The Loneliness of the Parish Priest

 This essay was inspired by the post by my friend Stephen Adubato in his Substack "Cracks in Postmodernity," "Our Priests are in Trouble: we gotta help them."  With his customary sensitivity, insight and good humor he considers the crisis in the American priesthood. He sees this primarily in our ordinary diocesan clergy who lack the support, accountability, and encouragement enjoyed by those in religious orders, or close to lay renewal movements or others in strong ethnic communities. I find his diagnosis to be accurate. It caused me to consider the nature of Catholic priesthood and its condition in our time. By numbers alone, we are in crisis.

The solitude that defines masculinity (in contrast to the connectedness inherent in femininity) is intensified in the priest. The primal aloneness of Adam was relieved by his ecstatic embrace of Eve "at last...bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." And so it is with the husband/father. But the Catholic priest, in the violence of sacrifice ("make holy"), renounces that communion. He emulates Jesus alone in the desert and in Gethsemane. There is a fundamental loneliness about the priesthood. A solitude with God and for the Church, bride of Christ.

Let's Go to the Movies

Consider:

- the fornicator-whiskey-martyr-priest in Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory,

- Karl Malden raging at Johnny Friendly's thugs in On the Waterfront, 

-the humble, dignified missionary Gregory Peck in Keys to the Kingdom, 

- the virile Jesuit Jeremy Irons facing down the ferocious Robert DeNiro in The Mission, 

- the depresed alcoholic curate of  Edge of Sadness, [this is a book, not a movie.] 

- Montgomery Cliff heroically defending the seal of confession in Hitchcock's  Confession, 

- Alec Guinness's good natured Monsignor Quixote, 

- Javier Bardem's tormented Fr. Quintana chastely comforting a ravishing Olga Kurylenko in  Into the Wonder,  

- Spenser Tracey's Father (now Venerable) Flannigan of  Boy's Town, 

- Richard Burton's Becket, 

- Mark Walberg's endearing  Father Stu,  

- Max von Syndow's seasoned cleric in  The Exorcist,   

- France's classic Monsieur Vincent, 

- Raul Julia's breathtaking Romero, 

- the levitating St. Joseph of Cupertino in  The Reluctant Saint, 

- another Gregory Peck as  the historic Vatican rescuer of Jews in Scarlet and the Black,  

-  De Niro's careerist cleric facing off his tough detective brother Robert Duval in True Confessions,  

- G.K. Chesterton's charming Father Brown, 

- Pat Obrien mentoring gangster Jimmy Cagney in Angels with Dirty Faces, 

- Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary's. 

That's 20 off the top of my head. In each we see a man, a priest, standing alone, heroically. 

[If you, dear Reader, have not seen at least 10 of these films, you are not an authentic, certified Catho-Cinephile like myself!]

Loneliness of the Contemporary Priest

Solitude as configuration to Christ and gift of self to the Church is heroic and holy, But on the negative side, the temptation is to the life of a bachelor: self-centered, ungenerous, detached from the feminine, sterile...however charming, educated, and refined. This toxicity is heightened today as priests are more isolated than ever. In my own parish we have two churches, two rectories, two priests...each lives alone in his own rectory, one mile away from each other.

It was not always this way. In the Church of my childhood, thriving postwar urban America, a typical parish had four or more priests. The pastor was probably well beyond his prime, enjoying his role and a community he had known for decades. He left the running of the large parish (school, nuns, organizations, devotions) to his competent second-in-charge, probably in his 50s or 60s. The youngest priest worked with youth, the school, catechesis, CYO and sports. There might be additional priests with particular ministries, responsibilities and interests. At its best it was a wholesome brotherhood.

Today the 1-priest rectory has become normal. A young priest who shows himself to be competent and reliable will be given charge of a parish within a few years, without the benefit of years of mentoring, friendship and experience.

To survive and thrive as a priest today one needs the moral integrity, resilience, fortitude and wisdom of the 20 priest heroes of the movies mentioned above.  Happily I have known many such priests, over the course of my lifetime. Studies also show a good measure of happiness and wholeness among our priests. The quantity of priests is down; but the quality is high. We are in crisis. But it is not catastrophic. On the whole, I am less critical than my friend Stephen Adubato...edgy, urban, avant-garde, counterculture, anti-bourgeois, no lover of anything suburban.

Society of Jesus and of Maryknoll

Besides diocesan priests here in Newark NJ, over the years,  I have befriended many Jesuits and Maryknolleers. In the individualism of their spirituality and charism they are more like secular clerics  than the mendicants and monks. Their focus is not primarily on the shared life of charity and prayer, but apostolic action. Maryknoll was originally committed to the conversion of pagans but shifted after the War to corporal works of mercy with the poor. This, joined with their American pragmatism,  inclined them post-1965 to sympathy with leftist politics. Their intimacy with the poor, however, has ensured a closeness to Christ. The Jesuits, with their focus on education and upper echelon academics, were even more vulnerable to the errors of the Cultural Revolution. Both are prone, in complex ways, to the fragilities of isolation and loneliness associated with the bachelor life.

The Thriving Priest

What qualities are evident in happy, wholesome priests?

1.  Personal holiness, deep prayer life, intimacy with our Lord Jesus.

2.  Emotional balance, integrity, clear masculine identity, ease in deferring to and wielding authority, substantial if not impeccable freedom from deep-seated compulsions around sex, approval, insecurity, money, status, alcohol/drugs.

3. Realistic, honest reckoning with his own personal weakness and need for God's grace.

4. Solid, chaste, brotherly friendships with other priests.

5. Love for Catholicism in all its richness: liturgical/sacramental, theological, moral, social.

6. Wholesome relationships with laity, including women.

7. Support from family of origin or surrogate.

There are other qualities...administrative ability, personal charm,  intellectual capacity and erudition... nice but not necessary, accidental but not essential to the priesthood.

We continue to benefit from such priests: wholesome, virile, confident, steadfast, sober, balanced, and independent. But their numbers are decreasing. They were common in the prosperous post-war American Church of large families, thick ethnic communities, and Catholic revival. Particularly among us Irish American Catholics. 

The Holy Spirit works in different ways: some predictable; some random and counterintuitive. We see priestly vocations coming from non-religious families; from conversions out of dark lives; and later in life. Not a few are gifted, devout, sincere but afflicted with psychological disorders and compulsions.  These, when not deep-seated and when countervailed by strengths, need not be invincible impediments. We need such numerically. But we also benefit to the degree they confess and surrender to God's healing grace. Familiarity with their weaknesses, failings and addictions make them, for us, "wounded healers."

We cannot depend upon the paradigm of priest as lone ranger without Tonto;  as Shane who rides into town, kills the bad guys, rescues the widow and child, and rides lonesome into the sunset; as John Wayne who rescues his Natalie Wood niece from the Indians, in The Searchers, and moves on in a mysterious solitude.

Communion in Intimacy, Transparency, Accountability, and Support

The contemporary priest needs, not independence-autonomy-isolation, but a strong network of support, candor, vulnerability, and accountability. This can take many forms: friendship, family, spiritual direction, priest support groups, counseling and therapy. It is particularly strong in:

- Twelve step groups. These are absolutely necessary for the priest enslaved by addiction. As an ealier generation benefited from AA priests, so today, with the pandemic of pornography, not to mention the homosexual priest abuse scandal, priests benefit from Sexaholics Anonymous, a program that precisely mirrors Catholic understanding of chastity and sexual sobriety. 

- Lay Renewal Movements. Outstanding here is the Neocatechumenal Way which fosters an environment of startling honesty. Openly, in the company of men and women, participants speak candidly of personal struggles with chastity, within family and marriage, and other. With my own Irish Catholic background, I was taken aback at first. But I could see that it represents a certain wholesome "triumph of the therapeutic." I understand it is good for priests. 

The priest's role is to represent Christ as teacher, authority, presider over liturgy, leader-king, and moral exemplar. This is a heavy burden to carry continually. "Walking" as a brother in the "Way" provides a space of freedom, honesty, accountability and encouragement. 

 A different reality is operative in Communion and Liberation which does not provide the same intensity but the lighter, fresh, liberating, wholesome, serene positivity of founder Luigi Giusanni in the male/female friendship.

- Some religious orders.  My family has close familiarity with the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, a young order, birthed nearby in NYC, which has a strong charism: closeness to the poor, fervor in evangelization, flawless loyalty to Catholic teaching, an ethos of priestly virility, embrace of much that is new-yet-Catholic in the Church. These friars cultivate a brotherly intimacy that is strengthening.  By contrast, many of the older orders, robust in 1965, now in decline, retain the lonesomeness-autonomy of the lone ranger without Tonto. 

Ethic Parishes?  In the above, I entirely agree with Stephen's post. Not so much with regard to ethnic parishes. Such are a thing of the past. I have spent my entire adulthood in Jersey City, close to NYC, Newark and the Oranges. Ethnic parishes are a relic of the past. Stephen is nostalgic and sentimental here, attached to the idealized urban Italian Catholicism of his memorable grandfather. What is remarkable, however, especially with Italians but also us Irish, Polish and others: despite the baptism into bourgeois mediocrity of suburban life, secularity, careerism, consumerist materialism, sexual liberalism, upper class conservatism, and even the mafia, ethnic Catholicism retains a deep grip on the soul. My experience with lapsed Catholics, non-practicing and absent from the sacraments for decades, is that they retain intense, deep if sporadic attachment to the faith of their families. This cannot be unrelated to the indelible seal received at baptism. It will serve them, especially with the last rites, at death and particular judgment. 

Seminaries now require a new "propaedeutic year" of formation in personal spiritual and emotional health, before theology. My hope is that a key focus is on the building of a permanent network.

Communion with the Bishop

A pronounced element of our priestly crisis, clear in recent studies, is the disconnect from the bishop. In wake of the Dallas Charter, priests distrust their "father figure" as the sheriff, prosecutor and judge of wrongdoing. Fr. Tom Guarino of Seton Hall has carried on the prophetic mission of Avery Cardinal Dulles in challenging this injustice. 

I see the problem as systemic, not the personal fault of our bishops who are on the whole decent, intelligent, competent, loyal priests. The Church has exploded malignantly in institutions like schools, hospitals, social care and other. The bishop is in fact the CEO of a multi-millionaire organization. The time has come for the hierarchical/institutional Church to divest, surrender the works of mercy to the laity, and focus upon the actual purpose of the priesthood as: announcement of the Word, celebration of liturgy and sacraments, fostering of holiness, and strengthening of communion in charity.

Conclusion  

Two urgencies present themselves:

- Cherish, in gratitude, our priests who sacrifice themselves to bring us Christ in Word and Sacrament.

- Pray for our priests, pray for more priests, pray for our own children/grandchildren to answer the call to priesthood and religious life.

Thank you Lord for the priesthood and our sacramental life.

Thank you for each of our priests.

Sanctify them with your Holy Spirit.

Send us more priests and consecrated.

Choose from our own family men and women to serve you in this special way.

 

Prayer for my Mission

 Make me Lord

An agent of your Mercy.

The servant of your little ones.

An echo of your Truth.

A radiance of your holiness.

Amen.

Fasting

Today being Good Friday, I review my 78th lent and find my fasting was well above my norm.

Confession of a Non-Faster

My norm is very low: not zero but close to it. I believe in fasting. Jesus himself said some demons cannot be cast out except with prayer and fasting, But I pretty much never fast. I can't fast. I have a constitutional aversion that I have not been able to overcome. But this lent I made some progress. Part of it may be that my appetite is diminishing as I age. The rest is God's grace.

I am product of my time and place: with my boomer generation, I am soft. We were protected, secure, comfortable, and generally indulged. We are not tough. Our parents were tough: Great Depression, War, large families, marvelous church, exploding economy, containment of communism, a peaceful and prosperous world order. Even now we retirees receive inordinate money from the government and sit on assets while the young cannot purchase homes. I am ashamed of myself and my cohort.

What I Have Learned About Fasting

1. Intercession.  

The only thing that ever motivates me to fast, that overcomes my resistance, is intercession. At various times in my life, when someone dear to me was in trouble, I easily fasted as part of my intercession. Whenever I felt hungry I thought of my dear one. I felt an aversion to eating. For example, I have done the three day fast on liquids only. After the first difficult day, it became easier as my stomach shrank. When I broke the fast I was not terribly hungry. Additionally there is the well known physical benefit f the purging.

2. Spiritual Leisure: Freedom from Stress

I cannot fast when I am at all stressed. In 12-step spirituality we learn (HALT) to avoid becoming Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired as our tendency is to treat these with our preferred addiction. I would add to that stress. Stress for me is aggravated by hunger. Eating comforts me and diminishes anxiety. For example, my current schedule has me attending to the needs of our home for women on Monday and Tuesday: paperwork, repairs, personal problems. There is a lot going on. I do not even think about fasting. This may be part of why I avoided fasting: most of my adult life had me engaged in a degree of stress. There is some wisdom in this. The non-fasting may have been in part a prudent if humbling deference to my psychological weakness.

3. Spiritual Leisure and Delight.

The underlying psychology of my daily routine has me looking forward to my next meal, however modest. Eating may be the most steady, dependable, satisfying aspect of my day.  For me to fast I need to replace those delightful punctuations with spiritual ones. So, I can fast when I know I will take a long, quiet walk; spend time in Church, alone; do some spiritual reading; maybe even take a nap. In short, my craving for pleasure and delight gets redirected to the spiritual. Fasting becomes easy.

4. Communal, not Individual.

Catholic fasting is not an act of the will by a solitary individual. It is a corporate thing. Everyone is giving up meat and eating fish on Friday. Everyone! We are by nature intrinsically mimetic and social; and so it is with fasting. Recall that the preaching of Jonah provoked all of Nineveh, from king to the animals, to fast in contrition. In the catechetical confusion that prevailed after 1965, fasting fell of fashion in progressive circles. Traditional Lenten practice indicated fast, prayer and alms. But up-to-date priests would dismiss fasting in favor of acts of charity. This was a huge mistake: charity and discipline work together, not against or in place of each other. The pendulum is swinging back. Fasting is cool again.  My nephew is doing Exodus 90, a demanding program of masculine discipline. A grandson gave up all sweets; another takes cold showers; my wife gave up wine. I love to hear these things. They encourage me. And I feel that I am a little part of a very large ecclesial movement. Every Ash Wednesday Jesus directs us to our rooms to fast quietly and covertly rather than seek approval. That valid truth needs to be balanced: we need let our light shine so as to encourage and strengthen each other, in the mimetics of holiness.

Tomorrow evening we will transition within the Paschal Mystery into Easter, 50 days of festivity and feast. May the Holy Spirit deepen, intensify, purify, and strengthen us in communion, compassion, and spiritual delight! 

What is a Woman to a Man?

 Many things...very very good and very very bad...profound, mysterious, dramatic, complex.

First, the very very good.

1. Mother.

For several reasons, a woman is always for a man, at least unconsciously, mother. 

First, the man spends 9 months and several years enclosed within the mother. That experience, of filial gratitude/trust or suspicion/resentment, abides always.

Second, every girl is already infused, by God and nature, with the powerful instincts of maternity, as she organically embraces her first doll. Woman is finally mother; as man is finally father.

Third, the mature, wholesome man in search of a spouse, however unconsciously, looks for the mother of his children, the singular partner in creating his legacy. This contrasts sharply with the immature male who is seeking regressively to recover his own lost mother.

2. Sister, Friend, Partner.

Here we have mutuality and equality in respect, affection, chaste delight, and shared interests, values, adventures and missions. This starts with one's own biological sisters and cousins; translates to friends; and fundamentally defines the wife.

3. Lover and Spouse.

Here we include the flame of sexual and romantic desire/fulfillment as wholesome and holy,  intended by God to image his own passionate/intimate/dramatic love, properly within marriage. Outside of that communion, many friendships, in chaste restrain and within wise boundaries, enjoy the enrichments of libidinal appreciation.

4. Madonna-Virgin-Martyr-Beauty.

In a privileged, extraordinary way, woman embodies the True, the Good and the Beautiful...emotionally, physically, socially, intellectually, and spiritually. This finds its ultimate expression, of course, in Mary, mother and virgin. Secondly, we see this in our virgin-martyrs and in all consecrated women. Even the natural beauty of women is properly a reflection of the deeper, eternal reality of Beauty.

5. Daughter.

A man achieves full virility in fatherhood, biological and emotional/spiritual. The father's paternal bond with daughter is different from that with son: more intense delight, distance, mystery, difference, protectiveness, tenderness, reverence. The mature man transfers this paternity to every woman, in her preciousness, fragility and trust. 

In every encounter with a woman, the man engages, in endless combinations, these five dimensions: gratitude/trust/affection, camaraderie/friendship, desire/intimacy/communion, reverence, gentle-strong tenderness.

Now, the very very bad:

1. Sex object.

This is not the natural, holy sexual desire intended by God, however urgent and passionate. This essentially is objectivization of the woman: she is configured entirely as a source of pleasure and release. Her dignity, her personhood, her suffering, and holiness are all blocked. 

2. Goddess-like, Distant Object of Desire.

Similar to the prior dynamic, this is less physical than psychological. Here the woman is coveted as the satisfaction of a deep, emotional emptiness. The root cause is surely in part a traumatic loss of the mother and a residual wound of emptiness and longing. The man suffers interminable tension as he craves what he cannot have. An excessive female cultivation of glamor, even if not deliberate, inflames this urgency. This is a suffering that if not acknowledged leads to obsession, bondage, sin. 

3. Evil Stepmother, Femme Fatale.

Here we have the dark, devouring, rejecting mother figure. Jezebel, the seductress, the critical-harassing wife, the smothering mother. Even the relatively normal male can experience the dissatisfaction/criticism of the relatively normal female as psychically life-threatening.

4. Object of Resentment, Contempt, Abuse.

Developmentally, the adolescent male commonly sees femininity through the lens of an inadequate masculine ideal as weak, cowardly, annoying, emotional, and of little worth. In the best case scenario, he gradually attains a confident masculine identity, wholesome friendships, spousal intimacy and masculine appreciation for the splendor of the feminine, deeper than the mere physical. Alternatively, the man with mother wounds can become pathologically misogynist: viewing woman with contempt, rage, fear, controlling dominance and frustrated desire. This becomes abuse, neglect, or disordered distance.

A woman can be for a man: excruciatingly desirable, threatening, smothering, demeaning, seductive, frustrating, and incomprehensible. More truly she is  fascinating, awesome, mysterious, incomprehensible, delightful, comforting, inspiring, encouraging, and holy.

 And What am I as a Man to a Woman?

Let us confess to God and our sisters: we are abusers, neglectors, disrespectors, cowards, regressive and needy infants.

May we rather be:

Brother, Friend, Partner in Christ, before God first and foremost. Here there is equality and mutuality. "In Christ there is no man and woman." Chaste, fervent, passionate communion in the good, the true, the beautiful; in adventure, delight, and mission. In this I am brother equally to man and woman.

Childlike, Grateful, Receptive of the feminine/maternal comfort, care, wisdom, empathy and love; ever moving beyond the childish, the selfish, the regressive.

Paternal as tenderly protective and providing. A steady source of stability, clarity, wisdom, and calm.

Reverent before innocence, loveliness, virtue, generosity, nobility, and holiness. 

Mary our Mother, St. Joseph and all you saints and angels, Pray for us!

Praying for Sinful Souls

An hour ago I had a pleasant conversation with a priest friend, an octogenarian monsignor who most days offers mass privately in his home. At my request he will offer masses for Caesar Chavez and  Father/Bishop-by-virtue-of-indelible-seal-of-ordination Ted McCarrick. He would not take a donation. He was happy to do so as he is an admirer of both. He served as pastor under McCarrick for the entirety of his time in Newark and knows many good things about him. He mentioned that we don't know that they didn't repent of their sins. I was delighted that he is saying these masses.

As I get older, I like to pray for the souls and have masses said. I am getting closer to my own particular judgement, retribution, mercy and wrath. This is important. This is Catholic. A crucial conflict between the Protestant reformers and Catholicism was precisely masses and prayers for the souls in purgatory. In the wake of Vatican II, which was an ecumenical reconciliation, there was a covert triumph of the reformers in the "Spirit of Vatican II". It was not that anyone denied purgatory or actively discouraged prayer for the deceased. But, in large part, we simply stopped doing it. It was now the null curriculum. Funeral services became Resurrection-focused, sin-ignoring, eulogy addicted, solemnity-deprived, retribution-denying, and heaven-presuming. Catholic ritual continued to pray for the deceased; but popular piety imbibed the cool aid of a secularized, sentimental, superficial, cockeyed optimism. 

Next I hope to have masses said for Jefferey Epstein and Bernie Maddow. Then, Brigid Bardot and Ingrid Bergman. Probably Fr. Bruce Ritter and Jean Vanier. After that I am even thinking about Saddam Hussein and Osama ben Laden. 

In each of these I see good. I cannot just accept that their souls go to hell.

Note: the normal donation for a mass is still $10, the most inflation-resisting bargain in the world. Of course, it is a donation: one can give more or less or nothing at all. To "sell" a sacrament is the serious sin of simony. I don't want to have these masses said in the parish as it can cause scandal, confusion and unhealthy controversy.  So, for my new crusade, I hope to quietly engage priest friends, out of the limelight. 

I am not inclined to pray for Fr. Marcial Maciel,  Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, or  Mao. I won't deny you the right to pray for them. Theoretically it might be good for me to pray for them...and Pilate, Nero, Genghis Khan, Count Dracula, and Ivan the Terrible. But psychologically I cannot grab on to any good in them. It doesn't feel right to me.

We pray always for Mercy and Justice. Not just mercy. But mercy in justice, truth, and annihilation of evil. We want retribution: not revenge, but justice as good for good and destruction of evil. 

We do not pray for Lucifer and his minions. 

 The classics, of course, are JFK and MKL. St. Padre Pio had high regard for American presidents and was deeply saddened by the assassination of Kennedy. He allegedly told a priest friend that Kennedy was in heaven. It is also reported that Pio said he benefited from all the prayers of the faithful. Does this mean we need not pray for him? I think not! This is, after all, private revelation. If anything, he may be in heaven as God foresaw all the prayers for him. And likewise in the case of King. 

A death brings for us here closure, a conclusion. But not absolute finality. For the damned, the judgement is definitive. But the soul in purgatory is still in motion; and the one in heaven intercedes for us on earth. Life here is not self-contained, but opens up to a broader, eternal drama.

Additionally, as considered in an earlier blog, it is possible that the moment of death, for each of us, included hardened sinners themselves in the act of a mortal sin, might have each of us face to face with the wounded-but-glorified Jesus in his final offer of Mercy albeit with Justice. With that in mind, we do well to pray for those who have died even hard in sin. As God transcends time, our prayers are retroactively efficacious. 

The Church in her wisdom has assigned no person to hell; in her mercy she buries the murderer, terrorist, pedophile, suicide, and the psychopath. There are rare exceptions this, for pastoral reasons, where it would cause scandal.  The practice of the Church resonates with the question of Balthasar: Dare we hope? 

And we hope that when each of us faces that moment, we will benefit from prayers and masses yet to be offered for us in the Body of Christ, the Church. In the meantime, we do well to revive our Catholic practice of prayer for the souls, even of hardened sinners, as our conscience and the Holy Spirits prompts us. As we emulate Christ and his saints in their thirst for souls, we all benefit.

May their souls...and the souls of the faithful departed...as well as the not so faithful departed...through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.

Birthright Citizenship and the American Bishops

 As usual, I largely sympathize with the moral view of the bishops on this issue but think they err in advocating. They are "out of their lane"...as usual.

Their concern is that children will be vulnerable to "statelessness." This is a strong moral argument. But it is not an absolute. It is a prudential judgment that must weigh other concerns into a political policy. But the bishops enjoy no authority in regard to policy. In this case, it is not even a political problem, but a very specific legal, constitutional issue. The bishops surely enjoy no authority in that.

Most of the nations, even Catholic ones, do not provide birthrate citizenship. We do not see the Vatican or some synod of bishops crusading for it as they often do against controlled borders, global warming, or the prudential use of lethal force in capital punishment and warfare. Clearly, this is not some Catholic moral absolute.

The judges themselves will not rule on the moral goodness (protect children) or even the political wisdom of the policy, but upon its constitutionality. The conservative judges generally know their role: to umpire policies according to precedent and the Constitution. It is not for them to autocratically decide what is best for children, or the poor, or the nation.

The liberal political conscience does not know boundaries, form, or order. It's raging indignation explodes into sports, the Oscars, and the Church. And so, we are subject to political harassment in every arena as liberal justices themselves determine for us major issues like abortion, gay marriage, death penalty and others. 

The birthright constitutional clause and precedent is so strong and clear that it is highly unlikely the justices will side with Trump. Some may very well sympathize with his political reasoning about the risks to our nation in light of the recent flood of illegal immigration under Biden. But they know that is not their task. This issue is not up to the Executive, even with the Judicial, to determine. It is a complicated political question that should go through democratic and legislative processes. I would not be surprised if there is a unanimous decision against Trump.

The bishops forfeit their political authority when they step beyond their mission. It is not for the Church to dictate political policy to the nations. Outside of clear moral absolutes (abortion) practical policy is complex and contentious. It is properly the competence of the laity: politicians, governors, activists, social scientists, and such. The bishops need not concern themselves with this. They have enough to do with worship, reception of the Word, proclamation of the Gospel, Church governance, dogma and morals.

Their propensity to dictate political policy unveils an arrogant clericalism: a sense that they must teach the ignorant laity the right things to do in policy. Actually, the "right things to do" are not revealed in Scripture or Tradition or to the Magisterium. They are often confusing. They must be worked out, often in culture war, among various factions.

By advocating specific policies, the hierarchical Church polarizes us further and needlessly alienates those of us who come to opposing prudential decisions. 

We can trust that the Supreme Court justices, especially the conservative Catholic ones, know their lane. The bishops can learn from them.

State of Grace/State of Sin; Objectivity/Subjectivity...Balancing Binaries

Traditional, pre-Vatican II catechesis, was clear: you are in a state of grace or a state of sin. A hard binary: no gray areas, no spectrum or scale. Grace is friendship with God. Mortal sin (deliberate, free act that is gravely evil) breaks that relationship and places you in the state of sin. We would refer to someone "living in sin" which meant sleeping with someone outside of marriage. Likewise, missing mass on Sunday without good reason was grave and had to be confessed before one could receive communion. Someone with a mortal sin, unconfessed and unpardoned, would add additional sacrilege by receiving Holy Communion. Any number of venial sins would not destroy the state of grace. But venial sins would eventually lead to mortal sin if not repented. 

This crystal clear model disappeared from mainstream Catholic catechesis after the Council. It was part of the ecclesial collapse into confusion after 1965. The papacy of John Paul and the Catholic Catechism of 1994 marked the beginning of recovery. 

This moral clarity and simplicity presents a problem! In 1965 75% of Catholics went to mass on Sunday; today that figure may be as low as 20%. Most of our Catholic friends and family are not there Sunday. Do we say they all are "in the state of mortal sin?"

Well...not exactly. Here we have to distinguish objective from subjective evil.

The act or condition itself can be objectively evil: a Catholic missing mass or sleeping with his girlfriend or advocating legal abortion. We can and must make that objective judgement. But we cannot judge the subjective culpability of the person doing the act. We cannot read the heart and intellect of someone else: we do not know their intent, or their knowledge, or the psychological forces (fear, insecurity, anxiety, trauma, etc.) that may be at work. 

A person can be objectively in a state of sin but not culpable subjectively due to a defective, ignorant intellect or a will weakened by psychological damage. Imagine a young woman who has been neglected and abused and surrenders herself sexually to the first man who show affection for her. Objectively this is grave, but her intention may be relatively innocent, her deliberation and discretion compromised, her consent not fully free. And so, only God can look into her heart and measure her culpability.

We do well to retain our Catholic objectivity while we see the immense psychological depth, complexity and mystery of human subjectivity. We can and must judge objectively the good/evil of an act. But we cannot look into the heart of another and judge that. The "triumph of the therapeutic" which gripped our culture and Church after 1965 is not all bad. We can draw the good out of it in our pastoral sensitivity to the inner drama of the human heart as we keep our Catholic sense of the moral order, the battle between the kingdoms of darkness and light.

Imagine two doctors. One has given himself over to generous, sacrificial service of the very poor. He has also fallen into love and adultery and stopped going to mass. The second is successful and prosperous, proudly in mass every week with his impressive family before he goes to the country club. He cares not for the poor as he enjoys a superficial, satisfying life.  Which of the two is in the state of grace? As we ponder this we of course think of Ceasar Chavez, Martin Luther King and others!

Happily, we do not have to judge. We leave that to God. But we can pray for both civil rights leaders. And we might invite the country club guy to give a day to serve the poor in the city. And invite the adulterer to come to a penance service with us.

Lord, let your mercy be upon us as we place our trust in you.!