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!