Let's Bring Back Retribution

Retribution, etymologically, means "to assign back." Retribution for a business man would be to receive from his debtors and give to his creditors, thus restoring order. It refers to the just bestowal of reward and punishment, as by God in the afterlife. It is mistaken for vengeance. 

St. Thomas distinguished the two aims of punishment: to restrain or prevent violation and to restore order. The classic four part division is rehabilitation, protection, deterrence and retribution. The last deals with the restoration of order. The following continues a discussion about the disappearance, the "cancelling" of retribution, specifically in debate on capital punishment, including by our four recent popes. 

Consider these comforting, reassuring words:  "Rejoice beloved of my Father, receive the  Joy that has been prepared for you from the beginning of the world: I was innocent and you raped me; I was trusting and you betrayed me; I was fragile and you tortured me. Do not be afraid! My Father knows nothing of retribution, condemnation or wrath. He is only Mercy, Gentleness and Absolutely Unconditional Love for you just as you are."

We know, of course, that in his actual words, Jesus condemns to hell, not genocidal psychopaths, rapists and pedophiles, but those who fail to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, visit the sick.

Hard fact, straight from Revelation, but ignored if not denied: Lucifer and his minions are condemned eternally to hell. Not to rehabilitate them, not to deter future sins, not to protect vulnerable angels. Out of sheer retribution. Wrath. Justice. Righteoussness. Condemnation. Stop, dear Reader, and ponder that for a bit. It is good for the soul. You are unlikely to be advised to do so by your parish priest, or bishop, or pope; much less your therapist or life coach!

On October 7, 2023 Hamas tortured and raped mothers before their children and children before their mothers; they emasculated and disembowled men; they took captives, innocent children and elderly, whom they still hold. The perpetuators deserve the death penalty. As a deterrent? Yes! As protection? Yes! As rehabilitation? Yes, in several ways: that they repent prior to final eternal judgement and for the Palestinian community to seek a new path. As retribution? Absolutely! It is right and just. Like Eichmann and the Nuremburg trials: dignity, presumption of innocence, due process, right to legal representation. If you viscerally resist this, beware! You may have unconsciously succumbed to our pervasive, undiagnosed pandemic of soft, effete, saccharine, sentimental secularity. 

The "R" word has become dirty and cancelled: Retribution.

Retribution: Opposite of Revenge

First of all, it is confounded with revenge; in reality it is its polar opposite. Revenge is a personal VICE of hatred and resentment. Retribution is a different category: it is a judicial decision, by an authority transcendent of the conflict (judge, jury, parent, referee, dean of discipline), who practices the VIRTUE justice by restoring order and balance through punishment and reward. 

Revenge: big brother hits little brother and little brother cracks big brother's head open with a baseball bat. 

Retribution: big brother hits little brother. Father observes. He has feelings of anger, protective of little guy. But he checks himself. Breathes deep, counts to ten. Calls them together in silence, allowing guilt in big guy to arise, hurt and anger of little guy to subside. Speaks calmly, solemnly with both. Explains the nature of bullying: big violates little. Explains blood obligation to protect little brother. Elicits apology. Allows time for little guy to heal. Directs big guy to leave the baseball field and rake leaves for an hour as retribution.

This example is, of course, heavy on fatherly discipline/rehabilitation, as well as deterrence and protection. But the retribution part is distinct and essential. Both parties, subjectively, require it. It allows the culprit to make reparation and then emerge guilt free. Failure of authority to impose negative restitution fosters unconscious infections of guilt and shame. Correct and just retribution allows the victim to heal and bring closure as order is in some way restored, the balance of justice is honored. Retribution fosters forgiveness; cheap mercy feeds into resentment. Retribution is the antidote to both guilt and resentment.

Divine and Human Retribution

Retribution is good: it is just, wrathful against evil, protective of order. In our world, retribution virtually always works in harmony with rehabilitation, deterrence and protection. But it is distinct onto itself. It is its own form. It finds pure expression in the afterlife, in God's judgment against the damned, angelic and human, and judgment for the saved.

Human justice on earth is a reflection of the divine; it includes retribution, but never revenge. All authority on earth is given from above and reflects that of heaven: parental, political, juridical, etc. Genuine mercy is real only in tension with justice, which is restitution, both reward and punishment.

Sentimentality and Sensibility

The retreat from retribution is in part sentimental: a feeling of aversion that flows from about 80 years in the West of comfort, affluence, security, and the triumph of the therapeutic. More deeply, it flows from secularity: indifference to the supernatural realms of God, heaven, Lucifer, hell, sin, damnation. Even where belief in God and heaven is prevalent, as in the USA, the comfort and security of our prosperity make for a forgetting of the supernatural, especially of sin and evil.

The daughter of the deceased mafia boss spoke of her cousin, who had  "ratted" on her father and remained in witness protection :"Dad is in a better place; but I will take care of my cousin as he would have."  Really?

The 9/11 attackers died as martyrs, expecting 100 brown-eyed virgins each as reward. Really?

Three times since being elected, Pope Leo has spoken of Pope Francis looking down upon us from heaven. Really?

Pope Francis assured his agnostic journalist friend that God sends no one to hell. Really?

Such presumption is so pervasive that it is assumed, unrecognized, accepted as normative. I have attended a number of funerals in which the priest homilist canonized the deceased; in some cases their shortcomings were blatant. Sentimentality!  Especially by the best of us. For about a century clergymen have been falling over each other in retreat from the vile, condemnatory priests that tormented Stephen Daedelus in the James Joyce classic "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." The worst thing imaginable for a priest since the 1960s is to hint at anything resembling divine judgement. We have succumbed to a mercy without justice, a compassion without wrath, an emotionalism without intellectual clarity.  

Contrast Bishops Sheen and Barron

Let's contrast Bishop Fulton Sheen with Bishop Robert Barron. They are unequaled as American prelates for their communication skills, erudition, intelligence, charm, orthodoxy and evident holiness of life. They differ in spirituality because of difference in their audiences. Sheen addressed audiences that had suffered the Depression, a world war, the holocaust, a contest with Soviet communism. He was extremely aware of the supernatural aspect of things. My primary1950s childhood memory was of his big joke that the angels erased his chalk boards. The supernatural was close at hand. That included Satan, hell, evil and sin. Bishop Barron is keenly sensitive to his audience: us indulged boomers and our children. He avoids topics like eternal hell or retribution in regard to capital punishment. He favors the theology of Balthasar with his "dare to hope" for the salvation of all.

Balthasar, John Paul, Benedict and Ralph Martin

In his important work, "Will Many Be Saved," Ralph Martin approvingly quotes Balthasar that Scripture contains two strains which must be kept intact and in tension: the triumphant Mercy of God and the human  freedom to defy God and incur his wrath. He faults the Swiss theological genius for collapsing the later into the former. This correction is appropriate.

Balthasar ranks, for me, with John Paul and Benedict, as the bright shining lights of Catholic theology of the last 80 years; as doctors of the Church; as right behind Thomas and Augustine for the depth and breath of their theology. They are flawlessly orthodox, including their doctrine of hell/retribution and maintain the balance much more than did Pope Francis. But I will be bold enough to challenge them on a singular weakness: a relative forgetting of God's retribution. It is not denied; but it is ignored; specifically in regard to capital punishment. A correction is required: Ralph Martin is in this prophetic as well as boldly unfashionable.

Relation to Priest Sex Scandal: Diminished Sense of Evil

A root cause underlying the absolute "inadmissibility" of capital punishment, the canceling of restitution, denial of eternal damnation and the episcopal tolerance of priestly sex abuse is: a diminished awareness of the radicality of evil, sin, Satan, spiritual warfare, and the Kingdom of Darkness. Accompanying Vatican II was an optimism, a positivity, a secular humanism that exulted in the prosperity and achievements of the time...economic, scientific, technological...and looked hopefully to the political and therapeutic. The supernatural, especially the bad part, became the "null curriculum."  The positive part, belief in heaven, remained very strong in the USA. But immediately, in 1965, as the Council ended and the Cultural Revolution exploded, people stopped going to confession, priests and religious left their vocations in large numbers, Harvey Cox's The Secular City became a best seller, and the Church went into a steep decline. The focus of theological training in seminaries became the therapeutic (Freud), the political (Marx), and the techno-scientific (Darwinian evolution.) 

At the first rumblings about the priest-homosexual-scandal bishops were directed by psychologists to pursue therapy, by lawyers to avoid liability, by their instincts to protect the reputation of the Church. Additionally, they had inhaled the naivete, optimism, and humanistic confidence of the time. They could not grasp the gravity, the radicality of the evil: trusted priests violating young men. They no longer believed deeply in evil, sin, Satan and hell.

In our time, what type of man pursues the priesthood and succeeds there? Mostly men who are wholesome, generous, kind, and trusting. Such unconsciously project themselves onto others: they expect others to resemble themselves. William James helpfully contrasted two religious types: once-born and twice-born. The once-born are naturally receptive, grateful, generous and trusting. The twice-born surrender to evil but experience a rebirth into goodness. Such retain an interior familiarity with evil. Examples of once-born: St.Terese of Lisieux, Carlo Acutus, and the childhood saints. Twice-born would include St. Mary Magdalene, St. Augustine and the Stephen-killing zealot Saul of Tarsus. Most of our bishops and vicars are once-born: naturally good.  This temperamental credulity and naivete combined with a progressive, secularized positivity created a perfect storm for episcopal neglect in justly handling abusive, predatory priests. Perhaps no one is as ill prepared to deal with predators, con artists, sociopaths, and compulsives as our priests and bishops!

The avoidance, the denial of radical evil underlies the episcopal malfeasance about sex abuse, the retreat from retribution, and the abolition of the death penalty, as well as other mistakes.

Theology of Mercy: Faustina, John Paul, Francis

The revelation received by St. Faustina, almost 100 years ago, was (in my opinion) the most significant work of the Holy Spirit in the 20th century Catholic Church. Let us contrast the presentation of this mercy in three important figures.

St. Faustina was a classic Catholic mystic: her presentation of Mercy was so intense because it faced two other powerful forces: the evil of sin and the justice/wrath of God. All of our great saints and mystics maintain this tri-polar metaphysics: the evil of sin, the justice of God, and his mercy. This is not the Manichean world (of Star Wars) in which good and evil are eternally in opposition. Rather, God ultimately prevails, in both justice and mercy, but evil remains unvanquished until Christ returns in cloud of glory (in which he left us on Ascension Thursday, today as a matter of fact, NOT Ascension Sunday!) Even into eternity, with the complete victory of God's Mercy and Justice, a residue or remnant of evil abides in the damned souls, angelic and human. How this can be is beyond our imaginations and intellects.

John Paul's magisterial encyclical "Dives in Misericordia" ("Rich in Mercy") 1980, powerfully proclaimed the Mercy of God while tacitly keeping in place truth, justice, wrath, and condemnation of sin. It is an interpretive key to his person, life and mission. 

With Francis we encounter a different reality: mercy becomes absolute, unconditional and thereby cheapened; retribution disappears; along with it the co-primacy of truth, justice, and wrath against evil. We have: blessing of homosexual unions, "who am I to judge?" compromise with the sexual revolution, Pachamama in the Vatican, continuing protection of highly connected clergy predators, the inadmissibility of capital punishment, surrender of the Chinese Church to the communist party,  replacement of the apostolic college by a group dynamic process straight out of the 60s, repression of the ancient rite of the mass, and war against young priests configured as dogmatic, legalistic, condemnatory. The heavenly revelation to St. Faustina has been reconfigured as indulgence of evil.

What is Worse? Death or Sin?

From a natural perspective, death is normal, inevitable and unavoidable. There is an irrational randomness as to when it comes. From a faith perspective, it is a passing to the afterlife, the particular and general judgments, reward or punishment (retribution!), hopefully eternal joy. Sin is much worse: it offends God. It risks an eternity of damnation. It demands retribution.

Many years ago I argued with a dear priest friend: he told me he carried a condom in his wallet just in case he fell into sin, at a club for example, to avoid disease. I encouraged him to throw away the condom so he would be motivated, by fear of sickness, to avoid sin. He was unmoved. For him, sickness and possibly death were worse than sin. Later his acceptance of a gay identity caused him and a number of bishops many headaches. 

Doctrinally, today almost everyone accepts a "delusional presumption": the dogma that everyone is going to heaven anyway. God is merciful. But suffering and death: horrendous tragedies! And so, we recoil at the image of the state taking a life: it is a violation of human dignity. It is as bad as things can get! We value this life, to an extreme: we do not dread hell, not for ourselves or others; nor do we passionately hope for heaven! We do not experience this life as a vale of tears as we bask in bourgeois comfort and security.

The move to absolutely abolish capital punishment, finalized by Pope Francis, is not an organic development of our legacy; it is a corruption. It is rooted in secularization, an amnesia of the supernatural, of divine holiness and justice. Capital punishment in some cases in required by retribution alone. Additionally, of course, it offers an opportunity for rehabilitation, not for this life, but for the soul who anticipates judgment. Some repentant murderers have requested and preferred this punishment out of a now properly contrite conscience. Along with this, note that the high confidence in our prison system in protection and deterrence is not well founded: just recently we had a murder in Ocean County Jail, the morning I was there with Catholic ministry as well as escape from prison in New Orleans by half a dozen accused of murder. 

Perhaps the worst priest pedophile, John Geoghan, with 150 reported child victims, was murdered in a Massachusetts prison in 2003. A double irony here! Although he was in protective custody, our vaunted prison system could not prevent the murder. Additionally, the perpetrator was a man already convicted of murder of a gay man. In a crude way, retribution was inflicted. The homophobic culprit, already serving a death sentence, probably received a second. A clever fellow, he may manage to kill another homosexual. This is not impressive as rehab, deterrence, protection or retribution. If I were a gay imprisoned in Massachusetts, I would take another look about the " permanent inadmissibility" clause on the death penalty in our Catechism! 

Hitler/Stalin/Mao/Putin/Amin/Osama/Hussein, Hamas, Hannibal Lector, Keyser Soze, Attila and so many more...do not need a life sentence. A death sentence is just and merciful for all involved. From a natural as well as a supernatural perspective.

Retribution, Temporal Punishment for Sin, Purgatory, Indulgences (Plenary and Partial)

In their Reformation, Protestants largely threw away purgatory, retribution, masses for the dead, temporal punishment due to sin, and indulgences. In the long game of history, in our age, the Protestants win; Catholics guided by Trent lose. A Catholic family today might spend close to $1/2 million on a quality secondary and college Catholic education: their child will be versed in Critical Race Theory and intersectionality but not know a partial from a plenary indulgence, a particular from general judgment, a mortal from a venial sin, or the meaning of divine retribution.

The Catholic practice of death, our November traditions around the last things (death, judgment, heaven and hell) and all saints/souls days, center upon the Mercy of God, of course, but also divine retribution (punishment and reward,) merit, temporal punishment due to sin, the debt to be paid, masses and indulgences offered for the dead. All of this has largely disappeared, after 400 years of Catholic militancy in defending it, in the prevalence of cheap mercy, secularism, presumption, and effete progressivism.

Dangers of Righteous, Religious Retribution: A Girardian Caution

Retreat from retribution is not unfounded. Surely, the worst violence is righteous, religious retribution. Sins of passion, gangster-type violence for money, power, and revenge are all understandable within the human realm. Religious indignance has an infinite boundlessness about it, exploding beyond nature and psychology into the supernatural and diabolic: the Jihadism of 9/11 and October 7, 2023; the boundless messianic license of communism; the religious fury of racism in Nazism and the KKK.

From Rene Girard we learn about mimetic rivalry and its resolution through the scapegoat dynamic of "sacred violence" which targets, in indignant condemnation, the innocent  victim, thus unifying the community in self-righteousness. The pervasiveness of this dynamic at the heart of all culture and religion, excepting at the foot of the cross at Calvary, gives pause to a retrieval of retribution. Admirers of Girard would be inclined to cancel the category, guaranteeing the "inadmissibility" of capital punishment. 

This would be to throw out the baby with the bathwater, to go to an extreme. A proper Girardian sensibility will scrutinize vigilantly all jurisprudence around retribution for disguised mimetic, scapegoating "sacred violence." But, if resentful, hateful vindictiveness camouflages itself in religious righteousness, we are not to entirely obliterate the category of retribution. The Catholic natural law tradition has a different perspective. Girard must be kept in tension with St. Thomas!

Personalism Needs Thomas! Thomas Needs Personalism

The defining theological accomplishment of Catholicism in the 20th century was the marriage of Thomism with Personalism: St. John Paul, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Pope Benedict, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Maurice Blondel along with Gabriel Marcel, Dorothy Day, Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, Josef Pieper, the David Schindlers...an entire culture of rich Catholicism which synthesizes centuries of metaphysics, ethics, and theology with the best of contemporary phenomenology, social sciences and philosophy. The objectivity of classical thought finds a balance in the subjectivity of our age...and vice versa. It is a valid, licit marriage, but a rocky one. There remain (as in every marriage) tensions between the lovers. 

The argument here is that the subjectivity of personalism, on the reality of retribution, requires the balance of objective justice, more prominent in classical Thomism, its epistemological realism, ontology of being, and ethics of natural law. It calls to mind the dynamics of the feminine and  masculine in marriage: mutually delightful, complementary, asymetrical, and in tension.

Amnesia about Divine Justice, Wrath and Retribution: the Catholic Antidote

Retribution, justice in dispensing of punishment and reward, is crucial in our engagement with God as it safeguards the divine holiness and transcendence, including wrath towards evil, against a disordered, cheapened mercy that degenerates into presumption, relativism, indulgence of evil. It structurally protects created freedom in its accountability and consequences. Analogously, at every level of human interaction...discipline in the kindergarten playground, criminal justice, capital punishment, just war, police action, academic grading, athletic competition...it guards and restores order and harmony. It allows for the guilty culprit to make amends; and the hurting victim to move to pardon.

Happily, our Catholic heritage offers rich resources to strengthen our sense of justice. In the passion and death of Jesus we contemplate: the gravity of evil, the consequence of sin, the inexpressible holiness of God. In the Eucharist, properly understood and celebrated as a memorial of just this torture and death, we participate in the sacrifice that atones for sin and restores order, that pays an unspeakable price, that destroys evil and death as it rescues the sinner. 

A rich network of devotion draw us into tenderness and reverence for our Lord in his sacrifice: stations of the cross, mysteries of the rosary, the liturgy of lent and holy week, use of the crucifix with the suffering body of our Lord. Our funeral liturgy relativizes the trauma of death and loss, as it strengthens our hope in the afterlife, anticipation of judgment, and vigilance against sin.

To ensure our reverence for the holiness of God, our aversion to sin, and a richness in genuine mercy......Let's bring back retribution!

The Inner Form of History? Four Models

 Our last century has seen drastic, rapid, monumental historic change. Our intellects look for an interior meaning, direction, logic and intentionality. Where have we come from? Where are we going? Let's consider four models that inform most understandings of history: "no history" (paganism, Nietzsche), evolutionary progressivism (Darwin), dialectical materialism (Marx) and Catholicism.

1. No History.  Ancient religions saw no liner history but only the cycle of the seasons. No beginning or end, but an endless, recurring circle of life. Tradition prevailed: each generation repeated the prior one. Chaos and randomness occurred within a continual return to the given. This was an enchanted, magical, mysterious world, haunted with supernatural powers, hostile and benign. Survival was placation of these powers and preservation of the permanent legacy handed down. Family, tribe, and religion defined the real. These were stable, basically immune to change.

Nietzsche retrieved this world view, now disenchanted and void of religion/tradition/community, and installed the Superman and the Will to Power. History comes from nowhere and is going nowhere. Reality is chaos and the void. All that remains is the isolated, raging, ecstatic, futile and ultimately despairing Sovereign Ego. Reality is constant war of Self against other selves.

Hitler and pure forms of national fascism embody this view. Since there is no "arc of history," the Ego and the Nation use raw power to create their own narrative. Trump, while he is supported by many Christians and is himself nominally so, is a good example: what matters is his will as expanded to his nation.

Ayn Rand and extreme individualism of the right (white nationalism, hyper-machismo, proud boys) channel this same spirit. 

Likewise, sexual liberationists inhabit just such a closed, entrapping world. Tearing sexuality from procreation, they exult sexual pleasure and live in an "everlasting present" of disconnection from past and future generations. Homosexuality, transgenderism, abortion, contraception, cohabitation, pornography are all postures of isolation, disconnection, sterility and hopelessness. 

Extreme forms of environmentalism similarly despise an expanding population, preferring a serenity of nature, a sterility of negative birth rates, and a flight from history.

These diverse expressions, sharing the disenchantment of modernity, are nihilistic and despairing.

2. Evolutionary Progressivism. With Marxism, this is a Christian heresy in that it develops out of the linear view of history originating in Revelation. Paradoxically, this widely influential perspective juxtaposes a reductionist materialism with an extravagant idealism of the human intellect. Evolution progresses in an inevitable, mechanical manner as random mutations, void of purpose, allow for the survival of the fittest and inexorable improvement. Now, however, with the happenstance emergence of human, scientific intelligence, evolution takes direction from a godlike techno-elite. The "arc of history" is now in control with progress in science, technology, education and endless advance over a past of ignorance, superstition, and passions. And, so we pass through eras which are seen as ruptures from each other: dark ages, middle ages, renaissance, enlightenment, industrial age, modernity, post-modernity. This is arguably the dominant worldview, especially in academia and elite circles, even as it mingles with alternate views with which it is inherently incompatible. Within the educated, privileged, meritocratic elites this view fosters an optimism approaching grandiosity, that is without roots and destined for eventual capitulation to the realistic but despairing nihilism of Nietszche.

3. Dialectical (Hegel) Materialism (Marx). Here again we find a self-contradictory Christian heresy: a hard, reductive materialism which assumes a quasi-divine, inexorable force, interior to history, the dialectic,  transcendent of human choice and agency, pushing providentially to an earthly utopia. This is a rival "arc of history." The ultimate reality is the conflict between thesis and antithesis: concretely the battle between a dominant socio-economic class and the oppressed. This process leads eventually to a  victory which then leads to another class war. Theoretically, in classical Marxism, it concludes in a dictatorship of the proletariat. In real life Marxism exists only in corrupt, violent, totalitarian form as in Cuba and China. In the West, it lives in adulterous decadence with elements of Nietzschean narcissism, sexual license,  evolutionary progressivism, and libertarian individualism in LGBTQ and ethnic-identity politics.

4. Catholicism.  We will outline the Catholic, rather than the Christian perspective, since the Church has a clear, defined, dogmatic articulation while the myriad alternate forms of Christianity, without boundary and authoritative precision, are vulnerable to corruption by the ideologies explained above.

This life, for the Catholic, is enchanted as open to and infused by the heavenly, the eternal, the Divine. The cycles of natures, as well as the contingencies, ruptures and progressions of history all occur within the Great Event, Encounter and Drama of engagement with God. The free God has freely created free creatures, human and angelic, and invited us to a Great Love Affair. With the rebellion of Lucifer and then Adam and Eve a secondary drama erupted: the war between heaven and hell, on earth. Jesus crucified-risen-ascended-Spirit-sending has achieved victory; but only with his return will that be consummated. There is neither eternal cyclical return nor inevitable, mechanical progress. Every soul, every community, every generation and society are engaged in spiritual combat and a Love Affair.

Preliminarily with Israel and conclusively with the Church, God created a new Person, an organism, a corporate identity, the Church, the body and bride of Christ. This is a living, integral entity that lives through time in continuity of identity with organic change. It engages with the life of the Trinity as it combats the Dark Kingdom, the world-flesh-devil. The heart of history and reality is this living person, ever in communion with the eternal, ever-eventful Trinity. The struggle is ever with personal sin, worldly systems of systemic evil, and the diabolic.

Each person, embodied soul, is organically within The Body, the Church. Each person  is a Freedom, spirit or soul, an intellect, will, heart wed to flesh, emotions, vulnerability. An agency within a greater receptivity. The events of each life...sufferings, joys, achievements, tragedies...are in service of and subordinate to the primary Drama: encounter of a Freedom with other Freedoms, God and persons and angels and demons. Each life is a serendipitous itinerary to the Father. 

The greater Person, the Church, likewise is a free, responsive, creative, living, organic growth with a an integrated, continuous identity. In her finitude, creaturehood, humanity and sinfulness she is subject to error, corruption, disloyalty. Yet there abides substantial identity precisely in her communion with Christ even as she fights militantly on this earth.

She is herself enclosed within the broader world, and yet distinct. Her boundaries are pervious as she receives, good and bad, from beyond. She is herself the defining interiority of the world, the heart and soul. The history of the world is chaotic, random, ruptured; sometimes progressive, sometimes regressive and corruptive. But the Church herself continues in steadiness, protected by the Holy Spirit and secure in a miraculous, profound organism of practice, prayer, belief, and hope.

And so, the Catholic intuits within the Church a continuity along with a fecundity, creativity and serendipity. All the time she lives within the natural cycles, dialectical conflicts, scientific progress, cultural declines and Nietzschean willfulness of a world madly chaotic and random yet mysteriously guided by Providence.

Within the continuous, creative Church, interactive always with the world, the Catholic sees world history as informed by a continuity, a steadiness, a formal or substantial interiority. Regimes change, societies prevail and then collapse, revolutions and ruptures coexist with progress; but what abides is the Church (herself abiding within the Trinity) in her love affair with the world. 

A recent Fleckinstein essay situated Vatican II in continuity with the past and numerous other movements of the Holy Spirit in the 20th century. An yet unpublished article by my priest-theologian-historian-scientist nephew and his colleague identify the continuity of scientific development out of the medieval period, including Arabic Spain, into more recent centuries, thereby correcting the tendency to exaggerate rupture and dissonance in scientific progress. 

Conclusion

Like all ancient religions, historical narrative rests on a primal religious mythology and ontology: the Eternal Return, the Will to Power, evolution/progress, and the Hegelian dialectic. The despair of Nietzsche contrasts with the false optimism of Darwin and Marx. 

Our Catholic vision flows from Revelation, the Event-Drama-History of our engagement with the living, Triune God in Jesus Christ. It leaves us with a contemplation of history as ever beautiful, purposeful, intelligible, enchanting, stable, dramatic, fecund, serendipitous and hopeful.

 

 

  

Capital Punishment: Inadmissible?

 We read this morning that in 2023 then Cardinal Prevost firmly agreed with the "seamless garment theory" (of Cardinal Bernadine, restated by Cardinal Cupich) and specifically the "inadmissibility" of the death penalty. 

First, of course, it is important that this was said prior to his election as pope. Not everything he has said over the years now is cloaked with inerrancy and authority. If he repeats this now as pope it has to be taken seriously. 

But more important is the word itself, as used by Pope Francis. "Inadmissibility." A strange word when speaking about morality. He did NOT say we now recognize it as inherently evil. Nor did he clarify in the manner of John Paul and Benedict that it remains fundamentally a prudential decision. He did not use the classic language of Catholic ethics but used a different word. What does it mean?

It means "cannot be admitted." It does not mean evil, sinful, wrong. It is the language of social acceptability. For example: no admission without tie and shoes, or if under 3 feet tall, or under 12 years old. My daughters tell their children: "That is not appropriate." This is very close to the meaning of "inadmissible." It is not a moral judgement; it is about social propriety. So, for example, "potty talk" is not appropriate. Loud talk in the library likewise. Burping and flatulence in public even more so. In the courtroom, language is ruled "inadmissible" for technical reasons; in another state or even before another judge it might be allowed.

Conservatives argue that if Francis is now recognizing the inherent evil of capital punishment than the Church has for centuries been in error. This opens the gates for all doctrines to be reconsidered. So he uses the language, not of ethics, but of propriety.

However, the language of social propriety is always fluid, prudential, relative to culture/circumstance and allowing of exceptions. Burping in Arab cultures indicates satisfaction with the meal. As a grandfather, I reserve the right to indulge in light "potty talk" from time to time; I do not confess it. My gerontologist and I discuss bowel movements and nightly urinations without shame. Shouting in the library is not just allowed, but morally required in case of fire, active shooter, or a rabid racoon. 

Therefore, the ever-emotional Francis was in fact not making a clear moral decision on the death penalty. Rather, he was cloaking in highest intensity his emotional, social, sentimental disgust with the practice. He is passionate about it. But not intellectually decisive, authoritative or clear. 

So, our hermeneutic can take the word according to its meaning. Capital punishment is indeed repulsive, abhorrent, unfortunate, revolting, nauseating, regrettable, inadmissible. It is not inherently, always, absolutely evil. It is related to personal and cultural taste. But more fundamentally of pragmatic judgement. It is not binding upon the Catholic conscience. 

We wait to see what Pope Leo will say. I suspect he will let it sit: neither reverse it nor strengthen it. If he restates its "inadmissibility" we can relax; sympathize with the sentiment; but remain free in conscience to practice the natural law as handed down through the centuries. It remains a tool for the secular state to use, only when necessary, to protect the community.

Six Competing Political Ideologies, USA 1945-25: a Catholic Evaluation

 As thinking/political (communal) creatures, we all have a political philosophy or ideology, however intuitive, inchoate, unarticulated or even self-contradictory. The Catholic Church, in her teaching, does not propose nor endorse any such system in the way of sharia law, divine right of kings, or even the liberal, democratic, capitalist, rule-of-law constitutionalism of the USA.   As "Catholic" she gathers to herself those from every class, nation, ethnicity and ideology (with some exceptions like communism, jihadism, genocidal racisms, ). At the Eucharist, we are in communion with each other: capitalists, libertarians, socialists, anarchists, Democrats and Republicans. Thus it is offensive when priest/bishop/pope (who are entitled to their opinions like everyone else) crosses the line to endorse or attack any specific philosophy, system, party, or politician at mass or in an official capacity. 

In Catholic Social Teaching, especially since Pope Leo XIII, we enjoy a fluid, creative, dynamic organism of values, ideas, and principles that can act as a leaven within a variety of political systems, renouncing and minimizing the bad and affirming, enhancing and fortifying the good. Herein we will briefly summarize the highlights of this body of thought and then use it to evaluate the six most significant ideologies in the USA over the last 80 years.

Fundamentals of Catholic Social Teaching

1. The inviolate, sacred dignity of every human person, especially the weak, suffering, disabled, incompetent, poor, powerless, refugee, elderly and unborn.

2. Religious liberty, the ability to follow ones own conscience in regard to the ultimate, the true and the good; as well as associated freedoms of speech, press, political assembly, economic agency, etc.  This requires a constitutional openness to the Transcendent and the practice of religion, including Catholicism.

3. Primacy of the family...natural, faithful, fecund, responsible...as the first building block of society. Parents are educators of their children. This precedes every other societal form: government, etc. And from it flows:

4. Sacredness of sexuality and gender as constitutive of the person and the family and the urgency of marital permanence, spousal fidelity, and chastity in all states of life.

5. Moral or "natural law" as given in the created order as guidance for all human governance and law.

6. Common Good, in all its diversity and richness, as the intention of all politics, at every level of society.

7. Solidarity of all people...across the globe, nations, classes, ethnicities, ideologies, etc...as we are all children of our heavenly Father and therefore brothers and sisters of each other.

8. State is required to protect common goods, peace and innocent life with the use of force, lethal if necessary, as in war, police work and capital punishment, only if necessary. This includes secure, protected national borders.

9. State protects private property and economic initiative along with provision of public goods, prudent regulation/taxation, and just distribution of the goods of the economy/society.

10. Subsidiarity: Performance of every social task by the smallest possible unit, delegating to the larger, more abstract and distant levels (national, global, etc.) those which cannot be properly handled by the lower. In our time this inclines a preference for the immediate//local along with a caution and suspicion of bureaucracy, intrusive technology (AI, social media) and gigantism in industry and government.

These principles, part of the moral teaching of the Church, are themselves defining for every Catholic. But we differ in the weight we give them and in application to concrete situations. Now we consider six ideologies that have competed for the allegiance of Catholics in the USA over the last 80 years.

1. Political-Economic (not Cultural) Liberalism of the Democratic Party 1945-65: Party of labor and the working man, patriotic, anti-communist, internationalist, supportive of civil rights and farm worker movements, pro-capitalism. The Democratic Party was an alliance of contradictions: Catholic union men, southern racists, socialist and sexually-liberational Jews. But the strong Catholic presence insured that it was implicitly, but emphatically pro-family, pro-life, pro-chastity.

Representative would be John F. Kennedy. Even better, Sargent Shriver.

In its implicit cultural values and militant political agenda, it implemented to a high degree the elements of CST (Catholic Social Teaching.) It was a 20 year  "Camelot," a honeymoon of Catholicism with the USA. Its flaws were minor relative to its strengths:

- Forgetfulness of subsidiarity and infatuation with national politics as the federal government was so effective in the war, emergence from the Depression,  opposition to Soviet Communism,  nationwide victory of Civil Rights for blacks, a national economy of prosperity and global hegemony.

- Prosperity led to certain a national arrogance, materialism, consumerism, an idolatry of science/technology, eventually (after a post-war religious revival) secularism, and spiritual/moral/intellectual superficiality.

- Along with the above, an unbalanced confidence and optimism, loss of humility and of the sense of the supernatural, left the Church entirely unprepared to combat the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and following.

Notwithstanding its flaws, this at its best, rates a solid 8 on a scale of 10.

(Realistically, an 8 is the high end of the spectrum. Given human finitude, fallibility and sinfulness, we know that systemic error and evil penetrate every human system. A 10, in this life, in inconceivable; a 9 virtually impossible in practice.) 

This political synthesis died around 1970 as it was subsumed by a voracious sexual liberalism.

2. Cultural Liberalism of the Democratic Party 1970-2025.  Catholics succumbed to the Sexual Liberationists without a fight. This was the defining tragedy and catastrophe of our age. The greatest generation prevailed through Depression, World War, Cold War, build a prosperous Church and society, raised large families and prevailed as THE global power; they surrendered without resistance to the Sexual Revolution. This is in large part due to an admirable and ancient Catholic reverence, shyness and reticence about sexuality. To this day, about half of Catholics in the USA vote for the left for the traditional economic issues, oblivious in denial of the contradictions of so much that is precious to our faith. The DNC became the party, not of the Catholic worker, but of the affluent, educated professional, sexually liberated classes. It embraced a libertarianism in private life as it retained a moderate collectivism in economics.

This new, now cultural, liberalism retained the previous commitment to unions and the poor; but located this within a firm allegiance to the liberation of sexuality from marriage and children, militant feminism of contraception/abortion/reproductive technologies, radical individualism, secularism, break with religious traditions, exultation of science/technology, triumph of the therapeutic, identity politics (BLM, CRT, LGBTQ) and messianic trust in an expansive, centralized, sovereign state.

It affirmed the worldview of the successful, prospering bourgeois: education, meritocracy, sexual license, financial security, trust in expertise/technology/bureaucracy. It viewed with condescension the uneducated, low-wage conservatives as it assumed a posture of moral superiority in a "wokeness" that actually secured its own upper class privileges. 

Exemplary Catholics of this stripe: the Kennedys, Cuomo's, Biden's, Kerry's, Pelosi's. 

While it retains a (confused) concern for the poor/marginalized, respect for women, and international alliances of peace and cooperation, it violates in blatant manner almost all of the ten principles above.

It rates a 2; possibly a 3 if it leans into its traditional economic concerns and away from its moral/cultural agenda of depravity. It is the Anti-Catholic of our age, our primary antagonist.

3. Reaganite, Tripod, Fusionist Republican Conservatism 1980-2016.  Developing in the National Review of William Buckley in the 1950-60s, this coalition came to power with Ronald Reagan and was recently  replaced by Trump. It's three pillars: militant anti-communism, cultural protection of traditional family/religion/ethos and libertarian or "neo-liberal" economics. It was embraced by many Catholics, largely for its global resistance to Soviet and later Jihadist imperialisms and its protection of family and faith. In economics, however, it embraced an individualism, a libertarianism, a "neo-liberalism" that built philosophically upon the primacy of the autonomous individual, rather than the person within family/church/community. It opposed an expansive state but approved of a malignant, corporate capitalism which was itself corrosive of  religion and community at all lower levels. Like the FDR/JFK synthesis earlier, it was eventually unstable. 

Along with Buckley, many Catholic intellectuals embraced it for its defense of crucial values and its appealing intellectual clarity and coherence: Scalia/Alito/Thomas, Barr, Novak/Neuhaus/Weigel, Boehner, Ryan.

It's fatal flaw: libertarian individualism, weakened solidarity/solidarity/concern for the poor.

Depending upon the emphasis given to this individualism versus the stronger Catholic values, it earns a respectable 6-7. Lower than the earlier Catholic liberalism; but far superior to the contemporary cultural liberalism.

 4. Trumpism.  Trump strikes a deep resonance with the Catholic conscience in his defense of religion, liberty and the family as well as his resistance, on behalf of the lower classes, to the priviligies, power, and contempt of the upper levels. His personal depravity and bad personal influence are a contradiction of our values. Policy-wise he is a mixed package: restoration of our southern border, but reckless disregard for rule of law for the undocumented; xenophobic, jingoistic impulsiveness; inconsistency towards China; tariff incoherence and chaos; financial policy that promises to increase prosperity for all but favors the investor class, increases the debt, and adds to inflation. Highly volatile, on any given day he can score from a 2 to an 8 but averages about 5.  The first respectable Catholic intellectual to endorse him, to my knowledge, was Reno of First Things.  He now counts Rubio, Vance and RFK Jr. in his coterie.

5. Benedict Option.  Rod Dreher articulated the widespread disgust with our politics, on both sides of the aisle, and the urgency to disconnect from mainstream culture in favor of a localism centered on family, Church, local community and small organizations. This is a kind of a monasticism. It is not entirely indifferent to the broader world but hopes to eventually influence it, in the way of medieval monks, by slow, incremental influence. 

The Catholic Worker of Dorothy Day was an earlier example of this separatism, with a harder leftism of pacifism and anarchism. That movement was militantly anti-bourgeois in embrace of simplicity of life, care for the poor, absolute rejection of war, detachment from government including non-payment of taxes. 

Other strands within contemporary Catholicism enact a similar separation without ideological clarity. The Neocatechumenate focuses immense energy interiorly, on developing intimate fraternities in worship, attention to Scripture, simplicity of life,  and strong, large families. Other than being prolife, they are largely indifferent to politics in the broader society. Homeschooling detaches from public, private and parochial systems to center education within the family. A network of new, smaller, intensively Catholic colleges also detach to heighten Catholic identity and values. In a more abstract, intellectual vein, philosophers like Andrew Willard Jones (Franciscan University),  and D.C. Schindler (John Paul II Institute) radically critique the entire liberal order and the concept of state sovereignty as they envision a distant, ideal  Catholic order built entirely upon the principles of CST.

Its weakness is, of course, utopian, vague, impractical nature. In practice it is a localism which directs all energy to the immediate, the intimate, the most sacred. It is an extreme of subsidiarity, the opposite of the ideologies above that compete on the national scene for the big prize of power. It prefers the allure of the wholesome and the holy to the exercise of power and coercion.

If practiced, however, by saintly people who are drawn to such groups, it is deeply Catholic and might move towards a 9.

6. New Catholic Right? Out of the Trump revolution, we find a small but promising new Catholic political synthesis that is populist culturally and politically: conservative culturally and economically liberal, the best of both worlds. It revives the FDR/JFK defense of the poor and the worker in unions and an assertive government that countervails capital. At the same time it wages the culture war against sexual libertarianism. This party is fighting for control of the Republican Party against the establishment libertarians of capital and the technocrats (Musk). Trump himself is unstable and unpredictable as to which of these three camps he favors. 

In theory, it affirms all of the ten Catholic principles of social justice. In practice, however, it is currently aligned with Trump and all his contagious decadence. In the abstract it is close to perfect from a Catholic perspective. But it remains to be seen if it can take charge of the Republican Party or if it will remain marginal with some influence. It will have to detach from the person of Trump and his narcissistic universe of disorder and dysfunction. 

It's flaw, discounting the person of Trump, is a jingoistic, xenophobic, separatist nationalism that is low on compassion for the refugee and weak on international solidarity and global alliances for peace/prosperity. Its most hopeful figures are Rubio and Vance who currently remain in bondage to Trump. If it is able to divorce Trump, embrace compassion and renounce isolationism, it might well rival the post-war Democratic Liberalism with a 8 or even 8.5.

Conclusion

Moving forward to implement the Catholic principles above in a manner that is "catholic," realistic, and hopeful, we will want to:

- Agree with the Benedict Option in its negative evaluation of our overall culture and focus on strengthening our immediate families, Churches and organizations.

- Retain what is best from our finest Catholic syntheses: Democrat Liberalism after WWII and Reaganite Conservatism of the 1980s.

- Combat the Cultural Liberalism of the current DNC.

- Support genuine Catholic elements of the emergent populist right as we detach it from the pathologies of Trumpism.

- Practice the "Christian Strategy" of Adrian Vermulle which is a relative detachment from any specific party or polity but an allegiance to the community, nation and state in an openness to collaborate in the good as it manifests in any group. Yes, even the DNC,. Yes, even Trump.

 

 

What's So Great About Pope Leo XIV?

 Don't Get Me Started!

1. He is a man of deep prayer and holiness. Close to Christ.

2. His heart burns with love, especially for the suffering and poor.

3. He is genuinely humble, modest, and self-effacing. He is the Non-Narcissist in the Age of Narcissism.

4. A listener, he receives and affirms the good wherever he finds it. He is friend to the conservative and the progressive both as he sees the good in each.

5. Sublimely irenic, he will draw us towards unity in our viciously polarizing time.

6. An institutionalist and canon lawyer, he deeply understands and cherishes the structural integrity of the Church. He will protect and enhance it.

7. A genuine globalist, he is a sturdy tripod with a foot in the USA, in Peru, and the Vatican. He has travelled and worked around the globe.

8. Solid theologically, he is grounded in our tradition in the manner of John Paul and Benedict even as he shares the urgency of Francis to reach out those who feel excluded. Best of both worlds. Not primarily a culture warrior or world class theologian, he nevertheless is on the right side of the conflict and will right the deformities of the previous pontificate.

9. A gifted administrator, Vatican insider, mathematician who can read a spread sheet, young/fit/energetic, and quintessentially a pragmatist, a man of action, he may be able to reform the Vatican (financially, theologically and spiritually) in way that eluded the previous three popes.

10. American: chosen in spite of, not because of his origin. The abiding global anti-Americanism is arguably heightened by Trump, although the new multipolar world has diminished our status as singular world power. His qualifications are so strong, that it overcame this impediment. He knows and loves American and can only have a good influence on us.

That's an initial impression. Since his selection, Fleckinstein has been a stable, calm, euphoric state. The question must be faced:  Is this a hallucinatory state? Did I die and go to heaven? No, this is neither psychosis nor exaltation out of this life. But it is heaven on earth!

20th Century Catholicism in Stability and Currents of Renewal: is Vatican II Overrated?

Especially for our generation who came of age in the 1960s, Vatican II has been the dominating event of the Church in our age. Progressives and Traditionalists agree that it was a rupture, the start of a new Church; the former view this providentially, the later catastrophically. John Paul and Benedict rightly insisted upon a "hermeneutic of continuity." Many of us who ascribe to this later interpretation continue to see it as uniquely defining of our time. Now, 60 years after the council and 25 years into a new century, we can locate the event in a sober, balanced way within the overall life of the Church. Regarding it as a significant work of the Holy Spirit, we do well to lessen its importance in relation to the overall workings of Providence in that era. It is important; but not dominant.

The Primary, Substantial Reality of the Church

The Church is a person, who subsists in identity even as she changes and develops in change. She is the Bride of the Groom who unceasingly, steadily, reliably, passionately, ineffably, efficaciously "makes love" to her every day, everywhere, in an infinitude of manners. This "affair" finds ultimate expression in the Eucharist, offered every day on every altar by every priest in every mass, and in the abiding, stable, physical presence in every tabernacle in the world. No event or development is as important as the mystical union Christ has with the entire Church and every single soul. The mystical body, the communion of saints, the spousal communion of groom/bride is the abiding, fluid, creative, fruitful identity of the Church. 

This reality finds its living expression in the lives of the saints, the canonized and the unknown, in the radiance of sanctity in all its brilliance, fascination, fecundity and eternity. And so, historical events and developments are secondary to the abiding communion in holiness. It finds dramatic expression in the death of martyrs, notably across the Islamic and Communist worlds in our time: a reality too little attended to in the West, which has its own subtle forms of persecution. Additionally, we cannot fail to recognize the hidden life of prayer of countless vowed, cloistered, hermits and monks.

Personal Change: Accidental, Substantial, and Significant

Since the Church is best understood as a person, the bride of Christ, with Mary and the saints at the center and all of us joined in a "communio" of persons, we can understand change in the Church as analogous to personal change. Identity subsists throughout a person's life, along with change, rupture, growth, and decline. 

Accidental change is more trivial, transitory, passing: a hair cut, broken arm, gaining a million or a billion dollars, receiving a doctorate from an Ivy, a Nobel or an Oscar.

Substantial change is absolute, interior, formal change; the replacement of one reality for another: death, possession by a body snatcher, fall from grace into depravity, conversion from state of mortal sin to a life of holiness. Baptism is arguably a substantial change.

Significant change here is understood as more than accidental but less than fully substantial: falling in love, starting a new career, marrying, having children, suffering a severe trauma or a disabling event/condition, ordination, confirmation. 

The Church will not change substantially until Christ returns. Her stability and continuity is guaranteed by the Holy Spirit which moves freely, serendipitously; as it infuses a dense institutional network of scriptures, sacraments, teachings, practices. 

The tripartite model suggested here entails a spectrum of the significant: many changes are more than accidental but less than substantial. This calls to mind our classic Catholic view of actual sin as venial and mortal. This model has always seemed inadequate to me: the "venial" category suggests minor, trivial, excusable; the mortal is total spiritual death and eternal damnation. Actual sin seems to me to be always significant, but on a spectrum; perhaps not often fully mortal (including full deliberation and consent as well as grave matter); never trivial; but worst of all dynamic as it leads powerfully to deeper depths of depravity, moving towards the mortal.

The argument here will be that the Council was a super-significant event, less than substantial. It was not the defining event of the century. There are several developments that rival and may exceed it in importance.

Super-Significant Events in the Catholic and Broader Church

The Church subsists fully in the Catholic Church but exists in varying degrees, intensity and depth in many ecclesial bodies. Surveying both the Catholic and broader Church, three events or dramas, in addition to the Council, stand out.

1. Ecumenical Movement, largely among Protestant denominations, has been a move toward the unity Christ desired for the Church. This overcomes (in some degree) past hostility and condemnation by focus upon the essentials that unite us: Jesus Christ as our savior and lord, his redemptive suffering and resurrection, the Bible, the creeds and early teaching, prayer, and the life of charity. Our Vatican II was the Catholic expression of this move of the Spirit that has been active for decades.

2. Pentecostal Movement. Exploding into our world in 1900, it has spread like wildfire within and outside of all denominations. It is extremely powerful in the Southern hemisphere. It came into Catholicism in 1967, immediately after the Council. It has attracted many non-practicing or lukewarm Catholics. From a more parochial, counter-reformation perspective, this departure from the Catholic institutions is a loss. But from a more ecumenical/evangelical/charismatic view, it is a gain as many draw close to Christ, the Word, the Holy Spirit and local fellowship. Happily, many later revert and recognize the intimacy of the Groom with his concrete, historical, sinful, institutional Church.

3. Mercy of Jesus.  The revelations to St. Faustina, later integrated into Catholic practice by St. John Paul, are the most significant work of the Spirit in the Catholic Church in the 20th century. These are not a change, but an organic, fluid growth of what is at the very heart of the Gospel and our faith but has not always been received with such clarity and depth.

Vatican Council as Culmination of 20th Century Renewal Movements

That 1962-5 event in Rome is best understood not as the beginning of a new Church, but as the culmination, the finale, the climax of the early 20th century. It comingled, finalized, clarified, situated, authenticated and institutionalized movements of the Holy Spirit that had been flaming for the entire century, quite intensely in the two decades since the war. These include:

1. Ecumenical movement mentioned above but now embraced by the institutional Catholic Church.

2. "Resourcement" theology: a return to the sources including the fathers and a refocusing upon the fundamentals of the Gospel.

3. Engagement with modern thought. Positive and yet critical, the Church moved away from an anxious and angry defensiveness toward modernity and opened up a dialogue, eager to embrace the good and renounce the bad. This embraced theology but also philosophy (personalism, phenomenology, dialogue with existentialism and Marxism), social science, the hard sciences, literature and culture in general.

4. Biblical Movement. This included a correct acceptance of the academic, literary-historical study of the Scriptures, but more importantly a renewed emphasis on the Word as the substance of our faith.

5. Liturgical Movement: intended to draw the laity closer to the Eucharistic mysteries.

6. Judaeo-Christian Studies. In part grief at the Holocaust and contrition about our history of anti-Judaism and antisemitism, this has been more deeply a recovery of our roots and recognition of our continued fraternity with Rabbinic Judaism.

7. Church/State relationships were reconsidered with primacy upon religious liberty and awareness of the USA model of separation of Church and state.

8.World Religions were seen with more positivity and openness to dialogue. There emerged recognition that God is at work in them even as they prepare for and crave fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

9. Thomism. The Council is properly seen as a liberation from a narrow, closed, restrictive scholasticism. Such categories of thought were avoided in the final documents. Nevertheless, the bishops and theologians were all thoroughly formed by St. Thomas. The Thomistic revival, including Gilson and Maritain, had been widely influential. The more contemporary transcendental Thomism of Rahner/Lonergan was a presence. Monsignor Tom Guarino has pointed out that underlying all the documents are fundamental thomistic concepts such as analogy. So St. Thomas was an influence. 

This list is hardly exclusive. By gathering these currents and directing them to flow into and out of the heart of our faith, the person/event of Jesus Christ, the Council Fathers gave a fresh, creative expression that was loyal to our legacy. An authentic advance that was continuous and loyal as it was fresh, creative and fecund.

Renewal Movement Later in the 20th Century.

1. Lay Renewal Movements: Cursillo, Marriage Encounter, Charismatic, Neocatechumenate, Communion and Liberation, Focolare, Saint Egidio, L'Arche and others, 

2. Classic, Conservative Movements: Opus Dei, Regnum Christi, and other.

3. Social Justice and Option for the Poor: First and foremost in classic corporal/spiritual works of mercy intimately with the poor in St. Mother Theresa, Dorothy Day, Madaleine DelBrel, Catherine Doherty. More systematically in the Theology of Liberation, the "Option for the Poor," and other.

4. Culture War: Particularly in the USA, but across the globe, and ecumenical alliance between Catholics, Evangelicals and other defenders of the natural order rallied against the sexual liberationists.

5. New Religious Orders: Sisters of Life, Franciscan Friars of the Renewal and many small orders across the globe.

6. Intensive, Alternative, Catholic Colleges: In the USA, an alternative to the largely accommodating mainline universities (Land of Lakes Conference 1967 when they divorced from the Church under the leadership of Fr. Hesburg and the Jesuit schools) developed: Franciscan, Benedictine, Ave Maria, and perhaps a total of 20.

7. Home Schooling: As motivated by the faith in reaction to parochial and public schools in decline.

8. Expansion of the Church of the Global South: Demographically the center of gravity of the global Church, Catholic and Evangelical, has shifted south of the equator. We in the north are now more and more missionary areas for those of the south.

9. John Paul's catechesis and anthropology of the sexed, gendered human person: Almost entirely ignored by the Catholic academy, he communicated directly to those receptive, assisted by the John Paul Institutes, Christopher West, Jason Everett, Paul Houlis and others.

10. Theology of Benedict, Balthasar/Speyr, and Communio School: Numerically small, spiritually great.

11. The Latin Mass: Significant move to retrieve reverence and formality in worship.

12. Marian Movements: Fatima, Medjugorie, Legion of Mary, Priests for Mary, and other.

 Realistic Evaluation of Vatican II

The suggestion here is that the Council was not the singularly decisive event as our generation has assumed. It is one of the most significant of multiple movements of the Holy Spirit in the 20th century. It authoritatively articulated many of these renewal currents; even as it prepared for those to follow. Like the Church, it is an act of the Holy Spirit even as it is a human creation...limited, flawed, situated in a particular time/place with associated limits as well as strengths. Three realities impress:

1. It suffered the misfortune of happening just as the Cultural (sexual) Revolution was about to explode in the West. It did not anticipate or prepare us for this explosion of an earthquake of a tsunami. Its "spirit" was one of unbalanced optimism which made us gullible and vulnerable. Concluding after two decades of unprecedented prosperity and peace in the West (excluding the Cold War which it ignored), it exuded a humanistic, scientific confidence just as our culture was about to collapse. It inclined, even among us moderate non-progressives, an attitude of superiority to the past, a loss of filial gratitude.

2. As a result, the implementation after 1965 was in good part highjacked by sympathizers with the Cultural Revolution. Reform of the liturgy was especially problematic. This was recognized by Benedict but denied by Francis.

3. There is no mention of our primary antagonist, then and arguably now, communism. Another sign of a positivity unleavened by realism about the world, the flesh and the devil.

Conclusion

This essay reflects a familiarity with American Catholicism since 1945 but ignorance about the myriad  workings of the Holy Spirit beyond the Catholic world and on the other continents. It is, therefore, a mere sample of the broader workings of Divine Providence. We have identified about 25 initiatives from heaven, with the Council being one of the most important.

Imagine the Church as a magnificent garden, bursting life: flowers, fruit, vegetation, birds and gentle animal life. The master gardener, Jesus himself of course, protects and nourishes but needs to carefully monitor and mentor his assistants who are often dysfunctional and incompetent. There are perennials which abide as well as annuals which are always new and fresh. Dirt of the earth is rich with endowment from the Creator who also provides perfect temperature, sunlight and shade. The garden is watered, mysteriously and miraculously, but underlying springs of water (the Holy Spirit) which surge serendipitously wherever needed, in perfect proportion to need. Surrounding the garden is a world that is part garden and part wilderness and in constant combat. The boundaries between the two are clear, but porous. The garden gushes out bringing order, nutrition, all kinds of good seed and animal life. Likewise, the wilderness invades the garden with toxic plant life and predatory animals. The garden is in a constant state of war: defensively, and offensively as it attacks malicious forms of life and allies itself with all forms of order and beauty in the world beyond its clear borders.

And so we were so blessed in 20th century Catholicism to live in a stability and safety, with rich soil,  perfect warmth/sunlight/shade, ever new fresh surges of life within stability and safety.  The Council was among the greatest, but hardly THE defining event of the century.

The "Frump" or "Trancis" Syndrome

 The last 10-12 years, the "Frump" or "Trancis" era, has been for our nation and Church a dystopian nightmare of leadership. The President and (ex) Pope are often set against each other as global, ideological opponents. This is a category error, a big mistake, triggered by the Pope swerving out of his lane into politics, policy and ideology. It is endemic to progressivism which sacralizes politics and politicizes religion. This narrative sets the celebrity populists against each other, the poor-loving, leftwing internationalist against the money-loving, rightwing nationalist on borders, environment, capital punishment and other. 

They are in fact, mimetic rivals, despite the distinct arenas, because they mirror each other in the underlying structure of their personality and leadership. We could hardly imagine Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Mike Tyson competing in the ring, court or course; but as popular celebrities that is imaginable. 

Let us consider the "Frump" (or alternately "Trancis") Syndrome. The following will be offensive to supporters of both: to love one is to hate the other. In the face of such severe dysfunction, filial loyalty requires candor and truth.

1. Anti-Institutional. Governing the two greatest institutions in human history, they both viscerally despise each as they are. Trump has contempt for rule of law, the Constitution, and all rules/protocols as his DOGE crusade recklessly eviscerates agencies and his tariff impulsiveness upends decades of agreements. Francis tirelessly disparaged things standard and traditional: canon law, dogma, the ancient liturgy, pious practices, and "clericalism" as he himself exemplified his exhortation to "make a mess." "Synodality" replaces the apostolic college as the locus of authority with a progressive, revolutionary, democratic "group process." Bereft of filial gratitude and loyalty, both vent a reformers rage at what is received.

2. Narcissistic. Trump need not be discussed here: he is not just a classic, case study of the condition; he is a cartoonish, caricature of it...shamelessly transparent and obvious. Francis is much more complicated.

He is not a full blown clinical case; rather he has a strong trait, that is camouflaged by a rich, complex personality. I have known and loved many priests who clearly have the trait but  balance it by other good qualities: charm, humor, intelligence, generosity, affection, prayer and even (a degree) of holiness. Their preaching and ministry is even enriched by the dramatic, passionate and histrionic. 

If this trait is common to priests and politicians, it is disastrous in high quantities at the level of pope and president. It underlies their iconoclastic, anarchistic recklessness. They disregard rules, traditions, restrains and surrender to the compulsions of the Imperial Ego. With the president this is obvious to all. With the pope it is disguised by contravailing, wholesome traits: genuine love for Christ, care for the poor, freedom of spirit, homiletic and inspirational creativity, personal warmth and charm. His resentment at the Church establishment is heartening to those distant from or offended by her, including the entire progressive wing therein. He is often described by his admirers as humble. For sure his love of the poor and preference for simplicity are genuine. But these coexist, serenely, with a genius for dramatic, histrionic, attention-attracting gestures. He is easily the most egoistic pontiff of the last 80 years. 

3. Emotional, Resentful, Intellectually Incoherent. Both highly intelligent, they basically operate out of intuition, emotion, instinct. They are powerful in their loves and hates. Resentment is, for Trump, the overwhelming source of energy: against the left, those who impeached and tried him, anyone who criticizes or opposes him. Francis is a more complex mixture but a good portion of his pontificate was an attack on what he perceived as a rigid, judgmental, arrogant, Latin-praying, clericalist and contemptible Church. Both intellects are quick, insightful, clever, creative but incapable of sustained, coherent thought. Both prone to contradiction and inconsistency. Francis famously told the mafia they were going to hell if they did not repent but assured his agnostic journalist friend that God sends no one to hell; he simply ignored the "dubia" of the four cardinals; he consistently supported the LGBTQ cause and then used contemptuous language about "faggotry" in the Vatican. Trump infamously abstains from daily reports and decides according to who he spoke with recently and his own compulsions. With neither do you find a clear, detailed, coherent agenda other than emotional rants about immigrants, MAGA, clericalism and "synodality."

4. Superpowers: Immense Talent, Energy, Confidence. In a marvelous podcast just prior to the election, Jordan Peterson described Trump and his coterie (Musk, Vance, Kennedy, etc.) as marvel superheroes: extraordinarily talented, sublimely confident, odd, bursting with energy. They are cartoon characters, not ordinary human beings. Completely out of the normal. Each in his own realm has achieved far more than we can expect of a mere human.  Jordan was positive: he acknowledged dangers involved but had great hopes for them. He was 100 % correct: developments since they took power confirm his viewpoint. 

Pope Francis is in their league. He is his own man, a free spirit. Like them, he is unrestrained by norms, tradition and protocol. Reckless in his loves and hates. He was active and dynamic, even in old age and when mortally sick. He did the unprecedented as pope. Like Trump and his gang, he was fearless and fierce.

5. Elite, Populist Demagogue.  Each present as populists, champions of the poor, marginalized, neglected, the one nationalist, the other globalist. Both are rhetorical geniuses, in choice of words and thoughts and presentation arousing intense loyalty and emotion among those who feel victimized. At the same time, however, they carry interior contradictions. Trump is a multi-billionaire whose tax policies up to now have benefited the investor class. Francis an anti-clerical who uses his position of power at the top of the hierarchy to impose his will. He is the enemy of populist movements around national/cultural identity and largely hostile to popular forms of piety. 

6. Polarizing. The "Frump" phenomenon is intensely polarizing, in the nation and Church, because resentment is the primary energy. It is unlikely that anyone invested in the Church or national politics is neutral or indifferent about either of the two: you simply have to love them or hate them. Their energy, talent and resentments are overwhelming: each is a tidal current that can only be wholeheartedly resisted or embraced.

7. Dictatorial.  Trump's tyrannical compulsions are now fully transparent. Prior to the election, I was one who expected Trump 2 to mirror his earlier administration: suprizingly moderate, deferential to experts, largely "business as usual" notwithstanding idiotic tweets. My liberal friends and family were right: the new Trump is a monster. My view is that four years of relentless battle...impeachments, trials, media assaults, etc...have created this monster. He is surging with resentment. His preternatural triumph has left him exploding with grandiosity. This Ego knows no restraints.                                                           Francis again is less straightforward, more subtle and camouflaged. But he is dictatorial in ways we have not seen in recent memory of the papacy: singlehandedly, without collegiality or "synodality,"  reversed Church teaching on capital punishment, communion for the divorced-remarried, and gay blessings; removed traditional bishops, and filled the college of cardinals with those who agree with him. He is correctly seen as the "Catholic Peron."

What About Leo?  Leo is not Francis 2. Leo is not the Anti-Trump. He is Leo. He is integral, full scale, classic, multi-dimensional Catholic. He is authentically self-effacing, modest, humble. He is a listener who sees the good wherever it is. He is friend and partner to the liberal and the conservative. He is a patriot and a globalist. He is an institutionalist, a canon lawyer, expert in, defensive of, and reverent towards the sacramental/traditional structures and practices of the Church. He is a man of the poor, happily free of resentments. He is emotionally sober, judicious, intellectually coherent. He is energetic, talented, zealous...all in a quiet, low key. He is respectful of the proper dispersion of authority and gentle in his own exercise of it. Above all: he is a unifying force in a world gone wickedly combative. He is the "Non-Frump."

How Do We Deal With Frump-Trancis?                                                                                              DETACH, WITH LOVE. From the "codependency" wisdom of Alanon and similar groups, we learn how to deal with compulsives. All of us are living...all the time...everywhere...with people that are out of control...be it substance, money, sex, food, gambling, rage, anxiety, depression, power. We detach, with love. We disinvest the interest, dependency, fascination, fear, status, control we have invested. We create an emotional distance. From that position, we are able to relate in love and truth...sometimes a tough love and truth.                                                                                                                                           A wholesome subsidiarity recognizes that we have all invested far too much status, fascination, power, anxiety, and hope in the top of the pyramids of both Church and State: the Pope and the President. Too much power in the center. Structurally we need to disperse authority downward in both society and Church. Localism. But more important, emotionally/spiritually each of us have to "get a life"...regain interior peace, freedom, agency, hopefulness, and joy. We need to renounce our obsessions with pope and president.                                                                                                                                                     For example, in the USA 2025, perhaps 40% of us are suffering some degree of Trump Derangement Syndrome: obsessive resentment, contempt, victimization, powerlessness, fear of impending doom. On the other side, close to 40% of us may acknowledge Trumpian disorders but minimalize it in the context of greater dangers from the left. The first group are victims; the second enablers; both are codependents.          

Without saying or doing very much at all, Leo XIV has modeled for us a faith that is quiet, profound, humble, confident, free of anxiety and resentment, sober, intelligent, active, embracive of the good wherever it is found.                            

We have entered a new era in our Church and world. The age of Frump/Trancis is over! Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last!                            Praise Be to God!  

Most Influential American Catholic Theologians of the Last 80 Years

The critique (on today's First Thing's website) of recently deceased Fr. David Tracey by Monsignor Tom Guarino...respectful, insightful, lucid and (miraculously) metaphysically user-friendly...provoked a question: Who are the most influential Catholic American theologians (for better or for worse) since WWII? 

(You are well aware, kind reader, of how Fleckinstein loves top-ten-type lists!)

Regarding professional theologians and influence on the guild and thereby on the Church and society, I go with a first team of:

-Courtney Murray.

-Oestrreicher.

-Dulles.

-Tracey.

-D.L. Schindler.

-R. Brown.

-Hahn.

Expanding "American" to include those north and south of USA we need to include:

-Lonergan (Canadian).

-Gutierrez (Peruvian).

-Boff (Brazilian).

The best theological minds of our hierarchy would be:

-George.

-Chaput.

-Sheen.

-Barron.

Since philosophy is so close to theology we might also include: 

-McLuhan (Canadian).

-MacIntyre.

-Kreeft.

-Grant (Canadian). 

More popular, less academic but widely influential theologians:

-Merton.

-Nouwen.

-Rohr.

-Novak.

-Neuhaus.

-Weigel.

-Groeschel.

-Von Kam.

Important women theologians (Disclaimer: Fleckinstein is not a student of feminist theology.)

-J. Smith.

-M. Healy

-E. Johnson.

-R. Reuther.

Who, dear Reader, would you add? Delete? Do not be shy to "comment."

Leo, the Lion of Judah, and the Resurgence of Christlike Masculinity

Lord! Make me zealous, fierce, fearless!  Prayer of a Catholic man.

Properly, the conversation about the name of our new pope has focused on the integral Catholicism of Leo XIII: retrieval of St. Thomas and the origination of modern Catholic Social Teaching, at once traditional and progressive in the best sense. There has also been  a nod to St. Leo the Great. Less attention has been paid to the meaning of the Latin "Leo": Lion.

Cardinal Prevost, who knows Latin, is intuitively drawing us to Jesus as the Lion of Judah. This is the most underrated of the titles of Jesus. It  is my personal favorite. It is the one we need most today. 

Our societal crisis in noble virility and the emasculation of our Church flow from our failure to receive Jesus Christ as Lion of Judah, Champion, Victor, Hero. We are in flight from virility as fierce, fearless, strong, daring, adventurous, combative, confident. Cultural liberalism fears the "toxicity" of masculinity as assertive, competitive, militant. Culturally correct masculinity is configured as gentle, meek, peaceful, receptive, reassuring. But also as passive, safety-seeking, unthreatening, risk averse, non-confrontational, reconciliatory, nurturing. 

Absolutely, genuine virility is gentle, steady, protective, calming, welcoming, nurturing. But that is only one half of the equation. It is also strong, competent, daring, 

A good friend recently referred me to an article in America Magazine: "Men and Boys are Lost: the Catholic Church Can Give Them A Better Model..." (March 7, 2025, by Brady Smith.) The piece contrasted the raw, reactive machismo enticing our young men with a different paradigm: the "servant leadership" of myriads of men quietly, generously, steadily, modestly serving their families, parishes, little leagues and so forth. 

I completely agreed with and identified with the piece. I would like to think that in some degree I have deliberately and unconsciously emulated just such manly virtue which has surrounded me for my entire almost 78 years. And yet, I felt an involuntary aversion to this advocacy of  "servant leadership." Well, I have been hearing this phrase for my entire life: it is tired. But there is a deeper problem. 

A man, especially a young mans, needs something else besides humble, generous service. He needs an ideal of greatness. He want to be a hero, a crusader, a martyr, a combatant. He needs a cause greater than himself and even his own family: the Church, a war, the nation, the political battle, generous service of the poor and suffering. 

I have always loved, revered and emulated my own father. Today, perhaps most of the goodness that flows through me is a mimesis of him, unconscious and deliberate. But growing up, my aspiration was not to imitate him. Frankly, his quiet, generous life seemed quite boring. I was fascinated by my Uncle Billy, brother of my mother, who was a sharp contrast: eccentric, decorated war hero, life long spy (for army intelligence we learned after his death), entrepreneur, unpredictable, wild, heavy drinker and smoker, world traveler, a character straight out of Graham Green. I decided to pursue a religious version of him as a Maryknoll missionary: on horseback, competent, authoritative, tall and handsome, assisting the poor in South America with education, evangelization, the sacraments, credit union, and more. Gregory Peck in "Keys of the Kingdom."  I wanted to be a hero. I still want to be a hero.

The visceral appeal of Donald Trump, in all his moral depravity, to young men is precisely his ferocious virility: fearless, combative, confident, aggressive, unrestrained, bold. If I were to highlight among all the factors that brought him electoral victory it would be: his fist pumping, blood running down his cheeks, after he was shot. Every man looks at that and says: THAT is a man. A toxic, despicable, vile man yes. But that is a man.

To return to Pope Leo XIII. In demeanor, style, presentation he is a darling of the Cultural Left: quiet, modest, good listener, nurturing, caring, loving. He is an icon of "servant leadership." But I sense underneath that calm exterior a backbone of steel. A deep grounding in prayer and God's love. A confidence that is profound and therefore quiet, unpretentious. A sharp, incisive, inclusive intellect. A steadiness. A fearlessness. A ferocity of purpose. A fortitude. A burning zeal for God and His Kingdom. A true solider of Christ. A lion, in the mode of the Lion of Judah!

Counsel to a New Pope: Stay in Your Lane

 Stay in your lane! You are Pope; heir of St. Peter; teacher and governor of the Catholic Church; a poor sinner called to strengthen your brothers and sisters in the faith; a source of unity for the global Church; protector of the Deposit of Faith. 

Renounce the clericalist temptation to be spiritual Caliph of a global Christendom. Respect the boundary: tread not past moral teaching into politics, policy, and ideology. It is not for you to directly intervene to protect immigrants, the environment, or other secular, prudential, policy matters. 

The line between moral teaching and policy is definite, if delicate and pervious. Strong, clear moral teaching from our Holy Father will empower the laity to do their task in all these areas. Policy is the competence of secular authorities and experts, not the hierarchy. 

Direct intrusion into political issues by clergy is destructive on many levels. It polarizes the Church along political lines. It diminishes the genuine spiritual authority of the office. It alienates from the hierarchy those with a different pragmatic judgment on the issue.

Above all: do NOT allow yourself to be cast as the Anti-Trump. He is not your antagonist, whatever differences you have on a range of issues. Nor is Biden/Harris or anyone else your antagonist or ally. You are in different lanes. Setting you against Trump is like comparing Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan: nonsense!

Moral problems, whether treatment of refugees or the unborn, must be addressed by you in clear terms. But with a degree of detachment and abstraction, free of entanglement in the details of policy.

The moral disorders of Trump (or any other civil authority) must be restrained and countervailed by the complex network of lay actors: the courts, other agencies, conscientious members of his own circle and party, and of course opposing political parties.

Pope Francis erred here. He became associated with policies around boundaries, environment, and capital punishment. He offended the Ukraine in his attempt to draw Putin to peace; he insulted the Israelis in direct criticism of their Gaza invasion. Worst of all, he directly contradicted Trump while warmly welcoming Biden, Pelosi, and other liberals. And so, recently Cardinal Joseph Tobin set Trump and Francis as competing champions of two ideologies. Big mistake! The pope cannot be Anti-Trump or Anti-or-Pro-Anyone!

Apparently as Cardinal Prevost you have directly engaged, on social media, both Trump and Vance, on controversies about immigrants and the "order of love." Clearly your heart is with the poor. Is it the place of a Prince of the Church to get into the weeds, policy-wise? How much less helpful is it for the pope to do so?

This week, in your first words to the Cardinals, you exhorted them to "be small." Beautiful! In manner and presentation you are yourself "small": modest, humble, calm! The Church will grow small under your leadership: less organizations, less money, less power. And so, in the political sphere, it is good that you be small, true to your Petrine mission, inspiring lay actors to do the right thing.

Pope Leo XIV: the Very Best Version of Pope Francis (A Hopeful Perspective from an Anti-Francis Guy)

 I picture the purgatory of Pope Francis as being short but intense. Short because everyone has been praying for him. (Even I offered my first Jubilee Plenary for him. Honestly, it was probably less than a full plenary as I retain attachment to sin. But it was not nothing!) Intense because he was himself SO intense. Passionately he loved his Lord, the Church, the poor/suffering/marginalized, and especially those who feel distant from and rejected by the Church. But his 12 year reign left a Church polarized, confused, discouraged. This was not deliberate. His intention: to reform a Church he viewed with contempt as rigid, judgmental, arrogant and condemnatory with the warm, welcoming love of Christ. He succeeded in part. But he was sabotaged by unrecognized resentments, impulsiveness, narcissism, dictatorial compulsions, administrative incompetence, bad choices in personnel,  and theological  incoherence. Even with many plenary and partial indulgences he has serious purgation and reparation to do. The end product, post purgatory, the masterpiece (Jorge Bergoglio) God intended all along may look a lot like Robert Prevost.

Pope Leo may be Francis 2, new and improved. The same love of the Lord and Church, the same urgent charitable impulse to comfort the poor and suffering and excluded. But he may also be the Not-Francis: steady and reliable, theologically coherent and grounded, low-key and non-histrionic, free of resentment, administratively competent and genuinely welcoming of ALL groups within the Church. The  optimal scenario: what Cardinal Dolan wished for, the best of Francis, Benedict and John Paul!

Much like his nemesis, Trump, Francis was flamingly polarizing: you either love him or hate him, strongly. Little in between. Both carry heavy resentment: Trump blatantly, transparently; Francis camouflaged by his preference for the rejected. Prevost seems to be a man of interior peace. 

He worked for Francis and his agenda. His first words as pope praised his predecessor and the (TRIGGER ALERT: THE "S" WORD!) "SYNODAL" Church. But it sounded different coming from Leo. Francis spoke about "listening" but he would not listen to those he did not like: Cardinal Zen about the martyred Church in China, or any Latin Mass Participants, or the "dubia" Cardinals, or  the wise/holy theologians of the John Paul Institute in the Synod on the Family, or any USA pro-life Evangelical/Catholic "conservatives," or any serious scholar in canon law or dogmatic theology. 

Robert Prevost is to the left of me; but I think he is just right for the Church. He can bring peace and communion, draw us together in Christ...because of his balance, his moderation, and the exquisite calm he radiates in style and manner as well as substance. Our divided Church and world needs just such charism. For the last 50 years our society and Church have suffered this painful division: within families and friendships. My friend Tim and others have seen that the choice of name, recalling Leo XIII, brings to mind our legacy of Catholic social teaching (more "liberal" leaning) and the revival of St. Thomas (more "conservative" leaning.) Leo, like Benedict, John Paul and Vatican II, embodies the solidity and the creativity of Catholicism.

My son Paul this week shared an insight from some podcast. A marriage can survive almost everything (addiction, adultery, abuse) with one exception: contempt. When a couple succumbs to contempt there is little or no hope for the marriage. And so with society. And increasingly, in America and the Catholic Church, we are drawn to mutuality in contempt. Trump and Francis embody this. Prevost does not.

A proposed agenda for Leo XIV:

- Remain prayerfully in the peace of Christ, like a branch in the vine, that you may involuntarily radiate it to all.

- Calmly, quietly, confidently, clearly reaffirm the unchanging Catholic ethos: the infinite dignity of every human life, especially the powerless (unborn, elderly, etc.); the fecund intentionality of the spousal act; the masculine nature of the priesthood. Restore the old John Paul II Institute for the Family in Rome. Do away with blessings of gay unions and that entire agenda. Dismiss talk of women priests. You needn't make the Culture War your first priority; but you have to put things back in place.

- Renounce the agreement that hands the Chinese Church over to the communists.

- Reinstate the Latin Mass; encourage its participants; restore the prerogatives of the local bishop in its regard.

- Reconfigure "synodality" as a spirituality of listening and openness at every level of life: ecclesial, familial, social; NOT as a novel bureaucracy, an obsession with conferences, the replacement of the apostolic college by a democratic protocol,  a neo-messianic process of progress a la Carl Rogers, Karl Marx, and Charles Darwin. Convene every 2 or 3 years a real synod, of bishops, to know and strengthen each other ("Like iron sharpens iron, a bishop strengthens a bishop".)

- Restore the traditional teaching on capital punishment in the Catechism.

- Reform the Curia and especially the finances. Use your mathematical intellect, American pragmatic managerial competence, steadiness and strength of will to clean house. You may have to diminish, de-institutionalize, go small. You have to pay the pensions of your employees. You may have to sell some cultural prizes like artwork to pay the bills. As once the Vatican lost its political states, so now it may have to lose a network of schools, hospitals, organizations and agencies that served in an earlier era. The works of mercy will be taken over by the laity as the clergy focus (like the Apostles in Acts in delegating to the deacons) on prayer, the Word and the interior life of the Church.

- Encourage our young priests, in their love for Tradition, and invite them to outreach to the suffering.

Come Holy Spirit, upon Pope Leo and our entire Church. Fill us with the Love of Christ!

Divine Mercy: the Real Deal or the Cheap Version?

The Real Deal:  Therese of Lisieux, Faustina, Theresa Benedicta of the Cross, Maximillian Kolbe, Dorothy Day, Catherine Doherty, Madeleine DelBrel, Caryll Houselander, Adrienne von Speyr, Balthasar,  Mother Theresa of Calcutta, John Paul II, Pope Benedict, to mention a few.

Cheapened Version:  The papal teaching and governance of Pope Francis.

Century of Mercy.  The defining event, drama and journey of 20th century Catholicism was the triumph of the Divine Mercy, sublimely in the persons mentioned above, quintessentially in the revelations to St. Faustina, and magisterially in John Paul's "Dives in Misericordia" and his entire life and pontificate. The providential events of the 20th century Church can all be seen as rays of the Divine Mercy: Vatican II, ecumenism,  rsourcement theology, theology of the body, care for the poor, liturgical reform, and the lay ecclesial movements.

What is Mercy?  The response to misery and sin by the Good, the Holy, the Gratuitous, the Extravagant, the Transcendent, the Almighty Trinity. Two extremes here: the miserable, suffering, guilty, death-fearing sinner...and the infinite, absolute, almighty, transcendent, holy God. Mercy is the movement of the later to the former; the condescension, compassion, generosity, prodigality, and extravagance of pure Love. Without the Holy and the sinful you have no mercy. The denial of sin and oblivion of the Holy vitiates Mercy. Our great 20th century saints above held in tension a dread of sin and awe of the supernatural. The infinite tension and distance between the two is what draws forth the extravagance of Mercy. A demonic strategy against Mercy would be a leveling of the transcendent and a normalizing of the sinful. Mercy, as articulated classically by Faustina and John Paul, does not stand in isolation by itself as an Absolute. It is in tension with...as it coinheres in...and is coinhered in...Justice, Holiness, Truth, and Wrath. John Paul especially articulated a powerful message of Mercy but always in tension with these other realities of the divine. A mercy bereft of truth, justice, wrath and holiness is cheap, counterfeit, superficial, and sentimental. 

Mercy: God's Greatest Name?

This popular mantra of the Francis era is misleading. In our own misery and sin we are most interested in his Mercy as our relief. It is not God's greatest name. Consider: within God's own self there is neither misery nor sin. And so, there is no mercy within the interior life of God, distinct from relating to us. Theology distinguishes between the "immanent Trinity," God's own internal self, and the "economic Trinity" which is how He interacts with us. And so, within God, prior to creation and salvation, mercy would have no place. So, for us to claim this as his greatest name or attribute is anthropocentric or self-centered. Traditional language of God as holy, transcendent, supernatural, absolute, infinite, and "the act of being" (contrast to us "beings") all point beyond our neediness to the intrinsic Goodness and Reality of God.

Pope of Mercy? A Mixed Legacy

Francis and his coterie configured his pontificate as a turn to mercy, a revolution, a reversal from a prior Church and previous papacies that are implicitly seen as legalistic, excluding, judgmental, and uncharitable. A complicated man, he was not consistently liberal or conservative in theology. Highly emotional, he nourished an animus against a traditional, clerical Church seen as exclusive, self-centered and indifferent to the suffering beyond Church walls. His famous directive to the youth to "make a mess" signals a resentment, an urge to destroy a status quo seen as morally defunct. In this, strangely, he mirrors his Great Antagonist, Trump, in his Musk/DOGE/chain saw rage against the American "system" and "deep state." In this Trump and Pope Francis both lack a conservative's filial gratitude and reverence for what has been received, our deposit of faith or constitutional rule of law, however flawed and imperfect. This view is offensive to the entire trajectory of 20th century Catholicism as noted above. 

Unfortunately, this papacy is in fact a deep rupture with the past, with the 20th century legacy of Mercy, of St. Faustina and John Paul II and an entire litany of saints and confessors. At the core of this pontificate, fueling all its initiatives, is a reconfiguration of Mercy, with a diminished sense of the Holy and of sin. This is the "who am I to judge/" "I'm ok, you're ok" version: sentimental, soft, superficial, effete, people-pleasing. This is not Abraham sacrificing Isaac, Moses descending from the mountain, Elijah and Elisha, John the Baptist calling out Herod and Herodias, or Jesus the Lion of Judah. 

Jorge Bergoglio was an admirable Christian, priest and spiritual director. His generous, welcoming gestures to prisoners, immigrants, and those suffering sexual confusion elicited widespread esteem and affection, largely from those critical of or removed from the Church. He enjoyed a deep, passionate union with his Savior; a fervent love for the poor and suffering;  and an extraordinary (for a churchman) freedom of spirit. A gifted spiritual director and creative homilist, he was at the same time an interesting eccentric and maverick. On the corporal works of mercy (feed hungry, shelter homeless, visit prisoners, etc.) he gets straight As.

Problem: the task of the pope is mostly the spiritual works of mercy. Peter and the apostles deliberately initiated the diaconate so  they could be free of feeding the poor to focus on prayer, study of Scripture and preaching of the word. Peter was called to "strengthen his brothers in faith." Jesus told him "feed my sheep." This was not literal; it meant teach, govern and sanctify the Church in truth and love. The spiritual works of mercy include: correct the sinner, teach the ignorant, counsel the doubtful. More than anyone else on earth, the pope has the mission to correct, teach, counsel. On these he will be judged: did he affirm the sinner in sin, fail to teach hard truths, further confuse the doubtful? On these issues, we do well to pray for the soul of our deceased brother and pope before we pray to him.

 Let us briefly consider the legacy of Pope Francis in light of his underlying understanding of Mercy.

1. Sexuality.  With some inconsistency, but with vigor, he rejected the rigorous sexual ethos of chastity and spousal fidelity, presented in a fresh expression by John Paul and Benedict, in favor of a welcoming, accepting, accommodating posture towards mortal sins against the 6th and 9th commandments. This is clearly expressed in the "blessing of homosexual unions." He destroyed the John Paul II Institute for Family Studies in Rome, replacing it with its opposite, an openness to legal abortion, contraception and homosexual activity. In many gestures, he encouraged LGBGQ militancy and sheltered clerics accused of sexual abuse just as the Church was struggling to recover from the priest scandal. In this he diminished the iconic sacredness of sexuality/gender and the gravity of mortal sin in one move, leaving in its place a soft, sloppy laziness.

2. China. Not himself an expert on Chinese communism, he allowed Cardinal Parolin to hand control of the Church there over to the Communists. They now appoint bishops at their pleasure. The clergy in China now are under control of the state. This was a profound error: a massive underestimation of the evil intentions of the communists; and a degradation of the sacred nature of the hierarchy. This is a Catholic nightmare. The extreme opposite of John Paul's sage, courageous defeat of the Soviet Empire.

3. The Latin Mass. It is hard to explain his hatred for TLM: illiberal, merciless, dictatorial, anti-traditional. He advocates a pluralism, but on this he tyrannically usurped the prerogatives of the local bishop, in shameless non-synodality. TLM at its heart is a craving to worship our Lord Eucharistically in a manner that is reverent, elegant, uplifting, and in union with the traditions of centuries. One can fully endorse Vatican II (with Benedict) and still see the value of this expression as not only honoring our predecessors but also more expressive of the holiness of God along with our own desperate need for Mercy. The Vatican II mass, especially as deformed in its implementation beyond the council directives, tends to be comfortable, informal, casual, secular...not always expressive of our sinfulness and God's holiness. TLM is dissonant with a relaxed, easy, go-along-to-get-along type of Mercy.

4. Synodality. This intends to replace the apostolic college, our hierarchy, created by Christ, with a democratic, modernist, dialogic process. The spirit behind it is again a disgust for the hierarchy as received, the college of cardinals and bishops. It is a diminishment of the sacredness of holy orders. It is an underestimation of the pervasiveness of error in our world beyond the shelter of the Church and the inspiring Holy Spirit. It is a misplaced 60s-ish trust in optimistic, humanistic psychology of encounter. Again: the perversion of Mercy is twofold: dismissal of the holy and downplay of evil.

5. Death Penalty.  Here we have the direct contradiction of our unchanging teaching: use of lethal force is a prudential judgement (as in war and police action) at the discretion of civil authorities. Francis created a new absolute: capital punishment is never to be allowed. This is not an organic development of doctrine, but a rupture, a rejection, negation. Many of us (John Paul, Benedict, I myself) believe out of a complex pragmatic calculation that in most contemporary situations adequate alternatives relieve us of recourse to the death penalty. BUT, this is not an absolute, inherent prohibition, like deliberate killing of the innocent or violation of marital fidelity. The absolutism, clearly heterodox, of Francis on this indicates a view of mercy unbalanced by just retribution/wrath/justice as well an underestimate of the power of evil which sometimes must be confronted with hard, even lethal justice.

6.Political Agenda. Much of this papacy focused on a secular, policy agenda: immigrants, environment, capital punishment, poverty. This was again a mercy towards the suffering. Unfortunately it was also a clerical intrusion upon prudential, policy, pragmatic issues which are the concern of the laity and for which neither holy orders nor seminary training provide competence. This policy/secular focus again entails a distraction from the supernatural economy as our antidote to sin.  

Conclusion.

In critical mass, the words and decisions of this papacy did severe violence to our communion in truth. This past 12 years leave us polarized, confused, disoriented. This was not the intention of the pope. He was eager to reach out in compassion to those suffering and feeling rejected by the Church. He brought a flair, an intensity, a creativity, a zeal to this mission. And this surely did some good.

It could have been worse.  At the end of the day, diehard progressives are more disappointed than us conservatives. To his credit (and the protection of the Holy Spirit) he did not reverse or significantly undermine any major teaching: abortion, homosexuality, women priests, contraception, etc. It was more like death by a thousand paper wounds. On three points he clearly went heterodox: blessing of gay unions, communion for the divorced but not annulled, and capital punishment. The first two were clothed in ambiguity. The last was hardly discussed since there is a broad consensus against it on prudential grounds. 

He was uniquely ill prepared for the Petrine mission to "strengthen the brethren in the truth."  At the core of his "Petrine disability" is his emotional temperament,  complex of resentments, confused intellect, and a disordered understanding of the divine mercy.

As we end this period of mourning for him, we commend him to that very Mercy. And invoke the Holy 
Spirit of Mercy...and Truth, Justice, Holiness, Wrath, Transcendence...upon the cardinals in conclave and upon the entire Church.