Virginal Dimension of Marital Love

In Communio of Summer 2008, Father Antonio Lopez writes in “Mary, our Certainty of Hope” of the primal human fear of final solitude and of Mary as the one who accompanies us, reflecting the love of God as the moon does the sun’s rays, and rooting our hope in absolute confidence, rather than anxiety, because God has already come among us, taking flesh within her womb. Mary teaches us the silence in which to pray “Come” as we long with her for the “undeserved miracle of God’s company” even as we already enjoy that holy company. Along the way, he reflects upon the virginal love of Mary, following his mentor Father Luigi Giusanni. This is a difficult and challenging concept as it moves well beyond the physical into a phenomenology of the interiority of love.

Virginal love:
- Is one that desires to possess the beloved (eros) but with an interior detachment that sets the beloved free (agape).
- Does not impose, but allows and invites a free and creative reception.
- Perceives and delights in the beauty of the beloved in selfless surrender and sacrifice.
- Affirms the other without the impulse to absorb or use her selfishly.
- Beholds and cherishes the beautiful that is gratuitously given in the being of the beloved, in obedience to the form and nature of that beauty, renouncing any urge to control or use from an extrinsic, non-contemplative vantage point.
- Is a reciprocal possession of each other as gift in openness to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit.
- Allows us, like the woman caught in adultery and liberated by Jesus, to be completely free, completely ourselves, and yet completely possessed by our Lover.
- Allows union with distinction, rather than fusion into unity and thus dissolution of otherness.

Clearly, such virginal love is the inner form of any pure and genuine love: friendship, marriage, paternity or maternity, and filiality. Why does such beauty-perceiving, union-seeking, other-affirming, liberating love take the specific form of abstinence from romantic/erotic desire and procreation? This virginal love, embodied so perfectly in Mary, is a privileged share in God’s chaste, creative and redemptive love for us. He desires us, but not in the manner of sexualized pagan gods, rather with a liberty and gratuity that guarantees our own autonomy, freedom and capacity to freely reciprocate the love. The spirit of love, the Holy Spirit, is communion with pure distinction; it creates and allows distance, preserving the autonomy of both Lover and Beloved; and in our historic, temporal domain finds a privileged and specific expression in virginity as freely chosen abstinence from romance, sex and family.

Romantic and erotic longings are powerful and overwhelming; they spring from the very deepest needs of the needy human self; they tend by concupiscence to become possessive, selfish, angry and manipulative. In the Garden of Eden before the fall, we can imagine that eros and agape infused each other in a sublime nuptial communion. With sin, however, this union was broken and erotic love became identified with covetousness, deception, control and violation. The inner form or meaning of erotic love, however, will always be a movement into agape, selfless reception of and gift to the other in her distinctive beauty and nature.

Where does this leave married love? Nuptial love if it is to be and become free, total, faithful, and fruitful, must also be virginal. The romantic and erotic dimensions of love are terribly distinct from but not contradictory of the virginal dimension. In the honeymoon embrace, virginity is not lost, is not taken, and is not violated. Rather, it is freely given and (within the natural realm) fulfilled. The marital act is holy and sacramental because of the virginal dimension that is present by grace, even if more implicit than manifest. It is the virginal element that must grow with the marriage as the lovers encounter each other’s selfishness and all the challenges of family life. While the romantic and erotic will ebb and flow unpredictably according to their own rhythms, the virginal aspect purifies, strengthens and lightens the relationship and opens it up to hope.

Such a union is not closed in upon itself in a cycle of mutual selfishness and violation. Rather, the virginal opens the lover to see his beloved as completely free and other because she belongs first and foremost to God, in a relationship of eternal love. Her love affair with God is what defines her and so spousal love is secondary and contributory to that primal love affair. This transcendent dimension opens the lover to appreciate and embrace his beloved in all of her otherness: her maternity, her work and interest and gifts, her failings, idiosyncrasies and weaknesses. It especially allows the lover to see and serve his beloved in the mission entrusted to her by God. As seen in St. Joseph, such love evokes an obedience, a silence, a sacrifice, and a guardianship of the specific and unique vocation of the beloved in all its density, complexity, creativity, enormity, ambiguity, expectancy, fragility and mystery.

With the passing of years, of course, the romantic and erotic diminish along with youthful vitality, endurance and energy; but the passing of time and accumulation of experience can work to enhance the virginal dimension of love: the mutual acceptance and affirmation of each other, without selfish claim or possession. So we see that marital love is already in the beginning virginal; but this virginity is even more so its goal and destination. As physical energies lessen and psychic longings become transformed, virginal delight in each other develops and expands. No need for viagra or hormone therapy here! Rather, with the passing of libidinal energy and fecundity to the next generation, the spouses are free to deepen their guardianship of their shared and specific missions. Their pray life and its service of the young is especially reinvigorated with release from household responsibilities.

Within the Catholic economy, we rightly highlight the bipolarity and mutual fecundation of the celibate and married states. By contrast, Hindu tradition encourages the natural trajectory of marriage from the household stage into a monastic lifestyle of prayer, poverty, chastity and obedience. And so, we might synthesize these insights and marvel that spousal love, always grounded in the virginal, is destined to deepen and purify its inner form with the passing of time, the growth in experience, and the diminishment in physical strength. With John the Baptist, we pray “I must decrease so that you may increase.”

As so, at last, we will say like the guests at the Cana: “You have saved the best wine for now.” (John 2:10)

Ponzi Finances of Debt; Catholic Economies of Plenty

Our economy is more and more looking like a mega-Ponzi scheme. We got into trouble because everyone was borrowing too much: China has loaned us $1 trillion over the last decade. To get out of the crisis we will stimulate the economy by borrowing another $trillion, probably from China. Isn’t this the way a Ponzi scheme works: expansive borrowing to cover prior debt? If faith in unregulated, low-tax free markets went into crisis in late summer of 2008 with the mortgage bust, we are now witnessing a revived faith in Keynesian deficit spending. Today’s NY Times explains that the Chinese have loaned us so much money because we Americans borrow and spend without saving while the Chinese are making, saving and loaning tons of money without buying anything. We are joined to each other as addict to co-addict. It is hard to avoid the impression that the economy we have created is a macro-monster that no one really can understand, control or predict. The financial wizards and economic experts with their obscure terminology and complicated mathematical modeling did not anticipate this crisis and elicit little confidence that they can resolve it. What are we learning? We are learning to place little trust in things like stocks, credit, planning, pensions, retirement plans and “financial security” in general. It resonates of the Gospel rebuke to the rich man building barns for his harvest: “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded of you!” (Luke 12:20)

Sin as Debt?

The time seems ripe to retrieve the language and imagery of sin as debt. To literally identify sin as debt and debt as sin would surely be simplistic and distorting of both; but there is a sin-like quality to debt and a debt-like quality to sin. The mystery of iniquity is illuminated by many images: disease, addiction, isolation, mimetic contagion, rebellion, deception, darkness, and bondage…to name a few. Sin has traditionally been understood as an infinite debt incurred by offending our Almighty God. This approach has been unfashionable in recent decades but can be helpful. Both sin and debt are progressive and dynamic and lead us deeper into a bondage that can become inescapable; both involve profound deficit, loss and negativity; both bring bondage and oppression; both lead to hopelessness and paralysis. The economic and spiritual spheres of human life are clearly distinct; but they do mutually infuse and influence each other and there is an analogical and interactive relationship between them. In an age of Ponzi schemes and trillion dollar deficits, our fear and loathing of sin might well inflame our dread of debilitating debt and our thirst for frugality, simplicity and generosity.

Grace and Plenty

If sin implies debt and destitution, grace clearly means plenitude, surplus, and extravagance. Christ in the paschal mystery has not only canceled our debt, but has invested us into his own legacy of boundless plenty. In the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, we eat the bread of eternal life and drink from heavenly springs. This spiritual banquet overflows into our economic, domestic and physical, economies. Within the faith of the Church, we daily live the miracle of the loaves and fishes and the generosity of the sinful woman who anointed her Lord with precious oils; we draw from the merits or credit of the Communion of Saints even as we sup on the provisions of Mother Nature.

It is a marvelous time for skepticism about financial instruments and macro-economics; a time for uninhibited immersion in the sacramental economy and the abundance of the Kingdom; a time for vigorous and celebrative simplicity, frugality and generosity.

Waterfront Priest: the Church and the Union

In my childhood home we had a book, The Waterfront Priest, on Father John Corridan S.J., whose defense of workers’ rights on the NY waterfront was later portrayed by Karl Malden as Fr. Peter Barry in On the Waterfront. In that cinematic masterpiece, street-tough Terry Malloy (Marlon Brandon) is torn between the values of the Catholic reformist priest and the corrupt, mob-ruled longshoreman’s union of Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb.) That riveting drama provides an illuminating model for understanding the tense, troubled relationship between Catholic and union values in 2008.

That book was a gift to my father from the Jesuit St. Peter’s Labor School in Jersey City, where he taught Catholic labor principles from the viewpoint of a union activist. His involvement as a Catholic labor man was emblematic of the close, fruitful relationship between Church and union in those days. Unions were full of Catholic ethnics and were closely mentored by priests inspired by papal social teaching. These were fighting for control on two fronts: against mob corruption and leftist radicalism. For the most part, the fight was largely successful and the Church-labor relationship was, in the 1950s, one of mutual infatuation. In a Catholic labor family such as ours, the union was a quasi-divine institution closely engaged with the Church herself and dedicated to fighting dark, greedy forces of corporate greed. The honeymoon simplicity, clarity, and felicity enjoyed in that working class, urban, ethnic Catholic cocoon was not to withstand the changes of the 60s. In that era, Church and union took different directions and now face each other like Johnny Friendly and Father Barry battling for Terry Malloy’s soul.

As son of a union organizer, I always took pride during my career at UPS (5 years as a teamster myself, almost 20 in supervision dealing with the union) in my company’s pro-union philosophy, even as I endured the fierce, combatative tensions between company and union. But my first personal experience with the union was not pleasant. During my trial period as a package car driver when I was trying to earn my 30-day union book, I would come early to work and spend a few minutes of my own time previewing the packages on my truck since I was new to the routes and areas. I was not represented by the union but trying, with some urgency as father of three at the time, to become a union member. The shop steward threatened that if I continued working for the company on my own time, I might be thrown off the truck. Later, in supervision, I had occasion to “brown up” and drive past a railroad picket line (our own union drivers would not do so) in order to retrieve packages from the striking rail companies. At that time I experienced the violence of a picket line. It was not a pretty sight. This was the darker side of the union movement.

In UPS, management and teamster leadership both worked their way up from the ranks so that between the company and union there was no class distinction, but a realistic and wary knowledge and suspicion of each other. A hard-driving, demanding, stress-maximizing corporate climate evoked an angry, defensive, belligerent union reaction, especially in areas like NY/NJ. Union pressures rose to countervail company demands. Tension and anger were, however, always regulated and directed by “The Contract.” This is an eminently sensible way to do business. In my years as dispatcher, I was very happy to work with the shop steward who would let me know immediately if I violated the contract (about things involving seniority like overtime) but defend me against unfair driver grievances and complaints. I lost my naiveté and illusions about the union movement and came to see company and union as equivalent morally: both fundamentally good institutions, equally prone to greed and distortion. Union members were no more morally superior to management than management was to labor leadership.

In the broader social context, however, the union movement increasingly aligned itself with the cultural liberalism on issues like abortion and gay marriage. These should, of course, have remained extrinsic to bread-and-butter economic issues of wages, benefits, safety and job security. But within the umbrella Democratic Party, the union movement came to endorse abortion and the entire ethos entailed. So, for example, in the 2003 contract agreement with GM, UAW leadership attempted to include coverage for abortion as a benefit. They attempted to do this on the sly, without submitting it to the democratic approval of the membership. To President Gettlefinger’s chagrin, word of the innovation was leaked and a pro-life reaction crushed the initiative. It is telling that the social engineering was attempted as an anti-democratic, elitist coup, much like the successes of our activist judiciaries in imposing their liberal cultural agenda. This specific case of worker pushback against the cultural liberalism of the union elite is, unfortunately, an exception. In general, the union continues to live“in sin” with feminist and gay militancy within the Democratic Party.

During these same ending decades of the 20th century, our seven children were attending a parochial school system that was increasingly stressed by the decline of the teaching religious orders. Parochial schools were switching into lay hands and their economic survival, in lower income communities like our own, required some form of tax credit or voucher for families choosing parish schools. Here we find the second anti-Catholic initiative of the union movement. The teachers’ unions, with support of the entire Democratic alliance, became the Number One enemy of financial relief to parents supporting two school systems. In some urban areas, a majority of public school teachers send their own children to non-governmental schools; yet, the unions remain militant against parental choice in education.

And so, an observant Catholic today typically finds himself aligned against his own union on two important issues: abortion and education. This brings us to a more recent issue: the union advocacy of “card check.” As my father and uncles knew so well, our law requires a secret ballot election about unionization after organizers have gathered signature cards requesting such election from 30% of a company’s employees. The new “card check” procedure, advocated by the unions and endorsed by President-elect Obama, would dispense with the secret ballot and grant union certification as soon as union organizers get over 50% of employee card signatures. This is an open process in which organizers know who has signed and who has not. Confidentiality is voided. There is no privacy. This is a problem. Most elections, from President of the nation to home room representative, are secret ballots to protect the confidentiality of the elector. Generally, a person should be able to vote his conscience or preference without public scrutiny and vulnerability to coercion or retaliation. The unions on this issue allege subtle coercion and manipulation by business as a pretext for exposing the worker to greater vulnerability.

The union movement is turning towards the dark side… as it did on the mob-run docks in the 40s and 50s and could have with the Stalinists in the 30s. Plagued with the same gigantism of bureaucratic government and global capitalism, it has aligned itself with both, through the Democratic Party, in an agenda hostile to the Church’s values on innocent life, sexuality and marriage, the education of our young, and the confidentiality of voter choice. These are bad days for the labor movement.

There are only two divinely created societies: marriage/family and the Church. The first preceded the Fall; the second is heaven’s antidote to the Fall. Along with government, military, police, business, and private property, the union is an inherently good institution in accordance with human nature in a fallen world. As such, it is reactive to evil and itself tends to corruption and perversion. Especially in our complex, globalized society, we need these institutions to countervail and correct each other. More importantly, as Catholics, we need to scrutinize them as to how they enrich and support the more primal and foundational values expressed in the family and Church.

By this reading, the union movement is in sad shape today, especially by comparison with the glory days of our fathers in the 1950s. The Father Corridans and Laracy brothers of that time were triumphant over the Stalinists and the mobsters even as they countervailed corporate interests on the part of worker’s rights. Our generation has not done as well.

However, the battle continues. In a capitalist world, the Catholic will always support the union; even though the unions have turned against the Church and the values and interests of their own members. Terry Malloy took a terrible beating from Johnny Friendly on that dock; but he walked away bloody and victorious.

Let’s Talk Salvation

You can’t talk to young people about salvation. What’s salvation? What does salvation mean? My eternal soul? You can only talk to young people in young people’s language, really. And if you’re going to talk to them about salvation, the first thing they will understand is saving the planet. You’re talking about being saved and they will say: ‘What about saving the planet?’
Irish Bishop Kiernan Conroy in an interview.

Christ, give me souls. Let anything you like happen to me, but give me souls in return. I want the salvation of souls. I want souls to know your mercy. Diary of Saint Faustina

Bishop Conroy is SO wrong! Saint Faustina is SO right!

The purpose of evangelization and catechesis is precisely to introduce a new language, a novel vocabulary. Language and vocabulary have the power to unveil and reveal realities that had been hidden and obscure. And so the purpose of religious education is to equip our young with this language that unveils the hidden drama underlying all human existence: the drama of good and evil, the spiritual conflict in every soul between the Kingdom of Darkness and the Kingdom of Light.

And so we need to think and speak constantly of salvation as the Presence of the Great Lover who created us out of love, destined us for an eternity of love, and sent his Son to suffer and die to deliver us from sin back to love. We need to talk relentlessly about sin as disbelief, isolation and loneliness, death, guilt, and shame. What young person does not know loneliness, shame, fear, guilt and death? It is the very air we breath: the pervasive threats to all that we so desperately long for.

I suspect that Bishop Conroy is projecting his own loss of faith, his own incomprehension, his own alienation from our tradition. I find young people to be fascinated with the last things: death, judgment, heaven and hell. These we can return to time and again as they orient us in our pilgrimage through life. They also respond with great interest to:

- Spiritual combat with Satan: the reality that he is constantly on the attack, pulling us away from our deepest longings and our true destination. Who is not interested in possession, seduction, opression, obsession, temptation, and deception?
- Sin in all its variety: mortal and venial, omission, near occasions of sin, the objective and subjective dimensions, primacy of conscience, erroneous consciences as culpable and inculpable.
- The supernatual economy of the Communion of Saints: Mary and all our saint/angel friends in heaven; prayer for the souls in purgatory; indulgences; the question of a populated hell (crowded or empty?); and the very mind-boggling idea of an eternity of joy or sadness.
- The mysterious efficacy of the sacraments, including: the seal of confession, transubstantiation in the Eucharist, the permanent character infused into the soul by baptism, confirmation and holy orders.
- Moral categories that are so illuminating but rarely spoken of: rash judgement, calumny, detraction. How would we be able to make sense of complex moral issues (war, amputation, police actions) without the principle of double effect?
- The language of sexuality as gift, fidelity, chastity, waiting in patience, promise and fecundity. This language is largely unknown and opens up a breathtaking panorama of joy and generosity. (On a street corner here in Jersey City, I once mentioned to two men that a friend, Dave O’Brien comes every year to speak to our youth about “being chaste.” One of them, a street-wise character, was interested. “Oh yeah? Being chased by who…the cops?”)

The list is endless. As a catechist for over 40 years, I find myself more and more enthralled with these spiritual realities as time passes. My grasp of them becomes more lucid and my interest more inflamed. Students respond to this clarity and passion. The ideas may not be entirely intelligible to them, especially if they live in non-observant homes and are not even minimally immersed in a worshipping, believing, obedient community. But at the very least they sense that this strange man is very excited about something.

May we steep ourselves in the thought patterns of saints like Faustina… and pray for Bishop Conroy and so many others who are confused and misled.

The Silence of Advent

It is not an empty, barren, futile silence.

It is full, deep, pregnant, peace-filled, comforting, hopeful, strengthening, and beautiful.

It is the silence of the mute Zechariah, speechless and awe-filled before the overshadowing and the miraculous conception of his son…a silence that would explode into praise after nine months.

It is the expectant, trusting silence of Mary, in quiet dialogue with the angel of the annunciation; the silence that was to ponder these things in her heart; the silence of the Pieta and the exuberant quiet of Easter morning.

It is the listening, obedient silence of Joseph who says not a word but does as directed by the heavenly visitors.

It is the chaste, reverent, nuptial silence between Mary and Joseph.

It is the silence of the inarticulate, embryonic John who leaps for joy in an arena free of sin; the silence of the desert where John would find his voice and lend it to the Word made flesh; the silence of wordless martyrdom.

It is the silence of many hours and miles of quiet pilgrimage, by the three kings, across barren, still, arid lands, following the star.

It is the silence over the shepherds on those quiet hills just before they burst into angelic exultation.

It is the silence of the Innocents; the silence of exile in a foreign land; the silence of waiting and expectancy.

It is the infinite silence in the heart of the Father as he contemplates His beloved Son, and us his sons and daughters.

It is the silence in our hearts as we abide in His delight

Excruciating Silence of Caroline Kennedy

The campaign of Caroline Kennedy for Hillary’s senate seat is excruciating. In her, there is so much of her father and especially her mother: refinement, taste, wholesome and yet glamorous beauty, intelligence, competence, idealism, maternity, concern for the common good and radiant femininity. But the Kennedy curse hangs over her: abortion.

Last night, her cousin Kerry Kennedy was on Hardball, supporting Caroline’s bid as well as her own book on being Catholic. Chris Matthews asked about Caroline’s stand on abortion: pro-choice or pro-life. Kerry answered that she did not know; it had never come up in conversation. Mr. Hardball was incredulous: “The Kennedy family, so famous for their political conversations…and this has NEVER come up in conversation?” This is, of course, ludicrous. This family is the quintessential political family, the ultimate American Catholic family, a family obsessed with questions about the public order. And abortion is THE polarizing, defining moral, social, cultural issue of the last 35 years, which is to say Caroline’s entire adult life.

How telling it is that a cousin (recall that the Kennedy’s are renowned for their close family ties) cannot publicly speak on Caroline’s position on abortion. Apparently, she has no clear public record on the issue. Is it possible she is pro-life? No, it is inconceivable! She emerged from privacy (an absolute value for her) to enthusiastically support Obama. She herself is being supported by Uncle Ted and the entire choice establishment. She has ties to NARAL and other choice groups. Her book on privacy connected abortion and contraception with the alleged shrinking of the right to privacy. We all know she is pro-choice, probably in the 100% category with Obama, Teddy and Hillary. Imagine a Kennedy Christmas gathering if a cousin were to clearly advocate legal defense of the unborn. This would be worse than a Fleckinstein posting on his (liberal, Democrat) family’s website. It would be chaos! It would be civil war!

Caroline’s silence on this issue is more than shyness. Her deep Catholicism and maternal nature cannot but trouble her. Her silence on the issue is a guilty compliance and acceptance of legal abortion. This is not the Advent silence of the pregnant Mary and Elizabeth that erupted into Praise at the Annunciation; it is not the humble, obedient silence of Joseph who protects the Christ child from the murderous Herod; nor is it the contrite, humble, awe-filled silence of Zechariah at the miraculous conception of his son John. No, this is the silence of a conflicted conscience; the silence of betrayal; the silence of non-resistance to and therefore compliance with absolute evil.

In the political sphere, Caroline will become another foot soldier for the Democrat machinery of annihilation. Let us hope that she returns to her decent, honorable life of anonymous service, preferring the privacy of her mother to the ignominy of Kennedy choice.

Merry Christmas from President-elect Obama

Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration is a very good sign. It infuriated the Gay left and showed that our President-to-be knows how to say no. Even more significantly, it suggests that moral conservatives, for whom man/woman marriage is absolutely sacrosanct, are not to be disenfranchised in the new regime.

Warren, like most people of traditional faith, sees homosexual activity as dysfunctional and immoral. Obama does not agree. But he acknowledges that Warren’s viewpoint is not disreputable and intolerable. He is saying that the values and disvalues of homosexual actions are things about which we can disagree within the bonds of civility and national unity. This is huge! The militant left, by contrast, cannot tolerate this difference. For them, any critique of same-sex acts is a form of hatred directed at a persecuted group.

In my religion classes, my constant chant is what I learned from my mother: “Hate the sin; love the sinner.” “Judge the action; not the heart of the actor.” “Distinguish the manifest objective act from the subjective intention, which is known clearly only to God.” This simple, clear distinction is quite obvious. I might attack cigarette smoking, because I care about the smoker. The same logic applies to anorexia, cutting, drug or alcohol abuse and the varieties of sexual misconduct. Your average seven-year-old can grasp the distinction. However, the homosexual movement is resistant to this logic and flies into indignant rage at the criticism of their actions. People who smoke, drink, hunt, or serve in the army tolerate moral censure from critics with no loss of self-esteem or psychic trauma. It is only the homosexuals who demand that their behaviors be condoned by everyone in society. They advocate a totalitarianism that suppresses any opinion, no matter how ancient or how scientifically verified, that disapproves of the actions and lifestyle which they have chosen as their identity. (This allergy to disapproval is itself a symptom of psychological insecurity.) Their logic is: “I have sexual desires for my own gender; I must act on theses; these desires and actions define me; disapproval of these actions is a rejection of my identity.” This argument is flawed at every point except for the first: that they suffer sexual attraction. The symbolic choice of Warren says that tolerance is to be extended to those who choose these actions as well as to those who disapprove of the same.

There are indications that the new administration is moving strongly to the center. The decision to keep Secretary of Defense Gates is basically a continuation of the Bush policy of the last two years. This is a radical departure from the quasi-pacifism of the candidate who captured the Democratic nomination by his repetitive, indignant anti-war rhetoric. Likewise, the choice of Hilary for State Department implies a more realistic and moderate positioning regarding world affairs.

Let us hope that the Warren choice is the first move towards the middle on the Culture War issues as well. Obama’s voting record is so extreme that I dismissed all his talk of unity as rhetoric and hype. But the Warren decision has me questioning my cynicism. The real test will be with FOCA and other abortion issues. There were reports this week that his transition team plans a billion dollar bailout for the abortion industry including exportation of Planned Parenthood services overseas. Should he move to use our tax dollars for these purposes and to dismantle the few restrictions on abortion (partial birth, parental notification, etc.), he will ignite a furious Culture War. Let us hope that the invocation choice is not a bone thrown to the right before he implements the draconian regime associated with FOCA. Should he sideline these initiatives and more or less continue the status quo, he has a chance to unite our country in facing the economic crisis as well as health care, immigration and international problems. Now that is a change we can believe in!

Merry Christmas to you also, President Elect!

Avery Cardinal Dulles

The only American to receive the red hat for his work in theology passed on to his eternal reward, fittingly, on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. If the virgin of Tepeyac embodies all that is good, true and beautiful in America and in the Church, then this quintessential theologian joins the company of Juan Diego, the ultimate catechist, as one of her very finest manservants and collaborators. Easily the preeminent American Catholic theologian of the last forty years, he took the baton from his Woodstock colleague John Courtney Murray but surpassed him for breath and balance. He came from American aristocracy and became a prince of the Church.

In September of 1969, I knocked sheepishly on the door of his Fundamental Theology course and asked if I could audit it as a non-matriculated, itinerant theology student. At that time Woodstock Theologate, just relocated in Manhattan from Maryland, offered classes only for Jesuit seminarians. Father Dulles welcomed me warmly, without hesitation, like a family member and directed his beetle (I understand this to be a distinctively Jesuit term for overall assistant) Brian to make sure I had the class readings and was made to feel at home. I was more than at home, I was elated.

Some of my fondness for him was because he reminded me a lot of my Laracy uncles and ancestors: tall, lean, lanky, shy and reticent, slightly awkward. But what a brilliant teacher: clear, insightful, patient, open-minded, balanced, and immensely reverent before the Word of God, the Church and Tradition.

It was around 1972 when I had an opportunity to sit at lunch with him in the cafeteria of the Riverside Interchurch Center. (I had tuna/egg salad sandwich with bacon, lettuce and tomato on rye. Outstanding! I have never had anything quite like it since.) At the time I was enamored of the political theologies of Metz and Moltmann and specifically the then fashionable view that the theologian is always political, that if you are not resisting the status quo than you are supporting it. In other wards, authentic Christian theology means standing with the poor in some active advocacy. I pressed this point with Father Dulles. My argument was, obviously, an attack upon his entire life of academic, non-politicized theology. It was particularly personal given his staunch, Republican establishment background. In a conceptual, academic manner, I was attacking his life work and his family. He responded with impeccable serenity, without a trace of defensiveness. He did not engage the theoretical issues, which he could have done in masterful fashion. He quite humbly said “I don’t believe I would be any good in community organizing or political advocacy. So I do what I am able to do, which is academic theology.” He was not apologizing; he was neither aggressive nor deferential. He was perfectly candid and forthright: I have some ability to do this and I do this.

There was about him a gentle humility that emerged from a deep sense of dignity and worth. He was so self-confident that there was no need for bravado. Surely he realized his intellectual giftedness. But he also had the quiet air of someone born and bred to lead men. And lead he did!

He published over 20 books and about 650 articles. No matter the topic, his approach was predictable. He would provide a concise, insightful, complete historical review going back to the Greeks and Scripture; he would trace the tradition in all its complexity and nuance; he would review magisterial statements, precisely distinguishing what they said, the context in which it was said, why it was said, and what it did not say; he would survey current opinion, fairly evaluating all pertinent views in a perfect balance of critique and appreciation; and oftentimes he would delight at the conclusion with a serendipitous insight or suggestion that was both faithful to our received Deposit and yet pregnant with promise. Years ago he treated missiology in a typically comprehensive manner and then ended with the delicious suggestion that the Christian in mission is moved to share the Gospel but also to himself encounter, more deeply, Christ in the people he serves and accompanies. More recently, he addressed the topic of the population of hell, showing that Scripture and tradition can support arguments for an unpopulated as well as for an immensely populated inferno; then he ended with a wise suggestion: It is better that we not know whether very many or very few end in hell; if we knew the former, we would be tempted to despair; in case of the latter, we might give in to presumption. Our ignorance allows us to nourish both urgency and hope.

Balance, universality and precision were his hallmarks. He was impeccably faithful to the Magisterium but precise in discriminating what really was defined from what was still open to argument. His tone and manner were sober, unemotional, objective, civil and ecumenical. He was open to all views and evenhanded in his criticism. In the years after the Council, he was known as a progressive in articulating the new vision of the Council; by the 1970s he was viewed as a conservative in reaction against an infatuation with undirected change. He claimed his theology never really changed and I believe he was right although the emphasis and stance changed as the Culture War erupted, especially after Roe. On the Culture War he was on the right side (according to the Fleckinstein blog) but always in a civil, respectful, cordial manner. His old school courtesy calls to mind the amicable and respectful meeting of Grant and Lee at Appomattox or the playful banter between William Buckley and a Galbraith or a Moynihan. At some points in the 80s and 90s he seemed to be the only American theologian standing in the way of the progressive stampede towards the cliffs; yet he earned and maintained the respect of so many who disagreed with him. Is there anyone else who was consistently published over the years in both America and First Things?

Upon receiving his red hat from Pope John Paul, he awkwardly leaned over and dropped it onto the pontiff’s lap. Later, he remarked that “he didn’t let the red hat get to his head.” Notice the lightness, the humor, the self-deprecation springing from a deeper dignity and confidence!

Just a few years ago he spoke in South Orange on the topic of suffering. During the question period, a nurse spoke movingly of a book she had found very helpful. By now in his late 80s, the Cardinal took out his pen and asked for the precise spelling of the author’s name and the publisher. Clearly, he was eager to get and read the book. Well into his ninth decade, he was still the avid learner. And he was preparing for his own passover.

He was a beautiful man! Deo Gratias

America’s Empress and Americanism

Empress of the one America is “La Morenita” (“the dark-skinned maiden”) who appeared to Juan Diego in 1531 as: expectant with new life; poor; modest and humble; patroness of the oppressed and little; victress over the powers of death; trans-national (at once Spanish and Indian); bearer of Glad Tidings; and reverent before our Holy God. As our Empress, she embodies and expresses all that is best in America: inclusion, faith, children, innocence, humility, catholicity, and love of the poor. Our loyalty to her and her reign position us to understand the wave of betrayals that can be grouped under the concept of “Americanism.”

“Americanism” was condemned by Pope Leo XIII in his apostolic letter Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae addressed to the bishops of the United States in 1899. He acknowledged the good apsects of America and was himself famously an advocate on behalf of the poor and a progressive social ethic. However, with this term “Americanism” he refered to an elusive complex of anti-Catholic values and beliefs that threatened the Church in the USA as well as Europe (esepcially France.) These beliefs were closely related to liberalism, secularism, modernism and individualism. Included were: preference for the active virtues over the contemplative; disparagement of authority and tradion in favor of personal experience; elevation of the natural over the supernatural; an excessive separation of church and state; and absolute freedom of speech and of the press. The denunciation seemed to have some effect since these tendencies diminshed in the American Church; but the teaching was also widely disparaged as targeting a “phantom heresy” which was not held or taught by anyone.

Over a hundred years later, however, we can clearly see that this “phantom” took flesh in the 1960s and erupted in a contagion of betrayal of the Catholic and American values embodied in the young maiden of Tepeyac Hill. We can identify several specific “Americanisms.”

Choice. The entire culture of choice (sexual license and the option to kill the unborn) is an exaggeration of an individualized liberty, disassociated from truth, family, authority, and love. If there is a specific devil in charge of Lucifer’s American operations, his name is surely Choice. The collaboration of our Catholic people in this culture is a betrayal of heartbreaking proportions. Our President-elect boasts a 100% NARAL rating and garnered 54% of the Catholic vote. Senator Bob Casey, poster boy for the “Pro-life Democrats,” boasts a 65% approval rate from the same group and has accepted over $300,000 from abortion groups. When I was in management at UPS, we were not allowed to accept a necktie from customers at Chrismas because of our code of integrity. If a necktie is problematic for integrity, what does $300,000 do to a man? Casey is a puppet of Chuck Schumer’s plan to coopt Catholics into collusion with the apparatus of death. The plan succeeded, in 2008 beyond the highest expectations. In his worst nightmares, Pope Leo XIII could not have conjured up ogres like Casey, Cuomo, Kennedy, Kerry, Biden and Pelosi…and treason by most Catholics. On behalf of freedom, they would use the immense resources of the state to facilitate the right to abort. Contemplate this crusade in the light of the expectant, hope-filled young maiden Empress!

Academic License. Fr. Hesburg, at the notorious Land O Lakes Conference of 1967, led the mutiny of Catholic Universities (prominently the more prestigious ones). Renouncing their fidelity to apostolic truth and authority, they pledged allegiance to the emergent Americanist religion of choice springing from the newly perfected contraceptive technology and leading immediately into abortion, divorce, gay sex, and genetic engineering. Again, consider these developments in light of the Star of the New Evangelization!

Irenic Bishops. Starting in the 1960s, Catholic bishops reflected their people’s inferiority complex and desperate need to be accepted by the larger culture. The prime value became peace, harmony and the avoidance of conflict. So, our bishops have become expert in pledging loyalty to the Vatican in a manner meek and mild, without ever giving real offense to the emergent powers in the USA. The clearest example is the warm welcome they extend at communion to even the most virulently abortionist Catholic politicians. Contrast this ambiguousness, indecision, and doublemindedness with the clarity and radiance of the icon left on the peasant’s Tilma.

Free Markets. Switching to the conservative side of the political spectrum, we can consider the classical economic liberalism of National Review conservatism as a constrasting expression of Americanist liberty, free-floating and uprooted from a moral compass. That magazine infamously rejected the papal social teahing (“Mater si; Magister no!”) Here we see the same individualistic liberty, but applied to the economic sphere. Here we have the impersonality of free markets, meaning the overall purposeless interplay of a million individual choices, elevated into a godhead. Such a cold, mechanical, efficient and heartless economy is hardly reflective of the Lady who came to comfort and heal the most sick and poor among us.

Isolationism. Otherwise solid American Catholic conservatives like Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul are overly threatened by illegal immigration and surrenderd to an ango-philic, zenophobic, isolationist paranoia. The very expression “America First” expresses a patriotism that is defensive rather than synergistic and internationist in the tradition of the Spanish-Indian Empress. The paleoconservative creed, fiercely reactive to secular moderntiy and expressive of so many Catholic values, fails to meet the standard on “catholicity” in the precise sense of universality and inclusivity.

Americanism is no longer a phantom; it is more like the Dragon of the Apocalypse, waiting to devour the offspring of the woman. She, however, flees into the desert where she is safe. May we join our Lady in that desert and absolutely reject Americanism in any of its virulent forms.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, Empress of America

Come to me; tell me all your woes and problems. I am your Merciful Mother, Mother of all the Nations, and Mother of the One, True God, and I want to alleviate your sufferings… Am I not here who am thy Mother…What dost thou fear? Today, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, we recall these words to St. Juan Diego.

John Paul II entrusted the one America to our Lady of Guadalupe. Single case: America. This brilliant Catholic insight of One America defies customary thinking. Geographically, we clearly envision two distinct continents united by a thin strip of land called Central America. But the Rio Grande is even more discriminatory of two contrasting worlds: Iberian Catholic vs. Anglo Protestant; Spanish/Portuguese vs. English; Third World vs. First World; patchwork of dictatorships and democracies vs. the world’s premier capitalisms. But John Paul sees one America and entrusts her to Our Lady, calling her “Mother of America and Star of the New Evangelization.”

This makes perfect sense to the Catholic mind. We pledge allegiance to our flag, but this loyalty defers to a greater Kingdom, to the Church, and to the Queen herself. Our bonds with our south-of-the-border brothers are actually stronger and deeper than our patriotic pledge. It is a spiritual, eternal bond that transcends and relativizes differences in language, culture, income, politics, economics, or skin complexion.

The Western Hemisphere shares a common identity. First it is “western.” This raises the question: western in regard to what? We are western in regard to Europe and more specifically to Rome and Jerusalem, the source of the faith that defines us. We generally consider everything east of Rome/Jerusalem as the Orient or the East and the Atlantic community as the West. Our identity and the way we image our world centers from the gospel that moved from Jerusalem to Rome and then to the entire world.

But more deeply, we can see that the same core forces formed the one hemisphere of America: the indigenous people who were treated so badly by the European invaders; African slaves; the impulse to conquer and accumulate as seen in many of the conquistadores; the impulse to bring the Gospel in both the Catholic South and the Protestant North; and the thirst for freedom of religion, especially in the North. We might ask ourselves how our Empress presents herself to this menagerie.

Most vividly, she identifies with the poor, specifically American natives. Her image is that of an Aztec maiden. Dramatically she opposes the Aztec rites of human sacrifice and the barbaric treatment of the conquistadors. Her chosen ambassador is a humble native. She respects the freedom of her children as there is nothing compulsive or oppressive about this humble, gentle virgin. She appeals only to her children as a loving mother. She clearly identifies with the conquered, the poor, and the marginalized; at the same time she is an internationalist, unifying Spaniard and Native and all the peoples of America.

There is an inexpressible, gentle, consoling, miraculous and mysterious power about this image of our Lady. Last week an image of her that is traveling from house to house in our extended family was in our home and it truly was like a visitor, radiating a most non-intrusive but sweet and inspiring influence.

As we pledge our loyalty to this Queen and Empress as Americans (here implying the politically correct notion of continental, not national identity…the correct expression for USA nationals is not clear) and Catholics, she relativizes and contextualizes our political and economic values in favor of her own clear, powerful agenda. This includes:

Evangelization: Our little catechist St. Juan Diego was steward of this image which elicited 10 million conversions within a decade. Never has there been such successful evangelization. The image simply has an unexplainable power to touch human hearts and minds. The maiden’s goal is always to lead her children to her Son and our heavenly Father through the Holy Spirit. The reverent tilt of her head, deferring to Another and belying any misunderstanding of her as a goddess, speaks more than a million words.

Life Bearing and Protecting: With few words but powerful symbolism, the obviously expectant “little dark skinned girl” (“La Morenita”) deconstructed the entire Aztec system of human sacrifice even as she critiqued the brutality of the conquering Iberian armies. So today she is closely associated with a lucid and absolute renunciation of the apparatus of infant destruction.

Family: Our Lady’s words to Juan are striking for their maternal intimacy and affection. It is amazing that this 50-some-year-old man is addressed thus by a young woman of child bearing age. At that time, however, the family itself was not under attack as it is today. So it is of interest that a new devotion to Mary under the title of Our Lady of America has been encouraged by a number of bishops. In a series of apparitions to a contemplative nun named Sister Mary Ephrem (1916-2000), our Lady stressed the purity of love and the indwelling of the Holy Trinity within the Christian home. This private revelation was approved and advocated by Archbishop Paul Leibold of Cincinnati who had been Sister’s spiritual director. Just last year Archbishop Burke (then of St. Louis, now in the Vatican) reported favorably to our United States bishops on the devotion. It seems to be Mary as Immaculate Conception speaking directly to the attack on family. Sister Mary Ephrem herself explained that Our Lady of America is specifically patroness of the USA while Our Lady of Guadalupe is patroness of the one America as an entire hemisphere. (We note here again the linguistic problem of referring to the USA as America.)

Solidarity especially with the poor: Our bonds (religio in its root means “bonds”) with our Latino brothers and sisters are far deeper than any linguistic, cultural, economic differences. In particular, we cherish closeness to those who are poor, humble and simple…like the Virgin of Mexico. This means that we welcome our Latino immigrants like family, without disparaging the need for secure borders, controlled immigration, and respect for law. A Catholic internationalism complements a genuine patriotism, cleansed of insecurity, fear, nativism, isolationism and protectionism.

The mysterious, iconic sacramental from Tepeyac and the young-yet-ancient earthly-heavenly woman it images come into our homes like a spring of infinite peace, joy and hope. In the midst of forces of death that have become as virulent as Aztec sacrifice or Conquistador greed, she unites us with her Son and all the simplicity, generosity, courage and love of his Holy Spirit.

Environmentalism in the Light of Creation and Advent Hope

Along with his endorsement, Pope Benedict as teacher brings correction and centering to the valid movement known as environmentalism, a.k.a. global warming, a.k.a. climate change, a.k.a. Al Gore. Specifically, the movement tends towards anxiety, false ultimacy, pantheism, scarcity-consciousness, false autonomy and unresponsiveness to the poor. These can be balanced by the Holy Father’s sense of Advent Hope and of Creation.

Anxiety: About this entire concern there is a sense of panic and imminent doom. We have been here before: in the 50s it was the Red Scare and in the 60s the Population Bomb; the turn of the century threatened the great computer crash; 9/11 anxiety stampeded us into the Iraq War; and many today live in fear of our brothers from south of the Rio Grande. Anxiety is a killer. Such toxic fear is always rooted in a lack of trust in God. The antidote to this is simple: faith in God, in Divine Providence, in His active and loving presence in the flesh, in time, in history, in the here and now. The climate change movement is largely associated with liberalism and secularism: with those who do not believe, don’t know if they believe, or at least don’t think too much about God and the supernatural. Relax! Take a deep breath! Armageddon is not imminent! There really is Somebody up there that likes you!

False Ultimacy: We are only here for a while: we are on our way to heaven (or the other place.) The last things are the ultimate things and they put everything else in perspective: not to worry. What matters is the salvation of our souls (as well as the entire created realm.) In this light, climate change is of interest and of concern, but it is not of ultimate concern. Much of the worry about the environment lacks this transcendent, eschatological depth and offers an alternate apocalypse: the world is going to end, disastrously. It takes on the appearance of a “new age” religion of its own: no transcendent God but the earth-animate-human life becomes the absolute. Like all forms of idolatry, this will finally trap us in fear, despair and anger.

Pantheism: The foundational Christian belief is Creation. This world we inhabit is itself a creation, a gift, conceived out of nothingness, motivated purely by love. It is neither necessary nor random. All of its goodness, truth and beauty are contingent, temporary and expressive of an infinitely greater and absolute Personal Goodness, Beauty and Truth. The beauty and goodness of nature and human life awaken within us a longing for this Greater. The sunset, the seashore, the splendor of another’s eyes…these are all good in themselves even as they point to and promise the Greater Good.
Much of environmentalism implies the disbelief and despair of pantheism: This is all we have; life as we see it is holy and sacred; let us enjoy and cherish it; desperately let us make the best of it because there probably is nothing after this. This is a great sadness.

Scarcity: The movement shares with the Population Explosion Crusade (of not-so-happy memory, though there are still zero population extremists among us, many of them now environmentalists) an anxiety about the scarcity of goods available to the human community. The earth is so limited and fragile that we need to stop burning oil; stop having so many kids…before we kill ourselves. To heal this worry we need a renewed sense of the abundance, generosity, and resiliency of Creation. We speak of Mother Nature out of an intuitive sense of her (definitely feminine!) nature as nourishing, protective, inclusive, competent, wise, and generally solicitous of her children’s every need. Belief in a Providential God provides a trust in the abundance of His creation.

False Autonomy: Implicit in much of the literature is a “soft atheism” that exhorts us: the earth is in our hands; there is no outside help; we had better clean up our act or we will destroy ourselves. We sense here “man come of age:” the Secular City of Marx, Darwin, Freud and Modern Scientific Man; the Drama of Atheistic Humanism. Our Pontiff exhorts us to again become childlike: trusting, innocent, filled with awe before Creation as Mother and God our heavenly Father. After this primal trust and hope, the quintessential virtue becomes obedience as “listening and responding in love:” obedience to the splendid and brilliant order of Creation; obedience to the personal voice of the Father as it speaks to every human heart; and obedience to our original vocation to become fertile and multiply and to tend to the Garden of earth.

The Poor: The obsession with climate change is specific to the affluent and can entail an indifference to the plight of the poor. Many of the more radical proposals to limit man-made emissions would hurt the poor most. Al Gore himself is notorious for his personal “carbon footprint” and a lifestyle typical of the rich and famous. By contrast, a more Franciscan appreciation for nature is married to a preferential love of the poor and a preference for simplicity of lifestyle. We need a Catholic “Prosperity Gospel” that announces the abundance of the Kingdom, primarily for the little ones and the poor, in a manner that is modest, simple, generous and joyous.

Imagine that a woman receives a beautiful bouquet of roses and delicious chocolates from an admirer. She enjoys the bouquet and munches on the candy without even reading the note. Enjoying the gift, she ignores the giver. Maybe she thinks the commodities arrived at her house out of randomness, through some process of chance selection. Maybe she suspects the giver and does not want to even think of him. Maybe she senses they were given out of necessity, not gratuitously. Maybe she has so many suitors and is indifferent to them all. Nevertheless, there is a sadness here: the very meaning of gift is frustrated if the giver is not acknowledged and “received” through the gift. The gift has its own beauty and value, but is full and complete only in light of the love of the giver. In this way, the gift moves on to gratitude, joy, hope and communion.

May we appreciate anew each day, with childlike wonder, the beauty and kindness of Creation, deepening our love for and longing for the Beauty and Goodness of our Creator Himself.

The Unmanly Passivity of Adam;
the Noble Receptivity of Christ and Mary

The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it…The man replied, “The woman whom you put here with me---she gave me fruit from the tree and so I ate it.” Genesis 3

Adam’s sin was one of passivity. He is compliant, lethargic, lazy, slothful, and impotent. By contrast, Eve’s sin is an active one: she grabs the fruit out of distrust, deception, and ambition. Adam “is with her” and then “she gave some to her husband.” The violence of Cain, often considered the primal male sin, is secondary and derivative of the original sin which was closer to sloth (in the classical understanding) than to anger.

This passivity was a failure of the vocation he was given. With Eve, he was to “be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish…” He himself was specifically commissioned to “cultivate and care for” the Garden of Eden. He would remain in communion with God and tend to the Garden and everything in it, especially his wife and eventually his offspring. He named all the creatures and was destined to “leave his father and mother and cling to his wife…” Instead, he stood by and allowed Eve to be deceived by the serpent and then take their destiny into her own hands. His was a sin of inaction, omission, and a failure in vigilance. He did not husband his wife. Gender roles were diabolically inverted: Eve took the initiative and Adam became compliant. We have had that same problem ever since: woman as anxious, controlling dominatrix; man as lethargic, compliant masochist and wimp.

We men are haunted by this Adamic curse of passivity. It is the primal, foundational masculine vice and finds expression in cowardice, weakness, gluttony, lust, and paradoxically in activism, restlessness, agitation and even violence. In the ancient ascetic traditions of the desert fathers, sloth in the deepest sense is not merely physical laziness but the sickness of a soul disinterested in the things of God. This often found expression as restlessness, geographical mobility, agitation, and activism. And so the fathers realized that hyperactivity and violence can camouflage the deeper malady of spiritual sorrow and deadness.

Consider contemporary manifestations of such emasculating passivity:

Alcoholism, Substance Abuse, Gluttony: These are passive processes in which the male regresses to an infantile comfort zone of ingestion. They can lead to fights, date rape and all manner of violence; but at their roots they are masochistic.

Pornography: Lustful voyeurism is again passivity: a taking in, through the eyes, in a greedy, voracious manner, without giving to another. It is the polar opposite of masculinity as donative, generous, and life-giving. It is the ultimate emasculation.

Couch Potato Spectator: Stretched out on couch, Bud in one hand, remote in the other, channel surfing, beer belly extruding from tee shirt…This is not what we were made for. We are destined to be gladiators, not spectators.

War and Peace: It is now 60 years since the UN declared “no more genocide.” Since then we have a litany of them. President Bill Clinton has repeatedly said that his biggest regret is that he failed to intervene in Rwanda. The Iraq war is small change compared to the human devastation of genocide (Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda) that could have been avoided were it not for post-Vietnam American indifference. The “Give Peace a Chance” and “War no More” chants are morally offensive to those who devote their lives and sometimes give their lives to protect us; they are morally offensive to the memory of the millions who died unnecessarily; and they are morally offensive since they express a retreat from the masculine mission to protect the innocent.

Indecision of our young men: Our young men today are having great difficulty in committing to career, family and children: They live with their girl friends or parents; drift from career to career; are reluctant to take responsibility for children. Is this not a repetition of Adam’s indecision and impotence?

What is the remedy for masculine passivity? Is it a muscular, voluntarist activism of some sort? Hardly! We already observed that muscularity, exertion of the will, and agitated activism are often symptoms of sloth.

The remedy is genuine receptivity as perfectly realized in the relation of Jesus to his Father. Jesus receives the will of his Father, for example in the other Garden, Gethsemane; Jesus goes into the desert where he fasts, lives on “every word that comes from the mouth of God,” and does battle with the devil; Jesus proclaims, heals, exorcises and gathers to himself a posse of apostles who will continue this work upon his departure...and all he does is in the will and work of his Father.

In Jesus, as in his mother, we see that genuine receptivity is never passive: it actively appropriates, internalizes, re-represents, amplifies, and responds. Jesus is receptive to his Father but active in every other way: towards the devil and his dark kingdom, towards the poor and the lost, and towards us.

And so, the masculine project is to regain genuine receptivity: to return to communion with the Father and his Son in the Holy Spirit. Let us highlight three dimensions of this all-important re-connection: God, our brothers, and our sisters.

God: Imitating Jesus, we need to passionately seek intimacy with our heavenly Father: prayer, immersion in the Word of God, silence before the Eucharist, sacraments, and ongoing study of God’s ways. These disciplines will sensitize us to receive the many graces descending upon us in everyday life.

Brothers: We desperately need a holy brotherhood. We need to encourage each other. Particularly, we need this mutual strengthening in spiritual combat: fasting, prayer, discernment of and renunciation of evil influences such as those mentioned above. We need accountability, vulnerability, solidarity, brutal honesty, mutual correction and affirmation.

Sisters: We need to consciously and intentionally place ourselves under the influence of good, holy women: our mothers, wives, sisters, family and friends.
Primary here, of course, is our Blessed Mother herself. It is impossible to overestimate the value of intimacy with Mary, especially this week when we celebrate both Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Immaculate Conception. She is the New Eve: replacing suspicion with trust, anxiety with serenity, jealous activism with joyous reception, domination with rapturous surrender, falsehood with truth, and seductive manipulation with virginal maternity.
Consider the contrast between the women who influenced Herod in the murder of John the Baptist and the wife of Pilate in the execution of Jesus. An inebriated Herod was manipulated by the incestuous Herodias and her provocative daughter Salome: he is the passive male whose lethargy makes him a tool for another’s violence. Pilate’s wife was of a different sort: she realized through her dream that Jesus was a holy man. She exerted her good influence but Pilate did not receive it, surrendering instead to opposing pressures. Would that he had listened to his good wife!
A few weeks ago, Fr. Groeschel hosted on his show a holy cloistered nun who had been active in the movies in the 50s. She worked with Elvis Presley on some of his films. She described him as a perfect gentleman with her: gentle and respectful. In fact, he loved to discuss scripture with her and would find opportunities to do so. Elvis was the ultimate male sex symbol of the last 50 years; yet much of his appeal sprung from a certain innocence. The same holds for his feminine contemporary, Marilyn Monroe. It was this combination of raw sensuality, glamour and innocence that made each of them so magnetic. Isn’t it interesting that he would intentionally spend time with this good and holy young woman in pondering God’s word? We need to do the same.
Let us cherish and enjoy the lovely women of our lives and allow their good influence to lead and strengthen us in our masculinity.

As loyal sons of our heavenly Father and of our Mother the Church, we are blessed to receive a steady flow of grace and strength in the Holy Spirit: in prayer and sacrament, in our brotherhood, and from our beautiful women. This power from above moves us beyond passivity, insobriety, voyeurism and sloth. We are strengthened to guard our hearts, to tend our garden, to husband our wives, to cherish our women, to father our children, to renounce Satan and all his lies, to become fruitful and have dominion over the earth.

Catholic Confusion on Capital Punishment (Part 3 of 3):
Secular Presuppositions of the Crusade against Capital Punishment

Current arguments against capital punishment commonly refer to development in modern sensibilities. Deeper inspection suggests that these sensibilities are largely secularized sentimentalities of compassion uprooted from moral principles like authority, accountability, judgment, natural law, and retribution. Notice that the death penalty has for some time been banned in the most secularized countries of Europe but remains popular in the evangelical cultures of the USA. It also seems to have diminished in appeal as abortion and related atrocities have become pervasive. This hints that “modern sensibilities” may be less than infallible on matters of social conscience. The moralizing repulsion from capital punishment springs partially from modernity and secularization as a loss of the sense of the Transcendent. Let us view this in relation to five aspects of the Transcendent: authority, natural law, sin and judgment, the supernatural, and abortion.

Authority

Modernity is characterized by a rejection of the transcendence of authority in favor of a leveling egalitarianism. By contrast, tradition has always viewed authentic authority (parental, ecclesial, governmental, judicial, etc.) as descending from God. The Modern Project renounces this and elevates the isolated Self as the center of all meaning and authority. This places everyone on the same plane in a permanent state of aggression against each other. In this view, action by a state is not different in kind from that of the individual; it is merely an aggregate or collectivization of individual agents. So, we hear from our bishops that the state is contradictory in its effort to “teach that killing is wrong by killing those who kill.” This argument assumes that forceful action by the state is similar in kind to that by an individual. From a traditional point of view, this is patently ridiculous since the difference in the two is self-evident. This afternoon, my 4-year old grandson Matt grabbed the coloring book from his 5-year old sister Brigid. Their mother took it from Matt to bring peace to the situation. Brigid and Matt both know with utmost clarity the difference between the actions of Matt and Mom. The one was aggressive; the other was restorative. Every child knows the difference between a beating by the local bully and a spanking by Mom or Dad. Every child welcomes a spanking (if it is just a spanking, and not an abusive beating) of the bully by his Mom or Dad as a sign to all that the bullying is NOT tolerated. The modern sensibility prohibits Mom from taking the coloring book from the aggressor or spanking the bully. Such forceful behavior is not nice; the preference is for reasoning, negotiation, and appeals to benevolence.

We see here that prohibition of executions springs from a refusal to invest the state with authority superior to that of the individual. It is the same suspicion of authority that renounces Biblical inspiration, the Church’s magisterium, Just War practices, and responsibility of the state to protect the unborn, even from their own mothers.

Natural law

Just use of lethal force by the state rests within the Natural Law tradition which discerns in creation a moral intelligibility, structure and purposefulness intended by our Creator as an image of his own absolute justice and truthfulness. This order is transcendent of the individual but discernable to conscience and is universal and permanent even as it is comprehended and expressed in a variety of fashions in different times and cultures. This understanding is largely lost to modern consciousness which has deconstructed creation into the empirically objective (what can be measured) and the arbitrarily subjective (purely voluntaristic and self-determined).

Outside of a vibrant sense of creation and natural law, the use of lethal force can only be seen as a despicable aggression of one will against a weaker one. The repulsion is understandable given the broader secular, egalitarian framework.

Sin, Judgment, Freedom, Responsibility

A pervasive, understated determinism suffers a pity for the violator who is seen as a victim of circumstances: poverty, abuse, trauma, genetic-based orientation, and lack of love. Implicitly, this viewpoint denies the freedom, responsibility and culpability of the human person as a moral agent. As Christopher West says, we human beings are angimals, a mysterious blend of the angelic and the animal, the material and the spiritual, the determined and the free. So, we are partially determined and yet free and accountable. Our entire tradition of morality and legality is supported by a conviction about the root freedom and culpability of the moral agent. A sentimental, effete liberalism retreats from such stern accountability in favor of a pity that constructs the offender as a passive, pathetic victim. It is unbearable then that one who has been victimized by family, misfortune and society should now be further victimized by the finality of execution.

Supernatural

Modern sensibility is insensitive to the supernatural. Here we might consider the fourth purpose of punishment: rehabilitation or repentance. The death penalty cuts off future opportunities for rehabilitation, the argument goes, and therefore absolutely short-circuits the disciplinary, corrective, educational value of punishment. This argument is persuasive on the purely natural plane. If however, each of us is destined for an eternity in heaven or hell, another dimension opens up. St. Thomas viewed imminent execution as an opportunity for final repentance. He argued that if one fails to repent with death so imminent, it is unlikely that one will do so at a later date. There is logic here: a longer, steady, uneventful life terminated, let’s say, by an unexpected accident or heart attack, will not necessarily enhance the probability of final repentance. God is, of course, free to work on death row and in lifetime imprisonment. This element is not vulnerable to human calculation. Nevertheless, the eventuality of final penitence/impenitence is hardly part of the thoroughly secularized discussion on capital punishment.

Abortion

The consistent “seamless garment” ethic opposes both abortion and capital punishment in the effort to safeguard the sanctity of human life. There is an apparent, superficial logic to this stance. In practice, however, crusaders against execution are less than zealous about abortion and anti-abortion activists are less than absolute in their rejection of executions. The underlying energies of the two campaigns are going not only in different directions, but in opposing directions. What divides the two crusades is the underlying attitude towards state authority: the liberal who abhors state execution is reluctant to give the state authority over the life of the embryo against the choice of the mother; inversely, the moral conservative boldly empowers the state to perform executions in defense of life and to override a woman’s choice to abort. Both claim to be pro-life but in practice they oppose each other: the liberal tolerating legal abortion but not legal executions on behalf of a feeble state; the conservative is proactive and assertive on behalf of innocent life, not hesitating to execute the guilty and limit the rights of the mother. The “seamless garment pro-lifer,” self-satisfied in his opposition to war and executions, will vote for the party of choice. Sister Helen Prejean, noted death penalty activist and protagonist of Dead Man Walking, endorsed Obama, who supports the death penalty, abortion, infanticide and in naming Gates his Secretary of Defense is effectively continuing the Bush war policy of the last two years. She self-identifies as pro-life; but her actual vote suggests a different agenda. She may agree with her good friend Susan Sarandon who also endorsed Obama: “I think that he has definitely convinced people that he stands for change and for hope and I can’t wait to see what he stands for.”

Conclusion

Catholic teaching on capital punishment is clear and unchanging: the state may use such lethal force when necessary. Whether it is necessary remains an open and lively issue. Arguments against its use in current conditions are largely persuasive on pragmatic, tentative, consequential grounds involving protection, deterrence and discipline. This essay is NOT in favor of executions today. The central philosophical question of just retribution remains largely unaddressed except for a minority report by theological and legal scholars like Dulles, Scalia and Bork. The prohibitionist crusade, however, is largely built upon secular modernity at its worst: the denial of the transcendent. As such, it tends towards an emotivist disparagement of masculine, conservative values including authority, natural law, sin and responsibility, judgment and retribution and it aligns itself with a feminist sentimentalism in the refusal to protect innocent life.

Catholic Confusion on Capital Punishment: Retribution (Part 2 of 3)

Retribution is the most essential and defining of the purposes of punishment, capital or otherwise; the other three (protection, deterrence, rehabilitation) are extrinsic consequences. It is the most oblique, mysterious and spiritual. And it is not addressed by anti-execution crusaders, not even by John Paul II himself. Retribution is actually a synonym for punishment, stripped of its usefulness for discipline, protection and deterrence.

Retribution means to pay back in the sense of reward or punish according to justice. It presupposes a moral order such that good deeds are rewarded and bad are punished. It directs that each is given what is due, no more and no less. It deals strictly and purely with justice without contamination by passion and emotion (revenge) or inspiration by mercy (restitution). Retribution is close to and usually involved with the related realities of revenge (retaliation) and restitution (and reconciliation.) Revenge means to avenge or inflict injury in return for a prior harm and implies fierce passions of resentment and rage. On the other extreme, restitution means to restore to a previous state as in reparation and amends. Retribution is the clean, austere reality of paying what is due in a correct balance and so is distinct from revenge and restitution.

Catholic belief holds that each of us faces final and absolute retribution, positive or negative, at the particular and the general judgment. Purgatory, heaven and hell are granted according to what we deserve. God’s merciful salvation by grace through faith does not exclude, but includes our own freedom, participation, merit or culpability. Within time and history, human retribution is always inadequate and partial; but it is also unavoidable. Authority and law are responsible for implementing a just order of punishment within every human realm. A person or a specific community of faith might well entrust retribution for wrongs endured into the hands of God All Mighty, but legitimate authority cannot avoid the responsibility of implementing justice, including punishment, as fairly as it is capable.

If you slash my tires, I may slash your tires or do even worse in passionate revenge. On the other hand, you might sincerely apologize, ask for forgiveness, and pay for my new tires as well as compensate for the annoyance and distress entailed; that would be an act of restitution. Even after that reparation, however, there would be a question of retribution: is there a moral need for further punishment in the way of a fine, warning, probation, suspension, public censure, or detention? Evaluations of the appropriate degree of severity will vary, but the moral consciousness requires that a debt be paid. One might decide that the monetary compensation and apology suffice as retribution; but the essential issue is that, aside from restitution, a just retribution is required by justice. If, for example, the violator is rich and able to provide financial restitution effortlessly, then a further censure or punishment would be required; on the other hand, a poor culprit who has to work and sacrifice to make the payment might be more than adequately punished.

Capital punishment is usually considered as a response to the most heinous crimes such as the deliberate, premeditated torture, rape, sexual abuse or murder of the innocent, especially the young and defenseless. The pure, austere justice question centers on retribution, aside from pragmatic and extrinsic concerns about consequences like protection, deterrence and rehabilitation. The cold, clear issue is: in justice, what is due to the one who deliberately destroyed an innocent life? This is a deep, difficult, mysterious question. This question is basically avoided by our anti-execution crusaders.

Consider the case of Saddam Hussein. What did he deserve? Disregard extrinsic considerations: his death as possible martyrdom and provocation; his continued existence as destabilizing; his unfortunate childhood; understandable Shiite and Kurd rage; adequacy of Iraqi prisons; deterrence; possibility of rehabilitation; fairness of his trial; and the indignity of his actual execution. What did he deserve? He was responsible for the violent death of hundreds of thousands. Does he deserve to live out his days in the humane, comfortable conditions of a typical U.S. penitentiary? Many would say he deserves to suffer some form of extended torture, but that would surely barbarize us as a society. Rather, an intuitive clarity emerges that a clean, dignified, instantaneous execution is a just desert.

Our religious tradition has consistently answered that human life is so sacred that intentional murder must be punished by state execution. This penalty is applied by the state as a transcendent authority, representing the judgment of God. The punishment descends, so to speak, from on high and is executed by Godly authority to assert justice and to reinforce the sacredness of human life as inviolate.

This logic is rejected by the crusade for several reasons:
1. Confusion of retribution with revenge. The former is a clear, judicial, moral reality; the later is a passion to harm the violator; the former intends to resolve and dissolve the violence; the later is a mimetic imitation and extension of the violence; the former is the act of a transcendent agent of justice and peace, the later is an additional violation of justice and peace. Unfortunately, such state action is often misinterpreted as collectivized violence rather than as a moral, transcendent and authoritative act of righteousness.
2. Elevation of love, compassion and mercy over justice and truth. In our tradition, mercy and justice, love and truth are bipolar moral absolutes which inform each other, balance each other, correct each other, but cannot dominate or erase each other. Theological fashion is in denial of justice, retribution and the toughness or harshness of genuine love. There is discernable here a kind of clericalism in the campaign, favored by liberal sisters, clergy and lay elites (professors, church bureaucrats, social workers) who live and work in safe, nurturing, religious environments as they try to impose genteel, even effete standards of compassion-over-justice and mercy-over-punishment on the broader society.
3. Rejection of authority. The action of the state in execution is viewed as comparable to the violence of individuals and even as encouraging it. This flight from authority is the most important root cause of the absolutist rejection of capital punishment (and will be discussed in the 3rd part of this essay.)

A pervasive, powerful theme of popular culture, especially the movies, is that of vigilante justice, especially the powerful, righteous warrior who emerges to punish the wicked in a social climate where a weakened social justice system is powerless before violence and chaos. Examples include Batman and all the superheros as well as the litany of movies involving Arnold, Sylvester, Clint, and company. This theme might be disparaged by cultural elites as pandering to vulgar populist passions of rage and violence; but the phenomena does entail a concern for justice, retribution, and a restoration of order. If the social justice system is vulnerable to abuse of the poor and powerless, it can also become feeble and impotent. The vigilante heroes are angry and righteous, unsoftened by mercy; they are the polar image of the compassionate crusaders for elimination of executions. The religious and academic circles that so strongly advocate against executions are themselves sometimes blind to the moral demand for restitution as they live in protected and privileged environments and are nourished on values of compassion, kindness and even “niceness” that enable them to avoid the moral demand for clear, clean punishment of evil doers. Low-brow, populist culture here gives us a moral insight that has been lost to the zealots of the new prohibition.

What Are Glorified Bodies?

We are all destined, eventually, for the resurrection of the body. What will our bodies be like in the new, glorified state? We really don’t know. But we have premonitions. I suspect it will be like:

- Fred Astaire dancing with Ginger Rogers.
- The first time, and every time, you know the one you love loves you.
- Tiger Woods’ swing.
- Becca laughing heartily, when just seconds before she was crying or yelling.
- The smell of fresh coffee early in the morning.
- Your First Communion day.
- Cleansing your mouth at the end of a root canal. (Spelled relief!)
- The delicate, sweet aroma from the head of a 2-year old that is falling asleep in your arms.
- Running through the woods with Hawkeye and Chingadigook, carrying long rifles, to the score of Last of the Mohicans.
- Seeing again and at last those you have loved and lost to death.
- My wife MaryLynn’s garden in the spring.
- John winning Hudson Cross Count Meet: smooth, confident, effortless.
- Jogging along the seashore to the musical score of Chariots of Fire.
- Your girl friend asleep, her head resting on your shoulder in sublime trust.
- Finally finding the courage to stand up to that bully.
- The Friday Nighters, my parents’ friends, singing along with Mitch at a 1950s party, after quite a few beers.
- The prayerful, peaceful, melodic pace of a Benedictine monastery.
- My daughter Clare’s windmill pitch.
- Waking, as a child, on Christmas morning.
- That crystal, brilliant morning in Tanglewood in August of 1973.
- The very first day of any vacation.
- Perfectly catching the perfect wave while body surfing at the Jersey Shore at age 19.
- First urination without a catheter after colon surgery.
- Rodolfo and Mimi’s love aria at the end of the first act of La Boheme.
- Michael Jordan, down by 1 with 5 seconds remaining, receives the ball.
- Mary Elizabeth’s first appearance on her wedding day.
- Seeing the state employee take his scraper to remove the old inspection sticker, indicating that your car passed.
- Bernadette talking to her “little man,” Luke.
- The first taste of chocolate on Easter morning after 40 days of abstaining.
- Walking across northern Spain on the camino to Santiago de Compestela.
- The cousins doing Irish dance as Celtic Cross plays the music at a wedding.
- When she laughs at your jokes; and gazes into your eyes adoringly.
- Margaret Rose Laracy delivering a valedictory address.
- Paul Anthony, entering the Belmar bar dressed like Russell Crowe the Gladiator in the Coliseum and announcing: “I am Maximus Decimus Meridus; Commander of the Armies of the North; General of Felix Legion; loyal servant of the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius; father to a murdered son; husband to a murdered wife; and I will have my vengeance, in this life or in the next.”
- Grandchildren.

I invite and encourage you, loyal blog reader, to make your own list of such premonitions of our flesh in glory. It will inflame you with appreciation, gratitude and praise; and it will whet your appetite for heaven.

Catholic Confusion on Capital Punishment (Part 1 of 3)

True or False:
- The Church has changed its position on the death penalty?
- The Church now teaches that capital punishment is evil?
- An obedient Catholic must oppose state executions?

False is the correct answer to all three questions. The Church has not changed its teaching that the state may use the death penalty if necessary. The operative phrase here is “if necessary.” Whether its use is necessary is a practical, prudential judgment about which Catholics may disagree. John Paul, Benedict and the American bishops have all argued that its use is not necessary in society today. That, however, is a practical, fallible and tentative viewpoint and is not a statement on faith and morals so it is not protected and guided by divine inspiration. It is an application of a moral principle. And so, the Catholic receives from the Church today two distinct teachings:
1. The permanent, traditional, universal doctrine that the state may use the death sentence if required to protect innocent life and the order of society.
2. A tentative, practical, fallible evaluation that alternate forms of punishment today suffice so that we can dispense with capital punishment.
A Catholic must accept the first of the two since it is a permanent teaching on morals; a Catholic may disagree with the second, a practical calculation subject to a universe of complications, contingencies, consequences and considerations. A Catholic who would absolutely deny the state the use of the death penalty is in dissent from Catholic teaching while a Catholic might advocate for its necessity without denying any Catholic truth. This distinction is essential and is obscured, for example, when the bishops state with an aura of authority that “modern conditions do not require use of capital punishment.” That opinion is surely arguable and the bishops have every right to articulate it but they must clarify that it is their practical opinion and not a pure or clear expression of their episcopal role of magisterial clarification. A simple phrase would suffice: “Our estimation…In our opinion…It seems to us…It is probable that…The consensus among us is…”

Purpose of Capital Punishment

Our tradition sees four purposes in the death penalty and in all punishment.
1. Protection: of society from further violence.
2. Deterrence: of further violations.
3. Retribution or punishment.
4. Rehabilitation or repentance.
Questions of protection and deterrence involve empirical calculations so the evaluation may vary even within a given nation. So, for example, an outbreak of child-kidnappings in a given area might necessitate a harsh policy that is unnecessary in another region. The issues of retribution and rehabilitation/repentance are deeper, thornier philosophical questions that will be reserved for another blog posting.

Tentative, Contingent Evaluation

Blogster Fleckinstein does not support the use of capital punishment in the USA in 2008; but he insists that this be rightly understood as a provisional, probative evaluation based upon a number of empirical observations which are subject to change with historical developments or new information. Reasons include:
- Relative adequacy of our prison system to provide protection.
- Inefficiency of deterrent value since it is rarely used.
- Fallibility of court system that is exaggerated by inequalities related to wealth, race, mental ability and other socio-cultural factors.
These three reasons are each subject to reservations, challenge, development and reversal. The first, adequacy of our prisons in providing protection, is questionable: the murder of pedophile Father Geoghan in prison by a convicted murderer casts doubt upon the adequacy of our prison systems. Secondly, the deterrent value might be considerable if it were applied consistently against specific heinous crimes such as deliberate kidnapping, torture, sexual abuse and killing of children. Lastly, the fallibility of our system might be significantly decreased by developments in DNA testing and more competent legal defense provisions for the poor.

Deeper Confusion

There are clear, solid reasons for opposing the death penalty. Unfortunately, however, the crusades on this issue, including that of the American bishops, involve a moral absolutism that identifies capital punishment with an anti-gospel culture of death. This absolutism hides a number of underlying, secular presuppositions that are obfuscations of the gospel we have received from our tradition. These will be explored in two following blog posts.

Was Jesus a Pacifist?
No. Was he then a Just War guy? No.

Actually, Jesus never articulated a position on state use of lethal force. An argument from Scripture can be constructed to validate either position. Consider the ambiguity of his disarming of Peter at Gethsemane. Some see here a pacifist gesture; others note that the fact that his number one follower was armed up to the day before his death indicates a tolerance, if not an endorsement, of forceful self-defense. A broader framework or philosophy is needed to evaluate the use of lethal force.

The pacifism of Christians of the first few centuries is no more conclusive since they were removed from positions of state responsibility and were systematically and brutally persecuted by the Roman Empire. It is obvious that such a repressed, powerless minority could hardly evaluate in a positive light the use of lethal force by the state.

Since Constantine, when Christians first assumed positions of governmental authority, the mind of the Church has consistently taught the Natural Law doctrines of the right to self defense and the Just War Theory. This teaching was further endorsed by the Vatican II and has not been retracted. As a matter of fact, recent Vatican statements on humanitarian intervention on behalf of genocide victims have brought refreshment and renewal to the doctrine. So, the Catholic Church is a just war, not a pacifist church.

Violence

Webster’s Dictionary defines violence as “exertion of physical force so as to injure or abuse.” The operative and defining phrase here is the one indicating the intention to injure or abuse. Contemporary usage expands the term to include verbal, psychological, emotional and social violations. So, we can understand violence as the use of force (of any kind) to violate or harm another. Clearly then we can distinguish non-violent (protective) from violent force. With this clarification the mind of the Church is clear: non-violent force, even lethal if necessary, is permissible and even required for the protection of the innocent and of a just social order.

Police killings, warfare and capital punishment are all uses of lethal force, but not necessarily or essentially violent. The intent and circumstances determine whether such use of force is violent or not. Current discussion of the death penalty is particularly confused on this point since it is commonly seen as violent. Church teaching is lucid: if prudential decision finds that circumstances require use of capital punishment, then it is not violent since the intention is to protect, rather than to harm or violate. By sharpest contrast, other actions are inherently and always violent: rape, abortion, genocide, targeting of non-combatants, and torture. The principle of double-effect is at work here: just as surgical amputation of a gangrene arm is an act of healing, not violence, because the intent is to save, so the use of deadly force to protect life is a peaceful, not a violent act.

Just Use of Force

Just use of force is distinguished from violence by:
1. Authority: it is exercised by a supra-personal, state agent; not an individual. This is a fundamental distinction: all genuine authority is Godly and this applies especially to the use of protective force. It is the polar opposite of personal violence. The distinction between the personal level (turn the cheek) and the societal or governmental is of utmost importance.
2. Obedience: the immediate agent is not self-serving, but obedient to a higher will. Violence is usually an explosion of personal rage or a mimetic, irrational group happening. By contrast, just force is done in obeisance to authority and order.
3. Rational, not impassioned. It springs not from anger, fear or agitation, but from a truthful and objective decision and a just intention to protect life. As such it is controlled and limited by rigorous moral boundaries and criteria.
4. Loving: the goal is to protect or restore the common good. Just force even requires love of the violator and is directed to stop his abuse, not to abuse him.

Consider, for example, a swat team called into a sniper/hostage situation. After attempts at negotiation, the sniper continues to kill hostages. The commander instructs his best rifleman to shoot the sniper. He kills him. Was that swat shot violent? No! It was lethal but not violent as the intention was to stop the violence. It was directed by the proper authority; it was done in obedience, not in self will; it was rational and directed to a restoration of peace; it was limited and controlled so it did not spiral out of control; and its intent was to stop the violation, not harm the violator.

This same logic applies to a wide range of cases. If the swat team applies non-violent force that is in reality peace-making, the same can apply to: spanking of a malicious, disobedient child; forceful breaking up of a fist fight; US entry in WWII; and humanitarian intervention to stop genocide.

By this logic, the most non-violent and noble professions are surely the police and the military. They are responsible for protecting the peace; they risk their own lives in confronting violators; they are expected to encounter violence at its very worst and use just force to restrain it without themselves becoming violent. Indeed, these and the related vocations of prosecutor, dean, sheriff, security guard, and disciplinarian at whatever level...these are quintessentially peace-making and sacrificial callings. We need to honor these careers; groom our most talented young men for them; and be constantly grateful for the Godly protection they afford us.