What Happened to the Jesuits?

What Happened?

For four hundred years, for the Tridentine-Counter-Reformation Church, the Society of Jesus was the backbone, the Jedi Council, the Navy Seals, the Knights of the Round Table, the epitome of virile heroism, fortitude, intelligence, erudition.

Think: Francis Xavier crossing southern Asia, Matthew Ricci in China, Edmund Campion and scores of British martyrs,  the marvelous reductions of South America (movie The Mission), the brilliant Robert Bellarmine, the fingerless Isaac Joques and the North American martyrs, Peter Claver (who baptized 300,000 slaves), Miguel Pro calmly facing his executioners, Claude de la Columbiere, Walter Ciszek enduring the Soviet Gulag. What group could boast a comparable litany of 20th century theological geniuses: Danielou, DeLubac, Balthasar, Lonergan, Rahner, Chardin,Courtney-Murray, Dulles and more? 

A Critical Mass

Suddenly, with Vatican II, a critical mass of the order surrendered to theological liberalism. What happened?

Arguably I am unfair to the Jesuits. Didn't the same happen to all the orders. Well, no. Not exactly. The Jesuits are different: they fell from such a height to such a depth. Their influence was unsurpassed: both for the good over four centuries and for the bad for now half a century.

The idea of critical mass is essential here. It is not that the entire order changed in this way. They remain, as individuals, mostly erudite, sophisticated, holy men. But their public image and influence...particularly through their prestigious universities...has for the last 50 years been entirely influenced by a minority of gifted, intelligent, passionate progressives. Can you name five American Jesuits who cumulatively wield the influence of  James Martin? A smaller minority of Jesuits, outliers and solitaries, have opposed this direction with equivalent passion and intelligence, in the tradition of the order. But these last have had limited influence. My own impression is that the vast majority, perhaps 80%, live quiet, dignified, pious lives of moderation without clear convictions on the contested issues (contraception, women priests, gay marriage, etc.). They have more sympathy with the progressives and therefore have quietly surrendered the order to them.  

My Love for the Jesuits

I did not get a Jesuit education growing up, but have always felt close to them. I grew up with America magazine. When I was a child, my father participated as a union leader in the St. Peter's Institute for labor relations of the Jesuits in Jersey City. Upon graduating high school I wanted to be either a Jesuit or a Maryknoll Missioner. I went with the later as my enthusiasm was more for the poor and the missions than academia. 

After college I studied theology at Woodstock Theologate, newly moved to Manhattan in 1970. There I came under the influence of renowned theologian Avery Dulles and a mystic theologian Joe Whelan. Both deeply influenced me. At the same time I taught part time at Xavier High School where my supervisor and then spiritual director was Neal Doherty, a classic Jesuit holy man. For most of my adult life I was guided spiritually by John Wrynn, also a quiet, scholarly, holy, Irish-American Jesuit. 

My own spirituality is not particularly Ignatian, but I have been greatly blessed by the influence of these wise, profound men who so love our Lord and his Church. Because of this, the fall from grace of the Society of Jesus (in a critical mass) is a cause of grief.

Two Causes

I see two possible causes for this unhappy development. I am sure there are more. The first has to do with the inner structure of the Ignatian charism; the second with the immersion in elite academia just as it was turning secular and dark.

Individualism. In stark contrast to the intense communal nature of the monastic and mendicant life, the Jesuits have about them a striking individualism.  This is rooted in the core of Jesuit piety: the Spiritual Exercises. These are pronouncedly an extended encounter of the individual with the person of Jesus Christ: very isolated from any community other than the director. The director himself is very non-directive, almost "Rogerian," in that his own subjectivity diminishes in order to facilitate the individual's own discernment of the "spirits" as evident in the movements of the heart which lead to or away from Jesus himself. 

And so, when we think of the great Jesuits...Xavier, Jogues, Miguel Pro...we imagine a lonely, heroic figure, unsupported by a close community. They are self-contained, independent and autonomous, sustained by a profound inner communion with our Lord that springs from the Exercises. Traditionally the Jesuits have nourished a devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, especially under the influence of St. Claude de Colombiere. 

Ironically, there is evident here a similarity to the American Evangelical cult of "Jesus and Me" piety which is of course critiqued by a more sophisticated Catholic sense of community and sacramentality.

But this Jesuit individualism has always co-existed, strangely, with a fierce commitment to the institutional Catholic Church, the sacramental economy, the papacy, the Magisterium, the academic tradition and the organizational needs of the broader Church. So what we find in the traditional Jesuit is at once a fierce individualist and a determined "organization man."

To have dinner with a community of Jesuits is an striking experience. One can hardly imagine such erudite, sophisticated, entertaining, charming, gentle, intelligent, cultured, and yet idiosyncratic individuals. There is an evident respect among them, but also a distance. They are priestly, but not clerical, preferring to wear the black and collar on the rarest occasions. They are fraternal. They feel like a group of congenial bachelors. (Disclaimer: most of the Jesuits who have befriended me are Irish-American of a specific cohort: the Quiet Generation, born before or after World War II, a little older than me,  the big brothers I never had as oldest son.) 

My son Paul, when studying at St. Peter's College in Jersey City was invited one night to dine with the Jesuits and the following night, by coincidence, with a small group of Salesian priests. He laughed at the contrast: the former had quality alcohol, excellent food, and an aura of elegance and taste. The later had cheap beer,  dinner out of cans, and a relaxed/rugged feel. He admired both. He felt more at home with the later. 

This individualism was a strength for the martyrs, missionaries, and mystics of the Tridentine Church, but became a liability, I am suggesting, in the encounter with the triumphal individualism of the new liberalism of the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. The solitary Jesuit was prepared for the torture of the rack and the loneliness of the missions, but not resistant to the corrosive individualism of Cultural Liberalism. Without a strong communal rooting, the Jesuit had a weak immune reaction to the emergent and corrosive individualism of secular liberalism. 

This vulnerability was heightened by being combined with the second factor: the academy.

Immersion in an Elite Academy Gone Secular

The endpoint of Jesuit life is to "find God in all things." To find God in the world. Thus they are not sequestered in monasteries but involved with the broader society. This requires, of course, a shrewd discernment of the spirits in order to be "in the world" but "not of the world."  And so it is here that we find the crisis of the order in the 1960s. 

For 400 years the Jesuits created their own staunchly Catholic universe of academies: a world unto itself, fortifying the Catholic Church intellectually, set off from Protestant and secular higher education. But coming out of Vatican II the Church, especially the intellectuals, the "best and brightest," surrendered to an intoxicated, euphoric, open-minded (but inadequately critical) dialogue with and embrace of the best in broader society, especially the academy. It became intellectually fashionable to reject the alleged narrow, defensive, reactionary Church prior-to-1960 and celebrate the explosion of new findings, theories and speculations of Modernity. 

The problem: our best and brightest made this passionate act of Trust in Ivy League culture just as it was turning secular, atheistic and dark. The WASP civil religion that had reigned over society, including elite academia, into the post-war period was disintegrating just as the Catholic Church was surrendering herself in a blind infatuation with the elite academia. 

A good friend of mine was a scholastic and young priest in these years. He explained that he got to study theology at a fine German university because at that point in time all the really smart young Jesuits no longer wanted to go to prestigious Catholic schools in Europe but preferred Harvard/Princeton/Yale.

We see here a perfect storm gathering: the individualism of the Ignatian charism left the "best and the brightest" of the young Jesuits particularly vulnerable to the Catholic infatuation with an Academy just then turning dark.

What followed was, in retrospect, predictable. Jesuit moralists played a key role in a gathering of the Kennedy brain trust in the late 1960s that prepared the liberal Catholic acceptance of legal abortion. America magazine tracked consistently to the left both politically and theologically. Jesuit universities, especially the more prestigious, participated in the Land of Lakes Conference, and continued to renounce explicitly Catholic influence in their  uncritical mimesis of Ivy League schools.

Conclusion

Yesterday, July 31, 2022, the 500th anniversary of the conversion of Ignatius, Jesuits all over the world joined with their Superior General in rededicating themselves to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Let us join our prayers to theirs: that their marvelous legacy of faith and erudition be rekindled and that we may all of us draw closer to that merciful Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of his mother. 

Postscript

Conversation after posting the above pointed to other trends contributing to the trajectory of the Society of Jesus since the Council.

1. Theologically, the Transcendental Thomism of Rahner and Lonergan has been largely influential in the order, for example in the Gregorian in Rome. Those two geniuses were, like their generation, firmly grounded in the Tradition and St. Thomas. But they engineered a pivot towards German Idealism, a Kantian shift towards subjectivity of the Self as knower, as seeker of God, and away from an epistemological realism rooted in the objectivity of Creation. Already in 1968 Rahner and Lonergan both rejected Humanae Vitae and approved of contraception. Rahner's protege, Johann Metz, went on to develop a leftist political theology that influenced liberation theology and other leftist theologies. So we see that this highly abstract theory opened the door to the two primal troubling directions of post-Council Catholic liberalism: sexual liberation and leftist politics. The two are distinct but in the atmosphere of America politics they are allies. So we sense the gravitational pull as Catholics who are lukewarm about Cultural Liberalism will unfailingly vote pro-choice out of their political loyalty to the Left.

2. Over the last five decades, the Order has become increasingly more gay-friendly. This is evident in its elite universities and America magazine. It is noteworthy that in the wake of the priest sex scandal these pushed back fiercely to obscure the overt homosexual nature of the crisis: over 80% of the violations were of post-pubescent males, not so much girls and not so much children. And so they have surely become attractive to religious men who identify as "gay."  This has, of course, intensified the detachment from Catholic traditions of chastity, state of life, spousal fidelity, and celibacy.

3. Pope Francis is himself a good example of the 80% or so of Jesuits who remain confused, uncertain and undecided about the Culture War issues. In his core love for the person of Jesus, for the Church and for the poor he is Ignatian in an exemplary, outstanding manner. But his emotive aversions...against clericalism, the Latin Mass, border walls, global warming, capital punishment, populisms of the right, the Evangelical-Catholic coalition in the USA...fog and confound his thinking. About sexuality he seems at times to be progressive, other times conservative, and often indifferent, as if it doesn't matter. He has in fact NOT reversed traditional teaching on gay marriage, women priests, or contraception. But he has given encouragement and influence to culture warriors of the left, such as Martin and Paglia, so he has in fact been an enabler of cultural liberalism within the Church, if in a convoluted fashion. In this he unhappily images the broader Jesuit Society.

4. It is widely understood that the primary theological contest in the Church since the Council has been between the "Concilio" school of Rahner and the "Communio" school. In the broader Church, the later prevailed decisively throughout the dual pontificate of John Paul and Benedict who were leaders of that school. Other founders of the Communio school were brilliant, prominent Jesuits: Balthasar, DeLubac, and Danielou. We might add Avery Dulles who was not exactly a member of that school but certainly sympathetic with it orthodox, traditional-yet-innovative direction. Yet, with notable exceptions, that entire body of thought has been ignored by the bulk of Jesuits and renounced by that critical mass of progressives. This has been a momentous drama, entirely contradictory of the staunch Catholic loyalty of the Jesuits over 400 years.

5. Interestingly, our beloved Balthasar very reluctantly left the Jesuits in 1950, just before their catastrophic pivot. He was told he could not start the new Community of St. John while still in the order. He obediently did the thirty-day Exercises, as directed, and discerned a very unusual, specific call to leave and start this new endeavor with Adrienne von Speyr. He was the most Ignatian of Jesuits. He attributed his vocation to the Jesuits to a mystical intervention of Ignatius himself. His writings are full of Ignatian themes of call, obedience, discernment, etc. He directed many in the Exercises including some who joined the Society. Adrienne herself experienced mystical encounters with St. Ignatius as a child, before she knew anything about the saints. This move suggests that the charismatic Ignatius, from heaven, may have sensed the emergent individualism of his Society and proactively inspired a new direction.

Confessions of an Unfriendly, Anti-Social, Introverted, Invisible, Anonymous Parishioner

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I don't want to talk with anyone at mass. I require 12 to 15 feet of social distancing (my wife excepted.) I certainly don't want anyone holding hands with me during the Our Father or scurrying around Church to hug me at the Sign of Peace. A distant wave suffices. A benefit of the Covid: no more hugs or hand holding!

I do NOT want friendship or community at Church. I have more than enough outside of Church.

I go to daily mass. I have been a parishioner for 40 years. I know almost no one by name. I like it that way. We have been going to mass about twice weekly at our new parish at the Jersey Shore for several years. I know no one by name. I like it that way. 

I come by it honestly. As a child I would go to mass with my grandmother, bachelor uncle and unmarried aunt: we would drive to Church and then they would separate to different parts of the Church. I get it: they live together, eat together, aggravate each other: Why sit together in Church?

My mother, the most sociable and convivial of people, described that when raising the nine of us she cherished the one hour at mass and the 10 minute walk to and from because it was the ONLY time she had to herself.

In part it is my introverted streak: I value time alone.

In part it is that my life is filled with friendship and community: I came from and raised large families; I have a strong network of good friends; my work has always involved working with people, always with serious responsibilities involved. 

Mass for me is: Quiet. Peace. Rest. Solitude. The Presence of Jesus.

I know that the "Spirit of Vatican II" has liturgy as community, friendship, celebration. Not for me!

There is irony here. For most of my adult life I had an obsessive desire to find a deeper form of Christian Community. Coming out of college I was interested in the politically radical "Basic Christian Communities" of Latin America. Early in our marriage I drove with my new wife up the Hudson River and we visited a Catholic Worker Farm and the Bruderhoff Community. Both intensive, countercultural Christian communities. The first anarchistic and chaotic; the second super-organized and controlled. Clearly we would fit into neither. Later we participated vigorously in a Charismatic prayer group; but we never joined a covenant community although I was fascinated by the idea. I myself walked, for a time, with two different Neocatechumenal Communities, but eventually left both. 

I never found my Community.

Instead, my life has been movement and flow in and out of a diversity of friendships, involvements, movements, tasks and associations. My one foot is firmly planted in the sacramental life of the proximate parish or Church. My other foot is wandering like a pilgrim, a mendicant, a searcher, a missioner. It has been stable and rooted (in the parish); but always interesting, novel, dramatic, eventful. 

My conviction has been that the broader society has become so hostile to our  faith and the Church so compromised that our Catholic life cannot flourish outside of intentional, intense, countercultural communities like the religious orders and the lay renewal movements.  

I have found such support, inspiration and energy...but in a smorgasboard of engagements and encounters. 

I am concerned, of course, for my children and their children. One daughter is fully engaged living the evangelical life as a "Memores Domini" within the Communion and Liberation Movement. One son with wife and children is passionately devoted to his Neocatechumenal Community. They stand on solid ground.

My other five are firmly connected to their parishes but, for the most part, no other intentional community. This makes them, especially my grandchildren, vulnerable to the broader, hostile culture.  Will they be blessed, as I have been, by a rich variety of holy connections? 

That is something I pray for ... quietly...at mass.

 

Discernment: Overrated!

A marvelous word, "discernment" has become overused, trivialized and thereby spoiled.

What does the word mean? The Latin etymology ("dis-cernere") means to separate apart or discriminate. It  means a judgment that is deep, broad, discriminating, and normally patient, time-consuming and laborious in its consideration of evidence. It is the opposite of a quick, simple, impulsive decision. It implies a degree of complexity, density and obscurity that requires studious attention, careful evaluation and consultation.

In Catholic circles we often hear "I am discerning the priesthood...or the religious life, or marriage." That is entirely appropriate. But it has become overextended and cheapened. My youngest daughter, part-time nurse and mother of three little ones, was asked to take on leadership in the parents' association of her parish school. She committed to involvement but not the Presidency. A serious friend asked: "How did you discern that?" Discern? She didn't really engage a process of discernment. Bright, quick and decisive, she decided in a "blink" (Malcolm Gladwell) that she could serve but not as the boss.

In Catholic spirituality discernment was authoritatively developed by St. Ignatius as a sophisticated practice of determining God's will, especially in regard to vocation, state of life, or a significant life decision. Classically, within a 30-day retreat, one is led systematically through an itinerary of prayer, scripture reading and meditation by an experienced spiritual director, frequently a Jesuit. It is an active, imaginative, disciplined, deliberative process. Particular attention is paid to the "discernment of spirit"...the quiet action of God and that of the Antagonist...by awareness of consolations and desolations of the spirit. So, the retreatant shares with the director his interior responses to the readings and themes: what brings him joy, peace, hope, faith and what brings him discouragement, sadness, inner turbulence.

This is a far more sophisticated, profound engagement than the crude "follow your bliss" of Joseph Campbell and similar Jungians. God or the Evil One can cause joy or sadness. It requires, precisely, discernment. So, for example, imagine a successful but discouraged, middle-age business man, deep in undiagnosed midlife crisis, who becomes youthful, thrilled, hopeful, and light-hearted when he thinks about his 21-year-old assistant who has a crush on him; but becomes sad, irritated, angry and bored when he thinks of his annoying-and-annoyed wife of 30 years. Shall he listen to Campbell and follow his bliss? Not according to St. Ignatius who teaches us that when our soul is in a state of sin the actions of the devil fill us with pleasure while the workings of grace provoke resistance, turbulence and sadness. A good spiritual director will, of course, assist where our own blindness would lead to disaster. 

My suggestion here is that discernment is a serious, rare event, not part of the normal flow of life. It is like a miracle,  exorcism, or an apparition. It happens. When God wants it. But it is unusual. How many of us can go off to a 30-day retreat.

(Disclosure: I was blessed to make the Spiritual Exercises, under annotation 19 "in everyday life." For most of my adult life I benefited from spiritual direction from Jesuits John Wrynn and Neil Dougherty. The finest, most influential of all my teachers were the renown Avery Cardinal Dulles and the mystic Joe Whelan. Jesuits have been very close to me. Yet, I would not characterize my spirituality as Ignatian.)

It is, of course, the foundation of Jesuit spirituality and a marvelous charism within the Church. But I further suggest that it bears fruit within a broader, balanced Catholic spirituality. It is a private endeavor done alone with the director, and tends to a certain isolation. It is largely an activity, although in response to Scripture and sensitive to the movements of the Holy Spirit, with a strong sense of the agency of the intellect, imagination and will. These are, of course, strengths but need to be balanced by other dimensions of Catholic life.

So if discernment is overrated, is not our ordinary manner of conversing with God, what is?  To be specific, these six are vastly underrated: Divine Providence, Mimesis or Imitation, Sacramental Immersion, Habit as Fidelity to State of Life, the Blink of Intuitive Decision, Prompting of the Holy Spirit.

Divine Providence. Ninety percent of our life comes to us without our choice, agency or will power. When, where and how we are born and die; and virtually everything in between...comes to us actively and we receive passively. We know in faith that all of this, everything outside of our agency, is under the Providence of God and is planned or allowed (permissive will in regard to evil and suffering) by God for our wellbeing here and now and in the hereafter. Our first and foremost urgency: to receive all of this, gratefully and trustingly. We can never say "Thank You" enough. And this moves us into surrender or abandonment to God's providence. Like an innocent, trusting child we place our lives in the hands of God and rest joyfully. This is not agency, this is deep passivity. Jesus! I surrender myself to you! Take care of everything!

Mimesis. Of the remaining 10% of your life, 90% of that is mimesis or imitation. As persons we are created to image or imitate the Trinity and so mimesis is the core of our being. Always and everywhere we are looking for someone to  imitate. We are for the most part the sum of the influences which we emulate, mostly without intention or deliberation. That is why it is SO important who we associate with, what we listen to and watch. If you hang with holy people, you will become holy. It actually is a simple as that.

Sacramental Immersion. For the Catholic, 100% of life is centered in worship, in the sacramental encounter with the Trinity through Jesus Christ. The Eucharist and accompanying sacraments are the vortex, the center, around which the entirety of our lives flow. Everything moves into and out of Christ in the Eucharist.

Habit as Fidelity to State of Life. About 90% of our conscious life is given over to habit: how we wake up and go to sleep, get dressed, structure our day. Even more so as we get older we are creatures of habit. We are products of the "program of life" or the (however indeliberate) "rule of life" we have developed. It is like a good high school track or football program: they systematically train and turn out championship teams every year, not so much from recruitment but from consistency, patience, and persistency. Whatever our state in life...family, priesthood, evangelical vows, undetermined...our habits carry us most of the way to our goal.

Blink of Intuitive Decision.  Malcolm Gladwell taught us that momentous and trivial decisions are often made in the blink of a micro-second. Our mind takes in a complex situation and reacts immediately, without deliberation or discernment of any sort. Consider buying a house: this would seem to require serious, attentive study about the location, taxes, house structure, school system, asking price and so on. But my realtor friend of happy memory, Joe Napolitano, was amazed that often a woman knows immediately, at first sight, that she wants that house. It is a flash intuition: like in the movies and your eyes meet and your are in love for ever. This is largely, but not absolutely, the marvelous workings of the human psyche and intellect.

Promptings of the Holy Spirit. When I am confronted with an on-the-spot, difficult decision I do not go into deliberative discernment mode. I become quiet, rested, passive. I implore the Holy Spirit:  "Guide me. I don't know what to do. Help me! I trust in you." And then I rest, peacefully and quietly, and I wait and I still my mind. And I wait. And then I repeat it again: "Guide me. I need you. I trust in you." And again I still my mind, I wait, I quietly pray thanks in praise for the impending guidance. I am attentive and receptive to what is outside of me and what is at work within me. And then, most gently, I suddenly know what to do. That is the prompting of the Holy Spirit.

To conclude: I am not knocking discernment. It has its valued place in Catholic life. It operates in a broader context of immersion in, reception of, and response to God's grace present always within us and around us.

 

The Christlike Character, Strength and Celibacy of the Batman

 I don't like super heroes but I love the Batman because he has no super powers, he is human, wounded and vulnerable. He resembles Jesus in many ways.

Lacking unnatural powers, he has nevertheless enhanced his human capabilities...intelligence, fighting skills, technological prowess, courage...to the maximum. But there is about him a tender sadness and grief (about the murder of his father and mother) and a fierce if restrained rage at the evil powers threatening Gotham, which he loves. He is formidable and confident with a tender side: that is Jesus; that is virility at its best.

Gotham, in the comic books but even more in the recent movie versions, is a dark, rainy, desolate city being overtaken by dark powers of greed, crime and corruption. Is that not a realistic image of our current world: Russia, China and Iran are on a rampage; crime in cities out of control; southern border insecure; fears around the virus and inflation pervasive; trust in ALL institutions at an all time low.  We are living in Gotham.

Batman is almost, but happily not quite, a lone protagonist. He is not the "Protestant Loner" like Gary Cooper in High Noon, abandoned by everyone. He is not humming "Though none go with me, still I will follow." No! He has community. There is Alfred, his butler, but competent, intelligent and protective. He comes across as even more paternal than usual in the latest Batman movie which has Bruce Wayne (Robert Patinson) as surprisingly young, morose and discouraged, notwithstanding the powerful portrayal of him as Batman. Next of course is his friend/collaborator Police Commissioner Gordon: a decent, conscientious officer who is overwhelmed by the web of corruption and violence around him. The two are fiercely loyal to each other and trust each other implicitly. He stands in as well for all the good people of Gotham whom they are defending. Batman is clearly the hero, but he has a good team around him.

Strikingly in the new version, Batman is a man of few, almost no words. He is tall, dark, handsome and quiet. He is a refreshing icon of virility as attentive, restrained, intelligent, vigilant QUIET. He reminds us of St. Joseph, John Wayne, Gary Cooper and a litany of masculine icons.

Romantically he is passionate in his affection and desire, but flawlessly chaste and restrained. He is frustrated; he is celibate. This dimension is handled extremely well in the new (2022) version. Zoe Kravitz, playing Cat Woman, excels outstanding predecessors (Halle Berry, Michele Pfeiffer, Anne Hathway!!) in her flaming attractiveness. She is more natural as her feline nature is muted and limited. She is wild, brilliant, fierce in battle, eccentric, angry and wounded (like the Batman), eccentric, transgressive and anarchistic.  Her fight scenes with Batman were striking: she (or her stunt double?) is  quick, flexible, mobile ...amazingly so...but Batman easily, calmly overwhelms her with his superior strength and then holds her with a confident tenderness that is paternal rather than erotic. Her bisexuality is handled in a subtle, effective manner. Early in the movie she is talking on the phone with "baby" who is clearly hysterical and frightened. Is it her child? Boyfriend? Girlfriend? It turns out to be the last. She is protective and tender with her. We see here, in a discrete fashion, only what is best in such a relationship. But the chemistry between the cat and the bat is fierce, but understated and restrained. There is one, maybe two, kisses. 

We know this romance can go nowhere. She is way too wild to settle into a marriage. Batman is absolutely committed to his crusade against evil; he is not ready for family time. The mild transgressive aspect gives her a certain forbidden appeal but also relieves us of any disappointment as we all know they will not live happily ever after.  She is seductive, but Batman is unflappable except for reception of that tender kiss. The fire between them is that much more fierce because it cannot be consummated. In the finale they ride together on their motorcycles, suggesting a union, but then separate in their opposite directions. Each has a mission, an identity, a destiny that will not allow for more than a passing, however inflamed, romance. 

Theirs is reminiscent of other cinematic romances which are all the more passionate because they are tender, chaste, restrained and sometimes agonizingly frustrated: Ingrid Bergman and Bing Crosby in Bells of St. Mary's, Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday, Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation, Alan Ladd and Jean Arthur in Shane. Such icons encourage us in chastity, whatever our state or mission in life.

There is nothing about God in Batman, it is not explicitly Christian. Bruce Wayne is however, absolutely dedicated to justice and good, ready to die fighting evil. The  psychic root of this passion is his memory of his father and his legacy. This theme is strong in the new version in which he has to face hard facts about this legacy. Nevertheless, his wealth, status, memory and family history all add up to a tradition of goodness to which he pledges his life. He is an inspiring figure!

Watching Fox While Reading the Times: Letter Eight to my Teen Grandchildren

Last Sunday afternoon, returning from a vacation in the Finger Lakes, I decided to relax and catch up on the news by watching Fox and reading the Sunday NY Times.

How many people do you know that would or could do these two things at the same time? 

Not many! For most these two are incompatible. My conservative friends would scornfully say "You still read that rag?" My liberal friends would view me as contaminated by habitual viewing of Fox News.

For me, on the other hand, they require each other; they complement and fulfill each other. With only one of the two my viewpoint would be very jaundiced and narrow. It is like: catching the football with both hands, not one-handed; like loving my mother and my father, not one or the other; like surrendering to God's Mercy and his Wrath-Justice-Holiness...the one without the other would be sentimental, saccharine, nauseating while the inverse would be desolation and despair.

I read the NY Times every day; have been doing so for  60 years. It is a staple of my life. In high school history class, Fr. Giblin had us read the "Week in Review" every Sunday and outline a number of articles; I dispense with the outline but continue the reading habit.

I know that the paper is my antagonist in the relentless Culture War and that their politics is out of alignment with mine. I know that their viewpoint infiltrates the entire enterprise: what is reported, how it is slanted...news, book reviews, Sunday Style, et al. I know who I am and I know what it is and I respect it as such: a secular, progressive, highly opinionated, often interesting and sometimes reliable Jewish newspaper.

But I treasure it for several reasons: First, it is a dependable source of information about world events. For example, daily I read the updates on the Ukraine war and find them to be trustworthy and helpful. Second, they often offer valuable insights from a variety of sources: I regularly read Douthat, Brooks, Stephens and even Collins, Dowd, Krugman Goldberg and Blow. Occasional contributors like Arthur Brooks or Jonathan Haidt are invaluable.   Lastly, it is good to know what the enemy is thinking, seeing, and planning. I recall that John Paul, when still a bishop, was seen entering a synod meeting of the bishops with a Marxist journal in his pocket.

Regarding Fox: I am a happy member of that family. And proud of it. Although it is admittedly a dysfunctional family Religiously we watch, at 6 PM,  Bret Baer,  who is like a brother: practicing Catholic, family man, real smart, funny and light-hearted, patriotic and conservative, competent and professional. He interviews a progressive Democrat and a conservative Republican with the same calm, sober, respectful but tough questioning. He, along with Shannon Bream  and Martha McCallum are the portion of the three-part channel that I like. The others not so much. The ideologues (Hannity, Ingraham, etc.) are so unbalanced, , emotional, ad hominem and shrill that they are unwatchable. In between these two is a more ambiguous group, the entertainers and comedians: Jesse Waters, Tucker Carlson, Greg Grunfeld and his bunch (especially the huge wrestler guy and the smart, skinny, funny blonde).  They are not serious, reliable journalists, but they are funny and cathartic as they give the progressives the ridicule they deserve. Ok...this is a guilty pleasure; I am not proud of it. Hey! I am only human! 

Often at 7 PM I switch to CNN and Erin Burnett for a change of pace. For one thing, Erin is a lovely brunette:  What's up with Fox and all these smart, confident, gorgeous blondes? We have always liked Erin. My wife has closely monitored her appearance and weight in and out of her three pregnancies: she has come out of it all looking great! (Hey: if that is sexist, blame her not me. To be fair, Bret has also added and lost weight. Lately he looks good. He is getting older so lets cut him some slack!)  She is super-intelligent and generally a fine journalist. She does not disguise her pro-abortion bias: but this is CNN so what can we expect? Sadly she is a  victim of  TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome). When she talks about him she becomes a different person: agitated, shrill, angry, unhinged. It is devastating for both her feminine charm and her professional credibility. It is noteworthy: since Biden took office the five letter word T-R-U-M-P is never mentioned in Bret's 6 to 7 slot on Fox; but every Erin show obsesses about him (the Big Lie, January 6, and yada yada yada). It is unfortunate to waste her fine mind and all that energy!

I am blessed to receive information from a lot of different sources. Two older, conservative friends cut and mail me pieces from the Wall Street Journal, the Economist and others that I don't read. My liberal, policy-wonk double cousin sends me stuff from the Times, the Washington Post, and other. I religiously read the Catholic press: especially Communio (theological journal), First Things, The Catholic Thing, National Catholic Register, Crisis and sometimes New Oxford Review, Catholic Worker, NC Reporter, Commonweal and America. 

Like everyone else, I am in my own bubble. But I enjoy the breath and depth of my bubble. A good Catholic strives for a (small c) catholic mind: embracing and welcoming the True and the Good wherever it can be found. A good Catholic is fearless in dialoguing with all sides and does not cancel, demonize or flee from dissonance and contradiction. A good Catholic realizes the fallibility and frailty of the human mind and the provisional, positional, finite, biased nature of human knowing. And so the good Catholic is open minded, searching and passionate in his craving for The Truth in all its splendid, entertaining, paradoxical and even disturbing manifestations.   

Love and It's Four Movements: Letter Seven to My Teenage Grandchildren

I think a lot about love and what I consider its four movements.

What is Love?

First: What is love? I invite you to pause here for a second and consider how you would define love.

Commonly we hear that love is not a feeling, but an act of the will,  a decision for the well-being of the beloved. That definition has merit but is too narrow for me: it sets the will against the heart and ignores the intellect. It isolates the act of the will and fragments it from the entire person.

My definition of love: engagement of the whole person in the Goodness, Beauty and Truth of a reality that elicits the knowing approval of the intellect, the delight of the heart, and the decision of the will to honor, celebrate, protect and enhance the beloved reality.

Understood thus, love is far more than a feeling but it involves the heart and therefore desire, emotion and passions. It is an intellectual act since we cannot love something we do not know. It moves into the will with the desire to unite with the beloved as well as to honor, protect and enhance and therefore give oneself to the beloved. It is receptive before it is active but it is both/and: a mutual engagement, an event, a drama.

Analogy

The Catholic intellect understands all of reality in the light of ANALOGY. (The meaning of "analogy" WILL be on the test!) Analogy is: a similarity within a greater difference. We see all of reality as created by God: so creation, coming from God, in some way resembles God, and yet is precisely Not-God as creation and not Creator.  This simple concept is the basis for all Catholic theology. God is "father" in that our fathers, at their best, image God but in an infinitely different reality. Our very being, as finite/mortal/contingent/fallible/dependent images the BEING of God which is infinite, eternal, gratuitous, infallible and independent.

Within Creation itself different "realities" or "levels of being" are analogous to each other: at once similar and yet immensely different. They are not univocal, all the same. They are not anomalous, entirely different. So, we have material reality (rock), vegetative (flowers), animal (dogs), human (angimal), spiritual (angels and devils), Divine, abstract (numbers), virtual (internet), fictional, and so forth.

Everything that has being, that has come from the hand of the Creator, is in itself Good/True/Beautiful and therefore evocative of love. But the thing is known and loved as it is: so our love for a garden is different from our love for our best friend is different from our love for Jesus our Lord. But they are analogous: vastly different but similar in that they involve an intellectual approval, a heartfelt delight, and a commitment of the will to honor and protect.

Genuine love is approval, delight and commitment to the good of the beloved's very self. So, if I say "I love Jersey Mike's subs" I am speaking of what is really a sub-love, a delight and desire that is not real love since it is pleased, not by the sandwich in itself, but in the pleasure derived from eating it. It actually destroys its object. There is an analogy here so we can honestly say "I love this sandwich" but we know it is really pleasure, not real love. I will argue below that sexual attraction and even romance are not genuine, pure loves but are themselves good and natural (created) realities, sub-loves, that properly directed can enrich and develop the deeper, truer forms of love.

The Four Loves of C.S. Lewis

Hopefully, you have or will read the classic The Four Loves by the incomparable C.S. Lewis. He describes four basic loves: Agape, selfless concern for the other; Eros, desire for the beautiful and the good; Philia, friendship as equality in shared valuing of some good or goods; and Storge, natural affection as in familial fondness. Agape finds its perfect expression in Jesus on the cross, loving his enemies. Eros is not primarily physical/sexual desire but longing for the Good/True/Beautiful. Some have set Agape against Eros but Pope Benedict in a more Catholic tradition sees that the two infuse each other: Jesus sacrificed himself for us even as he desired to have us with the Father in heaven. His desire was pure Eros, not flowing from a need or deficiency on his part, but from the overflowingly gratuitous generosity of the Triune Event of Love. Philia is friendship between equals in which there is a shared interest, love, or value: we play hockey or shop or pray together. Finally, Storge is natural affection that even animals can demonstrate. It is the instinctive fondness we have for our immediate family (although not all of the time) or the fond response to a cute child, animal or old person.

Paca's Fleckinsteinian Four Movements

My four movements of love resemble those of Lewis with some differences: Tender Care, Reverence, Delight with Desire, Friendship in the Good.

Tender Care is the compassionate, merciful, generous and sacrificial care for the Beloved in her suffering, vulnerability, and sadness. It is God's love for us in our misery and sin. It is the heart of maternal and paternal love as Mercy: fierce yearning for the well-being of the beloved in her precious weakness. It will characterize any genuine love in the degree that the beloved is suffering. It is a combination of Lewis's Agape and Storge since it incorporates the physical/emotional/familial emotion of tenderness into the sacrificial, selfless care for the other's well being.

Reverence is admiration, esteem and reverence for the goodness, truth and beauty of the beloved. If the prior love responds to vulnerability and weakness, this responds to strength, valor, generosity. It is essentially our love for God in his might and our poverty. It is the filial affection of the child for mother and father as they provide and comfort from their strength. It includes trust and gratitude. It is the reciprocal of Tender Care as that is received in trust, gratitude and eventually reverence. This again combines Lewis's Eros and Storge as they merge in all filial, trusting, grateful, respectful loves. If tender care flows from strength and fulness, reverence flows from weakness and need.

Friendship in the Good Is the same as Lewis's philia: between equals (brothers and sisters, friends) there is a sharing in some good beyond themselves. A relationship in which two find mutual pleasure, as in a romance, but does not open up to some greater good will eventually show itself to be a reciprocity in need-fulfillment and fall to pieces. We see this all the time, in movies and real life. Often such failed relationships retain deep disappointment, sadness and resentment. Of course, the higher the good the deeper the friendship. So my baseball friendships will be smaller than genuine intellectual relationships will be lesser than partnerships in prayer.

Delight with Desire  Delight in the beloved is at the heart of every love. It commingles with the intellectual approval as well as the intention to honor. It also flows into Desire, in the deepest and highest sense. Delight is different from pleasure: delight is joy in beholding the beloved, while pleasure can be self-serving and indifferent to the real value or well-being of its object. So the word "desire" is problematic since it will more often than not refer to a lower-level longing that is self-serving, possibly corrupt and evil, but at best a sub-love or natural need for affection, attention and satisfaction. But a wholesome love will also desire the beloved. A mother and child desire each other, in a way that can be holy and wholesome. God desires us in a way that is absolutely holy. 

I suggest to you that every love is a combination of some, maybe all of these four loves. For example, a healthy marriage will include all four to an intense degree. And in marriage the first two, tender care and reverence, will flow fluidly in a fascinating dance as each spouse serendipitously manifests both strengths and weaknesses. My own happy experience has been that most often when I am weak my bride is strong and when she is weak I become strong.

Sexual and Romantic Attraction

As mentioned: physical and emotional attraction are not genuine, pure loves. They are not selfless regard for the worth of the beloved. They arise from ones own physical, emotional and psychological needs and urges. As such they are natural, created and good in themselves. They serve many good purposes in God's providential design. When attracted to someone, I recommend a prayer of gratitude: for the goodness of the person and for your own God-created attraction. Along with that pray for the well being of that person especially if he/she is not available as a potential spousal partner. Ask for yourself God's grace to relate in a pure, tender, reverent way with this person.

Such feelings are ordinary and natural but they can also be very powerful and are usually accompanied by good or bad spirits. The good spirits are the genuine loves: tender care, reverence, delight and friendship in the good. These may draw the two of you down a path into perpetual, joyous marital union. Or they might enrich a friendship that maintains a respectful distance and restrain. Alternately, of course, they can commingle with selfishness, lust, covetousness, resentment, dominance and dysfunctional neediness...and do immense damage. Here we return again to the importance of chastity.

Conclusion

At this point you might ponder your many  friendships, loves, loyalties, and attractions. Do you notice that some of your relationships are especially strong in any one of the four movements.

As your grandfather, I enjoy all four of them for each of you. But above all you are for me, each in your distinctive manner, a PURE DELIGHT! 

I Am Not a White Man

 First of all I am not white I am a man of color. I am bad with colors but looking at my arm I would say I am pinkish on the inside and light brown on the outside (it is mid July in NJ). 

I have never known a white man. I have seen very few: they are called albinos. There are about 10,000 real white albino males in the USA. Very rare! But that is not what we are discussing.

I am not Caucasian either. I have no real connection with the Caucuses.

The "White Man" is a  remnant of a few tragic centuries of Euro-centered racism and a figment of the wounded, paranoid, resentful imagination. Basically he is: cis-gendered, homophobic, misogynist, often Republican/conservative, narcissistic, pee-pee-standing, he-him-his-pronoun-using, self-righteous, mansplaining, European-descended, powerful,  privileged, greedy and often wealthy, condescending, aggressive, and proud...a moral monstrosity!

The good news: he is not real! It is mythical construction! Like dragons, mermaids, unicorns, dragons!

There are basically three or four recognized races; they correspond with Europe, Asia, Africa and the (native) Americas. There are subdivisions within these, and some outliers.  Each group shares a handful of physical characteristics: skin color, facial structure, hair quality and such. With all the intermarrying through the centuries...and even more in today's interconnected globe...almost everyone is some combination. We don't have three or more pure, discreet "races" a la Hitler.

But the category of race is entirely superficial, void of meaning and useless. To speak of race is like saying: "There are three human types: large-nosed, small-nosed and medium-nosed." The categorization is ridiculous. Who decides what is a large nose? How about a huge man with a nose larger than average but proportionally small for his body? The typology suggests a small-nosed (or alternately a large-nosed) person who subconsciously despises his/her nose and is channeling his hatred  and shame to the scapegoat group! 

What interests is not skin color or nose size, but (personal and communal) identity, history, culture, religion, ambition, and destiny. 

Who am I? A son-and-creature of our heavenly Father and brother to every single other human being; a Catholic united with others to Jesus Christ in the Church; a male in all my relationships with all men and women; a Laracy and also a Gallagher and married to a Remmele who is also a Hemberger; an Irish-American (and both are important). I am a thousand other things as well: husband, father, grandfather, cousin, uncle, friend, walker, reader, New Jersian...and on and on!

But I am NOT a white man!