The "Us vs. Them" Pope

There are good reasons why someone like Cardinal Raymond Burke would have made a terrible pope. At the crux of the matter there is the marked tendency he has shown to treat issues like ideological footballs which he would try to pick up and power down the field down his opponents throats. Now, that might make some sense when dealing with forces like a highly partisan and unfriendly to hostile to Catholicism press corps, like the one we suffer from here in the United States. Where it makes little to no sense is in the pastoral work of the church, where to do so is to divide the Church into issue groups, some labelled "friends," others labelled "enemies."

Unfortunately, if such is true of a Cardinal, it's is more true of a sitting pope and Pope Francis seems to have forgotten that fact, if he was ever aware of it at all. It has been the policy of many traditionalists to give Francis the benefit of the doubt, but it is becoming increasingly clear that he sees the world, and as a result the Church, as being filled with combating ideological camps. He's President Bush standing in front of us all and saying "you are either with us or against us." That Francis is being lionized by people who love neither the Church, nor the real flesh and blood human beings that make it up, and seems to be actively seeking their approval, makes me sad beyond words.

It's not that I didn't know it was coming. It's sort of like your own demise. It's one thing to acknowledge one's inevitable end. It's another to see it looming up before you.

The Problem With The Press

Another component of the press' vendetta against the Catholic Church has begun to unravel: The Frustratingly Poor Quality of Press Coverage

The whole world now knows about Father Stephen Kiesle of Oakland, the priest who tied up young boys and molested them sexually and whose request to be defrocked came before then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. The press is swarming with assertions that, as the Washington Post headlined its story, "Future pope balked at defrocking priest." This, we are led to believe, is the smoking gun. Raztinger signed the letter in 1985. That is HIS signature. Case closed....

In talking to reporters, I raised the question: Why was this case in front of Ratzinger in the first place. It does not make sense. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was given jurisdiction over cases of the "graviora delicta" of sexual abuse only in 2001. Before that time, it is a bit unclear who had immediate jurisdiction in Rome, although one point – which I also made to reporters – went unmentioned then and in all the reporting about the future Pope’s role in handling sex abuse cases, namely, the local bishop has the authority to remove a priest from the clerical state. Recourse to Rome is necessary only to dispense a priest from his vow of celibacy, so that he can subsequently be married in the Church.

Perhaps, some of the confusion has to do with the translation from Latin that the original AP story procured from the chairman of the Classics Department at USC which translates "Hoc dicasterium" as "this court." I do not question the Chairman of the Classics Department’s command of Latin, but a dicastery in the Vatican is not a court, but an agency or department. The CDF did not then and does not now serve as a canonical court.

But, then it hit me: I was asking about the dog that had not barked. The documents exchanged between the diocesan officials in Oakland and the CDF do not mention "graviora delicta." The case was presented as a priest seeking laicization....


In the "Votum Episcopi," the document by which the bishop demonstrates his support for Father Kiesle’s request for laicization, Bishop John Cummins notes that Kiesle had been arrested for molesting six boys, had pleaded "nolo contendere" and received a three-year suspended sentence. Three facts jump out. First, the request for defrocking was made by Father Kiesle, not by the bishop. Second, the priest had already been removed from active ministry, so the case did not seem urgent insofar as protecting children in the future was concerned (remember, Kiesle was only asking CDF to dispense him from his vows). Third, the response from and punishment by the civil authorities were not as severe as the crime warranted. As we now know, very few people understood the nature of pedophilia, otherwise civil authorities would not have imposed a three- or five-year statute of limitations, and the penalties for what amounted to rape would have been more severe. It turns out that the emotional scars of sex abuse are worse than physical scars of physical abuse, not least because they are often unseen.

One other part of Cummins’s letter to Cardinal Ratzinger seems to have escaped the attention of the assembled press corps. The bishop notes that the trial generated "a great deal of publicity surrounding his conduct." The bishop says that all the local papers covered the story. So, the idea that Cardinal Raztinger subsequently dragged his feet to avoid publicity is an odd charge, one that the documents do not support. When Cardinal Ratzinger replied that the "good of the universal Church" should be considered in adjudicating the case, he was evidently not trying to prevent adverse publicity. That publicity had already occurred....


Another factor explaining Ratzinger’s invocation of the "good of the universal Church" was a change of policy going on at the Vatican in the early 1980s. In the years after the Council, many priests asked to be laicized. George Weigel, in his biography of Pope John Paul II, writes: "Pope Paul VI had granted more than 32,000 requests from priests who had asked to be released from their vows and returned to lay status – the greatest exodus from the priesthood since the Reformation. Soon after his election, John Paul had stopped the routine granting of these ‘decrees of laicization.’" John Paul was especially concerned about younger priests seeking to be defrocked, and very few such requests were granted to priests under the age of 40. It is telling that Father Kiesle’s request for laicization was granted as soon as he did turn 40.

What had Pope John Paul, and Cardinal Ratzinger, worried was that the sacramental character of priestly ordination was being obscured by the ease with which priests were being dispensed from their vows. Catholics do not see the priesthood as a career choice, to be set aside if something better comes along. When a man is ordained, the Church believes that God affects an ineffaceable and permanent change upon the ordinand, just as the Church believes that bread and wine are truly changed into the Body and Blood of Christ at Mass. Even a priest who is laicized retains the power to say Mass and absolve from sins in confession, even though the Church strips him of the authority to do so.

This is the background that the American and British press, blinded by their bigotry, has made obscure through their shoddy reporting. Actually, I would disagree with the tone of this piece in that it seems to ascribe to the press a veneer of incompetence when I believe all evidence points to a deliberate attempt on the part of the press to smear the Pope. Granted, the press routinely gets basics of the Catholic faith wrong through sheer ignorace, but in this case, where an effort should have been expended to make sure the reporters knew what the documents they had were actually discussing, and such an effort was not undertaken; it becomes difficult to call it anything other than evidence of ill will.

This, in a nut shell, is the problem with the press today. Those citizens who didn't read the paper, and were thus ignorant on the matters discussed, would have been aware of their ignorance and therefore acted in a manner consistent with that status. People who read and believe what they read in the press, on the other hand, will think they are informed when they are in reality still ignorant. Worse than that, they will have been deliberately provided faslehoods meant to attack those the press has identified as their enemies.

Journalism today is no longer journalism. It is war carried on by other means.

More Anti-Catholic Bigotry From the BBC...

...with an assist by the Associated Press:

Pope Benedict XVI has become embroiled in new revelations over child sexual abuse, over a letter he is said to have signed in 1985 before becoming pontiff.

Associated Press said it had obtained the letter, signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, resisting the defrocking of offending US priest Stephen Kiesle.

Cardinal Ratzinger said the "good of the universal Church" needed to be considered in defrocking, AP reported.

This is supposed to be a smoking gun? What horseshit. Of course any laicization must be done with the "good of the Universal Church" in mind. By definition laicization affects the standing of any individual in regards to the Church as a whole. If the problem at hand didn't affect the Universal Church then you wouldn't be talking about defrocking in the first place. (Really, how stupid are reporters these days? I know schools of journalism are not held in the highest intellectual regard, but this is ridiculous.)

Not content with displaying their shaky understanding of common Enlgish words, the BBC then proceeds to outright lie:

[The AP] said the Oakland diocese had recommended Kiesle's removal in 1981 but that that did not happen until 1987.

Cardinal Ratzinger took over the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with sex abuse cases, in 1981.

This gives the impression that then Cardinal Ratzinger was given this case in 1981 and did nothing until 1987. The only trouble is the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was not the venue where sex abuse cases were handled in the 1980's. This has been pointed out repeatedly in recent weeks:

...the competency to hear cases of sexual abuse of minors shifted from the Roman Rota to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith headed by Cardinal Ratzinger in 2001. Until that time, most appeal cases went to the Rota and it was our experience that cases could languish for years in this court. When the competency was changed to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in my observation as well as many of my canonical colleagues, sexual abuse cases were handled expeditiously, fairly, and with due regard to the rights of all the parties involved. I have no doubt that this was the work of then Cardinal Ratzinger.

That this now well known piece of information was deliberately skirted by the BBC (if not the AP) has to be an example of prejudice. It is conceivable, I suppose, that it could have been the result of ignorance, but it would have been ignorance of such a gross and negligent variety, a reckless disregard for the truth bordering on insanity, that the maxim of Ockham's Razor rejects it. Good old fashioned bigotry is much more plausible.

All I can say about the BBC is that they are no good, bigoted, lying sons of bitches.

More Anti-Catholic Bigotry On Display By BBC

Gee, what are the chance? Netherlands gays in protest over Catholic snub

Hundreds of activists in the Netherlands have walked out of a Sunday Mass in protest at the Roman Catholic policy of denying gay people communion.

There is, of course, no such "policy." There is a policy that states that anyone known to be out of communion with the Church, for any reason, should not receive communion. There is no "policy" singling out homosexuals for special treatment. Therefore, if a parish priest knows, for example, that a parishioner has divorced and re-married outside the sanction of the church, the priest is required to deny communion to them as well.

Maybe the BBC would then run a story outlining the "Church's policy of denying heterosexual people communion."

That is the thing about being bigoted like the BBC; it makes you incredibly stupid.

Depressed

It is hard to watch the debacle going on at the formerly Catholic Notre Dame University. It has gotten to the point that if you do not want to make "accommodations" with the most extreme of pro-abortion agendas, well, the president of Notre Dame will call you a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Nice.

I suppose I shouldn't be depressed by this turn of events. After all, it isn't as if I didn't predict them in a sense. In the second post I ever wrote for this blog I noted the following:

The object of this kind of writing, from... liberal Catholics... seems to be [the creation of] a Catholic church that will be safe for the party platform of the Democratic party. Indeed, it is hard to distinguish where the one ends and the other begins. This need to "update" the Catholic church so that it is nearly identical with this or that contemporary political ideology troubles me. I feel the church plays a much more important role as a counter-cultural force. The church is supposed to represent eternal truths, not this decades fashions. Historically the church has gotten itself into trouble by being too of its time, not too little. The sad history of popes as petty tyrants playing out their games of political power is not a pretty one. But it is a history that will be repeated if the church gets involved in remaking itself in the image of our contemporary political institutions. However, the drive that impels the [liberal Catholics] of this world is strong. Anyone who opposes their vision is for them, well, a Nazi.

And, in the short run, I think [they] will win. That is why I consider myself a "partial Catholic." The wind has been blowing cold for some time. The church will be fundamentally altered in my lifetime, and the post Vatican II church in all its successes and failings, will cease to exist. So I keep my distance. It would be too painful for me to be a full blown Catholic.

And, a little over two years ago I noted the following in a discussion about the troubles in the Episcopal church:

The reason I'm interested in this sad spectacle is I'm sure this is exactly how things will play out in the Catholic Church once the "progressives" reach the majority. This movement represents the complete politicization of religion. By that I mean, this is the strongest expression of the belief that political ideology, of the "correct" sort, is the preeminent "moral" principle by which every category of human existence must be measured. Therefore everything, including religious beliefs, must be made subservient to ideology. It was once said that the Catholic Church made philosophy the handmaiden of theology. Well, the Episcopal Church is now attempting to make theology, political ideology's bitch.

Could the sad spectacle going on in Indiana be viewed as anything else but the movement of such an ideology into the "mainstream" of "Catholic" thought? I really don't see how it could be viewed as anything else.

I knew it would happen.

Somehow it isn't comforting.

Notre Dame: Despicable

It amazes me. Notre Dame, stung by criticism of its decision to defy the wishes of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and honor abortion proponent Barack Obama, has been trying to hide behind the skirt of Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon. Luckily, Prof. Glendon is having none of it.

I learned that “talking points” issued by Notre Dame in response to widespread criticism of its decision included two statements implying that my acceptance speech would somehow balance the event:

• “President Obama won’t be doing all the talking. Mary Ann Glendon, the former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, will be speaking as the recipient of the Laetare Medal.”

• “We think having the president come to Notre Dame, see our graduates, meet our leaders, and hear a talk from Mary Ann Glendon is a good thing for the president and for the causes we care about.”

A commencement, however, is supposed to be a joyous day for the graduates and their families. It is not the right place, nor is a brief acceptance speech the right vehicle, for engagement with the very serious problems raised by Notre Dame’s decision—in disregard of the settled position of the U.S. bishops—to honor a prominent and uncompromising opponent of the Church’s position on issues involving fundamental principles of justice.

Prof. Glendon is classier than I am. Had I been used in such a cynical CYA manner I would have simply told them to "stick your medal where the sun don't shine."

Humanae Vitae Triumphant

Over at First Things, Mary Eberstadt has a nice piece about the Catholic doctrine our social and political betters love to hate. Here is a taste:

Perhaps the most mocked of Humanae Vitae’s predictions was its claim that separating sex from procreation would deform relations between the sexes and “open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards.” Today, when advertisements for sex scream from every billboard and webpage, and every teen idol is sooner or later revealed topless or worse online, some might wonder what further proof could possibly be offered.

But to leave matters there would be to miss something important. The critical point is, one might say, not so much the proof as the pudding it’s in. And it would be hard to get more ironic than having these particular predictions of Humanae Vitae vindicated by perhaps the most unlikely—to say nothing of unwilling—witness of all: modern feminism.

Yet that is exactly what has happened since 1968. From Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem to Andrea Dworkin and Germaine Greer on up through Susan Faludi and Naomi Wolf, feminist literature has been a remarkably consistent and uninterrupted cacophony of grievance, recrimination, and sexual discontent. In that forty-year record, we find, as nowhere else, personal testimony of what the sexual revolution has done to womankind.

Consider just what we have been told by the endless books on the topic over the years. If feminists married and had children, they lamented it. If they failed to marry or have children, they lamented that, too. If they worked outside the home and also tended their children, they complained about how hard that was. If they worked outside the home and didn’t tend their children, they excoriated anyone who thought they should. And running through all this literature is a more or less constant invective about the unreliability and disrespect of men.

The signature metaphors of feminism say everything we need to know about how happy liberation has been making these women: the suburban home as concentration camp, men as rapists, children as intolerable burdens, fetuses as parasites, and so on. These are the sounds of liberation? Even the vaunted right to abortion, both claimed and exercised at extraordinary rates, did not seem to mitigate the misery of millions of these women after the sexual revolution.

Much more to read over there.

"No One Here But Us Non-Bigots"

Just remember, there is no such thing as anti-Catholic bigotry among the Left:

Paul Zachary Myers, a professor at the University of Minnesota Morris, has pledged to desecrate the Eucharist. He is responding to what happened recently at the University of Central Florida when a student walked out of Mass with the Host, holding it hostage for several days. Myers was angry at the Catholic League for criticizing the student. His post can be accessed from his faculty page on the university’s website.

Here is an excerpt of his July 8 post, “It’s a Frackin’ Cracker!”:

“Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers?” Myers continued by saying, “if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I’ll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won’t be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web.”

Two points:

A) Imagine the reaction had a Prof. made similar statements directed at Islam instead of Catholicism.

B) How could anyone be certain that a person holding such hateful opinions could treat students fairly?

It is becoming clearer that universities in this country have become a haven for tenured bigots.

The Eucharist For Dummies

It amazes me the degree to which people we are supposed to take as "public intellectuals" are in reality dumb as a box of rocks. Case in point; the Washington Post's non-Catholic "religion journalist" thought she would like to take Communion at the Catholic funeral mass for Tim Russert. She then wrote about the experience in the Post.

Now, she has been criticized for her distasteful mockery of the meaning of the Catholic sacrament of the Eucharist, and she cannot understand why.

I was really close to him, and I was grieving. And I thought me taking the Eucharist would be a thing that he would really enjoy. And all these things are what religion should be about. ... There's no sign out there that says you're not allowed to take Communion. [The Catholic Church is] like, "Everyone is welcome. This is God's house." God doesn't turn people away, supposedly.

I'm not sure which is scarier, the shocking ignorance of Catholic belief in a journalist specializing in religion, or the hubris of someone who believes the beliefs of a two thousand year old faith should be trumped by one person's whimsy.

First Things has a good take on this:

“I’m very pluralistic about religion, and I feel that everyone should respect everyone else’s.”

For Sally Quinn, respecting all religions apparently means all religions must respect all of Sally Quinn’s religious choices. She needn’t respect a religious community’s desire that only those in communion with Christ and His Church receive the sacrament of communion.

Evidently, respect is a one-way street.

A Priest As Moron

Doesn't this guy have a Bishop around to at least attempt to keep the Catholic Church away from such garbage?

Hate Is Hate

News of an anti-Catholic hate crime in Chicago. (Covered here and here.)

I can't wait for the MSM yawn of boredom.

I've Heard Of "Fighting Irish," But "Dumb Irish"?

Damn that liturgical calendar! St. Patrick's Day causing Catholic dilemma

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- That famous saint named Patrick will have his green-drenched party this year, but it's unclear when the guests are supposed to arrive.

For the first time since 1940, St. Patrick's Day will fall during Holy Week, the sacred seven days preceding Easter.

Because of the overlap, liturgical rules dictate that no Mass in honor of the saint can be celebrated on Monday, March 17, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

But a few Roman Catholic leaders are asking for even more moderation in their dioceses: They want parades and other festivities kept out of Holy Week as well.

Bishop J. Kevin Boland of the Diocese of Savannah, Georgia, wrote to practically every agency in his city, from the Chamber of Commerce to the Board of Education, saying the diocese was changing the date of its celebration this year. In response, the citywide Irish festival was moved to Friday, March 14, when schools will close and bagpipe-driven parties will carry into the streets.

More than half a million people stream into the Southern city for the festival, one of the nation's largest St. Patrick's Day affairs, said Bret Bell, Savannah's public information director. Savannah bars will be open March 17, but no organized events will be held that day, he said.

"The city has a very strong Irish Catholic community, a very traditional Irish Catholic community," Bell said. "They attend Mass regularly. And the last thing they want to do is get in the bad graces of the Catholic Church."

Philadelphia has also moved its parade date to avoid giving offense, and Milwaukee is hitting the streets sooner than usual, too.

But in Columbus, the Shamrock Club is going ahead with its March 17 parade, drawing protests from the local bishop. A handful of Irish-American politicians have lined up behind church leaders, breaking with tradition by refusing to march in the parade.

In a letter last fall, the Catholic Diocese of Columbus told the Shamrock Club, the group that organizes the parade, that Bishop Frederick Campbell wanted "all observances honoring St. Patrick" -- religious or otherwise -- removed from Holy Week.

"It's not a sin to celebrate your Irish culture," countered Mark Dempsey, the club's president.

"Actually, you're born Irish first," he said, "and then you're baptized Catholic."

Wow. What a dumb argument to make.

For starters, Holy Week is the single most important and central liturgical celebration of the year. St. Patrick's Day is the single most important day for the makers of green food dye. Which one of those demands the most respect do you think?

Also, this shows the Shamrock Club, and any other groups deciding to ramp up their boozing during Holy Week, to be nothing but a bunch of ingrates. Catholic dioceases in this country routinely give dispensations when St. Patrick's Day falls on a Friday so Irish folks (and others) can enjoy their corn beef and cabbage without running afoul of lenten observances.

I guess such considerations are a one-way street only.

When "Getting Real" Means Getting Nowhere

Nathaniel Peters has an interesting post over at the First Things Blog: (Sorry, the direct link to the post itself is not working. You can find it by clicking the above link and looking for an entry titled "Why The 'Nostalgia'?"

As many have heard, the former papal Master of Ceremonies (the man who organizes and runs the masses at which the pope presides) Archbishop Piero Marini has just published a book, in English, called A Challenging Reform: Realizing the Vision of the Liturgical Renewal, 1963-1975. The book recounts Marini’s time and service on the committees dealing with the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council. While First Things hopes to review Marini’s book in a future issue, I found an interview he did with John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter on the occasion of the book’s publication worthy of comment. Allen asks the Archbishop about his book’s concern “about the current liturgical direction of the church, warning of a return to a ‘pre-conciliar mindset.’” Marini says that we should always be concerned about upholding the faith of the Bible and the Fathers in every age. Then the interview begins to address this “nostalgia:”

That said, I have to add that today I’m a bit more concerned than in the past, because I see a certain nostalgia for the past. What concerns me in particular is that this nostalgia seems especially strong among some young priests. How is it possible to be nostalgic for an era they didn’t experience? I actually remember this period. From the age of six until I was 23, in other words for 18 years, I lived with the Mass of Pius V. I grew up in this rite, and I was formed by it. I saw the necessity of the changes of Vatican II, and personally I don’t have any nostalgia for this older rite, because it was the same rite that had to be adapted to changing times. I don’t see any step backward, any loss. I’m always surprised to see young people who feel this nostalgia for something they never lived with. ‘Nostalgia for what?’ I find myself asking.

John Allen: How do you explain this nostalgia?

In part, I suppose, because implementation of the liturgy of the council has been difficult. It’s true that many times there were exaggerations, which happened for the most part in a time when we could say there was disorder in the church. This was the period of great debates over new Eucharistic prayers, private adaptations, and so on. The danger today, on the other hand, is a ‘neo-ritualism,’ meaning a sort of exhaustion that one sees in many priests who celebrate the rite almost as if it’s a magical formula rather than a real participation of life. I see, therefore, a certain separation between celebration and life. Obviously, this separation can induce nostalgia for the past, for a time when everything was easier . . . when we used a language that no one understood, the rites were often incomprehensible, there were signs of the Cross everywhere, and so on. There wasn’t the same expectation that liturgy should speak to life. If one doesn’t insist on the link, it’s easy to see the liturgy more in terms of theatre. I believe this, to some extent, is the basis of the nostalgia we see today.

Archbishop Marini wonders why so many, especially so many young people, have nostalgia for an era that many of them never saw. I’ve heard his arguments before too. Young people today didn’t live in the fifties. We didn’t hear Masses mumbled by a priest in a language we never understood. We never saw how the church of that decade was driving people away from the faith and how the reforms of Vatican II brought the liturgy back to relevance for the changing times.

All this is true, of course. Those of us with more traditional liturgical tastes never did live in the fifties, and certainly there were reforms that needed to be made; I am grateful to have more Scripture read and to hear the Eucharistic prayer when it is said.

The problem, as many have noted, is that changes made in the name of reform have turned the beauty of the Church into spiritual drivel. The language of the Mass is debased. It’s as if the powers that be did not believe that the laity could handle the full beauty of the Roman Rite and the full power of its theological messages, and so brought the mass down to their level the way one condescends to a child. The architecture, the vestments, the rituals, the whole Mass became more banal and mundane. The plenitude of Scripture and Tradition was not truly passed down, and relevance replaced reverence with unfortunate consequences.

Peters has this exactly right and Archbishop Marini has it exactly wrong. The "nostalgia" is not for a rite that people my age or younger have never experienced, but for a liturgy that holds the real promise of transcendence as something vital and sacred. All too often the modern rite has equated "speaking to life" with being almost entirely mundane. Too many Catholics today have grown up with no sense that anything special is supposed to be going on in the liturgy. In its worst excesses the modern service is almost entirely devoid of transcendence. In such a view a church becomes merely a building, an altar becomes a table, and the liturgy itself becomes a script.

This was brought forcefully into focus for me many years ago when I attended mass at a new Catholic Church in Maryland with some friends I was visiting. It was a completely depressing experience. The recently built church looked like a barn. If you didn't know already what it was supposed to be you would have never guessed it had a religious purpose. There was even a pamphlet that explained how the folks in the parish didn't wish to be "intrusive" by having things like steeples or a visible cross. The entire church was meant, in effect, to be an apology for its own existence. I couldn't help but think back to the churches in my home town of St. Louis. When I was in high school we went on a church tour and learned about the communities that built these beautiful structures: how the Irish in one neighborhood would try to outdo the Italians a few blocks away (and vice versa) by having a taller steeple or a larger church bell. Sure, taken to an extreme it could lead to a false sense of pride, but their confident religious expression was infinitely superior to the cringing I saw in Maryland.

Inside the barn/church things were little better. It was a church "in the round." (Which in itself tells the lie about the older liturgical forms being the only ones prone to "theater.") As I looked around there was no tabernacle visible, or even an alcove chapel where I could assume the consecrated host was being kept. So, I went in and sat down in a pew. I noticed that everyone else was genuflecting towards the altar as they entered the pew, and I asked my friend why they were doing this. There was nothing there to be venerated. Catholic are supposed to believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but it seems clear that these folks didn't know exactly why one should genuflect in the first place. It had become an empty formalism not because the act of genuflecting is of necessity empty but because the modern liturgy has removed the very thing that gives it meaning.

This lack of meaning infuses the worst aspects of the modern liturgy. Symbols have been decried as not being "real" and have been systematically removed, but this impulse is completely wrong-headed. The meaning of symbols is that they point to something outside of themselves. The truth of the matter is that we live our lives completely in the mundane world, so we need and use symbols that direct us to something beyond our earthly experience. So the desire to "get real" in the liturgy has the effect of making the Eucharistic service just another mundane thing.

We all deserve better than that, and some are clamoring for it. Folks of the old guard like Archbishop Marini would be better served by listening to the spiritual needs of today's congregations rather than decrying their "nostalgia." Since when is a desire to experience things sacred and holy a bad thing?

Benedict Triumphant

It seems lots of people are making a habit of underestimating Pope Benedict, although no one seems to be profiting from it. From the BBC: Pope publishes cancelled speech

The Vatican has released the text of a speech the Pope was due to have given during a visit to Rome University, that was cancelled due to protests.

While some Rome students and faculty members have been crying victory, others have rallied around the pontiff. At Wednesday's general audience, students turned up with banners of support for the Pope.

A senior Vatican cardinal has urged Romans to turn out for next Sunday's Angelus blessing in St Peter's Square.

In the speech that Pope Benedict wrote himself for delivery at the start of the academic year in Rome, he acknowledges that some of the things said by theologians over the centuries have been proven false by history.

But he insists that the search for truth cannot be divorced from the traditional fields of study at universities since the Middle Ages, namely philosophy and Christian theology.

The BBC reporter doesn't quite get it, but this isn't surprising as the Pope's talk touched upon a number of thinkers from Socrates to John Rawls and is pregnant with undercurrents. Indeed, it seems obvious that either the Pope was aware of the possibility of the protests or that the speech was altered to highlight the intellectual vacuousness of his critics.

At one point Benedict even invokes the neo-Marxist school known as "Critical Theory": (The Pope's address, in Italian, can be found here)

Jürgen Habermas esprime, a mio parere, un vasto consenso del pensiero attuale, quando dice che la legittimità di una carta costituzionale, quale presupposto della legalità, deriverebbe da due fonti: dalla partecipazione politica egualitaria di tutti i cittadini e dalla forma ragionevole in cui i contrasti politici vengono risolti. Riguardo a questa "forma ragionevole" egli annota che essa non può essere solo una lotta per maggioranze aritmetiche, ma che deve caratterizzarsi come un "processo di argomentazione sensibile alla verità" (wahrheitssensibles Argumentationsverfahren). È detto bene, ma è cosa molto difficile da trasformare in una prassi politica.

For those whose Italian isn't what it could be, I'll translate:

Jürgen Habermas represents, in my opinion, a vast consensus of current thinking when he says that the legitimacy of a constitutional charter, in its legality, derives from two sources: from the equal political participation of all the citizens and from the reasonable manner in which political disputes are resolved. Concerning this "reasonable manner" he notes it may not be only a matter of arithmetic majorities, but it should be characterized as a "process of argumentation sensitive to the truth." It is well said, but it is a difficult thing to transform into political practice.

Indeed, that difficulty is spelled out by the knee-jerk reaction of the critics at La Sapienza, who represent less a moment of progress as compared to the Church's medieval obscurantism, than a return to such obscurantism. They certainly failed to live up to any Liberal idea of what a University should be. They even failed to live up to the politics of mediation favored by leftists like Habermas. Indeed, all they managed to do is look foolish, boorish and downright uncivilized.

It is heartening that some are recognizing this in Italy itself. From the BBC again:

The Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone told the Rector of Rome University, after students threatened to disrupt the Pope's visit, that the Pontiff would no longer be "guaranteed a dignified and tranquil welcome".

What is interesting is that the anti-Pope protests seem, in some ways, to have backfired. One leading Italian newspaper the Corriere della Sera ran a front page editorial headlined "A defeat for the country", while President Napolitano and politicians of both the right and left have been condemning demonstrations of intolerance towards the Pope.

Even when this Pope loses, he wins

Semi-Confessions of a Partial Catholic

In the past couple of weeks I have read the two novel series Conclave & Council by Greg Tobin (Forge Books). The novels follow the exploits of an American Roman Catholic bishop as he first gets elected pope, and second, calls for another church coucil (i.e. Vatican III.) The books are kind of like a Tom Clancy novel interbred with a church hymnal. Instead of Clancy's longwinded digressions into the technology of spycraft we are given equally longwinded digressions on various aspects of Catholicism. Otherwise they are very similar. We are even given flashback sequences where the bishop-to-be kicks some ass in Vietnam, although he is always thoughtful about the people he kills. The books themselves are not bad reads. All the flashbacks seem to indicate that Tobin didn't have confidence in the strength of his main story line, but this is a minor criticism.

As pop culture documents of American Catholicism this former seminary student finds them a little more troubling. For starters there are the villians of the piece, the leaders of the Conservative (i.e. reactionary) Evangelium Christi movement, obvious stand-ins for the real life Opus Dei. This gay bashing, woman hating group stoops at nothing in these books. They stage a "terrorist" attack to murder a pope, and engage in all other forms of intimidation and character assasination when they are not busy mudering people. As if Tobin hasn't made his feelings about the Evangelium Christi clear enough by their actions, he also feels the need to link them to honest to God Nazis. Ok, we get it!! They are the bad guys!!

The payoff for all the bloodshed is of course that the liberal American pope is the very vessel of the Holy Spirit who will lead the church to institute holy orders for women, and to allow priests to marry as well. That the two are basically equated in the book is not uncommon in American Catholic thinking. There seems to be a general ignorance of Catholic teachings on these matters by those American writers who tackle the subject. Gary Wills' piece of drivel (screed?) Papal Sins was much the same way. The truth is that the ecclesiastical rule that keeps priests from marrying is just that, a rule. It can be changed by the church without altering the faith in any way. This explains why there are already married Catholic priests, such as converts from other denominations and members of churches in union with Rome that traditionaly have allowed clergy to marry. Only the idea of allowing women to become priests involves changing the dogma of the church.

The object of this kind of writing, from Tobin, Wills and other liberal Catholics like them, seems to be a Catholic church that will be safe for the party platform of the Democratic party. Indeed, it is hard to distinguish where the one ends and the other begins. This need to "update" the Catholic church so that it is nearly identical with this or that contemporary political ideology troubles me. I feel the church plays a much more important role as a counter-cultural force. The church is supposed to represent eternal truths, not this decades fashions. Historically the church has gotten itself into trouble by being too of its time, not too little. The sad history of popes as petty tyrants playing out their games of political power is not a pretty one. But it is a history that will be repeated if the church gets involved in remaking itself in the image of our contemporary political institutions. However, the drive that impels the Tobin's and Wills' of this world is strong. Anyone who opposes their vision is for them, well, a Nazi.

And, in the short run, I think Tobin and company will win. That is why I consider myself a "partial Catholic." The wind has been blowing cold for some time. The church will be fundamentally altered in my lifetime, and the post Vatican II church in all its successes and failings, will cease to exist. So I keep my distance. It would be too painful for me to be a full blown Catholic.