The Troubled Soul of Donald Trump

Last night on 60 Minutes Ross Douthat did an extraordinary interview of Donald Trump,  the first extended interview since the midterms. Pressing  him clearly, firmly with hard questions on a range of topics, Ross maintained a courtesy, a respect, an emotional serenity. This seemed to calm the President who voiced the usual nonsense, but himself remained tranquil, reflective and even accepting of the historic events. No election denial. He seemed to be unaware of how critical Douthat has been of him over the years.

The conclusion was astonishing. He asked about the state of his soul, before God, as he considers his death. Wow! At age 80 Trump is surely aware of his mortality. He seemed to be, after this marathon of rallies, fatigued and therefore pensive. Ross, a solid Catholic, is aware that we are in November, the last month of the Church calendar, the month of sanctified and suffering souls, of the last things of death, judgement, heaven and hell. He moved seamlessly from the political, the historic, the immanent to the transcendent, the eternal: the destiny of his soul. 

Trump's response, immediate and spontaneous, was revealing: "I hope I am missed." In the face of death, he does not fear annihilation or condemnation, he does not long for God, nor does he does  presume heaven. He wants our attention, our approval, our affection. He wants to be loved. Emotionally, he is a needy, even infantile person.

He said that as a religious person he believes in God, heaven and hell. He expressed a hope for heaven but seemed very uncertain about it. At this point, the finale, Ross discards his identity as sage-investigator and goes full blast prophet, confessor, spiritual director. He asks: before Christ at your death, will you be able to forgive your enemies, Comey, Pelosi and others? His response is clear and firm: No. I will not forgive them. They are bad people and have done bad things. I will not forgive them. He is definite. He is hard. There is no softness or ambivalence. He is in the mortal sin of hatred.

In this he revealed his own soul, but also the heart of his MAGA movement. The core: hatred. This populist movement is a mixture of many policies, but the emotional power springs from resentment and anger. Trump is such a lightening rod for the diabolical energies of MAGA ... in a way no one else can mimic ... because he is himself possessed by the spirit of hatred. He himself admitted that he could shoot someone on a NYC street and his followers would remain loyal to him. This is because however bad he is, he still embodies their hatred of the liberal elite.

Clearly, he is  a sinner, a public sinner, in need of our prayers. He is not Catholic. He is baptized and therefore a Christian, part of the body of Christ. He is our President and therefore elicits our loyalty. Now that he is thrown off his pedestal of power, he is a pathetic, pitiable person. I do not myself find this difficult: I have a soft spot in myself for him. Melania is Catholic, apparently, in a pious and private manner. We pray for all of them: Jared, Ivanka, and the family.

I find it easy also to pray for Bill, Hilary, Barak and Michelle...all non-Catholics, deeply misguided but also decent in many dimensions. My challenge is prayer for disloyal Catholics, Joe Biden above all. 

In a different flavor, yesterday's news also included a clip of George W. Bush riding bike across his ranch with disabled veterans. With the passage of time, by comparison, the simple, modest decency of that president, and his father, becomes more pronounced. 

It is good for all of our souls that we pray for the eternal destiny, forgetting about politics for a time, of our leaders. Trump needs prayer. Don't we all?

Happy November: month of saints and souls, thanksgiving, death, judgment, heaven and hell.

The Four Streams of Love

What is love?

Dictionary definitions see it as a feeling, emotion, attachment, attraction or affection. These are clearly reductionist as emotivist. Yes, love is a feeling; but is much more than that.

More philosophical, moral minds insist it is an act of the will, a concern for the other, a disposition of generosity and even self-sacrifice. This is an improvement, but remains reductive as moralistic. Yes, love is a decision, of will-guided-by-intellect; but is much more than that. 

Love cannot be defined in light of other realities since it is the absolute, primal, foundational, original principle of reality. It is coextensive with Being itself. How do you define being? existence? reality? They are immediately, intuitively obvious, as self-manifesting. The attempt to define in other terms is immediately futile.

Human loves...in all their complexity, nuance, depth, ambiguity, promise...remain vulnerable to futility, frustration and tragedy...unless they realize their true nature. They all flow from, reflect, and flow to, the Absolute, Eternal, Tri-Personal Drama/Event of love within the Holy Trinity. Human loves only become coherent, purposeful, integral, and sustainable when seen as reflections, icons, sacramentals...finite, tentative, provisional...of the great, abiding, infinite Love of the Trinity.

Let us again ponder the varieties of human love. C.S. Lewis, in his classic The Four Loves, revived the classic Greek typology:  Storge as affection, body-based; Philia as friendship of equals joined in a common engagement;  Eros as desire;  Agape as selfless, sacrificial concern for the other. Here we again prefer an alternate four-part typology around the loves of the family: filial, of the son/daughter for father/mother; paternal/maternal as delight and tenderness; fraternal/sororal of brother and sister and friend; and spousal, the mutual desire of bride and groom. This paradigm is less abstract and more concrete, grounded in the realities that structure every human family.

Filial love incorporates storge love of affection into a deeper spiritual reality. It is the primal love of the human person as creature: receptive. The embryo/infant/child is receptive of parental love, broadly understood. This is physical, emotional, and eventually intellectual, social, spiritual. It is the primal pleasure and joy of comfort received that nourishes trust as the foundational attitude towards life. This develops further into gratitude, appreciation, reverence and eventually adoration of the Creator. This is the fountain from which every human love will flow. This is the core love of every creature.

Paternal and Maternal loves are best not abstracted into "parental love" so that they retain their grounding in nature, biology, and the ontology of gender. But their inner form is identical in its twofold focus: delight in the little Beloved, and tenderness of care for the little one in her fragility, vulnerability and suffering. Delight here is distinct from pleasure or satisfaction; it is not merely a feeling; it is the intellectual-contemplative-emotional-spiritual engagement with the little one as true, good and beautiful. This is accompanied by the passion to nurture and protect her against any threat. This passion of protection, even in the animal kingdom, is the strongest natural instinct, even exceeding the desire and delight of lovers. (In my opinion.) Arguably this is the love that most resembles the divine. It is groBunded in the physicality of storge as it consumes itself sacrificially in the love of agape.

Fraternal/Sororal or Friendship love is identical with philia.  It is the mutuality of equals as engaged in a common enterprise: family, sport, politics, religion, art, etc. It is free of the neediness of filial love, of the heavy duty of parental concern, of the flaming passion of spousal desire. There is mutuality in delight, respect, care and desire...but all in a lighter manner. What binds is not that mutuality so much as a third, shared reality that engages, a faith, mission, interest, hobby or goal. So it is a tripod: two friends and their shared concern.

Spousal Desire is equivalent to eros  understood in the broadest, deepest sense. We of course know the "erotic" as physical desire or attraction. This is  included in eros or spousal longing but is far from being everything. A deeper aspect is romantic, emotional or psychological attraction. This is stronger as it draws from deeper psychic needs. Both of these, however, are basically need-based attractions and not really love in the truer sense of valuation of the other, beyond one's own needs or desires. Such desire can be selfish, passing infatuation and, frustrated, be easily transformed into hatred and resentment. Such attraction is itself wholesome and good, but only within the context of  and infused by deeper, stronger forms including charity (agape), reverence, tenderness, selfless delight, and shared openness to transcendent values.   

Christian, especially Protestant, thought (Nygren) has sharply contrasted agape  and eros as opposites which exclude and deny each other: the first generous, selfless, Godly; the second selfish, lustful, sinful. It is true that eros on its own is vulnerable to perversion into domination, violence, control. But even the lowest forms of need-based desire (of the infant, of the animal, of the injured person) are in themselves good. In addition, there are higher forms of eros  which are more deeply, intensively wholesome: the desire for genuine beauty, truth and goodness. Here we have the artist, the scholar, the journalist, the activist in passionate pursuit of justice. These too are forms of desire. More profoundly still: our inner desire for God's very self. We are created to desire God: this is Eros. This is good. 

Even deeper still: the love of God for us, properly understood, is not pure agape, oblation and sacrifice, bereft of desire. God does desire us. He created us out of generosity but also out of desire for us, a yearning to share with us his eternal joy, a yearning for us as delightful to him. This was not need based. It was generosity-based desire. 

And so, we see in every love the operation of desire along with generosity. The infant desires the attention of mother and father; and this is very good. Friends and siblings enjoy each other and their shared interests. The mother and father desire their little one, in an entirely wholesome, generous manner. Lastly, of course, spousal desire includes but transcends the physical and emotional into the generative, altruistic, personal, aesthetic, moral, and spiritual. 

Spousal love  uniquely flows from mutuality in desire but is even more profoundly grounded in fraternal/sororal or philia love, the more stable reverence for each other and united engagement with transcendent realities, including family and God. In lesser degree, spouses or lovers engage with each other ... creatively, fluidly, organically ... in filial/parental love. In the dance of matrimony one responds to the others need and vice versa. But that is, of course, not the focus of the relationship.

Love and Time

Living in the fragility and tentativeness of time, we are always pilgrims, journeyers moving and changing, drawn by grace to the Kingdom of Heaven. And so our human loves are tentative, finite, and vulnerable. We move from infant love to maturity, from one friendship to another, from romantic love to seasoned love. No earthly love can satisfy the profound erotic longing of our God-desiring hearts. 

At the same time, every genuine human live is a sharing in the infinite love of the Trinity and so it endures, as memory, in the enduring life of God and thus triumphs over death intrinsic to time. Every kind act, every friendship and romance, every heroic act...abides forever in the eternal heart and intellect of of God.

Pope Benedict

With incomparable clarity and depth, Pope Benedict, in his classic Deus Caritas Est, illuminated the interior harmony of eros and agape. In human (sinful) life they often contrast. But in God they infuse and illuminate each other. God gives to us in oblation, sacrifice and generosity; but out of a desire for us and for union with us. He imagines the ladder of Jacob, with angels ascending and descending, as showing the love of God, descending generously as it ascends from the abyss of human desire and need. The two are in perfect accord. 

The Love of Christ

We leave the best to last. In our Lord Jesus Christ we see every human love as reflective of the love of the Trinity. 

Filial: Christ, loyal son of Mary and Joseph,  is the Son of God: perfectly, absolutely receptive of and reflective of all the love and being of the Father. 

Paternal: Christ comes to us from the heart of the Father to die for us, to pardon, to save, to give eternal life.

Fraternal: Christ is our friend, brother, captain and king.

Spousal: Christ is Bridegroom of the Church his Spouse: he burns with desire to give himself and set fire to the earth.

Every specific human love is a unique combination of these four loves. Every one of our personal, human loves, however humble, is a share in this magnificent Drama of Love.

You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.  St. Augustine

 

Asymmetry of Man and Woman

 Asymmetry is a lack of similarity, balance, or proportion between two parts. It suggests a tension, a dissonance. For example, your left and right hand are largely symmetrical as they face each other in different directions but one is dominant as in left-or-right-handed.

In the Catholic world we are highly aware of the complementarity of man and woman: that we balance and compensate each other to make a more complete unity in marriage and family and beyond. This is true enough. Our seven children would agree that they benefited from the contrasting masculinity/femininity of my wife and I. But that spousal communion never reaches a climax of harmony, serenity and balance. There remains always frustration, misunderstanding, annoyance, conflict. Part of the mystery of gender is this very tension/dissonance that is not resolved in this life. We will soon celebrate 56 happy years of marriage. The tension does not diminish with age; in fact it heightens in some dimensions with decline in physical/psychological stamina, energy and resilience. It is essential that we clearly accept the inevitable asymmetry between male and female. It is not a negative, but a fruitful tension if handled in wisdom, charity, patience and faith.

A minor example: the humor of the male, as in teasing,  is often aggressive, crude and even sexual. To the woman this is at best childish, at worst offensive and repugnant.  This dissonance does not resolve itself but tends to persist despite good intentions for mutual sensitivity.

Men and women do not think alike. For example, in moral thought and behavior, women are compassionate, intimate, intuitive, generous. Men are more detached, objective, rule-and-principle oriented. No, these realities are not to be dismissed as stereotypes. They are part of reality.

The two mature at different paces. Teaching CCD to 7th graders, I marvel at the disparity at age 12: the boys are little boys, physically and emotionally;  the girls mostly tower over the boys in height but even more in emotional maturity. The boys will catch up, but it will take a very long time.

Women in large part do not understand men. Innocent but naive young women with curvaceous figures cluelessly dress in fashionable tight-fitting clothing. If they could read the minds of men who see them they would be horrified.

Men in large part do not understand women, especially in their sensitivity and vulnerability. We do not know the harm we have done with our infidelities. I exhort my brothers: Let us pray passionately for purity of heart, that we clearly see our women in all their preciousness, that we repair the harm we have done!

From this fundamental asymmetry definite truths emerge.

- The biggest possible error is the romantic illusion that a lover will satisfy, complete and fulfill you. The idea of a "soul mate" who matches you in perfect symmetry. This is a recipe for disaster. Big reason about half marriages fall apart. In popular culture this is the dominant myth. It prevails also in the delusion of "gay marriage."

- Men and women each need strong, close, sober friendships with their own sex. These have to satisfy much of the emotional need we all carry. We of the same sex naturally understand each other; can support each other properly.

- The Catholic practice of same-sex education, especially in high school, makes a lot of sense. Educators can address the specific needs of men and women. The distractions of attraction, flirtation and jealousy are helpfully diminished. Focus is on learning, friendship, sports and other activities.

- It is extremely rare for a man and woman to sustain a very close (BFF) relationship over a period of time. In the famous When Harry Met Sally argument, Sally won the argument as they did not maintain a longtime non-sexual, non-romantic relationship. They fell for each other, sexually and romantically. But another reason such a relationship is unlikely is the asymmetry: men and women rub each other the wrong way, much of the time. Without contrary attractions of sex/romance and the mission of family, social pressures and expectations, not to mention shared faith in Christ, it is very rare for such a relationship to prevail over time.

- Homosexuality, lacking the fruitful tension of asymmetry, is a fraudulent, deceptive mimicry of conjugality: not complementary, not unitive, not fruitful, not asymmetric; it is a monotonous, violent, pathological symmetry, like Narcissus gazing at himself in the pond. As a cultural movement...pride, parades, podcasts, flags...it is flamingly histrionic and self-righteous. Inherently, it is sterile and self-destructive.

- Finally, a realistic approach to marriage is to anticipate great joy and satisfaction, but along with that misunderstanding, hurt, disappointment, and conflict. In the catechesis of Kiko Arguello, couples are guided to expect mutual crucifixion: we crucify the ones we love, the ones closest to us. On our own resources we cannot overcome such sin and suffering. If we each draw close to Christ, in conversion and trust, we receive from the Holy Spirit the ability to ask for forgiveness, and to give forgiveness. In this we overcome the asymmetry and draw each other deeply into the love of the Holy Trinity which alone satisfies and completes us.

Our Church Polarized, Confused, Betrayed; and the Loyal Catholic Resistance

Now almost 18 months into his papacy, we see that Leo...prayerful, slow, cautious, deliberate,  steady, serene, irenic...is true to his word: he is continuing the program of Francis.  This is a sadness, a disappointment for many of us. We are betrayed in crucial areas of our received Catholic faith. But first, a thumbnail review of five recent papacies (the most recent both dual-pontificates.)

Postwar Stability and Expansion. Pope Pius XII, 1945-58. Especially in the USA, the Church was steady, thriving, confident, expansive; united against the global adversary, atheistic Communism; moving across the globe, especially the global South, in missionary fervor, cultural influence, and aid to the suffering. Time-tested, stable institutions stood serenely as alongside them, in full view, movements of renewal quietly flourished: ecumenism, Scripture, social justice, role of the laity, centrality of religious freedom, acceptance of pluralism, dialogue with Judaism and world religions, and positive engagement with modernity.

Vatican Council Renewal. St. Pope John XXIII and St. Paul VI, 1958-68. Tremendous church change within even greater cultural revolutions.

Confusion and Chaos. St. Paul VI, 1968-78. Widespread catechetical/theological confusion; progressivism takes charge of Catholic academia; loss of vocations; decline in church participation; widespread collapse of institutions. At the same time, lay renewal movements gain in strength. 

Restoration. St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, 1978-2013. Grounding of the Council reforms in continuity with tradition. Catholic Catechism. An extraordinary body of papal teaching from both pontiffs. Lay renewal movements continue to surge in influence.

Return of Confusion and Polarization. Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV, 2013-Today.  Impulsive, incoherent campaign to reconcile with theological progressivism and Chinese communism. In this they have betrayed fundamentals of Catholicism.

1. Chinese Church has been abandoned into the hands of the Communist Party. The underground Church, loyal for 80 years to the Pope, has been betrayed. The Party now unilaterally designates bishops and controls them. John Paul and Benedict, knowledgeable about communism, refused to sign such an agreement. This is a disloyalty of enormous proportions. I can recall no comparable abandonment of so many Catholics into the hands of such a  hostile enemy. Cardinal Zen stands as a solitary witness against this.

2. Spousal-Sexual Ethos ... centrality of chastity and conjugal fidelity...  of John Paul and Benedict, traditional and yet fresh, is renounced in favor of a truce with cultural progressivism, including feminist and LGBTQ militancy.

3. Latin Mass, center of Catholic life for 1500 years and source of inspiration for young families, is dictatorially crushed.

4. Deconstruction of the Episcopacy.  Synodality continues to replace bishops' authority with a group-process parliament of endless grievance, introversion, and progressive manipulation. Meanwhile, in important Vatican offices,  lay people assume positions of authority and governance traditionally reserved to those in holy orders.

5. Clerical Intrusion into the lay domain of politics. As the laity are clericalized into Church governance, the Vatican assumes a global  role as "caliph" responsible for world peace, justice and order. And so, the hierarchy intervenes on contentious, chaotic, prudential and properly lay policy affairs including immigration, borders, war, economy, climate and other. The distinct missions of clergy and laity are convoluted.

6. Just Use of Lethal Force of State to defend the common good and the innocent...in war, police work and capital punishment...as always understood by the Church is replaced by a vague, vacuous pacifism s in denial of the hard realities of evil.

Loyal Catholic Resistance

It is imperative that those of us who know and love our Catholic legacy resist the Francis/Leo hegemony and that we witness to Truth received... always in loyalty, humility, clarity, decisiveness and love.

The clearest resistance to date has come, at least in the USA, from the laity: First Things, EWTN, etc. In the hierarchy we have Zen, Burke, Scola, Mueller, Sarah, and more. The best example of such truthful resistance is the clear, absolute refusal of the entire African episcopacy to cooperate with blessing of homosexual unions. Another encouraging incident: Bishop Barron recently corrected Cardinal Vesco who said we do not want to convert Jewish and Muslim believers. We need more of such virile candor, courage, confrontation and correction from our prelates. We are in fact in a war within the Church, even a holy war on behalf of Revealed Truth handed down to us. We can no longer "make nice" with deference to the Pope and avoidance of conflict. "I have come to bring the sword" is the way Jesus put it.

In Outliers, (2008) Malcolm Gladwell considered the horrible safety record of Korean Airlines in the 1980-90s. Their accident picture was 17 times worse than that of American Airlines despite comparable training, competence and mechanics. The problem was the culture of extreme deference to hierarchy and authority: subordinate pilots would not confront or correct their superiors out of a dysfunctional respect. Their accident picture corrected itself with the introduction of a more direct, confrontational, less hierarchical safety culture.  Something like this has to happen with our Church. We need from our bishops virile, vigorous candor and confrontation.

Big Picture

The institutional hierarchy is essential to and constitutive of the Church. But it is not everything. The Church is best understood as the Mystical Body of Christ, the Communion in holiness of saints (militant on earth, suffering in purgatory, triumphant in heaven), as our Mother, as the Bride of Christ.

Christ, in the Holy Spirit, is intimate with his Church in so many ways besides the hierarchy: primarily the prayer and charity of saints, including the humble, anonymous ones; ordinary priestly ministry and parish life; and an infinity of works of mercy, religious life, gatherings in prayer, holy families, and so forth.

I return always to my "Fr. Burke Principle." Fr. John Burke (you recall dear Reader), pastor of my parish from before my birth until when I left at age 18, was rarely seen and when seen was odd. Was it alcohol? Emotional distress? Unknown. But what was clear is that the work of the Church went on smoothly: priests, brothers, sisters, families, school, sacraments, births and deaths. Distress and dysfunction of priest/bishop/pope does not stop the workings of the Holy Spirit.

In my single positive experience with physical therapy I learned that the weak, wounded bone would recover slowly as the adjacent muscles were strengthened by exercise. And so, with the Church: dysfunction in the Vatican and in much of the episcopacy need not discourage us. Our Lord is present to us in so many ways. We open our hearts, minds, and action to the Holy Spirit in our distinctive places and missions. Our Lord will correct the hierarchy in his good time.

Let us pray that Truth, in Love, prevail across the entire Church, especially in the Vatican and the episcopacy!

 

Catholic Eccentrics and Centrics

An eccentric is someone "off center," different, odd, idiosyncratic, non-conventional, weird, not a normie. Sometimes it is used positively in the sense of entertaining, endearing, comical, and refreshing. By "centric" I here mean one who is properly centered, grounded, and balanced. We will see that the two do not exclude each other.

We were blessed in our family of nine (with another two fosters) by a mother and father who were strongly centric: grounded in their Catholic faith, tested and tried in youth by the Depression and WWII,  ever in love with each other. Everything else fell into its proper place. We were additionally graced with eccentric family members. My maternal Uncle Billy was a purple heart WWII vet, studied at Columbia University,  and spent his adult life as a mendicant entrepreneur in South America. All the time he was also an agent for US army intelligence, a spy. He lived a double life and never told a single family member. He was highly intelligent, hilariously funny, immensely idiosyncratic, a story teller, and a fascination for us. My paternal Uncle Jack was different: he fought with Patton and may have been  post-trauma. He was a loner, avoiding family functions; his wife,  agoraphobic, stayed home. He was in his 50s and still caddying when I started at about the age of 14. He had a job and so was not what we called "a rummy"... a drinker that caddied to pay rent and buy booze. He was affectionately called "duck" because of how he walked so I was nicknamed "little duck." I was not insulted; he seemed to elicit a quiet, respectful affection. Our great-aunt Agnes was a spinster who lived next door and was close to us. She was also "a character." She loved Robert E. Lee. This made sense as her father (my paternal great-grandfather) had fought for the confederacy upon arrival from Ireland, taught for a while as a Christian Brother, and started a dairy farm in West Orange, NJ.

I have delighted in a range of friendships over the years but am particularly drawn to eccentrics. For example, I have written about "maverick priests" whom I particularly cherish as interesting, insightful, afflicted, intuitive, entertaining, loving and lovable. I find them and they find me.

Here we will identify significant eccentrics and centrics of the last 80 years in the Church. 

Top Catholic Eccentrics 

These are important influencers within Catholicism whose thought was "off center" or different but in a way that was enriching, if not entirely balanced. Recall, please, that all our great reformers were eccentric in their time: Jesus and the apostles, Anthony, Benedict, Francis, Dominic, Ignatius and so on. These are prophetic figures who lean heavily and fruitfully into some reality of our faith, perhaps pushing the boundaries of our Catholic reservation in some way, but remaining overall loyal and offering us great enrichment. 

Kiko Arguello and Carmen Hernandez. Kiko left  bourgeois life and buried himself with the gypsies, taking his bible, guitar and ten dogs for heat. With Carmen, he developed an entirely creative, radical, orthodox, alternative Catholicism.

Ralph Martin and Leaders of Charismatic Renewal. Under the influence of the Holy Spirit, (in my view), in the wake of the Council starting in 1967, these integrated from Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism religious resources to create a distinctive Charismatic Catholicism which contrasted strongly with the dominant progressivism of the time.

Ivan Illich. Primarily a cultural critic rather than a theologian, he troubled the Vatican with his views but was voluntarily laicized to pursue his controversial advocacy. His was a most profound, broad critique of modernity (and the Church institution) as bureaucracy and technocracy. Similar views were advanced by non-Catholics Ellul, Berry, Goodman, Holt as well as Catholics Schumacher, Chesterton, Belloc.

Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. Maurin was an itinerant, self-taught wise man who instructed Day in a distinctive, radical, love-the-poor Catholicism. They were hardcore Catholic but politically anarchist and pacificist and so eccentric within our Church. A charming, convincing disciple today is Larry Chapp, a "communio" theologian who left academia to start a Catholic Worker farm. He is a favorite of mine for several reasons. He is by far the most comical, entertaining, living Catholic theologian. He influenced my daughter and her husband in college. He is triply eccentric as anarchist, pacifist and universalist. But his love for Christ and the Church somehow overcome these flaws.

Rene Girard. With his groundbreaking, revolutionary anthropology of mimetic desire he has in effect created a new "center" for Catholic thought that is basically consonant with and enriching of our legacy. His thought has been wonderfully presented by his disciple Gil Baile. He is  more significant a contemporary thinker than Freud, Marx, Darwin or Nietzsche. 

Adrienne von Speyr and Hans Urs Von Balthasar. Balthasar is the most profound, encyclopedic, creative Catholic theologian of the 20th century. He deferred to his collaborator, the controversial mystic Adrienne von Speyr as more significant, especially for her annual Holy Saturday "descent into hell" which informed his theology of hell.

 E. Michael Jones. A cranky conservative Catholic, Jones is a brilliant cultural analyst and historian. His work is flawed by a pronounced anti-Judaism which returns to earlier Catholic bias and is much too close to antisemitism. He is especially prescient in criticism of Catholic conservatisms including Neoconservativism, Pentecostalism, and Marian apparitions at Medjugorje. He is second only to Jaki in combativeness.  

 Simone Weil. A brilliant mystic, she died out of solidarity with the poor and suffering in WWII, having refused baptism despite her love for the suffering Christ. She is strongly "out of center" but left us tremendous insight.

Paolo Freire, Oscar Romero, Gustavo Gutierrez, Don Camara.  These are the shining stars of a "liberation theology" which remains (precariously) within Catholic boundaries. They pushed our faith strongly into solidarity with the poor. Camara was archbishop in Brazil for 21 years and Mendez of Cuernavaca for 30 years. They had affinities with Illich. Cardinal Mueller, protege of Ratzinger, whose Catholic discernment is impeccable, strongly endorses liberation theology in the form offered by Gutierrez. Romero is a canonized saint.  

Top Catholic Centrics

These are Church leaders and influencers who have been centered, profound, orthodox, balanced in their teaching and witness, including their demeanor/style/action. Important leadership positions in the Church especially require strong centric personalities and thinkers. Representatives: 

Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Paul VI, John XXIII, Pius XII.

Theologians Dulles, D.L. Schindler, DeLubac, Danielou, Congar, Boyer, Gilson, Maritain, Hildebrandt, Stein, Pieper, 

Cardinals Cantalamesa, Burke, Sarah, Mueller, Scola, Cooke, Suenens, O'Connor, George.

Bishops Varden, Barron. 

Special Cases

Popes Francis and Leo.

Bergoglio was a real eccentric: intense, volatile, impulsive, intuitive, emotional, intellectually incoherent. He was his own man. Creative and insightful, he was an excellent homilist and spiritual director, but a trainwreck of a pope. Above all a pope must be centric: holding everyone together, holding the Gospel truth in all its dimensions together. 

Prevost is deeply centrist in temperament, demeanor, and governing style. He looks for stability and especially unity in the Church. Theologically he is influenced by the progressivism of Francis and lacks depth, clarity and decisiveness in orthodoxy. 

Holy Ones Who Go "Catholic Weird"

Padre Pio, Mother Theresa, all stigmatists, healers, bi-locators, levitators, exorcists, hermits, and postmortem in-corrupts.

Eccentric Centrics 

The following were deeply centric in thought and life as they were eccentric, idiosyncratic and immensely entertaining in personality.

Blessed Fulton Sheen: flamboyant, histrionic; famously fought with powerful Cardinal Spellman over money for the missions;  and got in trouble late in life for his zeal for racial justice.

Mother Angelica: Immensely influential with EWTN as down-to-earth, populist, crusty Italian Catholic.

Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete: Sophisticated, NY, priest, writer-speaker celebrity; leader of American Communion and Liberation; hilariously entertaining; spent the last years of his life caring sacrificially for his disabled brother.

Flannery O'Connor: Immensely creative and entertaining; fiercely Catholic.

Fr. Stanley Jaki: Brilliant scientist/philosopher famous for his fierce combativeness.  

Elizabeth Anscombe: Protege of Wittgenstein; cigar-smoking, custom-defying, Humanae Vitae endorsing, atom-bomb condemning, mother of seven. Probably the most eccentric of all! 

Caryl Houselander: Inspirational writer who suffered anxiety and had an extraordinary, non-professional gift for helping those suffering mental and emotional anguish.

Heather King: Recovering alcoholic, convert, a contemporary Caryl Houselander.

Founders of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal were largely eccentric centrics: Groeschel, Sudano, Fortuna, Pio, and Apostoli. 

The John Paul Institute for the Family in Washington DC seems to attract eccentric centrics: Adrian Walker, Paolo Prosperi, Michael Walker  and others are balanced by sound centrics like Healy, Schindler, Antonio Lopez and others.

Stephen Adubato, curator of "Cracks in Modernity," a friend, and the most promising up-and-coming eccentric centric.

Conclusion

Notice that most of these were alive and active during and after the Council. Those were the years of my own adolescence and early adulthood. There were times of immense ferment in the Church. These significant figures are orthodox theologically, but moving zealously into prayer, contemplation and the mystical side of Catholicism. Many of them identify strongly with the poor and marginalized. They also include critiques of modernity as technological/bureaucratic/meritocratic. They coinhere in a traditional yet contemporary Catholicism that is renunciatory of cultural progressivism without being a retreat to a Church of the past.

Do you, dear Reader, share my delight, admiration, and gratitude in considering these inspiring, entertaining, radiant persons?  It has been a wonderful time to be Catholic!

Praise God!

Exult!

 Recently, when I ask our Lord what he wants from or for me, I receive a single word: Exult!

Question: When I receive this word, is this a natural, psychological process, a kind of auto-suggestion? Or is it heavenly and supernatural, a movement of the Holy Spirit?

It is both; it is not an either/or. It is natural, ordinary, psychological. This word comes to me much as any random, meaningless word might: stone, boy, loud. It is not miraculous and unnatural like bilocation, stigmata or incorruption after death. But the fruit of it is that I feel very happy in relation to God; I experience a surge in confidence, zeal, fervor, fierceness, strength, courage, and longing for God. "By their fruits you will know them." So, with joy I receive and cherish this Word. The natural is oriented to, receptive of, and collaborative with the supernatural or spiritual.

Try this, dear Reader. Prayer is friendship with God: PAL...Praise and thanks; Ask...for yourself and others; Listen...for God's voice. So I invite and encourage and exhort you:  Ask Jesus what he wants for you or from you. Then sit quietly, peacefully, patiently, hopefully. And wait.  And wait.  And wait. You may or may not hear a word. If you do, that word may well be random and meaningless. But it may also be a comforting, healing, strengthening Word from God.

"Exult" is an interesting word: it means to rejoice, to experience and manifest extreme joy, often after a victory.

The Latin root "exsultare" means literally to leap out. It means to "jump for joy." It is interior but manifests physically, powerfully and spontaneously. 

We see this in sports. Your basketball team wins the championship with a jump shot at the buzzer in a third overtime. Fans and players all spontaneously jump for joy. Victory! Triumph over the opponent! Sheer joy!

It is associated with military victory. Imagine El Cid and the Reconquista; the victory at Lepanto; the images of VE Day on May 8, 1945. 

It is close to the word "exalt" which is to praise and glorify someone. The etymology: Latin "exaltare" which means to "lift up." This clearly occurs mostly in liturgy in which we glorify God, especially recalling his marvelous deeds. We remember the Israelites as they see the waters destroying the hostile Egyptian chariots. We share in the Resurrection Joy of the apostles and disciples in that 40 days of glorious presence. 

As I write this, dear Reader, I am not quite sure if the word I heard was "exult" or "exalt." What I understood was the intense joy of exult joined with glorification of God. And so, I think (again): it is not either/or but both/and.  It is intense, manifest, fierce Joy, in God's goodness and works.

In this life on earth we are never entirely in the victory, in the way when the buzzer rings and our team is up by one or when Germany and Japan surrendered officially. We are always in the battle. But, by anticipation/expectation/hope, we already exult/exalt. We are like the underdog team that is down but fiercely determined to win. By anticipatory exaltation/exultation, we are zealous, energized, hopeful, fervent, confident, fearless, reckless, already-exultant-exaltant. 

I invite, encourage and exhort you, dear Reader, let us together exult-exalt in the Lord, his works, his intentions!

Foundational Virtues of Virility

 "The defining catastrophe of our time is the crisis in masculinity."    Fleckinstein

Our "virtue" and "virility" both derive from the Latin "vir" which refers in the Roman world to a freeborn masculine person, as distinct from "puer" (boy) and "homo" (human person). It connotes honor, dignity, strength and goodness. Virility...or manliness or masculinity...indicates the masculine as good: as strong, generative, paternal, protective, energetic, forceful. 

The core aim of the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s was, among other things, to deconstruct virility as a form and as a representation of God the Father. It has been fabulously successful. We are suffering a catastrophic crisis in masculinity. 

The final aim of masculinity is paternity: the fatherly giving of life as representative of God our heavenly father. This includes but goes well beyond the merely biological. It begins as filial reception and response: of son to father and mother both. This develops into fraternity, friendship and brotherhood with both men and women. Then spousal or "groomal" (a rare but real word) intimacy with and loyalty to the bride. Finally, fatherhood: physical, emotional, social, intellectual and spiritual. And so we see the itinerary of virility: filial, fraternal, spousal and finally paternal.

The virtues which configure goodness in a woman and in a man are similar, but they take a different gestalt as there is distinction in identity, destiny and mission. For example, vices like vanity or timidity are less damaging to the character of a woman; but lack of empathy or generosity would be less ruinous for that of a man. 

Masculinity is, more than femininity, a discipleship, an itinerary, a process, an achievement. It requires deliberate rites of passage, tests, discipline, encouragement, competition and finally ordination. So it is important to be clear on the most significant virtues to be encouraged. The following seven virtues mutually infuse each other to form the interiority of virility.

1. Loyalty.

Loyalty is arguably the primal masculine virtue; infidelity the worst vice. Abandonment or betrayal of wife, friends, family, country or faith is the abolition of virility. This theme runs through all of culture, literature, and history. What is required, above all, is the proper hierarchy of loyalties. For example, mob movies are obsessed with loyalties: to the gang, the boss, to the brotherhood. However, since there is no underlying faithfulness to virtue, truth, charity, and God, the plot inevitably leads to dramas of betrayal. Likewise, dramas about men in other forms of conflict...police, military, etc...often center on loyalty to the brother that conflicts with fidelity to truth, justice or charity. Loyalty at its best of course is the martyr who dies for his faith or the hero who gives his life for his people.

2. Humility.

The final aim of virility is to image the Fatherhood of God. It is representational. Therefore, the foundational virtue is humility by which the ego of the person is deflated that his Self may reflect the glory, the honor, the love and the mercy of the Father. Problem: in the real, post-original-sin world, the strongest feature of masculinity is pride, the inflated and fragile male ego. And so, the ego must be reduced in order that the genuine Self, in Christ, resplendent in holiness and strength, be manifest.

3. Fortitude.

Virility as paternity images God as strong, protective, life-giving. Fortitude is both passive and aggressive. It is passive as patience, endurance, long-suffering and peaceful in adversity and suffering. It is active as courage, assertiveness, zeal, fierceness, valor, confidence and authority.

4. Chastity.

Purity of heart, including specifically sexual chastity, is required of virility lest it abuse  its power in toxicities of lust and covetousness or emasculate itself in fantasy flight from the real.

5. Sobriety and Serenity.

In addition to freedom from irrational enslavement to inebriation, lust, anger, anxiety, greed and ambition, sobriety here is interior peace that allows for contemplation, wisdom and prudence. Such deep, strong tranquility is a font of stability, energy and fruitfulness.

6. Justice. 

 The male mission ensures the objectivity, the harmony, the integrity of order. It is to do the right thing. It is distinct from Mercy: it does what is due; it does the right thing. Ultimately, in God, Mercy and Justice must infuse and inform each other.

7. Prudence.

Practical wisdom: the fruitful pursuit of the good through all the complex, dense, random and convoluted circumstances of life.

Conclusion

The great failing of Western civilization since 1965 is that we have failed to guide our young men on a path to these virtues. These might make the core curriculum of an itinerary into mature masculinity.

Note that we do not here address the essential theological virtues: faith, hope and love.

Other virtues are arguably as important as the above. Specifically, the core of the relationship of man to woman is tenderness and reverence. These entail compassion, kindness, generosity as well as esteem. These will flourish spontaneously, fluidly, organically in the mutuality of man-and-woman when there is interior to the man the foundation of the seven virtues here denoted.

The Good News: even in the catastrophic insanity of Cultural Liberalism, virility and femininity are irrepressible. There are ever resurging. They are inherent to the created order. 

Let us exult in our masculinity and femininity!

: compassion, gratitude, kindness, generosity and more. These will flourish fluidly and spontaneously when the above are firmly in place.

Good news: even in the insanity of cultural liberalism, we see the resurgence of virility, along with femininity. They are inherent in the created order. They are irrepressible. They reflect the splendor, the truth, the holiness of God. Let us exult in them!