The three most significant, influential women over the last century were (circle three):
Margaret Thatcher; Marilyn Monroe; Rachel Carson; Golda Meir;
Simone de Beauvoir; Mother Teresa; Saint Faustina; Margaret Sanger; Hillary Clinton; Edith Stein; Aretha Franklin; Madonna.
If you chose the three consecrated virgins, your Catholic intuitions are impeccable.
One of the really, really new things that came into the cosmos and history with Jesus was consecrated virginity. Ancient paganisms and Judaism, like contemporary liberalism, had not the faintest clue about this mystery.
Jesus and Mary were the first, unless you count John the Baptist. St. Joseph may have had a prior marriage but surely lived virginity in this utterly unique marriage. Saints Paul and John followed along. But a most striking thing about early Christianity was the spontaneous flowering of virginal consecration among young women. Resisting immense social pressures and breaking all sociological models, holy young women passionately, zealously, and tenderly surrendered themselves, through the evangelical counsels, to Christ their Bridegroom. Many suffered tortuous martyrdoms rather than compromise the nuptial donation they had pledged. Long before canon law could regulate institutionalized religious life such women surrendered themselves to prayer and service in a fluid, organic, seemingly effortless and utterly informal way. And yet, the inner form or gestalt was crystal clear: physical virginity, along with poverty and obedience, as a bridal surrender to their Great Lover.
Virginity is above all else liberating: it frees one from the complex web of obligations, pressures, limitations, and expectations associated with family, tribe, nation and empire. The virgin wants to please only the Lord and is free of the needs and expectations, not only of husband, but of father and tribe, of king, nation and state. She is free for prayer and contemplation, for deeds of mercy, and for proclamation of the Gospel. She is lifted out of the exhausting cycle of procreation into a luminous zone of restful contemplation and Spirit-infused action. She turns away from the earth to open her heart to heaven; and returns to earth with heavenly gifts. Her feminine receptivity and fecundity takes on sublimity as she conceives and delivers a heavenly newness into a world grown old in sin.
The virgin enters the zone of “liminality,” described by anthropologist Victor Turner as passing of a threshold into an alternate zone of freedom and novelty: “Liminality may perhaps be regarded as the Nay to all positive structural assertions, but as in some sense the source of them all, and, more than that, as a realm of pure possibility whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise” (1967: 97).
Liminal persons, he continues, have “no status, insignia, secular clothing, rank, kinship position, nothing to demarcate them structurally from their fellows” (1967: 98). They are, he continues, “neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremony” (1969: 95)
And so, the virgin bursts out of all social categories into a realm of novelty, possibility, creativity, contemplation and transcendent joy. She re-enters ordinary life, from the liminous, with a luminosity, a liberality, an abundant graciousness.
In time, of course, the Church came to regularize the virginal life in a more formal way. It became prone to stagnation, but our great religious women (think of the Theresas and the Catherines) efficaciously renewed the liberating, serendipitous, liminal nature of the virginal life. The Catholic faith has always treasured this state of life. It has evolved in a creative-if-sometimes-tension-filled relationship with a masculine, Petrine-clerical institution that can guide but never control it in its irrepressible dynamism.
Luther and his reformation, by contrast, brutally suppressed virginity and regressively compelled every woman back into the boundaries of the home. Protestantism is an attenuated masculinity relentlessly oppressive of the feminine in the dimensions of the sacramental, the virginal, the contemplative and the Marian. By contrast, Catholicism is an always-fruitful mutual fecundation between the (authoritative, efficacious masculine) Petrine and the (receptive, contemplative, feminine) Marian.
The fashionable feminism of the last several decades is a far cry from the liminosity of Catholic evangelical feminism. Unfortunately, it married itself to four horrible ideas. First, it mimics the worst corruption of the masculine in seeking power in the sense of social status and the power to exert external control over the “other.” And so, we see the demand for holy orders and enhanced social status. Likewise, we find liberal religious advocating for specific partisan policies and thereby situating themselves along side of similar lobbying groups (for union, environment, etc.) and enmeshing themselves in worldly pressure politics, far from the zone of luminosity. Secondly, 60s feminism taught that maternity (biological or spiritual) is less important for feminine identity than career, accomplishment, and social status. Thirdly, it emulated the most decadent masculinity in embracing sexual promiscuity as a right and value. And worse of all, it asserted the right of the mother to kill her unborn.
Nevertheless, in surprising and delightful ways, liminal, luminous, liberating feminine virginity is again flowering in the Church. Again, as in every generation, it is irrepressible, serendipitous, and fecund with new life. Far from distrusting and resenting the masculine, it longs for the Uber-masculinity of the Bridegroom, even as he gives Himself in the masculine dimension of the bridal Church. And graces are flowing from heaven through humble, hidden, prayerful women.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Exaltation of the Feminine
Why are there so many Marian apparitions and so few appearances of our Savior himself?
How is it that Catholicism developed such a high Mariology that is hardly explicit in Scripture?
Is a distinctively Catholic feminism, precisely for us men, now revealing itself?
What does the coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven and Earth teach us about authentic Christ-like virility?
Adrienne Von Speyr (doctor, mystic, theological collaborator with Von Balthasar) may have given us the key to answering these questions. She writes:
The unity of Son and Mother, as it exists after the Son’s Ascension and the Mother’s Assumption into heaven, can be taken as a point of departure. From then on, the Son can be seen almost to retreat backward beneath the veil of the prophecies and forward beneath the veil of the Eucharist and the Church’s existence. He retreats so as to allow the Marian line in the Old and New Testaments to emerge in the special unveiling that Mary has in the promise and in the Church. And the male saints retreat with the Son, while the female saints form an apparent unity with the Mother. The Son is, of course, as much in charge here as he is everywhere else. He is, as it were, latent and in perfect unity with the Father and the Spirit. But this is now in order to liberate the Mother’s line and to make it visible. She is not conceivable for a moment without him. Yet precisely because, as a woman, she so dearly loves being hidden and veiled, the Son demonstrates what she was, from eternity, and is, for always, in this hidden state: in Eve, in the women of the Old Testament, during the Son’s life on earth, during the latter days of the Church, in the holy women, and in womanliness in general. (Mary in Redemption, page 59).
Jesus is Hidden, Mary is Unveiled
Since his ascension, Jesus is hiding. He is playing “hide-and-go-seek:” it is not an absolute absence; he is hiding to be found. Ascended to Glory He is now present everywhere but in veiled fashion; he is hiding to allure us into seeking him; he is hiding to be found. He is hidden in the Word and sacrament, he is hidden in the poor, he is hidden in silence, and he is especially hidden in the quiet, welcoming, unobtrusive Host. But he has enthroned his mother as Queen of Heaven and Earth; he has unveiled her in her splendor; and he sends her frequently from heaven on missions to us on earth. The humble, docile, obedient virgin who exulted to be "maidservant of the Lord" has now been exalted as Queen, soverein over heaven and all of creation...not through assertiveness or empowerment, but by the gracious action of her Son and his Father. As he entrhones and exalts his mother, the Son himself, by a second kenosis, retreats into the hidden, quiet anonymity of availability and service.
A cosmic reversal of the masculine/feminine polarity occurred with the Ascension/Assumption and the glorification in heaven of the virginal male and female bodies. From the fall to the redemption the male was dominant and oppressive and the female was submissive and hidden. Speyr’s breath-taking insight is that the masculine God-man has performed a magnificent inversion by humbling himself, in his virility, to lift up the feminine, the maternal, and the virginal: the masculine now become hidden, the feminine unveiled; the virile becomes servile, the womanly is enthroned; the male is reticent and humble, the female is triumphant and sovereign.
Ecclesial Primacy of the Maternal and the Feminine
John Paul himself affirmed the magisterial Speyrian/Balthasarian insight that for the Church, the Marian is more foundational than the Petrine dimension. The Church is first, foremost and always our mother and the bride of Christ. The Church is Christ’s bride for eternity and history is best understood as a romance between the groom and his beloved. Ecclesial institutions are temporary and will fade away at the eschaton: canon law, papacy, orders, and the like. All of these masculine or Petrine institutions are at the service of the abiding reality: the bride who is ravished by her groom.
Paradigm of Virility: Hiddeness, Humility, Service
What is it like to be a Prince Phillip to Queen Elizabeth? A Todd to Sarah Palin? Husband to Margaret Thatcher or Merrill Streep? A Brad to Angelina? (Let’s face it: Brad may or may not be the sexiest man alive, but he is small change compared to Angelina and even to Jen.)
The implication of Speyr’s vision is that each of us men is called to be the helper of a woman in her more significant historical role. Balthasar himself considered his theological work (monumental in its insight and erudition) to be of less significance than his passing on of the intuitive insights of his mystic friend. By an analogical imitation of Christ, a man is to enthrone the woman: his wife, mother or daughters, or (for priests) our mother the Church. The maternal task of conceiving, nurturing and caring for the new, ensouled person is the highest natural human action; all masculine activities are oriented to service of this absolutely primal creaturely and feminine mission.
This new model of virility is in sharpest contrast with the widespread "de-masculization" of our culture: the disparagement of the specifically virile as violent and oppressive, the cult of androgny, the preference for meek, weak, docile men who lack masculine vigor, passion, and character. Rather, the assumption here is of a confident, magnanimous virility which delights in and exalts the feminine as different, precious, splendid, sensitive, and generous.
This new Catholic feminism is congruent with contemporary trends which highlight the distinctiveness of femininity (Carol Gilligan, Virginia Held) as well as an emergent Catholic awareness of the genius of woman (Stein, John Paul II, as well as Speyr/Balthasar.) It contrasts with mainstream feminism: it accentuates rather than eliminates the difference; it exalts the specifically feminine rather than ignoring it; it relies, not on the assertion of power, but surrenders to humbled and serving love; it trusts rather than fears the (sanctified) masculine.
Post-lapsarian virility is aggressive, egotistical, controlling and predatory towards the feminine. Virility in Christ is gentle, selfless, contemplative and exalting of the womanly. With his last breath, the dying Jesus entrusted his precious mother to John; in doing so, he entrusted her, and every woman, to each of us males.
Think of St. Joseph! In this most perfect of human societies, Joseph is the least: the quiet one, the humble and hidden one, the mystified but obedient one, the one laboring serenely in the background. By contrast, Mary is front and center from beginning to end: from her Immaculate Conception, through the Annunciation, the Crucifixion, Pentecost and finally to Assumption and Coronation.
A young couple is expecting their third child and the mother, normally vigorous and energetic, is suffering a severe and weakening sickness. The father, a man’s man who has jumped out of airplanes as a soldier and prosecuted sexual predators as a lawyer, finds himself coming home from work to clean and cook and care for the little ones. He knows the proper location for every toy and even matches socks after they are washed. He is now a “made man”: he no longer has to prove his masculinity to anyone. He knows how to care for women and children and therefore he is fully vested in authentic virility, he has tenure, he is certified, he has arrived!
Prayer for Men
Come Holy Spirit!
Draw us into a profound communion with the virile Jesus and his mother Mary, our Queen!
Make us strong in gentleness, humble but magnanimous, pure, generous, tender and courageous!
Help us to revere and love our precious women.
Amen.
How is it that Catholicism developed such a high Mariology that is hardly explicit in Scripture?
Is a distinctively Catholic feminism, precisely for us men, now revealing itself?
What does the coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven and Earth teach us about authentic Christ-like virility?
Adrienne Von Speyr (doctor, mystic, theological collaborator with Von Balthasar) may have given us the key to answering these questions. She writes:
The unity of Son and Mother, as it exists after the Son’s Ascension and the Mother’s Assumption into heaven, can be taken as a point of departure. From then on, the Son can be seen almost to retreat backward beneath the veil of the prophecies and forward beneath the veil of the Eucharist and the Church’s existence. He retreats so as to allow the Marian line in the Old and New Testaments to emerge in the special unveiling that Mary has in the promise and in the Church. And the male saints retreat with the Son, while the female saints form an apparent unity with the Mother. The Son is, of course, as much in charge here as he is everywhere else. He is, as it were, latent and in perfect unity with the Father and the Spirit. But this is now in order to liberate the Mother’s line and to make it visible. She is not conceivable for a moment without him. Yet precisely because, as a woman, she so dearly loves being hidden and veiled, the Son demonstrates what she was, from eternity, and is, for always, in this hidden state: in Eve, in the women of the Old Testament, during the Son’s life on earth, during the latter days of the Church, in the holy women, and in womanliness in general. (Mary in Redemption, page 59).
Jesus is Hidden, Mary is Unveiled
Since his ascension, Jesus is hiding. He is playing “hide-and-go-seek:” it is not an absolute absence; he is hiding to be found. Ascended to Glory He is now present everywhere but in veiled fashion; he is hiding to allure us into seeking him; he is hiding to be found. He is hidden in the Word and sacrament, he is hidden in the poor, he is hidden in silence, and he is especially hidden in the quiet, welcoming, unobtrusive Host. But he has enthroned his mother as Queen of Heaven and Earth; he has unveiled her in her splendor; and he sends her frequently from heaven on missions to us on earth. The humble, docile, obedient virgin who exulted to be "maidservant of the Lord" has now been exalted as Queen, soverein over heaven and all of creation...not through assertiveness or empowerment, but by the gracious action of her Son and his Father. As he entrhones and exalts his mother, the Son himself, by a second kenosis, retreats into the hidden, quiet anonymity of availability and service.
A cosmic reversal of the masculine/feminine polarity occurred with the Ascension/Assumption and the glorification in heaven of the virginal male and female bodies. From the fall to the redemption the male was dominant and oppressive and the female was submissive and hidden. Speyr’s breath-taking insight is that the masculine God-man has performed a magnificent inversion by humbling himself, in his virility, to lift up the feminine, the maternal, and the virginal: the masculine now become hidden, the feminine unveiled; the virile becomes servile, the womanly is enthroned; the male is reticent and humble, the female is triumphant and sovereign.
Ecclesial Primacy of the Maternal and the Feminine
John Paul himself affirmed the magisterial Speyrian/Balthasarian insight that for the Church, the Marian is more foundational than the Petrine dimension. The Church is first, foremost and always our mother and the bride of Christ. The Church is Christ’s bride for eternity and history is best understood as a romance between the groom and his beloved. Ecclesial institutions are temporary and will fade away at the eschaton: canon law, papacy, orders, and the like. All of these masculine or Petrine institutions are at the service of the abiding reality: the bride who is ravished by her groom.
Paradigm of Virility: Hiddeness, Humility, Service
What is it like to be a Prince Phillip to Queen Elizabeth? A Todd to Sarah Palin? Husband to Margaret Thatcher or Merrill Streep? A Brad to Angelina? (Let’s face it: Brad may or may not be the sexiest man alive, but he is small change compared to Angelina and even to Jen.)
The implication of Speyr’s vision is that each of us men is called to be the helper of a woman in her more significant historical role. Balthasar himself considered his theological work (monumental in its insight and erudition) to be of less significance than his passing on of the intuitive insights of his mystic friend. By an analogical imitation of Christ, a man is to enthrone the woman: his wife, mother or daughters, or (for priests) our mother the Church. The maternal task of conceiving, nurturing and caring for the new, ensouled person is the highest natural human action; all masculine activities are oriented to service of this absolutely primal creaturely and feminine mission.
This new model of virility is in sharpest contrast with the widespread "de-masculization" of our culture: the disparagement of the specifically virile as violent and oppressive, the cult of androgny, the preference for meek, weak, docile men who lack masculine vigor, passion, and character. Rather, the assumption here is of a confident, magnanimous virility which delights in and exalts the feminine as different, precious, splendid, sensitive, and generous.
This new Catholic feminism is congruent with contemporary trends which highlight the distinctiveness of femininity (Carol Gilligan, Virginia Held) as well as an emergent Catholic awareness of the genius of woman (Stein, John Paul II, as well as Speyr/Balthasar.) It contrasts with mainstream feminism: it accentuates rather than eliminates the difference; it exalts the specifically feminine rather than ignoring it; it relies, not on the assertion of power, but surrenders to humbled and serving love; it trusts rather than fears the (sanctified) masculine.
Post-lapsarian virility is aggressive, egotistical, controlling and predatory towards the feminine. Virility in Christ is gentle, selfless, contemplative and exalting of the womanly. With his last breath, the dying Jesus entrusted his precious mother to John; in doing so, he entrusted her, and every woman, to each of us males.
Think of St. Joseph! In this most perfect of human societies, Joseph is the least: the quiet one, the humble and hidden one, the mystified but obedient one, the one laboring serenely in the background. By contrast, Mary is front and center from beginning to end: from her Immaculate Conception, through the Annunciation, the Crucifixion, Pentecost and finally to Assumption and Coronation.
A young couple is expecting their third child and the mother, normally vigorous and energetic, is suffering a severe and weakening sickness. The father, a man’s man who has jumped out of airplanes as a soldier and prosecuted sexual predators as a lawyer, finds himself coming home from work to clean and cook and care for the little ones. He knows the proper location for every toy and even matches socks after they are washed. He is now a “made man”: he no longer has to prove his masculinity to anyone. He knows how to care for women and children and therefore he is fully vested in authentic virility, he has tenure, he is certified, he has arrived!
Prayer for Men
Come Holy Spirit!
Draw us into a profound communion with the virile Jesus and his mother Mary, our Queen!
Make us strong in gentleness, humble but magnanimous, pure, generous, tender and courageous!
Help us to revere and love our precious women.
Amen.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Marian Devotion and Women Priests
Classic Catholic devotion to Mary our Mother immediately rules out the possibility of woman priests. Anyone who loves and (hyper)venerates our Lady intuitively understands that Catholic woman priests are an impossibility. This knowledge is usually not discursive or cognitive: the believer knows with certainty but cannot necessarily explain it to the outsider, the skeptic. You either “get it” or you do not: what is common sense within the gestalt of Catholic faith becomes a logical incoherence and a moral abomination to the modern, secular, late-Protestant mindset. It is like explaining love to one who has never been loved: it is so primal and foundational that it cannot be constructed or explained from other concepts. The demand for woman priests was only possible in a post-Council Church that had largely demoted Mary from her pre-eminent salvific role to a lower status of mere disciple, one of us, not significantly superior in any way.
To the Catholic imagination, Mary is a creature, one of us, but distinguished from all the rest of creation by her perfect, unbroken, whole-hearted union with God. She is the supreme and perfect creature: “our tainted nature’s solitary boast” (Wordsworth.) She is Queen of heaven and earth; the privileged sovereign within creation, always submissive, perfectly, to the Creator, her son and his father; sovereign over the angels, archangels, apostles, martyrs, popes, and saints; Immaculately Conceived; virgin mother; enabler of the redemption by her fiat; bodily assumed into heaven; mediatrix of all graces; and the very heart of the Church.
A Catholic’s attitude towards Mary and the maternal Church is filial: an analogue of his union with God. Mary and the Church inter-fuse each other and nurture us, their children. The child of God-and-Mary-and-Church is therefore, docile, receptive and submissive to Mary-and-Church as they mirror the love and truth of Christ Himself. It is not, then, for the child to instruct and reform our Mother, to dissent.
The liberal, modern and feminist attitude is best understood as non-filial: “I am not a dependent and obedient child; I am an autonomous adult and the equal of anyone. Everyone is the same; no one is different or superior. I am obedient to no one except my own choice.” Modernity, void of the sacred and the enchanted, levels everyone so there is a total absence of authority, hierarchy, obedience, and filiality. Female becomes functionally equivalent of male, child of adult, animal of human. Creation is not surrendered to its Creator; earth not impregnated by heaven; femininity not yielded to masculinity; and child not docile before father and mother.
By sharpest contrast, the Catholic faith elevates, to a sublime position, Mary our Queen and Mother, and with her all women. Motherhood is viewed as pristine and sublime. There is nothing a male does that can compare. In the most intimate manner conceivable, the mother cooperates with God in the conception of a unique, bodied-spirit who will live eternally. This is hardly “reproduction,” a term which applies to photo-copiers and factories, but procreation, miraculous creation from nothing. By comparison, the masculine contribution is distant and marginal. John Paul himself quoted Balthasar on the primacy of the Marian over the Petrine dimensions within the Church. And so, within my own family I now have two nephews studying for the priesthood and a nephew and daughter consciously pursuing the evangelical life of poverty, chastity and obedience. Which pair is closer to the heart of the Church? The seminarians will be invested with the power associated with Church governance, preaching and dispensing of the sacraments. But the consecrated life brings one closer to the Marian heart of the Church. And so, within the kingdom of God, there is a preeminence of the vowed life. This is incomprehensible to the modern mindset.
The Catholic Church cannot and will not, ever, ordain women priests. To do so would be to pervert the inner form, gestalt, soul and essence of the faith. A son or daughter of the Church lives immersed in a web of filial relationships, all of them hyper-gendered. Our hearts surrender to our heavenly Father, Mary our Mother, holy mother the Church, our Holy Father, and all the spiritual mothers and fathers, virgins, brothers and sisters. May we grow always deeper in our filial faith!
To the Catholic imagination, Mary is a creature, one of us, but distinguished from all the rest of creation by her perfect, unbroken, whole-hearted union with God. She is the supreme and perfect creature: “our tainted nature’s solitary boast” (Wordsworth.) She is Queen of heaven and earth; the privileged sovereign within creation, always submissive, perfectly, to the Creator, her son and his father; sovereign over the angels, archangels, apostles, martyrs, popes, and saints; Immaculately Conceived; virgin mother; enabler of the redemption by her fiat; bodily assumed into heaven; mediatrix of all graces; and the very heart of the Church.
A Catholic’s attitude towards Mary and the maternal Church is filial: an analogue of his union with God. Mary and the Church inter-fuse each other and nurture us, their children. The child of God-and-Mary-and-Church is therefore, docile, receptive and submissive to Mary-and-Church as they mirror the love and truth of Christ Himself. It is not, then, for the child to instruct and reform our Mother, to dissent.
The liberal, modern and feminist attitude is best understood as non-filial: “I am not a dependent and obedient child; I am an autonomous adult and the equal of anyone. Everyone is the same; no one is different or superior. I am obedient to no one except my own choice.” Modernity, void of the sacred and the enchanted, levels everyone so there is a total absence of authority, hierarchy, obedience, and filiality. Female becomes functionally equivalent of male, child of adult, animal of human. Creation is not surrendered to its Creator; earth not impregnated by heaven; femininity not yielded to masculinity; and child not docile before father and mother.
By sharpest contrast, the Catholic faith elevates, to a sublime position, Mary our Queen and Mother, and with her all women. Motherhood is viewed as pristine and sublime. There is nothing a male does that can compare. In the most intimate manner conceivable, the mother cooperates with God in the conception of a unique, bodied-spirit who will live eternally. This is hardly “reproduction,” a term which applies to photo-copiers and factories, but procreation, miraculous creation from nothing. By comparison, the masculine contribution is distant and marginal. John Paul himself quoted Balthasar on the primacy of the Marian over the Petrine dimensions within the Church. And so, within my own family I now have two nephews studying for the priesthood and a nephew and daughter consciously pursuing the evangelical life of poverty, chastity and obedience. Which pair is closer to the heart of the Church? The seminarians will be invested with the power associated with Church governance, preaching and dispensing of the sacraments. But the consecrated life brings one closer to the Marian heart of the Church. And so, within the kingdom of God, there is a preeminence of the vowed life. This is incomprehensible to the modern mindset.
The Catholic Church cannot and will not, ever, ordain women priests. To do so would be to pervert the inner form, gestalt, soul and essence of the faith. A son or daughter of the Church lives immersed in a web of filial relationships, all of them hyper-gendered. Our hearts surrender to our heavenly Father, Mary our Mother, holy mother the Church, our Holy Father, and all the spiritual mothers and fathers, virgins, brothers and sisters. May we grow always deeper in our filial faith!
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Core Politcal Model: The Market, The State or The Family?
At the heart of any political vision is a core model, value or belief. For the communist this would the dictatorship of the proletariat; for the Islamist it is Sharia, complete obedience to the will of Allah, for the libertarian it is unfettered individual freedom, for the fascist it is the ethnic nation state.
For our American Right, especially the Tea Party movement, the core value is The Market, the free market. Their faith is that The Market, as a system of unobstructed exchanges between free agents, is able to create wealth for all, to eliminate poverty, to ensure the liberty and well-being of all. This is religion, a leap of faith. It isolates the individual as an autonomous agent, separate from the family. Family becomes a private hobby, an option, a personal preference abstracted from the public realm.
For the Left, the Messiah is the State: the democratic government as protector of the poor and weak; re-distributor of wealth; and provider of education, health, and general well-being.
For a Catholic, the core model is the family, nestled within the Church, and nourished by broader communities according to the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity. The family is the first and foundational community. The individual is never an isolated automaton, but always son/daughter, brother/sister, spouse, mother/father. The well-being of the person and the family depend upon and infuse each other; they cannot be separated from one another. The family as a value and a community precedes the state, the party, the market and all other social institutions.
All other social constructs spring from and feed into the family. Their value is determined by their impact on the family. The primary social values include:
- Marital fidelity and chastity in general.
- The cherishing of every human life, especially those most weak and vulnerable.
- Primacy of labor over capital; the family wage; the complimentarity of gender and the privileging of maternity; the widest possible distribution of private property and political power; parental rights in education; the protection of religious freedom and conscience; the empowerment of local, concrete, person-to-person communities and endeavors over more globalized, giganticized and distant institutions of state and commerce.
We can see that as currently constituted, the Democrat and Republican parties are both hostile to this politics of the family, although they are not morally equivalent. Both isolate the individual from the family. The Left is more directly hostile to the family in its destruction of innocent life and its ethos of sexual liberation. The Right defends the powerless and the family but subordinates it to the isolating, deconstructing, disintegrating dynamics of global capitalism. The Right is culturally supportive of the family culturally but not economically and structurally.
Increasing, a Catholic political vision is cynical about “politics” as such; it is becoming more intensively counter-cultural in reaction against broader, alienating cultural forces on the Left and Right; and more interested in engagement that is local, concrete, limited, and personal.
For our American Right, especially the Tea Party movement, the core value is The Market, the free market. Their faith is that The Market, as a system of unobstructed exchanges between free agents, is able to create wealth for all, to eliminate poverty, to ensure the liberty and well-being of all. This is religion, a leap of faith. It isolates the individual as an autonomous agent, separate from the family. Family becomes a private hobby, an option, a personal preference abstracted from the public realm.
For the Left, the Messiah is the State: the democratic government as protector of the poor and weak; re-distributor of wealth; and provider of education, health, and general well-being.
For a Catholic, the core model is the family, nestled within the Church, and nourished by broader communities according to the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity. The family is the first and foundational community. The individual is never an isolated automaton, but always son/daughter, brother/sister, spouse, mother/father. The well-being of the person and the family depend upon and infuse each other; they cannot be separated from one another. The family as a value and a community precedes the state, the party, the market and all other social institutions.
All other social constructs spring from and feed into the family. Their value is determined by their impact on the family. The primary social values include:
- Marital fidelity and chastity in general.
- The cherishing of every human life, especially those most weak and vulnerable.
- Primacy of labor over capital; the family wage; the complimentarity of gender and the privileging of maternity; the widest possible distribution of private property and political power; parental rights in education; the protection of religious freedom and conscience; the empowerment of local, concrete, person-to-person communities and endeavors over more globalized, giganticized and distant institutions of state and commerce.
We can see that as currently constituted, the Democrat and Republican parties are both hostile to this politics of the family, although they are not morally equivalent. Both isolate the individual from the family. The Left is more directly hostile to the family in its destruction of innocent life and its ethos of sexual liberation. The Right defends the powerless and the family but subordinates it to the isolating, deconstructing, disintegrating dynamics of global capitalism. The Right is culturally supportive of the family culturally but not economically and structurally.
Increasing, a Catholic political vision is cynical about “politics” as such; it is becoming more intensively counter-cultural in reaction against broader, alienating cultural forces on the Left and Right; and more interested in engagement that is local, concrete, limited, and personal.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
What Was He Thinking?
How is it that decent, even admirable, people like Joe Paterno and a litany of monsignors can look away, do the minimum, and essentially tolerate the sexual abuse of children? In a fine Nov. 15 NY Times piece, David Brooks deflates the righteous indignation that pervades public commentary on the scandal and shows how prevalent and even normal such irresponsibility is among us feeble humans. It helps to understand why people “look away” when confronted by sexual abuse. Three motivations stand out: institutional loyalty, personal loyalty, and, most importantly, a primal shyness, sensitivity, and tendency to glance away from sexual matters.
A common analysis of the tolerance of sex abuse ties it to organizational loyalty: we need to protect the reputation of the Church or the Program. This motive is condemned as odiously self-serving in the case of higher level officials whose own status, wealth and power are identified with the institution. So, the thought that a coach or administrator would sacrifice the innocence of a child to the reputation of a program is unspeakably repugnant. And yet, loyalty to the group (family, Church, nation, corporation or team) is clearly a good thing. We raise our children to renounce selfishness and serve the common good: to be loyal to the larger group. The urge to protect the reputation of my family, my Church or my football team is on the whole a praiseworthy thing. No doubt there is a temptation to idolize such collectivities and this may have played a role in the various sex scandals; but I see it as a secondary, not a primary motivation.
Personal loyalty, to the perpetrator, is probably a stronger motivator in the suppression of an aggressive prosecution of sexual wrongdoing. Here again, we have a morally praiseworthy motive: loyalty to comrade or friend is among the very deepest and truest of moral sentiments. Where would we be if we did not instinctively protect each other…especially in hostile environments like warfare, football, business and (yes!) the spiritual life of the Church? If I find my best friend or brother in wrong-doing, is my first impulse to call the police? Of course not, I want to correct him and protect him; I want his well-being as well as the broader, common good, specifically the protection of the innocent. Nevertheless, this good can itself become an idol and a moral atrocity if we were to consciously sacrifice the innocence of children to protection of our comrades.
A deeper, more primal force is at work in the avoidance of sex abuse, especially among those who are basically innocent morally: shyness, a reticence, a sense of delicacy about things sexual. Sexuality is so precious and tender that the natural, the innocent reaction is to shelter it, to glance away, to avoid it except in the proper and protected context. John Paul II’s groundbreaking understanding of the relation of shame to sex in the world after the fall underscored wholesome “shame” as a protection, a shelter, a delicacy about what is most precious, vulnerable and valuable about our bodied selves. This motive is even stronger among the innocent and pure. In the article cited above, David Brooks speaks of “motivational blindness” and studies in which people are shown images and those uncomfortable with sex look away from the more graphic ones. This seems to be a wholesome and natural, deeply primal response, to what is precious and sacred. And it would be stronger among those most innocent. Many of us, coming upon a scene of grown men beating up a small boy, would instinctively jump into the fray to protect the little ones…Penn State football players certainly would not hesitate. But we are not so prepared, instinctively, to deal with the erotic intimacies of others. Instinctively we look away, avoid and hopefully forget about the disturbing sight. I recall chaperoning high school proms and being directed by my principal to patrol the dance floor and intervene where the girls were “too close” to their dates. I went through the motions but religiously avoided the couples that were out of compliance: I found it unbearable to intrude on such a personal, intimate reality. This instinct to “look away” is in itself a wholesome, reverent one. Tragically, it is not the correct response to abuse of the young.
Most of us, especially the more pure and wholesome among us (Joe Paterno and a number of bishops), are not well prepared to deal directly with sex abuse. Most families and groups have swept these matters under the rug, not out of moral depravity, but out of a painful shamefulness and awkwardness. This awkwardness is heightened, culturally, among those who came of age in the more Victorian society prior to the cultural revolution of the 60s. My dear aunt of happy memory, born in 1910, told me of her first job and how shocked she was when the boss explained that she would be replacing a woman leaving the workplace due to her “pregnancy.” That he would use such a word in her presence was, for her, unthinkable. She was of the same generation as the bishops who were to govern the Church when the sexual revolution exploded in the 60s: they were not prepared. The Great Generation was not sexually confident, knowledgeable or comfortable enough to directly and clearly address the sexual issues that were thrown in their face. They looked away. And this “looking away” continues today. The rapid and widespread acceptance of homosexuality as a lifestyle is possible only because we look away from the facts and details intrinsic to that behavior. Pious Catholics are able to vote Democrat, albeit with some discomfort, because they divert attention away from something like partial-birth abortion. The sexual libertines are winning the culture war because decent, notably Catholic, people look away and prefer to remain unengaged in such intimate, personal affairs.
This “avoidance response” may spring from innocence, but it is an immature innocence: shyness, awkwardness, timidity, and anxiety. A mature, confident innocence will be able to soberly and calmly see the real, judge it, and confront it in justice.
This is not at all to justify or condone the toleration of abuse. On the one hand, it is an attempt to practice the exhortation of St. Ignatius Loyola: “Put the best possible interpretation on the action of another.” It is also a way to deepen our own self-understanding so to train ourselves in sobriety, vigilance and preparedness for the confrontations with evil that can take us by surprise. The Brooks’ piece, drawing from the social sciences rather than a faith tradition, establishes how prone we all are “to self-deception. We attend to the facts we like and suppress the ones we don’t. We inflate our own virtues and predict we will behave more nobly than we actually do.” Without implying a moral equivalence, we sense a shared spiritual blindness: we are all of us so weak, fragile, and prone to error and evil.
May we all bring ourselves, victimized and victimizing, humbled and weak, into the Mercy of the one Victim who does not accuse or condemn or victimize; the victorious and regal Victim himself, Jesus our Lord.
A common analysis of the tolerance of sex abuse ties it to organizational loyalty: we need to protect the reputation of the Church or the Program. This motive is condemned as odiously self-serving in the case of higher level officials whose own status, wealth and power are identified with the institution. So, the thought that a coach or administrator would sacrifice the innocence of a child to the reputation of a program is unspeakably repugnant. And yet, loyalty to the group (family, Church, nation, corporation or team) is clearly a good thing. We raise our children to renounce selfishness and serve the common good: to be loyal to the larger group. The urge to protect the reputation of my family, my Church or my football team is on the whole a praiseworthy thing. No doubt there is a temptation to idolize such collectivities and this may have played a role in the various sex scandals; but I see it as a secondary, not a primary motivation.
Personal loyalty, to the perpetrator, is probably a stronger motivator in the suppression of an aggressive prosecution of sexual wrongdoing. Here again, we have a morally praiseworthy motive: loyalty to comrade or friend is among the very deepest and truest of moral sentiments. Where would we be if we did not instinctively protect each other…especially in hostile environments like warfare, football, business and (yes!) the spiritual life of the Church? If I find my best friend or brother in wrong-doing, is my first impulse to call the police? Of course not, I want to correct him and protect him; I want his well-being as well as the broader, common good, specifically the protection of the innocent. Nevertheless, this good can itself become an idol and a moral atrocity if we were to consciously sacrifice the innocence of children to protection of our comrades.
A deeper, more primal force is at work in the avoidance of sex abuse, especially among those who are basically innocent morally: shyness, a reticence, a sense of delicacy about things sexual. Sexuality is so precious and tender that the natural, the innocent reaction is to shelter it, to glance away, to avoid it except in the proper and protected context. John Paul II’s groundbreaking understanding of the relation of shame to sex in the world after the fall underscored wholesome “shame” as a protection, a shelter, a delicacy about what is most precious, vulnerable and valuable about our bodied selves. This motive is even stronger among the innocent and pure. In the article cited above, David Brooks speaks of “motivational blindness” and studies in which people are shown images and those uncomfortable with sex look away from the more graphic ones. This seems to be a wholesome and natural, deeply primal response, to what is precious and sacred. And it would be stronger among those most innocent. Many of us, coming upon a scene of grown men beating up a small boy, would instinctively jump into the fray to protect the little ones…Penn State football players certainly would not hesitate. But we are not so prepared, instinctively, to deal with the erotic intimacies of others. Instinctively we look away, avoid and hopefully forget about the disturbing sight. I recall chaperoning high school proms and being directed by my principal to patrol the dance floor and intervene where the girls were “too close” to their dates. I went through the motions but religiously avoided the couples that were out of compliance: I found it unbearable to intrude on such a personal, intimate reality. This instinct to “look away” is in itself a wholesome, reverent one. Tragically, it is not the correct response to abuse of the young.
Most of us, especially the more pure and wholesome among us (Joe Paterno and a number of bishops), are not well prepared to deal directly with sex abuse. Most families and groups have swept these matters under the rug, not out of moral depravity, but out of a painful shamefulness and awkwardness. This awkwardness is heightened, culturally, among those who came of age in the more Victorian society prior to the cultural revolution of the 60s. My dear aunt of happy memory, born in 1910, told me of her first job and how shocked she was when the boss explained that she would be replacing a woman leaving the workplace due to her “pregnancy.” That he would use such a word in her presence was, for her, unthinkable. She was of the same generation as the bishops who were to govern the Church when the sexual revolution exploded in the 60s: they were not prepared. The Great Generation was not sexually confident, knowledgeable or comfortable enough to directly and clearly address the sexual issues that were thrown in their face. They looked away. And this “looking away” continues today. The rapid and widespread acceptance of homosexuality as a lifestyle is possible only because we look away from the facts and details intrinsic to that behavior. Pious Catholics are able to vote Democrat, albeit with some discomfort, because they divert attention away from something like partial-birth abortion. The sexual libertines are winning the culture war because decent, notably Catholic, people look away and prefer to remain unengaged in such intimate, personal affairs.
This “avoidance response” may spring from innocence, but it is an immature innocence: shyness, awkwardness, timidity, and anxiety. A mature, confident innocence will be able to soberly and calmly see the real, judge it, and confront it in justice.
This is not at all to justify or condone the toleration of abuse. On the one hand, it is an attempt to practice the exhortation of St. Ignatius Loyola: “Put the best possible interpretation on the action of another.” It is also a way to deepen our own self-understanding so to train ourselves in sobriety, vigilance and preparedness for the confrontations with evil that can take us by surprise. The Brooks’ piece, drawing from the social sciences rather than a faith tradition, establishes how prone we all are “to self-deception. We attend to the facts we like and suppress the ones we don’t. We inflate our own virtues and predict we will behave more nobly than we actually do.” Without implying a moral equivalence, we sense a shared spiritual blindness: we are all of us so weak, fragile, and prone to error and evil.
May we all bring ourselves, victimized and victimizing, humbled and weak, into the Mercy of the one Victim who does not accuse or condemn or victimize; the victorious and regal Victim himself, Jesus our Lord.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Catechesis of Desire: Lessons from Monsignor Giussani, Bill W., and Rene Girard
Anyone who reads the Magnificat liturgical prayer journal on a daily basis, especially the short, introductory mediations, is being gradually, systematically catechized into the spirituality of the Communion and Liberation movement, which might be called a catechesis of desire. The key insight of their founder, Monsignor Luigi Giussani, is that the human heart is a desire for God, a longing for infinite and eternal Love.
This is, of course, a classic Catholic intuition: St. Augustine famously said “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You O Lord” and St. Thomas Aquinas held that all human desire is implicitly, even when erroneously, a movement towards the good, or towards God. Perhaps no one, until Monsignor Giussani, has developed and expanded this insight into a comprehensive path to God. In sharp contrast to residual Jansenism, which developed Augustine’s more negative evaluation of human desire, Giussani celebrated desire with an exultant positivism. The tone of his writing is unrestrainedly euphoric with the good news: our desires, even in their often-deformed state, are fundamentally good and destined for fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ. In contrast to the negativity of moralism, he exults in the Beauty and Joy of life in Christ. Monsignor Albacete, his friend and American protégé, recounts the story of when Giussani came upon two young lovers in a passionate, erotic embrace on a starry night. They were embarrassed but he only asked: “What does what you are doing have to do with all these stars in the sky?” The disciple Albacete explains: the tender mutual longing the lovers have for each other is reflective of the even deeper human desire for a Love that is Eternal and Infinite. Far from being upset or judgmental about the lovers’ embrace, the Monsignor is in awe of it.
We encounter here an extravagant positivity about human desire as fundamentally good, as essentially a longing for God and as destined to be more than fulfilled. This excessive affirmation seems incongruous, however, with what we experience as the irrationality, toxicity and destructiveness of so much of human desire. This approach might well be complemented by two different, contemporary evaluations of human desire: that of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and the mimetic theory of Rene Girard.
The AA of Bill W and Doctor Bob unveiled the dynamics of addictive desire as compulsive, self-destructive, and insatiable. This might be called “false desire.” By definition, addictive desire is beyond the control of the person who is enslaved and powerless. Much of the practice and insight generated by the 12-step programs is a retrieval or re-statement of traditional understandings of sin. The passage to freedom and interior peace includes a series of quite specific steps and practices, mostly involving regular meetings and personal sponsorship, and an underlying spiritual attitude of confession of wrongdoing and surrender of one’s will and life to God. These steps are, then, a journey of liberation from false desire into genuine desire, desire for God.
A third dimension of human desire has been thoroughly explored in the mimetic theory of Rene Girard. According to this, human longing is incessant and insatiable but has a vague, undefined nature, in contrast to the structured instincts of animals. We desire but don’t know what we desire so we are ceaselessly looking to and imitating others. We are made to image or mirror another, starting with the smile of our mother. Each of us, in everything we do, is always a reflection of the desire we see in another. Desire as mimetic is neither good nor evil but is a possibility for either. When we look mimetically upon evil we ourselves emulate and become that evil and so associate ourselves with greed, violence, and covetousness in all its forms. By contrast, when we look into the face of genuine Love, we ourselves are moved inexorably (one might say, efficaciously) to reflect that love.
Our behavior, then, springs not from an autonomous, self-directing will, but out of the mimetic, emulating, unitive gaze to the other, the other as Godly or ungodly, the other as gracious or vicious, the other as generosity or as covetousness.
These three approaches move in a shared direction: decisively, they reject a moralism that locates the springs of human agency in an independent, autonomous, self-directing will. They all see human desire as infinite, incessant, and itself more deeply constitutive of the human person than the intellect, the will and the emotions. Combined with an understanding of sexual desire as outlined by Pope John Paul the Great, these complementary visions of human longing promise a most rich anthropology of the person as infinite desire.
This is, of course, a classic Catholic intuition: St. Augustine famously said “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You O Lord” and St. Thomas Aquinas held that all human desire is implicitly, even when erroneously, a movement towards the good, or towards God. Perhaps no one, until Monsignor Giussani, has developed and expanded this insight into a comprehensive path to God. In sharp contrast to residual Jansenism, which developed Augustine’s more negative evaluation of human desire, Giussani celebrated desire with an exultant positivism. The tone of his writing is unrestrainedly euphoric with the good news: our desires, even in their often-deformed state, are fundamentally good and destined for fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ. In contrast to the negativity of moralism, he exults in the Beauty and Joy of life in Christ. Monsignor Albacete, his friend and American protégé, recounts the story of when Giussani came upon two young lovers in a passionate, erotic embrace on a starry night. They were embarrassed but he only asked: “What does what you are doing have to do with all these stars in the sky?” The disciple Albacete explains: the tender mutual longing the lovers have for each other is reflective of the even deeper human desire for a Love that is Eternal and Infinite. Far from being upset or judgmental about the lovers’ embrace, the Monsignor is in awe of it.
We encounter here an extravagant positivity about human desire as fundamentally good, as essentially a longing for God and as destined to be more than fulfilled. This excessive affirmation seems incongruous, however, with what we experience as the irrationality, toxicity and destructiveness of so much of human desire. This approach might well be complemented by two different, contemporary evaluations of human desire: that of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and the mimetic theory of Rene Girard.
The AA of Bill W and Doctor Bob unveiled the dynamics of addictive desire as compulsive, self-destructive, and insatiable. This might be called “false desire.” By definition, addictive desire is beyond the control of the person who is enslaved and powerless. Much of the practice and insight generated by the 12-step programs is a retrieval or re-statement of traditional understandings of sin. The passage to freedom and interior peace includes a series of quite specific steps and practices, mostly involving regular meetings and personal sponsorship, and an underlying spiritual attitude of confession of wrongdoing and surrender of one’s will and life to God. These steps are, then, a journey of liberation from false desire into genuine desire, desire for God.
A third dimension of human desire has been thoroughly explored in the mimetic theory of Rene Girard. According to this, human longing is incessant and insatiable but has a vague, undefined nature, in contrast to the structured instincts of animals. We desire but don’t know what we desire so we are ceaselessly looking to and imitating others. We are made to image or mirror another, starting with the smile of our mother. Each of us, in everything we do, is always a reflection of the desire we see in another. Desire as mimetic is neither good nor evil but is a possibility for either. When we look mimetically upon evil we ourselves emulate and become that evil and so associate ourselves with greed, violence, and covetousness in all its forms. By contrast, when we look into the face of genuine Love, we ourselves are moved inexorably (one might say, efficaciously) to reflect that love.
Our behavior, then, springs not from an autonomous, self-directing will, but out of the mimetic, emulating, unitive gaze to the other, the other as Godly or ungodly, the other as gracious or vicious, the other as generosity or as covetousness.
These three approaches move in a shared direction: decisively, they reject a moralism that locates the springs of human agency in an independent, autonomous, self-directing will. They all see human desire as infinite, incessant, and itself more deeply constitutive of the human person than the intellect, the will and the emotions. Combined with an understanding of sexual desire as outlined by Pope John Paul the Great, these complementary visions of human longing promise a most rich anthropology of the person as infinite desire.
Monday, October 3, 2011
The Third, Lay Magisterium
We Catholics defer to the college of bishops in union with the pope as our magisterium, our indefectible teacher, inspired by the Holy Spirit to guide us in faith and morals. In the wake of the 2nd Vatican Council, an alternate, frequently oppositional magisterium took shape in the form of the theological guild. With their status immensely enhanced by their input into the Council and their ability to straddle the ecclesiastical and the secular academic worlds, they gave voice to a progressive consensus that mimicked the intellectual fashions of secular elites and thus criticized the Vatican, tradition, authority, classic Catholic piety and sexual norms.
Subsequently, in a much more gradual and dispersed manner, a third magisterium emerged, mostly from the laity. Counter-cultural and reactive against liberal fashion, an array of lay voices articulated a staunch, militant, “thick” Catholic vision. These voices were usually lay in two senses: not members of the clergy (or religious orders) and not credentialed academic theologians. Many were associated with the new ecclesial movements; most aligned themselves passionately with the dual pontificate of John Paul/Benedict. They draw from different sources and take distinct shapes but all tend to be: populist and reactive against cultural elites; filial, humble before authority and tradition; evangelical, exultant in the Person of Jesus Christ; pious in traditional ways; critical of modernity; skeptical of the hegemony of a reductive science and an overwhelming technocracy; militant in defense of innocent life and the family; and keenly aware of the supernatural including the diabolical, the mystical, and the communion of saints beyond death. The distinct streams of this rich, symphonic lay synthesis include:
- Charismatic lay leaders (Ralph Martin, Steve Clark) who incorporated the legacy of Evangelical/Pentecostal Protestantism into a new Catholic gestalt. Prominent in this group is Neal Lozano whose ministry of deliverance from evil spirits is gentle, Jesus-centered, counseling-based, and user-friendly for the ordinary layman.
- The brilliant, new-yet-traditional , extended and arduous catechetical itinerary of Kiko Arguello which may join the ranks of Classic Catholic achievements such as the monastery, the mendicants, the spiritual exercises of Ignatius, the mystical heritage of St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa of Avila, and the French Catholic Renaissance in spirituality.
- EWTN lay personalities (Marcus Grodi, Raymond Arroyo) who reach an astonishingly wide audience, including the elderly, sick and isolated. Mother Angelica so shrewdly yielded control of her powerful network to a Board of red-meat Catholic laymen, just as the American bishops and the Vatican were both considering a “hostile take-over” through her vow of obedience.
- Psychologists like Paul Vitz and the Institute for Psychological Sciences who integrate good psychology into a Catholic anthropology and critique the secularist biases of mainstream psychology.
- Gil Baile who develops and popularizes Rene Girard’s breakthrough anthropology of mimesis and sacrificial violence and integrates it with the theology of Balthasar, John Paul and Benedict.
- Converts: The steady flow of high calibre (intellectually and spiritually) converts is infusing our lay leadership with new riches. These bring an intense appreciation for specifically Catholic values (authority, Eucharist, Mary, the saints, etc.) as well as enrichments from their own traditions. This includes the Jewish converts of the Association of Hebrew Catholics as well as Evangelicals and other Protestants who give their stirring witnesses on EWTN's The Journey Home. Interestingly, ministers and Rabbi converts become, ordinarily, Catholic laymen and so infuse the laity with rich theological and ministerial resources.
- Other lay conspirators from the Marian movements, pro-life groups, Natural Family Planners, Theology of the Body enthusiasts, micro-Agapic-initiatives (Jean Vanier, Dorothy Day), Latin Mass afficionados, and allies in the new religious orders (Friars of the Renewal) and academia (notably, the outstanding lay theologians of the John Paul II Institute in DC under the leadership of David Schindler.)
Blessed John Cardinal Newman observed that it was largely the faith of the laity that preserved the Catholic faith during the Arian controversy when a majority of bishops went into heresy. So today, we see the lay defense of crucial Catholic values and beliefs that are disparaged by liberal elites and often avoided by an irenic, conflict-averse episcopacy. In their opposition to liberal consensus, these voices are able to be more militant and emphatic than the more diplomatic, moderate institutional magisterium of pope and bishops. They are often to the “right” of official leadership. For example, they may be more vigorous politically in defense of human life and the family. They are more likely to see the negative side of issues like evolution as a mega-theory, global change as manmade and catastrophic, and the UN as an actor for the common good.
These voices tend to be reactive against post-enlightenment modernity. They are more sensitive to the darker powers operative under the cover of rationality, individual freedoms, science, technology, big government and business. In a prophetic mode, they alert us to contemporary evils in a manner not accessible to one like our current Pontiff whose every utterance is a masterpiece of balance, moderation, nuance and complexity.
Outside of the specific areas of faith and morals are the vast, complex arenas of culture where our papal and episcopal magisterium enjoys no direct, divine guarantees. In these areas of peril and combat, in our discerning of spirits and reading of the signs of the times, we do well to heed the voices of the laity in the trenches, those close to family and ethnic faith, those distanced from and so less deceived by illusions of prestige and privilege, those loyal to our heritage and our ancestors.
Subsequently, in a much more gradual and dispersed manner, a third magisterium emerged, mostly from the laity. Counter-cultural and reactive against liberal fashion, an array of lay voices articulated a staunch, militant, “thick” Catholic vision. These voices were usually lay in two senses: not members of the clergy (or religious orders) and not credentialed academic theologians. Many were associated with the new ecclesial movements; most aligned themselves passionately with the dual pontificate of John Paul/Benedict. They draw from different sources and take distinct shapes but all tend to be: populist and reactive against cultural elites; filial, humble before authority and tradition; evangelical, exultant in the Person of Jesus Christ; pious in traditional ways; critical of modernity; skeptical of the hegemony of a reductive science and an overwhelming technocracy; militant in defense of innocent life and the family; and keenly aware of the supernatural including the diabolical, the mystical, and the communion of saints beyond death. The distinct streams of this rich, symphonic lay synthesis include:
- Charismatic lay leaders (Ralph Martin, Steve Clark) who incorporated the legacy of Evangelical/Pentecostal Protestantism into a new Catholic gestalt. Prominent in this group is Neal Lozano whose ministry of deliverance from evil spirits is gentle, Jesus-centered, counseling-based, and user-friendly for the ordinary layman.
- The brilliant, new-yet-traditional , extended and arduous catechetical itinerary of Kiko Arguello which may join the ranks of Classic Catholic achievements such as the monastery, the mendicants, the spiritual exercises of Ignatius, the mystical heritage of St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa of Avila, and the French Catholic Renaissance in spirituality.
- EWTN lay personalities (Marcus Grodi, Raymond Arroyo) who reach an astonishingly wide audience, including the elderly, sick and isolated. Mother Angelica so shrewdly yielded control of her powerful network to a Board of red-meat Catholic laymen, just as the American bishops and the Vatican were both considering a “hostile take-over” through her vow of obedience.
- Psychologists like Paul Vitz and the Institute for Psychological Sciences who integrate good psychology into a Catholic anthropology and critique the secularist biases of mainstream psychology.
- Gil Baile who develops and popularizes Rene Girard’s breakthrough anthropology of mimesis and sacrificial violence and integrates it with the theology of Balthasar, John Paul and Benedict.
- Converts: The steady flow of high calibre (intellectually and spiritually) converts is infusing our lay leadership with new riches. These bring an intense appreciation for specifically Catholic values (authority, Eucharist, Mary, the saints, etc.) as well as enrichments from their own traditions. This includes the Jewish converts of the Association of Hebrew Catholics as well as Evangelicals and other Protestants who give their stirring witnesses on EWTN's The Journey Home. Interestingly, ministers and Rabbi converts become, ordinarily, Catholic laymen and so infuse the laity with rich theological and ministerial resources.
- Other lay conspirators from the Marian movements, pro-life groups, Natural Family Planners, Theology of the Body enthusiasts, micro-Agapic-initiatives (Jean Vanier, Dorothy Day), Latin Mass afficionados, and allies in the new religious orders (Friars of the Renewal) and academia (notably, the outstanding lay theologians of the John Paul II Institute in DC under the leadership of David Schindler.)
Blessed John Cardinal Newman observed that it was largely the faith of the laity that preserved the Catholic faith during the Arian controversy when a majority of bishops went into heresy. So today, we see the lay defense of crucial Catholic values and beliefs that are disparaged by liberal elites and often avoided by an irenic, conflict-averse episcopacy. In their opposition to liberal consensus, these voices are able to be more militant and emphatic than the more diplomatic, moderate institutional magisterium of pope and bishops. They are often to the “right” of official leadership. For example, they may be more vigorous politically in defense of human life and the family. They are more likely to see the negative side of issues like evolution as a mega-theory, global change as manmade and catastrophic, and the UN as an actor for the common good.
These voices tend to be reactive against post-enlightenment modernity. They are more sensitive to the darker powers operative under the cover of rationality, individual freedoms, science, technology, big government and business. In a prophetic mode, they alert us to contemporary evils in a manner not accessible to one like our current Pontiff whose every utterance is a masterpiece of balance, moderation, nuance and complexity.
Outside of the specific areas of faith and morals are the vast, complex arenas of culture where our papal and episcopal magisterium enjoys no direct, divine guarantees. In these areas of peril and combat, in our discerning of spirits and reading of the signs of the times, we do well to heed the voices of the laity in the trenches, those close to family and ethnic faith, those distanced from and so less deceived by illusions of prestige and privilege, those loyal to our heritage and our ancestors.
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