"The Church is the conscience of the state."

...so says Jim Wallis.

Not really. My conscience is a part or a dimension of my person. The Church is not bound to the state by any such analogy. At least I think that's what a good Hauerwasian would say. I note that Wallis is still thinking about Christian politics in terms of "values" and a "values agenda." Yawn.

Huckabee vs. Paul

Good to see alarm bells of more and more Catholics going off over the Huckster. When Ron Paul first mentioned the saying about the Anti-Christ, that he will come draped in a flag and toting a cross, I thought he was just making an oblique but suggestive statement in response to Huckabee's Xmas ad. But the more I think about it, I'm coming to see it as prescient about Huck. Here are some others who have raised their Catholic eyebrows with the rise of the latest evangelical aspirant to national power.

Catholic News Agency
The Bride and the Dragon
Bonfire of the Vanities
Mark Stricherz
Peggy Noonan
Robert Novak

Some of them link to each other, such is the blogosphere.

I don't think I've ever been as excited about a presidential candidate till Ron Paul. I never thought I could like a libertarian. Maybe the label needs to be redefined after Paul. I do remember feeling my pulse rise a little over Ralph Nader, but he was uncritically pro-choice and eventually got ensnared in personality politics, which I've learned recently was mostly the fault of Democratic Party operatives who brutally stonewalled and trashed Nader. The Nader treatment isn't too different what Bob Casey Sr. got previously. The GOP hasn't shown much more humanity in their machinations either apparently, which is why it should be a little more grateful to have a man like Ron Paul running on their ticket.

My only wish right now is that RP would do or say something to scare off all those anarcho-nihilist-conspiracy-theory nutjobs who keep jumping all over his platform.

Weak dollar, weak evies

I didn't think there was much good in a weak dollar other than increased exports...till I read this in Christianity Today:

Campus Crusade for Christ missionaries to France Dan and May Workman ended their October newsletter with a prayer request for a strengthened U.S. dollar. But in November, the dollar hit an all-time low. It traded at $1.4641 to the euro. (emphasis added)

Of course, I don't celebrate the fact that well-intentioned evangelical missionaries are feeling a few more rumblings in their bellies. But evangelical models of missions are repugnant, once you get past the glossy pictures of plump white people surrounded by the poor brown/yellow folk. Without a vow of stability and/or poverty, they're glorified spiritual vacations for naive denominational entrepreneurs. Without much respect for the missionary traditions that predate Protestantism, they have little respect for the cultures and communities they invade. Without a finely honed sense of the complexity of religion and politics in different countries, they end up being mostly distribution agents for wealthy churches back home to feel good about themselves with fancy presentations and displays of their poor little rice Christians. And to demonstrate the depth of their faith, they pray to the God of the Currency Market. If that's not a sign of a "bankrupt" missions model...

The Purg

The Anastasis Dialogue has some great reflections on the vibrant discussion over at the Reformed Catholicism blog on Purgatory. Usually I steer clear of Purgatorial theology, mainly cuz it's a mystery that polemcists don't fear treading upon enough. But Hieromonk Maximos noted that Fr. Al Kimel, who I miss, has posted some good stuff in the comboxes so I had to check it out. HM sets up a common Catholic attitude for a good paddling:

"Of course we Catholics don't believe that our salvation is automatically assured just because we make a single act of faith in 'Jesus my personal Lord and Savior.' But that doesn't mean we are left in complete and utter anxiety about our future. Right now I am not conscious that I have committed any mortal sins since I went to Confession last week. That means I'm in a state of grace, which means I can be morally certain that if I died right now I'd go to heaven. Of course, I may have a few venial sins or some other imperfections that need to be purified. I can't rule out some time in Purgatory! But even that could be eliminated if God gives me the extra grace of receiving the Sacrament of Anointing before I die, or of receiving a Plenary Indulgence. So yes, I don't think my assurance of salvation is any less real than any Protestant's."

I hope I have been fair in reproducing this monologue. At any rate it contains nothing that is not strictly in accord with what I understand to be Roman Catholic teaching.

Yet it's horrifying.

If a large number of Catholics previously believed that the state of one's soul can be mapped out on an accountant's ledger, then Vatican II indeed was necessary and a true work of the Spirit. Read the rest of HM's careful critique.

Naivety in the Nativity

Philosopher Paul Ricoeur spoke of a "second naivete" necessary for the mature adult mind. It's not romanticism or nostalgia, both of which have bitter axes to grind with some objectified thing or person as symbol of all they hate about the world. But I think Garrison Keillor's got the real deal:

This magical story is a cornerstone of the Christian faith and I am sorry if it's a big hurdle for the skeptical young. It is to the Church what his Kryptonian heritage was to Clark Kent -- it enables us to stop speeding locomotives and leap tall buildings at a single bound, and also to love our neighbors as ourselves. Without the Nativity, we become a sort of lecture series and coffee club, with not very good coffee and sort of aimless lectures.

On Christmas Eve, the snow on the ground, the stars in the sky, the spruce tree glittering with beloved ornaments, we stand in the dimness and sing about the silent holy night and tears come to our eyes and the vast invisible forces of Christmas stir in the world. Skeptics, stand back. Hush. Hark. There is much in this world that doubt cannot explain.

HT: Mark Shea

The Ringwreaths

I've always felt this a little, but now I'm convicted enough to say it: Advent candle wreaths are kinda lame. I'm not opposed to them. I just think they're nothing to feel much of anything for, so why has it become THE Catholic visual for Advent? They all have this pastel mass-produced flatness to them, even with (or because of?) the Martha Stewart flourish. We light a candle every week at one Sunday Mass. And then who knows how it works between the 8am and 10am Masses? Someone puts one out after every Mass; they light it again, put it out once everyone's scurrying off to Sunday brunch. Like it's a show, a party favor. Yes, the candle symbolizes the coming Light of Christ which we bless with this holy water, etc, etc. But it's a one-fingered "Mary Had A Little Lamb" on the piano when the Church should be jamming to something with a little more groove.

Somehow this brainfart was inspired by a Fr. Stephen Freeman post on the Romney speech:

Thus to say merely, “Jesus wishes you to be saved from your sins,” is true. But stated so flatly it quickly becomes banal and of little significance. It is Mary Had a Little Lamb, repeated until you come to hate the tune. Such banality among Christians makes them easy prey for those who would say, “Mormonism is Christianity.” It also makes them easy prey for those who would exploit their simplicity in far more sinister manners.

Orthodox Christianity is not just the fullness of the faith tossed about like a slogan (”Look at us! We have the fullness and you don’t!”). Such fullness is not fullness but stupidity. It is fullness that is found only in relationship to Christ who draws us towards a freedom with regard to nature that we become Rubensteins of the spiritual life - or whatever calling it is God sets before us. We become not merely human beings who are individual instances of a general thing we can call human nature. We become persons, birthed in freedom which is the gift of the Spirit. In that freedom we are not determined by the limitations of our nature, but persons determined by their freedom as we turn to Christ.

Consistent Ethics

The term "consistent ethic of life" has been seeing bear market days. But for all the wrong-headed political conclusions it has spawned, the idea itself is correct, at least from an apophatic reading. To me it wisely commends that our ethically-inspired political agendas, however righteous, have an intrinsic limitation according to the degree to which we actually live consistently with that ethic.

Environmentalists demand political and legal solutions to problems that are intrinsically ethical and personal. To oppose those legislative proposals is not necessarily an opposition to the ethic, but a suspicion that ethics from above have counterintuitive and contradictory consequences. We want governments to force change upon polluters when we the lay public are doing everything to encourage, even require, the polluters to behave the way they do. So long as environmentalism absolves the people of their cult of consumerism, convenience, and gluttony, there's a natural limit to what Kyoto-style agreements can really accomplish.

That limitation must be recognized if we are going to be sane and dispassionate about this issue. Without such a recognition, we're liable to fetishize and moralize the environment, and play political games to browbeat and step on others who disagree with us. Without it, our polis is just a breeding ground for more ideological manipulation.

Similarly, the pro-life movement has made precise, correct attacks on the constitutionality of Roe v. Wade, but has done scant little to even acknowledge that abortion is much bigger than Supreme Court opinions. We've come to hate the pro-choice ideology so much that we've divorced the pro-life issue from the reality of human choices altogether. How does the cult of individual private Choice in all matters limit what we can expect out of our legal victories against Roe et al? Beyond legal battles, what kinds of choices do I need to be making to help inaugurate a pro-life universe?

Protest & Moral Sentimentality

The rhetorical pose of protest today is indeed moral sentimentality. There are videos all over youtube in which street interviews of pro-life and pro-choice protesters demonstrate how ridiculously mindless and shallow their positions are. And it's not their views themselves, it's the form of protest that's to blame. In my past life as a social justice dude, I ran the whole protest gauntlet several times and learned the Seeger protest hymnal. I don't care how much MLK loved it - "We Shall Overcome" is as limpy whimpy tune as I've ever heard. But after a while I felt the two sides just feed off each other. It's dualistic, dialectical, demonizing morality politics at its goofiest. Protest today does seem to make you stupid.

I think this has been one of the downsides of evangelicals joining the Catholic pro-life dance - they brought an Urbana/megachurch rah-rah attitude to a complex moral-political-cultural-religious-social issue. It's not just a megachurch thing. I can't watch the presidential debates or the Daily Show anymore because of the self-bovinizing ways American audiences cheer and jeer. Listen to Prime Minister's Questions for an example of cheering-jeering that's raucous but intelligent and attentive, almost choral. There's something so utterly vacuous in the American "woo-hoo," which unfortunately has made its way into every public venue, including our churches along with applause as if liturgy were just a type of townhall meeting.

For apostolic Christianity, liturgy is the primary weapon in our battle with the demons of this world and though protest may have liturgical resonances, it's ultimately anti-liturgical. There's infinitely more power in a Eucharistic procession or Stations of the Cross or even May Day processions than in any protest.

But what about the Civil Rights marches? That which brought a racist empire to its knees was far more specific and clear-headed in its goals and methodology. Today we have annual rallies which have the goal of allowing political co-religionists the comfort of feeling like they're doing something or standing up for something. Posturing becomes a substitute for substance. Look underneath and they're expressions of impotency. In Liturgy, the posturing is theological symbol, and thus heavily stylized and iconic.

This interview with Eugene McCarraher, always the historian/writer provocateur of the Hauerwasian-Catholic mold, reinforces my thinking on this. I strongly disagree with some of his positions, but I appreciate his way of thinking which is rarely given any voice in the Catholic pro-life movement. A good test for me is the reflexive moralistic tone with which pro-lifers will automatically pounce on him for being "soft" on abortion. He may very well be soft on abortion, but the reflexive response of the herd is equally telling.

He has some insightful points on the ties that bind capitalism and American pro-life movement culture. He doesn't draw nearly fine enough of a distinction between pro-life culture and pro-life ethical reasoning as I'd like and he collapses capitalism with "the world" more than I'd like, but he's not trying to skin those cats.

Some of the other advice I'd offer probably won't go down as easily. First, I think that Christians should stop yakking about "consumerism." "Consumerism" is not the problem—capitalism is. Consumerism is the work ethic of consumption, the transformation of leisure and pleasure into duties. Talking about consumerism is a way of not talking about capitalism, and I've come to think that that's the reason why so many people, including Christians, whine about it so much. It's just too easy a target. There's a long history behind this, but the creation of consumer culture is very much about compensating workers for loss of control and creativity at work, and those things were stolen because capital needed to subject workers to industrial discipline. (I don't, by the way, believe that we inhabit a "post-industrial" society. Our current regimes of work are, indeed, super-industrial.) Telling people that they're materialistic is both tiresome and wrong-headed: tiresome, because it clearly doesn't work, and wrong-headed, because it gives people the impression that matter and spirit are antithetical. As Christians, we should be reminding everyone that material reality is sacramental, and that therefore material production, exchange, and consumption can be ways of mediating the divine.

As for abortion, I think we have to stop seeing it as the primary culprit in a "culture of death." Abortion becomes conceivable as a moral practice once we take individual autonomy as the beau ideal of the self; but to recognize that is, if we're logical, to indict not only abortion but also our cherished idyll of "choice" or "freedom." But that, then, is to indict capitalism, which employs a similar language of sovereignty both to legitimate itself and to obscure the remarkable lack of creative freedom at work. I know that I'll catch a lot of hell for saying this, but I think that a lot of opposition to abortion is sheer moral sentimentality which turns the fetus into a fetish. (You'll notice that I think fetishism of some sort or other is a pretty salient feature of the contemporary American moral imagination.) Many of the same people who oppose abortion are champions of laissez-faire capitalism, and they either don't see or don't care to see the linguistic and cultural affinities between themselves and the pro-choice advocates they fight. They'll retort that capitalism doesn't kill anyone in its normal operations, but, first, that's just not true—capitalism has never been instituted or maintained anywhere, not even in the North Atlantic, without considerable coercion and violence—and second, it doesn't matter, because the exercise of market "autonomy" has devastating effects on individuals and communities regardless of whether or not they wind up dead. ("Yeah, the company cut your medical benefits or cut your job or left your town a mess, but hey, you're still alive!") When I say this, a lot of people retort that I'm "changing the subject." In one way, yes I am, but for a reason—because I want them to see that it is the same subject, in a different guise. Talking about abortion is a way of not talking about the "autonomous individual," the latest ideological guise of libido dominandi, discussion of which would topple quite a few idols, and not just "reproductive choice."

No 'hope' for the Progs

John Allen reports on some complaints from the "reform wing(nuts) of Catholicism" over the new encyclical Saved in Hope:

The deliberately wide appeal of Spe Salvi does not mean that early reaction has been uniformly positive. The “Wir Sind Kirche” [We Are Church] statement, for example, posed three critical questions about the encyclical:

• Why doesn’t it rely more on Gaudium et Spes, or “Joy and Hope,” the Pastoral Constitution on the Church and the Modern World from the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), which has long been a sort of charter document for the reform wing of Catholicism?
• Why doesn’t the pope ask whether the current structures and disciplinary systems of the church actually promote an atmosphere of hope?
• Will this encyclical generate real hope for progress towards ecumenical reunion?

Forgive their childish petulance for a moment. But reading used to have something to do with entering into the mind and imagination of another - a true communicative act. Today reading is mostly about shoehorning texts into agendas like meat through a grinder.

P.S. I've noticed that a lot of sites are translating the title as "Saved By Hope." "In" seems more theologically evocative and correct, and ecumenically less distracting. The Vatican's English translation quotes Romans in the first line: "in [not 'by'] hope we were saved." The West, especially the Protestant side, is used to hearing that we are "saved by faith." Benedict makes a good point in the first paragraph on the essential equivalence between faith and hope. But why let a dubious preposition furrow the brow of every Protestant before he/she even gets to the first sentence? Better to call it "Saved In Hope."

Chrysostom on Diocesan Assets

St. John Chrysostom scratches his beard, a bit perturbed by the sight of his brother bishops clamoring for legislative judgment-proofing of church assets:

What are we to fear? Death? Life to me means Christ, and death is gain. Exile? The earth and its fullness belong to the Lord. The confiscation of our goods? We brought nothing into this world, and we shall surely take nothing from it. I have only contempt for the world’s threats, I find its blessings laughable. Homily Before His Exile, 1-3

In other words, religious freedom for Christians consists of far more than the boundaries of state beneficence. This is where Dignitatis Humanae is at its weakest.

Paprocki and {sigh} ecclesiology

Reading Bp. Paprocki's recent Red Mass homily contrasting the angelic policy of charitable immunity against the "demonic" attacks on it in the wake of the pervert priest scandal so tickles the irony bone when read alongside Pope Benedict's recent statements.

In his address to the Indonesian ambassador, Benedict condemns the manipulation of religion for political ends. Chicago Trib quotes Bp. Paprocki:

"This attack is particularly directed against bishops and priests, since the most effective way to scatter the flock is to attack the shepherd," he told worshipers in Grand Rapids. "We must also use our religious discernment to recognize that the principal force behind these attacks is none other than the devil."

"I'm not saying the plaintiffs in that case or the lawyer were acting demonically," he explained later. "I'm saying it is in a sense a diabolical consequence when you can no longer provide a charitable service."

Hmmm. Then I read another Zenit piece (on corporate America's profligate rewarding of failed CEOs) which cites Pope Benedict's 9/23 addresses:

"Basically, it is a matter of choosing between selfishness and love, between justice and dishonesty and ultimately, between God and Satan," the Pontiff commented.

In the midday Angelus, back at Castel Gandolfo the same day, Benedict XVI added further reflections on the Gospel text. "Money is not 'dishonest' in itself, but more than anything else it can close man in a blind egocentrism."

See supra, right? But back to Paprocki:

"The settlement or award of civil damages is punishing the wrong people, namely the average parishioner or donor whose financial contributions support the church but who have no role in the supervision of clergy," he said.

Blind egocentrism, you say, Your Holiness?

I hate to disagree with Ed Peters, and he has honorably made full disclosure of his personal ties to Bp. Paprocki, but as a recent JD and fledgling canon law student, I must side with ecclesiology over law, canon or civil. Gerald Augustinus and Off the Record are spot on in essentially calling out the bishops who are groveling before secular courts and legislatures for fiscal salvation, and promulgating bad theology in a weak effort to drum up support for their latest damage control plan.

Arguing the legal merits of charitable immunity as Bp. Paprocki is attempting to do just seems so belittling of what is and has been at stake when it comes to the Church I know and love: the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church of Sts. Peter and Paul, the Roman Martyrs, and all the Saints of the True Body of Christ. Some major random discombobulated thoughts:

Ecclesiology - Paprocki insists that the laity is unjustly "punished" by these massive litigation figures because we had no role in the supervision of priests. Really? Of course we can eliminate our role in the actual abuse and negligent transfer of offending priests, but that's merely a lawyer's analysis of responsibility. As I understand it, Catholic ecclesiology leans towards, if you will, a Three Musketeers understanding of the Church: yes, we all have different and unique parts and roles to play, but when push comes to shove we're all for one and one for all. Add to that our seamless garment understanding of solidarity with all who share sacramental union with Christ which includes the Faithful Departed and the Church Triumphant (ie. the Communion of Saints). We are beholden to each other and if one part suffers the rest does. If one part sins, then though culpability can be narrowly identified in individual persons, it's never individualized theologically.

The American laity by almost all counts have demonstrated its higher allegiance to American paganism and gnosticism over apostolic Catholicism; we spearheaded with abandon the "Spirit of Vatican II" and all its hostility to the Apostolic Tradition, including its strict, but life-giving and cruciform disciplines and aesthetic/ascetic virtues. (The Linacre Institute report is an underappreciated analysis of how loss of asceticism leads to moral degeneration.) Passions? The Fathers and the East always taught that we must subdue and mortify the passions via holy ascesis and prayer. The V2 Church pretty much rejected all that, stupidly confusing it with puritanism. Instead it taught us how we're supposed to just accept and love ourselves including our sexualities, which no longer could be "disordered." Now I never subscribed to the modernizing heterodoxies of AmChurch, but as a Catholic I am obliged to acknowledge that I am a part of it and it is a part of me. I am no SSPXer who thinks being Catholic allows you to cut yourself off from the maddening crowds just because you've discovered a tidy purified corner on traditional orthodoxy.

Those pervert priests and clueless/spineless bishops who recycled them are part of my ecclesial Self - that's just a function of being Catholic. Bishops and priests were all lay at some point, were raised by lay Catholics, had lay Catholic family, friends, and teachers, all of whom played their small parts in cooperating either materially, formally, or efficiently in our moral collapse; how could the clergy be immune? They fed on the theological junk food of our AmChurch and regurgitated it right back for our consumption, and its been clogging our arteries ever since; no surprise that we'd experience a catastrophic arterial rupture sooner or later. So it's awfully demoralizing to hear a bishop of the Church essentially preaching a corporate shareholder ecclesiology that disingenuously paints the laity as innocent, passive victims of some Diabolus ex machina. The Church is not Enron or the Red Cross. Paprocki is arguing as if the Church is essentially just another secular nonprofit charitable institution offering religious goods and services to civil society. Alisdair MacIntyre's managerial emotivism is on full display right here. I'm still waiting for a bishop to sound like an actual heir of the Holy Apostles, Martyrs, and Fathers, who understood they were humble stewards of a Great Pearl not executives of nonprofit religious corporations or corporations sole, who did not expect a dime from the State, who never would have prostrated themselves before Caesar or popular opinion polls, who even when absolutely innocent, went to the slaughter like lambs in imitation of their Lord. That's the ecclesiology that makes the Catholic Church worth living and dying for; that's the ecclesiology that sees the Body of Christ as the Church Militant against the world in our battle with the passions as the path to saving the world.

But an apostolic, eucharistic, communio ecclesiology is contemptible to most American Catholics, clergy and lay alike. The average American Catholic feels victimized by the use of Latin in the Mass for crying out loud. We're a flabby, lazy, and indolent Church; we were practically begging for our priests to follow their "creative" passions wherever they led because that's the same homily we want to hear from the pulpit. In ecumenism, we've hankered for the me- and now-centrism of the Protestants and barely know a thing about our Eastern rite brethren or the Orthodox who uniquely share in our apostolic heritage and have stores of wisdom to impart to us. We've forgotten who we are as Church, Bride of Christ. No, America owes us nothing for the ways we've abandoned our priestly identity and vocation to her.

Justice - OK so the actual damages we're looking at are basically lots of closings and sales of parishes, schools, charitable institutions, and other assets. Paprocki argues this is unjust because it wrongly levies punishment upon those who rely on these goods and services. He's probably saving the Poor People card for later when the anti-Catholic attack dogs are barking at their loudest. (God help me if a bishop is clueless enough to argue that the lawsuits will harm all the poor children who the Church serves.) But meanwhile it seems awfully consequentialist to say that justice should be determined by the ripple effect the resolution of this matter will have on third party beneficiaries, especially when there is an obvious unwillingness to treat the real victims as the real victims. Clearly lawyers and anti-Catholic Catholics are seeking vengeance for all sorts of collateral issues, but that just comes with the territory. You don't FUBAR over innocent children and then demand that the public not be excessively pissed off at you. Add it all up and you're still not arriving at anything disproportionate to the sins. All's fair when you baby and coddle sick priests but treat their victims and families like annoying salesmen. If bishops are not seeing this as a case of comeuppance, their eyes aren't on the ball.

Furthermore, Paprocki's argument betrays a glaring indifference or callousness to the atrocious nature of the injuries committed by so many of our clergy. His argument is more fitting if the Church were being sued over slip and fall torts, not the extensive sexual abuse of Catholic children entrusted to our guardians of the Sacred Mysteries and the subsequent episcopal coverups. It's barely legitimate to want to remind the world about the marginal percentages of offenders compared to other professions, but if you stop there (as too many Catholics do), you're just not getting it. What ius demands from our Church is incalculable. And it's not the goal of the plaintiff's to eradicate the Church, as Paprocki acknowledges, but it's also not just for us to cry victim and beg for State to rescue the Church. The Church has committed grievous wrongs, and if our spotless Lord went to the whipping post without protest, how should we who are pockmarked by infidelity and sin submit to our discipline?

So no, I do not think there is any injustice in the way plaintiffs are attacking Church assets, especially since no serious effort has been made to pierce the corporate veil or impose personal liability on individual lay Catholics or beneficiaries of Catholic services. Even if the American Church were to be completely eradicated and liquidated, America would still allow us to have our priests, popes, and sacraments. We'd have Mass in homes and rented warehouses, but that wouldn't be much of downgrade from the architectural "innovations" of the last few decades anyway. So please spare us the patronizing suggestions that this is some massive attack on the Church. America ain't got nuthin' on Diocletian Rome.

Public Relations - It's a manipulative racket of a business which should be kept far away from the Church but even if you wanted to adopt some of its strategies, don't look to Paprocki as any good example. He looks like he's ripping from the Karen Hughes PR playbook. Let's take the most sympathetic red herring of the indigent and voiceless who derive food, shelter, and clothing from the Church's social ministries. If there is truly an injury to the poor, then shouldn't all the other advocacy groups be voicing concern or outrage over the excessive bleeding inflicted by plaintiffs' bar? If I were bishops' counsel, I'd be speaking to the non-Catholic organizations who could credibly articulate the injustice of steamrolling over charitable immunity. They might demur because of the political heat but they're the only mouthpiece free of obvious conflicts of interest. If the bishops alone are arguing for charitable immunity on behalf of their putative beneficiaries, they only end up looking manipulative and opportunistic because the public has no way of knowing whether they're genuinely for the poor or for their own power and prestige.

What sort of message does it send to the world that the Church needs the State to bail her out from the fruit of her own sins? This is where public relations and ecclesiology overlap. America has been good to Catholics and Catholic things, but not very good for Catholicism. We can be thankful for the privileges enjoyed by the Church under the American flag but we should never be lulled into thinking that the Church needs America or that America has given us our freedom of religion. Christ is the ground of our freedom whether we live in an violently anti-Catholic totalitarian regime or not, period. So the Church does not depend on the state to practice charity - a reminder for us who have come to overvalue Catholicism as the great and marvelous font of human services when arguably it has become a cog in the welfare state machine. I'll defend the existence of Catholic Charities and Catholic hospitals any day, but let's admit that they can serve as a cheap substitute for real evangelical charity. The real heart of the Church is the Eucharist, not charitable institutions, or rather the Body and Blood of Christ is our primary charitable work. Paprocki may assume this, but if he's crying victim over loss of our charitable operations, he's sending conflicting messages about what constitutes the Church.

Someone in the USCCB needs to go over Shelby Steele's work on the psychological phenomenon of white man's guilt and how it spill over into foolish, irrational decision-making. What we're witnessing in our bishops is a similar phenomenon of bishop's guilt. They've been traumatized in their own way and their nerves have been frayed by this whole ordeal, so I can sympathize too with our bishops. But they're acting with the same defensiveness of America's desperate but flatfooted attempts to make the race issue go away. Liberals insist on affirmative action even if it might harm black America. Conservatives gripe mindlessly about reverse racism. Bishops are going through something similar, but they need to get a grip. I don't expect spiritually rootless Americans to accomplish this, but I'd think bishops have deeper resources.

Law - Some bishops have symbolically donned the sackcloth and prostrated themselves before the aggrieved parties in humble contrition (eg. O'Malley), but most continue to hide behind slick corporate lawyers. Canon law too can be susceptible to the self-reproducing cycle of rationalizations and sophistry, so self-assured in its clean codifications of canonical equity. But our canons tried so hard to mimic secular Enlightenment civil code systems, with all their lexical pliability that it's so easy to forget about simple apostolic sensibility. Even if the law is on our side and even if charitable immunity is in the best interests of reason, justice, and the common good, it is also beneath the dignity of the Church to stand on the law. We may use the law for our apostolic ends, but as Church we don't strut the law; we don't circle the wagons around clever legal arguments or manipulate the law to our advantage against people we've injured, no matter how greedy they and their lawyers may be. It just looks ridiculous. The job of church lawyers is to render smooth legal representation of the Church in the courts and to ensure our clergy are honorably upholding and complying with the law, always conscientious that their client is not just any organizational client; anything more adversarial than that, the Church assumes the mind of Wall Street and Walmart.

St. Thomas More understood that the law stops at the water's edge and the rest is fidelity to Mother Church unto death. He didn't lobby for legislative reforms or public sympathy or rope in innocent third parties as a buffer - again, he was innocent of wrongdoing but fictitiously guilty of treachery against the King. Meanwhile our bishops are guilty of considerable wrongdoing but essentially immune from criminal prosecution and still they're complaining about state laws that seek to liquidate their financial assets in order to make some restitution and retribution for unfathomable destruction of souls conducted in the name of the Church. I really don't understand where we get the nerve.

If the Church is our Mother

...then this really does capture the "Spirit of V2" church:

Here is what one of her [Alice Thomas Ellis'] characters says about the post–Vatican II Church: “It is as though . . . one’s revered, dignified and darling old mother had slapped on a mini-skirt and fishnet tights and started ogling strangers. A kind of menopausal madness, a sudden yearning to be attractive to all. It is tragic and hilarious and awfully embarrassing.”

Which is a witty variation on the "She might be a whore, but she's our Mother" ecclesiology. From First Things' On the Square by Marian Crowe on the Catholic Novel in England.

Bellas and whistles

Barbara Nicolosi, the de facto dean of Catholic film arts in America, strips off all the hype surrounding Bella, and even questions its pro-life bonafides [gasp].

Could you ever see us pro-lifers being heart-warmed and won over by a subtly pro-choice film, you know, and kind of not see that it is undermining our world-view? And aren't pro-choice people minimally as smart as we are? You're damn right they are. So, regardless of what is being said, this movie is not strongly pro-life. It doesn't represent common-ground. It just takes a very complex, divisive social issue and handles it, well, sloppily enough that neither side in the argument knows exactly what case is being made. I don't even think it is pro-adoption as some have claimed. If it was, then the bookend at the beginning would have Jose looking somewhat healed after five years with the child. As it is, he looks like a pedophile who hasn't moved an inch from the last time we saw him. If it is supposed to be "pro-adoption," it's just sadly sloppy.

The underlying lesson here is what draws my interest to this story, that of American Catholicism's shallow aesthetic sense, which infects both liberals and conservatives alike. Ideology destroys aesthetics. And it's because the pro-life movement has become so ideologized that pro-choice ethics can still look so half-reasonable to so many people. It all comes back to Liturgy. Sloppy lex orandi leads to sloppy lex credendi leads to sloppy art, politics, morals, you name it.

Ecumenism vs. the Ecumenical Movement

...just like there's Vatican II vs the "Spirit of Vatican II." Ochlophobist explains why the "ecumenical movement," as it has been expressed in the World Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches, the legions of joint commissions, and all so-called "interdenominational" orgs, is dead. He's not singing any Panikhidas for this corpse though. Memory infernal, in fact:

No serious Orthodox theologian or bishop ever went to a WCC meeting expecting to learn something true which Orthodoxy lacked, and then come home and teach the flock, "you know, we need to start doing (or believing) this..." That being the case, the only person who could still believe that the WCC was actually for the unification of the different sects and Churches would be that person who believed that all the groups actually believed the same thing, or that none of them believed anything that was not in some fashion negotiable (such people believing such things do exist). The WCC ended up a self-righteous bureaucracy that is functionally impotent. The NCC is a political propaganda machine, a fact which even most on the theological left admit, and it remains solvent only through the financial support of groups that have no interest in ecumenism, that are not even churches at all but political groups - and every player in the current and former NCC scene knows as much.

On a simple fact that Catholic apologists refuse to honestly address:

We [the Orthodox] have very, very, few bishops who speak grave theological error in public, and this is in part because we take hierarchical order so seriously. Make fun of us as you will, we prefer disputes over who stands where in line to all of our bishops holding hands in a circle while each pursues his own particular theological, liturgical, and sociological agendas.

On the naivete of the current "reunification" pipe-dream in fashion in RC circles:

If the RCC returns to Tradition, it will be the work of the Holy Spirit, which is generally subversive, confronts banality at every turn, and is frequently almost absurd. This does not happen through meetings of high ranking ecclesial Tradition consultants. Many Orthodox (and not a few Catholics) think that a dose of Orthodox Tradition could fix some of the serious problems in the RCC. It simply does not work that way. Even more overt, perhaps, is the belief that the Papacy will fix the problems of the EOC. If we reunited with the RCC, especially under the terms that Catholic friend Mike Liccione suggests, there would still be Orthodox bishops walking out of rooms when other Orthodox bishops walked in. If the Pope tried to arbitrate between them simply as the authority, the losing side (and there would be a losing side) would in most cases go into schism and reunite with those Orthodox Churches which never joined with Rome in the first place.

On the iron cage of dialecticism in the West:

It is worth noting that Christ, as the Gospels well show, refuses dialectic at every turn, and especially at the most brutal turn. He does not defeat Death by Life. He defeats Death by death. He refuses to enter into a relationship of necessary conflict even with death. Because of this, death is destroyed, as Death had set itself up in a necessary dialectic with Life. Life refused to honor a necessary conflict, and thus we have the situation where Life itself goes to Death, and the bargains Death makes, those petty existential resolutions made between life and death, are now pointless. Death is thereby overcome, and there is no Death, now only Life. Christ honors no determinism, He accepts no terms but those the Father has given. There is no synthesis of necessary conflicts, there is only Christ, all in all. The reconciliation of Christ is that of bringing persons who have in reality embraced irresolvable futility (perhaps seeking dialectic resolution), turning them in the opposite direction (repentance, as opposed to progressive movement towards dialectic resolution), and having their lives recapitulated in Christ.

The only authentic ecumenism:

We should hold no hope in programs or schools, including ecumenism, but we should cultivate real things, such as friendship....the most significant shared relationship that Christians of different traditions can have with one another is a relationship of shared suffering....It seems to me that those Christians who are serious about unity are those who suffer in the Name of Christ. If the state or Islam or some other foe is not attacking us at the moment, let us outdo one another in our voluntary sufferings for Christ - serious prayer, fasting, almsgiving. Let us give up our vain attempts at projects and schoolings, and give ourselves over to be recapitulated into the Man who emptied Himself. There is our only unity.

There's really too much to blockquote. Just read it.