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.

As is usual, I have been quite busy but still have had a chance now and then to keep up on the goings on.  I have been thinking about the unsurprising response of many commentators in the media about the responsibility of the pro-life movement for the killing of notorious abortionist George Tiller along with the broader implications of this response.

Beginning with Mike Hendricks’s illuminating (though not illuminated) blathering in the Kansas City Star and then the subsequent piling on of the likeminded (if I can use the term): see Colby Cosh’s tirade in the National Post, and Ellen Goodman’s tortuous logic in the Boston Globe. The expected theme is the same in all of these: those who call abortion murder are thereby also guilty of Tiller’s murder.  If one looks at the logic flowing from these representatives of the mass media, one finds ominous signs for religious freedom and any speech that does not comport with the ruling party line.

Like BO’s speech at Notre Dame implied, these writers begin with the premise that abortion is not murder.  For BO it may be a significant moral consideration but it is not the killing of an innocent human person.  For BO dispassionate dialog can only begin on this premise.  It is not clear that those represented by the above media representatives are even open to allowing the prolife community a platform.  However, if they are, prolifers must first disavow the equation of abortion with murder.  This is the trap that so-called pro-life/pro-Obama Catholics seem to fall into.  To be invited to the table, they must be willing to reject such inflammatory language as “murder.”

The tactic of censoring speech because it is said to incite violence is nothing new.  The abortion lobby has used it for years and the homosexualist activists have adopted it as well.  However, the circumstances have changed considerably. One who shares this view now has the nation’s bully pulpit and the party most sympathetic to this view now hold dominant majorities in both houses of congress.  This is not to mention that the courts have been increasingly populated with activists who are also more and more likely to abet such a view.

Moreover, abortion is only one plank in the aggressive social restructuring agenda that the current president seems poised to attempt to enact.  His proclamation of June as LGBT pride month was also telling. In making this proclamation, BO put the office of the President squarely against natural law and the Judeo-Christian tradition.  Same sex attraction and gender identity disorders are now protected, nay, preferred and promoted lifestyle choices (see this LifeSiteNews article for an example of the results of this distorted way of thinking).  However, there is a stumbling block in the way of such an ambitious project.  We are beginning to see the administration’s strategy for overcoming this “problem.”

The actions of the Obama administration in appointing radically pro-abortion and anti-family “Catholic” zealots to executive and judicial posts, and its promoting of relationships with “Catholic” notables and organizations that are attempting to attenuate the significance of Catholic cooperating with pro-abortion policies all seem aimed at developing a dissenting “anti-magisterium” that can offset the authority of the only authoritative and organized voice against abortion and for protecting the natural family.  The Catholic Church is in fact the biggest threat to this social restructuring agenda.  No opportunity will be passed up in the attempt to marginalize, discredit, counter, or silence the truth about the human person proclaimed by the Catholic Church in the US.  The media’s response to the Tiller murder illustrates this.

Cosh’s comments are the most illuminating.  He indicates that if abortion is murder, then Tiller’s murder is justified and the pro-life community has to embrace this.  The others writers implicitly accept this when they say that calling abortion murder makes violence the logical consequence.  Obama’s response to the murder seems to imply the same.  For all of their talk of peace and justice, this logic betrays an implied threat to both.

I believe these rumblings to be ominous because they share the thinking of Robespierre and the purveyors of the Reign of Terror.  Declaring themselves the guardians of liberty, they mean their own liberty to act as they wish with no limitations placed upon them.  They have an implicit distrust others because their own will is made the arbiter of truth and so there is no way of adjudicating between competing wills other than through means of force.  Those who do not readily accept their assertions cannot be reasoned with for there is no defensible use of reasoned arguments in their assertions.  Thus, violence on their part is an ever looming threat.  What we are now seeing appears to be the preparations for justifying such violence (intended or not).

By no means is the majority of the country yet with this agenda.  However, neither does it have the intellectual or moral formation to defeat it on its own.  To overcome the current threat, we require the clear and unwavering voice of the Catholic Church.  This is what we began to see from the bishops during the last election and what we saw with the Notre Dame scandal.  The bishops see the impending threat and many are beginning to respond.  I think that the majority within the country is still influenced by natural law and the Gospel.  However, they require our faithful and continuing witness if we are to overcome the deleterious effects of the mass media engine and the bully pulpit of the current administration.

We are in Dayton for our goddaughter’s graduation, so that is the only reason I have a breather right now.  I thought I would take the time to comment on a topic I have seen in my inbox this  month.  Several articles by several different persons have been forwarded to me about Christopher West and the fallout from his Nightline interview.  He has been taking quite a bit of heat for it.  According to some (Alice von Hildebrand and David Schindler), it is not simply the case that West was taken out of context and misconstrued,  but rather that he has some underlying problems in his anthropology.

First for some caveats and disclosures: I cannot speak as an expert on Christopher West’s interpretation of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, as I have read and/or heard relatvely little of his thought.  However, I have read and heard some and have found that I share some of the concerns being presented.  I know David Schindler.  I took a course from him at the John Paul II Institute which, by the way, served as the inspiration for the title of this blog.  He was also a reader for my dissertation.  I do not always agree with Schindler’s take on John Paul II. I think it is often too heavily read through his “Balthasarian lens.”  However, I do think that some of Schindler’s criticisms are well-founded, and these criticisms will be the focus of this post.  I don’t claim to be the world’s foremost expert on John Paul II or his theology of the body, but I do consider myself to have an above-average expertise, as this was the foundation of my dissertation, and I have taught undergraduate courses on the theology of the body for several years.

Schindler begins with some apparently rather questionable statements that Christopher West has made.  Oftentimes, these questionable statements can seem to be reconciled with orthodoxy when contextualized, but even in doing so, Schindler says that there is a residual problem.  Schindler lists four issues he sees with West’s approach, and also with the substance of his theology.  These Schindler sees as giving rise to what many find vulgar and prurient in West’s approach.

Schindler first lists West’s underestimation of the damage done to humanity by concupiscence.  Schindler refers to his having brought this up to West a number of years ago.  I recall Schindler’s having mentioned this discussion (back in 2003, I think it was).  He mentioned West’s problematic dismissal of the perduring effects of concupiscence and West’s response.  However, I also recall that I did not agree with the way the Schindler seemed to frame the meaning of concupiscence.  He seemed to reify it as some positive reality then, as something that resides in the body.  His statement in the above linked article also intimates this understanding.  Nevertheless, what I have heard from West seems to suggest to me that he does in fact underestimate the impact of concupiscence on the human person.  Redemptive grace in this dispensation does not remove concupiscence, and concupiscence in sexual attraction cannot be ignored.  West seems to forget this, though “Christopher” of this blog, who has recently taken a class from West, indicated that West is reconsidering his take on concupiscence.

I have the impression of West that he seems to consider puritanism as a greater threat than the sexual libertinism of the sexual revolution.  I seem to recall seeing this written by him, but if I am wrong about this, I apologize.  However, if it is true, it would explain many things about his overemphasis on sex which Schindler thinks arises from his lack of a proper sense of the analogia entis (the analogy of being), which takes its archetype in God but never forgets that the difference between God and His creation is greater than the similarity.  Puritanism is a distortion of chastity.  Libertinism is a rebellion against not only puritanism but also against chaste virtue.

West seems to think that concupiscence can and must be defeated.  This is impossible.  Temptation must be overcome and defeated but concupiscence remains for the entirety of this lifetime.  Concupiscence is not an object to be defeated.  Concupiscence is a privation of integrity between the affects (i.e. emotions and appetites) on the one hand and the intellect and will on the other.  The original state was one of integration among these faculties, which we had only because of original grace–but this is how we were created–we were created for grace.  This integrity can be provisionally restored to a greater or lesser extent by cooperating with sanctifying grace, but the proclivity to sin always remains, and so it must not be tempted.  West can seem to dismiss this.  In doing so, it seems that he is falling into the error of presuming upon God’s grace in order to reject the admonition to avoid the near temptation of sin.  God’s grace can transform us if we cooperate it, but in our fallen state this is not a straight path that one can achieve simply through the force of will or by a quietist presumption on grace.

Schindler criticizes West for a lack of Marian sensitivities in his theology of the body. The way Schindler describes this is pure Balthasar and so it is not fair, I think, to consider this a failure. John Paul’s theology is certainly sympathetic with Balthasar’s Mariology, and good arguments cans be made that he incorporated this to some degree in his own thinking.  At most this should be proposed as a corrective to West’s prurience but not a fault in West’s theology.  Hildebrand argued that West loses the mystery of the person by his lack of sensitivity to the dangers of concupiscence.  This I think I have seen.  It is, I think, the reason behind his inability to discern what is inappropriate or vulgar and what is not.

Puritanism and sexual libertinism are both threats.  The former because it set the stage for justification of the latter.  However, both reject the authentic meaning of the human person and the sacredness of the body.  The danger is (and I think that this is the trap that West falls into) that the response of one who suffers from puritanical thinking can look very much like the response of one who has an authentic anthropology and responds out of a desire for purity.  That is, when subjected to sights that might be a temptation both will turn away.  The puritan because he thinks that the naked body is dirty or evil and the wannabe saint because he realizes that the goodness of the naked body is sacred, and in his fallen state he can be tempted to reduce the other to his sexual value.  Furthermore, there is a stewardship for the weaknesses of others that must be observed in order to protect them from temptations.

When inadvertantly subjected to experiences that can lead to lust, one does indeed have the obligation through self-mastery to overcome the temptation.  However, one also has the obligation to avoid the near temptation of sin.  It is ill advised, indeed it can be sinful, to  subject oneself purposefully to anything with which Satan or our simple fallenness can use to draw us more easily into sin.  Everyone is different.  Men and women are tempted differently.  Men tend to reduce women to their sexual value for the sake of pleasure.  Women tend to reduce men to the latter’s ability to meet their need for complementary bonding and personal fulfillment.  Among men, however, temperament, experience, history of subjection to pornography, etc. all factor into what can lead to temptations and how difficult it is to master oneself in this regard.  One may not sin in a misguided attempt to attain self-mastery. Neither may I assume that what I can safely be subjected to is the standard for everyone.

West’s use of images that offend the sensibilities of many good Catholics seems to be motivated by the fact that he thinks that puritanism is the root cause for their offense.  He needs to be reminded that puritanism is a relatively recent phenomenon and that chastity and purity are age old virtues.  While it is true that some cultures are not offended by things sexual that do offend others (a point I recall West often making), one must not draw conclusions based upon superficial assessments.  Lack of offense does not imply purity in reception.  Cultures in which men and women are both publicly naked must not be assumed to show that public nakedness is a possibility for a society that wants to achieve purity.  In fact, these cultures rarely show a high regard for women and their sexuality.

Ok, enough blathering and back to the question: is Christopher West’s interpretation of theology of the body dangerous?  First, I will say that I wish that this discussion could go on in private because it serves to give comfort and aid to dissenters and can undermine a good apostolate that West has developed, albeit, one that is in need of some course corrections. However, with respect to the question,  I suspect that for some people it can be.   I do think that in many ways he has done very much good, and I have no way of knowing how much that his disregard for concupiscience may have caused damage to those misled by it.  I do hope that he will take the public criticism to heart and find someone who can help him to correct his misinterpretations.  Our culture needs it and so does the Church.

Something told me not to go through with it because God has a special plan for this little girl…

Emma is by all accounts, a very spiritually mature 7 year old.  In her innocence she teaches her adoptive parents and she also teaches me:

The report says Emma was 3 the first time she mentioned the Pope. She saw him on TV in the hospital and sat up in bed. “That’s my new pope,” she told her mother. “That’s my new pope. Do you think I can ever meet him?”

Watson didn’t pay much attention to the request. But over time she saw how serious her daughter was.

The Make-a-Wish Foundation doubted a child would request to see the Pope, Watson said. So several people wrote letters on her behalf.

“Ever since Emma began talking, she has spoken about prayer and wanting to become a nun,” wrote Dr. Hrair Garabedian, a Spokane cardiologist. “Again, I am surprised by her complete devotion to God, but it does not surprise me at all she has requested a visit with the pope.”

“Emma is a very special child and in some spiritual way, old beyond her years,” said another letter to the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

Watson said Emma is joyful, never complains, and has a deep faith.

Mrs. Watson told the Associated Press:

“Some small part of us thought we were doing something good by saving this sick little girl, not realizing it was God’s plan all along to save us – from selfishness, from not getting caught up in the little things of life. One of the biggest things we’ve learned is to take things one day at a time and try not to worry about tomorrow.”

Reading a bit about this little girl and was something of an integrating experience for me.  In contemplating the teaching impact of a little one whose life was spared, a life the world demands never be allowed to leave the womb alive, one is drawn to return to the mystery of Providence. Providence is often a truth that we explore only when we are forced to decide for it or against it.  That is, we have no choice but to trust in God and that He has a plan for us or to despair.

This Lent was an unusually good spiritual experience for me in this regard. It began with a very humbling episode.  March 3rd was our 25th wedding anniversary and I had planned on giving my wife with a trip to Rome which we had more or less been saving for.  Instead, I had to cancel those plans and give her the news of my pink slip I had received the day before, on the first Monday of Lent.

Of course there was good that came out of this disappointment.  It caused me to contemplate how much of what I was doing was for God and how much was for me.  It allowed me to realize that I could not, of my own capacities, provide the security and protection for my family that most men feel the obligation to provide.  It shook me out of my spiritual comfort and complacency and challenged me to again surrender myself to God’s merciful Providence.

Lent this year was an experience of continual effort to trust when I could not see the pathway forward.  It was a continual effort to give myself to my students even though I would not be able to see them through to the end of their studies…and to give them even more since the time was now so short.  It was a continual challenge to continue to give myself totally to the apostolate about which I was continually tempted to separate from emotionally, the apostolate that had told me that I would no longer be able to serve with them.

This experience was in some small way, an experience of solidarity with Jesus.  Though, I did recognize that it was very small.  Previous to my own impending unemployment, I was continually drawn to thoughts and prayers for friends, like Hierothee, who have been much more affected by the lack of teaching jobs than I.  I recognized that there were many others who were coming to the end of their financial ropes and did not know where they would be living very soon.  So, it was not so much that I did not recognize or appreciate the relative magnitude of my experience, rather it was that I had not fully ascertained its personal importance for my spiritual life.

I still had not adequately recognized the increase in faith, minuscule as it might be, God had drawn from me in the experience and how he had used it to prune from me my unholy attachment to the trappings of the apostolate I was serving and the false sense of security I put in my own efforts rather than in Him.

It was the story of this little girl who wants to see “her Pope,” presumably because he manifests to her the God in whom she places all of her trust, which provided me the pure grist, separated from the chaff of the experience, I needed to see those aspects of my Lenten experience which I had permitted to purify me and those for which I still needed to permit purification.  This side of heaven there will continually be disordered attachments to the things of the world, even holy things that make use of the created order.  I can only believe that this little innocent girl will teach others even greater things about the joy and comfort that comes from putting our hope only in the Lord, but for me, one whom some call “professor”, she has taught alot.

The task load has increased considerably in trying to place students, in finding a job, in continuing to teach classes, and in handling the unhappy tasks associated with shutting down a school.  This apostolate was growing with the intention of creating a compelling new venue for bringing the Catholic intellectual tradition into the public university environment.  This is an important enterprise which ought to be pursued at universities everywhere.

The thinking, or perhaps a not so close facsimile thereof, that goes on in a public university makes it very much a challenge to introduce Catholic thought.  However, that is in fact the reason for the need.  The challenges are manifold.

The first challenge is simply the name “Catholic.” The myth of a conflict between religion and science, fostered by John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White in the late 19^th century, still has plenty of traction among academics today.  While this reveals a tremendous ignorance of history, we still must contend with the perception that Catholic thought offers only obfuscation.

Many others believe there to be a more comprehensive contradiction between faith and authentic knowledge.  Many contemporary academics simply assume that anytime faith is asserted, reason necessarily has been excluded.  In fact, I have been told directly by one such academic that a person of faith (read Christian) teaching on his own faith tradition has no place in a “secular” university classroom.

Another challenge is what John Cardinal Henry Newman, in his The Idea of a University, referred to as an educational philosophy of utility. That is, little value is awarded to knowledge that does not appear, at least indirectly, to possess economic or technological utility. Given widespread biases against religion and modern philosophy’s supposed discrediting of speculative thought, contemporary academia presumes Catholic thought offers nothing of value. As a consequence wisdom has been traded for knowledge and today’s university concerns itself with only the latter.

Further difficulties arise from the manner in which the specialization has led to a fragmentation of knowledge and its evil twin, what I refer to as an “ontologizing of the method.”  The problem with this fragmentation of knowledge is that there is no longer recognition that all knowledge interrelates and so there is little appreciation for what Catholic thought might contribute to the way one thinks about his discipline.  What I mean by “ontologizing the method” is nothing more than the metaphysical and epistemological reductionism that arises when the scientific method becomes an idol.  Metaphysical reductionism results in materialism and for epistemology it is “scientism.”  Materialism, of course, further prejudices against any claims coming from one perceived as motivated by his religion.  Scientism is essentially positivism which cleaves knowledge into science and opinion; the latter is given little value.  Other challenges presenting include the assumption that education must be values neutral, a distorted view of academic freedom, and a revisionist understanding of the separation of church and state.  All of these hurdles must be taken into consideration if one is to develop an effective strategy for engaging contemporary academia.

These were hurdles that we were embarking upon clearing but the apostolate has now experienced a set back, possibly a lethal one.  Restoring the capacity to think to academics is critical because of the affect that they have on the students and so on the rest of society.  The US university has been a significant contributor to the secularization and the attending fall from virtue that we have seen in the US over the last 50 years or so. This in turn has been a large contributing factor to our nation’s current ills.

With all of the darkness coming out of anti-life federal legislation and policies, state attacks upon the Church, economic woes uncovering the vermin that have always lurked under the rocks, etc this is the worst time to be shuttering such a school.  This darkness points to a very serious spiritual crises that we have finally arrived at.  Such an enterprise as we are now shutting down is needed more than ever today.  The Institute itself will continue to exist but it will be a one man apostolate teaching two undergrad classes a semester.  Better than nothing but not what it was intended to be and certainly not what is needed.

I would very much appreciate prayers first for the students who are directly affected, for other students who will not now learn how to think clearly and be able to defend themselves against the secularizing horde which is academia, and for those of us who have been given the further challenge of finding work in these hard economic times.  Well, I suppose it is back to the unhappy chore of putting an end to a promising apostolate.

The question in light of the revelation: now what?  I would have to admit that I have found what some have decided to be the correct response, well, disappointing.  Now, I am not talking about the anti-Catholic press, or erstwhile Catholics in the secular press that have abandoned the faith, or even the (not so) Catholic press.  I am talking about faithful Catholics who have decided to lecture the Legionaries about what they should now do.  The advice ranges from internal purging of what they assume to be knowing enablers to dissolution of the order.  I am much troubled by such open letters and blog posts.

There is certainly a need for the Order to reassess what this means for them and to discern what, if anything, these confirmations demand.  However, the Legionaries ought to be able to do that themselves, in obedience to the Holy Father, without outside interference.  They do not need our “piling on” when they are down.

This is a time, it seems to me, to recognize that our brothers and sisters in the Legionaries and Regnum Christi are shocked and suffering and they need us to join with them in solidarity and in prayer.  The Legionaries and Regnum Christi have done enormous good.  They have established important and successful, world-wide media, education, and evangelization apostolates that are helping to transform the world.  It is true that sometimes they have grown faster than they had the organizational maturity to handle perfectly, but everything that they have done has been in fidelity to and for the good of the Church.

So what now?  For those who are Legionaries and Regnum Christi, it should be discernment in obedience to the Holy Father.  For the rest of us, it should be a response of gratitude to God for his having blessed us with this Order and our offering of prayers and support to those who have given themselves to Him through it.  Finally, we must all pray for those who have suffered at the hands of an apparently very confused and deceitful man.

In his article, Bishop Herman put things in the right perspective, showing that anger at BO and his administration is misplaced (do read the entire column linked to above).  Rather, our anger, or rather our focus, ought to be on the enabling of Catholics (or half of us) and of Catholic politicians who have allowed us to arrive at where we now stand.  BO did not hide what he had planned even if the MSM did its best to keep it out of public view.

It is a failure of Catholics to understand and live their faith that has allowed the country to drift into a post-Christian, post-God malaise.  Chesterton’s poem is written about events in English history that he sees as significant. Chesterton asserts that the average Englishman was/is more endowed with common sense than those leaders whose goal it was to labor for freedom from the Crown.  However, in each of these events he writes of he admonishes, it seems to me, the average Englishman for his silence being more interested in mundane niceties than fighting for what justice:

Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget;
For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.
There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully,
There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we.
There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise.
There is hunger in our bellies, there is laughter in our eyes;
You laugh at us and love us, both mugs and eyes are wet:
Only you do not know us. For we have not spoken yet.

Chesterton writes of the suppression of Catholic monasteries in England while the common Englishman says nothing:

They burnt the homes of the shaven men, that had been quaint and kind,
Till there was no bed in a monk’s house, nor food that man could find.
The inns of God where no man paid, that were the wall of the weak.
The King’s Servants ate them all. And still we did not speak.

He writes about reign of Charles I in an indictment of the blindness, in fact, the tyranny of the democratic forces that opposed Charles.  Recall that Charles I was the last King of England who professed the divine right of kings and who was eventually executed for his various attempts to secure this right:

And the face of the King’s Servants grew greater than the King:
He tricked them, and they trapped him, and stood round him in a ring.
The new grave lords closed round him, that had eaten the abbey’s fruits,
And the men of the new religion, with their bibles in their boots,
We saw their shoulders moving, to menace or discuss,
And some were pure and some were vile; but none took heed of us.
We saw the King as they killed him, and his face was proud and pale;
And a few men talked of freedom, while England talked of ale.

He goes on to speak of Napoleon and others but ends with what he seems to find to be the sad state of political affairs of his time and the fact that the common Englishman has not spoken yet:

They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger or honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs.

We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,
Our wrath come after Russia’s wrath and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest
God’s scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.

What is common to both Bishop Herman’s column and Chesterton’s poem is that we all know, or should know, what is right and what is wrong.  We have the responsibility for standing up for what is right.

In our present circumstances, we must stand for the right of the unborn to be born and for the right of society to be free from the tyranny of disordered social structures mascarading as protected alternative lifestyles.  We have to put truth and justice ahead of convenience and social acceptance.  We have to put down our ale and stand to protest against erroneous claims of promoting freedom that in fact, deprive us of authentic freedom.

Both, perhaps could  be summarized by the dictum attributed to that 18th century Irishman, Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.”  Let us not talk of ale while our blind politicians talk of freedom.

Here is more on CRI from Tim Drake’s column from the June 3-9 issue of NCR:

Jeff Gardner, formerly of Relevant Radio, and Catholic journalist Tom Szyszkiewicz have created Catholic Radio International as a way to provide content for Catholic stations.

“Historically, the Church has been at the forefront of communications,” said Gardner. “Whether the printing press or Vatican Radio, the Church has been about the business of spreading the Good News.”

Yet, says Gardner, when it comes to modern communications, the Church has had little if any involvement in television or motion pictures.

“Those have been the bulldozers for popular culture,” said Gardner. “The Internet, as a delivery platform for media, changes that. It’s a great social leveler and presents an opportunity to communicate with an audience at an economy never before seen.”

So, Catholic Radio International launched three programs in early May. The two commentary-style programs and one news program are available for download on the Internet.

“We’re trying to raise the quality of Catholic radio programming,” said Szyszkiewicz. “We need a Catholic response to National Public Radio.”

While their content is currently available online, the next step involves getting their programs aired on Catholic radio stations.

I listened to one of their program episodes on Ron Paul, from the program The Heart of the Matter. The programs are very professionally done and from a Catholic perspective they are clearly pretty solid.  However, in their treatment of Paul, I can’t help but offer some of my thoughts.  I would have liked to have heard a treatment not only of Paul’s not being in either the traditionally “left” or “right” camp but also I think necessary would be a treatment of shortcomings of libertarianism, which is essentially the same as one of the shortcoming of classical liberalism but on steroids. That is, libertarianism suffers from a lack of recognition of original sin and its effects.  Here is what I mean.

While modern liberalism generally suffers from an aversion to subsidiarity, libertarianism rejects subsidiarity in the other direction. In other words, while subsidiarity demands things be done at the lowest possible level, ultimately leaving to the individual and family that which they can effectively do on their own, it also recognizes that there is a necessary role for different levels of government and different degrees of governmental influence on daily life based upon the issues at hand. Libertarianism simply wants no interference on the individual in any manner.

Modern liberalism, if I might generalize, tends toward more and more control at higher and higher levels of government; except, that is, for issues related to sexual moral order and here they are very much in line with libertarianism.  Modern conservativism (which some suggest is the offspring of classical liberalism), is often characterized as being exactly the opposite of this.  On these issues, conservativism tends more toward libertarianism.  Again, libertarianism seems to presuppose that governments should have little to no role in almost every issue. In other words, it seems to see law as at best, a necessary evil rather than as an expression of wisdom.  Thus, laws should be kept to a minimum.  In our fallen world though, governmental instituted order, based upon natural law, subsidiarity, and solidarity, is a necessity. Ron Paul’s world view, as I understand it any way, is naive and simply a recipe for anarchy.

Any way, back to CRI.  Another critique that I have, and I suspect this primarily has to do with precision in wording, comes from a statement under the Masthead of their The Heart of the Matter program: “To omit information about an issue or an event is to lie.” Taken in an absolute sense, this certainly is not the case. However, from the context it is obvious that they are trying to say that the current culture of politics, media, etc. in which people intentionally mislead by omitting relevant facts that would change, or even contradict what is being asserted is in fact lying. That is true.

However, in itself, to omit information is not lying. The intent to mislead is lying (see CCC 2481). One always omits information in any assertion because he cannot possibly say everything about a matter that could be said.  One always must make judgments of relevance.  In addition, the difference between being wrong about one’s facts (which is in contradiction to the truth) and being a liar, is that one intends by his actions to mislead. In fact, one can omit even relevant information without the intent to mislead, without lying.

One could do this due to an error in judgment about the relevance of a fact or a lack of appreciation about how the missing information might lead to a misinterpretation. Moreover, there are times in which one is obligated to omit information about an issue. The sin of detraction is one in which one reveals true information about the faults or failings of one’s neighbor without an objectively valid reason (see CCC 2477).

Any way, I do not offer these as criticisms to CRI.  Rather arising from my temperament, I am wont to offer precisions and take opportunities to educate whenever they appear…which my wife hates by the way… Do check out CRI’s website and if you have a Catholic radio station you listen to, if you like what you hear with CRI why not suggest to your radio station that they pick up some of their content.

Well who is Bill Schneeberger you might ask. He is the owner of BOGO wines, a winery that contributes from its proceeds to great Catholic, pro-life organizations:

Monica shared with me that he has developed a plan modeled after that of Susan Komen of the “pink ribbon” campaign. The focus of his plan is to generate awareness, interest, and funding for ethical stem cell research (adult, cord, autologous, etc). Monica writes:

He studied the Susan Komen plan to find out what made it so successful. You can barely buy a bag of chips now without inadvertently funding the the Komen foundation — it’s crazy – they are wildly successful at doing what they have done. I was at Target tonight w/ my husband and noticed they’ve got a whole “October is breast cancer awareness” promotion thing with all these pink products you can buy to help the Komen foundation. If Schneeberger’s initiative is only a fraction as successful as the Komen one, it will still do so much to help advance ethical research.

Schneeberger has obtained a patent trademark/logo for Adult Stem Cell Awareness. Yes, it is meant for car magnets – among other things, but please don’t think this is just about silly car magnets and even “Adult Stem Cell Awareness Month” . . . it’s about finding a way to get “adult stem cell awareness” into the world of the regular guy — and as small as it sounds, things like car magnets and awareness campaigns are incredibly effective. Well, just ask the Susan Komen foundation, right?

Now, it’s true, I’m hoping therapies such as autologous tissue engineering will help my child survive her heart defects, God-willing. But there are millions of people out here who stand to benefit from this kind of awareness campaign — not only because it is ethically sound, but because adult stem cells are really producing life-saving results. One of the orgs that this kind of campaign will help, certainly, is Dr. Moy’s John Paul II Stem Cell Research Institute. This is the kind of organization that we Catholics need to stand behind.

So, the goal is to try to get the info about the awareness campaign initiative in the hands of people who can really lobby for it. Politicians – for sure. I’ve already written my congressman. Unfortunately, it’s pretty slim pickings up here in terms of “pro-life” legislators. But can we be creative about who can help? Any ideas? What about professional societies who can lobby – how about Catholic hospitals? Catholic Universities?

In conjunction with Bill’s efforts, Monica has set up a blog which focuses on promoting Adult Stem Cell awareness. Go check out the blog, add it to your daily blog visits, and if you can get involved in some way, please contact Monica.