What Happened in 1965?

I have often wondered:  What went wrong with those marvelous Catholic theologians who inspired and exhilarated me as a college seminarian in the theological euphoria immediately after the Vatican Council with their exuberant, hopeful, confident and Christ-centered visions? I am talking about: Schillebeeckx on Christ as the sacrament of encounter with God, Moran on catechesis and on-going revelation, Kung on ecumenism, Padavano on Christ in culture/literature, and others. Their writings, during the Council period of 1962-5 offered fresh and exciting, catholic and Catholic, reflections on how the light of Christ radiated vast realms of culture and society. Fast forward just a few years, however, and these same theologians had left the parameters of the Catholic Church. What happened to them? And why was it that other theologians of renewal...Ratzinger, DeLubac, Dulles, Karol Wojtyla...during this same period of the late 1960s responded to the Cultural Revolution of the West in a contrary way, by intensifying their loyalty to classic Catholic values and beliefs? I wonder if there was a theological infection of "individualism" in the thought of the defecting thinkers which rendered them vulnerable to the anti-Catholic animus of that Revolution. By contrast, the loyal theologians seemed to have been fortified and immunized against that malady by a confluence of three distinguishable but commingled loyalties, intimacies, love affairs: with the person of Jesus Christ, with the actual Catholic Church, and with the conjugal mystery of family-marriage-vocation-chastity-fidelity. The single foundation for Catholic life is a love affair with Jesus Christ. Everything else flows from this. But the Catholic receives and reciprocates this love within a rich network of ecclesial loyalties: immersion in sacramental life, filial love for the hierarchy and our Blessed Mother, humble participation in the Communion of Saints. And thirdly, the Catholic identifies with a specific position within a certain family (biological, religious order, diocese) within the greater Church family as son/daughter, husband/wife, religious/priest, father/mother, and brother/sister. This last involves what we call "state in life" and is a concrete, specific position and relationship...gendered and familial...within the Church. So, the Catholic can be described as a Lover involved with three-in-one love affair(s): with the singular person of Christ, within the structured Church, and very concretely in a spousal/familial identity as father/daughter/husband/sister/etc. By contrast, the defecting theologians mentioned above seemed to embrace an exaggerated  contemporary autonomy and renounce the classic forms of Catholic love: the masculine, celibate priesthood; sexual love as inherently unitive-fruitful; and filial communion with Tradition and authority. Even otherwise solid, profound, faithful and learned theologians of renewal like Rahner and Lonergan seem to have focused on the believer as an autonomous thinking-deciding-acting individual (like post-war European existentialism) outside of the defining conjugal realities. As a result, their followers show more sympathy for diffuse modern individualism and less apprehension of classic Catholic structures of intimacy.  For my part, I want to retrieve the liberating progressive visions that exploded within the Church in the time of the Council even as I stay rooted in the tripartite, concrete, intelligible love affair with Christ, within his Church, in my particular structured spousal-familial identity.

Receiving the Francis Magisterium in the spirit of Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day knew to receive our Faith through the prism of the lives of the saints and at the same time to reverence our hierarchy (source of efficacious sacraments and infallible teaching) with a brutal, candid realism about the failings and sins of any particular priest, bishop and pope. Dorothy's life and spirituality provide a marvelous template by which to receive the contrasting pontificates of Francis and John-Paul-Benedict.  She is unsurpassed (excepting Mother Theresa of course) in the boldness and vigor with which she reached out to those at the margins: the homeless, addicted, mentally ill, radicals, communists, artists, bohemians and all the rejected. She epitomizes like no one else Francis' passion to reach out to those who feel neglected and rejected by the Church. Indeed, she was most at home with these very people and clearly had problems with someone like Cardinal Spellman and his conviviality with war, wealth, status and power. At the same time, she was rigorous and uncompromising in her acclamation of the Truth of our faith in all its splendor and depth. There was nothing puritanical or prurient in her view of sexuality and romance: she was flamingly passionate in her love affairs even as she later embraced the rigorous, vigorous Catholic ethos of chastity, largely from her exquisitely feminine sense of the needs and vulnerabilities of women and children. If the dual JPB pontificate announced Truth with impeccable clarity, depth and gentleness; and Francis burns with desire to share the Love of Christ with the alienated; than Dorothy is a splendid, fascinating, synthesizing embodiment of both impulses, which require crave each other in a marriage made in heaven.

The Catholic Worker as Matriarchy: Absence of Father

My lifelong fascination and admiration for Dorothy Day is being renewed by reading the Jim Forest biography All Is Grace.  Her profound love for the poor and deep Catholic faith have inspired me to pray to her for our work at Magnificat Home in providing a home for women. In her femininity she is fierce, fearless, compassionate, intelligent, and determined. My favorite vignette: she picks up two cold, homeless men; brings them to the bar she frequented with radicals, writers and mobsters of various stripes. She sits at the bar, orders three shots and then busts spontaneously into song. Eugene O'Neill was among those awestruck by her strange beauty...bold, passionate, unrestrained by custom, radiantly feminine! I have always, however, been put off by her anarchism and pacifism. Reading Forest's chapter on the Catholic Worker in the 60s helped me understand the underlying problem: absence of the masculine as paternal. Forest quotes Tom Cornell as saying that the anarchy of the Catholic Worker was Dorothy's anarchy. It was (and probably still is) a matriarchy. She was the one in charge...even as, true to her anarchy, she was "not in charge." Especially in the late 60s the NY Catholic Worker received an influx of "hippies" enamored of  rebellion, drugs and free sex. The community lacked the resources for control and protection. There was an absence of the paternal  as an internal principle of order, accountability, discipline and definition. Dorothy herself, and her movement, lacked an appreciation of the necessary use of fatherly force in a way that is rational, controlled, peace-enhancing and even merciful, for the victims and offenders both. She would never call the police. Her own experiences of the police in her radical youth was tarnished with abuse. In our own residences for women here in Jersey City we have received police visitations perhaps 25 times or more.  Impeccably they are gentlemanly, courteous, reassuring, professional...really agents of peace and protection. Dorothy seems not capable of imagining such. The root cause for this may be that her ferocious femininity was never balanced by a compensating virility. Her father seems not to have been a strong presence although she follows him into a career in journalism. He moved frequently for his career and so left a sense of rootlessness and impermanence that followed Dorothy as she traveled always and everywhere in an illusive homelessness even as she rooted herself always with the poor and in the Church.  She loved, passionately,  a very short list of men, but the love was largely unrequited. When she told her first lover, Lionel, that she was pregnant he left her to abort their child. This abandonment surely left her wounded. The "love of her life" Forester also left her when she became both pregnant and Catholic. Again, she is deeply violated by abandonment. These pivotal relationships surely left a negative effect. But not all is dismal. Her friendship with Eugene O'Neill remained chaste and drew her (she attests) closer to God. Peter Maurin was a significant masculine influence and the Catholic Worker may not have happened without him. In that sense the movement did issue from the conjoining of man and woman. Brilliant and learned in an eccentric manner, he was a humble and holy man but weak compared to the Lioness Dorothy whose imprint clearly determined the nature of the paper and movement. More deeply and spiritually, she was relentlessly, obediently filial in her loyalty to the masculine, hierarchical Church. Her bridal soul was receptive of the Divine Bridegroom...immaculately so from the time of her conversion. But that wholesome spousality never was reflected in her social practice which retained a militant femininism of a distinctive flavor. I am sensitive to this since my own Irish Catholic family sustains a milder form: a fiery femininity that is allergic to masculinity as authority, warrior, entrepreneur or preacher.  While our five uncles all served honorably in World War II the traditional Irish Catholic pride in the noble virility of fireman, policeman, soldier and FBI agent has been largely forgotten in the anti-war, anti-authority, anti-masculinity tsunami of the 1960s.  And so we see that the Catholic Worker is emblematic of the affliction that is destroying our society and parts of our Church:  the absence of the strong-and-gentle father.

My Prayer

Draw me to Yourself O Lord, fill me with your love.
Draw me to Yourself, cleanse me of my sin.
Pour Your blood upon me and make me pure, holy, good.

I am sick, give me your health; I am sinful, give me your mercy; I am tired, give me your rest; I am weak, give me your strength; I am lonely, give me your love.

Preserve my heart in purity, patience, perseverence, and peace.
Seal and secure my heart in your love.
Revive, defend, enhance my innocence.
Sanctify me by the indwelling of your Holy Spirit.
Strengthen me with your beautiful strength.

Make me humble, holy, loving and pure.
Make me quiet, still, calm, attentive, alert, watchful and vigilant.
Make me receptive, docile, pliable, disponible, responsive, obedient and grateful.
Make me patient, painstaking, longsuffering, persistent and persevering.

Make me sensitive, compassionate, kind, generous, merciful;
Make me magnanimous, joyous, zealous, fierce and fearless;
Make me steadfast; make me wise and prudent in all things.
Make me trustworthy as I place my trust in you.

Inflame me with love for you and let this fire consume what is not of you and purify all my loves.

Let me sing your praises forever.
Let me be a Praise of your Glory.

Let your mercy be upon us as we place our trust in you.

Loneliness

Not long ago, someone who knows me well said: “You are greatly loved.” I agreed. I am arguably the most non-lonely man in the world: wonderful spouse and family (both of origin and of marriage), excellent network of friends, challenging and satisfying work, and a rich prayer life. If I am not the most blessed man on the earth, I am solidly in the top .01%. (About 1 in 10,000 are in my league!) Recently, nevertheless, I am aware of a loneliness within, an emptiness, a sense of isolation and sadness, even when I am in the midst of my loving family and community. This may be maturity: I just turned 70 and my mortal destiny looms increasing large and imminent. I identify two sources for this loneliness, like two streams converging to form one river: the psychological and the spiritual. Psychologically, we humans are, from conception on, fragile, vulnerable, fleshly, needy and desperately dependent upon support, nurture, comfort, affirmation and encouragement. It is the nature of things that our desperate needs are unmet at crucial points...by Mom, Dad, family, friends, others...and we become interiourly wounded, traumatized, and sad. Eventually, this inner sadness mixes with our personal history and makeup and takes a variety of shapes: depression, resentment, addiction, romantic and sexual longings, and so forth. I suspect that most of us suffer these compulsions in a cloud of unknowing without clear awareness of the underlying loneliness. This ache of the heart can, in varying degrees, be healed, comforted and transformed but when it is deep it becomes constitutive of the psyche with an irrepressible, unavoidable persistence. Underlying the emotional pain is a deeper spiritual or ontological reality: we are created with an infinite longing, a boundless desire that cannot be satisfied by any finite being or combination of such. We long for the Good, the True and the Beautiful. We are created for loving, eternal communion with God. And so, if my loneliness is in part a remembrance of a painful past; it is also a premonition of a glorious future. My yearning, my quiet loneliness cannot be sated by any combination of friendship, family or spousal/romantic joy! My solitude constitutes my psyche not only as an ache from the past, but as a Hope for a future that infinitely exceeds everything we know in this empirical world. And so I continue to seek healing for this twofold sadness with a dual approach that merges into one path: I deepen my yearning for God, especially in prayer and liturgy, and I strengthen the bonds of love, tenderness and reverence that bind me to family and friends. The two loves interpenetrate, enrich and strengthen each other...so that the solitude is purified into courage, perseverance, peace and Hope.

Man Meets Woman

I have explained the masculine life itinerary as a vigorous, adventurous journey from the secure, encompassing womb of the mother through virile companionship and competition into the arms of our heavenly Father. I identified four pivotal dramatic transitions which are repeatedly enacted in every man's life: the handing over of the mother to the father in early childhood (classic oedipal resolution) in which the child establishes affectionate union with Dad and a relative release of dependency upon Mom; then there is identification with the other boys in competition and comraderie; thirdly, by adolescence there are secondary fathers (teachers, priests, coaches,) who provide a compensating, additional mentorship; and lastly each man must go into the desert, without any support or help, to do spiritual combat and depend on God alone. This narrative is accurate and correct but one-sided and could be understood as misogynist in that it fails to recognize the rich, complex, profound and miraculous ways in which virility is elicited by the feminine. And so I have come to recognize six distinct ways in which a man encounters woman such that his own virility is elicited, affirmed, strengthened and sealed in virtue. These are distinct even as in real life they interpenetrate and inform each other. First, there is the friendship of the brother-sister relationship. This is clear and strong in the blood connection but characterizes any genuinely "philia" relationship, free of the romantic or spousal, that involves equality, mutual reverence and affection, and shared interests and values. It is enhanced by the male-female contrast but serene in its freedom from the longing of the erotic. It can be a cousin, classmate, neighbor, colleague or other. In a gentle but enjoyable manner, this friendship evokes and accentuates a man's virility even as it flourishes in a commonality or harmony of equality and similarity. The second encounter is, of course, the sexual-romantic-spousal encounter with all its mystery, power and serendipity. Not least important for the man is the explosive, complex longing that overwhelms him and ultimately unveils a boundless loneliness, weakness and incompleteness. The third encounter with the feminine is the re-immersion into a "feminine" organism which encompasses, nourishes, educates and forms the man. This occurs with regard to the family (which is greater than the Mother), the school as "alma mater," the "motherland" and most sublimely with our Holy Mother the Church. Even a super-macho organization like "The Marines" can be understood as an encompassing organization that breaks down the singular male ego to resurrect it in a stronger form within a greater fighting body or organism. Such a "maternal enclosure" can take demonic forms in mob hysteria or criminal gangs but finds a wholesome and even holy embodiment in other societies insofar as they image the Communion of Saints for which we are all destined. A forth encounter, not unrelated to the previous, is the Marian Encounter or the "Fairy Godmother Dimension." In this case the man experiences the feminine as sublimely powerful even as it is beautiful, good, nurturing and peaceful. The ultimate expression of this reality is, of course, Mary crowned as Queen of Angels and Saints. As such, she far surpasses all other creatures in her beauty, goodness, and power. She is radiantly edifying and consoling. This reality is imaged in the fairy godmother who has marvelous power but in a feminine, maternal manner and is invincible against the raging of the evil powers. A vivid example of this is Gladriel (Cate Blancet as feminine elf) in the Lord of the Rings: her healing, protective, and radiantly lovely maternal influence is sublimely efficacious and confident and not in the slightest threatened by the empire of Evil rousing itself against all that is fragile and decent. Encounter with the luminous, mysterious and efficacious reality of such femininity has the effect of ennobling, purifying and sanctifying the otherwise explosive and disordered passions of the masculine heart. The fifth encounter is when the new mother "creates" a father by presenting him with their child. A man cannot even know he is father except through a revelation, in trust and truth from the mother. And later on, the father cannot emotionally or spiritually father the child if the mother does entrust her into his hands in a gesture of deepest trust an confidence. We can see, then, that suspicion and distrust from mother to father, work to destroy a man's paternity, which is to say his virility. The last, and sweetest, encounter is when a man fathers a daughter. This is entirely different from the experience of a man with his son. Not better, but different. There is less similarity and more difference so there is a certain reverent, fascinated distance which makes for surprise, delight and exhilarating amazement. It is admiration and elation of a distinctive nature. The father observes this new miracle of femininity as she evolves in innocence, spontaneity, elegance and grace into a magnificent woman. The love of a father for his daughter (or granddaughter) is surely a taste of the love of our heavenly Father and, along with the other five encounters, is simply the reality of heaven on earth.

Is the Pope Catholic?

This question used to be a silly joke, like “Does a bear have hair?” or “Does a bear pee in the forest?” But it has become, for many of us, a pressing question. I have serene confidence in the faith of Pope Francis which I see as deep and edifying in some ways but weak and challenged in others. With the father of the boy with an evil spirit (Lk 9:24), and with all of us, our Holy Father has to pray: “Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief.” Three dimensions of faith can be distinguished even as they interpenetrate each other: the intellectual (Truth) in its clarity and depth of perception of the spiritual realities; the mystical or prayer dimension (Beauty or Splendor of God) in the soul’s intimate, silent communion with God; and the drama (Good) in which we act out and express our love for God and neighbor. Father Groeschel said that often a saint is especially strong in one or the other: e.g. St. Thomas in the first; St. John of the Cross in the second; St. Mother Theresa of Calcutta in the third. Pope Francis is very strong in the dramatic or action aspect as he is so strongly drawn to the poor and needy. A real “Martha”...he is exemplary! He also seems to have a profound and distinctive friendship with Christ as his homilies are (for me) inspiring. His weakness is intellectual: he is really an "emotivist" in that he works from feeling and spiritual intuitions and does not think in a systematic manner. He is confused about some things and therefore confusing. This does not make him a bad person; but it makes him a weak pope since the pope’s main job is to teach. This brings to mind the “Peter Principle” which stated that one rises in an organization to the position where he is weakest. When I taught in a Catholic high school, a sister, a marvelous woman and outstanding teacher,  was a catastrophe as principal. But I am not worried about the Church. The Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ, is SO much bigger that the pope. And we have had much worse. The Church will survive. In the parish of my youth (St. John’s, Orange, NJ) our pastor, was a flamboyant eccentric who was never around. Randomly, he would appear in Church in phantom-of-the-opera-like cape and dash around nervously and then disappear for a few more months. But the parish flourished with fine priests, huge school with sisters of charity and christian brothers, and tons of large families. The Church did not just survive, it flourished! (By way of analogy, I am not worried about the USA under Trump either: the institutions are strong and resilient and the organism is basically healthy...nothwithstanding the spiritual/moral/cultural crisis!)  The book “Gathering of the Ungifted” raised, for me, a question over 40 years ago: How does the Church deal with those with weak faith? Those who deny or doubt essential beliefs? Is there a litmus test: if you don’t believe certain things you are expelled? The answer was a firm NO! There is no litmus test. Actually we are all weak in faith and in need of God’s grace. If one is gifted, gratuitiously and serenditiously, with powerful attraction to the poor, and to prayer and liturgy, and to the teachings of the Church, than one should drop to the floor in gratitude and adoration; proclaim oneself unworthy of such a precious gift of faith; and be most tender, kind and patient with those not so gifted. Among those I would include our Holy Father. May the Holy Spirit protect him, console him, strengthen him especially in his weakness, and infuse him with wisdom, knowledge and understanding!

Liberal Catholicisms: Three Types

Rod Dreher, in a recent blog, predicts the demise of liberal Christianity. He has a good point about the internal contradictions and instability of liberal Christianity in the face of an aggressive secularism. But he underestimates the resiliency and durability of religious liberalism in our culture and he fails to distinguish its types. In the Catholic world that I know, there have been three distinct liberalisms. First, there was the wholesome Catholic liberalism of 1945-65 in which we were raised: vigorous in defense of the working man, of the poor, and of civil rights for blacks;  patriotic and yet internationalist and unflinchingly anti-communist. Most of all, it was absolutely, if inarticulately, pro-family and pro-life.  That liberalism died around 1970 and was survived by two descendants which we will call militant and modest liberalism. The first is more cultural and moral, the second primarily political. The first comes out of the sexual revolution, the second attempts to perpetuate the earlier wholesome version by ignoring The Culture War. The first issues from a philosophy of the Sovereign Self as autonomous and free to assert its own choice and values; the second draws, at least indirectly, from a concern for the common good. The militant is fanatically committed to an ethos of sterile, which is to say contraceptive, sex and all its correlates: abortion as backup, homosexual marriage, easy divorce, recreational pornography, cohabitation and sexual license. The modest liberal is often personally traditional, sometimes admirably so, but retreats from defending that way of life in the public square and therefore defers to, even collaborates with, the militant. The later is viciously condemnatory of the Catholic Church as misogynist, homophobic, regressive, authoritarian, and repressive. The modest is more patient, deferential and respectful of the Church. Abstaining from The Culture War he sides with neither tradition nor liberation. He inherits from the earlier generations a quietness, a shyness and a reticence about sexuality that was admirable in a different time. To handle the moral dissonance, he practices avoidance and denial: professes to be pro-life but votes unfailingly pro-choice and despises the pro-life movement as moralistic and arrogant and in league with "The Right." Largely uncertain about contraception, legal abortion homosexuality, he relegates it to the private sphere and thus sides, in practice, with the militant. Tentative and uncertain on Catholic truth and practice, he apes the militant in a rigid, dogmatic allegiance to leftist positions on taxes, guns, immigrants, the death penalty, and the entire litany. And so the two live, more or less happily together, in the Democratic Party. The modest liberal in effect enables the cultural agenda of the militant as it looks away in denial. In the hard game of politics, then, the modest liberal sides with its militant sibling against traditional Christian values. Considered in itself, modest Catholic liberalism is a continuation of an honorable tradition that vigorously advocates for the poor and marginalized and for the common good as it assumes a quietness and reticence about matters of sex and marriage. But in the post-1960s context it has become complicit with an agenda that deconstructs family, gender, chastity and spousal fidelity. Let us consider the Jesuit order which is often viewed, somewhat unfairly, as heretical. The reality, in my view, is more complex. My (more than anecdotal but less than rigorously statistical) experience is that no more than 20% of Jesuits are militantly liberal in an articulate and forceful rejection of the Church's teaching. Perhaps 10% are similarly articulate and forceful in their defense of our traditions. These last, however, are largely marginalized since the remaining 70% are modest liberals: leaning left politically but culturally uncertain, indifferent or removed. As a result, the leading Jesuit institutions (America magazine, Georgetown, Boston College, etc.) are overwhelming controlled by the critical mass of militants like Thomas Reese and James Martin. Pope Francis is complex and contradictory but certainly in his all-important appointments of bishops and cardinals he is a modest liberal who has made his peace pact with the militants and has no taste for the Culture War. He and his appointees are concerned about the environment, open borders for refugees, and a redistribution of wealth. They prefer not to engage with the pandemic of sexual license, pornography, infidelity, lustful objectification of women and the decomposition of family, spousality, paternity and maternity. Theirs is a soft materialism that trusts that the family structure will be restored by higher minimum wage and capital gains tax. The militant version is flat-out a contradiction of the Catholic way of life. The modest is an attempt to split the difference. It is a thin religion, blending seamlessly into the mainstream as it condemns war and champions the earth and avoids abortion. "Catholic Lite"...it is feeble in its resistance to elite, hegemonic culture and cannot protect its young from the allure of a careerist, materialist and sexually liberated lifestyle. In time, it will largely (as Dreher predicts) drift into secular liberalism. Mainstream Protestant churches are a stop-over as the militant becomes increasingly secular. The Catholic Church will continue, in the foreseeable future, to fill up with modest liberals, a la the lieutenants of Pope Francis, since the religious instinct itself as well as the noble liberal instincts (inclusion, care for the needy, yearning for peace, care of nature, etc) are both irrepressible. We can only hope that this modest liberalism will find in its heart the fortitude, the certainty, the magnanimity and the sense of purpose to defend family, fidelity, fecundity and chastity against its wicked twin.

Does a Catholic Girl Get Vaccinated for HPV?

Pressure is mounting on adolescent females to get the HPV vaccination. Human Papilloma Virus is carried in some form by almost 50% of the adult population. It causes a range of maladies from genital warts to, in the worst strains, cervical cancer in women. It is mostly communicated through sexual contact. The urgency, even to the point of mandating it, rests on the assumption of a promiscuous culture in which sexual activity is widespread among the young. This assumption is not well-founded as over 50% of our youth preserve their virginity through high school and that rate has been rising in recent decades. There are many thriving sub-cultures (Evangelical, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, etc.) in which chastity and marital fidelity are still cherished and protected. However, elite culture, notably entertainment/law/education/politics and including medicine and public health, is dominated by a secular, really atheistic rejection of traditional sexual/marital morality and the presumption of license and promiscuity starting at an early age.  And so, this vaccination raises serious issues for the Catholic family. The Catholic Medical Association study (http://www.cathmed.org/assets/files/Position%20Paper%20on%20HPV%20Immunization.pdf ) finds no ethical problem with the procedure and recommends it medically even as it emphasizes the parents' role in sex education, values chastity for a host of reasons and resists mandating the vaccination. The document is disappointing on several levels: it lacks catechetical vision of the meaning of the gendered, sexual body; it fails to highlight this issue as a "learning opportunity" for parent and daughter; and it seems oblivious to the pervasive invasion of technology into the sacred realm of our sexuality. This last point on technology situates the vaccination within a culture which has intruded an armada of invasive, destructive and toxic techniques...contraceptive pill, test tube babies, maternal surrogacy, frozen embryos...into a arena that should be natural, wholesome, innocent, fluid, spontaneous, trusting and fruitful. Conjugal intimacy between husband and wife is the most precious, private, sacred and hopeful natural reality in God's Creation. But the sexual revolution (empowered by the contraceptive pill) has sundered it apart into sterile, recreational pleasure and "reproductive technologies" (is there an uglier phrase?) And so, for the Catholic, this HPV issue comes at a special time as an invaluable opportunity: for a conversation with the young lady about her now transforming body, the meaning of femininity and intimacy, the human body as a temple of the Holy Spirit, the value of chastity and fidelity, and the marvelous and mysterious unitive and fruitful nature of gender and sex. It is an opportunity to identify the threats to purity that assail our young from the the media and elite cultures. It is an opportunity to "discern the times" and identify how we as Catholics are in dissent from mainstream culture and how we can together protect purity of heart, mind and body. There are many aspects of this question. For one, it is salutary for the bright young woman to learn  biological facts (real, not sentimental sex education!) about the consequences to the body (warts, cancer, etc) as well as to the heart/mind/soul of outside-of-marriage intercourse. The possibility of rape must be considered and the possibility that her husband-to-be may have made bad decisions in this regard. Recently, the American College of Pediatricians as strongly warned against the widely used Gardasil vaccination as there is emerging evidence that it causes Premature Ovarian Failure also known as Premature Menopause. There is even evidence of a cover-up by the pharmacy industry of the dangers of the procedure. (Sound familiar? How concerned has public health and the medical profession been about the toxic effects of the contraceptive pill on the young woman's body?) The final reality is that no combination of technologies can protect the body, heart, mind and soul of the young woman. Genuine protection comes from a virtuous life, sustained by closeness to God and to family and friends who genuinely love her.  I would certainly not have my daughter vaccinated without this conversation; such would be a form of abuse. I would not forbid it. But I would have a really good conversation and hopefully come to a shared understanding, respecting her own intelligence and freedom and cherishing her precious, luminous, emerging femininity..

Clericalism, Anti-Clericalism, and Non-Clericalism

For purposes of this essay, "clericalism" is used in an objective, non-pejorative, almost anthropological sense of the system of cultural practices and beliefs that maintain a distinct priestly caste. As such, Catholicism is inherently clerical as our faith centers on God's presence in a sacramental system, particularly Eucharist and Penance, which is maintained by a priestly caste, our clergy. Anti-clericalism becomes, therefore, inevitable and almost constitutive of our culture for two reasons. Given our sinful nature, many if not all of our clergy will succumb to temptations to arrogance and distance that come with the privileges of the caste. Even if all priests were, however, perfect saints, envy and resentment will arise among the laity in regard to their status...again because of our sinful nature. "Non-clericalism" refers to a style that consciously downplays the clerical style to accentuate the equality of priest and lay as sinners-in-recovery and disciples of our Lord. A wholesome clericalism, then, would emphasize the imitation of the servant Christ and the unworthiness of the individual to be such an "alter-Christ" and dispense the sacred mysteries. Clericalism in the negative sense would be a climate of arrogance, power, privilege and separation that can accompany the priesthood. Pope Benedict is an example of clericalism in the best sense: he had a profound sense of the solemnity of the liturgy and his manner and theology flowed from a humility before Christ's Eucharistic presence. For example, he rode a bike to school, even as a renowned theologian. When asked if he did so as bishop, he smiled and said "No. I would never be so unconventional." His instincts were modest, reticent and conservative:  he would continue what had been done rather than call attention to himself or innovate. John Paul, by contrast, was priestly in the highest sense but non-clerical as he presented himself as an equal, a brother, a friend. His liturgical style is informal and loose but very holy. Pope Benedict (with a different style) said he felt closest to his predecessor when he said the mass. Pope Francis, surprisingly, is anti-clerical. He dislikes the trappings of formality that surround the hierarchy: the Latin mass, the title "monsignor," and manifestations of piety, It is, to say the least, unusual that our number 1 cleric be anti-clerical. Nevertheless, the Church is a big tent and has room even for anti-clerical clerics! I consider myself to be moderately clerical. Almost 70 years old, I address 28 year old priests as "Father." At an ordination I happily kneel for a blessing and kiss the hands that will confect the Sacrament. I recall that as a collegiate seminarian I was warned (by my mentor, a wise ex-marine, ex-fighter autodictat librarian) that Catholics systematically, warmly spoil their priests and seminarians and it is hard to resist the sense of privilege. The priest who wants to be called by his first name is non-clerical, but not necessarily anti-clerical. Much of the Church is a wholesome non-clericalism. It prevails in many of the religious orders, especially brothers who are non-clerics and noticeably among Franciscans, Benedictines, Salesians, Jesuits and Maryknollers. These cherish the priesthood but in a low-key manner. Their vows ordinarily preceed their ordination, if they are ordained, and the identity as evangelical brother takes precedence over holy orders. This is healthy but does not contradict a balanced and modest clericalism in the manner of Joseph Ratzinger. For a Catholic, all things lead to The High Priest, our Lord Jesus, who himself had some harsh things to say about the priests of his time. The Catholic Church is a big table with room for the modest clericalism of Benedict, the holy and priestly non-clericalism of John Paul, and the anti-clericalism of Francis.

We Don't Like You, But We Love You

"We have to love everyone, but we don't have to like everyone" my father liked to say. Pope Francis, discarding the restrains of tradition, is transparent and even shameless about those he doesn't like. The top five are: clerics who cherish the rubrics and status of a priestly caste, the pious who count their devotions and show forth their devotion, capitalists even if they create and share wealth, Latin Mass folk who love tradition, and Culture Warriors (that's me!) who advocate a rigorous ethos of chastity in defiance of hegemonic sexual liberalism and are seen as moralistic and arrogant. We are, of course, the very people who are most fervent in our love and loyalty to the pope. It is as if a teacher disliked students who have perfect attendance, straight Es in conduct, and are on the honor roll; but loves those who "make a mess" (a favorite phrase of Pope Francis) by disrupting class! When someone really doesn't like you it is hard, if not impossible, to keep liking him. And, my father taught me, it is not a Christian obligation. Besides, the cultural liberators will agree that it is more healthy to admit feelings than repress them. So I will be honest:  I don't like you Holy Father! And you don't like me. But I do love you. I am loyal to you, even in respectful disagreement. You are our teacher, father, and source of unity...even when you are ridiculous. And I pray for you. May God bless you and bless us, this dysfunctional family that is the Catholic Church!

Judgement: Male and Female

We love the person always; but not always what he says or does. These we must judge. And in truth we must correct him if he is in error or sin. In some spheres, the modern mind accepts this as with cigarettes which are bad for you so it is an act of love for me to tell you this. But in the sexual sphere it is not so. For the Catholic, sexuality is sacred as a vehicle of intimacy that images that of God Himself and as a participation in the creation of life, even of an eternal soul. For the secular modern it is sacred but in an opposing way: sexuality is a sacrosanct, private expression of who I am and any judgement by another is an intolerable violation. If I am not directly hurting another, who are you to judge me? There is an absolute intolerance of difference of opinion: it is unthinkable that one suggest anything pathological about pornography, homosexual activity, contraception or cohabitation. It also has to do with the feminine and masculine minds. The strength, and weakness, of the feminine intellect is to move to the concrete, to the person, to synthesize; it is the strength and weakness of the masculine intellect to disengage, abstract, analyze and distinguish. In the act of love and the act of knowing both there always involves both engagement and distance: the counselor who completely engages without distance will be swallowed by the emotion of the client; but one who distances without engagement will be cold and detached. Both are required: union and distance. Love and knowledge are always both: union and distance. The feminine tends strongly to union; the masculine to distance. They need to balance each other. If the immature male mind tends to detachment and abstraction, the immature female brain is weak in distinction, distance and abstraction as it embraces the concrete person. The two need each other to strike a balance in love and knowledge. The contemporary, cultural liberal mind is that of the immature female that lacks paternal influence: immersed in emotion and unable to distinguish. And so, if I critique contraception or cohabitation, I must hate all contraceptors and cohabitators. This intellect is incapable of entertaining the possibility that I might love them and want to separate them from what is toxic and sinful. In theology and politics both, the conservative mind at its worst is that of the immature male and the liberal mind at its worst is that of the immature female. We need each other to grow in wisdom and love.

The Wrath of God

A merciful god, tender, inclusive, tolerant of all...free of wrath...is a soft, "femmy" god without gravitas and unworthy of worship. The God of the Bible is a God of Wrath and of Mercy. His wrath is not against the sinner, whom He loves, but against sin which he detests...which he absolutely does not tolerate...which he takes upon himself and destroys. It is helpful to view the passion and crucifixion of Christ as the final and complete expression of God's wrath. But it is not just the wrath of the Father. Rather, the Son shares fully in this wrath and so he enters into his passion, not just in weakness and passivity like a lamb and victim, although he does surrender in humility and obedience. No, the other side is that our Savior despises sin and enters his passion and death as a champion enters into battle. He despises sin. He absolutely un-tolerates sin. He completely vanquishes sin, guilt and death. He is our champion, riding into hell to deliver us, fearless and reckless and aflame with anger at sin and Satan and the entire realm of darkness. The Catholic iconography of the passion...stations of the cross, sorrowful mysteries of the rosary, bloodied body on the crucifix, Gibson's "Passion"...easily lead the imagination into a feeling of sadness, defeat, and despair. But when Christ talked with Moses and Elijah about his passion on the mountain of the transfiguration, they were not melancholic! They were exultant about this event of unexcelled love: love of Jesus for his Father and for us. But it was also an event of unequaled vigor, passion, strength and triumph: the absolute defeat of sin, death, guilt and the kingdom of darkness. And so, our Church needs more Wrath, more anger against the Darkness, more aversion to sin! Our love for the sinner will be in proportion to our hatred of sin! Our Yes to God will be as strong as our No to Satan! Just like our baptismal promises! Let us pray that our Love and all our loves be fortified by our wrath and hatreds of the Dark Side!

Who AM I To Judge?

It is the most simple and fundamental concept in moral thinking, but the most difficult for many (notably adolescent females and liberals) to comprehend: the distinction between the subjective and the objective. We must judge the act, but not the person!  We can NEVER judge the heart and soul of another person! Never! Not the pope not the Supreme Court...none of us can judge another! But we can and must and constantly do judge actions and ideas!And so we see the confusion caused by our Holy Father when he says, in reference to homosexuality, "Who am I to judge?" On the face of it, he is voicing a Catholic truism with which his predecessors and any informed Catholic would surely agree: Who am I to judge the heart and soul of another person? But he is ambiguous and so he is largely understood to mean:  Who am I to judge these actions, relationships and lifestyles? As Pope, he is, of course, supreme judge of right and wrong; he is our teacher; he is an incomparable source of instruction, for Catholics of course but for others as well. A wise and loving father will firmly and directly admonish his children against sin. It is impossible for us to determine: did this ambiguous statement do more harm or good? Did he do more good by welcoming and affirming active homosexuals? Or did he do more harm by confirming them in error, by enabling them in what is harmful? My view is that truth is essential and not to be watered down! We are, all of us, sinners...hopefully in recovery...and our recovery absolutely requires heavy doses of candor and truth...even if that arouses the ire of those of us still in denial. For my money, Pope Francis is too much of an enabler. He is our "Father" and a father's love is tender and compassionate but also true and just. It can be experienced as a harsh and tough love. By contrast, his is a soft, feminine and inclusive love, lacking firmness, clarity and justice.

Respectfully, Holy Father, We Disagree

Our Catholic Church is in trouble! After the synods clearly renounced his agenda, Pope Francis has covertly led us into division if not outright schism on the specific issue of communion for those divorced-and-remarried-civilly. The German bishops allow it; next door the Polish do not. The German bishops are, of course, implementing the approval (in defiance of the collegial decision) that Pope Francis gave the Argentinian bishops about this practice. This is NOT the Catholic way. It is a binary question: they can or they can't! It is like woman priests and contraception: it is a Yes or a No. It can't be avoided or transcended or finessed. Pope Francis is right or wrong. I stand firmly, clearly, peacefully, confidently, and loyally against our Holy Father, in fidelity to the legacy of two thousand years so recently and stirringly re-affirmed by Popes John Paul II and Benedict. At the very heart of our Catholic faith is marriage of man and woman, indissoluble, as analogue for our conjugal union with Christ in the Eucharist. If you distort these two, you have destroyed the Catholic faith. St. Thomas Moore and countless martyrs suffered tortuous death on behalf of this reality. Our Pope MUST be resisted on this; he must be corrected, perhaps formally by the cardinals or bishops. It is simple: Speak the truth in love!  Hate the sin, love the sinner!  Has no one condemned you? Then neither do I! Go now and sin no more! Truth and Love are not separate from or extrinsic to each other: they belong to each other in a perfect union, a marriage, a communion analagous to the Trinity. If I love you I will be true to you, I will speak the truth to you. If you are in sin, I will tell you the truth and invite you to repent and pray for me, a sinner-in-recovery myself.But it is essential that we witness in a spirit of love and peace. There must be nothing shrill, anxious, judgmental or angry about our witness. Our dispute can and must be civil, respectful and charitable. Unfortunately, Pope Francis himself is not a role model in this regard. He refuses to answer the "Dubia" which were questions for clarification from a group of Cardinals. Instead, he makes a habit of ridiculing his opponents as rigid, moralistic pharisees. His style is emotional, resentful, and contemptuous. And so we do well to emulate his predecessors in style as well as substance: John Paul and Benedict were unfailingly sober, unemotional, peaceful, dignified and respectful as they witnessed to the Truth in Love. Always! Their teaching was reliably profound, clear, faithful to Tradition and yet refreshingly creative. Pope Francis, by contrast, has successfully humanized the papacy in that he is transparent in his confused thinking and personal bias.  By now this is so obvious that it cannot be denied by a sentimental piety of unthinking  submission to papal authority. A healthy family is not one without problems, but one that faces, acknowledges and engages the problems: peacefully, respectfully, directly. And so those of us who love the legacy of JP/Benedict and the Great Tradition now must renounce the positions of Pope Francis which contradict our tradition. But we do so respectfully: he is our Holy Father! Notwithstanding his shortcomings, he is both Holy and Father by virtue of his office. And so, respectfully, Holy Father, we disagree!

Praying for Presidents' Families

This morning I pondered: my own work, being demanding, brings some stress to my family. What must happen to the family of our President? This moved me to pray: for the Trump, Obama and Clinton families. Not for their politics, but for themselves and their families. For their souls. It felt great because I saw them not as political foe or friend, but as a child of God, a brother-and-sister in Christ, another sinner in need of God's mercy. I viewed them outside the realm of politics. It freed me. For me Obama and Clinton are ideological enemies on a small number of infinitely important issues; while Trump is a political enemy on a wide range of less important issues. In Christ I am directed to forgive my enemies and that includes the political ones. This is a helpful exercise and it helps me to keep politics in its proper spot: it is not of ultimate importance. It is like playing ball: during the game you play vigorously against your opponent; but afterwards you forget about the game and return to friendship. Politics should be something like that: we fight about this or that but later we are friends and family. The prayer for presidents' families helps us to lighten up and see things in the long term...even in light of eternity!

My Organizational Behavior Course

My Rutgers MBA program was largely a waste of time: but not my Organizational Behavior Course! It was wonderful! It triggered an intellectual conversion! This discipline studies systems of behavior in a sober, objective, scientific, non-moralistic and unemotional manner to identify and scrutinize their various consequences. I found this SO refreshing! Coming of age in the 60s, I was thoroughly indoctrinated in the emergent leftist obsession with systems of injustice: racism, militarism, chauvinism, and imperialism. In Catholicism we understand this as "structural sin," what we always referred to as the "world." Surely there are such: racism in the USA before 1970; the culture of contraception/pornography/abortion after 1970; Islamic misogyny evident in polygamy, honor killings, and aversion to education of women. However, there is also, especially among liberals, an exaggerated indignation, moralism, judgmenalism and emotionalism around policy issues that are best considered with sobriety. So we have recurrent personal attacks: if you support ABC you are racist, misogynist, and so forth. There is shrillness, a heaviness of spirit such that disagreement on some issues makes you a bad person. My Organizational Behavior course largely lifted that burden off my spirit. I came to see that practical, prudential judgments allow for a range of opinion and do not always carry the grave moral significance that concrete personal acts do: voting for or against food stamps is not the same as feeding or not-feeding your neighbor; there may be negatives about the food stamp program and better ways to feed the hungry. I read about a soup kitchen that opened and destroyed the business of local, inexpensive Hispanic bodegas and diners. Yes there can even be a social justice case AGAINST soup kitchens! This is why churchmen need to avoid pontificating on social policy! This is why we need to avoid personal, emotional judgments against each other on policy matters! This is why we do well to lighten up a little about our political ideologies!

The Francis Option

Many of us traditional Catholics, grieved at the negative cultural and political trends so dominant in our society, are drawn to the "Benedict Option" of Rod Dreher. As the Roman civilization was crumbling into chaos in the forth century St. Benedict retreated from society to form small, monastic communities. These flourished, quietly, throughout the so-called dark ages; they preserved learning as well as liturgy and faith; developed agricultural techniques; and eventually became the basis for Medieval Society. And so we are drawn to withdraw our hope from the political parties as well as mainstream institutions (business, courts, media, etc.) to build strong, local, intimate communities of faith and value. Some actually retreat to rural, distant locations but the crucial idea is not escape from the city as much as focus on family, faith and local community. The hope is that eventually the value fostered there reaches out to lighten and strengthen the macro-society. I offer a variation in imitation of St. Francis of Assis (and maybe our Pope Francis as well):  Find the poor, become close to them, identify with them, and embrace them as a sacrament of our Lord Jesus. So, this is most easily done in the city but can certainly be done anywhere:  the poor we always have with us, everywhere. It could be one person, or a group or a population. This is really classic Catholic practice: Dorothy Day, Mother Theresa, Catherine Dougherty, Mother Cabrini, and the list goes on. This is NOT social activism in the sense of political advocacy to use the state to achieve justice and equality. It is not opposed to such. But it is really just standard, old-fashioned Christian charity...it cannot be beat...the corporal and spiritual works of mercy..."whatsoever you did to the least..."

Gay, Catholic and Celibate

I like it! There is a small but significant movement of people coming out publicly as gay, Catholic (or Christian) and celibate. This could be a novel, distinctive witness to truth. It confounds my categories. Up to now, "gay" for me has meant public acknowledgement of same-sex attraction but most significantly the affirmation that one's self-identity is defined by the desire and the profession of the moral goodness of sterile, non-unitive sexual acts. By this definition, to self-identify as Catholic and gay would be a contradiction. So I may need to change my understanding of "gay" or adapt new terminology. (Shall we speak of "ccay" or of "homocelosexual"?)  This public profession implies important assertions: that sexuality is a significant aspect of identity but not essential, definitive or fundamental; that sex is a desire and not a need; that abstinence, chastity and celibacy are all wholesome and normal; and that sexual expression is properly ordered and fruitful within traditional marriage. The profession also dispels the falsehood that the Church hates gays. It leaves open the fascinating questions about the origin and the fluidity of the attraction. It seems to allow (with the Church) that the tendency itself is not sinful, but it is disordered in that it can lead to sin. It seems to allow also (against a dogmatic gay movement) that the tendency is often associated with other disorders including male insecurity, a wound from the father, difficulty with authority and fear of women. The unembarrassed, positive profession also implies appreciation of the many good qualities that so frequently accompany the disposition: enhanced sensitivity to the beautiful and the spiritual; higher emotional intelligence; generosity and tenderness of heart. It implies a sound psychology and spirituality of emotion and desire which must be acknowledged, owned and accepted and then directed by intelligence and will in a good direction. Such a profession was unthinkable in previous generations when sex was private, sacred, and not spoken about so publicly. But in this age that is so saturated with the erotic, a fresh, transparent, unashamed and expressive witness is needed: and that is just what this is. Our Church and our society are enriched by the courageous testimony of our ccay, homocelosxual and catholesbian brothers and sisters!

Liberal Catholicism Resurgent: The Return of the Innocents

Pope Francis is leading a resurgent liberalism within the Church: Jesuit Tom Reese said that if John Paul or Benedict had so relentlessly installed prelates in their own image, he would have been furious. Indeed, those conservative popes, liberally, elevated liberals like Tobin and Bergoglio! Our new Cardinal Archbishop Tobin here in Newark seems to be a classic: leans left on political issues like refugees but soft-peddals the cultural issues. I know the type! Most of my family and friends are such. (I am talking here about my generation: baby boomers.) Generally they embrace and live our faith with marriages that are faithful and fruitful. But they loyally vote Democrat for lots of good Catholic reasons: the poor, refugees, the environment and so forth. They ignore the moral issues of abortion, marriage, and religious liberty. I have long marveled at the political passivity and indifference in which they have allowed the sexual liberals to take over the major institutions including the Democratic Party and the labor movement. One cause for this passivity is a positive legacy from their parents, the Great Generation: the conviction that sexuality is private, sacred and best not discussed. In a way this is a good attitude. Our parents taught us chastity and fidelity by their lives but were mostly inarticulate about it. That worked at the time: up until about 1965. This week my wife and Cardinal Tobin enlightened me to another cause. We read that one of the Cardinal's favorite movies is The Big Chill so we watched it out of curiosity. Fifteen years after college, a group of boomers gather to grieve the suicide of a dear friend. They share deep affection for each other and nostalgia about the idealism and joy of their shared youth as adulthood has brought lots of disappointment in  marriage and career. They profess their love for each other, grieve, argue, smoke pot, and fall into adultery together. The movie is saturated with sentimentality, melancholy, and a quiet nihilism. The adultery is notably given a sweet taste. So we wondered: Why is this our Cardinal's favorite? My wife offered: he is probably innocent; he ignores the adultery and sees the affection, sensitivity, grief and mourned idealism. Exactly! The liberal Catholics I know are innocent! They live wholesome, faithful, chaste lives apparently with little effort. My guess is that Tobin and Francis are happily, naturally free of sexual torment and temptation. The same seems to apply to my liberal friends. And so they are sanguine about the sexual issues: pornography is weird but no big problem; masturbation is more or less normal; cohabitation is fine if they love each other; and of course contraception is just swell! Homosexuality is wonderful too and gay couples will live happily ever after if everyone stops bullying them! We might distinguish here between "hard" and "soft" cultural liberals: perhaps 10% of the population have embraced sexual sin as a way of life (pornographers, abortionists, gay militants, Holywood) and militantly advocate while 40% or so are my friends who dislike such sin but refuse to publically resist and so accept it. And so the liberal Catholic seems to live a serene chaste private life and ignore the culture war. Liberals are good people. Us conservatives not so good: more tormented by concupiscence! And therefore more vigilant about the culture as well. The problem with liberalism, however, is that it cannot protect the young: our culture has become so perverse that innocence must be protected and cannot be assumed. The following generations will not inherit so placidly the innocence that the Great Generation gave some of us. There seems to be a naivete about liberalism. The paradigm is Chamberlain meeting Hitler at Munich. Obama assumed office with a happy, polyannish certainty: with Cheny and Bush out of the way, he would restore peace to the earth as he dialogued rationally and respectfully with Islam. I am sure events in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, and Palestine have disabused him of this innocence. Merkle in Germany is another example as she opens her borders, generously, to refugees but fails to protect her own civilization in its fragility. Francis himself pontificated early on that "violence is not part of genuine Islam" and so raised the question about his authority as pope to define "genuine Islam" as well as his own experience as a prelate from Latin America. And so we see that an easy-going attitude towards sexual licence is strangely wed to the same attitude towards Islamic radicalism. And so my conclusion is that liberals are good people who seem blissfully flee of disordered libidinal or aggressive urges and so worry little about sexual disorder or aggressors like ISIS or Iran. They are more likely once-born rather than twice-born in the William James sense that they have not greatly felt their own sin and so are not running to the confessional line. They are able to concentrate their energies on social justice and care for the poor. God bless them! But their naivete will not serve the young as they defer passively to the sexual and Islamic revolutions! We are at war for the hearts, minds and souls of our youth! Francis is, in his blissful innocence, a disappointment! He has brought the Church in to a winter: hopefully it will not be too dark, too cold, and too long!

Book Review of Todd Hartch’s “The Prophet of Cuernavaca: Ivan Illich and the Crisis of the West”

Among major Catholic figures of the last half of the 20^th century, few or none rival Ivan Illich for his raw intellectual brilliance and creativity, his vast and eclectic erudition, his linguistic fluency (accent-free in nine languages), his electrifying and provocative eccentricity, his missionary spirituality of austerity and humility, his breath-taking critique of modernity as technocracy/bureaucracy, and his contempt for the proud, prosperous post-war American Church. He is probably also the least appreciated and understood thinker of the period. Todd Hartch does much to correct this in “The Prophet of Cuernavaca: Ivan Illich and the Crisis of the West.”

As the title suggests, he focuses on the Cuernavaca period of the 1960s when Illich operated a fine language school and a radical think tank in beautiful Cuernavaca, Mexico. Illich’s experience of the North American and Latin American churches had convinced him that the heralded crusade to flood the Southern hemisphere with priests and missionaries was a crude form of cultural imperialism. Hartch sees that Illich’s appreciation for the popular Catholicism of NYC Puerto Ricans in the 1950s had awakened in him a deep sense of mission as humility, poverty and kenosis: the one sent empties himself of his own culture in order to welcome, humbly, Christ as present in his new people and culture. Additionally, Illich had a keen sense that the adult experience of learning a foreign language...awkward, humbling, confusing...was already an emptying that could prepare the missionary to humbly receive. Unfortunately, Croatian warrior that he was, Illich could not be content to share this spiritual vision but waged a fierce, no-holds-barred, initially deceptive and finally successful war to stop the “invasion” of Yankee missionaries. Hartch has done his homework well in covering, in detail, this campaign including his ever-dramatic relationships with the episcopacy, the Vatican, Maryknoll Father Considine, his students at the school and his amazing network of talented thinkers and leaders. For example, early in the course of the Vatican Council he served as peritus to Cardinal Suenens, one of the very most admired, influential and progressive of the Council Fathers. But he left in disgust at the bishops’ reluctance to unambiguously condemn nuclear arms. His position here is typical of his radical aversion for the modernity of the West and much of the institutional Catholic Church.

Hartch also sees, however, that underlying Illich’s thought and life was a deep, barely articulated, mystical love of the Church in a most ancient and radical manner. For example, he willingly stripped himself of his priestly faculties when he entered more deeply into his vocation as polarizing critic and advocate because he realized that his (prophetic?) call of witness and argument conflicted with the priestly task, at the Eucharist, of being a source of unity. (This is in strong contrast with the clericalism, especially on the left, of priests and even conferences of bishops who abuse holy orders by using it to sanctify policy positions.) He also maintained throughout his life his loyalty to celibacy and the Liturgy of the Hours.

His conflicted, ambivalent relationship with the Church is perhaps best seen in his inquisition in the Vatican in the Spring of 1968. (Roughly when this reader studied Spanish at his Cuernavaca Institute and fell under his influences as a young, Maryknoll College seminarian.) Illich is summoned to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Church about vague charges of polytheism. He is warmly greeted by the head of the Congregation, fellow Croatian Cardinal Seper whom Illich later described as “very kind, very correct, most humane, rather apologetic ...acting like a man obliged to proceed in a transaction that embarrassed him profoundly.” They chat comfortably in their mother language. The mood changes abruptly: he is led down a hall to an underground room to meet a man in a dark cassock who only reluctantly gives his name and asks for a secrecy oath from the accused. Illich refuses the oath and asks for the questions in writing. The priest is finally directed by Seper to provide the questions in writing. The questions are an insult and include: “What do you have to do with the kidnapping of the Archbishop of Guatemala? Do you want to exclude the rich from the Church? What do you think of heaven and hell and also of limbo?” Illich delivers a letter, in which he refuses to answer the questions, to Seper who embraces him and says, most unexpectedly: “Get going, get going, and never come back.” These words, it happens, are the very words of Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor as he sent Christ away. It is hardly possible that the Serbian prelate chose these words by coincidence. But lest we prematurely canonize Illich, Hartch notes that the lead up to the investigation was inflamed by a story of Illich telling a bishop, on a plane ride, that he practiced Afro-Caribean polytheism. This charge was, of course, ludicrous. But Illich, who enjoyed prank-type provocation and shock, may well have contributed to the furor by his intellectual antics.

In the end, Hartch makes the case that Illich was successful in his effort to stop the flow of missionaries. My impression was different: he was, for a time, provocative and (in)famous, but widely dismissed as an extremist and a crank and less influential that he should have been. The failure of the North American mission to the South was due more to the broader societal dynamics of the 1960s than to the efforts of this single, brilliant eccentric. Nevertheless, Hartch is a fine start to a retrieval of Illich. His work awoke, in this reader, a hunger for three more Illich books. First, we need a far more thorough treatment of his understanding of the crisis of the West (the subtitle of the work). Hartch focuses more narrowly on his ecclesial concerns and tends to see the later, broader, secular developments (about de-schooling society, medical nemesis, etc.) as outflows from these. But his broader cultural views may in the longer run be far more significant than the inner-Church fueds. His thought, hopefully, will be brought into conversation with similar culture critics like Ellul, Schumacher, Berry, as well as Schindler and the Communio School of the John Paul II Institute in DC. Secondly, we learn very little about the person of Illich: He remains an enigma! What about his early family life? His best friends? His loves? Why did he change his name from John to Ivan? Indeed, he remains a cold, detached figure: capable of befriending a wide range of talented, influential people but seemingly intellectual and distant if not manipulative. He was a close and trusted colleague of Fr. Considine even as he was quietly undermining that priest’s life work! “With friends like this, who needs enemies” the good Maryknoller must have wondered in hindsight. Nor do we learn from Hartch anything about his later years when he died of cancer and apparently refused medical aid in accord with his views. Lastly, Hartch hints at but does not fully develop his underlying spirituality: his mysterious call to the priesthood, his enchantment with St. Thomas under the tutelage of Jacques Maritain, his 40 days in the Sahara in the spirit of Charles de Focault, and his pilgrimage across Latin America. His was an ancient, deep vision that has not yet been articulated.

Illich has been largely disregarded as utopian and unrealistic. But I for one recall, with gratitude, the influence he had on me a half century ago. As a religion teacher in Catholic high schools I remained aware of the contradiction, or at least the tension, between the coercive nature of schooling and the glorious freedom of the Gospel...and I did my best to lean into the later. For 25 years I made a good living for my family in UPS as a loyal, enthusiastic supervisor but I retained a sense of the impersonal, mechanical pressures of that environment that granted me a degree of internal freedom. More recently I have been blessed by involvement with a modest residence for low-income women...a far more “convivial” and “Illichian” engagement.

Our Church and our entire culture will greatly benefit from a deeper encounter with the spirit of this profound, brilliant, elusive mystic! Todd Hartch has made a fine contribution.

Emasculation and the Post-Trumpian Politics of Irrationality

The Trump movement is best understood as an explosion of male rage: rage at emasculation. It is diffuse, confused, chaotic and furious. The post-election liberal meltdown is best understood as female hysteria: a diffuse, confused, chaotic feeling of vulnerability and danger. Both are rooted in the crisis of masculinity and the decline of virility as paternity. An axis of malevolent forces have conspired over the last half century in a "perfect storm" to deconstruct masculinity and fatherhood: a mega-bureau-technocracy that leaves men powerless, the contraceptive revolution that set sexuality free from fertility/paternity/responsibility, a feminism that resents patriarchy and cannot cherish paternity, the breakdown of family and all the surrounding network of subsidiary communities, the deconstruction of gender as a personal/cultural construct, and a distancing from our heavenly Father. The mission of every man is, among other things, to be a "king" in his own realm, however small and modest. To reign regally as a servant means: sobriety, rationality, chastity, humility, courage, objectivity, selflessness, steadfastness, integrity and serenity. With the assault upon masculinity it has become rare and almost impossibly difficult for our young men to find a path that leads to such virile maturity. And so: the male rage! And so: the female hysteria! The concept of "hysteria" is unintelligible to our androgonous culture but is transparent to traditional cultures. The woman is open: physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. As such she is receptive: of all that is precious, truthful, beautiful and good. But as such she is vulnerable: to hostile penetration. So, she inherently has a delicacy, a sensitivity and a propensity to anxiety. The male disposition is quite different: he protrudes and is destined for paternity but if not guided properly he succumbs to rage or impotence and discouragement. So many of our young men are just so discouraged or angry! And so many of our women are anxious! Personally, I have very little hope in Trump or either of the parties. I am inclined to the politics of the Benedict option: to engage our energies locally, concretely in our families, faith communities, and the needs of those around us. St. Benedict: Pray for us!

How to Interpret Pope Francis: a Catholic Hermeneutic

Fr. Groeschel said that a saint is often strong in one of the transcendentals: truth, beauty and goodness. That probably applies to the rest of us and to our popes. St. John Paul was extraordinarily strong in truth and goodness and had a vigorous, wholesome sense of beauty...especially of nature and the splendor of marital love. Pope Benedict equaled his predecessor in the charism of truth: both were brilliant, wise and probably will be considered doctors of the faith. He has a very high sense of the beauty of the liturgy and tradition. He is good in a wholesome and ordinary way. Surely he is a saint in the normal sense of deeply immersed in the Communion of Saints; maybe he will be canonized and maybe not. Pope Francis is quite a change of pace. He is in John Paul's league in his zeal to bring the love of Christ to the poor and neglected. His sense of beauty is sub-par as he has an aversion to the Latin mass and much of Church ritual. With regard to the Truth he is confused and confusing. He is not a heretic: he has no desire to change Church teaching. But he is vague and puzzling in his eagerness to downplay aspects of our faith that may offend people. How are we to interpret so many of his statements? I like to apply three Catholic principles. First of all, he must be understood in relation to the entire tradition, much like we interpret a verse of scripture in terms of the entirety of Revelation. Secondly, we are exhorted (by St. Ignatius of Loyola among others) to put the very best interpretation on the statement of a believer, and especially of a leader. Thirdly, we know from our Tradition that we are all weak and fallible and our postmodern awareness heightens our sense of the tentativeness, finetude and partiality of all human statements. This applies even to the papacy in its infallibility which is rarely engaged to the full extent. And so, it seems to me, that we can receive with serenity the many confusing statements from our Holy Father: appreciating his goodness, compassion and zeal; aware of his own limitations; seeing him in light of the Tradition and especially the splendid legacy of his two predecessors; and most of all confident that the Holy Spirit is working even in the midst of such annoyance!

Circumcision of the Masculine Heart

Sunday past was New Year's Day, Feast of the Motherhood of God, World Peace Day, and the Feast of the Circumcision. Of the four, which was least discussed in the Church? Surely the Circumcision! Why would a priest...or anyone at all...talk about the circumcision of Jesus? Yet it is a venerable memorial. And every event in the life of Jesus is a saving mystery! Additionally, circumcision was the ritual chosen by God to mark His covenant with Abraham and His chosen people. But to the attitude of Modernity, what could be more incoherent, repulsive and aberrant than male circumcision? (We abstain here from the medical debate on the health and hygiene aspects of the act.) Circumcision is a violent, bloody attack on the male sex organ that represents communion with the Holy. Now Modernity (among other things) is the denial of blood and sacrifice, the deconstruction of gender, the sentimentalization and sterilization of sexuality, and the absence of the Holy. A priest in Church talking about circumcision would be looked upon as a lunatic. Modernity as we know it is the renunciation of virility, fertility and paternity, chastity, sacrifice as the shedding of blood, and communion with God. If we want to revive heroic, generous masculinity, we should talk about circumcision. But the New Testament, in its embrace of the uncircumcised, moved beyond that specific rite into concern with "circumcision of the heart." So, we ask:  What does it mean for a man to be circumcised in the heart? Circumcision is a painful loss of a masculine part. In addition to association with health and hygiene, it involves identity as a son of God. It is significant that it involves the organ of fertility, of communion and of self-gift. And so, there are at least four ways in which the male heart and psyche needs to be circumcised. First of all, from puberty on male life is continuously, relentlessly, oppressively overwhelmed by sexual desire and frustration. So the first "cut" is endurance, patience, and long-suffering in regard to tension and frustration. This is difficult but becomes oppressively so in this culture of pornography. Second, and closely related, is the longing for emotional, romantic closeness that is also normally frustrated. Here again, the developing man (and we develop until we are dead) need to find the psychological and spiritual resources to care for and revere women and suffer his own deprivations. Thirdly, the pride of the notorious male ego must be dethroned and so each man needs to endure failure and humiliation to come into a liberated humility. So the third cut is the deflation of the ego. Lastly, every man must fight and spill blood: there is no other path into virility. A man must defend himself and fight for what he values. In doing so he has to spill blood. There is no way around this. And so we see that for a young man to enter into his masculinity he must be prepared for the shedding of blood: the frustration of the body and the heart, the deflation of pride, and the struggle of warfare on different levels. Our culture disbelieves in all of this and so leaves our young men adrift and purposeless. It is different for young women. Their "blood sacrifice" is different: natural, fluid, non-deliberate and spontaneous. Their suffering less agonistic and individual and more relational and compassionate. Their pride less pronounced. But our young men need to be circumcised...in the heart, emotions, mind and spirit...to be wholesome, strong and fertile.