Catholic Theology: Weak in Faith, Weak in Reason

"Fides et Ratio" ("Faith and Reason")is John Paul's brilliant, inspiring, monumental exclamation of the happy marriage in Catholic thought and life between faith and reason, Jerusalem and Athens, heart and intellect, revelation and intellectual reflection. The pontificate of his collaborator and successor was even more focused upon this symphonic synthesis. It is a retrieval of what is great in the Catholic Tradition over two millenia. Unhappily, mainstream Catholic theology since the Council, with exceptions, has not emulated this example, but is feeble in both faith and reason.

By faith I here mean surrender of will, intellect, heart, soul and entire personality in the encounter with the person of Jesus Christ. At the core of our faith is this personal event; everything else (dogma, ethics, liturgy) flows from it. Lacking clarity, depth and intensity in this core lends us to confusion, weakness, error, misdirection. The evangelical encounter becomes communal, ethical, liturgical, intellectual.

It is not that our theologians completely lack faith, but that their faith is not solidly Christ-centered, not evangelical, not Trinitarian, not personal, concrete, scriptural, communal, traditional. It is a faith that grasps and appreciates aspects of the Gospel, but not the heart and soul of that Gospel...the very person of Jesus, Son of God. And so we we do not find (what Balthasar called) a "kneeling theology"...reflection flowing out of the encounter with God in personal prayer and corporate liturgy. There is shift of focus: away from loving God with all your thought and all your mind and all your strength; toward subordinate themes such as psychological healing, justice for the poor and oppressed, and others.

By reason I here mean rigorous philosophical reflection grounded in a clear metaphysics of reality, of Being, of the good-true-beautiful. Theology is based in metaphysics. To not do metaphysics is impossible (as it is impossible not to do ethics, politics, religion); to "not do metaphysics" is to do bad metaphysics. So, what occurred immediately after the Council was the widespread turn from philosophy, as the handmaid of theology, to the social sciences, especially psychology and politial science, to Freud and Marx. And so we saw a drift downward into ecclectic, vague, incoherent philosophical ideas drawn from Jung, Whitehead, Chardin, Cambell, and various schools of psychology and politics. We witnessed on a large scale abandonment of the Tradition of "faith and reason."

A case in point: Pope Francis. He certainly has a lively, passionate faith. He loves Christ; he prays; he is fierce and fearless in his devotion to the poor and marginalized. But regarding reason he is severely challenged. He is incapable of deep, coherent, grounded theology. He is a man of emotion, not of thought. He is not merely non-intellectual; he is an anti-intellectual in that he resents dogma, sustained reflection, and the authority of Tradition and Magisterium. He may or may not be a saint; but he is a catastrophe of a theologian, and a weak, weak pope.

Question: were things better in the pre-Council Church. Well...sort of!

We shared a widespread culture of faith, but it was neither evangelical nor deeply intellectual. It was the ethnic, immigrant faith of the unschooled, purified by suffering: immigration-prejudice-poverty, the Depression, and World War II. It was not strongly Christological. But there was reverence, trust, gratitude and obedience toward God; a rich banquet of devotions to Mary, the saints, the sacraments and hierarchy; an acceptance, at least in thought, of the moral law; an openess to the supernatural; a culture that encouraged virtue and family life. Intellectually there was a failure to engage with the broader culture and a formal, manualist theology lacking in depth. But there was a simplicity and coherence to the theology and its relation to the ethnic culture. It was an ethnic religion, solid and coherent, but lacking a firm evangelical core and intellectual depth. This is why after the Council the culture crashed so catastrophically.

In that post-War period, however, there was a Catholic renaissance of true depth. The flourishing of religious orders, parishes and Catholic institutions of all sorts was not only a superficial flourishing of newfound Catholic bourgeois affluence; although it was that. Alongside of such materialism, there were deeper currents flourishing: resourcement theology as return to the sources (scripture and the fathers), engagment with the best in contemporary thought, renewal movements including the liturgical, Cursillo and similar retreat movements, and a wearied post-war enchantment with the supernatural. These currents were not spectacular statistically; but influential and significant.

The Good News: those often small, humble currents of genuine renewal did not disappear. They inspired the Council itself and continued in the renewal movements, in Communio theology, the Great-Dual-Pontificate and in a million quiet currents of prayer and goodness.

Notwithstanding the travails of the current Church, the Great Catholic Tradition experienced a renaissance in the run up to the Council, in that Event itself, and the dual papacy of Faith-and-Reason. We are blessed to live out of that majestic current of grace!

Let's Revive the Parishes! Let's Renew the Church!....Actually, Let's Not!

We need to reform the Church!..........BAD IDEA!

My buddies are older than me: pushing 80. They are arch-conservative, uber-Catholic Culture Warriors, like me, maybe worse! Their idea: "Let's get together, us Knights of Columbus, and pray to the Holy Spirit and work to revive our parishes!" I laughed spontaneously at the youthful idealism and enthusiasm. I responded positively and I meant it: "Any time anyone gets together and prays to the Holy Spirit it is a win-win-win!" But I also thought: "Really? At this stage, we old white guys are going to renew the Church?" I wondered: "What are you taking? I could use some!" More cynically, I considered: "Can this be early-onset, hypo-manic, grandiose senility?"

The reformer impulse, of Luther and Calvin and others, to reform the Church is always a bad idea. It is very Protestant, extremely anti-Catholic! It is not for us to reform the Church: not by our enlightened theology, not by synodality, not by institutional reform, not even by our favorite renewal movements!

The Church Herself, in her interiority, nothwithstanding the glaring corruption of her members, is never in need of reform. In her soul, her interior form. she is perfect! She is the Bride of Christ, cleansed, immaculate, purified. She is the Body of Christ, whatever infrections and wounds present. She is our Mother, however flawed.

It is you and I who have to be reformed, not the Church. We need ourselves to be reformed, renewed, converted by the Church because She is the visible, incarnate presence of Christ on earth. Christ is present:

Physicaly, ontologically in the Euharist

Efficaciously in all the sacraments.

Infallible in the Magisterium. Wherever the Word is proclaimed.

Radiantly, extravagantly, anonymously, eventfull in the lives of the holy ones...not only the great ones, but the little, humble, grateful ones.

The Catholic respose to the Church is always gratitude, obedience, surrender, participation, consent.

My uncle Billy (whom we all adored as a decorated WWII hero, lifelong convert operative for military intelligence, brilliant and charming eccentric, voracious reader, golfer, fisherman, dysfunctional businessman, Graham-Greene-type-Catholic) once told me: "I hate do-gooders!" I laughed because I was by most standards a "do-gooder" but I also knew he told my mother, his sister, that I was his best friend. But I know what he meant. Reformers, social activists, do-gooders...it is the self-righteousness, the moralism, the indignation! Sorry, a Catholic is NOT a reformer, an activist, or a do-gooder.

What a relief it was, in mid-life, to discover the 12-step approach: work my own inventory, tend my own garden, sweep my own side of the street.

More recently, in old age, I happily recall what we learned in parochial school: my first concern is the salvation of my own soul. And it is not my doing, but God's. And as I allow the Holy Spirit to sanctify me, this mysterious influence spreads to those around me, and even beyond to the entire Creation.

Now THAT is a Good Idea!

Jesus, the Devil and the Passion

A first: I today surrender this blog to a guest essay. Dan Pellegrin is a dear friend for over 50 years, since our college days. He is a lawyer who defends the rights of the mentally ill; an ordained, now retired, always maverick deacon in the Catholic Church. He has a ton of kids and grandchildren. He was, in my opinion the smartest guy in our class; he vigorously disagrees. He is oftentimes my theological adversary; but even when he is dizzyingly, brilliantly convoluted in his logic, he is unfailingly gracious, congenial, endearing and charming. This piece is a gem!

Jesus, the Devil and The Passion

“Scourge him” -- these are the words we know Pilate used.

The Roman soldiers seized the rope binding His wrists and led him out to the scourging pillar. As the burly soldier laid on the lash, Lucifer the Evil One whispered on Jesus’ ear: “Your people led you to this. How could they?! This is so unfair! You did nothing to deserve this!” Whip. “This is their fault. They don’t love you. They must hate you! Save yourself! We know you can. Summon that sniveling Michael, your angel” Whip … “He’ll make short work of these beasts.” “End this pain. Abandon this plan. People will never understand you or your Father.” Whip. “I’ve been right all along. You know I have been. Stop this!”

Jesus said nothing.

And wearing a crown of piercing torns, He was half-led, half dragged back to Pilate. Pilate was afraid now, and asked Jesus in a half-choked, hoarse whisper: “Where are you from?” Jesus made no reply.

Pilate: “You refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have the power to release you, and power to crucify you?”

Jesus: “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above.”

Lucifer screamed for only Jesus to hear: “Your cursed Father is doing this to you! He’s letting this happen! Damn him!”

The Chief Priests: “If you relerase this man, you are no friend of Caesar.”

With a hand gesture, made in frustration, disgust, fear, ambition, and denial, Pilate gave the order to the soldiers -- take him away. Crucify him.

The cross’ crosspiece was heaved on Jesus’ shoulder, with splinters and edge that cut into him. As he struggled to begin the way of the cross, Lucifer was at his ear: “How that hurts I know. It’s so wrong! You did nothing to deserve this. Your message was peace” (and with a sneer) “and love. Love! These swine know nothing. They can’t. Stop this madness! Rise up! Çurse them all as only you can! Love? Love yourself! Take the power! Crucify them! Them! Crucify all these gaping apes!”

Jesus grimaced with pain and said nothing.

Lucifer was there when Jesus fell the first time. “”Don’t get up.” And the second. “Stay down!!” And the third, each time screaming his hate and vengeance in Jesus’ ears.

Lucifer: “You know what’s ahead? They’re going to drive nails into your hands and feet. You’re going to have to stand on those piercing nails! The pain!”

Jesus looked at Lucifer then. What was in His eyes? Lucifer saw no hate there. Was it pity?

They reached Golgatha.

Lucifer: “Jesus, listen to me. Do you know what’s going to happen? You’re going to be nailed to that cross. Breathing will get harder and harder. Pain will rack you. You won’t be able to breathe. You know what then? You’ll DIE!! DIE!!! For what?” With scorn: “For them?!” Jesus didn’t look at him as the cross was shoved into place.

Lucifer was next seen on a grey-black shaggy rock outcrop, disconsolate, gazing at The Scene. Demons danced around him in a frenzy of ectasy as they lookd on the Son of God, bloody, humiliated, exposed, dying. A few pathetic, powerless humans weeping at the bottom of the cross.

Gleeful howls from the demons.

Lucifer shifted his gaze from the God-man to the demons. He fixed them with a hateful gaze, and said,

“You stupid, stupid deluded wastes. What do you see here? A crucified God? No, no -- you see our defeat. Our utter, forever, unchangeable defeat.

“Is any one of you willing to be beaten, whipped, scorned, sentenced with no iota of justice? CRUCIFIED? To win our war for the humans? I am NOT. And neither is one of you.

“No, Jesus has won. He has forever won. He has defeaetd us, utterly. Completely. Forever. This is his testament. His love for these sacks of sticking flesh has no measure. Surely no answer from us.’

“I have lost. Forever.”

The Agony of It All: Sexual Suffering and Romantic Misery

Why did no one tell us about it? It would be nice to know!

Sexual satisfaction and romantic happiness...insanely overrated! Sexual suffering and romantic misery...vastly underrated!

Let's face it: sexual desire is frustrated about 99.9999% of the time! Same for romantic longing! Even in the best case scenario, where "they live happily ever after", there is an endless parade of frustration, hurt, disappointment, annoyance, anger...endless! In the best case scenario, these afflictions are suffered, in God's grace, with some degree of forgiveness/contrition and patience, and slowly give birth to a love that is deeper, stronger, truer and purer than the volatility of sex and romance.

Disclosure: I speak, as always, as a man, and (I presume) for men as I am (as best I can tell) typical, not exceptional. I cannot speak for women who are strange, mysterious, fascinating and inscrutable for me.

Mother Church in her wisdom has taught us mostly what is important to know, but not everything. She has been mute about the agony of it all. We learn: of the sacredness of sexuality, gender, spousality, paternity and maternity; of the beauty of chastity and fidelity; of the grave destructiveness of it outside of very clear boundaries; of our constitutional weakness in this area and drastic need for prayer, support, conversion, sacramental grace, accountability and brutal honesty. But She is strangely silent about the suffering underlying it all! And so: She can sound moralistic and negative.

The credo of Cultural Liberalism is that sex/romance is simple, fun, recreational, satisfying, and trouble-free once the negativities of religion are discarded. A pure lie from the Father of Lies! This falsehood pervades our culture and influences all of us as we long delusionally for Mr. or Miss Wonderful! It is good to know!

Well, actually, as I think about it, someone did tell us about it!

A priest in confession once told me that I would be afflicted like this, I would be fighting this battle until my body is cold in its grave four days! It is good to know!

Perhaps 20 years ago, already in my 50s, I was enjoying a whiskey in a cosy tavern on the lower east side of Manhatten with John Rapinich, my best friend, my little-big brother, brilliant autodidact, poet, artist, friend of Jack Kerouac and the Beats, hard-core Catholic convert, charismatic, Neo-Cat, delightful eccentric. I was aware of the generations of workers, ethnic immigrants, gangsters, activists, artists, politicians, alcoholics, and others who had enjoyed such a whiskey in such a warm ambience with such congenial company. Mystically, I felt united with the Communion of Saints-and-Sinners. The gentle, warm euphoria that comes around the third or forth sip of whiskey was descending upon me. It occurred to me to share with this wise, loving friend about my struggles with unchastity. I did so. I don't know what I expected but my trust in him was strong so I knew he would only be helpful. He seemed to sigh quietly and then... calmly, solemnly voiced two words: "The suffering!" I was stunned! This made no sense at all: a complete non-sequitur ("does not follow")! I was not talking about suffering! I was talking about a psychological weakness, a defect in character, a moral failure, an insobriety and a sin! Not suffering! I was quiet. He was quiet. For quite a time. It was as if I had traveled into the Egyptian desert in the third century to receive a Word...a single Word...a Word from the Lord...from St. Anthony of the Desert. This Word was not something to be questioned, analyzed, discussed. It was Holy! It was from Above! It was to be gratefully, reverently, humbly received...and cherished. And I have so cherished it ever since! It is good to know!

Not too long after that I was in a holy place, a friary, with a wise young friar and I similarly shared a tormenting obsession. He gently responded: "Some things just must be suffered." Again...that word...suffer! It is good to know!

It is good to know we are suffering. It is a first step on the road to beatitude. It is a curse to suffer and not even be aware of it. Recently I interviewed a woman who was looking to move out of a good apartment which she was convinced was being broken into. Her anxiety was palpable. Her psychosis obvious. When I mentioned the anxiety she responded: "What anxiety? I am not anxious!" For me one of the great tragedies is the failure of middle aged men to recognize and articulate their depression and so commit suicide. It is good to know you are suffering. And it is good when another, a friend or counselor or confessor, acknowledges your suffering.

It is even better when you find a purpose for your suffering. When it has meaning. Like the mother giving birth. Like the long distance runner breathing heavy in the later stage of the marathon. The suffering is lessened, is backgrounded and marginalized but not eliminated, when some purpose is in the foreground. For example, I have found consistent relief when I simply pray for the woman who arouses sexual or romantic passion: you would not believe how many prayers I have offered for Ingrid Bergman, Sophia Loren, Halle Berry, Penelope Cruz and a litany of other beauties. I hope the prayers help them but they certainly do help me!

It is good to know that we are suffering! It is good to do some little positive thing with our suffering!

You are formally notified, dear Reader! You are suffering...You have suffered...and You will suffer...the Agony of sexual and romantic yearnings! Until Jesus comes!

Come Lord Jesus!

Pro-Motherhood

Words matter! In the enflamed abortion wars this week as the Court considered Dobbs we hear as always: pro-choice, pro-life, anti-abortion, anti-choice, women's rights, etc. I suggest an improvement: Pro-Motherhood.

Here we privilege neither the life of the fetus nor a woman's privacy/autonomy against each other: rather, the larger reality of mother-and-child. Mother-and-Child is the most precious, sacred, vulnerable, beautiful reality in Creation. It is the honor and joy of the Man to protect and provide, to cherish, enjoy and even adore the Mother-and-Child.

They belong together and define each other, similar to the Trinity in which the Father and Son in the Spirit constitute each other as three-in-one. What would a mother be without a child? Not a mother! What a child without a mother? An impoverishment!

The father-husband is an outsider to this privileged intimacy. At childbirth he in a sense loses his closeness to the wife and defers to the needs of the vulnerable mother and infant. He protects and provides. He stands alone, in God's grace, in the joy of caring for these two precious creatures, in a sense a singular reality, entrusted to his care.

The State is an extension of the paternal mission in its task of protecting the vulnerable from violation and ensuring peace and justice. Therefore, foremost in the agenda of any government is protection of the mother and child.

With such clarity of purpose very concrete consequences follow:

1. The life of the fetus is sacrosanct.

2. The safety, peace, protection of the mother is equally sacrosanct. Her rights, needs, vulnerability become a primary concern of the social order. This means economic security, health care, emotional-social-spiritual support.

3. The mother could never be criminalized in the event of an abortion since she is herself the victim in her motherhood. Rather, the abortionist is liable; additionally any men (boyfriend, husband, father) who coerce the woman into abortion will see prison.

4. Men who father children are held accountable for support of the child as well as the mother in her dependent condition.

Such an approach deepens and broadens the pro-life perspective beyond a narrow focus on the fetus to include the mother; even as it expands into a genuine feminism which reverences motherhood as the pinacle of femininity. It also gives focus and purpose to the energies of virility which tend to violence/chaos or atrophy if not directed to the protection and care of the vulnerable.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph ... pray for us!

New Catholic Politics

Surprisingly, happily...there is recently a flurry of innovative Catholic political thinking...small but significant. In a helpful article in First Things this past August (https://www.firstthings.com/article/2021/08/catholic-ideas-and-catholic-realities), Ross Douthat identified four movements of thought. I will adjust his categories into three, with three distinct movements in the last.

The Context.

- There is a widespread sense that we have moved into a new post-liberal society. The two classic post-War expressions of liberalism, the Democratic Party of FDR/JFK and the Republican Party of Ronald Regan, have both expired: the first in a steady decline over the last 50 years into a nihilist Cultural Liberalism and the second unseated by the Trump movement. Liberalism, of the right and of the left, in priviliging the individual...isolated, competent, agential...is corrosive of the bonds (of faith, family, community) that define us and so victimizes all of us but especially the weak and incompetent, quintessentially the most helpless, the unborn. Furthermore, Adrian Vermulle has shown that the liberalism we face today, unbalanced by a wholesome conservatism, pushes relentlessly towards a better future by renouncing the past, by destroying custom, tradition, ancient habits of family and faith. In this it is self-destructive, annihilating the very basis for a good society and eventually provoking the kind of populist revolts we are witnessing across the globe. Clearly we are moving into a post-liberal world.

- The globe has moved from the bipolar Cold War through a temporary Liberal Euphoria after the fall of Soviet Communism into a dystopic apocalypse of the four monstrous kingdoms (see prior blog essay.)

- Catholic social teaching, after being deepened, strengthened and clarified by the dual pontificate of John Paul and Benedict has been confounded and polarized by Francis. He presents as a populist, defensive of the maginalized; but he has become a shameless partisan of the causes dearest to affluent, western liberals: global warming, open borders, death penalty. He has been entirely congenial to the three worst totalitarianisms (Chinese Communism, Cultural Liberalism, and aggressive Islam) while he vehemently opposes the actual populist movements that are surging across the globe. He is undisguished in his contempt for the American Catholic-Evangelical alliance that resists Cultural Liberalism. In a recent speech, Cardinal Joseph Tobin, one of his lieutenants, cast him as a kind of a messianic protagonist against the rising dictatorships. His self-identification as a moralizing global ideologue is deeply discouraging and polarizing even as it delights the liberals who side with him on these issues. Even those of us who might agree with his policies must bemoan the clericalism that elevates him into an diplomatic-political expert and the loss of moral stature due to his partisanship.

- The American Catholic with conservative tendencies finds himself homeless in his nation and his Church.

- The (hopefully permanent) marginalization of The Donald allows us some fresh air and a chance to collect our thoughts.

- Meanwhile the downward spiral of Democratic liberalism has hit a new bottom with the Biden Administration. Beneath his congenial, working man, pious Catholic, glad-handing demeanour lies a sickening moral decay and a breathtaking intellectual vacuity. He simply does not see or reverence the Real, the Good, the True and the Beautiful. He does not see the Form of things: regarding the precious, helpless fetus he sees waste matter and is rallying the full force of the federal government to destroy her; regarding our friends in Afghanastan who risked life to fight for us, he cavalierly abandons them in the most shameful foreign affair decision of my lifetime; regarding the border integrity of our nation he is careless and reckless in luring hopeful immigrants into the perilous journey and further arousing the anxiety of our own under class; regarding spending he is like a drunken sailor, indifferent to what this debt will do to following generations. As a Catholic Biden is a scandal and a sacrilige; and his moral rot contaminates the bishops, our pontiff and all who indulge him. If nothing else, the moral-intellectual abomination that he represents is enough to drive us Catholics to rethink our politics.

NEW CATHOLIC POLITICS

Returning to the renaissance in Catholic politics, we might identify three promising developments: the Benedict Option, Populism, and several marginal aspirations to a thorough, comprehesive political philosophy rooted in Catholic belief (Tradanistas, Integralists, and the New Polity community.)

1. The Benedict Option of Rod Dreher remains for me the defining Catholic politics in the USA 2021: protective, defensive retreat from the overwhelmingly hostile elite institutions to smaller arenas of family, faith and community to strengthen our common life of faith in all its elements. This is not, of course, an absolute, monopolistic approach but demands to be complemented by other approaches including the following.

2. Populism might be understood as "Trumpism without Trump": purged of its toxicities and idiocy, the Trump agenda suggested an outline of a promising Catholic-friendly polity: conservative culturally but economically protective of the working class. He delivered beautifully on the first platform, not at all on the second as his tax plan favored the rich. He shows little concern for the poor and remains shamelessly a rich, powerful guy challenged in his conscience. But moral conservatives like Douthat, Reno, Ahmari, Vance and others advocate for a new post-Trump Republican Party defensive of Catholic concerns for the unborn and the family as well as the working and poor classes. The success of this would need a charismatic figure capable of rallying the Trump base, maintaining some support from traditional Republicans while displacing their economic agenda, and appealing to swing voters as well as minorities and workers. This would be a miracle! Lets pray for it!

3. Deeper Catholic philosophizing has taken three directions of late: Tradanistas, Integralists, and the New Polity school. Each is very small, apparently insignificant, unknown except to Catholic nerds like myself. They look deeply into Catholic philosophy to create an ideal vision: intellectual, abstract, erudite. Most would dismiss them as impractical and utopian. Yet I value their efforts for two reasons: First, we always need an image of the good, even the ideal, as we struggle towards it accepting imperfection. Secondly, in our troubled times with the breakdown of traditional liberalisms we need new options to consider.

The Tradanista group is the most marginal and probably least promising. It seems to be a group of young Catholic intellectuals, without any prominent publication or heavy weight thinker (although it was befriended by Larry Chapp whom I like). Its name is explanatory: traditional (in morals) but Sandanista-like in concern for the poor. Theoretically it combines both poles of Catholic social teaching not entirely unlike a Catholic-friendly configuration of populism. They like Dorothy Day, Chesterton, the distributists, McIntyre as well as John Paul's catechesis on the human body. All that is to the good. But they also seem to favor the economics of Bernie Sanders. Here we find a double incoherence: first, Sanders probably would not know what "distributionism" is; secondly, the expansive state favored by Sanders is also biggest enemy of traditional morality. It remains to be seen if this good attempt develops into something significant.

Integralism is a retrieval of the classic Catholic conception that human life involves the temporal and the eternal and therefore is ruled by the state and church. It argues that every government in fact embodies religion as a set of values: liberalism obviously idolizes the surpremacy of the imperial, isolated individual. Any state that is not countervailed by a true, good spiritual principle degenerates into tyranny and idolatry. The best path is a revived Catholic community which opens itself to God in the Church and in secular affairs and grants final authority to the Church over the state. This proposal seems at first to be entirely implausible give the diminished status of the Church and the diversity of our society. But it has in its favor the advocacy of two first rate thinkers: Hardvard Law's Adrian Vermulle and the monk Edmund Waldstein. I must say that their writings are sophisticated, nuanced and persuavive. Nevertheless this approach is widely criticized in regard to coercion by the Church in a retrograde clericalism.

Even more sophisticated and profound is a new development: New Polity journal. Like integralism, this is a retrieval of deep Catholic, largely Thomistic thought. It is close to integralism but addresses the concerns around coercion and dualism. It has greal intellectual gravitas behind it: metaphysician D.C. Schindler of the John Paul Institute in D.C.; historian Andrew Williard Jones; and precocious teen philosopher genius Marc Barnes (who blogs as "badcatholic" with delightful lightness and humour). This school sees that human society is always oriented to or away from God; that there is no neutral, liberal zone. They advocate a theocracy even as they are sensitive to human freedom. They speak a metaphysical language that is entirely foreign to most of us. But they are developing a promising, profound new Catholic politics of the "real" (title of Schindler's recent book.)

These new forms of conservatism are deep-Catholic, unlike what we are used to in the USA. They clearly renounce the "mysticism of markets" and the elevation of individual choice. Noticeably they neglect the foundation of much American conservatism: reverence for the Constitution and the "founding" as sacrosanct. They see enlightenment liberalism as a defect in our founders, notwithstanding a countervailing Christian (although pronouncedly anti-Catholic) piety. For example, Vermule has recently argued for the need to go beyond "originalism" into a "common good constitutionalism" which implies a philosophy of natural law, a deeply Catholic thought, entirely unintelligible to our contemporary legal community.

Perhaps a decade ago David L. Schindler (D.C. Schindler's father) delibered a lecture in NYC in which he presented what Pope Benedict suggested as the three founding principles of a just social order: reverence for EVERY human life; respect for the family and all that supports it; and openness to the Transcendent and the free practice of religion. In this, I suggest, we have the beginning of a "new constitution." I suggest two additions. First, a preferential concern for the poor, suffering, powerless and marginalized. Secondly, a valuing of personal freedom and a reluctance for coercion as a tension-keeping balance to the strong sense of Truth.

There is no single "Catholic Politics" in the partisan, party or ideological sense. This is the realm of prudential judgment involving a universe of values, beliefs, facts, interpretations, contingencies, uncertainties, hopes and risks. Catholic do and should disagree...often passionately...about political options. (Unlike the moral and theologial in which we enjoy a substantial unity and peace.) Our faith and our societal reality is so dense, complex, and uncertain that no specific polity can be definitive as "Catholic."

It is thrilling that we can enjoy the conversation between these five movements, as well as what remains of value from the legacies of FDR and Ronald Regan. It is an interesting time to be Catholic...in a world falling into chaos...as we "stand erect and lift our heads and wait for the coming of the Lord."

Come Lord Jesus!

Our Apocalyptic Times: The Four Monstrous Kingdoms

The mass readings this past week, the last of our liturgical year, involved Daniel's visions of the four horrific kingdoms: one is more grotesque, destructive and fearsome than the next. It occurs to me that our current world can be understood, by analogy, as a competiton between four such competing kingdoms: fascist dictatorships, Sharia Law, Cultural Liberalism and Communism. They are not equally evil.

The least evil of the four is the surge of righwing dictatorships across the globe. In the West we see a nationalist populism fueled by rage at the totalitarianism of Cultural Liberalism. Putin is a prime example. The hysterical-derangement-syndrom Left configures Trump as such but he is a "dictator-wanna-be." Ross Douthat is accurate in saying that he lacks the political will and talent to become a true strongman. In his middle-of-the-night delusional tweets he is another Putin but in the real world his narcicissm, lack of focus and incompetence shortcircuit his ambitions. Early on Douthat correctly suggested that his campaign lacked the intelligence and sophistication for a genuine collaboration with the Russians but the prolonged, expensive Mueller Commission, like the current hearings on January 6, was a necessary OCD ritual that helped the Left process their obsession, anxiety and rage.

The good news about dictatorships: recalling Hannah Arendt's famous distinction between the authoritarian and the totalitarian, we see that right wing dictatorships claim monopoly over political power but if that is not threatened they tolerate a wide range of religious, cultural, and business freedoms. There was more liberty under Saddam than in Iraq today; under the Shaw than the Mullahs; under Diem than Ho Chi Min, even under Hitler than Stalin. These dictatorships are often mixed bags with some wholesome elements supportive of religion, family life, patriotism and the weak and vulnerable. In contrast to the three totalitarianisms, authoritarian regimes can be open to the "Christian Strategy" advocated by Adrian Vermulle whereby we might emulate Old Testament figures (Daniel, Joseph, Esther) who worked with such rulers to protect their people, advance the good and minimize the bad.

Sharia law tends to be more totalitarian than fascism, particularly in its denial of religious freedom. But as it is itself based upon religious principles it also has redeeming qualities: respect for the unborn, openness to the Transcendent, and respect for most of the Moral Law.

Cultural Liberalism is in many ways, like Islam, a Christian heresy that inflates and distorts certain elements of the gospel as it denies others and creates a new monstrosity. Its repression is more sophisticated and subtle and camouflaged in the righteousness of a more enlightened Christianity. Yet, the Christian elements are alive and dynamic and so here again there is an opportunity for the "Christian Strategy" whereby we work with this realm toward the good even as we oppose the impulses to evil.

Worse by far is the communism, especially of China and North Korea, but also of Cuba and Venezuela. This is hard, absolute evil. The accomadationist policies of Pope Francis and Bide are misguided: this is an arena for martyrdom and warfare (hopefully cold not hot), not dialogue and cooperation.

What is a Catholic to do in this dystopian, dismal universe? That is a topic for another essay!