Viewing the skulls of bishops

Now that we're in Lent, I am not only reading but carefully pondering Fr. Al Kimel's fine series on purgatory. I recommend the same to all even as I look forward to defending it from the inevitable criticisms. But my Lenten meditation also includes, as it should, prophetic diagnosis of sin itself. Like each of us for ourselves, I must begin and end with my own sins; but those are of less general interest than the sins of Church leaders, which also point to the purification that American Catholics need to undertake collectively.

In the past I've been critical enough of the clergy, especially of the American bishops as a group. Having had my say, I figured that too few would notice or care if I said anything more. But now a few friends have drawn my attention to Fr. Richard John Neuhaus' pre-publication review, entitled "Paved with the Skulls of Bishops," of Philip Lawler's new book The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture (Encounter). I have not read the book or even had the opportunity to buy it; that will change ASAP. But to me, the most important thing is what the book prompts Neuhaus, a man far more influential than I or even Lawler himself, to say. The news is not good. But the right perspective on it, which Neuhaus provides, affords a certain kind of hope. It helps some of us see ourselves in the problem.

From the review:

“The thesis of this book,” writes Lawler, “is that the sex abuse scandal in American Catholicism was not only aggravated but actually caused by the willingness of church leaders to sacrifice the essential for the inessential; to build up the human institution even to the detriment of the divine mandate.” Bishops again and again responded to the crisis as institutional managers, employing public relations stratagems to evade, deceive, and distract attention from their own responsibility. Lawler several times invokes the terse observation of St. Augustine, “God does not need my lie.” The bishops lied, says Lawler, and many of them are still lying. This is offered not as an accusation but as a conclusion that he believes is compelled by the evidence.

The first aspect of the scandal, the sexual abuse of children, has been acknowledged and addressed,” Lawler writes. “The second aspect, the rampant homosexuality among Catholic priests, has been acknowledged but not addressed, and later even denied. . . . The third aspect of the scandal has never even been acknowledged by American church leaders.” The third aspect, the malfeasance of bishops, “is today the most serious of all.”

Over 80 percent of reported cases of abuse were with teenage boys. That does not include, of course, uncounted instances of sex with men who are of age, since those cases, as several bishops have opined, constitute no problem for the Church, meaning no legal or financial problem. Spiritual and moral problems apparently do not enter the equation. The name for this is corruption.

Indeed. By way of explanation, Neuhaus quotes Lawler quoting a once-widely-discussed article by Jesuit priest Paul Shaughnessy that was written well before the Boston scandal broke in 2002. It is entitled "The Gay Priest Problem." I myself have read that article, quoted it before, and owe much to it. It explains a lot. By all means read it.

Why do I dredge this up again? Because, just as the Boston scandal was a "synecdoche" for the national sex-abuse-and-coverup scandal, so that national scandal is a synecdoche for the failings of American Catholics as a whole. With some laudable exceptions, the bishops as a whole are like American Catholics as a whole: they don't yet "get it." The bishops as a whole have yet to confront and address the fundamental, spiritual failings on their part that let the sex-abuse problem get out of hand; American Catholics as a whole have yet to confront and address the failings of theirs that have so gravely undermined the witness of the Church in this country. We do, after all, get the leadership we deserve. But just as it is too convenient for the bishops to focus attention and outrage on those under their authority who sexually abuse minors, so it's too convenient for American Catholics to focus attention and outrage on the failings of bishops and priests. When it comes to sin, the first finger we point must always be at ourselves. What we need is purification: of our faith itself, and of our personal practice of our faith.

We need to purify our faith because, among American Catholics as a whole, the theological virtue of faith is no longer fostered or even widely understood. Consider one important example.

If you're an active Catholic who is not a "progressive" Catholic, but who has belonged to a parish or institution not committed to maintaining orthodoxy, you have probably observed a phenomenon familiar to many of us. If you make a point of seeking fidelity to the Magisterium in such a setting, especially from clergy or vowed religious, you will find yourself labeled "divisive" and/or "intolerant." If you lack formal credentials in theology, you will also be labeled "ignorant"; if you have them, especially if they are impressive, you will merely be labeled "arrogant." In neither case will you be permitted to catechize. Of course none of this is to say that frank orthodoxy is actually verboten, though it occasionally is; most progs recognize that the cardinal virtue of tolerance requires recognizing that all of us, even the orthodox, have a right to our opinions. But in the nature of the case, such tolerance is—to adapt a phrase from Herbert Marcuse—"repressive tolerance."

That's because, in a Catholic setting, to regard fidelity to the Magisterium as just one tolerable option among others is to reject the very concept of fidelity to the Magisterium. To be Catholic means that one does not regard that which the Church teaches with her full authority as a matter of opinion. One regards it as that which God has revealed, and one so regards it on the authority of the Church, which one believes is the Mystical Body of Christ sharing in his authority as her Head. Understood as including without being limited to fidelity to the Magisterium, orthodoxy is therefore not opinion. It is necessary as a boundary condition for that assent of faith which, as such, carries with it the certainty that we are not deceived. This is not to rule out all theological opinions; those cannot be avoided, and some diversity thereof is healthy. It is not even to rule out all false theological opinions. What the assent of faith rules out is treating what the Church has taught with her full authority as itself a matter of opinion, as ideas which some might find useful but which could turn out to be false. It also rules out treating as irreducibly a matter of opinion the question what counts has having been taught with the full authority of the Church. When there is disagreement about that question, as inevitably happens in this or that case, it is ultimately for the Church herself to settle, either through the consensus fidelium over time and space or by a formal ruling from the Magisterium.

But that is exactly the stance which, in many quarters of the Church in America, is roundly rejected. Again, it is not always or even often rejected by formal denial. Many Catholic leaders are too prudent for that, if only because they don't want to jeopardize their platform and perks. But once orthodoxy is treated as mere opinion, it is effectively ruled out. It comes to be seen only as an irritating ideology that must be tolerated for the time being, but which cannot be allowed influence to match the authority on which it claims to be based. More or less quickly, a necessary condition for the assent of faith gets sidelined and silenced within what is, or ought to be, a community of faith. Heterodoxy then becomes the community's orthodoxy. At the extreme of such a process, this-or-that kind of orthodoxy opposed to Catholicism, often of the secular, left-wing variety, takes the place of mere heterodoxy.

Now it might be replied that this is only a problem in "progressive" settings and does not reflect on the American Church as a whole. There certainly are quarters of the Church in this country where the virtue of faith, and the orthodoxy on which it depends, are understood and fostered. But such a witness is severely undermined by the degree to which the bishops allow dissent to go unpunished. E.g., even personally orthodox bishops such as Egan of New York and Wuerl of DC refuse to withhold the Eucharist from Catholic politicians who openly defy Church teaching on points that the Pope himself has indicated are non-negotiable. Other personally orthodox bishops, such as Flynn of the Twin Cities or O'Malley of Boston, refuse to discipline heterodox theologians on the faculties of universities over which they have at least nominal authority. And then there's the fact, so widely known as to be rarely mentioned, that on the literally vital matter of contraception, lay Catholics are allowed to do exactly as they please—which in most cases involves rejecting the constant, irreformable teaching of the Church. Even Catholic media are caught up in the corresponding ambiguity: we have the National Catholic Register, yes, but we also have the National Catholic Reporter. Of course it is well-known, among those who give thought to such matters, that the Catholic Church in America is polarized. But what is not so well understood is that the very persistence of that polarization strengthens the heterodox sides of the spectrum. Once again, it gives out the impression that orthodoxy is optional: not merely for American Catholics as Americans—which is and ought to be unexceptionable—but as Catholics. That makes it impossible for the virtue of faith to be widely fostered and understood among rank-and-file Catholics.

For not only is it not obvious that orthodoxy is optional for Catholics as Catholics; it's downright false, and when it's believed, it's objectively incompatible with being Catholic. That's why it has often been observed, rightly, that American Catholics have come to think habitually like Protestants: the Church is one "denomination" among many; as a simple matter of conscience, one may pick and choose among her teachings; the only important things are to worship at the church of your choice and be a nice person. Such is the attitude that must be extirpated if we are to purify our faith. But it cannot be extirpated if constant, irreformable teachings of the Church are themselves treated as mere matters of opinion. Do the bishops have the courage to get us past that? Their record, at least as a body, is not encouraging.

The problem of optional orthodoxy is also important because, unless faith itself be purified, we cannot properly understand how to purify our practice of the faith.

Purgatory is a post-mortem process, for the already saved, of being "purged" of our sinfulness to as to be divinized as fully as God intends. We can avoid that if we complete our purification on earth by learning detachment from sin through suffering, both involuntary and voluntary. But that's a concept and a necessity which, for several reasons, we've largely lost sight of in the American Church. When thought of at all, purgatory is seen mostly as an eschatological escape valve for the lukewarm, an excuse for not answering the universal call to holiness. I still have a vivid childhood memory of the joy with which the men of my neighborhood started grilling hamburgers on Friday evenings when Pope Paul VI eased the traditional fasting rule. Ascesis across the board has pretty much gone south from there. I rarely even hear anymore about the old idea of "offering up" suffering joyfully as a way to participate in Christ's Passion and thus become more like him: holier. The idea and the reality are still very much out there, of course, especially among conservative younger priests and adult converts; but neither that form of ascesis or any other form plays a prominent role in collective Catholic life anymore. Aside from the relaxed fasting rules, which are unenforced and therefore effectively optional, ascesis is purely private and optional. That would be fine if clergy and vowed religious led the laity by preaching and example to greater ascesis all the same. But they don't, and nobody much cares.

Given that orthodoxy itself is effectively optional, it should come as no surprise that ascetic orthopraxis is too. But if everything is effectively optional (except smoking in church, which will get you ejected if not arrested), what becomes of collective witness? What we've become is a collection of individuals willy-nilly at variance with each other and often at variance, for good or ill, with our leaders. So much for being the Mystical Body "one in mind and heart" with her Head. So much for answering the universal call to holiness together.

The road to hell, as St. John Chrysostom once said, may well be "paved with the skulls of bishops." But we need to learn something about ourselves by viewing them. I think we can. As Barack Obama likes to say: "We can do this."

How much can one get away with disbelieving?

It's a relief to see that the one serious critique (so far) of my previous post on Luke 13: 24-30 comes from Scott Carson, a man I greatly respect as a Catholic and a philosopher, and whom I can thus engage as somebody with whom I share the same basic belief-commitments. With that understood, I don't think he'll mind my pointing out that his criticisms of my position are very similar to those I've encountered before—mostly from non-Catholics—and that my replies are accordingly similar to the ones I've made before.

First, Scott says [emphasis added]:

I think there's much to agree with in Mike's post--for example, I agree that some Catholics accepting or rejecting certain Church teachings appears to be more a matter of convenience than anything else, and it also seems to be true to say that religious belief has become something of a pro forma matter for some. But taking note of such social phenomena is, I think, a dangerous background for the interpretation of passages such as the one on offer, which was clearly aimed at Jews who assumed that adherence to the letter of the law was a sufficient condition for the virtue of piety.

It's worth noting that I had already conceded that "[o]n an obvious, historical level, Jesus seems to be speaking about certain Jews of his day...Not a few Jews of Jesus' day rejected him despite having eaten and drunk in his company and heard him teach in the streets. And Jesus duly warns them." But I know of no exegetical evidence that, in the passage at issue, Jesus was addressing primarily those Jews who thought "adherence to the letter of the Law" sufficed for "the virtue of piety." He was referring to those who, by how they lived, would be rejecting his message; the two classes overlapped, but were by no means coextensive; and it is at the very least possible that many members of the Church are to be found in that latter class. Indeed, when we read Scripture as addressed to the Church—which is what the four Gospels are, among other things—we must go beyond the obvious, historical level even as we acknowledge its meaning as the "literal" sense.

Second, Scott says:

It seems to me that there is often a danger, in attempting to explicate passages such as this Gospel or other passages having to do with "getting into heaven" or "avoiding hell", of treading too closely to what amounts to a kind of spiritual utilitarianism. It seems that analyses such as the one Mike offers make out heaven as a kind of reward for good behavior, hell a kind of punishment for bad, when in fact it seems to me that a more sophisticated analysis would see both in terms of standing in a certain sort of relationship with God, that is, a state in which a particular soul can be more or less in communion with God.

If I understand him rightly, I entirely concur with Scott that heaven and hell should be understood primarily as ways of speaking about how a person will ultimately stand in relation to God. Indeed, the passage of the Gospel on which I had been meditating, along with several related passages elsewhere in the Gospels, includes a number of extended metaphors on Jesus' part. In that vein I treat "getting to heaven" is a metaphor for finding oneself, after death, in a definitive state of loving communion with God; by the same token, I treat "going to hell" is a metaphor for finding oneself, after death, in a definitive state of rejection of God. Hell is for people who prefer it to living on God's terms; heaven is for those who prefer God's mercy and love to their own sins. But like the former, the latter preference is no mere velleity; it is a firm orientation of the will that requires, among other things, repentance. Yet it is not exactly easy to repent of actions, or attitudes, that one fails to see as wrong. Hence, knowing the relevant right from wrong is rather important for coming into and remaining in communion with God—or, if one prefers the metaphor, "getting to heaven." After all, "if you love me, you will keep my commandments"; we can't love well if we don't know what love requires and what love excludes. So the questions then become: what are the relevant commandments, and how important is knowing them?

If we read Luke 13: 24-30 as addressed to the Church, then believers know the relevant right from wrong in two ways: reason and revelation. Reason inclines us to know the natural and thus universal law inscribed in the hearts of all; revelation, as conveyed to us primarily through Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium of the Church, tells us all the rest we need to know of the eternal will of God for us. To the extent one knows the relevant precepts of reason and revelation, one is accountable for living by them. Since, as sinners, we cannot live by them on our own, we need the grace of God won for us by Jesus Christ. But in order to be duly empowered by grace to live as we are called to, we must admit not only the need for grace but also what grace is needed for. If a believer voluntarily rejects some precept of the natural law or divine revelation, then in that respect they are not admitting what grace is needed for, and hence are unlikely to be empowered to live well in that respect. It's not just that the more demanding the precept, the less able we are to observe it on our own power; people being what we are, the more demanding the precept the more likely we are to find reason to exempt ourselves from it. To the extent we exempt ourselves from it, we reject the divine authority with which it is given to us, and thus love God the less. That is why acceptance of the entire yoke of God's love is a necessary condition for finding it light. Conversely, the less we love God, the less in communion with him we are, and the more burdensome we find his yoke.

That, to my mind, is the most common spiritual danger today among believers. It has not always been so, of course: there have been some periods and quarters in the Church when overscrupulosity posed a greater danger than indifference or selectivity. And one can always find such individuals in any period. But I don't think it can be seriously suggested that overscrupulosity is the greater danger today. The greater dangers are indifference and, worse, a rationalizing selectivity. And that is what I felt the need to warn about.

Yet Scott says [emphasis added]:

I think it is also too common, at least in certain quarters, to use passages such as the narrow gate passage to frighten or even coerce those more-or-less believers into "accepting" things that they may not be quite ready to absorb fully into their hearts. I'm not sure what that kind of acceptance really amounts to in the end, and as long as we're approaching the matter in such a utilitarian way I'm not so sure I see the utility of scaring people into "belief" by threatening them with hellfire. For one thing, it reeks of a variety of fundamentalism that is particularly distasteful, the kind that walks around wearing placards that read "God hates fags".

I find that rather odd. St. Paul says [emphasis added]:

Do you not know that the unjust will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor boy prostitutes nor sodomites nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Is this a "particularly distasteful" form of "fundamentalism," no better than that exhibited by people "wearing placards that read God hates fags?" Is it really incompatible with Jesus' message of love? St. Paul, after all, was the apostle keenest to stress that it is by grace alone, not by our own laughably puny merits, that we are saved; and he was always urging Christians to love one another. That much understood, I think Scott would agree that the message here is that those who voluntarily persist in serious sin will not be saved. And that is because such persistence is incompatible with bearing the light, easy yoke of Jesus: the yoke of true love of God and neighbor. Basing myself on that message, my point has been that people who refuse to recognize this or that kind of serious sin as serious sin are putting themselves in grave jeopardy. They cannot repent of what they don't recognize as sin, and hence they cannot receive the grace that is both required for and entailed by repentance. Thus, they could well be refusing the grace needed to enter by the narrow gate and putting themselves on the wide road to perdition. I know so because I have done so in my own life, and I do not predict that I never will again.

Scott's concern is for people who are "not quite ready to absorb" this or that difficult precept "into their hearts." He seems to think I'm being unduly harsh on them. But I believe he's failing to acknowledge a key distinction, and failure to observe it can be disastrous in a pastoral context. Since I can't talk about everybody in a "pastoral context," I shall speak only of Catholics.

Some Catholics who don't accept this or that definitive moral teaching of the Church—call it 'DMT' for short—are nonetheless sincere in their desire to follow Christ through his Church and to grow spiritually. In such a Catholic, failure to accept DMT can be due to any one or more involuntary factors. Perhaps nobody has ever explained it to them. Perhaps the spirituality of the person who did explain it to them was repulsively toxic. Or it might just be that they haven't yet learned to love enough to know, in their heart, just how T expresses and calls for the sort of love Jesus taught and exemplified. I agree with Scott that threatening such people with hellfire is typically useless and often counterproductive; the solution in such cases is more learning, both intellectual and spiritual. But that's not the kind of Catholic for whom my warning is meant. My warning is meant for two other kinds of Catholic.

One kind is the sophisticated cleric or theologian who produces finely wrought rationalizations for rejecting DMT despite having been given every tool and reason for knowing better. Such a person sets themselves up as part of a magisterium opposed to the Magisterium. It is just such people for whom the classic formula "let him be anathema" (Galatians 1:9) is meant. They are heretics; if unrepentant, they will be severely judged. And they need to hear that in one way or another.

The other kind is the Catholic who, though not a heretic in the above sense, is perfectly content with being deceived by heretics. Unlike the first, sincere sort of Catholic, they are not well disposed enough to learn what they need to in order to accept DMT. They think they'll get away with disbelieving DMT, and perhaps much else. They think they're perfectly fine as they are, thank you very much, and they don't need a bunch of sex-starved old men in the Vatican to tell them otherwise. Well, they aren't and they do. And sometimes they need a good jolt to learn that—the kind that Jesus delivered in the passage we've been discussing, and the kind that I've received more than once in my own life.

Priestly celibacy: what's important is the fascination

At his blog Ascent to Mount Carmel, Catholic seminarian Paul Hamilton remarks: "I have had more conversations about priestly celibacy with both Catholics and non-Catholic strangers alike than I have had about any other single topic." Amazing, isn't it? More than on any other single topic. Alas, I believe it. And it's got me thinking anew about a topic about which I'd thought there was little left to say.

Over the decades, I've tried more than a few times to explain the point and value of requiring celibacy to people who are mystified by, even skeptical of, that feature of the Catholic priesthood, be they non-Catholic or Catholic. I've relied chiefly on the work of Fr. Benedict Groeschel, a PhD psychologist and ascetic as well as the founder of a new religious community, and encyclicals by popes Paul VI and John Paul II. But in my experience, the only people who take such explanations at face value are those who, for reasons of their own, are keen to defend the Eastern-Catholic and Orthodox tradition of a married parish clergy while, at the same time, upholding the concurrent tradition of celibacy for bishops. The rest generally take for granted that the stated reasons for the Roman-Catholic requirement are not the "real" ones which, of course, are then triumphantly proposed in the most cynical terms. Just as oddly, it has rarely occurred to anybody unbidden that I might actually be interested in consecrated celibacy for myself, which I once was and am again, even when they know me as a deeply committed and well-informed Latin-Rite Catholic. The few to whom I've expressed such interest wonder, not so covertly, what DSM heading(s) my particular form of derangement is to be classified under. But a bright, mentally healthy young man such as Paul who's actually about to commit himself to lifelong celibacy cannot be so easily dismissed and, indeed, compels attention to what that commitment stands for. The phenomenon of such a person seems to compel attention even when talking directly about what it stands for would not.

That, I have come to believe, is the best argument for retaining the Latin Church's norm of requring celibacy of its priests—the exception to the norm being, of course, those ordained under the Pastoral Provision, which will necessarily remain exceptional. When lived faithfully for the right reasons, its evangelical witness is incalculably powerful. In former times, the witness of giving up the possibility of children attested sharply to the reality of the Kingdom to come; in today's sex-obsessed world, where children are often seen as more of a burden than a blessing, the witness of giving up voluntarily induced orgasms is testimony enough. Of late, that witness has been somewhat obscured by the sex-abuse scandal; but there's no reason to believe that such abuse has been less prevalent among married people, even among married clergy of other churches. As the Church tightens her measures for excluding pederasts, the witness will re-emerge once again.

In the meantime, Paul, I'll support you or oppose you—whichever you think would help!

After asceticism

Given that I should have posted this during Lent, I've decided to recoup a bit by making my title a pun.

In 2004 The Linacre Centre, a research institute for moral theology sponsored by the UK bishops, and which normally focuses on biomedical issues, issued a study explaining the roots of the sex-abuse scandal rocking the Catholic clergy. It's called After Asceticism: Sex, Prayer and Deviant Priests; you can buy it in either paperback or e-book form. It's well done, making inferences to the best explanations from the best empirical research then available, including the John Jay Report. The publisher's blurb does it justice without hype; here's the blurb's conclusion, with emphasis added:

After Asceticism draws the connection between the ancient ideas about sex, prayer, and spiritual friendship with modern scientific research on the biology of fasting and the psychology of hope. It warns, however, that as society becomes more deeply immersed in pagan sexuality, the Catholic Church will remain mired in sexual crisis absent a return to its ascetical tradition.

I could not agree more, and I speak from personal experience as well as from the wisdom of the saints.

Alas, it's not in the least surprising that the book has garnered so little attention. 'Unpopular' is an imprecise word for its message; 'incomprehensible' would be closer to the truth. Most Catholics in the developed countries today have little or no conception of what real asceticism means; all that survives in most quarters is a token, ritualistic 'giving up' of chocolate or alcohol for Lent. Young people preparing for confirmation might also be encouraged to deposit change they would otherwise spend on fripperies into a makeshift poorbox. I blame the clergy for this wretched state of affairs, including Paul VI; I remember from my childhood the first, almost ecstatic Friday evening steak-grillings in my Catholic neighborhood when he made the no-meat rule optional outside Lent and a few other special days. And so neither is it surprising that the gutting of our ascetical tradition affected the clergy disastrously. Neither can the laity escape blame: there's no point in complaining about priestly sodomites if we fornicate, contracept, and divorce as much as the general population.

Next Sunday is The Feast of Divine Mercy. A great way to observe the feast would be to use the prescribed prayers to seek the Lord's pardon for our collective failure to heed the Apostle's advice to "make no provision for the desires of the flesh." Perhaps such a prayer might be better heard if we resume serious ascesis when "ordinary" time resumes after the Easter season.

What are we examining when we examine our conscience?

Lent anticipates the Easter Triduum liturgically for good reason: if followed, the discipline of Lent helps us to live more fully the Paschal Mystery to be celebrated at the Triduum. We thus prepare ourselves for authentic celebration of our salvation by allowing more room for the Holy Spirit to recapitulate in us the Son's accomplishment of our salvation while on earth. That is why self-denial—both the kinds life requires and the kinds we impose on ourselves—is so important a part of Lenten discipline. But for acts of self-denial to be effective instruments of divine grace, we must strive consistently to be honest about the self we are denying. That means looking at ourselves from as much of the God's-eye point of view as we are given to share. Which brings me to conscience.

A good forum for the needed honesty is the sacrament of reconciliation, which is sometimes named by its most challenging feature: confession. Some say that a good psychotherapist helps too, and that can be true. But I have found psychotherapy useful only with a therapist who believes in God, is not committed to professional fashion or theological heresy, and who combines empathy with objectivity—which last is another way of saying that s/he knows how to love. Such are most of the qualities I also look for in a good confessor. Yet, and as is often said, confession is not the same as therapy. While it can have therapeutic effects, its most obvious focus is on how we have sinned—whether or not we also have mental-health issues related to our sins. And that is where the focus must be when the issue is our salvation: i.e., whether and how we will persevere in that transformation-in-Christ which has been wrought in us by baptism. In order to understand how we have sinned, we must conduct what the neo-scholastics came to call "examination of conscience."

One of the main reasons, if not the main reason, why relatively few Catholics go to confession these days is that they cannot conduct a meaningful examination of conscience. I have no time to go into all the reasons for that, which have been amply discussed elsewhere. (I would welcome links from those who have any to offer.) In my experience, the minority who take the notion seriously seem to think of the process as no more than going through a checklist of no-nos to see how many points one is down with God. It ought to go without saying that thinking of examination of conscience in just that way is both aversive and childish. While a checklist is necessary, it is hardly sufficient, and exclusive focus on it can actually be harmful. Accounts of what the spiritual journey is, why one lives it willy-nilly, and where one is on it are also important. But even more basic, one must know what conscience is and why it is so important. Most Catholics, even those who do not hesitate to proclaim the primacy of conscience, seem clueless about that too.

For those non-professionals interested in exploring the topic, I offer two online articles:

• A talk by Auxiliary Bishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney
• My own (brief) "The Primacy of Conscience: Real and Imagined."

I'm sure that other, still better pieces can be found out there, both online and in more traditional hard-copy form. I solicit suggestions.

Lenten Friday indulgence

No, I don't mean an all-you-can-eat fish fry. I mean that Catholics can get a plenary indulgence by doing something pretty simple today. I shall do it.

I said "simple," not "easy." To be actually received, indulgences plenary or partial require freedom from "all attachment to venial sin." Pray well, and good luck.