Our Pandemic of Hysteria and the Demise of Fatherhood

With his customary depth of insight, Gil Baile, in The Apocalypse of the Sovereign Self, accurately describes our culture of hysteria and nihilism in which the person (grounded in relationships, transcendence, mission, history, family, community) has been replaced by the individual (isolated, uprooted from memory and hope, desperate) who, with delusions of autonomy, surrenders himself to the  dynamics of mimetic desire, rivalry and violence. Crucial to his analysis is retrieval of the concept of hysteria which he detaches from its Freudian connection with femininity-sexuality-unconscious and redefines, drawing from Rene Girard and Balthasar, as the desperation of a post-Christian nihilism frenzied by the chaos of mimetic jealousy, insecurity, emptiness and rage. This essay will follow Baile's lead with a more Freud-friendly awareness of gender.

What is Hysteria?

Here we will accept a lay, commonsense understanding of hysteria as diffused, confused anxiety. It is an overwhelming experience of threat, vulnerability and powerlessness. The source is not specific and identifiable, but more confused and enveloping, for example in a panic attack. 

As such it is more congenial to the feminine psyche which is organically/emotionally open, defenseless, vulnerable to invasion and violation. The masculine psyche/body is by contrast extensive, protruding, expansive, explosive. As such the male is more prone to rage at a specified target. This rage can target, catastrophically, the man's own self in the form of discouragement, self-hatred and despair. But in either case, the quintessential masculine response to threat is not hysteria but aggression. It is specific and targeted; not diffuse and enveloping.  

It is clear that hysteria in its strong, pure form is common to women but rare among men. But Baile is surely correct to apply it analogously to a culture or society as it is largely a contagious or mimetic dynamic which engages men also. 

Hysteria: Anxiety of the Feminine Unprotected by the Masculine

A marvelous statue of the Holy Family has a long, lean, lanky, and muscular Joseph cradling a slimmer, feminine Mary who is herself cradling the baby Jesus. This graphically shows the form of the human family: the needy infant requires the attention of the mother who herself, in a hostile world, needs the protection and provision of the man, husband and father. 

What happens to a woman, with or without child, in this same hostile world, who is unshielded by a strong, loving man? She becomes hysterical: anxious in a global, paralyzing, enveloping, confused fashion.

World Without Fatherhood: Hysterical

So we can see clearly that a world bereft of fatherhood becomes hysterical. The anxiety of unprotected women and mothers infects children and eventually the social order including men who have been emotionally/spiritually castrated. 

The West, since 1965, post Cultural Revolution, is best understood as a society without fatherhood. Paternity has been redefined negatively as toxic patriarchy, oppression of the weak by the strong. The sexual/gendered binary which supports every culture has been deconstructed into the androgynous, autonomous, isolated Self of "choice." With the demise of virility as paternity, as gentle strength, we fall headlong into hysteria. 

The First Hysteric: Eve

Lucifer shrewdly found Eve, isolated from the masculine protection of Adam, and seduced her away from trust in our heavenly Father. "Surely he lied to you" the serpent suggests. Upon hearing these words, the unshielded and therefore vulnerable woman became suspicious, rather than trusting. She became hysterical. She found herself alone: away from her cruder, less vulnerable partner and suddenly distant from the Father. We can imagine her anxious imagination: "O my goodness. Maybe he is not a loving Father after all. He may have lied. He may be holding back from us real powers that he keeps for himself. I need to take things into my own hands and grab that piece of fruit and eat it." She "took control." Deprived of authentic authority as "sacred" she empowered herself. She deprived herself, Adam and our race of paternal protection.  Lucifer's primary target is the Fatherhood of God but also all paternal images which reflect that.

Radical Feminism

Suspicion of men is the core of the second wave feminism of the 1960s. Ironically, it replicated the most toxic forms of male toxicity itself in its embrace of sexual promiscuity, careerism and abortion. It deconstructed the family, maternity and paternity.

Covid Hysteria

The recent crisis was actually two interwoven pandemics: the biological and the psychological. The emotional reaction of fear was itself a distinct crisis in that it exaggerated the actual threat. The prolonged closing of schools, Churches, and even parks all bespeak a globalized, irrational anxiety.

Trump Derangement Syndrome 

While this condition finds a specific target or source, it generalizes itself into anticipation of global apocalyptic catastrophe. With his election in 2016 otherwise sound, grounded individuals succumbed to clinical quality anxieties about nuclear war, the end of democracy, unbounded racism, gun violence, and global warming. In fact the apparatus of government continued seamlessly; the economy flourished; an unusual period of global peace ensued; an accord was struck between Arabs and Jews; and the President was flamboyantly congenial to hostile regimes in China, North Korea, and Russia. Classic hysteria!

By contrast, the lunacy on the right is more one of rage than hysteria. Trump is a genius in arousing and channeling the populist rage at the powerful, liberal elite. His rallies are like sporting events: inflamed with testosterone-fueled combativeness. 

Global Warming

Here again, a real problem becomes a trigger for exaggerated, enveloping anxiety. The imbalance, insobriety of some alarmists (think Al Gore) does not help as it provokes backlash on the right.  There seems to be little confidence in our engineering ability to overcome the problems and optimize the opportunities. But more philosophically, much of the alarmism rests upon the secular denial of the Fatherhood of God and his providential plan for our lives and our world. The simple, childlike trust in God our Father puts our challenges in a different perspective. Creation, received as gift from the Creator, is an entirely different reality from a standalone universe. The later is viewed either in a secular, nihilistic perspective or else a vague, pantheistic, new-age, mother-earth romanticism. So we find again that absence of Fatherhood leaves us, especially young women, vulnerable to hysteria.

Black Lives Matter

Critical Race Theory and the obsession with "systemic racism" is a textbook case of hysteria in the absence of fatherhood. The core problem of the poor black family is the absence of the father. This is rooted in a  "perfect storm" of catastrophes  including: the destruction of the black family in slavery, a persistent Culture of Poverty, an unjust class system, the Sexual Revolution which magnified the weaknesses of black men, and a toxic institutionalization of dependency, entitlement, and victimization. The hysteria around racism and police violence flows not so much from the black community itself as from the limousine liberals who construe blacks as powerless, passive victims of the white oppressor. This narrative only increases the sense of emasculated powerlessness. Nevertheless, I have found in the black community, family and Church considerable resources of paternal virtue, serene trust, and filial pietas.

Contrary Reaction of Masculine Violence

Much like the anger of our own political right, our global ideological enemies are not paralyzed by feminine hysteria, but explosive with masculine aggression. The purest expression of this is militant Islam which combines polygamist misogyny with unrestrained violence. Obviously Putin's invasion of the Ukraine is paradigmatic of raging macho violence. But worse even than that is the steady, determined imperialism of the Chinese Communist Government. 

Meanwhile, the West remains in large part paralyzed by the Culture War between traditional Christianity and a hysterical woke progressivism.

Moral Heroism of the Ukraine

A sign of hope...an exception to this bipolarity of powerless hysteria and manic violence...is the moral heroism of the Ukraine in its defense of their homeland. Interestingly, the Ukraine sits at the boundary of the West and the East. As such it is offering the world an alternative to the hysterical nihilism of the West and the vicious rage of the East: a moral revival of virility, courage, loyalty, and a willingness to suffer and die for the greater good. They offer us an iconography of the paternal as sacrificial, generous, selfless, and noble. They invite us to revive our own traditions ... family, Church, military, police, firefighters ... of the manly as protective and lifegiving. 

Pietas

Wisely, Baile gives considerable attention to the crucial virtue of "pietas" which does not translate well into our "piety." It is a classic, Roman word indicating filial affection, gratitude, receptivity and loyalty to what is received from parents, family, community, country, Church and God. It is the sense of bonding with the past and the future. It is identity as personal and communal, neither individualistic nor collectivistic. It is engagement with a rich past and movement into a promising future. It is the current and concrete as open to the sacred, the transcendent, the supernatural. It is humility about one's own smallness along with magnanimity in loyalty to ones unique mission, great or small. It is the joy of being a very small part of a very large thing. It is the efficacious antidote to the hysteria of nihilistic individualism.

Our New Guardian of Doctrine, Archbishop Hernandez; Sidelining of Truth; Accompaniment in Sin; Cult of Synodality; Crisis of Mercy

Our new guardian of the faith, Archbishop Hernandez, unveiled his theological intentions in a recent interview with Pillar. Asked about John Paul's magisterial "Veritatis Splendor" he responded: "It is a great document, powerfully solid...with a particular concern--to set limits." He then called for a new tone, a new approach. 

I would translate this as: "We can ignore these principles and be pastoral, compassionate, welcoming." This is a kind of hyper-flexibility, a fluidity, a retreat from doctrine and the intellect to feelings.

In my supervisor career at UPS I often joked that my favorite clause was the "flexibility clause." The management culture there was schizoid: officially, mountains of regulations dictated everything including safe work methods, defensive driving, and detailed industrial engineering protocols for efficiency. At the same time, a macho "get-it-done" attitude was ready to throw out the rule book to overcome the actual obstacles to getting the packages delivered on time. I have carried this attitude into many spheres of my life. But there are two that are Sacred: the sacraments and sexuality. These are NOT to be played with! You play fast and loose with the regulations of global capitalism and the expansive State but NOT with the liturgy and chastity!

Unfortunately, Hernandez and the entire Francis coterie overapply the flexibility clause where it does not belong. Notice: he did not contradict, critique or in any way engage Veritatis Splendor. Shrewdly, he affirmed it...and then put it back on his bookshelf to ignore. This tactic recalls the response of Pope Francis to the famous "Dubia": he completely ignored them. Francis often rants against rigid dogmatism. He carries a resentful anti-intellectualism that is the polar opposite of his two predecessors. Such an attitude is widespread and not necessarily toxic, except in a pope. 

When asked about the blessing of gay unions Hernandez stated clearly that such were not to be confused with sacramental marriages. With that clear, he opened the door. He specifically renounced the formulation "God does not bless sin." He explained that such might be correct theologically but pastorally inappropriate in light of given circumstances. Surely we share his concern for sensitivity, kindness and discretion. But he again sets principle, truth and our legacy against compassion. He would surely have an allergic reaction to our classic "Hate the sin; love the sinner." This has been replaced by: "Don't worry about sin! Always Be Compassionate!" (ABC) This adds up to accompaniment in sin: let me give you a ride to your abortion appointment; do you need a few dollars for your birth control pills or your transgender surgery?"

Pope Francis sees in Hernandez a new era, a renunciation of a past harshness, the dawning of the Age of Aquarias! I feel like I am back in the late 1960s.

Cult of Synodality

The obsession with this new synod offers no specific agenda, teaching, or development. It is a quasi-mystical fascination with an illusive process of listening and talking. It seems to be a faux-Hegelian or Teihardian dynamic, a imminent dialogic process, that will miraculously produce a new Church, discontinuous with the rigid, static, closed Church of the past (Including Benedict, John Pau,l John Paul, Paul, John, Pius, etc).

It is a return to the intoxicating confusion of the late 1960s. I know this well because I myself, in college at the time, drank deeply of the kool-aid. Intuitively, which is to say delusionally, we all knew with certainty that we had entered a new world, an era of enlightenment discontinuous with a systemically ignorant, oppressive past: a Camelot of Alinskian empowerement, Rogerian listening, peace rather than war, Freirian education for liberation, triumph of the therapeutic, "Spirit of Vatican II," gospel secularity, existential engagement, counter-culturalism, anti-establishmentarianism, women's liberation and such. In a fog of idealism, we surrendered ourselves to leftist politics of liberation and salvation through the therapeutic. We were fascinated with the impure union of Freud and Marx and, without deliberation, abandoned our Catholic communion with Christ in sacrament, Word, tradition, authority and prayer.

This armada of demons, renounced in the great dual pontificate of John Paul and Benedict, is back with reinforcements now in this vacuous, hysterical fascination with "synodality."

Crisis of Mercy

If you asked me for a single word to sum up the papacy of John Paul II,  I would answer "Mercy." He channeled the heavenly message entrusted to St. Faustina to the entire world. This is the Mercy given us by the Father, in Christ, through the Holy Spirit, which delivered us from the domain of sin and restored us to the dignity and freedom of our identity as children of God. This is Mercy infused with Truth, Justice and Wrath (against sin and evil) in the tradition of all the saints.

With the pontificate of Francis, we entered a crisis of Mercy. By this I do not mean a resurgence of moralism, arrogance, legalism and rigidity. That is a perennial temptation for the religious temperament. What I see rather is a cheapened Mercy, torn away from Truth, Justice and Holy Wrath (against sin): effete, soft, indulgent, accommodating, lukewarm and therefore nauseating. It is resentment of the paternal and patriarchal in its legacy, authority, accountability, and sacredness as oppressive and restrictive of the autonomous Sovereign Self.

Weeds and Wheat

How do we navigate a Church in which the guardians no longer safeguard doctrine; the preachers no longer call to repentance; the patriarchs disparage our patrimony; and we are stampeding in synodal confusion straight off the cliff of emotionalism?

We find strength and serenity in the parable of the hysterical workers and the calm, confident owner. The farmer assures us:  "I wouldn't worry about the weeds. Be at peace! Be patient! Take courage! The wheat is strong, resilient, steady, enduring. Even in adversity it will thrive. At the proper time there will be the ingathering and the weeds will be burned. For now continue to husband your crops...calm, steadfast, joyous, trusting."

Things have been worse in our Church. They may get worse before they get better. But Christ is with us to the end. The Holy Spirit is our constant companion. And so we dispel anxiety and resentment. We rejoice gratefully in the abundance of grace He pours upon us, even in our mess.

Clerical Virility

 The Masculine Form of the Catholic Priesthood

The Catholic priest is two things:  our spiritual father and a living icon of the spousal love of Christ the bridegroom for his bridal Church. Prior even to this, he is son, in the Son, of our heavenly Father and our mother the Church. He is our brother-in-Christ.

The interior masculinity of the priest is as intuitive for the Catholic imagination as is the maternity of Mary and the Church herself. It is incoherent and retrograde to a modernity that has deconstructed gender to reconfigure the human person into an androgynous individual, identically replaceable as units of production and consumption. 

 I call priests who could chronologically be my grandsons "Father......." At ordination, in receiving the priestly blessing, we kiss their hands because they will feed us the Bread of Life. They administer, regardless of their personal moral merit, the efficacious sacraments which make us holy. They are trained and ordained to share in the Church's faithful proclamation of the Gospel. Irrespective of age, erudition, maturity, or personal holiness...we are their spiritual sons and daughters.

Christ loves the Church, St. Paul tells us, as a husband his wife. We, the Church, all of us, men and women, are loved by Jesus our Lord to his death. In forgiving our sins, in celebrating the Eucharist, in proclaiming the Word, the priest is not only himself, but is representative of Christ. In this light, the priest must be male and generally needs to be celibate, manifesting the chaste love of Christ for his singular bride, the Church.

Masculinity itself is always representative of that which is greater than the man himself: primarily the Fatherhood of God, but also tradition, authority, truth, justice, safety, stability. Virility is most itself in a uniform: fireman, police, judge, priest, soldier. By contrast, the feminine personality has a substantiality and interior integrity of its own, especially as maternal, and represents nothing other than her generous, generative, delightful, irrepressible person. The male psyche, fractured-dispersed-explosive-egocentric, becomes unhinged and toxic unless surrendered to a higher Good.

The Manly Catholic Priesthood of Post War America

In the Catholic revival after WWII, a critical mass of veterans returned home, not with post-trauma-stress-disorder, but with a profound sense of evil, the supernatural, the Lord Jesus and his Church. Battle-hardened, these were tough, confident men of honor, of gravitas. Stand-up guys! There was a vocation boom that peaked at 1965 (the year I graduated high school and entered seminary) and then collapsed entirely.

 A typical parish had about four priests: the pastor, possibly in his 70s and semi-retired; the second-in-charge, in his 50s or 60s, seasoned and competent, who often ran the parish; a third priest in charge of organizations and lots of priestly duties; and oftentimes a younger man who worked with youth in school, religious instruction, CYO and athletics. In my grammar school days (1950s) all of us boys, even the delinquents among us, wanted to be a priest at some point. The priest was the most fascinating, virile, educated, funny and high-status man we personally knew: the singular alternative to our own father who, however sterile in character, seemed bland and boring by comparison.

The Dissolution of Priesthood and Masculinity as Iconic of God the Father

The core, the interior form, of the catastrophic Cultural Revolution that exploded in the late 60s, in all its elements (sterilization of sex, break with Tradition, triumph of the therapeutic and narcissistic, dissolution of the person into an isolated individual, hegemony of the technological-meritocratic-bureaucratic, demise of the supernatural, decay of the family, rupture of community, tyranny of mega-government and global capitalism, politics of self-pity and resentment) can best be understood as contempt for Fatherhood, in all its dimensions, as expressive of the first person of the Trinity.

A host of historical, cultural, intellectual, and financial dynamics converged to form this "perfect storm." But this synchronization was so overwhelming that it could only be the handiwork of a Supernatural Intellect, that of Lucifer himself.

The entire cacophony of evil that fell upon the globe, especially the West, after 1965 is rooted in some way in the loss of the Father: the absent, addicted, abusive, unavailable, egocentric, unfaithful, raging, lusting or lethargic Father.

Lucifer's strongest resources, clearly, focused on the Catholic priesthood, which he finds especially odious. So we now see, looking back: the priest scandal in all its horror, an increasingly effete priesthood, and a crisis in vocations.

Alliance of the Feminist and the Gay Against the Paternal or Patriarchal

In the ancient world, a young priest pointed out, powerful kings and lords entrusted their harems, wives and concubines to eunuchs, neutered-castrated men incapable of competing for feminine attention. These impotent, sterile men formed a quiet alliance with the women in resistance to the distant, dominant overlords. You had the hyper-masculine world of the warriors and the opposite, an emasculated culture of eunuch-with-women.

The Church today, my young cleric argued, especially in its more progressive forms, is a similar alliance. Aggressive, confident, energetic men stay away from Church and operate in business, the military, police and fire departments, construction trades, athletics and such.  The ancient/medieval reality of a warrior-priest is a contradiction in a world in which gay priests collaborate with women in resentment against "patriarchy."

In the 1960s, two emergent movements came together in their contempt for the masculine priesthood: feminism and gay militancy. Increasingly we have a Church lacking a strong paternal and virile influence. Even in mitigated forms, like normal parish life, we sing sweet, sentimental songs often repugnant to masculine taste; we hear tiringly about unconditional love and a mercy without truth, wrath or justice. Much of Catholicism has become repugnant to a robust masculine sensibility.

Virility as Paternity

We encounter in "Fatherhood" a dense Mystery that defies categorical definition but can be described: a certain distance and transcendence that is iconic of God; strength with gentleness; stability and steadfastness; clarity and certainty in thought and behavior; emotional sobriety; humility, chastity, fortitude, prudence and justice; tenderness with rigor. 

We might consider the striking virility of our previous two popes. John Paul was, of course, athletic, robust, expansive, and dramatic in his masculinity. Benedict, on the superficial level, was quiet, meek, gentle. Underneath this serene temperament was a sterling character of strength, clarity, certainty, sobriety, restrain, purity, generosity.  He may have been, by temperament, the meekest man, since Moses, to walk the earth. His brother said of him: "He does not look for a fight but he will not walk away from one. Hans Kung described him as "sweet but dangerous." He was slandered and demonized across the progressive Church as "God's Rottweiler." We have here, below superficial differences, two "stand up guys" or men of honor, reliability and strength. 

Radiance of the Father

In three manners the human and priestly father radiates the Fatherhood of God.

1. Naturally, he is big, strong, protective and tender to the mother-with-child. He provides an ambience of safety, trust, peace, hope and abundance. Concretely he manifests the love of the Father. Additionally he is a distant, transcendent figure from the objective world and so he represents that world as he assures of its ultimate benevolence.

2. By the key virtues of masculinity (humility, chastity, fortitude, fidelity, prudence, justice) he images God.

3. In his failings, he points beyond himself to One Greater by his confession of sin and request for forgiveness. He thereby shows that the final source of safety, rest and joy is beyond him.

Vocation Crisis

Our current ecclesial dilemma is less one of quantity (of priests) than of quality. A single holy, virile priest can do more good than a dozen mediocre ones. Our situation will not be resolved by married priest or women priests or temporary priests. 

We know that "grace builds on nature." The supernatural efficacy of the sacraments and the infallibility of the Church are both illuminated, enhanced and strengthened by the virtue and holiness of masculine men.

Raise up, for us, heavenly Father, strong, pure, holy priests in the image of your Son Jesus!

 

Joe Biden: Anti-Grandfather, Anti-Life, Anti-Catholic, Anti-Honor

The disowning, the abandonment of his little granddaughter by our President is unspeakably despicable. It is not a solitary act: it is emblematic of the interior moral rot that informs his entire persona and politics.

The moral monsters of our decadent age retain at least a residual loyalty to blood and tribe: Saddam Hussein was loved by the Sunni; Putin by the Russians; John Gotti by his "family." 

Even his rival, the vile egoist Donald Trump, is favorable in comparison. Kierkegaard famously compared the summer fool and the winter fool. The former is recognizable on a country road, from a miles distance: unkempt, wild hair, messy clothing, strange movements and facial expressions. The later appears at your door on a cold winter night: impressive, elegant, dignified. He evokes immediate respect and trust. He enters slowly. Calmly takes off his hat, gloves, scarf, overcoat, and sweater. And then you look at him and your realize: He is a fool!  Trump is clearly the summer fool: everything about him announces this! His hair, his countenance so incapable of laughter or humor, his obsession with self, his infantile bullying compulsion, his indifference to truth. Yet, there is a refreshing candor about him: lack of pretense, indifference to convention and even decency, breathtaking lack of shame. He is a burlesque performance, a cartoonish and cathartic enactment of the unchained Id ridiculing the prohibitions of the enfeebled (elite, woke) Superego. Biden is hypocrisy in pure form: he presents as pious Catholic, good family man, champion of the working class. Consider the following as consistent with his abandonment of the little girl:

Anti-Life. He has become the global champion of abortion. Why would we be shocked that the great enabler of the genocide of the unborn would abandon a granddaughter? He is Herod-killing-the-Innocents multiplied by a million!

Anti-Family. He has shamelessly affirmed, supported and enabled his son Hunter in a life of addiction, infidelity and fraud. We now know millions of dollars flowed to the Biden family through a network of shell companies while Hunter has no known business competence. At this point we don't know if Joe is a criminal; but he is a depraved father.  He participates in his son's irresponsibility to his own daughter. Putin, Hussein and Gotti would not be capable of such degeneracy.

Anti-Catholic. He would coerce the Little Sisters of the Poor to provide contraceptives against their consciences; doctors and nurses to provide transgender operations and abortions; Catholic adoption agencies to place small girls in the care of gay men; and the state to elevate homosexual unions as equivalent of marriage. As a Catholic, I have always maintained a certain detachment from most of our presidents since they are not Catholic; do not understand our faith; are from another tribe. This is a respectful "live and let live." They see things differently and we learn to live together.  But it is different when one of our own turn against us: our own Judas, our own Benedict Arnold.

It is tragic that the contest in the Democrat primary is between two Catholics, Kennedy and Biden, both traitors to the faith. If the Nazi party is anti-Semitic, the Communist party is anti-capitalist, the Democratic party is anti-Catholic. "Fredo! You're my older brother and I love you. But don't every take sides against the family with anyone. Ever!" 

Anti-Ally. He abandoned our allies in Afghanistan and left them in the hands of the Taliban in the most shameful act of diplomatic betrayal in historic memory. The sight of those frightened people running desperately alongside of the airplane leaving the country will stay with us for our lifetimes. In this cowardly decision, against military advice, he signaled Putin and the Chinese that the Americans no longer have the will to fight alongside of our friends for our way of life. He greenlighted the invasion of the Ukraine and probably marked the start of a new age of aggression and domination by the CCP.

Anti-Working-Class.  He clearly thinks of himself as champion of the working class. What he clearly favors is identity politics and critical race theory which splinters the working class against itself and diverts attention from actual class issues. He crusades for LGBTQ causes and the entire sexual revolution which has destroyed the working class family. He would pay student loans which favor the professional and upwardly aspirational classes and pay for it by the taxes of blue collar workers who get no benefits at all.

Anti-Truth. During the Presidency of Trump, I was sure he is the GOAT (greatest of all times) in his absolute disregard for truth. It was not that he lies. Lying entails a knowledge of the truth and an intentional contradiction of it. Trump is simply indifferent to truth. His only reality is his own interests. Trump has a rival in Biden: but it is packaged with more charm and deception.

Anti-Younger-Generation. His reckless dispersal of borrowed money has heightened inflation and left a heavier national debt for our children and grandchildren to carry. The Patriarch Joseph, chaste and wise and forgiving, famously saved the entire Egyptian world with his provident, prudent stewardship. Later, St. Joseph, likewise chaste-strong-reliable-faithful-wise protected the Holy Family from Herod. Their namesake, Joseph Biden, emulates Pharaoh and Herod in their massacre of the boys of Israel:  He is the ANTI-JOSEPH!

Clearly incompetent, he refuses to step aside to let a younger generation take over leadership. Here again he shows himself to be an ANTI-FATHER, inhibiting the rising of the young by his own unbounded narcissism. His age clearly disqualifies him. But worse his longstanding incompetence. But worst is his shameless Ego!

Anti-Virility. He has surrounded himself with people like himself. Harris, Garland, Yellin, Blinken, Buttigieg and company effuse an effete, uncertain, vacuous weakness in honor and virility. They do NOT instill confidence. They do not inhibit our enemies from aggression. They suffer from a moral vacuum rooted in the protection of innocent life and the generosity of gender, family and marriage.

Anti-Paternal-Protection. He has abandoned our borders; left us vulnerable; and lured countless desperate immigrants. He and his party fail to protect our cities. His DOJ refused to protect our Supreme Court Justices, even from the threat of murder, after the Dobbs ruling. His support for the Ukraine has been too little, too slow, too late...because of his underlying timidity and lack of courage.

Conclusion. Joe Biden brings shame and dishonor on family, Church and nation. A vote for this man by any Catholic who values our faith is cooperation with his decadence. However grave one's TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) support for him is inexcusable. I myself suffer (clearly) a severe case of Biden-Contempt-Syndrome. But I am not deranged. I have not and will not vote for Trump: the lesser evil is nevertheless evil and a Catholic cannot participate.

 

World Youth Day, Lisbon, Aug. 1-6, 2023 (1) Letter 54 to Grands

Pope Francis:  "To prepare for World Youth Day, speak with your grandparents."

Why are you going to Lisbon?

To be with Jesus. He awaits you there. He said "...if two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in their midst." How much more will he be with over one million gathered in his name. You are going to Lisbon to be with Jesus and a million others who want to be with him. 

At World Youth Day in 2000 St. John Paul said:  "It is Jesus in fact who you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you seek satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is he who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in your hearts the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves an society, making the world more human and fraternal.

Dear Young People, in these noble undertakings you are not alone. With you there are your families, your communities, your priests and teachers, and so many of you who in the depths of your hearts never weary of\ loving Christ and believing in him. In the struggle against sin you are not alone: so many like you are struggling and through the Lord's grace are winning."

You are going to Lisbon to be grasped by the love of Christ.  For us Catholics to love Christ is always to love his Church, his Bride, our Mother. Never a "Jesus and me" thing. My love for Christ is singular and distinctive, but it dwells in and is itself indwelt by my love for my brothers and sisters. In Lisbon you will encounter Jesus and at the same time your companions in a new way.

Not a Vacation!

A Pilgrimage is not the rest, pleasure, or relaxation of a vacation. It is far more thrilling, demanding, challenging, difficult, painful, frustrating, rewarding and delightful. A pilgrimage is a journey to a specific destination (in this case Lisbon) to encounter God in an intimate, passionate, flaming embrace. 

For each of you, an unexpected, life-changing event awaits you. It will be particularly yours, unlike that of anyone else. Expect this! Even now give thanks and praise for it!

A pilgrimage entails, not comfort and pleasure, but sacrifice, pain, danger, inconvenience. You may face sweltering heat with no relief; bad food; inconvenience; uncomfortable sleeping arrangements; huge crowds; long waits. If you are not prepared for this, it is better that you not go. Pilgrimage is not for the weak; the complainers; the self-pitying. It is like combat: if you do not want to fight, do not go into the battle.

Traditionally a variety of motives move one to pilgrimage: seeking a healing; atonement for sin; desire to convert and draw close to God; gratitude for a blessing; intercession for the needs of others; an openness to what God wills for your life.  Bring to Lisbon, to surrender to Christ, your greatest anxieties and fears; your sorrows; the things that control you; your deepest longings. Come with expectant faith: awaiting marvelous blessings. Open your heart, intellect and will to the annoyance, frustration, pain and discomfort of the pilgrimage to be closer to the Jesus who carried his cross to Calvary to be tortured and murdered for us. Intensify your Joy by already giving abundant thanks and dilating your heart to receive the gifts, fruits and miracles of the Holy Spirit.

What Do We Make of Pope Francis (Letter 53 to Grands)

Four points.

1. He is our Pope, our Pontiff, our Holy Father, our (in the words of St Catherine of Sienna in a time of dueling popes and Vatican decadence) dear sweet Christ on earth. Whatever his good and bad aspects we owe him filial reverence, loyalty, deference and above all our prayers. 

With that said, he is flawed and fallible. The last fully infallible papal decree was on the Assumption of Mary in 1950. In the 73 years since then, the many papal statements have varying degrees of authority and fallibility. 

It is just like your own mother or father. You love and respect them. But it is not reverence to deny their faults. Especially something important...addiction, abuse, adultery...the truth must be openly recognized and addressed. Otherwise the family falls into a toxic pattern of enabling and co-addiction. 

So let's consider first the strengths and then the weaknesses of Pope Francis.

2. First, he clearly loves Christ and is a man of prayer. This is, of course, the first and foremost virtue of any Christian and Catholic.

Second, he is a man of the poor. He lives out his passion for those who suffer, for the marginalized, the oppressed. He calls us to do the same. In this he is admirable.

Third, he is a fine homilist with a gift for words. Early in his pontificate I was critical of him and was directed by Sister Joan Noreen, leader of Our Lady's Missionaries of the Eucharist, to read two or three of his homilies daily to repair what she viewed as my disrespect. I did so for several months. It was helpful. He is often inspiring. I would welcome him as confessor, spiritual director or retreat master. 

Forth, he has a quality of freedom about him. He is his own man. He fits no stereotype and does not defer to any person or program. At the time of his election Cardinal George said this is why he was elected.

3. The problem: for the mission of the papacy, to teach the Catholic faith and govern especially through appointments, he is singularly inept. He is not a systematic theologian. It is almost as if I were made coach of a professional hockey team: I cannot skate well, I know nothing about the game, I don't like the game. He is an emotional, not an intellectual person. Many of us are that way. But this is a serious deficit in a pope. He allegedly told his agnostic journalist friend that God would never send anyone to hell; but he told the mafia they were going to hell if they didn't change. He has not thought through a coherent theology of hell...or of anything else. His biggest mistakes:

- On sexuality, he has implicitly rejected the groundbreaking catechesis on the body of John Paul and Benedict in favor of an accommodation to sexual liberalism. He destroyed the John Paul Institute of the Family in Rome and reconfigured it to be affirming of contraception, homosexuality and liberation of sex from marital boundaries. In a recently released documentary from Disney, he told young people that the teaching of the Church on sex was "still in diapers." In this he disparaged the deposit of the faith, the heritage of saints/doctors/popes and gravely misled his conversation partners. That is the last thing we would expect of a pope whose job is to pass on this body of truth.

- In China he has betrayed the persecuted Church by giving control over to the Communist Party in the choice of bishops. This will go down in history as one of the most shameful, disloyal papal acts ever.

- His confused and incoherent discourse has further polarized the Church. For example, his famous footnote in Amoris Laetitiae ambiguously approved reception of communion by the divorced and remarried. So today in Poland such cannot receive; but across the border in Germany they can. This contradicts the unity of the Catholic Church. He has been a source of grief for conservatives. But strangely, he has also disappointed progressives since he has not clearly, firmly advanced their causes like contraception, women priests or gay blessings.

- He is systematically suppressing the practice of the Latin mass which has drawn many, including the young, to a love of the Catholic tradition.

- He elevates his social-political views into moral absolutes on issues including capital punishment, immigration and borders, global warming, and war. The popes real expertise is on faith and morals. On those areas he is adverse to clarity and certainty of thought. But on prudential policy issues, which are properly the concern of the laity (elected officials, experts, etc.), he shows a clerical overreach. He has been presented by Cardinal Tobin of Newark as a counterforce to the rise of nationalist, populist figures like Trump and others. In championing, in certain (but not all ways) the ideology of the progressive West, he loses credibility as pope.

- He has demoralized young clergy with his disparagement of clericalism, dogmatism, and rigidity in teaching. The vocation crisis is getting worse under his leadership.

In my own lifetime of over 75 years, in regard to holiness and wisdom, we have had three very good popes (Pius XII, John XXIII, and Paul VI), one excellent pope (Benedict) and an outstanding, arguably the best in history (John Paul II.) Unfortunately, Francis is a weak pope: incoherent, confusing, and polarizing. 

4. And yet, we do believe the Holy Spirit is guiding him. How can that be if he has made such a mess? (One of his messages to youth was: "Go and make a mess.") My answer to that is that things could be much worse. I believe the Holy Spirit has protected him from more damage. Miraculously, he has not renounced any major teachings. This is why real progressives are so disappointed. 

There are two clear errors which must be corrected by a future pope. One is the wording on capital punishment in the Catechism must restore the view that this is a prudential judgement, not an inherent truth. Second, the ambiguity of the footnote on divorce-and-communion must be clarified one way or the other, for the entire Church.

And so, we do our best to honor Pope Francis, to receive what is best from him, and be clear and calm about what he gets wrong. Most of all, we pray for him.

A Personal, Catholic Consideration of Same Sex Attraction (4) (Letter 51 to Grands)

 A simple no-yes question: Is homosexual intercourse, as sterile and non-unitive,  inherently sinful?

This is a binary question: no need for nuance, sophistication, erudition. It is yes or no. If the answer is "yes" than the Catholic Church is loving in truth by teaching this and the progressive gay-affirming agenda is enabling and affirming of sin. If the answer is "no" than the Church of millennia, the saints and doctors and popes, have been systemically homophobic, hateful, exclusionary, and judgmental.

We have here two contradictory religions: traditional Catholicism and woke, gay-affirming progressivism. They are like oil and water: incompatible. They repel each other. They combat each other.

This month of June we are saturated, at least here in blue-woke-NJ, with gay pride. In this same month we Catholics honor the Sacred Heart of Christ and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It is not possible to synthesize the two: they renounce each other. One must choose.

In the Archdiocese of Newark, three parishes publicly advertised  and will hosted this past Sunday Pride Masses. This is an incoherence. A scandal and a sacrilege. A grave dereliction of duty on the part of our Cardinal.

The Evil Nature of the Acts

Creation is infused by the Creator with purpose, form, meaning. For example, the eating of food is for the nourishment of the body and for the communion of persons, family and friends. A person who binges, in loneliness, and then purges, and then binges again, in loneliness, and then purges is doing an act of eating that contradicts its purpose. This becomes habitual, a vice; damages the throat; becomes a pathology; and unchecked  kills. The act of speech is to witness to the truth. One who abuses this faculty, indifferent to truth, to advance selfish concerns (think Biden or Trump) violates his own dignity, destroys trust, and corrupts the social order.

The spousal act of sexual intercourse is intended for the faithful union of life between man and woman and the begetting of children. Contradictions of this are grave sins: pornography, masturbation, cohabitation, contraception, adultery.  

The sins approved by the gay ideology are not evil because they are homosexual; they are equally, arguably more sinful practiced by heterosexuals. We will be candid here: oral, manual and anal sex are basically non-spousal acts of mutual masturbation. They are extrinsic, not unitive. They are sterile, not fruitful. They are oppressive, lacking the face-to-face intimate personalism of normal, wholesome intercourse. There is an indignity, a shamelessness to them. One of the two partipants, especially for men, is the dominant, the "upper," the oppressor.

Performed by a married man and woman they are arguably more sinful because they defile the spousal union itself. Between homosexuals or unmarried heterosexuals they are entirely non-spousal, masturbatory and mutually abusive, however consensual. 

With the current, largely unrecognized, pandemic of additive pornography/masturbation we have young marriages destroyed as the husband has been infected with obsession with perverse sexual acts and disgusts his innocent wife with such indignity. This tragedy, for me, is greater than that of homosexual intercourse.

Privacy or Pride?

For Catholics sexuality is sacred and therefore private. The spousal love between husband and wife...faithful, fruitful, chaste, exclusive, free, generous and generative, final...is the most iconic expression (save for the Eucharist) of Triune Love in the created, physical world. 

Its location within marriage resembles the Sacred Host in the tabernacle: precious, holy, protected, to be revered. Therefore it is surrounded with privacy, confidentiality, reserve, and a shy innocence. 

Another reason for this reserve and privacy is that it is also the seat of our deepest wounds, longings, disorders, and sins. Due to The Fall and the presence of concupiscence, each of us carries interiorly the infectious disorder that especially inhabits our sexual inclinations. 

John Paul, in his insightful consideration of "shame" showed that the dignity of the human body, wounded but not destroyed by sin, must be protected. For this reason, a reasonable, honorable sense of dignity and "shame" has us protect our sexuality by covering our most delicate body parts and exhibiting modesty in dress, language and deportment. Thereby we protect ourselves and others from lust, covetousness, and degradation.

Normally, we reserve sharing our intimate, sexual feelings for our spouse...and our spouse alone. It would be unthinkable for an honorable man or woman to talk openly with others about spousal intimacies. There are exceptions, of course: confession, therapy, spiritual direction, and more rarely the  confidence of a trusted friend or specialized support group (the 12 steps of Sexaholics Anonymous or Courage, the Catholic group for the same-sex-attracted seeking chastity.) So there is a "don't ask, don't tell" quality, a wholesome, holy secrecy inherent to sexuality.

Gay ideology, an outgrowth of the Sexual Revolution, denies the sacred, iconic, spousal (unitive/ procreative) nature of sexuality. It trivializes it into self-fulfillment, the release of inexorable energies, or delusional romance. It desecrates it. 

Worse yet: it publicizes it, shamelessly. You cannot go to a baseball game, see a Disney movie, drink a lite beer, or walk into a florist without being bombarded with pride, rainbows, parades. The menu of the little greasy spoon diner in which I meet friends for breakfast insists that choice of a BLT sandwich must be accompanied but LGTBQ sympathies. Can't I just get my eggs and bacon without the sexual ideology?

Clearly, the "pride" of June is indeed "pride" as the capital sin: arrogance before Christ, his Church,  the moral order, the iconic and delicate splendor of sexuality. It is dishonorable: a loss of dignity, innocence, purity, modesty and humility. It is a grave sin of the intellect to affirm  a "gay identity." 

We honor and love those with this attraction by recognizing the suffering, the longing, the splendor of their persons and inviting them to work with us towards purity and holiness.

Lord Jesus,  Bridegroom of the Church, draw all of us...in all the disorder of our longings...to you in holiness, purity, truth and compassion.  Amen!

SCOTUS on Preferences: June 2023

This past week has seen triumph after triumph in the Supreme Court for us moral conservatives in our culture/class war against the progressive elite. But they got one thing wrong.

The ruling on college admissions fulfilled the prophesy of Sandra Day O'Connor 20 years ago that racial preference would no longer be necessary within 25 years. It is a relief from the sterile, tiring lament of racial victimization; it moves to heal the polarization and resentment, specifically among Asians; it renounces the paternalism and condescension that defines blacks as inferior and in need of remediation as well as the corrupting ideology of victimization and entitlement; it helps us to focus properly upon culture and class, the real vectors of marginalization.

The decision on loan forgiveness properly restrained an expansive executive and inhibited the privileging of white collar, upwardly mobile professionals over the blue collar working class. 

The defense of the religious rights of the web designer against the LGBTQ militancy protects our right to live our religion and enhances a promising "live and let live" concordat. 

The determination to raise the bar, in the post office case, in requiring a higher level of accommodation of the employer to the religious practices of workers is a small step in restraining the ravenous appetite of the unrestrained market.

All four rulings worked against progressive interests and favored the religious, blue collar underclass.

The Counterman vs. Colorado result was something else. Kagan, for a strong 7-2 majority including conservatives, found in favor of free speech and against a Colorado law that protects against threats, including on the internet. "Threat" means, of course, clear expression of intent to harm (e.g. "I will kill you.") But it also can mean less explicit patterns of harassment. The Colorado law took this to mean a pattern that an ordinary person would see as threatening. The Court overruled this in requiring a subjective proof that the defendant understood that the actions could be threatening and did them, not necessarily intending harm or threat, but recklessly.

In this they favored the subjective over the objective criteria. They protected freedom of speech over protection from harassment. In the specific case, the male virtual stalker (who has mental illness and has already served four years in prison) is vindicated in his free speech right over the young, female writer whose life was ruined by the intimidation. 

This decision in favor of speech, an over-protectiveness of the aggressor and an indifference to the vulnerability of the victim, flows from the faux-feminism of the last half century that requires  equivalence, in all things, between men and women and thereby denies the actual reality of femininity.

There is an overwhelming gender difference in this issue of threat. Men are far more prone to threaten; women are more vulnerable.  It is like rape: men do it, women suffer it. There is no equality or uniformity here. Women suffer in athletics from trans-women; men have nothing to fear on that account. Women journalists in the locker rooms of NFL or NBA players is immodest, indecent, and unnatural; but it doesn't threaten these jocks. The more narcissistic of them may enjoy an exhibitionist thrill. Do we want the inverse: men in locker rooms and showers of female professionals? How about college athletes? They are themselves adults; and semi-professional.

In things regarding physical force and violence, women by nature require a preference, a protection. If men and women are treated the same, as dogmatic feminism dictates, the one who suffers is the woman.

Recall the controversial Kavanaugh nomination. The evidence for his guilt was weak. Male conservatives rallied to the presumption of innocence and were furious (Lindsay Graham) at the lynch mob dynamic. But fair-minded conservative women weighed that same evidence on a different scale. They identified, of course, with the alleged victim. They were too familiar with the frat-boy, egotistical, jock-type. Even if there were, say, a 40% possibility he had done the act as an intoxicated, adolescent prank and completely forgotten about it, that was enough to disqualify him. That is a sound logic. Very feminine.

Consider the now widespread practice of a paternity leave as equal to the maternity. To any culture or religion that has not been colonized by the ideology of androgyny this is patently ridiculous. But the logic of our market (not every market; not market in some pure, formal sense) dissolves male/female complementarity/asymmetry to reconfigure both as equivalent units of production and consumption. The actual consequence of such alleged "equity" is that women have a full work load but still carry most of the nurture and household care.  

In this case Barrett and Thomas got it right. Thomas, always a strict constitutionalist, found the Court majority to be doing social policy (the realm of legislatures) and projecting it into the Constitution (shades of Roe and Obergefell!) 

It is regrettable that the other conservatives (Roberts, Alito, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch) are inhaling the cultic air of gender equity and neutrality. In domains like "threat" the avoidance or transcendence of gender difference in effect victimizes the woman.

I have two grandmothers, one mother, six sisters, five daughters, twelve granddaughters, six aunts, five sisters-in-law, eighteen nieces. I am passionate and certain: there is a masculine reverence and tenderness due to the feminine, by its very nature. It is called honor, chivalry, virility. If this is not self-evident, there is nothing more I can say.