The Legacy of Slavery in the USA: the Good (Womanly Faith) and the Bad (Manly Infidelity)

The good: the sublime Christian faith universal among black American women. It is amazing! Over the years I have known hundreds of black women and have been close, in work/Church/community, to dozens. Every single one has strikingly intense, deep faith in Christ. I cannot remember a single exception...not a atheist or agnostic, nor a Nietzchean/Darwinian/Marxist. Not a single woman with whom I could not pray to Christ. This is true also for those who are addicts, borderlines, psychotics, criminals and the homeless. The evangelization of our black slaves stands as one of the greatest missionary accomplishments in Church history. Based on its persistence it may exceed that of Mexico, Ireland, even Poland or the Philippines. Mostly non-Catholic. But one wonders: who brought the good news that was so deeply accepted? Baptist and Methodist ministers? Pious slave-owning women? Mendicant preachers? Simple white farmers? Whoever it was, they surely have a special place in heaven. Black Christianity is a rich, resilient, profound faith: seemingly strenghened by centuries of oppression, suffering and violence. Black women, in the worst circumstances, manifest a serenity, a sense of humor, a generosity, a seasoned wisdom, a confidence, a humility, a courage. If we were to vote for the most superior group of humans among us, I would nominate American black women for their faith.

Now the bad news: the fracturing of the masculine psyche under slavery and the resulting culture of marital infidelity. As a young man, when I learned about American slavery what shocked me more than anything was the fracturing of black families. That was, for me, inconceivably evil. The only comparable reality I encountered was the genocide of the Jews by the Nazis. Both represent for me absolute proof of the existence of supernatural, diabolical evil. The lasting consequence, however, has been a widespread destruction of virility as paternity. The male psyche is far, far more more fragile, vulnerable, taut than the fluid, resilient, supple, tough feminine spirit. Consider John Steinbeck's class "Grapes of Wrath": as things get worse for the migrant farm workers the women get stronger in their care for the suffering and the men fall apart in crises of identity. And so we live now with generation after generation of young boys growing up without fathers because of male infidelity and promiscuity. Even as the women carry faith, family and community with extraordinary strength. Feminine identity, faith and purpose are largely spontaneous, organic, fluid, effortless...in the context of a minimum of love and safety. But the masculine identity/mission/purpose is a long, difficult, complex, delicate itinerary requiring sensitive coaching, discipline, encouragement, fraternity. Lacking this we end up with a thug or a wimp. This is the root cause of inequality, impoverishment, and the entire Culture of Poverty: male infidelity.

Critical Race Theory compounds the tragedy: it emasculates and infantilizes the black man as victim of "The Man"....as implicitly impotent, passive, incapable of protecting wife and children. A similar dilemna hangs over the progressive agenda of special treatment including quotas and the entire "War on Poverty"...which elicits dependency, entitlement and a furter emasculation.

Making things worse is the broad slander of police as predators upon passive black men. Of course there are racists, sadists and sociopaths among the police and the code of blue loyalty too often tolerates them. But in general, sytemically, our police safeguard our most vulnerable, deal with our most dangerous, and then are stigmatized as systemically violent. This ideology seems prevalent, not in the black neighborhoods of Jersey City where I spend my time, but in sequestered, homogenous, zone-protected, suburban enclaves of bleeding-heart, limousine liberals and their prestigious school districts staffed by the covid-phobic, CRT-indoctrinating, parental-choice denying teachers unions.Privilege indeed! Shame, shame, shame on them!

Is there a solution? Not an easy one. Policies that contribute to education, employment, and mentoring of young men are certainly helpful. But they are better off not race-based but directed to all who are afflicted by the Culture of Poverty. Progress will largely be incremental and concrete: as specific young men find mentors and father figures, opportunities for advancement, motivation to be faithful, chaste, holy and virile.

"Do Not Blush About His Bride, The Holy Church"

Blessed Charles de Foucault, notoriously a lover of women in his sinful youth, gives us these striking words in today's Magnificat meditation. The Church..first and foremost, always and everywhere...is a Woman, is uber-hyper-mega-super-sublimely Feminine. The Church is Bride of Christ, our Mother, and at the same time a Whore. To know and understand the Church, you must know and understand femininity in its mysterious depth. Root problem of so much of our Church's depravity and superficiality: denial, fear, ignorance, disgust and flight from The Feminine.

In his classic, must-read Flight from FemininityKarl Stern showed how the unhappy philosophical legacy of enlightenment rationalism flowed, strikingly in Descartes and the rest, from a disparagement of the feminine as intuitive, empathetic, mystical, nurturing and a obsession with a toxic, unbalanced masculinity of certainty, clarity, proof, power and control.

Our Church has similarly suffered from a clerical, immaturely masculine theology that is in flight from the feminine. Our clergy is masculine and men come, only with difficulty and much time, to an understanding and appreciation of femininity. So, to the degree that our priests are immature, they fail to know the Church. To think theologically, "with the Church" there are two necessities: love of prayer and love of women. Both are essential. Both are in short supply.

Why is it so difficult for men to understand women? First, they are so different...so, so, so different. The adolescent male psyche is crazy with desire for woman but has not the faintest clue about the interiority of a woman. This takes many years to achieve and normally requires a happy marriage, daughers or daughter-surrogates, chaste feminine friendships, as well as prior grounding in sound mothering and a network of sisters-cousins-aunts-grandmothers. Not all men have benefited from such. Secondly, all of us retain a largely unconscious resentment-rage against the "bad mother" who frustrated, contradicted, punished us in early childhood. Thirdly, our libidinal craving for the feminine is, randomly, out of control and carries with it fear, shame, guilt, frustration and sadness. Forthly, some men fail in the oedipal passage and remain enmeshed in the maternal, as "momma's boys" or homo/metro-sexuals and incapable of wholesome desire and appreciation.

And so, it is the lack of EROS, of tenderness, delight, reverence, delight in the feminine that underlies Catholicism's clericalism, moralism, legalism, dogmatism, ritualism...not to mention its pedophia, misogyny, and general sterility.

Women themselves intuitively understand the femininity of the Church as they live, love, breath and pray in and with her. The few women I have known who advocate for women priests themselves evidence a feeling of discomfort with their own sexuality. I recall a marvelous sister of charity, a real servant of the poor here in Jersey City, a talented and idealistic woman, who resented that "her feminine organs kept her from the priesthood." I was shocked and saddened by her disparagement of her own sacred womanliness. A woman with a wholesome sense of her bridal-maternal-sororial sublimity surrenders herself effortlessly into the Marian depth of the Church.

Arguably, the great accomplishment of resourcement and communio theology...DeLubac, Balthasar, John Paul, Ratzinger...is the recovery of the erotic, the nuptial, the sublimity of masculinity-femininity as a radiance of the love of Christ the Bridegroom for His Bride, sometimes prostitute, our Mother the Church.

Let us not blush for her!

We Are Like Sheep Without a Shepherd

These words from my college friend Tim struck a cord with me: those of us who were enflamed...with love, zeal, courage, hope...by John Paul and Benedict have endured the current pontificate as sadness, discouragement and heartbreak. But, true to my reputation as a cock-eyed optimist, I have avoided the "adjustment disorder" afflicting traditionalists by the tested Marine strategy "adapt and overcome." I have a chipper, bouyant attitude because...

First of all, we have absolute confidence that Christ is firmly in charge of his Church, precisely in the thick of the decadence, chaos, incoherence...as He was when He, abandoned by his apostles, performed his "Graious Act" on the cross. Regular readers of Fleckinstein know my "Fr. Burke Principle": Father "no-work" Burke, our pastor throughout my childhood and youth, was almost never around except when he he scurried about the Church and sacristy, manically and aimlessly, in a phantom-of-the-opera-esque cape. But... the work of the Church proceeded symphonically through a marvelous cadre of flawed but faith-and-love-filled priests, sisters, brothers and laity. This primordial experience left me with absolutle certainty that Christ is serenely in control of His Church, regardless of the clergy. So...if our local priests are a coven of sexual deviants, our pastor a psychotic cleptomaniac, our bishop a malicious psychopath, our cardinals a conspiracy of Masonic Satanists and our pope an Arian Visigoth...still, inerrantly and efficaciously, our Lord through the workings of His gentle Holy Spirit, in the mysterious Communion of Saints, is dramatically ,in Word and Sacrament, working out our holiness.

Secondly, the legacy of John Paul and Benedict is very powerful and resilient. An entire generation of priests, especially the brightest who studied in Rome, are under their influence. Even if Francis succeeds in recreating the episcopate in his image, these heirs of the apostles will be dependent upon the proteges of his two predecessors as their most intelligent, reliable, competent, zealous co-workers. Add to that the fierce energy of the renewal movements and we are moving forward with exhuberance.

Thirdly, given our weakened papacy and episcopacy, I have found wisdom, purpose and encouragement in an "alternate ecclesial elite" of mostly lay folk. First, the "communio theologians" who carry on the work of the dual-pontificate, especially the Schindlers and their colleagues at the Washington D.C. John Paul Institute for Study of Marriage and Family. (Even as the Vatican desimates that Institute in Rome.). Secondly, for almost half a century I have been guided and energized by charismatic leaders like Ralph Martin and Neal Lozano. In recent years I have been heartened by the evangelical energies manifest in the Neocatechumenal Way and Communion and Liberation. Thirdly, the First Things crowd offers an always-challenging high-brow banquet of thought in the best Catholic/Evangelical traditions. Forthly, I am indebted to the remarkable Gil Baile who has repackaged Rene Girard, along with Balthasar and John Paul, in a congenial, breath-taking synthesis. Fifthly, a more low-brow but solid menu is regularly served up by The Catholic Thing, EWTN, Crisis Magazine, New Oxford Review, and others. Lastly, on broader cultural-political issues there is a vibrant school of younger thinkers who draw upon our Catholic heritage to offer alternatives to mainstream Republican-Democrat toxicities: Ross Douthat, Patrick Dineen, Rod Dreher, Yuval Levin, J.D. Vance, and others.

Lastly, regarding Pope Francis: in the words of my grand-niece: "Let me tell you something, he ain't terrible." He is a weak, but not a terrible pope. He has his bright sides: he is genuine, spontaneous, authentic; he loves Christ; he cares tenderly for the poor. He has conservative instincts that serve him well if inconsistently. I have enjoyed malicious delectation in the frustration of the progressives such as the synodality-maniacs in Germany. He could be worse.

So I am not despondent. Sometimes I have to caution myself against a slide into triumphalism!

The Agon of Jacob

AGON: A Greek word meaning competition, as in an athletic contest or a dramatic conflict between protagonist and antagonist.

Jacob's all-night wrestling match with God, today's first reading (Gen. 32) is among the most puzzling, bizarre, and mysterious of biblical events. First of all: if you have ever really wrestled with someone, you were exhausted after about 3 or 4 minutes of absolute exertion. It is unthinkable that one could wrestle all night. Secondly: Jacob prevails against God. And God seems to congratulate him for his feat; but then he wounds his sciatic as a reminder so he is limping afterwords. What is going on here? It makes no sense! We know that God is almighty and that our salvation is in surrendering to Him. So why is Jacob honored for his resistance? It reminds me of Fight Club: the point was not to win the fight, not to get victory or triumph; the point was just to fight. IF you are strong or weak; undefeated or always defeated; it did not matter! What matters is to be in the fight.

So: I read the story in this way: God engages us, throughout our entire lives (all night), in agonistic struggle. Life is conflict, war, competiton. Relentless. Exhausting. Merciless. We struggle with events that attack us...with friend, family and foe... with our own interior chaos that never really goes away....with our antagonists in the Culture War...with the world, the flesh and the devil! We are always in La Lucha!

So, it seems to me, this is why God is so pleased with Jacob, even as he leaves him a wounded sciatica as a badge of honor. If he is to be one of the three great Patriarchs, he must be battle-tested. He fought all night. He became a "made man." He was strenthened by the test, by the "agony." May we also be so tested; tried; strengthened; honored!

Good Liberalism. Bad Liberalism.

This is a fun game. I will describe a type of liberalism. You, dear reader, will say either "Good Liberalism" or "Bad Liberalism." You will like this game. As a regular reader of Fleckinstein, you will be very, very good at it.

Liberalism as the flowering of Christianity and the fierce acclamation of the infinite worth of every person, large and small, competent and incompetent, born and unborn, regardless of ethnicity or race, as created by an almighty and all-loving God.

Liberalism as liberation of the individual from all bonds of tradition, family, obligation, gender, community and faith.

Liberalism as pursuit of the Liberal Arts, the interior freedom received from scrutiny of the Good, the True and the Beautiful.

Liberalism as a disconnect with the past as superstitious and ignorant and a boundless confidence in future progress through science and technology.

Liberalism as rooted in the moral order, "natural law," the mysterious Logos that indwells all of Creation.

Liberalism as individualistic autonomy, independence, and unrestrained choice.

Liberalism as personal communion...in the Good, the True and the Beautiful...in a rich symphony of communities from family, through Church, neighborhood, city, state, nation and humankind.

See how much fun that game is? Well, by now you detect an underlying theme: good liberalism is a personalism flowing out of communion, with a range of communities, with Creation as Good-True-Beautiful, and with God and heaven. Bad liberalism is loneliness, isolation, individualism. Bad liberalism promises a false liberty by way of a Disconnect: from others, from the past, from God. Bad liberalism leads to despair, ennui, sterility and sadness.

Now lets consider three prevaling liberalisms: political liberalism, economic liberalism and cultural liberalism. The first two have problems. The last is a catastrophe. The first, political, is vulnerable to the last. The second, economic, also lacks a healthy immunity to the toxicity of the last.

Political liberalism is that of the Democratic Party. It has a strong sense of solidarity with the weak, the poor, the marginalized; it identifies with the victim; it uses government to correct injustice and assist the suffering. Its heyday coincides with my childhood: 1945-70...FDR, Truman, MLK,JFK, LBJ. Its two weaknesses manifested after the Cultural Revolution. First, a weak sense of subsidiarity in an unbalanced trust in big government and an inattention to mediating institutions. The earlier positive achievements (relief from the Great Depression, victory in the war, Civil Rights, the American Peace and triumph in the Cold War) left a blindness to the dysfunction of dependency on the Mother State, deterioration of other levels of community, and the culture of entitlement.

Economic liberalism is libertarian in its fierce defense of the individual's rights in the face of state tyranny, as in communism or the expansive progressive state. This is Milton Freedman, Ronald Reagan and the pre-Trump Republican establishment. In face of the Cultural Revolution it embraced moral conservatism in its concerns for Life, marriage and family, and religious liberty. It also had two weak spots: an individualism that obscured solidarity, including with the poor, and a similarly weakened sense of subsidiarity that allowed the expansion of mega-global-corporate capitalism and neglected to protect family, local community, the working and poor classes. Unlike political liberalism, it embraced moral conservatism; but its immunity was weak due to individualism, avarice, tolerance for gigantism in the private sector and indifference to the needs of the worker and the poor.

Cultural liberalism is sexual license: the severing of eros from chastity, fidelity, marriage, family and the religious vows. It is the ultimate liberation of the monadic Self as a god-unto-her-or-himself, unrooted and undirected in a vast, empty, meaninless void of a universe. It is futility, sterility, disenfranchisement, and despair. But it is powerful. It completely devoured political liberalism in a hostile takeover about which the Catholic Great Generation (apparently exhausted by Depression, wars with Japan and the Nazis and the Communists, and ensuring world peace) had very little clue.

Liberalism, as we know today, in its various expressions is LONELINESS Nevertheless, I for one, as son of a union organizer, cannot give up the pure, good meaning of the word. Rather, I crave a genuine liberalism as freedom, a freedom that breathes from the riches of our past, that rests in a "catholic" {i.e. universal) communion with all that is good and true and beautiful, that values all the freedoms and cherishes especially the little ones and the poor ones. This is the liberalism of John Paul II, Pope Emeritus Benedict, Edith Stein, Jacques Maritain, Dietrich von Hildebrand and many more. May we emulate them! May they pray for us!

My Favorite Prayers at Holy Communion

Jesus, come into my heart! Possess me! Bring me, by the gentleness and strength of your Holy Spirit, to our heavenly Father!

Jesus, I surrender myself to you! Take care of EVERYTHING!

I need you; I crave you; I am desperate for You!

I want You! I choose You!

I love You! I adore You!

I thank You! I trust You!

I repent to You! I abide in You!

I receive You! I exult in You!

I remember You! I look forward to You!

I rest in You! I move in You!

I am quiet in You! I speak in You!

I delight in You! I hope in You!

Neutrality in the Cultural War: Viable?

At least a strong plurality, probably a majority, in society and the Church, keep on neutral ground, "Switzerland," in the Culture Wars. Most of the hot issues are fought out between militant, passionate minorities of 10 to 25 percent on each side. The remainder largely abstain as they are ambivalent, confused, indecisive, indifferent, or simply lack the stomach for the fight. In the broader society this has benefits: it contributes to civil peace. The margins have to appeal to the moderate middle to get anywhere. Neither side gets a full boat. Reason, moderation and negotiation come into play. Imagine if both sides on issues like gun control, immigration, and climate control numbered 40% or more! We would plunge into full scale culture conflict and become a balkanized country. (I know, we are already!)

Within the Church it is a different matter entirely. Unity is constitutive of the Church, but unity in Truth. We cannot have one gospel for Germany, another for Poland; one liturgical-moral-doctrinal legacy in San Francisco, another in New York. Furthermore, the crucial theological and moral issues ARE binary: God is three persons or one person; Jesus is human-divine or human or divine; women can or cannot become priests; sterile, non-unitive sex is essentially wrong or it is not. One side is right; the other side is wrong. If women can become Catholic priests than they should! Absolutely! And not 50 years from now, but yesterday! And the refusing Church is indeed hateful, ignorant, misogynist, legalistic, retroactive and phobic. But if women cannot become priest, they cannot. Simple! No one can make them priests: not the Pope, not synodality, nothing!

Priests by a large majority keep a distance from the Culture War. Occasionally you will hear a sermon about abortion, but very very rarely will you hear on Sunday about homosexuality, cohabitation, contraception, pornography and masturbation, and the masculine priesthood. These are taboo topics...on both sides...and there are reasons for this. I have know a fair amount of Jesuits and Maryknollers over the years: about 90% avoid these issues. Their hearts burn for the poor and the suffering, they are very uncomfortable with the sexual and life issues. My spiritual director of many years, John Wrynn S.J. of happy memory was non-directive with me, neither endorsing nor challenging my fierce conservatism, but one day he quietly said: "I don't know why women can't be priests." He is typical: uncertain, he has no dog in the fight.

Why are so many neutral, abstaining from the fight? Great question. A number of vectors come into play.

1> Most people are not philosophers: they lack the ability and/or interest to pursue theoretical principles. So they don't really care about these issues that exploded in the 60s with the Sexual Revolution. Morally, most people are emotivists: they decide and act on the feelings of their heart, not the reasoning of their intellect. This is even more true of women and so of the de-masculinized Church we have become. In the context of World War II, all the loss of life and resources we sustained in the wake of Pearl Harbor, few Catholics thought twice about the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Every felt good the war was ended without further bloodshed and most liked Harry Truman. About abortion most Catholics might say: "I don't like it and would never do it but I FEEL uncomfortable with the government telling a woman she can't have one. So I am peronally averse but politically pro-choice."

A second motive is to keep the unity of the Church, to prevent schism or a mass exodus. Saint Pope Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae but did not enforce it. He kept the Church together, even though there was a de facto schism. Priests and bishops avoided the topic. The result: over 90% of Catholic women of child-bearing age went on the pill at some point. The Church retreated, ceded the ground to the Liberation forces, and has been losing the War ever since. The recent letter of Cardinal Ladaria cautioning the American Bishops to proceed with caution and avoid a split Church reflects this pastoral concern. Both John Paul and Benedict were extraordinary: they relentlessly persisted in proclaiming the gospel truth, always gently and patiently.

Thirdly, and closely related to the previous motive, is a pastoral sensitivity in priests to keep close to those who cannot accept or understand Catholic teaching on these topics. The culture has pulled most far away from the Catholic way. So, for example, a typical priest finds that most couples seeking matrimony are already living together. What to do? Most soft-pedal and play good cop: pre-marital chastity is offered as a suggestion, an option, an ideal. Hardly any mention of "living in sin." Priests want to love and be loved; they want to give and receive acceptance; they have little taste for tough love.

Forthly, the crucial issues of gender, sex, and unborn life have always been, for Catholics, sacred, delicate realities that are surrounded by silence and discretion. These are not things we talk about: not because they are bad, but because they are holy. And so, when the Sexual Revolution exploded after 1965, the Great Generations of Catholic in power at the time were entirely unprepared: so they avoided the conflict. Result: the Revolution succeeded, entirely, even within the Church.

Lastly, these moral-religious issues have become unhappily politicized. Traditionally the Democratic Party championed Catholic concerns: the working man, the poor, marginalized minoritites, a more robust sense of the common good, solidarity and a limited but assertive state. Implicitly, for example, the party of my childhood was quietly, but firmly, pro-family, pro-life, pro-religious liberty. A Copernican Revolution occurred circa-1970: the Democrats betrayed Catholics for the liberated, secular elite; the Republicans gathered up conservative Evangelicals and Catholics into a political stew that included (traditionally Catholic) cold war militance and (questionably Catholic) low taxes, preference for the wealthy, and a failure to critique mega-capitalism in favor of a moderate subsidiarity. And so, Catholics were quite comfortable backing gun control, generous immigration policy, and an expanded health care system; as they were uncomfortable with a pro-life movement that they perceived as arrogant, indifferent to the poor, and too close to the wealthy.

Pope Francis is a good example of this neurality: he seems to be ambivalent. Last week the Vatican sternly forbade blessings for homosexual couples; this week he wrote a sappy, saccrine letter to Fr. James Martin commending him on how Christ-like he is in being close, compassionate and caring. No mention of truth, justice, sin or holiness. His position is untenable: conservatives feel entire abandoned by him, progressives resent that he has disappointed him.

The neutral position is entirely untenable. The forces for sexual liberation are so militant that to abstain is basically to surrender. Their aggression is increasing. The war is raging ever more viciously. We live in apocalypic times. It is time for us to revive the legacy of John Paul: as he quietly, confidently faced and eventually defeated the Nazis and the Communists, it is now for us to persist in the Truth...confidently, calmly, affectionately, fiercely, hopefully.