More on Vatican and Communion Debate

Back on June 5th, I commented on a story from Catholic News Service which gave the impression that the Vatican might somehow restrain those courageous bishops saying they would deny the Eucharist to pro-abortion celebrity politicians. Now, Catholic News Service has followed with a story dated June 11th which is all over the place but, in my opinion, appears to signal that the Vatican is happy to let bishops like Archbishop Burke in St. Louis and Bishop Sheridan in Colorado Springs play a long overdue prophetic role on the problem of pro-abortion Catholic politicians. The key statement in the article is the admission as an undisputed fact that a bishop can indeed deny the Eucharist to a pro-abortion politician. Here is how the article states the matter:

Many at the Vatican would agree that a Catholic politician who supports legal abortion could be denied Communion under church law.

Source: Catholic News Service, "No easy answer: U.S. debate over Communion reverbates at Vatican," by John Thavis, 6/11/05.

In addition, the same article notes as follows:

Now that a few [bishops] have spoken out -- courageously or incautiously, depending on one's point of view -- the Vatican is reluctant to stifle them.

"There's probably some hesitancy (at the Vatican) to undercut somebody who may be taking a prophetic stance, even if it's a little bit imperfect or not terribly nuanced," said one Vatican official

Source: See above link.

How does all this fit into my prior analysis of the situation? In my prior June 5th post, I ruled out that the Vatican would just prohibit denial of the Eucharist to these politicians, because canon law and Eucharistic theology in fact support denial. The latest article supports that conclusion.

I also opined that the Vatican, given its concern, would take some sort of stand, most likely one providing guidelines so that bishops proceed carefully in this matter. If the Vatican sources in this latest article are reliable, then it seems that this is exactly what will happen: the Vatican will urge care and provide guidelines but leave the decision in the hands of individual bishops. And it is important to note, as the latest CNS article does, that an individual bishop cannot be hamstrung by the bishops' conference:

In recent years, in fact, the Vatican has sometimes reminded bishops that their duty to speak out boldly and "prophetically" should not be curbed by the consensus-building efforts of bishops' conferences and other assemblies.

Source: See above link.

So the handful of prophetic bishops can take comfort. As these bishops already know, since some of them are knowledgeable canonists themselves, they are on solid ground in taking the prophetic actions that have generated so much media coverage. In addition, these bishops were right in stepping forward and leading instead of waiting for the bishops' conference task force which does not appear to be in any hurry to address the scandal created by the pro-abortion politicians.

Catholic Does Mean Universal

Sometimes a small news story exposes the chasm between Catholicism and the rest of American culture in a way that even the big stories can fail to do. Recently, the N.Y. Times reported on a story that it is amazing that it even bothered to cover: that American Catholics are asking Catholic priests in India to offer Masses for special intentions and, of course, paying the customary offering associated with such requests ("Short on Priests, U.S. Catholics Outsource Prayers to Indian Clergy," by Saritha Rai, 6/13/04). Why would a major newspaper bother with that story? Even more intriguing, why would this major newspaper present this practice as somehow sinister or even vaguely scandalous? The implied thesis of the article is that this practice is unseemly and means that American Catholicism is on the verge of collapse and that Indian priests are somehow corrupt.

Well, if "catholic" means universal, the practice of American Catholics requesting Masses from Indian priests is not anything that is even remotely bad or unseemly. Rather, this practice is an expression of the heart of Catholicism: Catholicism as a universal communion. This universal communion encompasses Americans and Asian Indians. At the same time, when memorial Masses are involved, this now newsworthy practice shows that the universal communion of Catholicism includes the dead. As Cardinal Ratzinger does not tire of pointing out, the Church must be viewed "diachronically"-- literally, "through time"--and not merely synchronically, that is, focused only on the present or same time. As a result, Ratzinger concludes:

that in the Church no generation is isolated. In the Body of Christ, death no longer works as a limit; in this Body, past, present and future interpenetrate. . . . A majority formed at some juncture against the faith of the Church of all times would be no majority: the true majority in the Church reaches diachronically across the ages, and only when one listens to this plenary majority does one remain in the apostolic "we."

Ratzinger, Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today (Ignatius Press, 1996), p. 99.

In addition to Ratzinger's point that a majority in the Church extends through time, it is also clear that a majority in the Church extends through geography. So the story of Asian Indian priests saying Mass for the intentions of American Catholics is a perfect concrete illustration of the nature of the Catholic Church. She encompasses the living throughout the world and the dead in another world. It all comes down to the traditional description of the Church, seldom heard in American homilies today, the Church Militant on earth, the Church Triumphant in heaven, and the Church Suffering in purgatory. All of those form the one Catholic Church. To split off the Church Militant from the others is to be left with a denomination or club, not a Church.

Ratzinger emphasizes this difference between a Church and a mere denomination holding periodic assemblies or conventions where resolutions are adopted by majority vote. He notes about majorities:

The foruitous majorities that may form here or there in the Church do not decide their and our path: they, the saints, are the true, the normative majority by which we orient ourselves.

Ratzinger, p. 154.

In fact, Ratzinger quotes another cardinal on this point. Cardinal Meisner wrote that "[d]emocracy in the Church means to accord the right to be heard in the present-day generation of Christians to the generations who have believed, hoped, loved and suffered before us" (Ratzinger, p. 154 note 9). Ratzinger comments again that "[i]n fact majority in the Church can never exist only synchronically but in essence is always purely diachronic, because the saints of all times are alive and because they are the true Church" (Ibid.).

And so we can see the great losses inflicted by the Protestant Reformation's rejection of prayers for the dead and de-emphasis on the role of saints. Even worse, we see the stunning myopia of liberal or modernist Catholics who strip our churches of images of the saints and treat purgatory as a medieval fiction. These so-called "reforms" are no more than attempts to dismember the Church.

So when an Asian priest says a Mass for a soul in purgatory, it is a reflection that the soul in purgatory is as much a part of the Church as any Catholic walking on earth. When an Asian priest invokes in the Mass the intercession of a saint or commemorates a saint in the course of praying for the intentions of an American Catholic, that priest is literally "being Church." If I were a non-Catholic reading about this exotic practice of international Mass intentions in the Catholic Church, I would want to be part of that Church, that communion of the living across the earth and including the dead. If a Catholic, I would once again have proof that I am in the right place.

Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ: Gn 14:18-20; 1 Cor. 11:23-26; Lk 9:11b-17

In Genesis, in a way, Christ makes his first appearance in the form of Melchizedek who, as Christ would do much later in the Gospels, brings out bread and wine, as a "priest of God Most High." The book of Hebrews in the New Testament clearly links Christ to Melchizedek. This first "eucharist" was a thanksgiving for the deliverance of Abram from his enemies. This first "eucharist" (which in Greek means "thanksgiving") became a source of blessing for Abram who received the blessing of God's priest. Let us allow Scripture to comment on Scripture:

[Melchizedek] is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness, and then he is also king of Salem, that is, king of peace. He is without father or mother or genealogy, and has neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God he continues a priest for ever.

Hebrews 7:2b-3 (RSV).

In my personal opinion, who else could Melchizedek be but Jesus Christ, the king of righteousness and peace, the pre-existing Word without human genealogy, the Alpha and the Omega? This is only a private opinion, but it is certainly defensible.

In First Corinthians, Paul passes on the tradition about the institution of the Eucharist. The New Melchizedek offers again the bread and wine for our blessing. In Genesis, Abram responded to Melchizedek with a tithe of "everything." Today, as a eucharistic people we will inevitably respond with equal generosity to the blessing we receive.

In Luke, Jesus multiplies the loaves and the fish and "all ate and were satisfied." Jesus as our food satisfies all. He can do so because He is the Alpha and the Omega without "beginning of days nor end of life" as was Melchizedek. Jesus as the Word is also our Creator. As our Creator, only He can satisfy us. No creature on earth, no created thing on earth can satisfy the human heart. We search, sometimes with great agitation, for self-fulfillment. Yet, it is there, quietly and serenely, in the tabernacles of our churches, always waiting for us. For many of us, it takes a great crisis of "hunger," a personal tragedy or failure of some sort, to bring us there. Our suffering, our finding ourselves "in a deserted place" like the crowd fed by Jesus, finally brings us back to reality.

The Cultural War Targets Religion

We are now in a society where casual heterosexual promiscuity and gay sexual relationships are openly accepted and celebrated as healthy and normal. We are in society where pornography and indecent fashion are everywhere accepted as part of the scenery. Just ask yourself: how many baby boomers are raising their kids to be chaste? The vast majority of baby boomer families will never raise the issue. It is not a surprise. If the parents don't believe it, never practiced it, and probably don't practice it today, how can chastity be transmitted to future generations? One major national political party and even some politicians, especially from the Northeast, in the other national political party view abortion has a fundamental civil right. All of these anti-Christian beliefs and behaviors are openly and aggressively pushed in our society. They have become noncontroversial for many.

Yet, if anyone invokes God or religion, there is a cultural problem. Religion is supposed to remain a private taste and search for spiritual self-fulfillment with no public impact. Religion is not supposed to be part of the national debate. And it is certainly not supposed to have a political impact. That's why George W. Bush is especially hated by liberals--because he does not hide his evangelical Christian faith. That's why the liberal media is up in arms over some Catholic bishops protecting the Eucharist from sacrilege and scandal.

One of the lies, parroted even by some people claiming to be religious, that plays a central role in this onslaught on traditional religion is the lie that sexual sins are just not serious sins. Some spiritual writers, including C.S. Lewis, have indeed correctly pointed out that passionate sins of the flesh are not as deadly as the more cold-blooded sins of pride and hatred. So much is true. But a needed correction needs to be made in our modern circumstances. Most spiritual writers who have correctly pointed this out lived in societies in which everyone knew that sexual sins were sins. They obviously occurred frequently, but no one claimed they were virtues or something to be openly proud of. Today, the situation is quite different because contemporary Western society rejects the concept of sin itself. And so sexual sin is not mitigated by a social consensus, by religious belief, or by shame. Instead, the bold pervasiveness of openly celebrated sexual sin has grown to huge proportions.

In my view, writers like C.S. Lewis and others, including Dante, viewed sexual sin as a weakness of the flesh due to our concupiscence--that is, in spite of our best intentions and ideals, we fell. They contrasted this weakness of the flesh with the more calculated and cold-blooded hatred exhibited in sins of pride and self-righteousness. But in modern societies, we do not tend to fall into sexual sin as a mere lapse but rather as an intended lifestyle. In our society, the fundamental option has been made by many that we are obligated to satiate consupiscence and leave it unchecked.

And so, today sexual sin is not so much about lapses, but a matter of consciously chosen lifestyles. That conscious choice is cold-blooded, not a product of momentary passion that is later regreted. The roots of that cold-blooded choice lie in our selfishness and our pride, in our callous exploitation of others for our selfish gratification. Now, in a society that misleads many into thinking that these lifestyles are good and normal, the person's subjective fault may not be clear, at least in the beginning. But, as all moral inhibitions are jettisoned, I submit that the harm done becomes progressively more obvious and subjective culpability increases. After all, we are rational beings. We cannot fail to observe the increasing injury done to others and to ourselves.

In addition to that selfishness, consider the self-righteousness of modern sexual immorality which refuses to question itself. Sexual license is viewed as a fundamental right that knows no limits--even the "contraceptive" killing of the unborn. This license has become an obsession and a tyrant. The sins of the flesh as practiced today are frequently rooted in an imperious self-righteousness that considers itself beyond good and evil. It is not the sort of momentary lapse that spiritual writers of another era were most familiar with. Sexual sin today exhibits a tyrannical self-righteousness that bridles at any dissent and refuses to blush.

In the face of this new tyranny, to invoke one's religion is equivalent to refusing to worship Caesar in the Roman Empire. It sets you distinctly apart. We are all supposed today to worship the secular Caesar of license in which religion is marginalized as a private self-help game. And even when you don't invoke your religion but merely argue for the right to life and for responsible behavior based on reason, human rights, and natural law, liberals will try to disqualify your views as religion in disguise. For liberals, the argument is won if any of your positions on an issue is consistent with historic Christianity. The only role liberals will allow for religion is as an inspiration for social work or "Peace Corps" work that duplicates secular inspiration.

Thus, it is no surprise that polls consistently show that greater church attendance correlates with voting Republican. Secularized society considers religion the greatest scandal while at the same time exalting real scandal as freedom. For Christians, the situation is hostile, but there is a silver lining. We are called to risk mockery for the faith. Today, it is easy to fulfill that call. All that we have to do is merely question the new tyranny celebrated all around us.

Reagan Would Not Have Backed Destroying Embryos for Stem Cell Research

Today's N.Y. Times has an op-ed by William P. Clark, a former Reagan adviser and cabinet secretary, reiterating that Reagan was 100% pro-life. In the piece, Clark emphasizes that Reagan would not have in any way backed calls for stem cell research that requires the destruction of human embryos. Rather, Clark persuasively argues that Reagan would have shifted our attention to the promising potential in adult stem cell research. Clark, a Catholic, has great credibility when it comes to Reagan's views because Clark was for years close to Reagan.

Clark quotes from a 1983 speech by Reagan:

"We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life — the unborn — without diminishing the value of all human life," he wrote. He went on to emphasize "the truth of human dignity under God" and "respect for the sacred value of human life." Because modern science has revealed the wonder of human development, and modern medicine treats "the developing human as a patient," he declared, "the real question today is not when human life begins, but, What is the value of human life?"

Source: N.Y. Times Online (free reg'n required), "For Reagan, All Life Was Sacred," by William P. Clark, Op-Ed section, 6-11-04.

So don't let anyone forget that Reagan was a pro-life President. Even more telling was that in his famous "Evil Empire" speech before the National Association of Evangelicals, also in 1983, he made these remarks about abortion:

"Abortion on demand now takes the lives of up to one and a half million unborn children a year," he said. "Unless and until it can be proven that the unborn child is not a living entity, then its right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must be protected."

Source: see link above.

And so the Soviet Union was not the only evil empire referred to in that famous speech. It is time to recognize that Reagan was also talking about another evil empire tolerated in our midst: the evil empire of abortion founded on Roe v. Wade.

Peggy Noonan on Ronald Reagan

Especially in light of the Clinton years, the title of Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan's biography of Reagan says it all: When Character Was King (Penguin Books, 2001). Noonan was a former Reagan speech writer who worked on some of Reagan's most memorable speeches. She is also a strong Catholic and admirer of John Paul II.

The book is one of those that you will eagerly wish to read through as quickly as possible because of its gripping personal anecdotes. Noonan likes the personal, as most of us do, and so she does not disappoint us.

Reagan's strong religious faith inherited from his devout evangelical Protestant mother is key to his character. Like his mother, he believed that everything, good or bad, happens for a reason known to God. That was the basis of his optimism, not raw nationalism. And so, he thought that his survival of assassination in 1981 was the will of God:

Later Reagan would say he was sure someone was looking out for him that day. Which is precisely what Pope John Paul II himself would think, when, eight weeks later, he too would be the victim of an assassination attempt. The pope, who was Reagan's ideological and philosophical comrade, felt that he had been saved by the intercession of the Blessed Mother. It was the feast of Our Lady of Fatima, and the pope was a Marian devotee. When he survived he said that the rest of his life was owed to God, would go to God.

Eight weeks earlier, across the sea, Ronald Reagan in recovery also said that whatever time he had left was God's, would go to God.

Noonan, pp. 193-94.

The intersection of these two men in history and in the collapse of Soviet Communism was no accident.

Reagan's great faith in divine providence brought to the world stage the role of his mother. This small, devout, busy Bible-reading Midwestern "church lady" helped to change the world (see Noonan, p. 20). She transmitted a faith-based optimism to her son, and he brought it to the world when the world needed it. As Mother Teresa would say, "Do small things with great love." Nelle Reagan practiced it, and the world reaped the benefits in ways she could have never imagined. Yes, the humble can be world historical. Our small acts of faith will have an impact that we will never fully know in this life.

And Reagan, the former heroic lifeguard who had saved 77 people in his youth, was pro-life. Here is an anecdote concerning Reagan's pro-life activism as recalled by one his assistants:

We had a meeting in the cabinet room every January twenty second [the anniversary of Roe v. Wade], and all the right to life leaders were there, and as the meeting was ending he said, 'Wait a minute, we haven't asked about whether the baby feels pain during an abortion, we have to talk about it.' So they did. The next year Bernie Nathanson did the film The Silent Scream, with the baby kicking away from the needle--he did that because of Reagan. The old lifesaver at it again . . . .

Noonan, p. 259.

Reagan and his character are not out-of-date. His character is needed today more than ever. And we are fortunate that the President who will preside over the ceremonies today is George W. Bush, another man of deep religious faith, optimism, and strong character. I believe it is no accident that Reagan left this world during this particular administration. A Reagan funeral presided over by a President Clinton or a President Gore would have been as jarring as having a papal funeral presided over by an atheist.

Near the end of her book, Noonan has a chapter in which she interviewed George W. Bush about Reagan. She gives her historical assessment of our current President Bush, an assessment that George W. Bush apparently shares. It is an assessment that puts the relation between Reagan and George W. Bush in the perspective of American history:

Since September 11, Bush has put me in mind over and over . . . of Harry Truman, whom Bush had brought up in our interview. Truman had followed a charismatic leader, had seemed too plain and uninteresting to fill a president's shoes and was, his first few years in office at least, a bland public speaker, an uninspiring man. But this plain, uninteresting, colorless man had managed to do pretty much everything right. He rallied his war-tired nation to rebuild Europe, to support the Marshall Plan, to stop Soviet communism in Greece, to wage a war to stop it in Korea. He was a leader. He just didn't seem at the time, early on, to be one. I think in Bush we have a Truman. And my hunch is: Bush thinks so too.

Noonan, pp. 309-10.

You will hear it again and again this week: Ronald Reagan ranks with Franklin Roosevelt in transforming the American landscape. We are fortunate to have Reagan's Truman in office: a very different man from his predecessor but similar in the one thing that counts--character.

Michigan Bans Partial Birth Abortion

Recently, a federal judge declared the federal ban on partial birth abortion unconsititutional. But, in Michigan, 460,000 registered voters signed a petition banning partial birth abortion as a matter of state law (see Detroit News story, "Late-term abortions banned," 6/10/04). The Michigan legislature today comfortably passed the ban presented by the citizens' petition. The petition process was necessary because it allows the legislation to bypass the pro-abortion governor, who had previously vetoed a prior ban passed by the legislature. Now, the pro-abortion governor is out of the loop.

The pro-abortion and pro-partial-birth-abortion governor is Democrat Jennifer Granholm, who receives Holy Communion in the Catholic Diocese of Lansing. She claims that she cannot impose Catholic teaching on Michigan. 460,000 registered voters, Catholic and non-Catholic, want the ban on partial birth abortion. Comfortable majorities in the legislature also want the ban. It is not a matter of imposing Catholic teaching but of proposing and working for the protection of the most fundamental of human rights. The truth is that Gov. Granholm's reference to not imposing religion is a smokescreen. The reality is that she does not consider the unborn or partially born child a human person deserving of the right to life.

A brief comparison is instructive. In the recent past, the Vatican found it necessary, in response to complaints, to explicitly instruct clergy not to deny the Eucharist to individuals who choose to genuflect as a sign of reverence prior to receiving the Eucharist. In other words, some priests were in fact refusing the Eucharist to individuals that merely made a traditional gesture of devotion and reverence for the Body of Christ. Yet, today, many clerics say they just can't bring themselves to deny the Eucharist to pro-abortion politicians. It is surely paradoxical that some were denied the Eucharist for being too devout, while pro-abortion crusaders like Gov. Granholm get a free pass.

The citizens of Michigan, with the help of the Catholic Church, successfully stood up to Gov. Granholm's fanatical devotion to abortion. Now, it is time for the Church to also stand up to politicians like Gov. Granholm in matters of sacramental discipline.

Media Poll Manipulation

One tried and true tactic of liberal media spin involves political polls. A biased and defective poll is a convenient way to make a partisan editorial favoring liberals under the cover of objectively reporting "public opinion." A biased poll is nothing more than a disguised editorial. The most recent example is the poll just released by the liberal Los Angeles Times claiming a Kerry lead of seven points over President Bush. Here is the strong response by Bush strategist Matthew Dowd as related to MSNBC's online First Read feature:

Bush campaign senior advisor Matthew Dowd tells First Read that the poll "is a mess. Bush is leading independents by three, ahead among Republicans by a larger margin than Kerry is ahead among Dems, and we are down by seven. Outrageous. And it gets worse. They have Dems leading generic congressional ballot by 19. This means this poll is too Democratic by 10 to 12 points."

Source: MSNBC's First Read, June 10, 2004 (emphasis added).

What Dowd is referring to is the voter sample skewed in favor of Democratic voters. You will not get those background details from the L.A. Times.

For a reality check, see the latest Fox News poll ("Poll: Bush, Kerry Still Closely Matched," 6/10/04, by Dana Blanton), and the latest Rasmussen poll showing a tight presidential race.

Another poll that is, in my opinion, problematic is the Zogby poll which has shown a plummeting approval rating for the President in the recent past. The problem is that Zogby apparently does not ask its respondents directly whether or not they approve or disapprove of the President's performance. Instead, Zogby asks if the respondent views the President's performance as excellent, good, fair, or poor. I know because I have been one of the respondents in his interactive poll. Zogby confirmed to me by e-mail that he treats "fair" responses as equivalent to "disapproval." In Zogby's own words, "Fair = Negative!" (e-mail communication dated 6/2/04). For me, and I believe for most people, "fair" intuitively means satisfactory or O.K. That's what it means when I see it on a child's report card. So, in my view, Zogby's numbers on the President's approval rating are highly questionable.

According to pollster Scott Rasmussen, the CBS poll--which also tends, in my opinion, to put the President in a worse light compared to other polls--has had problems in the past with undersampling of Republicans (e-mail communication dated 6/5/04). In sum, the lesson is: before you take a poll seriously, ask around and research it. What is not disclosed may surprise you. At a minimum, compare with other recent polls. As President Reagan liked to say, "trust but verify." For Catholics, it's known as the virtue of prudence.

A Study in Contrasts on D-Day: Secular Humanism vs. Bibles

On June 6, 2004, the President of France, Jacques Chirac, made his remarks at Normandy commemorating D-Day. Chirac appropriately gave his sincere thanks to all that America sacrificed to liberate France in 1944. President Bush followed with his own remarks. The contrast between the contents of these two speeches tells us much about the difference between secular France and a United States in which many Americans still view themselves as religious.

Not once in his speech--as far as I can see--does the French President mention God. He never invokes the blessings of God on the free world, nor does he invoke God's mercy on the departed. Instead, Chirac, true to the heritage of secularism borne of the French Revolution, invokes "humanist" values:

For over 200 years now, the same humanist values have shaped the destinies of France and America. Our two nations have never ceased to share common love of liberty and law, of justice and democracy. These values are rooted in the very depths of our cultures and civilization. They are the spirit of our peoples. They are the heart and soul of our nations. From the plains of Yorktown to the beaches of Normandy, in the suffering of those global conflicts that have rent the past century, our two countries, our two peoples have stood shoulder to shoulder in the brotherhood of blood spilled, in defense of a certain ideal of mankind, of a certain vision of the world -- the vision that lies at the heart of the United Nations Charter.

Source: Available at this link (emphasis added).

In contrast, President Bush invoked the mercy of God on those who died on D-Day and ended his speech with a poignant reference to the many Bibles that were strewn among the dead American bodies that littered the French coast on D-Day:

When the invasion was finally over and the guns were silent, this coast, we are told, was lined for miles with the belongings of the thousands who fell. There were life belts and canteens and socks and K-rations and helmets and diaries and snapshots. And there were Bibles, many Bibles, mixed with the wreckage of war. Our boys had carried in their pockets the book that brought into the world this message: Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

America honors all the liberators who fought here in the noblest of causes, and America would do it again for our friends. May God bless you. (Applause.)

Source: Available at this link.

Chirac's blatant secularism echoes the French refusal to incorporate any references to God in the European Union's new constitution, in spite of insistent pleas from the Pope and some other European nations. The French Revolution ushered in an era of instability, dictatorship, war, humiliation, and surrender for France beginning in 1789 and ending with the ignominy of Vichy France. In fact, the French Revolution is famous for its Reign of Terror. In today's world in which terrorists are the prime external enemies of the free world, France gave us the first terrorists in the Reign of Terror.

Something is radically wrong in a France where at a solemn occasion commemorating the dead the President of the Republic makes no reference to God. A growing Middle Eastern population and declining French fertility indicate that French society will likely face major demographic changes in the near future. In my view, such declining fertility is a function of secularism. Ironically, French secularism may very well lead to increased religious fundamentalism from its Muslim residents. The country that spawned the Reign of Terror may face increased anti-secular Muslim terrorist activity on its own soil. The Old Europe is sick, and the source of its sickness is plain for all to see: a visceral hostility to religion.

Compare and Choose [Updated]

Let's get to the point, and evaluate the two candidates for President from a Catholic point of view. Bush is pro-life, while Kerry is a leading pillar of the abortion regime. Bush favors the death penalty, while Kerry apparently favors the death penalty for some crimes. As to the war in Iraq, the only difference appears to be that Kerry would have favored even more diplomacy prior to attacking Saddam Hussein--although it is hard to tell what Kerry actually thinks about Iraq. My view is that what Kerry says about Iraq depends on the latest polling and the latest campaign strategy meeting.

If we go through the issues one by one, we see that the Catholic choice is Bush. On abortion, Bush wants to return to the legal regime prior to Roe v. Wade in which the abortion issue was left in the hands of state legislatures with most states allowing abortion only in very restricted cases (see Abortion Law Before Roe v. Wade, by James S. Cole). Kerry of course favors Roe v. Wade as an essential civil rights landmark which made abortion on demand a federal constitutional right immune to tampering by state legislatures. While the Catholic position is no direct abortion ever, it is obvious that the Catholic voter must go with Bush, the candidate who wants to roll back Roe v. Wade's constitutional regime of abortion on demand.

As to the death penalty, neither candidate rules it out completely. Neither does the Church. The Catholic News Service runs an article where the Catholic distinction between abortion and the death penalty is clear: direct abortion is always wrong, while the death penalty can sometimes be appropriate (see Catholic News Service, "Church opposes abortion, death penalty--but experts see a difference," by Agostino Bono, June 8, 2004). Direct abortion is absolutely wrong, while the death penalty is more a matter of mercy mitigating a morally allowable option for society. It is impossible for a Catholic to put abortion and the death penalty on the same moral level, in spite of the misleading use of the "Seamless Garment" argument by many Democrats.

As to war, it is all a matter of how much diplomacy is enough. Like many, I consider that the President satisfactorily engaged in extended diplomacy to avert war and that he rightly took military action as a last resort. Kerry, at least for the moment, appears to disagree, but does not rule out eventually having attacked Iraq. So the difference here is one of political and diplomatic judgment. It is not a matter of fundamental moral absolutes as in the case of abortion. The war issue does not tip the scale one way or the other between these candidates. Consistent with Church teaching, the determination of a just war is a matter of prudential judgment for properly constituted civil authority (Catechism, section 2309).

As to stem cell research, Bush opposes expansion of research that would involve destroying human embryos. The Bush policy announced in August of 2001 was that such research could take place only on existing stem cell lines that did not involve the new destruction of human embryos (see Remarks by the President on Stem Cell Research, 8/9/01). Given the media spotlight on Alzheimer's disease arising from President Reagan's death, Kerry is seeking to exploit the emotions of the moment to push for removal of the ethical standards applied by President Bush on such research, even though experts say it is unlikely that stem cell research would lead to a breakthrough on Alzheimer's (see Associated Press story, "Kerry on Radio Promotes Stem Cell Research," 6/12/04). In contrast to Kerry's opportunism, Bush is resisting pressure from both parties in Congress to loosen restrictions on stem cell research that would involve destroying human embryos (see Reuters story, "Senators Ask Bush to Change on Stem Cell Policy," by Thomas Ferraro, 6/7/04).

And to top it all off, we now have the issue of gay marriage, which is, of course, contrary to Catholic teaching. Bush supports a federal constitutional amendment to define marriage as being exclusively between one man and one woman. Kerry rejects any such amendment because it would foreclose future court decisions legalizing gay marriage, as has already happened in Kerry's home state of Massachusetts. The gay lobby is, like the pro-abortion lobby, an essential part of the modern Democratic coalition.

In sum, because Roe v. Wade has made the widespread and routine murder of the innocent socially acceptable, the fate of this court decision is paramount: roll back Roe v. Wade or maintain and strengthen Roe v. Wade? Bush would roll it back, while Kerry would strengthen the reach of Roe v. Wade, as he has proven by opposing even the ban on partial birth abortion. If Democrats want the intelligent and conscientious Catholic vote, they have to begin by rejecting Roe v. Wade--something the Democrats will never do because it is a pillar of their party's very existence. The Democrats have written off the informed Catholic vote. We Catholics should write them off as well. Liberal Catholics, including some prominent clerics, who seek to obscure the obvious moral choice are playing a game of smoke and mirrors.

Update: Another reason to prefer Bush emerged today. Laura Bush affirmed that restrictions on stem cell research should not be relaxed, even in the face of the understandably emotional plea of Nancy Reagan for relaxing such restrictions. See Associated Press story, "Laura Bush Says Cannot Support Stem Cell Research," by Sue Pleming, June 9, 2004.

Wojtyla the Prophet from 1960

While working on some minor revisions to the Catholic Analysis book Unpopular Catholic Truths, I saw once again how John Paul II was truly a prophet years before he became pope. Back in 1960, while a young bishop in Poland, Karol Wojtyla wrote Love and Responsibility, whose very title is the opposite of the "Lust and Irresponsibility" that the sixties would bring to the forefront in the way Western culture began to openly and aggressively view and organize relations between men and women. God gave us a prophet to warn us just before the cultural embrace of lust and irresponsibility and a prophet to guide us today in recovering from the disastrous physical and emotional legacy of decades of socially approved lust and irresponsibility.

In the book, I struggled with the issue of the primary ends of marriage and the issue of birth control. Liberals claim that with Vatican II the Church replaced procreation as the primary aim of marriage with "love." The liberals--whom, like Weigel, I define as those who believe in religion we make up, as opposed to revealed religion--love to make this claim as a justification for contraception and even for gay unions. But, of course, Vatican II did no such thing. And in Love and Responsibility, John Paul II gives us a key to interpret the passages of Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes, especially section 50, in which the Council speaks of procreation as the aim of "the true practice of conjugal love and the whole meaning of family life." In the same section, the Council also stated that "[m]arriage and conjugal love are by their nature ordained to the begetting and educating of children."

So, clearly, Vatican II's own words, ipissima verba, show no deemphasis on procreation. But how to relate the prominence still given to the aim of procreation with the emphasis on conjugal love? Prophet Wojtyla easily cuts the Gordian knot. In Love and Responsibility, Wojtyla makes clear that the traditional aims of marriage in Catholic tradition have not changed: the "primary end" of procreation, the end of mutual help between the spouses, and the end of satisfying sexual desire still remain (Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility [Ignatius Press, 1993], p. 66).

But, in a brilliant move, Wojtyla preempts any potential conflict between this listing of the aims of marriage and the importance of conjugal love. He does so by making use of what he calls the "personalistic norm" by which he means the moral imperative that the "only proper and adequate way" to relate to a person is through love (p. 41). This personalistic norm is the "principle on which the proper realization of each of the aims" of marriage depends (p. 67).

As a result, none of the aims of marriage can be realized apart from love and, in fact, are "realized in practice as a single complex aim" (p. 68). Yet, Wojtyla still affirms that "procreation is objectively, ontologically, a more important purpose" than the other aims of marriage because the "possibility of procreation" is necessary for the flourishing of mutual help between the spouses (p. 68) and for the flourishing of the "spontaneity and depth" of sexual intimacy (p. 69). In sum, marriage "always remains above all an intimate bond between two people," but, at the same time, procreation always remains the primary aim of marriage. As others have pointed out, it is the difference between defining what marriage is and articulating the primary aim of marriage. There is no break with Catholic tradition as the liberals like to imagine.

The impact of Wojtyla the prophet and pope is only beginning. Recently, even the New York Times took note that the Pope's Theology of the Body is spreading:

Dissemination of the theology started only in the last decade or so but has picked up in recent years. Advocates say it has taken years to study and interpret the pope's ideas on the subject.
But theologians say it is seeping into marriage preparation classes, workshops for the clergy, and other programs. Led by laypeople, dozens of groups have sprung up around the country to study the pope's views.

Source: N.Y. Times Online, "Spreading the Pope's Message on Sexuality and the Spirit," by Mireya Navarro, June 7, 2004, N.Y. Region section (Isn't funny that the article is not in the "National" section of the newspaper where it should be?).

For recent generations who learned about sexuality through the pornographic lense of manuals like the inaptly entitled The Joy of Sex, the Theology of the Body is long overdue for rewiring our minds on sexual matters. For newer generations, it will save them from a lot of the heartache and personal tragedy arising from the sexual "sound and fury signifying nothing" offered by our secular culture.

Ronald Reagan: A Superior Model for Aspiring Presidents

With the death of Ronald Reagan, there has been an outpouring of front-page headlines, of spontaneous tributes by average citizens, and of praise with non-stop, universal coverage by news outlets. All of this will continue at least throughout this week, culminating with a National Day of Mourning proclaimed by President Bush to coincide with Reagan's state funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. But tributes to Reagan had begun long ago: Reagan Airport in Washington, D.C., the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Ronald Reagan, and even a proposal to put his image on our coins. One news report noted that already numerous streets and schools have been named for Reagan. As a Cuban-American, I recall that in the eighties there was already a Ronald Reagan avenue running through Miami's Little Havana. Cuban-Americans knew that he was their friend. The news report also mentioned that there already is a Mount Reagan. Don't be surprised if you find Reagan's image someday in your pocket change.

From a wider perspective, the passing of Reagan offers a unique cultural and psychological moment. He is rightly praised for making America optimistic again during his term of office. He may now, in death, be working an even more beneficial transformation in the way Americans think by providing a new model for presidential leadership that can potentially be influential for generations.

For decades now, a fascination with the late President Kennedy has held sway with large numbers of Americans. But most significantly, this Kennedy fascination has had a strong influence on the generations of Democratic politicians that followed Kennedy. Bill Clinton, for one, idolizes Kennedy. It is clear that Kerry is of the same mind as Clinton. Numerous other Democratic politicians and rank and file voters, both Democratic and not Democratic, still view Kennedy as the model president. Reagan may change all of that for our culture.

The great Kennedy mystique is based on his oratory, wit, charisma, and looks. The Reagan mystique is more than a match for Kennedy on all of these points. Reagan's muscular oratory is unforgettable for its boldness and fearlessness in an age of political correctness. Reagan's wit and charisma are second to none. And, even in looks, it is hard to imagine someone better cast for looking presidential. Reagan's posture, stride, and demeanor bespoke presidential authority.

But, unlike Kennedy, Reagan survived the attempt on his life and served two complete terms. In those years, Reagan was able to do what Kennedy did not have the chance to do: to transform American politics. Reagan put liberalism on the defensive. He laid the foundation for the historic Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. Today, however tenuous, there is indeed undeniable evidence of the Republican realignment that began under Reagan. More voters identify themselves as Republican than ever in our recent history, and both houses of Congress are under Republican control. Kennedy, in contrast, inherited an already strong Democratic Party dominant in Congress for years before Kennedy took office. Radical changes in policy were left by fate to Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.

Even more important, from a Catholic point of view, than these political generalizations is the personal model of leadership that Reagan provides for future aspiring presidents. While Kennedy's ambition for the presidency trumped ideology, for Reagan conservative ideas were the reason to seek the presidency in the first place. The priority of ideas over manic ambition can be seen in the contrast between Kennedy the youngest man ever elected president and Reagan the oldest man ever elected president. Reagan was not an "ambition machine" on the fast track from an early age. Reagan acquired strong political convictions before he acquired presidential fever.

Here is how one historical overview described the very different Reagan route to the presidency:

Ronald Reagan, governor of California for eight years and President of the United States for another eight, never thought of himself as a politician. His journey to the White House was not marked by a burning lust for power or position. Ronald Reagan preferred to see himself as a simple citizen who had been called upon to come to the aid of the nation he so loved. His mission, as he saw it, was to free his fellow citizens from the clutches of an invasive federal government, and to rid the world of the tyranny of Communism.

Source: PBS's American Experience: The Presidents (Legacy, Ronald Reagan, 40th President).

On the more personal level, there is further contrast. While Kennedy is famous for his adulteries, Reagan is famous for star-struck devotion to Nancy Reagan. It is unimaginable that Ronald Reagan would have betrayed Nancy Reagan as President Kennedy casually betrayed Jackie Kennedy.

But, in my opinion, the most significant personal contrast between Kennedy and Reagan is in their very different reactions to the dysfunctions of their fathers. Kennedy's father, Joseph Kennedy, was severely dysfunctional in his own compulsive adulteries. Unfortunately, this dysfunction, and its accompanying damage to character and recklessness, flourished in President Kennedy.

Reagan's own father also had a serious dysfunction: alcoholism. But, in contrast to the Kennedy embrace of paternal dysfunction, Reagan emphatically rejected the dysfunction of his own father. Here is how Reagan rejected the flaws of his own father:

Reagan was no stranger to seemingly dismal situations. His childhood was marked by poverty, an alcoholic father and a long-suffering, "do-gooder" mother. Despite this, Reagan early on embraced an optimistic outlook that often defied the reality around him. In time, his rosy perspective and faith in better days ahead would win over legions.

The youngest of John and Nelle Reagan's two sons, Ronald Reagan was born on February 6, 1911 in Tampico, Illinois. When Ronald -- his family called him "Dutch" -- was nine, the Reagans moved to nearby Dixon. What little money John Reagan earned as a shoe salesman was often squandered on his drinking binges. As an adult, Reagan would say of his boyhood, "We didn't live on the wrong side of the tracks, but we lived so close to them we could hear the whistle real loud." But the future president appeared to gain wisdom from his meager beginnings, later reporting, "...I learned the real riches of rags."

Reagan's mother, Nelle, instilled in her son her belief in the essential goodness of all people and the importance of religious devotion. She encouraged Ron to participate in Disciples of Christ church activities and doctrine. Young Ron was especially drawn to the sect's strict abhorrence to alcohol. Not yet a teenager, Reagan honed his public speaking skills drumming up support for Prohibition.

Source: PBS's American Experience: The Presidents (Early Career, Ronald Reagan, 40th President).

Maybe, the lack of economic success of his own dysfunctional father, along with the presence of a mother determined that the pattern would not be repeated, made it easier for Reagan to escape his father's problems. In contrast, the Kennedy brood could not escape the shadow of the wealthy, successful, and dominating Joseph Kennedy. It is not the first time that a humble background turns out to be a blessing.

And so character won in Ronald Reagan's life from an early age. Reagan pursued an idealism integral to his character, not a superficial idealism founded on manic ambition. I submit that Reagan's model of idealistic character is a far better legacy for aspiring presidents than the Kennedy model of manic ambition combined with gravely wounded character. The Kennedy model gave us the highly flawed President Clinton. The Reagan model offers us something better. Let us hope that a paradigm shift occurs and that the better model replaces the tragic legacy of a mythic Camelot. That cultural shift may turn out to be Reagan's greatest contribution to the country he loved.

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity: Proverbs 8:22-31; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

The reading from Proverbs provides a hint of the full revelation of the Trinity in the New Testament. This reading speaks of the wisdom of God who participated with God in His creation of the heavens and the earth. In John 1:1-4, the fullness of this revelation is finally made clear:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

In Romans, Paul mentions in the course of the five verses read today: God, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. In Pauline usage, the term "God" was traditionally and customarily reserved for the Father, even though both Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit were also unquestionably viewed as divine. The fact that all three, the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, are mentioned repeatedly in the same breath by Paul in his letters gives us the triadic reality which the Church would later come to call the Trinity.

In the Gospel reading, Jesus himself presents the triadic reality of God. Jesus declares that the "Spirit of truth" will guide the disciples to all truth. Jesus further states that this Spirit "will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you." Jesus then says that "[e]verything that the Father has is mine." Jesus thus links all the persons of the Trinity: whatever the Father has, Jesus Christ also has, and the Holy Spirit in turn will declare what they both identically have. And so from the mouth of Jesus himself we have three person in one Godhead--the Most Holy Trinity, a thoroughly biblical doctrine and teaching.

Ronald Reagan (1911-2004): "Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation"

At the time of the 10th anniversary of Roe v. Wade in 1983, The Human Life Review published an essay by President Reagan. Here is the conclusion of that essay:

Abraham Lincoln recognized that we could not survive as a free land when some men could decide that others were not fit to be free and should therefore be slaves. Likewise, we cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide. My Administration is dedicated to the preservation of America as a free land, and there is no cause more important for preserving that freedom than affirming the transcendent right to life of all human beings, the right without which no other rights have any meaning.

Source: The Human Life Review, Spring 1983.

When reading the entire essay at the above link, you will see that Reagan's words and analysis are as true today as they were in 1983. In fact, the urgency of Reagan's warning about infanticide, the urgency of his warning about proposals to slaughter disabled infants, and his pointing to medical advances that clearly show that the unborn child is a living human being and medical patient capable of feeling pain have been amply confirmed by developments since 1983. We stand today on the threshold of a society that will treat all life as something to be snuffed out at will by those who have the power to do so for the sake of personal, economic, or social convenience. Reagan was right in 1983. He is right today. Like Reagan, all believers in life must remain optimistic and persevere in the struggle against the Culture of Death. No other struggle is even remotely as important as this great crusade.

Vatican Entering Communion Debate

Given the divisions among American bishops on the issue of denying communion to pro-abortion political celebrities, it is no surprise that the Catholic News Service is reporting that the Vatican, through Cardinal Ratzinger, is seeking to address the issue with American bishops ("Vatican wants to meet with U.S. task force on Catholic politicians," June 3, 2004, by John Thavis).

Unfortunately, the Catholic News Service article is, in my opinion, biased in favor of those bishops who tremble at the thought of denying communion, but apparently not at the sacrilege of giving it. How can you easily spot the bias? Notice the end of an article and ask yourself what is the last word, the last quote, the last thought with which the reader is left. In the article, the last quotes reflect the position of a New Mexico bishop who appears very anxious about the possibility of having to deny communion to a pro-abortion crusader.

This particular bishop ends with a reference to the late Jesuit theologian John Courtney Murray who is famous for his work on religious freedom. What the bishop does not mention, at least in the article, is that Murray's death in 1968 occurred five years before Roe v. Wade. In other words, we don't have the benefit of Murray's insights on the spectacle of abortion on demand being aggressively promoted by Catholic politicians for the last thirty years. Murray did not live to see one of the major national political parties make a abortion a non-negotiable civil rights issue. He did not live to see that the party taking this huge step would be the party that had traditionally benefited from Catholic voter loyalty.

The article quotes Murray to the effect that the legislator does not have to prohibit all that morality prohibits, or promote all that morality demands. As a very general statement, that is surely true, as Aquinas would also agree. In fact, Aquinas states the matter with the needed precision:

Human law does not forbid all vicious acts, by the obligation of a precept, as neither does it prescribe all acts of virtue. But it forbids certain acts of each vice, just as it prescribes some acts of each virtue.

Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Pt. I-II, Q. 96, Art. 4 (Reply to Obj. 1).

So the real issue is whether the direct taking of innocent life in abortion should be prohibited. Aquinas, in my view, answers the question with this passage:

Human laws do not forbid all vices, from which the virtuous abstain, but only the more grievous vices, from which it is possible for the majority to abstain; and chiefly those that are to the hurt of others, without the prohibition of which human society could not be maintained: thus human law prohibits murder, theft and such-like.

Summa, Pat. I-II, Q. 96, Art. 2 (body of the article).

The direct, voluntary killing of the innocent is murder. The majority can abstain from it. The right to life is fundamental to the maintenance of human society because, without life, we obviously cannot participate in any aspect of human society. Surely, abortion is to the hurt of another. That is undeniable Catholic teaching.

The non-controversial truism that laws do not enact the entire moral code cannot mean that the law can promote denial of the right to life of the innocent. Aquinas would say that such a law would in fact be no law:

[E]very human law has just so much of the nature of law, as it is derived from the law of nature. But if in any point it deflects from the law of nature, it is no longer a law but a perversion of law.

Summa Theologiae, Pt. I-II, Q. 95, Art. 2 (body of article).

Yet, the journalist does not blink at leaving the bishop's unenlightening statement unchallenged.

But what will the Vatican do? At least three possibilities come to mind. Either the Vatican position will seek to prohibit denying communion to pro-abortion politicians, or it will promote a policy of caution with specific guidelines on when denial should take place, or it will, in the end, contribute nothing specific to the debate. I find it hard to believe that if the Vatican is showing serious concern with the issue that it will fail to take a position on the issue. So that leaves the other two options. Will the Vatican stop bishops from denying communion to pro-abortion politicians? I certainly hope not. I do not think that they will given the clear authorization to do so in the Code of Canon Law (Canon 915). In addition, the Vatican itself recently issued a document on the obligations of Catholic politicians and voters that lays the foundation for the action taken by a few brave bishops. Finally, the theology of the Eucharist articulated by the Vatican, recently the subject of a papal encyclical and a disciplinary document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, shows the urgency with which Rome views the abuses of the Eucharist.

Moreover, Ratzinger's own writings on the Eucharist show that the Eucharist
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, God is Near Us [Ignatius Press, 1993], p. 60). The argument made by some who oppose denial of the Eucharist is that the Eucharist is not a "reward" for our good behavior but a sacrament for the "journey" of sinful people and therefore should not be denied (see Oregon's Mail Tribune, "Rites and wrongs," June 4, 2004, by John Darling). What this misleading argument leaves out is that the Eucharist is indeed a blessing and gift that arises from our reconciliation with God, and that the "journey" requires continual conversion and reconciliation through the sacrament of penance for grave sin. To use the term "reward" is a rhetorical ploy that seeks to give a false commercial tinge to the great truth that once we reconcile through the sacrament of penance we enjoy the great gift and privilege of the Eucharist. Without that prior reconciliation, the Eucharist is not a blessing, but a source of condemnation, as St. Paul clearly teaches.

The talk about a "journey" also tends to reflect our culture's lack of a sense of sin by implying in certain contexts, such as this one, that dramatic conversion on a continual basis is not part of the journey. The sacrament of penance is called in the Catechism the "sacrament of conversion," and the Pope emphasizes in his writings the dramatic quality of the Christian life, particularly when the Christian approaches the sacrament of penance. Our Christian life is not a comfortable suburban journey with smooth highways or first-class seats. The Christian life is one of real danger that requires dramatic decisions, trust, and continual conversion. That continual conversion takes place through the sacrament of penance.

But, in the end, what position will the Vatican take on this issue? My guess is that the Vatican will push for caution and guidelines for denying the Eucharist to pro-abortion politicians, as is fitting for such a serious penalty. And surely we can hope to get from Ratzinger a better and deeper explanation of the issue than the repetition of bland New Age jargon about "rewards" or the "journey" that merely mirrors our morally bankrupt culture.

Catholic World News Account of Pope's Meeting with Bush

Catholic World News has given permission for the reprinting of its special report today on the Pope's meeting with President Bush. As you will see, the report is consistent with my own analysis of the Pope's remarks to President Bush. Some other media headlines I have seen have already distorted the meeting. Here is the Catholic World News report:

Pope, Bush speak on Iraq, terrorism, and life

Vatican, Jun. 04 (CWNews.com) - Pope John Paul II (bio - news) called for a rapid "normalization" of the situation in Iraq, under international supervision, as he met on June 4 with US President George W. Bush.

Although many observers expected a clash, a Vatican spokesman said that the two were in agreement on the situation in Iraq.

The Holy Father also spoke of the need to confront the threat of terrorism, saying that this could be done effectively only through "a serene and resolute commitment to shared human values." He praised American humanitarian work, especially in the fight against AIDS in Africa. And he saluted President Bush for his "promotion of moral values in American society, particularly with regard to respect for life and the family."

Bush, in his turn, warmly thanked the Pope for receiving his delegation, which included his wife, Laura Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and security adviser Condoleeza Rice. He told the Pontiff that he brought the best wishes of "my country, where you are respected, admired, and very much loved."

During his visit, the American leader presented John Paul II with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor bestowed by the United States. Bush read aloud the citation that accompanied the honor, which cited the Pope as "a hero of our times."

Pope John Paul appeared badly fatigued during his public session with the US delegation. His voice was clear as he delivered his prepared remarks in English, but his speech was very slow and badly slurred, at times to the point of being incomprehensible.

Prior to their formal exchange of remarks before the Vatican press corps, Bush and the Pope had spoken privately in the library of the apostolic palace. At the conclusion of their public session, Bush met with the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano (bio - news).

Briefing reporters after the meeting, Joaquin Navarro-Valls said that the Pope and President Bush had found "points of convergence, especially regarding the process of normalization in Iraq." The director of the Vatican press office said that Bush and the Pontiff had held a "very cordial" private talk before their public exchange.

Navarro-Valls reported that during that private talk the Pope had made some of the same points that were included in his published address. John Paul II praised American efforts to promote better health care in the Third World, and particularly to fight AIDS in Africa. And Navarro-Valls reiterated the Pope's homage to Bush for promoting the dignity of human life and marriage on the American political scene.

It was Cardinal Sodano-- along with the American-born chief of the pontifical household, Bishop James Harvey-- who had met President Bush in the St. Damasus courtyard of the apostolic palace when he arrived for his third personal meeting with the Pontiff.

Bush was in Italy for commemorations of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Rome by US troops during World War II. He had altered his travel schedule, arriving a day earlier than originally planned, in order to meet with the Pope. Later in the day Bush would meet with Italian government officials, then leave on Saturday for France, and ceremonies marking the 60th anniversary of D-Day. Also on June 5, Pope John Paul will begin a two-day trip to Switzerland.

The Pope mentioned those busy schedules when he thanked Bush for making the time for their visit, acknowledging the scheduling "difficulties presented by your own many commitments during this present visit to Europe and Italy, and by my own departure tomorrow morning." And John Paul II said that he shared the emotions of the American people as he recalled "the sacrifice of those valiant dead" who paid the price of freedom in World War II.

Contrary to some observers' expectations, the Pope did not explicitly remind President Bush of his opposition to the war in Iraq-- although he did allude to "the unequivocal position of the Holy See." Instead he spoke of "the evident desire of everyone that this situation now be normalized as quickly as possible with the active participation of the international community and, in particular, the United Nations Organization, in order to ensure a speedy return of Iraq's sovereignty, in conditions of security for all its people."

The Pope then mentioned his hope that a similar movement toward peace could be "rekindled in the Holy Land," leading to new negotiations between Israel and Palestine.

Turning to the war on terrorism, the Pope reminded Bush that he had immediately condemned the attacks of September 11, 2001, and marked that day as "a dark day in the history of humanity." In his only critical remark about US policies, he followed up by remarking other deplorable events have come to light which have troubled the civic and religious conscience of all." Navarro-Valls declined to elaborate on that comment, but he did not dispute reporters' analysis when they suggested that the Pope was referring to abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US troops. The Pope had gone on to say that these "deplorable events" created new difficulties for the war on terrorism.

The Pope concluded his remarks by praising US initiatives to help the needy, especially in Africa. And as he gratefully accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Pope said: "May the desire for freedom, peace and a more humane world symbolized by this medal inspire men and women of good will in every time and place."

Pope John Paul ended his remarks simply: "God bless America!"

Source: Catholic World News, June 4, 2004 (emphasis added by Catholic Analysis).

Pope's Remarks to President Bush in Rome

Source: CNN.

Here is the link, from CNN to the full transcript of the Pope's remarks to President Bush in Rome today. It is well worth careful reading in full. I quote one sentence in particular that captures the essential point, the jugular, concerning the current U.S. presidential election campaign:

I also continue to follow with great appreciation your commitment to the promotion of moral values in American society, particularly with regard to respect for life and the family.

Source: CNN link above.

That is a sentence that the Pope could never have uttered about President Clinton or a President Gore. It is a sentence that the Pope could never utter about a President Kerry or Hillary Clinton. The reason is that all of these Democratic politicians view Roe v. Wade as a landmark of American civil rights on a par with Brown v. Board of Education. The "abortion on demand" feminist lobby is a central and indispensable pillar of the contemporary Democratic Party. The only presidential contender that can be praised for respecting life is President Bush.

As to the issue of family, the Democratic Party now views the legal recognition of gay unions as another civil rights struggle. And so, no leading Democratic presidential contender, now or in the foreseeable future, supports a federal constitutional amendment affirming that marriage is between one man and one woman. The reason is that the Democratic Party envisions the day when gay marriage is fully recognized in all 50 states. Be under no illusion: fully recognized and protected gay marriage as a fundamental civil right is the platform of the Democratic Party. Pro forma statements claiming to oppose gay marriage are merely empty and manipulative rhetoric that is shrewdly deemed acceptable by the gay lobby as tactically necessary at this particularly sensitive political moment.

The Democratic Trojan Horse strategy for gay marriage is in full swing. The gates to Troy will stay open for the horse to slip through, as long as there is no federal amendment affirming the traditional definition of marriage. No national Democrat, that I am aware of, supports the amendment to protect traditional marriage. The only presidential contender supporting the amendment is President Bush.

In his remarks, it is notable that the Pope makes no mention of the death penalty. If the death penalty was on a par with abortion, as liberal Catholics and some clerics erroneously argue, there is no way the Pope could praise President Bush for respecting life.

As to the Iraq War, the Pope states that in the past the Vatican has made its position known on this particular war, and affirms that all, including President Bush, now desire the normalization of the situation in Iraq:

It is the evident desire of everyone that this situation now be normalized as quickly as possible with the active participation of the international community and, in particular, the United Nations organization, in order to ensure a speedy return of Iraq's sovereignty, in conditions of security for all its people. The recent appointment of a head of state in Iraq and the formation of an interim Iraqi government are an encouraging step towards the attainment of this goal.

Source: CNN link above (emphasis added).

Also note that the Pope specifically goes out of his way to praise the recent appointment of an interim Iraqi government as an "encouraging step." The Pope also calls for Iraqi sovereignty. President Bush is in identical agreement with the Pope on this issue. The page has turned, and both President Bush and the Pope are now on the same page concerning Iraq.

In contrast to the Bush haters and the emotional pacifists, the Pope is, as we would all expect, a man who cannot be imprisoned by the emotions of extreme resentment and hatred expressed by some toward President Bush. Rather, the Pope clearly sees the challenge of the moment: to build a democratic and peaceful Iraq as soon as possible-- the same goal recently proclaimed in the President's last two major speeches, at the Army War College in Pennsylvania and at the Air Force Academy in Colorado.

And finally, to keep the recent past in perspective, it is worth recalling that, prior to the Iraq War, the Pope called for both the U.S. and Saddam Hussein to find a peaceful solution. It was a call made to both sides. Saddam refused to cooperate fully and transparently with U.N. inspections. That transparent and unequivocal cooperation would have undermined the case for war. The Pope's calls for peace applied to both sides, not just to President Bush, as the Bush haters imagine. It is absurd for some to view calls for peace as applicable to democratic nations only, but not to dictatorships. It was absurd and dangerous in the years preceding World War II, and it is just as absurd today and even more dangerous today with modern weaponry.

The Catholic candidate in 2004 is President Bush. John Kerry is in fact the candidate who has adopted the anti-Catholic platform as required by his party. Nothing could be clearer.
The Pope has turned the page. So should others.

Postscript: You can also read the President's remarks to the Pope today in presenting the Medal of Freedom to the Pope in this Fox news report.

Augustine on the Eucharist

In one of his 1978 homilies on the Eucharist as Archbishop of Munich, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger quoted Augustine, before his conversion, recording the words of a vision he had:

I am the bread of the strong, eat me! But you will not transform me and make me part of you; rather, I will transform you and make you part of me.

Ratzinger, God Is Near Us (Ignatius Press, 1993)(quoting Augustine, Confessions, bk. 7, 10:16).

We love to control. We love to use. That is why, instead of homo sapiens, the "wise or knowing man," the better label for Western man is homo gulosus: the "gluttonous man." We consume food we don't need, we buy things we don't need. We even seek to consume others by using them and exploiting them as instruments for financial gain, for power, and for sexual gratification. It is therefore no surprise that we come to the Eucharist in the same frame of mind.

Like those seeking "enlightenment" through New Age superstition or Eastern meditation techniques, Western man comes to the Eucharist as another product, another consumible that can help him or her become happier and healthier. We all want what is good. And so we rush to consume the Eucharist as if it were just another good among others.

What Augustine's vision indicated was that in receiving the Eucharist we are surrendering our control and calculation. We are entrusting everything to a Lord who will transform us. If we reject the prospect of that transformation and instead set conditions and parameters for the lordship of Christ, then we are not ready for the Eucharist. That is why anyone conscious of grave sin must first receive sacramental absolution: you must make the decision to re-commit yourself again to the sovereign control of Christ.

The gay activists in Chicago and other cities wearing sashes to receive the Eucharist have not let go of their special form of "gluttony." The politician who props up the slaughterhouse world of Roe v. Wade has not let go of the gluttony of personal political ambition. Each of us has a part of us under the control of some form of gluttony or concupiscence that goes beyond the mere craving for food. Even that territory occupied by the Enemy must be relinquished to the sovereignty of Christ.

The reception of the Eucharist is not just one among many "good habits." It cannot be added to diet, aerobics, financial planning, and psychological counseling, as just one more good that we consume for our ostensible benefit in which we are, as Ratzinger points out, the "stronger being" (p. 78). The Eucharist is the Good that transforms us definitively. Unlike the other goods, the Eucharist is stronger than we are. It is not a mere good, but the Good which we cannot control.

Long Overdue: A Catholic Cultural Revolution in the U.S.

Recent comments by Chicago's Francis Cardinal George in Rome paint a picture of a Church locked in inevitable conflict with wider American society. Here is a telling excerpt of his remarks to the Pope:

In this culture, the Gospel's call to receive freedom as a gift from God and to live its demands faithfully is regarded as oppressive, and the Church, which voices those demands publicly, is seen as an enemy of personal freedom and a cause of social violence. The public conversation in the United States is often an exercise in manipulation and always inadequate to the realities of both the country and the world, let alone the mysteries of faith. It fundamentally distorts Catholicism and any other institution regarded as "foreign" to the secular individualist ethos. Our freedom to preach the Gospel is diminished.

Source: Zenit, "Chicago Cardinal George's Remarks to the Pope: Church's Ability to Evangelize is Diminished," 6/1/04.

Recently, the Cardinal ordered his priests to deny the Eucharist to gay activists wearing sashes advertising their gay agenda (see Catholic News Service, "Cardinal George denies Communion to Rainbow Sash gay activists," by Michelle Martin, 6/1/04). Unfortunately, the same Cardinal has so far refused to give the same treatment to pro-abortion leaders who wear an invisible, but no less obvious, sash in the communion line that asserts that Catholics can be pro-abortion and work to preserve the abortion regime (see Catholic World News, "Chicago cardinal would not withhold Eucharist," 4/9/04). A piece of cloth should not mark the difference between denial or reception of the Eucharist if the substance and effect of the scandal is the same. Let us hope the Cardinal eventually resolves this issue in a logically consistent way.

In his remarks in Rome, the Cardinal also complained that liberal dissent rejects Church teaching, and that conservatives openly criticize bishops. The problem is not criticism itself but the purpose of criticism. If the criticism pushes for fidelity, then it is to be welcomed. If the criticism pushes for infidelity, then it and it only should be condemned. If some American bishops allow a subculture of heterodoxy to grow in diocese after diocese, you cannot expect and should not desire silence by Catholics who accept revealed teaching. In fact, you should welcome the expression of authentic Catholic voices as your ally in your apostolic ministry.

The Catholic Church in the United States is long overdue for a cultural revolution. The revolution begins with a radical change in self-image. Some of the Cardinal's remarks about the anti-Catholic nature of American society are a good start. Catholics should not view themselves as just another denomination, but as the lightning rod for an anti-Christian culture as the most visible, largest, and countercultural Christian community in the United States. No Protestant denomination, including the most fundamentalist and conservative, is so contrary in its beliefs to the conventional mindset of American society. Here is a key litmus test: how many Protestant fundamentalists oppose birth control? There must be some, but they are miniscule in number. Even the most conservative evangelical Protestant views birth control as an unquestioned part of the marriage package. Whatever the practice, the Catholic Church stands virtually alone in retaining this traditional Christian teaching that only began unraveling among Christians in 1930 when First World Anglicans began their continuing, and now highly accelerated, descent into de-Christianization.

A Church that stands virtually alone in its opposition to mainstream American culture can no longer view itself as a legitimator of the current culture. There was a time when the Catholic Church, in a country with a broad Judeo-Christian moral consensus in which Protestant legislators passed laws against birth control and against most abortions, could be another "civic" pillar. That time is long past. The Catholic Church as a whole is a movement. The entire Church must take the characteristics of the particular lay movements that now flourish within the Church. We began as a first-century movement, and we should be a twenty-first century movement.

What are the traits of a movement? First, movements demand commitment. That is what the debate about pro-abortion politicians and the Eucharist is about. Do we demand commitment to our fundamental teachings, or is such commitment optional? No one joins a lay movement such as Opus Dei or Communion and Liberation while at the same time rejecting the fundamental charism of those lay movements. It would be nonsensical. The same common sense requirement of commitment should apply to the Church as a whole.

Second, movements are expanding. They recruit in order to recruit more. They are focused on growth. They are not limited by ethnic boundaries or geographical boundaries. Too many Catholics, including some dioceses, think of evangelization as just targeting lapsed Catholics and the unchurched. Catholic evangelization should address non-Christians, even Jews and Moslems. Catholic evangelization should address Protestants and the Eastern Orthodox by calling for reunion with Peter. You cannot approach all groups in the same way, but you must approach them. A movement that "red lines" certain groups of potential converts is no movement. It is a fossilized institution.

Finally, movements emphasize personal communion akin to a family. For those in movements, there are strong personal ties to the community found in the movement; and a premium is placed on comradeship. In a society, where the extended family has disappeared among many, especially the non-Hispanic, there is an opportunity to show that one's "family" is not limited to blood or legal ties. The Protestant evangelical practice of referring to each other as "brother" or "sister" is on target. In a movement, the members are all brothers and sisters. A Catholic parish should be a collection of brothers and sisters. Maybe, in our common usage we should consider not limiting those titles to those in religious orders. Those in consecrated community life should rather be an example of what all Catholics are called to be for each other. In a highly impersonal American society, where even the most intimate relationships are now commonly carried on in an impersonal and transactional manner, the strong and close communion and fellowship--in New Testament Greek, koinonia-- of Catholics would be a welcome contrast. Interestingly, given current controversies over the Eucharist, the term koinonia is also applied to the partaking of Holy Communion (1 Cor. 10:16).

The needed cultural revolution would return us to our roots as a movement characterized by the demand for commitment, by a natural impulse for expansion, and by personalizing our communion with each other. It is in fact the weakening of these traits that, in my view, leads so many Catholics to leave the Church and enter fundamentalist or pentecostal denominations. One reference source even noted that "perhaps 100,000 Catholic Hispanics a year were being lost" in the U.S. to such denominations! (See Our Sunday Visitor's Catholic Almanac 2003, p. 421.) It is time to return to our first-century roots. The tame civic model of a long gone era no longer works.

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.