Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

A  local Champaign reporter who has been interviewing me about the aforementioned affair told me earlier today about the U of I’s offer to Ken Howell.  Apparently they have rehired him to teach one class per semester for $10, 000 per semester but he has to cut all ties with the St. John’s Catholic Newman Center.  He asked me for my thoughts on the matter.  Here is what I told him:

On the one hand, this is positive news.  The commission of the faculty senate has put the lie to the claims by LAS that teaching about the Catholic faith in a class about Catholicism is hate speech.  Nevertheless, the good fruit is laced with poison.

The offer seems to be exactly what I was afraid of.  The prohibition against Dr. Howell’s association with the Newman Center is another violation of his academic freedom and it is likewise a violation of his freedom of religion.  How many other adjuncts or part time faculty are prevented from working for an organization associated with their faith as a condition of employment?

The U of I appears to be making an economically untenable offer with the intent of voiding a 90+ year relationship with the Newman Center.  I suspect that they are banking on the fact that since Dr. Howell cannot work for the Newman Center, which paid him a full professor’s salary, he will not be able to afford to take the position.  The U of I is offering him perhaps a little more than a quarter of his Newman Center salary.

Even if Dr. Howell does manage to figure out how to make such a situation work, at the very least this stipulation seems to corroborate my experience that all too many at the U of I have a prejudice against faith. To suppose that being paid by a religious institution somehow disqualifies a professor from academic rigor and fair-mindedness is bigotry of the first order.  The fact that seminaries all across the country, whose faculty are paid by religious bodies, are also accredited by such associations as that which accredits the U of I (North Central Association of Colleges and Schools) indicates that funding from a religious source provides no warrant for suspicion.  Indeed, Catholic Chairs at major universities usually involve funding from Catholic donors and consultation with the local bishop about faculty appointments.  I do hope that this offensive stipulation is challenged.

See here and here for my previous posts on this matter.

Here is the last episode of our 8 part TV and radio series.  To sum it up, perhaps we can say that to have a good death one needs to practice dying now.  You can download the video here.

My last post on this topic provided my thoughts about it.  However, I thought that a little background as to how this came about might be of interest to some. I think it helpful to go back to the beginning of the association between the Institute of Catholic Thought (ICT), of which Ken Howell was the director, and the University of Illinois in terms of credit classes.

The ICT had its predecessor in a cooperative arrangement between the Spaulding Guild (the original instantiation of what is now St. John’s Catholic Newman Center, the parent organization of the ICT) and the University of Illinois.  The director of the Spaulding Guild, Fr. John A. O’Brien, joined with nine other campus ministry organizations to petition the University to accept for credit in the university, some courses the student centers would teach in their respective institutions.

On December 9^th 1919 the faculty Senate and the Board of Trustees approved an arrangement with these centers.  This allowed the Guild to teach Catholic courses for university credit under the supervision of a university appointed committee.  The stipulations for this arrangement required that the Guild follow certain guidelines.  These included that it incorporate, submit their proposed courses to the university for approval, provide instructors with a Ph.D. or equivalent education, provide their own facilities, and limit enrollment in the courses to students of sophomore standing or higher.

In the 1970s, controversy erupted over the credit course system that had been created by these campus ministers in 1919.  The controversy began developing in the late 1950s.  At that time, credit course enrollment had been integrated into the university’s registration process and the committee which had supervised the courses had been abolished (though their supervision was transferred to another body). These changes angered a small but powerful group of faculty members from the philosophy and sociology departments.  These faculty were members of the local chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and through the AAUP began making formal assaults on the credit course system, pressing for its discontinuance.

The ministers of the campus ministries, organized through the Religious Worker’s Association (RWA), fought the attack throughout the 1960s.  As the decade wore on, however, the heads of several foundations backed down, fearing that unless they compromised, they would have no voice in future decisions.  By the late 1960s, Fr. Duncan (the director [1943-1997] of what was now the Newman Foundation), was waging an increasingly lonely battle to keep the credit-course system intact, arguing that theology, which was the heart of religion, should be taught as an academic subject only by those trained in it. To the surprise of many, on May 17, 1972, the Trustees voted six to two to keep the credit courses (the above two paragraphs are from an unpublished history assembled by a friend of mine).

In 2000 the issue erupted again in which the Program for the Study of Religion again tried to eliminate the courses being offered in the Newman Foundation.  By this time, the Foundation, thanks to Msgr. Duncan’s influence , was the only remaining campus ministry center to be teaching these credit courses.  The director of the Foundation was now Msgr. Stuart Swetland who continued the battle with the same vigor.

The compromise he was to reach now included the discontinuation of teaching the courses as theology courses in the Newman Foundatoin.  The arrangement was modified in 2001 with the Program for the Study of Religion within the Liberal Arts School, subsuming these courses into its program and appointing two Newman Foundation professors as adjuncts within the Program.  These faculty would not receive any compensation from the University.  The courses were now taught as religious studies courses.  They were taught from an interior perspective, but they did not presume or expect faith on the part of the students.  These course turned out to be some of the most popular courses offered by the Program for the Study of Religion.  All of the classes offered by Msgr. Swetland and Ken Howell were regularly full and the instructors were ranked as excellent by their students almost every semester.

When Msgr. Swetland was reassigned in the spring of 2006, the battle erupted again.  The plan was for me to replace Msgr. Swetland in his classes.  Ken Howell notified the Program of this desired change.  The director was Robert McKim (the same person who “fired” Ken Howell earlier this year).  He was of course quite cool to the idea.  This stage of the controversy began with an invitation from the Program for me to meet with the faculty so “we could get to know one another.”

The meeting turned out to be something of an inquisition for which I was unprepared.  Three days after hearing that I would be taking Msgr. Swetland’s courses over, I was asked to cite the books I would use, layout on the fly a syllabus for these courses and answer specific questions about the topics posed by each of the faculty members.  Perhaps I should have expected this, but of course I was unprepared as I had not taught the courses before.

The faculty deemed me not competent to teach and declined to allow me to replace Msgr.  Swetland.  This was at the end of the academic year in the spring of 2006.  Over the summer Ken pushed Robert McKim on the issue.  McKim agreed that it was probably an unfair evaluation and that things likely would have gone differently if I had been given a chance to prepare for the meeting.  Much to the chagrin of the faculty, McKim relented and gave me a one year visiting appointment.  I have to admit that McKim did recognize he would take a lot of heat for this but decided to do the right thing.  Generally, I think McKim tried to be fair, even if his heart is with those who wanted to see us gone…or else his penchant for getting along weighed in our favor.  Nevertheless, he was always quite candid about his distaste for the current arrangement and his desire for a Catholic Chair whom the department would select (given they took to inviting “Charlie” Curran and Elizabeth Fiorenza as their guest lecturers one can see whom they would want to be the Catholic Chair).

However, during the fall semester of 2006 I was informed that the faculty had decided to begin a program to evaluate their adjuncts just in time for my inaugural semester.  I do not know if any others ever were evaluated, but McKim admitted that this was something new.  I had two faculty members sit in on two of my classes.  One of these members, one of them very hostile about Christian beliefs.

Of the two classes evaluated, one was on Vatican I and the Church’s response to Liberalism.  The other was on the background leading up to the calling of the Second Vatican Council.  While I think I was fair, I clearly laid these issues out from an interior Catholic perspective trying to explain the Catholic worldview and how this led to the events we were studying.  A few days later, I was called in to Robert McKim’s office.  He informed me that the “star chamber” had decided that I was not appropriate to teach within the Program.  He said that he could not share with me their deliberations and that the decision was final.  He did indicate to me that in general, the feeling was that I came across too much as though I believed what I was teaching.  McKim is one (perhaps the only one in what is now a Department) who thinks that students should not know what the professor thinks about what he teaches, presuming that this is the only way to be “objective.”

With my departure, this left finding a way to eliminate Ken Howell as the final step in a battle that had begun nearly 60 years prior, that is to eliminate people of faith from teaching subjects having to do with their faith.  To be fair, there are others who practice their faith who teach about their faith.  Conspicuously missing are those of the Judeo-Christian traditions.

It seems to me that this prejudice against people of faith is predicated upon a secular presupposition that there is an inherent conflict between faith and reason.  This premise is likely a vestige of the presumption that any kind of faith demands fideism which has permeated much of the Protestant religious experience in the United States.  While this fideism has its most obvious manifestation in Fundamentalism, it has its roots in the Reformed and Lutheran schools who adopted Ockham’s Voluntarist Nominalism.  Nevertheless, this premise is simply a rationalization as I see it.  My experience was that there seems  to be almost a fear of engagement with Catholic thought among many of these academics.  The U of I Department of Religion (it transitioned from a Program to a Department in 2007 or 2008) represents a gamut of responses to Catholic thought: from hostile ad hominem attacks, to snobbish dismissal, to fearful avoidance of any discussion.  This is not all of the faculty, but it describes at least the vocal leaders.

Ken’s firing was made easy by the 2001 arrangement.  Adjuncts have no rights and I suspect that this was foreseen.  Even though the arrangment was supposed to continue into the indefinite future, an almost century old agreement, the stipulations of the agreement made it only a matter of time before the desires of the hostile faculty members would prevail.  In some ways, it is amazing that they did not find a reason to get rid of Ken earlier.   I suspect that because he always had full classes, no complaints, and was rated excellent by his students for at least 10 consecutive semesters, and they were not paying for his services they found it very difficult to justify.

It is easy to see that they needed something like this sensitive, politically correct scheme to complete their nearly 6 decade-long effort to expunge people of particular faith perspectives from the classroom.  One even wonders if this might have been a set up.  Based upon Ken’s description of the events and an evaluation of the two documents upon which the U of I seems to have made its decision (Ken’s e-mail to his students and the anonymous complaint by an ostensible friend of one of Ken’s students), it seems that the “star chamber” decision was simply a calculation that they could get away with it this time.  I suspect they thought no one would be able to defend Ken’s e-mail because they have never seriously engaged with Catholic thought.  For the time being any way, they seem to have won…

The antiphon for the first Psalm from this morning’s morning prayer reminds me of one of the great challenges of the spiritual life…at least mine any way.  The antiphon reads:

When will I come to the end of my pilgrimage and enter the presence of God?

About a year ago a very good friend of mine made a comment similar to this as we were talking one evening.  Unfortunately, as I am wont to do, I responded with my thoughts on the matter rather than listening to her.  Here are some of those thoughts for what they are worth.

I lived for the first three decades of my life in a veritable spiritual coma until God, in in His great mercy, sent His Holy Spirit to administer a holy 2×4 upside my hard Irish noggin.  Slowly but surely as I came to understand of God’s great love and His plan for us, I found myself yearning for a quick end to the journey in order to experience what eye has not seen.  That is, I did until my spiritual life began to progress and I came to realize how unprepared I was.

A couple of years ago, this was made quite clear to me.  One evening, my wife noticed that my right pupil was dilated more than my left.  I mentioned this to my doctor who showed great concern.  He immediately scheduled me for a battery of exams and referred me to several specialists.  As I was to learn that there were quite a few possible causes for this; most of them very serious to fatal.

Over the next couple of months I had ample opportunity to contemplate this question.  The experience was a most sobering one.  The very real possibility that this question might be answered: “very shortly,” brought what I knew previously in a more dispassionate way home to me in a much more personal way.

I realized that my moral courage was quite lacking. I realized that my trust in God left much to be desired.  I came to understand how very large the gap was between where I was and where I needed to be.  This made an imminent  particular judgment not a joyful prospect.  Eventually, I received a benign diagnosis.  Perhaps this is why I have not made all that much progress since then.

Nevertheless, at times the insanity of life can still cause me to ask this question.  But now I recognize much more clearly that my yearning needs to correspond better to my personal holiness.  Thus, during these times I pray for the holiness needed to be ready to pray this antiphon.

Here is the 7th segment of our 8 part series on Theology of the Body…

To download, click here.

It is ironic.  In academia today there exists the prevailing notion that universities are bastions of freedom to pursue truth…though paradoxically, all too many in the academy no longer accept the notion of truth.  In reality, truth has been replaced by freedom as an end in itself. And there is almost nothing off limits in this pursuit of academic freedom: pornography, blasphemy, bigotry against select religions, except for authentic academic freedom.  In any case, the self-appointed guardians of “freedom as an end” will so often look down their noses at people of faith who are “encumbered” by dogmatic thinking and so are unable “to think for themselves.”

In truth, man is a dogmatic animal.  He is made to pursue the truth (i.e. dogmas) and cannot abide with falsity nor with those who are unwilling to see the truth.  As it turns out, even in the most secular of institutions dogmas of faith will trump academic freedom. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is one such institution.

As a matter of full disclosure, I must say that I experienced the University of Illinois’ squelching of  academic freedom myself a few years ago.  I was a visiting professor for an academic year at this institution.  The Religious Studies department was not happy with my teaching there, but through an almost century old agreement with the Newman Center, they initially were compelled to allow me.  Because of this, they decided that  they should start sitting in on classes of their adjuncts/visiting professors.  Two faculty members sat in on my class on US Catholic History.  Some days after my class visit I was called in to the department head’s office to be told that I would not be allowed to continue the following academic year.   It seems that I had committed a very grave sin against the new orthodoxy.  My sin?  I appeared as though I believed what I was teaching.  I was not accused of proselytizing, being unfair to students, or expecting them to believe what I taught.  Nevertheless, since my subject matter did not conform to secularist orthodoxy, it was deemed that there was too great a danger in exposing students to rank heresy without an “orthodox” professor there to refute it for them.

Thus, I was not surprised a couple of weeks ago when my former colleague who has been teaching there since 2000, called to tell me that after 10 years his appointment at the university was not being renewed.  Kenneth Howell was a very popular teacher.  He had been ranked excellent by his students every semester for years (at least since I got there in 2005).  His classes were always full.  Even his students who disagreed with him, respected his ability to clearly and dispassionately explain to them what the Catholic Church teaches.  However, now he too has been found to be so grave a sinner against secularist orthodoxy that he too must be purged from the ranks of the orthodox.  Indeed, his sin was much more grave than my own.  Here is Ken’s explanation sent to his friends:

“Dear Friend:

I write this short narrative to explain why I am no longer teaching at the University of Illinois and am not employed by the Diocese of Peoria as of 30 June 2010. First, a little background.

I came to Champaign-Urbana in August of 1998 to be employed by the St. John’s Catholic Newman Center as a teacher in the courses of the Catholic faith that were then taught through the Center. For seven years I enjoyed a working relationship with Monsignor Stuart W. Swetland, the Director of the Center, who taught alongside me in that program. In 2000, Monsignor Swetland negotiated an agreement with the Department of Religion in which he and I would be adjunct professors in the department and would teach courses on Catholicism. We simultaneously established the Institute of Catholic Thought of which I became the Director and Senior Fellow. The purpose of the Institute was to promote the intellectual heritage of the western world in which Catholicism played such an integral role.

Since the Fall of 2001, I have been regularly teaching two courses in the Department of Religion. Since Monsignor Swetland’s departure in May of 2006, I have taught the equivalent of a full-time professor every semester, sometimes even more. This past semester (Spring 2010) something occurred which changed an otherwise idyllic academic life. One of the courses I have taught since 2001 has been “Introduction to Catholicism.” I think that it is fair to say that many students at the University of Illinois have benefited greatly from this and other teaching I have done. Every semester in that “Introduction” class, I gave two lectures dealing with Catholic Moral positions. One was an explanation of Natural Moral Law as affirmed by the Church. The second was designed as an application of Natural Law Theory to a disputed issue in our society. Most of those semesters, my chosen topic was the moral status of homosexual acts. I would happy to explain more fully the Catholic Church’s position on this matter but, for the sake of brevity, I can summarize it as follows. A homosexual orientation is not morally wrong just as no moral guilt can be assigned to any inclination that a person has. However, based on natural moral law, the Church believes that homosexual acts are contrary to human nature and therefore morally wrong. This is what I taught in my class.

This past semester was unusual. In previous years, I had students who might have disagreed with the Church’s position but they did so respectfully and without incident. This semester (Spring 2010) I noticed the most vociferous reaction that I have ever had. It seemed out of proportion to all that I had known thus far. To help students understand better how this issue might be decided within competing moral systems, I sent them an email contrasting utilitarianism (in the populist sense) and natural moral law. If we take utilitarianism to be a kind of cost-benefit analysis, I tried to show them that under utilitarianism, homosexual acts would not be considered immoral whereas under natural moral law they would. This is because natural moral law, unlike utilitarianism, judges morality on the basis of the acts themselves.

After the semester was over, I was called into the office of Robert McKim, the chairman of the Department of Religion, who was in possession of this email. I was told that someone (I presume one of my students) sent this email to the Office of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Concerns at the University. It was apparently sent to administrators in the University of Illinois and then forwarded on to Professor McKim. I was told that I would no longer be able to teach in the Department of Religion.

Professor McKim and I discussed the contents of the email and he was quite insistent that my days of teaching in the department were over. I offered that it would be more just to ask me not to address the subject of homosexuality in my class. In fact, the other class I regularly taught (Modern Catholic Thought) never dealt with that subject at all. I also avered that to dismiss me for teaching the Catholic position in a class on Catholicism was a violation of academic freedom and my first amendment rights of free speech. This made no difference. After that conversation and a couple of emails, Professor McKim insisted that this decision to dismiss me stood firm.

I then consulted with our Diocesan lawyer, Mrs. Patricia Gibson, to see if the St. John’s Newman Center could sue the university for breach of contract. Mrs. Gibson, kind in spirit and articulate as regards the law, told me that unfortunately the university had made very careful provisions to protect itself and so would not be liable in a law suit. I am still consulting with other lawyers about possible legal action on the grounds of the first amendment.

Then Monsignor Gregory Ketcham, the current Director of the St. John’s Catholic Newman Center and my superior, informed me that the Center would not be able to continue employing me since there was no longer any teaching for me to do. I then reiterated what I had mentioned to him the day before. I suggested that we work together to have courses on Catholicism taught at the Newman Center that could be accredited by a Catholic university and that could be transferred into the University of Illinois for credit. In this way, the students whom we had been called to serve could continue to be instructed in the Catholic Faith. I told him in fact that I had once had conversations with professors in Catholic universities who were willing to make such arrangements. Monsignor Ketcham said that he had no interest in such a plan.

Thus, after more than sixty years, students at the University of Illinois will have no classes on Catholicism available to them. If the Department of Religion continues to offer the courses I taught, I have no idea how accurately Catholicism will be represented. I know this subject well enough to say it can be easily distorted. I have tried in this document to portray in a straightforward manner what happened. I also am preparing another document giving my own interpretation of all these events.

I look back at the twelve years I have spent in this position with memories of wonderful times with my students and friends with whom I have labored. It has been a time of great growth and joy. I thank God from the bottom of my heart. I don’t know what the future holds but I do know Him who holds it. He is faithful and can be trusted.

Sincerely,

Kenneth J. Howell “

A dispassionate presentation of the Catholic Church’s position on natural law apparently cannot be tolerated by the magisterium of the new orthodoxy.  After all, the dogma that same sex attraction disorder is a preferred orientation is a revealed truth that cannot be rationally defended; thus, it must simply be accepted.  Those who will not accept it cannot be tolerated in polite society.  It is ironic that this is exactly what these same thinkers claim about the Catholic faith and why they are so suspicious of any believer who would attempt to teach about the Catholic faith in a public (or secular as they would say) institution.

If you want to keep up with this, or if you would like to weigh in with the U of I administration, you can go to a Facebook page started by Ken’s former students.

It is becoming longer and longer between posts, but I haven’t yet decided to call it quits.  As such, here is number 6 in our television/radio series on TOB.  Click here to view (please excuse the lead in…).

Here is the fifth in the Theology of the Body TV/Radio series.  This episode looks at the significance of this theology for ecclesiology. Thoughts?

Click here to view.

Here is the fourth installment of the TV/Radio series we are doing in South Texas.  In it, we try to bring out the significance of the Incarnation, focusing on the fact the Son of God took upon Himself a body.

Click here to view.

Some have asked, so I thought I would pass along to those who might want the warning.  Yes, tonight is the fourth episode in our TV/radio series on Theology of the Body.  If you are not in San Antonio, you can catch it streamed live on Guadalupe Radio Network at 8pm Central.   Select the South Texas option.  If you do happen along to listen, how about giving us a call…we get kind of lonely in the studio all by our lonesomes…

Last Monday night’s Theology of the Body class brought up a short discussion on a topic of some recent interest to me.  I have been developing my thoughts on this topic for a number of years, however at Monday’s class I was not able to recall all of them.  This post is a first attempt to jot down the main thread of my thinking for future development and share it with whomever might still be happening by CLS.

A number of years ago, I recall hearing what at the time I considered to be an extremely fanciful theory about what exactly the act that comprised Original Sin entailed.  In a class, one of my students mentioned that they had heard Christopher West say that the original sin of Adam and Eve was contraceptive sex.  Now it is true there is a very old tradition, dismissed by most because of the way it is characterized, that their sin was sexually based.  This tradition is reflected in the (humorous?) adage, “it wasn’t so much the apple in the tree but the pair on the ground.”  But I wondered, how could one seriously move from this tradition to suggest that it was really contraceptive sex by which they sinned?

I have not read or listened to much of Christopher West, so I have never heard this myself and so I do not know how he might justify his theory (though the theory was confirmed to me by someone who knows West’s work well).  Nevertheless, to my surprise the more I considered it, the more sense it began to make to me.  Now I have not adequately fleshed it out in my thinking in order to begin teaching this as a cogent theory, but several of my classes have heard my current thinking on the subject.  Unfortunately, I think that I gave my best description of it during last year’s theology of the body class but I never did document it and cannot now recall all of my points.  Thus, I thought I might start to document them here.

Of course, we ought to begin with what Genesis has to say.  In sketch, Genesis 3 describes God’s proscription against Adam and Eve’s eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  I don’t intend to do a thorough exegesis of the text here.  Nor will I try to draw correspondences of all of the mythical language to this theory.

What I would like to look at first is the use of the terms “fruit” (periy) and “knowledge” (technically yada` is the verb form, while Gen 2 uses the noun form da`ath).  These terms certainly are used in a variety of ways  in Scripture but here the terms have a decidedly procreative meaning.  Anyone who has studied JPII’s Theology of the Body catecheses will understand the procreative significance of the term “knowledge.”  From a hylomorphic hermeneutic, knowledge encompasses cognitive knowledge but it extends to a more comprehensive exchange of persons and is completed in its most intimate visible manifestation in the marital act in which there is a complete body-soul exchange of gifts of one to the other in life-giving, fruitful love.

Fruit likewise, is a key term.  Adam and Eve were told to be “fruitful and multiply” as were the animals, but they had the additional charge to self-determination…to subdue the earth and have dominion over its creatures.  Choice, necessitating a free will, are fundamental to authentic human fruitfulness (i.e to go beyond simply animal procreation).   In these terms, the fruit of Adam “knowing” Eve was first Cain.  It would seem that there is warrant at this point to at least considering the possibility that the mythical language about “knowledge” and “fruit” in Genesis 3 could be a reference to the marital act.  But of course, we must go much further.

The next thing to consider is the adjectival phrase “good and evil” modifying “knowledge.”  One must ask the question how one might know evil.  Metaphysically speaking, evil can only exist parasitically in some good.  That is, evil exists by depriving the good of some necessary aspect of its existence.  Thus, evil is a state and not a created entity.  Evil has only a privative existence.

If we are consider what this primordial knowledge of good and evil might be in the context of our theory, we must recall that authentic knowledge must be an act where the form of the act manifests a potentially fruitful, complete exchange of persons in the most intimate of all self-giving.  This act is good but it can be experienced also as evil if it is deprived of some essential aspect of its being.  Any time the form of the act is altered from its archetypal structure, it is evil.  If the man does not cling to his wife as the two become one flesh (e.g. adultery or premarital sex) it is evil.  If it is not open to the two being fruitful and multiplying it turns into an evil (i.e. contraceptive sex).  Both cases lead to the “eating” of a deficient “fruit”,  however, it would seem that the text suggests that they are created as man and wife, called to consummate their marriage and so the latter option is left.

A reasonable question that could be asked would be about the significance of contraceptive intercourse as the act by which all of creation would be torn from its relationship with God.  This is indeed a significant question and I think that the theology of nuptial mystery provides the rationale for it and for a second question.  That is, why Satan would choose deforming the marital act as his first (apparently) attack against man.   The nuptial mystery understands Trinitarian Communion as the archetype of nuptial love.  The narratives of man’s creation in both accounts (Gen  1 & 2) focus on man’s creation as complementary selves who are called to be fruitful (Gen 1), to be one flesh (Gen 2) which by nature can be seen as ordered to the same goal.  Some strands of nuptial theology understand the marital act to be the one, par excellence, which hylomorphically manifests the life-giving, fruitful love of total-self gift which is the eternal Trinitarian Processions.  Man images God relatively (as St. Thomas says) more perfectly than the Angels, than Satan himself, in this act.  Where else would this prideful, fallen angel choose to attack man than in the act that allows man to image God, in one way, more than does Satan with all of his perfect intellectual nature.  That is, in the capacity to beget (recall the first Procession).

Recall also the tradition in which Satan is said to reply: non serviam when given the knowledge that he was made to serve man, this lowly vile creature with a body like the sub-personal animals.  Not only that, but that he would have to worship one of them whom God was to join to Himself.  What better way for Satan to prove to himself that he is superior if he can deform, and thereby pervert, the very act by which these (rational) animals superiorly image God?

But one would have to ask why Adam and Eve would be tempted into this?  It wasn’t like they would be afraid that college costs for their progeny would require them to give up the winter home in Aspen.  The Genesis text says that Eve saw that it was good for food, a delight to the eye, and desirable to make one wise.  Certainly knowledge, especially this marital knowledge is a good but Adam and Eve would have had to have been able to see that somehow this act without its procreative fruitfulness was preferable to the authentic act.  I think that the answer here is to realize that they were tempted into falling into Satan’s prideful sin.  They tried to achieve their destiny, to become God-like, without God.  I suggest that they thought that “knowing” one another on their own terms, without God’s “interference” (i.e. His law and the law of the order of nature) was the only way to really authentically experience their “freedom to choose.”  Isn’t this the continuing problem today.  We can often be so blinded by our need to freely choose, and this is a real human need, that we are drawn to ignore the structure by which this choosing leads to authentic human happiness.

Adam and Eve ruptured the integrity of God’s creation by abusing the gift of self-determination.  Instead of following the divine archetype in Whom, through Whom, and for Whom they were created–that is returning themselves to the Father in love, trust and thanksgiving–they tried to take the gift and use it for their selfish ends at the expense of the good of the sacred order.  A final thought.  If it were contraceptive sex that led to this, would this not perhaps by why it is pointed out that while God did not take away the gift of the possibility of fruitful self-giving, the fruit would now be more painful for the woman?

Ok, these are my thoughts thus far.  Thoughtful comments, critiques solicited.

The third part of our 8 part series was last Wednesday night.  Don’t forget that it is being streamed from grnonline.com at 8pm Central; you can call in and let us know that we are not just talking to ourselves (though we know that is a distinct possibility).  Let us know what you think:

Click here to view.

This is the second part of the eight part series for those (both) avid followers of this blog. It is a look at the meaning of the human person as made in the image of a Trinitarian God.  We didn’t quite get through all of the points that I had wanted but that is the consequence of doing a live program.

I was not as pleased with this session as the last but I have found that going by one’s feelings is not always a reliable indicator.  The president of our College saw this session and remarked that he had never seen me so animated.  I am not sure if that was good or bad?

This last week there was some sort of technical glitch (still not sure exactly what happened) but the radio simulcast did not activate.  As a result,  the regular EWTN radio program was playing for anyone who happened to try to listen in (I heard from a few).  Sorry about that; however, here is the video for anyone who might have the time and inclination to watch.

This runs live every 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month, so we have a three week break until the next episode.  Again, these recordings will also be available on the sidebar under metathreads.

Click here to download.

Well there was an overwhelming request to have access to the broadcast for those who could not listen to it live streaming so here it is…for both of you.  I will have it as a page that you can find on the meta threads on the side bar (look carefully, I need to ask Shelray to make an icon for it).  I will also post here when I upload a new one sometime after the showing.  Here it is as well so you don’t have to go looking for it.

Click here to download.

Well, it is kind of a double entendre any way if you are familiar with John Paul II’s Theology of the Body.  I wanted to share with y’all (I’m back in Texas so I’m allowed) one of the irons I have had in the fire (which is one reason I have been slacking with my posts).  I will be doing an 8 part series on the theology of the body on local Catholic TV and Radio, the latter of which unfortunately for you, is also streamed.  This first series will take John Paul’s work from a little different perspective.  A short description of the series is found below.  The CTSA program description and resources will be found here.  The streaming can be found here (runs at 8pm Central on the Wednesdays noted below; select “listen in English” and then choose “South Texas”).

The popular treatment of Theology of the Body has been focused around the most obvious areas, the promotion of chastity and purity, and to a lesser extent, marriage but I would argue that John Paul II’s theology of the body is a new, complete synthesis of Catholic teaching in the manner of what St. Thomas Aquinas did with his Summa theologiae.  This first series will approach John Paul II’s insights in a manner of a mini-catechism in order to try to illustrate its wide reaching implications.  Here is a summary of the series:

Episode 1 (Mar 10): “Theology of the Mystical Body”

This first episode explains the purpose of the series and how it will progress to include a brief overview of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body and its significance for the Church.

Episode 2 (Mar 24): “Know Thyself”

This episode discusses the meaning of man as made in the image of God, emphasizing why understanding the Trinity is essential for understanding what makes us tick and how we ultimately will find our happiness.

Episode 3 (Apr 14): “This Valley of Tears”

This episode explores creation and the Fall and what this means for our personal experience of goodness and of sin.  It looks at how the Fall affects our relationship with God and with others, and what the challenges are for having a fully Christian life of joy.

Episode 4 (Apr 28):  “Jesus’ Body”

This episode looks at the Incarnation Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ from a fresh perspective.  It explains these events in order to highlight their universal significance while at the same time providing insights into the human condition and the meaning of life.

Episode 5 (May 12):  “Christ’s Body”

This episode investigates various doctrines concerning the Church from the perspective of marriage based upon John Paul II’s analysis of Ephesians 5.

Episode 6 (May 26):  “Offer It Up”

This episode explores the significance of the liturgy & the Sacraments from the perspective of the human person and his place in the cosmos.

Episode 7 (Jun 9):  “It’s Not Hard, But It Is Humanly Impossible”

This episode discusses the moral life by looking at the interplay of grace and human action in achieving self-mastery and joy in this life in order to prepare for the next.

Episode 8 (Jun 23):  “Earth in Heaven”

This last episode of the series explains the Last Things from the perspective of what it means to be human; i.e. what the Last Things mean with respect to a body as well as a soul.

Hierothee suggested I do a post on my research about the connection of sacrifice to consumption.  This is very difficult to do in the space of a standard post so this will necessarily be a broad sketch of what one day may be a much more compelling (I hope) manuscript.

I suppose the place to start is with John Paul’s Trinitarian anthropology.  Man is made in the image of a Communion of Persons.  He explains this Communion, starting from traditional Processional theology, in terms of total self-gift.  Communion is total self-gift.  This total self-gift  is thereby the archetype for the human person in his relationships.

The human person is a hylomorphic entity; that is, a unity comprised of a spiritual soul and a material body.  Man exists at once,  in the realm of the spiritual and the animal.  As a spiritual being man shares in the capacity for communion by use of his rational faculties, intellect and will.  These faculties give him he capacity for total self-gift, for communion.

Animals also, in some way, must reflect God’s perfection.  As fundamental as communion is to God’s being, one might expect that there should be some way in which sub-personal animals participate in communion.  Certainly sub-personal beings do not have the rational faculties necessary for the communion of gift.  They do however, experience a sort of communion in which they join themselves to something of a lower nature (hopefully).  However, this union is through annihilating the lower nature and raising it into a higher nature.  They become one with it, though this is a defective communion because the “other” has lost its being.

Man lives in both of these dimensions.  He experiences both this spiritual communion of persons–most perfectly when the giving accords with the archetype, that is total, disinterested self-gift.  He also experiences the communion of consumption when he eats…though I would argue he can consume in other ways…when he treats another person as a means rather than an end…but this requires more discussion than we have space for.

Man now exists in a deficient condition; he is fallen.  It is very interesting to look at the third book of Genesis and the story of the fall in light of the above discussion.  The mythic (this does not mean untrue of course) imagery shows our first parents with the task of total self-gift–that is, to give themselves in trust and thanksgiving to God, very much the way that John Paul describes the second Procession of the Son.  There is a detailed discussion of the theology of creation in relation to the Son and the second Procession which should be inserted here but neither is there space for that so this might seem less compelling than it should be, but the support will have to wait a longer work.

The Genesis imagery of the fall indicates that the instead of achieving communion through this act of total-self gift, they instead chose consumption.  I would argue that whatever the act of rebellion might have actually been, the choice of the consumption imagery is significant.  It suggests that consumption–communion on man’s terms rather than God’s terms–is to be a perennial problem.  In fact, consumption now often masquerades as communion.  I believe that this is the anthropology behind what we know as “comfort foods” which are standard recourse for many of us, particularly when we have trouble with relationships of communion.

Man’s fallen state means that his capacity for love takes upon itself, potentially a bitter aspect.  It is now the case that one has to die in different ways, when one loves.  In the very least, he must die to himself and his selfish inclinations if he is to love the other for the other’s sake.  This is a type of sacrifice.  In fact, the challenge to love disinterestedly requires varying degrees of sacrifice.  Sacrifice is to give of yourself for the sake of the other to the point that you experience loss in some manner or another.  This is ultimately what the divine Processions are…though it may not be appropriate to use the term sacrifice for the divine Procession because of the attendant connotation of loss in sacrifice and there is no loss in the divine Communion.

However, the remedy to the fall, in which man’s failure to emulate the second Procession, will take on the proper meaning of the term sacrifice.  The Son Incarnate will freely choose to manifest temporally what He does eternally.  He will, in love, trust and thanksgiving, return to the Father all that the Father has given Him…including His human life.  This Sacrifice on the cross will restore the conditions of possibility for communion, but interestingly enough, it does so in a way the redeems the consumption by which man’s initial communion was lost.

Of course we know well the fact that the Cross draws together the eternal with the temporal.  It draws into itself the last Passover seder in the upper room before Christ’s Passion, as He transforms this  seder into the New Testament Passover–the Sacrifice of the Mass.  The Cross also brings forth the economic manifestation of the second Procession, that is Pentecost–in an analogous way in the first Procession brings about the second.

This one Paschal act, beginning with the Incarnation and ending with the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, is liturgically made present in the Sacrifice of the Mass.  The Mass re-presents the Sacrifice of the Cross through the memorial enactment of the New Testament Passover proleptically celebrated in the Upper Room.   It culminates in an efficacious symbol of communion which looks very much like animal consumption–we call it Holy Communion.

The consumption in the Garden of Eden which destroyed man’s communion with God  is now redeemed by the Son.  The Son, who in an act of total self-gift reflective of His eternal gift, continually gives up His Body and Blood in every Mass celebrated throughout the ages, that through an animal act of consumption the faithful are restored by this life-giving communion with the Son and thereby, inserted into Trinitarian Communion.

In a hylomorphic act of love which eclipses Aristotle’s greatest thoughts, both aspects of the human person, animal and spiritual, are incorporated during this divinizing rite we call Holy Communion.  The human person is inserted into the hypostatic order giving him entrance into Trinitarian life when he consumes the Flesh of the Son of Man and drinks His Blood…he now truly has life in him.

Consumption has been redeemed and is immutably implicated in spiritual communion.  This doesn’t mean that consumption no longer masquerades as communion; it does.

It does mean though, that when this masquerading does lead to sin, it is now the source of its own ultimate undoing…because where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.  The love revealed and effected on the Cross, is poured out in time via the mediation of the Sacrifice of the Mass, restoring communion where souls choose to turn again to God.  Sacrifice has redeemed consumption and made it the material cause of communion.

Edward Oakes has a post up at First Things about Rene Girard. There has been much talk about Girard at First Things lately, as Oakes himself notes, but as well at National Review, where Peter Robinson has an interview up (but which I was unable to find in a quick search). It has inspired me to post a stinging criticism of Girard’s theory of the origin of religious sacrifice taken from Louis Bouyer (Cosmos: The World and the Glory of God, 1988, p. 238, n. 14). In explaining the tenor of the following quotation, I should point out that Bouyer had a strong aversion to theories of the necessary evolution of a religionless Christianity, such as one could find in Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann, and he seems to have seen Girard as a proponent of this sort of thinking. In other words, anathema to him were those who think that Christianity is necessarily secularizing and that Christ’s sacrifice put an end to religion.  Also, he had a strong aversion to annihilationist theories of sacrifice. Sacrifice, he held, is divine self-gift to humanity in which we are ourselves incorporated and made fully self-gift, and it is consummated in the sacred meal, wherein our being comes to fulfillment. Sacrifice is not consummated in the putting to death of a sacrificial victim. The sacred meal is the fundamental activity of man, and the pre-Christian religions pre-figured the Christian Eucharist in this regard, without ever having had access to a truly efficacious communion with deity:

The ideas developed by Rene Girard on the nature of sacrifice have recently created a considerable stir in learned circles. But his brilliant speculations overlook virtually all the contributions made in the last hundred years on this undeniably fundamental aspect of religion. Which may be why he considers supremely indicative of the meaning of sacrifice the apotropaic rites now recognized by all specialists as never having been looked upon as sacrifices by those who practiced these rituals. Quite simply, scapegoats and all variations on the theme, far from ever being considered as sacrifices to God, were always sent to the devil! On the materiality of sacrifices — the necessary starting point before any attempt to unravel their meaning — one may refer to works such as R.K. Yerkes’s Sacrifice in Greek and Roman Religions and in Primitive Judaism. This kind of factual study inevitably leads to a firm conclusion: it is not the killing which determines sacrifice, even when the victim is put to death, which is far from always being the case (see in this respect E.O. James, Origins of Sacrifice, London, 1953, pp. 256 ff.). Neither is its nature established by the oblation to the divinity. Instead, a sacrifice is a meal, but a meal considered as sacred because the divinity partakes of it, whether the sacrifice is exlusively intended for the deity (as in the holocaust), whether priests alone also take part (as in the Hebrew sacrifices for the expiation of sins), or finally whether the entire people participate with them, as in the sacrifice of communion. Or indeed in the Passover, and this seems to have been a characteristic of the very earliest sacrifices, in which all is consumed by the participants, with no role clearly reserved for the divinity.

This explains why, in the most ancient mythic expression of their significance, sacrifices are far from appearing as tremulous attempts of terrified humans to placate a bloodthirsty divinity through some kind of ritual murder. Instead, the gods themselves, acting either directly or through kings deemed to embody or represent them, are the initiators of sacrifices, and thereby show themselves as the quintessential benefactors of mankind, and more particularly the sources of human life in that which maintains it (nourishment) and produces it (sexuality). The idea of sacrifice as a ritual murder is nothing but the fabrication of self-styled scholars, who thus prove that they belong with the pathetic dupes who persist in taking seriously the alleged Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

I thought that I would add a bit to David’s great post on the influence of Saul Alinsky on the CCHD. The whole question opens up profound problems in regard to the history of the conciliar Church in the U.S., for Alinsky’s radicalism is very closely insinuated in the Church of that time and place. But the question is much larger than that, for Alinsky’s radicalism was favored by one of the great heroes of modern Catholic thought: Jacques Maritain. 

It is particularly troubling to consider the spiritual sympathy between Alinsky, a Jewish agnostic/atheist, who was a vulgar ruffian and an agitator of the lowest sort, with Maritain, whom many have assumed to have been a personal bastion of orthodoxy and a lock-step Thomist (do you have an excuse for this, Ralph McInerny?). Maritain was, of course, a close friend and confidant of Garrigou-Lagrange, whom Lefebvrists to this day revere and honor as the one and only twentieth century Catholic theologian worth his salt, and a Catholic philosopher whose idea of a fully Christian, political humanism — an “integral humanism,” as he called it — had a profound effect on the post-conciliar papacy. Indeed, in Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI makes copious use of this expression, which was greatly favored by Paul VI, and which derives ultimately from the pen of Maritain. Maritain is also a favorite, it should be pointed out, of the so-called “neo-conservative” Catholics Michael Novak and George Weigel.

It is instructive to recount a pertinent section from Jean-Luc Barre’s biography of Jacques and Raissa Maritain: Beggars for Heaven, which was a best-seller in France (it went through several printings in the mid ’90s) and which was translated into English by Bernard E. Doering, who himself wrote a book on the close relationship of Maritain with Alinsky entitled The Philosopher and the Provocateur.

Barre points out that Maritain was among the first continental Catholics to express an appreciation for the idea of democratic America, including its principled separation of Church and State, and it is in the context of this love for the “American idea” that Maritain’s relationship with Alinsky is perhaps best understood.

Maritain considered Alinsky to be one of his closest friends, “an indomitable and dreaded organizer of ‘People’s Organizations’ and an anti-racist leader whose methods are as efficacious as they are unorthodox” (quoted from Maritain by Barre on p. 402).

Maritain had met Alinsky during the Second World War and was immediately taken with his “savvy” work in the cause of economic and social justice. Barre describes their mutual sympathy as founded on a profound “shared taste for subversion and irreverence…and a similar confidence in the people” (403). It should be remembered that, on the one hand, Maritain was greatly distrusted by many Church hierarchs prior to the council as a “Marxist.” Indeed, in visiting America, he could find little support among the hiearchy, and in the universities he could find even less support among the authorities, because there was, even in those days, a global antipathy to Thomism. This made him, in Barre’s words, a “desparado,” and a kindred spirit to Alinsky. On the other hand, Maritain was himself, like Alinsky, committed to what he took to be the “democratic ideal” that everyone should be free to question and challenge authority. How interesting, then, that Maritain, who had one great friend in the hierarchy in Garrigou-Lagrange, should play a role in the banishment of “la nouvelle theologie” prior to the council.

And did Saul Alinsky ever look up to Maritain! This is, I suppose, a reminder of the attractive character that the life of grace imparts to the human soul, an attractiveness so compelling that even hardened atheists recognize its appeal. In saying this, I should point out that I would not in any way, in recounting this story, wish to impugn Maritain’s holiness. At any rate, Alinsky was, to quote Barre, a “personage who was known for being aggresive and rude [but] was nothing but modesty and deference toward the intellectual who had come from France and of whom he asked one day, with unexpected timidity, for a signature on a photograph of Maritain” (403).

Indeed, Alinsky loved Maritain as a father. He told Maritain, in seeking to explain his desire for Maritain’s autograph, that he was not prone to idol worship: “…[but] what I am trying to say is that a picture of you with some personal statement on it would be one of my most cherished possessions. There I have said it” (403). Alinsky even dedicated his now-infamous Rules for Radicals to Maritain, with the inscription: “To my spiritual father and the man I love, from his prodigal and wayward son” (403).

Maritain seems to have seen in Alinsky’s work the possibility of imprinting the Christian ideal on movements for social justice and of shaping the creative energy of contemporary history. In a point of particular sympathy, Maritain saw in Alinsky’s community organizations the advent of “mediating structures” between the individual and the State that could buffer the individual from domination by the State.

But herein lies the troubling question of Maritain’s Catholic alliance with Alinsky, which would serve as a model for the post-conciliar Church in the U.S. and which should call the whole socio-political strategy of the post-conciliar Church in America into question. How could Maritain not have seen that Alinsky’s community organizations, his “buffers,” were in fact ordered to becoming functionaries of the State, its repressive arms of authority? Like all American agitators whose work operates in the trajectory of Marx’s nihilism, Alinsky awaited the day when a fully socialist political power would reign in the nation’s capitol. That day has now come, of course, as Saul Alinsky’s spiritual grandchild, and his heir to control of the community organizations in Chicago, Barack Hussein Obama, has now ascended to the presidency of the United States. Community organizations and “buffers,” such as SEIU, have now become potential instruments of governmental coercion.

Maritain could not see that Alinsky’s “community organizations” were always meant to be substitute churches which were ordered by their very essence to the derogation of the proper authority of the most important of the natural and supernatural mediating societies, namely, the natural family and the Catholic Church. Maritain could only see in Alinsky’s work the coming-into-being of new guilds, along the lines of the medieval guilds, that could put a check on the greed and radical individualism that underlies so much of the practice of free market capitalism. He thought that these organizations could embody the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, so that the grave social injustices of capitalism could be held in control without tyranical federal intervention. But he failed to realize that these organizations were in fact meant by Alinsky to be stepping-stones to the advent of, and eventual workers for, a centralized power structure that would coercively bring about his dreary, ugly, a-religious concept of social justice. Maritain seems to have failed, in other words, to recognize that it is perilous indeed to make common cause with those who have rejected the religious essence of man. Social justice without a truly Christian, religious foundation is a perversion of social justice.

And Maritain’s naivete in this regard is nothing if not representative of the attitude of most of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in the post-conciliar age. Perhaps the pre-conciliar hierarchy exercised prudence in keeping its distance from Maritain’s social “do-goodism,” which eventually would aid and abet those forces in society that seek the destruction of the natural family and of the authority and freedom of the Church.

So, what are we to make of this alliance between Maritain and Alinsky? In whose service was it formed?

I would like to end this brief post with a further question and a thought: If Barack Obama is Alinsky’s spiritual grandchild, does that make him in some twisted sense Maritain’s spiritual great-grandchild? The Catholic inspiration of history is so subtle that it often eludes our grasp, and sometimes, upon grasping its influence, we might very well think it better to have remained ignorant of it!

I was reading an article today about four US bishops who have stopped their diocesan collections for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD).  This article brought to mind an article I recently read that a friend of mine is trying to get published.  In my friend’s article, he makes the argument that because of the foundation of the Legionaries of Christ is in a radically disturbed man, that the only real possibility for reform of the order would be by re-founding it completely cutoff from Fr. Maciel (though he does not seem to think that is possible).  I don’t intend to go into the issue of the Legionaries now but it occurred to me that this same basic idea must be applied to the CCHD.

Why is it that we see so many problems with CCHD and the organizations that they fund?  While they have cleaned up their act considerably from the days that they openly and wantonly funded groups at odds with Church teaching, they still have not been adequately successful in purging themselves of past demons.  I propose that the reason for this lies in CCHD’s roots.  CCHD is essentially formed around the ideology of the architect of community organizing, Saul D. Alinsky.

Saul Alinsky is a complex figure who formed his ideology from a variety of sources especially from Marxism.  However, one cannot say that he was purely aligned with Marxism, though he did seem to most consistently espouse the gradualism of Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Communist.   Gramsci promoted a gradualist sort communist revolution that relied on infiltrating the “oppressing” source of power and using the dialectic process in a transformative approach rather than fomenting bloody revolution.

Alinsky’s thought is summarized in his two books, Reveille for Radicals (1946) and Rules for Radicals (1971).  In these, he lays out his philosophy of life and his approach to community organizing.  For those wishing a quick look at his thought, let me point to one sympathetic treatment of his thought and another  not so sympathetic.  Interestingly enough, you get the same basic insights  from both.  Some points that seem to stand out with respect to Alinsky’s thought is that when it comes to the good of the community (in Alinsky’s view of good) that the end always justifies the means. In fact, Alinsky eschews the idea of following one’s conscience if it means not promoting what he understands to be the  good for the masses:

He who sacrifices the mass good for his personal conscience has a peculiar conception of ‘personal salvation’; he doesn’t care enough for people to ‘be corrupted’ for them. (Alinsky 1972: 25) (cited here).

It also seems to be the case that pragmatic activism is the only acceptable approach to change.  Pragmatic activism means that one cannot do nothing and so if there is only one option open to achieving an end, regardless of what it is or what one’s conscience tells him about this option, it must be taken if the “powerless” may be said to benefit.  Pragmatic further means that it must be able to achieve the end; an idealist approach that has little chance of working is also to be shunned.

Alinsky also seemed to be strongly influenced by the Marxist view of power and its dialectal “truth” that conflict was the necessary means by which two opposing views would be reconciled.  As such, a fundamental principle of community organizing is that the organizer must be committed to agitating.  He must create conflict where there is none, if there is going to be change.  For Alinsky, change is structural change in the organization of the community and organization of the community is defined in terms of who holds power.  If held by the elite it must be gradually wrested away from them and given to the “powerless.”

Alinsky was not against radicalism.  He was simply a pragmatic gradualist.  He thought that one needed to work within the system in order to transform it into a radically new structure.  Thus, while Alinsky’s sentiments for bettering the lives of the poor and downtrodden was noble, his Machiavellian-Marxist philosophy left him and his followers open to the attitude that anything goes in the struggle for power if the end can be characterized as giving power to the powerless and the end is achievable.

So what does Saul Alinsky’s philosophy have to do with CCHD?  Alinsky is known as the father of community organizing.  Lawrence J. Engel, in an article  published in Theological Studies, talks about Alinsky and his influence on CCHD.  Engel  shows that Alinsky must be considered not only the father of community organizing but also the father of CCHD.  Engel writes of Father P. David Finks of the Diocese of Rochester, active in Alinsky’s FIGHT organization and arguably one of the founders of CCHD:

Thirty years later, Finks recalled his own work during the late 1960s: “[T]he NCCB Urban Task Force, the Catholic Committee for Urban Ministry, my years on staff at USCC/NCCB, the organization and selling to the bishops of the Campaign for Human Development–all were an attempt to make available and find support for Alinsky’s approach to community organization, empowerment of USA citizens from the bottom up, and what his IAF successors now call church/congregation-based organizing. As for me, I loved Saul. He stood me on my head and showed me a radically different way to see the world, the church, and democratic politics.”(110) The influence of Alinsky is evident in Finks’s own words and is also confirmed by the priests who worked closely with him in the 1960s. John McCarthy recalls that Finks “idolized Alinsky” and that community organization was “all Finks would be able to talk about.”(111) Charles Burns of the Urban Task Force staff remember that “Finks worshipped [sic] the ground Alinsky walked on,” and that Alinsky was “his father.”(112)

CCHD was, and one might argue must still be assumed to be,  thoroughly imbued with Alinsky’s Machiavellian philosophy and his metaphysic of power dialectics.  Certainly those community organizing institutions that CCHD funds are to varying degrees infected by Alinsky’s defective philosophies.  Is it any wonder that ACORN is as corrupt as it appears to be?  Can we be surprised at what these Alinskyite organizations can justify and work for when what is always right is whatever some organizing leader claims would benefit the powerless and when one’s conscience is no justification for not acting on such.

Alinsky’s ideology is built upon a false view of reality and distorted view of the human person.  It is based upon moral relativism which can justify just about anything as a good.  It is founded upon agitation, ridicule (which is one of Alinsky’s 13 primary tactics for community organizers) and the premise that life is about a struggle for power.   Ultimately, this ideology’s underlying anthropology cannot account for the authentic needs of the human person.  It cannot consistently identify or work for the common good.  Even when it might happen to do so accidentally,  it’s methods will ultimately damage those it intends to support by fomenting a mentality which assumes the only way out of a difficult situation is to do battle in some deceptive manner, with those “in power.”

A Catholic approach to community organizing, rather recognizes that authentic structural transformation comes about not through deception and seizing power but through individual conversion and human solidarity.  It recognizes also that subsidiarity is a co-principle with solidarity.  This means that long term solutions are found in helping those in need to recognize that part of any solution is working for the holiness of both the “powerful” as well as the “powerless.”  It realizes that situations and societies are authentically transformed not through conflict but through selfless cooperation.

It recognizes that those being served must be an integral part of any solution meant to serve them, and this includes setting the goals and the strategies for achieving them.  It is not that confronting unjust situations might sometimes be necessary but a Catholic approach may not succumb to the ideology that confrontation is a normal, even necessary approach.

Neither can a Catholic approach fall into the adjunct heresy that life is a struggle for power. Authentic power is not the forcing of one person’s or group of people’s will over another’s.  Rather, authentic power occurs only when love triumphs.  God is love who is the source of all authentic power.  When one views the other as an enemy to be defeated, authentic power is suppressed.  When one views the other, even an oppressor, as a fellow sinner who Christ died for one will be better prepared to discern the proper approach for a particular situation.

Because CCHD was founded upon a counter-Catholic ideology, I would argue that CCHD must be disbanded.  The Church must also eliminate its material support of any organization formed around Alinsky’s  ideology.  It is true that we must support efforts that help others “learn to fish” but the Church cannot support corrupt, ideological movements in order to achieve such noble ends.

It is time to abandon this failed experiment called CCHD and devote the available resources to building a new Catholic apostolate dedicated to promoting authentic human flourishing.  This new apostolate should base itself upon the social teachings of the Church, built upon an authentic understanding of the human person and how the truth of man demands a social interaction according to the co-principles of solidarity and subsidiarity.  The social encyclicals of John Paul II and Benedict XVI are the most mature articulation of this.  Anything short of this will risk contaminating authentic efforts at social justice with tactics arising from a relativist, amoral ideology.  If we continue with the status quo, we cannot expect anything but more of the same.

Most have probably read Bishop Tobin’s public rebuke of Representative Patrick Kennedy last week.  The public rebuke of wayward Catholic politicians is becoming a growing trend among our US shepherds.  For decades now, the dominant pastoral strategy among bishops who have taken seriously their responsibilities, has been to engage these politicians in private.  The thinking being that pastoral dialogue is only possible when done in private.  Once the matter becomes public the opportunity for personal dialog is generally lost.  Unfortunately, those politicians have come to recognize this and taken great advantage of it.

Kennedy, like others before him, thought himself free to publicly proclaim the meaning of being Catholic assuming that he was exempt from public rebuke.  I suspect that part of this comes from the predominant American heresy that says religion is a completely private, individualistic affair.  In other words, no one can tell me what “my faith” means.  Thus, wayward Catholic politicians regularly proclaim that they can do whatever they wish and still be “good” Catholics.  I would argue that this heresy has been unintentionally abetted by the previously dominant pastoral strategy of US bishops.

Bishop Tobin’s public action is the latest in a trend among US bishops that recognizes that this one-sided strategy has borne more ill fruit than good.  The relativist assumptions of politicians such as Kennedy, that because they claim the Catholic faith then it is whatever they define it to be, has had a corrosive affect on US Catholics by and large.  This last election I think has been a turning point.  Here we had a politician who publicly promised to do everything he could in order to put laws and policies in place which would bring about the greatest expansion in history of the killing of unborn innocents, who at the same time garnered a majority of “Catholic” votes.  The confusion among Catholic voters could not be more manifest.

This last election has made it clear that the private approach must have its limits.  Its affect has been to allow many Catholics to assume, as do the politicians, that faith is simply personal opinion.  The lack of sufficient public rebuke for obstinate politicians has led others to reach the conclusion, perhaps in an unarticulated way, that while perhaps not a good thing abortion is certainly not an evil on the level of murder. This confusion must be remedied.

Other than one grammatical error, I find Bishop Tobin’s missive to Rep. Kennedy to be a model for the right pastoral response.  Kennedy has rightly been silenced.  His complaints that the discussion about his faith is something that should remain in private (though he himself previously made it public) demonstrates his faulty expectations of free public reign on his part with silence on the part of his bishop.  Bishop Tobin’s approach will not only serve to help to correct Kennedy’s false public witness but it also will serve as a warning that politicians may not speak with impunity about what it means to be a Catholic when they contradict Church teaching.

It is true that wayward Catholic politicians have souls in need of salvation and that this is part of a bishop’s responsibilities.  However, many bishops are coming to recognize that there are many other souls being led astray with a one-sided strategy that looks only at the conversion of the politician.  It is still a matter of prudential judgment when it is time to go public.  Nevertheless, there is a growing realization that eventually taking the issue public is a necessary matter of public witness.