Ecumenical Memories and Longings

As Christian Unity Week ends, some memories.

 The Quiet Ecumenical Peace of Post-War USA

Our Catholic, childhood world (1947-1960) was parochial but quietly ecumenical. In our small, urban, ethnic world we were keenly aware that as a united country we had just defeated the Axis powers and were facing an even worse threat in global Communism. There was no profound culture war among us; minimal polarization. We swam every week in the YMCA as my father played handball even though Church guidance still warned against Protestant organizations. As a union and Democrat family we enjoyed an alliance with non-Catholics, including secular, socialist Jews and Southern Evangelicals. We all had family members who married Protestants and Jews. We knew who we were: Catholics not Protestants, Democrats not Republicans, working class not capitalists. But I recall no animosity, no demonization, no intense negativity. It was more like amiable rivalries between rival high schools or intramural teams: we competed without rancor and then went on with life; no hard feelings. Ike was iconic: he was not of our tribe; but in the bigger playing field, against Nazis and Communists, he was on our team and the captain at that. As a teenager I caddied, like my brothers, father and uncles before me, for affluent Jews in a relaxed manner, happy to make a few bucks. No class warfare there or identity politics there! In the academia, and especially theology, our scholars were deeply involved with the work of those outside of the Church. In short, the ecumenism that was clearly articulated in Vatican II was already percolating, at many levels,  in the decades leading up to it.

1960s:  Vatican II

Ecumenical passions intensified and united in the 1960s from several directions. Within the Catholic Church Pope John XXIII recalled the plea of Christ for unity among his followers. In our country, Martin Luther King proclaimed the gospel of the brotherhood of all men that united us, passionately, across religious lines. From our own local Seton Hall University, Jewish-convert Monsignor John Osterreicher led the Jew-Catholic dialogue that culminated in a ground breaking Vatican II document, renounced a shameful past, awoke deep awareness of the Jewish roots of our faith as well as a love of contemporary Judaism. The papal call of openness to the broader culture elicited a enthusiastic engagement, especially in the academy, with all the emerging sciences and liberal arts.

1970s: Charismatic Renewal and Evangelical Catholicism

The Charismatic Renewal was a welcoming of Pentecostal and Evangelical spiritualities into Catholicism. As such, it was a deep reconciliation with those branches of Christianity that had been entirely detached from the Catholic Church. At conferences, we heard from Jim Baker, Ruth Carter Stapleton as we read tons of literature on healing, deliverance from demons, praying in tongues, authority, gender roles (as mainstream Christianity was aping the broader culture in deconstructing them) and other. I recall a conference in which the speaker called for us to look around the bleachers and reconcile with members of other Churches:  I cried emotionally (not my normal modus operandi) in doing so.

Late 1970s to Present:  Culture War

The Roe decision and the broader triumph of cultural liberalism across elite culture birthed a new ecumenism, in strong contrast to the liberal coalitions and dialogues of the 60s: coalition of moral conservatives, especially Catholics and Evangelicals, in defense traditional values including powerless human life, marriage and sexuality, and religious freedom. This found expression in the Reagan legacy as well as First Things journal of Fr. Neuhaus, the Catholic-Evangelical Dialogue and a broad intellectual/spiritual movement.

Ecumenical Dead Ends

There are limits and boundaries to Catholic ecumenism as our legacy is incompatible with many of the stronger currents in today's world:

Cultural Liberalism.  Moral progressivism (as sterilization of sexuality, acceptance of "choice," deconstruction of gender, technologizing of "reproduction," etc.) is contradictory of Catholicism even as accommodation to it prevails across Catholic academics.

Marxism. The once fashionable dialogue and its progeny, Liberation Theology, has not born fruit as our faith is incompatible with its materialism, implicit atheism, and absolute dialectic of oppressor/victim.

Eastern Religions. No doubt there is value to serious dialogue between participants with depth knowledge of and engagement in their own traditions. Likewise, many seem to benefit from cultural practices like the physical exercises of Yoga. However, in general the "new-age-type" spiritualities seem in general to be retreats from Trinitarian Theism, Christ and his cross, the sacramental economy of grace and authentic Catholic mysticism in favor of a vague pantheism of nature and the expansive Jungian self.

Ecumenism Today

The ecumenical passions no longer burn so brightly.

- The internal Pax Americana of the 1950s is long gone.

- The liberal dialogue of the 1960s is diminished as mainstream Protestantism has surrendered to cultural progressivism. 

- The vigorous gospel activism of MLK has succumbed to the victim complex of BLM and CRT.

- Charismatic Renewal burned fiercely for a short period in the USA but has receded, but not entirely disappeared, although it is fierce in Africa.

- The moral passion of the pro-life movement, having triumphed in Dobbs, is greatly compromised by the contagion of Trumpian moral decadence.

- The Anglican dialogue is especially troubling, and not only in that denomination's capitulation to moral progressivism. Their sacraments, especially Eucharist and Orders, are not valid in our Catholic view; but they mimic us so closely. It is creepy. Last week Pope Francis allowed an Anglican Eucharist in a major Roman basilica. This is disturbing for a wholesome Catholic Eucharistic sensibility. A Pentecostal or Baptist prayer service would not have been a problem. But this faux-liturgy, in the presence of the Real Christ in the tabernacle, is deeply dissonant. Not good ecumenism!

- Catholicism in the Francis era suffers from a pontificate eager to accommodate the sexual liberation as the younger clergy are reactive against a culture turned dark and anti-Catholic. These later have few ecumenical propensities, whether for social activism or Evangelicalism, as they echo an earlier American Catholicism, defensive of our identity as  threatened by a hostile environment.

One might be consoled that the ecumenical, like all movements, especially those that flowed into Vatican II (liturgical, scriptural, etc.), has left an enduring imprint on our Church and society and then disappeared. There is truth to this. We visit the sick as volunteer chaplains in our local hospital and our prayer is warmly welcomed by almost everyone, regardless of creed, class or ethnicity...Jews, even the Orthodox, are especially congenial, and even Muslims and secular-agnostic types. Strikingly in the face of sickness and fragility, there endures a quiet ecumenical piety underneath the fury of the culture war. The Catholic-Evangelical Dialogue continues quietly; the moral coalition remains intact if contaminated; local ecumenical groups still work together to care for the homeless, hungry, addicted and mentally ill. So ecumenism lives on: modestly, almost anonymously, without fanfare.

We are seeing now the passing of priests now in their 80s; the cohort that were young priests during the Council; who drank deeply of the spirit of the time, including the good values of ecumenism, care for the suffering, and social justice. As we honor them, aware of their limitations and failures, I personally long to retrieve those noble passions that burned fiercely in that decade.  

It is a sadness to see a divide between this older cohort and younger priests who are more conservative. Even more tragic is the distance between priests of all ages and bishops who in light of the Dallas Charter are experienced, not as fathers and brothers, but as heartless, bureaucratic enforcers. (A tragedy predicted by Cardinal Dulles and identified by Monsignor Guarino.) A different development of significance is the increasing influence, in the Archdiocese of Newark and elsewhere, of priests of the Neocatechumenal Way. This association is so intense, self-contained and apocalyptically alarmist towards the world and the mainstream Church that it has little energy for even intra-Catholic, much less inter-Church ecumenism. Add to these dynamics the virtual-schism that has intensified in the Francis pontificate and we see clearly a fractured, polarized Church and churches, desperate for unity at multiple levels.

As I ruminate nostalgically, I grieve: the national harmony of the 1950s, the thrilling activism of the 1960s, the Charismatic-Evangelical enthusiasm of the 1970s, the martial fervor of the anti-Roe, pre-Trump, conservative, moral coalition; the Catholic restoration under John Paul and Benedict.

I fully share the theological conservatism of our younger clergy, especially as it is informed by the visions of John Paul and Benedict; even as I hope that the coming generations will preserve all the good of those earlier ecumenisms, especially as they were expressed in the thought and ministry of those two pontiffs. That is the promising path to a Catholicism that is deep in its traditional roots, critical of error, and welcoming of all that is True-Good-Beautiful in a wholesome ecumenism. 

The desire of Christ is clear, passionate, definitive: that we be one in him as he is one with the Father. The fire of Trinitarian faith, infused in us by our sacramental immersion and inflamed by our Eucharistic engagement/consumption, burns for "Communio" in every dimension of our lives. We do well to enkindle this fire: institutionally as prudence directs; theologically (Truth); above all in shared prayer and care for the suffering (Good); but also in the delight of mutual reverence and affection (Beauty)...alwasy in the charity and truth of Christ!

Warm, Welcoming (Maternal) love...Hard, Demanding (Paternal) Love; Our Catholic Crisis

In the Organizational Behavior Course (outstanding! 1980s Rutgers MBA program) I learned that every social system depends upon a dyad of contrasting higher status authorities: one challenging and disciplinary, the other affirming and supportive. A high school will have a tough, no-nonsense dean of discipline, along with a compassionate guidance counselor or nurse. Their roles are distinct; both essential; they need not compete. In business, your boss should be tough; your union shop steward supportive; even if their personalities pull in opposite directions. We learned of (Philippine?) culture in which biological fathers are unconditionally loving, but the uncles (brothers of mother) very strict. In a family where parents are adequately stern, grandparents are free to be affectionate without restraint (I know this well from personal experience.) 

Wary of offensive stereotypes of the masculine/feminine, we defy political correctness in describing the one as paternal and the other maternal. To be clear, very often the woman is stern and rigorous; the man accepting and welcoming. My wife did far more disciplining than I did: she recalls that she would report misbehavior to me on my return from work and I would calmly respond "That doesn't sound so bad to me." In the Catholic girls high school I was a soft disciplinarian; so was the big, strong male Vice-Principal in charge of discipline; but the religious sister Principal was tough. I have known a number of such tough sisters over the years in Catholic education. Such is a paternal love, without being unfeminine; as my fathering had a maternal flavor without becoming unmanly.

This distinction is culturally specified but rooted deeply in human biology: the mother receives the seed, carries the embryo, nurses and comforts the infant, and is created (chemically, neurologically, psychologically, spiritually) to bond closely to the child. The father is distant, representative of the external, objective world, and oriented to autonomy, independence, agency, accountability, competition, law, tradition, authority, and order. This general binary allows, of course, for wide diversity  and individuality.

Systems will adjust to imbalance: a weak father elicits a stern mother; weakness on the part of both parents may evoke firmness from grandparents.  Students in a high school without the nurse or counselor may find support in a sympathetic gym teacher or their peers. 

Communities, religions and organizations can become systemically imbalanced. Islam, with polygamy and Jihad, is inordinately masculine and oppressive of the feminine. Catholicism in its true form, as a patriarchy, is balanced by devotion to Mary, Queen of Angels and Saints, holy-humble-pure "Mother-Matriarch." The military, the mob, NFL football are all necessarily masculine. The fire department is better off masculine. In my experience, police work benefits from women (as when our residence for women is visited by the police.)

A wholesome family requires the paternal/maternal balance, but this can take a million different shapes. Often, in the absence of a father, another or a series of father-figures compensate: uncles, brothers, cousins, teachers, priests, coaches. Similarly in the absence of the mother. I would suspect that in same-sex parenting there tends to such a specialization and contrast in roles, just as the couple mimics the male/female (active/receptive) dyad in sexual intercourse.

The defining crisis of the West is the demise of the masculine as paternal: strong but gentle, confident but tender, authoritative and protective, humble but magnanimous, clear, certain, steadfast, patient, chaste, courageous, attentive, sober, calm, generous, loyal. The woman and the family, abandoned (literally or emotionally-spiritually) must adapt. Notwithstanding the preternatural resiliency, strength and generosity of the feminine/maternal, the adaptation tends to disorder. 

So we have: a faux-feminism aping toxic machismo in promiscuity-abortion-careerism; resentment and distrust of the masculine; an emergent matriarchy in which young women are vastly outperforming men; androgyny as the loss of the masculine/feminine as dyadic form of the human person; and masculinity tending to either violence or weakness. 

Notwithstanding the iconic paternity of both John Paul and Benedict, our Catholic Church has suffered this crisis since the Vatican Council but it has been exasperated by the pontificate of Francis. In his person we find pronounced maternal impulses: to welcome, affirm, comfort those suffering, marginalized or stigmatized. These are themselves, of course, very good; necessary for every father-figure. The problem comes when they are not balanced by paternal instincts. The pope has asked his theological commission to "demasculinize" the Church. Here he manifests clearly the toxic antipathy to virility that is eviscerating our culture and Church.  He despises: military, business, borders, dogma, law, traditional liturgies, the demanding Catholic sexual ethic restated by John Paul, conservative clergy, capital punishment, the doctrine of hell (sometimes), "backwardness" (a synonym for tradition?), hierarchical authority (which he replaces with "synodality"), clarity and certainty in thought.

His pontificate has been an anxious, overregulating, smothering "matriarchy." Like a controlling, dysfunctional mother, he has dictatorially, without consultation with the episcopacy or Tradition: 

- repressed the Latin mass rather than allowing it to thrive with all the weeds and wheat;

-  proscribed capital punishment, secure borders, and fossil energy rather than leaving these complex issues in the hands of the competent, lay authorities; 

- entirely destroyed the John Paul Institute in Rome.

His most confusing, polarizing and dysfunctional act is Fiducia Supplicans on the blessing of homosexual couples. He has recently again reiterated that the blessing is for the persons, not the union. This is nonsensical: it is evident that a blessing or prayer is always available to anyone, whatever their sin, if requested humbly. Imagine: I am an Uber driver and get talking with my rider who is on his way to rob a bank. We like each other and share our Catholic faith. He is anxious and disoriented and asks, meekly, for a prayer. No I do not condemn him! I pull to the side and pray quietly: for his safety, for his conversion, for the safety of everyone in the bank should he continue on this path. If he is robbing my bank of over 40 years, Wells Fargo, I will not worry about them; they are worth $180,000,000,000 and are probably protected by insurance and the FDIC so what's a couple of hundred thousand $ to them?

Praying and blessing for a Catholic is like breathing; like flying is to a bird; like swimming is to a fish. We cannot bless evil or sin; we renounce that. But WHY REGULATE IT? Let it be. As a baptized, confirmed Catholic I am free to bless wherever I want: always for the good and against the bad. I don't need a rule, a regulation, a didactic instruction.

It is evident that the Fiducia declaration springs from a disordered motherly impulse to make practitioners of homosexuality feel welcome and affirmed by at least minimizing its gravity and removing the stigma if not legitimizing it entirely. This embrace of "the gay" is a further retreat from Catholic traditions of virility as paternity, chastity, fidelity, and fecundity.  

Here we see the overregulating, smothering "bad-motherly" papacy at its worse. Instead of exercising the Petrine ministry to confirm, in clarity-certainty-unity, the Church, he has provoked explosive centrifugal forces: progressives defying his explicit instructions in one direction, conservatives openly rejecting the document in the other, and an indecisive middle affirming the literal statement but ignoring its obvious intent and consequences. We have a Church in confusion and disunity. We are fatherless.

But...this too will pass! We are blessed with the legacy left by John Paul and Benedict. Theirs is a refreshing and rejuvenating preservation of our Faith. We can stand, with virile virtue, all of us men and women, upon this endowment. They were giants who stood upon the shoulders of giants. We do well to stand now in our turn upon their shoulders: leaning into the maternal love...holy, pure, tender, beautiful, loving...of Mary our Mother and into the Fatherhood of God radiant in his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Spiritual But Not Religious

The "Nones," who self-identify with no organized religion, are now the largest "religious" grouping in the USA, at 28% outnumbering Catholics 23% and Evangelicals 24%. Many, but not all, describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious." 

Religion and Spirituality

Religion and spirituality are close to being synonymous but the sharp contrast is clarified by the etymology of "religion." It derives from the Latin religio meaning bond, reverence and obligation. And so it is clear that spirituality as opposed to religion is individual, subjective, isolated and adverse to bonds of loyalty, responsibility, gratitude. These are bonds with others in a faith, a tradition, a culture; they are bonds as well, in reverence, with ancestors and descendants. They entail practical, concrete, physical practices and things: worship, meetings, singing, works, laws, obligations, and entire social systems. Spirituality like religion is a network of beliefs, values, practices, and style but it flees the concrete, corporeal, communal, historical and institutional details of a share religion.

Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12 Steps

The best face of "spiritual but not religious" is the 12-step tradition of AA. This emerged out of Evangelical Christianity, but very early it detached from that association in order to welcome others, especially Catholics, who at that time would not associate with a Protestant-based group. More broadly, it wanted to welcome all alcoholics, including ex-Evangelicals, atheists, and in principle anyone identifying as an addict, regardless of religious belief. 

Paradoxically, it is based upon "belief in a higher power" but the nature of that is left undefined so that, for example, one might surrender to the program itself as "higher power." A sound theological intuition informs the entire program as they say of God only: "There is one; it is not me."

Paradoxically also, while it detaches from any religion, it is itself religious, not merely spiritual, in that it is deeply communal, concrete, and ritualized in a tight, dense network of practices and beliefs: defined literature, structured meetings, sponsorship, shared (serenity) prayer, strong sense of authority and tradition, a prolonged itinerary of recovery into sobriety, and a clearly defined culture. This is not individualized spirituality, but communal religion. But as it focuses clearly, exclusively on recovery from compulsion, it is compatible with any religion. In fact, in my own view it works best in just such conjunction.

Christian, Just Christian, No Denomination

A similar phenomena in Evangelical Christianity is the identification of oneself as "Christian" without association with a tradition, denomination, or body of theology. This is anti-intellectual, fideistic and subjective: it assumes an obvious "Christianity," (usually involving salvation by faith in Christ alone and a self-evident meaning to Scripture) without the mediation of a specific historical, theological community. Every such believer draws, of course, from some tradition, but is unaware of such, and so operates in an individualism systematically dismissive of tradition, history, authority, and the sacramental.

A-Historic

And so the spiritual-not-religious and the just-Christian both live a-historically, in a present before a revelation that is not related to past, tradition and authority or a future trajectory. This is a "presentism" that lives in the moment, without organic attachment to past and future, rootless regarding the past and sterile looking into the future. It coexists nicely with a "progressivism" that trusts in a messianic science as it disparages an ignorant, superstitious past.

Anti-Communal

This areligious spirituality is allergic to the annoyances, inconveniences of community and other people. It righteously judges institutions as hypocritical (not to say that they are not; but aren't we all?) and thus elevates the Sovereign Self over the moral failings of the religious. It enjoys detachment from obligation, gratitude and dependency in order to indulge personal preferences: the beauties of nature, art, therapeutic introversion, health and wholeness. The Nones are not noteworthy for their engagement with the poor, suffering and marginalized.

Pantheistic

Allergic to "patriarchy" viewed as toxic, the trend is away from the Fatherhood of God (the theism of Judaism, Christianity and Islam) towards pantheistic pieties which locate the divine in Mother Nature and in the Jungian Self. There is compassion for the suffering, heightened awareness of communion with Nature and the impersonal, triumph of the therapeutic, emergence of the narcissistic, obsession with health and "wholeness." With the loss of transcendence, the supernatural, and the holy, the religious sense of the sacred is directed, not to heaven, but to earthly realities of injustice, environmentalism, and personal fulfillment. Spirituality draws now heavily from therapy and Eastern traditions of Yoga and Zen which aspire to elude human suffering without the Cross of Jesus Christ.

Disincarnate

With the loss of the transcendent and the supernatural, the physical is no longer iconic or sacramental: earthy manifestations of the heavenly. There is no God to incarnate since he is not transcendent but already imminent to the natural. There is no body/soul unity as the subjective self is detached from a body that is bereft of form, logos and a nature and so is vulnerable to "choice" and technological engineering.

Catholic Contrary

By sharpest contrast, Catholicism is the most "religious" in the etymological sense of bond, loyalty, obligation, reverence. It is an immensely rich symphony of icons, sacraments and sacramentals, practices, relics, authority, Tradition and traditions, liturgy, piety, processions and pilgrimages, miracles, laws, hierarchies, orders and renewal movements...all communal, corporeal, historic...rooted in the past and moving into the future...bonding us to each other...our ancestors and descendants...saints and sinners...all in the Eternal Word, become flesh...in Jesus born, living, crucified, risen, ascended, Spirit-sending, and to return...and in the Eucharist, so quiet here in our midst. 

 

 

 

Cultural Substructure of Abortion

The fierce reaction against the Dobbs decision clarifies that legal abortion will not be entirely banned in the USA, in the foreseeable future, through electoral politics. More significantly, it unveils how legal abortion is an essential foundation for the culture that has prevailed in our society for the last half century. Key structures of our culture that make abortion a necessity include: contraception, distrust of the male, individualism as a "gnostic" understanding of the Self, individualism as the breakdown of family/community,  techno-idolatry, forgetfulness of God, and the flight from philosophy.

1. Contraception

 The sterilization of sex, the rupture of it from marriage-family-fecundity, carries with it the necessity of abortion as back-up contraception. The progressive trust that widespread use of contraception works to minimize abortion has it backwards. Rather, the choice to contra-concept, which is unreliable in all its forms, carries the necessity of an abortion should the "protection" fail, as it does regularly. And so, it was inevitable that after the contagious spread of the pill in the 1960s that abortion was legalized in 1973. The progressive, sexually liberational, "blue" culture that prevails in the upper tier of our society makes the elimination of "choice" unthinkable to that demographic.

2. Distrust of the Male

"I am 100% pro-life and against abortion, but I don't see how a man, or the government, can tell a woman what to do with her pregnancy." No doubt a large majority of women, even devout Catholics blessed with good fathers and husbands, resonate with this statement. Resentment of and distrust of the male is pervasive across our society. It is understandable: misogyny in a variety of forms is (in my view) the most vile, widespread, and consequential evil in our world. Granting the rational basis for this reaction, it is a tragic mistake for a mother to reconfigure her maternal relation to her child in terms of a hostility to the male. 

3. Individualism and the Gnostic Self

Perhaps the defining structure of our society is the sovereignty of the "Imperial Self," the isolated, narcissistic, lonely, competent self as the god, the idol, the definer of all meaning and purpose, the holder of inviolable rights but free of allegiance or responsibility to any higher power. This self is, furthermore, is an interior subjectivity, the agency of "choice," who is fundamentally free of any natural, moral, cosmic patterns, regarding the physical world and even the human body. So, the body and the world are neutral or hostile materials to be engineered by the isolated, detached, subjective self. And so, we no  longer have a gendered person, defined by relationships (daughter, mother, sister, wife, etc.) but a distinct monad, unilateral agent of her own destiny, "empowered" against bonds of faith, family, responsibility, reverence. So, "choice" of the lonely, androgynous self is the defining sacred value.

4. Individualism and the Destruction of Family/Community

Inexorable dynamics of global capitalism, technocracy and expansive government have worked with the cultural trajectory to individualism to deconstruct the family (nuclear and extended), local communities, Church life, and much of the intermediary organizations. The more impersonal, mechanical, dehumanizing workings of mega-government-capitalism increasingly displace the smaller communities which nourish, support, protect and ennoble the person, who is always in relationship. And so again, " choice" and abortion become the option and right of the solitary individual, detached from family, faith, and community.

5. Techno-idolatry.

Huge technology, including industrialization, computers, dependency upon professionals in all life skills, has largely displaced the organic, personal, vernacular, local, creative, synergistic an convivial with the artificial and mechanical. The prudential, lay, commonsense intellect has surrendered itself to expertise in the techno-universe. And so, we no longer have procreation, fecundity, conjugality; in its place we have "reproductive technologies": abortion (including partial birth), surrogacy, in vitro fertilization, euthanasia, assisted suicide, embryonic cell research, transgender chemicals and operations, sterilization, contraception and more to come. The discrete human individual...fetus, mother, bureaucrat, social engineer...is a disposable, replaceable, androgynous unit of production/consumption...stripped of bonds that are organic, personal, familial, historical, local, and religious.

6.  Forgetfulness of God

Our Creator and our Savior are forgotten. Secularism and atheism reign unchallenged in upper, elite culture and reign over the society. There remains, in the lower tiers of society, a resiliency in religious belief and practice but the bonds that strengthen that awareness of God are greatly weakened so that many live as practical atheists, thinking-deciding-acting without engagement with God, although residues of Christianity remain. And so, we have the tragedy of the abandoned, lonely woman deciding in desperation to abort her child, bereft of a sense of God's presence, support and purposes.

7. Flight from Philosophy

Very few of us do academic philosophy but all of us work from an implicit, practical view of life. Here again, we need clarity that the pathology is inflamed at the top, elite tiers of society: entertainment, academia, wealth, media, Democratic politics. This toxicity "trickles down" to the lower tiers where it wreaks havoc on lives that lack the resources to compensate for spiritual/moral/social depravity. And so the flight from philosophy leads directly to a decadent, if unacknowledged world view: materialistic, nihilistic, despairing, Kantian (claiming that the human mind constructs what it knows, rather than actually seeing, understanding and engaging the real), and lacking childlike wonder/awe at the splendor of Being, of Creation, and the divine hand that offers this gift.

Diabolic Nature of the "Anti-Catholica"

The word "diabolic" means demonic or Satanic but its etymology means "to tear apart." And so, the culture of progressivism, of death, is fundamentally diabolic as it tears the individual away from: sexuality as unitive/procreative, the spousal communion and trust of man/woman, the soul/body communion, bonds with family/commuAgnity, the organic-local-historic-traditional-ethnic, God and all things heavenly and religious, and the philosophy of wonder/awe, realism, Being and Creation.

It is contempt for all things Catholic: sacredness of all human life, especially the powerless; the holiness of the male/female union; person as spirit-in-flesh; person as embedded in many layers of family/community; the organic-natural-convivial-personal-local-traditional rather than the engineered-artificial-mechanical; reverence for a Holy-but-Tender God; and philosophy of the True-Good-Beautiful.

Where From Here?

If the above is an accurate diagnosis, our path forward is simple and straightforward.

1. The persistent pro-life movement has born fruit marvelously in correcting the judicial calamity that was Roe. More important, it has labored over the last 50 years to assist women with troubled pregnancies. Thank God for all of that! At this point we do well to relax our political efforts at the national level; to remain vigilant and active, however, at the state and local levels. We need to resist initiatives from our opposition to reinstate Roe legislatively of course. But aggression to ban abortion nationally, given the nature of our culture outlined above, is at best futile and at worst counterproductive. It will provoke only more anxiety, hysteria, rage, and polarization.

2. Rather than casting the mother's rights against those of the child, we do well to care for the dyad: mother-and-child. What is a mother without a child? A child without a mother? Is not the best thing we can do for the fetus or baby to assist the mother? With this clear focus, we can imagine an alliance with the Left on things like child credits, maternity leave, and a strong safety net for the woman facing an unanticipated pregnancy with few resources and little support. In this we follow the "Christian Strategy" of Adrian Vermule in which we detach from partisan allegiance to a specific party/ideology but work cooperatively in various alliances to enhance the common good and protect our values and interests.

3. Well beyond that important political agenda, we need a religious revival of us men: passionate, profound repentance for our violation of women. This is pervasive in forms obvious and hidden: lust, control, indifference, contempt, detachment, lethargy, cowardice, infidelity, pornography, prostitution, covetousness, disrespect, inattentiveness, contraception, cohabitation, and the faux-feminism of androgyny-choice-careerism-promiscuity. We need to storm heaven for graces of virility, tenderness, loyalty, steadfastness, humility, patience, gentleness, peace, appreciation, reverence, gratitude and generosity.

4. Lastly, a version of the "Benedict Option" is hopeful: rather than aspiring to create the broader society in our image, we focus most of our energies on our own Culture of Life: Church, family, schools, and all the concentric organizations the flow from and into family/Church, the two institutions specifically created by God and morally prior to the State.

To conclude: let us cultivate the virtue of longanimity. This means we play the long game. The abortion culture and all that goes with it has deeply planted itself in our society over the last 50 years; it will be here for a long time. We are talking many decades, generations, centuries (?). But in the long term, it is: sterile, nihilistic, despairing, unnatural, artificial. It carries within itself seeds of its own demise. So as we fight the Culture War, we are anxiety-free, confident, hopeful, joyous, serene, patient, as we are zealous, fierce, persistent and courageous. We grow in humility and magnanimity as we delight in the presence and providence of God, our bonds with the past and the future, and our engagement with the Beauty-Truth-Goodness of the "little here and now"...the concrete, organic, familial, personal, convivial and "Given."

The Gnosticism of Modernity vs. Catholicism on Body/Soul

 Gnostic Enslavement of Good Soul in Bad Body

A key doctrine of the ancient Gnostics was that the human soul is imprisoned in a material body that is hostile, negative, degraded. This concept is an exaggeration of an idea prevalent in Greek thought, specifically Plato, that the soul, the spiritual is alien to the body, the material. Accordingly, the Gnostics detached sexuality from the soul, alternating between an absolute, puritanical celibacy and an antinomian (respecting of no law) license alleged to leave the inner soul untouched.

Escape of Soul from Body: Buddhism and Shakers

This theme runs more broadly through the history of spirituality as a perennial temptation: the compulsion of the spirit to flee, contemptuously, from the body. Buddhism finds a path to enlightenment (not salvation, certainly not of the body) but an escape from the corporeal as "illusionary." So, through meditation one is relieved of the false consciousness of the unenlightened, suffering, embodied self and liberated into a condition that is vague and illusive but certainly free of the vulnerabilities of the body. The Shakers, influenced by the negative, crude sexual experiences of founder Ann Lee in her marriage, renounced sex altogether, pledging lifelong celibacy as a path to spiritual wellness.

Descartes: Intellect and Certainty Independent of the Suspected Body

The father of modern thought, Descartes, started from a posture of absolute suspicion of the body, the physical and specifically the feminine/maternal, to construct a logically perfect, utterly abstract, "hyper-masculine," certitude in thought. Clearly suffering from a disconnect from and hostility to the feminine (see "Flight from Woman" by Karl Stern) he isolated himself from sensation, relationships, and connections to create from his own isolate thought a sterile certainty. We see here the origin of the entirety of modern philosophy, Kant through Hegel and so on, in a pathology of suspicion and isolation. We see here that modernity is pure, absolute, despairing individualism. And so Descartes retrieves the Gnostic self: a soul detesting and fleeing from the natural, material, corporeal as hostile, deceptive, evil.

Transgender: Gnostic Soul

"A woman's soul in a man's body" is what we hear in transgender theory. This is pure Gnosticism: the soul is entrapped in a hostile body. The true, inner self, is oppressed by a body that is random and oppressive and must be reshaped, engineered by the disembodied subject. Here is the Gnostic heart of modernity: the subject/object antagonism. The body is extrinsic to, essentially detached from the soul; it is void of interior meaning or dignity; it is at best neutral clay to be formed coercively and at worst a hostile force to be overcome, chemically or surgically.

The interior subject, technologically, controls, designs, reshapes all things physical, particularly the human body and quintessentially the female form. The key that opened this Frankenstein-like door was the contraceptive pill. Technologically, this tore fertility from sexuality and both of them from marriage and family. The natural, nature, natality (birth) was replaced by the artificial, the technological. Next came the entire monstrosity of "reproductive" technologies: in vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, sperm banks, and experimentation on embryos. The organic, generative-gendered-generous, created is displaced by the artificial, "reproduced," engineered.  

Contempt for the Body

Gnostic disgust with the human body manifests in a range of modern phenomena: abortion, pornography as objectification, self-destructive eating disorders, rejection of the body as given in obsession with an idealized image of beauty-fitness-health-idealized, plastic surgery, fear of aging, pregnancy reconfigured as disease, maternity/paternity displaced as marginal hobbies deferential to the prioritized production/consumption, rituals for the dead made efficient and economical by cremation, and childbirth itself suspected as toxic for the planet. Concern for the environment itself, as in global warming, often draws not from a creaturely gratitude and reception but from a secular, anxious, lonely, joyless impulse to control. Detached from the Creator, the source of nature and reality, the environmental crusade becomes joyless, despairing and controlling, mirroring the technology of disrespect that provoked it.

Gnostic Universe: Uncreated, Lonely, Despairing, Sterile

In short, the human subject is reduced to an isolated ghost, trapped in an oppressive body and a meaningless material universe, Godless. There is no Creator and therefore no creation; no reception or gratitude or hope; little profound companionship. The human subject lives in a universe without essential logos, meaning, beauty, truth or goodness. It is abandoned to "choice" in a world that itself offers no objective, value laden reality to receive. It is a posture of permanent anxiety and eventual despair.

Catholic View of Body/Soul

The human person is created as a body/soul composite: they are united intrinsically to each other; distinct but not separate; they define and order each other, interiorly, harmoniously, as a single unity. 

In this they follow Aristotle in his more biological, "hylomorphic" understanding of the soul as the form of the body, not as a separate, even alien occupant of a temporary shelter. So, all things have interior forms: animals, vegetables, and even artwork is material informed by the form imagined by the artist. In harmonious union, the body and soul mutually indwell each other, the one visible and the other invisible, the one material the other spiritual, in the unified human person as embodied spirit. 

Even more important is the Scriptural, Old Testament understanding of the person as a unity of flesh and spirit, without the Platonic-Gnostic separation of body and soul. In the earlier books there is little evidence of life after death. There emerged, however, the doctrine of the resurrection of the body which we know was accepted by the Pharisees and rejected by the temple Sadducees. On this Jesus is a Pharisee.

There was also, however, in the course of time, a Platonic, but not Gnostic, influence in the belief of the immortality of the soul. While the body dies and corrupts, the soul (this logic indicates) as destined for eternal life with God, must be created for immortality. So the soul lives after death.

But Scripture, sympathetic to Aristotle, clearly sees the soul-body unity in the human person. And so our doctrine has it that each person is destined, eventually, for the resurrection of the body, a new and glorified body-soul union, at the end time, already actual in Jesus and Mary, but quite mysterious for us. We are then, in the words of Christopher West: angimals, both angels (in immortal soul) and animals (in perishable but eventually glorified) flesh. 

Which is more accurate: I am my body? or:  I have a body?  The first, of course affirms the unity of the two but obscures the distinction and the crucial immortality of the soul and tends to materialism. The second upholds both the distinction and the immortality of the soul but compromises the unity, indicating a separation of the two and a propensity to angelism, Platonism and possibly Gnosticism. The Catholic answer is, of course: both: I am my body which is intrinsic, not extrinsic, is essential, not accidental to who I am. But I also have a body as I am an immortal soul, in union with the body but distinct and capable (somehow...in God's mysterious plan) of existence beyond the body.

Every person is an utterly unique and infinitely valued masterpiece of body and flesh, the two mutually infusing each other in a perfect "marriage." Even more, the person is destined for union with God and so the body itself is truly a Temple of the Holy Spirit. And so, while this specific, contingent, temporary body is mortal, my entire person, specifically my soul, will live forever as a glorified body. And so, each human body is itself sacred, precious, illuminated with intrinsic meaning, truth, beauty, goodness, identity and destiny. Here we have no soul trapped in a hostile body; no female spirit in hostile male flesh. 

Creation: Natural World as Iconic and Sacramental

The entire material universe comes from the Creator's loving hands as expressing, in finite always defined ways, the Beauty-Goodness-Truth of the diversity-in-unity of the Trinity of infinite persons. Every interior has an interior. Every existent, every reality, every thing-vegetable-animal-human carries intrinsic identity, dignity, value. Each images the Trinity upon whom it depends in its contingency, finitude, and neither-necessary-nor-random gratuity. 

In the Catholic world there is a love affair between spirit and flesh, between soul and body: are distinct but not separate as they desire each other to be full; they indwell each other in harmonious communion; the spirit craves flesh to exult itself; the flesh longs to be indwelt to become and express meaning. 

And so the physical becomes iconic: transparent of the eternal. The material becomes sacramental, signifying the transcendent and effecting what it signifies; the natural is revered, cherished and protected, as it is transformed into the culture as meaningful-true-good-beautiful and the spiritual as revelatory of the heavenly and the divine. 

And so, before the created the creature is not first chosing, active and engineering. First it is receptive, grateful, reverent and adoring. Within that prior creaturely passivity, the human person responds, participates and creates in an agency that remains grateful and worshipful. 

Conclusion

The contrast could hardly be more sharp:

The Gnostic, progressive, "choosing," Self is sovereign, lonely, anxious, despairing in a hostile body and material world.

The Catholic, created self is little, received, grateful, collegial, happy in the marriage of spirit and flesh (notwithstanding the wounds of sin), exhuberant with joy and hope, admiring of the "Given," adoring of the Great Giver, and a collaborative participant in the ongoing creation of the Good-True-Beautiful.

 

Administrative (a.k.a. Deep) State: Good? Bad? Both?

Both, in my view, but mostly good, definitely necessary, and dangerous.

The Good

Son of a union organizer, with working class, labor roots and affinities,. I adhere to to Catholic Social teaching, especially on solidarity (but also on subsidiarity). A staunch moral conservative, I have never been Reaganite Republican or libertarian on economics as I am critical of business, labor and government...especially when they are big...and immensely suspicious if they are not countervailed against each other. If you have big business, you will need to have big unions and big government.

Especially over the last 15 years as director of a boarding home for women, I have found Jersey City and New Jersey regulations to be reasonable and the inspectors to be practical and helpful. Regarding police, fire and medical emergency personnel I cannot adequately sing enough their praises!

With a strong Catholic sense of subsidiarity (which means the smallest possible social unit competent for the task is preferable), I favor smallness, localism, and minimalism. I worked for 25 years as a supervisor for UPS, happily and gratefully, proud of our mission, but always aware of the dehumanizing dynamics of its bigness. Finely attuned to the negativities that attend bureaucracy, I nevertheless appreciated its blessings. In a few hours I will board a plane from here (Antigua) to Miami: I am indebted to the pilots, security guards, engineers, inspectors and hundreds of thousands of others...to the mega-techno-bureaucracy!

My son, formerly a JAG lawyer with the army, is a manager in the Veteran's Administration; my son-in-law is principal of a large high school;  my nephew and his wife are high profile prosecutors with the DOJ. About half of my large Irish family work within large private or state bureaucracies; we are, for the most part, not farmers, artisans or entrepreneurs. They are intelligent, competent , dedicated and of sterling moral character. Our urban, Irish-American tribe has always served heavily in the military, police/department, FBI, politics, unions and the entire network referred to as the administrative or (disparagingly) as deep state. I do not share that contempt. With exceptions (below) I have the highest respect.

Our market, competitive, meritocratic, class, free society systematically privileges the positioned and the competent in thousands of ways. Voluntary charity on the part of the more privileged is not adequate to address this. A strong state is required to protect the vulnerable and restrain the powerful and predatory.

Yuval Levin reminds us that not only are strong, durable, fluid institutions required for the wellbeing of society, but they serve to form us, as singular persons, in virtue. Long term commitment, even to a monotonous job, elicits loyalty, patience, solidarity, cooperation and a host of virtues; it is a trainig in virtue.

There are valued, essential communal goods that inherently cannot be provided by the market itself: safety, security, healthy environment, economic infrastructure, and countless others. We need a strong state, but not a malignantly expansive one.

The value of civil service, long recognized, is to have a stable, reliable network of institutions not vulnerable to the whims of political fashion. This is strikingly pertinent in this age of Trump and extreme polarization. The remarkable thing about the Trump administration is that, notwithstanding his incompetence, impulsiveness and incoherence, he had little effect on the workings of government. This was due to his obsession with attention, disinterest in and capacity for governance, but also the stability and resilience of the administrative state. Given the extremism active in both parties, we are well served by a network of agencies that are only partially reactive to the party in power.

The Bad

As noted above, the principle of subsidiarity prefers the small, the local, the convivial, the personal over the immensity and impersonality of mega-technological-bureaucracies. And so, our gigantic government, especially federal, share with big business and labor a pattern of pathologies, which coexist with the goods they provide.

The agency, competence, and dignity of the person is compromised by the regime of expertise, technology and bureaucracy as the individual, even more so if  successful (in some specific skill) and affluent, is  dependent upon professionals in all things and disabled, even paralyzed, in the performance of small, concrete actions which order the immediate environment and form character.

The techno-bureaucracy carries within itself a powerful, inexorable logic or form: to control, for efficiency, avoidance of risk and danger, and therefore suppression of freedom, creativity, conviviality, not to mention contemplation as interior to action. It tends of its very nature to oppress the personal as interior and the spiritual as the root of agency to a disguised totalitarianism. 

Smaller communities of value and agency, above all the family, but the entire universe of intemediate organizations (small business, local non-profits, Churches, etc.) have been systemically deconstructed, leaving the lonely, monadic individual at the mercy of the mega-organizations of market and state.

Every agency and organization, directed by a coherent set of goals and values, carries within itself specific values, and so has to be countered with society by contrasting actors. People with specicfc values are drawn to certain agencies. Zoning board members may share an urgency to protect the status quo and exclude or heavily regulate newcomers; social science and humanities departments of universities are overwhelmingly liberal; police departments maybe not so much. And so we do well to suspect an imbalance in agencies that are very large. We are wise to be critical and countervail such forces with competing agents.

Culturally, the current dominance of moral progressivism and sexual liberation over our elite organizations but specifically the Democratic Party leaves us moral conservatives defensive before an expansive government weaponized against our cherished values: powerless and incompetent human life, sexuality-marriage-family, religious freedom in particular. This is the diabolical face of the administrative state: it will coerce us to cooperate with abortion, reproductive technologies, desecration of the gendered human body, deconstruction of masculinity'/femininity into androgyny, and disguised imposition of a secular, individualistic/collectivistic technocracy. 

Conclusion

The techno-bureaucracy, in our world, is conjoined to a cultural progressivism in isolating, sterilizing, and disempowering the lonely individual, uprooted from family-tradition-community, and dependent upon itself. But we cannot simply abandon or destroy the beast. Rather, we can emulate our fathers ("the great generation") in the labor movement of the 1930 when Catholics battled Marxists for control of the unions (concurrently as they fought capital for the rights of workers.) Happily, they prevailed. We can aspire to the same.

In favor of the local, the personal, the concrete, the personal we do well to restrain the malignant growth of big state and big business both as we nourish small community at every level and overcome the loneliness of individualism (as progressive sexual liberation and "conservative" economic neo-liberalism) in pursuit of virtuous personality,  embedded in family/faith/society. 

The rage of the far right against "The Administrative State" is not without cause, but it has inflamed itself into anxious, hysterical, violent anarchy, desperate to tear down, but bereft of anything positive to offer. We cannot merely destroy this network, trusting naively in the unretrained market or an imagined return to an imagined past. We have no choice but to wrestle with the beast, resisting the bad, grasping the good.

I myself am heartened by the emergence within the conservative party of a "new right" which defends our Catholic moral values but retrieves the Catholic-friendly liberalism of the New Deal and the post-war Democratic Party: a critical but overall positive view of labor unions and government active on behalf of the disadvantaged and working classes. Sohab Ahamri, J.D. Vance, Adrian Vermule, Michael Lind and a small, but insightful and passionate cadre  offer a viable alternative to the raging anarchism of the far right, the crude and vicious resentment of Trump, and the moral nihilism of the Left.

The administrative state is a necessity. Is in itself, its form or essence, a good thing. But vulnerable to bad actors and larger-than-life dynamics. We do well to cherish it, as we scrutinize it with clarity and fight for it passionately and confidently.

Fiat of the Creature...Before the Real

What follows aspires to echo, with my personal elaboration, some of the suggestive themes in "The Spirituality of Baron von Hugel" by Joseph Whelan S.J.

Fiat...Let it be...Amen...Yes!

Mary's response to the angel was the defining, climatic event in the history of creation.

Since Eve's turn away from God, all of creation, heaven and earth both, awaited this encounter.

With this consent, the quintessential creature, the very high point of creation, Mary, welcomes into her womb the very Creator, The Word, the Light of the Word.

With that singular reception, the anxious, jealous, suspicious, ungrateful grasping agency of Eve (and her passive, complicit, finger-pointing husband) was overcome with a simple Yes, Fiat.

And so the creature was restored, in that very moment, to its original constitution as recipient, admirer, guardian, partner and companion of the Creator, giver of thanks and adoration.

The creaturely identity of the human person is always first to receive: to be receptively passive; to be gift; to rejoice in Being; to give thanks; to worship; to delight the One who delights to give.

The human person...body, emotions, heart, spirit, intellect, will...is the recipient of the Real...in all Beauty, Truth and Goodness...and so the guardian, the gardener, the responsible, the appreciator, the respecter, the craftsman and artisan, the knower, and the lover.

Mary alone is the perfection of creatureliness, unwarped by sin as distrust, envy, anxiety, irreverence, ingratitude and violent, disobedient grasping.

To be creaturely is to be...ever receptive; grateful; reciprocally generous; appreciative; reverent; joyous. 

To be creaturely is to be small, finite, concrete, modest, firmly planted in "the little here and now." (Hugel)

To be creaturely is to be the beggar, "protagonist of history"...to be contingent, precarious, needy, dependent, hopeful, trusting. 

To be creaturely is to respond...firmly, quickly, compassionately, lovingly, joyfully...to the beggar who presents...the lonely, sad, suffering, poor, anxious...and to contemplate and respond to the Great Beggar, who from the Cross thirsts for our love.

To be creaturely, as human, as person, is to live always in time and eternity, in place and in infinity, in humility and in grandeur, in the secular and the sacred. To be "angimal" (West) as enfleshed spirit, in a happy marriage of the heavenly and the earthly.

To be creaturely, as sovereign person, in the image of God, is to receive but always actively...to engage, combat, push against and forward, to create, to penetrate with intellect...lovingly, reverently, gratefully...to echo in graciousness and generosity.

To be creaturely, as knowing/loving person is to treasure, admire, engage all that is secular in its marvelous particularity: the flower, the competition, the garden, the beloved, the child, the task presented however big or small, the moment of rest, the gratuitous smile, the delicious morsel, the good nights sleep, the fierce argument, the book, the worthy adversary, the unworthy enemy, the loyalty and the betrayal, the combat whether physical, cultural or spiritual.

To be creaturely, as an agential person, to to work, to transform, to create, to order, to restore, to beautify the world...this physical, social, natural, institutional, historical world...in ways small and large...and in that effort, especially against resistance, inner and outer, to have ones character formed, consensually but not always deliberately...in patience, humility, steadfastness, loyalty, hope, faith and love.

To be creaturely, as a person in history, a specific (little) here and now, is to embrace with open arms all the givens, the afflictions, injustices, insults, inequalities...not in passive victimhood, but as the raw materials with which to grapple in the transformation of the earth and the journey to personal holiness.

To be creaturely, as a person, is to suffer desires...endless, successive, obsessive, consuming, never fully satisfied desires...because of the underlying desire for the Infinite, for unbounded-extravagant Beauty and Goodness and Truth. 

To be creaturely, as a person, is to enter into that Desire...receptive and grateful...rooted in memory, history, tradition...joyful in always-responsive agency...hopeful, hopeful, hopeful!

To be creature, as human person, is to surrender, as finite-mortal-weak-needy, to this boundless desire for God...in Trust...renouncing the disordered desire to be God...envious, suspicious, angry, rivalrous, despairing, violent.

To be creature as human is to be male-relating-to-female or female-relating-to-male...a hard, absolute binary...in longing, torment, grief, gratitude, mutuality, asymmetry, reverence, tenderness, generosity, adoration, fecundity, nature interdependency, confidence,  humility, trust, receptivity...renouncing control, lust, resentment, jealousy, covetousness, manipulation, infantile dependency, sterility, fear. 

To be creaturely, as person, is to cherish, protect, admire, engage, delight in every single creature...in its finitude, fragility, mortality, historicity...as fleeting...and to grieve its passing in Joy...as it presages a Joy that will be unending. And the Good, the True, the Beautiful of that passing moment is not lost but somehow dwells eternally within the heart and intellect of the Creator.

To be creaturely, as a person, is to rest in the Eucharist, the Act and the durational, quiet presence...and to act always out of that rest.

To be creaturely, as a person, emulating that perfection of Creation, is to say Yes, Fia...to image the Triune God in the modest specifics of the "little here and now"... to accept...incompletely, imperfectly, slowly, patiently, zealously, ambitiously, durationally...the invitation to companionship with the Person and Event...of Love, Absolute Love...present right here...and eternally, the Alpha and the Omega.

 

My Sons and Daughters Have Escaped Me! Thanks Be to God!

"The golden rule is to help those we love to escape from ourselves, and never to help or influence them, till they ask, but to wait for them."  Baron von Hugel, in a letter to his niece, quoted in Whelan, The Spirituality of Baron Friedrich von Hugel, p. 292.

They have escaped my control and influence; they are elsewhere; with their own families, careers, and lifestyles; distinct in so many ways; in no way photocopies or clones of me.

These words above of Baron von Hugel enlighten me how marvelous this is. Each of our two sons and five daughters is free; pursuing a distinctive identity and destiny; endowed with unique gifts and charisms; facing particular difficulties; engaged in rich networks of family, friends and associations; called to a singular mission within the Church and the world.

Yes, there has been the inevitable tension, dissonance, disagreement.

Mostly, I delight in the serendipitous difference, surprise, variety, spontaneity, fecundity.

For years my wife has been telling me "You are strong." She meant this not so much in a positive way, but that I can overcome others. My sister once told me "You are an intellectual bully." Another sister has me as the most stubborn man she ever knew.  I am indeed firm, clear, passionate in my convictions. And yes, however unintentionally, I can overcome, bully others. Just recently, referring to a tension between one daughter and myself, another daughter (strongly sympathetic to her sister) said "You are a strong man and you have a strong daughter." It thrills me that each is thus strong, in very specific, distinct manners.

And so I rejoice that each child of mine has, in subtle and complex ways, escaped my control, resisted my influence in certain things, and exercised their own sovereign freedom in dignity in search of their distinctive identity, mission and destiny. 

The singular joy my wife and I entertain is that each of our children, and their families, share our Catholic faith...and that with depth, clarity and intensity. And difference. 

Several postures structure my own faith life but have not been replicated, at least not in the same manner and degree, by my sons and daughters.

First, the Charismatic Renewal within Catholicism immensely impacted my faith, in 1973, and that of our marriage. We received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, spoke in tongues, enjoyed other gifts, and participated for some years, eagerly, in prayer meetings.  But we did not continue participation in such community and so our children did not receive that from us. They are, to be sure, evangelical in their intimacy with Jesus Christ and open to the movements of the Holy Spirit in ways both similar and distinct from us. This has not been a disappointment or a regret for me as they are firm and fervent in their Catholic faith. But it is a significant difference.

Secondly, as a boomer moving through early adulthood in the 1970s I reacted against the trajectory of my generation and became a fervent Culture Warrior. This in large part defined my intellectual life for the remainder of my adult life. My children and their families are on my side of this divide, but not with my focus and intensity. One son is more countercultural than myself but he is deeply involved in a renewal movement and largely detached from the public contest.

Lastly, I am anti-bourgeois and eager to be with the poor. My children share this sensibility but for the most part live a more mainstream lifestyle than the one my wife and I negotiated.

Their mother was, as is normal, the more immediate, strong influence on them. While raising the seven, she was an unusually supportive partner in freeing me to pursue in some degree my passions while, of course, being the wage earner. I was busy, out-and-about, but always delighted to return to a home that was happy and orderly in a relaxed fashion. Fortunately , we shared core faith values, deeply, but contrasted sharply in so many ways: she artistic, concrete, sensitive to beauty as a cook, gardener, real homemaker; myself intellectual, abstract, more austere less aesthetic, hungering for insight and truth. So that our children enjoyed a broad horizon of taste and style in which to develop their own distinctive personalities. She is shares ordinary middle class sensibilities but has been generous in deferring to my more counter-cultural tendencies.

The mystic-philosopher Baron von Hugel was himself under the spiritual direction of the great French Abbe Huvelin, who also directed St. Charles de Focauld and other important people. They adored him. Hugel said "Behind every saint is another saint." Huvelin stood behind quite a few. It is hard to imagine such contrast as that between Hugel and Focauld, although they both came from wealth. But the quote above, about "escape" seems to me to be the key to great spiritual direction. A powerful figure like the Abbe could easily diminish those in his shadow. This is a danger for the strong father or mother as well.

And so I rejoice that our children have, more quietly than dramatically, declined, refused aspects of my faith, even those I so treasure, to find their own paths. They have escaped my control, into the providential, liberating, impowering hands of One with whom they now partner so vigorously! 

Efficacious

This beautiful, precious, unused and underrated word is boundlessly reassuring and inspiring, richly ecclesial, deeply Catholic, Tridentine, anti-Protestant-subjectivism, yet ecumenically gracious.

The dictionary has it as an action that is successful in what it intends; as synonymous with effective. But the later is used normally in regard to human endeavors; the former has, to the Catholic mind, a heavenly meaning.

Opus Operatum

Specifically, it refers to our  "opus operatum" (Latin for "work worked") understanding of the seven sacraments which achieve what they signify and intend by virtue of the very act itself, independent of the performer (normally priest) or recipient. A sacrament has its effect, even when done by a vile priest and received by an indifferent, inattentive Catholic.

A Case Study

Imagine two mafia hitmen are both mortally wounded in a murder attempt. They mutually confess that each has secretly believed in Christ and desired baptism and the Catholic life. They know about efficacy. They take turns baptizing each other, gasping for life, with correct intention (union with Christ in his Church, absolution of all sin, infusion of grace), proper matter (water, however dirty), and form (the words "I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.")  Whatever the depth and purity of their intentions, the baptisms are absolutely valid and efficacious. They are saved. They are Catholics in good standing. They are on their way to heaven. God's grace is active within them for as short or as long as they live. It is likely that with whatever strength remains, they make acts of contrition, forgiveness, amends, kindness, thanksgiving and praise.  Should they miraculously recover from the wounds and return to their life of crime, they remain Catholics; the effect of the act cannot be removed or retracted; as it cannot be repeated; it leaves an indelible seal on the soul; it will be acting in their conscience in regard to their sins; it will be drawing them to conversion.

Magic or Miracle?

We see here an entirely different meaning from the effectiveness or efficiency of a human endeavor. This is not about human control. It appears, certainly to the secular mind, like an act of magic, something out of Harry Potter. But it is not magic. Indeed what distinguishes magic from the miraculous is that magic is a human performance, like that of the engineer, but the miraculous is an action from heaven. It is supernatural. An action of God, who uses human intentions and words as well as creaturely things.

Encounter of Finite with Infinite Freedom: Neither Subjectivist nor Objectivist

Magic is mechanical, external, coercive, and purely objective. In this it resembles science in its mastery over the material in medicine and surgery. The miraculous, the efficacious and mysterious, is organic-spiritual, interior, liberating, and engages the subjectivity of the recipient, without falling into subjectivism. It is dramatic, interplay of two freedoms, in the manner of a romance. 

Imagine a man crazy in love with a woman who has no interest in him. Patiently, sensitively, gently he courts her. Learns all about her: her fears, preferences, desires. He is fierce and persevering in his pursuit, but tender, courteous, diplomatic, patient, hopeful, prudent, generous, confident and entirely delighted in the adventure. If he is a gentleman of virtue, his attention will be in some degree efficacious. He will surely elicit respect and affection from his Beloved, as well as her family and friends. Whether he captivates her heart into spousal desire will depend upon the movements of her own heart, intellect and will. It is a dramatic event, an encounter between two freedoms. Nothing mechanical, external, coercive or objective here. Certainly, his love as reverent, tender and true will achieve, if not a romance, a lasting friendship. It will be efficacious, while leaving intact the freedom of his Beloved.

Catholicism, wrongly practiced and understood, can tend to objectivism: follow the program, obey the commandments, receive the sacraments, accumulate merit and you get to heaven. The focus here is on human effort, obscuring the prior-prevenient-ever-present action of grace, efficacious grace.

Protestantism is in large part an disordered subjectivist reaction to an unbalanced objectivism. "Salvation by faith alone" is a disastrous, isolating, introverting program. It opened the path to the modernist bifurcation into the objectivism of the technocracy and the subjectivism of the isolated individual. 

Christ, the Sacrament of Encounter with God, by Hans Kung (1963) precisely outlined the Catholic Vatican II correction by using the dramatic, personalist language of "encounter" to avoid the imbalances of objectivism/subjectivism. The teachings and magisterium of John Paul and Benedict solidified this accomplishment. Unfortunately, progressive theology after the Council (including that of Kung) mimicked the subjectivism, nominalism and individualism of the Reformation. 

Broader Catholic Meaning of Efficacy

Beyond the nature of the seven specific sacraments, this word unveils the Catholic vision of life on every level.

1. Creation. God spoke, efficaciously, and Being and all beings came into existence. Our universe and all of life, all that is good-true-beautiful, is a result of the efficacious Word of God.

2. Salvation. The Passover of Christ, his death and rising, is efficacious for the salvation of the entire world, of everyone (who in freedom accepts), of history, of the universe.

3. Church. The life of the Church in her entirety, quintessentially but not exclusively the Catholic Church, is efficacious in a marvelous symphony of life and love: clergy, family life, friendship, good works, art, culture, industry, and the life of piety. The seven sacraments are efficacious in the highest, purest degree, but all elements (some of which we will mention below) achieve, inexorably, what they intend.

4. Word of God.  We Catholics, of course, accept the infallibility of the Pope (under very limited conditions) and the general indefectibility of the Church in her hierarchy. We can trust, without suspending our critical faculties, the Magisterium. But even beyond the institutional Church, the Word of God, when proclaimed authentically and witnessed to in life is efficacious. This is VERY important. It is here that we learn from our Evangelical/Pentecostal friends, who fail to fully appreciate the sacramental economy, but greatly excel us in their zealous receptivity to the Word proclaimed, to the Word in the Bible, to the primacy of listening with docility. We Catholics tend to a monotony, a boredom, a disinterest in the proclamation of the Word. We have so much to learn from our Protestant friends.

5. The Poor.  D.L. Schindler, echoing Balthasar, sees that the presence of the poor and suffering efficaciously elicits in us poverty of spirit and therefore holiness. This is VERY IMPORTANT. Attention to, acceptance of , empathy for, tenderness towards one who is poor or suffering is efficacious of holiness; it is a sacrament of Christ. It is not that we overcome the suffering; not that we do works of mercy; not that we advocate for an agenda. It is that we receive, accept, contemplate and revere in tenderness. This is efficacious for our salvation and holiness! It is good for us to welcome and seek the suffering and the poor. How unhappy those who associate only with the successful, the healthy, the affluent. How happy those who in their weakness and poverty elicit the compassion, tenderness and reverence of others and thereby efficaciously elicit in them holiness.

6. Prayer.  We firmly believe that our prayers are efficacious. Whatever we request, we know that God listens and responds, always in love for us, not always to our liking. When we pray for a healing, that prayer is heard, in a mysterious manner. The other day on my flight to Antigua I pulled out my Magnificat for morning prayer and the elderly, attractive woman, Ellen, next to me, quietly asked me: "Will you remember my family in your prayers? There are so many things going on!" I continued to read on the flight but was obsessed with praying for her family. We talked a little. As we exited, she said "I feel happy and confident in your prayers." My wife and I have been praying for this family all week. I have no idea of the nature of the problems. But I am certain that in a manner I will only understand in the afterlife they are important, efficacious. 

7. Mimetic influence.  We are all of us, all the time (we learn from Rene Girard and Gil Baile), consciously and unconsciously, under the mimetic influence of those around us, those we observe, those we love, and even those we hate. I am who I hang around with. To be around, to listen to, to observe virtuous, holy people is to become good and holy myself. Even without deliberation, decision or effort, I become like those close to me. And so happy are we who find ourselves surrounded, in family and friendship, with the virtuous. Happy are we to seek and follow the same. Just this being with, prior to decision or agency, is efficacious of interior goodness.

8. Catholic life.  The entire universe and apparatus of Catholic life and culture is "sacramental" in the broadest sense. This includes all the sacramentals (medals, crucifixes, statues, scapulars, rosaries, stained glass windows, holy water), and pious practices (novenas, visits to the Blessed Sacrament, sign of the cross, family prayer, spontaneous aspirations, retreats, pilgrimages, etc.), spiritual reading, corporal and spiritual works of mercy, fasting, and habits of daily prayer. To be Catholic is to immerse oneself in an enchanted, miraculous, delightful, mysterious, boundlessly complex ambience.

9. Deliverance from Demons.  The disciples, and we ourselves, were given power over demons. They cast them out. This is not prayer, which is directed to God. It is the command: "Demon, be gone, in the name of Jesus Christ!" It is imperative. It is not done by our will power but by the efficacy of the name of Jesus. At that name, demons must flee. They cannot stand it. But this is not magic; it can take time; it requires the patience an persistence of the woman demanding justice for the evil judge. It works! It is efficacious. (To be clear, this is a charismatic, Pentecostal conviction; not widely held by Catholics.)

10. Beyond the Catholic Church.  God's grace is infallibly, inexorably, efficaciously active always/everywhere in the divine, but always-also-human-sinful Catholic Church. But it is not limited to those institutional boundaries. It abounds wherever there is life. Even in a world wounded and fractured by sin, God's grace has not abandoned us. The drama of warfare between good and evil occurs in every human heart, in every community. God's grace is present, efficacious even where, perhaps especially where, evil abounds. 

11. Being as True-Good-Beautiful.  Existence, life everywhere and in every dimension, coming from the hands of our Creator, as True-Good-Beautiful, is diffusive, manifest, expansive, revelatory. To be sure the hardened, sinful heart-intellect-will is resistant and even hostile to such; but this rebellion is finite, temporary and vulnerable.

12. Truth. In the chaos of the culture wars, in the wanderings of our youth, how encouraging it is to recall the inexorability, the eventual invulnerability of the Real, the Given, the Created, the True. This conviction leaves us with an inner serenity, a freedom from anxiety and rage, a joyous hope. It is not for us to win the argument or convince the doubting. It is for us to merely witness to the Truth. The journey to Truth is durational, slow, long...for all of us. So often, as my friend John Rapinich would assure me, we are "speaking into one's future." Those we love will eventually be captivated by the Beauty-Truth-Goodness that has grasped us. We can rest tenderly in it, as we witness to it gently.   

Clearly, this efficacy does not deny, but engages our freedom. But how comforting strengthening, and encouraging it is to consider the efficacy of God's movements within us and among us!

 

A Sterile World; Our Catholic Response

 In "The Desecration of Man" (First Things, January 2024), Carl Trueman identifies three characteristics of modernity: disenchantment: loss of the sense of the miraculous, the wonderful, the transcendent: fluidity: lack of any stability, permanence, durability, longevity; and desecration: absence of the "sacred" and the subsequent degradation of the human person. This is an accurate picture of our world. I would add another, that gripped our culture violently just over 50 years ago in the Sexual-Cultural Revolution: the sterilization of the person.

Two Meanings of Sterile

In our discourse, this word has two distinct, but related meanings. In medicine, of course, it refers to antiseptic cleanliness of bacteria and other hostile organisms as in the hospital and surgical protocols. It is a good thing. But the primary meaning, in ordinary conversation, is infertile, incapable of generating new life. This is a bad thing. Underlying both, however, is a singular image: barren, empty, lifeless.

In medicine antiseptic sterility is a miraculous practice of protection from lethal infections. What we have recently, unfortunately, in the broader culture is an exaggerated germ-phobia, an inordinate fear of contamination. This exploded, understandably, during the Covid pandemic, but it lingers still. It is an anxiety about the body in its close intercourse with nature, with other bodies, with nature, with invisible microcosms. It underestimates the resiliency and efficacy of the body's natural resources, especially the immune system. It overrates the potency and hostility of the invisible, microscopic world. It seeks protection in distance, chemical sanitation, masking. This is in sharpest contrast to the world of my youth: lots of children close together in homes, play, packed classrooms; sharing each others germs and bacteri (good and bad alike), and exercising vigorous immune systems within the "herd" context.

This fear of life, of the body, of the natural of course mirrors and reinforces the sterilization of sex. 

- Reliance on technological intervention to isolate and thus "protect" the individual.

- Retreat from the natural, the intimate, the concrete, the physical.

- Anxiety related to the natural and the body; isolation; defensiveness. 

- A paralyzing reluctance to engage life, and to give new life. 

Contra-Conception Transformation

The birth control pill, perfected in the 1960s, in tearing sexuality from fecundity, was the most consequential, disastrous technological development in human history. Yes, more important than fire, printing, the internet; Yes, worse than gunpowder and the atom bomb! It refigured, distorted, perverted the human person, who was created male-female to reign over the earth in a sacred communion of fruitfulness, into a sterile, autonomous individual, lonely, isolated, hopeless. The sin of Onan, masturbation, became normative, wholesome sex, isolated with porn or together in contracepted or homosexual actions. The male/female person as partner with the Creator in the generosity-grandeur-dignity of creation was trivialized, mechanize, and sterilized. 

Gen": To Give Life

Gender, generative, generous all come from the proto-European root "gene" meaning to beget, to give life. All created life comes from our Creator, but generously he has blessed us to participate in the giving of life, biological, spiritual, psychological, agricultural, cultural and all sorts of life. We do not do this as isolated monads, but in community, imaging the Eternal Three-in-One of our Creator, especially and prototypically in the union of man-and-woman.

Deconstruction of Gender

The liberalization of sexuality from marriage/children and the marginalization of fruitfulness immediately destroyed both femininity and masculinity as generous, generating forms. Maternity and paternity, no longer the foundation of the family and society, became optional hobbies, but marginal to the techno-bureaucratic economy operated by androgynous units of consumption/production. Our younger people do not "see" the form of masculinity/femininity, they only "see" the isolated, lonely individual, and therefore they see gay and trans identities as perfectly normal. By the logic of sterility, only an ignorant or hateful person would have a problem with trans-athletes or gay marriage.

Demographic Winter

Most of our world...the West, Russia, Japan, China, but not Africa and most of Islam...is undergoing a severe decline in population. We have lots of old people and not enough young people to take care of them. The extravagant benefits enjoyed by the now retiring American boomers will be paid for by our grandchildren. There really is, right now, a generational war, which no one (except Ross Douthat) talks about. Things are much worse across Europe and Russia. In the long term, Russia, notwithstanding its oil and aggression in the Ukraine, is demographically a weakling. The breathtaking failure of our current administration to control the border is partly due to an unacknowledged calculation that we need these workers. 

Despair

If the birth of a child is always a sign of hope, than the decision for sterility...masturbation, contraception, abortion, gay or trans identity...is an expression of despair. The deliberately sterile life is isolated...as on an island...alone, disconnected from a past and tradition, detached from the Eternal, without hope in the future. It leads into indulgence, narcissism, resentment and despair. It is the suicide of the community.

Catholicism's Fourfold Response to Modernity

1. Disenchantment.re Creation, to the Catholic mind, is radiant, enchanted, and fascinating: a symphony of beauty-truth-goodness, the entirely gratuitous love of the Creator for his work, an eternal community of love, the miraculous, spiritual warfare of heaven and earth, the dramatic engagement of freedoms culminating in heaven and hell. 

2. Fluidity The Eternal has taken flesh, become The Crucified/Risen Protagonist of history, in Jesus Christ and remains with us in this time and space, durationally, steadily, reliably, until the end of time, in the Eucharist, from which flows a stream of life and grace, extravagant and serendipitous, for every person, place and thing.

3. Desecration. Springing from the hand of the All-Holy-God, Creation is itself sacred, especially in the image of God, the human person, however little and powerless, including the generating-generous-gendered male-or-female body.

4. Sterility. The Ultra-Generosity of the Trinity resounds through Creation and history and quintessentially in the receptivity-gratitude-responsiveness-agency of the person-in-community. 

The lifeless, anxious, threatened sterility of antiseptic germ-phobia and contraception is itself, I suggest, a counterfeit of genuine purity, as generous, fecund, beautiful. All primitive religions are obsessed with purification, with protection from contamination. Secular modernity is based upon rituals of protection from infestation, intimacy and fecundity. By contrast, purity as closeness with the Holy, as seen in Mary and the saints, is a genuine cleanliness springing from our salvation on Calvary, and brings with it freedom from fear, conjugal comfort in the body and with nature, an intensification and deepening of love as generous-romantic-charitable-erotic-fruitful.

Such purity-as-holiness-and-wholesomeness takes, within Catholic life, two forms: spousal love of man and wife in marriage, and the virginal and celibate surrender. Particularly striking, and entirely unintelligible to the secular, sterile modern, is the fecundity of virginity-as-maternity and celibacy-as-paternity. In each, intimacy with God...exclusive, free, faithful, fruitful...is an extravagant pouring forth of life, graces and blessings. This is a great blessing. The maternal-paternal nuptiality of the virgin and the celibate itself illuminates the interior form of marriage as chastity, loyalty, fertility, and attachment-within-detachment in tender reverence.

Conclusion

Within a world that is dying of sterility, self-abuse, futility and despair, we look with delight to the Church, the Bride of Christ, our Mother, steadfast and yet fluid, tender and reverent, chaste and fruitful, intimate and so fertile. Every family, friendship, endeavor, organization and community...even outside of the institutional boundaries of the Catholic Church...to the degree that they draw to the Eternal, enfleshed Body of Christ, in all its mystery...close, trustful, free of fear, loyal...share in that joyous, hopeful, thriving fecundity. 

 

 

Freedom from the Tyranny of Expertise: the Dignity, Primacy, Sovereignty of the Ordinary Layman

Disclosure: I am not a professional in any sense, but an ordinary layman, bereft of expertise. As such, I exercise "first order" knowing, common sense, prudence, which is superior to all specializations.

What follows is not a Luddite ingratitude for the miracles of our advanced, complex society. But a realistic recognition of temptations, dangers that come with those marvels.

By "profession" we here mean a financially compensated expertise in a specific area, entailing training and certification, within a community with an elaborate body of shared beliefs, values, practices. It brings with it as well social status, authority and power.

By "first order knowledge" here I mean the personal, experiential, concrete, integral encounter of the person with the Real. By "second order knowledge" I intend specialized, abstract, especially scientific knowledge that is not the actual experience of a real person. So for example, Artificial Intelligence is incapable of first order knowledge.

Anecdote: Over 20 years ago, a friend was describing the battle of his lawyer with that of his wife over alimony in the impending divorce. He had destroyed his career, reputation, marriage and family by a bad habit, caressing the breasts of his female medical patients. He went on to jail. He was working a 12-step program including "amends." He valued my counsel. I suggested: "Overrule your lawyers. Direct them to give your wife everything she wants...as part of your amends to her."  He laughed dismissively. Did not honor the suggestion by engaging it or addressing it. Why was this unthinkable, indeed ridiculous, to him? Because he valued his money and wanted to keep as much as possible? Yes, I think so. But I think there was another, possibly stronger motive. His personal identity was deeply invested in his medical expertise. In the parallel realm of law, it was inconceivable that he, a mere layman, would contradict his lawyers, the experts. He had forfeited the freedom, dignity, sovereignty of his own intellect and conscience, as well as the primacy of his spiritual life and that of his family, to the dictatorship of expertise.

Anecdote:  Frank, parish deacon and retired social worker making about $95 hourly as a consultant was positive about our residence, in the convent, for low income women until there was an incident and he told me what he really thought: "What you are doing is crazy, reckless, dangerous. You have no professional social workers, nurses, psychologists, security system! You take women directly from the psych ward! Anything could happen here! This is not good!" I said nothing but thought to myself: "Professional!"

We inhabit a complex, elaborate social universe of interlocking mega-techno-bureaucracies. Almost all human work is performed, not by the personal agent, within a convivial community, on a human scale; but by enormous, powerful, science-based, machine-like systems. This mega-machine-universe produces astonishing results in medicine, law, production, services, travel, communication, entertainment and every field. Highly educated "professionals" maintain this overgrown, largely impersonal universe.  Economic and social (status, power, authority) rewards are distributed according to a hierarchy of what is considered most valuable to "the machine." We have become a two-tiered society, with the upper class, especially professionals, enjoying rich rewards and the lower very few. 

The problem: a dependency upon "the machine" for all human needs has induced an impotence, a paralysis, a loss of agency in daily life, for all of us. Indeed, it is likely that the more "successful" among us, higher up the social hierarchy, with more money, access more goods and have even less agency (aside from their narrow expertise) than the poor, who must fend for themselves and rely more on ingenuity and solidarity.

Work, we learned from John Paul II, is a quintessential action for the human person, it is transitive as it moves from the actor to recreate and reorder the world. The capacity for work, we learned from Freud, is a sign of psychological health. Work is a flourishing of the human body and spirit; it is communal; it is generous and generative; it is physical, concrete, specific in time and place. But the malignancy of our technology is a cancer that disables us, persons and communities, in our agency and potency.

And so we do well to cherish and cultivate all forms of work that are non-bureaucratic and non-technological: gardening, child rearing, reading, conversing, cooking, decorating, home schooling, walking, sports, prayer, liturgy. The more concrete, simple, small, local... the better. The less elaborate, technical, regulated, certified...the better.

This is not to reject modern technology tout court in the manner of the Amish and the Luddites. But it is to recognize the toxic consequences of mega-technology and compensate for them. It is to deliberately prefer the concrete, the local, the immediate, the small in scale.

The professions and the techno-universe they inhabit have inherent biases, some very bad. There is an assumption of knowledge as control, rather than contemplation and grateful reception of the Real as already/always Given as True, Good and Beautify. There is an exaggerated confidence in human achievement over much that is uncontrollable: suffering, death, guilt, sin. There is a presumptuous compulsion to engineer and save ourselves by our efforts and expertise. There is a righteous rage when this expectation is, inevitably, frustrated. There is immersion in a network of practices and institutions that are technical, mechanical and not inherently receptive, contemplative, grateful.

A second foundational bias of the professions is a compulsion to protect, to defend, to avoid risk, to detect and combat threats. Safety is the reigning value in the professional world. The lawyer is attuned to liability. The medical professional deals daily with serious sickness and is quick to suspect it and eager to diagnose and treat. The insurance salesman...need I go on?

Immersion in any profession, years of training-testing-certification followed by 40-60 workhours weekly, involves an immense concentration in a narrow second order of knowing specialty (tax law, heart surgery, etc.) and can easily unbalance one's first-order of knowing, prudence. In particular, service within the mega-technology leans into a preference for control, a defensiveness about danger, an aversion to risk, a loss of agency outside of that expertise, and a diminishment of wonder, reception, serenity and gratitude.

And so, increasingly we find ourselves subservient and obedient to the experts in child rearing, diet, health, legal matters, fitness, mental wellness, housing and almost everything. With diminished agency, we are more prone to depression, discouragement, anxiety, addictions, and a quiet nihilism. Work becomes mechanical, vacuous, oppressive rather than fluent, creative, refreshing and convivial. And the more affluent and prestigious among us are possibly the most effected as they labor abstractly, removed from the real, the concrete, the physical.

My Lay, Non-Professional Resume

I have made my living as a Catholic religion teacher, a UPS supervisor, and director of a residence for low-income women. Happily, I have cherished my lay agency and independence.

In teaching religion I was always the protagonist in my classes. I used the text and curriculum freely, treating a range of topics (liturgical seasons, current issues, saints). I benefited from the support of those, usually religious sisters, who ran the schools. I enjoyed community, agency, freedom, creativity an serendipity.

In 25 years at UPS, most as a supervisor, I was indeed a cog in the "big brown machine," an exemplar of bigness, technology, regulation, and industrial engineering. Early on, I was warned by a priest: "Do not sell your soul to the company." I retained always a lively sense of the impersonality of the system, and so maintained an interior detachment. Yet, my family  benefited (good salary, benefits, etc.); I was  loyal to the company; and always proud of our work which was a genuine, if mundane service within a generally wholesome moral context. 

However, there were always two management cultures, often contradictory of each other. The "by the book approach" upheld all the protocols, rules, laws, industrial engineering standards, safe work and driving methods, and so forth. On the other hand, the "get the job done" culture was the "macho" willingness to throw away the rule book and do what it takes to get the packages where they had to be. If a trailer load was late for the train, we would exceed the speed limit; if it had bad brakes but no time to be repaired, we would pull it anyway (exercising extra caution.) I recall as a pack car driver seeing a little, fragile lady in the rain with groceries falling all over the place in wet bags. I carefully helped her into the truck and drove her home,  all the time nervous and cautious but also laughing that the safety committee, human resources, lawyers and tons of others would have heart attacks if they knew about it. And so, while I observed and taught the rules with fair diligence, I retained my "lay" autonomy to throw the book out when prudence and common sense directed such. This "can do," entrepreneurial, confident approach was a triumph over the mechanical, engineering, impersonal nature of the "big brown machine." 

Finally, I have delighted in my work in our boarding home because of the large space for initiative and agency.  No we are not social work professionals; we are entirely lay, vernacular, lacking in expertise but guided by our paternal/maternal intuitions. The rules and the inspectors are reasonable. We comply with laws and regulations but we do not go crazy about it. Our operation is simple, lay, uncomplicated...nothing complex or elaborate about it. We enjoy collaboration with staff, volunteers, contributors, along with state health insurance and social security, as well as the police, ambulances and fire department. It is a happy world: convivial, organic, synergistic, dramatic and active.

The Joy of the Layman

I can happily report that all our seven children are professionals; I am proud of them and the good work they do. But I am not jealous. While I lack the deep, rich body of expertise each has in a specific field, I am happily a lay man, an amateur, in the sense of one who pursues an activity out of love. Primarily I see myself as a catechist, echoing the voice of Christ within the Church, but along with that I am an amateur theologian, psychologist, philosopher, blogger, and student of culture. This leaves me free of the inherent obligations, bonds, and biases of a profession (especially control and protection) to move in and out of various disciplines in the spirit of joy.

In addition to freedom from a profession and the amateur's privilege in exploration and learning, I have benefited in other ways in growth towards prudence and wisdom. I have lived in close contact with the urban working class and poor and their humility, simplicity, piety and gratitude; at a remove from the affluent and powerful. I have lived in the heart of the Church, the place of reception of the Word, sacrament and worship. Here I treasure a deep connection with Tradition and thereby an enhanced immunity from the bourgeois delusions and pretensions of techno-progressivism. I delight in  the benefits of our amazing society, but strive always to live simply,  gratefully, locally, reverent before and attentive to The Given, here and now.