Longanimity

 Longanimity is underrated. 

Actually, longanimity is unknown. 

Let's bring back longanimity!

I am reading about it in the spiritual classic The Sanctifier by Archbishop Luis Martinez of Mexico City in the 1950s.

From the Latin "anima" for spirit, the word means "long-spirited." It is a virtue and gift of the Holy Spirit which elevates the intellect and will to "play the long game." It is the ability to endure hardship, suffering and difficulty for long periods. So it is almost synonymous or overlaps patience, longsuffering, endurance, perseverance, tenacity, and persistence. In that it is a virtue of the will. But it is also a virtue of the intellect: to see things in the long run. In the long run, of course, we are all dead. So it is fitting to ponder this virtue and gift now, November, as we remember the last things: death, judgment, heaven and hell. And as we pray for the souls and honor the saints.

St. Mother Teresa suffered the dark night for about 40 years: longanimity.

Jimmy Lae is suffering bad health in a Hong Kong prison: longanimity.

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett in her recent book Listening to the Law diligently unveils the nature and workings of our constitutional system and The Court. She is emphatic: their decisions are not focused so much on the particulars of the moment, but upon the broad logic of law and the repercussions well into the future. Longanimity.

My friend Adrienne (who I saw yesterday for the first time in 50 years) is lovingly caring for her husband of 48 years who is suffering Lewy body dementia, arranging her home and schedule around his needs. Longanimity.

Our Senate Republicans recently found the courage and integrity to resist the President's pressure to discard the filibuster. They were protecting a protocol essential to the integrity of the Senate. Longanimity.

When we were raising our children, our friend (really sister-in-Christ and aunt to our children) Betty would calmly announce: "This too will pass." Longanimity.

Yesterday I spoke with an inmate in a local county jail who was just denied recourse to Recovery Court and so will spend more time in prison. He was understandably disappointed. I recalled the story of the patriarch Joseph of Egypt and the reality of Divine Providence and encouraged him to: Longanimity.

Longanimity of the intellect keeps us in communion with those who have gone before us, across the generations, and the legacy they have given us. It inclines us to view the future, well beyond our lifetimes, like Moses looking into the Promised Land, the promises to our children and theirs. It situates us well beyond our own limitations of space and time within the broader contours of family, community and Church.

I encourage you, dear Reader, as I encourage myself to practice the virtue and pray for the gift of Longanimity.

Come, Holy Spirit, giver of all good gifts. Bring patience, peace and longanimity!

Epstein and Maxwell: Eunuch's for the Kingdom of Darkness

November: Month of Souls in Purgatory and of the Last Things (death, judgment, heaven, hell)

Jeffrey Epstein is dead. There is nothing we can do about him, except pray for his soul. But: do we pray for the soul of Jeffrey Epstein? He relentlessly seduced hundreds of adolescent girls. Many were in some degree innocent; many no doubt virgins. Do we ask forgiveness so that he can live eternally in Joy? I don't get a good vibe. Jesus said of such "It would be better for them to have a weight tied to them and thrown into the sea."  

My conclusion: Yes, we pray for him. We commend him to God...to his mercy and his retribution. Yes, retribution. Judgment. Punishment. Wrath. Here is a case where the God-who-is-only-Mercy-Compassion-Acceptance who has become so fashionable in progressive theology is unveiled as anemic and repulsive. As you have heard, Dear Reader, from Fleckionstein: Let's bring back retribution! Let's bring back judgment! Let's bring back heaven, hell and purgatory! Let's resist the Protestant propensity to deny purgatory! Let's pray for the souls! Let's pray for Jeffrey. We leave it to God to do the right thing, merciful and just.

Eunuchs for the Dark Kingdom

Jeffrey and Ghislaine were a "power couple." They did not marry; did not bear new life. They seemed singularly devoid of parental and maternal love. They parodied it: they faked it in a highly expert, perverse game of grooming. They offered to mentor aspirational young women, to assist in their careers, to give them a new and exciting life. 

A friend had asked Ghislaine "What of the girls?" She responded "They are nothing, they are trash."  both are possibly sociopaths, or close to it....void of conscience or empathy.

She told a friend that psychologists had confirmed to Epstein that he "needed three orgasms a day." Such "need" is not natural; it is the fruit of sexual addiction at a deep level. 

She is a more complicated, puzzling case. She was deeply disturbed in her own sexuality, well before meeting Epstein. An acquaintance remembers a party where she disappeared and then returned with scarfs and announced '"the game": the men were to be blindfolded by the scarfs. The women were to bear their breasts and be fondled by the men who were to guess whose breasts they were. She was known for teasing and provoking unchaste behavior. 

Clearly she was deeply influenced by her father, whom she adored. Theirs was a family of eight, thought to be the perfect family. It was in fact dysfunctional. The mother was blatantly disrespected as the father had affairs shamelessly. He seems to have had a sadistic streak himself. He treasured Ghilane as a "trophy daughter" as she would accompany him socially at the very highest levels of society. There is no evidence of sexual wrongdoing, but this was clearly a violation of the father's duty to protect the innocence of his daughter. In a very real sense, she was already prostituted by father as a symbol of prestige, sexual glamour and power. This was what she knew.

She was devastated by his death and then by the fact that he had plundered the pensions of his workers. She clearly found in Epstein an adequate replacement: tons of money, status, and perverse excitement. They settled together into the diabolical game of seduction of the innocent.

Remarkably, the family stayed together to support her through her trial and may well be involved with the current machinations to get her sentence commuted. 

This couple, along with homosexual practice and the pandemic of isolating porn/masturbation, is the epitome of the sexual ethos of our time: sterile, joyless, perverse, despairing, death-dealing.

Conspiracy Theory: the World, the Flesh and the Devil

I am immune to conspiracy theories about Jews, Masons, Communists, deep state, yada yada yada. I do not think there is a list of a circle of powerful men who contrived to seduce women. The evidence suggests it was Jeffrey's obsession. No doubt he shared it with anyone interested. But no, it was not a conspiracy. He was not a spy for Israel or the CIA. He did not have a list of men he was blackmailing. He made tons of money because he was expert in channeling large funds to avoid tax.

The real conspiracy, aggressive to entrap each of us: the world, the flesh and the devil. Epstein and Maxwell are a case study. The word was that Epstein would not work for anyone that was not a billionaire. If you are only worth, say $950,000,000,  you did not meet the bar. The two of them mingled with the highest levels of society. She mixed with royals already in adolescence. She provided him access to the elite and he provided her tons of money: a match made in he....ll! This is the world at its most seductive, glamorous, alluring. Regarding the flesh, they both suffered severe bondage to lust, greed, avarice. And the hand of Lucifer is clear in their passionate crusade to seduce the innocent.

They are for us a cautionary tale: the allure of the world, the enslavements of the flesh, and the brilliant perversity of Lucifer. They are something out of Dante's Inferno. 

As we commend them to the mercy and the justice of God, we ourselves do well to ponder those holy realities. And beg for the pardoning, purifying, sanctifying Holy Spirit!

 

Pope Leo XIII: Non-Theologian, Institutuionalist

 In an astute essay in First Things, reviewing two recent biographies of our new pope, Fr. DeSouza notes: we know nothing about the theological views of Robert Prevost, his rise in the hierarchy was entirely the doing of Pope Francis, he was the "Francis candidate" most unlike Francis temperamentally. He spent his life in in Peru and Rome, mostly in leadership of institutions. His formative years, the 1970s in the seminary, and his entire life has been in a Church in institutional decline; and he wonders "what he learned from this?"

I take a slightly different view. Leo is clearly an institutionalist, an "organization man," in the best sense. While he has lived in a Church in institutional decline, he is himself, a canon lawyer, instinctively a preserver of the institution. This is a very good thing. 

He is a man of prayer, a holy priest. Like his mentor Francis.

He is pastoral, urgent to share the love of Christ, especially with the suffering and marginalized. Like his mentor Francis.

He is not a theologian. Like his mentor Francis.

He is inclined to steady the bark of Peter; to strengthen unity; to minimize conflict and stress. Unlike his mentor Francis. 

The best Churchmen, progressive or conservative, are instinctively "catholic" in an openness, a liberality, a "live-and-let-live" acceptance of diversity. In the Archdiocese of Newark which I know, Cardinal Tobin is a ranking lieutenant of Francis but he rules here with a light hand, allowing distinct groups like the Latin Mass and the Neocatechumenate to live peacefully. Prior to him, Archbishop Meyers came here with a reputation as the second most conservative in the nation; I expected fireworks as our presbyterate could be described as moderate-liberal; there was peace. In a recent Pillar piece, Ed Conlin expressed appreciation for Cardinal McElroy of Washington D.C. who is on the far left of the American episcopacy but well received by conservative priests.

Pope Francis blatantly lacked this openness, notwithstanding his profession of openness and "synodality." He shamelessly refused the red hat to prelates of leading sees (Philadelphia) that always receive it out of personal animosity. It is clear that, by contrast, Pope Leo does have this disposition towards unity.

The Church in which Prevost came of age, the 1970s, was most significantly in catechetical crisis. Coming out of the Council, the Baltimore Catechisism and the received synthesis was discarded but nothing replaced it, until the papacy of John Paul II. Catechetically, Prevost was part of the "lost generation" in its intellectual grasp of our Catholic tradition. Our faith was passed on as a communion in prayer with God, as a worshipping community, as a fraternity of love and outreach to the suffering. But theologically most of the Church was in a fog of confusion. There were points of light. A hungry theological intellect could find its way to the Communio School or that of St. Thomas. 

But Prevost was apparently not such an intellect. He majored in college in math. Clearly bright. But not drawn to theology. He is an American: a pragmatist. His vision, just announced, for the John Paul II Institute for the Family is entirely pastoral and (shades of Francis) anti-intellectual. He wants to move away from abstraction and reform it as a practical guide and aid to family life. Depending upon who leads it, this can be a good or a bad thing. But it is a retreat from the outstanding academic tradition of that school.

It is striking: in my lifetime we had three popes (Pius XII, John XXIII, and Paul VI) with fine, clear, deep theological intellects. These were followed by John Paul and Benedict: theological geniuses, possibly the finest pope theologians in Church history, surely to be doctors of the Church. And now we have two quite mediocre theological popes.

Nevertheless, I am happy with this pope. He is modest, judicious, stable, self-effacing, gentle, open to all. He is a force for steadiness, for unity, for peace. He is endearing and charming.

We have the theology of John Paul and Benedict. It will be taught in seminaries and schools of theology for generations to come. Those hungry for the truth of the Gospel will bask in it and radiate it. Leo will steady the ship of the Church. He will call us to works of Mercy. As the legacy of John Paul and Benedict draws us into the clarity, the depth, and the profundity of Truth.

Make America Godly Again: A MAGA Vision

 Do not be so quick, dear Reader, to dismiss what follows as impossible, as sheer fantasy. ALL things are possible to God. Also: we know that Donald Trump is quite capable of change.

IMAGINE:  Donald Trump wakes up one morning, overwhelmed by how much he is loved by God. Perhaps it is the prayers of those who love him. Perhaps the intercession of Charlie Kirk in heaven or his friendship with Erika. Perhaps the unfailing affection and loyalty of Melania and his family. He is largely (but of course not completely) liberated from enslavement to narcissistic compulsions. So, he:

- Announces that he has been wrong to so many people and asks forgiveness. He starts a serious program of amends to those he has harmed, insulted, or hurt in any way.

- He forgives all who have harmed him in any way. He expresses appreciation for those who have tried to hold him accountable by indictments and impeachments. He issues presidential pardons for Comey, Bolton, James, Smith and Willis.

- He authorizes a full audit of his personal wealth in order to donate 80% to the poor and going forward to give 80% of his income annually to the needy. 

- He joins a Narcissist's Anonymous group, gets a sponsor, works the 12 steps, He finds that virtually all elected politicians in DC certify for the program.

- He joins the OCIA program to enter the Catholic church so he can confess his sins to a priest.

- He enjoys a special Synodal session of congress and hosts it at Mar Lago so Democrats and Republicans can get to know and like each other.

- He takes a 30-day prayer sabbatical from his duties, handing responsibility to JD Vance. (Is this constitutional? Possibly not. But who would have standing to contest? And if anyone did, he would be back in charge within a month anyway.)

- He does a 30-day directed retreat with a good Jesuit to consider the direction of his life after the presidency. Everything is on the table, including jail ministry at the prison in El Salvador with all the gang members, the hermitage or cloistered monastery, a Josephite (abstinent) marriage with Melania, teaching ESL to immigrants, and other.

Granted, dear Reader, the details here seem far-fetched. But you get the drift. Let's pray for something in that direction! This is, after all, November, the month of the last things: death, judgment, heaven, hell.

Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and the Rosary

Reporter Jonathan Karl, in his book Retribution reports on the final, secret meeting of Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden shortly after the disastrous debate which revealed his incompetence. The Biden family now despises Pelosi as the prime mover in ending his campaign. The meeting was in the Biden family living room and was a secret even from his staff. She delivered the bad news: widespread consensus was that he would not only lose the election but also bring down the house. The meeting was not contentious. When she finished she took out what Karl calls a rosary or also a rosary coin. I don't know of a rosary coin although a rosary ring with 10 beads is common. In any case, it turns out that Biden then took out the same rosary. It isn't clear that they prayed together, but they did show each other a rosary (or rosary coin?) That was the final meeting between the two of them. They are now, in Karl's words, "enemies forever."

This anecdote is fascinating on several levels.

These two are the incomparable icons of "Catholic" Progressivism of the last several decades. Pelosi has been arguably the most powerful woman politician in American history. She is not allowed communion in her diocese of San Francisco. Biden, the second Catholic president, disparaged the values of his faith in a number of public ways. 

Cultural Progressivism (post 1970) is itself a religion, competitive with and contradictory of Catholicism. Core beliefs: sterilized sex, deconstructed gender, abortion, superiority of technological/scientific culture over the past, and other. Biden/Pelosi are key figures in the triumph of Progressivism. But they flavored this, their core religion, with a superficial, nostalgic, sentimental Catholic piety.

They embody the stereotypical private/public binary: I wouldn't want one but I want the state to pay for everyone else's abortion, especially the poor and the black. 

How ironic that it is reported in a book entitled "retribution." Actually, the theme of the book is retribution by Trump against his enemies. (You are aware, Dear Reader) Fleckinstein is a strong advocate for the retrieval of "retribution" as a moral, cultural, religious form. One might view the aftermath of the meeting as heavenly retribution as  the Biden/Pelosi legacy was devastated by the sweeping Trump victory.

Ironic also that after these displays of piety, they now despise each other.

If they did pray (which I strongly doubt), what mysteries would they have pondered. The first are of course the Joyful: the Annunciation, the Visitation, The Nativity. These deal with the sacredness of unborn life: conception, the embrace of two pregnant cousins, the birth of Jesus (accompanied by the slaughter of the Holy Innocents.) I cannot imagine that these two crusaders for legal abortion would have prayed these foundational Catholic realities. 

Perhaps they replaced with Progressive Dogmas: contraception, abortion of the unborn through 9 months, artificial technologies of surrogacy and other, euthanasia and assisted suicide of the elderly/infirm, the contagion of legal pornography, the sacred status of homosexual and other forms of sodomy. 

These two perfectly represent the dyad of Cultural Progressivism: the passive, impotent male; the empowered, controlling, grasping female. This is resonant of Eve, jealous, manipulative, aggressive; Adam, emasculated, self-pitying, finger-pointing. It is the pathetic Ahab and his vicious, controlling wife Jezebel. It is Herod, manipulated by the incestuous Herodias to cut off the head of the prophet whom he admired.

Catholicism has always been vulnerable to syncretism, impure mixture with other religious practices. It would be hard to imagine something as depraved, as repellant to the Catholic mind as these two mutually admiring each others rosaries. We compete, respectfully, with political/cultural adversaries, for example, the Clintons and Obamas in the political arena. But the presence within our own Church of a Trojan horse, an enemy within, a betrayal by our own of our basic values presents an immense challenge.

The temptation here is a serious one: to contempt. To view a fellow Catholic, a brother and sister in Christ, with spiritual loathing. How do we renounce this temptation? Only with prayer! Prayer for our enemy. 

Lord, touch our hearts with your tender Mercy. Touch as well the hearts of our enemies, cultural progressives, especially Catholics, within the Church and in the political arena. Let your Mercy be upon us as we place our trust in You!

Election Day, November 3, 2025: End of a Temper-Manic Episode?

Like a pampered 2-year old or a raging neighborhood bully, Trump has been on a 9 month rampage, manic and furious. It is simply amazing that he got away with so much for so long. Our constitutional system, still resilient and steady, is finally restraining him.

On Tuesday, the electorate in a number of states, especially in NJ, decisively rejected the Republicans.

 On the following day, the Supreme Court heard arguments about the Trump tariffs and will almost certainly find them unconstitutional. These are a centerpiece of his diplomacy and economics. He sees this as total catastrophe. The Wall Street Journal anticipates it with joy.

With the ongoing government shutdown, Trump is calling for the "nuclear option" of doing away with the filibuster. Like a self-centered infantile, which he is psychologically, he sees only his own immediate concerns. Finally, Senate Republicans are finding some spine and defending their institutional integrity. 

We can hope that, led by moderate-conservative justices Barrett and Roberts, institutions including congressional Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and progressives, agencies including the FED and others renounce their contemptible subservience to this dictator-wannabe-narcissistic. 

This comes from a moral conservative who voted for Trump in 2024 and for the Republican ticket this week. Ciattarelli is personally prochoice and unappealing. My vote was ideological: pro-Republican and anti-Democrat in defense of fundamental Catholic realities including the life of the powerless, religious liberty, the dignity of the person, gender, sexuality, marriage, the role of science, and more.

While I was initially disappointed with the outcome, I quickly saw the positive. The pendellum had to swing back against the MAGA excesses. Precisely from a conservative viewpoint, basic institutions and protocols of respect have to be protected from the violence, the crudeness, the irrationality of MAGA. 

Is it too much to hope for a resurgence of a more based, traditional, stable conservatism?

We can always hope and pray! 

Almost Catholic...The Twilight Zone of the Catholic Church

 Almost Catholics

Charlie Kirk was seemingly on a trajectory into the Catholic Church, under the influence of his amazing, best-of-many-worlds wife, Erika. Who knew that a woman could be Evangelical and Catholic, a social activist, a mother, a gorgeous celebrity, and a prayerful theologian?  

Jordan Peterson, whose wife famously entered the Church, stands frozen at the boundary, apparently unwilling to or incapable of crossing that line of trust, even as he powerfully articulates Catholic views.

C.S. Lewis remained Anglican, apparently retaining reservations about the papacy and Marian devotion as well as some residual prejudice against Catholicism from his childhood. His teachings were resoundingly Catholic. If he were alive today, it is hard to imagine that he could resist the pull across the Tiber.

Simone Weil, brilliant philosopher-social activist-mystic, was possessed by love for the poor and by the person of Jesus Christ. She was deeply drawn to the prayer of the Church but rejected baptism out of a disgust for dogmatic and institutional dimensions of the Church.

Mother Margaret Cusack, a fiery Irish nationalist and brilliant, prodigious writer (35 books)fought the English overlords and fed the starving during the famine before converting to Catholicism.  Described as eccentric, passionate, rebellious and difficult (think Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man), she was an early advocate of the apparitions at Knock and claimed that the Blessed Mother spoke directly to her. After fighting with the episcopacy in Ireland, she got permission personally from the Pope to found a new order, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, to house and train "friendless girls." In 1885 she opened a home (still there) in Jersey City. She again got into ecclesiastical trouble, now with Newark authorities and NYC's  Archbishop Corrigan over her support for a leftwing activist priest and over funds. She left the Catholic Church, returned to the Anglican and was buried therein.

My high school friend Frank was a Catholic priest for 25 years and an Episcopalian priest for just over that. He considers himself a Roman Catholic who has a job with the Anglicans. He says as Episcopalian he does half the work and gets twice the pay he did as Catholic. When he isn't presiding at Eucharist as a visitor he attends a Catholic mass. He, unlike myself, seems untroubled that the mass he celebrates is probably valid but illicit and therefore at least disrespectful but perhaps sacrilegious as his communicants entertain various theologies of the mass.

Another friend left the Church to be ordained a Methodist minister; then reverted to Catholicism, renouncing his ordination; then re-reverted to Methodism; then re-re-reverted to Catholicism. He is intelligent, passionate and articulate in his faith.

I graduated in 1969 from Maryknoll College Seminary with over 50 classmates after 4 years preparing to be missionary priests. Today most do not practice our faith. In large part, their children and grandchildren are minimally familiar with our faith.

If I were to honor, from my generational cohort of idealists, priests, psychologists, activists, and academics,  one figure for his service to the suffering and his prayerfulness of life it would clearly be college classmate John: ordained a missionary priest, he still happily displays a picture of himself concelebrating mass with John Paul II. He left the missionary priesthood, confronted his alcoholism, surrendered himself to the 12 steps and prayer, married, raised a son, and built a marvelous community of service to the addicted, homeless and mentally ill. He speaks with affection, gratitude and reverence of the Church as he seems to remain distant.

To summarize, we contemplate with awe the complexities, nuances, depth and boundless variety in such relationships with the Church.

A Church in Decline?

By all the numbers, our Church has been in steady, steep decline for the last six decades since the Council. There seems to be now a plateau, and even signs of a revival, certainly among young men in the USA. But numbers do not accurately disclose spiritual realities. And so, the argument here is that the reality of God and his Church in our lives is immeasurable, mysterious, dense, largely anonymous.

Not long ago, Catholics were 50% of the NJ population; now it is closer to 33%. The NONES are now more than 25% and possibly half of them are ex-Catholics. Only one in six Catholics practice their faith by weekly participation in Sunday mass. So, in NJ about one in eighteen, just over 5%, people practice our faith. Even these are largely victims of the catechetical famine that afflicted us from the Council until the pontificates of John Paul and Benedict (from 1965 through the 70s). Few understand with any depth and clarity our faith. So, integral, intelligent, passionate Catholic faith has become rare, almost a cult, found in niches like religious orders, priests, renewal movements and the Latin Mass. (For example, many Sunday mass attendees would be unpleasantly surprised by the previous essay on the structure of the spousal act.)

However, (as noted in an earlier blog essay), our experience in hospital ministry shows that while institutional loyalty has declined, there abides a immense, deep Catholic influence. Almost everyone we encounter has some connection, usually positive, with the Church. Some are influenced by marriage or a family member. Many retain practices and beliefs: devotion to Mary or the rosary, Padre Pio, St. Francis. Most at least admire the Church's solicitude for the poor and suffering. Most respect and (to some extent) emulate the ideals of marital fidelity. Even those who self-identify as agnostics or even atheists are open to prayer as they entertain some uncertainty in their "unbelief." Frequently we hear grateful mention of a happy connection with a priest, nun, devout layperson or a vibrant institution.

The Church is like other movements and communities of value: there are concentric circles of participation. At the very center, those fully dedicated: professionally or voluntarily, but wholeheartedly. Moving outward, we find decreasing intensity. At the outside circles we have nonmembers who nevertheless are influenced, and therefore participant in some degree. At least in NJ, it is like St. Patrick's Day when everyone is Irish: everyone is, however incompletely, Catholic.

Conclusion

Christ and His Church is a bright, flaming, illuminating, warming fire at the heart of creation, history, society. It reaches everything and everywhere. Even as some are moving away; others moving closer;  many strangely moving now one way and then another. The warmth and light is available everywhere to everyone. There are shadows everywhere; and in everyone. There are also black holes of sin ready to devour the willing. 

May we despise the dark and the cold. May we crave the light and the warmth. May we draw each other closer to that Fire!