Six Catholic Cultures of a 2026 N.J. Catholic Family

Our family is not just Catholic; we are (what Mexicans call) "muy Catholico." Very Catholic. Even Uber-Catholic. But we are not monotonous or uniform; we are diverse and multi-flavored. So, within my own family we entertain six contrasting cultures. Richard Niebuhr (Christ and Culture) famously contrasted five paradigms in which faith interacts with culture: Christ against/within/above/of/in paradox/transformer. Here are six specific cultures which demonstrate all five models:

1. Notre Dame University: wholesome, successful, self confident, politically moderate and balanced, high-achieving, good looking, bourgeois, football-loving, proudly (often Irish) American.

2. Franciscan University of Steubenville: charismatic, countercultural, enthusiastic, evangelical-allied.

3. Neocatechumenal Way: militantly counter-cultural, fervently communitarian, evangelical, radical, Christ Against Culture.

4. Conservative Catholic: First Things, rightwing-Republican-MAGA-tolerating politics, culture warriors, classically Catholic in liturgy, morals and belief.

5. "Ignatian Catholic": Jesuit schools, urbane and sophisticated, America, leftwing politics, progressive theology, Fr. Jim Martin S.J. and the "gay crusade." 

6. Communion and Liberation: Italian, educated, sophisticated, confident, positive, congenial, solidly Catholic movement flowing from friendship in Christ.

1. Notre Dame Catholicism

My granddaughter is ecstatically happy as she approaches sophomore year; my daughter was valedictorian just over 20 years ago; my sports-obsessing son, with his football tickets, is as happy as his daughter. This is the highest possible synthesis of America-at-its-best and Catholicism. Consider football weekend: partying, fun, masses before and after the game and throughout the weekend, celebration, confidence. The university represents every dimension of American Catholicism: conservative and progressive, devotion and social justice advocacy, scholarship, networking, science, business...you name it!  Its weakness is its strength: it attracts ambitious,  confident, attractive people who for the most part accept  as they triumph in the mainstream, meritocratic, careerist, materialist, bourgeois, suburban, American society. 

2. Franciscan University Charismatic Catholicism

As a red-blooded charismatic Catholic myself, I am thrilled beyond words that one of my own, my granddaughter, as well as some great-nephews, is studying there. In their senior year, I brought most of my seven children there with high hopes but none were interested. I have already told the Lord:  "Now I can go in peace!"

In the 1970s, as the mainline Catholic academy went progressive, charismatic (in both senses of "gifted" and "Pentecostal") Fr. Michael Scanlon (Franciscan) led the transformation of the then-failing school into the most fierce, reckless, pure expression of Catholicism in the country. It is Pentecostal but also Marian, TLM friendly, homeschool-welcoming, Theology-of-the-Body-believing, militantly pro-life, and vocation-encouraging. It now shelters political think thanks that are Catholic-friendly as conservative morally but economically liberal (care for poor, pro-unions, New-Deal-friendly).  Next week my granddaughter will attend a wedding of a college friend; she reports that a common expectation is to be engaged by graduation. This is Catholic Counter-Culture on steroids!

3. Neocatechumenal Way

Born in the gypsy slums near Madrid over 60 years ago, this is an extraordinarily intense, militant, novel-yet-orthodox Catholic development. My second son with his wife and 9 children are passionately involved. It centers itself in faith, in family and small community, in simplicity/humility/praise, in a rigorous rule of scripture reading, prayer and sharing. It views modernity as a dystopia of Godlessness and is implicitly critical of the post-Constantine Church as inadequate to the apocalyptic reality before us. It is amazingly fruitful as it forms new communities, large families and many priestly/religious vocations. It is controversial but widely influential and this will only increase going forward.

4. Neo-Conservative Catholic

With my own two brothers, I belong here (but  not exclusively). We read First Things, vote Republican because of the Culture War as well as a passionate positivity about American democracy/capitalism/legacy, and practice classic Catholicism around the sacraments and Church teaching. This view is highly compatible with the Notre Dame synthesis but more sharply ideological and so clearly opposed to the Ignatian option. It is compatible with Communion and Liberation but uncomfortable with the "far out" Neocatechumenal and Charismatic styles.

5. Ignatian Catholic

The Catholic Academy and prestigious, notably Jesuit,  institutions in critical mass, after the Council now 60 years ago, have embraced leftist politics, cultural progressivism and theological liberalism. My oldest granddaughter is now an editor at America after graduating from Columbia University, her brother is a senior at Fordham, her sister is at U Penn, and little brother at Xavier Jesuit HS in Manhattan where her father is in leadership. Most of my six sisters and their families would be most comfortable in this camp: urban, Democrat, liberal. As an ardently charismatic-culture-war grandfather, I am delighted that my grandchildren...in this NYC, Jesuit, progressive, urban space...have largely gravitated to the most Catholic friendly dimensions of that world: Catholic Worker home, farm worker unions, care for the poor, gun control, homelessness, environment, respect for women and minorities. That they are also influenced by Communion and Liberation has helped with this.

6. Communion and Liberation

Strong in Italy but small in the USA, this is a significant, sophisticated expression of classic, Italian, highbrow Catholicism. It has about it a striking spontaneity, freedom, confidence, positivity and organic fluidity as it nourishes friendship in Christ and wholesome, passionate, intellectual conversation on personal experience and our shared cultural/political world. It is completely at home in the Church and regards modernity with a Vatican II-type welcome, confidence, and acceptance although not without prophetic criticism. It tends to an open-to-but-critical-of engagement with the other five models here. 

Conclusion

Of the six, the Neocatechumenate is an outlier as radically, intensively, militantly, counterculturally Catholic. I have spent time with them and am immensely admiring. The charismatic (my preference) is second as pronouncedly Catholic and countercultural. Communion and Liberation is culture-critical, but in a manner that is congenial, non-combative, generous, non-defensive, welcoming, nuanced and sophisticated. The other three are each embracive of a distinctive Americanism: the Ignatian of progressivism, the neo-conservative of free-enterprise capitalism, and  Notre Dame of the moderate middle. There is serious dissonance between the Ignatian on the left and the three on the right, while Notre Dame and CL are open towards both ends of the spectrum.

Happily, notwithstanding a significant political/theological rupture, our family has enjoyed for several decades harmony that is especially remarkable considering how strong we are in our religion and politics. This is for several reasons:

1. We continue from our parents and family an immense affection and respect for each other, even across differences of viewpoint.

2. We are primarily Catholic in our communion with Christ and his Church in its essential objectivity of worship/morals//belief and so we do not exaggerate our differences.

3. We are for the most part serene, safe, intelligent and generous enough to appreciate the other side of most debates and so not polarize and demonize each other.

4. Almost 20 years ago as a family, with friends, we opened a residence for low income women. This shared work of charity has united us more deeply than certain beliefs divide us.

5. Feminine influence: my own immediate and extended family are both more matriarchal. It is not just the numbers: we brothers are outnumbered 6-3 by sisters; my son 5-2 by daughters. It is also that these 11 women, along with our wives, are strong, influential women who set the tone for the family. Additionally, both groups are very close and collegial. As a group they are disinclined to dispute, competition and conflict. And so a pleasant, wholesome harmony abides. 

Most of the family, to be sure, does not live in these six specific, strong cultures, but a more middle class, parish-and-school-based normality.  Of the six models above, the moderate Notre Dame is probably the ideal most strive towards in contrast to the stronger accentuations of the other five. 

Additionally we are influenced by many other Catholic cultures. We ourselves are friends with the Latin Mass community in Jersey City;  the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal in the NY area, Maryknoll priests,  Felician sisters of Lodi, Caldwell Dominicans, Convent Station Charities, the Lasalle Christian brothers; the Cursillo movement and the Communio school of theology in Washington DC. We are admiring of the Catholic Worker movement. I have been personally impacted by a number of Jesuits, although mostly of the moderate or even "old school" type.

The Church...in America, in NJ...is a sublime symphony, a banquet of delights! It is a big table!

The Primacy of the Jew; the Dramatic Persistence of Hatred of the Jew

 How odd of God to Choose the Jews!

God chose the Jews. Not because of their superiority or because they are the greatest nation ever. On the contrary. They were and are small; often poor, powerless, persecuted. There is no rational, calculative logic to this choice. It is spontaneous, gratuitous, random. They are "elect" as chosen to do his work, which includes suffering disproportionate suffering and hatred. The Jews are his special people.

The rest of us...gentiles, goyim...have a choice: love them or hate them. You cannot be neutral or indifferent, in the Drama of Salvation, about the Jews. They are to good/evil and sin/salvation what Duke is to college basketball, what Notre Dame is to college football, what the Yankees are to MLB: you love them or you hate them.

Recall that Joseph, 11th of Jacob's sons, was specially loved by his father and so despised by his brothers. They conspired together to kill him. But Ruben, the oldest, intervened first to prevent his outright murder and instead throw him into a ditch. Then Judah suggested that he be sold into slavery instead of murdered. So, albeit imperfectly, two of the brothers did decide in favor of his life. Later, happily, he becomes the savior of his family and the entire Middle East in time of famine. 

We Christians have been adopted into the chosen people. We gentiles have been "grafted onto" the vine that is Israel. Spiritually we are Semites. We love the Jew: Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the apostles, the patriarchs, prophets, kings and all Jew through the ages. This includes secular "Woody Allen" Jews, leftwing Jews, observant Jews.

God's love for the Jews over three millennia has left its mark. Every Jew I encounter, even the entirely non-religious, even the militantly secular as Marxist or Freudian, radiates a delectable charm that is invisible, mysterious, emotive and spiritual. 

We Catholics who consume the body and blood of the Jew Jesus ourselves share in this charism.

The surge of antisemitism on the political right and left both goes far deeper than disapproval of Netanyahu, the suffering in Gaza, leftist anti-colonialism or fascist chauvinism. It's spiritual root is Envy, the sin of Lucifer. It is diabolic. Lucifer in his envy of Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth, is constituted by two primal hatreds: of woman and of Jew. Antisemitism is resentment of God's elect and of God himself. 

Of course criticism of Israel or its policies, of Zionism or even of Judaism is not antisemitism. Policies, programs and politics are prudential issues that can be debated. But love of the Jew is at the very heart of our Catholic faith. 

It is troubling that antisemitism is surging at both extremes of our political spectrum. As a strong moral conservative, firmly on the Right, I am more troubled by that on the right. From the left criticism of Israel is in part understandable humanitarian concern for Palestinian suffering. It is deeper than that as an expression of ideological rejection of colonialism, another example of the dominant oppressor/oppressed paradigm. I do not sense as  much a resentment of the Jew as such. For example, I am not aware of holocaust denial from the Left. 

From the right we do have ideological isolationism, rejection of American interventionism and "forever wars." Those arguable concerns are not antisemitic as such. But accompanying these prudential concerns there is the vile odor of hatred of the Jew: holocaust denial, conspiracy theories, and broad disgust for the Jew as greedy, powerful, and manipulating.

As a conservative Catholic, I disagree but tolerate ideological anti-Israelism from the left. That from the right is a deeper and darker reality. When conjoined with misogyny its diabolic nature, its hatred of Christ himself is manifest.

Wonderful Catholic Women of our Time

Today, feast of St. Mary Magdalene...who was delivered of 7 devils, who was there at Calvary with Mary who first delivered our Savior to us, and who first announced the Gospel to the apostles themselves...we consider the great women of our time.   

In Catholic life there is ever the quiet, humble primacy of woman. Masculinity...in all its glory (think St. Joseph) as gentle strength, serenity, humility, chastity, loving authority, filial loyalty, reverence, prudence, detachment, decisiveness, intellectual clarity, stability, ferocity, boldness, tenderness, generosity...is always at the service of the Madonna and child. 

Most Significant Catholic (-Friendly) Women Thinkers of the 20th Century

1. Edith Stein (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross): classical synthesis of wisdom and holiness.

2. Adrienne von Speyr: extraordinary mystic who collaborated with Balthasar.

3. Simone Weil: eccentric, dizzyingly intuitive and creative mystic.

4. Hannah Arendt: secular, Jewish, moral genius.

5. Elizabeth Anscombe: stalwart, brilliant Catholic disciple of Wittgenstein. 

6. Caryll Houselander: another tormented, sensitive, eccentric, intuitive, spiritual genius.

7. Dorothy Day: radical politically and Catholicly. 

8. Catherine Dougherty: wise, holy servant of the poor.

9. Flannery O'Connor: surprising, serendipitous, ironic  Catholic fictional genius.

10. Sigrid Undset: profound historical novelist.

11. Ida Gorres: little known German theologian esteemed by Joseph Ratzinger.

12. Raissa Maritain, spouse of Jacques.

13. Alice von Hildebrandt, spouse of Dietrich.

14. Maisie Ward, spouse of Frank Sheed.

15. Carmen Hernandez (partner of Kiko in Neocatechumenal Way)

16. Ruth Carter Stapleton, charismatic healer of memories.

17. Katherine Kuhlman, charismatic preacher/healer.

18. Anne Morrow Lindberg, Gift of the Sea.

19. Rachel Carson.

Notice: many of the above were engaged in some way as protagonists against Nazism. 

Many worked closely with male partners. Some as spouses: Dougherty, Ward, Maritain and Hildebrand). Day partnered with Maurin; Speyr with Balthasar.  Stein, Arendt, and Anscombe were the best students of arguably the greatest philosophers of the century: Husserl, Heidegger and Wittgenstein; and yet they developed entirely distinctive philosophies of their own as feminine, Catholic, intuitive-moral-wise in contrast to the spiritual superficiality of their mentors.

Most Significant Catholic Women Mystics of the 20th Century

Prime criterion here is not personal sanctity or intensity of mystical phenomena but rather providential impact of revelations and manifestations on the Catholic Church.

1. St. Faustina for revelation of the Divine Mercy

2. Fatima Seers: Saints Jacinta and Francisco and Venerable Lucia.

3. St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta for her 40 year dark night.

4. Adrienne von Speyr for her mystical experiences and theological collaboration with Balthasar.

5. St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross: mystic, theologian, virgin, martyr.

6. St. Gemma Galgani, extraordinary mystic/stigmatist.

7. Conchita Cabrerra, Mexican mother.

8. Robin Marthe, French paralytic stimatist.

9. Therese Neuman, German stigmatist. 

7. Seers of Medjugorje, controversial apparitions of Mary

8. Maria Esperanza Biancini, Venezuela stigmatist.

9. St. Elizabeth of the Trinity.

10. Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, of Bayonne NJ.

Greatest 20th Century Women Catholic Servants of the Poor

1. St. Mother Theresa of Calcutta

2. St. Maianne Cope

3. St. Mother Francis Xavier Cabrini

4. St. Mother Katherine Drexel

5. Dorothy Day

6. Catherine Doherty

7. Madaleine Delbrel

8. Rose Hawthorne

9. Mother Mary Joseph (Maryknoll Sisters)

10.  First nine Sisters of Life (NYC 1991)

11. Mother Elvira Petrozzi (Comunita Cenacolo of Italy)

12. Chiara Lubich of Focolare

20th Century Virgin Martyrs

Clarification: the classic Roman virgin-martyrs died in defense of their virginity, like St. Maria Gioretti. However a virgin who dies in witnessing to Christ is also a virgin-martyr, like St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. All these are highly venerable.

1. St. Maria Gioretti

2. St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

3. Sisters and others martyred in the Spanish Civil War.

4. Sisters and others martyred under Communism.

5. Sisters and others martyred under Nazism. 

6. Sisters and other martyred by Jihadism across Africa and Asia.

7. Missionary sisters and laywomen (4) killed in El Salvador (1980) who worked for poor and similar.

8. Innocent women who have suffered violation due to the sexual revolution. 

9. Countless innocent women who,  often silently,  suffer violence against their bodies.

10. Blessed Karolina Kozka (1914, Polish), Blessed Anna Kolesarova (Slovak 1944), Blessed Albertina Berkenbrock (Brazilian 1931), Blessed Antonia Mesina (Sardinia 1935), Blessed Benigna Cadoso da Silva (1941 Brazilian)...all died defended chastity.

Women on more than one of these four lists: St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (3), St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta (2), Adrienne von Speyr (2), Dorothy Day (2), Catherine Doherty (2). That is your all-star team!

Significant Catholic (-Friendly) Women Thinkers Alive Today 2026

In random order.

Tracey Rowlands

Angela Franks

Eve Tuschnet

Heather King

Mary Healy

Janet Smith

Mary Ann Glendon

Mary Eberstadt

Patricia Snow

Mary Harrington

Camille Paglia

Amy Coney Barrett

Abigail Favale

Maureen Dowd

Peggy Noonan

Alyssa Finlay 

Margaret McCarthy

Helen Alvare

Inez Murzacu

Diane Traflet

Elizabeth Moberly

Stacey Stasoncos

Anne Widdecombe (recently murdered in England)

Helen Andrews

Leah Lebresco Sargent

Louise Perry

That is over 50 women of the last century and 26 writing and thinking today.

Aren't we blessed?

Heroism of Life and Philosophical Brilliance in Three Mid-20th-Century Jewesses: Stein, Weil, Arendt

They are easily the most creative, brilliant and profound female intellects of the century. It is more: their luminous femininity and their Homeric courage as protagonists in the defining Drama of the 20th century. Contemporary collaborators against the Nazi Evil; Jews; world class philosophers. Each in an utterly distinctive, creative manner engaged with their Judaism, femininity, Christianity, Nazism and philosophy. 

The century is a long litany of intelligent, saintly and heroic women. But none compare with these in intellectual brilliance. Among their male counterparts there are perhaps three in their league in the combination of dramatic courage and wisdom: John Paul II, Dietrich von Hildebrandt, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. All three combatants against Hitler; the first two similar to Stein in their marriage of personalism with Thomism. 

Judaism 

Weil renounced her Judaism. She despised the idea of a chosen people and strenuously advocated a universalism in a solidarity with the poor and suffering. She suffered guilt over the privilege of her family and overidentified with the afflicted. In accord with a deeply personal Gnosticism she entirely rejected the Hebrew Scriptures and observant Judaism. Like her family, she was a secular, liberal intellectual up until her mystical experiences of the suffering Christ. 

Arendt was the extreme opposite in her assertive Jewish identity. She was taught by her mother to defend her Jewishness and she did this her entire life. A Zionist, she risked her life fighting Nazism and was arrested by the Gestapo. Entirely secular, she was fierce in defense of Jews and Israel. She was a combative intellectual, confrontational and controversial on many fronts.

Stein was the only of the three raised in a religious family. In youth she rejected Judaism. Later, in embracing Catholicism she also retrieved her Jewishness. She wrote Life in a Jewish Family as she painfully grieved the rupture her conversion brought to her family. She implored Pope Pius XI to condemn antisemitism. Together with her blood sister, a Carmelite nun like herself, she surrendered her life to God for her people, the Jews, and died in Auschwitz a double martyr: for her Catholicism and her Judaism. She embodied the Catholic reconciliation with Judaism that found expression in Vatican II.

Femininity, Sex, Romance

Weil, ever eccentric, despised her femininity and adapted a masculinity in style, an asexuality. Already in childhood she disdained all things feminine and gravitated to the masculine. Her parents serenely accepted this. Her brother, a prodigy, later a world class mathematician, apparently elicited in her admiration, envy and low self esteem. In an exaggerated empathy for the poor, she starved herself to death as a spiritual anorexic. Her mystical communion with Christ and the suffering was accompanied by a deep negativity of deprivation so that she refused baptism and rejected ecclesial communion in a sacramental anorexia. Her femininity took the course of a profound, intense empathy, unrelieved by boundaries, masculine protection or self care.

Stein was by contrast an icon of natural and saintly femininity. Unlike the anti-feminine Weil but like Arendt, she was a striking beauty. 

(Aside: we are stunned in both Stein and Arendt with the quality of intelligence that radiates in their feminine loveliness. We know that "smart is sexy" and that women, for various reasons, are attracted to intelligence in men. But we less frequently attend to the erotic/romantic appeal of feminine intelligence. Think: Jackie Kennedy, Grace Kelly, Kiera Knightly, Jodi Foster, Felicity Jones, Ingrid Bergman, Audrey Hepburn, Katherine Hepburn, Maureen O'Hara, Helena Bonham Carter, Amy Coney Barrett, Emily Blunt, Jennifer Lawrence, Jessica Chastain, Meryl Streep, Cher, Barbara Streisand, Helen Mirren, Lilly James, Emma Thomson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Oprah, Queen Elizabeth...Don't get me started! It is certain that insecure men can be threatened by a woman who is strong, confident, intelligent. But one confident in his virility welcomes such as friend, partner, lover, spouse.)

She dreamed in youth of a great love but apparently never had a lover. She enjoyed rich, intimate, chaste friendships with men and women. A close friend and philosophy colleague died in WWI; when she visited the widow she was drawn by the serenity of her Catholic faith towards the Church. She was classically a virgin, a bride of Christ, a martyr and a mother...caring for children in Auschwitz just before her death. Like John Paul and Hildebrandt, she articulate a profound philosophy of the woman as compassionate, welcoming, sheltering, integrating and integrated.

Arendt was an entirely different, far more complex woman. As an 18-year-old student of philosophy she entered an adulterous affair with her 35-year-old professor, the great Martin Heidegger. This affair was to last her lifetime. Hitler soon after came to power; Arendt married another philosopher student of Heidegger; the couple were separated by the war and divorced congenially. Hannah fell in love with a nonacademic, a leftist activist of considerable charm and masculine energy. They married and stayed together through the war, into life in the USA until his death in 1970. Theirs was a stable, serene and "open" marriage. This allowed him to follow his promiscuous propensities. On her end, she entertained no sexual or romantic dalliances. But she did renew her intimate, now platonic affair with Heidegger. 

This may be the strangest romance in human history. Heidegger went totally Nazi: as rector of a university he expelled Jewish students and professors. Hannah was out of touch with him in his postwar disgrace until the early 1950s. She got in touch and astoundingly reignited the romance, now no longer physical. It is incomprehensible that a strong, ardent, Zionist, combatant, anti-totalitarian Jewess should pardon this adulterous, woman abusing, lying Nazi. Not only did she pardon him, but she went on to actively restore his reputation. She excused his Nazism as a temporary lapse of weakness, not indicative of his moral character. This will remain a mystery, but several factors shed light.

 

First, she was a passionate Romantic. In Heidegger she met the love of her life.

Second, intelligence. As noted above, intelligence is attractive, especially to the intelligent. He may have been the smartest man of the century; her the smartest woman. She was infatuated, not with raw cognitive ability but with his sensitivity, profundity, creativity.

Third, she was the ultimate non-victim. She had an enormous self-confidence, strength of will, sense of agency. At 15 she was expelled from school for leading a protest against an insult from a teacher. In her pivotal Eichmann in Jerusalem, the Banality of Evil, she inverted the standard narrative. She saw Eichmann not as a superpowered monster of evil, but as a pathetic, passive cog in the bureaucracy. Along with that she noted the widespread compliance and failure to resist on the part of Jewish leadership. She stood by her views in the face of furious hostility. As Jew and as lover she was never the passive victim, but always the actor, the protagonist, the free agent. And so it was not in her character to remain the victim. She is a fall cry than our contemporary cult of self-pity and victimization ( Epstein).

Lastly, her admiration and delusional idealization of Heidegger seems to be accompanied by a sympathy for him as sad and lonely. Male/female erotic chemistry is always a dance of strength/weakness by both partners. Heidegger was a miserable man: a lying Nazi, an unfaithful husband, an abuser of women. His entire philosophy is saturated with the postwar, existential despair, isolation, and nihilism. His is a universe without God, hope, moral order or meaning. A wise man once said: "If you want to be depressed, pick up Heidegger and read about "being unto death," "thrownness," and "Dasein." Thats what happens when you are the smartest man alive and you go Nazi, sexual predator, adulterer, and liar." The suggestion here is that at a deeper, indeliberate level, Hannah surrendered to a maternal instinct to comfort this tormented soul.

We conclude by noting how significant to each protagonist...in thought and life... is the feminine capacity for empathy. Stein developed it phenomenologically as a path to overcome the solipsism of phenomenology (and the entirety of modern philosophy) and retrieve realistic epistemology and the ontology of being in union with contemporary personalism. Weil sacrificed herself in an extreme compassion for the suffering. Arendt, ever the tough combatant, clearly yielded to a sentimental mercy, free of masculine retribution, for her deplorable lover.

Protagonists Against Nazism

Arendt  was strikingly virile in her lucidity, assertiveness, confidence. Throughout her entire life she was fierce and fearless on a number of fronts. Yet we will see in her personal life(Heidegger) and philosophy (Natality) a piercing maternal empathy.

Stein by contrast was flamingly Marian in her holiness, surrender, charity, wisdom and sacrificial gift of self.

Weil in a more extreme, disordered fashion gave herself over to mystical identification with the victims of that era. 

Their Philosophical Thought

Each is an entirely original, distinctive thinker. None is a disciple or member of a school of thought; nor did they originate such a school. 

Weil was the most independent and creative. She excelled in philosophy in school, writing a dissertation on Descartes. But she followed no particular thinker. She read randomly and broadly: Plato, Hindu mystics, St. John of the Cross, the Christian scriptures. She was deeply involved in social activism: unionism and the left side in the Spanish Civil War. She developed her own mystical spirituality. But she provided most profound moral insight in a fluid, spontaneous phenomenology.

Stein and Arendt were deeply schooled in formal phenomenology. Stein was with Heidegger a protege of Husserl. They were collegial early on but differed sharply as they developed their own views.  Arendt was a student of Heidegger. But both women developed their own distinctive philosophies, which contrasted sharply with their mentors: deeply feminine, intuitive, spiritual and moral. Let's consider a key concept of each: Empathy in Stein, Attention in Weil, Natality in Arendt.

Stein on Empathy.  Already in her doctoral dissertation she pondered empathy as the human capacity for communion with others. She developed a detailed, sophisticated philosophy of femininity.

Weil on Attention.  Perhaps Weil's strongest contribution was her consideration of attention as the most pure, selfless gift we can give each other.

Arendt on Natality. This is an entirely original idea of Arendt; I am unaware of any other philosophical usage, before or after her. She intuited that the sheer fact of a human birth is an absolutely new beginning and therefore heralds that newness, creativity, revival, hope, promise and freedom are possible.  This stunning discovery is all the more astonishing as she was entirely secular, disbelieving in the supernatural, eternal life, or the immortality of the human soul. The idea underlies her entire political philosophy of action, agency, and freedom. She saw in the birth of a single, random baby the definitive triumph over the totalitarianisms that she confronted and studied. This is a spiritual, although secular, perception that comes straight from the Judeo-Christian tradition. At the same time it is strikingly feminine and maternal. Recall: with her husband she deliberately decided not to bring children into the violence and chaos of the world of her young adulthood. She dedicated herself to study, teaching, and advocacy. And yet, at the heart of her thought is this motherly apprehension of the absolute value of a single infant, a promise opening up infinitely. Such feminine resilience characterized her entire life and thought; and contrasts with the nihilism of her dismal mentor/lover/friend. (She died in 1975 in USA and did not write on legal abortion which was at the time exploding. Both sides of the dispute claim her approval. It is hard to imagine such a secular feminist protecting the embryo, but clearly the impetus of her intuition is in that directions.)

Conclusion

We do well to ponder the life and thought of these three fascinating, brilliant, heroic, utterly creative and unique women. As Catholics we venerate St. Teresa of the Cross...genius, philosopher, theologian, virgin, martyr, mystic, Jew, Catholic...and seek her intercession.  We are grateful also to Hannah and Simone...in their very wounds and disorders they left us a profound legacy of wisdom, courage, and inspiration.

"Spiritual, not Religious": the Gnostic as Anti-Creation, Anti-Body, Anti-Incarnation and Anti-Catholic

 21% of Americans identify as "spiritual, not religious." That makes them competitive: nonreligious and nonspiritual 30%, Evangelical Protestants 23%, Catholics 19%, Mainline Protestants 11%, Black Protestants 5%. 

When someone identifies as "spiritual, not religious," I have three responses. First, I respect here a searching spirit, someone yearning for the True, the Good and the Beautiful. I note that they have not seen this in established religion and hope that they might find something in my Catholic faith. 

Second, I worry: they are isolated, atomized, alone, vulnerable, in danger; much like a small lamb wandering into a forest surging with mountain lions and wolves, defenseless against the world, the flesh and the devil. 

I grieve that he/she is a gnostic.

Gnosticism is an umbrella term indicating religious patterns prevalent in the Mediterranean world of the 2nd-4th centuries. These various forms interacted with Christianity and competed  as  alternative religions. "Gnosis" means knowledge. Salvation from evil was here found not in simple faith, repentance and decision for God and the good, acceptance of Revelation, participation in the Church or communion with the Trinity; rather in special knowledge. This knowledge: the human soul is a spark of the divine, trapped in a body that is evil. Reality is dualistic:  the deity is all good and purely spiritual; the countervailing evil power, the demiurge, is the source of physical reality, the flesh, which is inherently bad. And so the gnostic compulsion is to find release and happiness by escape from the body, the physical, the flesh.  This dualism denies creation as good from a Creator; it seeks escape from the physical, from suffering, from sexuality, from history, from the Feminine, from the institutional, and from the Jew. It exults the inner, subjective, isolated, solipsistic, autonomous Soul or Self as the "spark of the divine." 

From this primal contempt for the human body, many consequences follow:

Anti-Sexuality. Disparagement of sex goes in two extreme directions. There is disgust and avoidance of sex. We find this in the  Shakers who all embraced celibacy and predictably died out a few years ago. A different manifestation is in the emergence of new sexual identities such as "asexual," "agender,"  "demigender," and so forth. On the other hand is licentiousness justified because sex is not expressive of the soul. So, "hooking up" is a casual, trivial thing as Hugh Hefner taught us. Sexual engagement is trivialized. A husband might minimize adultery with a prostitute: "It was just sex. It meant nothing to me."  This is a strong factor in Catholic progressivism in its disparagement of "pelvic theology." When Pope Francis and Leo downplay sexual ethics in favor of social justice they are manifesting the gnostic impulse. They imply that the epidemic of porn addiction, marital infidelity, and homosexual behavior are trivial in comparison with issues like immigration, capital punishment and the environment.

Anti-History.  History, tradition, and past revelation have no value for the gnostic who lives only in the present. The Cultural Progressive in his disparagement of the past as ignorant, unjust and hateful is gnostic: entrapped in the moment and dismissive of what is given.

Anti-Institution. The "spiritual not religious" detaches from human institutions into loneliness. Institutions of course bond us to the past and future as well as the present. They embody (however imperfectly) spiritual values and join us together in them. The gnostic sits in judgement of the weaknesses and failings of human institutions and maintains an illusory sense of private, moral superiority.

Misogyny. Karl Stern (Flight from Woman) showed how Descartes and his followers were systemically and profoundly hateful of the feminine and maternal. Indeed, modernity is in its essence a rejection of the feminine (virginal, bridal, maternal, receptive, contemplative) in favor of a depraved masculinity of abstraction, detachment, control, violence, egoism and abuse.

 Antisemitism.  The second century gnostic Marcion rejected the Old Testament as divine revelation. The Church of course renounced this in accepting those books as inspired. A deep hatred of the Jew mysteriously accompanies the gnostic impulse. The gnostic despises history, the particular, and the institutional. The Jew is all three. Carl Jung held leadership positions in Nazi organizations. Heidegger, the philosophical titan of 20th century European philosophy, the heir of the Cartesian turn to the subject, was an active Nazi.  We are tragically suffering now in the USA a resurgence of antisemitism on the  Left and Right both. There are a number of contingent, current causes for this. But deeper there is an undiagnosed gnostic, spiritual-ontological resentment and disgust for the Jew.

Suffering.  For the gnostic, suffering is not the result of sin, an act of freedom; nor is it an occasion to turn to God or even share in the salvific suffering of Christ. Rather, it is an error caused by the mistake of the creation of the physical which is itself evil. Here there is no faith in the saving act of a suffering savior, rather there is search for the hidden knowledge that will bring relief.

The "gnostic compulsion" dominates the history of spirituality well beyond these early centuries and finds expression in many contemporary spiritualities.  Let's consider some.

1. Enlightenment, Modern and Contemporary Philosophy.  The very word "enlightenment" has a gnostic taste. It suggests salvation through some knowledge: in this case, the use of reason of the isolated individual as liberated from tradition, custom, authority, and the fleshly. Modernity is the turn to the subjective, the interior Self, the autonomous intellect...cut off from the real, Being, the body, history, sex/gender, tradition and transcendence. Descartes' starting point was the search for absolute clarity and certainty of thought  by the solitary, individual intellect. He assumed absolute suspicion of anything not logically self-evident. He displaced trust in the body, the Church, tradition, the feminine, the received. He rejected as suspect all that is "given"...creation, community, revelation, tradition. He rejected the realistic epistemology and the ontology of being of St. Thomas.  And so, the entire corpus of modern/contemporary philosophy insofar as it builds upon Descartes/Hume/Hegel is deeply gnostic. This applies also to the softer, subtle way of Transcendental Thomism (Rahner, Longergan) which futilely attempts to reconcile Catholicism to the Cartesian/Kantian gnostic turn to the Self and the disconnect with the Real.

2. Lucifer.  Was the first, primordial Gnostic. No, he is not an evil Demiurge, a dark deity coequal with God, and himself the source of the physical world as a fall into corruption from the divine. Rather, he is himself a creature, the most brilliant and bright of all the angels, created good in himself. Ancient non-biblical Christian traditions (neither approved nor condemned by Tradition and the Magisterium) say that he revolted when he heard God's plan for a physical universe and that God would himself become flesh of a woman. He would have considered his angelic nature superior to the human and all flesh and refused to defer to a God-Man and his especially his fleshly, feminine mother. Satan was the quintessential Gnostic.

3. Triumph of the Therapeutic.  Much of contemporary psychology is at least implicitly gnostic in that it considers the client in isolation and loneliness. This is lucid in Carl Jung who identified the religious as the interiority of the Self, as a subjectivity of archetypes, ideas, and intuitions. The subject does not relate to the real, the objective, the transcendent and eternal. There is no I-Thou. Rather, the individual goes deeply into the unconscious of confusion and chaos. The popular Joseph Cambell is more blatantly gnostic in his evident disdain for the historical religions, his antisemitism, and his infatuation with pagan, cyclical religions. Even a sane moral voice like Jordan Peterson remains a gnostic, however enlightened in a good way, by his inability to accept Revelation like a child. The therapeutic culture that took over elite society in the 1960s posited as absolute the "authentic" Self, the autonomous individual who defines himself, free of family, history, authority. The path to human flourishing was no longer found in loyalty to God/family/Church/community, but in sincerity and transparency, whatever that entailed. This is a retrieval of the Gnostic "inner flame" of the soul, freeing itself from the flesh of connections, duties, obedience and loyalty. 

4. Contraceptive Sterilization of Sex and LGBTQ Crusade.  The sexual revolution detached the "inner self" from sexual/gendered human flesh in all its consequences of intimacy, vulnerability, fertility, fidelity, and communion with creation, community, ancestors and descendants. This new "Self" is autonomous, isolated, self-determining, liberated from history, institutions, gender, and fertility. The consequence of this is the LGBTQ construct whereby a rootless, disconnected, sovereign Self chooses gender and identity, renouncing what is "given" by birth, nature and Providence.

5. Technology further isolates the self with phone, internet, and a mega-system that dwarfs the person, removes agency, and disparages the particular, the place, the immediate, the physical, the historical and the institutional. The breakdown of family, community and local Church leaves the individual atomized and defenseless against manipulation by giga-state and mega-corporation. The measured, proportioned, organic and fluid interaction of the person with immediate, concrete ambience and community is replaced by the matrix and the machine.

6. New Age and Eastern-type Spiritualities.  Lacking a theology of Creation and Creator, these offer an alternative religious path that has gnostic characteristics. Christian Zen, for example, lacks the primal reality of creation but also that of sin, freedom, redemption by crucified Christ, incarnation of God, the redemptive value of suffering and resurrection of the body. Rather, it offers "enlightenment" (that word again!) This is not a free act of turning from sin, of acceptance in faith of God's initiative in Christ, of loyalty to Him within the Church. The gnosis that saves here is noncognitive and anti-intellectual: it is recognition of the illusion of suffering, of the ego or person. It is a mystical dissolution of a false consciousness and a restoration to primal peace and union. Creation and the physical are here not evil so much as illusory and deceptive. This is accompanied by an ethos of kindness, generosity, and serenity. It retains the core gnostic belief of the real self entrapped in a hostile apparatus of ego, intellectuality and social convention. Such spiritualities ordinarily carry with them a disparagement of religion as dogma, ritual, tradition, and authority.

7. Simone Weil.  We find an extreme, even shocking case of "Christian-Gnosticism" in this young, Jewish, brilliant, philosopher-mystic who died "of compassion" in World War II. She identified so deeply with the Suffering Christ of the poor and tormented that she fasted in solidarity and contributed to her death by a spiritual anorexia. Along with a saintly intimacy with Jesus and a heroic charity, she e suffered a gnostic-type aversion to the body. She believed in Christ but refused baptism. So she inflicted upon herself a sacramental as well as a physical anorexia. She aspired to "decreation" as a radical annihilation of the self. She viewed the dogmatic and institutional aspect of the Church with contempt. She did not view the physical world as the all-good creation of a generous Creator, but as a corruption or a fall, just like the ancient Gnostics. She is at once a genuine mystic, a brilliant thinker and a deeply tormented spirit.

The Hylomorphic Communion of Body and Soul: Aristotle, Thomas, Stein, John Paul

Aristotle famously overcame the view of his mentor Plato that the soul is entrapped in an alien body. Attuned to biology, he advocated the "hylomorphic" (matter-form) that soul and body are essentially wed together to form a reality. This idea proved to be entirely compatible with the Bible's view of the human person as embodied-spirit (or "angimal" both spirit and animal in a unity). More recently, John Paul has renewed this awareness in his pivotal catechesis on the human body. Very close to his thought is that of St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein.)  Stein is a striking contrast to Weil. A contemporary, she was a secular Jew who converted to Catholicism. She is again a brilliant philosopher and an authentic mystic. She is entirely Catholic all things but especially about the human body. She wrote and spoke eloquently about the "genius of woman" and herself died a martyr in the concentration camp. The contrast between Gnostic and Catholic is glaring in the anthropology of the human body.

Catholic Intuition: God's Passion to Incarnate

We know from our faith: not only does God love everything he has made in the physical universe, but he craves...madly, passionately, desperately...to incarnate himself, to become flesh, to penetrate and indwell us, in our very flesh.

He became flesh, lived, suffered, and died in Jesus. His flesh lives now eternally in heaven. But that was not enough. He wanted to remain with us, in us, in the flesh. So he is with us in the Eucharist, in every consecrated host on every altar and in every tabernacle.

He is in-fleshed, until the end of history, in the historical, institutional, hierarchical Church: the infallible teaching, the efficacious sacraments, the forgiveness of sins, the powers of the priesthood, the sanctity of marriage as a sacrament, the anointing of the sick and the dying, the holiness of saints, the repentance of sinners. 

By virtue of his own crucifixion, he is present in the suffering: the martyrs, the persecuted, the disabled, the emotionally afflicted, the poor and the sick.

He craves to sanctify our sexual yearnings, our masculinity and femininity, with generosity, tenderness, heroism, fruitfulness, and holiness.

He is incarnate when heaven penetrates earth: miracles, healings, stigmata, levitation, bilocation, incorruption, the odor of sanctity, exorcism of evil spirits, sacramentals, devotions, pilgrimages, where two gather in his name, rosaries, scapulars, crucifixes, chapels/churches/cathedrals, religious vows, acts of mercy, asks for forgiveness, pardons, sacrifices, feasts and joyous celebrations.

Heaven is not separate from earth; it is not after earth; it is here, married to earth.

Iconoclastic and Pantheist Impulse

Many of the historic, monotheistic faiths are neither Gnostic nor Catholic, but iconoclastic. They affirm a transcendent, good Creator who has intervened in history. But to protect the transcendence, they refuse to associate the Divine so intimately with the fleshly. And so: they destroy icons; they deny the sacraments; they flee from the incarnation.  This applies clearly to Judaism, Islam and most of Protestantism. Consider: is there anything more sterile, monotonous, annoying than an airport chapel or a Protestant Church. I would prefer a DMV office, a bus terminal, a YMCA gym or pool. 

On the other hand we have pantheism. Here the transcendent is denied and the Divine is located in the earthly. This can come with militant feminism in its hatred of Fatherhood, even of God. It can come as nature mysticism, including a disordered obsession with the environment, not as beautiful creation but as an idol of its own.

Conclusion

Gnosticism is flight from the flesh: sexuality/gender, history, tradition, soul/body unity, creation, institutions, suffering, and the Incarnation.

Catholicism is surrender to God's love affair with the flesh: in sexuality, ritual, institutions, suffering, sacrament, miracles. icons/sacramentals, intimacy with the poor, and the Eucharist.

P.S.  To his credit, Pope Francis addressed the dangers of neo-Gnosticism twice in 2018: in his apostolic exhortation Gaudate et Exsultate and a letter Placuit Deo.  Also, Cyril O'Reagan, the renowned Irish, Balthasar scholar of Notre Dame (who sat on my son's dissertation defense) has written volumes on its manifestation in contemporary culture. This is to assure you, Dear Reader, that Fleckinstein is not a random, lonely anti-Gnostic ruminating in his solipistic blog-world. No. He is thinking with the Church!

Where are You on The Catholic/Progressive Spectrum?

Cultural Progressivism is not the progress dynamic inherent to science and technology, nor is it the Catholic-friendly political liberalism of the Democratic Party of the postwar era (1945-65). Rather, it is a coherent, powerful ideology...philosophical, theological, political...which took over the elite institutions of the West starting in 1965, as the Second Vatican II Council ended and the Sexual Revolution exploded across society. 

The essentials of Cultural Progressivism:  

1. -distrust of the past, of tradition, of authority, and of divine revelation as ignorant and unjust;

2. -fervent trust in science and technology; and in inexorable progress, the "arc of history" invincibly overcoming pathologies of the past;

3. - faith in the therapeutic as path to human flourishing;

4. - devaluation of incompetent human life (fetus, elderly and infirm) as disposable refuse;

5. - detachment of sex from procreation in artificial contraception, technologies of "reproduction" and the cult of sterile sex;

6. - deconstruction of femininity (as virginity/bridal-spousality/maternity) and  masculinity (as virtuous virility/husbandly spousality/paternity) in favor of the neutered, sterile, isolated individual as unit of production and consumption;

7. - fundamental dynamic of society is the oppression of master/slave in male/female, rich/poor, white/non-white, heterosexual/homosexual, Israel/Palestinian, colonizer/colonized and more.

8. - sovereignty of isolated Self over claims of family, community, faith or country.

9. - absolute secularity; denial of reality of the eternal, transcendent or supernatural; banishment of religion from the public to the private.

10. - rejection of realist epistemology and ontology of being for a constructivist relativism.  

This is clearly the contradiction of Catholicism in many dimensions. 

Catholic Progressivism is the futile attempt to marry Catholic faith with Cultural Progressivism. The substantive here is "Progressivism" which is flavored with elements of the Church compatible with it. This will be distinguished from Progressive Catholic which retains Catholic integrity along with more liberal or leftwing prudential judgments. 

Since the Council, our Church has been a Culture War between Progressivism and enduring-organically-vital Catholicism. Below is a test to position yourself on the Catholic/Progressive spectrum.

Catholic/Progressive Spectrum

Answer Yes or No to each question. Each is a progressive belief that contradicts Catholic faith. At the end give yourself -1 for each No and +1 for each Yes. If  undecided or ambivalent, score a 0. 

1. A woman can be a Catholic priest.    Yes   No

2. Artificial contraception within a generous marriage is a good moral option.   Yes   No

3. War is no longer a moral option.  Yes  No

4. Capital punishment is inherently and always wrong.   Yes  No

5. Church denial of Eucharist to the divorced/remarried/not-annulled is uncharitable.  Yes  No

6. In Vitro Fertilization and related technologies are valid moral options for the infertile.  Yes  No

7. Homosexual acts are not in themselves immoral so that such unions can be blessed.  Yes  No

8. Self-identification in opposition to birthed, biological gender is a good moral option.  Yes  No

9. Sacramental practice (Sunday mass, regular confession) is not essential or necessary for a Catholic living a good life.   Yes  No

10. Living and sleeping together outside of marriage is morally ok if there is mutual love.  Yes  No

11. Legalized abortion is a good way to protect women.  Yes  No

12. Trans-women have a  right to compete in female sports.  Yes  No

13. Assisted suicide and euthanasia are compassionate options.  Yes  No

14. Religious refusal  to place children for adoption with homosexual couples or to participate in homosexual marriages is bigoted and should be illegal.  Yes  No

15. Sex work (prostitution) should be legal and free of shame and guilt.  Yes  No

16. Moderate use of porn and masturbation can be wholesome expressions of sexuality.  Yes  No

17. Catholic traditions of hermit life, cloistered convents and monasteries are unhealthy. Yes  No

18. Devils, miracles, an eternal hell and such are psychological-moral symbols, not hard, literal realities.  Yes  No

19. Catholic priesthood...male and celibate...is dysfunctional, repressive, unjust.  Yes  No 

20. Access to affordable artificial contraception is the right of every woman and must be guaranteed by the State.  Yes  No

These are simple binaries: yes or no.  It your total is in positive numbers you are more progressive than Catholic, and vice versa. Many Catholics and even priests are undecided or ambivalent on these questions. If you are such on more than a handful then you are afflicted with confusion and indecision of the intellect. Many progressives have good intention and pure, generous hearts but are in confusion. Do not be hard on yourself: Pope Francis and it seems Pope Leo also suffer such confusion and indecision. This is the ordinary state of the Church, our catechetical crisis, since the Council. 

Postscript

The original version of this test included "progressive" opinions or prudential judgments which do not contradict Catholic teaching. One might agree with these without compromising the integrity of the Catholic faith. These included:

1. White racism is systemic and pervasive in USA 2026.

2. Our international system of nations states must be replaced by a World Government.

3. American power, greed and imperialism is responsible for most world injustices.

4. Evangelical MAGA-related crusade (e.g. Charlie Kirk), sometimes called Christian Nationalism, is racist and fascist.

5. Biden immigration policy was compassionate; Trump policy cruel and immoral.

6. Corporate capitalism is corrupt and unjust and must be corrected by massive wealth redistribution and an expansive state.

7. Synodality is valid effort to include laity in Church governance.  

Agreement with these political judgments along with rejection of the moral statements above would make for a "Progressive Catholic," an integral Catholic with liberal political views. This is different from the "Catholic Progressive" described above.

 

Top Twelve Things I love About Vatican II

 1. Jesus Christ.  Refocused our Catholic faith in the divine/human person of Jesus Christ. The singular failure of the postwar Church was detachment from Christ. The entire Christian life is incoherent without roots in Christ. The pontificates of John Paul and the various lay renewal movements reinforce this Evangelical Catholicism.

2. Holiness of the Laity.  Clear call to holiness for all, laity, clergy and religious. This is not new but a refreshing and necessary intensification. The invocation of Pope St. John XXIII and the bishops for a new Pentecost subsequently bore fruit in the renewal movements.

3. Ecumenism.  Recovery of our deep unity...in Christ, scripture, and the Christian life...with our separated brothers/sisters.

4. Jewish Dialogue.  Reset of our relationship with Jews and Judaism; renunciation of antisemitism and anti-Judaism; deepened recovery of our own roots in Judaism; recognition of God's continued Providential love for the people of Israel. 

5. Freedom of Religion and Political Liberties.  Here the influence of the American model, specifically through John Courtney Murray S.J. is clear. Essential here is the inherent relationship of freedom to truth.

6. Liturgical Renewal.  Effort, not without difficulties, to increase lay participation in the liturgy.

7. "Ressourcement."  Return to the sources, broader study of the fathers and doctors. The narrow focus on St. Thomas was overcome and scholastic language avoided in the documents. But Monsignor Tom Guarino and others have shown that Thomistic metaphysics and epistemology, especially the concept of analogy, provided the underlying intellectual structure of the Council. 

8. Positive Engagement with Modernity.  The tradition of suspicion, anxiety and defensiveness was overcome with an inclination to recognize, not uncritically, what is good, true and beautiful in the broader culture and developments.

9. Appreciation of World Religions. Consideration of the good and the workings of God's grace beyond the institutional boundaries of the Church in world religions.

10. Ecclesial Clarity.  Hierarchical, apostolic structure of the Church was clarified. The collegiality of the college of bishops, always in union with the Pope, was illuminated. Also, contrasting roles of clergy/laity was highlighted: the laity bring the Gospel to the world as the ordained govern/teach/sanctify the Church. Unfortunately, that distinction has been obscured since the Council by progressive dual clericalist jealousies: lay envy of the priestly vocation (largely advanced by clerics, notably in the new cult of "synodality") and a clericalism in which hierarchs pontificate on prudential, secular, lay concerns including immigration, capital punishment, war, and environment. The properly sacerdotal and lay become convoluted, confused, and corrupted: the lay want to be priests, the popes want to be caliphs. 

11.  Biblical Revival.  Intensified academic and devotional attention to Scripture, properly related to Tradition and Magisterium, had deep intellectual, ecumenical and evangelical consequences.

12. Liturgical Renewal. Return to the scriptural sources and the crusade to engage the laity were proper concerns. Not the documents themselves so much as their disordered implementation led to excessive informality, casualness, and loss of the sacred, often in the name of "the spirit of Vatican II."

It bears repetition: the Council was not a rupture, not a replacement of an outdated Church with a new model. It is not like selling an old car and buying a new. It is more like renovation of a classy mansion that maintains all the integrity but refreshes and renews. It was not an end and a beginning. The Council was the culmination and synthesis of multiple movements of the Holy Spirit in the six decades of the 20th century, especially the two after WWII: ecumenical, liturgical, biblical, Jewish dialogue and engagement with culture, the fathers, and world religions. 

This partly explains why the documents of the Council were approved by overwhelming majorities. The bishops and popes involved recognized with remarkable unity the clear directions from the Holy Spirit. Likewise, they were for the most part received with enthusiasm and docility by the laity who recognized values they were already living.

Clearly, the Council was an act of the Holy Spirit and an authoritative declaration by the Magisterium. Yet, it was a human event, finite and vulnerable to imbalance, in need of correction and development. So now, sixty years later, we can identify problems.

1. Unbalanced Positivity and Credulity, especially in regard to modern culture. The problem here is the timing: in 1965 the Council ended with an open, warm, trusting openness to modern culture. At that precise moment, the Cultural Revolution was exploding in the West. Not only did the Council fail to prepare us for this new, fierce Culture War, but it made us weak, trusting, and vulnerable.

2. Null Curriculum. This is the concerns that are significant for their absence. 

- Communism is not mentioned. It was at that time in history the primary antagonist of the Church. In 1962, in the Metz Accord, the Vatican agreed with Russia to avoid condemnation of communism in exchange for permission of bishops from that bloc to participate in the Council. This was in accord with a broader conciliatory approach in which the Vatican hoped to appease the communists. Tragically, this same policy is now at work in China. John Paul, long a quiet but resolute opponent of communism, was to replace this with a warrior approach that (aligned with Regan's hard ball diplomacy) triumphed. In any case, a student of history reading the Council documents would get a false, limited view of the Church of 1962-5 with the avoidance of its  single biggest enemy. Could you write a history of WWII without mention of Nazi Germany?

- Sexuality. The Council properly emphasizes the unitive, along with the procreative, end of sex within marriage. It deliberately punted on the issue of contraception. This is understandable as that technology was brand new at that time; prudence dictated patience. The flaming hot issue was placed in the hands of the Pontifical Commission on Contraception. In 1966 the members voted 64-4 to allow contraception within marriage when motives are pure, generous and prudent. Pope Paul VI controversially rejected this guidance, heeding instead the minority report, championed by Cardinal Wojtyla (to be John Paul) in Humanae Vitae 1968. This was a striking decision: Paul listened to the majority and minority reports and then decided with the 6% minority. Is this the "synodal" way? Probably not; but it is the Catholic way. In any case, the Council documents give no hint that the Church was about to enter into a "forever war" over sex, gender, family and the value of incompetent human life.

- Secular Age: Loss of the Sacred.  Unintended consequences. What was happening in the 1960s in the West and especially the USA was a surge of unprecedented prosperity. This contrasts sharply with the hardship and suffering of the Depression and the War as well as the religious revival of the post-war years. With it came a sweeping secularism: infatuation with science, technology, progress; the triumph of the therapeutic; loss of a sense of the sacred, of the supernatural, of the diabolic. The Council did not endorse this, but nor did it directly confront it. There seems to have been a euphoric positivity about society and culture, an ease with this confidence, a diminished sense of the holy and the demonic. This included a disparagement of religious tradition, of authority, of the sacredness of both paternity and maternity. Here again, the Council noticeably misread the signs of the times. In its unbalanced positivity towards modernity and world religions, it became vulnerable to relativism and subjectivism. In its liturgical reform, it diminished the sense of awe, the solemnity of the Latin and an ancient rite, of communion with our ancestors as well as the Church Triumphant (heaven) and Suffering (purgatory).

And so we see that the diabolical forces already active and about to surge were minimally recognized by the Council. In fact, the unintended consequences, not only of the implementation but also of the actual documents, was to weaken the spiritual immune system of Catholicism. An entire culture collapsed in the wake of the Council, not as a direct result, but partly because it weakened rather than strengthened defensive forces: preaching on sin and repentance, confession of sin, silence in liturgy, reverence for priesthood/religious life, vigilance about the diabolical, awe of sexuality, and consideration of the last things of death/judgement/heaven/hell. Inexorably but unintentionally, especially among academic elites,  Catholic piety was being replaced by the therapeutic and social justice activism.  

Conclusion

Vatican II was an organic, complete, coherent, inspired and inspiring gestalt of mid-20th-century Catholicism, peaking exactly in 1965. At the same time, it unintentionally weakened our combative resources against the axis of world/flesh/devil that was surging to attack us at that very moment.

Now, sixty years later, we are under attack from those same forces: communism (now relocated to China), cultural progressivism (now deep within our hierarchy with Parolin, Fernandez, Cupich, etc.), and we might add Islamic terrorism. John Paul and Benedict were seasoned Cultural Warriors... clear, decisive and assertive...  against antagonists: Nazism, Communism, Cultural Liberalism, the Culture of Death, the violent irrationality of Islam, and the Dictatorship of Relativism. 

In contrast to this "soldier of Christ" militancy, we see in the papacies of Francis and Leo a return to appeasement and accommodation, a weakness in clarity and decisiveness, often summarized as "the Spirit of Vatican II." As we invoked and received the Holy Spirit in the Council and in many forms afterwards, we do well to again pray for Pope Leo, the cardinals and bishops: "Come Holy Spirit!"