Catholicism Archives
July 03, 2007
What will Catholics say?
A friend sent me an article from the New York Times about a suicide and asked, "What do Catholics think St. Peter will say?"
This is my response.
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P-----,
Not sure what St. Peter will say, but Roman Catholics will say "God have mercy on his soul."
When you wonder what the Catholic Church says, you can always search the Catechism. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is a reliable source for the Church's teachings, as opposed to, for example, the New York Times, or Planned Parenthood, or "Catholics" for Free Choice, or broadcast television, etc.
http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc.htm
http://www.kofc.org/publications/cis/catechism/index.cfm
There seems to be an impression among many people that Catholics believe they are saints, when the exact opposite is true: Catholics know they are sinners, in need of God's mercy, forgiveness, and love.
P-----, hostility towards and intolerance of Catholicism and Catholics is around 2000 years old, and that hostility will be around until Judgment Day.
Most Roman Catholics are under no mis-impression that they are loved in or by the world. As JRR Tolkien said, "I am a Roman Catholic. I do not expect history to be anything but a long defeat."
A few more thoughts about the Catholic Church and Catholics:
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"If you're not Catholic, and especially if you're an atheist or agnostic, then it makes sense to regard the church as just another worldly institution. After all, you don't believe in papal infallibility or the guiding hand of the Holy Spirit. But if you do believe in these ideas, what could it mean that you oppose the new pope and his adherence to tradition, other than that you're disappointed in or angry at God for not changing his mind?"
-- "Controversy in Reuterville," Best of the Web Today, James Taranto, April 20, 2005
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The following is by my friend, Chuck Williams. It appeared as a guest commentary in the St. Paul Legal Ledger, October 19, 1999.
"Catholic Guy: Who's the establishment here?"
I'm writing this after a long couple weeks for a Catholic guy. First I heard from the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and then I heard from Gov. Jesse Ventura.Maybe it's just fatigue, but in the end, I can't get too worked up about Jesse. I'm a Catholic guy, and my governor thinks I'm a dolt: so what? Every politician thinks I'm a dolt. I'd rather have a governor who bellows that religion is for fools than a slippery president who parades around with a Bible. Besides, I'm used to the fact that if you ask Jesse a question, you're likely to get an answer, however wrongheaded.
That's in stark contrast to the board at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, which hasn't come anywhere close to answering any of the questions that interest me about their funding fight with Mayor Giuliani.
I've always understood that art must be challenging and that the First Amendment protects it, so the more the board pontificates about that, the more I just sagely nod my head. But meanwhile, what I really want to know are other things. Things like, whatis it about pee and dung that gets the New York art crowd in such a happy tizzy? And why do they only pee and dung on things Catholic?
The first question probably has a cool avant-garde answer. I just don't know what it is.
Maybe that's because I'm a parent. I can't understand how any parent could see anything sensational in pee and dung. Your youngest kids are always dropping toys and other weird stuff in the toilet just to see what it looks like. And there's a friend who tells the story of walking into her kid's bedroom and finding he'd painted the wall with his own excrement. When she walked in on him, he was just beaming, pleased as punch. On the other hand, he was eight months old, or something like that. So even though I'm familiar with the concept of putting things in pee and getting artistic with dung, I still don't know what the deal is when it's a bunch of grownups who are getting off on it.
But even if I was smart enough to grasp the avant-gardishness of all this pee and dung, that still wouldn't answer my second question. I'd still be wondering how come it's always got to be Catholic stuff that's put in the pee and under the dung. My friend's kid used excrement as his medium and a wall as his canvas, and I can respect that. It makes some kind of sense in a pre-toddler kind of way. But if that's the fun spirit, you'd think the artistic community could at least do an occasional Jewish sculpture in dung, or place some non-Catholic stuff, like a Koran or something like that, in one of their big old bottles of pee. But no. It's always got to be Catholic stuff.
So I have to wonder. The artist and the board surely know that, since it's always Catholic stuff that's getting peed and dunged on, after a while some Catholics are likely to get the idea that all this Pissing on Christ and Dunging on the Holy Virgin is intended to insult their religion.
Look, I agree that everyone has a First Amendment right to Piss on Christ and Dung on the Holy Virgin to their hearts' content.
All I'm saying is that it does raise the question of why. Well, it does to some of us Catholics, anyway. And it's not a particularly shallow question, I don't think. I mean, if you know that what you're doing will insult somebody and you go ahead and do it anyway, it seems to me you'd expect that one or two of those somebodies might eventually demand an explanation.
But as far as I can tell, the museum's answer to that and every other reasonable question has been, "Shut up."
And then, even if the "why" is answered, even if the museum board or some brainy critic can explain how the artist has an avant-garde reason for insulting my religion (I'm not saying he doesn't), and even if he has a solid First Amendment right to insult my religion (and I'm saying he does), why must the board's supporters act shocked and appalled when I then say well, OK, but I still don't think you should use the government to force Catholics to pay the board to insult us. And it is brute force we're talking about here: if you don't pay your taxes, you go to jail.
The appropriate answer to would-be censors is to say, "if you don't like it, don't look at it." Or just don't read it, or just don't listen to it. The reason that retort doesn't work here is that the Catholic guy isn't complaining that anybody's forcing Catholics to look at Dung on the Virgin. He's complaining that Catholics are being forced to pay for it. He's saying, go ahead and Dung on the Virgin anywhere you like. Just do it on your own dime, or on your fellow Catholic-bashers' dime. Just don't do it on the taxpayers' dime.
But to the wine and cheese crowd on the museum board, them are fighting words. OK, I admit I don't understand that reaction. But I'd still just shrug my shoulders if the board didn't go on to add farce to insult by assuming the ridiculous pose of a courageous little community being set upon by the heavy hand of the establishment.
That's just too silly to go unremarked. Because it's as clear as a jar of pee that it's the Catholic guy who's being stomped and insulted here -- and by people who make more money in a day than he does in a week. The museum board members are wealthy, powerful, socially and politically connected, and like lots of this country, and certainly much of the media, not too fond of the Catholic Church. They're the establishment, if anyone is, not the Catholic Church, with whatever pitiful, tenuous hold it may still have on 1999 American culture.
I mean, like another friend of mine once said, if you want to be counterculture, be a Catholic.
So here's what I'm saying. Picture the wine and cheese crowd gathering at some Brooklyn Museum of Art benefit. Then quick cut to somebody, anybody, in 1999 New York, who still gets up early to go to church, kneel in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary and pray. Which depicts a smug and intolerant establishment?
Well, if you picked the devout Catholic on his knees before the Virgin, you're not alone. But I still don't get it.
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[I]f my faith depended on the sinlessness of priests I'd be in big trouble. I have known cruel and vicious priests as well as men of great kindnesses. John Geoghan was my parish priest when I was a kid, and I see the names of my schoolmates in the paper as his victims. I am not a Catholic because of how priests behave. I've known some very holy priests, I've known some very bad priests. Most are kind of a mixture of the two like the rest of us.So some very bad priests committed some very evil crimes against God's precious little ones. And in dealing with it, Cardinal Law, by his own admission, really bungled it. So I'm supposed to let that ruin my faith? Rubbish! My faith is built upon the rock of Christ, who declared Peter to be the rock and built His Church upon him. Peter, the first Pope. Peter who betrayed Jesus. Yes, that is my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against her. As we have seen the gates of hell will certainly try to prevail, but don't expect me to jump ship.
. . .
All priests sin. Surprise. Bishops, cardinals and popes too. (The pope goes to confession every week--do you think he needs to go more than you do?) Some priests commit crimes. They should be brought to justice. Some priests commit abominations and scandal. Jesus said, "Woe to him through whom scandal comes. It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone around his neck." So if you think you're angry, chew on that.
"I am Not Ashamed," by John Mallon, Peter's Voice
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The Catholic Church is not a church reserved exclusively for latter-day saints. Nor is it a church that expects its ministers to be without fault. A universal church must expect trouble from universal sins. Catholics are not an elect, immune from temptation, but strivers after God who inevitably stumble and need forgiveness. The contretemps with Novatian and the Donatists highlights, again, the reality principle within the Church, and the church's dismissal of those who would limit its benefactions to the holy few, rather than the unholy many. In Oscar Wilde's memorable phrase--and Wilde himself a deathbed convert--"The Catholic Church is for saints and sinners alone. For respectable people the Anglican Church will do."
"Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church," by H.W. Crocker III, hardbound (Prima Publishing 2001), pages 38-39
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Love and God Bless!
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January 15, 2007
Franciscan University High School Youth Conferences
Franciscan University High School Youth Conferences
June 29 - July 1, 2007, Session 3, Steubenville, OH
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December 26, 2006
"Christmas in Christendom"
When the technocratic secularists today, in the name of the “modern world,” strike at Christmas and attempt to prohibit its public celebration, they can take comfort in being in a tradition that goes back to the fining of poor men five shillings because they danced on Christmas Eve. Secularism and all the mythology about the “absolute separation of church and state” is simply a Puritanism debased, its original corruption compounded.
"Christmas in Christendom," by Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, December 1967
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December 17, 2006
"A miracle!"
How presumptuous it is to try to treat of such a subject in a short article, when great books (like Dietrich von Hildebrand's In Defense of Purity) have been written on the subject. I can only put down a few thoughts, a few incidents, perhaps a few things I have read which influenced my thinking profoundly.
A few years ago a young woman came to our farm-retreat house to spend a few days before Pentecost, on which great day she was going to be confirmed together with two or three other adults in the local parish. You could not say she was spending her time in silence and recollection, because she was an ardent and lively creature and shouted rather than talked and moved swiftly rather than with the thoughtful deliberation one might expect for such an occasion. She was as happy as a lark and after the great occasion when we all sat down to table to celebrate with a good Sunday dinner, she snatched the short breviary from her pocket and called out loudly, "Listen to this! Listen to St. John Chrysostom: '. . . the grace of the Holy Spirit . . . has been poured out abundantly and has transformed the whole world into heaven; not by changing of natures, but by correcting of wills. For it found a taxgatherer and transformed him into an evangelist; it found a persecutor and made him into an apostle; it found a robber and conducted him to Paradise; it found a prostitute and rendered her equal to virgins; it found the learned and showed them the gospels. . . .' A prostitute--equal to virgins! That's me. That's me today. A miracle!"
"Reflections During Advent, Part Three: 'Chastity'," by Dorothy Day, Ave Maria, December 10, 1966
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December 07, 2006
new blog - Ask Sister Mary Martha
St. Rose of Lima was aware that if her beauty caused boys to have...bad thoughts...she was causing them to sin, which by the way, is a sin on her. Somebody needs to explain this to Brittany Spears, post haste.
"I feel a headache coming on," Ask Sister Mary Martha, December 1, 2006
Posted at 06:27 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Catholicism , Fun , Humor
September 17, 2006
"Oriana and Rosie - two women of the left"
But I must mention [Rosie] O’ Donnell, because while she claims herself a woman of the left, she is the polar opposite of Fallaci, and I cannot let [Oriana] Fallaci go without focusing for a second on how far the left as devolved. Where resistance-member Fallaci was intelligently confrontational, trendy-cause committed O’ Donnell is merely shrill. Where Fallaci dared to look at the effects of Christianity and Islam on civilizations and see real differences and moral distinctions, O’Donnell casts a vapid, bigoted glance and calls them all cake, declaring: “Radical Christianity Is Just As Threatening As Radical Islam.”After all, she doesn’t have to think. The thinking has been done for her by her co-ideologues. All she has to do is fall in line and parrot.
I gag. I barely want to waste the energy to respond to it, because she’s really not worth it. So, I’ll simply leave it to Ms. O’Donnell to point out to the rest of us the buildings that have been flown into, the throats that have been slit, the genitals which have been mutiliated, the raped women who have been killed for their victimhood, the countless suicide bombers who have died screaming “Jesus is Lord” as they blew themselves up, the gays who have been hanged for being gay, the raging Catholics who rampaged through the streets burning Andres Serrano in effegy when he submerged a crucifix in urine and called it “art,” the Christian who have murdered filmmakers for making less-than-flattering films about their faith…
Come on, Rosie, make your case and justify that moral equivalence you so easily, lazily, thoughtlessly burp out to the assured applause of your Upper West Side audience. Don’t point to a few sick extremists who have killed abortionists, unless you are willing to admit that the Christians themselves have condemned such violence. Show us the justification for your statement that “Radical Christianity Is Just As Threatening As Radical Islam.”
"Oriana and Rosie - two women of the left," the anchoress, September 15, 2006
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December 03, 2005
Homosexuality and the Priesthood
Deep-Seated?: As for the vexed document on gays in the priesthood itself, like Amy Welborn, I'm troubled by some of its language - particularly the exclusion (or suggested exclusion, more accurately, since all of this will be actually decided on a seminary-by-seminary basis) of men with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies." If by "deep-seated" the authors mean "desires that the candidate is unwilling or unable to avoid acting on," then that kind of ban makes sense - just as you would probably exclude a proudly lecherous heterosexual from the priesthood. (This seems to be the interpretation favored by, among others, Fr. Joseph Fessio.) But if, as seems much more likely, "deep-seated" is meant to refer to anyone who lives with more-or-less permanent same-sex attraction - well, then as Amy notes, it seems like the Vatican is neglecting "the complex point that men with homosexual tendencies, same-sex attraction, whatever can be good priests, and have put spiritual orientation before sexual orientation, and have put on Christ, becoming new creatures in Him."There are two ways of looking at this, I think. One is to view the document as a somewhat clumsy and overly-sweeping response to two very real problems facing the Catholic Church, by which I mean 1) the sex-abuse scandals, which were largely a phenomenon of priests abusing teenage boys, not pedophiles preying on children, and which raised serious questions about the influence of homosexuality on the culture of the priesthood, and 2) the presence, within the Church and particularly within seminaries, of a large body of priests who simply reject Catholic teaching on human sexuality. The other way, Andrew and Will Saletan's take, is to assume that this document is another step in Ratzinger/Benedict's supposed decades-long campaign "for a purge of homosexuality," as Saletan puts it. To this, I would say two things. First, while there's little question that Benedict takes a more stringent line on homosexuality than some Catholic theologians, it's easy to overestimate the extent to which every document that emanates from the Vatican is a reflection of "the Pope's take" on a given issue. As John Allen points out, "the new instruction was not explicitly issued in forma specifica, meaning with the weight of a papal act, and hence it carries the authority of a Vatican office rather than the pope himself" - which among other things, makes it more likely than other documents to be revisited and revised at a later date. (That's exactly what the Vatican did, he notes, with the question of admitting alcoholics to the priesthood - issuing a blanket ban in the early 1990s, and then revising and softening it later.)
Second, if Benedict has a long-running obsession with homosexuality, he's got a pretty funny way of showing it. Fr. Jim Tucker, a priest-blogger, puts it best:
If a person were to sit down and read the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the journal in which all the official acts of the Vatican are recorded, he would probably find that about 1% of Roman pronouncements -- actually, probably less -- have to do with sex. If you were to read through all the statements and addresses and public discourses delivered by Pope Benedict since he took the throne in April, you could probably count the statements on sex on a single hand -- two hands at the most. The vast, vast majority has nothing to do with sex.
The problem, of course, is that . . . most people get what they know about Vatican pronouncements from the mainstream media, and the media (which are in the business of selling information -- nothing wrong with that) offer the kind of information that is most likely to grab people's attention and interest them enough to look at the TV for 15 seconds or read the first paragraph or two of a newspaper article. And, like it or not, sex, violence, and controversy are a whole lot more interesting to most people than the nature of Christian charity, building wells in sub-Saharan Africa, or the basis of the New Evangelization in the vows of baptism. So, the market wins out, and your daily bit of Vatican information is about sex -- preferably something controversial about sex.
The same thing goes for Papa Ratzinger's supposed fixation on homosexuality. After twenty years in the Holy Office, Cardinal Ratzinger signed off on, what, two (very short) documents that dealt with the subject? Whatever one happens to think about that handful of pages, one could hardly call it an obsession. And if you set aside those official documents and look solely at his published work as a theologian and writer -- all those heaps of books that none of his harshest critics seems to have opened -- there is next to no sex in them at all. There's a great deal about beauty, about worship as the inner longing of man, about the saving wounds of Christ, about the Cross as the Tree of Life, about faith as a light in life's darkness, about the unity that emanates from Christ's Body, about our brotherhood in Christ's Church, but off the top of my head I can't remember ever having read any passages about sex in general, or about homosexuality in particular. Many of us bloggers and comment box denizens have already written more about sex in the last two months than Ratzinger has in his entire career.
It would be better, perhaps, if Benedict had written more about sex, and particularly homosexuality. Too often, I fear, conservative Catholic intellectuals, including many writers I admire, have avoided coming to grips with the complexity of "deep-seated" homosexuality - as opposed to the more opportunistic variety - and the particular difficulties it creates for otherwise faithful Christians.
"Deep-Seated?" by Ross Douthat, The American Scene, November 30, 2005 (many links in original post)
Posted at 04:26 PM · Comments (0) · Categories: Catholicism
November 12, 2005
If you're not Catholic....
If you're not Catholic, and especially if you're an atheist or agnostic, then it makes sense to regard the church as just another worldly institution. After all, you don't believe in papal infallibility or the guiding hand of the Holy Spirit. But if you do believe in these ideas, what could it mean that you oppose the new pope and his adherence to tradition, other than that you're disappointed in or angry at God for not changing his mind?
"Controversy in Reuterville," Best of the Web Today, April 20, 2005
Posted at 08:10 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Catholicism , Good Advice
October 18, 2005
The lust for money is the root of all evil - Prom Culture
Kellenberg Memorial High School in Uniondale, NY, a Catholic school, cancelled the senior prom.
"I think the prom itself is out of control and it's really beyond reform," Hoagland told "Good Morning America." "These are great kids, we just don't want to put them in harm's way."In a letter explaining his decision to 489 parents, Hoagland wrote, "It is not primarily the sex/booze/drugs that surround this event, as problematic as they might be. It is rather the flaunting of affluence, assuming exaggerated expenses, a pursuit of vanity for vanity's sake — in a word, financial decadence."
"Prom Canceled Due to 'Financial Decadence'," ABC News, October 18, 2005
Here's the letter from the President, Fr. Eichner, and Principal, Bro. Hoagland, of Kellenberg Memorial High School (pdf)
We sent the following email to Father Eichner and Brother Hoagland:
Fr. Eichner and Bro. Hoagland, Your September "Prom" letter is a humbling teaching that many in our country, including me, need to hear.It is depressing what some "Catholic" parents not only allow, but encourage.
I intend to share this with the Head of School at my daughter's school, and will be sharing copies with other parents.
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October 09, 2005
ACLU and Catholic Guy
We saw this image on Don Surber's blog ....
and it reminds us of Chuck Williams' article, "Catholic guy: Who's the establishment here?" ...
Posted at 02:15 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Catholicism , Politics
September 19, 2005
Catholic guy: Who's the establishment here?
This commentary is by a friend and is reproduced here with his permission.
"Catholic guy: Who's the establishment here?," by Chuck Williams, guest commentary in the St. Paul Legal Ledger, October 19, 1999.
I'm writing this after a long couple weeks for a Catholic guy. First I heard from the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and then I heard from Gov. Jesse Ventura.Maybe it's just fatigue, but in the end, I can't get too worked up about Jesse. I'm a Catholic guy, and my governor thinks I'm a dolt: so what? Every politician thinks I'm a dolt. I'd rather have a governor who bellows that religion is for fools than a slippery president who parades around with a Bible. Besides, I'm used to the fact that if you ask Jesse a question, you're likely to get an answer, however wrongheaded.
That's in stark contrast to the board at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, which hasn't come anywhere close to answering any of the questions that interest me about their funding fight with Mayor Giuliani.
I've always understood that art must be challenging and that the First Amendment protects it, so the more the board pontificates about that, the more I just sagely nod my head. But meanwhile, what I really want to know are other things. Things like, whatis it about pee and dung that gets the New York art crowd in such a happy tizzy? And why do they only pee and dung on things Catholic?
The first question probably has a cool avant-garde answer. I just don't know what it is.
Maybe that's because I'm a parent. I can't understand how any parent could see anything sensational in pee and dung. Your youngest kids are always dropping toys and other weird stuff in the toilet just to see what it looks like. And there's a friend who tells the story of walking into her kid's bedroom and finding he'd painted the wall with his own excrement. When she walked in on him, he was just beaming, pleased as punch. On the other hand, he was eight months old, or something like that. So even though I'm familiar with the concept of putting things in pee and getting artistic with dung, I still don't know what the deal is when it's a bunch of grownups who are getting off on it.
But even if I was smart enough to grasp the avant-gardishness of all this pee and dung, that still wouldn't answer my second question. I'd still be wondering how come it's always got to be Catholic stuff that's put in the pee and under the dung. My friend's kid used excrement as his medium and a wall as his canvas, and I can respect that. It makes some kind of sense in a pre-toddler kind of way. But if that's the fun spirit, you'd think the artistic community could at least do an occasional Jewish sculpture in dung, or place some non-Catholic stuff, like a Koran or something like that, in one of their big old bottles of pee. But no. It's always got to be Catholic stuff.
So I have to wonder. The artist and the board surely know that, since it's always Catholic stuff that's getting peed and dunged on, after a while some Catholics are likely to get the idea that all this Pissing on Christ and Dunging on the Holy Virgin is intended to insult their religion.
Look, I agree that everyone has a First Amendment right to Piss on Christ and Dung on the Holy Virgin to their hearts' content.
All I'm saying is that it does raise the question of why. Well, it does to some of us Catholics, anyway. And it's not a particularly shallow question, I don't think. I mean, if you know that what you're doing will insult somebody and you go ahead and do it anyway, it seems to me you'd expect that one or two of those somebodies might eventually demand an explanation.
But as far as I can tell, the museum's answer to that and every other reasonable question has been, "Shut up."
And then, even if the "why" is answered, even if the museum board or some brainy critic can explain how the artist has an avant-garde reason for insulting my religion (I'm not saying he doesn't), and even if he has a solid First Amendment right to insultmy religion (and I'm saying he does), why must the board's supporters act shocked and appalled when I then say well, OK, but I still don't think you should use the government to force Catholics to pay the board to insult us. And it is brute force we're talking about here: if you don't pay your taxes, you go to jail.
The appropriate answer to would-be censors is to say, "if you don't like it, don't look at it." Or just don't read it, or just don't listen to it. The reason that retort doesn't work here is that the Catholic guy isn't complaining that anybody's forcing Catholics to look at Dung on the Virgin. He's complaining that Catholics are being forced to pay for it. He's saying, go ahead and Dung on the Virgin anywhere you like. Just do it on your own dime, or on your fellow Catholic-bashers' dime. Just don't do it on the taxpayers' dime.
But to the wine and cheese crowd on the museum board, them are fighting words. OK, I admit I don't understand that reaction. But I'd still just shrug my shoulders if the board didn't go on to add farce to insult by assuming the ridiculous pose of a courageous little community being set upon by the heavy hand of the establishment.
That's just too silly to go unremarked. Because it's as clear as a jar of pee that it's the Catholic guy who's being stomped and insulted here � and by people who make more money in a day than he does in a week. The museum board members are wealthy, powerful, socially and politically connected, and like lots of this country, and certainly much of the media, not too fond of the Catholic Church. They're the establishment, if anyone is, not the Catholic Church, with whatever pitiful, tenuous hold it may still have on 1999 American culture.
I mean, like another friend of mine once said, if you want to be counterculture, be a Catholic.
So here's what I'm saying. Picture the wine and cheese crowd gathering at some Brooklyn Museum of Art benefit. Then quick cut to somebody, anybody, in 1999 New York, who still gets up early to go to church, kneel in front of a statue of the Virgin Maryand pray. Which depicts a smug and intolerant establishment?
Well, if you picked the devout Catholic on his knees before the Virgin, you're not alone. But I still don't get it.
Posted at 08:42 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Catholicism
August 14, 2005
Saints and Sinners
An acquaintance says that people who go to church are hypocrites who think they're better than others. My response is, "Most people who go to church do so because they realize what big sinners they are." I guess my acquaintance's point is that only saints should go to church. Hmmm... they'd be empty then. Oh. I guess that is her point - no one should go to church!
I'm also reminded of something Oscar Wilde, a deathbed convert, said, "The Catholic Church is for saints and sinners alone. For respectable people the Anglican Church will do." ... saints and sinners covers most of us ...
If my faith depended on how other people acted, I'd be admitting my lack of faith in Christ as the Messiah and in His promise that Hell would not prevail against His Church.
John Mallon sums it up well:
[I]f my faith depended on the sinlessness of priests I'd be in big trouble. I have known cruel and vicious priests as well as men of great kindnesses. John Geoghan was my parish priest when I was a kid, and I see the names of my schoolmates in the paper as his victims. I am not a Catholic because of how priests behave. I've known some very holy priests, I've known some very bad priests. Most are kind of a mixture of the two like the rest of us.So some very bad priests committed some very evil crimes against God's precious little ones. And in dealing with it, Cardinal Law, by his own admission, really bungled it. So I'm supposed to let that ruin my faith? Rubbish! My faith is built upon the rock of Christ, who declared Peter to be the rock and built His Church upon him. Peter, the first Pope. Peter who betrayed Jesus. Yes, that is my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against her. As we have seen the gates of hell will certainly try to prevail, but don't expect me to jump ship.
. . .
All priests sin. Surprise. Bishops, cardinals and popes too. (The pope goes to confession every week—do you think he needs to go more than you do?) Some priests commit crimes. They should be brought to justice. Some priests commit abominations and scandal. Jesus said, "Woe to him through whom scandal comes. It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone around his neck." So if you think you're angry, chew on that.
"I am Not Ashamed," by John Mallon, Peter's Voice
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Catholic Orders
Tom Kreitzberg said that he finds "that jokes are more helpful than solid overviews in understanding the differences [among orders]. In keeping with my personal motto of semper opifer, I offer this old chestnut:"
During a Eucharistic Congress, a number of priests from different orders are gathered in a church for Vespers. While they are praying, a fuse blows and all the lights go out.The Benedictines continue praying from memory, without missing a beat.
The Jesuits begin to discuss whether the blown fuse means they are dispensed from the obligation to pray Vespers.
The Franciscans compose a song of praise for God's gift of darkness.
The Dominicans revisit their ongoing debate on light as a signification of the transmission of divine knowledge.
The Carmelites fall into silence and slow, steady breathing.
The parish priest, who is hosting the others, goes to the basement and replaces the fuse.
"Semper Op," by Tom Kreitzberg, January 2, 2003
Posted at 07:27 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Catholicism , jokes
February 20, 2005
Catholics are not an elect, immune from temptation.
The Catholic Church is not a church reserved exclusively for latter-day saints. Nor is it a church that expects its ministers to be without fault. A universal church must expect trouble from universal sins. Catholics are not an elect, immune from temptation, but strivers after God who inevitably stumble and need forgiveness. The contretemps with Novatian and the Donatists highlights, again, the reality principle within the Church, and the church’s dismissal of those who would limit its benefactions to the holy few, rather than the unholy many. In Oscar Wilde's memorable phrase--and Wilde himself a deathbed convert--"The Catholic Church is for saints and sinners alone. For respectable people the Anglican Church will do."
"Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church," by H.W. Crocker III, hardbound (Prima Publishing 2001), pages 38-39
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January 14, 2005
A long defeat ....Tolkein
I am a Roman Catholic. I do not expect history to be anything but a long defeat.
-- JRR Tolkien
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May 14, 2002
Should homosexual men be Catholic priests?
Should homosexual men be Catholic priests?Whoops. Too late. They already are.
Ever since the Situation began, in late January, the issue of homosexuality and the priesthood has been percolating along side it. I’m not going to do a complete recap here of all of the discussions, but let’s just hone it down to this point:
Since the vast majority of cases coming to light involve the sexual exploitation of adolescent males, some people are starting to ask if homosexuals belong in the priesthood at all. Over the past couple of days, a bishop and a Cardinal or two have been quoted as saying the issue deserves a look. A story I linked yesterday indicated that a seminary in Philadelphia purposefully tries to weed out homosexual candidates for the priesthood. Yesterday and today, we’ve read the inevitable “witch hunt” stories, telling tales of terrified homosexual priests, huddling in their rectories, fearful for their collars.Everybody’s wrong. Except me, of course.
This scandal, in its present incarnation, has many roots. It’s wrong and just dumb to try to trace it back to a single “root cause” and it’s pointless to try to solve it by sitting around musing about some fantastical, ideal future. What’s the issue now? What’s the solution in the context of the present reality – the established structure and teaching of the Roman Catholic Church? That’s the issue.
And reality right now is that the vast majority of priests in the Roman Catholic Church voluntarily take a vow of celibacy. That’s what they’re called to live. There are many priests who violate that vow of celibacy. Some have done it once. Some habitually violate it. Some are in long-term relationships. Some of them are homosexual. Some of them are heterosexual. That’s the way it is.
To try to weed out homosexual men from the priesthood just because they’re homosexually-inclined would be pointless and senseless and wrong, considering that it would send the message that violating the vows with women is somehow...okay. What’s not senseless is weeding out seminarians, for example, who are emotionally immature. Getting rid, to the extent possible, of seminarians who don’t accept the Catholic teaching on sexual matters. Making sure that you’re not ordaining men who aren’t absolutely committed to celibacy and have been formed in a way that they know how to live that challenging lifestyle.
If you’re doing all of that , then, it seems to me, your priesthood should be okay, within the current parameters.
So, if you’re ordaining men who struggle with same-sex attraction, but are committed to living within what Catholicism teaches about sexuality, what’s the problem? None. The problem is in ordaining men who don’t really buy the Church’s teaching on sexuality and who have been taught in seminaries that the Church’s teaching on sexuality is up for grabs. So to speak.
I truly think it is frankly insane to suggest that homosexually-oriented men are intrinsically destined to be more troublesome priests than heterosexual men. Consider, for example, the nature of parish work. In working with parish staffs and volunteers, with whom is a priest going to come into close contact more frequently, men or women? Women. Right. No question. What’s true is that working in close proximity to women and dealing with intimate, intense matters of the soul can be a tough challenge for a heterosexual man committed to celibacy, and a way of living and working that requires a constant dependence on prayer.
The problem, it seems to me, is not the hypothetical homosexual priest. If there is a problem with homosexual priests, it’s this: it’s with a very specific contemporary situation: the homosexual priests who don’t support the teaching of the Church on sexuality – don’t teach it and don’t live it – and who do, as even “liberal” observers like Richard Sipe have observed, tend to network and protect each other. And if they don't support the Church's teaching on this issue, why were they ordained in the first place? Bishop? Bishop? Seminary faculty? Anyone?
Equally implicated in all of this and other problems are the heterosexual priests who don’t support or live the church’s teaching on sexuality and who also protect each other.
See, here’s the thing. Pedophilia and sexual exploitation of teens is one thing. But we cannot get to the point in which we are trying to “weed out” priests for being human beings with all of the confusion, flaws and mystery that makes us human. I can’t, for the life of me, declare that a priest who struggles with homosexual inclinations, but is committed to living the Truth in Christ no matter what the cost, is any less “worthy” to be a priest than one who struggles with heterosexual yearnings or the urge for power or popularity. As Fr. Neuhaus said today on television, we all possess a disordered sexual nature, to some extent, because we all are burdened with the effects of original sin.
The issue we should be concentrating on is, as other Catholic bloggers have noted lately, an issue of acceptance of Church teaching and the commitment to live it out – not subvert it or use the institution as a cover so you can hide your self-indulgence, whether that self-indulgence be a lust for power or a lust for other human beings.
"Should homosexual men be Catholic priests?" by Amy Welborn, from her blog In Between Naps, April, 2002
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March 14, 2002
Infallibility
Every bishop was, and is, a sinner:
Stop for a moment and consider how the Church understands infallibility. For she does not make her claims on the basis of power. As Stalin said, "How many divisions does the Pope have?" Nor does she see infallibility as some sort of mark of special virtue or braininess. Indeed, infallibility does not mean that the members of the Church (including the Pope) are without sin. On the contrary, it is a solemn teaching of the Church that every man who ever occupied a bishop's chair was a sinner (and, we might add, it is a matter of historical record that many were fools as well.) Yet all this is exactly what the Spirit's gift of infallibility is given to the Church to amend. For infallibility is a special gift given by God to the Church in her weakness, not bestowed on her for being especially clever or strong. If we want to get the hang of it, we have to imagine the Church, not as an ace student who letters in football, gets all the girls and never has to study, but as a character in a farce who is guided through life miraculously (by the good graces of his fairy godmother) and who (only through those good graces) is preserved from walking into walls or off cliffs. Thus the term is, if anything, a confession of failure, blindness and ineptitude on the part of the Church. That is how the Church sees her gift of infallibility. For she holds with gratitude to the promise which Christ gave her, that He would lead her (often by the nose) into all truth; not that she would figure truth out because of her brilliance. For truth possesses her; she does not possess it.
"Infallibility Doesn't Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry," by Mark Shea, 2001
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February 14, 2002
"Catholic guy: Who's the establishment here?" - Chuck Williams
This was written by a friend of mine, Chuck Williams.
I'm writing this (October, 1999) after a long couple weeks for a Catholic guy. First I heard from the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and then I heard from Gov. Jesse Ventura.Maybe it's just fatigue, but in the end, I can't get too worked up about Jesse. I'm a Catholic guy, and my governor thinks I'm a dolt: so what? Every politician thinks I'm a dolt. I'd rather have a governor who bellows that religion is for fools than a slippery president who parades around with a Bible. Besides, I'm used to the fact that if you ask Jesse a question, you're likely to get an answer, however wrongheaded.
That's in stark contrast to the board at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, which hasn't come anywhere close to answering any of the questions that interest me about their funding fight with Mayor Giuliani.
I've always understood that art must be challenging and that the First Amendment protects it, so the more the board pontificates about that, the more I just sagely nod my head. But meanwhile, what I really want to know are other things. Things like, what is it about pee and dung that gets the New York art crowd in such a happy tizzy? And why do they only pee and dung on things Catholic?
The first question probably has a cool avant-garde answer. I just don't know what it is.
Maybe that's because I'm a parent. I can't understand how any parent could see anything sensational in pee and dung. Your youngest kids are always dropping toys and other weird stuff in the toilet just to see what it looks like. And there's a friend who tells the story of walking into her kid's bedroom and finding he'd painted the wall with his own excrement. When she walked in on him, he was just beaming, pleased as punch. On the other hand, he was eight months old, or something like that. So even though I'm familiar with the concept of putting things in pee and getting artistic with dung, I still don't know what the deal is when it's a bunch of grownups who are getting off on it.
But even if I was smart enough to grasp the avant-gardishness of all this pee and dung, that still wouldn't answer my second question. I'd still be wondering how come it's always got to be Catholic stuff that's put in the pee and under the dung. My friend's kid used excrement as his medium and a wall as his canvas, and I can respect that. It makes some kind of sense in a pre-toddler kind of way. But if that's the fun spirit, you'd think the artistic community could at least do an occasional Jewish sculpture in dung, or place some non-Catholic stuff, like a Koran or something like that, in one of their big old bottles of pee. But no. It's always got to be Catholic stuff.
So I have to wonder. The artist and the board surely know that, since it's always Catholic stuff that's getting peed and dunged on, after a while some Catholics are likely to get the idea that all this Pissing on Christ and Dunging on the Holy Virgin is intended to insult their religion.
Look, I agree that everyone has a First Amendment right to Piss on Christ and Dung on the Holy Virgin to their hearts' content.
All I'm saying is that it does raise the question of why. Well, it does to some of us Catholics, anyway. And it's not a particularly shallow question, I don't think. I mean, if you know that what you're doing will insult somebody and you go ahead and do it anyway, it seems to me you'd expect that one or two of those somebodies might eventually demand an explanation.
But as far as I can tell, the museum's answer to that and every other reasonable question has been, "Shut up."
And then, even if the "why" is answered, even if the museum board or some brainy critic can explain how the artist has an avant-garde reason for insulting my religion (I'm not saying he doesn't), and even if he has a solid First Amendment right to insult my religion (and I'm saying he does), why must the board's supporters act shocked and appalled when I then say well, OK, but I still don't think you should use the government to force Catholics to pay the board to insult us. And it is brute force we're talking about here: if you don't pay your taxes, you go to jail.
The appropriate answer to would-be censors is to say, "if you don't like it, don't look at it." Or just don't read it, or just don't listen to it. The reason that retort doesn't work here is that the Catholic guy isn't complaining that anybody's forcing Catholics to look at Dung on the Virgin. He's complaining that Catholics are being forced to pay for it. He's saying, go ahead and Dung on the Virgin anywhere you like. Just do it on your own dime, or on your fellow Catholic-bashers' dime. Just don't do it on the taxpayers' dime.
But to the wine and cheese crowd on the museum board, them are fighting words. OK, I admit I don't understand that reaction. But I'd still just shrug my shoulders if the board didn't go on to add farce to insult by assuming the ridiculous pose of a courageous little community being set upon by the heavy hand of the establishment.
That's just too silly to go unremarked. Because it's as clear as a jar of pee that it's the Catholic guy who's being stomped and insulted here — and by people who make more money in a day than he does in a week. The museum board members are wealthy, powerful, socially and politically connected, and like lots of this country, and certainly much of the media, not too fond of the Catholic Church. They're the establishment, if anyone is, not the Catholic Church, with whatever pitiful, tenuous hold it may still have on 1999 American culture.
I mean, like another friend of mine once said, if you want to be counterculture, be a Catholic.
So here's what I'm saying. Picture the wine and cheese crowd gathering at some Brooklyn Museum of Art benefit. Then quick cut to somebody, anybody, in 1999 New York, who still gets up early to go to church, kneel in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary and pray. Which depicts a smug and intolerant establishment?
Well, if you picked the devout Catholic on his knees before the Virgin, you're not alone. But I still don't get it.
"Catholic guy: Who's the establishment here?" by Chuck Williams, guest commentary in the St. Paul Legal Ledger, Oct. 19, 1999
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