Ochlophobist-phobic

I, and most proud Catholics, have reason to fear a blogger who puts out lines like:

In a nation with this many manicured lawns, abortion is a necessity.

Any Christian should know that nothing moral is determined by the majority, and, in fact, the majority qua majority is nearly always immoral.

I was simply unable to pray at RC masses, both conservative and liberal, traditional and novus ordo.

Liturgical recapitulation, not revolution

Fr. Martin Fox has some parting thoughts on the annual Sacred Music Colloquium at CUA:

Why should we rekindle and bring back out the treasures of chant and polyphony? Because it is part of who we are, because it expresses the faith so well, because -- as music specifically composed for the Mass -- it conveys something special, and above all, because it is beautiful.

The Sacred Liturgy must be beautiful.

Beautiful, but not pretty or fancy. Not that Fr. Fox is saying otherwise. But I'm finding in a lot of wealthier Catholic parishes the mentality that the duty to liturgical Tradition is fulfilled by having virtuosic polyphony sung by professional choirs and well-polished organ blaring away. This always comes off to me as Anglican-lite. I've noticed this off-putting aesthetic both at the Roman Catholic St. Matthew's Cathedral and the Shrine of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception here in DC. I think it's the cross-town osmotic effect of the ECUSA-run National Cathedral, as well as the general federal, Beltway snootiness that infects the Archdiocese of Washington. True Christian Beauty, as any Balthasarian will tell you, cannot be self-referential or performance-oriented at all; it must rather be screaming the Truth and the Good with every inch and beat of its existence. So while the pretty fancy liturgies at many Catholic parishes are a welcome change from the folk liturgical mockeries, we've still many miles to go before we can sleep in these liturgy wars.

This doesn't mean only chant and polyphony; but it does mean these must not be excluded. On the contary, the Church, at the highest level, teaches they merit "pride of place" (particularly chant).

The modernist spirit of the post-V2 era was so wrong to think that liturgical innovation or development could occur by the logic of revolution. Revolution abandons the past, and deems it unworthy of even a moment's pause much less a drink. Development, in the Catholic sense, however requires immersion in and internalization of the Tradition before anything new under the sun can emerge. That means we sip, slurp, swirl, swish, and swig the Tradition down deep into our bellies before we try the new stuff. Why? Because instead of the law of revolution, our Lord gave us the law of recapitulation. Yeah, it's not just a soteriological concept.

Knowing God

From Fr. Stephen Freeman's blog:

In a conversation with the Abbot, she asks some questions about a passage in Maximus the Confessor. The Abbot reacts with alarm, “You’ve been reading the Fathers?” She replies in the affirmative. He is concerned that she may have done herself damage. “You should never read more hours in a day than you pray,” was his admonition.
....
I have known brilliant men and women, with degrees from very prestigious institutions, indeed with degrees in various forms of religious disciplines, whose knowledge of God was less than my average catechumen, but whose very “knowledge” reduced the possibility of discovering their ignorance and coming to a knowledge of the truth. Again, knowledge that is not accompanied by ascesis is dangerous - no matter whether the knowledge is of an academic character or of a mystical character. We cannot know God and at the same time not be like Him to some degree. Such conformity to His image is itself a result of such knowledge. It is for this reason that the Scriptures tell us that “by their fruit you shall know them.” If someone
claims knowledge of God, but his life is not in conformity with the commandments of Christ, then we know that what we are hearing is largely delusional in character.
....
Much of modern Pentecostal and Charismatic teaching has offered false information on religious experience to an audience of Americans who wants everything. Too often we want the interior life of Mother Teresa and all of the shoes of Imelda Marcos. It just doesn’t work like that.

The story is told in the Lives of the Desert Fathers that one of the Fathers was in prayer when the devil sought to trick him. A demon appeared in the cell of the monk (who was in prayer) and said, “I am the angel Gabriel sent from God.” Without looking up the monk replied, “You must be in the wrong cell. I am not worthy for an angel to visit me.” The demon disappeared, defeated by the humility of the monk.

Numbers game?

WaPo piece on the "art" of counting denominational membership:

Next month, Ascol [a Southern Baptist pastor] plans to bring a resolution to the denomination's annual meeting in San Antonio calling for "integrity in the way we regard our membership rolls in our churches and also in the way we report statistics."

Integrity? As in picking out who are the real Baptists? I always thought that was a job for the Great Thresher of Heaven. Everyone knows there is a big number gap between those who claim Catholicism as demographic identity marker and those who claim it as their personal all-encompassing faith. That seems to give Protestants cause to shake their heads at the way we inflate our numbers way beyond actual "practicing" Catholics. But what defines membership? The individuals who have privately marked the Church as their own or the Church's mark (or to be more accurate, seal) on the individual as one of its own? I'd say the latter is a far more fair and consistent measurement, both demographically and ecclesiologically.

Lose-lose

LA Times has the story on Cdl. Mahony's sale of the diocesan HQ building Apparently, if you sell parishes off, you're evil. If you avoid selling parishes and instead put chancery office space up on the auction block, you're still evil.

"The cardinal has instructed his attorneys to pull out every weapon to try to deny victims a single nickel," said plaintiffs attorney John Manly. He said the church has enough insurance coverage and other assets to settle the cases without unloading real estate. "The notion that the cardinal would have to sell buildings to pay settlements is just laughable," Manly said.
....
Mary Grant, Western regional director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said Tuesday's announcement was "probably the first of several shrewd moves Mahony will make to claim poverty."

Everyone knows the LA Archdiocese is wealthy, as are all the metropolitan archdioceses; that's why no archdiocese has yet declared bankruptcy. Even if I think Mahony's scum, he's not crying poverty here; hopefully he's just privileging worship space over office space. Of course, the Catholic Church is very used to a secular society that refuses to see anything but evil in the Church. Plaintiffs should be aware that their attorneys' strategies are not helping their class in the long run. If bishops will always be publicly imputed the worst motives for everything they do, they're not getting much incentive to do the right thing. I just hope the bishops' awareness of this lose-lose situation doesn't disorient them and cause them to lose sight of the real Prize.

Excommunicate them anyway

From The Hill, through the Religion Clause blog on the 18 Catholic House members who are shameless enough to strut their skills at casting pebbles at the Pope for show:

“I’ve always thought also that those bishops and archbishops who for decades hid pederasts and are now being protected by the Vatican should be indicted,” said Catholic Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who spoke to reporters last week.

Since that has been tried by a bunch of state attorneys general and found legally unsupportable, Sen. Leahy must be advocating for a special law that ensures indictment, custom-fit for bishops who won't shut up about abortion. But as far as I know, he hasn't sought any new legislation (which would invariably be struck down as a bill of attainder). So he's just ranting for political theater. I happen to agree that there should be some way of exacting legal punishment for the bishops' negligence. But Leahy's cheap shots are just despicable.

Liberation

Obviously, Liberation Theology's social science has changed over the years. No more Marxist analysis. This is obviously a good thing, but I don't think jettisoning Marxist frameworks fundamentally changes the substance or significance of Liberation Theology. Marxism was never really essential to Liberation Theology, conservative critics notwithstanding. Liberation Theology is fundamentally a methodology: doing theology in light of concrete work with and on behalf of the poor. As long as theologians continue to engage in this reflection in light of liberating praxis, they will continue to produce theology that challenges the priorities of the institutional Church, which is committed to (and organized around) a fundamentally different model. This will inevitably lead to tension, and at times even conflict. But this tension can be a positive thing, and, at the end of the day, I think there's room for both models.

Prof. Penalver just doesn't get it. Christianity is not about the free flow of theological models. Models packaged as "alternative" or anything separate from orthodoxy are always doomed from the getgo because their foundation is not Christ of the Apostles but some imagined Christ of the philosophers, in this case, those who believe the world to be ontologically divided between rich and poor. They insist that orthodoxy conservatively privileges the rich. But Christianity has never reduced poverty and injustice to materialist categories (which is the Marxist and capitalist sine qua non, so sorry, liberation theology is still Marxist at its core).

It's always telling to me when dissenters simply skip over orthodoxy and glom onto some hip new "prophetic" "model." Because if Catholic orthodoxy does not stand for a true justice and liberation, distinct from but encompassing secular categories, why bother with Catholicism at all? Here's the simplest example of liberation theology's folly: to its advocates, if you reject liberation theology, you're automatically anti-poor. It's neat and simple, but ridiculous. It never enters their mind that orthodoxy might be more pro-poor and that it might have something precious to say about our failures and sins against the poor, just not the way liberation theology childishly may want it.

No more, no less

You Are 63% American

Most times you are proud to be an American. Though sometimes the good ole US of A makes you cringe Still, you know there's no place better suited to be your home. You love your freedom and no one's going to take it away from you!

How American Are You?

Nationalism is an abstraction created by the modern State to supplant true religion and thereby monopolize control of bodies and souls.

Christian like Coldplay

Ok, I just discovered Mat Kearney has been claimed as a "Christian artist" with full coverage on Christianity Today and other evie outlets. I like his sound even though he is basically a Coldplay clone that can rap (sometimes I just want pure WB-soundtrack pap). But I needed Google to tell me that he's Christian. I've been listening to him a little more closely and I stil cannot for the life of me tell how his music is any more Christian than, well, Coldplay. So why do I get the feeling that there are "churches" that play his music during their Sunday "worship"?

Affirmative duties & abortion

Prof. Penlaver (liberal Catholic) responding to Prof. Brennan (quite orthodox) on Prof. Kaveny (kinda liberal Catholic) over at Mirror of Justice

I read her argument as making a narrower point by comparing a woman who carries a child to term at risk to her own health or life to someone who risks his own life to save another. I do not see her actually offering a judgment about whether there is a moral obligation so to act (in either case). The law does not compel a person to act in the latter instance, and the question is why it ought to in the former.

Since all pregnancy involves a degree of risk, Patrick has a point in questioning whether the analogy she makes can be cabined. But I think meaningful distinctions about risk can be drawn here, and I think the analogy is an interesting one. Even if one agrees with the Church's position that a woman is in fact obligated to carry the child to term, does the gap between what is moral and what portion of that category it is wise to try to enforce by law provide room to disagree about whether the state ought to insert itself into a woman's decision in this narrow category of cases?

Am I missing something? True, the law does not impose an affirmative duty to rescue a third party. But it's misleading to suggest that creating a legal prohibition against abortion is analogous to imposing an affirmative duty to rescue the fetus. The current law that says you don't have to save another's life is categorically different from our abortion laws which say not only do we not have to save the fetus' life, but that we have a right to affirmatively and intentionally destroy it. So how is the right to abortion anything like the right to not have to rescue each other? But what do I know? I'm not an Ivy League law professor.

Pounds of flesh

Commonweal's got Dean Mark Sargent's latest article on the sorry state of clergy abuse litigation.

MSNBC v. GOP

I'll tell you who really won tonight's GOP debate: the Democrats. I'm not sure if GOP planners considered how MSNBC & the DNC might conspire against their candidates by letting Chris "Hardball" Matthews moderate their debate, but that was probably the worst moderating job I've ever seen. Matthews lazily made up his own questions extemporaneously and then exerted only the thinnest semblance of order over the candidates. It made all the candidates look very edgy, confused, off-balance, and even more frumpy than they already looked. And the most ridiculous questions, like "which of you don't believe in evolution?" and "should Bill Clinton be back in the White House?" I thought I misheard the question. If I were the GOP, I'd be screaming for Matthews' head.

Insulted by facts?

I don't have a dog in this race, but I love Mr. Hitchens' implicit hat tip to MacIntyre's critique of emotivism, that insipid belief that one's dignity/self-esteem is only respected when the individual's gut feelings are accorded synonymity with reason and conscience.

1. "Dear Mr Hitchens, I feel utterly insulted by your gratuitous claim that there is no such thing as ADHD'. You are obviously an ignorant moron. You should do some research on this, and then you would know that it was a real problem."

A. An insult can only be offered to a person, directly, and concern his personal failings or faults. It is not possible to be 'insulted' by a statement of fact, or by an argument you disagree with. If the statement isn't true, then you are well placed to prove that. If you disagree with the argument, then you can say so. To say that you have been 'insulted' is to refuse to accept that there may be some truth in what I say, possibly because you have some doubts about the matter yourself. In fact I often find that angry, personal vehemence in an argument is a sign that the person involved has serious doubts about his or her position. Let us begin as we mean to go on, and treat this as a matter of facts and logic. Also, as it so happens, I have done a great deal of research on this matter, not least as a result of dealing with several waves of correspondence on the subject. And the more research I have done, the more alarmed I have become at the great numbers of children and teenagers being drugged because they are supposed to be suffering from a complaint for which there is no established, objective test.

Getting the East

Weigel on the hullabaloo over on Mt. Athos against Pope B16's overtures to the East:

The truth of the matter is that, outside historically Orthodox countries and certain ethnic communities, the thought of how one stands vis-à-vis the Patriarch of Constantinople simply doesn't enter Catholic heads. Perhaps that's a problem, but it's nowhere near as great an obstacle to ecumenical progress as the conviction in some Orthodox quarters that non-communion with Rome is a defining characteristic of what it means to be "Orthodox."

Unfortunately, this only reinforces the East's view of Catholics as ecclesiologically clueless. Quite simply, the Athonite monks are not anti-Rome per se, and they certainly are not defined by their anti-Romanism the way Protestants as a whole are. In fact there's still a palpable nostalgic affection for the "true Rome" of the Fathers that's mixed in with the healthy bile some Athonites are coughing up. Today Rome does symbolize all that is "heretical" in Western Catholicism, and it's the heresies that get them in a tizzy. But it's always simpler and more self-congratulatory to paint the Orthodox as an older, prettier version of Protestantism when it's not. It's also convenient because it shifts all the burden of change on the East which now has to to "loosen up" or "get over" their irrationally anti-Roman prejudices if Ut Unum Sint is to become a reality.

I care about this only because I hate it when Protestants misconstrue Catholic intentions and beliefs in general, as well as on the ecumenism issue, eg. "intercommunion." So to see Catholics carry on with the same methods of rhetorical misrepresentation towards the Orthodox is particularly disappointing, especially when it comes from "orthodox" Catholic commentators like Weigel who should know better.

And Earth to Catholics: the "Two Lungs" metaphor has worn itself out into some "can't we all just get along?" ethic, pace JPII. I really don't think he intended it to be mindlessly and casually plugged into every conversation on RC-EO relations. Catholics can get so attached to the lace -- the frilly turn of phrase uttered by a pope which when taken out of context becomes its own substitute for substance.