“It isn’t about contraception, it is about religious liberty!” is the chant from the right. This is like saying that the Civil War was not about slavery. Just as the Civil War was about slavery (as well as states’ rights vs. the union) this Culture War is about contra-ception, as well as liberty. But the battle for religious liberty is one that we must fight and we can, possibly, win. The war over contraceptives is so one-sided that no one dares voice a word in the public square against their use.
During this controversy, I have not heard or read a single word about the many negative biological risks for women, of the pill…nor of the fact that Natural Family Planning and periodic abstinence has absolutely no such risk. Yet, the contraceptive-fanatics rage indignantly about “woman’s health.”
If contraceptives are as good as liberals think…liberating, healthy, empowering, safe, healthy…than we as a society really do have a duty to provide them, free of charge, to all “female reproductive agents.” If they are as bad has the Church claims, then we really need to, non-coercively, discourage their use.
“Contraception is about a woman’s right to control her own sexuality and reproductive capacities.” This statement is intelligible to every knowledgeable 12-year-old. “Contraception is inherently evil.” This statement is incomprehensible to about 99% of our university professors, lawyers, doctors, judges and journalists…including liberal Catholics. Nor do they want to understand what is intended here.
Bishop Lori, testifying before Congress, compared the contraception mandate to a hypothetical requirement that kosher restaurants serve pork. This comparison works as persuasive rhetoric in defense of liberty in the marketplace of ideas, but it badly distorts the issue. The case against contraception is not cultic, like pork prohibition specifically for Jews or the Lenten fast and abstinence for Catholics. Rather, by the natural law, which is to say “the nature of things, specifically persons,” we see that it violates the purpose of sexuality and is toxic for women, family and the entire society. Contraceptive use, in this view, is objectively harmful like bulimia, inhaling tobacco or gorging on Tran’s fats, only much worse since it harms relationships, the soul, the emotions, and the community even more than it does the body. Recourse by Bishop Lori to such a mistaken analogy shows that the bishops entertain not the slightest hope of advancing their viewpoint, on contraception, in the public square. Increasingly, orthodox, “thick” Catholicism is becoming a marginal, counter-cultural, Amish-like community within American society.
When I taught high school religion, I exhorted the young ladies: “Should any man, boyfriend, husband, doctor or whoever, as much as suggest that you ingest that toxic pill into your precious body, kick him to the curb!” Now that is what I call woman’s liberation!
Yes, I am every bit as passionate and intense about contraception as the Clintons, Obama, Sibelius, Planned Parenthood and the fanatics who would impose this mandate upon everyone and who work tirelessly to export contraception and abortion all over the world, using our tax money.
The contraception empire is an alliance of the Democratic Party, Planned Parenthood, Hollywood, Madison Avenue, the pharmaceutical companies, the unions, most of the medical profession, academia, the eugenicists, and all the cultural elites…to name just a few. The Catholic bishops have as allies: No One, except a few eccentrics who think and care deeply about the meaning of sexuality. No institution or elite will benefit from the practice of NFP: the ones who will benefit are women, children, the family, local communities and society.
Contraception is the threshold, the linchpin, the key to the hegemonic culture of sexual license. For Catholics, baptism is the basis, the foundation for the sacramental life. For the liberal, contraception is the rite of passage that leads to a system of rituals: cohabitation, abortion as back-up, serial polygamy, gay intercourse, euthanasia, embryo-experimentation, and the litany goes on.
When the pill became available in the 1960s, instantaneously a mimetic, contagious pandemic overcame our society: 99% of our women succumbed. It was as irresistible as a tsunami. No wonder that the Church…the Vatican, theologians, the clergy… all backed down rather than confront it. None of us are uncontaminated. By some strange irony of Providence, it was a full, disastrous decade after the Pill that we attained the good science supporting Natural Family Planning and the inspiring Theology of the Body.
Compare:
- The pill induces the man to objectify and use the woman, NFP encourages reverence, specifically for her in her distinctive physicality.
- The pill emphases pleasure; NFP insists upon sacrifice.
- The pill is toxic for the woman’s body; NFP is entirely harmless.
- The pill ends conversation; NFP depends upon ongoing communication between spouses.
- The pill exercises technocratic, mechanical control over “reproduction;” NFP is natural, is based on good science, and is personalistic.
- The pill excludes God from the act of intercourse; NFP opens the couple to God as partner in the Mystery in which faithful love and procreation mutually infuse each other.
Perhaps the best consequence of the Obama violation of religious liberty is that the Church, which is to say the bishops collegially, have been aroused to clearly affirm and defend their position on contraception. The voice of the Church on this pivotal issue has been muted, if not entirely silent, and cowardly since the clarification with Humanae Vitae in 1968. It is time for us Catholics to recover the courage of our convictions.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Virility as At Once Magnanimity and Humility
Tim Tebow and now Jeremy Lin: there is a small surge of fierce, competitive, dominant athletes who are also openly faith-filled, pious and humble. In a thought-provoking opinion piece (NY Times, Friday, Feb. 17, 2012) David Brooks raises the “Jeremy Linn Problem:” Are not the directional energies of aggressive, dominant, competitive athletics and humble, obedient piety contradictory of each other? He quotes Lin’s own introspective reflections on the interior tension he deals with in trying to look beyond his own selfish satisfactions towards greater goals. He quotes renowned Orthodox Jewish theologian Joseph Soloveitchik on the sharp contrast between the ethos of Majesty and that of Humility. Columnist Brooks seems to agree with sage Soloveitchik that the courage of the athlete and the humility of the saint are opposites.
For a Christian, however, humility and magnanimity infuse and define each other: they are two sides of the same coin. The genuine saint is characterized by “magnanimity.” The etymology of this is Latin: “great-spiritedness.” It implies boldness, courage, intensity, passion, zeal, and depth and breadth of vision. An authentically humble man is bold and courageous:
- Fearless, ego-deflated, and engaged in a mission beyond his own individual status and honor.
- Admits his weakness and failings but is not paralyzed by self-centered fear.
- Knows his strengths and gifts and exercises them to the maximum, free of inhibitions.
- Is in love with Someone/Something beyond himself and eager to self-sacrifice.
- Sees himself as a role-player, part of a greater whole, a community, a team, and so he does not crave attention. He empowers and depends upon his fellows.
- Does not take himself or his private success seriously and so he is light-hearted, humorous, free.
Think of our great saints: Paul, Francis of Assisi, Francis Xavier, Dominic, Mother Teresa, and John Paul II. They are all humble and yet fierce, relentless, passionate, and iron-willed.
Think of our favorite heroes: Aragon, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Atticus Finch, or the more inspiring performances by John Wayne, Harrison Ford, Gary Cooper, or Jimmy Stewart. Are they not equally gentle and strong?
What father would want his daughter to marry a man who is strong without humility, or humble without strength? For strength without humility would be a false strength; and humility without strength would be a bogus humility.
And so, a Majesty and Humility in mutual opposition would both be superficial and inauthentic. There is something very “B.C.” or “before Christ” about the dichotomy described by Brooks and Soloveitchik. In the earlier dispensation, priest, prophet and king were entirely distinct missions. The warrior king, think of Samson or David, was hardly clean enough to enter the sacred space and offer holy sacrifice.
But in our Lord Jesus we recognize the quintessential warrior, king, priest, victim, and prophet; the lion and the lamb; one who is overcome by suffering and death even as He is triumphant over death, sin, Satan and his legions, and all the principalities and powers.
Praise be to God for Tebow and Lin!
May all of us be filled with this Holy Spirit of gentle strength, bold kindness, and humble zeal!
For a Christian, however, humility and magnanimity infuse and define each other: they are two sides of the same coin. The genuine saint is characterized by “magnanimity.” The etymology of this is Latin: “great-spiritedness.” It implies boldness, courage, intensity, passion, zeal, and depth and breadth of vision. An authentically humble man is bold and courageous:
- Fearless, ego-deflated, and engaged in a mission beyond his own individual status and honor.
- Admits his weakness and failings but is not paralyzed by self-centered fear.
- Knows his strengths and gifts and exercises them to the maximum, free of inhibitions.
- Is in love with Someone/Something beyond himself and eager to self-sacrifice.
- Sees himself as a role-player, part of a greater whole, a community, a team, and so he does not crave attention. He empowers and depends upon his fellows.
- Does not take himself or his private success seriously and so he is light-hearted, humorous, free.
Think of our great saints: Paul, Francis of Assisi, Francis Xavier, Dominic, Mother Teresa, and John Paul II. They are all humble and yet fierce, relentless, passionate, and iron-willed.
Think of our favorite heroes: Aragon, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Atticus Finch, or the more inspiring performances by John Wayne, Harrison Ford, Gary Cooper, or Jimmy Stewart. Are they not equally gentle and strong?
What father would want his daughter to marry a man who is strong without humility, or humble without strength? For strength without humility would be a false strength; and humility without strength would be a bogus humility.
And so, a Majesty and Humility in mutual opposition would both be superficial and inauthentic. There is something very “B.C.” or “before Christ” about the dichotomy described by Brooks and Soloveitchik. In the earlier dispensation, priest, prophet and king were entirely distinct missions. The warrior king, think of Samson or David, was hardly clean enough to enter the sacred space and offer holy sacrifice.
But in our Lord Jesus we recognize the quintessential warrior, king, priest, victim, and prophet; the lion and the lamb; one who is overcome by suffering and death even as He is triumphant over death, sin, Satan and his legions, and all the principalities and powers.
Praise be to God for Tebow and Lin!
May all of us be filled with this Holy Spirit of gentle strength, bold kindness, and humble zeal!
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Politics of Cultural Radicalism
They are three distinct monsters, or we might describe it as a three-headed dragon: the Culture of Death, the expansive State, and the mega-technocratic-finance-economy.
The Culture of Death is the direct liberal assault upon innocent life, the integrity of marriage, religious liberty, and the dignity of the person as spousally en-bodied: abortion, pornography, mandatory contraception, sterilization, embryo destruction, gay rights and the litany goes on. If only it were a single issue!
The expansive State is inexorably expanding to take control of all areas of human life: education, health care, sexuality and family life. Systemically, the ascending network of local communities is being deconstructed by an omniscient, omnipotent State. In the liberal synthesis, this State is the implementer of the Culture of Death as it systematically marginalizes and privatizes communities, especially the Church, resistant to its totalitarianism.
Meanwhile, multinational capitalism grows with its own impersonal, expansive, technocratic logic: it fuels and is fueled by consumerism and greed; it disrupts the bonds of community associated with family, faith and locale; it inordinately privileges educated, professional elites (the 20%); it benefits from an impure union with the expansive liberal-fascist State; and it encourages the Culture of Death.
The Democratic Party is the political enabler of this dragon. It unapologetically supports the Culture of Death and the expansive State. It attempts to humanize and soften some of the injustices that flow from international, finance capitalism by a more generous safety net, stricter regulation, and higher taxes on the most affluent. But it essentially supports and is supported by the empire of big business and finance.
The Republican Party, traditionally the vehicle of capitalists, has largely become an alliance of those who oppose the Culture of Death (cultural or moral conservatives) and the expansive State (Tea Party). But it remains true to its roots and is naively uncritical of unregulated, large-scale capitalism. Indeed, it is unabashedly and enthusiastically supportive of capitalism, with all its warts, fiercely resisting even the relatively minor adjustments (higher capital gains tax) supported by the Democrats.
About half of American Catholics, informed by the New Deal traditions prior to the Cultural Revolution of the 60s,remain stuck in that earlier political paradigm by which the Democratic Party was fiercely defensive of the working class and Church’s social doctrine and implicitly supportive of the Catholic ethic of life and love. But a cultural radicalism faithful to the Catholic reality of this century must resist the three-headed Dragon, and its political embodiment in the Democratic Party, even if it is less than satisfied with the Republicans and their naïve embrace of unrestrained finance capitalism. At every level, we are challenged to develop a politics of communion which supports: family life, smaller and more local communities of value and action, and those who are most innocent and powerless. At the same time, on the macro level, we must wrestle with the twin dragons, State and Corporation, so that they serve, in good subsidiarity and solidarity, the smaller communities of human dignity.
The Culture of Death is the direct liberal assault upon innocent life, the integrity of marriage, religious liberty, and the dignity of the person as spousally en-bodied: abortion, pornography, mandatory contraception, sterilization, embryo destruction, gay rights and the litany goes on. If only it were a single issue!
The expansive State is inexorably expanding to take control of all areas of human life: education, health care, sexuality and family life. Systemically, the ascending network of local communities is being deconstructed by an omniscient, omnipotent State. In the liberal synthesis, this State is the implementer of the Culture of Death as it systematically marginalizes and privatizes communities, especially the Church, resistant to its totalitarianism.
Meanwhile, multinational capitalism grows with its own impersonal, expansive, technocratic logic: it fuels and is fueled by consumerism and greed; it disrupts the bonds of community associated with family, faith and locale; it inordinately privileges educated, professional elites (the 20%); it benefits from an impure union with the expansive liberal-fascist State; and it encourages the Culture of Death.
The Democratic Party is the political enabler of this dragon. It unapologetically supports the Culture of Death and the expansive State. It attempts to humanize and soften some of the injustices that flow from international, finance capitalism by a more generous safety net, stricter regulation, and higher taxes on the most affluent. But it essentially supports and is supported by the empire of big business and finance.
The Republican Party, traditionally the vehicle of capitalists, has largely become an alliance of those who oppose the Culture of Death (cultural or moral conservatives) and the expansive State (Tea Party). But it remains true to its roots and is naively uncritical of unregulated, large-scale capitalism. Indeed, it is unabashedly and enthusiastically supportive of capitalism, with all its warts, fiercely resisting even the relatively minor adjustments (higher capital gains tax) supported by the Democrats.
About half of American Catholics, informed by the New Deal traditions prior to the Cultural Revolution of the 60s,remain stuck in that earlier political paradigm by which the Democratic Party was fiercely defensive of the working class and Church’s social doctrine and implicitly supportive of the Catholic ethic of life and love. But a cultural radicalism faithful to the Catholic reality of this century must resist the three-headed Dragon, and its political embodiment in the Democratic Party, even if it is less than satisfied with the Republicans and their naïve embrace of unrestrained finance capitalism. At every level, we are challenged to develop a politics of communion which supports: family life, smaller and more local communities of value and action, and those who are most innocent and powerless. At the same time, on the macro level, we must wrestle with the twin dragons, State and Corporation, so that they serve, in good subsidiarity and solidarity, the smaller communities of human dignity.
Monday, February 13, 2012
The Economics of Gratuity
In our side yard, a peach tree gives us nice fruit every year. We did not plant, plan or engineer this tree: it came to us spontaneously as an impulsive gesture of generosity from Mother Nature by way of some lively, productive squirrel or bird. Gratuity!
An hour ago, a handy-man friend of mine came over and installed a new thermo-coupler on the broken furnace of a single-mother friend in the neighborhood. He wouldn’t take any payment.Gratuity!
Our seven children have completed about 140 years of schooling, almost all of it Catholic. Financially this is completely impossible on the one modest salary we earned while they were growing up. How did it happen? Some mysterious, serendipitous, even miraculous Gratuity!
When we were raising our family, our dentist didn’t charge the co-pay; our mechanic (of almost 40 years) did countless repairs free of charge; our exterminator and plumber wouldn’t accept payment. When we had $500 in the bank, friends and family gave us money and help to buy and fix the 15 room house in which we raised our family and still live. Grandparents on both sides gave us memorable annual vacations in Maine and Belmar NJ. Gratuity!
A group of our family and friends opened a residence for low-income, special needs women. The rent we collect covers about 60% of our expenses. But the home is like a magnet, attracting donations of food and clothing and money as well as volunteer services. Gratuity
I have lived my entire life immersed in the economy of gratuity. This is the real economy; the human economy; the grace-infused economy. We usually have two models in mind when we say “economy:” first, the globalized, market economy including things like Gross National Product, unemployment rate, per-capita income and annual rate of growth. Secondly, we think of the government with its budget, deficit, debt, income and expenditure. These are, of course, aspects of our macro-economy; but they are of minor significance compared with what Pope Benedict has termed “the economy of gratuity.” I read in yesterday’s Times that economists have found that as a society increases its total wealth it does not increase human happiness. This makes perfect sense. It also means that the rate of growth, or decline, is not so important after all; what matters are gratitude and generosity.
A materialistic liberalism would have us believe that unemployment and scarcity are the prime sources of human misery. The real tragedy would not be that a man has no job; it would be that he lacks the resources of heart and intellect, the spontaneity, the imagination, the social encouragement and the generosity to make use of the time with which he is graciously gifted. Naïve conservatism trusts that an unregulated, untaxed market will inflate human happiness, avoiding the reality that a mechanistic, dehumanizing global economy, fueled by greed and consumerism, may be a greater threat to wholesome human communities than the over-reaching state.
Government and business, both, at their best are bursting with gratuity. We are blessed with an extensive, generous, governmental safety network which provides food, medical care, housing, education and other services to so many of us, especially the very needy. Excellent business people passionately want to serve, to be fruitful, to satisfy genuine needs and to surpass expectations. My brother, who sells bagels, gives many away. This generosity is not an activity separated off from his work; it involves the same energies, passions, imagination, and exuberance that make him a good businessman. United Parcel Service, my employer for 25 years, used to match our donations and made it possible for our family to endow a scholarship at St. Peter’s College for students who have suffered from mental or emotional conditions. Profits from UPS fund the Casey foundations which are fabulously generous on behalf of families in need. These activities are not set off from the UPS “service” industry. Generosity and gratuity are not a third domain set off from industry and government, they are already built into them; they are essential to them and fundamentally constitute them. I cannot imagine a good politician, civil servant or businessman who is not also grateful and generous.
And so, the national deficit and debt, unemployment rate, or Dow Jones average may not be so important after all. What matters is the degree to which gratitude and generosity infuse our working, our resting, our buying and everything we do.
Nor does this reflection lead to a moralistic, voluntaristic intention to give away more money or time or talent. Rather, the economics of gratuity can only spring from a deep spirit of gratitude, of quiet appreciation, of eager reception, of contemplation. We can start by marveling at the bounteousness of nature, the extravagance and synergy of our social energies, the sophistication and expertise of our culture and technology, the productivity of our economy and the complexity of our governmental system (city, state, national). We can diminish the excessive negativity that has become endemic to the dismal science: the obsessive anxiety over debt and deficit, the decline of America, or the growing gap between the rich and the poor.
This is not to deny that there are serious problems and an urgent need for sustained, thoughtful and purposeful action. It is to affirm that such insightful and fruitful action can only flow from a prior positivity of awe, contentment, reception and gratitude…such that our work, rest and celebration all flow with such delight and exuberance that all we do, in feast and famine, resounds to the Glory of God.
An hour ago, a handy-man friend of mine came over and installed a new thermo-coupler on the broken furnace of a single-mother friend in the neighborhood. He wouldn’t take any payment.Gratuity!
Our seven children have completed about 140 years of schooling, almost all of it Catholic. Financially this is completely impossible on the one modest salary we earned while they were growing up. How did it happen? Some mysterious, serendipitous, even miraculous Gratuity!
When we were raising our family, our dentist didn’t charge the co-pay; our mechanic (of almost 40 years) did countless repairs free of charge; our exterminator and plumber wouldn’t accept payment. When we had $500 in the bank, friends and family gave us money and help to buy and fix the 15 room house in which we raised our family and still live. Grandparents on both sides gave us memorable annual vacations in Maine and Belmar NJ. Gratuity!
A group of our family and friends opened a residence for low-income, special needs women. The rent we collect covers about 60% of our expenses. But the home is like a magnet, attracting donations of food and clothing and money as well as volunteer services. Gratuity
I have lived my entire life immersed in the economy of gratuity. This is the real economy; the human economy; the grace-infused economy. We usually have two models in mind when we say “economy:” first, the globalized, market economy including things like Gross National Product, unemployment rate, per-capita income and annual rate of growth. Secondly, we think of the government with its budget, deficit, debt, income and expenditure. These are, of course, aspects of our macro-economy; but they are of minor significance compared with what Pope Benedict has termed “the economy of gratuity.” I read in yesterday’s Times that economists have found that as a society increases its total wealth it does not increase human happiness. This makes perfect sense. It also means that the rate of growth, or decline, is not so important after all; what matters are gratitude and generosity.
A materialistic liberalism would have us believe that unemployment and scarcity are the prime sources of human misery. The real tragedy would not be that a man has no job; it would be that he lacks the resources of heart and intellect, the spontaneity, the imagination, the social encouragement and the generosity to make use of the time with which he is graciously gifted. Naïve conservatism trusts that an unregulated, untaxed market will inflate human happiness, avoiding the reality that a mechanistic, dehumanizing global economy, fueled by greed and consumerism, may be a greater threat to wholesome human communities than the over-reaching state.
Government and business, both, at their best are bursting with gratuity. We are blessed with an extensive, generous, governmental safety network which provides food, medical care, housing, education and other services to so many of us, especially the very needy. Excellent business people passionately want to serve, to be fruitful, to satisfy genuine needs and to surpass expectations. My brother, who sells bagels, gives many away. This generosity is not an activity separated off from his work; it involves the same energies, passions, imagination, and exuberance that make him a good businessman. United Parcel Service, my employer for 25 years, used to match our donations and made it possible for our family to endow a scholarship at St. Peter’s College for students who have suffered from mental or emotional conditions. Profits from UPS fund the Casey foundations which are fabulously generous on behalf of families in need. These activities are not set off from the UPS “service” industry. Generosity and gratuity are not a third domain set off from industry and government, they are already built into them; they are essential to them and fundamentally constitute them. I cannot imagine a good politician, civil servant or businessman who is not also grateful and generous.
And so, the national deficit and debt, unemployment rate, or Dow Jones average may not be so important after all. What matters is the degree to which gratitude and generosity infuse our working, our resting, our buying and everything we do.
Nor does this reflection lead to a moralistic, voluntaristic intention to give away more money or time or talent. Rather, the economics of gratuity can only spring from a deep spirit of gratitude, of quiet appreciation, of eager reception, of contemplation. We can start by marveling at the bounteousness of nature, the extravagance and synergy of our social energies, the sophistication and expertise of our culture and technology, the productivity of our economy and the complexity of our governmental system (city, state, national). We can diminish the excessive negativity that has become endemic to the dismal science: the obsessive anxiety over debt and deficit, the decline of America, or the growing gap between the rich and the poor.
This is not to deny that there are serious problems and an urgent need for sustained, thoughtful and purposeful action. It is to affirm that such insightful and fruitful action can only flow from a prior positivity of awe, contentment, reception and gratitude…such that our work, rest and celebration all flow with such delight and exuberance that all we do, in feast and famine, resounds to the Glory of God.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Being catholic (small c) in a Catholic (Capital C) Way
I was saddened by Fr. John Haughey S.J.’s essay “The Catholicity of Lonergan” in the recent Lonergan Review. I came to know Fr. Haughey’s work in the early days of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and was thrilled that such a sharp, erudite, Jesuit mind was serving this movement that was so enamored of the person of Jesus, within an ecclesial context, and so physically expressive and exuberant about it. Fr. Haughey has come a long ways since then…in an unfortunate direction. In the name of his fellow Jesuit Bernard Lonergan, he offers an ideal of “catholicity” as the capacity of the human intellect to reach out beyond itself in the direction of deeper truth. Thus described, catholicity is praiseworthy. The problem, however, is threefold: he explicitly disassociates it from Jesus; he removes it from an ecclesial, or Catholic, context; and lastly, he describes it as an abstract, intellectual action, transcendent of the body and the physical. The essay implies contempt for: Christocentrism, ecclesial institutions, and the role of the physical…precisely the three values so treasured in Catholic Pentecostalism.
The essay unfavorably contrasts the Christocentrism of the early Lonergan with the inclusiveness and uprootedness of his later work. It voices the standard disgust for “bureaucracies” on behalf of an ethereal, abstract spirituality unsoiled by the hard work of actually getting things done. Implicitly, this “catholicity” is anti-Roman and certainly non-Catholic. It imagines an inexorable dynamism of the human intellect in search of truth and goodness but fails to connect with the body, concretion, or the harsh reality of sin. Haughey pays homage to the Vatican II shift from objectivism and classicism, with their view of truths as abstract and absolute, towards a sense of the historicity and subjectivity intrinsic to all human knowing. It advocates, however, an idealism of the intellect, an idealized “transcending” dynamic of human knowing, that has no specific, concrete root or locus in human history. In this Lonergarian “catholicity” there is denial of the “concrete universal” of Jesus Christ, of His continued historic enfleshment in the institutional Church, of the sacramentality and intelligibility of the body and material creation. This is a “catholicity” without Jesus Christ, without a Catholic Church, and above the messiness of the body and sex and even Eucharist. We might call it an anti-incarnational or non-fleshly catholicity.
This shift from Catholic to catholic is paradigmatic of the tragic trajectory of liberal, especially so much Jesuit, theology since the Council. It directly contradicts the authentically magisterial hermeneutic of John Paul and Benedict which is absolutely Jesus-centered, ecclesial (which is to say, liturgical and sacramental), and physical (Theology of the Body, Benedict on eros and agape.)
Interestingly, this issue of the Lonergan Review is dedicated to Deacon Bill Toth, a man who excelled in his love for the person of Jesus, the Roman Catholic Church, and the gendered, sexual human body. Bill may have shared my misgivings about this Lonergarian "catholicity."
I considered Bill a role-model and an inspiration whom I came to know better in recent years through my friendship with his son Father Stephen. When I took Bill’s course in Moral Theology some 25 years ago, I was puzzled, then thrilled, and inspired. At first I was puzzled about his own views in that polarized field since he explained, with such clarity and sympathy, feminist and liberationist ethics which contradicted Church teachings. Eventually, in personal conversation, I learned how fiercely loyal he was to the magisterium. His was a catholic appreciation for other viewpoints, but he was entirely devoted to his Catholic faith. While running a business and raising a large family, he found time to study and teach theology. I was greatly encouraged that I too, with more modest intellectual endowments, might well continue to study and echo in my own sphere the voice of Christ as heard in the Church.
His was a catholic intellect; but he was wholeheartedly Catholic, unapologetically Roman Catholic, and completely at home in the messiness and physicality of family, sex, capitalistic business, power politics and all arenas of culture. What a great role model for a layman!
Bill Toth, pray for us, that we may be good Catholics, as you were!
The essay unfavorably contrasts the Christocentrism of the early Lonergan with the inclusiveness and uprootedness of his later work. It voices the standard disgust for “bureaucracies” on behalf of an ethereal, abstract spirituality unsoiled by the hard work of actually getting things done. Implicitly, this “catholicity” is anti-Roman and certainly non-Catholic. It imagines an inexorable dynamism of the human intellect in search of truth and goodness but fails to connect with the body, concretion, or the harsh reality of sin. Haughey pays homage to the Vatican II shift from objectivism and classicism, with their view of truths as abstract and absolute, towards a sense of the historicity and subjectivity intrinsic to all human knowing. It advocates, however, an idealism of the intellect, an idealized “transcending” dynamic of human knowing, that has no specific, concrete root or locus in human history. In this Lonergarian “catholicity” there is denial of the “concrete universal” of Jesus Christ, of His continued historic enfleshment in the institutional Church, of the sacramentality and intelligibility of the body and material creation. This is a “catholicity” without Jesus Christ, without a Catholic Church, and above the messiness of the body and sex and even Eucharist. We might call it an anti-incarnational or non-fleshly catholicity.
This shift from Catholic to catholic is paradigmatic of the tragic trajectory of liberal, especially so much Jesuit, theology since the Council. It directly contradicts the authentically magisterial hermeneutic of John Paul and Benedict which is absolutely Jesus-centered, ecclesial (which is to say, liturgical and sacramental), and physical (Theology of the Body, Benedict on eros and agape.)
Interestingly, this issue of the Lonergan Review is dedicated to Deacon Bill Toth, a man who excelled in his love for the person of Jesus, the Roman Catholic Church, and the gendered, sexual human body. Bill may have shared my misgivings about this Lonergarian "catholicity."
I considered Bill a role-model and an inspiration whom I came to know better in recent years through my friendship with his son Father Stephen. When I took Bill’s course in Moral Theology some 25 years ago, I was puzzled, then thrilled, and inspired. At first I was puzzled about his own views in that polarized field since he explained, with such clarity and sympathy, feminist and liberationist ethics which contradicted Church teachings. Eventually, in personal conversation, I learned how fiercely loyal he was to the magisterium. His was a catholic appreciation for other viewpoints, but he was entirely devoted to his Catholic faith. While running a business and raising a large family, he found time to study and teach theology. I was greatly encouraged that I too, with more modest intellectual endowments, might well continue to study and echo in my own sphere the voice of Christ as heard in the Church.
His was a catholic intellect; but he was wholeheartedly Catholic, unapologetically Roman Catholic, and completely at home in the messiness and physicality of family, sex, capitalistic business, power politics and all arenas of culture. What a great role model for a layman!
Bill Toth, pray for us, that we may be good Catholics, as you were!
Sunday, February 5, 2012
The Ache of the Heart
A friend described the event. It was a 12-step sharing group for homosexuals striving to live a sober, chaste life. One told his story: he had beckoned a male prostitute to his hotel room and then apologized “I am sorry; I will pay you the standard fee; but I don’t want sex; I only want you to hold me.” The young man responded: “That’s no problem; I get that from you guys a lot; I do that all the time.” A silence fell upon the room of close to a hundred. Slowly the sound of sobbing emerged. Then the sobbing increased in intensity: the room filled with irrepressible, heartfelt sobs. There was not a dry eye in the room.
It is not about sex. It is about affection. It is not a physical condition present at birth. It is the yearning of the human heart. It is not about physical intercourse. It is about the longing to be affirmed, warmed, welcomed, comforted, and strengthened by a gentle, protective, penetrating love.
In an environment of gay-affirming, intrusive militancy, this gentle truth can hardly be whispered.
It is not about sex. It is about affection. It is not a physical condition present at birth. It is the yearning of the human heart. It is not about physical intercourse. It is about the longing to be affirmed, warmed, welcomed, comforted, and strengthened by a gentle, protective, penetrating love.
In an environment of gay-affirming, intrusive militancy, this gentle truth can hardly be whispered.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Virginity, Liminality and Authentically Liberating Feminism
The three most significant, influential women over the last century were (circle three):
Margaret Thatcher; Marilyn Monroe; Rachel Carson; Golda Meir;
Simone de Beauvoir; Mother Teresa; Saint Faustina; Margaret Sanger; Hillary Clinton; Edith Stein; Aretha Franklin; Madonna.
If you chose the three consecrated virgins, your Catholic intuitions are impeccable.
One of the really, really new things that came into the cosmos and history with Jesus was consecrated virginity. Ancient paganisms and Judaism, like contemporary liberalism, had not the faintest clue about this mystery.
Jesus and Mary were the first, unless you count John the Baptist. St. Joseph may have had a prior marriage but surely lived virginity in this utterly unique marriage. Saints Paul and John followed along. But a most striking thing about early Christianity was the spontaneous flowering of virginal consecration among young women. Resisting immense social pressures and breaking all sociological models, holy young women passionately, zealously, and tenderly surrendered themselves, through the evangelical counsels, to Christ their Bridegroom. Many suffered tortuous martyrdoms rather than compromise the nuptial donation they had pledged. Long before canon law could regulate institutionalized religious life such women surrendered themselves to prayer and service in a fluid, organic, seemingly effortless and utterly informal way. And yet, the inner form or gestalt was crystal clear: physical virginity, along with poverty and obedience, as a bridal surrender to their Great Lover.
Virginity is above all else liberating: it frees one from the complex web of obligations, pressures, limitations, and expectations associated with family, tribe, nation and empire. The virgin wants to please only the Lord and is free of the needs and expectations, not only of husband, but of father and tribe, of king, nation and state. She is free for prayer and contemplation, for deeds of mercy, and for proclamation of the Gospel. She is lifted out of the exhausting cycle of procreation into a luminous zone of restful contemplation and Spirit-infused action. She turns away from the earth to open her heart to heaven; and returns to earth with heavenly gifts. Her feminine receptivity and fecundity takes on sublimity as she conceives and delivers a heavenly newness into a world grown old in sin.
The virgin enters the zone of “liminality,” described by anthropologist Victor Turner as passing of a threshold into an alternate zone of freedom and novelty: “Liminality may perhaps be regarded as the Nay to all positive structural assertions, but as in some sense the source of them all, and, more than that, as a realm of pure possibility whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise” (1967: 97).
Liminal persons, he continues, have “no status, insignia, secular clothing, rank, kinship position, nothing to demarcate them structurally from their fellows” (1967: 98). They are, he continues, “neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremony” (1969: 95)
And so, the virgin bursts out of all social categories into a realm of novelty, possibility, creativity, contemplation and transcendent joy. She re-enters ordinary life, from the liminous, with a luminosity, a liberality, an abundant graciousness.
In time, of course, the Church came to regularize the virginal life in a more formal way. It became prone to stagnation, but our great religious women (think of the Theresas and the Catherines) efficaciously renewed the liberating, serendipitous, liminal nature of the virginal life. The Catholic faith has always treasured this state of life. It has evolved in a creative-if-sometimes-tension-filled relationship with a masculine, Petrine-clerical institution that can guide but never control it in its irrepressible dynamism.
Luther and his reformation, by contrast, brutally suppressed virginity and regressively compelled every woman back into the boundaries of the home. Protestantism is an attenuated masculinity relentlessly oppressive of the feminine in the dimensions of the sacramental, the virginal, the contemplative and the Marian. By contrast, Catholicism is an always-fruitful mutual fecundation between the (authoritative, efficacious masculine) Petrine and the (receptive, contemplative, feminine) Marian.
The fashionable feminism of the last several decades is a far cry from the liminosity of Catholic evangelical feminism. Unfortunately, it married itself to four horrible ideas. First, it mimics the worst corruption of the masculine in seeking power in the sense of social status and the power to exert external control over the “other.” And so, we see the demand for holy orders and enhanced social status. Likewise, we find liberal religious advocating for specific partisan policies and thereby situating themselves along side of similar lobbying groups (for union, environment, etc.) and enmeshing themselves in worldly pressure politics, far from the zone of luminosity. Secondly, 60s feminism taught that maternity (biological or spiritual) is less important for feminine identity than career, accomplishment, and social status. Thirdly, it emulated the most decadent masculinity in embracing sexual promiscuity as a right and value. And worse of all, it asserted the right of the mother to kill her unborn.
Nevertheless, in surprising and delightful ways, liminal, luminous, liberating feminine virginity is again flowering in the Church. Again, as in every generation, it is irrepressible, serendipitous, and fecund with new life. Far from distrusting and resenting the masculine, it longs for the Uber-masculinity of the Bridegroom, even as he gives Himself in the masculine dimension of the bridal Church. And graces are flowing from heaven through humble, hidden, prayerful women.
Margaret Thatcher; Marilyn Monroe; Rachel Carson; Golda Meir;
Simone de Beauvoir; Mother Teresa; Saint Faustina; Margaret Sanger; Hillary Clinton; Edith Stein; Aretha Franklin; Madonna.
If you chose the three consecrated virgins, your Catholic intuitions are impeccable.
One of the really, really new things that came into the cosmos and history with Jesus was consecrated virginity. Ancient paganisms and Judaism, like contemporary liberalism, had not the faintest clue about this mystery.
Jesus and Mary were the first, unless you count John the Baptist. St. Joseph may have had a prior marriage but surely lived virginity in this utterly unique marriage. Saints Paul and John followed along. But a most striking thing about early Christianity was the spontaneous flowering of virginal consecration among young women. Resisting immense social pressures and breaking all sociological models, holy young women passionately, zealously, and tenderly surrendered themselves, through the evangelical counsels, to Christ their Bridegroom. Many suffered tortuous martyrdoms rather than compromise the nuptial donation they had pledged. Long before canon law could regulate institutionalized religious life such women surrendered themselves to prayer and service in a fluid, organic, seemingly effortless and utterly informal way. And yet, the inner form or gestalt was crystal clear: physical virginity, along with poverty and obedience, as a bridal surrender to their Great Lover.
Virginity is above all else liberating: it frees one from the complex web of obligations, pressures, limitations, and expectations associated with family, tribe, nation and empire. The virgin wants to please only the Lord and is free of the needs and expectations, not only of husband, but of father and tribe, of king, nation and state. She is free for prayer and contemplation, for deeds of mercy, and for proclamation of the Gospel. She is lifted out of the exhausting cycle of procreation into a luminous zone of restful contemplation and Spirit-infused action. She turns away from the earth to open her heart to heaven; and returns to earth with heavenly gifts. Her feminine receptivity and fecundity takes on sublimity as she conceives and delivers a heavenly newness into a world grown old in sin.
The virgin enters the zone of “liminality,” described by anthropologist Victor Turner as passing of a threshold into an alternate zone of freedom and novelty: “Liminality may perhaps be regarded as the Nay to all positive structural assertions, but as in some sense the source of them all, and, more than that, as a realm of pure possibility whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise” (1967: 97).
Liminal persons, he continues, have “no status, insignia, secular clothing, rank, kinship position, nothing to demarcate them structurally from their fellows” (1967: 98). They are, he continues, “neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremony” (1969: 95)
And so, the virgin bursts out of all social categories into a realm of novelty, possibility, creativity, contemplation and transcendent joy. She re-enters ordinary life, from the liminous, with a luminosity, a liberality, an abundant graciousness.
In time, of course, the Church came to regularize the virginal life in a more formal way. It became prone to stagnation, but our great religious women (think of the Theresas and the Catherines) efficaciously renewed the liberating, serendipitous, liminal nature of the virginal life. The Catholic faith has always treasured this state of life. It has evolved in a creative-if-sometimes-tension-filled relationship with a masculine, Petrine-clerical institution that can guide but never control it in its irrepressible dynamism.
Luther and his reformation, by contrast, brutally suppressed virginity and regressively compelled every woman back into the boundaries of the home. Protestantism is an attenuated masculinity relentlessly oppressive of the feminine in the dimensions of the sacramental, the virginal, the contemplative and the Marian. By contrast, Catholicism is an always-fruitful mutual fecundation between the (authoritative, efficacious masculine) Petrine and the (receptive, contemplative, feminine) Marian.
The fashionable feminism of the last several decades is a far cry from the liminosity of Catholic evangelical feminism. Unfortunately, it married itself to four horrible ideas. First, it mimics the worst corruption of the masculine in seeking power in the sense of social status and the power to exert external control over the “other.” And so, we see the demand for holy orders and enhanced social status. Likewise, we find liberal religious advocating for specific partisan policies and thereby situating themselves along side of similar lobbying groups (for union, environment, etc.) and enmeshing themselves in worldly pressure politics, far from the zone of luminosity. Secondly, 60s feminism taught that maternity (biological or spiritual) is less important for feminine identity than career, accomplishment, and social status. Thirdly, it emulated the most decadent masculinity in embracing sexual promiscuity as a right and value. And worse of all, it asserted the right of the mother to kill her unborn.
Nevertheless, in surprising and delightful ways, liminal, luminous, liberating feminine virginity is again flowering in the Church. Again, as in every generation, it is irrepressible, serendipitous, and fecund with new life. Far from distrusting and resenting the masculine, it longs for the Uber-masculinity of the Bridegroom, even as he gives Himself in the masculine dimension of the bridal Church. And graces are flowing from heaven through humble, hidden, prayerful women.
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