It is not hard to connect the dots:
1. The Church sex scandal overwhelmingly (81%) involves neither pedophilia nor women but young adolescent men. It is a homosexual problem. Married and women priests have nothing to do with it.
2. There was a surge of this activity in 1965-85 when there was an invasion of homosexual, especially actively gay, men into the priesthood. (Why I do not know.) Relatively few allegations outside of that time immediately after the sexual revolution. The good news: we are 30 years out of the storm!
3. The compulsive obsession with young men has been prevalent in gay culture and lifestyle since the Greeks. It is part of the condition.
4. Those gay men who came into the priesthood in that period are now in late adulthood (60s and 70s) and many are in high positions in the Church. They compose the Vatican's "lavender mafia" that protected McCarrick and provoked the Vigano testimony.
5. Pope Francis is probably not homosexual (by attraction) and certainly not gay (by lifestyle or ideology); he is ambiguous and confused as he has spoken on both sides of this polarizing issue. He is, however, zealous about his own agenda: climate change, immigrants, death penalty, and a softer and more people-pleasing Church. Therefore, he has accepted as his allies and advisors McCarrick and his mafia comrades. He befriends the gay lobby the way we pro-lifers in the USA are partnered with the conservatives (economically, diplomatically, etc.) and social-justice Catholics align with legalized abortion, gay marriage, embryo destruction and compulsive contraception taxation.
You cannot make this stuff up: this summer, as the McCarrick, Pennsylvania, and Vigano bombs all exploded, our Pope had Fr. James Martin and Cardinal Farrell in Dublin proclaiming, to the Conference on the Family (!!!!!) the values of homosexuality.
The big relief from the Vigano revelation is that now we know what is happening! Now we have, if not a cure, an accurate diagnosis! At the highest levels and widely beyond Rome, our Church is in the hands of a corrupt, secretive, pedarist network which has aligned its hidden, shameful intentions with the progressive political agenda of Pope Francis.
There is not much we can do about it. It is highly unlikely that our Pope will unveil the truth, clean up the mess, or resign from the papacy. The Vatican is clammed up like the very best of the "good fellows." To their credit, a critical mass of American bishops and leaders have demanded transparency but the pontiff retains monarchical powers and is unlikely to authorize a real investigation. The civil authorities, as in Pennsylvania, will chip away at the truth.
McCarrick and his cronies remind me of the 85-year-old mafia boss, feeble and senile and sickly, who is given a 50-year prison sentence and pleads "Your honor: I will never make it!" and is reassured by the judge "Just do your best!" This cadre of cardinals are now old and in decline. They have done immense damage to victims and to the entire Church. But they are pathetic: secretive, sterile, and depleted of virility, generosity, fruitfulness, and hope.
On our part, we are to wait, pray, hope, suffer, and do the good that is offered to us. A wise young man, when I had confided a tormenting situation, once told me: "Some things must be suffered." This curia and this pontificate must be suffered...patiently, peacefully, hopefully. This is all about the weeds and the wheat!
Sunday, September 9, 2018
Tuesday, August 7, 2018
Pope Francis on the Death Penalty
The 1992 Catholic Catechism on the death penalty: 2267 "Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor,"
Pope Francis has replaced that paragraph: 2267 "Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good. Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption. Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”,[1] and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide."
Is this a change in teaching"? A "development of doctrine?" No and No! The Pope cannot just change, by fiat, the moral law: what was good for millennia cannot become evil in July 2018! Nor is it an authentic development of doctrine: it is not organicaly, coherently, logically and inherently flowing from Truth as already revealed. This change is best understood as the insertion, into the Catechism, of a temporary, prudential judgment. The language is key: "increasing awareness"..."new understanding"..."more effective systems of detention have been developed." In other words, changes in attitude and organizational effectiveness...in the judgment of the Pontiff...make executions unnecessary. This means further changes in attitude or institutions may again change this practical judgment: an outbreak of kidnappings, or of terror and child-molestation, or a breakdown in penal systems could reverse the judgment. The operative word is "inadmissible"... a weak, indecisive word, hardly adequate for the expression of the moral good and evil. The Pope is not teaching a moral truth,an absolute...as in "thou shall not commit adultery"...that pertains always and everywhere; he is not defining an inherent evil like torture or targeting of civilians...but making a situational calculation: right now we don't need the death penalty.
I agree that in the USA in 2018, for a host of contingent, practical reasons, we can do away with executions. But this kind of judgment doesn't belong in the Catechism. It is not an eternal truth that pertains in all circumstances. I can imagine that in Afghanistan or in Mexico, intelligent, good Catholics might consider the death penalty a necessity. If I were commander of paratroopers who were raping, torturing and killing innocent women and children I would have no moral reservation about executing them, legally and with due process, to protect innocent life; nor would I hesitate to approve the death penalty for the ISIS warriors who viciously abused women and children.
Punishment traditionally has four purposes: protection, deterrence, retribution, and rehabilitation. Contemporary discussion strangely ignores the last three. But let us consider each of them.
Regarding protection, it is widely assumed that the strength of contemporary prisons ensure the prisoner cannot do more damage. This is patently false. Consider: the horrific power waged by gangs within prisons; the escape of drug lords from prisons in Mexico; the weakness of penal systems in much of the world; the murder of priest-pedophile Geohgan in a prison near Boston. Just last week the news reported two murders within prisons, one of a guard, by convicted murderers.
As a deterrent, capital punishment is useless, in the USA, because it is so rarely used. Studies show that it not the gravity so much as the certainty of punishment that deters. American juries are disinclined to use execution so it is worthless as a deterrent. This is not to say, however that it would not be helpful, even necessary, in another environment.
The third purpose, retribution, is widely confused with revenge. They are completely different, almost opposites. Revenge is a form of resentment or hatred in which a person passionately, emotionally violates the other in reaction to a received violation. It is violence responding to violence. Retribution, by contrast, is a sober exercise of restoration or reparation that corrects the wrong and reestablishes justice and order. For example, the moment after death, at the particular judgment when we encounter Christ in all his mercy, justice, and suffering in relation to our own sins, we will (I believe) beg for purgatory, we will insist upon doing our restitution or retribution before receiving the glory and joy of heaven. It is arguable that a Timothy McVeigh or another terrorist who deliberately kills thousands, a serial murderer or rapist, a molester of children... that such a person has a debt to pay that must be more than life in prison, but certainly less than torture which is a real violation of the person's dignity. We might differ on this question, some favoring mercy and others a stricter justice. But it is clearly a worthy discussion, not to be dismissed by a paragraph inserted into the catechism.
Rehabilitation means more than restoration to a positive role in society; ultimately, we hope for the salvation of the soul of the criminal. Avery Dulles, surely the premier American Catholic theologian of the past century, pointed out that the certainty of one's imminent execution could provoke a conversion. This again, like retribution, is an area of mystery and uncertainty but a conversation worth having rather than foreclosing by a simplistic ultimatum.
The Pope has closed down all conversation about these dimensions with an appeal to "human dignity." It is not clear to me (nor to generations of saints, popes, doctors, thinkers, councils) that human dignity, properly understood, rules out the death penalty. The prevalent, fashionable view of human dignity advocated by our papacy/episcopacy draws from a secular perspective that denies or downplays the two deepest human realities: Evil in its profundity and power; and the holy, the transcendent, the supernatural as the source of all human authority.
The longstanding teaching of the Church is that some cases of evil are so grave that the death penalty is required. But secularism and Pope Francis have a more sentimental view: that natural death is a final, rather than a relative evil and that execution by the state is an absolute violation of human dignity. Today's popes and bishops are possibly the least qualified to deal firmly and justly with real Evil: with psychopaths, serial killers, sexual predators, power-hungry dictators, borderline personalities and criminals. This is because by nature and background they are mostly: privileged, innocent, protected, wholesome, generous and merciful. Who would you rather confront Hitler: Dorothy Day, Pius XII, or Winston Churchill? We need the non-saint, the last of the three to protect civilization! By a perverse irony, just now when it is clear that our hierarchy has been catastrophically incapable of protecting our young and weak from its own predators, our pontiff condescends to dictate to the secular state how to protect our innocent. Robert Royal is right: the pope might take a moratorium, abstain from pontificating, and lead a penitential movement for all in authority who have violated or covered up.
Perhaps more important is the divine origin (as St. Paul says) of all human authority. The father/mother, policeman, lifeguard, and judge all derive their power from God. It is a sacred trust. It is not just a utilitarian function of protection against aggression. The aversion to execution assumes a leveled, democratic, disenchanted view of authority as force of a human will against another. In a sacred cosmos, the necessary, just, paternal, authorized use of lethal force is a hallowed, honorable task. Contrast the swat member with the sniper: they are opposites as the later is violating innocents, the former is protecting them. The material act is the same, pulling a trigger; the purpose, the form, the final end of one is an absolute contradiction of the other. Similarly with the death penalty, where needed. The trajectory of Pope Francis' emotionalism and theological confusion is towards a vague pacifism (he does not approve of life in prison either) that draws from a secular sentimentality rather than a hard-edged, classic grasp of sin and evil, of the supernatural and the diabolic.
Aware that we will be confronting violence until the coming of Christ... that it could become worse...and skeptical of the efficacy of penal technology...we need to honor and even consecrate those entrusted with the holy use of lethal force. I propose a quasi-sacramental anointing of all who are legitimately authorized to take aggressive human life: police, soldiers, executioners, prosecutors and so forth. We would implore the Holy Spirit to descend with gifts of restrain, prudence, courage, justice and mercy. This could include a penitential, purifying rite for those forced to use such force as their spirit, inevitably, should be repulsed by their dreadful but necessary duty. The executioner or officer will need a healing himself as he, in his flesh, participates in a tragedy, however necessary and just.
Additionally, this change to the Catechism is a kind of cultural imperialism: insisting upon a viewpoint that has come to dominate the secular West. Has he consulted with African bishops? What Council approved this? What happened to collegiality? What happened to decentralization of power? How about Yasidee and Christian women in Iraq who have been kidnapped, tortured, raped, shamed and killed? How about victims of drug violence in Mexico and Columbia where the prisons are weak? How about the poor and weak in Yemen, Sudan and Rwanda? What about humility before Tradition? Or respect for diversity?
The fervent papal crusade to abolish the death penalty is futile. Executions are now eliminated across Europe and in all Catholic-majority countries. Most occur in China, Pakistan, Iran and other Muslim countries: Does Pope Francis think the communists and Muslims care what he thinks? They have become rare in the US: we haven't had one in NJ in over 50 years. Over 50% of American Catholics favor use of it in some circumstances. These, probably many Trump supporters, despised by liberal elites as ignorant, fearful, and bigoted, may actually be more deeply in touch with moral realities such as vulnerability to Evil, need for restitution, and mortal sin as worse than physical death. Pope Francis, heralded as the populist pope, is not only indifferent to these concrete, valid concerns but moralistic and judgmental against them.
This correction also displays the subtle clericalism, the arrogance so common on the left: the assumption that we lay people need specific directions from our clergy about practical policies regarding walls, immigration, death penalty and the environment. Clergy are trained in theology not social policy; the Church's infallibility applies to faith and morals, not to partisan political decisions. The propensity of the liberal cleric is to correct us laity and dictate our politics. The implication is that the clergy as an elite have superior insight while the laity are ignorant and incapable without explicit directives on policy. As noted above, however, the clergy themselves are severely challenged in regard to the secular, brutal confrontation with raw Evil.
Our papacy and the emergent Francis episcopacy are in a serious crisis. In their weakened state, prone to ideologies of the left, they offer a feeble, emasculated Magisterium as they advocate a cheap mercy, depleted of virile qualities of truth, holiness, justice, accountability. We need to look elsewhere, at least for now, for spiritual guidance: to the bishops of Africa (Cardinal Sarah) where the Church is flourishing and orthodox; to the lay leaders raised up by the Holy Spirit (Kiko, Ralph Martin and the lay movements; D.L. Schindler and his Communio comrades; Reno and the First Things crowd; Scott Hahn and the new-Oxford influx of converts; Gil Baile, Neal Lozano, Robert Royal, Phil Gleason, Ross Douthat, Raymond Arroyo, and even Wild Bill Donohue!); and of course to the precious, profound legacy of Popes John Paul and Benedict.
I remain loyal to the traditional Church teaching on the death penalty, even as I oppose it's use in current circumstances. In this I follow luminaries like Cardian Dulles and Archbishop (Why is he not a Cardinal?) Chaput! I understand the Catechism correction in light of tradition as a pragmatic suggestion. Respectfully, with a serene, confident conscience, I reject the apparent elevation of this judgment into an absolute. I would encourage Catholic judges, prosecutors, legislators, governors, soldiers and others responsibility for protection, order and justice to exercise their God-given, lay intelligence, expertise, conscience, charism and responsibility in the light of the tradition and accept this correction to the Catechism for what it is: a tentative, prudential suggestion, masquerading as a moral absolute.
Pope Francis has replaced that paragraph: 2267 "Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good. Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption. Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”,[1] and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide."
Is this a change in teaching"? A "development of doctrine?" No and No! The Pope cannot just change, by fiat, the moral law: what was good for millennia cannot become evil in July 2018! Nor is it an authentic development of doctrine: it is not organicaly, coherently, logically and inherently flowing from Truth as already revealed. This change is best understood as the insertion, into the Catechism, of a temporary, prudential judgment. The language is key: "increasing awareness"..."new understanding"..."more effective systems of detention have been developed." In other words, changes in attitude and organizational effectiveness...in the judgment of the Pontiff...make executions unnecessary. This means further changes in attitude or institutions may again change this practical judgment: an outbreak of kidnappings, or of terror and child-molestation, or a breakdown in penal systems could reverse the judgment. The operative word is "inadmissible"... a weak, indecisive word, hardly adequate for the expression of the moral good and evil. The Pope is not teaching a moral truth,an absolute...as in "thou shall not commit adultery"...that pertains always and everywhere; he is not defining an inherent evil like torture or targeting of civilians...but making a situational calculation: right now we don't need the death penalty.
I agree that in the USA in 2018, for a host of contingent, practical reasons, we can do away with executions. But this kind of judgment doesn't belong in the Catechism. It is not an eternal truth that pertains in all circumstances. I can imagine that in Afghanistan or in Mexico, intelligent, good Catholics might consider the death penalty a necessity. If I were commander of paratroopers who were raping, torturing and killing innocent women and children I would have no moral reservation about executing them, legally and with due process, to protect innocent life; nor would I hesitate to approve the death penalty for the ISIS warriors who viciously abused women and children.
Punishment traditionally has four purposes: protection, deterrence, retribution, and rehabilitation. Contemporary discussion strangely ignores the last three. But let us consider each of them.
Regarding protection, it is widely assumed that the strength of contemporary prisons ensure the prisoner cannot do more damage. This is patently false. Consider: the horrific power waged by gangs within prisons; the escape of drug lords from prisons in Mexico; the weakness of penal systems in much of the world; the murder of priest-pedophile Geohgan in a prison near Boston. Just last week the news reported two murders within prisons, one of a guard, by convicted murderers.
As a deterrent, capital punishment is useless, in the USA, because it is so rarely used. Studies show that it not the gravity so much as the certainty of punishment that deters. American juries are disinclined to use execution so it is worthless as a deterrent. This is not to say, however that it would not be helpful, even necessary, in another environment.
The third purpose, retribution, is widely confused with revenge. They are completely different, almost opposites. Revenge is a form of resentment or hatred in which a person passionately, emotionally violates the other in reaction to a received violation. It is violence responding to violence. Retribution, by contrast, is a sober exercise of restoration or reparation that corrects the wrong and reestablishes justice and order. For example, the moment after death, at the particular judgment when we encounter Christ in all his mercy, justice, and suffering in relation to our own sins, we will (I believe) beg for purgatory, we will insist upon doing our restitution or retribution before receiving the glory and joy of heaven. It is arguable that a Timothy McVeigh or another terrorist who deliberately kills thousands, a serial murderer or rapist, a molester of children... that such a person has a debt to pay that must be more than life in prison, but certainly less than torture which is a real violation of the person's dignity. We might differ on this question, some favoring mercy and others a stricter justice. But it is clearly a worthy discussion, not to be dismissed by a paragraph inserted into the catechism.
Rehabilitation means more than restoration to a positive role in society; ultimately, we hope for the salvation of the soul of the criminal. Avery Dulles, surely the premier American Catholic theologian of the past century, pointed out that the certainty of one's imminent execution could provoke a conversion. This again, like retribution, is an area of mystery and uncertainty but a conversation worth having rather than foreclosing by a simplistic ultimatum.
The Pope has closed down all conversation about these dimensions with an appeal to "human dignity." It is not clear to me (nor to generations of saints, popes, doctors, thinkers, councils) that human dignity, properly understood, rules out the death penalty. The prevalent, fashionable view of human dignity advocated by our papacy/episcopacy draws from a secular perspective that denies or downplays the two deepest human realities: Evil in its profundity and power; and the holy, the transcendent, the supernatural as the source of all human authority.
The longstanding teaching of the Church is that some cases of evil are so grave that the death penalty is required. But secularism and Pope Francis have a more sentimental view: that natural death is a final, rather than a relative evil and that execution by the state is an absolute violation of human dignity. Today's popes and bishops are possibly the least qualified to deal firmly and justly with real Evil: with psychopaths, serial killers, sexual predators, power-hungry dictators, borderline personalities and criminals. This is because by nature and background they are mostly: privileged, innocent, protected, wholesome, generous and merciful. Who would you rather confront Hitler: Dorothy Day, Pius XII, or Winston Churchill? We need the non-saint, the last of the three to protect civilization! By a perverse irony, just now when it is clear that our hierarchy has been catastrophically incapable of protecting our young and weak from its own predators, our pontiff condescends to dictate to the secular state how to protect our innocent. Robert Royal is right: the pope might take a moratorium, abstain from pontificating, and lead a penitential movement for all in authority who have violated or covered up.
Perhaps more important is the divine origin (as St. Paul says) of all human authority. The father/mother, policeman, lifeguard, and judge all derive their power from God. It is a sacred trust. It is not just a utilitarian function of protection against aggression. The aversion to execution assumes a leveled, democratic, disenchanted view of authority as force of a human will against another. In a sacred cosmos, the necessary, just, paternal, authorized use of lethal force is a hallowed, honorable task. Contrast the swat member with the sniper: they are opposites as the later is violating innocents, the former is protecting them. The material act is the same, pulling a trigger; the purpose, the form, the final end of one is an absolute contradiction of the other. Similarly with the death penalty, where needed. The trajectory of Pope Francis' emotionalism and theological confusion is towards a vague pacifism (he does not approve of life in prison either) that draws from a secular sentimentality rather than a hard-edged, classic grasp of sin and evil, of the supernatural and the diabolic.
Aware that we will be confronting violence until the coming of Christ... that it could become worse...and skeptical of the efficacy of penal technology...we need to honor and even consecrate those entrusted with the holy use of lethal force. I propose a quasi-sacramental anointing of all who are legitimately authorized to take aggressive human life: police, soldiers, executioners, prosecutors and so forth. We would implore the Holy Spirit to descend with gifts of restrain, prudence, courage, justice and mercy. This could include a penitential, purifying rite for those forced to use such force as their spirit, inevitably, should be repulsed by their dreadful but necessary duty. The executioner or officer will need a healing himself as he, in his flesh, participates in a tragedy, however necessary and just.
Additionally, this change to the Catechism is a kind of cultural imperialism: insisting upon a viewpoint that has come to dominate the secular West. Has he consulted with African bishops? What Council approved this? What happened to collegiality? What happened to decentralization of power? How about Yasidee and Christian women in Iraq who have been kidnapped, tortured, raped, shamed and killed? How about victims of drug violence in Mexico and Columbia where the prisons are weak? How about the poor and weak in Yemen, Sudan and Rwanda? What about humility before Tradition? Or respect for diversity?
The fervent papal crusade to abolish the death penalty is futile. Executions are now eliminated across Europe and in all Catholic-majority countries. Most occur in China, Pakistan, Iran and other Muslim countries: Does Pope Francis think the communists and Muslims care what he thinks? They have become rare in the US: we haven't had one in NJ in over 50 years. Over 50% of American Catholics favor use of it in some circumstances. These, probably many Trump supporters, despised by liberal elites as ignorant, fearful, and bigoted, may actually be more deeply in touch with moral realities such as vulnerability to Evil, need for restitution, and mortal sin as worse than physical death. Pope Francis, heralded as the populist pope, is not only indifferent to these concrete, valid concerns but moralistic and judgmental against them.
This correction also displays the subtle clericalism, the arrogance so common on the left: the assumption that we lay people need specific directions from our clergy about practical policies regarding walls, immigration, death penalty and the environment. Clergy are trained in theology not social policy; the Church's infallibility applies to faith and morals, not to partisan political decisions. The propensity of the liberal cleric is to correct us laity and dictate our politics. The implication is that the clergy as an elite have superior insight while the laity are ignorant and incapable without explicit directives on policy. As noted above, however, the clergy themselves are severely challenged in regard to the secular, brutal confrontation with raw Evil.
Our papacy and the emergent Francis episcopacy are in a serious crisis. In their weakened state, prone to ideologies of the left, they offer a feeble, emasculated Magisterium as they advocate a cheap mercy, depleted of virile qualities of truth, holiness, justice, accountability. We need to look elsewhere, at least for now, for spiritual guidance: to the bishops of Africa (Cardinal Sarah) where the Church is flourishing and orthodox; to the lay leaders raised up by the Holy Spirit (Kiko, Ralph Martin and the lay movements; D.L. Schindler and his Communio comrades; Reno and the First Things crowd; Scott Hahn and the new-Oxford influx of converts; Gil Baile, Neal Lozano, Robert Royal, Phil Gleason, Ross Douthat, Raymond Arroyo, and even Wild Bill Donohue!); and of course to the precious, profound legacy of Popes John Paul and Benedict.
I remain loyal to the traditional Church teaching on the death penalty, even as I oppose it's use in current circumstances. In this I follow luminaries like Cardian Dulles and Archbishop (Why is he not a Cardinal?) Chaput! I understand the Catechism correction in light of tradition as a pragmatic suggestion. Respectfully, with a serene, confident conscience, I reject the apparent elevation of this judgment into an absolute. I would encourage Catholic judges, prosecutors, legislators, governors, soldiers and others responsibility for protection, order and justice to exercise their God-given, lay intelligence, expertise, conscience, charism and responsibility in the light of the tradition and accept this correction to the Catechism for what it is: a tentative, prudential suggestion, masquerading as a moral absolute.
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
The McCarrick Scandal
I am saddened but hardly shocked by the revelations of the pedastry of Cardinal McCarrick, who was our talented, energetic, charming and intelligent shepherd here in Newark for many years. He was admirable in his competence and I appreciated his loyalty to the Magisterium of Pope John Paul. However, when he got his red hat he turned to the dark side and became chaplain to the Biden-Pelosi Congregation of Catholics-who-despise-Catholicism. Now it makes sense: the personal is always political and theological! How could he fight for the Church, in D.C., the political epicenter of the Culture War, when he was already captive of his own concupiscence and disordered cravings? That he was influential in the choice of many American, especially NJ, bishops places a dark cloud over our episcopacy. It is not to assert guilt by association nor that they knew or colluded in his wrong-doing. Rather, the travesty is that, with Francis, he jprefers as bishops kindred spirits who for whatever reason lack the wisdom, heart and courage to defend the sacredness of innocent life, sexuality and marriage. Some at least are weak on basic Catholic values but invest immense spiritual energy in the standard leftist causes: immigration, environment and the death penalty. Pope Francis himself is erratic and unreliable in confronting elite culture but autocratic in imposing his own political preferences. Viewed in the context of Church history this and related incidents are not surprising and are best evaluated with from a place of serenity.
I myself was happily, effectively inoculated against "scandal at the Church" at the age of 16 at Seton Hall Prep by a marvelous Catholic catechesis when a priest asked us: "How would you react if you learned that your mother was a whore?" Creepy question from a priest! But he led us through a simple logic: You would be, of course. shocked, confused, ashamed, and angry...and more shock, confusion, anger, shame! But, at the end of the day...think about it: She is your mother. You love her, your mother the whore. Than he paused and said. You must know that your Mother the Catholic Church is a whore! She is the Bride of Christ and your Holy Mother, but she is also, in her human dimension, sinful and unfaithful in all her members, including priests, bishops and cardinals (excepting our Blessed Mother of course.) From then I was immunized against scandal: If I were to learn today that the Pope and his cardinals were a cabal of psychotic, sadistic terrorists I would think: "The regrettable, unavoidable sinful side of the Church! Thank God the Holy Spirit watches over us in all of this!"
Coming of age in the 50s and early 60s I was aware of the problem with alcoholic priests: the pastor of my childhood parish was rarely present to the parish and when he was behaved in a strange, eccentric manner. Clearly he suffered from alcoholism or perhaps an emotional disability. Miraculously, the parish flourished despite him. This seemed, to me, to be normal Catholicism. As an adolescent this sensibility was strengthened by reading about the endearing "whiskey priests" of The Edge of Sadness and the Power and the Glory.
And so, the moral weakness and corruption of the clergy is, for me as a cradle Catholic, a "given." Nor am I indignant that "everyone knew" and insistent that we uncover "who knew what when." Everyone knew...but what did they know? There was no clear testimony but rumors about a strange pattern of sleeping with seminarians without real sexual interaction: it entailed adults, consent (although an egregious inequality of power), and seemed to be less than a clear violation of celibacy. This seemed weird but less than shocking in the world-post-sexual-revolution. Understandably, none of the young men were willing to publicly testify out of fear of retaliation and possibly out of a sense of guilt and responsibility for having complied. As Rod Dreher pointed out: conservatives avoided it because it was a cardinal; liberals avoided it because it involved homosexuality. Only in the last few weeks have we learned that he is alleged to have violated, over the years, at least two adolescent boys and also to have crossed the line into actual sexual acts with at least some seminarians. We know that sexual predators and compulsives are expert in hiding their activity: they precisely target as victims those who are insecure and timid, desperately avoiding the confident and assertive. We are instructed, within the Church, by St Ignatius of Loyola (whose feast day is today) among others to always put the best interpretation upon the actions of others, especially the clergy. This entails a reluctance to rush to rash judgment. I am inclined to give the culprit here full credit for fooling those around him. The post-Council Church is a culture of mercy...probably to a fault...clearly our mercy needs to be tempered by truth, justice and wisdom...although our pontiff and his lieutenants seem not to see this. It helps also to remember that clergy, to the degree that they themselves are wholesome, chaste and innocent are perhaps the least competent when it comes to detecting and confronting sociopaths, criminals, sexual predators, and borderline personalities. A prime example: Saint John Paul is widely criticized for his handling of the priest sex crisis but I see it as a sign of his personal sanctity and integrity that he simply could not fathom such a thing and that he was less than an outstanding bureaucrat. And so it is hardly surprising that a cleric of such talent, charm, energy and drive would rise to the top of the organization: he would have risen this way in the army, business, politics or any large institution.
Nor am I anxious that gay cabals have secretly taken over the entire Church. I am satisfied, from my own experience with priests, that most are substantially faithful to their vow of celibacy by abstaining from sexual intercourse (pornography and masturbation are, no doubt, pervasive as in the broader society of men.) Many of our finest priests, I am sure, experience homosexual attractions but control them and live quiet, chaste, holy and fatherly lives. Surely there are circles (seminaries, orders, dioceses) that are infiltrated by active gay men but the fact that they are so well hidden and out of sight is a positive sign that the Church maintains overall a culture of sexual continence and fidelity.
There is also a chronological catastrophe at work here: just as AA did not exist prior to the 1930s so that alcoholics, until then, were hopeless cases, so the recovery programs for sexual compulsives (Sexaholics Anonymous, Courage for homosexuals within the Church, etc.) were nonexistent until the 1980s. And so, the bumper crop of sexual predators, pedarists, pedophiles and compulsives that exploded, covertly, on the scene in the 1970s, in the wake of the Sexual Revolution, faced even deeper despair, shame and self-hatred than did the drunk pre-1940. Imagine the interior tension, guilt and conflict that must have afflicted these casualtes of the Sexual Revolution.
One wonders: did he not have a confessor, a spiritual director, a counselor or support group to encourage him, correct him, and hold him accountable? Probably not: we knew him as a workaholic, a super-high-achiever, a careerist. He probably did not know how to take care of himself in his own neediness. He is emblematic of American achievement and activism and the incapacity for genuine rest, contemplation and receptivity. While fully conscious of the gravity of the violation, I for one am not without compassion for the violator.
It is good to review the findings of the John Jay Study: over 80% of priest abuses were against adolescent males. Only 6% involved pedophilia; surprisingly few females involved. Most violators were homosexual; but not all homosexuals are violators. Nevertheless, the craving for young, masculine flesh is widespread in gay culture and should give pause to Pope Francis as he empowers James Martin SJ and his like to crusade for gay liberation. There is nothing "gay" about homosexuality: it is a sadness, a suffering, an affliction; like all crosses it bears abundant fruit, in in lives of countless priests and religious, when endured patiently, humbly, prayerfully, chastely.
The bulk of violations occurred between 1965-85: there was an explosion of Lust from Hell that swept our society off its feet. There were almost none in the 1950s and we seem to be returning towards that as normal. Now we are mostly dealing with the "perfect storm" of chaotic, contagious concupiscence that infected an entire generation...us Boomers and pre-Boomers! It is calming to know, although sin is always with us, we are out of the hurricane!
I think that it is good that the truth is out. I agree that the Church probably needs something like an "internal affairs" institution to investigate allegations even against bishops and cardinals. Perhaps this requires a board of lay prosecutors, soldiers, policemen, accountants, lawyers and investigators with full powers to uncover financial arrangements and access all paperwork.
But the organization fix is never enough. This revelation comes as an opportunity for Father McCarrick (he is still a priest but no longer a Cardinal at this time) to "repent and pray" as the Vatican directed him. May he experience the gravity of his sin: the immense power he yielded over these men whose entire clerical life depended upon him; but even more the sacrilege that this "father of fathers" whose mission was to strengthen young priests in their paternal role as fathers was systematically emasculating them out of his own disordered craving of masculine affection. Worse, of course than the seminarians is the younger men he violated! Victimized also are many Catholics, especially the young and innocent, who are scandalized that the Church, great herald of chastity and fidelity is so filthy.
McCarrick is a whore! The entire Church, including the episcopacy, is a whore! I am a whore myself! Let us pray: for abusers and all the victims. May our Savior embrace His unfaithful Bride and breathe his Holy Spirit on us: healing the wounded and cleansing the impure!
I myself was happily, effectively inoculated against "scandal at the Church" at the age of 16 at Seton Hall Prep by a marvelous Catholic catechesis when a priest asked us: "How would you react if you learned that your mother was a whore?" Creepy question from a priest! But he led us through a simple logic: You would be, of course. shocked, confused, ashamed, and angry...and more shock, confusion, anger, shame! But, at the end of the day...think about it: She is your mother. You love her, your mother the whore. Than he paused and said. You must know that your Mother the Catholic Church is a whore! She is the Bride of Christ and your Holy Mother, but she is also, in her human dimension, sinful and unfaithful in all her members, including priests, bishops and cardinals (excepting our Blessed Mother of course.) From then I was immunized against scandal: If I were to learn today that the Pope and his cardinals were a cabal of psychotic, sadistic terrorists I would think: "The regrettable, unavoidable sinful side of the Church! Thank God the Holy Spirit watches over us in all of this!"
Coming of age in the 50s and early 60s I was aware of the problem with alcoholic priests: the pastor of my childhood parish was rarely present to the parish and when he was behaved in a strange, eccentric manner. Clearly he suffered from alcoholism or perhaps an emotional disability. Miraculously, the parish flourished despite him. This seemed, to me, to be normal Catholicism. As an adolescent this sensibility was strengthened by reading about the endearing "whiskey priests" of The Edge of Sadness and the Power and the Glory.
And so, the moral weakness and corruption of the clergy is, for me as a cradle Catholic, a "given." Nor am I indignant that "everyone knew" and insistent that we uncover "who knew what when." Everyone knew...but what did they know? There was no clear testimony but rumors about a strange pattern of sleeping with seminarians without real sexual interaction: it entailed adults, consent (although an egregious inequality of power), and seemed to be less than a clear violation of celibacy. This seemed weird but less than shocking in the world-post-sexual-revolution. Understandably, none of the young men were willing to publicly testify out of fear of retaliation and possibly out of a sense of guilt and responsibility for having complied. As Rod Dreher pointed out: conservatives avoided it because it was a cardinal; liberals avoided it because it involved homosexuality. Only in the last few weeks have we learned that he is alleged to have violated, over the years, at least two adolescent boys and also to have crossed the line into actual sexual acts with at least some seminarians. We know that sexual predators and compulsives are expert in hiding their activity: they precisely target as victims those who are insecure and timid, desperately avoiding the confident and assertive. We are instructed, within the Church, by St Ignatius of Loyola (whose feast day is today) among others to always put the best interpretation upon the actions of others, especially the clergy. This entails a reluctance to rush to rash judgment. I am inclined to give the culprit here full credit for fooling those around him. The post-Council Church is a culture of mercy...probably to a fault...clearly our mercy needs to be tempered by truth, justice and wisdom...although our pontiff and his lieutenants seem not to see this. It helps also to remember that clergy, to the degree that they themselves are wholesome, chaste and innocent are perhaps the least competent when it comes to detecting and confronting sociopaths, criminals, sexual predators, and borderline personalities. A prime example: Saint John Paul is widely criticized for his handling of the priest sex crisis but I see it as a sign of his personal sanctity and integrity that he simply could not fathom such a thing and that he was less than an outstanding bureaucrat. And so it is hardly surprising that a cleric of such talent, charm, energy and drive would rise to the top of the organization: he would have risen this way in the army, business, politics or any large institution.
Nor am I anxious that gay cabals have secretly taken over the entire Church. I am satisfied, from my own experience with priests, that most are substantially faithful to their vow of celibacy by abstaining from sexual intercourse (pornography and masturbation are, no doubt, pervasive as in the broader society of men.) Many of our finest priests, I am sure, experience homosexual attractions but control them and live quiet, chaste, holy and fatherly lives. Surely there are circles (seminaries, orders, dioceses) that are infiltrated by active gay men but the fact that they are so well hidden and out of sight is a positive sign that the Church maintains overall a culture of sexual continence and fidelity.
There is also a chronological catastrophe at work here: just as AA did not exist prior to the 1930s so that alcoholics, until then, were hopeless cases, so the recovery programs for sexual compulsives (Sexaholics Anonymous, Courage for homosexuals within the Church, etc.) were nonexistent until the 1980s. And so, the bumper crop of sexual predators, pedarists, pedophiles and compulsives that exploded, covertly, on the scene in the 1970s, in the wake of the Sexual Revolution, faced even deeper despair, shame and self-hatred than did the drunk pre-1940. Imagine the interior tension, guilt and conflict that must have afflicted these casualtes of the Sexual Revolution.
One wonders: did he not have a confessor, a spiritual director, a counselor or support group to encourage him, correct him, and hold him accountable? Probably not: we knew him as a workaholic, a super-high-achiever, a careerist. He probably did not know how to take care of himself in his own neediness. He is emblematic of American achievement and activism and the incapacity for genuine rest, contemplation and receptivity. While fully conscious of the gravity of the violation, I for one am not without compassion for the violator.
It is good to review the findings of the John Jay Study: over 80% of priest abuses were against adolescent males. Only 6% involved pedophilia; surprisingly few females involved. Most violators were homosexual; but not all homosexuals are violators. Nevertheless, the craving for young, masculine flesh is widespread in gay culture and should give pause to Pope Francis as he empowers James Martin SJ and his like to crusade for gay liberation. There is nothing "gay" about homosexuality: it is a sadness, a suffering, an affliction; like all crosses it bears abundant fruit, in in lives of countless priests and religious, when endured patiently, humbly, prayerfully, chastely.
The bulk of violations occurred between 1965-85: there was an explosion of Lust from Hell that swept our society off its feet. There were almost none in the 1950s and we seem to be returning towards that as normal. Now we are mostly dealing with the "perfect storm" of chaotic, contagious concupiscence that infected an entire generation...us Boomers and pre-Boomers! It is calming to know, although sin is always with us, we are out of the hurricane!
I think that it is good that the truth is out. I agree that the Church probably needs something like an "internal affairs" institution to investigate allegations even against bishops and cardinals. Perhaps this requires a board of lay prosecutors, soldiers, policemen, accountants, lawyers and investigators with full powers to uncover financial arrangements and access all paperwork.
But the organization fix is never enough. This revelation comes as an opportunity for Father McCarrick (he is still a priest but no longer a Cardinal at this time) to "repent and pray" as the Vatican directed him. May he experience the gravity of his sin: the immense power he yielded over these men whose entire clerical life depended upon him; but even more the sacrilege that this "father of fathers" whose mission was to strengthen young priests in their paternal role as fathers was systematically emasculating them out of his own disordered craving of masculine affection. Worse, of course than the seminarians is the younger men he violated! Victimized also are many Catholics, especially the young and innocent, who are scandalized that the Church, great herald of chastity and fidelity is so filthy.
McCarrick is a whore! The entire Church, including the episcopacy, is a whore! I am a whore myself! Let us pray: for abusers and all the victims. May our Savior embrace His unfaithful Bride and breathe his Holy Spirit on us: healing the wounded and cleansing the impure!
Wednesday, July 4, 2018
Letter to My Granddaughter and Cousins on Service Trip to Guatemala
July 4, 2018
Dear Brigid, Brendan, Ally, Jake and
Mary,
I am thrilled...and I speak also for
our family...that you are going to Guatemala.
“Blessed are the poor, for the
Kingdom of God is theirs” Jesus famously said. Perhaps on your trip
you will encounter the poor and enter into this strange, puzzling
Mystery.
The initial experience of raw poverty,
for us who live in comfort and relative affluence, can be harsh,
disturbing, troubling and even traumatic. I can imagine four possible
reactions:
One would be to despise the suffering
and deprivation; flee desperately from it; and move forward to avoid
poverty at all costs and do all possible to accumulate success,
security and prosperity. This, of course, is a response of anxiety
and fear. It could also be aligned with a sense of superiority and
arrogance: that our society and way of life is far better,
technologically and economically, in that we are able to build such
wealth in comparison with these inferiors who live in poverty due to
ignorance, laziness or primitiveness. That would clearly be an
unhappy outcome and (thank God!) improbable for you.
A second would be only slightly better:
to become sad and discouraged, weakened in faith, to forget or
repress the memory, to avoid thoughts about such suffering and
inequality, and to live a mediocre, ungenerous life with a small and
fearful spirit.
A third would be better morally, but
unfortunate in a subtler, deeper manner. This would be anger and
resentment against the suffering and the offensive inequality that
some live in obnoxious extravagance while others suffer deprivation.
This is, to an extent, a just and truthful reaction. It can take the
form of an indignant, political judgment against capitalism,
structures of inequality and discrimination. Again, in right
proportion this is a holy response: Jesus said “Blessed are those
who hunger and thirst for justice.” It can lead to a simplistic
approach to economics and politics that fails to grapple with the
complexity of things. Worse, the resentment can simmer and produce a
shrill, indignant, judgmental self-righteousness; a disguised
arrogance and superiority; and underneath, perhaps, an anger at God
who allows this. Such agitation and resentment is not good for the
poor or the heart and soul.
Finally, a response rooted in our faith
in Christ and His Church will be deep, joyful, nuanced, hopeful and
complex:
- You will recognize in the poor, underneath the physical deprivation, marvelous resources of resilience, joy, courage, generosity, gratitude and strength. You will come to love, not poverty as deprivation, but the poor themselves as fascinating, charming, delightful, and inspiring. You will see that they have much to teach you! You will be jealous of their faith, hope and love.
- Enriched by this new friendship, you will be moved to live your life liberated from excessive consumption, competitiveness, and covetousness in simplicity, gratitude and magnanimity. You will, in the words of St. Mother Theresa, “live simply, that others may simply live.”
- You will think patiently, deeply, inquisitively about the roots and resolution of poverty. You will ponder the workings of global capitalism as it results in an odious degree of inequality as it pulls millions out of poverty; it enhances freedom of enterprise as it tends to erode bonds of family, faith and community; it is extraordinarily productive materially and technologically as it can impoverish interiority and relationality. You will consider the proper role of government on behalf of the common good and the underpriviledged, avoiding extremes of an oppressive, overly-controlling state as well as a libertarian individualism that advantages those already wealthy and powerful.
- Most importantly, you will recognize, in this encounter with the poor, your own inner poverty and need for God's help. Your poverty may be feelings of anxiety, depression, confusion, inadequacy, weakness, ugliness, and inferiority. Adolescence is, for almost everyone, a time of ferocious, miserable insecurity. On Facebook, the athletic field, or in a bathing suit on the beach: almost everyone seems so much more attractive, popular, muscular, and confident. It is a time of self-doubt, jealousy and overall psychic misery (not all the time Thank God!). I invite you to bring your own hidden poverty into intimacy with Jesus: “Lord, I am a poor one, in need of your mercy and your love." this is hard. And so, on this beautiful pilgrimage to Guatemala, may you:...... Find comfort in your own inner poverty in prayer intimacy with God; in good friends and cousins; and in love of family. ....... Find strength and energy in Christ's presence in the Eucharist: so small, quiet, humble, poor, generous and powerful........ Emulate the poor in faith, gratitude, joy, patience and fortitude. ....... Rejoice in the Holy Spirit in all your blessings and gifts as well as your struggles and suffering. ....... Be exhilarated to find yourself blessed by these marvelous people you will encounter and find that you are yourself, for them also, a blessing...not by any altruism, effort or achievement on your part, but simply by your attention, presence, humility and grateful receptivity.
Our prayer, hopes and love go with you.
Love,
Paca-Matt
Saturday, June 2, 2018
The Theresa Club!
What is it...mystical?, miraculous? wonderful?...about that name Theresa (or alternately Teresa)? For starters: any reasonable list of the best woman saints must include the four Great Theresas: Avila, Lisieux, Auschwitz, and Calcutta. The first three are close to each other as Carmelites; the last in class all of her own. But the four share: an extraordinary intelligence that is humble, wise, practical, spiritual, intuitive and feminine; heroic strength of character and courage; and saintly holiness. Notice that each is strongly identified with a place which means specificity, particularity and concreteness of time and space. I am currently reading the biography of a fifth Theresa: Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, from Bayonne NJ, who was likewise blessed with a fine intelligence and a quiet, humble but really mystical union with our Lord from her earliest childhood in quite ordinary circumstances. I am brother to a Theresa whose mind is bright, intuitive, empirical, practical and wise and whose heart is indescribably tender, kind, and generous. I am uncle to a Theresa who radiates quiet faith, warmth and intelligence as a wife, mother, sister, daughter, nutritionist and niece! Imagine my joy that my first grandchild Brigid has chosen for her confirmation name...Theresa! She is becoming familiar with all of these amazing women and is aware that she will find her own particular identity and mission even as she emulates their wisdom, interior strength, and holiness! All you Great Theresas, in heaven and on earth, pray for us!
Tuesday, May 22, 2018
Is "Liberalism" a Bad Word? Towards a Conservative, Communion Liberalism
No! Liberalism is a marvelous word: it means freedom! Who of us prefers bondage, oppression and slavery? But there are many liberalisms; and some of them are at war with each other. The ultimate question: What is the inner nature of freedom? The second question: how do we express, shape and structure that freedom in culture, politics and economics? The most immediate meaning for liberalism would be the politics of the Democratic Party since FDR: freedom from oppression and poverty by way of a strong federal government that regulates the market, avoids depression, ensures safety and health, provides an adequate safety net for the poor, protects the disadvantaged (minorities, workers, disabled, elderly), and countervails against excessive concentrations of wealth and power. In tension (if not full scale war) with this is the classic economic liberalism we call "conservatism" and associate with Ronald Reagan and the mainstream Republican Party: free markets, low taxes and regulation, and enhancement of individual liberty and agency. Moving into the realm of culture we have another duality: life-style, sexual liberalism advocates release from traditions of restrain on behalf of sexual liberty as well as the option of disposing of useless human life on the margins of life. Reactive to this is an emergent religious liberalism insisting upon freedom of religion and refusing to be coerced into participation in the cult of abortion, sterile sexuality and the hegemony of technology over life, death and procreation. A third, analogous culture war over freedom operates in Catholic theology: the creative, articulate, and brilliant theologians at the Vatican Council (including Ratzinger, DeLubac, Woytija, etc.) were almost immediately recast as "conservative" immediately after that Council by more radical liberals who advocated a break with Tradition at significant points. We might call the former group "conservative liberals" in that they fiercely valued freedom (schooled in the battle with Nazism and Communism) even as they understood freedom, in continuity with centuries of tradition, as oriented from the interior to Truth in Love and a context of given, gifted relationships. This Catholic-Conservative-Communio liberalism is a striking contrast with the individualism, autonomy and loneliness that Dineen (and many others) see underlying our culture.
Dineen is right: liberalism as individualism has, indeed, failed. But that is a reductive, distorted, even perverted kind of liberalism. The antidote: a wholesome, integral, rooted liberalism that conserves the best of the past, and explicitly roots itself in deeper pre-political communities of faith and family. Dineen lucidly unveils the toxic consequences of secular, individualistic liberalism but he (like Rod Dreher and many others) is prone to an exaggerated negativity that pervades our culture, a despair that all institutions are falling apart. This results from an overload of information and the reality that much of it comes to us from extreme left and right wings that exaggerate the failings of the other. The unhappy consequence can be a loss of trust in fundamental liberal institutions just when these need support and strengthening. Such prophesies of doom can have a self-fulfilling dynamic and provoke what they dread. We know from 20th century developments in Russia and Germany what happens when the center, rooted in reason and faith, does not hold against the resentment and fear of the right and messianic utopianism from the left.
The liberal, free institutions which we defended against the competing ideologies of Nazism and Communism are still valid and promising: democracy, free markets, freedoms of speech/religion/etc, jury by peers, separation of powers, federalism, and so forth. These sound institutions cannot rest on the absolute sovereignty of the Imperial Self; but they need not depend upon a narrow denominational theocracy. The communio, conservative liberalism advocated here includes:
1, An understanding of Freedom as a gift from a transcendent, holy realm and interiorly oriented to that realm and to all that is True, Beautiful and Good. Freedom is not, at its core, arbitrary choice; the godlike, really diabolic, ability to determine for oneself what is true and good; the power to impose ones own will as one wishes. It is true that negatively Freedom includes a certain release from coercion, oppression, necessity and slavery. At its core Freedom is movement to the Good!
2. As Yuval Levin suggests, such a conservative, contrast to a progressive, liberalism is a freedom to move organically, creatively, patiently and gratefully into the new in a way that appreciates the past, tradition, authority and Nature. In line with Burke, deToqueville and our Constitution, this view gratefully receives the bounty and logic of Nature as well as the legacy of history even as it critically appropriates and develops it.
3. In continuity with the robust Catholic liberalism of the post-war period, it passionately practicses a solidarity with the poor, marginalized and oppressed as it corrects the blind spots of that legacy in regard to subsidiarity (correcting the concentration of power in the federal government) and a clear sexual ethic (as developed by St. John Paul as an answer to the Sexual Revolution).
4. In continuity with the (conservative) legacy of Ronald Reagan, it defends innocent, powerless life and protects economic liberties in the face of an expansive state even as it is critical of global, unrestrained capitalism and renounces the underlying libertarian (Randian) individualism in favor of an ethos of community and communion. Such a conservative liberalism is moderate and balanced in evaluating the positives and negatives of big government and globalized capitalism, neither idealizing nor demonizing either of the two but recognizing the impersonalism inherent in both.
5. Grounding freedom in relation to Truth and Love, this cultural liberalism of communion rejoices in the liberty that springs from promise/fidelity/ purity, the generativity/generosity of the natural family, and the iconic splendor of sexuality. And so it engages, passionately and untiringly, in a peaceful, patient culture war with that lifestyle liberalism that trivializes and sterilizes sex; that empties it of its meaning and beauty; and leads to pernicious forms of interior slavery (e.g. pornography).
6. According to a wholesome subsidiarity, it gives reverence and primacy to smaller, intermediate communities that flow from and into family and faith. Modifying the Benedict Option, it attends first and foremost to the immediate and the concrete, without losing interest in the big picture.
7. In foreign affairs, a Catholic liberalism is necessarily internationalist, entailing a modest patriotism that opens up into a universalism that is neither an American Imperium nor the hegemony of secular, cosmopolitan elites. Profoundly conscious of the Mystery of Evil, such liberalism avoids utopianism in favor of a realism (R. Niebuhr) capable of forcefully restraining explosisons of terror and violence. And so, it deeply honors vocations to the military and police even as it holds these to the highest standards of conduct.
8. With Adrian Vermulle, this approach practices a "Christian Strategy" of engagement in public life in the ancient traditions (Joseph of Egypt, Daniel, etc.) of serving the broader empire and one's own people without compromise of principle. Avoiding full allegiance to any specific party or platform, there is freedom to work in alliance with various players on behalf of the common good. In our polarized environment, such a sober, confident and positive movement might have a reconciling effect as it is refuses to demonize ideological adversaries but looks for the positive in both sides of an issue. Such might entertain an ambivalent, ironic, and constructive relationship with each of the prevailing ideologies (Trump, Democrats, Republicans) even as the absolute reverence for innocent life, religious liberty and marriage means a passionately adversarial engagement with the forces of lifestyle liberalism that control the Democratic Party.
Perhaps most significantly, conservative liberalism, drawing from deep resources of faith, communion, and history, enjoys a quiet and serene confidence, a resolute hopefulness, and a restfulness that expresses itself in fervent, fruitful action. It can, therefore, practice a "noblesse oblige," a relaxed generosity and liberality. Free from fear and resentment and unburdened by utopian illusions, it flourishes in contentment, sobriety, hope and gratitude. And so it delights in the current world, with all its flaws and in all its splendor, even as it awaits the coming of a Greater Kingdom.
Dineen is right: liberalism as individualism has, indeed, failed. But that is a reductive, distorted, even perverted kind of liberalism. The antidote: a wholesome, integral, rooted liberalism that conserves the best of the past, and explicitly roots itself in deeper pre-political communities of faith and family. Dineen lucidly unveils the toxic consequences of secular, individualistic liberalism but he (like Rod Dreher and many others) is prone to an exaggerated negativity that pervades our culture, a despair that all institutions are falling apart. This results from an overload of information and the reality that much of it comes to us from extreme left and right wings that exaggerate the failings of the other. The unhappy consequence can be a loss of trust in fundamental liberal institutions just when these need support and strengthening. Such prophesies of doom can have a self-fulfilling dynamic and provoke what they dread. We know from 20th century developments in Russia and Germany what happens when the center, rooted in reason and faith, does not hold against the resentment and fear of the right and messianic utopianism from the left.
The liberal, free institutions which we defended against the competing ideologies of Nazism and Communism are still valid and promising: democracy, free markets, freedoms of speech/religion/etc, jury by peers, separation of powers, federalism, and so forth. These sound institutions cannot rest on the absolute sovereignty of the Imperial Self; but they need not depend upon a narrow denominational theocracy. The communio, conservative liberalism advocated here includes:
1, An understanding of Freedom as a gift from a transcendent, holy realm and interiorly oriented to that realm and to all that is True, Beautiful and Good. Freedom is not, at its core, arbitrary choice; the godlike, really diabolic, ability to determine for oneself what is true and good; the power to impose ones own will as one wishes. It is true that negatively Freedom includes a certain release from coercion, oppression, necessity and slavery. At its core Freedom is movement to the Good!
2. As Yuval Levin suggests, such a conservative, contrast to a progressive, liberalism is a freedom to move organically, creatively, patiently and gratefully into the new in a way that appreciates the past, tradition, authority and Nature. In line with Burke, deToqueville and our Constitution, this view gratefully receives the bounty and logic of Nature as well as the legacy of history even as it critically appropriates and develops it.
3. In continuity with the robust Catholic liberalism of the post-war period, it passionately practicses a solidarity with the poor, marginalized and oppressed as it corrects the blind spots of that legacy in regard to subsidiarity (correcting the concentration of power in the federal government) and a clear sexual ethic (as developed by St. John Paul as an answer to the Sexual Revolution).
4. In continuity with the (conservative) legacy of Ronald Reagan, it defends innocent, powerless life and protects economic liberties in the face of an expansive state even as it is critical of global, unrestrained capitalism and renounces the underlying libertarian (Randian) individualism in favor of an ethos of community and communion. Such a conservative liberalism is moderate and balanced in evaluating the positives and negatives of big government and globalized capitalism, neither idealizing nor demonizing either of the two but recognizing the impersonalism inherent in both.
5. Grounding freedom in relation to Truth and Love, this cultural liberalism of communion rejoices in the liberty that springs from promise/fidelity/ purity, the generativity/generosity of the natural family, and the iconic splendor of sexuality. And so it engages, passionately and untiringly, in a peaceful, patient culture war with that lifestyle liberalism that trivializes and sterilizes sex; that empties it of its meaning and beauty; and leads to pernicious forms of interior slavery (e.g. pornography).
6. According to a wholesome subsidiarity, it gives reverence and primacy to smaller, intermediate communities that flow from and into family and faith. Modifying the Benedict Option, it attends first and foremost to the immediate and the concrete, without losing interest in the big picture.
7. In foreign affairs, a Catholic liberalism is necessarily internationalist, entailing a modest patriotism that opens up into a universalism that is neither an American Imperium nor the hegemony of secular, cosmopolitan elites. Profoundly conscious of the Mystery of Evil, such liberalism avoids utopianism in favor of a realism (R. Niebuhr) capable of forcefully restraining explosisons of terror and violence. And so, it deeply honors vocations to the military and police even as it holds these to the highest standards of conduct.
8. With Adrian Vermulle, this approach practices a "Christian Strategy" of engagement in public life in the ancient traditions (Joseph of Egypt, Daniel, etc.) of serving the broader empire and one's own people without compromise of principle. Avoiding full allegiance to any specific party or platform, there is freedom to work in alliance with various players on behalf of the common good. In our polarized environment, such a sober, confident and positive movement might have a reconciling effect as it is refuses to demonize ideological adversaries but looks for the positive in both sides of an issue. Such might entertain an ambivalent, ironic, and constructive relationship with each of the prevailing ideologies (Trump, Democrats, Republicans) even as the absolute reverence for innocent life, religious liberty and marriage means a passionately adversarial engagement with the forces of lifestyle liberalism that control the Democratic Party.
Perhaps most significantly, conservative liberalism, drawing from deep resources of faith, communion, and history, enjoys a quiet and serene confidence, a resolute hopefulness, and a restfulness that expresses itself in fervent, fruitful action. It can, therefore, practice a "noblesse oblige," a relaxed generosity and liberality. Free from fear and resentment and unburdened by utopian illusions, it flourishes in contentment, sobriety, hope and gratitude. And so it delights in the current world, with all its flaws and in all its splendor, even as it awaits the coming of a Greater Kingdom.
Sunday, May 6, 2018
Outstanding Catholic Leaders of "My Time"
Now 70, I ponder: In my lifetime, who were the greatest influences on my faith and my Church? I identify four groupings: my own generational peers, those of my parents' generation, those of my grandparents, and an "honorable mention" group who influenced me. (You will note that the generational boundaries are imprecise.) The standouts in my own generation are: First, David L. Schindler who has applied the "comminio theology" in a profound critique of American culture. Second, Ralph Martin has synthesized the Charismatic Renewal and the legacy of the saints into a sharp-edged, profound spiritual theology. Thirdly, Gil Baile combines the philosophical anthropology of Rene Girard with communio theology into a fresh, novel but thoroughly faithful Catholic narrative. Forthly, Giuseppe Genereni is the apostle of the Neocatechumenal Way to the USA and so an immensely significant historical figure. Fifthly, Neal Lozano (Unbound), also out of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, has presented the Church with a method of deliverance from satanic powers that is gentle and yet powerful, psychology-based and yet Jesus-centered, and miraculously liberating! Lastly, Paul Vitz has contributed more than anyone to a synthesis of good psychology with Catholic principles. The second grouping, my parents' generation, is led, first of all, by the theological trio of Balthasar (who is actually older), John Paul and Benedict whose combined work rivals that of the two Catholic giants, Augustine and Thomas. The great founders of the lay renewal movements come next: Giusanni, Kiko and Vanier. While not a participant in these currents, I consider myself a friend of each as they have directly touched my children and marvelously influenced the Church. The third, and most important group is a remarkable cohort of women (more or less of my grandmothers' generation) who lived through most of the 20th century, buried themselves humbly in service of the poorest as they drew from a deep, prayerful union with God. These are: St. Theresa of Calcutta, Dorothy Day, Catherine DeHueck Dougherty, Madeleine Delbrel, Adrienne von Speyr, and Caryll Houselander. Lastly, honorable mention includes: Avery Cardinal Dulles S.J., who...erudite, balanced, broad, loyal... taught me and generations of Jesuits and theologians; Father Joseph Whelan S.J., a saintly contemporary of Dulles who taught me that Christ is inseparable from his bridal Church and that holiness is integral to sound theology; Ivan Illich, an eccentric genius who impacted my youth with his profound critique of technology and modernity; Fr. Benedict Groeschel who interwove psychology and theology into a splendid,, spiritual and practical synthesis; and Sister Joan Noreen who has influenced my wife, myself and my family through her leadership of Our Lady's Missionaries of the Eucharist. Above all, of course, I am grateful to my own Mom and Dad and an army of family, friends and collaborators! "My time" has been a glorious one in which to be Catholic: my hope is that my children and their generation and their children will see even greater marvels!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)