Filial Reception of Magnifica Humanitas

As a loyal son of the Church, I am very deliberately receiving this new encyclical in the positivity of trust, gratitude and docility. Genuine obedience is far from blind, mechanical compliance; the word's etymology is from the Latin audire, "to listen attentively." This is not the suspension of the critical faculties into thoughtlessness. Rather it is eagerness to receive, to penetrate deeply with the presenter, to use all ones faculties (intellect, will, passions, desires) in the urgent search for the True, the Good and the Beautiful. 

Several forces motivate my intentional docility:

1. This is an authoritative papal instruction and therefore evocative of trust and receptivity.

2. St. Ignatius of Loyola advised us to always put the best possible interpretation on another's words. This applies doubly to Church authorities.

3. Temperamentally and philosophically, I am strongly disposed to a "catholicity" that embraces all that is good, whatever its circumstances.

4. I have been pleasantly surprised by the encyclical. My expectations were low so I was shielded from disappointment. Leo is many good things; he is not a first rate theologian. Really, we do not know much about AI. Even the brilliant engineers driving it don't really know where it is going. I did not think this topic was a good idea. But reading it, I now see lots of good in it. It is what we are given. Thanks be to God.

Let's consider some of the strengths and then the weaknesses of this teaching. The majesty, the magnificence, the mystery of Catholicism is: that the Divine comes to us infleshed in the finite, fallible, deficient and even sinful Church. The human and divine come to us as one Reality: we receive the first with patience, compassion and generosity; we receive the second in thanksgiving and adoration.

The Best of Magnifica Humanitas

1. The Tone.  In accord with Leo's personality, style, and charism the teaching is steady, reassuring, calming, and sensible. He is critical, but not pessimistic. He is positive, but not utopian. Ross Douthat admired that he is critical, aware of dangers, as he "normalizes" it. By this Douthat means that he sees it for what it is: a form of technology. A tool. However sophisticated, it is just a tool. In a world of exponential change, fluidity, and transience, we need a voice of stability, calm, permanence: who better than the Pope to give us this?

2. Human Dignity.  This, more than AI itself, is the prime theme of the teaching. The inexpressible worth, preciousness and beauty of the human person is the prime concern. Any technology, ideology or social order that threatens this is rebuked by the Church and this pontiff.

3. Spiritual Teaching.  In the introduction and conclusion both, Leo gives solid spiritual principles to guide our path. The initial offering is a comparison between the Tower of Babel and Nehemiah's rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. The first is Godlessness, arrogance, power; the second is humility, adoration, fraternity. The conclusion brings us to Mary, her Magnificat, and the Eucharist. The most important parts of any essay are the beginning and the end: this piece is strong in both.

4. Summary of Catholic Social Teaching.  The value of this large section is that it presents Catholic social teaching as an organic, living, developing whole. He summarizes the contributions of popes since Leo XIII as well as the Vatican Council. All the basics principles are presented (solidarity, subsidiarity, common good, natural moral order, etc.) but are woven together into a lively body of wisdom. He sees this a living organism, much like the Church herself as well as our broader dogmatic/moral legacy. Here he manifests his personal propensity for unity and peace. The section exudes a Catholic confidence: we stand upon a deposit of wisdom and are well prepared to face the challenges that present themselves. 

5. Modesty.  Again, like the person of Leo, this teaching is modest, humble, unpretentious.  It presents no master narrative or innovative insight. It reverently receives the tradition given to us. It acknowledges the complexity and enormity of the challenges, but does not yield to despair. It properly challenges all of us in our own domains...engineers, policy makers, politicians, families, educators...to a calmness in cooperation and agency with God's assistance.

The Deficiencies in Magnifica Humanitas

1. Our Progressive, Pelagian, Pacifist Augustinian?  

Scattered among the encyclical's "wheat of wisdom" are "weeds" of a toxic, dysfunctional progressivism. The most egregious is: "...just war theory...is outdated." This unfortunate statement will attract more popular attention than the parts of the document that merit such. 

"Out of date" is itself a most non-Catholic, progressive, technological phrase. It indicates that something is now obsolete, useless, replaced by newer technologies. The phrase is antithetical to the organic, continuous, reliable nature of Catholic teaching, including on the political order. We might contrast three attitudes to the past/future: the revolutionary despises the past and seeks to destroy and replace it; the progressive looks always to advance, improve and also replace the past; the wholesome (Catholic) conservative, unlike a sclerotic reactionary, looks to conserve, protect, develop and enhance a  precious heritage received from the past. "Out of date" is, if not revolutionary, a progressive term, certainly not Catholic. Relentlessly we are harangued: 

Capital Punishment, Just War, Patriotism, Justice as Retribution...out of date!

Sex as unitive/procreative, Marriage as irrevocable, Contraception-Homosexuality-Fornication as sin, Masculine Priesthood, Human person as male/female...out of date!

Latin Mass...out of date!

Underlying this quasi-absolute rejection of just war is a Pelagian confidence that war can be replaced by dialogue, compassion, negotiaon/compromise, open-mindedness, "the synodal way," renunciation of power and selfishness. It is the same presumption that would replace police with social workers; that displaces capital punishment with an unwarranted pride in our prison system; and mistakes just retribution with hateful revenge. 

We recall that the heresy of Pelagius, decisively renounced by Augustine, was just such a confidence in the ability of the human will to achieve salvation. Augustine, with his understanding of the City of God and the evil City of Man, is rightly applauded for his sense of the depth of evil and his articulation of the just war theory. It is striking that our Augustinian Pontiff has such a Pelagian perspective.

Consider: Putin's gratuitous invasion of the Ukraine,  Iranian terrorism and nuclear ambitions,  the violence of Jihadism against Christians in Africa, and above all the imperialist ambitions of totalitarian Communist China. What we need today is precisely an improved, updated Just War theory, aware of technological and political realities. We need precisely to deter such bad actors from inflicting their diabolical regimes upon the rest of us. It is astonishing that in the face of these threats Leo should lean into such a soft, Pelagian, progressive pacifism.

The defining diabolic catastrophe of the Church in our time is the priest sex scandal: not only the abuse of the innocent, but the failure of the hierarchy to address it. It was an omission, a tolerance, an avoidance, a passivity in the face of evil, a failure in virility and paternity. Underlying this grave dereliction was an erroneous, illusory credulity; a softness; a confidence in rationality, therapy, and the goodness of human nature; a denial of the reality of sin, evil, the demonic. In the face of Jihadist terrorism, totalitarian-imperialistic Communism, national fascism and aggressive sexual libertinism, we risk a Church going soft, irenic, passive, effete and complaint with if not submissive to Evil.

2. Lack of Metaphysics.

Perhaps even more silly, disturbing and troubling is Leo's repetition of the chant of Francis: "Time is greater than space." This makes no sense at all! The two cannot be compared as there is no value in which they can be measured against each other. It is like saying: "the air we breathe is better than the earth we walk on."  What??? "A grand slam in the bottom of the ninth is better than a hole in one." What???  "Ballerinas are better than power forwards!"  What???

This can, of course, be given a positive interpretation. Francis resented a negative stability of law, dogma, stagnation, moralism, and control. He valued openness, patience in growth, hope in the future. There is a promise in time and a stability in place. They mutually inform each other: like present/past/future. Reality is always a symphony of stability and change: to elevate one over the other is nonsensical. Time itself is relentless change, death to everything. This is overcome by promise and fidelity: a stability within time, a triumph of the permanent over the evanescent. The "time is superior to place" chant, philosophically, implies the triumph of change over stability, of existence over essence, of death over life.

A more Catholic view:  "The Eternal transcends both time and space but visits and dwells in both." They are not the same; they are neither equal nor inequal, they are incomparable. They are distinct. A Catholic sensibility values stability: we have sacred places, pilgrimage sites, and Churches. Above all, we have the Eucharistic presence in a specific "thing" and place. Especially in "fluid modernity" we desperately need a sense of the stable, the reliable, the permanent and even the Eternal. For Leo to continue the crusade of Francis against stability and permanence, exemplified in the "synodal way," is gravely mistaken. 

This singular, misguided dabbling into ontology leads us to an important omission in the teaching: a lack of just such metaphysics. What sets AI apart from any previous technology is precisely its simulation of human INTELLIGENCE.  Leo is emphatic that a human is not a machine and a machine is not a human. But he is not conceptually clear, deep and precise in his definition of human intelligence. Douthat pointed out that the founder of Anthropic, Chris Olah, who accompanied Leo in the presentation, himself challenged the entire premise of the encyclical in suggesting that "Claude" is approaching human states of "joy, satisfaction, fear, grief and unease." That is, of course, the fundamental challenge of AI. Leo in effect dismisses it, but does not clearly address it. 

Much of the answer is already available in classical, Thomistic metaphysics of form and essence. Interiorly, a computer is still a thing, an inert object. It lacks a vegetable soul, an animal soul, and of course a human soul. Despite its complexity, it is interiorly nothing, it is like a sand castle on the beach, a compilation of things; any unity is not internal, but exterior, configured by the creators. By contrast, human intelligence is a spiritual capacity, the ability to "know" or interiorize the other, Truth, and reality in all its splendor.

Happily, this was addressed in an astute manner at the recent 2026 Academy of Catholic Theology Conference in Washington DC by Rev. Joseph Laracy S.T.D. in a talk entitled "Persona et Machina: the Ontological Limits of Artificial Intelligence."  Laracy, who teaches science and theology at Seton Hall University, drew upon his own engineering/science background and especially the  groundbreaking thought of Rev. Stanley Jaki O.S.B., to clarify that human intelligence is a principle of inner unity capable of freedom, self-consciousness, wonder, intentionality, curiosity, and other. He contrasts the contemplative wonder of intellectus with the rational calculus of ratio, seeing that AI has high ability  for technical computation but zero capacity for contemplation.

It is just such conceptual, philosophical clarity that would have greatly enhanced Magnifica.

It is understandable that Leo avoided this important resource. He is himself quintessentially American, a pragmatist, a man of action, of the people, a mathematician, a competent administrator and governor, a get-the-work-done type, a "Martha" more than a "Mary." He came of age in the theological fog of the 1970s. The Vatican Council itself avoided the language of Thomistic metaphysics; but Rev. Thomas Guarino has showed us that fundamental principles of Aquinas (like "analogy") were implicit in the theology of that Council. The theologians and bishops who authored the documents were all breaking beyond the boundaries of a narrow scholasticism to engage the modern world as well as the Fathers, but they were all fully grounded in the metaphysics of Thomas which quietly informed their thought. 

Unfortunately, the students of Rahner-Lonergan-Kung-and-Company lacked that philosophical grounding and much of the increasingly progressive theology of the post-Council era drew more from social sciences than from philosophy. The result was a default conceptual grounding that was superficial, pragmatic, uncritical, and vulnerable to secular fashion.  This philosophical incompetence already predated the Council. It is my view that the impressive post-war (1945-65)  American Catholic edifice (vocations, parishes, buildings, schools, hospitals, etc.) collapsed so quickly and catastrophically because the foundations were weak in two ways: spiritually not grounded evangelically in the person/event of Jesus Christ; and intellectually not rooted in solid Catholic philosophy/theology.

Conclusion 

To its credit, this is a modest effort. It is best understood as a first salvo, a "draft." Critics see a failure to really engage the unique challenge of a simulated humanity. I do not fault Leo here. We still do not really know where we are going. Yuval Levin pointed out that Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum was written when we were well into the Industrial Revolution so the outlines of that world were clear and a definitive Catholic response possible. We are not there with AI; perhaps in 20 or 30 years we will be.

Going forward, Leo would do well to:

1. Look to Augustine for realism about the hardness of Evil, the City of Man and the necessity of forceful resistance.

2. Look to Thomas for a philosophy that unveils the interiority of things.

3. Realize we are in a now-perpetual war...always and everywhere...with three enemies that intend to destroy our faith and our world: Communism, Jihadism, and Cultural Liberalism. Dialogue, compassion, empathy have their place in this world. But so do combat, courage, decisiveness, and just use of mortal force.

4. Embrace the "Benedict Option" of Rod Dreher which sees the fragmentation, dysfunction and toxicity of mainstream mega-institutions and advocates a relative detachment to concentrate energies on smaller communities: family, local Church, schools, intermediate organizations and movements.

5. Use the "Christian Strategy" of Adrian Vermuelle: detach, in some degree, from ideological and partisan allegiances in a willingness to cooperate, in limited ways, with all actors in the pursuit of goods. Like Joseph of ancient Egypt or Daniel of Babylon, we find a place within an alien empire to protect our own faith community and advance the common good of all. So, we are open to collaboration, in the good, with Muslims, Communists, Fascists, Maga-istas, and even Cultural Liberals.

We are grateful for this encyclical and its author, Pope Leo. We are always grateful for what we are given, even as it is finite and flawed. 

Leo is a pope of the poor, prayer, intelligence, sobriety, integrity, unity, reconciliation, dialogue, steadiness, modesty, competence and good governance. His weakness is a softness, a reluctance to decide, a disinclination to engage in combat.

So, as we thank God for him and his evident gifts, we ask that the Holy Spirit compensate for his weakness with gifts of wisdom and counsel, clarity in thought, courage and decisiveness in combat.

Come Holy Spirit!

The Masculine Glance Upon the Madonna with Child

 "The male gaze" is a concept of feminist aesthetics which identifies in art, and especially cinema, the toxic, male configuration of the female as a voyeuristic object of pleasure, objectified, and herself devoid of dignity and agency within the dramatic narrative. It expresses the "patriarchic" devaluation of the feminine. What follows will not challenge that idea, which is in its way an accurate diagnosis of a real pathology. 

Today, the day after Pentecost,  being the feast day of Mary, Mother of the Church, we will consider an alternative,  positive, healthy and even holy reality.

The "Madonna with Child" is arguably the most profound, powerful and pervasive image in Catholic art and imagination. There are others of course. The crucifix, with the tortured male body of Christ, has a certain primacy, especially in contrast to an iconoclastic Protestantism which prefers the bodyless cross, in a flight from the flesh, the incarnation, and the ultimate bloody sacrifice. There is also the Pieta: again the mother holds her son, now an adult corpse, the other bookend of the story. Happier than these is the Holy Family: father, mother, son...wholesome, happy, whole. 

As a male, however, I prefer the mother with child. Joseph being absent, I take his place looking upon wife and child.  This icon is incomparable in that it works, for the male, on several different emotional and spiritual levels. 

1. Identification with Infant.  

Subliminally, there is a regression to infancy, a recall of the warm, tender, protective embrace of the mother. Mary is always beautiful, but also  modest, chaste, holy. She is generous, nurturing, and extravagant. Jesus in the arms of Mary is an incomparable image of safety, contentment, peace, trust and gratitude. 

This is probably more powerful for the male because masculine identity requires, from the moment of birth when the mother recognizes the "otherness" of her child, a gradual but radical detachment from the maternal. Fruitful, mature paternity requires, eventually, autonomy, independence from the maternal. By contrast, fruitful, mature maternity builds upon a continued bond with the mother.

The suggestion here is that psychoanalytically the male carries, inevitably, a wound from the detachment from the womb, the breast, the arms of the mother. He longs, unconsciously, for a return to that enclosure of warmth and safety. His "passover" to the "world of men," to identification with the father, to the world of camaraderie, competition and combat, involves an itinerary of pain, injury and sacrifice. 

By this interpretation, the male, notwithstanding his enhanced testosterone-based aggressiveness, carries interiorly a propensity to regression, to retreat, to cowardice. In this view, the "male gaze"...voyeuristic, pornographic, objectifying...is itself a toxic regression, a "death wish," a retreat from the AGON of the masculine journey. It shares with other addictions...alcohol, drugs, etc...an "anti-virility" of passivity.

By contrast, the prayerful, reverent, tender contemplation of Madonna with Child allows the man to subconsciously bring his deepest insecurities, vulnerabilities and anxieties to the Holy Mother, who herself reflects the Mercy of the Father, as she is holy, pure, tender, loving and beautiful. In Marian devotion, the Catholic man configures his own personal reminiscence of feminine, especially maternal, love, with the person of Mary and also with his enclosure within the Maternal Church. This return to "childhood" in a state of rest, serenity, trust and reception allow for a mysterious healing and interior strengthening. 

2. Admiration of the Woman.

In this icon, the woman is the protagonist, the child the recipient. The Great Antagonist, the Evil One, is entirely absent, repelled to hell by the holiness of Mary. The absence of Joseph, the father, allows the male observer to assume the position of husband and father.  This is first and foremost a glance of reverence, of awe before the immense dignity, gratuity, and elegance of the mother. The self-gift, the sacrifice, the generosity of a mother is incomparable to anything else in human life. The closest a man can come is spilling his own blood, as a martyr or hero. In Catholic lore, the Virgin-Martyr is perhaps comparable in valor and goodness to the natural mother. In Mary, the Catholic sees Virgin and Mother. She is queen of angels and saints, and of martyrs. She assumes a position as queen that is unequaled by any mere man or angel.

We see that the masculine gaze of admiration of the feminine is the polar opposite of the "male gaze" which devalues and objectifies. The seeing, with admiration, of such holiness, penetrates the male heart, intellect and spirit and sanctifies him with a gentle, but audacious virility.

3. Tenderness for Mother and Child.

In her embrace of the infant, woman herself shares with the little one a vulnerability, a precious fragility. She is so given over that she herself becomes defenseless. In that sense maternity is the most profound form of human vulnerability. The man who is secure within his own identity, strength and masculinity, surges with tenderness, protectiveness, affection for both mother and child and the dyad itself. Masculine strength and assertiveness finds here its formal and final cause, its ultimate purpose: protection and provision for this precious, sacred twosome. Timidity, anxiety and insecurity are banished as a ferocity both lionlike and lamblike surges within the mans breast.

4.  Humility of God.

The most profound, impenetrable Mystery is that this tiny, fragile, incompetent infant is God's very self, the Son, the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity. Absolute Being, the source of all that is true, good and beautiful is present in one so small, needy, powerless. This is The Mystery of our faith. This we cannot understand, explain, analyze or utilize. We can only drop to our knees, like the three kings, and adore. 

But there is more. The Almighty God continues to come to us, each of us and all of us...in the very least, the very smallest, the incompetent and powerless. This is the infant, the embryo, the demented, the insane, the very poorest. 

God has lowered himself to become an infant, entirely dependent upon his mother. And so, in a million ways every day, he presents himself over and over again: in the needy, the dependent, the disabled. And each of us has the incomparable dignity of serving him. His very weakness elicits our own strength and nobility.  

To Conclude...

With an invitation to all men, myself first of all, to calmly sit before the Madonna with Child:

To be as a child in the arms of the mother, myself small, fragile, weak and vulnerable.

To admire the incomparable Splendor of Mary our Mother, and of every woman as virgin and mother.

To surge with the flame of virile tenderness, protectiveness, and gentle strength.

To adore Christ incarnate as an infant, and present in every person as vulnerable, suffering and poor.

Top Ten Best Catholic Programs for Holiness

Consider: we all (especially we self-obsessed Boomers) know that physical health requires a solid, steady program or routine: a good night's sleep; balanced, temperate, nourishing diet; and daily exercise of some sort. Consider: some high schools and colleges produce competitive, championship-level teams year after year because they have good programs, rigorous workouts and high motivation. Even more does our spiritual thriving require a good program.

In 1973, the year my wife and I dived into the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, as that movement was surging powerfully, John Haughey S.J. published his classic: Conspiracy of God: the Holy Spirit in Man. He intended the word "conspiracy" in its etymological, Latin sense: "to breathe with." So, we "conspire" with God when we breathe with him: aspire, collaborate, journey, commune together. He distinguished three types of spirituality: programmatic, which emphasizes habit, institutions, traditions; pneumatic, which seeks the interior inspiration of the Holy Spirit; and autogenic, which highlights the agency of the person, in freedom, initiative and love. At the time I read the book, I happily identified with the pneumatic or charismatic which I saw as superior to the autogenic social justice politics of my late adolescence as well as the institutional Catholicism of my childhood. In the half century since then, I see that a wholesome spirituality blends all three, but the programmatic is fundamental. 

The enthusiasms of "the Spirit" easily vanish and the agency of the Self proves itself to be largely volatile and impotent. We are communal: we need steady support of others. We are creatures of habit: we need good ones. We are sinful: we need rituals of repentance, encouragement, pardon, support. A good Catholic is one with a good program. My grandfather used to say: "Just go to confession every other Saturday, as a habit." Catholicism is a programmatic, institutional,  traditional faith.

Poison of Protestant Individualism

Our nation is deeply Protestant, or late-Protestant if not post-Protestant. In its various forms...mainline, progressive, Evangelical, fundamentalist, Pentecostal...it can be a living, lively Christianity, but its core infection is individualism. At its origin in Luther, Calvin, Henry VII and the others, it renounced the Church community in favor of some individual, subjective faith. And so, through the centuries it has proliferated into thousands of different denominations. Many today identify simply as "Christian." This means that they follow no authority or tradition, but contrive their own system...or they follow some local, rando pastor who has contrived his own religion.

American Catholics have mostly gone "protestant." In our hospital visits, between 10 and 20% who identify as Catholic practice their faith. By this I mean: attend mass every Sunday. Most of the others, if they still identify as such, explain that they relate to God, they pray on their own. It is, in other words, an isolated, lonely faith. It is not nothing. It is faith. It can be highly Catholic in flavor: devotion to Mary, the rosary, the saints, sacramentals and such. Of course I do not challenge or correct these people of faith, however anemic, who are sick in bed. But as we pray together, almost always the Our Father, my hope for them is that our shared prayer will awaken a desire to return to communion with the community, the Church.

We are NOT created to live and pray in isolation. We need communion with each other. We need steady, reliable patterns and habits to carry us when we are weak. We need resources to correct, encourage, revive, inspire and eventually sanctify us. We need program. Let's consider ten good ones.

1. Classic Tridentine Catholicism

Counter reformation Catholicism, reactive to Protestantism and defined at Trent, is arguably the most programmatic, institutional religion imaginable. The subjectivity of "faith alone" of Luther was countered by a solid, objective program.

"It's all bullshit, pure bullshit! All this liberal Vatican II stuff! All you need is two things: the commandments and the sacraments. That is all you need!"  This was my conservative high school friend Frank who disapproved of my liberal enthusiasms, in 1965. Frank served as a Catholic priest for 25 years; as an Episcopalian priest for 25 years; and is retired. Now he is the progressive, I am (obvi!) the conservative. We get together every few months for burger and drink, but don't go too deeply into theology. Nevertheless, my buddy provided a succinct summary of the Catholicism in which we were raised. Clear, defined, objective. Obey the commandments. Receive the sacraments. Fidelity to your state in life (marriage, priesthood, religious life.) Hard, durable, clear, simple.

In its full baroque grandeur, it was magnificent: art and architecture, missionary accomplishments, religious orders, theology, religious devotions (Mary, the cross of Jesus, penance for sin, sacramentals) and more. It's singular weakness was that it was not always firmly rooted in the foundation: the person and event of Jesus Christ. To the extent that it lacked this, it tended to and was perceived as dogmatic, moralistic, ritualistic, clericalist...all in the negative sense. 

In the form we received it (1950s) it was still intact, but already leavened by our postwar prosperity, implicit ecumenism, and positivity. It was, for those two decades 1945-65 a thriving, exuberant American Catholicism. But its spiritual, intellectual roots were not deep. The bonds of communion and prayer were not deep enough to renounce the subjectivity, the individualism, the therapeutic narcissism at the core of the Cultural Revolution. And so, Catholicism entered into a 60 year period of steady decline. The Latin Mass is, of course, an admirable endeavor to preserve and retrieve much that was best in this Catholicism.

2. Evangelical, Pneumatic Catholicism of John Paul and Benedict

These two pope fully engaged Vatican II, especially the recentering on the person of Jesus Christ. They interpreted the Council in continuity with the past, as they engaged modernity, critically, but appreciatively. So, they strongly affirmed the best contemporary developments in the Church and the world: ecumenism, dialogue with other religions, appreciation for Judaism, centrality of religious freedom, the role of and call to holiness of the laity, social justice for the poor, the positive accomplishments of science and technology, liturgical and biblical revivals. Patiently and peacefully they resisted the progressive assault on Catholic principles around incompetent life, sexuality/gender/family, objectivity of morality, and the balance of faith/reason. Their authoritative teaching aligns with and mutually strengthens the lay renewal programs below.

3. Catholic Charismatic Renewal

This movement of the Holy Spirit, which exploded in Duquesne University in 1967, is arguably the most significant of our time as it is part of the broader Pentecostal movement that started in 1900 and has spread around the globe in many churches. In terms of Christianity writ large, within and beyond the Catholic Church, this is the most consequential development of the last 126 years and going into the future. In part this was a brilliant synthesis into Catholicism of elements of Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism: love of Scripture, focus on Jesus as savior and lord, invocation of the Holy Spirit, gifts of the Holy Spirit (tongues, prophesy, etc.), spiritual warfare, gender roles, authority, emphasis on praise and strong spiritual community. 

4. Divine Mercy

The revelations to Saint Faustina constitute the most significant development within Catholicism and are the interpretive key to the pontificate of John Paul. They are a revival of traditional themes but with a new clarity, emphasis and luminosity. Practically, there are simple practices: the litany of Divine Mercy, the image of the merciful Jesus and the celebration of Mercy Sunday a week after Easter.

5. Neocatechumenal Way, Communion and Liberation and Lay Renewal Movements

These all flow from a distinctive encounter with Christ in the unique charism of the founder and find expression in practices and habits that are creative, novel, and fruitful as they draw deeply from tradition.

6. Monastic Rule of Life

The epitome of this is that of St. Benedicts which he built on the shoulders of the Dessert Fathers and was the foundation of Medieval Christendom. It develops later into the medicant friars, the active religious orders, ands most forms of Catholic life. It interweaves prayer as personal and communal, silence, work, study, and community. It is the quintessential "Catholic Program of Holiness."

7. 12-Step Groups

Not explicitly Catholic, these might be conceived as "anonymous Catholicism" (with a nod to Karl Rahner's famous "anonymous Christian." Famously, they aspire to be "spiritual" rather than "religious" rather than associate with baggage attached to institutional faiths. In clear, definite practical manners they practice the fundamentals of Christianity and Catholicism: awareness of weakness and need, trust in God, accountability, community of support, and a clear body of literature and practice. In the deeper etymological sense, it is itself a "religion": a "bonding" of a community through shared beliefs, values ands practices. It does not inherently replace or compete with other faiths, but is best practiced as an "accompaniment" to them. It addresses addiction and provides a path to sobriety and does not ambition to be a total plan of life as a full religion does.

8. Our Lady's Missionaries of the Eucharist and similar Traditional Programs

About a dozen years ago my wife and I made promises to OLME, Our Lady's Missionaries of the Eucharist, of now deceased Sister Joan Noreen, a gifted spiritual guide. It is a refreshing synthesis of the traditional elements of Catholicism: Eucharist, Mary, obedience to the Church, the sacraments, liturgy of the hours and simplicity of life. There are many such traditional movements: Opus Dei, Regnum Christi, Legion of Mary, and others.

9. Liturgical and Devotional Year and Holy Places

The Church year with its seasons, it feasts and fasts, its "saint of the day" is a dazzlying program for holiness in itself.

The Catholic soul is particularly fascinated by the Eucharist and the Mother of God: daily mass, visits to the Church, 40-hour devotion, processions, rosary, Marian feast days, and other.

As time is sanctified by our Catholic calendar, so space is made holy also. Holy places are the destination of pilgrimages: Israel, Rome, Santiago, Fatima, Lourdes, Guadalupe and so many more. Every parish Church is holy...and every chapel, cathedral and basilica.

10. Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy: Service of the Poor and Suffering

Within the Catholic economy of grace, special blessings come with programmatic, systemic, habitual service of the poor and suffering. This is strikingly evident in saintly figures such as St. Mother Theresa of Calcutta, Dorothy Day, Catherine Doherty and a litany of others.

Conclusion

In addition to the above, Catholicism offers a rich banquet of optional programs: novenas, devotions, retreats, spiritual direction (including the famous Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius), pilgrimages (my favorite being the Camino of Santiago in Spain) and other. No single person could practice all of these. They all feed into and draw from the presence of our Crucified-Risen-Ascended-Spirit-Sending Lord in his Church incarnated in Word and Sacrament.

The core, essential program of the Catholic: Sunday mass. You have to show up Sunday morning. You don't have to be pure and holy; you don't have to receive communion; you don't have to fully believe in everything Catholic; you don't have to pay attention for the whole time. You have to show up. You have to be there, in the flesh, in Church, for an hour, whatever high jinks your monkey-brain performs. 

The key Catholic word is:  EFFICACIOUS.

The sacraments are efficacious: they effect what they symbolize. This is not magic. It is Mystery. They effectively and fruitfully give us Christ's grace, of their very nature. They do not depend upon the merit or worth of the minister: an evil priest still confects the Eucharist; he still pardons sin in confession; he still heals body and soul in anointing of the sick. 

Their full force is released only with the cooperation, the ascent, the surrender of the recipient. But their power is not limited by that subjectivity. For example, imagine someone receiving a sacrament in a state of distraction and inattention. Subjectively, consciously the mind is elsewhere: anxieties, regrets, resentments, sadness. Nevertheless, if there is even a faint intention to receive Christ in the sacrament than that grace is given, miraculously, gratuitously, abundantly.

The entirety of Catholic life flows from the sacraments. In this it contrasts sharply with the subjectivity inherent to Protestantism and its offspring narcissistic, therapeutic, moralistic individualism.

By analogy, the rest of Catholicism shares a certain, lessor but nevertheless miraculous efficacy inherent to the sacraments. So simple practices themselves, in their form, give grace, even when the subjectivity is distracted: carrying a rosary, wearing a medal, hanging a crucifix in  a room, blessing yourself when passing a Church, donating to a Church or charity, receiving ashes, casually saying "God bless you."

Modernity is isolated, individualistic subjectivity. Catholicism is communal, connected objectivity.

My own joy is that I have participated in all of these programs...if poorly. My personal motto: "Anything worth doing, is worth doing poorly." I am excellent and exemplary in nothing. But I have done very good things very poorly. And the things themselves are efficacious. 

May we all, celebrating Pentecost today and moving into ordinary time, deepen, strengthen and intensify our Catholic program of holiness of life!

One Battle After Another: A Call to Arms!

"I have not come to bring peace, but the sword."  John 10:34

"Peace I leave you, my peace I give you. Not as the world gives do I give you peace." John 14:27

Jesus left us his peace, but in a perpetual state of war and wars...until he returns in the Parousia.

War these days has an undeserved bad reputation. Popes like to exclaim: "War no more!" In our youth we sang "All we are saying...is give Peace a chance!" Pumper stickers announce: "War is not working."

The  progressive or liberal narrative is: War is optional. We can chose peace over war. By our own agency and volition we can move beyond war to a state of peace. We simply: redistribute wealth so no one is hungry, reasonably negotiate and compromise, disarm enemies by our compassion and understanding, follow the science, provide education and therapy, empower the oppressed (especially women, people of color, sexual transgressors,) and above all overthrow the white, male, homophobic, misogynist, Zionist, rich, Republican, fascist oligarchy. 

This thinking is delusional.

War, struggle, la lucha, combat, Agon...is the core of Reality, of History, of Being. War is inevitable, inexorable, unavoidable. The only question is: do we capitulate in weakness and cowardice? Do we fight viciously and violently? Or do we engage heroically, truthfully, virtuously?

Let's bring back VALOR, CHIVALRY, HONOR, COMRADARIE IN ARMS, HEROISM, SACRIFICE, BOLDNESS!

I am not talking about Hegsethian militarism or masked ICE agents. I am talking about the evangelical ethos (poverty, chastity and obedience) of the medieval Knights Templars and Teutonic Knights who were elite warriors in the spiritual and the military realms. I am talking about the generations of Spaniard Crusaders who reconquered the Iberian Peninsula for Christendom. I am talking about our fathers who defeated the Japanese, Nazi and Soviet Imperialisms.

Let's identify the main wars being waged now: the spiritual, the cultural, and the global.

(Yes, patient reader, another top 10 list!)

1. Spiritual Combat

This conflict is threefold: with the world, the flesh and the devil. ..The primary and defining battle in every age. The rest are subordinate and more superficial.

 "The World" here is not the splendor of Creation, but human life as organized without and against God. It is autonomy, pride, arrogance.

"The Flesh" is our own personal disordered tendencies, physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual. Every person is in this fight.

"The Devil" is of course Lucifer and his demons: created persons, spirits with intellect and will, but without bodies, who rejected God and are desperate to bring us into the dark kingdom.

And so, we on this earth are always the Church Militant, the Church in combat. We are not the Church Triumphant (in heaven) or the Church Suffering (in purgatory), although we participate by anticipation in those states. Above all we are NOT the Church at peace, or the world at peace!

2. Culture Wars

The civil war within our own society, "the West," has four different theatres which indwell each other: cultural progressivism, technocracy, gigantism, and class conflict/poverty.

Cultural Progressivism assaults the foundations of our common life by sterilizing sexuality, deconstructing gender and family, killing incompetent human life, disparaging tradition, and isolating the individual.

Technocracy vacates Creation and especially the male/female person of interior worth and meaning by instrumentalizing all of life. This leads in all directions: pathologies of social media, threat of AI, environmental toxicity, energy crisis, transgenderism, reproductive technologies. Perhaps the most significant breakthrough of all is artificial contraception which thrust a poison into the sacred sexuality of the binary, generous/generative human person.

Gigantism assaults the dignity of the person and human communities by a cancerous malignancy whereby institutions inexorably grow to inhuman size, overwhelming the person, vitiating agency, and destroying natural bonds. This includes centralized government, multinational corporations, unions, universities and even the Church. Here our tradition proposes subsidiarity: preference, where possible and prudent, for the small, the intimate, the concrete.

Class War is a reality in any advanced, industrial society. Without accepting the entire Marxist narrative, we recognize in our society systems which favor specific privileged, powerful class and disadvantage others, not only the working class but those trapped in cultures of deprivation.  Part of this, then, is also the battle against poverty, including beyond our national boundaries, and sickness.

3. Global Wars

Our three antagonists here are: Communism, Jihadism and Fascism.

Communism includes North Korea, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam but above all China which is brutally repressive of human rights and imperialistically ambitious. 

Muslim Jihadism takes two forms: Shiite in Iran and Sunni which includes terror groups around the globe but especially violent in Africa. It is fortunate that the two fight each other. So, there are hopes for an alliance in the Middle East of the West, the gulf states and Israel.

Fascism which is a perennial weed, seen today in Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and elsewhere. 

Our adversaries enjoy significant advantages over us. They are amoral totalitarianisms: unrestrained by popular opinion or moral principles. The Jihadists are religious and so do not fear death in the way that seculars do. But also: they know that they are at war. They are not blinded by the progressive delusion that peace is an option.

Conclusion

And so, as I write, we are engaged in...not one, not two...but at least ten wars: world, flesh, devil, cultural progressivism, technocracy, gigantism, class war and poverty, communism, jihadism and fascism. 

Jesus assured us that "the gates of hell will not prevail" against the Church he would build upon Peter, the rock. (Matt 16:18). We are not on the defensive. It is the Dark Kingdom of Lucifer that is gated and vulnerable. With Christ our King, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we are on the offensive. The gates of hell will not prevail before our assault.

And so, let us stand with Aragon at Black Gate:

There may come a day when the courage of men fails,

 when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship,

IT IS NOT THIS DAY!

An hour of wolves and shattered shields,

when the age of men comes crashing down.

BUT IT IS NOT THIS DAY!

This day we fight!

By all that you hold dear on this good earth,

I bid you stand, Men of the West!

My Theological Dream Team

In a previous post , (May 13, 2026) after contrasting two 10-man teams of Jesuit thinkers, one progressive and the other orthodox Catholic, I announced the "Fleckinstein Fantasy Theologian Competition." But I did not give my own dream team. So I offer now, my first and second team.

Criteria:

Intellectual brilliance, creativity, insight; depth and breath of erudition; fidelity to Tradition; holiness of life; range of influence.

First Team

1. Pope St. John Paul

2. Pope Benedict

3. Balthasar

4. Kiko Arguello

5. Ralph Martin

6. Monsignor Luigi Giussani

7. Edith Stein/ St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross

8. Avery Dulles

9. David L. Schindler 

10. David C. Schindler 

Second Team  In no order of ranking.

Rene Girard

Jacques Maritain

Etienne Gilson

Dietrich von Hildebrandt

Karl Stern

Romano Guardini

Fulton Sheen

Scott Hahn

Henri de Lubac

Raniero Cantalamesa

Notes:

- John Paul is the singular theological champion of our time. He, along with Benedict and Balthasar, forms a cohesive, synthetic theology that draws deeply from Tradition and Revelation, engages modernity, and authoritatively interprets the Council. Their work is definitive for our Church in our time.

- After those three is a second triumvirate of spiritual leaders of the renewal movements: Kiko, Martin and Giussani.

- Four Americans who I have personally known make my first team: R. Martin, Dulles and the two Schindlers. These have greatly impacted the American Church, perhaps not so much global Catholicism.

- Note the strong preference for a creative Thomism that incorporates the best of modernity, especially personalism and phenomenology: John Paul, Stein, Benedict, Hildebrandt, Blondel, Maritain, Gilson and in some degree all of the 20 thinkers.

- St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), the only woman on the list, merits special honor for her brilliance, holiness, heroism in death as Jewish and Catholic martyr, and her drawing from classical Catholicism as well as the best of contemporary thought to plumb the mysteries of empathy, femininity, and the cross.

Conclusion

Our Church in our time has received extravagant theological wisdom, through these and others. With this heritage, we can suffer serenely the infection of progressive confusion, indecision, and compromise afflicting our hierarchy. It is now our delight and destiny to plumb the depths of these riches.

Mary our Mother, Seat of Wisdom, pray for us! Help us to receive, cherish, defend, enhance and share the heritage we have received.

Top Twenty Best Catholic Communities That Have Been a Blessing

Grateful for:

20. Catholic/Evangelical Alliance in the Culture War, including the Prolife Movement

19. Camino of Santiago

18. World Youth Days

17.  Franciscan Friars of the Renewal

16. Sisters of Charity, Convent Station, NJ

15. Jesuit priests who taught me at Woodstock NYC, taught my children in Jersey City, and with whom I worked at Xavier HS, NYC.

14. Maryknoll priests, staff and my classmates at Maryknoll College Seminary, Glen Ellyn, Ill 1965-9.

13. Catholic colleges: Mount St. Mary's, Md; University of Notre Dame; St. Peter's, Jersey City; Seton Hall University; DeSales University, Pa; Fordham; Franciscan University of Steubenville; Institute of Psychological Studies; John Paul Institute for Study of the Family. 12.  

12. Communion and Liberation

11. Neocatechumenal Way 

10. Our Lady's Missionaries of the Eucharist (OLME)

9. Cursillo

8. Communio school of theology at Washington DC.

7. Charismatic Renewal.

6. Magnificat Home residence for women which our family and friends support.

5. The CCD, confirmation and religion classes I have taught for over 60 years.

4. Many Catholic elementary and high schools which educated our family and in which we have worked.

3. Our current parish and every parish in which Christ has nurtured us with his Word and Sacrament.

2. My origin family: Father/Mother, brothers/sisters, grandparents, uncles/aunts, cousins.

1. Our own marriage and family as it expands and extends outwards.

Honorable Mention:   Christian Brothers; Dominican Sisters of Hope and of Caldwell; Felician Sisters; Marriage Encounter; NET retreats;  Ivan Illich's Cuernavaca Institute in Summer 1968; Regnum Christi;   Volunteer chaplaincy at Jersey Shore University Hospital; Catholic Communion service at Ocean County Jail; EWTN; Knights of Columbus; Weston and Mt. Savior Benedictine Abbeys; Bethlehem Hermitage in Chester, NJ; Service Immersion Trips Overseas; Catholic Worker; First Things; Jewish-Catholic Dialogue; so many retreats, conferences, pilgrimages, men's support groups, bible sharing sessions, (anonymously Catholic) 12-step meetings.  

 Counting schools and parishes, our list goes into the hundreds. Italian in my neighborhood (NY/NJ) might say that our family is "connected."

You might, dear Reader, make your own list. It is a salutary exercise in memory and gratitude. 

Thank God for our Catholic Church in all her marvelous expressions!   

Welcome to the Fleckinstein Fantasy Theological Competition League

Jesuit Adversaries: Progressive and Conservative

 Every man and many competitive, athletic women will understand: a worthy competitor, adversary, antagonist is a great thing. Ok...it is not as good as a good lover, mother/father, friend, mentor. But it is a great thing.  He will bring out the best in you.

The Jesuits were immensely influential, beyond their numbers, in Tridentine Catholicism: education, missions, martyrs. In the Vatican II Church, they have been inordinately effective in shaping and maintaining Catholic Progressivism, especially through their flagship institutions: universities, especially the more prestigious ones, and America.

Below is my "Top Ten Best Jesuit Adversary List." They are all extraordinarily brilliant, erudite, influential, God-loving, Church-serving, PROGRESSIVE Jesuits.  I did not personally know any of them. I wish I did. Each is fascinating, brilliant, and by reputation prayerful and charming. In heaven I will look them up. Each had a strong hand in forming contemporary Catholic Progressivism: the turn to sterile sexuality, tolerance of legal abortion, rupture with tradition, trust in technology, embrace of leftist politics, and more.

In no particular order:

Pope Francis

Pedro Arrupe

Karl Rahner

Bernard Longergan

Robert Drinan

James Martin

Teilhard de Chardin

Roger Haight

Daniel Berrigan

John Courtney Murray

I look forward in heaven to engaging and challenging them. But I cannot compete at their level. So, I would field against them my all-star team of contemporaneous conservative Jesuits:

Hans Balthasar

Jean Danielou

Henri-Marie de Lubac

Avery Dulles

Joseph Fessio

Gerald Collins

Kenneth Baker

John Hardon

Eric Przywara

Ed Oakes

I look forward in heaven to watching these two teams-of-heaven square off against each other. Obviously, my money is on the second team. I hope that I clear purgatory before the competition begins. It shouldn't be a problem: Drinan is looking at some serious time there; but he is a theological lightweight anyway.

Fantasy Theological Competition League

I offer you, dear Reader, a challenge: Fantasy Theoogical Competition League.  Above you see my 10-man Jesuit team. I dare you to propose an alternate group, your personal "fantasy team," of theologians of the last 85 years, since 1945.   They generally must be Catholic, with rare exceptions. Fleckinstein will be the final judge as he is honest, balanced and unafraid. (Or is that Bret Baier on Fox at 6 PM Eastern Time?) 

Some options:

Progresssives 

Obviously, you want to avoid progressives like the rogues gallery above as well as Kung, Schillibeckx, Tracey,  Baum, and above all Richard Rohr! Please, please, please...Not Richard Rohr! Generally, feminist and liberation theologians are not strong competitors, although Gustavo Gutierrez is a contender. You might avoid the dialogue with Eastern religions: Panikkar, de Mello, Zen Christianity and such. For example, the early Merton (pre-1965) is impressive, the later Merton not so much. 

Philosophers, since the two disciplines are so close and interwoven, make good choices. These are usually lay, while theologians more frequently clerical.

Thomists

A strong team would include Thomistic philosophers like: Maritain, Gilson, Pieper, Norris Clark, John Finnis, Garrigou-Lagrange, Elizabeth Anscombe, Peter Kreeft, Ralph McInerny, Thomas Joseph White, and Alasdair MacIntyre. 

Personalist-Thomists (Communio)

An even stronger offering would be those who combine a grounding in Thomas with contemporary phenomenology and personalism as well as a retrieval of the fathers: John Paul, Benedict, Hildebrandt, Marcel, DC and DL Schindler, Adrian Walker, Paolo Prosperi, Michael Hanby, Antonio Lopez, Tracey Rowland and Nick Healy. Edith Stein (Saint Theresa Benedicta of the Cross) died in 1942, but she is such a strong influence that we will grant her a special dispensation to compete.

 Different Flavor

 Charles Taylor, Rene Girard, Remi Brague, Christopher Dawson, and Jean-Luc Marion. 

Radical, Passionate, Eccentric, Dynamic

Ivan Illich, Henri Nouwen, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, Heather King, Carlo Caretto, and Paolo Freire. Along similar lines: influencers like Fulton Sheen, Robert Barron, Luis Martinez, and Archbishop Chaput. On the more hierarchical track consider: Suenens, George, Arinze, Mueller, Zen, Sarah, Scola,  Burke (early, but not later) Schonborn.

Non Catholics

While this competition is for Catholic theologians, we will grant dispensations for important, Church-adjacent-or-friendly intellects like Protestants C.S. Lewis, N.T. Wright, Wendel Berry, Stanley Hauerwas, John Milbank, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Orthodox David Hart and Alexander Schmemann. Bultmann, Tillich and Barth are too anti-Catholic. Possible Jewish contenders would be Martin Buber and Abraham Heschel.

Biblical ScholarsA distinct but compelling genre:  Scott Hahn, Raymond Brown, John McKenzie, Brian Pitre, John Bergsma, and Joseph Fitzmyer S.J. 

Charismatics

You know that Fleckinstein favors charismatics so you might consider: Ralph Martin, Raniero Cantalamessa, Killian McDonald, Francis Martin, and Ed O'Connor.

Catholic Neo-Conservatives

Notwithstanding their soft libertarianism, "Americanism," enthusiasm for capitalism, and comfort with bourgeois Republicanism, these have been fierce in defending Catholicism in the Culture War and the global war with totalitarianism and so merit our respect: Novak, Neuhaus, Weigel, Reno, Arroyo, Royal, Gleason, Eric Sammons and their posses at First Things, Crisis, The Catholic Thing, and EWTN.

Psychologists

Strong Catholic voices from and within academic psychology include: Paul Vitz, Karl Stern, Benedict Groeschel, Joseph Nicolosi Sr and Jr, Elizabeth Moberly, Conrad Baars, Greg Bottaro, Andrew Sodergren,  and Richard Fitzgibbons. With this group we might include Susan Motto and Adrian von Kaam, both in the field of spirituality.

Conclusion

There you have it kind Reader: 120 of the Catholic thinkers who have shaped our Church and world. We look forward to considering your theological dream team. 

Thank you for indulging Fleckinstein. His compulsion to make lists is getting out of control. If you suspected that he is "on the spectrum" you would not be without grounds. Do not talk about this with the family: everyone will want me back on my meds. But I do my best blogging when I am in my hypo-mania! Don't you agree?😂