John F. Kavanaugh SJ's Letter to Obama

Absolutely Hating Abortion


Harry Blackmun, the man who ruined this nation's political system

Yes, he did. He instigated legislation from the bench. Unfortunately, in the recent wake of the civil rights struggle at the time, this is what the Supremes thought they had the right and the duty to do. In this case, they over-reached. He may have destroyed any chance this country may ever have of coming to a consensus on the issue that has disfigured the two great political parties.

I hate abortion with ever fiber of my being, not only for what it is, but for how it has mutilated and polluted politics in America for the last generation. Rather than taking the matter off the table, the Supremes merely turned it into a war. Sure, we'd have had legislative wars anyway, but now every presidential contest is primarily about Supreme Court nominations, which has been marring the whole judical selection process ever since.

I want a re-alignment! The current one is entirely unnatural. There has been progress this time around in the DNC Platform, but not enough. With the Catholic vote still hanging out there as the crucial swing vote as it has in years past, and with the nature of the selection of the vice-presidential candidates we've just seen, it looks to me like the issue will return to the fore as we head into the last 60 days. With Joe Biden out there, we're likely to see these stupid "wafer wars" all over again.

The economic stakes are too high to keep messing around with this issue. In the period of time that has since passed in exact parallel with Roe v. Wade, the Republican Party, with plenty of help from similarly lobby-owned Democrats, has entirely sold out and gutted this country. I don't know if we can literally withstand another four years of their economic philosophy and the diminished stature and influence of the United States in the world. That's why I don't want to see the Democrats blow another election by bowing and scraping to their secular left wing.

I get the back-alley problem. I do. I understand it. I realize that there always have been, and always will be desperate women who will seek out abortions whether they are legal or not. I can see this.

I also realize that the duty of the Christian is not to conquer, but to convince. Overturning Roe v Wade would only return the matter to the states, creating a confusing and chaotic hodge-podge quilt of competing laws. In the long run, however, if we don't tackle this issue as a people, we will never come to a consensus on it as a people.

Absolutists on my side would label me a heretic for even entertaining the notion of voting for a Democrat. I say let's avoid the idolatry inherent in anointing the vote to that extent. I also say that the strategy of the last 35 years has failed. I sincerely believe at this point that we would be better served in striving to change people's hearts and minds about abortion rather than concentrating so heavily on changing laws. There's no point in changing laws if hearts aren't changed first. If we can't stop all abortions, can we at least work with people of good will on the other side to prevent some, or to work on the issues which make some women feel compelled to have abortions in the first place? Should we work harder on convincing our adversaries that we care just as much about babies after they are born as before they are born, and that we consistently value human rights and human dignity in every other context?

As for the absolutists on the other side... The Democratic Party needs to free itself from the grip of the NARAL, Emily's List, and Planned Parenthood zealots kneeling on what they proudly call their Bill Clinton presidential kneepads, worshipping in front of their coat-hangar cross on the Altar of Abortion on Demand Without Apology. If they don't, in a country which is currently undergoing an evangelical awakening, the Democrats will continue to lose, and lose, and lose...

Fr. John F. Kavanuagh SJ recently wrote an open letter in America magazine called Dear Senator Obama. A lot of Catholics who normally find themselves with the GOP on account of their prolife views are supporting Obama this time around, including myself. A lot of scholars and professors at Catholic institutions have gone out on a limb for him. They sense something about Obama's unitive and conciliatory approach that is appealing and hopeful. While expressing and upholding prochoice views, Obama at least indicates that he understands the feelings and beliefs of people on the other side. Still, there are concerns. We are not going to give up our "love affair with the fetus" any sooner than prochoice women are going to give up the right to choose. What then? It's not just conservative Evangelicals and Catholics who share these concerns, but also progressive Protestants, like Jim Wallis at Sojourners. I think it's worth reproducing Kavanaugh's letter in full.

I am writing this open letter to you, Senator, on the outside chance that one of your National Catholic Advisory Council members might read America and pass it on to you.

You have an abortion problem, especially with pro-life Catholics who would like to vote for you—something to keep in mind when you ponder the fact that there has been up to a 15 percent rise in Catholics voting Republican in the past two elections.

Catholic voters do not think monolithically. That should come as no surprise to you, since you have many Senate colleagues with a Catholic background who have supported every bill insuring a “woman’s right to choose.” But if you are interested in the respectful hearing of opposing positions, as you often note, it will be valuable for you to have serious conversations with groups like Democrats for Life of America and Feminists for Life.

There are some Catholics who will vote for you, hoping that your programs may do more for the unborn than rhetoric or a promise by Supreme Court nominees who would just return the decision to the states. They will vote for you, not because of your position on abortion, but despite it, realizing that your approach to wars of choice, capital punishment, hunger, homelessness, health care and refugees might better serve the lives of “the least” of our brothers and sisters.

There are some Catholics who will vote for you because your liberal agenda appeals to them and they refuse to vote for any Republican. There are other Catholics who will never vote for you—a few because of the abortion issue alone, but many more because they are irreversibly Republican and distrust all Democratic policies. As one prominent pro-life Republican put it, he would have voted “holding his nose” for the pro-choice Rudolph W. Giuliani because of Giuliani’s other Republican positions.

There is a third group who are truly undecided or are tending away from you because they think you not only defend partial-birth abortion but also are against lifesaving therapy for newborns surviving an abortion attempt. You are going to be hit with ads about your vote in the Illinois State Legislature against the Induced Infant Liability Act.

I know you have tried to explain this in your Relevant magazine interview, but you seemed evasive. Can you just simply affirm your conviction that any newborn, even after an abortion attempt, should be given effective life-sustaining treatment? Perhaps your seeming ambivalence is related to your position on late-term abortions and partial-birth abortions. Second- and third-trimester abortions comprise a small percentage of all abortions, but they are horrific. Anybody who thinks not, does not think. But even your gentle qualification of the mental health exception was met with a storm of protest from the National Abortion Rights Action League, and you seemed to wilt.

I know you do not want to criminalize abortion, that you think it is a profound moral issue and that you think a father’s responsibility continues after conception, as you said on Father’s Day this year. I know also that you think our young ones should be taught more about the seriousness and sacredness of sexuality. But more is required if you are to reach the group of Catholics (and other Christians) I have been talking about. Here are three suggestions:

1. Support the Rev. Jim Wallis’s “abortion-reduction agenda,” with its economic support for pregnant women and greater access to adoption as part of the Democratic platform.

2. If you are interested in diversity and mutual respect, give a place at the Democratic convention for Democrats for Life to show you are unafraid of difference and debate.

3. Engage the arguments and evidence offered in opposition to second- and third-trimester abortions. You may find that the position of most American men and women is quite different from Naral’s. The earlier stages of embryonic and fetal development are more contested. But even your Republican opponent supports embryonic stem cell research. Ask him, and all the Catholics who will vote for him, how this fits into their professed commitments.

Perhaps you owe some courageous people like Douglas Kmiec a bit of reciprocation. Kmiec, a pro-life Catholic law professor who served in the Reagan and Bush administrations, announced his support of you because of your approach to war, poverty and immigration. Because of this stand, he has been denied Communion at least once. Are you willing to risk excommunication from the church of Naral for a principled position on abortion?

Maybe they will call you that terrible name “flip-flopper.” But remember this: anyone who refuses to change a judgment in the face of irrefutable data is either a fool or a toady. And you, clearly, are neither. As I see you move more and more to the middle in matters of the economy and the war in Afghanistan, I wait. Will you move a bit to the middle on this matter of abortion?

A vociferous cadre in the Democratic Party has for too long wielded a dogmatic veto over any discussion of limiting abortions. With your commitment to reasoned, evidence-based and respectful discourse, are you able to challenge your party to welcome pro-life Catholics into its supposed big tent?

Catholicism & Capitalism

Can Catholic Social Teaching Offer a Valid Critique?


The Moneylender and His Wife, by Quentin Massys (1514)

When Fernando Lugo was elected President of Paraguay a few months ago, it suggested that liberation theology may not be quite as dead as its critics would like it to be. We all know about certain circles in the Church, some within the very top reaches of the hierarchy, who get their knickers entirely in a twist when one theologian or another dares to borrow "marxist dialectic" in some kind of synthesis with Catholic theology. On the other hand, John Paul II was a firm critic of untrammelled capitalism too, as is his successor, so why doesn't anyone get at least mildly perturbed when someone tries to produce a synthesis between Catholic theology and the classically liberal laissez-faire thought of the likes of Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek?

Case in point... In addition to writing thoughtful and useful critiques of liberation theology such as Will it Liberate ? Questions About Liberation Theology, the author and intellectual Michael Novak has also written books and articles seeking to marry free market capitalism to Catholic social ethics, such as books titled (I'm not kidding here): The Corporation: A Theological Inquiry.

In his new book Left at the Altar: How the Democrats Lost the Catholics and How the Catholics Can Save the Democrats, Michael Sean Winters describes the thought of various Catholic paleo-conservatives and neo-conservatives (although I think he's wrong to link the paleo Pat Buchanan with the neo-cons on economics), including a truly amazing bit of exegesis from Novak:

Buchanan's conservatism was a different brand from the cheerful variety Reagan had offered. His Catholicism was also different from that of most Catholics. His vision was dark and censorious and had more in common with Calvinism than it did with American Catholicism. Buchanan was a kind of modern-day Daniele da Volterra, the sixteenth-century painter the reactionary Pope Paul IV hired to cover the nudes in the Sistine Chapel. The culture of the American Catholic ghetto had celebrated life, even while it directed life's choices toward approved ends, but Buchanan's worldview saw only calamity and conflict. The air in Houston (the 1992 Republican Convention) had no celebratory quality, no human sympathy, nothing of the immigrant Catholic community's vibrant, lively, hopeful culture.

Buchanan was not alone. Conservative Catholic writer William E Buckley had spawned a gaggle of conservative Catholics from his perch as founding editor of the magazine National Review, and Buchanan was merely the movement's most public, political face. A triumvirate of Catholic neoconservatives emerged who would present themselves as the defenders of Catholic and Republican Party orthodoxy in America. Lutheran convert Richard John Neuhaus, founder of the magazine First Things, joined forces with liberal convert and American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Novak to give the GOP a Catholic imprimatur. Catholic writer George Weigel, who made up in hubris what he lacked in academic credentials, was the third member of the Catholic neoconservative troika. All three were prepared to relegate the Church's teachings to an adjectival status and ignore those teachings when they did not suit them, and their public writings inevitably read like a recitation of GOP talking points as much as a thoughtful reflection on the Christian Gospels.

What linked these three intellectuals with Buchanan was the smugness of their judgements and the ridiculous, almost idolatrous, manner in which they paid homage to democratic capitalism and the American way. How far they had fallen from Monsignor Ryan's teachings, or from the teachings of Popes Leo, Plus XI, John XXIII and Paul VI can be seen in an excerpt from Novak's tome, Toward a Theology of the Corporation. "For many years, one of my favorite texts of Scripture has been Isaiah 52:2-3. `He hath no form or comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; he was despised, and we esteemed him not,"' wrote Novak, citing one of the most famous Christological passages of the Hebrew scriptures, set to music by Handel in the Messiah and read in church every Good Friday. But Novak had a different use for these solemn verses. "I would like to apply these words to the modern business corporation, a much despised incarnation of God's presence in this world."

Er, wha-aa...?

Ronald Reagan ushered in an era where we find that the business executive represents the pinnacle of what every good American should aspire to be... Utilitarian, efficient, pragmatic, bold, unsentimental, and supposedly the fount of all good judgement and common sense. According to this line of thinking, only the private sector is capable of producing anything truly useful, since men and women are reliably and realistically motivated solely by self-interest.

Something has gone terribly wrong with all this. As the response to Barak Obama's speech the other night demonstrates so clearly, Americans are looking for their government to help them, not to hurt them. That's not to say that they aren't self-reliant. They are. They just don't buy into the Republican axiom that the only purpose of goverment is to enforce the laws protecting private property (although when it came to the property of the poorest and most vulnerable of our citizens after Hurricane Katrina, it didn't seem to matter much to the GOP). Americans are not looking for handouts, but they expect the government to protect the public from corporations that have grown increasingly more powerful and rapacious.

Last week there was an article in The Tablet (UK) by Clifford Longley called An Acceptable Face for Capitalism, questioning whether Catholic social teaching could provide a touchstone from where we could all begin to look at ameliorating the more pernicious effects of the varieties of "savage" capitalism. Some excerpts:

With the all-conquering global free market seeming to trounce all competing social and economic ideologies, a moral and practical framework looks increasingly necessary. Could Catholic social teaching fill the gap?

In a page-long article in The Observer in June, Will Hutton, a doyen of British writers on economics and chief executive of the Work Foundation, heaped copious praise on the Vatican for daring to ask the questions that politicians are refusing to ask - questions such as: how can capitalism and its market-driven dynamic be made to serve the good of everyone and not just the wealthy?

Hutton had just taken part in a conference in Rome convened by the Centesimus Annus Foundation, and was clearly taken by surprise to find how much overlap there was between Catholic social teaching and his own economic ideas, especially his passionate advocacy of stakeholding. How you give modern economic systems a human face was one of the questions posed...

In the field of Catholic social teaching - or "Catholic social thought", to use an American expression for the more speculative side of the business - there are even more radical questions around than these. One of them, a little surprisingly perhaps, is simply this: "Could the economic and cultural criteria identified in the tradition of Catholic social thought provide an effective path to sustainable prosperity for all?" This was the central proposition round which a four-day conference took place in Los Angeles recently, organised by the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies, which is attached to the University of Southern California.

The tendency for economic systems eventually to self-destruct is notorious, as economies in the West seem determined to demonstrate once more. Is their fatal flaw the fact that they are using a wrong model of human nature, an abstraction called homo economicus (or in an earlier period, Marxist man) which bears little resemblance to the real people who work in real economies? Instead of bullying people to behave more like the theory says they should and wringing one's hands when it all goes wrong, why not design a system around a true appraisal of human nature? It was a thought dear to the heart of Pope John Paul II, who saw the failures of Marxism and of "savage capitalism", as he called it, all too clearly. It was their anthropology that let them down...

It was not just the results of these economic systems that failed these analysts' ethical criteria, but their internal methodology, especially the deterministic assumptions these systems made about human nature - that we are all fully informed, rational individuals who act entirely in our own interests. (We) saw these dissenting economists as saying things not far from what Catholic social teaching tradition had been saying in papal social encyclicals stretching from Rerum Novarum of 1891 to Centesimus Annus 100 years later. Nor is this so surprising. Human nature is the common factor.

Through its natural-law tradition largely focused on the teachings of Thomas Aquinas and augmented by biblical insights, the Catholic Church has developed a profound understanding of human nature in all its glories and all its flaws. Economists such as Joseph Stiglitz, observers of human nature coming from an Enlightenment Western tradition, have reached similar conclusions. Caron's proposal was to bring these two schools of thought together, to let the economists talk to the theologians to see how far they would agree. I have to say that by the end of the four days it was difficult to tell them apart.

While the True Wealth of Nations conference was representative of much mainstream Catholic American thought, there are other players in the field, notably the right-wing think tank called the Acton Institute. The main message of that institute, which is attempting to spread its presence worldwide from its base in Grand Rapids, Michigan, seems to be that American capitalism as conceived by Republican neoconservatives is as close as it is possible to get to a model of capitalism that Catholicism could approve of - an idea that greatly appeals to certain wealthy Catholic businessmen in the United States and indeed to the whole ideology of "Americanism" that the neocons promote.

The Acton method seems to consist of emphasising bits of the tradition, such as several pro-business passages in Centesimus Annus, and ignoring those bits that were uncongenial, for instance, parts of Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, published in 1987, which were described by the neocon Wall Street Journal as warmed-up Marxism. That has undoubtedly made some in the Vatican nervous about how any new pronouncement might be received in America, and the Vatican has become a regular port of call for right-wing lobbyists.

Acton, which elevates personal and economic freedom to one of the highest ideals and condemns "Big Government" as the ultimate enemy, has not moved far from the anti-social-justice rhetoric of Friedrich Hayek. It is consequently anti-welfare, anti-tax and anti-common good. It has pitched in against the American bishops' conference, which has criticised George Bush's tax-cutting strategy as highly damaging to the poor. This debate is not just theoretical. Issues at the heart of the coming American presidential election are involved. It is an ideal time, one might think, for some clear exposition of the Church's social thinking in an American context...

There is a common view that market forces can be harnessed to good ends, that it is right for Governments to intervene when markets fail as they often do, and that a preferential option for the poor is an inescapable obligation of the Gospel. Wealth creation in all its complexity is both a human delight and a human duty, part of the continuation of the work of creation begun by God and entrusted by him to mankind's earliest ancestors.

We were not without human resources for our conference. Catholic social thought is a lively academic discipline on American Catholic campuses, which are intellectual environments where religion has not been marginalised. My theory is that what gives Catholic social teaching an extra edge in America is the absence there of any significant Marxist or socialist tradition, ideologies which in their prime in Europe and elsewhere offered a robust challenge to free-market capitalism and shaped its behaviour. With the departure of those competing ideologies, European societies may also need something like Catholic social teaching as a counter-weight to run-away market forces - as Will Hutton seemed to see.

And the result? Nobody took serious issue with our central proposition that the foundations of Catholic social thought could be used to find a path to sustainable prosperity, though a long list of loose ends was identified - a definition of the "common good" being among the most elusive. All the participants expressed themselves fascinated by the coherence that emerged. Indeed there was enough of it to justify turning the conference papers into a book, and an international publisher is being sought.

Will it make any difference? That depends on whether it is an idea whose time has come, or a byway of interest only to a few intellectuals. My sense is that it could well be the former. Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, launched the subject of political economy as we know it today, and few books have had greater impact on Western culture. The True Wealth of Nations project is a modest attempt to take the argument further. If it meets a need, it will succeed.

Donkey Kong

The wild, wacky world of Democratic Conventions


The Democratic Party Covention, 1928. The makeshift pavillion in Houston. African-American delegates were made to sit in a cordoned off section behind chicken wire.

We haven't had an exciting Democratic Party Convention in a long time.

It wasn't always that way. For years, the Democrats were reknowned for their fratricidal get-togethers. Is it possible that we may see some excitement this time around in Denver? I'm not sure, especially in light of Obama's inexplicable and spectacularly uninspired choice of the long-winded, numbskulled egomaniac Joe Biden as his running mate. Will we see some fireworks from the potential protests we've been hearing about, like the ones promised by groups like the Recreate 68 Alliance? Is Rush Limbaugh correct in his assertion that the Hillary forces will figure out a way to sieze the nomination at the convention?

Let's take a stroll though time, looking at some of the more contentious moments in Democratic Party Convention history.

New York, 1924: The Ku Klux Klan & the "drys" vs. Tammany Hall & the "wets"



The "Klanbake" in Madison Square Garden, also known as the Ballot Brawl. Prohibition was the huge issue of the day, and the Ku Klux Klan was at the height of its power. At the time, the Democratic Party consisted of a strange and uneasy alliance between conservative Southern whites, strongly supportive of Prohibition, and Northern immigrants, opposed to Prohibition in equal measure. Bitter fights ensued over the party platform, and the Southern delegates who'd travelled up to the belly of the immigrant beast in "Jew York" were heckled by the Tammany Hall "Braves" who'd been brought in to stuff the balconies. They consisted largely of Irish toughs and other ethnics, described colorfully as "Tammany shouters, Yiddish chanters, vaudeville performers, Sagwa Indians, hula dancers, street cleaners, firemen, policemen, movie actors and actresses, bootleggers . . ." The Tammany crowd had brought in ear-splitting fire department sirens to drown out the speeches of their opponents, and pandemonium ensued. The main candidates were Woodrow Wilson's son-in-law William Gibbs McAdoo and the Catholic Governor of New York, Al Smith. At one time, the venerable William Jennings Bryan got up to speak in order to explain his support for McAdoo, and was drowned out with catcalls and a sound comparable to "10,000 voodoo doctors in a tropical jungle beating 10,000 tom-toms made of resonant washtubs."

After 103 ballots, the nomination finally went to the compromise candidate John W. Davis of West Virginia, who promptly lost to Calvin Coolidge in the general election.

Chicago, 1932: Happy Days are Here again, but the Happy Warrior checks out



In 1928, Al Smith finally did win the Democratic nomination, becoming the first Catholic to contend for the presidency. The popular Governor of New York, who'd come of age in a multi-ethnic environment in New York's Bowery, believed that he knew what it took to get people from different backgrounds to work together. He had a benign, and perhaps naive view that he could extend this to the rest of the American electorate, trusting in the essential goodness of the American people. He lost to Herbert Hoover in what was a viciously anti-Catholic campaign. Smith was heartbroken, especially when he lost his own home state of New York.

By the time 1932 rolled around, America was in the throes of the Depression, and Smith had been replaced as governor by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a one-time protege who had introduced Smith into nomination in 1924, describing Smith as "That Happy Warrior". Smith considered Roosevelt a friend, but also somewhat of a lightweight (he was not the first or the last person to make this mistake).

A bitter Smith, still smarting from his 1928 defeat, had not yet realized that he and his Tammany supporters had been eclipsed. All the talk going in had been about Roosevelt, but Smith still seemed to think that FDR was supposed to be a coat-holder for him. Roosevelt's other main rival was the Texan John Nance Gardner. Gardner was backed by newspaper mogul William Randoph Hearst, who hated Al Smith. When the convention appeared deadlocked, Joe Kennedy got on the phone to Hearst and convinced him to throw his support behind Roosevelt.

As Roosevelt was nominated, Smith's supporters urged him to express his support for Roosevelt in a show of party unity. Smith refused, sitting in his seat muttering "I won't do it... I won't do it..." before stalking out of the hall. He took a train back to New York, saying upon arrival “I have absolutely nothing to say to newspaper men...I am tired and I want to get a rest.”

Here is the only movie of Al Smith I could find on Youtube, showing him voicing his satisfaction and vindication at the eventual repeal of Prohibition in 1933.



Chicago, 1956: "If we have to have a Catholic, I hope we don't have to take that little pissant Kennedy." -- House Speaker Sam Rayburn




Adlai Stevenson already had the nomination wrapped up, but threw the selection of a vice-presidential nominee to the delegates on the convention floor in open balloting. Russell Baker wrote in the New York Times that it was "a spectacle that might have confounded all Christendom... an epic clash that caused shrieking pandemonium with 11,000 persons on their feet and howling."

The contending candidates were Jack Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, New York Mayor Robert Wagner, Estes Kefauver, and Al Gore Sr.

According to Curtis Wilkie:

Stevenson was intrigued by the thought of a Catholic on the ticket. He liked Kennedy, but lacked the nerve to name him outright. ..

Kennedy thought he could appeal to the Democratic intelligentsia. But when he turned to their grand dame, Eleanor Roosevelt, she rebuked him for his failure to stand up against Joseph McCarthy's witch hunt...

Humphrey, whose civil rights speech at the 1948 convention drove Southerners into a Dixiecrat movement that year, was still loathed by the Southern delegates. But the Southerners were no more comfortable with the candidates from their own region. Kefauver was an unapologetic liberal, and Gore had been one of the few who refused to sign the Southern Manifesto signaling war against the Supreme Court's school desegregation decision...

The two leaders pounced on the wounded Humphrey. Kennedy, following the proceedings on TV in a nearby hotel room, sent his young aide, Ted Sorensen, to the convention to check on Humphrey's disposition. But Sorensen was dismissed with a poet's contempt by Eugene McCarthy, the other Minnesota senator, who was serving as his colleague's campaign manager...

Kefauver had better luck with Humphrey. He caught the distraught senator, weeping over his impending defeat, off the convention floor and begged for his help. He got it. Minnesota gave all 30 of its votes, which had previously been Humphrey's, to Kefauver on the second ballot. But Kefauver's momentum was offset by an unusual stampede to Kennedy among the Southern delegations. Because both Kefauver and Gore were anathema, prominent segregationists such as Birmingham's Bull Connor (who would unleash police dogs on black demonstrators in 1963) Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina (who had led the Dixiecrat revolt in 1948 and would leave the Democratic Party in 1964) and Senator John Stennis of Mississippi joined JFK's ranks on the floor...

But there was to be one more decisive turn, one which has never been fully explained. Representative John McCormack of Massachusetts, who would succeed Rayburn as House Speaker, was seen whispering with a leader of the Missouri delegation. Though nominally a Kennedy supporter, McCormack was still smarting from a defeat at Kennedy's hands at a state convention earlier in the summer. McCormack shouted at Rayburn, who held the gavel and was trying to decide which state to recognize. "Sam!" McCormack yelled. "Missouri!" Rayburn recognized Missouri, which switched 36 of its 38 votes to Kefauver. The move triggered a rush by other states to push Kefauver's total over the top.

Suddenly, it was over. Kennedy came to the floor and asked for Kefauver to be put on the ticket by acclamation. Stevenson, watching on TV at a downtown hotel, was said to have slumped in disappointment.

Stevenson was whipped by Ike in '56. If Kennedy had been the veep choice, it might have been the end of his political career.

Chicago, 1968: "The Whole World is Watching"



Well, I was just a kid but I sure remember this one. Chicago, again. Who could ever forget the police riots in Grant Park and in front of the Conrad Hilton Hotel on Michigan Ave? Who could ever forget Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley saying to the press afterwards "Gentlemen, gentlemen... Get the thing straight once and for all. The policeman is not there to create disorder. The policeman is there to preserve disorder."

The Yippies had organized their demonstrations against "Johnson's War" and the ensuing riots shocked and horrified the country. In addition to the violence outside, American television viewers were treated to spectacles inside the convention hall such as Dan Rather being roughed up, and the response to Senator Abraham Ribicoff, who said "If George McGovern were president, we wouldn't have these Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago." Mayor Daley and his retinue leapt to their feet indignantly, shouting for that "F'ing Jew to shut up!"


Democratic National Convention

Lyndon Johsnon's Vice-President Hubert Humphrey won the nomination, but he was fatally wounded politically. The general election was close, but Dick Nixon, relying on the "Silent Majority" and the "law & order" vote, won in November, and thus began the Imperial Presidency.

Miami Beach, 1972: "Acid, Amnesty, & Abortion"



Before the 1972 election, Ted Kennedy was derailed by Chappaquiddick, and Ed Muskie was derailed for allegedly crying over press criticism of his wife. This left the door open to George McGovern, who was able to wrest the nomination process out of the hands of the party bosses like Richard Daley and into the hands of primary voters. Some of these party bosses were angered and forever alienated, and it hurt McGovern's funding later on.

A lot of the radical activists in 1968 had gone mainstream by 1972, and this was their moment. The old guard, with its big city machine apparatus, union muscle, and commitment to the New Deal consensus faded into the background. Rightly or wrongly, depending on your point of view, the Democratic Party became associated more with group identity politics and fighting battles over personal autonomy rights than with fighting battles over economic justice.

The columnist Robert Novak pinned the "Acid, Amnesty and Abortion" label on McGovern. Quoting an unnamed Democratic senator, Novak wrote "The people don’t know McGovern is for amnesty, abortion and legalization of pot... Once middle America — Catholic middle America, in particular — finds this out, he’s dead."

According to Novak, the unnamed seantor was McGovern's own original running mate, Thomas Eagleton. Eagleton had been forced to withdraw (and was replaced by Sargent Shriver) when it was disclosed that he had undergone electroshock therapy treatments. What a train wreck.

Shirley Chisholm was the lone bright spot.

New York, 1980: "Teddy Kennedy? I'll whip his ass."



In 1980, Ted Kennedy finally came to the decision to take the risk in running for president, but he did it against the sitting Democratic incumbent, the peanut farmer from Georgia. An irritated and indignant Carter famously quipped, "I'll whip his ass."

He did. The contest between them was bitter, and Kennedy lost, but he managed to clean himself and his act up enough to call for the party's renewal to a commitment to economic justice in his speech, "The Dream Will Never Die".



If only they'd done a better job of taking it to heart.

For all the bitterness on display at the convention, what was perhaps most noticable (and comical) was Jimmy Carter chasing Ted Kennedy around on the podium after he was nominated, desperately trying to get Kennedy to raise hands with him, while Kennedy darted around just as desperately, trying to avoid him.

What have you got in store, Denver?

What is the Proper Response to This?

Sick and Tired of 16th Century Controversies...



I saw this over at Vox Nova a few days ago, where they'd apparently picked it up from Mark Shea - "Where Are the Men?" priests ask.

Interesting reaction from the assembled community. They all just seemed to ignore him, and continued celebrating the Mass. Was that the right thing to do? Probably so, but I'm not sure it's what I would have done.

A couple of weeks ago, Steve Bogner put up a post referencing an article on whether anti-Catholicism was still alive in America or not. Right on cue, some guy starts chiming in from one of those "Witnessing to Roman Catholics" kind of websites. What is with these people? Thanks for the advice... As for politics, you can keep your Republican Party.

In a more light-hearted vein, here, George Bush's friend and ex-advisor Ted Haggard gives some of the good-natured business to a Jesus Camp camerawoman, shortly before his implosion.

Evolutionary Psychology and Original Sin

The Prisoner's Dilemma. What Would You Do?

The first time I became acquainted with the Prisoner's Dilemma it was in a book by Robert Wright called The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. Apparently, it's a well-known scenario used in game theory studies, and there are even tournaments built around it.

If I wasn't a person of faith, I could see myself putting a lot of stock in evolutionary psychology. Heck, maybe I still can anyway. In terms of explaining why human beings do so many of the things they do, it makes a lot of sense to me, especially in terms of boy-girl stuff and the way we act in terms of reciprocity, altruism, tit-for-tat behavior, and zero-sum games.

We are operating in a post-modern 21st century world with minds that were shaped by tens of thousands of years of living in the stone age. Our ancient ancestors were used to operating in bands of no more than 100 or 150 people. This might have a lot to do with our fear and mistrust of strangers, our appetite for gossip and scandal, and our proclivity to spend so much emotional currency on the intimate news of one death while at the same time having trouble extending it to the death of millions. It seems like it might explain the rationale for a lot of what we've traditionally called Original Sin.

Here's how the Prisoner's dilemma goes.

You and a friend have been arrested under suspicion of having committed a crime. You are being interrogated separately and face a hard decision. The state lacks the evidence to convict you of the grave offense they've accused you of, but does have enough evidence to convict you both on a lesser charge - with, say, a one year prison term for each.

The prosecutor, wanting a harsher sentence, pressures each of you individually to confess and implicate the other.

He says to each of you: If you confess, but your partner doesn't, I'll let you off scot-free and use your testimony to put him away for ten years. The flip side of this offer is a threat: If you don't confess but your partner does, you go to prison for ten years. And if you confess and it turns out your partner confesses too, I'll put you both away, but only for three years.

One year? Ming! The Venetian here says he could do one year standing on his head. I ain't sayin' nuthin. Marron....

How about you?

Catholic Shame?

Flagellants, (circa 1349?)

Those of us who are older than 45 can probably tell you a thing or two about Catholic guilt.

In the media, it's a sort of tiresome cliche, as if it's a given for everyone who's Catholic. Among those younger than 45, however, I don't think it's there to any extent at all. They carry around something very different indeed, which may be even heavier to bear, even if in some cases it's covered up by a sort of bravado.

Recently I read a book called The Faith Between Us: A Jew and a Catholic Search for the Meaning of God, by Scott Korb & Peter Bebergal. It was an unremarkable read as far as I was concerned, but I did see an interesting quote in there attributed to the Catholic writer Paul Elie. I think I do see a lot of this going around...

Among the church's younger members, Catholic guilt has been supplanted by Catholic shame - a deep embarrassment about our church and its presence in the culture. In part we are ashamed for the reasons Christians have always felt ashamed: we associate faith with childhood and are eager to throw off childish ways; we disapprove of the church's doings; we appraise the church by its own standards and it doesn't measure up; or we appraise ourselves and realize we don't live up to what Christ and the church demand of us.

Mostly, though, we are ashamed because we lack the resources of Catholic tradition that might enable us to reconcile seeming opposites and make sense of the absurdity we confront.

The Day Henri Nouwen Dissed The Blues Brothers

The sterner side of Henri

Remember the gentle, kind, spiritual, non-judgmental Henri Nouwen? Well, I guess there were certain things that could get even his back up, like the time he took in a screening of the The Blues Brothers with a group of private school students.

It wasn't particularly great cinema, or great comedy, and it certainly wasn't good blues, but I recall that my friends and I got a few chuckles out of it when John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd wrote and starred in The Blues Brothers in 1980. Here is the scene being referred to by Henri below. I remember we were sort of stunned and strangely thrilled at the time. A chase scene like this might seem like old-hat and standard fare to be found in movies today, but in 1980, the scale and cost of this thing was kind of new.



From Nouwen's book Peacework: Prayer, Resistance, Community...

We should not be distracted by arguments as to whether peace starts within or without. Inner and outer peace must never be separated. Peace work is a spectrum stretching from the hidden corners of our innermost selves to the most complex international deliberations. Our resistance against the powers of death must therefore be as deep and wide as peace itself.

Entertainment with Death

Not long ago I visited an exclusive American prep school. Most of the boys and girls came from well-to-do families, most were well educated, and all of them were very bright. They were friendly, well-mannered, and ambitious; it was not hard for me to imagine many of them eventually holding important positions, driving big cars, and living in large homes.

One evening I joined these students in watching a movie in the school's auditorium. It was The Blues Brothers. I could not believe what I was seeing and hearing. The screen was filled with the wild destruction of supermarkets, houses, and cars, while the auditorium was filled with excited shouts coming from the mouths of these well-mannered, bright young people. While they were watching the total devastation of all the symbols of their own prosperous lives, they yelled and screamed as if their team had won a championship. As cars were being smashed, houses set on fire, and high-rises pulled down, my excited neighbor told me that this was one of the most expensive "funny" movies ever made. Millions of dollars had been spent to film a few hours of what I considered to be death. No human beings were killed. It was supposed to bring a good laugh. But nothing human beings made was left untouched by the destructive activities of The Blues Brothers.

What does it mean that ambitious young Americans are being entertained by millions of dollars worth of destruction in a world in which many people die from fear, lack of food, and ever-increasing violence? Are these the future leaders of a generation whose primary task is to prevent a nuclear war and stop the arms race?

I report this seemingly innocent event to point to the fact that much contemporary entertainment is designed to feed our fascination with violence and death. Long hours of our lives are spent filling our minds with images not only of disintegrating skyscrapers and cars, but also of shootings, torture scenes, and other manifestations of human violence. Once I met a Vietnam veteran on an airplane. He told me that as a youngster he had seen so many people being killed on TV that once he got to Vietnam it had been hard for him to believe that those whom he killed would not stand up again and act in the next program. Death had become an unreal act. Vietnam woke him up to the truth that death is real and final and very ugly.

When I am honest with myself I have to confess that I, too, am often seduced by the titillating power of death. I am fascinated by someone who walks a tightrope strung over a gaping abyss. I bite my nails in excitement when I see trapeze artists making somersaults without a safety net beneath them. I look with open eyes and mouth at stunt pilots, motorcyclists, and race car drivers who put their lives at risk in their desire to break a record or perform a dazzling feat. In this respect, I am little different from the thousands of Romans who were entertained by the death games of the gladiators, or from the crowds who in the past and even the present are attracted to places of public execution.

Any suggestion that these real or imagined death games are healthy ways to deal with our "death-instincts" or "aggressive fantasies" needs to be discarded as unfounded, unproved, or simply irresponsible. Acting out death wishes either in fact or in the imagination can never bring us any closer to peace, whether it is peace of heart or peace in our life together.

Amy-Jill at the Gates

Amy-Jill Levine slips through the pearly gates with some humor and a challenge

One of the New Testament and historical-Jesus scholars I thoroughly enjoy reading is Amy-Jill Levine. She's the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School.

She describes herself as...

“a Yankee-Jewish feminist who teaches in a predominantly Protestant divinity school in the buckle of the Bible belt”.

She grew up not far from New Bedford, MA, near a neighborhood that was predominantly Portuguese-Catholic. She recalls seeing Pope John XXIII on television as a child, and asking her mother who he was. Her mother told her and added, "He was good for the Jews." Levine said,

I immediately decided I would be pope; it meant lots of spaghetti, great accessories, and the job was good for the Jews. "I want to be pope," I announced to my mother. "You can't," she replied. "You're not Italian." Clearly, for a variety of reasons, I was in desperate need of instruction regarding the relationship between church and synagogue.

Of course, growing up with a fascination with the Christianity of her friends eventually and inevitably exposed her to the anti-semitic overtones that could unfortunately still be found within it as well.

In bringing her Jewish education and influence, as well as excellent and readable scholarship to bear on New Testament studies, Levine certainly provides some challenging and thought-provoking insights. It is always done, however, in a spirit of irenicism, and she has a very good sense of humor, which always makes a person worth paying attention to.

Here, in her book, The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, she imagines herself in front of St. Peter at the pearly gates.

After a long and happy life, I find myself- at the pearly gates (a sight of great joy; the word for "pearl" in Greek is, by the way, margarita). Standing there is St. Peter. This truly is heaven, for finally my academic questions will receive answers. I immediately begin the questions that have been plaguing me for half a century: "Can you speak Greek? Where did you go when you wandered off in the middle of Acts? How was the incident between you and Paul in Antioch resolved? What happened to your wife?"

Peter looks at me with some bemusement and states, "Look, lady, I've got a whole line of saved people to process. Pick up your harp and slippers here, and get the wings and halo at the next table. We'll talk after dinner."

As I float off, I hear, behind me, a man trying to gain Peter's attention. He has located a "red letter Bible," which is a text in which the words of Jesus are printed in red letters. This is heaven, and all sorts of sacred art and Scriptures, from the Bhagavad Gita to the Qur'an, are easily available (missing, however, was the Reader's Digest Condensed Version). The fellow has his Bible open to John 14 and he is frenetically pointing at v 6: "Jesus says here, in red letters, that he is the way. I've seen this woman on television (actually, she's thinner in person). She's not Christian; she's not baptized-she shouldn't be here!"

"Oy" says Peter, "another one-wait here:"

He returns a few minutes later with a man about five foot three with dark hair and eyes. I notice immediately that he has holes in his wrists, for when the empire executes an individual, the circumstances of that death cannot be forgotten.

"What is it, my son?" he asks.

The man, obviously nonplussed, sputters, "I don't mean to be rude, but didn't you say that no one comes to the Father except through you?"

"Well," responds Jesus, "John does have me saying this:" (Waiting in line, a few other biblical scholars who overhear this conversation sigh at Jesus's phrasing; a number of them remain convinced that Jesus said no such thing. They'll have to make the inquiry on their own time.) "But if you flip back to the Gospel of Matthew, which does come first in the canon, you'll notice in chapter 25, at the judgment of the sheep and the goats, that I am not interested in those who say `Lord, Lord,' but in those who do their best to live a righteous life: feeding the hungry, visiting people in prison..."

Becoming almost apoplectic, the man interrupts, "But, but, that's works righteousness. You're saying she's earned her way into heaven?" "No," replies Jesus, "I am not saying that at all. I am saying that I am the way, not you, not your church, not your reading of John's Gospel, and not the claim of any individual Christian or any particular congregation. I am making the determination, and it is by my grace that anyone gets in, including you. Do you want to argue?" The last thing I recall seeing, before picking up my heavenly accessories, is Jesus handing the poor man a Kleenex to help get the log out of his eye.

A Crack in the NASA Wall of Silence?

Or just a moonbat?


Ed Mitchell on the Moon - Apollo 14 Mission, 1971

Former astronaut Ed Mitchell says that UFOs and aliens are real.

Dr Edgar Mitchell, said he was aware of several UFO visits during his career, but each one had been covered up.

The 77-year-old, who was a crew member of the Apollo 14 mission, said sources at the space agency had described aliens as resembling "little people who look strange to us".

Dr Mitchell told Kerrang! Radio that human technology was "not nearly as sophisticated" as theirs and had they been hostile, he warned: "We would be been gone by now".

He said: "There's not much question at all that there's life throughout the universe, we are not alone at all. I'm most assured about that...

"I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we've been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomena is real.

"It's been well covered up by all our governments for the last 60 years or so, but slowly it's leaked out and some of us have been privileged to have been briefed on some of it.

"I've been in military and intelligence circles, who know that beneath the surface of what has been public knowledge, yes – we have been visited.

"Reading the papers recently, it's been happening quite a bit."

...Officials from NASA, were quick to play the comments down...

"Dr Mitchell is a great American, but we do not share his opinions on this issue."

You know, I've never really given much thought to extra-terrestrials one way or the other. I've never found a compelling reason to believe in them. The way I figure it, if they exist and if they ever wanted to make themselves known to us, there isn't much we could do to stop them from imposing their will upon us, for good or for ill.

If they are benign, that's good to know. Maybe they'll step in when we're on the brink of destroying ourselves. If not that, maybe they can at least pay for the Fannie Mae/Freddy Mac bailout.

You can listen to the interview with Ed Mitchell here.

"Fratello Metallo" - The Rockin' Cap

Brother Cesare Bonizzi, OFM Cap. The Heavy Metal Friar

The Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, founded by former Capuchins, have hip-hop artist Stan Fortuna as their troubador. The Caps have responded with 62-year-old Brother Cesare Bonizzi (click on image).



Take that Stan!

The CFR have nothing on the Caps...

Rammstein's Oliver Riedel says, "German language suits heavy metal music. French might be the language of love, but German is the language of anger".

Hmmm. What is Italian to heavy metal? The language of faith?

Perhaps Cristina can translate Brother Cesare for us. That is, if his ... music... um... well... if it can be translated. :-D

Hat tip to A Minor Friar and The Ironic Catholic

A Plea for Some Kind of Understanding...

Despite my suspicion that the "Extraordinary" is slated to become the "Ordinary"

The seriously misguided and far too influential Dario Cardinal Castrillon de Hoyos

You'd probably do better, your eminence, in putting your good offices to work on things like getting FARC hostages in Colombia released, rather than indulging your obsessions over the Latin Mass.

I believe there is a difference and a fine line between critiquing the church (asking hard and challenging questions of both the laity and the clergy) and garden variety anti-Catholicism. I’ll stand on record and say that I believe there is also a difference between faithful dissent and attacking the Church.

Every now and then I feel a need to put a level-set on what I’m attempting to do here. On my reading list, you can often find material that challenges orthodox interpretations of the faith (Nobody is going to tell me what I can read and can’t read. After all, they read everything at the Vatican). In addition, I’ve had plenty of posts that boost certain theologians who’ve found themselves in hot water in Rome over the years, as well as some posts that have criticized various members of the hierarchy, trends I find disturbing, and poor decisions that have been made over the course of the last 40 years or so. Nevertheless, what I do here is never intended to tear the Catholic Church down. On the contrary. What I’ve always wanted to do here is to build her back up, emphasizing what I consider to be the strongest points in her traditions and teachings. I don’t do this for the entertainment of non-Catholics and skeptics who get a kick out of seeing a Catholic bashing his own hierarchy.

I’m pretty conservative in my basic inclinations, mostly as a result of my upbringing, and the peers and families who’ve most influenced me by positive example. On the other hand, prayerful and collaborative priests who trusted the laity to do the right thing helped to form my vision of the Church. I don’t feel particularly comfortable having to consistently carry water for either the traditionalist or the liberal wings of the Church. As my profile indicates, what concerns me is not championing the causes of the left or right, but polarization, which indicates frustration with both ends of the spectrum. I embrace much of the progressive agenda, I do, but being staunchly pro-life, I’d probably never make a good spokesman for the far left wing of the Church. Liberal Catholicism as it’s commonly understood isn’t really my thing. I like certain aspects of Liberation Theology, which is radical, not necessarily liberal.

When I first started posting on the web, it was on conservative apologetics forums. Like many Boston-area Catholics, I felt a strong sense of outrage and demoralization when the sexual abuse crisis exploded and felt compelled to explore in depth the “root cause” of the problem. Many of us read the books related to the crisis that were getting most of the attention in the mainstream media at the time. I plowed through some of the works of Gary Wills, Donald Cozzens, James Carrol, Paul Dinter, Thomas Cahill, Joseph Girzone, Eugene Kennedy, and others. While some of these authors brought up some great points that are worth considering, I felt that the tone was essentially defeatist and depressing. They seemed void of solutions and void of hope. In addition, it was clear to me that these authors, many of whom were ex-seminarians or ex-priests, clearly had their own agendas and their own demons that they were trying to project upon the Church. Forget about self-flagellation as described in The Da Vinci code. Immersing yourself in the thought held in certain corners of the Church is the ultimate in self-flagellation.

When I played sports as a youth, I learned that you never sit on the bench and hang your head when your team is in trouble. You “put on your game face” and rally.

Poking around on the web, I stumbled upon the world of Catholic apologetics. At the time it was a pleasure to be exposed to men and women who felt no shame in being Catholic, who fully embraced Vatican II without mumbling about how embarrassing the pre-Vatican II Church was. Books that had gone dusty on my shelf by Augustine, Teresa of Avila, Fulton Sheen and Ignatius Loyola, I re-opened with new vigor. I’ll state here that Thomas Rausch and Michael Himes probably never would have motivated me to and explore the rich tradition of the early Church fathers. Would Richard McBrien or Charles Curran motivate any one us to mine the treasures to be found in reading Newman, Francis De Sales, Catherine of Siena, and Robert Bellarmine? Probably not. I found myself wondering if Wills & Co. were wrong. Rather, was the fundamental analysis of the “root cause of the problem” by George Weigel right? As Fr. Neuhaus put it, was the answer “Fidelity, fidelity, fidelity”?

Well…

Over time I started to see some real problems in those circles, and a troublingly consistent trend. What I discovered was the furtive (and at times not so furtive) contempt for JPII mixed in with the common hagiography that circled around him, and not for his conservatism. It was for his supposed “liberalism” and “modernism”. What I also found, much to my dismay, was not appreciation for Vatican II, but representations ranging from the most tepid endorsements that were humanly possible, to outright hijacking of the council’s purpose and intent and the motivation behind its documents; and worst of all, the accusation that it was some kind of Communist/Masonic/Jewish plot that was responsible for the destruction of the Church and all of the accompanying evil in the world. Some of this came with a nasty streak of anti-semitism which wouldn’t have been so bad if it had been laughed off by more reasonable people as absurd, or if it had been condemned. As fundamentalism sweeps the planet in one form or another, it became clear to me that the polarization that I decry was being stoked much more from the right than from the left.

I could shrug a lot of this off as the web providing a platform for the most committedly extreme elements, but I can’t shrug off the feeling that the hierarchy, as presently constituted, have given up on the Council as well.

In a lot of ways, this pontificate of Benedict’s has been very difficult for me, even more difficult than the years when the scandal exploded. As Cardinal Ratzinger, I never found his actions and decisions to be particularly helpful to the Church, and I find it harder and harder to defend him from the charge that he’s a restorationist. His attitudes towards the liturgy, and his recent comments laying the blame for the sexual abuse crisis on the “proportionalism” that was taught in the seminaries in the 1970s underscore this. There's no introspection, no self-examination, no self-criticism of the institution. It’s always the fault of the liberals. As John Dominic Crossan puts it:

It is not enough to focus only on criminally abusive priests and even on guiltily indifferent bishops. It is not even enough to say that it was “sometimes very badly handled”—when was it ever handled otherwise? What is necessary from the Pope—and what was never even hinted behind his mention of “deep shame” (a private matter)—was some awareness of structural and systemic problems within the episcopal and papal hierarchy which facilitated the depth and breadth of the crime.

Finally, then, while the Pope looked outward and made several very accurate structural criticisms of society, he never looked inward and made similar criticisms of his own hierarchy. Here is the question: is the Roman Catholic hierarchy deeply flawed by an abuse of power and authority of which clerical pederasty and episcopal complicity are but one terrible manifestation?

Now, putting aside the abuse crisis, and getting back to the Council... In speaking of the Council which I believe Benedict has re-interpreted to his own liking, let's be fair for a moment.

The Council did not call for married priests, women priests, acceptance of divorce, acceptance of pre-marital sex, and gay marriage and lifestyles. It didn’t call for acceptance of birth control, although the bishops and theologians did tell Paul VI that they hadn’t tied his hands on the issue.

What the Council overwhelmingly did call for was a “reform and restoration” of the liturgy. With the recent Motu Proprio, however, Benedict sanctioned the use of the unreformed liturgy without the local bishop’s permission. If we are no longer seeing what the council did ask for, I think we can conclude that all of the above-mentioned issues that progressives care so much about are so far off of the back-burner they are not only off the stove, they’ve essentially been tossed out of the kitchen door into the backyard!

A couple of weeks ago, Cardinal Castrillon De Hoyos made some astonishing remarks indicating his conviction that he and Pope Benedict not only wanted to see the Latin Mass made more widely available, but that he'd like to see the Tridentine Mass celebrated in every Parish. So much for the "extraordinary" form. It sure looks to me like a long-term strategy to make it the "ordinary" form again.

A Pontifical High Mass in the Tridentine Rite was said in Westminster Cathedral last weekend for the first time in four decades. Its celebrant, a close ally of the Pope and an ambassador for the old liturgy, promised that further changes will be afoot.

Imagine for a moment a vibrant and confident Catholic church, the pews filled every Sunday with parishioners of all ages, eager to celebrate a distinctive liturgy that will impart a sense of reverence and awe and the mystery of Christ's redeeming sacrifice.

That is the vision of the Church presented last weekend by a senior member of the Curia, Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos. And the means of achieving it, he claims, is the revival of the Tridentine Rite.

It was last July when Pope Benedict issued an instruction, or motu proprio, encouraging the rite's much wider celebration if a "stable group" requests it from a parish priest. He designated the Tridentine Mass the "extraordinary form" and the new the "ordinary form" of the one Roman rite. But, Cardinal Castrillón, who is close to the Pope, has now gone much further, suggesting it should be made a far more frequent liturgical experience.

He was eager to explain why he considered the revival of the old rite - which he called the Gregorian Rite - so important. He had a forthright response to those who complain that its reintroduction violates the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, calling such a view "absolute ignorance". Pope Benedict, he added, was a theologian with deep understanding of Vatican II and was acting exactly in accordance with "the way of the council" that the freedom of different kinds of celebration is to be offered. Similarly, he judged complaints about the priest in the old rite celebrating Mass with his back to the congregation to be "ridiculous". The priest represented the person of Christ and in facing east - that is, towards God - he was reviving the sacrifice of the Son to the Father.

Asked whether he hoped to see provision for the Tridentine Rite made in "many" parishes in England and Wales, the cardinal said he wanted "all" parishes to experience this "treasure". As for men training for the priesthood, he disclosed that the Vatican is writing to all seminaries, asking them to ensure they will be taught Latin not just for liturgical purposes but also to prepare them for their studies in theology and philosophy.

But what of the confusion felt by many Catholics who had seen the transition from the Tridentine to the new rite in 1970 and had welcomed it, seeing it as real progress? I suggested that for some this new emphasis on old rite might feel like a step backwards.

"Progress is important, but what does it mean?" said the cardinal. "Today, for me, progress is discovering the meaning of contemplation. This is progress. A person who has no time for silence is a poor person. A person who has no time for contemplation is poor also. The holy Mass is sacrifice. We have to look at Golgotha, at Calvary, the Cross of Christ. When we have sacrifice in Christ we feel free from sin, we are redeemed, then we are happy and when we celebrate the Resurrection of Christ we are happy to gather together and to celebrate, but first the sacrifice, second the community aspect of the meal."

Is it not possible to express all this in the new rite?

"Yes, but the experience of these 40 years is not always so good," said Cardinal Castrillón. "Many people abandon the sense of adoration of God. Yes, we are brothers but we are not saved as brothers. We are saved by the sacrifice. We need to be in front of the mystery. We sing because we are brothers. We sing because we are celebrating, but we keep silent because we are in front of the mystery. The new rite can express it but there have been brought out so many abuses all over the Church that many people abandon it [sic]. Many children do not know how to be in the presence of God, how they have to be adoring."

But what exactly were the abuses he had alluded to earlier that had crept in with the advent of the new rite? The answer was surprising.

He explained that he had received letters complaining that a priest had celebrated Mass made up as a clown: "The parish priest with the lips painted and the wig and mirrors here," he said, pointing to his temples. "A travesty." Other examples including that of a priest who had allegedly presided at Sunday Mass dressed in a miniskirt, and a priest who had invited his Protestant "brother" to celebrate the Eucharist. Yet another had introduced his wife and sons before celebrating Mass.

"There is an atmosphere that makes possible those abuses and that atmosphere must be changed, and in my poor opinion the new presence of the Gregorian Rite will help us to take seriously the identity of our faith, respecting all the other ways of thinking but keeping strongly our identity with Christ, with Christ in Calvary, with Christ in Golgotha, with Christ offering his blood for our salvation."

He's not without some good points, but on plenty of blogs I've seen all of this nonsense about clown masses. It's astonishing to see someone like Hoyos buying into it. I don't know... I'm from flinty New England. If this ever happened anywhere outside of the Paulist Center, I'm unaware of it. Has anyone reading this ever actually seen a "Clown Mass"?? Maybe you need to go out to someplace like Rochester or the Midwest where everyone is friendly and cheerful and hold hands during the Our Father to be familiar with this sort of thing... All I can say is that I find it startling that a senior churchman can use this sort of anecdotal, apocalyptic and hysterical nonsense to justify what he's trying to see accomplished.

Get it straight. The revival of Latin and the revival of the Tridentine Rite are all about control (control of language, and therefore, control of theological development... or non-development) and the re-establishing of boundaries between the clergy and the laity (control of everything else).

This is the year of St. Paul, so I'll borrow a bit of Pauline rhetorical style... "Does all of this mean that I'm fed up with the hierarachy, that I'm opposed to the existence of the hierarchy, and that I want to smash it? By no means!"

I could never be a "Sola Scriptura" Christian. Jesus never wrote down a word. He didn't leave a book behind. He instituted the Eucharist, and he left apostles behind, who in turn "sent" out new ones by the laying on of hands. I believe in Apostolic Succession. John Michael Talbot, hardly a raging right-winger, puts it well here:

Jesus, the Living Word, appointed living men to be his apostles and preach his word of salvation. They were anointed by the Spirit of the living God at Pentecost and empowered to fulfill their commission. Thus it was that the living God sent a living Word to a living people through the life of Jesus Christ and the apostles. The word is not written in stone, it is written in the life of Christ! "He is the God of the living, not of the dead."

The early church of Acts 2 did not follow scripture alone, it followed "apostolic instruction." From this living apostolic tradition, the Old Testament was interpreted, and the New Testament itself was brought forth. It is because of this living tradition that Paul was able to say, "Owe no debt to anyone except the debt that binds us to love one another. He who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law ... love never wrongs the neighbor, hence love is the fulfillment of the law."

Sola Scriptura could never work for me, because for one thing, the New Testament is full of contradictions. No one can convince me any longer, for example, that James and Paul were of the same mind. They were not. In many ways the New Testament reflects the struggles and tensions in the early Church, and is in fact a consensus document, melding and absorbing the Gentile and Jewish missions together. I believe the Bible is inspired because I believe in the witness of the men of the Church who told me so.

It just wouldn't be bad to see them exercise their authority with a little bit more humility and honesty, that's all.

Here's where the plea for understanding comes in.

If Vatican II is a dead letter, it's not only the fault of the obstructionist curia. The Council Fathers were putting a lot of trust in the laity. They were calling on us to be a priesthood of believers and to live out lives of holiness in the temporal sphere. They put a lot of faith in us, and in fact, really went out on a limb for us.

In most cases, we have failed them spectacularly.

Therefore, we have a lot to do with why the Council went nowhere. One of the biggest problems out there now is the lack of an educated laity, and progressives who've pretty much had an unencumbered hand in catechesis have a lot of blame to carry for this "Beige Catholicism".

Although I'm not crazy about the Tridentine Mass revival and other developments, I do understand where it is coming from, and I do share the concern about the deconstruction of our society and the loss of formality that has accompanied it. I've written about that here before too.

I understand where young radtrads are coming from. The cultural sink we live in is a very hostile and difficult place in which to nurture faith. Everthing else that their generation exposes them to is the antithesis of what they hold dear.

In other words, there is fear. There is fear that the Faith is going to disappear.

It's not an unfounded fear. I'll hold out an olive branch to traditionalists, because the disappearance of Catholicsm (outside of a very, very small remnant) within our lifetimes is a real possibility. We are in serious trouble. If we are going to last at all, we are going to have to come to some kind of understanding with each other and work together.

Catholicism matters! It sure as heck does. Despite what all of our enemies and critics say, the world without Catholicism will not be a better place. If the brand of Christianity coming out of the Global South is going to be a charismatic, pentecostalized faith that is demon-obsessed, emotionally-based, rigid, intolerant and literalist, the contemplative aspects of Catholicism will be dearly missed, you wait and see. Not everything that claims to come from the Spirit does. I agree with St. Thomas Aquinas that there are three sources of wisdom - The philosopher, the Theologian and the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, I want to be more about making peace within the Church rather than to be a constant gadfly, although there are times for that.

Almost a month posting nothing, and now I'm babbling and rambling.... I'll close with this quote from Cardinal Martini, whose sentiments I share:

There was a time when I dreamed of a church in poverty and humility, one that does not depend on the powers of this world. A church that gives space to people who think outside the box. A church that transmits courage and worth, especially to those who feel belittled or like sinners. A young Church. Today I no longer have those dreams. After 75 years I have decided to pray for the Church.

Champeens

Yep, that's the NBA Trophy



When the Celtics were sold to their current group of owners back in 2003, the deal was signed in a local diner.

Anne and the boys just happened to stop by while the trophy was being brought back around for a little visit.

Switching sports for a moment... After all, there's all this fútbol talk going on lately...

"Number One Son" goes up over the top and lays some lumber on the competition



Now, I'm not saying he's a dirty player, or anything... But hey, that's what they teach them. A club team game isn't like town rec league. It ain't beanbag.



All of his favorite players are forwards and midfielders, and he only likes defense... Go figure.

Please Bear with Me...

My apologies to friends who might be stopping by here lately looking for some new content and aren't finding much.

I've been pretty busy lately with some major implementations at work, some RFP responses, and of course, Summer family stuff...

I do confess, however, to a bit of blogging fatigue. I'm not crazy about the news right now on any front - political, ecclesiastical, economical, vocational, educational, ecological, or otherwise.

I'm taking stock a little bit in where I want to go with this thing, after a little over two years of blogging. If I can't get it said in two years, I probably can't get it said, period.

Bear with me though, I'll be around in some fashion.

A Measure of Redemption

It doesn't make up for the Patriots, but we'll take it...



It's a dictum that holds true for all sports...

Defense Wins Championships!

The Patriots may have said that last year too, but they were whistling past the graveyard when they said it, as their defense was aging rapidly on them.

Then again, how much more would the rest of the country have hated this town if the Patriots had managed to get it done too? Is it possible to hate us any more?

Defense wins championships... It makes me less uneasy with another iron law:

Money buys championships.

But that's a subject for another day.

As with the Red Sox last fall, I'd be remiss in not giving credit where credit is due, even though I haven't been following the Celtics avidly. To tell the truth, I'm not much of an NBA fan anymore, although it really was nice seeing them demolish the Lakers, especially in that last game. It kind of got the juices flowing again.

And speaking of "The Truth", the best thing about this was that Paul Pierce really deserved it. He's been a class act in this town, and seeing him win a championship after all of those years in the wilderness was gratifying.

Disclaimer: This post is in no way meant to rub salt into the wounds of Utah Jazz fans. If, however, you root for anyone else (and you know who you are), y'all can kiss my ...

SWEET SEVENTEEN!

Blues in Wingtips

A completely random post with an Otis Rush Shuffle

Otis, my man... (click on image)



"Oh, the formality!"

May we have a little bit of that back in our society please? Just a little bit? I miss it.

May the Blues live forever. The truest and most honest musical form there is.

Death to Hip-Hop. Death, I say... Death, death, death...

Fr. Andrew Greeley on Pope John XXIII

Smiling down on the crowd, (John XXIII) said: Tornando a casa, troverete i bambini. Date una carezza ai vostri bambini e dite: questa è la carezza del Papa. It means, “When you go home, you’ll find your children. Give them a kiss, and tell them that this kiss comes from the pope.” It summed up the legendary love of the man.

(After the 2005 papal conclave) a L’Unità cartoon showed Benedict XVI at the same window, saying, “Tonight, when you go home, I want you to give your children a spanking, and tell them that this spanking comes from the pope.”
-- John Allen ("Benedict's first year. One year on, he shapes up to be more a consulter than an enforcer, more a teacher than a star")

Excerpts from Andrew Greeley's column this morning, Church needs to revive its stalled reform (He was speaking of his recent visit to the papal tombs):

We were almost swept away by a crowd of Polish pilgrims, singing loudly (and on key) as they marched to the tomb of John Paul II. He is their great folk hero, and their enthusiasm is justified.

Yet I wonder about the other great pope of the end of the 20th century -- Blessed John XXIII. He has been beatified but no one seems greatly concerned about his canonization. Yet in fact, the church has never in recent centuries had a leader who attracted so much positive attention to the church...

Pope John was a reforming pope -- as every pope should be under the dictum Ecclesia Semper Reformanda ("the Church must always be reformed"). The unchanging church could in fact change, fresh winds blew through the arid dicasteries of the Vatican Palace. The church was not afraid of anyone or anything. The pope could dialogue with anyone. He could reopen any question. He could listen to any proposal. He tugged the Council out of the hands of the curia and gave it to the bishops of the world.

It was the most dramatic Catholic era in 1,000 years. We were young and alive, and the church was also young and alive. This old man, filled with the vitality of faith and hope had turned the Church upside down and inside out. Under "Good Pope John" it was impossible to be anti-Catholic.

It was all too good to be true.

One would have thought that he had established a model for a religious leader of all the world -- "A hopeful Holy Man who smiles," I had written. A few more popes like that, popes filled with the hope and love of the Gospel, and the pope would have become de facto the most important religious figure on the planet. Yet he had terrified the men who would succeed him and those who would elect such successors, good men, pious men, sincere men.

Nervous men.

The pope is not an actor, not a comedian, not a joker. He was vicar of Christ, the heir of Peter the fisherman. He had to be serious. He had to defend the deposit of faith from those who were attacking it. Pope John had almost ruined the Church, many of the curialists were whispering. It was time to restore order, clean up the mess and protect the church from those who took Pope John's Council seriously.

As the years went on it became necessary to double-think what the Council had accomplished -- it was more about continuity than about change. It was not a reformation. The church would creep back into its suspicions of the world and become hostile and defensive. You could not fight off those who were opponents of the Church's "teachings about life" by laughter and a ready smile.

Some of the more recently ordained priests claim that they are not Vatican II priests but John Paul priests, a position which, taken seriously, is close to heresy.

The Tablet, an English Catholic publication, said that John Paul II had "aborted the reform." Both popes were saints, one was correct about the "signs of the times" and the other not. The Church still needs reform. Desperately. More than ever.