Would, Could, Should Pope Leo XIV Give Us a New "Rerum Novarum?"

Baring a supernatural intervention: No! No! No!

This for three reasons.

First, this Leo is not a world class theologian, intellectual, teacher. He is many splendid things that can make for a solid papacy: highly intelligent; holy, prayerful priest; servant of the poor; cosmopolitan in the best sense; competent administrator, canon lawyer, institutionalist; real listener to all; humble, modest, restrained, sober, judicial, prudent, cautious stabilizer, peacemaker, and unifier. To his credit, he loves Augustine and Pope Benedict. He seems to be little influenced by John Paul as he was already fervently engaged in his missionary work during that monumental papacy. He is quintessentially American: a pragmatist, no library rat or metaphysician. He resembles most of my own family and friends: heart of gold, competent man of action, compassionate and generous. His singular weakness:  he is soft theologically, weak in intellectual (but not spiritual) clarity, depth and decisiveness. Like Francis, in contrast to John Paul and Benedict, he is temperamentally, psychologically, and theologically indisposed to confront the assault of the Sexual Revolution upon the family and the innocence of our young. With Francis, he would avoid this battle, failing, by omission, but not deliberately, in a modesty of weakness, to restrain the imperialistic aggression of the sexual liberationists.

Secondly, our world has become so explosive, dense, complex, confusing...AI, internet, energy, hostile imperialisms, environment, technocracy, gigantism, secularism, decline of Christendom and the family...that it is improbable that a document could accurately address them. 

 Lastly, it is an error to see the pope as teacher on the correct global political order. Catholic social teaching is a body of fluid moral principles that guide the laity in all the specific spheres of decision. It does not dictate policy, politics or ideology. In a camouflaged clericalism, Francis unhappily presented himself as world authority on prudential matters: immigration, war, energy, environment, and capital punishment. He became configured globally, by his progressive admirers, as the Anti-Trump. Leo has similar propensities. 

We do not need a theological breakthrough, like Rerum, from Leo. We need steady governance. We need simple clarity on sexuality and restrain of the sexual liberationists of the European episcopacy. We need to stop abandoning the Chinese Church to the Communist Party. We need less accommodation; more clarity, courage, decisiveness.

 God Gives Us What We Need...When We Need It

What we have...already given by God...is a magisterial body of teaching, starting with Rerum, through the Council and Humanae Vitae, into the Great Dual Pontificate and aspects of Francis.

If I were Leo, I would...

Not stress about the world order. I would delegate. 

I would commission my six best theological bishops (young Turks like Varden and Barron as well as old guns like Mueller, Sarah, Zen, Scola) to dig deeply into the social teaching of Leo XIII through Francis to provide a clear, updated, simple statement addressing our current situation. This would clearly state Catholic understanding of: dignity of human life, sex/gender/family, solidarity, subsidiarity, all the freedoms starting with religion, the role of markets and the state, and more.

They would be served by a second commission of perhaps a dozen outstanding theologians or periti. 

A third level of consultation might be a gathering of experts in specific fields who could show how Catholic thought impacts their areas. Included in this group would be some non-specialists, generalists: journalists or thinkers who merge familiarity with our faith with knowledge of our world condition.

Most importantly, each ordinary bishop of our 3,100 dioceses would find a suffering person, such as a paralyzed quadriplegic, unable to do anything but pray. These would be asked to pray for the fruitfulness of this mission.

What Do We Do in the Meantime?

Leo is unlikely to take this path. He will be an immense improvement on Francis but is unlikely to show the lucidity, courage, decisiveness we conservatives crave. 

In the meantime, we always have...John Paul, Benedict and their interpretation of the Council; their retrieval of Tradition; their both critical and appreciative engagement with modernity.

During the dual-pontificate, many of us were so discouraged by the progressive drift of the Church that we leaned into a degree of ultramontanism, "papalodolatry." The papacy of Francis disabused us of this.  

Happily, we now live in a more multipolar Church. We honor, love and obey Pope Leo as our Holy Father, and Vicar of Christ on earth, but we recognize his limitations. So we receive his teaching in a proper context. Christ with his Father is our King; Mary is our Queen; so we live in a Patriarchy/Matriarchy unlike any social order. Our greatest earthly authority is the lives, example, and teaching of the saints. Along with this we have Scripture/Tradition/Magisterium. At this point I suggest a certain binary Papacy: Leo is our now-Pope. But the teaching of John Paul and Benedict will guide us through the current century and beyond. We have, as well, guidance from bishops. And the intellectual and theological communities. So, we enjoy a multi-magisterium. 

This will leave us with realistic expectations from this fine man who is now our pope. We will enjoy the multiple manners in which we are guided from heaven.

Come Holy Spirit, upon Pope Leo, and on all of us!

My Favorite Ways to Celebrate Eucharist

 What follows is my own subjectivity. Objectively, every Eucharist is equally, absolutely, objectively, formally Perfect:  participation in and reenactment of the unitary Paschal Mystery: Last Supper, death on Calvary, descent, and Resurrection.  But in our personal subjectivity, we are fragile, distracted, inattentive, preoccupied. It is marvelous that some expressions awaken and enliven us, drawing us into the Mystery.

20. - Mass in a Benedictine monastery: austere, simple, basic.

19. - Any mass with a bishop.

18. -Relaxed, informal celebration in family home, reunion, gathering of some sort.

17. - Mariachi mass, Cuernavaca, Mexico, 1968.

16. - In my pre-Council, altar boy days, and occasionally in my adult life, when I was alone with the priest, in a side altar or crypt, as if the priest was there to bring Christ to me personally, even as I represented the entire Church.

15. - Mass in a beautiful basilica, cathedral, church or chapel.

14. - Altar boy, in the old days, at 6 AM mass: communion before mass for those going to work, 20 minutes.

13. - Mass with tens or hundreds of priests in procession, with rousing music, manifesting the splendid virility of the priesthood.

12. - Old funeral mass, all black, Dies Irae, solemn, silent.

11. - Caribbean mass: lively music, huge smiles, warm spirits.

10. - Neocatechumenal mass: especially Kiko's "crusader music," exhortations, echoes.

9.- Two masses with Pope John Paul and one with Pope Benedict.

8. - Ordination masses and first masses, including "first blessings" and kissing of priestly hands.

7. - Mass in retirement homes of Maryknoll and Jesuit priests, many in wheel chairs...men who have given their entire lives to Christ and the Church.

6. - The Latin Mass: Gregorian chant, tons of altar boys (some in their 70s), up and down about 20 times. 

5. - Charismatic mass: praise music, praying in tongues, passionate preaching, prophesies, raising of hands.

4. - Mass with hundreds of men.

3. - Mass with thousands of people, especially young people and families.

2. - Sunday mass in an ordinary parish.

1. - Daily mass: 3-minute homily, 30 minutes, simple, solemn, serene.

The shape of the mass is exquisitely simple: reception of the word; priestly offering of the sacrifice, reception of communion. It is inexhaustible. It properly is expressed in a multitude of ways. It is source and summit of the Church; center of history; heart of the world; purpose of Being.

Vatican II...Overrated!

"The Council is the most important event in the last seventeen hundred years of the Church..."

 This casual, silly statement came in a text this week from my dear college friend Tim R. who is reliably  intelligent, informed, and theologically sound. (Full disclosure: Tim thinks like me most of the time. For some reason, people who think like me, such as yourself dear Fleckinstein-Reader, are always unusually intelligent.😊) This statement reflects an error more common on the theological left wing of our generation: an exaggerated importance attributed to the Council.  We Boomers...privileged, indulged, entitled, narcissistic...coming of age in the 1960s,  view reality through the narrow lens of our pampered youth. And so, our decadent generation, now aging but clinging to power and wealth, vastly exaggerates the importance of the Council. 

In our own lifetime (born 1947) I would identify at least ten events (including the negative) as more important for our Church: 

1. - The Cultural Revolution of the West: sexual liberation, breakdown of family, Godlessness, isolation of the individual, deconstruction of gender, contraception/abortion, collapse of a Christian West.

2. - The Communist triumph in China and North Korea.

3. - Collapse of the Soviet Empire.

4. - Spread of Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism (mostly non-Catholic) especially in the global South.

5. - The malignant growth globally of big tech, state, corporation, bureaucracy..."the machine"..."the matrix."

6. - The rise of Jihadist Islam in various forms.

7. - Reception of the Divine Mercy as revealed to Saint Faustina and proclaimed by St. John Paul.

8. - Lay renewal movements in the Catholic Church.

9. - Dual pontificate of John Paul and Benedict, their authoritative interpretation (continuity) of the Council, and the "Communio" school of theology they share with Balthasar, DeLubac and others.

10. -Priest sex scandal and episcopal negligence; crisis in the priesthood. 

What if There Had Been No Council?

Fleckinstein's interpretation of the Council is well known to you dear Reader: it was a work of the Holy Spirit but is best understood, not as the start of a new Church, but as the culmination, completion, synthesis of  at least ten movements growing fiercely in the previous half century:  

1. ecumenism, 

2. religious freedom, 

3. liturgy, 

4. Bible, 

5. positive if critical engagement with modernity, 

6. "Resourcement" that implicitly retains Thomas in light of all the fathers and doctors, 

7. the holiness and mission of the layman, 

8. reconciliation with the Jews, 

9. acceptance of historicity without abandoning foundational ontology, 

10. recentering of Catholicism in the person/event of Jesus Christ.

If we understand, by "The Council" the sum of these nine movements, we might conclude that it is the defining event of our time. But the Council is itself a singular, discrete event; and these are nine clear movements. 

If there was no Council? These movements would have continued to percolate powerfully within the Church without such a clear, punctuating synthesis. In large part, we might well have the same Church we have today. It is possible to imagine a scenario in which a figure such as John Paul or Benedict could have integrated them, gradually and gently,  without the rupture and chaos that ensued in the 1970s and following. The stunning unanimity of the bishops in accepting the documents and the widespread enthusiastic reception by priests and laity both indicate that these changes were already widely operative and accepted. The Council did not so much change the Church; rather, it validated what was already real.

My friend Tim's comment triggered me to ask:  What are the most important events of the last 1700 years, since Constantine? But first a preface.

The Real Life of the Church: Bride and Body of Christ, Our Mother

More important than any and all events in the life of the Church, since Pentecost, is the underlying continuity of a love affair between Groom and Bride:

- Lives of holiness: that of the great saints, but also the quiet, humble, hidden lives in families, priesthood and the religious life.

- Sacramental encounter with Christ in ordinary Church life.

- Preaching and catechesis of the faith in a million mundane venues.

Granting that primal continuity, the Church is a pilgrim in history and so events do matter.

Most Important Events Since 326  (In addition to the ten above in our lifetime and the ten that birthed the Council.)

1. Evangelization of the globe out of Europe from 1500 -1900.

2. Protestant Reformation: fracture of Christianity.

3. Counter Reformation of Trent and all that followed of Baroque Catholicism.

4. Muslim conquest of about half of Western civilization: across north Africa, into Spain and Turkey and eastward into India.

5. Foundation of religious orders, starting with Ignatius of Loyola, from 1500, which evangelized the globe and structured modern Catholicism. 

6. Fall of the Roman Empire and plunge of Europe into civilizational chaos.

7. Monastic movement, starting with Benedict, as the basis for medieval Christendom. This was preceded by the hermits and monks of the deserts.

8. Defeat of Islam in the Spanish Reconquista, Lepanto, Vienna and other.

9. Defeat of the Axis powers in World War II. 

10. Theology of Thomas, Augustine and the doctors/fathers.

Honorable mention: Schism between West and East, the mendicant  orders (Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites), Medieval Universities,  Renaissance, Enlightenment, World War I, Industrial and Scientific revolutions. 

Fleckinstein concludes in a state of delectation and "com-placentia"...not the lethargy, self-indulgence and ungenerosity of our "complacency" but the deeper Latin-rooted state of "delight with" as interior serenity and gratitude. In this essay, we have not one, not two, but three "top ten lists!" It doesn't get any better than that!

Afterthought: the compulsion to produce "top ten lists" is a subcategory of OCD, a highly masculine preoccupation with hierarchy, order, ranking and dominance. Particularly afflicts firstborn sons. As you know, dear Reader, among Fleckinstein's interests are disorders and therapies that elude the protocols of professional psychology.

My Charismatic Hypo-Manic Episode...and the Two Priests Who Re-Grounded Me

I have a sense of how seemingly ordinary young men suddenly are radicalized by an ideology...Leftist, Rightist, or Jihadist...and become violent terrorists. The immature male psyche...isolated, ungrounded, disconnected...is drawn to an abstract world of ideas, policies, politics. I know because I have such a psyche. What attracts is not exactly fantasy, nor psychosis, but the abstraction of ideas. Women do not seem drawn to this obsession with ideology. Only some men are. The female enjoys an inherent harmony within the brain: the Left and the Right, the discursive/analytic and the contemplative/intuitive/artistic. In right order, the analytic/discursive/abstractive enriches ones engagement with reality. But the immature male, isolated and disconnected, falls easily into toxic disassociation. The ideas, policies, ideology, programs, and conflicts become far more fascinating and arousing than one's own actual life. It is a disassociation similar to daydreaming, delusional thought, hallucination. It resembles also another pathology of exaggerated masculinity: autism in its personal disconnect and fascination with objectivity.  It is symptomatic of a fractured male psyche: lonely, isolated, unhappy, unhinged and in flight from reality.

My Double Life 

So, I have always lived a double, a secret life. "Fleckinstein" itself is obviously a pseudonym, a "nom de guerre" (war name). My actual life is quite ordinary and dull: husband/father, H.S. teacher, supervisor, boarding home director, and so forth. Nothing too exceptional. But my secret life is fascinating: I am a philosopher,  Culture Warrior, contemplative, sage, theologian, prophetic voice, psychologist/anthropologist/sociologist, student of history, critic of culture. I am a Catholic, intellectual Walter Mitty: camouflaged covertly beneath a mundane life is an exhilarating life of the intellect, 

This started in adolescence: I liked pickup basketball but was not athletic, didn't talk to girls because of pathological shyness, worked a number of jobs but mostly caddied, studied appropriately, moderately engaged in classes, and practiced my faith in a steady, sincere but low-affect manner. Life was safe, serene, pleasant, unexceptional, dull. But I was euphoric when I had a book in my hand. Fiction, history, current events, psychology, theology...everything! From the comfort of a large, modest, working-middle-class family, this amazing cosmos opened its miracles to me in reading. 

This stepped up a notch towards the end of college, age 20-21, 1968-9, as I studied philosophy, especially nineteen century and medieval thought. At the same time from the tranquility of a seminary I considered the monumental changes shaking our society and Church. My librarian mentor Pat Williams encouraged and stimulated me. Summer at Ivan Illich's think tank in Cuernavaca heightened the ecstasy.

Example: around sophomore year of college I read Summerhill, the account of a British "free" school where children are unburdened by any mandatory curriculum but spontaneously respond to a rich environment of educational resources. I became fascinated and obsessed. I told my father, an intelligent, down-to-earth, union organizer. He thought I was off my rocker. About three months later I read Bruno Bettelheim, a hardnosed realist psychologist who destroyed the fantasies of progressive education and argued that all children, but especially the poor, need structure, direction  and order. I absolutely renounced Summerhill and went strong conservative on curriculum. My adolescence and early adulthood was one of reckless, high-energy intellectual promiscuity.

This trajectory continued after college: now out of the seminary but without career direction, I fell in love, courted my wife-to-be, worked parttime teaching ESL in South Bronx. That was my real life. But my secret life continued: I studied theology with holy, learned Jesuits and the best liberal Protestant theologians at Union Theological. 

My first real, fulltime job, religion teacher in a tough, Jersey City, Catholic high school brought me into painful contact with reality. For four years, this was not an easy job. But in 1973, age 25, I went into an entirely new intellectual/religious zone. We made Cursillo and then dived into the Charismatic Renewal. To this point, my Catholic faith was steady, but burdened by an obligation to serve the poor and a persistent, low grade liberal guilt about that. With Cursillo/Catholic-Charismatic our lives changed: we were now swimming in God's love, directed by the Holy Spirit, receptive of the Word, immersed in a cult of praise. No more social justice guilt! Lots of joy, praise and expectant faith. For about half a dozen years I remained more or less in a mild ecstasy: happy, loved, excited about moving forward in God's plan.

This was a religious awakening, but also an intellectual one. Sharp lay intellects like Ralph Martin and Steve Clark drew from Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism to vivify a Catholicism under attack from Cultural Progressivism. At the same time, outstanding priest theologians (Francis Martin, Killian McDonald, George Montague) plumbed our Catholic tradition to show its consistency with this startling renewal. I could hardly be happier: a passionate religious and intellectual movement, deeply Catholic and yet ecumenical. While mainstream Catholic academia was moving left into progressivism, I was pulled into the opposite direction: a splendid marriage of the Evangelical/Pentecostal with uber-Catholicism. Happiness is...!

My Hypo-Manic Episode

This renewal is defined primarily by the "baptism of the Holy Spirit": a spiritual experience of the movement of the Holy Spirit (previously received for Catholics in baptism/confirmation) characterized by: a turning to Jesus as Lord and Savior, repentance from sin, expectant hope, exuberance in communal praise, speaking in tongues, affective reception of the Scriptures, prophesy, the felt guidance of the Spirit, an urgency to share the faith,  and more. 

We were encouraged to seek and surrender to interior movements of the Holy Spirit: praise in tongues, prophesy, interior guidance, and such. Participating regularly in prayer meetings, conferences, spontaneous gatherings constant reading, I maintained a steady, mild state of religious, intellectual excitement. This was probably a degree of hypo-mania.

For example, one day while walking with my wife and friends in NYC I felt overwhelmed by the love of God and was aware that most of the people on the street seemed like lost souls, unaware of this love. I dropped suddenly to my knees and begged Christ to make me a vehicle of his mercy. This took maybe 60 seconds. When asked I explained directly what I was doing. In the charismatic world I inhabited, this was not strange. Not that everyone did it, but I was constantly reading testimonies of such happenings so I simply emulated what I was looking at. Later I learned that word spread and there was rumors about my aberrant behavior.

Another time, aware of my fear of the gangs of wild dogs I would sometimes meet while running, I was "led by the Spirit" to go and seek these gangs and confront them. In this I would overcome fear and enter more deeply in my God-intended masculinity. Well, I went in search but found none. What to make of that? Divine inspiration or hypo-mania?

And my confrontation of our pastor Fr. Ed Joacim. He was a gifted, charming, artistic, eccentric priest very involved in jail ministry. I was enchanted by him and joined him in visits to Hudson County Jail. With time I tired of his obsession with the jail; and then I became annoyed. With the faux confidence of hypo-manic grandiosity, I confronted him in the rectory with "fraternal correction." He became quite nervous. He will appear again a little later. 

Then our drive to Princeton. One hot summer, Saturday after noon we decided to take a ride to Princeton and walk around. We had no money.  (Parenthesis: From May 1975 to November 1976 I was without steady work. I left my HS teaching job get better pay. For 6 months I taught religion in our local St. Paul's Elementary School. Other wise, I hunted for a job, loaded trucks, painted peoples homes, worked on the Ford truck line, and kept busy. We never were hungry, but had almost no money. I, but not our families, was entirely serene about this; mostly in the quiet euphoria of the charismatic renewal.)

Driving home, I received a clear interior voice to go into an office building we were passing. There was one car in the lot. We entered an unlocked door and found a single office open. A young man, about my age, was sitting there. We engaged him and learned he was a Church architect. He seemed in low mood. He had studied the theology of Rudolph Bultmann. This is a defective liberal theology which denies the actual, bodily resurrection of Jesus and interprets the entire Gospel as a subjective experience, by the disciples, of a spiritual awakening which they interpreted into the  Resurrection appearances. So we received this as an obvious opportunity to share the real Gospel: that Jesus was indeed risen, that the tomb was empty, that we were all destined to share in eternal glory. As we left, we rejoiced in confidence that we were being led by the Holy Spirit. Is that crazy?

Next, a bizarre if harmless incident. We are directed to randomly  enter a bodega and ask for a pack of cigarettes for free. Neither of us smoked; neither of us wanted to smoke. But we obeyed the interior direction. Our request was declined. We continued on our way. Harmless, but definitely strange!

The next was more interesting. We pass a nice house with a big pool and are directed to visit the house and ask to swim in the pool. We didn't have swim trunks and didn't really want to swim but we did  obey these promptings. We have a pleasant conversation with a nice man who assures us he would like to welcome us but his wife would not allow it. In accord with my reading of the time, I recognize that the man is submissive in fear of his wife and it is for us to invite him into his full masculine responsibility. I exhort him  to disregard his wife's wishes and take responsibility as head of the family, to make his own decision, for or against. We get nowhere with this so we part congenially,  continue on our way, satisfied that we are complying with the promptings of the Holy Spirit. 

Wise, Loving Priestly Interventions: Fr. Paul Viale and Fr. Ed Joachim

Fr. Paul was our dear friend, associate pastor, a holy, gentle, humble priest. He came to visit us and asked if I would like to walk. He asked how I was doing. I talked for almost an hour, as we walked around my neighborhood, about how we were experiencing the Holy Spirit. Emotionally and intellectually I was high energy, agitated. He listened and nodded, listened and nodded. He did not say a single word. Did not correct, advise, counsel, instruct. Actually, he probably did not know what to make of it himself. The stuff was ambiguous: largely harmless, some of it interesting, possibly fruitful, definitely  strange. But we were living in this charismatic world where miracles were not just possible but expected. Risk taking was encouraged.

 When I was finished, I looked into his eyes, awaiting his response. Again: not a word. He had no thought on the matter. But what he convey, nonverbally, was a profound respect, a tender care for me. I took this in. And immediately, something deep within me changed. Nothing cognitive.  Deeper than the mere emotional. Very quiet.  I felt loved, safe, grounded and peaceful. My agitation and hypomania evaporated like the early morning fog in the sunlight. Peace. I never returned to that state of excessive interior hyper-activity.

And then our pastor at Christ the King, Fr. Ed, the one I had confronted. Perhaps weeks later, in our prayer meeting everyone agreed to pray over me. I don't recall the reason. It was not dramatic as if I was in trouble and needed prayer. We were always praying over each other. I happily sat, opened  palms up, closed my eyes. Everyone laid hands on me and prayed in tongues. At a point I opened my eyes and saw Fr. Ed in front of me. He was praying for me with eyes closed. There was a prayerful, tender, reverent look in his face. It struck me like a truck: this man really loves me1 I broke down into intense weeping. I realized my error: I felt distant, ignored, unloved by him. It was that underlying, unrecognized feeling of rejection that had infused my earlier confrontation with a quiet, covert resentment. A "father wound" was miraculously healed. A lie...that I was unloved by Father...was unveiled. I was, not so much the prodigal as the older son: I should have known but somehow didn't know this love. My own father and many father figures had always loved me but somehow I had been deceived and suspicious. My relationship with authority was decisively healed at that moment.

Conclusion

In the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, we were urged to seek, welcome and surrender fearlessly to promptings from the Holy Spirit. But equal in urgency was the instruction to discern: to submit them always to the community, especially the leaders, including obviously the priests. I still believe the Holy Spirit directly, personally communicates with us. But looking back on these incidents, I see them as a deliberate invocation of the subconscious by a psyche in some degree lonely and unconnected and so in a hypomanic episode. The real miracle: the pastoral love...the affection and respect...of these two fine priests. Amazing: these men ordained to teach and sanctify did not engage my agitated, grandiose intellect, but simply loved me in a manner both fraternal and paternal. They really loved me. I got it. I received deeply the comfort and serenity of the Holy Spirit.

Father Paul and Father Ed, Pray for us!

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and enkindle in us the fire of your love, send forth your Spirit and we shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth!

Why is the Jew Hated?

The Jew is The Beloved. This is why he is hated...by the Unloved. The Beloved is envied and despised by the Unloved: Abel by Cain, Joseph by his brothers, David by Saul, Jesus by Jewish leadership.

God's love is preferential, specific, gratuitous, almost random. Of all ethnicities, he chose one as The Beloved: the Hebrews, the Israelites, the Jews. "How odd of God to chose the Jews." (Chesterton) The Joshua Project identified 17,500 distinct ethnic groups. Why choose the Jews? We will never know. 

Love is mysterious. Why do I love my wife? Why did I fall in love with her? I could immediately give you 25 good reasons to love her, but that list would not get to the heart of the matter. Something deep and interior in me delighted in her very self, her deepest self and everything that flows from that including her smile and laughter, intelligence, body, style, faith and on and on and on. This love cannot be defined or explained. And so it is with God's love for Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and seed.

But how to understand this troubling surge of antisemitism from the right and the left, especially from the young?

Antisemitism: Overdetermined

There are many factors that contribute to this hatred. 

- Sympathy for the suffering Palestinians and aversion to the Gaza war, particularly the denial of food/medicine to civilians as well as the history of aggression by rightwing Israeli settlers.

- Configuration by the left of Israel as "oppressor" in the standard paradigm and therefore conflated with tyranny, racism, patriarchy, capitalism, homophobia, imperialism, yada yada yada.

- Muslim resentment and envy.

- The perennial scapegoating of the Jew by Christendom as the outlier, the strange one, the suspect.

- Anti-Judaism in strong form as accusation of "deicide" (murder of Christ) or more moderately in perception of legalism, formalism, lack of charity.

- Suspicion of the Jew as rich capitalist, powerful and conspiratorial.

- Religious distrust of the Jew as cultural or political revolutionary: communist, sexual libertarian, pornographer, enemy of the family and perverter of children.

- Local resentment  by neighbors of Orthodox communities as self-serving, aggressive, inbred, and indifferent to the needs and sufferings of others.

Yet, all these historical, sociological factors seem insufficient to account for the persistence, the depth, the ferocity of the hatred of the Jew. Note the contradictions above: the Jew is revolutionary undermining the moral order and at the same time the one in control of that order as banker and power broker. Both sides share a view of the Jew as powerful and hostile in a drama of victimization. On the Left and Right we have politics of envy, victimization, alleged powerlessness and exaggerated power.

We need to go deeper ontologically and spiritually to get to the profundity of this hatred.

Hatred of the Beloved by the Unloved

Monsignor John Oesterreicher, anti-Nazi convert from Judaism to Catholicism and architect of Nostrae Aetate, Vatican II document on the Jews, saw that Nazi antisemitism, far from coming from Christian animus against the Jew, was more deeply a hatred for this "people of the Book" in their identity with the moral law and the Creator God. Subliminally, disgust for the Jew is hatred for the God of creation, of goodness. 

Developing this insight, we see that the "unloved" looking at the "beloved" surges with envy, resentment, and the compulsion to murder this occasion of misery. 

This is the envy of Lucifer when he learned a human, a woman at that, was destined to be Queen of Angels and Saints. 

To the extent that one is unloved, he can only despise the beloved. 

Deep down, this hatred is bipartisan: the Right hates the Jew as revolutionary, as enemy of religion, family, innocence. The Left hates him as rich, powerful, oppressor of the poor. In both: Envy reigns.

Lucifer's Preferences

In his perverse imitation of God, Lucifer, the Prince of Envy,  has his own preferential hatreds. He hates all, but hates some especially. Predictably, he hates most those whom God most loves. Particularly three. Above all, he despises Mary our Mother, over whom he has zero influence. She is entirely triumphant over him. He and his minions must flee before her. He takes his revenge on other women: nothing pleases him more than the degradation of women as in rape, domination, pornography or the sophisticated faux feminism of abortion and consumerism. Secondly, Lucifer despises the Jews, the very people of Mary and Jesus. Hitler was his cherished protege. Thirdly, he despises the Catholic Church, especially in the religious life and priesthood, especially confession and Eucharist.

Love of the Beloved

On the other hand, we have those who love the Beloved. Ruben and Judah both intervened to save their younger brother: Ruben advocated throwing him into a pit as he intended to return to rescue him. Judah then suggested selling him into slavery rather than letting him die in the pit. Jonathan, son of Saul, was a loyal friend to David. And of course we have all the Jews that loved Jesus: apostles and disciples, Mary and Joseph, even Pharisees Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and Gamaliel. 

And so, the drama of life: in encountering the Beloved, we envy and hate him; or we love him, and receive his love, and become possessed by that very love.

The Catholic Loves the Jew

We might define the Catholic: one who loves the Jew. Jesus, the quintessential Jew, the very epitome of Judaism. Mary: the crown of her people.

We do not distinguish good from bad Jew, but we love them all. We love the Woody-Allen-libertarian-pornography Jew; the nationalistic, warrior Jew; the wealthy, powerful Jew; the aggressive, legalistic, unfriendly Orthodox Jew; the Neoconservative Zionist;  and the Freudian-Marxist revolutionary.  We love Bernie Madoff, Allen Ginsburg, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Dutch Schultz, Herbert Marcuse, Meyer Lansky, Leon Trotsky, the Rothschilds, Ben Netanyahu.  Yes, these are sinners: we hate the sin, love the sinner. These are, of course, our enemies in the Culture War. But we esteem them in their giftedness; we learn from them; we thrive in combat with such worthy adversaries!

The Catholic esteems the religion of Judaism: but with criticisms. Historic Rabbinic Judaism, which survives today in various forms (reform, conservative, orthodox and entirely secularized) historically is rooted in the rejection by leadership of the messianic claims of Jesus. They are prone to a wide variety of errors: political, moral, theological, and other. But they are still The Beloved.

The Catholic is not theologically or ideologically Zionist in the way of some Evangelicals, awaiting the second coming out of the founding of the state of Israel. The Catholic is free to criticize the actions of the government there. But because this state is protective of the Jewish people, there has to be strong support for it, along with disagreement.

Jesus, the quintessential Jew, is Beloved of the Father. As we come under his influence, we fall in love, we fall into his love, we love him and his. We love all he loves. We loves his people: the Jew and today the Church. We overcome our own envy, insecurity, and resentment as we are filled with the Holy Spirit of love from the Trinity.

May God bring peace to Jerusalem, to Israel, to Iran, to Gaza, to Palestine and the Middle East!

The Institution of Masculinity, the Masculinity of Institutions, and the Crisis of Both

Masculinity is Institutional. 

Like femininity, it is multi-leveled: biological (chemical, morphological, neurological, etc.), emotional, cognitive, social, spiritual and institutional. Femininity is less institutional: more  organic, fluid, emotive, natural, synthetic, concrete, direct, intuitive, and instinctive. Of course integral femininity also requires education of the intellect, strengthening of the will, habits of virtue,  the sanctification of prayer, and the orderly life of institutions. Femininity, with even modest safety, order and love, flourishes organically. It fluidly directs itself,  with even modest organization and discipline, to care of and communion with the persons close by: particularly the young, infirm, suffering, and elderly. Already by age two the girl is mothering her dolls: this is not socialized behavior, it is organic.

In every dimension (oxytocin, intellect, body) the male is more distant, abstract, isolated, outlooking. If the female vocation is primarily direct attention to the person; the male vocation is outward to create a world which protects, shelters and enlivens the mother/child/infirm/elderly/hurting. Of course man and woman partner in a common vocation, to multiply and govern the world, but there is a fundamental difference in calling, identity, destiny and mission. In family and society, the two are fully equal partners, but there is divine/natural gender distinction. For example, even in the now common event of the wife outperforming in career, (think Justice Amy Barrett), the woman retains a powerful focus on the persons close to her, the man share this but less intensely with more orientation to the broader world and abstract cultural realities.

While more sensitive and prone to anxiety/hysteria, the woman is also more resilient and hardy in her core femininity. She is like a hardy plant, a hosta or day lilly, that thrives with little attention, water, nourishment or sunshine. Masculinity is more delicate, fragile and complex: it is like a very fussy plant that requires prolonged attention, fertilizing, sunshine, trimming and water.  Mature, wholesome, fruitful masculinity requires a prolonged, elaborate itinerary of formation through multiple institutions. These need not be formal. They include direction, correction, accountability, encouragement, fraternity, obedience, recognition for achievement, and certification. 

Nature of Masculine Institutions

The male vocation is to provide and protect the family and community. It is to create a safe, sheltering, dignified, life-enhancing world. This requires order and structure, good institutions...authoritative, stable, reliable, fluid, resilient, adaptable. The core male institutions are naturally, ontologically inherent to the structure of the natural family: son, brother, husband, father. These are absolutely closed to women. We can add to these primal, pure male institutions: Catholic hierarchy and priesthood, kingship classically understood, the "father figure," and the warrior.

Other institutions are strongly male, but not absolutely as they require some balance with the feminine dimension to be healthy. Most areas of contemporary society properly include both: education, entertainment, politics, health care, and so forth.

The Catholic Church is herself ontologically feminine in reception of the spousal love of Christ, the Bridegroom. The corporate Church and each of us individually is receptive of Word and Sacrament, the Holy Spirit, forgiveness of sin and eternal life.  So, Mary epitomizes in herself the Church and discipleship. However, within that filial-bridal-maternal-mystical identity, the "Petrine" dimension is the masculine or institutional: authority, governance, tradition, proclamation of the Word, and presiding over liturgical life. And so, the Church is the masculine/institutional within and subordinate to the more primal feminine/mystical. 

Characteristics of Masculine Institutions

1. Fraternity within combat and competition. The male psyche instinctively goes to war and finds brotherhood within battle. The feminine psyche inclines more to cooperation, less to combat.

2. Sacred order, hierarchy, authority, obedience. Masculinity carries a powerful sense of a transcendent, moral order which permeates all of life. And so, etymologically, hierarchy ("sacred" "rule") means a holy order; it entails obedience to the transcendent, not the oppression of the weak by the powerful. Likewise, authority (as distinct from power) is an anointing from above for a mission of service and stewardship. Filial obedience is given, not to the strong or the conqueror, but to the holy, the good, the true as represented by an authentic representative of the cosmic order.

3 Prominence of abstract, ordering principles, laws, regulations, protocols; justice including retribution, not revenge, but sober reward/punishment for good/bad.  Mercy and compassion are operative, but do not absolutely abolish justice, truth, retribution and wrath against evil.

4. Tradition as a connection and rooting in history as well as a hopeful anticipation for the future through the fidelity and stability of institutions and manly behavior.

5. Blood sacrifice, heroism and martyrdom, courage, fortitude and perseverance in combat.

6. Humility: the fragility of the inflated male ego is overcome by movement into virtue and service of the good, the true and the beautiful as instituted in family, community, organization and nation.

7. Chastity: toxic proclivities to lust, domination, covetousness, indulgence and fantasy are mortified by fidelity to institutions, spouse/family, vows, Church, the innocent/incompetent,  and social group.

8. Sobriety as gentle strength, freedom from disordered emotions, clarity of thought, prudence in judgement, emotional patience and steadiness...source of comfort and security for those anxious and threatened. 

Classically Masculine and Feminine Institutions

More masculine, by nature or form, institutions: Catholic priesthood, military, law enforcement, elite chess, engineering/architecture (88%), computer/math (74%), stem (71%), professional athletics, construction, truck driving, manufacturing, organized crime, and comedians (2-1 ratio, 6-1 in standup, and 10-1 open mic.) 

More feminine institutions: education (73%), health care and nursing (76%), psychological therapy and counseling (75%), service. Women now outperform men in higher education: they are 53% of college educated workers.

We are now 60 years into the relentless insistence on gender homogeneity. But the hard, factual reality of gender difference persists in the professions above.

Cultural Revolution: Assault on Masculinity and Institutions

The relentless disparagement of "patriarchy" from the cultural left is in some part justifiable renunciation of toxic male domination, misogyny, lust, and control. But it has actually thrown out the baby with the bath water. It has deconstructed masculinity itself: its very identity, destiny and mission; and the dense web of institutions that both express and nurture it. 

The prosperity and comfort of postwar American has fostered a cult of indulgence, narcissism, comfort, unchastity, and effeminacy. Femininity...filial, sororal, spousal, maternal...has been corrupted by emulation of toxic masculinity in sexual license, careerism, and abortion. But virility has been fundamentally vacated of its interior form as paternal, spousal, fraternal, and filial...as humble, chaste, courageous, sober, prudent and just. If the woman/mother is reconfigured as glamor or career girl; the man/father is perverted into wimp or thug.

A New Era?

Femininity and masculinity are forms intrinsic to nature, to reality, to the human person. They cannot be extinguished or repressed by progressivism: they are inexorable, inevitable, in a degree invincible. 

There is a clear, if statistically modest, revival among Gen Z men: movement to religion, conservatism, and classical virility. This is a promising blessing. Let us welcome, encourage, and pray for it. The biggest benefactors will be women...and their children!

Dorothy Day...a Saint?

"Don't call me a saint...I don't want to be dismissed so easily."  Dorothy Day

"We are all called to be saints. We might as well get over our bourgeois fear of the name." Dorothy Day 

I don't know of any canonization cause so controversial as that of Dorothy Day. Most static about Catholic canonization comes from those outside the Church: allegations that Pius XII was soft on Nazism; argument that Edith Stein was killed for her Jewishness, not her Catholicism; slander of Junipero Serra as a colonizer; etc. In the case of Dorothy (since I met and spoke with her, I use her first name!), there is contention within Catholic principles themselves...in house, we might say. 

Diverse Views

Within the movement she mothered, there is ambivalence. Brian Terrell, longtime friend and colleague, in The Catholic Worker, (Jan. 28, 2025) makes a very "Catholic-Worker-ish" argument: he disparages (in flaming, anarchistic, anticlerical indignation) the Vatican's Dicastery for the Causes of the Saints as wasteful, misogynist, and pious in a negative sense. He recalls how she herself was devoted to the saints and urges us all to ignore the ecclesiastical process, venerate her memory spontaneously in the manner of the early Church, and get to work in care for the poor. He reminds us that Dorothy did not like being called a saint.

Another Catholic Worker insider, Colleen Dulle, ("An inside look at Dorothy Day's contested canonization process," America December 16, 2021) notes that the cost of the initial process approached a million dollars as well as thousands of volunteer hours and aroused concerns: undue focus on abortion and promiscuity, a distortion of her into a pious woman and a distraction from her fierce social judgements. She concludes nevertheless in favor of canonization.

From a conservative position, S.V. Arrogast (in First Things, "Dorothy Day's Complicated Case for Sainthood," April 6, 2026) acknowledges her heroic virtue and extraordinary charity and generosity, but sees her stern, ideological anarchism and pacifism as contradicting established Catholic social doctrine on the authority of the state and the necessity of the just war theory and practice. Rather than encourage emulation of these disorders, he argues that she remain a "servant of God" and not advance to "venerable."

Current Status

Dorothy was declared a "Servant of God" at the local NY level and is being considered by the Vatican to become "Venerable." The first title follows thorough, expensive research to find evidence of "heroic virtue." That was completed and unanimously approved by the US Bishops. Pope Francis himself, in visiting the USA, paid homage to her virtue. The Vatican must now agree with the evidence of her virtue and influence on drawing others to God. The faithful are encouraged to honor the venerable, but they are not invoked in official liturgy. The final two steps, to beatification and canonization each require (with some exceptions) a certified miracle at each step. 

Case in Favor 

The case for her sanctity is strong: primarily, a lifetime of sacrificial service to the poor. She is not quite Mother Theresa, but about the closest one can get. (Perhaps rivaled by Catherine Doherty and Madelene del Brell.) Her wild youth should not impede as she strongly converted to live a pure, holy life. Many were influenced by her: she was not just a public activist, but a real living saint. As a gifted writer, she articulated our faith in splendid fashion. She is a kind of a down-to-earth Doctor of the Church. She lived and articulated her Catholic faith fervently, expressively; reverence for hierarchy, immersion in sacraments, devotion to Mary and the saints. Quite strikingly, in the sexual confusion that swept the political/cultural Left in the late 1960s, she remained clear and steadfast in her witness to chastity and fidelity. Her life was messy in many ways, but consistently holy after her conversion, and therefore inspirational for all dealing with life's messes.

Birth Control and Abortion

She is on the record as morally opposed to contraception and abortion. But in writing and in public she is almost completely silent about it. She clearly stated that The Catholic Worker as policy would not address the issue. This contrasts with her ferocity against capitalism, racism, and sins against charity and justice. She famously suffered an abortion but was quiet about it. In a letter to Father Daniel Berrigan she agreed with Caesar Chavez that in its use against the Afro-American and Hispanic poor, abortion/contraception amounts to genocide. This was a powerful, heartfelt statement, but a once-only. She was not a pro-life crusader. With most of the Left, she preferred to avoid this conflict. She emphasized pardon for those involved and harshly judged systems of injustice that contributed to these. When the American bishops advanced her cause to the Vatican, Cardinal George received ovation when he saw her as patron of women who have suffered abortion. Some who knew her personally insist she would have resisted such a role.  She is representative of the Catholic Left in her personal rejection but reticence and privacy, a certain feminine delicacy.

Case Against

Two strong impediments present: her ideological extremism and the loss of Catholic faith by her daughter Tamar and the grandchildren.

Yuval Levin is accurate in his diagnosis: our societal crisis is largely one of institutions. We have as a society become individualistic, isolated, dependent upon technology, and idolatrous of celebrity. Our fundamental institutions are fragmented: family, Church, local community, abiding friendships, politics, business, education, and other. To say the least, emulation of an anarchist is problematic. Each of us, in our specific places, need to patiently, slowly rebuild the institutional bonds that serve us and form us. Dorothy is a benevolent anarchist: small communities and farms and such. But she is nevertheless an anarchist. No taxes! No big government or big companies or big unions! No responsibility to self defense by force! She is significantly a bad example. Catholicism is and always will be pro-government, pro-business, pro-union and pro-just-war.

On the other hand, the Church allows a wide range of opinions in politics, policy, and ideology. Of course, a Catholic could hardly be a real Communist, Nazi, Jihadist or  (in my view, but perhaps not Dorothy's) a pro-abortion Democrat. But a Catholic can be libertarian, socialist, capitalist, and arguably an anarchist. There is no political litmus test, other than moral absolutes like the targeting of innocent life and (again in my view) the worth of incompetent human life. A serious mistake for a Catholic is the sanctification of a given ideology, of the left or of the right. In that light, we might argue that Dorothy might be elevated to Venerable with the understanding that her politics is not being sanctioned and that it is less significant than her concrete life of charity. On the other hand, so adamant was she in her anarchist/pacifist absolutism, that her elevation might implicitly approve that. My own view is that her ideology is a very significant, but not a definitive impediment to her advancement.

More troubling for me personally is the heartbreaking family narrative provided by her granddaughter Kate Hennessey in A Harsh and Dreadful Love: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement. This contrasts sharply with other biographies as it is a family-insider, an intimate, a feminine view of the close, painful relationship of Dorothy and daughter Tamar, and consequentially the 9 grandchildren.

Like many, Dorothy was involuntarily a single mother as the love-of-her-life, father of her child, Foster Batterman declined marriage and despised religion. She raised Tamar within the Catholic Worker community as she continued her exhausting public life and service of the very poor. This had complex, complicated consequences for Tamar, herself a sensitive and intelligent one, not unlike her mother. Tamar married a man who was eventually an alcoholic and closet homosexual. Dorothy remained close and supportive of Tamar, the children and even her ex-lover Foster for her entire life. But the troubling reality: Tamar and her children fell away from the Catholic Church. One granddaughter continues the legacy in activism and service; another, Kate, wrote this splendid, honest, poignant biography. 

As a Catholic father myself, this was easily the most touching biography I had ever read. Some of my family cried as they read it. We identify with the tension between an active life of service and attention to the needs of ones children. By some tragic irony, Dorothy's iconic Catholic witness did not touch the hearts of those ten closest to her. 

There is no question of blame here.  Rather, a confluence of negative dynamics: two dysfunctional fathers, her primal vocation to serve the poor, the interaction of two complex personalities. 

This is not a definite impediment. But it does cause pause. Catholic tradition is very clear on the states of life: marriage and priesthood/religious life. Dorothy was lay; not married but a mother; vowed, however implicitly, to service of the very poor. She is a Catholic anomaly.  She lived a life of extraordinary charity and virtue, but broke the norms of ordinary life. Helpfully, we have a similar case in Rose Hawthorne.

Case of Rose Hawthorne

With her customary brilliance, Patricia Snow considers the unusual, saintly case of Rose Hawthorne (First Things, "Hawthorne's Daughter" Jan. 1, 2020). She allowed her estranged husband to die alone as she cared for the destitute dying of cancer in NYC. She founded the Hawthorne Dominicans who to this day care for the very poor who are dying of this disease.  She is similar to Dorothy: she straddled both worlds, that of family life and those consecrated to care of the destitute. I can only highly recommend the article for its nuance and depth. She is another anomaly for a Catholic: how can a wife leave her husband to care for the poor. 

On March 14, 2024 Pope Francis declared Rose (in religious life Mother Mary Alphonsa) Venerable. She also came from NYC. 

If Rose can make it, why not Dorothy?

The Matriarch, Sexuality/Romance and Her Spiritual Director, Fr. Hugo

Dorothy was the Matriarch in her world, family and Catholic Worker. She was a powerful feminine force. As such she was countervailed by no comparable masculine power. Peter Maurin was her intellectual mentor and cofounder but not equal in influence. Foster was incompetent as husband and father. No one in her movement came even close to her in gravitas. Giants like Thomas Merton, Daniel Berrigan and (especially now!) Caesar Chavez seem small by comparison. 

Her legacy...anarchism, pacifism, and the amiable chaos of the Catholic Worker...reflects a femininity without the paternal, the authoritative, the orderly, the disciplined. In this, her person and legacy shows a disorder, a dysfunction, a lack of the masculine in the positive sense. 

She is the type of a woman common to Catholicism: she drastically breaks the norms of standard femininity as a super-woman of holiness, strength, intelligence, and influence. Joan of Arc, the Catherine's (Sienna, Alexandria, Genoa), Theresa's (Avila, Calcutta, Lisieux, Benedicta of the Cross), Elizabeth Seton, Chiara Lubich, Francis Cabrini, Angelica of EWTN, Katherine Drexel, Rose of Lima, and countless others. We who came up through the parochial schools knew such women as teachers and principals: fearless, firm, assertive, confident, authoritative. Each is the match of any vicar or monsignor. Such are not anti-masculine so much as feminine-strengthened-by-a-ferocious-virility-of-spirit. They naturally assume the title of "mother." 

In an insightful essay (America, "Love, Sex and Dorothy Day," October 13, 2023),my friend Stephen Adubatto notes that along with her fervent embrace of celibacy and the Catholic ethos of sex, she retained a vibrant, refreshing positivity about sexuality, the human body and romantic love. She was not one to moan about toxic masculinity. Her own femininity was fierce in its response to virility: Forester as romantic/erotic, Peter as intellectual, and finally Fr. John J. Hugo as spiritual director. As a young woman, she was dizzyingly attractive, physically and otherwise. She never lost her carnal, now chaste, zest for life.

In 1940 she made her first 8-day silent retreat with Fr. Hugo and was deeply impacted. It became the joy of her life. Recall, she had given up her lover, all her old Leftist friendships, her carefree bohemianism. She was a rigorous Catholic, a single mother, a devoted servant of the destitute. For a long time after her baptism she had no Catholic friends but was disconnected from the old gang. She lived in an emotional/spiritual desert. Her joy became the spirituality of Fr. Hugo. This was a deep, radical, old-school-Ignatian call to holiness, specifically of the laity. It provoked controversy and was slandered as Jansenist in its rigor. The retreat was hardcore Catholic; it followed a Jesuit tradition going back to DeCaussade's Abandonment to Divine Providence. It demanded self-denial: no more bingo as fundraising for pastors, no cigarette smoking. It was anti-bourgeois and ascetic. It was the strong medicine that Dorothy craved in her walk through the desert. Apparently it was solidly Catholic, similar in ways to DeLubac and the Resourcement theology of Europe. Like those theologians, Hugo was for a time sidelined but later restored. He anticipated the liturgical renewal and the Council's emphasis on the sanctity of the laity. He anticipates the deeper Catholicity of the lay renewal movements and the Communion school of theology. Dorothy returned again and again and brought everyone she could with her. 

What we read in the Hennessey biography is that this strong medicine did not sit well with adolescent Tamar. It repelled her. Such requires a certain depth and maturity of spirit. Such might be toxic for those not prepared. And so, Tamar and many others reacted negatively. It was, perhaps, imprudent of Dorothy to expect that what so inspired her was good for others. 

Throughout WWII, Fr. Hugo encouraged Dorothy's pacifism and developed a Catholic theology to explain it. And so he provided a deepened Catholic spirituality as well as a basis for her ideology. He remained for many years a friend and spiritual adviser. He may rival or even exceed Maurin in interior influence. 

As such, he assisted Dorothy in her bridal surrender to the only Man who could satisfy the yearnings of her feminine spirit: Jesus Christ, the Bridegroom. Like the female saints she so admired, her final Joy was found in the spousal surrender to the Great Lover himself. Clearly, it was only in this agapic-erotic-philial communion that she found the resilience, the energy, the patience, the joy  to love her troubled family and all the wounded that surrounded her.

 Conclusion

It is consoling that whatever the Church does about "venerable," promotion to beatification and canonization each require a miracle. So, if the Church does rule favorably, she will not move further unless heaven itself makes clear, verified moves. 

The impediments to Dorothy's advancement to "Venerable," specifically her ideological absolutism, are serious. But they are not definitive. Nor is her service of the poor, her heroic virtue, her sacrifice and generosity definitive. Rather, it is the deep interiority of her Love Affair with Christ. Her flaming femininity, her craving to love and be loved, her boundless passion was only satisfied by her spousal union with Christ. She lived this out in all the messiness of the poor. But she is first and foremost daughter of the Father and the Church, spouse of Christ, and Mother to many. 

For this reason I for one hope that she becomes "venerable."

SERVANT OF GOD, DOROTHY DAY, PRAY FOR US!