New Catholic Politics

Surprisingly, happily...there is recently a flurry of innovative Catholic political thinking...small but significant. In a helpful article in First Things this past August (https://www.firstthings.com/article/2021/08/catholic-ideas-and-catholic-realities), Ross Douthat identified four movements of thought. I will adjust his categories into three, with three distinct movements in the last.

The Context.

- There is a widespread sense that we have moved into a new post-liberal society. The two classic post-War expressions of liberalism, the Democratic Party of FDR/JFK and the Republican Party of Ronald Regan, have both expired: the first in a steady decline over the last 50 years into a nihilist Cultural Liberalism and the second unseated by the Trump movement. Liberalism, of the right and of the left, in priviliging the individual...isolated, competent, agential...is corrosive of the bonds (of faith, family, community) that define us and so victimizes all of us but especially the weak and incompetent, quintessentially the most helpless, the unborn. Furthermore, Adrian Vermulle has shown that the liberalism we face today, unbalanced by a wholesome conservatism, pushes relentlessly towards a better future by renouncing the past, by destroying custom, tradition, ancient habits of family and faith. In this it is self-destructive, annihilating the very basis for a good society and eventually provoking the kind of populist revolts we are witnessing across the globe. Clearly we are moving into a post-liberal world.

- The globe has moved from the bipolar Cold War through a temporary Liberal Euphoria after the fall of Soviet Communism into a dystopic apocalypse of the four monstrous kingdoms (see prior blog essay.)

- Catholic social teaching, after being deepened, strengthened and clarified by the dual pontificate of John Paul and Benedict has been confounded and polarized by Francis. He presents as a populist, defensive of the maginalized; but he has become a shameless partisan of the causes dearest to affluent, western liberals: global warming, open borders, death penalty. He has been entirely congenial to the three worst totalitarianisms (Chinese Communism, Cultural Liberalism, and aggressive Islam) while he vehemently opposes the actual populist movements that are surging across the globe. He is undisguished in his contempt for the American Catholic-Evangelical alliance that resists Cultural Liberalism. In a recent speech, Cardinal Joseph Tobin, one of his lieutenants, cast him as a kind of a messianic protagonist against the rising dictatorships. His self-identification as a moralizing global ideologue is deeply discouraging and polarizing even as it delights the liberals who side with him on these issues. Even those of us who might agree with his policies must bemoan the clericalism that elevates him into an diplomatic-political expert and the loss of moral stature due to his partisanship.

- The American Catholic with conservative tendencies finds himself homeless in his nation and his Church.

- The (hopefully permanent) marginalization of The Donald allows us some fresh air and a chance to collect our thoughts.

- Meanwhile the downward spiral of Democratic liberalism has hit a new bottom with the Biden Administration. Beneath his congenial, working man, pious Catholic, glad-handing demeanour lies a sickening moral decay and a breathtaking intellectual vacuity. He simply does not see or reverence the Real, the Good, the True and the Beautiful. He does not see the Form of things: regarding the precious, helpless fetus he sees waste matter and is rallying the full force of the federal government to destroy her; regarding our friends in Afghanastan who risked life to fight for us, he cavalierly abandons them in the most shameful foreign affair decision of my lifetime; regarding the border integrity of our nation he is careless and reckless in luring hopeful immigrants into the perilous journey and further arousing the anxiety of our own under class; regarding spending he is like a drunken sailor, indifferent to what this debt will do to following generations. As a Catholic Biden is a scandal and a sacrilige; and his moral rot contaminates the bishops, our pontiff and all who indulge him. If nothing else, the moral-intellectual abomination that he represents is enough to drive us Catholics to rethink our politics.

NEW CATHOLIC POLITICS

Returning to the renaissance in Catholic politics, we might identify three promising developments: the Benedict Option, Populism, and several marginal aspirations to a thorough, comprehesive political philosophy rooted in Catholic belief (Tradanistas, Integralists, and the New Polity community.)

1. The Benedict Option of Rod Dreher remains for me the defining Catholic politics in the USA 2021: protective, defensive retreat from the overwhelmingly hostile elite institutions to smaller arenas of family, faith and community to strengthen our common life of faith in all its elements. This is not, of course, an absolute, monopolistic approach but demands to be complemented by other approaches including the following.

2. Populism might be understood as "Trumpism without Trump": purged of its toxicities and idiocy, the Trump agenda suggested an outline of a promising Catholic-friendly polity: conservative culturally but economically protective of the working class. He delivered beautifully on the first platform, not at all on the second as his tax plan favored the rich. He shows little concern for the poor and remains shamelessly a rich, powerful guy challenged in his conscience. But moral conservatives like Douthat, Reno, Ahmari, Vance and others advocate for a new post-Trump Republican Party defensive of Catholic concerns for the unborn and the family as well as the working and poor classes. The success of this would need a charismatic figure capable of rallying the Trump base, maintaining some support from traditional Republicans while displacing their economic agenda, and appealing to swing voters as well as minorities and workers. This would be a miracle! Lets pray for it!

3. Deeper Catholic philosophizing has taken three directions of late: Tradanistas, Integralists, and the New Polity school. Each is very small, apparently insignificant, unknown except to Catholic nerds like myself. They look deeply into Catholic philosophy to create an ideal vision: intellectual, abstract, erudite. Most would dismiss them as impractical and utopian. Yet I value their efforts for two reasons: First, we always need an image of the good, even the ideal, as we struggle towards it accepting imperfection. Secondly, in our troubled times with the breakdown of traditional liberalisms we need new options to consider.

The Tradanista group is the most marginal and probably least promising. It seems to be a group of young Catholic intellectuals, without any prominent publication or heavy weight thinker (although it was befriended by Larry Chapp whom I like). Its name is explanatory: traditional (in morals) but Sandanista-like in concern for the poor. Theoretically it combines both poles of Catholic social teaching not entirely unlike a Catholic-friendly configuration of populism. They like Dorothy Day, Chesterton, the distributists, McIntyre as well as John Paul's catechesis on the human body. All that is to the good. But they also seem to favor the economics of Bernie Sanders. Here we find a double incoherence: first, Sanders probably would not know what "distributionism" is; secondly, the expansive state favored by Sanders is also biggest enemy of traditional morality. It remains to be seen if this good attempt develops into something significant.

Integralism is a retrieval of the classic Catholic conception that human life involves the temporal and the eternal and therefore is ruled by the state and church. It argues that every government in fact embodies religion as a set of values: liberalism obviously idolizes the surpremacy of the imperial, isolated individual. Any state that is not countervailed by a true, good spiritual principle degenerates into tyranny and idolatry. The best path is a revived Catholic community which opens itself to God in the Church and in secular affairs and grants final authority to the Church over the state. This proposal seems at first to be entirely implausible give the diminished status of the Church and the diversity of our society. But it has in its favor the advocacy of two first rate thinkers: Hardvard Law's Adrian Vermulle and the monk Edmund Waldstein. I must say that their writings are sophisticated, nuanced and persuavive. Nevertheless this approach is widely criticized in regard to coercion by the Church in a retrograde clericalism.

Even more sophisticated and profound is a new development: New Polity journal. Like integralism, this is a retrieval of deep Catholic, largely Thomistic thought. It is close to integralism but addresses the concerns around coercion and dualism. It has greal intellectual gravitas behind it: metaphysician D.C. Schindler of the John Paul Institute in D.C.; historian Andrew Williard Jones; and precocious teen philosopher genius Marc Barnes (who blogs as "badcatholic" with delightful lightness and humour). This school sees that human society is always oriented to or away from God; that there is no neutral, liberal zone. They advocate a theocracy even as they are sensitive to human freedom. They speak a metaphysical language that is entirely foreign to most of us. But they are developing a promising, profound new Catholic politics of the "real" (title of Schindler's recent book.)

These new forms of conservatism are deep-Catholic, unlike what we are used to in the USA. They clearly renounce the "mysticism of markets" and the elevation of individual choice. Noticeably they neglect the foundation of much American conservatism: reverence for the Constitution and the "founding" as sacrosanct. They see enlightenment liberalism as a defect in our founders, notwithstanding a countervailing Christian (although pronouncedly anti-Catholic) piety. For example, Vermule has recently argued for the need to go beyond "originalism" into a "common good constitutionalism" which implies a philosophy of natural law, a deeply Catholic thought, entirely unintelligible to our contemporary legal community.

Perhaps a decade ago David L. Schindler (D.C. Schindler's father) delibered a lecture in NYC in which he presented what Pope Benedict suggested as the three founding principles of a just social order: reverence for EVERY human life; respect for the family and all that supports it; and openness to the Transcendent and the free practice of religion. In this, I suggest, we have the beginning of a "new constitution." I suggest two additions. First, a preferential concern for the poor, suffering, powerless and marginalized. Secondly, a valuing of personal freedom and a reluctance for coercion as a tension-keeping balance to the strong sense of Truth.

There is no single "Catholic Politics" in the partisan, party or ideological sense. This is the realm of prudential judgment involving a universe of values, beliefs, facts, interpretations, contingencies, uncertainties, hopes and risks. Catholic do and should disagree...often passionately...about political options. (Unlike the moral and theologial in which we enjoy a substantial unity and peace.) Our faith and our societal reality is so dense, complex, and uncertain that no specific polity can be definitive as "Catholic."

It is thrilling that we can enjoy the conversation between these five movements, as well as what remains of value from the legacies of FDR and Ronald Regan. It is an interesting time to be Catholic...in a world falling into chaos...as we "stand erect and lift our heads and wait for the coming of the Lord."

Come Lord Jesus!

Our Apocalyptic Times: The Four Monstrous Kingdoms

The mass readings this past week, the last of our liturgical year, involved Daniel's visions of the four horrific kingdoms: one is more grotesque, destructive and fearsome than the next. It occurs to me that our current world can be understood, by analogy, as a competiton between four such competing kingdoms: fascist dictatorships, Sharia Law, Cultural Liberalism and Communism. They are not equally evil.

The least evil of the four is the surge of righwing dictatorships across the globe. In the West we see a nationalist populism fueled by rage at the totalitarianism of Cultural Liberalism. Putin is a prime example. The hysterical-derangement-syndrom Left configures Trump as such but he is a "dictator-wanna-be." Ross Douthat is accurate in saying that he lacks the political will and talent to become a true strongman. In his middle-of-the-night delusional tweets he is another Putin but in the real world his narcicissm, lack of focus and incompetence shortcircuit his ambitions. Early on Douthat correctly suggested that his campaign lacked the intelligence and sophistication for a genuine collaboration with the Russians but the prolonged, expensive Mueller Commission, like the current hearings on January 6, was a necessary OCD ritual that helped the Left process their obsession, anxiety and rage.

The good news about dictatorships: recalling Hannah Arendt's famous distinction between the authoritarian and the totalitarian, we see that right wing dictatorships claim monopoly over political power but if that is not threatened they tolerate a wide range of religious, cultural, and business freedoms. There was more liberty under Saddam than in Iraq today; under the Shaw than the Mullahs; under Diem than Ho Chi Min, even under Hitler than Stalin. These dictatorships are often mixed bags with some wholesome elements supportive of religion, family life, patriotism and the weak and vulnerable. In contrast to the three totalitarianisms, authoritarian regimes can be open to the "Christian Strategy" advocated by Adrian Vermulle whereby we might emulate Old Testament figures (Daniel, Joseph, Esther) who worked with such rulers to protect their people, advance the good and minimize the bad.

Sharia law tends to be more totalitarian than fascism, particularly in its denial of religious freedom. But as it is itself based upon religious principles it also has redeeming qualities: respect for the unborn, openness to the Transcendent, and respect for most of the Moral Law.

Cultural Liberalism is in many ways, like Islam, a Christian heresy that inflates and distorts certain elements of the gospel as it denies others and creates a new monstrosity. Its repression is more sophisticated and subtle and camouflaged in the righteousness of a more enlightened Christianity. Yet, the Christian elements are alive and dynamic and so here again there is an opportunity for the "Christian Strategy" whereby we work with this realm toward the good even as we oppose the impulses to evil.

Worse by far is the communism, especially of China and North Korea, but also of Cuba and Venezuela. This is hard, absolute evil. The accomadationist policies of Pope Francis and Bide are misguided: this is an arena for martyrdom and warfare (hopefully cold not hot), not dialogue and cooperation.

What is a Catholic to do in this dystopian, dismal universe? That is a topic for another essay!

Greatest Cinematic Icons of Virility

We men are constitutionally desperate for role models: good men we can imitate. The movies have for many decades been a rich, entertaining provider of such.

To be an "icon of virility" a movie character must be masculine, heroic in the sense of brave to the point of death, strong and fierce and forbidable in the fight against evil, intelligent in outwitting the foe, virtuous in protecting the vulnerable and defending the good, and pure of heart especially in treatment of women and children. Here is my list:

Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday, To Kill A Mockingbird, Keys of the Kingdom,, Russel Crowe in Gladiator, Cinderella Man, Sidney Poitier and John Wayne in almost anything, Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig and in High Noon, Alan Ladd as Shane, Charlton Heston as El Cid and Ben Hur, Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa, Alec Guiness as Obi Wuan Kenobi, Liam Neeson as Schindler, Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront,James Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life, Frodo and Aragon in Lord of the Rings, Peter O 'Toole as Lawrence of Arabia, Zorro and Robin Hood and Batman, Denzel Washington in Equalizer,Spencer Tracey as Father Flannagan, Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men, Ox Bow Incident, My Darling Clementine and others, Paul Newman in The Sting Nobody's Fool and Cool Hand Luke, Montgomery Cliff in I Confess, Jeremy Irons in The Mission, Robert Deniro in Bronx Tale, Roberto Benigni in Life is Beautiful.

Who is my favorite? Tough decision! But for his unique combination of gentleness, strength, intelligence, calmness and lightheartness I have to go with Gregory Peck in Roman, Mockingbird and Keys.

Who did I miss, dear Reader? Who is your favorite?

The Smartest Man I Ever Knew

My field of interest is theology, philosophy, culture, history, and the social sciences; so I am not talking about so many other intelligences such as musical, engineering, emotional, mathmatical, athletic, political, artistic, business and other. I will include among those I have known some famous figures who I have heard speak but I did not know personally and who did not know me; these I will italicize. By "smart" I mean here a combination of natural intelligence, erudition, virtuous character, and holiness which together bear fruit as wisdom and depth of insight.

Genius level, first team. John Paul II, Kiko Arguello, Pope Benedict Emeritus.,

Brilliant level, second team. Ivan Illich, Fulton Sheen, Adrian Walker, Scott Hahn, Paolo Prosperi and D.L. Schindler and D.C. Schindler, Avery Dulles.

Outstanding level, third team. Paul Vitz, Tom Guarino, Benedict Groeschel, Joe Whelan S.J., Bill Toth, (from the same JP II Institute) Antonio Lopez and Michael Hanby and Nicholas Healy, Ralph Martin, Rabbi Asher Finkel and Lawrence Frizzell.

Special mention: Two non-academics who were autodidacts (self-taught) but widely read, sterling in character, deep in insight and who deeply, personally influenced me: John Rapinich (my best friend, artist, beatnik friend of Kerouac, eccentric, saint) and Pat Williams, ex-marine, ex-pugilist, librarian, college mentor.

A tougher question: Who are the greatest women I have met in this regard? As I pondered this, I realized that the outstanding women I have known are weaker in erudition but deeper in emotional, intuitive, psychological, and spiritual wisdom. Less abstract and academic, they are more engaged concretely and incarnately in a life of prayer and service. At the top of this list: two women I personally met, Mother Theresa of Calcutta and Dorothy Day. Also: Seton Hall's Doctor Diane Traflett, my friend Felician Sister Marilyn Minter, Union Seminary's psychologist-theologian Ann Ulanov, and my charismatic mentor, Sister of Charity Pat Brennan.

I stand on the shoulders of giants.

Virtue and Femininity

In the pursuit of virtue, the woman has a huge advantage over the man as she is endowed by a powerful natural, instinctive urge to the good: morphologically, hormonally, neurologically and every which way...the woman is open to the other in sensitivity, compassion, emotional intelligence, kindness and generosity of spirit. It is her nature. In contrast to the brittle, sharp boundaries of the masculine soul and the inflated propensities of the male ego, the womanly psyche is pourous, engaged in the other, outgoing, inclusive, and gracious.

This instinctive, intuitional openess disposes her, at the same time, to specific weaknesses which require a formation of the intellect and will in virtue. Edith Stein (St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross) was especially prescient on this: she recognized the endowed richness of womanly instinctivity as well its need for a deepening and sharpening in the goodness of the will and intellect which can be overwhelmed by emotion and passion.

The masculine soul is more fragmented: even neurologically, parts of the brain that process emotion, thought, articulation, and decision do not communicate with each other as well as the more unitary, synthetic feminine brain. The danger for the woman is that she can be overwhelmed by emotion in a way that clouds the intellect and disables the will. So, education of the young woman needs a special kind of attention here.

The intense, profound bond between mother and daughter, of course, stengthens the feminine/maternal instincts. As does the spontaneous, intimate friendships formed so easily with other girls. So in a way quite different from the boy, the girl needs the influence of the loving, gentle, strong, protective father. Inbibing the love of the father, she takes in the best masculine qualities which she by nature lacks: a sense of being safe and cherished, emotional sobriety, inner serenity, respect for realistic boundaries and rules, reverence for authority/tradition/law, courage and self-confidence, a quiet assertiveness in the broader world, self-esteem in her own exquisite femininity as well as appreciation for the distinctive goodness of the masculine.

Mainstream feminism of the cultural liberalism of the past half century has tended to be a deconstruction of genuine femininity, actually a camouflaged and sophisticated misogyny, in its rush to androgyny which is actually a mimesis of toxic masculinity as sexual promiscuity (renouncing of paternity-maternity), bourgeois careerism in its pursuit of success-ambition-power, and the destruction of the powerless unborn.

A contrasting, more positive itinerary for the feminine in the face of an impoverished masculinity, can be seen in the black, ex-slave community. Here we see a fierce, resilient femininity, deeply rooted in Christian faith, that has compensated for masculine abandonment with a virile fortitude that yet preserves a maternal and feminine generosity.

In the broader culture, however, the decline of masculinity as a form structured by virtue has led to a decadent culture institutionalized in a emasculated liberalism bereft of the virile virtues and expressive of a weakened, reasentful and even hysterical effeminacy. This in turn has provoked a reaction in the form of a crude Trumpian machismo of xenophobia, bravado, anxiety and resentment.

Just this week, my niece mentioned to me her visceral aversion to some of the readings at daily mass: the mother of seven sons in Maccabees who exhorted her sons to suffer torture in fidelity to their God and the saints Perpetua and Felicity who themselves left their infants to accept excruciating martyrdom. My niece is by her nature exquisitely motherly; I was disinclined to disparage her feelings. But then she herself mentioned her devotion to our Blessed Mother. That of course opened a most hopeful direction: growth in closeness to Mary can only intensify all that is best in natural maternity even as engagement with the Passion of her Son can bring it a new spiritual depth.

Mary, our Mother, pray for us.

Virtue and Virility

The root for both virtue and virility is the Latin "Vir" meaning man, implying heroism and character. Virtue is constitutive of virility in a way different from the way in which it informs femininity. It is a different mix, a distinct gestalt.

Double standard here? Absolutely! Femininity and Virility are distinct forms; they contrast and complement each other; they are equal in dignity and significance. Vive la difference!

Femininity is more richly endowed...naturally, hormonally, intutitively, biologically...with compassion, resiliency, generosity, fidelity, sensitivity and emotional intelligence. The full flowering of femininity in spousality and maternity builds upon a wholesome filialtiy as with virility. But the blooming of the girl's character and personality is more fluid, spontaneous, and organic in comparison to the maturing of the boy which is tortured, labored, deliberate, prolonged, complicated.

Femininity is like a sturdy plant that can thrive in different circumstances: resilient and fierce, it can survive in dry or wet, cold or hot, with little or much sun and rain, with or without rich nutrients in the soil. with very little cultivation. To be sure, if it has good conditions it flowers into a magnificence of beauty and fruitfulness. To attain its fullest expression it requires, of course, formation in virtue. But even in the worst conditions it has a mysterious interior dynamism of resiliency and gratuity.

By contrast, manliness has a fragility, brittleness and vulnerabity about it. Without the right cultivation, the boy becomes either a weakling or a thug. It is like a plant that if not cultivated over many years with the right recipe of sun, rain, temperature and nutrients either shrivels and dies or becomes a monstrosity. Fruitful, fragarent femininity (I speak as proud father of five daughters) is relatively low maintenance; a little love and care and it yields wonderful fruit. Masculinity is super-high maintenance: takes many years of mentoring, correcting, encouraging.

The purpose or end of virility is paternity: the giving of life, protection, education, and guidance. As such, there are three primary virtues (humility, chastity, courage) and two secondary (prudence, justice) which constitute virility as paternity.

Humility. Humility is first of all for two reasons. Most important: human paternity is representative of the Fatherhood of God. Of its very nature it points away from itself to God. The success of a father is not that his children love and respect him; it is that they have moved, with his help, beyond him into a filial relationship of trust and love for our heavenly father. By contrast, maternity is not represenational, it is its own distinct creaturely form which complements but does not represent the Fatherhood of God. Secondly, the masculine psyche or ego is (since the Fall) brittle, crude, self-centered, insensitive, defensive-aggressive, and isolated. It is exactly what it should not be to point beyond to our heavenly Father. Deflation of the masculine ego is the lifetime task of every man. Paradoxically, however, genuine humility is not self-deprecating or weak. Rather, it is a realistic acknowledgment of ones weaknesses but even moreso a grateful, trusting reception of all God's gifts including intelligence, fortitude, wholesome self esteem, and magnanimity of spirit.

Chastity. A father's love is wholesome and pure in that it seeks (indeed fights for and dies for) the well being of his child. The polar opposite of such love is predatory abuse of the vulnerable. Lust and covetousness, in all their ugly configuations, is sariligeous in that it defiles true paternity. Here again we see that "normal" or post-original-sin masculinity is violent, toxic, narcissistic and predatory. The fight for purity of heart is also a lifelong struggle for the man.

Courage.Virility is essentially strength or fortitude. Such is essential to paternity. Paradoxically, such is the inverse side of, not the contrary of humility. The child, the wife, the family, the community depend upon the stability, reliability, safety provided by the strong father. Cowardice or weakness are the contraries of virility. Growth in fortitude is the third of the great masculine life projects.

PrudenceA man who is growing in humility, chastity and courage is also advancing in prudence. This is practical wisdom or intelligence which issues from serenity of spirit, sobriety in the emotions, rational self-restrain, and an receptivity to the Real. The good man provides a stability, a steadiness, a sense of peace and safety which is desperately needed by the young, the vulnerable and by women with their heightened sensitivity.

JusticeThe prudent man (who is humble, chaste and strong) will see and do, spontaneously, the just thing. He has the interior peace to evaluate all the elements in a given situation and will intutively move to the right decision. His presence insures a sense of justice which brings safety and peace.

The attainment of virility is lifetime project which requires personal dedication and exertion, relationships of accountability-support-mentoring, and a life of prayer and trust in God's Holy Spirit.

St. Joseph, Pray for us!

1968 Turn to the Dark Side: Catholic Liberalism Dies; Cultural Liberalism Prevails

Like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"...the entire liberal establishment, especially the Democratic National Party, until then a bastion of Catholic Liberalism, became transfigured and possessed by two conspiring ghost-demons: those of Marx and Freud.

The political-economic liberalism of my father's generation(1945-65) was solidly Catholic. It's primary concerns (the rights of workers against capitalists; the care of the poor and disadvantaged, including in other countries; the emergent civil rights movement) firmly aligned with Catholic social teaching. The entire culture passionately endorsed the traditional family, with as many kids as possible, in a rich ethnic Catholicism. It embraced a vigorous patriotism, having just sacrificed to defeat German and Japanese expansion, which entailed a fierce religiosity in defiance of atheistic, imperialistic Communism. This was not the liberalism of individualism, of resentment of authority and tradition, of personal license; it was solidarity in family, faith, trade union, and country. This powerful edifice (Catholic faith, patriotism, labor movement, Democratic Party) collapsed, spectacularly, like the walls of Jerico, in 1968.

This Fall was triggered by the acceptance of two coniving lies: that of Marx that all of social life is violence, the dominance of the weak by the strong, war always and everywhere; and that of Freud (or his followers) that the repressive superego is dominant over the innocent erotic yearnings of the childlike Id. The synthesis of the two is the work of the Frankfurt School: both build upon an atheistic nihilism and assume a chaotic universe of unending violence: interiorly within the psyche itself and externally between the master and the slave. This was the work of Marcuse, Reich, Fromn, the New Left and the hippies and the yuppies, Black Liberation, feminism, gay rights, and the decade of the 1970 and afterwards.

These two falsehoods are appealing as there is some truth in them. Power dynamics are in play in all areas of human interaction; it is part of original sin. Dominance and submission happens between classes, genders, races, ethnic groups, nations, empires, families, siblings and friends. But this is not the total and final picture. Likewise, wholesome sexuality has certainly in the past been suppressed by fear, shame and guilt aligned with unhealthy religiosityAgain: that is not the entire story. It is ironic that just as an emergent post-modernity was about to declare the end of all mega-narratives, the Cultural Left became intoxicated with this dual narrative of dominance and oppression as explanatory of everything.

It bears mentioning also, here, that John Paul II emerged as pope, at the very end of the catastrophic 1970s, with the definitive response to both narratives with his catechesis of the human body and his social teaching.

If Cultural Liberalism is a contradition of the communal, populist, pious liberalism of my youth, it was an intensification of the trajectory of classical enlightenment liberalism: liberation of the autonomous, uprooted individual from the shackles of the repressive, reactionary, superstitious, legalistic, religious past. The core of this liberalism: hatred of the Father. Patriarchy is the constitutive negative image of this religion: oppression of women by men, children by elders, eros by law, reason by superstition, freedom by authority, poor by rich, and black by white. The original Fall, when Eve inbibed the Satanic lie "that the Father is not to be trusted" is reenacted with catastrophic global consequences. For underlying it is, of course, a rejection of the loving Creator by resentful, jealous creatures. That classical liberalism took several forms: the economic liberalism (RNC) of the successful and affluent that idolized entrepreneurship, free markets and trade, expansive corporate captialism; and the contrary political liberalism (DNC) which mobilized an expansive government in defense of the powerless; and cultural liberalism which favored sexual liberation. By the late 1960s, a strange and unexpected political regestaulting occurred: economic liberalism alligned itself to cultural conservatism in reaction to the marriage of political and cultural liberalism. The working class, ethnic Catholic found himself without a home: entirely excommunicated from the anti-family party of abortion and sexual license, he could not entirely embrace the party of big money and libertarianism either. The party of Ronald Regan, while pro-life, pro-family, anti-communist, and pro-religion, remained alligned with corporate affluence and implicitly hostile to the subsidiarity of smaller communities that support the family.

With that background, we might now take a new look at Donald Trump from the point of view of Catholic politics. A year into the Biden regime and a year away from Trump's nauseating Twitter obsession, we have some distance and can evaluate what he offered. For our purposes here, I will not regard his vile personal behavior which firmly disqualified him from my vote in both elections. But focusing strictly on policy, he presents a promising new Catholic paradign for politics. He failed to deliver on all he promised; and he was toxic in so many ways (xenophobia, misogynistic, polarizing, unpredictable and incompetent by virtue of narcissism). But in his fundamental policy positions, he proposed a new conservative (culturally), populist (economically) Republican Party that aligns closely with (not all, to be sure) Catholic concerns.

He combined Republican conservativsm's defense of life, family and religious freedom (what is best about that party) while rejecting economic liberalism (free markets, trade) with its implicit individualism. In theory (though not in practice) he absorbed into his party the traditional Democrat concern for the working and poor classes. His consistent and firm defense of life and religious freedom, in his court selections and other decisions, was marvelous from a Catholic perspective. Not so much was his economic populism: his tax plan benefited the rich. Indeed, there is a litany of criticism that can be leveled against him. But in broad outline, he offered a populist, conservative alternative to the decadent indulgence of the Left and the affluent indifference of the Right. What I am advocating is a Never-Trump, (Trumpian?) Catholic-friendly Conservative Populism.

Personal Postscript: I am eternally grateful for my 1968: happily ensconced in college seminary with good friends and plenty of books I ventured to Cuernavaca, Mexico, that summer to study conversational Spanish at CIDOC, the think-tank of then-Monsignor Ivan Illich. I fell under the spell of this brilliant, eccentric, iconoclastic, Catholic mystic. He was far more radical than anything in the Catholic Left or the movements of the 1960s: a medievalist, he rejected modernity in toto...technology, bureaucracy, the clericalism of the Catholic Church. But underlying this was a deep, Catholic love for Christ and the Church. This appealed to my young, idealistic heart. I imbibed his suspicion of modernity and I think this helped to protect my heart and mind and keep me "in the world but not of the world." More deeply, I emulated his striking love for the Gospel and the Church. That very summer he was disciplined by the Vatican and later left the priesthood to pursue his vocation, keeping always his celibacy and prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours. God bless Ivan Illich!

Eulogy for Judy Laracy Carpron November 13, 2021

What a delight and honor: to be here with my cousins to remember Judy, our first cousin. I am myself an expert on "cousins"...really! Recently I wrote an essay on "Cousins...Underrated!" My expertise comes from experience: I have great cousins. It is particularly good today to see the different generations of cousins gathered here today!

She was very close to my mother, her Aunt Jeanne, who passed earlier this year at the age of 101. Just before she died, sound of mind and strong in spirit, she was calling people to say goodbye. She called her dentist, whom she loved, to say she wouldn't be in for her cleaning and exam. Judy was at the top of here list. They had a great chat. There was no fear of death there.

A Catholic does not fear death. I often remember my Aunt Marian, Judy’s Mom, just weeks before she died there was a big party, for Frank’s 75 birthday party, but it was really a going away party for her and she was radiant, smiling and laughing and as always full of affection and joy.

My Mom fondly remembered Judy a a teenager surprising her with a visit with her friends and a box of candy or goodies. That was Judy: always fun and laughter and joy. For us younger cousins she was the quintessential cool 1950s rock-and-roll teen: popular, gregarious, fun-loving. She was in the league of Ricky Nelson, Fonserelli, and John Travolta! She had a wild side, mischevious and even naughty: she would sneak out of her house in the morning to go to the infamous candy store for her breadfast of coke-and-donut.

We had a rough start though:: she liked me but I wasn’t crazy about her. I was maybe 4 years old and she was about 14. She like me but I wasn’t too crazy about me. So she would look at me and say “Hey cutie, I’m going to kiss you.” I would scream: “No. No kisses” and run away in terror. She would chase me, laughing. And I remember wondering “What is funny about this?” And she would catch me and kiss me. So annoying. SO ANNOYING! She was such a tease. She got that from her father, Frank.

This is what I want to say: she was, straight out, the most fun and funny person I ever met. When you were with her you were always laughing. The only ones in her league are her sisters Eileen and Pat. First of all: they tell everything. There are no secrets. No skeletins. No facade or pretensions. You are sitting there and you think: “Wow! She just said that!” And then you are laughing. If they are together it is even worse. You have to take a breath between the laughter. All the foibles and failings and sufferings...they all become light and humorous and affectionate when you are with the Frank-and-Marian cousins.

Judy, like her sisters, is a sublime sythesis of their mother and father, Frank and Marian. What a couple! So different. Frank tall and large in stature, in personality and character. Loud, clear voice; intelligent; gregarious; expansive and generous; funny. A leader of men! Marian, by contrast: petite, vivacious and bubbly, overflowing with affection and warmth; rich in faith. When you put that intelligence and humor together with that warmth and affection you have magic, that was Judy.

She was a product of, even the epitome, of the world in which we grew up. Working class, Irish Catholic; lots of kids; women pregnant or nursing; drinking and laughter and happily loudness. The men, all active in the labor movement, talking sports or union or politics. It was lively, light-hearted, energetic, and loud in a happy way. The Laracys, the Lenons, the Corrigans, the Hegers and others. Frank and Marian seemed to serenely preside, like king and queen, over this rich community of laughter, energy, faith, hope and love. And Judy was like a Princess.

Underneath it all: a deep, quiet Catholic faith. Our gatherings were often around the sacraments: somebody’s first communion, confirmation, wedding, baptism or funeral (like today). Judy, Rich,Eileen, and Pat lived literally in the shadow of Our Lady of Lourdes Church in West Orange. The Church was like the West Orange mountain, solid, palpable, reliable, invulnerable. ..like the earth beneath your feet. From the Church you could almost throw a snowball and hit their house. The Eucharist was there and the sacraments and I believe Judy inhaled, with the oxygen, the Holy Spirit radiating from that Church. She always kept the faith...in her quiet, humble way. Nothing pretentious, preachy or moralistic about her. All fun, affection, kindness. Never a hint of resentment or self-pity. Judy loved her novenas. And her rosary. I am told that when she was sick Linda asked if she wanted her rosaries she took them and immediately started praying her hail marys. It is like riding a bike...it comes right back. With her sisters she was expert about dispensations: she knew the travel dispensation, sick and all the others like a trained canon lawyer. She lived in the state of grace: quiet, humble. Trusting in God’s presence, power, providence.

As the oldest of us, Judy always seemed to me to have a foot in both generations: ours, and our parents. Born in 1937, she was a young girl during the war, well before the rest of us were conceived. You can imagine what a joy she was in those difficult years to her grandparents and all the women praying for safe return of the troops. She was Aunt Grace’s best friend. She was like a little sister to my father and the Laracy brothers. Uncle Jack was very fond of her. He was a funny guy: a loner, quiet, we didn’t see much of him. He fought with Patton. Aunt Grace remembers that Judy would get these beautiful letters from overseas from him. In beautiful penmanship, well expressed, they read like poetry. But the letters to Grandma and Aunt Grace were three sentence scribbles, not real intelligible. Some years later Aunt Grace asked him about the letters. “Oh that: I wrote the ones to you but the ones to Judy were done by a guy in our regiment who could really write well and he did the important letters to girlfriends and wives and stuff." I doubt Judy every knew that. I wasn’t going to tell her.

I felt a sweet Joy when I learned she had passed. A relief that her suffering was over. A sense of awe at a live well lived. But most of all a surge of joy pondering the joy in heaven as she is received by Pop Lenon, Grandma and Aunt Grace, her Laracy uncles and all the rest. Yes there is great joy in heaven as she is welcomed by so many who love her: Frank and Marian, Pop Lenon, Grandma and Aunt Grace and the Laracy borthers and others.

We are here today to pray for her soul, of course, because like all of us she is in need of God’s mercy. Her purgatory, I suspect, was largely served over these last difficult months of sickness. So I feel drawn to already share that Joy in heaven. With that happy thought, Let me end with a prayer of gratitude.

Dear God. Thank you for this beautiful life! Thank you for this marvelous cousin, wife, mother, grandmother, sister, friend. Thank you for all the joy and love and laughter she gave us. May she and all those she has loved in heaven send blessings of joy and love to us on earth, especially Bill, Kathy and Billy and Linda and their families, Rich and Eileen and Pat and their families, her cousins and friends. and all of us who enjoyed her so. Amen.

Incest in Camelot

Jacqueline Kennedy herself, in a 1963 interview, embraced the Camelot myth: "There will be other great presidents, but never a period like this." She is correct: It was a Camelot time...in more ways than one.

Clearly there are such times in our personal and communal lives...sublime, extravagant, joyous times...when everything is right...when life is enchanted: a summer romance, a family holiday, the courtship-honeymoon stage of a romance, the illuminative stage of prayer life, an athletic championship. For Israel, the kingship of David was Camelot; it fell apart, due to the diabolic dynamisms of incest, biological and moral-spiritual.

The heroic warrior-king-father David (a prototype for Arthur, JFK, MLK) created the quintessential Camelot, but the seeds of its destruction were in his adultery and a pattern of incest. His adultery with Bethseba was despicable mostly in his betrayal of Uriah, her husband and his loyal soldier and therefore, symbolically, his son. Morally, David slew his (moral) "son" to have his (moral) "daughter-in-law." Fast forward and we have his family in a sexual chaos: his one son rapes his own half-sister and then is slaughtered by her full-brothers. We have: adultery brings filiocide, brings incest, brings fratricide. This is the prototype for the incest-driven fall of Camelot.

The John F. Kennedy Presidency was a Camelot for us liberal, Catholic, especially Irish Americans. It was...the intelligence of the brain trust, the movie-star-glamour, the virile energy, the international altruism, the confidence, the expansive economy, the Pax Americana, the Vatican Council, the large families, the religious vocation surplus, and so much more.

The pressing historical question that haunts our boomer generation: Why did this splendid, enchanted Kingdom collapse so catastrophically shortly after the death of JFK around 1965? The answer may be in the Camelot tradition itself!

In the earliest legends, King Arthur dominates as a heroic warrior...much like the young King David, not unlike JFK and MLK. Later, he is sidelined as elderly and relatively weak in comparison with the appealing Lancelot who steals his bride Guenevere. We see here that the king, a paternal image, becomes weak while the queen's affection goes to the younger knight in a quasi-oedipal adultery. One of the earliest Arthurian legends has his nephew achieving this oedipal victory. In both cases, the king is diminished and sidelined as mother and surrogate son surrender to sexual chaos. This simple story line unveils the inner form of the Cultural Revolution that exploded in the late sixties: the diminshment of the Father (and authority, tradition, law, the sacred, the masculine), the explosion of a resentful femininism, and the license for contracepted, sterile, largely oedipal sex.

JFK was himself, of course, the opposite of the cuckolded, failing patriarch: he was robust, vigorous, confident and shamelessly promiscuous in imitation of father Joseph Kennedy. The Patriarch established the adulterous legacy and explicitly initiated his sons into it. John's alleged bedding of his father's ex-lover Gloria Swanson is an oedipal soap opera on a colassal scale. The Kennedy men continued this abuse of women out of unrestrained, power-fueled, toxic masculine lust. The legacy continued: Martin Luther King, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, Andrew Cuomo, Jeffrey Epstein and a legion of often-Democratic, always contracepting, pro-choicing abusers of women. Clinton' daliance with Monica, same age as his daughter, was the most overtly incestuous drama; as such fatal for the life of the family and community; but casually dismissed as a recreational indiscretion. Epstein's abuse of underage women is nauseatingly oedipal in the moral and psychological sense. MLK continues as a cultural idol, curiously immune to "me-too" critique and its implicit acceptance of sexual license.

It is a mystery, a paradox, an irony: as the Great Generation (of men who defeated two totalitarianisms, contained a third, built a superb economym, society and church) reached the pinacle of power in the late 1960s that there was this luciferian pivot against the paternal into oedipal, incestuous spiritual chaos. How could this happen? How did they lose their grip on the Good and the True? Why did their women collapse into envy, resentment and disgust for the paternal/maternal? Why did their children despise them and their legacy with such arrogance and narcissism? it is a Mystery from hell! At the heart if it is the dark underside of Camelot: patriarchy turned adulterous/incestuos; womanly rage and envy; filial disloyalty, narcisissm and arrogance; the desecration of the iconography of the paternal, maternal, spousal and filial.

I recall a conversation many years ago with a young Italian security guard at Newark Airport: speaking of his love for his children, he recalled running into an ex-girlfriend who offered an adulterous daliance. He declined. Thoughtfully he reflected: "In regard to my wife, I could have gone with her. But not in regard to my children. I could never look them in the face." It struck me at the time as a profound moral intuition: the worst thing about adultery is the damage to the children. We know marriages that survive and even flourish post-adultery, where the offender is contrite and the offended forgiving. But the wound to the children, it seems to me, is indelible. The child's very being is conceived in the union of groom-and-bride; the child's very identity flows from the conjugal union, however imperfect, of the two. The violation of the sacred father-son/daugher relation in (implicitly incestous) adultery is the deepest of sins; it is not so much about sex as about the holiness and desecration of fatherly love.

The fall of Camelot, of the kingdom and the family and a legacy...of David, Arthur, JFK and MLK, Clinton and Weinstein...lies in the betrayal of paternal love in adultery; oedipal resentment and distrust of the father; feminine envy and rage at the paternal as disloyal and tyranical; the degeneration of the paternal as heroic, noble, generous; and the surrender into the chaos of sterile, recreational-romantic, non-spousal, anti-paternal, non-maternal sex.

The building of a new, genuine Camelot must be on the foundation of the holiness of the family; the primacy of state-of-life (vows of marriage or consecration); chastity; filiality; fraternity; fruitful, spousal love; paternity and maternity. This is why the destruction by Pope Francis of the John Paul Institute for the Family in Rome is the most disloyal, decadent of his decisions. The trivialization of sexuality and the pervasive acceptance of the adulteries of JFK, MLK, Clinton, Trump in the desecration of paternity is the deepest evidence of the decadence of our society and Church. It is that the health of the Church and society flows from the deep, good roots of wholesome, holy families...the prayerful, faithful, humble life of Nazareth.

Misomasculinity, Virophobia, and the Reign of the Smothering Mother

Disclosure: Notwithstanding the apparently misogynist theme, this writer is a passionate, extravagant, devoted philogynist. He was only slightly smothered by his own mother whose fierce maternity was, happily, purified and corrected by the conjugal love she shared with her husband who told her: "Do not put your son on a pedestal!"

In the real order, every person, relationship, family and community draws its integrity, vitality, harmony, creativity, and joy from the interaction of the feminine and masculine as spousal, tender, reverent. If one pole or the other is denied, dominant, feared or despised, life becomes toxic. The denial of gender bipolarity is the collapse into chaos; andryogyny is sterility. Our society and Church, in its flight from toxic masculinity and patriarchy as tyranny, in its fear and hatred of virility, is not being liberated, but falling under the despostism of the the controlling, devouring feminine.

The Smothering Mother is:

- Motherly love as excessive in compassion, inclusion, acceptance because it is unbalanced by and hostile to fatherly love as demand, obligation, authority, boundary, tradition, truth, honor.

- A moral sense that is emotivist and anti-intellectual.

- Quintessentially: the Evil Mother swallowing her unborn, innocent and helpless.

A militant femininism hostile to femininity as form, as purpose, as beauty-truth-goodness, in a degenerate mimesis of toxic masculinity as careerism, loneliness, individualism, sexual license, and fear of the father.

- Safetyism as global, pervasive anxiety; flight from death, risk, adventure, challenge, combat, engagement; compulsive construction of a protected, maternal bubble; covidophobia, over-masking, extreme social distancing, hypermandating; conspiracy theories and dread of vaccines; helicopter parenting.

- A presidency and political party that is rabidly anti-paternal and anti-maternal in its genocide of the unborn, innocent and powerless; that desecrates the human body in its denial of the sacrality of sexuality as conjugal, fruitful, iconic; that abandons its allies in Afghanastan in a debacle of shameful disloyalty and startling incompetence; that is unwilling to protect its borders and so lures countless poor southern neighbors into a dangerous pilgrimage of hope; that spends the money of our children/grandchildren in its "boomerish" insistence on consumpiton NOW; that propagates a narrative of powerful/powerless, rich/poor, black/white, male/female, hetero/homo, and cis/trans that dehumanizes an alleged "oppressor class" as it infantilizes a "victim class" (e.g. black men are emasculated by the allegation that they are victims of "the man" and unable to protect their women and children); and so provokes, from the underclass, an anxious, raging populism-nationalism that tends to crude toxic masculinity.

- The expansion of the "mommy state"; tolerance of, indeed indulgence of moral decadence and sexual depravity; systemic deconstruction of traditional itineraries into noble masculinity; immersion in a tyranny of technology and bureaucracy; the predominance of unbalanaced femininity in crucial arenas of education, entertainment health care, media and law.

- A pontificate that is emasculated in an excess of compassion-acceptance-nurture bereft of fatherly demand, accountability, responsibility, chastity, authority, holiness, justice and truth; that is allergic to manly sturctures of dogma, law, tradition, authority, hierarchy; that embraces immigrants but is indifferent to the need for boundaries, rule of law, and national identity; that abandons the martyred Church in China in cowardly submission to vicious communists; that urges inclusion and dialogue but then resents criticism and lapses into catty resentment of traditionals (suppression of Latin mass) and conservatives (destruction of the John Paul II Institute in Rome"); that unleashes a confused, disorienting "synodality" in a vague resentment of tradition bereft of clarity, direction and purpose.

- A gay movement that, in a classic oedipal drama, camouflages its wounded masculinty, by recoiling from the paternal viewed as hostile-judgmental-shaming-rigorous and embraces the maternal as accepting-approving, and rages (in an elaborate liturgy of pride, parades, rainbows, coming out, etc.) like a petulant child for unconditional moral approval.

With this we understand the nature of our civilizational and ecclesial crises: a classic oedipal drama. In suspicion and resentment, son and mother collude together against the paternal experienced as tyranical and evil. The key protagonists are the gay and the femininist; the antagonist is masculinity as paternal. The structures of modernity...contraception, sexual liberation, deconstruction of gender, bureaucracy, technology and scientism, expansive state, demise of the family and intermediate institutions...all collude in the disparagement of paternity and the empowerment of a Smothering Motherhood.

The good news is that the Real, the True, the Good, the Beautiful are all irrepressible: masculinity/femininity, paternity/maternity, filiality, spousality, fraternity...these are superabundant, generous, resilient, captivating, charming and engaging. They share a certain invulnerability to The System. They will triumph! Thanks be to God!