Remi Brague

My college friend Tim Regan recently directed me to French thinker Remi Brague. I immediately pre-ordered and excitedly await the release today, November 30, first Sunday of Advent, of his latest book: Eccentric Culture: A Theory of European Civilization. His thesis is that European, which is to say Christian, civilization is rooted in the mediation by Rome of two prior, foundational sources, Jerusalem and Athens. Rome, of course, contributed its own elements to our history, as did other cultures; but there was about Rome humility or deference to the Hellenic as a superior culture. And so, Roman Christianity deferred to both Greece and Israel as foundational sources. This makes Europe an “eccentric” civilization in that it centers not on itself, but on two points that are prior and external. This places our Christian identity in a refreshing and new light: we (cultural) Europeans (or Christians) are basically barbarians (non-Greeks) and gentiles (non-Jews.) Therefore, without discarding our inherited customs, we need constantly to be returning to our sources in Golden Greece and the Old/New Testament. If this is accurate, then our history can be understood as a series of evangelical revivals (of biblical faith) and cultural renaissances (retrieval of the classics.)

This fascinating model gives a novel way to evaluate developments of the second Vatican Council. One might identify three distinct forces at work in the renewal that led to and sprang from that momentous event: return to the Gospels, “resourcement” as a retrieval of ancient sources (especially the Fathers), and an updating or modernizing of our faith. The dominant, fashionable trend in the wake of the councils emphasized updating to the detriment of resourcement. Specifically, there emerged an emphasis upon the historicity of faith and dogma and an eagerness to deconstruct what was seen as a stale, rigid, ossified, Tridentine, Baroque Church. The battle call was to de-Hellenize the faith. Influential thinkers like Lonergan, Rahner and Dewart wanted to free theology and practice from imprisonment in antiquated concepts and rituals. Ironically, this group failed to see that they themselves were largely being swayed by currents of contemporary history that are, in large part, hostile to our ancient faith.

Happily, a countervailing school (DeLubac, Balthasar, and the brilliant young Ratzinger) were moving in an entirely different direction: more deeply into the sources, especially the Church Fathers who themselves were a providential articulation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ using Greek culture. This, of course, is the consistent Catholic way and the trend that has guided the magisterium through the persons of John Paul and Benedict and their collaborators. Meanwhile, most of the Christian academia has been in explicit or implicit retreat from the tradition of metaphysics, scholasticism, and the Fathers. Academic theology largely severed or ignored its roots in ancient philosophy and became enamored with the practical sciences of politics and psychology. Just recently, the General of the Jesuits expressed nostalgia for liberation theology which was itself largely a politicization of the faith.

Contemporary renewal movements are also illuminated by the new Brague model. Many of the most powerful are evangelical in nature as they return to the Gospels in a literal manner, especially Pentecostalism and the Neocatecumenal Way. The weakness of these currents is a tendency to primitivism (rejection of post-Apostolic Church developments), emotivism and anti-intellectualism. By contrast, we find in the Communion and Liberation Movement less evangelical intensity but a profound appreciation of culture in all its forms. Closely related to the Communio or Resourcement School of Theology, this group represents a kind of a cultural renaissance as it draws trustingly from contemporary and classic sources for spiritual and intellectual enlightenment and refreshment.

John Paul was at heart an evangelical, equally at home with Billy Graham, charismatics, and NeoCats; by contrast, Benedict is quintessentially a classicist, reading the Gospels through the lens of the Fathers, the ancients, and the very finest of our cultural heritage.

Partnering with the evangelicals and the “culturals,” we can enjoy both refreshments: that of revival and that of renaissance. It is a good time to be Catholic! Thanks Remi Brague!

The Thrill of Chaste, Fraternal Love in the Movies

“…his (Jesus) virginal way of loving is what makes him attractive to those he encounters. The woman caught in adultery, for example, realized after Jesus forgave her that she belonged to him more deeply than to the one from whose arms she was taken. Jesus did not treat her according to common expectations, but rather according to the design of the Father…He thus knew her more deeply and purely than anyone else…It was within that love that she felt free, totally herself in being totally his.” Father Antonio Lopez, “Mary Certainty of Our Hope,” in Communio, Summer 2008.

Fr. Lopez, following Balthasar, Giusanni and Benedict, sees that “virginal” love is that which allows the beloved to be in her beauty, without possessing or controlling in any way. And so, any genuine love has a virginal quality: it admires the beloved, cherishes and protects her, and detaches in admiration so as not to violate in the slightest manner. This love reached perfection, of course, in the Holy Family. But every romantic and marital love requires this dimension if it is to be genuine: it is the purification of eros by agape, a deeper and truer attachment through detachment, an entry into the unitive way by virtue of the purgative. Such virginal love sees the beloved in her comprehensive beauty, her multifaceted femininity inclusive of maidenly innocence, poignant victimization, and potential or actual maternity, but most especially sees her as cherished daughter of our heavenly Father.

The prime daily task of this male (and I don’t think I am exceptional) is to renounce lustful, possessive, covetous, egotistical cravings and grow in Christ-like virility as chastity, purity, generosity, courage, confidence, authority, tenderness, gentleness, protectiveness, truthfulness, and militancy. Each of us, in other words, is called to be a good brother to all the women in our lives, including our wives, girlfriends and lovers. The form of virility is fraternal love which includes delight, protection, attraction, renunciation and sacrifice.

Especially within marriage and courtship, brotherly love is primary and roots other dimensions of conjugal love, including the erotic and romantic. These later two are transient and unreliable: part of their excitement is that they come and go whimsically, without warning or logic. Unless rooted in the more admiring and agapic brotherly love, they eventually die and turn destructive, resentful and envious. However, when rooted in that steady, undying cruciform love, they are free to come and go as they will, bringing joy and delight, free of regret and desperation.

Where do we look in popular culture for such images of virility? So pervasive has become the erotic in its corrupted form that our culture has become a wasteland in regard to real masculinity. There is, however, a short list of inspirational movies.

Shane. In this 1953 western, the protagonist played by Alan Ladd is a wandering gunslinger who comes into town, is attracted to another man’s wife, becomes a role model for that couple’s young son, kills the bad guy, and then rides out of town in lonely fashion to the shouts of “Shane, come back!” This is a most archetypal image of virility: loneliness, courage in battle, renunciation of the beloved because she belongs to another. The John Wayne character in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence expressed the same theme: quintessential virility expressed as courage in conflict and sexual renunciation; the courage of the martyr combined with the purity of the virgin.

Stagecoach. This 1939 film, John Ford’s first “talkie,” is among the very first and very best westerns. The tough Ringo Kid, (a lean, handsome young John Wayne) falls for the beautiful Dallas (Claire Trevor), a prostitute who is being run out of town by a puritanical temperance league. Defying the consensus of contempt for Dallas, Ringo views her with unadulterated innocence and admiration and treats her like a lady. One is reminded of Dulcinea of The Man from La Mancha, not to mention the woman caught in adultery. In this case our hero dutifully kills the villain and then rescues his beauty and they drive away towards the horizon. In this story, our hero does win his beloved through his courage and the innocence of his affection.

Roman Holiday. Another 1953 classic, starring Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn, this may be the very best romance ever filmed. The chemistry between the exquisite Princess and the handsome reporter is at once thrilling, inspiring, delighting and finally ennobling. The setting of their surprising, innocent adventure in Rome further heightens the sense that their tender love attained an eternal and transcendent dimension that would enrich them and many others for ever. As he did in so many other roles, Gregory Peck expresses virility as tender, protective, pure, strong, confident, wise heterosexual affection in a manner that has never been surpassed.

Lost in Translation. In this 2003 movie, a wise but sad older man (Bill Murray in the performance of a lifetime) and a lonely, confused younger woman (stunning Scarlet Johanssen) discover each other and become emotionally intimate, sharing their most precious vulnerabilities and longings, in a manner that remains reverent and innocent. The loneliness, desire and sadness of each is so raw and the sexual attraction so evident that it is simply miraculous that they maintain a brotherly/sisterly, or even a fatherly/daughterly innocence and tenderness. Sophia Coppola is to be congratulated in providing such a stunningly countercultural and inspirational film.

Bella. In this 2007, low budget delight, a contrite and grieving chef (played by Latin heartthrob Eduardo Verastegui) reaches out in kindness to a distraught, now-unemployed waitress who finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy. Each protagonist is wounded and distraught and hardly ready for mature intimacy and fidelity. Within the context, however, of a supportive family and an itinerary of repentance, an exquisite brother/sister love affair develops. My students, addicted as they are in fantasy to the romantic as possessive, tend to reject the fraternal love theme of the movie and insist that Nina and Jose eventually “get together.”

This idea of the fraternal as the basis for the romantic was uncovered by John Paul in reflection on the Song of Songs in a series of talks he decided not to deliver in his catechesis on sexuality because their depth and sensitivity might be misunderstood and even scandalize the less mature. Christopher West has developed this trend of thought in a fresh and exciting new book Love’s Song. I cannot recommend this short, readable book enough: it encourages the integration of sexuality and spirituality in a profound and evocative manner. Having read the work a first time, I now carry it in my bag in anticipation of opportunities to read a paragraph or a page in meditative manner, preferably before the Eucharist.

Now in my 60s, I awake every morning with the same masculine ambition I conceived around the age of 13: to become a brave hero, to rescue my beauty from those who would possess or violate her. Now however, I have a sublime confidence that I can and will be come that hero…in sacramental union with our Lord, in communion with our Lady and all the saints, martyrs, virgins, and through the power of the Holy Spirit…I can become that hero imaged so vividly by Alan Ladd, John Wayne, Gregory Peck, Bill Murray and Eduardo Verastegui.

Dear Blog Reader,
Do you know of other movies that portray such chaste, fraternal, virile love?
I need all the encouragement and inspiration I can get (and I am not exceptional).
Fraternally,
Blogster Fleckinstein

Catholic Economics

Today our Church remembers Saint Roque Gonzalez (d. 1628) the gifted and courageous Spanish Jesuit, martyred by tomahawk, who founded the “reductions” of Paraguay. These idyllic communities combined, in a distinctive and creative manner, respect for the Indians, Catholic values, and communal-and-private use of property. They were repressed by Spain in reaction to Vatican resistance to the Spanish empire. The sadness associated with this loss, captured so well by the movie The Mission, can present a temptation, for the Catholic in our current context, to despair of the possibility of ever expressing the values of our faith in the larger political/economic arena. It feels as if the articulation of a Catholic politics will inevitably be overwhelmed by larger, impersonal forces: the global market economy, totalitarian systems, or the more subtle cultures of death that corrupt the familial basis of society and sacrifice the innocent and powerless.

Then, however, one comes upon an inspiration like the lecture “Market Economics and Ethics” (http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=8544) delivered by then-Cardinal Ratzinger in 1985, years before the 1989 collapse of communism and decades before the globalized, capitalistic crisis of 2008. With his typical lucidity and prescience, he critiqued both economic communism and classic liberal (we would call it conservative) free market capitalism. Both view economics as systems of absolute, mechanistic determinism: the one in dialectical materialism and the opposite in the “invisible hand” that magically coordinates a multitude of egoistic (often greedy) decisions into efficiency, abundance, and happiness for all. Neither system allows participation of the ethical, free, decisive person in economics: the one seeing only objectivistic determinations at work and the other marginalizing the ethical to the subjective or private realm. Without entering into any of the concrete, prudential details of political and economic controversy, the Cardinal insisted that economics, like politics, is an action of the human person and always presumes and expresses an ethical viewpoint.

This illumination is most pertinent for our current situation and specifically for the emerging battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. The surges of enthusiasm for Huckabee and Palin, as well as the clear rejection of Giuliani, certified that defense of the family and the innocent is the non-negotiable center of the movement. But economic policy is another thing. The “free-market-low-tax-small-government” libertarian wing of the party continues to dominate in economics. The McCain/Palin mavericks catered to this wing and worsened their chances in the face of the economic decline as their only chant became: “lower taxes and stop earmarks.”

That same wing now despises the Bush Administration for not being “truly conservative” in the venerated Reagan tradition. In fact George W. Bush did distance himself from the free market fanaticism associated with Reagan. For example, he tripled the amount of foreign aid over that of Bill Clinton, who is rightly regarded as an internationalist and humanitarian. This accomplishment, especially in regard to AIDs in Africa, as well his other efforts towards a “compassionate conservatism” earned him the animosity of that wing of his own party and did nothing to temper liberal resentment, which grew into an almost compulsive hysteria. The worst thing would be for the anti-Bush wave to install the free market extremists in control of the conservative movement.

An influx of working class and economically liberal Catholics into the Republican Party would both consolidate its commitment to innocent life and move it economically towards a common sense, pragmatic and worker-friendly economics, allowing for free markets influenced by government direction and correction. Such an approach is advocated by moderates like David Brooks and Douthat/Salam ("The Grand New Party.") The lack of such an exodus in the recent election is another reason it was such a disappointment.

The Catholic voice is entirely silenced and domesticated within the Democrat Party and may be overwhelmed by the free-marketers within the Republican Party. This leaves the Catholic voter in roughly the position of the Paraguayan reductions, portrayed by Jeremy Irons and the pugnacious Robert DeNiro, which is to say the position of our martyr-saint Roque Gonzalez, as the tomahawk split his skull.

Gratitude and Gift

The Gift is a concrete expression by the giver of his delight in the person of the receiver. Its intention or purpose is to awaken the delight, surprise, appreciation and praise of the recipient. It fructifies in this response spontaneously, serendipitously, and almost efficaciously, if not blocked by some suspicion or resentment.

The intention of the Gift can be frustrated by mere passivity as it is intended to awaken delight and pleasure. Equally, the goal of Gift can be aborted if it triggers a sense of debt in that an exact reciprocation is necessitated. So, there is an asymmetry rather than equality between giver and recipient: the one expresses delight in order to awaken a distinct type of delight in the other. There is mutuality as each takes delight in the other and in the other’s delight; but there is a distinction as they relate differently to the gift, one as giver and the other as receiver.

Within the Trinity, the Father is primarily Giver; the Son is essentially Recipient; and the Holy Spirit is the Given. All of creation images, by analogy, this inexhaustible flow of generosity and gratitude that is absolutely mutual and infinitely asymmetrical.

Creation is itself gratuitous, neither necessary nor random. As such, it moves inexorably towards delight, appreciation, ecstasy, gratitude and praise. The locus of this event is the human person and community. So, the entire universe is yearning to enter Eucharist, the feast of thanksgiving and praise.

All of created life images this generous and grateful dynamic except where it has been negated and diminished by demonic activisms of distrust, suspicion, anxiety, ambition, control and despair.

The entire Christian life, its moral code and belief system, moves us into the delight of the Gift-recipient. In the spirit of the Psalms, we sing our delight in the gifts and the Giver; and we ourselves delight the heart of our Father.

Our purpose: to live in delight, appreciation, gratitude and praise! All is Gift!

An Epiphany of the Heart

It was an extraordinary event: a genuine epiphany.

The year was 1998; the occasion was an international Recovery Convention for those seeking freedom from sexual compulsions through practice of the 12-steps of AA. So meaningful and fruitful were the special sessions for those with same-sex attraction that a large group had decided to spontaneously gather late Saturday evening, after all scheduled events, to continue sharing their “experience, strength and hope” in their common search for sobriety and interior freedom. The personal sharings grew deeper and truer, reaching unprecedented levels of candor, humility, sincerity, intimacy and vulnerability.

A brother spoke about the time he had called a young male prostitute to his hotel room.

“Please don’t think this is stupid. I will, of course, pay you the normal fee for your services. But that is not what I want. I just want you to be here with me. And I want you to hold me.”

“Oh, that’s not stupid,” replied the young man, “I get that all the time. That is what all you guys want.”

An awesome hush fell upon the room. A nerve had been struck. Then the weeping began. First it was gentle and quiet. Then it spread. There was not a dry eye in that large group of men. Then it grew in tenor and tone: deep, heartfelt moans and groans could be heard all over the room.

Only in the context of unusual spiritual honesty and vulnerability could such a profound disclosure occur. All of these men had been involved for some time in the 12-step process: fearless honesty in disclosure of character failures; amendment of past wrongs; full dependence upon a higher power; accountability through the sponsor relationship; acceptance of imperfection and growth in honesty and sobriety.

The core of homosexual desire was unveiled at that providential session: it is not about sex at all. It is the longing to be loved and to love; it is about the noble masculine hunger to be cherished as a son, as a brother, as a friend. It is the desire that, at the deepest level, defines each of us. It is, at last, a longing for our heavenly Father and His kingdom.

Political Narratives

Human existence, like each personal life, is a Great Drama and a series of smaller dramas. So the human mind always looks for the “story line” or narrative. This applies to politics. In 2008, a number of narratives compete for explanatory and illuminative influence.
1. Fight for Reproductive and Gay Rights. This narrative controls the Democrats and gained a huge victory with Obama who promised Planned Parenthood that his first act would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act.
2. Battle for the Family and the Holy Innocents. This story has been the most consistent theme of John Paul and Benedict and unites obedient Catholics with the Evangelicals (Huckabee/Palin) who have become the core of the Republican Party.
3. Economic Justice for the Poor. This continues to be a ruling narrative of the Democrats (health care, tax cuts for the middle class, stronger safety net) even though self-declared liberals are now more wealthy than conservatives who have increasingly become a party of rural, countercultural, lower-education and smaller-income populists.
4. Defense of Free Markets and Limited Government. This is a second pillar of the Republican Party and was rejected by the electorate who favors government intervention in the face of a threatening depression.
5. Rejection of the Militarism, Unilateralism, and Arrogance (of the departing administration.). This reaction is as strong from the smaller Paleoconservative Right as from the Left and prepared the way for the Obama victory.
6. Danger of Islamofascism. This fear helped elect Bush in 2004 is in decline due to distaste for the Iraq conflict and a safe period since 2001 (possibly due to the vigilance of the Bush administration?).

At least four less dominant narratives also compete:
1. Climate Change. Recent evidence indicates the earth is actually getting colder so that the phrase “global warming” may be inaccurate. Nevertheless, Al Gore has aroused considerable anxiety among Democrats about human-initiated climate change; Republicans remain untroubled.
2. Invasion of the Aliens. Alarm about illegal immigrants is the anxiety of choice among uneducated, lower income, more provincial, less cosmopolitan conservative Republicans. The more sophisticated, internationalist views advanced by Bush and McCain cost them dearly in political support.
3. Alternate energies. This was the “null curriculum” of the oil-loving Bush administration and will have to be a large part of our future.
4. Demography. This story line is far more important in Europe-now-becoming-Eurasia with the influx of Moslems and the decline of the Caucasian race. For the USA, however, demographics is destiny as well. Lowered birth rates among the affluent presage generational conflicts in the near future and will probably require a continued influx of inexpensive Latin labor. In the long term, seculars with their low birth rates will lose influence to more religious groups: Muslims, Evangelicals, and orthodox Catholics.
The current Democrat Party aligns the odd-numbered narratives above while the Republican Party unites the even-numbered ones.

This blog is
- Fiercely committed to the Battle for the Family and the Holy Innocents;
- Moderate and pragmatic on the balance between Justice for the Poor and Freedom of the Markets as well as the competition between diplomacy and strength on the international front.
- Mildly skeptical about global warming and the feasibility of alternate energy sources in the near future.
- Fascinated by demographic developments and warmly sympathetic to our Latin guests from the South.

The recent election was clearly a victory for governmental intervention in the economy and for more diplomacy and less use of force internationally. It advances the causes of sexual freedom, climate change, and alternate energies. The President-elect has patronizingly dismissed the cultural wars as “so 90s.” Should he push FOCA, as promised, he will find himself embroiled in an explosive cultural battle just when he needs a united country to face the economic crisis.

Contentment and Ambition

“The Laracys lack ambition,” observed an in-law about the family into which he had married. It didn’t come across as a compliment. But he was onto something.

Our Aunt Grace (of happy memory) frequently commented that the happiness of our parents’ marriage came from the financial contentment of our mother: she was happy with their level of material comfort and never exerted pressure on the breadwinner for upward mobility. Mom herself confirmed this: aware of her own father’s breakdown during the Great Depression, she had no intention of putting stress on her conscientious, hard-working husband. Aunt Grace was on to something.

The virtue of contentment is largely forgotten and ignored in our society; and it desperately needs to be retrieved, especially in this time of economic distress and downward mobility. This virtue is not the contradiction of all ambition; but it does indicate restfulness, an inner serenity, a cessation of restlessness, agitation, and hyperactivity. It indicates a peace and happiness with what is given. It entails a profound sense of gratitude. It connotes fullness, abundance, a sense of surplus. It is the virtue of the Sabbath, of rest, of praise, of simplicity, and of Hope among hopes and in even in hopelessness.

My students are dumbfounded when they hear this: they assume that they will live better than their parents and their children will live better than themselves. The more insightful among them quickly realize that such an upward trajectory is not sustainable indefinitely. The addiction to upward mobility and an expansive economy carry within themselves their own destruction. This has something to do with the bust we are currently experiencing.

It is not likely that the unprecedented prosperity we have enjoyed in America over the last half of a century will continue indefinitely. We may now be entering a prolonged period of deflation, underemployment, scarcity and downward mobility. This will not be a bad thing if we encourage each other in the practices of contentment, gratitude and simplicity.

And what can we say of genuine, healthy, even holy ambitions? These include: The longing to grow closer to God and become a saint; the desire for happy, holy families; the ambition to do God’s work by announcing the Good News to the poor; and the passion for wisdom and virtue.

May the imminent recession/depression become for us a Visitation from our Lord in which we grow in holy contentment and Godly ambitions!

Moral Tribute to President George W. Bush

So pervasive, accusatory, emotive, contagious, and vindictive has become the contempt for President Bush, even in sectors of his own party, that it is a pleasure to defend his moral honor and accomplishments. It is always better to be on the side of the advocate, rather than that of the accuser, especially on behalf of an underdog! From the perspective of Catholic moral teaching, his positives far outweigh his negatives.
1. Defense of the fetus. His Supreme Court appointments alone vindicate his presidency, but his overall firmness and consistency on this, the primal moral issue of our time, has been impressive.
2. Embryonic stem cell research. In 2004 the hype and deception around this issue reached a pandemic proportion with candidate Edwards prophesying that Michael Fox would be revitalized if the resistance to progress could be overcome. As fellow conservatives (Hatch, McCain) caved in to the pressure, Bush stood tall against the tide. His stance on this issue at that time was simply heroic.
3. Aid to Aids in Africa. Even his political enemies acknowledge that his energy and impetus in this area has reaped marvelous results.
4. Faith-based initiatives. This was less than successful but the idea itself remains promising for the future. The best chance to make inroads against deeply ingrained poverty is an alliance between government, the private sector and volunteerism, especially of the religious kind. (Fr. Neuhaus reminds us that there are not a large number of atheistic charities.)
5. Immigration. Here again he was unsuccessful, but he defied his own base and make an honest attempt at a decent, humane resolution of the problem.
On all of the above this President stood with “the very least” and faced opposition from both the left and from the right.

His negatives are, admittedly, not trivial:
1. Torture. This is the one “essential evil” that he endorsed. This was unfortunate as it lessened our prestige across the globe and seemed to have produced little fruit. On this issue especially he would have profited from a lucid Catholic moral analysis.
2. Iraq War. The invasion did not (in my view) pass muster as a “just war” and subsequent information (on WMDs) confirmed it as a rash judgment. Nevertheless, with the success of the surge, the establishment of a definite timetable for troop withdrawal, and hope for the first stable democracy in the area, we still await the final verdict. This remains one of the very most ambiguous of moral issues: granting the high costs of the war, how do we measure them proportionally against the possible costs of an indefinite Hussein regime? The emotive indignation of the left and paleoconservative right are simplistic.
3. That war is a prominent example of a broader and deeply troubling tendency towards narrowness, arrogance, and rash judgment. The failure of Cheney and Rumsfeld to consider important intelligence information about Iraq was rooted in a deeper distrust of professionalism in general and a hyper-confidence in their own convictions and ideology. A small group within the White House made the crucial decisions as dissident voices (Colin Powell) were marginalized. The politicization of the Attorney General’s office reflected this same partisan overzealousness, narrowness and lack of humility. This attitude seems to have pervaded the administration and is partially responsible for the bad spirit in which it departs.
4. President Bush’s sins of omission are many and will be given different weights according to one’s predisposition: health care, global warming, alternate energies, regulation of the economy, Katrina debacle, and tax advantaging of the affluent. All of these have moral dimensions but are complex, prudential policy issues allowing for a diversity of opinions within the Catholic community.

The record is mixed but given the gravity of the offense against innocent life and his consistency there, his overall grade is a B.

Obama has no comparable body of work to evaluate so we can only go by his rhetoric and voting record. He indicates not the faintest concern for the very least among us, the unborn. He even advocates destruction of babies who survive abortion attempts. With that stance, he can not earn higher than a failing F in basic social morality, whatever his compensating strengths.

His strengths, however, are not trivial and exactly mirror the weaknesses of the Bush years. His initial cabinet appointments indicate openness to the best of the professional and intellectual world and openness to expertise, diversity and study. By a powerful swing of the pendulum, he promises to address the very things that Bush ignored. Hopefully, he will succeed in what is best in this agenda but fail to reverse what is most honorable in the Bush legacy, especially concern for the VERY least.

Feast of Presentation of Mary in the Temple
Yesterday’s feast of the Presentation of Mary in the Temple and today’s remembrance of virgin-martyr St. Cecelia prompt a reflection on virginity.

The story of Mary being presented in the temple is probably a legend (from non-canonical Gospel of James of the 2nd century) since Judaism had no such custom of consecration for maidens. The temple was a fiercely masculine environment: male priests doing animal sacrifice with most heavy flow of sacrificial blood. Nevertheless, the feast captures a sure spiritual reality: that Mary at some point intentionally consecrated herself to God and God alone in a virginal, physical dimension.

Virginity in the Early Church
Consecrated virginity was virtually unknown to ancient (and historical) Judaism and rare in the ancient world. (The six vestal virgins who tended the sacred fire for Rome are a prominent exception.) But the phenomenon of female virginity for Christ was an early, vigorous and distinctive mark of Christianity. It could only have been a spontaneous and charismatic mimesis of the virginity of Mary and the chastity/celibacy of Jesus himself. It was a form of intimacy with and imitation of Christ and was immediately recognized as a distinctive “ordo” within the primitive Church. Many of our early saints are virgin-martyrs and thus gave themselves physically to their Bridegroom, in both senses of giving their fertility and their mortal lives through a bloody death. Interestingly, virginity in paganism often is associated with violence: virgins would be sacrificed to avert calamities and a vestal virgin who violated her vow would be buried alive. Also in ancient Rome, the six vestal virgins enjoyed a degree of freedom and privilege otherwise unknown to women in patriarchal society. This was a premonition of the freedom in Christ exercised by women who spontaneously dedicated themselves to Christ and thereby transcended normal limitations of domestic life and the fear of death. Jesus in today’s gospel makes the same association and earns the respect even of the Sadducees: “…those deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise.” (Luke 20) Holy virginity and bloody martyrdom both express, in the body, a freedom from the very limitations of the body, experienced most poignantly and intimately in sexuality and physical death. This is a distinctively Catholic intuition, opaque to Judaism, Protestantism, and Islam and entirely ridiculous to Secularism.

Virginity as Feminine
Intuitively we know that men are not virginal, although they can choose celibacy and can become chaste. Virginity is a feminine endowment that can be lost or given away but does not have to be earned; celibacy is a lifetime commitment associated with priesthood and religious life; chastity is purity of heart, mind and body and is a lifelong task for the male. The male body lacks a physical container or expression of virginity and the male psyche is so hormonally and concupiscentially disordered that it is the rare, privileged and saintly male that is a “virgin” in any real, interior sense. Virginity, a most precious physical gift a woman can give to her spouse or her Lord, has a physical base but its deepest meaning is spiritual and connotes: innocence, fertility, purity, generosity, and luminous goodness. And yet, in Mary as virgin-mother we see that virginity and maternity are not inherently contradictory of each other; rather they relate as potential to actual, as desire to fulfillment. Maternity is the fulfillment of virginal fertility. Mary is at once the perfect virgin and the perfect mother; in her we contemplate femininity in its perfection, as the very masterpiece of God’s creation.

Mary’s presentation in the temple is full of meaning since she completely fulfills the Old Testament longing of God, not for bloody sacrifice, but for obedience, faithfulness and trust. She is the new Temple of the Holy Spirit. She marks the end of the sacrifice of violence and the initiation of sacrifice as purity and as joyous self-gift. She is at once the epitome of the Old Covenant and is herself the temple prepared by the Spirit for the New Covenant.


Pope Benedict and the “Memores Domini”How interesting that Pope Benedict’s household is composed of his two clerical secretaries and three female members of the Memores Domini (“Memory of the Lord”), the group of maidenly women within Communion and Liberation who live poverty, chastity and obedience. These women care for the needs of the pontiff (meals, laundry), celebrate Eucharist and share meals with the three prelates.

Thus, we see within the papal household, an image of the original Church: Mary and John at the foot of the cross, receiving the gift of each other from their dying Lord. “Woman, behold…..” We see here an image of the Church in her Petrine and Marian dimensions, male and female. In his practical and theological wisdom, Benedict realized that Papa needs the close and steady influence of the feminine, specifically in its dimension as virginal: prayerful, trusting, pure, and generously donated to God.

Virginity Today Tyra Banks is upset that the average age at which her survey respondents report losing their virginity is fifteen. She is right: so many today do not value and reverence themselves in their femininity, innocence and virginity.

By strongest contrast, we celebrate on the feast of the Presentation the consecrated vocation of those cloistered for a life of solitude and intensive prayer. It is consoling to think of these, men and women, anonymous and hidden, praying for us and for the entire Church on earth.

We men, if our masculinity is to become pure, healthy, life-giving and strong, need the influence of the virginal, the innocent, and the maternal at its life-giving and liberating best. I recall, for example, my remarkable and effortless recovery from cancer surgery over two years ago: I was surrounded at the time by feminine faith and love. My wife, daughters, mother and sisters all dropped everything to be at my bedside during my days of recovery. I attribute its speed to their influence. For the last six years I have spent my days with almost two hundred maidens: the Felician sisters and our adolescent students, all of whom emanate, in their distinctive ways, a delicate and tender innocence, generosity and fecundity. They all make me “want to be a better man” (as the Jack Nicholson character told Helen Hunt in “As Good as it Gets.”) I consider myself to be “blessed among women.”

The legend of St. Cecelia is that her pagan husband was inspired by her virginity and specifically by a vision of her guardian angel to the degree that he courageously died a brutal martyr’s death. So, on these beautiful feast days, may we men emulate this receptivity to holy, feminine influence and be inspired to similar courage!

(Catholic?) Campaign for Human Development

This Sunday, the Culture War comes in the form of the collection basket: the bishops’ annual Campaign for Human Development. Fr. Neuhaus notes that the campaign sometime ago dropped the modifier “Catholic” with good reason since the group apparently funds mostly or only non-Catholic organizations. Why this is so is not clear. This year the campaign discontinued support for Acorn (Association of Community Organizers for Reform) which had received more than $7 million dollars of collection money over past years and gained notoriety for voter registration fraud, financial misconduct by a chief executive, and close ties to Obama and his campaign. No wonder Fr. Neuhaus recommends against contributing and even some bishops have raised questions, with some not sponsoring the collection in their dioceses.

The principle of the campaign is a good one: empower poor communities to resolve their problems through local initiative on issues like housing, safe neighborhoods, food, cooperatives and the like. It is similar to the United Way but with more emphasis on empowerment of the poor and marginalized for initiative in the spirit of seculars like Freire or Alinsky. In that sense it is in tune with Catholic social teaching in its preference for the needs of the poor and especially John Paul’s strong sense of human freedom and initiative. Everything would be honky-dory except for the Culture War! Apparently, the CCHD got into trouble about a decade ago for involvement with anti-Catholic groups supporting abortion and the like. This pattern returns with Acorn’s support for Obama. . Strong support for the Campaign is advocated on the America magazine website where Fr. Neuhaus is criticized in the very strongest terms. Unfortunately, the Great Fact for us is that so much legitimate social activism was radically compromised in the 60s by a hostile takeover by sexual liberalism. It is difficult in today’s environment to advocate for the poor without participation in activities opposed to Catholic practice

What is a Catholic who cares about the poor to do? This is a prudential judgment. Given the strong, continuing support from the bishops, the benefit of the doubt should go to the campaign. But I will not be giving. Rather, I will give to Catholic Relief Charities, the National Right to Life, and maybe some other groups that are uncontaminated. I don’t trust the bishops on these things.

The bishops are heirs of the apostles and divinely inspired on matters of faith and morals; but their track record on pragmatic, prudential, social/political issues is not re-assuring. Their cover-up of the priest sex scandal was made worse by the unbalanced Dallas accord; “Protecting God’s Children” is wrong-headed in several ways; their condemnation of the death penalty lacks nuance and reservation while their opposition to abortion is vague and open-ended. They are clear and firm when they should acknowledge complexity; they are wishy-washy when they need to be lucid and strong.

I am sympathetic: the Bishop’s job is an impossible one. They are expected to be saints, theologians, fund-raisers, CEOs, diplomats, prophets, policy analysts; they must be pastorally sensitive, theologically orthodox and sophisticated, financially astute, ecumenically open, culturally prophetic... They are only human after all. I will follow them on doctrine and morals without hesitation. On social policy, I will listen to them with respect but suspicion. There are lots of unfortunate pressures upon them. This Sunday I will relieve them of one responsibility: how to utilize my contribution; I will make that decision myself and give directly to some good charities.

Soldiers of Christ
“Bear your share of hardship along with me like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. 2Tim 2:3

In an earlier era, we all learned that at confirmation we became soldiers of Christ. That imagery was cast aside in the 60-70s with the effeminizing, pacifistic contempt for the profession of the soldier. So today our young are being confirmed with admonitions to have no enemies and be nice, inclusive, and non-judgmental. This year of St. Paul is a good time for us to get back to the militant, masculine spirit reflected in Fr. Landry’s meditation on the above quote from 2 Timothy:

“(Paul) encourages Timothy to do his part as a ‘good soldier of Christ Jesus.’
A good soldier is focused, dutiful, disciplined, obedient, courageous, loyal and honorable. He functions as a member of a unit, fighting for something greater than himself. He is accustomed to sacrifice and is willing to give his life for others. Every disciple is called to have all these soldierly traits.
Today some balk at this militant imagery as unworthy of the Gospel. Christ came to bring peace, they say, and to make us peace-makers, which they equate with diplomats. Apparently Pontius Pilate and the Sanhedrin did not get that memo in time.
Christ himself stressed, in fact, that he had come to bring not peace but the sword, to lay down his life to save his sheep. Peace comes not from negotiation with the forces of evil, but through conquering evil with love on the battlefield of life.
The war continues, and Christ is still looking for a few good men.” (P. 338, “Praying with Saint Paul.)

False Messiah?

I was directed by Mile Brendan to an article by Father Rutler, an article which prepares us for our new era with insightful quotes from two important Cardinals:

"Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes not divine, but demonic" (Cardinal Ratzinger in "Truth and Tolerance").

"Do you think [the Prince of Lies] is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the Truth? No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform. This is the way in which he conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you; he tempts you to rail against your rulers and superiors; he does so himself, and induces you to imitate him; or he promises you illumination, he offers you knowledge, science, philosophy, enlargement of mind. He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them. He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his." (John Cardinal Newman)

The Obamas’ School Choice

The Obama family is looking at expensive, elite schools in Washington DC for their daughters. One is an old Quaker school; another is very informal as students refer to teachers by their first names; tuitions range above $20,000 yearly. Governmental and parochial schools are apparently not in the running.

One of the surest barometers of a family’s cultural values is the choice of a school. We have several distinctive school cultures in our society:
- Governmental schools differ according to neighborhood: affluent towns have solid academic programs; most urban schools are disasters. The common denominator is that God and traditional values (about family, sexuality and innocent life) are proscribed while a secular code of relativism and inclusion is rigidly enforced.
- Expensive, elite schools for the affluent elite.
- Home schooling for the traditionalist and otherwise eccentric counter-cultures.
- The Church’s parochial school system, now in dramatic decline.
The accommodation of the Catholic community to mainstream suburban culture could be measured by the decline of our parochial schools. Where I live in Jersey City, charter schools have introduced a welcome element of diversity and competition but have also hurt the parochial schools which receive neither tax monies nor tax relief. The decline of the religious orders contributes to the problem, but at a deeper level there is the loss of desire for these schools. Consider that our ancestors built this magnificent system when they were poor immigrants; they wanted it that badly as a way to preserve and pass on the faith.

And so we have the Obamas enacting the standard ritual of liberal Democrats:
- The elite exercise an educational choice that is systematically denied to the poor.
- Urban blacks remain enslaved to horrible governmental schools as they herald with hosannas the one who denies them choice and diversity in education.
- Billions of $ become available to bail out mega-institutions like the Big Three and the UAW; but a voucher or tax credit of a few thousand dollars to make choice available to a working family is offensive to the Teacher’s Unions.
- Allegiance is pledged to public mega-bureaucracies and the autonomous, imperial Self (“choice”) as war is waged on mediating, nurturing organisms like the parish school, the family, and faith-based social agencies.

The Democrat idea of choice is that which destroys the unborn and family integrity; not the one that empowers poor families with educational freedom. Meanwhile, the blacks enslaved in the inner cities and Catholics exiled in suburban Babylonia swoon and wax eloquently about the “Great New Hope.” They know not what they do.

Father Roy Bourgeois MM, Maryknoll and Mary

Within a few days, Father Roy Bourgeois MM will almost certainly be excommunicated. The 69-year-old Maryknoll priest of 36 years has lead the crusade against the School of the Americas for several decades. In August, he delivered the homily and participated in a so-called “ordination of women.” The Vatican recently directed him to recant the action within 30 days or be excommunicated, in accord with Canon Law. He has now publicly defied the Vatican and accused it of sexism in its ordination policy.

This is a sad turn of events.

I remember looking up to Roy in Maryknoll College Seminary. He was older than most of us: a Vietnam vet and Purple Heart Recipient, he saw the face of God in the orphans in Vietnam and returned to seek Maryknoll priesthood. He is a genuine hero. He is a man of unusual integrity, idealism, conviction, energy and courage.

Along the way, however, he became caught up in ideological passion. He became consumed by an accusation against our military and especially the SOA (School of the Americas.) The radical changes in Latin American and the world after the 80s did not lessen his righteous anger. He has now transferred this same righteous accusation to his Church which has declared (authoritatively and finally through John Paul II) that it CANNOT ordain women.

The excommunication was predictable and perhaps inevitable since it is mandated by canon law. News reports indicate that Roy is shaken up by this. He has given the last 36 years of his life to priesthood; now he will not even be able to receive communion.

Give him credit for the courage of his convictions. He is consistent: if women can be ordained, they should be ordained…and the Church should be resisted in its “sexist” policy. In his publicly released letter to the Vatican, he states: “Conscience is very sacred. Conscience gives us a sense of right and wrong and urges us to do the right thing. Conscience is what compelled Franz Jagerstatter, a humble Austrian farmer, husband and father of four young children, to refuse to join Hitler’s army, which led to his execution. Conscience is what compelled Rosa Parks to say she could no longer sit in the back of the bus.”

It is unfortunate that he casts himself in the role of indignant, accusatory prophet (like the martyr Jagerstatter) rather than as a penitent, a humble sinner like St. Peter at the crowing of the cock, and as an obedient son of the Church. It is unfortunate that he has been obsessed with resentment of the “military industrial complex.” It is unfortunate that he is blinded by accusation against the perceived evils of others and is not free to practice his own examination or inventory.

Predictably, Maryknoll took no disciplinary action. Maryknoll herself has drifted far from the high Mariology that inspired founders and pioneers like Price, Walsh, Ford and the generations that followed. Consider the role of Mary as classically understood: she is our Mother and Queen of the angels and saints and worthy of hyper-veneration. At Pentecost, she was present and essential in her hidden and anonymous manner. She quietly and peacefully enabled the fierce, masculine, apostolic zeal of Peter and the apostles who burst forth from that cenacle with a fire that was to change the world. She was not envious of their apostolic prerogatives but confident in her own pre-eminent role in salvation.

By contrast, we now have Maryknoll Father Roy confirming his misguided woman friends in their unholy envy for ordination. He joins them in their rage against Church authority, tradition, and indeed the gendered, sexual, bipolar structure of human existence and the entire created order.

When I entered Maryknoll College Seminary in 1965, a common practice among us was to say the rosary together in groups of 2, 3 or 4 while walking around the beautiful campus grounds. It was a masculine, fraternal exercise of openness to the Feminine One par excellence. Within about two years, that practice was entirely forgotten as the Cultural Revolution wrecked its havoc in our minds and hearts.

It would be good for us all to get back to that practice. And let us remember Father Roy as well as his Maryknoll brethren, especially is this sad time.

Recipe for Raising Children in the Catholic Faith

The odds are stacked against us today if we want to raise our young in the Catholic faith. But my experience is that the combination of four important ingredients yields a marvelous result: family, parish, school, and renewal movement.

Family: Faith in the family is primary and essential. This means that the family prays together, in some fashion or other; that husband and wife are surrendered to Jesus Christ; and that God is a living, real presence in the home. Scenario: Free Sunday afternoon, prime time for the family. Dad want to see the game, Sis wants to go to the mall, Butch wants to see a movie, and Mom wants to visit Grandma! What to do? Simple: stop for a moment of prayer and ask God what he would like you to do. He will tell you. And you will all be (relatively) happy with the result. It is just that simple! Faith is not so much taught as caught; it is a holy contagion.

Parish: The family is essential and necessary but not sufficient; it needs to participate in larger environments of faith. The first of these is the local parish where primary catechesis occurs and all the sacraments are dispensed. Children must learn loyalty to the local parish, whatever its inadequacies. It is not necessary for the parish to have an appealing or charismatic pastor or priest. There is even an advantage, for the Catholic, if the pastor is dysfunctional in some sense (too progressive or reactionary; known to drink too much; cranky and unsociable) since the children will learn two indispensable lessons: first, that God pours his mercy and grace upon us efficaciously in spite of our personal failings and those of our leaders; second, that we likewise need to accept, forgive and love each other precisely in our very inadequacies.

School: Conservatives are home-schooling; the renewal movements develop their own alternate catechesis; mainstream suburbanites seem satisfied with governmental schools; and the anti-catechesis of liberal dissent has penetrated every level of the parochial system. Catholic schools are in crisis! Nevertheless, these schools are precious and invaluable for the passing on of the faith. At the elementary level especially our little ones are often exposed, for sustained periods of time, to people of basic, simple faith. This faith can be integrated over time into a comprehensive understanding history, humanity and creation. How can you put a price tag on this? Our parochial schools are simply indispensable!

Renewal Movement: The parish/school system we inherited is so weakened in comparison with the broader culture (including media, entertainment, politics, and peer cultures) that it alone cannot sustain the Catholic family in the faith. God, in his providence, has provided a variety of enthusiastic renewal movements which strengthen and inspire us with the faith. Over the years, we especially used summer vacation to send our children to World Youth Days, NET retreats, catechetical sessions, Catholic camps, and mission trips. These were fun, exciting and educational experiences. Especially important was the experience of being with other young people who share a joy and zeal for the Lord. These more than countervailed against the failings and weaknesses of parish and school and strengthened the entire family in faith. In today’s world, something like this is absolutely necessary.

So hostile to our Catholic heritage has become the broad culture that we desperately need to immerse ourselves in environments of faith. Particularly valuable is the synergetic fruitfulness of loyalty to both institution and movement. Consider Jesus himself: he worshipped in synagogue and temple, celebrated Passover, and was entirely observant (albeit more flexibly than some); and yet he started his public life by associating himself with the penitential movement of his cousin John the Baptist. He seemed to have among his disciples Zealots. He may have been influenced by the desert, monastic, countercultural, apocalyptic Essene communities. He was faithful to Tradition in a flexible manner, open always to the movement of the Holy Spirit.

The pontificate of John Paul and his protégé have ushered a New Springtime into the Church. Our children and their children will flourish in this refreshing flow of grace. Our families, parishes, schools and renewal movements are the privileged avenues for this holy outpouring.

How a Catholic Votes for Choice

It is bad enough that a majority of Catholics voted for Obama; worse is the considerable number of Sunday mass attendees who voted thus; but worst by far is the spectacle of saintly, daily communicants voting for choice! What is the veil of deception that has descended to confuse even very good souls? A variety of dynamics are at work.

Economism. “It’s about the economy!” Even bishops have explained and excused the vote for choice: “It was not a vote for legalized abortion; it was a vote about the economy.” But that already indicates a moral judgment that economic concerns preempt cultural/moral concerns such as protection of innocent life, the family, and religious freedom. Today’s liberalism is a soft materialism rooted in the belief that economic or material concerns are the most important issues in politics. A “pro-life” argument is made that abortions can be reduced by economic measures such as universal health care, better welfare network, and more jobs. There is truth to this argument and there are reasons for backing such policies; but the judgment that such economic issues are the real core issues regarding life and family is a materialistic one. Our ancestors came to this country in poverty and gave us life and faith in conditions of material poverty and oppression, without universal health care, reproductive rights or emissions standards. The legacy of John Paul the Great includes certainty that cultural, moral and spiritual values will prevail over military and economic might. This economism is understandable in the context of American politics because the post-WWII period was constituted by harmony on the moral/cultural front but economic conflict between the business and the working class. The transition in 1973 into a Culture War found most Catholics unprepared. For the last 35 years, most continued in economic-war mode and vote for choice year after year. In a decade or two, there will be no economic distress and no war or Bush to despise, but the economism will prevail and the Catholic vote for choice will be a given. (This materialism is, of course, mirrored on the right by the obsession for low taxes and free markets.)

Privatization. The fundamental liberal principle is that issues of sexuality, family and innocent life belong to the private realm, not the public realm. We see the self-contradiction here as liberals rally for FOCA, the Obama transition team prepares to immediately use tax monies to implement and export abortion and embryo destruction, and the gays are in a fury that the people of California prefer not to governmentally sanctify sodomy.

Defeatism. We hear: “Roe has established abortion as a constitutional right and there is no going back on that now!” The decision by a handful of justices 35 years ago is accepted as Fate. Ironically, the very best heritage of the left, (that of Paulo Freire, Saul Alinsky, and the brave leaders of the union movement in the 1920-30s) is precisely the conviction that social institutions are not set in stone but vulnerable to the initiatives of human freedom. When John Paul visited Cuba, he sat patiently through many hours of Fidel’s lament about how victimized the Cubans were by American imperialism. John Paul then announced, in very few words and without crosstalk towards Fidel, that they were not at all enslaved but were in fact free human agents, in bondage to neither communism nor capitalism, but free in Christ. So are we Catholics free: to overthrow Roe and return the issue to the patient, slow democratic process within each state.

Feminist resentment. Post-1970s liberalism is infused with the feminine accusation against masculinity: “We do not trust you; we want our bodies back; we demand the right to kill our young; you are (with exceptions) violent, greedy, arrogant, preachy, judgmental, insensitive, and superior.” Among pro-life, devout Catholics there is a subtle or soft feminist resentment: “I am pro-life but government (as a masculine, oppressive, not protective institution) should leave the woman alone; male warfare is worse than a woman’s decision to abort; if we (maternally) help the poor, rather than (aggressively) prohibit them, they may choose to have their babies.” Underlying the Catholic tolerance for choice is feminine reaction against the masculine in its propensity for warfare, greed, arrogance, control and judgmentalism. We men are guilty as charged on all counts! This means we are in for some serious repentance; even as we fulfill our paternal duty to defend life and speak truth.

Partisan loyalty and ideological rigidity. The political memory of the Democrat is still inhabited by FDR, the union and civil rights movements, and the war on poverty. Pre-1965, liberal politics was a pure and perfect expression of a Catholic’s faith and love. This synthesis is deeply woven into the heart and mind of the Catholic liberal; it is infused in the neuron pathways, the hormones, and the nervous system. It is an addiction that was positive and wholesome from 1945-65; but then became toxic and destructive after the revolution. It is a pattern that is resistant to recovery or conversion.

Personal disgust and rash judgment. The personal hatred of Bush, Cheney, and even Palin has an intoxicating, disorienting effect. We know that the bigoted or prejudiced person is incapable of handling ambiguity and configures personalities into stereotypes of total good and absolute evil. From the right we saw the silly effort to configure Obama into an anti-American, a Moslem, a socialist. But the loathing for Bush from the left is particularly intense and contributes strongly to the decision of a practicing Catholic to vote for choice. To continue a favored analogy: it is like a fervent anti-Stalinist voting for Hitler; or an anti-Nazi supporting Stalin.

Accommodation. Much of the above is part of a broader, deeper, historic movement of the Catholic population from minority, immigrant status to full fledged membership in mainstream middle class culture. A deep, powerful, unacknowledged desire to be accepted by the broader society has fueled this upward mobility and seduced the Catholic into abandoning or at least downplaying those aspects of their faith that are offensive to the broader culture. Strong as I feel about abortion, for example, I am reluctant to post a “Adopt not Abort!” bumper sticker on my car because I know that a majority of cars I pass on the road in NJ, and a segment of my own family, will react: “Look at the theocratic, fundamentalist extremist!” This desire to participate and be accepted is powerful and largely unconscious. On the left exemplars include the Kennedy family, Father Hesburg, and the more prestigious Jesuit universities; on the right we have the legacy of William Buckley and his rejection of the papal social encyclicals.

Disunity and Timidity of our bishops. At this point in time our bishops are sharply divided, like our society and families. An increasing number of bishops have spoken clearly and courageously. Apparently, an equal number are afraid to rock the boat. Overly irenic, they desire “peace at any price” and fear offending anyone. They advocate inclusiveness for communion rather than “politicizing it,” avoiding the fact that such openness is already political: it signals the laity that advocacy for abortion is an acceptable option. In this policy, they scandalize their flock. As long as our episcopacy is disunited and timorous, the Catholic vote will mimic the general population and largely enable the machinery of murder.

Catholic cooption by the culture of choice over the last thirty-five years is the result of powerful historic, societal, mimetic forces, generally unrecognized by the sincere but deluded collaborators. These include: economism, defeatism, privatization, feminism, ideology, emotional rash judgment, accomadation, and the timidity of our bishops. We are powerless over these forces; but there is one greater than us and in Him we place our trust.

Deceived Conscience and Deluded Consciousness

The concept of an “ignorant conscience” (vincible or invincible) is an important and significant one in Catholic moral thinking because it allows us to uphold the primacy of following conscience and yet acknowledge the possibility of error; to distinguish objective evil and subjective guilt and so judge the act but not the heart of the actor; and to suffer serious differences in belief within family, society and church and still maintain bonds of mutual respect and love. The concept is troubled, however, for several reasons:

1. It underestimates the active dynamisms of deception and delusion operative in all human groups.
2. It suggests that mere information or instruction may ameliorate the situation when
   the erroneous intellect is already resistant and hostile to such information.
3. It suggests that evil acts spring from a lack of knowledge, rather than from a surplus of information that is erroneous and deceptive.

It is more accurate and illuminating, therefore, to speak of a deceived conscience since exposure to new information will either reinforce the error or provoke resistance and hostility.

If Rene Girard is correct, than every society generates a “myth,” a primal narrative which justifies the foundational accusatory gesture and sacrificial violence against a scapegoat by which it directs and controls the threatening chaos of mimetic rivalry, violence and anxiety. Therefore, the knowledge and information of any culture is already directed to rationalize violence against the scapegoat, who is often innocent and randomly chosen.

Socialization then is always indoctrination into a rationalization of victimizing violence. The more information gathered, the deeper becomes the fog of deception and delusion. So, for example, the 12-year old suicidal Palestinian terrorist who blows up a busload of Israeli children is not suffering from an ignorant conscience; rather, his conscience has been plentifully informed by the ruling myth of the indignant Arabs. A few minutes watching MSNBC or Fox News will vividly demonstrate this myth-making dynamic: Keith Oberman and Sean Hannity are equally adept at demonizing and disparaging their designated goats and each is passionately convinced of his narrative. Turn to CNN and you can hear Lou Dobbs rant about the ominous illegal aliens from south of the border.

Evaluating the current climate from a Catholic context, we note that the higher the level of education, the greater the support for the politics of choice and the culture of death. The more information one absorbs from ivy-league-wannabe institutions and the greater one’s credentials (especially in the humanities or the social sciences), the more sophisticated become one’s rationalizations for the genocide of the unborn.

What we face in our Church and culture is not ignorant consciences, but deluded ones: they have been deeply and broadly formed in the prevalent myth. Confronting these consciences about the sanctity of defenseless life will provoke a convoluted, complex and passionate argument. This mindset is not vulnerable to logical argument or evidence.

Is there any escape from these demonic dynamics of deception? Yes, there sure is! The Church! Within the liturgy of the Church, the Gospel of Christ is announced: the call to convert; the call to empathy with the victim; the call to worship God and release ideology and rationalization. Here we surrender ourselves to a culture of contrition, not accusation; a ritual of thankful sacrifice, not sacrificial violence; and a dynamic of trust and abandonment, not one of mimetic jealousy and rage. Listening to the Gospel as proclaimed by apostolic authority we are enabled to unveil the violence underlying societal myths and ideologies and confront the Culture of Death. We undergo what John Paul called a purification of consciousness; and we hope that it becomes contagious.

Let the Killing Begin

The Catholic moral conscience has an absolute clarity and simplicity; the following are always, everywhere, intrinsically and gravely evil: abortion, genocide, ethnocide, euthanasia, suicide, embryo destruction, infanticide, femicidal honor killings, targeting of civilian populations, and torture; adultery, fornication, prostitution, pornography, homosexual actions, and masturbation. The first group deals with the destruction of innocent life, the second with the spousal nature of sexuality.

The Catholic moral conscience has about it a sense of complexity, nuance and tolerance. A wide range of social policies require probative, prudential judgment involving uncertainty, ambiguity, and a legitimate diversity of opinion: justness of a given war, necessity of the death penalty, taxes, immigration, environment, health care, and the safety network for the poor.

The Liberal moral conscience has an absolute clarity and simplicity; the following are always, everywhere, intrinsically and gravely evil: war, death penalty, tax breaks for the rich, strict immigration policy, global warming, resistance to universal heath care, and reductions in the safety network for the poor.

The Liberal moral conscience has about it a sense of complexity, nuance, tolerance and diversity about: abortion, euthanasia, suicide, embryo destruction, adultery, fornication, prostitution, pornography, homosexual acts, and masturbation.

The one is the inversion of the other. Take your pick: one has it right; the other has things backwards. This is for sure: you cannot be at the same time Liberal and Catholic.

The media is reporting that Obama will immediately use his executive powers to authorize use of governmental power and tax monies to destroy living embryos (referred to fallaciously and euphemistically as “stem cell research”) and increase abortions. His first actions are consistent with everything he has always said. The three political commentators on CNN last night enthusiastically agreed that he was elected precisely to implement those policies and that is what he should do, swiftly and efficiently.

Some find my relentless comparison of Democrat and Nazi policy unfair. They are right: Hitler did not so clearly announce his genocidal intentions. His plan developed deceptively and secretly, in deference to the decency of the German people. The same cannot be said for the USA in 2008. The comparison is unfair to the well-intended, genuinely ignorant German people who placed him and kept him in power.

Praying for the Departed

We Catholics pray for the departed, with particular fervor in November, primarily because our Church instructs us that such prayer helps the souls in purgatory to be released to the eternal joys of heaven. Many Protestants regard such belief with scorn. Fashionable “Spirit of Vatican II” piety implicitly relegated this practice to the null curriculum and the waste basket of superstition and ignorance: “No need for prayer; God is merciful and everyone is in heaven!” However, such prayer has many benefits for us, the living:
- We are reminded of our own purpose and destiny: we are here for a little while. We are on a pilgrimage to heaven. We need to prepare in humility, charity, trust.
- We consider the role of purgation and suffering and greet it in joy and peace. Mystics tell us that the suffering in purgatory in grave and we do better to serve our temporal punishment here on earth: offering up our pain, doing acts of mercy, contrition and forgiveness of the enemy.
- We unite ourselves more consciously with the saints in heaven and we open our lives up to mimetic participation in their life, rather than the alternative that prevails in the world around us and comes from the world below.
- It strengthens our bonds with our dearly beloved. As we pray for parents, family, and especially the preceding generation who gave us life and faith, we deepen our gratitude and more deeply interiorize the love and devotion they gave us. As children we tend to be ungrateful, but with the passing of the years we appropriate anew the love we took for grated and ignored in youthful foolishness.

It is almost like the old pragmatic argument: even if there is no purgatory and no real value in prayers for the dead, we would have to invent the practice and convince ourselves of it because of the Good that we derive from it. Well the Good News is that we don’t have to invent such a myth because the reality of purgatory is True. We receive this truth with certainty from the Church. And not only is it Good and True, but this reality (like all of Being) is equally Beautiful! There is a splendor to the justice and logic of it: that we all receive our just reward, that we have a chance in God’s mercy to finally amend our wrongdoing, that we are all united in the Communion of Saint, that we the Church Militant assist the Church Suffering just as the Church Victorious helps us, that our beloved departed will await us at heaven’s gates, that our unfinished amendment on earth may be helped by those we leave behind. About the granting of indulgences there is a particular, almost mathematical clarity and definiteness: a specific act is required, always prayers for the Pope, communion and confession, freedom from attachment to sin and living in the state of grace. This clear and formal combination makes us clear and transparent conduits for the flow of grace from the merits of those in heaven to those in purgatory who are still in debt. About this, and indeed all aspects of canon law, there is clarity, delineation, and a formliness that unveils the splendid logic and form of our salvation.

It is Good for us to pray for our beloved departed; it is Good, True and Beautiful, as are all things of God, his Church and his creation!

Sorrow in the Church and in the Family

There is a deep, poignant sadness in our Church and our family in the wake of this past election. This sorrow is not about the outcome, which is part of the ebb and flow of American politics and was expected given the stressed economy, unpopular President and war, and the talented, steady, even charismatic young candidate who contrasted so with his older, impulsive and erratic opponent. Rather, the grief is that over half (54%: more than the general electorate) of Catholics voted for legalized abortion. Raymond Arroyo of EWTN counted over one hundred Catholic bishops who had spoken out clearly on the primacy of the right to life over all other rights and issues; these exhortations were ignored by a majority.

For a Catholic, this election was not just about opinion, political direction, or partisan allegiance. It was about our core belief; it was about what defines us; it was about protection of the very least among us. This sorrow is not political, but familial: filial, fraternal and sororal, paternal and maternal. This sorrow dwells in the most intimate and personal bonds that unite us with each other. The pro-choice vote authorizes the handing over of “the very least” to destruction, with our tax money. It is as if one’s own sister or brother, daughter or son, willingly handed our infant child over to Herod’s or Pharaoh’s soldiers, who then butcher him in our presence. This vote is a most personal betrayal.

For a Catholic, this vote is a scandal given to the young. Our youth are caught up in enthusiasm about Obama with little manifest reaction against his policy of choice. Intelligent, devout, informed, older Catholics are confirming them in this indifference. This is unspeakably sad.

This sorrow has nothing to do with condemnatory judgment or personal resentment. Democrat intentions are largely praiseworthy: peace, distributive justice, medical coverage, and the recovery of the economy. Likewise, there is no question of personal hatred for pro-Obama friends and family. Christian love and good manners will prevail. Bonds of respect, concern and affection remain…and even intensify: “distance makes the heart grow fonder.” Here the distance is spiritual, moral and interior; and it is great.

Spiritual communion has been broken. A divorce has occurred. There is now a huge gulf between us. The Catholic Church and the Catholic family will never be the same in the USA. Certain dates stand our as significant markers for us: Columbus in 1498, the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Civil War of 1860, the end of WWII in 1945, our Catholic president in 1960. Now the tragic Catholic Apostasy of 2008 may prove to be as significant for American Catholics as Henry VIII’s declaration of sovereignty was for English Catholics or Luther’s posting for German Catholics. We now have, in substance, two different religions in the same Church and within the same family.

The root of our word religion is religio which means bonds. A bond within our family and Church is our shared love for the very little ones. On November 4, 2008 fifty-four percent of us ruptured that bond. The directive from Cardinal Ratzinger that politicians who persist in advocacy for legalized abortion be refused communion is merely a candid explication of the spiritual divorce or self-excommunication that has already occurred.

Our word diabolic is rooted in words that mean "to tear apart." The vote to governmentally support the literal tearing apart of the unborn has now torn apart our families, our Church, and our society...at the deepest level. That vote by 54% of us was truly diabolic.

For the loyal Catholic, legalized abortion is an essential evil, an abomination, as much as legalized genocide, child sex abuse, polygamy, or honor killings. The friend or family member who votes for legalized abortion takes on the same moral status as one who actively supports legalized genocide, child sex abuse, polygamy, or honor killings. It is just that serious, that clear, that simple!

This election has rightly been recognized as the definitive end of our Civil War over slavery. Within society, but especially in the Church, it is also the explosion of a new Civil War: a quiet and (sometimes overly) civil one; the violence hidden, technologized, and sanitized; a cool culture war, camouflaged by courtesy; intensified by mutual affection and respect.

At this point in time, thirty-five years after Roe, there is no argument or exhortation that will convince those we love who have fallen into this error. There is very little we can do. We acknowledge that we are powerless. Prayer is essential: a deepening of our own personal and liturgical prayer. In this context, we reaffirm our love for those who voted for the new regime, even as we sadly acknowledge an unavoidable spiritual distance that has opened between us.

This unavoidable sorrow of separation is somehow part of Divine Providence, a purgative moment on our pilgrim journey to heaven. Bringing it to prayer, we are encouraged by yesterday’s mediation from Saint Faustina: “I will glorify Jesus in abandonment and darkness, in agony and fear, in pain and bitterness, in anguish of spirit and grief of heart.” (Diary, 1662.)

Islamic Femicide and Liberal Infanticide

Earlier this week, in the midst of the Obama-euphoria, the NY Times reported a terrible incident from the war-torn Sudan. Twelve-year-old Muslim Aisha was on her way to visit her grandparents when she was raped by three men. Her parents brought her to report this to the authorities who then decided she was guilty of adultery. She was placed in a hole and stoned to death by fifty men while one thousand watched. The three rapists have not been arrested.

Is there anything worse than this?

Yes: a mother intentionally killing her newborn, struggling infant, a survivor of abortion, with the full backing of the government and medical profession. This is the policy repeatedly endorsed by our President-elect. A majority of our electorate is comfortable with this; many are ecstatic about his triumph.

Meanwhile, Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman informs us that if we are not thrilled with our new President-elect, there is something wrong with us. There is something wrong with us: it is called heartbreak.

Dark, patriarchal, femicidal currents in Islam give the males the power to kill their daughters should they shame the family.

Dark, matriarchal, infanticidal currents in liberalism give the mother the power to kill her children at her discretion. It is called choice, woman’s issues, and reproductive rights.

These two cultures of death are inverse, mirror images of each other.

“The Center Cannot Hold”

A century ago, Yeats, intuiting the onset of an Apocalyptic Time, wrote:

Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words outWhen a vast image out of Spritus MundiTroubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desertA shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about itReel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I knowThat twenty centuries of stony sleepwere vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? W.B. Yeats

The center cannot hold. Within Judaism, the Conservative Movement, which is actually the moderate of the three streams (Reform being modern and innovative; Orthodox very traditional), is in decline. Currently containing just less than one third of American Jews, it has lost its position of numerical preeminence to the Reform movement. Children of Conservative Jews are moving into Orthodoxy if they are observant; or becoming Reform or secular Jews if they are more modern, free and secular. The Orthodox expressions show more energy, vigor and definition; while Reform gives greater flexibility and inclusivity. Demographically, the Orthodox have larger families, less intermarriage and exit rates, and will surpass the Reform numerically if current trends continue. There is even talk of the Conservative blending with the Reform movement since there is no longer any substantial difference between them.

This is unfortunate because a few decades ago Conservative Judaism was a robust and flourishing blend of the traditional and the modern. It accepted Torah as divinely revealed but humanly written and therefore worthy of reverence and yet subject to critical human study. Brilliant, holy scholars like Abraham Herschel had been trained in traditional Talmudic study and were able to synthesize these traditional roots with the best of contemporary, including Christian, scholarship. (Much like that same generation of Catholic scholars had been steeped in their tradition and able to innovate from within it: Rahner, Lonergan, Balthasar, and Ratzinger.) I personally have warm memories of taking class at Jewish Theological Seminary (their flagship school) and reading happily in their library. The tradition seemed remarkably similar to that of Catholicism with its ability to absorb the new in light of the received. There was about the place a lightness and depth that contrasted sharply with the grim liberationist resentments of Union Theological Seminary across the street on Broadway.

How different our world today is from that America of the mid-twentieth century! That culture was receptive of and reverent towards religion: cultural icons such as Abraham Herschel, Thomas Merton, Bishop Sheen, or Billy Graham could draw deeply from their respective traditions in a contemporary and creative manner and exert immense influence. In the late 60s the culture drastically turned against the Church which herself faced a fork in the road: give in to a hostile world or turn counter-cultural. The ferocity of assault allowed no compromise. In the great schism of 1967 over Humanae Vitae, most of Catholic academia followed Rahner and Lonergan into dissent while a smaller group rallied to Pope Paul VI and resisted the Trojan Horse. (Pun intended!) Today, in society and Church, we inhabit two opposing camps.

In recent decades the Jewish Conservative Movement has been under assault by secular, liberal culture on the issues of female and gay ordination. The terms of peace with secular culture were unconditional: absolute gender uniformity and unrestrained sexual diversity. It has surrendered on both fronts. The conflict polarized the tradition and fractured it into two opposing trajectories: forward into modernity (Reform) or deeper into tradition (Orthodoxy.) In this Culture War, there is no middle ground: the center does not hold.

Politically the same radicalization prevails: we have just elected our most liberal senator (the left extreme) as president; while a genuine middle-of-the-roader (on economic and cultural issues) had to turn to the opposite extreme for a vice presidential candidate in order to vitalize the base of his own party. The extreme right owns the one party as the radical left controls the other. The center does not hold.

In the Protestant world, long been fractured into opposing liberal and evangelical camps, we see the famed “via media” of Anglicanism exploding in civil war. Islam seems regrettably to lack this conflict: a significant but not majority of militant fundamentalists have declared Jihad against the West and modernity while a large but passive group lack the courage and clarity to confront them and therefore become collaborators or enablers by way of omission.

Within the Catholic Church the same dynamic is operative: innovators and accomadationists prefer fashion to tradition and authority; a marginal and eccentric fraction continue to rail against the progressively-conservative Vatican Council; while genuine Catholicism, defined authoritatively by John Paul and Benedict, digs deeply into holy traditions and flourishes in a variety of new movements and orders. Young Catholics are being pressured into secular conformity or are standing directly against this Brave New World, secure within the Maternal and authoritative Church.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.

Gender, Generosity and Generation

Sunday’s NY Times Style (11/2/08) section had items of interest:
- In the “Modern Love” column, Kate Rood relates the transition of her twin sister Emma into transgendered Eli. Just past twenty years of age, Emma/Eli is torn between conflicting forces: (s) he is taking testosterone injections but she is reluctant to completely destroy her capacity for motherhood.
- Wedding page has prominent pictures of high profile Hollywood figures Erik Hyman and Max Mutchnick with their twin daughters Rose and Evan. They celebrated, just prior to the California referendum on gay marriage, a combination marriage and baby-naming ceremony. The two grooms, in dark suits and yarmulkes, themselves looked like twins. Their daughters were provided by way of a surrogate mother and probably in vitro fertilization. It wasn’t clear who contributed the seed or who sold/contributed the egg.
At the heart of these two poignant stories is the intense, generous desire to pass on life, to generate, to mother or to father another. The Latin root genus means birth and gives us the significant words gender, generosity and generate. The works all refer to passing on of life, to magnanimity of spirit and of body, to the bi-polar and life-giving structure of human nature. Emma cannot avoid her intense maternal passions, whatever her gender confusion; Erik and Max share a passion to be fathers, notwithstanding their sexual proclivities. Emma is feminine and maternal; Erik and Max are both masculine and paternal. Maternity is the end, telos, purpose of femininity, just as paternity is the goal of masculinity. Gender is not a cultural construct, a personal preference, or a proportionality of hormones. Gender is:
- The God-given and God-imaging desire;
- Springing from the depths of the human spirit, infusing every cell, neuron path, muscle;
- To bond with the other;
- And to generously give life.
This gendered and generous desire to engender is irrepressible. Whatever our dysfunctions and confusions, it springs ever afresh like a clear, crisp fountain from the depths.

Is President-elect Obama a Christian?

If he is baptized with water in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit by one with the intention of the Church, then he is a Christian. The sacrament is itself efficacious: this is objectively guaranteed and completely certain for the Catholic mind. No need to apply a theological litmus test, a moralistic threshold, or some ortho-practical standard. Obama is signed and sealed by Christ with an indelible character. For the sacramental imagination, spiritual realities have a brilliant lucidity, simplicity and formliness!

Does he live by Christian principles? It is not for us to judge (in the sense of condemn.) St. Ignatius of Loyola would have us place the best possible interpretation on the conduct of another. Therefore, we can gratefully appreciate that he is a fine husband and father; that he manifests the best intentions regarding peace, distributive justice, medical care for those in need, immigration, and a laundry list of issues. He seems to be a genuine searcher: sensitive, intelligent, open, inclusive, and attracted to the person of Jesus Christ.

Has he been properly catechized by a genuine itinerary of formation into the faith? Hardly! Prominent influences upon him include his anthropologist mother, the secular Saul Alinsky, and rage-filled Reverend Wright. Through no fault of his own (we assume) he has been educated into a bogus gospel.

Regarding innocent, defenseless unborn life, he stands squarely in the tradition of the Pharaoh of Exodus and Herod of the Holy Innocents. Their more localized atrocities would be magnified to a global magnitude by his Freedom of Choice Act. Policy-wise, he is a genuine Anti-Christ figure in a league with Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Saddam.

The renowned Russian philosopher Soloviev finished his short classic on “The Anti-Christ” on Easter Sunday of 1900. Pope Benedict and other prominent churchmen have referred to this masterpiece frequently. In it, he portrays the Anti-Christ as an enlightened, kind, generous figure: a philanthropist, ascetic, ecumenist, pacifist, scripture scholar, and environmentalist. He issues in a euphoric period of positive change. He does not, however, want to humble himself before Jesus, crucified and now alive; rather, he considers that he has elevated and purified what was best about Jesus. The portrayal is remarkably and frighteningly prescient of the Obama phenomena.

Obama must be seen as an Anti-Christ figure because of his infanticidal program; he himself, of course, is not the Anti-Christ. We do not judge the status of his soul since he very well may be carrying out this quiet genocide in invulnerable (“not his fault”) ignorance of conscience. He may have good intentions like the righteous Saul at the slaughter of Stephen, the first martyr. We might think of him like a young, innocent child who has become possessed by the devil, not because of his own consent to evil, but because of a family environment that is open to the occult and the demonic. The child’s soul may be innocent of serious sin even as he becomes the host for the satanic presence. This way of thinking allows us to judge the evil, but not the person; to hate the sin but not the sinner.

So, how do we respond to our baptized, well-intended, sensitive-searching, infanticidal, Anti-Christ figure President-elect? With prayer! We have powerful reasons to pray for him:
He is our leader and we always have to pray for leaders and authority figures.
He is our brother-in-Christ (as baptized) and badly in need of sound catechesis and mentoring.
He is the tool of higher, more intelligent powers: the principalities and rulers of the age. We must pray that he not be used to implement this crusade against the unborn.

We might especially entrust Obama and his family to the intercession of St. Martin de Porres, whose feast day we celebrated yesterday. Like Obama, St. Martin:
- Was mulatto son of a freed black woman and a Spanish aristocrat;
- Was disowned by his father;
- Was a marvelous social activist, organizing orphanages and hospitals for the poor.
In addition, he performed many miracles of increasing food for the hungry; levitated and bi-located to minister to the suffering; flagellated himself three times nightly for his own sins and the conversion of pagans; had a rapport with animals; and was exhumed twenty-five years after his death and found to be intact and exhaling a sweet fragrance. Reprimanded by a brother for bringing an aged and ulcerous beggar back to his own bed, he replied: “Compassion, my dear Brother, is preferable to cleanliness. Reflect that with a little soap I can easily clean my bed covers, but even with a torrent of tears I would never wash from my soul the stain that my harshness toward the unfortunate would create.”

St. Martin de Porres: Pray for us; Pray for President-elect Obama.

I am Matt Laracy; I am running for citizenship in heaven and I approve this message!

An Apocalyptic Time

“Why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” Jesus, Luke 12

USA, 2008: We are living in an apocalyptic time. This is a cross, an honor, a blessing!

“Apocalyptic time” here means a period when violence explodes, society polarizes into a civil war, families are divided as brother fights brother, core values are jeopardized and considered worth dying for, hearts and loyalties are unveiled, churches split and excommunicate each other, and there remain no neutral territories or spaces for negotiation and compromise. A time of choice! Examples of such times are:
- The mother of Maccabees tells her sons to accept death rather than betray Torah;
- Jews at the time of Jesus choose for or against him: fraud, madman or messiah?
- Peter and Paul agree Gentle Christians will NOT practice the entire Judaic Law;
- A choice for baptism in the early church was a decision for martyrdom;
- Christians in Europe during the Reformation were loyal or disloyal to the pope;
- Americans in 1776 were loyalists or revolutionaries;
- Citizens of Virginia in 1860 pledged allegiance to the commonwealth or the nation;
- Spaniards in the 1930s were leftists or rightists, as were Germans and Russians.

Barack Obama is so clear, simple, consistent, relentless and uncompromising on the status of unborn life that he has propelled us into an apocalyptic time. Ironically, he has done this in the most charming, irenic manner: proclaiming unity and peace, offering a range of reasonable and enlightened policies, with a temperament steady, reassuring, forgiving and inclusive. The violence is quiet and hidden behind hygienic, legal abortion procedures and moving into embryo/cloning labs, euthanasia of the elderly and even infanticide. Hardly a single issue, it is an entire Culture of Death (said John Paul II.)

He would not allow the rescue of a struggling baby that has survived an abortion. With the Freedom of Choice Act, he would use our tax money to fund abortions here and import them overseas. He would strip away any restrictions the states have already enacted and sanctify abortion (and infanticide, eventually) into an absolute right.

Most social and political policies (health care, immigration, taxes) involve complex prudential judgments about which we can reasonably disagree in good will. Such policies are shrouded in uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Killing of the innocent and defenseless is not such an issue; it is always inherently wrong. Any 7-year old can understand this; it takes a college education to confuse it. THE Church does have A position on genocide, legalized abortion, euthanasia, suicide and infanticide. It does not have A position on health care, immigration or hunting of polar bears.

Many issues are negotiable: if you want a 30% capital gains tax and I want 50%, we might compromise on 40%. The life of a little one cannot be determined by such a Solomon-like decision. Two core moral values are mutually exclusive: the right of the mother to abort and the right of the fetus to life. They cannot compromise; it is either/or.

The common position that “I am personally opposed to abortion, but ….” is a decision that the government support abortion rights against the life of the little one. It is pro-abortion. Princeton’s Robert George has lucidly compared such a stance to a Southerner in 1860 who says “I am personally opposed to slavery and do not own slaves myself; but it is part of our society and we cannot deny the right to choose slavery to others.” Such a position is pro-slavery; the “personally opposed…” stuff is politically meaningless.

In the post-Roe, pre-Obama era, devout, informed, liberal, pro-life Catholics might vote “choice” year after election year, confident that the positive consequences of Democrat policy on a range of issues (peace, jobs, health care) more than overwhelmed the regrettable legalization of abortion. This belief is dismantled by the clarity of Obama’s position: notwithstanding his evident intelligence, good will, and enlightened position on many issues; notwithstanding the many negativities of the Bush administration and the McCain campaign; notwithstanding the pressing urgency of the economic crisis. State-sponsored, legitimated, funded and exported abortion is not comparable to emissions standards or marginal tax rates; nor to health or Iraq policy; it the same as genocide. It is an abomination. A vote for Obama is a vote for a quiet genocide; it makes one the enemy of the “least” and of those of us who would defend and cherish “the least.” The moral judgment on this issue is immune to confusion, nuance and complexity: it is clear, certain, and infallible.

Only Two Choices: Republican or Democrat?
Obama’s policy is so drastic and lucid that he provokes an apocalyptic choice: for or against abortion. A vote for Obama is clearly a vote for legalized abortion and is not possible for a Catholic. This absolutely binary choice can easily be confused in our system as a choice between the parties. The reality is more complex. Thought experiment: imagine an electoral choice in the early 20th century between a Hitler and a Stalin. No matter how bad the Stalin alternative and how enlightened the Hitler policy (on say, health care or the economic situation), a Catholic could NEVER vote for either.

A pro-life Catholic cannot vote for Obama; he need not vote McCain. There are other options: a third party vote or a boycott of the election. A liberal Catholic, unable to support Republican economic or foreign policy might boycott as a protest against both Republican and the Democrat forms of evil. A paleoconservative might vote third party in rejection of the politics of imperialism as well as that of choice. Conversely, boycott by a low-tax, strong defense, pro-choice Republican would be a choice for abortion, even though it appears similar to the decision of the pro-life Catholic. A vote for legalized abortion is morally prohibited; a vote for any particular party or candidate is not required.

Immediate Future of the Culture War
This Culture War has been waged for 35 years (mostly in a civil manner) and it will only intensify. The Obama candidacy brings a new level of intensity and clarity. It has been less prominent in this election than economic policy: both sides are confident of their base and reaching out to independents and therefore downplay the polarizing issue of defenseless human life. But it is the defining moral issue of our time. The surge of enthusiasm for Huckabee and Palin, who came out of nowhere, revealed the intensity of the movement. In a few years the Iraq war and the economic crisis of 2008 will be dim memories; but the war over innocent life will rage through the lifetimes of our children.

Then-Cardinal Ratzinger clarified a few years ago that Catholic politicians who persist in support for legalized abortion are to be denied communion. John Paul, Benedict and our bishops are tireless in their chant: all other rights (to work, immigration, health care, etc.) are meaningless if the right to life is denied. Slowly, our bishops have been getting clearer in their teaching and removing the fog of confusion that would conflate the destruction of innocent life with other “life” issues ranging from just war determinations to tax policy to transfats, clean air and dog fights.

Especially under an Obama presidency, the Culture War will intensify. Out of power, the pro-life movement will reinvigorate itself as the Catholic-Evangelical alliance is strengthened. In the Catholic Church we already see an emergent leadership that is more vigorous and counter-cultural in defense of life and family. The boomer generation, formed by the cultural revolution of the 60s and an undiscerning preference for formless “change” over tradition and authority, is moving steadily towards retirement, the nursing home, the cemetery and longevity in purgatory (if God be merciful!) Leadership will pass into the hands of the John Paul II generation, including more traditional clergy and laity from the ecclesial movements. The excommunication policy of our pontiff will slowly be implemented by an episcopacy that has been up to now mostly timorous and accomadationist. Imagine, for example that a Catholic Vice-President Biden were to break a congressional tie over the Freedom of Choice Act by a vote for abortion: any self-respecting Cardinal of Washington DC would be forced to refuse him communion. The Biden dilemma (loyalty to party or Church) is paradigmatic. The incompatibility of being (pro-life) Catholic and (pro-abortion) Democrat becomes blatant and obvious in an increasingly apocalyptic time.

Long Term Prospects
In the long run, the Culture of Life will prevail. No society that kills its very young can long endure. The culture of “choice” carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction as surely as did the communist, the Nazi or the Ba’athist Parties. The atheistic, nihilistic and anti-procreative logic that underlies the politics of “choice” will eventually self-destruct by an inexorable process inherent in the created order. Despite setbacks, victory in the war is assured us by Christ: “The gates of hell shall not prevail against you.”

Strategy for an Apocalyptic Time
Confident of eventual victory, we recognize the conflict as primarily spiritual; secondarily, moral and cultural; and thirdly, political. Therefore, our priorities are:

Repentance and humility: confession of my own arrogance, resentment and accusation; immersion in works of mercy, prayer, sacrament, and the Word.

Forgiveness of the enemy. With Jesus, we can forgive our enemy only if we name him, in a spirit of peace. My enemy is always the one closest to me, especially spouse, brother or mother or sister or father. Those are the ones who frustrate, disappoint, shame, and damage us. So, we candidly admit the enmity within our families and move to overcome it through forgiveness, prayer and love.

Patience is everything! Many who vote the pro-choice line do intend to protect life through a complex range of policies (health care, end war, distributive justice for the poor)even as their judgment on state protection of innocent life suffers from the confusion foisted by the “spirit of the age.” An agitated, argumentative and condemnatory attitude on our part will do further harm. Patience is all; as the saint said: "Those who rush destroy the things of God."

Passion and persistence in our own commitment to life in all dimensions, overcoming defeatism and discouragement, announcing “in and out of season.”

Clarity in echoing the Gospel of Life: with intelligence and insight, we disentangle the issue of defenseless life from a web of other realities. It cannot become married to a right wing ideology of small government and strong defense. In its simplicity and clarity, it is distinct from but related to the fostering of life through more complex policy issues (foreign affairs, tax, health care, immigration) about which we can and must disagree and compromise in prudential discourse.



It is a privilege to live in such times! How exciting and exhilarating! Whatever our disappointments and failures, we move ahead, confident in God’s grace, repenting from sin, forgiving our enemies, basking in God’s mercy, and protecting life, in the unambiguous and apocalyptic issue of innocent life, as well as the endless flow of complex, interrelated, and controversial issues that impact human life in our age.



“Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three; a father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” Jesus, Luke 12