Real hope for real change

“Christian hope is not a matter of optimism; it is not the expectation of steady progress through democracy and science; it is the anticipation of everlasting life with God, his angels, and all his saints. Only such an unchanging good could serve as the foundation for hope.” (Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi)

Excerpt From: “Rebuilding Catholic Culture - Ryan N. S. Topping.” iBooks. 

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Vatican Insider trips over its own criticisms

After lauding the way that immediate access via the internet to Pope Francis' statements means that they are no longer subject to distortion from unreliable "intermediaries," you'd think that Vatican Insider would take care to get their own reporting exactly right. Yet on the day after that assertion, we see an article titled "Francis' Message to Catechists: 'An Injured Church is Better than a Closed Church.'" But what did the Pope really say? Quoted in the same article is the answer:

Sometimes, being in a Church community “is like being in a closed room. You get sick sooner or later. Of course, when you go out into the street accidents can happen, but I would far rather have an injured Church than a sick Church.”

Is it "closed" or "sick" that the Pope really said? Does it make a difference? I think so. Is it too much to ask that a headline copy-writer at La Stampa, which runs Vatican Insider, report the Pope's actual words?

Pope Francis' "rivers of words"

From Vatican Insider, how to miss the point about Pope Francis' torrent of words:

Even the upper echelons of the Vatican hierarchy have been aware for a while now that, since Francis rose to the papal throne, his river of words has been reaching people through all sorts of channels and without any intermediaries. So the Pope’s direct way of addressing his audience is ensuring that the media do not go into a spinning frenzy regarding the figure and actions of the Bishop of Rome.

It is simply not true that Pope Francis' speeches and homilies are "reaching people through all sorts of channels without any intermediaries." I'd argue that it's usually through intermediaries that Catholics are encountering the Pope's words. And not faithful Catholic intermediaries, either, but through their daily newspapers, if they still read any, or more likely through some popular online aggregator like Google News or the Huffington Post, which generally dismiss the mission or teachings of the Church, and have a tacit alliance with those within the Church who strive to turn it into a social services agency.

The last man who clearly explained the liberating reach of Francis’ direct style of preaching was the Assessor for General Affairs of the Secretariat of State Peter Brian Wells. ... Wells said that online access to the Pope’s homilies and speeches has freed individuals, families and communities from a reliance on media coverage that may be manipulative or biased.

This is utterly unrealistic. Perhaps Mr. Wells and his co-workers can spend the time necessary to find and then carefully read the Pope's extensive comments, homilies, and speeches, but I'd bet the farm that fewer than one in a thousand American Catholics do that. They get their Church news from the same sources they get their secular news, with the dangers already mentioned.

The problem with Francis' torrent of statements is that it is a torrent. Fewer statements that were more carefully worded, more cautiously guarded from misinterpretation, and unembellished with asides, would serve the faithful much better.

"An exciting ride"

If Francis really is in the line of Cardinals Martini and Bernardin, as Russell Shaw remarks, we are indeed in for "an exciting ride" in the Catholic Church. Exciting, that is, in the sense that skidding your car into a freeway guardrail is exciting. And to claim that the Church has been too confrontational over the past forty years is to ignore the shabby record of silence of most American and European bishops on any subject that might get them bad press, or even a few scowls from the more dissident members of their flocks. If Shaw is right, Francis' path isn't new; what's new is that we now have papal validation of the worthless habits of thought that have led to so much decline.

For eight precious years of the pontificate of a certain Emeritus Pope, it looked like the "long, melancholy, withdrawing roar" of this blog's namesake poem had finally fallen silent, and that the Sea of Faith was poised for a new flood tide. But with each passing month of Francis' reign, that hope seems to have been, at best, premature.

I posted a portion of these remarks first in the combox of the Alateia website, where the article appeared.

Poets who came home

This enjoyable article at National Catholic Register tells of five notable poets of the 20th century who converted to the Catholic faith: Wallace Stevens, Claude McKay, Oscar Wilde, Sally Read, and Roy Campbell. Very much worth a look.

In the combox there, one trollish reader condemned all tales of deathbed conversions to Catholicism (e.g., Stevens's and Wilde's) as propaganda, because the supposed convert is dead, and we can no longer ask him or her to verify the story. The trouble with this line of reasoning is that if we followed it uniformly, we would believe almost nothing about the past. Before photography and audio recording became widespread, there was simply no other source of knowledge about a distant or past event than the testimony of someone who was there — a witness. Since this may be obvious even to the aforesaid reader, I suspect that the rule is to apply only to events which might be dangerously pro-Catholic.

Another bishop gone bad

Here's another delightful example of a Bishop who doesn't have a good grasp of the Church's teachings, and even if he did, he wouldn't be likely to think it his duty to support them.


The Bishop conflates two separate issues which the Church's moral teaching depends upon keeping separate: a inclination to sin, which involves no guilt; and giving in to that inclination, which does.

I can't help but think of the many defenses offered after Pope Francis' ill-considered remarks on the plane coming back from Rio's WYD, the infamous "Who am I to judge?" statement. Notice that the secular reporter prefaces his question with a reference to that very statement.

So here's the thing. The laity is constantly reminded that the Bishops are successors of the Apostles. At that point, the conversation is usually headed for some variant of "And so don't criticize your Bishops when they fail to uphold clear and firmly held teachings." That would sit better if the Bishops were subject to ANY discipline. In secular corporate terms, we have something like a team of regional Vice Presidents who are autonomous and above correction or removal if they start to go off the rails. Oh, you might be transferred to another Diocese, perhaps a less prestigious one, but that's the extent of it. I know, I know, the Church isn't a secular corporation. But is that really a good reason why it should be run with less accountability than a secular corporation?

Can someone explain to me why Bishops are allowed to wallow in error for years, while the laity in their dioceses are told to shut up because their Bishops will eventually reach mandatory retirement age after doing just a few more years — or decades — of damage to souls? (Roger Mahony comes to mind). If the Apostle your bishop chooses to model himself after is Judas, is there no recourse?

What I wish I could tell Mark Ruffalo

It seems that actor and renowned deep thinker Mark Ruffalo is proud of his mother for aborting one of her children, i.e., a brother or sister of his. He pads out his defense of the indefensible with the same hackneyed nonsense slogans that pro-abortion people have used for forty years.

The LifeNews article about this incident mentions what is, to my mind, a polite but too-mild response from Students for Life America's Kristan Hawkins. Here's what I'd like to say to Ruffalo:

Your mom killed a brother or sister of yours, and you're proud of it. She was tired of seeing herself as a mere possession, so she fixed that by treating another person as a mere possession. You say her abortion experience, apparently pre-Roe, was dirty, dangerous, and demeaning. You might ask some of Kermit Gosnell's victims if things have changed much after forty years of legalized child-killing. That's because although the legalities have changed, the kind of doctor who would kill children is still the same. The kind of man who would applaud the murder of his brother hasn't changed, either.

'via Blog this'

Game of Thrones v. Lord of the Rings

George R. R. Martin's brutal, ugly tales of his imaginary world of Westeros are making piles of money for him and many others.

This post from MercatorNet gives us a glimpse into the vastly different worldviews of Martin and J. R. R. Tolkien, and why, a century from now, Tolkien will still be an honored genius, and Martin will be a footnote in a forgotten Wikipedia article.

More on this later, I hope.

USAID Rep Shuts Down Workshop on Abortion Complications

Remember that pesky, outmoded First Amendment? What a drag, if you're into a woman's right to choose! It's such a relief that the current administration has found intrepid people willing to advance abortion women's health by muzzling unwelcome speech, even in the context of scientific presentations by physicians.

Via C-FAM.

E for Effort

In the wake of Pope Francis' ill-considered off-the-cuff remarks ("... who am I to judge?) to the press on his way home from Rio, the popular blogging Deacon, Greg Kandra, has the right idea about expressing the Church's teaching about homosexuality more clearly. But in the CNS video I link to here, even his version seems to wander a bit.

Unless I'm reading my Catechism of the Catholic Church wrongly, it all comes down to these bullet points:

1. One kind of sexual relations is pleasing to God: the kind that happens between one man and one woman in the context of the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. Nothing else.
2. Any other kind of sexual relations — heterosexual, homosexual, or what-have-you-sexual — displeases Him. Not because He wants to spoil all our fun, but because He knows how those things trap us in distortions of our true human nature, which He understands far more profoundly than we do.
3. So, since we have a duty to God to resist any inclination to displease Him, we have a duty to resist any inclination to have some other kind of sex, no matter what it is, who (or what) it's with, or how good it feels.

Now, one may not agree with those teachings. Many Americans don't. Heck, even a lot of baptized Catholics certainly behave as if they don't. But, when put briefly and clearly like this, at least we're clear about what we're defending, and what we're not.

Conan O'Brien dips a toe in the cesspool

The Catholic League has correctly identified yet another example of people enjoying the last broadly permissible bigotry, this time via Conan O'Brien:

It was the one-liner subtitle about children being molested by priests that was a low blow: “Kids can opt out of fondling by texting #nothanks to the Vatican.”

Religious profiling—portraying all priests as molesters—is not out-of-bounds with late-night hosts. Now if Conan had said, “Kids can opt out of fondling by texting #nothanks to gay priests,” he may have been fired. But just smearing all priests is considered perfectly acceptable. These are the rules in liberal land.

Pro-abortion mob in Chile vandalizes cathedral during Mass

Via LifeSiteNews (but also available via the Washington Post, for those who might be skeptical of a Catholic news source): "Mob of pro-abortion protesters storm, vandalize Cathedral in Santiago de Chile during homily."

According to the cited story, the mob numbered about 300. Now, I admit that seeing 300 weirdos stream into my church in the middle of Mass would have taken me aback, too. But I'd like to think that after those initial moments of stunned immobility, my first impulse would have been to leave my pew to help throw them out physically.

The thing that puzzles me is that this was allowed to happen in a Latin American country, where men are supposedly so proud, even "macho." How many men were present in the congregation? I mean, real MEN? Yes, I understand that some formed a protective cordon around the main altar, and thereby prevented even worse abuse from happening. Good start. But what was the rest of the congregation doing, while the confessional was being tipped over, and while an altar was being defaced, while pews were being ripped out and carted into the street? I can understand being surprised for a moment, but then... well, the proper response of Godly men to goons like these was recorded 2,000 years ago in I Maccabees 3: "...be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar."

And ladies, I mean no disrespect to you by speaking of men, above; it's just that it's our job as men to sacrifice our lives for you, our families, and our Church. When we've all gone down fighting, it'll be your turn. Just let us have the first crack at 'em.

Such things are coming to your town and to your parish church, too. It's only a matter of time. We need to be in readiness. We've been warned.

Desmond Tutu: ‘I Would Refuse to Go to a Homophobic Heaven’

Interesting remarks by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, demonstrating how important it is to use precise language, not the buzzwords of the day. "Homophobic" has taken on the connotation of any attitude that falls short of complete approval of homosexual sexual acts. If he's saying that he would separate himself from God for eternity if he found that God displeased him in this way, that's pretty shocking for a churchman. Another black mark against the confused mess that is mainline Anglicanism.

A solution for the Romeikes?

I've written before about that unfortunate German family, the Romeikes, who fled Germany and sought asylum in the United States. The parents were criminals, admittedly: they were — brace yourselves — homeschooling their children, which has been illegal in Germany since Nazi days. Initially granted that asylum during the Bush presidency, the family later saw it revoked by the Obama administration, and is facing deportation back to Germany, where the children will be forced into state schools.

The Home School Legal Defense Association is trying to get the case to the Supreme Court, but it's a long shot.

I have a modest proposal.

If it appears that deportation of the Romeikes is imminent, they should flee to Mexico or Canada, and from there enter the U.S. illegally. Since the Obama administration has already declared it impossible to find all the "undocumented" immigrants we now have, or to prevent more from entering by securing the border, and since it has offered a path to citizenship for those "undocumented" immigrants they do become aware of, this seems the path of least resistance, with a reasonable chance of achieving the protections of citizenship as well. 

Yes, I'm being facetious. But I hope the plausibility of this absurd tactic will illustrate how unfair the administration's policies are. Sneak across the border to get a better job, and as long as you haven't had more than a couple of DUI's and a handful of criminal convictions while living here, you can stay and become a citizen. But flee to the U.S. openly just to be able to escape the tyranny of enforced state indoctrination, and it doesn't matter how upright and law-abiding you are: out you go.

Maybe rescuing the Romeikes is a job for the Catholic Church...? We're a world-wide organization, and we've helped rescue the persecuted before. I'm just sayin'.

A Rush to Sainthood?

Don't get me wrong; I think that both John Paul II and John XXIII bore the great burden of the papacy honorably and skillfully. But the move to canonize both of them now may someday come to be seen as shortsighted and unwise.

It's good for Catholics to remember that when the Church recognizes a person in its Canon of Saints, it's doing nothing on its own. Canonization isn't an award that the Church confers for what appears to have been exemplary service, like the Congressional Medal of Honor is for military heroism. It's just a recognition of something that has already happened.

The Church has always understood that it has no power to "make" a saint. Only God, out of His great mercy, can admit a soul to full communion with Himself — that is, to true sainthood. And when He does, he doesn't post about it on Facebook or put it up in lights somewhere.

Instead, the faithful discover, over time, that when they ask in prayer that a person of extraordinary holiness who has died would intercede with God for them, sometimes the result for which they ask comes to pass. And it comes to pass in a way that can't be satisfactorily explained by naturalistic causes. In other words, by a miracle. After a sufficient number of such miracles and much skeptical investigation, the Church may conclude very cautiously that that person's soul must have come into such a state of the purest communion with God that he or she must have actually interceded with Him; that is, has become what we call a saint.

But whether the Church ever takes that step for any particular person, the actual spiritual state of that soul doesn't change.

I worry, then, that Pope Francis is taking an unwise risk by announcing the imminent canonization of these two very recent popes, and especially by waiving the requirement for a second miracle in the case of Pope John XXIII. Unless he explains that latter decision very carefully and effectively, he may end up giving the impression that sainthood is, indeed, like a military decoration — a mere acknowledgement of extraordinarily good works, which can never "earn" Heaven for anyone.

Bob Schieffer's blind spot

This post from Deacon Greg Kandra's blog takes note of the surprising ignorance of veteran reporter Bob Schieffer of the coercion that's already taking place against those who don't support soi-disant gay marriage.

So if you've encountered growing support for the redefinition of marriage among your Catholic friends, you might ask them whether they know about it, too. Because this isn't a fight about freedom; it's a fight about coercion in support of a lifestyle, and making that coercion acceptable in the public mind.

"The non-ordination of non-Catholic non-priests"

Phil Lawler over at CatholicCulture.org takes note of a newspaper story that leads off with a remark about how there haven't been any signs that Pope Francis is thinking of allowing women to be ordained as priests in the Roman Catholic Church. I've never read a better critique of the nonsensical coverage this subject always gets in the secular press than what he writes next:

So now look at the headline on the same story: “Roman Catholic women priests ordained in Falls Church.” How could that be, if women can’t be ordained as priests? Which is true: the headline or the lead sentence? They can’t both be right. 

Read on, and the confusion mounts. The ceremony took place at the First Christian Church. One of the women who claimed ordination is a chaplain at an Adventist hospital. Her husband is a Methodist, the story tells us, “but she said she couldn’t give up her Catholic faith.” Then, a few sentences later, we’re told that “the women taking part are automatically excommunicated.” So then she did give up her Catholic faith, didn’t she? 

Fellow journalists, this really isn’t that hard. You can’t be a Catholic priest if you’re not a Catholic. Since the Catholic Church does not ordain women as priests, women who claim to be priests must belong to some other organization. You can argue against Catholic teaching, and can champion the cause of these women, if you like. But the principle of non-contradiction still applies.

So, when you read of the next bogus "ordination" of "womenpriests" in your local newspaper, write to the Editor, and use Mr. Lawler's approach to assert sound Catholic doctrine. In the struggle between truth and falsehood, it's time for lay Catholics to strike the blows that must be struck.

But to heck with marriage! Immigration is the most pressing issue!

Catholic News Agency (CNA) reports that Archbishop Gomez tells us how "immigration tests America's identity, and how it is 'the most pressing issue that we face in American public life."

In the light of today's refusal by the U. S. Supreme Court to validate the efforts of the American people to hold to the definition of marriage which the Catholic Church itself teaches, Archbishop Gomez' assertion seems downright silly. On every level — moral, political, cultural — the defense of marriage is far more important than giving illegal immigrants a "path to citizenship" in the country they broke into.

One more reason not to give up

CatholicVote.org has the best take on things so far:

What a morning. Time to exhale. 

What you are reading in the news is not the whole story. 

Moments ago the Supreme Court handed down two very narrow decisions. Both of them were wrong. But the marriage fight is far from over. ...

In essence, the Court invalidated a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and rejected the right of the people to defend a law passed by millions of citizens in California. The Court ducked the question of whether Proposition 8 in California is constitutional – and most importantly, did NOT create a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. 

States that have protected marriage and those that seek to do so in the future cannot be stopped. 

The Court did disenfranchise millions of voters with its decision on Proposition 8. Five Supreme Court justices effectively dismissed the votes of millions of citizens who twice voted to protect marriage. Nevertheless, the record in California is now plain: the people voted to protect marriage, but reckless politicians refused to respect the right of the people and enforce the law. 

What is left is a single decision by a district court judge that applies to two couples. The legal fight to clarify what happens next will be critical and will be heavily contested by defenders of marriage in the courts. Same-sex marriage advocates touting immediate statewide gay marriage in California are misleading the public. 

Today’s decision striking down portions of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was limited to only those same-sex "marriages" already recognized in the states that allow same-sex marriage. 

Also, remember that other parts of DOMA protect states from being forced to recognize same-sex marriage in other states. That portion of the law was not challenged and remains in force – and in some ways was strengthened by today’s decision. 

Thus, while today’s decisions were very disappointing, they do not represent a watershed moment for marriage as many are suggesting. Same-sex marriage advocates did not get what they wanted, namely a “Roe v. Wade” for same-sex marriage. 

We have a clear path forward to protect marriage and respond to these rulings, in Congress and in the states, and in the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens. ... 

The debate on marriage lives on and is up to us. 

Why Prop 8 should have been clearly upheld

Randy Thomasson of SaveCalifornia.com made these points earlier today:

The justices had a simple question before them, and the answer is also simple when you abide by the written Constitution.

• First, marriage is not in the U.S. Constitution. 
• Second, the 14th Amendment, which is not about marriage but about race, and not about couples but individuals, does not apply to Prop. 8. 
• Third, the 10th Amendment recognizes states have powers that are not federal powers and that are not prohibited by the Constitution. 
• Fourth, Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution guarantees a republican form of government to each state, where a written constitution is the supreme law of the state. 
• Fifth, the California Constitution contains Proposition 8 as Article 1, Section 7.5. 

Therefore, Prop. 8 should have been upheld.

But we live in an era in which many believe the Constitution must be "living," by which they mean that parts of it which stand in the way of their desires must be discarded or ignored; and that parts which have never before been recognized as pertaining to a situation suddenly develop "penumbras" (a phrase used in the Roe v. Wade decision) in which vast new meanings can be found.

One more thing: by ruling that the plaintiffs had no standing although California officials had abandoned their sworn duty to defend Proposition 8, the Court has effectively nullified the power of the state initiative. A hostile Governor can now say openly to the people of his state, "It doesn't matter what laws you enact by initiative. My allies will get a judge to declare it unconstitutional, and then I and my government will refuse to defend it."