A Modest 5-point Proposal to the Latin Mass Community (5 of 5)

 1. Intensify your prayers for Pope Francis and especially the bishops/priests most hostile to your liturgy. Enhance ands express your esteem and affection for them even as you correctly retain your intellectual judgment. Your intellect is strong in Truth; your heart can grow stronger in love.

2. Clearly affirm your acceptance of the Novus Ordo as normative, of the authority of this pope, of the divine inspiration of the Vatican Council. Restrain one another in speech that can be heard as resentful, polarizing and disrespectful, especially in social media and public discourse, even in the face of official persecution.

3. Continue your generosity, which is obvious, including financially. Perhaps each community might take on a specific action of mercy: visiting those sick, in prison or homebound; catechizing youth; mentoring young men; feeding the hungry; giving retreats.

4. Participate joyfully in normal parish life including the Novus Ordo and especially daily mass. Share your love for the Eucharist especially in adoration and holy hours.

5. Consider celebrating some or all of the Easter rituals with the broader parish in the Novus Ordo as an act of humility on behalf of Church unity.

I offer this in fraternal affection and esteem. Your love and devotion to the Eucharist of the centuries is a precious and necessary gift for the Church.  Your witness is at times blurred by resentment, anxiety, defensiveness, and pride. You are, as a group, intelligent, creative, dynamic, fervent, devout...often in eccentric, delightful ways.  May our Lord bless you and your families in your Eucharistic devotion. And the Church through your witness.

A Modest 5-point Proposal to Kiko and Companions (4 of 5)

1. Stop referring to your program as "THE Way."  Instead you can say "our way" or "the neo-way" or "our path." Be humble: your itinerary is not THE way. It is a way. It is one way within the one Church. Jesus is The Way. And the Catholic Church is The way to full communion with Jesus.

2. Celebrate your Eucharists every other Saturday instead of every week. On the alternate weeks attend an ordinary parish Sunday mass. With this you strengthen your bond with the broader Church. You properly defer to the parish Novus Ordo mass as the normative Eucharist of the one-holy-catholic-apostolic Church.

3. Once monthly cancel your celebration of the Word and participate in some alternative (preferably) Catholic spiritual event: daily mass, novena, retreat, holy hour, men or women's support group, 12-step program such as AA or Alanon or SA (Sexaholics Anonymous). This will overcome a certain narrowness into a more catholic Catholicism.

4. Celebrate Easter Vigil and Holy Saturday Eucharist with the entire parish. You might extend and enrich your celebration into the night with readings, echoes, songs that further develop these memories of our salvation.

5. Have each maturing community, at an appropriate time (after passing a scrutiny?), accept together a small corporal or spiritual project of Mercy. This could be: visiting the sick, or in prison or in nursing homes; catechizing; assisting a Catholic school; giving retreats; mentoring youngsters; supporting single mothers; distributing food or meals to the poor; helping those who clutter and horde to regain order and peace; and countless others.

These practices will purify, strengthen and deepen your Way. They will countervail the pronounced "cult-like" propensities of your program. They will restrain your inordinate centripetal dynamism and enhance your centrifugal energies. They will deepen your Catholicism and enrich the broader Church and community.

I offer this proposal with fraternal affection, admiration and some jealousy: yours is the most dynamic, militant, and promising of all the lay renewal movements in the Church and I wish I could have remained myself as a journeyer in your way.

Catholic Eucharist as The Banquet of Friendship? (3 of 5)

Since the Council 50 years ago, I for one have been conflicted about the emergence of a model of the Eucharist as a Passover-type meal that ignores or denies the "temple" aspects of holy sacrifice and abiding Divine Presence. 

This model emerged strongly after the Council but is not an expression of the actual decrees. It moves decisively away from a temple model of ritualism, sacrifice, formality, solemnity, fasting, elaborate artistry, restrain and humility before the Holy and Sacred.

It replaces such for the informality, intimacy, personalism, authenticity, interaction, spontaneity, and subjective expressiveness of the Eucharist as a remembrance of the Last Supper, a relaxed, affectionate communion of Jesus with his disciples, in  accord with Jewish practice and memory.

It takes place outside of a sacred place (Church or chapel), in a living room, or outdoors, or an activity center. It is largely stripped of the accoutrements of worship. It is relaxed, affectionate, intimate, humorous, spontaneous. It involves personal witnesses about God's grace or confessions of personal weakness and need for such. It is engaging.

On the positive side, such a model is experientially rich and enjoyable, personal, non-threatening, exhilarating, interactional, delightful and meaningful. It is not boring, mechanical, formal, alienating.

On the negative side it is casual, normal, and lacking in protocols of reverence and solemnity before the Sacred. It can degenerate and become superficial, sentimental, emotional, ephemeral and monotonous in its own way.  

At its worst, it resembles the surrounding culture of subjectivity, narcissism, encounter-sensitivity groups, emotivism, therapy, consumerism and bourgeois indulgence. For example, communion might be offered to all participants, including non-Catholics, without regard to their preparedness...doctrinally, morally, psychologically...for the sacrament. After the service, the Sacred Hosts that are not consumed might be treated as unconsecrated hosts, sacrilegiously.

It is a break with Catholic tradition of many centuries. It may reject the ordinary Catholic mass as formalistic, monotonous, inauthentic. Implicitly or explicitly, it may seek to retrieve an ideal of the early Church liturgies as Passover meals, unencumbered by alien associations with temple, ritual, sacrifice, formality and solemnity. It may reflect the reformer's temptation: in the zeal to purify a contemptable Church, there is an "originalist" return to a pre-Constantinian Church of simplicity prior to the descent of the Catholic Church into power, ritual, and prestige. In this it can harbor a disgust for the actual, concrete, institutional Church of recent centuries.

However, I cannot deny that this celebration deeply, beautifully impacts many people, in many situations. I have seen this at our class reunions, retreats, family and friend gatherings, and most pronouncedly in the Neocatechumenal Way. Oftentimes those far from the Church participate and are deeply touched by a sense of God's love. This cannot be bad, can it?

The resolution to my ambivalence and conflict? I have come to see that these must be pleasing to God as they touch people so deeply. But in the right order. Specifically, the Eucharist as Word and Banquet cannot entirely detach from the Liturgy as Sacrifice and Abiding Presence. Indeed, the power, depth and beauty of these celebrations draws mysteriously from the communion with the broader, normal, parochial Church.  Protocols must be respected. Non-Catholics or those who have rejected Catholic practice cannot be reverently given Communion. The Host that is not consumed must be properly reverenced as the body of Christ. A tone of reverence and solemnity must prevail, although informally.

This Eucharist as Banquet, as Last Super, is not the normative liturgy of the Catholic Church. It is an outflow, a development, an extraordinary expression. It is an outreach. It flows out of and back to the ordinary parish mass as Word, Meal, Sacrifice and Presence. 

It is an expression of God's extravagant love. As such it flows out of and back into the more normal, even mundane parish Church building as "Temple of Worship." 

The Novus Ordo and the Latin Mass (2 of 5)

The Novus Ordo of the Vatican Council is in organic, substantial continuity with the Latin Mass of Trent and Gregory the Great and generations prior to that. The inner form or substance of the mass was preserved, but accidents were changed. The intention of the Council Fathers was to enhance participation by the laity, remove accretions that had become distracting, and unveil more transparently the simple, ancient, continuing shape of the Liturgy. The change was more like a haircut or a makeover, rather than a heart transplant or gender transition. Extremists among traditionalists and progressives see a rupture, a substantial change, and therefore disparage one or the other as a defective form. An authentic Catholic view affirms both/and, not either/or.

The Novus Ordo is now the authentic, normative rite of the Latin Church. For over 1,000 years the Latin mass was such. It remains a valid, authentic rite. It has not been cast aside or invalidated. It is now secondary and subordinate to the new rite. It remains.

The liturgical instructions of the Council were inspired by the Holy Spirit and protective of the integrity of the Eucharist. But this rite, while divinely inspired, is a human endeavor, therefore finite, limited, prone to weakness, imbalance, and misuse. It is not above criticism. I will offer two such critiques, along with a countervailing appreciation of the more traditional rite: loss of reverence and excessive verbosity. 

Loss of Reverence and Solemnity.  In making the liturgy more accessible, normal, and understandable, the Church risked the loss of reverence and solemnity. This loss became far greater than anyone could have anticipated. This was not the work of the Council documents. Rather these teaching were voiced to a Church that was rapidly and catastrophically assimilating itself to a world that was at that very second falling off the cliff into bourgeois secularism, consumerism, materialism, technocracy, relativism and Godlessness. 

The awe, silence, fasting, confessing, genuflecting, restraint, and sense of sacredness that had been handed down by almost a hundred generations of priests, parents, ascetics, mystics, hermits, missionaries and catechists disappeared...in a split second. It was an instantaneous change! A catastrophe! A monumental victory for Satan!

Excessive Verbosity.  Related to the loss of reverence is the imbalanced reliance on verbal, deliberative discourse and a displacement of more solemn modes of contemplation and worship including silence, fasting, ritualistic actions, iconography, non-intelligible song and worship. In the new rite, we are listening to someone speaking, in English, usually the priest, from start to finish. The words never top. We never get a break to rest our discursive intellect and surrender to contemplative rest. Too many words! Contrast this to the Latin mass! An unknown language that can be accessed by a missal but allows the mind to rest and ruminate, while smelling the incense, and glancing around at icons, statues stations of the cross, and stained glass windows. Likewise, in a good charismatic mass, there are periods of silence and waiting for the Word, prophetic deliverances, and the praying in tongues which resembles Latin in that it is an non-intelligible discourse which relaxes the cognitive brain and allows more meditative, poetic and mystical ruminations. 

Ironically, the new rite is over-focused on the priest celebrant and his words. For sure the Latin mass is clerical, but the actual personality, articulation and viewpoints of the priest were hidden by a richness of ritual that led the worshipers beyond his person into the Holy. The celebrants person disappeared behind an elaborate ritual. The new rite lends itself to an unfortunate clerical narcissism as the stripped down rite can lend the celebrant to see himself as center of attention: his humor, stories, insight and erudition. It leads to a more tedious, toxic clericalism.

Renewing our liturgy, "opening the doors to the world," at the very moment of radical secularization created a perfect storm of flattening, sentimentality, superficiality, verbosity, and monotony that pervades our liturgical life. The rite is not itself defective. But it has no defense against trivialization as it is so porous  and non-resistant to the surrounding culture of hostility. 

In this environment, the Latin Mass offers an antidote. It obscures the personality of the celebrant, it highlights the solemnity around the holy sacrifice and the real presence, it enhances worship by silence, genuflecting, iconography, chant, visual stimulation of servers bowing and gesturing around the altar, "ad orientem" posture of priest-with-people. This ancient rite is a perfect antidote to the superficiality, trivialization and middle class mediocrity to which the new rite is vulnerable.

The policy of Benedict was wise as well as kind and unifying: retain both rites. Let them both flourish. Let them mutually enrich each other: the old and the new, the traditional and the innovative .Live and let live!

The policy of Francis is narrow and imprudent, as well as vicious and polarizing. 

The old and the new belong to each other; as do memory and hope; tradition and creativity; fluidity and stability; past, present and future. A more generous and appreciative embrace of the Latin mass will only enrich the Novus Ordo. 

The Shape of the Catholic Eucharist (1 of 5)

In its splendid simplicity, the form of the Catholic Eucharist has four movements: the Word, the Meal, the Sacrifice, and the Abiding Presence. These four flow out of the Jewish institutions of the Synagogue, the Passover meal, and the temple as sacrifice and abiding presence. 

The announcement and reception of the Word of God is the initial movement. This must be readings from Scripture, with emphasis on the Gospels and before that the Old Testament and the epistles. Here we have the conviction that God is actually speaking to us, right here, right now, through these readings. An appropriate homily by the priest accompanies the reception of the Word.

The mass is a repetition of the Last Supper which was a Passover meal or similar celebration of Jesus with his apostles. It is a meal of friendship. But not an ordinary meal; it is a sacred meal. In Jewish worship, temple sacrifice usually entailed a meal shared by the priests. And the Passover was connected to temple worship as the lamb was sacrificed in the temple. So we have here a sacred meal, closely connected to the temple of worship.

Jesus sacrifice on Calvary is recapitulated in the mass. As he shared the bread and wine he said, "Do this in memory of me...this is my body to be given up for you...this is my blood to be shed for you..."  In contrast to the reformers, the Church has always insisted that the mass is a bloodless sacrifice. Jewish temple sacrifice was a prefiguring of that of Jesus on the cross. So there is an essential "temple" dimension inherent to the Catholic mass. This contrasts with Protestant iconoclasm and disparagement of the temple-like edifice surrounding the Catholic eucharist

By the doctrine of transubstantiation, Catholic accept the abiding presence of Jesus in the Eucharistic Host. This is a privileged, exceptional presence. God's presence is everywhere, but differs significantly. Anything that exists is in communion with God. But he becomes more intimately and powerfully present in the community of worship: wherever two or more are gathered, in proclamation of the Word, in the sacraments, in care of the poor and acts of charity, in the priesthood, in confession and contrition. Even among these, the Eucharistic presence is exceptional and, yes, superior. Here is the actual body and blood of Jesus himself, humanity and divinity. Just as present as he was bodily to his family for thirty years and his disciples for three years. 

The reformers largely disparaged the enduring Eucharistic presence in favor of the more generic presence of Christ in the proclamation of the Word, the worshipping assembly, and the spirit of praise and charity. The Catholic gestalt is different: the Eucharist presence is extraordinary, and it enhances and focuses all the other movements of the Holy Spirit.

All the great Catholic saints of recent centuries attest to this. For example, Elizabeth Ann Seton, when she was converting into the Catholic Church, found herself sitting in an Anglican Church but praying to Christ physically present in the Tabernacle across the street in the Catholic Church.  Charles de Focauld, largely alone in the Sahara desert, centered his life on worship of Christ present in his chapel. Through the centuries, anchorites have buried themselves in small cells, attached to Eucharistic chapels, largely separated from the world, but happy to worship their savior present in the Tabernacle.

The Eucharist, emblematic of the entire economy of salvation, is a Mystery of fluidity/movement and stability/substance. It is the encounter with Christ...in Word, in festal feast, in the action of sacrificial surrender. But within this movement/fluidity is an abiding Presence. If the blood flows from the side of Christ and is consumed in the liturgy, the body is consumes but yet remains, stable, steady, structured, enduring. In the simple, white, round, serene, stable Host, Christ abides with us...permanently, efficaciously, faithfully, eternally. In the Eucharist we are drawn into the movement of Christ, in the Spirit, to the Father, by way of our mission in the world. Even as we abide in Him, who abides in the Father. We at once move and are moved, even as we remain. 

It is this double Mystery of movement and abiding that inflow and unite the four dynamics: reception of the Word, festal feast of friends, sacrifice and abiding presence.

Let's Bring Back Wrath!

Synonyms are not exactly synonymous.  For example, a woman might be described as pretty, beautiful, cute, adorable, gorgeous, attractive, lovely, appealing, good-looking, stunning, precious, delightful, enchanting, captivating, appealing, charming, glamorous, elegant, alluring, winsome, ravishing, heavenly, arresting, irresistible, gracious, exquisite, breath-taking, easy-on-the-eyes, hot, comely, fair, or pulchritudinous. These all mean the same; but they don't. Each has specific nuances, associations, allusions. Some are very close; others quite distinct. 

This essay addresses anger and its synonym-analogues, especially wrath, as in Divine Wrath.

We will take anger as the generic, basic reality. It is an emotion we all know so well, naturally. It is a prime, basic emotion we understand intuitively and need not define in terms of other realities. It is simple. I will understand it  as three intermingled moments: the feeling of being violated, that explodes in antagonistic energy, against the cause that is judged culpable by intention or at least negligence.

First, then, there is passivity, a vulnerability in being abused or harmed. Secondly, there is an intellectual judgment that this hurt was caused by an intentional agent, by an intelligent-willing actor, even if through negligence. Last there is an arousal of adversarial energy against the perceived aggressor. There cannot be real human anger without these three elements: a weakness and harm suffered, a judgement about guilt, and an explosion or hostile energy against that agent. 

Can animals be angry? By this understanding, NO! They are incapable of the intellective judgement. They do demonstrate an animal analogue in the "fight response" whereby they attack what they instinctively sense as threatening. Human anger is in part such an emotive response, but it includes the intellectual aspect. Of course a child or an adult, overwhelmed with anxiety, might have diminished cognitive capacity and respond with unreflective animal-like rage. For example, we know cases wherein a combatant will "black out" and not remember what happened in the fight. Clearly, such is not anger in the human sense but in a subhuman, non-cognitive state. 

We speak of "righteous anger" which is a true, rational or appropriate anger against injustice. This is Jesus in the temple. This our adage: "Be angry but sin not." Righteous anger is anger, but it is just and therefore virtuous. It can be directed, in prudence and restrain, to the common good. It can be gathered into a love that is wholesome, integral, active.

Outrage and indignation retain the strong sense of judgment, but in a less virtuous manner, implying a determination that is false, mistaken or unfounded and therefore less than just. 

Most of the synonyms for anger, with the glaring exception of wrath, imply a more emotional and animal-like, less rational force, with the element of intellectual judgement diminished if not eliminated. "Mad" is associated with insanity and therefore irrationality. "Fury" calls to mind the ancient "furies" of ancient Greece which were deities of revenge and far from anger as justice. "Rage" implies a lack of control and therefore violent, irrational anger. Other synonyms suggest a lower level of anger, less violent, but no less rational, entailing a level of discomfort without suggestion of righteousness: annoyance, irritability, exasperation, displeasure, antagonism, enmity,, umbrage, resentment, 

Can God be angry? By this understanding, NO! God is not passive or vulnerable. He cannot be hurt in that way. To ascribe such a limitation or imperfection to God would be an anthropomorphism: erroneously attributing to God a human imperfection. 

"The Wrath of God" is a different reality, quite distinct from anger as passivity.  This word comes to us almost exclusively from Scripture, that is, from Revelation. It is the divine analogue of human anger: similar within a greater dissimilarity. God is absolute perfection and Act; invulnerable to violation of abuse in Himself. In that sense, the Wrath of God is almost the opposite of human anger as passivity, vulnerability, weakness. God's Wrath is infinite power: overwhelming, invincible, almighty. It is, furthermore, a manifestation of His Holiness and Glory:  the True and the Good and the Beautiful as infinite, eternal, uncompromised...and intolerant (absolutely) of sin, evil, impurity.

This non-human, Divine reality has been revealed to us through the centuries in God's dramatic history with Israel, her friends and enemies, and Jesus and his Church. The wrath of God is unbounded power in the utter annihilation of what is evil and sin.  It is transcendent, eternal, non-historical even as it enters into history.

The human person is incapable, without divine intervention, of Wrath, just as the animal is incapable of righteous anger. We are capable, however, of the analogues of holy wrath. First, of course is righteous anger which attacks injustice in prudence and restrain. Secondly, is horror at evil; a disgust for sin; an uncompromising refusal to tolerate moral impurity and injustice. 

As we are drawn closer to God through the sacraments, prayer, and holiness of life, we increase in virtue, including fiery righteousness and in our aversion to sin. We become, like our Blessed Mother and all the saints, a repellent, an antagonist, an absolute contradiction of sin.

Today, in the Church, we NEVER hear about God's Wrath! This is a big problem. It is because we know little or nothing of His Holiness and Glory. We dwell relentlessly in the secular, the horizontal, the this-worldly. So our piety has degenerated into a pity that is sentimental, saccharine, emasculated. The focus is upon mercy, but a mercy that is eviscerated of truth, justice, paternal demands, holiness and divine wrath. It is a mercy that is soft, enabling, ever-affirmative, undemanding, indulgent.

For the last two weeks (last of the liturgical year) the first mass readings have all been from the book of  Revelation. They deal with the Wrath of God, destroying evil and sin. I have attended at least half a dozen parishes and listened to more priests than that. Only once was the first reading mentioned: the priest joked that it was too early to talk about the book of Revelation.

We live in apocalyptic times: evil is contagious, violence everywhere, polarization poisoning, war raging in eastern Europe, hunger widespread, deaths of despair, inflation, energy shortages, pandemics, and threat of nuclear war. We desperately need to hear about God's holiness; His Wrath for evil; His providential plan to create a new heaven and a new earth. We need to hear the book of Revelation; to ponder the Wrath of God; to be in awe of His Glory; to despise sin and evil; to draw close to a Mercy that is Holy and yes Wrathful.

Mary our Blessed Mother, alone of our race, was fully open to the Holy and perfectly adverse to sin. As we draw close to her son and the Trinity, within the Church, we do well to ponder the Wrath of God. To be in awe. To despise sin. To surrender to a Mercy that wrathful and annihilating of all sin.

 

  

 

What is a Woman? (Letter 17 to Teen Grandchildren)

 Before reading further, look away from this text and think: How would you define "woman?" Take a few minutes.

If you have difficulty formulating a definition, don't feel bad. Our new Supreme Court Justice, Katanji Jackson Brown famously refused to answer the question, responding "I am not a biologist." Actually, the dictionary definition is precisely biological and straightforward:  "A person capable of forming eggs, gestating life and giving birth." But the real question is philosophical: Aside from the obvious biological, procreative dimension, is there something, a form, an interiority, an essence of The Feminine?

There are two contradictory answers to this: the essentialist and the constructivist. The first affirms an interior form or essence of Femininity; the later denies it and sees femininity, aside from the biological, as a social or personal construct, a figment of the communal or individual imagination. 

All traditional societies and religions have affirmed or assumed essentialism, the belief in a reality of femininity and masculinity. While the distinction is elaborated in multiple manners, the idea that there is a basic underlying reality of difference is the basis for society and the continuance of life. Additionally, in some form, all religions recognize in gender something Divine, something mysterious, transcendent and profoundly interior to all of reality. This also takes all kinds of forms.

This universal, common sense realism was radically rejected by the militant feminism that exploded in the 1960s. In all kinds of cultures, women saw, men have used the difference to dominate, oppress, and abuse women. The solution proposed: do away with gender differences and treat everyone the same: equality and sameness in employment, opportunities, wages, childcare, and everything. Fairness as sameness. Aided by the contraception pill, a new concept of the human person emerged: the androgynous, neutral, non-gendered individual.

This did not work well for women! Women had to take the pill or device. When it failed, women had to bear the child, often as a single mother, or abort. Women were more often disturbed with sadness and depression in the aftermath of alcohol-fueled, pick-up sexual encounters. Women, now equaling and often excelling men in the professions, were still primarily concerned for childcare, eldercare, maintenance of the home and relationships and therefore increasingly suffering burnout.

In the flight from the feminine, the movement became a mimic of toxic masculinity at its worst: casual sex, careerism, access to abortion, and the imperial Self as autonomous, self-determining, uprooted, lonely, and free of bonds and commitment.

A deeper paradox and contradiction developed. If "woman" is a construct rather than an essential reality, it is up to every group and individual to construct their own understanding. There is no reality behind the word. If that is so, there is nothing to defend, value and admire as "feminine" other than a construction of the mind. This logical contradiction has come full term now with the Trans movement. Bruce (aka Kaitlyn) Jenner, arguably the greatest American athlete of my generation, has three marriages, tons of kids and then transitions into a "woman." He now can claim a legal right to enter woman's areas like bathrooms, showers, protective shelters, and compete athletically. The idea of this impressive male athlete competing with women is ludicrous to anyone not brainwashed into "wokeism." 

It will not surprise you that I am an essentialist, not a constructivist. Now my definition:

A woman is a creature, a human person, who is capable of gestating life within herself, in relation to (including reception of) the masculine, and giving birth as well as all the maternal nurture and care of life. The feminine is a manner of relating...as mother, bride, sister, daughter...that distinctively images the Trinity as Good, True and Beautiful.

Creature.   This is the most primal, foundational, and significant reality. The Feminine is created by God, to image His goodness, truth and beautiful, in a specific, if mysterious manner. Femininity is NOT a human construct! It is not determined by social consensus or the independent self. It is received as a gift from above. It is discovered. As such it is then shared, generously, as it was received gratefully. And so it has within it, however profoundly and obscurely, an interior logic as Love; an integrity and an identity; a destiny and a final purpose.

Human Person.  A human person, as created by God, is an embodied spirit. As a spirit it has intelligence, free will, and self-determination within limits. Imaging God, it has freedom as the capacity to give itself in love, as it has already received itself in love. But essentially embodied, it has already a shape, a form, an orientation and destiny specifically as masculine or feminine. This is an absolute binary: there are no third or forth or fifth options. There is not a spectrum. This is not a buffet in which one can choose some items of femininity and others of masculinity. The human person is essentially relational, as masculine or feminine, towards the other.

The woman is partner with the man, equal in dignity, complementary and asymetrical. Before the Fall into sin Adam and Eve were entrusted together with the dual mission: bring forth new life and tend the garden together. That partnership was wounded, but not destroyed by sin. Specifically, sin robbed man and woman of their mutual, innocent tenderness and reverence for each other. It resulted in the abuse of woman by man. But their destiny remained: to image the holy Trinity in love and generosity to each other and their offspring and their world. This was, of course, definitively restored in Christ.

Gestate Life Within Herself.  Not on her own, but only in her trusting reception of the masculine, is she able to gestate life...within herself. By contrast, the masculine gives life outside of himself, but only with the trusting reception of the woman. The biological reality is evident and straightforward.

But the Catholic universe is symbolic, sacramental, and always pointing to other deeper, truer, fuller realities. And so, the maternal gestation and generation of life is not only physical, but is emotional, spiritual, intellectual, moral, social and spiritual. Think of Mother Theresa of Calcutta, a virgin who never gave biological birth but epitomizes in herself femininity as maternity. 

In Relation to the Masculine

In a mysterious manner that eludes articulation, the Feminine is self-contained, receptive, inclusive, rested, embracive. The Masculine is donative, initiating, restless, explorative, decisive. Maternity and paternity have within themselves all the same dynamics but are integrated in contrasting, complementary manners. To be generative, the masculine and feminine depend upon each other; neither are autonomous; both are generous, even as they are mutually dependent.

Manner of Relating. Femininity is, then, at once an essential interiority, and a manner of relating. Daughter, sister, bride, mother...these resemble and yet contrast with son, brother, bridegroom and father. They are the same; and they are not the same. 

Iconic of Trinitarian Life. It has been revealed to us that within the Trinity there is infinite diversity of the Three, absolute unity, and complete equality. All of created life images the Trinity; but none as well as the love between man and woman. Here we also find difference, equality, and unity... of love. There is the overflowing generosity of gifted, grateful, fruitful, receptive, donative Love. In an authentic, genuine conjugal union, and the family that issues from it, we see Triune life imaged.

But the masculine and the feminine, each in its distinctive, limited, manner, also image the Love of God as True, Good and Beautiful. The feminine particularly embodies the Beautiful, understood as integrity, harmony and radiance. The feminine body and psyche is integrated and interiorly harmonious in striking contrast to the more fragmented, restless and explosive masculine body and psyche. Additionally, she radiates an indescribable but most palpable luminosity that is restful, serene, comforting, reassuring, delightful, charming, gracious and inspiring. By contrast, the masculine (at its best) expresses gentle strength, clarity, decisiveness, movement, action.

Against Stereotypes

The basic feminist critique of essentialism is that it tends to narrowly stereotype the woman as nurturing, emotional, passive, home-bound, volatile, and so forth. This is a very good point. It is very difficult to articulate the essentialist view without walking close to the cliff of stereotyping.

There is a boundless richness and diversity about the feminine and it is violated when it is reduced to a stereotype. It expresses itself in wonderful and wild variations.

A woman can have facial hair; a concave chest; dislike children; despise pink; be attracted to other women. A woman can be a marine, a prize fighter, a mafia hit man.  A woman can transition, socially-chemically-surgically, into a male social identity. She can have her breasts and uterus removed. She is still a woman. Interiorly, in her psyche and soul, she is feminine. All the various attributes, exteriorities and accidents associated with femininity are not the essential. In her heart, intellect, will...and in her manner of relating...she can only be feminine. She cannot be masculine. There are no other options.

The Immaculate, Assumed into Heaven

Woman, as a creature, was God's idea. Clearly, he had a concrete, particular woman in mind, the very highpoint of his creation, Mary. In her virginal sensitivity, she is wholly receptive of God's grace. In her maternity she is extravagantly generous in giving life to God's own Son and to all of us. In her vulnerability she suffered the passion with her son. In her holiness she crushed the head of the serpent. In her expectant faith, at Pentecost and always, she opens us to the Holy Spirit. As Queen of heaven and earth, she watches over us and guides us. She is, as Woman, the perfection of Creation.

Let us, all of us, men and women both, place ourselves and keep ourselves ever under the mantle of her holiness and purity, her beauty and her love.

Debt of gratitude: much of the above was received from or inspired by the marvelous book "Genesis of Gender" by Abigail Favale.

     

Immune Reaction within the Body of Christ

Of all our bodily systems...respiratory, reproductive, digestive, etc...my favorite probably is the immune system. This is the protector that defends us from invasive, destructive germs, viruses, bacteria and all kinds of pathogens. Without a strong immune system we are vulnerable to swift decline and even death as we are without defense. Among the very worst pathologies is a compromised immune system as we can be undone by all kinds of invasive enemies. The immune system senses the threat and fires itself up to attack, destroy and expel the invader. Then it assists in recovery. Then it emerges even stronger than before the attack. This is the "anti-fragility" dimension that is so valuable: as a result of this battle and victory, the immune system is smarter, stronger and well prepared for a similar assault in the future. After an assault, a good immune system helps us emerge more healthy, resilient and strong than before.

The Church is the body of Christ and has a similar immune system which is triggered by an invasion into the body of error, corruption and sin. As with the physical analogy, this system is awesomely complex, dense and mysterious. It includes: holiness at all levels of life, a vibrant sacramental economy, craving for the Word of God in scripture and preaching, and the magisterial agency of the Church.

But what happens when the infection enters through the magisterium, the hierarchy, the pope/bishops/priests?

This is our situation today. For at least 100 years we have had popes of extraordinary intelligence and holiness, many of them now canonized. But Pope Francis is a weak, confusing pope. His intentions are good. He is not a bad man. He is simply inept as pope. On the major threats to our Church and world, he is basically the opposite of his predecessor St. Pope John Paul II.

In the face of a militant Cultural Sexual Liberalism that captured the West and much of the globe, John Paul proclaimed, serenely-clearly-firmly, the Gospel of the fertile masculine/feminine human body as iconic of the Holy Trinity. He was the decisive, authoritative answer to the Culture of Death. Pope Francis has reversed this teaching, erratically to be sure, but with overall consistency. He has destroyed the John Paul Institute in Rome; elevated the LGBTQ-friendly crusade of Fr. Martin S.J. and company; and contorted a "who am I to judge" attitude into an indifference to and even enabling of sin.

John Paul was a crucial warrior in the defeat of Soviet Communism. Francis is deferential to a more virulent Chinese Communism: betraying the persecuted Church as well as the human rights of  Uyghurs and others.

John Paul, in his youth, resisted the Nazis occupation of Poland, and consistently defended the principles of human liberty throughout his papacy. Pope Francis, just recently, failed to confront the odious Russian invasion of the Ukraine in his pitiful, enfeebled effort to curry favor with the Patriarch of Moscow. 

On the death penalty we find a subtle but significant contrast between them. John Paul shared the visceral aversion to capital punishment and strenuously advocated against it. But he argued on pragmatic grounds that it was no longer necessary in modern society. So he left the classic doctrine in tact. He allowed for a difference in judgment, on practical grounds. Despite his passionate stance, he was humble before Tradition and the prudential judgment of those who disagree with him. Francis was not so restrained: unilaterally he changed the Catechism, disregarding the established Magisterium without consultation with the bishops and in contempt for those (police, prosecutors, legislatures, judges) who judge the penalty necessary to protect the common good. Lacking the brilliant philosophical intellect of his predecessor, he surrendered to his emotional compulsions. 

John Paul's clarity and strength finds its polar opposite in the confusion and weakness of Francis.

How does our ecclesial immune system react to this invasion of confusion and error? Clearly: with Truth and with Love. Two movements which commingle together.

Truth. We have to say clearly where Francis is in error. With a few exceptions (the Dubia Cardinals, Chaput, Mueller, etc.) the hierarchy and even most priests are reluctant to publicly criticize the pope lest they wound the unity of the body. This is understandable. Happily, however, this task has been handled capably by a range of laymen including, in our country, Raymond Arroyo and EWTN, Crisis magazine, Reno and First Things, and others.

Love. This element is even more important than Truth. Genuine love, of course, includes Truth. But those of us most sensitive to Truth can easily become agitated, anxious, angry, divisive and bereft of serenity, reverence and affection. This is a big problem. 

For example, I myself have been in a fairly steady state of quiet agitation, annoyance, discouragement and resentment throughout this papacy...precisely because it offends many of my strongest Catholic convictions. What to do?

Recently I have been confessing my attitude and receiving absolution. I think the sacramental graces are working. I am more peaceful. I am praying more fervently and affectionately for Pope Francis and his squad, my antagonists. I am learning to love my enemy.

This tonic of love is what I have been missing. My allegiance to Truth has not been adequately balanced by Love.  So: I am now doubling down on the  forgiveness, contrition, prayer and loyalty to the Pope and the bishops who accompany him. 

This is good. I am confident that if we strengthen our allegiance to the Truth but even more vigorously intensify our loyalty and affection for our pope/bishops/priests...especially in their weakness as sinners like ourselves... we will emerge from this invasion with an immune system ever more resilient, healthy and robust.

Fruitful or Sterile? (Letter 16 to Teen Grandchildren)

 I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me, you will bear much fruit.   

It was I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear much fruit, fruit that will last.   John 15

In what follows, "fertility" and "sterility" mean more than the biological capacity to give life. They refer to a way of life, an interior, personal direction that is moral, spiritual and psychological.

Before you are two worlds, cultures, societies, ways of life: the fruitful and the sterile. The two are incompatible, contradictory and have been at war for half a century since the Sexual Revolution and the eruption of Cultural Liberalism. They will be at war long after you are dead. It is for you to choose: one or the other. Many try to straddle the two, accepting aspects of both, picking and choosing. That leads to a split personality: one side of the person at war with the other. Better to be one or the other.

The fruitful life is: abiding in God's love; receptive and responsive; masculine and feminine; organic and natural; incorporated into a family, a larger family, a community, a Church, a nation; generous and generative; differentiated and yet equal in dignity; open to new life.

The sterile life is: individualistic; autonomous; detached from God; androgynous and rejecting of gender as binary and fertile; contraceptive in tearing sexual intercourse from procreation; technocratic in reconfiguring the fertile as the "reproductive."

"The Pill,"  "contra-ception" ("against birth") changed our world, in the 1960s, more catastrophically than has any other technological change: more than gunpowder, printing, the computer and internet, more than all the air pollution in our atmosphere. Contraception deconstructed the human person as fertile, gendered, life-giving...as an image of the Trinity.

"Diabolical" means demonic or Satanic, but etymologically it means "to tear apart." It is the opposite of "symbolic" which means to "join together."  In that sense, marriage is symbolic, divorce is diabolic. Contraception was diabolic in that it tore sexuality from fertility, it tore them both from love as faithful-exclusive-free-generative, and it tore all three from spousal communion. It thus eviscerated the heart of the family; it detached the person from past and future, from tradition and authority, from the natural purposes of sexuality and from God's very Self.

Contraception destroyed the bonds of union between man and woman; between the current and past as well as future generations; between the Church as virgin, bride and mother and Christ as chaste bridegroom and father. It did this by isolating the individual as alone, lonely, autonomous, uprooted, self-determining, defensive and suspicious...incapable of trust, reception and surrender.

Gender, generous, generative...all draw from the Latin root (gen) that refers to birth, to create, to give life. So the core meaning of gender, masculine and feminine, is generosity or generativity...the giving of birth, biologically and psychologically and spiritually and every such way. So: woman is the human person, related to the masculine (conjugally), who is capable of gestating life within herself. Man (masculine) is the human person, related to the feminine (conjugally), who generates life outside of himself. They complement each other as maternal and paternal...biologically, psychologically spiritually and in every domain of life.

In the gendered, generating, generous world, all of Creation images the Creator in his extravagant, explosive, infinite Goodness, Beauty and Truth...in His Love. Such is a symbolic or sacramental universe: everything is connected together, and everything in its inherent worth and relationships points beyond to Infinite Value. Life radiates a luminous Mystery and promises an infinite destiny.

The contracepted (against life) universe is sterile and futile; it isolates; it sets every will against the other in an endless conflict of oppressor/oppressed. It is disenchanted:  empty of mystery, of grace, of destiny, of  charm, of miracle and magic.

Abortion should disappear in a thoroughly contracepted society: but the opposite occurred. By the 1970s over 90 % of women of child-bearing age were contracepting; abortion became legal; the abortion rate increased to over one million little ones per year in the USA. This is because abortion is the inevitable and necessary consequence of contraception. Contraception frequently fails. Often this is user failure. The woman on the pill for a long time forgets about her natural fertility and defaults to an understanding of herself as sterile. She forgets to contracept. She conceives. With her partner she had already decided against life. She must abort. 

Sterile has two meanings: unable to give birth; clean, hygienic and free of bacteria or other microcosms. In a surgery, of course, such cleanliness is healthy and protective (against disease) of life. However this limited, appropriate concern has exploded beyond itself in our technocratic society so that we have today an inordinate fear of germs, disease, of natural/organic life. There is an exaggerated fragility of the self as vulnerable and endangered by a Nature now seen as predatory. There is a forgetfulness of Nature as our home, of our companionship with her, of our immune-capability and our anti-fragility (what attacks us makes us stronger.) 

Fruitfulness contrasts with productivity, and especially with reproductivity. The former is organic, biological, natural. It flows fluidly from the harmonious interaction of living elements: for plants it is the seed, water soil, sunshine. For humans it is masculine/feminine love, tenderness, protectiveness, loyalty, stability, connection with larger communities and abiding in God. But productivity is impersonal, unnatural, artificial, technological and mechanical.  Our society overvalues productivity and undervalues fruitfulness. The later is more interpersonal, fluid, mysterious, non-measurable, sacramental and enchanted.

Contraception, as a technological assault on the fertile body, deconstructed procreation as the enchanted masculine/feminine participation in God's creation of a new person and reconfigured it as "reproduction" (This might be the ugliest word in the English language!) It is entirely void of grace, splendor and mystery; it is technological, mechanical and with sterile as deadly. And so we hear of "reproductive rights." (Surely the ugliest phrase in the English language.)

Technology has displaced spousal (married) love as the genesis of life:  contraception prevents life, abortion kills the mistaken life, artificial technologies in the laboratory "reproduce" human life for those who suffer biological infertility.

In the sterile universe, active homosexuality is privileged and prideful as it is essentially, not just technologically and deliberately, sterile. In the fruitful universe it is sad, futile and tragic.

Likewise, transgenderism is, in the sterile universe, an expression of freedom and self-expression in the best sense. In the fruitful universe, it is a violation of the sexed-body in its preciousness, fragility and sacredness.

The Democratic Party is the political arm of the Culture of Sterility, of contraception and abortion. The Republican Party is more complicated as it is at least four things: the political arm of traditional, fertile Christianity; a "libertarian" view that protects the liberty of the individual and even defends the right to abortion as well as legalization of drugs; an institution that protects the wealth of the very rich; and a populism that is furious but incoherent in its rage at the powerful liberal elites. We see here one good reason for a Catholic to support it and three reasons for a Catholic to resist it. There are no good reasons for a Catholic to support the Party of Sterility and Death.

You and your parents were born into a world at war. I was more fortunate: born 2 years after World War II and 20 years before the Culture War erupted, I entered a world at peace. You will not be able to detach yourself from this war! Neutrality is not an option!

Let us give thanks to God for your fertility, for your masculinity or femininity, for your incorporation within a family and a Church and a nation; for your connection with generations past and future (your own children and legacy); for your fruitfulness as a branch in the vine that is Christ! 

November of the Four Last Things; Remembering Al Remmele; the Final Encounter with Mercy (Letter 15 to Teen Grandchildren)

Husband, father of three, student of medicine, 23-year-old Christoph Probst, guillotined in 1943 by the Nazis for his part in the White Rose Resistance Movement, was baptized into the Catholic Church minutes before his death. Just before that he wrote his mother:

Thank you for giving me life. Looking back now, I see that it has all been a single road to God.  Soon I will be closer to you than before. In the meantime I will prepare a glorious reception for you all. I never knew that dying could be so easy. I die without any feeling of hatred. NEVER FORGET THAT LIFE IS NOTHING BUT A GROWING IN LOVE AND A PREPARATION FOR ETERNITY.       (Magnificat, November 2022, page 177)

Every November as we finish the Church year, we Catholics recall the four last things: death, judgment heaven and hell. It is good for the heart the intellect and the will...for the soul. Glancing towards eternity we grow in HOPE: hearts are cleansed, wills are strengthened,  intellects are clarified. Everything falls into its proper place: anxieties diminish, regrets recede,  joys increase, wisdom prevails, courage abounds, and serenity abides. 

We don't think enough about heaven. We don't yearn for it enough: so our desire gets distracted.

Life is nothing but a growing in love and a preparation for eternity. Said the wise, courageous Christoph Probst just after (baptism) and before (death) his birth into eternal life.

Everything else...our achievements, reputation, wealth, health...everything else is not nothing. It all is part of our journey. But it is not everything. Everything is God and heaven and all our life drawn into that.

I want to share with you a theological speculation from a marvelous book: God's Gamble by Gil Baile (a deep thinker whom I consider a friend). We Catholics believe in two judgments: the general judgment at the end of time and the particular judgment at the moment of death when we face Christ, review our life and enter heaven (including purgatory) or hell. Baile, along with other thinkers, suggests another dimension to death. The Church does not teach this, nor does it renounce it. It is something we have liberty to accept or not. I personally strongly accept it. The idea is:

At death, each of us, saint or sinner, encounters Jesus Christ, with his wounds suffered in love for us. He offers us his Mercy. It is for each, in freedom, to accept or reject. The very worst sinner has a chance to receive, to be contrite for sin, to extend forgiveness to those who have hurt him. Likewise, the very best person has freedom at that moment to accept or reject the Mercy of Christ.

This is quite different from the traditional understanding of the particular judgment. That event is itself not an act of freedom; it is post-life and post-freedom, a final review and judgment of up or down. This new view proposes a final act of freedom which may sum up the preceding history of good or evil but might conceivably be a reversal, hopefully for better in the encounter with the Merciful Jesus who suffered so for us. 

This is particularly hopeful when we consider those who appear to die in sin. For example, suicide victims. Suicide is itself a taking of a life and therefore objectively a mortal sin. But today we are very aware of the psychological conditions that might mitigate or even eliminate culpability: profound depression, anxiety, dementia, rage, intoxication, mental illness. Years ago the Church would not give a Catholic funeral to a suicide victim. This has changed: we understand the weakness that might cause it and we have a heightened awareness of the triumph of the Mercy of Jesus, especially through the revelations to St. Faustina that were authenticated under St. Pope John Paul.

You are no doubt aware that your great-uncle, Al Remmele (brother of your Grandmother and John, Paul, Mark and Suzanne), sadly took his life after long struggles with mental illness. He was a year younger than me; we were close, friends as well as brother-in-laws. He was very handsome and attractive (tons of girl friends), athletic (varsity basketball), intelligent (math teacher), charming and sweet in personality. He was a deep thinker, reader of theology and philosophy. I personally know that he made every conceivable effort in every direction to seek healing: psychology, exercise, charismatic healing, prayer, self-help groups (he was a leader in Recovery a group for sufferers of inordinate anxiety). He had a beautiful relationship with a wonderful woman who adored him. He made every effort imaginable. His suffering overwhelmed him.

The last acts of Al before his death. He got on his knees and helped Walter, his stepfather, to remove his boots. Before he died from a rope in the garage, he lit a candle. His death of agony was surrounded by an act of mercy and a prayer of hope.

His death was unquestionably the saddest event of our lives. His funeral was even stronger: there was an overwhelming outpouring of love and mercy from so, so, so many people. Just prior to this event, I read John Paul's encyclical that had just been released On Divine Mercy. Throughout this amazing funeral, I kept thinking:  "If all these people (hundreds) have such compassion, kindness, tenderness for Al, how much more must our Lord have?" 

I have never doubted that Al is with the Lord, his horrendous interior suffering is over, encompassed eternally in Mercy and Joy. His purgatory would be short as he suffered so in this life.

That death was a defining moment for my own life. It's meaning: Mercy. Our family's devotion to the Magnificat Home flows out of the memory of the suffering and goodness of Al.

Regarding this possibility of a final encounter with Mercy at death, one might worry: could this conjecture tempt us to presumption, the false assurance that we can sin all we want and Jesus will still forgive us and we can get into heaven at the last minute? Yes, that is a good point. 

However I look at it in a different way. I imagine the beauty of Christ and the joy of heaven and I am motivated to prepare, every day, even every moment, so that I am ready to fully embrace his love. Death is the final contest, the nationals, the world series, the super bowl. I want my entire life to be a getting ready so I am at my very best, peaking at that immense event!

And so we imagine that for each of us, wherever we might appear on the scale of good to bad, Jesus comes at the moment of death, offering his Mercy. Each of us like the two thieves crucified with him. He waits for our petition: "Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom." He yearns with infinite passion and tenderness to assure us "This very day you will be with me in paradise."

These are good things to recall in November.

The Moral Ambiguity of Cultural Liberalism as a Form of Christianity, However Deviant and Deprived

 Cultural liberalism is better understood as a form, heretical, of Christianity rather than neo-paganism or post-Christianity. This was the suggestion some time ago in an article in First Things. I think that is correct. It is surely not genuine, integral Christianity in morals, ontology, and practice. But it is a deviation from Christianity. In this it resembles Islam, Mormonism, traditionalist fascisms (e.g. Putin) and Communism. 

Nazism in Germany was a pure form of neo-paganism, although that was not evident to everyone early on. Monsignor John Oesterreicher famously clarified that Hitler's hated for the Jews expressed a loathing of the God of the Torah and therefore a renunciation, complete, of the Gospel. That was neo-paganism.

But the Cultural Liberalism that erupted in the 1960s does not so self-define. Rather, it presents itself as a more enlightened, up-to-date, intelligent and compassionate development of the love message of Jesus Christ. This is manifest of course in liberal theology, but implicit as well in wholly secular activism which sees itself as defensive of the oppressed, downtrodden, marginalized. Identity politics, feminism, BLM, LGBTQ, and so forth. 

So we are not now living in post-Christendom, but in a Christendom now weakened and fragmented by emergence of a powerful and appealing heresy that presents itself as an improvement upon traditional religion. The good news here is that the gospel has deeply penetrated the West, and indeed the globe, with values and attitudes, that have however become twisted and perverted. This means we are not two families at war with each other; but one family with a huge internal conflict. This is a more hopeful, positive take on the Culture War. I will give a case study:  social workers.

In my work over the last 13 years, I have known perhaps 30 social workers who serve the residents in our boarding homes. They are always the same: young, female, very attractive, competent, professional, modest, dignified, very compassionate. They like me and what I do: they see me as a kind uncle or something like that. I immediately fall in love with them. But it is okay: they remind me of my daughters (one a social worker, another a psychologist) so my fatherly tenderness allows me to enjoy a low-level ecstasy in wholesome serenity and sobriety. Just this week two, both very competent and ravishing Hispanic beauties, asked me for recommendations for graduate work. I happily comply of course. 

We  have never come even close to discussing politics, religion or sexuality. We work happily, fruitfully together to help the women entrusted to our care. It is good. It is untroubled. It is delightful.

Yet, I am sure that almost all of them are pro-choice, BLM-supportive, and LGBTQ-friendly. They are mostly not going to Church or praying with those closest to them. They are or have been or will be contracepting and cohabitating. They may be bringing clients to the abortion clinic. In the Culture War they are all my adversaries. But I do not engage.

At the same time, they are in harmony with my  deepest values. We are working together to serve the poor and suffering. I am sure they ambition for themselves what I have enjoyed: a stable, permanent, loyal, exclusive and fruitful (however imperfect) marriage. Were it appropriate, they would mostly welcome an occasion to pray with me. Deep down, they are Christian. Their catechesis, ethics and metaphysics is weak.

So it is best to dwell in the light. To support each other in the works of mercy. To see the good in each other. To share enthusiasm, synergy and delight. To hope that what is most true, good and beautiful in my life awakens also what is so in theirs.

Abortion: a Way of Life; THE Defining Civilizational Conflict of our Time (Letter 14 to teen grandchildren.)

The recent midterm elections and the hysterical furor after the Dobbs overturning of Roe make clear:  abortion is the defining conflict of our time, of the last 50 years and the next. No other issue compares. In our history only slavery rivals it in moral gravity.

Do you know anyone who would disapprove of: low crime and gun violence? reduced inflation and unemployment? lessened global warming and protection of our environment? adequate but not extravagant safety network for the needy? a controlled but welcoming immigration process? support and accountability for police?

Of course not! We all agree on those. We can disagree on the best means to get there and on the relative value of competing values. But on those goods we agree.

Legal abortion? Here we find an absolute contradiction. Here there is no compromise, no dialogue, no negotiation. The unborn baby lives or dies. The binary is absolute. It is like slavery. Abortion is the core moral problem that polarizes our society so radically.

Abortion is not a single issue, separate unto itself. It is a culture, a religion, a way of life. It is the nexus of a myriad of values, beliefs, practices. In this also it resembles the slave society of our South.

1.  Euthanasia, assisted suicide, and even infanticide (as in partial birth abortion) come with abortion as murder of the weak and powerless.

2.  Contracepted and sterilized sex are the root causes of abortion, which is back-up to failed birth control. If you accept contraception, the inevitable consequence is abortion. The widespread idea that contraception prevents abortion has it entirely backwards: having decided for contracepted sex, an unintended pregnancy moves inevitably towards abortion.

3.  The sterilization of sex, the rupture of intercourse from procreation, trivializes sexuality and opens the door to cohabitation without marriage, homosexual marriage, increases in divorce, adultery and pornography and the decline of marriage and family.

4.  The technological intrusion extends itself to artificial reproduction: surrogate mothers, artificial  insemination, and eventually movement towards human cloning and blending with other animal species.

5. It attacks "woman" as maternal, welcoming, nurturing. It destroys the mystery of masculinity/femininity in their dignified, equal, complementary yet asymmetrical generosity. It isolates the woman as disconnected, defensive, unprotected, and hostile to the unborn life within her.

6. It attacks the father, grandparents, brothers and sisters of the conceived. It ruptures the bonds that bind us in family on behalf of an isolated, autonomous individual. It is a sin against previous and succeeding generations.

7. It flows from and feeds into the breakdown of communal bonds of family, Church, local and smaller associations of value. It atomizes the individual and constructs a dependence upon cancerously large corporations and state.

8. In deconstructing the woman as maternal, it reconfigures femininity into a social and personal construct, removed from nature, and leaves her stripped of dignity except as an object of masculine desire (beautiful, glamourous, popular) or as  productive within the all-encompassing careerist, meritocratic technocracy. In devaluing the incompetent embryo, all who are not successful and achieving are also considered "losers" without value. So we have the bifurcation of our society into two classes: the "haves" and the "have nots." The new Class War.

9. In deconstructing the man as paternal, it leaves the young fatherless and adrift: pandemic of pornography (even among young women I am surprised to learn), crime and violence, deaths of despair (suicide, overdoses), anomie and rage among men, self-hatred among young women.  

10. It is a renunciation of God as the source and meaning of life. It idolizes the deciding Self as a mini-god unto him/herself. It is violation of the moral order, the very logos of creation.

On that last point consider a thought experiment. Imagine we had technology that could remove any fetus from the mother's womb and place it into a safe, nurturing technological surrogate. Imagine enough pro-life families were willing to adopt all such babies. Would the pro-choice movement serenely hand over the little ones, satisfied with a woman's "right to her own body?"  I think not! This abortion movement would insist on the "right to choice"...the right to kill the little life even if it is no longer a threat to the woman. This is because, I believe, there is something deeper, more sinister here than the understandable need of a vulnerable woman for her own bodily integrity. There is a rebellion of the creature against creation and the Creator.

The Culture of Death is powerful in our country. It holds at least half of us, even among Catholics, in its grip. We cannot merely legislate against it. We empathize with the vulnerable women afflicted with an unintended pregnancy. Our is a huge moral obligation to support such women. I suggest that our efforts and energy in that direction should be 100 times more strenuous than the politics of ending abortion. But abortion itself is a further violation of the already violated woman. It is not the cure. Abortion is a moral infection, a cancer, a contagion. It is out of our control. It is of the Kingdom of  Darkness. We cannot easily get rid of it. 

We cannot cooperate in this evil. Let us detach and resist. Less by political activism than by lives of prayer and holiness, by acts of Mercy.  Let us must maintain our own integrity in our reverence and  tenderness for human life in all its forms, especially the most powerless. Let us shine light into an increasingly dark world by our deep communion with each other, in Christ, and open our femininity and masculinity to the radiance of generosity.

Overcoming Polarization in the Church?

To overcome polarization in the Church, Carlo Lancellotti (National Catholic Register Nov. 5, 2022), recalls the focus of Monsignor Lorenzo Giussani, his mentor, on the Event of Christ as the heart and center of our faith. This is, of course, the legacy of Vatican II, the dual papacy and the most influential, promising Catholic school of theology of the last half century. Rightly, he centralizes the Incarnation and sees ecclesial ideologies of the right and left as too often abstractions, detachments from the concrete, fleshly, incarnate, crucified and risen Jesus. 

Carlo, friend, a gifted mathematician, is blessed with an extraordinary theological intuition, nurtured by his life within Communion and Liberation. His translation and explanation of the Italian Del Noce are major contributions. Carlo is a brilliant.  But this essay left me uneasy.

Everything he writes here is insightful and pertinent: the polarization is scandalous, the source of unity is the person and event of Jesus Christ, we too often gather into opposing theological camps. Amen to all of that! This admonition is especially salutary for those like myself  who are strongly compelled to engage in argument over truth. The call for unity, from Jesus and throughout the New Testament, is fundamental. The way there is two-fold: love of God, in Jesus; and love of my brother and sister, in Jesus. But I would add a third: fidelity to Truth.

And this is the problem with the essay: the goal itself, of overcoming polarization. This disunity and conflict is unavoidable. It will be with us until the Parousia. Ending it is like eliminating warfare, suffering, hunger, adultery, sin. Culture war, in ever new configurations, is a permanent structure of human, historical existence.

Jesus himself said he did not come to bring peace, but the sword. Balthasar is very clear: the event of Christ intensified the warfare between the light and the darkness. Life after Christ, even within the Church, is not the progressive triumph of the light. It is no a contagion of peace.  It is the intensification of the conflict between two kingdoms. History is not progress, evolution, reconciliation...it is the drama of war.

My own experience is that engagement with the Person of Jesus impelled me directly into the war over truth. Carlo would be the first to admit that from this encounter gushes objective dogma, morality and practice that constitute our Church. Fidelity for us is to Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Light. This engages us in unavoidable polarization. The war over truth is with us, within history, all the time, everywhere. 

The ambition to overcome polarization and reconcile is misguided. It is like the political compulsion to appease Putin, Iran or China. Peace is not possible. War is unavoidable. But we must wage it in the Holy Spirit: humble, courageous, certain, confident, clear, luminous. Our final aim is neither victory nor peace, but to witness, as martyrs, to the Truth.

The point here is not to contradict Carlo, but to note that surrender to Christ urges us in two directions: sometimes to reconciliation and collaboration, and at other times into deeper combat. 

This is important because it is, I suggest, exemplary of a broader current in Communion and Liberation and the Church.  Clearly, their charism includes an openness of mind, a welcome of the best in the world, a freedom from fear and defensiveness, a Renaissance (Italian) sophistication, serenity and confidence of spirit...all this out of a deep engagement with the person of Christ within the Church and her rich Tradition. But there is a dark side: a reluctance to engage in intellectual combat, an irenic propensity to please and appease, an aversion to Culture  War.

The remarkable New York Encounter every winter in Manhattan is exemplary. It is hospitable to cosmopolitan, sophisticated, largely secular New York City. I cannot imagine another expression of authentic Catholicism so appealing to a sensitive, searching modern soul. I attend every year, invite others, including those distant from the Church, and I enjoy it immensely. But part of this charm is the avoidance of confrontation. Some examples follow. 

In the 2020 conference, papal biographer Austin Ivereigh spoke. "Hagiographer" might be a more appropriate term. He is a huge admirer of Pope Francis. On the face of it, this seems fine: Francis is our Pope. And he is attractive in many ways to a Manhattan cosmopolitanism. But the problem is: from a Catholic perspective there are issues with this papacy. But it is unthinkable that criticism of Francis would be entertained in the way, for example, of a respectable interchange or debate. This is regrettable. 

In the 2021 conference, after George Floyd's tragic death, there was a panel on racism. The participants were extremely impressive: intelligent, refined, modulated, radiant with gospel values of forgiveness and reconciliation. They narrated, in sincerity and authenticity, personal experiences of racial hatred. Quite moving! A clear, uncontested consensus: our society today suffers systematic racism. I myself was, very happily, participant on a panel that followed that. But I remembered thinking: in this ambience, it would be unthinkable to express my own conviction that the continued suffering of American blacks is not due to current systems of racism but more complex cultural-class dynamics that flow from past injustices but not from contemporary practices of anti-black bigotry. Such a view would be respective of their real suffering but questioning of their interpretation. It would need to be cancelled.

In the past 2022 conference, Francis Collins spoke and was welcomed with unmitigated enthusiasm. He is an important, impressive, admirable and historic personage. But there are serious questions about his leadership through the COVID epidemic. Outside the conference hall, demonstrators quietly distributed pamphlets critical of decisions he shared in. It would have been helpful to hear those within the hall and receive his own response...respectfully, calmly of course. But the feel-good mood in the hall could hardly tolerate such.

The New York Encounter is so good at what it does that I offer criticism with hesitation. Would I really want it to change to entertain such controversy? Maybe not. It would lose some of the kinetic positivity it simply radiates. And so I retain a strong appreciation for The Encounter, Communion and Liberation and Carlo, one of its finest intellects.

In an earlier blog essay I identified an extreme negativity within the Neocatechumenal Way towards the broader society and Church. CL moves in the opposite direction: embracive of what is best, it seems to ignore the worst. The two renewal movements contrast sharply in several ways. They share, however, a certain monotony of thought; an aversion to vigorous disagreement. This is more surprising in the case of CL which is more highbrow, attractive to the educated and sophisticated, and centers its share life in the "school of community" which is an open, candid sharing of each others experiences and reflections.

Perhaps we benefit in the Church with both tendencies. Happily, we find in other groups (Communio, First Things, (more low brow) EWTN  a willingness to engage the world in uncensored, critical candor. The Neos with their "Christ against the world" and CL with its "Christ within the world" (to borrow from Richard Niebuhr) both enrich the "big table" that is Catholicism. But the compulsion to accommodate and appease is currently strong and troubling in the Church.

Pope Francis has been inconsistent, but clearly withdrawn from a confrontational engagement with a West now depleted by the sexual, cultural revolution.  His two predecessors achieved a marvelous balance of affirmation and confrontation. A people-pleasing, beta-male legacy in our American Church of Bernadine-McCarrick continues in Cupich, Gregory, and McEnerny.  Neither victory nor reconciliation is our destiny. Our task is to witness to the Truth: in communion with the Incarnate Christ...in all humility, clarity, vigor, charity, certainty, courage, serenity and hope.

     

    

 

A Class Society?

Every society is organized by class: distinct groupings with specific tasks, rewards, powers, prerogatives and status.

Church, Heaven, Hell 

The Church, the "perfect society" is a good example. We have the hierarchy in its distinct ranks; religious including monks, mendicants, missionaries, cloistered sisters, consecrated virgins; secular institutes, exorcists, catechists, hermits, theologians, sacristans and so forth.

We don't know much about the angelic realm but we know there are different orders; archangels, guardian angels, choirs, dominions, and so forth. The demonic kingdom would of course mirror this. All of created being is hierarchical in nature.

I will stretch it and even suggest that, analogically understood, God the Trinity is composed of three persons who could also be understood as three hyper-classes, equal in dignity but distinct in identity, relationships and tasks.

Feudal Order

Medieval Christendom is the best example: knights, monks, bishops, serfs, merchants, craftsmen. Each had specific duties and privileges. Of course some tasks are so important, difficult or dangerous that they merit reward and status. For example, the knight risked his life to protect the community so he received prestige. There are, however, rewards and challenges for each class so it is not evident that one or other is over or under the other in the manner of power and oppression. Each, especially the most humble, is a blessing, a charism, a mission.

Marxist Class Warfare

Marx, of course, observing a sinful world without the lens of faith, borrowed the Hegelian dialectic to develop a narrative of continual class warfare: one class oppressing another until the revolution when  a new oppressor/oppressed dyad emerges. His is a dystopian view of relentless power, coercion, violence and oppression. But this "class war" narrative is not intrinsic to the reality of class society.

Class Deniers

There are those who deny class and aspire to a classless society. The hippy who is doing too much weed may imagine himself in a classless, utopian commune. This is a kind of psychosis.

Mao tried to destroy class and implemented possibly the most draconian, devastating,  totalitarian oppression in human history.

But closer to home, the American middle class imagines itself as a classless society. The narrative: we are a nation of immigrants who left European class societies; to find freedom; in a spirit of initiative; with equality for all; and a meritocratic system that rewards the industrious, competent, entrepreneurial. This is, of course, a myth of the bourgeoisie. Not entirely false. But not the entire picture.

Class in USA: 1945-65

 The class identity of my family was crystal clear in my early years: my father as a union organizer identified entirely with the worker, the union movement, the Democratic Party, and the social teaching of the Catholic Church. The Republican Party was the other: rich, privileged, WASP, indifferent to the poor. The fundamental class structure was simple: capital vs. labor. But the economy was expanding so exponentially that there was a huge pie to share and and class peace that mirrored the international Pax Americana. Of course there were all kinds of classes within that primary binary: blacks in the South and those moving into the cities, Southern Democrats, secular Jews who were liberal culturally and politically, Orthodox Jews, Puerto Ricans, all the Asian ethnicities, a smaller cohort of Catholic Republicans (National Review), rural evangelicals and fundamentalists, and many more.

The New Class Structure 

An entirely new class structure emerged out of the cultural revolution and the accompanying economic, technological changes. It is a rich, complicated and dense universe of multiple classes, interacting, competing and intermingling in fluid, creative, and sometimes violent dramas. It is far more fascinating than the tired categories of race and gender.

I am going to suggest something like five classes in USA 2022. Of course within each there is a multitude of more specific classes. 

At the bottom, there is undeniably a culture and class of almost invincible poverty. While some outliers arise out of it due to opportunity and talent, the mass are stuck in a toxic network: poor education, housing, medical care and all the necessities of life but above all a broken family structure without a father in the home and weak connection with Church. This is the poor poor. It is colorblind but has a disproportionate number of blacks as a result of a history of slavery but not a current system of racism.

Second is the working poor. Some of these were in the prosperous working class of the 1945-65. They continue to work but with non-union jobs, poor benefits, and low levels of education. This class has been hard hit by the sexual revolution and has fallen away from Church, tend to cohabitate and divorce, and have single mothers without fathers like the bottom class.  This is the working poor.

Third is the middle working class, those who have adequate income, education, health benefits, and housing. They don't have a lot of capital or access to power and wealth. They include: tradesmen (plumbers, carpenters), small business owners, teachers, police, firemen, civil service employees, nurses, lower level management in large firms. They are the equivalent of the large, prospering working-becoming-middle class of the post-war era. But they are a smaller contingent.

Fourth is the prosperous, comfortable professional, managerial class. These have college degrees with the exception of some successful business men. They have easy access to the best medical care, education, housing and networking. These often come from the families of the middle working class but have climbed the ladder of success higher: perhaps due to ambition, competence, opportunity of come combination thereof. They earn enough to invest and know how to increase their wealth.

Lastly is the affluent. This is far more than the famous 1 %. Perhaps it is 2-4 %. These have wealth and invest it and so are on a constant upward climb in assets. They have access to all the best things in life. They hang out together.

Meritocratic and Fluid

Our class structure is stable: it stays in place and does not change much. But it is meritocratic, to a degree, so that the competent and ambitious from lower classes are able to climb into higher brackets. Likewise, those higher up do with regularity fall down the ladder of success. So it is fluid as there is a constant movement of individuals up and down the ladder. This can, of course, inspire many. But it can also induce guilt and self-blame in those who do not climb up as well as anxiety in many who are higher up.

Life of Holiness in Class Society

The life of holiness, of intimacy with God in Jesus Christ, does not lead one to deny or resist the class society. Rather, holiness leads to a "linimal" or "luminous" zone of freedom within a class but unbound by restrictions and limitations. So, the poor man is not poor but rich in spiritual, social, moral capital. The rich man freely disposes of his wealth to those in need. Living in the world, but not of the world, the life of holiness is above all one of freedom. Able to move spontaneously, into other worlds, with fluency and serenity. It is transcendence of the oppressions and limitations of class society, in the liberty of the Holy Spirit.

Towards a Fuller Constitution of the U.S.A.

Adrian Vermeule,  Harvard's explosively provocative, controversial conservative, advocates as an integralist for a Catholic state, for an expansive federal executive, for the return of the New Deal, and worst of all, for movement beyond originalism into common good constitutionalism. 

This last especially is a conservative's nightmare: for the last 50 years our nemesis has been a Supreme, Activist Judiciary that single handedly instituted the abortionist state. Our creed has been originalism, the restriction of the judiciary to the task of testing every law and regulation against the original intent of the Constitution. The crucial idea: it is the role of the elected legislature, not an absolutist President or Supreme Court to initiate new practices. The Court is merely an umpire, calling balls an strikes.

For legal practice I will stay with originalism.  But philosophically I agree that the Constitution itself, read literally, is not an adequate guide for a state. It is a brilliantly practical document: division of powers, federalism, rule of law, all our rights, etc.  But it is limited and flawed. It is the product of hundreds of years of Christendom but written by Enlightenment, deist, Calvinist, masonic, slave-holding, papist-hating elites. Especially as a Catholic, I cannot genuflect before the document like they do at Liberty University or Hillsdale College.

Substantially I agree with Vermeule. His is a "Catholic" sensibility that this document (like the Bible and any classic piece of literature) is not to be read narrowly, fundamentalistically in isolation from history, tradition and context. Rather, it makes sense only within a broader tradition and a universe of meanings that are not explicit in the wording.

What we need is a common good constitution rooted in natural law, the moral structure of the real. 

Every social order is grounded in a philosophy and a religion, even if it is not explicit. Every one, however unconsciously, is an integralist. Everyone supports an order that favors specific values, that institutes a logical structure of meaning, that coerces and punishes violations. The alleged separation of Church and state and the neutrality of a secular order is a deceit. Consider our "liberal" order that requires the Little Sisters of the Poor to provide contraception, the evangelical baker to support and celebrate "gay marriage," the Catholic agency to place orphaned girls with sexually active homosexual men.

Our current crisis is far broader and deeper than the flaws of this document, it is the demise of the broader Protestant culture in which it breathed. In the 1960s, our elites and their institutions catastrophically renounced the legacy of Christendom that gave us what is best in the Constitution. They brought to a climax the interior toxicities of Enlightenment liberalism as individualism, isolation, knowledge as technocratic control, and freedom as detachment from tradition, family, religion and the True and the Good. Ours is not a constitutional so much as a cultural crisis: we have two societies that despise each others values. There is no common ground. It is now Cultural War...everywhere and all the time\

Nevertheless we always need a goal, a purpose which directs our politics. So I am proposing key elements of a better Constitution, rooted in natural law and tradition. Realistically this vision is fanatically resisted by the entire apparatus of modernity as secular, sterile, mega-technological, and individualistic. The assumption is that it cannot be imposed by a tyrannical Executive or Judiciary. Rather, the loveliness and charm of this politics, when lived at every level from the bottom up, radiate an irresistible, efficacious and fruitful influence. 

About a dozen years ago David L. Schindler spoke in NYC about the three values that Pope Benedict identified as crucial to a good social order: the inviolate dignity of every human person; the sanctity of sexuality, marriage and the family; and the primacy of the transcendent and religious freedom. Here we have no narrow Roman Catholic confessionalism, but witness to the Real as true, good  and beautiful. 

Such a "politics of the Real" is practicable by all of us, wherever we are. It does not depend upon a party, an ideology and an administration. All three elements are contrary to the entire edifice of Modernity as individualism and mega-technology as control. This is not advocacy for a systematic ideology, but rather for humble practice of the small as beautiful.

In that line a forth value can be added to the first three: primacy of subsidiarity and the small. A wholesome Constitution will be anti-monopoly and anti-monotony and supportive of the small, the local, the personal and concrete. It is inconceivable that we would deconstruct huge institutions like airlines, national defense or stock markets. But it is only humane to restore what is human in scale.

A fifth commitment would be to the poor, the suffering, the disadvantaged. This would NOT be a revival of racial animosities. It would be colorblind. Realistically, every society has a class structure, with some toward the top and others toward the bottom. Ours is largely a meritocracy in which the more competent rise to the top. But the more advantaged clearly stay at the top, whether due to the competency they achieve or inherited privilege. It is utopian to aim to abolish the class structure in the way of Mao's Cultural Revolution. But a just society will be systematically and vigorously seeking to mitigate the inevitable underlying injustices that endure.

A sixth priority, in a globalized world and from a Catholic (universal) perspective, is collaboration towards a broader, international order of peace, liberty and prosperity. This is NOT "make America great again." This is a strong preference for internationalism and a firm renunciation of isolationism. It springs from two sources: the deeper, purer being the Catholic faith and its urgency to be shared; second, an appreciation for the post-war Pax Americana which, however flawed, is vastly superior to its dystopian alternatives (Communism, national fascism, Sharia law.)

To conclude, six elements towards a natural law, common good constitutionalism:

1. Respect for every human life.

2. Sanctity of sex, marriage, family.

3. Reverence for the transcendent and religious freedom.

4. Subsidiarity and protection of the small, the local, the concrete against gigantism.

5. Solidarity with the disadvantaged and suffering.

6. Internationalism as defense of the classic, Christian, free world order against tyranny.

These six precious, luminous realities are not something we impose upon the society, or the world, or upon anyone. Rather, they are realities that we freely live, preferably in quiet, humility, and peace. And of their interior, invincible dynamism, they transform the world, efficaciously and infallibly.