Temptation of Femininity to Pantheism: Monist, Anti-Paternal, Non-Transcendent, Asexual, Sterile

 Men are Atheist; Women are Pantheist

In the USA 65% of atheists are men. They are overwhelmingly young, white, college-educated, male Democrats. In his classic The Psychology of Atheism, Paul Vitz showed that the famous atheists all harbored deep resentments of their fathers: Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus, and Feuerbach. Turning Freud on himself, he showed atheism to be quintessentially a masculine psychic violence against the father. It is neither rational, scientific nor intelligent, but emotional, volitional and pathological. It is psychic male violence against the father, male-on-male combat. Militant disbelief is the projection of deep, oedipal psychological forces.

The transcendent Creator God is by definition not knowable by the unaided human intellect. He is not a knowable being, but Being-its-very-self. He is not in or part of the universe, but transcendent of it and yet intimately immanent but never measurable or identifiable in a scientific way. Agnosticism is a reasonable, honest viewpoint as none of  us really know God. The proofs of God's existence are not empirical evidence or logically compelling for the intellect-not-inclined-by-wil- to-believe. "Belief" in God is precisely a volitional act of trust, in some witness, intelligent in its own way, which grants access to a reality unavailable to the unaided intellect. Within belief there is a certain agnosticism:  acknowledgment of human limitation and of divine transcendence. 

The relati0nship of son to father, unlike that of the daughter, includes a battle, an agonistic struggle of one masculine will with another. We recall Abraham's aborted sacrifice of Isaac and even Jesus' initial resistance to the will of his Father in Gethsemane. The daughter's more docile, trusting nature disinclines her to fight with her father. The son must do so, in some manner, to define his own identity and mission. 

And so, male resentment and aggression can take the religious form of atheism. Female atheists [with exceptions like Rand and 0'Hair] are like female chess grand masters: rare. Vitz showed that feminine disappointment with the father more frequently shapes itself as pantheism or humanistic/nature mysticism.

Pantheism: Feminine Rejection of the Masculine

"Pantheism" from the Greek "pan" [all] and "theo" [God] affirms that divinity is present in all life, but not distinct from the universe as we know it. It contradicts theism which affirms an independent Creator who is the source of all being but independent and yet mysteriously immanent as love within Creation. It is not denial of the Divine; but rejection of transcendence, of the paternal and therefore of the "hyper-masculine" transcendence of God. Unlike the hard, decisive, assertive atheistic assault, pantheism is a passive-aggressive diversion, an avoidance of the paternal. It is:

- Monist.  Alterity, "otherness"  is banished: all is harmonious and monotonous. Tensions, binaries, contradictions are eliminated: creator/creation, male/female, natural/supernatural, time/eternity all evaporate into amorphous uniformity.

- Empathy and Compassion, the defining posture of femininity, dominate in response to suffering.  But the physical/emotional sensitivity, without balance of the moral/intellectual/religious, tends to disordered sentimentality: self-righteous, even indignant advocacy of abortion, euthanasia, gender surgery for the young, obsession with faux-victimization, and resentment of the newborn as threatening to scarce resources. 

- Asexual: The violent tension, attraction, fascination, dissonance, asymmetry and mystery of the masculine/feminine is dissolved into monotonous, androgynous gender-as-self-construct. 

- Anti-Male as the distinctively virile is suspect as "toxic masculinity" and the preferred man is reconfigured as soft, sensitive, gentle, passive, and impotent.

- Anti-Female as the distinctively female as virginal and maternal is despised in an angry feminism that apes the depravities of disordered masculinity including careerism, sexual license, and narcissism. 

- Sterility is preferred to fertility which is treated as a pathology by contraception and abortion in the catastrophic rupture of sex from fecundity.

- Animal-idolatry diverts the paternal/maternal instincts to sentimental affection for pets seen as equivalent of the human child.

-  Freedom, Agency and Responsibility of the person are denied as the individual is viewed as determined psychologically by trauma and social circumstances. The reality of judgment, particular and general, as retribution, reward for good and punishment for bad, is despised as cruel. 

- Scientism elevates the empirical method beyond its proper domain into a comprehensive philosophical worldview as that natural mode of knowing is not balanced by metaphysical and religious thinking. And so the invisible, non-measurable and spiritual are systematically excluded from the real. 

- Anosognsic, emotional, unaware as the pantheist does not think ontologically and so does not self-identify with, say, the pantheism of Spinoza or Hegel, but feels union with the divine of nature and denies any transcendent reality. 

- Hysteria as passivity, anxiety and vulnerability in the absence of the paternal and the presence of threats including global warming, fascism, homophobia, racism and other.

- Spiritual, not Religious as pantheists practice individually, rejecting historical-traditional-organized religion. Most identify as "Nones." However the belief system seems strong in mainstream liberal  Protestantism and among more progressive Catholic nuns.

- Cult of the Body.  In the absence of an immortal soul and the afterlife, the human body itself becomes divinized so that health, fitness, diet, looks, and exercise become obsessional. 

- Disenchanted Nature Mysticism. The ecstatic union with nature is trivialized and depleted as the natural order is no longer expressive of transcendent Truth-Goodness-Beauty but is reduced to what is knowable to the human mind and scientific method.

- Desecration, the opposite of consecration, of the human person and the natural world as both are ripped away from communion with the Creator and isolated in sterile, meaningless futility

Conclusion

Pantheism is pervasive across theological liberalism, New Age fashions, and the retreat from traditional Christianity to the impersonality and passivity of alternatives from Asia. 

Like the fruit offered  Eve by the serpent in the garden, it assumes the absence of masculine companionship and replacement of trust in the Father with what is immediate, attractive, seductive. 

It is a sadness to see our sisters lonely, suspicious, sterile... suspicious of God our Father, of their own radiant femininity, and of our iconic, if flawed, masculinity. 

JMJ     Jesus, Mary and Joseph...Pray for Us!

   

,Women atheists, like Ayn Rand and Madalyn 'Hair) are like female chess grand masters: rare and exceptional.

Prayer Before the Eucharist

 Lord Jesus

My friend, brother, captain, king, savior and God

Present in the Eucharistic host,

     so thin, white, light, quiet, humble

Make me like Yourself:

Small, simple, silent, serene,

Poor, powerless, patient, persevering, pure,

Receptive of...and radiant with your holiness.

Amen.

I Am Roman Catholic...

Roman Catholic of a specific type...

- Irish American, fully embracive of the faith I received from family, parish, parochial schools in working class, urban, ethnic, postwar America.

- Vatican II Affirming, in the nuanced, sophisticated hermeneutic of continuity of John Paul and Benedict.

- Boomer Child of the 60s, observant of and fascinated by the Cultural Revolution of my late adolescence and early adulthood, from the serene, safe posture as  Maryknoll college seminarian.

- Philosophically a disciple of the classical Thomism of Maritain/Gilson and the Personalism of Buber/Marcel/Blondel; adversary of the "Great Masters of Suspicion" Marx/Darwin/Freud; follower of the deep-Catholic cultural radicalism of Illich/Schumacher/Ellul/Freire as an alternative to the then fashionable New Left and hippie movements. 

- Jesuit-Trained Theologically, in the classic Catholicism of my teachers Avery Cardinal Dulles S.J. and the saintly Joseph Whelan S.J. and his mentor, the great mystic lay modernist Baron Fredrich von Hugel.

- Evangelically Catholic, after personal encounter with my Savior and Lord, the Divine/Human person of Jesus Christ in a Cursillo at the age of 25 in 1973.

- Charismatic, experiencing "baptism of the Holy Spirit," again in 1973, along with intensive ecclesial community, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, an ecumenical urgency, intimacy with the Trinity, and flaming zeal to share my faith.

- Theologically of the Creative/Orthodox "Communio" School, of John Paul, Benedict, Balthasar and their American disciples led by David Schindlers, junior and senior. 

- Vocationally, non-professionally a Catechist, zealous to hear and echo the voice of Christ within my Church, time and place.

- By aspiration, Friend of the Poor, seeking to emulate, in my limited way, Mother Theresa, Dorothy Day, Catherine Doherty, and countless holy ones...in Magnificat Home (residence for low income women founded and supported by our family and friends), happy visits to local hospital and jail, and variety of rich, random friendships.

- Culture Warrior, battling Catholic progressivism in the Church and Sexual Liberation in society.

- Politically Non-MAGA Republican, prolife enemy of the reconstructed, post-1970 Democratic Party, with economic/political sympathies for the poor and working class.

- Devoted to the Mercy of Christ, as mediated by St. Faustina and St. John Paul. Not so much the diluted, weakened form fashionable under Pope Francis.

- American, patriotic in my embrace of all that is coherent with my Catholic faith [freedoms, rule of law, constitutional democracy, free markets] but critical of residuals of anti-Catholic Protestantism including sexual liberation, consumerism, materialism, individualism,  and unrestrained capitalism.

- Parish and Catholic School are, aside from family, the defining instituti0ns of our faith, despite my youthful infatuation with Illich's "de-schooling" and my admirati0n for homeschooling and my expl0rati0n 0f small, intensive faith c0mmunities. 

- Friend and Fellow-Traveler, adjacent to but not fully immersed participant in Communion and Liberation, Neocatechumenal Way, and 12-step spirituality.  Additi0nally, friendship with the Latin Mass, Cursill0 and Marriage Enc0unter. 

- Associate member of Our Lady's Missionaries of the Eucharist (OLME), with promises (irregularly kept) around Eucharistic and Marian devotion, liturgy of the hours, simplicity of life, and others.

- Philo-Semitic-Judaic, in the tradition of Monsignor John Ostereicher, the Catholic Vatican II reevaluation, and my teachers Rabbi Finkel and Father Frizzel of Seton Hall. This is a fascination and admiration for Jews, their faith, and their amazing cultural achievements, even the problematic ones (Freud, Marx, aggressive Zionism.)

- Philo-Hispanic after time in Mexico and Puerto Rico and especially the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

- Diplomatically [Catholic} Internationalist and Realist [Niebuhr}, preferring Churchill to Chamberlain in a world full of Hitlers. In my lifetime: Stalin, Tito, Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Serbian Milsevic, Rwandan genocide of Tutsis, Saddam Hussein, Castros, bin Laden, the North Korean Kim's, the Ayatollahs, Putin, and Al Queda, This is a rejection of [quasi]pacifism, optimistic global progressivism, as well as isolationism and idealized America-first-ism, 

The Catholic world in which I dwell is dizzyingly, heart piercingly, flamingly Beautiful!

I can never be adequately grateful!   

The Loneliness of the Parish Priest

 This essay was inspired by the post by my friend Stephen Adubato in his Substack "Cracks in Postmodernity," "Our Priests are in Trouble: we gotta help them."  With his customary sensitivity, insight and good humor he considers the crisis in the American priesthood. He sees this primarily in our ordinary diocesan clergy who lack the support, accountability, and encouragement enjoyed by those in religious orders, or close to lay renewal movements or others in strong ethnic communities. I find his diagnosis to be accurate. It caused me to consider the nature of Catholic priesthood and its condition in our time. By numbers alone, we are in crisis.

The solitude that defines masculinity (in contrast to the connectedness inherent in femininity) is intensified in the priest. The primal aloneness of Adam was relieved by his ecstatic embrace of Eve "at last...bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." And so it is with the husband/father. But the Catholic priest, in the violence of sacrifice ("make holy"), renounces that communion. He emulates Jesus alone in the desert and in Gethsemane. There is a fundamental loneliness about the priesthood. A solitude with God and for the Church, bride of Christ.

Let's Go to the Movies

Consider:

- the fornicator-whiskey-martyr-priest in Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory,

- Karl Malden raging at Johnny Friendly's thugs in On the Waterfront, 

-the humble, dignified missionary Gregory Peck in Keys to the Kingdom, 

- the virile Jesuit Jeremy Irons facing down the ferocious Robert DeNiro in The Mission, 

- the depresed alcoholic curate of  Edge of Sadness, [this is a book, not a movie.] 

- Montgomery Cliff heroically defending the seal of confession in Hitchcock's  Confession, 

- Alec Guinness's good natured Monsignor Quixote, 

- Javier Bardem's tormented Fr. Quintana chastely comforting a ravishing Olga Kurylenko in  Into the Wonder,  

- Spenser Tracey's Father (now Venerable) Flannigan of  Boy's Town, 

- Richard Burton's Becket, 

- Mark Walberg's endearing  Father Stu,  

- Max von Syndow's seasoned cleric in  The Exorcist,   

- France's classic Monsieur Vincent, 

- Raul Julia's breathtaking Romero, 

- the levitating St. Joseph of Cupertino in  The Reluctant Saint, 

- another Gregory Peck as  the historic Vatican rescuer of Jews in Scarlet and the Black,  

-  De Niro's careerist cleric facing off his tough detective brother Robert Duval in True Confessions,  

- G.K. Chesterton's charming Father Brown, 

- Pat Obrien mentoring gangster Jimmy Cagney in Angels with Dirty Faces, 

- Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary's. 

That's 20 off the top of my head. In each we see a man, a priest, standing alone, heroically. 

[If you, dear Reader, have not seen at least 10 of these films, you are not an authentic, certified Catho-Cinephile like myself!]

Loneliness of the Contemporary Priest

Solitude as configuration to Christ and gift of self to the Church is heroic and holy, But on the negative side, the temptation is to the life of a bachelor: self-centered, ungenerous, detached from the feminine, sterile...however charming, educated, and refined. This toxicity is heightened today as priests are more isolated than ever. In my own parish we have two churches, two rectories, two priests...each lives alone in his own rectory, one mile away from each other.

It was not always this way. In the Church of my childhood, thriving postwar urban America, a typical parish had four or more priests. The pastor was probably well beyond his prime, enjoying his role and a community he had known for decades. He left the running of the large parish (school, nuns, organizations, devotions) to his competent second-in-charge, probably in his 50s or 60s. The youngest priest worked with youth, the school, catechesis, CYO and sports. There might be additional priests with particular ministries, responsibilities and interests. At its best it was a wholesome brotherhood.

Today the 1-priest rectory has become normal. A young priest who shows himself to be competent and reliable will be given charge of a parish within a few years, without the benefit of years of mentoring, friendship and experience.

To survive and thrive as a priest today one needs the moral integrity, resilience, fortitude and wisdom of the 20 priest heroes of the movies mentioned above.  Happily I have known many such priests, over the course of my lifetime. Studies also show a good measure of happiness and wholeness among our priests. The quantity of priests is down; but the quality is high. We are in crisis. But it is not catastrophic. On the whole, I am less critical than my friend Stephen Adubato...edgy, urban, avant-garde, counterculture, anti-bourgeois, no lover of anything suburban.

Society of Jesus and of Maryknoll

Besides diocesan priests here in Newark NJ, over the years,  I have befriended many Jesuits and Maryknolleers. In the individualism of their spirituality and charism they are more like secular clerics  than the mendicants and monks. Their focus is not primarily on the shared life of charity and prayer, but apostolic action. Maryknoll was originally committed to the conversion of pagans but shifted after the War to corporal works of mercy with the poor. This, joined with their American pragmatism,  inclined them post-1965 to sympathy with leftist politics. Their intimacy with the poor, however, has ensured a closeness to Christ. The Jesuits, with their focus on education and upper echelon academics, were even more vulnerable to the errors of the Cultural Revolution. Both are prone, in complex ways, to the fragilities of isolation and loneliness associated with the bachelor life.

The Thriving Priest

What qualities are evident in happy, wholesome priests?

1.  Personal holiness, deep prayer life, intimacy with our Lord Jesus.

2.  Emotional balance, integrity, clear masculine identity, ease in deferring to and wielding authority, substantial if not impeccable freedom from deep-seated compulsions around sex, approval, insecurity, money, status, alcohol/drugs.

3. Realistic, honest reckoning with his own personal weakness and need for God's grace.

4. Solid, chaste, brotherly friendships with other priests.

5. Love for Catholicism in all its richness: liturgical/sacramental, theological, moral, social.

6. Wholesome relationships with laity, including women.

7. Support from family of origin or surrogate.

There are other qualities...administrative ability, personal charm,  intellectual capacity and erudition... nice but not necessary, accidental but not essential to the priesthood.

We continue to benefit from such priests: wholesome, virile, confident, steadfast, sober, balanced, and independent. But their numbers are decreasing. They were common in the prosperous post-war American Church of large families, thick ethnic communities, and Catholic revival. Particularly among us Irish American Catholics. 

The Holy Spirit works in different ways: some predictable; some random and counterintuitive. We see priestly vocations coming from non-religious families; from conversions out of dark lives; and later in life. Not a few are gifted, devout, sincere but afflicted with psychological disorders and compulsions.  These, when not deep-seated and when countervailed by strengths, need not be invincible impediments. We need such numerically. But we also benefit to the degree they confess and surrender to God's healing grace. Familiarity with their weaknesses, failings and addictions make them, for us, "wounded healers."

We cannot depend upon the paradigm of priest as lone ranger without Tonto;  as Shane who rides into town, kills the bad guys, rescues the widow and child, and rides lonesome into the sunset; as John Wayne who rescues his Natalie Wood niece from the Indians, in The Searchers, and moves on in a mysterious solitude.

Communion in Intimacy, Transparency, Accountability, and Support

The contemporary priest needs, not independence-autonomy-isolation, but a strong network of support, candor, vulnerability, and accountability. This can take many forms: friendship, family, spiritual direction, priest support groups, counseling and therapy. It is particularly strong in:

- Twelve step groups. These are absolutely necessary for the priest enslaved by addiction. As an ealier generation benefited from AA priests, so today, with the pandemic of pornography, not to mention the homosexual priest abuse scandal, priests benefit from Sexaholics Anonymous, a program that precisely mirrors Catholic understanding of chastity and sexual sobriety. 

- Lay Renewal Movements. Outstanding here is the Neocatechumenal Way which fosters an environment of startling honesty. Openly, in the company of men and women, participants speak candidly of personal struggles with chastity, within family and marriage, and other. With my own Irish Catholic background, I was taken aback at first. But I could see that it represents a certain wholesome "triumph of the therapeutic." I understand it is good for priests. 

The priest's role is to represent Christ as teacher, authority, presider over liturgy, leader-king, and moral exemplar. This is a heavy burden to carry continually. "Walking" as a brother in the "Way" provides a space of freedom, honesty, accountability and encouragement. 

 A different reality is operative in Communion and Liberation which does not provide the same intensity but the lighter, fresh, liberating, wholesome, serene positivity of founder Luigi Giusanni in the male/female friendship.

- Some religious orders.  My family has close familiarity with the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, a young order, birthed nearby in NYC, which has a strong charism: closeness to the poor, fervor in evangelization, flawless loyalty to Catholic teaching, an ethos of priestly virility, embrace of much that is new-yet-Catholic in the Church. These friars cultivate a brotherly intimacy that is strengthening.  By contrast, many of the older orders, robust in 1965, now in decline, retain the lonesomeness-autonomy of the lone ranger without Tonto. 

Ethic Parishes?  In the above, I entirely agree with Stephen's post. Not so much with regard to ethnic parishes. Such are a thing of the past. I have spent my entire adulthood in Jersey City, close to NYC, Newark and the Oranges. Ethnic parishes are a relic of the past. Stephen is nostalgic and sentimental here, attached to the idealized urban Italian Catholicism of his memorable grandfather. What is remarkable, however, especially with Italians but also us Irish, Polish and others: despite the baptism into bourgeois mediocrity of suburban life, secularity, careerism, consumerist materialism, sexual liberalism, upper class conservatism, and even the mafia, ethnic Catholicism retains a deep grip on the soul. My experience with lapsed Catholics, non-practicing and absent from the sacraments for decades, is that they retain intense, deep if sporadic attachment to the faith of their families. This cannot be unrelated to the indelible seal received at baptism. It will serve them, especially with the last rites, at death and particular judgment. 

Seminaries now require a new "propaedeutic year" of formation in personal spiritual and emotional health, before theology. My hope is that a key focus is on the building of a permanent network.

Communion with the Bishop

A pronounced element of our priestly crisis, clear in recent studies, is the disconnect from the bishop. In wake of the Dallas Charter, priests distrust their "father figure" as the sheriff, prosecutor and judge of wrongdoing. Fr. Tom Guarino of Seton Hall has carried on the prophetic mission of Avery Cardinal Dulles in challenging this injustice. 

I see the problem as systemic, not the personal fault of our bishops who are on the whole decent, intelligent, competent, loyal priests. The Church has exploded malignantly in institutions like schools, hospitals, social care and other. The bishop is in fact the CEO of a multi-millionaire organization. The time has come for the hierarchical/institutional Church to divest, surrender the works of mercy to the laity, and focus upon the actual purpose of the priesthood as: announcement of the Word, celebration of liturgy and sacraments, fostering of holiness, and strengthening of communion in charity.

Conclusion  

Two urgencies present themselves:

- Cherish, in gratitude, our priests who sacrifice themselves to bring us Christ in Word and Sacrament.

- Pray for our priests, pray for more priests, pray for our own children/grandchildren to answer the call to priesthood and religious life.

Thank you Lord for the priesthood and our sacramental life.

Thank you for each of our priests.

Sanctify them with your Holy Spirit.

Send us more priests and consecrated.

Choose from our own family men and women to serve you in this special way.

 

Prayer for my Mission

 Make me Lord

An agent of your Mercy.

The servant of your little ones.

An echo of your Truth.

A radiance of your holiness.

Amen.

Fasting

Today being Good Friday, I review my 78th lent and find my fasting was well above my norm.

Confession of a Non-Faster

My norm is very low: not zero but close to it. I believe in fasting. Jesus himself said some demons cannot be cast out except with prayer and fasting, But I pretty much never fast. I can't fast. I have a constitutional aversion that I have not been able to overcome. But this lent I made some progress. Part of it may be that my appetite is diminishing as I age. The rest is God's grace.

I am product of my time and place: with my boomer generation, I am soft. We were protected, secure, comfortable, and generally indulged. We are not tough. Our parents were tough: Great Depression, War, large families, marvelous church, exploding economy, containment of communism, a peaceful and prosperous world order. Even now we retirees receive inordinate money from the government and sit on assets while the young cannot purchase homes. I am ashamed of myself and my cohort.

What I Have Learned About Fasting

1. Intercession.  

The only thing that ever motivates me to fast, that overcomes my resistance, is intercession. At various times in my life, when someone dear to me was in trouble, I easily fasted as part of my intercession. Whenever I felt hungry I thought of my dear one. I felt an aversion to eating. For example, I have done the three day fast on liquids only. After the first difficult day, it became easier as my stomach shrank. When I broke the fast I was not terribly hungry. Additionally there is the well known physical benefit f the purging.

2. Spiritual Leisure: Freedom from Stress

I cannot fast when I am at all stressed. In 12-step spirituality we learn (HALT) to avoid becoming Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired as our tendency is to treat these with our preferred addiction. I would add to that stress. Stress for me is aggravated by hunger. Eating comforts me and diminishes anxiety. For example, my current schedule has me attending to the needs of our home for women on Monday and Tuesday: paperwork, repairs, personal problems. There is a lot going on. I do not even think about fasting. This may be part of why I avoided fasting: most of my adult life had me engaged in a degree of stress. There is some wisdom in this. The non-fasting may have been in part a prudent if humbling deference to my psychological weakness.

3. Spiritual Leisure and Delight.

The underlying psychology of my daily routine has me looking forward to my next meal, however modest. Eating may be the most steady, dependable, satisfying aspect of my day.  For me to fast I need to replace those delightful punctuations with spiritual ones. So, I can fast when I know I will take a long, quiet walk; spend time in Church, alone; do some spiritual reading; maybe even take a nap. In short, my craving for pleasure and delight gets redirected to the spiritual. Fasting becomes easy.

4. Communal, not Individual.

Catholic fasting is not an act of the will by a solitary individual. It is a corporate thing. Everyone is giving up meat and eating fish on Friday. Everyone! We are by nature intrinsically mimetic and social; and so it is with fasting. Recall that the preaching of Jonah provoked all of Nineveh, from king to the animals, to fast in contrition. In the catechetical confusion that prevailed after 1965, fasting fell of fashion in progressive circles. Traditional Lenten practice indicated fast, prayer and alms. But up-to-date priests would dismiss fasting in favor of acts of charity. This was a huge mistake: charity and discipline work together, not against or in place of each other. The pendulum is swinging back. Fasting is cool again.  My nephew is doing Exodus 90, a demanding program of masculine discipline. A grandson gave up all sweets; another takes cold showers; my wife gave up wine. I love to hear these things. They encourage me. And I feel that I am a little part of a very large ecclesial movement. Every Ash Wednesday Jesus directs us to our rooms to fast quietly and covertly rather than seek approval. That valid truth needs to be balanced: we need let our light shine so as to encourage and strengthen each other, in the mimetics of holiness.

Tomorrow evening we will transition within the Paschal Mystery into Easter, 50 days of festivity and feast. May the Holy Spirit deepen, intensify, purify, and strengthen us in communion, compassion, and spiritual delight! 

What is a Woman to a Man?

 Many things...very very good and very very bad...profound, mysterious, dramatic, complex.

First, the very very good.

1. Mother.

For several reasons, a woman is always for a man, at least unconsciously, mother. 

First, the man spends 9 months and several years enclosed within the mother. That experience, of filial gratitude/trust or suspicion/resentment, abides always.

Second, every girl is already infused, by God and nature, with the powerful instincts of maternity, as she organically embraces her first doll. Woman is finally mother; as man is finally father.

Third, the mature, wholesome man in search of a spouse, however unconsciously, looks for the mother of his children, the singular partner in creating his legacy. This contrasts sharply with the immature male who is seeking regressively to recover his own lost mother.

2. Sister, Friend, Partner.

Here we have mutuality and equality in respect, affection, chaste delight, and shared interests, values, adventures and missions. This starts with one's own biological sisters and cousins; translates to friends; and fundamentally defines the wife.

3. Lover and Spouse.

Here we include the flame of sexual and romantic desire/fulfillment as wholesome and holy,  intended by God to image his own passionate/intimate/dramatic love, properly within marriage. Outside of that communion, many friendships, in chaste restrain and within wise boundaries, enjoy the enrichments of libidinal appreciation.

4. Madonna-Virgin-Martyr-Beauty.

In a privileged, extraordinary way, woman embodies the True, the Good and the Beautiful...emotionally, physically, socially, intellectually, and spiritually. This finds its ultimate expression, of course, in Mary, mother and virgin. Secondly, we see this in our virgin-martyrs and in all consecrated women. Even the natural beauty of women is properly a reflection of the deeper, eternal reality of Beauty.

5. Daughter.

A man achieves full virility in fatherhood, biological and emotional/spiritual. The father's paternal bond with daughter is different from that with son: more intense delight, distance, mystery, difference, protectiveness, tenderness, reverence. The mature man transfers this paternity to every woman, in her preciousness, fragility and trust. 

In every encounter with a woman, the man engages, in endless combinations, these five dimensions: gratitude/trust/affection, camaraderie/friendship, desire/intimacy/communion, reverence, gentle-strong tenderness.

Now, the very very bad:

1. Sex object.

This is not the natural, holy sexual desire intended by God, however urgent and passionate. This essentially is objectivization of the woman: she is configured entirely as a source of pleasure and release. Her dignity, her personhood, her suffering, and holiness are all blocked. 

2. Goddess-like, Distant Object of Desire.

Similar to the prior dynamic, this is less physical than psychological. Here the woman is coveted as the satisfaction of a deep, emotional emptiness. The root cause is surely in part a traumatic loss of the mother and a residual wound of emptiness and longing. The man suffers interminable tension as he craves what he cannot have. An excessive female cultivation of glamor, even if not deliberate, inflames this urgency. This is a suffering that if not acknowledged leads to obsession, bondage, sin. 

3. Evil Stepmother, Femme Fatale.

Here we have the dark, devouring, rejecting mother figure. Jezebel, the seductress, the critical-harassing wife, the smothering mother. Even the relatively normal male can experience the dissatisfaction/criticism of the relatively normal female as psychically life-threatening.

4. Object of Resentment, Contempt, Abuse.

Developmentally, the adolescent male commonly sees femininity through the lens of an inadequate masculine ideal as weak, cowardly, annoying, emotional, and of little worth. In the best case scenario, he gradually attains a confident masculine identity, wholesome friendships, spousal intimacy and masculine appreciation for the splendor of the feminine, deeper than the mere physical. Alternatively, the man with mother wounds can become pathologically misogynist: viewing woman with contempt, rage, fear, controlling dominance and frustrated desire. This becomes abuse, neglect, or disordered distance.

A woman can be for a man: excruciatingly desirable, threatening, smothering, demeaning, seductive, frustrating, and incomprehensible. More truly she is  fascinating, awesome, mysterious, incomprehensible, delightful, comforting, inspiring, encouraging, and holy.

 And What am I as a Man to a Woman?

Let us confess to God and our sisters: we are abusers, neglectors, disrespectors, cowards, regressive and needy infants.

May we rather be:

Brother, Friend, Partner in Christ, before God first and foremost. Here there is equality and mutuality. "In Christ there is no man and woman." Chaste, fervent, passionate communion in the good, the true, the beautiful; in adventure, delight, and mission. In this I am brother equally to man and woman.

Childlike, Grateful, Receptive of the feminine/maternal comfort, care, wisdom, empathy and love; ever moving beyond the childish, the selfish, the regressive.

Paternal as tenderly protective and providing. A steady source of stability, clarity, wisdom, and calm.

Reverent before innocence, loveliness, virtue, generosity, nobility, and holiness. 

Mary our Mother, St. Joseph and all you saints and angels, Pray for us!

Praying for Sinful Souls

An hour ago I had a pleasant conversation with a priest friend, an octogenarian monsignor who most days offers mass privately in his home. At my request he will offer masses for Caesar Chavez and  Father/Bishop-by-virtue-of-indelible-seal-of-ordination Ted McCarrick. He would not take a donation. He was happy to do so as he is an admirer of both. He served as pastor under McCarrick for the entirety of his time in Newark and knows many good things about him. He mentioned that we don't know that they didn't repent of their sins. I was delighted that he is saying these masses.

As I get older, I like to pray for the souls and have masses said. I am getting closer to my own particular judgement, retribution, mercy and wrath. This is important. This is Catholic. A crucial conflict between the Protestant reformers and Catholicism was precisely masses and prayers for the souls in purgatory. In the wake of Vatican II, which was an ecumenical reconciliation, there was a covert triumph of the reformers in the "Spirit of Vatican II". It was not that anyone denied purgatory or actively discouraged prayer for the deceased. But, in large part, we simply stopped doing it. It was now the null curriculum. Funeral services became Resurrection-focused, sin-ignoring, eulogy addicted, solemnity-deprived, retribution-denying, and heaven-presuming. Catholic ritual continued to pray for the deceased; but popular piety imbibed the cool aid of a secularized, sentimental, superficial, cockeyed optimism. 

Next I hope to have masses said for Jefferey Epstein and Bernie Maddow. Then, Brigid Bardot and Ingrid Bergman. Probably Fr. Bruce Ritter and Jean Vanier. After that I am even thinking about Saddam Hussein and Osama ben Laden. 

In each of these I see good. I cannot just accept that their souls go to hell.

Note: the normal donation for a mass is still $10, the most inflation-resisting bargain in the world. Of course, it is a donation: one can give more or less or nothing at all. To "sell" a sacrament is the serious sin of simony. I don't want to have these masses said in the parish as it can cause scandal, confusion and unhealthy controversy.  So, for my new crusade, I hope to quietly engage priest friends, out of the limelight. 

I am not inclined to pray for Fr. Marcial Maciel,  Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, or  Mao. I won't deny you the right to pray for them. Theoretically it might be good for me to pray for them...and Pilate, Nero, Genghis Khan, Count Dracula, and Ivan the Terrible. But psychologically I cannot grab on to any good in them. It doesn't feel right to me.

We pray always for Mercy and Justice. Not just mercy. But mercy in justice, truth, and annihilation of evil. We want retribution: not revenge, but justice as good for good and destruction of evil. 

We do not pray for Lucifer and his minions. 

 The classics, of course, are JFK and MKL. St. Padre Pio had high regard for American presidents and was deeply saddened by the assassination of Kennedy. He allegedly told a priest friend that Kennedy was in heaven. It is also reported that Pio said he benefited from all the prayers of the faithful. Does this mean we need not pray for him? I think not! This is, after all, private revelation. If anything, he may be in heaven as God foresaw all the prayers for him. And likewise in the case of King. 

A death brings for us here closure, a conclusion. But not absolute finality. For the damned, the judgement is definitive. But the soul in purgatory is still in motion; and the one in heaven intercedes for us on earth. Life here is not self-contained, but opens up to a broader, eternal drama.

Additionally, as considered in an earlier blog, it is possible that the moment of death, for each of us, included hardened sinners themselves in the act of a mortal sin, might have each of us face to face with the wounded-but-glorified Jesus in his final offer of Mercy albeit with Justice. With that in mind, we do well to pray for those who have died even hard in sin. As God transcends time, our prayers are retroactively efficacious. 

The Church in her wisdom has assigned no person to hell; in her mercy she buries the murderer, terrorist, pedophile, suicide, and the psychopath. There are rare exceptions this, for pastoral reasons, where it would cause scandal.  The practice of the Church resonates with the question of Balthasar: Dare we hope? 

And we hope that when each of us faces that moment, we will benefit from prayers and masses yet to be offered for us in the Body of Christ, the Church. In the meantime, we do well to revive our Catholic practice of prayer for the souls, even of hardened sinners, as our conscience and the Holy Spirits prompts us. As we emulate Christ and his saints in their thirst for souls, we all benefit.

May their souls...and the souls of the faithful departed...as well as the not so faithful departed...through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.

Birthright Citizenship and the American Bishops

 As usual, I largely sympathize with the moral view of the bishops on this issue but think they err in advocating. They are "out of their lane"...as usual.

Their concern is that children will be vulnerable to "statelessness." This is a strong moral argument. But it is not an absolute. It is a prudential judgment that must weigh other concerns into a political policy. But the bishops enjoy no authority in regard to policy. In this case, it is not even a political problem, but a very specific legal, constitutional issue. The bishops surely enjoy no authority in that.

Most of the nations, even Catholic ones, do not provide birthrate citizenship. We do not see the Vatican or some synod of bishops crusading for it as they often do against controlled borders, global warming, or the prudential use of lethal force in capital punishment and warfare. Clearly, this is not some Catholic moral absolute.

The judges themselves will not rule on the moral goodness (protect children) or even the political wisdom of the policy, but upon its constitutionality. The conservative judges generally know their role: to umpire policies according to precedent and the Constitution. It is not for them to autocratically decide what is best for children, or the poor, or the nation.

The liberal political conscience does not know boundaries, form, or order. It's raging indignation explodes into sports, the Oscars, and the Church. And so, we are subject to political harassment in every arena as liberal justices themselves determine for us major issues like abortion, gay marriage, death penalty and others. 

The birthright constitutional clause and precedent is so strong and clear that it is highly unlikely the justices will side with Trump. Some may very well sympathize with his political reasoning about the risks to our nation in light of the recent flood of illegal immigration under Biden. But they know that is not their task. This issue is not up to the Executive, even with the Judicial, to determine. It is a complicated political question that should go through democratic and legislative processes. I would not be surprised if there is a unanimous decision against Trump.

The bishops forfeit their political authority when they step beyond their mission. It is not for the Church to dictate political policy to the nations. Outside of clear moral absolutes (abortion) practical policy is complex and contentious. It is properly the competence of the laity: politicians, governors, activists, social scientists, and such. The bishops need not concern themselves with this. They have enough to do with worship, reception of the Word, proclamation of the Gospel, Church governance, dogma and morals.

Their propensity to dictate political policy unveils an arrogant clericalism: a sense that they must teach the ignorant laity the right things to do in policy. Actually, the "right things to do" are not revealed in Scripture or Tradition or to the Magisterium. They are often confusing. They must be worked out, often in culture war, among various factions.

By advocating specific policies, the hierarchical Church polarizes us further and needlessly alienates those of us who come to opposing prudential decisions. 

We can trust that the Supreme Court justices, especially the conservative Catholic ones, know their lane. The bishops can learn from them.

State of Grace/State of Sin; Objectivity/Subjectivity...Balancing Binaries

Traditional, pre-Vatican II catechesis, was clear: you are in a state of grace or a state of sin. A hard binary: no gray areas, no spectrum or scale. Grace is friendship with God. Mortal sin (deliberate, free act that is gravely evil) breaks that relationship and places you in the state of sin. We would refer to someone "living in sin" which meant sleeping with someone outside of marriage. Likewise, missing mass on Sunday without good reason was grave and had to be confessed before one could receive communion. Someone with a mortal sin, unconfessed and unpardoned, would add additional sacrilege by receiving Holy Communion. Any number of venial sins would not destroy the state of grace. But venial sins would eventually lead to mortal sin if not repented. 

This crystal clear model disappeared from mainstream Catholic catechesis after the Council. It was part of the ecclesial collapse into confusion after 1965. The papacy of John Paul and the Catholic Catechism of 1994 marked the beginning of recovery. 

This moral clarity and simplicity presents a problem! In 1965 75% of Catholics went to mass on Sunday; today that figure may be as low as 20%. Most of our Catholic friends and family are not there Sunday. Do we say they all are "in the state of mortal sin?"

Well...not exactly. Here we have to distinguish objective from subjective evil.

The act or condition itself can be objectively evil: a Catholic missing mass or sleeping with his girlfriend or advocating legal abortion. We can and must make that objective judgement. But we cannot judge the subjective culpability of the person doing the act. We cannot read the heart and intellect of someone else: we do not know their intent, or their knowledge, or the psychological forces (fear, insecurity, anxiety, trauma, etc.) that may be at work. 

A person can be objectively in a state of sin but not culpable subjectively due to a defective, ignorant intellect or a will weakened by psychological damage. Imagine a young woman who has been neglected and abused and surrenders herself sexually to the first man who show affection for her. Objectively this is grave, but her intention may be relatively innocent, her deliberation and discretion compromised, her consent not fully free. And so, only God can look into her heart and measure her culpability.

We do well to retain our Catholic objectivity while we see the immense psychological depth, complexity and mystery of human subjectivity. We can and must judge objectively the good/evil of an act. But we cannot look into the heart of another and judge that. The "triumph of the therapeutic" which gripped our culture and Church after 1965 is not all bad. We can draw the good out of it in our pastoral sensitivity to the inner drama of the human heart as we keep our Catholic sense of the moral order, the battle between the kingdoms of darkness and light.

Imagine two doctors. One has given himself over to generous, sacrificial service of the very poor. He has also fallen into love and adultery and stopped going to mass. The second is successful and prosperous, proudly in mass every week with his impressive family before he goes to the country club. He cares not for the poor as he enjoys a superficial, satisfying life.  Which of the two is in the state of grace? As we ponder this we of course think of Ceasar Chavez, Martin Luther King and others!

Happily, we do not have to judge. We leave that to God. But we can pray for both civil rights leaders. And we might invite the country club guy to give a day to serve the poor in the city. And invite the adulterer to come to a penance service with us.

Lord, let your mercy be upon us as we place our trust in you.!

Father, Forgive Them for They Know Not What They Do

In the psyche ward of the county jail I met Michael about two years ago, when he arrived and I joined the Catholic jail ministry. Cognitively he was ok, but very depressed, quiet. He only asked: "How do you get rid of guilt?" I have seen him a few times since as we rotate to different sections of the jail. He would attend our Catholic communion service every week, but with rotating leaders. He seemed different this past Friday. He was walking briskly, exercising. He was serene and peaceful as he told us his sentencing will be June 5 and he expects to get 30 years. I wondered what he could have done. In prayer he was different. Quiet but peaceful. Good eye contact. In the petitions he prayed "that all incarcerated people could leave jail better than they entered." That touched me and I mentioned it. He spoke sincerely of hope and how important it is. I marveled: You are looking at 30 so calmly; you must have hope. We discussed the Passion of Christ and he noted that Judas redeemed himself somewhat at least by his remorse. My partner leading the prayer correctly contrasted Judas and Peter: Peter received pardon, Judas did not. I agreed with that, of course, but did affirm Michael's point: the contrition of Judas was not without value, I shared the theological opinion, neither renounced nor affirmed by the Church officially, that Christ appears to each of us, sinners, at death, showing his wounds sustained for our pardon, and offers his mercy. And so, while we Catholics believe in a hell populated, at least by demons, we do not know with certitude that any human is there, even Judas. 

Later I learned his crime. In a schizophrenic state, fighting about household chores, he stabbed his mother and father to death. Now I understood the guilt. I was amazed by his newfound peace. I have been thinking about him since then. I see this as a real miracle. A GREAT miracle, if quiet and hidden.

I am happy with our Catholic mission. Jails do always welcome religious visitors as we can give them headaches with our enthusiasms and good intentions. But we are welcomed by the officers. We are simple, compliant, disciplined, obedient and objective. We do a simple service: read Scripture, receive communion, discuss the readings. We do NOT involve ourselves personally with inmates. Priest comes monthly for confessions. Jail rules are strict. We are there too share our Catholic faith, with the efficacious Word and Sacrament. We do not reveal last our last names. Do not bring in pens, rosaries, phones. Any piece of paper must be approved by the officer. We rotate so the inmates meet different people every week. It is not about ME, but the simple, clear objectivity of the communion rite.

It was this simple, steady objectivity, I assume, that assisted the miracle of conversion of Michael.

The jail chaplain is a muscular, tattooed, no-nonsense drill sergeant type, with a tender heart. Our leader, an ex-marine, worked for years in UPS management like myself. The jail, the military, UPS and Catholicism are alike: a clear, simple, masculine objectivity of form, rules, protocols. This is not about feelings, relationships, therapy. There is discipline, purpose, accountability, seriousness of intent. Jail is serious stuff, life and death, hard and objective; Catholicism is serious stuff, life and death, hard and objective.

Michael will be moving on to the state prison, a dark place, worse than the local jail. Let's pray for him going forward: that his own peace be preserved; and also that he be a light to others there in his quiet, meek manner.

God, bless, protect and strengthen Michael. Grant that the incarcerated be drawn to you.

Top Catholic Intellects of the 20th Century

Indulge, dear Reader, Fleckinstein's compulsion to rework top-ten lists. Our criteria here will be: fidelity to our Catholic legacy; range of influence; depth, breath and creativity of erudition; and holiness in personal life. With an exception, we identify groups, nor individuals.

10. One of a Kind: Avery Cardinal Dulles. A personal favorite of mine as he taught me, he is the only solitary on this list. He stood largely alone...like Athanasius against the Arians, like Marlon Brando/Terry Malloy against Johnny Friendly and his thugs (On the Waterfront), like Gary Cooper in High Noon, like Henry Fonda (in 12 Angry Men), like Gregory Peck, whom he resembled, (To Kill a Mockingbird)...against the theological progressivism that prevailed through the 1980-90s. Named a Cardinal for his work, he earned the respect and affections of legions of intellectual antagonists, including in his own Jesuit order, by his brilliance, vast erudition, ecumenical sensitivity, quiet charm, humility and unspoken holiness. His theological method and style is continued, with more flair and a slightly better vocabulary, by his younger colleague, Fr. Tom Guarino of Seton Hall. Dulles was not entirely alone: he worked closely in the Catholic-Evangelical dialogue with key figures Neuhaus, Colson, Reno and others.

9. Popular Spiritual Writers: Baron von Hugel (largely unknown early 20th century expert on mysticism), Henri Nouwen, (early) Thomas Merton (of The Seven Story Mountain, later 1960s Merton of the Catholic Left and dialogue with the East not so much,) Carlo Caretto, St. Charles de Focault, Romano Guardini,  and Walter Ciszek S.J. Important non-Catholic voices would be C.S. Lewis, Etty Hellison, Simone Weil, Abraham Heschel, Martin Buber. Not included here are widely popular thinkers who are dissonant with fundamental Catholic principles: Richard Rohr, James Martin S.J., and Joan Chittister. 

8.Biblical Scholars:  Especially in the build up to Vatican II: Raymond Brown,  Joseph Fitzmyer, John McKenzie, Cardinal Bea, Joseph Ratzinger and more recently Scott Hahn and Brant Pitre. These have all brought academic study of the Bible more clearly into Catholic thought.

7. American Communio School of Theology: David L Schindler, David C Schindler, Antonio Lopez, Nick Healy, Michael Hanby, Adrian Walker and others.  These bring the Communio theology of John Paul, Benedict and Balthasar into conversation with our American culture.

6. Evangelists: Fulton Sheen, Fr. Patrick Peyton and Bishop Robert Barron. Sheen and Barron are first rate theologians, but these three are remarkable for their vast influence. In a different, lay key we note Frank Sheed. 

5. Holy Women: Mother Theresa, Dorothy Day, Catherine Doherty, Madeleine Delbrel, Caryll Houselander, Elizabeth Leseur, St. Elizabeth of the Trinity.  Non-academics, these women lived lives of heroism and holiness, often very close to the poor and suffering,  as they exercised immense influence through their communities, thought and writings.  Adrienne von Speyr is a special, controversial mystic and close collaborator with Balthasar. Ralph Martin considers her to be gravely pathological; Balthasarian true belivers, myself included, see her as immensely important. 

4. Lay Philosophers: Jacques and Raissa Maritain, Maurice Blondel, Etienne Gilson, Dietrich von Hildebrandt, Edith Stein (St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross), G.K. Chesterton, Rene Girard, Gil Baile, Remi Brague, John Finnis, Germain Grizez, Robert George, George Weigel, Louis Depre, William May, Robert George, Charles Taylor, Alasdair McIntyre, Gabriel Marcel, Paul Ricoeur, Peter Kreft, Augusto del Noce, Ivan Illich, Schumacher, Karl Stern. Adjacent to, coextensive with and co-inherent with theology, these critically engaged contemporary thought, drawing largely from Thomism and Personalism. It is notable that among these 25 there is not a single priest (excepting the laicized Illich.)  The clergy dominate however in theology. A special case: Fr. Stanley Jaki, priest-scientist-theologian. 

3. Periti at Vatican II: De Lubac, Danielou, Congar, Boyer, Chenu, Phillips, Ratzinger, Courtney Murray and John Osterreicher.  These greatly influenced the Council and went on to interpret it in continuity with tradition. Fr. Phillips is not known globally as a theologian but was the diplomat who navigated the documents to find common ground and virtual episcopal consensus. Garrigou-Lagrange deserves mention as a conservative voice that was decisively countervailed. Other influential thinkers, after the Council, pursued a progressive direction which had harmful effects in their followers: Haring, Kung, Baum, Schillebeeckx, and others.

2. Founders of Lay Renewal Movements: Luigi Giussani, Kiko Arguello, Chiara Lubich, Ralph Martin and Collaborators (Cardinal Suenens, Steve Clark and others). These articulated distinctive, creative but Catholic-loyal spiritualities that inform the Church of the new century. Influential in a different lay movement, liberation theology, we can include Gustavo Gutierrez  who worked to keep it within the boundaries of Catholicism. 

1. St. Pope John Paul, Pope Benedict, Hans Urs von Balthasar. Taken together, their work rivals that of Thomas, Augustine or entire schools of the fathers and doctors. It defines our Catholicism of the years to come.

That is actually 80, not 10.  (Ratzinger shows up in three groupings.) Each an utterly distinctive synthesis of intellectual brilliance, loyalty to Christ and his Church, holiness of life, and wide influence. Few remain with us. Imagine their conversation in heaven! A conversation in which we share as we consider their lives and read their writings! 

Pray for us, you wise and holy ones,

that we may receive, cherish, defend, enhance, and above all hand on

the legacy you have left us!

This list is hardly exhaustive: it excludes literary, scientific and political figures. Who has been ignored or overrated here, dear Reader? Your comments are welcome!

Best Day of the Year: March 25

 Most overrated: Christmas, December 25.  Most underrated: 9 months earlier, Annunciation, March 25.

Christmas is rich in sentiment, nostalgia, custom, tradition, gift giving, song, fun, friendship and family affection. It is brutal for the lonely, the mentally ill, the broken hearted.  It is not the time when God became incarnate. That happened 9 months previous, when this unique person, the God-Man, was conceived in the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit.

My favorite holydays are the bookends of Jesus' life on earth: his conception and Pentecost, when he sent the Holy Spirit, the conclusion of his mission on earth. Between those definitive points, we have: birth, baptism/desert/public appearance, passion/death, Resurrection, 40 days of appearances, and ascension. If I had to rate them: 1. Annunciation. 2. Pentecost. 3. Resurrection.  4. Passion/death. 5. Baptism/Public. 6. Appearances. 7. Birth. 

How much difference between Jesus, or any one of us, at one week old and at one week before birth? Very, very little. Same little creature. There is a change in place. The change is accidental, geographical, extrinsic. How much change pre- and post- conception? Absolute! From nothing into something. Creatio ex nihilo. 

I will be 79 years old on my birthday, Aug. 20, 2026. I was born Aug. 20, 1947. But that date is not as important as 9 months previous, Nov. 20, 1946 or so, when I came into being out of nothing.

Mary's Yes, her Fiat, in response to the angel Gabriel was the SINGULAR greatest human decision, act, encounter, event. ALL of created being...the entirety of human history...was transformed in that one word: FIAT. Be it done to me according to your will.

When Mary said Yes, Jesus was conceived. Man and God were wed. They became "one flesh." God would not incarnate himself without consent. Mary was free. She represented the entire human race in our freedom, as did Adam and Eve in their primal decision, their assent to Lucifer, their betrayal of our heavenly Father.

When Mary said Yes, the deal was done. The covenant was consummated. The rest is history. Mary loved Jesus, and came to be loved by him...for the next 9 months, then the next 30 years, then the next 3 years, then the days from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning, than the next 40 days, then the next 10 days, and then afterwards in the companionship of John and the Church, and then assumed into heaven forever.

We, the Church, the entire human race, are drawn into that communion in love between the Trinity and the virgin. 

The Solitude of St. Joseph

Six days ago we celebrated the feast of St. Joseph. Consider his role in this drama. He is exterior to it. He has no direct role of intimacy in the conception of Jesus. He is adjacent. He is solitary. He is alone with God. He receives his own annunciation from the angel and is, like his spouse, obedient. His is a supporting role. He never says a word in Scripture. We know he was a carpenter. We know he cared for his family, tenderly. We know he did as directed from heaven. We know he died happily in the presence of Jesus and Mary. We know nothing about his friends or coworkers. We know nothing of his family, except that he was from the line of David. He is silent, invisible, anonymous, humble, protective, chaste. He is the quintessential man.

He is certainly the second holiest person who ever lived. He is second only to Mary who is in a category of her own: not God, but the most sanctified of creatures. He is also in a category of his own: not due to virtue or heroism or effort or will power. But because he lived in the intimate, chaste influence of Mary and Jesus. 

Who is third holiest? I go with John the Beloved Apostle who was so close to Jesus, even at the foot of the cross, and then close to Mary for many years. 

Conclusion

How do we become holy? 

Follow the example of Joseph and John. Stay close to Jesus and Mary. Open our hearts to their influence. That doesn't seem to be so hard!

Why I Like Italians So Much

 Top 12 reasons I love Italians:

12. We Irish and Italians like each other. We are different. We are both Catholic. Two things matter most: blood (family) and faith (Church). You are always Catholic. You can never be un-Catholic. You can be a porn star, a mafia hitman, a fascist or a Marxist...but you are still Catholic. Every Church is your Church, every priest is your priest, every hermit is praying for you. At your death, awaiting you is Christ and his Church.

11. Italian mafia movies: De Niro, Pacino, Pesci, Palminteri, Gandolfini and Liotta. Primal! Virile! Dramatic! Passionate!

10. (American) Italian food is the best! Everyone knows that!

9. Growing up, living, praying and working in urban NJ   I am always around Italians. They are fascinating. They act and talk like gangsters. But many are tender, holy, meek. I eventually outgrew my adolescent timidity and conviction that Italians are tougher than myself and my kind. Actually, a lot of Irish are awfully tough. (Not me!) They are loyal and vengeful. They either hate you enough to kill you on sight or love you enough to die for you, in a NY minute. 

8. Italian men are men and Italian women are women. No gay-affirmation! No gender ideology! "Patriarchy" is a good word. Camile Paglia can explain this better than me.

7. The luminous balance of the sacred and profane: the mafia boss who drives his wife to daily mass, the Italian bakery with pictures of the Sacred Heart, Francis of Assis, Sophia Loren, Padre Pio, and Claudia Cardinale.

6. The natural beauty of Italy: coastland, farms, fields, cities.

5, The History: Greeks, The Empire, Hannibal, Visigoths, Huns, the law, the architecture. You walk the streets of Rome and any cobblestone under your foot can be 2,500 years old.

4. The beauty of the Renaissance, artwork, statues, basilicas, Churches. 

3. Church history: relics of Peter, Paul, virgins, martyrs, popes, mystics, hermits. I am "Roman Catholic"...not Jersey City Catholic or Orange, NJ Catholic. 

2. Italians are to holiness what Kenyans are to marathons or Irish to alcoholism. 90% of stigmatists are Italian. They just are passionate, intense, inflamed with love for Christ: Francis of Assis, Catherine of Siena, Padre Pio, Maria Gioretti, Gema Galganni, and So many others. They levitate, bilocate, die incorrupt, fight demons, heal miraculously, receive locutions and apparitions, and SO much more.

1. Sophia Loren.    (Full disclosure: I was only 14 years old, without defense, when I say her in El Cid. I lost my mind, broke my heart, and fell into terminal covetousness. I have never been right. At this point, my hope is that my encounter, directly with Christ, at my particular judgement and my cleansing in purgatory will set me right.   Actually, it is not just Sophia. It is all Italian women. It may be a stereotype, but I don't really care: If you are Italian and female your food is from heaven, your soul is that of a virgin/martyr, your body that of a pagan earth goddess, your heart that of a Madonna. Just sayin...)

The Great, Inspiring, Historic Man/Woman Partnerships of Our Time

It is striking how many of the very best things that happened in the second half of the 20th century came from a collaboration of a man and a woman. Most of these were not romantic, sexual or spousal. They continued the classic Catholic, gendered-generosity-generativity of Benedict/Scholastica, Francis/Clare, Catherine of Siena/Raymond of Capua, Teresa of Avila/John of Cross, Francis de Sales/Jane de Chantal, Vincent de Paul/Louise de Marillac, Claude de la Colombiere/Margaret Mary Alacoque.

We start with the most significant.

St John Paul, St Mother Theresa of Calcutta, Saint Faustina.  

John Paul and Theresa were not close friends or collaborators. He harshly refused her request to retire to a life of prayer. In this he extended her agonizing dark night and intensified the depth of her holiness. In the broad scale of things, the two stand over the Church and world of this time as incomparable icons of maternity and paternity.

As far as we know, John Paul and Faustina never met each other. She died at the age of 33 in 1938 in Krakow. He moved to Krakow at the age of 18 in 1938.  They lived in proximity to each other. But more importantly, she was the recipient of the revelations from heaven of Christ's divine Mercy; John Paul later as Cardinal and Pope approved and spread this devotion. This was possibly the most powerful visitation from heaven to earth in the century.

Hans Urs von Balthasar and Adrienne von Speyr.

Balthasar is in a league with Augustine and Aquinas in his encyclopedic erudition, creative brilliance, and insight into our faith. He insisted that his own work was entirely a collaboration with Adrienne and that her own work greatly exceeded his own in significance. He considered her to the greatest mystic since St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. Their theological work, combined with that of John Paul and Benedict, defines Catholicism for the foreseeable centuries.

Kiko Arguello and Carmen Hernandez.

Together, these two founded the Neocatechumenal Way. They are clearly partners, although Kiko is a spiritual genius in the league of the greatest (Benedict, Francis, Dominic, Ignatius of Loyola) while Carmen was theologically trained and probably responsible for their distinctive liturgy (which I personally consider the weak leak in their chain.)

Next we consider partnerships in the active life of charity.

Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin

Co-founders of the Catholic Worker, Dorothy was the moving, charismatic force, the Mother of the movement; but she could never have done this without her mentoring by Peter in the Catholic tradition.

Catherine and Eddy Doherty

Catherine is the peer of Dorothy Day in her spiritual wisdom, activism and influence.  She founded Madonna House, not unlike the Catholic Worker.

She married Eddy Doherty, a renown journalist, in a "Josephite marriage," in which they both pledged sexual abstinence. Both had prior marriages (hers annulled as her husband was a cousin, in the Russian Orthodox Church) and had children in their previous marriages. Eddy became a permanent deacon. 

Next We Consider Marriages of Philosophers

Jacques and Raissa Maritain

Dietrich and Alice von Hildreband

These two marriages have striking similarities: contemporaries, the husbands knew each other. They are certainly two of the most accomplished, influential Catholic philosophers of the century. Both followed St. Thomas although Dietrich leaned more heavily into contemporary phenomenology and personalism. Both wives were substantial thinkers in their own right. Both marriages were Josephite: sexually abstinent, seeking fruition spiritually but not biologically. 

Next: the mystic and the atheist doctor.

Elizabeth  and Felix Leseur

This wife loved her hardcore atheist husband tenderly, passionately, and with immense suffering. Upon reading her memoir after her death, he converted, spent the remaining 30 years of his life as a Dominican priest, spreading the legacy of his wife.

Next: Professors and their Female Proteges

Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein (St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross)

Ludwig Wittgenstein and Elizabeth Anscombe

Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt

Academic consensus surely holds Wittgenstein and Heidegger as the greatest philosophers of the century, with Husserl easily in the top ten. So, it is so striking that each had as their standout protege a female student of brilliance and moral/spiritual character. 

All three geniuses were detached from religion but moved by powerful spiritual sensibilities. Husserl converted to Lutherism from Judaism and retained a sense of awe as he pursued  philosophy detached from faith. Wittgenstein, secular but of Jewish descent,  likewise was moved by deep moral, spiritual motives as he detached from formal religion. Heidegger, raised a devout Catholic and attended seminary,  renounced the Catholic tradition of dogma and philosophy but proposed in his thought an alternate, non-theistic but strongly spiritual philosophy. All three renounced traditional Christian thought, but lived and taught their own philosophy as a faith or way of life.

Stein, like her mentor, converted from secular Judaism. She became  a brilliant Catholic thinke;, a Carmelite nun;  a martyr, for being Jewish, in Auschwicz; and a canonized saint. Like John Paul and Hildebrandt, she combined Thomism with modern phenomenology to offer a Catholicism that is contemporary, fresh and traditional.

Anscombe was a brilliant, hardcore Catholic who forcefully denounced the bombing of Hiroshima as well as the acceptance of contraception by many Catholic who rejected Pope Paul's Humanae Vitae.

Arendt was and remained Jewish, if in a secular fashion. Yet she was a profound, insightful moral thinker, astutely scrutinizing contemporary issues from a spiritual/ethical depth. She was student and romantic-sexual lover of Heidegger who was a Nazi. Strikingly, she later reconciled with  him in friendship, thus enacting forgiveness, a theme she also studied. 

In all three cases, the younger female protege excelled her more prestigious mentor in wisdom, moral character, and spiritual clarity. Clearly, the male geniuses, brilliant but not firmly grounded in the True and the Good, were fascinated by the interior-intellectual-spiritual loveliness of their students.

Conclusion

These twelve partnership have striking resemblances. 

- None bore biological children.

- Four were marriages, but three of those were Josephite, sexually abstinent. One entailed a non-marital sexual romance.

- All engaged deeply, passionately in spirituality, philosophy, active charity,

- Five were Jewish with four of them converting; one a Nazi; one remained a secular Jew. 

- Most exemplified the classic Catholic marriage of chastity, wisdom, simplicity of life, and closeness t the poor.

- We see in strikingly unique ways, the mutuality, fecundity and serendipity of the male/female encounter. Many (the Hildebrandts, John Paul, Edith Stein, Balthasar, Speyr) delved deeply into the mystery of sexuality/romance/masculinity/femininity/spousality/maternity/paternity. In them we are given the definitive response to the sterile, iconoclastic Cultural Liberalism afflicting our world.

We have here  mesmerizing personalities: radiant with brilliance, holiness, moral character, iconic in their masculinity and femininity, and resplendent in chastity, reverence, tenderness and heroism.

We do well to study them, ponder them, pray to them, and emulate them.

The Despair of the Progressive

It is palpable in the Opinion section of the Sunday NY Times: a sense of doom and desperation; democracy is being replaced by fascism; global warming about to destroy our planet; regressive populism is spreading across the globe. The faith of the progressive is in crisis.

This faith is in...progress. The famous "Arc of History!" The faith that "Progress" is the religious/metaphysical core of history and indeed reality. There are many versions but really two basic models: the evolutionary and the revolutionary. The evolutionary (Darwin, Whitehead, Chardin) sees a gradual, inevitable, imminent force in history/reality pushing forward to utopia and places immense trust in science, technology, education, therapy, reason, and diplomacy. The revolutionary (Hegel, Marx) posits the eternal dialectic of oppressor/oppressed by which the underdog is constantly in rebellion against oppression. The two obviously contradict each other; yet they coexist incoherently in various expressions of cultural liberalism.

This reality of progress is not a scientific discovery; not a revelation from the eternal; not a metaphysical intuition. It is a myth. Actually, the core dogma of secular progressivism. It is organically connected to other myths: gender as self-choice; the sacrosanct right of a mother to kill her unborn child; the contraceptive rupture of sex from having children; the omnipotence of science/technology; masculinity/patriarchy as toxic;  "born that way" homosexuality; systemic racism; the messianic role of the maternal state; and the sovereignty of the isolated Self over all bonds of community, history, religion and family. 

This pandemic of despair, anxiety, hysteria, and rage is often diagnosed as TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome. But it is surely deeper than a response to this pathetic, manic, histrionic egomaniac. He has been on a tear for over a year, but is already being restrained and will be out of the picture within two years. 

The fear is deeper: that the sacral "arc of history" has been stopped, or diverted, or inverted, or nullified. The historic significance of Trump is that he halted that allegedly inexorable direction of history. 

But it is much more than him.

- With the advance of technology (cell phones, social media, etc.) we are seeing a decline in learning outcomes.

- With the availability of therapy, we see increase in mental health problems.

- With the eruption of bad actors we see the irrelevance of diplomacy and the United Nations. 

- In resisting evidence of the lab origin of Covid, "follow the science" guru Dr. Fauci has been unveiled as a partisan manipulator.  

- Climate, the most pressing concern of liberals, is displaced by pressing needs for energy due to wars and emergent AI. 

-Shootings continue but gun control makes no real progress across the nation. 

- Critical race theory has proven to be a dead end, widely rejected by the working class, including many of color.

- The imminent demographic winter, which spares the more religious and generative of us, is ominous for the secular culture of sterile, non-generous sex. 

- Perhaps worst of all: it is the underclass, the workers, the uneducated and deprived who are choosing rightwing populists like Trump in valid democratic elections. 

Trust in a secular ameliorative process inherent to history and reality is being destroyed in every arena. The "god of progress" is...if not dead...fatally wounded. Furthermore,  progressivism, largely secular,  lacks the comfort available to religious conservatives, a transcendent, eternal life beyond this one.

The Catholic Progressive

Let's distinguish the Catholic Progressive from the Progressive Catholic. The noun or substantive is the defining inner form: the CP is progressive interiorly, with a Catholic flavor; the PC is here understood as basically Catholic in foundational moral/theological beliefs but leaning left on pragmatic, political issues. And so the Catholic Progressive accepts contraception, the technology of reproduction, legal abortion, female priests, transgenderism, and the LGBTQ agenda. Substantive Catholics share fundamental truths, but may differ as progressive/conservative/radical on prudential issues such as: immigration, capital punishment, taxes, environmental policy, diplomacy and specific wars as just.

The Catholic Progressive configures classic Catholicism as fundamentally erroneous and hateful as patriarchal, homophobic, judgmental, and authoritarian. The authentic Catholic...liberal, conservative, radical, or other...affirms Catholic dogma and morals but retains freedom of conscience in considering practical policies that do not involve inherent evils.  

 It is clear that the Vatican and American bishops lean left on many of these issues; but that practical evaluation is not guaranteed by the Holy Spirit and not binding on the conscience of the Catholic laity. A Catholic layman might well consider but then reject magisterial opinion and serve on ICE, or in Iran, or as prosecutor/judge in a capital punishment case.

The pontificate of Francis was a happy one for the progressive Catholic: it left in place basic dogma but mostly favored the liberal policy agenda. Not so much for the Catholic Progressive: he aroused hope for change but remained confusing/contradictory and in the end did not change church teaching. This will be even more pronounced with Leo: his sympathies are with the Left on policy issues. His pledge to follow the direction of Francis suggests a softness on dogma and morals. In temperament and attitude he is mediator, a peace maker, a compromiser. But he is also a canon lawyer, an institutionalist, concerned with Church stability. He is less likely than Francis to change basic teaching, even as he is less clear and forceful as teacher than many of us desire.

What Do We Make of This?

Yuval Levin has helpfully shown that in the Culture War, neither side is able to prevail against the other. The sides are roughly equivalent, although there is a pendelum swing from one election to another. Both sides share an anxiety that their side is in danger of extinction. 

With this in mind, we do well as conservatives to take a deep breath, relax, and enjoy a degree of relief from anxiety/anger,  serenity and confidence. In many ways the war is a stalemate, like Ukraine/Russia. But in the long run we have the advantage. Our values are perennial, eternal, rooted in the moral order and Revelation. Our fertility, biological/spiritual/intellectual, is superior. The progressive paradigm is sterile, fragile, sentimental, and futile. 

This posture of interior peace allows us patience, hope and persistence. It allows compassion for the progressive in his affliction of despair. It even allows us to listen respectfully and affirm the truth offered by our distressed antagonist. It awakens a desire for reconciliation and movement ever deeper into the True, the Good and the Beautiful. 

Cesar Chavez: a Fallen Hero

 I received with piercing sadness, yesterday, the NY Times investigative reporting that Cesar Chavez had not only habits of adultery but that he abused teenage girls and even raped his colleague of many years, Delores Huerta. Huerta, now 95 years old, carried this secret for about 60 years, to protect the legacy she shared with Chavez. 

This struck me in a personal way. In my late adolescence and even early married life Chavez was for me a hero figure as a historic labor leader, a father figure for Mexican-American farm workers, but also an exemplary Catholic in his prayer, fasts and Eucharistic devotion. Early in our marriage we would boycott supermarkets that carried non-union grapes. Our first daughter, around age 2, referred to grapes as "boycotts." 

He is the last of a series of personal heroes, in the public life, who have fallen off the pedestal: JFK, MLK, Fr. Bruce Ritter, Jean Vanier are others. Each represented for me historic greatness and moral goodness. Yet, in their treatment of women they were depraved. Worse was the abuse of the young. And also worse was the combination with spiritual abuse and manipulation. 

As I type this, at 2 AM, unable to sleep, I feel dirty myself. It is as if I had collaborated with him in my hero worship. Or as if this was done by my own father or son.

Any More Heroes?

Do we have today, in public life (as distinct from the Church), any moral heroes? I think of one: Jimmy Lai, the Catholic Hong Kong millionaire publisher in jail for defending freedom. He is a hero. 

I cannot think of any other heroes of the moment. But we do have decent, moral exemplars in our public life. 

By my Catholic values, advocacy for legal abortion is a moral contamination similar to membership in the KKK or the Nazi Party: systemic evil. So I cannot admire any Democratic politician of the last 60 or so years. The last authentically prolife Democrats were: Sargent Shriver, the older Governor Casey of Pennsylvania, and Mayor Ray Flynn of Boston. Even Hubert Humphry, Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale, and Jimmy Carter were compromised on this issue as the tide was turning approaching 1970. 

Happily, we do have a number of public figures with moral integrity. (What follows is not an endorsement of their politics, but of their personal decency, however imperfect.)  Ronald Reagan, both George Bushes, Gerald Ford, William Buckley, Nicki Halley, Condoleza Rice, Ron DeSantis, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, William Barr, Paul Ryan, Justices Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Barrett, Denzel Washington, and Tom Hanks

Going back to my own childhood and youth, we can admire: Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman (although dropping the bomb is a problem), George Meany, Gregory Peck, and Adlai Stevenson. 

Globally we think of: Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Dag Hamarskjold, Antonio Salazar of Portugal, Desmond Tutu, Nyerere of Tanzania, and Margaret Thatcher.

These 36 figures are not morally perfect. Many of their policies, decisions and values are problematic. But they all maintained a private and public decency and dignity, qualities desperately needed in leadership today. 

Catholic World

Within the Church, we have been blessed (again, within my lifetime) with extraordinary people, some canonized, to emulate: St. Mother Theresa, St. John Paul, St. Padre Pio, St. Pope John 23, St. Paul 6, Luigi Giusanni, Pope Benedict, Mother Angelica, Monsignor Luigi Giussani, Chiara Lubich, Dorothy Day, Catherine Doherty, Adrienne von Speyr, Madaleine del Brell, Caryl Houselander, St. Fulton Sheen, Cardinal Van Thuan, Archbishop Luis Martinez, Bishop Barron, Father Patrick Peyton, 

We have others still living with us. But I decline to name them. They are still vulnerable to sin. Perhaps specially targeted by Lucifer. "The higher they climb, the further they fall." The memory of Cesar Chavez moves us to pray for the living, even those most admirable. 

Conclusion

We remember Cesar Chavez today with deep sadness. Sad for the young, trusting women who continue to suffer from this abuse. Sad for his sin, his disrespect for women, his public hypocrisy. 

We pray for his soul.

We pray for ourselves: "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."

We celebrate today, as I type, the feast of St. Joseph. May his intercession and influence make us chaste, loyal, fatherly, strong yet gentle.

Release from Toxic Nostalgia: Purifying the Memory

 We serious, boomer Catholics can be excused some nostalgia for our youth. Fondness and gratitude for childhood, in proper proportion, is filially wholesome and virtuous. Beyond that: the postwar period (1945-65) was a great time to be growing up American Catholic.

In the lifeline of every person and community there are golden times and terrible ones. The Israelites recalled with delight the days of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph), the Exodus with reception of the 10 commandments, the kingships of David and Solomon; but also the days of slavery and the exile in Babylon.

The victorious end of the war, with the Depression now a memory, initiated a Catholic Camelot: expanding economy, pride in defeat of the Axis powers, global dominance, national unity against Communism, large families, lots of jobs and overtime, numerous vocations to priesthood and religious life, religious revival (Billy Graham, Bishop Sheen, Fr. Peyton, Thomas Merton), labor and capital both thriving and cooperative, and an explosion of Catholic institutions.

By the numbers, this thriving world collapsed, catastrophically and rapidly, starting in 1965 as the Council concluded and the cultural revolution exploded: flight out of the priesthood and religious life, decrease in Catholic practice, theological confusion, polarization between progressives and conservatives, the priest scandal, and other.

Understandably, we who are aging in a world of relentless change, are tempted to despise the new and the contemporary and project a sentimentalized, idealized image upon the past. This is neither wholesome nor holy. God is present, working always in the present. He builds upon the past, Tradition and memory, but is ever new, eventful, creative, refreshing...moving us into an ever more glorious future, eventually an Eternity of Joy. 

We do well to balance gratitude for the past, with realistic scrutiny of it, but rejoice always in the Gift of the Present as a foretaste of a promised future and Eternity. In an exercise of renouncing toxic nostalgia, let us consider six bad things of the postwar period, specifically urban, ethnic Catholicism 1945-65 and ten good things of 60 years since then.

The Bad

1. Superficial Spiritually. If that Catholic culture was as strong as the numbers suggest, as we like to imagine it, it would not have collapsed so completely, so quickly. The roots and foundation were not deep and strong. 

In large measure, Catholicism was not evangelical or Christ-centered. We were not clearly evangelized into a personal relationship with the divine-human person of Jesus Christ as savior and lord. We were well instructed in the fundamentals of dogma, morals, sacraments and prayer but all of that was not deeply, coherently anchored in Christ. We were not conversant with the Bible, in contrast to our Evangelical neighbors. 

Pious behavior (Sunday, weddings, baptisms,) was pervasive but in large degree habitual, motivated by social pressure as well as fear of eternal retribution. 

2. Intellectually Weak.  Laity, mostly ethnic immigrants, were largely uneducated. Their piety was familial, populist, deeply felt, but not highly intelligent. Priests were the intellectuals, but their seminary training was limited: focused on Thomistic philosophy and theology, but largely removed from the broader, thriving cultures of the sciences and humanities. Catholic colleges were considered relatively weak, although they did teach the faith. Influential bishops and priests were often good builders and administrators rather than theologians. 

3. Tribal and Narrow.  To their credit, ethnic parishes elicited coherence of life, loyalty, certainty, and stability. The darker side was a tribal bias against the Other. Prejudice...against blacks, Jews, Protestants and other ethnicities...was commonplace. 

4. Clericalism. We dearly and deeply revered our priests as authorities, as dispensers of the Mysteries. But that could elicit pride, arrogance, condescension from priests. Many clerics did not relate well to women. Alcoholism was a common problem.

5. Misogyny.  I do not speak here of patriarchy, in the ideological sense, as I revere our patriarchs. But in cultures modern and traditional the immature male fails to appreciate and reverence the female in her very womanliness. This was, and is, a problem within the priesthood, but also in family life. If anything, the sexual revolution and ideological feminism hav made this worse. This problem manifested differently in various cultures: for example, the Italian male has a different dysfunction than the Irish.

6. Sexuality. Catholicism has always maintained a profound reverence for sexuality as a sacred gift from God to be cherished within marriage. This has also been accompanied by shame, guilt, and fear. I personally never received a negative catechesis; rather, it was a taboo subject, not mentioned. This was at once a reverence; but also an awkwardness, an embarrassment. And so, an admirable reverence coexisted with anxiety, guilt, shame and negativity. As a result, we were unprepared for the sexual revolution.

The Good

1. Vatican Council II  While its implementation was corrupted into the progressive "Spirit of Vatican II" by the overwhelming headwinds of the Cultural Revolution, the Council itself was the work of the Holy Spirit and a miraculous ecclesial event:

- The documents, fruit of an unprecedented gathering of theologians,  were all overwhelmingly approved by huge majorities of bishops in a clear consensus.  It was unequivocally an authentic act of the Catholic Church.

- Centered Catholic life in the person of Jesus Christ.

- Opened the Church to engage the broader culture appreciatively but critically. Although probably not critically enough!

- Ecumenically reconciled with our brethren in Christ beyond our Catholic boundaries.

- Renounced  anti-Judaism with a new-but-ancient "love of the Jew," a deepened appreciation for our own roots and a glimense of the providential nature of rabbinic Judaism.

- Recognized clearly the call to holiness of all the baptized and the value of lay leadership, especially in culture and family. 

- Highlighted the importance of freedom of religion and conscience, in its orientation to Truth. 

- Retrieved a broader study of the Church fathers and doctors. While Thomistic language was not used, the underlying philosophy of St. Thomas (e.g. analogy) as well as that of John Cardinal Newman was retained.

2. Lay Renewal Movements. Under mostly lay leadership, these: focused on the person of Jesus Christ (evangelical), reception of Scripture, the activity of the Holy Spirit, community, retrieval of traditional values in fresh expressions, a pronounced sense of the supernatural in resistance to a world gone secular. These include Charismatic Renewal, Communion and Liberation, Neocatechumenal Way, Focolare, and others.

3. Divine Mercy. This devotion, received through St. Faustina in the 1930s, spread informally and steadily, largely among the laity until the papacy of John Paul who elevated it into prominence and expressed it in his powerful encyclical Dives in Misericordia. "Full of Mercy."

4. Papacy of John Paul II. Arguably the most consequential pontificate in Church history, he manifested our ever-ancient-ever-new faith in his own personal drama of holiness and teaching on: the centrality of Christ, an authoritative interpretation of the Council, the dignity of the person, the triumph of Divine Mercy, catechesis on sexuality, a sophisticated and nuanced engagement with contemporary culture, an agonistic struggle against ideologies including fascism, communism, and sexual liberalism, a profound social doctrine and more.

5. Papacy of Benedict XVI. Ratzinger was the primary collaborator with John Paul but was himself a theologian and Churchman of immense significance: the youngest, startlingly brilliant theologian at the Council; a man of humility and holiness; a brilliant scholar of Scripture, theology and contemporary culture; and a master catechist who expresses our faith with incomparable sweetness.

6. Theology of Balthasar and the Communio School. In an extraordinary partnership with mystic Adrienne von Speyr as well as collaboration with Resourcement Theologians Fr. Balthasar articulated a majestic, encyclopedic Catholic-yet-contemporary theology of holiness, beauty, and drama.

7. Pentecostal Movement around the Globe. This includes but transcends the Catholic Charismatic Renewal as it has spread like wild fire in Pentecostalism, through mainline Churches and around the globe, notably in the Southern Hemisphere.

8. African Church is thriving demographically but also spiritually in its contest with militant Islam. It is purified in persecution. It retains, against the secular-progressive West traditional Catholicism as has become a missionary Church, serving the Church-in-decline to the north. 

9. Countercultural Catholicism. With the hegemony of secular progressivism in Western elite culture, Catholicism has partnered with Evangelicalism and other allies to articulate a passionate, profound countercultural Christianity: prolife movement, defense of sexual chastity and marital fidelity, protection of the incompetent and weak, freedom of religion, and articulation of the supernatural. This finds  expression in a rich range of new, small but intense institutions: the Latin Mass, homeschooling, new religious orders (Friars of Renewal, Sisters of Life, etc.), classical schools, and intensive Catholic colleges. Additionally, we have benefited from striking apostolates to the poor: Mother Theresa, Dorothy Day, Catherine Doherty, and others.

10. Twelve Step Programs. This miraculous legacy of Bill W. and Doctor Bob grew in the form of Alcoholics Anonymous from the 1930s into the 1970s but was significantly expanded to address other forms of addiction: gambling, sex, drugs, eating, workaholism, and other. It works beyond the boundaries of any Church religion as it welcomes all beliefs but offers a program clearly rooted in the Christian revelation and is a powerful work of the Holy Spirit.

Fundamental Continuity

More significant than the catastrophic numerical decline and even the above ten developments is the underlying stability, identity, continuity of the Church through both periods: 1945-65 and 1965-2026. The interiority, substance and form of the Church did not essentially change. Numbers declined, some vices were overcome as new ones emerged, fresh organic features developed. But the Church as Bride of Christ, as Body of Christ, as our Mother, as the Communion of Saints on earth thrived, abiding in Christ and bearing fruit. 

Conclusion

We rightly remember with joy and gratitude the graces of God received in Catholicism in the postwar period. We avoid idealistic nostalgia as we see the systemic shortcomings of the time. We retrieve all that is good as we attend to the workings of the Holy Spirit in the present, guiding us always to a more glorious future. Thanks be to God!

War Forever: The Long Game of an Internationalist, Culture Warrior Catholic

So called "forever wars" (Iraq, Afghanistan)  are disparaged as wasteful and useless by many on the left and the right; notably by J.D. Vance and his millennial generation. This simple point of view rests upon a mistaken assumption: that peace is an option. A simple binary is imagined: peace, as in Biden's abandonment of Afghanistan, or war, as with Trump's current invasion of Iran. 

The truth is that we are ALWAYS, everywhere, at war...always in this life, always within human history, always. Peace with Hitler, peace with the USSR...  was never an option. Nor is it now with China, Iran, Sunni Terrorism, Cultural Liberalism, and the crime families to our south. Peace is not possible. The binary is not peace or war, but victory or defeat, Chamberlain or Churchill.

Most men understand this intuitively. By the time we can talk we know that life is about: the good guys and the bad guys. This insight does not come fluidly to many women. This reality is absolutely, systemically denied by contemporary liberalism.

Vance and the right blissfully trust that isolationist retreat will ensure peace and prosperity in the homeland. This is delusional. We could not detach from two world wars or from the Cold War. As I write, the Iranian military, that has been largely destroyed, retains a grip on the straight of Hormuz and is strangling the entire global economy. They can do this at will. If their entire arsenal is destroyed, they will be immediately replenishing drones and missiles, working in shops and importing from abroad. They would not hesitate to bring down the global economy. In our age of crypto-warfare and AI, isolation is all the more misguided.

The delusion on the left is more profound. Progressivism is optimistic: there is no devil, no sin, no permanence of evil to the human condition. We will enter a utopia of peace when people are fed and sheltered, educated, therapized, reasoned with, affirmed, understood. We need to address the deeper roots of the problems and war will disappear.

The ontology of Evil

We know from Revelation that evil and combat predated human history. Lucifer led a third of the angels in revolt against God. They all live eternally in hell, separation from God. Human life is a participation in that combat. Like the angels, we face a simple binary: heaven or hell. Peace between the two is not an option. In the paradise of Eden, Adam and Eve were not shielded from the demonic attacks: as free agents, their destiny was already to engage Evil: surrender/victory. Not diplomacy, compromise, and negotiation.

War with Islam

 In an early encyclical, Pope Francis famously said that "true Islam is a religion of peace." How he as Catholic pontiff can define "true" Islam is a good question. But facts verify the more negative scrutiny offered by Pope Benedict in his Regensburg address on the interplay of irrationality and violence within that religion. Almost immediately, at its origin, Islam crushed the flourishing Christian civilizations of Africa and the Middle East. The singular instance in which Christendom regained territory was the reconquest of Spain which took 770 years. We waged the crusades for two hundred years. Islam would have swept east through Europe except for ferocious battles at Constantinople 718, Lepanto 1571, Vienna 1683, Zenta 1697, Vasvar 1664, and the first Balkan War 1912.  Today we are engaged across the globe in this never-ending civilizational conflict: Sunni (Isis) and Shiite (Iran) terrorism, the immigrant invasion of Europe, and alerts everywhere.

Islam is a particularly resilient, persistent, tenacious, aggressive religion. It takes much that is best of Judaism/Christianity: monotheistic belief in a transcendent, holy God and the moral code of the ten commandments. It combines this with a regressive misogyny (polygamy) which fosters a hyper-masculinity and a cult of warfare. It lacks the merciful Gospel and the efficacy of the sacraments. It aggravates male propensities for lust and violence but offers inadequate purification rites. The result is that the guilt/shame add fire to a righteous violence, now viewed as Jihad. It is remarkable that many of the suicide terrorists of 9/11/2001 were using pornography the evening before they died. It makes perfect sense: they had no recourse to confession so they cleansed themselves by a martyr's death.

This is not to demonize Islam. There are rich resources in this faith, including mercy, hospitality, humility, prayer and piety. No doubt there are interpretations within the tradition which renounce this legacy of violence. But the historical record is clear.

The mullahs of Iran and warriors of Isis are enemies of America, Christianity, Judaism and Israel. They are at war with us. It is for us to protect ourselves and all that is precious to us. We are at war with them. Retreat with Vance into isolation is not possible. Diplomacy, without military might and the willingness to use it, in the mode of Obama and Biden, is self-defeating.

World of War Lords

Our world resembles that of El Cid, 11th century Spain. A colossal civilizational conflict of seven centuries. Everywhere there were local war lords, Christian and Muslim. They aligned with each other, often in messy arrangements. For example, at times a Christian and Muslim Lord will find it to their advantage to align against others of their own faith. Nevertheless, the major fault line is between the two religions and their civilizations.

Call it Christendom or Christian Nationalism or Catholic Integralism...but our faith is corporate, political, civilizational...it is not private, isolated, interior. Our faith ineluctably incarnates itself in institutions, families, practices, politics, conflicts, laws, armies, police, schools, organized works of mercy and a culture. Our faith create a civilization. And ours competes with our adversaries. 

Five civilizations are in competition in our world: Christianity, with Catholicism as the stable institution at its heart; Communism in various nations; Islam, expressed variously among Sunni and Shiites; fascisms; Cultural Liberalism.

Our four opponents are all perversions of Christianity. As noted, Islam is a merge of Arian or Judaized Christianity with misogyny and a culture of war. Communism is Christianity secularized into a this-worldly utopia and therefore inherently totalitarian. Fascisms are often blends of toxic-imperialistic nationalism, xenophobia, and a corrupted Christianity (as with Putin). Cultural liberalism is another secularized, perverse ethos of materialism, narcissism, sterility, toxic empathy and despair.

Fascism is the least of our threats as it lacks an enduring ideology and often dies with the tyrant (Hitler). Communism and liberalism are secular and therefore lack the faith in transcendence. They are trapped in a final despair. This is expressed in the demographics: sterility, a failure to procreate. So our greatest long term threat is militant Islam. It believes in God and heaven and therefore is freed from many earthly fears and entrapments. It has a high reproduction rate. It successfully passes on its faith to the young. 

Catholic Internationalist

No less than our rival ideologies, our Catholicism is expansive, confident, generous, evangelical. Liberals want to put lots of tax money into exporting contraception, abortion, the the LGBTQ agenda. Putin's Russian fascism is brutally imperialistic. Chinese communism is intrusive over the globe. And the proxies of Iran extend over the entire Middle East. But all the more so does our Catholic faith urge us to share it.

Our Catholic faith urges us to defend freedom...especially of religion, but all the freedoms. And to expand these freedoms...in never ending combat with repressive communism, fascism, Jihadism, and cultural progressivism. This means war...all the time.

Conclusion

Our current fight in Iran is a temporary skirmish in a long term war. Within a few weeks, both sides will run out of ammunition and the fighting will calm down. Both sides will declare victory. The regime will not collapse. In its two faces, clerical and military, it is resilient, tough, aggressive. While it may only have the support of 20% of the people, there is no countervailing force with weapons of destruction. To install a new regime would require an occupation. Such is not a political possibility. I wish it was. 

We are handicapped in our war against Islam, Communism, and Fascism as we fight a civil war within our own civilization against Cultural Liberalism. This religion denies the supernatural, including the demonic and the sinful. It assumes a humanity that is inherently good, peaceful, reasonable. It believes we can dispense with war if we redistribute wealth, defend the oppressed, feed the hungry,  provide education and therapy. It deconstructs family and gender as it reconstructs sexuality as the indulgence of the isolated, sovereign Self. It renounces fatherhood in horror of toxic masculinity and patriarchy. It is emasculating, perverted, depraved. 

The  number of adults who daily use marijuana has doubled in the last five years. This ethos of lethargy and passivity is connected to the plague of pornography, the cult of contraception/abortion, the failure to protect our borders, the escape from Afghanistan, weakness before Putin, the bipartisan explosion of deficit/debt, Critical Race Theory and its emasculation of the black male, deaths of despair, and the demographic winter.

It is the crisis of virility. The emasculation of our society and our Church. The refusal to recognize and cultivate the form of noble manhood.   

It is for us to "man up"...to gird ourselves, every day, in little ways and large, for the combat...personal, cultural, spiritual, civilizational, political...in which we are ever engaged.