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.

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.

Well, it looks like we will be moving back to San Antonio after having been away for almost the entire decade.  The sad end to this apostolate has opened the door to a promising new apostolate in San Antonio.  A new school called the Mexican American Catholic College will begin offering courses in the fall.  I will be serving as their academic dean.  I have been meaning for some years to recover my long dormant Spanish (I pray that it is dormant and not lost) and this new position with this bi-lingual school makes that a pressing requirement.

In the waning weeks of our school of theology here in Champaign, I have had the opportunity to more clearly appreciate the gift that this apostolate was.  The time spent with students and staff, I do not take so much for granted any longer.  One such experience was my panel participation last Tuesday night in which our FOCUS missionaries hosted a campus wide  “Stump the Catholic” panel discussion.

Students from across the U of I campus were invited to bring their questions and boy did they.  One enterprising atheist student posted on reddit, soliciting questions in order to “demolish” us. Most of the questions from the floor were the old fare that one would expect to hear.  Some students clearly were taken aback that there were such solid answers to questions of which they had assumed that all serious Catholics must be ignorant.  Not all, however, allowed themselves to experience this ephiphany.  In reading about B16’s address this morning to the Pontifical Biblical Commission I am reminded of important insights that help to explain why with some questions, for example those which deal with Scripture, it is notoriously difficult to satisfy some people.

CNA reports that the Holy Father discussed the issues of contemporary biblical interpretation and reminded his audience that authentic interpretation of Scripture can only take place with the Church.  This is a very important point that needs to be understood.  Benedict goes into the justification in the article and so I will not repeat that.

However, let me offer that a proper anthropology can illustrate why this is so.  Such an assertion as Benedict’s is, of course, very offensive for those who subscribe to the notion that critical approaches to biblical exegesis are the only appropriate tools for “enlightened” minds.  These people who place themselves outside of the Church’s tradition take such a claim as one smacking of intellectual suppression.  It seems to me that this very mindset is the problem keeping them from considering the legitimacy of the Pope’s statement.

I would say that Benedict’s assertion is a corollary to St. Augustine’s sage insight articulated in the dictum: “I believe that I might understand.”  Belief is in fact a prerequisite to understanding the divine mysteries.  But belief is often misunderstood.  I recall the exchange of open letters between the late Carl Sagan and a priest from the Christophers (whose name I do not recall) a number of years back about Sagan’s unbelief.  It came down to the fact that Sagan was fearful of believing because he felt that belief surrendered the intellect and made him vulnerable to exploitation.

The US culture does in fact promote this type of thinkingthrough a still strong but fading fideistic current.  However, trust, belief, and faith are eminently human.  The less of them we possess, the more we surrender our capacities to fulfill ourselves has human beings.  We can see that we need trust just to live.  There is no place one can go in which he does not have to in some way, rely on another.  A quick (and adequately reflective)  audit of daily life will verify the level of interdependence we have on one another as well as the unreflective trust we immediately place in others upon whom we depend.  Moreover, we cannot have a relationship unless we trust.  The depth of a relationship is dictated by the level of trust between the two parties comprising the relationship.  We cannot fulfill ourselves as human persons without these deep, trusting, giving relationships with others.

We are in fact, created to trust.  Trust and belief do not require one to suspend his reason.  Far from it.  In fact, in order to mature in faith it demands active engagement of the intellect.  However, it begins with trust.

Trust is the first step in belief, in faith.  To be skeptical, is an anti-human disposition.  Now skepticism is not the same as prudential caution.  If the consequences are grave for misplaced trust and/or the probability high that one’s trust might be abused in less than grave situations, caution is very reasonable.  However, skepticism (as I am defining it anyway) is an act of the will against trust before even opening one’s mind to consideration of the rationale for the acceptance of a proposition.  In other words, one has prejudged; he has made made up his mind without fairly considering the evidence.  This is termed unjust prejudice and it is why prejudice is wrong.  Skepticism, as distinct from prudential caution, is simply prejudice or bigotry. To be truly human one must first trust; man is one who believes.

This is an initial step in recognizing why understanding Scripture requires one to be in communion with the Church but of course there are a few more to go. Once we trust (with prudential caution) we then are open to hearing, understanding, and considering a proposition .  This proposition is one in which we are asked to believe.  It is not a rare event mind you, to take on trust the propositions of others.  It is something we do countless times throughout the day. Those who tabulate such things claim that over 90% of what we “know” we have accepted in trust from others without verifying it for ourselves. If the proposition is reasonable and the proposer is credible and competent then it is eminently reasonable to begin the process of trusting the proposition.  Of course, various persons are going to have a variety of questions to be answered before determining any such proposition is reasonable.

At this point, one is open to the final stage in Christian faith and that is to accepting the gift, the theological virtue of faith which elevates and perfects the natural trust and belief of the hearer.  This theological virtue is that which deepens and broadens the understanding of the proposition in addition to being able to hold the conviction with unshakable certainty.  It is this experience of faith and of God’s love which gives one deeper and more profound insights into the propositions which convey the mystery of faith.

This experience of faith and love is nothing more than the experience of communion with God which human beings acheive through union with Christ.  Union with Christ is by definition, communion in His Church the fullness of which is the Catholic Church. The anthropology of trust makes understandable why one must be in the heart of the Church to understand its profound mysteries and why this communion does not entail suppression of one’s intellect.

B16’s statement has deep Trinitarian, Christological, ecclesiological and anthropological implications.  One of which suggests that those who uncritically accept the philosphical baggage that comes with the history of higher criticism will never be able to understand the authentic meaning of Scripture.  Criticism is a very useful tool but to assume that one must adopt skepticism toward divine revelation or toward the Church in order to perform the various methods of biblical criticism is to disqualify oneself from being a Catholic biblical scholar and to remove the liklihood that one will come to an authentic exegetical result.

It means that athiests and other methodological skeptics will never be convinced through intellectual argument alone.  They must first experience conversion, a softening of the heart.  It is the reason that our young atheist mentioned above subsequently claimed victory and why many in the Catholic bibilical academy will unfortunately go to their graves rejecting many Church teachings and steadfastly rejecting the use of any exegetical tools other than criticism.  We must pray for a change of heart for those who are thus instransigent so that they may be set free in order to more effectively use their heads.

…, 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.

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…

A couple of days ago, I began what might turn out to be a series of reflections on the anthropology of sex difference as exposited by one of Radical Orthodoxy’s representative thinkers, Gerard Loughlin. Here I am continuing to concentrate on an essay of his, entitled “Erotics: God’s Sex.”

I had mentioned that Loughlin cannot seem to get beyond his reductionist, postmodern concepts. Furthermore, his importation of a world view from morally bankrupt postmodern thinker, Georges Bataille, further exacerbates his ability to understand, and so critique, the Trinitarian theology and anthropology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. In Loughlin’s defense, while Balthasar is dependent upon an Aristotelian-Thomist metaphysics, he is often loathe to acknowledge it. Without recognizing this metaphysical perspective in Balthasar’s thought, his theology can appear to be somewhat arbitrary. Loughlin’s apparent lack of understanding of this metaphysical tradition might contribute to his misreading of Balthasar.

Recall that Loughlin chose to replace theological analogy with a postmodern “parody,” with all of the latter’s attendant vulgarity. Loughlin seems to make the same amoral move with his understanding of eros, blundering into the same irony. Loughlin’s definition of eros is “ravenous desire” (p. 148). Eros for him, as we saw in the previous post, seems solely associated with animalistic desire. It is of interest to note that the meaning of the term ravenous is focused on taking something for oneself in a greedy way, quite antithetical to Balthasar’s anthropology, which requires disinterested and total self-gift as the foundation for an authentic eros. Etymologically, the term “ravenous” arises from the Old French word meaning “to seize,” itself coming from a word meaning “extremely hungry.” This is consistent with Loughlin’s adoption of Batailleian carnal vulgarity.

Loughlin seems to have in his mind when he talks about sex difference that a constitutive aspect of sex must include the various disordered sexual behaviors in which animalistic consumption masquerades as sexual intercourses’ proper telos, a communion of persons.

Loughlin’s obsession with corporal sex betrays an inability to understand the human person as a body-soul unity, a hylomorphic composite of body and soul in which the soul is not joined to a preexisting body, but the soul interpenetrates, gives existence, shape, and animation to the body. The human person is not, therefore, an enfleshed soul or an ensouled body, but a single nature that has two unified aspects, body and a spiritual soul.

Loughlin also seems not to understand the tradition of Trinitarian Persons as subsisting Relations, which distinguish the Persons from the one divine nature and the way that this is analogically manifested in the human person. The category of relation, a sort of quasi-substantial category, is essential to understanding how Balthasar and other personalists think about the human person and the way the human person is differentiated into two different sexes.

Loughlin seems only to be able to think in terms of Cartesian substance, which is simply matter, or – in the case of the human body – corporeality. For non-corporeal beings it is not as clear what his thinking is, but it does not include the category of relation. Thus, when Loughlin reads Balthasar writing of the Processions (the begetting of the Son and the Spiration of the Holy Spirit) in terms of the structure of Self-giving love, he sees this in terms of the movement of some substance from one Person to another. Human persons inevitably “parody” this postmodern monism in Loughlin’s anthropology.

Thus, Loughlin criticizes Balthasar’s concept of unity in difference. For Balthasar the unity in difference, which can be seen in creation (body and soul, individual and community, the Incarnation, male and female), is the created analogy of trinitarian unity (unity in nature and distinction in Persons). Loughlin does not appear to understand relation so he ends up collapsing every characteristic into some sort of substance (read as Cartesian extension).

Without a properly Trinitarian metaphysics, Louglin is unequipped to understand the Processions, the Incarnation, the Church, the Eucharist, or sex difference. It leads him to claim that his “parodic substitution allows Christianity to place at its symbolic centre certain cultural taboos-against cannibalism, incest and homosexuality-and there break them” (p. 152). Loughlin sees the Processions as “the incestuous homosexual coupling of Father and Son” (p. 156). Of course, the Eucharist is cannibalism. The Marian Church wedded to Christ the Bridegroom is incestuous.

Ironically, Loughlin accuses Balthasar of misreading “the flow of the trinitarian parodies” (p. 154) when the latter declares that humanity is primarily feminine. Loughlin claims that Balthasar’s own logic requires human nature to be masculine. His reasoning is that because Balthasar says that the Father is supramasculine in relation to the Son, and because the Church comes through Christ on the Cross, who is male, and that Eve comes from Adam’s flesh, which is male flesh, there is a masculine sexual monism that is later differentiated into male and female.

Loughlin clearly sees matter as the primary reality here, at least for creatures. Substance for him is extended matter. In fact, he does not seem to have any other category. Sex difference for him is real, and so in his limited, modern/post-modern categories, sex difference must be something arising from the flesh alone. This is inevitable without the category of relation, especially in this case, sex difference being a relational category which conditions the relational person (see this metathread for a short primer on these ideas).

Loughlin is not the only RO theologian with these views. Rowan Williams promotes similar thinking in his essay, “The Body’s Grace.” This essay was published in a collection of pro-SSAD articles entitled, Christian Our Selves, Our Souls and Bodies: Sexuality and the Household of God [ed. Charles C. Hefling (Boston: Cowley Press, 1996)]. Hankey (see the previous post) shows that Williams was an original member of the Radical Orthodoxy movement. Hierothee pointed me to a recent article online that shows that Williams’s unfortunately soft thinking in this regard is not at all unlike that of Loughlin.

In conclusion, I would note that it appears to be not so much that Louglin’s and Williams’s distortions/perversions of Christian truth stem from a misunderstanding of classical theology. Rather, the problem begins with their pre-commitment to said perverted notions. Their articulation of an incoherent metaphysics is simply a rationalization for a subversively depraved anthropology. Indeed, with the likes of Loughlin and Williams as guides to the movement, one might argue that Radical Orthodoxy is at root an expression of radical depravity.

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 . . .

The website Catholics Come Home launched in March, is credited with bringing 3,000 Catholics in the Diocese of Phoenix back to the Church in less than three weeks. Take a look around the website and while you’re there, watch the television ad called Movie (bottom of home page) – very powerful.

For the movie of our life can be used to judge us. We will sorrowfully relive the bad times and joyfully revisit the good. (Romans 2:1-16)

It is then we will fully realize how our unkind thoughts and selfish choices wounded others, and led us away from our loving Father. (Matthew 25: 31-46)

And each time we ignored God’s voice, our conscience grew more deaf, and our heart hardened. (Matthew 24:12, Hebrews 3:8,15)

No matter what you’ve done, there is good news, since Jesus came not to condemn the world, but to save it. (Isaiah 1:18; John 3:16-17; Romans 5:8)

Jesus can heal your memories and forgive your past, if you accept His mercy. You really can be freed from the addiction of sin and find lasting peace. (Matthew 11:28)

May God abundantly bless those who love enough to humbly bring others to Christ.

H/T Catholic Education Resource Center

I found an interesting commentary in the London Times Online from a Catholic priest, Fr. James Bell, a convert from Anglicanism. The commentary is sort of a review of a new book on Cardinal Newman entitled “John Henry Newman–A Mind Alive” by Msgr. Roderick Strange. However, Fr. Bell discusses other issues as well. He talks about the announcement of Cardinal Newman’s imminent beatification. He spends most of the commentary discussing Newman’s role in the ecumenical dialog between the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church. Bell laments that so many members of the Communion have moved much further from their Anglican roots in terms of confession and moral teaching than was the case just 40 years ago. Fr. Bell seems to hold hope that the upcoming beatification can be an impetus for the movement of Anglicanism closer to reunity with the Church, perhaps based upon Newman’s conviction to ecumenism through trust and a radical commitment to Christian truth. However, he does not seem to be very confident this will be the case. He ends the article with the observation that Newman’s grave was desecrated just a few weeks ago and then wonders whether the the fruit from ecumenical talks will be worth the effort spent.

If I read him correctly then I can certainly affirm Fr. Bell’s sentiments. Reunion with Anglicanism seems quite bleak at this point for the reasons Fr. Bell points out: there is very little unity within it. The sense of unity within Anglicanism is one primarily of political unity rather than unity in Truth Himself. If one looks at its history, it would seem likely that this would eventually in our time, be the case.  The Church of England went from still relatively Catholic under Henry VIII, then radically reformed under Edward, and then Catholic again under Mary.  Elizabeth’s rise to the throne saw this see-saw come to an end because she saw the unity of the empire more important that unity in truth.  Elizabeth demanded compromises in the truth of the faith that she hoped would satisfy both the reformers and the Catholics. Thus, the heritage of Anglicanism seems to have been from the earliest days, any compromise in belief that is necessary in order to maintain political unity. Today we see the same thing happening with the ordination of bishops who openly practice their same sex attraction disorder and the attempt to strike whatever compromise is possible to maintain unity. Even Rowan Williams who had openly supported ordaining those with SSAD is now backtracking for the same of political union.

However, as bleak as things seem what is truly impossible for men is possible with God.  If the the Shoot can arise from the stump of Jesse, the dry bones can regather into living flesh, and the springtime in the Church that seems to be blossoming in the US and in other parts of the world is a reality, it is clear that God can bring about life where there appears only death.  Faithfulness and not the prospects of success is the reason why the ecumenical dialog is worthwhile regardless of how useless it might seem to be in human terms.  I am sure that Cardinal Newman and Fr.  Bell would agree. Cardinal Newman: Pray for Us!

H/T Fr Alvin Kimel, Pontifications Purgatory as Self-Knowledge :

Humankind cannot bear to see the destruction and horror that it brings into the world, cannot bear to accept the responsibility for the injuries it has afflicted on others. Our offenses, infidelities, greed, lust, and violence ripple through families and communities, affecting people unto the third and fourth generation. We spend much of our time, both individually and corporately, protecting ourselves against this knowledge; – “Human kind”, T. S. Elliot

Like cursed offspring, mankind continues to suffer as a result of the sins of our ancestors past who sought refuge among the destructive sins of abortion, contraception, violence and sexual “freedoms”. In our quest of seeking out happiness and self fulfillment away from God, we develop into a type of spiritual hurricane with the hope of dwelling within the eye of the storm. The quick fixes, “personal choices” and alleged “rights” bring about the false sense of security one usually experiences while in the eye of a storm, holding on to a false hope of totally isolating themselves from the destruction and chaos of the storm swirling about them. The effects of our sins bring about a spiritually blindness, and through fear we learn to justify and accept the horror of abortion, the selfishness of contraception, the immoralities of lust and other immoral and unethical means of protecting the integrity of our selfish pride, comfort and safety. All the while, we believe we are making personal decisions and unaware that our evil deeds have become a new source of spiritual destruction, causing harmful scandal and suffering for generations to come and we allow injustices to go on, saying and doing nothing – out of fear and indifference, and for that we will be held accountable.

We see the meaning and the effects of ALL our sins in Purgatory—their effects on others as well as ourselves, both directly and indirectly, through chains of influence presently invisible, chains so long and effectual that we would be overwhelmed with responsibility if we saw them now. Only a few can endure the saint’s insight that “we are each responsible for all. – “Human kind”, T. S. Elliot

I’m feeling not so much in the judgmental mood right about now.

A brand new Web site through the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy provides open access to Biblical verses with exegesis from doctors of the Church AND cross reference liturgical texts with commentaries from Church Fathers. The site offers six categories in nine languages in addition to the option of downloading the site’s content. The nine translations of the Bible, including Hebrew and Greek, can be read side-by-side, as can the Eastern and Latin Codes of Canon Law. A down-loadable version allows us to connect Sacred Scripture to the complete works of many Doctors of the Church, Councils, Encyclicals, teachings of the Popes, Catechisms, as well as commentaries from secular literature, etc…

Might want to bookmark this one. Fair warning if you plan to down-load a version onto your hard drive, it’s excruciatingly slow.

Update: E-mail support for documents and articles of interest for Bishops and Priests.

Zenit

Recently, I have had a number of opportunities to consider the current state of theological inquiry and the prevailing approach to Catholic theology that has been called “the current emphasis.” I will argue, that this new approach, the “Nuptial Mystery” reflects a new synthesis of authentic previous theology on the order of that established by St. Thomas. But first some background.

In the 13th century there was a watershed in Catholic theology which would establish the approach to Catholic theological inquiry for the next seven hundred years. If one allows St. Anselm of Canterbury to be identified as the progenitor of the scholastic method, this event occurred about a century and a half into the development of this systematic approach to doing theology. The watershed to which I refer, of course, is arrival on the scene of the intellectual giant, St. Thomas Aquinas, who not only mastered and perfected this method but he employed it in such a way as to synthesize (almost) literally, all available sources of authentic knowledge up to that time. At the outset, I must say that I am not reducing all medieval theology to Thomism. However, even the the most hostile scholars to Thomism must admit that since Augustine, no single theologian has had the wide-ranging influence of St. Thomas.

St. Thomas was not only a brilliant personality, but as Etienne Gilson points out, he possessed in uncommon abundance an attribute that magnifies intellect in a synergistic way–a great humility. St. Thomas was not simply an intellectual giant, he was a humble saint and these together allowed him the ability to synthesize knowledge in such a way that even almost eight centuries later, we have not finished plumbing the depths of what he left us. His great synthesis began with adapting and purifying the intellectual tools of philosophy, and integrating recently rediscovered Aristotelian metaphysics into this, for Christian theology. With these tools, he integrated the best of biblical scholarship with his mastery of theological wisdom and insights from the patristics and scholastics up to his time.

Because his insights and completeness of thought were so formidable, the greatest effort of the vast majority of theologians who came after him was in plumbing its depths rather than in adopting his method. This is not to ignore the Franciscan school’s rejection of Thomism and the attempts to set up an alternative school. However, it seems clear that while the Scotian school certainly influenced thinking, and not all for the good when one considers his student’s, William of Ockham, insidious distortion of Western thought with his Voluntarist Nominalism. Nevertheless, even this theology took Thomas as its point of departure. Years later, when Thomism was eventually embraced by a majority of Catholic theologians, later approaches (so called neo-scholasticism) did not place as high a premium on mastering the sources as Thomas had.

This began to change at the end of the 19th century in Tubingen, and even more so, in the early part of the 20th century leading up to the Second Vatican Council. Among an influential group of Catholic theologians, there grew an emphasis on a return to the sources, the so-called Ressourcement, that so many theologians had set aside. The fruit this bore, was its influence of the conciliar documents and it came of age in the years following the council, primarily in the school now called Communio. Those associated with this school are certainly not monolithic in their approach or their models. However, there is a prevailing theme that, I would argue, one might now identify as the dominant approach to modern Catholic theology at the turn of the millennium that is bearing fruit.

Hence, I must say that I agree with Fergus Kerr, Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians: From Chenu to Ratzinger, who identifies this approach to be the aforementioned “Nuptial Mystery.” In his book, Kerr attributes this theology primarily to Hans Urs von Balthasar and Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II. So what is the nuptial mystery? You can read the About this Blog page to get a little better sense of it, but in a nut shell it is the recognition that the Trinity is a Communio Personarum, a Community of Persons. One of the most fruitful insights has come from recent insights in personalism. These insights begin with the fact that man is made in the image of this Communio and that the human person can in deed be understood in analogy to the Divine Persons. This has led to stunning implications of this image for anthropology, the Sacraments, ecclesiology, indeed, the whole of theological inquiry. In a word, the nuptial mystery looks at the analogy of the Trinitarian Communio with human nuptial communion as the “model” par excellence to draw together and provide the integrating theme for the various theological traditions describing Trinitarian life, creation, the Incarnation, soteriology and indeed, all of salvation history.

In the end, the beatific vision is described in terms of marriage; it is marriage with God for which man was created. This is because human marriage arises from and is possible only because of the divine Communio Personarum. Thus, marriage with God is understood as an insertion of individual persons into Trinitarian communion, not as individuals, but corporately. This corporate incorporation comes about again through marital communion. This marital communion is the marriage of the Church, the Bride to the Incarnate Son, the Bridegroom. It is this marital communion that integrates the corporate Bride into the Hypostatic order. In other words, humanity is restored to its communion with God in the Person of Jesus Christ. Fallen human beings share in this restored communion, by union with Jesus Christ, and thereby enter into the Trinitarian Communio–which is integration into the eternal marital communion of the Trinity. Everything that the Church teaches, then, can be understood in terms of this marital end for which we were created.

This nuptial mystery has its foundations in the the exitus–reditus schema which permeates many civilizations’ cosmologies and was taken up in Christianity, especially in the East. This idea of creation coming out of God and returning to God can only be maintained in coherence in the Christian distinction (i.e. the infinite difference between Uncreated Being (God’s nature) and created being). Thus, the going forth and returning cannot be maintained in a substantive sense but rather, must recogized to be in the category of real relations (on the part of creation, not of God of course). Not surprisingly, St. Thomas’ magnum opus his Summa Theologiae, is arguably organized according to this schema and his presentation of what is called today, the Immanent Trinity (the Trinity in Itself) and the Divine Processions, reflect this.

St. Thomas presents all of the features necessary for this Nuptial Mystery in his theological work. In fact, he presents a little recognized foundational insight for it in his treatise on the Angels in the prima pars of the Summa. Here he says that while the Angels in their nature more perfectly reflect God in His nature, human beings because of their begetting more perfectly reflect God relationally.

It seems to me that St. Thomas has the metaphysical tools necessary for expounding the depth and breadth of the Nuptial Mystery but primarily in metaphysical terms. He did not yet have the philosophical tools for further developing the theological analogy of human personhood to divine Personhood. Indeed, philosophical personalism would not begin to flourish until the early-mid 20th century and the theological implications of this would not come about until Balthasar and Wojtyla especially. Today we still do not have a vocabulary for describing the quasi-substantiality of real created relations, much less the quasi-substantiality of real, I would argue, volitional relationships.

Baltahasar and Wojtyla are themselves synthesizers of the fruits that have arisen from biblical scholarship and the return to the sources that began in the years prior to their entry onto the scene. Between the two, I would say that Balthasar, in some ways, has been the most creative. However, I would argue that Wojtyla/JPII has been the greater and more complete synthesizer. One of the reasons for this is the latter’s better understanding and complete acceptance of Thomist metaphysics which stands at the foundation of his theology. Fused with this is Wojtyla/JPII’s mastery of a relatively new philosophical tool, phenomenology, which has enhanced developments in philosophical personalism. Wojtyla/JPII uses phenomenology to extract universal insights from subjective experiences by bracketing the subject’s unique conditioning of the way he interprets his experiences.

Balthasar, on the other hand, leaves too many cracks in his theology, it seems to me. Specifically, he has abandoned a consistent metaphysics (read Thomism) in favor of embellishing his theo-dramatic model. For example, he dismisses the metaphysical structure for discourse about God and His immutability because he cannot reconcile this with God’s suffering in His divinity. Suffering in God is important for the symmetry of his Theodrama. However, in doing this Balthasar leaves a contradiction between suffering and immutability because suffering per se means privation of being. Thus, he is left with a contradiction that he has to hide with appeals to mystery.  I cannot see how this avoids abusing the meaning of mystery and thus leaves him open to charges of fideism.

The Nuptial Mystery is an integrating thread that demonstrates the consistency and coherence of myriad traditional theologies such as those found for creation, the Incarnation and salvation, the Church, anthropology, the Sacraments, the liturgy, and eschatology. It also explains the human person and makes sense of interior dynamic experience. However, not everyone is happy with this approach. Not surprisingly, it appears to be those who are not especially attached to Catholic teaching or traditional Catholic theology.

R. R. Reno of Creighton University gives some insight into this disapproval in a follow up to his review of Kerr’s book cited above, both in First Things and both of which are more interesting reads than this post I must admit. Any way, Reno discusses the fact that Kerr is lambasted by the seventies crowd for many things in his book, but especially for not criticizing the Nuptial Mystery. Reno points out that Kerr defends himself in response, obviously hurt by the rejection of his contemporaries, that he was misunderstood, and that his “sardonic style” was missed. Those who reject this new synthetic theology are the usual suspects. They are radical feminists, sexual libertines, and others who wish to promote lifestyles that reject the truth that sexual intercourse can only be expressed legitimately within the marital covenant, and then only in openness to life.

Background in the Nuptial Mystery brings with it new and deeper meaning to reading Wojytla/JPII’s writings, especially his Theology of the Body. It will make deeper sense of Ratzinger/B16’s works such as the Spirit of the Liturgy. A good book on this that I would recommend is by Angelo Cardinal Scola entitled nothing other than, The Nuptial Mystery.  If you needed any other motivation to learn more about it, read Reno’s On the Square post about those who reject it…this should be sufficient evidence that there is something compelling there.

Of all days for a Protestant tradition to hold a service honoring Mary , why on the Feast of the Assumption?

“The people of the church need to know that Mary is important in the life of the church,” said the Rev. William F. Dopp, rector at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Hudson. “Mary is to be honored.” To help achieve that end, Dopp’s church is offering a service for Mary on Wednesday, her feast day. It includes a dramatic reading of words attributed to Mary, as well as a teaching on her role in the church.

Is anyone aware of why Episcopalians, who clearly reject the authority of the Catholic Church and, therefore, also presumably reject doctrines of The Immaculate Conception and Assumption, would choose that very day which Catholic’s celebrate the latter?

In the Episcopal tradition, August 15th is observed as the commemoration “Of the Blessed Virgin Mary”, and the recent Anglican-Roman Catholic agreed statement on the Virgin Mary assigns a place for both the Dormition and the Assumption in Anglican devotion.

I got an e-mail the other day, forwarding a link to an article from an on-line North Carolinian newspaper. It was a commentary on the CDF’s recent ecclesiological clarification that we posted on back in early/mid July. I found the article interesting for the simple fact that it contains, in one convenient place, almost every logical fallacy and erroneous form of thought that I have seen hurled at the Church for this document–and all of this in just over 800 words.

The author, Lauren R. Stanley, is a former Catholic who is now ordained in the Episcopalian ecclesial communion. As a literary device, she repeatedly uses a southern phrase of disagreement/disbelief:

Well, spit. I guess I’m not a real Christian after all. I thought I was. Truly. I’ve devoted my life – my body and my soul – to being a Christian, to trying to live as one. But apparently, I’m not. At least, not as far as Pope Benedict XVI is concerned. The Vatican, under his leadership, recently announced that the Roman Catholic Church is the only true Church, and that those of us who worship in other “churches” aren’t worshipping in real churches after all.

The “real Christian” assertion is a non-sequitur. The Catholic Church explicitly teaches that everyone who is validly baptized is a Christian (see CCC 1271). The claim of not being a real Christian then is Stanley’s interpolation and not that of the Church. Now if Stanley wants to argue that the Church is wrong about this and assert that everyone must be in a “real church” to be a “real Christian” then she must make the case for her assertion. Otherwise, to claim that Pope Benedict or the Catholic Church is asserting something that he/She is not is, at the very least negligent but more probably, disingenuous.

But of course, in distorting the meaning of the document, which is euphemistically called “spin” but more honestly called a lie, she is in good company with a majority of the reporting on this. This type of behavior seems to be reminiscent of that which one sees from rebellious teenagers who are not yet able to argue logically and so they emote by accusation. But of course, this is not all she had to say. Stanley goes on:

The Vatican even had the audacity to proclaim that while Orthodox churches could be considered “churches” in some ways, they aren’t really because they suffer from a “wound” that comes from not recognizing the primacy of the papacy.

Stanley accuses the Catholic Church of “audacity” for daring to have an understanding of Christianity and of the Catholic Church at variance with her own. In accusing the Church of arrogance what she does is to conflate a subjective attitude with a truth claim and in so doing, she falls into the trap of relativism by assuming that either there is no absolute truth or assuming at least that no one can have access to it.

The fact is though, that a truth claim is either true or false. If it is false then one simply need to demonstrate its falsity. However, what she does here is to assume its falsity, a priori, and then goes on to make an assessment of the subjective state of all of those involved with making this proclamation. In other words, she has looked into all of their souls and summarily found them all guilty of having an arrogant attitude. Quite a feat, huh?

The interesting thing about falling into relativism is that you automatically become self-contradictory–and that is what happens here. In assuming that the Catholic Church is wrong about the nature of the Church, and that she is right, without even making an argument for her position, she is becoming dogmatic in the pejorative sense of the term. Dogmatism is never tolerant and so it is not surprising to find that neither is Rev. Stanley.

She assumes that her ecclesiology is the correct one and seems to have no tolerance for those who would disagree with her. If tolerance is openness to hearing and discussing others’ views without personal condemnation, then Rev. Stanley must be characterized as being intolerant.

She is also self-contradictory in assuming that her position is right and the Catholic teaching is wrong. Later she will imply that anything that a Christian wants to call a church is one by definition in giving the advice to her readers to continue to go to the church of their choice. One might ask by what authority does she claim to know infallibly (or at least with sufficient confidence so as to authoritatively teach others) what God has taught and what He has not. Here she is making the logical fallacy of special pleading. She asserts that the Catholic Church does not have authority to teach on Christ’s behalf (she says later of B16: “You don’t get to decide these things!”– presumably this is because He didn’t give anyone this authority?) but then she immediately assumes this authority for herself in order to condemn the Church for assuming this authority for itself–an authority that apparently does not exist except momentarily when she needs to make use of it. Did you follow that? But the good Rev. is not done with Catholics yet. She will return to the old canards of caricature and ad hominem:

I must admit, there is a part of me that says, “Oh, ignore him. Benedict is the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, but he’s not my spiritual leader.” This is the part of me that recognizes that Benedict is the former cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger, who always has been a strict interpreter of the Roman Church’s stances. That this is the man who in 2000 wrote the document Dominus Iesus, in which these current views were promulgated. That this is the man who was feared by some in the Roman Church for his unwavering conviction that he was right, the rest of the world was wrong, and that was that.

This is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. As an Episcopal clergyman who has chosen to speak out about the Catholic Church she has some obligation to understand the Catholic Church and what it teaches if she is going to criticize it. Her reference to “the current views” of the Church assumes that the Church sometime had taught something else, but this is exactly the purpose of the document–to affirm the continuity of the teaching about the Catholic Church as the fullness of the one Church that Christ founded.

Further, she ought to know that Magisterial teaching is not a matter of the individual opinions of those comprising the Magisterium weighed against others. But I forgot, the Catholic Church has no right to Her own ecclesiology. The Church must submit to Stanley’s ecclesiology or be dismissed as arrogant. If I were the type to posit the attitude of another, I might say that she is arrogant. After ranting a bit, she gets in one more of the favorite canards of vague thinkers, before returning to her apparently favorite approach–caricatured distortions:

And then there is the part of me, the one that after my initial reactions is gaining ascendancy, which is bemused and asks, “Is this really the way to proclaim the Gospel? Is this how we work to proclaim the love of Christ? Are we really called, as beloved children of God, to be this exclusionary? Did Jesus really tell me to say, ‘My faith is better than your faith!’?”

Here she throws in the old stand by of modern religiosity: namely, that any faith that makes demands on its adherents is by definition, exclusionary. There is much that could be said about this: for example, this is not a document meant for initial proclamation of the gospel but a clarification of a truth for Catholics who may have been confused by theological discussions of this issue. Regardless, her implication is that any truths of faith that could in any way be taken in a negative way by those who are not part of that faith must be expunged. This fits very well with a relativist mindset but as I said, relativism is inherently self-contradictory.

One might ask her, isn’t proclaiming the love of Christ exclusionary in itself? Why proclaim it at all? Is it necessary or just a heart warming thing to do? If necessary, then doesn’t this mean that those who have not accepted Him are excluded from the Church until accepting His truth? If proclaiming the gospel is just something nice to let people know about it, then why proclaim it at all and risk offending some who do not want to hear it? There is no justification for proclaiming the gospel if Christianity is not by definition exclusionary–it excludes those who have not heard or do not want to accede to the truth it proclaims. Well, perhaps she had a sense that this was an implication of her thinking because she immediately goes back to caricatures in her last sentence and in the next paragraph:

And in part, I realize that every time someone comes along – be it the pope or one of my neighbors – proclaiming that he or she alone knows the mind of Christ, and the rest of us are damned, I cringe. Because that sort of exclusionary theology ensures that many, many people – people who are starved for spiritual nourishment – are going to turn their backs on churches and church politics and say, “No way. I refuse to be involved in any church that tells me I’m not good enough.” Which basically is what Benedict is saying: Those of us who are not, or who no longer are, Roman Catholics, quite simply are not good enough.

I suppose that I need not point out that the Pope does not proclaim that he alone knows the mind of Christ. He does not say that everyone who is not Catholic, or even Christian, is damned. He did not say that non-Catholics are not good enough. I suppose it is appropriate for the good Rev. Stanley to end her longer rant with her favorite tactic of impersonating an emoting teenager. After all, if one is not prepared to dialog with authentic tolerance, without caricaturing or condemning the other because one disagrees then I suppose all that is left to do is–well, spit!

Benedict XVI has named the Archbishop for the Military Services, Edwin O’Brien, as the 15th Archbishop of the nation’s first See in Baltimore. Archbishop O’Brien was an Army Chaplain with the 82nd Airborne Division back in the early 70s, as well as a chaplain in Vietnam for the 173rd Airborne Brigade and the 1st Cavalry Brigade as well. He has also been Rector of St. Joseph’s Seminary in NY and North American College in Rome. His military background and his seminary experience are no doubt why he was selected to oversee the seminary review that was completed last year. I suspect that this background may also be the reasons that he was given Baltimore.

He was my Archbishop for my last 4 years on active duty. I never met him though I did inconsequentially correspond with him once. He was generally known by the average military Catholic (who cared enough to know about his faith) to be a solid and caring bishop. Even though the military services are low on priests, he would not hesitate to remove a priest whose actions/beliefs led to more harm than good. With the work ahead of him, I think that his background will be of great benefit.

The Pope has done Baltimore a great service by giving them an Archbishop who cares more about their faith than their personal approbation. Please say a prayer for the Archbishop as he begins to serve the people of Baltimore.

The recent “one, two” punch of the motu proprio, Summorum pontificum, and the CDF’s RESPONSES TO SOME QUESTIONS REGARDING CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE DOCTRINE ON THE CHURCH (along with a very helpful commentary) illustrate the focus of B16’s pontifical program. Namely, to continue John Paul the Great’s (JPTG) program of implementing the authentic vision of the Second Vatican Council.

As I have said many times, an authentic reform of the liturgy is one of Benedict’s highest priorities. Hopefully one benefit of this will be that seminaries will now take more seriously their obligation to form their seminarians in Latin, which seems to be essentially proforma (if it is addressed at all) in too many seminaries at this point. While the wider availability will be slow in coming because of the preparations necessary to say the Mass well, I think that it will eventually help to create a longing for many of the important elements that were sadly left out of the current Roman Missal.

Furthermore, Summorum comes with a limpid affirmation that there is but one Latin Rite and that both the current Roman Missal and the 1962 Mass are two expressions of the same Rite. This is a clear statement of correction to the two “camps” of Catholics that agree that the Second Vatican Council was a break from the past. While these camps agree that VII was a break, that is all they agree about. The Bologna school camp has made it their primary task in life to convince the rest of the world that the Catholic Church, in the Second Vatican Council, has now recognized that She is just one of a host of other man-made organizations indistinguishable in essence from the non-demoninational church that will set up shop in the vacant store down at the mall next week. This School attempts to buttress its position with the claim that its “more humble view” is necessary for ecumenism, though this is not any ecumenism that is recognizable from even a cursory reading of Unitatis redintigratio (e.g. see paragraph 11 and the warning against harming the purity of the faith in the pursuit of a false peace). The other camp–the Radical Traditionalists–agree that the Second Vatican Council did break from the Catholic Church of the past and so they want to go back to the “good old days” of the 1950s–or perhaps the 1650s–in order to recover the purity of the faith.

Benedict recognizes that this erroneous theory of discontinuity needs to be corrected. One of the biggest issues is the faulty ecclesiology of the Bologna camp that attempts to place the entire weight of this “new” Catholic ecclesiology on the now infamous phrase in Lumen gentium 8, “the one Church of Christ … subsists in the Catholic Church… .” Well, this little phrase cannot bear such a burden, especially when all of the weight of evidence is against it. Theologians such as Francis J. Sullivan, (cf. e.g. “Quaestio Disputata: A Response to Karl Becker, S.J., On the Meaning of Subsistit In,” Theological Studies 67 (2006): 395-409) have spent a lot of time and effort trying to develop vast theories with detailed analyses of language, evolution of documents, etc., all with the aim of trying to show that the documents don’t really say what they say.

Setting motivation aside, it seems to me that these theologians possess a faulty philosophical foundation (apparently Ockhamist Nominalism) which allows them to conceive of a Church that can both have the fullness of Christ’s Church but not be equated with Christ’s Church at the same time. Christ has but one Mystical Body, one Church. It is the Catholic Church. This Mystical Body is hierarchically constituted with the Successor to St. Peter as its head. To rip the Catholic Church and place it on its own, in autonomy from the Church of Christ, renders the Church of Christ as an unrealized ideal that has no real ontology. This is an emaciated ecclesiology that also deprives humanity of it access to grace–understood as partaking in the divine nature (2 Pt 1:4). Thus we are left with a Reformed theology of grace as extrinsic favor rather than intrinsic, deifying communion. It is no coincidence that the Bologna school adopts a Protestant ecclesiology and is then driven also to a Protestant Sacramentology.

The argument is sometimes made that the Catholic Church is just another particular Church, with the assumption that every other Christian body is its own, autonomous particular church. But it is unity in Christ, and so in the Vicar of Christ, by which each particular Church achieves its essence. Contra Cardinal Kasper, the particular Church cannot preexist the Universal Church. Thus, to the degree the Christian body is united with the fullness of the Church, these Churches and ecclesial communities share in Christ’s mediation of the Father’s grace to humanity…i.e. are united to the Catholic Church. But regardless of whether they are in visible communion or not, any and all grace they receive is mediated through Christ’s single Mystical Body, and so it is mediated by the Catholic Church.

A major complaint is that this ecclesiology sounds so triumphalistic; thus it is arrogant. Proper distinctions need to be made to see the error in this. Any truth claim is what it is–it is either true or false. Arrogance/truimphalism is a subjective attitude and has nothing to do with truth claims. Truth can be presented in humility and falsehoods can be proclaimed with arrogance (the latter of which is more often the case I would argue). One cannot preemptively dismiss a truth claim as false simply because of fears about how it might be received. To do so is to succumb to an emotivist relativism.

It is this confused thinking that B16 is taking on as he attempts to get authentic ecumenical dialogue started (again) by returning Catholic ecumenists to their task of understanding and then humbly presenting the truth of the Catholic faith to their dialogue partners, and so get on with the important work of authentically moving toward unity.

We can see that B16 is going full bore in carrying out Blessed John XIII’s three main goals for VII: reinvigorating the faith of the Church, restoring Christian unity, and bringing the Church into dialogue with modernity. He has an uphill battle when too many of those who are involved in carrying out this program are so confused about what the Church really is and what She teaches. Nevertheless, building upon the patrimony of JPTG and with B-16’s intellectual acumen and intrepid leadership, we are now off to a great start.

12 years ago yesterday, Amber and I originally exchanged marriage vows outside of the Catholic Church on June 10th 1995 by a Methodist minister, and subsequently had our union officially recognized through a Convalidation of Marriage by the Church on August 29, 1999. Looking back, I think I may understand how tough it must be for some parents whose adult children have abandoned the faith and painfully want to do what is best to ensure the salvation of their children’s soul. For many years in my early adulthood years, my father and I – who were so very much alike – had a somewhat of a contentious relationship which placed a burden on him to maintain a relationship with his son who was not typically open to inconvenient truths and, at the same time, protect him from his own ignorance. He did the best he could. Despite the fact that I had not darkened a Catholic Church in 10 years at the time, because of my father – I actually went to confession and spoke to a priest prior to the wedding. Not that it would have made a difference, but the priest told me since it was only weeks away from our wedding, that we could just to go ahead with the wedding and return to the Church in 6 months (which I never did) to have it recognized – just what I wanted to hear but not correct (correct response here).

My favorite wedding picture of Amber who told me once, in no uncertain terms, she would never be a Catholic!

The exchange of our wedding vows which were not recognized by the Church, not because the Catholic Church sees Herself as the only Church capable of performing a valid marriage but because as a Catholic I should and must follow Church law.

We had our union officially recognized by the Church through a convalidation of marriage at Our Lady of the Atonement by Father Phillips. My father died prior to this and Amber’s conversion to the Catholic faith, but grace through his patience and words that he spoke to me shortly before he died, along with David and Tricia brought me and Amber home.

I guess you could say Frances Kissling, who dared The Church to excommunicate her for her pro-abortion advocacy, and I have something in common- neither of us knew anything about excommunication latae sententiae. First Things explains how and why Catholics who advocate for abortion actually excommunicate themselves.

The issue of excommunication persists, however, because canon law treats abortion much more severely than most other kinds of wrongdoing. It imposes on the canonical crime of procuring an abortion a so-called latae sententiae excommunication (canon 1398). An excommunication latae sententiae attaches to the offender merely because he has performed the prohibited action and without any judicial action by the Church—indeed without any further action by anyone whatsoever. The penalty is imposed automatically, or, as an American lawyer might say, by operation of law. Ecclesiastical authority will, at most, take note of the fact that the wrongdoer has incurred the penalty.

Hence, when Catholic politicians violate the canon, the Church should declare openly that they have incurred the penalty of excommunication latae sententiae.

Note to Ms. Kissling – best wishes on your book deals and safe travels on your speaking tour.

Update: (Important comment left by Jeff Miller/ Curt Jester) -

Unfortunately I think he misrepresents the Canon. No Canonist has extended the Canon on “Procuring” an abortion to those who vote to make it law. Rome has not interpreted this Canon this way. If they did there would never had been any talk about giving pro-abortion politicians Communion since those who are excommunicated automatically are not allowed Communion.

Canonist Ed Peters who is quite reliable has posted on this multiple times on his blog.

The Pope was asked a question about the Mexican bishops and excommunicating pro-abortion politicians. So far these Bishops have not in fact excommunicated anybody, but if they did the Pope would be totally behind them because they certainly can. The real issue is not whether they incurred an automatic excommunication, but the fact that under Canon law they should in fact be denied Communion for this.

Catholic Archbishop of Russia, Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, has strongly rejected the practice of “proselytism”,  which, according to the article, “is conversion of Orthodox Russian into Catholicism”(?).

”Russia is above all an Orthodox country and it is the Russian Orthodox Church that is responsible in the first place for converting people”. The archbishop also stressed that the Catholics were called ‘together with Orthodox brothers’ to take part in the conversion of people, ‘helping each other and strictly observing the teaching of the Catholic Church that proselytism is absolutely unacceptable and cannot constitute a strategy for the development of our (Catholic – IF) structures either in Russia or in any other country in the world’.

Archbishop Kondrusiewicz also said ‘It is completely wrong’, to understand the Fatima prediction of Russia’s turning to God as meaning a conversion to Catholicism as Mary spoke only of a conversion in general.

Maybe I lost his definition of proselytism in the translation. So, I’ll cautiously assume Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz’s rejection of proselytism is referring to the use of unfair and coercive methods leading to conversion. But I must question the judgment of his confident belief and vocal conviction that it is “completely wrong” to believe our Blessed Mother’s prediction of a Russian conversion was never meant to be understood as, to the Catholic church. Given statements like this, the Archbishop can rest assured no one could ever accuse him of proselytising a soul to Catholicism.