Spiritual Stimulus

Our economic crisis at once camouflages and manifests the deeper, underlying spiritual crisis. Excessive debt is the immediate cause but the more foundational malady is affluenza, an addictive obsession with possessions, conspicuous consumption, status and financial security…all rooted in disbelief. This crisis is a stimulus, allowed in God’s loving providence, to gently prompt us back to trust in him (not our equity), simplicity, generosity and thanksgiving.

I accept the consensus among economics that the crisis requires an immediate and substantial influx of cash. This necessitates close to a trillion dollars of debt to be repaid latter. Ironically, we respond to a debt-caused problem by an increase of debt. This is not comforting.

This would be tolerable if the immediate stimulus was balanced by a forward-looking plan addressing underlying problems with reason and sobriety. Unfortunately, the President’s plan is not merely an immediate stimulus but also includes within it his ideological vision for the future. It entails permanent changes involving things like health care as well as sexual/cultural policies like funding for contraception and abortion.

As an American I am rooting for the stimulus to save jobs and homes; as an economic moderate, I have sympathies for universal health care and a degree of economic redistribution but have reservations about how we (actually, our children) will pay for it without damage to a free, market economy; as a moral conservative, I am horrified that the liberal hegemony is using this crisis to advance their ethos of death and recreational/sterile sexuality.

Today’s gospel has the apostles, anxious about the storm raging about them, waking Jesus from his sleep in the boat. He is stern with them: “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” (Mark 4: 35-41)

This is not a time for anxiety about jobs, homes, savings and financial security.

This is not a time for trust in trillion-dollar debt, condoms and universal health care.

This is a time for faith: a renewal in prayer, fasting, sacramental immersion, generosity, and the strengthening of the holy bonds within family and Church.

This is a time to gently increase our trust in Jesus, even if he is sleeping in the boat.

Denial of Reality

“Republicans are not really pro-life; they talk that way to get votes but in reality Reagan and Bush have not done anything for the unborn.”
This argument is commonplace among Catholic Democrats. It is not true.

Surely there are some insincere conservative politicians who use this cause to gain votes just as the herd of Democrats stampeded into the pro-choice camp when that became the liberal fashion. It is also true that there is a vibrant pro-choice contingent under the Republican umbrella. Would that the Democrats had a comparably influential pro-life movement!

But consider W. Bush’s record on the unborn: He has done everything he could to protect innocent, unborn life. First and foremost, he appointed two pro-life justices to the Supreme Court. Those two decisions alone validated my two votes for him. He stood tall and clear when embryonic stem cell research blew up. He implemented the Mexico City policy and every other administrative option available to reduce abortions. There is nothing else he could have done on that front.

Those who really care about abortion, on both sides, know this well. Abortion militants saw him as their worst enemy and are ecstatic about Obama; pro-lifers saw him as their best friend and are distressed at the moment.

Talking with a liberal who argues that Bush did nothing for the unborn is like arguing with someone who denies the Holocaust or that there are any homosexuals in Iran or that Bush invaded Iraq. It is frustrating because in the face of such a blatant denial of reality there is no reference to truth and no basis for conversation.

This denial and compulsion to slander Bush and Co. is rooted in negative irrationalities of resentment and guilt. The hatred of Bush and all he represents is so fierce that there is no ability to recognize his good achievements. The unacknowledged guilt is inevitable for a Catholic who has voted for an abortion agenda and needs to rationalize an unsettled conscience.

The Bush legacy is vulnerable to criticism on many fronts: torture, war, economy, environment, and health care. but his record on unborn life is impeccable. He was our most pro-life President and he will always be a hero on that account. I miss him already!

Agree to Disagree??????

At the March for Life on Thursday, we learned that our new President had already reversed the Mexico City policy and that our tax money would be used to import abortion overseas. This Clinton/Obama abortion-imperialism is deeply abhorrent to me personally as I imagine poor, distressed, pregnant women, many of them Catholic, being “counseled” into an abortion by tax-supported clinics in poverty areas all over the world.

My students ask: “Why are we paying for other country’s abortions?”
“Where do we get this money in this crisis?” I cannot give a coherent answer.

Pope Benedict XVI called the White House last week and they hung up on him. (Apparently, they thought it was a prank.) When he finally got through to the President, he asked him to stop the abortions. The President’s reply was: “We must agree to disagree.”

Note the falsely irenic coating. My wife and I “agree to disagree” about tuna salad because she likes mayonnaise but I prefer Miracle Whip. If I told my wife I was using some of our shrinking assets to torture and kill our grandchildren she would not “agree to disagree.” She would stop me; she would kill me if necessary; it would be all-out war.

So, we are at war: cultural, moral and spiritual war.

Father Groeschel put it well: “President Obama has turned a corner; we did not declare war on him, he declared war on us by this decision.” The wise and aging friar looked directly into the TV camera and added: “I come from Jersey City, a peaceful place. But if you want trouble, you’ve got it.”

The saddest thing about this war is the betrayal by fellow Catholics who support a regime of jihad against the innocent.

Security

"The safest place for me to be is in the center of God's will, and if that is in the line of fire, that's where I'll be."

- U.S. Army Chaplain Fr. Tim Vakoc

Ambivalence and Irony among Weeds and Wheat

This is a week of deep ironies and ambivalence.

I read that Bishop Gemma, well-known exorcist of Rome, declared that the Blessed Mother never appeared in Medjugorje and referred to it as the “work of the devil:” “I am referring to the devil’s shit, money.” I personally know so many people from Catholic and charismatic circles who were positively touched at this alleged apparition site: is it possible both heaven and hell are active there? I consider it probable.

On Monday, ours was the only school I know of to hold classes on Martin Luther King Day. As I started each class, honoring his legacy and its culmination in our first president of color, I quietly recalled the marital infidelities of his personal life and the ongoing, catastrophic effect of sexual license and male abandonment upon hard core poverty and the abortion culture.

Tuesday, of course, the entire nation was mesmerized by the inauguration of a time of “change and hope.” Washington was aglow with energy, glamour and vitality. Today, however, 35 of us from my high school will join hundreds in the cold of January D.C. to announce our reverence for unborn life: implicitly in opposition to the new regime.

The irony is great: Obama is heralded as our new messiah, even as he is unreservedly committed to the rights of his daughters to massacre his grandchildren “in case of a mistake.” Bush retires to a chorus of relentless ridicule and contempt, even though he did more than any president in our history for the very most innocent and powerless.

Our country faces a spiritual and moral crisis that is far more severe than those involving energy, military or the “devil’s shit.” President Obama hopefully will bring advances on the secondary levels of war and economy, but he is hardly our savior in the truer dimensions of the spirit. His policy agenda here is a symptom of, and may well become an aggravation of, the crisis of the soul of our country.

Today we do need to pray and fast for our country.

Hidden Life

Bernie Madoff definitely makes the top ten list of most amazing secret lives: not only did he fool the S.E.C. and some of the smartest, richest people in the world, but it turns out he (apparently) pulled the wool over the eyes of his own wife, who worked with him daily and with whom he is extremely close.

In a league with him is the anthrax killer, possibly Dr. Bruce Ivins, who killed himself this past summer. He was a high ranking governmental scientist who apparently had another life as a killer. He had been diagnosed as a psychopath and had an obsession with sororities. The FBI has not been able to prove his guilt and many close to him adamantly insist that he was incapable of the deed. Definitely a top ten double life!

Perhaps the greatest double-lifer our time is FBI agent Robert Hanssen who is alleged to have harmed our national security more than any other spy. “Diabolically brilliant,” he was a “solid family man,” daily communicant, and Opus Dei participant as he was a high ranking intelligence officer and a spy and a sexual pervert who became very close to a prostitute with whom he refused to sleep because he was trying to convert her. Now that is not a double life, but more like a quadruple life! In addition to the excitement and glamour of being a “turned spy,” Hanssen had all the ingredients of a compartmentalized life: financial irregularities, disordered sexual proclivities, and a staunch religious life.

My own favorite spy is our own Uncle Billy, a thoroughly charming and intelligent WWII veteran who we now know worked covertly for US Army intelligence in South America throughout the postwar period. This was revealed only after his death when his paperwork was being processed. He never told any family member: his wife, daughter or sisters. Both sisters asked him directly, just prior to his death, if he had worked for the CIA; he merely smiled and raised his beer glass in toast fashion. I spent time with him and we became close before he passed and I was dying to know the truth but intuitively knew that he would tell me if he wanted to and that I could not ask.

The first rule about fight club is…

The masculine mind, which compartmentalizes so easily, is especially drawn to a secret life; the feminine brain, hardwired with greater connectivity, is more inclined to integration and synthesis than to separation and distinction. Instinctively, than, the male understands the dichotomizing of spheres of life: business, family, recreation, and religion.

The addict, of whatever flavor, is compelled to camouflage his acting out by creation of a double life that involves endless deception. The compulsive thus moves seamlessly from one life to another, skillfully covering his tracks at every move. Intensely religious people seem more prone to this dichotomy since they have developed a devotional life intolerant of the darker compulsions. Even beyond the pleasure and release of the chemical or behavioral high, however, there is clearly a thrill to this game of hide, deceive, and elude. The challenge of staying one step ahead seems to release a hormonal rush of excitement and energy.

This taps into a most primal impulse to “hide and seek.” Already, the infant is delighted by playing “where’s the baby” as she hides her face and then reveals it. “Hide and seek” becomes more complicated as the toddler and small child is able to actually hide behind furniture and await with excitement the climax of being found. I recall in elementary school the thrill of taunting older boys and then running away with an exhilarating charge of fright and excitement.

And so there is a game-like quality to the double life: Bernie Madoff seems relieved and composed now that his Ponzi game has concluded; Dr. Ivins may have penned his suicide note, in which he denied being the anthrax killer, in a mood of devious delectation; and agent Hanssen, now in solitary confinement, may console himself with euphoric recall of his brilliant deceptions and sexual irregularities.

But the hidden life is not always a devious and diabolical one. We know that anything evil is actually a counterfeit version of an authentic and real reality. And so we see that hiddenness is a constituent of the good, the true, the holy, and the beautiful life.

The 12-step program of AA, addiction antidote, is itself anonymous in the genuine and healthy manner of confidential, private, and humble. Protected by a seal of privacy, the participant is free to reveal the previously hidden and shameful in an environment of honesty, vulnerability, contrition and healing. His involvement is generally partitioned off from his public and social persona and exercises a quiet, covert and salutary influence on the latter.

Let us consider the many hidden dimensions of the life of Jesus himself. We refer to most of his years as his “hidden life” and we know nothing about them except that in his youth he was subject to Mary and Joseph and that he grew in age and grace and wisdom. So the incarnate life of the Son is mostly private, anonymous and hidden from us. In his public life we find the enigmatic “messianic secret” which refers to the many passages in which he directs demons or those he has healed to shield his messianic actions and identity. I have not yet heard a satisfactory theological explanation of the motivation for this secrecy that remains tantalizingly illusive and mysterious. The heart and soul of the life of Jesus, is, of course, his intimacy with his Father. About this, we are given the slightest possible glimpse: his nights alone in prayer.

The Gospel leaves us with a sense that ours is a partial vision of the Mystery of Christ: like seeing the tip of an iceberg and knowing there is so much there beyond our vision. And is this not the phenomenological structure of all personal knowledge, relating and love: something is revealed but much more is withheld so there is elicited a profound longing for greater revelation, participation and communion?

The lives of the saints all reflect this. Who would have guessed that beneath Mother Theresa’s radiant smile and preternatural energy was a secretive, limitless, enduring suffering? Who would have recognized the mysticism of the simple, unimpressive Sister Faustina? Who but Father Balthasar could have validated the extraordinary supernatural encounters of the doctor, widow, convert Adrienne von Speyr? In the aftermath of valid apparitions, the impulse of genuine visionaries is to hide themselves in the manner of St. Bernadette and Lucia of Fatima.

The spirituality of hiddenness seems especially pertinent for our times. Charles de Foucauld buried himself in the Sahara desert with the desire to draw close to the Eucharist and serve Christ in humble, hidden ways. In like manner, Kiko Arguello buried himself with the Gypsies where he eventually received the charism of the Neocatecumenal Way. Our ecclesial movements tend towards the discreet and anonymous in contrast to the explicit, overt style of traditional consecrated life. Secular institutes generally involve consecration to Christ in poverty, chastity and obedience in a lifestyle within the world that is overtly normal and unpretentious. Their witness to Christ is gentle, often inarticulate, and hidden. This wholesome and holy anonymity as humility is intrinsic to the style of Opus Dei as well as communities in Communion and Liberation.

The holy life of a genuine Christian is mostly hidden: “humility, simplicity and praise” is the way Kiko describes the hidden life of the Holy Family. Jesus instructed us to not let our left hand know what our right hand is doing. So, the goodness of a Christian must even be hidden from himself.

Amazing! Everyone we encounter today has a hidden life, maybe many hidden lives. Some of them involve fellowship with Satan; others draw from communion with God.

In the name of Jesus, be gone Satan!

Come Holy Spirit, so gentle, peaceful, hidden!

Praying for Barack

Top reasons why I am praying for our new President (in no order of importance):
1. My mother is doing so and I will imitate her good example.
2. As President, he is a role-model, a father figure, and an influence upon so many in dimensions beyond policy and administration.
3. We moral conservatives, oftentimes arrogant and condemnatory, need the exercise in humility and love.
4. We Republicans have made a lot of messes and this is partial reparation.
5. He comes across as a searcher: open and hungry for the Good, the True and the Beautiful.
6. He is a decent, dear, lovable person.
7. He is tragically misguided and deceived on the issue of innocent life and may cause a great deal of harm.
8. He is tragically misguided and deceived on issues of sexuality, marriage and family and may cause a great deal of harm.
9. Expectations for him are too high; he is just one of us, another not-God!
10. He seems adrift, without a spiritual home or church and in need of such.
11. He is facing very grave problems and needs divine guidance.
12. He is our leader and scripture directs us to pray for governmental authorities.
13. He was abandoned by his own father and betrayed by his spiritual father and, like all of us, is in need of heavenly fathering.
14. It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
15. He is my ideological enemy and we are instructed to pray for our enemies.
16. He is a baptized Christian and so is my brother in Christ.
17. He is, like me, a sinner in need of God’s mercy.
18. Sunday mornings he plays ball instead of going to Church because he doesn’t have a Church.
19. He is, arguably, the most powerful man in the world; but will be severely restricted in what he can do.
20. He has a beautiful family.
21. He has been indoctrinated into a worldview that is overly secular, liberationist, materialist, cosmopolitan and relativist.
22. He really wants to bring peace and justice to a world in need of them.
23. He seems to be surrounded by intelligent, competent, decent people; but are any deeply holy and apt to draw him closer to God?
24. The devil wants to use him to bring many souls to hell…and bring him to hell as well; but I don’t think that he knows this and no one close to him is likely to tell him.
25. As I’ve said before, I like him.

The Passing of Father Richard Neuhaus

I was one of the legions who received First Things with a rush of delightful expectation, eager to jump ASAP into his “Public Square” reflections. He was unfailingly knowledgeable, insightful, erudite, clear, precise, witty, and delightfully humorous.

His personal pilgrimage is unusually emblematic of the crucial developments of the last half-century. A civil rights, anti-war, inner-city Lutheran pastor in the 1960s, he underwent a number of “conversions” to become the leading Catholic, pro-life, neo-conservative intellectual of our time.

Tributes to him by friends and collaborators (Raymond Arroyo, Michael Novak, and George Weigel) highlight his importance on several fronts:
1. He recognized with the Roe decision that the genuine moral trajectory of the Civil Rights Movement carried into the Pro-Life interest in the human dignity of each life. He correctly renounced the direction of the liberal stampede into the swamp of reproductive rights and sterile sexuality.
2. Sensing the emptiness of mainstream liberal Protestantism and entering the Catholic Church in 1990, he vigorously advocated the providential and brilliant agenda of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
3. He activated the implicit Catholic-Evangelical Alliance in the post-Roe Culture War, by convoking, with Charles Colson, a regular gathering of the best and brightest of both traditions to strengthen Communio and explore agreements and disagreements. He was ecumenist as intellectual and activist.
4. He demonstrated an extraordinary ability to attract talent, to network, and to form friendships and alliances with a wide range of gifted and influential thinkers.

The National Review eulogizes him as the most influential Catholic and Christian thinker of the last ½ century. That he gave their ideology an ecclesiastical and intellectual imprimatur surely effected their positioning him in the number one position. I think of competitors (Cardinal Dulles, Rick Warren, political evangelicals like Robertson and Falwell, Father Henri Nouwen and Jean Vanier, Father Groeschel, the Communio school of Schindler, Mother Angelica), but he would have to be on anyone’s short list, especially in tandem with theo-neo-con buddies Novak and Weigel. Surely he was unrivaled for his happy marriage of gracious and pleasing prose, clarity of thought, erudition, relevance, humor, Catholicity, ecumenism, influence, confidence, ferocity in argument, and mischievous delectation.

Father Neuhaus was sternly criticized by paleoconservative E. Michael Jones for his close ties to NY Jews, their money, and Pro-Israel militarism. As a Judaeo-phile myself, I am not persuaded: Father Neuhaus was a strong and independent thinker and nobody’s fool. In his engagement with Judaism, he never compromised on his defense of innocent life, unlike so many to the left of him. His friendship with Abraham Heschel and his evident love for the Judaism of yesterday and today clearly flowed from deep and genuine Christian roots.

A deeper and truer critique of Neoconservative Catholics came from David Schindler of Communio and the John Paul II Institute: their core image of human freedom and dignity inflated the importance of agency, activism, initiative and individualism to the detriment of the foundational antecedent of creaturely receptivity in the mold of Mary’s Fiat. Schindler detects a subtle but powerful neglect of contemplation in favor of action, of communion in favor of the individual, of being in favor of doing. Here we see a quintessentially Protestant, American, Anglo, liberal, and masculine temptation.

His dear friend Joseph Bottom attributes to him an extraordinary work ethic. He was, in other words, something of a “Martha.” A man of prayer, faith, action, and thought, his blind spot may have been this stress on agency. The invasion of Iraq, which he famously supported in disagreement with John Paul, the Vatican and most of the American bishops, was arguably a failure of contemplative and patient intelligence. The invasion was a rush into action out of anxiety and uncertainty, without sufficient information, patience, and trust in alternate intelligence analyses, diplomacy or multilateralism.

An admirable activist, intellectual, priest and Christian, Father Neuhaus was a good and faithful servant and has now departed to enjoy much-deserved rest, in the company of, among others, his friend, collaborator and confirmation sponsor, Avery Dulles. His presence and mission, as that of every genuine Christian, is inimitable and will be missed.

I Like Obama

On the issues that matter most to me, the sacredness of sexuality/marriage/family and of innocent life, our President-elect is my very worst nightmare. Nevertheless, I like him; I respect and admire him as a decent, intelligent and competent leader; and I will honor him as our President.

I like:
- His paternal love for his daughters.
- His spousal relationship with Michelle.
- The pained and dignified way in which he disengaged from Reverend Wright.
- The spiritual search that led him to Christianity.
- His tone and manner: even, mellow, calming, reasoned, and respectful.
- The way he thinks: rational, orderly, comprehensive, analytic, open-minded.
- His passion for more universal health care.
- His community organizer background and his sincere concern for the poor.
- His disposition to diplomacy now united with a realism about the use of force.
- His turn to the middle in appointments like Gates and Clinton.
- The tolerance for moral conservatives shown by his invitation to Reverend Warren.
- The emphasis upon competence and experience shown in his cabinet selections.
- The fact that he plays basketball and the way (as I have read) that he plays the game.
- His repugnance at the use of torture.
- That he is our first black President and that he is genuinely post-racist.
- His fine education and accomplishments in working his way to the top of our society.
- The optimism and hope he has aroused internationally.
- The competent way he ran his campaign.
- The respectful and moderate way he handled himself in the debates.
- His practical shrewdness as a politician.
- And even his lean, athletic virility and masculine demeanor.

I could go on. My appreciation, affection and even admiration for my ideological enemy is enabled by my Catholic faith which admits for diversity in policy and situates politics and government as less than ultimate in importance.

Question: How many liberal Democrats view Bush or Cheney or Palin or Huckabee with similar respect and affection? None that I know…and I know plenty! Otherwise balanced and reasonable people become apoplectic and borderline hysterical at the mention of these names. It is not merely that they disagree on policy; rather, they compulsively disparage the moral character and intellectual competence of these leaders. Is it possible that these politicians are as morally and intellectually deranged as the liberal imagination constructs them…or is there something in the liberal mind that tends to personal resentment and emotive condemnation? Is there an intrinsic illiberalism to the liberal mind? I think there are several factors that work towards this irrational toxicity.
1. Liberals inflate the importance of politics and government, while conservatives deflate the same. Liberals have great hopes in regard to government (“The Great Society,” etc.) while conservatives have minimum expectations. The later give more importance to smaller communities (family, Church, business and other mediating communities) by a stronger sense of subsidiarity. Liberals expect centralized government to ensure full employment, provide child care, sex education, health care for everyone, and bring peace on earth without use of lethal force. In the liberal narrative, Bush single-handedly sunk the world economy, brought war to the Middle East, mal-distributed our national wealth, disenfranchised minorities, desecrated the environment…and did all of this through a combination of incompetence and evil intentions. One wonders: how could an incompetent moron influence the world on a scale with geniuses like Hitler and Genghis Ghan? Obama is hailed as the expected Messiah while Bush is condemned as Satan incarnate. By contrast a moral conservative deflates Bush’s influence and is not seriously disappointed in his administration since expectations are not great about the ability of government to overcome evil in our world.
2. Residual class resentment. A legacy of envy remains as Republicans are viewed as wealthy, powerful, and greedy. This is ironic since we know that today self-described conservatives are less affluent than and more personally generous than self-described liberals. Big business, especially groups like litigation lawyers and the finance community, poured millions of dollars into the Obama campaign. Today’s Democrat Party is a coalition of power elites and the Republican Party is more and more composed of a populist, countercultural underclass drawn to Huckabee and Palin.
3. Liberals are more secular with less attachment to faith, tradition, and authority. This is not to say that all liberals lack faith; but that secular elites exercise an inordinate influence and liberals tend to privatize religion and thus leave the public square bare and secularized. They are loyal to John F. Kennedy’s pledge to keep his faith out of government so they nod their heads solemnly as militant secularists disparage as “theocrats” those who advocate religious, family and life values. Removed from Church and tradition, liberals sanctify their politics and ideology as a religion. As a result, ideological enemies (e.g. those who oppose governmental medical coverage or favor the invasion of Iraq) become demonized. Since there is little taste for the supernatural, the transcendent or the eschatological (or at least no space for it in public life), the political becomes the ultimate. Therefore, political disagreement becomes personalized and absolutized as first-order in ultimacy, not second order.
4. Liberals have lost a sense of original and actual sin. A liberal can be described as one who does not confess sins because he self-identifies as a “good person.” Evil becomes re-positioned onto an oppressor class: Neo-Conservative Republicans, white males, heterosexualists, militarists and oil magnates. A fierce indignation and righteous wrath is directed at these groups as the primal agents of evil in an otherwise serene world.
5. Feminism has successfully redefined as pathological masculinity and values associated with it: objectivity, rationality, law, authority, tradition, obedience, and heroic combat. There has resulted an “effeminization” of liberalism in the form of emotivism and over-personalism. Perhaps the clearest manifestation of this was Senator Kennedy’s emotive, indignant, personalized attacks against Judge Alito as racist at his confirmation hearings. Alito maintained an impeccably sober, judicial, intellectual demeanor as he analyzed law and precedent in an impersonal way, free of anger or defensiveness. It was a clear confrontation of the emotive, resentful ideologue with the sober, indifferent (in the classical Ignatian sense) scholar.
6. Implementation of the liberal agenda of libidinal license has generated a reservoir of repressed sexual guilt. Unacknowledged and unconfessed, this becomes transformed and projected in accusatory rage at an evil and incompetent class of people.
7. Knee-jerk, post-Vietnam anti-American-militarism exploded with inordinate indignation and self-righteousness about the Iraq war. This was, of course, the energy that fueled Obama’s momentum in the Democrat primaries.

Conservatives are not free of this fault. I recall a virulent form of it directed against Hillary during the Clinton presidency. However, I do not listen to right-wing radio; I read the Times, listen to MSNBC, and live in blue NJ, and am incessantly subject to the liberal rant. It is good to know where it is coming from.

Happily, President-elect Obama, the new liberal Moses, has some sort of immunity to this liberal virus of personal resentment. He was especially impressive in the debates where he responded respectfully to the disparagement and emotivism of Senator John McCain. He is a good example for all of us.

Merton Forty Years Later

The December 2008 edition of The Catholic Worker celebrates the 40 year anniversary of Merton’s death with an article by Anna Brown and an excerpt from Merton’s “The Ecological Conscience” that appeared in CW in June of 1968. Merton was easily the most popular and influential Catholic spiritual writer of that turbulent period four decades ago. His article and Brown’s reflections are significant because they clearly reflect the direction liberal interest in ecology has taken since then.

Merton sounds a now familiar theme: that Western culture has dominated, controlled and desecrated nature and that we need an ecological awareness of our dependence upon our natural environment. At the time this was a prescient insight and by now is widely accepted even by evangelicals (Rev.Warrren), Catholics (Pope Benedict) and Republicans (Senator McCain.) What is absent from the article is any explicit reference to the person of our Creator or our Redeemer, in whom all of creation came to be. The Catholic tradition, expressed so lucidly by the “theologian of creation,” St. Thomas, sees in nature a gift, an image, a gesture from the personal creator. This awareness is blatantly absent from Merton’s piece…an important omission from a monk and the preeminent spiritual teacher of the era.

Merton emphasizes the theme of ambiguity: “Man is a creature of ambiguity. His salvation and his sanity depend on his ability to harmonize the deep conflicts in his thought, his emotions, his personal mythology. Honesty and authenticity do not depend on complete freedom from contradictions—such freedom is impossible—but on recognizing our self-contradictions and not masking them with bad faith.” Notice here that salvation is not a gift from Jesus our Savior; rather, it is a human achievement of recognizing and harmonizing psychic ambivalence. This is a pure statement of therapy as religion in the vein of 60s gurus including Jung, Fromm, Rogers and Marcuse. There is no apparent need to look beyond self and nature towards a transcendent, eschatological or heavenly salvation.

His article continues, however, and sheds any sense of ambiguity at all in regard to political and economic issues. “The ecological conscience is also essentially a peace-making conscience. A country that seems to be more and more oriented to permanent hot or cold war-making does not give much promise of either one. But perhaps the very character of the war in Vietnam—with crop poisoning, the defoliation of forest trees, the incineration of villages and their inhabitants with napalm—presents enough of a stark and critical example to remind us of this most urgent need.” Merton sees no ambiguity about this conflict: he is blissfully unconcerned with the spread of totalitarian communism but sees with stark simplicity the evil of American policy. He starts the excerpt by concentrating upon ambiguity but ends with an ideological perspective that is simple, uncomplicated and bereft of ambiguity in its condemnation of US policy. Ambiguity is resolved by a mythological demonizing of the Military-Industrial Complex; a belief system that is ritualized annually by pilgrimages to denounce the School of the Americas.

Anna Brown’s article continues in the same vein. Referring to her Social Justice classes at St. Peter’s College, she says: “”My hope and prayer is that each student will come to ‘see,’ for example, the mighty roar of a single raindrop. Unadorned and ordinary, this raindrop will show immediately the unity of all if only we are able to look.” Here is a nature mysticism of “a raindrop” as a sacramental of “the unity of all.” Again, there is no reference to the Creator or the raindrop as a gift from our God. Implicitly, she advocates here a New Age type of pantheistic mysticism that not only fails to lead us to God (as transcendent Father and Creator) but distracts us by absorbing us in the raindrop itself and an amorphous sense of unity.

Brown goes on to write of idolatry as “putting oneself and one’s nation above all others.” But idolatry as classically understood is the elevation of any creature to distract us from adoration of God alone. An ecological conscience and political ideology (bereft of ambiguity) that ignores the person of God our Creator and Jesus our Savior is itself an alternate religion and a form of idolatry.

A gift always has a dual purpose: to delight the beloved with the splendor of the gift and to arouse within the beloved love for and communion with the lover. Imagine that a beloved is so enchanted by the beauty of the gift (flowers, necklace or delicious chocolates) that she ignores the person of the giver. This would be tragic. The flowers will die, the candy be consumed and even the necklace may eventually be misplaced; but the final goal of the gift is to enhance communion between the lover and the beloved.

In these pieces, neither Merton nor Brown draws us towards our Origin and End, the Great Lover Himself. This is the problem: since 1968 our Catholic institutions are filled with people like Anna Brown. These are idealistic, generous, sincere and passionate in their advocacy of values like peace, woman’s rights and a clean environment. These are all, of course, good values. But oftentimes these teachers have not really understood and accepted the Catholic faith so that they are catechizing our young people into an alternate gospel that replaces creation with ecology, salvation with therapy, and sanctification with political correctness. This is, of course, their prerogative; but let us be clear that this is a rejection of Catholicism, not a more enlightened form of it.

And so we cherish and cultivate environment, creation and Mother Nature in all their splendor and integrity…always with a poignant sense that this world is temporary and provisional, it is passing away and is a premonition of our final destiny of eternal communion with our Father who created us, our Lord Jesus who saved us, and the Holy Spirit who even now is sanctifying us.

Brag about My Protectors

I live a life that is safe, protected, secure; serene and reasonably confident; largely free of anxiety and low on stress. This is because I live within the Church. But more specifically, I am protected by two wise and holy men who direct and correct me; who pray for me; who shield me from my own compulsions and obsessions; and to whom I am obedient. Both men “have my back” as they say. Both are formidable, in a quiet, anonymous fashion.

Obedience here is not servile oppression; rather, it is listening in trust, an openness to guidance, a liberating assent, a movement beyond the isolating limits of self into the heart of the Church.

Both men are older and wiser than myself; both are strong Christians; both have their own imperfections; and both love me in a manner that is fatherly, brotherly, passionate, tender, knowing and wise. One is a priest confessor/spiritual director: from him I receive encouragement and correction; he is a spiritual father although he relates in a most fraternal and gentle manner. My second protector is a mentor, a spiritual big brother, a sponsor in the tradition of the 12-steps. He also knows me well, especially my weaknesses and sins, and helps to guard and protect my soul, from my own disorders.

Most adult men, I am convinced, make the mistake of living like the Lone Ranger: independent and alone, isolated and unprotected. One of the primal male temptations is false autonomy, independence and isolation. In my 25-year business career at UPS, I never had a godfather; I was always on my own; I was always implicitly fighting to prove myself and protect myself in an environment that was largely hostile. I was appropriately stressed and anxious.

To my great fortune, however, throughout my adult life I have always been under the protection of some confessor, mentor or spiritual director. I have always had, therefore, a check upon my own self-destructive impulses and toxic tendencies. Additionally, I have usually been part of some small men’s group (bible sharing, charismatic discipleship group, etc.) in which fraternal confidentiality, honestly and vulnerability provided much-needed support, healing and protection.

I am not the Lone Ranger. I am a child of the Father; a son of the Church and of our Blessed Mother; a protégé of Jesus our Lord. I am a team member and a role player. Because I am so well protected, I can offer protection; because I am under authority, I can exercise authority; because I am obedient, I am free and serene and confident.

I am proud of and grateful for my two Godfathers: they have my back!

If you don’t have such a protector, mentor, director, confessor, sponsor…If you are alone, independent, and isolated…I exhort you: Get one today…for your own good and the good of everyone who is under your influence! I think you are going to like it!

Marian Dimension of the Kingdom of God

In the third luminous mystery of the rosary, we consider the Call to Repentance and the Proclamation of the Kingdom. About the concept “Kingdom of God” there is a strong masculine tone; but prayed within the rosary to Mary it is placed within the Queenship of Mary so that a balance between the masculine and feminine is maintained.

This balance between the masculine and feminine is at the heart of every culture and community but is given great emphasis in the Catholic cult of high Mariology. When Christ gave us Mary as our mother from the cross and when the Father assumed her physically and totally into heaven as Queen of heaven and earth, the feminine was elevated to glory and to a privileged participation in Christ’s reign from on high. One of the missions of the Holy Spirit on earth has been to maintain this inspiring, sanctifying feminine influence in balance with the masculine dimensions including apostolic authority and decisiveness. And so, within the early Church, we see almost immediately the emergence of orders of virgins, widows, and feminine martyrs who exert powerful, if quiet influence on the Church. By contrast, we see within Islam, Pharisaic Judaism, Protestantism and all iconoclastic monotheisms a devaluation of the feminine and a host of consequent pathologies.

American culture is Protestant and Protestantism is, in great part, a flight from the Marian, maternal or feminine aspect of the Church: rejection of sacraments, cloistered life, relics, pilgrimages, intercession for the souls and invocation of the saints. Late Protestant American culture is a split personality resulting from a bad mother connection: on the one hand, we have hypo-masculine, hyper-feminine secularizing liberalism which contrasts with hyper-masculine, hypo-feminine evangelical conservatism. The former is inclusive, compassionate, and accepting but reactive against boundaries, law, authority, tradition and definition. The later tends to moralism, legalism, individualism, competition, self-righteousness and aggression. The former is, of course, the Democratic Party; the later the Republican Party. So, we have the sad situation of Catholics voting in a majority for the party of abortion because of a hyper-feminized disgust for a hypo-feminized party of strong defense, small government and family values.

If mainstream American culture is dysfunctional with regard to gender balance, where do we look for such integration? We can look to a wide range of smaller, counter-cultural groups and movements: Marian groups, homeschoolers, renewal movements, right-go-lifers, natural family planners, traditionalists, Catholic Worker-types on the far left, culture warriors on the far right, and even to fellow-travelers within liberal and evangelical circles. Most of all, of course, we look to the heart of the Church: the liturgy and the sacraments, the daily prayer of the Church, the guidance of the Magisterium, the communion of saints in heaven and on earth, and to our Lady herself.

On this Solemnity of the Mother of God, let us pray that we get the gender thing right: that we might emulate the mutuality, reverence and affection shared in the Holy Family by Jesus, Mary and Joseph.