Novus Ordo: Boring, Banal, Simple...in Disguised Anonymity

 "I don't get anything out of mass" is easily the most frequent statement about the Eucharist.

That is the point: Jesus comes to us in disguise...he has no appeal, no comeliness, no charm. Utterly plain, mundane, unglamorous. He requires us to go beyond our "experience" and our feelings and appearance to see Him hidden in the simple, small, round, white host. He requires that we love Him, not for some pleasant feelings, but for Himself in his utter modesty and humility.

I like to go, from time to time, to the Latin mass. Where I go in Jersey City the chant is to die for: you are in heaven. Then the solemnity of the service:  kneeling, standing, sitting...constant motion. A legion of altar servers, of all ages, engage our eyes as they genuflect, move the lectionary, hold the incense, bow, and circle each other smoothly in a well-practiced ritual. The Latin brings back memories of myself as an altar boy. I know enough of it so that together with my familiarity with the ritual I know what is going on but there is a solemnity, a mystery about it. Since half of it is not intelligible, my deliberative intellect is able to relax and I am able to surrender to a serenity that is enhanced by the incense, visual movement and on-and-off chant. It is a heavenly experience. I don't know why I don't go more often.

Better yet, as a charismatic I love to go to St. Antoninus in Newark:  impassioned songs of praise and worship, praying in tongues, inspired prophesies, and zealous evangelical preaching. Not as serene or deep as the Latin mass, it makes up for it in energy and joy. You get evangelical revival, the sacrament itself, and a chastened Dionysian ecstasy all for the price of admission.  I don't know why I don't go there more often.

In a similar key I have enjoyed over the years participation in the liturgy of Kiko and Carmen: heartfelt exhortations and echoes, guitar music as enlivening as praise and worship, and an intense sense of interpersonal communion. I don't know why I don't go more often.

And then there is the Tony Azzarto mass. From time to time Fr. Tony Azzarto S.J. brings a group of volunteers to our boarding home where he says mass and they serve a fine dinner. Our ladies love it. Tony does not use the chapel but the dining room. He is relaxed, friendly, warm, inviting and inclusive. There is something deep, prayerful and loving about him. You cannot help but feel serene and safe. He has a reverence in an informal key. Actually, much too casual for me. He welcomes all to receive communion, regardless. This leaves me conflicted. It is irreverent from a Catholic point of view. But everyone, including myself, is left with a sense of God's love. I do not fully approve, but I welcome them quietly because the event is generous, joyous, and deeply reassuring to our ladies.

In the same vein:  the mass we share every five years at our class reunion, Maryknoll College Seminary class of 1969. It is a great event: we enjoy, stimulate and love each other. The emotional high point is the final mass. Four of us are today Maryknoll priests and one of them presides with Azzartoesque warmth, relaxed reverence and lots of humor. There is a dialogue, shared homily in which many share intimate feelings. Very moving. The majority of our classmates no longer practice their Catholic faith, abstaining from mass except for funerals and weddings. Of perhaps 30 classmates (and some wives), I am probably the only one tormented by its dissonance with Catholic protocols. Yet I doubt any imaginable gathering or ritual could substitute for it, so deeply engrained is our Catholic sensibility, even for those who have fallen away from the practice. 

All of these experiences...music, emotions, ecstasy, serenity, smells, visuals...all feed into and flow out of the Eucharistic encounter. They are not extrinsic or accidental. But nor are they essential. It is more like your eyes, your hands, your feet...they are constitutive of the full you, but were they amputated, your essence would be intact. 

The essence of the Eucharist, the fundamental shape, is sublimely simple: the hearing of the Word (prepared for by the confession of sin), the Offering, the Consecration, and Communion. 

Everything else elaborates, expresses, enhances the core act.

And so, the act is most sublime when it is stripped down, unadorned, simple. The mass said by priests in prison with a crumb of bread and drop of wine that had been smuggled in. The mass of John Paul high in the mountains on a skiing trip with his young friends. The masses, since my youth, in which I have served or attended alone with the celebrant, in solitude and yet representative of the universal, bridal Church.

How about the ordinary parish Sunday Novus Ordo mass? Well, not so grea! It lacks the embellishments of the Latin, Neocat, charismatic or Azzattonian masses. Most of the time, the music is soft, sentimental, banal, lacking in solemnity or martial vigor. The atmosphere is casual, friendly, bourgie. The sermon is predictably thoughtful, intelligent, down-to-earth, moving to an assurance of the unconditional love of God (free of wrath, justice, accountability) and a moralistic exhortation to kindness, generosity, and inclusiveness. Basically, the accoutrements...music, friendliness, sermon...are distractions from the Eucharistic Act in its rawness and profundity. 

The simple, short, unadorned daily mass of the Novus Ordo is my "Eucharist of Choice." It is nothing to brag about. It is like meat/potatoes/vegetable at Mom's: no flavoring, not gourmet. Plain, nourishing.

It is what our mother the Church gives us. It is more than enough!

 

Addendum to Best Movie Priests

 On Aug. 22, 2022 this blog listed the best movie priests. Easily number one was the Javier Bardem priest in Into the Wonder. He now has a competitor. Last night I finally watched (at suggestion of friend Tim Regan) Rome, Open City. I had been prepared for the dazzling Anna Magnani, but not for the main protagonist, Father Pietro. He is chubby, unglamorous, very Italian, wonderful with the wild street boys, unabashedly pious, saintly and breathtakingly heroic. He is officially in a tie for first place among movie priests. 

The Most Beautiful Movie Women

These cannot be rated in a numerical hierarchy because each is in its own way a unique perfection, analogous to real women. I will merely recall, subjectively, what were for me the most breathtaking, dazzling, inspiring, ecstasy-producing, euphoria-inducing, heart-piercing, dizzying portrayals of feminine splendor. 

Audrey Hepburn in A Roman Holiday.

Sophia Loren in El Cid

Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca.

Olga Kurylenko in Into the Wonder.

Grace Kelley in any performance.

Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man.

Mary Lynn Remmele Laracy in My So-Called Life with Annoying Matthew.

Jennifer Lawrence in Hunger Games.

Anna Magnani in Rome, Open City.

Ginger Rogers whenever she dances with Fred Astaire..

Felicity Jones in Rogue One.

Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.

Donna Reed in It's a Wonderful Life.

Nicoletta Braschi in Life is Beautiful.

Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz.

Penelope Cruz in any role.

Scarlett Johansson in any performance.

Robin Wright in Princess Bride.

Brigid Bardot in any photo in her prime.

Emily Blunt in Sicario.

Meryl Streep in any performance.

Cher in Moonstruck.

Barbara Streisand in Funny Girl.

Angelina Jolie in Girl Interrupted.

Claudette Cobert in It Happened One Night.

Michelle Pfeiffer in The Baker Boys.

Claire Forlani in a movie I cannot remember.

Kim Novak in Vertigo.

Debra Winger in Officer and a Gentleman. 

Jane Fonda in Klute

Tess Harper in Tender Mercies.

Natalie Wood in West Side Story.

Kim Basinger in LA Confidential.

Lilly James in Mama Mia, Here We Go Again.

This list does not pretend to be exhaustive or objective. It is, however, accurate and authoritative. It is unlikely there lives on this earth a man who exceeds its author in appreciation for women. This is because his own ordinary virility, flawed and sinful, has been influenced by So much love from So many fine women:  his wife, mother, daughters, granddaughters, sisters, grandmothers, daughters-in-law, aunts, cousins, nieces, friends, religious nuns, colleagues, the thousands of young women he has taught and the hundreds of women he has welcomed into Magnificat Home. He met and spoke with both Mother Theresa and Dorothy Day. When it comes to women, he knows what he is talking about!

God of infinite, absolute splendor! Thank you for Women, the most beautiful of all your creations! 

.

 

Kiko's Revolutionary Ecclesiology

Kiko's "way" is not a cult, it is more than a movement,  but it is far more than an "itinerary of formation" as it self-describes in its Statutes. It is an alternate model of the Church, a novel-radical-revolutionary brand of Catholicism. It is far more profound, intense and demanding than anything known in our Catholic lay world, past or present. It entertains a powerful ambivalence toward the actual Catholic Church: on the one hand it is an intensification, to an unprecedented depth, of elements of Catholicism. On the other hand, it is in practice largely detached from the broader Church. This balance of attachment/detachment...to its own program and to the Church...is the question posed in this essay. In morality and dogma it is Catholicism on steroids, but in liturgy and culture it is a separate track, a challenge to the Church as One.

Terminology: Way, Neocatechumenate, Movement, Itinerary

Internally participants speak of "walking in The Way." This language is offensive to non-participant Catholics who see "The Way" as Jesus himself and his Church, the broader Church as bride-body-mother, rather than any specific expression therein.  The word "Neocatechumenate" is awkward, esoteric, but also not entirely accurate. This process is not intended to introduce the initiate into the current, actual Church, but leads into the formation of an alternative network of communities and relationships which are distinct from and yet interactive with the ordinary parish/diocesan system. Carmen infamously corrected Pope John Paul II when he referred to it as a movement. "It is a Way" she exclaimed. But she was right: it is far more than a movement. We know the ecumenical, charismatic, Communion and Liberation, Focolare, and other movements which renew the Church with a distinctive gestalt of values and practices but leave the institution in tact.  Kiko's program is a spiritual movement but at the same time is a drastic institutional revolution that creates a new community of communities within the parish and diocese. It is breathtakingly revolutionary, in an institutional way, but that purpose is not articulated.

My Perspective

From youth, I have myself entertained an ambivalence about the Church. On the one hand, I have benefited from a habitual, indeliberate, serene and confident sense of my Catholic identity. Have never  questioned that for a second. It is one of my certainties: I am a human, a male, a creature, and a Catholic. But I was never satisfied with the spiritual provision of the ordinary parish so I searched for something deeper, more intense. I have journeyed: political activism of the 60s (especially the radical Catholic anarchism of Day and Illich), Cursillo, Charismatic Renewal, Marriage Encounter, the theology of Balthasar-John Paul-Benedict, Communion and Liberation, the 12 steps, Kiko's Way, Our Lady's Missionaries of the Eucharist, and our Magnificat Home mission. I was longing for a deeper community. I never found it. I always return to the prosaic, generic Catholic parish. And so I have come to see that as the norm: the renewal movements come and go in my life and in the Church. At their best they refresh, broaden and deepen our ecclesial life. Then they disappear. There is not now much of the biblical or ecumenical movements that flourished before the Council and inspired it; but their charisms are now part of Catholic life. The agenda of Kiko is more drastic.

Mine is a particularly privileged perspective on this new way. My best friend John Rapinich and his wife Mary walked with the very first community in this country. He shared transparently with me his love for this new blessing. For example, early on he invited me to St. Columba's in Manhattan to hear Kiko, in person, deliver a Lenten Announcement. We were cIearly out of place: everyone sat with their community. I was mesmerized by Kiko. Like nothing I had ever seen! A real living Prophet! John was corrected for inviting an outsider. 

I myself walked with two different communities: one in NYC and another in NJ for a number of years. I greatly benefited but left as my wife was disinterested and my own life was already full of commitments. My son and his wife are deeply involved. I admire and support them. If anything I am a little jealous: this way is unequalled in the intensity and depth of its Catholicism. 

Uniqueness of Kiko and His Project

Kiko's proposal is in a different league from all other movements. I view him as Catholic mystic and spiritual genius in the league of a handful of giants: Benedict, Francis, Dominic, Ignatius, the Carmelite mystics, and maybe a few others. His charism has been to take specific Catholic elements and then deepen/intensify them to a new dimension and in a concrete program: Jesus' triumph over fear of death, love of the enemy, renunciation of material wealth, engagement with the Word of God, and above all the hidden life (humility, simplicity, praise) of Nazareth (a la St. Charles de Focault.)

The presence of this way is particularly strong in our Archdiocese of Newark. Then-Archbishop McCarrick welcomed them, no doubt to endear himself to Pope John Paul who loved them. Their numbers are steadily increasing within our clergy. Within a few decades, they could be a majority of our priests. And they will be strong in leadership as they are theologically sound and immersed in a program that directly confronts their moral/emotional failings. 

This way is the face of the Church of the future for many reasons:  l.  They are missionizing as they create new communities.  2. They are providing many priests for the Church.  3. They have tons of children, many or most of whom continue on this path.  4. They offer the strongest antidote to the prevailing toxicity of our society.

Totalizing Immersion

Involvement requires a degree of commitment unprecedented for Catholic laity. We have varieties of pious associations, renewal movements, third orders, secular institutes and such. But none, to my knowledge, require the same commitment of time and resources. The closest might the charismatic covenant communities that developed in the 80s. Those involved, at times, an extreme degree of obedience and authority. But they left the parish and its liturgy in tact and required less time. 

Two nights weekly are a minimum: the Saturday evening Eucharist and a weeknight sharing of the Word. But there is more: preparation for the Word or the Eucharist,  monthly Sunday afternoon convivences, periodic weekend retreats, and occasional pilgrimages. If one becomes a catechist of a new community that is another three nights out preparing and presenting. We are up to about six involvements weekly. If your children are teenagers, they join their own community so your are driving them 2-3 nights a week.

An active participant may be giving above 20 hours weekly, in addition to a day job and raising perhaps 10 children. This level of commitment takes on a cult-like appearance, surely, to the ordinary, middle class bourgeois mind. 

It adds up to the type of total commitment we Catholics expect from our our consecrated, the non-laity: monks, mendicants, missionaries, hermits, cloistered and active religious. This degree of lay immersion in prayer and apostolate is unknown to the Catholic world. Our norm...not always explicit...is that the laity focuses on family, work, and a balanced life of prayer and civil/cultural engagement. All the other renewal movements respect that model. This way is different. 

It in effect creates an alternative culture: like a hippy commune, the Israeli Kibbutz, the Catholic Worker, the Bruderhof or the Amish. This is an inner-directed, centripetal world with distinctive  synergies and economies: lots of children, mutual childcare among families, a candor and transparency that rivals 12-step meetings and the encounter culture of the 70s, a paucity of resources with a generosity in a loaves-and-fishes sense of providential abundance, a schedule that is spontaneous and tardy and informal. It is as if Kiko lived with the Gypsies and brought back an exotic, disruptive lifestyle. It is: anti-careerist, non-bourgeois, unbureaucratic, oral rather than literate, low-technological, spontaneous and primitive in a romantic fashion. It is not a preference for the poor in a social-activist, patronizing, do-gooder, ideological sense. It actually is a life of poverty that is immensely rich in  spiritual-cultural-social-psychological capital.

The problem is: this degree of immersion inevitably effects a disconnect...with extended families, friends, the Church and civil life.

Kiko's Worldview:  Anti-Constantinian Church in a Dystopian World

In a marvelous essay published with their Statues, Giuseppe Gennerini highlights the agreement of Kiko and John Paul II  that we live in apocalyptic times: that the structures of society have collapsed and a fierce spiritual battle is being waged between the forces of heaven and hell. This way is extremely negative in its view of the broader world. It might be seen as the opposite of the positivity of the Vatican II documents, so eager to embrace the best things in modernity. 

It is a Benedict-option-on-steroids as it concentrates all focus and energy interiorly on its own program and detaches from all ecclesial, political, cultural or civil engagement. There is no political agenda: it is strongly anti-abortion, of course, but otherwise non-committal. There seems to be little interest in politics. My friend John showed a compatibility with a hard right position. John loved rightwing talk radio; had he lived he would have little difficulty, I suspect, with Trump.

Many (not all) participants have renounced a prior life of moral depravity and are therefore "twice-born" in the William James sense of reborn from evil. There prevails a strong "against the world" sense: that their way is an ark in an ocean of evil.  It is not unusual that those who "stop walking" fall into dysfunctional patterns. 

What results is a suspicion of the broader world, a detachment, a failure to engage that resembles the reputation (deserved?) of Orthodox Jews: they create their own world with an indifference to others.

This distrust extends as well to the broader Catholic Church as Kiko clearly holds a "primitivist,  anti-Constantinian" view of the Church. Like the Reformers and others, he attempts to return to the Church before it was embraced by the Roman Empire. This is blatant in their liturgy which emulates the Passover Seder but renounces the development of the mass as a sacrificial, temple-like ritual. It embraces the common reformist view of the corruption of the Church by its embrace by political power. It tries to recreate the small communities we imagine in the immediate post-apostolic time.

Discontinuous with Christendom, it has little affection for the late-Tridentine Church many of us recall.  Kiko is an ascetic, mystic, artist, bohemian, iconoclast...and brazenly anti-bourgeois! He reminds me of another eccentric, maverick, spiritual genius: Ivan Illich. When Illich came to NYC in the 1950s he fell in love with the Puerto Ricans, the "lower echelon" of the American Catholic Church. He also had contempt for the now-prospering Irish-American mainstream Church and its clergy/hierarchy. It is understandable: such strong spirits are prone to an aversion to the mediocrity and banality of ordinary piety. But this can be a temptation to arrogance and detachment.

Temptation to Detachment

So we see: the intensity of their spirituality, the dystopian worldview, the critique of the actual Church, the centripetal direction and all-consuming nature of their program...all conspire to a deep detachment from other communities. There is a resemblance here to the Legionnaires of Christ: certainly not in the mendacity of the founder, but in an intensified Catholicity combined with the impulse to separation.

Their evangelical generosity, which is abundant, is structurally directed inward, to their communities, and the replication of the same. But in regard to other communities,  there is a separation, a coldness, a distance, not intended but systematically inevitable. Surely a lack of ecumenism in the sense of engagement with and openness to other communities.

A good example: the practice of Saturday night Eucharist. It is not that this is an option, but that it is the high point of the week. It is unthinkable for a serious participant to miss Saturday liturgy. There are preparations throughout the week: a group studies the mass readings for exhortations, another bakes the bread, others bring wine and flowers. This is a far more than ordinarily Catholic Eucharist-centrism.

But it is also pointedly countercultural:  Saturday night is, of course, the recreational high point of American life: date night, movie night, dinner our night, party night, family reunion night. And so this practice is a brilliant, liberating gesture for those who fall into sin on Saturday night. But what about the wholesome, ordinary family and friend reunions that are frequently planned. A participant in this way is permanently absent from any such gatherings on Saturday, the night of preference as the next day is normally one of rest. This can only be received by the extended family and friends as a kind of rejection...albeit not intended.

Questions

1. St. Ignatius of Loyola, toward the end of his life, said that were it God's will to disband the Society of Jesus, it would take him 10 minutes to accept it. Imagine that this way were to be suppressed by the Vatican. This is currently not probable  but easily conceivable. The Latin mass, which is far more consonant with the Tridentine and Novus Ordo masses, is now being repressed.  How would that effect your attachment to the Church? Would you move into ordinary Catholic life, perhaps bringing the best of what you received in Kiko's way? Or would you intensify your allegiance to this program and separate from the established, now persecuting, Church?\

2. How about spiritual direction, especially for leaders and catechists, by a Catholic priest outside of the way? A classic challenge in Catholic religious life is the tension between the inner and outer forums. The inner forum is the absolute privacy of the confessional and the profound confidentiality of spiritual direction. The outer forum is the inevitable exercise of authority in community. The two need to be separate. Your superior, in community, cannot be your spiritual director as that poses a conflict of interest. So, for example, a Franciscan Friar might have a Jesuit as spiritual director. The Legionnaires got into lots of trouble precisely here. This became a huge issue, some years ago, in charismatic covenant communities, in which community leaders were also exercising direct, intimate and authoritative spiritual direction. The catechists in this way exercise authority in the communities but also a form of intimate, powerful, private direction in their scrutinies. My observation is these bear very good fruit and come from the Holy Spirit. But it is nevertheless inherently problematic as the structure of authority is not divided and balanced. The availability of spiritual direction from outside the communities would protect against cult-like abuse and overall enrich the way.

3. About 15 years ago Pope Benedict directed that the communities arrange to celebrate Sunday Eucharist at least once monthly with the broader parish. From what I can tell, this has been entirely ignored. A rationalization is that the liturgies are open to the parish and so there is no need to obey the regulation. This is nonsense: the very dynamic of their Eucharist is that it is personal and communal. For an outsider to attend would be like a stranger crashing a wedding reception: quite outrageous. And so the suggestion here is for the leadership to reconsider and obey. Failing that, I would urge individual participants to exercise their own freedom, conscience and Catholic obedience and go, at least once monthly, to the parish mass and thus free up one Saturday night for friends and family.

4. Does this way benefit from pastoral and theological guidance from a qualified Vatican or diocesan priest? This makes sense. There is a danger of being too inbred in such an intense, totalizing program.

5. How about the idea of a sabbatical, especially for responsibles and catechists. They could take time away from these burdensome responsibilities to rest and enjoy other ecclesial blessings: retreats, quiet time, pilgrimages, study and rest.

This suggestion is offered in friendship, admiration and candor: That this way relax the intensity of its attachment and immersion in order to connect in a wholesome, balanced way with friends, family, society and Church. I understand that leadership is protective of this precious, powerful charism. And they should be! I trust that this rebalancing can be done in a way that preserves, and even purifies and enriches, this way. Each must, of course, find his/her own balance of attachment/detachment.

Memories: A Mendicant, Catholic, Theological Student at Union Theological Seminary 1969-71

Fresh out of college, without career direction, carefree about money,  crazy in love and courting my spouse-to-be, infatuated with theology, concerned with the plight of the poor, left leaning in politics and religion, fascinated with radicals (Illich, Day, Ellul, Friere). but stable in my sacramental life. Teaching, evenings,  ESL to Spanish-speaking in the south Bronx for Puerto Rican Community Development Project. Then part-time religion at the Jesuit Xavier H.S in lower Manhattan. Sharing apartments with a variety of other young men. 

My best friend in NYC was George Lissandrello, roommate in Maryknoll College Seminary, then living in gay community of the East Village where I was welcomed with affection and lots of laughs. Also, Gilbert Davidowitz,  roommate, pious Orthodox Jew; maverick and brilliant student of linguistics; neurotic in the extreme. We shared an admiration for each other's "thick" religions and a touching affection. Tony Petrosky, roommate and boss at PRCDP, a genuine pot-smoking, guitar-playing hippy. The real deal: a bright, luminous spirit. And lastly, Peter Murray, a Jesuit seminarian at Woodstock  who welcomed me into that school and community. Very good friends!

In random fashion, I took courses that interested me at Union, Woodstock, Columbia, and later Teacher's College and Jewish Theological. Loved it! Happiness is: alone for hours in Union Theological Library!

Very non-Roman-Catholic, Union was delightfully (small c) catholic in its diversity of theological personalities. At the time Woodstock Jesuit Theologate was attempting a partnership that failed. There were solid RCs there:  Renowned scripture scholar Raymond Brown. Ed Oates, S.J., of happy memory, worked on Balthasar whose aesthetics and studies in culture would resonate at high-culture Union. My friend Bill Toth, businessman-deacon-theologian, worked on Catholic social teaching, probably the dimension of Catholicism most palatable at Union. I was an outlier, But I enjoyed it.

Two Jesuit theologians, at Woodstock, deeply influenced me: Joe Whelan, himself a mystic and saint; Avery (later Cardinal) Dulles, who looked like my uncles, and was The Dean of American Catholic Theology. Marvelous mentors!

I was fascinated by the distinctive theological personalities such as:

Anne Ulanov, Jungian psychoanalyst, Anglican, fluent in literature and the Catholic mystical tradition, interested in "the feminine." She was herself quintessentially feminine in appearance, thought, manner. Listening to her lecture, I received what she delivered cognitively even as psychically I relaxed into a calm, euphoria, free of the discontent of lust or romantic yearning, reminiscent of my happy breast-feeding infancy.

Cyril Richardson: scholarly, distinguished, elderly, high Church Anglican taught on the Eucharist, using the classic Shape of the Liturgy by "papist" Anglican monk Gregory Dix.

Robert Handy taught the history of American Protestantism with encyclopedic authority in the moderate tone of mainstream American Protestantism.

Samuel Terrien taught a course on the prophets Amos and Hosea. Doing a paper on Amos I experienced writer's block and never completed the course. Large, vigorous, expansive, warm, fluent in all the ancient languages, he was a brilliant Old Testament scholar who developed a distinctive theology of the presence/absence of God as well as a biblical theology of the masculine/feminine. He had a mystical radiance about him. Long-timer at Union, he was colleague of Niebuhr, Tillich, Heshel and all the Morningside Heights theological giants. I recall an anecdote he shared in class: crossing Broadway he was confronted by a young couple requesting money and threatening to put a curse on him if he refused. He laughed heartily and gave them his blessing in return.

Hans Hoekendijk was a Dutch missiologist, raised in Indonesia, influential in the World Council of Churches, who developed a radical, secular theology of God's action in the world. He worked with Paolo Freire and appealed to the radical streak in me.

Philip Phoenix was a brilliant, distinguished philosopher of epistemology and education, a pillar at Columbia University for decades. He taught a marvelous course on The Ways of Knowing wherein he distinguished with precision and reverence the distinct ways of knowing, locating the scientific as on amidst aesthetic, moral, interpersonal, philosophical and especially the religious. He emanated a philosopher's awe before the complexities of the Real. He reminded me of the magisterial Degrees of Knowledge (by Jacques Maritain) I had read a few years earlier.

My favorite institution on Morningside Heights was Jewish Theological: the interior, the library, but especially the interchange between the contemporary and the traditional which most resembled my own "ressourcement" Catholic viewpoint. 

Later, in the 90s, after a master's degree in education and religion at Seton Hall (studying under marvelous theologians Toth, Frizzel, Finkel and inhaling the air breathed by titans Ostereicher and Jaki who rival or surpass the titans of Morningside Heights) to the doctoral program between Union, Jewish and Teachers. Then I enjoyed:

Will Kennedy.  Much like Hoekendijk, Will was a political radical, colleague of Friere, influential in the World Council of Churches and its turn leftward into politics,  deeply concerned with the inequalities of class, race, gender and other. He was "woke" way ahead of his time. He was a charming, generous, expansive, and luminous personality. He seemed slightly puzzled by and interested in me with my radical sympathies and hardcore Catholicism.  I recall in class a discussion about the memorable funeral of John F. Kennedy and he commented: Whatever you say about the Church, it does know how to bury people." He sounded Roman Catholic when he referred to THE Church.

Mary Boys, a feminist theologian and Roman Catholic nun was for me surprisingly Catholic in that ambience as she (like Ulanov) taught Theresa of Avila and argued for the necessity of some magisterium, a word hardly intelligible in that institution. She opened in class a conversation about the students' experience at Union, spiritually and academically. I was startled by the absolute consensus:  the place was a desert spiritually, but a dazzling garden academically. She told me candidly that with my theological views I did not belong studying at Union. She was right of course.

Each of these seemed to live in his or her own personal theological universe. There was no shared world as one might find, say with the Balthasarians at the John Paul Institute in DC or the Thomists at a good Dominican institution.  Each was fascinating, charming, energized, entertaining, brilliant, full of life and in a particular love affair with the Church (broadly understood) and some dimensions of our Tradition. 

What a sweet gift that time was for me! I was like a pig in mud! A form of pure leisure! A sabbatical, before I had even worked to merit one. Entirely unburdened by financial stress and career ambitions, I lived worry-free like a bird. Delighted with my girlfriend back in NJ, enjoying my English students, comforted by sweet friendships, I was studying for the sheer joy of it, without any ulterior purpose. It was a taste of heaven!    

The Reformer's Matricidal Hatred for Mother Church; The Catholic's Affection, Reverence and Loyalty

The Hatred and Infidelity of the Reformer

The "reformer" despises the actual, current, concrete, flawed, sinful Church because he is infatuated with an illusion of his own creation, a projection of his own needs, longings, hurts. It is like a masturbatory  fantasy, a playboy centerfold. It is not a real woman in all her actual particularity, nobility, loveliness, vulnerability, monthly cycle, physical pain and emotional longings. It is a mirage, like the beautiful oasis really seen by the Sahara pilgrim dying from thirst, a hallucination fabricated out of desperation. 

His "Precious" (think Gollum in Lord of the Rings) is more liberal or conservative, radical or relevant, Constantinian or Pre-Constantinian, evangelical or activist, monastic or charismatic, solemn or informal. It may be a utopian commune of love, or a warrior for the poor in the class conflict, or a sanctuary of medieval or Tridentine piety, or  Dionysian Pentecostalism,  or a culture warrior against the "woke."

In contrast with this mesmerizing ideal, the existing, actual Church is seen with disgust as a vile whore. He sits upon his throne and passes judgment: She is boring, annoying, reactionary, dogmatic, legalistic, misogynist, privileged, arrogant, defensive, uncompassionate, promiscuous, relativistic, fundamentalist, clericalist, unorthodox, compromised, and accommodating.

And so the reformer diverts his affection, loyalty and reverence away from the actual Catholic Church, (the women whispering their rosaries, the cold pastor, the distant bishop.) his Mother, the actual body and bride of Jesus Christ, to his idolatrous fantasy. He creates his own Church. So we have in the USA today tens of thousands of different churches. Calvin created his, Luther his, Henry VIII his. And so before them we had Arius, Mohammed, and so many others. Many Evangelicals today identify simply as "Christians" and that is in a way correct: they love Jesus our Lord, as portrayed in the Bible. But they assume some direct, individual one-on-one with Jesus through Scripture. They are clueless that Jesus is always mediated by a community and that theirs and all the others are indeed love affairs with Jesus but through a community that has despised his body and bride, our own mother, given to us in the person of Mary at the cross and the anointing of the apostles by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. They implicitly renounce the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church and therefore love the Head in a disordered, deprived manner. 

The reformer is himself the judge, of the Church. He is not judged himself, by and in the Church, by the Word, the Sacrament, the lives of the saints. He is not saved from his sins by the blood of the cross. He himself is enlightened and tasked with reforming the now corrupt Church.

The reformer's compulsion is a temptation for anyone who is intense in spirit. Such is strongly drawn to specific spiritual truths or goods which are then seen as lacking in the actual Church. Such is thus missioned to bring his charism to enrich the broader Body. But this can be done fruitfully only in the purification of humility, patience, humor, obedience, trust, longsuffering, reverence, gratitude, tenderness and generosity of spirit. This is a long and difficult road.

My Story:  A Reformer in Recovery

I myself, as a "Reformer in Recovery" know about this. In my youth, especially the intoxicated college years after the Council, I drank the juice and, for example, avidly read National Catholic Reporter, taking malicious delectation in ridicule of traditionalism. A few years later, early in our marriage,  I threw myself into Catholic Pentecostalism and viewed ordinary Catholicism as a lesser, impoverished version of the Gospel, lacking in the charismatic gifts. Moving through adulthood, I reacted to the emergent hegemony of Cultural Liberalism by intensifying a conservative Catholicism as  I exulted in the dual-papacy of JP-Benedict and the lay renewal movements. But the papacy of Francis has placed a dark cloud over my later years as my reformer compulsivity has resurged.

In the midst of that journey,1970,  while courting my bride, as I emerged from my liberal phrase and just before my charismatic days, I was singularly blessed to study the Catholic Mystics at Woodstock College in Manhattan with a holy Jesuit theologian, Joe Whelan. From him I learned that all the Catholic saints loved the Church, our Mother, herself, even as Christ himself loves her. A second lesson: he had us read "Theology and Sanctity" by Hans Urs von Balthasar and there I learned that theology in its integrity flows only from a life of prayer, public worship and sanctity of life. He put me on the right path!

Conservative Catholic Reformers

This reformer compulsion is pronounced in Catholic progressivism. It permeates the papacy of Francis. He has given his life to the Church but he shamelessly he vents his disgust of the Latin Mass, clericalism, dogmatism and traditionalism, the American Catholic-Evangelical Alliance, the comfort and privilege of the clergy. It is not that this criticism is without value; but he delivers it with a repugnance void of tenderness or respect. This discontent with the actual Church underlies the inchoate, convoluted paraphilia they call "synodality." 

But I know personally that the impulse is strong also in conservative circles. The core is a rejection of the actual, current Church in favor of a theological ideology or fantasy.  Let's consider my own favorites: charismatic renewal, the Latin mass, and the Neocatechumenal Way.

Charismatic Renewal.  This was and still is, in my view, a real movement of the Holy Spirit. It was also, viewed sociologically, an incorporation of Evangelical and Pentecostal American spirituality into Catholicism. As such it moved in the opposite direction of mainline Catholicism after the Council. There was the manifestation and exercise of specific gifts long forgotten by ordinary Catholicism: prayer in tongues, prophesy, miraculous healings, literal and intimate engagement with Scripture, direct guidance by the Holy Spirit, spiritual combat and deliverance from evil spirits, traditional gender roles, stronger forms of authority and obedience, and a fervent ecumenical embrace of evangelicalism and Pentecostalism. As is common with such enthusiastic movements (Ronald Knox is classic on this), many of us experienced this as a more intense and pure Christianity than what we know as ordinary parish life.  

Additionally, soon two divergent paths emerged: one more Catholic and the other more Pentecostal. The first leaned deeply into our Catholic tradition: sacramental life, the magisterium, lives of the saints, Mary and the witness of John Paul. Some however strengthened the ecumenical bonds and  downplayed Catholic piety which troubled the newfound unity across denominational lines. This last was the path of the Sword of the Spirit (umbrella group of covenant communities) and led our local People of Hope into a dramatic clash with Archbishop Peter Gerety over exactly the issues of authority, obedience, and gender roles. 

Happily, however, after several decades the People of Hope are reconciled to the Church, leaders like Ralph Martin have fruitfully incorporated the Renewal into a vigorous Catholicism, and this movement continues to energize the Church. All is well that ends well!

Latin Mass.  Here we find a fascinating ambiguity: on the one hand a love and loyalty to the Tradition as handed down and received through generations. At the same time, however, a disdain for the current Church, especially the hierarchy. Some are suspect of Vatican II and lean towards sedevacantism (we have no valid pope.)  Francis' own disdainful oppression of them does not help. We hope  for a retrieval of the legacy of Benedict and mutuality in humility, generosity, tenderness, contrition and forgiveness.

Neocatechumenal Way.  The ambivalence here is even more profound, complex and rich. This charism of Kiko is flawlessly, fiercely embracive of our moral and dogmatic traditions. Loyal to our hierarchy, they work only with the blessings of bishop and pastor. Close to the papacy, they have Vatican approval despite their controversies. They pray with the Church, passionately, and emulate the lives of the saints. They contribute new riches to Church art and music.

 On the liturgy, however, they break with the Novus Ordo more radically than does the Latin Mass. This is important: theirs is a distinct liturgy and a distinct liturgy means a different Church. Aligned with this is a radical negativity about a Western culture they see as thoroughly corrupt. In reaction they pursue a drastic "Benedict Option" in building a network of intensive communities as the model of an emergent, alternative Church in a now dystopian world. While it is not articulated, there operates as well an underlying distaste for the current parochial Church, as well as the received Tridentine and indeed post-Constantinian Church. And so, there is no formal or theological split from the Church but there is a significant liturgical fracture and an underlying emotional distance. For example, I have loved to attend an annual Archdiocesan Men's Conference which is hosted by a smorgasburg of Catholic groups: People of Hope, Knights of Malta, Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, and others. Neocats would almost never participate in something like this. Not because they oppose it; rather,  they have no time as their own internal ecclesial engagements are all-consuming. This is not a bad thing per se. But it is a weakening of the bonds of affection and loyalty they share with the broader Church.

We hope that as they grow and mature,  and more priests are ordained from their communities to serve the broader Church, there may be an increase in mutual affection, reverence and loyalty.

Let Us Love Our Church

St. Ignatius of Antioch, at the close of the Apostolic age, exhorted us to cherish our unity through the hierarchy. That call resonates today. It is this actual, concrete, so disappointing Church we are to love tenderly, reverently, loyally, patiently, generously. How happy the habit we have of praying an Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be for our pope at the end of every rosary. I don't like this pope and his people. It is not just that I disagree on this or that issue. It is that I despise, passionately and viscerally, what they are doing to our Church. It is because of my Catholic faith that I am enraged. But this same faith causes me to pause. First of all, whatever his failings, he is my pope and they are our bishops and therefore worthy essentially of  reverence and loyalty. Secondly, Francis himself and his lieutenants are in many ways honorable and decent men worthy of respect.

So, the only path ahead: loyalty to our cherished, threatened Catholic truths even as we. bring them to prayer. Pleading for Truth. Pleading for Unity. Pleading for tenderness, reverence and loyalty for  precisely those who infuriate us so.

The Masculine Task: Contemplate the Feminine

The mission and delight of the male is to observe, cherish, delight in, honor, protect, affirm, and adore the female.

Woman is God's last and greatest creation. Only with Eve was God's work complete. Only then could he look and see that all was "very good." She is greater than anything in Creation, even than the highest of angels. Tradition has it that Lucifer in envy of her status rebelled and created his own kingdom. His passion is to despise and defile the feminine. In Mary we see that Creation, even as fallen, has attained its final end. Nothing in the universe or human history will ever equal or surpass what God accomplished in this Virgin. What remains in time and space is the flowering, unfolding and culmination of the miracle of Mary.

The feminine is charming, comforting, delightful, lovely, inspiring, attractive, fascinating, encouraging, ennobling, captivating.

The feminine is generous, compassionate, nurturing, welcoming, sacrificial, serene, self-effacing, surrendered, receptive, trusting, edifying.

The feminine is sensitive and vulnerable to suffering, sadness, violation, anxiety, hysteria, and domination. 

God's image is most perfectly reflected in "male and female" and the love they give each other. 

Consider:

Adam first glance at Eve:  "This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh."

The baby Jesus looking at the beatific face of his beautiful mother.

Joseph watching over mother and child: surging with virile tenderness, ferocity, awe, gratitude, adoration.

Jesus on the cross, looking down at the face of his mother, his bride, his co-mediatrix of all graces. And giving her, as his final gesture, to the Beloved Disciple, which is to all of us.

Virility only becomes itself in the face of the feminine which in its preciousness and splendor arouses masculinity as tenderness, care, protectiveness, strength, courage, ferocity, awe, gratitude, self-sacrifice, admiration and adoration. 

Yes...this is a proposal of the Mysticism of the Masculine/Feminine! Let us exult in our own virility and femininity. Let us magnify the Lord, with Mary our Mother.

The "I Hate Synodality Club"

Reader beware: what follows is a Fleckinsteinian catharsis, a release of explosive, pent up passions.

I am not just a member, I am a founder and honorary president of this club. NO ONE,  I repeat NO ONE, hates synodality more than I do!

It is not that I have reservations and concerns! I despise it! It is the most ridiculous, silly thing I have ever seen. The Church has had darker times, but none more silly. This is the silliest of the silly seasons. When I was young and said or did something really stupid, my father would ask: "What did you take your stupid pills this morning?" I have to ask:  "Is someone passing around stupid pills in the Vatican?"

When I hear the word itself, I feel like the maniac in the Abbot and Costello skit who was just fine until he heard the words "Niagara Falls" which put him into a homicidal rage. If you speak with me, dear Reader please do not mention this word, do not bring up the papal extension to 2024, and better not to discuss this essay.

The entire process has no purpose, no telos, no substance, no real program or logic. It flows from some vague, dreamy, quasi-dialectical-Darwinian illusion that everybody venting their frustrations, complaints, accusations, resentments and misunderstandings will result in a new, enlightened Church. It feels like a return of the sensitivity and encounter groups of the 70s. 

Pope Francis, while not a certifiable liberal, clearly suffers the core progressive pathology:  discontent with the Church. This compulsion is to despise the present, real, actual Church and even more that of the past in the hope of a new, emerging Church. This is the real problem with liberals. They simply do not love the actual Church. They love some illusion in their head. It will be a welcoming, non-judging Church; without binding, moral absolutes; women and non-gendered and multi-gendered priests, contraception and abortion for everyone, holy communion for everyone including the little animal critters to whom we are bound and who are in no way inferior to us humans. The liberal's love for the Church is like the woman who marries a man and is in love with the man she intends to make him and eventually realizes she despises the real guy. 

A genuine conservative loves the actual, messy, flawed, sinful, and institutional Church...as it is. He wants to conserve, protect, proclaim, celebrate, and share the received Church, the Deposit of Faith, the Tradition, the Faith of our Fathers.

This silly process is like a judge directing the jury:  "We don't want to get into this guilt stuff! Let's talk about our feelings! Let's hear how the alleged rapist felt before he did this. Maybe he had bad experiences with women. Maybe he feels unloved. We need to hear about his mother."

It is like a college professor of, say, statistics, or canon law, or abnormal psychology going into the classroom and saying:  "I am not concerned about the so-called curriculum, or reading list, or assignments or tests. I want to hear how you feel about things like the  mean and median, or the validity of a sacrament, or the very idea of a diagnostic manual." 

I told our local bishop-vicar (in a more muted, polite fashion) what I thought of this thing. He gave me a nice talk about "listening" and its importance in a viciously polarized society. What he said was fine. I am all about listening. If the Pope proclaims a crusade of listening, in every day life, I will sign on and lead the charge. All of us need to listen to each other: rich and poor, grandchildren and grandparents, debtors and loaners, reactionaries and revolutionaries and so forth.  This is simply human life. 

About 50 years ago I left my pregnant wife to attend a conference in Canada given by Father Charles Curran (not the moral theologian, the Rogerian psychologist with a strong Catholic direction) to learn about listening. My bishop is right:  Listening is underrated. But this is part of life: like breathing, like seeing, like talking. It is not the way to govern the Church.

I don't want to burn with rage and disgust! So what will I do from now to October 2024 when this silliness will hopefully end? 

I will listen! Listen to those who are in my life. Listen to the voice of Christ in the liturgy of the Church. Listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit so gentle within me. And receive, in quiet and gratitude and serenity, the Church as she is...today!  Yes, that includes even the Synodaligists, in all their stupidity and silliness!

American Catholicism: Dhimmitude and Inferiority? Or Splendor and Magnanimity?

 "Dhimmitude" refers to the inferior, subjected status of Jews and Christian under Islamic rule. For example, we know that when Islam conquered Egypt the Christians had three options: convert, be killed, or pay large amounts of bribe (protection) money. Today's Coptic Egyptians are descendants of wealthy Christians who could pay. As worshipers of the God of Abraham, Jews and Christians are granted a status superior to pagans or atheists, but it is diminished.

I first heard the expression "Catholic Dhimmitude" from Patrick Dineen at the "Restoring our Nation" conference in Steubenville last weekend. A question had been raised about an essay by Michael Hanby in New Polity which argued that the "New Right," confident and aggressive in its battle with both the Cultural Left and the Neo-Liberalism of classic Republicanism, failed to adequately comprehend just how deeply corrupted our entire society is by politics as power, Baconian science as control, absolute individualism, rule by technology, and the demise of contemplation and reception of Creation in all its intelligibility, beauty and goodness. Dineen had not read the article but knows Hanby's thought: he did not engage it at its philosophical depth but argued that such profound negativity tends to discourage and inhibit Catholic engagement in the public realm and in effect cede, for example, the Republican Party to the Neo-Liberals (and I would add incoherent Trumpian rage).

Hanby and Dineen are both right. The corruption is as deep as Hanby sees. But Dineen rightly urges that we not be despairing and disengaged. Armed with Hanby's insight about the magnitude of the conflict, we go forth properly prepared for the fight. 

History of Catholic Dhimmitude in the USA

We Catholic know the history of hatred of Catholicism and its subjected status in America. Our founders, many of them Masons, despised "papalism." We have learned from Hanby and his colleague D.L. Schindler that the American Founding was deeply Protestant and therefore averse to the contemplative, the Marian, the sacramental, the deeply communal nature of Christianity. From the founding, then, our nation was vulnerable to the idolatry of the Individual, technology, the pragmatic, and knowledge as control. An American Catholic might well admire so much of our founding and constitution but can hardly elevate it as "scripture" in the manner of Evangelicals from, say, Hillsdale College.

People still living may remember the "Irish need not apply" signs in our cities and the fact that Catholics were not welcome in the Ivy League,in prestigious WASP law firms, or in any elite circles.

The exception: the honeymoon period of the post war period, especially the 1950s. In this feel-good period of victory, world dominance, unity against Communism, religious revival, and a booming economy, mainline hegemonic Protestantism became good-natured, ecumenical and Catholic-friendly. Bishop Sheen and Thomas Merton became national celebrities...not to mention John Kennedy, Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby and others.

Catholic Dhimmitude Post-1965

Dramatically, elite WASP culture turned secular, sexually liberational, and culturally liberal in the late 1960s. Overnight, a new anti-Catholicism emerged across elite institutions of the Democratic Party, law, higher education, Hollywood, the media, and even the scientific community. As if a magic spell was cast over the West, without resistance, in the upper tiers of society, the affluent and powerful, sexuality became sterile and extrinsic, gender deconstructed, authority and tradition despised, science idolized, government and global capitalism malignantly inflated, subsidiary institutions of family-faith-locality diminished, nature mechanized, contemplation denigrated, and the isolated Individual stripped of all connection and protection. Real Catholicism became a pariah, an alternative counter-culture. 

By a catastrophic coincidence, this explosion of  Godlessness occurred at a moment when American Catholicism was vulnerable and without defense. By 1970, the critical mass of the urban, ethnic demographic had left their urban parishes for suburban life; were newly affluent; and assimilated to bourgeois consumerism, careerism, technologicism, safetyism, one-or-two-childism, and materialism. 

The Vatican Council, ending in 1965, in its documents a profound and inspired renewal of our faith, was highjacked by the media and the elites and harnessed to a "Spirit of Vatican II" that was an assimilation to and capitulation to the new hegemony of the secular and liberational. The flourishing Catholicism of the 1950s...big families, large parishes, new schools and seminaries and colleges...was unveiled as lacking in spiritual, moral and intellectual depth as the Church plunged into chaos. A new polarized Church emerged: one side submissive to the new regime, the other in resistance. Here we see the new face of Catholic Dhimmitude. 

Consider these expressions of it:

Democratic Party and the Union Movement.  These had been deeply influenced by the confident Catholicism of the post-war decades, but turned anti-Catholic with a ferocity at the time of Roe. The "Great Generation" of Catholics who had survived the Depression, defeated Japanese and Nazis imperialism, opposed the Soviet Empire, rebuilt Europe, and created a surging national and global economy were...pathetically compliant, feeble, and subservient to the new regime.

Republican Party. In the next two decades, 1970-90, something like half of American Catholics migrated into the party of the Right.  There were two major, but contradictory, streams involved here. Moral conservatives opposed to abortion and protective of traditional family life and religious freedom became a core constituency of a new coalition. But at the same time many newly affluent, suburban Catholics became defensive of their economic security and favored a neo-liberalism of reduced taxes, government and regulation. With Ronald Regan and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, the alleged "end of history," a new idolatry of "The Market" prevailed with a widespread amnesia of the Catholic social teaching that had earlier inflamed the union movement, civil rights and the war on poverty. The Catholic conscience compromised: in return for the crusade for unborn life, traditional sexual morality and religious freedom, toleration was extended to economic libertarianism  with its own anti-Catholic animus. This was a subtle, largely self-righteous capitulation that was identified 40 years ago by D.L. Schindler in his critique of the neo-conservatism of Novak-Weigel-Neuhaus but only unveiled in all its inadequacy with the emergence of Donald Trump.

American Episcopacy.  For over 50 years, since Humane Vitae, we have a Church in schism, although it is hidden. It is like a family that is in conflict but keep its fights hidden behind closed doors. So, we have two episcopacies! The one is people-pleasing, accommodating itself to prevalent bourgeois liberalism: avoiding and downplaying Catholic teaching on contraception, cohabitation, abortion, homosexual activity, the masculine priesthood and such. This is the cohort has been empowered by the papacy of Francis and includes disciples of McCarrick as well as Tobin, Cupich and others. On the other hand, we have the countercultural legacy, articulated firmly by John Paul and Benedict as well as brilliant minds like Cardinals O'Connor, George and Chaput. With such a divided episcopacy, the Church in America has been unable to confront surging Godlessness with a clear, firm message.

The strongest evidence of episcopal weakness is surely the spineless, thoughtless closing of the Churches and suspension of the sacraments in the pandemic of 2020. Even as huge gatherings of BLM crusaders were gathering in parks, our bishops closed huge Churches and suspended the sacraments in a cowardly, compliant submission to safetyism, bureaucracy and doubtful science. If they were so willing to suspend Sunday Eucharist, what is their credibility in this new Eucharistic revival they are attempting. If they are so safety obsessing, why should the laity go out of their way for Sunday mass? This was, in my mind, the most despicable expression of Catholic dhimmitude and inferiority.

Catholic Universities. Father Ted Hesburg of Notre Dame is exemplary of the inferiority complex that has pervaded Catholic higher education since 1970. He convened, in 1967, in the euphoria of the Council, the Land O'Lakes conference in which leadership of the Catholic Universities declared their independence of the Church. As they did that, Notre Dame was being funded by the elite WASP foundations (Ford, Rockefeller) to run pro-contraception summer conferences. The premier Catholic school capitulated to the "population bomb" panic of the time and disparaged the traditional Catholic viewpoint that was subsequently reaffirmed by Pope Paul VI. 

This misguided emulation of the Ivy League tradition, just as it was itself pivoting against its Christian roots, was an unfortunate reaction to the reality of Catholic intellectual inferiority. In 1955, the renown historian Father John Tracey Ellis had lamented the academic superficiality of American Catholicism. This had many causes: American pragmatism, bigotry, need to utilize resources for elementary and secondary education and others. But rather than digging deeper into Catholic tradition, Hesburg led the stampede into the darkness of now-secular post-Christianity or a Catholic Lite version of it. This movement in higher education accompanied the same trajectory in liberal politics.

Disengagement by Thick Catholicism.  As in the Hanby-Dineen exchange noted above, a completely different temptation presents to deep, faithful, thoughtful Catholicism:  such disgust and distress about the culture as to disengage entirely. This is understandably a vulnerability for traditionalists (home schooling, Latin Mass people) and the more intense renewal movements (especially the Neocatechumenal Way and versions of Charismatic Renewal), and of course the famous Benedict Option. Vigorous Catholic life is always a two-way movement of detachment from and engagement with the world. We have our cloisters, hermits, monasteries. But these involve a mystical, Mary/Martha communion with those in the dirty work of society: just as in today's first reading at mass,l Joshua's victory in battle was the result of the prayer of Moses-Aaron-Hur. And so an unbalanced negativity is itself a different kind of dhimmitude.

Catholic Magnanimity and Splendor

Magnanimity, meaning great-in-spirit, is underrated! It is the opposite of arrogant superiority and triumphalism. It assumes a humility about the self as limited, finite, sinful, and in need of God's grace. But it is confident, hopeful, joyous and exultant as possessed by and in service to the Mystery of Christ and his kingdom, his Church. It is unbound from defensiveness, fear, and self-consciousness.  It is bold, ambitious, ferocious and fearless. It is Aragon, Mufassa, Katniss, Obi-Wan Kenobi! It exults in the generosity, serendipity, and eventfulness of the Gospel.

Consider these expressions of Catholic Splendor:

Legacy which we inherited: the magnificent parish and school system; the network of hospitals, orphanages, and agencies that have served the sick and marginalized; engagement with unions, local politics, a range of intermediate organizations, civil rights and initiatives to relieve poverty. 

Prolife Movement, including the reversal of Roe, was largely a Catholic thing. It remained defiant in the face of the disgusted mainstream as well as disdain from Catholic progressivism. 

Renewal Movements, robust and exuberant, have been without embarrassment in witnessing to our Deposit of Faith. Noteworthy, among others, is the New York Encounter, hosted annually by the Communion and Liberation Movement, which radiates a positivity and confidence in sophisticated, cosmopolitan Manhattan. 

Supreme Court  of our country is now with a Catholic majority: six of the nine are Catholic, and one was raised Catholic but now Episcopalian. This is not to imply that every opinion reflects Catholic teaching. But Amy Comey Barret is a particularly promising Judge. She is staunch Catholic, charismatic, highly qualified, and unapologetic about her faith. She is an icon of Catholic magnanimity and splendor, in her public and private life.

New Right is in part a restoration of an integral Catholic politics: conserving of our moral fabric and yet protective of the poor and working classes, in resistance to both the neoliberalism of the right and the cultural liberalism of the progressive elite.

Conclusion

The ferocious anti-Catholic animus of our elites and the broader culture is deepening and spreading in a toxic contagion. We are, more than ever, an outlier, an exception, a counterculture. We are not, however, to be submissive, fearful, embarrassed, discouraged or hopeless. We are ourselves, despite our personal and even communal failings, possessed by and in the service of the Truth Incarnate, of Beauty-Goodness-Truth incarnate and triumphant. We will not accept dhimmitude! We will exult in our mission, our identity and our destiny!

 

  

A New, Integral, Post-Liberal, Catholic Politics

 Attending today the "Restoring the Nation Conference" at Franciscan University of Steubenville, I see with heightened clarity the emergence of a new Catholic politics, the "New Right.". Amidst a variety of streams, emphases, and viewpoints there is a united, coherent form at work. It is a movement on the Right that incorporates basic concerns of the Left. Its basic structure is:

1.  Firm cultural conservatism on the moral issues around life, family and sexuality in opposition to cultural liberalism and individualism.

2.  Class warfare on behalf of the underclass, including an assertive state and union movement, against corporate, elite capitalism and its neoliberal economics of unregulated free markets, open borders, and libertarianism.

3.  A revived patriotism as a moral engagement including a retreat from the aspirations of a global empire.

4. Restoration of foundational, traditional bonds of family, religion, locality, and nation.

5. A new, economic support of family and procreation through practical programs like: financial rewards for bearing children, economic assistance to new families in buying first home, generous maternity leave and child support.

This diverse, complex development goes by a number of different names:  integralism, national conservatism, Trumpism without Trump, common good conservatism, and Democratic Interchange Capitalis. None of these words seem adequate. National Conservatism is an umbrella term and cannot define a specifically Catholic politic. The mention of the name Trump twice awakens all the disgust for the personal moral degradation associated with it. Integralism is a proper term but carries negative imagery of a return to Franco-like tyranny. 

I prefer the word "integral" because the movement integrates the two streams of Catholic social practice that have been set against each other for the last half century. Solidarity with the poor and powerless has traditionally motivated the Democratic Party even as it abandoned basic Catholic moral views on life and sexuality. On the other hand, since 1970 the Republican Party has championed our ethos of life and family even as it remained in large part the party of Capital. This New Right, surprisingly and happily, is left of (American) center on economics and right of center on culture and ethos.  

This binary fell apart with the triumph of Trump's populism in 2016. In theory (but not so much in practice) he waged a new class warfare (ironically, himself so wealthy), on behalf of an underclass that had emerged in recent decades in a bipartisan neoliberal order. Economically he defied (again, in theory, but his tax plan contradicted this) the mainstream, conventional Republicanism on behalf of the working class. Culturally he defended traditional, lower class Christian values against the woke elitism of cultural liberalism. In a convoluted, ersatz fashion, he molded the outline for a new, integral Catholic politics.

What is the Liberalism in Post-Liberalism?

As "post-liberal" this integral politics is essentially anti-liberal, as in Patrick Dineen's foundational Why Liberalism Failed.  What Dineen and company mean by "liberalism" is the philosophical individualism that underlies both the sexual liberalism of the left and the economic, libertarian neo-liberalism of the right. Both see the isolated individual as the primary model of human life. In this they both despise all traditional bonds of family, faith, heritage, authority, locality, and nationality by which all religions structure human life. Post-liberalism or integral Catholic politics is a retrieval of traditional valuing of the bonds of family, faith, tradition, locality and nationality.

Three Previous Catholic Politics

Over my lifetime, the post-war period since 1945, Catholic in America have supported three prevailing ideologies: New Deal Liberalism of 1945-70, Democratic Cultural Liberalism of 1970-Present, and the Republican neoliberal "conservatism" that prevailed under Ronald Regan and afterwards. We can measure all three against the two Catholic concerns for the poor and for the marriage/moral life.

New Deal Liberalism of the post-war period was a vigorous integration of the two currents. Basically it waged class economic war on behalf of the worker against the capitalist. It's closest ally was the labor movement. It advocated for a strong welfare net and championed the Civil Rights movement. It shared with its adversary the Republicans the Cold War hatred of communism. Culturally it was implicitly, along with the opposition, conservative. From 1945 to 1965 a widespread Christian revival prevailed in a Protestant USA that was newly Catholic-friendly. The Democratic Party of this period was a coalition of urban, union, ethnic Catholics with more radical (often Jewish) liberals, and still-racist Southern Democrats. In the 1960s however, the party made two pivots, one (from a Catholic perspective) very good, the other, very bad. First, by embracing civil rights it lost the Southern Democrats but gained the black vote. Secondly, it embraced, passionately, the emergent cultural liberalism of the sexual revolution (contraception, abortion, militant feminism, eventually gay liberation) in contempt for Catholic teaching. Strangely, it did not lose the Catholic vote.

Cultural Liberalism, in the wake of the Roe decision on abortion, of the now-transformed Democrat Party, became the embodiment of sexual liberalism: sterile, recreational, relational sexuality was torn from its natural domicile in marriage and family. At the same time it remained the party of the labor and civil rights movements as well as a strong welfare state. At the same time, it increasingly expressed the values of the emergent new elite: professional, managerial class and the financial class who accumulated very quickly obscene quantities of wealth. It increasingly became a convoluted  incoherence: the expression of a limousine liberalism that is indulgent, narcissistic, meritocratic, careerist as it assuages guilt by a pretentious indulgence of the identity politics of BLM and LBGTQ. Bizarrely, this politics in its shameless contempt for the Catholic ethos retained the allegiance of about 50% of Catholics. The ignorance of and indifference to the Catholic way is breathtaking!

Republican Conservatism, which economically is neo-liberalism, as quintessentially expressed by Ronald Regan was built upon three pillars: moral conservatism against libertinism, cold war hatred of Soviet Communism, and a mythology of the "Market" as an invisible hand that ensures personal liberty, economic efficiency and productivity. From a Catholic viewpoint, of course, the first two were fine; but neoliberal economics could never conceal its inherent indifference to the poor. It failed entirely on the principle of solidarity. About half of the Catholic population in some degree embraced this ideology for two reasons: one very good, the other not so good. Moral conservatives became Republican to defend innocent life and their traditional understanding of marriage, family, sex and gender as well as religious liberty to practice this. At the same time, many Catholics had by now ascended the social ladder of status and wealth and embraced the bourgeois values of the traditional Republicans. Eventually, with Trump this dynasty collapsed but it never passed one of the two crucial Catholic litmus tests.

A New Hope

So, this new integral (national conservative, integralist, Trumpian-without-Trump) politics is very hopeful. It integrates what the two liberalisms had separated: care for the poor and for the family. It is in many ways a revival of the wholesome liberalism into which my generation was born.

It has its problems. It can associate with white identity politics, xenophobia, and crude nationalism. I myself, as a strong Catholic internationalist, reject its isolationist tendency. For example, in my view, the retreat from "empire" voiced by Trump and implemented by Biden in Afghanistan, abandoned women in that country to the vicious misogyny of the Taliban. I am in a minority that would have retained troops in that country. I know I am an outlier. 

Arguably it is unrealistic. It remains to be seen if such a wholesome, integral politics can get traction in a Republican Party that is largely a contest between the establishment of wealth and a populism of resentment and rage. 

Nevertheless, it gives a serious Catholic a clear vision, a template of where we want to move. We want to protect both the traditional family and the poor. Implementing Adrian Vermulle's famous "Christian Strategy" we will know with clarity our goals and prudently work with various alliances in that direction.

 

How to Understand the Priest Sex Scandal: Letter 13 to Teen Grandchildren

You may be aware that over the last 30 years, in the USA and around the globe, we have learned of a pandemic of priest sex abuse of young people, children and teens, How do we understand this? 

1.  Horrific Nature of this Scandal. First, we know that sexual abuse of the young and powerless is a violation of unimaginable magnitude. Second, we Catholics look to our priests as representatives of Christ; we trust and admire them deeply, even as we know their flaws. That those we most trust and admire would violate our little ones is a sin of immense gravity. There is no minimizing or denying this tragedy, trauma, pain and shame.

2. Church as Human (sinful) and Divine. Except for Mary, we are all sinners, including pope, bishops, priests. At the foot of the cross, Mary and John and the other women were there as the nucleus of the Church about to be born. But all the other apostles, notably Peter the denier, had abandoned Christ in his agony. Ours is a Church of sinners...essentially. At the same time, Christ has promised to be with us, through his Holy Spirit, until the end of time. However bad our priests, bishops and even pope, Christ is with us, guiding the Church infallibly in its teaching and sanctifying us efficaciously in the sacraments.

In my high school religion class the priest shocked us by asking our response if we learned our mother was a prostitute. He allowed us to sit quietly, stunned. Then he said:  we would all be horrified, ashamed, angry. But eventually, she is your mother. And you love her....whatever. And so with our Mother the Church: she has prostituted herself in many ways. But she is still your mother.

3. Two Scandals. The actions of priests and the "coverup", the failure of the bishops to protect the victims. This essay will address only the first. The second is also complex and deserves treatment in another essay.

4.  Pedophilia.  This is sexual attraction to or interaction with children, before the age of puberty, prior to around the age of about 12. This is a serious psychological sickness. A pathology. There was a small number of priest pedophiles who did immense harm. Often they were serial offenders, harming many victims. However, the vast majority of the abuse was not against children but against teenagers. So the scandal was not one of pedophilia.

5. Homosexual Predation on Adolescents. Over 80% of the reported abuse was of adolescent males. It is surprising that there was relatively less violation of females. Overwhelmingly it was a practice of homosexuality. This is not to identify homosexuality itself with abuse of the young; the vast majority of homosexuals and self-defined gays are innocent of such behavior.  The facts are simply undeniable, even as their assertion is misinterpreted by gay-friendly progressives as homophobic. It is also a fact that large numbers of homosexuals report being abused in their youth.

6. Sexual Addiction.  Much of this predatory behavior came out of sexual addiction. Similar to drug or alcohol addiction, (as well as gambling, work, consumption, hoarding, eating and other) sexual addiction is a psychological compulsion which is largely out of the person's control. An addict may firmly intend to resist the behavior but be actually incapable of doing so. Happily, in the last 50 years or so we have learned much about addictions and the measures that can bring varying degrees of freedom. This includes psychology as well as 12-step programs of support such as Alcoholics Anonymous. If deep seated in the psyche, an addiction may be a permanent structure of ones personality that is never completely cured. But its power can be greatly diminished so that one can become "sober" and live largely free of the affliction with the proper supports, accountability and help in place. Unfortunately, we lacked this knowledge in the period (1965-2000) when much of this behavior occurred. So, the priest afflicted with such an addiction had little hope for triumph over it. 

7. Split Personality.  In the worst cases, where the addiction was most powerful, there seems to have been almost two personalities in the same priest. Oftentimes, the priest had a tremendous reputation as pious, compassionate, charismatic and deeply devoted to the Church and the care of his people. These qualities seem to have been sincere and authentic. At the same time, a second personality, the addict and predator, had an invincible hold on the priest's soul. So, he lived a kind of a double life: a real Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde life. Tragic and catastrophic!

8. Demonic.  We do not want to underestimate the powerful action of diabolical spirits in this scandal. The evil that resulted is beyond measure: the profound harm to the victims, the bondage of the priests to compulsive sin, the loss of faith of so many, the damage to the work of the priesthood, and it goes on and on. This is clearly the masterful work of Satan. In our time, he has clearly targeted the family and the priesthood and used disordered, compulsive sexuality as his weapon.

9. Time Period.  Chronologically, there was a surge in priestly abuse immediately after the cultural revolution of the 1960s and the emergence of a militant, progressive, sexually-liberational Catholicism after the Vatican Council in 1965. This would be approximately 1970-2000. Why this period? Several reasons. First, the sexual revolution across the West deeply influenced our entire society, including the Catholic priesthood. Secondly, within the Church there was a strong movement to liberalize our sexual ethos and accept behavior previously prohibited. Thirdly, there was a large flow of homosexual men into the priesthood in these years. Over the centuries we have always had significant numbers of homosexual men in the priesthood. It is an obvious choice as they would not marry. Many and maybe most were gifted, spiritual men who lived chastely and served the Church well. But in the moral environment of the sexual revolution and a progressive Church increasing numbers practiced with young men, whether out of compulsion or choice. The good news is that the Church has now reacted to the abuse and the number of allegations has greatly decreased. Some years ago we learned that active pedophiles on the internet were warning each other that the Catholic Church had become the most inhospitable of institutions to their practice. (This is NOT to suggest that sexual abuse was entirely the province of progressive priests. Some of the very worst predators were flawless in their theological orthodoxy. In these cases, obviously, the hypocrisy, denial, splitting and psycho-moral-spiritual pathology is that much deeper.)

10. Are Priests Worse than Others?  There is no data to show that abuse is worse in the Catholic priesthood than in other professions: teachers, coaches, ministers, rabbis, etc. There are a number of reasons why the Catholic priesthood was targeted by media, lawyers and victims while other groups were not. First, the Church is seen as having lots of money so lawsuits promised rich rewards for the victims and their lawyers. The Church is, of course, wealthy in real estate (churches, schools, etc.) but not overflowing with cash as they operate so many programs. Secondly, there is a resentment against the Church as the sole institution that firmly advocates traditional sexual morality in the face of cultural liberalism. So, we can see progressive elites, especially in law and the media, taking pleasure in the pronounced hypocrisy of a Church that fails to walk its talk. 

11. Chastisement.  This justified attack on the Church has a good consequence: it has humbled and chastened the Church. We can see God's hand here: painful as the humiliation is,  it can  show us our sinfulness and need for God's mercy and grace. The Church has lost much prestige, power and status, but there is hope that a Church is emerging that is small, faithful, trusting and pure.

12. Dallas Charter. In 2002, in the face of this scandal, the American bishops implemented the Dallas Charter of Protection of Children and Young People. This was a plan to protect our children. It had a flaw: it directed that any priest credibly accused of abuse would be immediately dismissed from his priestly work. The problem is that "credible" means any accusation that is possible, not obviously impossible or contradictory. This means that an accusation that is false, a misunderstanding or an intentional lie, is treated with respect. The priest is then treated as guilty until proven innocent. This is, of course, an understandable reaction to the tolerance previously show to priest abusers. The result is that now priests live in dread of a single credible accusation. Without due process or an opportunity to face the charges and defend himself, a priest accused is relieved of his duties, loses his life work and reputation and cast into a limbo of shame and assumed guilt. Some priests, for example, now in their 70s or 80s, face charges about 50 years ago and suffer the stigma without the ability to defend themselves. This is a severe injustice against priests. Now many  priests can suffer the consequence of the actions of other priests over the decades.

13. Priestly Crisis.  Our Catholic priesthood is in deep trouble. It is widely disparaged in our society as a coven of child molesters. A priest is vulnerable to shame and disgrace at a single accusation, however deceitful or misguided. There is a severe shortage of priests that will get worse as most of our priests are elderly. Young people, for a variety of reasons, are not joining the priestly or religious life. 

And so, let us pray for our priests. That they be protected from the attacks of the devil under the mantle of Mary our Mother. That there be an increase in vocations to the priesthood. That the victims of abuse and their families find healing and peace. That the Church and the broader society protect our little ones from violation. That our priests radiate the holiness and chastity of Christ.  

Real Politics: Letter 12 to Teen Grandchildren

 A deep-Catholic perspective you will not hear in  Political Science 101 or on CNN or at a MAGA rally.

What is Politics?  From the Greek word polis, meaning city, politics is the manner...dense, complex, multifaceted...including activities, traditions, ideas, associations, laws, and other...by which a community organizes its life, governs itself, and distributes its goods (including wealth, power, status) and tasks.

Politics of the Trinity.  The inner life of the Trinity is absolute, boundless mega-hyper-uber-politics. All creaturely politics, at every analogous level within the hierarchy of being, is at its best a reflection of that life. The interaction of the Three is without limitation, flaw, negation of any kind. It is eternal and immutable (by our understanding of mutation) but is best imagined not as stagnant but as an infinite, everlasting event of boundless synergy, generosity, donation-reception, creativity and mutuality in delight. It is the Gold Standard of politics.

Politics of Heaven.  The created angels and saints, especially our Blessed Mother Mary, share eternally, but always as creatures, in the shared life of the Trinity. This again is a dynamism of love, encounter, surprise, creativity, exaltation, gratitude and praise. This blessed life overflows from heaven, always through Jesus (and secondarily through Mary and the Church), into our world, created in all goodness-truth-and-beauty but fallen now into sin, guilt, and death.

Politics of Spiritual Angelic Combat.  Prior to the creation of humanity there was already a political battle in heaven when Lucifer, the greatest of the angels, led a revolution against God. He self-defined as his own deity and refused to adore. One third of the angelic hosts followed him. St. Michael (whose feast day, shared with Gabriel and Raphael, is today as I write) decisively cast him from heaven and into hell. But he was given permission to roam and eventually (through the consent of Adam and Eve) rule the earth. 

Politics of the Garden of Eden.  The primal political act was our parents' trust in the deceit of Satan and distrust in God in their eating of the forbidden fruit. That singular act opened human history to the politics of hell.

Politics of Hell. This we all know so well: violence, domination, egotism, greed, deceit, communism, fascism, racism, male chauvinism, sexual liberalism,  jihadism, and all the isms. It is gun violence, abuse of women, predation upon children, the invasion of Ukraine, terrorism, degradation of the Creation, and polarization in hatred.

Politics of the City of God, the Church.  In Jesus and his Church we on earth participate in the politics of heaven, albeit in a disguised and often troubling manner. This politics is the reception of the Word of God, participation in the sacramental polity and economy, reception of absolution and the Body and Blood of Christ, and life in the Holy Spirit. It is the life of Love, in Truth. This is humble, hidden, often anonymous and covert, but a politics of luminosity, radiance, invulnerability, generosity and ecstasy. 

Politics of Tragedy and Martyrdom.  In the risen Jesus, the Holy Trinity is decisively victorious over the politics of hell. But in a hidden manner. The victory is not complete and manifest until the final end of time. Until then, the politics of hell retains a certain dominance. And so, testimony to the Kingdom of Heaven normatively concludes, as with John the Baptist, Jesus and all the martyrs, in "failure" and apparent tragedy. Suffering, death, and defeat are the ordinary consequences of a life on earth lived in communion with the Trinity. And so we retain, until the end of history, a realism, an expectation of the worst, a determination to endure to the end, a dependence always on the grace of God in the face of trial and terror.

Politics of Prudence.  Everything creaturely, since the Fall, is broken, flawed, wounded, dysfunctional, problematic, disordered, and mortal...inherently. Our salvation and sanctification, in the Holy Spirit, strangely left in place, until Christ returns, the multiple systems of evil, political and otherwise. The Event of Salvation continues in us, as we engage and overcome these systems. Our political efforts are always imperfect, partial, tentative, and flawed. We have on this earth no lasting city, no utopia. And so we renounce "ideology" in the sense of an absolute system of thought that promises fulfillment here in this world. In Hope, and with all our various hopes, we joyfully accept failure, tragedy, and disappointment. We encourage each other and push forward with courage.

Politics for the Poor, the Suffering, the Least.  This goes without saying but it must be said: Our politics focuses always upon those so close to the heart of our Savior: those who suffer.

Politics that is (small c) catholic.  Out of our Catholic faith, we "catholically" welcome with open arms all that is good-true-beautiful and work with others of all faiths and political loyalties to protect and enhance the Common Good.

Politics of the Immediate, the Concrete, the Small.  Primarily,  politics is our here-and-now everyday life, our actual engagement with those closest to us: the mother caring for children, the children studying, the rich web of work, family, friendship, and faith that is each specific life.  Public policy is, of course, necessary in such a complex, interrelated world as our own. It is not nothing. But it is often overrated, inflamed with passions of resentment and fear. Or, it is inflated with expectations of messianic efficacy. On the right we have Trumpian rage and idolatry of the market and the nation; on the left we have Trump-Derangement-Syndrome,  arrogance of the technocratic-liberal elite, and trust in the state or the ongoing "revolution." Policy is  best considered in sobriety, serenity, and open-minded deliberation and study.

Politics of Drama.  Ours is not a politics of progress, evolution, dialectics or an imagined "arc of history." Rather, every age, generation and individual life is a DRAMA, an engagement of freedoms...personal, communal, heavenly and demonic...that is entirely unpredictable and absolutely consequential. So, for example, in our own time we saw in the 1960s the heavenly triumph of Civil Rights and the emergence of a countercultural critique of a society become arrogant, complacent and materialistic even as we sank into a hell of genderless androgyny, sexual chaos, and genocide of the smallest. Personally and communally: the conflict continues. We are called to fraternity in fierce, agonistic engagement, to unending vigilance, Godly courage, and heavenly holiness of life.

Politics of Masculinity/Femininity.  Human flourishing at every level flows from the mutual tenderness, reverence and fidelity between man and woman. This is a hard binary, intended from the very beginning by our Creator to image the inner life of the Trinity. Our wellbeing depends upon masculinity as: humility, chastity, fidelity, paternity, fraternity, provision and protection, fortitude, gentle strength, justice, emotional sobriety, and prudence. Our well being depends upon femininity as; compassion, communion, psychological resilience, interior serenity, trust, receptivity, selfless generosity, unconditional love, emotional intelligence, patience, and holiness. Above all, masculinity inform, influence, chasten and strengthen each other in their distinct identities in a mutuality of affection, respect,  loyalty and self-donation. 

Politics of Chastity and Fidelity to the Vow.  One of the foundational errors of modernity is to absolutely separate the public, as in politics, from the private, as in sexuality. Wrong! Our sexuality is our most political engagement. It is the way we procreate. (I do not use the word "reproduction": it is for photocopiers, not humans!) It is the intimate, abiding bond between man and woman. It is the foundation of our society. The best political act you can perform today is to recommit yourself to chastity and save yourself, heart and body and soul, for your spouse...or, alternately, your vow to Christ and his Church. In our own society here in the USA, most material poverty today is simply the result of a man fathering and then abandoning mother-and-child. All the policy in the world is largely helpless in the face of that lustful abandonment. That child is largely doomed...save for the grace of God!

Politics of Prayer.  We are created to walk in intimate friendship with God. Prayer is our conversation with him. As our earthly hearts and minds are open to this heavenly intimacy we become fountains of serenity, healing, mercy, truth, justice and holiness for those around us. This has a rippling effect as it resounds through the entire Body of Christ, the Communion of Saints, and around the world and into history. This is the root and foundation of all Real Politics,  of the True and the Good and the Beautiful.