"Don't let Trump be misunderstood"

Eric Burdon was one of the most horrible people in Rock and Roll history. Why would I say that? Well, he named his band The Animals. Didn't he know that they were human beings made in the image of Almighty God?



It is nearly as bad as what President Trump did yesterday. He referred to Catholic Priests as 'animals'. Can you believe that? He called Catholic Priests animals! That is absolutely unacceptable. Doesn't he know they are human beings? Regardless of what they have done? Oh, wait. Sorry; that was Pope Francis that referred to priests as animals. Excerpt:

During a Q&A session towards the end of the meeting, Francis spoke of a “pastoral cruelty,” such as priests who refuse to baptize the children of young single mothers.

“They’re animals,” he said. “This is individualism.”

[It’s] “an individualism which doesn’t affect only priests, but society as a whole, that looks for pleasure, that is hedonist, searching for that ‘damned’ well-being which has hurt us so much,” he said.

Should the Pope have called these priests who refuse baptism due to lack of paternal parentage "animals"? Hmmm... You know what? Yawn. No one cares. Maybe he should have been a little more specific and called them a "brood of vipers." That's a classic, I always thought. I mean, it is a rhetorical device, is it not? Whether it is Christ, or the Pope, or Eric Burdon or Trump talking this way.

("Hey, Jesus, you said 'Let he who is without sin throw the first stone.' So can I throw a tire-iron?" Ha, ha. Grow up.)

Speaking of the Pope and Trump, I got myself in trouble once when I said "The Pope and Trump are a lot alike." "How so?" shot back an indignant liberal Catholic dude I know who likes the Pope and despises Trump. "Well," I replied, "they both speak off the cuff continually, and get themselves in trouble all the time that way with detractors, but neither seems to care very much." He had no response to this observation.

Do you know what the motto of Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) is? It's really simple to remember, boys and girls: "Rape, Control, Kill." They are really into facial tattoos, so maybe they want to look like animals. However that wouldn't be justification to call them animals so much as the fact that they are big into underage prostitution. There is tons of money in that industry, or so I have heard.

So if in a scientific or theological or metaphysical sense it is incorrect, inaccurate or insensitive to call the members of the MS-13 gang "animals", I would argue that it is not for lack of trying on their part. And if you think President Trump is saying something racist about Latinos by calling these nasty people "animals" then you are misunderstanding him on purpose.

Update: This is pretty hilarious.

The Obvious Comparison

I was going for a run the other day in 25 degree weather and I began thinking about two of the most perplexing people alive at this moment. I mused that maybe I should do a Top Ten list of things that Pope Francis and Donald Trump have in common. But the two main things I came up with is that photographers seem to love to capture their facial expressions and they put their feet in their mouth a lot. So I gave up, even though I knew it would be instructive to point out the similarities of two gentlemen who are so good at surprising, perplexing and making headlines.

So along comes this really good article. It's worth reading, and it details some commonalities of these two super-famous men. Here's the most interesting part to me, something I've been wondering about for some time now:

But iconoclasm, though exhilarating for a while, may not deliver the revitalization it promises. For all his global popularity, the pope has failed to improve the reputation of the church he leads. A Washington Post-ABC News poll found “no evidence that Francis’s likability has boosted Catholic identification, worship attendance or prayer.”

This may be because, as the German writer Martin Mosebach has observed, Francis presents himself as a “dynamic, unconventional, courageous pope with a golden heart” in contrast to a church that is a “crusty, dead, faithless, rigid machine.” Why go to church? Better to follow the pope on Twitter.

That makes me sad; I'm afraid it rings 100% true. I don't hate the Pope the way some people on the Catholic right seem to, but I don't really see him as doing anything that great. He needs a lot of damage control, and no one is coming back to the church because of his "new style".

Obviously this is sort of the feeling I have about Trump. My opinion of him has gone down since he decided to stink up the GOP primaries, but I don't hate him.

I guess the biggest similarity to note is between Catholics who support the Pope and Trump's voters. It doesn't matter if they do or say something cringe-worthy, we still support them. In fact, I would suggest that Donald Trump is already a Pope of sorts, judging from his followers' devotion. But who am I to judge?

The Real Sexual Revolution

The real "sexual revolution" took place in the early Church, and the one people talk about in the sixties was just an attempt to undo it. Many people who have rediscovered the restoration of the beauty and integrity of the human person are converts to the Catholic Faith, and a number of them (130 to be precise) have delivered what I think is by far the most gracious, balanced and respectful letter voicing the concerns of the Catholic faithful with regard to the Synod on the Family. Excerpt:

With respect to the bewildering diversity of contemporary opinions about the human good, especially where questions about the human body are concerned, we understood that the radical nature of the Christian claim − that God, the Son, had taken up all flesh into Himself − was at stake. Christ “revealed man to himself” (Gaudium et Spes 22). He thereby “made clear” the meaning of our humanity – and with it the meaning of the body, of sexual difference, of sexuality, marriage and the family. He did this, for example, when the Pharisees asked him about divorce, and he turned them (and his own disciples) back to “the beginning,” to human nature as it was created. What is more, he brought something new to that same humanity, bestowing on it, mercifully, a share in His own fidelity to the Church. It was not by accident, then, that early Christians were drawn to the Church through the radiant humanity of His followers, manifest, for example, in their unique attitudes toward women, children, human sexuality, and marriage. And it was not by accident that, for the same reasons, we too were drawn to the Church many centuries later.

We are keenly aware of the difficult pastoral situations that you will be confronting at the Synod, especially those concerning divorced Catholics. We also share something of the burden you carry in confronting them. Some of us have experienced the pain of divorce in our own lives; and virtually all of us have friends or close relatives who have been so afflicted. We are therefore grateful that attention is being paid to a problem that causes such grievous harm to husbands and wives, their children, and indeed the culture at large.

We are writing you, however, because of our concerns about certain proposals to change the church’s discipline regarding communion for Catholics who are divorced and civilly re-married. We are frankly surprised by the opinion of some who are proposing a “way of penance” that would tolerate what the Church has never allowed. In our judgment such proposals fail to do justice to the irrevocability of the marriage bond, either by writing off the “first” marriage as if it were somehow “dead,” or, worse, by recognizing its continued existence but then doing violence to it. We do not see how these proposals can do anything other than contradict the Christian doctrine of marriage itself. But we also fail to see how such innovations can be, as they claim, either pastoral or merciful. However well meaning, pastoral responses that do not respect the truth of things can only aggravate the very suffering that they seek to alleviate. We cannot help but think of the abandoned spouses and their children. Thinking of the next generation, how can such changes possibly foster in young people an appreciation of the beauty of the insolubility of marriage?

Our current Holy Father is quoted in the letter:

"Today, there are those who say that marriage is out of fashion….They say that it is not worth making a life-long commitment, making a definitive decision, ‘forever,’ because we do not know what tomorrow will bring. I ask you, instead, to be revolutionaries, I ask you to swim against the time; yes, I am asking you to rebel against this culture that sees everything as temporary and that ultimately believes you are incapable of responsibility, that believes you are incapable of true love." - World Youth Day, 2013

Here's the concluding statement, but I hope everyone goes and reads the letter in its entirety: "It is our hope that our witness will strengthen yours so that the Church may continue to be the answer to what the human heart most deeply desires." That's why I became a Roman Catholic. I discovered that it is the only religion which answers the longings of the human heart.

To me, the details surrounding the process of annulment-granting is not really interesting at all. Loosening the requirements or tightening them are not even the point. I just feel a deep sadness thinking that people could go through so much pain and then realize that, if indeed their marriage was null, they didn't get one bit of grace from it. What a complete waste of their time and of themselves. Unless maybe they learned something from the experience and can actually make a sacramental marriage the second time around.

I heard a woman casually discussing her annulment with another woman in line for confession one time and I thought that it's no big wonder people think it's Catholic divorce. They treat annulments with more respect than their own marriage.

The list of people who signed the letter contains a great list people whom I deeply respect: J. Budziszewski, Jeff Cavins, David B. Currie, Dawn Eden Goldstein, Scott & Kimberly Hahn, Marcus Grodi, Austin Ruse, Tim Staples, etc. I'm humbled and happy to be a small follower in their larger footsteps.

No, no, no, possibly and it's hard to say

I liked this article on the Synod on the Family from CNN. It's short and to the point. Here's a cliff notes summary:

1. Will the church change its position on same-sex marriage?

No.

2. Will the church change its teaching on birth control or abortion?

No.

3. What about euthanasia?

No.

4. So will this meeting change anything at all?

Possibly.

5. If the synod does recommend any changes, when will they take effect?

It's hard to say.

Number four is the placeholder for the liberals hopey for changey. The strategy for "this meeting" is the same as always for liberals: to take some tossed-off lines from Pope Francis or from others that are written down into documents which can have interpretations read into them. Then they will base their actions on the agenda they inject. This is what they've done for years with Vatican II, so I highly doubt they will do anything different for this synod.

For example, notice this line: "Pope [Francis] has said the communion is 'medicine' and not a 'prize for the perfect.'" This is not a Pope Francis thing, this is basically the traditional Catholic response to the Jansenist heresy and there is nothing new or innovative about the statement at all. The priest who first gave me instruction went even further stating that "Holy Communion is medicine for your soul not a reward for being good". So forget perfect for a minute, you don't have to even be good to receive communion! All you need to be is in a state of grace and not in some persistent state of sin like being in an unlawful marriage.

Normal Catholics and people in general will note how much middle ground exists between perfection and a persistent state of sin. Most of my friends and acquaintances are somewhere in between. But liberals love to spend their time at the poles. So they will treat the whole thing like a binary either/or proposition. For example, many liberals give the impression that if you don't approve of and celebrate every immoral act of an active homosexual then you are no better than people who physically attack and kill homosexuals. And if you make distinctions — like the Church does — between valid and invalid marriages then you really don't think that those people in the latter love each other. Which of course has nothing to do with being either in a state of grace or a persistent state of sin.

I'm not worried that anything horrible is going to take place within the context of the synod. I do think that some people will take it as a green light to push a liberal agenda, and it is amusing to see them pretty much doing this already when this meeting is just getting underway. The worst I fear is that the Church might lose an opportunity to clarify its constant teaching in the interference of all the gay talk. But it wouldn't be the first of the last time that's happened. But I think that TFP and MBD are overly worried.

Pope Francis supports actual exercise of religious liberty

Pope Francis often has a roundabout, "chatty" way of expressing Universal Truth, but he was pretty direct about conscientious objectors like Kim Davis. Excerpt:

"I can't have in mind all cases that can exist about conscientious objection,” Pope Francis told journalists on his flight, “but, yes, I can say that conscientious objection is a right that is a part of every human right."

"And if someone does not allow others to be a conscientious objector,” the Holy Father said, “he denies a right."

The pope also said conscientious objection must be respected in legal structures.

"Otherwise we would end up in a situation where we select what is a right, saying: 'This right has merit, this one does not,'" he stated.

The unambiguous comments from Pope Francis in support of religious freedom come after other comparable statements he made, spoken and symbolic, throughout his historic visit to the United States, making religious liberty a recurring theme for the trip.

It would seem like the Pope believes, as do all of us in the whole 1st Amendment crowd, that you actually have to exercise your religious freedoms the way you exercise your muscles to keep them from atrophying. And it would seem that conscientious objections to bad laws would strengthen the case for religious liberty, not weaken it. It's in line with the whole St. James "screw faith without works" thing.

UPDATE: When I posted this yesterday I was thinking about Dreher's contempt for Kim Davis. But I wasn't thinking about the Benedict Option. Silly me; I forget about the principle of material equivalence. Rod Dreher is the Benedict Option, or BenOp, or Benny, or Strategic Withdrawal, or "Pull and Pray"... at this point in his life at least. I was also thinking about Michael Medved who said a lot of similar things about Davis on his radio show. Medved has a masterful mind and I usually agree with him, but I was not swayed on this point. Maybe Kim Davis isn't the best spokesperson for religious liberty, but this is a time in history to take a stand poorly rather than withdrawing or doing nothing.

Keith's posted comment showing Dreher's use of the photoshopped face of Pope Francis incenses me. And so that is why I feel compelled to make this update. I have lost friends over my refusal to attack the Pope over his deficiencies, real or perceived. Rod Dreher is NOT A CATHOLIC ANYMORE and therefore feels like he has the freedom to say whatever he wants about the leader of another religion. Oh, yeah—if it happens to be the Roman Catholic religion. But my guess is that he has borrowed this image from others with an opposite opinion from his, i.e., people who think it is great that Pope Francis is more lax, less rigid than his predecessors and aligned with mercy rather than justice. At the same time these people tip their hand on what they really think about the Office of the Papacy, the Vicar of Christ, by painting his face like a clown to get their message across, and that is what Rod Dreher and those on the opposite side have in common: contempt for the Catholic Church and her mission in and to the world.

A lot of people do not realize that a week before Rod Dreher penned his famous 2013 Time article "I'm Still Not Going Back to the Catholic Church" he wrote this article in the NY Times titled "The Pope Did More Damage Than He Realized". Taken together, these articles give the impression of a Goldilocks personality who doesn't even care for the baby bear's bed, chair or porridge. His position can be stated "I completely disagree with the Pope's position, he is damaging the church even worse than it was when I left it, he's proving my point about the general unseriousness of Catholics especially in America, he is empowering the dissidents, but I'm still not going back to the Catholic Church." Oh, well to be honest we sort of didn't think you would, Rod, after the article you wrote a week earlier.

So Rod Dreher is all for taking a stand... but not like Kim Davis, God forbid! He stands up and points a finger at her and cries "Who is she to judge!?" He is all for judging himself, and he damn sure wants a father figure who presages Almighty God at the final judgment. But everyone else can just shut the hell up.

If we are entirely confused at this point about how exactly Rod Dreher wants Christians to behave then it is Rod Dreher's fault. And this is nothing new. In his confusing world, we have seen over and over again conflicting images. We've seen a story where an Orthodox Priest reports jubilantly that Rod Dreher has left the Catholic Church and become Russian Orthodox, followed by an angry Rod Dreher lashing out at the messenger in the case, my friend J-Carp, a Citizen-Journalist, for revealing something he was supposedly proud of and yet hiding it under a bushel basket. We've seen him now constantly playing the part of a little, misunderstood Alfred Prufrock when people sensibly and persistently point out that the Benedict Option sounds an awful lot like the refusal to be "salt and light" in the world. And throughout all of this there runs a current of anti-Catholicism of Rod Dreher. The fact that his anti-Catholicism is more intellectual than that of Jack Chick makes it no less real. And no less disgusting.

And the fact that this update is long enough to be its own post... well, it probably means it will be its own post when I have a little more time.

Zugwrack

This is an example of why I haven't been wringing my hands about the upcoming synod. It turns out that Cardinal Kasper did some exaggeratin' about the Pope being on board with his proposal of greater complacency mercy towards adulterous couples and homosexuals.

As Arroyo continued to question him, the cardinal appeared to be increasingly exasperated and defensive, and at one point denied that he had made any proposal at all. Responding to Arroyo’s observation that priests were contending with divorcees and even homosexuals who were demanding that they receive Communion because “this is clearly what the pope wants,” Kasper responded: “Well this is a misunderstanding, and first of all, it was a question, and I put the question to open the debate. It’s not a proposal. And therefore, of course a couple can come and want Holy Communion. I spoke about a penitential process, a penitential way, it needs time.”

“But you do understand, when a churchman like yourself, a theologian, an esteemed international figure, a curial official, says ‘here is my proposal and the pope agrees with me,’...”

“Well I did not say that,” retorted Kasper.

“Well you did say, and the quote is: ‘Clearly this is what he wants’ and ‘the pope has approved of my proposal,’” responded Arroyo.

“No, he did not approve my proposal,” the cardinal replied. “The pope wanted that I put the question, and afterwards, in a general way...before all the cardinals. He expressed his satisfaction with my talk, but not in the end, not in the special question. I would not say that he approved the proposal, no, no no.”

"No, no, no." I hope this development doesn't surprise anyone here. Pope Francis condemned "gender ideology" again recently, this time comparing it to the Hitler Youth. Maybe that was a message delivered to the German Cardinal?

Kasper’s new attitude regarding the pope’s position dovetails with the pope’s own increasing public reticence regarding Kasper’s proposal. Following a massive and sustained outcry from clergy and faithful against the proposal, the pope no longer makes statements urging more laxity towards people in illicit unions and has increasingly spoken in favor of traditional marriages, urging larger families and denouncing gender ideology. His statements about the second synod, scheduled for this October, have become increasingly vague, and he has recently hinted that he no longer seeks to give Communion to the divorced and “remarried.”

There are already actions that the Church mercifully makes available to divorced persons. Confession, annulment, and then full communion and the ability to get remarried in the church. No one ever said this was easy.

My advice to Catholics and others: don't strain too hard rubber-necking at the train wreck named Kasper.

Martyrdom Is Not Optional

Martyrdom is not optional, but it comes in several colors.

The word "martyr" is Greek for witness. The early Christians gave witness to Christ through their death, hence they were honored with the title of Martyr. But every Christian has to give witness; that's why Pope Francis recently said this:

He encouraged Christians to turn to the Holy Spirit to remind them of Jesus' words, and guide them in preparing to be witnesses “with small every day martyrdoms, or with a great martyrdom, according to God’s will.”

So, red or white. But not both. And unlike wine choices, God makes the call.

When I first read this I thought "Huh. This fits in with something Diane and I were discussing on her Facebook page. So the Pope must want everyone to read my blog!" Actually I didn't really think that last thing. But one of Diane's friends wrote something which I thought was pretty good:

The problem with the Benedict Option (whatever it may mean as a withdrawal from general society in order to preserve the Church and the culture and society that springs forth from Her) is that it is a fundamentally incorrect analogy to apply to the societal problems of post-Christian cultures.

The Benedict(ine) option, and monasticism in general, developed as a *response* to the CHRISTIANIZATION of culture. No longer able to pursue a martyrdom of blood, Christians pursued spiritual martyrdom alone, in the desert, and eventually, with other ascetics in community. Monasticism started in Egypt, and eventually spread throughout Christendom. It did not develop as a result of the loss of faith, nor did it develop as a response to the fall of Roman civilization.

Just as the Church within a society that has become Christian creates monasticism, likewise the Church will no longer produce many monastics within a society that de-Christianizes. Small parishes, house churches, and underground churches will be the places that the faith survives, and saints are made. Monasticism will become less and less necessary, because martyrdom and ascetic challenges will no longer have to be sought out in order to be found.

Benedictine monasteries, of course, did thrive, survive and preserve culture in a West being ravaged by Pagan invasions and piracy, but to try to apply the lessons learned from "Paganism vs Christianity" to "Christianity vs post-Christianity" is to fundamentally misunderstand what post-Christianity *actually* is, how it relates to Christianity, and how it will need to be endured.

The fundamental difference, of course, is that Pagans can be converted.

"Christians and Pagans had much more in common with each other than either has with a post-Christian. The gap between those who worship different gods is not so wide as that between those who worship and those who do not…” - C.S. Lewis

The Church will return to something closer to what She was in the earliest days. Branding it the "Benedict(ine) Option" may make the future more palatable for some Christians, and it's got a nice ring to it, but as a concept it is essentially, well, pointless.

If the person who authored this wants attribution I can provide it, but I'm starting off by just stating that it didn't originate with me. I think he makes a strong argument for why there is nothing really Benedictine or monastic about this thing we keep hearing about called the Benedict Option. In fact, the very absence of any type of rhyme or reason—never mind a rule—in the chaotic descriptions of the Benedict Option by those who claim to favor it demonstrates it's dissimilarity to anything Benedictine. They are called Orders for a reason, you know.

We've pointed this out again and again but I am convinced there is no reason to stop. This is reinforced constantly; there were other people chiming in on the thread who were obviously serious, educated Catholics but who were utterly unable to explain what was even meant by the Benedict Option. They did, however, display some classic behaviors of people who are losing an argument:

1. The first reflex was to call Diane a "hater". So the conclusion is that Diane hates the Benedict Option because Dreher preaches it rather than considering that maybe Diane has contempt for Dreher because ideas for which he is responsible—like the Benedict Option—are so incoherent and cockamamie. *
2. Then there was a classic line from the Benedict Option defenders: "If you've home-schooled your children then you've used the Benedict Option." Wow, so that makes me an idiot or a hypocrite or both for ever criticizing the Benedict Option since I also home-schooled my kids at one point. I might as well be saying "hands off my medicare!" It's also sort of daunting to realize that Adam and Eve, Noah and many other Bible personages were practicing the Benedict Option thousands of years before the birth of St. Benedict. I guess they kind of got us there.
3. Then I was accused of possessing a "deep ignorance of what the Benedict Option is" because I pointed out that whenever someone mentions some example of Christian virtuous practice the Benedict Option people claim it and say "Yeah, Benedict Option! Benedict Option!" Because, well, they do—see point number 2. But actually I won't doubt my ignorance about something that no one can define.
4. Then Diane tried to order up a short overview summary of the Benedict Option and was told that there was no such thing since the Benedict Option is "merely an ongoing conversation among Christians about strategies for withdrawal from an increasingly hostile liberal society and state." So while it might be that coming up with a explanation isn't too difficult a task for their communication skills, it is too condescending an undertaking for their powerful minds.

Diane can provide other highlights from the exchange. Others added remarks which were insightful and, in Maclin Horton's case, borne out by experience. There is still the need to correct a knee-jerk proposal of the nebulous Benedict Option as a panacea in holier-than-thou circles and possibly in more sincere circles.

The man who wrote the passage I first quoted later stated this: "Saints have been made in many places throughout history - but arguably the majority have come from the ranks of the monastics since Constantine." Well, that's where people were paying attention the most—that's where they were looking for saints. It is well to familiarize one's self with a 1988 writing by JP II titled Christifidelis Laici which undertakes the hard task of describing "The Vocation and the Mission of the Lay Faithful in the Church and in the World." It's an actual blue-print to follow. Once you read it you realize that you don't need a "Benedict Option".

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* - Yes, I know who Alasdair MacIntyre is. That was one of the questions thrown at me. But Googling Benedict Option produces one name over and over again and it isn't MacIntyre's.

Tough Words But True

I've been meaning to post a link to this for awhile now. I think it is good medicine from a lady, Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, who has been fighting the good fight against queers, liberals and pagans for some time now. Excerpt:

Some of you are hysterical over the Synod, as though the Holy Father were plotting to change Church doctrine. Haven’t you seen this report from the National Catholic Register? The four American bishops said at their press conference, “There must have been two synods, and the four of us must have happened to be at the wrong one.”

I don’t know what in the world you kids are thinking. You certainly realize that the Holy Father has no authority to change Church doctrine. And he knows it.

Some of you are upset because all the wrong people seem to like the Holy Father. I realize there is a battle to capture the symbolic value of the Papacy. The “Progressives” who want the whole Sexual Revolution, would love to claim the moral authority of the Papacy and the Catholic Church for their team. But do you realize that every time you repeat the liberal media talking points like this, you are scoring for the “Progressive” team?

You kids know me well enough to know that I don’t generally go around scolding people. As a matter of fact, refraining from scolding is how I get away with my unabashed presentation of Church teaching on marriage and sex, in front of non-Catholic and Catholic audiences alike. (Check out this and this, for instance. Surely you will not accuse me of soft-pedaling Church teaching!) Scolding people is not very attractive. And I like to keep my powder dry for situations that really call for a full-on Mom-Mad.

I don't think she is talking so much here about people like William Oddie or Father Longenecker who have presented constructive criticisms of Pope Francis. I think she mainly means the hysterical slashing of people like an acquaintance of mine who suggests in his rant emails that surely all true faithful Catholics realize that Pope Francis is a heretic and probably the anti-Christ, or least a sub-anti-Christ under President Obama.

I realize that Pope Francis is not necessarily your style. He talks about issues you would rather not discuss. He talks about things in a way that is alien to you.

Too bad. He is still your father, even if you don’t like everything he says or does. You owe him the respect due to his office, as father.

I insist that you respect your father. That’s what good moms do.

I have made a point of publishing this column on a non-Catholic website. Can you imagine how we look to our Separated Brethren? Do you realize that many of them wish us well? Faithful Evangelicals know their lives will be a lot harder if the Catholic Church goes soft on the sexual issues.

Pope Francis is not a "conservative" by temperament, but ideologically and theologically he's the same as the last two Popes. I don't think any thing is going to change either of these realities.

Look at Archbishop Kurtz’s blog, where he talks positively about the Synod. People don’t become Catholics because someone literally or metaphorically bludgeons them into submission. People become Catholics because they are attracted to the person of Jesus Christ.

Your basic question should always be: am I drawing people closer to Jesus Christ? If the answer is yes, you are doing something right. If the answer is no, you need to do something different.

If you are going to wear the Catholic label on your forehead, kindly make yourself as attractive as you can. Moaning and complaining and tearing each other down is NOT attractive.

I think all her points should be taken by Catholics. Even if they then want to explain how Pope Francis has fallen short, in their humble opinion. Recently there was a total bullshit story about the Pope saying that your dead pet dog will end up in heaven. The thing was sewn together out of whole cloth and fragments from a story about remarks from Pope Paul VI.

The moral is to not believe anything you hear about the Pope until you verify it from a real news source. Everyone hysterical about Pope Francis has forgotten all the supposedly awful things that Pope JPII did in the way of introducing Satanism, Wicca, Alchemy and Altar Girls into the Catholic liturgy. This was 20 years ago when I joined the Catholic Church, and obviously it was all either a bunch of crap or, as in the case with altar girls, it didn't split the Church the way the traditionalists predicted (or hoped in some cases). The non-factuality of all the lies didn't stop the haters from spewing them; plus ca change.

Pope Francis on the Complementarity of Man and Woman

Here is the whole speech. Excerpt:

It is fitting that you have gathered here in this international colloquium to explore the complementarity of man and woman. This complementarity is a root of marriage and family. For the family grounded in marriage is the first school where we learn to appreciate our own and others' gifts, and where we begin to acquire the arts of cooperative living. For most of us, the family provides the principal place where we can aspire to greatness as we strive to realize our full capacity for virtue and charity. At the same time, as we know, families give rise to tensions: between egoism and altruism, reason and passion, immediate desires and long-range goals. But families also provide frameworks for resolving such tensions. This is important. When we speak of complementarity between man and woman in this context, let us not confuse that term with the simplistic idea that all the roles and relations of the two sexes are fixed in a single, static pattern. Complementarity will take many forms as each man and woman brings his or her distinctive contributions to their marriage and to the formation of their children -- his or her personal richness, personal charisma. Complementarity becomes a great wealth. It is not just a good thing but it is also beautiful.

We know that today marriage and the family are in crisis. We now live in a culture of the temporary, in which more and more people are simply giving up on marriage as a public commitment. This revolution in manners and morals has often flown the flag of freedom, but in fact it has brought spiritual and material devastation to countless human beings, especially the poorest and most vulnerable.

Cardinal Dolan reports on the Synod

Over on his blog, Cardinal Dolan gives a quick summary on the Synod of the Family. Excerpt:

One such revelation is that He intends the gift and beauty of sexual love only for the loving relationship of a man and woman in lifelong, lifegiving (children!), faithful, marriage.

Such a bond is so radiant, He has revealed to us, that it actually hints at the infinite love enjoyed among Father, Son, and Spirit in the Blessed Trinity, and reflects the personal, passionate love God has for each of us.

Anyone who thought this synod could change that has not read Catholicism for Dummies. The Church does not change God’s revelation, but attempts to change us so we can live it.

What was refreshing, though, was a warm, gracious tone, so marvelously personified in Pope Francis, (who would tell us it’s hardly his style, but that of Jesus!), that the Church is at her best when she invites, embraces, understands, welcomes, and affirms, instead of excluding, judging, or condemning.

Family is a challenge, but it is pretty awesome to think of how we mirror the love of the Blessed Trinity. This is what I wrote about the Gift of Fatherhood on Facebook the other day: "I just want to say, pace Tim Cook, that I'm proud to be a virile heterosexual male human with six male offspring, and I consider being a virile heterosexual man with six male offspring among the greatest gifts God has given me."

Newsflash: Pope Still Catholic, will beatify Pope Paul VI

Jennifer Roback Morse writes the following for the Ruth Institute on her blog:

Ok, everyone, listen up.  There is no longer any doubt: Pope Francis is definitely Catholic! And completely orthodox on sexual morality!  At the end of the Synod, he will beatify Pope Paul VI, author of Humanae Vitae.  This action leaves no doubt at all where the Holy Father stands.  He absolutely does not have to beatify Paul VI. His doing so will be a major-league thorn in the side to the self-styled “progressives” and “reformers.” He is “sealing the deal” on Church teaching on contraception by beatifying Paul VI.

Besides all that, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI attended the ceremony.  The liberal world loves to hate Benedict, and has tried to create a “narrative” which opposes the “good guy” Francis to the “bad guy” Benedict. Actually, they are on the same team.  They may be playing “good cop, bad cop” as a strategy, as parents must sometimes do with recalcitrant children.  But there is no doubt at all that these Holy Fathers are united.

People, do not allow yourself to be triangulated by media games pitting Pope Emeritus against the current Pope.  Do not allow yourself to be sucked into the liberal spin machine vortex, by repeating their narrative.  They have enough outlets for telling their story, don’t you think?

Get behind Pope Francis. Spread this word as far as you can, in as positive a manner as you can. Church teaching is not changing. We still believe that human sexuality is a great gift from God, that it is deeply meaningful, and that we are not to demean that act by deliberately separating the unitive and the procreative aspects of the sexual act.

Thank the Father, Son and Holy Spirit that we will continue to witness to this beautiful truth, when all the world is teaching the opposite: “A good society must strive to separate sex from procreation and both from marriage. Sex has no intrinsic meaning, only the meaning we happen to assign to it. We ourselves are nothing but meaningless atoms, bumping into each other at random in the cosmos, for no particular reason at all.”

If you have a Facebook page, you are a member of the New Media. If you have a blog, you are a member of the New Media. Use your microphone to make it clear: the Catholic Church will not be changing its doctrine on sexual morality.  If Francis had plans to do so, there is simply no way he would even mention the prophetic voice of Paul VI, much less take steps to canonize him.

BTW, if you are not sure whether Paul VI was prophetic, read paragraph 17 of Humanae Vitae.  Think about the “one child” policy in China, and realize that Paul VI predicted this type of human rights abuse in 1968.

I realize that Dr. Morse's viewpoint is not the only one out there. Some people are afraid that the Church is "giving way" by even considering certain questions. But I so see it that way. I'm more in line with Fr. Longnecker's take on the synod, and he has criticized the Pope's style in the past.

So please fire away in the comments, and don't hold anything back, man.

Cliff notes on the Synod on the Family so far

Here's the half-time report. Here is my "cliff-notes" excerpt:

In the report, the Synod Fathers also reaffirm that same-sex unions cannot be considered equal to matrimony. And it is unacceptable that pressure be brought to bear on pastors or that international bodies make financial aid dependent on the introduction of regulations inspired by gender ideology.

Finally, stating that openness to new life is essential part of married love, the Synod Fathers affirm the message of Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae regarding the need to respect dignity of person in moral evaluation of methods of birth control.

There you go.

Tea Party Pope?

I report, you decide. This is an excerpt from a recent Fortune article about Pope Francis.

The pope’s strategy for addressing both spending and pension issues is to gradually shrink the Vatican workforce through attrition and raise more money to maintain the benefits. In February of 2014 he imposed a hiring freeze and also stopped formerly generous overtime payments. The plan is to move existing employees from overstaffed congregations to growth areas, such as financial management, without replacing those who depart.

You have to read through a lot of yadda-yadda to get to this which, to me, is the meat. Workforce reduction is the only way to meaningfully reform a budget. If you think in terms of centuries like the Catholic Church does, attrition is the best way to do it. Cutting overtime is a great idea to since it saves money right away AND can make people quit who need their cushy lifestyle. They should grub for it in the "non-Church" sector.

This is what I wish would happen in our government at all levels. Due to automation, we should need less employees than we used to in places like the IRS and the welfare/unemployment offices. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Takeaway quote from the Pope on money:

Pope Francis has a complex but pragmatic view of money. “Money is useful to carry out many things, for works to support humanity,” he has said. “But when your heart is attached to it, it destroys you.”

Classic virtue of detachment, put simply. Not sure what is "complex" about that.

Pope Francis Underlines "Stop"

Ed Morrissey (a Catholic) has a pretty good explanation on where the Vatican is on ISIS. The UN and the US seem to be nowhere... so far. Excerpt:

“I underscore the verb ‘to stop’. I am not saying ‘bomb’ or ‘make war’, but ‘stop him’. The means by which he can be stopped must be evaluated. Stopping the unjust aggressor is legitimate,” [the pope] said.
...
In it, the Pope actually does specify that the proper venue should be the United Nations, plus he’s a little more careful than Reuters or the AP suggested in issuing an explicit endorsement of force. In this case, though, to ask the question is to beg the answer. “Is this an unjust aggression?” cannot be answered in any way other than yes, unless we want to suggest that genocides and sexual slavery are legitimate in some circumstances. “How should we stop it?” may be a little more nuanced, but there is no way to stop ISIS now without resorting to some kind of military force.

Just what I said here, writ large. If someone needs to be stopped, you may use workable means.

Phil Robertson: "We never, ever judge someone."

Wow, Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty agrees with Pope Francis and the Catholic faith about homosexuality. Excerpt:

We never, ever judge someone

I know that excerpt pretty much tells you everything you need to know about what Phil Robertson said, but really, RTWT*. It's awesome.

(* - Read The Whole Thing)

A "revolution in the self-understanding of the Catholic Church"

George Weigel on Pope Francis. Excerpt:

He is a man of broad culture, well-read theologically but more given to literary references and illustrations than to scholarly theological citations in his preaching and catechesis. Thus one of his recent daily Mass sermons praised Robert Hugh Benson’s early 20th-century apocalyptic novel, “Lord of the World,” for raising important cautions against dictatorial utopianism, or what the pope called “adolescent progressivism.”

Pope Francis also grasps the nature of the great cultural crisis of post-modernity: the rise of a new Gnosticism, in which everything in the human condition is plastic, malleable and subject to human willfulness, nothing is simply given, and human beings are reduced, by self-delusion, legal definition or judicial dictums to mere bundles of desires.

And the conclusion:

As he wrote in “Evangelii Gaudium,” Pope Francis is not a man of “political ideology.” He knows that “business is a vocation and a noble vocation,” if ordered to the common good and the empowerment of the poor. When he criticizes the social, economic or political status quo, he does so as a pastor who is “interested only in helping all those who are in thrall to an individualistic, indifferent and self-centered mentality to be freed from those unworthy chains and to attain a way of living and thinking that is more humane, noble, and fruitful.”

Pope Francis is a revolutionary. The revolution he proposes, however, is not a matter of economic or political prescription, but a revolution in the self-understanding of the Catholic Church: a re-energizing return to the pentecostal fervor and evangelical passion from which the church was born two millennia ago, and a summons to mission that accelerates the great historical transition from institutional-maintenance Catholicism to the Church of the New Evangelization.

I agree with Weigel's summary.

Pope Francis: "Don't accept relativism! Be vigilant!"

...and "please let's not do business with the Devil!"



Hat Tip Carol McKinley.

Points to Ponder from Phil Lawler's Upcoming Book

I really like this approach of Philip Lawler to the Church's current crises. The type of renewal we need is best served by non-institutional efforts, at least at this point. Priests and bishops should do what they do best, i.e., liturgy, homilies, sacraments, canon law, and leave "the rest" of the work of evangelization to the laity. What constitutes "the rest"? Lawler provides the example of EWTN:

My favorite example of this phenomenon—and arguably the greatest success story of 20th-century American Catholicism—is the growth of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN). Who could have predicted that a cloistered nun with no background whatsoever in broadcasting, and with serious physical ailments, could found a Catholic radio-television empire that spans the globe? Mother Angelica began with nothing but a vision and a commitment supported by faith. She had no experience or expertise in broadcasting, no connections with the industry, no powerful corporate sponsors. For years she faced opposition from the US bishops’ conference, which poured millions of dollars into a competitive effort. Yet against all odds it was EWTN that prospered, while the lavishly funded effort by the bishops’ conference disappeared from the scene without leaving a trace.

Here's how he looks at the "Francis effect":

So let me ask the question again. Could there be something stirring within the Church: a subterranean rumbling, a movement for renewal that could burst forth to change the religious landscape? Since his election in March 2013, Pope Francis has prodded us all—not only Catholics, but the whole world—to look upon the work of the Church in a new way. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Pope Francis wants the Church to look at the world in a new way: with eyes fixed resolutely outward, concentrating first on the needs of our neighbors rather than on the internal housekeeping of Catholic institutions. His unconventional approach has caused some confusion—even a sense of disorientation—among faithful Catholics. But his popularity is undeniable. Thanks to “the Francis effect,” many more people are interested in the Catholic Church. People are asking questions about the Church, wondering if there is something about Catholicism that they have not quite understood. Yes, it is a time of great uncertainty; but it is also a time ripe for evangelization.

A lot of goofy ideas are floating to the surface recently, and they are based on a "spirit of Pope Francis" rather than authentic Catholic teaching. Some of these ideas floated up in a homily I heard recently given by a priest visiting from San Francisco. The man cherry-picked from every source he used—not just the pope's words—and served up the kind of thin gruel that turned the mainline protestant churches into ghost towns in the 20th century. I might blog about that in more detail later. The fact that I am able to communicate on the subject on this blog is the kind of thing that gives me hope. Good useful ideas will push out the useless, dopey ones. People will take the meat over the gruel when it is presented to them; that's the key.

A great religious revival does not necessarily begin with a formal announcement, and the people who take part in it do not necessarily realize that they are part of a historical movement. Decades from now, historians may look back and declare that a resurgence of the Catholic faith had already begun in the early years of the 21st century. They may even say that you and I helped to start it! And if a religious revival is gathering force in America today, it is arriving just in time to save our society from disaster.

In this book I am examining the influence of the Catholic Church on society, rather than on individual souls. Theoretically, I suppose, it is conceivable that a spiritual revival could occur without producing dramatic effects on society. But in practice, a vigorous movement of faith always produces social effects. A spirit of worship—of “cult” in the classical sense—cult gives birth to a culture.

By the way, this is not a brand new or unique approach to bringing the Gospel to the world. Opus Dei has been pushing this approach for years since its inception. It's actually the real intention of the Vatican II council which is supposed to be about the Catholic laity's role in the world, not the laity's role in the Church.

Pope Praises Radical Catholic Group

Pope Francis praises the radical Catholic group Knights of Columbus.

Vatican City, 10 October 2013 (VIS) – “I wish to express my gratitude for the unfailing support which your Order has always given to the works of the Holy See”, began the Holy Father's address to the Knights of Columbus, whom he received in audience this morning in the Sala Clementina of the Vatican Apostolic Palace, on the occasion of a meeting held by the Order in Rome. He thanked them for their prayers and witness of faith, and concern for brothers and sisters in need.

Swords are pretty radical, don't you think? I always carry a couple in my trunk. Our Lord told us to do it, so you should carry one or two as well.

Father Barron on the Pope Francis interview