NOT a Good Person!

I am NOT a good person! I am like my old Honda CRV before it died: it would stall out, randomly, unexpectedly, uncontrollably at every 7th or 12th or 19th red light. It was not a "good car"...it was unreliable, unfaithful, fickle, embarrassing, dysfunctional, pathological and annoying. So am I. My wife, mother, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters...not a "good person" among the seventeen of them. We are, all of us, miserable sinners, desperate for God's pardon, mercy, and help. That is the single most important fact of our existence. We NEED God, desperately! We need a Savior! We need Jesus Christ! It is not that I lack goodness. On the contrary, goodness flows into and through me, constantly, miraculously, inexorably. But the goodness comes from beyond me...it comes as gift...it is not my doing. The marvel is that despite the overflow of love, grace and gifts I have received, I remain helplessly prone to infidelity, cowardice, malice, fear, and distrust. Like my old CRV, I am fickle, unreliable, disordered, pathological. You can see that I am an Evangelical Catholic, not a liberal. Words like "He is a good person!" flow easily from the lips of a liberal. "He doesn't go to Church, but he is a 'good person.'" This apparently means: he is not a militarist, a capitalist, a rapist, or a preacher. This apparently means: he is originally and actually innocent, un-wounded by sin, in need of neither a Savior nor the pardon and grace of the sacraments. "Why do you call me good? One alone is good!" were the words of Jesus himself. As Catholics, we know that Jesus is a good person...even though he denied it. Mary is also. So are all the saints in glory, the Church triumphant. But we are the Church militant...still fighting the war daily...each of us an unstable dynamic of good and bad...the best of us infected by badness, the worst of us influenced by goodness. But I am not...a good person!

The Inevitability of Dogma

The human mind requires certitude. I am certain about where I came from (my Mom and Dad and God) and where I am going (death, the particular judgment, and an eternity in hell or purgatory/heaven.)As a Catholic, I have total certitude about the inexhaustible mystery of Being in the form of our creed and dogma: Trinity, creation, original sin, Christ, transubstantiation, angels and devils, absolution, and so forth. With such certitude, I am able to entertain a healthy, rational skepticism about tentative, empirical, political and scientific matters: for example, the saving efficacy of the expanded state (Obamacare) or of the low-taxed, low-regulated free market. Those bereft of such a sanctifying creed, are compelled, unconsciously, to construct a bogus dogmatic system in which they place their trust. The editors of The New York Times or of CNN, for example, are entirely incapable of tolerating any doubt about evolution as a mega-theory, explanatory of all life, about the catastrophic imminence of man-made global warming, or the messianic significance of contraception and legalized abortion. Deprived of a supernatural or transcendent revelation, the liberal mind substitutes a "scientistic" creed by making absolute theories and values that are vulnerable to doubt and questioning. In this manner, it is the liberal, secular mind that is irrational and anti-scientific. By contrast, as an unabashedly dogmatic Catholic, I approach issues like evolution, climate change, and contraception with a healthy, reasonable, questioning attitude...open, inquisitive, free, and therefore genuinely liberal. Bogus dogma enslaves the mind that is unaware of itself; genuine dogma frees the intellect and the will.

Aging: Moving from Martha to Mary

Aging is the steady loss of energy, stamina, and strength: the inexorable decline, over time, of the "Martha capacity"...the ability to do, to accomplish, to achieve, and to serve. With God's grace, however, we can become more like Mary: receptive, appreciative, contemplative, prayerful, and loving. It seems that we need to accept weakness, fatigue, forgetfulness, and incompetence...not as failings or curses...but as opportunities to relax, trust, surrender, and love. Mary and Martha, dear friends of our Lord, pray for us!

The Neutrals

In the Culture War that has been blazing for over 40 years, a troubling, puzzling, significant, and determinative phenomena is the persistence of The Neutrals, those who abstain from the fray, who do not advocate for or against legal abortion, women priests, or gay marriage. This group is the deteminative majority, or at least plurality: since neither side of the war has a decisive plurality, there is a virtual parity with the neutrals determining the outcome. Their passivity has, by default, ennabled the liberal drive for sterile sexuality and abortion and the triumphant, unstoppable parade for gay marriage. Within the Church, it is different: for more than a decade after the Council, the revolutionaries set the tone but the emergence of John Paul, and all his collaborators (present company included),turned the tide and the Church is today, more than ever, dedicated to protect the helpless and the family and is ferociously at war with the hegemonic, liberal, elite culture. Many of the brightest, best Catholic minds I know,especially among the Jesuits and Maryknollers, are neutrals. They sharply separate their personal and social values: privately against abortion, they vote pro-choice, unfailingly; anxious about climate change, they are unable to defend the male priesthood or the normativity of heterosexuality. The logic is: I wouldn't abort my child or grandchild, but I don't care, politically, about the 60% of black NYC pre-borns who are aborted...an attitude that is less than inclusive, Catholic or compassionate! They follow the correct liberal line on war and the enviroment but would not be caught dead praying the rosary in front of an abortion clinic. These culture war issues are all binary in that they require a yes-or-no answer, much like: Will you marry me? Are you alive? Is the electricity turned on? Clearly, if women have a right to become priests, it is a grave injustice to deny them; but if they do not, it is impossible for the Church to contravene the will of God. It is not possible to straddle these issues. A common dodge for such neutrals is to sympathize with the liberals but advocate patience: the Church takes its time, sometimes centuries, to develop its understanding. This doesn't work: the stress, pressure and polarization are all so intense, right now, that a decision is required. The Church is right or the Culture is right: you can't have it both ways. How is it that such fine, bright, good minds persist in abstaining from the fray? I see two major causes of this neutrality: inherited reticence about sex and life; and an inadequate catechesis on the body. First, especially among the Irish with their Jansenist background, there is a deep, traditional Catholic reticence, shyness, and avoidance of sex and the body. Many fine Catholics don't want to talk about abortion and contraception and so they ignore them. This is especially true of the older, "great" generation and those who came of age before the sexual revolution of the late 1960s. A Victiorian propriety and decorum continued to influence these generations so that the bishops, for example, who governmed the Chuch in the 60s and afterwards had no real answer to the Sexual Revolution: they were unarmed, defenseless, inarticulate...and so they largely avoided the topic. They have been ready to pronounce on war, immigration and the federal budget, topics about which they have no competence, but retreat from teaching God's plan for the human, male-female body. The second and primary cause of this neutrality is an inadequate catechesis or understanding of the meaning of the gendered, human body. The ground-breaking, breath-takingly inspiring teaching of John Paul remains a secret due to the indifference of so many. Bereft of such a personalist, Catholic understanding, the neutral remains reactive against what is perceived as a legalistic, negative religion of condemnation. They remain indecisive, split between a private and a public world, confused and ambivalent. It is like being undecided on slavery in 1860 USA, or disinterested in Hitler in 1937 Germany. It would be better if they were hot or cold.

A Recipe for Raising Catholics

My life achievement, my role in (Salvation)History, my legacy...I hope and pray...will be: with my wife, our families and the Church, I raised seven Catholics...real, practicing, believing, hoping, loving, sinning-and-repenting Catholics. Not canonizable saints; no, sinners like all of us, but sinners who know how to receive the incomparable love of Christ, the graces, pardon, strength, and truth our Savior gives us through His Church; not perfect individuals, not fabulously successful achievers, not celebrities, not even "good people"; but living, pulsating, suffering, militant members of the Communion of Saints who think, act, breathe, desire and hope with The Church. The world in which we raised our children was already a sharp contrast from the pro-Catholic, Christian 1950s USA in which we were raised. When our children were born in the 70s and 80s, our culture had already turned dark and hostile to the Catholic way. The recipe we used to pass on our faith and way of life included four crucial ingredients: a Catholic family and home, a Catholic parish, parochial schools, and inspiration from the ecclesial movements. Only the synergy released by the interaction of these four energy fields is adequate to overcome the toxic actors that prevail in our culture. Primary, of course is a Catholic home: where God is evoked, together, in prayer, commonly, frequently, naturally; where the Church and her tradition and practices are honored; where there is care for the poor and suffering; and where we share a sense of our need for forgiveness and pardon. Secondly, the parish: where we are baptized, married, buried; where we learn our faith; where we are forgiven of our sins. The parish, like the family is always imperfect: the priest too conservative or too liberal; too taciturn or too gregarious; too disorganized or overly-controlling. Nevertheless, the parish is where the sacraments are efficaciously performed for our sanctification. Thirdly, parochial schools. These again are hardly utopias; often enough they are not very Catholic or not great schools. Nevertheless, they are a place where the light of faith can openly, unashamedly, freely and boldly be shed on all aspects of reality and human life. Lastly, the ecclesial movements are environments of intense, deep, heartfelt faith. Most of these emerged in the post-Council Church and manifest distinctive and interesting charisms, all for the Church. Particularly helpful for us was the practice of sending our adolescents, during their summers, to special events and experiences: Youth 2000s; World Youth Days; immersion, mission experiences; catechetical camps; NET retreats; and charismatic conferences. It was here that our children saw that it was "cool" for people their own age to avidly, openly, and articulately love Christ and His Church. There is nothing magical about this formula. Not every Catholic would agree. My own nephews, one recently ordained and the other in evangelical vows, received their faith and vocation without attending Catholic schools and with minimum contact with the movements. Indeed, it is a good bet that many of our priests are less than enthusiastic about maintaining parochial schools and about the influence of the movements. Ours is a very "lay" perspective. It worked for us...thanks be to God!

Our Lord Jesus Christ: Lover of Women

I have come to see our Lord Jesus Christ as the absolute, perfect lover of women. He is, after all, the Bridegroom to His bride the Church...a title that is largely ignored by most of us. He loves us, his bride, with a love that is uber-virile, ultra-masculine, infinitely-paternal, and endlessly gentle, sensitive, strong, tender, heroic, brotherly, and husbandly. His personal love for me, a man, is husbandly and mine for him, even in my own masculinity, is always primarily bridal-feminine in that it is receptive, responsive, inviting, welcoming, and grateful. This reality is deep, mystical and not easily accessible to the average guy. What is more concrete, practical and realistic though is the fact that Jesus himself loved women so marvelously. It is endlessly inspiring to contemplate his relationships (a good word, relationship): the woman caught in adultery, the one who washed his feet with her hair, Mary and Martha, the polyandrist Samaritaness, Veronica, the women at the foot of the cross, and of course, his mother. His love is reverent, chaste, appreciative, supportive, generous, pure,steadfast, admiring, sensitive,and gentle yet strong. He is blissfully free of disrespect, possessiveness, domination, lust, resentment, covetousness, and insensitivity. He is NOT like the rest of us men. And so, especially when I eat His body and drink His blood, I ask him to fill me with this marvelous love for women.

Hell...and a Virile Faith

In pondering the important reality of hell, three sets of polarities have to be held in tension and balance. First, God's Mercy, his immense and unconditional desire for the salvation of every single person, must be answered by his justice, wrath, holiness and absolute rejection of sin. Secondly, our freedom of choice, our free will, must be countered by awareness of the weakness, determinations and limitations of our nature, rooted in our body and the condition of sin...which is to say, our misery. Our spiritual and theological culture has come to emphaize the mercy of God in response to our misery. This is a positive development. For example, we bury suicide victims with full Eucharistic hope in awareness of the suffering and diminished culpability of intellect and will and of God's overwhelming love. But our culture has also come to avoid and deny, implicitly if not explicitly, the justice, wrath and holiness of God and our own responsibility by virtue of our free will. This imbalance can be understood as a domination of a feminine over the masculine dimension of spirituality. The maternal impulse is one of nurture, comfort, understanding, affirmation, unconditional acceptance and inclusion. This is the spirit of our age. The masculine spirit more strongly inclines to transcendence, judgment (which is a bad word in today's world), holiness, demands, conflict, separation, accountability, justice and retribution (a terrible word in today's world). Mention of hell invokes images of a cruel God, of pity for the damned, of an desperate demand that ALL be included in salvation, of a realization of the pain and limitations of those who are victimized by their own choices. This reaction indicates an imbalance of the maternal over the paternal. It was not always so. For example, traditional Catholic mariology looks to our Lady for mercy and comfort as a balance to the harsh but sanctifying standards of the Father and his Son. A balance of mercy and justice is thus set. Ralph Martin, in his critique of Balthasar, appears to be balancing the equation. He appreciatively quotes Balthasar's affirmation that the two streams in Scripture, on the mercy and on judgmental wrath, need to be held in tension without either being evaporated. Martin argues that the Swiss genius did not succeed in keeping that balance. The later's theology of the descent into hell and hope for a depopulated hell appear to have come largely from the Holy Saturday mystical experiences of Adrienne Von Speyr. These need careful scrutiny by the Church. They are quite different and may reflect a mixture of the human and divine: in her case, a deeply feminine nature is painfully vulnerable to the suffering of Christ and his thirst for souls. But it is possible that her confessor and theological collaborator did not bring a masculine balance. Perhaps here the "marian" overwhelmed the "petrine" or, more accurately, was not fully surrendered to God our Father. If so, he is not the only man who has failed to bring a strong but gentle, corrective but affirmative, protective but empowering paternity to an exquisite, sensitive, compassionate feminity.