The Bush Pivot

We are now seeing what I predict will be viewed as one of the most skillful pivots in American policy that we have seen in a long time. The public mood became anxious over what was the exit strategy in Iraq. The Bush administration responded with a bold "pivot"--not a reversal of policy but an acceleration of policy. Bush accelerated the exit strategy for Iraq by judging that the time was right to go full throttle on full sovereignty and all its accoutrements for the Iraqis. The old Governing Council liquidated itself after the U.N. blessed the selection of a new Iraqi government. On June 30th, the American occupation ends, and the new Iraqi government assumes full control. Today's N.Y. Times reports on the front page that top U.S. military commanders are already redefining their mission from one of attack to one of protection. This change means that U.S. casualties are likely to continue to decline. In May, U.S. casualties already declined by more than 50% compared to the month of April.

But the biggest news is that the U.N. resolution on Iraq proposed by the U.S. and Britain sets a firm date for withdrawal of foreign troops: no later than January 2006 (see Fox News story for June 1, 2004). The American public now has the exit strategy it was anxious to get.

All of which means that John Kerry and his foreign policy advisors will be hard put to differ with the Bush pivot. Kerry and company are now pulling their hairs in exasperation. From a Catholic point of view, these events add to the justice of the Iraq war. Clearly, the U.S. goal was not an endless occupation of Iraq. Clearly, the U.S. goal was not control of Iraqi oil. These events and the proposed U.N. resolution confirm that the cause was just: restoration of full sovereignty and the introduction of civilized government to a land formerly ruled by a murderous madman. But don't be surprised if the prophets of doom and gloom try anyway to make all of this good news appear sinister, conspiratorial, and imperialistic. Old habits are hard to break even when they crash against reality.

The Conscience of a Catholic

When Vatican II proclaimed that governments cannot coerce the consciences of its citizens in religious matters, the words were rightly welcomed as a reaffirmation of the long-held Christian belief that coercion cannot play any role in faith (see Dignitatis Humanae, 3 [Dec. 7, 1965]). Yet, what Vatican II proclaimed at the time of the Cold War, as a rebuke to the official atheism of the Communist world, has been twisted and misinterpreted, as so many other portions of Council documents have, into an apologetic for the secular view of conscience. The modern secular Western view of conscience emphasizes three traits which I will explain further:

1. Conscience as exclusively individual;
   
2. Conscience as psychological; and
   
3. Conscience as non-existential.
   

Given the arguments made by pro-abortion politicians, it is ironic that it is precisely in our eucharistic participation that the authentic character of conscience is revealed. If we examine conscience eucharistically, we see traits that contradict the three traits emphasized by our culture.

When I say that the culture views conscience as exclusively individual, I mean to contrast this with a eucharistic conscience which is also communal. While still Archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Ratzinger referred to this communal aspect of conscience:

[W]e can see how the closeness of the Lord also brings people together and brings them close to each other: it is because we have the same Lord Jesus Christ in Munich [or Boston or Detroit] that we form one single people of God, across all frontiers, united in the call of conscience, united by the word of God, united through communion with Jesus Christ, united in the praise of God, who is our joy and our redemption.

Ratzinger, God Is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life (Ignatius Press, 2003), p. 106 (emphasis added).

Conscience cannot be exclusively an individual matter. For the Christian, conscience unites us in a community, a communion, with other Christians. And so when Vatican II rightly rejects the coercion of a political community on the individual conscience, that rejection can in no way be used to distort the fact that the Christian conscience is inherently communal. A eucharistic conscience recognizes its communal nature because "the Eucharist is instrumental in the process by which Christ builds himself a Body and makes us into one single Bread, one single Body" (p. 114). It is understandable that a secular West that thinks of community only in terms of the political community with its powers of coercion cannot understand the communal nature of a Christian or eucharistic conscience.

The second difference between the secular conscience and the eucharistic conscience is in the psychological emphasis of our culture. For Western culture, the conscience is no more than the urge and tug of our subjective feelings: conscience is psychology. In contrast, the Christian conscience cannot be merely a subjective psychological event. It must also be objective. In the Eucharist, we encounter the real Christ, not just our memory of Christ or our sentiments about Christ as a past historical figure. And so Ratzinger can say that the "conscience is the inner aspect of the Lord's presence, which alone can render us capable of receiving the eucharistic presence" (p. 105). The Lord's presence is objective; it has an outer aspect. A Christian conscience reflects the inner aspect of that objective presence. But, of course, a secular society that has no need of God or Lord lacks this objective reference. And so the Western conscience can be no more than a psychological episode.

The third difference between these two types of conscience lies in the realm of the existential. By "existential," I mean our predicament as persons, our real conduct. The famous Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) emphasized that "I am I and my circumstances." Although not Catholic, Ortega captured the existential aspect that cannot be ignored without falsifying our human predicament. Where are we as persons? The conscience of a Hitler does not carry the same dignity as the conscience of a Mother Teresa because their conduct was so radically different. Our culture's version of conscience tends to focus on our feelings as opposed to our conduct and thus denies the importance of what we actually do or fail to do. In effect, our culture more and more deems the content of our objective behavior as irrelevant as long as we generally intend to be "nice," even though we create inherently exploitive and hurtful situations. But, in Catholic terms, our consciences either correctly reflect what we must do or are in error about what we must do. Intentions alone cannot make objectively exploitive and hurtful conduct into good conduct. Certainly, the arena of sexuality is rife with relevant examples. The correct conscience must be informed by the will of God for our circumstances.

And so the evaluation of the authority of conscience cannot ignore the will of God for our particular circumstances:

For man, the will of God is not a foreign force of exterior origin, but the actual orientation of his own being. Thus the revelation of God's will is the revelation of what our own being truly wishes--it is a gift.

Ratzinger, pp. 104-105.

God's will is known in His word, and "God's presence in the word and his presence in the Eucharist belong together, inseparably . . . . [for] [t]the eucharistic Lord is himself the living Word" (Ratzinger, p. 105).

So conscience that does not encounter the word of God is not eucharistic. A conscience formed without reference to the will of God--the type of conscience celebrated by secular society--is not ready to receive the Eucharist.

All three traits of the modern secular conscience reduce conscience to mere consciousness. In contrast, the eucharistic conscience of a Catholic is both individual and communal, it is linked to the objective reality of Christ and is thus Christocentric, and it reflects a person oriented to executing the will of God as revealed in His word. Next time you hear someone say that a pro-abortion conscience formed in contradiction to the word of God is free to receive the Eucharist, you will know that they are confusing a secular view of conscience with a eucharistic view of conscience. They are making a category mistake by confusing Vatican II's correct rebuke of government infringement on religious freedom with their own misguided defense of a non-eucharistic conscience.

An Archbishop for the Times

A regular Catholic Analysis reader brings to my attention that the Sunday N.Y. Times has an article well worth reading on Archbishop John J. Myers of Newark, New Jersey. Myers recently wrote a welcome pastoral letter telling pro-abortion politicians not to receive the Eucharist. The article is noteworthy because it presents the "conservative," i.e., authentically Catholic, archbishop in a favorable light, even referring to New Jersey Catholics happy to be led by an outspoken orthodox bishop. Two liberal critics are quoted. One is the usual suspect Richard McBrien of Notre Dame who, by now most should be aware, is a theologian with no credibility on matters Catholic. The other is a lesser known liberal Jesuit, a Rev. Raymond Schroth, who, when teaching years ago at Loyola University in New Orleans, was reprimanded for his mishandling of his duties as advisor to the student newspaper involving the publication of a student column gratuitously attacking Hispanic students at the university. You can comfortably dismiss the criticisms of both liberals as not credible.

The very end of the article is worth quoting. Archbishop Myers responds to his critics:

Archbishop Myers said he was confident that, in time, his robust leadership would revitalize the church by giving believers something to rally around. And even if his detractors are right, and the emphasis on traditional doctrine leaves the church smaller but more theologically pure, Archbishop Myers said he would have no regrets.

"Then so be it," he said.

Source: "In a Liberal State, a Catholic Archbishop as Conservative as He is Controversial," N.Y. Times Online (free reg'n required), by David Kocieniewski, May 30, 2004.

And if you want proof that our culture is in dire need of bishops like Myers, read the article on teenage sexual customs also in that Sunday's N.Y. Times ("Friends, Friends with Benefits and the Benefits of the Local Mall," by Benoit Denizet-Lewis, May 30, 2004, Magazine section). The article describes a teen culture that has descended into, what has to be plainly called, routine cash-free prostitution that will mar the lives of many teenagers for decades.

And for further proof that Myers is exactly what we need, Andrew Sullivan, the pro-gay marriage blogger, has a book review in the same issue of the newspaper celebrating a Benedictine monk who, apparently, years ago unilaterally revised Catholic teaching on sexuality, ironically, in his counseling of a wayward teenager ("'Father Joe': The Saint and the Satirist," Books section, N.Y. Times, May 30, 2004). The article on today's teenage behavior documents the damage done by the revision of Catholic teaching celebrated by Sullivan. I wonder if Sullivan can make this connection that is blatantly apparent in the very same issue of the newspaper in which his book review appears. The Catholic Church--the Church of Jesus Christ-- as usual is always the lightning rod for liberal attack. (There is also a garbled and dim-witted article by Frank Rich in the same issue that attacks the movie The Passion of the Christ and those Christians who correctly see the influence of our pornographic culture in the photos of prisoner humiliation from Iraq. That a major newspaper publishes such a weird opinion piece confirms that professionalism is in a terminal state in journalism.)

Next Major Update: Tuesday, June 1, 2004

Due to the Memorial Day holiday, the next major update will be on June 1st. Short news-related updates are always possible.

Defeatism, Original Sin, and Emotional Pacifism

On this Memorial Day weekend, the reality of war in our history confirms the presence of war in our present. We are in a War on Terror begun, like Pearl Harbor, with a spectacular attack on American soil. The government tells us what we already knew: that more such attacks on American soil are being planned. The President has taken the offensive by removing the Al-Qaeda controlled regime in Afghanistan--an enterprise which the media falsely viewed as a quagmire in the making based on a false comparison with the earlier British and Russian experiences in that country. The President took the offensive and removed the mad Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq which had chemical weapons and had numerous links with Al-Qaeda-- not to mention the dictator's genocidal policy of massacre and his penchant for mutilation. Recall that in the process of overthrowing Saddam Hussein, the media also claimed that we were bogged down. Contrary to the media's reflexive defeatism, Baghdad fell in a matter of days.

Today, Iraq remains the central battlefield in the War on Terror. It is a magnet for terrorists that would otherwise be busy elsewhere, including our own shores. The emergence of a civilized regime in Iraq has the potential to transform the dynamic of tyranny and terror that has prevailed for too long in the Islamic Middle East and spawned savage fanaticism focused on killing the innocent worldwide. As usual, the media is playing its defeatist role by questioning every turn of events in the most negative terms possible. As we remember World War II, we should also remember that there were dark days in 1942 when the Axis seemed unbeatable. If our present-day media had been active then, surely, true to form, they would have questioned everything the Allies were doing and echoing pessimism as they are doing today.

In the end, the Iraqis themselves will set the course for their own society. All the United States and its allies can do is create the conditions for success and aid with security. Whether Iraq ends up in civil war or with a united, civilized government will depend on the Iraqis themselves. Neither the United States nor anyone else can do it for them. Their failure to create a civilized government that avoids civil war would be their own failure, not that of the United States or anyone else. After World War II, Japan and Germany began a long process of becoming civilized democracies. They were homogeneous countries not divided by ethnic hatreds as Iraq is. Japan and Germany had been powerful industrial countries with a high standard of living. They recovered. Whether the Iraqis can rise to the occasion remains to be seen. But it is ultimately their challenge, not ours. When we leave Iraq, we will have accomplished the removal of a mad and highly dangerous dictator who was a bitter enemy of the United States and given millions the opportunity for freedom. Those were goals worth going to war for.

Yet, in these times, there seems to be a knee-jerk emotional pacifism which sees nothing worth fighting for. In a world of original sin, Christians should be the last to be surprised that wars occur and are sometimes necessary. Christians should be the last to be surprised at the need for a strong military, just as our own cities cannot survive without a strong police presence. Danger lurks everywhere. Baghdad is dangerous, but so are Detroit, Cleveland, New Orleans, Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, D.C., from the presence of our own homegrown criminals--just ask any shopkeeper in those cities. Judaism and Islam do not believe in original sin. Christianity does and should be the last to suffer from the delusion of emotional pacifism. In my opinion, a lot of mental illness is due to our inability to face the reality of evil in our world. We desperately try to escape to a place of complete safety and peace and thereby subject ourselves to endless frustration because there is no such place on this planet. Mental illness means being out of touch with reality. Emotional pacifism tends in that direction.

Life is conflict. Incessant conflict even marked the life of our Lord and ended with his brutal suffering and death--the product of intense hatred toward perfect good. There is conflict within families, neighborhoods, cities, and nations. There is conflict between nations, and between nations and terrorist organizations. In the inevitable conflict between good and evil, the forces of good should not and must not be embarrassed to fight back.

I quote, as I have done before, the words of C.S. Lewis which he broadcast during World War II in an England that knew the anxiety of coming close to actual defeat:

Does loving your enemy mean not punishing him? No, for loving myself does not mean that I ought not to subject myself to punishment-- even to death. If one had committed a murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself to the police and be hanged. It is, therefore, in my opinion, perfectly right for a Christian judge to sentence a man to death or a Christian soldier to kill an enemy. I always have thought so, ever since I became a Christian, and long before the war. There's no good quoting "Thou shalt not kill." There are two Greek words: the ordinary word to kill and the word to murder. And when Christ quotes that commandment He uses the murder one in all three accounts, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And I am told there is the same distinction in Hebrew. All killing is not murder any more than all sexual intercourse is adultery. When soldiers came to John the Baptist asking what to do, he never remotely suggested that they ought to leave the army: nor did Christ when He met a Roman sergeant-major--what they called a centurion. The idea of the knight--the Christian in arms for the defence of a good cause--is one of the great Christian ideas. War is a dreadful thing, and I can respect an honest pacifist, though I think he is entirely mistaken. What I cannot understand is this sort of half pacifism you get nowadays which gives people the idea that though you have got to fight, you ought to do it with a long face and as if you were ashamed of it. It is that feeling that robs lots of magnificent young Christians in the Services of something they have a right to, something which is the natural accompaniment of courage--a kind of gaiety and whole-heartedness.

C.S. Lewis, Christian Behaviour: A Further Series of Broadcast Talks (N.Y.: Macmillan, 1950), pp. 41-42 (originally published in 1943)(bold emphasis added).

There are many addicted to the emotional "half pacifism" described by Lewis. We even have presidential candidates catering to this trait. Our succumbing to the paralysis of emotional half pacifism is the only way the terrorists can win. Unfortunately, some who want to be President fit the temperament of the half pacifist marked by reflexive indecision and excessive caution.

More Evidence on the Justice of the Iraq War: Al-Qaeda Links

A new book published by major publishing house HarperCollins documents the links between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda. One link has to do with the manufacture of chemical weapons. You can read the details about this newly published book in a new article in the Weekly Standard ("The Connection," by Stephen F. Hayes, 6/7/04 issue). Al-Qaeda members were active in Saddam Hussein's police state. They could only be active in Iraq with the consent of the regime. It makes sense that these two bitter enemies of the United States would naturally seek to work together. As I have said before, years from now historians will wonder at the reluctance by so many to see the obvious threat.

So now we have two pieces of the puzzle: both sarin and mustard gas have been found in Iraq, and Saddam Hussein was cooperating with Bin Laden. Add the two pieces together, plus September 11th, and you have a clear and present danger. The President was right to overthrow Saddam Hussein. We are safer today without the existence of that regime. History is the ultimate poll, and history will favorably judge the much maligned George W. Bush.

Newsweek Religion Writer Opines on Abortion Controversy

Newsweek's religion writer Kenneth Woodward publishes today an opinion piece in the N.Y. Times (free reg'n required) discussing the coming clash between pro-abortion politicians and Catholic bishops ("A Political Sacrament," Opinion section, 5/28/04). Woodward clearly does not favor denying the Eucharist to these politicians. Yet, there are signs that the debate on this issue has focused the issue and advanced the defense of life even among those like Woodward who shrink from the obvious and long overdue need to deny the Eucharist to those pro-abortion celebrities who obstinately persist in propping up legal abortion.

The first positive sign is that Woodward eventually points out--after an initial erroneous description of papal teaching-- that the abortion issue cannot be put on a par with issues like the death penalty and the Iraq War:

But this line of reasoning [the much misused "Seamless Garment" line of reasoning] is fraught with peril. For the pope, the bishops and — if polls are to believed — for most practicing Catholics, abortion is the taking of innocent life and therefore violates the most fundamental of human rights. By contrast, the pope's opposition to capital punishment is conditional, not absolute, and the church's application of just war principles is open to reasoned debate. When it comes to abortion, there is far less room for discussion.

Source: Kenneth L. Woodward, N.Y. Times, 5/28/04.

Not only is there far less room for discussion when it comes to abortion--there is no room for discussion as to a Catholic supporting abortion. In a culture that shrinks from any absolutes--except maybe when it comes to the evil of tobacco or "homophobia"--the Catholic Church announces that direct abortion is intrinsically evil. That is the source of the conflict because our culture finds any absolute, non-negotiable moral stand intolerable.

Woodward also reports that the U.S. bishops may release their task force report on the issue of pro-abortion politicians earlier than anticipated because of the controversy. An early release would be a sign that our opinions do count. When you write a letter to the editor or e-mail a bishop, your voice can have an impact on evolving events. Woodward in the paragraph quoted above faces the reality of Catholic teaching, instead of hiding behind the misuse of the Seamless Garment argument that falsely puts abortion, the death penalty, and war on the same moral level. They emphatically are not on the same moral level. The death penalty targets convicted criminals, not the innocent. The decision to go to war in Iraq was motivated by Saddam Hussein's defiance of the U.N. on disarmament. The Iraqi dictator was also a genocidal tyrant who routinely engaged in torture, mutilation, and massacre as an open and official instrument of state policy directed at innocent civilians.

From reading Woodward's column, it appears that he anticipates that the task force may favor telling the pro-abortion politicians to voluntarily refrain from receiving the Eucharist. The task force may even recommend imposing some lesser sanctions such as barring such politicians from making speeches at Catholic institutions. That is some progress, even if it fails to live up to the full moral imperative. Yet, no committee or task force can tie the hands of a courageous bishop. Some bishops will continue to be bold and apostolic on this issue. They will continue to move the ball down the field even if all we get is a field goal.

The truth is making progress when even someone like Woodward recognizes the moral problem of pro-abortion Catholic politicians and the sophistry of the excuses made in the past by such luminaries as former New York Governor Mario Cuomo. Yet, Woodward himself has room to grow. He refers to the stand of Bishop Sheridan of Colorado Springs as "eccentric" for calling on Catholic voters who vote for pro-abortion politicians to refrain from the Eucharist unless they repent and go to confession. Sheridan just stated the obvious, but the obvious becomes "eccentric" when compared to the timidity of many other bishops. It reminds me of one Catholic biblical scholar who refers to Jesus as a "Marginal Jew." I guess Bishop Sheridan should take comfort that on this issue he is the "Marginal Bishop." He has good company in his so-called "eccentricity."

In addition, the title of Woodward's piece "A Political Sacrament" is vaguely offensive, if not outright blasphemous. The Eucharist is not a political sacrament in spite of the best efforts of pro-abortion politicians to make receiving the Eucharist a false public statement of their standing as Catholics. The Eucharist is, like all sacraments, an Ecclesial Sacrament. It is a sign of unity and communion with the Catholic Church. And that is the source of the problem for the politicians. On this Memorial Day weekend, it is good to recall the famous World War II saying, dating from Pearl Harbor, to "praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition." Keep praying and keep speaking out. The truth is our ammunition.

A Puzzling Statement by Another Bishop

The Catholic News Service is reporting that Pittsburgh Bishop Donald Wuerl spoke recently to a Catholic audience and stated that denying the Eucharist was not part of the "pastoral tradition" of the Church. My initial reaction is that canon law clearly envisions denying the Eucharist to pro-abortion politicians, as canonists have pointed out (see, for example, this analysis by Dr. Edward N. Peters). Does pastoral tradition nullify the explicit words of canon law? In my humble view, if it is in canon law, it is part of the pastoral tradition of the Church. Canon law reflects the pastoral tradition of the Church, and cannot contradict it.

The Pope's own words in promulgating the current Code of Canon Law bear witness to this organic and close relation between canon law and the pastoral practice of the Church by noting the purpose of canon law:

[I]ts purpose is rather to create such an order in the ecclesial society that, while assigning the primacy to love, grace and charisms, it at the same time renders their organic development easier in the life of both the ecclesial society and the individual persons who belong to it.

Source: Apostolic Constitution Sacrae Disciplinae Leges, available at this link (scroll down document).

Canon law, theology, and pastoral practice are intended to reflect the same truth. If American pastoral practice contradicts the carefully redacted text of canon law duly promulgated by the Pope, then it seems to me that something is amiss in pastoral practice in the United States (see Canon 24).

The Diocese of Pittsburgh website provides the entire text of the bishop's address on May 25, 2004. Most of the address is an eloquent affirmation that abortion and voting to keep abortion legal are both grave evils. The surprising problem is that the bishop fails to draw the logically required conclusion from his own eloquent statement of the relevant premisses! Instead, when you think he is about to concur that politicians who obstinately persist in supporting abortion should be denied the Eucharist, he pulls back citing concerns about Church interference in politics. The bishop puts forth three inadequate reasons for pulling back from the conclusion required by his own statement of Catholic teaching on abortion:

1. That the issue of supporting legal abortion is on a par with other issues such as the death penalty--but he himself states earlier in his remarks that the right to life is "the most fundamental of all human rights";

2. That we have to consider under what circumstances we would deny the Eucharist to any Catholic--but the issue, as he himself earlier pointed out, focuses on the peculiarly public position of politicians, not on the situation of unknown Catholics;

3. And that the Church recoils from judging the "state of the soul" of those presenting themselves for Holy Communion--but canon law does not require such a subjective assessment but merely a determination that the individual is in an objective state of grave sin, and certainly the Church makes that sort of determination in her rule barring divorced and remarried Catholics from the Eucharist without delving into the reasons for their marital situation.

In addition, the bishop states at one point that the recent Vatican document on Catholic politicians does not say that it is a grave sin for Catholic politicians to vote for pro-abortion legislation:

The statement of the Doctrinal Note that one has a “clear and grave obligation” to vote against abortion legislation is not a declaration of or confirmation that such a person voting in this manner is in personal grave sin.

Source: Bishop Wuerl's address at diocesan link above (6th paragraph in the section entitled "Discipline and Holy Communion").

I respectfully disagree with his conclusion. Here is the basis of my disagreement based on the same text that the bishop himself refers to:

John Paul II, continuing the constant teaching of the Church, has reiterated many times that those who are directly involved in lawmaking bodies have a «grave and clear obligation to oppose» any law that attacks human life. For them, as for every Catholic, it is impossible to promote such laws or to vote for them.

Source: Vatican website, Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life, Section 4, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 11-24-02 (emphasis added).

If it is a grave obligation to oppose such laws, I submit that to violate that obligation is a grave matter and so a grave sin. As such, the bishop's comments on this particular point miss the point. In my view, the Doctrinal Note is not talking about formal grave sin but about material grave sin. For formal grave sin you need to find subjective fault. For material grave sin, all that is needed is that the objective behavior itself is gravely sinful, not a determination of the subjective state of the person engaging in the objectively sinful behavior. The bishop fails to make this traditional distinction clear and speaks ambiguously and broadly of "personal grave sin" only and thus ignores the crucial issue at the heart of denying the Eucharist under canon law.

Yet, in spite of this misstep, the important point is that the rest of the bishop's own analysis begs for the conclusion that pro-abortion politicians should be denied the Eucharist. His eloquent statement of the foundations for that conclusion lead me to hope that he will, sooner or later, come to the manifestly required conclusion.

Update: Catholic World News for May 31, 2004, has an article in which the top Vatican canon law cardinal speaks about the role of canon law as an aid to evangelization. The article reinforces the above comments.

New Addition to Blog Roll: Kausfiles

Mickey Kaus has a political weblog at Slate.com. He has a knack for seeing what the liberal media tries so hard to hide. He is a balm for those of us who can now say that we are not alone in scratching our heads over the obtuseness of the old media. Once you read his commentary on coverage of the presidential campaign, you will realize how much the prestigious liberal media garbles, distorts, and falsifies the campaign news. An example is the liberal media's distorted presentation of President Bush's recent speech on Iraq in which he called for Iraqi elections no later than January. The words struck me as significant as soon as I heard them while listening to the President's speech Monday night. You don't have to be a careful lawyer or political pundit to see that these words mean that the administration is open to holding Iraqi elections earlier than January as originally envisioned. Yet, as Kaus shows, the N.Y. Times gets this highly significant part of the President's speech exactly backwards. And so you are left wondering what the so-called "newspaper of record" is recording: objective fact or its subjective projections? Kaus also gives an insightful analysis of the latest election polling that will be of comfort to pro-life voters. You will find the link to the Kausfiles here and at the blogroll in the side margin.

Ratzinger on Open Communion

"Open communion" is the term, common in Protestant circles, for the practicing of admitting anyone to partake of the Lord's Supper. My impression is that those Protestant denominations practicing open communion usually require only that one be a baptized Christian regardless of denominational affiliation. I would not be surprised, given the collapse of any semblance of Christian orthodoxy among liberal Protestant denominations, that even this minimal requirement is disregarded by some. In Catholic circles, the term refers to the push by those liberal Catholics who seek "intercommunion" whereby Protestants are free to receive the Catholic Eucharist. Not too long ago, a Catholic priest in Germany was disciplined for actually putting the idea into practice. Curiously, among some strict Baptists, the debate on open communion is about whether one has been baptized by immersion or not. Some of these Baptists will bar anyone who has not been baptized by immersion. The topic of open communion is particularly relevant because of the controversy over pro-abortion Catholic politicians.

In the United States, the inside cover of most Catholic missals states the rules for admission to the Eucharist by various groups:

1. Non-Christians are excluded;
2. Non-Catholic Christians are ordinarily excluded, except in exceptional circumstances requiring permission of the bishop in accordance with canon law (Canon 844, section 4)(But the Catholic Church, on her part at least, does not object to reception of communion by members of the Orthodox Churches, the Assyrian Church of the East, and the Polish National Catholic Church, which split from the Catholic Church in the 19th century after a fight with the American hierarchy);
4. Catholics are not to receive communion if conscious of grave sin and if they have not received prior sacramental absolution "except for a grave reason where there is no opportunity for confession" and an act of perfect contrition is made that includes the intention to go to confession as soon as possible.

Source: United States Catholic Conference (1996).

But what happens when someone who is known to fall into one of these categories approaches anyway? If these rules have any real meaning, then the minister of Holy Communion--whether priest, deacon, or lay--must deny the Eucharist. Surely, the minister of communion must deny the Eucharist if he or she knows the status of the person approaching. The same would hold in the case of someone who is obviously drunk approaching the Eucharist. Denial would be in order.

Yet, what is being argued by pro-abortion Catholic politicians and their supporters would overthrow the current rules of the Church. They are conscious of grave sin because the Church has told them again and again that abortion and the support of abortion are grave sins. They do not agree with the teaching, but they are undeniably conscious of it. Given the recent press coverage, they certainly are by now conscious of it. Some present hypothetical situations where supporting Roe v. Wade may not involve grave sin. These strained hypothetical situations are not persuasive and moreover have an air of fantasy about them. And, of course, the same politicians make no act of perfect contrition or bring their support of abortion to the confessional because they have no contrition to begin with and in addition have no intention of amending their behavior. So clearly, the pro-abortion Catholic politician falls into a category of exclusion from communion as much as the non-Christian.

But if we nevertheless admit such Catholic politicians to communion, then the path to open communion is clearly marked. Why then deny the Eucharist to non-Catholic Christians at all? Some of these non-Catholic Christians may, after all, in fact, be pro-life, unlike the politicians. Is it their fault that they were born into and raised in another Christian tradition and cannot in good conscience accept all of the teachings of the Catholic Church? And as to non-Christians, if in their conscience they cannot in good faith declare a Christian faith in Jesus, why deny them closeness to Jesus that may bring them to future conversion and if God's grace is somehow already manifested in their current level of religious faith and practice?

The pressure to admit non-Catholics and even non-Christians will focus on the fact that, like the pro-abortion politicians, they are just honestly following their consciences as best they can at this time in their lives, and that it would be wrong to bar them from approaching Jesus. And especially today, given the trend in the theology of world religions to view all world religions as equal paths to the divine, the basis is being laid to make open communion the logical and standard practice. I assure you that there are some, if not many, liberal Catholics who see no problem with such expansive open communion, especially given that some do not even hold to the divinity of Christ, much less believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist as traditionally taught in the Catholic Church.

In such controversies, it is good to go below the rules, so to speak, to the underlying theology. As usual, a good guide is Cardinal Ratzinger. Ratzinger addresses the idea of open communion by looking at how some propose viewing the Eucharist:

Others say that the Eucharist is the continuation of the meals with sinners that Jesus had held. This . . . idea has become for many people a fascinating notion with far-reaching consequences. For it would mean that the Eucharist is the sinners' banquet, where Jesus sits at the table; the Eucharist is the public gesture by which he invites everyone without exception. The logic of this is expressed in a far-reaching criticism of the Church's Eucharist, since it implies that the Eucharist cannot be conditional on anything, not dependent on denomination or even on baptism. It is necessarily an open table to which all may come to encounter the universal God, without any limit or denominational preconditions.

Ratzinger, God is Near Us (Ignatius Press, 2003), p. 59 (bold emphasis added).

And so you can see that the theological push for open communion, even for the unbaptized, is a real force today. You cannot logically ignore this reality when evaluating the controversy over pro-abortion politicians. Ratzinger makes clear that this idea of open communion is fundamentally mistaken:

But then, again-- however tempting the idea may be-- it contradicts what we find in the Bible [that is, in divine revelation]. Jesus' Last Supper was not one of those meals he held with "publicans and sinners". He made it subject to the basic form of the Passover, which implies that this meal was held in a family setting. Thus he kept it with his new family, with the Twelve; with those whose feet he washed, whom he had prepared, by his Word and by this cleansing of absolution (Jn 3:10), to receive a blood relationship with him, to become one body with him. The Eucharist is not itself the sacrament of reconciliation, but in fact it presupposes that sacrament. It is the sacrament of the reconciled, to which the Lord invites all those who have become one with him; who certainly still remain weak sinners, but yet have given their hand to him and have become part of his family.

Ratzinger, pp. 59-60.

Ratzinger notes that the Eucharist presupposes the Sacrament of Reconciliation or Confession. Notice that today many like to speak of the Eucharist as itself imparting forgiveness of even mortal sin. The Church teaches that in the Eucharist our venial sins are forgiven, but mortal sin must be absolved in the Sacrament of Penance. But most of those who emphasize the Eucharist as effectively replacing the sacrament of reconciliation have long ago abandoned as quaint any distinction between mortal or venial sin. Certainly, most Protestants make no such distinction. Ratzinger gives us his conclusion:

The Eucharist is . . . the sacrament of those who have let themselves be reconciled by God, who have thus become members of his family and put themselves into his hands. That is why there are conditions for participating in it; it presupposes that we have voluntarily entered into the mystery of Jesus Christ.

Ratzinger, p. 60.

That voluntary entering into the mystery of Jesus Christ means we have broken with mortal sin. And that is all that is being asked of the great and mighty of the political world. To fail to deny the Eucharist to those who have broken with Christ is to practice open communion, an open communion which knows no logical limit.

Blogs: Economic Theory at its Best

Recently, weblogs or blogs have been receiving some attention. Bill Gates hailed blogs as a useful tool superior to the traditional website (calling a website "traditional" shows how fast technology evolves!)(see BBC story for May 21, 2004). Most newspaper websites now have associated news blogs. Every presidential campaign has a blog. Families use them. Businesses use them. Catholic blogs are having an impact, as noted even by their theological opposites at the liberal journal Commonweal founded in 1924.

In my view, blogs are an example of democracy at its best because they provide access to those who would otherwise be kept silent and isolated. If you look at the cable channels, some of the hosts of different news or talk shows are downright strange. Chris Matthews at MSNBC is a one-man, hyperventilating attack machine on anything Republican who barely lets his guests get in a word. You have odd "hip" newshows with blaring, jarring theme music. The selection of stories is clearly biased on most television news outlets and their internet adjuncts.

Now comes the weblog that is a direct pipeline to what people really think without the inhibitions of commercialism or the Beltway or liberalism. The stereotype of the blog is that it provides merely the stream of consciousness musings of one unknown individual. The truth is that many blogs provide links to news sources thus saving time for readers who don't have the leisure to extensively search the internet everyday. Blogs also provide book reviews and quote interesting portions of books, old and new, to whet the reader's interest.

Blogs also serve the social function of bringing logic to the fuzzy musings of the great and powerful. The on-going controversy about pro-abortion politicians and the Catholic Church is a prime example. Comments on this issue by the pro-abortion Democrats and even by some high-ranking clerics have betrayed outrageous illogic, incoherence, and even just plain ignorance. Blogs have exposed this incoherence, something that the old media seems incapable, unwilling, or unqualified to do.

In addition, blogs require creative talent. The blogger must provide content, not just reprint articles from other sources. They require, at their best, an attempt to synthesize the chaotic flood of news on the internet. Blogs propose a perspective. The blogger is judged by the quality of his or her presentation, not by job title or curriculum vitae. With low barriers to entry, access is democratic.

And yet, this democratic access is combined with a meritocratic result. The good blogs keep their readers. The lesser blogs do not. It is a market of virtually perfect competition in which there are many "sellers" or providers of information and many "buyers" or consumers of information. It is easy to switch to another blog when one disappoints. Substitution is always possible and makes the consumer of content sovereign. It is the economist's ideal of perfect competition in which the consumer rules.

Yet, there is one apparent difference from the economist's conventional model of perfect competition. In Economics 101, a perfectly competitive market is one with many buyers and sellers so that no single party can control or significantly alter the price for anyone else. In blogdom, the "price" is the time spent by the reader. Only the reader controls that. No other reader and no blogger can control that "price." But the economics textbook also assumes that the products offered in a perfectly competitive market are perfectly identical, as in a market for wheat. But in blogdom, the products are very different. Each blog has its own personality, perspective, design, style, and content. Each is its own brand.

So, in this particular area, blogs modify traditional economic theory: we can still have virtually perfect competition even with products that are in effect unique brands. The reason is that reading one blog does not keep one from reading others. Usually, for a person, with a limited income, buying, say shoes, means choosing a particular brand and thereby necessarily foregoing some other brand. For most of us, buying a particular brand excludes another brand. Not so with weblogs. Readers can consume many different brands almost contemporaneously at the click of a mouse. The convenience of technology enables the consumer of information to choose one brand without excluding other brands. And so we have to modify the description of a perfectly competitive market that we got in Economics 101.

In other words, blogdom is not a zero-sum game, as shown by the widespread practice of blogrolls or links to different blogs appearing on most blogs. There is a recognition that you don't have to rob Peter to give to Paul. Brand diversity is non-threatening.

An intelligent reader can follow current events quite reliably by just accessing blogs and thereby escape the mediocrity and underlying bias of the old media. In addition, the reader will not get hidden bias, but an open stand on the issues. The reader can easily "change the channel" to sample an opposing perspective. The father of economics, Adam Smith, would be proud.

But what does this economics excursion have to do with Catholic analysis? The Catholic view is that truth is one and that all truth reflects the Creator who is Truth. So when we use our rational nature as persons created in the image of God to shed light on God's universe, whether in economics or physics, we are approaching, however imperfectly, the perfect Truth who is God.

Nothing genuinely intellectual is alien to Catholicism. The Council of Trent made this clear:

Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth."

Source: Catechism of the Catholic Church, section 159.

Vatican II reaffirmed this Catholic outlook on human knowledge:

Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are.

Source: Catechism of the Catholic Church, section 159.

Those who have read Adam Smith's 1776 classic The Wealth of Nations will see an echo in Vatican II's reference to the "hand of God" of Smith's famous allusion to the "invisible hand" of God (see link on Adam Smith).

Postscript for Economists: Some will say that the blog market is more like what is known as a "monopolisitcally competitive" market in which there are many sellers as in perfect competition, but in which the differences among the products offered allow sellers to somewhat control the price. I do not think this market model applies to blogs because the price of using a blog is not a money price but time. And technology makes the cost of time to access a blog the same for all blogs. For more on this economic terminology, see the glossary provided by the well-regarded U.K. magazine The Economist at this link (scroll down for the entry on "monopolistic competition").

Congratulations to Blogger Lane Core

Another blogger laboring in the vineyards marks his second anniversary at Blog from the Core. See this link for details on the growth of this blog in just two years. Commonweal was at least right to take notice of Catholic bloggers--it is a growing apostolic opportunity. Lane's experience is evidence of that.

Iraqi Weapon of Mass Destruction Confirmed

The Associated Press is reporting that lab tests have now confirmed that the chemical weapon sarin was in fact present in an unmarked Iraqi shell recently discovered by American troops. Therefore, Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons in his possession, contrary to what he told the U.N. before the war began.

But many will close their eyes to this fact by saying that Saddam just inadvertently overlooked destroying this particular old shell in the process of earnestly cleaning out his arsenal of chemical weapons. As some have pointed out, some anti-war ideologues will likely end up saying that American soldiers just happened to have stumbled on the only sarin-filled shell in Iraq or on one of only a handful of such shells that exist. The ideologues will keep raising the hurdle by saying that no massive stockpiles have been found.

In the end, either you believe that Saddam lied or that he acted in earnest good faith. His past record leads me to believe that he lied to the U.N. And so the war to overthrow Saddam was indeed a just war, justified by, among other reasons, Saddam's refusal to comply with U.N. demands for disarmament. I, for one, believe that future historians, far removed from the emotionalism and politics of the moment, will so view it. They will scratch their heads wondering why anyone kept betting on Saddam's good faith. Fortunately, President Bush did not take the risk of trusting in Saddam's good faith.

Commonweal Notices St. Blog's Parish

A recent issue of the unabashedly liberal Commonweal-- unabashedly because its website logo is emblazoned with the word "Liberal"--takes notice of St. Blog's Parish, and, of course, criticizes the conservative (read: authentic) Catholic tilt of the vast majority of Catholic blogs. (As an aside, how typical of liberal hubris and condescension that the journal is happy to call itself "Commonweal"!) The author of the article, a librarian from Boston, the citadel of heterodoxy, mourns that too many Catholic blogs are trying to separate the wheat from the tares. Needless to say, bloggers like me will disagree and say that we are not separating the wheat from the tares but rather trying to separate truth from falsehood so that more wheat will grow, and, maybe, by the grace of God, some of the tares will be transformed into wheat. Speaking the truth is a spiritual work of mercy, not a work of uprooting and discarding people.

Yet, the article is mild given its appearance in a liberal journal. Catholic blogs are making their contribution to the kingdom, however humble. They are small things done with great love. It is good to see that even cafeteria Catholics are noticing. Some of them may not be the same after frequenting St. Blog's. Here is the article link ("St. Blog's Church: America's most vibrant parish?", by Rachelle Linner, Commonweal, 2/27/04).

The Rest of the Story

Below is a Republican analysis of one of the latest election polls. Why does a Catholic blog present this? The Democratic analysis--or better the anti-Bush analysis--is automatically presented by the three traditional major TV networks and by the giant liberal newspapers in our major cities (for further proof of the liberal bias, see these new survey results reported in today's Washington Times under the headline "Poll shows liberal tilt escalates in newsroom," by Jennifer Harper). Blogs serve the interest of truth by presenting the whole story when the mainstream or old media refuse to do so. For Catholics, presenting the whole truth is a moral good. Here is the rest of the story:

What you might have missed in the most recent Washington Post-ABC News Poll

TO: Campaign Leadership
FR: Matthew Dowd
Chief Strategist
RE: What you might have missed in the most recent Washington Post-ABC News Poll

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Since the general election began in earnest after Senator Kerry all but clinched the Democratic nomination (March 2), the movement between the Washington Post/ABC News polls of March and May is promising. Since March, Senator Kerry has suffered deterioration in nearly every key leadership attribute, while President Bush has stayed the same or increased.

Today, the race is dead even, just as we have maintained that it will roughly stay until the Democratic convention.

President Bush has cut Kerry’s advantage on the economy by 7 points, and gained 7 points against Kerry on who the public trusts to handle Iraq.

Since March, Kerry has lost 23 points on the attribute of “honest and trustworthy,” 18 points on “strong leader,” and 15 points on “understands the problems of people like you.” President Bush’s ratings on these attributes have remained stable since March.

Furthermore:

President Bush has a 60-point advantage over Senator Kerry on who “takes a position and sticks with it.”
President Bush has a 17-point advantage on who “can be trusted in a crisis.”
President Bush has a 16-point advantage on making “the country safer and more secure.”

Source: Bush website (data tables at source link).

The Eucharist is the Feast of Life

In the book God is Near Us: The Eucharist, The Heart of Life, we have a collection of talks and sermons by Cardinal Ratzinger on the Eucharist. One homily from 1978 is entitled "The Wellspring of Life from the Side of the Lord, Opened in Loving Sacrifice" and apparently formed part of a series of sermons entitled "The Eucharist: Heart of the Church." These titles capture a reality of the Eucharist missing from the practice of many: the Eucharist is the heart of life and the Church. Yet, the way the Eucharist becomes the heart of life and of the Church is through death.

The Cardinal said it in striking fashion:

[T]he Eucharist is far more than just a meal; it has cost a death to provide it, and the majesty of death is present in it. Whenever we hold it, we should be filled with reverence in the face of this mystery, with awe in the face of this mysterious death that becomes a present reality in our midst. Certainly, the overcoming of this death in the Resurrection is present at the same time, and we can therefore celebrate this death as the feast of life, as the transformation of the world. In all ages, and among all peoples, the ultimate aim of men in their festivals has been to open the door of death. For as long as it does not touch on this question, a festival remains superficial, mere entertainment to anaesthetize oneself. Death is the ultimate question, and wherever it is bracketed out there can be no real answer. Only when this question is answered can men truly celebrate and be free. The Christian feast, the Eucharist, plumbs the very depths of death. . . . [I]t plumbs the very depths of existence, which it calls death, and strikes out an upward path to life, the life that overcomes death.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, God is Near Us (Ignatius Press, 2003), p. 44 (emphasis added).

As Ratzinger later notes, the Eucharist is "the presentation of Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the Cross," the sacrifice of the innocent Lamb (p. 44). By means of this sacrifice, life overcomes death. This overcoming of death in the Resurrection is present "at the same time." And so he calls the Eucharist "the feast of life." The Eucharist leads us on "an upward path to life."

And so abortion--the continued direct killing of the innocent--is the direct opposite of the Eucharistic path. Man continues to crucify the innocent like lambs in spite of the sacrifice of the innocent Christ which has already opened up the way to life with the Resurrection. In abortion, man replaces the feast of life with the routine of death for the innocent--a feast of death-- by choosing freely and without necessity to directly destroy innocent life. Christ's sacrifice, present again in the Eucharist, has defeated death. Yet, we continue to make the unnecessary death of the innocent a matter of legal right.

The sinless God-Man has died to bring us life in the Eucharist. We cannot come to the feast of life if we continue to crucify the innocent in defiance of that feast. By doing so, we mock the sacrifice of Christ which, once and for all, has set us on the path of life. Abortion is the feast of death in which we choose to make death victorious. It is a blasphemy against the feast of life which has already defeated death. The deeper you go theologically, the less tenable and the more outrageous are the excuses and rationalizations given by those who are pro-abortion but yet seek to participate in the feast of life. Such participation is a lie and contradiction.

Phoenix Bishop Issues Welcome Statement

The bishop of the Diocese of Phoenix has issued a strong statement relating to the issue of pro-abortion politicians and the Eucharist. In my view, the statement clearly implies that such politicians who continue to receive the Eucharist may very well face some sort of disciplinary action. I have highlighted certain crucial portions of the statement. Here is the statement as received from the Diocese of Phoenix, through a Catholic Analysis reader:

The headline in the Arizona Republic (5/21/04), "Bishops won't
link politics, Communion" misrepresents my position. Abortion is the
killing of a completely innocent life and thus bad news for both unborn
children and their mothers. It is a horrible wrong. It is intrinsically
evil. We have a serious obligation to protect human life, and especially
the most innocent and vulnerable. Whoever fails to do this, especially
when they are able to do so, commit serious sins of omission. They
jeopardize their own spiritual wellbeing and they are a source of
scandal for others. Should they be Catholics, they should not receive
Holy Communion.

No one who is conscious of having committed a serious sin
should receive Holy Communion. For the Eucharist is the very Body and
Blood of Jesus Christ, our most precious gift in the Church. And St.
Paul warns us (I Cor 11:27-29): "Whoever eats the bread or drinks the
cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of
the Lord. A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and
drink the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the
body, eats and drinks judgment on himself."

I call upon all Catholics, especially those in public life, to
examine their consciences, and to refrain from receiving Holy Communion
if they are unambiguously pro-abortion. As a bishop, I shall continue to
pray for an end to abortion and other sins against life; I shall stand
up for the life and dignity of every human person and I urge all people
of good will to do the same. Should some Catholic politicians who are
presently pro-abortion obstinately persist in this contradiction to our
faith, this becomes a source of scandal and measures beyond those of
moral persuasion would be needed. As God tells us in the Book of
Leviticus (19:16), "You shall not stand by idly when your neighbor's
life is at stake."

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted
Diocese of Phoenix

Eloquence from a Letter Writer

All of the letters to the editor in today's Detroit News deal with pro-abortion Catholic politicians. The newspaper chose to publish five letters supporting a hard-line against such politicians-- including one letter from a Lutheran pastor calling on pro-abortion Catholic politicians to stop being hypocrites. There are also five letters taking the liberal line. Covering all bases, the editors included one pro-life letter that seems to favor prayer over denial of the Eucharist as the remedy for this scandal. We don't know how the letters actually received by the newspaper stack up on the issue. The symmetry of the published letters leads me to conclude that the editors intentionally balanced the numbers on each side of the issue. In any event, it is gratifying to see so many letters taking a stand against pro-abortion politicians in a very Democratic urban area with a strong union presence.

One letter is particularly eloquent and should be read far and wide. No prestigious pundit or humble blogger that I am aware of has said it better. Here it is:

Put fetus on trial

A popular complaint is that it is somehow “hypocritical” to condemn infanticide while allowing the death penalty for convicted criminals. What is ridiculously hypocritical is the notion of equating the most innocent of persons with the most guilty.

On the other hand, if anyone truly means to equate the two, at least let’s be consistent about it. With regard to the unwanted baby, let’s grant the little soul a full trial by jury with legal representation — just as we grant the criminal on trial — to determine what terrible crime the baby committed to deserve to be put to death. Provide appeal after appeal, stays of execution and the real possibility of a last minute pardon.

Source: Detroit News, Letters section, May 24, 2004.

That is a great letter: concise, logical, and irrefutable. The truth has an irresistible force that can only be met by conversion or by looking the other way as the pro-abortion politicians do. Liberals love due process. It appears to be one of the few values, along with "choice," that many of them would be willing to even come close to treating as an absolute. Why not appoint a guardian to represent the unborn child in a legal proceeding to determine if the child should be killed? Of course, it will never happen. For such a proceeding to be convened would require recognizing that the child is a legal person with legal rights. The great liberal lie is that the unborn or partially born child is not a person. So while everyone else gets due process, the most innocent get none. And they wish to lecture pro-life Catholics on social justice!

The Future Can Look Like the Past

Near the Ambassador Bridge that connects Detroit to Canada, there is, in a topsy-turvy geographical twist, a piece of Mexico. The neighborhood is called Mexicantown for obvious reasons. It was formerly an enclave for European Catholic immigrants, which must have included Lithuanians given the inscription on one old building. Today, it is an enclave of Mexican Catholic immigrants--although the descendants of the European immigrants are not altogether absent. On a Sunday, in which most of midtown Detroit is sullenly empty, the main street of Mexicantown is bumper to bumper traffic with sidewalks full of pedestrians. Young, old, and in-between go from store to store. Some corners are a bit seedy, but others show off recently constructed and gleaming Mexican supermarkets. Portions of the main street need a litter pick-up, but a large, leafy park was, as far as I could see, surprisingly litter free given its location in an inner city neighborhood. In other inner city neighborhoods I have seen, such a large park would have been inevitably choked with refuse. But the predominant impression in Mexicantown is of a vibrant, slightly chaotic immigrant neighborhood with a vigor that reminds one of descriptions of the old immigrant neighborhoods of New York in the early 1900s.

Just off the main street, there is a large Catholic church, one of those massive brick complexes that served the earlier waves of European immigration. The church is intact, that is, its original high altar is still in place, the tabernacle is at center stage on the old altar, even the altar rail is there, gracefully surrounding the sacred space. Saints proliferate. And, of course, there is a large icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe looming over a side altar. The candles are burning. Across from the church, there is a religious goods store. Along the main street, there was at least one shop prominently advertising first communion dresses. I did not see any Protestant churches. The bilingual church bulletin prominently announced a class in Natural Family Planning led by a Hispanic physician--a fact that would make the Catholic Lite crowd shudder.

Some tell us that, sometime during this century, Hispanics will form the majority of American Catholics. That prediction is believable given that one estimate is that Hispanics now account for 39% of American Catholics (see recent estimate by U.S. Bishops' Conference). European immigrants built a solid, loyal Catholicism in America that had no time or desire for imitating liberal Protestantism. From what I saw in Detroit, the Mexican immigrants are on the same path. I could not help but wonder who had the better deal: the affluent suburban Catholic attending a liberal parish housed in a sleek modern church with a hidden tabernacle, or the poor Mexican who attends a distinctively Catholic church that grandly celebrates the Catholic difference. In the long run, my bet is with the Mexican.

Further Sign of Panic Over Catholic Revolt Against Democratic Elite

In further confirmation that pro-abortion Democrats are in a panic over the revolt by a few Catholic bishops against the traditional code of silence over pro-abortion politicians, the wife of Senator Edward Kennedy, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, pleads in the Washington Post (5/23/04) to take politics out of the Eucharist. Of course, her plea is a great lie. The truth is that it is the pro-abortion Democrats, like Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy, who politicize the Eucharist by seeking to make reception of the Eucharist a public political statement that a Catholic who is pro-abortion is in good standing. They are the ones politicizing the altar by daring to approach the Eucharist even when they lead the crusade to keep the killing of innocent children legal.

In the column, Mrs. Kennedy attempts to wash her hands of the slaughter of the innocent by claiming that, as a pro-abortion Democrat, she is just voting to allow a woman to make the private decision of abortion. Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review Online quickly quashed that argument by comparing it to someone saying that they are not responsible for the slaughter of Italians although they consistently vote to support keeping the slaughter of Italians legal:

The act of abortion is wrong. But so is the act of withholding justice from the unborn by denying them a right to life. It is, so to speak, a separate injustice. Even if there were no abortions in America, the legality of abortion would remain an injustice. A legislator who votes to reduce legal protections for the unborn (or votes against efforts to provide them with protections) is himself guilty of an injustice even if he himself is "personally opposed" to abortion. If he voted to make it legal to kill Italians, he would be guilty of injustice even if he himself did not go on to kill any Italians himself. These things are true, obviously, for non-Catholics as well as Catholics.

Source: National Review Online's The Corner (5/23/04).

The Church has always taught that abortion is a grave evil. The ones politicizing the altar are those like Mrs. Kennedy who seek to use the public reception of the Eucharist to change and adapt this teaching to match the politics of the national Democratic Party. Her plea is like that of a burglar who claims that the homeowner has no right to eject him from the homeowner's invaded home. Like the homeowner, a few bishops are acting in self-defense of Catholic teaching against the aggressive theological revisionism of Mrs. Kennedy's fellow pro-abortion Democrats. Their reception of the Eucharist under false pretenses is akin to theft--to taking what they have no right to take. It is time for the pro-abortionists like Mrs. Kennedy to stop acting like burglars and respect the altar they talk so much about.

Ascension of the Lord: Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:17-23; Luke 24:46-53

One homilist put it simply: Jesus returned to the Father when his mission was completed. Note that the "his" in the previous sentence is appropriately equivocal: Jesus' mission was the Father's mission. It was given to Jesus by the Father. Jesus and the Father are one. And so we too will be taken up to heaven when our missions are complete. We ourselves will not be the judges of when that mission is complete. We ourselves may not even be able to tell exactly when our mission really began. Most likely, we will become aware of our mission in medias res, in the middle of things, just as the great heroic epics of literature begin--in the middle of the action. We will become aware of that mission by the grace of God--by the Holy Spirit.

In the Gospel reading, Jesus hints at the apostolic mission: to preach "in his name to all the nations, beginning in Jerusalem." Clearly, the apostles did not grasp this mission until much later, although it already began with the discovery of the empty tomb. In Acts, Luke again records how Jesus again gave the mission: "you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." In both cases, Jesus tells the apostles they will receive power from on high through the Holy Spirit for that mission. At that point, the apostles will finally fully grasp their mission, although the mission actually began years ago in their dusty travels with Jesus.

In Ephesians, St. Paul invokes a blessing on his auditors: that they may receive the Holy Spirit--"a Spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of him." This Spirit will allow them to "know what is the hope that belongs to his call, what are the riches of glory in his inheritance among his holy ones, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power for us who believe, in accord with the exercise of his great might [emphasis added]."

The Greek word for "call" used above is the same word Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 7:20, but which the Revised Standard Version translates as "state": "Every one should remain in the state in which he was called" (emphasis added). Here, Paul uses the Greek word for "call" to mean one's occupation or social station when converted, as made clear by the verses following 1 Cor. 7:20. So our "call" from God has connotations of an occupation. Our mission from God is our true profession, our true occupation, our inheritance for which we are destined.

That mission will lead us to glory, as it led Jesus, the pioneer of our faith, into the glory of the Ascension. And the Holy Spirit allows us to know our true occupation and gives us the power to complete its mission.

Welcome Controversy on the Eucharist Across America

The current controversy over pro-abortion politicians and the Eucharist has taken a life of its own in the media. Recently, the Detroit News ran half a page of letters going back and forth on the issue. Of 14 readers' letters published, eight of the letters--over half--supported denying the Eucharist to pro-abortion politicians. All of the letters in favor of denying the Eucharist to pro-abortion politicians demonstrated knowledge of Catholic teaching. In contrast, the remaining seven letters that opposed denying the Eucharist to pro-abortion celebrities raised irrelevant points, demonstrated ignorance of Catholic teaching, or were clearly erroneous.

Two such letters argued that the sexual abuse scandal precludes bishops from protecting the Eucharist. Of course, that is a logical non sequitur--it just does not follow. Two wrongs don't make a right. One letter just gave no reason and merely stated its opposition to denying the Eucharist. Another letter argued that non-Catholics should not be obliged to follow Catholic teachings-- another irrelevant non sequitur. No one is seeking to impose Catholicism on non-Catholics. Rather a few bishops are seeking to teach Catholicism to people claiming to be Catholic.

Two other letters misrepresent Catholic teaching--as done recently in a letter signed by 48 House Democrats-- by arguing that advocating the death penalty and the Iraq war are on a par with advocating abortion. Fortunately, at least four of the letters supporting denial of the Eucharist pointed out this blatant misrepresentation of Catholic teaching which is commonly repeated by pro-abortion politicians and their supporters. It bears repeating that Catholicism does not absolutely prohibit the death penalty and that the Catholic Church allows Catholics to differ in good faith on whether the Iraq War is a just war--but the Catholic Church does absolutely prohibit direct abortion and does not allow a difference of opinion on the abortion issue.

But the letter that takes the cake, apparently from a Catholic writer, is so confused that it must be quoted in part:

If the Catholic Church is going to take a stance of "no communion" on the pro-choice issue, it will have to go all the way and refuse the sacraments to all Catholics who practice birth control, have premarital or extramarital sex, or go through divorce. I guarantee Sunday Mass will be virtually empty.

Source: The Detroit News, May 21, 2004, Opinions section, p. 11A.

This confused argument is taking the route, advanced even by some clerics, that denying the Eucharist to pro-abortion celebrities means denying the Eucharist to anonymous Catholic parishioners. These persons argue against a practical and enforceable measure targeting pro-abortion celebrities by invoking the impossibility of knowing which anonymous Catholics in the communion line are in a state of mortal sin. The two situations are completely different because, in the case of the pro-abortion politician, you have an open and very public stand contradicting Church teaching, while in the case of the average, anonymous parishioner that is, by definition, not the case.

In addition, Catholic teaching tells all such persons-- the pro-abortion politician or voter, the practitioner of birth control, the unchaste, and those remarried outside the Church--to receive sacramental absolution before approaching the Eucharist. The teaching is already consistent and applies to all equally. But as to denying the Eucharist, that is an action that can obviously be taken only when there is public manifestation of such sins. If the head of Planned Parenthood or a celebrity who openly lives with an unmarried sexual partner approaches the Eucharist, then they too should be denied the Eucharist preferably after following appropriate canonical procedures. But if the person's conduct is unknown, then obviously denial of the Eucharist is not possible.

Moreover, the letter writer in this case is woefully misinformed because the letter gives the impression that divorced people cannot receive the Eucharist, while the Catholic teaching is that only divorced people who remarry outside the Church should not receive the Eucharist. The letter also gives the impression that persons practicing birth control or living unchastely are free to approach the Eucharist without previous sacramental absolution.

The only exception, that I am aware of, to the requirement of prior sacramental absolution for those conscious of grave sin is in rare cases where a person cannot, for good reason, go to confession beforehand, does make an act of perfect contrition beforehand, and is determined to go to confession as soon as possible (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, section 1457; Code of Canon Law, art. 916).

The exact wording of the applicable canon follows:

Can. 916 Anyone who is conscious of grave sin may not celebrate Mass or receive the Body of the Lord without previously having been to sacramental confession, unless there is a grave reason and there is no opportunity to confess; in this case the person is to remember the obligation to make an act of perfect contrition, which includes the resolve to go to confession as soon as possible.

Source: 1983 Code of Canon Law.

A leading catechetical work puts it this way: "If one who has sinned gravely has a pressing need to receive the Eucharist and has no opportunity to confess, he should first make an act of perfect contrition, an act which includes in it a promise to confess as soon as possible" (Lawler, Wuerl, & Lawler, eds., The Teaching of Christ: A Catholic Catechism for Adults, 3rd ed. [Our Sunday Visitor, 1991], p. 371 (with imprimatur)).

And, as to the confused letter writer's point that Sunday Mass will be empty, that can happen only when people are under the mistaken belief that participation in the Mass is meaningless without receiving Holy Communion. The Church advises the indisposed to make a spiritual communion in those situations. In fact, the Church encourages Catholics remarried outside the Church to continue to attend Mass and raise their children in the faith, while making a spiritual communion. The point about Sunday Mass being empty is evidence that there is a cavalier approach to receiving the Eucharist in too many parishes.

From this example, we can see that the debate about the Eucharist and pro-abortion politicians is exposing the ignorance of many Catholics at all levels, from politicians to the average citizen, of fundamental Catholic teaching on receiving the Eucharist. There is a lot of work to be done. The controversy, like all crises, is an apostolic opportunity.

Action Alert: Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act

This is a congressional alert from the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) in Washington, D.C. Please forward this alert to all appropriate lists.

ACTION ALERT: Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act


WASHINGTON -- On May 20, 2004, Senator Sam Brownback (R-Ks.) and Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), with the strong backing of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), introduced a major new pro-life initiative, the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act (S. 2466, H.R. 4420).

"There are numerous laws to prevent cruelty to domestic and wild animals, but no law to prevent well-developed unborn children from suffering excruciating pain as they are torn limb from limb or crushed during abortions," said NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson, who joined Brownback and Smith at a press conference in the U.S. Capitol announcing the introduction of the bill.

Statements endorsing the bill were also issued by the Family Research Council, Christian Medical Association, Southern Baptist Convention (Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission), and U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

This bill would require every abortionist to provide, whenever a woman seeks an abortion past 20 weeks after fertilization, specified information about the capacity of her unborn child to experience pain during the abortion, after which the woman must either accept or refuse (by signing a form) the administration of pain-reducing drugs directly to the unborn child. The bill would apply to all abortions past 20 weeks, regardless of the method used.

The pain caused by the partial-birth method has been the subject of testimony during the ongoing trial before a federal judge in New York regarding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. For example, the Associated Press dispatch reported on April 7: "A type of abortion banned under a new federal law would cause 'severe and excruciating' pain to 20-week-old fetuses, a medical expert testified yesterday … 'I believe the fetus is conscious,' said Dr. Kanwaljeet 'Sonny' Anand, a pediatrician at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. … Anand said yesterday that fetuses show increased heart rate, blood flow, and hormone levels in response to pain. 'The physiological responses have been very clearly studied,' he said. 'The fetus cannot talk . . . so this is the best evidence we can get.'"

The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act contains a number of proposed congressional "findings" regarding the scientific evidence that unborn children would experience great pain during abortions at 20 weeks (and perhaps earlier). The findings also cite a number of existing federal laws that seek to diminish the suffering even of animals, such as restrictions on how livestock are slaughtered and restrictions on the use of animals in medical research.

In a Zogby poll conducted last month, the public supported "laws requiring that women who are 20 weeks or more along in their pregnancy be given information about fetal pain before having an abortion" by a 77-16 percent margin.

ACTION REQUESTED: Go to the NRLC Legislative Action Center, at this link to send e-mails to your lawmakers, urging them to cosponsor the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act. For those senators and representatives who are already listed as cosponsors, you can send already-prepared e-mails thanking them for their support for this important new pro-life initiative.

The full text of the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act will be posted on the NRLC website as soon as it is made available by the Government Printing Office, along with additional helpful documentation on the issue, at this link.

Madame Bovary's Priest

The great nineteenth century classic of realism, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), is about the unraveling of the two adulteries of Emma Bovary, a hedonistic, egocentric, and delusionary woman in provincial France. She ends her forays into adultery by killing herself with arsenic. Throughout the novel, she is addicted to exaggerated romantic expectations that trigger her adulteries. The novel is a sure antidote to our current culture's emphasis on feelings as the guide to action and the measure of marriage. Priests and deacons could do well to recommend the book to couples preparing for marriage in order to shock them out of the unrealistic egocentric expectations our culture imposes on marriage and which result in our high divorce rate.

Yet, I want to go beyond the main plot line of the novel and focus on Madame Bovary's priest. In a time when many clerics are rightly under fire for the homosexual abuse scandal and the on-going scandal involving pro-abortion celebrities, it is good to keep in mind the many priests who do their duties, without hint of scandal, day in and day out, and who stand up for the faith. One such priest was Madame Bovary's priest. From what I have read, Flaubert was not a practicing Catholic, yet the book, as a work of realism, captures the presence of Catholicism in the French region of Normandy in the 1840s. I submit that the picture of the Church and her priests that emerges is a powerful contrast to the reckless egoism of Emma Bovary. It appears that some critics simply refuse to see this favorable portrayal of the Church, a fact that may be due to the ideological prejudices of the critics. But it is easy for me as a Catholic to see it.

The first appearance of a priest in the novel is in the childhood of Emma's doctor husband, Charles Bovary. It is a comic appearance in which the village priest haphazardly attempts to be the boy's tutor. In a scene that the sexual abuse scandals have precluded in the United States, the boy comes to the priest's room to have some lessons:

They went up to his room and settled down; the flies and moths fluttered around the candle. It was close, the child fell asleep, and the good man, beginning to doze with his hands on his stomach, was soon snoring with his mouth wide open. On other occasions, when Monsieur le Curé, on his way back after administering the holy oil to some sick person in the neighborhood, caught sight of Charles playing about the fields, he called him, lectured him for a quarter of an hour, and took advantage of the occasion to make him conjugate his verb at the foot of a tree. The rain interrupted them or an acquaintance passed. All the same he was pleased with him, and even said the "young man" had a very good memory.

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (W.W. Norton & Co., 1965), repr. in The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, Vol. 2 (W.W. Norton & Co., 1979), pp. 745-46 (the following page references will be to the anthology edition).

This scene is a far cry from the cruel Protestant schoolmasters depicted by Charles Dickens (1812-1870), another great realist novelist of the nineteenth century who was Flaubert's older contemporary. Yet, the figure of the priest emerges fully, years later, when Charles Bovary is a doctor of sorts in the town of Yonville whose curé is Abbé Bournisien. He too is caught up in the day-to-day duties of the village priest and cannot comprehend the neurotic state of emotionalism of Emma Bovary when she comes seeking some spiritual solace:

[The priest asks Emma,] " . . . And how is Monsieur Bovary?" She seemed not to hear him. And he went on . . . "Always very busy no doubt; for he and I are certainly the busiest people in the parish. But he is doctor of the body," he added with a thick laugh, "and I of the soul." She fixed her pleading eyes upon the priest. "Yes," she said, "you solace all sorrows." "Ah! don't tell me of it, Madame Bovary. This morning I had to go to Bas-Diauville for a cow was all swollen; they thought it was under a spell. All their cows, I don't know how it is . . . ."

Flaubert, p. 820.

The critics appear to take this scene as showing the obtuseness of the priest who cannot come to the spiritual aid of Emma. Yet, I see it as a wise contrast between a priest whose two feet are firmly planted on the earth and Emma, a self-isolated neurotic in a state of perpetual dissatisfaction who refuses to live the life she has been given. It is a contrast between the emotionally healthy and the emotionally sick.

Yet, the Abbé is not just an earthy and busy vicar. He has his moments when he speaks forcefully in moral criticism of post-Napoleonic France. His foil is the village anti-cleric, the pharmacist Homais, who even named one of his children after Napoleon and who tries to bait the priest. One of Emma's adulteries is reignited when she meets an old admirer at an opera performed in a nearby city. So it is interesting to see the priest make a prophetic analysis of the problem with these performances:

He [the priest] was undoubtedly a kindly fellow and one day he was not even scandalised at the pharmacist, who advised Charles to give madame some distraction by taking her to the theatre at Rouen to hear the illustrious tenor, Lagardy. Homais, surprised at the silence, wanted to know his opinion, and the priest declared that he considered music less dangerous for morals than literature. But the pharmacist took up the defence of letters. . . . "I know very well," objected the curé, "that there are good works, good authors. Still, the very fact of crowding people of different sexes into the same room, made to look enticing by displays of worldly pomp, these pagan disguises, the makeup, the lights, the effeminate voices, all this must, in the lon-run, engender a certain mental libertinage, give rise to immodest thoughts and impure temptations. Such, at any rate, is the opinion of all the church fathers."

Flaubert, p. 898.

And so the priest predicts the very atmosphere that will eventually lead to the consummation of Emma's adultery with an admirer. And, for us today, the priest is a prophet of the moral disaster that Hollywood is. (Would that the present Cardinal of Los Angeles had a bit of Abbé Bournisien in him!)

In my view, Flaubert presents the priest as prophet. And so I differ with those critics who see the priest as a minor figure mocked by the author. And, in the end, when Emma is dying of her self-administered poisoning, it seems very likely that she has made an act of perfect contrition as the priest administers the last rites:

The priest rose to take the crucifix; then she stretched forward her neck like one suffering from thirst, and glueing her lips to the body of the Man-God, she pressed upon it with all her expiring strength the fullest kiss of love that she had ever given.

Flaubert, p. 977 (emphasis added).

Flaubert has a deep appreciation for the sacraments. He has the Catholic sacramental imagination, in spite of his own immoral lifestyle. He describes in detail the redeeming effect of the last anointing of the dying Emma by Bournisien:

First, upon the eyes, that had so coveted all worldly goods; then upon the nostrils, that had been so greedy of the warm breeze and the scents of love; then upon the mouth, that had spoken lies, moaned in pride and cried out in lust; then upon the hands that had taken delight in the texture of sensuality; and finally upon the soles of the feet, so swift when she had hastened to satisfy her desires, and that would walk no more.

Flaubert, p. 977.

And so the humble village priest, who had failed to come to grips earlier with Emma's moral sickness, now is the means of her salvation. It is what many imperfect priests do on a daily basis.

Yet, the village priest could also thunder as noted by the anti-clerical village pharmacist. Flaubert later describes the Abbé Bournisien who "thundered against the spirit of the age, and never failed, every other week, in his sermon, to recount the death agony of Voltaire, who died devouring his excrements, as every one knows" (p. 992). Bournisien was, as noted earlier by Flaubert, a kindly man, but he was no shrinking violet. We have seen a few such bishops recently in the headlines thundering against the spirit of the age.

The opposite of the village priest is, as said before, the anti-clerical village pharmacist, Homais, who metamorphoses into a figure we today are quite familiar with: the anti-Catholic journalistic muckraker. Flaubert disdainfully describes the burgeoning journalist:

[G]uided always by the love of progress and the hatred of priests. He instituted comparisons between the public and parochial schools to the detriment of the latter; called to mind the massacre of St. Barholomew á propos of a grant of one hundred francs to the church; denounced abuses and kept people on their toes. That was his phrase. Homais was digging and delving; he was becoming dangerous.

Flaubert, p. 991.

Today, journalists have rightly exposed the sex abuse scandal, but that cannot erase the reality of anti-Catholicism that is the mindset of the major liberal newspapers of the United States. But remember, when the Homaises of today write, that somewhere an unknown, scandal-free Abbé Bournisien is saving someone--something the journalists cannot do.

48 House Democrats Seek to Intimidate Church on Eucharist

The story of the letter signed by 48 House Democrats and addressed to Cardinal McCarrick of Washington, D.C., is in today's Washington Post ("48 House Democrats Warn Bishops' Stance Could Spark Bigotry," by Alan Cooperman, 5/20/04). The article reports that the Democrats oppose denying the Eucharist to pro-abortion politicians 1.) because this action will revive anti-Catholic bigotry; and 2.) because it will gravely harm the Catholic Church. What they are really saying is that if the Church takes such action, they, the Democrats, will be harmed politically. That is not a persuasive argument for allowing profanation of the Eucharist. In fact, there is no persuasive argument for allowing profanation of the Eucharist by anyone at anytime.

What is really going on is that the pro-abortion Democratic Party is deeply worried, surprised, and alarmed that some Catholic bishops have woken from their traditional decades-old slumber and decided to defend the sacramental discipline of the Church. Even Kerry, yesterday-- in a typically confused, manipulative, and misleading statement intended to cynically play all sides of an issue-- found it necessary to say that he would consider appointing anti-abortion judges to lower courts only. He reaffirmed that he would never appoint anyone to the Supreme Court who would reverse Roe v. Wade. Here is the Associated Press on the latest Kerry Waffle:

Kerry told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he would consider a judicial candidate who disagrees with his support of abortion rights as long as it doesn't lead to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade (news - web sites), the landmark 1973 ruling that made abortion legal. Hours later, as fellow Democrats and abortion-rights supporters sought clarification, Kerry issued a statement pledging not to appoint anyone to the Supreme Court who would undo abortion rights. He left open the possibility of appointing anti-abortion judges to lower courts.

Source: Associated Press, "Abortion-Rights Supporters Stick by Kerry," by Nedra Pickler, 5/20/04.

Thus, we have two virtually contemporaneous signals that the Democrats' internal polling probably shows that they are being harmed politically among Catholics by being the national party of abortion. The easy way for the Democrats to repair the political damage is to become a national pro-life party, but they will never do that because they view Roe v. Wade as a civil rights landmark on a par with the recently celebrated Brown v. The Board of Education. The pro-abortion lobby is an essential pillar of the modern national Democratic Party, along with the pro-gay lobby that opposes a federal amendment to protect the traditional definition of marriage.

The Democrat letter claims that any action to deny the Eucharist will revive anti-Catholic bigotry. It does not need to be revived. Anti-Catholic bigotry is alive and well as documented by Philip Jenkins' recent book The New Anti-Catholicism (Oxford Univ. Press, 2003). Here is a recent example of anti-Catholic bigotry pushed by the national Democratic Party:

Contempt for Catholic sensitivities was apparent during the controversy over the political role of Governor Case [of Pennsylvania], a Democrat who was impeccably liberal on most social and labor issues and who tried to establish universal health care within his state, yet he held strongly to the Church's position on abortion. A Pennsylvania law he had favored was the subject of an important Supreme Court decision in 1992, which permitted states to impose limited restrictions on the practice of abortion. In his views on the issue, Casey reflected a large section of Catholic and moderate opinion. Nevertheless, he was refused the right to address the 1992 Democratic convention, because his views on abortion were considered too outrageously extreme for the group's feminist majority. In itself, this incident confirms how far the Democrats had moved from the days when Catholics were a substantial portion of their strength. At the convention, abortion rights activists sold buttons depicting Casey dressed as the Pope.

Jenkins, p. 81 (emphasis added).

The national Democratic Party is the party of anti-Catholic bigotry.

As to the Democrats' ominous warning of harm to the Church, faithful Catholics can only laugh. Persecution has always strengthened the Church, that is a verity inscribed on the pages of centuries of Catholic history. The issue is harm to the Body of Christ and compromise of the truth. Those matters are not negotiable. They are not subject to political bargaining or horse trading.

What will be the impact of the letter? Well, Cardinal McCarrick has already signaled that he is too fearful to stand up to these politicians. But, thank goodness, Cardinal McCarrick does not control his fellow bishops. Each bishop, according to Vatican II, is a vicar of Christ in his own diocese. And some brave bishops are taking that role seriously and not waiting for a politically compromised document from Cardinal McCarrick's committee that will likely find a way to succumb to the intimidation of the Democrats. In the end, the Democrats' letter is a welcome sign that they are being hurt politically by their embrace of abortion. It will encourage Republicans to speak out even more forcefully in favor of life. Our witness is having an impact. The witness of a handful of courageous bishops is having an impact. Imagine the impact if all the bishops would find such courage.

Bishop Wenski's Full Column

After reading Bishop Wenski's recent pastoral statement, you will see that the statement, entitled "Politicians and Communion," begs to be reprinted in full because it concisely captures the essential issues surrounding pro-abortion celebrities and the Eucharist:

Any Catholic on this side of Judgment Day can call himself a “practicing Catholic”. After all, our earthy pilgrimage in this “valley of tears” is our one time opportunity to “practice” Catholicism until we get it right. But “getting it right” for a practicing Catholic means conforming oneself to the will of God as revealed to us through Scripture and Tradition and as definitely set forth by the teaching authority of the Church. A practicing Catholic cannot invoke “conscience” to defy or disregard what the Church definitely holds as true – for a practicing Catholic doesn’t create his own truth but forms his conscience according to the Truth.

Invincible ignorance, culpable willfulness, or ingrained habits of sin might explain why a self-described “practicing Catholic” might dissent from one or more of the definitive teachings of the Church in word, thought or deed and still think that he or she is a Catholic in good standing able to be admitted to the Eucharist. One of these factors may explain such behavior but none can excuse it.

We can explain, for example, why Pontius Pilate, though he personally was convinced of Jesus’ innocence, could not bring himself to “impose” his views on the mob. Yet, he did not demand to participate with the Apostles in “breaking of the bread” as the Mass was first called. While we do not judge his ultimate fate – for only God can judge the subjective state of his soul – we nevertheless cannot excuse his cowardice. Had Pontius Pilate shown up and presented himself for communion, the apostles certainly would had [sic] admitted him to communion – but only after he had first repented and reconciled himself to God and the Church.

Serious sin breaks our communion with God and his Church as does refusing by one’s dissent obedience to Church definitive teachings in matters of faith and morals. Before participating in the sacramental expression of that communion – by partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion - “practicing Catholics” must be restored to spiritual union with God and with their fellow believers through Sacramental Confession in which they repent for the serious sin and express a firm purpose of amendment. Our admission to Holy Communion depends on our prior “visible” communion with the community of faith (i.e. that we are in fact Catholics) and of our prior “invisible” communion with the Lord (i.e. that we are not in the state of serious (mortal) sin. To insist on partaking in communion in the first case would be, on the face of it, boorish behavior, (equivalent to a guest who behaves badly in his host’s home) and in the latter – at least objectively speaking – sacrilegious (for as St. Paul says, unworthy reception brings judgment, cf. 1 Cor 11: 23ff).

Bishops as teachers of the faith have no special competencies in the world of business or politics – and in those worlds we have no regulatory or legal powers. We don’t want such power – nor should we. But precisely as teachers of the Catholic faith we do have competence to tell businessmen or politicians or anyone else for that matter what is required to be a Catholic. It is totally within our competence to say that one cannot be complicit in the injustice of denying the right to life of an unborn child or an invalid elder and still consider oneself a good Catholic. It is totally within our competence to urge our Catholic people to participate in the political life of our nation with coherence and honesty. It is within our competence and our responsibilities as pastors to advocate for laws that protect the rights of all human beings from the first moment of conception till natural death.

To be a Catholic is to strive after holiness. This is a daunting task for us all – impossible without the saving grace that embraces us through our turning to the Lord and walking in his company. The Lord is patient with us – after all, we all are still just “practicing”. He warns his disciples not to be too ready to pull out the tares lest we damage the wheat. For this reason, when rebukes are necessary, pastors generally strive to give them in private.

But to fail to rebuke when necessary is to fail in the charity we owe our brethren. (And we bishops will be apologizing for a long time for the failure to rebuke and apply sanctions to those wayward priests who criminally sinned against young people and children.)

The Church wants all her members to become holy. To this end, she offers the examples of the saints to encourage and inspire us. For politicians, St. Thomas More stands as a role model. He did not draw any false distinction between his personal morality and his public responsibilities: he was his king’s good servant, but God’s first. Today, some self-identified Catholic politicians prefer to emulate Pontius Pilate’s “personally opposed but unwilling to impose” stance. Perhaps, they are baiting the Church, daring an “official sanction” making them “bad Catholics”, so as to gain favor among up their secularist, “blue state” constituencies. Such a sanction might turn their lack of coherent Catholic convictions into a badge of courage for people who hold such convictions in contempt.

But if the whole of point of being a Catholic is to grow in holiness –admittedly by practicing a whole lot and making some errors along the way - then it would be as John Paul II reminds us “a contradiction to settle for a life of mediocrity, marked by a minimalist ethic and a sentimental religiosity”. You cannot have your “waffle” and your “wafer” too. Those pro-abortion politicians who insist on calling themselves Catholics without seeing the contradiction between what they say they believe and their anti-life stance have to do a lot more of “practicing”. They need to get it right before they approach the Eucharistic table.

May 3, 2004



Bishop Thomas Wenski
Coadjutor Bishop of Orlando

Source: Diocese of Orlando website.

Florida Bishop Parts with Cardinal McCarrick's Passivity

Coadjutor Bishop Thomas Wenski of the Diocese of Orlando, Florida, has issued a pastoral statement that disagrees with the passive approach to pro-abortion celebrities and the Eucharist favored by Cardinal McCarrick of Washington, D.C. You can read the details at LifeSite. The article points to the relevant section of the pastoral statement:

It is extremely rare for Catholic bishops to criticize each other in public. However, bishop Wenski in his statement made a not very veiled reference to the reaction of some US bishops, such as Washington's Cardinal McCarrick and Los Angeles' Cardinal Mahoney, who have said that sanctions and public rebukes may ultimately harm the pro-life cause.

Bishop Wenski compares the failure to chastise pro-abortion politicians with the failure of the bishops in general to protect young people from predatory homosexuals in the priesthood. He writes, "But to fail to rebuke when necessary is to fail in the charity we owe our brethren. (And we bishops will be apologizing for a long time for the failure to rebuke and apply sanctions to those wayward priests who criminally sinned against young people and children.)"

Source: LifeSite, "Florida Bishop Rebukes Pro-Abortion, Communion Receiving Catholics," May 18, 2004.

This statement confirms that there is a trend for the better among American bishops. May it continue. (The article also contains a link to the entire pastoral statement.)

Question of the Day

Today, the first U.S. soldier was sentenced to jail time for prisoner abuse. So the question of the day is: Can you name one Iraqi soldier sentenced to jail by Saddam Hussein's regime for abusing a prisoner?

Update: A video of the brutal mutilations and murders under Saddam Hussein has now surfaced. It includes a beheading. The details are in the Washington Post for May 21, 2004 ("Hussein-Era Videos Released to Contrast Prison Scandal," by Peter Slevin, World section). Expect more to come out at the criminal trial of the ex-dictator himself, yet many here in the U.S. and in Europe still think he should have been allowed to stay in power. The reality is that the only way the dictator would have been overthrown was through an invasion. Those not living in Iraq have the luxury of thinking otherwise.

The Paralysis of Fearing Risk

Today, N.Y. Times columnist William Safire has a must-read column capturing the "Four Noes" of defeatists on the Iraq War, as summarized below:

1. No Weapons of Mass Destruction, while ignoring the discovery of chemical nerve agents;
2. No Link between Saddam and Al Quaeda, although evidence of those links exists, as most recently underlined by the beheading of Nick Berg by a terrorist leader linked to Al Quaeda;
3. No human rights high ground for the U.S. since the prison abuse photos, although no photo released so far comes even remotely close to matching the uninhibited, well-known, and widespread official policy of tortures and massacres of Saddam Hussein;
4. No Arab country is amenable to democracy, in spite of the usual liberal cries for human rights and against racist stereotyping.

William Safire, "Sarin? What Sarin?," N.Y. Times Online, May 19, 2004 (free reg'n required).

And add today the absurdity of a Senate committee calling in all three top U.S. military commanders from a highly active war theater to testify about prisoner abuse. Can you imagine Congress calling in Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Admiral Nimitz at the height of World War II for a hearing on prisoner abuse? Obviously, the senators, in spite of the obvious evidence, do not really view the Iraq War as being an urgent part of the world war on terror. Apparently, only another 9-11 or worse will refocus them. It is an amazing spectacle of defeatism.

But what lies behind this defeatist streak in our culture? My own analysis looks to the fact that we are rich. Compared to the rest of the world, even a working class American is rich. Compared to the rest of the world, even a poverty stricken American on government aid is rich. We want security at all costs. We don't want wrinkles or grey hair. We don't want to age. We endlessly overmedicate ourselves, and we endlessly tinker with different faddish diets while obsessed with new culinary experiences. We have prenuptial agreements, and we have an insatiable appetite for contraception because we fear "unplanned pregnancies." We fornicate at will because we don't want to "jeopardize" our advanced education with the financial risk of committing to marrying and raising a family. We don't want to rock the boat for ourselves, or risk confronting others by rocking the boat. We avert our eyes from the routine slaughter of abortion and from the irrationality of a crazed pornography industry because these realities meet so efficiently our desire for convenience. You can see this exaggerated risk aversion even among clerics who can find no reason to dare to deny the Eucharist to anyone who approaches them in church. They will not risk confrontation or disrupting the "mood."

The virtue of fortitude is lacking on the homefront, while the vast majority of soldiers displays it on a daily basis on the warfront. In my view, the roots of this risk averse culture lie in the conviction that all we have is the here and now. When there is no genuine belief in an eternal destiny beyond the grave, much less in an eternal judgment after the grave, there is little incentive to risk. The result is a culture of hoarding in which we seek to grab as much pleasure, popularity, security, and money as possible in our tightly clenched fists.

The risk averse culture is the opposite of the Man on the cross who stretched forth his arms between heaven and earth. As noted by C.S. Lewis, courage is not optional:

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Letter XXIX, para. 6 (original emphasis).

Our risk averse culture is the opposite of the open hands nailed to the cross at Pilate's order. Instead, we dare nothing for justice or chastity or integrity. The problem is that by daring nothing we will win nothing and lose our souls in the process. Fortunately, not all of our leaders are reflexively risk averse. Not all of our leaders see nothing worth fighting for.

Pope Reaches 84th Birthday: He Marginalized Heterodoxy

Today, John Paul II reaches his 84th birthday. Needless, to say, a relative few will be disappointed, while many will rejoice. His pontificate has transformed several generations of Catholics who have rejected the confusion and revisionism of the seventies. His full legacy is yet to be felt as all of these generations mature. History will remember that when the Catholic Church was at great peril from internal heresy and heterodoxy, especially in Western Europe and North America, but also from neo-Marxists in Latin America, God gave us a pope who reversed these trends. And, of course, how can we not think of his role in the destruction of Soviet Communism whose atheism and amorality were echoed by social liberals in Western societies. Today, the forces of heterodoxy are in worldwide decline. They can offer only an echo of the empty shibboleths of secular society and an imitation of the dying relics of liberal Protestantism. In spite of continuing disappointment at surviving remnants of heterodoxy in the Church and at many bishops who seem incapable of apostolic boldness--disappointments that will always accompany and have always accompanied the Church on her journey from the very beginning-- the trend line is positive. The trend is upward.

The words of Franklin Roosevelt, near the end of his life, in his wartime 1945 inaugural address are apt. In the address, FDR quoted the words of an old teacher:

I remember that my old schoolmaster, Dr. Peabody, said, in days that seemed to us then to be secure and untroubled: "Things in life will not always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising toward the heights—then all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward; that a line drawn through the middle of the peaks and the valleys of the centuries always has an upward trend."

See link.

Dr. Endicott Peabody, a Protestant Episcopalian of the old school, was expressing a sort of All-American prep school Enlightenment optimism (see link for background information). But his words can resonate with those of us who instead see the hand of Divine Providence in His Church, the Catholic Church, the Sacrament of the unity of all mankind.

Postscript: Having quoted FDR, I am sure to get one or two e-mails telling me how immoral FDR was. I would point out preemptively (Bush-style) that quoting certain apt words--and in this case the quote is even of FDR quoting someone else--does not mean endorsing the moral character of the speaker, just as some who have no illusions about John Kennedy's moral character can still admire some of the speeches crafted by his speech writers.

Preliminary Tests Show Weapon of Mass Destruction Found in Iraq

The syllogism is quite simple. Before the current Iraq conflict, it was undisputed that in the past Saddam Hussein possessed sarin gas. He agreed to destroy the chemical agent. The U.S. went to war in part because of Saddam's failure to account for such chemical agents. The chemical agent has now been found in Iraq. Case closed.

For details on the discovery of sarin and also mustard gas in Iraq, see this Fox news report. This discovery further bolsters the case that the Iraq war was and is a just war. Now watch the anti-war spin. It has already begun with former inspectors David Kay and Hans Blix dismissing the significance of the discovery. What will satisfy them? Nothing, because entrenched egos come first.

As for the rest of us whose egos are not tied to exonerating Saddam Hussein, we can make the inescapable, common sense conclusion: Saddam Hussein still had chemical agents at the time the Iraq War started. The current tests appear to be preliminary, but it appears that at least two U.S. soldiers suffered symptoms of chemical exposure. So it seems reasonable to believe, as of now, that some chemical agent was present.

Update: The N.Y. Times online provides a balanced and bias-free article on the discovery of a weapon of mass destruction in Iraq ("Army Discovers Old Iraqi Shell Holding Sarin, Illicit Weapon," Intern'l section, by Dexter Filkins, 5-18-04). If preliminary tests are confirmed, this discovery is the "smoking gun" that further justifies statements about WMD made by the Bush administration before the beginning of the war. As to those who sincerely believe it was a mistake to invade Iraq, I urge them to consider with an open mind this new evidence and also to consider that, without an invasion, Saddam Hussein would still be in power today torturing as a matter of unquestioned official policy completely immune from investigations or hearings of any kind, engaging in the widespread murder of Iraqis as a routine tool of governance, and possessing chemical weapons. To say that it was a mistake to overthrow Saddam Hussein comes perilously close to saying that Iraq would be better off today with Saddam Hussein still in power. I think the Kurds and Shiites would beg to differ. So would I.

Here is a quote from the N.Y. Times article: "The discovery of the sarin-filled shell appears to offer some of the most substantial evidence to date that Mr. Hussein did not destroy all of the banned chemical agent, as he claimed before the war last year." The article also notes the difficult challenge of discovering these weapons. In this case, the shell was not marked as containing a chemical agent. The Army found it by accident.

Update: Fox News reports on Tuesday, May 18th, that tests have confirmed the presence of the sarin nerve agent in the Iraqi shell. There must be a lot of network and print editors scratching their heads about how to report this new development.

Bush Again Calls for Federal Amendment to Ban Gay Marriage; Kerry Again Opposes

Gay marriages were legally solemnized today in Massachusetts. Gay couples will enter from other states to also be married. They will go back home and take legal action to have these marriages legally recognized. It is obvious that only a federal amendment can preserve the meaning of marriage in America. Bush has renewed his call for a federal amendment to define marriage as the union of one mand and one woman, as reported by the Associated Press. Kerry, of course, opposes such an amendment. In spite of Kerry's pro forma, tactical denials, in my opinion, the conclusion is inescapable that Kerry favors the gay marriage movement, as does most of the Democratic Party leadership. Another issue that makes Bush the clear Catholic choice on November 2nd.

Update: Here is the text of President Bush's statement on the issue:

Statement by the President Regarding The Sanctity of Traditional Marriage

The sacred institution of marriage should not be redefined by a few activist judges. All Americans have a right to be heard in this debate. I called on the Congress to pass, and to send to the states for ratification, an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of a man and a woman as husband and wife. The need for that amendment is still urgent, and I repeat that call today.

GEORGE W. BUSH

Truth is Reality

In his small and wise book on prayer, philosopher Peter Kreeft makes a point in the early pages of the book that bears repeating: when we seek God in prayer, we are seeking reality, not escape or fantasy. Kreeft gives this reality as a motive for prayer:

"The true, the good, and the beautiful" are the three things we need and love the most, because they are the attributes of God. . . . To put it most simply, God is God, the Absolute Reality, Infinite Perfection, more massively real than the universe itself and more worthy than all the ideals together ever conceived by all human minds. . . . Thus, we should pray because prayer is the most realistic thing in the world to do. It is our acknowledgement of reality, our right response to reality, our honesty with reality.

Kreeft, Prayer for Beginners (Ignatius Press, 2000), pp. 16-17 (original emphasis).

Kreeft returns to this focus on reality near the end of the book:

[To become wholly God's] is not only the perfection of sanctity, it is also the perfection of sanity, of right-reality-response, of living in objective reality instead of in our subjective fantasies. For in reality, we are wholly God's. We are creatures: our very act of existence is not our own but his gift, on permanent loan.

Kreeft, p. 92 (original emphasis).

The truth that we are creatures whose very meaning, identity, and purpose derive from God makes prayer the most realistic and sensible thing we can do. This reality is what makes sense of renunciation. When we renounce some transient pleasure, it makes sense only if we are renouncing it in favor of our truth and reality which are given to us by God. The hedonistic, consumerist, and materialistic mentality of our culture is always anxious about "missing out" on some pleasure--the perks of high income, sexual indulgence, exotic travel, fame and attention. But to evaluate those things, we must go to God who made us.

And so, Kreeft writes that the realistic attitude toward our fellow creatures is that "we must love them as they are: as our equals, our brothers and sisters, not as our gods" (Kreeft, p. 93). That advice in itself would save many a marriage or other relationship from the ravages of disillusionment. Kreeft emphasizes the point to include not just other people but things: "They [other creatures] are not our God, and things are not our God, and we are not our own God; only God is God" (Kreeft, p. 93). Of course, the same realistic appraisal would apply to non-rational creatures or animals, in spite of the tendency to implicit idolatry of some extreme animal activists.

If we drift from focusing on God as the most real, we inevitably substitute some other god. And so the ambitious politician can end up evaluating everything in terms of his own ambition. The sensualist evaluates everything in terms of transient pleasure. The money-hungry keep buying or building palaces of conspicuous consumption. One's god is fairly easy to spot, sometimes in contradiction to one's outward religious observances.

Once we focus on God as reality, we acquire a trust and serenity in the midst of unpopularity or disapproval and can dare to defy conventional wisdom. And courage results. So those bishops who have bravely spoken the obvious about pro-abortion celebrities who should not receive the Eucharist are, in spite of their small numbers, the ones in touch with reality. No public opinion polls, no media coverage can shake the serenity of one who is in touch with reality. In fact, so much of the news and commentary in our society is nothing but illusion, as seen in the cliche that the "medium [not the truth] is the message."

Fortunately, illusions have a tendency to collapse. Many who were deluded by bad catechesis and preaching in the seventies have discovered through hard experience the eternal truths of the faith. That is why it is not uncommon to hear stories of successful businessmen or professionals who by the time they reach forty years of age have or are ready to enter the priesthood or serve the Church in some other capacity. Truth emerges because it is reality, in spite of the best efforts of many to hide it or run away from it. And that reality is God.

Sixth Sunday of Easter: Acts 15:1-2, 22-29; Revelation 21:10-14, 22-23; John 14:23-29

Today's readings are quintessentially apostolic in character. They highlight the apostolic origins of the Church and the apostolic succession which is found in the Catholic Church and in the Eastern Orthodox churches. In Acts, we have a picture of the early Church functioning with apostles and elders. The Greek for elders is "presbyteros" or presbyters. Our English word "priest" derives from this same word. Even today, in Catholic dioceses, the presbyteral council is an advisory council of priests, and the term "presbyterate" refers to priests. In Spanish language missals, priests are routinely referred to as presbyters or "presbíteros." Thus, we see in the New Testament the apostles functioning as bishops assisted by priests or presbyters. The conclusion in inescapable that the Acts of the Apostles portrays the Catholic Church. Contrary to the myth long pushed by biblical scholars, mostly from a Protestant cultural background, the book of Acts does not portray a pre-Catholic church later "corrupted" by Catholic elements that smothered charismatic vitality. The Catholic elements were present from the beginning. In the reading from Acts, the apostles and presbyters issue the first conciliar decree invoking the direct authority of the Holy Spirit to welcome the new Gentile converts to the Gospel. The picture could not be clearer once prejudices borne of the Prostestant Reformation are put aside. The apostles are the first bishops supervising the churches, assisted by presbyters or priests. As the apostles die, some of these presbyters will emerge to take their place as supervising bishops. Some, like Timothy, already acted as New Testament bishops during the lifetime of the apostles who appointed them.

This apostolic theme is consummated in the book of Revelation where the foundation of the New Jerusalem at the end of the age contains the "twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb." The foundation of the Church is apostolic.

In the Gospel reading from John, Jesus reassures his disciples that the Holy Spirit "will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you." This is the same Holy Spirit invoked by the council of apostles and presbyters in the Church's first conciliar decree. The Catholic system is the New Testament system.

Absurd Quote of the Week

The Washington Times has more coverage from the on-going unravelling of the "traditional" consensus of meekness among Catholic bishops about pro-abortion politicians. Sometimes, it is exhilarating to undo the "traditional." In its coverage, the conservative Washington Times correctly follows the significant change in course from the past resulting from more Catholic bishops being more outspoken against pro-abortion political celebrities. For the liberal spin, you can read this article from the National Catholic Reporter in which the reporter has obviously gone out of his way to interview two known "liberal" or "moderate" clerics in order to get on the record opinions in favor of coddling pro-abortion politicians. In this case, the liberal reporter searched out well-known liberal Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles and "moderate" Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk of Cincinnati. (Of course, in liberal spin, moderates are "reasonable" and "open-minded" as opposed to "rigid" and "close-minded" conservatives.)

Yet, even the liberal spin can't cover up the liberal alarm over some Catholic bishops taking their charge to defend the truth seriously. Mahoney expresses alarm in the article:

"I am puzzled by people rattling sanctions at the moment. That has not been our tradition over the years," he said.

It looks like Cardinal Mahoney is a bit taken aback by a new generation of bishops who are bucking the spineless consensus.

In addition, the National Catholic Reporter (also known, for very good reasons, on these pages as the National Catholic Distorter) thinks the matter so alarming that is posts a hyperventilating editorial excoriating bishops who have rebelled against the past paralysis on this issue. The editorial argues that the faulty logic of the outspoken bishops was exposed when pro-life leader Senator Santorum recently endorsed pro-abortion Senator Specter in Pennsylvania. The editorial argues that, under the logic of bishops taking action against pro-abortion policians, Santorum should be denied communion. Let me say from the outset that I would support any bishop who would deny Santorum communion for his support of Specter. But the editorial's argument falls apart once you think clearly about it. Santorum is a strong pro-life leader who wants to keep Senate control in the hands of the only pro-life national party, the Republican Party. Unfortunately, Santorum made the judgment that pursuing that goal required supporting Arlen Specter. I, for one, think that judgment was mistaken. But it was a tactical judgment meant to advance the current strategic advantage the pro-life movement now holds in the Senate with Republican control--an important strategic advantage that the editorial writer is surely aware of but fails to mention. The bottom-line is that Santorum made a tactical decision to preserve a strategic pro-life advantage. That much is clear even if you think, as I do, that Santorum's tactical decision was mistaken.

That tactical scenario is very different from the pro-abortion politician who is acting solely to protect Roe v. Wade's regime of abortion on demand. If a bishop thinks that Santorum should be denied communion because of the tactical Specter endorsement, that is fine with me, although the fact is that any pro-life person can only dream that a Kerry, a Kennedy, a Clinton, or any other national Democrat for that matter would ever come close to matching the strong pro-life leadership demonstrated in the past by Senator Santorum.

More interestingly, the editorial ends with a plaintive plea:

"The circular-firing-squad mentality infecting too many conservative Catholics and a number of bishops should stop now. Before it is too late."

Before it is too late for what? The editorial does not say. Maybe, the editorial writer is worried that his liberal Catholic subscriber base will begin to actually leave the Catholic Church. In my opinion, that outcome should be welcomed because it is merely a recognition of the truth that they have long since fallen out of full communion with the Catholic Church by pursuing religion as something we make up. Better the honest truth than a lifetime of self-deception and denial.

But the promised "Absurd Quote of the Week" goes to Cardinal McCarrick of Washington, D.C., as recorded in the Washington Times, defending his discomfort with refusing communion to anyone: "[A]s a priest and bishop, I do not favor a confrontation at the altar rail with the sacred body of the Lord Jesus in my hand."

Cardinal, what altar rail? The altar rails of the vast majority of our churches have been ignominiously torn out of church after church. And, what confrontation? Any political celebrity to be denied the Eucharist by the cardinal will have been duly informed, in accordance with canon law, well before he or she shows up at the communion line. All the ministering priest has to do is to kindly give a blessing and move on. I assure the cardinal that none of the political celebrities will try to forcibly take the Eucharist from him--that would not look good, even in the secular press. And if the political celebrity wants to exchange words, so be it. Is that too much for a priest of the crucified Christ to risk? Is that too much to risk to protect the Body of Christ from sacrilege? The cardinal is straining at a gnat, and swallowing a camel. And so to him belongs the absurd quote of the week.

N.Y. Times Aghast that Colorado Springs Bishop Proclaims Catholic Teaching

Another bishop has courageously stepped up to the plate and dared to repeat Catholic teaching in a pastoral letter, citing the Catechism of the Catholic, Church, the Pope's encyclical The Gospel of Life, and the recent document on politicians by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In his pastoral letter, Bishop Michael Sheridan of the Diocese of Colorado Springs begins with a welcome and needed discussion of the Catholic view of what conscience is and its role in our moral decisions. He then proceeds to state clearly that in the November election Catholic voters must ensure that pro-life candidates win. He states clearly the bottom-line on pro-abortion Catholic politicians and voters:

There must be no confusion in these matters. Any Catholic politicians who advocate for abortion, for illicit stem cell research or for any form of euthanasia ipso facto place themselves outside full communion with the Church and so jeopardize their salvation. Any Catholics who vote for candidates who stand for abortion, illicit stem cell research or euthanasia suffer the same fateful consequences. It is for this reason that these Catholics, whether candidates for office or those who would vote for them, may not receive Holy Communion until they have recanted their positions and been reconciled with God and the Church in the Sacrament of Penance.

Bishop Michael Sheridan, Pastoral Letter "On the Duties of Catholic Politicans and Voters," (PDF document), May 1, 2004, Diocese of Colorado Springs.

Bishop Sheridan correctly applies this same conclusion to those advocating same-sex "marriage":

As in the matter of abortion, any Catholic politician who would promote so-called “same-sex marriage” and any Catholic who would vote for that political candidate place themselves outside the full communion of the Church and may not receive Holy Communion until they have recanted their positions and been
reconciled by the Sacrament of Penance.

See link to Sheridan Pastoral Letter above.

The document is worth reading in its entirety. Bishop Sheridan also makes clear that he is in solidarity with and supporting his brother bishops who have dared to clearly state Catholic teaching on these issues. After you read the letter in its entirety, then consider what I will now say about the N.Y. Times coverage of the same letter.

The theme of the N.Y. Times headline and story is that Sheridan is now daring to advocate denying the Eucharist to any Catholic voter who votes for a pro-abortion politician ("Bishop Would Deny Rite for Defiant Catholic Voters," N.Y. Times Online, National section, 5/14/04). Of course, this sensationalistic approach is intended to panic the average Catholic parishioner who fears that now he or she will be denied the Eucharist just as some pro-abortion celebrities have been. Well, if a Catholic voter is a well-known activist for abortion or gay marriage who obstinately and knowingly persists in pushing these anti-Catholic positions then he or she can and should under canon law be denied the Eucharist. But it is obvious that no anonymous, average Catholic voter by definition fits into the category of a public activist. This pastoral letter is telling average, anonymous Catholic voters that if they have freely and knowingly voted for pro-abortion politicians and/or politicians supporting gay "marriage," fully aware, as is likely, that these positions are gravely immoral under Catholic moral teaching, they need to go to confession prior to receiving the Eucharist.

But obviously no one will be able to deny the Eucharist to such an average voter for the simple practical reason that his acts are not known to the public. Even the N.Y. Times article makes note of that, even while distorting the wording of the bishop's pastoral letter. In my view, the N.Y. Times is distorting the message of the pastoral letter--which at no point addresses the issue of denying anyone the Eucharist--in order to paint Sheridan as an extremist inquisitor who will now harass every Catholic communicant, however humble and anonymous. In my opinion, this distortion is part of the liberal strategy to save Kerry and other pro-abortion celebrities by linking their fate to that of non-celebrity, average Catholics.

The N.Y. Times is so alarmed and aghast that some Catholic bishops are showing chutzpah that it misrepresents Sheridan's written statement and thereby creates confusion among average Catholics. But the same liberal media won't be alarmed about someone like Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles who is indirectly quoted in the same story as asserting that Kerry is "welcome" to receive the Eucharist in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Mahoney's compromise of Catholic teaching is to be expected by anyone familiar with his liberal reputation. It is no surprise. I would not even be surprised to see Mahoney leading the invocation for Kerry at the Democratic convention in Boston. Kerry recently met privately with Mahoney on May 5th. It would not be out of the ordinary for Kerry to have already issued the invitation for Mahoney to appear at the Democratic convention. As I recall, Mahoney has done that before. But what is a newsworthy surprise is that an increasing number of Mahoney's brother bishops are showing that they are cut from a different cloth.

Update: If you would like to thank Bishop Sheridan of Colorado Springs for his strong apostolic witness, you can e-mail the Diocese of Colorado Springs at info@diocs.org. The media will try to paint these stalwart bishops as extremists or kooks. We know better, and should encourage bishops who stand up to the errors of the secular culture.

Proof That Prison Scandal is a Pornographic Scandal

In a graphic article, the New York Post (May 13, 2004) reports that the photos of prisoner abuse include pornographic photos that have nothing to do with Iraqi prisoners, but a lot to do with pornographic activity between and among U.S. soldiers, with one female soldier apparently being in effect the leading pornographic "actress" in the photos. This evidence supports the initial analysis written here that the crux of the current scandal is about pornography, not about any official military policy of prisoner abuse (see Catholic Analysis for May 8, 2004). These were crazed, rogue soldiers steeped and formed in the immoral pornographic culture that flourishes in our country.

Yet, as pointed out before, the liberals, who enthusiastically take the lead in dismantling traditional morality by pushing abortion, contraception, domestic partnerships for both unmarried heterosexuals and homosexuals, gay marriage, and exaggerated First Amendment protection for indecency in the media, are assiduously avoiding the central moral aspect of the prison scandal. The liberals would prefer to make it a matter of "torture" and official policy, even after the highly praised military officer, Army General Antonio Taguba, who authored the investigative report on this particular Iraqi prison, made clear in sworn congressional testimony that the abusive conduct was not the result of official orders or wider policy. With that statement, the liberals lost the scandal. It slipped right through their fingers. They know it.

But a scandal that liberals would rather not confront remains. And it is a pornographic scandal that reflects a corruption at the heart of our society. But you can bet that Senators Kennedy and Clinton won't be too concerned with that scandal because they don't find the culture of sexual chaos scandalous in the least. For them, it is not chaos, but a matter of liberation and empowerment. Yet, the real truth of this scandal is emerging. It will be interesting to see how the mainstream media reacts to the emergence of the type of scandal that contradicts its cultural bias against traditional sexual morality. It is likely that they will engage in blatant denial and ignore the obvious. Thus, you will likely see the scandal slowly recede from the headlines as its true parameters continue to emerge. Only in conservative media, especially on the internet, will you see the crux of the prison scandal described in unflinching terms.

All of which brings me to a point that many political observers fail to grasp when discussing the public's view of the state and direction of the nation. Many such observers point to polls showing that a majority of the public believes the nation is on the "wrong track" as a sign of trouble for Bush's re-election, in spite of the fact that the Kerry campaign remains stuck in the polls. I suggest that the Beltway pundits and their colleagues from the other major liberal media centers are missing a central point: a solid Bush supporter can be deeply pessimistic about the state of the nation but still turn out to vote for the President. In fact, the deeper the pessimism, the more likely the Bush supporter will turn out to vote for Bush. The reason is that the pessimism is based not on the daily political back and forth served up by the mainstream media or the latest mischaracterized scandal pounced upon by the media but rather on cultural pessimism. It is right to be culturally pessimistic about a society in which moral chaos is rampant in the push for current lifestyles of sexual insanity and in the craze for hedonism and materialism.

This moral chaos results in an "integrity deficit" in our country. That integrity deficit is far more dangerous and alarming than any budget deficit could ever be. Those who lean to supporting President Bush know that. It is why Bush's strongest support comes from Americans who take religious practices, such as church attendance, most seriously. So the mainstream media has the equation backwards: cultural pessimism may very well propel the vote for Bush, not for the candidate steeped in extreme Massachusetts social liberalism. It all depends on what the voter is pessimistic about. The economy is obviously improving, and the Iraq situation is already slowly stabilizing. Yet, the source of legitimate cultural pessimism remains: the integrity deficit. That cultural pessimism favors the Bush campaign. But, alas, sometimes the deepest cultural currents are too deep to merit the notice of a superficial mainstream media that itself so closely reflects the integrity deficit.

Update: More proof of the above thesis at the N.Y. Post. One Slate.com commentator remarked sardonically that "right-wing cultural warriors" would spin the scandal into one of sexual immorality. Well, the "right-wing cultural warriors" are looking more on target every day.

Respecting Conscience

A popular argument by some clerics who argue that they are not comfortable with denying the Eucharist to pro-abortion political celebrities is that the decision to receive is up to the conscience of the celebrity. In prior posts, I have indicated why this highly subjective view of conscience is contrary to Catholic teaching and even to relevant canon law. But today it is time to consider one of the most effective ways of exposing fallacy: reductio ad absurdum, that is, showing that a point of view is mistaken by showing that it leads to absurd results-- to "a reduction to absurdity."

Let us take a hypothetical bishop who goes to the media and says that he is not comfortable with denying the Eucharist to a pro-abortion celebrity--in reality, some have already actually done this. But now let us go to a local priest who has a correct grasp of Catholic teaching and canon law on this issue and as a result is firmly convinced in his conscience that for him to give the Eucharist to the local pro-abortion governor or legislator or to John Kerry would make him as a priest an accomplice to the profanation of the Eucharist. Our hypothetical priest has an informed and correct conscience. Moreover, he is certainly obligated to protect the Eucharist from profanation. How can our hypothetical bishop expect that priest (or for that matter a lay person who is an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion) to act contrary to a well-formed conscience and give the Eucharist to a pro-abortion celebrity?

The hypothetical bishop can forbid the priest from denying the Eucharist, but, in that case, the bishop has contradicted his own public statement that the judgment of the individual conscience is supremely sovereign on the issue of who can receive the Eucharist. Or the bishop can let each priest make his own decision on giving or denying the Eucharist. That latter option would at least be consistent with the bishop's public statements on the supremacy of individual conscience. Yet, even this latter option is not desirable because it introduces chaos into the sacramental life of the Church within a particular diocese and between different dioceses.

In other words, the best our hypothetical bishop can do is to recognize that both theology and canon law require a consistent policy of refusing the Eucharist to pro-abortion celebrities. The Eucharist is protected, and Catholic sacramental life remains orderly and uniform within and between dioceses.

Some may object that a policy of denying the Eucharist to pro-abortion celebrities would itself be the source of chaos because there would have to be a complex laundry list of political positions that preclude one from receiving the Eucharist. The truth is that there would be no chaos. Any political celebrity openly and obstinately contradicting Catholic teaching on what is grave sin should be told not to approach the Eucharist and should be denied the Eucharist if he or she does approach. We are not talking about the death penalty issue--the Church has no absolute prohibition against the death penalty, contrary to the implications of some who speak publicly. We are not talking about the mechanics of economic policy about which Catholics can and do legitimately differ. We are not talking about the Iraq War because the Church recognizes that Catholics can legitimately differ on the application of just war criteria to a particular situation.

Any laundry list of obstacles to communion would involve grave and intrinsically evil matters about which the Church recognizes no right to diversity of opinion. In addition, the only practical and feasible targets would be celebrities who persist in denying such Church teaching and thus create scandal--not the average anonymous parishioner.

Catholic liberals are continuing to spout what can only be called "whoppers" in the news media that misrepresent Catholic teaching in their eagerness to defend pro-abortion Democrats. As noted before, one common misrepresentation is that the abortion issue and issues such as the death penalty or the Iraq War are on the same plane. The other great misrepresentation is that denying the Eucharist to a political celebrity is equivalent to denying the Eucharist to an anonymous parishioner where scandal is not a factor.

The biggest misrepresentation was recently made by that reliably unreliable source of Catholic teaching, the Rev. Richard McBrien of Notre Dame University, who is quoted as saying that "Abortion is not a dogma." Here is an excerpt from the news article containing the McBrien quote:

"The only way that you can separate yourself from the church is by knowingly and deliberately denying a dogma of faith," said the Rev. Richard P. McBrien, a professor of theology at Notre Dame and a liberal in such matters. "Abortion is not a dogma."

"Communion Becomes a Test of Faith and Politics," by Daniel J. Wakin, N.Y. Times online, May 9, 2004 (free reg'n required).

Well, a "dogma" is a divinely revealed teaching. It may be defined solemnly as was done in the case of the Immaculate Conception or the Assumption of Mary, or it can be defined "in an ordinary way, as with the constant teaching on the malice of taking innocent human life" (John A. Hardon, S.J., Modern Catholic Dictionary s.v. "Dogma"). As Hardon notes, a dogma is a "[d]octrine taught by the Church to be believed by all the faithful as part of divine revelation" (Ibid.). And it is clear that the grave immorality of the direct and voluntary taking of an innocent human life--which includes deliberate or procured abortion--is a divinely revealed teaching:

This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written word of God, is transmitted by the Church's Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.

John Paul II, The Gospel of Life (Evangelium Vitae), section 62.3 (i.e., 3rd paragraph in section 62).

Consistent with the Pope's declaration, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reaffirmed that the grave immorality of the direct and voluntary taking of innocent human life is a divinely revealed teaching (see Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the 'Professio fidei,' June 29, 1998, section 11 (also refer to section 5), available at EWTN.com.)

So McBrien, not surprisingly, is again wrong. The only remedy for this mess is exposure of these wild misrepresentations and a constant reiteration of the truth. The power of the truth cannot be suppressed by sound bites.

A Benedictine Abbot's View of the Eucharist: Highly Relevant for Today

Abbot Vonier (1875-1938) was a German-born Benedictine monk who for many years was abbot of a monastery in England. Among the many theological works he wrote, one that is especially relevant to today's controversies is a work from 1925: A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist, reprinted in 2003 by the new Zaccheus Press in Bethesda, Maryland. In an introduction to this book, theologian Aidan Nichols, O.P., describes Vonier as "the most gifted dogmatic theologian writing--and preaching-- in England during the inter-War years [the nineteen twenties and thirties]" (Vonier, p. xi). In a preface to the book, Catholic philosopher and apologist Peter Kreeft notes that he has "seldom read such a convincing, clear, and comprehensive study in Eucharistic theology" (Vonier, p. ix).

Vonier's writings on the Eucharist are especially relevant today when some priests and bishops seek to justify the scandal of pro-abortion political celebrities receiving the Eucharist with impunity. The thread of the reasoning of these clerical defenders of scandal is a highly individualistic and subjective view of the human conscience. If you consider their rhetoric, which at times appears to have an off-the-cuff, shoot-from-the hip quality to it, it reflects the American cultural worship of the individual subjective conscience, however ill-informed, as justifying a wide range of behaviors. Under this secular world view, "choice" is preeminent over the "good" because there is no authoritative, objective measure of the good. In this cultural view, the best we can do is agree on procedures by which to allow for the social co-existence of virtually every subjective desire or choice imaginable. That American cultural view has infected, whether consciously or unconsciously, the rhetoric of some churchmen.

In contrast, the authentic Catholic view is that conscience must be formed by authoritative objective truth, that conscience can and does frequently err, and that it is the obligation of the Church as the bearer of objective divine revelation to correct such errors for the sake of the truth, the good of the individual and wider humanity, and the glory of God.

As to the current controversy about "pro-choice" political celebrities receiving the Eucharist, Vonier's writing from 1925 is a necessary corrective to the current cultural mindset. Vonier emphasizes the social and ecclesial aspect of the Eucharist:

The Eucharistic sacrifice is fundamentally a corporate act, the act of the Church herself; we are never isolated worshipers in the great rite, even when we are but a few gathered around the altar in some remote church, for we are in communion with the whole Catholic Church. So the eating of the divine oblation is always invested with social significance. We all become members of one Body, eating one Bread: this is the classical, traditional concept of the Eucharistic assembly.

Vonier, p. 169 (emphasis added).

Receiving the Eucharist is a social act. It announces that one is in full communion with the Catholic Church. It is, as Vonier writes, "the act of the Church herself." Eucharistic theology determines the meaning of the Eucharist, not secular culture's obsession with "choice." In contrast,the current defense of people like Kerry receiving the Eucharist focuses on the Eucharist as a highly individualistic exercise with no social significance. This type of defense of pro-abortion leaders receiving the Eucharist implies that the Eucharist belongs primarily to individuals, not to the Church. That is how the false and absurd charge can be made that, in defending the Sacrament, the Church is somehow interfering in politics.

Vonier writes prophetically when he observes as follows:

It would be a disastrous day for the Christian cause if, in the minds of the faithful, the Eucharistic mystery were shorn of that all-important social character, if their frequent eating of the heavenly Bread meant to them nothing more than individual spiritual satisfaction, without promoting the well-being of Christ's mystical Body, the society of the elect.

Vonier, p. 169.

Vonier clearly saw, way back in 1925, what is now at stake in having obstinate pro-abortion leaders partake of the Eucharist. What is at stake is an exaggerated neo-Protestant view of the Eucharist as an individual transaction between one worshipper and God, with the Church merely providing the physical setting for the act. This neo-Protestant view does away with the Church herself as the custodian of the sacraments. This view has now become the thoroughly secular caricature of religion as mere "spirituality" for individual consumption in the market for spiritual and psychological solace. This psychological view of the sacraments is why our society inevitably views as puzzling the Church's efforts to defend the Eucharist and limit participation by those who reject fundamental Church teaching. Much of American culture cannot comprehend the classic social significance of the Eucharist and thus invests it with an individualism that, while indigenous to our American culture, is alien to Catholicism.

Vonier notes, with an amazing relevance to our current controversies, that the "ideal world of which the saint dreams is a human society where there is practical knowledge of the meaning of the Eucharistic sacrifice, where men and women have a clear comprehension of the divine mysteries, and where purity and justice are cherished, because without them men would be unfit for the Communion of the Body of God" (Vonier, pp. 169-70). Without a commitment to the justice of defending human life in all its forms, we are unfit for Holy Communion. The clear articulation of the theological basis of this truth makes the reprinting of Vonier's book on the Eucharist a timely, welcome, and providential event for these troubled days.

Clerical Malpractice

When an educated professional with qualified staff and other available resources gives a superficial and erroneous analysis of an issue within his area of responsibility with harmful results, our culture calls it malpractice. Recent statements by clerics, such as Cardinal McCarrick in Washington, D.C., respond to the issue of pro-abortion politicians receiving the Eucharist by saying that you cannot deny them the Eucharist because we cannot see into their hearts and minds and know what lurks therein (see Catholic News Service story, 4/27/04). Here is what Cardinal McCarrick is quoted as saying in the Catholic News Service story:

"I would be very uncomfortable to have a confrontation at the altar, because it implies that I know precisely what's in a man's heart or in a woman's heart, and I'm not always sure," he said.

That is the analysis presented to the public and to fellow Catholics. It is devastatingly wrong. It is clerical malpractice.

In a recent Zenit interview, priest-theologian Thomas Williams, the dean of the School of Theology of the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical Athenaeum in Rome, gave a professional analysis of the issue based on canon law. You can and should read the entire interview at this link. But let's get to the "heart" of the issue: to deny the Eucharist to these politicians, does a bishop have to know what lurks in the hearts of men? Canon law clearly says no. Here are the words of Fr. Williams:

Four essential elements come into play, all of which are necessary to fulfill the conditions laid out in Canon 915.

The first element is "gravi peccato," or grave sin. This can only be taken to refer to the matter of the action -- or omission -- without necessarily implying a judgment of subjective culpability. "Grave sin" in this case simply means objectively evil conduct of a serious nature.

The second requirement specified by Canon 915 refers to the "manifesto," or overt, character of the sin. This stipulation limits the sanction to sins of a public nature, and reiterates the public and ecclesial dimension of Holy Communion, which signifies moral, spiritual and doctrinal union with Christ and with his Church.

Thirdly, to be refused Communion a person must persist -- "perseverantes" -- in this openly sinful behavior. To say that a person persists in a public sin means that he somehow makes it known that he plans to continue engaging in his sinful behavior.

Finally, the code speaks of obstinate persistence. The Latin adverb "obstinate" here means that the person has been duly informed of the evil of his behavior but deliberately chooses to persist in it anyway.

There is such a thing as inculpable persistence in evildoing, when a person is unaware that a certain habitual activity is sinful. But once the evil of his actions has been brought to his attention, his persistence qualifies as obstinate.

Judging from the foregoing considerations, it seems clear that a politician who votes in a way that fails to defend innocent human life on a consistent basis and gives every indication of his intention to keep doing so despite warnings from ecclesiastical authorities can be said to obstinately persist in objectively evil behavior of a public nature. And in this regard he fulfills the requirements of Canon 915.

"Why Communion Could Be Denied to Anti-Life Legislators," April 26, 2004, Zenit.org (emphasis added).


No judgment of subjective culpability is required. What canon law requires is "objectively evil conduct of a serious nature." This objectively evil conduct creates scandal. Canon law contemplates denial of the Eucharist to squelch the scandal. So for McCarrick and other bishops, such as Bishop Mengeling of Lansing, Michigan, for example (see Lansing State Journal story), to speak of not being able to judge the hearts of communicants is to miss the boat. Here are Mengeling's remarks as reported in the Lansing newspaper:

Mengeling said denying Communion to Granholm [the pro-abortion Michigan governor] and other politicians who support abortion rights would force the church to judge every Catholic, a task he said is up to God.

"We assume that (people) are in good standing with the law in terms of their own conscience," Mengeling said. "The Lord knows that. I don't."

No one is making the straw man argument of reading anyone's heart or conscience. In the same Zenit interview, Fr. Williams points to the absurd situation of effectively open communion created by irrelevant talk of reading someone's heart: "If publicly supporting abortion doesn't constitute a sufficient pastoral reason to justify the denial of Holy Communion, it is hard to imagine when recourse to this measure would be appropriate."

Canon law is not speaking here about reading anyone's heart. Canon law does not contemplate impossibilities. The issue of reading someone's heart is a red herring that is, from all indications, a convenient way to dodge the issue and avoid confrontation. Avoiding confrontation over the truth is episcopal malpractice. The People of God deserve better. And, thanks to Zenit, the People of God now know better.

Fifth Sunday of Easter: Acts 14:21-27; Revelation 21:1-5a; John 13:31-33a, 34-35

A striking common theme of all three readings is the transformation of the world. In the reading from Acts, Paul and Barnabas are traveling evangelist-bishops going from city to city. I term them "bishops" because they oversee the various churches they set up in different cities. As they travel, they strengthen and exhort the disciples undergoing hardships for the kingdom of God, just as Jesus in the Gospel of Luke had said that Peter, another traveling evangelist-bishop, would strengthen the brethren (Luke 22:31). Interestingly, Luke is also the author of the book of Acts in which the work of Paul and Barnabas, as just noted, is described as strengthening the disciples (Acts 14:22) . In these two passages (Lk 22:31 and Acts 14:22), Luke uses two slightly different forms of the same Greek verb for "strengthening" or "confirming." Peter, Barnabas, and Paul are engaged in the same type of work, although Peter is singled out in the Gospel of Luke as preeminent in strengthening the brethren in a broader sense.

It is also worth noting that earlier in Acts 13:2-3, we have an account of the ordination of Barnabas and Paul through the laying on of hands at the direct command of the Holy Spirit. Here we see the Sacrament of Holy Orders with its distinctive laying on of hands functioning at the direct command of God. Thus, in Acts, we see those who have been ordained taking the lead in transforming the world by evangelization. As part of this evangelization, Paul and Barnabas, the traveling evangelist-bishops, appoint elders or presbyters in each church (Acts 14:23). In the New Testament, the terms "presbyter" and "bishop" tend to be used interchangeably. But we can already see a distinction between Paul and Barnabas who supervise and appoint presbyters for different communities and the resident presbyters they leave behind. These presbyters are the new priests of the New Testament who assist the traveling evangelist-bishops by leading the newly converted. In time, as the Church developed, the chief resident presbyter or elder in each community would become the exclusive holder of the title of bishop in each community. It is clear from Acts that the specially ordained are taking the lead in transforming the world through evangelization and through the founding of churches.

In Revelation, John sees a new heaven and a new earth. The New Jerusalem is the bride adorned for her husband, Jesus, the Lamb. Jesus is the bridegroom. Later, in Revelation 21:14, we are told that the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb are inscribed on the foundations of the New Jerusalem. So we see that the ultimate transformation of this world is based on the evangelistic work, described in Acts, of the apostles of the Lamb. They have done the work of the Bridegroom on earth. Although Paul is, so to speak, the "13th Apostle," his apostolic ministry was confirmed by the original apostles (see Acts 15).

Finally, in the Gospel of John, Christ gives the new commandment: love one another. This love (agape) is the distinctive mark of Christ's disciples on earth. It is how they will transform the earth. A timeless expression of that transforming love is found in the Latin chant Ubi caritas, which can be translated into English as follows:

Where charity and love are, there is God.
The love of Christ has brought us together into one flock.
Let us rejoice and let us be glad in that love itself.
Let us fear and love the living God.
And let us love from a pure heart. Amen.

In sum, today's readings tell us in the book of Acts the identity of the ones taking the lead in transforming the earth (the apostles and their assistants), describe the final transformation in Revelation based on the work of the twelve apostles, and remind us in the Gospel that love is the distinctive means of that transformation.

The High Price of a Pornographic Culture

For those who have a squeamish temperament or who find bad news too much to handle, it is probably better to skip this essay. For the thesis of this essay is that America is a pornographic culture in denial. The bottom-line is that we and our leaders must speak openly about this before we are fully enveloped in chaos.

The current military prison abuse scandal, which is in many prominent ways a sexual abuse scandal, is an epiphany. For it manifests the reality of our culture. To see the generals and Rumsfeld himself--all from a prior generation--grapple in disbelief with the magnitude of the prison abuse scandal is to see a tremendous difference in generational formation. For a prior generation, which benefited from growing up in a culture with a conservative sexual moral consensus, it is hard to believe that professional soldiers would indulge, photograph, videotape, and take great pleasure in perverse acts. But it is not hard to believe for those of us who grew up in a different culture in which fornication and sexual license became a way of life.

It is a culture in which it is common for Catholic males getting ready to shortly receive the sacrament of matrimony to have bachelor parties in which pornography--live or videotaped--is a staple. It is a culture where President Clinton made references to fellatio a topic of household conversation . It is a culture that was foreshadowed in the private pornographic White House lifestyle of the mythic John F. Kennedy. Today, the heir of that Kennedy lifestyle, Sen. Edward Kennedy, calls for Rumsfeld's resignation--the same Kennedy who left behind a young female companion, later found dead, at Chappaquiddick, the same Kennedy who was caught on camera a few years ago, while a Senator, engaging in sexual intercourse in open air on a sailboat off the European coast. In a breathtaking display of hypocrisy, the living emblem of the cultural problem poses as the moral crusader outraged at the problem.

A pornographic culture will produce sexually perverse and abusive soldiers, just as a pornographic culture produces sexually perverse politicians, priests, and ministers. The latest revelation is that a former Carter cabinet member now admits having had sexual relations with a 14-year-old earlier in his political career! The news also contains a steady stream of reports of an HIV/AIDS outbreak in the nation's busy pornography industry centered in Los Angeles. It is amazing that the industry is legal. It is amazing that engaging in sexual acts for money is considered "work" on a par with other work and that the sordid, satanic pornographers are considered an "industry." Well, the "industry" is now at a standstill because abused nature is taking its revenge. In an age, when the news media delights in exposing corporate corruption and every possible peccadillo involved with politically connected companies like Halliburton, it is amazing that there is no news media exposé of the pornography "industry" which is intrinsically and openly exploitative, inhuman, and anti-woman.

As in the Catholic sexual abuse scandal, those who planted the seeds of the problem now seek to exploit the problem to advance their pre-existing political agendas. Reference has already been made to the walking hypocrisy of Sen. Kennedy. All we have to do is add the school-marm hypocrisy of Senator Hillary Clinton about whose spouse's contribution to the pornographic culture I have already said enough. In the same way, Catholic liberals who for years undercut traditional Catholic sexual morality sought and seek to advance their agenda during the sexual abuse crisis. Recently, Bishop Untener of Saginaw, Michigan, a leading Catholic liberal, passed away to great sorrow. But lost in most of the accolades was the reminder that this same Bishop Untener, earlier in his career, allowed films with pornographic content to be made available to seminarians in order to "sensitize" them to sexual issues (see National Catholic Reporter's sanitized version of the incident [13th paragraph from the top]).

Yet, Rumsfeld is no Cardinal Law, however much Sen. Kennedy yearns for that identification. From all indications, the military scandal was a surprise to Rumsfeld. In contrast, Cardinal Law apparently knew what had happened, but kept transferring the guilty to new parishes. Rumsfeld should not be the target here. The target is a morally chaotic culture in which pornographic excess permeates our schools, our churches, our media, and our military. It is time for cultural conservatives, in and out of politics, to make this self-criticism. It would behoove the President to point out our cultural flaws in this area, as he has done in other areas. Sometimes the best patriotism is that which exposes cultural corruption. Anything else smacks of sentimental and self-destructive denial.

New Jersey Governor Bows to Reality

A Catholic Analysis reader sent me the May 6th New York Times article noting that pro-abortion Governor James McGreevey of New Jersey has decided to bow to reality. He says that he will not receive communion in the dioceses of three New Jersey bishops who have said that he should not seek to receive the Eucharist. The bishops are Archbishop John Myers in Newark, Bishop John Smith in Trenton, and Bishop Joseph Galante in Camden. Three bishops stood up, said the obvious, and the politician bowed to reality. The governor is free to attend Mass, come forward, receive a blessing, and make a spiritual communion.

The bishops have done him a great spiritual favor. They have rescued him from compounding his own confusion about abortion with the sin of sacrilege and have clearly shown him the path to full communion with the Catholic Church. I would not be surprised if one day McGreevey thanks these courageous bishops for their clarity.

The N.Y. Times article makes much of the fact that pundits believe that this action by the bishops will help the governor politically. The article misses the boat. The bishops' action has nothing to do with the political fortunes of the governor. It has everything to do with the sacramental discipline of a religious community. The political effects are irrelevant. These observers just can't seem to understand that for Catholics protecting the Eucharist is worth all the political setbacks in the world. The pundits can't seem to understand anything beyond the back and forth of political competition.

Yet, the governor is still resistant, as seen in his comments complaining that the bishops have violated the separation of church and state. Of course, this complaint is ridiculous. Freedom of religion, enshrined in the Constitution, means that religious communities are free to decide who has access to their rites and rituals. In fact, it is the governor and other pro-abortion politicians who are violating the separation of church and state by pressuring a religious community to change its age-old moral teachings and sacramental discipline to match a secular political agenda that became prominent only in the nineteen seventies.

As to other, less courageous Catholic bishops, the lesson is clear. Here, three bishops in a very liberal, pro-abortion state took a firm and clear stand, protected the Eucharist, and protected the integrity of the Church's teaching against abortion, and their world has not collapsed. The consciences of the bishops are clear. No priest in these dioceses will be placed in the position of possibly contributing to the profanation of the Eucharist. It is as it should be.

It is good to see bishops in a major state not following the passive approach advocated by Cardinal McCarrick in Washington, D.C. It is obvious that McCarrick's view is his own problem that he will have to sort out on his own and will not inhibit bishops who wish to act like bishops. It may be that we are seeing the beginning of the end of a long, cowardly phase of American Catholicism.

FDA Rejects Over-the-Counter Sales of Morning-After Pill

The FDA has rejected a proposal to sell the "morning-after" contraceptive pill over-the-counter. The regular birth control pill requires a prescription, but the higher dosage "morning-after" pill would have been available without a prescription under the rejected proposal. One news report notes that many of the buyers of the "morning-after" pill are males who then give the pills to the females they have relations with. The women's group quoted in the news report contends that the morning-after pill facilitates sexual abuse of young females. You can read the news report at this link. The connection between contraception and sexual abuse is more evidence that the contraceptive mentality is an anti-woman mentality.

Iraqi Prisoner Abuse and the Corruption of Feminism

The current media frenzy over the photos of the wanton humiliation of Iraqi prisoners--who I assume included people who attacked American troops--is justified because the behavior contradicts American identity and policy. Yet, as columnist Cal Thomas writes, the issue must be kept in the context of a Middle East in which brutal physical torture--not just non-physical humiliation--is still a daily reality imposed by Moslems upon other Moslems. One of the masters of such physical torture was Saddam Hussein himself whom American troops removed from power in about 21 days. Hussein would even film his torture of political opponents, just as Hitler filmed the brutal executions of those Germans who tried to assassinate him during World War II, in order to terrorize other potential opponents. Maybe, someone could dig up one of those films and publish excerpts of it in order to give a sense of realistic context to the current controversy.

It is undeniable that these acts of humiliation were rogue acts in defiance of American policy in Iraq. The physical torture of Saddam Hussein, on the other hand, was the anointed centerpiece of his regime's governance to which the United Nations for years turned a blind eye. The American public intuitively understands that, and so the Democratic attempt to gain political points from this scandal will come to nothing. Thus far these intolerable acts seem to be mostly non-physical and lacking the infliction of physical pain. Therefore, based on what we know now, they cannot be appropriately termed "torture" except by those with a pre-existing ideological axe to grind.

Yet, there is a deeper issue here from a Catholic perspective: the moral character of the soldiers who did this. It is especially disturbing to see pictures of female American soldiers engaging in sexual humiliation of male prisoners. Would that have occurred in another era? Would female American soldiers be grinning at and pointing at the genitals of male prisoners? In a prior era, where feminine modesty was considered a virtue, you would have never seen such wanton behavior. In fact, you would have never seen female personnel dealing so intimately with male prisoners. It is already apparent from some of these infamous photos that part of the politically incorrect roots of this scandal lies in the breakdown of feminine dignity and modesty in wider American culture.

In the military itself, there seems to be a policy of androgyny: male and female soldiers are considered, for the most part, completely interchangeable. That policy is an expression of our corrupt culture in which gender differences are considered merely accidental and not central to our human identity. It is a great lie. The idea that there are certain situations in which female participation is inappropriate is now considered quaint. And here are the consequences. The radical feminist project which refuses to recognize that women should not be placed in certain situations should be questioned as a result of this scandal, but you can rest assured that the mainstream media will not touch that issue.

If we as Catholics really believe that our gender differences are central to our human identity, then we should point out that those gender differences mean that women soldiers should not be manhandling male prisoners. Otherwise, we are left with demeaning photos of naked males mocked by grinning females. I submit that in these photos the one experiencing the greater humiliation is the highly confused grinning female soldier and her family back home. And I think not a few Moslems will agree with that assessment.

Statement on Eucharist and Abortion from Newark Archbishop

Archbishop John Myers of the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey, issued today an eloquent statement that clearly analyzes the issues involved in the propriety of pro-abortion politicians receiving the Eucharist. The archbishop correctly distinguishes between grave and instrinsic evils like abortion on which there is only one Catholic position and other issues of social policy, such as increases in welfare payments or tax cuts, about which Catholics can differ in good faith. The archbishop also makes clear that receiving the Eucharist is not an absolute right, and that those who are pro-abortion should honestly admit they are not in communion with the Church. Let us hope that this statement is a prelude to action. What is also striking about this statement is the contrast with the weak-as-water comments of Cardinal McCarrick of Washington, D.C., who heads a task force considering this issue for the bishops' conference. It has even been reported that this task force will probably not finish its work before the 2004 election! So in the end, Cardinal McCarrick's passive response to the issue is irrelevant. What is relevant is that some bishops and archbishops are taking action or preparing to take long overdue action. Maybe the rest of their colleagues will eventually emulate their apostolic boldness. According to Vatican II, each bishop is a vicar of Christ in his diocese--not a vicar of the bishops' conference or of a committee or of a paralyzed task force. Fortunately, it seems that several bold bishops have taken that teaching of Vatican II to heart.

The Popularity of Ambiguity

I was recently stuck in a traffic jam in Sterling Heights, Michigan, one of the original enclaves of the famous Reagan Democrats. As you may recall, the Reagan Democrats were those traditional, usually working-class Democratic voters, many of them Catholic, who crossed party lines to elect Reagan twice as president. This time the traffic jam was caused by Bush supporters heading to an outdoor rally at which George W. Bush would speak. It is likely that more than a few Reagan Democrats were headed to the rally. All of which raised for me the different personal styles of Reagan and Bush on one hand and John Kerry on the other.

If the pollsters are correct, a "gender gap" persists in this presidential election with more women preferring Kerry, while more men prefer Bush. Whether that gap will last until November 2nd is unclear. My own hypothesis is that the gender gap may have to do with our differing cultural reactions to assertive politicians with a penchant for morally unambiguous statements. Back in the eighties, when Reagan stated the abundantly obvious--that the Soviet Union was an "evil empire"-- he was roundly criticized as a warmonger by the liberals and the liberal media. Reagan had committed the sin of making a clear-cut distinction between good and evil. Reagan had played the role of the assertive male. At the same time, Margaret Thatcher, the "Iron Lady," was playing the role of the assertive female who did not shrink from calling a spade a spade and was also the target of venomous criticism.

The assertive proclamation of good and evil is viewed in today's culture as insensitive and unintelligent. We can see that in the current paralysis by many Catholic bishops on the question of denying the Eucharist to pro-abortion politicians. Some--including most recently Bishop Mengeling of the Diocese of Lansing, Michigan--take cover in the obvious fact that they can't read the minds of every Catholic seeking to receive communion. Of course, this excuse is transparently baseless. No one is talking about denying the Eucharist to anonymous parishioners. We are talking about prominent political celebrities who go out of their way to publicly reaffirm again and again that they are leaders in the pro-abortion movement. There is no need to read their minds or consciences. They have spilled forth the contents of their minds for all, but the most timorous, to see. But there is a strong cultural affinity for the "nice" approach that shrinks from unambiguous confrontation with evil.

In a way, an inaccurate view and caricature of Christ has been partly responsible for this cultural preference for moral ambiguity. The false image of Christ that is the darling of liberal Protestants and liberal Catholics is that of Christ as the sensitive male who never confronts evil. The Gospel picture is radically different. Christ was brutally executed because he would not desist from confrontation. Christ had a spine of steel, while the caricature is a biblically fictitious person who would have offended no one and would have never been executed.

But back to political preferences. Today, George W. Bush is the favorite political target of those, both male and female, who favor the morally ambiguous male. Bush is mocked and derided as unintelligent, as a warmonger, and even as a killer of civilians because he dared to overthrow a genocidal tyrant who terrorized thousands of his subjects for years while the U.N. engaged in endless debate. Bush routinely refers to the terrorists as evildoers, while the culturally sensitive seek to focus exclusively on the excuses and frustrations that lead to terrorism.

Kerry, on the other hand, with his trademark pink salmon-colored tie, is the quintessential tortured Hamlet who is incapable of making a clear judgment call. He is for and against everything, and breathes ambiguity. The ambiguity even enveloped for years his own ethnic background. As reported by the Boston Globe, Kerry was happy to leave Massachusetts voters for years with the useful impression that he was of Irish Catholic background. To the surprise of many who had been his constituents for years, Kerry lacks any Irish Catholic background. Kerry's ambiguity extends to more significant matters: rejecting Catholic teaching on abortion but refusing to get out of the communion line, supporting and then attacking the Iraq War, crowing against gas guzzling vehicles but owning an SUV, basing his whole campaign on his Vietnam war record but refusing to release all of his military records, and making populist attacks on tax cuts for the rich while at the same time being an extremely wealthy man with a conspicuously opulent lifestyle who supports his heiress wife's refusal to release her own tax returns. In sum, Kerry is the incarnation of the cultural affinity for the Hamlet-like, sensitive, "intelligent" male paralyzed by distinctions.

Experience teaches many of us that, at some point, excessive introspection is not a sign of intelligence but of moral escapism. Life is by nature dramatic and requires dramatic choices. That is how we form our character. Yet, we see a strong cultural affinity for ambiguity that is a mark of our preference for seeking escape, whether in the pursuit of power, alcohol or other drugs, pornography, or materialism. In the real world, escape is sometimes not an option. Sometimes you must make a clear choice and take up the cross.

New Report on Unfaithful Historically Catholic Colleges

The Cardinal Newman Society is an organization intent on restoring fidelity to the campuses of historically Catholic colleges and universities. Note that I call them "historically" Catholic institutions because that is all you can safely say in general about them and still be accurate. We know that these institutions were founded by prior generations in complete fidelity to Catholic teaching. But today it is common to see example after example of blatant contradictions of Catholicism. Patrick Reilly, the President of the Cardinal Newman Society, has brought to my attention the following news story which I reproduce in full with a link to the society's new report on these campuses. The value of this report is that it gathers in one place what most of us have seen in sporadic media stories or on different weblogs. What do we do with this information? If you are an alumnus of one of these confused institutions, you can protest and withhold contributions. If you are a student, you can protest. If you are the parent of a prospective college student, you can go out of your way to find a faithful institution and stop subsidizing anti-Catholic behavior--you can also let one of these scandal ridden institutions know why you chose to put your tuition dollars elsewhere. I am afraid that, as in the homosexual abuse scandals, only financial pressures will force reform.

Here is the story on the recent Cardinal Newman report:

NATIONAL STUDY REVEALS PRO-ABORTION, RELATED ACTIVITY AT CATHOLIC COLLEGES
SINCE 1999

- 56-Page Report Documents Scandals in Catholic Higher Education -

MANASSAS, VA (April 28, 2004) - Cardinal Newman Society has issued a
shocking new report on scandals at U.S. Catholic colleges and universities
that is certain to reignite concerns about the colleges' religious
character.

The 56-page report, "The Culture of Death on Catholic Campuses: A Five-Year
Review," documents inroads made by advocates of abortion, contraception,
premarital sexual activity, and physician-assisted suicide onto Catholic
college campuses since 1999. It is the most extensive evidence of problems
in Catholic higher education ever compiled in a single source-and yet it
only scratches the surface, relying primarily on media reports and college
websites.

"'Pro-choice' is no choice for a Catholic institution, which by its Catholic
mission must be courageously pro-life," said Erin Butcher, lead researcher
and co-author of the report. "Cardinal Newman Society has responded to
scandal after scandal on Catholic campuses, but many Catholics still fail to
appreciate the scope of the problem."

The report, which can be downloaded free of charge at
www.cardinalnewmansociety.org beginning April 28, identifies the problems
and suggests solutions to ensure that Catholic colleges uphold their
Catholic, pro-life mission. Highlights include:

* Pro-abortion presidential candidates at Catholic colleges. In January,
St. Anselm College (N.H.) hosted seven pro-abortion candidates for their
final debate before New Hampshire's Democratic primary. Other campaign
appearances have included John Kerry at Georgetown in January 2003, Dennis
Kucinich at Sacred Heart University last June, Howard Dean at St. Anselm
last September and at Georgetown last October, Dick Gephardt's daughter at
Boston College last November, Gephardt and Kerry at Clarke College (Iowa) in
January, Wesley Clark at Rivier College (N.H.) in January, and Kerry at
Georgetown again in April.

* Nearly 200 instances of campus speakers and honorees who have been public
advocates of abortion or otherwise contributors to the "Culture of Death".
These include at least 17 visits and lectures by President Bill Clinton at
Georgetown University, researchers engaged in human cloning and embryonic
cell research at Assumption College and the College of the Holy Cross, NARAL
Pro-Choice America president Kate Michelman at Boston College law school,
radical feminist Gloria Steinem at Fairfield University, pornographer Larry
Flynt at Georgetown University, and National Organization for Women (NOW)
president Kim Gandy at Loyola University of New Orleans.

* "Emergency contraception," an abortifacient, provided to students by the
College of Santa Fe and Rockhurst University.

* College officials and faculty with ties to pro-abortion and
pro-euthanasia organizations, including a Boston College law professor on
the board of directors of the Death With Dignity National Center; a
Georgetown University philosophy professor on the board of directors of the
Compassion in Dying Federation, and two Georgetown University women's
studies professors who are also employees of the Planned Parenthood
Federation of America.

* Pro-abortion politicians serving as college officials and faculty,
including Carol Moseley Braun teaching management at DePaul University,
Geraldine Ferraro on the Fordham University law school Board of Visitors and
teaching public policy at Georgetown University, and Leon Panetta teaching
political science and on the Board of Trustees and law school Board of
Visitors at Santa Clara University.

* Pro-abortion student clubs including the Reproductive Choice Coalition at
Boston College law school, H*yas for Choice at Georgetown University,
Georgetown Students for Choice at Georgetown law school, and a NOW chapter
at St. Ambrose University.

* Internships and service opportunities offered by Catholic colleges,
including service as a Planned Parenthood "clinic escort" promoted by
Nazareth College's campus ministry and internships with Planned Parenthood
offered by Villanova University.

* Website referrals to pro-abortion organizations as medical or academic
resources including Georgetown University links to local abortion clinics,
LaSalle University links to NOW and the Feminist Majority Foundation, Loyola
University of Chicago links to Planned Parenthood and the Feminist Majority
Foundation, Loyola University of New Orleans links to NARAL Pro-Choice
America and Planned Parenthood, and Seton Hall University links to the
Feminist Majority Foundation and NOW.

* Student newspapers promoting sex and contraception, including sex advice
columns titled "Sex and the Univercity" in The Heights at Boston College and
"Sex on the Hilltop" in The Hoya at Georgetown University.

The report is available at the Cardinal Newman Society website.

John Paul II and Our Preaching

In 1982, André Frossard, who famously experienced a striking conversion experience from atheism to Catholicism, published a book of conversations he had with John Paul II early in his papacy. As you would expect, such a book contains gems of insight into the Pope and the faith as the Pope spoke with ease and familiarity with Frossard. One striking comment involved the Pope's definition of an "active life." The response was prompted by Frossard's asking about the role of prayer and contemplation in John Paul's life. Here is part of John Paul's response:

If my past and present life can be described as 'active,' let us not forget that the 'act' par excellence of each day is the Holy Mass, which constitutes the most perfect synthesis of prayer and the heart of our meeting with God in Christ. Over thirty years' experience of priestly life has taught me that to reach this summit, to arrive at this synthesis and this fullness, one must approach it through prayer and emerge from it towards the prayer of the whole day, knowing perfectly well that this day will be filled to overflowing with activities and engagements of every sort. . . . On the whole, work takes most of the time, but all activities should be rooted in prayer as though in a spiritual soil.

André Frossard, 'Be Not Afraid': André Frossard in Conversation with John Paul II (London: St. Martin's Press, 1984), p. 33 (original emphasis).

In his recent book Letters to a Young Catholic (just reviewed in Catholic Analysis), George Weigel highly recommends praying the liturgy of the hours, even if in an abridged form. Weigel goes so far as to recommend the use of the monthly prayer magazine Magnificat. Interestingly, in his conversation with Frossard, John Paul makes special mention of how "the priest's day is liturgical, not only thanks to the Mass but also through the liturgy of the hours . . . ." (Ibid.). Certainly, praying the liturgy of the hours is one suggestion worth seriously considering.

But more impressive to me as a writer and relevant to all of us who must inevitably in writing or speech make known what we think throughout the day is John Paul's reference to an "ancient principle":

The ancient principle, Contemplata aliis tradere (hand on to others the fruits of prayer), is still topical and life-enhancing. It concerns in the first place the one who 'hands on', the preacher or servant of the Word: he is entitled to communicate-- uniquely and exclusively only contemplata, thoughts passed through prayer.

Frossard, p. 34 (bold emphasis added).

The Pope refes to the privilege of the preacher "in the first place" to pass on "thoughts passed through prayer." Yet, it is not only the preacher at Mass--priest or deacon--who has this obligation, as the Pope's phrase "in the first place" implies. Lay persons speaking to groups outside Mass, any of us speaking to any other person, and certainly those who write on religious topics have the privilege and I daresay obligation to pass on what has first gone through prayer. Anyone who has attended a charismatic renewal gathering knows that in such gatherings it is not uncommon for people to stand up to share the fruit of their personal prayer with those assembled. Our own sharing may not be as dramatically presented as those in such gatherings, but we seem to be called to do, for all practical purposes, the same thing. What better communication than to communicate the fruit of prayer?

Certainly, I do not mean adopting the posture of a prophet who prefaces his remarks with "thus sayeth the Lord." But what we communicate can be the fruit of prayer even if we do not ostentatiously label it as such. If we are praying Christians, then it should be assumed that our serious remarks to others should be rooted in that prayer. The lay person is also called to communicate in the appropriate venue what has been contemplated. Even the lay lector at Mass by reading the Scripture should make his or her reading the fruit of contemplation by previously praying over the assigned reading. In a way, the lay lector has the privilege of being the instrument of God's own preaching.

This perspective shows how silly it is for those obsessed with usurping clerical roles to try to have lay people, contrary to the rules of the Church, give homilies at Mass. There is no need to usurp the role of the priest or deacon. As lay people, we are in effect engaging in a form of preaching as lectors in the Mass and everytime we engage in a serious conversation outside the liturgy. This perspective exposes the superficiality of those who think that lay people are empowered only to the extent that they encroach on the roles of the ordained. Such misguided crusaders have missed the boat because they forget that all of us in the active life are called to pass on what has been first contemplated. The mindset of those seeking to encroach on the preaching role of the ordained reflects a mindset alien to a life of prayer. It is an impoverished mindset which equates preaching solely with the homily. The Pope's perspective in contrast brings back to mind that in all the activities of life we are in effect preaching if we pass on the fruit of our prayer. From that deeper perspective, there is no need to compete over liturgical roles.

4th Sunday of Easter: Acts 13:14, 43-52; Revelation 7:9, 14b-17; John 10:27-30

All the readings today focus on the mission ad gentes, to the peoples, to the gentiles. In the Acts of the Apostles, those Jews who rejected the Gospel turned on Paul and Barnabas out of envy with "violent abuse." A strange spectacle of our fallen human nature: to reject good news, the news that God is here to save you from spiritual and physical death. Yet, we do it all the time. The teachings of Christ call us to a high standard of love, yet we still descend to the level of pornographic behavior. The teachings of Christ call us to put relationships above the pursuit of money and power, yet we structure our whole lives around that pursuit. Some parents even jockey to put their small children in competitive preschools so that they can gain a career advantage in the long run! Millions put themselves into enormous debt seeking self-justification by means of conspicuous consumption and thus reject the good news that none of that striving and juggling is even remotely necessary for our welfare. And so it is no surprise today that those attempting to follow Christ are still met with jealousy and violent abuse because the teachings of Christ radically call into question the cherished life plans of many.

In Revelation, the fruit of the mission to the peoples is on display. John has a vision of a great multitude from every race taking part in an eternal Palm Sunday waving palm branches and worshipping God. That is the liturgy we participate in at every Mass. And the promise is not vague: "God will wipe away every tear from their eyes." That is why every Mass is simultaneously solemn and joyful. We are rejoicing that the very structure of reality is merciful.

The Gospel reading is quite brief. Jesus says that his sheep hear his voice, that he knows them, and that they will follow them. The one who rose from the dead and thus proved his credentials now promises that we will have eternal life. The sheep follow him from quite disparate backgrounds, cultures, and tastes. In spite of distance from each other, the sheep gravitate to Him. And so the Church is the sign or sacrament of the unity of all mankind. The old classical humanist saying is that "nothing human is alien to me." Well, nothing that is authentically human is alien to Christ-- for sin is not authentically human.