Magisterium of the Laity

Crisis of the Hierarchy

 According to St. John Cardinal Newman, in the Arian controversy, a majority of bishops (with exceptions like Athanasius) fell into heresy and the orthodox faith was preserved by the lay faithful. Our own situation may be approaching that of the catastrophic 4th century. Our magisterium is in crisis. The entire German Church is in apostasy and scattered bishops around the globe are primed to follow a path, called "synodality," off a cliff into heresy. 

Where do we, who intend to be loyal to the real Magisterium, look for guidance? Certainly not to the confusing, volatile papacy of Francis! But we  have burning, radiant lights to guide us.

Bright Lamps: John Paul and Benedict; Faithful Priests; Loyal Bishops/Cardinals

1. Legacy of John Paul and Benedict, as the authentic interpretation of the inspired Vatican Council, abides as a fresh, creative but loyal expression of our Tradition. It is, perhaps, fitting that Benedict remains alive, however quiet and reserved, as a sacramental reminder that his guidance abides with us.

2. Priests now in their fruitful years were formed by those two popes. Polls show younger priests becoming more conservative while the laity move in the opposite direction. We are blessed by many wise, humble priests serving us quietly in the trenches.

3. In the hierarchy we have clear, firm voices of Truth: Chaput, Mueller, Burke, Sarah. Beyond this small, prophetic remnant,  the majority of bishops/priests remain loyal to our legacy but are muted and silent for a variety of mostly honorable reasons.

Subdued Voice of Priest/Bishops

The authority, credibility and confidence of the hierarchy has been compromised by a series of cascading crises: sex scandal and failure in accountability, financial chaos in Rome, internal polarization and confusion, the hostility of a West gone secular, and a theologically confusing and administratively inept papacy. Stripped of unity, authority and clarity, loyal priests and bishops mute their voices for understandable reasons:

- Loyalty to the pope as authority and center of unity. 

- Classic Catholic aversion to polarization and disunity. 

- Inclination to embrace what is best in this papacy.

- Ambivalence or uncertainty about the issues at stake.

- Avoidance of progressive hostility.

- Fear for their own well-being as priests. There is a servitude of obedience built into the priesthood, even beyond the spiritual vow. The career, opportunities and flourishing of a priest lie very much in the hands of his bishop .Disfavor in the chancery jeopardizes his most precious ministerial aspirations. This kind of servitude is unknown to us laity: a lawyer, accountant, or mechanic unhappy with his boss can get another job. It is not so easy for a priest! Another woe for the priest in this era of scandal, shame, hostility and the Dallas Charter.

Emergent Magisterium of the Faithful Laity: Non-Clerical, Largely Non-Academic

4. Last among our burning lamps:  the "magisterium of the laity." Normally, the role of the laity is to receive, and then live, the Truth as declared by the hierarchy. But we are in a time of crisis. Vatican II has been called  the "council of the laity."  Arguably its most resonant theme is the call to holiness of everyone, including the laity. Holiness is closeness to God, strength in Charity, but also firmness in Truth. And in our age clear witness to Truth seems to have become largely the mission of aware lay people. It is the lay who have received the Magisterium who are now echoing it, as the papacy and much of the episcopacy are asleep at the wheel.

Lay Catholic Intellectuals 1900-60

We have had sterling lay teachers in the past. My own intellectual formation (1965-72) was largely under the remarkable cadre who brightened the early 20th century. A golden age for the lay, Catholic intellectual: Von Hugel,  Blondel, Bergson, the Maritains, Gilson, Pieper, Sheed and Ward, Maurin, Mounier, (Russian Orthodox) Soloviev and Berdyaev, K. Stern, the Hildebrandts, Peguy, Claudel, Marcel, Chesterton, Dawson, (Anglicans) Lewis and Elliot,Waugh, Bernanos, Mauriac, Taylor, Girard, Unamuno, Ortega, Del Noce, Schumacher, Percy, Tolkien, Greene, Belloc, Muggeridge, Flannery O'Connor, Leseur, Catherine Dougherty, Sigrid Undset, Speyr, Day, Houselander, Anscombe, (later consecrated and canonized) Stein. 

These were not professional, academic theologians. All were philosophers, often home-spun and amateur. They contrast sharply with the sterile, abstract, rigid scholasticism that prevailed in the clerical academy of seminaries at the time. They tend to the pragmatic, mystical, phenomenological, existential, imaginative, engagement with culture-history-politics, and combat with fascism, communism, and bourgeois modernity. These reinvigorated the best of the past and prepared the authentic genius of the Council. 

I am not sure that the lay Catholic intellectuals of the last 50 years ago equal those of the previous half century who mentored me. But their role is more important because of the crisis within the hierarchy.

Magisterium of the Theologians?

Some time after the Council, there was talk about "the magisterium of the theologians." This is understandable: the Council was the heyday of the theologians, almost all clerical. The bishops were guided by their "periti" in a posture of remarkable episcopal docility; but theirs was the final voice. The theological guild fell, in critical mass, off a precipice, immediately after the Council as  they interpreted the Council in a disconnect from Tradition and surrendered themselves (with exceptions of course) to a culture turned catastrophically secular. At the time, Avery Dulles, with his usual clarity and good sense, identified an appropriate, collaborative, magisterial role for professional theology that is neither superior nor alternative to the papacy/episcopacy. Currently, the Catholic theological guild remains a source of confusion and dissonance in its disconnect from foundational Catholic truths.

Lay Voices of Clarity, Certainty, Authority

The contemporary lay voices which clarify and illuminate our Church operate largely outside of the hierarchy and the academy. They are down-to-earth, firmly grounded in the Deposit of Faith, prophetic and filled with the Holy Spirit. They aspire to think within a ambience of worship. 

Kiko Arguello stands alone (although with his partner-in-mission Carmen) as a distinctive prophetic voice like John the Baptist in the desert. He is surpassed in our time only by John Paul and Mother Theresa. Neither ordained nor academic, he is a spiritual genius. 

Leaders of the lay renewal movements have articulated a variety of innovative-yet-,orthodox expressions of Catholicism, organically connected with Tradition and loyal to the Magisterium yet engaged with culture. In particular, Ralph Martin and his partners in the Charismatic Renewal have collaborated with what is best in Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism to develop a fresh-but-traditional faith in opposition to a now hegemonic Culture of Death .

The John Paul Institute for the Family and Communio journal in D.C. are surrounded by a small, vigorous, brilliant family of scholars, mostly lay, who channel the authentic Magisterium of John Paul and Benedict to the U.S.A. They embody the Balthasarian "theology-in-holiness."

A number of conservative Catholic publications are radiant with faithful, lay Catholic thought: First Things, Lamp, Crisis, Touchstone, New Oxford Review, EWTN, National Catholic Register, The Catholic Thing. Along with these we have mainstream Catholic journalists (Ross Douthat, Matthew Dougherty, Sohab Amari) who argue politics but adhere to the moral magisterium of the Church and express it with flavor and zest. 

The Symphonic Alliance

These voices are not an alternative or challenge to the hierarchical magisterium, but an alliance with it. They echo it, with distinctive emphases. Let us consider the Church, with Balthasar, as a symphony, a miracle of harmony and melody. A multitude of sounds, each distinctive, all blending into a singular form of beauty. The composer-producer-owner is, of course, Jesus our Lord with the Father in the Holy Spirit. The foundational soundtrack is already there in Scripture and Tradition. The conductor is the dual pontificate interpreting the Council. And each of us has a distinct, but not dominating role.

The thinkers discussed here, those in both the earlier and later 20th century, represent what Balthasar famously called "lay style" of aesthetics. In his view, clerical-academic Catholic theology after St. Thomas weakened in its reception of the radiance and splendor of Revelation as it separated into an academy cut off from worship, prayer, and the sanctity of everyday life. Such theology tended to become abstract, sterile, detached, disincarnate. It has been up to the lay style to engage created Beauty and the Creator himself in a vernacular at once poetic, mystical, pragmatic, historical-yet-ontological and engaged with culture-politics-family.

It is striking that the very best, indeed the definitive hierarchical/magisterial theology of our age is hugely influenced by lay, cultural thought beyond the boundaries of academic and clerical theology. John Paul, Benedict, Balthasar, and Giassani are all influenced by Scripture, Tradition, St. Thomas and the return to the sources...but also to phenomenology, Goethe, music, poetry, fiction, and the vernacular of lay culture.

Currently, our heavenly symphony is discordant due to a conductor (papacy, episcopacy) become divisive, distracted and disoriented. How crucial it is that the lay faithful echo...in clarity, serenity, and vigor...the original heavenly score! 

Father Pavone Dismissed From the Priesthood

As a moral conservative I have admired Fr. Pavone's work for life, but I hesitate to jump to his defense and condemn the Vatican's action of laicization. First of all: as always, the devil is in the details. We don't know the details and will probably not get an accurate account of them, not from Pavone and not from the Vatican. I retain a strong personal inclination to give authority the benefit of the doubt, even in a Church rife with scandal, incompetence and corruption, because I know from personal experience that an authority is often not free to defend a decision publicly for a host of reasons. 

Problems and Questions With Father Pavone

1. There is a contradiction between public advocacy and the work of a priest. Over 50 years ago a controversial advocate of another flavor, Monsignor Ivan Illich, voluntarily left the priesthood because he realized this conflict. The priest is the center of unity at the Eucharist, which unites those of various political views. If a priest publicly supports a specific party, candidate, or policy he becomes a polarizing, not unifying force in the community. If a priest feels compelled by conscience to work for a social cause, he needs to separate himself from the clerical state and pursue that mission, as did Illich. So there has always been a tension interior to "priests for life." Ministry to post-abortion victims in Rachel's Vineyard and attention to women considering abortions are surely good priestly work. But public advocacy, even for such a morally pure cause, is problematic on the part of a priest.

2. The problem gets worse with Pavone's flagrant support of Donald Trump. Priests and bishops are obliged to teach moral truths, such as the inherent evil of legal abortion. But a red line is crossed when they support specific candidates, parties or policies. This specific case is especially toxic given the grave scandal of bad example that the private life of Trump offers our young.

3. He apparently has a long history of conflict with Church authorities. He portrays himself as a victim of persecution. He declares: "When you defend the unborn you will be mistreated like them." Anyone who declares himself so flamboyantly as a righteous victim, especially within the Church, is (IMO) suspect. Do not accept the self-approval! The news reports that it is unclear in which diocese he is incardinated. This is quite ridiculous: he should simply identify the diocese. Or admit that he is not incardinated. The latter is probable. This means that he is functioning as a renegade, maverick priest, on his own. This seems right as he comes across as arrogant and self-righteous,  lacking in docility, humility and obedience. 

4. In a video he stood before what appeared to be an altar (which he claims was actually his office desk, unconsecrated, but decorated as an altar) on which lay a dead fetus. This gesture is at best melodramatic and histrionic, at worst sacrilegious towards the unborn as well as the Eucharist.

5. In a public tweet he condemned pro-choice Democrats with repetitive use of the expression "goddamn." This was later deleted. This language is not acceptable, especially for a priest. 

6. He has suggested that he might deny absolution to a Democrat-voting confessant. I understand his logic: I also see a pro-choice vote as morally equivalent of one for a Nazi, a Communist, or a KKK zealot. But we face here a complex reality of wrong or, more accurately, ignorant consciences. It is a huge challenge to help others out of the darkness of such moral error. But suggesting the denial of absolution is counterproductive. It will polarize and infuriate many of fine intelligence and good heart who see themselves as pro-life but make a different political, pragmatic calculation on how to best protect life in policies. His statement was entirely dissonant with Catholic confessional practice. This involves the "inner forum" and a sacred confidentiality between penitent and priest. It is entirely different from the public reception of Holy Communion which, in the case of flagrantly abortion-supporting figures, becomes sacrilegious and scandalous.

Eventually a pattern emerges: Pavone uses his priesthood as weapon in his moral/political crusade. He displays an irreverence for the Eucharist, his own priesthood and the ministry of the clergy. He weaponizes his ordination to further his cause.

Political Clericalism

He is afflicted with a malady that is more prevalent on the Left: a political clericalism that abuses Ordination to advance a preferred policy or ideology. That sacrament bestows an authority on faith and morals, but not on public policy. Prudence on such is the domain specifically of the laity, not the clergy. Weaponizing priesthood, episcopacy or papacy to advance a pragmatic, social preference is arrogant, impudent and disrespectful of the sacrament of orders. This has particularly marred the papacy of Francis as he abuses his authority to promote his preferences on prudential issues like capital punishment, immigration, and global warming.

Moving Forward

The firm decision by the Vatican on Father Pavone may be good for the Church, for the pro-life cause in America, and for Father Pavone himself. (He is a priest forever by the seal of ordination so I will refer to him still respectfully as Father rather than Mister even as he is not permitted to function as such.) He has every right to legally appeal the decision, but it may be good for him to humbly submit and pursue his passion for victims of abortion by another path, without abusing his priesthood as a weapon in a political contest. A move into quiet, modest service would be contrary to his temperament but might benefit his soul.

At this time, in the wake of Dobbs, the pro-life movement faces many legislative battles at the state level. Pro-choice hysteria is at a fever pitch. But the priority must be to provide support for the many women with unintended pregnancies who will have no choice but to bring them to term. Perhaps Fr. Pavone can channel his immense competence and energy to provide for them.

Double Standard in the Church

With that said, however, we clearly see a double standard on the part of the Church. How many progressive priests have been laicized for political activism? Fr. Robert Drinan S.J. was a vicious abortion-advocate but remained a Jesuit in good standing and a celebrity among progressive Catholics. The notorious leftist activist Fr. Fleger was just returned to active ministry in Chicago with barely a slap on the wrist. An American Cardinal publicly endorsed Biden over Trump in 2019. This was more grave: Biden's policies are far more odious from a Catholic view and the endorsement came from a Cardinal, not a mere priest. Will he be disciplined by the Vatican? 

Would that the Vatican could show such determination on both sides of the political spectrum in defense of the integrity of our liturgy and sacrament!.

May this zealous priest be guided by the Holy Spirit to serve the least in humility, obedience, docility.

May the Vatican and our bishops be guided by the Holy Spirit in prudence and wisdom to reverence human life in all its forms and protect the integrity and sacredness of the sacraments and priesthood.

May we all be guided by the Holy Spirit to fervently defend, cherish and honor human life, especially that which is powerless and vulnerable!

What is This Neo-Cat Thing?

 It is the most fascinating, powerful, promising, baffling, provocative, creative-yet-traditional, and little understood phenomenon of the post-Council Church.

Little Understood

By its nature it is opaque and elusive of interpretation. 

To the outsider it is mysterious and unknown. It operates quietly, in confidence and quasi-secrecy. It attracts rather than promotes. It is hidden from public view.  It has no public relations. (Although Kiko and his lieutenants, sincerely loyal to the pope/hierarchy, have also been shrewd in cultivating the esteem of the three pontiffs to date.) There is no literature to describe and explain it. Their teachings are not published. It attracts, largely, people who are in crisis and distress. Many of them are poor, underemployed and without higher education. It is not widely attractive to the affluent, successful, educated, the solid citizen, or the stable parishioner. It is mostly viewed with suspicion by the clergy as some kind of cult. It operates a spiritual program under a parish but distinct from normal parochial activities. The demands of their program are severe so that little energy is left for the leaders in the group to contribute to the ordinary parish programs. The dynamics of the agenda are centripetal, inward directed, so they can appear to be distant and cool. The movement is loyal to pope, bishop and pastor, but in general views the broader Church as weak in the face of a hostile, dystopian society. They maintain a high degree of separation from the broader Church.

To the insider, it is opaque in a different way. This "way" is above all a dynamic of trust and surrender. An act of faith, for sure; of reason, not so much. A powerful charism is at work in the catechesis, the series of steps and "adventures," and the formation of an intimate community. It is not an intellectual environment in which discussion and argument are encouraged. This is not primarily due to the fact that the demographics do not favor the educated. Rather, the nature of the catechesis is authoritative and elicits trust and surrender, rather than consideration. Even a genuine intellectual, for example a professional theologian (I know one very well!), to flourish in this way will exercise a certain suspension of critical thought. The direction is trust, acceptance, docility, surrender...to Christ in the Holy Spirit, within the Church, to be sure...but also to the catechists and the program. I would compare it to a competitive athlete who joins an Olympic team: he will defer to the coach, even if he disagrees, because the dissonance of dissent would only undermine team morale. This trust, this suspension of criticism, is in itself mostly a wholesome, sanctifying, and especially humbling (so necessary for an intellectual!) practice, but perhaps not entirely.

So, those outside the group are distant and suspicious; those inside are fully engaged and mostly incapable and indisposed to detached evaluation. Arguello himself, and Gennarini (his US apostle) are brilliant intellects who know what they are doing. But beyond a small inner circle, I doubt there is sophisticated understanding, theologically and anthropologically, of the movement. 

My Privileged Position

I boast: I am one of a very few who know this reality from a position of participation, love and critical detachment. I am sure there are others, but I don't know them.

My best friend, John Rapinich, walked with the very first community in the USA for the last decades of his life and kept me well informed. I went with my oldest son, when he was in crisis, to the catechesis in NYC. He left, I continued quite happily with the program for about 2 years. I was most impressed. But my life circumstances (demanding job, active parishioner, large family, distance) and the disinterest of my wife necessitated my withdrawal. I departed with some regret and much admiration. Since then my second son and his family are participant. I consider myself an admirer and friend of this way, but from a posture of (appreciative, not hostile) critical distance.

 What is It?

A lay renewal movement? An intensified catechumenal itinerary of formation? An alternate ecclesiology or model of the Church? A new form of evangelical-lay spirituality? A new order in the Church?

It is ALL of the above. It is a lay renewal movement, although a distinctive one. John Paul II insisted upon this word "movement"  over the objections of Carmen. He asserted: "It moves, does it not? It is alive! It is a movement!"

It self-defines, for the Vatican, in its statues as an "itinerary of formation." It is that. But much more. It is more intense than the mainstream parish process of catechesis by a factor of 1,000 at least. I learned just recently that the name "Neocatechumenate" was given by the Vatican itself as a way of categorizing it. It is an unsatisfactory category, in itself, for the dense reality.

In an earlier blog, I described the innovative ecclesiology implicit: the small community as foundational and replacing the parish as the prime unit of assembly. In this essay I will consider it as a new form of evangelical-lay life and possibly a new order within the Church.

New Form of Lay-Evangelical Life

It is startling, radical and novel in calling the family, the laity, to an evangelical commitment that the Church has always reserved for the "religious state" as single, celibate, unmarried. Will it work? Can the married laity wholesomely embrace such a level of dedication? This is a great question!

One of the first steps in the itinerary invites the participant to "give away his wealth." What this means is not entirely clear. It does not require the absolute, literal dispersal to the poor of all one's financial assets. But it is meant to be a real, significant dispossession. More than a minor, symbolic gesture.  It is an act of liberation from dependence, for security and status, upon material wealth. It is flamboyantly anti-Bourgeois! It is the Gospel, pure and undiluted. It calls to mind the Batman movie scene when Keith Ledger's Joker confounds his gangland comrades as he burns millions of dollars and shrieks with delight. He demonstrated a supernatural, Luciferian indifference to money. The Neo-Cats ambition a similar freedom, for heaven not for hell.

The degree of time, energy, and attention approaches that of the monk. A catechist couple may typically have 8-10 children; mother in the home; father with a modest, blue-collar job; and spend 4-6 nights a week out engaged with their own community, catechizing another, or taxiing their children to their respective communities. It is a total commitment requiring detachment from social, career, cultural, ecclesial or political engagements.

What happens to the children when Mom and Dad are out-and-about with this work? Obviously the older children care for the younger as is standard for large families. But additionally each community becomes itself an extended family in which they care for each other. So, if one couple is active catechizing, even several communities, they are assisted by other members. This is NOT middle class American life. This is a profound communitarian experiment. Like the hippie commune or the Kibbutz, children are in a degree raised by the community, not the isolated, nuclear family. This is radical!

Every few years, in the presence of the Pope in Rome, a large number of families go on mission to the most desolate, God-forsaken places in the world: think Siberia, Haiti, the slums of India. They go as a community, with priest, to plant the Church where it does not exist. This is not a temporary mission. They go there to stay. With their children! This, from a bourgeois perspective, is child abuse, plain and simple. I think not. It is radical Christianity. They knowingly plant themselves in a hostile, even persecutorial ambience, but along with a strong community of support. Their children are, IMO (in mhy opinion) the most blessed!

The degree of immersion into the community and detachment from normal bourgeois life is stunning. It can only be perceived as cult-like by outsiders. But it is actually more like the life of classical Catholic religious communities, but now for families. A serious innovation.

A Short History of the Evangelical and Lay Life

In classical Catholic practice, we distinguish between the "states of life": marriage and family as lay, the religious life as vowed to poverty-chastity-obedience-community-apostolate, and the priesthood or clerical state. By this paradigm the family as such is never called to the total surrender of the evangelical or religious state. In ordinary Catholicism, as received in recent memory,  the wellbeing of the nuclear/extended family...provision, protection, stability, education, security...is the priority of the spouses, with prayer and charitable engagement clearly subordinate.

It was not always so. The apostolic and primitive Church did not clearly distinguish these states. Immediately there flourished in the early Church the life of celibacy and virginity. It was spontaneous, not formal. Most of the apostles were married; most early priests were married. Becoming a Christian was a radical act by the entire family. It entailed willingness to die for the faith. Often a dispersal of one's wealth to the needy. A radical break with the family/tribal forms of society. A deep immersion in a "new family," the "body of Christ."

The first formal, organized expression of the radical, evangelical life was the hermit movement into the Egyptian deserts in the 4th century. Out of that emerged the monastic movement which found its supreme expression in St. Benedict and became the foundation of the entire medieval order. The mendicant Franciscan and Dominican orders maintained a close and closed community of prayer and fraternity as they replaced stability of place for a missionary migration around the world. As we approach the modern era, we see an explosion of new orders (Jesuits, St. Vincent de Paul's sisters) which emphasize active apostolates of education, mission and care for the needy. These maintained a cloistered religious life as the source for their activism. In mid-20th century, the 1940s, we have a new reality: Secular Institutes. These were single, celibates who vowed themselves evangelically to poverty-chastity-obedience-service but in a more lay fashion as they lived outside of cloistered-type communities, possibly in small households. They fashioned themselves as "lay" or fully involved in the secular spheres like education, social services, care and advocacy for the poor and suffering. Often highly educated and socially confident, they live the evangelical life in a quiet, modest fashion. However they are celibate and not married. 

We see a clear trajectory of the evangelical life from the Egyptian hermitage, to the Benedictine monastery, to the travelling mendicants, to the active apostolic orders, to the secular-lay-celibate-evangelical state. The Neo-Cats take a huge step forward: the engagement of families as families in an evangelical style that is not celibate but spousal, but radical in poverty, obedience and an intensive communal life of prayer and fellowship. 

They are clearly a return to the primitive Church of evangelical families, not just individuals or enclosed communities.

Cosmic Conflict

Implicit in the Neo-Cat worldview is that society has returned to a Rome-like hostility to the Gospel and the Church. Christendom has collapsed and we are again in the Church of Martyrs. We are in an apocalyptic time. The traditional social and even ecclesial structures of Christendom are approaching a terminal point of collapse. We are involved in a life-and-death struggle with diabolical powers released upon our world. Ours is a violent, hostile world: we need thick, deep, radical, fierce and fearless forms of Church life. Enough with lukewarm, lite, bougie, accommodating Catholicism!

Yesterday a friend sent me the weekly meditations of Fr. Richard Rohr. (He has been for years my nemesis: EVERYONE wants to send me his stuff!) His theme: we have a benevolent God and a benevolent universe. As he is an extremely intelligent man, I wondered:  What is he smoking? What world is he living in? I myself, actually, have lived in a benevolent world, protected, serene and happy. But by the age of reason, seven, I became aware of the immense suffering and evil of the world. I have never gotten over that. I responded to my friend: "Thanks for this. It reminds me of my problem with Rohr. Benevolent universe? Tell that to the Ukrainians, the North Koreans, the Haitians, the Uyghurs and Christians in China, the persecuted in Nigeria and across the Islamic world! Rohr has no crucified Christ! No confession of sin! No Kingdom of Darkness! No spiritual combat! His is indeed a soft, sentimental, saccharine, effete and anemic Christianity.

Kiko is the opposite of Rohr! He is gearing up for battle: to the death. To follow Christ is to die...to prepare to die...possibly in ones own blood and pain. This is serious. This is militant, virile, fierce, ultimate. This is high-octane, red-blooded, straight-up and undiluted, shameless Catholicism! Clearly John Paul and Benedict both understood and shared their worldview. Francis likes them because they reach out so vigorously to the suffering, the margins, the poor.

A New Religious Order?

Clearly they do not want to be understood as a religious order. But I would suggest that is what they amount to. They are a distinctive, enclosed, very intense and militant expression of Catholic life. Theirs is a special vocation within the Church. They most emphatically are NOT "The Way." Their practice is not normal or normative for Catholics. Theirs is clearly a special, distinctive, and rare way. They are preparing for engagement in a cosmic battle that is already upon us. They are the storm troopers, the navy seals, the Spartan warriors, the Jedi knights of the Church. 

They certainly don't want to be so classified and placed under the bureaucratic supervision of a Vatican commission. They want to be left alone to live their Nazareth-like life of humility, simplicity and praise. I want that for them as well.

They also have strong similarities to the Amish, the Catholic Worker, the Bruderhof, and Hasidic Judaism. Such are intense, thick religious communities with strong boundaries in opposition to a largely hostile, alien world. They keep care for each other's children. They keep their adolescents close, not sending them away for college. They largely abstain from politics, including that of the Church. They do not fight the Culture War in the public arena, but in their own quiet, humble life. They intend for their children to marry within the community. 

They are strong medicine for the very strong in spirit who hunger for the ultimate, the pure, the Absolute. Who thirst for Truth, Beauty and Goodness...undiluted and uncompromised. Their challenge is to maintain this level of zeal, of hard Catholicism, along with a "catholic" openness to the Church and world beyond.

Conclusion

When I look at my world, I do not see Rohr's Pollyannaish Disneyworld. But I do see two realities. I see the Apocalypse Now around the world and pronouncedly in the decadent West. But I also see, in my own small world and that of my children/grandchildren, a living and breathing, not extinct Christendom: healthy families, vibrant schools and parishes, a rich culture of athletics, politics, and civil life. All is not dark! Our world is not entirely, but is very largely, Batman's Gotham!

Even as a wanna-be, didn't-make-the-cut Neo-Cat, I am rooting for them. May they flourish and thrive!  God's grace is strong with them. They are humble, hidden, fervent, persistent. May they continue to bring the light of Christ to a world largely darkened by sin and disbelief. 

May God's grace continue to sustain a living Christendom, in the broader Church and society, among us.

May Christianity and indeed the entire social order, be "salted" by the zeal and holiness of this way!

Mental Health Crisis of Adolescent Women and Forgetfulness of Virginity (Letter 19 to Teen Grandchildren)

The Crisis

The last 10 years have seen an explosion of emotional suffering among our teenagers, especially girls. Suddenly the crisis in femininity seems to be surpassing that of masculinity. Depression, anxiety, self-harm, drug abuse, isolation, eating disorders, gender dysphoria...all surging! It has surprised me recently to learn that use of pornography, which I always took to be a male problem, is prevalent among young women, even from good families.

There is a consensus that social media is fueling this. Inordinate time on the computer is associated with reduced, wholesome personal interaction and a spiral into loneliness and narcissism. Additionally, parenting style has become overly protective and disempowering: the "helicopter mother." Broader cultural/global problems can add to hopelessness: environmental warming, war, the pandemic,  political polarization, and increased violence.

All these factors contribute, but the root cause is deeper, moral, cultural, spiritual, psychological: loss of the very meaning of the feminine. "Being a woman" has lost meaning. Our binary human identity as male/female has been deconstructed. "Woman" has become a social or personal construct. The girl maturing into womanhood has no inherency, interiority, meaning or destiny. She is left to seek worth in the marketplaces of achievement and/or popularity/attractiveness.

Undiagnosed Cultural Contempt for "Woman as Woman"

Underlying and informing our culture is a diabolical assault upon "woman as woman," a contempt for femininity itself. In the first wave of the Cultural Revolution, in the 60s and 70s, femininity in itself was assaulted on three fronts: promiscuity attacked femininity as virginity; abortion assaulted femininity as maternity; and careerism (the doctrine that one's worth depends upon career achievement) destroyed femininity as endowment, as inherent, as unmerited gift. Subsequently we have seen contagious epidemics of self-harm (cutting, etc.) and eating disorders which are clearly assaults upon the female body as female. More recently we have witnessed surges in sexual disorientation and gender dysphoria which are, in part, flight from the feminine as vulnerable, weak, contemptable.

This aversion to the feminine is interiorly related to the loss of fatherhood, that of God and that within the traditional family, as it is the gaze of the loving father that specifically recognizes and affirms the feminine as worthy in itself.

Marian Femininity: Virginity and Maternity

We Catholics honor Mary as virgin and mother. She is, to be sure, singular and exceptional in her Immaculate Conception, perfect Fiat, Virgin Birth, Assumption bodily into heaven, and coronation as Queen of heaven and earth. In her very sinlessness, however, she is the prototype of all creatures as receptive of God's love. She is the defining analogue for all of us. She is especially the model for all women. 

In her, virginity and maternity indwell each other. For us, of course, they are contradictory. Biologically virginity refers merely to an organic, feminine barrier that is intact. There is nothing comparable in the male body. It is defined as a lack of having sexual intercourse. In our contemporary society this implies naivete as weakness, a lack of experience, a deprivation, an immaturity. For us a virgin is not a mother and a mother is not a virgin. 

Traditionally, virginity is not a lack, but a positivity. It is itself a fulness, a rich potentiality, an innocence, a freshness, a youthful vitality. The etymological root of the word means: fresh, green, flourishing. For example, a virgin field, for a farmer, is not merely one that has not been seeded, but one that is fertile, promising, rich in nutrients and potential for life.

Virginity as Passivity, Positivity and Life -Giving

Virginity is itself passivity, not activity. It is not something that is achieved or performed. It is a state of being that is GIVEN and RECEIVED. It is not an act of the will, not agency, not an executive function. It is a form of innocence: pure, wholesome, charming, delightful. Think of the sanctity of the Holy Innocents: they did nothing to merit canonization. They were passive as victims. But we see in them an eternal goodness that was never on their part intentional or deliberate. Think of BEAUTY.  Genuine beauty, even in art, is not constructed or achieved but is in some sense received, if in the artistic intuition. Feminine beauty especially is never the result of exercise, fashion and cosmetics. It is natural, organic, effortless, given and received. 

Virginity is unknown in our society because we have entirely lost the contemplative in favor of the active; the received in favor of the achieved; the organic in favor of the artificial and fabricated; the authentically feminine in favor of a toxic masculinity. 

Virginity then is positivity: it is goodness, truth and beauty. It requires no intellection, no deliberation, no volition, no exertion. It abides, effortlessly. The virgin...our Blessed Mother or our daughter, sister, friend...is effortlessly, organically, spontaneously resonant as beautiful, hopeful, charming, calming, serene, reassuring. There is no competition here; nothing to prove; no effort required. 

Virginity is a capacity, yet unseeded, to give life, to conceive life, to bear life, to nourish and provide for life. It is maternity-in-potential. As such it is sacred in itself. It need not prove itself. It need not compete. It merely is. It abides. It remains. It rests. It waits...for its fruition.

Feminine as Virginal; Masculine as Chaste and Faithful

We tend not to speak of men as virgins because their body is different: it lacks the physical structure of virginity. Its generative abilities are activated naturally, without deliberation or volition. It has nothing to protect and treasure: not biologically. But the physical is always expressive as well of the emotional, spiritual, and moral. The generative propensity of the male is donative, aggressive, and explosive: his challenge is not primarily to protect his innocence, but to restrain his energies in a tender, reverent chastity and to direct them in fidelity, to his bride, to the family they will bring forth, and to the broader family. For that reason we do not normally speak of male virgins, but of men as chaste and faithful. For the male these virtues are eventually received as gifts from God, but they normally require, unlike feminine virginity, a long, muscular itinerary of discipline, effort, accountability, confession and reparation.

Restored Virginity

There is a sacredness to the innocent, virginal, female body. The physical is always symbolic, sacramental and iconic of the spiritual. However the Gospel wipes away, always, shame, guilt and isolation in all their forms. So we see that the woman who has "lost" or mistakenly given away her virginity in sin has good news: Christ, marvelously in confession, restores fully the integrity, innocence, purity and generosity of virginity. This is sometimes called secondary virginity. I prefer restorative virginity. Virginity is restored in its fulness. It is not second class. Indeed the repentant woman who washed Jesus feet with her hair is praised by him: "She who is forgiven much, loves much."

St. Mary Magdalene, St. Mary of Egypt. More recently, Dorothy Day and Heather King. So, if the virgin may treasure the gift of innocence, the repentant can exult in her restoration in mercy.

Virginal Love

Monsignor Luigi Giassani understood virginity as "possession, in love, within a detachment." I take this to mean a love that is not possessive in the ordinary sense. It is love that is pure, innocent, detached...and yet mysteriously possessive of the beloved. It leaves the beloved free to be fully herself, free of control, possession, domination, manipulation, oppression. It delights, in detachment, in tender, reverent awe before the integrity, loveliness and preciousness of the beloved. So, even within married love, the spouses love each other virginally to the degree they free each other, contemplate each other, reverence each other, and care for each other.

A Father's Love for His Daughter

The love of a father for his daughter is quite distinctive. It is less intimate than that of a mother. It is distant. In this difference, there is a heightened awareness, tenderness, reverence precisely for the daughter in her femininity which so contrasts with his masculinity. His son reflects back to him his masculinity; as the daughter mirrors the mother's femininity. But the father is in awe before what is so different from him: femininity in its inherent worth, beauty, truth and delightfulness. The father naturally views his little girl as virginal: innocent, lovely, precious, charming, and radiant with life.

The father is pleased by and proud of his daughter as she is (by social standards) attractive, intelligent, athletic, accomplished. Those are additions; they are not the essential. If she is none of them, if she is (by social standards) homely, academically challenged, uncoordinated, and unsuccessful...he loves her nevertheless. Because she is precious in her very self, aside from achievement or social recognition. It is noteworthy, however, that the young woman who interiorizes this inherent worth becomes effortlessly, fluidly charming, alert, wholesome and proficient. 

It is the distinctive task of the father...as other, as authoritative, as objective, as representative of the outside world...to certify his daughter as worthy, as valuable, as delightful, as precious...in herself, aside for any achievement or social recognition.

Our Blessed Mother, the Virgin Mary,  is emblematic: she knew herself, surely from Joachim her biological father, as favored and worthy. But, even before the greeting of the Angel she knew herself, intuitively, as SO worthy in the eyes of her heavenly Father. As in her prayer The Magnificat, she exulted in her own worth, as gifted from the Father. It was not her intelligence, her physical attractiveness, her achievement: it was her inherent virginal worth that ravished the heart of the Father.

The Affliction of Fatherlessness

Here we arrive finally at the root cause of the current crisis in femininity: it is the prior failure of masculinity as paternity. Our young women, so many of them, lack a father's love: a love that is tender, reverent, virginal (as pure, non-possessive, liberating), protective and delighted. A girl with such love is largely immunized against even the most pernicious toxins of our culture: internet, drugs, despair, anxiety, etc. 

This is not in all cases the fault of the father. A decent father may be viewed by the daughter with suspicion, disinterest, or disrespect. Imagine a mother who is hostile to the father. Imagine a peer environment that is pulling the girl away from trust in the father.

Virginal Feminism

St. Maria Gioretti had lost her father at the age of nine. At the age of eleven she had no one to protect her from rape by the porn-addicted Alessando Serenelli. She herself defended her virginity and died as a martyr in the act. She died a painful death. She forgave him. She appeared to him from heaven and won his heart over to the Mercy of God. She knew her worth. She knew her strength. 

May she, and all the virgins and martyrs, and the chaste St. Joseph and our Blessed Mother...in Jesus our Lord...pray for all our young people who suffer such emotional afflictions. May they know their worth, and their strength...and delight in it, giving praise to God.

When a Dear One Leaves the Priesthood or Religious Life

What was previously rare and unmentioned became commonplace for my boomer, liberal, Vatican II generation: departure from the clerical and vowed life. But we did not receive or develop a wholesome way to process this. The default attitude of a tolerant, open-minded, secularizing culture was casual, accepting, affirming: no big deal! as long as she is happy! he is doing good work anyway!

The good side of this was, of course, that it did not judge in a moralizing manner by attributing a disloyalty.

The problem was that it did not allow for grief, a sense of loss, on the part of the rest of us who had invested such hope and trust in the apparent vocation.

No doubt many or most departures were necessary and wholesome, in God's will, for the one departing. If the Church is gracious in granting laicization and dispensation who are we to object. No one wants an unhappy priest or religious, least of all God. But it is, nevertheless, a serious loss for the Church and her faithful.

Serious loss must be grieved. The beauty of death in the Catholic world is that it is so well celebrated: wake, support, flowers, prayers, funeral mass with incense and music, burial, repast. I look forward to my own funeral and repast and wish I could be there.  But there are other losses which lack such protocols: divorce, miscarriage, abortion, break up of a friendship...and loss of a vocation. These are often associated with shame, guilt and isolation. One is on his own to work through the grief.

To her credit, Ines Murzaku, of Seton Hall,  addresses this in The Catholic Thing article "Like a Virgin?," December 10, 2022, on the departure of famed Italian singing nun Sister Cristina from the Ursulines. In 2014 the order allowed her to compete for the "Voice of Italy" which she won and then became famous. Since then, she suffered the traumatic loss of her father, took a leave, and left the order to wait tables in Spain and hopefully pursue a singing career. Murzaku is, in my view, harsh in her judgment against the order and not particularly empathetic with the young woman. But she is at least honest: we have lost something here.

I've been thinking about this for about half a century but the provocative article helped clarify my thought. 

First, we dare not judge. The workings of the human heart...suffering, confusion, motivation...are deep and dense and simply not for us to judge. Likewise, the workings of God's grace, and the demonic, are obscure and hidden to us. We dare not judge in moral righteousness.

Second, we do need to grieve. This is a loss. Vocations are so precious! We jump for joy at an ordination or consecration. Departure is a sadness. We need to be able to acknowledge that. To talk about it. To pray about it.

Five people close to me have so departed, two friends and three family members. Each is distinctive.

One obtained a proper dispensation, married sacramentally in a beautiful ceremony, is doing very good work with suffering young men, and is expecting a child. We all rejoice in this marriage and the new life. I personally pray that all the graces received in those years of prayer, service and fraternity bear new fruit in marriage and lay life.

One is also doing admirable work with at-risk adolescents and passionately striving to live a generous Catholic life. Gifted, charming, charismatic, he has moved to the peripheries, the moral peripheries, by redefining for himself the meaning of chastity. There is a poignant suffering and dissonance here. As this serious drama unfolds, we hold him tenderly in our hearts and prayers.

One left and married decades ago but did not bother with laicization so was married non-sacramentally. With his wife he lives a generous, affectionate, humble life. They both spent many years serving those afflicted with mental illness. His moral character is sterling. His is a quiet but deep faith. He had been advised that laicization was not necessary. This dissonance with Church protocol is troubling to some of us who love him.

One left the priesthood to write and has been living a quiet, devout, humble life. His is a sharp theological intellect. His friendship has been enriching for me. He reversed the trajectory of Jesus: after an active ministry, he lives a Nazareth-like, prayerful, hidden and loving life. 

One was the undisputed leader of our college seminary class: a fun, funny, warm, expansive, sensitive heart. Gifted as a leader. He married, fathered a child, and divorced. He has done remarkable work for the poor and suffering. He has rooted his moral/spiritual/psychological work in the 12 steps of AA.  He is removed from the sacraments but seems at peace with the Church. In holiness of life, compassion, and generosity he is The Outstanding One of our cohort: he is lapping the rest of us. Humble and self-effacing, he would deny this.

All five are very dear to me. Three have come to sobriety in AA. Four serve those who suffer poverty or mental illness. All five are living lives radiant with magnanimity, humility, empathy and generosity. God's grace is manifest in their lives. God's grace is mysterious It operates beyond the restrains of my admittedly parochial (in both sense: finite, positional, limited and Roman Catholic) viewpoint. God's grace is wonderful! His name be praised!

Big Table Catholicism: Overcoming Cult-like Tendencies in Lay Renewal Movements

As a couple we will soon celebrate 50 years since our personal encounter with Jesus Christ in Cursillo,  baptism of the Holy Spirit in the Charismatic Renewal, and a new birth in our Catholic faith. Since then I know the lay renewal movements as the most intense, fruitful and promising developments in our Church. Paradoxically, however, the very dynamics that give them such depth and passion also open a vulnerability to anti-Catholic, divisive tendencies. 

The Church is One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic. Renewal movements burn with desire for holiness and zeal to return to the Apostolic origins. But in doing so, they risk damage to the Church unified and "catholic", understood as universal, inclusive of all the good. The very centripetal forces that inflame communal zeal can tend to separate in cult-like fashion. These movements are emphatically NOT cults. They are holy renewal movements, but prone to imbalance precisely due to their intensity. Let us consider characteristics of cults as they manifest in six renewal movements. 

Characteristics of Cults

1. Inordinate allegiance/obedience to a charismatic leader who is unaccountable to anyone and exercises excessive control.

2. "Us versus Them" attitude to all outside of the community. The exterior world is evil. Safety and salvation are found only within the community. It is "Christ against Culture" (to quote Richard Niebuhr) to an extreme. Suspicion towards "the outsider" and vulnerability to a persecution complex.

3. Total control of all spheres of life. The personal schedule becomes monopolized by communal activities. No time or energy is left for other activities or hobbies.

4. Separation from family, friendships, career, politics, and culture in favor of total immersion in the community.

5. Energies work to recruit new members into the group. Dynamics are all centripetal rather than centrifugal. Little contribution to the broader society or Church.

6. Questioning and dissent are not acceptable. The decisions and teaching of authority are authoritative, not open to debate.

7. Leaving the group is associated with feelings of fear, guilt and shame.

True cults have additional bad traits including manipulation by lies, sex abuse, accumulation of money by illicit means, and violation of conscience. These are not useful for our purposes here. However it is very troubling to learn of the widespread sexual misbehavior, abuse of authority, financial wrong-doing and lack of accountability in respected, conservative renewal and religious communities.

Confessions of a Charismatic

Our involvement with a prayer group (but not the deeper commitment of a covenant community) of the People of Hope in Jersey City, over half a dozen year (1973-79), was reflective of broader trends.

1. Catholic Pentecostalism, happily, had no single leader. Immediately in 1967 a remarkable group of leaders worked fruitfully together out of Ann Arbor and South Bend. They understood themselves to be following the Holy Spirit, however imperfectly, (and I agree.) They incorporated  elements of American Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism into Catholicism in a direction brazenly contradictory of the mainstream, fashionable post-Council renewal. However, these "charismatic" (in the generic sense) Charismatic leaders were granted an unusual degree of authority, in teaching and governance, especially within covenant communities. A strange evangelical practice of "headship" was encouraged. Dissonant with Catholicism, traditional or contemporary, and insanely counter-cultural, it empathized the authority of the father in the family and a system by which everyone was in obedience to a designated "head." Specific, authoritative direction was given about career, courting and marriage and finances. These blatantly cultish practices led to crises in many communities. My impression is that they have been resolved in groups that self-identify as Catholic like the People of Hope in New Jersey. 

2. The baptism in the Holy Spirit, including exercise of gifts like tongues, prophesy, deliverance of evil spirits and healings, is inebriating. It is a recovery of the Pentecostal dynamics of the early Church and the saints. It tended to demote mainstream, sober, bread-and-butter Catholicism to second-class status. This was a divisive trend that was countered strongly by leadership within and without the movement. But the attitude to the broader society was not overly negative, suspicious or defensive. It was optimistic, embracive, confident and assertive. Even a newfound triumphalism in an urgency to share the Gospel with a world desperately hungry for it. It did not flee the world but charged into it and still does.

3-4. While covenant communities elicit strong commitment, there is not total control. Participants maintain ordinary family and parish life, careers, and cultural engagements. My observation is that charismatic spirituality is entirely compatible with bourgeois life as professional, affluent, and careerist. Generally it is not strongly countercultural like the Catholic Worker or the Neocatechumenate. It is not at war with the broader culture or Church.

5.  Energy-wise there is a balance of the centripetal and centrifugal: many Catholics attended prayer meetings and conferences and benefited from the menu of praise, healing, renewal, and music. The boundaries of the movement were porous and open. While the movement has receded, its influence on the broader Church endures.

6. Despite an authoritative tone to teaching by leadership, there was an intellectual, theological vitality to the movement. The lay leaders were fluent in theology and engaged outstanding academics in the discussion. There was immediately a large literature about it. Discussion and argument were vigorous.

7. Movement in and out of prayer groups and conferences is fluid although covenant communities are firm in identity and boundaries. Fear and guilt are not strong motivators. 

This movement demonstrated modest cult-like qualities but was largely open to the Church and world. Perhaps that is a reason why it no longer exists as the vibrant, expansive phenomena it was through the 70s and 80s. It is diminished in mainstream white America, remaining stable in a small number of covenant communities. It is powerful in Africa. It is not strongly countercultural. Amy Coney Barret is witness: it does not get more mainstream than the Supreme Court of the U.S.A.

Legionnaires of Christ and Regnum Christi

1. Maciel was the classic malevolent "noble leader." We now know he required vows of secrecy/loyalty and indulged himself in almost unthinkable sexual and financial wrongdoing. He was idolized by his following.

2. They created their own "regnum" or kingdom, separated from the world, and largely from the Church. In dogma, morals and liturgy they are flawlessly Roman Catholic. But they maintained their own separated institutions.

3-4. Control of personal life seems to be excessive but far from total. Both clerical and lay branches copied standard Catholic patterns. Ordinary family, friendship, parish and cultural life are maintained.

5. Energies are mostly centripetal as they recruit others into their domain but extend themselves outward, generously without return, to a lesser degree.

6. Criticism of authority, especially that of the Founder, and free discussion were not allowed.

7. Fear and guilt were strong motivators as the world was viewed in a dark light.

This has to be the very most cult-like organization or movement in the Church in recent memory.

The Latin Mass

This traditionalist movement has minor cult-like aspects. There is no leader; no control over personal life. Ordinary connections with family, friends, career and culture are maintained. Fear and guilt are not used to manipulate. 

Participants are largely educated, affluent, prosperous and well-integrated into society. They are generous financially with the Church and the poor. They tend to be, politically and culturally,  standard right-wing conservatives, not adversarial to careerism, global capitalism, or bourgeois Christianity. They are not counter-cultural like the Catholic Worker or the Neocatechumenate.

At their best they retrieve much that was precious and then discarded by the post-Council Church: reverence in worship, moral rigor, doctrinal clarity in the Thomistic mode, and a distinctive Catholic ethos.

At their worst (as on the internet) they can go beyond respectful criticism of the Council, the ordinary form of the Eucharist and the current pontiff into outright rejection and even moral contempt. In that they set themselves up against the actual, current, hierarchical Church (however flawed) and set themselves up as an alternative "Catholic" cult of suspicion, isolation, resentment and nostalgia.

My concern is that Pope Francis in his own suspicious, repressive hostility will push them further away from the Church. Far better is Pope Benedict's magnanimous, gracious liberality.

Franciscan Friars of the Renewal

This is young religious order rather than a lay renewal, but I address it because of my longstanding admiration and affection. As a fierce, conservative, countercultural force, they are not flawless. There is a defensiveness and an uncharitable, judgmental disparagement of Catholic progressivism. From their founders (notably Fr. Benedict Groeschel and Fr. Glen Sudano) they inherited a tough, N.Y.C. sarcasm. Their way is NOT for everyone. But they are definitely not cult-like, for many reasons.

First, their leader, Fr. Benedict, was one of several founders. Despite his rich gifts and histrionic trait, he was humble, self-effacing and free of the hubris of "The Charismatic Founder."

Second, they are not suspicious or afraid of the world as evil; they are aggressive, confident in a macho, evangelical zeal to save it. They are not running away, but charging ahead. They wage Culture War, fiercely; they reach out to youth; they serve the very, very poor. In this their energy flows outward, expansively, generously.

Thirdly, they recruit selectively and judiciously, requiring quality of vocation rather than quantity.  As a classical Catholic order, of course, there is control over daily life in accord with the rule of life, but with all the protections of tradition. The order is accountable to the Church. Privacy of conscience and the "inner forum" is respected. To the degree possible, normal family and friendship life is encouraged. Our own family has been warmly welcomed into the Friary on many occasions.

Fourthly, a lively intellectualism is received from the founders, particularly Fr. Groeschel. While blatantly Catholic and countercultural, there is a sophisticated, urbane, hipster, bohemian and even cocky style about them. They associate broadly with vital and authentic developments in the Church.

Lastly, fear and guilt, while not absent (we are dealing with human beings here), are not deliberately used to recruit or retain friars.

The CFRs are entirely Catholic and catholic; receptive of and generous to the Church and the world. They are the Non-Cult.

Communion and Liberation

This movement is also in the Not-a-Cult- Club. They are its polar opposite. If anything, an argument might be made that they are overly optimistic, hospitable, and weak in boundaries.

Their charismatic founder, Monsignor Luigi Giussani, embodied himself and infused the movement with freedom, liberality, graciousness, release from fear-guilt-shame, and a boundless desire for the Good-True-Beautiful.

Founded in Italy, they exude the Renaissance cultural confidence of Michelangelo and Raphael. They are not afraid of anyone. They are not fighting anyone. They are exulting, like Giussani, in the richness of Catholic Tradition and the Joy of art, culture and social life.

Their boundaries are porous and open: people coming and going into welcoming gatherings of various sorts. They exert no control over personal life, assuming that family, parish, career and cultural life are all resonant with value and meaning. No suspicion or defensiveness. No effort to recruit or retain: they work (like the 12 steps) by attraction rather than promotion. Energy flows in and out  with organic fluidity.

There is liveliness in discussion, debate and criticism. The writings of Giussani are inspiring, open-ended and provocative, entirely free of coercion or force. There is an openness, not without critique, to the prevailing liberal culture. Highly educated, sophisticated, and erudite, they are arguably less receptive of counter-elite, populist, rightest views. Free of guilt, fear or shame, the ambience fairly glistens with curiosity, enthusiasm, and appreciation. This is The Non-Cult!

The Neo-Catechumenate

1. They do not get more charismatic than Kiko Arguello! Hardly a cult founder, he is in the great Catholic tradition of gifted saints like Benedict, Francis, Dominic and Ignatius. He is entirely a son of the Church, deferential to Church authority and miraculously receptive of the treasures of Scripture and Tradition.

2. Their view of the world, and in a more complicated way the Church, is entirely negative. In this they resemble a cult: "us against them." The world is dark, dangerous and demonic. The Church is weak against the powers of the world, the flesh and the devil. Outside of their fold, other than a monastery or convent, there is no reliable safety or salvation. There is fear of "the world." Their view contrasts with the positivism of the Council and its aftermath. 

3-4. The time and energy required is not totalitarian, as in a cult, but tends to be totalizing, leaving little available for outside, normal life with friends, extended family, career, culture and hobbies. This leads to an inevitable, if unintended, degree of separation.

5. The energy is entire centripetal, building intensive communities of faith against a hostile world and eventually replacing the traditional parish model.

6. The catechesis of Kiko is received as authoritative, not to be questioned. Largely, but not entirely, this attracts low-brow, blue collar, working class folk. Questioning, argumentation, and study are not strong values. A tone of defensiveness prevails as they correctly read the hostility of the world but also of secular clergy.

7. Fear is a constant as the world outside is (not unreasonably) seen as so dangerous and toxic.

This group is paradoxical: passionately Catholic in belief, practice, morals, prayer; but in a dystopian world and a weakened Church, they fortify themselves by a rigorous, demanding rule. It is not a cult, but understandably has strong cult-like tendencies.

Big Table Catholicism: Thick, Fierce, Diverse, Unified, Serene, Engaged, Confident, Synergistic

Surveying these six movements, we find:  Communion and Liberation and the Friars, are energetically Catholic in a catholic fashion and deep in the heart of the institutional Church. The Latin Mass and Charismatic groups have separatist tendencies that are contravened by unitive and embracive dynamics. Lastly, the Legionnaires and the Neocatechumenate show strong isolating propensities; the former due largely to its founder, the later to a negative view of society and Church.

One way to approach this is to ask: About the world and the Church, who is correct: Giussani in his positivity or Kiko in his negativity? My theologian son is a determined disciple of Kiko; my psychologist daughter an enthusiastic protege of Giussani. Do I set them against each other? Do I judge one right and the other wrong? No! It is not a simple binary. The Council was in the optimism club, but its singular defect (argues Tracey Rowlands persuasively) was a lack of realism and preparedness for the assault just then being launched from hell.

Temperamentally I am with Giussani, but in sober realism I judge Kiko to be right about our now dystopian world. In our time it is understandable that strong renewal movements turn inward to strengthen their members in their charism, form and way of life. The world today is five times worse than it was fifty years ago; the Church is also. Both are ten times worse than they were sixty-five years ago during the Council. In our time the world and Church have suffered an invasion by the demonic. The poison of our age requires a potent antidote. Any pattern intended to revive Catholic life is vulnerable to dilution, diminution and decadence if it is not rigorous and demanding. We Catholics face a dilemma. The strong antidote tends to separatism. But the weaker medicine tends to cave to the pressures of the world.

The Church needs all these different movements. I would exhort Kiko to protect the strength and expansiveness of his communities and yet strengthen unity with the broader Church and be receptive of the workings of God's grace in the world. I would encourage Communion and Liberation to blend that wondrous openness with a shrewd vigilance. In today's Gospel at mass, Jesus castigates the crowds who neither dance to his flute nor mourn to the dirge of John the Baptist. Clearly, we need to do both.

Indeed, we all...each in his own way...have to do three things at once:

1. Withdraw from the dystopia to protect our young and build strong, small, local families, parishes, schools and communities of worship. This is the "Benedict option" of the early hermits into the desert and the monks departing a Roman Empire in decline.

2. Maintain our unity with each other, under the hierarchy, despite the tensions, in mutual tenderness and reverence.

3. Renouncing timidity, engage the culture confidently, serenely, assertively in outreach to the poor, confrontation of the false-evil-ugly, and receptivity of all that is true-good-beautiful.

As a catholic Catholic I am happiest to see the synergies of distinct groups working together. A local Catholic school, Koinonia, founded by charismatics, is now attracting traditionalists, homeschoolers and ordinary parishioners. The annual Archdiocese of Newark men's conference is hosted by the Friars, the Knights of Malta, charismatics, and tons of priest hearing confession. Franciscan University of Steubenville has become a cornucopia of Catholic richness: charismatics, pro-lifers, homeschoolers, traditionalists, solid academics, Eucharistic adoration, and even a "new Catholic populist right." 

As my best friend, ex-beatnik, mentor, wanderer, coffee-store-owner, pilgrim, artist, charismatic, Neo-cat, bibliophile, autodidact, little-big-brother John Rapinich loved to say, of the Church:  "It's a big table!"

Holy, Wise, Influential Marian Figures of the Catholic Church, U.S.A. 1970-2022.

As queen of heaven and earth, of the angels and saints, our blessed mother Mary is supreme, among creatures, in deference to her Son the King and to our heavenly Father. Her supremacy and sovereignty flow from her receptivity and surrender to the Father and the Son, in the Spirit. The created order is not then, a matriarchy, but (properly understood) a patriarchy. Within creation, the feminine enjoys a vast superiority over the masculine...ontologically, morally, spiritually, emotionally...in integrity, influence, generosity, receptivity, and responsibility. The masculine, as inferior (fragmented, detached, defensive, lonely, competitive, insecure) requires in the social order an enhancement of status in order to maintain parity with his superior in the partnership and to fulfill his mission as "representative" of the Father. And so, patriarchy (in its essence, not its abuse, which is admittedly pervasive) is a good thing. Matriarchy is an exception to the rule as the feminine is normally stronger in influence but weaker in governance. On the list below, the first five are clearly matriarchs, within the communities they mothered. But all are Marian in their surrender to Christ their spouse and to their heavenly Father. Their immense influence flows not from power or control but from holiness, compassion, generosity, prayer and receptivity.

1.  Saint Mother Theresa of Calcutta. She is not American and shouldn't be on this list except that she came here with her sisters and spoke so strongly and clearly, countervailing (like Mary stomping the serpent) our Culture of Death. By her long "dark night" and her extraordinary love for the poor she is the most outstanding saint of our time. Probably makes the "top ten list" of saints in heaven!

2.  Mother Angelica. Her work, EWTN, is spectacularly, miraculously fruitful in delivering a solid, lowbrow, populist, wholesome, faithful Catholic piety to millions around the world.

3.  Catherine DeHueck Dougherty. This Russian aristocrat and expatriate, mystic and activist, founded Madonna House and embodied a sublime marriage of prayer and closeness to the poor.

4.  Dorothy Day. Gifted writer, mother and grandmother, activist, contemplative, anarchist, pacifist, ex-bohemian and ex-revolutionary, devout Catholic she mothered the remarkable Catholic Worker, an eccentric but inspiring expression of Catholicism.

5.  Sister Jean Noreen of Our Lady's Missionaries of the Eucharist. This holy woman influenced our own marriage by drawing us into the Daily Prayer of the Church as part of a "lay rule of life" centered in the Eucharist, devotion to Mary, simplicity of life, and to the Church as a communion in holiness.

6.  Heather King.  Drawing from her own wounds, this delightful eccentric communicates Christ's tender love for the disordered, the aberrant, the outlier. She shatters the limitations of moralism, legalism, fear and defensiveness. She exults in all the splendor, freedom, serendipity and Joy of Christ.  

7.  Dr. Mary Healy, Sister Patricia Brennan and Women of the Charismatic Renewal. Dr. Healy is devoted to the healing ministry, the Word of God and holiness of life. Working with Ralph Martin, she brings a radiant femininity to the unrestrained virility of his spirituality. 

Sister Pat Brennan, of Convent Station, was my own mentor in the charismatic renewal. She is the feminine St. Paul: intense, assertive, intelligent, confident, and madly in love with the Gospel. The last time I saw her she was deep into dementia in the nursing home; did not even blink at me. But I was struck that she was so neat, groomed, pretty and still luminous with an indescribable innocence and purity. 

So many marvelous women of influence in this Renewal, oftentimes not in the limelight.

8.  Sister Marilyn Minter. This VERY special lady is now serving the desperately poor in the desolation of Haiti. She is a Live Wire: super-energized, musical, evangelistic, bright, simply electrified and explosive with love for Christ. What a joy it was for me to work with her at Immaculate Conception H.S. 

In my work for the Church, and especially in Catholic schools, I have been delighted and blessed by marvelous sisters, including Charities, Dominicans and Felicians. I am "blessed among women."

9.  Dr. Dianne Traflet. She looks like a glamorous, affluent, accomplished suburbanite. When she talks, you realize she is a holy, brilliant theologian. I remember listening to her on a teachers retreat and weeping uncontrollably. About a decade ago it occurred to me I might benefit from spiritual direction from a holy woman. With Sister Marilyn in Haiti, Dianne was the obvious choice. I spent a most encouraging, inspiring hour in conversation. I will never forget it.

10. Pro-Life Movement Women.  This is largely the work of women. I am thinking less of the politics than of the many serving vulnerable women in pregnancy centers. Here again: generous, anonymous, humble, wise, holy women.

Cultural Warriors. In the demonic assault upon our way of life from the sexual revolution, especially encouraging and reassuring is the feminine voice: firm, nuanced, compassionate, intuitive, concrete, balanced, confident, tender, contemplative. There are so many: Mary Glendon, Patricia Snow, Abigail Favale, Angela Franks, Helen Alvare, Mary Eberstadt, and others. Our contemporary "Joan of Arcs" in championing fidelity, chastity and truth-in-love.

IAs oldest of nine, I never had a big sister and was always the big brother. That role defined my entire adult life as father, teacher, supervisor, director of a home. But this lack has been more than satisfied by the women above and those unmentioned. Some of the above were personal friends. I spoke with Dorothy Day.  I said to a plain-looking woman on the lower East Side "Can you direct me to the Catholic Worker?" and she pointed to the house behind her and said "Right there." I spoke at more length with Mother Theresa, who directed me, in a no-nonsense tone, to "always teach with the Church." I have tried to do that.

At this point I must pause...in gratitude, affection and admiration...for the women close who have loved me so well. But if I go down that path it will be, not a blog, but a book, and a long one at that. I repeat: "I am blessed among women."

We praise you heavenly Father,  for bringing into our time, our Church, our lives...these marvelous women.

Raise up among our youth, Lord, just such women: intelligent, strong, beautiful, confident, trusting, receptive, humble, pure, loyal, compassionate, generous, fearless and holy!