Best Day of the Year: March 25

 Most overrated: Christmas, December 25.  Most underrated: 9 months earlier, Annunciation, March 25.

Christmas is rich in sentiment, nostalgia, custom, tradition, gift giving, song, fun, friendship and family affection. It is brutal for the lonely, the mentally ill, the broken hearted.  It is not the time when God became incarnate. That happened 9 months previous, when this unique person, the God-Man, was conceived in the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit.

My favorite holydays are the bookends of Jesus' life on earth: his conception and Pentecost, when he sent the Holy Spirit, the conclusion of his mission on earth. Between those definitive points, we have: birth, baptism/desert/public appearance, passion/death, Resurrection, 40 days of appearances, and ascension. If I had to rate them: 1. Annunciation. 2. Pentecost. 3. Resurrection.  4. Passion/death. 5. Baptism/Public. 6. Appearances. 7. Birth. 

How much difference between Jesus, or any one of us, at one week old and at one week before birth? Very, very little. Same little creature. There is a change in place. The change is accidental, geographical, extrinsic. How much change pre- and post- conception? Absolute! From nothing into something. Creatio ex nihilo. 

I will be 79 years old on my birthday, Aug. 20, 2026. I was born Aug. 20, 1947. But that date is not as important as 9 months previous, Nov. 20, 1946 or so, when I came into being out of nothing.

Mary's Yes, her Fiat, in response to the angel Gabriel was the SINGULAR greatest human decision, act, encounter, event. ALL of created being...the entirety of human history...was transformed in that one word: FIAT. Be it done to me according to your will.

When Mary said Yes, Jesus was conceived. Man and God were wed. They became "one flesh." God would not incarnate himself without consent. Mary was free. She represented the entire human race in our freedom, as did Adam and Eve in their primal decision, their assent to Lucifer, their betrayal of our heavenly Father.

When Mary said Yes, the deal was done. The covenant was consummated. The rest is history. Mary loved Jesus, and came to be loved by him...for the next 9 months, then the next 30 years, then the next 3 years, then the days from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning, than the next 40 days, then the next 10 days, and then afterwards in the companionship of John and the Church, and then assumed into heaven forever.

We, the Church, the entire human race, are drawn into that communion in love between the Trinity and the virgin. 

The Solitude of St. Joseph

Six days ago we celebrated the feast of St. Joseph. Consider his role in this drama. He is exterior to it. He has no direct role of intimacy in the conception of Jesus. He is adjacent. He is solitary. He is alone with God. He receives his own annunciation from the angel and is, like his spouse, obedient. His is a supporting role. He never says a word in Scripture. We know he was a carpenter. We know he cared for his family, tenderly. We know he did as directed from heaven. We know he died happily in the presence of Jesus and Mary. We know nothing about his friends or coworkers. We know nothing of his family, except that he was from the line of David. He is silent, invisible, anonymous, humble, protective, chaste. He is the quintessential man.

He is certainly the second holiest person who ever lived. He is second only to Mary who is in a category of her own: not God, but the most sanctified of creatures. He is also in a category of his own: not due to virtue or heroism or effort or will power. But because he lived in the intimate, chaste influence of Mary and Jesus. 

Who is third holiest? I go with John the Beloved Apostle who was so close to Jesus, even at the foot of the cross, and then close to Mary for many years. 

Conclusion

How do we become holy? 

Follow the example of Joseph and John. Stay close to Jesus and Mary. Open our hearts to their influence. That doesn't seem to be so hard!

Why I Like Italians So Much

 Top 12 reasons I love Italians:

12. We Irish and Italians like each other. We are different. We are both Catholic. Two things matter most: blood (family) and faith (Church). You are always Catholic. You can never be un-Catholic. You can be a porn star, a mafia hitman, a fascist or a Marxist...but you are still Catholic. Every Church is your Church, every priest is your priest, every hermit is praying for you. At your death, awaiting you is Christ and his Church.

11. Italian mafia movies: De Niro, Pacino, Pesci, Palminteri, Gandolfini and Liotta. Primal! Virile! Dramatic! Passionate!

10. (American) Italian food is the best! Everyone knows that!

9. Growing up, living, praying and working in urban NJ   I am always around Italians. They are fascinating. They act and talk like gangsters. But many are tender, holy, meek. I eventually outgrew my adolescent timidity and conviction that Italians are tougher than myself and my kind. Actually, a lot of Irish are awfully tough. (Not me!) They are loyal and vengeful. They either hate you enough to kill you on sight or love you enough to die for you, in a NY minute. 

8. Italian men are men and Italian women are women. No gay-affirmation! No gender ideology! "Patriarchy" is a good word. Camile Paglia can explain this better than me.

7. The luminous balance of the sacred and profane: the mafia boss who drives his wife to daily mass, the Italian bakery with pictures of the Sacred Heart, Francis of Assis, Sophia Loren, Padre Pio, and Claudia Cardinale.

6. The natural beauty of Italy: coastland, farms, fields, cities.

5, The History: Greeks, The Empire, Hannibal, Visigoths, Huns, the law, the architecture. You walk the streets of Rome and any cobblestone under your foot can be 2,500 years old.

4. The beauty of the Renaissance, artwork, statues, basilicas, Churches. 

3. Church history: relics of Peter, Paul, virgins, martyrs, popes, mystics, hermits. I am "Roman Catholic"...not Jersey City Catholic or Orange, NJ Catholic. 

2. Italians are to holiness what Kenyans are to marathons or Irish to alcoholism. 90% of stigmatists are Italian. They just are passionate, intense, inflamed with love for Christ: Francis of Assis, Catherine of Siena, Padre Pio, Maria Gioretti, Gema Galganni, and So many others. They levitate, bilocate, die incorrupt, fight demons, heal miraculously, receive locutions and apparitions, and SO much more.

1. Sophia Loren.    (Full disclosure: I was only 14 years old, without defense, when I say her in El Cid. I lost my mind, broke my heart, and fell into terminal covetousness. I have never been right. At this point, my hope is that my encounter, directly with Christ, at my particular judgement and my cleansing in purgatory will set me right.   Actually, it is not just Sophia. It is all Italian women. It may be a stereotype, but I don't really care: If you are Italian and female your food is from heaven, your soul is that of a virgin/martyr, your body that of a pagan earth goddess, your heart that of a Madonna. Just sayin...)

The Great, Inspiring, Historic Man/Woman Partnerships of Our Time

It is striking how many of the very best things that happened in the second half of the 20th century came from a collaboration of a man and a woman. Most of these were not romantic, sexual or spousal. They continued the classic Catholic, gendered-generosity-generativity of Benedict/Scholastica, Francis/Clare, Catherine of Siena/Raymond of Capua, Teresa of Avila/John of Cross, Francis de Sales/Jane de Chantal, Vincent de Paul/Louise de Marillac, Claude de la Colombiere/Margaret Mary Alacoque.

We start with the most significant.

St John Paul, St Mother Theresa of Calcutta, Saint Faustina.  

John Paul and Theresa were not close friends or collaborators. He harshly refused her request to retire to a life of prayer. In this he extended her agonizing dark night and intensified the depth of her holiness. In the broad scale of things, the two stand over the Church and world of this time as incomparable icons of maternity and paternity.

As far as we know, John Paul and Faustina never met each other. She died at the age of 33 in 1938 in Krakow. He moved to Krakow at the age of 18 in 1938.  They lived in proximity to each other. But more importantly, she was the recipient of the revelations from heaven of Christ's divine Mercy; John Paul later as Cardinal and Pope approved and spread this devotion. This was possibly the most powerful visitation from heaven to earth in the century.

Hans Urs von Balthasar and Adrienne von Speyr.

Balthasar is in a league with Augustine and Aquinas in his encyclopedic erudition, creative brilliance, and insight into our faith. He insisted that his own work was entirely a collaboration with Adrienne and that her own work greatly exceeded his own in significance. He considered her to the greatest mystic since St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. Their theological work, combined with that of John Paul and Benedict, defines Catholicism for the foreseeable centuries.

Kiko Arguello and Carmen Hernandez.

Together, these two founded the Neocatechumenal Way. They are clearly partners, although Kiko is a spiritual genius in the league of the greatest (Benedict, Francis, Dominic, Ignatius of Loyola) while Carmen was theologically trained and probably responsible for their distinctive liturgy (which I personally consider the weak leak in their chain.)

Next we consider partnerships in the active life of charity.

Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin

Co-founders of the Catholic Worker, Dorothy was the moving, charismatic force, the Mother of the movement; but she could never have done this without her mentoring by Peter in the Catholic tradition.

Catherine and Eddy Doherty

Catherine is the peer of Dorothy Day in her spiritual wisdom, activism and influence.  She founded Madonna House, not unlike the Catholic Worker.

She married Eddy Doherty, a renown journalist, in a "Josephite marriage," in which they both pledged sexual abstinence. Both had prior marriages (hers annulled as her husband was a cousin, in the Russian Orthodox Church) and had children in their previous marriages. Eddy became a permanent deacon. 

Next We Consider Marriages of Philosophers

Jacques and Raissa Maritain

Dietrich and Alice von Hildreband

These two marriages have striking similarities: contemporaries, the husbands knew each other. They are certainly two of the most accomplished, influential Catholic philosophers of the century. Both followed St. Thomas although Dietrich leaned more heavily into contemporary phenomenology and personalism. Both wives were substantial thinkers in their own right. Both marriages were Josephite: sexually abstinent, seeking fruition spiritually but not biologically. 

Next: the mystic and the atheist doctor.

Elizabeth  and Felix Leseur

This wife loved her hardcore atheist husband tenderly, passionately, and with immense suffering. Upon reading her memoir after her death, he converted, spent the remaining 30 years of his life as a Dominican priest, spreading the legacy of his wife.

Next: Professors and their Female Proteges

Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein (St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross)

Ludwig Wittgenstein and Elizabeth Anscombe

Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt

Academic consensus surely holds Wittgenstein and Heidegger as the greatest philosophers of the century, with Husserl easily in the top ten. So, it is so striking that each had as their standout protege a female student of brilliance and moral/spiritual character. 

All three geniuses were detached from religion but moved by powerful spiritual sensibilities. Husserl converted to Lutherism from Judaism and retained a sense of awe as he pursued  philosophy detached from faith. Wittgenstein, secular but of Jewish descent,  likewise was moved by deep moral, spiritual motives as he detached from formal religion. Heidegger, raised a devout Catholic and attended seminary,  renounced the Catholic tradition of dogma and philosophy but proposed in his thought an alternate, non-theistic but strongly spiritual philosophy. All three renounced traditional Christian thought, but lived and taught their own philosophy as a faith or way of life.

Stein, like her mentor, converted from secular Judaism. She became  a brilliant Catholic thinke;, a Carmelite nun;  a martyr, for being Jewish, in Auschwicz; and a canonized saint. Like John Paul and Hildebrandt, she combined Thomism with modern phenomenology to offer a Catholicism that is contemporary, fresh and traditional.

Anscombe was a brilliant, hardcore Catholic who forcefully denounced the bombing of Hiroshima as well as the acceptance of contraception by many Catholic who rejected Pope Paul's Humanae Vitae.

Arendt was and remained Jewish, if in a secular fashion. Yet she was a profound, insightful moral thinker, astutely scrutinizing contemporary issues from a spiritual/ethical depth. She was student and romantic-sexual lover of Heidegger who was a Nazi. Strikingly, she later reconciled with  him in friendship, thus enacting forgiveness, a theme she also studied. 

In all three cases, the younger female protege excelled her more prestigious mentor in wisdom, moral character, and spiritual clarity. Clearly, the male geniuses, brilliant but not firmly grounded in the True and the Good, were fascinated by the interior-intellectual-spiritual loveliness of their students.

Conclusion

These twelve partnership have striking resemblances. 

- None bore biological children.

- Four were marriages, but three of those were Josephite, sexually abstinent. One entailed a non-marital sexual romance.

- All engaged deeply, passionately in spirituality, philosophy, active charity,

- Five were Jewish with four of them converting; one a Nazi; one remained a secular Jew. 

- Most exemplified the classic Catholic marriage of chastity, wisdom, simplicity of life, and closeness t the poor.

- We see in strikingly unique ways, the mutuality, fecundity and serendipity of the male/female encounter. Many (the Hildebrandts, John Paul, Edith Stein, Balthasar, Speyr) delved deeply into the mystery of sexuality/romance/masculinity/femininity/spousality/maternity/paternity. In them we are given the definitive response to the sterile, iconoclastic Cultural Liberalism afflicting our world.

We have here  mesmerizing personalities: radiant with brilliance, holiness, moral character, iconic in their masculinity and femininity, and resplendent in chastity, reverence, tenderness and heroism.

We do well to study them, ponder them, pray to them, and emulate them.

The Despair of the Progressive

It is palpable in the Opinion section of the Sunday NY Times: a sense of doom and desperation; democracy is being replaced by fascism; global warming about to destroy our planet; regressive populism is spreading across the globe. The faith of the progressive is in crisis.

This faith is in...progress. The famous "Arc of History!" The faith that "Progress" is the religious/metaphysical core of history and indeed reality. There are many versions but really two basic models: the evolutionary and the revolutionary. The evolutionary (Darwin, Whitehead, Chardin) sees a gradual, inevitable, imminent force in history/reality pushing forward to utopia and places immense trust in science, technology, education, therapy, reason, and diplomacy. The revolutionary (Hegel, Marx) posits the eternal dialectic of oppressor/oppressed by which the underdog is constantly in rebellion against oppression. The two obviously contradict each other; yet they coexist incoherently in various expressions of cultural liberalism.

This reality of progress is not a scientific discovery; not a revelation from the eternal; not a metaphysical intuition. It is a myth. Actually, the core dogma of secular progressivism. It is organically connected to other myths: gender as self-choice; the sacrosanct right of a mother to kill her unborn child; the contraceptive rupture of sex from having children; the omnipotence of science/technology; masculinity/patriarchy as toxic;  "born that way" homosexuality; systemic racism; the messianic role of the maternal state; and the sovereignty of the isolated Self over all bonds of community, history, religion and family. 

This pandemic of despair, anxiety, hysteria, and rage is often diagnosed as TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome. But it is surely deeper than a response to this pathetic, manic, histrionic egomaniac. He has been on a tear for over a year, but is already being restrained and will be out of the picture within two years. 

The fear is deeper: that the sacral "arc of history" has been stopped, or diverted, or inverted, or nullified. The historic significance of Trump is that he halted that allegedly inexorable direction of history. 

But it is much more than him.

- With the advance of technology (cell phones, social media, etc.) we are seeing a decline in learning outcomes.

- With the availability of therapy, we see increase in mental health problems.

- With the eruption of bad actors we see the irrelevance of diplomacy and the United Nations. 

- In resisting evidence of the lab origin of Covid, "follow the science" guru Dr. Fauci has been unveiled as a partisan manipulator.  

- Climate, the most pressing concern of liberals, is displaced by pressing needs for energy due to wars and emergent AI. 

-Shootings continue but gun control makes no real progress across the nation. 

- Critical race theory has proven to be a dead end, widely rejected by the working class, including many of color.

- The imminent demographic winter, which spares the more religious and generative of us, is ominous for the secular culture of sterile, non-generous sex. 

- Perhaps worst of all: it is the underclass, the workers, the uneducated and deprived who are choosing rightwing populists like Trump in valid democratic elections. 

Trust in a secular ameliorative process inherent to history and reality is being destroyed in every arena. The "god of progress" is...if not dead...fatally wounded. Furthermore,  progressivism, largely secular,  lacks the comfort available to religious conservatives, a transcendent, eternal life beyond this one.

The Catholic Progressive

Let's distinguish the Catholic Progressive from the Progressive Catholic. The noun or substantive is the defining inner form: the CP is progressive interiorly, with a Catholic flavor; the PC is here understood as basically Catholic in foundational moral/theological beliefs but leaning left on pragmatic, political issues. And so the Catholic Progressive accepts contraception, the technology of reproduction, legal abortion, female priests, transgenderism, and the LGBTQ agenda. Substantive Catholics share fundamental truths, but may differ as progressive/conservative/radical on prudential issues such as: immigration, capital punishment, taxes, environmental policy, diplomacy and specific wars as just.

The Catholic Progressive configures classic Catholicism as fundamentally erroneous and hateful as patriarchal, homophobic, judgmental, and authoritarian. The authentic Catholic...liberal, conservative, radical, or other...affirms Catholic dogma and morals but retains freedom of conscience in considering practical policies that do not involve inherent evils.  

 It is clear that the Vatican and American bishops lean left on many of these issues; but that practical evaluation is not guaranteed by the Holy Spirit and not binding on the conscience of the Catholic laity. A Catholic layman might well consider but then reject magisterial opinion and serve on ICE, or in Iran, or as prosecutor/judge in a capital punishment case.

The pontificate of Francis was a happy one for the progressive Catholic: it left in place basic dogma but mostly favored the liberal policy agenda. Not so much for the Catholic Progressive: he aroused hope for change but remained confusing/contradictory and in the end did not change church teaching. This will be even more pronounced with Leo: his sympathies are with the Left on policy issues. His pledge to follow the direction of Francis suggests a softness on dogma and morals. In temperament and attitude he is mediator, a peace maker, a compromiser. But he is also a canon lawyer, an institutionalist, concerned with Church stability. He is less likely than Francis to change basic teaching, even as he is less clear and forceful as teacher than many of us desire.

What Do We Make of This?

Yuval Levin has helpfully shown that in the Culture War, neither side is able to prevail against the other. The sides are roughly equivalent, although there is a pendelum swing from one election to another. Both sides share an anxiety that their side is in danger of extinction. 

With this in mind, we do well as conservatives to take a deep breath, relax, and enjoy a degree of relief from anxiety/anger,  serenity and confidence. In many ways the war is a stalemate, like Ukraine/Russia. But in the long run we have the advantage. Our values are perennial, eternal, rooted in the moral order and Revelation. Our fertility, biological/spiritual/intellectual, is superior. The progressive paradigm is sterile, fragile, sentimental, and futile. 

This posture of interior peace allows us patience, hope and persistence. It allows compassion for the progressive in his affliction of despair. It even allows us to listen respectfully and affirm the truth offered by our distressed antagonist. It awakens a desire for reconciliation and movement ever deeper into the True, the Good and the Beautiful. 

Cesar Chavez: a Fallen Hero

 I received with piercing sadness, yesterday, the NY Times investigative reporting that Cesar Chavez had not only habits of adultery but that he abused teenage girls and even raped his colleague of many years, Delores Huerta. Huerta, now 95 years old, carried this secret for about 60 years, to protect the legacy she shared with Chavez. 

This struck me in a personal way. In my late adolescence and even early married life Chavez was for me a hero figure as a historic labor leader, a father figure for Mexican-American farm workers, but also an exemplary Catholic in his prayer, fasts and Eucharistic devotion. Early in our marriage we would boycott supermarkets that carried non-union grapes. Our first daughter, around age 2, referred to grapes as "boycotts." 

He is the last of a series of personal heroes, in the public life, who have fallen off the pedestal: JFK, MLK, Fr. Bruce Ritter, Jean Vanier are others. Each represented for me historic greatness and moral goodness. Yet, in their treatment of women they were depraved. Worse was the abuse of the young. And also worse was the combination with spiritual abuse and manipulation. 

As I type this, at 2 AM, unable to sleep, I feel dirty myself. It is as if I had collaborated with him in my hero worship. Or as if this was done by my own father or son.

Any More Heroes?

Do we have today, in public life (as distinct from the Church), any moral heroes? I think of one: Jimmy Lai, the Catholic Hong Kong millionaire publisher in jail for defending freedom. He is a hero. 

I cannot think of any other heroes of the moment. But we do have decent, moral exemplars in our public life. 

By my Catholic values, advocacy for legal abortion is a moral contamination similar to membership in the KKK or the Nazi Party: systemic evil. So I cannot admire any Democratic politician of the last 60 or so years. The last authentically prolife Democrats were: Sargent Shriver, the older Governor Casey of Pennsylvania, and Mayor Ray Flynn of Boston. Even Hubert Humphry, Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale, and Jimmy Carter were compromised on this issue as the tide was turning approaching 1970. 

Happily, we do have a number of public figures with moral integrity. (What follows is not an endorsement of their politics, but of their personal decency, however imperfect.)  Ronald Reagan, both George Bushes, Gerald Ford, William Buckley, Nicki Halley, Condoleza Rice, Ron DeSantis, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, William Barr, Paul Ryan, Justices Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Barrett, Denzel Washington, and Tom Hanks

Going back to my own childhood and youth, we can admire: Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman (although dropping the bomb is a problem), George Meany, Gregory Peck, and Adlai Stevenson. 

Globally we think of: Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Dag Hamarskjold, Antonio Salazar of Portugal, Desmond Tutu, Nyerere of Tanzania, and Margaret Thatcher.

These 36 figures are not morally perfect. Many of their policies, decisions and values are problematic. But they all maintained a private and public decency and dignity, qualities desperately needed in leadership today. 

Catholic World

Within the Church, we have been blessed (again, within my lifetime) with extraordinary people, some canonized, to emulate: St. Mother Theresa, St. John Paul, St. Padre Pio, St. Pope John 23, St. Paul 6, Luigi Giusanni, Pope Benedict, Mother Angelica, Monsignor Luigi Giussani, Chiara Lubich, Dorothy Day, Catherine Doherty, Adrienne von Speyr, Madaleine del Brell, Caryl Houselander, St. Fulton Sheen, Cardinal Van Thuan, Archbishop Luis Martinez, Bishop Barron, Father Patrick Peyton, 

We have others still living with us. But I decline to name them. They are still vulnerable to sin. Perhaps specially targeted by Lucifer. "The higher they climb, the further they fall." The memory of Cesar Chavez moves us to pray for the living, even those most admirable. 

Conclusion

We remember Cesar Chavez today with deep sadness. Sad for the young, trusting women who continue to suffer from this abuse. Sad for his sin, his disrespect for women, his public hypocrisy. 

We pray for his soul.

We pray for ourselves: "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."

We celebrate today, as I type, the feast of St. Joseph. May his intercession and influence make us chaste, loyal, fatherly, strong yet gentle.

Release from Toxic Nostalgia: Purifying the Memory

 We serious, boomer Catholics can be excused some nostalgia for our youth. Fondness and gratitude for childhood, in proper proportion, is filially wholesome and virtuous. Beyond that: the postwar period (1945-65) was a great time to be growing up American Catholic.

In the lifeline of every person and community there are golden times and terrible ones. The Israelites recalled with delight the days of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph), the Exodus with reception of the 10 commandments, the kingships of David and Solomon; but also the days of slavery and the exile in Babylon.

The victorious end of the war, with the Depression now a memory, initiated a Catholic Camelot: expanding economy, pride in defeat of the Axis powers, global dominance, national unity against Communism, large families, lots of jobs and overtime, numerous vocations to priesthood and religious life, religious revival (Billy Graham, Bishop Sheen, Fr. Peyton, Thomas Merton), labor and capital both thriving and cooperative, and an explosion of Catholic institutions.

By the numbers, this thriving world collapsed, catastrophically and rapidly, starting in 1965 as the Council concluded and the cultural revolution exploded: flight out of the priesthood and religious life, decrease in Catholic practice, theological confusion, polarization between progressives and conservatives, the priest scandal, and other.

Understandably, we who are aging in a world of relentless change, are tempted to despise the new and the contemporary and project a sentimentalized, idealized image upon the past. This is neither wholesome nor holy. God is present, working always in the present. He builds upon the past, Tradition and memory, but is ever new, eventful, creative, refreshing...moving us into an ever more glorious future, eventually an Eternity of Joy. 

We do well to balance gratitude for the past, with realistic scrutiny of it, but rejoice always in the Gift of the Present as a foretaste of a promised future and Eternity. In an exercise of renouncing toxic nostalgia, let us consider six bad things of the postwar period, specifically urban, ethnic Catholicism 1945-65 and ten good things of 60 years since then.

The Bad

1. Superficial Spiritually. If that Catholic culture was as strong as the numbers suggest, as we like to imagine it, it would not have collapsed so completely, so quickly. The roots and foundation were not deep and strong. 

In large measure, Catholicism was not evangelical or Christ-centered. We were not clearly evangelized into a personal relationship with the divine-human person of Jesus Christ as savior and lord. We were well instructed in the fundamentals of dogma, morals, sacraments and prayer but all of that was not deeply, coherently anchored in Christ. We were not conversant with the Bible, in contrast to our Evangelical neighbors. 

Pious behavior (Sunday, weddings, baptisms,) was pervasive but in large degree habitual, motivated by social pressure as well as fear of eternal retribution. 

2. Intellectually Weak.  Laity, mostly ethnic immigrants, were largely uneducated. Their piety was familial, populist, deeply felt, but not highly intelligent. Priests were the intellectuals, but their seminary training was limited: focused on Thomistic philosophy and theology, but largely removed from the broader, thriving cultures of the sciences and humanities. Catholic colleges were considered relatively weak, although they did teach the faith. Influential bishops and priests were often good builders and administrators rather than theologians. 

3. Tribal and Narrow.  To their credit, ethnic parishes elicited coherence of life, loyalty, certainty, and stability. The darker side was a tribal bias against the Other. Prejudice...against blacks, Jews, Protestants and other ethnicities...was commonplace. 

4. Clericalism. We dearly and deeply revered our priests as authorities, as dispensers of the Mysteries. But that could elicit pride, arrogance, condescension from priests. Many clerics did not relate well to women. Alcoholism was a common problem.

5. Misogyny.  I do not speak here of patriarchy, in the ideological sense, as I revere our patriarchs. But in cultures modern and traditional the immature male fails to appreciate and reverence the female in her very womanliness. This was, and is, a problem within the priesthood, but also in family life. If anything, the sexual revolution and ideological feminism hav made this worse. This problem manifested differently in various cultures: for example, the Italian male has a different dysfunction than the Irish.

6. Sexuality. Catholicism has always maintained a profound reverence for sexuality as a sacred gift from God to be cherished within marriage. This has also been accompanied by shame, guilt, and fear. I personally never received a negative catechesis; rather, it was a taboo subject, not mentioned. This was at once a reverence; but also an awkwardness, an embarrassment. And so, an admirable reverence coexisted with anxiety, guilt, shame and negativity. As a result, we were unprepared for the sexual revolution.

The Good

1. Vatican Council II  While its implementation was corrupted into the progressive "Spirit of Vatican II" by the overwhelming headwinds of the Cultural Revolution, the Council itself was the work of the Holy Spirit and a miraculous ecclesial event:

- The documents, fruit of an unprecedented gathering of theologians,  were all overwhelmingly approved by huge majorities of bishops in a clear consensus.  It was unequivocally an authentic act of the Catholic Church.

- Centered Catholic life in the person of Jesus Christ.

- Opened the Church to engage the broader culture appreciatively but critically. Although probably not critically enough!

- Ecumenically reconciled with our brethren in Christ beyond our Catholic boundaries.

- Renounced  anti-Judaism with a new-but-ancient "love of the Jew," a deepened appreciation for our own roots and a glimense of the providential nature of rabbinic Judaism.

- Recognized clearly the call to holiness of all the baptized and the value of lay leadership, especially in culture and family. 

- Highlighted the importance of freedom of religion and conscience, in its orientation to Truth. 

- Retrieved a broader study of the Church fathers and doctors. While Thomistic language was not used, the underlying philosophy of St. Thomas (e.g. analogy) as well as that of John Cardinal Newman was retained.

2. Lay Renewal Movements. Under mostly lay leadership, these: focused on the person of Jesus Christ (evangelical), reception of Scripture, the activity of the Holy Spirit, community, retrieval of traditional values in fresh expressions, a pronounced sense of the supernatural in resistance to a world gone secular. These include Charismatic Renewal, Communion and Liberation, Neocatechumenal Way, Focolare, and others.

3. Divine Mercy. This devotion, received through St. Faustina in the 1930s, spread informally and steadily, largely among the laity until the papacy of John Paul who elevated it into prominence and expressed it in his powerful encyclical Dives in Misericordia. "Full of Mercy."

4. Papacy of John Paul II. Arguably the most consequential pontificate in Church history, he manifested our ever-ancient-ever-new faith in his own personal drama of holiness and teaching on: the centrality of Christ, an authoritative interpretation of the Council, the dignity of the person, the triumph of Divine Mercy, catechesis on sexuality, a sophisticated and nuanced engagement with contemporary culture, an agonistic struggle against ideologies including fascism, communism, and sexual liberalism, a profound social doctrine and more.

5. Papacy of Benedict XVI. Ratzinger was the primary collaborator with John Paul but was himself a theologian and Churchman of immense significance: the youngest, startlingly brilliant theologian at the Council; a man of humility and holiness; a brilliant scholar of Scripture, theology and contemporary culture; and a master catechist who expresses our faith with incomparable sweetness.

6. Theology of Balthasar and the Communio School. In an extraordinary partnership with mystic Adrienne von Speyr as well as collaboration with Resourcement Theologians Fr. Balthasar articulated a majestic, encyclopedic Catholic-yet-contemporary theology of holiness, beauty, and drama.

7. Pentecostal Movement around the Globe. This includes but transcends the Catholic Charismatic Renewal as it has spread like wild fire in Pentecostalism, through mainline Churches and around the globe, notably in the Southern Hemisphere.

8. African Church is thriving demographically but also spiritually in its contest with militant Islam. It is purified in persecution. It retains, against the secular-progressive West traditional Catholicism as has become a missionary Church, serving the Church-in-decline to the north. 

9. Countercultural Catholicism. With the hegemony of secular progressivism in Western elite culture, Catholicism has partnered with Evangelicalism and other allies to articulate a passionate, profound countercultural Christianity: prolife movement, defense of sexual chastity and marital fidelity, protection of the incompetent and weak, freedom of religion, and articulation of the supernatural. This finds  expression in a rich range of new, small but intense institutions: the Latin Mass, homeschooling, new religious orders (Friars of Renewal, Sisters of Life, etc.), classical schools, and intensive Catholic colleges. Additionally, we have benefited from striking apostolates to the poor: Mother Theresa, Dorothy Day, Catherine Doherty, and others.

10. Twelve Step Programs. This miraculous legacy of Bill W. and Doctor Bob grew in the form of Alcoholics Anonymous from the 1930s into the 1970s but was significantly expanded to address other forms of addiction: gambling, sex, drugs, eating, workaholism, and other. It works beyond the boundaries of any Church religion as it welcomes all beliefs but offers a program clearly rooted in the Christian revelation and is a powerful work of the Holy Spirit.

Fundamental Continuity

More significant than the catastrophic numerical decline and even the above ten developments is the underlying stability, identity, continuity of the Church through both periods: 1945-65 and 1965-2026. The interiority, substance and form of the Church did not essentially change. Numbers declined, some vices were overcome as new ones emerged, fresh organic features developed. But the Church as Bride of Christ, as Body of Christ, as our Mother, as the Communion of Saints on earth thrived, abiding in Christ and bearing fruit. 

Conclusion

We rightly remember with joy and gratitude the graces of God received in Catholicism in the postwar period. We avoid idealistic nostalgia as we see the systemic shortcomings of the time. We retrieve all that is good as we attend to the workings of the Holy Spirit in the present, guiding us always to a more glorious future. Thanks be to God!

War Forever: The Long Game of an Internationalist, Culture Warrior Catholic

So called "forever wars" (Iraq, Afghanistan)  are disparaged as wasteful and useless by many on the left and the right; notably by J.D. Vance and his millennial generation. This simple point of view rests upon a mistaken assumption: that peace is an option. A simple binary is imagined: peace, as in Biden's abandonment of Afghanistan, or war, as with Trump's current invasion of Iran. 

The truth is that we are ALWAYS, everywhere, at war...always in this life, always within human history, always. Peace with Hitler, peace with the USSR...  was never an option. Nor is it now with China, Iran, Sunni Terrorism, Cultural Liberalism, and the crime families to our south. Peace is not possible. The binary is not peace or war, but victory or defeat, Chamberlain or Churchill.

Most men understand this intuitively. By the time we can talk we know that life is about: the good guys and the bad guys. This insight does not come fluidly to many women. This reality is absolutely, systemically denied by contemporary liberalism.

Vance and the right blissfully trust that isolationist retreat will ensure peace and prosperity in the homeland. This is delusional. We could not detach from two world wars or from the Cold War. As I write, the Iranian military, that has been largely destroyed, retains a grip on the straight of Hormuz and is strangling the entire global economy. They can do this at will. If their entire arsenal is destroyed, they will be immediately replenishing drones and missiles, working in shops and importing from abroad. They would not hesitate to bring down the global economy. In our age of crypto-warfare and AI, isolation is all the more misguided.

The delusion on the left is more profound. Progressivism is optimistic: there is no devil, no sin, no permanence of evil to the human condition. We will enter a utopia of peace when people are fed and sheltered, educated, therapized, reasoned with, affirmed, understood. We need to address the deeper roots of the problems and war will disappear.

The ontology of Evil

We know from Revelation that evil and combat predated human history. Lucifer led a third of the angels in revolt against God. They all live eternally in hell, separation from God. Human life is a participation in that combat. Like the angels, we face a simple binary: heaven or hell. Peace between the two is not an option. In the paradise of Eden, Adam and Eve were not shielded from the demonic attacks: as free agents, their destiny was already to engage Evil: surrender/victory. Not diplomacy, compromise, and negotiation.

War with Islam

 In an early encyclical, Pope Francis famously said that "true Islam is a religion of peace." How he as Catholic pontiff can define "true" Islam is a good question. But facts verify the more negative scrutiny offered by Pope Benedict in his Regensburg address on the interplay of irrationality and violence within that religion. Almost immediately, at its origin, Islam crushed the flourishing Christian civilizations of Africa and the Middle East. The singular instance in which Christendom regained territory was the reconquest of Spain which took 770 years. We waged the crusades for two hundred years. Islam would have swept east through Europe except for ferocious battles at Constantinople 718, Lepanto 1571, Vienna 1683, Zenta 1697, Vasvar 1664, and the first Balkan War 1912.  Today we are engaged across the globe in this never-ending civilizational conflict: Sunni (Isis) and Shiite (Iran) terrorism, the immigrant invasion of Europe, and alerts everywhere.

Islam is a particularly resilient, persistent, tenacious, aggressive religion. It takes much that is best of Judaism/Christianity: monotheistic belief in a transcendent, holy God and the moral code of the ten commandments. It combines this with a regressive misogyny (polygamy) which fosters a hyper-masculinity and a cult of warfare. It lacks the merciful Gospel and the efficacy of the sacraments. It aggravates male propensities for lust and violence but offers inadequate purification rites. The result is that the guilt/shame add fire to a righteous violence, now viewed as Jihad. It is remarkable that many of the suicide terrorists of 9/11/2001 were using pornography the evening before they died. It makes perfect sense: they had no recourse to confession so they cleansed themselves by a martyr's death.

This is not to demonize Islam. There are rich resources in this faith, including mercy, hospitality, humility, prayer and piety. No doubt there are interpretations within the tradition which renounce this legacy of violence. But the historical record is clear.

The mullahs of Iran and warriors of Isis are enemies of America, Christianity, Judaism and Israel. They are at war with us. It is for us to protect ourselves and all that is precious to us. We are at war with them. Retreat with Vance into isolation is not possible. Diplomacy, without military might and the willingness to use it, in the mode of Obama and Biden, is self-defeating.

World of War Lords

Our world resembles that of El Cid, 11th century Spain. A colossal civilizational conflict of seven centuries. Everywhere there were local war lords, Christian and Muslim. They aligned with each other, often in messy arrangements. For example, at times a Christian and Muslim Lord will find it to their advantage to align against others of their own faith. Nevertheless, the major fault line is between the two religions and their civilizations.

Call it Christendom or Christian Nationalism or Catholic Integralism...but our faith is corporate, political, civilizational...it is not private, isolated, interior. Our faith ineluctably incarnates itself in institutions, families, practices, politics, conflicts, laws, armies, police, schools, organized works of mercy and a culture. Our faith create a civilization. And ours competes with our adversaries. 

Five civilizations are in competition in our world: Christianity, with Catholicism as the stable institution at its heart; Communism in various nations; Islam, expressed variously among Sunni and Shiites; fascisms; Cultural Liberalism.

Our four opponents are all perversions of Christianity. As noted, Islam is a merge of Arian or Judaized Christianity with misogyny and a culture of war. Communism is Christianity secularized into a this-worldly utopia and therefore inherently totalitarian. Fascisms are often blends of toxic-imperialistic nationalism, xenophobia, and a corrupted Christianity (as with Putin). Cultural liberalism is another secularized, perverse ethos of materialism, narcissism, sterility, toxic empathy and despair.

Fascism is the least of our threats as it lacks an enduring ideology and often dies with the tyrant (Hitler). Communism and liberalism are secular and therefore lack the faith in transcendence. They are trapped in a final despair. This is expressed in the demographics: sterility, a failure to procreate. So our greatest long term threat is militant Islam. It believes in God and heaven and therefore is freed from many earthly fears and entrapments. It has a high reproduction rate. It successfully passes on its faith to the young. 

Catholic Internationalist

No less than our rival ideologies, our Catholicism is expansive, confident, generous, evangelical. Liberals want to put lots of tax money into exporting contraception, abortion, the the LGBTQ agenda. Putin's Russian fascism is brutally imperialistic. Chinese communism is intrusive over the globe. And the proxies of Iran extend over the entire Middle East. But all the more so does our Catholic faith urge us to share it.

Our Catholic faith urges us to defend freedom...especially of religion, but all the freedoms. And to expand these freedoms...in never ending combat with repressive communism, fascism, Jihadism, and cultural progressivism. This means war...all the time.

Conclusion

Our current fight in Iran is a temporary skirmish in a long term war. Within a few weeks, both sides will run out of ammunition and the fighting will calm down. Both sides will declare victory. The regime will not collapse. In its two faces, clerical and military, it is resilient, tough, aggressive. While it may only have the support of 20% of the people, there is no countervailing force with weapons of destruction. To install a new regime would require an occupation. Such is not a political possibility. I wish it was. 

We are handicapped in our war against Islam, Communism, and Fascism as we fight a civil war within our own civilization against Cultural Liberalism. This religion denies the supernatural, including the demonic and the sinful. It assumes a humanity that is inherently good, peaceful, reasonable. It believes we can dispense with war if we redistribute wealth, defend the oppressed, feed the hungry,  provide education and therapy. It deconstructs family and gender as it reconstructs sexuality as the indulgence of the isolated, sovereign Self. It renounces fatherhood in horror of toxic masculinity and patriarchy. It is emasculating, perverted, depraved. 

The  number of adults who daily use marijuana has doubled in the last five years. This ethos of lethargy and passivity is connected to the plague of pornography, the cult of contraception/abortion, the failure to protect our borders, the escape from Afghanistan, weakness before Putin, the bipartisan explosion of deficit/debt, Critical Race Theory and its emasculation of the black male, deaths of despair, and the demographic winter.

It is the crisis of virility. The emasculation of our society and our Church. The refusal to recognize and cultivate the form of noble manhood.   

It is for us to "man up"...to gird ourselves, every day, in little ways and large, for the combat...personal, cultural, spiritual, civilizational, political...in which we are ever engaged.