Saints as Failures

Failure, more than success, accompanies holiness of life. This is not an absolute rule. We pray that our efforts be blessed with success and we give thanks when that happens. But we do expect the worse. We prepare to fall forward, like Jesus did three times climbing Calvary. We welcome failure. For every good work we do that is successful, we may suffer three or four or perhaps ten or twenty failures.

An analogue of this is the "Law of Inverted Consequences" I unveiled in my own UPS supervisor career. When I worked the hardest, everything went wrong; when things went very well, I was exerting little effort. I found this also in teaching: one year I had a class that was complete chaos; the very next period I welcomed a class that was something close to paradise. I was the same teacher. There are always forces around us, far superior to us, good and bad, and we are victims or beneficiaries, but we are NOT in control. You can see why I loved the first of the 12 steps: "Admitted that we were powerless over.....that our lives had become unmanageable." Yes, much of my life has been the anguish of powerlessness. So happy that there is a second step: "Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."

The core of life in Christ is not success, but fruitfulness. This is something entirely different. It is not the result of our intention, initiative, efforts, industry. It is something mysterious, above and beyond us, whereby God uses our faith, hope, love, suffering, efforts, patience and hope to bring forth entirely unanticipated fruits for others, fruits of joy, peace, healing, happiness and holiness. The saint is not one who succeeds. The saint is one who fails, and in those failures God brings forth fruit. 

My favorites:

St. Charles de Foucauld.  In the canon of saints, he is the most fascinating; the most successful; and the biggest failure. He started off as an overweight, lazy, indulged, decadent rich kid. He spent his immense inheritance so recklessly that his family sued in court before the entire thing was depleted. He lost his Catholic faith. Then he served in the Foreign Legion in the Sahara where he distinguished himself as a military genius of extraordinary courage and intelligence. He was a national hero. Then he developed an interest in the people of the Sahara so, disguised as a Russian Rabbi, he traveled where no European had ever been, taking meticulous anthropological notes, which he published as a groundbreaking masterpiece. Again he was a national hero. His saintly cousin, Marie de Bondy, loved him dearly and prayed for him ardently. She suggested he see the holy Father Huvelin. Suddenly he found himself confessing his sins and undergoing a extreme, I would even say violent conversion. He ambitioned radical imitation of Christ. He found the most difficult monastery of the most demanding order (Carthusians) in the world and found it too soft. He found a humble spot as servant to a convent of nuns in the Holy Land. But eventually he was ordained a priest and set off to the Sahara to serve these people he loved so, to convert them to Christ, and start an order to follow in his path. There he again became a celebrity: remembered still for his military prowess but even more for his radical poverty, holiness and charity. Has anyone achieved such success in such diverse areas? But in his two defining goals, he failed miserably. Despite years of toil, he gained not a single convert nor a single recruit. No one! He was murdered by a group of desert Bedouins. A failure in what mattered to him. But he had kept a journal. This was read and went "viral", eventually bringing to life a number of religious orders and inspiring Kiko Arguello in his own submergence in the Gypsy community and founding of the Neocatechumenal Way. Success, Failure...and Fruitfulness.

Dorothy Day. Arguably the most influential American Catholic of the 20th century, she had one daughter, Tamar, out of wedlock, who herself had eight children with a husband who eventually surrendered to alcoholism. The heartrending biography, Saved by Beauty, by her granddaughter Kate Hennessey relates the close, but painful relationship between Dorothy and Tamar, and most sadly, the rejection by Tamar and virtually all of her children of the Catholic faith so dear to Dorothy. As a Catholic parent myself, nothing matters to me like the acceptance of my faith by my children and then by theirs. I can hardly imagine the sadness of this holy woman in her failure to pass on her faith. A life successful in so many dimensions; and fruitful as well; but a failure in what surely mattered to her most.

Elizabeth Leseur. This humble, holy woman was deeply devoted to her husband, a passionate atheist. She lived her Catholic faith quietly, anonymously, in a thoroughly bourgeois, atheist environment. She never preached or argued. But, especially in her later, sick years, she was much loved by those who would visit her for counsel and comfort. She died alone in her faith, her husband still unbelieving. When he, however, read in her memoirs of her love for him and her anguish that he come to faith he had a powerful conversion. He became a priest and spent a long life spreading her writing and life example. Again, failure in this life; fruitfulness in the aftermath.

Jeanne Jugan. Moved by the sight of a blind, homeless woman in the cold, Jeanne carried her into her own bed and cared for her. This was the beginning of the Little Sisters of the Poor, whose mission is to care for the poor, elderly and dying. Her work spread and flourished. But a hostile priest took charge and banished her as an unknown to a convent. There she lived anonymously, humbly for another 27 years. Her fellow sisters had no idea that she was the foundress of their work. She received no credit, but imagine her joy in observing the fruitfulness of her fidelity to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit!

Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete. Priest-celebrity, speaker, writer, spiritual leader, hilarious entertainer, this marvelous man spent the last years of his life in anonymity, caring for his disabled brother. Startling humility! Breath-taking renunciation of fame for service of the very least!

Saint Mark Tianxiang. An esteemed doctor, father of a large family, and lay leader, Mark became addicted to opium after being prescribed it for pain. He died as an addict. He was martyred in the Chinese Boxer Rebellion but never conquered his addiction. He might be the patron saint of so many who strive for virtue and holiness but are overcome by addiction. 

Brennan Manning. He was more of a failure than Saint Mark. Gifted preacher, writer, spiritual guide he died in his addiction and of his alcoholism due to damage to his brain. He left his Franciscan priesthood and the Church; married; divorced; continued to preach, with much fruit, about God's unconditional love for us. He touched many souls, in the Catholic charismatic renewal and later among Evangelicals and Pentecostals. Even toward the end of his life, he would preach a powerful retreat; go on a four-day bender; and then fly across the country to preach another powerful retreat. He was a catastrophe as an alcoholic. But he persevered in proclaiming God's love. He was buried in St. Rose Catholic Church in Belmar NJ. 

There are so many others. Some, notably Saint Alphonsus Liquori, resemble Jeanne Jugan in being removed as heads of orders they founded. Many simply died young, bereft of accomplishments: St. Maria Gioretti, Saints Francisco and Jacinta of Fatima, Carlo Acutis, Pier Giorgio Frassti, and even the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem. Always: lack of success, failure, fruitfulness.

Lastly, for a change of pace, lets consider a secular analogue. Sully, placed by Paul Newman at his best, in Nobody's Fool, is a failure of a middle-aged man: drunkard, penniless, renting a room, estranged from family, feuding endlessly with a local. He has nothing to show for his life. Yet, there is a humility about him. A quiet serentiy! He seems at peace with himself. He befriends, chastely and charitably, the sexy wife of his antagonist, played by Melanie Griffith. He reconciles with his family. He somehow exudes something like wisdom. He is the secular analogue, however flawed, as the unsuccessful but humble and fruitful saint.

May God bless our endeavors with success, also with failure, but always with humility, gratitude and fruitfulness!

Snyodality: Not So Bad After All?

I was wrong: I predicted the synod thing was at best a waste of time. At best! But now as the dust settles it seems the Holy Spirit, quietly, did show up. It wasn't all bad after all. The synthesis statement apparently is relatively innocuous: the g-word (gay) is not mentioned, the call for study of female deacons has already been dismissed by Francis himself. The sky is not falling! I can see three spirits at work: one good, the other two bad.

Listening. What is synodality? It is vague and undefined; but it does involve listening to each other. And that is, in itself a good thing, a very good thing. It seems that listening did occur over this past month. One prelate related that he heard very little ideological talk but much discussion of cultural differences: that sounds good to me!. It is not possible to exaggerate the value of listening: to each other, to the suffering, to our adversaries, to conscience, to the Word, to Tradition, to the gentle Holy Spirit. Listening is not everything; it is only about 93%! Three cheers for listening! Just one suggestion: perhaps Pope Francis and his lieutenants would walk their talk by welcoming and hearing young Latin mass families, Evangelical-Catholics from the USA, Americans on the southern border suffering from the uncontrolled invasion there, Ukranians, and some clerics who frequent Roman lace shops for their liturgical garb.

Progressive Agenda. It is crystal clear that many, or most, of the movers and shakers behind this favor the German path of synodality into a reconstruction of our faith in the model of liberal Protestantism. They did not substantially advance their cause. It appears that the forces resisting that push remain  strong. In my own reading, of admittedly conservative literature, I am heartened by the clarity, energy and strength of the intent to be faithful to our tradition. This "synodal path" seems to be eliciting a pushback in the right direction. Pope Francis himself, predictably confused and confusing, is not committed in a coherent way to this agenda and is a big disappointment to its advocates.

Dark Discontent and the Fantasy of "Synodality." Pope Francis in his obsession with this phantasm is moved by a profound unhappiness with the Church he has received. I can imagine his nightmares: obese clerics in fancy lace castigating fornicators and active homosexuals, canon lawyers obsessing over punishments for sin, hyper-capitalist American Republicans moralizing about abortion, arms dealers gloating in the surge in business with two major global wars, and so forth. This is an emotional pope who hates what he hates. What he wants is not clear. But it involves listening and engagement with those away from the Church, peace and love with the Chinese communists, open borders, some kind of a de-clericalization of the Church, embrace of an Islam that does not know Jihad, a kind acceptance of the sexual revolution of the West. He is placing his hope, not so much in the efficacy of the sacraments and the inerrancy of the Church's Gospel (for which he has a unique responsibility), but with this amorphous, group dynamic process called synodality. 

We have here a shepherd who hates sheep dogs and thinks if they would just stand down, the wolves and sheep will live nicely together!

Happily, the Holy Spirit is with us, even in synodality!😀

Remembering Blessings, Actual Graces, and Holy Events

Conceived in the love...tender, passionate, innocent, sacramental, erotic, faithful, fruitful, reverent, romantic, masculine/feminine, spousal...of Ray and Jeanne Laracy for each other. Baptized into their quiet, ardent Catholic faith. Gifted with two brothers, six sisters and a rich extended family.

Catechized into the sacramental life by 20 years of Catholic schooling with the Sisters of Charity, Christian Brothers, diocesan priests, laity, Maryknoll and Jesuit priests; in the thriving, expansive, serene, urban, ethnic, Roman Catholicism of post-war America.

Upon learning, around age 7 or 8, of the starving pagan babies in China, gripped by a obsession to respond to such suffering, I paced furiously back and forth in our home in Orange, NJ, thinking and bursting with concern. From this flowed as well a lifelong aversion to inordinate, conspicuous wealth.

Nurtured intellectually in adolescence by voracious reading, novels and non-fiction, along with a steady diet of America, NY Times, and Maryknoll Magazine, all staples of the wholesome, vibrant Catholic liberalism of the period.

Blessed, at Maryknoll College Seminary, Glen Ellyn, Illinois, by a safe, steady quasi-monastic routine (study, work, prayer) where I made lifelong friends and enthusiastically observed the immense changes in Catholicism after the Council and in society in the cultural/sexual revolution of 1965-9.

Befriended and mentored by Pat Williams: marine, price fighter, librarian, father, family man, librarian, autodidact, brilliant free thinker. Recruited by him into catechesis, a vocation that was to define my life.

Studying philosophy of the middle ages and of the 19th century, encountered the sharp combat between the sublime intellectualism of  Aquinas/Maritain/Gilson and the despairing irrationalism of Marx/Nietzsche/Freud...the heritage of faith and reason against that of suspicion, resentment, violence. Gained thereby an intellectual clarity that has served me ever since.

From Ivan Illich...ex-cleric, iconoclast, genius, mystic, anarchist, eccentric...received a profound critique of modernity in its toxicity as malignant technocracy-bureaucracy and a preference for the small, the simple, the convivial that allowed me to live in our bourgeois, dystopian megapolis with companionship, freedom, joy and agency.  

Uncertain of the priestly vocation, left the seminary to immediately fall passionately in love with Mary Lynn, court her passionately but patiently, marry and live happily ever after.

As a mendicant theological student at Union Theological and Woodstock Jesuit seminaries, enjoyed above all the mystic, saintly Joe Whelan S.J. and secondly the remarkable Avery Cardinal Dulles S.J. The first exemplified the conjunction of holiness and theology, the second the epitome of Catholic scholarship.

In Cursillo encountered Jesus Christ as God and man, as my personal Lord and Savior and thereby overcame my low Christology, a defect in my faith I had imbibed in my liberal college years.

In Charismatic Renewal ecstatically surrendered to the movements of the Holy Spirit and thereby was delivered from my steady, low-level liberal guilt complex about not doing enough for the poor. This was a major watershed moment in my life. Happily, we shared it as a couple. It deepened and intensified our Catholic faith, opened us up in ecumenical love for Protestants, and relieved the shrill, moralistic oppression of the messianic, political liberalism.

As the Cultural War intensified, I became a dedicated Warrior.

Enjoyed collaboration with partners, especially religious women, in Catholic schools with Jesuits, Sisters of Charity, Dominicans and Felicians at five schools over a dozen years.

Enjoyed the exquisite delights of being father to seven and partner to the best mother of our generation. We were blessed to raise our family in a spacious home, in a rough but decent neighborhood, a good parish, with fine Catholic schools in Jersey City. Our children's Catholic faith was strengthened by a range of evangelical experiences: World Youth days, Magdallen College summer programs, NET retreats, charismatic conferences, and others.

Employment in UPS, mostly supervision, for 25 years provided our family economic security and gave me a challenge and provocation to growth in manly character.

The persons and pontificates of John Paul and Benedict, as well as the theological school of the Communio school  in Washington DC, immensely deepened and enriched my theological vision.

Engagement with the 12-step program brought a serendipitous relaxion of compulsions against chastity and even more euphorically freedom from persistent, underlying, unrecognized fears and anxieties.

Several years of "walking" with a Neocatechumenal Community in NYC and NJ engaged me with the remarkable, radical catechesis of Kiko/Carmen, confirmed me in my most countercultural-Catholic intuitions, and triggered an early retirement from UPS supervision to seek God's will for me.

Our daughter Clare invited us into Our Lady's Missionaries of the Eucharist, a small, classically Catholic association founded by the saintly, gifted Sister Joan Noreen which synthesized elements of our faith. As a couple, we have especially benefited from prayer together of the daily office.

Walking the Camino of Santiago across northern Spain and probing God about his will for my life I received a clear, intense impulse to open a residence for people in need of a home. Family and friends eagerly worked together and so we opened Magnificat Home, a blessing for many women, for our family and above all for me myself.

Recently, we moved from Jersey City to Bradley Beach, a charming town at the Jersey Shore where we are enjoying a lovely environment, great jparish, a ministry of prayer with the sick in a local hospital, and more relaxed lifestyle.

Grandchildren. Need I say more? 

The good news: there is even more than the above. Friendships, worship experiences, priests, parishes, religious, movements like Communion and Liberation and the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal...to mention a few.

And better news yet:  The Best Is Yet to Come!

Deo Gratias!

Suggestion: The above might serve as a sort-of or in-lieu of a eulogy at my funeral. "Eulogy" means "to speak well." It pleases me to "speak well" of the many blessings I have received and to share that Joy with all who have participated in them with me.

A Eucharistic Heart (Letter 63 to Grands)

Our American bishops have us now in a three year Eucharistic Revival. I offer the following.

Eucharist is...

- The gracious act, the abiding presence of our Lord Jesus; the communion in holiness of the saints; the body and blood of Christ; the Church.

- The one source, focus, and goal of a Catholic life. As such it far outweighs all our other loves, longings, engagement, aspirations...all added together.

- The incomparable presence, the en-fleshing of God on earth, completely, in every mass, tabernacle, and reception of communion.

Eucharistic Abandonment and Indifference

American Catholics in large numbers have "apostasized"...left the Eucharist, like a man might leave his wife and children. Majorities no longer believe in the Real Presence; majorities no longer go to mass on Sunday. The tragedy of the American Church of the last half century can be accurately described as "The Great Eucharistic Apostas" means abandonment.)

Those of us who do attend mass, (let's be honest), are prone to distraction, monotony, and quiet indifference. Our liturgy does lend itself to routine and boredom. Evangelicals, who lack the Eucharist, compensate oftentimes with lively preaching and music. For example, I myself, during the one hour at Sunday mass, find myself spending perhaps 15 minutes writing my next blog essay, 15 minutes in random rumination, 15 praying for my intentions, and 15 minutes of listening to the Word and adoring our Lord. And so if the average Catholic who attends mass spends half an hour in real prayer, that is less than one half of one percent of our waking hours. 

How Do We Develop a Eucharistic Heart?

The following is offered as a comprehensive, promising program. We need our love for Christ in the Eucharist to permeate our entire life, and then culminate at the liturgy. Perhaps several elements will work for you.

- Visits to the Tabernacle.  We do well to seek out open churches and chapels that are open for visitation. We are fortunate that our parish Church here in Bradley Beach is open all week. For almost 50 years in Jersey City we benefited from St. Anne's Nursing Home which welcomed us to its chapel. There are schools, institutions, and parishes with open doors and yet our Lord's presence is ignored. Along with this: participation in public adoration whenever there is Benediction and Exposition in the monstrance.

- Reverence Toward the Tabernacle. Cultivate silence in Church; bring conversation outside. Make sign of cross when passing a Catholic church. Upon entering a church, identify tabernacle by red, sanctuary, votive light and genuflect on right knee; bless yourself with holy water. Outside the Church you might pray to Christ in the Church, especially if you are nearby. Elizabeth Ann Seton, while in the process of converting to the Church, would sit in her Episcopalian church and find herself praying to Christ present in the Catholic church across the street. Another good practice is coming to mass early and staying after to pray. (Full disclosure: I do not do this; I am resistant; I have to pray about this now that I am retired and have leisure time.)

- Confession. This is an invaluable, incomparable partner to participation in the Eucharist. My grandfather used to say: "Just go to confession every other week. As a habit. You don't think about it." For many, monthly is adequate. For us men there is urgency here since sins of chastity, starting in adolescence, are surely the strongest factor keeping men away from mass. It is possible, but unlikely that a red blooded male (aged 15 -75) develop a Eucharist heart without confession of sin.

- Daily Mass. As much as your schedule allows and your ardor urges: your ambition can be daily communion and liturgy, but not as routine habit, rather as tender, reverent, intense devotion. This is, of course, the working of the Holy Spirit, whom we implore. 

- Prayer with The Word. Jesus the Word is Jesus who lived and died is Jesus risen and sending the Holy Spirit is Jesus present in every mass and tabernacle. Our liturgy is first the reception of the Word and then the Sacrifice, fulfilled by communion. Listening to the Word, in Scripture, is intrinsically related to reception of his Body and Blood. So: daily reading of Scripture is essential to a Eucharistic heart. A good practice is daily prayer, outside of Church, of the daily or Sunday mass readings as in the Magnificat or the Word.

- Rosary and Devotion to Mary. There is a mystical, ineffable connection between devotion to Mary, who gave Jesus her body and his body, and reception of his body in the Eucharist.  

- The Poor. Jesus in the thin, weightless host is small, poor, powerless, ignored, vulnerable, humble and He has a preferential love for the small, poor, powerless, ignored, vulnerable, humble. The Eucharistic heart is downwardly mobile, seeking out the suffering.

- Simplicity and Silence. Jesus in the host is utterly simple, uncomplicated, and absolutely silent. Reception of Him requires and communion with Him entails the aspiration for the simple and the quiet.

- Priests. Without priests we have no Eucharist. They bring us Jesus in this way along with confession, the sacraments, the Word, governance of the Eucharistic community, and they embody for us in their lives (albeit imperfectly) the very person of Jesus. 

- Communion in Holiness.  Our union with the sacramental Jesus flows into and out of our friendship with the "holy ones." This means that we seek and enjoy the companionship of others with a Eucharistic heart. It means we read and imbibe the lives of the saints.

- Receptivity. We conclude with consideration of the primacy of receptivity. As creatures, our being, our very existence, is received. We are "creaturely." (A word favored by my mentor Joe Whelan S.J. and his mentor Baron von Hugel.) Our action, all we do, flows from our being; and our being is received.  Our human drama is first and foremost a Mystery of Receptivity. Our Eucharistic Christ hungers to give Himself to us in the Host: He wants us first and foremost to receive. Such a giving elicits, not passivity, but a most tender, ardent receptivity. Out of such receptivity, we overflow, we fructify, we become radiant. Quintessentially in the Liturgy, but in every moment...every encounter, trial, suffering, joy, love affair, aspiration...it is primary for us to receive. The Eucharistic heart is receptive, of all that our Lord desires to give us...the joyful, the luminous, the sorrowful and the glorious.

On offer here is a lifetime program. An impossibility, except for the Holy Spirit. It is yours, offered generously by God, but only if you passionately desire it!

Eucharistic Lord, make us receptive...docile, pliable, "disponible," responsive, grateful, obedient, fruitful, generous!

 

 

Father Fitz, the Catholic Worker Farm, and My Political-Science-Professor Dream: Joy in Chaos

Father Hugh Fitzgerald was among the holiest, and surely the most charming and delightful of the priests I have known. Short, very Irish looking, always smiling, he was maybe 50 years old when I, aged 25, knew him at St. Mary's H.S, Jersey City in the mid 1970s. I loved when he would take my religion class; I would relax. Typically, he would welcome us into the rectory living room next door; informal and casual. He planned no content, but would chat happily about random things. He had an indescribable appeal and charm. It all seemed so good. Oftentimes, he would engage 5 or 6 close to him and the rest would chat among themselves. That bothered him not at all. I caught his tranquility of spirit and also allowed it. If it didn't bother him, why should it bother me? Normally I was very anxious to maintain class order; but with him I was on sabbath. I am told in his early priesthood he had a fierce Irish temper; by the time I knew him, God's grace had beautifully prevailed. His serenity and joy were contagious.

Catholic Worker Farm.  Around that same time, perhaps 1972 or so, my wife Mary Lynn joined me in my search for "Christian Community" as we visited the Catholic Worker Farm north of us overlooking the Hudson River. A striking experience: very run down, messy and unkempt, with a good number of dysfunctional people, mentally ill and alcoholic, wandering around. But there were also a small number, perhaps half a dozen, of high-functioning, intelligent, motivated people of deep faith, character and motivation. In accord with Dorothy Day's anarchism, there was little or no structure or rules. Whatever got done was done by the good will of these quite extraordinary people. It was "live and let live" at the extreme. I was impressed by these people but decided I could not live that way.

We left the farm and then visited the Bruderhof: in the Anabaptist tradition, it is  the equal of the Catholic Worker in its countercultural, radical, communal spirit of poverty but the opposite extreme in regard to structure and order. With Germanic exactitude, everything was neat, orderly, aesthetic, and symmetrical. The flower gardens were magnificent. The children well-behaved and groomed. At lunch with several hundred people, we finished grace and then my wife and I were chewing into our apples when I noticed that everyone, except us, was quartering the apple with the knife. We quickly did the same. I was most impressed with the beauty and order of the place, but we agreed that we needed something half way between these two extremes.

My Dream Last Night. As always in my dreams, I am in school, lost, disoriented and out of control. Usually I am a teacher, in this case I am a student. I don't know if I have a class this period so I decided to walk through all three floors of the school to see if I can identify my class. I do not succeed but I do walk through a political science class in which the professor, medium sized, perhaps 50 years old, of European descent, greets me with a warm smile that touches my heart. I then find myself as a guest in his classroom. It is a senior class and I am a junior so I am pleased by this. He comes in with that same stirring warmth, joy and affection. To my surprise, the class is in disorder, but he is unperturbed. He engages the students nearest him in lively, happy dialogue. I struggle to hear him as the other voices are loud. After class he asks me to remain with a few students. It becomes apparent that they are engaging me in an "intervention" regarding some (unspecified) intimate matter that I had revealed. The professor is entirely affectionate, reassuring and kind. The students are benign but uninvolved. I am happy to be receiving this attention, expecially from seniors, above me in the hierarchy of things.

Interpretation. JOY IN CHAOS...That is what unites these three anecdotes. Joy in Chaos. The protagonists...Fr. Fitz, the Catholic Workers, and the Political Science Professor...all radiate undiluted joy, affection, attention, and energy in the middle of disorder. They are not in control. Yet, they are charming, confident, unthreatened, and strong in agency.

Much of my working life I suffered anxiety, discouragement and sense of inadequacy because I failed to meet the bar of control over challenging situations. First of all, as high school teacher, I was a mediocre disciplinarian and saw myself as a failure in the classroom. UPS, even in supervision, was not as difficult as teaching, but I again felt inadequate in meeting standards: my drivers were not performing as required; I made mistakes in dispatch; and at the airport, the tolerance for error was very short and I faced frequent criticism.

More recently, in our boarding home for women, I am surrounded by dysfunction and eccentricity. Strangely, I find a deep peace as I accept each woman for who she is;  I entrust the house to God's care; and I do what I can do. I enjoy this peace, perhaps, because I am emulating Fr. Fitz, the Catholic Workers and my imagined Political Science Professor.

There is irony here: Political Science. This is the discipline around order in community. For the last few weeks, I have been unable to watch any TV, other than the news, as I am gripped by the war in Israel as well as the chaos in the Republican Party, not to mention the Ukraine and our current president. This is "chaos on steroids!" Perhaps, through this dream and these beautiful memories, the Holy Spirit is encouraging me, in the face of global disorder, to remain concerned but detached, joyful, attentive, affectionate, serene, confident, and magnanimous.

Thank You Jesus! 

 

Aspirations (Letter 62 to Grands)

 Aspire comes from Latin "ad-spirare" which mean "breathe to."  And so in normal usage it means to aim, desire, hope, strive, ambition toward something. For example, one might aspire to: play Division 1 basketball, to a career as a surgeon, to make $1 million before the age of 30. The human heart is created to aspire to God, the eternal, infinite Event of Love. Nothing less will finally satisfy; nothing on earth. The good human life aspires to what is noble, true, beautiful, kind, and heavenly. And then, of course, there are the evil, sinful aspirations: revenge, lust, jealousy, greed, gluttony, vainglory and so forth. At this point, you might ask yourself about your deepest aspirations, ambitions, desires!

Aspiration, in Catholic piety, refers to short prayers, "breathings toward God," of a very few words, normally from three to a dozen. These are among the best forms of prayer: so quick, so easy, but very heartfelt. They may express more intensity, depth, tenderness and ardor than long litanies and rituals. I share with you here my personal favorites. You may find that one or more express your heart and spirit at this moment. Some are good for special times: guilt, desperation, sleeplessness, gratitude. I suggest you try each one and see which one feels just right. And then pray it frequently, randomly, spontaneously, joyfully.

Thank You!

Come Holy Spirit!

Jesus, I Trust in You!

Let your mercy be upon us as we place our trust in you.

I come to you as a poor man, in need of your mercy, in need of your love!

I surrender myself to you! Take care of everything!

Jesus come into my heart. Possess me. Bring me, by the strength and gentleness, the fire and sweetness of your Holy Spirit, to our heavenly Father.

Mother Mary, I place myself under the mantle of your holiness, your purity, your beauty and your love.

Come Lord Jesus.

Draw me to yourself, O Lord, fill me with your love.

Draw me to yourself, cleanse me of your sins, pour your blood upon me, make me pure, holy and good.

We adore You, O Christ, and we bless You; because by your holy cross, you have redeemed the world.

I want You. I need You. I am desperate for You.

I love You and I adore You.

I thank You and I Trust in You.

I delight in You; I hope in You.

I rest in You; I move in You.

I receive You; I abide in You.

I repent to You; I exult in You!

Be free, creative, relaxed with this form of prayer. Some of these work well after Holy Communion, others for falling asleep, others when you are anxious, discouraged, or desperate.

They are a form of spiritual breathing and can be prayed in harmony with your bodily breathing, in and out. Among the most famous, especially in Russia and the Eastern Church is the famous "Jesus Prayer" which allows the first part to be prayed with the inbreathing, and the second with the outbreathing:

Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Living God.....Have mercy upon me a sinner.

They can also be prayed as a litany, even using your rosary beads, as with the litany of Divine Mercy.

For the sake of his sorrowful passion...Have mercy on us and on the whole world.

Enjoy!

A Catholic Look at College and Colleges (Letter 61 to Grands)

College life, like high school and every period, is a time of spiritual drama and combat. Spiritual life is never static, inert, or steady: there is always advancement toward God or decline into sin. God's grace is always at work; but so are the dark powers of the world, the flesh and the devil. Every day we are being pulled toward the kingdom of heaven or down into the swamp of sin. One might even be advancing in one area but declining in another: imagine someone who is engaging in service of the poor but also cohabitating and not praying or attending mass: an advance on one front, a retreat on another. 

A typical scenario: an 18 year old from a good Catholic family  goes away to school and is drawn into the notorious "dorm/party" culture of alcohol and promiscuity; stops mass attendance and prayer; imbibes secular, progressive ideas and comes to disparage Catholicism. The family pays hundreds of thousands of dollars and gets: loss of faith, disgust for the Church, possibly an alcohol and/or sex addiction, and sometimes lack of career preparation or ambition. Catholic colleges often are not better, and can be worse. College is a dangerous place! Some history of higher education follows.

Secular Universities

We recall that most of the prestigious schools, especially the Ivy's, started as seriously religious, Protestant and mostly Calvinist. In the course of time they secularized and detached from Christianity. In the 60s, along with the broader culture, they radicalized and largely adopted anti-Christian ideologies of the left: Marxism, sexual liberation, pro-abortion feminism, an atheism more or less explicit, an idolatry of science/technology/achievement/success, and a progressivism contemptuous of religious tradition.

Catholic Schools

Prior to the 1960s, the Catholic community kept its own separate college system. As part of the "Catholic ghetto," clearly defined against mainstream (historically anti-Catholic) Protestantism, it included courses in philosophy and theology which articulated, clarified and deepened the faith. It was considered academically inferior to the better secular schools. A lively debate erupted in the 1950s and early 1960s about this perceived inferiority status. But in the post war period of 1945-65, Catholicism, including its colleges, was warmly welcomed into mainstream middle class culture even as it retained Catholic practice and theology.

Vatican II, Land of Lakes Conference and Mimetic Envy of the Ivy's

A sea change occurred, however, in the wake of Vatican II. That historical event had two foci: engagement with the contemporary world and a renewal in Christ through return to the sources of Scripture and Tradition. In American Catholic higher education the first came to dominate: a fascination with contemporary, elite culture. Tragically, this uncritical embrace by a now more liberal Catholicism of secularism occurred at the exact moment when that culture itself was turning radically away from it's Christian past. This catastrophe was most pronounced in Catholic higher education, especially the more prestigious, pretentious schools.

In the post-war years of 1945-65 Catholics increasingly accultured into middle class society and attained acceptance and prestige as the "ghetto" dissolved. Largely without clear deliberation, they also succumbed to the above noted academic "inferiority complex" and desired to emulate the more esteemed institutions that were at that moment secularizing radically. Sadly, we must admit that there was some credence to the inferiority accusation when we see how broadly (with exceptions) Catholic academia abandoned i'st treasured legacy to mimic the seculars. 

This trend prevailed after 1965 but had a defining moment in the Land O' Lakes Conference in July, 1967. Fr. Theodore Hesburg of Notre Dame convened leaders from the more important Catholic schools (Boston College, Fordham, Georgetown, Catholic University and others) and together they declared a hard academic freedom free from any external authority, including that of the Church. With this disastrous decision, they divorced the academy from the Church. They adopted a secular model. They surrendered Catholic identity in order to imitate the higher status schools. 

Sidebar: It is worth noting that at this very time Notre Dame was accepting money from the Ford Foundation and others for summer conferences on the need for widespread contraception in the face of a feared "population explosion." They happily jettisoned the Catholic view of sexuality/fertility in dread of a crisis that did not develop. Indeed, we are now facing a demographic winter as, across the West, Russia, China and Japan, there are not enough younger people to support the expanding older generation. The Ford and other WASP (white-anglo-saxon-protestant) foundations were at the time terrified of the demographic fertility of Catholics and Afro-Americans who threatened their hegemony. The WASP campaign succeeded fabulously, with the collaboration of Hesburg, as Catholics (despite Humanae Vitae) and Blacks went on to contracept and then abort at very high proportions. 

Sidebar to Sidebar:  Fr. Hesburg was in many ways a devout, devoted, and extremely gifted priest-leader but seriously flawed by an unconscious compulsion to gain the esteem of the ruling, liberal, post-Protestant elite. In this he is emblematic of Catholic higher education of the last 55 years.

Another Sidebar:  In these same years large amounts of federal money became available to colleges so the secularization process (e.g. taking crucifixes off walls) was intensified by impulse to growth and desire for funds.

And so we see the widespread imitation of secular schools in their worst aspects: acceptance of secular ideologies and rejection of Church tradition; loss of Catholic identity in teaching and practice; embrace of "dorm culture" and cultural/sexual liberalism.

This idea of "absolute academic freedom" is untenable as every scholar and institution already starts from some philosophical posture. This can be scientific, political, religious. So what happened across Catholic education was the widespread rejection of the faith in favor of alternate commitments to technology, science, career advancement, and ideologies of the Left.

Catholic Reaction Schools and "Ex Corde Ecclesiae"

A very small number of very small schools resisted this trajectory to assert, firmly, a counter-cultural Catholicism. Such maintained a Catholic ambience of prayer, liturgy, theology, concern for helpless human life, encouragement to chastity, openness to vocations of marriage/priesthood/religious life, and interest in the humanities and classics

Franciscan University of Steubenville is noteworthy: it was on the brink of collapse when taken over by Fr. Michael Scanlon, a gifted, charismatic, Franciscan friar. He led the community in the opposite direction from the mainstream: dormitories centered in prayer and the sense of Christ, an exceptional Catholic theology program, a warm welcome to forms of traditional Catholicism no longer received by the Academy such as pro-life movement, homeschooling families, charismatic and other renewal movements. This campus is on fire with Catholic zeal, in a number of ways. Recently I attended a political conference on the emergence of an economic populism on the Right; that same weekend hosted a vocations conference and another political conference. A visit to the adoration chapel (open around the clock) at 10 PM on a Saturday night finds 10 to 20 students in prayer. Just this morning (Oct. 21, 2023) I read that in response to the crisis of anger on college campuses, this passionately Catholic campus is offering a special program for Jewish students who feel unsafe on their campuses. This entails arrangements for synagogue worship, kosher food, and distance learning. It reflects the intense love for Jews in the Catholic Church, since the Council, without prejudice against Muslims and Palestinians.

Other schools are smaller and maintain a family feel with focus on the classics: Thomas Aquinas College, Magdallen College, Christendom,  Belmont Abbey, Wyoming Catholic, and others.

Larger schools which retain a thick Catholic identity include: Catholic University of America, University of Dallas, Benedictine, and Ave Maria. 

In 1990, Pope John Paul issued an authoritative apostolic constitution "Ex Corde Ecclesiae" in which he affirmed that an authentic Catholic college is guided by our faith. It was a direct contradiction of the Land O' Lakes Statement and a clear articulation of Catholic academic identity.

Elite Catholic Progressive Schools

Most of the more prestigious, competitive Catholic schools by 1990 were all the way down the path of secularization and completely ignored Ex Corde Ecclesiae. For example, the Pope asked that teachers of theology be certified by their bishops as clear teachers of the faith. At that time I myself was teaching theology as an adjunct at Caldwell College; I requested that certification and was proud of it. That directive was ignored, along with the entire document, by most schools. 

Emulating the elite schools, aspiring universities watered down Catholic identity, qualified for large amounts of federal money, expanded, focused on career goals and research. Worst of all, they abandoned "hiring for (Catholic) mission" and instead hired the most prestigious professors, with the right degrees from the right schools. They became imitations of the seculars with a flavoring of Catholicism, especially in areas like social justice congenial to leftist progressivism.

The hard scientific, engineering fields are largely oblivious to the Culture War and less affected by the ideologies of the liberational, progressive revolution of the 1960s. Not so with the humanities. Literature and history largely surrendered to hermeneutics of deconstruction and skepticism along with radical ideologies. The social sciences, especially psychology, systemically embraced an underlying philosophy of moral relativism and agnosticism. Jared Crawford, husband of cousin Christine Polycastro Crawford, himself a liberal professor of psychology, interestingly did his dissertation on the pronounced liberal bias in the discipline of psychology. It is well known that more than 90% or psychology professors self-identify as liberal. Whether due to self-selection or bias in hiring, it has become unheard of for a psychologist with conservative beliefs to pursue a career in academic psychology. 

Theology departments of these liberal schools consistently deliver a progressive alternate to Catholicism as received from earlier generations: deconstructive of gender and the masculine priesthood, sympathetic to legal abortion, liberal/relativistic in sexual morality, devoted to identity politics including the militant homosexual agenda and critical race theory, dismissive of the supernatural, and accommodating of the secular culture.

Interestingly, some schools have philosophy departments  (Fordham, Boston College) that are more lucidly Catholic than the theology programs.

These progressive Catholic schools have many worthwhile assets: tremendous scholars and students, athletic programs, solid academic departments, career opportunities, social justice activities and others. The danger is that the theology departments are systemically hostile to traditional Catholicism, disparaging it as chauvinist, homophobic, reactionary, legalistic and ignorant. These same biases prevail largely in the humanities, history and social sciences. 

There may be many good reasons for you to chose such a school. I simply urge you to be vigilant and alert to the oftentimes subtle attacks upon our faith. These schools are actually more dangerous than the purely secular ones in that they do not merely attack our faith, but they costume these assaults in an appealing, progressive synthesis that postures itself as a superior, enlightened, modern kind of Catholicism. It is in truth an alternate to our faith as received; but that reality is unrecognized or disguised.  

Catholic Counter Culture in the Secular University

From the Catholic perspective, the advantage of a strictly secular, even neo-pagan university, is that the overt hostility may elicit a strong reaction of faith from the student. Oftentimes, such places cultivate small Catholic communities of resistance.

Fr. Joe Laracy studied computing engineering at the University of Illinois in a technical program in a huge, secular institution. He benefited immensely, however, from a fierce Catholic Newman Club, run by a charismatic Monsignor Swetlan, graduate of the Naval Academy and John Paul Institute. A scientist-theologian, he became mentor to the student Joe Laracy and shared an intellectually vigorous, spiritually rich Catholic faith. Such programs are also common on Ivy campuses, where faith and intellectuality merge in a strong mixture in resistance to a hostile environment.

Families in the stronger renewal movements (Charismatic and Neocatechumenal Way) often prefer to send their children to such secular schools where they are not vulnerable to the Catholic-flavored progressivism prevailing on Catholic campuses. Additionally, they avoid "dorm culture" and keep their children close to family and faith community.

Mixed Catholic Campuses

We have considered two strongly contrasting, mutually contradictory models: the progressive and the countercultural/conservative.  Most schools, however, are a mixture of elements of both; with countervailing and contradictory dynamics regarding the faith. Such harbor quite a variety: party culture, sports, academic and professional programs, various levels of status, and communities of faith. Our family has familiarity with a number of such schools, mostly in the Northeast.

Seton Hall University. As a diocesan and institutionally Catholic school, "the Hall" boasts a respected seminary,  Judaeo-Christian Studies and Catholic Studies programs as well as a litany of past luminaries: Ostereicher, Dougherty, Laki, Finkel, Frizell, Liddy, Guarino, and others. It is a rich source of Catholic study and life for those who seek that, even as it is a typical bourgeois "party school." It's flaw, typical of such mixed schools, was identified by my sister, Margaret Laracy Smolin, in her doctoral dissertation on  the implementation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae there: the failure to "hire for mission" in the academic disciplines and administration. Preferring secular status to Catholic commitment, the school, over time, systemically, has created an imitation of the secular model. For example, some years ago when Archbishop Meyers wanted to appoint his friend Monsignor Swetland (mentioned above as mentor to Fr. Joe), the pushback of the faculty was so fierce that he had to defer. This school continues to offer an abundance of Catholic riches, but with the passing of time the powerful forces of liberalization seem to increasingly prevail. Immaculate Conception Seminary offers a solid theology program, but the Religious Studies Department is very progressive; the Catholic Studies program offers an intelligent, moderate liberalism, while the Judaeo-Christian program is rich in historical appreciation for Judaism but tends to soft pedal classical aspects of Catholicism.  Not long ago, the self-support group for homosexuals seeking chastity, Courage, was cancelled on the campus as homophobic. Reflective of the broader Church, Seton Hall offers strong expressions of Catholicism along with intense disgust for its practice and teaching. (With 10 family members have studied or taught there, our connection with this school is long and close, but not untroubled.)

St. Peter's University.  (With 11 members of our family having studied or taught there, our connection with this school is also long, close, and not untroubled.) A smaller, Jesuit school with a respected past, this now serves a more urban and low-income population. My children benefited from  generous financial packages, intense involvement in student life and athletics in a tough urban ambience, and rich friendships with admirable Jesuit scholars. Our family endowed a modest Alwyn Remmele Scholarship, intended for as need-based for a student suffering from anxiety or mental illness. In 2008, to my own distress, the school hosted a campaign talk by Barak Obama whose support for abortion, even partial birth, glaringly contradicts Catholic respect for life. That event deeply offended me. Yet, to this day the St. Peter's Campus Ministry Kitchen provides a meal for our Magnificat Home every week. It is another good example of a mixed school. 

(BTW: All six of our married children met their spouses at their colleges! How cool is that? But that is not to say that you go to a Catholic school to meet a mate!)

Mount St. Mary's, Emmitsburg, This mid-sized school, set in historic, rural Maryland near Gettysburg has a rich legacy, including a highly respected seminary, the gorgeous Marian ghetto, and the breathtaking shrine of St. Elizabeth Seton. It's Catholic identity remains relatively thick, including a fine philosophy program. (With 8 family members graduated there, our family connection is close, strong and basically untroubled.)

DeSales University of Allentown Our Clare met her husband Dave there and she received an excellent professional preparation for a career as a Physican's Assistant as well as some depth theology study in the thought of St. John Paul and the Theology of Marriage. To my knowledge, it retains a Catholic identity, along with the party atmosphere and pressures from the progressive Left.

University of Notre Dame  As the uncontested premier Catholic University, this is also the quintessential mixed school. It represents the entire American Church, in its progressive and conservative expressions. It upholds traditional values even as it continues the Hesburg legacy of imitation of the seculars. Our Margaret Rose probably earned her valedictory status through her engagement in such a wide range of activities: social justice institute, teaching of ESL, semester in Chile in identification with poor, friendship with Legionnaires of Christ, and other. Their theology department is huge and diverse, offering every imaginable flavor of theology: Thomistic, liberation feminist, patristic, "resourcement," and other. It lacks the cohesive, integrated Catholic theological ethos available at Franciscan University or the graduate program of the John Paul Institute. It honored then-President Obama, to the consternation of conservatives like myself.

Other schools we know which are mixed in this fashion are Felician, Caldwell and Assumption. These are smaller, less prestigious, but similarly preserve a genuine Catholic core in the face of pressures to accommodate to woke culture.

I personally cherish a long, close connection with both Seton Hall and St. Peter's, both are "family" to me, but both have left me betrayed and disappointed. The University of Notre Dame elicits a similar, if lessor ambivalence. More satisfying is our strong connection with Mount St. Mary's which has given us three children-in-law, retains a clear Catholic identity, offers a solid academic program (particularly in philosophy), and carries a rich historic and religious legacy. Positive thoughts also pertain to smaller, admirable Catholic colleges of Caldwell, Felician and DeSales...including warm associations with the Dominican and Felician sisters.

Conclusion

This essay is not to endorse or  condemn any schools. 

Although, to be honest, I would love someone to go to Franciscan University, that flaming torch of deep, Catholic life. (It became a joke with our daughters' counselor as I brought each girl there but none chose the school.)  Oh yes, I would shudder at a theology degree from a prestigious liberal school!

There is a mountain of considerations for your choice: cost, aid and scholarship package, sports, status, academic excellence, distance from home, large/small, urban/rural/suburban, Catholic/secular, social atmosphere, demographic mixture.

Choosing a college can be (but not always) an intuitive, subjective, personal, moral and artistic decision. It is not always entirely deliberative and cognitive. It can resemble accepting a friendship, falling in love, hearing a religious call. My realtor-friend, Joe Napolitano of happy memory, told me that frequently a woman will look at a house, without entering it or learning about it, and fall in love at first sight, like a man and woman in a romantic comedy. And so your choice may be a matter-of-fact, practical, realistic evaluation of facts. Or, it may be a mysterious surrender to what you sense as True, Good and Beautiful, about a specific school, whether prestigious or humble and unpretentious. 

As your grandfather, I am most concerned with your spiritual life. None of the schools are all good; none are all bad. For example, at my own favorite, Franciscan, I recall student comments reflecting a tone of superiority that I found offensive. Also, browsing their bookstore I marveled at the breath and depth of Catholic literature, but I missed seeing a little of Marx, Freud and Nietzsche who are the great masters of suspicion, our antagonists, but also geniuses with deep insights to offer. Contrariwise, the most woke schools will surely offer rich countercultures of Catholic life and thought.

I have every confidence that your faith is deep and that you will flourish in whatever school you choose, rejecting the weeds but benefiting from the wheat.

God bless you!

Ever Virgin? Why Would Joseph and Mary, After Jesus' Birth, Abstain From Sexual Intercourse?

 I was flummoxed by this question. I could not answer it. I had never thought about it. I had never been given a reason. I knew that they were celibate: the perpetual virginity (before, during and after Jesus' birth) of Mary is part of our Catholic faith. I knew the What, but I couldn't say the Why.

(Sidebar: the sexual history, like the age, of Joseph is unknown. An early tradition has Joseph with children by a prior marriage. A later tradition has him as a perpetual virgin. Each is a pious belief; not stated in Scripture and not taught by the Church. One may belief what one wants. My own view is that such speculation is futile.) 

I was more perplexed: our dear friends of 50 years, a solid and devoted Catholic couple, were certain and passionate in insisting that the holy couple,  as  married, would certainly have enjoyed sexual intimacy. Worse than that was the logic:  "The Catholic Church is obsessed with a negativity about sex. That is all they talk about. This idea of perpetual virginity expresses this negative view of sex, even within marriage." What most saddened me was the disparagement of the Church by a dear brother and sister in Christ. 

I had never heard that or thought that.

Catholic View of Spousal Sexuality

My experience in the Church is crystal clear: sex within marriage is a wholesome, holy act. It is part of the sacrament of marriage in which we are joined to each other in Christ. The marriage bed, along with the family table and the Eucharistic altar, are the privileged places of encounter with God. Sex is unspeakably precious, sacred and awesome: to be protected, cherished and revered. It is reserved for the conjugal union: free, final, faithful, fruitful, unitive. Outside of that it is a grave sin: dangerous and destructive.

I see a reality opposite to that  noted by our friends: the Church speaks too little on the treasure that is sex. It is never mentioned from the pulpit. Our youth are drowning in a cesspool of pornography, masturbation, hook-up sex, adultery, and divorce; our priests are mute on it. We are bombarded with rainbows, parades and pride months! Cohabitation/contraception has become for our Catholic youth, not a mortal sin, but a positive, normative step towards adulthood. How often do we hear about the value and challenge of chastity? Of fidelity? Of celibacy and virginity?

(Anecdote: standing on West Side Avenue, Jersey City, I mentioned to two friends that our confirmation program included a retreat about being chaste. My street smart black friend liked that and probed: "Cool! Cool! You mean...What do you mean 'being chased'...you mean being chased by the cops?"

The profound esteem of the Church for the male/female body is evident in the Renaissance art of Rome. The reverence for marriage and sexuality reached a high point in the catechesis of John Paul on the human body. The idea that our doctrine that Mary is "ever virgin" camouflages a Catholic contempt for marital sexuality is startling and saddening!

The Dark Side of Sexuality

However, their logic is not entirely unreasonable: the abstention from sex could, but does not necessarily, suggest a disparagement of it. And our Catholic history does include a suspicion, a fear, an aversion to sexuality. We find such in Augustine, in some spiritual writers, in the Jansenism that moved from France into Ireland and into our own American Irish Catholicism of earlier generations. John Paul himself said that his intention was to overcome just such a suspicion in our tradition.

A  degree of fear, awe and vigilance about sex is salutary and intrinsic to any real religion. Calvinism, Shakerism, Manicheism are all extreme forms of that, even going so far as to forbid marital sex entirely. But since the Fall our sexuality is entwined with concupiscence: disordered, dark, incomprehensible drives and desires. These do not disappear after marriage. 

Psychoanalysis has probed somewhat, finding in our sexual longings dark forces: the death wish, infantile regression, oedipal and incestuous drives, not to mention the long list of paraphilias. 

Even within marriage, sex is not an angelic, pure, innocent thing. It brings with it dark, obscure, always potentially destructive dynamics. Yet, within marriage it becomes a meritorious, holy act. 

Prudence, sober caution, and realistic vigilance are called for, especially in education of our children.

Catholicism: The Facts

"The facts, Ma'am, just the facts."  Sergeant Joe Friday, on Dragnet, TV Show, 1951-9.

Catholicism is first and foremost about FACTS. The FACT of God the Trinity. The FACT of God engaging us in Jesus Christ in his incarnation, life, death, rising, ascending, sending of the Holy Spirit and his return in glory.   These are all FACTS, realities, events, happenings, within a dramatic, on-going history.

Our faith is a code of conduct: compassion for the suffering, action for justice, all the virtues. But all this comes after the FACT.

Our faith is feelings of awe, gratitude, joy, hope. But all this comes after the FACT.

Our faith is a rich network of prayers, cults, sacraments and rituals. But all this expresses the FACT.

Our faith is a system of belief, theology, theory. But all this articulates the FACT.

Four Facts about Mary

Dogmatically, infallibly, we Catholics hold dear four facts about Mary. She is:

1. Immaculately Conceived. Like no one else.

2. Mother of God. Not just of the humanity of Jesus.

3. Perpetually virgin: before, during and after the birth. Forever.

4. Assumed bodily into heaven. Like no one else except her son.

My Christian Brother friend-mentor told me that some 60 years ago his theology professor told him that this dogma of the perpetual virginity of Mary is one of the hardcore, countercultural Catholic beliefs, offensive to softer, watered-down, progressive forms of Catholicism. That is about right. 

We are Given the What. Not Always the Why

We know with certitude that Jesus was born a Jewish man, 2000 years ago, in Palestine, and died on Calvary, and rose on the third day.

We don't really know WHY: a man, not a woman? A Jew, not a Roman? 2000 years ago, not 4,000 or 10,000? in Palestine not Athens? on the 3rd day, not the 2nd or the 10th?

Why does she have no children, and she has 14? Why did he die at the age of one day and she is still alive at 105 years? Why such violence, suffering, nihilism? We cannot answer these WHYS. 

These are Mysteries. We don't really know the Why? 

Why did Joseph and Mary abstain? We don't really know. That was something between them and God.

But we can ponder it. Prayerfully. Hoping that our own intellects, hearts and wills be inflamed and enlightened by the Holy Spirit.

History of the Dogma

The virgin birth, but not the perpetual virginity of Mary is clear in Scripture. Her ever-virginity has its earliest written expression in the Protoevangelium of James, written a century after the apostolic era. It was clearly articulated in the very early councils of Constantinoble and Lateran and later repeated at Trent. While it was disputed in the early centuries, virtually all the heavy-hitters affirmed it: Origin, Ambrose, Augustine, Thomas, etc. Even the reformers Luther and Calvin accepted it although their followers soon rejected it. To say it is not true is formally defined as a heresy. Vatican II reaffirmed it in stating that "Christ did not diminish his mother's virginal integrity, but enriched and sanctified it."

We customarily refer to her as "the virgin Mary." It may be, along with "Mother Mary" the defining evocative for her. She is not, like most women, "the used-to-be virgin" but the "ever virgin." It is not natural for a virgin to be a mother or for a mother to be a virgin. But that is the exact point: we are not dealing here with a natural or historical fact. This is a supernatural FACT! Part of the fact of Christ is the FACT of the ever-virginity of Mary. 

St. Ignatius of Loyola and the Moor

Riding on a country road in Spain on his donkey, the newly converted Ignatius engaged in an argument with the Muslim who accepted the miraculous conception of Jesus but insisted Mary's virginity could not be retained through the birth. They argued back and forth without resolution until the Moor sped ahead to his destination. As Ignatius continued, he became furious with the Moor and himself. He had failed to defend the honor of the Virgin and felt he must find and slay the man for his sacrilege. He was troubled in spirit and undecided so determined on a primitive mode of discernment: at the fork in the road, he would not lead the donkey but let him chose the path. If the animal chose the path taken by the Moor, he would find and slay him. If he chose the other path, he would let it go. Happily for all involved, the mule chose the other path. Happily also, the Spaniard warrior went on to develop more nuanced ways of discernment. 

For better or for worse, I myself am no equal to the noble Basque in his reverence for the Virgin or his fighting spirit. Not many of us are today! For sure he did not question her perpetual virginity.

Mystery of Virginity

Virginity was unknown to the world before Christ, in Judaism and paganism. It came into the world with Christ. It is heavenly. It is not natural, but supernatural. 

It is incomprehensible, even repugnant to Jew, Muslim, almost all Protestants, and especially seculars.

The virginity of Christ is a Mystery to us. It is the intimacy he shares with the Father. It is also part of his spousal, bridegroom embrace of us, his bride. He loves us, the Church, his body, our mother, as a husband loves his wife. Sacrificially, unto death. Generously, giving his all, his body and blood. It is fitting that he not love, engage conjugally, a single woman. 

Catholic virginity is a sharing in that of Jesus. Mary, Joseph (at least during his marriage to Mary), John the Baptist, John the beloved disciple, Paul the Apostle were all virgins. Immediately in the early Church, young women in their love for Christ, vowed themselves spontaneously to virginity, sometimes incurring martyrdom, even by their Roman fathers.

Virginity is a heavenly charism, it is a love gift from the Heavenly Groom. It is an intimacy. It is a secret between the two lovers. It is no ones business.

At the same time, out of this intimacy with the Great Lover, the Beloved conceives a distinctive, heavenly love for the brothers and sisters. The energies and intimacies of spousal/paternal/maternal love are not destroyed; not repressed; not disparaged. Rather, they are released in a new, heavenly way. 

And so the consecrated woman/man and the celibate priest bring a distinctive love to us, the Church. It is different, if difficult to describe. It is tender, reverent, detached and yet close. It is a sharing in the way Jesus himself loves us, each of us, all of us.

In surrendering, in freedom, spousal love in all its richness, romantic-sexual-generative, the celibate or virgin enjoys a a privileged intimacy with God-in-Christ, as well as an enhanced availability and closeness to the Church, to the rest of us. The Catholic intuits a claim, an ownership of the priest and sister, as virginal, in contrast to a certain distance honored towards a married person. 

From a worldly perspective, such virginity is weird, unnatural, distasteful. In the eyes of faith, it is a taste of heaven.

Josephite Marriage

A marriage emulating that of Joseph and Mary in virginity is called a Josephite marriage. It is extremely rare; hardly discussed; but recognized in Catholic life. It is a real marriage, enacted by the mutual self-giving of the spouses. But due to an extraordinary charism/mission, they together embrace virginity. Of its nature as a spousal intimacy shared with God it is confidential and normally secretive. It is surely rare.

Catherine de Hueck Doherty, the Dorothy-Day-like founder of Madonna House, mystic, writer, spiritual leader was a Russian Orthodox baroness who married and conceived a son with her first cousin. She converted to Roman Catholic, divorced and had her marriage annulled. She lived an extraordinary life of prayer and service to the poor. Eventually, she married Eddy Doherty, noted journalist, with the understanding that they would live virginity together and that the marriage would be secondary to her vocation to prayer and service. This was approved by the Church. This is rare, but good. Her cause for canonization is alive in the Church.

Maria and Luigi Quattrocchi, the first lay couple to be beatified (2001,) made the Josephite vow after giving birth to four children.

Their contemporaries, Jacques and Raissa Maritain, also have a canonization process in the works. They are the famous philosophers who early in their relationship, atheists at the time, vowed to a shared suicide if they could not find meaning. They came under the influence of great intellect-spirits of the time (Bergson, Peguy) and converted to be genuine mystics and brilliant thinkers. They apparently took the Josephite vow. Jacques became the foremost protege of St. Thomas in the 20th century and himself became mentor to St. Pope Paul VI.

There seems to be no literature, discussion or theology of this reality. It is quiet, confidential, intimate, supernatural.

It also unveils the nuanced nature of Catholic matrimony. For centuries thinkers debated what created the marital bond: consent or sexual intercourse? The eventual resolution: it is consent that creates the bond; intercourse consummates or completes it. So, a "ratified but unconsummated" marriage is a real marriage. It cannot be annulled because it is valid, not void. However, strangely, such a marriage can be dissolved by the Pope, for good reasons. This is rare. I understand that in a country under the Soviet empire housing was so short that many couples married but had no home for themselves. Some lived separately for years and discovered they had no interest in being married to each other. Apparently, the Vatican was flooded with requests for (not annulment but) dissolution of the marriage. A ratified and consummated marriage is indissoluble, even by the pope. Not so for the unconsummated marriage.

We see here that intercourse is inherent to Catholic marriage, but not absolutely required. The Josephite marriage is a real marriage, although it is lacking something important. Something else is given in its place.

Super-Positivity of the Evangelical Counsels of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience

These three vows are not detachments from things negative or inferior. On the contrary, the goods of marriage/sex/family, ownership, and autonomy are created, natural goods. They are gifts from God. In surrender the consecrated one makes a sacrifice of something precious and good, not negative and inferior. It is like the sacrificial lamb of temple worship: it is to be spotless, perfect, healthy; not sick and deformed. 

These vows are unnatural, as heavenly. The chosen one is embraced by a supernatural charism and mission, a rare and special intimacy with The Groom. The chosen one relishes and tastes the natural goodness of marriage and suffers a loss, a grief in surrendering it to the Lord for another type of intimacy. 

In this vowed surrender, the wholesome, natural energies for romance, intimacy, sexuality, paternity and maternity are not destroyed, denied, repressed or ignored. Rather, "grace building on nature," they are transformed by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit into new, creative, fecund, delightful expressions. First and foremost, of course, as with Jesus and the Father, the beloved enjoys a mysterious, spousal intimacy with God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Out of that flows an availability to and tenderness for the brother and sister. The restriction, of no marriage and no children, allows a freedom to embrace the brother and sister, expecially the one in suffering, in sin, in need. 

The vowed, the professed, the "beloved of Christ" suffers the deprivation of natural goods: family, ownership, autonomy. But in turn receives the "hundredfold" promised by Jesus: an intensification of charity as agape, affection, friendship and chaste eros; a Paul-like exultation in paucity and abundance; and a mysteriously enhanced agency and initiative in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Catholic States of Life

Classically, Catholicism cherishes a thick, deep sense of the "states of life": married/lay vs. vowed/ordained. We pray for vocations to the priesthood and religious life, aware that marriage/family is the normal/default vocation. I was surprised to learn while studying at Union Theological that Protestants do not talk or thing about "vocations." Theirs is a homogeneity: everyone is the same, ministers are married, there is no consecrated life, no ordination or marriage as a sacrament.

Ours is not a simple, absolute binary however. Rather, there are a number of interwoven binaries: priestly/lay, married/vowed, contemplative/active, cloistered/worldly, solitary/communal and so forth. Catholic life has a complex, organic, vigorous integrity to it; along with a fluidity and flexibility. 

We cherish exceptions, such as the Josephite marriage, which do not eliminate but accentuate the binary forms. We have married priests, but they are exceptional. The most romantic, "eros-possessed" man I ever met was the holy theologian-mystic Joe Whelan S.J. who taught me about prayer and the Catholic mystics. Adrienne von Speyr, collaborator with Balthasar in creating the secular institute of St. John, was married three times, apparently not a virgin, but herself an exceptional mystic. The Memores Domini of the Communion and Liberation movement are evangelical but consider themselves lay rather than consecrated. Dorothy Day was a mother who lived a vigorous life of voluntary but not vowed poverty and secondary virginity. Monsignor Ivan Illich surrendered his clerical status for a life of intellectual activism and controversy, but fulfilled his priestly vows to celibacy and prayer of the daily office.  Rose Hawthorn "left" her sick husband to serve the poor who were dying of cancer. A normal pattern to sainthood is abandonment of the world for the hermetical life, followed by the forming of a community of monks: solitude flowing into community.  

Families in the Neocatechumenal Way take their children into mission in poverty and danger, embracing an apostolate normally reserved for the single and celibate, in a startling renunciation of bourgeois comfort and safety. Kiko and Carmen, founders of this "way" that is the most energetic, militant expression of Catholicism moving into the new millenium, were neither married, ordained nor publicly vowed. They may have taken private vows. In any case, along with other leaders of renewal movements, married (Ralph Martin and charismatic renewal) and single (Chiara Lubich of Focolare), they present a vibrant, fecund lay spirituality that challenges the more narrow binary that prevailed in the four centuries between Trent and Vatican II. 

The rich, nourishing smorgasbord of Catholic life today preserves the distinction and integrity of diverse charisms: marriage, ordination, consecration, social service, solitude, community life. But they find novel, surprising, fruitful, even eccentric expressions and combinations. 

Catholic life is the mutual indwelling of contraries! The most paternal (John Paul) and maternal (Mother Teresa) are also the most childlike and pure. The most active (Martha) are the most contemplative (Mary.) The most humble, the most magnanimous. The most trusting, the most ferocious. The most solitary, the most communal. And so, the underlying strength of a good marriage is the personal, solitary prayer life of each spouse. The quintessential fruit of a genuine religious or priestly vocation is the tenderness toward the others.

The Enduring Conjugal Virginity of Mary and Joseph

We stab, finally, at understanding the continued abstinence within the Holy Family. 

:First: a thought experiment. If they had been sexually active, we must wonder; why no children? It conceivably could be providential that they be active but sterile. That is not an inspiring thought, not in our contraceptive society. Imagine if they had seven children and twenty-seven grandchildren (a normal number in that time.) Would this have effected Mary's participation in the redemptive drama? Would she have been at the foot of the cross...or babysitting? Would Jesus have entrusted her to John, and thereby to all of us, or just sent her home to the family? This line of thought is not promising! 

The perpetual virginity of Mary and the continence/chastity/maybe virginity of Joseph can only be pondered in light of that of Jesus. His abstinence was not a condemnation of sex as evil. It was rather an exceptional intimacy with his heavenly Father. As such it was confidential, unspoken, precious and sacred. We do not probe; we only ponder and adore.

It was secondly, a mode of closeness to all of us, each of us. He had no wife, no natural children. We the church are his bride; each of us his very own son and daughter.

Mary and Joseph were so close to him, naturally and spiritually, that they shared in this intimacy, in a mysterious manner. They shared with each other, and personally with God the Father in the Holy Spirit, an unnatural, heavenly, incomprehensible communion in love. This turned the Holy Family towards us in an openness, availability and closeness that is naturally impossible and inconceivable. 

And so we do not question, we do not disparage the reality of this virginal marriage. We receive it, contemplate it, allow ourselves to be grasped and penetrated by it. It is the GREAT FACT. It is the Great Drama of God's becoming flesh among us. 

Virgin Mary, Pray for Us!

Chaste St. Joseph, Pray for Us!

All you holy virgins and celibates, Pray for Us!

Give us chastity in heart, body, spirit. Make us faithful to each other!

Invasions from Hell (Letter 60 to Grands)

My last letter identified 12 visitations from heaven; this will consider 12 invasions from hell. Our age has become dark: war, hatred, violence, polarization, confusion, decadence. Life in this world is always spiritual warfare: it is important that we be clear that the conflict is not just political or psychological, but we are engaged with "principalities and powers"...with supernatural forces of evil, with Lucifer, his legions and his formidable kingdom established and explosive in our world. The Accuser, the Liar, has engaged our own weakened flesh and a world distanced from God into an Axis of Evil: the world, the flesh and the devil. Our tactics and strategy in this combat includes the political and the psychological, but even more fundamentally the spiritual, our communion with God and his kingdom in prayer, liturgy, fellowship, virtue, sacrifice, faith and the obedience in love. Let's consider the clear initiatives of Satan in our world.

1. Misogyny. Lucifer's greatest hatred, after God himself, is woman. His first target was Eve. His antagonist, who crushes his head, is Mary. The female embodies and expresses, in herself, in an incomparable manner, Created Beauty, Good and Truth. The male represents God; but the female in herself, as created, as not-God, is the very epitome of created Goodness. Our mother Mary is the singular epitome of this, but every woman reflects it as well. Satan despises her; including her feminine body. She crushes the Evil One; she steps on his head with complete serenity. An ancient tradition has it that Lucifer's rebellion was the response of his pride to the fact that he would be subordinate to Mary, a fleshly woman, as Queen of the angels and the saints, of heaven and earth. And so we find across our globe and throughout history diverse expressions of the hatred of woman: honor killings, polygamy, rape, pornography, prostitution, and other. We see this interiorized in women themselves in self-hatred expressed in eating disorders, cutting, promiscuity, transgenderism, and other. The militant feminism of the 1960s in large part has been anti-woman in its mimicking of a crude machismo: promiscuity, abortion, and bourgeois materialism. Any disrespect for the feminine, as in language contemptuous of the womanly body, is demonic. What disparages woman is from hell; what honors the feminine is from heaven.

2. Anti-Paternity. To be sure, there have been abusive, oppressive, misogynist forms of "patriarchy," but the heavenly mission of the masculine is to image God our Father in a humble, wholesome, holy paternity. Such requires the happy combination of gentle strength, purity of heart, and deflation of the expansive male ego. Such has become rare in our world. Since the Cultural Revolution, notwithstanding the demonic assault on woman, I observe a remarkable resiliency in the feminine. For example, within the Afro-American community, with its family structure devastated by centuries of slavery and recent currents of sexual liberation joined with entitlement and resentment, black women manifest, in my view, a miracle of patience, generosity, faith and love. By contrast, the crisis within this community is first and foremost the failure of masculinity as paternity. This crisis is across our entire nation and indeed the globe: Lucifer has effectively destroyed paternity by drawing us men into violent machismo or effete weakness. His assault is upon paternity as the foundational icon of the Fatherhood of  God.

3. Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. This was (in my view) Lucifer's greatest accomplishment since his deception of Eve in the garden. It was a multi-faceted masterpiece of seduction as it:

- Built upon the prosperity, pride, and self-assurance of a flourishing post-war USA and Europe in a materialism, arrogance, secularism and disconnect from the heavenly and the holy.

- Deconstructed sex differences, expressive of the Divine, and disparaged both femininity and paternity, stripping us of our primary icons of the holy.

- Tore sexuality, in contraception,  from its sacred embodiment in spousal fidelity-generosity-fecundity and set it free to burn recklessly in lust, infidelity, impurity, covetousness, misogyny, and license.

- Destroyed the family, nuclear and extended, as well as local, mediating communities and institutions of solidarity leaving the isolated, atomized "Individual" uprooted and dependent upon impersonal, oversized federal government and global capitalism. 

- Exaggerated an extravagant confidence in science/technology into presumption of an unrestrained, god-like power over life and death: abortion, reproductive technologies, environmental degradation, and weapons of mass destruction.

What has emerged is a new view of the human: secular and detached from God in a disenchanted universe; sexually liberated from the bondage of chastity, marriage, family and tradition; omnipotent by virtue of science/technology; androgynous as replaceable units of production and consumption in an impersonal, mechanized, cosmopolitan world order.

4. Communism,  Notwithstanding the colossally significant collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989, this God-despising, human-crushing system remains in control of China, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and remains confident in its enduring ambitions for global domination. It is a pure expression of evil in its defiance of God and destruction of human dignity and freedom. Close to one out of five people on the earth remain under this slavery.

5. Islamic Extremism.  There are benign, liberal forms of Islam, but scholars differ on the weight to give Pope Benedict's incisive Regensburg critique of a violence and anti-rationalism evident in the religion. What is evident across the globe, however, is pervasive violence in the form of terrorism, persecution of Christians and Jews, state imperialism (Iran), as well as a deep misogyny evident in polygamy, honor killings and a toxic patriarchy. In its more benign, West-friendly forms (Saudi Arabia) it is still brutally intolerant of other religions. About 1.8 billion people are Muslims, almost one in four across the globe. While not all endorse violence, misogyny and intolerance, there is an evident failure, across the globe, to resist these forces clearly and forcefully. The religion of Islam is far from a pure expression of evil like communism. It is the most ambiguous of religions: Mohammed drew from much of the good in Judaism and Arian (Jesus is not God) Christianity in his devotion to the One God, embrace of the moral law, teachings on mercy and compassion, and other. But he also regressed, renouncing the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, and the salvific crucifixion, to the misogyny of polygamy and unrestrained tribal, "sacred" violence of Jihad. And so, violence against non-Muslims, as well as disrespect for the feminine, broadly characterizes the Islamic world today. These are evil.

6. Ethnic Violence.  We see across the globe explosions of ethnic/tribal/national violence: Ukraine, Palestine, Armenia and Azerbaijan, ISIS and Al Queda, Nigeria, Sunni vs. Shiite, and in recent history Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Cambodia and other. Notice: these are not racist, but ethnic. Most entail one group against another within the same race. True racism as in Nazism, South African and the slavery of our South is not a dominant world dynamic. Racism is overrated; tribal violence is underrated. Rene Girard and his protige Gil Baile have famously considered the role of mimesis (imitation),   the inevitable eruption of mimetic rivalry and its primal resolution by violence against a "scapegoat" onto which the community projects evil and vents violence. So, we see today: Russians hate Ukrainians, Sunni/Shiite, Palestinian/Israelis, China/America, Democrat/Republican, etc. The devil is called The Accuser and so he delights to "demonize" one group against another, breeding self-righteousness, contempt and finally violence. This is, since Babel, the plight of sinful humanity. Only on the level ground before the cross of the Victim-Who-Did-Not-Victimize, only in the Pentecostal Holy Spirit of the Crucified/Risen one is this enmity overcome.;

7. Addictions. Here we see Satan exploiting the weakness of our flesh: alcohol, drugs (fentanyl), sex (pornography), eating, work, gambling, anger, anxiety. These are social pandemics; they are psychological pathologies; they are moral vices; but they are also the working of "outside agitators" which is to say the demons. Even within the entirely non-theological AA literature there is recognition of a spiritual force, beyond the personal and social, that must be rejected in the Higher Power. At the heart of the 12-programs is a reliance on God, however conceived. A true addiction is another pure form of evil: it devastates personal dignity and freedom, marriage and family, and wrecks havoc on the community. Happily, we have in the 12-step tradition, especially when joined with religious practice, the antidote to this evil. Here again our recourse is to prayer, personal and communal, solidarity in contrition, accountability, compassion, and service.

8. Class Warfare.  Every developed, sophisticated society diversifies itself into distinct classes, with specified tasks, prerogatives and powers; this is not bad in itself. In a wholesome society, unified under a just, harmonizing religion, the classes serve each other (more or less) generously and trustingly. Imagine a feudal society in which peasants farm, knights defend, craftsman make, priests/religious pray and preach. In the absence of such Gospel-like dynamics, however, the rich and powerful dominate the poor and the weak; the classes divide, the one bloated with privilege and arrogance, the other simmering with resentment and jealousy. The USA 1945-65 enjoyed a prosperous, relatively wholesome integrity with decreasing disparity between rich and poor, a vigorous labor movement for the working class, and steady improvements for minorities. In the 60 years since then, however, we have moved inexorably into a toxic, caste-like economy: the educated, connected, competent doing very well; with an underclass of the marginalized, uneducated, less-connected and less-competent falling deeper into a Culture of Poverty with its paralyzing patterns of discouragement, passivity, resentment, and despair. This is unhealthy for both parties: the one arrogant, indifferent, decadent, lacking in compassion and purpose; the other dying deaths of despair.  

9. Priest Sex Scandal.  This might be the most brilliant, effective of Lucifer's assaults. As with the Cultural Revolution, it entails aggressions:

- In part it flows out of the Sexual Liberation as it prevailed in the years (1970-2000) immediately after the catastrophic 1960s. To be fair, however, many of the worst abuse cases were perpetuated by theological conservatives (Maciel, McCarrick for most of his career) so it is not merely a consequence of the loosening of sexual mores.

- It expressed sexual addiction, suddenly pervasive in society and Church, before the widespread recognition of its nature and its treatment in 12-step sex addiction programs.

- Over 80% it entailed the abuse of teen boys so it was accompanied by militant homosexuality.

- It was abetted by a cultural, clerical, and episcopal climate of denial, avoidance, disbelief.

This demonic strategy succeeded in corrupting the priesthood and the Church as iconic of the Fatherhood of God.

10. Assault on Marriage, Family and Religious Life. Catholic life is founded upon the twin pillars of the "states of life:" marriage/family and the priestly/religious life. Satan's purpose is clear: destroy the family and priesthood/religious life. The surest resistance to the powers of hell are: a holy (not perfect, but prayerful) marriage and a holy priestly or religious life. Satan has released all his fury against these two institutions over the last half century, with immense success. The result: weakening of the family and the Church and the isolating of the vulnerable, unhinged, manic-depressed "Individual."

11. Weakening, Polarizing and Liberalizing of the Church. In this last 60 years since the Council and the Cultural Revolution, a largely prosperous, bourgeois Catholic Church has suffered (despite the resistant pontificates of John Paul and Benedict) an irrepressible progressive compulsion to accommodate to the broader, now anti-Catholic society. The most horrific instance is the decision of Pope Francis to give absolute control over Chinese Catholicism to the Communist Party. The other expression is the impulse to accommodate the sexual liberation in the West. We see around us a "Catholic Lite": abortion, divorce, contraception, cohabitation rates match that of the general population; disbelief in the Real Presence in the Eucharist; normalization of homosexual relations; a soft secularism in diminished sense of the holy, the supernatural, the demonic; ignorance, indifference or even contempt for Catholic cults of adoration, the rosary, the saints, the precepts (laws) of the Church, chastity, the consecrated life and all that sets Catholicism apart from post-Protestant secularism. In elite, liberal, especially academic circles, there has been a religious embrace of leftwing politics as salvific; in response we now have a crude, populist, rightwing explosion of resentment and rage. 

12. Abuse of Internet and Social Media. Although  blessings in some ways, these technologies have intensified many of the demonic currents above. They have accelerated the drift of our young into loneliness, isolation, and vulnerability to pornography, social insecurity,  anxiety, negativity and reduced agency, solidarity, wholesome solitude and prayer. The marked increase in emotional pathology among teenage women over the last decade is especially troubling.

Conclusion. 

A sober, realistic consideration of the explosion of evil across our globe does NOT ...repeat NOT... leave us discouraged, passive, self-pitying or even resigned. Rather, we are  heartened by the words of Christ: "The gates of hell will not prevail." Note: our Lord does not say "the gates of heaven will prevail against the attacks from hell." Rather, it is hell that is defensive, unsuccessfully, against the initiatives from heaven. 

We are on the offensive. We take the initiative. We are heartened that, in the power of the Holy Spirit, all the fury and chaos of hell is entirely vincible. We are strengthened in faith, hope, love and virtue...We are challenged by demonic assaults to stand ever more patient, hopeful, steady in the strength of God...We exult and delight in the graces from heaven flowing to us and in us and through us.

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.

Mary our Mother, we place ourselves under the mantle of your holiness, your purity, your beauty and your love.

Come, Holy Spirit!

Musings on "Synodality"

 THESE ARE INTERESTING TIMES!  SO FUN!

Sacrament of  Listening  

"We need to listen to each other. We are divided and distant! We just need to listen to each other." These heartfelt words came to me from Bishop Greg Studerus, of Newark. I have known him for many years: intelligent, competent, moderate, no culture warrior, a man of faith and kindness, a good priest. He was defending the "synod on synodality." I received the words quietly. I could not disagree. 

Good listening...attentive, receptive, affectionate, reverent, tender, and yet intelligent, even critical...is a holy encounter. Far more than the reception of words, thoughts, facts...it is a mystical welcoming of the person, the "Thou," in his or her depth, dignity, suffering, heroism, virtue, identity and destiny in God. 

About 50 years ago I attended a conference on listening by priest-author-psychologist-lecturer Charles Curran (not the moral theologian.) At the time the fashion was the non-directive listening of Carl Rogers, widely popularized in progressive circles my my nemesis, ex-Maryknoll-priest Eugene Kennedy. But Fr. Curran brought a Catholic and spiritual depth to this iconic act. He modeled it for us. I was deeply moved. From that day I ambitioned to be such a listener. As I recall that today I am determined to listen, deeply, to everyone who addresses me today. It that is "synodality" then I will drink to it!

Challenge to Pope Francis 

I double-dare you, Holy Father, to invite and really listen to Cardinal Zen (a hero, martyr, saint whom you refuse to met), a handful of young Latin Mass families, some participants in the  USA Evangelical-Catholic Dialogue, members of Courage, the support group for Catholics with same-sex attraction who seek a chaste life.

Better yet: Invite Archbishop Vigano for a good Italian meal, with abundant wine. Relax and enjoy him. Do not seek to debate or silence or discipline him. Contemplate him in all his worth as a successor of the Apostles, his lifelong service to the Church, his endowment with the Holy Spirit at baptism and confirmation. Set aside for a bit the disordered nature of his recent thinking.  Emulate your predecessor Pope Benedict in his magnanimity, generosity, serenity: one of his first acts as pontiff was to invite for dinner his theological antagonist Hans Kung (who described the pope then as "very sweet and very dangerous.") Maybe you could concelebrate mass and hear each others' confessions. If that is synodality, I am all for it.

The Perplexing Secrecy and Silence

There is a sacred value to secrecy and silence: in the inner forum of confession and spiritual direction, in a Eucharistic chapel or church, in the confidentiality of the attorney-doctor-psychologist-friend, on a silent retreat. The Holy Spirit does favor quiet and peace. There may be a valid spiritual intuition in this protection from publicity, social media and the mimetics of the herd.

But there is a stronger, dark side to the secrecy being impose on the synod. The absolute prohibition of all press coverage and public sharing recalls the diabolical control of Fr. Maciel over the Legionnaires: toxic secrecy, idolatrous loyalty to him, intolerance of dissent or open discussion. If I were asked to discern the spirit behind this secrecy, I would suspect it comes from the dark side.

It contrasts sharply with Vatican II which was an open, lively, transparent media bonanza. The participants, bishops and theological periti, became media stars. It became a major cultural event, far beyond the Church herself. There was something wholesome about it. Why does Francis go to the opposite extreme, cloaking it in secrecy. Is he afraid? It is not good.

Value in the Process

I wonder at the experience: a full month sitting at a table, sharing and listening, with a group of exceptionally gifted people, bishops and lay leaders. I would love to be there. It will not be without value. I imagine deep learning. I imagine new friendships. I imagine a refreshing, extraordinary ecclesial event. Like a really, really good retreat. I am jealous. If that is synodality I am in.

A Final Product: Futile at Best, Disordered at Worst

The process as described may be enriching for the participants, but it is systemically incapable of producing any clear, accurate statement of consent. Most of the activity is in small groups without any efficient method of synthesis. There are no protocols for proposals, open debate, voting, or minority reports. As a productive event it is entirely futile and sterile.

But it does lend itself to manipulation by the organizers. They control all flow of information and the final statement or "synthesis." They disallow any alternative narratives or arguments. The entire thing seems to come out of the communist handbook from the Kremlin or Peking.

A Sideshow

My friend Brother Ray mentioned that in the working-middle class parish he attends on Sunday there is no mention of synodality, by priests or parishioners. Life goes on, in the ordinary parish, indifferent to the culture/theological wars: with their priests, people engage God in prayer and sacrament, work, family life. Life goes on. No more than 1 % of Catholics participated. Perhaps another 1% are those of us who oppose the whole thing: the dubia Cardinals, Raymond Arroyo, Robert Royal, myself and a small group of us. For most lives, this is a sideshow. It is not nothing. I am myself mesmerized by it and think it is highly significant. But it is not the end of the world or the Church as we know them. It is not the birth of a new Church or a new world order.

Confidence in the Good, the True, the Beautiful

They may be well-intended...(I do not judge their will, their motives, their heart)...but it is clear that Francis and his "magic circle" are conspiring to birth a new "synodal Church" discontinuous with the one he received: 

- Destructive of the rigorous, firm, clear moral/dogmatic/practical foundations of Catholicism.

- Congenial to the sexual liberalism of the West and the totalitarianism of Chinese Communism.

- Fluid and responsive to the spirits of the age.

- Participant in a New World Order of environmentalism, open borders, sexual freedoms and the values of  Western liberal elites.

In the short run, Francis and his new synodal Church have the better hand...in the politics of coercion and manipulation. 

In the long game: not so! The True and the Good and the Beautiful have an efficacious, infallible, invincible appeal to the human conscience. God and his Kingdom cannot be overcome. The Lord is with us to the end. The gates of hell will not prevail. Come Holy Spirit! Come Lord Jesus!