1968 Turn to the Dark Side: Catholic Liberalism Dies; Cultural Liberalism Prevails

Like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"...the entire liberal establishment, especially the Democratic National Party, until then a bastion of Catholic Liberalism, became transfigured and possessed by two conspiring ghost-demons: those of Marx and Freud.

The political-economic liberalism of my father's generation(1945-65) was solidly Catholic. It's primary concerns (the rights of workers against capitalists; the care of the poor and disadvantaged, including in other countries; the emergent civil rights movement) firmly aligned with Catholic social teaching. The entire culture passionately endorsed the traditional family, with as many kids as possible, in a rich ethnic Catholicism. It embraced a vigorous patriotism, having just sacrificed to defeat German and Japanese expansion, which entailed a fierce religiosity in defiance of atheistic, imperialistic Communism. This was not the liberalism of individualism, of resentment of authority and tradition, of personal license; it was solidarity in family, faith, trade union, and country. This powerful edifice (Catholic faith, patriotism, labor movement, Democratic Party) collapsed, spectacularly, like the walls of Jerico, in 1968.

This Fall was triggered by the acceptance of two coniving lies: that of Marx that all of social life is violence, the dominance of the weak by the strong, war always and everywhere; and that of Freud (or his followers) that the repressive superego is dominant over the innocent erotic yearnings of the childlike Id. The synthesis of the two is the work of the Frankfurt School: both build upon an atheistic nihilism and assume a chaotic universe of unending violence: interiorly within the psyche itself and externally between the master and the slave. This was the work of Marcuse, Reich, Fromn, the New Left and the hippies and the yuppies, Black Liberation, feminism, gay rights, and the decade of the 1970 and afterwards.

These two falsehoods are appealing as there is some truth in them. Power dynamics are in play in all areas of human interaction; it is part of original sin. Dominance and submission happens between classes, genders, races, ethnic groups, nations, empires, families, siblings and friends. But this is not the total and final picture. Likewise, wholesome sexuality has certainly in the past been suppressed by fear, shame and guilt aligned with unhealthy religiosityAgain: that is not the entire story. It is ironic that just as an emergent post-modernity was about to declare the end of all mega-narratives, the Cultural Left became intoxicated with this dual narrative of dominance and oppression as explanatory of everything.

It bears mentioning also, here, that John Paul II emerged as pope, at the very end of the catastrophic 1970s, with the definitive response to both narratives with his catechesis of the human body and his social teaching.

If Cultural Liberalism is a contradition of the communal, populist, pious liberalism of my youth, it was an intensification of the trajectory of classical enlightenment liberalism: liberation of the autonomous, uprooted individual from the shackles of the repressive, reactionary, superstitious, legalistic, religious past. The core of this liberalism: hatred of the Father. Patriarchy is the constitutive negative image of this religion: oppression of women by men, children by elders, eros by law, reason by superstition, freedom by authority, poor by rich, and black by white. The original Fall, when Eve inbibed the Satanic lie "that the Father is not to be trusted" is reenacted with catastrophic global consequences. For underlying it is, of course, a rejection of the loving Creator by resentful, jealous creatures. That classical liberalism took several forms: the economic liberalism (RNC) of the successful and affluent that idolized entrepreneurship, free markets and trade, expansive corporate captialism; and the contrary political liberalism (DNC) which mobilized an expansive government in defense of the powerless; and cultural liberalism which favored sexual liberation. By the late 1960s, a strange and unexpected political regestaulting occurred: economic liberalism alligned itself to cultural conservatism in reaction to the marriage of political and cultural liberalism. The working class, ethnic Catholic found himself without a home: entirely excommunicated from the anti-family party of abortion and sexual license, he could not entirely embrace the party of big money and libertarianism either. The party of Ronald Regan, while pro-life, pro-family, anti-communist, and pro-religion, remained alligned with corporate affluence and implicitly hostile to the subsidiarity of smaller communities that support the family.

With that background, we might now take a new look at Donald Trump from the point of view of Catholic politics. A year into the Biden regime and a year away from Trump's nauseating Twitter obsession, we have some distance and can evaluate what he offered. For our purposes here, I will not regard his vile personal behavior which firmly disqualified him from my vote in both elections. But focusing strictly on policy, he presents a promising new Catholic paradign for politics. He failed to deliver on all he promised; and he was toxic in so many ways (xenophobia, misogynistic, polarizing, unpredictable and incompetent by virtue of narcissism). But in his fundamental policy positions, he proposed a new conservative (culturally), populist (economically) Republican Party that aligns closely with (not all, to be sure) Catholic concerns.

He combined Republican conservativsm's defense of life, family and religious freedom (what is best about that party) while rejecting economic liberalism (free markets, trade) with its implicit individualism. In theory (though not in practice) he absorbed into his party the traditional Democrat concern for the working and poor classes. His consistent and firm defense of life and religious freedom, in his court selections and other decisions, was marvelous from a Catholic perspective. Not so much was his economic populism: his tax plan benefited the rich. Indeed, there is a litany of criticism that can be leveled against him. But in broad outline, he offered a populist, conservative alternative to the decadent indulgence of the Left and the affluent indifference of the Right. What I am advocating is a Never-Trump, (Trumpian?) Catholic-friendly Conservative Populism.

Personal Postscript: I am eternally grateful for my 1968: happily ensconced in college seminary with good friends and plenty of books I ventured to Cuernavaca, Mexico, that summer to study conversational Spanish at CIDOC, the think-tank of then-Monsignor Ivan Illich. I fell under the spell of this brilliant, eccentric, iconoclastic, Catholic mystic. He was far more radical than anything in the Catholic Left or the movements of the 1960s: a medievalist, he rejected modernity in toto...technology, bureaucracy, the clericalism of the Catholic Church. But underlying this was a deep, Catholic love for Christ and the Church. This appealed to my young, idealistic heart. I imbibed his suspicion of modernity and I think this helped to protect my heart and mind and keep me "in the world but not of the world." More deeply, I emulated his striking love for the Gospel and the Church. That very summer he was disciplined by the Vatican and later left the priesthood to pursue his vocation, keeping always his celibacy and prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours. God bless Ivan Illich!

Eulogy for Judy Laracy Carpron November 13, 2021

What a delight and honor: to be here with my cousins to remember Judy, our first cousin. I am myself an expert on "cousins"...really! Recently I wrote an essay on "Cousins...Underrated!" My expertise comes from experience: I have great cousins. It is particularly good today to see the different generations of cousins gathered here today!

She was very close to my mother, her Aunt Jeanne, who passed earlier this year at the age of 101. Just before she died, sound of mind and strong in spirit, she was calling people to say goodbye. She called her dentist, whom she loved, to say she wouldn't be in for her cleaning and exam. Judy was at the top of here list. They had a great chat. There was no fear of death there.

A Catholic does not fear death. I often remember my Aunt Marian, Judy’s Mom, just weeks before she died there was a big party, for Frank’s 75 birthday party, but it was really a going away party for her and she was radiant, smiling and laughing and as always full of affection and joy.

My Mom fondly remembered Judy a a teenager surprising her with a visit with her friends and a box of candy or goodies. That was Judy: always fun and laughter and joy. For us younger cousins she was the quintessential cool 1950s rock-and-roll teen: popular, gregarious, fun-loving. She was in the league of Ricky Nelson, Fonserelli, and John Travolta! She had a wild side, mischevious and even naughty: she would sneak out of her house in the morning to go to the infamous candy store for her breadfast of coke-and-donut.

We had a rough start though:: she liked me but I wasn’t crazy about her. I was maybe 4 years old and she was about 14. She like me but I wasn’t too crazy about me. So she would look at me and say “Hey cutie, I’m going to kiss you.” I would scream: “No. No kisses” and run away in terror. She would chase me, laughing. And I remember wondering “What is funny about this?” And she would catch me and kiss me. So annoying. SO ANNOYING! She was such a tease. She got that from her father, Frank.

This is what I want to say: she was, straight out, the most fun and funny person I ever met. When you were with her you were always laughing. The only ones in her league are her sisters Eileen and Pat. First of all: they tell everything. There are no secrets. No skeletins. No facade or pretensions. You are sitting there and you think: “Wow! She just said that!” And then you are laughing. If they are together it is even worse. You have to take a breath between the laughter. All the foibles and failings and sufferings...they all become light and humorous and affectionate when you are with the Frank-and-Marian cousins.

Judy, like her sisters, is a sublime sythesis of their mother and father, Frank and Marian. What a couple! So different. Frank tall and large in stature, in personality and character. Loud, clear voice; intelligent; gregarious; expansive and generous; funny. A leader of men! Marian, by contrast: petite, vivacious and bubbly, overflowing with affection and warmth; rich in faith. When you put that intelligence and humor together with that warmth and affection you have magic, that was Judy.

She was a product of, even the epitome, of the world in which we grew up. Working class, Irish Catholic; lots of kids; women pregnant or nursing; drinking and laughter and happily loudness. The men, all active in the labor movement, talking sports or union or politics. It was lively, light-hearted, energetic, and loud in a happy way. The Laracys, the Lenons, the Corrigans, the Hegers and others. Frank and Marian seemed to serenely preside, like king and queen, over this rich community of laughter, energy, faith, hope and love. And Judy was like a Princess.

Underneath it all: a deep, quiet Catholic faith. Our gatherings were often around the sacraments: somebody’s first communion, confirmation, wedding, baptism or funeral (like today). Judy, Rich,Eileen, and Pat lived literally in the shadow of Our Lady of Lourdes Church in West Orange. The Church was like the West Orange mountain, solid, palpable, reliable, invulnerable. ..like the earth beneath your feet. From the Church you could almost throw a snowball and hit their house. The Eucharist was there and the sacraments and I believe Judy inhaled, with the oxygen, the Holy Spirit radiating from that Church. She always kept the faith...in her quiet, humble way. Nothing pretentious, preachy or moralistic about her. All fun, affection, kindness. Never a hint of resentment or self-pity. Judy loved her novenas. And her rosary. I am told that when she was sick Linda asked if she wanted her rosaries she took them and immediately started praying her hail marys. It is like riding a bike...it comes right back. With her sisters she was expert about dispensations: she knew the travel dispensation, sick and all the others like a trained canon lawyer. She lived in the state of grace: quiet, humble. Trusting in God’s presence, power, providence.

As the oldest of us, Judy always seemed to me to have a foot in both generations: ours, and our parents. Born in 1937, she was a young girl during the war, well before the rest of us were conceived. You can imagine what a joy she was in those difficult years to her grandparents and all the women praying for safe return of the troops. She was Aunt Grace’s best friend. She was like a little sister to my father and the Laracy brothers. Uncle Jack was very fond of her. He was a funny guy: a loner, quiet, we didn’t see much of him. He fought with Patton. Aunt Grace remembers that Judy would get these beautiful letters from overseas from him. In beautiful penmanship, well expressed, they read like poetry. But the letters to Grandma and Aunt Grace were three sentence scribbles, not real intelligible. Some years later Aunt Grace asked him about the letters. “Oh that: I wrote the ones to you but the ones to Judy were done by a guy in our regiment who could really write well and he did the important letters to girlfriends and wives and stuff." I doubt Judy every knew that. I wasn’t going to tell her.

I felt a sweet Joy when I learned she had passed. A relief that her suffering was over. A sense of awe at a live well lived. But most of all a surge of joy pondering the joy in heaven as she is received by Pop Lenon, Grandma and Aunt Grace, her Laracy uncles and all the rest. Yes there is great joy in heaven as she is welcomed by so many who love her: Frank and Marian, Pop Lenon, Grandma and Aunt Grace and the Laracy borthers and others.

We are here today to pray for her soul, of course, because like all of us she is in need of God’s mercy. Her purgatory, I suspect, was largely served over these last difficult months of sickness. So I feel drawn to already share that Joy in heaven. With that happy thought, Let me end with a prayer of gratitude.

Dear God. Thank you for this beautiful life! Thank you for this marvelous cousin, wife, mother, grandmother, sister, friend. Thank you for all the joy and love and laughter she gave us. May she and all those she has loved in heaven send blessings of joy and love to us on earth, especially Bill, Kathy and Billy and Linda and their families, Rich and Eileen and Pat and their families, her cousins and friends. and all of us who enjoyed her so. Amen.

Incest in Camelot

Jacqueline Kennedy herself, in a 1963 interview, embraced the Camelot myth: "There will be other great presidents, but never a period like this." She is correct: It was a Camelot time...in more ways than one.

Clearly there are such times in our personal and communal lives...sublime, extravagant, joyous times...when everything is right...when life is enchanted: a summer romance, a family holiday, the courtship-honeymoon stage of a romance, the illuminative stage of prayer life, an athletic championship. For Israel, the kingship of David was Camelot; it fell apart, due to the diabolic dynamisms of incest, biological and moral-spiritual.

The heroic warrior-king-father David (a prototype for Arthur, JFK, MLK) created the quintessential Camelot, but the seeds of its destruction were in his adultery and a pattern of incest. His adultery with Bethseba was despicable mostly in his betrayal of Uriah, her husband and his loyal soldier and therefore, symbolically, his son. Morally, David slew his (moral) "son" to have his (moral) "daughter-in-law." Fast forward and we have his family in a sexual chaos: his one son rapes his own half-sister and then is slaughtered by her full-brothers. We have: adultery brings filiocide, brings incest, brings fratricide. This is the prototype for the incest-driven fall of Camelot.

The John F. Kennedy Presidency was a Camelot for us liberal, Catholic, especially Irish Americans. It was...the intelligence of the brain trust, the movie-star-glamour, the virile energy, the international altruism, the confidence, the expansive economy, the Pax Americana, the Vatican Council, the large families, the religious vocation surplus, and so much more.

The pressing historical question that haunts our boomer generation: Why did this splendid, enchanted Kingdom collapse so catastrophically shortly after the death of JFK around 1965? The answer may be in the Camelot tradition itself!

In the earliest legends, King Arthur dominates as a heroic warrior...much like the young King David, not unlike JFK and MLK. Later, he is sidelined as elderly and relatively weak in comparison with the appealing Lancelot who steals his bride Guenevere. We see here that the king, a paternal image, becomes weak while the queen's affection goes to the younger knight in a quasi-oedipal adultery. One of the earliest Arthurian legends has his nephew achieving this oedipal victory. In both cases, the king is diminished and sidelined as mother and surrogate son surrender to sexual chaos. This simple story line unveils the inner form of the Cultural Revolution that exploded in the late sixties: the diminshment of the Father (and authority, tradition, law, the sacred, the masculine), the explosion of a resentful femininism, and the license for contracepted, sterile, largely oedipal sex.

JFK was himself, of course, the opposite of the cuckolded, failing patriarch: he was robust, vigorous, confident and shamelessly promiscuous in imitation of father Joseph Kennedy. The Patriarch established the adulterous legacy and explicitly initiated his sons into it. John's alleged bedding of his father's ex-lover Gloria Swanson is an oedipal soap opera on a colassal scale. The Kennedy men continued this abuse of women out of unrestrained, power-fueled, toxic masculine lust. The legacy continued: Martin Luther King, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, Andrew Cuomo, Jeffrey Epstein and a legion of often-Democratic, always contracepting, pro-choicing abusers of women. Clinton' daliance with Monica, same age as his daughter, was the most overtly incestuous drama; as such fatal for the life of the family and community; but casually dismissed as a recreational indiscretion. Epstein's abuse of underage women is nauseatingly oedipal in the moral and psychological sense. MLK continues as a cultural idol, curiously immune to "me-too" critique and its implicit acceptance of sexual license.

It is a mystery, a paradox, an irony: as the Great Generation (of men who defeated two totalitarianisms, contained a third, built a superb economym, society and church) reached the pinacle of power in the late 1960s that there was this luciferian pivot against the paternal into oedipal, incestuous spiritual chaos. How could this happen? How did they lose their grip on the Good and the True? Why did their women collapse into envy, resentment and disgust for the paternal/maternal? Why did their children despise them and their legacy with such arrogance and narcissism? it is a Mystery from hell! At the heart if it is the dark underside of Camelot: patriarchy turned adulterous/incestuos; womanly rage and envy; filial disloyalty, narcisissm and arrogance; the desecration of the iconography of the paternal, maternal, spousal and filial.

I recall a conversation many years ago with a young Italian security guard at Newark Airport: speaking of his love for his children, he recalled running into an ex-girlfriend who offered an adulterous daliance. He declined. Thoughtfully he reflected: "In regard to my wife, I could have gone with her. But not in regard to my children. I could never look them in the face." It struck me at the time as a profound moral intuition: the worst thing about adultery is the damage to the children. We know marriages that survive and even flourish post-adultery, where the offender is contrite and the offended forgiving. But the wound to the children, it seems to me, is indelible. The child's very being is conceived in the union of groom-and-bride; the child's very identity flows from the conjugal union, however imperfect, of the two. The violation of the sacred father-son/daugher relation in (implicitly incestous) adultery is the deepest of sins; it is not so much about sex as about the holiness and desecration of fatherly love.

The fall of Camelot, of the kingdom and the family and a legacy...of David, Arthur, JFK and MLK, Clinton and Weinstein...lies in the betrayal of paternal love in adultery; oedipal resentment and distrust of the father; feminine envy and rage at the paternal as disloyal and tyranical; the degeneration of the paternal as heroic, noble, generous; and the surrender into the chaos of sterile, recreational-romantic, non-spousal, anti-paternal, non-maternal sex.

The building of a new, genuine Camelot must be on the foundation of the holiness of the family; the primacy of state-of-life (vows of marriage or consecration); chastity; filiality; fraternity; fruitful, spousal love; paternity and maternity. This is why the destruction by Pope Francis of the John Paul Institute for the Family in Rome is the most disloyal, decadent of his decisions. The trivialization of sexuality and the pervasive acceptance of the adulteries of JFK, MLK, Clinton, Trump in the desecration of paternity is the deepest evidence of the decadence of our society and Church. It is that the health of the Church and society flows from the deep, good roots of wholesome, holy families...the prayerful, faithful, humble life of Nazareth.

Misomasculinity, Virophobia, and the Reign of the Smothering Mother

Disclosure: Notwithstanding the apparently misogynist theme, this writer is a passionate, extravagant, devoted philogynist. He was only slightly smothered by his own mother whose fierce maternity was, happily, purified and corrected by the conjugal love she shared with her husband who told her: "Do not put your son on a pedestal!"

In the real order, every person, relationship, family and community draws its integrity, vitality, harmony, creativity, and joy from the interaction of the feminine and masculine as spousal, tender, reverent. If one pole or the other is denied, dominant, feared or despised, life becomes toxic. The denial of gender bipolarity is the collapse into chaos; andryogyny is sterility. Our society and Church, in its flight from toxic masculinity and patriarchy as tyranny, in its fear and hatred of virility, is not being liberated, but falling under the despostism of the the controlling, devouring feminine.

The Smothering Mother is:

- Motherly love as excessive in compassion, inclusion, acceptance because it is unbalanced by and hostile to fatherly love as demand, obligation, authority, boundary, tradition, truth, honor.

- A moral sense that is emotivist and anti-intellectual.

- Quintessentially: the Evil Mother swallowing her unborn, innocent and helpless.

A militant femininism hostile to femininity as form, as purpose, as beauty-truth-goodness, in a degenerate mimesis of toxic masculinity as careerism, loneliness, individualism, sexual license, and fear of the father.

- Safetyism as global, pervasive anxiety; flight from death, risk, adventure, challenge, combat, engagement; compulsive construction of a protected, maternal bubble; covidophobia, over-masking, extreme social distancing, hypermandating; conspiracy theories and dread of vaccines; helicopter parenting.

- A presidency and political party that is rabidly anti-paternal and anti-maternal in its genocide of the unborn, innocent and powerless; that desecrates the human body in its denial of the sacrality of sexuality as conjugal, fruitful, iconic; that abandons its allies in Afghanastan in a debacle of shameful disloyalty and startling incompetence; that is unwilling to protect its borders and so lures countless poor southern neighbors into a dangerous pilgrimage of hope; that spends the money of our children/grandchildren in its "boomerish" insistence on consumpiton NOW; that propagates a narrative of powerful/powerless, rich/poor, black/white, male/female, hetero/homo, and cis/trans that dehumanizes an alleged "oppressor class" as it infantilizes a "victim class" (e.g. black men are emasculated by the allegation that they are victims of "the man" and unable to protect their women and children); and so provokes, from the underclass, an anxious, raging populism-nationalism that tends to crude toxic masculinity.

- The expansion of the "mommy state"; tolerance of, indeed indulgence of moral decadence and sexual depravity; systemic deconstruction of traditional itineraries into noble masculinity; immersion in a tyranny of technology and bureaucracy; the predominance of unbalanaced femininity in crucial arenas of education, entertainment health care, media and law.

- A pontificate that is emasculated in an excess of compassion-acceptance-nurture bereft of fatherly demand, accountability, responsibility, chastity, authority, holiness, justice and truth; that is allergic to manly sturctures of dogma, law, tradition, authority, hierarchy; that embraces immigrants but is indifferent to the need for boundaries, rule of law, and national identity; that abandons the martyred Church in China in cowardly submission to vicious communists; that urges inclusion and dialogue but then resents criticism and lapses into catty resentment of traditionals (suppression of Latin mass) and conservatives (destruction of the John Paul II Institute in Rome"); that unleashes a confused, disorienting "synodality" in a vague resentment of tradition bereft of clarity, direction and purpose.

- A gay movement that, in a classic oedipal drama, camouflages its wounded masculinty, by recoiling from the paternal viewed as hostile-judgmental-shaming-rigorous and embraces the maternal as accepting-approving, and rages (in an elaborate liturgy of pride, parades, rainbows, coming out, etc.) like a petulant child for unconditional moral approval.

With this we understand the nature of our civilizational and ecclesial crises: a classic oedipal drama. In suspicion and resentment, son and mother collude together against the paternal experienced as tyranical and evil. The key protagonists are the gay and the femininist; the antagonist is masculinity as paternal. The structures of modernity...contraception, sexual liberation, deconstruction of gender, bureaucracy, technology and scientism, expansive state, demise of the family and intermediate institutions...all collude in the disparagement of paternity and the empowerment of a Smothering Motherhood.

The good news is that the Real, the True, the Good, the Beautiful are all irrepressible: masculinity/femininity, paternity/maternity, filiality, spousality, fraternity...these are superabundant, generous, resilient, captivating, charming and engaging. They share a certain invulnerability to The System. They will triumph! Thanks be to God!

Root Cause of Our Civilizational Collapse: Demise of Virility as Paternity

Description of PaternityAs a prime reality, a Mystery, Paternity cannot be defined in terms of other realities. At the level of biology it is clearcut enough: the donator of seed in sexual reproduction of life. But in the sacramental, iconic cosmos of Catholicism, that is an image of profound realities: social, psychic, ontological and theological. At the depth level, Fatherhood...like truth, being, love, beauty, goodness...is not definable in other terms. It presents itself directly, simply, intuitively to the intelligence. If someone has no spontaneous sense of love or beauty it it is futile to define it.

Nevertheless, as "super-intelligible" rather than "non-intelligible" it can be described, however inadequately. (Here, we need the poet. This writer is nothing if not prosaic!)

Fatherhood is generosity, graciousness, gratuity, extravagance in the giving of life. It is authorship, initiation, origination. It is provision, protection, pedagogy. It is authority as sacred, holy, or "super good." It is order, intelligibility, purpose, structure. It is transcendence...infinite distance...that is overcome by tenderness and mercy...to an infinite degree. Fatherhood is at the very heart of God as Trinity so Fatherhood in its purity is God, is Trinity, is the Father loving the Sonl Just as Sonship is the Son loving the Fatherhood. Our eternal destiny is to love the Father...in the Son...as the Son...in response to the Father's love for us. So it is simple enough: the purpose of life, of creation, of the cosmos: to receive, embody, share, delight in, and magnify the love of the Father, as Father, for us who are sons and daughters.

Paternity and MaternityHuman paternity, as a reflection or analogy of divine Fatherhood, is essentially related to maternity. Human paternity is always representational; by contrast, maternity is substantially distinct unto itself...different from God...quintessentially creaturely, the woman has her own solid, definite identity in a way that the man does not. The male, in all he does, is always pointing toward our heaveny Father; or sacriligously defacing His face. The woman's role as mother is different; complementary; reflective of God but in a manner distinct from Fatherhood and therefore closer to the Son and the Spirit in their distinction and distance from the Father. Maternity is likewise generosity, graciousness, gratuity...as reception, surrender, intimacy, compassion, inclusion, union, mercy. Maternity and Paternity include each other within each other; they are the same in so many ways, but mysteriously different and distinct in so many ways. Both are rooted in a prior spousality, of bride and groom, which creates a unity as it strangely preserves a limitless distance and distinction. Spousality, Paternity and Maternity all involve intimacy within distance and so relfect the interior life of the Trinity.

Original Sin Against Fatherhood Eve's primal sin was a direct rejection of Divine Fatherhood, an act of suspicion and distrust, a preference for autonomy and control rather than communion and surrender. On the face of it, Adam's sin was secondary and derivative as he followed her lead. She, the woman, apparently, has the primacy in sin and evil. A more contemporary interpretation, however, faults Adam for his absence from Eve in her moment of temptation: he failed in his vocation of spouse and father by abandoning her to her own resources; he left her alone and vulnerable. One might argue that his failure in paternity and spousality was the opening that Satan needed to seduce Eve. By this logic, Adam's dereliction in paternity led Eve to doubt the fatherly love of her heavenly Father and sieze control herself.

Purpose of Virility: PaternityThe destiny of every man is to become a father, to mirror the paternity of the Father. The itinerary of masculinity is: filiality (sonship) into fraternity (brotherhood, friendship) into spousality (groom to his bride) into paternity (fatherhood, in some form.) The source of paternity is filiaity: one is first a son, receptive of fatherly love, like an open receptacle; and later this love develops, clarifies, deepens and strenghtnes into the love of a father. One who is not fathered (in some form) cannot father.

Modernity: Desecration of FatherhoodThe Cultural Revolution that exploded in the West in the late 60s is, even more than a sexual revolution, a rejection of Paternity. The contraceptive tearing of sexuality from procreation, gender and spousality was the linchpin that deconstructed Fatherhood, but along with that was the deep renunciation of authority, of the sacred and the holy, of the past as tradition and revelation, of the primal relationships of man-woman and father-mother-child as analogues of the creator and the creature. The rich, profound cosmos of interwining relationships (God and creation, man and woman, father and child) was diabolically replaced by the autonomy and hegemony of the lonely, isolated, unrooted and purposeless individual. Individualism...the heart of liberalism!

The Tortuous Journey to Noble VirilityFemininity, in its destiny of maternity, is natural, organic, hormonal, biological, resilient, irrepressible, largely efficacious and almost infallible. Femininity, however violated, abused, despised, and repressed has about it a deeper invulnerability underneath the vulnerability. The mother's instinct is the most powerful force in the natural realm. In my neighborhood I have known homeless, drug addicts who were nevertheless passionate, tender, faithful mothers. Not so with fathers! Virility is an impossibly fragile, difficult, laborious project. It is NOT spontaneous,organic or hormonal. It requires a long, detailed, sophisticated itinerary of formation: instruction, modeling, correction, encouragement, testing, affirmation, more correction, more modeling, more affirmation. The formation of good men is the most difficult, complicated and significant of cultural accomplishments.

I would say that in our civilization the status of manhood reached a certain high point in my father's generation: the Great Generation who suffered the Depression, defeated the Nazi and Japanse imperialisms, contained Soviet Communism, and fathered large families. At the very apex of their achievement, however, in 1965, a diabolical dramatic turn occured across our culture but primarily at the level of the elites: the desecration of Fatherhood. The pampered boomer generation...so doted on by their adoring parents...listened to a soft, seductive voice: "You are better, stronger wiser, kinder than your stupid fathers!" They believed it. They turned against their fathers. They regressed (symbolically) to a narcisssitic and infantile immersion in the warm, safe maternal "womb." And the half century since than has been a collapse into decadence, unchastity,irresponsibility, infantilism and anti-paternity. It has become a dark world. A world without fathers.

St. Joseph Pray for Us!

USA 2021: A Darkening, Dystopian World; A Great Time to Go Catholic...Deeply, Radically, Fiercely Catholic

The moderate, reasonable middle no longer holds...decadence prevails...hysteria, extremism, irrationality exploding on the right and the left...our world has become dystopian! A fantastic time to be Catholic...true, profound, passionate, inflamed in our faith!

In 1960 the critical mass of American Catholics were in love with the party of John Kennedy which was overtly Catholic in its defense of the working family, civil rights, the poor, an idealistic internationalism and a fierce global resistance to communism. In 1989, right-leaning Catholics could proudly champion the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan...pro-life, victorious (in alliance with John Paul II) over Soviet Communism, champion of the freedoms of man. In 2020, the left has gone Cultural Libertarian, quasi-Marxist, and big-state-big-corporation fascist. The right has degenerated into Trumpian demagoguery. It is inconceivable to me how any alert, awake, practicing Catholic could vote for a Biden or a Trump! Our political world, along with the entirety of elite culture, has gone berserk in one direction while the underclass is vulnerable to toxic populism in a contrary way. Where do we find Sanity? Stability? Serenity? In a deeper surrender to our Catholic faith!

Our world reminds me of the Europe of the 1930s. Not the Depression, but the political polarization into extremes: Stalinism was facing rising fascisms of the right. Think Spain, Italy,Germany! The middle did not hold. At the same time, consider three humble Poles: Sister Faustina quiet in her convent, the young Karol Wojtyla maturing in his own hidden life, and Father Maximilian Kolbe championing the Immaculata as he prepares for his gory, glorious martyrdom. (See video Ocean of Mercy for an inspiring review of these three lives.) All three are now canonized saints. All three lived humbly, generously, prayerfully. All three greatly influenced our world.

It is an immense grace to live in the wake of these three. To surrender ourselves in prayer...to Mercy...to the reception and distribution of the Divine Mercy.

It is a terrible time to be a Democrat or a Republican! It is a wonderful time to be a Catholic!

I Stand Corrected...on Afghanastan

Regarding an earlier blog "A Catholic Case for Staying in Afghanastan" (Oct. 7, 2021) my JAG lawyer son pointed out a number of realities I underestimated:

1. In contrast to Syria and Iraq, Afghanastan has no Christian or Catholic community at all. The only chapel was in an embassy. I checked the numbers: some countries have a Catholic population at .01% (North Korea, Cambodia, Kyrgystan, Mauritania, Niger, North Macedonia, Tajikistan); Somalia comes in at .001%; but Afghanastan is by far the smallest at .0003%. Their Muslim culture is fiercely hostile to Christianity. While the urgency to bring the Gospel to every nation may make Afghanastan number one priority, there is a question about prudent use of scarce missionary resources.

2. Afghanastan might also be the most resistant and hostile to Western culture. An anecdote: our military built a courthouse for them. Shortly after it was handed over to the locals a visit showed that it was being used to house sheep and goats. So much for "rule of law" and "due process!"

3. The immense dangers of placing our 18-year-olds with heavy gunnery in violent circumstances: they may perform admirable 99% of the time but that one mistake evokes a tidal wave of hatred for the foreign invaders. It is not fair to our young men and to the locals.

4. Paradoxically, the countryside there is more peaceful now that we are out of there. The Taliban is in control and there is less conflict.

These are serious, sobering realities so I change my mind. I am about 60% confident that withdrawal (however badly executed) was the prudent strategy. Of course, future events may change our evaluations. A single terrorist attack from a base there will be a game changer, but I agree that the Taliban, as rational deciders (we hope), have learned a lesson and will suppress any bases that might provoke another invasion.

The "neoconservative-leaning Catholicism" underlying my earlier argument remains in its fundamentals: first, the imperative to plant the Church everywhere, second the importance of education and dignity for women, and thirdly the broader global cold wars against Sharia law and Communism and the need for vigor, strength, agressiveness.