Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog

Donahue vs. Obama

Bill Donahue of the Catholic League is not impressed with Barack Obama’s Catholic National Advisory Council. On May 2nd he said:

“The best advice I can give Sen. Obama about his Catholic National Advisory Council is to dissolve it immediately. Of the 26 Catholic former or current public office holders he has listed as either National Co-Chairs (5), or as members of the National Leadership Committee (21), there is not one who agrees with the Catholic Church on all three major public policy issues: abortion, embryonic stem cell research and school vouchers.

“Indeed, on the issue of abortion, their record is disgraceful. Consider the scorecard as issued by the most radical pro-abortion organization in the nation—NARAL. Of the two National Co-Chairs who have a NARAL tally, one agrees with the extremist group 65 percent of the time and the other agrees 100 percent of the time. Of the 20 National Leadership Committee members with a NARAL score, 17 have earned a 100 percent rating. Of those who have less than a perfect score, not one is in favor of school vouchers. ...

As CNA reports, the committee members were offended—nay, outraged!—that their failure to support clear Catholic teaching was being used as evidence that they don't support clear Catholic teaching:

The 26 member advisory council, which includes two sisters and one priest, responded to Donahue’s accusation that they are “dissenters” from the Catholic Church by writing him a letter.

In their letter, the council members counter Donahue’s charge that they don’t follow Church teaching on abortion by saying, “Unlike the Catholic League, the U.S. Catholic Bishops advise careful consideration of candidates’ positions on a broad set of issues.” This type of consideration, according to the council, is bolstered by the U.S. bishops’ document “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship”.

The advisors quote from paragraph 29 of the bishops’ document, where the bishops explain that Catholics cannot be against abortion and simultaneously ignore other offenses against human life.

They advisors point out that this means, “particular issues must not be misused ‘as a way of dismissing or ignoring other serious threats to human life and dignity’ such as ‘racism and other unjust discrimination, the use of the death penalty, resorting to unjust war, the use of torture, war crimes, the failure to respond to those who are suffering from hunger or a lack of health care or an unjust immigration policy’."

Read their entire response here (PDF format). Donahue responded on May 8th:

“The reason I mentioned only public officials who are part of Sen. Obama’s Catholic National Advisory Council is the same reason I chose just three public policy issues: voting tallies are available on these advisors (but not on the others) and on these three issues. If I knew more about the others, no doubt some would have made the cut.

“It is more than embarrassing—it is shocking—to read how these Catholics view abortion. The Catholic Church regards abortion, as well as embryonic stem cell research, as ‘intrinsically evil.’ But not these folks. For them, abortion is merely ‘a profound moral issue.’

“Sadly, it has been apparent for years that many who fancy themselves ‘progressive’ Catholics do not treat abortion the way they do racial discrimination. No one in his right mind says that the best way to combat racial discrimination is by changing people’s hearts and minds, not the law. Which is why we do both. But when it comes to abortion—including partial-birth abortion—the progressives settle for dialogue.

“It is so nice to know that Obama thinks abortion ‘presents a profound moral challenge.’ Is infanticide another ‘profound moral challenge’? To wit: When he was in the Illinois state senate he led the fight to deny health care to babies born alive who survived an abortion. That, my friends, is not a moral challenge—it’s a Hitlerian decision.”

• Sen. Barack Obama: "I don't know anybody who is pro-abortion." (Jan. 24, 2008)
• That's why Catholics should vote for Sen. Obama? (Feb. 15, 2008)
• Catholic reporter defends his support for Obama, stating: "bishops be damned" (Feb. 15, 2008)
• The soul of Senator Barack Obama (Feb. 28, 2008)

The Renewal of Vatican II: Distractions and Distortions

The Renewal of Vatican II: Distractions and Distortions | Douglas Bushman, S.T.L. | Ignatius Insight

Years of teaching courses on Vatican II and Ecclesiology have provided me the data of an ongoing survey that continues to produce amazingly consistent results. The question is simple: "What is the first word that comes to mind when I say, 'Vatican II'?" Invariably the response is "renewal" and "change." The same answer comes from countless groups of adults with whom I have reflected on the Council that Pope John Paul II described as "the gift of the Holy Spirit" to the Church of our time.

The follow-up question produces similarly consistent results, though it may be difficult to discern at first. To the question, "What kind of change?" people point first to the liturgy: Mass said in English, priest facing the assembly, laity serving as extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist, communion received in the hand. Often mentioned is the adaptation of the discipline of abstinence from meat on Friday. Others point to participation on parish or diocesan pastoral or finance councils, while some refer to institutional innovations such as the synod of bishops, the International Theological Commission, and the many new pontifical councils.

Seemingly widely diverse, these examples have something in common; they are visible and institutional changes. Observable changes such as these naturally draw our attention; they are the first things we notice. The Council, however, did not see changes as ends in themselves, but as means to something higher. The challenge is to look beyond them, or through them, to discover that more profound reality. Such a "looking beyond" is natural for Catholic faith, which perceives the Son of God in Jesus of Nazareth, and the bestowal of grace in the visible signs we call sacraments.

What is that more profound reality? It is holiness, as unchanging in its nature as doctrine, the essence of the sacraments, and the hierarchical constitution of the Church. Holiness, that is, life in communion with God in faith, hope and charity lived in the ongoing conversion that is an unending task for the Church, is fundamentally the same in all ages. The real challenge of Vatican II is the change or renewal of hearts that in the Gospels is called metanoia.

Read the entire article...

An emerging source of frustration

Terry Mattingly of Get Religion has a post titled, "Define 'emerging,' give three examples," which looks at how the "emerging church" movement continues to avoid definition and vital questions:

Whatever the term means, it is supposed to be linked to a kind of post-evangelical embrace of the nuances of postmodern reality, in an attempt to fuse ancient mysteries with contemporary questions without the certainties of orthodoxy or something like that.

The key figure — in part since his church is so close to the D.C. Beltway — is the Rev. Brian McLaren, an author who has a stunning ability to write thousands and thousands of words without betraying anything specific about where he stands on centuries of Christian faith and doctrine and how they apply to modern issues. That’s where — for a premodern, Orthodox Christian guy like me — the frustrations begin. The last thing journalists need to be doing right now is tossing around another loaded, yet almost totally undefined, term. I mean, imagine trying to write an “emerging church” entry for the Associated Press Stylebook.

Mattingly refers to a recent interview in The Washington Post with McLaren, which contains the following:

Q: On the theology behind the emerging church, you reject the idea that there's an absolute truth. So what boundaries are there on theology that churches are teaching? Can any church just call itself an emerging church?

A: Obviously that's a challenge. The flip side of that question is look at the Catholic Church: For all of its orthodoxy, it could have bishops covering up for molesting priests. And evangelicals, for all their claims of orthodoxy, can be barbaric to gay people and can blindly support a rush to war in Iraq and can be, as we speak, fomenting for war with Iran. ... Obviously, I have a lot of critics and they often say, 'You're wanting to water down the Gospel to accommodate to post-modernity.' I say, 'No, I really don't want to do that. But what I do want to do is acknowledge first the ways we've already watered down the Gospel to accommodate modernity.' ... I think the naivete of some of those critics is that they're starting with a pure pristine understanding of the Gospel. It seems to me we're all in danger of screwing up.

That, then, is a taste of the "stunning ability" referred to by Mattingly. My basic impression of the "emerging church" movement is this: it is a reactionary movement within a reactionary movement (evangelicalism) that was formed within a reactionary movement (20th century conservative Protestantism) that was a subset of a reactionary movement ("classical" Protestantism). It will continue to frustrate many, even while it splinters, resplinters, divides, morphs, shifts, and otherwise emerges, submerges, re-emerges, and partially converges in numerous forms, all of which will lead to, uh, something. Mattingly, meanwhile, would like someone to ask McLaren three basic questions:

(1) Are the biblical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus accurate? Did this event really happen?

(2) Is salvation found through Jesus Christ, alone? Was Jesus being literal when he said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6)?

(3) Is sex outside of the Sacrament of Marriage a sin?

Answers to said questions will emerge. Someday. Maybe. In the meantime, here is a sample of what McLaren has to offer:

"I don't think we've got the gospel right yet. What does it mean to be 'saved'?.... I don't think the liberals have it right. But I don't think we have it right either. None of us has arrived at orthodoxy." –– Brian McLaren, quoted in "The Emergent Mystique", Christianity Today, November 2004

"Ask me if Christianity (my version of it, yours, the Pope's, whoever's) is orthodox, meaning true, and here's my honest answer: a little, but not yet. Assuming by Christianity you mean the Christian understanding of the world and God, Christian opinions on soul, text, and culture I'd have to say that we probably have a couple of things right, but a lot of things wrong, and even more spreads before us unseen and unimagined. But at least our eyes are open! To be a Christian in a generously orthodox way is not to claim to have the truth captured, stuffed, and mounted on the wall." –– Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), p. 293.

Hmmm...well...I think I'll have to go with Chesterton on this one:

This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. The Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any warhorse; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along one idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. She swerved to left and right, so exactly as to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand the huge bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to make Christianity too worldly. The next instant she was swerving to avoid an orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly. The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable. It would have been easier to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would have been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into the bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of Christendom -- that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.

•  Chesterton and the "Paradoxy" of Orthodoxy

Vatican website now features Latin texts

The Vatican home page now has a section titled, "Sancta Sedes (Latine)," which leads to numerous Church texts in Latin, including writings by the last four popes and Pope Benedict XVI, the Bible, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, documents of Vatican II, the Code of Canon Law, and more.

A BBC News piece about the addition of Latin to the Vatican site has this humorous bit:

But Father Reginald Foster, an American priest who is the Pope's official Latinist, praises the virtues and the clarity of the Latin language.

"You have to say something and move on," he says.

"It's not like French and some of these philosophical languages where you can write a whole page and say nothing - in Latin you can't do that!''

Fr Foster has a weekly programme on Vatican Radio called The Latin Lover, in which he explains the historical and contemporary uses of the language.

Here's more about Fr. Foster and "The Latin Lover."

Archbishop Naumann to Governor: Stop receiving Holy Communion

Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas has been dealing with Gov. Kathleen Sebelius  for a while now regarding her scandalous and unrepentant support, as a Catholic, of abortion. He has now taken further action. The Kansas City Star reports:

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius should stop taking Communion until she repudiates her support for the “serious moral evil” of abortion, the Catholic archbishop for northeast Kansas says.

Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann, of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, also criticized the governor Friday for her recent veto of a bill imposing new restrictions on abortion providers.

The Archbishop, in his weekly column, wrote:

Since becoming archbishop, I have met with Governor Sebelius several times over many months to discuss with her the grave spiritual and moral consequences of her public actions by which she has cooperated in the procurement of abortions performed in Kansas. My concern has been, as a pastor, both for the spiritual well-being of the governor but also for those who have been misled (scandalized) by her very public support for legalized abortion.

It has been my hope that through this dialogue the governor would come to understand her obligation: 1) to take the difficult political step, but necessary moral step, of repudiating her past actions in support of legalized abortion; and 2) in the future would use her exceptional leadership abilities to develop public policies extending the maximum legal protection possible to the unborn children of Kansas.

Having made every effort to inform and to persuade Governor Sebelius and after consultation with Bishop Ron Gilmore (Dodge City), Bishop Paul Coakley (Salina) and Bishop Michael Jackels (Wichita), I wrote the governor last August requesting that she refrain from presenting herself for reception of the Eucharist until she had acknowledged the error of her past positions, made a worthy sacramental confession and taken the necessary steps for amendment of her life which would include a public repudiation of her previous efforts and actions in support of laws and policies sanctioning abortion.

Recently, it came to my attention that the governor had received holy Communion at one of our parishes. I have written to her again, asking her to respect my previous request and not require from me any additional pastoral actions.

Read the entire column. Dr. Ed Peters comments:

Canon 915 as a tourniquet to staunch the wound that Gov. Sebelius has inflicted on the Mystical Body of Christ. But Canon 915 is only designed to keep a bad situation from getting worse; what is ultimately necessary here is repentance by a prominent Catholic of her grave pro-abortion activities. In the meantime, if Canon 915 doesn't stop the bleeding, the archbishop's only alternative would be surgery under Book Six of the Code of Canon Law, "Sanctions in the Church."

And no one should want that.

Read his entire post.

Calumny in the Blogosphere

 Calumny in the Blogosphere | Rev. Michael P. Orsi | Homiletic & Pastoral Review

Calumnious blogging is a serious offense against God's law. Those who engage in it are jeopardizing their immortal souls and the souls of others.

Calumny is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary (1992) as a “false statement maliciously made to injure another’s reputation.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) places calumny as a serious sin under the Eighth Commandment, “Thou shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” The Catechism states, “He becomes guilty of calumny who, by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them” (2447). The Catechism notes that calumny offends “against the virtues of justice and charity” (2479).

Calumny and its close relative detraction (derogatory comments that reveal the hidden faults or sins of another without reason) have been part of life since the dawn of time. But opportunities for breaking the Eighth Commandment have proliferated with the advent of the Internet, especially since the rise of the phenomenon known as “blogging.” “Blog” is one of those punchy little contractions we live with today, an example of the technological shorthand so beloved in our culture of email and text messaging. A blog (short for “weblog”) is a personal website or online journal. Blogs perform a variety of communication functions, combining elements of both private conversation and broadcasting, usually incorporating a forum for interactive discussion.

Blogs are vehicles of global self-expression, something unprecedented in the history of human discourse. They are a means by which the average person—with creativity, initiative and the investment of time—can reach limitless numbers of readers anywhere in the world. They elevate the marketing presence of entrepreneurs and small companies to levels that used to be attainable only by major corporations. And they have transformed journalism, breaking the monopolies of resource and licensure that once restricted entry into the world of mass communications.

Read the entire article...

Fr. Joseph Fessio: The Pope is just being who he really is

From a May 8th ZENIT interview with Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.:

While many Americans have a new take on the personality of Benedict XVI after his U.S. trip, Father Joseph Fessio says the Pope revealed nothing new. ...

The Jesuit, who is also the founder and editor in chief of Ignatius Press, the Pope's primary English-language publisher, explained that the Holy Father "is transparent, so what you see is who he is. His many concrete acts of thoughtfulness and generosity are unknown to most people, but would not be a surprise to those who have now had the chance to see and hear him."

There has been speculation that the Pope sometimes was negatively portrayed by the press simply because of his many years leading the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, coupled with his shyness.

Father Fessio agrees that these have been factors, "[b]ut the largest factor is that the secular media and dissenting Catholics will always project a negative image of anyone who upholds the teaching of the Catholic Church on the controversial, neuralgic issues of our time. Most are related to gender: contraception, abortion, homosexuality, ordination of women, married priests."

"Once the tide of enthusiasm recedes," the priest speculated, "the Holy Father will be portrayed as a hard-line conservative who is behind the times."

Read the entire interview.

Flash back to April 2005, shortly after the election of Benedict XVI, to this Ignatius Insight interview with Fr. Fessio:

What is Pope Benedict XVI like as a person? What about his reputation as an “enforcer” ?
 
Father Fessio: As a person, Pope Benedict is courteous, kind, gracious, soft-spoken, with an ever-present sense of humor and a twinkle in his eye. I’ve never heard him express anger or raise his voice. He listens very attentively to people and while clear and firm in his expression of the truths of the Catholic Faith, he always speaks or writes with profound courtesy and respect. He has a reputation as an enforcer because he had that task assigned to him. Even in treating dissident theologians, he was always open and fair, thorough and objective. Although there are still lingering complaints about the “secrecy” of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, there is simply no basis for that. The Congregation has worked with complete transparency. I can’t think of anyone in the Vatican who has been more open to being interviewed or being questioned on any topic than Cardinal Ratzinger. Of course, when he is obliged to tell someone who considers himself a Catholic of good standing that what that person is teaching or advocating is incompatible with Catholic truth, that is often not well received. In trying to explain the hostility toward Cardinal Ratzinger, I can only think that it is a projection of the anger of those who are being corrected upon the one who has to administer the correction.

• The Theological Genius of Joseph Ratzinger | An Interview with Fr. D. Vincent Twomey, S.V.D., author of Pope Benedict XVI: The Conscience of Our Age (A Theological Portrait)
• The Courage To Be Imperfect | The Introduction to Pope Benedict XVI: The Conscience of Our Age (A Theological Portrait) | D. Vincent Twomey, S.V.D.
• Benedict XVI's Theological Vision: An Introduction | Monsignor Joseph Murphy | From the introduction to Christ Our Joy: The Theological Vision of Pope Benedict XVI              

Cardinal Kasper: It's time for Anglicanism to "clarify its identity"

From The Catholic Herald:

Speaking on the day that the Archbishop of Canterbury met Benedict XVI in Rome, Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council of Christian Unity, said it was time for Anglicanism to "clarify its identity".

He told the Catholic Herald: "Ultimately, it is a question of the identity of the Anglican Church. Where does it belong?

"Does it belong more to the churches of the first millennium -Catholic and Orthodox - or does it belong more to the Protestant churches of the 16th century? At the moment it is somewhere in between, but it must clarify its identity now and that will not be possible without certain difficult decisions."

He said he hoped that the Lambeth conference, an event which brings the worldwide Anglican Communion together every 10 years, would be the deciding moment for Anglicanism.

Cardinal Kasper, who has been asked to speak at the Lambeth Conference by the Archbishop of Canterbury, said: "We hope that certain fundamental questions will be clarified at the conference so that dialogue will be possible.

"We shall work and pray that it is possible, but I think that it is not sustainable to keep pushing decision-making back because it only extends the crisis."

Read the entire piece.

Russell Shaw on clericalism

Shaw, the author of several books including the just published Nothing to Hide: Secrecy, Communication, and Communion in the Catholic Church (Ignatius, 2008), has written a lengthy piece, "On Clericalism" (ht: Mark Shea) for InsideCatholic.com:

Imagine a man who wakes up in the morning with a headache, fever, and chills. The symptoms persist and are there when he goes to bed that night. Next day, it's the same thing again -- headache, fever, chills. This continues day after day, week after week, over and over. Finally the poor man starts to think: "I guess this is how people always feel. I just have to live with it."

The Catholic Church is something like that man. In the Church, the illness is called clericalism. We Catholics have suffered from it so long that most of us take it for granted. In fact, we're clericalists ourselves. "That's how it is," we say. And our symptoms persist.

They look like this:

• A pastor lords it over his people, consulting no one and habitually making unilateral decisions. His people are a passive, dispirited lot, quick to complain and slow to cooperate.    


• A bishop routinely goes far beyond fundamental moral principles in talking about political issues. He advocates highly specific solutions to problems that admit of more than one legitimate view and makes no secret of his political partisanship.    


• A carefully planned, highly touted diocesan vocations recruitment program aimed at attracting men to the priesthood turns out a flop. Its planners scratch their heads and wonder what went wrong.
  

Clericalism is operative in all these cases and many others. After all this time, you'd think people would have caught on and taken remedial steps. But even now, many haven't. "That's how it is," they say. And the symptoms persist.

Read the entire piece.

In Nothing to Hide, Shaw argues that clericalism is the key to understanding the sex abuse scandal, especially how it was handled (or, rather, mishandled):

But visible or not, clericalism and the clericalist culture were at the heart of the sex abuse scandal. ... Clericalism did not cause the sex abuse, nor did sex abuse cause clericalism. But the connections are very real. Sex abuse in a clericalist social setting naturally takes on a clericalist coloration, making it difficult to keep the two things separate and distinct. To put it simply, the attitudes and behavior patterns tied to clerical elitism time and against came into play when priests were found by their superiors to have engaged in abuse. (p 15)

Read more about Nothing to Hide.

The "Smackdown of the Week" is courtesy of...

... Martin Cothran of "Vere Loqui," who penned a devastating and hilarious fisking of John Derbyshire's "review" of the controversial movie, Expelled:

I have always admired G. K. Chesterton's dictum that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing badly, but I never appreciated the full scope of its application until reading John Derbyshire's recent review of Ben Stein's "Expelled" at National Review Online.

"What on earth has happened to Ben Stein?" asks Derbyshire. "He and I go a long way back." Are the two close? Are they old pals who have been through a lot together? "No," he says, "I've never met the guy." But wait. How can this be? How can Derbyshire have forged this bond of friendship with Stein without actually knowing him?

"Though I've never met him," he explains, "I know people who know him, and they all speak well of him."

Got it.

In fact, Derbyshire displays an amazing ability, far beyond that of the rest of us, to engage with people and things even though he has had no direct contact with them. Take "Expelled" for example. "So what's going on here with this stupid "Expelled" movie?" he asks--a question which could have been answered by the simple expedient of actually watching it. A man with Derbyshire's special talent, however, is not hampered by such constraints:

No, I haven't seen the dang thing. I've been reading about it steadily for weeks now though, both pro ... and con, and I can't believe it would yield up many surprises on an actual viewing.

That's right: Derbyshire reviews "Expelled" without actually having seen it! This is a man who has friends he has never met, and who can review movies he has never seen. It is perhaps fortuitous that Bill Buckley, the founder of National Review, recently passed from among us: this is a talent I am not sure he would have fully appreciated.

Read the entire post.

And for the record, I've not yet seen the movie, so I can't say much, if anything, about it. However, prior to the movie's release I did interview associate producer Mark Mathis. Go here to read that interview.