Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog

The Doritos Commercial and the Revival of Voluntarism

Bishop Robert Barron | The Dispatch at CWR

Though the commercial is, of course, playful, it exaggerates something quite real—but NARAL insists the child in the womb should not be "humanized".

I'm sure by now you've heard about the absurd reaction of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) to the lighthearted Super Bowl commercial produced to advertise Doritos. In the thirty-second clip, a pregnant mother, undergoing an ultra-sound, is annoyed by her husband who is absent-mindedly munching Doritos while their baby's image is displayed on the screen. But as the father moves the corn chip, the baby in the womb moves with it; and when the mother throws the bag across the room, the child reacts so keenly and purposively that he decides this is the moment to be born.

Cute, funny, harmless, right? Oh not according to NARAL, who complained (and one is compelled here to stifle laughter) that the commercial dangerously "humanized" the fetus. We are tempted to ask, "What do you think was gestating in the womb? A monkey? A rabbit?"

It has, of course, long been established scientifically that even a conceptus (a fertilized ovum) is already in full possession of human DNA distinct from that of his parents. Moreover, the developing embryo has a heartbeat and her own circulatory system 22 days after conception; at 20 weeks, the baby in the womb is capable of hearing his mother's voice, and responding to light, music, and other external stimuli. So though the Doritos commercial is, of course, playful, it exaggerates something quite real.
Yet according to NARAL, the child in the womb should not be "humanized," lest the absolute right to murder that child at any stage of its pre-natal development should be denied. And mind you, that right, in our country, extends even to the moment when the baby is emerging from the womb (partial birth abortion), indeed to the time after his birth, since many states place no restrictions on the killing of a newborn who has miraculously survived the abortion procedure (cf. born alive legislation). For many people, the bottom line is this: all objective evidence to the contrary, the unborn are not human because defenders of abortion don't want them to be.

And here, philosophically speaking, is the rub.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

America's Golden Calf Moment

(Photos: us.fotolia.com | tunedin & davidevison)

America's Golden Calf Moment | Carl E. Olson | CWR Editorial

Led by the murky metaphysics of Judge Anthony Kennedy, the U.S. plunges ever deeper into the dictatorship of relativism

“There is no true liberty except the liberty of the happy who cleave to the eternal law.” — St. Augustine, On Freewill

“Conservative commentator, and Blaze contributor, S.E. Cupp broke down on-air Friday after the Supreme Court decided in favor of same-sex marriage. Cupp was overjoyed, and said Republicans have to accept gay marriage or risk becoming 'relics.'” — The Blaze, June 26, 2015

I.

The great division in modern politics, argued Russell Kirk in The Politics of Prudence, “is not between totalitarians on the one hand and liberals (or libertarians) on the other; instead, it lies between all those who believe in a transcendent moral order, on the one side, and on the other side all those who mistake our ephemeral existence as individuals for the be-all and end-all.”

There is, however, a third possibility—although it is, in fact, just a devilish riff on the latter, liberal stance: the belief that the language of the transcendent moral order can be conveniently applied, like a sort of cheap and convenient paint, over the relativistic “order” that now, in so many ways, dominates the United States. It is a sort of metaphysics, but without any cohesive understanding of first things or vision of the transcendent order, something like an arrogant man awkwardly holding a hammer and saw and claiming to be “a carpenter,” but with little or no idea how to build—or even why to build.

Justice Anthony Kennedy is one such carpenter, having written the now infamous and risible line (in 1992, in “Planned Parenthood vs. Casey”): “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” In “Obergefell v. Hodges”, sent down yesterday from the enlightened mountaintops of the same blind but liberty-loving universe, Kennedy deigned to explain to us somnolent citizens the ways of the cosmos and, secondarily, the court:

It is demeaning to lock same-sex couples out of a central institution of the Nation’s society, for they too may aspire to the transcendent purposes of marriage. The limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples may long have seemed natural and just, but its inconsistency with the central meaning of the fundamental right to marry is now manifest.

This aspiration to transcendence via marriage is apparently important to Kennedy, for he repeats it: “Same-sex couples, too, may aspire to the transcendent purposes of marriage and seek fulfillment in its highest meaning.” This builds on his earlier assertion that “the annals of human history reveal the transcendent importance of marriage. … Marriage is sacred to those who live by their religions and offers unique fulfillment to those who find meaning in the secular realm. Its dynamic allows two people to find a life that could not be found alone, for a marriage becomes greater than just the two persons. Rising from the most basic human needs, marriage is essential to our most profound hopes and aspirations.”

And what are those hopes and aspirations?

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Pretty Little Lies: The Idolness of Bruce Jenner

"The Adoration of the Golden Calf" (L'Adoration du Veau d'or) by Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) [WikiArt.org]

Pretty Little Lies: On the Idolness of Bruce Jenner | Lauren Enk Mann | CWR 

Both Jenner and the adoring media are falling prey to one of the oldest, gravest sins: idolatry, the worshiping of false gods which we ourselves have crafted

By now, the hubbub over Bruce Jenner's Vanity Fair cover has reached most ears. And eyes. After extensive surgery and hormone treatment, with the aid of heavy makeup and Photoshop, Jenner posed in a corset as "Caitlyn" for Vanity Fair's exclusive 22-page article on his transition from a man to a woman.  

Effusive praise for "Caitlyn" Jenner flooded the internet following the cover's debut—a reaction symptomatic of society's default approach to the human person. The reaction stands squarely on a decades-long foundation of practices that deny the God-given meaning of human sexuality, from divorce and contraception to porn and the social acceptance of gay "marriage". There is no inherent human nature that you could mar or offend by doing these things, says the world. 

But why is our society so gullible in the face of such lies? It is said that the devil can appear as an angel of light—he is, after all, the father of lies. And Bruce Jenner is living a colossal lie. But because he looks glamorous doing it, he is heaped with praise as media echo chambers resound with affirmations of his "courage."

Lies are ugly things, but the point of a lie is to hide its true face; lies don't seem ugly, but attractive and appealing. They steal the looks of something good—beauty, compassion, or happiness—and mimic it, relying on a deceptive veneer to win us over. 

This devilish tactic is one reason the world so easily swallows grave moral errors. 

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

CRUX's "spirituality columnist" slanders orthodox Catholics as "bigots"

CRUX's "spirituality columnist" slanders orthodox Catholics as "bigots" | Carl E. Olson | CWR blog

Margery Eagan "prays" that Francis will get rid of "anti-gay bigots". Here are 6 problems with her "arguments".

"Not only is it wrong to take the life of another, but it is also wrong to bestow the poison of anger upon him, strike him with slander, and speak ill of him." — Pope Francis, Angelus, Feb. 16, 2014

Margery Eagan, the "spirituality columnist" for the CRUX site, recently wrote a column, "My prayer: That Francis prevails over the bigots within the Church" (Oct 21), in which she uses a broad and sloppy brush to attack those Catholics who, in short, uphold Church teaching regarding the true nature of homosexual inclinations ("objectively disordered"—CCC, 2358) and homosexual acts ("grave depravity"—CCC, 2357). What is especially interesting to me are two things: the faulty assumptions and misleading arguments she uses and the apparent (if tacit) approval of the hierarchy at CRUX.

First, the assumptions and "arguments:

1). That the controversy over the passage in the "Relatio post disceptationem" was about being nice to homosexuals: "Nothing like the prospect of the Catholic Church 'welcoming' gays to cause hysteria in conservative ranks." This is nonsense. The problem was with the fuzzy language in the midsession repport suggesting that having an inclination toward homosexuality was somehow a positive and morally good thing:

Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community: are we capable of welcoming these people, guaranteeing to them a fraternal space in our communities? Often they wish to encounter a Church that offers them a welcoming home. Are our communities capable of providing that, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony? ...  Without denying the moral problems connected to homosexual unions it has to be noted that there are cases in which mutual aid to the point of sacrifice constitutes a precious support in the life of the partners.

If we are to "value" the homosexual orientation, then what to do with the teaching that such inclination is disordered? Ignore it? Cut it out? If so, should we also expect to rexamine Church teaching about adultery and fornication? Pornography, masturbation, and cohabitation? And what of polygamy and those who might have an orientation to a "swinging" lifestyle? What gifts might such people bring into the Church solely because of their orientations? No reasonable person denies that every sinner has gifts and abilities. What puzzled and upset so many was the suggestion that the flawed orientation and even sinful actions somehow provide gifts and graces.

2). That there are only two possible approaches to those identifying as homosexual: complete and total acceptance of the orientation and lifestyle (that is, a celebration of the Reign of Gay), or homophobic hatred, bigotry, and intolerance on every level and in ever possible way. This is clearly the intention of Eagan's cherrypicking of certain anti-homosexual comments, as if comboxes are equal to the thoughtful and principled approaches to the topic that good Catholics have written. But, of course, this is how the Reign of Gay works: either bow and celebrate, or be damned to the darkened fringes of society. The truly Catholic option is the one that so many (although not all) homosexuals despise: love the sinner, hate the sin. Eagan, however, will have none of it.

3). The sloppy attempt to equate homosexuality with a morally upright cause:

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

Card. Kasper denies he gave interview. Journalist posts recording of interview.

Left: German Cardinal Walter Kasper arrives for the morning session of the extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the family at the Vatican Oct. 8. (CNS photo/Paul Haring). Right: Undated photo of journalist Edward Pentin, left, with Pope Francis. (edwardpentin.co.uk)

by Carl E. Olson | CWR blog

The German prelate insists, "I never said such a thing about Africans..." But the evidence says otherwise.

For those who thought the Synod and the many reports and controversies swirling around it couldn't be any more surprising, surreal, confusing, and conflicted, tighten your seat belts. The past 36 hours or so have provided another drama within The Drama, and while some might dismiss it as just another example of the push, pull, and politics of such ecclesial events, it could prove, in hindsight, to be a turning point.

First, the background. As CWR's managing editor, Catherine Harmon, explained, Cardinal Walter Kasper of Germany was interviewed yesterday by veteran Vatican journalist Edward Pentin, who writes frequently for ZENIT and National Catholic Register, as well as other outlets, including CWR. In the interview, Catherine summarized, "the German cardinal said he believes 'a growing majority' of the synod participants are in favor of his controversial proposals about Communion for the divorced and remarried. Cardinal Kasper also emphasized the differences between the challenges faced by the Church in the West and the Church elsewhere, stating that the problems of the African Church, in particular, are 'impossible' for the synod to solve. Likewise, he said, the African bishops “should not tell us too much what we have to do.” There was then this surprising exchange:

[Kasper:] Africa is totally different from the West. Also Asian and Muslim countries, they’re very different, especially about gays. You can’t speak about this with Africans and people of Muslim countries. It’s not possible. It’s a taboo. For us, we say we ought not to discriminate, we don’t want to discriminate in certain respects.

But are African participants listened to in this regard?

[Kasper:] No, the majority of them [who hold these views won’t speak about them].

They’re not listened to?

[Kasper:] In Africa of course [their views are listened to], where it’s a taboo.

What has changed for you, regarding the methodology of this synod?

[Kasper:] I think in the end there must be a general line in the Church, general criteria, but then the questions of Africa we cannot solve. There must be space also for the local bishops’ conferences to solve their problems but I’d say with Africa it’s impossible [for us to solve]. But they should not tell us too much what we have to do.

Needless to say, those remarks caused a furor. Then, this morning, Cardinal Kasper issued a denial, telling kath.net [an Austrian Catholic news website], “I am shocked.  I never said such a thing about Africans and would never say such a thing either. I declare: no one from Zenit contacted me in recent days and weeks.”:

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

The Confounding and Curious Pontifications of Cardinal Kasper

German Cardinal Walter Kasper, right, speaks with cardinals as they arrive for the afternoon session of a meeting with Pope Francis in the synod hall at the Vatican Feb. 21, 2014. Also pictured are Cardinals Roger M. Mahony, retired archbishop of Los Angeles, left, Carlos Amigo Vallejo, retired archbishop of Seville, Spain, and Giuseppe Betori of Florence. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

The Confounding and Curious Pontifications of Cardinal Kasper | Carl E. Olson | Editorial | Catholic World Report

Is the German prelate and theologian promoting a book on mercy or pushing a dubious agenda at the expense of fellow bishops?

Cardinal Walter Kasper, noted German prelate and theologian, has been on a book tour in the States in support of his most recent work, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life (Paulist Press). I'm not sure how much interest he has generated regarding his book, but In the course of just a few days, he has managed the rather remarkable (which is not to say admirable) combined feat of slighting the head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (a fellow Cardinal, Gerhard Müller), essentially dismissing the pastoral authority of the USCCB, praising an openly dissenting theologian while positively comparing her to St. Thomas Aquinas—and doing so while talking of "humility" as if only he and a few others have even heard of it before.

Frankly, I'm aghast. I've never seen anything quite like it. Certainly not from someone of Cardinal Kasper's stature. And I've talked to several others in the past two days—all of them lifelong Catholics and all working in some capacity for the Church—and they say the same thing.

Cardinal Kasper's resume is undoubtedly impressive: he was president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity for almost a decade (2001-2010) after ten years as bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart (1989-1999). He has taught at several schools, including the University of Tubingen and the Catholic University of America. He has long had a reputation of being a "liberal"—although that is certainly relative—and he has had some interesting and high profile, um, discussions about various theological points over the years, as when he and then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger went round and round in 2001 about the nature and relationship of particular churches and the universal Church (see this ZENIT piece by Cardinal Avery Dulles for details and analysis).

He got back into the bigger spotlight in February, when he gave a two-hour-long address to an extraordinary consistory on the family at the Vatican, and was then praised for it by Pope Francis. But not everyone was so impressed. In fact, it soon became clear that many of those present were deeply critical of Kasper's ideas about how to better address the situation of Catholics who have been divorced and remarried. In late March, Edward Pentin reported:

Read the entire editorial at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Not a Christmas Carol

Not a Christmas Carol | K.V. Turley | CWR

The constant bustling of London often hides a dark loneliness at its core

London is a strange place, and the longer one lives in its shadows the stranger it seems to become.

Commuting home, we hardly notice those sitting or standing around us, our hands so full of newspapers and books, our heads crammed with the day’s ups and downs—some of import, most not. The last thing on anyone’s mind is the person sat opposite.

Until, that is, something extraordinary throws it all into relief.

And in this city, a few years back, that something crawled to the surface and, for a while at least, stood in full view for all to behold: proving too much for some, too little for others, and altogether too late for the unfortunate woman concerned.

This city: so full of people and things, and, yet, seemingly with such an emptiness at its core. A recent film documented this like no other I have seen. Paradoxically, it has a Festive setting; but this is definitely not A Christmas Carol, or for that matter It’s a Wonderful Life—quite the reverse in fact. There is no redemption here, and, perhaps, therein lies the reason why it still haunts me so.

Documentaries rarely make any money when shown in cinemas. One released at Christmas, dealing as it did with a lonely death, was always going to be a hard sell. And so, not surprisingly, Dreams of a Life made a pittance at the box office when released in 2011, but it did gain some impressive reviews.

The subject? A young woman who died alone in a drab apartment, remaining there for three years until the property was repossessed; by which time, her skeletal remains were waiting for the bailiffs. During those years, she had been sat in front of a television set that was still on, surrounded by recently wrapped Christmas presents. It couldn't get any more pathetic, or maybe more insightful, into an aspect of London life many would prefer not to know about.  In this Christmas tale, there is to be no comforting ending: no ecstatic Scrooge, no overjoyed George Bailey reunited with his family. Instead, it is one that ends in tragedy, with an accusing finger pointing at all of us.

And yet, there is something “Dickensian” about the scene nevertheless.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Salon.com author: "So what if abortion ends life?"

Because, hey, it's all about the mother. Everything. Always. Oh, and one's feelings. So insists Mary Elizabeth Williams:

Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.

When we on the pro-choice side get cagey around the life question, it makes us illogically contradictory. I have friends who have referred to their abortions in terms of “scraping out a bunch of cells” and then a few years later were exultant over the pregnancies that they unhesitatingly described in terms of “the baby” and “this kid.” I know women who have been relieved at their abortions and grieved over their miscarriages. Why can’t we agree that how they felt about their pregnancies was vastly different, but that it’s pretty silly to pretend that what was growing inside of them wasn’t the same? Fetuses aren’t selective like that. They don’t qualify as human life only if they’re intended to be born.

When we try to act like a pregnancy doesn’t involve human life, we wind up drawing stupid semantic lines in the sand: first trimester abortion vs. second trimester vs. late term, dancing around the issue trying to decide if there’s a single magic moment when a fetus becomes a person. Are you human only when you’re born? Only when you’re viable outside of the womb? Are you less of a human life when you look like a tadpole than when you can suck on your thumb?

We’re so intimidated by the wingnuts, we get spooked out of having these conversations. We let the archconservatives browbeat us with the concept of “life,” using their scare tactics on women and pushing for indefensible violations like forced ultrasounds.

She later writes:

My belief that life begins at conception is mine to cling to. And if you believe that it begins at birth, or somewhere around the second trimester, or when the kid finally goes to college, that’s a conversation we can have, one that I hope would be respectful and empathetic and fearless.

But, hey, pro-lifers are the "wingnuts" and irrational zealots! Good grief. Rod Dreher writes, on the American Conservative site:

By conceding that the unborn child is a human life, it seems to me that Mary Elizabeth Williams endorses infanticide. At least she’s not hypocritical about it. But it sure is ghoulish. If the fetus is fully human, why does the mother have the right to end the life of a human being, for any reason at all (which is Williams’s position). If the law recognized Williams’s view that the fetus is fully human, then it would call abortion a form of murder, almost by definition.

Can you think of another situation in which fully human beings lived under conditions in which their master had the right to kill them with impunity, because there were nothing more than property? Of course you can. Nice historical company Mary Elizabeth Williams keeps.

Sure, Rod, resort to logic and historical precedent. Don't you know these sort of complicated questions should be settled with angry rhetoric and namecalling?

Related articles

Card. O'Malley calls for prayer, penance on 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade

Peter Kreeft on what to do about abortion

Salon.com's 'So What' Moment About Abortion

Media Alert: "UnPlanned" Author Abby Johnson "Exposes the Lie"

Abortion and the Will to Power: 'So what if abortion ends a life?' asks Salon writer

"Abortion Ends Life? So What?" Here be Monsters. - UPDATED

Lord of the Dance

Lord of the Dance | John B. Buescher | Catholic World Report

Grounded in Gnosticism, dubious historical scholarship, and hyper-individualism, liturgical dance is by its nature unsuited to Catholic worship.

“Medicine-man, relent, restore—

Lie to us,—dance us back the tribal morn!”

—     Hart Crane, “The Bridge: The Dance”

Please take “Lord of the Dance” out of your hymnbooks, assuming you don’t attend a Gnostic church.

Sydney Carter wrote it in 1963, based on the apocryphal, second-century Gnostic Acts of John, where Jesus is supposed to have led his disciples in a round dance before his death. As the Lord of the Dance, he was simply an avatar of a cosmic principle.

In line with Gnostic thought, Jesus was not both true God and true man, but only a kind of pure spirit, who disguised himself in a cloak of matter. Because he wasn’t really a man, he couldn’t really be killed. So, for Gnostics, some kind of trick occurred at the crucifixion: some taught that a switch was made, so that a surrogate or disguised stand-in (some said Joseph of Arimathea) was crucified instead, while Jesus watched from far off.

Other Gnostics made Jesus’ body a kind of puppet that appeared to undergo torture and death, while in fact the “real” Jesus, residing in pure spirit, laughed at their foolishness, and eventually sprang away from the cross. (“I am the dance, and the dance lives on.”) This Jesus, a sort of cosmic trickster and shape-shifter, is captured in the Acts of John.

The round dance and its little song were supposed to be part of an initiation ceremony after the Last Supper, in which Jesus, standing in the middle of a circle, sang in order to achieve an ecstatic separation from his body in preparation for his Passion (thereby “supplementing” Matthew 26:30: “And when they had sung a hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives”). This is the Gnostics’ secret teaching on the Last Supper, assumed by them to have been kept out of the Gospel accounts because it was the true heart of the events described, and could not be told to the unworthy.

Dancing in the sanctuary?

In Exodus 15, “Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took the timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dancing.”  In 2 Samuel 6:1-5, David “and all the house of Israel,” as the Ark of the Covenant was being rolled into Jerusalem, celebrated “with all their might before the Lord, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals.” And in Psalms 149 and 150, we read that “they shall dance in praise of his name, play to him on tambourines and harp!” and, “Praise God in his holy place…Praise him with tambourines and dancing.” This might in theory be an inspiration for dance as part of worship in His holy place, which is to say (in line with Exodus 32:19, in which the Jews dance before the idol of the golden calf), in the place where worship is directed to the true God. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that dancing was ever a part of Temple worship.

There was dancing at annual Jewish religious festivals (outside the Temple itself), and done in groups separated by gender. Certainly people danced after weddings, just as we do today (Matthew 11:16-17 says, “But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market places and calling to their playmates, ‘We piped to you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn’”). Then there was the banquet celebration for the Prodigal Son’s return. And, of course, there was what Salome did for Herod, but that would hardly qualify as something to inform Christian worship. Apart from the spurious round dance in the Acts of John—that’s it, for dancing.

In medieval times and later, there was folk dancing at festival celebrations outside churches, drama reenactments of miraculous scenes in the lives of the saints or of Bible stories, and mystery plays. And there were pilgrimage processions, such as the Corpus Christi procession or the touring of neighborhoods by decorated statues or relics brought from churches, sometimes done with participants coordinating their steps or other movements, with everyone having a joyful time.

This is all quite robustly Catholic. But none of this dancing actually intrudes into the sacred liturgy of the Mass itself, just as dancing was not part of Temple worship in ancient Israel. Until recently, Catholics had always saved their dancing for outside the church—or at least not during the liturgy itself.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Dozens injured, thousands confused by riots over "Gospel of Jesus' Wife"

By Nick Bottom of Audacious Scoffing Services:

DEVIL'S ELBOW, Missouri (ASS)— Theocratic, mean-spirited violence has erupted throughout the deep South, the "Bible Belt", the Midwest, and a smattering of towns in the Rocky Mountains as thousands of Christians have taken to the streets, wielding swords, Bibles, and plowshares, to protest the recent revelation that Jesus had at least one wife. Other protests, less violent but also widespread, took place over reports that some scholars and pulp novelists believe Jesus merely dated, but never married.

In Devil's Elbow, Missouri, a group of about two hundred men, women, and children, all blood relatives of one sort or another, dressed in their Sunday best and carrying large Bibles, stormed through the downtown, chanting, "Those who mock the Lord, will surely taste the sword; Liars say he had a wife, liars deserve to taste the knife." At least eighteen were injured from blows and bursts of righteous indignation, and two men were slain in the Spirit, although they were apparently not harmed physically.

Eyewitnesses report that the riotous Christians were singing a popular, militantly theistic song with the lyrics, "It only takes a spark, to get a fire going/and soon all those around, are warmed up by its glowing..." One bystander, Joe "Buck" Bob, said the singing was "unusually good; they have really purty voices."

Similar riots have broken out in numerous small towns. But they are also taking place in cities and other important places. Demonstrations near Harvard University, where professor Karen L. King teaches, were especially intense, in part because Christians had not been on the Harvard campus for nearly five decades, and faculty and staff were deeply confused by their clean-cut appearance and efficient methods of quoting Scripture while seeking to force victims to "do some serious soul searching". Numerous faculty members and students were shocked and traumatized by what one history professor called "the sort of theocratic-inspired violence that hasn't been witnessed since Galileo was torn to shreds by Roman Catholic popes and their mistresses in the Vatican gardens in the thirteenth century."

King, the Harvard Divinity School professor who had brought the stunning text, "The Gospel of Jesus' Wife" to public attention last week, denounced the actions as those of "crazy, right-wing, woman-hating, religious zealots who want to impose their fundamentalist, sharia law upon people of good will and Ivy League professors." Speaking from a tightly guarded ivory tower, she told some six dozen reporters that the potentially bloody demonstrations were not surprising considering the violence that had followed the publication of The Da Vinci Code, which had first brought the issue of Jesus' marital status to the attention of people who were not aware of who Jesus was or why an ordinary Jewish lad would eschew marriage in the first place.

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

"Head East, careless reporter!"

The Vancouver Sun has a most curious piece about the recent visit of Patriarch Sviatoslav Shevchuk of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church to British Columbia. For whatever reason, the reporter failed rather badly at getting the facts straight about some essential subjects:

Patriarch Shevchuk, 42, is back to Vancouver as the youngest “Catholic” bishop in the world, says his Canadian colleague, Ken Nowakowski, the Ukrainian-Catholic bishop for B.C. and Yukon.

Even though the Ukrainian Catholic Church follows Eastern Orthodox rituals and has an arms-length relationship with the Vatican, Shevchuk’s election as Ukrainian patriarch, or main archbishop, was confirmed last year by Pope Benedict XVI.

Wha....? Why the scare quotes around "Catholic"? The Patriarch is just as Catholic as the Pope. Why is that difficult to grasp? And the bit about the Ukrainian Catholic Church following "Eastern Orthodox rituals" is strange; this bit, from further on in the piece, is even worse:

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

Whence Come These Puppets of Doom?

Call to Action closing liturgy, 2008.

Whence Come These Puppets of Doom? | John B. Buescher | Catholic World Report

“Liturgical puppets” have shown up in churches for years, but aren't limited to Catholic venues—they have long been used as agents of iconoclasm and revolutionary agitprop.

“We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.”

— Hilaire Belloc, This That and the Other (1912)

I, for one, hesitate to welcome our new puppet overlords.

They visited the 2008 West Coast Call to Action Conference closing liturgy, the video of which the proprietors of the Orate Fratres blog have linked under the title “Mr. Potato Head Concelebrates the Holy Mass?”

Other recent sightings (among many) are documented on the web, showing one puppet floating through a nave at a Minneapolis church’s Palm Sunday Mass, and several puppets pausing for a few moments from Speaking Truth to the Man to pose with their human wards, stimulating the owner of the Bad Vestments blog to ask, “What is up with leftists and giant papier-mâché puppets of doom?”

Sightings of the large, sad variety of “liturgical puppets” go back some years, and are by no means limited to Catholic venues. Episcopalians, unsurprisingly, have paraded them down the aisle of St. John the Divine Cathedral. And St. Michael’s Episcopal Parish in Litchfield, Connecticut supports the Colossal Puppet Theater Company. In recent years, puppets have appeared in many denominations’ services.

All of which has elicited enraged incomprehension in some quarters—what is the point of these visitations into the sanctuary?

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

The "crazy" rhetoric of Michael Sean Winters

Being called "crazy" by Michael Sean Winters is like being called a "heretic" by his employer, the National Catholic Reporter—if that particular publication ever admitted the existence of heresy. Such accusations lack gravitas and authenticity; they also come across as a bit, well, crazy:

Those who are prone to conspiratorial explanations of phenomenon tend to be, well, a little bit crazy. And, their craziness is not only intellectual, it is moral.

How else to explain this bizarre article at the Catholic World Report anout the "Nuns on the Bus" tour being linked with financier George Soros. Soros, you see, gave money to the Center for American Progress. The Center for American Progress played a role, not clear what role from this diatribe, in the foundation of the group Faith in Public Life. The group Faith in Public Life apparently was one of the groups that the nuns at NETWORK met with when the idea of having a bus tour was hatched. Q.E.D. Sr. Simone might as well have been caught sitting in Soros' lap! And all for the sake of publicity! The horror. Except that, in a democracy, publicity is not a bad thing, is it? What is so different about the bus tour from the pamphlet "Common Sense"? And, in American democracy today, the idea of trying to garner publicity for the plight of the poor by means of a bus rental is almost quaint, at least when compared to the gobs of money making its way onto the airwaves via the SuperPACs.

And, so what if Sr. Simone had cashed a check direct from Soros? Where did this demonization of Soros begin? I may not agree with all of his politics, but the man has used a considerable amount of his considerable fortune to promote civil society and democratic norms and independent journalism in the countries ravaged by Communism. Is that such a bad thing? I deplore some of his positions, especially his support for euthanasia, but that cannot undo all the good he has done. Ignoring the good, and only emphasizing the bad is, tarring everyone with an association with an indictment, this sort of conpiratorial think is, as I say, crazy.

Folks can read my post and judge its level of intellectual and moral craziness for themselves. For my part, I'm unclear what Winters means by "moral craziness"; is he actually accusing me of a specific depravity, evil, and sin? Or inclination to the same? (I know he believes in sin: it is any action or thought issuing forth from what he calls "Catholic neo-cons".) Perhaps I missed the memo about going easy (as the mainstream media does) on an atheist billionaire who has been convicted of insider trading in France, and who supports a number of dissenting, progressive Catholic groups, some of which are openly pro-abortion, such as Catholics For Choice. And how, for goodness sake, does my post qualify as "conspiratorial"? Especially since Soros's political and social stances are fairly well-known and his support of causes and groups in opposition to Church teaching and authority are equally evident?

Well, I would spend more time analyzing it, but over the years I've learned that analyzing the "logic" of Winters' posts and articles is like looking for a melody and a sax solo in a Sex Pistols "song". Besides, it is obvious Winters knows that his core readership of catechesis-challenged Catholics will dutifully come running when he throws out the "crazy" label. Having penned the post, "Conspiratorial Craziness" (see above) about myself and CWR on July 11th, he quickly followed up with a post titled "More Conspiratorial Craziness" on the same day:

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

Lady Gaga Gets the Indonesian Boot

Lady Gaga Gets the Indonesian Boot | Matthew Cullinan Hoffman | Catholic World Report

Asians are sending a message to America. Are we listening?

News of the cancellation of the Lady Gaga concert scheduled for early June in Jakarta, Indonesia is receiving a lullingly uniform spin in the American and international media. It is, we are told, a morality play about the triumph of radical Islamism over artistic freedom, and a disturbing omen of Indonesia’s supposed slide into religious fanaticism.

In reality, however, the negative response to Gaga’s hypersexualized and iconoclastic performances was not isolated to extremists, nor to the country of Indonesia. Gaga’s religion-insulting concert tour and other, similar forms of entertainment are increasingly ill-received throughout the region of Southeast Asia and beyond, and reflect a growing indignation at what is perceived as an American cultural imperialism that treats the moral values of other countries with contempt.

Blame for the Jakarta fiasco is being assigned to an organization known as the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), a hard-line Muslim group known for its clashes with Christians and its strict interpretation of the Koran. According to the International Crisis Group, a peacemaking organization whose verdict on the affair is being quoted by the Associated Press, it is “clear that there wouldn’t have been a thought of canceling the concert” if the FPI and other extremist groups hadn’t “mobilized” to stop it. 

The FPI and kindred groups, however, were not at all alone in their opposition to the Jakarta concert.  In fact, it was vigorously opposed by a dozen other Islamic organizations, including the Indonesian Ulema Council, the highest Muslim authority in a country known for its moderate religious temperament.

Moreover, opposition to Gaga’s performance didn’t stop at the border of Indonesia. In fact the tour, dubbed the “Born this Way Ball” in reference to Gaga’s scientifically-unsubstantiated claim that homosexuals are born with their “gay” orientation, has provoked protests in multiple countries in the region, mostly by Christian groups.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Maureen Dowd marks the day with a sputtering Feast of Condescension

This week the Catholic Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord. Maureen Dowd, meanwhile, is castigating the Church via her own little Feast of Condescension, filled with her usual sour soundbites and tasteless morsels.

As usual, she opens with a dubious assertion, upon which she then clumsily builds her house of snark and sand:

I ALWAYS liked that the name of my religion was also an adjective meaning all-embracing.

By "my religion" she must mean faux Catholicism or catty secularism as the name "Catholicism" does not mean "all-embracing". The Greek word katholikos means "throughout the whole", or universal, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church notes, saying, "The word 'catholic' means 'universal,' in the sense of 'according to the totality' or 'in keeping with the whole.'" (par 830). This refers to two essential qualities: the Church is in union with her head, Jesus Christ , and the Church has been sent by Christ to proclaim the Gospel and draw men into her unity. This unity is not based on vague emotional appeals but in Christ, first, and in the authority, doctrine, worship, and tradition given by him to the Church and safeguarded by the Holy Spirit. 

I was a Catholic and I wanted to be catholic, someone engaged in a wide variety of things. As James Joyce wrote in “Finnegans Wake:” “Catholic means ‘Here comes everybody.’ ”

So it makes me sad to see the Catholic Church grow so uncatholic, intent on loyalty testing, mind control and heresy hunting. Rather than all-embracing, the church hierarchy has become all-constricting.

(I didn't know that Joyce was a Catholic bishop and theologian; I thought he was a novelist. Go figure.) Dowd apparently thinks catholicity is some sort of code word for a vague sense of warm, fuzzy tolerance unconcerned completely with specific beliefs, doctrines, and dogmas. She is also apparently unaware of the New Testament and the history of the early Church, which are filled with many examples of loyalty being tested (remember the fellow named Simon Peter? No?) and heresies being exposed and addressed (think, for example, of the seven churches in The Apocalpyse, as well as Docetism, Gnosticism, Arianism, etc.). What Dowd sees as constricting is most likely a matter of definition, clarification, and explanation. And, indeed, that is the case:

It was tough to top the bizarre inquisition of self-sacrificing American nuns pushed by the disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law. Law, the former head of the Boston archdiocese, fled to a plush refuge in Rome in 2002 after it came out that he protected priests who molested thousands of children.

The AP reports on converting from Catholicism to ...

... "Southern Baptism". Which is rather funny. Especially at 3:00 am.

Other conversions that might be interesting to witness, even if from a safe and wary distance:

• From Methodism to Scientologistism
• From Buddhism to Agnosticalism
• From Mormonism to Hinduitism
• From Presbyterianism to Palestinianism
• From Lutheranism to Easternism Orthoproxy
• From Atheism to Satanalyticalism
• From Free Jazz to Neo-Prog Rocketism

I could do this all night. But, instead, I'm converting to Fallasleepism....zzzzz...

Garry Wills has conned himself and now seeks to con others

It's hard to believe that the Garry Wills formerly known as an intelligent and elegant writer has sunk to a point so low and embarrassing that his "arguments" are on par, if just barely, with elementary school playground spats: insults, name calling, and falsehoods. His little screed, "Contraception's Con Men" (The New York Review of Books blog, Feb. 15, 2012), is revolting in its sneering vitriol and revealing in its rejection of basic facts.

It stands as yet one more piece of evidence that if a man dedicates his life to defending and promoting a sin, he will end up a sad and bitter shell of his former self. "Sinners are people who hate everything, because their world is necessarily full of betrayal, full of illusion, full of deception", wrote Thomas Merton. The hatred in Wills' piece is directed at "a revolting combination of con men and fanatics"—that is, all Republicans; all Catholic bishops (who are "stupid"); Popes (Paul VI is referred to as "crazy"); any Catholic who follows Church teaching and obeys Church authority; and the "nice smiley fanatic" Rick Santorum, who is equated with Torquemada. For a man who is so enamored with "love", he doesn't show much love.

As for illusion, Wills cannot conceive (pun intended) that the HHS mandate is a direct assault on religious liberty and simple civil respect for conscience. (Even Douglas Kmiec has recognized the mandate was an "insult" and a "failing", though he fails to admit that his perception of Obama was largely incorrect.) Wills harbors the further illusion that President Obama's "accommodation" was somehow an honorable admittance of lines crossed and rights crushed rather than the cynical shell game it really is.

But the real problem is one of deception, for having deceived himself about the nature of the Church, Church authority, and Church teaching, Wills now works to deceive his readers about the same. I suspect that in doing so he is not even being knowingly duplicitous, because there comes a point in a lifelong mad pursuit of the glittering "My precious" that reason, judgment, and reflection are burned away, leaving only naked pride and sterile rage.

Examples abound in Wills' diatribe; I will highlight just a few:

This Quote of the Day has not been approved by...

... the FDA as it is raw and unpasteurized:

"I can't believe in 2012 the federal government is raiding Amish farmers at gunpoint all over a basic human right to eat natural food," said one of them, who asked not to be named but received weekly shipments of eggs, milk, honey and butter from Rainbow Acres, a farm near Lancaster, Pa. "In Maryland, they force taxpayers to pay for abortions, but God forbid we want the same milk our grandparents drank."

The solution seems obvious: claim that fresh farm products are contraceptives and are necessary for the fulfillment of "reproductive justice". Then the government will not only make sure everybody has access to them, they will be covered by your insurance, promoted by Planned Parenthood, and handed out for free at high schools across the land.

And the leading contender for Clueless, Oafish Op-Ed of 2012...

.... is "For Priests’ Wives, a Word of Caution", by Sara Ritchey, assistant professor of medieval European history at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, which appeared in yesterday's edition of the award-winning journal of religious thought and Church history, The New York Times. It's difficult to do justice to Ritchey's historical hit piece in a single sentence, but it is easy to bluntly identify what she gets right: almost nothing. Dan Brown would be proud if he weren't so jealous.

Okay, enough praise; let's look at a few of the low lights. The piece opens: "What will life be like for the wives of Roman Catholic priests?"

By "Roman Catholic" I take she refers to "Catholic", as is the common practice. The problem is at least two-fold:

1) she is more accurately referring to Catholic priests of the Latin Church, one of several rites within the Catholic Church;

2) the majority of those rites have married clergy—and have had them for centuries. The Catechism identifies the Latin (which includes the Roman and Ambrosian rites), as well as Byzantine, Alexandrian or Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Maronite and Chaldean (par 1203). The Byzantine, the largest of the Eastern rites, contains the Ukrainian, Ruthenian, and other rites.

The Catechism explains:

All the ordained ministers of the Latin Church, with the exception of permanent deacons, are normally chosen from among men of faith who live a celibate life and who intend to remain celibate "for the sake of the kingdom of heaven." Called to consecrate themselves with undivided heart to the Lord and to "the affairs of the Lord," they give themselves entirely to God and to men. Celibacy is a sign of this new life to the service of which the Church's minister is consecrated; accepted with a joyous heart celibacy radiantly proclaims the Reign of God.

In the Eastern Churches a different discipline has been in force for many centuries: while bishops are chosen solely from among celibates, married men can be ordained as deacons and priests. This practice has long been considered legitimate; these priests exercise a fruitful ministry within their communities.  Moreover, priestly celibacy is held in great honor in the Eastern Churches and many priests have freely chosen it for the sake of the Kingdom of God. In the East as in the West a man who has already received the sacrament of Holy Orders can no longer marry. (pars 1579-80)

The significance of all this is obvious: if the Catholic Church has had married clergy for, well, two thousand years, Ritchey's question surely should be put to the wives of some of those married priests. It also reveals how misleading is this statement by Ritchey: "The Vatican has stressed that the allowance for married priests is merely an exception (like similar dispensations made in the past by the Vatican) and by no means a permanent condition of the priesthood." This might be acceptable and understandable if she used more precise and accurate language within the larger context—theologically and historically—but, alas, the point of the op-ed is not to illuminate or educate, but to disparage the Church for not treating priest's wives with sufficient respect.

Now as then, the church’s critics and defenders are rehashing arguments about the implications of having married priests in an institution that is otherwise wary of them. But in the midst of these debates, we should pause to ponder the environment that the priests’ wives might expect to encounter. After all, the status of the priest’s wife is perhaps even more strange and unsettling than that of her ordained Catholic husband.

That is a mighty big and broad claim, isn't it? How, exactly, is the status of a priest's wife strange? And unsettling? How so? To whom? Surely not to Eastern Catholics (and Eastern Orthodox); and probably not even to the Catholics who attend St. Mary Catholic Church here in Eugene, Oregon, whose associate pastor is married, as he is a former Episcopalian who was ordained a Catholic priest a few years ago this past year. Does Ritchey interview any of these wives? No, she goes right to the heart of the matter: the First Lateran Council, held in 1123 (warning: don't read this while eating or drinking):

While the early Christian church praised priestly chastity, it did not promulgate decisive legislation mandating priestly celibacy until the reform movement of the 11th century. At that point, the foremost purpose of priestly celibacy was to clearly distinguish and separate the priests from the laity, to elevate the status of the clergy. In this scheme, the mere presence of the priest’s wife confounded that goal, and thus she incurred the suspicion, and quite often the loathing, of parishioners and church reformers. You can’t help wondering what feelings she will inspire today.

By the time of the First Lateran Council, the priest’s wife had become a symbol of wantonness and defilement. The reason was that during this period the nature of the host consecrated at Mass received greater theological scrutiny. Medieval theologians were in the process of determining that bread and wine, at the moment of consecration in the hands of an ordained priest at the altar, truly became the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The priest who handled the body and blood of Christ should therefore be uncontaminated lest he defile the sacred corpus.

The priest’s wife was an obvious danger. Her wanton desire, suggested the 11th-century monk Peter Damian, threatened the efficacy of consecration. He chastised priests’ wives as “furious vipers who out of ardor of impatient lust decapitate Christ, the head of clerics,” with their lovers. According to the historian Dyan Elliott, priests’ wives were perceived as raping the altar, a perpetration not only of the priest but also of the whole Christian community.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. As Paul Moses writes on the Commonweal blog: "I wouldn’t have expected an argument like this from an academic historian; it takes the ascetic Peter Damian’s advocacy of clerical celibacy in the 11th century totally out of its historical context, and inserts it without qualification into a vastly different time." And the context, as always, is pretty darned important.

"Failure makes people bitter and cruel."

So said the novelist W. Someset Maugham (1874-1965). And when it comes to being bitter, it's hard to top left-wing, dissenting, arrogant "Vatican commentators", as evidenced by this piece in The Irish Times:

“JOSEPH RATZINGER should never have become pope. It could not happen. According to the unwritten rules of papal conclaves such a ‘divisive’ figure would never be able to command the two-thirds vote necessary to be elected.”

Those are the opening words of a new book, Ratzinger, A Pontificate In Crisis , by Marco Politi, the veteran Vatican commentator who in an interview as early as November 2004 had indicated the then Cardinal Ratzinger as a “secret candidate” to become the next pope. In his book, (not yet available in English) Politi outlines the background to his interview with Ratzinger.

He points out that he had originally issued a formal request for the interview in 2001. However, it was only in November 2004, at a time when John Paul II’s chronic ill-health was all too obvious, that the then senior Vatican spokesman, Opus Dei member, Joaquín Navarro-Valls confirmed the interview.

Politi suggests that during the summer of 2004, an inner Holy See cabal of ultra-conservative, Hispanic Curia cardinals had decided that “God’s Rottweiller” Ratzinger was the cardinal who could best defend their hardline conservative views. The cardinals in question included the Colombians, Darío Castrillón Hoyos and Alfonso López Trujillo, the Spaniard Julián Herranz and the Chilean Jorge Medina Estévez. The idea of the interview with Politi, then the Vatican correspondent for influential left-wing daily La Repubblica was to “promote” their man.

The rest, of course, is history. The best-laid plans came to fruition with the April 2005 election of Pope Benedict XVI, a Curia figure who for most of the previous 20 years had not even figured on the list of papabili (future popes) drawn up by Vatican commentators.

Failure not only leads to bitterness, but to the sort of gnawing anger that breeds conspiracy theories, victimhood, and bigotry. The failure seen here, however, is not a failure to win power or to leverage for political influence, but the failure to have faith. Show me a Catholic who talks endlessly and obsessively of power struggles, personality clashes, "plans", "programs", and politics, and I'll show you a Catholic who has either lost his faith or is on course to do so. Once your gaze fails to ever look heavenward, you are bound to curse nearly everything on earth, either through impotent words of rage or violent acts of domination. The Epistle to the Hebrews states:

Strive for peace with all men, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fail to obtain the grace of God; that no "root of bitterness" spring up and cause trouble, and by it the many become defiled; that no one be immoral or irreligious like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal. (Heb 12:14-16)

What is that "holiness" but the purity of heart and clarity of vision gifted by grace and grown by faith? Why is being "immoral" linked to being "irreligious"? Because the rejection of Creed (to borrow from Abp. Fulton Sheen) is almost always rooted in a defiant rending of the Commandments. This is not to dismiss such omniscient Vatican commentators as sad sinners unworthy of attention; after all, we are all sad sinners if we are without grace, repentance, and confession. Rather, it is marvel at the arrogance of those who denounce the Pope and his work as devious and "dysfunctional" failures while they lash out in confused frustration over their failure to circumvent the work of the Holy Spirit.

But, again, there's the rub: if you really do believe in the Holy Spirit, the power of Jesus Christ, and the supernatural character of the Church, your criticisms will exhibit far less desperation and a bit more charity. But if the Church is just a matter of politics clothed in bells and smells, then don't waste any time going after that dark and sinister "inner Holy See cabal of ultra-conservative, Hispanic Curia cardinals"! After all, when all else fails—especially faith—bitterness and cruelty are some of the only options left on a desolate table.