Conversion of a "Never-Trumper"

Free of Trump-Derangement-Syndrome, I was nevertheless sworn (a simple, not solemn vow) to never vote for him. I came to enlightenment sooner than Bret Stephens (NY Times Op Ed, Dec. 17, 2024): on Holy Thursday, March 28, 2024, we were watching Bret Baer at 6 PM. (Yes, we are proud members of the Fox family! What family does not have their Sean Hannity's? If it helps: I also regularly read the NY Times!) On that day, Biden and Trump were both in NYC: the former for a fundraiser with millionaires; the later went to the wake of a policeman killed on duty. Of course I realize that fundraising is standard for all politicians; and the wake was, as with all things Trump, performative-histrionic-political. Nevertheless, for me it was a tipping point: upper class vs. lower class. It was the culmination of over three years of Biden. I vowed to vote for Trump. I renewed my lifetime oath to resist the systemic-absolute-contagious decadence-hypocrisy-cowardice-genocidal-lunacy of the Democratic Party. 

Upper Class Contempt for the "Low Life"

Conservative Never-Trumper's (Brooks, Stephens, French, Cheny) are as visceral in their disgust for Trump as Leftists. This is in part upper class snobbery: an issue of style, taste, aesthetics. In some degree, Trump-disgust is a matter of class/culture/taste. We can distinguish, but not separate, in Trump his public policies, his private morality, and his personal style and taste. They mutually infuse each other, of course. But it is his "low class" style/manner/taste that disgusts the elite, conservative and liberal. Standard conservatives renounce his economics; religious conservatives his personal behavior; but upper class and aspirational groups (used to be called "lace curtain Irish") are repulsed by his vulgarity.

I am working-middle class, with high aspirations, especially around education,  but there are many "low class" things I despise: dog fights, rap music, worldwide wrestling, tatoos, body piercing, chewing-and-spitting-tobacco, guns and hunting, nascar racing, purple hair on women, scraggily beard and hair on men,  heavy makeup and Donald Trump. None of these are, by my Catholic principles, sinful or immoral. They are questions of taste, entertainment, aesthetics. In my youth we adored John F. Kennedy: it was his politics, his (apparent) morality, and especially his style...the way he talked, walked, smiled, posed with family, played football, joked.

Like everyone else, I knew of DJT long before he ran for office. I held him in contempt. Part of that was his morality; but much of it was his style. In that I am a snob-in-recovery. The lower class love the guy. They love his style: tough, crude, vulgar, authentic, aggressive. It took quite a while, but I have shed my upper class pretensions and learned, not only to accept the guy, but to enjoy him. He is a cartoon character, but extremely entertaining. He is entirely transgressive of progressive-puritanism. He is SO refreshing in his absolute freedom from hypocrisy. Think of him pumping his fist when he was shot, serving McDonalds, driving a garbage truck! He is a Flanner O'Connor character: a distorted, deprived, empty, selfish, greedy, disrespectful low-life...and a refreshing contrast to the righteous, hypocritical, affluent, educated, pretentious, arrogant, progressive elite.

DJT as a Warrior Judge/King:  Private and Public Morality

"How can you vote for Trump? That is like telling your grandsons that they can be like him and still become president of the United States?" This was shortly after the election. She was speaking for all six of my sisters who are horrified that their three brothers voted for Trump. In no family (not even Maureen Dowd's) is the "gender-divide" so pronounced as in ours!

Fortunately my grandsons are smart enough to distinguish a political decision from a personal endorsement. But I agree with the logic. It is why I was a Never-Trumper for over 8 years. I believe strongly that private and public ethics cannot be absolutely separated. By virtue of the mimetic nature of the human person, we are...all of us...all the time...role models; but especially those in positions of authority and prominence. Even Charles Barkley! I believe the tolerance of the Clinton/Lewinski incident marked a steep descent in our moral culture. I recall at that time talking with a fine man, a plumber, a Democrat and devout Catholic, who said: "It is like a shoemaker: you don't like his behavior, but he does a good job on your shoes." I did not argue but thought quietly: "If you can't trust him with your daughter, can you trust him with your shoes?" Fellow boomers, Clinton leads to Trump. 

I have not changed my mind about the moral vacuity of Trump or the importance of personal modelling in public life. But during the Biden years the world around us changed dramatically and so has my view of it. 

Weakness...moral, military, economic, diplomatic, domestic...has been the form, the interior, the nature of the Biden administration. Consider his lieutenants: Blinken, Garland, Buttigieg, Mayorkas...all  thoughtful, intelligent, prudent...but also indecisive, hesitant, cautious, and anxious. Weak! Harris is different: she is a lioness...fierce, aggressive, passionate...but about one thing only: killing of the unborn. In her campaign she was vague, indecisive, giddy, and inarticulate...until she spoke about "reproductive rights" and she became a different person: a raging, fanatic, zealous, indignant, self-righteous warrior! With Biden/Harris we have Hansel and Gretel's worst nightmare: the father impotent, infirm, passive and self-delusional; the evil stepmother furious,  powerful and determined to devour her children. The emasculated father; the dark mother!

New World Order. We no longer live in the stable bi-polar world of the cold war; nor in the triumphant uni-polar world in the years after 1989. In the early years of this third millennium we transitioned into a dangerous, unstable, multipolar world more like that of the 1930-40s. The Christian order, present since Constantine, is embattled on four fronts: the civil war, for more than half a century, at home with Cultural Liberalism; the Communist Party in China (and North Korea, Cuba); Jihadism in its Shiite (Iran) and Sunni (Al Queda); and the imperialism of Russia.

What we need now in the face of these violent foes (at the moment united in Ukraine) is a strong man, a tough guy, a war lord. We need Winston Churchill, El Cid, Michael Correlone, George Patton or Benjamin Netanyahu. What we do NOT need is Neville Chamberlain. We need DJT pumping his fists as blood flows out of his ear lobe. 

It is ironic that such an ignoble character has become the champion of religious freedom, the unborn, and traditional values. In his personal morals he is a train wreck, but he does call to mind an ancient model:

Warrior Judge and King. Samson was arguably the greatest of the Judges of Israel: from his childhood the Spirit of the Lord flowed upon him. He triumphed against their enemies. But he is a poor role model: he sinned gravely with Delilah with catastrophic consequences. Even more pronounced is the greatest King of Israel, David, arguably with the patriarchs one of the most important figures in the Old Testament. He likewise sinned gravely with Bathsheba, killing her husband Uriah in cowardly fashion, and going on to wreck havoc upon his legacy by siring many children with many women. Bad role model; great leader of the people. 

More recently, we continue to honor JFK and MLK. Both great public figures. Both honored as paragons of liberalism and civil rights. Both horrific in their treatment of women. Credible sources allege that MLK participated in orgies with fellow clergymen in which women were raped. Where is MeToo when we need it? Consider the hypocrisy: King an ordained man of God, rising to the altar Sunday morning after his Saturday night orgy; the Kennedy name synonymous with support for feminism, particularly reproductive rights, while many of their powerful men are sexual compulsives and predators. 

How refreshing by contrast is DJT in his honesty and authenticity: no pretense to being a righteous paragon of virtue, evangelical or progressive!

Appeal to the Lower Class. This authenticity is part of his appeal to the lower echelons of society. It is the strangest thing: despite his privilege and wealth, he somehow connects with the lowly. It is notable that many historical leaders span different cultures: Moses was Hebrew and Egyptian; Paul was Jewish and Roman; Hawkeye was colonial and Mohegan; Tarzan was ape and human. The Trump triumph is many things: rebellion of the lower class, resurgence of a masculinity that has been castrated by effeminate progressivism, and resistance by the religious against a secular totalitarianism. It is a visceral disgust for the progressive elite in their condescension, arrogance, superiority and certainty. The Harris voter, snug and smug within the liberal echo chambers, confident-judgmental-and-dismissive of the "deplorables" as ignorant-racist-homophobic, is clueless but largely incurious about the appeal of Trump: void of empathy or understanding. 

A Modest Catholic Proposal  

Our world has become dark and ominous. We Catholics are like Tolkien's Hobbits engaged with Morgoth, Sauron, and the hellish powers of Middle-earth. We are like the infant born in Revelation: but there is not one dragon waiting to devour, but a flock of them: Cultural Liberalism, Communism, Jihadism, and National Fascism. Unlike Pope Francis, I do not see that the Church has a prominent, messianic, secular mission to rid the world of global warming, warfare, capital punishment, economic inequality, arms race,  gun violence, racism, immigrant suffering or homophobia. 

Our mission is small, humble, fragile. With St. Terese of Lisieux, Rod Dreher, Joseph Ratzinger, and Kiko Arguello...I see "the little way," the Benedict Option, the path of the monks at the fall of ancient civilization, of the friars in the 13th century, of generations of hermits, cloistered religious and quietly pious lay people. The quiet, hidden life of praise and thanksgiving, communion in Sacrament and Word, gentle service and mutuality in tender-reverent love. 

To pursue this life, we need protection: like the Knight Templars, El Cid, Aragon. We need a strongman who is not intimidated by our four dragons; who is not deluded by an emasculated, pacifist, lets-all-just-get-along progressivism. DJT has shown ferocity against Cultural Liberalism (Supreme Court), China and Iran. Not so much Russia. We hope and pray that, in all his flaws, inadequacies and policy randomness, he will be the  strongman we need in this dangerous world. May God bless him in this work! 

The Moral Dilema of "Gone, Baby, Gone"

 I invite you, Dear Reader, to see the movie "Gone Baby, Gone" available now on Prime Video. It is a standard investigative mystery about a missing child but, like every great movie, raises that genre to a new level. The plot unravels with surprises that are, retrospectively, coherent with the entire narrative. Marvelously directed by first-time Ben Affleck, it is dominated by the superb performance of his brother Casey as protagonist, tough, young Irish Catholic private investigator in gritty, corrupt, brutal Catholic Boston area. The ensemble cast is extraordinary: Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, Amy Ryan, a lovely Michele Monahan, and strong supporting performances including a short, electrifying scene with the magnificent Michael Williams (of happy memory who played Omar Little in The Wire.)

The protagonist rises to the level of a classic hero: courageous, smart, calm, persistent. He is a man of honor: wearing a cross and medal, he refers more than once to advice given him by a priest. He is entirely at home in the violence and decadence of the ambiance. He is no saint: he lives with his partner/lover: but with Michele Monahan can you blame him? At one point he surrenders to rage and murders a pedophile/murderer. Emotionally everyone would approve, but his conscience torments him; again he refers back to his Catholic faith. 

But what sets the movie apart is the excruciating moral dilemma at the conclusion. I will not be a spoiler. Please watch it! Does Patrick McKenzie do the right thing? Or is his girlfriend right?  Please watch with your spouse, sibling or friend of the opposite sex: I am guessing there will be a gender divide on this one. We learned from feminist psychologist Carol Gilligan that the female moral conscience is more relational, concrete, compassionate than the moral-principle-and-order-based masculine psyche. Another way of viewing it is the divide between the consequentialist (used to be called "situation ethics") and the "essentialist" perspectives. The protagonist, you will see, is strongly masculine and essentialist, which is to say Catholic.

To illuminate the dilemma consider another, similar: a historical one. At the end of World War II, a devout Catholic Polish family faced a crisis: when the Nazis took control of Poland, their Jewish neighbors entrusted to them their baby with the understanding that later the little one would be returned to them or their family in Canada. The Jewish family perished in the Holocaust. The Catholic family now loved the little one. Additionally, they would of course have believed the eternal salvation of the soul would be more certain within Catholic devotional and sacramental life than in a Judaism that continues to deny the claims of Christ. They consulted their parish priest. Surprisingly, for that Catholic time and place, the priest said they were morally obliged to return the child to the biological Jewish family. 

In this he affirmed three truths: first, the binding nature of a moral promise; secondly, the sacred nature of the biological family; thirdly, a trust that God's salvific action is effective beyond the explicit boundaries of the Catholic Church, specifically in a Rabbinic Judaism that continues after millennia to renounce the messianic claims of Jesus Christ. He was startlingly "liberal" in the classic sense: open-minded, free-spirited, affirmative of all that is good and true and beautiful. 

That priest became John Paul II. Already in 1945 he was thinking with Vatican II (1962-5). I can think of no one who manifests a consciousness that is at once virile, essentialist, Catholic and yet classically liberal and influenced by the feminine, especially the Marian.

As you ponder the conclusion of "Gone Baby Gone," recall this significant incident!

Please let me know your thoughts!

A Prayer

This prayer is best read and said after and before listening to Matt Mahr's "Lord, I Need You"

Lord, I need you...desperately!

 I want YOU...and all things only in you!

 I choose you...and renounce all that is not of you.

I receive You!

I thank you.

I trust you.

I love you.

I adore you.

I serve you.

Jesuits, Frenemies, Dear Friends and Worthy Adversaries: A Love Story

The Society of Jesus has been a strong, consistent, salutory influence for my entire life. I grew up with America Magazine. My maternal grandfather was reading it back in the 1930s; my mother introduced my father to it. More recently, my granddaughter has worked and written for it as an intern. As a union leader, my father participated in the 1950s in the JesuitfSt. Peter's Labor Institute, Jersey City, which brought together leadership from industry and labor to share Catholic social doctrine. The Waterfront Priest was visible in our house; the book represented the Church and Union, the two institution which structured our world; and inclined me to cherish the movie On The Waterfront, which gets my vote as best movie ever made. I did not attend Jesuit prep school or college; but my two sons, son-in-law, and grandson did both; and I have delighted to see them receive such a fine education. On approaching my own high school graduation, I was drawn to the Jesuits and Maryknoll; the attraction of service of the poor and adventure overseas won out.

For the two years (1969-71) after graduation from Maryknoll College Seminary, during which we wed, I studied theology at Union Theological Seminary and Woodstock Theologate in NYC. At the former I engaged the finest minds in liberal Protestant theology of the time. But at the later I encountered two mentor/teachers who deeply influenced my faith and thought. Fr. (later Cardinal) Avery Dulles SJ was unequaled, in American Catholic theology of the second half of the 20th century, for his orthodoxy, balance, influence, humility, depth and breath of thought. He looked and presented himself like one of my uncles: long, lean, lanky, precise, thoughtful, awkward, self-effacing. He represented for me the ideal theologian! Even more personally influential was Father Joe Whelan SJ, the most holy man I ever knew. He rooted solid theology in the mystical, the life of prayer, deep within the heart of the Church. He introduced me to Balthasar's classic "Sanctity and Theology" and his "kneeling theology." He had written his thesis on Baron Freidrich von Hugel, himself a mystic, a one time "modernist" who sublimely integrated an organic Catholic conservatism with a wholesome, liberal openness to the best of modernity.

At this same time I taught religion at Xavier H.S. NYC and befriended my department chair, Fr. Neil Doherty SJ who became for me a spiritual director. Prayerful, erudite, gentle and humble in spirit, he was a true son of St. Ignatius. In the same mode was Fr. John Wrynn SJ, historian at St. Peter's College, who was spiritual director and friend to me for close to 40 years.

Our children were deeply influenced by the Jesuits of St. Peter's Prep and (then) College in Jersey City of the 1990s and afterwards. At "Prep" my sons and son-in-law were deeply touched by the famed Tony Azzarto, Browning, Keenan and others.  My oldest grandson also benefited from Jesuit secondary and now university education. My son-in-law has given himself over to the mission of Ignatian secondary education. 

At many levels Jesuit high schools provide an excellent education. Academically without a doubt. More importantly is the "care of the person": a wholesome environment in which young men thrive, good role models, solid values, strong extracurricular and athletic programs. In catechesis, there is a weakness: while not as drastic as that in the colleges, cultural/political progressivism has a strong, pervasive influence, especially in my NY/NJ blue location. There is more likelihood of a LGBTQ than a prolife club; more probable to hear in religion class about Critical Race Theory than John Paul's theology of the body. The leaning is to present as  Catholic the progressive viewpoint on prudential issues about which we can disagree for example on immigration, climate, warfare, systemic racism and capital punishment.  I was myself, nevertheless, satisfied that the positives overcame the deficits, which I as parent worked strenuously to overcome, personally and with the help of a range of more traditional-evangelical-charismatic involvements. 

At "The College" there was my friend Wrynn, Kennedy, Ruane, Buckley, Lynch, Sheridan, Majewski. These were a clear and distinct cohort: the quiet generation, mostly of Irish descent, they came of age in the thriving, confident post-War Catholicism of the 1950s. They were young priests at the time of the Council (1962-5) and deeply inhaled the positivity, hopefulness, ecumenism, open-mindedness, and confidence that permeated the air we breathed. When the Cultural-Sexual Revolution exploded a few years later, their persons and philosophies were set in place; they neither participated nor resisted; they abstained and remained detached, neutral for the remainder of their lives. They were intelligent, erudite, low key, good natured, reserved, devout in a low key, connosieurs of quality alcohol and food, prayerful men of the Church. In sexuality as in piety, they were reserved,  quiet, shy: virile, chaste, reverent and affectionate towards women, gentlemanly in the best old-fashioned manner. Our Church and world today would benefit from measured dosage of that residual Irish Jansenism they carried! Outstanding educators, devoted to the Ignatian "cura persona," they provided a rich environment for our young people to thrive. A deep debt of gratitude is due!" 

I maintain strong connection to Maryknoll from my college seminary days; I have worked happily in schools with Lodi Felicians, Caldwell Dominicans, and  Convent Station charities; and in recent years our family has become close to the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, certainly a contrasting flavor with the Jesuits. But our family and I myself have always benefited from our friendship with the Jesuits. The Society retains, even in the light of recent history, our affection, gratitude and respect.

The Authentic Ignatian Legacy

The Jesuit Order I, with the entire Tridentine Church (1540-1960), so esteemed...of Francis Xavier, Robert Bellarmine, Edmund Campion,  Isaac Jogues, Mateo Ricci, Miguel Pro, John Corridan (waterfront priest), Walter Ciszek, and so many others...was militantly Catholic, theologically orthodox, fierce-fearless-virile, agonistically engaged with Protestants, communists, paganism, and union gangs. It was comfortable in argument because it was clear, certain, passionate. It took a special \vow of fidelity to the Pope. It was the "navy seals" of the Catholic Church: combative and forceful against anything that threatened the Church.

Transformation of the Jesuits in the 1960s: Three Paths

The Society underwent a profound transformation in the late 1960s. Perhaps more than any other Catholic group, it suffered the catastrophic convergence the two defining events of the time, one providential, the other diabolical: Vatican II opened the Church to the world in a posture of welcome, inclusion, affirmation and positivity; just as that world exploded in the Cultural Revolution. And so, the Jesuit Order, with the entire Church, found itself engaged, both accommodated and resisting,  a godless, increasingly totalitarian modernity now sexually liberational, deconstructive of gender/family, militantly progressive, hype-technological, destructive of organic/intermediate organizations, culturally Marxist (identity politics, CRT), in worship of the isolated Sovereign Self, individualized and isolated, subservient to the mega-State and malignant corporate globalism.

Three aspects of the order, previously so combatively-counterculturally, thickly, militantly Catholic, inclined it to accommodate to modernity: its striking individualism (for example the Spiritual Exercises) and weakened communal bonds (compared to monastic and mendicant orders); it's strong academic orientation which made it vulnerable to an intellectual world going secular; and its goal to "find God in all things" which on a superficial level tends to affirm and accept current, worldly fashion. And so in the 1960s, with the Church's "opening to the world," in the middle of the Cultural-Sexual Revolution, we find three distinct pathways emerging: Progressive, Organic Conservative and Moderate.

Progressives

Four pivotal figures of the 1960s clearly represent  post-Vatican II Catholic Progressivism:  Teilhard de Chardin, Karl Rahner, Bernard Lonergan, and Pedro Arrupe together represent the turn to the political, evolutionary progress, fascination with subjectivity, and the sterilization of sexuality.

Teilhard articulated a Darwinian (not Hegelian/Marxist) vison of evolutionary progress  as an inevitable dynamic, like the development of a plant or animal. This inclines to a progressivism that is looking to move always beyond a past viewed as deficient. This is at  least in tension with a Catholicism that looks always back to a final, definitive, incomparable Revelation in Jesus Christ and his engagement with the primitive, apostolic Church. At the heart of progressivism is a constant overcoming of the past viewed condescendingly as ignorant and deficient; at the heart of Catholicism is a retrieval and renewal of a superabundant Revelation which has been given-handed down-received, even as it develops organically and finds fresh expressions. Teilhard is himself not as fashionable and influential as he was in the 1970s; but his faith in progress is a foundation of modernity.

Lonergan and Rahner are rightly associated with each other as "transcendental Thomists" in their intention to translate Thomas into the Kantian universe with its centering of the constructive human intellect, in contrast to the receptive/contemplative intellect in the classical tradition. With Lonergan, we might highlight his concern, much like Teilhard, with historicity. Rightly understood, this awareness is an admirable and salutary development of the contemporary mind. However, divorced from a classical Thomistic ontology and epistemology, it can degrade into a "historicity" which removes stable philosophical foundations and abandons all belief and practice to change, relativism and cultural construction. And so followers of Lonergan typically discard the Greek metaphysics of Plato/Aristotle in favor of a Parmenedian elevation of change over permanence, whether in Darwinian, Hegelian or Nietezchian form.

Rahner, along with Lonergan,  attempts a reconstruction of Catholicism in light of the Kantian Self, focusing on human longings, thinking, judging and deciding. There is a shift away from the vertical, objective visitation from heaven of the eternal, now incarnate Logos in the specific concrete of Jesus Christ. As with history, the turn to the personal and interpersonal is a welcome development in contemporary thought, but if imbalanced leads to solipsism, relativism, and individualism.

Arrupe, Superior General of the order in this tumultuous time 1965-83, was surely the most influential Jesuit of the time. His personal holiness is clear. He responded to his traumatic experience of the Hiroshima bombing with a turn to the political. He is credited/discredited with the embrace of social justice by the society. This was hardly a rejection of the supernatural, but surely a new emphasis on the secular and especially leftist politics. And so we have  Daniel Berrigan, Robert Drinan, the brothers Cardenal in Nicaragua, liberations theologians like Sobrino and Segundo, and the embrace of leftist political ideology by the entirety of  Jesuit higher education in the USA. In this he allowed if he did not encourage the politicization of the order.

Less known about him is a letter to the Society he wrote in 1968 in which he strongly, eloquently endorsed Humanae Vitae. He fiercely recalled the original Ignatian charism of fidelity to the papacy and called for thoughtful, prayerful, filial submission to the controversial encyclical. In this essential matter he reflects an organic conservatism alongside of his political liberalism. This splendid expression of fidelity to Catholic tradition was not widely emulated within the society. Rather, the embrace of contraception, the rejection of Humanae Vitae, notably by Teilhard-Rahner-Lonergan, set the tone for elite leadership, especially in higher education.

These four figures were admirable in their erudition, grounding in tradition, outstanding character and personal piety. The canonization process for Arrupe is proceeding smoothly: a 10,000 page document was submitted by the diocese to the Vatican. However, these seemingly minor theoretical errors, when handed down to the their proteges, in chaos of the Cultural Revolution, had disastrous consequences. It can be compared to the launch of a satellite to outer space: a small error can result in a large miss.

Organic Conservatism

Prominent Jesuits Balthasar, DeLubac, Danielou and others developed the Resourcement theology which largely guided the Vatican Council and developed out of that event into the Communio school. They looked to the past, Scripture and the Church fathers/doctors, to retrieve and then develop Tradition in an organic, consistent, fluid manner, in conversation with the best of modernity. Crucially, they articulated the classical Catholic understanding of sexuality as conjugal (unitive, procreative, sacred) in fresh expressions, notablyin John Paul's Theology of the Body. Unfortunately, with exceptions (Fessio, Baker, Schall, Oakes and of course the esteemed Dulles) this thought was ignored by Jesuit theology, when it was not explicitly rejected (for example by  James Martin.)

They were accused (and still are) of modernism by more strict Thomists, often Dominicans, like Fr. Garrigou-LaGrange and Cardinal Ottaviani; as they were rejected as reactionary by the progressives. Their avoided the  extremes of a progressivism, contemptuous of the past,  and rigid traditionalism. It found authoritative expression in the pontificates of John Paul and Benedict.

Moderates

The majority of Jesuits (like most priests and laity)(and notably the quiet generation), in my experience, are neither progressive nor conservative, but moderate. They abstain from the Culture War. They could not/would not deliver a clear, firm sermon for/or/against the masculine priesthood, contraception, gay marriage or IVF. They are men of good character, fine scholars, loyal to the Church, balanced and prudent. Their neutrality is in part  pastoral sensitivity to the opposing  interests in the Church. It can also be seen as modest patience in waiting for the Church to be guided by the Holy Spirit. The problem is, however, that these are hard binary choices: if women can be priests, the Church is and has been misogynist. Additionally, given the dynamic power of change and "progress," there is no real ground of neutrality: to tolerate the attack on traditional Catholic beliefs is itself to enable it. It is like a security guard who decides to stay neutral when the bank is robbed. It suggests a deficiency in virile clarity-courage-decisiveness, the very hallmarks of the classical Ignatian legacy.

This condition is quite pronounced in our Jesuit Pope Francis. He has failed to present a clear, coherent vision; he implicitly rejects the legacy of his two predecessors; he has not delivered a clear liberal program; he has plunged the Church into confusion and polarization with his crusade for vague "synodality;" and so he has frustrated both conservatives and progressives. 

Triumph of the Progressives

With the majority of Jesuits ambivalent/undecided and a smaller, critical mass on both sides of the divide, we see the outcome: clear  victory of the liberals in all the elite Jesuit institutions, specifically the universities and America Magazine. This reflects, of course, a similar result across Catholicism and the entire range of elite, secular society. And so we have the widespread view, among conservatives, of Jesuits as Marxists, heretics and libertines. This is unfair to the majority of Jesuits; but is not without basis in the actual Culture War of our time.

Sense of Betrayal

Much that is most precious to us as Catholics...the conjugal nature of sexuality, the iconic sacredness of masculinity/femininity, the virility of our priesthood as expressive of the Bridegroom's love for his Bride, our filial loyalty to Tradition, reverence for the Magisterium...is despised by Cultural Progressivism as misogynist, homophobic, reactionary, authoritarian, clericalist, irrational, and rooted in fear, hatred and ignorance. In this context, the accommodation of our prestigious Jesuit institutions to modernity can only be felt as betrayal. It is because we love the Jesuits, because we esteem them so, because they have traditionally so encouraged and inspired us, that the betrayal is so wounding.

Enemies: A Love Story

Truth, as received within the Church, is worth fighting and dying for. The Jesuit order is remarkable precisely for the heroes and martyrs who did just that: in Elizabethan England, China/Japan, Canada and South America, Masonic Mexico, Spain of the 1930s, the Soviet Gulag. on NJ docks...around the world and through the centuries. This is a hill upon which we will die.

And so, it is an excruciating irony that in our time it is the elite Jesuit institutions (not by any means all Jesuits) who have turned against fundamentals of our Catholic faith. In the genuine Ignatian tradition of the centuries, even reflected in the Arrupe letter of 1968, we are impelled to contradict these errors, these untruths, in defense of our faith as received.

However, as we hate the sin but love the sinner, so we reject the error but not the erroneous one. Our communion within the Church is founded upon Truth. But that is not all. Dogma and morals is NOT everything. Within our families and communities we may disagree in theology and politics, but other bonds unite us: mutual affection and reverence, our life of worship, shared concern with the poor, social justice, delight in culture/art/beauty, and a shared desire for the True, the Good and the Beautiful. Fierce, passionate, intelligent, informed argumentation is part of the Jesuit legacy. And so we engage our antagonists combatively, but respectfully. They are themselves men of sincerity, honor, deep faith,  intelligence, erudition, character and considerable charm. They are worthy adversaries. They are deserve our respect. 

I cherish and revere my Catholic liberal friends and family, Jesuit and otherwise. It is like a healthy married couple that has learned to fight fairly and respectfully, if emotionally. The passion, clarity, certitude of my argument with the dominant progressive wing of the Jesuit society does not diminish my affection and respect. The two enhance and heighten each other. This is a love affair; if combative and passionate!

The Mercy of God

 Dives in Misericordia (Rich in Mercy), which I read shortly after it was issued by John Paul in 1980, influenced me more than any other book. By a providential grace, I read it just before the heartbreaking death, by suicide, of my wife's brother Al...the singular, incomparable tragedy of our shared life. Al was endearing and admirable in a million ways: gentle, kind, intelligent, athletic, handsome, inquisitive, charming. He suffered emotional distress gravely and heroically for many years. He fought it with all the resources available to him: psychology, "Recovery" self-help groups which he led, healing through prayer, exercise, a beautiful relationship with a lovely woman who loved him dearly. There was nothing that he could have done that he didn't do to overcome his distress. Before his (apparently) final act, he lit a candle...surely a gesture of hope and prayer. Before that he assisted his elderly stepfather in taking off his boots. 

His wake and funeral were extraordinary. There is nothing like a young death from a big family to bring out huge numbers of grievers/comforters. The kindness, compassion and love of all these people was overwhelming. A single thought gripped my mind:  "If all these people are so merciful, how much more so is God, who is full of mercy, the source of all mercy."

At that point, the Mercy of God, became the defining reality of my life. Everything else came to be seen in the light of this.

What is Mercy?

Mercy is the response to sin and suffering by goodness, generosity, abundance, compassion, strength, and love.

Without sin or suffering, you do not have mercy. So, in the Garden of Eden and after the second coming of Christ there is no mercy. Within God's very self, there is no mercy, as he has neither sin nor suffering. So, we may say that mercy is the defining form of God's relationship to us in this life, finite-dependent-sinful creatures that we are. It will have no place after this life in the eternity of heaven. And it had no place in the life of God prior to creation. The exercise of freedom by us, his creatures, in choosing evil and the consequential suffering  is what elicited from his infinite goodness the reality of Mercy.

Imagine a joyous wedding party where everyone is happy, thriving, celebrating:  the bride and groom are ecstatic, the parents and family overflowing with joy, all the guests are dressed up, satisfied and euphoric. At this moment there is love, joy, hope, generosity...but no real mercy, because there is evident here no sin or suffering. And so heaven we are told is like a wedding feast.

 Mercy in Context and Relationship

 In the teaching of John Paul, following the revelations to St. Faustina, Mercy is not a monotone; it is held in tension with truth, justice and holy wrath. This is fully in accord with the clear teaching of Jesus himself as well as that of the saints and the Church throughout the ages. 

The mass readings during this month of November are from Revelation and the gospels and deal with the end times: descriptions of terror, wrath, punishment on Babylon, the great serpent and all evil. They are fierce and frightening. We are directed this month, ending the liturgical year, to consider the Last Things: death, judgement, heaven and hell. Clearly, God's Mercy is not a dismissal of judgement, Truth, punishment and wrath. Rather, it remains in tension with these dimensions of God's relation to sin, error and evil. 

We might say that the Catholic Church, in our age, since WWII, has shifted its theological gestalt to highlight more clearly, especially in light of St. Faustina's revelations, the victory of God's Mercy. For example, we now grant funeral masses for victims of suicide. This is probably due to the enhanced grasp of God's goodness as well as a development in anthropology/psychology and our understanding of the forces that diminish freedom and therefore culpability. However, with the Church of the ages, we kneel in awe of a Holy God, powerful in Mercy but also in truth, justice and wrath.

Disordering, Exaggeration, and Cheapening of Mercy

A troubling development during the pontificate of Pope Francis is presentation of Mercy as a monopolistic absolute, uprooted from its connections with other realities of the Divine. And so we read that Mercy defines the very essence of God, as if there is mercy within the Divine, even before the exercise of creaturely freedom. And so there is dismissal of the reality of hell, accountability and judgement. Mercy as kindness and acceptance dominates as to dismiss or diminish Truth.  Moral absolutes, around sexuality especially, are minimized on behalf of a soft love and a cheap mercy. Mention of moral absolutes, punishment, chastity, Lucifer, hell, law, spiritual warfare...all of this, essential to our legacy, is reconfigured as legalism, dogmatism, rigidity, clericalism, and so forth.  

The result is a cheapened, soft, effete kind of mercy as unconditional acceptance and affirmation, void of masculine virtues of fortitude, purity,  zeal, and fear of the Lord.

Real Mercy

The real deal, that we learn from St. Faustina and John Paul and the entire tradition: Mercy is even more magnificent in relation to the holiness, the justice, the wrath of God. It triumphs, not by dismissing or diminishing those mysteries, but by miraculously encompassing them. This is not something we can understand. We can only kneel and adore before it.

A Populist Authoritarian? Or Progressive Totalitarianism? What's a Catholic to Do? Or: Why I Voted for a Morally Repugnant Wannabe Dictator

Dedicated to Dr. Wilbur Puhr PhD who came to Maryknoll College Seminary from the University of Chicago to teach us political science and introduced us to the magnificent thought of Hannah Arendt, including her pivotal distinction between the authoritarian and the totalitarian in the classic Origins of Totalitarianism  (a must-read to think politically after 1945.) And a fond memory of dinner and drinks with him in Ivan Illich's marvelous Cuernavaca, summer of 1968, in the midst of all the social and ecclesial uproar.

What's the Difference Between Authoritarian and Totalitarian?

The former demands complete political control and will crush any opposition or political pluralism, including freedom of speech. But if you do not challenge his political control, he can be a good neighbor and friend. He will live easily with cultural and societal pluralism: religious activities, evangelization, private enterprise, various schools, non-profits, art and such.

The later is a far darker, deeper nemesis. Flowing from a total, quasi-religious fanaticism, it seeks to control all of human life: religion, family, education, economics, culture and art. This we might call "radical evil"...a real visitation from hell on earth. A far, far deeper evil than routine dictatorship.

Portugal's Salazar, Spain's Franco, and (arguably) Italy's Mussolini were authoritarians; Hitler, Stalin and Mao were totalitarians. Contrast: 1930s Spain of Franco and the Popular Front; Vietnam under Diem and the Viet Cong; Iran under the Shah and the Mullahs; Nicaragua under Somoza and the Sandinistas; Cuba under Batista and Castro; Russia and Eastern Europe after and before 1989.

Totalitarianism flows from an ideology, a total, but reductive view of the person and uses violence to destroy anything that resists this: Nazism (racial), Communism (economic), Sharia Islam (religous), and Cultural Progressivism (sexual).

 Trump: Incompetent, Aspiring Dictator

As a person, Trump epitomizes and aggravates the moral depravity of our age: post-Sexual-Revolution-of-1960s. He is an entertainer, a celebrity, a flaming narcissist who demands attention. He is not a power broker. He did not consolidate power in his first term. His defiance of the  2020 election was futile, ridiculous, and pathetic. His current crusade for Matt Gaetz as Attorney General is a case in point: a self-defeating waste of energy out of his obsessional resentment against a Department of Justice that targeted him in four prosecutions that were poorly founded, political and finally self-defeating . His insistence will elicit resistance from a critical mass of moderate Republicans or eventually (if he achieves recess appointments) from a Supreme Court. While he has consolidated control over the RNC, he is erroneously presuming a huge mandate out of an election that was a virtual tie. He is riding for a fall. Traditional Republicanism is in decline, but has not disappeared. More importantly, failing that guardrail, we have a Supreme Court that is conservative, but not mechanically so. A recent NY Times article enumerated the many cases in which Justice Barrett resisted the "conservative" position out of  rigorous legal reasoning. She is not alone: Roberts rescued the Affordable Care Act and Gorsuch infamously installed gay marriage as law of the land. Alito and Kavanaugh are also capable of surprisingly independent thought. I am optimistic about the strength and resilience of our political institutions. My liberal family and friends disagree; but they hope that I am right.

A Modest Catholic Proposal

The USA of 1970 was entirely different from that of 1960. We might understand it as the Invasion of the Body Snatchers: same body but now indwelt by an alien spirit. The 1960 reality was exuberantly Christian, Ecumenically-Protestant-and-Catholic-Friendly, after victory in WWII and united in opposition to the communist USSR. A single technology, in the 1960s, along with a perfect storm of developments, transformed our culture: Contraception. Sex was torn from marriage, children, fidelity, chastity; abortion became an absolute necessity; divorce and cohabitation became the new norm; pornography an epidemic; religion declined; the family was broken along with all the smaller/intermediate institutions that nourished it; Big Government and Big Business took control in service of the sovereign-indulgent-unhinged-isolated Self. Some of us were slower than others (many are still stuck cognitively in a euphoric 1960), but sometime in the 1970s, certainly by the time John Paul became pope in 1978, the Catholic found himself a stranger in a strange Brave-New-Progressive-Catholic-Despising-World. Classic Catholicism was suddenly reconfigured by Progressivism as misogynist, homophobic, reactionary, authoritarian and later transphobic and often racist, greedy and even fascist.

In this context, we Catholics do not ambition to transform society: to eliminate abortion, global warming, gun violence, social inequality, warfare, birth control, adultery and crime. No! Our primary goal is simple and modest: to live our faith. We aspire to freedom to live our way of life, raise our children in it, and share it with others who desire it. But we must fight fiercely for that liberty. It is at risk in a Progressive, totalitarian world hostile to it. 

And so, for example, we will insist that our own hospitals, doctors and nurses, tax and insurance money will NOT be used to kill the unborn, to make and freeze embryos, to reconfigure the gendered human body. It is true that two thirds of black babies conceived in NYC are destroyed in the womb; that Afro-Americans continue to vote pro-choice in large numbers. There is little we can do for those babies as that is  the overwhelming consensus of that demographic. However we will fight fiercely to protect our own way of life. We will NOT cooperate with abortion, IFV, or trans-surgery.

Progressive Totalitarianism

- Kamala Harris insisted that there would be no religious exemptions  regarding her sacred "reproductive rights." The religious dare not resist the absolute, unconditional right to kill the unborn; additionally they will be required to cooperate with it. For good reason did she boycott the Alfred Smith dinner in NYC: she realizes her agenda is hostile to that of the Church.

- Catholic agencies across the country have closed their adoption services as they are required to place little girls and boys with homosexual couples.

- The Little Sisters of the Poor, who sacrificially serve the poor and elderly, have been forced to court repeatedly to resist state coercion to support contraception and abortion as regulated under the Affordable Care Act.

- In the Covid crisis, Churches (with the compliance of bishops who are most to blame for this) were closed across the nation, depriving all of us, including the dying and dead, of the sacraments. Meanwhile large BLM rallies were tolerated and liquor stores, gyms, and mainstream institutions remained open.

- Trans-females, biological males who prefer another gender, are granted "constitutional" (???) rights to use female bathrooms and compete in woman's sports.

- Believers who do not accept "gay marriage" are coerced, against their inner convictions, to bake cakes and take pictures at these events.

- In vitro fertilization, an artificial, expensive and unnatural practice, which freezes millions of small human beings (what else are they?) is widely, unthinkingly embraced across the society, including by the ignorant Trump and much of the RNC.

- Mainstream Catholics (Knights of Columbus, Latin mass folks, Pro-life centers) are targeted by FBI memos, Senate hearings for justices, and widespread vandalism that goes unaddressed by liberal prosecutors.

The pattern is consistent, assertive and systemic: the Progressive State cannot tolerate the Catholic way of life. In that it agrees with Nazism, Communism, and Sharia law. But not on behalf of the master race, the working class, or the Koran; but on behalf of the Sovereign Self.

Global Culture Wars

On the international level, the Christian order is engaged in agonistic struggle with three and a half totalitarianisms. The "half," and in the long term least threatening, is Putin whose racial/cultural imperialism makes him more than your ordinary dictator but less than full scale totalitarianism. The communism of China, North Korea and Cuba is totalitarianism pure and simple; but now more technologically potent than that of Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Likewise, Sharia law is classical totalitarianism, but it is divided against itself in its Sunni/Shiite forms, Iran and international terrorism, and therefore less powerful. The most insidious, camouflaged, and close at hand is Cultural Progressivism. It presents as liberational in its crusade for the isolated, rootless, sovereign Self as it systemically destroys the bonds (especially the most sacred, father-mother-child) that bind us to each  other. The enemy close at hand is worse than that overseas.

We find ourselves in complex, contradictory conflicts and shifting alliances. Currently, Iran, China and North Korea are aligned in the Ukraine, while a fragile Nato consensus faces the Trumpian intention to detach and make peace. In the Culture War however, Putin himself supports Christian tradition against Cultural Progressivism. So we see that his endorsement by Archbishop Vigano is not entirely crazy (but only 90% crazy!) Recall also that John Paul's struggle against the abortion imperialism of the West in the Cairo and Peking conferences found its best allies in the Islamic countries. 

We defeated Hitler in partnership with Stalin. In the "real politique" of the Cold War we supported many dictatorships as the lessor evil than the imperialistic, totalitarian order. And so now, in the new, violent, multi-polar order, we do well to follow the "Christian Strategy" of Adrian Vermulle: position ourselves pragmatically but not absolutely with those parties who advance and protect our concerns. 

Conclusion

Yes, Trump entertains authoritarian impulses: he imagines himself as John Gotti on a global level. I am confident that our political institutions are resilient and will resist his chaos. He is a world class demagogue, a flaming narcissist, a product of the sexual revolution, a low-class and crude American, a xenophobe, a moral counter-exemplar, a cartoon character, a buffoon. He has become the voice of the underclass, the marginalized, those despised (as ignorant, racist, homophobic) by the liberal elite. He has championed our religious freedom, the nature of the gendered-sexual person and family, and the inviolate value of  every person, however small or powerless. Given the choice between a real, camouflaged but pervasive Progressive totalitarianism and our aspiring,  often entertainingly transgressive (against dogmatic "wokism") strong man... the choice is easy.  He is a jerk, but he is our jerk. He is the enemy of our enemy; so he is a friend.

 

The Feminine Voice and Intellect: Confessions of a Catholic Philogynist

There is nothing like a dame...nothing in the world...there is nothing you can name...that is anything like a dame.          Rogers and Hammerstein, "South Pacific"

I fell into a burning ring of fire.     Johnny Cash

It will not surprise you, dear Reader, that your Fleckinstein has been accused of being "patriarchal" and so, however unintentionally, misogynist. The reality is entirely different: an extreme love of women, even approaching adoration. Why such intense attraction? Admiration? Delight? Obsession? Desire? Tenderness? It is in part temperamental: we see in many young ones a pronounced attachment to the mother or father, to women or men. But most responsibility goes to my own mother, a woman of exceptional beauty, inner and outer, and generosity. She mothered me wonderfully. Additionally, I have been very loved by very many very good women. And so, in every encounter with a woman, (not excluding psychopaths, borderlines, criminals) I have zero capacity for sustained suspicion, resentment or malice as I resonate with radiant positivity, quiet euphoria, serenity, trust and impulsive generosity. Eve's sin I personally blame on the passivity and neglect of Adam. And so you see here the root of my boundless contempt for Cultural Progressivism: it denies the iconic loveliness of the feminine as well as the heroic nobility of genuine virility. Granted I have suffered more than my share of toxic gynephilia, understood here as disordered attraction to women, rooted in concupiscence, that is needy-selfish-lustful-covetous-sterile-ungenerous. But one of the joys of aging within the sacramental embrace of our maternal Church is the slow but steady diminishment of those disordered cravings and the purification and intensification of wholesome philogyny as generous, fraternal, paternal, free and fruitful. 

Whitney Houston, Barbara Streisand, Maria Callas, Julie Andrews, Cher, Amy Grant, Taylor Swift, Joan Baez, Celine Dion...What is it about a woman's voice? Indescribable! Delightful, abundant, generous, resonant with emotion, at once earthly and heavenly, inspiring, mystical and miraculous, down-to-earth, heartbreaking, lucid, iconic, comforting, inebriating and yet sobering.

Similarly, in these my "golden years," I clearly prefer woman writers and thinkers, in all my areas of interest: spirituality, theology, psychology, philosophy, culture and even politics. My favorites:

Contemporary: Heather King, Tracey Rowlands, Mary Anne Glendon, Mary Harrington, Patricia Snow, Abigail Favale, Mary Eberstadt, Mary Healy, Rhonda Chevrin, 

Late 20th Century:  Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Adrienne von Speyr, Madaleine Del Brell, Caryll Houselander, Elizabeth Anscombe, Elizabeth Moberly, 

Early 20th Century:  Edith Stein, St. Faustina, St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, Elizabeth Leseur, Flannery O'Connor, Etty Hellison, Sigrid Undset, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil.

My own intellect is very masculine: abstract, detached, clear, certain, prosaic, sober, authoritative, transcendent of emotion, comprehensive, assertive, combative, philosophical. So it needs the balance of the feminine intellect which is: contemplative, receptive, intuitive, sensitive, engaged, corporeal, synthetic, compassionate, artistic, fluid, organic, inclusive, refined, conciliatory.

 In accord with nature and Providence, the paternal and maternal complement and complete each other. The tragedy of our society is that we are both fatherless and motherless. Certainly we are not "patriarchy" in the sense of ruled by fathers. Rather, our culture is permeated by a disordered, toxic, diminished "masculinity" of technological control-abstraction-detachment, devoid of the feminine as natural, organic, receptive, communal and contemplative. And so, for example, mainstream feminism itself is a flight from the feminine in its competitive, jealous mimicry of disordered masculinity as sexual license, careerism, power-status envy, and individualism.

We find something entirely different in the internal life of the Marian, which is to say maternal, Catholic Church. Balthasar has taught us that the Marian (feminine, receptive, contemplative, unitive) influence is superior to the Petrine (masculine, hierarchical, apostolic).  And so, virile, priestly, apostolic authority that is authentically Catholic is never a mimicry of the power dynamics of the techno-dominant world, but rather placed under the influence of Mary, Queen of angels and saints, Mother of Christ and all of us. Genuine paternity is strong, stable, certain and is the fruit of the seed of the filial position of being both held and liberated by the loving Mother.

Carl Jung taught that in the second half of life the recessive, hidden aspect of the personality (the anima)  emerges so that the assertive male manifests feminine aspects previously camouflaged. This makes a great deal of sense. In any case, within Catholic life, reception of the feminine or Marian influence is essential to the maturation of fruitful paternity.  On that note, we end prayerfully:

We place ourselves, Mary our Mother, under the mantle of your holiness, your purity, your tenderness, your beauty and your love.