Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

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.

Many of those who are commenting upon B16’s latest Encyclical bring little value to the discussion because they have not read the document or they cannot see beyond their particular ideology in order to competently engage the Pope’s thought.  One such example is a particularly obtuse commentary by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland and daughter of RFK.

Kennedy does not seem to have read the Encyclical upon which she comments and neither is she able to extricate herself from her radically dissenting ideology in order to put together any coherent thoughts.  She uses the events of  BO’s audience with B16 with the Encyclical as renewed opportunities to lambaste the Church for her teachings on…what else… those issues dealing with sex and the human person.

Kennedy presents an ironically ignorant essay due at least in part, to these two shortfalls.   She goes so far as to say that BO better represents the views of American Catholics than does B16 (more on that later).  So why comment upon such screed?  Well, her op ed serves as an example of the long road ahead in trying to bring Catholic politicians to use their intellects for a change and so to seriously engage the teachings of the Church.

Kennedy seems to recognize that the title of the Encyclical means truth in love but she does not seem to appreciate that the Pope is directly addressing the issues that she raises.  In her comments, Kennedy uses the same tired canards to attack the Church’s teaching on abortion, same sex attraction disorder, artificial contraception and women’s ordination that have been thrown out for all too many years now.  Of course, she unabashedly rejects all of these teachings.

Kennedy does not even bother to address the argument that Benedict puts forth in the Encyclical that love without truth is not love at all.  Perhaps she is not even aware that he has made such an argument.  Instead, she simply asserts, without any supporting logic, that the Church’s teaching demonstrates a lack of love.  She also asserts, again without demonstrating, that the only reason for the Church’s teaching in these areas is due to a fear of losing power.  She never seriously considers that her understanding of love and truth may be seriously deficient.  The same could be said of her understanding of the interrelationship between the two.

It is ironic that she makes a claim for truth in love without making an obvious argument for the truth of her position.  What she does do is to make a reference to polls of US Catholics on certain issues, the results of which she claims contradicts the “positions of the Pope.”  Her argument is based upon a not very well thought out assumption that the Pope is supposed to represent the “values” of some constituency, here US Catholics.  She doesn’t even address the Church’s 2000 year old teaching that the Holy Father’s role is rather to lead all Catholics in truth.

It is perhaps this contemporary political mindset that Kennedy impresses upon the Church that keeps her stuck in obtuse diatribe in which she is never able to rise to the level of basic argumentation.  Kennedy does not seem to understand that she assumes an indefensible definition of truth. Truth is not the higher percentage number response to a question (an all too often leading question at that) that some pollster is able to squeeze out of the few who answer their phones and the fewer still who will answer the pollsters’ questions.  Neither is love to be equated with the particular position for which you receive affirmation from the group that you identify with.

Again, Kennedy is quite ironic in her rather arrogant assertion of those things that BO has to teach B16.  She says that “respectful disagreement and the willingness to recognize [sic] differences” are two of these lessons.  Here she is referring to Church teaching on the killing of innocent unborn (and those born after a failed abortion) and the promotion of the rupture of the social fabric of society by the redefinition of marriage and the family that BO promotes and still he was so graciously willing to go to UND anyway…imagine that for a politician.  Apparently, Kennedy has not herself learned that same lesson as she does not respectfully disagree with the Church but accuses her leaders of cowardice and ignorance.  She is not willing to “recognize” (rather, tolerate)  the differences between her worldly views and the teachings of the Church which the Magisterium upholds.  Rather, she demands that the consistent 2000 year old, infallible teachings of the Church be changed to fit her personal world view.

A final example of Kennedy’s tortuous thinking are the two times she refers to Church teaching in order to support her position.  The first is her reference to the latest Encyclical which she claims that it gives credence to BO’s policies and to “progressive politics writ large.”  She mentions it again, when she asserts that Notre Dame’s giving an honorary degree to BO was simply that school’s highlighting of “the best of Catholic teaching” applied to politics.  She embraces Catholic teaching when she is able to twist it to fit her secular world view and rejects it when she is not.  She does not even try to provide an argument that justifies how she can both embrace and reject teachingz which come from the same source.  If she is writing off the authority of the Church then why even bother noting when there is apparent agreement?  If she recognizes the authority of the Church, then what is her justification for the selective dissent?

The new Encyclical, if one reads it with an open mind and an open heart, can and must transform the way we think about the world and the way that our current public and private organizations, institutions, and structures operate.   There are many who are spilling much ink and/or electrons writing about it but few have read it.  Fewer still have allowed themselves to read it as it was written without projecting their own ideologies upon it.  This does not bode well for expectations of progress with these dissenting politicians.  Kennedy is proof positive of the old addage that you can lead a horse to water . . .

The blog list at “Inside Catholic” is quite perplexing. On many days when I go there I find links not only to the loathsome “Vox Nova” (which I’ve described here), but to Commonweal and to the National Catholic Reporter. Indeed, there are times when the list of linkages at Inside Catholic is full of these latter blogs. This raises a question: does the publicity that “Inside Catholic” gives to these blogs constitute a cooperation in evil? I’ll take Vox Nova and Commonweal out the picture. These are highly annoying blogs,  to be sure. Vox Nova strikes me, as I’ve said, as yet another front group for George Soros. Commonweal is a promoter of the passe liberalism of the 1970s. But the National Catholic Reporter? It is nothing more than a propagator of lies and heresy. It is outright destructive of the Church.

On the bright side, The National Catholic Reporter is dying off. By their own account several years ago, though I don’t have time to fact-check this, their average readership was quite aged. Is “Inside Catholic” not helping to prop-up their operation and thereby standing in implicit support of the evil work that is done by them? I don’t want to take a definitive stand on this issue. I’d be curious to hear other opinions.

Before I get to my post on Kant and modern science, I want to take a little diversion.

I must be far too blog curious. I recently followed a link from “Inside Catholic” to a group blog entitled “Vox Nova.” From my brief perusal of the site, I assumed that it was yet another “Catholic” George Soros front group, but I’m not sure. Perhaps it is not professional enough to be that. The blog comprises various grad students at various points in their journey before attaining terminal degrees. They run a mostly political blog, but they have some contributors with a bit of theological training and seem to be inspired to some degree by recent trends in theology which claim to theologize politics rather than letting politics dictate theology. Many of the proponents of these new trends in theology are not very consistent in their claim (think John Milbank), and the Vox Nova crowd seems similarly inconsistent. They give the impression that they are theologically orthodox and above the fray of political reductionism in theology. Even so, they are clearly prone to proof-texting voices from the tradition to support political positions or theological programs that are inherently destructive of Church unity.

As a case in point, one of the contributors, when I got there, had just given a favorable review of a recent book by Rosemary Radford Ruether. The title of Ruether’s book is quite boring, and the content as described by the blogger in question seems even less interesting, however enthusiastic he may have been about it. There is no need to delve into the particulars of this clearly ephemeral and provincial book. It is Ruether in what she represents and her overarching theological program that is the important issue. The blogger described Ruether’s approach to theology as a much needed alternative to the theological imperialism of bloggers who claim that the only authentic theological voice in the Church today is Pope Ratzinger. His post struck me as being rather smarmy. Of course, smarminess is typical of grad students who have not yet had to face in a personal manner learned opposition to their points of view: although, admittedly, as most professors are committed socialists, this particular grad student may never face such a personal challenge. In his follow-up comments, he contemptously described liturgical traditionalists and “Ratzingerian” bloggers as being prone to support “death dealing,” right-wing, fascist politics. With the bemusement of an aspiring grad-school sociologist, he contemplated the prospect of studying this connection of liturgical traditionalism and political evil.

Of course, such political confusions do not in fact accompany most liturgical traditionalists or Ratzingerians. This is certainly true of those whom I have met, and, as someone who has served in an editorial capacity for a scholarly journal committed to such issues, I’ve met quite a few of these people. Moreover, it should be needless to say that fascism is mostly a phenomenon of the left not the right. So, what of the propensity of anti-traditionalist theologians to support death-dealing leftist politics? Also sociologically interesting, no? I felt compelled to point out this obvious fact in the combox at “Vox Nova.” Of course, I have yet to meet a socialist who will admit to it, and the comments following mine on the blog post in question illustrate continued, obstinate, disingenuous reticence in this regard. I was even accused of being a political reductionist myself by these strange people for pointing out the deadly fact of socialism, nationalist or internationalist, in history! The (Pol) pot is always on the lookout to call the kettle black! Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Castro et. al. are ever vigilant to see the speck in General Franco’s eye!

Be that as it may, what I want to discuss is Rosemary Ruether, and the duplicity that attends those who, like the blogger at ”Vox Nova,” see her as exemplary in giving another side of the theological story to Pope Ratzinger’s presumably authoritarian Roman position. It is necessary to put it bluntly: Ruether’s position on most, if not all, theological issues is in violent opposition to Apostolic Tradition and cannot be accepted as a viable alternative, or complementary theology, to that of Ratzinger, or JP II, or any other pope, saint, doctor of the Church, patristic theologian, or scholastic figure who is a legitimate keeper and expositor of the Tradition. Ruether has spent a career trying to undermine essential dogmas of the Church, teachings essential to the fabric of God’s revelation, indeed, flowing from the very heart of God’s Eternal Word. She is radically opposed to the nuptial mystery of creation, which is the central scriptural image of the God-world relationship and which symbolizes a concrete ontology that has been brought out in the Augustinian tradition and recovered in the twentieth century. Her rejection of the all-male priesthood, of sacramental marriage, of the traditional family, and of the nuptial meaning of the procreative act are all signs of this. She proposes a reimaging of the Trinity that in fact does away with the Triune God. She thinks of the Church as first and foremost a social and historical construct, a free association of bourgeois humanity. It is not, for her, divinely instituted, with a structured hierarchy whose ministerial priesthood was willed by Christ, in accordance with divine Wisdom, to have the special privilege of shepherding, sanctifying, and teaching the flock. The Church is not the Mystical Body of Christ for her, in any sense that sees it in its essential bearing as the continued corporeal, mysterious presence of the Logos made flesh. Henri de Lubac was correct to point out the social character of the Mystical Body of Christ, but this does not do away with the fact that the Church is an organism with an authoritative form set by Christ (its Head) in continuance with his incarnate mission on earth. Moreover, she rejects the salvific uniqueness and universality of revelation in Christ. She does not accept that Christ alone is the Logos made flesh, the historical Jesus alone a divine person and not a human person. There’s no need to discuss Matthias Scheeben on this last point, who said that Christ could be called a human person if by that we refer strictly to his integral human personality and not to his ontological subjectivity. Ruether lacks Scheeben’s subtlety and so cannot make such a distinction. And, needless to say, her rejection of the unifying mission of Peter stems from a gross misinterpretation of Vatican II. Theologically speaking, it should go without saying that Vatican II must exist in a literal continuity with Vatican I, and all other councils, if Catholicism is to have any objective meaning whatsoever. Some commentor at Vox Nova actually tried to argue that poor John Henry Newman, based on one letter that he had written, rejected the special authority of the papacy as defined by Vatican I! Again: proof-texting without proving a point or even understanding it.

So, how is Ruether’s theological project at all salutary for the Church? It is no mere “political reductionism” to see that it is fatally flawed. She represents a theological program that undermines truth, and in undermining truth is destructive of the unity of the Church. Her individualist, nominalist vision of Church progress is not progress at all but annihilation. Hers is not a complementary theological vision to that of Pope Ratzinger but a sundering of the Mystical Body of Christ.

Of course, there is quite a problem with those who, like this grad student at “Vox Nova,” claim to respect the Pope and yet who argue in essence that blog opposition to the likes of Ruether is generally nothing more than a form of irrational, narrow-minded, politically-motivated ultramontanism propagated by those who just aren’t well-read. The Vox Nova blogger essentially claims that Ratzinger, like JP II before him, is hailed by other bloggers simply because he is conceived of as the voice of authority from on high.

To put it mildly, that is all bunk. “Ratzingerian” bloggers love Ratzinger, as they did JP II, because he is such a powerful and trenchant defender and expositor of Apostolic Tradition, whereas Ruether and her ilk seek, like ravenous packhounds, to tear apart Tradition into shreds!

So, by all means, “Ratzingerian” bloggers, stay bold, stay firm, you have chosen the better path over the grad students out there who would seek to undermine you with quotations drawn from Pavel Florensky, or Serge Bulgakov, or Ruether, or whomever else they’ve managed to read passages from or books by in their graduate courses that week, or in their preparations for a course paper or master’s thesis.

I just got back into town today after a quick trip to San Antonio for a job interview (see my earlier post if you want to know why) for a new, very small Catholic college.  I think that it went well except that my 30 year old Spanish has not yet come back, but I am working on it.  I never noticed before how, even outside of South Texas, that it seems easier to find a Spanish language radio station these days then often even a Country music station.  That is to say that I have now embarked upon a steady diet of Spanish radio when possible.  For those so inclined, I would very much appreciate your prayers for the rest of the selection process as the job seems to be an almost perfect fit to me and it will allow cornflakes to continue to populate the kitchen table…for that matter, it will ensure that there will still be a kitchen table.

Piggy-backing upon Hierothee’s most excellent post about the Notre Dame debacle, let me propose the following for your measured consideration. He covered quite well all of the logical inconsistencies of Fr. Jenkins’s rather pathetic rationalization for what can only be seen as a grave act of scandal.  Hierothee pointed out that there are clearly some heinous ideologies that people can hold about which no one can doubt that honoring someone holding the same could ever be honored, even if the end were dialogue and conversion.

In this case we have some one who not simply abets, but actually promotes mass murder.  Whether there are in fact any “accomplishments” to honor (Hierothee’s post assesses this dubious claim), honoring accomplishments while ignoring grave and extensive moral crimes is an intellectual schitzophrenia of the worst kind.  Let us consider substituting for BO, another figure from history who rescued a nation from economic turmoil while having the unfortunate character flaw that he thought some human beings deserved the protection accorded human persons while others did not.

Can we imagine Fr. Jenkins inviting Adolph Hitler to receive an honorary doctorate for his accomplishments in reforming the German economy, putting between 6 and 7 million unemployed  Germans back to work, reenergizing the German economy which had been in shambles after WWI, rebuilding the countries defenses, and unifying the country politically.  Of course, as with all socialist/totalitarian economic programs this probably would not have provided long term stability for the economy or the society but fortunately, the Third Reich fell before the house of cards could collapse under its own weight.

Nevertheless, can you imagine what Notre Dame would have to live down today, if a Fr. Jenkins-esqe school president had thought up some half-baked scheme to honor Hitler and to justify the act by claiming it is in order to dialogue with him.  Or suppose, perhaps, that this hypothetical brainiac had run a Catholic university in Nazi Germany.  Here the parallel would have been even more similar in that he would have been gaining “prestige” for his school with the intelligentsia for inviting a wildly popular leader of the state.  Even accounting for that fact that he oversaw a totalitarian regime, Hitler had approval ratings that still eclipse even BO’s at his highest (the link below reports that Hitler had a 90% approval rating in 1939).

Now some will argue that BO is not the cold blooded fiend that Hitler was and so the comparison with Hitler is unfair.  I say that  the comparison is more fair than they might be willing to admit.  It seems to me that it can only be those who reject the equation of abortion with murder, at least on some subliminal level, who would be drawn to call such a comparison unfair.  Though I admit I have no idea how authoritative this might be, I would still like to point to a very interesting assessment of Hitler’s worst mistakes.  These are so interesting because  they seem, eerily so, to effectively make my case for me:

Ultimately, Hitler’s worst mistakes were:

a) Formulating policy for a great state on the basis of a bizarre and fallacious worldview,

b) buying into his own press and gambling on his supposed Providence-supplied infallibility to play high-stakes power politics with an insufficient purse, and

c) ensuring the vilification of himself and his ideology by practicing industrial genocide on innocents.

How about providing some other personalities in the comment box that we might substitute into Fr. Jenkins’s rationalization so me might demonstrate his folly?

…, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still pleasing men, I should not be a servant of Christ” (Gal 1:10).

Paul’s letter to the Galatians came to mind recently as I was considering the recent hullabaloo about which the local church in Austria has been screwing itself into the ground.  The bishops there are in open revolt against the Holy Father because he is not as beholden to the sensitivities of the world as they appear to be.  I still cannot fathom how seriously I had misjudged Cardinal Schoenborn.

These are gravely mistaken Austrian bishops who have chosen to take it upon themselves to engage in pressure politics, attempting to use the coercion of public opinion to overturn decisions made by the Holy Father with respect to schism-healing and episcopal appointments.  Of course, impudent reactions to the Holy Father’s guidance of the Church are not limited to the Austrians.

Now, I am certainly not surprised by the reaction of those who habitually fawn after the politically correct crowd.  It is not unusual that their determination as to the right or wrong of any particular action which the Church undertakes is to be judged by the positive or negative reaction of the mass media.  However, in this case, even some commentators less obsessed with “public relations” are criticizing the Holy Father for his lack of public relations savvy.  Here is why I think that the hypersensitivity of these commentators to world reaction is misplaced.

In the case of Bishop Williamson, world reaction betrays a willful ignorance of the Church and the meaning of this move.   These are people who are uninterested in the new progress toward reconciliation.  They have no concern for the gains that have been made in reforming, or at least isolating, Bishop Williamson as one who, for whatever reason, denies the actual horror of the holocaust.

Those who wish to accede to world reaction tacitly put forth the argument that no attempts toward rapprochement should have been made with SSPX, or at least with Bishop Williamson while he continues in his odd beliefs.  In other words, this is essentially saying that such people ought to be excluded from any attempts at reform.  One might observe that the people who condemn the Church for this action are the same who have hailed, or at least been silent about, BO’s intent to engage in dialog with Iran, a country whose President has declared that Israel has no right to exist and who has himself denied the holocaust.  This is very telling.  It strongly suggests that the motivation for this uproar is driven by animus toward the Catholic Church rather than any real concern over what some confused schismatic Catholic priest thinks about the Holocaust.

Since Pius XII, the Church has recognized the need and taken very significant initiatives in terms of rapprochement with our Jewish brothers and sisters.  It is disingenuous for anyone to imply anti-semitism on the part of the Church for the actions she has taken in trying to reconcile SSPX.  Those in the media and in the Church who do so are the same who lambaste the Church for being heavy-handed for any other excommunications.  They presume to tell the Church who should and who should not be in communion with the Church based primarily upon their notions of political correctness.  Frankly, it is none of their business.

The other issue is the nomination of an Austrian priest as an auxiliary bishop for a diocese in Austria.  The uproar here again, I think , has little to do with the priests’ impolitic speculations about the connection between some natural disasters and the unquestionable widespread moral depravity associated with the affected regions.  Certainly, I agree that in the wake of a devastating event with many innocents suffering, especially in our culture in which these statements would in themselves have little chance of being comprehended, it seems that such comments are more likely to exacerbate the suffering of the innocent than it would convict consciences of the guilty.

However, while his speculation was not a theological certainty, neither was it a theological error.  It is possible that God would permit devastation to occur as an opportunity for sinners to awaken themselves from their hedonistic stupor.  Again, it is unlikely that the priest’s statements were the real reason for this reaction.  By all accounts, it is more likely the case that the hierarchy in Austria is more concerned with his willingness to be a public voice of moral truth which will be, for them, an embarrassment.  If not an embarrassment, at least it will cause them difficulties with the largely dissenting clergy and laity.  Certainly, they are also concerned to have a prelate who will not be so “rigid” about truth and Church teaching.

Now, I am not saying that prudence in avoiding unnecessary offense and confusion ought to be set aside.  However, that is not the same as recognizing that we cannot always avoid uproar from an unbelieving world when Christ is proclaimed.  If the suggestion of these critics is that no decision ought to be made until it is vetted by some sort of public relations office, then we may as well simply join the Anglican Communion right now.

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross would never have made it through such a vetting process.  Neither would have St. Maximilian Kolbe.  Dominus Iesus would never have been able to have been released. All of these caused uproars which could not be avoided.  A cautious vetting process would still have us waiting for an acceptable version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to be brought forth. Perhaps we ought also to pass all Sacramentary and Lectionary changes/translations through some public relations vetting process?

When people are looking for an opportunity to be offended, there is little chance one is going to be able to proclaim the Gospel and avoid offending people.  With so many others looking for any excuse to attack the Church we perhaps ought to gain certainty that actions that get such an uproar in response were in fact the right ones.

Catholics ought not fall into this politically correct, obsessive mindset to which all too many otherwise solid Catholic commentators seem to have fallen prey.  Regensburg was not a public relations failure; lifting the excommunication on the SSPX was not a public relations failure; the appointment of a solid, if impolitic, Austrian priest as a bishop was not a public relations failure.  The reactions are all unavoidable, if ridiculous, clamorings of a world that cannot bear to hear the truth.  This confused world is abetted by Catholics who share their aversion for truth.

If we make affirmative responses from the world our touchstone for determining what we are to proclaim, then we can no longer be the servants of Christ.

Peter Steinfels, writing in the NY Times, asks the question about when any bishop in the US will speak out against B16’s lifting of the excommunication against the four SSPX bishops.  Steinfels, is a journalist, the former editor of Commonweal, a Fordham professor, etc, and was instrumental in helping get the Common Ground initiative started.  He would seem to be the kind of self-styled “progressive” that John Allen Jr has attempted to become–that is, thoroughly “progressive” in terms of viewing Catholicism through the lens of the “liberal” US intelligentsia, while trying to maintain an air of fairness to the views of those he considers the “conservative” opposition.

Steinfels begins his weekly column by setting up what he seems to think is justification for seeing some dissent from US Bishops to Benedict’s magnanimous action toward the Lefebvrists.  In other words, he shows that it is possible that B16 could have made an error of judgment and that the Bishops have a certain autonomy in their own right.  Since they are not prevented then, from expressing misgivings by the Church’s constitution, why are they not?

It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Steinfels, I suppose, that it might just be that they appreciate the significance of this gesture much more than he does.  In other words, they recognize that this is no mistake.  It is a mistake only to those who think that Regensburg was a mistake.  Church unity and the salvation of souls is of much more important than the trying to ride the fickle tides of MSM opinion which is always looking for a way to assault the Church.

Steinfels has two beefs.  First, he is concerned about the message that is being sent to the Jews given the response of some.  Second, he is concerned about, because of what SSPX stands for, what this is saying to the rest of the world about the significance of the  Second Vatican Council.  Steinfels writes:

Even Catholics who understand the priority that church leaders always give to healing any formal schism that can perpetuate itself are puzzling over the Vatican’s extraordinary solicitude for this relatively small ultratraditionalist sect.

They wonder whether proponents of liberation theology or women’s ordination need to enlist a few schismatic bishops, who might ordain further bishops, in order to get a similar hearing in Rome.

And of course there are Catholics who dread – and some who hope – that the accommodations made to the Society of St. Pius X augur a larger reversal of the work of Vatican II.

Surely Catholic bishops are aware of the corrosive effect that these kinds of nagging questions can have on the faith of their people. A few such questions have quite likely nagged at some bishops themselves. But so far none of them have chosen to discuss the matter out loud.

This silence would be understandable if the bishops’ only option were to engage in harsh criticism. But they have plenty of respectful, charitable alternatives, from merely acknowledging that the papal action was troubling or perplexing to indicating that they are requesting clarification of Rome’s procedures and the pope’s intentions.

It’s a safe bet that during the last week, private expressions of dismay or bewilderment have been flying from bishop to bishop and from bishops to Rome.

Steinfels here employs the disingenuous technique of the new journalism in which the journalist’s own biases are attributed to the anonymous masses in order to appear to objectively inject the biased tone the writer wants to engender.  It would be more honest if he were attribute the “puzzling,” “wondering” and “dreading” to himself.

I find it singularly remarkable that Steinfels is concerned about the “corrosive effect” that his perceived “reversal” of the work of VII might might have on the faith of Catholics.  He does not seem to be concerned about the “corrosive” effects of the dissent from Church teaching that the pages of the erstwhile Catholic magazine, Commonweal, had on the faith of Catholics while he was its editor.  After all, Catholics are adult and can make up their own minds.  Only when it comes to reversing the work of the Second Vatican Council does this become a threat to these “adult” Catholics.  This brings up the question as to what Steinfels understands to be the “work” of VII–a question I will take up shortly.

Steinfels seems to think that somehow SSPX is getting preferential treatment.  Perhaps he is saying more than he realizes when he says that proponents of liberation theology and women’s ordination need to enlist some schismatic bishops.  Since Steinfels recognizes that the lifting of the excommunication does not completely reconcile the SSPX, is he suggesting that perhaps the other groups he mentions have perhaps excommunicated themselves by their views? I doubt it.  Nevertheless, I am happy to see that he puts them in the same camp–that is, they all belong to a problematic group that needs to conform its views to the Church in some way or another.

Nevertheless, there are clearly differences.  SSPX has a validly (if illicitly) ordained hierarchy which governs approximately 600,000 souls.  They play a significant role in the faith life of many other Catholics who have similar concerns but who still maintain unity with the barque of Peter.  SSPX is especially important within France.

The possibility of dialogue with SSPX, as we have now seen, has been greatly enhanced with the lifting of the excommunications.  Steinfels certainly is sensitive to what he might call the chilling effects of excommunication on the possibilities of dialogue I would imagine. Why he does not seem to see that as applicable in this case is telling.

In fact, this group has now shown an extraordinary, I would say, turn around in their polemics against Rome since the excommunications were announced.  In fact, the apologies by Bishop Williamson and the efforts to silence him on the part of the other bishops can be directly attributed to the lifting of the excommunication.  For the run of the mill dissenters, it is left to their bishops and priests to help them to come to see the truth.  They have not been excommunicated as a group and so there are not the sames structure by which to bring them as a whole back into full communion with the Church.

Steinfels wishes to project his “nagging questions” upon the rest of Catholics in the US.  Perhaps he wishes, rather, to inflame them with the same.  Steinfels and his ilk are all about dialogue with those with whom one disagrees unless this dialogue might be viewed by his milieu as impolitic.  That would seem to be the case here.  If there is a chance to change the hearts and minds of Bishop Williamson and those he might influence, it will come about ultimately through restoring him to full communion with Church teaching.  Even if this conversion cannot happen, bringing  him under the authority of the Church is more likely to provide the opportunity to keep him from propagating his problematic views.  Indeed, just lifting the excommunication seems already to have born fruit in this regard.

I suspect that Steinfels’s problem is primarily that he shares the view of the SSPX, whether he would admit it or not.  That is, that Vatican II marked a rupture with the pre-conciliar Church and if there is a chance at all of bringing SSPX back in, this would upset his premise.  If it is possible to reconcile SSPX, then the Bologna school’s interpretation is all the more clearly reprobate than he might like to believe.  The hope of the Common Ground initiative to raise dissent to respectability and thereby firmly entrenching it in the US Church as a legitimate perspective, will have been further dashed.

Bishops, by and large, realize that the “progressive” agenda is dead.  The only question is what will be the size of the Church that remains after the laity comes to realize that the Church has not and will not change Her teachings.  Who will be the first to ask the question? It will surely not be by any Bishop who has thought about this issue in any theological depth and with any level of objectivity.

I was at the gym this morning and, as usual, was exposed to the latest bloviation from the mainstream media.  This morning, Kerry Kennedy was on some morning show offering her explorations into her Catholic faith that she is promoting through a new book, Being Catholic Now: Prominent Americans Talk About Change in the Church and the Quest for Meaning.

Kennedy is one of Robert F. Kennedy’s youngest children.  She describes her motivation to write the book:

So, what happened is that I was feeling conflicted because my Catholicism is so deeply important to me — it was my sense of connection to the almighty, to humanity, to my heritage, my upbringing. And my Catholicism informed my view of the world, and the work that I do every day on social justice issues. And yet, so often when I went to church, I was confronted with words and symbols that were anathema to my values. …So I thought it was time to take some time and reflect more deeply on these issues.

I suppose that this is a good thing.  One should feel a sense of consternation when the values one holds are in conflict with the faith one professes.  Now Kennedy is a lawyer, so we might assume a lawyer who is going to investigate some conflict of positions would begin by looking at the reasoning behind the positions in which she is in conflict.  That is not apparently what Kennedy chooses to do.

Her modus operandi is to ask 37 different prominent Catholic Americans for their views on Catholicism.  She wanted a broad spectrum of views from people of have thought seriously about some issue…any issue.  She did not think it important that they have thought seriously about what it means to be Catholic.  Some of her choices of “Catholics” are quite curious.  While there are a couple who might make sense, Cardinal McCarrick and Tom Monghan, others are bizzarre.  She interviews such authorities on what it means to be Catholic like: Bill Maher, Dan Akroyd, Susan Sarandon, Andrew Sullivan, and Nancy Pelosi.  Bill Maher, are you kidding.  Exactly what will you learn from this obscence, anti-Catholic ignoramus?  For some reason, I do not think that if I wanted to know about a topic, say superstring theory, that I would ask someone who has thought a lot about Keynesian economics but hasn’t a clue about superstring theory.  I dunno., maybe that’s just me.

The problem, it seems to me, is that instead of considering the source of the Church’s teaching and the source of her values, Kennedy instead seems to assume her values to be foundational and instead an open investigation into Church teaching and an honest self-assessment, she turns her focus on trying to legitimize her desire to remain Catholic while rejecting those teachings which conflict with her “values.”  With such an agenda, where else would one turn than to some of the notable leaders of dissent:

So, as Robert Drinan in this book pointed out, the pope apologized for 92 things that the Catholic church had done wrong, and he (Drinan) said, ‘These are fallible people and I expect them to do fallible things in the future as well.’ And so I think that that is a source of comfort for me, to view it sort of in that way, that we’re all fallible, and we’ll all make mistakes, but that this is an important institution to be part of.

This is the old, tired canard of dissenters.  The Church has erred on this or that issue in the past, and usually they make no distinctions among the issues that throw out, thus they are wrong (and I am right) in my dissent against this or that issue (which usually has to deal with sexual restraint).  These dissenters generally conflate matters of prudential judgment, sinfulness of some members of the hierachy (she makes much hay over the “pedophile” scandal), changes in disciplinary practice, and authentic development of doctrine all to suggest that the Church is not infallible (not asking how much more fallible she might be than the Institution). And that is what Kennedy does here:

I was trying to resolve that issue, of how do people who disagree with what the institutional church is saying to them look themselves in the mirror and say, ‘I am a Catholic.’ And what I found is that absolutely everybody disagrees with the church. The cardinals disagree with the church, and the nuns and the priests, and even Tom Monaghan disagrees with the church, so everybody has a disagreement, which is interesting to me. It’s just not a monolith at all. It’s an enormous organism with a lot of moving parts and people with strong opinions and I think that that’s good.

Tom Monaghan’s admitting that he would not again send his children to Catholic schools because they have become destructive to the faith of young people is not the same as Fr. Drinan arguing that abortion “rights” is an issue that Catholics can legitimately support. Kennedy certainly does not demonstrate that she possesses a mature understanding of her faith.  In fact, she does not manifest even the capacity for making critical distinctions that is supposed to be the art of a lawyer.  In terms of her  understanding of the faith, here is what I take to be her summary:

I also think that Catholicism is inherently about contradiction. So much of the New Testament is about Christ arguing with the Pharisees and with the scribes and with the Jewish leaders of the day, and as Pope Benedict said, it’s a quest for the truth. And so if you’re going to have a quest for the truth, you’re going to have a lot of questioning of authority. And we’re taught to have obedience to authority, but we’re also taught to revere saints, so many of whom were burnt at the stake or martyred because they questioned authority. And then we are told that Christ has died but Christ is coming again. And when Catholics say I don’t understand this, how can this really be transformed into the blood of Christ, is this really the body of Christ that we are eating now, they are told, ‘That’s the mystery,’ and ‘Go in peace,’ and that’s sort of it. And so I think that, in a way, I think it’s good, because it prepares us to deal with so many other parts of life, where there are conflicting emotions. At the moment of greatest love, there is greatest fear, and at the moment of enormous repression, there is resistance, and therefore a chance at revolutionary change. And so I think our lives are full of contradictions.

So since the Catholic Church is about contradiction she “feels” that she can be at peace with holding to the faith which is “anathema” to many of her personal  values.  For example, the Church is a strong promoter of social justice around the world she argues, except for the parish she went to in Northern Virginia which preached on ending a woman’s right to abortion.  Nor did it permit girl altar servers, an even more disturbing anachronism it seems.  But not to worry, now she is in a great parish in Armonk, New York where the priest is always putting a picture of haloed Gandhi on the altar. She seems to equate Christian mystery with contradiction reflecting a rather immature (and erroneous) understanding of this important doctrine.

Implied is that for Kennedy, the most relevant contradiction is the fact that the Church requires obedience to authority (at least she knows that) but on the other hand, everyone knows that Jesus was a rebel (of course, Matthew 23:2-3 was a distortion of the pure Gospel message inserted by some later, ecclesio-centric redactor). So she will be an obedient rebel?  I suppose she will be obedient to her personal “values” and rebellious against Church authority because it will not canonize her personal values.  The scary thing is that this lady says she is teaching CCD.

So the Church prepares us for the contradictions of life by being, not a contradiction with the world, but a contradiction with reason.  This sense that faith is opposed to reason, the radical individualism, and the anti-authority rebellion are emblematic of Enlightenment rationalism and are all manifested in Kennedy’s assertions.  But she is not even a rationalist.  Rather, she is parasitic on Enlightenment premises for some of her argumentation but proves to be, as will be seen, thoroughly post-modern.  This justifies (in her mind I suppose) her self-contradictions in arguing that her “Catholicism inform[s] my view of the world, and the work that I do every day on social justice issues” but at the same time it does not inform her moral world view in terms of same sex attraction disorder, abortion, contraception and the like.

One might ask why she would still want to be a member of the Church with which she has so much disagreement.  Well, it is for an immature understanding of a seriously correct reason.  The Catholic Church provides her “sense of connection to the almighty, to humanity, to my heritage, my upbringing.” It does provide this because the Church is man’s entry into communion with God.  Unfortunately, Kennedy’s dualistic ecclesiology feeds her individualistic worldview.  For her, the institutional Church “is separate and apart from my sense of connection to the Almighty, when I pray.” She believes that she can separate the “institutional” Church from her “Catholicism.”

Perhaps someone should recommend to her De Lubac’s Splendor of the Church, or Balthasar’s The Office of Peter and the Structure of the Church as counter proposals to her defective understanding of the Church.  In these works, these 20th century thinkers show how the Church is an organic whole comprising the Totus Christus, the Whole Christ.  One cannot have the unity with the Father the Church effects while rejecting the hierarchical structure that the Lord Jesus established to tend His sheep. Or as St. Cyprian says, “one cannot have God as Father who will not have the Church as his Mother.” One cannot fully embrace the Father if one rejects the fullness of the Truth, which is His Son–and this includes the Son’s Mystical Body–the Church.  The fragmented thinking of our time might make a fragmented view of the Church seem plausible but it is worldview that has deleterious consequences for one’s soul.

Kennedy presents a confused sort of argument which allows her to maintain her connection with her childhood memories by remaining Catholic and still embracing her Enlightenment formed, personal “values.”  She hopes that her book will be a comfort for other confused Catholics who are searching for a rationalization, or more correctly mutual emotional support, for their dissent:

I hope that they’ll feel like they’re not alone…I hope that people will feel that there are a lot of others out there who are grappling with the same issues: Should I raise my children Catholic? What does that mean? Am I a good Catholic? What does it mean to be a good Catholic today? If I’m not following the way I was taught as a child, or that my parents approached the religion, does that mean that I’m somehow missing something, or that I’m bad? And I hope also that others might feel a sense that the essence, the goodness of Catholicism, of that relationship with God, of that sense of love, can be embraced without embracing the parts of the institutional church which are anathema to your values, to one’s values.

Kennedy chooses an apt term for her position.  Her desire that people considering dissent are able to “feel” a solidarity with other dissenters is more truthful than asserting that any honest, thinking person could embrace such drivel. She is in fact, proposing that the ground of action must be one’s arbitrarily chosen “values” rather than a quest for truth and justice.  When faced with a contradiction of values, Kennedy chooses to side with Nietzsche and Sarte.  Unfortunately, with these two rebels as her priest-mediators, she is risking abandoning the “connection with the Almighty” she claims to desire; regardless of what her affective senses tell her.

[This post is a joint effort between Hierothee and David]

Donna Freitas, a Catholic theologian and Assistant Professor of Religion at Boston University, recently published a book on attitudes toward sex among contemporary students at colleges and universities, Catholic and otherwise: Sex & the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America’s College Campuses.

She found that Catholic college and university students are as prone to contemporary “hook-up” culture as students at secular universities. She found that only strongly evangelical colleges comprise student bodies that reject the hook-up culture: because, she says, in the manner of a liberal protestant, these evangelical colleges encourage a “cult of purity.”

Freitas is apparently not a profound theologian. You can read a little bit about her book and her general take on things at National Catholic Reporter and decide for yourself. Nevertheless, it is useful to learn from her that students at Catholic colleges are as prone as any to engage in thematic “sex parties.” One particularly prevalent type of sex party, Freitas shows, involves young women dressing up as sexual objects (prostitutes, etc.) and engaging in random fornication with their male hosts.

Freitas gives us useful, though somewhat abstract, sociological information in this book. But the whole sordid trend becomes personally shocking when one hears a first-hand account of such a party.

We at C-L-S have been apprised of such an incident. It happened recently off campus at a prominent Catholic university, and involved undergraduate students from the university in a swingers’ game that was prominent in the 1970s. We cannot, of course, give the identity of the person who was brought, unwittingly, to the party and who told us about it. Nor can we disclose the particular university. The student in question left the party, appalled, as soon as it became evident what was going on.

There are many shocking things about all of this. But what is most shocking of all, in our opinion, is the resigned attitude that women who willingly partake in these sordid activities have about them.

We have recently posted on a study revealing the grim fruits of Catholic higher education.  The study indicated that half of the students in Catholic colleges and universities think that it is morally permissible to fornicate.  Most surprisingly, the study revealed that women were more likely (50%) than men (41%) to engage in premarital sex. Troubling as these numbers are, they do not prepare one for arrival of 1970’s swingers’ games that for some, or even many, appear to be what college is all about.

John Paul II was often accused of paying so much attention to women that he virtually ignored men in his theo-pastoral writings. He did, in fact, directly address women much more than men.  He did so because he recognized that a great evil had entered the culture, one that was directly attacking femininity.

What John Paul saw was that modern feminism had adopted Margaret Sanger’s distorted viewpoint that for women to be equal to men they must be able to compete with men in everything.  At the forefront of Sanger’s concern was the ability to be “equal” with men in hedonistic, sexual debauchery, which demands that women be free not simply from any procreative ramifications of unrestrained sex, but even free from any emotional attachments arising from sexual intercourse. Science was to help in the former, but not the latter.

Men and women are both created for complementary, total self-giving.  Sexual intercourse is the most intimate manner of total self-gift, but sex has an immutable, inner structure.  The complementarity of sex is not purely physical.  The natural telos of this physical complementarity points to a greater meaning. Fruitful sexual intercourse results in the unity of persons and, simultaneously, the openness to life-giving love.  This physical structure suggests a metaphysical structure to complementary love.  Namely, masculine love is one of initiating love, and feminine love is actively receptive.

As such, both men and women in their entire make up, physiological, emotional, psychological, and spiritual, are ordered according to this structure of love.  This makeup orients women more toward relationships and, in terms of the sexual act, to experiencing it as the permanent bonding themselves with another person.  Karol Wojtyla indicates this in his book, Love and Responsibility:

The very structure of the male psyche and personality is such that it is more readily “compelled” to disclose and objectivize the hidden significance of love for a person of the other sex. This goes with the relatively more active role of the male in such love, and also imposes a responsibility on him. Whereas in the woman sensuality is as it were covert, and concealed by sentimentality. For this reason she is by nature, more inclined to go on seeing as a manifestation of affection what a man already clearly realizes to be the effect of sensuality and the desire for enjoyment. There exists then, as we see, a certain psychological divergence between man and woman in the manner of their participation in love. The woman appears more passive, although in a different way she is more active. In any case, her role and her responsibility will be different from the role and responsibility of the male (Karol Wojtya, Love and Responsibility, [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993] 111-12).

The context of this statement is sexual intercourse. It is so very important, especially for girls and young women, to understand the differences between the meaning which men and women generally attach to the sexual experience. Because of their masculine structure, which is less integrated than women, men generally experience it more in terms of sensuality and enjoyment. Women, on the other hand, because they are more interior and integrated, will see and experience it more in the way of affection and attachment. That is not to say that men and women are not both damaged when this structure is violated.  They are, but in different ways.  Men, in general, experience the inability to form lasting relationships when they regularly fornicate.  Women generally experience emotional trauma.

The resignation of the young women at college sex parties shows that they are getting the message that they should be talking and thinking about sex in a manner more in keeping with fallen masculine habits.  Nevertheless, they still will experience sex as feminine persons. Due to their feminine structure, they generally should be more reticent about engaging in sex outside of wedlock, but in their confusion they are setting themselves, and the rest of society, on a collision course with reality.  They do not experience pre-marital sex in the same way they are told about it and talk about it. We suspect that the epidemic of cutting, anorexia/bulimia, and other psychological ailments that all too many young women are experiencing is due in large part to this confusion. The sage wisdom that says: God forgives always, men sometimes, but nature never, applies here. With religious restraint on social debauchery all but gone, and feminine restraint waning, there is little to prevent the cultural collapse that all societies face when they so reject the order of nature.

If we had a child ready to go to college, we would seriously consider delaying his entrance until we were morally certain that he had the spiritual maturity to weather the storm of hedonism that he will confront during his four years at what appear to have become fornication factories. Certainly this is not the case at every Catholic school, but only at those which take their Catholic identity seriously will there be a likelihood that the experiences of the young student that we mentioned at the beginning of this post will be avoided. Saint Maria Goretti and Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassatti, pray for us!

This city has aroused my anger and wrath, from the day it was built to this day, so that I will remove it from my sight because of all the evil of the sons of Israel and the sons of Judah which they did to provoke me to anger–their kings and their princes, their priests and their prophets, the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.  They have turned to me their back and not their face; and though I have taught them persistently they have not listened to receive instruction. They set up their abominations in the house which is called by my name, to defile it.  They built the high places of Baal in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin (Jeremiah 32:31-35)

Carolina had a very good post today over at the Crescat. She echoes the assessment of Cardinal George that the electorate went, by and large, to BO because of their economic fears.  She insightfully points out the farce that was such a motivation and what it reveals about us.

For my part, this brought to mind Jeremiah’s prophecy about Judah who had gone over to the gods of the nations.  As the phrase has come to be used, they “bowed to Molech.”  Now we, often times, in reading how Israel and Judah “played the harlot” after the gods of the pagan nations, are left perplexed as to why they might do such a thing.  We often dismiss them as not all that wise.  We ought not make this chauvinistic mistake…”it’s the economy stupid.”  The early Church Fathers, following the Rabbis, explained that the gods the nations worshiped in reality were demons who did in fact provide material benefits for those who would fall before them.  Israel did not play the harlot for the charge they got out of rebelling against YHWH; they voted with their wallets, if you will.

Carolina’s post reminded me also of Cardinal Stafford’s comment about those who feel betrayed by prolife Catholics who voted for BO.  This is especially true of those who rationalized and allowed themselves to be swayed by the propaganda that BO is the the economic savior of the poor and middle-class.  They have played the harlot.  They have, most astoundingly, bowed to Molech.

Now Molech was a particular kind of god worshiped by Israel’s neighbor and enemy, the Ammonites.  As Jeremiah indicates, this god demanded the sacrifice of the worshipers’ children by fire in order to receive his promised material benefits.  Now everybody worships something and many of us seem to have done as Israel often did.  They, like we, wanted to have it both ways.  They would still worship YWHW but they found it hard to pass up the material benefits sacrificing to the other gods could bring them.

It seems the arguments from those who profess to be prolife Catholics but still voted for BO fit this picture quite well.  They point out all the good that he has promised to do…and oh, this little peccadillo like signing the FOCA bill, well the wealth he will redistribute will take care of this as well.  It’s all about the gold don’t ya know.  If enough people have it then they won’t be compelled to kill their unborn children (though the Guttmacher Institute shows that less and 1/5 of those who abort say that economics were a consideration).

We have elected a material messiah who promises to give us every material thing we could ever want.  However, there is just this one catch.  We must offer our collective sons and daughters to Molech in exchange.  The messiah cannot do his miracles of wealth redistribution unless we make this sacrificial offering to his god…and we have done it.

I wonder if we have gone so far now as to provoke God’s wrath and anger such that he will remove our city from His sight because of the evil we have done?  I do not think that BO would have been elected except for the complicity of people who should have known better.  Now, as even many otherwise sober leaders are warning, we indeed may have hell to pay.

Not all Kenyans are enthusiastic about BO’s election to the US presidency.  Which ones you ask?  Those who are concerned about the stability of Kenyan society and thus are concerned about life and family issues.  LifeSiteNews has an article interviewing a Catholic MD from Kenya who voices his concerns.  Here are some tidbits but do read the entire article:

Dr. Stephen Karanja, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist from Nairobi told LifeSiteNews.com that those in Kenya “who know what is good for their world,” had feared the election of Obama because of his pro-abortion and anti-family positions.

“We in Kenya know him (Obama) as a person who is anti-family,” Dr. Karanja said. “A person who would support abortion. In America they can do all right killing their babies. But they must not associate us with the people who would want our babies to be killed.”

In an interview at an international conference of obstetricians and ethicists in Rome, Dr. Karanja said that Africans are now under threat, with Obama having made his radical support for abortion without restriction a key point of his campaign. “Now we are in big trouble because of these Americans,” Dr. Karanja said.

Dr. Karanja expressed his frustration at the result of the US election: “They have no business electing a person who is going to destroy our countries. And that is what they have done. This is something that a lot of people don’t realise, that what these Americans do affects innocent people thousands and thousands of miles away.”

“The truth is that they have put a bad man in the most powerful office in the whole world. And are putting people outside your borders in danger.”

Of course, the argument will be that this Kenyan OB/GYN is really a Republican stooge who is expressing sour grapes about his man having lost the election or some nonsense.  The truth of the matter is that we in the US have lived with the culture of death for so long we have now become immune to the horrors of killing.

We have traded our unborn children’s birth-right, or rather right to birth, for pottage.  In the mistaken notion that the government can and should bail us out of our present economic difficulties (see Carl Olson’s post for support for this claim) , those who profess to be pro-life have rationalized their support for an administration that has promised policies that will increase the number of dead unborn babies by hundreds of thousands.

We have much work to do in the next four years.  It begins with reaching out to Catholics who thought they could licitly vote for BO and convince them to they have committed a gravely immoral act and are in urgent need of repentance.  Instructing them in moral decision making is needed.  Active and prayerful support is needed for pro-life activists, lobbyists and legislators.  Finally, prayer and fasting for BO’s and the rest of the country’s conversion is also a high priority.  The battle may have been lost but the war is not over.  Clayton reminded me of this in a recent combox post about eucatastrophe:

“It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?

But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.”
-Samwise Gamgee, The Two Towers

Today’s second reading from the Office of Readings is taken from Gaudium et spes 82-83.  It is about the need for reeducating man for the cause of peace if we are to bring authentic peace about through political structures. I thought how appropriate this reading is for the day before such a critical election.  In a nutshell, the reading indicates that justice is required if peace is to be attained.

There are other aspects of the problem of peace covered in the reading but it seems to me that false hope and justice are key here.  That is we are now seeing a false sense of hope motivating about half of the country to be positioning itself to elect a candidate who has told us very little about what he has planned in specifics but what he has made clear is that he plans untold inherent evil for unborn children.  If he has gotten justice wrong on such a fundamental level as the protection of the most innocent and defenseless human beings then it is certain that this injustice, as devastating as it is, will lead to untold more.

I have heard many excuses from Catholics who consider themselves pro-life trying to justify their vote for this candidate of false hope.  Some of them sound like rebellious teenagers claiming that the Church cannot tell them who to vote for as if moral truths end at the voting booth.  Others repeat the vacuous, pollyannic claims of the candidate about restoring justice and peace through little more than government fiat. In doing so they take the stance that one may do grave evil if good may come from it.  Others simply reveal their legalistic mindsets by declaring it is illegal for the Church, and by extension anyone who belongs to the Church apparently, to tell them that they can’t vote for their favorite candidate.  Accuracy in jurisprudence aside, I suppose that it hasn’t occurred to them that it was illegal in Nazi Germany to oppose its “final solution.”  If it were illegal to declare moral truths then this would be an unjust law that cannot bind one’s conscience.

I will not speculate about the additional evils that this candidate may bring to the world; those that he has explicitly promised for the unborn I think sufficient to cause any Christian to shudder.  We have two days left.  I think that Jesus’ admonition to His disciples that some evils can only by exorcised through prayer and fasting need to be our guidance here.  Please pray and consider fasting today and tomorrow during election day for something evil this way comes.

Why would two, ostensibly “prolife” Catholics who are also distinguished lawyers and professors of the law, support a staunchly “pro-choice” candidate for President?  Of course I am speaking of Doug Kmeic and now Nicholas P. Cafardi.  Of course, one cannot easily discern motives of the heart and judging from their attempted justifications, this is where I think matter lies.

I have had several discussions with prolife Catholics who are drawn to Obama.  For many of them, the matter seems to be one of an emotional attachment to the Democrat party.  I intuit that this is because of their upbringing and that this party has well positioned itself to be promoted as the “champion” of the poor and underprivileged.  They have also done a fairly good job of demonizing the Republican party as the enemy of the same.  I suspect that there are other factors but by and large, I think that this caricature provides the incentive for the rationalizations one hears.

But since I am not going to judge motivations, I am left to addressing the strained logic presented by these two men.  As one might expect, they are not all that different in their reasoning. Kmeic goes so far as to write a book attempting to justify his position.  Cafardi simply outlined his in a short opinion piece in NCReporter and a longer statement read to a group of “Catholics” who are promoting Obama at Carlow College.

The errors of both of these gentlemen fall into two categories: errors of fact and faulty moral assessment.  Addressing first the errors of fact, many can be cited:

Both claim that regardless of who is elected, this will make no difference for the matter of abortion.  In fact, Cafardi goes so far as to say that the war against abortion is lost and so it is time to move on to other issues. The fact is that this is an issue that can never be dismissed and the fight against it never abandoned because it is an inherent moral evil that attacks the very foundation of human dignity.  To give up this fight is to disengage from political life and wait for the Vandals to finish sacking Rome so that we may begin to rebuild society anew.  It is also a fact that there will a significant increase in dead babies directly as a result of an Obama election.  NCRegister (here and here), among many others, did a good job of outlining these.

Both go so far as to say that there is a difference between being pro-abortion and pro-choice and Obama is only the latter and so justifiably supportable by a Catholic.  Both are false statements of fact.  Morally there is no speakable difference between being pro-choice and proabortion, at least as Obama manifests the pro-choice position.  Obama’s positions make him a formal cooperator with abortion and so morally culpable in the extreme.  He promotes policies that both enable and promote abortion as mentioned above.  There is formally and materially no difference for Obama regardless of whether he is pro-choice or proabortion.  This assertion fails on all accounts.

Cafardi claims that there are other issues of inherent evil to account for.  He claims that McCain advocates torture and the Obama is against it.  This is a factual error.  It is also a very murky issue in terms of what McCain and Obama actually would support and not.  I will not hash over the issues here (see a good summary here) but to say that McCain advocates torture while Obama doesn’t is at the very least, misleading.  One can point out that McCain broke ranks with the administration over the issue of water boarding which he agrees is torture and he also sponsored a bill, named after him, restricting DOD use of aggressive techniques not permitted in the Army interrogation manual.  Nevertheless, even if he approved as something so henious as waterboarding, or even worse, this does not rise to the level of abortion.  It certainly would not lead to the magnitude in deaths and so could not justify cooperating with the inherent evil promised by the Obama ticket as an alternative to McCain’s hypothetic policy.

Cafardi also claims that the issues of “just war” and “ignoring the poor” are intrinsic evils that he can change by voting for president (since he ignores the evils of untold additional abortion that he can avoid by voting for McCain).  These assertions also are factually in error.  Cafardi quotes Cardinal Ratzinger in 2003 suggesting that the Cardinal did not see that the criteria for just war had been met in the case of Iraq.  That particular issue of just war was a decision that was made in 2003 by both Republicans and Democrats together.  Electing Obama can and will do nothing about to change it.  Cafardi can provide no Magisterial statements that say that the war we are now in must be ended now regardless of consequences because it is unjust.  In fact, he will only find the opposite.  They say that the US is obligated to stay until Iraq is stable and capable of self-governance.  Cafardi is also confused about the matter of prudential judgment in this case, just as he is confused about the issue of prudential judgment in voting for Obama.  While neither did I agree that the information I had at the time met the criteria to go to war with Iraq, I recognized that I did not have all of the information that the Bush adminisration had.  I also recognize the difficulties in dealing with intelligence, having done so for at least 15 years in my Air Force career.  The case for and against this war as just, was and remains sufficiently murky with respect to what was known at the time, that one may not say that the war was inherently unjust.  In fact, in his letter to Cardinal McCarrick the same Cardinal Ratzinger made the same point, declaring the the issue of the justness of war did not equate with that of abortion because the former entails prudential judgment while the latter does not.  Here Cafardi handles magisterial statements in a way not unlike that of the average dissenter from Church teachings.  Something which I find troubling.

Ignoring the poor again is something of a canard.  Cafardi did not point out any specific McCain policies.  In order to consider this issue, one must first show that “ignoring the poor” is McCain’s policy, second that the federal government has ability and obligation to act in a different manner, and finally one has to show that this “ignoring the poor” will lead to a similar order of magnitude in deaths of innocent people as does abortion.  As far as I can see, the differences in policy positions between the candidates amounts to differences in levels of funding (i.e. how much the levels should be increased) in programs for the poor.  This does not qualify as ignoring the poor.  Moreover, it is not clear which poor he is talking about.  If he means McCain has promised to ignore the poor in our country, clearly this is false.  If he promises to ignore the poor in other countries by not promising new spending programs in say Africa while Obama does (I have no idea that this is the case), Cafardi must make the case that the US has both the ability and the obligation to do so.  Finally, in no case that I am aware of, in which imminent death is a risk has either party ever refused to act to alleviate famine.  Again, there is no conceivable way that this could ever be a licit argument whereby one is justified in supporting an abortion candidate.

Both Cafardi and Kmeic also make errors in moral judgment.  They both agree that abortion is an inherent moral evil but they fail to analyze Obama’s policy positions as formal cooperation in inherent evil.  In fact, both erroneously try to excuse him of this.  They also fail to recognize that even if they do not formally cooperate (however, given the centrality that protecting the “right’ to abortion is to Obama’s campaign, one may argue that anyone who actively supports him must also desire his success, however reluctantly, in his abortion policies as well making that person a formal cooperator in inherent evil) they still may not arbitrarily materially cooperate with inherent evil.  For one to justly cooperate with evil in a material way certain conditions must apply.  First, there must be no other valid option.  Second, one is then obligated to ascertain which option involves the least amount of inherent evil.  I have already done an assessment of this here and so I will not repeat it.  However, I will say that unless the pro-Obama Catholics can show that McCain promotes policies such as nuking each year a million and a half innocent Iranians, North Koreans, etc., there exist no other issues that rise to the level of abortion.

These pro-Obama Catholics claim that they are following their formed conscience and exercising their liberties as Catholics and Americans.  They have a confused sense of informed conscience and an erroneous understanding of freedom (see here for Dcn Fournier’s assessment of Kmeic’s book in this regard).  However, not only are they falling into grave sin themselves, they also have committed themselves to scandalizing other faithful Catholics into thinking they are justified in voting for Obama.  Jesus has a warning for those among us who would cause His little ones to sin…

Recently I saw an article about a married, former Baptist minister who was ordained as a Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Louisville. In the Diocese of Peoria in which I currently reside, we had a former Episcopalian minister ordained as a priest. Shelray goes to an Anglican Use Rite parish in San Antonio, the first established in the US I believe, in which the priest is married.

One thing that this article that irritated me was the comment from his spiritual adviser. She mentions that the Church will benefit from it because he knows what it is like to be married. This is a most asinine canard and has nothing to do with the decision. A man knows only his marriage from experience and a particular experience may help with empathy but it does not go much further than that when it comes to understanding and helping with the myriad of issues that married couples are faced with. One might just as well say he prefers a psychiatrist who has suffered from his pathology because he understands it from experience. But this is an aside.

The article itself calls to mind the difficulties some people have with the provision that the Church has made for some time, in allowing former ministers from the traditions arising after the Reformation, to seek ordination to the Catholic priesthood. I had one friend who was convinced (perhaps he still is, I don’t know) that married Catholic men would soon be allowed to be ordained. His reasoning was that this prohibition is not dogmatic and there is already provision which allow it for those “ordained” in non-Catholic traditions. Thus, he reasoned, as a matter of fairness it is something that must also be open to married Catholic men.

I strongly support the pastoral provision but I also vigorously disagree with my friend’s line of thinking. First of all, ordination is not a matter of one’s rights. As such, the language of unfairness has no place in the discussion. Second, regardless of the fact that ordination of married men to the priesthood is not prevented by a dogmatic prohibition, this does not lead to the conclusion that it must, therefore, be opened to married Catholic men.

There is a solid theology which prevents married men from becoming priests. I would argue that the historical evidence supports this contention as it indicates that this prohibition has always been in place. That is not to say that in various times and cultures, the law was not widely disregarded. In the Eastern Church, unfortunately, married priest were permitted as a concession to human weakness and then only for the priesthood. The concession was allowed under the relatively permissive theologoumenon of the “oikonomia” which also is used to permit divorce and remarriage and artificial contraception.

Rather, the theological rationale behind the unmarried priest is, of course, that he is already married to the Bride in the Person of the Bridegroom. Therefore it is not proper for the vicar of the Bridegroom to have a singular bride as well. The East recognizes this in its prohibition against married priests being ordained as bishops, as they more perfectly manifest the Bridegroom than does the priest, who is the bishop’s vicar, if you will. All of this is without mentioning the significant practical problems and negative family impacts for the family of a married priest.

Then why allow anyone who is married to become a priest? This is the important question. Again, it is not a matter of fairness to the man because neither he, nor anyone else, has a right to ordination. The answer, it seems to me, is in understanding this as fulfilling the authentic vocation that the man imperfectly, but sincerely, responded to before he had come to know the fullness of the truth. In other words, he heard God’s call to serve him as a priest but due to his invincible ignorance because of his upbringing in a non-Catholic tradition, he assumed that this call to ministry was in the tradition to which he was attached. The problem is to then discern whether God is still calling him. That is why the provision requires the man to enter the Church for some time before even beginning the discernment, and then it is done in union with his bishop.

This situation is not significantly unlike the Pauline privilege in which, after a non-baptized person is baptized, their non-baptized spouse refuses to accept them any longer because of their baptism, the newly baptized person is permitted to remarry and the non-sacramental, one-flesh union is allowed to be dissolved.

The parallel here is that the assumption is that both persons had invincible ignorance about the fullness of truth of the faith and this ignorance allowed them to enter into a commitment which would eventually become an impediment to their future vocation. In both situations, the person responded to God’s call in trust and selflessness (ideally any way). Therefore, the canonical law can be waived for the sake of permitting the person to fulfill his vocation. Of course, the cases are not exactly equivalent. However, they do have sufficient parallels to make this connection.

Clearly, not everyone who is ordained as a non-Catholic minister and then comes home to the fullness of the Church, is being called to the priesthood. Even if they had imperfectly responded to what had been an authentic call. Just as God does not continue to call Catholic men to ordination after they miss the initial calling and get married, He does not continue to call non-Catholic ministers to the Catholic priesthood.

So, my old friend was wrong on all counts. We discussed this many times but of course, when someone has made up their mind about something, it usually requires a change of heart rather than a change of mind in order for one to over come the mindset that something is just not fair…

As most regular readers of the “Cafeteria is Closed” weblog realize, Gerald Augustinus has been, for quite some time, openly expressive of his defiance of the Church’s teachings regarding sexuality. This comes as little surprise, as Gerald is quite vapidly libertarian in his political outlook. Gerald started his blog just before Amy Welborn shut down her “Open Book” weblog. This left Gerald’s blog as perhaps the only weblog out there that kept a regular, daily discussion going on the headlines of the day, pertinent to all things Catholic.

Gerald picked up many of Amy’s readers. Of course, Gerald never really had anything of interest to say in substantive issues. It was just a good place for Catholics to congregate and discuss the headlines in a Catholic-friendly web environment. Lately, however, the atmosphere at the Cafeteria has become rather toxic. There is nothing of interest to see at his weblog. His opinions, which never were particularly well thought out, are now so emotivistically liberal in substance that the discussion there has become amenable to the presence of some rather unsavory characters. The weird, pseudo-intellectual, Spirit of Vatican II (Dennis O’Leary), has even found a home in some of the Cafeteria’s comment threads. So, it is clearly time to leave the Cafeteria behind. But where shall one find a weblog where the daily issues pertinent to the Church can be discussed?

We need an enterprising individual, with the time and the Catholic identity necessary, to create such a blog. But it isn’t easy. It takes a rather demanding daily effort. I don’t know how Amy did it for so long. We are unable to provide such a service at C-L-S, as we are all professionals. Our posts are necessarily sporadic, at best. Gerald is able to blog daily as he is, for all intents and purposes, a househusband. Still, it would be a wonderful service if someone, who is not a cafeteria type, were to provide such a forum. Or, is there already such a weblog, whose existence I am unaware of? Or, perhaps Amy could restart “Open Book?”

CNA’s published an article about the repentance and the reconciliation with the Church of one of the excommunicated St. Louis parish board members.  Edward Florek recently returned to the Church after having been excommunicated for having voted to rebel against the authority of the Archbishop of St. Louis over the issue of the legal transfer of St. Stanislaus’ parish to the Archdiocese.

There are many things that could be said about Florek’s return.  However, one that is worth pursing is how this illustrates one of the main purposes of excommunication.  Our culture’s immature legalism immediately runs to a caricature of the medicine of excommunication, reducing it to a punishment as a means to coerce people amidst some power struggle.  Now while it may have been abused in some circumstances in the past, this is not generally a problem today.

Moreover, its remedial benefits are often overlooked.  Its purpose has always been to allow the sinner to experience in his daily life the separation he has already caused spiritually by his actions and thereby open his eyes to the reality of his sin.  St. Paul provides the template for this effect in his first letter to the Corinthians (see 1 Cor 5:5ff).  However, Its purpose has also been to show others the gravity of these sinful acts and thus avoid the chance of scandalizing the faithful.  This scandal is most often caused when others see no ramifications for prohibited actions and this all too often leads some/many to question the gravity or even the  truth of the prohibition against said actions.

Florek’s repentance shows the potential effectiveness of these biblically based remedies.  While it is obviously not going to work for everyone, it is a very necessary salve for those whose hearts are open but are being led astray by faulty thinking and affective attachments.  Nevertheless, even if it works to bring home just one lost soul, we know that there is more joy in heaven over the return of one lost sinner . . .

Benedict XVI’s General Audience reflections on St. Gregory the Great brought got me ta’ thinkin’ again. Much like Etienne Gilson’s observations about St. Thomas Aquinas, B16 finds Gregory’s greatness grounded in his profound humility. Gilson also believed that Thomas’ impressive intellect was made phenomenal because of his deep humility. Fr. Thomas Dubay, in his book, Faith and Certitude, makes the assertion that all error arises from sin. I think that this insight corresponds with B16’s thoughts on St. Gregory. Humility is nothing other than an orientation to the truth. Both arrogance and false humility are precommitments of the will to some proposition or belief. They remove openness to the truth and make one very susceptible to sin. Authentic humility is the remedy.

So what does this have to do with politics? Well, there have been two very high profile, prolife Catholics who have recently endorsed two of the most anti-life candidates ever put forth. I posted some time ago about Ambassador Raymond Flynn who runs a prolife apostolate and who endorsed Hillary Clinton. I need not review Clinton’s problematic positions. His reason: her husband gave him a job. Here we have a very distorted loyalty.

Most have also heard about Douglas Kmiec, who was among other things, Dean of the Columbus Law School. Kmiec also works for the elimination of abortion. He originally endorsed Mitt Romney and after that horse left the race, he switched to Barack Obama. His rationale: he thinks Obama’s position, that abortion poses a “serious moral issue” (whatever that may mean) but it is better addressed through personal responsibility than through “divisive” politics or through legislation. Jay Anderson does a very good job of outlining the problems associated with Kmiec’s position so I need not rehash that here (for those who may not recall Obama’s positions, here is a website that is very favorable to Obama and his positions that summarizes them).

It seems to me that both of these educated, articulate men are abusing their intellectual gifts in trying to rationalize their obvious, morally problematic positions. They both support candidates (Flynn now perhaps in the past tense) who have made it very clear that they will do everything they can to keep abortion legal and available. Roe v. Wade aside, with a President’s executive power alone, immediately upon taking office both of these candidates can and will sign directives that will greatly increase the numbers of babies killed throughout the world by making US funds available for this carnage. Supporting such a candidate is clearly material cooperation with evil . . . and I would argue could be shown to be formal cooperation. However, to make material cooperation morally licit, one needs to show that greater damage would be done by the other candidate. There is no case to be made here and so neither Clinton nor Obama can legitimately be supported.

So where does humility come in? Flynn presumably will not allow himself to be seen as “disloyal” as he sees it. He cannot continue to bear an unpaid debt when it is called in and so he is put in the precarious position, it seems to him, of compromising on some principle. He has chosen his personal honor over life itself. Kmiec is much more curious. However, his public support for any candidate brings with it questions, especially given the high degree of probability for confusion and scandal that this particular case can cause. Humility would allow him, moreover, to give up whatever precommitment he possesses in rationalizing his support for Obama.

I do not believe that either candidate provides the moral room for arguing he can be supported on prudential judgment grounds but certainly more humility would lead a good Catholic at least to be quiet about his problematic prudential judgments.

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.

“You, son of man, I have appointed watchman for the house of Israel; when you hear me say anything, you shall warn them for me. If I tell the wicked man that he shall surely die, and you do not speak out to dissuade the wicked man from his way, he (the wicked man) shall die for his guilt, but I will hold you responsible for his death. But if you warn the wicked man, trying to turn him from his way, and he refuses to turn from his way, he shall die for his guilt, but you shall save yourself.” – Ezekiel 33:7-9

According to Father Doyle, Archbishop Burke is “vindictively clubbing people with canon law”, for issuing a decree of two “canonical crimes” against him for defending two excommunicated board members from St. Stanislaus parish. According to the decree, Fr. Doyle did not adhere to the requirement of having prior approval from the Bishop to represent the excommunicated board members nor did he immediately respond to his summons to appear before him. Archbishop Burke’ is also keenly aware of Fr. Doyle’s beliefs and ideology which are inconsistent with Catholic teaching.

In his defense, Father Doyle responded to the charges of negligence on his behalf.

“He’s making a mockery of the role of the bishop, a mockery of himself, and the role of leadership in the church when it comes to resolving disputes and problems.”

Doyle said he didn’t get Burke’s approval to represent Krauze and Rozanski because he was already representing other board members in their appeal to the Vatican. “He exaggerated it,” he said. “It’s total nonsense.”

Doyle also objected to Burke’s contention that he has publicly taken a position contrary to the infallible teachings of the church. “My faith and what I believe, and how I believe is none of his business,” he said. “It’s personal. “My obedience to him has nothing to do with my standing with the higher power.”

Our previous experience with Fr. Doyle and his response to our unfavorable view of his role as a Catholic priest can be read here.

Most remember that St. Stanislaus Parish in St. Louis rebelled against their Bishop’s authority back in 2005 and voted “to hire” their own priest. This goes to show that the rebellion of Trusteeism that plagued the Catholic Church in the U.S., beginning in earnest in the early 19th century, is still alive today.

Trusteeism of course was the revolt of some Catholic parishes, who were affected by practical Protestant ecclesiology and the democratic culture of the U.S.  They exercised the legal authority over parish property that they had in the name of their trustees in order to usurp the authority of the Bishop.  Trustees existed in the U.S.  because of many states’ anti-Catholic laws prohibiting the property to be owned by the Catholic Diocese.

Well, it seems that St. Stanislaus has experienced a time warp and made its way from this initial anti-hierarchical Protestantism and covered a couple of centuries of doctrinal decay in a very short time. Apparently the priest that St. Stanislaus brought in had more in mind for the parish than simply continuing leading it in an otherwise Catholic manner.

An article in STL Today shows that those responsible for St. Stanislaus’ revolt are now looking to get rid of the priest that they brought in. What they wanted was a priest who limited his refusal of assent to truth solely to his recognition of the authority of the hierarchy which ordained him. They did not want one who also rejected the other dogmatic teachings on faith and morals. Not surprisingly, that is what they got.

I don’t suppose that it will become apparent to these parishioners anytime soon that they are simply reaping the inevitable consequences of their actions.  What they are seeing is the natural result of their initial denial of the truth of the authority of the Bishop over their parish.

They may have in fact lost their parish as the priest has brought in enough new dissenters, such that the original dissenters are now outnumbered. The new dissenters want to keep the priest because he has open communion, including for those who have divorced and remarried and for those who live a same sex attraction disordered lifestyle.  He also attended the attempted “ordination” of women as Catholic priests.

I cannot think of another case that has demonstrated so aptly and so quickly, the logical consequence of Protestant rebellion. Once the principle of Church organization/hierarchical authority has been ruptured, there is nothing left but the arbitrary will of those remaining to keep a community, in any degree, in union with the teachings of Christ.  St. Stanislaus, pray for us!