Kudos to the Trump Administration Handlers!

THANKS FOR YOUR SERVICE! That is what I would like to say to the patriots who served our country in the Trump administration. Pence, Barr, Pompeo, Kelly, McMaster, Tillerson, Matis, Haley, ...yes even DeVos, Mnuchin, Chao, Sessions. Liberals, confounded by the hysteria of Trump-Derangement-Syndrome, feel boundless contempt for anyone associated with him. But today, looking back with some distance upon his four years in office, it is amazing, I think even miraculous, that in his policy and governance he did so little harm and that the ship of state sailed on so serenely and even made some improvements.

When he was elected, at our family Christmas party, some of my sisters were distraught that he would start a nuclear war or otherwise gravely impact our world. I was silent: it did not seem to me to be an irrational fear. He is SUCH a fool! The next four years, as mediated by the media, was one idiotic twitter distraction after another. But the good news: Trump had zero interest in and ability for governance or classic politics. He had one and only one focus: his own narcisisitic performance. So, to a great extent, he let the administrative state continue its course with no interference. Additionally, he surrounded himself with mostly competent people, who swallowed their repugnance to serve the country.

His important aides shared a corporate personality: Conservative and Republican, mostly in a classic manner. (Obviously, Bannon and his type were another thing entirely.) From my point of view they were too far right on many issues; but they did defend unborn life, religious freedom and the traditional family. They had impressive careers in business, government and the military. They were practical, prudent and contrarian to his erratic impulses. They exuded confidence, strength, expertise. They served him faithfully but eventually had to renounce him: Barr and Pence of course in dramatic fashion in regard to the 2020 election.

For those four years, our was mesmerized by the Trump Clown Show. BUT: the world was at peace. We started to stand up to China. We got NATO nations to start paying their share. We allied the Sunnis and Israel against an aggressive Iran. The economy flourished. The Imperial Liberal Supreme Court was disestablished. Religious freedom was defended. The unborn were respected. The hegemony of the Liberal Elite was dealt a blow.

By comparison, 15 months under Biden and we have: in Afghanistan one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in our lifetime, a horrific invasion of Ukraine provoked by the perception of a weak USA, a border in crisis, crime raging in our cities, uncontrolled inflation, and a society becoming more polarized every day. Biden himself has contributed to all of this.

So we owe a debt of gratitude to those who swallowed their disgust and endured the frustration of working for The Donald!

On the Other Hand...Regarding the Enneagram

I was unfairly dismissive, in the prior post, of the Enneagram. I have been rumminating for several days about how I am a five and a six. It has been helpful: not a just a frivolous narcisstic ritual. So I am thinking this thing can be an aid in self-awareness.

We are each endowed, at conception, with a primal temperment. This is the initial raw material out of which our personality, identity and destiny will be formed. It is GIVEN. It is, of course, not a fixed, absolute structure. It will interact with the environment, even in the womb, and with our freedom in our beliefs, decisions, purposes and engagments. It is fluid and maleable, but not absolutely so. Eventually Lady Wisdom will lead us to befriend our given temperment...accept it, welcome it, guide it, sublimate it, compensate for it, educate it. But NOT deny, repress or even ignore it. It is most salutary to recognize our propensities, weaknesses, faults and failings as in part the result of a temperment that is given and that we can change only to some degree.

For example, Number 5 is inclined to thinking, reading, speculating and tends to detach from concrete life to reflect. This presents obvious positives and negatives. It can create a rich interior, thoughtful world. It can also tend to isolation and abstraction. My adolescence and early adulthood were largely happy and energized because I was always deeply into two or three good books: history, philosophy, psychology, literature. My own world was steady, safe, peaceful and monotonous: large family, school, some sports, and ordinary superficial adolescent male friendships. My actual life was not very interesting; but my life in literature was one fascination after another. In early adulthood I intuitively sensed a personal imbalance and realized it would be unhealthy for me to pursue an academic career although my talents and interests were in that direction. I soon married, we had children, and I worked in the real world as a school teacher, UPS supervisor and boarding home director. Fortunately my life was grounded and my life in abstraction limited.

Last year I was about 18 momths late with my 2020 tax returns. My son who does the returns gave me a clear, kind imperative: do not do another blog until you send me your paperwork. I laughed! He knows me. The next day I sent the receipts. I have been fortunate throughout my adult life in that demands and exigencies of life have kept me grounded...most of the time.

The enneagram is helpful in that it provides these paradigmatic tempermental types and can lead one to serendipity: "Wow! That is me! I am a five!" But it allows flexibility in that we then find a secondary type: "And I am also in some ways a six!" There is flexibility, creativity, fluidity in it. Much like our temperments themselves!

Please pardon my rash judgment, dear Reader, if you are yourself an afficionado of the Ennegram!

What to Make of the Enneagram?

I've been having fun this week figuring out if I am a five with a six wing or a six with a five wing. But seriously: The Enneagram...is it a valuable body of insight to be used for psychological/spiritual flourishing...or a comouflaged occult practice from the demons?

I would say none of the above. (Disclaimer: I have the very slightest exposure to the thing!) I see it as entertainment, fun, a parlor game. Like playing monopoly, reading a Harry Potter book, or watching a Jason Bourne movie. These are diverting, restful, enjoyable. Inherently not evil or holy.

Of course everything has its proper place and proportion. If my enneagrm-loving nephews invited me to an Enneagram party, with drinks and good snacks, I would happily go and argue about who is which type. (Oh smack! You are SUCH an eight!) But if they start a club with private meetings, secret initiations and binding vows...I will decline!

A quick historical search shows that its pedegree as science, philosophy and religion is zero. There is "no there there." While there are faint resemblances in the ancients and Sufi mysticism, there doesn't seem to be any real substantial continuity. It was started 100 years ago by a Russian "mystic"Gurdgieff. In the 1960s (Buyer Beware!) a clever Bolivian (Ichazo) and a creative Chilean (Naranjo) spun it into an engaging collage. Then it simply went viral.

Why its popularity? Because in the therapeutic era, the culture of narcicissm, it is an appealing exercise in self-contemplation. The vanity, the egotism of the Self delights in pondering: really, what type am I?

Real science measures and studies the actual; real philosophy ponders the nature, purposes, and structure of existence; real faith is reaching out to God. The eneagram seems not to come under any of these sciences. It assumes a horoscope predetermination of a rigid nine-point typology with some obscure origin. It reminds me of the "values clarification" that was so popular in the 70s: If you were a car, what would you be?

There are any number of academic and popular models that seem to offer help in self-reflection: Myers-Briggs (expecially extrovert-introvert binary), birth order factor, languages of love, and of course the unfathomable and boundless contemplation of masculinity/femininity. But the Enneagram to me lacks validity and solidity.

And so: the sight of Catholic retreat houses hosting enneagram weekends is not encouraging. It suggests a slide into new age superficiality and sentiment. Overload on cotton candy! A detraction from real food: meat, vegetbles and potatoes!

But honestly: Dear Reader! Do you see me as a five or a six?

I Never Knew a Monsignor I Did Not Like

I do not go as far as Will Rogers who famously said "I never knew a man I did not like."

A monsignor is to the priesthood what a made man is to the mob: He has proved himself; has paid his dues; is entitled to respect; his loyalty, competence, courage, dependabiltiy is beyond dispute; he carries a quiet gravitas about him; he is no one to be played with; he is serene, calm, gentle and confident in his strenth; he is a stand-up guy, a goodfellow; his word is gold.

MonsignorJim Finnerty, a marvelous priest, spent his last years in residence in our parish and then a nursing home nearby. He told someone I was the only one who called him Monsignor. For everyone, including himself, he was "Father Jim." He was comfortable, friendly, tender-hearted, informal, approachable, kind, non-judgmental, peaceful. Clearly, he was Fr. Jim. Nevertheless, I continued, more purposefully, to call him Monsignor.

It is not just my contrarian conservatism. The word for me carries respect. Jim Finnerty more than deserved it. He was a Vatican II priest in all the best sense. He spent decades in poor neighborhoods of Newark, serving the poor even as he himself was by any mainstream standard poor. He made thousands of visits to local hospitals and prisons, bring the sacraments and consolation. He touched my own family and in-laws over 50 years in parishes in Newark, Montclair and Jersey City. He visited our home to annoint a family member suffering serious mental-emotional torment. A little afterwards he started to improve. Now he is doing marvelously. Did the sacrament have anything to do with it? I think so!

I would visit him, wheelchair-bound, in the nursing home. I always left the visit bouyed up with happiness. He was always at work: often writting letter to friends. He would be in his clericals. He heard confessions and ministered to the residents and visitors like myself. When he said mass, he always delivered a homily that was a model of homelitic brevity, clarity, humour and inspiration. I wanted to get a copy of it. I found it comical that he delivered this perfect, handwritten, thoughtful, wise talk to a group of residents who were all at varying stages of senility and sleepiness. I just know that the angels and saints in attendance enjoyed it with me.

He was a true Monsignor. "Monsignor" is a form, an inner reality. I will give you a phenomenology of it: Steady, stable, and rock solid...emotionally, socially, intellectually, spiritually. Reliable and dependable. Intelligent, often in the academic and practical realms. Confident, strong, dignified. Good sense of humour. Humble; and usually from common, working class roots. Virile. In love with the Church.

Pope Francis discontinued naming such at one point and has since reinstated it with restrictions. The Holy Father has a bit of a chip on his sholder about hierarchy, clericalism and formalism. It is ironic: a monsignor is considered an honorary member of the Popes inner circle and here he is disapproving of it.

But he does have a point. There is the dark side of clericalism: careerism, arrogance, ambition, pomposity, privilege, unrecognized psycho-sexual immaturity, distance from the laity. We are all now living in the dark shadow of Maciel-McCarrick! The pope's changes make sense: now one must be over 65. It should take a while to "be made."

Honestly, I have not personally encountered much of that dark clericalism at its worst. It surely contributed to the priest sex scandal. But the monsignors I have met are remarkable for being at once gifted-intelligent-competent and yet humble and down to earth.

Calling someone Monsignor is a way of saying: Thank you for your service! Thank you for using your gifts so generously and humbly! Thank you for representing in yourself the Church as solid, reliable, enduring, enlightening, inspiring!

Thank God for our monsignors!

Grateful for the Interpreters

Creative geniuses are hard to understand: they use language in obscure, strange ways to unveil the the Real as True, Good and Beauty in new ways. That's why their translators or interpretors are so helpful! They are themselves super-intelligent scholars who read, understand and re-present the difficult teaching in a way us common folk can understand.

My lifetime-lifeworld has been blessed by four such geniuses: Balthasar, John Paul, Rene Girard and Ivan Illich. In reading them I barely get 50% of what they are saying. But happily each has come to me by way of a congenial, helpful guide. These guides are themselves first rate thinkers who penetrate the heart/intellects of their mentors and have an extraordinary gift for making those insights clear, available and inspiring.

Edward Oakes S.J. in Patterns of Redemption gives a masterful, clear, inspiring summation of the main teachings of Balthasar. He himself was a marvelous translator of Balthasar and his school to America. In addition, of course, we have the Communio School at the John Paul Institute in Washington D.C. who together develop the work of the great Swiss.

John Paul's catecheses on human sexuality are ellusive but Christopher West, gifted populizer and catechist, has made them easily available to all of us. He himself studied at the John Paul Insitutite which is the primary purveyor of both John Paul and Balthasar to the English-speaking Church. On some points, and correctly, the rigorous Communio School along with others have been critical of West. But that does not detract from his extraordinary success in making that body of teaching available.

Rene Girard found in Gil Baile an extraordinary, deep, supple disciple who gave us a breath-taking account of Girardian "mimetics" in Violence Unveiled. More recently he gives us, in God's Gamble, a creative, insighful synthesis of the best of Girard, Balthasar, and John Paul. He is the King of Interpreters and himself, in my view, a firsgt-rate creative thinker.

Ivan Illich fascinated me in the 1960s before he became a major critic of modernity in the 70s-80s but fell into disfavor when his Genderoffended mainstream femininism. I am now reading David Cayley's majesterial, authoritative Ivan Illich: an Intellectual Journey. Wow! No wonder I couldn't quite get Illich. Cayley is smart enough to know what makes sense in Illich and what is confounded and what is ellusive. This is definitely the hardest guy to intepret. But SO worth it.

The word "interpretor" or "translator" does not do justice to the work of these four. Each is himself an original, creative thinker in his own right. Each brings a wealth of scholarship, personal insight and charism to their work. What you get is two-for-the-price-of-one: the vision of the original genius as mediated to our world through a secondary but outstanding thinker.

In our Catholic world, however, there is another kind of genius who combines the two into one: delivers depth of insight in clear, understandable prose. Such tend not to be so creative. They have read widely and digest this erudtion into a message that is clear, inspiring, and easy to digest. Newman was such. Ratzinger is also. Sheen, Sheed, Guarino, Guardino, Lewis, Dulles, DeLubac, Hahn...the list goes on!

Thank God for our theological geniuses: those we can understand, those we cannot, and the ones who help us with that!

Catholic Theology: The Kantian Divide

At a conference in honor of Father Stanley Jaki in Seton Hall University in 2021, Monsignor Richard Liddy, himself an icon of Seton Hall (See sidebar below.), recalled his relationship with the great scientist-philosopher: over about three decades they never spoke with one another. Why? It goes back to when Jaki arrived at the campus. Liddy approached him and extended his hand to introduce himself and welcome him. Jaki looked him in the eye and sternly said: "I know who you are. And I know that you follow Bernard Lonergan. And I stand with Etienne Gilson. And I can never have anything to do with you."

I love this anecdote. Partly because the boundlessly congeneal, humble, magnanimous Liddy related it entirely without resentment in serene acceptance and a touch of humour and affection. Additionally, it represents two faces of the Catholic Church as "here comes everybody." Liddy: warm and welcoming, kind-hearted and open-minded. Jaki: cantankerous, fiercely combatative, take-no-prisioners Warrior for Truth.

Liddy, of course, would have happily engaged with the neo-Thomism of Gilson; but Jaki was intolerant of the transcendental Thomism of Lonergan. Why? I don't know. I hope to ask the Monsignor if I get to see him. But surely it has to do with Emmanuel Kant. Kant is arguably THE premier philosopher of modernity. Out of the systematic skeptism and the foundational "I think therefore I am" of Descartes, he created a new philosophy rooted in the knowing, subjective (transcendental) Self. He renounced as naive the traditional realism whereby we accept the knowing act as the immediate appropriation of the real, the objective, the other. He proposed an epistemology of the constructive human mind which creates knowledge in the form of "phenomena" but lacks clear, intimate and direct access to the "noumenal" as real and objective. Modern European/American philosophy in large part assumes, reacts to, and builds upon Kant.

Much of the divide in contemporary Catholic theology is rooted in Kant. On the one hand, you have the transcendental Thomism of Lonergan and Rahner which attempts to blend the best of Kant with the tradition of St. Thomas. On the other side, you have at least three movements against Kant. First, neo-Thomists Maritain/Gilson flat out renounce Kant to revive a naive but robust realism. Second, the monumental Balthasar retrieves Thomas in the spirit of Goethe and a mysticsm of beauty, nuptiality and drama. A third movement, entirely commensurate with the prior two, is the "phenomenological metaphysics" of John Paul, Edith Stein, and Hildebrand. These followed the phenomenological path of Husserl out of Kant by closely attending to the experience, temporarily "bracketing" the metaphysical question, but returning to that question to rediscover the robust metaphysics of being and realistic epistemology in an enrichment from modern personalism and historicity.

The Catholic question becomes: is there enough of the True and the Good and the Beautiful in Kant that we can incorporate him substantially into our theology? Recalling the "spoils of Egypt" trope and the Tertullian/Origin debate: is there gold here that can enrich our worship of the one true God or is it intrinsically oriented to idolatry?

I can't answer this because I have never been able to read much of Rahner or Lonergan: my narcolepsy kicks in and I get bored, fatigued, irritable. I listened to a Lonergan lecture at St. Peters College JC circa 1971 and couldn't stay awake. I keep a copy of Insightat bedside and when my melatonin is inadequate, rather than reach for a Xanax, I randomly read a paragraph or footnote and am fast asleep by the third sentence. (LOL!) Clearly an intelligent, holy scholar like Liddy has obviously allowed Lonergan to deepen and intensify his faith. According to Balthasar, Marechal succeeded in the synthesis of Thomas and Kant...if it is good enough for the Swiss genius, it is good enough for me. Monsignor Tom Guarino, whom I trust implicitly on these things, is cleary tolerant of such critical realism and cautions a slow, patient ecclesial process of discernment rather than rash judgment. So we have to give them the benefit of the doubt.

In his recent The Unchanging Truth of God? Guarino asks what philosophies can sustain and protect the truth claims inherent to the Revelation received by the Catholic Church. A correlative question, perhaps more important for our salvation, is: What philosophies are able to sustain and protect Catholic life...virtue, faith-hope-love, loyalty to state of life, concrete (not ideological)intimacy with the poor, resistance to the Evil Kingdom, worship and contemplation. As Balthasar taught us, theology's task is to protect the Good and the Beautiful along with the True.

From this practical viewpoint, a problem arises with the Kanitan Catholics. Rahnerians and Longergarins seem to move, en masse and inexorably, to a rejection of the core Catholic ethos of sexuality, gender, the secramentality of the human body (or bodies: feminine and masculine; there is no generic, neutral human body) and the sacramental system itself. For example, Rahner and Lonergan both rejected Humanae Vitae's restatement on contraception and therefore aligned themselves against the Church on an absolutely foundational principle. Arguably, the current transgender obsession is the final consequence of the lonely Kantian Subject, isolated in the phenomenal from the noumenal. Exposure to Kant seems to lessen Catholic immunity and lead to accomadation with the toxicities of Modernity.

Serious engagment with Kant seems gtroubling in several ways:

First, the detachment and disincarnation of the phenomenal from the noumenal tends to a vague agnositicsm, an exaggeratedly aphophatic theology that disrupts the fleshly Transcendent/Immanent balance of the Incarnation as Catholically conceived.

Secondly, the pronounced focus on the autonomous, isolated Conscious Self makes it vulnerable to the fundamental idolatry of late modernity: the hegemony of this Self. And so we find among progressive Catholics a tolerance for legal abortion whereby the conscious Self has total control over the less-than-competent, smaller, dependent and vulnerable person.

Thirdly, infatuation with the thinking self tends to entertain a disembodied subjectivty like a platonic soul trapped in an alien body or a Cartesian knower boxed into a machine. There is the loss of the hylomorphic person, body and soul wed together, that we find in Aristotle, Thomas and John Paul's catechesis of the body.

Fourth, the inflated Self moves to obscure the objective, natural, moral order as intended by the Creator for the physcial order as expressive of the spiritual.

Fifth, such Catholic Kantianism lends itself to an exagerated historicism that eventually swallows and destroys the Catholic, "Guarino-ian" protection of the univerality, permanence and material continuity of the Truth.

Lastly, centering of the Subject unavoidably obsures and marginalizes the essential nature of reality, and divinity, as gift received and given, event, drama, love and knowing as mutual indwelling. Clearly solid Catholic thinkers like Liddy, Lonergan and Rahner adhere to these fundamentals; but arguably the inherent trajectory of Kantian logic undully elevates the autonomous, monadic Self.

In conclusion, and returning to Fr. Jaki: Notwithstanding his anger issues, he may have been on to something. We are on stronger Catholic ground with the robust realism of Gilson, Balthasar and Edith Stein. But we certainly don't want to "cancel" Rahnerians and Lonergarians!

Sidebar: Seton Hall University, which has been an academic home for my family, has had a good run of world-class thinkers. First and foremost is Monsignor John Ostereicher. His work was continued by Fr. Frizzel and Rabbi Finkel. The above mentioned Fr. Jaki and Monsignor Liddy. In my own high school years on that campus the President was scripture scholar Bishop John Dougherty. Today we are blessed with Emeritus Professor Tom Guarino. Thanks be to God!

Why Monsignor Tom Guarino (like Cardinal Avery Dulles) Matters!

Disclaiamer: Any "plagaristic similarity" between this and Guarino's First Things piece on Dulles (May 1, 2009) is entirely deliberate. Let's be unapologetically Girardian here: I am echoing Guarino, as he did Dulles, as he did Thomas, Newman and a litany of doctors, and we all are all the time echoing...hopefully the Incarnate Word, not the other guy.

Yesterday, at the booksigning of his new work, "The unchanging Truth of God" I marveled at how he has inherited the mantle of Avery Dulles (as well as that of Ratzinger).

1. Man of the Church, true Vir Ecclesiasticus, he thinks, feels, moves and breathes withing the Church. Fiercely, flawlessly faithful to the Magisterium, he interprets it with nuance and subltety. If the Church leaves the door open 2 inches, he does not slam it shut; nor does he swing it wide open.

2. Range of thought. Dulles was famously encylopedic in his treatment of any topic. Similarly Guarino"s reach is extensive: one minute engaged with St. Vincent of Lerins and the next with postmodernist Vattimo. Josef Pieper described the achievement of St. Thomas as not so much brilliant creativity as a sublime summation of the entire tradition: he had read and incorporated everything available from the Tradition, the ancients and his contemporaries. This likewise characterizes Dulles, Ratzinger and Guarino. Reading a chapter of any of these gives you a wholesome, nourishing, delicious digestion of a library of research.

3. Sense of Catholic unity underlying a genuine diversity. He echoes Pascal: "unity without diversity is tyranny; diversity without unity is chaos." Dulles/Guarino protect a valid theological pluralism by achieving a precise, delicate balance on the role of concepts in revealing the Mystery of God and indeed of Being. Both proclaim the super-intelligibility of God and Being in an analagous, symbolic Creation such that human concepts validly access and express that which vastly exceeds that expression. And so, dogmatic formulations are perenial and authoritative; even as they do not exhaustively articulate the Truth. In this way a reductive, and formal rationalism, as well as a foggy, agnostic, sentimental irrationalism is avoided. We enjoy an authentically Catholicism: intellectual and mystical, humble yet authoritative, certain and clear, open-to-development but firmly rooted.

4. Champion of Vatican II. With Ratzinger and John Paul he interprets it as a genuine development within a greater organic continuty.

. 5. Strong Ecumenist, especially with the Evangelicals. This is a most significant development within the American Church and society that is sadly misunderstood in the Vatican. He dialogues from a strong, clear Catholic position, knowing where to draw the line and not watering down our inheritance.

6. Unattached to any particular school of theology, he is the quintessential seminary professor in setting the smorgasboard of Catholic theology before his students, allowing them to benefit from whatever suits their spiritual/intellectual taste. He is a "theological celibate": not enamoured of any particular giant or movement, he maintains a respectful if distant "just friends" relationship, loyal always to the Magisterium and the Tradition.

7. Often, like Gary Cooper in High Noon or Henry Fonda in Twelve Angry Men, he stands in a heroic loneliness against the herd instincts of the mainsteam. This pertains especially to defense of priests in the face of the Dallas Charter but also a willingness to stand by the Church in defiance of fashion.

8. Admirable restrain in not using theology to advance any political agenda or position. I am not aware that Guarino or Dulles publically endorsed any political issue. They clearly stand within the domain of moral theology. This was, of course, especially exemplary in Dulles who surely had more than residual loyalty to the legacy of his father John Foster Dulles.

9. Rigour and precision in scholarship.

10. Humility of spirit: When I suggested that he was the heir of Dulles, Guarino demurred "I am not in his league." He thereby confirmed my point with his Dulles-esque humility.

11. A deep, quiet, self-effacing, Catholic faith.

12. The Joy of Theology. Reading or listening to a Dulles, Guarino or Ratzinger one is pierced by the beauty of Theology as truly Queen of the Science. Guarino here has an avantage over his two shy, retiring colleagues in the overt intensity, passion, colorfulness and kinetic energy of his writing and lecture style.

Surely his greatest contribution has been his years of teaching. When I meet a seminarian or young priest in our Archdiocese I like to ask which were the best professors in seminary: the first name mentioned is always Guarino. May he stay strong and fruitful for a long time!Like Ratzinger and Dulles before him, Guarino has been an inspiration, encouragement and delight for me personally and for the faith of a Church in much confusion. May he fourish and work for many years to come!