High Noon

This  is best read while listening to the poignant High Noon Ballad: https://youtu.be/hsDyrZVqipA 

The classic High Noon, like all iconic art, can be contemplated at various levels of meaning.

1. Straightforward. Lean, direct, clear, low-budget, tightly defined by the 80 minute wait for the noon train...it  enacts the primal event of virile loneliness and heroism. At some point, every man must stand alone, without support from family-friends-community, with God only, in the face of death, evil, and his own weakness. This is Jesus in the desert for 40 days. To eventually enter into his vocation as Father, a man enters a solitude and requires a fortitude, in a manner perhaps incomprehensible to a woman. And so, Will Kane (Gary Cooper) simply cannot run away from Frank Miller and his thugs. Everyone, but especially his new wife, thinks he is crazy. In a remarkable performance, Cooper's facial expressions and manner show his fear, ambivalence, insecurity. He has been described as the anti-hero because his emotions register such vulnerability in contrast with the cool confidence reliably shown by John Wayne and similar cowboy heroes. But his solid character overcomes his fears and he emerges victorious. 

Twenty-one year old Grace Kelly, as his wholesome, virginal, innocent, Quaker wife, elegant and voluptuous in her tight-fitting white bridal dress, is sublimely beautiful. She is preternaturally the embodiment of comfort, pleasure, safety and happiness (for any cis-gendered, heterosexual, red-blooded, privileged, walking and breathing man, like Will Kane.) Initially, he flees the fight in the comforting companionship of his young wife.  This is the primal regressive temptation of the man: the retreat to infantile immersion in the maternal as safe, protected, pampered and pleasured (that can find expression in substance abuse, homosexuality, fornication, pornography). Like every man, Kane must renounce this temptation in order to face his own fears, death and loneliness. 

The film's synergistic, serendipitous symphony... Cooper's quiet, tortured expressions/manner, Kelly's exquisite loveliness, the haunting ballad (Do Not Forsake Me O My Darling song by Tex Ritter), and the sparse, lucid script... make for an unparalleled drama of the masculine AGON.

2. POLITICAL. The movie was written and produced in the middle of the McCarthy-Congressional hunt for communists in Hollywood. The film's writer  Carl Forman and the producer Stanley Kramer were caught up in this event. They were close friends, Jewish liberal activists, and had past associations with the Communist Party. Forman, loyal to his friends, evoked this fifth amendment rights and refused to "name names." Kramer broke with him on this. Forman was fired from the project, banned from Hollywood as a "red," and went on to a fine career in England. Writing the script in the midst of this, he self-consciously identified Kane with himself, the thugs with the McCarthy forces in D.C. and the cowardly, disloyal townsfolk with the compliant Hollywood establishment. It was, in short, a condemnation of the "red baiting" and the complicity of the entertainment industry. Kane's final gesture, casting his lawman's star contemptuously into the dirt, does not make sense as the finale of the plot. But it does as Forman's disgust for those who betrayed him. The conservative John Wayne, by contrast, despised the film as anti-American and brought out Rio Bravo a few years later as a rebuttal. To his credit, Cooper, himself a conservative Republican, was a lonely support for Forman, out of personal loyalty rather than ideology. How striking: in an accompanying personal/political drama, Cooper himself reprised the role of the heroic, loyal, lonely Will Kane. The film stands forever as a memorial to that brutal Culture War of the largely tranquil 1950s.

3. ECCLESIAL. John Wayne, and possibly John Ford, may have despised the film for a deeper, religious reason. The film sets the lonely, heroic Kane against the cowardly, disloyal townsfolk. This is a strikingly Protestant perspective: the nobility of the individual conscience against the despicable herd. By sharpest contrast, all the Ford-Wayne movies set the hero-protagonist in the midst of a dazzling community of fascinating, flawed, entertaining, finally loyal and honorable friends and family. This sense of a rich company clearly came from Ford's Irish Catholic background. Wayne himself later became Catholic (as did Cooper which we discuss next.) Ford's formula was patent: the noble Wayne,  some beautiful heroine, and a remarkable ensemble of character actors: Walter Brennan, Ward Bond, Barry Fitzgerald, Victor McLaglen, Hank Warden and others we recognize fondly without recalling their names. These loose bonds of friendship and family are affectionate, humorous, light-hearted and always accepting of each other's (even the Wayne characte'sr) failings and foibles. By contrast, High Noon's supporting characters are sad, heavy, monotonous, cowardly and disloyal. Seeing, or re-seeing any Ford-Wayne movie is like attending a big, happy, Catholic family reunion: memories, warmth, affection and laughter! 

4. Spiritual.  Most fascinating by far is the drama of a tormented soul that accompanied the film. Gary Cooper was in spiritual crisis. His happy marriage to an elegant, devoutly Catholic Veronica was being destroyed by his compulsive affairs. He had a long history of such. It wasn't just that he fell in love with every leading lady, but that every leading lady fell in love with him. A bad combination! Especially in the Hollywood environment bereft of the protections and inhibitions of bourgeois and Christian life. He had been raised Anglican and his choice of roles...honorable, noble, heroic, decent...indicates a delicate conscience. He had a nervous breakdown shortly before his marriage. He was the icon of American masculine virtue on the screen but privately a reckless fornicator-adulterer. He was associated with Marlena Dietrich, Lupe Velez, Carole Lombard, Claudette Colbert, Joan Blondell, Tallulah Bankhead (who famously said "the only reason I went to Hollywood was to f... that divine Gary Cooper.) and others. While filming High Noon, Cooper was entangled in a long-term, shameful affair with Patricia O'Neill which culminated in the abortion of their child. We can easily imagine the torment of this promiscuous but sensitive conscience as it is  display in virtually every scene of the film. He is so persuasive in his pain because he was himself in such pain. He eventually returned to and repaired his marriage and was later drawn into the Catholic Church of his bride, Late in life, but not too late, he found peace and the moral integrity he performed so strikingly on the big screen.

With this background, we see the struggle of Will Kane as iconic of the deeper agony of Gary Cooper. The annoying disparity in age between Kelly and Cooper takes on meaning. There was about a 30 year disparity between the 20 and 50 year olds. But he looks even older due to the stress lines. In his personal life he had multiple affairs with younger women. He clearly suffered a severe love-sex compulsion in his desire for the comfort of a child-bearing-aged woman, his desire to please women, to be close to them. The agony on the face of Will Kane reflected the conflicted soul of Gary Cooper: torn between his desire for virtue, loyalty to his wife and family, disordered attachment to the stunning younger O'Neil and his compulsive lust-covetousness. 

If we are to accept the Ballad of the movie, Kane himself is not afraid of death (he is a tested gunfighter) or of Frank Miller (whom he had already vanquished), but of losing his bride.

"Do not forsake me, oh my darlin, on this our wedding day, I do not know what fate awaits me, I only know I must be brave. And I must face the man who hates me, Or lie a coward, a craven coward, or lie a coward in my grave.

Oh, to be torn twixt love and duty, Suposin I lose my fair haired beauty, look at that big hand move along, nearin high noon. 

He made a vow while in state prison, vowed it would be my life or his'n, I'm not afraid of death but, oh, What will I do if you leave me?

Do not forsake me oh my darlin', You made that promise as a bride, Do not forsake me, oh my darlin, Although your're grievin', don't think of leavin', now that I need you by my side.

Will Kane is terrified by the possible loss of his "fair haired beauty." Gary Cooper is desperately clinging to his "fair haired beauty" in real life. He is destroying his marriage, killing his child, and annihilating his sensitive conscience. Clearly well into middle age, Cooper is facing a life-and-death crisis of the soul and desperate not to lose that which comforts him and eases all his fear.

Well, the story ends even better in real life than in the movie. Cooper starts going to Sunday mass with his wife and daughter. They establish a marvelous tradition, remembered by his daughter, of wearing swim suits under their Sunday clothes and swimming in the ocean before breakfast. He befriends a gifted priest with whom he share a virile camaraderie. At the age of 61 he passes from cancer, with the sacraments, in a serene, holy death. He was ready for the High Noon train!

May he rest in the Peace that eluded him for so long but finally grasped him!

 

The New Right

There is a lot of intellectual energy around the "New Right" that has been described as "Trumpism without Trump." It's three prongs are: cultural conservatism, economic populism, and protectionism. It is associated with a variety of personalities: Tucker Carlson, Sohrab Ahmari,  J.D. Vance, Rod Dreher, Patrick Deneen, Michael Brendan Dougherty and (with more nuance and sophistication, maybe) Ross Douthat and R. Reno. 

Generally, they tend to tolerate Trump, glancing away from his personal depravity, as a lesser evil than the alternative. Trump himself articulated the  three-point-ideology even as he markedly failed to deliver on his promise of economic populism. He was most loyal in his fidelity to moral conservatism. 

They ambition to replace the "fusionist" conservatism that  was formulated by William Buckley, peaked with President Regan, has prevailed over the last 50 years, and continues in the now weakened Republican non-Trumpian establishment (Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, and such.) It is a far cry from the Republican Party of the 1950s: the moderate, congenial,  pro-business, patriotic, confident, monoculture Christian America of Eisenhower and Rockefeller.

For an observant Catholic like myself this is a very happy development as it marries the two distinct currents of the Church's social teaching that have long been opposed to each other: advocacy for the poor, vulnerable, and disadvantaged and the moral foundation of society in the family, respect for powerless human life and religious freedom. As a Catholic political vision, it is far superior to the other options: big government progressivism in bed with cultural liberalism or small government, low tax, trickle-down conservatism. But it is not without its problems.

PROBLEMS OF THE NEW RIGHT

1. It's narrow nationalism/isolationism denies the Catholic intuition into the solidarity of all people as well as a realism about our own national interest in a stable, peaceful world order. A Catholic's identity is defined first by his faith, not his nationality. A wholesome patriotism has its place. But a Civil Religion, especially in the post-Protestant United States, does not fit Catholicism.

2. Many in this group are Catholic and young; some are converts. They combine intellectual acuity with an admirable intensity. Less happily, this is accompanied by an immaturity,  a certain lack of balance, depth, breath, diplomacy.  At the age of 37, Ahmari has already been a Shiite Islam, atheist, fusionist conservative, Catholic, Trumpian and now leader of the New Right. He brings to the Culture War  a brilliant mind and fire in in belly. He went to war, no holds barred, with David French over the Drag Queen Story Hour in the local library. He is on the right side of that battle (in my view). And yet, long term, in the Culture War, I prefer the gentle, nuanced, amiable confidence of the more sophisticated Ross Douthat. 

3. Identification with The Donald is a corrupting influence. J.D. Vance is most impressive: hillbilly, marine, ivy league lawyer, author, Catholic, venture capitalist, and now candidate for Senate in Ohio. He has aligned himself with Trump and his base in all its debased fear and rage. This may prove to be politically shrewd if he accesses the immense (but negative) energy there. But the danger, from a Catholic perspective, is that he himself be contaminated. He apparently said that he cares about our Southern border, not about the Ukraine. This dialectic of antimony, setting the one against the other, is contradictory of the quintessentially Catholic "both-and": Yes, we can care for our border and theirs...it is not a zero sum game. 

4. On the other extreme, the more refined Never-Trump position of Ross Douthat, disconnected from the irrational fury and power of the base, risks becoming an intellectual, New York, hyper-Catholic niche without influence. 

CLASS WAR IS CULTURE WAR

The New Right sees that the culture war is a class war. They intend to transform the Republican Party and the conservative movement into a defense, culturally and economically, of the underclass and the worker. 

Some historical context: prior to 1970 the political divide was class based economics, pure and simple: capital vs. labor. Culturally united in a Protestant but Catholic-friendly civil religion, the conflict was relatively mild.  That changed radically in the 70s: DNC betrayed its Catholic, working class base in favor of the cultural liberalism of the emergent professional, affluent, educated elites. It was able to retain the support of (mostly evangelical) Afro-Americans and the labor movement because it defended their financial interests against a RNC still close to the wealthy and defensive of low taxes, minimal regulation and small government. 

This changed in a major way with Trump who pulled the religious and the disgruntled into the conservative fold. The New Right intends to complete this move: recreating the RNC as defender of the underclass both culturally and financially. The current alignment is quite strange: the Left upholds the status quo which privileges them and militantly defends their morals but retains the allegiance of much of the underclass through its support of identity politics and of a stronger safety net as well as governmental support of labor. Meanwhile, the RNC is a contradictory, unstable alliance between moral traditionalists, the old Republican wealthy, and the furious Trump base. It is a convoluted, illogical configuration that fiercely resists change.

Can it transform the RNC? Unlikely, but not impossible. Trump himself is still around and may even win in 2024 but he is not serious or competent. To really influence the country the New Right would need the emergence of a magnetic, charismatic figure (like JFK, Regan, Obama, Trump) who could pull these strings together in an appealing way to rouse the base and appeal to a broader constituency. Short of that, we can only hope that this new force pushes our politics in positive ways culturally and economically.

POST LIBERAL?

Ross Douthat recently suggested in a NY Times piece that the liberal order needed a religious foundation to be strong and secure. This makes sense. But it sounds more like the Neo-Conservatism, now in retreat, of Neuhaus/Novak/Weigel. These affirm the fundamental validity of the liberal order but call for a religious-moral revival to inspire it correctly. This is NOT the viewpoint of the New Right.

The various constituencies of the New Right are fundamentally critical of liberalism as an order. The core metaphysical/religious affirmation of the sovereign Self is seen as the foundation of the  regime that is cancerous and dying. They renounce the view of history shared by Right and Left: an inexorable, progressive evolution through technology, science, productivity, meritocracy, rule by experts, and expanding economy, They challenge the alliance of Big Tech, Big Business, Big Government, and Big-Celebrity-Culture which is defended by both political parties in different gestalts. 

They come with this critique from diverse positions which are not mutually compatible: Tradinista Marxism, integralist Catholic reaction, anti-technocracy, Wendell Berry/Catholic Worker back-to-the-farm-ism, Benedictine localism, the Communio philosophy of the John Paul II Institute, and other. What they share is a drastic, extreme view of the current system(s) as a dystopian Matrix.

I am in agreement with this diagnosis and yet: first, the liberal world order has lots of good as well as evil; second, it is so firmly and broadly in place that it could hardly be replaced in toto. We have no option but to defend it (against, China, Putin and Jihadism) and incrementally improve it and purify it of its toxicities and dysfunctions, even as we detach in key dimensions. 

WHAT DOES THE NEW RIGHT PROPOSE

While they are faulted for not offering a positive alternative, the outline of a coherent polity is emerging.

1. Pro-traditional-family in culture (abortion, wage, sex-gender ethics) but also in economics (child support, family wage, adequate safety net.)

2. Religious freedom.

3. Protectionism in an effort to retrieve industrial jobs for the working class.

4. Control of the southern border.

5. Isolationism as a deep reluctance to wage war over seas.

6. Support for police and law enforcement.

7. Support for the labor movement.

8. Anti-monopoly action against outsized, powerful, gargantuan Tech-Business-State.

9. Localism, federalism, subsidiarity to reduce the power of the federal government and return agency to smaller social units.

10. Engagement in the class/culture war and the rejection of identity politics.

CONCLUSION

For a Catholic, the New Right is a hopeful, refreshing development. Whatever its measure of success, it expresses what we value as true, good and beautiful. We continue to hope and to pray! 

 

The Resurgence of Deep Evil and the Return of Christian Realism

In the current First Things, R. Reno wisely recalls the Christian Realism of Reinhold Niebuhr. Writing in the time of Hitler and Stalin, he was looking directly into the face of the Deep Evil we now see resurging in China, Russia, Iran and Islamic terrorism. Niebuhr, with a clear-sighted Barthian sense of sin, provided the theology underlying the prudential, forceful diplomacy of Churchill, FDR, de Gaulle and later JFK, Nixon-Kissinger and Regan. Such realism is a sober, rational, appropriate response to Evil in all its intensity, depth and destruction. 

In the 75 years since the War, we have been indulged, softened and corrupted by unprecedented peace and prosperity. The deterrence policy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) worked perfectly. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 left the Pax Americana firmly in place and Western liberal institutions (temporarily) unrivaled for global dominance.

 Secure, comfortable, and overly confident, we have surrendered ourselves to a variety of "un-realisms." Comforting, delusional, deeply in denial...they compete with and contradict each other but share an inner form or structure: Pelagian trust in a simple, ideological fix to violence and injustice, flowing from a sentimentality in flight from the reality of sin and deep evil. Five such un-realisms  prevail:  Neo-Conservatism (attributed especially to W. Bush and the Iraq invasion), the Vietnam Derangement Syndrome (epitomized by Biden's abandonment of Afghanistan), nationalistic isolationism (crudely enacted by Trump), rationalistic/optimistic liberalism (of Obama), and  anemic, sentimental semi-pacifism (of Pope Francis and a herd of happy Christian liberals).

1. Neo-conservatism, which surged with the end of the Cold War, is the most obvious and widely disparaged, on both the Right and the Left, of the ideologies of arrogance. It is blamed for our futile, wasteful wars in the Middle East. Its weakness, we all see now, was the "end-of-history" over-confidence in Western liberalism. On the other hand, it was more realistic than the other four ideologies in its accurate assessment that the withdrawal of American power would leave a vacuum that would be filled by far worse actors.

2. Biden's catastrophic and simply idiotic withdrawal from Afghanistan is the opposite of the neo-conservative impulse: the dread of American military engagement. It is a prolonged, adverse reaction to Vietnam. It motivated Clinton's refusal to intervene in the genocide in Rwanda. If the neo-conservatives inflate America into a messiah, these liberals exaggerate its demonic character.  It a convoluted, visceral conviction that withdrawal of American forces from combat will leave peace in its wake.

3. Closely aligned with this is the optimistic rationalism confidently articulated by Obama. He was immediately and unthinkingly given the Nobel peace pride, especially for reaching out to Muslims. The liberal assumption, of course, was that the turmoil in the Middle East was largely due to the Cheny-Bush greed for oil, money and power. Surely, the modest, calm, reasonable, conciliatory Obama would swiftly bring peace to the area. We know things got far worse: Libya, Syria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq! Those were horrific years. Obama did not, of course, cause this. That is the point: there are fierce, diabolic forces at work in that area which America did not cause, cannot control and will not cure. His peaceful, reasonable, conciliatory approach was useless. They should revoke the prize which was demeaned by its bestowal.

4. Distinctive is Trumpian nationalism and isolationism. His crude "America First" demeanor shares the aggressiveness of the Neo-cons as well as a realism about the use of power. He shares the post-Vietnam aversion to over-extension overseas. His demand that Europe pay its fair share of NATO expenses was entirely just. But his offensive, arrogant manner unnecessarily frustrated the alliances we need to be effective on the global scene. By temperament and training a Catholic internationalist, I was repulsed by his ethnophobia and narrow ethnic politics. But it is also unrealistic: we were unable to avoid engagement in two world wars in the last century. The globe is far more interconnected now. American self-interest, rightly understood, depends upon a stable, peaceful world order. The retreat to the isolationism of Charles Lindberg is itself a sentimentality and a delusion.

5. Lastly, we find in the Christian Liberal mainstream, exemplified in our current pope, the presumption that understanding,  compassion, forgiveness, and love are in themselves adequate to overcome evil so that we can do away with lethal force: the absolute rejection of capital punishment, defunding of the police, "war is not working" doctrine, allegations of "mass incarceration." This is a naivete, a softness, a sentimentality. It is a sterilized, allergic flight from the just and rational use of force, including deadly force. It is unrealistic and irresponsible. 

So what will a prudent Christian realism look like? I suggest the following:

1. Acknowledgment of the power of sin and evil in its depth, intensity, expansiveness and oftentimes it penultimate triumph...this side of the Parousia.

2. Willingness to use lethal force in a reasoned, sober way to restrain the spread of evil.

3. Accurate assessment of our own capabilities, limits and boundaries.

4. Acceptance that weakness in the face of expansive evil can be worse than resistance. (Churchill.)

5. Determination to work with others in less-than-perfect alliances to restrain evil and advance our values and way of life. (NATO, the cooperation of Israel and the Sunni states against Iran, and a coalition in Asia to inhibit an imperialistic Communism in China.) 

6. A wholesome patriotism balanced by a modest but assertive internationlism.

As Catholics, of course, we can relax and sigh with relief. We are on earth only for a little while. This life is a test, a preparation for Eternal Life. Jesus is Risen. We are destined for heaven. Our agonistic engagement with the Kingdoms of Deep Evil is important, but is NOT the most important thing!   

The Inner Structure, the Form of "Gay"

Gay is not the same as homosexual. Gay is a type of homosexuality. Many homosexuals are not gay.

<p>We have always had priests and religious who are homosexual and live holy, sacrificial, chaste, fruitful lives and are not gay. There are those, probably bi-sexual, with happy marriages and families, who may or may not indulge their urges quietly on the sidelines. And then there have always been those who are sexually active, with a partner and/or promiscuously, without making a public statement about it.  For example, notorious homosexual predators Maciel and McCarrick were not properly gay: living a double life, they publicly upheld a traditional viewpoint.

<p>These last two exemplify a profound pathological splitting: two aspects of personality are entirely cut off from each other. The gay narrative would apply this paradigm to all non-gay homosexuals, understanding them as "in denial of their true selves" and oppressed by the shame of internalized homophobia. I think not.

<p>Gay entails these proclamations:

<p>1. That homosexual activity is morally good.

<p>2. Self-identification as profoundly, substantially homosexual.

<p>3. Righteous, angry demand for moral approval from society and Church.

<p>4. Participation in an alternative gay culture and socio-religious-political movement.

<p>We have had homosexuality throughout history and across cultures; but the explosion of the Gay Movement in the 70s is a distinctive product of modernity and cultural liberalism. Its immense influence is the confluence of three powerful currents of modernity:

<p>1. The sterilization of sexuality; its rupture from fertility and conjugal sacramentality.

<p>2. The explosion of the identity politics of "victim groups" and the omnipresence of the Marxist model of oppressor/oppressed.

<p>3. The triumph of the therapeutic and the emergence of the narcissist as the characterological prototype of our time.

<p>IMPORTANT CLARIFICATION: The word "narcissist" in this essay is NOT  intended in the  deep, dark sense of the pathological Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Rather, it is used in a non-clinical, general sense of the tendency or trait shared, in some degree, on a scale, by all of us. It is not intrinsically bad. For example, my 2 and 4 and 6 year old grandsons clamoring for my attention is entirely wholesome and delightful. I am aware as I type this that a strong narcissistic impulse is at work in me: I love my thoughts and hope they will be admired by you, kind Reader. This is not my best trait, but is not perverse or sinful in itself. I hope that Dante and Shakespeare and even St. John took some narcissistic delight in their work. Our best entertainers, comedians, politicians and priests are often narcissistic as it lends a liveliness, an energy, a charm to their performance. At the Eucharistic Conference in Philadelphia in 1976 I saw in person Bishop Fulton Sheen, surely the most brilliant, holy, influential  American Catholic evangelist of the 20th Century. I was stunned by his flamboyance, histrionics, showmanship." Liberace in the Holy Spirit!"  Powerful narcissistic trait: but integrated into a personality inflamed with Faith-Hope-Love it became another gift used for God's glory and the edification of the Church. Many priests show this trait: but combined with generosity, compassion, filial loyalty to the Church, humility, immersion in the Word of God, and a good sense of humor, the negativities associated with the trait are overcome and it becomes a priestly asset. How monotonous our Church would be if all priests were low on the narcissistic scale!

<p> The core of Gay is not homosexuality, but an unrestrained narcissism. Gay is homosexual narcissism or narcissistic homosexuality. It is not merely the surrender of the will to the erotic urge; it is the declaration  that this urge is good, that this urge is defining of the self, that this urge must be granted public, moral approval. It is the eruption of an infantile demand.

<p>The narcissistic thrust inherent in the entire gay movement is shamelessly manifest in the current furor over the Florida law protecting parental prerogatives in sex education and restraining school instruction in grades 3 and under. Traditional religions, common sense, parental intuition and even Sigmund Freud recognize the "latent" nature of sexuality in children prior to puberty. They are happily innocent in this stage, assuming they are not violated. This normal innocence has been under assault for decades, especially by an entertainment world obsessed with sex and romance. The gay narrative of "born that way" further sexualizes the child by positing a fixed "orientation" present even in this latent period. Alan Ginsburg famously said, 60 years ago: "We will come for your children." The assault is now in full force. Psychologists understand that the narcissistic parent, lost in the fog of his own confused emotions,  is not able to be attuned to the needs of the child. And so, we have today the urgency of young adults, confused in identity, desperate to self-validate by inflicting their sexual ideology on children entirely incapable of understanding it. 

<p>Acceptance of Gay, it follows, is not truthful, authentic love. It is indulgence, codependency, enabling. It is normally well-intended, but an error, a mistake in judgment, that harms the homosexual and the entire community.  It is sentimentality, not charity-in-truth. It is confirmation of the homosexual in his false, indeed sinful identity. It is an infantilizing of the adult as a victim, as pathetic, as depleted of virile or feminine fertility, as diminished in paternity and maternity.

<p>The word Gay itself is a defiant deception: the condition is hardly happy, light-hearted, free. Unless embraced sacrificially as a cross, it is inexorably frustrating, futile, lonely and sad. To agree that the attraction, the activity, the lifestyle and the culture are all happy, freeing, life-giving...to even use the word Gay...is to affirm a lie.

<p>And so: to love the person with homosexual attraction in real compassion and truth is to renounce the word Gay and all it entails. It is to acknowledge the loneliness, sadness, and sense of futility. It is to see this as the Cross. It is to affirm his or her dignity as a man or woman; as a father or mother; as a child of God and brother/sister in Christ.

The Ex-Priest

 The mass exodus from the priesthood is one of the Great Facts of the American Church of the last half century. One source reports that in the decade after the Council the Church lost over 100,000 priests. Leaving the priesthood became the "new normal." Most of us number them among our friends and family. They are on the whole admirable men: talented, altruistic, generous, intelligent, seriously spiritual, and living wholesome, fruitful lives.

<p>We know that the sacrament of Holy Orders imprints a permanent, indelible spiritual seal upon the soul of the recipient. This mysterious imprint, like that of baptism and confirmation, cannot be removed...not by the pope, not by laicization, not by a change of mind. And so departure from the priesthood presents a deeper dilemma than does that from the religious life. In the later, we see dispensation from a vow and a permission to marry. With the priesthood, there is such a dispensation and permission, but the permanent seal remains.  What are we Catholics to make of this invisible, now covert seal? It is not nothing. It is not erased. It cannot be entirely ignored or dismissed. It is a Mystery worth pondering.

<p>It is said that the sin of a priest, because of the graces received in ordination, is more grave and consequential. A deeper place in hell is said to be reserved for bad priests. That makes sense within the Catholic economy of sin and grace.

<p>What is the grace of ordination? I think of it as an interior configuration to the person of Jesus Christ, an extraordinary identification, of even greater intimacy-depth-intensity than that of baptism/confirmation. With that comes sacramental powers, especially to absolve sin and confect the Eucharist, and a share in the governance and teaching authority of the Church. If a man is laicized, released from the clerical state and obligations, marries in a valid sacramental manner and lives a grace-filled married Catholic life...the permanent seal remains in place. This defies understanding.

<p>For many (hard to quantify), departure from the priesthood entailed a rejection in part of Catholic life and thought: marrying non-sacramentally without laicization, entry into a gay lifestyle, acceptance of the sterilization of sexuality in contraception, contempt for the masculinity of the priesthood, and typically the embrace of the "therapeutic" or left wing politics as surrogate religions. This then is part of the Great Apostasy of the Church of our generation. It is a profound error of the intellect, not a volitional act of bad will. It flows from a judgment against the Church; a distrust; an attitude of superiority against a "retrograde" institution. 

<p>The departed priests who marry sacramentally, raise families, and live charitable, generous lives seem to be normal lay persons, living out their baptismal/confirmation graces,  detached from the official acts of the Church. But the seal remains. What do we make of that? I do not know. It seems best to not probe too deeply. But it is not nothing. We need to wonder at it.

<p>Particularly interesting are those who do not marry or who marry and then divorce. They in effect remain in, or return to, the celibate life. Alone. Here the intimacy with Jesus that is granted in ordination is able to flourish. Without wife and children, the ex-priest can lean into the profound relationship into which he surrendered on his ordination day. He can renew a deepened life of prayer and charity as providence invites. Some priests seek laicization but are not dispensed from celibacy or the daily office. One such was Ivan Illich: the brilliant, eccentric, iconoclastic, mystical, ascetical provocateur who maintained his vows of celibacy and prayer of the daily office as he pursued an entirely strange, extraordinary life of thought.

<p>I have known others who went on to live quiet, modest, hidden, ordinary Catholic lives...prayerful, filially obedient to the Church, generous in simple ways. I think of St. Charles de Focault who remained a priest but buried himself in the Sahara desert, alone among unbelievers, living a life of hidden prayer and quiet charity. Perhaps he is the patron saint of the unmarried ex-priest. This a beautiful, unspoken, underestimated Mystery that we do well to appreciate and contemplate.

The Afflicted Priest

 He suffers. Interminably: not for 40 days but indefinitely, like Mother Theresa in her prolonged dark night. He is lonely and afraid of being alone. He suffers mental and emotional disorders. One or many addictions. He is the alcoholic in The Edge of Sadness; he is the whiskey Mexican priest in The Power and the Glory.

<p>He is, apparently, a failure. Humble, compassionate and holy, he nevertheless is a zero in the clerical world. He has achieved nothing. He is the Non-Monsignor.  A special type of Maverick Priest. Seemingly low in talent; unable to network effectively; not entirely dependable.

<p> He is the tormented, merciful Javier Bardem priest in Into the Wonder. He is the solitary missionary, played by Gregory Peck, working tirelessly for decades without results in Keys of the Kingdom. He is St. Solanus Casey, the sacerdotus idiotus (idiot priest) considered incompetent for preaching or confession but meekly answering the door of the Friary. He is St. John Vianney sent off to Ars, which today would be a hospital or cemetery assignment.

<p>He is stripped of pride; publicly shamed; entirely deflated in ego. He is an ecclesiastical pariah. He may be accused, but not defended. Guilty by default. He loves the Church but feels utterly rejected.

<p>He has no worldly or churchly support. Finally, his only recourse is into the heart of his Lord, Jesus himself. He is configured to Christ by a second ordination: that of shame, abandonment, emptiness, the agony of Gethsemane and Calvary. But by his wounds we are healed. He is precious, beautiful to us.

Kudos to the Trump Administration Handlers!

THANKS FOR YOUR SERVICE! That is what I would like to say to the patriots who served our country in the Trump administration. Pence, Barr, Pompeo, Kelly, McMaster, Tillerson, Matis, Haley, ...yes even DeVos, Mnuchin, Chao, Sessions. Liberals, confounded by the hysteria of Trump-Derangement-Syndrome, feel boundless contempt for anyone associated with him. But today, looking back with some distance upon his four years in office, it is amazing, I think even miraculous, that in his policy and governance he did so little harm and that the ship of state sailed on so serenely and even made some improvements.

When he was elected, at our family Christmas party, some of my sisters were distraught that he would start a nuclear war or otherwise gravely impact our world. I was silent: it did not seem to me to be an irrational fear. He is SUCH a fool! The next four years, as mediated by the media, was one idiotic twitter distraction after another. But the good news: Trump had zero interest in and ability for governance or classic politics. He had one and only one focus: his own narcisisitic performance. So, to a great extent, he let the administrative state continue its course with no interference. Additionally, he surrounded himself with mostly competent people, who swallowed their repugnance to serve the country.

His important aides shared a corporate personality: Conservative and Republican, mostly in a classic manner. (Obviously, Bannon and his type were another thing entirely.) From my point of view they were too far right on many issues; but they did defend unborn life, religious freedom and the traditional family. They had impressive careers in business, government and the military. They were practical, prudent and contrarian to his erratic impulses. They exuded confidence, strength, expertise. They served him faithfully but eventually had to renounce him: Barr and Pence of course in dramatic fashion in regard to the 2020 election.

For those four years, our was mesmerized by the Trump Clown Show. BUT: the world was at peace. We started to stand up to China. We got NATO nations to start paying their share. We allied the Sunnis and Israel against an aggressive Iran. The economy flourished. The Imperial Liberal Supreme Court was disestablished. Religious freedom was defended. The unborn were respected. The hegemony of the Liberal Elite was dealt a blow.

By comparison, 15 months under Biden and we have: in Afghanistan one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in our lifetime, a horrific invasion of Ukraine provoked by the perception of a weak USA, a border in crisis, crime raging in our cities, uncontrolled inflation, and a society becoming more polarized every day. Biden himself has contributed to all of this.

So we owe a debt of gratitude to those who swallowed their disgust and endured the frustration of working for The Donald!

On the Other Hand...Regarding the Enneagram

I was unfairly dismissive, in the prior post, of the Enneagram. I have been rumminating for several days about how I am a five and a six. It has been helpful: not a just a frivolous narcisstic ritual. So I am thinking this thing can be an aid in self-awareness.

We are each endowed, at conception, with a primal temperment. This is the initial raw material out of which our personality, identity and destiny will be formed. It is GIVEN. It is, of course, not a fixed, absolute structure. It will interact with the environment, even in the womb, and with our freedom in our beliefs, decisions, purposes and engagments. It is fluid and maleable, but not absolutely so. Eventually Lady Wisdom will lead us to befriend our given temperment...accept it, welcome it, guide it, sublimate it, compensate for it, educate it. But NOT deny, repress or even ignore it. It is most salutary to recognize our propensities, weaknesses, faults and failings as in part the result of a temperment that is given and that we can change only to some degree.

For example, Number 5 is inclined to thinking, reading, speculating and tends to detach from concrete life to reflect. This presents obvious positives and negatives. It can create a rich interior, thoughtful world. It can also tend to isolation and abstraction. My adolescence and early adulthood were largely happy and energized because I was always deeply into two or three good books: history, philosophy, psychology, literature. My own world was steady, safe, peaceful and monotonous: large family, school, some sports, and ordinary superficial adolescent male friendships. My actual life was not very interesting; but my life in literature was one fascination after another. In early adulthood I intuitively sensed a personal imbalance and realized it would be unhealthy for me to pursue an academic career although my talents and interests were in that direction. I soon married, we had children, and I worked in the real world as a school teacher, UPS supervisor and boarding home director. Fortunately my life was grounded and my life in abstraction limited.

Last year I was about 18 momths late with my 2020 tax returns. My son who does the returns gave me a clear, kind imperative: do not do another blog until you send me your paperwork. I laughed! He knows me. The next day I sent the receipts. I have been fortunate throughout my adult life in that demands and exigencies of life have kept me grounded...most of the time.

The enneagram is helpful in that it provides these paradigmatic tempermental types and can lead one to serendipity: "Wow! That is me! I am a five!" But it allows flexibility in that we then find a secondary type: "And I am also in some ways a six!" There is flexibility, creativity, fluidity in it. Much like our temperments themselves!

Please pardon my rash judgment, dear Reader, if you are yourself an afficionado of the Ennegram!

What to Make of the Enneagram?

I've been having fun this week figuring out if I am a five with a six wing or a six with a five wing. But seriously: The Enneagram...is it a valuable body of insight to be used for psychological/spiritual flourishing...or a comouflaged occult practice from the demons?

I would say none of the above. (Disclaimer: I have the very slightest exposure to the thing!) I see it as entertainment, fun, a parlor game. Like playing monopoly, reading a Harry Potter book, or watching a Jason Bourne movie. These are diverting, restful, enjoyable. Inherently not evil or holy.

Of course everything has its proper place and proportion. If my enneagrm-loving nephews invited me to an Enneagram party, with drinks and good snacks, I would happily go and argue about who is which type. (Oh smack! You are SUCH an eight!) But if they start a club with private meetings, secret initiations and binding vows...I will decline!

A quick historical search shows that its pedegree as science, philosophy and religion is zero. There is "no there there." While there are faint resemblances in the ancients and Sufi mysticism, there doesn't seem to be any real substantial continuity. It was started 100 years ago by a Russian "mystic"Gurdgieff. In the 1960s (Buyer Beware!) a clever Bolivian (Ichazo) and a creative Chilean (Naranjo) spun it into an engaging collage. Then it simply went viral.

Why its popularity? Because in the therapeutic era, the culture of narcicissm, it is an appealing exercise in self-contemplation. The vanity, the egotism of the Self delights in pondering: really, what type am I?

Real science measures and studies the actual; real philosophy ponders the nature, purposes, and structure of existence; real faith is reaching out to God. The eneagram seems not to come under any of these sciences. It assumes a horoscope predetermination of a rigid nine-point typology with some obscure origin. It reminds me of the "values clarification" that was so popular in the 70s: If you were a car, what would you be?

There are any number of academic and popular models that seem to offer help in self-reflection: Myers-Briggs (expecially extrovert-introvert binary), birth order factor, languages of love, and of course the unfathomable and boundless contemplation of masculinity/femininity. But the Enneagram to me lacks validity and solidity.

And so: the sight of Catholic retreat houses hosting enneagram weekends is not encouraging. It suggests a slide into new age superficiality and sentiment. Overload on cotton candy! A detraction from real food: meat, vegetbles and potatoes!

But honestly: Dear Reader! Do you see me as a five or a six?

I Never Knew a Monsignor I Did Not Like

I do not go as far as Will Rogers who famously said "I never knew a man I did not like."

A monsignor is to the priesthood what a made man is to the mob: He has proved himself; has paid his dues; is entitled to respect; his loyalty, competence, courage, dependabiltiy is beyond dispute; he carries a quiet gravitas about him; he is no one to be played with; he is serene, calm, gentle and confident in his strenth; he is a stand-up guy, a goodfellow; his word is gold.

MonsignorJim Finnerty, a marvelous priest, spent his last years in residence in our parish and then a nursing home nearby. He told someone I was the only one who called him Monsignor. For everyone, including himself, he was "Father Jim." He was comfortable, friendly, tender-hearted, informal, approachable, kind, non-judgmental, peaceful. Clearly, he was Fr. Jim. Nevertheless, I continued, more purposefully, to call him Monsignor.

It is not just my contrarian conservatism. The word for me carries respect. Jim Finnerty more than deserved it. He was a Vatican II priest in all the best sense. He spent decades in poor neighborhoods of Newark, serving the poor even as he himself was by any mainstream standard poor. He made thousands of visits to local hospitals and prisons, bring the sacraments and consolation. He touched my own family and in-laws over 50 years in parishes in Newark, Montclair and Jersey City. He visited our home to annoint a family member suffering serious mental-emotional torment. A little afterwards he started to improve. Now he is doing marvelously. Did the sacrament have anything to do with it? I think so!

I would visit him, wheelchair-bound, in the nursing home. I always left the visit bouyed up with happiness. He was always at work: often writting letter to friends. He would be in his clericals. He heard confessions and ministered to the residents and visitors like myself. When he said mass, he always delivered a homily that was a model of homelitic brevity, clarity, humour and inspiration. I wanted to get a copy of it. I found it comical that he delivered this perfect, handwritten, thoughtful, wise talk to a group of residents who were all at varying stages of senility and sleepiness. I just know that the angels and saints in attendance enjoyed it with me.

He was a true Monsignor. "Monsignor" is a form, an inner reality. I will give you a phenomenology of it: Steady, stable, and rock solid...emotionally, socially, intellectually, spiritually. Reliable and dependable. Intelligent, often in the academic and practical realms. Confident, strong, dignified. Good sense of humour. Humble; and usually from common, working class roots. Virile. In love with the Church.

Pope Francis discontinued naming such at one point and has since reinstated it with restrictions. The Holy Father has a bit of a chip on his sholder about hierarchy, clericalism and formalism. It is ironic: a monsignor is considered an honorary member of the Popes inner circle and here he is disapproving of it.

But he does have a point. There is the dark side of clericalism: careerism, arrogance, ambition, pomposity, privilege, unrecognized psycho-sexual immaturity, distance from the laity. We are all now living in the dark shadow of Maciel-McCarrick! The pope's changes make sense: now one must be over 65. It should take a while to "be made."

Honestly, I have not personally encountered much of that dark clericalism at its worst. It surely contributed to the priest sex scandal. But the monsignors I have met are remarkable for being at once gifted-intelligent-competent and yet humble and down to earth.

Calling someone Monsignor is a way of saying: Thank you for your service! Thank you for using your gifts so generously and humbly! Thank you for representing in yourself the Church as solid, reliable, enduring, enlightening, inspiring!

Thank God for our monsignors!

Grateful for the Interpreters

Creative geniuses are hard to understand: they use language in obscure, strange ways to unveil the the Real as True, Good and Beauty in new ways. That's why their translators or interpretors are so helpful! They are themselves super-intelligent scholars who read, understand and re-present the difficult teaching in a way us common folk can understand.

My lifetime-lifeworld has been blessed by four such geniuses: Balthasar, John Paul, Rene Girard and Ivan Illich. In reading them I barely get 50% of what they are saying. But happily each has come to me by way of a congenial, helpful guide. These guides are themselves first rate thinkers who penetrate the heart/intellects of their mentors and have an extraordinary gift for making those insights clear, available and inspiring.

Edward Oakes S.J. in Patterns of Redemption gives a masterful, clear, inspiring summation of the main teachings of Balthasar. He himself was a marvelous translator of Balthasar and his school to America. In addition, of course, we have the Communio School at the John Paul Institute in Washington D.C. who together develop the work of the great Swiss.

John Paul's catecheses on human sexuality are ellusive but Christopher West, gifted populizer and catechist, has made them easily available to all of us. He himself studied at the John Paul Insitutite which is the primary purveyor of both John Paul and Balthasar to the English-speaking Church. On some points, and correctly, the rigorous Communio School along with others have been critical of West. But that does not detract from his extraordinary success in making that body of teaching available.

Rene Girard found in Gil Baile an extraordinary, deep, supple disciple who gave us a breath-taking account of Girardian "mimetics" in Violence Unveiled. More recently he gives us, in God's Gamble, a creative, insighful synthesis of the best of Girard, Balthasar, and John Paul. He is the King of Interpreters and himself, in my view, a firsgt-rate creative thinker.

Ivan Illich fascinated me in the 1960s before he became a major critic of modernity in the 70s-80s but fell into disfavor when his Genderoffended mainstream femininism. I am now reading David Cayley's majesterial, authoritative Ivan Illich: an Intellectual Journey. Wow! No wonder I couldn't quite get Illich. Cayley is smart enough to know what makes sense in Illich and what is confounded and what is ellusive. This is definitely the hardest guy to intepret. But SO worth it.

The word "interpretor" or "translator" does not do justice to the work of these four. Each is himself an original, creative thinker in his own right. Each brings a wealth of scholarship, personal insight and charism to their work. What you get is two-for-the-price-of-one: the vision of the original genius as mediated to our world through a secondary but outstanding thinker.

In our Catholic world, however, there is another kind of genius who combines the two into one: delivers depth of insight in clear, understandable prose. Such tend not to be so creative. They have read widely and digest this erudtion into a message that is clear, inspiring, and easy to digest. Newman was such. Ratzinger is also. Sheen, Sheed, Guarino, Guardino, Lewis, Dulles, DeLubac, Hahn...the list goes on!

Thank God for our theological geniuses: those we can understand, those we cannot, and the ones who help us with that!

Catholic Theology: The Kantian Divide

At a conference in honor of Father Stanley Jaki in Seton Hall University in 2021, Monsignor Richard Liddy, himself an icon of Seton Hall (See sidebar below.), recalled his relationship with the great scientist-philosopher: over about three decades they never spoke with one another. Why? It goes back to when Jaki arrived at the campus. Liddy approached him and extended his hand to introduce himself and welcome him. Jaki looked him in the eye and sternly said: "I know who you are. And I know that you follow Bernard Lonergan. And I stand with Etienne Gilson. And I can never have anything to do with you."

I love this anecdote. Partly because the boundlessly congeneal, humble, magnanimous Liddy related it entirely without resentment in serene acceptance and a touch of humour and affection. Additionally, it represents two faces of the Catholic Church as "here comes everybody." Liddy: warm and welcoming, kind-hearted and open-minded. Jaki: cantankerous, fiercely combatative, take-no-prisioners Warrior for Truth.

Liddy, of course, would have happily engaged with the neo-Thomism of Gilson; but Jaki was intolerant of the transcendental Thomism of Lonergan. Why? I don't know. I hope to ask the Monsignor if I get to see him. But surely it has to do with Emmanuel Kant. Kant is arguably THE premier philosopher of modernity. Out of the systematic skeptism and the foundational "I think therefore I am" of Descartes, he created a new philosophy rooted in the knowing, subjective (transcendental) Self. He renounced as naive the traditional realism whereby we accept the knowing act as the immediate appropriation of the real, the objective, the other. He proposed an epistemology of the constructive human mind which creates knowledge in the form of "phenomena" but lacks clear, intimate and direct access to the "noumenal" as real and objective. Modern European/American philosophy in large part assumes, reacts to, and builds upon Kant.

Much of the divide in contemporary Catholic theology is rooted in Kant. On the one hand, you have the transcendental Thomism of Lonergan and Rahner which attempts to blend the best of Kant with the tradition of St. Thomas. On the other side, you have at least three movements against Kant. First, neo-Thomists Maritain/Gilson flat out renounce Kant to revive a naive but robust realism. Second, the monumental Balthasar retrieves Thomas in the spirit of Goethe and a mysticsm of beauty, nuptiality and drama. A third movement, entirely commensurate with the prior two, is the "phenomenological metaphysics" of John Paul, Edith Stein, and Hildebrand. These followed the phenomenological path of Husserl out of Kant by closely attending to the experience, temporarily "bracketing" the metaphysical question, but returning to that question to rediscover the robust metaphysics of being and realistic epistemology in an enrichment from modern personalism and historicity.

The Catholic question becomes: is there enough of the True and the Good and the Beautiful in Kant that we can incorporate him substantially into our theology? Recalling the "spoils of Egypt" trope and the Tertullian/Origin debate: is there gold here that can enrich our worship of the one true God or is it intrinsically oriented to idolatry?

I can't answer this because I have never been able to read much of Rahner or Lonergan: my narcolepsy kicks in and I get bored, fatigued, irritable. I listened to a Lonergan lecture at St. Peters College JC circa 1971 and couldn't stay awake. I keep a copy of Insightat bedside and when my melatonin is inadequate, rather than reach for a Xanax, I randomly read a paragraph or footnote and am fast asleep by the third sentence. (LOL!) Clearly an intelligent, holy scholar like Liddy has obviously allowed Lonergan to deepen and intensify his faith. According to Balthasar, Marechal succeeded in the synthesis of Thomas and Kant...if it is good enough for the Swiss genius, it is good enough for me. Monsignor Tom Guarino, whom I trust implicitly on these things, is cleary tolerant of such critical realism and cautions a slow, patient ecclesial process of discernment rather than rash judgment. So we have to give them the benefit of the doubt.

In his recent The Unchanging Truth of God? Guarino asks what philosophies can sustain and protect the truth claims inherent to the Revelation received by the Catholic Church. A correlative question, perhaps more important for our salvation, is: What philosophies are able to sustain and protect Catholic life...virtue, faith-hope-love, loyalty to state of life, concrete (not ideological)intimacy with the poor, resistance to the Evil Kingdom, worship and contemplation. As Balthasar taught us, theology's task is to protect the Good and the Beautiful along with the True.

From this practical viewpoint, a problem arises with the Kanitan Catholics. Rahnerians and Longergarins seem to move, en masse and inexorably, to a rejection of the core Catholic ethos of sexuality, gender, the secramentality of the human body (or bodies: feminine and masculine; there is no generic, neutral human body) and the sacramental system itself. For example, Rahner and Lonergan both rejected Humanae Vitae's restatement on contraception and therefore aligned themselves against the Church on an absolutely foundational principle. Arguably, the current transgender obsession is the final consequence of the lonely Kantian Subject, isolated in the phenomenal from the noumenal. Exposure to Kant seems to lessen Catholic immunity and lead to accomadation with the toxicities of Modernity.

Serious engagment with Kant seems gtroubling in several ways:

First, the detachment and disincarnation of the phenomenal from the noumenal tends to a vague agnositicsm, an exaggeratedly aphophatic theology that disrupts the fleshly Transcendent/Immanent balance of the Incarnation as Catholically conceived.

Secondly, the pronounced focus on the autonomous, isolated Conscious Self makes it vulnerable to the fundamental idolatry of late modernity: the hegemony of this Self. And so we find among progressive Catholics a tolerance for legal abortion whereby the conscious Self has total control over the less-than-competent, smaller, dependent and vulnerable person.

Thirdly, infatuation with the thinking self tends to entertain a disembodied subjectivty like a platonic soul trapped in an alien body or a Cartesian knower boxed into a machine. There is the loss of the hylomorphic person, body and soul wed together, that we find in Aristotle, Thomas and John Paul's catechesis of the body.

Fourth, the inflated Self moves to obscure the objective, natural, moral order as intended by the Creator for the physcial order as expressive of the spiritual.

Fifth, such Catholic Kantianism lends itself to an exagerated historicism that eventually swallows and destroys the Catholic, "Guarino-ian" protection of the univerality, permanence and material continuity of the Truth.

Lastly, centering of the Subject unavoidably obsures and marginalizes the essential nature of reality, and divinity, as gift received and given, event, drama, love and knowing as mutual indwelling. Clearly solid Catholic thinkers like Liddy, Lonergan and Rahner adhere to these fundamentals; but arguably the inherent trajectory of Kantian logic undully elevates the autonomous, monadic Self.

In conclusion, and returning to Fr. Jaki: Notwithstanding his anger issues, he may have been on to something. We are on stronger Catholic ground with the robust realism of Gilson, Balthasar and Edith Stein. But we certainly don't want to "cancel" Rahnerians and Lonergarians!

Sidebar: Seton Hall University, which has been an academic home for my family, has had a good run of world-class thinkers. First and foremost is Monsignor John Ostereicher. His work was continued by Fr. Frizzel and Rabbi Finkel. The above mentioned Fr. Jaki and Monsignor Liddy. In my own high school years on that campus the President was scripture scholar Bishop John Dougherty. Today we are blessed with Emeritus Professor Tom Guarino. Thanks be to God!

Why Monsignor Tom Guarino (like Cardinal Avery Dulles) Matters!

Disclaiamer: Any "plagaristic similarity" between this and Guarino's First Things piece on Dulles (May 1, 2009) is entirely deliberate. Let's be unapologetically Girardian here: I am echoing Guarino, as he did Dulles, as he did Thomas, Newman and a litany of doctors, and we all are all the time echoing...hopefully the Incarnate Word, not the other guy.

Yesterday, at the booksigning of his new work, "The unchanging Truth of God" I marveled at how he has inherited the mantle of Avery Dulles (as well as that of Ratzinger).

1. Man of the Church, true Vir Ecclesiasticus, he thinks, feels, moves and breathes withing the Church. Fiercely, flawlessly faithful to the Magisterium, he interprets it with nuance and subltety. If the Church leaves the door open 2 inches, he does not slam it shut; nor does he swing it wide open.

2. Range of thought. Dulles was famously encylopedic in his treatment of any topic. Similarly Guarino"s reach is extensive: one minute engaged with St. Vincent of Lerins and the next with postmodernist Vattimo. Josef Pieper described the achievement of St. Thomas as not so much brilliant creativity as a sublime summation of the entire tradition: he had read and incorporated everything available from the Tradition, the ancients and his contemporaries. This likewise characterizes Dulles, Ratzinger and Guarino. Reading a chapter of any of these gives you a wholesome, nourishing, delicious digestion of a library of research.

3. Sense of Catholic unity underlying a genuine diversity. He echoes Pascal: "unity without diversity is tyranny; diversity without unity is chaos." Dulles/Guarino protect a valid theological pluralism by achieving a precise, delicate balance on the role of concepts in revealing the Mystery of God and indeed of Being. Both proclaim the super-intelligibility of God and Being in an analagous, symbolic Creation such that human concepts validly access and express that which vastly exceeds that expression. And so, dogmatic formulations are perenial and authoritative; even as they do not exhaustively articulate the Truth. In this way a reductive, and formal rationalism, as well as a foggy, agnostic, sentimental irrationalism is avoided. We enjoy an authentically Catholicism: intellectual and mystical, humble yet authoritative, certain and clear, open-to-development but firmly rooted.

4. Champion of Vatican II. With Ratzinger and John Paul he interprets it as a genuine development within a greater organic continuty.

. 5. Strong Ecumenist, especially with the Evangelicals. This is a most significant development within the American Church and society that is sadly misunderstood in the Vatican. He dialogues from a strong, clear Catholic position, knowing where to draw the line and not watering down our inheritance.

6. Unattached to any particular school of theology, he is the quintessential seminary professor in setting the smorgasboard of Catholic theology before his students, allowing them to benefit from whatever suits their spiritual/intellectual taste. He is a "theological celibate": not enamoured of any particular giant or movement, he maintains a respectful if distant "just friends" relationship, loyal always to the Magisterium and the Tradition.

7. Often, like Gary Cooper in High Noon or Henry Fonda in Twelve Angry Men, he stands in a heroic loneliness against the herd instincts of the mainsteam. This pertains especially to defense of priests in the face of the Dallas Charter but also a willingness to stand by the Church in defiance of fashion.

8. Admirable restrain in not using theology to advance any political agenda or position. I am not aware that Guarino or Dulles publically endorsed any political issue. They clearly stand within the domain of moral theology. This was, of course, especially exemplary in Dulles who surely had more than residual loyalty to the legacy of his father John Foster Dulles.

9. Rigour and precision in scholarship.

10. Humility of spirit: When I suggested that he was the heir of Dulles, Guarino demurred "I am not in his league." He thereby confirmed my point with his Dulles-esque humility.

11. A deep, quiet, self-effacing, Catholic faith.

12. The Joy of Theology. Reading or listening to a Dulles, Guarino or Ratzinger one is pierced by the beauty of Theology as truly Queen of the Science. Guarino here has an avantage over his two shy, retiring colleagues in the overt intensity, passion, colorfulness and kinetic energy of his writing and lecture style.

Surely his greatest contribution has been his years of teaching. When I meet a seminarian or young priest in our Archdiocese I like to ask which were the best professors in seminary: the first name mentioned is always Guarino. May he stay strong and fruitful for a long time!Like Ratzinger and Dulles before him, Guarino has been an inspiration, encouragement and delight for me personally and for the faith of a Church in much confusion. May he fourish and work for many years to come!