Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

Almost every day you can see in the news more evidence about the confusion over same sex attraction disorder (SSAD). California’s courts have decided to legislate SSAD marriages into existence. New York appears to be making an executive decision just to ignore their laws on marriage. Of course, the thinking , if you can call it that, of these well intentioned activists is that this is a matter of civil rights and rights must be defended regardless of the law.

Looking at the meaning of the relationship of love that results in sexual intercourse, it appears fairly obvious that the natural end is to be found in the begetting and rearing of children. One wonders why the obvious is so hard for so many in our culture to be able to see today. Of course, one reason is that we have changed our perception of the meaning of sexual intercourse, via contraception, to one of the pursuit of pleasure. Another is that the fiasco of our no-fault divorce system has modified the meaning of marriage into the state subsidized pursuit of self-fulfillment through trial couplings.

Nevertheless, even when the meaning of the human person and these fundamental relationships is so distorted, for sexually complementary couples one can still see an obvious natural logic to the relationship. Not so with those who, in their disorder, pursue same sex relationships. This reminds me of an exchange I had last year with a young man who suffered from same sex attraction disorder. We were talking about this natural end of sexual intercourse. His response, as is true with many SSAD sufferers who have even considered this argument, was that he didn’t much buy the “teleological” argument (we did not explore in detail what he understood by this) because this did not accord with his experience.

Ahh yes, experience. Our society today seems to prize personal experience above all else. It is the hallmark for ascertaining truth. What is meant by personal experience seems to be a confused mishmash of elements of empiricism, romanticism, Kantianism, and postmodernism. However, personal experience need not be completely jettisoned as an element of truth testing, as a source of seeking reality. However, experience must be properly understood. When it is, one realizes that all experience must be contextualized.

John Paul II provides the key for using experience to interpret reality in his Crossing the Threshold of Hope. What he says is that the proper hermeneutic for testing experience is understanding the reality of Original Sin. So many activists lead themselves down the road to oblivion because they do not recognize this or they consciously reject it.

The various liberation movements all seem to fall into this error. For example, radical feminism has adopted as their truth testing hermeneutic, the judgment as to whether any proposition accords with feminine experience. Though it must be admitted even without acknowledging Original Sin, they are coming to realize that defining feminine experience might be an insurmountable challenge. Although they have not completely abandoned the idea. Regardless, the ill fruits of Original Sin can be ignored only at one’s peril.  It does not seem to take much reflection to recognize this. One master of reflection, G.K. Chesterton, opined that Original Sin is the one revealed dogma that can be proved from human experience alone.

Without this key, like SSAD activists, radical feminists, and others, we are in danger of unreflectively considering all of our experiences as normative. But it is not simply acknowledging Original Sin and its underlying ill fruit of concupiscence that is necessary. One must go to the very root cause of Original Sin. John Paul II finds that the first sin was, and all subsequent sin is, the attempt to abolish fatherhood and the radiation of God’s fatherhood throughout creation.

This is a profound insight. It would not take much to see the manifestations of this rejection of fatherhood in the two examples provided: radical feminism and SSAD. Rejecting fatherhood: God’s fatherhood, ecclesial fatherhood, or spiritual fatherhood is a fallen inclination we experience because to accept paternal love we first must trust. Paternal love is a love of initiative.

One who is offered this love is put in the position of accepting it. Without trust, accepting this love seems to be very risky. This is particularly the case for those who been previously hurt in a similar situation.  They often find it too risky to trust and prefer to remain in control.  This is not self-control mind you, but control of the other, or at least of the situation. This means doing as they are tempted rather than submitting their inclinations to reasoned discernment.  I suspect the reason for this is that they intuitively realize that they are asserting their will over the will of Someone else.

It is no surprise then that as we see the dissolution of the family, what we see most is that the landscape is beginning to be dominated by fatherless households. The solution for society is a restoration of authentic paternity and paternal love. The solution for each individual is recognizing when experiences are driven more by primal inclinations than by self-giving love.  This is a prerequisite for discerning between an authentic human experience and a fallen human experience.

Understanding that Original sin is real, and that in our fallenness we are tempted to push our wills over/against this unseen Will that we do not trust, is the key to using our experiences to interpret reality.

The more that comes in about POW Network’s accusations against Fr. Corapi, the more it becomes clear that this organization and their “investigator,” Don Bendell are guilty of defaming the character of Fr. Corapi based upon false claims, hasty assumptions, and generally reckless behavior.

These folks are still claiming that Fr. Corapi said he was a Green Beret and had served in Vietnam. My last post indicated why it is obvious that these are false accusations. In a nutshell: in every one of Fr. Corapi’s talks we cited, Fr. Corapi not only never claims to have been a Green Beret or served in Vietnam, he has explicitly denied it at least once and strongly denied it implicitly on every other occasion. Since that post, we have had a number of people posting in the combox, transcripts from relevant portions of Fr. Corapi’s talks that continue to bear this out:

In this comment, Jim Gorski provides the transcript from a talk (posted by Ken Follis) given in 1992 (Jim provided the date to me via e-mail). Here Fr. Corapi talks about his training. His training is definitely well beyond that of basic and advanced Infantry training. While this extraordinary training cannot yet be “verified” (if that is even necessary) from the records that POW Network provides he certainly does not claim to have earned the Green Beret or that he served in Vietnam. These, after all, are their claims.

In another comment, Gibbons Burke provides the transcript of the audio we provided earlier from the Mary Foundation recording that was dated prior to 1995 and in which he explicitly says that he was never a Green Beret and that he never saw combat!

Gibbons also provides a transcript from 1997 talk in which Fr. Corapi again discusses his Army days. He clearly indicates that he had plans to go to Special Forces training at Fr. Bragg (with his reference to Smoke Bomb Hill at Ft. Bragg). He does not explicitly say he made it there though there is some indication that he did. If he is referring to himself as having jumped from 20,000 feet and reached terminal velocity with the altimeter popping the chute, this would be a HALO (High Altitude, Low Opening) jump. This would have placed him both in Jump School and some follow on Special Forces training. The time frame that Fr. Corapi was referring to was at the end of what was called “the crisis years.” Crisis referred to a dearth of new recruits required to support the Army’s mission in Vietnam. Many novel things were done during these years to try to make “ends meet.” It is conceivable that Fr. Corapi received some accelerated Special Forces training that would not have qualified him for the Green Beret but would have allowed him to deploy quickly to Vietnam to serve either with an SF unit or with regular infantry but possessing this specialized training. Because of the length of time after his Basic Combat Training and Advanced Individual Training (Infantry), about 50 days beyond what it took in those days, and since it would have been a non-standard program (which again is conjectural) it is certainly conceivable that he could have had the training. In fact, his comments about his training are all very consistent from one talk to the next. He always speaks of having gone from Georgia to North Carolina, though his records indicated that he was assigned in Alabama and Kentucky during this time. It is possible that he could have been assigned as his assignment history indicates but was deployed to Ft. Bragg with Temporary Duty (TDY) orders. Moreover, it is not likely that any off the cuff “embellishment” would be so consistent. However, this is all tangential. The point is that he never says that he earned the Green Beret or that he went to Vietnam and these are the defamatory claims.

Here is another transcript from Gibbons in which he again says that he finished the training required to go to Vietnam but his unit was sent to the Panama Canal Zone for a program that is called the Jungle Operations Course conducted at the Jungle Operations Training Center at Ft. Sherman, Canal Zone. Again, he says that he was hurt in a helicopter accident and so never went to Vietnam. He never says that he earned the Green Beret.

Ken Follis posts a comment which gives a quote from a book written about Fr. Corapi which again states the same exact details about his Army service. Again, there are no claims to have earned a Green Beret or to have served in Vietnam.

Ken also gives this transcript from a 2001 talk in Austin, Texas. Here he confirms again the same details we are hearing over and over about his training prior to the time he is hurt. All of these are very consistent. Again, he never claims to have been a Green Beret or to have served in Vietnam.

We have 8 or so examples directly attributable to Fr. Corapi himself, about his Army career. He is very consistent about the details. But in none of them does he claim that which he accusers attempt to pin on him. But that is not all we have found out.

In my last post, referred to above, we were able to rule out, using his own words, Fr. Corapi’s having made the claims about which he is being accused. However there was an “eye witness” claim for which we had no answer other than the possibility of his having misheard/misunderstood. Namely, I mentioned that POW Network says that they have someone from Kansas who had accused Fr. Corapi, at a 1996 Lenten Retreat in Lenexa, KS, of saying:

“I was standing there, wearing my Green Beret…”/

Since then have found two people who were at that retreat. Jim Gorski was there, and he says:

From: James Gorski

Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 4:31 PM

To: kenneth follis

Subject: Father Corapi training

Kenneth, I cut and pasted this paragraph from the POW NETWORK page on Father Corapi. I personally attended this Lenten Retreat and sat in the second row from the front, just in front of Father Corapi’s podium. He NEVER said he was “wearing my Green Beret uniform”. This is an absolutely false claim.

Jim pointed us to the organizer of the conference, Mr. Jim O’Laughlin, from KC Catholic Radio. Mr. O’Laughlin also confirms that he never heard Fr. Corapi claim to have been a Green Beret or having worn a Green Beret uniform.

If you have been following the comments, you probably can see that our friend Joe has gone on to other pastures. Joe, who like his hero Mr. Bendell, is very susceptible to fits of emotion in which he attempts to make up for a lack of substance in his arguments with vitriol and <i>ad hominem</i>. He has gone over and started a thread on Catholic Answers Forum to spew his venom. Worth pointing to is a responding comment from Pangur Ban who has summarized Don Bendell’s claims and provided counter claims. We might call his a response to the Syllabus of Lies.

The point of all of this is to say that far from making their case, the POW Network has, with reckless disregard for the truth and common decency, continued to push their false accusations against Fr. Corapi. They cannot credibly support either of their two accusations. In our litigious society, I would think that this would be an easy defamation of character case in that POW Network has been provided evidence that they are clearly wrong in matters fact and yet they still refuse to correct themselves, much less, apologize for their unfair attack.

I would suggest that everyone interested ought to send Chuck and Mary Schantag of the POW Network a very respectful email demanding that they do the right thing and remove their false accusation against Fr. Corapi from their website. The e-mail address is:  info at pownetwork.org. Yes, they ought to be concerned about Stolen Honor as they claim. However, in this case it is they who are doing the stealing.

“It does not matter how many virtues a man may have, even if they are beyond number and limit. If he has turned from the path of self-scrutiny, he will never find peace. He will always be troubled himself, or else he will be a source of trouble for others, and all his labors will be wasted”. —Saint Dorotheus

Who we “think” we are is often no more than a distant hope of who and what we truly want to be. We often like to portray an image of who we want you to think we are, but during the unexpectedly real moments of our lives, we become despondent when our internal wretchedness is unleashed for all the world to see – guilt, ultimately defiling anything which is not in accordance to our own, authentic value system.

“See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.” – I Thess. 5:15

We like to project a certain image of ourselves unto the world, while dubiously concealing our internal self serving exercise of gaining authority and power over another. We ultimately become victims in our own games, not knowing exactly where our self serving pride begins and the love for others ends. We “give” in order to advertise a desired identity when in reality, we covet receiving something of greater value – like a position of power, authority, or vain glory.

“And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” – I Cor. 13:2-3

We usually cling to what we fear losing most, but ultimately end up feeling exhausted and unsatisfied, regardless of what is given in return. Narcissistic addictions to our disordered attachments make us weak because they are a manifestation of “falling in love” with ourselves in order to hide from our own inadequacies, treating others like objects with the hope of convincing ourselves of our strength and our ability to control.

The more we learn, the more I am becoming convinced that there was no occasion on which Fr. Corapi asserted himself to have been a Green Beret or that he had served in Vietnam. Because much of this to which I refer is scattered around in posts and comments, and some of it has not yet been posted, it would be good to take stock of it all in one place. Here is a summary of the charges that POW Network/Don Bendell have made and what we have found to be the case:

A. Mr. Bendell accuses Fr. Corapi of lying for having claimed to have had an enlistment commitment to the Special Forces for the simple reason that such a enlistment program did not exist at that time. Bendell’s claim turns out to be false. We have found that there was a program at the time and confirmed this from two sources (see Update 3 in this post).

B. POW Network accuses that Fr. Corapi claimed to be a Green Beret on his website but suddenly changed it after he was confronted by Mr. Bendell in August of 2007. This accusation also turns out to be false; we found that as far back as Sept 2005 (the furthest the Wayback Machine archives go for this webpage), his website only says he served in the US Army during the Vietnam War era (see Update at the bottom of this post).

C. Mr. Bendell accuses Fr. Corapi of failing to correct a presenter who introduced him as Green Beret and then Father went on to say that he finished all the training necessary to become a Green Beret. Listening to the audio provided, one can clearly hear that Fr. Corapi was not introduced as Green Beret and that he says he completed the training needed to become a soldier, a specialized kind of soldier, but he does not say what this is. Furthermore, he is clear by the context that he failed to become this “specialized kind of a soldier” because of a helicopter accident. In all of his talks about his military service the context is always his mistaken desire to try to “be somebody” by great accomplishments which he always failed to achieve. Add to this that he explicitly says that he was shipped off to Germany to sit out the Vietnam war as a pencil pusher. He does not say he is a Green Beret but clearly implies that he was not. Neither does he claim to have been a Vietnam Veteran; he explicitly denies it. This context alone puts the lie to accusations that he is somehow trying to steal undeserved valor. (see item “B.” in this post).

D. Mr. Bendell claims that Fr. Corapi was wearing a Special Forces (SF) pin during a talk and then pulls the lapel of his coat on which the pin is located citing the Special Forces motto. In the video, the resolution is insufficient to see what kind of pin he is wearing and so this is a specious accusation. Furthermore, the shape does not comport with the SF pin and the pin Father is wearing is highly reflective unlike the SF pin appears to be. Finally, there is no context in the portion of the talk Bendell provided that would indicate what the pin is. Fr. Corapi does use the SF motto but in the context of a priest forgiving sins and the context is being freed from the chains of sin which make the phrase and the lifting of his lapel understandable in this context alone. There is nothing in the video at all that would otherwise suggest any connection with SF (see item “C.” in this post).

E. There is much evidence that Fr. Corapi has always explicitly denied that he ever was a Green Beret or served in Vietnam. A talk he gave prior to 1995, at the very beginning of his speaking career, gives evidence of his firm and clear statements to this effect. This is something that his accusers do not ever address and seems to me fatal to their “case” (see item “A.” in this post, a commenter transcribed the relevant section of Fr. Corapi’s talk here).

F. Mr. Bendell points to a post on a website that is a summary of a homily given in which the priest recollects a talk from Fr. Corapi at his parish’s Lenten retreat in which Fr. Corapi was to have said that he was spit on when returning from Vietnam in his Green Beret Uniform. We have contacted the priest who posted that homily and he responds that he was writing well after the retreat and could have easily conflated the Green Beret and Vietnam points from other sources with what Fr. Corapi actually said. This does not rule this out of course, but it puts it in context. Without a recording of the talk then, given Fr. Bloom’s uncertainty this cannot be held up as proof.

G. Mr. Bendell accuses Fr. Corapi of lies in many of his talks because the assignment history from Fr. Corapi’s military records supposedly make Father’s claims impossible. Ken Follis’ study of Fr. Corapi’s military records shows that Mr. Bendell was wrong about every one of his accusations and that Fr. Corapi’s records comport well with everything that he has said about his military career (see item “D.” in this post).

At this point there is very little else to check out; but there are somethings. Mr. Bendell has produced two people who claim to have heard Fr. Corapi say that he was assigned to Special Forces, one in Kansas whom I have not talked to and a Catholic candidate for the Deaconate, Slawomir “Rick” Grabianowski, in Reno, NV whom I have corresponded with. Rick says he does not remember exactly where he heard it but he is sure on two different occasions he heard Fr. Corapi say he “served in Special Forces.” Rick is sure of this because he also served in SF and was impressed with Fr. Corapi at the time, though he is not sure if he said Green Beret. At this point, Rick would be the only one whom I have heard from who is sure. Given that we cannot track down the source to verify Rick’s memory and the good possibility that Fr. Corapi could have been referring to other possible specialized training in which he was hurt in a helicopter accident, and that the weight of the evidence is in Fr. Corapi’s favor that this must be set aside as evidence. As for the Kansas man, unless this leads to a tape or video, I must place it in the same category.

That said, if we could track down what Fr. Corapi was doing in a helicopter in the Panama Canal Zone in the fall of 1967 I think that many of these questions would be answered and the rest of Mr. Bendell’s “case,” such as it is, would be undermined.

The only clear and erroneous attributions of Green Beret and Vietnam veteran status to Fr. Corapi have been on three or four websites for which he had no direct responsibility. Though I must mention that SOLT, his order, did have this false attribution on their website. The “Green Beret soldier” attribution seemed to have been taken from Dcn Bud McFarlane’s CD, Green Beret, Vietnam Vetran, which he sent free to people around the world even though the in the talk on the CD Fr. Corapi explicitly said that he was never a Green Beret and never made it to Vietnam. This has since been removed from the SOLT website. There is no evidence Fr. Corapi was ever aware of his bio on the SOLT website.

Fr. Corapi never says he was a Green Beret; he never says he was a Vietnam Veteran. In fact, we only have him explicitly denying it. I honestly do not understand how POW Network and Mr. Bendell can honestly consider this evidence and still hold to their, quite unfair I will add, accusations. It is clear to me that given the shoddy and error filled “investigation” of POW Network and their Special Forces volunteer, Don Bendell, that there will be no federal investigation much less any prosecution. In fact, given such a shaky case, no person who was really concerned about honor would put at risk a man’s stellar reputation by making such unfounded accusations public until some firm evidence had been gathered.

This Post is a follow up to the post below. If you hadn’t read about the bogus accusations made against Fr. Corapi by Mr. Don Bendell, it may help to read it first.

As evidence comes in I will post it here. If you have any, please send it along.

Update: I found that I was wrong about the date. This talk in Hudson NY was from a free audio CD that Dcn Bud McFarlane was offering from Catholicity.com as early as Jan 1999 entitled John Corapi’s Amazing Story (see it on Wayback Machine).

Update 2: A commenter confirms a copyright date of 1995 from the Marian Foundation on this Hudson, NY audio tape (Thanks Dim Bulb)! Thus, we have Fr. Corapi denying from the beginning of his public speaking that he was ever a Green Beret or that he served in Vietnam. I am sure even this will not be sufficient to satisfy the zealots.

Update 3: Dim Bulb does it again. Mr. Bendell has apparently based his entire confidence in Fr. Corapi’s guilt in Bendell’s mistaken belief that Fr. Corapi could not have signed a commitment for Special Forces because such a program does not exist at the time. Dim Bulb has found that there was in fact such a program which began in 1952. This is confirmed in an e-mail exchange between Mr. Bendell and a former SF member who himself entered under such a program. It took some convincing, but it appears that Mr. Bendell finally accepted that he was wrong. Maybe there is some hope he is still open to finding the truth.

A. Here is an audio of Fr. Corapi speaking in Hudson, NY back in 2003 before 1999. Note that this is four at least 8 years before these claims were made against him. This comes from from Janice Carl via True Knights via Ken Follis: Hudson, NY 2003before 1999. As you can see, Fr. Corapi explicitly says that he never earned the Green Beret and never went to Vietnam. Hmmm, what does this do for Mr. Bendell’s and POW Networks accusations?

B. Here is a link to an audio CD that Mr. Don Bendell provided to Ken Follis as evidence that Fr. Corapi claimed to have won the Green Beret:

Mr. Bendell and others claim that Fr. Corapi was introduced as a Green Beret but never countered it. Please listen closely. The man doing the introduction says that “…Fr. Corapi enlisted in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam conflict with a commitment to the Special Forces….” This begins at 00:14. He does NOT introduce Fr. Corapi as a Green Beret: Fr. Corapi discusses \”special training\”

Fr. Corapi has always stated that when he enlisted he signed a contract for Special Forces (see later in this audio). Given his service record there is no reason to doubt this as the training he went through was consistent with someone who would be eligible for SF school. I will soon post an analysis of his service record done by Ken Follis. Further on, at the 9:45 mark Fr. Corapi himself says that he had “an enlistment commitment for the Special Forces, the Green Berets.” Fr. Corapi continues on to talk about his entering the Army and then discusses (at 10:88) that he “went through all the training to become a soldier, a very specialized kind of a soldier and I finished it all and at the end I was injured again in a helicopter accident. And just again when I thought I was becoming somebody, I was reduced to nothingness, nobody. And they send me off to Germany to some miserable desk job…” All of this is consistent with Fr. Corapi’s service record.

Fr. Corapi certainly does not say that he finished the training necessary to become a Green Beret. He says he finished the training to become a soldier. But he says, a specialized kind of a soldier. What was he talking about? Well his service record shows that he did his basic combat training at Ft. Gordon in GA. and completed his Advanced Individual Training (AIT) as an infantryman at Ft. McClellan in AL. Then his record shows something interesting. He is then sent to Ft. Knox, KY with a duty designation that suggests he is now a qualified infantryman. His record does not call his assignment at Ft. Knox AIT. Rather, he now takes on “student” status and is shown to be administratively attached, not assigned, to a training company at Ft. Knox. Ken Follis’s investigation reveals that there was a Special Troops Air Cavalry Squadron (The BlackHawks) that left Ft. Knox for Vietnam in September 1967 to provide reconnaissance and security and to work alongside the 5th Special Forces Group. What could then could Fr. Corapi’s training have been? I would argue that one possibility could have been Air Assault School (headquarted at Ft. Campbell, KY but taught at a variety of locations including Ft. Knox) which is a 10 1/2 day course (under two weeks). It is still taught today at Ft. Knox for ROTC cadets. This training certainly would count for the specialized training to which Fr. Corapi made reference and it would explain the helicopter accident reference.

Let me say that only someone with bad faith precommitment to guilt would assume that Fr. Corapi was trying to mislead here. He simply did not go into making precisions in trying to explain something specialized like, for example, Air Assault School. In the context of his talk, it is clear that he did not successfully complete whatever program it was because he ends it by saying, he was still a “nobody.” One might ask, how this qualifies as “stealing honor.” Far from being a smoking gun, this is further evidence of Fr. Corapi’s innocence as far as I can see. However, you decide.

C. Here is a link that is hardly worth mentioning but it is apparently central to the case of those making accusations against Fr. Corapi:

In this video Fr. Corapi is wearing an unidentifiable pin on the lapel of his coat. Mr. Bendell and others claim that it is a Special Forces pin. It does not seem to have the shape of the SF pin, nor does it appear that there are arrows over spreading the outline of the pin. You can freeze the video and blow it up though this video doesn’t have the resolution to make any kind of reasonable determination. This pin could just as easily be a Chi Rho or some other symbol on the tens of thousands of Catholic pins there are out there. If we had the entire video, perhaps there might be some clue as to what he is wearing and why. Perhaps it is an SF pin for an event hosted by a Catholic SF group who awarded him an honorary member. Certainly there would be no intent to mislead in that case. Given the lack of knowledge about this pin, the venue, and the context below, it is quite irresponsible to claim that whatever it is on his lapel is Fr. Corapi’s claim to Green Beret status.

The other offense that Fr. Corapi has committed in this video, according to them, is his use of the Latin SF motto, De Oppresso Liber which is said to mean, “Free the Oppressed,” though that cannot be had from a direct translation of the Latin…but that is an aside. He does this at about the 7:41 mark. The accusation that his quotation means Fr. Corapi is claiming to be Green Beret is quite silly. It is true that this particular phrasing is used as the SF motto but the context has nothing to do with the military. In fact, it is quite biblical (Is 61:1) which Christians understand to be fulfilled in Jesus Christ and Catholics recognize to be liturgically actualized in the priest. Fr. Corapi is talking about his first confession as a priest and he says of this penitent who had not been to confession for 30 years, Fr. Corapi could figuratively see the chains falling from him. However, Fr. Corapi makes clear it was not him freeing this man from the oppression of sin, but Jesus Christ. Now, perhaps he was claiming SF status for Our Lord and Savior. I would not argue with him about this. Perhaps Mr. Bendell might take issue with it though.

I await some sort of convincing evidence that Fr. Corapi has claimed to have been SF and/or served in Vietnam. Of all of the evidence I have seen, the worst that one can claim is ambiguity. However, in light of Fr. Corapi’s early clear and unequivocal denials that he was ever a Green Beret or in Vietnam and taking into account the context of these two tapes which some might consider ambiguous, the more reasonable among us will not even see smoke there, much less fire.

D. I mentioned that I would post Ken Follis’ analysis of Fr. Corapi’s assignment history. Here it is. Here also is a response by Ken to specific claims made by Mr. Bendell.

A friend of mine recently told me that Fr. Corapi’s credibility is being questioned by an organization called P.O.W. Network. What is at question is his military service.

This website claims that Fr. Corapi has presented himself as a former Green Beret who had served in Vietnam. They link to his DD-214Freedom of Information Act released records (a document every service member receives when separating from active duty which summarizes his service) which, in fact, does not show that he ever received Special Forces training, served in any SF units, or that he served in Vietnam. Assuming no errors were made in documenting his service (something that is very common) we will take it as given that Fr. Corapi did not ever earn the Green Beret and never made it into the Vietnam theater during his time in the Army.

The question remains, has Fr. Corapi ever made the claim that he served in Vietnam or that he wore the Green Beret? The P.O.W. Network says that he has. I might note that their website does not appear to me to have been professionally done and the quality of their claims seem to follow this same do-it-yourself pattern.

They begin to make their case with a “cut and paste” from Las Vegas Marian Center which makes the claim that Fr. Corapi had been a Green Beret. Then POWN follows this up with the claim that suddenly in August 2007 Fr. Corapi’s website was changed to remove all references to his having been a Green Beret and had served in Vietnam. Their proof that he changed the site. Well, I suppose it is the link to Fr. Corapi’s bio on his website. Sure enough, it doesn’t claim that he was a Green Beret or that he served in Vietnam.

So let’s see what we have so far. A website that Fr. Corapi apparently has nothing to do with makes a claim about him. We go over to his website and he doesn’t make that same claim. We have nothing documenting that his website ever did make that claim. I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that Fr. Corapi cannot be held responsible for what the Las Vegas Marian Center puts on their website. At this point, I am not impressed.

POWN then provides links to a variety of websites, some saying that he was a Green Beret and two saying that his hopes of becoming a Green Beret serving in Vietnam “dissolved” after a helicopter accident. I am not sure if they read these posts very closely because this would appear to me to be testimony that is in conflict with their claims.

It doesn’t take a trained detective to suspect that those quotations with the additional details (about the helicopter accident) which say that his hopes of becoming a Green Beret were never realized might merit further investigation. They clearly indicate that he did not say he earned the Green Beret and one seems to indicate that he says he never went to Vietnam. I still do not see that they have any case . . . except perhaps, that they may be guilty of libel.

But not to fear; there is more. They have posted two e-mails from a stellar . . . errr cosmic might be a better term “detective.” He is a certain Don Bendell. A quick perusal of Mr. Bendell’s website gives some illuminating and relevant insight into his personality I think. These suspicions I believe can be confirmed from his rather surprising ramblings when asked to produce evidence of his claims in this e-mail exchange with my friend (as with all e-mail trails, read from the bottom up). His attacks on a Desert Storm veteran and the Catholic Church for nothing more than that veteran’s request for primary source documentation of their claims says all I need to hear to make up my mind. Ad hominem is often the first line of defense for those who have been caught a bit short in the intellectual department. Nevertheless, I will let you decide about this for yourselves. It appears to me that this Bendell character is the source of P.O.W. Network’s interest? As with the latter, the former is large on accusations but short on evidence.

I have looked over the evidence that these activists have provided and I have to say that at this point it is clear to me that some good Catholics have believed that Fr. Corapi has said that he was a Green Beret and served in Vietnam. However, I have not seen from Fr. Corapi’s himself any words that would justify this belief. Further, I do not know if any of these good Catholics would have had the background to make the proper distinctions that it seems to me, Fr. Corapi may have been making.

What I mean is that it is possible for Fr. Corapi to have made reference to training that he, and every soldier, underwent during basic training and subsequent advanced individual training that all infantrymen received as preparing him for his plans to become a Green Beret. Fr. Corapi has said that he was enlisted under a contract guaranteeing him a slot in Special Forces training. As such, he could legitimately have said that his initial training was preparing him for Special Forces (Green Beret’s) school. This would be valid even though he was injured and disqualified prior to such an assignment proper. Again, saying that he served in the Army during the Vietnam War does not mean to suggest that he went to Vietnam. It locates the service in time; not geographically.

In the absence of evidence and the good possibility that the manifold erroneous biographies are due to the propagation of perhaps one or two people’s mistaken understanding of Fr. Corapi’s biography, it is necessary to give Fr. Corapi the benefit of the doubt. If anyone has any direct evidence to the contrary (transcripts, recordings, published quotations, etc. of Fr. Corapi’s exact words), please provide such.

By the way, many have heard that Fr. Corapi is no longer traveling because of some unidentified ailment that his doctors have not yet been able to identify. Please keep him in your prayers.

Erratum: I erroneously referred to the document providing Fr. Corapi’s service history as a DD-214. The information was actually a summary of his records on a National Archives form (NA 13164) along with his assignment history apparently directly from his personnel file.

Update: The POW Network’s claim above that Fr. Corapi “suddenly” changed his website in August 2007 after having been confronted can be seen to be patently false.  They imply by this that it previously had referred to him as a “Green Beret soldier.” The Wayback Machine has this page of Fr. Corapi’s website back as early as September 2005 and this is what it says of him: “From small town boy to the Vietnam era US Army, from millionaire businessman in Las Vegas and Hollywood to drug addicted and homeless, to religious life and ordination to the priesthood by Pope John Paul II, to a life as a preacher of the Gospel who has reached millions with the simple message that God’s Name is Mercy!”  (Underline added).  The more we check into the POW Network and their SF investigator the more we find that they make unfounded accusations following incompetent investigators apparently motivated by a precommitment of the guilt of their target.

Italian activist Gabriele Paolini earned five months in jail for a 2005 incident of accusing Pope John Paul II of being ‘gay‘. He interrupted a live broadcast when he yelled his ‘offensive’ words against JPII as the state run television was updating the pontiff’s deteriorating health. Italian law forbids any interruption of a public service which carries a sentence of up to one year in jail. For offending Italy’s state religion, one can be punished with up to two years in prison.

Paolini, officially entered into the Guinness Book of Records for appearing on television more than 20,000+ times, is notorious for positioning himself with television reporters, wearing a condom necklace and waving sexual paraphernalia or photos of the Pope. He apparently blames the Pope and everyone else opposed to sexual immorality for the death of his friend who contracted AIDS from a prostitute.

While common sense would dictate that if the teachings of the Church/Pope were responsible for the spread of AIDS, it would be evident by a significantly skewed prevalence of AIDS among practicing Catholics, while those outside the Church should be relatively AIDS free. While obviously illogical to any outside observer, to the perpetrators of blame aimed at the Church, it’s about as clear as mud.

Blame is based on anger, hatred and revenge. Blame is a convenient defense mechanism used extensively throughout our developmental years which is largely outgrown as we mature; unfortunately, those who have experienced a trauma typically experience an arrested stage of developmental maturity. We typically depend on blaming others when we believe ourselves to be helpless and hopeless. As these feelings progress into our adulthood, we fully incorporate these feelings of inadequacy, and become convinced of never being “good enough” to successfully protect ourselves and others against the injustices of the “unfair” world.

Consequently, we adopt self-destructive behaviors which ultimately become the source of our own pain and anger, and we become embittered towards the world for all the unpunished abuses by the powers of the world. With every disappointment, comes a convenient means of self-destruction and a perceived justification in blaming others for all of our self inflicted wounds.

Jeff Miller posts an e-mail sent to him by Marty Haugen, whose music most of us are familiar with if we have attended any Mass in the US since the 1980s. It seems that Marty’s knickers are in a twist over some things Jeff posted earlier. In a nutshell, Jeff makes the statement that Marty’s music is not appropriate for use in the Mass. Marty’s response: “It is hard to engage with people who dislike you so much.” He also seems to believe that those who do not think his music appropriate for the Catholic liturgy also believe that his prayers are not as effective as his.

These strange comments arise from a conversation that centers around the criticisms that have been flying about the use of acclamations from Haugen’s “Mass of Creation” at a Papal Mass. It is interesting to me that Haugen professes to love and respect the Catholic liturgy (he is not himself Catholic…he was Lutheran (LCA) and now is at a UCC community I understand) but he seems not to be able to understand the criticisms against him.

He does not defend the quality of his music but simply says that liturgical music is not as important as how we live. Now, this is true but what does it have to do with the criticisms? The question is whether the music is appropriate to the dignity of the Mass. It is not. The Eucharist is the source and summit of Christian life because it alone makes possible living a Christ-like life. To adorn such an ineffable gift with less than the best we can offer is taking God’s greatest gift to man and treating it as a novelty of minor significance. This is not to mention the negative effects that such music has in undermining one’s experience of the transcendence made present in the Mass.

Haugen says that he has no problems with the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist (though he does not say what it is he understands about it); rather his beef with the Church is her failure to “to commission, ordain and welcome all humans as Jesus did–male and female, married and unmarried, saints and sinners. I believe that the Church, God’s people and all of creation have suffered from this omission.”

It is hard for me to believe that he could understand, much less accept, the Catholic Church’s teaching on the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Real Presence but not be in a position to understand its necessary link to the priesthood and its masculine nature. Apparently the respect for the liturgy is accidental as his respect for the Catholic liturgy does not extend to the Church which keeps this liturgy alive. Else one might expect that instead of “judging” he might be more “open minded” and bring himself to fairly investigate and attempt understand from the Catholic perspective the necessary connection between the liturgy and the sex of the priest. Sr. Sara Butler’s latest book would be a good start.

It is hard to understand how he really views the Catholic Church. If this “omission” really has had the effect of causing suffering to the Church and all of creation, than is the Catholic Church something more than simply a human institution? He seems to suspect that it is but wants to deny it at the same time?

Marty leaves his e-mail address in his e-mail to Jeff so I suppose that if I were really interested I could send these questions on to him. However, I get the sense that from his statement that he finds it difficult to engage with those who dislike him so much in the context of his rather curious responses, that he may be suggesting that he doesn’t have much time for those who do not accept his work as authentic liturgical music.

CNS is running an piece on an article seen in L’Osservatorio Romano (OR). This OR article was written by Italian evolutionary biologist Fiorenzo Facchini. From the CNS article it is not clear if this was in the Italian daily version or the English weekly. The article says it was in the May 5-6 issue and the English was published May 7th. Though, as the daily does not usually cover two days it is not clear that this means the Italian either.

This is all to say, that I have not seen the article and so I cannot comment on it directly. So guess what? I will comment on it indirectly. In so doing, I will preface my comments with the caveat: “as reported by CNS.” In other words they are not necessarily aimed at the OR article or author. With that let me say why I think that this particular article is worthy of mention.

CNS portrays Facchini as presenting as fact rather than theory, biological evolution and common descent, though Facchini reverses it and calls it more properly man’s assent from the subpersonal animal kingdom. With common “ascent” as the precommitment, Facchini then is made to go on to provide a theological explanation for man arising from “prehuman” animals.

He also attempts to distinguish his theological speculation from what he believes to be Intelligent Design’s unwarranted “intrusion” of theology into science. I have exhausted what I have to say on this issue in past posts so I will not again explain what I find erroneous about this statement other than to say that he is painting with a rather broad brush. The originators of the ID movement do not generally enter into theology. They do impose some philosophical speculation, in varying degrees, but for many they no more than most scientists similarly do unawares.

I do not know how this article is framed. Now if this was contextualized as theological speculation about how Christian teaching could be reconciled with a scientific theory, this would comment worthy–though would might ask why a biologist would be the one to do such commentary. However, if the OR article is substantially as CNS makes it out to be then I find this to be problematic.

As OR is “the Holy See’s official organ of information,” it seems to me that OR’s appearing to promote a debated scientific theory as settled fact goes well beyond magisterial competence and so beyond OR’s charter. Taking this as a pretext in order to explain how God then “did” bring about humans of in the context of theology is likewise misleading.

Facchini seems to be orthodox in his portrayal of man’s special dignity with respect to the rest of the animal kingdom. In general, the few details provided in the CNS article suggest that his attempt to show how the theological truth of man’s special status can be consistent with the theory of biological evolution is plausible, though I do not know Facchini’s qualifications in Catholic philosophy or theology. However, I do hope that his article makes more qualifications about his theological theory than the CNS article seems to think. Absent these qualifications, I would say from the few quotes we do get from the CNS article there appear to be some philosophical issues in his theory:

The article said that, “when the biological conditions necessary for supporting a being capable of reflective thought were attained, the will of God, the creator, freely desired it, and man came to be.”

The article posed the question: Does this mean that humans evolved from chimpanzees?

“No, it might be better to say that at some point God willed a spark of intelligence to light up in the mind of a nonhuman hominid and thus came into existence the human as a being, as a subject capable of thought and the ability to decide freely,” it said.

My difficulties with what seems to be suggested here is that the human person is an animal with the added faculties of intellect and will. This is perhaps an Aristotelian way of looking at it though I suspect that it may not even be as integral a view as Aristotle, much less than say St. Thomas Aquinas.

What I mean is that the human soul must not be viewed as an animal soul with some additional faculties (intellect and free will). Rather, the human soul is different in kind from animal souls. The faculties do not arrive later to bring about a human person. The faculties are manifestations of the uniquely human, spiritual soul which is made in the image and likeness of God. These faculties, or at least the potency for these faculties, are necessary features for human personhood because these faculties are prerequisite for the capacity for love.

A further conundrum would the timing for this “spark of intelligence.” If this comes about “from without” after conception, as I take the quote to indicate, we would have two separate creatures who share the same exact DNA, though the former would have to be annihilated to make way for the human. My hylomorphic sensibilities tell me that this would obviate the principle of individuation for the unique substantial form. While discontinuity of species is an perennial problematic artifact of common descent theories, it it is to be resolved it will require much more philosophical precision than is apparent here.

I am also sensitive to the way in which Facchini describes this transition as his tone, again intuited from the quotes, suggests a presupposition of Cartesian mechanism with primacy given to material processes. This bias is to be expected from a scientist as it is rampant among even faithful and well theologically formed Catholics who have been schooled in the Cartesian school that is our academy of science in the west. It is however, problematic because leads to reductionist thought. It also tends to portray God in Deist terms: as “outside” His creation who imposes Himself upon “natural” processes and therefore, so it is thought, as an “imagined interference” with modern science.

Thus, I would argue that theological theories trying to reconcile the theory of biological evolution with Christian anthropology require a solid formation in classical metaphysics by a scholar who has adequately purged, or is at least sensitive to the fact that he has not, modern philosophical biases from his thinking.

Again, I do not want to pin these short comings on OR or Facchini at this point: i.e. presupposing evolution (though given the author’s expertise this would be of no surprise but it would be that OR would run it that way), presupposing the facticity of personal theological speculation, and the apparent philosophical issues. It very well could be the fault of CNS in the way they are reporting it. Perhaps it is CNS rather than OR who is promoting evolution as a Catholic teaching?

Has anyone seen the article to which CNS refers?

“when you were younger,

you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted;

but when you grow old,

you will stretch out your hands,

and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.”

He said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God.

Jn 21:15-19

“The man who finds fault with himself accepts all things cheerfully— misfortune, loss, disgrace, dishonor and any other kind of adversity. He believes that he is deserving of all these things and nothing can disturb him. No one could be more at peace than this man.” - Saint Dorotheus, abbot

May we pray for the courage to see our true selves as revealed to us through God.

… And when he had said this, he said to him, “Follow me.”

So says Tim Padgett in a Time Magazine article entitled ” A Catholic’s Take on the Pope’s Trip.” This article is illustrative of a rationalist confusion over the proper relationship between faith and reason. In the article, Padgett summarizes his views of B16’s visit has having little effect in bringing U.S. Catholics around to accepting what he refers to as “retro dogma.”

This would be an extremely long post if I were to address each and every one of his contradictions in thought. He has many that he seems not to be aware of: his dogmatic dichotomy between the Catholic Church as an institution and the Christian religion; his ability to admire the Church’s teaching on how sexual intercourse should be entered into while rejecting its admonition that it is exclusive to complementary marriage, his apparent acceptance of the Church’s teaching about the Eucharist and its ability to confect it while rejecting its teaching authority.

The reason he is able to uncritically accept these contradictory views, it seems to me, begins with the common dissenter’s confusion about faith and reason. He suggests this much by his favorable reference to Robert McClory’s Faithful Dissenters, a contradiction in terms if there ever was one. Padgett applies McClory’s half-baked ideas to arrive at the conclusion that by rejecting Church teaching, U.S. Catholics are, in fact, being “good Catholics.” What does he mean by this and how is this related to the confusion to which I refer?

What he means is that he accepts what he thinks to be the Church’s teaching on the importance of reason in one’s faith life (though he does not explain what he accepts it). However, like most dissenters, he is confused about the structure of faith and the role of reason in faith. This allows him, when combined with sloppy history, to believe that dissenters within the Church have always used their reason to correct erroneous Church teachings. He trots out the dissenters’ favorite canard, slavery, to attempt to demonstrate this point. This, of course, is also conflated with the history of personal failings of members and leaders of the Church thereby confusing doctrinal purity with personal impeccability.

Thus, Padgett believes, individual dissenters have always been the vanguard against the Church going astray, permanently at least, in her beliefs. So now that U.S. Catholics are using their “reason” to come to their own views about such things as women’s ordination, homosexuality, contraception, sex outside of marriage, etc. (N.B. that as is usual, his list is heavily weighted with moral issues as these are most susceptible to fallen human caprice) U.S. Catholics are now filling the role of “good” Catholics from the past. Padgett thinks that this, along with the so-called “pedophile” tragedy has “made the laity’s self-reliant spirit irradicable.”

It is hard to believe that anyone who has honestly looked at the Catholic responses to such inveracity can still hold these views without some sort of emotional precommitment that requires such rationalization. Regardless, it is not coincidental that his views reflect a cacophony of Protestant nominalism, Enlightenment rationalism, modern radical individualism, and neo-modern nihilism (ala Nietzsche and Sarte by which one creates his own reality according to his will). This is, after all, the philosophical patrimony of modernism that subjugates our culture and ironically allows us to believe (or at least claim) that we are thinking when we are blindly following the proverbial pack with lemming-like abandon.

If Padgett were to realize that faith is not simply a direct fruit of reason, he might be more cautious about his self-appointment as the final arbiter of truth. Rather, appropriating a phenomenology of faith from the Church’s rich intellectual tradition would uncover for him at least three basic components. Christian faith firt requires some intellectual object for consideration. Thus, reason is brought into play.

However, the difference between Christian reason and rationalism is that faith is not the simple correspondence of proposition to the terminus of one’s rational process. Reason is employed to make reasonable one’s submitting himself in trust to the Proposer–that is, Jesus Christ Himself. In doing so, one must also submit in trust to His chosen Mediator of Truth–the Hierarchically structured Church which is the visible manifestation of His Mystical Body. Thus, the next step for Christian faith is that the Christian responds in trust to God’s initiating offer of Himself. Thus again, reason makes trust reasonable.

But trust is still not Christian faith. Faith must be supernaturalized. Faith is finally Christian when the Christian receives the theological virtue of faith, ordinarily by means of sacramental grace. This is faith through grace and it is where the rationalist often goes wrong. He rejects this gift of grace because he understands from his Protestant culture, that grace annihilates his fallen human nature and so what one knows by reason can now be overturned by faith. To the rationalist, this means, and rightly so, an annihilation of his authentic humanity. Unfortunately, the rationalist then rejects faith as anti-human.

The Liberal Protestant tradition simply segregates these two realms from one another. The modern, Catholic rationalist dissenter is less consistent. He accepts faith when it accords with his “reason” (read caprice) and rejects it other wise. Thus, he is not open in trust to the Truth of Christ and does not experience, and so cannot conceive of, faith as something more certain than reason alone.  Without this faith, this belief, he fails to understand her teaching–as St. Augustine’s sage insight tells us: “I believe that I may understand.”  The dissenter is then left to trade faith illumined reason mediated by the Church and kept pure by the Holy Spirit, for worldly wisdom which St. Paul reminds us is foolishness to God (1Cor 3:19).

However, the Christian tradition purified of this Protestant fideism (and other errors) understands that human nature is not radically corrupted but only wounded. Further, it understands that human nature is not opposed to grace. In fact, human nature is made for grace. Grace is a partaking in the divine nature (see 2 Pt 1:4). As St. Basil indicates in today’s Office of Readings, it gives us a likeness to God–divinizing us. Rather than damaging human nature, it heals fallen nature, it elevates nature, and it perfects nature.

Correcting himself on these points will be the first intellectual steps in Padgett’s becoming an authentically “good Catholic.” Perhaps he is now confused because he was initially poorly catechized by a dissenting Catholic. I do not know this but, unfortunately, that is not unlikely these days. However, dissenting faith cannot be sustained. One cannot have true communion with God while pursuing falsehoods that take one in the opposite direction from Truth Himself.

We can pray that the death of “liberal Catholicism” will open the way to the recognition that if one is to accept Christ, he must accept the Totus Christus–the Whole Christ. This includes His Mystical Body, the Church, constituted on earth with a hierarchical structure. At that point U.S. Catholics will indeed begin to know better.

Hierothee passed along a link to one of the several articles that Time has run in the wake of B16’s visit to the U.S. As usual, they select commentators (see e.g. here and here) whose individualist libertinism distorts their world view and so corrupts their ability to adequately understand the Church and so the attendant dynamics of Church life.

That is not to say, that these commentators do not adequately understand the viewpoint of those mostly affected by current culture, perhaps including the majority of Catholics in the West. However, it certainly saddles them with biases, leaving them confused and unable to adequately explain the Church’s response to cultural challenges.

In this article, David Van Beima asks if “Liberal Catholicism” is dead. The first thing to note is the uncritical acceptance of such a misleading term. Van Beima does not even try to define it, presupposing that it is universally understood. In fact, what he means by the phrase one would have to try to draw from his article.  In doing so, one would be led to suppose that he intends: those who wish to consider themselves Catholic while at the same time rejecting Church teaching AND actively working to change the Church structures and teaching to accord with their political/social agenda.

Van Beima believes that Vatican II is the watershed event in the “liberal rebellion” in American Catholicism. It is good that here he seems to limit his scope to the Catholic Church in the U.S.  Like too many U.S. journalists, he is apparently quite myopic in his view of the Church and the world, not seeing its scope beyond that of its U.S. context.  Furthermore, rebellion is the correct term.  However, this rebellion would not have been possible to have exploded to the extent it did in the wake of the Second Vatican Council had it not already been underway for some decades prior to the Council.  Thus, suggesting that Vatican II was the sole, or at least primary, cause is not defensible.

He interprets the Council has having “overhauled much of Catholic teaching and ritual.” Of course, no Church teaching was overhauled. In fact, there was nothing “new” from the Council in terms of Church teaching. It did clarify and make authoritative many developments that had matured over the previous centuries.  Neither can the Council be saddled with the “overhaul” of, and confusion associated with, the liturgy that occurred in its aftermath. Of course, that is the view of those whom Van Beima has in mind with his “liberal” referent. He writes:

But Vatican II meant even more to a generation of devout but restless young people in the U.S. rather than a course correction, Terrence Tilley, now head of the Fordham University’s theology department, wrote recently, his generation perceived “an interruption of history, a divine typhoon that left only the keel and structure of the church unchanged.”

Tilley confirms as appropriate the “hermeneutic of discontinuity” to which B16 often makes reference as accurately characterizing those theologians who fall into this camp. They are “liberal” precisely because they adopt the agenda to spread their disintegrating hermeneutic to the rest of the Church. What characterized these “liberals” was the desire to impose a secular political structure on the Church. Van Beima calls it democracy while I would argue their agenda was rather an oligarchy of the libertine intelligentsia. Another feature of this “liberalism” was a primacy of conscience which I would more properly characterize as a replacement of the Magisterium instituted by Christ with a magisterium of individual whim. He identifies the main organs of this movement:

Its perspectives were covered in The National Catholic Reporter, Commonweal and America. Martin Sheen held down Hollywood, and the movement even boasted its own cheesy singing act: the St. Louis Jesuits. The reformers’ premier membership organization was Call to Action, but their influence was felt at the highest reaches of the American Church, as sympathetic American bishops passed left-leaning statements on nuclear weapons and economic justice.

There is no surprise here. But it is interesting to note that Van Beima clearly sees the so called St. Louis Jesuits’ and their music as an organ of “liberal rebellion.” With all there is to dispute with Van Beima’s view of the Church in this article, one observation that is not up for debate in my view is his characterization of them as “the movement['s] . . . own cheesy singing act.”

In fact, I do believe that this “cheesy” music and its imposition on the liturgy has done major damage to the laity’s self-understanding of the Church through its diminution of the transcendent experience of the Mass. When the Mass becomes the venue for campy music and the insipid taste endemic in the personal creative expression rampant during these decades (and not yet completely expunged from the scene today), it is no wonder that so many poorly catechized Catholics stopped practicing their faith and others grew in disdain for the Church which no longer seemed to mediate to them in the Mass, albeit through accidents but important accidents, the Sacrifice of Calvary but now subjected them to an aesthetic milieu that they would have turned off if it had been on the TV.

But I digress. Van Beima again quotes Tilley on the state of this movement:

Remarks Tilley, “For a couple of generations, progressivism was an [important] way to be Catholic.”

Then he adds, “But I think the end of an era is here.”

Van Beima says that “progressives” have essentially been so successful in changing the views of the average Catholic that they no longer seem relevant with any sort of unique message. He says that for a short time, they had a rallying cry around the perceived heirarchy’s complicity in the sex abuse scandal since JPII “remained mostly silent.” But now with B16’s visit and in his taking the issue on directly, he has changed the dynamic.

The first one can say is that it would be hard to argue that JPII was silent about it. He called the U.S. Cardinals to Rome within two months after the Boston Globe kicked off the press frenzy and said to them:

Like you, I too have been deeply grieved by the fact that priests and religious, whose vocation it is to help people live holy lives in the sight of God, have themselves caused such suffering and scandal to the young. Because of the great harm done by some priests and religious, the Church herself is viewed with distrust, and many are offended at the way in which the Church´s leaders are perceived to have acted in this matter. The abuse which has caused this crisis is by every standard wrong and rightly considered a crime by society; it is also an appalling sin in the eyes of God. To the victims and their families, wherever they may be, I express my profound sense of solidarity and concern.

Regardless of the erroneous contrast between JPII and B16, it is interesting to me the way that B16’s visit and especially his words have been taken. Whether this is a watershed event in the way that the media will cover the Church in this regard and the way the Church will be viewed by the laity, I doubt. It rather reflects the fact that there has been very little in terms of new news to keep the flames fanned. Nevertheless, it is gratifying that for once, the majority in the media have allowed the Catholic Church, in the person of B16, to express without skeptical commentary, its remorse for what has happened in the past and its resolve to ensure that nothing like this happens again in the future.

Van Beima’s quoting of Fr. Thomas Reese’s observation that “reform” movements need a visible enemy against which to organize as his rationale for the lack of steam among the graying activists is worth noting. The libertine rebels did everything they could to demonize Church teachings they did not like along with the hierarchy. But JPII was even more visibly affable than B16 and this did little to change the way he was demonized. Rather, what we are seeing is the dying out of the old guard and its replacement by a worldly and largely religiously indifferent generation.

The newer generations are not the social activists that arose in the rebellious 1960s. The Gen Xer’s and later generations are not rebels in the same sense. Their parents were the rebels and so in order to reject their parents, they are more content to just indulge themselves in all that the culture of hedonism has to offer.

Nevertheless, Van Beima is correct in his general assessment. “Liberal Catholicism” is dead but this does not mean that there will be a large return to orthodoxy. Rather, there will simply be a largely impassive laity who will either stop practicing their faith or simply go to church on Sunday and do what the culture tells them they need to be doing for their self-fulfillment the rest of the time.

This provides much opportunity, however. There will be less and less confusion generated by activist dissenters within the Church as the dissenters die out. The work in pre-evangelization of the wayward Catholics who remain will no longer not need to be focused on trying to clarify the confusion within the Church and instead will be able to be focused on the authentic beauty to be found in Church teaching and the genuine joy to be attained in conforming one’s life to the truth of the Gospel.

The damage that dissenters have done to the faith has been incalculable. Perhaps some will come to recognize that their desire for an socially activist church devoid of truth and any demands for self control can never be realized. Without truth one can only offer hedonism as an attraction to fallen man. The grim fruits of hedonism is an inward turn to dehumanizing selfishness and around this no church can flourish. So yes, “liberal Catholicism,” using Van Beima’s definition, is dead. However, now the hard work toward the new springtime in the Church can begin to start showing fruit.

For you say, “I am rich and affluent and have no need of anything,” and yet do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. – Revelation 3:17

This one goes a leap beyond the believable I think, even for the most fervent Catholic haters. We become defiled through our desire for revenge. Forgiveness is an act of the will, a gift to another which comes from sorrow.