A Catholic Scrutiny for J.D. Vance

 Dear J.D.

With you we joyfully thank and praise God for the blessings and graces he has bestowed upon you: your love of Christ in the Catholic Church; your striking family; your extraordinary gifts of intelligence, competence, charisma, virility, energy and leadership; your amazing life journey from hillbilly to marine to Yale law to capitalist to senator to V.P. candidate; and your moral vision combining economic with cultural populism on behalf of the underclass!

You are the most promising, talented, charismatic political leader since JFK; but you appear to be happily free of the demons of lust that afflicted him and his family.

You are far from perfect! Like all of us, you are a work in progress. You are young...especially in our Catholic faith. You are a good learner and you are still learning. As an older brother-in-Christ (you are same age as my second son, 6th of 7) I have a Word for you, a scrutiny, a challenge and invitation: Catholicity and Magnanimity of Spirit.

Nikki Halley, in her fine convention speech, urged the RNC to open up, to welcome others, to expand itself and enhance its influence. Good advice for you to take personally.

"Catholic" means universal and indicates a welcome to all people and indeed to everything, in every culture and people that is true, beautiful and good.  "Magnanimity" means "greatness of spirit" as a generosity, an expansiveness, a liberality free of fear and defensiveness. I urge you to pray for these gifts. You deficit here is, in my view, your defining weakness.

Your combative spirit is at once a strength and a weakness. It needs to be purified, deepened, sanctified.

Sometimes, listening to you brings to mind the Hatfield-McCoy feud, the iconic tribal battle between two hillbilly families. That is, of course, your background. It sounds in you still. But you are moving well beyond that, hopefully into deeper Catholicity and stronger Magnanimity.

You and the party are correct about our Southern border: it must be sealed tightly, immediately. This is for our safety and order, but also for all the migrants risking life and limb to make the journey. But let's drop the rhetoric of "aliens."  That word indicates a strange, inhuman creature, usually from outer space, or a hostile, dangerous presence from another land. These people are, for a Catholic, our brothers-and-sisters in Christ. For the most part they are decent, hardworking, family folks, like you and me. I am sure that you and I both would risk the journey from (say) Venezuela and cross illegally if we were convinced it would be the best for our families. You are not a moralistic legalistic! Let's drop the fear and defensiveness in favor of trust, confidence and decisiveness.

Likewise: the Ukraine. These also are our brothers and sisters. A good Catholic is a patriot, a localist, and also an internationalist...caring about young women in Afghanistan, civilians in the Ukraine, innocents in Israel and Gaza. We are bound together, ontologically as God's children, but also technologically. For humanitarian reasons for sure, but also on behalf of a stable world order which benefits everyone, we need a forceful foreign policy to deter bad actors like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. We need good alliances with NATO, with democracies in Asia, and furtherance of the Abrahamic Accords, one of the finest achievements of Trump's first term. May your fierce, martial spirit direct itself against the real threats to world order and show a gentleness and generosity to those under attack and suffering afflictions.

I haven't been so hopeful for our democracy since 1960, when I, at 13, was infatuated with JFK. You have promise of taking what is best of Trumpism and creating a new "Catholic-inspired"  politics which champions the weak, unborn, religious liberty, family life, social justice and all the freedoms. Like Moses, you come from the underclass but are at home with the overclass. You have the potential to overcome the class-conflict paradigm and draw different groups into cooperation.

For my part, I resist the temptation to idealize you. You are flesh and blood, wounded and sinful, like all of all. All the more for me to pray for you, your family, and your mission in our country and world.

In Christ!

The Assault on Modesty: Infection of Catholic Erotic-Sacrilege (Letter to Grandchildren)

Sacrilege (from Latin "sacer" or sacred and "legere" to sieze) is a sin against God, often in defilement of a person, place or thing that is holy. Erotic-sacrilege is a neologism, a new word, designed here to describe a recent, novel, demonic form afflicting our Church: profaning of the human body joined with perverse use of the sacred. It is a double sacrilege: against the masculine/feminine body; and against some sacred dimension of the Church. It is far more than sexual immorality as it desecrates what is consecrated to God. 

Modesty is discretion, self-restrain, protection of the dignity, sacredness, and innocence of one's sexuality, feminine or masculine. It is an interior quality of spirit that manifests in a style of action, speech, dress, manner, viewing and thinking. 

It is an aspect of chastity, which is itself integral to purity of heart, the interior simplicity and goodness that opens us to God.

It is associated with quiet elegance, graciousness, humility, nobility.  The Immaculate Virgin Mary is the icon and epitome of such modesty, chastity and purity.

It requires clarity of intellect, vision, conscience; even as it enhances the same.

It is imperative from two directions. First, the intimacies between husband and wife are private, confidential, sacrosanct, exclusive as they involve an incomparable union of body and soul as well as the creation of a new person with an eternal soul. Second, the temptations, weaknesses and disorders which we all suffer in our sexuality as a result of original sin (concupiscence) are themselves exquisitely delicate and vulnerable and so must be shielded tenderly. 

We veil and protect our sexual feelings, not because they are evil, but because they are sacred and precious, tender, vulnerable to shame and harm. We do not parade them to the public. Prudently, however, we share, as appropriate and needed,  with confessor, psychologist, or trusted confidant.  

Modesty is a natural quality that emerges spontaneously, by age three, with self-consciousness and emotional intelligence. It is cultivated by a society that is wholesome and appreciative of the good, the true, the beautiful.

It has suffered, in our society, a fierce, diabolical assault, starting in the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, in the forms of: pornography, degradation of language, indecent dress, promiscuity, militant feminism and homosexuality, objectivization of women, a pervasive loss of reverence, and a contagious decadence across entertainment/media/academia and more.

Case 1:   Cardinal Mueller, arguably the most authoritative Catholic theologian in the world, who was Prefect of the Congregation for the Faith under Popes Benedict and Francis, has strongly condemned, as a violation of modesty, a statue called "The Crowning", of our Blessed Mother giving birth to her son. Sitting in a Cathedral in Austria, it is scandalously graphic, depicting Mary with legs apart, the head of the infant starting to emerge. It is being defended as a liberation of the woman's body. It is blasphemous!

Case 2:  Jean Vanier, famous founder of L'Arche and among the most respected Catholics in the world for his work with disabled adults, was found to have been part of a secret sect which seduced adult women, in the context of spiritual direction. He himself violated at least 25 women over 60 years from 1952 to 2019. The belief was that they were mystically reenacting the incest between Jesus and Mary. Not only were they sinning sexually, but they attributed a mystical goodness to the sin. This is at once perversity, blasphemy and deception with an unthinkable gravity. 

Case 3. Fr. James Martin S.J. for Pride Month a few weeks ago preached in a Church next to a statue of the Blessed Mother draped in the LGBTQ flag. In this, he engaged Catholic devotion to the Immaculate Mary to advance his advocacy of the goodness of homosexual acts. 

The moral question of homosexual activity is simple: it is good or bad. For over three thousand years the Judaic-Christian tradition sees such as sinful: sterile, non-unitive, biologically toxic, and contrary to the moral order and God's will. Gay militancy sees this judgment as homophobic and hateful, declaring that the acts  can be affectionate and respectful. Catholic practice and the LGBTQ agenda are contradictory of each other. Fr. Martin, highly favored by Pope Francis and esteemed in the Jesuit order, is undeniably the premier advocate for this cause within the Church.

These three cases vary, of course, but they all involve a double sacrilege: violation of the dignity of the human body and a perverse implication of Mary, our Mother and Immaculate Virgin, in the disorder.

Concupiscence of the Intellect  The word "concupiscence" normally refers to disorder of the will in which powerful, destructive passions and desires (especially sexual) overwhelm a weak will. We recall St. Paul who did what he did not want to do. In such cases, the intellect/conscience is in tact and knows right from wrong but the will is feeble and succumbs to temptation. There remains a guilty conscience, a hope for eventual repentance. 

But in the cases above, we have something more unsettling: a disordered intellect.  The sculptor, Vanier and Martin suffer no qualm of conscience or contrition; they are self-righteous. They are confident that their motives are loving. Rather, to their minds,  it is the prude, the misogynist or judgmental homophobe that is hateful.

It is incumbent upon us to NOT judge their intentions or will: It is for God to judge. It is incumbent upon us to judge their judgements: are they right or wrong about the statue, the mystic-eroticism, and "gay" sex.

Respectful Privacy

I, like most of us today, enjoy warm, close relationships...family, friends, co-workers...with many who live the homosexual lifestyle. It is not a problem for us. It is private. We don't talk about it. "Live and let live." "Don't ask, don't tell!" "I sweep my own sidewalk; take my own inventory." "Mind your own business." "Stay in your own lane, soldier!" In such cases I do not know and do not want to know about someone else's sexuality: it is private and precious. This is a hard boundary. 

The problem comes with the gay crusade: parades, pride month, social media, podcasts, tee shirts, corporate marketing, bumper stickers. We don't want to know but this stuff is pushed in our face. 

Example: the recent Vatican statement allowing for blessings of homosexual couples specified that it be done in private, not public. The very next day Fr. Martin was photographed blessing such a couple and the picture was in the NY Times and seen by millions. This is a lack of modesty. It is an attack upon modesty. 

Fr. Martin's argument is that the Catholic disapproval of same-sex actions is homophobic and cruel. He brings his charm, intelligence and prestige to a subtle, sophisticated argument. Additionally, he engages the Blessed Mother, his own holy orders in regard to priestly blessings, as well as the status of the Society of Jesus in support of his case. If he is right, then the Catholic Church...of the fathers, doctors, virgins, martyrs...is now and has been objectively hateful in this regard. If he is wrong, and the Church is right, he is indulging erotic-sacrilege, desecrating the holy things of our faith to support, enable, encourage mortal sin.

This is a hard judgment: not against the person, heart, soul, intellect, and will of Fr. Martin; we leave tha to God alone. It is a judgement against the judgment he has made against the Church in its teaching on sexuality. A Catholic does not sit in judgment against the Church. Rather, in filial trust and loyalty a Catholic is judged by the voice of Christ heard within the Church. We would be remiss as Catholics and catechists ("echoers of the Word") if we did not witness against erotic-sacrilege on behalf of modesty and our faith.

New Catholic Erotic Sacrilege

The three cases above are not exceptional, but representational of a novel form of perversity-sacrilege that is afflicting our Church. Human weakness, sin and moral decadence have always been with us...and will be until Christ returns. What is new and scandalizing is that our Catholic faith is itself used to normalize, justify and even "sanctify" grave sin. 

- President Joe Biden basically abandoned and disowned his now-5-year-old granddaughter, his own blood. He is the most powerful and energetic advocate of abortion in the world. He mandates that biological males can compete athletically with women. He self-presents as a pious, practicing Catholic, receiving Communion every Sunday with the implicit approval of Cardinal Gregory. He enjoys the endorsement of close to 50% of American Catholics.

- (Father) Ted McCarrick abused boys and apparently violated the sacrament of confession. He was shielded for decades by connections in the Vatican and was allowed freedoms by Pope Francis years after Pope Benedict directed him to live quietly in repentance.

- Accusations of sexual abuse of about 30 religious women by then Jesuit priest Marko Rupnik were first made in 1993. He is among  the most widely esteemed Catholic artists in the world. He incurred the automatic excommunication for absolving a sexual partner in confession, but that was almost immediately lifted by the consent of Pope Francis. He was protected for decades by the Jesuit order and the Vatican as his adult women religious victims persisted in the accusations. He was finally expelled from the order but is not yet laicized. In the 2024 Vatican directory he is an official in the Dicastery for Worship and in recent years has personally visited the Pope and even preached a retreat for the papal household.

- One of the first actions of Cardinal Joseph Tobin as Archbishop of Newark was to host in Sacred Heart Basilica an LGBTQ Eucharist. The holy sacrifice of our Lord's Body and Blood was offered in the name of sinful actions, assuming  a (sincere, no doubt, but misguided) posture of compassion and love.

- We now have Vatican approved "blessings" for homosexual relationships.

The pattern is evident and deeply troubling: not only mortal sins against chastity, but the perversion of our religion to normalize and even idealize the evil; and then stigmatize the Tradition that disapproves of the disorders. Again, a double sacrilege: against the holiness of the body and of the sacraments and religion. Not to mention the contempt for our faith legacy and the moral order.

Note also that this pattern is religious and spiritual, not secular, atheistic or materialistic. The participants clearly believe in the sacred: priestly blessing, sacrament, our Blessed Mother, and so forth. The Catholic sacramental or sacrament is reconfigured to sanctify the sexual disorder. This recalls the pagan fertility cults of the ancient world, antagonists of Israel, in which priestesses and temple prostitutes mimicked the sexual intercourse of the fertility gods. The underlying demonic paradigm is striking: priestesses, abortion as sacrifice of the innocent, and sanctification of unchastity along with a nature mysticism which denies creation as the work of a transcendent Creator.

"Gay" as Anti-Modesty

The homosexual inclination, for the Catholic, is a cross, an affliction to be suffered graciously, generously, chastely and fruitfully. It becomes a charism, a blessing carrying many gifts. It resembles other vocations involving sacrifice: consecrated, hermit, martyr. This is a hard word. He never said it would be easy. It is the Catholic way: always was and always will be. 

In an alternate direction, the attraction, under the weight of concupiscence, can be accompanied by other psychological afflictions and take on a compulsivity that can express in a hidden, double life of promiscuity. That brings all the toxicities of shame and secrecy but does respect the modesty of sexuality and implicitly the moral order. 

A third group choses homosexual engagement but in a quiet, modest fashion: perhaps faithful to a single partner; abstaining from the moral crusade against Christian tradition. There abides a peace: Live and let live!

By contrast, "gay" as identity, culture and religion is an aggressive elaboration of indulgence, alleged victimization, and narcissism. The flamboyance, histrionics, militancy and melodrama camouflage an inner void and sadness, a desperation for approval. It combats shame, both the toxic social form as homophobia as well as the wholesome form as modesty, through a public shamelessness, a posture of defiant anti-modesty on display in parade and pride month.

"Gay affirmation" (as in LGTBQ groups in Catholic schools) is well-intended as compassion for the deep suffering, but it is misguided and sentimental as it deepens and aggravates the core affliction. It is enablement and encouragement in sin and error; it is untrue and unjust and therefore unloving.

Praying for the Enemy

Our Lord directs us to love the enemy. The greatest enemies of the Church today are those within. We do well to invoke God's mercy for Jean Vanier; and ask for the graces of conversion for McCarrick, Rupnik, Martin, Biden, and many in positions of power in our Church and society.

Conclusion

Modesty is a challenge for all of us today. Each of us suffers a specific concupiscence of the flesh. All of us are surrounded by a pornographic world, obsessed with sex. The devil is in the midst of it all. It requires strength of will, calming of the passions, and clarity of the intellect. The clouding of the conscience, evident in the above cases, is one of the great triumphs of the Deceiver in our Church today. But with the help of the Holy Spirit and our mutual encouragement, we can see clearly and become modest, chaste, pure.

Modesty is purity of the gaze. It requires, as it enhances clarity of vision and intellect. It is graciousness and dignity in speech. It is elegance and taste in dress. It is inner serenity. It is contemplation of the other as good, true, beautiful. It is femininity and masculinity as generosity.

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

Fleckinstein Surrenders: in Campaign Waged Against the Permanent Diaconate (3rd of 3)

In his wise, gentle, erudite manner, my priest-theologian-scientist-nephew brought me to see that Mother Church may have known what she was doing in reviving the married, permanent diaconate.

Most essentially: while the ecclesial duties performed by the deacon (weddings, funerals, communion services, preaching, etc.),so  important given the scarcity of priests, could technically be performed by an authorized lay person, it is undeniable that holy orders brings an additional grace, power, authority. I have experienced this personally: there are deacons involved in our hospital and prison ministries and clearly they bring such authority and grace. (Am I perhaps spiritually jealous of them? Probably.)

Additionally, it is noted that the threefold structure of the hierarchy, while not explicit in the gospels and ministry of Jesus, is clear in the New Testament and from the earliest days of the Church. It has been continually extant in the Eastern Churches. And so, while it is not an essential pillar of Church structure, it can be seen as normative in contrast to its absence in the Tridentine Church of my childhood.

My young mentor pointed out to me that the Catholic three-part view of the states of life (lay, ordained and consecrated) while essential, must be treated fluidly. It is not a pie with three distinct pieces cut off from each other. There is considerable interflow between them.

My fundamental problem with the permanent diaconate was that I could not see the  form of it. The answer I was given: it is a third partner in the hierarchy, with bishops and priests, in the threefold task to sanctify, teach and govern (priest/prophet/king) as defined by the concrete, historical circumstances. This is a satisfactory answer. The form is vague and undefined, of its nature. It takes shape pragmatically, fluidly. So, in the early centuries every bishop was surrounded by seven deacons who assisted in governance; they were sacramentally inferior to priests but wielded considerable authority and influence. One controversy was that they received communion, for a period, before the priests. By contrast, today they function mostly in their specific parishes, with little contact with the bishop.

There is a "type" to the current deacon. He is ordained usually between the ages of 45-60.  Good husband and father, successful career, financially stable, exemplary work ethic, solid practicing Catholic. He is pious in a standard, normal Catholic way: love for Eucharist, Mary, prayer, deference to the Church including priests, oriented to service. One might say he is a "Catholic Normie" in the best sense. His homilies are reliably orthodox, practical, personal, encouraging if not erudite or inspiring. 

Likewise, his services are parochial: standard parish-sacramental stuff...mundane, ordinary, without glamour or prestige. He performs the specified rites for baptism, burial, weddings, blessings of sacramentals, devotionals and such. It is a modest, humble ministry.

If we consider the institutional/charismatic binary within Church life, he is entirely institutional. This is not to say he lacks charism or the presence of the Holy Spirit. On the contrary, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit as well as his specific spiritual gifts enrich his ministry. But his fundamental mission does not depend upon such personal endowments as he serves the objective, institutional, sacramental, efficacious work of the Church: he might be in a state of mortal sin but the wedding, baptism, blessing are entirely valid and effective.

In this anonymity, modesty, humility and practicality the diaconate contrasts with the variety of lay elites, at once cooperative and competitive with the hierarchy, who have surged in the Church since the Council. Noteworthy especially are the powerful ministries (evangelist, catechist, responsible, healer, etc.) within the lay renewal movements. Consider also the laity entrusted with EWTN (and National Catholic Register) by Mother Angelica as she shrewdly avoided control by both bishops and Vatican. Lay theologians are powerful forces of influence on both sides of the culture war. In the papacy of John Paul and Benedict, the bulk of academic theology and journals (Commonweal, NCR, etc.) were a contradictory "magisterium." By contrast, the pontificate of Francis has been contravailed not so much from the clergy and episcopacy, but by lay elites associated with Communio, First Things, Crisis, The Catholic Thing, and others.

I confess: in my prayers for pope, bishops, priest, I have entirely ignored deacons. That is stopping today. I will now include them in my prayer. I further confess personal weaknesses that have fed into my antipathy to married deacons, even in addition to the jealousy noted above. From my childhood as an altar boy I have had reverence for the liturgy but also discomfort with the ritual and formality. Very strongly I want to be in the pew, invisible,  and so I have an aesthetic aversion to the deacon on the altar. More seriously, I have always lacked a reverence for the normality, indeed monotony of parochial sacramental life. I strongly prefer "Catholic Weird": mystics, missionaries, martyrs, hermits, apparitions, miraculous healings, exorcisms, Catholic Worker anarchists, eccentrics, praying in tongues, holy laughter, levitation, friars, prophets, geniuses, holy fools, recovering addicts, those who combine holiness with emotional illness. Slowly, my appreciation is growing for the Eucharistic Christ: quiet, small, round, white, anonymous, humble, ordinary.

Happily, the energy saved by surrender in this battle is now available for other, more worthy causes. These include, among others: suppression of "Synodality," abolition of clapping in Church, prohibition of bermuda shorts and tee shirts at Sunday Eucharist, eventual recovery from the convoluted and dysfunctional papacy of Francis, retrieval of the legacy of John Paul/Benedict/Balthasar, and revival of a virile Catholicism as honorable, chivalrous, humble, courageous, sober, prudent, serene, chaste, loyal, and magnanimous. 

Further Thoughts on the Permanent Diaconate (2nd of 3)

Fleckinstein is reminded that the sacramental nature of ordination to the permanent diaconate is clear in Vatican II, the Catechism, and post-conciliar teaching.  Additionally, the threefold nature of Holy Orders is pervasive in the earliest Church writings.  Nevertheless, it is not evident that this practice/teaching is irreformable and non-discussable. It is not like the masculinity of the priesthood which is not an option; but similar to the married priesthood which clearly is.

 Consider:

1. We do not find deacons in the earthly work of Christ. We see institution of the priesthood at the Last Supper; His entire public ministry centered on formation of the 12 apostles, antecedents of our bishops. We don't see deacons, nor sub-deacons, cardinals, vicars, acolytes, monsignors or lectors: these are all dispensable, inessential to the FORM of the Church.

2. The deaconate was instituted as a prudential response to a practical problem. If the Jews and Gentiles didn't fight about food we would not have it. This is not a profound origin.

3. The history of this institution is confused and inconsistent, deficient in practical stability as well as intellectual coherence. For about 1,000 years (late Middle Ages and the entire Tridentine era, including the Church in which I was born and raised) we have lived without it. We didn't miss it. It is hardly an essential foundation of the Church. It seems to have been different things at different times. In the first few centuries, the deacons were close collaborators with the bishop. Priests, superior sacramentally, at times envied their power. Through several centuries, more deacons became pope than priests. Today our deacons are hardly known to their bishops as they serve locally in the parish. So it was different things in Acts, in the patristic era, and today; and it was nothing in between those eras for a millennium.

4. This incoherence clouds the deaconess debate, which does not go away. The word was applied to women, in the early Church, but apparently it was a distinct status with different functions. The underlying cause of this confusion is the failure of feminist theology to see the spousal, which is to say masculine, nature of orders. The married diaconate does not help to bring clarity, but confusion.

5. With the concept of "FORM" we get to the heart of the argument: I do not see the form of the deaconate. I do not see a coherent, substantial, abiding reality. Great emphasis at the time of the Council was on the idea of service: this was offensive as all baptized/confirmed Catholics are called to this. They assist in the Eucharist but are incidental rather than essential. Nothing is really missing if our deacon is not at Sunday mass. There is no "there" there.

6. Worse than that however is that the institution is a confusion of the Spousal or Nuptial form of the Church as well as the three specific states of life that inform it. Christ is the Bridegroom who loves his Bride, the Church. All vocations and states reflect that. Marriage is the fundamental analogy. By Holy Orders the bishop and priest (but the deacon???) image Christ the Groom. Consecrated (which is not sacramental) life is a spousal (exclusive, intimate, final, fruitful) communion with Christ the spouse. Church life is a marvelous symphony in which these three interact. The married diaconate is a confusion to the Catholic gestalt. A similar confusion hovers over the strange married-monks of musician John Michael Talbot. In a different way, the Memores Domini ("Rememberers of the Lord") of the Communion and Liberation movement insist on their "lay" nature in contrast with anything cloistered or removed from the secular world and so they avoid language of "consecration" and "vows" but their inner form clearly is that of what we have always called the consecrated life. 

7. Lastly, Vatican Council and the surge of lay renewal movements  show that the Holy Spirit is moving to empower lay ministries (evangelist, healer, catechist, responsible, etc.). These participate in the interior, worship life of the Church but then explode outward to engage the darkness in the world.  We do not want to enlarge the clergy with a new, third level. Rather, we do well to accept a reduced but purified and deepened priesthood with a more defined, specific mission, free of the management of a mega-bureaucracy. 

Perhaps I am wrong in this argument. I have not heard it made by anyone else. Another Fleckinstein eccentricity? Can someone help me to see THE FORM of the married, permanent diaconate?

Let's Downgrade the Diaconate! Let's Upgrade Confirmation! (1st of 3)

Proposal:  Detach the diaconate from Holy Orders and refigure it as a specific ministry...comparable to catechist, spiritual director, administrator, evangelist, servant of the poor, minster of the Eucharist, youth minister, hospital or jail chaplain, etc...which entails a temporary commitment (2 or 5 or 10 years?), includes women, and for which one is qualified by confirmation. This will:

1. Clarify the spousal nature of holy orders as representative of Christ the Bridegroom of the Church which requires masculinity and ordinarily celibacy. And clarify the lay vocation.

2. Affirm the equality of men and women in lay ministries.

3. Highlight our lay empowerment in confirmation by the Holy Spirit and the range of marvelous ministries which we exercise.

Sitting this morning in Sunday mass I was distracted by a line of thought: I really like our parish deacons. They are strong, good, humble Catholic men. They do a lot of good things. They are more present and visual in our parish life than the priests. But I continue to be annoyed by the diaconate as a clerical status of "glorified altar boys and quasi-priests." These guys are lay, not clerical. They are like me. They are husbands and fathers with professions who live out their lay vocation including participation in worship, prayer, and reception of the Word of God. 

There is nothing that a deacon does that a layman, baptized-confirmed-living-a-vibrant- sacramental- life, cannot be certified by the Church to do: witness weddings, preach at mass, do baptisms, preside at communion services, pray at wake and grave services. These actions do not require the spiritual seal given in holy orders. These can be performed by virtue of baptism and confirmation.

About 60 years ago Ivan Illich argued in a controversial  article, The Vanishing Clergyman, that an inflated, institutional Catholicism would benefit from diminishment to a disestablished,  poor Church of small communities presided over by part-time, temporary, non-clerical priests, who would be ordained for a period of time. As with so much of Illich, this piece is at once piercingly insightful but off-center and exaggerated. In the age of McCarrick we see that the malignant, clerical bureaucracy is a hindrance to the work of the Church. Illich had a deep Catholic reverence for the Eucharist, but his theology of Holy Orders here is erroneous. Orders, along with baptism and confirmation, infuses the soul of the recipient with a permanent, indelible, spiritual seal...one that can never be removed. He himself realized this, I am sure, as he voluntarily requested laicization but remained faithful to his vows to celibacy and the daily prayer of the Church. His argument is, however, pertinent to the clerical status of the deacon. The mission/identity of the deacon does not require this third seal, after baptism and confirmation. He is ordinarily married, with wife and children. The sacrament of marriage is his specific vocation. Whatever services he renders community or Church are entirely subordinate to his spousal union and responsibility to family. 

This lower, third-level of ordination is a distraction, a gray area, that obscures the fundamental Catholic distinctions between lay/ordained/vowed. We learn clearly from Balthasar that in Catholic life the surrender to Christ seeks specific expression in three distinct paths: lay life and marriage, ordination to become an image of the Bridegroom, and consecrated poverty-chastity-obedience. The later two are easily combined in the life of religious priests. But the "lay" permanent diaconate is not such a happy combination, but a confusion.

Recall the origin of the diaconate in Acts: the apostles did not want to be distracted from their work of prayer, worship and sharing of the Word of God and so they designated seven worthy men to overlook the distribution of food and eliminate the fighting between gentiles and Jews. This diaconal work was practical, lay, quite distinct from the specifically ecclesial life of study and worship. The work of the deacon, (like that of catechist, minister of the Eucharist, spiritual director and others), participates in the liturgical and scriptural flow of life but it is distinct from and dependent upon the primary priestly ministry of priest and bishop. Priesthood, by virtue of Orders, is a permanent-ontological-indelible change in the soul. The priest is configured to Christ in a most profound, comprehensive manner. This never changes...whatever his activities, canonical status, competence.

The layman, configured to Christ in baptism/confirmation, does not enjoy the specific "spousal" configuration to Christ in Orders (or, in a different manner, in consecration) but expresses a mystical communion in a universe of marvelous engagements: marriage/family, politics, culture, community life, etc. 

And so, we see that disengagement of the diaconate from Orders will enrich our understanding of these vocations of lay life (including marriage and engagement with the secular world), priestly configuration to Christ, and consecration in poverty-chastity-obedience. 

, 

R.I.P. Xavier Rynne (a.k.a. Fr. Francis Xavier Murphy)...and the Silent Generation of Moderate, Liberal, Vatican II Priests

The Mole of Vatican Council II: The True Story of "Xavier Rynne" by Richard Zmuda (recently published by my college roommate Greg Pierce and his ACTA publishing company) is a lightly fictionalized account of Redemptorist theologian Francis Xavier Murphy who, writing in the New Yorker under the pseudonym "Xavier Rynne," chronicled the backroom machinations of The Council, especially the theological combat between conservatives and liberals. His progressive story of liberation from a repressive, reactionary elite was, of course, celebrated by the secular media. Perhaps more than any other writer, Murphy created the narrative of that historic event as a triumph of the "good guys" (led by John XXIII) over the bad guys (Cardinal Ottaviani). It is an engaging read, especially for those of us who lived through those years and recall the exhilaration, the fascination with the mysterious "Rynne," and the pleasure of rooting against Ottaviani and his scoundrels. 

Gifted, intelligent, charming, full-of-life Murphy, from the Bronx, was a genius of an "intelligence officer" using his connections and friendships in the Vatican to uncover what was happening in real time 1962-5. As a "peritus" (expert) at the Council, he had taken a vow to keep secrecy about the happenings. But he broke that vow, morally compelled to do his part to defeat the pernicious forces of reaction. 

He captivated me as he is iconic of his own, the "Great" generation of priests; but even more of those who followed him,  the Silent Generation. This group was coming out of the Depression and WWII; came of age in the peaceful, prosperous, Catholic-friendly post-war order. Typically, they were young priests at the time of the Council. They had imbibed the optimistic, liberal American values of their childhood which were entirely validated by the Council. They were ecstatic about the Council. These priests are now in their 80s and 90s and leaving us. They are a remarkable cohort; dear to me. I have known so many as friends...Jesuits, Maryknollers, and priests of Newark. Theirs is a distinctive spirit. It does not survive them. But first a fresh look at the place of Vatican II in history.

Continuity or Rupture: Two Models of the Council, Rynne or Guarino?

"Rynne" clearly, persuasively presented the accepted (by secular media and everyone else) plot line of the Council: triumph of progressives over the (deplorable) Ottaviani and his college of cardinals. This is no doubt what happened. This underlies the later narrative of the Council as a rupture, a discontinuity between the old and the new. The alternative view, of development within continuity, informed the entire, authoritative magisterium of John Paul and Benedict. 

More recently this later hermeneutic of the Council has been given more depth and clarity by (my friend) Monsignor Tom Guarino of Seton Hall. He develops the surprising view of Congar that the philosophy of St. Thomas quietly and covertly informed the theology of the Council. This comes as a shock as the documents avoided the language of scholasticism and Thomism in favor of a vernacular more friendly to dialogue. So, while the restrictive, deadening manualist theology was displaced, there remained underneath a solid, traditional if unarticulated foundation. The Council always had two goals: aggiornamento, an opening to the modern world, which takes central place in the Rynne story; but also resourcement, a return to the sources, the doctors and fathers, not excluding Thomas himself. Some years ago (was it R. Reno?) pointed out that the bishops and theologians at the Council, overwhelming affirmative of the progressive schemas, were all thoroughly formed by the Tradition, the legacy of St. Thomas. And so the developments...religious freedom, Jews, Revelation, ecumenism, liturgy, etc...were deeply coherent with that underlying Tradition. And so, the actual documents (as distinct from the imagined "Spirit of Vatican II") were not deviations, but authentic, organic developments of the Council, in accord with the thought of St. Vincent of Lerins and St. John Cardinal Newman. Guarino sees that the Thomistic concepts of "participation" and "analogy" inform all the major developments of the Council.

In this light we see the Council not so much as displacement of the old by the new, but rather as the retrieval of a deeper tradition: the famous "spoils of Egypt" whereby the Church gathers from the gentiles all that is good, true and beautiful, as did the Israelites in flight into the desert. As Augustine drew from Plato and Thomas from Aristotle, so the contemporary Church was adopting a receptivity to all that is good in modernity. So, Guarino sees that rather than renouncing Protestants as heretics, non-Christians as heathens, and Jews as "God-killers," the Council used the rich concept of analogy to see that these groups share is distinct ways, "similarity within dissimilarity," in the truth-goodness-beauty that finds full expression in the Catholic Church of Christ. There is an openness to what is worthwhile in other traditions, which is in balance/tension with the urgency to share the incomparable richness of our Catholic legacy.

All of this is, of course, not to detract from the engaging fiction (based on history) of Mole in Vatican II. But rather to clarify that accepting the simple, reactionary/progressive binary as a thorough, balanced account of the Event would be a mistake.

Communio Theology (Tracey Rowlands, David Schindler, Ratzinger, etc.)  on the Council and Culture

Guarino echoes the positivity of the Council, (and that of the moderate-liberal-Vatican-II-priest), in his serene confidence in an underlying philosophical continuity and substantiality that is yet organic, creative, and fruitful. Combine this with the Christ-centered emphasis of the dual papacy and you have the heart and soul of the Council. But that is still not the whole picture. With his sympathy for the post-modern sensibility, Guarino would agree that the schemas, authoritative and inspired by the Holy Spirit, are yet human statements, limited, finite, positional in time and space. So we ask: What is the weakness of the Council? For one, it did not really engage Communism, our primary global antagonist at that time as well as today. Secondly, it strangely failed to engage the singular Catholic theological genius of the century, Hans Urs von Balthasar, who was left to pursue his own work which expresses the best of the Council and corrects the weakness.  But most important, it's optimistic attitude to culture blinded it to the dark forces that were at that very moment starting to overwhelm the Church.

Famously, John XXIII renounced the "prophets of doom" (Ottaviani and crew) at the start of the Council. Looking back 60 years later, at the collapse of the Church as we knew it, we must grant that the optimism of the progressives of that time was not fully realistic. Ottaviani's dread, his sense of impending disaster, was indeed prescient.  Western culture was turning dark, even demonic, at the very moment that the Church was opening its arms in a trusting, credulous embrace. 

Tracey Rowlands has been especially helpful in showing the inadequate theology of culture which left us vulnerable to the assaults of the Cultural Revolution. She looks for realism to the mature thought of John Paul, Benedict, David Schindler, Alistair McIntyre, Milibank and the Radical Orthodox movement, Charles Taylor, Romano Guardino, Christopher and Dawson. These share a deep, clear sense of the hostility of culture, "the world" in biblical terms, to the gospel. Such realism was not explicit in the Council and entirely absent from the euphoria that followed and that carried an entire generation of priests for almost 60 years.

Recalling the typology of Richard Niebuhr on Christ and Culture, we might say that the Council had a strong sense of Christ in culture, but an inadequate grasp of Christ against culture. John Paul and Benedict were more balanced and realistic.

A Different Perspective on Vatican II

Zmuda repeats exactly the narrative we all ingested in the 1960s from Rynne and others: the revolution of enlightened, progressive forces against a powerful, entrenched, reactionary college of cardinals. It becomes expanded however into the conviction that the "old church" was overcome by "the new church." We got this from the secular media (particular Rynne's pieces in The New Yorker) and liberal Catholic journals like National Catholic Reporter, America, and Commonweal.

I propose an alternate, revisionist understanding: This event was not the start of something new so much as a culmination, a finalization of the Church that had been developing in the previous decades, especially since 1945, the end of the war. The reality is that the initial schemas of Ottaviani and his crew were overwhelmingly renounced by huge majorities at the very first session and throughout all four years. All documents were accepted by huge majorities, almost unanimously. From the start, Ottaviani was vastly outgunned. He never had a chance. With or without the clever, whistleblowing Mole, the reactionaries were doomed from the start. John XXIII had a sense of this from the beginning.

The Council was exuberantly, almost universally welcomed by the Church: not because it overthrew a repressive order, but because it affirmed and celebrated the very values we had been living for years. A range of flourishing movements flowed into the Council: liturgical, ecumenical, biblical, activist, and so forth. I recall my childhood in the 1950s: we swam and played handball in the Protestant YMCA and YWCA. My father with other Catholics worked closely in the labor movement with secular Jews. I myself was drawn to become a Maryknoll missioner...not to save pagan babies, but to address the physical suffering about which I learned. Yes, we had the mass in Latin, learned about limbo, ate fish on Friday, and didn't go into Protestant churches. But those were more like endearing eccentricities. The encompassing culture, in the Catholic ethnic (now dissolving) ghetto was one of ecumenism, openness, cooperation, optimism, and national unity against Soviet Communism. The young priests in parishes in 1960 had already been reading Rahner, Kung, DeLubac and company not to mention Protestant scripture scholars. Bishop Sheen, Thomas Merton, "Father Bing Crosby" and the Kennedys were national celebrities, across religious boundaries. And so, we see that the Council (1962-5) marked the high point, the climax and culmination of the post-war Catholic American Camelot. It is the end point of a very clear and distinct chapter in the history of American Catholicism. What followed is not so clear.

The New World in the West: Culture Revolution

If 1965 marked the definitive maturation and termination of a specific Catholic world, rather than the emergence of a novel one, it also marked the emergence, beyond the Church, of a New World...a real revolution, a liberation from sexual restraint, bonds of local and historical community, the natural law, authority, tradition and God. Sexual, cultural progressivism! Like the Council, this New World did not come out of nowhere, but exploded from a convergence of multiple streams: affluence, power, unrestrained technology, individualism, contraception, radical feminism, the triumph of the therapeutic, and the arrival of the indulged-entitled-narcissistic Boomer Generation. If our parents were tested and purified in the fires of Depression poverty and a world war, we were spoiled by comfort, safety, indulgence.

Cultural liberalism attacked the very heart and soul of Catholicism: authority and conscience, chastity, spousal meaning of sexuality, the family, community, reverence for Tradition, trust in and obedience to God. Neither the Greatest nor the Silent Generation were prepared for this. Neither generation even recognized it. 

The Happy, Moderate, Liberal, Vatican II Priest

The Silent Generation of priests who came of age in the prosperous, thriving 1950's Church were confident, optimistic, open-minded, inquisitive, ecumenical, energetic and concerned for the poor. About the Council they were simply ecstatic! Happiness is....being an American Catholic priest in 1962.

An hour ago I spoke with a Monsignor friend of mine, now a healthy 90 year old. I mentioned "Xavier Rynne" and he almost jumped for joy. He remembers that in the early 60s he would meet with a group of up to 30 fellow priests to discuss those letters about what was going on in the Vatican. You could feel his energy and joy. He mentioned names of priests, recently deceased, who were well respected for their theology and leadership. He emphasized the "energy" of the time. He wondered about the younger clergy who don't seem to share this enthusiasm. 

This happy, expansive, moderate, grounded priest is...I suggest...the default, normal, standard priest in the years after the Council. He retains a sense of tradition, sacrament and authority but in the euphoria of those exciting years. He is confident, expansive, generous, open-minded. Eager to serve the poor. Enthusiastically ecumenical. Interested in the social sciences, history, culture.

The problem: he never noticed the Cultural Revolution. If Ottaviani remained stuck in 1962, our Vatican II priest remains stuck in 1965. He detaches, remains neutral in the Culture War. You will not hear from him a sermon on contraception, woman priests, homosexuality...not for it and not against it. He remains in the conservative/progressive binary articulated by Rynne and so detaches from the actual world that exploded on us in the years immediately after 1965.

And so, he is not a huge fan of John Paul/Benedict. Father Francis Murphy in later years was asked about Pope John Paul and responded that he is a conservative pope in control of a conservative college of cardinals, but he does reach out, and so it is hard to make sense of him. John Paul does not fit his paradigm: he has the foul odor of Ottaviani about him. The Cardinal of Krakow was arguably the most vigorous bishop in the world in immediately implementing the Council in which he distinguished himself as the youngest, most gifted prelate. Likewise, Joseph Ratzinger was recognized by his older periti as the brilliant, young mind of the group. But in the troubled world of 1968 in which both men recognized the attack on our faith from cultural liberalism they were not seen for what they were, but only within the limiting "Rynnian" categories.

Pope Francis is an example of this Vatican II, silent generation priest. He obsessively rants against clergy that are dogmatic, rigid, condemnatory. We all wonder: who is he talking about? I will tell you who he hates so: Cardinal Ottaviani, at least as portrayed by Rynne and other detractors. The Ghost of Ottaviani haunts Francis and his generation of priests. That specter hovers behind every Latin mass, every Evangelical-Catholic alliance against legal abortion, every Philippine rosary group counting Hail Mary's, everything clerical and canonical.

This avoidance of the Cultural War has been, however, in many ways an adaptive, wholesome coping mechanism. These priests have remained, through all the chaos, change and depletion of Church life, energized, hopeful and positive. They have maintained the unity of the Church. They have retained the loyalty of many who have moved away from Catholic practice: think of the young people who cohabitate, contracept but then come to the rectory, in due time, for a sacramental wedding. They are men of the Church who have served with generosity and sacrifice.

Four Responses to Vatican II

Looking back now after almost 60 years, I would replace the limiting reactionary/progressive binary articulated by Rynne and widely accepted with a nuanced "quadnary" of: traditional, progressive, organic conservative, and moderate Vatican II.

Traditional stands with Ottaviani in rejecting the Council. This was a small cohort at first but has greatly increased, especially with young families, as the darkness of Cultural Liberalism is highlighting the appeal of tradition. This views the Council as a rupture with the past, and a loss of cherished legacy. Sometimes it blames the Council for the decline of the Church that followed. My own view is that that decline was not caused by, but was coincident with the Vatican reforms. Thought experiment: imagine that Ottaviani had prevailed. What would have followed? Nothing good! Possibly a schism. Surely an even greater abandonment of the Church into other denominations or pure secularism.

Progressive agrees that the event was a rupture, discontinuous with the past. It moves well beyond the texts of the Council, in a so-called "Spirit of Vatican II,"  to embrace the premises of the Sexual Revolution: contraception, woman priests, homosexuality, etc. Kung and Schillibeeckx are representative of this theological approach.

Organic conservative is the authoritative teaching of John Paul/Benedict which accepts the Council as inspired by the Holy Spirit and understands it with an Evangelical focus on the person of Jesus Christ, in continuity with Tradition, including a return to the sources, and a nuanced-positive-yet-critical philosophical engagement with modernity. Aligned with this dual pontificate as a secondary hermeneutical key to understanding the Council are the lay renewal movements which surged in the Church during or after that event in the 1960s. These moves of the Holy Spirit (notably the Charismatic Renewal, Neocatechumental Way and Communion and Liberation) coincided with the explosion of the Cultural Revolution and the implosion of the religious orders and the entire Catholic (1945-65) order.

Vatican II Moderate Liberalism is a positive celebration of the Council and all the post-war values it articulates, avoidance of Culture War, accommodation to bourgeois modernity. Clinging to the classic model of Rynne, it tends to conflate John Paul with Ottaviani. Rahner and Lonergan may be the best theological expressions of this school. It is a softer progressivism that retains a footing in tradition and ignores the radical challenges of the cultural revolution.

Conclusion

A sadness hangs over this generation of priests as they decline and pass: the younger clergy do not carry forward their legacy. Facing the darkness of Cultural Liberalism, a reality of which the older priests seem to be blissfully unaware, young priests are reactive and retrieve a more counter-cultural, traditional Catholicism. There exists a sad disconnect between young and old priests. This is not a failure of charity. It is a culture gap. They live in two different worlds. The one in the post-war, Vatican II Camelot of 1965; the other in the post-1968 dystopia.

As a boomer, coming of age in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, I am a Catholic Culture Warrior. Yet I have immense admiration, affection, and gratitude for this entire generation of priests, now in decline, who have loved and served our Church so competently, energetically, enthusiastically. May our younger clergy and all of us look to them, emulate them, receive-cherish-protect-share the rich legacy they leave us. Even as we engage an ever-darkening world and lean more strenuously into Christ and our legacy of faith.

The Gender Divide in a Catholic, Boomer Family

 Strong differences on politics and religions are common among families in our time and place; what is striking about our family is the clear gender divide.

Three brothers are all strong conservatives, politically and religiously, very close to each other in attitudes. Six sisters are more liberal, although there is a range of viewpoints. The oldest is sort of a bridge: married to a moderate Republican, she is strong in her Catholic beliefs but leans liberal in some ways. The next two have detached from much Catholic practice as they lean strongly into cultural progressivism. The youngest three maintain the parental legacy in its dual loyalties: to the Church and to liberal politics.

The world in which we were raised...the Camelot of Catholic, working class, ethnic liberalism in 1945-65...was entirely different from the one in which we came of age, post-1965, in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. My thesis: the brothers reacted in masculine, conservative, mode to this reality; the sister in feminine, liberal, mode.

Our father and mother, Ray and Jeanne, socially presented in a quiet, shy, gentle manner. But they were flamingly passionate and profound in their romance, faith, politics, love for family, masculinity and femininity; they were typical of The Great Generation. The nine of us inherited this calm intensity, but developed it in contrasting directions in a world in drastic change. Ray and Jeanne maintained their allegiance to Catholicism and political liberalism to their last days, even in the post-1965 world in which the two became competitive if not contradictory.

Consider two realities:

1, The feminine psyche-heart-intellect-soul is more compassionate, inclusive, affirmative, reconciliatory, concrete, and interpersonal. The masculine is more abstract, combative, traditional and deferential to authority. 

So the brothers reacted fiercely against cultural liberalism of the 1960s as a threat to our faith; they renounced the new Democratic Party as a betrayal of Catholic values. The sisters remained loyal to that party; two accepted progressive premises; the other four in some degree detached from this culture war in favor of keeping peace and extending welcome/affirmation to those now portrayed as victims of oppressive systems.

2. The male itinerary of maturation involves two radical breaks: around 2 years old there is the Oedipal rupture from enclosure within the mother and transition to bonding with the father (or surrogate). Later, in adolescence, the boy now breaks with the father, if in a gentle fashion, to become his own man and capable of fathering his own family. Even at the moment of birth, the mother looks upon her son and already sees alterity, otherness, "he is not like me." By contrast, the female, in moving towards maturity and autonomy, is spared these two violent ruptures. She maintains (in optimal circumstances) an uninterrupted communion with her mother. "A boy is your son until he finds a wife; a girl is your daughter until the end of her life." Likewise, the adolescent girl maintains a filial union with her father and has no need to strike out and become independent. 

And so, most of the sisters maintained the Catholic/liberal synthesis of our parents. To this day they all live within half hour drive of each other and are very close. Two of the six did detach from Catholic roots in favor of the new post-1965 values, especially around femininity and unborn life. The three brothers intensified Catholic values and switched political allegiance from liberalism to conservatism.

Our mother and father, along with their generation, coming of age in the Depression, veterans of WWII, participant in the Cold War, prosperous and thriving in the post-War years saw eye-to-eye on religion and politics. There was no gender gap. The feminist narrative of oppressed women, trapped in the kitchen, having too many children, and eager for the joys of a professional career was not the reality of my childhood world. Our mother and father were models of mutual reverence, tenderness and delight. There were fights; but no dominance, disrespect, or abiding resentment. There was nothing in this marriage that would explain the gender divide later between the sons and daughters.

We brothers quite self-consciously emulated our father and uncles in classic Catholic values around virility and paternity  ("patriarchy" in the positive sense of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and "faith of our fathers") even as we expressed this in a different political allegiance.  Our sisters were in varying degrees accepting or tolerant, in a soft mode, of the feminism prevalent in our youth. This was in no way a hatred of men: they love their husbands, sons and even (lol) their brothers. Rather, there is a pronounced preference for masculinity in a gentle, humble mode, as exemplified in our father. And so: a suspicion of masculinity in stronger, harder form: man as soldier, policeman, businessman, evangelist, and Republican. Along with this came a tolerance for the new Democratic Party with its alleged defense of women's "reproductive rights" against the government now viewed as male in a toxic sense.

Our mother, clearly the defining influence on our sisters, shared with them her faith, strong femininity, and love for men. But there were wounds. These were not discussed. Typical of her generation but even more pronouncedly, she dealt with suffering in accord with a song she often sang us:  "You've got to...accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, don't mess with Mr. Inbetween;  She dearly loved her father but lost him in early adolescence to mental illness during the Depression when he lost his job. She dearly loved her brother who returned that love but in accord with his eccentric and not always sensitive personality. In early adulthood, when she was ready for marriage, her entire generation left for WWII: another masculine abandonment. She worked in NYC: a beautiful, sensitive, shy young woman she became the object of unwanted attention from men. At this very time her sister married and was betrayed by her husband. All of this occurred in early adulthood, a delicate period. And so we can imagine that, notwithstanding her happy marriage, she carried wounds from men. And so, the soft feminism shared in various degrees by her daughters starts to make sense.

A cynical view of the brother's conservatism would see that their affluence has moved them into the Republican party of the rich, powerful and greedy. This would be unfair. They do show concern for the needy. Their average net worth is probably only slightly higher than that of our sisters. But more problematic is the assumption that the DNC remains the party of the poor and working class. They continue to advocate for unions, more progressive economics (higher capital gains and minimum wage), and regulation. However, the RNC of Trump is largely the rage of the underclass, the working poor, against the cultural arrogance, power and affluence of the secular elite and the comfortable, professional classes. In that sense, both sisters and brothers see themselves populists, righteously on the side of the underclass.

The brothers have moved somewhat to the right of our New Deal parents in economics: more suspicion of the big state, more positive about business and markets, as well as a stronger sense of subsidiarity. But for us the defining reality of our time is the attack on our Catholic way of life from Cultural Progressivism. On this, the views of our sisters range from acceptance, to accommodation, to tolerance, to avoidance...out of a womanly inclination to conciliation/affirmation and an aversion to cultural combat. 

Happily, this divide in our new post-1965 world is not as deep as our shared love, respect, care and Catholic values. We have learned to avoid political and polarizing topics as we agree in far more than we disagree. It is because our love for each other is so deep and intense that this divide is so painful.