The Celibacy of Adolph Hitler

Were Eva Braun and Adolph Hitler just friends or "lovers" in the full sexual sense. In "Eva Braun: Life With Hitler," German historian Heike Gortemaker assembles all of the evidence on this question. She presents the testimony of those closest to the two of them as it was left to us in the post-war investigations,in conversations, and in written memoirs. It is definite: we do not know. Half of their friends and collaborators are sure they were abstinent, the other half equally certain they were physically intimate. There is not hard evidence either way. Hitler's sexuality will probably always remain in the closet. In public, even with close friends, they demonstrated no signs of tender affection. Gortemaker stresses forcefully that Hitler himself rejected marriage in order to cultivate, quite self-consciously, a celibate image: as "Furher" he sensed that as father and spouse of the German Volk, he must transcend the ordinary bonds of marriage, wife, family and children in order to be available, as a transcendent demi-god, to the people themselves. He particularly realized that as a celibate he would elicit a stronger response from women, including mothers, as a symbolic spouse and father to their children. Surprisingly, in light of the evidence, Gortemaker concludes that he had a "normal" sexual relationship with the attractive blonde. This involves a leap well beyond the evidence which is absolutely inconclusive. My own guess would be that they did not consummate their love because my presumption would be that a man so deformed, in his soul, will, emotions and intellect, by hatred and megalomania could hardly have been "normal" in his sexuality, which is always infused by emotion, will, purpose and passion. To me, it is more probably that he suffered some form of impotence in the area of genuine man-woman intimacy. For my purpose, however, the more significant reality is his brilliant intuition of the moral/cultural value of his public celibacy. He realized that only as a celibate could he transcend the particularity and limitation of normal marriage in order to consummate a mystical, spiritual union with the Volk. We see here a perverse image of the celibacy of our Savior and as well as that of His mother, and that of the consecrated-evangelical life and the Catholic priesthood. Genius that he was, he realized that his transcendence of normal sexual, married life would equip him for an extraordinaryly broad and deep spiritual union with the nation. Gortemaker holds that many of his most loyal collaborators held to belief in his celibacy, even if it was an illusion, because it was constitutive of the overall messianic myth of the "Fuhrer." We have learned from Rene Girard that we are made to imitate God and that if we do not imitate him in the loving, filial manner of His Son, we will do so in the hateful, disobedient manner of Lucifer. And so, we find in the celibacy of Hitler, real or not, a perverse imitation of the genuine self-sacrficial, all-inclusive, transcendent-yet-incarnate-unto-suffering-and-death chastity of Christ, his priests and those who consecrate themselves, women and men, to Him.

Women Voting for Obama

The appeal of Obama for women is rooted in some of the structural dynamics of femininity, but at a deeper level, springs from a wounded feminism, specifically a suspicion of and alienation from masculinity. First, the maternal instinct seeks to care for the poor, weak and needy and looks to exercise this through the government. The appeal here of the Democrats is evident. Secondly, the feminine impulse is to include, welcome, and affirm everyone while the masculine, paternal instinct is more adept at boundaries, demands, standards, laws, conflict, and distinctions. A woman thinks more intensely with her heart and emotions and goes intuitively towards the person and that person's suffering. She is not equipped by nature and biology to distinguish abstractly, for instance, that criticism of an action, even if it offends the actor, is not hatred, but can be a form of love, albeit of a more masculine, paternal kind. So, we can understand that a femininity, alienated from the masculine, is drawn towards a tolerant, non-discriminating liberalism. Thirdly, single women especially voted overwhelmingly for Obama but women in general supported him because they are sympathetic to the dependency of women, abandoned by men, alone with children. Our society, oblivious to the value of subsidiarity, has progressively weakened all intermediary communities (family, Church, ethnic community, voluntary organizations, etc.) and increasing left the naked individual to the whims of the two mega-machines: the global corporation and the federal bureaucracy. Of these, the later is clearly more caring of the weak and needy, especially the woman alone with children. Fourthly, childbirth and sexuality are, for a woman, exquisitely delicate, sacred, protected and private. It is contrary to the feminine nature to battle in the public arena over these issues. Therefore, the default position of a femininity uninformed by complementary and countervailing masculine values, is to retreat to the private realm and abandon the public arena to the deconstructing militants. Lastly, an overwhelming majority of women have accepted the contraceptive view of sexuality that overwhelmed our culture in the late 1960s: that sex is not essentially oriented to union and conception within marriage, but is a personal, self-fulfilling, private and recreational activity; that it is necessary for happiness; that "protection" from its natural consequences in the form of contraception, sterilization and back-up abortion are natural human rights. This last dynamic, the need for "protection," is where we clearly see distrust of and resentment towards the masculine. The requirement (think Georgetown law student Sandra Fluck)that all women have access to such protection unveils a distrust of the male: a deep conviction that he will impregnate you and then abandon you and that a state that would protect the unborn is actually one that is hostile towards the mother, hypocritical, chauvinist and oppressive. Obama himself is a perfect icon of the emerging anti-male matriarchy of our culture. He is in so many ways an intelligent, pragmatic, and realistic politician: consider his move towards the middle in foreign policy and economics. But on issues about innocent life and gender he is absolutist and fundamentalist. He was unabashedly in favor of the legalization of partial-birth abortion. He is the product of a broken marriage and was raised by a cosmopolitan, anthropologist woman and he clearly inhaled her sense of abandonment by the father. All his father figures were themselves stuck in an adolescent rebellion against the father figure experienced as oppressive: Saul Alinsky, Reverend Wright and a string of others. So, we see that the Obama administration, rooted culturally in sterilized sexuality, abortion, and liberationally-reconstructed marriage, is at heart an expression of a femininity that has been abandoned and abused by men. It's most zealous advocates are themnselves promiscuous, unfaithful men who realize their lifestyle depends upon it: Bill Clinton, the Kennedys, John Kerry and the list goes on. But if the Democratic Party expresses a wounded, perverse feminism, the Republican Party is the opposite: a disfigured masculinity not fully appreciative of and generous to the feminine. To its credit it defends innocent life, marriage and religious liberty; but in economics it favors achievers and in foreign policy it swings between the quintessentially machismo extremes of aggressiveness and indifferent isolationism. From another viewpoint, the two parties are opposed versions of an insecure, ungenerous masculinity: the one aggressive, arrogant and selfish; the other impotent, castrated, indecisive and submissive to mother. At the deepest level, the conservative/liberal polarization of our cultural is the development of a Protestantism that had renounced both the feminine/maternal (Marian, consecrated life) and masculine/paternal (Petrine authority)dimensions of our Catholicity. Culturally, the current Democrat/Republican polarization is symptomatic of a deeper, sadder moral/spiritual/emotional divide: between man and woman. Furthermore, the depth and breath of this suspicion, resentment and hurt indicates that the culpability extends far beyond these obnoxious liberal celebrities mentioned above: the distrust of our women is the responsibility of all us men. Our women distrust us because we have failed to love them with the gentle but strong, faithful and sensitive, pure and courageous love shown by our Bridegroom sacrificially on His cross. This election, becomes then, an occasion for us men to examine our conscience and repent of our own failure to appreciate, affirm and protect the women in our lives.

November Perspective on Politics

The month of November is extraordinarily rich, liturgically, for us Catholics and a good time for us to suffer the recent presidential election. The month starts with the feasts of the saints and souls so our attention is drawn to the last things of death, judgement, and the eternity of heaven and hell. The month ends our liturgical year and our mass readings, especially from Revelation, are preoccupied with the final times, the tribulations and final confrontation between the beast and the Lamb. The middle of the month revolves around Thanksgiving, surely the most religous and uplifting of our civil holidays, especially if instructed by something like Lincoln's 1863 declaration. And we end the month by entering into Advent, anticpating the coming of the Christ Child and, of course, His second coming in glory. Within this overall framework, we can maintain our serenity and confidence as we ready ourselves for a continued assault, unprecedented in American history, upon our liberty, mission and identity. With this election, the malice and contempt of our elite cultures for our Catholic sexual ethos has reached a tipping point. If you had told me 20 years ago that our govenment would be forcing us to pay for sterilization and abortificents, and that we would be closing adoption services (because of requriements that we place children with homosexual couples) and programs for women victims of the sex trade because we fail to provide "reproductive services"... I would have thought you were crazy. The worst pain, however, is the betrayal: that so many Catholics, including intelligent, well-meaning people, supported this regime that despises our way of life. Nevertheless, within the broader ecclesial, liturgical perspective our situaion is not exceptional. Mexico in the 1920s, Spain in the 1930s, France in the 1780s, Poland under the Nazis and all of Eastern Europe under the Soviet empire...just to mention a few...suffered adversity that makes our own seem relatively minor. Nevertheless, we need to adapt ourselves to the reality that our nation has become, in its key institutions, bitterly anti-Catholic; and that our own Church is painfully divided between those who understand, cherish and defend our ethos and liberty, and those who are complicit with the enemy.

A Confident Catholicism

"I cherish and live my Catholic values within my family and in my own life but I cannot go out and tell two men who love each other that they cannot get married." These are the words of a woman very close to me, an intelligent, devout and serious-minded Catholic who is quite extraordinary in her generosity towards those in need and who recently voted for President Obama. She has an intense, quite feminine, aversion to anything oppressive, dominating, judgmental or arrogant. She has contempt for Republicans. She sees politics primarily as the arena in which to defend the rights and needs of the poor and needy against the greed of the rich and powerful. And she relegates values regarding innocent life at its beginning and end as well as marriage and sexuality to the realm of the private and the familial. She has almost exactly the same beliefs and values as mine; the crucial difference is that she reserves the life and sexuality concerns to the domain of privacy. The weakness of this approach has two sides: it fails to recognize and engage the aggressive, militant, evil forces that have now become dominant in the public realm of our culture; and it is reluctant to vigorously share the life-giving values of our faith which are necessary for the common good and especially the well-being of the weak, poor, and powerless. In 1970, about 70% of Afro-American births were to intact marriages; abortion was statistically insignificant as it was illegal in most of the USA. Today, in NYC, 60% of such conceptions are aborted and the majority of those delivered are to single mothers. Possibly one out of ten are born to intact marriages. This is a calamitous, tragic, devastating development of the last 40 years. It is not due to the slave trade of centuries ago, it is due to the sexual revolution of recent decades. Indeed, it is precisely the poor who are suffering most from the pandemic of contraception, abortion, divorce, cohabitation, pornography and male infidelity. The answer to this culture of death is the Catholic understanding of integrity, chastity, fidelity, and fertility. Our Catholic faith is inextricably mixed with our ethos of marriage and sexuality. The Catholic impulse is to share this pearl of great price, this wealth, this most gracious gift: not oppressively, arrogantly, and judgmentally; but gratefully, zealously, vigorously, and sensitively. The Catholic impulse is as militant and apostolic as that of violent Jihadism or revolutionary Marxism. The liberal, especially the Democrat, Catholic, however is excessively shy and insecure about her values in the public realm. Consider: who more truthfully loves the 60% of black pre-borns who are destroyed in the womb: the pro-life demonstrator or the liberal who doesn't want to think about it? Who loves the homosexual more: the one who condones sodomy as morally equivalent to the conjugal act or the one who cautions against something that is toxic, physically and spiritually, for all of us: men and women, homosexuals and heterosexuals, those who are married and those who are single? The Catholic impulse, inexorably, is to assist the poor and weak: materially and spiritually. The two are inseparable. I cannot hand a hungry person a piece of bread without some sense of gratitude to God, without a deep spiritual regard, without a remembrance of Eucharist. The current administration is dominating us and directing us that we cannot do public works of mercy unless we violate our consciences and implement the agenda of sexual liberation: the bishops closed down the outstanding program of service for women who are sexually trafficed because they would not provide "reproductive services;" adoptions services are closing because we are required to place children with homosexual couples; and we now face the human services mandate that threatens to close down our entire network of services unless we provide the technology of sterilization and death. We are in desperate need of a virile, assertive, confident Catholicism that is not shy and reticent but celebrative and exhuberant, precisely in the public square, about the BEAUTY and SPLENDOR of faithful and fecund sexual love...that is honorably, nobly, and unabashedly protective of every single female and her newborn.

The Greatest Warrior in History: On General Petraeus, King David and Uriah the Hittite

On a men's retreat recently, Catholic evangelist Jesse Romero heralded King David as the greatest warrior in history. This is open to debate. Exempting the Lion of Judah Himself, a top ten list might include: Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Patton, Robert E. Lee, Genghis Khan, Lawrence of Arabia, Hannibal (not Lecter), Rommel,George Washington, and many others. The tragic fall of our most celebrated American military hero of the last half century, General David Petraeus (fittingly nicknamed, even earlier, "King David"),casts a clear light on the subject. Honorably, he resigned when the infidelity came to light. He realized that this act was not a private one, but public in a cosmic manner: betrayal of his wife, their children, his paramour, her husband, the broader community including many military couples who looked to him as a role model, and the CIA and his country in that he made himself vulnerable to blackmail. It is perhaps the constitutive error of liberalism that sex is private, not communal. And so, I offer my recommendation for "Greatest Warrior Ever": not King David, but his more humble foil, Uriah the Hittite. Uriah, whose name in Hebrew means "God is my light," was one of David's 37 "mighty men of war" who fought closely and valiantly with him. He was himself a member of a minority, the Hittites, traditionally despised by the Israelites, which suggests that he was vulnerable to persecution despite his courageous service for Israel. (This calls to mind a family friend, an outstanding young man of Arabic/Muslim background,who suffered contemptuous discrimination during his service in the Marines shortly after 9/11/01). Uriah was in the front line of battle when David was in his palace, sleeping into the afternoon and lusting for Uriah's beautiful wife Bathseba. Summoned home, he sustained the oath he had made to abstain from sexual intercourse while involved in the holy war for the people and God of Israel. His chastity reflects his virile loyalty to his King, his comrades, his (adopted) country and his God. Even when plied with liquor he stays on the porch and remains continent, which is to say faithful and loyal in a virile, militant manner. What a contrast to his lecherous, cowardly King! Deceitfully, David instructs General Joab to murder Uriah by withdrawing his troops, without Uriah's knowledge, precisely when he is in the front line of battle. Uriah dies a hero, giving his life for Israel and his King who betrayed him, as well as a martyr to chastity. But the two, courage and purity, heroism and martyrdom, are inseparably linked in the seamless flow masculine virtue. The inverse is also unavoidable: David's sexual vice leads to cowardice, deceit, betrayal, murder and even treason as he jeopardized the victory of his army for his own private goal. Sexual sin is NEVER private, it is always the most communal of vices in that it breaks the most intimate, enduring, and sacred of bonds. Note also that in this story Bathseba herself is in the background and even the adultery itself is not the main issue: what dominates the tragic drama is the betrayal of brother by brother. This is always at the heart of adultery: when I covet my neighbor's wife, I betray my neighbor. Sexual sin, as betrayal, is never enclosed in a safe cocoon of consentual pleasure, but invariably erupts into violence: consider the abortion shaol that emerged from the culture of sterile, pleasurable sexuality! The roots of masculine infidelity, cowardice, impotence and indecision are precisely pornography, masturbation, contraception, and non-marital cohabitation. And so for inspiration and guidance we look to the Hittite, the abstinent, the courageous, and the loyal Uriah who loved his wife, his country, his King and his God unto death. One take-away here is the primacy of man-to-man loyalty: we all need close, intimate, candid, and loyal friendships with other men in which we can unveil or weaknesses and temptations, receive the support and maintain the accountability that we need. Other than the Lion-Lamb of Judah himself, none of us will be loyal without a network of support. Uriah the Hittite, Pray for Us!

A Visit from Heaven

(Disclaimer: Whether the contents of this private revelation are indeed divinely inspired I leave to the judgment of the Catholic Magisterium. It is, in any case, a quintessentially November, month of the souls, dream and may not be unrelated to my idiosyncratic propensity for purgatory jokes.) In the dream, my father, Ray Laracy, was smiling down upon us from heaven. He was quite happy and didn't even seem concerned with developments on earth. He had been in heaven for quite some time as his stay in purgatory was very short and surprisingly pleasant. It turns out that he had only one sin to repair. It seems that his drinking habit was no real problem as he was close to the norm for many Catholic saints and mystics; plus he was a little nervous and needed some relief; plus he was so affectionate and loving after he had a few. Life in heaven, for him, wasn't so different from life on earth, just much better. He catches 6:30 mass every morning and it is over promptly by 6:48: no homily. He normally makes breakfast, as he did for us his children all those years, for his mother, Aunt Grace, Aunt Agnes and any of his brothers or Friday-nighters that stop by. It is always bacon and eggs and toast with butter. He is able to play 18 holes of golf and 4 or five games of handball and not get tired. Hi golf game is now in the middle 70s and a single game of handball can run up to an hour since he and his friends rarely miss the ball. His afternoon is free for nap and reading. Drinks start at 4 PM and at that time he enjoys the company of our Lord, and the Blessed Mother and all the saints. Purgatory was a big surprise for him. He spent the entire time with Republicans, learning to love and appreciate them. He did not expect St. Peter to tell him that his sole sin was rash judgment against Republicans whom he considered to be universally greedy and arrogant. He was delighted to find so many of them to be unexpectedly generous and goodhearted. Greed was common among them but not nearly as bad as he had expected and the poor and working classes were hardly immune to envy and greed. More Republicans were doing time in purgatory for sins against the flesh because they know better; liberals in general do less time for these sins because many of them just do not know better. MLK and JFK both did reduced time by reason of ignorant consciences. Catholics do a lot of time for sexual sins, again because they should know better. The place is packed with Catholics who contracept but almost no non-Catholics who do the same thing. It is sort of like the old days when the place was filled with Catholics who ate meat on Friday. Unfortunately, missing mass on Sunday is still a big deal for Catholics while missing a service for Protestants or synagogue for Jews seems like a minor matter. It really doesn't seem fair but he seemed unperturbed. He really likes Herbert Hoover's sense of humor and Ike had become a regular golf partner since they both like to move along at a good clip. Ronald Reagan is a ton of fun and Richard Nixon is a character-and-a-half. He felt bad for the Rockefellows who spend a long time there. John D. the first is still there. There is a very large section reserved for that family. The only families with larger plots are the Pharohs of Egypt, the Herod family, and the Kennedys. The Laracy plot is modest and entirely dedicated to the bias against Republicans. Ray is pleased that his sons and one daughter have been happily redeemed from this bias, during their time on earth, and he encouraged me to assist my other sisters who are a little slower with this task.

The Church and Her Movements

Recent tensions between Catholic clergy and the Neocatechumenal Way (NW) bear striking resemblances to the more serious break between Newark’s Archbishop Gerity and The People of Hope, a charismatic covenant community, in 1985. These features are probably emblematic of constitutional aspects of enthusiastic renewal movements that inevitably make for conflict with the established Church of parish, seminary, and chancery. The covenant community movement of the 1980s and the Neocatechumenal Way share these features: 1. A highly negative spiritual evaluation of the broader dominant secular culture against which they take a more stridently counter-cultural stance. The Sword of the Spirit got in trouble with our Archbishop for emphasis on traditional distinctive gender roles. Likewise, a NW priest is likely to inflame fires of controversy and resentment by preaching against contraception. 2. Similarly, they hold a relatively low opinion of the spiritual health of the established Church in the face of such a hostile culture. Their premise is that a stronger antidote is required than normal parish life. 3. An exalted self-consciousness that God is doing something previously unprecedented in their specific way or movement. In this they resemble Joachim of Fiore, the 12th century Franciscan who perceived the mendicant movement of St. Francis as initiating a new stage in Salvation History. Interesting, Father Joseph Ratzinger’s second dissertation was on St. Bonaventure’s rejection of just this view of history. While less extreme than Joachim, the enthusiasts resemble their liberal theological antagonists in this sense of discontinuity: “spirit of Vatican II” enthusiasts who see in that council a radical rupture with the past, the liberationists who find definitive redemption in some combination of Marx and Freud, and of course post-moderns who worship at the altar of Nietzsche. 4. Flowing from this ecstatic embrace of what is seen as a radically new and profound divine initiative, be it Kiko or Marx, is a discontinuity with the Church of the past as well as the actual, concrete Church of the present. These various forms of enthusiasm have little interest in the teachings of the Popes Pius, of St. Teresa of Lisieux, Father Garrigou-LaGrange or even Romano Guardino. Likewise, they are strongly tempted to sit in harsh, rash judgment of the normal Catholic parishioner, cleric and institution as spiritually challenged. 5. Like the Protestant reformers, the return to the “origins” of the early Church affects a sense, more or less explicit, that the Church lost its way, usually with Constantine. The Church of the centuries, that of Aquinas, Augustine and Pascal, has little to offer in comparison with that of the Apostles and their contemporary imitators. This calls to mind the Mormon belief that the chosen people disappeared for a few millennia and showed up in North America after a period in limbo. 6. The efficacy of the sacraments themselves, operating ex opere operato, becomes de-emphasized in comparison with the more empirically effective dynamics of the renewal process whether that be baptism in the Holy Spirit, prayers of healing and deliverance, scrutinies and steps along the Way, or the political and psychological liberations of the left. 7. An alternative hierarchy emerges which is imbued with greater spiritual authority than that granted the institutional representatives with whom they compete. 8. An extraordinary degree of spiritual authority is granted to lay, non-ordained and minimally trained leaders in the form of “shepherding and headship,” scrutinies, and a range of counseling and group dynamics. This spiritual intimacy can bear great fruit especially in comparison with progressive infatuation with individual autonomy and initiative. But it often operates without the safeguards in place for centuries in the Church (e.g. the seal of confession, the practice in religious communities that a spiritual director or confessor not decide on the status of a candidate, etc.) 9. An element of secrecy can emerge as the lay leaders try to shield their precious charism from a hierarchy that might misunderstand and even destroy it in its fragility. This is more pronounced in The Way, with its mysterious processes, than the Charismatic Renewal which expressed itself more normally in publically open conferences and more readily available literature. 10. An anti-intellectualism can develop as the teaching of the founder(s) is granted a prophetic authority, docility and obedience are expected, and skepticism and criticism are perceived as disloyalty. This is ironic since the founder(s) (specifically Kiko himself and charismatics like Ralph Martin and Steve Clark) are themselves brilliant thinkers and self-educated in a manner that is broad, deep and eclectic. Their thought is spiritual, intuitive, practical and fruitful in a manner not available in the academy. Notwithstanding the intellectual brilliance of the leadership elite, the followers are hardly encouraged in critical thinking as part of the catechetical process. The comments here are offered by one who deeply loves both movements and views them as the hope of the Church of the future. They are movements of the Holy Spirit but also human endeavors and therefore in constant need of criticism and conversion, like all of us and like The Church herself.