Pray, Pay and Obey
I had forgotten that prior to the Council, the abbreviated catechism of the Church was 'pray, pay and obey'. It occurred to me that with a bit of a twist, and a post-conciliar interpretation, we might consider this a valid minimalist approach to the faith. I imagine that, in the final analysis, our Catholic community will be judged by the world based on how authentically we adhere to the practices of Lite Catholicism. The truest witness will always remain the witness of example. This is a pragmatic truth of our Faith.

PRAY - unity of worship
The word alone should be enough. As people of faith, this is our first, our principle, and our final duty. Nothing takes precedence over this and nothing on earth can substitute for it. The first of the Great Commandments is to love God with our whole mind, our whole heart, our whole soul, and all of our strength. We often confuse this primary duty with our duty to love our neighbor. We claim that we love God indirectly by loving our neighbor. We substitute humanism for theonomy. If nothing else, this is a bad tactical maneuver.
When Cardinal Egan first came to NYC, the NY Times wrote a short piece to introduce the bishop to New York. I saved a portion of the article because it so impressed me. Of course, by now, the fragment of newsprint is long lost, but I remember the gist of it.
Apparently, prior to assignment in NYC, the then-bishop gave a sermon in St. Pat's. In it, he drew attention to the statue of Atlas that dominates Rockefeller Center across the street from the cathedral. Naturally, the statue shows Atlas with the huge sphere of the earth on his hunched and struggling shoulders. Then the bishop drew attention to a statue of our Lady in the Cathedral itself. The statue showed Our Lady with a small globe in one hand. Sheltered in the other arm was the child Jesus. All of Our Lady's adoring attention is centered on the child.
The bishop noted that the different statues reflect the difference between a secular humanist and a Catholic response to the world. The secular humanist focuses on the world to the exclusion of everything else. He struggles desperately with the weight of it as he tries to resolve humanity's problems. The Catholic, on the other hand, holds the world lightly and without personal angst. He is equally effective in supporting the world. Yet he does so effortlessly, his entire attention being focused on the Christ Child. This is how Mother Theresa loved the world.
Prayer is the single most effective weapon in the war against sin, suffering, injustice and evil. It employs the power of Christ Himself, as well as His legions of angels, and the entire community of the Church Suffering and the Church Triumphant. Personally, I think that the pre-Vatican Church may have been better at framing this knowledge . I also think that the post-conciliar Church is making every effort to catch up on this 'forgotten' essential.
When I was growing up, everything about Church life was reverential. The universal Church had 'a unity of worship'. This was not simply a matter of the Mass. It was a matter of art and architecture and folk practices and saints' alcoves and votive candles. It was the faint scent of incense and the distant sound of children's laughter wafting through open stained glassed windows. It was the hush of the Church and the well worn carpets and the Perpetual Candle and the soft burnished gold of the Tabernacle. It was the sign of the cross at the sound of a siren, and another quick gesture when passing a Church. It was the 'bow of the head' at the utterance of His name and the myriad other details that were so automatic that you never even 'caught yourself' performing them. It was the solemn vigils and the May processions and the Stations of the Cross on Fridays. There were litanies and novenas and benedictions and holy hours and the interruption of life for Saturday confessions. There were Advent sacrifices and Lenten offerings and Friday abstinences and days of fasting. Every moment in one's life was quite unconsciously caught up and transformed by one's Catholicism. Catholicism was in a large measure the meaning of who you were. Gerard Seraphim points to an engaging article on this sense of Catholic childhood. If you have only read his excerpts, you would be doing yourself a favor to enjoy the entire article.
The unity of worship was a concrete thing back then. Any place in the world was home when you entered the Church. As a child, this seemed quite natural. When I was eight, we visited Europe and the holy places on the Continent. Everything was exotic and enticing and overwhelming. Then, we would visit a cathedral or a chapel or a shrine. Suddenly, everything was as familiar as our own backyard. The people were the same as our neighbors. They greeted us in strange tongues as though they were our neighbors. Then they prayed with us in one tongue and they truly were our neighbors.
Sometimes when I was young, I would be too sick to attend Mass. The family would go and leave me to my leisure. It wouldn't have occurred to anyone that a parent should stay in attendance on me. If I was old enough to attend school, I was surely old enough to mind myself for an hour... and Mass was a family affair. After Mass and after breakfast, my mother would bring me a Missal and I would be left for an hour to say the Mass.
My mother's parting instructions were always the same. Somewhere in the world, a Mass would have begun at the very moment I opened the Missal. My voice would join in that prayer and I would be perfectly entwined in that moment of sacrament. The murmur of my Latin would blend with the Latin of a foreign land, and I would participate in the celebration and the sacrifice. Our universal prayer and our universal language made this quite concrete in a child's mind.

THE MASS
I'm pretty sure that at this point, every one is assuming that I will make an appeal to restore the Tridentine Mass as our central act of worship. Personally, I suspect that it would be a bad idea. It would be as wrenching an experience for a new generation of Catholics, as the loss was to my generation of Catholics.
I love the Tridentine Mass. I think that it is the 'Pieta' of our prayer life. I would love to know that a high Tridentine Mass was celebrated once a month in every church, chapel and cathedral of Christendom. I would like our lives to be arranged so that on any given Sunday, the Tridentine Mass was an option for every Catholic. I think we need that option on the precise Sunday that we need it. Sometimes, our souls need the 'Pieta'. But this is a human need. It is not a necessity of God.
As often as we need the 'banquet' - perhaps even more often - we need the 'common bread.' We need comfort food. As the Mass of my youth, the Tridentine Mass is my comfort food. The current Mass is my daughter's comfort food. It is her place of reverence and her familiar ritual. If the Tridentine Mass were to replace the current Mass, her soul would always feel a slight hunger for the familiar. She would always know a yearning that should be sated by our common prayer.
I am not a liturgist. I don’t know all of the technical arguments about the Mass. I don’t even know most of the theological arguments. If there are necessary changes to be made, I would simply argue that they should be made slowly, cautiously and prayerfully.
I live in a parish where the Mass is said in the vernacular every Sunday. It is said in seven vernaculars and thus we are left with one building housing seven separate parishes. I rarely go to a non-English Mass. In a pinch, I've been to Spanish, Korean and Filipino Masses. I have found them to be disorienting and confusing. This experience could guide us in determining how Latin is used in our parishes. In parishes such as my own, Latin would probably be a unifying element. We would at least know all of our fellow parishioners on a 'nodding' basis. In other parishes, however, I see no clear advantage over the current use of the vernacular.
There is another form of Mass mentioned by Mike Who Should Be Reading. I am not certain whether the Mass to which he is referring is our common Mass, or something more along the lines of the sixties Celebrations of the Liturgy. Based on his statements, it would appear to be an adaptation of our common Mass that reflects the authentic grace of his parish. It sounds like a Mass that honors both our liberty and the Church's authority. This is one of the gifts of a Church that is simultaneously local (parochial) and universal. We should value these graces instead of disparaging them.
A few years ago, I was a temporary member of the Legion of Mary at a local church. ( It is a wonderful association, but in honesty, it wasn't my particular style of service). I mention it because, while there, I had a uniquely pre-Vatican experience. New York is a diverse city. In our particular association, we had some one from the Philippines, Belize, Puerto Rico, Ireland, some South American country, Nigeria , a black woman from the rural South, one black and one white woman(me!) from a middle-class suburban background and a native New Yorker (probably from Brooklyn). We all spoke English fluently and meetings were held in English. The interesting thing about our group, however, is how easily we all became intimate friends. It was simple. We all shared the very same childhood memories. Only the superficial details were different. The flowers and the pastries were different. The ceremonies and the occasions were the same.
This stands out in my mind as one of the marks of the universality of the Faith. It is worth preserving and it is worth reconstructing. It will require sincere and subtle effort. The new synthesis that we achieve may not look at all like the synthesis we let go. In time, however, it will serve the same purpose. In our local churches, we need to both particularize and universalize our rituals and traditions. We need the best of the old and the best of the new. We need both our local spice and our universal flavor.

PAY - unity of structure
FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTIONS
This is another obligation of the Catholic laity. We should be supporting our parishes so that, in addition to being powerhouses of prayer, they have the essential resources to meet our needs for education in the faith and moral instruction.
As parishes, we should also be looking out for our own. We can do this by assisting in job searches, by providing home care, and other temporary assistance to parishioners in need. This support of fellow parishioners should be mutual and personal. It should involve a commitment of time and of self. It should reflect the self-giving that is at the heart of our faith. It should also carefully guard the dignity of the recipients.
In light of our greater calling, it occurs to me that these less robust parishioners might be ideal candidates for filling essential parish posts that the more empowered laity should be deserting. Today our empowered laity have an urgent and immediate responsibility to transform and restore the whole of American society. We are needed on the real battlefield in the struggle against a culture of death.
In the meantime, participation in providing parish services would be face-saving and life-enhancing for our less empowered members. Our priests are fewer in numbers. They will surely need a few faithful followers to help carry out their functions. Housebound parishioners might even be enlisted in a spiritual Crusade, where they storm heaven with the power of prayer.
n addition to these local obligations, Catholics are required to pay support to the diocese and to Peter's Pence. Then there are all the particular charities that each of us might favor. We can afford to be generous. We Catholics are now the richest group in America., the richest nation on earth. We can keep in our hearts the secret knowledge that 'it is the prayers of the poor that wins salvation for the rich'. We can hope that our generosity is rewarded with such prayers.
Just the same, it is important to know that charitable contributions and support of the Church are distinct obligations. There is a fundamental difference in the nature of our relationship toward Catholic charities and toward the support of the larger Church community. Each form of giving has its distinct requirements for responsible stewardship.
When we give to a Catholic charity, it is legitimate and even necessary to consider financial statements, the percentage of dollars actually distributed to the poor, the significance of the services provided and the fruitfulness of the effort. We should not be squandering our wealth on Christemporos or bureaucractic inefficiencies. We are responsible for our selection and support of individuals and organizations. This is meaningful and generous charity.
The obligation to support the Church, on the other hand, is not charity. It is duty. We are workers in the vineyard of God. We harvest the fruits of our labor and we place our first fruits in service to God's Church. We give and we forget about it. Responsibility for the use of those monies is out of our hands. It now rests with God. We gave it to Him in the form of His Church, and we no longer have any claim to it. We have no authority over it. Our relinquishment is as total as though we had sacrificed it in burnt offerings. This, too, is significant and responsible stewardship.
When the owner of the vineyard comes calling, the steward turns over the profit from the harvest. He doesn't second-guess the landowner's use of it. Nor does he question the landowner's authority over it. If he were to do so, he would be guilty of theft.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO PARISH LIFE
When I was twelve, we moved …about a mile. This meant that we were in a different parish. The difference between parishes was like day and night.
Our original parish was pretty post-Vatican(?) even when the Council was merely a gleam in a soon-to-be-pope's eye. Father, never Monsignor, Little was a facilitator. The parish had a beautiful lending library that held books on Church history, theology, apologetics, saints, spirituality, philosophy and every possible area of Catholic interest. I can't be sure because I was merely a child but I believe that even then, small adult classes were held on a variety of parish interests. I know that my mom was heavily involved in this type of activity before, during and after the Council.
The various Church associations like the Holy Name were quite active. There were all kinds of groups and activities in the parish. Men were as active in parish life as women. Both groups channeled their activities through traditional Catholic associations. Whether it was concurrent with the Council or prior to it, the parish was also involved in parish partnering with an inner city parish.
For children, the school was the center of our lives .It was remarkable both in terms of academic excellence and Catholic formation. We lived in a Catholic cocoon in a much larger community. We were especially blessed.
Years later, I returned to that parish to raise my own child. Father Little is long gone. There are no priests in cassocks walking the main thoroughfare anymore. That instant of humility one experienced on seeing him in the distance, is itself a distant memory. The parish is different. Yet it is still Catholic. The new priests and the new pastor are as firmly committed to their vocations. The parish itself is as firmly committed to the faith and the formation of its young. For the most part, laity have replaced the sisters in the school. The convent is now an adult center for learning and spirituality. The parish has changed and grown and remained essentially the same.
Our next parish, however, probably epitomized everything that folks complains about when they decry the pre-Vatican church. The pastor was definitely a Right Reverend Monsignor. If, in a moment of excitement or confusion, any child addressed the Monsignor as Father, we were certain to be reprimanded at the dinner table. Yes, I believe that he would actually call the house. He was a small tyrant who was ultimately dragged kicking and screaming through the empowerment of the laity. Strangely, he was eager to embrace the liturgical changes. Or so it seemed to my childish eyes. Perhaps it was merely surrender.
Over the years that parish also seemed to maintain its basic character well into the nineties. The last time I visited, however, I did see some heartening changes
The Church building had been erected in the late fifties or very early sixties. It has always had a certain Protestant austerity. For most of its life, it has lacked a sense of 'sacred space.' On my last visit, the Church had been remodeled. Although there was little indication in the exterior of the building, the interior had been transformed into a 'chapel' of remarkable serenity and Catholic simplicity. Perhaps it reflects the new face of the Church. If so, good things are happening.
This leads me to another interesting reflection. It concerns the nature of the parish and addresses the issue of parish hopping. In the old days, the rules were that parishes were territorial. Your address determined your affiliation. Today, people select membership in parishes rather like one selects their friends.
The first approach is based on the concept of family. You don't choose your kin. It means that people have to work harder to be a community but it probably also means that communities have greater similarity one to the other. The second approach is based more on the ideal of friendship. Different parishes will draw like-minded people. The internal unity of the parish is strengthened. At the same time, parishes in relationship to each other become less similar and less unitive.
I think there are advantages and disadvantages in both approaches. I wonder which approach serves us better. I'm not really certain. I'd love to hear arguments both pro and con.
The nature of lay involvement in the parish has changed dramatically over the last thirty or forty years. In part, I imagine the change is due to a certain laxity in exercising our lay calling. Perhaps we have been too preoccupied with changing the Church and not enough occupied with witnessing as the church. This is a criticism that would apply equally to the reformers and the restorers. The parish is not a political entity. It is not a place for the exercise of power but rather a place for the practice of humility.
This is an area where we need to restore a sense of right relationships. We must understand the distinction between the duties of the laity and the duties of the priesthood
Different pastors, within a complementary relationship with parishioners, should be free to translate local needs differently. One of the gifts of the priest is leadership. One of the gifts of the parish is inertia. It is probably most in the spirit of Catholicism if the orientation of leadership and of inertia are slightly at odds. There should be enough creative tension between the two that the fruits of their union are always somewhat unexpected. It is in the union of complements that God expresses His true designs. It is in the small affirmative spaces between us, that God finds room enough to act.
Based on the charism of the priest, one parish might be shaped with an emphasis on community service complete with the youth club, and the singles club and the seniors club. Another parish might focus on the liturgy committee and the parish council and the board for this and the organization for that. A third might maintained a St Veronica's Guild, other Catholic lay associations and a more traditional approach to parish life.
As long as none of these activities interfere too greatly with the true life of the parish and the real mission of the laity, there is probably little harm in them. After all, it is important that even those, who are too fearful to meet today's challenge, maintain a sense of participation in the mission of the Church A variety of minor support functions can answer this human need.
Pastors, mindful of their people's leanings, should be able to channel these energies into effective auxilliary functions, while simultaneously keeping their own hearts fixed on their people's greater mission. We are a catholic Church. There should be room for all kinds of pastorial care and all kinds of pastorial visions. When you think about it, the difference between 'a church of statues' and 'a church of banners' is rather superficial. Both are attempts to give concrete form to our faith experience.
I am not arguing for the dis-empowerment of the laity. I am arguing instead for the full empowerment of all the laity. Many lay Catholics are intent on exercising some kind of authority - whether institutional, spiritual or moral - over their brothers and sisters in Christ. They lack the competence. As members of the laity, we are all equal in authority.
The real empowerment of the laity is found in the act of evangelization to the dominant culture. One of the major failures of Vatican II has been that the post-Vatican Church missed this point. Perhaps, because we were insecure, we allowed our attention to be misdirected. We have been acting like immigrant children of a Catholic ghetto. We have been directing our attention inward when we should have been looking outward. We don’t need to hundle in fear of the world outside our ghetto.
We are Americans now, and today, America needs the service of the Catholic Church. We are called to a new 'priesthood' of the laity. We are called to be 'priests' to our secular culture. This was and remains the initial and essential post-Vatican dream of a strong Church turned outward in transformative communion with the larger society. This is the distinct calling of the laity. It is the commitment that the Council demands of us.

OBEY - unity of doctrine
I'm big on Catholic obedience. I'm equally big on Catholic freedom. I think that they are tied to each other in the same way that authentic freedom is tied to truth.

OBEDIENCE TO CUSTOM
We learn the true Faith in the family and in children's catechisms like the old Baltimore Catechism. We learn the faith through Catholic family traditions and bedtime stories about the lives of the saints. We learn our faith, - the faith of our fathers, - from our fathers and our mothers and our aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers. The Catholic Faith is our home.
Most of Catholic obedience falls within the category of obedience to custom. We know the rules of Catholic living and we observe them. We serve as our own autonomous policemen. We employ an examination of conscience as our court of judgement and we anticipate mercy in the justice of our Penitential Rite. We exist as authentically self-governing people.
If you think about it, we may be the only people… the only great 'nation' that does not use force or the threat of force in the exercise of governance. The worst punishment that we must occasionally inflict, is to politely, and with meticulous patience, ask those who would deny our truth to leave our community. And always, when they embrace our truth, we will welcome them home.
This is the extent of our oppression and it is the grounds for our authentic freedom.

OBEDIENCE TO ONE'S VOCATION
In my mind, Catholic freedom is protected by two main principles: The Freedom of the Church and The Sanctity of the Family. The strength of the Church is in the domestic Church. The destruction of the family threatens human freedom and the preservation of the Faith in ways that are unimaginable. In this sense, we are the Church and the full power of the hierarchy can not ultimately defend Catholicism from our self-destructive attacks on her Domestic Church. If we want the Faith to flourish in America, we must recognize this as our most essential service. We have an obligation to know our faith, to live by our faith and to raise our children in the Faith. We are obliged to fix our families, to fulfill all of our obligations to our families and to adhere to the moral and sexual teachings of our Church.
The Church in America can survive any and all damages that the hierarchy might impose on her. She will not survive the damage of our careless neglect of our first and most authentic lay responsibility. If we are mothers, our true vocation is motherhood. If we are fathers, we have been called to be fathers. We are called to marriage as a primary calling. Everything else we do is in service to the family. The 'true' best interests of the family must be our primary concern.
I am not claiming that women should be second class citizens. We live very long lives. We can afford sequential commitments. We can raise our children and later, participate in 'all the works of man'. Our parents made the sacrifice for us and I believe it to be indecent that we do not make the same sacrifice for our children. If any of you are old enough to remember, this was the original game plan of the feminist movement. Society was to change to meet the needs of women. It wasn't supposed to work in reverse. It simply can't work in reverse.

OBEDIENCE TO ONE'S PRIEST
You have surely noticed that I am truly enchanted with the centrality of our lay mission to propagate the faith among our children. Perhaps this is why I consider the following story so pertinent. It involves a newly married couple.
The wife is fixing a roast for dinner while the husband, leaning against a kitchen counter, reviews the day's mail. Every once in a while he glances lovingly at his wife. Just before she places the roast in the oven, the wife cuts about an inch and a half of meat off the heel of the roast. She is about to toss it, when the husband notices what she is doing. He asks a bit sharply why she is discarding a perfectly good cut of meat. She responds by telling him that the heel of a roast isn't any good. A small argument breaks out which the wife eventually wins. Her trump card was telling her husband that her mother, who they both agree is a fine cook, always discarded the heel of a roast.
The next day, with the argument still fresh in her mind, the young wife calls her mother. She repeats her husband's claim that the heel of a roast is perfectly good meat. To her surprise, the mother agrees. She then reminds her mother that the mother never used that portion of the meat. She announces rather angrily, 'You always cut off the heel ' The mother responds 'I always had a small oven. A full cut of meat wouldn't fit inside it'
The point of the story is obvious. Sometimes, things get lost or even misinterpreted when information is passed from one generation to another. To guard against this type of distortion of the Faith, the Church provides us with parish priests. They can correct our misunderstandings and they can guide us in a fuller understanding of our faith. They can aid in our moral and spiritual development. They are a gift to the people of God.
The gift that the priest offers his people is dependent on the obedience of the laity. It depends on our humility, our willing to take correction and even our willingness to submit to rules that don't necessarily 'make sense'.
The Church's teachings on sexuality, for example, don't make sense in our modern world. They go against most of what society teaches us about 'healthy sexuality'. The concept of priestly celibacy is a hard enough to support. The idea that celibacy is a requirement imposed on all unmarried Catholics just boggles the mind. Submitting to it may very well require a formal act of obedience in it's rawest form.
Thankfully, in the case of chastity and even in the case of obedience, the discipline itself is its own justification. Simply living within the rules begins to provide one with intuitions about the grace of the rule. Later, after practicing this 'obedience of the flesh', one might find oneself gradually succumbing to an 'obedience of the will.' Eventually the realization dawns. You are no longer living this way simply because the Church says you should. You live this way because it has become your preferred way of living in the world. Chastity, although difficult, intrinsically contains the reward of personal dignity. Obedience intrinsically contains the reward of authentic freedom. At this point, you may not have the rational arguments to support your choice of virtue, but you have your own more subtle wisdom to support you.
I want to be clear that I am not arguing for 'blind' obedience. When obedience would require a direct, positive act in violation of one's well-formed conscience, a Catholic is required to disregard the command. In times of extreme internal turmoil in the Church, the requirement for discernment is heightened. I think that this is one of the reasons that the new Catechism has been such a priority for the current Pope.The whole issue of authority in a time of discord is one I would like to delve into fairly soon. That’s why I deal only with the pragmatic 'ideal' of ordinary parish life.

OBEDIENCE TO CHURCH TEACHINGS - unity in doctrine
All objections to Church teaching, begin and end in fear. That is why the Annunciation message will always be pertinent to our Faith. "Be not afraid. Christ is here."
A lot of Catholics are worried about the influence of dissident theologians. I can sympathize with their complaint. When I returned to the Church, I figured I would pick up a good contemporary overview of Catholicism. I felt that I needed a brush-up. I picked up and read McBrien's Catholicism. For a moment I was devastated. Just when I was ready to come home, I was finding that home had moved … and left no forwarding address. It was obvious that McBrien's Catholicism was not Roman Catholicism … so I wondered where my Church was hiding. Eventually I realized that it was where it had always been… in the hearts of the Faithful.
The only threat to the Faith that McBrien poses is the possibility that some one interested in the Faith might imagine he knows what he's talking about. This might keep new converts out of the Church. But most new converts will probably look in other places for information on the Church. The people who are likely to read him would be returnees. Every one of them knows that the essential teachings of the Church don't change. McBrien will only influence those who already agree with him. To any one else, he merely appears foolish and servile.
McBrien is a man of the hour. The Church doesn't need to defeat his arguments. The mere passage of time is sufficient to do so. Already his voice is lost in irrelevance. So are equally erroneous voices from the other side of the aisle. The folly of God is eternal The wisdom of men is mere storm and fury and a chasing of the wind. It signifies nothing. It is certainly not worthy of discord within the Church.
The major area of dissent within our community seems centered on sexual and gender issues. Even euthanasia traces it’s roots to this arena. Apparently, it is not enough for some Catholics to sin. They want gold stars for it. It is equally apparent that the only gold stars of value need to be backed by the full faith and credit of the Catholic Church. Even in charity, this can't happen. Sin is a form of slavery. The Roman Catholic Church is the Church of authentic freedom. Our freedom was purchased by the sacrifice of Christ. "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery" (Gal. 5:5).
Almost every voice of dissent within our community is a voice of fear. It is a failure to keep faith with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It is the substitution of transiant human wisdom or imperfect human will for the authority of God. It is a failure of nerve and a childish insistence that the world bend to the will of human beings. It is a cry of panic. It should be treated with all the gentleness necessary to soothe the underlying fear. One can stand firmly and gently in the truth of the Faith and defend our Faith in full charity. This is how adults respond to another's panic, with firmness, patience and inspirational courage.

OBEDIENCE TO OUR LAY MISSION
We must relearn the fundamentals of the faith. We must incorporate Church teachings on faith and morals into the very sinew of our souls. We have a duty to Catholicize the culture, not one to Americanize the Church. As I 've previously implied, parishes should be our fueling stations, not our parking lots.
This is no longer a minor concern. The culture of death has achieved significant sway in our country. Every aspect of our greater culture is being subtly and systematically distorted. As parents, as doctors, as lawyers, as teachers, as media professionals, as accountants, as mechanics, as people of every and all professions, we must engage the world as transformative Catholics. We must bear witness to the Church in the very places where it might cost us something. We can be the predominant culture if we truly engage the world at the level of our daily lives.
Back in pre-Vatican days, this was a mild and almost lukewarm commitment of lay living. It was almost a form of Catholic non-participation. Today, it is the only authentic Catholic participation. We should leave the priests to tend the home front. We, the laity, should head for the battle field where the war will be lost or won.
So there we have it -- PRAY, PAY AND OBEY -- Yet this is only Catholic Lite. The Vatican Council has called us to so much more. We are called to transform the world. We are called to sainthood.
The Church That Failed
Beyond the Catholic Inferiority Complex
Spirituality in the WorkPlace
Catholicism: What Else is There?

Labels: Pray Pay and Obey

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Hierarchy of Salvation
Why doesn't the pope do something? Why is he so slow to react? Why is his response so measured? Why hasn't he taken a broom to the Church hierarchy in America? In recent months, these questions have received a lot of attention. It seems to me that the key to understanding the pope's apparent inaction is the recognition that Jesus turns everything upside down and inside out.
A humanly designed hierarchy has power and authority concentrated at the top of a pyramid structure. The higher up one goes, the smaller the population and the greater the power. This structure tends toward tyrannical control and bureaucratic processes. It fails to engage the passion of most participants. It can lead to indifference or competitive behavior.
Government agencies are an example of this form of hierarchy. Most people (especially from the outside looking in) see our Church as another. But, just as the interior life of a Catholic is radically different from the interior life of a secularist, the interior life of the Church is radically different from the interior life of a secular institution.
The corporate life of the Church is based on the principle of subsidiarity. Authority is concentrated at the lowest level of the organization. Higher levels are support structures for the level immediately below them. Each level of the organization has a particular responsibility.
It is only when the lower level directly requests aid or when it is manifestly clear that the lower level has lost the competence to perform its function that the higher level involves itself. Then the higher level acts only to strengthen the original unit and only for so long as the original level is in crisis.
In Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II reminds us: "A community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support dit in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good."
The primary role of the parish is to strengthen the family in its service to God. Just as the role of mother and father are complementary, mutually supportive and in some ways exclusive, the roles of the family and of the parish Church are also complementary and exclusive
The parish supports the spiritual life of the parishioners and provides the basis for a larger involvement in community. Equally important, it lends support to 'families in crisis.' The parish provides spiritual sustenance to the family (via the sacraments) just as a father provides for the material needs of the family. In this relationship, the parish is masculine and the family is feminine.
The lowest level of Church in the Catholic hierarchy isn't the parish. It's the family. That's why we refer to the family as the 'domestic church'. It is also the basis for our defense of the 'sanctity of the family'. The sanctity of the family is a guard against the interference of 'higher' powers, whether they be Church or State. The responsibilities of the family are tremendous and they are not to be usurped The family is responsible for the transmittal of Catholic culture, Catholic doctrine, Catholic morality, etc. Parents are a child's first and final human authorities.
I think that it was John Paul 2 who said that the family is a union of love and it is only in a union of love, that authority and liberty can authentically coexist. Raising children is based on the dignity of the child. It is based on a complementary relationship between parental authority and personal liberty in support of the child's call to authentic freedom.
The key to Catholic society is this mutually supportive and complementary coexistence between authority and liberty. It is made possible by emulating the natural structure of the family. One of life's primary vocations in the eyes of the Church is the role of parent. Even though a father may be called to be a lawyer or a mechanic, this is a secondary calling. It is necessarily in service to his primary vocation of fatherhood. The strength of the Church is in the family and the primary mission of the Church is in the family.
At the next level, the parish becomes feminine and the diocese becomes masculine. The diocese doesn't 'interfere' in the organic functions of the parish unless either the pastor directly requests assistance or the incompetence of a parish is clearly manifest. The parish has its own authority commeasurate with its responsibility. The diocese supports these functions but refrains from usurping them.
To rob a pastor of his rightful authority is as wrong as robbing a parent of their authority in the family. It would deaden the parish because the passion and authentic freedom of the parish would be suppressed and subverted. A properly run parish on the other hand is going to be alive with grace because the pastor is supportive of parishioner's authentic freedom while at the same time maintaining the necessary authority to shepherd them in truth.
It is at this level that the idea - 'In essential things, unity; in doubtful things, liberty; in all things, charity' - really gains significance.
Parishes in order to thrive have to be responsive to the authentic gifts of their parishioners and to the authentic gifts of the 'host' culture. [Unfortunately, even - or perhaps especially - at this level, there seems to be a question of what 'local' values are authentically valuable and a question on the actual scope of the authority that authentically belongs to the parish.]
There are a couple of ways that the diocese might know that a parish is in crisis. First, as I mentioned, the pastor might request help. Second, parishioners might complain to the dioceses and the diocese might send some one out to check up on things. If you have a parish where only one or two members are complaining, it's very possible that the diocese will assume that most parishioners are happy and that things are really okay.
Remember the bishop is going to assume that the hundreds of families in the parish are authentically Catholic (through the oral tradition of the domestic church) and that these hundreds of families are fulfilling their authentic role in the parish much as one spouse legitimately demands her partner's fidelity to duty.
When confronted with 'rumors' of crisis, the diocese might check with the pastor as head of the parish. This is similar to a pastor checking with a husband on the health of the family. In both cases, the assumption is that the 'head of the household' is an authentic Catholic and well-versed in his responsibilities. When a lot of people complain, the diocese might delve deeper into the legitimate realm of the pastor.
A well-run diocese will support the authentic freedom of a parish while at the same time maintaining the Catholic identity and the Catholic mission of the parish.
The diocese also has authority over the schools, hospitals, social services etc within its domain. This is primarily a teaching authority and as such the bishop is responsible for the authenticity of liturgy, doctrine, moral teachings etc within his diocese.
Bishops in America have been negligent in this duty. They have allowed too many things to fall into the realm of 'in doubtful things, liberty'. I suspect that this may be the really crucial area of episcopal neglect. Ideas do have consequences. Similarly, errors in liturgy have consequences. They have a direct impact on the interior life of Catholics just as false doctrine has a direct impact on the exterior life of Catholics.
When it comes to rogue theologians and sundry dissidents, the responsibility for discipline rests primarily with their immediate bishops, and not with the Pope. The Pope is unlikely to usurp another bishop's authentic authority unless the disorder is totally out of control. The pope has insisted for years now that Ex Corde be implemented. Our bishops ignore him with the casual disregard that some spouses apply to their partner's legitimate complaints.
Sooner or later, things can (and obviously have) reach a level of dysfunction that requires a strict 'laying down of the law' but even in this, the pope acts in corrective fraternal support of the bishop. His duty is to insist on fidelity to the Church.
In thinking about this, two ideas are equally important: authority and liberty. The authentic liberty of each smaller/lower Church must be closely and 'jealously' guarded by all parties. The superceding authority of the Pope must intervene when the authenticity of the Church herself is being threatened by internal disorder (or superior external force).
The Church is modeled on the family. If the Church were run like a secular hierarchy, she would end up being an organization of men rather than the living organism that is the Mystical Body of Christ.
The key thing for the laity to remember right now is that the real power in the Church has always been in the hands of the laity. If we sincerely want to clean out the Church, the people of God should be doing everything in our power to repair the domestic church. I imagine that by the time we're done, the bishop's will have taken adequate care of their portion of this mess.

Labels: Hierarchy of Salvation

. . .

Wisdom to Know the Difference

Gregory Popcak over at Heart, Mind & Strength thinks that Catholics are suffering from a new mental health issue called Catholic Bipolar Disorder. He identifies "two irrational poles in the crisis; 'the interventionists' and 'the inspirationists.'" In his judgement, the interventionists want to take over the bishops' jobs in setting things right and the inspirationists want to dump the whole problem in God's lap.
I'm sure that he speaks to all of the reformers and all of the restorers and all of the lost children of post-Vatican syndrome. He isn't speaking to me. I'm here to defend the Faith -- in its entirety. I'm here because too much has been taken from me already. Too much has been destroyed in my limited lifetime. I'm here to say: No More.
This is my stand. No one will destroy one more iota of my culture, without my best effort to stop them. The reformers and the restorers and the radicals and the neophytes can all find some other target for their power politics. This is my war now, and I will defend my Church.
The American "way of life" has its own flaws. We've had Nixon and Carter and Clinton. Not one person suggested that it was time to change the form of secular government. No one started screaming: "Hey, let's replace democracy with monarchy." Even when the Supreme Court had to determine the next president, no one suggested that democracy was a bad idea. Instead, Americans said let's find democratic ways to fix it.
America is the longest-living experiment in democratic rule, yet it is less than 250 years old. Already, it's faltering. The Church is 2000 years old, so don't expect me to buy democratic, Protestant or 'American' solutions.
Yes, we have a Catholic problem. And yes, history teaches us that it will 'solve itself.' But in the meantime... we have a Catholic problem. We need to apply Catholic answers.
Gregory suggests (quite sanely) that: "The only mentally healthy way I can approach this crisis is by being very clear about what I can and cannot do." He then continues "As soon as I don't do enough, or try to do too much, I become polarized. I will either be depressively overwhelmed with the immensity of the problem, or consumed by self-righteous indignation and try to rebuild the Church single-handedly, or vacillate between the two."
There is a more reasonable alternative. There is the daily living of the Catholic faith. There is "the role of the laity." There is the every day application of Catholic answers. One answer surely is prayer and fasting. Another answer is "minding one's own house." We must begin again to raise adults rather than children. We must build and maintain strong families. We must know our priests.
We must perform our proper function within our parish. We exist in a complementary relationship with our parish priests and we have a right to demand fidelity from them. This is what most Catholics quite naturally do. And let me be clear, we don't do this with a presumption of guilt on the part of our priest, any more than we would assume infidelity in a spouse.
Gregory suggests that we should fulfill our mission as prophet. I agree and I will say this to those who ask. "God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor 5:21). When Christ died, he took on the sins of the world. Our sins were credited to Him and His holiness was credited to us. This is the mystery of the Cross. It is also is a mystery of the Church which exists as the Living Mystical Body of Christ. The holy Church (whose holiness is wholly of Christ) takes on the sin of Church members (who are her human element) as her own communal sin.
This is why it is not enough to 'blame the bishops' and to insist that the sin isn't ours and the need for penitence isn't ours. As members in the Body of Christ, we, the body of Christ, become sin so that all our human members may become righteous. We are literally and metaphysically one Body. This is also why our personal attempts at holiness impinge on the sin of the errant members of our one Body.
If you would prophesize, say this: "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." (John 3:16 )
If you would be priests, do what priests are called to do. Attend daily Mass. Instead of simply celebrating the Eucharist, affirm in your heart that the priest offers the Mass as sacrifice in Atonement for the sins of the world. This is the unique act of the Church. It is the Mystery of our communal Salvation.
Lastly, if you would be kings, recognize that as Catholics, we already possess and are exercising the solution to this crisis. What we apparently lack is a viable method of preventing the next one. The question, we have to ask ourselves is what our proper role is in ensuring the fidelity of men who apply to the priesthood. Do we have a role in overseeing or monitoring their formation? This is a legitimate question. Possibly, probably, our role is limited to prayer: prayers for vocations, prayers for our priests, prayers for our bishops. It's a powerful weapon. It's too bad that we've been so late in deploying it.
Oh... then again, we might raise fine sons to be priests.
The laity live in the parish in the dual role of spouse and beloved daughter. We have both the complementary rights of a spouse and a child's right to her father's protection. We have the right as children to demand that our pastors guard the safety and integrity of the parish. Yes, the bishops failed and we were not informed of the problem that lurks in our midst. Now, however, we do know. The solution has become a quite simple thing: we must exercise due prudence.Before taking on our "three-fold mission of being prophet, priest, and king", we should remember that we are made in the image and likeness of the God who we call Father. We should be certain that we are exercising this role. Even those of us who are single female heads-of-household are obligated to this duty. As parents, we (the laity) have the protection of our children as our primary and 'inalienable' responsibility.
Catholics have an obligation to judge men. Generally, although we may be slow to condemn men, we are pretty good at judging them. This probably explains those instances where parishes have risen up in defense of their priests. They have judged their priest and they have found him worthy of service. They don't deny the past. They don't exonerate the man. They simply say: "His sins have been forgiven." ... and he is no threat to us. Catholics believe in the conversion of the heart. Perhaps this is because so many of us have experienced it.
Catholicism is at heart local and personal. If we each tend our little corner of Christendom, the entire world becomes a garden
Although I think most of Gregory's advise is harmless enough, I do find some faults with his argument.
First, I doubt that "Whatshisname" over at Disputations has been suggesting that "God Himself must descend on a cloud and appear to you before you can be authorized to fulfill your prophetic mission." It's more likely that he is merely stating the Catholic argument that: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."
Especially today, many lay Catholics are intent on exercising some kind of authority - whether institutional, spiritual or moral - over their brothers and sisters in Christ. They lack the competence. As members of the laity, we are all equal in authority. Prophesize all you want, just don't expect your voice to carry any more weight that the next Catholic's. Whatshisname's voice is as authentic and as empowered as any other Catholic's. Your voice is one among many and it will be treated as such.
Personally, I liked "Whatshisname's" post on St. Catherine of Sienna. And even though I personally think that Emily is great, I thought that his post A holy fool's folly? was on point.
Second, I have a slight argument with Gregory's assertion that "if I am fulfilling what I prayerfully discern is my unique role as a prophet in this crisis, then I can face the crisis fully and not be dismayed or have a troubled mind, because I--at least--am doing my part. God wants no more or less from me, and as long as I do that much, even if the rest of the Church goes to hell, literally or figuratively, I can rest easy in his arms, and he will be pleased with me." As a Catholic, Gregory should know that this just isn't so. Catholics don't believe in the supremacy of conscience. We believe in the supremacy of truth. We also believe that the Church is the pillar and foundation of truth. Catholics know that they stand with the Church or they don't stand at all.
Third, whether or not "Whatshisname" mentioned it, Catholics believe that priests and bishops have charisms that are not given to the laity. We believe that priests and bishops are gifted through their office to adequately and appropriately correct our misunderstandings, and guide us in a fuller understanding of our faith. "Priests [of the New Testament] are taken from among men and appointed for men in the things which pertain to God... They are called to the front lines in the battle of the new evangelization, insofar as they are sacramentally configured to Jesus Christ, Head and Shepherd, who goes ahead of his flock." The Holy Spirit works in spite of man as well as through him.
What can I tell you...
I'm suffering from Catholic Bipolar Disorder like the rest of you guys. The only difference is that it's not the bishops who are driving me nuts.

Labels: Delusions of Grandeur

. . .

Silver Coins
Surely not I, Lord?

Before the Conference
I'm just a wee bit afraid that in addressing the current trouble over sexual immorality, our Bishops will be seeking American solutions rather than Catholic answers. If they are concerned about the high regard of the secular world and the approval of today's American Catholic, they will implement very modern open and politically correct policies. These will be American policies, but will they be Catholic? A Catholic response must consider the experience of Catholic living, which is based on a nuanced sense of personalism.
A truly Catholic policy might not meet with media approval. I hope that the bishops remember that people are supposed to be speaking all manner of evil against us. If they are not, we must be doing something wrong. We are supposed to be a sign of contradiction.
Obviously, I'm not implying that the current scandal is unfounded. The sins of our Church are very evident, although I don't know how severe the problems actually are. I don't know whether the problem is a few errant priests or a culture of corruption. I certainly am not in any position to evaluate all of the criticism.
In speaking of negative reactions, I am not referring to the problem. I am referring to the likelihood that Catholic solutions are not likely to meet with general approval. Of course, I don't really know what the Catholic answers are. I do however have Catholic questions.
I question the legitimacy of a national policy. To me, the only advantage in one is that it makes good public relations. The Church is dealing with 50 separate state governments. It isn't dealing with a single secular entity so what is gained by a national policy.
The disadvantage of a national policy is that it significantly changes the structure of the Church. The Church is local and She is universal. She is not regional or national. She should not be. The idea of a regional Church impinges on our universal nature and usurps the authority of the local bishop. Eventually, it will lead to divisiveness between the various regional Churches and might very well further rupture the universal Church.
A second disadvantage is that the mode of government would change from one in which responsibility can be clearly assigned to a single person to a government of 'the commons' where authority is ambiguous at best.
Thirdly, we should recognize that a cultural disconnect exists between the universal Catholic church and the church in America. Do we want to further alienate ourselves from Rome?
A final and more pragmatic consideration would be the legal/financial ramifications of such a move. Would the Catholics in Omaha be financial responsible for the malfeasance of a bishop in New York or D.C? In the Kos case, the courts answered 'No' because the Conference of Bishops lacked the competence to regulate the individual bishops. The ability to mandate a national policy might establish that competence.
I also think that the lay boards of inquiry are a bad idea. Again, my reasons are several.
First, there is the issue of clericalism. I really don't think that I want well-meaning, but frequently self-important parishioners making these kinds of decisions. Frankly, it's none of their business. These boards may provide political and even legal cover for the bishop, but they are intrusive and unnecessary. Too often, the problem isn't that the bishop made bad choices, but that he relied on the bad choices of others. He merely 'signed off' on the deal.
Secondly, I think that lay boards would be an obstacle to reporting. I know that I wouldn't deal with them. I would either keep my business to myself (which means that abuse would flourish) or I would go directly to the police (which means that unsubstantiated and non-credible reporting might flourish). The point of going to the Church is to address the problem with a response grounded on personalism.
A third consideration is that these board's are likely to be highly sensitive to public opinion. Many might think that this is an advantage. I think however that justice is often sacrificed on the altar of public opinion.
Fourth, there is the issue of privacy.
Fifth, the independence of these boards will always be open to question and attack.
Sixth, there is a real possibility that some bishops will allow such boards to question or even usurp the bishop's role in determining the final outcome of a review. What right of appeal exists when a judgment of the board is questioned? If a right of appeal does exist, why establish the intermediate step?
Seventh, what special charism do the board members have that would suggest they might be more competent than the bishop? What gives these people who are basically strangers the right to enter my life? Why, as a Catholic, should I grant authority over my life and my family to other members of the laity?
Eighth, if I can not go discretely to my priest about matters of grave concern, do I even have a priest? Is he not reduced to a mere technician of the sacraments rather than a minister of truth?
Finally, in going to the Church, I would be seeking truly Catholic answers. Catholic answers are not legalistic or bureaucractic. They are personal and they require a commitment of one-on-one negotiation.
Church Panels' Role Under Review
I am not alone in questioning the one strike policy
I wonder whether the Church should be placing such an emphasis on psychological evalutation in seminaries, and later, on psychological testing and rehabilitation. If nothing else, I would imagine that our badly burned bishops might have learned that psychology is a fickle mistress at best.I think this may be an area where 'the old ways' are the best ways.
I think that I've been clear in my objection to mandatory reporting. It seems like a violation of the sanctity of the family, a usurpation of parental authority, an infringement on the domestic church and a violation of Libertas Ecclesiae. These are issues that I would like to see addressed.
I suspect that it has been a practice to temporarily and even permanently assign troubled priests to chancery offices and seminarian instruction. I wonder what the implications are if this is indeed the case. I also wonder if it is wise.
I wonder why the bishops are so removed from the problem. Why are they delegating this responsibility to underlings and boards? Why can't they arrange an hour or two a week in special 'confessionals' or sitting rooms where they might personally hear initial allegations? Why aren't they sitting in on the subsequent discussions between the complainant and the priest?
The 'old Church' was exceptionally good at establishing boundaries. I was raised in it. To this day, I've never had a priest in my home. I would love to have my priests in to bless my house and visit for dinner. The trouble is: I am from the old school and I am single. Having a priest in my home would violate silly, old fashioned and necessary boundaries. Even now that I am well into middle age, the training and habits of propriety assert themselves. Maybe it's time that we re-introduced silly and yet appropriate boundaries.
These are some of my Catholic questions. I hope in Dallas there will be Catholic answers.
One final thought: How can we demand chastity of our priests, when the penance for fornication is "three Hail Marys"?
--Addendum--After the Conference
When I was young, a man I knew was charged and convicted of a 'white collar' crime. I knew this man to be highly ethical and beyond reproach. People who knew him would confirm that perception. The case in which he was involved was one of technical complexity. People familiar with the issues generally agreed that the jury didn't have the foundational knowledge of the 'industry' to reach a well-informed verdict. People unfamiliar with the issues gossiped.
I know that this miscarriage of justice had a profound effect on me. Years later, when I was in college, I had, as a class assignment, the task of reading and commenting on a then-popular book called 'Super-Lawyers'. After 3 chapters, I put the book down and refuses to pollute my mind any further. Instead, of addressing the 'scandalous revelations' of the book, I directed any remarks to the lack of scholarship and professionalism of the instructor who had encouraged such naive interpretations in his students. The book was nothing but innuendo, inference and deliberate misrepresentation. It was rather like the art of 'modern' journalism. It was simply ahead of its time.
I guess I've always had a natural affinity for Missouri. If you want my opinion, 'show me' an unbiased view of the evidence. By this, I don't mean to imply that the secular press has been anti-Catholic. Again, you would have to show me the evidence.
The one thing that I will say, however, is that this 'scandal' was ALL ABOUT SEXUALLY DEVIANT PRIESTS until the sex involved was homosexuality rather than pedophilia. Somewhere along the line, we should get back to the issue of sexual misconduct.
In the meantime, let's talk about structures. Yesterday, (actually the day before), I spoke of a lay response to the current troubles. Today, I'd like to suggest a Catholic exploration of the situation that might be useful in addressing the hierarchical aspects of the problem. First, it seems to me that, whether it's been done well or poorly, the historical approach of the bishops has been to address both the 'needs of the victim' and the 'duty to the priest'. Even the external needs of the community were considered both in terms of the Church's liberty and Her reputation. The aspects of the problem that weren't being addressed ( perhaps weren't even being considered) were the internal needs of the community. The efforts in Dallas are an honest attempt to address all of these issues.
I think some of the answers are very Catholic. ["The first obligation of the Church with regard to the victims is for healing and reconciliation..." ]
I think some of the answers are very American. ["We authorize the establishment of an Office for Child and Youth Protection at our national headquarters."]
I think some of the answers are very post-modern.[" When the accusation has proved to be unfounded, every step possible will be taken to restore the good name of the person falsely accused."] ... but perhaps necessary. Or so Cardinal Woolsey might argue as he did in a "Man for All Seasons". He too thought it legitimate that pressure be applied to the Church would make Her pliant.
These may all be good short-term answers, but I hope that long-term solutions will consider the way in which we are constituted as a people. I would like to see more attention applied to the principles of subsidiarity and personalism.
Subsidiarity would recognize the prior authority of lower institutions. It would recognize the authority of parents in determining whether or not reporting would be made to secular authorities. Personally, I feel that the Church, for her own protection, should do everything reasonable to encourage reporting. She should not, however, usurp the parent's a priori authority, particularly in cases involving the very young.
Subsidiarity would also recognize the natural authority of the parish in addressing issues that are of immediate relevance to the local community. Possible areas where this might apply might include some of the following scenarios.
When contemporary charges are made against a priest, some churches may want to issue a general statement saying that allegations of abuse within the parish have been made and asking anyone with unreported problems to step forward.
When charges are decades old, a parish may wish to retain their priest.
Some parishes may be willing to accept a reformed priest into ministry provided that he has made them aware of the problem.
Someday, when we are more certain of our priests' fidelity and our bishops' governance, some parishes may be willing to accept a reformed priest without prior knowledge, merely on the pledge of their bishop.
I am certain that a reflective examination of the current Troubles would reveal several areas where the role of the parish in addressing clerical abuse might be enhanced. I am not suggesting a free-for-all. Nor am I suggesting another dark alley in which sinners can hide. I imagine, however, that having identified areas for parish participation, the diocese might then provide each parish with a few choices on addressing the particular issues. For each identified area, each parish could determine and publish which option they choose to work under. Each parish policy could be internally reviewed and reconsidered every five years.
The question of 'how' the parish chooses would be up to the pastor of the parish. He could decide unilaterally, consult his 'empowered laity' or even put it up to a vote of the parish membership. If he used a voting system, he could allow only parents to vote or give each parent twice the voting rights as non-parents, or whatever he believed to best serve the interests of his people.
There might be an additional safeguard employed to ensure that the complementarity of pastor and parish member was respected.
Personalism should also play an important role in the investigation and disposition of recent cases. Much as I hate to criticize our bishops, I think that this is an area where they have been remiss. They should be physically present when new situations are addressed. They shouldn't send representatives or underlings. This is one of the truly significant actions of the local bishop. It is a portion of the 'salvation' business of the diocese. And we all know that the business of Salvation is the true business of the Church.
-Addendum--A Final Thought
Between the Dallas conference and the article on Emily Stimpson's blog where USA reports that 90% of American Catholics want more government control of the Church, I've begun to wonder how we'll spend our thirty silver pieces. Hey if we are going to turn the 'Body of Christ' over to the control of the secular authorities, we might as well get paid for it.

Labels: Silver Coins

. . .

Be Not Afraid

Back in October, I mentioned that I would be taking an hiatus from blogging. As most of my readers might guess, I am a strong advocate of personalism. Yet, an initial and superficial glance at this philosophy does not provide techniques by which we might fulfill our global obligations. The philosophic stance of personalism seems to have little to add to the discussion of our global responsibilities. I needed a way to translate personalism into a global concept. I recognized that my conclusions (whatever they might be) would fall outside the scope of Catholic 'traditionalism'. Thus I felt that this blog, designed to reflect traditional wisdom, was an inappropriate forum.

I am now in the process of developing an alternate site that will explore these particular interests and address other more personal attachments.That site is currently 'under construction' and will probably remain in this unfinished state for quite some time. At the moment, I am at the stage of simply pulling together some of the resources that I might use and highlighting some of the articles that influence my thinking. Eventually, I hope that the site will evolve into a personal 'cognition map' that I will find useful in structuring my relationship with the world. You are more than welcome to stop by there, but at the moment it is far behind where my thinking has taken me. In a sense, I'm still playing catch-up. (Too be honest, it's currently very mundane.)

Quite naturally, the premise of my alternate blog is Catholic but it is also highly individualistic. If it ever catches up with my life and my thoughts, it might be considered a reflection of my individual incarnation of Catholicism. In this, it is intended to reflect the vast freedom and diversity that can be found in the life of the Church.

All too often, it is implied that there is a rigid sensibility to Christianity that establishes quite arbitrary grounds for exclusion. There is a seed of conformity that threatens the imagination. I am of the opinion that the ways in which one might to be faithfully Catholic are as varied as our human souls. We are each uniquely creatures of God's own wisdom and we are uniquely designed to fill our place in the Mystical Body. Catholicism is not, and can never become, a one-size-fits-all denomination.

To me, the stream-of-consciousness that I might someday capture on my new blog is a more interesting experiment in virtual community than this traditionally grounded blog. It is more far-ranging and more ego-gratifying. Actually, the mere fact that it is ego-gratifying may imply that it risks becoming 'an occasion of sin'. While I continue to feel that there is substantial value in highlighting the more innovative, imaginative and conceptual aspects of living as a Catholic, I have decided to place that site on the back-burner. Although I might sense that it could become more engaging than A Religion of Sanity, It is also much less necessary.

After prayer and some reflection, I have decided that my primary emphasis will remain at A Religion of Sanity. In some ways, this comes as a disappointment. I had felt that most of the postings on this blog were self-evident. I didn't believe that there was much need to repeat myself; and I certainly never anticipated a requirement to 'de-construct' our modernist/Americanist premises. To me, their failures are simply too self-evident. Recent correspondence has convinced me otherwise. The habits of our Americanist premises are deeply held by some Catholics. Today many of them pose a substantial threat to the Faith.

One of my correspondents highlighted the fact that Catholicism, and freedom of Judeo-Christian religion, is under a concerted attack by forces that oppose the Judeo-Christian ethic. For years, Father Groesel has been pointing out that the crisis is upon us. Prior to the 'scandal', and on more than one occasion, he suggested that the 'State' would soon find ways to close our churchs, confiscate our Church properties and deny us the rights that we have taken so much for granted. I don't think that he envisioned our current state of affairs but his timeline is proving extremely accurate. The question that faces us today is how we might best realize our shared mission in the face of such hostility. The only viable answer is that we hold fast to the Rock of Peter. In the future, I will be addressing various aspects of the question being posed by this moment in history, the answers being posited and the forces that oppose us. As always, I include the following caveat: I am one Catholic voice among many, living the Catholic moment and reflecting 'the living memory' of our Catholic faith.

I don't know who said it but I read recently that "Jesus, the light of the world, kindled the fire of this world war in those days when he declared for the divine rights of humanity against the assumption of those who falsely claimed a divine right to oppress and enslave humanity." In other words, the Church has always lived in a world hostile to her premises.

In the very beginning, Jesus Himself warned us, saying "Remember the word that I said unto you: The servant is not greater than his Lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you." And again, "Take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten: and ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them."

Hostility to the Church is nothing new. Traditionally, martyrdom for the Faith is an expectation of the Faithful. As children, we were taught that at an moment our world might be altered in such a way that we would be forced to a choice between this world and the next. We were raised on stories of contemporary (particularly Chinese) martyrs and we understood the duties imposed on us by Faith. Don't misunderstand me. I'm not claiming that any of us would have (or will) make good martyrs. We simply recognized the plausibility of such a scenario. In other words, we would remain unsurprised. We took the possibility in stride.

Perhaps, the best way to illustrate this perceptual context is by comparing the reactions of two contemporary American Catholics to the abuse that many priests have had to endure in light of the current scandal. The first, who was raised in the post-Vatican Church, told the second that she had seen her own pastor remove his Roman collar so that he would not be subject to the stares and the possible rebuke of strangers on the street. She was expressing tremendous sympathy for the priest. The second Catholic, raised in the pre-Vatican Church, demurred slightly but had little to say on the subject. Later, perhaps because she had been dwelling on the conversation, she was more outspoken in her opinion. She admitted that when she heard such stories, it made her mad enough to spit. She wondered aloud "What kind of priests do we have today? Don't they know that they should be willing to die for the Faith? If they can't handle a little verbal abuse, they have no business in the priesthood."

Although it sounds harsh, I think that the older Catholic has a better sense of the current situation. She better understands the demands that it places on us. This isn't a woman in denial. She has been shocked and dismayed by the crisis of homosexuality in the priesthood. Don't imagine that she is hiding her head in sand. She isn't hiding her head at all. She is quietly, unassumingly and boldly reclaiming Catholics who have been scandalized into a denial of the Faith.

In dealing with rebukes that she frequently encounters, she follows the advice of her Master: "But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." She remembers the story of St Paul on his road to Damascus. Her Catholic hope remains firm that, somewhere in the not-to-distant future, she will be able to claim "He, who persecuted us in times past doth now preach the faith which once he impugned."

A friend of mine once admitted that every time she heard news of a shooting, she would pray that the shooter wasn't black. It's not that she wants tragedy to visit non-black communities. She simply recognizes that a crime committed by a non-black will be viewed as a single non-representative event. When a black person commits an attrocity, the entire race is tarred by the same brush. Since the insinuation is subtle and not necessarily universal, it is impossible to refute and equally difficult to escape.

Another friend of mine feels a sense of personal shame whenever she sees black strangers 'behaving badly.' It is not a simple matter of being overly concerned with 'other people's opinions'. It more closely resembles a child's tested and somewhat strained love for a wayward parent.

In both cases, these women's reactions are colored by prevailing prejudices, by their interpretation of those prejudices and their own ethical judgements. Their natural reactions are complicated and frustrated by the immediate and irrefutable facts that lend them such pain. They must develop viable answers to some tough questions. The issues that they deal with include the following. How does one deny the erroneous interpretation of events in the face of such glaring and 'supportive' facts? How does one reach behind the facts to tease out the truth without disparaging the weight of the evidence? How does one condemn the actions of one's people while affirming the culture that underlies them? Perhaps the most pressing dilemma is how one might simultaneously deny and affirm affiliations for the both self and the other

I imagine that a great number of Catholics today can identify with this tangle of emotions. We face many of the same questions. In addition, we are stymied by the horrific nature of the problem confronting us. We wonder how one can even begin to address these questions in the presence of such pain. A sense of outrage and the anguish of betrayal underscore all of our responses.

Nevertheless, we do have to ask these questions and we do have to come to terms with the less explicable aspects of our Faith. I've been lucky. Through such an effort, I have come to a new and deeper appreciation of our Faith. I've discovered just how reasonable and worthy of respect our institutions actually are. I've come to understand them in light of our Faith. In doing so, I have had to revise so many of my ill-considered and secular assumptions. I have measured both the strengths and weaknesses of our Catholic institutions. Strangely, while so many have come to the opposite conclusion, I have come to trust our institutions.

This is not to say that I imagine our institutions to be immune to corruption or abuse. I don't. Like many Catholics today, I am disconcerted by the rumors of a Lavender Mafia. I am sickened by the sins that are crimes and the sins that are no longer crimes. I suspect that there are indeed members in both our clerical and lay leadership who abuse the Church which they are called to serve. I do not know with certainty who they are and I will not sully our Faith with speculation. It is enough to be reminded that such hazards exist.

Naturally, each of us feels a duty to respond effectively and constructively to this crisis. The one thing on which almost everyone seems to agree is that we can not afford to return to 'business as usual'. We have to change something...anything.. everything. There are those who feel that our 'system' has let us down. Many are humiliated that our 'structures' weren't up to exposing this problem. Some of us feel and express a measure of gratitude to the secular press for uncovering this mess.

Yet in the end, what has really been accomplished? Old crimes have been uncovered, but will new ones be better prevented by the steps we have taken? Will injuries uncovered be forgiven? Will a greater number of souls be saved? Can we say with any certainty that this 'scandal' has resulted in a better Church? Can we even agree on what constitutes a 'better' Church? It seems that in a time of crisis the best any one is willing to do is to push their preferred agendas... on other people.

Somehow it seems to me that the solution lies elsewhere. I can't help but think that it lies in allowing God to push His agenda on all of us. Even now, it seems that we are most lacking in what we most need. We need personal humility and confidence in God's love for His Church. We need to remember that it is God's Church and not ours. We need to live such Catholic lives that people are drawn to our community as the only sane alternative in a world gone mad. We need to love God with our whole heart and our whole mind and our whole soul and our whole strength. And then, we need to do what He wills.


A couple of weeks ago, I found this posting, over at Bettnet.com

From St. John Eudes: “The most evident mark of God’s anger and the most terrible castigation He can inflict on the world are manifested when He permits His people to fall into the hands of clergy who are priests more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds. Instead of nourishing those committed to their care, they rend and devour them brutally. Instead of leading their people to God, they drag Christian souls into hell in their train. Instead of being the salt of the earth and the light of the world, they are its innocuous poison and its murky darkness. When God permits such things, it is a very positive proof that He is thoroughly angry with His people, and is visiting His most dreadful anger upon them. That is why He cries unceasingly to Christians, ‘Return, O ye revolting children...and I will give you pastors according to My own heart’ [Jer. 3:12-15]. Thus, irregularities in the lives of priests constitute a scourge visited upon the people in consequence of sin."

I think a lot of Catholics would find a measure of truth in these remarks. However, I'm not sure that there is a consensus on the nature of our sinfulness. In a way, this is a significant aspect of our communal problem. We no longer have a mutually agreed-upon definition of what it means to be Catholic.

At the most fundamental level, a Catholic is someone who is baptized in the Faith... even excommunicants are Catholic. Some Catholics are practicing. Others have fallen away. Some Catholics are in rebellion and others are faithful to the Magisterium. When we think of the Church in America, we must consider the whole Church and not simply that small segment of the Church that sees things our way.

The moment that we begin to think in these broader terms, we are forced to admit that the "scandal" is a Catholic scandal that involves both the laity and the clergy. The scandal in the clergy has only recently come to light, but the scandal of the laity has been visible for a very long time.

Most of us choose to ignore it. We begin by denying the relevancy of lapsed Catholics and slowly but surely we draw our circle of 'real Catholics' smaller and smaller until there is only room for" me and thee ... and sometimes I wonder about thee."

Suddenly, instead of being one people, we are as sectarian as Protestants. We have feminist Catholics, 'quality of life" Catholics, gay Catholics, social justice Catholic, temperance Catholics, rad-trad Catholics, conservative Catholics and only the Lord knows what else. Every one is so sure that they have the only valid brand of Catholicism.

When I was new to the blogging community I expressed the following sentiment:

Thirty-five (forty) years after the Council, Vatican II should not be a moment in the Church that divides us. It should be a table of communion where the old and the new bring their best fruits to the service of the Church.

...the thought has been buzzing around my head that we really should be looking to reconcile the various factions in our faith community. Perhaps for the first time in years, we are talking to each other rather than past each other. We are all faced with a humiliating Catholic event and we are turning to each other for answers, for explanations and for affirmation. Rather than attacking each other, we are identifying with each other as members of the same faith...as partakers in the same mystery. Perhaps this is one of the unanticipated blessings of this moment. If we avail ourselves of the opportunity, this may be an instance in which God turns evil to His own purposes and re-invigorates His people as a universal priesthood, ...as a people set apart. Regardless of where we stand on Church issues, today we are all immediately at one in identifying ourselves as Catholics.

This issue that divide us are real. Many of them are central to our Faith. Most of these issues -- actually ALL of the issues that are truly central to our Faith -- aren't ours to decide. If they were, we would no longer be worshiping the God in whose image man is made. Instead, we would be worshiping the god made in man's image. If we find a Church that agrees with us 100% of the time, we can be certain that we have found the wrong Church. God is greater than any of us. He is going to baffle us at least some of the time.

It's safe to assume that God is also wiser than any of us. He is wise enough to know how very opinionated and very stubborn we can be. For this reason, He has gifted us with a Church whose teachings on Faith and Morals will always accord with His Truth, His Life and His Love. They will not always accord with our values. But that's okay, because we all have something to learn about living. The sense of discovery is a part of the joy of living and, when whole-heartedly practiced, so is the art of obedience and fidelity to the Church that graciously shepherds us.

SInce we are all sinners, perhaps we can once again extend our definitions of Catholic to the entire Catholic community. The Pope has said "The grave challenges confronting the world at the start of this new Millennium lead us to think that only an intervention from on high, capable of guiding the hearts of those living in situations of conflict and those governing the destinies of nations, can give reason to hope for a brighter future." In addition, he has given us the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary. Perhaps we might all agree to say a rosary daily. We might ask all of the Catholics we know, practicing or otherwise, to say one rosary every day (with or without belief) or even once a week or once a lifetime starting this week. One rosary for the salvation of the world and the safety of our own souls.

Perhaps you'll be laughed at, perhaps you are even laughing now, but one rosary... 15 minutes out of a lifetime... what can it hurt? I know that there are those who will say that mere repetition of words does not constitute a prayer. But the rosary is prayer with the power to transform even the coldest of hearts. For a lost or lapsed Catholic, the mere repetition of these words may start a subterranean movement that, after long gestation, reaches the very heart of forgetfulness and regenerates the Faith. 15 minutes...what can it hurt?

Labels: Be Not Afraid

. . .

The Scourging at the Pillar
I live in New York. I don’t know Cardinal Law, but I do know that he gave the eulogy at Cardinal O'Connor's funeral Mass. He was quite simply amazing. All the 'power people' were in St Pat's that day. Cardinal Law took advantage of his captive audience to speak to them of the sanctity of life and the sin of abortion. He 'spoke truth to power' and the powerful squirmed in their pews while the Catholics erupted in applause. He was a Prince of the Church and the Church was glorious. I don’t imagine that the people in power have ever forgiven him for their televised discomfort. I imagine many in politics and the media might be feeling a small satisfaction in his sudden and torturous 'disgrace'. Perhaps I don't see Cardinal Law as clearly as others. For me, the halo of that moment will always surround him. I have heard the accusations and I have tried to follow the news closely. I disagree with the opinion polls. I suspect that Cardinal Law is a courageous man and a good bishop.
I love Chesterton and there is a quote that reminds me of a bishop's terrifying office: "It was no flock of sheep the Christian shepherd was leading, but a herd of bulls and tigers, of terrible ideals and devouring doctrines, each one of them strong enough to turn to a false religion and lay waste the world. Remember that the Church went in specifically for dangerous ideas; she was a lion tamer. The idea of birth through a Holy Spirit, of the death of a divine being, of the forgiveness of sins, or the fulfillment of prophecies, are ideas which, any one can see, need but a touch to turn them into something blasphemous or ferocious."
As bishop, Cardinal Law 'rode herd' on a diocese saturated with the 'spirit' of Vatican II. Every kind of Catholic inhabited his diocese. I am certain a great many of them have (ever so vocally) pressed to transform the Church into their particular vision of Her. All of these contrary and difficult 'goats' (and we have all become opinionated goats) were his to shepherd. Surely, he hoped to bring his people …slowly,… firmly, …gently … back into the fold of the Church. Such shepherding requires tremendous patience and resolute prayer. I imagine that every bishop wants to join Christ in saying: 'Those that Thou has given me, I guarded. And not one of them perished…(John 17:12) '
I don't think any of us can appreciate the delicacy and diplomacy that such effort requires. I think most Catholics, given such a burden, would give it their best shot. I think Bishop Law did and is doing the best that he knows how. My dad always told me that this is all God ever asks of us. I'm sure mistakes were made. We each make mistakes every day. On many occasions, I have made costly mistakes and I have been lucky enough not to have to pay for them in full. On some occasions, I have paid full price and, on others, the cost was borne by non-participants a.k.a. innocent victims.
Today, people may claim that the Cardinal's 'lack-luster' performance has alienated his flock to the point where he can no longer lead. I think such statements are foolishness. The future is not yet written. The Lord has said "My grace is sufficient for thee, for strength is made perfect in weakness". St Paul proclaims "Gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the strength of Christ may dwell in me. Wherefore I am satisfied, for Christ's sake, with infirmities, with insults, with hardships, with persecutions, with distresses. For when I am weak, then I am strong"
Cardinal Law is the bishop of Boston at this moment of crisis precisely because God has ordained him for this task. God may yet surprise (and delight) us. In some far away tomorrow, we may hail Cardinal Law for his faithful execution of his duty to our Church. And, regardless of how we measure this man, God has His own yardstick. I do not know the truths beneath the scandal in Boston. I'm certain that God does and so I leave the judgment of Cardinal Law in His most capable hands. In the meantime, I will add my prayers to the Cardinal's and trust both him and the Church.

Labels: The Scourging at the Pillar

. . .

O
Feed My Sheep

I imagine that some people may view what I said on Friday as a copout. They won't see the power within this position. The power, however, lies precisely in the acknowledgment of objective spiritual realities. By conforming our actions to these realities, we gain strategic and tactical advantages. In a sense, we are positioned on the high ground of the battlefield. We see the topography from an advantaged position. If we are to rebuild the Church, we need this perspective. We need to remember that the truths we utter about the nature of the Church are objective truths.
An objective Truth about the Catholic Church is that She is holy. Ordinarily, we recognize that this holiness is an attribute of God and not of men. Of late, however, there seems to be a tendency to see this holiness in purely mythic or mystic terms. The holiness of the Church appears as an ideal or high-level spiritual reality that exists in some parallel universe beyond time, space and the messiness of man. It is in the Church Triumphant or in the New Jerusalem where the holiness of the Church resides. The mundane, concrete Church of sinners and suffering and sorrow and sin is conveniently distinguished from the high Church of our imagination. People talk about this dirty little institution of venality and banality as though She were a thing apart from our Holy Mother Church. This, we are assured, is the Church experienced in her alter-ego state as ‘it’.
The argument suggests that there are two Churches. There is the true and beautiful invisible Church and the dark, soul-deadening visible church. Some even go so far as to imply that the ‘good people like us’ are members of the shining church while all of our crazy siblings are in that less than presentable ‘it-church’. While it may be popular, this image of the nature of the Church is an unhelpful bit of dualistic thought. The real significance of the Holy Church is that She is one Church of divine grace and human failing
When I was young, there was a typical Catholic story (similar to our modern urban legends) that used to make the rounds. Today, with Catholic culture so altered, it might need some explaining, but back in the day, it spoke for itself. Anyway, the story goes like this. There was a bum who lie dying in a hospice or perhaps a shelter. He was a coarse, drunken brute of a man. There was no grace or humility or pain resident in the man to call forth a sense of shared humanity or even pity. He was the dregs of humanity and he was a nasty, complaining son of a b. He cursed the nurses who cared for him and he rejected any form of spiritual solace with uncommon vulgarity.
On the day the doctor came with test results to inform the bum of his impending death, the man let loose a string of obscenities. The doctor, with the attendant nurse, backed away under his tirade. A little later, the nurse returned with a priest. Despite the bum’s curses, she introduced the two and went on her rounds. Later that night, again making rounds, she found a strangely subdued bum. For the first time, he spoke to her civilly. He thanked her, and told her he had received the sacrament for the dying. He asked her how she had guessed that he was Catholic. She replied that even in his most foul tirade, at every mention of the name ‘Jesus’, he gave a small but discernable nod. A lifetime of sin had not erased this last remaining reflex of a Catholic upbringing. This sole remaining vestige of the Faith was sufficient to make possible his soul’s salvation.
To me, this story signifies what is meant by the holiness of the Church. It is a holiness that nothing – no sin, no devil, no man – can ever quite eradicate, It is intimately tied to the human dimension of the Church and thus in a way it is intimately bound up in evil. Despite this close proximity, there is no crossing over of the evil to tarnish God’s real and holy presence. The Church is holy even in her degradation. She remains always one Church, one Body in Christ. A dualistic interpretation of the nature of the Church fails to honor the strength found in true nature of the Church. A more apt simile might be to compare her to the Person of Jesus. In Christ, we have two natures in one Body. The same might be said of the Church. The difference lies in the exercise of the human aspect of this single personhood. In Jesus, the human aspect of His person is perfected. Quite obviously, the same can not be said for the human aspect of the Church. Just the same it is necessary, if we are to be true to the Church, that we recognize the integrity of Her personhood. The Church is holy because She is the Mystical Body of Christ and as members of the Church, each of us partakes in that holiness.
We know that Baptism effects a change in our very souls that is utterly inalienable. God claims us as His own with a claim can not be undone. No power in heaven or on earth, no power of spirit or of man can erase the mark of our communion. As a thing apart from human mastery, we are made holy. God sets fire to our souls and that fire is an eternal flame. While Baptism is not, by any measure, a guarantee of heaven, it does unite us to the Mystical Body and it joins us to the grace that is Christ’s own.
We believe that there is an efficacy in this sacrament, and in all of the sacraments, that exists quite apart from our human endeavors. We have no knowledge of the intricate workings of this Mystery but we do know that its power and its purpose is independent of our own. Always, -- in our lives and our prayer, in our sins and in our complacency, -- there is the miracle of Baptism working, sometimes at cross purposes, with our intended meanings.
This is the holiness of the people of God. It is the root and the mystery of the greater holiness that is fully expressed in the Holiness of the Church. It is the perpetual touch of God’s grace in our very human, and at times very degraded, lives. Perhaps this is the Catholic mystique that underlies all of our other mystiques. It is the platform from which we might explore the nature of the priesthood and the Catholic concepts of authority and freedom.
Baptized Christians are different from their unbaptized neighbors. We possess a quality of wholeness that was lost to our race in the beginnings of time. In some unfathomable manner, that aspect of our soul damaged by original sin is restored to us as belonging wholly to God. Through Baptism, the very definition of our humanity is substantively different than that of the unbaptized. We are new creatures through the power of Christ. This newness is a thing of God and not of man. It is not dependent on us and it is not subject to us. It is a purity beyond the touch of mitigated beings.
I make this point in order to make an equally essential point. Priests are unlike any other creature of God. At the most fundamental level of human meaning, they are not like us. They possess a power beyond our imaginings. Priests, through ordination, are ontologically changed into men of sacred power and authority. They have the power to consecrate the Eucharist transubstantiating Bread and Wine into the Body and Blood of our divine Savior. Priests have the power to absolve us of our sins. They have the authority to make whole what was broken. They have authority over the devil himself, and all the evils that flesh is heir to. No mere Christian, no mere Catholic has the essential conformity to Christ required for such feats.
The power of the priest is not a human thing. Though it is wholly an attribute of the priest, it does not belong to him but rather to Christ in whose image he has been configured. There is a great mystery in this. An even greater mystery lies in the realization that the sacred power of priesthood is not a sure guard against temptation or sin or even degradation. What we might wish to consider a shield is quite probably more a lightening rod drawing the attention of man's great enemy. More mysterious yet, is the understanding that a priest's humanity is unimpeded by his priesthood. He remains a creature of freedom - open to both sin and sanctification.
A non-Catholic Christian can experience a calling from God, get the appropriate education and become a theologian or a minister. A Catholic who follows the same course can become... a better educated Catholic. The thing that distinguishes the priest is not his particular gifts nor his education nor any of the elements that lie within his control. The essence of the priest is that He is commissioned by Christ to a sacred office. He receives his power and his authority in a direct transmission of power that began with the Apostles and has been personally imparted from one generation of bishops to the next generation of priests.
This is not a fantasy for children ... and it is not a mere technicality. It is a constitutional element of our faith. In Catholicism. there are no mere externals. The 'laying on of hands' is not an empty gesture; it is a transferal of authentic power.
In addition to the sacramental power of the priesthood, each priest possesses a divinely mandated authority to teach the authentic Word of the Living God. This is an aspect of his priestly vocation and it differs significantly from the human talent of persuasion. It is a gift of grace and a reality independent of human will. The teaching authority of the priest is not an unrestricted right to propagate his personal opinion or even the opinion of scholars. It is the authority of Christ to speak the Truth in Love.
Today, so many of our people and our priests seem subtly cut off from the power of the Cross. They are children of their age and much taken with the latest theories in the ever-changing wisdom of mankind. Many are captivated and held captive by the limited vision of our particular prejudices. Often, it seems that priests, particularly in our most troubled parishes, either skirt the edges of heresy or preach actual heresy. The idea of acknowledging their particular teaching authority may fill many faithful Catholics with dread.
I, on the other hand, see it as a tremendous sign of hope in a troubled age. A lot of pseudo-sophisticates speak knowingly of the God of Gaps. Not I. I believe in the God of nooks and crannies, cracks and crevasses. I believe in a God who works minor miracles in the small tensions between us. I believe that we have the power to call our priests to faithfulness. Rather than deny the teaching authority of a theologically challenged cleric, we should assert that authority and demand its clear implementation in the lives of our priests.
One of the great recognitions that has grown out of the Second Vatican Council is the acknowledgement of an educated and intellectually savvy laity. Our need for priests well versed in the Faith was acknowledged. Our right to appropriately scaled instruction was affirmed. We have a right to expect our priests to converse intelligently on our sacramental, moral and spiritual lives. We have a right to question them so that we might better understand our Faith and we have a right to require that they provide the necessary translations between their teachings and the authentic teachings of the Church. Instead of a simple 'yes, Father', we can ask and expect answers to questions such as "how does what you're saying tie back to 'x' as outlined in the Catechism, council documents, Bible, etc." . We have a right to be treated like intellectual, moral and spiritual adults. We also have a duty to become such adult Catholics. I think that, properly approached, most priests would respond enthusiastically to this kind of dialogue.
In many cases, you may be enlightened by the lines that our priests are able to draw between things we think we disagree with and the actual teachings of the Faith. In other cases, the attempt to draw those lines and the dialogue inspired by that attempt, might open a few priestly eyes to the possibility that they have succumbed to teaching the wisdom of man in contradiction to the folly of God. The role of the student is frequently an effective technique of education. We are suddenly required to fill in the blanks and rethink our errors. The complementary role of teacher and inquirer contains within the relationship a possibility for each actor to move closer to God.
Another way in which our priests can exercise their teaching authority is to call us to do the same painstaking analysis of our own positions. Often enough, we will probably find that our errors are as one-sided as theirs. The key to attempting this kind of dialogue is not found in denying the teaching authority of the priest, but rather in affirming that authority and in calling our priests to legitimately exercise it.
Of course, in all of this, one should never overlook the moments of grace that abound. Even a committed heretical priest can exercise a teaching authority over us to which he, himself, may remain blind. A throw-away expression, a personal criticism, a thoughtless remark -- any of these may contain an essential lesson of the Spirit. In addition, there may be simple things like the example of debating skills that we might emulate or the virtue of anger management that we are forced to develop. One way or another, there are lessons to be learned from all of our priests. We simply need to pay close attention to the significance that God intends to impart.
A final authority that the priest obtains is the authority of governance over the people in his charge. Again, this is not an unmitigated authority. It is subject to constraints both from above and from below. I mention it only in passing, because somewhere along the line, it will most probably rate a separate posting.
These priestly attributes are among the elements of the Church that contribute to Her apostolic nature. They are among the living human contributions to that tradition. The apostolic mark of the Church is more than a recitation of dead historical fact. It is a living element of the Faith. It is alive in our priests, our Bishops and our Pope. It is a part of the unchanging nature of the Church and one of the guarantees of the continuing preservation of the faith.
We are a sacramental people. We are a holy people. We are people of inheritance. It is our inheritance that establishes us as one holy, catholic and apostolic people. The True Faith is our inheritance and it is up to us to guard it so that our children in their turn might receive their portion of the promise.
One of the great beauties of the faith is that it is a family tradition. It is something that we learn on our mother's knee and at our father's side. It is integrally bound up in the actual mundane living of our lives. It is something that we know without reflection or consideration. It is simply an orientation to the real.
In speaking of faith, people frequently express a preference for either the wisdom of the heart or the knowledge of the head. They rarely consider the knowledge of the bones and sinews and flesh. Yet I imagine that all great religions first capture man at this most fundamental level.
What I am trying to express is that often Catholics act as Catholics merely because there is no other way for us to experience the world. Alternatives lie outside our framework, not because they are inconceivable but simply because they appear absurd.
A while ago, Frank Keating suggested that Catholics, who were dissatisfied with their bishop, should stop participating in the life of their diocese and take their business to the diocese 'down the street'. Some folks apparently thought this was a good idea while others objected. To me, it seemed patently absurd. It's like telling a New Yorker who is unhappy with the governor to start paying taxes to New Jersey.
Today, I can explain fairly coherently why such an exercise of choice is absurd. I can do this only because the recognition of the absurdity was so immediate and unconditional. Since it didn't appear equally evident to everyone, I felt called upon to determine the basis for my visceral response. I imagine that it is important to stress that my initial response was visceral. It was a burst of surprised laughter at the unexpected silliness of the suggestion.
I have sometimes said that I would not leave the Church for another Christian/Catholic faith simply because, in doing so, I would suddenly and always feel like a motherless child. The same logic applies at the diocese level, I would not leave my diocese, because I do not wish to be a shepherdless sheep.
When I lived in New York, Cardinal O'Connor was my shepherd. I loved him not only because he was my bishop but because He made me proud to be a Catholic. I was proud of him as my Prince of the Church. When I moved to the Brooklyn diocese, my love for the Cardinal was undiminished. The pride I felt in him had given me a heart's love for the Cardinal that relocation could not erase.
Just the same, I now belonged to the Brooklyn diocese. No matter what my heart might utter, my bones knew my true attachment. Bishop Daily is my bishop and I am tied to his service with a sense of sureness and love. In truth, I don't know that much about Bishop Daily, but I am certain that he is mine. Although I grieved the death of Cardinal O'Connor, I also felt a peace in his passing. My heart was set free to join the rest of me in Brooklyn.
You might imagine that while Cardinal O'Connor was still alive and I was newly resident in Brooklyn, my attachment to the Cardinal would have been more strongly experienced than my attachment to Bishop Daily. You would be wrong. The Cardinal, while I loved him, was someone else's bishop. Bishop Daily was my own. For some strange and human reason, we love 'our own' more fundamentally and more strongly than we love that which is not 'our own.'
When I heard Frank Keating's suggestion, this knowledge was in my blood. It wasn't something that I had words to express. I simply said to myself, in dumfounded amazement, that such a move would leave a person shepherdless. Why, in the name of all that is holy, would anyone leave their shepherd for another priest who has no episcopal authority and no episcopal responsibility to them?
In a sense, the neighboring bishop's only duty to you would be a merely Catholic duty. In such a case, the bond that should bind can't be bound. It cannot be done because the tie simply isn't there to be tied. There is no basis for the claims that one might care to make on their chosen bishop. Regardless of your choice, he is someone else's bishop, not yours. He is responsible for someone else's welfare, not yours. His episcopal responsibility before God does not extend to you.
A New Yorker, who chooses to work and reside in New York, yet pays his 'tax' to Jersey instead of New York, has no claim on the governor of New Jersey. His purported taxes are mere charity. His failure to pay taxes to New York could be costly and his charitable gifts to Jersey wouldn't figure in the equation. He doesn't belong to New Jersey. He's a New Yorker and he belongs to New York. This is a matter of identity and not mere ownership. This same element of identity and mutual ownership lies at the heart of our diocese structure.
All fathers may have the same responsibilities to their children. But not all fathers have a father's responsibility to me. Only my father has that responsibility. It was in recognition of this most essential fact that I took a second look at our parish models. Following the logic of identity and ownership led me to a new appreciation of our mutual responsibility not only to our dioceses but to our parishes. This is the heart of our mutuality with our priests. It is the humanly contrived basis for establishing manageable flocks and it creates the potential for personalism to function as a method of governance.
In one sense, our priests belong to all of us. As men of sacramental power and authoritative teaching, they have a universal charism that is a gift to the universal church. Even in terms of governance, their charism is universal. Particularly in terms of governance, however, this universal charism is very specifically and particularly employed. I don't know but I half suspect that the power of this gift is greatest when it functions within it's legitimately defined boundaries. The supernatural, sacramental bond that provides grace to our acts of mutuality, complementarity and authority is probably established most powerfully when it follows the juridical relationships established by the Church. Conforming ourselves to this reality would thus create a deeper channel through which that grace might flow.
Especially today, it should be obvious that we need all the grace we might come by.
Perhaps the biggest problem I have in discussing Catholic concepts of freedom and authority, is that I have no real grasp of the corresponding modern humanist concepts. I know, for instance, that there is a modern presumption that freedom and authority exist in some type of oppositional relationship. But frankly, I don't quite get it. To me, freedom is merely the condition under which legitimate authority can be most adequately and appropriately exercised.
Let me try to explain.
Every person has an inalienable level of authority over their own lives. They have both the right and obligation of self-determination. In other words, they are creatures of intellect and volition. This personal authority does have some limitations, but I imagine that it is equivalent to secular definitions of freedom. If my assessment is correct, legitimate personal authority would be synonomous with secular definitions of freedom.
In addition to our individual authority, we all have some measure of authority over others. The most straight forward example of this would be parental authority. Our communal authority, however, is broader than the family. As members of a community, we each have some share in communal authority. We have a responsibility to our community and a complementary authority to exercise that responsibility effectively. Determining the nature and extent of this authority is the clincher. This is true particularly where the communal authority runs up against the alternate claims of personal authority. I imagine that what most people would describe as a conflict between authority and freedom might be better described in terms of competing authority claims. The key to resolving these issues would lie in determining the legitimacy of various claims to authority.
Our possession of personal authority does not in itself guarentee the full exercise of self-determination. Our lives are constrained by the circumstances of our birth. They are constrained by our previous choices. They are constrained by other people and by world events.They are even constrained by the random movement of chance. In other words, the playing field in which we exercise our legitimate authority is subject to a variety of constraints, This - the playing field - is where I would posit freedom. I would measure freedom by the limitations that define the playing field in which we exercise our legitimate authority.
So what is freedom? For the Christian the answer is simple. Freedom is living in the Truth of Christ. It's right there in the Gospels. The truth sets us free. I imagine that a secular translation might be that freedom lies in conforming one's life to objective reality. At first glance, this is not a definition that would satisy most secularists. It's interesting to note, however, that this is pretty much the definition of sanity proposed by the psychologist Nathaniel Branden (of Ayn Rand fame). So perhaps we are on to something.
Branden's argument was that an unblinking acceptance of reality is necessary to mental health. Only under such circumstances, would an individual be positioned to act free from any form of coercion. This recommended awareness would be based on a realistic assessment of one's external circumstances and an honest appraisal of one's internal condition. An acceptance both of external conditions and of one's most raw self would provide the playing field in which one might act. The greater an individual's knowledge of these elements, the greater his degree of freedom. So again, there is the suggestion that the truth sets us free.
Within either truth-claim, there is the secondary argument that the greatest barrier to human freedom is ignorance of the truth. This might be an ignorance based on lack of information or it might be one based on truth-avoidance. It could even consist of an intellectual assent without the corresponding assent of the will. We might 'know the truth' and prefer to not to live within its constraints. Branden would probably call this madness. Most Christians would refer to it as sin.
If this adherence to the Truth is the greatest determinant of freedom, it would appear that anyone who increases our understanding of the truth would be on the side of the angels. They would be agents of our freedom. Their admonitions might be considered exhortations to liberty. With this in mind, it is easier to imagine that the teaching authority of our priests is a contributing factor to our freedom rather than a necessary constraint on that freedom.
Of course, Nathaniel Branden and Catholic teaching reach very different conclusions on the proper exercise of freedom. Branden was an emphatic atheist who truly believed that all religions - but most especially Christian religions - are destructive of human beings and of the exercise of human freedom. He believed that the only action worthy of man is service to the Self. In a sense, he believed that each human Self is his own god. As such, the pursuit of a person's own desires deserves full and total dedication. Yet, it seems to me that the disagreement lies, not so much in the logic, but rather in the initial assumptions. Inevitably, we are led to the question - what is truth?
Of course, anyone with even a passing familiarity with the Gospels will recognize that this question draws us directly in to the Passion of Christ. For a Christian then, 'lived truth' is sacrificial love. For the non-believer, on the other hand, 'lived truth' becomes an extended exercise in nihilism. The non-believer, in failing to acknowledge God, is stuck with living a lie. He is caught tightly in the slavery of ignorance and sin.
Perhaps a definition of freedom that would be more acceptable to an atheist is that freedom is the condition most conducive to a man's ability to be true to himself. Again, the Christian finds a fairly easy path. We are creatures of body and soul made in the image of God. In creating each of us, God intends our unique meaning. A Christian attempt at freedom therefore lies simply in discovering God's intended meaning and living life accordingly.
An atheist on the other hand is stuck with the realization that we are mere flotsam on the currents of time. We have no meaning. To be true to oneself under these conditions means that we simply endure all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. There is no sense in struggle since everything is meaningless. Whatever current conditions might be, they are as valid as any other possible conditions. By this definition, the junkie is as free as the intellectual and the degenerate is more disciplined than the warrior. Freedom lies in total subjugation and submission to fate.
Of course, the atheist could take things a step further by declaring that man's interior urges are as real as his external conditions. By this measure, the 'good fight' gains some credibility but it still essentially lacks meaning. One fights against injustice merely because of some irrational inner urge. Strangely in order for an atheist to be true to himself, he must first lie to himself. In his effort to attain humanity, the atheist must cross a fault line in sanity. He must pretend that something actually matters. Of course, from a Christian's perception, this foundational break in atheistic logic is simply a blind and unwitting acceptance of the deeper truth that all human beings are created as creatures of meaning and intentionality.
Since the atheist can not acknowledge an inherent meaning, he is forced to create one. I would imagine that this creation will be based in some measure on the atheist's early upbringing. It might be either an embrace of parental values or a studied rejection of them. According to Branden's theory, it should be an exercise in selfishness. Regardless of the outcome, by utilizing some measure of self-deception, the atheist establishes a sense of self. I imagine that this 'self' is the self with which he keeps faith.
In being true to one's self, both the Christian and the atheist will encounter obstacles and difficulties. Some of these will be interior conflicts and weaknesses. Others will be in the environment. Each version of man, in attempting to be true to himself, will struggle with these obstacles. Each victory will be seen as an increase in freedom. Each defeat will be seen as a subjugation. In order to be effective warriors in this struggle, both the atheist and the Christian will develop certain disciplines and measures of self-control.
Self-discipline is one of the guardians of freedom. So are prudence, fortitude and even temperance. Yes, there are some who see freedom in the absence of these traits, but such freedom is highly dependent on the whims of fortune. It is not truly freedom. It is mere ease. It is total subjugation to the vagaries of fate. This is a licit stance for an atheist but it is a very different thing than freedom.
A person's ability to be true to himself and to exercise authority in his own life is based on interior freedom. At the same time, the exercise of this freedom is shaped by the conditions under which he lives. Today, most people, in speaking of freedom, are limiting their consideration to these external conditions. Patriots of freedom will feel called upon to modify these external conditions in a manner which leads to an increased sphere in which one might exercise legitimate personal authority.
This issue of legitimacy is central to the cause of freedom. It defines the boundaries that separate freedom from totalitarianism. The slogan 'If it feels good, do it' is totalitarian. Limiting this slogan to the argument that 'I can do whatever I please as long as I don't hurt anyone else' is a first step toward establishing freedom. Freedom by its very nature requires an acknowledgement of mutuality and an affirmation of some concept of justice. In a sense, freedom itself is a constraint on human activity. Patriots of freedom are necessarily advocates of self-discipline and guardians of justice.
Once again, we find ourselves dealing with a great number of abstractions. Rather than continuing down this road, it seems appropriate to ground our discussion in the concrete judgments that people employ in their every day lives. In addressing these issues, Christians remain faithful to their original definitions. Freedom is living in the Truth of Christ. This freedom necessarily implies that the Christian must reflect Christ's truth not only in his interior space but also in his external relationships. He is called to transform his society to mirror the truth of Christ. He is called to a life of sacrificial service for the glory of God. He is called to recognize and advance the dignity of all men in recognition of the Imageo Dei resident in each of us.
The task of the non-believer is not so easily stated. It is completely dependent on the lies that he initially used to create the artificial meaning that he assigns to himself. Perhaps in the end the best that he can do is to accept ease as the definition of freedom. For the ultra-individualist, this ease may be indistinguishable from a personally exercised totalitarian usurpation of power. For the communalist, it will devolve to the greatest ease for the greatest number of people. The implementation of this ease eventually depends on the totalitarian usurpation of power by the few to implement ease for the many. Finally, for the patriot of freedom, assuring this condition of ease might imply a libertarian state of warfare and siege. Again, unless all the atheists agree to play by the arbitrary rules of the libertarian, some form of totalitarian control will eventually be implemented. As I stated earlier, I fail to grasp secular definitions of freedom.
Admittedly, some atheists would argue that our American democratic republic is the model for atheistic ideals of freedom. Unfortunately, the contemporary evidence suggests otherwise. The progression of America in the last half century suggests that we are being torn apart by the factions outlined above. Assuming a non-Christian society, it's anyone's best guess which influence will win out. Not to be too obvious, but it almost appears that beyond Christianity, there is no freedom. Perhaps atheists and agnostics would be wise to consider the possibility that Christ was right in claiming that, only through Him, we shall know the Truth and the Truth shall set us free.
I imagine that all Christians live in some measure of agreement with the idea that we are called to live in the Truth of Christ. Admittedly, there does seem to be significant differences of opinion in how Christians might best know that truth. Non-Catholic Christians see this as a personal intuition based on their reading of the Bible which they hold to be the sacred word of God. Since these religions are an offshoot of Catholicism, they more or less accept the preserved tradition of the Catholic Church that exists in the Bible.
I don't mean this disparagingly. I imagine that they believe that up to some historic point the Church was indeed the guardian of truth. She held the power to correctly identify those fragments of written witness that attested to Christ's truth. Perhaps, they feel that this was the only intended role of the Church and that, having compiled this record, Her services were no longer required. In this view, the charism of infallibility would be limited to the compilation of this written record. Of course, this doesn't explain why some books are missing from the Protestant record but I'm not particularly concerned with this discrepancy. My concern is more with Catholic concepts of authority and freedom.
Catholics, like other Christians, see human freedom in terms of our created meaning and our conformance with Christ. We believe that freedom lies precisely in living the Truth that Christ imparted to his disciples. Anything that increases our ability to live in conformance with that Truth provides an increase in freedom while anything that hinders us in that effort is a diminishment of our essential freedom. Our knowledge of God increases our freedom while our participation in sin diminishes our freedom. The central issue for us, as for all Christians, is how we might know that Truth.
We begin at the beginning with an acknowledgement of original sin and with a sophisticated awareness of the consequences of that sin. We recognize that, in ourselves, we are insufficient to determine objective Truth. We need guidance and, in the course of living, we need correction. We accept that the truth Christ came to reveal is necessarily a revealed truth and one that must be taught. We need to hear His Word which means that, in every generation, there must be someone to teach His authentic Word.
Simultaneously, we do not believe that Christ came to impart the truth to the limited handful of men who actually heard Him speak. We do not believe that He left the future transmission of His message to the vagaries of chance. We do not believe that the mingling of human errors and half remembered truths is sufficient to determine the objective nature of reality. In other words, fully cognizant of our own sinfulness, we don't quite trust ourselves to play God. We expect that God has made the appropriate arrangement to ensure that his Truth does not perish from the earth. We accept as fact that Christ established His Church so that the Truth might be perpetually proclaimed. In the words of our creed, we believe in the holy catholic church. We see Her as the authentic agent of the Holy Spirit.
As Catholics, we see two mutually supportive paths through which the truth of Christ is preserved. The first is our lived tradition. This is commonly referred to as the 'Sense of the Faithful'. The second is our preserved institution of hierarchical and priestly authority. This authority culminates in the infallibility of the Pope. A great number of non-Roman Catholic Christians have difficulty with the claim of infallibility. This may be due in part to a misunderstanding of the actual claim but there is also a genuine difficulty with the undiluted claim itself. To a Roman Catholic, this difficulty is hard to comprehend. To us, the alternative appears to be a claim that each and every Christian obtains this measure of infallibility. To us, such a claim suggests self-deification.
Anyway, Catholics trust both the legitimacy of the 'Sense of the Faithful' and the legitimacy of the teaching authority of our priesthood. We see each as a guardian of the fidelity of the other. We recognize that, in terms of our day-to-day living, the possibility of error is always present. The faith we learn from our parents will be subtly altered by their lived experiences. The teachings of our priests are subject to their openness and fidelity to their priestly vocation. The possibility exists that our individually inherited faith has been distorted from the authentic Truth of Christ. The possibility exists that some of our priests might cut themselves off from God's authentic service. In such cases, it is to the larger picture that we look for reassurance of our fidelity to Truth. Where there are discrepancies, we look to the authentic teachings of the Church magisterium.
These teachings include the authority of our priests to correct our errors. They include our authority to call our priests to the faithful exercise of their function. It is true that priests are the servants of God's people, but this truth is necessarily a subtle one. Our priests are our servants in the same manner that we might claim that fathers are the servants of their children. The service of the priest is ultimately a service of authority. This is similar to the authority that a father exercises over his children. It is the authority to train his children in responsible adulthood and the authority to call them to maturity and freedom. The priest who properly exercises his authority does so, not at the expense of our freedom, but as a necessary condition of our freedom. For freedom's sake in every generation, God raises up His priests to teach His authentic Word. It is their sacred duty and devotion to comply with His Will.
Today, there is a lot of focus on the failings of our hierarchy, but, I suspect that a close look at the contemporary 'sense of the faithful' would reveal the same fundamental flaws. As a people, almost overnight, we have moved far from our roots. Is it any wonder that the priesthood has moved along side us? Today, it would appear that neither the fidelity of our priests nor the contemporary 'sense of the faithful' are to be trusted.
A great many of us feel that we are left with no choice but to fall back on our own personal resources. Some look solely to Rome as though the intermediate layers of authority might be abrogated at whim (or perhaps only in grave necessity). Others look to their own hearts and their privatized brand of the larger Catholic faith.
The suggestion that we should practice the formalities while trusting God to look after the larger issues leaves many of us with a sense of queasy uncertainty. Trust me. It's not an easy position to advocate and it is not an easy role to adopt. It demands a simple - perhaps even a simplistic - trust in God. It demands the brutal application of humility both in expression and in practice. It demands a formal and stringent self-limitation and an application of a standard of immediacy that is severe in its restrictiveness. The only positive thing that one might say about this suggestion is that it contains the seeds of liberation.
I live a small life. I imagine most of us do. I live in a small community with colleagues, neighbors, friends and family. I will never 'make my mark on the world'. I will never establish policies or renew the fabric of our great society. The most I can hope to accomplish is to live a small but authentically Catholic life. Amazingly, this is precisely what my faith demands of me.
I don't know whether men with same sex attractions should be allowed in the priesthood. I may have strong opinions on the matter; but I lack the competence (the charism) to make that determination. I do not know how the bishops might best address the current problems in the Church. Again, I lack the competence. Luckily, as in so many other cases, I don't have to know. I will not be judged on the answers I provide. My soul is not in the balance.
The things I will be judged on however are things within my purview. I will be judged on my own fidelity. I will be judged on how carefully I cultivate my children's faith. I will be judged on how fully I satisfy my obligations to my parish. I will be judged on all the elements of the small life that I live.
Yes, I know that something is amiss in our Church and yes, I recognize a personal obligation to act in a manner that might rectify what is wrong. I assume, that if this obligation is real, then there should be a real response that I can apply to the problem. It is this that leads me to our complementary role in parish life. The exercise of this role is do-able and it has the potential to profoundly effect change in my small portion of Christendom. On the other hand, my ranting and raving might satisfy my sense of self-importance but no one has really asked for my opinion and I doubt that many would be interested in it. Even if my tirades were effective, how could I possibly know that they would effect good?
To me, it appears better to apply my efforts in a more substantive manner. This is why I have chosen to look so closely at so many of the minor assumptions of our milieu. One of the things that I firmly believe is that our initial assumptions frequently place us in situations where all 'answers', no matter how varied, lead to the same result. When our initial assumptions are wrong, everything that proceeds from them is wrong. To get anything right, we have to get beyond those cultural assumptions. We have to return to the essentials of our Faith, even when they stand in contradiction to modern assumptions. The Faith is unchanging, and it is the Truth. Once before, the proclamation of this Truth changed the face of the world. Why should it's effect be any different today?
I have been adamant in my insistence on recognizing the legitimate authority of our hierarchy. I am equally adamant in my insistence on recognizing the legitimate boundaries of that authority. One of the errors of the pre-Vatican Church is that these boundaries were blurred beyond all reason. The blurring of boundaries occurred on at least two levels.
The first was a misapprehension of the status of the non-priest religious. They were deferred to with the same measure of obedience as that which is owed to our priests. This subservience was and continues to be a mistake. They, like the rest of the laity, lack the charism of the priesthood. At one time, they may have been better educated in the Faith, and even better educated in general, than the rest of the Catholic population but they lacked, and continue to lack, the essential element of priestly authority. They were 'experts' in the secular sense of the word and their expertise rested on the same authority as secular experts. Strangely enough, considering their exalted status in Catholic culture, it sometimes appears that they held themselves in even higher regard than the laity that deferred to them.

This is an important distinction for those involved in efforts to reclaim our Church. Currently, a great number of these dedicated professional Catholics are the guardians of the "Spirit of Vatican 2" and the corrupt institutional structures of our Church. It is essential to recognize that their authority has been humanly conferred. They possess neither the charism for teaching or the charism for governance. Essentially all they are is 'better educated' and probably better positioned to effect Church policy.
Today, a great number of these Catholic power brokers may be poorly raised up in the faith. Their education, training and preference may be far removed from the essentials of Catholic Truth. In fact, their knowledge of Catholicism may be less authentic than that of the self-educated laity. Their authority is legitimately open to criticism and may be subject to strenuous lay efforts to purify the institutional structures of our Church.
This is not meant as a rallying call and it is not intended as an invitation to discourtesy. I am simply attempting to establish that the rules governing our relationship with sisters, brothers and lay members of the religious establishment are significantly different that the rules governing our relationship with our priests. We are to honor them as we honor all those who work in the vineyard of the Lord. They are to accord us similar honor.
The second significant area in which the pre-Vatican lines of authority were significantly blurred was in the rearing of our children. Prior to the Vatican Council, there were a large number of religious brothers and sisters. A significant number of whom were involved in the education of Catholic youth. The current parochial school system is a mere token reminder of the strength of the pre-Vatican Catholic education system.
In some ways, the pre-Vatican system was a tremendous blessing for the Church. It was not, however, an unmitigated blessing. Its very strength contained the seeds for the collapse of our then prevailing Catholic culture. Parents, trusting in the educational system, abdicated their inalienable obligation to raise their children in the Faith. They assumed that, by placing their children in the care of the parochial school, they were fulfilling their Catholic responsibility. In doing so, they allowed the mutually supportive yet separate paths of Catholic authority to merge and overlap into one generic area that was neither the priesthood nor the family. This concentration of authority meant that neither the priest nor the parent was pro-actively involved in their designated duties.
To be honest, this wasn't the fault of the schools or the system or even the religious professionals that ran the schools. Perhaps, the only failure of these professionals is that they were too good at their job. Thus, they provided parents with a false sense of assurance that would later betray their parental expectation. At the same time, the deference shown to their expertise may have been detrimental to their own spiritual development. For a significant time, the Catholic education system was faithful to its calling and effective in transmitting a valid knowledge of Church teachings. However, it did eventually stray ... and far worse, no one with legitimate authority noticed. Catholic parents had permitted themselves the luxury of complacency. They had abdicated their parental obligations to the professional class of experts.
My point here is not to relive past mistakes. Nor do I wish to engage in finger pointing. Instead, I want to emphatically highlight the sacred obligations and authority of parenthood. Parents have an inalienable responsibility to their children that can not be taken away and that can not be given away. Just as priests are responsible for the souls in their care, parents are responsible for the souls of their children. They are responsible for the religious, moral and sexual education of their offspring. This responsibility is one of the fundamental attributes of the principle commonly referred to as the Sanctity of the Family. When we consider our Catholic response to the current Troubles, we should include serious consideration of the authority that resides in this Catholic principle.
Today, there is a lot of criticism over the religious training that Catholics receive. It is commonly claimed that our parish educators act as though Catholicism can be transmitted by osmosis. And so the call goes out for more formalized and professionalized education in the Faith. Personally, I think that this is what got us in trouble in the first place. It is true that many of today's Catholics are poorly formed in the faith but the chances are that this poor formation is the product of some type of formalized and professionalized religious instruction.
There really was a time when the faith was transmitted inter-generationally within the family. I'm a product of that cultural transmission as were my parents and their parents and theirs in a long line of fidelity to the Faith. Most of the Catholics that I admire also received their faith in a similar manner. Traditional Catholics were well-versed in the lived reality of the Faith. They were practiced in exercising discernment and judgement. They knew the creed and the folklore that establishes the Faith as a central source of human identity.
Unfortunately, whether intended or not, one of the effects of Vatican Reform was to decimate the lay traditions of Catholicism. Despite spirited claims by Reformers that theirs was a populist revolution, the implementation of Vatican 'reforms' was the work of second- and third-tier Catholic professionals. If you look at the die-hard remnant of that revolution, this fact should be obvious. The will to power isn't any more pronounced today; it is simply more nakedly exposed. Church reforms, made in the name of the Council, were accomplished through savage ridicule and manipulative flattery of the laity and often by force majore. All of the staples of anti-Catholic bigotry were turned against status quo Catholicism by the new breed of reformers who hoped to usher in a redefined and humanistic Catholicism. This new Church would conform to modern suppositions and the possibilities inherent in a brave new world.
Today, most people are either ignorant or forgetful of the fierce brutality with which Vatican 2 reforms were implemented. Our lay traditions were decimated. Our folk culture and inter-generational transmissions were castigated as a pre-eminent danger to the Church of the Future. Our family traditions were insufficient, even detrimental, to the educated Catholic of the Future. It was necessary that these embarrassments be deliberately and emphatically suppressed or the next generation would be lost to their parents and, more importantly, to the Faith. Even today, the pre-Vatican image that the Reformist old guard propagates is one of superstition, ignorance and subservience. This portrayal is as inaccurate as their claim that they are the future. The idea that our legendary saints and stories, our statues and altars, our Latin mass and our pageantry are incompatible with a mature faith or a reasonable stance was and remains a prejudice of the Vatican 2 vanguard.
The reality is, that by the time the Reformers usurped power, an educated laity was already an active force in American society. Catholics in the labor force were well on their way to becoming the richest segment of American society, while simultaneously staying true to the traditions of the Faith. Catholic mothers discussed the Summa Theologica while they tended their children in the parks. Strangely and quite beautifully, these educated Catholics were intimately connected to, and respectful of, their "ignorant" immigrant parents. They had no trouble integrating their education, their new secular status and the traditions of their faith. They continued to rely on the wisdom of their parents and the validity of inherited wisdom.
Just the same, the Reformers were effective in imposing a radical conversion of lay culture. Up until the Vatican transformation, Catholicism was an inheritance passed through the family. The reformers sought to change all of that. They savaged lay Catholics with demeaning characterizations in the largely successful effort to destroy that inter-generational linkage. They claimed that they attacked the hierarchy but their attack was directed at the heart of lay authority. Mothers no longer felt adequate to transmit the faith and religion became a matter of book learning where parents scarcely interfered. These changes were wrenching for most of the adult laity. They were so alienating to the children that a great flood of Catholics left the Church entirely as they moved through adolescence. Others clung to the hollowed-out husk of reform and a sterile replicant of our vibrant and fertile culture. One way or the other, the revolution succeeded. The natural result of this cultural suicide was that we lost our respect for our elders, the solidarity of our families and the authority of authentic tradition. Today, Catholics are scarcely distinguishable from the rest of American society.
Still the great beauty of the Vatican Council is that the false revolution has been buried by the very real fruits of that Council. Today, I am frequently amazed at how authentically the renewed Church is re-inventing our lay traditions. Once again, Catholics in the labor force are speaking of their obligation to live their faith as an active witness to Catholic truth. Parents are again insisting on their parental authority over and above the authority of professionalized Catholics. Soon we might again find Catholic mothers debating the fine points of Thomistic theology. Even Bishop Sheen seems to be making a come-back.
Yet if we are to truly re-affirm the authentic and necessary authority of the laity, we should take an additional step. We should return to an inter-generational mode of faith transmission by calling on the wisdom of our oldest Catholics. This historic wisdom is the essential counterweight to the authority of the hierarchy. It is the substance from which the "sensus fidelium" arises. Without this connection, we remain severely disadvantaged. We are like the children of divorcees. These children may want to make their marriages work but they lack the living example of a successful marriage that their parents should have afforded them. In a like manner, we may want to exercise our lay authority but without the historical connection, we lack the accumulated folk wisdom to exercise it appropriately. Even now, there is so much that the pre-Vatican Church could transmit to us if we will only take the time to develop authentic relationships with our most senior members.
Without rejecting the authentic fruits of the Vatican Council, we must reach beyond the gray-haired revolutionaries to the people whose lives they so violently altered. In doing so, we must not underestimate the distance. So many people mistakenly assume that the Spirit of Vatican 2 was a product of the radical sixties generation. Like many of our cultural assumptions, this is a myth convenient to the initiators of radical change. If we wish to reach beyond these activists, we must remember their old adage and 'not trust anyone' who was adult, yet under thirty, back in 1960. Basically, we should be wary of those who are now between fifty-five and seventy-five and who served as a professional Catholics in the heyday of Reform. Back then, these activists cloaked their claims in the mantle of youth; today, they are just as likely to adopt the claims of experienced wisdom. Either way, their message, which so dismissive of our Faith, hasn't really changed.
Yet even within this suspect age group, are a strong contingent of Catholics who remain faithful to the traditions of the Church. A great number simply survived the age of radical dissent by relying on the Faith of their heritage. Others participated in the Church Reform effecting significant and Catholic transformations. Many who were active as laity at a local and parish level remained faithful to the actual intents of the Council, while still others were initially misled until the handwriting on the wall became evident. I must emphasize that the majority of Catholics in this and in earlier age groups have remained fundamentally and foundationally faithful. To dismiss these faithful and contributing Catholics out of hand would be a disservice to them, to ourselves and to the future of the Church. We should simply be on our guard against imposters within this age frame. By the same token, and applying similar caveats, we should consider the inherited knowledge of Catholics under fifty-five to be a pale imitation of the heritage they should have possessed.
Among the older generation, a good rule of thumb in distinguishing between the legitimate transmitters of our culture and the pretenders is to examine their attitude toward the pre-Vatican Church. If they denigrate Her, they can not possibly be positioned to transmit her fruits. If they substitute their personal experience for our inherited wisdom, they cheat us. If personal experience were sufficient, we have our own. There is no need to rummage in other people's lives. What we are seeking is an integration of personal experiential wisdom with lessons transmitted through a long line of family and faith lore.
Among the post-Vatican generation, we should closely examine root assumptions to discern whether they are human-centric or theocentric. We should exercise the same prudence in discerning our own fundamental orientation. Although humans may achieve the greatest happiness living Catholic lives, this happiness is a byproduct of Catholicism and not its aim. The aim of Catholic living must always be to know, love and serve God in this world so that we might be with Him in the next. That is our only true happiness.Always, in this age of apostasy, we should remember Christ's admonition. "I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be ye, therefore, wise as serpents and harmless as doves."
In reclaiming our cultural past, we must recognize the damage that was inflicted on the laity during the era of reform. We must move beyond the hesitations and subtle embarrassments to the actual faith experiences of our oldest members. We must hear their memories of life as it was lived and search their lives for clues to living. We must respect the stories of everyday details that impart the patience of successful marriages and the endurance of family through hardship. We must seek their practical advice to our practical problems. In doing so, we lend historic authority to our own efforts to reclaim our rightful place in the Church. We are doing more than starting from scratch. We are starting from legitimate authority. Between the wisdom of the past and the pressures of the present, we can grow quite quickly in authority.
Young cradle Catholics can look to their grandparents for insights into how one might faithfully fulfill the demands of Catholic life. There are so many secrets that these old folk hold in their hearts. They know the pain and the dignity of lifelong commitment; they know how to hold to family commitments in the face of life's atrocities; they know the discouragement of parenthood and the secrets in raising children to Catholic adulthood. They know a love that exceeds all natural limits; they know how to hold a hatred for sin and a love for the sinner so firmly in their grasp that their response could never be mistaken for either condemnation or benign tolerance. They know how to enjoy the good life without reducing the good life to mere self-indulgence and how to endure suffering without even being long-suffering. Their knowledge is the stuff of legends and it is there for the asking.
Prodigal Catholics can look to their own parents and grandparents. Converts and prodigals alike can make a sincere effort to connect with and learn from the most senior members of our parishes. Yes, you will find much dross along with the gold. However, with sufficient patience you will discover the gold and perhaps the joys of new inter-generational friendships.
There is one caveat. We must hurry. Our cultural past, which should legitimately contain the seed to our future, is rapidly being absorbed into the Church Suffering and Triumphant. When this should occur, we will have only their prayers to fall back upon.

Labels: Feed My Sheep

. . .

Under Her Wings

One of the post-Conciliar changes in Catholicism that I find both invigorating and gratifying is the influx of evangelical Christians into the Catholic Family. In some ways it must feel like a homecoming to them. In other ways, it must feel like entering a strange and foreign land. Catholicism is so very different from the individualist world that they formerly inhabited. I remember my own great conversion of the heart... my own wonder and enthusiasm. I remember the crossing over when words gained a different significance and suddenly I was struck dumb. I couldn't talk across the great divide that separates the Catholic faith from the secular world. The words were the same but the significance of the words, the language, was different. I imagine that their experience must be similar in kind though not in content.
One event stands out in my mind as typical of the experience of people new or renewed in the faith. I was temporarily unemployed. As a portion of my tithe, I was donating time rather than money to the life of the parish. On this particular occasion, I was spending Sunday morning as a librarian in the parish library. My compatriot in this endeavor was a woman slightly older than myself who had spent her entire life within the arms of the Church. The hours when the Mass was being prayed were quiet interludes in which I had the opportunity to evangelize my co-worker with the splendor of the Faith. I'll not forget her response. After all my enthusiasm and all my fervor, her reply was a simple "Of course". In one respect her response was devastating. In a quite different way, it was inspiring.
There is a nonchalance in Catholicism that could frustrate those who seek to inspire us. We are a communitarian people and we inhabit a world within a world. The ways of God are perfectly accepted in this world. They are anticipated as the natural order of things. We are quite comfortable in our relationship with the Truth. We are people unabashed by the 'wonder of God' because we exist as his people in the folds of his embrace. We don't question His fidelity and we don't question His authority. I guess we consider ourselves His legal spouse. We have nothing to prove in our love. We have nothing to question in His love. We know that we belong one to the other.
I remember another experience that was quite as unsettling in a very different way. As a gift, I had been given the opportunity to attend one of those neo-conservative(?) Catholic forums. Although the experience was unsettling, it led to a fabulous renewal of my appreciation of our Catholic culture. I was suddenly so grateful to our priests who labor so arduously and so anonymously in the service of the laity.
There is a difference of perception in the experience of Protestant and Catholic Christianity that sometimes passes unremarked-upon. It is a difference that should be addressed gently since it contains the seeds for vast misunderstandings. To a Catholic, faith is a lived phenomenon. We don't need to know everything about our Faith, in order that we may be true to it. We need to know that portion of the Faith that allows us to live our own small lives in the presence of God. Many of us live small lives of great joy. Our evangelization efforts consist of providing justification for the joy that is within us. Like the earliest Christians, we believe that actions speak louder than words and that we are called to a life of exemplary delight.
We believe, as we have been told, that our particular vocation is "to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and ordering them according to the plan of God" (LG #31). In Laborem Exercens, John Paul II refers to "the Fifth Gospel" through which we are called to follow the example of Jesus who spent thirty anonymous years working and praying and living in faithful obedience to his Father. As Catholics, we project and experience the seductive attractiveness of a fully Catholic life. We live the 'dolce vita'. Our lives are our witness to the Faith.
We look at 'on fire' tel-evangelists and wonder whether they don't protest too much. Rather than a spousal relationship with God, they project the blatant self-glorifying passion of a mistress who seeks to supplant the wife. She is afire with bold declarations and false expectations. She is constant in her need for re-assurance. She is shrill in her insecurity and violent in her vows of fidelity. Yet for all of her passion, she can't quite leave behind the world, the flesh or the devil. Her alignment with her lover exists in a crystallized prism of renunciation, repudiation and the castigation of sinfulness.
Catholics look on such righteous zeal as a bit of a puzzle. The best comparison we might make is to the ex-junkie who, finding salvation in a rehab program, can't move beyond the rehab program. Instead he devotes his life to 'saving' others. He can't quite divorce himself from the drug culture and so he must constantly engage in a battle against it. At some fundamental level, his self-identification (drugged or sober) is wrapped up in the very sin with which he now contends. To him, the greatest evil is to 'resist not evil'. Perhaps the relationship to 'saved' Protestantism is that neither can afford even a single moment of weakness. How many times can one be 'once saved' without risking all of heaven?
Catholics are less attached to sin and therefore less vehement about it. We know that it is a part of our fallen nature. We know that we will most probably fall and we know that we will rise again. We will rise again simply because virtue in the final analysis is more pleasurable than even the most addictive vice.
Committed Catholics are slightly indulgent of the new and renewed members of our community. We are pleased to welcome them home and we are delighted that they wax enthusiastically about the delights of our shared faith journey. We enjoy the fruits of their journey in a Protestant world where life hangs on the correct interpretation of a Biblical phrase. We know that the Faith is richly textured and that they add an unexpected and exotic tartness to the stew.
At the same time, there is some hesitation in our enjoyment. We have our priests. We have no need for preachers. We find their presumption disconcerting. We live comfortably in our culture and we don't require flamboyant affirmations. We are a bit fearful of a contingent so fanatically opposed to sin that it chases away the sinners. Or one so suspicious of fun that it criticizes life's great and small pleasures. We know that God's truth is nuanced and inclusive and active only in love.
We have long and subtle memories. The word Christemporos has been forgotten but the presence of people 'alive' in the faith makes us slightly suspicious of insincerity on the part of those who would "preach to the choir". We remember the earliest teachings of the faith in which the Lord's disciples taught us how to discern those who proclaimed their own truth in the name of the Lord. Early communities were warned that those who come proclaiming the gospel and stay (living off the community) for more than three days are Christemporos and false prophets. It is the task of our shepherds, our priests, to feed the flock. It is not the proper action of sheep to feed off the flock.
Since I too was a prodigal, I recognize the enthusiasm of the newly converted. I constantly defend them with the suggestion that, as they adjust to our ways, they will grow in age and grace. I remind fellow Catholics of the heady romance and vast uncertainty of love's first blush. I argue that, when these new members of community are versed in the faith, they will recognize the true calling of the Church. We can practice a parent's patience while they practice their 'ministry' on us, knowing quite well that this effort is totally ineffectual and inconsequential. We do it in the hope that they will add to the strength of the Church and that in Catholicism their enthusiasm might mature into abiding spousal love.
It is this spousal love that will transform the world. It is this love that will engage the world in exceptional embrace. The world may at times appear to be the domain of the devil, but we know better. We know it is the creation of a benevolent God. Catholics tend to share confidences in the faith, we compare notes and blessings and the small insights that enliven our days. We grow weary of a love that protests too much. Our experience teaches us that love is passed in whispers and quiet conversations set in the jewel of the night.
Unlike those saved by righteousness, we know that our mission is not to those who live in the house of the Lord, but to those who gather on the doorstep. We don't require constant encouragement or a persistent renewal of vows. We have confidence in our corporate, communal and personal fidelity. We rest in our community and act in the world.
The point of Vatican II was to escape a marginalized existence. We no longer 'preach to the choir'. It is not what we are called to do. It is not what we are called to be. The Church has spent enough time 'talking to herself' and hiding in intellectual ghettos of articulated agreement. This is a waste of our time and an insult to God's glory.
We must talk across the great divide that separates the Catholic faith from the secular world. The world outside our doors is in such terrible need of hope. We must find the necessary translations to break the bonds of secular slavery. With laughter and good fellowship, we must make our lives transparent so the love and the joy shines through the darkness of our age. The Christmas carol 'O Holy Night' reminds us of our first duty as Christians. "Long lay the world in sin and error pining, till He appeared and the soul felt its worth" We must make souls know their worth. The wages of sin are everywhere apparent. With a faith that inspires the Dolce Vita, I'm taking odds that the richness and glory of Catholicism will be an easy sell.

Labels: Gathering Of Chicks

. . .

Raising Adults
The formative education of Catholics changed with the advent of the Vatican Council. In retrospect, I think it’s a shame. Our current education appears to be so much less adequate in preparing young Catholics for the harsh reality of sin. This transformation has happened just when the common occurrence of brutal sin has become so much more prevalent.
An additional consequence of this educational change has been a huge chasm in intergenerational communication between Catholics. Cardinal Law is older than I and so I imagine that his formative education was similar to my own. Today's Catholic is nonplussed by the argument that parents were negligent or children were culpable. People don't believe their ears. They assume that the Cardinal misspoke or that he just doesn't 'get' the gravity of his sin. They assume that this is a weakling's effort to shift the blame to the victims.
Please, don't turn away from me. I have been a child. I am a parent. I have experience of life's brutality. I am from the old school and I agree with the Cardinal.
I want to explain my position but to do so, I must make quick jabs at the explanation rather than form a coherent argument. This knowledge is not in my intellect. It is in my formation.
In the old days, parents were responsible for their children's religious formation. They were responsible for their moral development and for their sexual education. In those days, Catholics were raised differently.
When I was just passed the age for 'kitchen sink' baths, my mother would use bath time to explain the specialness of my female form. First, she would merely tell me that some parts of my body were 'private'. With later baths, she would hand me the wash cloth when it came to washing the 'private' areas of my body because they were special. In my mind, I learned that their specialness made them 'holy'.
My mother's exquisite courtesy taught me that they were not to be touched by others. Later, when I was three or four, I developed the spontaneous modesty of that developmental age. This modesty was encouraged with delicate respect.
At that young age, I don’t remember my mother ever telling me about 'good touch' or 'bad touch' or about 'good grown ups' and 'bad grown ups. My early sexual education was never so blunt or so cold. It was however sufficient for the maintenance of my dignity.
I knew the limits that God places on other's behavior. I knew my right to those limits and I knew where my protection lay if those rights were ever violated. Both my authority (responsibility) and the limits of my authority (responsibility) were clear. With eight siblings, I grew up under the watchful eyes of my 'stay at home' mom.
I am not claiming that this education immunized me to pedophilia. It did something better. It prepared me for the possibility of violation and provided me with a legitimate response. I was unwittingly armed and thus both my innocence and my 'psychological' safety were ensured.
Other things my mother taught me included the lives of the saints and the lives of the martyrs. I do not know if I would have had the courage for martyrdom but by the time I entered kindergarten I had the technique down pat. This is more important then it appears. Think about it. I knew the logic of martyrdom and I understood that there are values, such as personal virtue, that are more important than my life.
Today, people make the mistake of thinking that all children are naturally good and that all children naturally want to be good and perhaps pleasing to adults. My parents and my Church were not that naïve. They knew that children were children and that, more than goodness, a child craves nobility.
We were given as goals a nobility worthy of our desire. We wanted sainthood and we were taught so many varied paths to that goal. We were children who loved God first and our parents second. My family was not unique. All of my friends had the same foundation.
Maria Goretti was a constant reminder of the potential costs, saintly rewards and the severe obligations of our Faith. We were innocent, but we were not naïve.
So much has been said about the 'aura of spiritual authority' that priests employed in seducing their charges. In the old-school, that argument couldn't hold water. Parents were a youngster's first and final authority. Our parent's deference to the religious was a deference of equality and not of servility. As children, we quite naturally and instinctively understood that most subtle difference.
People talk about the special role of the priest in Catholic life. The argument runs along these lines: We were taught to think of priests as godlike… Father said it was okay and he has the authority of God… I believed him when he said it was a third and secret form of communion… etc.
I beg your indulgence. If these arguments are in any way sincere, I am forced to believe that the parents of these victims were indeed negligent. There is nothing Catholic in any of these claims. There is however a huge amount of non-Catholic distortion.
My memory is as old as I am. In the old-school, we were taught that ordination, much like baptism, changes a person at the most fundamental level of our nature. Our very being is changed and the change that occurs can never be undone. When original sin is washed away, nothing in nature can return it to our souls. No depravity of our own can return us to that initial state into which we were born.
Baptism doesn't make us holy. It merely makes us whole. Ordination doesn't make a man holy. It merely makes him a priest. There are good Catholics and bad Catholics. Each of us gets to choose which we will be. There are good priests and bad priests. Each priest chooses which he will be.
This is not esoteric theology. It is basic childhood education in the faith. You don't have to be particularly smart to understand any of this. It doesn't require a degree of maturity or constant repetition.
Catholics don’t have the same expectations of our priests as Protestants have of their ministers. We pray for good priests but we live with priests who are merely adequate. I am sure priests, for their part, pray for good parishioners. They settle for us.
I am not defending predatory priests. I'm merely arguing that as a 'pre-Vatican' child, I wasn't raised to be easy prey.
There are other areas of parental negligence that I can cite. As a single parent, I feel entitled to make judgements that might be culturally inconvenient.
Being a single parent is a form of negligence. All children, but especially Catholic children, are entitled to an intact family. Single parenting may be the best of a limited set of options, but parents have a degree of culpability in creating the limited set that makes such decisions necessary.
At times, I fear that my adult choices might have fashioned flaws into the very structure of my child's soul. These would not be fatal flaws, but they would be unnecessary vulnerabilities for which I am responsible. It isn't a question of blame. It is the problem of consequences.
Our sins lie heavy on our children whether they are the sin of divorce or the sin of unwed parenthood. Death is the only reasonable explanation for the absence of either parent from the home.
This is not an easy truth but it is a child's truth.
I mention this because time and again, we hear that the 'betrayal of trust' was especially heinous because broken families were so vulnerable to victimization. The crimes against these families were indeed heinous but the earlier sins within the family were also heinous. Some one other than a priest left these families broken.
If we are to address the problems within Catholicism that have been revealed by this scandal, we must open our eyes and address all the problems. As the media keeps proclaiming, we have spent 20 years addressing only the superficial symptoms of our dysfunction.
I have been talking hard truths but these are Catholic truths. These truths, so alien to modern thinking, get even harder. The children, particularly the adolescent children, bear some measure of responsibility in all that happened. This is not an easy argument to voice, but it should be said. Our Church is neither modern nor American. She addresses our universal human condition and in that larger universe of human suffering, certain truths are essential to survival.
Human beings are free and responsible moral agents. We have the capacity to know right from wrong and the competence to do right or wrong. If this is not true, there is neither sin nor redemption. There can be no predator priests, no morally corrupt bishops and no victims of evil. There is simply the passing of time and the events that find their shape in time. There is merely birth and death and the arbitrary passage from one state to the next. Human beings must be free and competent moral agents.
Each person becomes a moral agent somewhere between the age of four and the age of seven. (Seven years of age is the upper range for the really slow developers.) This is why children must wait until they are seven to receive the sacraments. Before this age, their moral competence can't be assured. After this age, it can't be denied.
If my memory serves me, Maria Goretti was twelve when she was martyred. I never learned that she was a slaughtered innocent or the victim of a pedophile or a person to be pitied. She was a heroine… a saint… a martyr.. and most of all, a model to be emulated should such a situation confront us.
I learned this before I was five. I believed it then. I believe it now.
Through most of time and most everywhere on earth, human existence is fraught with physical and spiritual danger. Americans like to think that we have changed our world. To a large extent we have. But we have not perfectly accomplished this task. We can never perfectly complete this task.
Yes, the world should be a safer, saner place. Yes, we have an obligation to make it so. At the same time, we must recognize that we can never guarantee the sanity or safety of our world. We can never assume that our corner of the world is a sanctuary from evil.
Such an assumption is in itself evil. It denies meaning to suffering and invalidates the worthiness (the worthwhile-ness) of virtue. In a Catholic vision, sin and 'the poor' are more inevitably a part of life than death and taxes.
When I was a child, when Cardinal Law was a child, these realities were as much a part of our consciousness as baseball and the heat of summer. These truths were neither tragedies nor adult secrets. They were merely an acknowledged portion of the human condition.
I stand with Cardinal Law on the culpability of children and the negligence of parents. I blame neither of these parties. I do not see my position as a rebuttal or a defense or as justification for anything that has happened. I think it is simply an unflinching observation of the world as it exists.
To accept that the injured teenagers were simply innocent victims is a denial of their human dignity. Our dignity lies in being free and responsible moral agents. I think that it is more charitable to acknowledge their shame and to discern their true responsibility. Otherwise they are left with a poisonous guilt that encompasses everything that occurred.
It is better to say: you are culpable but your responsibility lies merely in not telling your parents. Or you are responsible for poor judgement. Or you are responsible for loving improperly. Or you are responsible for this small thing, what ever the truth is. By assigning guilt realistically, you re-affirm a person's sense that they have some measure of authority over their lives. You can admit that the consequences of their failing were far more terrible than the consequences that most of us suffer for similar failings. You can speak the truth in love.

Labels: Cradle Catholics

. . .

By Our Love

When you first return home, you will probably experience some measure of misery. You are likely to be a prime target for evil spiritual attacks. If you had been happy in this parish to begin with, you would not have left. Finding yourself back in the same (or worse) circumstances, and recognizing your own commitment to duty, is likely to elicit certain negative emotions, reactions, thoughts, opinions and attitudes that are themselves sinful or occasions for sin. Your first priority therefore must be a constant prayer for you own healing and a plea for divine protection against these spiritual assaults. In addition to such prayers, make proper use of your suffering. I think that it was Newman who noted that a problem of the modern world is not so much the amount of suffering but simply that so much of that suffering is wasted. Don't waste yours. Offer it to God in union with Christ's redemptive suffering for the sake of your parish and the salvation of the world. Your suffering thus becomes a form of prayer.

Your second priority is to get to know and appreciate your fellow parishioners. Catholicism is frequently a religion that runs deep in the heart. The mistake that a lot of evangelizing Catholics (from either side of the aisle) make is to ignore or dismiss this subterranean river. Instead of seeing each of your fellow parishioners as a potential 'convert', realize that they are likely to be divine lesson plans designed specifically for your sanctification. Take these lessons to heart. Dwell on their mystery. Explore how other equally Catholic visions provide burnish for your own. In a similar spirit, learn to cooperate with God's grace by allowing Him to use you in a like manner for the sanctification of your fellow parishioners. And do remember, that sometimes your considerate actions may be the only sermon that some one else is prepared to hear.

During your initial period of reunion, concentrate on cooperating in God's preparation of you for the role HE wills you to play in parish life. Remain constant in your prayer and your reception of the sacraments. Accept that the talent for 'thinking with' the parish Church provides a deep capacity to effectively influence that thinking. It's far easier to show someone the way by walking beside them than it is to yell directions to them across great distances. It also makes the trip more pleasant for all the participants. It almost guarantees that everyone will have opportunities to point out interesting 'sights' along the way. So much of Catholic conversation can be framed with the words 'Yes, AND...' or 'Almost, BUT..." Take advantage of this fact. After you begin to 'think with' your parish, become an active participant in the area of Church life that is of gravest concern to you. Don't tackle everything at once. Focus on the essentials. Go for the small change and the viable compromise. Leave the parish make-over miracles to God's own discretion.

When you rejoin your parish, you will naturally speak to the pastor of the parish. In recognition of his priestly duties, speak openly with him. More importantly, listen openly to him. Acknowledge him in your heart as your priest. Understand what this acknowledgement entails and conform yourself to that bold understanding. This may be a particularly hard thing for you to do but it is an essentially thing. It is necessary simply because it conforms to spiritual reality. Remember that those who deny reality are not prophets. They are mad men. In an age when Catholics might legitimately worry that their priest is a heretic, degenerate or an obliging agent of Satan, this submission to Truth may seem next to impossible. Perhaps the only consolation might be to realize that the alternative truly is impossible. It is a denial of everything Catholic including the Eucharist.

So now you're in a fine pickle. You've come to renew your parish Church and you find yourself subject to the authority of someone who you suspect might be a heretic, degenerate, or worse. This would appear to be a uniquely Catholic version of catch-22. Depending on the depths of your dismay and the actual condition of your priest and parish, it could very well be your own personal crucible.

At the same time, it is essential for you to realize that your priest is responsible for his parish as one communal people and for each and every parishioner in his charge. He is charged with a responsibility for you as one of his parishioners. He therefore has a commensurate amount of authority over you including a teaching authority.

So what is a Catholic in such strange straits to do? First, you should know your faith and you should remain aware of how little you know of your faith. Second, you must accept the possibility that your assumptions are in error. Third, you must be open to the possibility that your knowledge of the faith is faulty. Fourth, you must accept the possibility that your priest is adequately discharging his duty. His perspective may be very different than yours simply because he is required to view the parish differently than you do. His knowledge of his parish and his individual parishioners is most likely far superior to your own. Give him every benefit of doubt. Remember, you were not called to his office. He was.

Take the time to really consider what it means when we iterate our common platitudes. God does indeed make use of the tools at hand. He does exercise transformative power over evil. He does govern His Church and He so loves His Bride.

We have a tendency at times to interpret things in the worst possible light. It is so easy to see heresy where it might not exist. I can give you a brief example. I heard a beautiful homily once on the Eucharist. It was perfectly crafted and wonderfully delivered. The enthusiasm of the priest was a quiet joy. Everything that he said was true. Everything he said was something to wrap your mind around. In the entire homily, however, there was no hint of Transubstantiation.

I was a visitor in the parish and so I haven't a clue why this mystery was unmentioned. Perhaps, the priest was a heretic. Perhaps he assumed this Mystery with such faithfulness that the mention seemed as unnecessary as an acknowledgement of the Sun. Perhaps, he was simply trying to highlight the secondary aspects of the Eucharist in a "Yes AND..." Perhaps, he felt that the acceptance of the Mystery was a shared assumption of his parishioners. Perhaps he felt that a homily was inadequate to address the Mystery. The point is... that I don't know why, and it would be wrong for me to jump to conclusions.

As a parishioner, however, if I was troubled by this omission, it would not be wrong for me to approach my priests with my concerns. Before doing so, it would probably be wise to study my own heart so that I might truly recognize the substance of my concern. I need to know what MY problem is, or at least acknowledge that the problem is mine, before I can seek his help in resolving it.

Another example: While at Mass, I froze on hearing the words "look not on my sins but on my faith." I was deeply offended by such a minor change in the liturgy. I was in a tizzy of outrage. On reflection, I recognized that I was panicked by the change. If God weighs my sins against my faith, I know for sure which way that scale will lean. I know in my depths, that I need the entire 'faith of Your Church' to be thrown into the balance as a credit to my account. Always it had been in the scales and suddenly I was to ask for a completely different and far less adequate arrangement. It blew me away. When I went to the priest, this was the anchor to our discussion.

I don't mean to suggest that we are making mountains out of molehills. I don't believe that this is at all the case. I think however that too frequently we tend to challenge our priests rather than question them. Our challenges may act as conversation stoppers. Our questions, on the other hand, might be eye-openers. This is not meant as encouragement to engage in manipulative behavior. It's meant to encourage a humble heart.

I know that I haven't addressed the tough calls. Even with the best of intentions, to address them properly is simply beyond my competence. This competence is the province of our priests. Thank God, we do have so many good ones who will do us the good service of guiding us through these difficult shoals.

. . .

Let’s assume that you are willing to shoulder your responsibility as a lay Catholic and that you recognize your duty to your proper parish. There is a chance that you will find yourself in a parish that is in trouble either doctrinally, liturgically or morally. Before you start a crusade or raise an army, consider the following…

When I was still a member of the archdiocese of NY, I attended several seminars at the archdiocese's center for spiritual development. The idea behind the center is fabulous and I take it on faith that a good number of the offerings are truly orthodox. Just the same, I did find some difficulty with the programming. Frequently, we were exposed to small errors in Christian thinking that have the potential to result in some major misdirection of the inner life. One example comes instantly to mind.

One particular seminar series was proceeding swimmingly until the Sister in charge expressed the belief that our own truest self is Christ. It follows, therefore, that we need merely listen to that small inner voice and follow our hearts into a guaranteed heaven. We could know and trust that voice simply because... at our deepest center, we are all Christ. We were assured that this is the heart of Catholic teaching.

Most people may have kind and generous inner voices. I, on the other hand, don’t. Trust me, I've listened to my small inner voice and its basic refrain is 'me, me, me.' My inner voice isn't even a good guide to civility, let alone Christianity. Anyway, I did feel the need to note this personal deviance from holiness. I also suggested that the Bible teaches us to 'put on Christ' rather than that we are Christ. The class suddenly got interesting.

The reason I mention this is not to argue the theology. Rather, I want to highlight one important aspect of the program. Most of the attendees at the center were people very like myself. They were interested in deepening their understanding of the faith. They were eager to learn and yet they also did know the faith that had been handed down to them.

When I spoke, everyone suddenly spoke. Immediately, there was a lively, open and exploratory discussion. I think that we were all better off for that give and take. We all walked away with something new and something old. The faith was defended and the 'new' ideas were suddenly being interpreted in light of that faith, rather than in contradiction to it. Sometimes, it only takes a very small effort to transform a conversation. And sometimes that small effort is required. If I had kept silent, there would have been only one interpretation available...and it would not have been the most Catholic one.

In the same vein...
When a decision was made to introduce a sex education program into our parochial school, people were given an opportunity to evaluate the film series that would be used. We were asked for feedback in an open forum. One of the issues that the series dealt with was the issue of homosexuality. In the film, the refrain "I don’t know what the Church teaches about homosexuality but...we should all love one another ....treat each other with dignity... etc" was constantly cropping up.

I raised only one question. "Since we are presenting Catholic teaching on sexuality, don’t you think that it is appropriate to ‘know what the Church teaches' and isn’t it appropriate to get a film that will fairly and adequately reflect that teaching? I guess it was the one unanswerable question because that particular series never got off the ground. Or at least it hadn't at the time I moved.

Another day...
I was an instructor in the CCD program and we had been issued new textbooks. The new book claimed that Jesus didn't know that He was God until He hung on the cross(?)...rose from the dead(?). I'm not quite sure when the insight was supposed to have hit Him. Anyway, I went to the head of the program and we had a lovely and rather ineffectual debate on the nuances of Jesus' self-knowledge. All the latest thinking and so forth.

At the end of the session, I was left with one question that I was contrary enough to raise. I asked about the finding in the temple. Was I really expected to believe that, when Jesus said that He had been about His Father's work, he was referring to a carpentry project? We shared a good laugh. The end result. The textbooks weren't returned but neither were we required to use them.

We all have stories. My point is that every day we are given tremendous opportunities to defend the faith and clean up the church at the most mundane levels. These interactions needn't be antagonistic. They don't have to be close minded or dogmatic. They can be open, sincere, mutual and even humorous. We can engage each other at the level on which we live our lives. In joy, truth, laughter and love, we can keep each other sane and we can keep each other Catholic.

A few caveats:
Be as eager to learn your faith as you are to spread it.
Listen and be open to the fullness of God's truth. However much you know, there is always more to know.
God's Truth has its own appeal. It doesn't require a good wordsmith or an expansive personality or a dogmatic defender. It simply needs to be spoken. Sometimes, repeatedly.
And keep in mind the motto of this blog...
in essential things, unity; in doubtful things, liberty; in all things, charity.

Tomorrow, I hope to start looking at our relationship with our priests under these more difficult conditions of parish service.

. . .

Before looking at other aspects of Catholic communalism, there are a few aspects of family based parishes that I think are worth highlighting.

The first is the rough and tumble nature of such parishes. Family-based models are most likely to incorporate a diverse population in terms of needs and objectives, They therefore run the risk of supporting a higher level of conflict and personal intensity. Clashes between claims may to be more strongly experienced and more strenuously pursued. Since substantial aspect of community life are in play and there is only the one playing field, the game can occasionally get rough.

The role of the pastor in such parishes is far different from the role he might play in fellowship communities. The family model almost demands that the authority of the pastor be exercised in a more traditionally masculine manner. Rather than merely working on a consensus-building model, the priest must be prepared to lay down the law. There will be times when, like a father in a large family, he will simply have to say that various protagonists have taken things too far or are in danger of doing so. He will have to listen to both sides of an argument and then determine unilaterally what will work in his parish. Disagreements will have to be ended, handshakes exchanged and matters settled. His word will have to serve as a law that binds the members to his decision and to one another. This is the only real way for families to work.

A second aspect of such parishes is that they probably produce hardier souls. In fellowship models, it's likely that members will exist in general agreement. The pastor may be involved in smoothing people's feathers, building consensus and other ego-stroking efforts. No one is overly likely to butt heads with hard facts contrary to their expectations. People live in general agreement with each other. This is not the case in a family model.

In family based parishes, subjectivism is always running smack up against objective reality. There is little coddling of the various antagonists by the opposing 'parties'. In this atmosphere, each member gains a realist measure of their own personhood. We get to constantly test our impressions, our strengths, our failings, and our goals. One could argue that family-modeled parishes address our very real need for humility by providing us with fairly accurate self-portraits. They also provides us with plenty of opportunity to develop strengths through the healthy exercise of parish involvement. We have opportunities to learn true tolerance, to experience sincere conversion and to persuade others of our insights. We get to play in a real world filled with grownups. Occasionally, we even find that we support our philosophical opponents in strange and sometimes startling ways. We get to change our own small corner of the world and we become changed by our experiences within that small community of family.

The family model also provides opportunities to remedy a fundamental flaw in our modern souls. One of our big weakness as a people seems to be how captivated we are by our own flattering self images. We are all so caught up in our automythologies and our personal soap operas. We are incredibly sensitive...to our own needs. We are terribly impressed with our own importance. We are dogmatic in our own opinions and unbending in our most mundane claims to preferential treatment. Like the spoiled only children of a bygone era, we have become people who have little or no tolerance for the word: 'No'. A community based on the model of a large family will gift all of its members with the wisdom and the ability to 'get over ourselves'. In it, we learn that we really aren't 'all that'. We also learn that the little we are, is in service to others.

. . .

I imagine that most of you assume that today I'll be singing the praises of the family-based parish model. I won't. Like many of you, I have enjoyed the freedom of selecting my parish. At the time, it seemed like a good idea. It never occurred to me that there might be drawbacks to the fellowship model. As a young mother, I moved back to my hometown. Since I lived on the boundary line of two parishes, I chose to go to the one that held the most memories for me and that, overall, provided the services and community that clicked with my needs, my station in life and my personality.

I was extraordinarily happy there. I was well served and I served well in various parish activities. I found a spiritual home that was unmatched by anything else in the area. The parish to which I belonged kept its doors open 24-7. After a long day, there was an intense delight in kneeling in a darkened Church before the Eucharist in the quiet of the soul. Sometimes, I would make my way there at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning when the worries of the world were hemming me in and a restless anxiety coursed through my veins. This one place in all the world was a guarantee of rest, and it was secret. Few were told of the discreet after-hours access that was available. If I hadn't been a valued and trusted member of the parish, I would never have known of this best-kept parish secret. Instead of praying before the Eucharist, I might have ended my days by baying at the moon.

Though no one ever told me, I knew from my own childhood that this was not my designated parish at all. By right, I should have attended a different and a more temperamentally alien parish. It is so easy to sing the praises of a liberty that led to such contentment.

My point in writing this, however, isn't to advance my particular preference. I'm less interested in what I prefer than in what is best for me. It's possible, and I begin to suspect that it is probable, that the family model is the more authentically Catholic implementation of parish life. In the family model, the parish membership is arbitrarily defined and externally imposed. It compels us to deal with our differences and to seek remedies for those differences. Since we can't run away without leaving the Church Herself, we are positioned differently in the world. We have an ordained and inescapable obligation to each other as members of the same community. Important things can not be brushed aside or sugared over. Conflict and the subsequent authentic reconciliation are mandated by circumstances. We thrive or perish together.

There is no question that the territorially based family model imposes hardships, particularly when one moves just beyond the parish lines. I remember when this occurred to my own family. We were growing like weeds in the parish (which I re-joined as an adult) when we moved about a mile across town. Suddenly, we were required to change the church in which we worshipped, the schools that we attended and the lives that we had led. For all intents and purposes, we might have moved a thousand miles. Since we loved our original parish community, we were not happy to be uprooted and we were quite critical of our new environs. As a family, we might have felt better served if we had be permitted to maintain our original alliances.

But perhaps, even this tearing away served us in unconsidered ways. We did learn to negotiate new friendships. We learned a quite different, but perhaps equally valid, definition of the relationship between the religious and the laity. We learned of differences and how to deal with them. At the same time, we learned ways in which we might contribute. In our original parish, everything was to our liking. In the new parish, there was the possibility of initiating changes to make it more habitable. Over time, we became engaged, -- perhaps differently -- but fully in parish life. Although difficult the transition was also considered natural. At the time, there was never any question about the need to re-locate to a new parish. The rules were simply assumed and unthinkingly followed.

The point is that there may be substantial benefits to be derived from situations that are not to our liking. In such circumstances, we are forced to behave in less convenient and perhaps more productive ways. When we have a non-negotiable involvement in an parish, we are uniquely vested in that community. We have a large stake in the minutia that culminates in the ambiance and the life of the parish. We belong uniquely to it, not as members of an association but as member organs in something larger than ourselves. It is the difference between being a member of a country club and a member of a large and extended family. The club membership is merely an activity. It is something that we do, rather than something that we are. The family, on the hand, is as much within us as we are within it.

I think Catholics are by nature fairly easygoing people. We may be fiery and fierce at times, but we are also likely to give a little, to let-bygones-be-bygones and to live-and-let-live. Of course, I'm not talking about individual Catholics. I'm remarking on the more general cultural climate of Catholicism. In some ways, this is a blessing but in other ways, it imposes a severe duty on us to discern matters of importance. We must exercise reasonable prudence in knowing where it is necessary to make a stand for the things of the Faith. I begin to suspect that it is at the level of the parish where this commitment and this vigilance should be exercised most carefully. If things are wrong within our Church, it's quite possible that they are wrong because we, as a people, have failed to maintain appropriate 'family' ties. Rather than improving our less desirable parishes, we have simply switched allegiance.

A final thought also flickers through my mind. Perhaps with so very many single, sibling-less children wandering our nations, the imposition of a family model on parish life holds a partial answer to a desperate and unacknowledged need. All of these single separate persons are in need of an authentic experience of family fashioned in such a way that it binds them irreparably one to the other. A traditionally modelled parish might begin to address the need for ties that are truly binding.

Of course, this isn't a matter for the ordinary Catholic to decide. It's really a consideration for those who legitimately govern the local churches. Catholics, in considering the consequences of parish-hopping, may individually determine to bind themselves to a particular community. This however is not the same as living without options. It may come close. But, while the door to alternatives remains opened, it isn't the real thing. It's closer to the kind of ties that single children establish among themselves to 'fake' a sense of siblinghood. Despite the lay Catholic's best intention, the binding power of this commitment is less than absolute.The parish community remains essentially locked in the instability of choice and is subject to the same subtle flaws as a more overtly fellowship-based community.

I don't know whether the older 'law' will ever again be enforced... I can't even claim to know that the old way was indeed a better way. I can only say this: I begin to suspect that, in the greater scheme of things, the old way might have some overlooked virtues that deserve a closer look. I think about my family experience and I consider my friendship experiences. Both are valuable but if forced to a choice... blood is thicker than water.

. . .

Essentially there are two models for parish life. The first is based on friendship while the second is built on the concept of the family. Both models are organically developed and each has something to recommend it. Of late, the fellowship model, based on friendship, seems to be the preferred option. In a culture dedicated to the primacy of the individual and the most complete exercise of choice, this comes as no surprise. Most proponents of this option could come up with a dozen or more reasons to support their preference.

The diehard anti-traditionalists are quick to point out the evils of the old ways. They fill their 'confessions' with horror stories about a Catholic world indifferent to their self-pity and brutal in its embrace of objective reality. They much prefer a world of subjective illusions. Other more grounded individuals, in the various camps of Catholicism, embrace the option of choice with more realistic and honest intentions. Perhaps they perceive in it, the opportunity to mold their chosen parish into a seed bed for radical transformation. In the sincere interest to either reform or restore the Church, they envision their local Church as a powerful beacon to the rest of the Catholic community. In this, they recognize the transformative power of collective action. Still others, perhaps less motivated but certainly no less devout, seek to find a spiritual home in their personal selection of a parish. They may simply want a sanctuary from the frustrations and tussles of the secular world. Whatever the reason, the arguments in favor of this model are easily discovered and eagerly embraced. There are few, if any, who reflect on the darker aspects of fellowship communities.

They say that experience is the best teacher and we now have the experience of both models of parish life from which we might draw valuable lessons. A quick look at the arguments in favor of fellowship-based parishes finds a certain validity in their claims. These advantages, however, should be weighed against the less easily discerned disadvantages inherent in the friendship option.

One of the more obvious disadvantages of this model is that the differences between parishes become attenuated. Suddenly, we have neo-traditionalist parishes and new age parishes and social justice parishes and community centered parishes. We have a variety of parishes that accurately but rather exclusively illuminate a small portion of Catholic consciousness. Our parishes begin to reflect a reality where virtues, cut off one from the other, support wild, dangerous and ultimately detrimental creations. Many, perhaps most, people laud this new diversity as a noble and generative development. There are, however, some major consequences to this rampant personalization.

The first problematic consequence is that a portion of Catholicism is not equivalent to the fullness of the faith. Rather than simply servicing cafeteria Catholics, cafeteria parishes take this selective approach to the next level and incorporate it into the institutional heart of the Church. Whether it exists at a personal or a community level, the cafeteria option is at heart a non-Catholic form of Christianity. A secondary attribute of this particular consequence is the development of a fast-food approach to the faith. Since everyone 'knows' their shared version of the faith, there is no particular incentive to clearly articulate the fullness of Church teaching. The 'here, this and there, that' of the Church is reduced to the 'here and now, this' of modern prejudice.

A second consequence of discriminatory membership is that it supports various forms of elitism. At heart, Catholicism is a religion for all time and all places and all cultures and all people. It is universal both at the theoretical and practical level. It is most of all a lived religion. It is an objectively true religion in an objectively real world of objectively varied people. A fellowship community does not reflect this reality and so it becomes less authentic to the mission of the Church. The interaction between divergent points of view, that is constituently a part of the faith, is missing. The humility, inherent in accommodating alternative expressions of faithfulness ,is lacking, The old Italian woman with her beads and the weary worker with her bingo are suddenly disenfranchised from the faith because they fail to meet peculiar and rigid definitions of 'aliveness.' They don't measure up to the expectations of their fellow parishioners. They are commonplace and common folk and not the shining light on the hill. The failure to incorporate the humble run-of-the-mill Catholic as a contributing member in the authentic life of the parish is a travesty against the universal nature of the Catholic premise. The idea that there exists only one way to participate in the fullness of the Faith is ridiculous, but it is given credence by theme-based parishes.

A third consequence is that it creates a climate of inclusion and exclusion. It provides the grounds for depersonalizing the internal dynamics of Church life. Suddenly, there are the select few among the parishioners who hold the shared vision of the parish and push that vision onto the more run-of-the-mill faithful. Strangely enough, this effort at depersonalized politics is often accompanied by the argument that the various natural factions within the parish are too polemic and too political. It claims to replace the old 'infighting' with a new sense of community purpose. People lose heart and, since choice is so easily accommodated, the disheartened membership may merely switch alliance to a different and more conducive parish. The results are pitiful. No one has been converted by honest disagreement; no one has be reconciled by attempts at compromise. Every one merely goes along their chosen route without objection and without reference to the foundationally real. We all get to play in a make-believe world where there is no personal otherness. There is only political otherness and the exercise of political power.

An essential element of the Catholic Faith is its universalism. This universalism should be locally reflected by mirroring the actual diversity of the local host-culture. This means that all Catholics within a territorially demarcated area should feel equally at home in the associated parish. It means that the evangelical Catholics and the new-age Catholics and the social justice Catholics within a territory should share in the life of one local parish in which, as individuals, they hammer out their differences. Yes, this involves compromise, and argument and sometimes hurt feelings. It involves winning with nobility and losing with grace. It involves the true negotiation of accommodating the many mansions of the faithful and it demands that we, as a people, be fully alive.

An additional and particularly obvious disadvantage of the fellowship model is that it is selectively populist. This means that the local Church is driven by public opinion. Since anyone can vote with their feet by switching parishes, the Catholic message will be watered down to accommodate the complacency or bigotry or presumptiveness of the local community. So often, we hear that the homilies offered at Mass are inadequate in the way they address sexuality or abortion or social justice or 'fill-in-the-blank.' I can't help but think that this is directly related to the 'pick a parish' climate now prevalent in the Church. Suppose, for a moment, that the priest were to adequately address any one of the issues that would be considered uncomfortable to the parishioners. In the old days, the laity would be forced to hear him out. They would be forced to listen again and again to his endless harangue. Not today. Today, those who already agree will applaud. Those who don't, will move on to the next parish or the next where the unwelcome criticism is muted or mute. So what's the point? Passioned eloquence may diminish the receipts in the communion basket but it doesn't stand a chance of changing hearts. People won't hang around long enough to be converted.

A secondary consequence of the populist model is the cult of personality. When people have parishing options, the entertainment value of the parish attains undue significance. This will effect the parish services offered, the liturgical style of the parish and the attitude of the priest. In many cases, the personality of the priest may become more important than the vocational function of priest. People will go where the preaching is most impassioned or the liturgy is most impressive or the priest is most charismatic. Style becomes more important than substance. Humility, the essence of Catholicism, will be lost in the effort to achieve favor. Priests who become accustomed to this model and seek to accommodate themselves to its demands are left wide open to spiritual corruption. At the same time, parishioners who follow the fellowship model may be derelict in their Catholic duty. Rather than involving themselves in the difficult task of personally transforming the culture and in the risk of being transformed by the diversity of their fellow Catholics, they merely relinquish their duty and move to more comfortable surroundings. They don't take the responsibility of their complementary role in the parish seriously. They 'divorce' the parish for a better partner. In this activity, no one and nothing is improved.

There must be other, perhaps equally significant, defects with the fellowship model. This is after all only a brief reflection. It serves only to highlight the faults that are most apparent. It raises the question of the validity of the fellowship model in parish life. This is not however to say that the fellowship model is naturally or completely invalid as a Catholic form of community. It is greatly to be valued in the free associations of Catholic workers, scholars, and other mission-oriented forms of service. It may, however, simply be inappropriate at the more fundamental level of neighbors making do with the neighbors they are given.

. . .

Much has been written about love as a purely human response. Generally we consider it to be an emotion that we possess or a studied determination or an act of human freedom. It may be something that we are in possession of or something that we give away. It exists as a gift within relationships.

All of this is true but there is more to love. Love is also a territory that the heart inhabits. It is a country of the interior. It is a setting within which so much of life takes place. In sibling love, the landscape of love attains pre-eminence. This is a love that serves as the background of life. It exists as the context of the family rather than the content.

In a large enough family, the content will be diverse and will change over time. Personalities will clash, goals will conflict, values may be vastly dissimilar. All kinds of negative potentialities may strut their way into the relationships between siblings. Some might comfortably take up residence there. This is not to say that they must. I merely acknowledge the possibility and, in doing so, I affirm the inconsequentiality of that possibility. At the level of instinct, family is family. Siblings can never quite escape the territorial borders of love's domain.

The love of siblings can also be defined as sheer reflex. It is so essentially human and so completely indifferent to those attributes, which we often imagine, constitute our humanity. This love is not a matter of the heart or the will or the intellect. It is not even a denizen of the gut. It is the liege-lord of the blood. It is a hardy love - careless of itself and indifferent to its subjects. It exists only as needed; and its authority is honored more in the breach than in the observance. The love of brothers and sisters is the root of our hope as a people.

Parents endeavor with devout strength to love their children properly. They nurture, they test, they strengthen. They concentrate on loving their children into responsible and authentic maturity. They are attuned to their children. Children, in their turn, love their parents passionately. They struggle, they dominate, they surrender and they survive. They live in the shadow and sunlight of parental love.

The love of siblings is of a different order entirely. It is love at its most primitive, and love at its most refined. It is simultaneously held in the narrowest and broadest definitions of love. It is love as habit and love as reflex. It is also very much a learned and arbitrated love.

Family love is hammered out in all the petty arguments of children and in the nagging admonitions of parents. It is the constant reiteration of 'be nice to your sister' and 'bring your brother along with you'. It is the daily demand for accommodation that every parent requires of every child. It is the necessity of getting along and growing up.

This is a love that announces itself in the exercise of autonomy and in cries for parental arbitration. It is willful and headstrong and passionate. It is aggressive and defensive and hot-headed. It is thrust and counterthrust, and a thousand repetitions of "I'm sorry". It is thorny and fierce...tender and arbitrary. It grows strong in the peace of the family. It grows even stronger in family conflict. It sprouts up wonderful like some tough and wild weed.

In time and with a strange devotion, 'fraternal' love grows ever lighter in its touch and ever more thorough in its office. Eventually, one notices an inescapable geography. We recognize that love itself is a land that we inhabit... as natives and patriots.

. . .

I grew up in a world where a family with two or three children was considered a small family. Today, a family with five children is considered large. I imagine that this perception makes a difference in how we are raised. Today everyone is 'special.' When I were young, everyone simply was - without adjectives. Instead of adjectives, we had names. We were probably less careful of each other, but perhaps we were also less cruel

Children with a lot of siblings have a ready-made place in the world. They don't have to negotiate friendships in quite the same way as an only child. Instead, they have relationships that they are stuck with. They have a 'circle of friends' who must take them in. They can never feel completely rejected or isolate or unutterably vulnerable to ostracism. At the very least, they always have people who will be forced to play with them on equal and pre-established terms.

Today, we emphasize the liberty and virtue to be found in exercising choice. In doing so, I think we have overlooked an equally valid freedom and virtue. There is something positive to be said for 'being stuck with' certain conditions and circumstances in life. There is something holy about destiny.

In a traditional family, children don't get to pick their parents. At least for the moment, parents don't get to pick their children. People don't get to pick their siblings. These are among the things that we are born into and they are some of the circumstances that we stuck with. Some people are lucky in their initial conditions and others are not so lucky. Either way, however, everyone is born into a situation and into relationships that they are forced to accommodate.

One of the virtues of being stuck with certain relationships is that we are forced to make these relationships work. As a child, I was lucky. I had lots of siblings and so... I've had lots of experience in making relationships work. This effort was never intended or even particularly mutual. At times it definitely went against the united will of the children involved.

We all got along the way large families get along -- at one moment, stiff-willed, at another moment, joyously. There were small battles and large-scale wars and all the childish attempts that people make in an effort to acknowledge the priority of the family.

In addition to everything else, there was something akin to fealty. There was a natural and unconsidered circling of the wagons when one of us was in danger. There was the knowledge that, right or wrong, my brothers would take my side. They might blast me privately, but in public, they would be my most staunch supporters. There was the unspoken assumption that I could level the most horrible complaints against my sister but my best friend had better watch her tongue.

In everything, there was the simple reality that the love within the family was the ground of our being. The deepest of feuds and the most perverse of complaints could all go on with a wild disregard because nothing could dent the bedrock of our kinship.

There is freedom in this unity of being. There are the virtues of fidelity and charity. There is the development of a personhood that is open to the possibility of radical love. There is a pre-conditioning in the activity of love and an expectation of social security.

In addition to all of this, there is the development of an organic 'social reality'. A family is something that becomes itself over time. It isn't a static thing but a living organism that changes as the community members change. It is a shared social vision. Surprisingly each family is as much an ideal as it is a fact. The lived ideal of 'my family' is different than your lived ideal. At the same time, my lived ideal is different from the family that I live in. It could almost be said that my actual family is my 'stuck with' conditions on their way to becoming the ideal that my 'stuck with' family aspires toward.

So many single children today grow up without this natural ambiance. They live in a world of choice. They live in a world of radical danger in which at any moment, they might become pariah. While these children may establish intimate and close relationships that last through their childhood, the full security of siblinghood is a thing unknown and a hunger unanswered.

I imagine that, as they grow older, their situation is only made worse by a world in which everyone - always and everywhere - exercises a choice. There is something inhumanly cruel in a world where no one is ever 'stuck with' anything that they define as a hardship or an inconvenience. At times, we are all hardships and inconveniences. In addition to the free association of friendship, we all have a need for the arbitrary and immutable tie of family. Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps it doesn't matter that so many people are growing up deficient in the skill of 'making do'. Still the utter aloneness must at times be crushing.

The worse part about being able to walk away, is knowing that you can be walked away from. The best thing about being stuck with something, is knowing that your 'something' is stuck with you. It's the knowledge that "when you go there, home is where they have to take you in."

Labels: By Our Love

. . .

Solidarity in Scandal

I am the Catholic Church. I have been a member of this body since the day I was born. Catholicism is the meaning of my life. Yet I have been a very poor Catholic. I continue to be a very poor Catholic, constantly sinning, constantly repenting, constantly seeking and being granted forgiveness in the name of my God. Today, my Church is the object of scandal. As a Catholic, I share in that scandal. I want more than anything to defend my Faith and yet her sins (my sins) seem indefensible. The sin of our day is the sexual abuse of each other. Some in my clergy participate in this evil. They hold it up to us so that we are suddenly aware of the degradation that they (we) have fallen into.

Like a mantra I silently reiterate the statistics: the rate of abuse of minors among the Catholic clergy involves only 3% of the priesthood; pedophilia affects only .3% of priests. While this may be true, it doesn't help the victims of abuse. I have only my shame and my apologies to offer.

Accused priests were transferred from one ministry to another. It doesn’t help to know that a great number of innocent priests have been unjustly accused. Guilty priests were protected at the expense of our youth. In anger born of humiliation, I reflect on the fact that recently the rapist of a 14-year-old was given probation while the rape victim was given advice from the bench to "get over it". This occurred in the same town and at the same time that Cardinal Law is being held to the fire. American hypocrisy is no consolation.

Charges of anti-Catholic bias are no defense. My shame is not relieved by the infighting of Catholics with personal agendas for the future shape of the Church. Knowing that there is a determined effort by the proponents of the Culture of Death to discredit the moral authority of the Church doesn't lend me strength in my defiance of that culture. Believing that a fifth column hides within the habits of religious life is no exoneration. Even acknowledging that we have become a nation eager for the next witch hunt does nothing to soften my humiliation.

Nothing helps. I am outraged and violated by the casual sexual depravity of my Church - by those who sinned and those who participated in sin through concealment, through silence or by defending the evil done. I am the Church. I am humiliated and I am sorry for my sins.

I remind myself that my Church leaders were following the advise of psychologists, the 'compassionate' laxity of our culture and the rapidly changing 'wisdom' of our age. I am desolate. I renew my awareness that we are a church of sinners called to sainthood. I call to mind the heresy of the Donatists and remind myself that, since our youngest days, the sins of a priest don't affect the efficacy of the sacraments. I remember the vices of the Renaissance and our constant reiteration that we don't expect impeccability of the pope (nor of the people) so why are we shocked that a few callous priests might insult their vocations?

In apologetics, we insist that we don't expect inerrancy in the pope, why are we now insisting on it in our bishops? They may have erred - some may have sinned grievously - but it is our teaching and our hope that the justice of God Himself will be scarred with that same error of mercy. Why, when some priests stumble, are we so ready to denounce the entire hierarchy of our salvation? The truth is that my hypocrisy is fueled by shame. I don't like the image of the Church that these sins present. I am too aware that it is the image of myself and my culture and the image of my very real need for salvation.

There have been varied responses to this scandal. There are people calling for a more democratic hierarchy, as though Hitler never proved that democracy is filled with its own perils. There are people who call for rescinding the requirement of celibacy, as though renunciation were the cause rather than the cure for sinful indulgence. There are people calling for a female priesthood as though the absence in the Church was a feminine absence rather than the empty places where men once stood. There are people calling for a heterosexual clergy, as though homosexual orientation negates the freedom of the human will. There are people calling for the solutions of the Inquisition when the Church would turn over the guilty to the secular arm. Now, the Church should turn over those who are merely accused.

There are so many people calling for political solutions. This isn't a political problem. It is a human problem. It is the only human problem. It is the problem of sin and the devastating 'mess' of human suffering that follows in the wake of sin. The Church has been brought to her knees by this scandal. This is the appropriate position for a penitent.

When I was young, in the shelter of the Church, I learned that our principle act of evangelism is the act of living a Catholic life. By this measure, I am a poor evangelist. Worse, I have been indifferent to the message that my life has proclaimed. Since the age of ten, I have been callously and inexcusably ignorant of the way in which my life reflects on the Church that acknowledges me. Today's scandal has the grace of making me acutely aware of my evangelical responsibility.
I am the Church. My sins accrue to her and her sins adhere to me. I am her embarrassment because my personal sins as well as my corporate sins are a weight that we must carry into the confessional.

Yet the consequences of sin remain. The penalties of justice must be invoked. By all means, cleanse the priesthood of gay culture. Treat disordered sexual preferences as an impediment to the priesthood. Recall the clergy to orthodoxy and reform any aspect of clerical culture that winks at the sexual misconduct of Catholics. Insist on the disciplines that surround chastity. The sexual sins of Catholics are destroying our two most vital institutions: the Church and the Family.

I have been humbled that I might know the goodness of my God. I hope, in fact I firmly resolve, not to make these same mistakes again. I want desperately not to sin again. My only comfort is found in the forgiveness of sin offered to me by a Church that has been sullied by the same sin and that shares my tribulation. I ask forgiveness for the things I have done. We are more than family. We are one body in Christ. Mea culpa.

When I was young, in the shelter of the Church, I learned to pray for the priesthood. I have been negligent in my prayers. The call of the priesthood is a sacred and a most difficult vocation. Our priests are in need of our prayers. I have always known this. It was the priests of my childhood that acknowledged this need and solicited this service. To think that these priests failed on their own, is disingenuous. I will pray for my priests.

I hear people say that it is not about sex. It's about a 'cover up'. They claim that these men continued in the priesthood because of a shortage of priests. We forget our own history and our own theology. We forget that sin is the human condition. If impeccability is a condition of priesthood, there can be no priests except among the dead. I do not make light of the evil perpetrated. These sins are an outrage and a scandal. Quite possibly the Church should have sent these men to cloisters. Undoubtedly the criminals belong in jail. We should be kept safe from predator priests.

Still, I know in my heart that I would rather receive forgiveness from a sinful and criminal priest than to leave this world without the sacrament of penance. I would rather kneel before a bishop found guilty of obstruction of justice or even a priest who confesses to the abuse of a minor than to do without the Eucharist, the body of Christ. Yes, I do want holy priests, but unholy priests should not be the impediment to the faithful that these detractors suggest. Knowledge of the danger doesn't threaten my faith. It merely strengthens my guard. I am the Church and I am stronger than sin.

I must use my anger to fuel a renewed commitment to holiness and answer the call for the prayers of the faithful. Rather than relying on human and politically tainted solutions to revitalize and renew our priesthood, I will rely on the Lord. It is God who calls men to the priesthood and it is our prayers that sustain men in the priesthood. I want a holy priesthood and I must pray so that God finds me worthy of one. In my presumption I have failed my priests and my bishop. I ask forgiveness for what I have failed to do. Mea culpa

In responding to the scandal that engulfs me, I seek to renew my Catholic sensibility. In this season of the Passion, I acknowledge that we are the broken and wounded Mystical Body that bears the sins of our humanity. We are the Church. Collectively as Catholics, we are the innocent Christ silent in the face of accusations; we are Peter denying for the third time that we know Christ; we are Judas betraying Christ. We are the soldier with the scourge and the centurion with the lance. As we recollect in our Sacred Triduum celebration, we are the crowd shouting 'Crucify Him".

In the final analysis, we are the Church forgiving and sanctifying all men so that all might be saved through Him. Some might argue that it is the human victim alone who has the authority of forgiveness in this matter. I argue that he lacks the competence. If we are dependent on men for the forgiveness of sin, we are all damned. It is our very inability to forgive the injuries done to us that constantly recreates the necessity for Calvary. The forgiveness of sin is the beneficence of God. It is among His gifts to His Church. This Eastertide, I take bitter comfort in the knowledge that the vocation of the church is the forgiveness of sin and not the prosecution of the sinner. I thank God that my sins are forgiven and that, each time I fall, the Church lifts me up.

This Eastertide, I face the stark realization that I am utterly reliant on the very mercy I have been so quick to condemn. Mea maxima culpa.

Labels: Solidarity in Scandal

. . .

A Problem of Perception
Perhaps because I was raised prior to Vatican II, I am always somewhat taken aback by the criticism that so many self-designated leaders feel free to heap upon the average Catholic. You would think that forty years of such abuse would dull me to the insult. In a way it has. The criticisms no longer anger me. If I ever felt the need for defensive posturing, it vanished long ago. Instead such remarks leave me shaking my head and wondering what purpose is served by honest response. After all, this too shall pass and, when it does, the Church of everyday Catholics will still be trudging to glory.
Without a doubt, the blanket condemnations issued today do have the demoralizing effect of incessant rainy-day drizzle. And without a doubt, like water, they tend to slide off the back of many Catholics. This is a shame because, though poorly framed, most of the criticism is well-intended. Even more significant is that, within the criticism, there is a seed - perhaps even a mountain - of truth. Too often this truth is obscured by the alien context of the larger message. Too often it is clothed in an Anglo-Saxon mindset that is fundamentally at odds with the deeper truths of the Catholic faith.
Catholicism has always been a religion of universal appeal. It is based on the radical belief that we are all of equal dignity before the Lord. There is no single best way to be Catholic. There is simply the universal call to holiness. For Catholics, this call is essentially personal. It is a call that attaches to a name and a face and a life and a future. It is intricately woven into the mundane fabric of daily life. The personal nature of this call creates a situation in which Catholics are surrounded by the mystery of human redemption. We do not know our brother's heart and we do not know our brother's heartache. We merely know that the journey is long and sometimes arduous. A Catholic understands that no mere Catholic is positioned to judge the interiority of his fellow Catholic. We can only guess that grace, even in absentia, is active in his life.
A call to holiness, accompanied by a disdain for the 'complacency' of Catholic life, is ineffective primarily because it is sensed as unauthentic. To be authentic and therefore effective, a call to holiness must honor the strengths of our complacency. It must understand the foundation on which that virtue rests and it must value the deeper virtues that establish a Catholic orientation.
One such virtue is merely a habit of the mind. It consists of a willingness to interpret the actions of others in the best light possible. A Catholic who is unwilling to entertain this interpretation is going to seem sinfully presumptuous, possessed of a dangerous spiritual naivete or simply unpracticed in the Faith.
As an example I might cite the situation where someone righteously opines on the comparative length of communion and penitential lines. The natural Catholic rejoinder is to point out that Church law requires Catholics to receive Penance annually and to attend Mass weekly. The fact that the communion line is 52 times longer than the confessional line may be a mark of either a sinfully complacent parish or an exemplary parish where mortal sins are infrequent in commission. Furthermore since annual penance is an Easter obligation, even this comparison is invalidly skewed.
Such a response is not simply another act of complacency and sinful denial. It reflects a very real and essential Catholic virtue. Catholic wisdom informs us that one can never know the state of another's soul. We therefore believe that it is presumptuous to pretend otherwise. For an old-school Catholic, the issue isn't that one interpretation is more valid. It is simply that one is more charitable. Fortunate or not, generic 'fraternal correction' simply isn't an activity rooted in our tradition. Instead, our tradition is to say 'I accuse myself'.
Naturally, we understand that there are times when it is necessary to talk to a loved one about the direction of his life or the habits of his heart. With this understanding comes the recognition that we must do so with an intimate charity and a ocean of humility. We are not dealing with a Catholic cipher. We are interacting with a person who has an honored name and a loved face, a real life and a mysterious future.
Too often in attempts to re-ignite the common Catholic, this grounding in personalism is either ignored or disparaged. I think it's a shame. As I said, there is a seed - or perhaps a mountain - of truth in the idea that we are called to something greater. But let me be clear. We are called to something greater than - not something different from - the habits of a generous mind.
When this foundation of charity is recognized as a moral good, the call to penitence is naturally re-framed as a call to greater conformance to the life of Christ. It becomes a call to sacrifice and a call to self-examination. Essentially, it becomes a call that is recognizably Catholic.
As a general rule, I attend mass at my local parish. Artistically it is a less than inspiring affair. The Church itself is enough to make one's eyes sore. The exterior of the Church is traditionally gothic but, once inside the doors, a parishioner is confronted with a neon monstrosity. There are digital LED displays above the confessionals. A weirdly disconcerting wrought metallic fence segregates the sanctuary from the nave. The garish use of red and gold provides additional distraction. This is a church where one closes one's eyes to pray.
The Sunday Mass is equally uninspiring as an artistic affair. The songs are pap and the voices are off. The priests are lacking in both eloquence and passionate intensity.They are all rather mundane and nondescript men of God. Most of the parishioners are work- a-day people with their own rudimentary lifes. They are not the artists or visionaries of our world. They belong to the bread and butter, meat on Sunday set. Our Mass is not a socialite's affair.
I doubt that many people in my parish attend Mass because it is the best of Sunday's offerings. I imagine most attend the parish simply because it is their parish. Some come because the rules demand it. Some come because, slight as the excuse is, it gives them a reason to be out and about. Some come to please their spouses and others to set an example for the children. Some attend because it sets the family mood essential to a sense of Sunday. Some come because they ache from the infidelity of a partner or the waywardness of a child. Some come for a moments peace and others to catch up on the news of the neighborhood. I know a man who comes to church to stave off his alcoholism and another who attends in the between days of his sojourns at Rikers. People in my parish come to Mass for the most mundane and the most desperate reasons. Why they come is almost irrelevant.
There is something about our Sunday obligation that rubs me the wrong way. It makes demands on me that are not consonant with my mood. I love daily Mass. Yet even when I am daily attending Mass, I feel a slight rebellion against the more mundane demands of Sunday. Daily Mass is my own desire. When the conditions of my life permit it, daily Mass conforms perfectly to my desire for holiness. It marks the high point of my day and it provides significance to the events that surround it. Sunday Mass, on the other hand, has very little to do with my mood or even with my state of grace. It is an alien intrusion into my complacence. It lacks the politeness of a request or the delicacy of a negotiation. Purely and simply, it is a demand that I do what someone else determines at a time of someone else's pleasure.
Perhaps because I live in the Northeast, attending Sunday Mass is in some ways reminiscent of a blustery winter's day. On many a Sunday morning, I would rather stay warm beneath the comforter and indulge in the small grace of jazz playing backdrop to a cup of Bailey-laced coffee. My week may have been long and dreary or it may have been frentic and exhausting. It may have been one in which malicious emotions were given too free a hand or one in which a spontaneous joy set me swirling and laughing into regions of delight and self-forgetting. It most certainly contained distractions that left me at least momentarily forgetful of my God. There are Sundays where only a sense of obligation draws me to my less-than-perfect Church.
On days like this, I bring my life with me. It is a bulky and disreputable thing like a workday winter jacket, heavy with the scent of subways and cigarettes, harried delays and last-minute reminders. It is a buffer against the cold of raw meetings and chance encounters in a city of strangers and strivers and those who have given up dreaming. Its heavy weight is both a burden and a solace. It dulls the cold and shelters me against the winds of random chance - the ever-present risk of being too vulnerably exposed to the sheer audacity of life. As I struggle against the temptations of sloth, I put on my life (such as it is on any given Sunday) and wear it into Church.
On Sundays of struggle I do not go to Mass with the anticipation of a spiritual awakening. I go with whatever mood my week has evoked. I slip into church with the press of obligation and the indifference of a child. I go through the motions with all the enthusiasm of the put-upon. And slowly, I feel myself loosening the collar of my life, unzipping the indifference that I have bundled around my heart. The dull boring off-key sameness of poorly performed ritual thaws my soul with its very familar sense of the commonplace. It is the ground that provides me with a common place to stand with my neighbors in our so ordinary lives. In its very ordinariness, this defamed liturgy opens the ordinary to the divine and it transforms the muslim of our common lives into the gold brocade of sacrificial offerings. When the Kiss of Peace is announced, I can turn honestly and fully toward my neighbor and see the grace of our unique sameness and our stunning dignity. Neighbor or stranger, I can look him in the eye and note his glory newly released from the overcoat of his cares. When the consecration is performed, my soul meets Calvary and in the Eucharist, I approach and receive my Lord... and my God. In that moment, it doesn't matter why I came or how I came. The only thing that matters is my presence in the presence of God.
When the Mass is over, I will slip into a life that is washed and as toasty as a coat fresh from the dryer. My life will hold a lingering scent of spring and a snuggly warmth. As my eyes avoid the jarring impressions of the altar, they will focus on my neighbors. I dont have to imagine it. I know that my neighbors have also been to the mountain. They too are looking into tomorrow in the light of the Lord.
Hail Holy Queen, Mother of mercy!
Our life, our sweetness, and our hope!
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve;
To thee do we send upour sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears!
So begins one of my favorite prayers. It captures an essential truth that lies at the heart of the Catholic understanding of the dolce vita. Beneath all our joys and all our sorrows is the brutal fact that we are exiles from our native land. It is this knowledge that we pass from one generation to the next. It is this understanding that sets us apart and that embosses every experience with the poignancy of the ephemeral. Each moment and every experience is fully itself. It will not come again, it will not bear repeating. It is what it is and it must be taken in its entirety. It is both our cup and our cross.
In our state of exile, we taste life as sweeter and more bitter than those who possess this world as their entitlement. We have no entitlement in this life. We have only the will of our God as our God wills. We are here for His purpose and our understanding of that purpose is far from complete. This sense of the unknown permeates our being. We live tentatively, accepting that the validity of our choices is always a question mark.
We live as strangers in an alien and imperfect world. We negotiate our lives and we measure our compromises. We recognize that every thing we do in the secular world is marred by sin and by our own sinfulness. We are imperfect beings torn always between a dim memory of our inheritance and the vibrant factualness of our lives. We make our home in the company of temptation. In doing so, we know without reflection how very vulnerable we are...how often we fall. We know that we are so much less than our God intends. We are dispossessed and making do.
We are aware of our degradation. This knowledge and acknowledgement of our own sin is the impetus that moves our hearts to a sympathetic uplifting of our fellow-man. It lies at the heart of our own willingness to be lifted up and sanctified through the admonishment of others. It acknowledges a judgment other than our own.
Miraculously, we are a people called by God to holiness. It is this call that establishes our alternate and simultaneous identity. We are a people set apart and lifted up as a holy people and a great nation. We are heirs to a great promise and we possess the one great secret. We know that "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." Through Him, we - the unworthy - are made worthy.
Through Him, we live in the midst of the Kingdom of God on the very beachhead that His reign establishes. Thus, while we are exiles, we are also heirs. We live in intimacy with the deeper reality that sustains the texture of the known world. We live in physical communion with God. There is nothing more miraculous and more mundane. For a Catholic, through the sacraments, communion with God is a practical and ordinary experience. For us, that which is most extraordinary in all the world is most ordinary. It is intended to be ordinary so that we might become extraordinary and a light to the nations.
It is impossible that a people might be more blessed by God. It is improbable that we can experience this reality without being transformed by it. And yet, how easily we slip into forgetfulness...
Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us;
and after this, our exile,
show unto us the Blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary!
Pray for us, O Holy mother of God
That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
In a prior posting, I mentioned that the priests in my parish are run-of-the-mill and nondescript men of God. By this remark, I intended a high complement. In a world dedicated to the promotion of ego and the propagation of self-aggrandizement, the simple dignity of my parish priests sets them apart and marks them as men dedicated to a higher calling. They are servants of God in service to the people of God. They are men of ordinary talent much like the rest of us. They simply put their ordinary talents in service to the extraordinary.
Mostly, their sermons reflect the lives of their parishioners. They deal with our everyday cares and our everyday failings. They call us to live our common lives in an uncommon manner. They attach their words to our lives in such a way that each listening parishioner might find some element for reflection or some prod toward improvement. I am frequently amazed at the skill my priests possess in tailoring their conversations and their homilies to the lives of the people they serve. They always seem to say the necessary thing. Often, they say the one thing I want least to hear and the single thing that it is essential for me to hear. This simple grace amazes me.
I have little patience with people who complain about the preaching style or sermon content of our everyday priests. It strikes me that these people may have simply stopped listening. Or perhaps, they haven't notice how applicable the priest's message actually is. More likely, they simply have never learned the trick of listening to a 'mediocre' sermon. A 'mediocre' sermon places requirements on us. We must listen with our lives as well as our ears. We must pay attention. In other words, we must do our part.
Most Sundays, my sister and her husband compare notes on the homily. Invariably, they have each heard a different sermon, one with a message that resonates in their individual lives. Often, their interpretations, when enacted, are complementary in nature so that the combined effect improves their relationship.
There have been Sundays when I have invited someone to my Church, only to be embarrassed by the lackluster performance of the priest. I have learned not to apologize. When I have done so in the past, my companion almost invariably experienced the sermon differently. The most frequent remark is that the homily was not only wonderful but personally relevant. I didn't notice. I was too busy evaluating the homily by some objective critical standard. Now, I no longer wonder how my guest is reacting to the sermon. Now, I simply listen for the message I'm intended to hear.
There are some who claim that parish priests are remiss in not discussing the hot-button items like abortion and homosexuality. I generally miss the point of their complaint. In our society, everyone already knows where the Catholic Church stands on these issues. On any given Sunday, the majority of the people attending Mass are not dealing directly with these issues as moral conundrums. Although such firebrand sermons may satisfy the political agenda of some, I doubt that it has any immediate relevance on the holiness of the congregation present. It seems to me, that these issues are generally peripheral to individual lives. When they are not peripheral, it is likely that they require the type of one-on-one consultation that our priests engage in either through the confessional or through private conversation.
Another complaint often voiced is that our priests lack the personal touch common to so many Protestant ministers. This is a complaint I have heard particularly in relationship to deathbed visits. Again, from my perspective, the problem is one of perception. A Protestant minister will usually have a much smaller congregation than the parish in which the priest serves. He may well know all the members of his congregation and his service is personal in nature. He is similar to a spiritual advisor. What he brings to the deathbed is his presence and his comfort. He is strangely powerless before death itself.
On the other hand, a priest generally serves a much larger parish. In a large parish, it is unlikely that he will know each parishioner by name. He may not even know the details of the parishioner's life. The priest, however, does not come to the deathbed as a mere friend or even as a spiritual comfort. He comes as a priest. It is his presence as a priest, even as an anonymous priest, that is required. He comes in the persona of Christ with the power to forgive sin and to throw wide the gates of Purgatory. In essence, the duty of the priest is substantially different than the role played by any other deathbed attendant. The comfort he offers is also different. It is freedom from a life of sin and the reception of the Eucharist. He offers the dying a foretaste of heaven. Generally, he does this simply and with the greatest of humility.
There is something to be said for the ordinary and for the effort that most of our priests make to be ordinary. There is grace in a humility that is expressed in such a way that it is neither self-effacing nor attention-getting. There is a priestly quality to such ordinary humility that calls each of us to emulate that graced gift.
I have been blessed with a grandmother who spent the last twenty, perhaps twenty-five, years of her life as a victim of Alzheimer's. The progress of her disease changed forever my understanding of what it means to be human.
Before my granny lost her mind, she was a remarkable woman. She was fierce and proud and independent. She was a stickler for all the small civilizing rules that make both life and social discourse pleasurable. She was a strict disciplinarian; yet her close scrutiny was a measure of her love for us. She was a woman of acute discernment and incredible dignity.
Although she had little formal education, Granny was the most literate person I have ever known. She knew thousands of poems and she could recite most of Shakespeare's plays from memory. Every poem, every quote, every play was pronounced with reverence and love. She knew the spirit that animates words and she had the grace to endow her children and her grandchildren with a spirited enthusiasm for the fullness of life's offerings.
She was also a woman with little discernable ego who exemplified all the small tidy virtues of a Christian woman. She had a heart as broad and generous as the ocean. She had an eye for her neighbor's need and the capacity to offer aid in such a gentle manner that, more often than not, her neighbor would imagine himself to be the purveyor of aid rather than its recipient. From my narrow perspective, she is unmatched in her industry, in her acceptance of life's vagaries and in her unswerving generosity.
I am sure that we all know such people. Their presence in our lives is an un-remarked blessing. They are so foundationally themselves that we can not imagine them otherwise.
And yet, this isn't the image of my grandmother that I hold in my heart. Instead, I see a wrinkled stick of a woman who has forgotten the power of speech and whose movements are jerky from the loss of fine muscle control. She sits in her favored seat at the dining room table, waggling her fingers in mindless enthusiasm and cackling with surprising glee. This is the memory that I hold most dear. It is the unintentioned gift of her long and difficult life.
Today, we share a commonplace truism that Alzheimer's is the most devastating of indignities to which flesh is heir. It is a disease that strips us of every valued aspect of our humanity. We lose our wisdom, our knowledge, and our unique flair. We lose our memories and our experiences, our relationships and our talents. We retain nothing of our personality or our character. We are literally mindless.
Despite all this, my grandmother has taught me that we never quite lose our souls. When everything is gone, that which remains is the deepest truth of our being, the habits of our hearts. If we have formed ourselves into generosity, the generosity remains; if we have fashioned ourselves through industry, the industry remains; if we have placed the needs of others before our own, we will through habit continue to do so. In many ways, Alzheimer's turned my grandmother's small frame into an empty vessel. And emptied of self, her soul shown with a splendid glory. She never became some one other than herself and she never ceased to be the accumulation of herself.
Strangely, (or perhaps not,) I have found a recognition of this aspect of our human dignity underscored by much that the Church teaches. Our early childhood formation is structured around the inculcation of a Catholic ontological orientation. It is these very habits of the heart, in conformance to Christ, that the Church seeks to instill in us as second nature. From our earliest childhood, we are taught to emulate the child, Jesus, and the young girl, Mary. We are given saints to fire a child's imagination and the half-legendary tales that surround their lives. We are constantly inspired to transform our ordinary lives into sacrificial offerings.
Years before our first confession, we acquire the habit of offering the acts of the coming day as prayers to the Almighty. Each evening, we review that same day against an itemized list of slights and sins and failings. We are prompted first by our mothers and later - much later - by conscience. Each day holds the promise of a new and hopefully a better offering. Each evening is a judgement on that offering. Always the day starts and ends with the resolution to implement greater holiness.
Under such premises, our small acts of charity and thoughts of courtesy attain a value beyond the inconsequential. They become modes of being and a form of practiced prayer. The smaller virtues become rote behavior and the ego is subsumed in the habits of ordinary discipline. This discipline, this habit of being, has more to do with our spiritual position than with our spiritual direction. It is the first - and, for my grandmother, the final - layer of Catholic orientation.
In keeping with this thought is the following Zenit release highlighting the universal accessibility of Catholicism: Catechizing the Mentally Handicapped
A while back, in speaking of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, Steven Riddle over at Flos Carmeli highlighted the following:
Showy vs. silent--My involvement with the historical center can and will be done without fanfare, without anyone other than the few on the council and the person who helped me to get involved knowing anything about it. In the St. Vincent de Paul society, every volunteer action is know by a bazillion people--the entire society and their entire network of friends. The friendly, but much to be avoided, eye of the pastor would pass over me noting my presence in this group (along with the five million other groups).
I hope Steven will forgive me for taking the remark completely out of context. It did, however, spark a completely different train of thought for me.
One of the lovely things about Catholicism is that it baptized so many of our natural inclinations. One such natural inclinations is to seek the approval and even the admiration of our peers. Secretly, we all want to "be someone". At the very least, we want to be "a contender".
All too often,in our secular society, this desire for affirmation finds expression in a flagrant, perhaps even an obscene, form of consumerism. In some Catholic Societies and Associations, this human inclination is transformed from conspicuous consumption into a conspicuous form of self-giving. In affording a legitimate utility to this natural tendency of 'self-promotion', such societies can effectively work to bring out the best in the community as a whole.
When social status and group acceptance is attached to such enterprises, people not naturally drawn to self-giving become participants in 'structures of charity'. On one hand, the actions of such societies change the world around them; on the other hand, participation in such 'structures of charity' act surreptiously to transform the participants involved these activities.
For people who adhere to a "no pain, no gain" philosophy, a life of easily practiced virtue is an oxymoron. The untested virtue of a person, or even of an entire society, may be dismissed as sloth. The significance of commonplace virtue may be devalued as mediocrity. Instead of honoring the mundane practice of homely virtue and thereby re-enforcing it, these advocates of holiness run the risk of annihilating habitual goodness through a contemptuous disregard for it's worth. Such disregard fails to adequately consider the objective nature of sin and the communal impact of its consequences.
Theoretically, a man could be beaten tonight. The ripples of this attack would cause anguish to those who love him, great suffering to those that depend on him and some alteration in the lives of those who are convenienced by him. I doubt that it would matter much to any of the 'victims' whether the act was motivated by a lust for violence or an indifference to life. Either way, there would be objective and social consequences to this sin.
By the same token, it's possible that the man in question will not be attacked. Again, the important thing is that the objective injury will not be imposed and the subsequent social consequences will not be experienced. From the potential victim's viewpoint, it doesn't really matter whether it is another person's sloth or virtue that preserves him. What matters is that he has been preserved.
All sins, even our hidden sins, are objective acts in an objective world. They have objective consequences. They result in divine and human suffering. They have a corrupting influence on the perpetrator and the victims. They have a corrosive effect on our larger society. It is important that we use every legitimate means at our disposal to avoid the possibility of sin. Habit, concern for the good opinions of others, a thoughtless adherence to social norms can all contribute to the virtuous society.
Just as sin has a rippling effort, virtue creates its own ripples. A kind word spoken or a small courtesy extended can have far reaching effects. I am sure that it will sound silly to most people today, but this is a lesson that my mother would re-enforce every school day of my childhood. As we left the house, she would remind us to smile as we made our way to school. She claimed that some one might glance out the window as we walked by. If we were smiling and cheerful, they would take delight in their day. If we were sullen or bickering, their mood would not be improved by the sight of us. They might even catch our mood so that their day would also lack joy. We were young enough to consider this a serious Christian duty.
So many of the social ills we are now experiencing are the result of not taking seriously the mundane duties and ordinary virtues. Working at a thankless job to put food on the table qualifies as a mundane virtue. Doing so with a humble enthusiasm may even make this act heroic. Maintaining spousal fidelity when love is on hiatus is also a mundane and ordinary virtue. So is the ordinary self-sacrifice of a stay-at-home mom. Setting limits on our children and even on the attention that we pay to our children is a dull and uninteresting virtue but it is a virtue that supports the world.
In one sense, it doesn't really matter whether we hold onto our jobs to keep up appearances or whether we remain faithful because we are too scared to cheat. What matters more than our reasons is our actions and our attitude in attending to these actions. By conforming our lives to such ordinary virtues, we create a society in which our children and our civilization can prosper.
There was a time, well within living memory, when divorce was almost unheard of and when almost all adults lived adult lives. Schools were orderly places of learning and teenagers had not yet been invented. People were better then, not because they were inherently better but simply because it was easily to be good. It was the norm.
One could argue that things fell apart because virtue had turned to sloth but I don't believe that this is the case at all. Instead, I think that people became convinced that ordinary virtue was sloth and that there was something extraordinary that they should be doing with their lives. They became enthralled with the ideal of self-actualization. Naturally, the emphasis was on self.
Not everyone jumped on the wagon. A good portion of our society continued in its practice of the ordinary. Just as today, a good portion embrace the satisfactions of a 'provincial' life. Proportionally, the percentage of people who changed with the times probably isn't that different today than it was when chaos first reared its head. Those strongly committed to virtue remain virtuous. Those who might have been virtuous in virtuous times, are now less than virtuous, if not down right sinful, in our less than virtuous times.
In a virtuous society, these would be hard-working dedicated family men and women. Their children would be properly raised and wholesome. Today, these same people are dilettantes at life and their children are fatherless, abandoned or stillborn. These children are victimized by the sins of their parents. They, in their own turn, will find virtue a difficult accomplishment. They lack examples to emulate and they may lack sufficient formation.
Whether or not we are honest enough to admit it, the sins of the father are necessarily on the heads of the children. Sin is an objective evil with objective social consequences. We've seen this. The practice of ordinary virtues and particularly the inculcation of habitual virtue is also an objective reality with objective ramifications. Let us honor and practice our mundane virtues for the glory of God and the sake of His children.
When I started this piece on Catholic complacency, I didn't have a firm idea of where I was headed. I simply felt that most attempts to engage the average Catholic in a pursuit of holiness, through attacks on this 'complacency', were being aimed at the wrong target. Often, the very efforts directed at increasing enthusiasm appear to elicit a determined resistance to both the speaker and his cause. The error was not only in the choice of target, but also in the choice of tactics. It struck me as though people were trying to re-kindle a hearth fire with water. Then it occurred to me. One deficiency in so many efforts to motivate Catholics is precisely that they are empty of the attributes consistent with our Catholic sensibility. They do not incorporate the virtues that support our Catholic rootedness.
What passes for "Catholic complacency" is something deeply embedded in the Catholic psyche. It is a sense of human frailty, the necessity of pardon, the requirement for gentleness and gentility. Actually, the list may be endless. Humility. An appreciation for ordinary works. The understanding that one's life is a lived prayer. The immediacy of our God. The charism of authority. The virtue of obedience. An affirmation of "love's austere office." The recognition of our exile. The consciousness of our unity. I haven't begun to skim the surface...
Catholic complacency is an outward sign of an inner reality that is vibrant and enduring. It is living affirmation of the Truth of Christ in conformance with a Church that holds the Keys to the Kingdom. Catholics are 'complacent' in their adherence to the Faith because they know that, as shabby as the Church may sometimes appear, there is no other place to stand. If we abandon the Church of man's redemption, where will we go in order that we might be saved? If we exile our sinners, justice will demand that we join them in exile. We face, with trepidation, our own complicity in sin.
This doesn't mean that we don't struggle with our faith, our Church, our lives or our sins. We do struggle. However, our struggle itself is grounded on this maligned Catholic sensibility. It occurred to me that anything so rooted in our culture that it is uniquely identifiable as a Catholic quality must have some redeeming social value.
As I started to review all of the goodness and virtue that provides the underpinnings for Catholic 'complacency', I began to get a sense of deja vu. This has all been said before. These virtues have all been underscored as something of inestimable value. There is a word for this ontological orientation which belongs collectively to Catholics and which, when viewed from afar, might be mistakenly identified as "Catholic complacency". Rummaging through my memory, I found the Word: charity.
"And I point out to you a yet more excellent way. If I should speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have charity, I have become as sounding brass or a tinkly cymbal. And if I have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, yet do not have charity, I am nothing. And if I distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, yet do not have charity, it profits me nothing.
Charity is patient, is kind; charity does not envy, is not pretentious, is not puffed up, is not ambitious, is not self-seeking, is not provoked; thinks no evil, does not rejoice of wickedness but rejoices with the truth; bears with all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Charity never fails... "
Perhaps, we would do well to consider "Catholic complacency" to be charity - as an ontological orientation - writ large. Obviously, this ontological orientation is insufficient as a definition of holiness. However, we might consider it to be a pre-condition, rather than an obstacle, to holiness. We might even consider emulating it in our evangelical endeavors.

Labels: A Problem of Perception

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Libertas Ecclesiae

A lot of Catholics have bought the mantra that 'the Church is not above the law'. This is beginning to seem like a Catholic theme song. Yet this argument is ridiculous. Of course, the Church is above the law. The Church is subject only to Christ. The Law of God 'trumps' the law of men. The authority of the Church is higher than the authority of the state. The Church sits in judgment over the State and deems her laws just or unjust. If this were not so, we would not currently have a Polish pope. The Church in the East would never have survived Stalin. If American Catholics can be this obtuse about the right relationship between Church and State, we won't ever need to worry about becoming a 'persecuted Church' in America. The Church in America will die at the hand of her faithful laity, - 'the People of God'.
The pederasty problem in the Church is not a failure to comply with secular laws. It's a failure to comply with Church Law. I'm certain that it is impolitic to say but secular law is completely irrelevant unless it can be made to conform with the appropriate ecclesiastical exercise of authority. Right now, in America, seven states do not, I repeat, do not recognize the seal of confession. Their failure to recognize this privilege changes nothing. It merely means that Catholics can be arrested simply for being Catholic. Most, but not necessarily all of those arrests, would be priests.
If and when the Church complies with secular laws, she does it at her own discretion. We call it 'employing the secular arm.' The Church might employ that secular arm in 15th century Spain, to rein in heresy… Or she might do so, in 21st century America, to rein in predator priests. She employs the secular arm because, on occasions of great and widespread rebellion, the use of force becomes necessary and because the Church, quite rightly, 'shrinks from blood' a.k.a. the employment of brute force. This may very well be a time when it has become necessary to employ the secular arm, but we should understand the significance of our actions.
We are calling for the Grand Inquisitor. We are even drawing on the same concepts to justify this action. Yesterday, heretics were the 'soul-slayers'; today pedophiles are. Yesterday's justice is today's excess brutality. How will today's justice look in the clear light of tomorrow? Remember, the record will show that the 'monster' Geoghan was imprisoned for 10 long years. His crime will read 'Geoghan touched a boy's thigh while teaching him to swim in a public swimming pool'. The record will show that the Church relaxed Geoghan to the secular arm. The record will show that all of this occurred after John Paul 2 promised the world that the Church would never again use the secular arm to force her teaching on aberrant Catholics. I understand that there is more to Geoghan's criminality. But the official record will show…
Of course, we should be angry. Of course, we should get pedophiles 'off the street'. Of course, we should hold our bishops to their duty. But we should also be measured, resolute and just. Right now, there's a tinge of hysteria in the air. We should be careful that the scandal of pedophilia is not overshadowed by a more scandalous witch hunt. We should remain faithful to the church and feel confident in her mystery.
The American concept of freedom of religion is based on a Protestant-individualist framework and is limited to freedom of conscience. As Catholics, we too believe in the freedom of a rightly-formed conscience. At the same time, we believe in our right to trade a private opinion for a public truth. The Catholic concept of religious freedom is based on a communal concept of religion. The Church defines religious freedom as the right of the Church to regulate her own affairs and to preach the gospel. In my humble opinion, the Church has precedence over the nations. She exists before the nation-state. Nations are her children. They are not her peers and they certainly aren't her parents.
One of the little known fact about the Spanish Inquisition is that the Spanish laity thought the inquisition was just the ticket needed. The Spanish even went so far as to kill the papal legate when the pope sent his representative to chastise the Church in Spain. The Spanish Inquisition (a.k.a. The Black Legend) has always been one of the hardest periods in Church history for me to comprehend, It is difficult to integrate with the claims of the Catholic Church. Until now, I have taken the modern position that there is a real problem with what actually happened (Obviously, there's an even greater problem if you believe the legend rather than the truth).
Suddenly, I'm not so sure. Ideas do have consequences. A predatory priesthood is a severe consequence but so are sexual seduction, broken vows, broken homes, broken children, birth control, abortion, child abandonment, adultery, homosexuality, extra-marital sex, pornography, the desecration of the Eucharist, irreverence at Mass. Perhaps, we could have saved ourselves from so much broken-ness, if we had taken on modern heresies unflinchingly and unfailingly. If this is the case, it wasn't the 'Church' that failed Catholics, it was the Catholics who have failed the "Church"
The sexual abuse of minors is not a Catholic problem. It is a cultural problem. It is happening worldwide. It is symptom of our compliance with a Culture of Death that denies the dignity of man. Within the Church, it is a clear sign that we (clergy AND laity) have failed in our fidelity to the Church. The real 'problem' that America has with the Church is that, as teacher and guardian, she will not bent to secular influence. This would be okay except 20% of the world's population is Catholic. The Church's influence extends well beyond the Catholic people. Faithful Catholics are an irritant in the 'body politic' of the Culture of Death. Pedophilia is a wedge that can be used to separate the 'people of God' from the Church of Jesus Christ. If we cut ourselves off from our bishops, we - not they - become the amputated parts of the Mystical Body. We - not they - are dead. We - not they - will be buried by cultural Marxism. Personally, I'll stick with Rome on this one.

Labels: Freedom of Religion

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The Moral Order - 1
Why do things get worse so fast?

In The Revenge of Conscience which was published by First Things, J. Budziszewski addresses this provocative question:
Things are getting worse very quickly now. The list of what we are required to approve is growing ever longer. Consider just the domain of sexual practice. First we were to approve sex before marriage, then without marriage, now against marriage. First with one, then with a series, now with a crowd. First with the other sex, then with the same. First between adults, then between children, then between adults and children. The last item has not been added yet, but will be soon: you can tell from the change in language, just as you can tell the approach of winter from the change in the color of leaves. As any sin passes through its stages from temptation, to toleration, to approval, its name is first euphemized, then avoided, then forgotten. A colleague tells me that some of his fellow legal scholars call child molestation "intergenerational intimacy": that’s euphemism. A good-hearted editor tried to talk me out of using the term "sodomy": that’s avoidance. My students don’t know the word "fornication" at all: that’s forgetfulness...

The usual explanation is that conscience is weakened by neglect. Once a wrong is done, the next wrong comes more easily. In this view, conscience is mainly a restraint,... a passive barrier... Often this explanation is combined with another: that conscience comes from culture, that it is built up in us from outside. In this view the heart is malleable.
Budziszewski offers a different explanation: Conscience is not a passive barrier but an active force; though it can hold us back, it can also drive us on. Moreover, conscience comes not from without but from within: though culture can trim the fringes, the core cannot be changed. The reason things get worse so fast must somehow lie not in the weakness of conscience but in its strength, not in its shapelessness but in its shape.
Believing that there are laws that we can't not know Budziszewski argues that if mere moral realists are right, then although the problem of moral decline may begin in volition, it dwells in cognition: it may begin as a defect of will, but ends as a defect of knowledge... What is the result? That our contemporary ignorance of right and wrong is genuine. We really don’t know the truth, but we are honestly searching for it—trying to see on a foggy night—doing the best that we can. In a sense, we are blameless for our deeds, for we don’t know any better.
All this sounds persuasive, yet it is precisely what the older tradition, the natural law tradition, denies. We do know better; we are not doing the best we can. The problem of moral decline is volitional, not cognitive; it has little to do with knowledge. By and large we do know right from wrong, but wish we didn’t. We only make believe we are searching for truth—so that we can do wrong, condone wrong, or suppress our remorse for having done wrong in the past.
If the traditional view is true, then our decline is owed not to moral ignorance but to moral suppression. We aren’t untutored, but "in denial." We don’t lack moral knowledge; we hold it down...
If the law written on the heart can be repressed, then we cannot count on it to restrain us from doing wrong; that much is obvious...(Budziszewski makes) the more paradoxical claim that repressing it hurls us into further wrong. Holding conscience down doesn’t deprive it of its force; it merely distorts and redirects that force. We are speaking of something less like the erosion of an earthen dike ... than like the compression of a powerful spring so that it buckles to the side.
Here is how it works. Guilt, guilty knowledge, and guilty feelings are not the same thing; men and women can have the knowledge without the feelings, and they can have the feelings without the fact. Even when suppressed, however, the knowledge of guilt always produces certain objective needs, which make their own demand for satisfaction irrespective of the state of the feelings. These needs include confession, atonement, reconciliation, and justification.
Of reconciliation, Budziszewski states: ...The need for reconciliation arises from the fact that guilt cuts us off from God and man. Without repentance, intimacy must be simulated precisely by sharing with others in the guilty act. Violation of a basic human bond (as in euthanasia) is so terrible that the burdened conscience must instantly establish an abnormal one to compensate; the very gravity of the transgression invests the new bond with a sense of profound significance. Naturally some will find it attractive.
The reconciliation need has a public dimension, too. Isolated from the community of moral judgment, transgressors strive to gather a substitute around themselves. They don’t sin privately; they recruit. The more ambitious among them go further. Refusing to go to the mountain, they require the mountain to come to them: society must be transformed so that it no longer stands in awful judgment. So it is that they change the laws, infiltrate the schools, and create intrusive social-welfare bureaucracies.
His comments on justification are equally insightful. Using sexual attitudes to illustrate his point, he argues: Because we can’t not know that sex belongs with marriage, when we separate them we cover our guilty knowledge with rationalizations...
...if the criterion of being as-good-as-married is sexual feelings, then obviously nobody who has sexual feelings may be prevented from marrying. So homosexuals must also be able to "marry"; their unions, too, should have cultural protection. At this point suppressed conscience strikes another blow, reminding us that marriage is linked with procreation. But now we are in a box. We cannot say "therefore homosexuals cannot marry," because that would strike against the whole teetering structure of rationalizations. Therefore we decree that having been made marriageable, homosexuals must be made procreative; the barren field must seem to bloom. There is, after all, artificial insemination. And there is adoption. So it comes to pass that children are given as a right to those from whom they were once protected as a duty. The normalization of perversion is complete.
The same process of justification is employed with abortion...
The only option... to deny the humanity of the victims. It is at this point that the machinery slips out of control. For the only way to make [this] option work is to ignore biological nature, which tells us that from conception onward the child is as human as you or me ... and invent another criterion of humanity, one that makes it a matter of degree. Some of us must turn out more human, others less...It hardly needs to be said that no one has been able to come up with a criterion that makes babies in the womb less human but leaves everyone else as he was; the teeth of the moral gears are too finely set for that.
People... are more logical than they know; they are only logical slowly. The implication they do not grasp today they may grasp in thirty years; if they do not grasp it even then, their children will...
So conscience has its revenge. We can’t not know the preciousness of human life—therefore, if we tell ourselves that humanity is a matter of degree, we can’t help holding those who are more human more precious than those who are less. The urge to justify abortion drives us inexorably to a system of moral castes more pitiless than anything the East has devised. Of course we can fiddle with the grading criteria: consciousness, self-awareness, and contribution to society have been proposed; racial purity has been tried. No such tinkering avails to change the character of our deeds. If we will a caste system, then we shall have one; if we will that some shall have their way, then in time there shall be a nobility of Those Who Have Their Way. All that our fiddling with the criteria achieves is a rearrangement of the castes.
Need we wonder why, then, having started on our babies, we now want to kill our grandparents? Sin ramifies. It is fertile, fissiparous, and parasitic, always in search of new kingdoms to corrupt. It breeds. But just as a virus cannot reproduce except by commandeering the machinery of a cell, sin cannot reproduce except by taking over the machinery of conscience. Not a gear, not a wheel is destroyed, but they are all set turning in different directions than their wont. Evil must rationalize, and that is its weakness. But it can, and that is its strength.

We’ve seen that although conscience works in everyone, it doesn’t restrain everyone. In all of us some of the time, in some of us all of the time, its fearsome energy merely "multiplies transgressions." Bent backwards by denial, it is more likely to catalyze moral collapse than hold it back.

Budziszewski also addresses other related expressions of the natural law in human nature. He notes that there are natural and unavoidable consequences to violating the natural law. But then acknowledges that the disciplinary effect of natural consequences is diminished in at least two ways... The first diminisher is a simple time lag: not every consequence of violating the natural law strikes immediately. Some results make themselves felt only after several generations...The second diminisher comes from us: "Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good," we exert our ingenuity to escape from the natural consequences of breaking the natural law.

...Naught avails; our efforts to thwart the law of natural consequences merely make the penalty more crushing when it comes. The only question is whether our culture will be able to survive the return stroke of the piston.

To survive what is bearing down on us, we must learn four hard lessons:...

But go read the entire article for yourself.
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The Moral Order - 2

Although "The Revenge of Conscience" is an excellent article, I am not convinced that it goes far enough in examining the deleterious effect that a culture of death has on subsequent generations. In line with the old adage that one generation’s sins are visited upon subsequent generations, Budziszewski briefly highlights the brokenness inflicted on our children's souls by the social consequences of private sin. Yet the injury that Budziszewski addresses is a damage that would be visited on the children of such sinners regardless of the prevailing culture.

Something different happens when the prevailing culture is one of brokenness. The consequences of private sin will be felt by all members of the subsequent generation thus geometrically increasing the magnitude of the problem. The society quickly reaches a point where broken people and broken lives are the norm rather than the exception. Yet, all told, this is merely a difference in degree.

I suspect that there is also an additional and discrete impact which is different in kind from the first. I suspect that in a broken culture, the very souls of the subsequent generation are impoverished. They are stunted by lack of sustenance as well as by lack of exercise.

The physical world can model my meaning. In a land of extreme poverty, a malnourished child will suffer from a number of complaints. His growth will be stunted, he will suffer from handicaps such as blindness due to vitamin deficiencies, he will suffer deformities such as rickets and from a greater susceptibility to disease. Some of these problems may be reparable but others result in permanent disadvantage.

I suspect that a spiritually impoverished culture would affect one’s spirit in much the same way. Children of such a culture would lack a largeness and vitality of spirit. They would lack a framework of spiritual abundance and their imagination would be limited to “let’s pretend.” In the game of “let’s pretend”, one can never lose sight of the fact that pretend is just pretend and can never be real. Alternately, by engaging in “make believe”, we make our belief real, if only for the moment. In doing so, we make dreaming possible and we make dreams attainable.

I could be wrong but it seems to me that one of the larger moral issues today is the inability to believe. I‘m not talking about faith. I’m talking about something much more basic. Today, most people believe that the earth revolves around the sun. For those who hold the proof, this may be science. But, for the rest of us, it is a belief that runs contrary to our senses. It is this measure of belief that seems to be breaking down. But more on this later…


The Moral Order - 3

"The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside." - Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

The loss of any "sense that there is an outside" is one feature of our spiritually impoverished world. It is one of the generational consequences that has befallen our children. By defining deviancy down, we have created a scenario where what was previously considered normal is now considered an unattainable ideal.

At first glance, it seems paradoxical that a broadening of lifestyle choices would result in a diminishment of real alternatives. This apparent contradiction is resolved when we recognize that channeled choice is not the same as freedom. In some cases, choice itself is a subterfuge of tyranny.

Consider the advice often given to parents of children in their "terrible twos". When a parent wants a child to perform action "A" without argument, the adult should present the child with two inconsequential options - both of which presuppose action "A". The child will then have the satisfaction of controlling an inconsequential action while being manipulated into the desired behavior.

The lifestyle choices being offered to adults today fall into the same inconsequential territory. There are a thousand roads to hell; yet there is no clearly discernible path to the greater rewards of the virtuous life. The substitution of options in lieu of fundamental choice creates a world in which the moral sense is blunted. Take for example the area of human sexuality.

In an earlier generation, the spousal nature of sexuality was normative. Young people could legitimately expect to grow up, marry and raise a family. Marriage was a permanent arrangement. Intimacy and trust within the marriage were realistic expectations. Society established clear guidelines on behavior leading to marriage and the behaviors necessary to maintain the marital state. The world was not free of sexual sins, but they were considered deviant rather than normative. The consequences of such sins were clear and socially re-enforced.

Today, in contrast, the sexual options appear to be unlimited. We can engage in any number of sexual adventures with any number of partners in any way imaginable. There are innumerable ways in which we might use each other. Yet there remains only one path to ‘one flesh.’ This path of spousal love is one based on fidelity and promise. It is one of unitive sexuality in which each act is open to procreative possibilities.

In broadening our definitions of normative sexuality, we did not simply admit non-spousal sexual options to a parity with spousal sexuality. We necessarily established them as preferential. The only way to normalize non-spousal sexuality is to discredit spousal sexuality through distortion. We had to create a preference for the perfect that would be destructive of the good. We romanticized sexual love by separating it from its incarnational form. We replaced flesh and blood partners with daemon-lovers. We substituted sentimentalism for love and selfishness for desire. Compared to our utopian dreams and romantic illusions, spousal love grounded in realism seems mundane and stultifying.

Eventually, having served its purpose of discrediting spousal love and having been irreparably damaged by too many encounters with reality, romantic love ceded preeminence to casual and ‘best buddy’ sexual encounters. In its own way, this paradigm is as false to realism and as damaging to persons as its antecedent. While romanticism denied immanence, buddy sexual encounters deny transcendence. Both refuse participation in the particularity of spousal love and both contribute to the illusion that spousal love is somehow suspect.

Any number of societal changes can be credited with the demythologizing and denigration of spousal love. Regardless of cause, the end result was to de- legitimatize spousal love as a vital sexual option different in kind from all other sexual options. To further complicate matters, society has conspired to sexualize the young and to eroticize friendship. Children growing to adulthood in such a de-formed culture find the path to adult sexuality difficult and at times impossible to navigate.

In yesterday's world when sexual virtue was normative, the volitional nature of sexual sins was unimpeded. This is no longer the case. Today, volition is limited by a failure of moral imagination. This failure is not in cognition. The law that we can’t not-know is still known. The issue in question is whether one believes that the natural law is capable of be met. In one sense, this is a failure that precedes and determines moral judgment. It is the context within which moral judgment is exercised. Yet for all of that, it remains a function of conscience, rather than an external condition.

The failure of moral imagination occurs at several levels.

First, the reality of spousal love has moved from a central to a peripheral place in our awareness. It has become an ideal rather than a norm. The wealth of exemplary models has been greatly diminished. In its place, we see a wealth of ‘exemplary’ failures to attain the ‘ideal.’ We see the cost incurred by such failure. What we can not see is whether these failures were based on the actual impossibility of realizing the ‘ideal’ or the volitional choice not to realize it.

Second, the surfeit of acceptable options creates a world in which the ideal is not necessarily recognized as the single alternative to violation of the natural law. Today, for example, many people presume that the requirement that spousal love be open to procreative possibilities is a fundamental option rather than a particular one.

Third, a misguided sentimentality deliberately seeks to diminish the perceived and actual consequences of alternative sexual options. Our moral imagination has been deliberately muddied with illustrative examples that highlight and contrast the ‘best case’ scenarios of alternative options and the ‘worst case’ scenarios of adherence to the natural law.

Fourth, the variety of false choices creates enough cultural confusion that adherence to natural law is no longer seen as an either-or choice. Instead it becomes one option among many.

In addition to the limitations imposed by this failure of the moral imagination, there are practical considerations that impede the volitional character of this judgment. These include the lack of societal support for the natural law and the inability to discern a clear path to the desired end. In a world where sexual congress is a normative aspect of ‘dating’, the chaste path to spousal love may seem impractical. Rather than accept the rigors of a path that precludes alternatives, many people may see such alternatives as the only viable way to achieve spousal love. Today, it certainly appears that most marriages spring from pre-marital sexual activities. Yet most pre-marital sexual relationships probably don’t end in spousal love. In this respect, people might violate the natural law as the only perceived path to its fulfillment. And as a consequence, they might find that they repeatedly violate this law in the expectation that this violation is a necessary act in pursuit of the law.


The Moral Order - 4

As our moral imagination has diminished, the realm of morality has shrunk to the hypothetical. What was once a matter of morals has become a matter of personal preference and social niceties. We honor our parents except with our psychologists or when talking about our therapy or when they ask for inconvenient considerations. Of course, this isn’t a moral problem. It’s a psychological necessity. Lies, gossip, slander, conversational cruelties, broken promises and casual disrespect are commonplace. They aren’t a moral violation. They’re social niceties. We don’t steal …except perhaps small inconsequential items, or by buying knock-offs or from cable companies or at tax time. This isn’t a moral problem. It’s being financially savvy. Our greatest pastime may be consumerism but we don’t covet. Instead, we use credit and support an expanding economy. We don’t commit adultery. We love not wisely, but well. We would never want to kill anyone but we do want to keep our options open. We are caring people so we would prefer to kill our babies through contraception than abortion. This isn’t a moral calamity. It’s a pragmatic choice.

When the chips are down, we will do the right thing. Someday we might have to take a moral stand and, in that event, we imagine that we will do the right thing. Perhaps we would be heroes like the men who rushed into the towers on 9/ll. But it is equally likely that we would simply consider such behavior aberrant. Such questions remain hypothetical.

One of the strange thing about our current situation is that most of our violations of natural law never hit our moral radar. It simply doesn’t occur to us that that morality is an every day aspect of living in the world. We remain blind to the moral dimension of our choices and to their impact on our character. We believe that we are essentially good people because we get to define good however we please. And we get to change that definition whenever we please.

But there are costs involved. . .

The Moral Order - 5

In failing to recognize the moral dimension of our every day lives, we move from a rational worldview to an irrational one. Events that work to fulfill the natural law are interpreted as random. We act not from self-knowledge but in self-defense. We become rigid where we ought to remain flexible and we become malleable where we should show strength. Lacking any objective criteria, we become ever more susceptible to the vagaries of popular opinion. We begin to value change simply because it moves us from the pain we currently inhabit. We never question whether the change itself might attenuate the pain. At the same time, we become increasingly parochial and risk-adverse.

We develop a strange and estranged moral schizophrenia. Not only are double standards acceptable but one can simultaneously adhere to contradictory standards. The Catholic Church can be denigrated for retaining homosexual leaders and the BSA can be smeared for not doing so. NYC's gay high school can be applauded for mentoring the sexually confused adolescent into homosexuality and NAMBLA can be condemned for the same service. Planned Parenthood can be applauded for protecting the sexual privacy of 'pedophiles' and Megan’s Laws can be implemented to expose pedophiles.

Having nothing to rely on but our private feelings, we misuse our feelings to establish our innocence and to demonize those who oppose us. We move from compassion to sentimentality to cruelty without so much as stopping to take a deep breath. Our goodness rests not in our thoughts (which we claim we can not control) nor in our deeds (which we don’t care to control) but simply in the fact that we feel.

Feeling is a particularly appropriate word for our justification. It has a multiplicity of utility in that it can refer to an emotion, an unspecified need, a desire, an appetite or a mere sensation. For the most part, these attributes exist at the interface between soul and body. Thus they can easily fall outside the focus of our attention. They remain unexamined and are therefore most open to suggestion and manipulation. We treat them as axioms. Yet they are the most ephemeral aspects of our being. Thus we make the ephemeral central and the permanent peripheral to our identities.

When morality becomes peripheral to our lived experience, we have in effect cut ourselves off from our humanity. We exist purely in the moment and only for the duration of any given experience. We can no longer claim our yesterdays and our tomorrows. They belong to 'who we are not now'. In reducing morality to a matter of taste, we becomes slayers of our own souls. We lack permanence and the ability to make commitments. We can never know ourselves because we are unwilling to define ourselves. We are engaged in a perpetual betrayal of both who we were and who we might become. In using subjective criteria and arbitrary social constructs to create a framework for our action, we are reduced to temporary attachments toward fashionable life styles.

We are not simply hiding behind a false persona. We have never been nor can we ever become anything other than the masks and disguises that hide our 'not-ness.' Beneath these masks, the non-existent self is not simply the absence of self. It is the positive and relentless act of self-annihilation. Some have called this the will to power. Nietzsche recognized it as the lust of the knife. It’s a strange hybrid of sadism, masochism and despair. It is a form of self-loathing often misinterpreted as self-love.

While a diminished moral capacity results in self-loathing, the narcissistic bend in our culture is not solely dependent on this phenomenon. Narcissism has been further advanced by our social conditioning. So many of us honestly believe that personal fulfillment is the only worthwhile pursuit. Even much of our religious orientation is built on this analysis.

Of course, the major problem with narcissism is that sooner or later, it runs smack up against the real world. In the real world, not everything bends to our instantaneous whim. There are quite arbitrary and very real limits on our power to ‘self-actualize.’ Narcissism by its very nature can not accommodate these limits. Once thwarted, self-loathing becomes an undifferentiated rage. Combined with our failure to develop self-discipline, there is an ominous potential for violence underlying even the smallest exchanges between the self and the not-self.
The Moral Order - 6

Many of the effects of a diminished moral imagination resonate in the area of personal relationships. When the interior world of personhood is annihilated, one lacks both the capacity and the competence to love. Love is a self-giving which presumes a self to be given. It is an unconditional self-giving which requires humility, maturity and self-discipline on the part of those who would love.

Love is a spiritual reality - an act of volition that requires a commitment that is permanent. Only someone capable of committing his present-and-future-self to the present-and-future-self of his beloved is capable of love. Any lesser commitment, though it might be invested with sentiment, is a mere alliance or facsimile. Such alliances may develop into love but, in themselves, they are prelude.

Both the love between friends and spousal love begin as a choice involving selection and decision; neither of which is necessarily rational. The judgment to love may be subject to conditions but the love itself is unconditional (by which I mean something quite different from unconditional acceptance). This is the basic building block of society. Divorce is a denial of this basic truth.

One of the great harms inflicted on our society by divorce is that it has changed the definition of marriage. Marriage itself has become conditional, leaving spousal relationships that much more susceptible to love’s facsimiles. This is an immeasurable tragedy because it alters the very nature of the family.

Family should exist as a given. It should be a permanent thing. Not only should one’s own family be permanent, but the very concept of family should be inseparable from surety and irrevocability. The necessary premise of marriage is love because it is in the family that children learn love. In a world where marriage is conditional, even the children of stable marriages are likely to learn that all love is conditional. It exists as a choice that can always be un-chosen.

Contraception further damages the knowledge that love is one of the permanent things. Children have a right to be ‘acts of God’. They have a right to know that their existence is not premised on their parents’ preference. Unfortunately, a contracepting society means that every child is his parents’ choice. A refusal to consider other options is still a choice not to consider other options.

I can’t even imagine how tentative a child’s existence becomes when it is bracketed by the twin tragedies inherent in a culture that condones both divorce and contraception. Such radical freedom in the adult sphere can only create a terrible sense of the arbitrary in the child’s world. To be wanted implies that you might not have been wanted, or that you won‘t measure up to what was wanted. Your very right to life is conditional rather than inalienable. This knowledge has to have a diminishing effect on the moral imagination.

The Moral Order - 7

Sometimes it seems to me that so many of today’s children are intimately involved in sin long before they have even the capacity to know the difference. A child, raised without benefit of a father and longing for the natural order in which family is forever, is already a victim of sin. What should have been the most real element in a child’s life is a never-to-be-realized dream. The hunger that is created by this need alone would be enough to cause moral chaos in a young person’s perspective. But the damage goes deeper.

For such a child, two of the most fundamental principals of the moral order are set at odds with each other. The first principle is sanctity of the family. The second principle is the Fourth Commandment that is written into the heart of every child. To a young child - heck…to a middle-aged woman -, the natural law looks an awful lot like a Catch-22.

If Budziszewski is right, our children can’t not know these two laws. Like the rest of mankind, children are bound by them. To maintain sanity, children are bound by an obligation to resolve the conflict between them. For a child born into a broken home, the very condition of his existence imposes on that child an obligation to break with the moral order. The only real choice he has is in determining which of the two laws he will violate and which he will honor. Having made the choice, he must re-interpret everything that he knows in light of that choice. Either way, his choice must involve lying to himself and suspending his moral judgment of himself and of others.

Most people would admit that young children look on their parents as gods who are all-knowing, all powerful and always in the right. Some would argue that, at an early age, this perception should be actively countered and replaced with a more realistic assessment of the parent’s plight. Fulton J. Sheen said that this perception is an important and necessary element in the natural order. It is a perception of protection that provides a safe place and a carelessness in which children can flourish.

This natural stage in a child’s psychological development is not simply an arbitrary illusion. It may be a necessary step in the movement from infantile narcissism to adult freedom. Fulton Sheen argued that, during this period, a parent’s particular obligation is to image God both in the act of parenting and in the living of life so that the child might come to a knowledge of the true God. Admittedly, this is a tough role to fill but it serves equally the parents in their own pursuit of holiness and the child in his introduction to that most human endeavor.

Today, in contradiction to this advice, popular opinion is that parents have a strict obligation to disassemble this illusion. We are told that our children will be better served knowing that their parents are vulnerable, arbitrary and wrongheaded. We should be honest with our children about our mistakes and our failings, particularly in our dealings with them. Supposedly, this permits them to develop a healthy self-esteem, a sense of control over their actions and their destiny and a ‘realistic’ moral criteria. I question whether this is a good estimate of the effects on the child. I’m pretty sure that it is a close approximation of the psychological effects on the parent. The bottom line is that it’s a cop-out. It allows the adult to behave less than admirably and it leaves the child with the task of ‘cleaning up’ the fallout.

The effect that this has on the moral order is devastating. Young children simply don’t have the skill or experience to establish moral order out of chaos. Of necessity, they will build a world premised on much more dangerous illusions. Possibly it will be a world without God and without recourse to justice, a dangerous and arbitrary world in which the only person that can be trusted is oneself and in which other people exist merely as satisfaction to one’s needs or as foils for one’s amusement.

Somehow I doubt that this is what we should be teaching our toddlers in Morality101. Who knows…maybe I’m wrong. Maybe these things don’t count. To be honest, I would hate to have the experience (that is every day imposed on our children) of finding out.

The Moral Order - 8

The initial moral disconnect that we inflict on so many of our children would be bad enough, but the damage we do to them extends further. We are the first generation that has attempted to define humanity without reference to a deity. This isn’t a skill that we have adequately mastered and we do a terrible job of it. We can’t seem to decide whether we are beasts or angels. Since we are neither, we never seem to get our definitions right. We are forced to hold two contradictory positions on everything. Yet we pretend that we deal in paradox rather than duplicity. Our incoherence extends to every level and in all directions. Think of the things we teach our children and the danger that our teaching imposes on them.

Assuming that we are angels, we teach our children that gender is meaningless. Yet when we raise our children to believe that there are no gender differences between men and women, we practically invent date rape. Young girls are taught that boys are just like them in their thoughts, their perceptions and their responses. Naturally, girls then think that boys will interpret situations with a female sensibility. Young boys, taught in a similar manner, will make a similar mistake. They will assume that girls are motivated by the same drives and ambitions as any of their male companions. Girls are taught that they can dress as they please and act as they wish and go where they want. Boys will naturally read this behavior as an invitation. After all, boys and girls are just the same and a boy’s only frame of reference is his masculine perspective. Perhaps it’s not quite this simple but a failure in communication does underlie much of our sexual warfare.

Based on the alternate assumption that we are beasts, we treat sexuality as an uncontrollable urge. Having told our children that gender is irrelevant, we then permit the premature sexualization of our children. We leave them exposed to a culture that glorifies narcissistic sexuality and random encounters. We simultaneously fail to connect love with sex and to distinguish friendship from desire. Perhaps we assume that this knowledge is self-evident. Or perhaps, like the nuts and bolts of human sexuality, we leave this education to the professionals. As parents, we aren’t privy to the details of what our children learn but lately - perhaps too late - we hear stories out of Massachusetts’s school system that are shocking. Is it any wonder that ‘anarchy is loosed upon the world’?

Of course, sexual anarchy is only one manifestation of a more general problem. The deeper problem is a generic failure to establish appropriate connections with the world beyond the self. We tell our children that they should be autonomous individuals intent on self-fulfillment. Most of the adults in their world accept this ideal and exemplify this behavior. In doing so, they explicitly indicate that the child’s self fulfillment is secondary to their own.

Children experience the disconnect between the words and the deeds. Their world is filled with such disconnects. They are told to think for themselves and then taught what to think. They are told to act independently and then criticized for exuberance or insolence. They are told that they are unique and then subjected to an education in the politics of group identity.

We tell our children that they are insignificant accidents of evolution. Then we tell them that they are responsible for the earth’s ecosphere. We claim that they are the future. Then we deny that there is a future. We assure them that they can be anything. Then we praise them simply for being. We tell them that we love them but that we only have time for them when it fits our schedule. We are nothing if not inconsistent.

And yet, somehow we and they survive. Perhaps we survive by not examining the ‘somehow’ too closely.

The Moral Order - 9

The traditional definition of the human soul is that the soul, having no constituent parts, is the singular reality of intellect and volition. Because the definition of intellect has been greatly diminished since the time when this definition was advanced, the word sentience is often substituted for intellect.

When we divorced morality from our everyday acts, we effectively decoupled our conscience from our volition. When we look more closely at the previously mentioned ’somehow’, it becomes evident that this decoupling is being duplicated in the sphere of the intellect.

So much of what we know, based on the arguments of science, is internally inconsistent. That being the case, there is only one way in which we can hold all of the self-contradictory ‘knowledge’ that we possess. We categorize it and we compartmentalize it.

Some few bits of information are seen as having a meaningful impact on our lives. The rest of our knowledge is merely data. This data doesn’t mean anything. It has no significance unless we are engaged in games like Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit. On such occasions, all knowledge is reduced to trivia. There is no prioritization in terms of either importance or significance.

Because so much of our knowledge falls into the trivial categories, we never contemplate the implications of this knowledge. We never assimilate it nor do we evaluate it in light of our actual experiences. Basically we have simply removed this segment of our ’knowledge base’ from intellectual inquiry. Yet below our awareness, this trivia does seep into our worldview and it frequently distorts our ability to reason effectively.

Consider merely the theory of evolution. This is a theory that, from our earliest days in primary school, we are taught as scientific fact. Today, children probably learn it on the Discovery channel long before entering school. It colors much of our more relevant thinking. In itself, however, it remains data. Most of us don’t give it a second thought. Yet the implications of the theory are profound.

Suddenly… All of creation is an accident. It no longer even qualifies as ’creation’. Instead, it is flotsam and jetsam. All change is merely mistake and there can be no such thing as progress. Even those that would argue that mankind is a plague or an ecological cancer have no footing on which to base their claims. There can be no good or bad, better or worse. All that exists is garbage.

Suddenly…Man is neither made by God nor in the image of God. He is an uncomfortable animal prone to self-delusion. Yet those who would make this claim have no basis for their claim. They are mere garbage and their utterances are as foolishly insignificant as those of their intellectual opponents. Regardless of the point of view proposed, what value can be placed on the mere firing of neurons?

Rather than acknowledge these inconvenient implications, the theory of evolution is placed safely in a category of unexamined assumptions. When on occasion it is taken out and dusted over, it is more than likely used as a basis for arguments that it hasn’t the structural integrity to support.

It’s claimed that the theory of evolution leads one eventually to the theory that man is merely a naked ape. He is no different in kind from the other animals. On one side of the discussion, we use models of animal behavior to tickle out what might be acceptable behavior for humans. On the other side, we put up false distinctions to delineate a difference on which we might predicate our humanity… only to have our arguments knocked down by a new study or a new theory.

One of the intriguing aspects of such conversations is that they are all premised on the very distinction that actually does delineate man from the animals. This distinction is overlooked simply because we have never made any systematic and critical inquiry into the human implications of evolution. We simply accept both the theory and the relevance of the theory. We accept that it has a bearing on the matter at hand. We take it on faith at the theory actually provides support for the irrational and disjointed theories that claim it as a necessary premise.

Instead of trying to define and examine the relationships between various claims and evolution, we simply place each claim in its own box as yet another incontrovertible fact. In turn, these ’facts’ can be used to build ever more elaborate castles in the air.

In an important sense, our castles in the air decouple our intellect from our lives. They have little bearing on how anyone should live his life. So life is lived by rote. The intellect becomes a tool and our thoughts become techniques. We think in terms of how rather than why.

When we do use our minds to explore the more esoteric realms, we fail to see how this exploration relates to the nuts and bolts of our own lives. Perhaps it is mere coincidence that so much of our thinking, like so many of our actions, never hits our moral radar. It too, has been reduced to the hypothetical.

In time, we become so accustom to our intellectual disconnect, that we fail to recognize even the reason that people have intellectual conversations and debates. The reason is simple. We want to persuade. We want to convince one another of where we are and where we ought to be going.

Of course, right there is the key. The reason man is such an uncomfortable animal - the reason he has an intellect at all - is to guide his actions. It is that portion of the soul responsible for discernment. Underlying all of our arguments for or against the distinctive nature of man, is a five-letter word that implies man’s unique place in the universe: ought.


The Moral Order -10

With so much of our knowledge base divorced from moral consideration, it’s interesting to consider how we do address moral issues. Obviously, we don’t address these issues dispassionately. To do so would be unfeeling and our current social premise is that we measure our goodness by the depths of our feelings.

Nor do we apply the same thought process and moral criteria to all our judgments. Instead, we seem to address morality as a subset of politics. Any particular issue is framed largely by the politics in play at the time the issue hits our political awareness. Abortion, proposed during the high mark of Objectivism, is most often framed in terms of a woman’s Objectivist right. Hate crime legislation, which is a later development, is based more on the issue of victimization.

Arguments that have proved useful in promoting abortion are still in play when defending it. Those same arguments are not brought in to play in evaluating hate crimes. Our moral paradigm has shifted. This shift adds current considerations to the abortion debate but it does not enlarge the debate on victimization with antiquated arguments. Sometimes I imagine that one might measure our social decline merely by exploring the evolution of our justifications.

One significant step in this evolution was in re-classifying moral problems as social issues. Doing so, allows us to ignore the personal in favor of the political. Additionally, it broadens the sphere of problems under consideration while simultaneously creating a moral equivalence between all such problems. Childhood obesity and violence in our schools are comparable concerns. Both threaten our children’s health and safety. Both require behavior modification and environmental restructuring. Neither requires the assignment of responsibility or blame.

Another significant step has been the pre-packaging that accompanies the exposure of a social problem This pre-packaging was on display both in the Enron Debacle and in the War on Terror. Neither of these events was orchestrated. Although the causes for each may have simmered for years, each burst on the scene unexpectedly. In both cases, there was agreement on the nature of the wrong perpetrated. In both cases, there were stable paradigms in which to interpret events. Resolution was merely a matter of accepting one worldview in preference to another. Or perhaps it was simply a matter of confirming one‘s previously assimilated worldview.

Rarely do we examine the actual packaging that surrounds a social crisis. The Catholic scandal would seem to be an exception, but this exceptionalism is illusionary. The simple truth is that there were merely more paradigms in play. The traditional and historic worldview of Catholicism is one that few people today understand thoroughly. It is undemocratic and communitarian with a particular emphasis on the personal. Since it precedes our two competing worldviews, it doesn’t accommodate either one.

Ordinarily, when a prevailing paradigm is under attack, the attack will be mounted by a single competing worldview. In this case, there were two ‘attacking’ agendas, each hostile to the other as well as to the ruling paradigm. One group was pushing to de-legitimatize the authority, the structure and the political power of the Catholic Church. Loosening Church teaching on sexuality and curtailing the influence and the liberty of the Church were on their agenda. A second group was intent on eliminating homosexual priests from service and attacking the perceived corruption of Church teaching and the practice of the Faith. Because these two groups had such different agendas, the political framing and re-framing of the issues was fast and furious.

Obviously, the ruling Catholic paradigm appears weakened, though this is not yet certain. Nor is it yet certain which of the competing alternatives gained the most advantage. Each of the alternate groups walked away with something, but neither walked away with everything that they had hoped for. The argument is still going on but by all counts it is now a different argument than either side had envisioned.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of the Catholic scandal occurred in a sphere from which our attention had been diverted . Victory or defeat is more measurable in the American host culture than in the Catholic sub-culture. Again, the jury is still out but preliminary indications are that those who advocate Statism are the biggest winners.

My main point in highlighting these three events is to point out that in each case the highlighted crisis was conveniently packaged to fit our pre-existing categories. We didn’t really have to apply any personal moral discernment. We could simply take the package and dump it into its allotted mental box. We could assume that all of the arguments within the package will correspond with our preferred paradigm and that they will be mutually supportive. We are not called upon to examine the internal threads or take the raw event and interpret it independently.

Again, in this sense, the Catholic scandal is instructive. With three competing ideologies in play, the ‘attacking’ paradigms didn’t quite hold. The more conservative group linked heterodoxy and homosexuality. The more liberal group framed the discussion as one of pedophilia and power structures. The battle between these two agendas caused each package to break apart. As a result of this unanticipated break down, the issue became one of church and state. Again, standard pre-package applied…but with the new twists that are inherent in the ideal of a nanny state.

Another way in which these social crises are instructive is in their failure to apportion individual culpability. In most cases, blame is placed on a structure or a process rather than on an individual. When an individual is blamed, he is blamed for being unfeeling, legalistic or too committed to the ‘failed’ structure. Occasionally, we argue that he is motivated by the only sins we are still capable or recognizing. These are the cold institutional sins of arrogance and avarice. The individual in question becomes a symbol for all that is wrong with the institution and he is relentlessly pursued in his role as symbol. We are thus free to assume that the answer to our ‘social ills’ is institutional rather than personal. It is political rather than moral.

As political concerns, these answers remains abstract rather than concrete. They replace individual discernment with consensus, and conveniently maintain the divide between our intellect and our personal morality.

The Moral Order - 11

One of the more interesting aspects of the social ills that I highlighted yesterday is that, with the exception of the Catholic crisis, our moral judgments were segregated from any requirement that we ourselves change our personal moral habits. Equally interesting, in the Catholic crisis, it was the historical and traditional paradigm that demanded this personalized response. Not only did the two contemporary paradigms deflect attention away from this consideration, they denigrated it as an evasion of moral responsibility. The inference to be drawn is that politics is the only legitimate arena for the exercise of morality.

Of course, this shouldn’t surprise us. Our whole culture seems to be structured around the goodness inherent in man and the damage imposed on him by society and ‘sinful structures‘. We believe that the innocence of youth is the equivalent of goodness, that children should “lead the way”, that people should “be all they can be”, that our innermost ‘face’ is Christ. Apparently our faith in the individual’s natural goodness is unshakeable.

Obviously, the evil that people perpetrate can not be laid at their own door. Instead, since evil does exist, it must be a function of social constructs and constraints. As a corollary, we can infer that any ‘evil’ that is not a function of authoritarian structures, is not truly evil. It is an expression of natural man, and “God doesn‘t make mistakes“. If people engage in activities that we find repugnant, the problem must lie not in the objectionable behavior but in our own critical, authoritarian nature.

In such circumstances, society offers us either of two acceptable responses. The preferred response is that we extend a generic tolerance to offenders. The less preferred, but acceptable, alternative is that we “love the sinner, and hate the sin.“ In our current dialect, both positions require, not an exercise of conscience, but a suspension of judgment.

When tolerance was a virtue, it required both a recognition of evil and a moral judgment on how to best respond to that evil. In the past, one tolerated evil in service to a greater good or in an effort to prevent greater evils. It required an initial judgment, an ongoing oversight and constant re-evaluation. It required effort and involvement.

In the past, when we loved the sinner, we loved him enough to try to save him from his sin. We considered admonishing the sinner, educating the ignorant and counseling the doubtful to be actual acts of mercy. Such love required involvement and effort. It involved critical judgment and personal discrimination.

Today, tolerance has become synonymous with tacit acquiescence and love for the sinner has become equivalent to an unconditional acceptance of the sinner in his sin. Of course, there is one advantage over traditional morality in both of these re-definitions. They let us off the hook. We enjoy the enviable position of promoting and preserving the common good simply by doing nothing.

The Moral Order - 12

Before leaving the subject of the moral imagination, there are a few items I wish to highlight. The first is the atomization of the individual which afflicts us all to some degree. At its most extreme, the individual is cut off from his past and his future, his God and his stewardship, his neighbors and his foes, his parents, siblings and children, his spousal nature and his spousal other, his body and his soul, his intellect and his free will, his judgment and his conscience, his actions and the consequences of his actions. He is separated from his authority and his responsibility. There is nothing holding him together in any meaningful arrangement and his experiences resemble the random pattern of pearls spilt from a broken necklace. This radical autonomy is divorced from human freedom. It is mere sentiment and ease, signifying nothing.

The second item to consider is that efforts to alleviate the symptoms of impoverishment run the risk of exacerbating the problem. We are trapped in the very paradigm that we seek to supplant. Among the potential hazards attached to this worldview are our predilection for dualism and our presumption of Hegelian interpretations. We don’t seem to realize that, with each swing of the pendulum, the path of the pendulum is shortened. The universe of definitions is continually diminished.

Today it seems clear to many that an underlying social problem is the undue emphasis on individualism. The corresponding cure is seen as renewing a sense of communalism. This is a cure that might be as problematic as our current condition. It may result in a culture even less hospitable to our humanity. Subsuming the individual in service to the State or even to the “common good” by be a short path to tyranny.

Of course, this isn’t the only option available. Alternately, we might reject dualism and the assumption of antagonistic goods by assuming a Western implementation of the Confucian model. The moral degeneration and social disintegration in China at the time of Confucius was probably as severe or perhaps more severe than in our Western culture. Confucius’ solution was to implement a code of the ‘Superior Man’. This code included courtesies as well as specific guidelines for moral behavior. It was not a moral philosophy as such. Rather it was a list of do’s and don’ts. In a sense, one might see our contemporary practice of political correctness as a rudimentary implementation of this approach.

These solutions all accommodate our diminished moral imagination rather than enlarging it. In this sense, while they may (or may not) bring us more in line with natural law, they accept limited and one-sided definitions of our humanity. As Chesterton acknowledged, a small circle may be just as perfect and complete as a large circle. It simply isn’t as large. Chesterton even suggests that the “combination between a logical completeness and a spiritual contraction” is the hallmark of madness. If we hope to ever become “the glory of God”, we will need to reclaim the larger definitions of our Catholic heritage.

As Chesterton puts it: “How much happier you would be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God could smash your small cosmos, scattering the stars like spangles, and leave you in the open, free like other men to look up as well as down!"

Labels: The Moral Order

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Heroic Virtue

To me, Maria Goretti is the ideal model of Catholic chastity, and her life is of particular value to the very young. Today, for some reason, every one seems to think that popular theories of personality and psychology are more pertinent and realistic than the folk wisdom of the Church. Personally, I think that most modern wisdom is pabulum for the soul.
We live in an age that assumes there is some moral value in victimhood. There isn't. Victimhood is not a mark of moral rectitude. It may simply be a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It may be the result of poor judgment. It may even be a sign of physical or psychological inferiority to one's attacker. Victims are simply people to whom life happens - perhaps viciously, perhaps violently, but not automatically in a manner that sanctifies them.
Survivors of crime are also simply people who haven't died as a result of criminal attacks. They are not thereby made wonderful, or noble, or good, or blameless. They are simply people who continue breathing after tragedy strikes. There is nothing inherently admirable about survival. It's something that we either do or we die. After the violence is ended, survival usually entails nothing more than that we breathe in and out.
The problem with sympathy is that too often it offers unequivocal affirmation of the whole person as compensation for the injury suffered. It becomes a way of not dealing with the terror or the anger or the guilt. It validates the person as victim or as survivor. It views the injured as an object of pity, or even worse, as an object of .admiration. Suddenly all judgment is wiped away by a declaration of anguish. There is no truth in this and therefore no justice. It is a salve rather than a cure. Basically, it's dishonest and cheap. It makes every one feel good and it solves nothing. It creates a distance from the horror through evasion rather than through confrontation.
The 'survivors' I've known aren't looking for sympathy or hand-patting or even pats on the back. They need to catch their breath and to steady their nerves. They need the silence of love and the patience of eternity. They need the sheer blunt nerve to continue. They need to experience substantial successes on the other side of vulnerability and yes, on the other side of guilt. Mostly, they need to find a way not to be afraid.
Father Bryce Sibley at A Saintly Salmagundi argues "For one to really “lose” their virginity they would have to consent to the act of sexual intercourse. This is not the case with rape, for in no way can anyone claim a woman consents in any fashion to being raped. But regardless of this distinction, Pius still says that the act of rape would have destroyed her childlike purity."
There is a superficial sense in this argument but in the end, it misses the mark. The argument that Father makes is political and not personal. I use this phrase in the same sense as feminists do when they argue that the personal is political. Politically speaking, I'm sure that Father is right. Personally speaking, his argument is flawed. A woman does have a choice. She can fight back for the sake of her dignity or she can choose to submit.
There can be any number of reasons why a woman 'assents' to rape. She may be incredibly naive in the sense that she doesn't really understand what is happening or in the sense that she simply can't imagine that there are other viable reactions. She will probably view her naivete as stupidity.
Alternately, she may trade her dignity for the sake of her family or her loved ones or simply because she is afraid. Possibly she will submit because her bones have become brittle and her age weighs too heavily upon her. There are thousands of reasons to submit and only one reason not to submit. That one reason is because "I'm worth defending."
The point I'm making is that, in this second scenario, a woman does make a choice and she is responsible for that choice. Deep in her soul, where it counts, she knows that she chose a course of action. Victim-guilt is not a burden that society lays on a victim of sexual assault. It is a burden that the violated pick up and place on their own shoulders. There is a deep truth in this guilt that needs to be recognized and addressed.
Father Shawn ONeal, as quoted at Nota Bene, , appears to have a problem that Maria Goretti "is revered for preferring to die rather than be raped -- so that her chastity would be preserved." He says this as though rape were not a deliberate attack on a woman's chastity. Like it or not, the harder truth is that rape does impact one's chastity. It challenged a woman's commitment to her virtue. It presents the greatest possible challenge to her dignity. When a woman fails to meet that challenge, she is wracked by her own cowardice and/or her own failure of ingenuity. I don't make these rules. This is simply how we women are made.
For the victim, rape IS about sex and it IS about violation and it IS about degradation. It is about fear and courage and audacity. This may not be fair, but no one told us life would be fair. For some women, particularly modernized and desensitized women, fighting back may be simply too great a challenge. For women who are primarily concerned about the needs of family, it may even appear to be a fool-hardy choice. Just the same, the challenge posed by rape is real. This challenge has a legitimate claim on the subconscious of the injured.
Father Sibley suggests that "To say that rape destroys the “moral purity” of the victim appears viciously untrue, especially in the light of the compassion and sensitivity we are called to have in ministering to women who are the victims of such a crime". It may not appear to be true but it is true and we all know it to be true. If our "moral purity" was not impacted, rape would be no harder to deal with than minor assault and battery. One can not claim both that the "moral purity" of the victim is unaffected and that a distinctive psycho-sexual disorder is attached to the victim as a result of the crime. In the brutal scheme of things, rape can, and frequently does, act as a corrosive bleach on the moral fibre of our souls. Victims of rape, particularly young and virginal victims, often do react with subsequent promiscuous behavior. Rape and molestation are particularly vicious acts against the young and virginal precisely because they do cause damage to the victim's moral sensibility. The horror of the current priestly scandal is precisely that these acts corrupt the child.
Healing must start with truth. The first truth of rape is that it is about sex. If it wasn't, it would be called battery. The argument that rape isn't about sex but about power is a political argument. It may address rape from the perspective of the rapist. Personally, I couldn't care less about the motives of the perpetrator. Rape recovery isn't for the sake of the rapist, but for the sake of the raped. For the victim, rape is about sex and dignity and chastity. It's about deciding, in your own estimation, whether your dignity or your life is of greater worth.
Sometimes, a second truth is that submission to rape is a betrayal of selfhood. The model of Maria stand as a guardian against this self-denigration. Even if we lack the faith or courage to oppose our assailant, she reminds us that we are entitled to such an extravagant defense. Maria's willingness to look death in the face acknowledges the atrocity inherent in the act of rape. The willingness of the Church to view her as a martyr affirms our dignity in the face of great evil. It marks the severity of our plight and refuses to grant us the option of objectifying or depersonalizing the event.
Beginning the process of reclamation may require acknowledging the intimacy of the violation and the destruction of sexual and thus social identity. The effect of rape may be similar to a puncture wound. It is necessary that the wound heal from the inside outward. True healing must start in the heart of forgiveness. It is an act of strength and of will and of sheer resolution. It is not cheap and it is not emotional. It is determined, deliberate and dear. Mostly, it's hard WORK.
Yes, in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, some may need a bit of pabulum in our diet. For the long haul, however, we need strong meat. We need the strength to live in a post-Christian world and not to succumb to either its enticements or its travesties. The task and intention of the Church should be to build strong souls.
Women are entitled to know that our dignity is worth preserving even to death. I read once that, in the Old Testament, there were two rules that applied to victims of rape. A woman, who was raped in the country, was not subject to stoning. A woman raped in the city, would be. The logic was that when a woman in the country cried out her distress, there might be no one to hear her and come to her aid. It was understood that a woman who cried out in the city would have more than enough men to come to the defense of her virtue. Today, when we claim to be so much more civilized, there are few men who will come to our aid. We are entitled to honor when we come to our own defense. We are entitle to greater honor than the women who assent.
The model that Maria Goretti presents may not be politically correct, but I have seen it work on several occasions. Some claim that people who have never experienced rape can not speak to it. I don’t. However, I do think that one must be careful to speak to it on a personal level rather than on a political level. On a personal level, Maria Goretti is a fine and particularly versatile model for rape response. Catholicism is not supposed to be easy. It is supposed to be true. Maria Goretti's life is a truth of the heart. It is a love strong enough to conquer both fear and death.
As Father James Poumade points out, "There's a difference between virtue and heroic virtue. The Church has always respected heroic virtue while recognizing that only a few are capable of it. So little Maria Goretti is honored for her heroic virtue, above and beyond the basic moral duty. It is precisely because what she did was extraordinary and unusual that she was honored for it. Pope Pius was not trying to say that anyone who acts differently is a fallen woman."
Father Sibley also claims that "I am so surprised in this age of an increased awareness of women’s rights and dignity, that the fact that Maria is held up as a model of purity because she refused to be polluted by the sin of rape is not questioned or criticized " Father Shawn ONeal adamantly supports his position "I cannot stand how this Church and many of its members have perpetuated the call for chastity and virtue on account of her murder. Yes, we must pray for an increase in the virtue of chastity, but this legend is not a suitable reference in regard to chastity . . . I like teaching to young people the virtue of chastity, but I REFUSE to use this story as a good example.
I have to disagree. Maria Goretti is the only sense that can be made of rape. Her story is the story of the victim's worth before God. As a woman, I can be judged equal to St Stephan and the other martyrs for the faith, simply by keeping faith with myself. Dying for my own dignity is as valued by God and by His Church as dying for professing His name. What greater honor could the Church bestow on women than to say that their virtue and their honor is as valuable - as sacred - as the name of God. If Maria Goretti is an embarrassment, is there any principle that the good fathers would be willing to die to preserve?
I don't claim that a failure of faith or nerve is a grave and mortal sin. We are all incredibly weak and incredibly sensible at times. It helps to know that we are both weak and sensible when we would have preferred to be strong and daring. It helps to know that it is okay to be weak and sensible. It doesn't help at all to be told that our weakness was strength and our cowardice was courage. Maria Goretti is an ideal model for women and children. She gives us more than one way of conquering our oppressor. Even if we fail in the first act of honorable defense, she shows us a secondary and more significant path back to our dignity. She shows us the love that casts out fear. She shows us how to absolve ourselves in the absolution of our assailant.
Rape violates women at the most fundamental level. It attacks the soul as much as the body. Chastity is the dignity of the body as dignity is the chastity of the soul. Frederick Douglas said "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they have resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress."
Women are finally catching on to the reality that we have an inalienable right to say NO. We have begun to feel that "If I am not for myself, who is for me?...And If not now, when?" Every woman I know who has fought back was cognizant of one amazing thing. The second touch, the touch of the fist, was softer and sweeter to our bodies than the first touch of lewd intent. We are entitled to our dignity and we are entitled to mourn its loss when loss does occur. Resistance whether of mind or muscle has a secondary advantage. Forgiveness comes easier since there is only one person to forgive rather than two.
A recent study which I believe was reported in Cosmopolitan magazine shows that the claim that women shouldn't fight back is without reasonable foundation. It found that women who do fight are more likely to escape unscathed. At the same time, if they don't get away, they don't suffer any greater injury than women who submit. I guess this is just another feminist myth that has betrayed us.
Father ONeal finishes with the following platitude "there are far too many of them [victims] who both carry their own emotional burden as if they earned the violence that they have endured plus there are too many people who continue to offer a lack of sympathy for the victims of sexual abuse " It may true that women who surrender, however sensibly, need time for their grief and time for their healing. Women who don’t surrender may need time to stop shaking. Regardless of how a woman responds, she may need a great deal of time before coping with the issues of responsibility and culpability. What women need more than platitudes, however, are the tools to keep evil at bay. We need our strength and God's good grace to greet the morning. We need fellow travelers who follow that ancient Jewish custom of coming to our defense. We also need Maria Goretti who forgave her attacker and pursued his soul even in death. Naturally, all of this is only my private opinion... but I need my wee saint for sanity's sake.

Labels: Heroic Virtue

. . .

The Problem of Wealth -1

The economic anomaly of the modern age is not the poverty of the second and third worlds. It is the prosperity of the first world. The huge economic disparity that exists between the two segments of the world's economy is the source of heartbreak for both Christian and non-Christian humanists. Sadly, this disparity does not appear readily amenable to change. The traditional route of Christian charity, while it may alleviate some suffering, has done nothing to reduce the disparity itself. This is the failure that we are called to rectify.

I am not an economist but, as a layman, it appears to me that our answers to the problem of wealth can take one of four forms. The first (and perhaps the easiest to implement) is to eliminate the disparity by eliminating the anomaly. If the 'first world' will simply adopt the economic standards of the rest of the world, the disparity disappears. We might do this voluntarily, or we might just watch as our wealth slip slides away. Either course rectifies the disparity. We will all be equally poor. The second alternative is a modification of the first. In this scenario, the 'first world' would limit its usage share of the world's resources to something more equitable. The assumption is that the rest of the world would then successfully fend for itself. Although, this approach might not eliminate the disparity, one expects (perhaps erroneously) that it would reduce it substantially by reducing the wealth of the 'first world'. A third option would be to enslave the 'first world' in service to the rest of the world. This servitude could be voluntary or involuntary. Properly implemented, the living standards in the 'first world' would fall significantly while living standards in the rest of the world would probably rise marginally. A final alternative would be to propagate the wealth-creation anomaly to the rest of the world. This might be accomplished through the 'invisible hand of the market', through a charitable transfer of technology and know-how* or through a mixture of both. I've probably missed something since economic analysis is not my forte. Yet, these are the only alternatives I've discovered to date. None of them is wholly satisfactory to me. This is one of the reasons I personally need to explore this aspect of our lay obligation to re-fashion the world as a mirroring of Christ's truth.

THE CONTINUUM OF MATERIAL WELL BEING
It's possible to think of austerity, temperance and luxury as a continuum of material well-being. Poverty exists separate from this continuum. While it may lie parallel to austerity, we should keep in mind the actual chasm that separates austerity from poverty. Poverty is not self-chosen. Frequently, those in poverty need assistance from others simply in order to continue in poverty. They are also quite likely to need help from others in order to escape it.

Austerity, on the other hand, is chosen. Since it is chosen, it should only be chosen responsibly. In most cases, it is irresponsible for some one to choose an austerity that depends on others to sustain it. If such a choice includes the decision not to contribute to the good of society, that person (in all likelihood) should be held subject to St Paul's rule: "if any man will not work, neither let him eat." [ 2Thessalonians 3:10]. This precept is intended to prod the slacker and the fearful to the fullness of their human dignity. In passing I should acknowledge that I am not at all certain that the 'blessings of the poor' can ever be acquired by those who are not poor. An attempt to do so could carry within it a subtle attempt at theft. This is not to say that standalone austerity doesn't have its own spiritual rewards. Depending on its implementation, it may or it may not. I simply don't know.

To my mind, one of the distinctions separating austerity from temperance would be pain. If it doesn't hurt, it's probably temperance. Of course, if it does hurt, it could still be temperance; so this can not be the only determinant. Another attribute of austerity would a requirement to live without the non-essential things that (while they may be desired) serve no utilitarian purpose. A third characteristic of austerity would involve doing without several essential material possessions. In America, this might mean doing without a car AND a washing machine AND a personal computer. It would have to involve doing without some of the things that the individual/family actually requires and truly desires. Its demands would include that some measure of personal inconvenience must be incurred to compensate for that lack.

I am uncertain but it seems to me that a commitment to austerity must serve a higher good in order to be a morally valid act. This doesn't mean that, when standing on it's own, austerity is immoral, but rather that it is morally neutral. As a moral choice, austerity could serve as a discipline, as an act of fraternal solidarity with the poor or as a necessary limitation in service to charitable giving. It could be a form of prayer or penitence. Austerity practiced in service to self-righteousness, on the other hand, might be morally neutral or even immoral. This would depend on the goods that were sacrificed in the pursuit of austere living, Even when morally neutral, however, this practice in service to self-righteousness has the potentiality (or perhaps the actuality) of becoming an occasion of sin.

On the other side of temperance lies riches. This would imply a life of material well-being in which both one's needs and one's wants are easily and routinely met. It suggests an ongoing and future financial security. It often includes a surfeit of material goods. A life of riches is not synonymous with a life of luxury. A life of prosperity and luxury would be one in which one's current and future material needs and wants are routinely met . It would also however include possessing the time, energy and temperament to enjoy one's material well-being.

Temperance would inhabit the vast middle ground between these extremes. It's my opinion that, regardless of where one positions oneself on the material-goods spectrum, the 'good life' requires a small taste of both extremes. An occasional day of fast or mortification adds to the pleasure quota of the materially endowed. It keeps wealth from being a burden. At the other end of the spectrum, a touch of frivolity makes austerity more bearable. For the same reason, some small measure of each extreme should be scattered like autumn leaves through a life of moderation. Both experiences add spice and dimension to the practice of temperance.

It is in terms of these definitions, that I begin my investigation into the problem of material wealth

POVERTY
Exercising the option of 'first world' impoverishment appears ridiculous on the face of it but... perhaps we are called to a poverty that acknowledges our total dependence on the beneficence of God. Possibly life is meant to be a great adventure in which survival is always at risk. Or perhaps poverty is meant to be a discipline, an exercise in self-denial. It is possible that some are called voluntarily to this life and it is equally possible that we are each called to some measure of participation in this life.

A calling to a life of volunteer poverty is a calling to vagrancy. It is living on the cusp of survival. It is combining the ownership of nothing with an inability to obtain anything. Being poor means having no way out, having all your options eliminated and being totally helpless in the face of financial adversity. It means depending on God because there is no other option. And it means that God will disappoint you time and time and endless times again.

There is a presumption about those who claim that, if we simply depend upon God, he will satisfy our essential and most basic needs. God loves those who watch their children die from hunger and He loves those who are raped and gutted in the Sudan. He loves those who call on him in vain. He may even love them more than He loves us. The dependence on God that the poor experience is the knowledge that His love is no guarantee of anything other than His love and the affirmation of calling on Him when there is no one else who hears their cries.

Being poor is living one step away from disaster. Luck for the poor is when that step is on the safe side of disaster. The rest of the time, disaster appears to be one step up from where you are. I will admit that poverty is relative. The poor who wander America, eating from trash cans and sleeping on subway grills are much better off that the women suckling dying babies on dry breasts in the heat of an African famine. An unemployed family man facing eviction and the uncertain hungry faces of his children is better off than either; yet he too might be standing eye to eye with poverty. Poor is relative but it always maintains a close acquaintance with desperation. If it is avoidable... if it is escapable... if it is voluntary... it may be a lot of things but it isn't poverty.

I may be wrong, and I am certain that many will disagree with me, but I do not believe that anyone whom God has charged with a financial responsibility to dependents is ever called to voluntary poverty. Such a secondary calling would violate the obligations of the first and primary calling. Without a doubt, many providers are indeed called to temporary or permanent poverty but a provider so called will recognize his calling by the inescapable grasp that poverty maintains on his person against his best efforts to break that grip. Any of us, at any time, may be called to authentic poverty. It is good to recognize the ever presence of this possibility. I do not think that there is any benefit in anticipating it and I think that there is even less benefit in courting it.

A provider has a primary obligation to provide adequately and properly for his dependents. His natural dependents include his children, his spouse, his aged or infirm parents, his disabled siblings, the dependents of his disabled or dead siblings and himself. He is obliged to do every moral thing in his power to provide for their immediate situation and their future. In a society like our own, this will include additional obligations such as the duty to assure the provisioning of future needs in the event of his disability/death and the obligation to provide his children with the tools necessary to live productive and faithful adult lives. It means providing for his own financial future when age and infirmity envelop him. It might also mean meeting societal standards that are the pre-requisite for entry into the workforce and for promotions within that sector. In addition a provider has an moral obligation and a divinely mandated charge to discern the authentic needs of his dependents and to determine the hierarchy of those needs. Forgive me for my contrariness, but I see anything less as a dereliction of duty (of which we are all probably guilty) rather than an embrace of virtue.

I also feel that a provider should feel shame when he is either unwilling or unable to adequately provide for the immediate and near-term needs of his dependents. The definition of adequate is, and should be, relative to his circumstances and his milieu. This shame is a natural emotion and it is grounded in the goodness inherent in man's created being. The shame that holds a man fast and prevents abandonment in times of trouble is rooted in this natural shame. By denying the first, you weaken the second. A provider ought to feel this shame precisely because it is this shame that acts as a prod to the often futile efforts to 'do better' for his dependents. This shame should always however be tempered by prudence and by courage. The men who left their families to ride the rails in the Great Depression knew this shame and bowed to it. They could have behaved differently - as so many did - by every morning, summoning the courage and the trust in God to try again and to try harder. Their failing was not the result of shame but the product of cowardice. Good times or bad, a provider has divinely mandated obligations to his dependents. He should be ashamed not to fulfill them. Every day, in our oh-so-compassionate culture, there are men who walk away from the children they father. These are men who have no shame.

Of course, a person responsible only for themselves may have more leeway in accepting a volunteer call to vagrancy. For me to dismiss a call to poverty for poverty's own sake, may be unduly rash. Yet if we pursue poverty at this level, we must be able to provide a Catholic answer to the question: What divine purpose is being served by my voluntary adoption of authentic poverty that might not be better served by my behaving as a responsible, self-supporting and productive member of society?

TEMPERANCE - An Insufficient Virtue
Of all the social justice alternatives listed in my introductory summation, the second presents me with the greatest difficulty. It can be summarized by the phrase "One must live simply in order that others might simply live." This is a plea for temperance and as such, it is not a response to poverty per se. Temperance stands on its own merits as a cardinal virtue. It's a good thing. It is a necessary prerequisite in our pursuit of justice, but it is does not partake in the actual pursuit. In measuring temperance, we must recognize that it is a vast middle ground between extremes. Like poverty itself, the standard for temperance is somewhat flexible. It too is relative to the milieu and its discernment is subject to the prudential judgment of the individual.

In some ways, this is the most attractive option offered. It demands less of us than the obligations of charity. Standing alone, it maintains the appearance of social responsibility. Yet this answer deeply troubles me. It does nothing to actively address the disparity between world economies. Passively, on the other hand, it is an aggressive attack on the disparity. It replaces a society of riches with a society of prosperity without ever affecting the economic hardship of the alternate economy. It's comparable to telling a destitute person that you will help them by burning your money. How does this help? The man is still hungry.

There is an economic system of thought that goes along with this precept. It is called Distributism. It is based on the idea of individual ownership of homes and businesses. In this theory, no one ever pays rent to another since every one owns their home. No one ever works for another since everyone owns their own business. Every one is their own farmer and their own laborer. There may be limited local trade among people in the community and possibly even trade between communities. Since, in its purist form, everything that is produced must be produced by a sole proprietor, all the luxuries of modern life slip into our memories. Cars, washing machines, plastics, medicines and weed-whackers are gone in a flash. The bottom line seems to be that each person both produces and consumes according to his needs using the resources which belong to him. He owns only so much as he can use for his personal needs. This essentially eliminates wealth and pretends to eliminate poverty. There are less purist versions of this theory which would acknowledge the legitimacy of cooperative ownership and the utility of the medieval guild system. In such versions, there exists the possibility of manufacturing and owning some of the modern conveniences. Other versions might include the possibility of trade with other economic structures.

There was a time when, if I could have afforded the price of admission, I would have become a distributist. I am temperamentally suited to the theory. The hybrid Distributism that attracts me would allow for me to have indoor plumbing, hot baths and refrigeration. I'm flexible about a lot of things but these are my luxuries. Like most Americans, I have always wanted to own a home. I would prefer a modest bungalow to a grand house on the hill and I have a preference for 'not having' things. None of this should be taken as a claim to virtue anymore than my love of country music should be interpreted as a vice. It is simply a matter of taste and temperament. Some people save every little remnant of living. They are called packrats... always expecting to use tomorrow the useless things of today. I am a spendthrift by comparison. I always assume that the imagined needs of tomorrow will eventually resolve themselves into the real needs of the 'Now'. When that time comes, I'll acquire what I need to meet them. Either quality can become a vice and either can be trained into a virtue. I suspect that we are best fashioned when our trained virtues are the complements of our habitual leanings. But I digress...

One of the reasons that I find Distributism so appealing is because it coincides with my vision of the idyllic life. Another is that it establishes clear limits on the moral obligation to produce. In addition to other benefits, this philosophy opens an avenue to the Dolce Vita. It provides a vision of balanced living where both pleasure and pain, work and play can fit the individual's desired level of expression. An additional recommendation might be that this position, if personally pursued and not externally dictated, recognizes a high degree of freedom belonging to the self and the other. As is always the case, this position requires individual discernment on what does and does not constitute a moderate lifestyle. In my estimation, however, it would be erroneous to view this choice as either poverty or charity. It is simply temperance.

The precept that "One must live simply in order that others might simply live" does not require an entire economic structure to support it. It can be practiced on an individual scale. Today, it is frequently practiced either from principle, preference or habit. There's something appealing about a life so lived. As Calvin Coolidge pointed out "There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no independence quite so important, as living within your means." There is a sense of accomplishment in DIY and a sense of artistry in the creative re-use of old materials. There is a pleasure found in bargain-hunting that even those committed to luxury can appreciate. One can find serenity in some forms of drudgery and one might discover a sense of rhythmic living within the simplified ordering of things. This model may offer a life of 'correct' proportions.

If voluntarily embraced and not moralistically proclaimed, this life appears to fit a Catholic mold. The only thing apparently lacking is global (and possibly - though not necessarily - local) generosity. This life is thus insufficient. Like it or not, as Christians(even simply as humanists), we are called to do more. The social justice demands of the post-Vatican Church make it quite clear that this is not enough. As a moral judgment, I wouldn't deny this option all validity; I would simply reserve the exercise of this option to a period of 'retirement' or to a sabbatical made necessary by exhaustion. Naturally others would judge differently.

. . .

The Problem of Wealth -2

The remaining two alternatives are both commitments to charitable giving. The first provides the fruit of our wealth to the third world poor. The second offers them the seeds of that wealth. I imagine that both are necessary, and that it is a matter of prudential judgment how one apportions one’s charity. One of the things any good manager will recognize is that both fire fighting and fire prevention are necessary actions. Time spent in fire prevention reduces the time that will be lost to fire fighting in the future. It does nothing (or next to nothing) in coping with the fires that are already burning. Successful management requires a balancing of these two activities so that progress might be made on the second task without neglecting the essential demands established by the first.

CHARITY
From a Catholic perspective, the two charitable responses to the existing Wealth Gap may be seen less as a call to poverty than a call to service. The first is the traditional exercise of charity as practiced since the earliest days of the Church. It involves both the production of wealth and its consumption. In a sense, it is the form of charity practiced by the pre-Vatican Catholic Church, which Vatican 2 declared to be good though insufficient. An essential element in adopting this mode of participation rests in the prudential judgment of Catholics. The central question becomes a matter of discernment in establishing the appropriate ratio between meeting my current needs, my future needs and the requirements of charity. I imagine that at one end of the spectrum, we might find the 1950's version of American Catholics. At the other end, we might place Maltese Catholics from the same time period.

Judeo-Christian tradition suggests that the appropriate ratio is the tithe which is 10% of one's earnings. Common Catholic practice, in my neck of the woods, is that this tithe be evenly divided between personal charities and Church support. In a world as prosperous as our own, some might suggest a doubling of the tithe or even a tripling. I am about to suggest something different. Perhaps we might think of the personal charities portion as monies that we donate along pre-global lines. We might apply these monies toward mending the broken-ness of our local culture and toward fighting the Culture of Death --a culture that has attached itself so thoroughly to our own nation and that spreads like wild fire across the world.

The benefit of this approach is that we begin to think of our obligations to the third world as a completely different thing. We might begin to recognize this ‘first world’ duty as a unique calling with its own demands and its own rewards. Rather than attempting to usurp the rewards of the poor, we might assume the obligations that adhere to our own ‘station in life’ as ‘first world’ members of the Church. With this in mind, I’d like to look at the requirements of tithe charity before turning to explore this “different calling”

Charity can coexist with riches, as easily as it coexists with moderate incomes or with austerity. Some people, perhaps most, see little moral value in a charity that co-exists with riches. Personally, I don't know how I feel about this. I've never been in a position where I was required to formalize an attitude toward it and I doubt that I ever shall be. I think that it is better than a lack of charity. I think the sheer volume of relief that might be obtained, does much to recommend it. On the other hand, quite apart from the issue of charity is the legitimacy of ownership of 'unused goods', (which I imagine applies equally to the various socio-economic classes). Simply in terms of charity, however, and not in terms of justice, I think that such charity is as valid as any charity that is rooted in giving of one's excess rather than one's substance.

I do think that it is relevant that the idea of the tithe is biblical and that the tithe is not a progressive ‘tax’. It applies equally to the poorest and richest among us. Perhaps this is meant to indicate that we all have an equal share in our communities and an equal responsibility to those communities. While Christ indicated in the parable of the Widow’s Mite that her charity would be more greatly rewarded, he did not argue against the nature of the tithe. He did not, for example, argue that the widow should be relieved of her duty to tithe or that she should instead be the recipient of the tithe. He simply acknowledged that the duty lay more heavily on her and would thus be more generously rewarded.

If anything, this parable might even be seen as a defense of a non-progressive tithe, since it is affirms the tithe duty even in the face of hardship. Today, with time so dear and money so prevalent in our society, I know a small number of people who have begun a tithe on their time -- giving 10% of their most precious commodity to God in good works and volunteer efforts. These people seem to recognize that wealth is not simply a measurement of money but a measurement of material wellbeing which includes time, energy and physical health.

Most people today imagine charity formed through austerity to be the Catholic ideal. Although I recognize that there will always be some called to the life of austerity, I don’t really consider it the calling of Everyman. I think that it is a life too open to temptations and one in which virtues are too easily cut loose from each other (with all the danger and damage that Chesterton implied). People too frequently seem to prize austerity for austerity’s own sake as a separate goal rather than seeing it merely as a means in support of a greater good. In doing so, there lies a strong potential for insulting the Dolce Vita.

To me, the Dolce Vita is one of Catholicism’s most important contributions to the common welfare of man. Earlier I presented you with a ‘1950’s American success story‘ of the Dolce Vita. Today, I’d like to fill out that picture with an equally valid, albeit more modest version offered by one of my readers.

"What I (65 on the l3th) learned from my German immigrant parents, especially my Lutheran mother, as the number one social justice responsibility of each of us was NOT to become a burden on anyone else if we could possibly help it. To not become a burden meant to work hard, to be responsible, to control one's appetites, to crack the books--all that old fashioned nose to the grindstone stuff. If everyone who could carry his own weight would carry it, then we would have a real crack at helping those who just can't carry their own weight...

I live a more frugal life than I need to. But not out of evangelical anti-materialism. Habit and there's a certain fun to it. It's even an ego trip as I suspect it is for many an anti-materialist. I've recently discovered I can play CD's on my computer while typing and reading. I like classical music. Pay approximately $20 for a CD? Nonsense. Because I turn 65 tomorrow, today I treated myself at the Goodwill second hand store to some $80 worth of fine CD's: four CD's at $3.99 each minus my senior citizen's discount. So somewhere between l5 and l6 dollars for the lot of four. Two still have their original sealed wrappings. Does such self-indulgence make me a materialist?

Buying in second hand shops is fun. Like the missionaries to Hawaii I do well doing good. The shops sometimes help good causes and sometimes, as with the Goodwill, employ people who might not otherwise be employable. And they do make many goods available at very, very reasonable prices to needy people. However, when I patronize them I am not doing that much toward employing people, at least not as much as if I bought the same items new in downtown stores. Same is true of not eating out, not going to entertainments etc. My non-materialism may be earning me brownie points with the Lord (at least according to some people), but it is not helping lots and lots of people make a decent living doing what they do best. Is it holier to just hand out as charity the bucks one saves by being non-materialistic or is it holier to provide a livelihood to others by paying them for goods and services rendered?...

I have thought about the morality of having savings while others are living from hand to mouth. My line of thinking is that saving is for future spending--and employing others--on big time necessities such as a new roof as well as old age care so that the charities are not going to be burdened with me as they try to provide for others less able or less willing to self-provide and so that my younger relatives--nieces and nephews-- won't have to morally sweat it out with me when they need to college educate their kids. Does this necessitate any self abnegation?

Well, I can't afford trips around the world and such like. Or if now I indulged in such, then someone else would certainly have to carry my weight down the road. For the present I help bring kids home from school. And also what I save the banks do not sit on. They loan it out to others who need to borrow to build homes and businesses to earn their livings and bring up families. If rightly understood and applied capitalism can be a big social insurance systemn. I contribute monthly to a long term care insurance program through California public employees. I pray each night to eventually die in my sleep and not to need the benefits. If I am so blessed I can only thank God and rejoice that my insurance contributions will help someone else."

There are many versions of the Dolce Vita. I think the Catholic Everyman is particularly called to this 'good life'. It is the alternative that we offer in contrast to the ‘lifestyles’ offered by the Culture of Death. It is attractive and inviting and life-enhancing. Our God is the God of Life and our lives were meant to be lived abundantly. It is for this reason that I would argue in favor of a charity built on a temperance which itself is build on prudential judgement. This is a responsible charity since it recognized the obligations of a provider's primary calling as well as the demands of our communal being. It is also a pragmatic charity since it recognizes the natural inclinations and affiliations of our human nature and trains these instincts to their proper function. It provides a solid foundation for an “economics of caritas” which Michael Novak identifies as being realistic rather than utopian.

. . .

The Problem of Wealth -3

The moment one begins to address intra-'first world' charity, one is dragged into a political quagmire. This, in itself, is a problem. Over the last 50 years, almost all of our political institutions have been so deformed that they seem to conspire against the very American ideals that birthed this nation. Much of our discussion on poverty and social ills revolves around altering the trajectory of massive administrative offices which frequently appear autonomous in scope and authority. This is an area of severe concern. It requires and deserves our dedicated attention. Too many of our government-sponsored efforts seem to be built on an erroneous understanding of man's essential nature. It often appears that they are the result of sloth and envy. Consequently, they foster further sloth and envy in a cycle that can only end in either violent or mute despair.

It is essential that our politics be informed by our religious beliefs. Having said that, however, I am stuck with the realization that the best definition of Catholicism that I've ever heard is "Here comes Everyone". Politics, like so much of Catholic life, is an arena for the exercise of prudential judgement. In the area of public policy (with a few exceptions such as abortion and sex education), our religion requires that we employ our knowledge, reason and experience, along with our faith, to discern the path that we should follow. There are no pat answers. There may not even be any correct answers.

The best I might hope to do is to suggest some guidelines. First, we should consider the effects that social policies might have on the integrity of the family. We should work to strengthen the traditional 'division of labor' family and we should seek to preserve 'remnants of families' from further deterioration and infringement. Second, we must attend to the children of America, particularly to their intellectual and moral development. It should be a matter of grave concern who controls these processes. (HINT: This should be their parents.) Third, we should examine the assumptions about the nature of man and human society that underlie various social policies and the way in which various policies might be implemented. Fourth, we must guard against policies that exacerbate the role of sloth and envy in our society. Fifth, we should seek to apply certain catholic principles such as subsidiarity, complementarity, personalism and solidarity to our proposed solutions. Sixth, we should, at the very least, lend an ear to what Church leaders have to say on social issues and we should pay close attention to the Catechism and the teachings of the Magisterium. Lastly, I think that we have to begin drawing some really definitive lines between social policy and charity. One can not, and should not, be treated as a substitute for the other. The requirements for each are distinct and perhaps frequently at odds.

OF COURSE, in terms of my larger exploration, all of this is a bit off the mark. I'm supposed to be addressing the issue of tithe charity and how it might best be employed. In this matter the most I have to offer is a few platitudes:

Man was not meant to be alone. Life is hard. Some people fall. Some people shatter. Some people stop. Charity may be our only human balm.

. . .

The Problem of Wealth -4

I have heard it argued that Gnosticism is like a fungus that has attached itself to the roots of Christianity. Everywhere that the Faith takes root, the fungus of Gnosticism is also propagated. Perhaps the same argument might be made with regards to capitalism. Consumerism may be a fungus that attaches to its roots rather than an inherent attribute of capitalism itself. I don't know the truth of this but it would appear to be an important issue.

The anomaly of the modern age is the wealth of the 'first world'. Before we turn our backs on the engine of that wealth, we might consider alternatives. Every Christian blogger and every 'first world' Christian has been a beneficiary of capitalism. Perhaps it is an economic system that we can 'baptize' (or re-baptize as the case may be). Perhaps we have a duty to the indigent peoples of the world to make such an effort and to then propagate a Catholicized version of capitalism that lifts the poor nations to an equal economic footing. The suffering so prevalent in the 'third world' suggests the legitimacy of such an effort.

Labels: The Problem of Wealth

. . .

True Love Marries
Now that reasonable people will admit that the pedophilia problem in the priesthood has been somewhat overstated, it's time to look more directly at some of the issues that have been brought to light. There are several, but for me, one issue seems to take center stage. No, it's not homosexuality in the priesthood, although I do agree that it's an area for significant discernment and discussion. I have a much greater interest in the wider topic of adolescent and adult sexuality.

First, just to set the record straight, priests are not the only Catholics that are required to live celibately. This is an expectation that the Church has set for all unmarried Catholics. As a universal teacher, she lays this demand before all single men and women. In some of the articles about priestly celibacy, I have actually seen the position taken that more mature men (who have the experience to know what they are giving up) are better candidates for the priesthood. Now I'm very big in my defense of sinners, but only a fool or a humanist agnostic could give any credit to this argument. By virtue of this argument, all priests should be previous scoundrels. They should all be ex-thieves and ex-addicts and ex-murderers.

Let's apply a little common sense here. Sinning has never made a person a better saint.

Again, I am reminded of another contemporary lie of complacency. This is the one that argues that 'I don't regret my past because it has made me the person I am. I'm a good person and that justifies my past.' Does it never occur to any of these people what a much better person they might have become if they hadn't spent so much time eagerly engaged in sin? As a first-rate sinner, the idea frequently occurs to me. My sins haunt me. To be honest, I think that our personal engagement with sin frequently keeps us from being the saints that we are called to be.

Think about it. If I feel that engaging in sex outside of marriage is venial, then I am more likely to affirm the right to contracept. I am more sympathetic to infanticide and abortion. I have a vested interest in excusing these sins as well as my own. But then, again, if I do engage in extra-marital sex, it's likely that I engage in at least some of these additional sins.

Or imagine that I have had an abortion and have lived to regret it. It is likely that I will assuage my guilt with the idea that, as difficult as it was, 'I don't regret my past'. It follows that I can not in conscience deny that same 'past' to others.

Another significant consideration would be the recognition that a past life of sin might leave us with the sense that we lack the moral credibility to condemn that same behavior in others.

My point is that sin never makes anyone a better person. We don't need a resume of great sins to acknowledge the difficult and painful path of conversion. A sinful past doesn't make us more sympathetic to the plight of other sinners. What provides us with this empathy isn't the atrocity of sin. Instead, it is the grace of redemption. We are born into a world where sinlessness is an impossibility. Literally, we are born into sin with the mark of original disobedience engraved on our souls and our bodies. The simple awareness of our own complicity with sin should be enough to grant us a humble heart. The reality that it doesn't is enough to convict us.

A case in point: To the best of my knowledge, and according to all the traditions of the Church, Mary the mother of Jesus and the Queen of Angels was the only 'only-human' person that never sinned. Because she, like our first parents, was born free of original sin, she was also absolutely free to assent to or dissent from the will of God. Her path was the complete consent of total obedience. Yet significantly, Mary in her sinlessness is known as the Saint of those most in need of salvation. Her very sinlessness makes her open and receptive to the anguish of sinners. In a sense, she has no agenda of complicity in sin. She is free to see clearly the terrible damage that sin inflicts on the agent of sin as well as on his victims.

One of the reasons so many people assume that a 'sinful past' permits a greater sympathy for the sinner is that so many 'righteous' believers have their own agenda of complicity of sin. To preserve their own image of righteousness, they have a vested interest in distancing themselves from the more visible and horrendous sins of their fellowman. This behavior does not at all reflect a true case of righteousness. It reflects a serious and dangerous case of psychological denial. It is the heresy that salvation can be found in 'works' rather than in faith.

The righteous indignation that condemns the sinner is not of God. It is purely of our own devising and it is the measure of our own complicity in sin. Our very righteousness condemns us. It is a clear indication of the distance that we have traveled in our path toward self-sufficiency.

The very idea that a sinner must repent before he is eligible for our forgiveness misconstrues the nature of human forgiveness. Human forgiveness is the act of moving ourselves closer to God's own graciousness. It's most significant impact is on the person who, having suffered an injury, forgives the injury. The actual forgiveness of the sinner is not ours to grant nor is it ours to withhold. That power belongs exclusively to God and it is given concrete form exclusively through the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

The truly Catholic response to sin is the recognition that 'there, but for the grace of God, go I'. It acknowledges the reality that our goodness is totally a thing of God and that, separate from the grace of God, we lack the dignity of worms. The goodness of the Catholic is not a goodness of our own devising. Instead it is the natural fruit of our faithful relationship with God. We are not good because we have achieved some human state of perfectibility. Rather we are good because the Lord works his wonders through us. We are vessels of goodness but as such we have no real claim to the attribute of goodness. All goodness, especially our own goodness, is the attribute of God.

A sinner may desire our forgiveness as a mark of re-admission into community but he doesn't need our forgiveness. All that he requires from us is re-admission. As a community, this is ours to grant or withhold. As a community, we will be accountable for how we exercise this privilege which we commonly refer to as justice. It is at this level that the tears (but never the anger) of the victims can be summoned as witness; it is at this level that repentance may be taken into account; it is at this level that restorative justice can be calculated and enacted.

All of which takes us back to the very nature of sin, and in this case, the nature of human sexuality. The Church teaches that the expression of human sexuality is a privilege of the marital state. For most of us, this is a difficult teaching simply because our secular culture has adopted a promiscuous sexuality as well as a wide range of social conventions that support this behavior. We are told from our earliest days that the Church is hung up on sex.It is suggested that this is the one area of human reality that she has always managed to get totally wrong. Sex is

seen as the Catholic problem. All the sins associated with human sexuality are caused by the errors of Church teaching rather than the failure to live up to Church teaching. This is the premise that I hope to consider.

Where do I begin? I guess the best thing would be to frankly admit that, from the outside looking in, the Church teaching on human sexuality has very little'curb appeal'. People (particularly single people) who have successful productive lives with 'satisfying' intimate relationships aren't going to see this as a big drawing card. Something else will attract them and the power of that attraction will grow strong enough that any sacrifice will seem a small price to pay.

After a time, however, from the inside looking out, these teachings appear to be among the most life-enhancing, gender-enhancing gifts that the Church provides. They become a magnet in their own right. Other ways of being in the world appear sterile and sexless and pitiable. This is true even for some one living in a state of 'involuntary' celibacy.

One of the easy things about most Church teachings on morality is that they are based on simple underlying principles rooted in the nature of humanity. In her sexual teachings, the root principle is simple: Each and every sexual act must be both unitive and open to procreation. (A corollary is that procreation and sexual congress should not be divorced, one from another.) The Church teaches that it is only in marriage that both conditions can be fully met and therefore sex should occur only in marriage. All persons, married and single, are expected to practice the virtue of chastity. The expression of that virtue obviously differs depending on your marital state.

Applying this principle to your specific life situations permits you to discern and live along the 'straight and narrow'. What is amazing about doing this is that, even without knowing any of the underlying theology and merely through the practice of this discipline, your life changes in wonderful and unimagined ways. You become more truly yourself and more open in your humanity. You become fully integrated as a triune being of flesh, mind and will.

Quite possibly, the secular lifestyle has more curb appeal, but only the homeless live on the curb. Most of us live 'inside' the lives we choose and, from the inside looking out, the Church is where a person can most fully be themselves and most fully be in communion with others. In human sexuality, as in all things, there is endless mystery in Church teachings and endless layers of meaning and relatedness. To paraphrase Thomas Moore in 'A Man for All Seasons', in the final analysis "it isn't about reason; it's about love". It's about the greatest love and the warmest embrace that the world has to offer.

The real secret of the Church's teaching on sexuality is not that she thinks so little of it but that she values it so highly. The fully inhabited sexual act is the closest any of us can come to experiencing the inner life of God. It is the fullest union of persons and rich in procreative power. It is the total surrender to the other and a total surrender to life. Simultaneously, it is penetration and dominion and tender pity and all the 'maleness' of God Himself. It is the ultimate risk and the ultimate reward. It is the taste of eternity and the reality of our flesh. Church teachings on sex are not a diminishment (or debasement) of the physical reality in favor of some 'higher spirituality'. They are grounded in the
physicality of sex. Think of our imagery, the Church as the Bride of Christ, the Mass as a marriage feast, the Eucharist as its consummation. This is not a sublimation of sex; it is a deep celebration of it. Human sexuality permeates Catholic theology and spirituality in the same manner that it permeates our mundane lives.

As a daughter of the Church, I can really only speak of the single female state. This is what I am 'stuck with'. But perhaps, in trying to address the 'harsh requirements' of Catholic teaching, this is a good place to be stuck. After all, it isn't as though society frowns on Catholic marriages. Often it is implied that, when compared with secular lifestyles, the state of singleness within the Church is sexless, inhibited, frustrated and bad for the complexion. Having experienced both, I have found just the opposite to be true. I can't explain this to the uninitiated any more than I could explain the color 'blue' to a blind man, or the sound of a symphony to the deaf. Living within this Catholic framework provides a life unaccompanied by the bitterness and sense of betrayal so often seen in secular singles. It is a life that is richly physical and deeply identified with gender. It is a life that embraces risk and dignity and compassion. It's living without calluses, and living in a world of infinite compassion and endless forgiveness.

It may seem counter-intuitive to argue that the value that the Church places on the physical expression of our human sexuality is greater than the value advocated by our more promiscuous secular society. After all, it is the wider world that is always telling the Church to lighten up and to realistically address the human condition. We are constantly being told that, if the Church would simply conform her teachings to the lived experience of modern people, every one would be happy, guiltless, sexually uninhibited and sinless. Truth, however, is stranger than fiction and the truth is that the teachings of the Church are far more conducive to human happiness than the licentious behavior advocated by our enlightened critics. Today, it could conceivably be argued that the Church is one of the few institutions that does not demean or debase the physical nature of man. Instead, She steadfastly refuses to entertain dualistic interpretations of our humanity. She insists that the nature of man is an embodied spirit of intellect and will.

A part of the problem in interpretation lies in the Church's 'here, this and there, that' approach to reality. "Thus, the double charges of the secularists, though throwing nothing but darkness and confusion on themselves, throw a real light on the faith. It is true that the historic Church has at once emphasized celibacy and emphasized the family; has at once (if one may put it so) been fiercely for having children and fiercely for not having children. It has kept them side by side like two strong colours, red and white, like the red and white upon the shield of St. George. It has always had a healthy hatred of pink. It hates that combination of two colours which is the feeble expedient of the philosophers. It hates that evolution of black into white which is tantamount to a dirty gray. In fact, the whole theory of the Church on virginity might be symbolized in the statement that white is a colour: not merely the absence of a colour. All that I am urging here can be expressed by saying that Christianity sought in most of these cases to keep two colours coexistent but pure. It is not a mixture like russet or purple; it is rather like a shot silk, for a shot silk is always at right angles, and is in the pattern of the cross."

Now it is true that historically the Church has opted for a celibate priesthood. There are probably many justifications for this but there is one that appears to receive little notice. The celibate priest might be a living human sign of contradiction. I read somewhere, quite possibly in a feminist tract, that no society places a positive value on male virginity. There is always either the old double-standard or a single standard of promiscuous behavior. The author made a point of arguing that a distinctive double-standard was particularly notable in the Judeo-Christian tradition. His contention was that, despite any claims to the contrary, Judeo-Christians place the same negative value on male virginity as the rest of the world. It was argued that, with the word virgin being exclusively female, we don't even possess a Western term for a virginal man. Naturally, this introduction set red signals off in my mind. It immediately struck me that, in the author's opinion, Catholicism must lie somewhere outside of this tradition.

I have suggested previously that, in offering us the folly of God, Jesus turns everything on its head. Possibly this is one of the unexplored and even unrecognized reasons underlying the preference for a celibate priesthood. The celibate male priest may be the symbol of this Christian inversion in the area of human sexuality. If so, the issue of homosexuality in the priesthood may be even more problematic than it at first appears. I suspect that, while it would not necessarily invalidate ordination, homosexuality would leave sterile this 'sign of contradiction'. If the priest is meant to be this symbol of virginal and virile manhood in defiance of pagan transvaluations, implicit in the sign is a vigorous and vibrant hetero-masculinity. I admit that this link between the priesthood and a sign of contradiction is a personal and perhaps erroneous intimation. I'm merely suggesting it as a possibility worthy of consideration.

Anyway, let's get back to the issue of non-ordained Catholics. Non-ordained Catholics can generally be divided into the religious and lay Catholics. It's important to realize that the non-ordained religious are in a sense a part of the laity. We might then recognize that there are two possible commitments open to the average Catholic. The first is a commitment to the religious vocation which includes a commitment to celibacy, while the second is an equally valid commitment to the married state. It is in this Realm of the Average Catholic where the 'black
and white' of celibacy and family resides. It is here where the Church's 'hatred of pink' takes effect. These are the two roads that are open to us. We can take one or the other but we can not simultaneously take both. The requirements of the religious life and the requirements of the secular life can not, in any fashion, be considered the same requirements.

A commitment to the religious life is a commitment to a life 'set apart' in absolute service to God and the utter negation of self. Even within the greater Catholic community which is 'in the world but not of the world', the religious are a distinctive group. They are people who discern a call to serve God in a self-effacing and sacrificial life. They take vows of poverty, obedience and chastity so that they might strip themselves of attachments to the secular world and the temptations of pride, power and appetite. Their vows are a renunciation of earthly goods in pursuit of heavenly goods. They seek a direct and uncompromised service to God either in prayer or in works.

I admit that I am speaking to the 'ideal' rather than to the actual situation of the religious. But it is only in terms of the ideal that a (non-ordained) religious life makes any sense. I think it's a sad commentary on the state of the various religious orders that their service' may be indistinguishable from their secular counterparts. It's important to realize that in a world truly premised on the Christian God, life is structured around the ideal of sacrificial service rather than the primacy of the self. In this framework, a deliberate choice in favor of the 'single secular lifestyle' is absurd. It is fruitless, and barren. Within a Catholic framework, however, one can conceive of the choosing of a religious vocation as a commitment to 'blessed singleness.'

Religious vows are not meant to imply that there is something essentially wrong with human or 'earthly' goods. They are rather an affirmation of the goodness of the very things that are renounced. Because certain goods are mutually exclusive, the religious renounce one set of goods for another set of goods that, as individuals, they consider more desirable. Since there is true sacrifice in this renunciation, and since the social contributions of the religious have been so significant, the religious life has often been considered exalted.

Just the same, and regardless of the mystique that accompanies our contemporary and less than clear-eyed view of the religious, I mention this commitment to celibacy as something of a counterpoint to the more general teachings on chastity. The religious commitment is completely separate and detached from these teachings. The religious commitment is a tribute to the virtue of a 'virginal' life. It is a
commitment to white. As such, it is completely divorced from the expectations of chaste secular living. It is unrelated to the requirement that unmarried persons live celibately. The commitment to chastity of the ordinary 'lay' Catholic is a commitment to red. The sexual restraint placed on single lay Catholics is not in service to virginity or celibacy. It is in service to matrimony and spousal love. In other words, the spiritual value that the Church has traditionally placed on virginity is peripheral to our discussion. What is relevant is the value that the Church places on human sexuality.

“Sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts"
"Self-giving... constitutes the very meaning of human sexuality"

These two statements reflect very different understandings of human sexuality. They are so diametrically opposed that it would appear that one of them must be false. I'd love to argue that only one of these two viewpoints has merit. Unfortunately, both statements are true. Or at least, each statement reflects a truth. As a matter of fact, any marital sexuality can contain elements of both truths. Non-spousal sexuality, regardless of the lipservice it pays to love, is only capable of accommodating the first definition. We should admit that either truth will have a
certain level of appeal to most individuals.

Essentially, though we appear loath to admit it, the modern definition of human sexuality is premised on the first statement. This isn't surprising. We are a society that is committed to the ideal of superior and self-actualizing children. We have made deliberate choices to ensure that our children define their goals, realize their objectives and actualize their talents. We have more or less told them that the whole point of being alive is to 'be the best that you can be.' Most of us have made tremendous sacrifices to ensure that our children's futures are
optimized. Unfortunately, we haven't been as apt in establishing a criteria for determining what constitutes the best. We certainly have been lax in explaining the purpose to which this best of the self should be ordered.

In the past half-century, we all seem to have bought into the idea that the actualization of Self is the primary point of human existence. We have bought into all the myths of popular psychology in the mistaken belief that psychology is a science. It isn't. It's merely a poorly conceived humanist fantasy... and a dangerous one at that. A good number of people, some of whom are psychologists, see it as a part of the problem of modern life, rather than as a solution to the problems of contemporary society. Basically, it is premised on a 'theology' of the Self.

In this theory, all of our actions are and should be performed in service to the self. All of our choices should be based on personal preference. By default, all of our human interactions necessarily become negotiations, with each party looking for a significant advantage. Whether we like to think so or not, sexual activity becomes a strange and sad case of commerce.

The problem with this arrangement lies in the fact that reducing human sexuality to a purely selfish act negates the experience that one seeks in pursuing sexual relations. Sexual activity can serve as a sporting event in which greater and greater titillation is sought. Or it can recede into auto-eroticism. It can become a psychological game of mastery and control. It can become a matter of seduction and corrupted innocence. It can be reduced to appetite and interpersonal despair. What it can never achieve is the simplicity of love. It can never fulfill the emotional or social expectations that push us all into each other's figurative (if not, literal) arms. As long as the object of sexual experience and adventure is any form of self service - including the romantic quest for true love - a sexuality based on selfishness will eventually fail to offer full satisfaction.

A self-oriented sexuality is perversely divisive. It objectifies both the self and the other. We become strangely divorced from our bodies. We remain strangely divorced from our partners. We suffer an alienation that is so profound that we lose our capacity for emotional connectedness. It would be lovely if frustration with our choice led us to renege on that choice but, more often than not, we manage to make some measure of compromise that sees us into our tomorrows. If our societal patterns are any indication, several of us will move into more perverse physical pleasures, while others will engage in a desperate game of emotional sado-masochism. Some will withdraw into sexual isolation. Others will fluctuate between withdrawal and frenetic involvement. Eventually, many of us will marry into lives of negotiated satisfactions. Almost all of us who are committed to a life of self-getting will suffer an excessive level of ennui and childish boredom

Even within this paradigm however there is a small measure of hope. Some may retreat into a 'new celibacy' which does indeed admit the small chance of developing into a renewed chastity. Others may withdraw enough emotionally that they stop seeking emotional gratification in sex and thus become open to the possibility of a startling generosity. Lord knows how... but there are people who do make wholesome transitions into love. The potential for conversion seems to lie always just below the surface of sin.

The path to establishing the gift nature of the sexual act is to actually gift some one with the fullness of your being. A 'virgin' can do this once, and never again. The 'never again' resides in the fact that you can not give away what you no longer own And you no longer own what you gave away. It doesn't really matter how delicately or indifferently or even cruelly the 'gift of self' was returned. When the affair is over, you are a different and a less wholesome person. You may have been slightly used, or roughly handled or even lovingly cherished. Regardless, there is a portion of yourself that you no longer own and that is no longer yours to offer. It's true that you may have new strengths and new gifts but the fullness of that first gift is significantly diminished.

The virginal gift of self is not a physical quality and so it remains a thing apart from physical virginity. The gift is unaffected by sexual violation but very much affected by sexual seduction. That's not to say that physical violation leaves the self undamaged. It not only damages the self, it damages the ability of the self to make an offering of self. It does not however diminish the uniqueness of the gift. Multiple experiences of self-giving damage this uniqueness. They make the act commonplace and they also reduce the authenticity of the act itself.

Although it might appear that the first self-giving of a virgin is significant in itself, the gift in order to be complete must be a gift of the total person. Despite any argument to the contrary, a marital commitment is implicit in this gift. Although marriage alone is no guarantee of a self-giving sexuality, the definition of sex as an act of self-giving proves true only within this relationship. An act of self-giving requires the complete giving of the self or it devolves into mere sentimentality. It necessarily includes an act of will, a commitment of being and a promise of the future. The necessity for completeness in giving is also the foundation for the absolute requirement that human sexual acts be open to procreation. By placing limits on self-giving, all non-spousal sex is reduced to an exchange of services. Even in its most naive and idealized form, it becomes a bargaining of self, rather than a mutual gift.

Complete and virginal self-giving in marriage should be the ideal expression of human sexuality. This ideal however does not preclude the possibility of a total self-giving in marriage for people who have some sexual experience. Unfortunately, it is their experience( and not the ideal) that may cause a significant problem. This problem can be successfully addressed by embracing a renewed commitment to chastity.

We tend to think of chastity (and its attending virtues and habits) as a personal attribute. We stress the fact that it protects a person's integrity and guards a person's physical dignity. It is right to acknowledge that chastity does indeed serve as a method of self preservation and even as a method of self-regeneration. But it is equally important to realize that the preservation of the self is not for the self. It is ultimately for the other who shares in the mutuality of self-giving and the mystery of love.

Earlier in this posting, I highlighted the following expressions:
“Sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts" - Ayn Rand
"Self-giving... constitutes the very meaning of human sexuality" - JP2
The only real line separating these two perceptions of human sexuality is the virtue of chastity. It stands as a perpetual guardian of the second philosophy against the impositions and depredations of the first.

Only in the light of spousal love can the true nature of ordinary lay chastity can be understood. Rather than a renunciation of human sexuality, it is a positive and life-giving affirmation of our human sexual nature. It is one of the guardian virtues that forces us to an awareness of our true nature by its resolute insistence on the dignity of human persons. It refuses all trite definitions and stereotypical interpretations so that we might consistently be situated in authentic conversations with the opposite sex. It insists that we not treat each other as objects or allow ourselves to be treated as objects. It requires that we recognize the central truth that each person is both an "I" and a "Thou". It forces us to renounce the machinations of power in deference to the responsibilities of love.

Chastity acts first through an insistence on an integral vision of man in which the three elements of spiritual substance, human will and physical body can not be treated as discrete entities. It insists that in human sexuality and all of human life, what happens to us physically affects our spiritual substance and visa versa. The contemporary dualistic idea that we own or use our bodies is outright rejected. The idea that we can engage in throw away sexual relationships and maintain an inner core of permanent openness to the startling appearance of significant love is unraveled. It recognizes that the claim "I have been faithful in my own fashion" is simply a disingenuous lie. Fidelity is a matter of behavior and not simply a matter of emotional investment. It is a matter of the flesh and a matter of the will as well as of the heart. Chastity further recognizes that a failure to live a internally consistent life is an act of self-mutilation.

Chastity also insists on the historicity of the person. The disconnected present in which we remove all consideration of the past and the future is recognized as a shirking of our authentic humanity. Through the virtue of chastity, we lay claim to both our past and our future. We acknowledge the strength of habit and the hold of prior experiences. We develop habits of the heart which incorporate a respect for others and a genuine presence in the presence of the other. We attach ourselves to the present moment and actually see the people we interact with. We discard the artificialities and learn the virtue of courteous attention. In committing ourselves to a way of being in the world, we take possession of ourselves. We own the future to the extent that we can account for who we will be in that future. Certain attributes of our future selves are foreseeable and come under our control. In the making of promises, we come to possess our future selves.

In our dealings with others, we also come to recognize both the integral nature of the other and the historical truth of the other. We become better judges of character, more insightful in compassion and more realistic in our responses. Chastity forces us to forsake the lie of easy compromises and transitory passion. It releases us from a insecure susceptibility to flattery and the equally dangerous allure of romanticized self-donation. It insists on addressing the entirety of the other rather than the limited offerings that so many proffer. In all of these ways,
chastity grounds our spirit in immanence.

At the same time, chastity insists on a certain transcendence that is natural to human relationships. It develops within each of us a mastery of both the emotions and the appetites. It provides us with the personal authority to experience authentic freedom, and it directs that freedom to its intended end. Chastity is a commitment of 'who I am not now' to 'who I don’t yet know'. It develops the character and attributes necessary for spousal love. In one fashion, it is a commitment to hope and the stretching of self into the future. By situating us in a
responsible permanence, chastity positions us for self-giving. We are careful with ourselves because we are promised to a yet unknown other.

Finally, it opens us up to the challenge of risk in our lives. It accommodates a certain trust in the future and a fidelity to hope. The commitment of lay chastity is a commitment to spousal love and the possibilities of the future. In most cases, its end is a transformation to the actuality of matrimony. In most cases… but not in all. This is a significant risk that attaches to chastity. It is the risk of faithful and apparently fruitless witness. It is the long moment when winged hope rests in the twilight and the future unravels into the past. Here, in the 'never will be', the chastity of the laity achieves heroic proportions. If lay chastity were a commitment to celibacy rather than a commitment to marriage, there would be nothing bitter sweet in perpetual lay chastity. It would have been a choosing of celibacy as a good in its own right and the rewards of that choice would be equivalent to the promises extended. Perpetual lay celibacy on the other hand has all the appearances of unfulfilled desire. From the outside and really only from a distance, it can look an awful lot like failure. It is however something quite
different.

Catholic courtship honors the fullness of the person and recognizes the unique contributions of emotion, chemistry and 'je ne sais quoi.' It refuses simplistic equations for matrimonial commitment. It seeks to discern the intentions of God in the movements of human affairs. Over their natural lives, the perpetually celibate exercise this same discernment in their relationships with others. In the course of time, they come to realize that the intentions of God are very different than their own subtle hope. Their lives take a different path than the traditional route. But it must be noted: it is through the authentic living of their lives that the path they follow takes them in unanticipated directions.

All of the qualities that are the fruits of chastity are fully employed in the service of a different and very personalized vocation. The self-possession, the humility, the authenticity and the openness to impossible risk are continually brought into play in a life that is fully and firmly inhabited. Joy and the presence of God are commingled with a state of being that can best be described as love. Just as marriage to one's individual spouse is a vocation based on an intimate interior calling, the life of the perpetually chaste evolves into a significant and fundamental call. It is the true meaning of the person in question. It is a both a witness to love and a state perpetually open to love.

The challenges of perpetual celibacy, while similar to those of initial celibacy, are at times much more severe. These challenges are meet and mastered by the authentic witness of our lives. As I said earlier, I can't explain any of this to the uninitiated any more than I could explain the color 'blue' to a blind man, or the sound of a symphony to the deaf. Within this framework one finds a life unaccompanied by bitterness or any sense of betrayal. It is a life that is richly physical and one that embraces risk, dignity and compassion. It is in essence a secret and hidden vocation till suddenly its muted joy bursts into birdsong. One discovers with startling clarity that "The heart has reasons that the reason
does not know."

There was a time when I believed that television was the most significant invention of the twentieth century. Recently, I've begun to think that a much more significant - and detrimental - twentieth century invention was the creation of the teenager. The teenager is an artificial construct. Some say that it was created to warehouse a sizable portion of the workforce after the last world war. Perhaps, it was invented as a response to the atrocities that men suffered during that war. Maybe it is a byproduct of a vibrant post-war economy. Whatever the reasons that called it into being, it's long past time that we retired the poor boy. The teenager is worse than useless. It dangerously destructive and it has 'no redeeming social value.'

I emphatically believe that this mythic teenage image is a significant part of our social problem. The modern fallacy of the teenager as a distinct category of childhood creates a disconnect between Church teachings and our prevailing culture.This disconnect has only existed for a half-century but its impact is profound. It's based entirely on the erroneous 'learning' of a single generation. Prior to the fifties, a teenager was simply a young adult. For the most part, adults were expected to act like adults. Adolescents, like other adults, somehow managed to meet those expectations. They grew in age and grace. They assumed adult responsibilities on leaving, not necessarily on graduating, high school. Today, this is no longer true. Unlike the young adult adolescent, the child adolescent appears never to grow up. Today, the majority of teenagers appear to be well past their thirtieth birthday. Yet, even those who are now in their sixties show no real signs of ever maturing into responsible adulthood.

The teenager has redefined the social landscape into a scenario of brokenness. It is the social equivalent of the nuclear bomb. Or rather it is the equivalent of a fierce campaign of carpet bombing in which everything is destroyed through a systematic series of ruthless attacks and deliberate cumulative destruction. The very moment that we accept a definition that situates adolescence as a stage of childhood, we have severely handicapped ourselves in the battle for human souls. We would do the world a great service if we merely insist on the view that adolescents are young adults.

It is during this formative period of transition that the shape of the grown person is more or less permanently cast. The modern myth of the teenager erroneously, yet quite successfully, casts our young people into a mold of hedonistic self-involvement at the very entrance to adulthood. It simultaneously creates a cult of self-centeredness and feelings of self-contempt. It robs our young and subsequently our adults of the higher and more noble sentiments and yearnings. It disparages our most sacred values. The problem is not merely the content of what
our young people are learning, it lies in the very context of that learning. Marshall McLuhan 's argument that 'the medium is the message' still carries a specific weight. How a discussion is framed is as important, perhaps significantly more important, than the discussion itself.

Take for instance the issue of chastity. The Church has traditionally taught that chastity is a condition of both the unmarried and the married state. Today, however, when directed toward young adults, the message of chastity seems inseparable from the message of sexual abstinence. On the one hand, we say that non-spousal sex is sinful. On the other hand, we insist that post-pubescent young people are at least a decade or two away from the maturity necessary for marriage. This leaves young people with the impression that, although the Catholic Church claims to value sexuality as a human good, She most frequently opposes the actual practice of human sexuality. This flawed assumption that marriage is appropriately reserved to midlife creates the equally erroneous perception of the Catholic Church as an institution of sexual repression.

Traditional Church teachings on human sexuality have always been grounded in the actual physicality of our human nature. The insistence on maintaining a link between procreation and sexual activity is a clear example of the Church's insistence on honoring the physicality of man's nature. It is a refusal to spiritualize or idealize or sentimentalize the requirements of spousal love. The "True Love Waits" campaign is a notable exception to this pragmatism. In its denial of human nature, it runs a significant risk of failure.

There is something inherently cruel in the message "True Love Waits", when it is directed at a fifteen year old in the throes of first love. Implicit in this announcement lies the argument that what the young person is experiencing is not love at all but rather an immature, ill-conceived and poorly disguised lust. We lose something as a society when the once commonplace phrase "falling in love" is replaced (as it has been) by the cynicism of "falling in lust" In all honesty, there is also something unnatural in the argument that young adults in their
physical and sexual prime should remain celibate. We were not made for this state. We were made for each other. And we were made as gifts to each other.

God created human beings so that as teenagers they are physically competent to engage in sexual intercourse and carry their children to term. They are mentally and physically competent to act as adults and as parents. If they lack the emotional competence to do so, the fault may lie not with our adolescents, but with ourselves. We have ignored human nature and attempted to refashion human beings.

Unfortunately, we are finding that people who don't grow up during their teen years run the substantial risk of developing into Peter Pans who never grow up. We have become a society of physically mature people who, in refusing to grow up, merely grow old in disgraceful and demeaning ways.

I would agree with the general theory that today's young adults are emotionally unprepared for marital and adult responsibilities. However, rather than acquiescing to this moral distortion, we should be preparing our children for adulthood. We should, as a people, be transforming our society so that young adults might find a legitimate entry to adult society that accommodates their adulthood. It is one thing to tell a fifteen year old that "True Love Waits" and quite another to tell that same young adult that "True Love Marries". One message invalidates the young
person's experience. The second provides a criteria by which the validity of that experience might be measured. It also provides a developmental path to follow should the love-experience be validated. A two year period of courtship in which preparation for matrimony is seriously pursued would be a significant and meaningful developmental path. It would encourage the formation of mutual adult love.

I'm not advocating that the age for marital consent be lowered to fifteen. I'm merely suggesting that we return to the wisdom of even a single generation ago when the expectation was that young people should marry. Asking a fifteen year old to trust their love with a wait of a year or two is significantly different than asking them to extend that wait to a decade or two. Even as recently as the mid-sixties, people were marrying at the age of eighteen. The common wisdom was that a man who hadn't married by his late twenties, was a bad marriage risk. The
same was considered true of a woman who remained single into her mid-twenties. The theory was that such people had developed habits of selfishness and were 'too set in their ways' to make good spouses. Common knowledge held that young couples would and should grow with each other so that they might grow in togetherness.

I grant that today many young people lack the emotional maturity for assuming adult roles but it is the very perversity of our expectations that contributes to this immaturity. I half suspect that our modern interpretation of teenaged 'angst' is one of our most grievous offenses against human nature. It is conceivable that this emotional roller-coaster is nature's deliberate attempt to establish a 'mating bond' between men and women. It is even possible that a failure to bond during these years leaves us at a significant disadvantage in ever quite making the human
connection necessary for life long intimacy. Our initial failure may press us toward an unnatural self-sufficiency that circumvents the demands of a full lifetime of love. It's possible that nature and God both intend us to be 'one flesh' and that our insistence on the two-ness in marriage is itself an obstacle to the forever-ness of the bond.

I doubt that we will solve the problems of a promiscuous society until we eliminate the ideal of an artificially prolonged childhood. Yet, amid all the brokenness of our immature world, there are painful signals to hope. While the talent for 'self'- perpetuation of the eternal teenager is undeniable, the teenager has also proven incapable of self-replication. The children of the 'teenager' are the shattered youth of our contemporary society. They are the victims of the destructive potential unleashed by an age of permissiveness. As broken and as dangerous as these youngsters and young adults might appear, they are the seeds of a cultural revolution. They are in desperate need of a hope that makes sense of their world. They need a religion that forsakes sentimentality for the stricter discipline of compassion. Properly presented, the ideal of Catholic sexuality may become their most desired objective. They do however need to be presented with both the option and the tools necessary to effectively exercise that option.

In the meantime, the children of adults are in danger of being lured into the false safety of perpetual adolescence. As long as their parents fail to question the preconceptions and false assumptions of our modern milieu, they put their children at risk of being the next wave of teenagers to decimate the future. But then again...I've been known to be wrong.


=======================Addendum=======================
In comments under Sex and the Single Catholic - 6,Caroline raises such interesting points that I felt compelled to offer an initial response ASAP. I think that a choice to stress either the positive or the negative aspects of chastity has more to do with the surrounding culture than with the Catholic message. When I was a girl, the Christian paradigm was still the cultural assumption. Today, the assumption has been shattered and we live in a world of increasing brokenness.

Our broken world is structured around a pop psychology that Paul Vitz identifies as the "Religion of Self". It is premised on the understanding that autonomy is the essential point of our existence. Since this key concept is at the root of our brokenness, much of 'counter-cultural' Christian thinking is going to be an attempt to dislodge this root misconception. For many people today, the idea of the person as a self-giving is a radically new concept. It is also a radically liberating concept. It strikes me that the contribution that chastity makes toward self-giving
must be stressed to ensure that formal 'chastity' does not become merely another form of self-preference.

In my discussion, I have avoided the 'thou shalt not's partly because I have detected a certain legalism in some Catholic corners of late. It reflects a Clintonesque approach to sexual conduct where the letter of the law is deliberately distorted to support violations of the law. This silliness isn't of any real interest to me. It doesn't appear to be open to any countering influence since the distortion is quite deliberate.

At the same time, in the contemporary culture, chastity is frequently less challenged by lust than it is threatened by boredom. While sex may not be as casual as a handshake, it has become rather mundane. It's an assumed part of the dating arrangement... The surprise lies in chastity, rather than in sexual accommodation. I think that these difference may account for the emphasis on the 'thou shall' message rather than the 'thou shalt not". The negative stress is an argument against a passionate lust. The 'thou shalt' is a defense against banality. Each in
its own place is essential.

Labels: A Promising Self

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