Just when I thought we were accomplishing something...

Despite its hothouse atmosphere, which can give its denizens too great a sense of self-importance, the blogosphere has been a net-positive influence on discourse in America. The fact that a wider variety of intelligent people get to say a wider variety of intelligent things than ever before, and to wider audiences than ever before, provides much-needed checks on and competition for the MSM. Assuming we don't collapse in economic chaos, the very nature of publishing can and will continue changing for the benefit of authors and audiences. E.g., many intelligent, orthodox neoCaths—the "mere Catholics" who are neither trad nor prog nor otherwise customers of the cafeteria—have turned their blogs into a venue for Truth, as well as their personal lives; most of them who deserve an audience probably would never have found one otherwise. Indeed, and in one of the many ironies of Catholic life, many neoCath bloggers are taken more seriously online, by more influential people, than in our own parishes and dioceses. And that's not just because we're too nerdy or quarrelsome to be taken seriously in the flesh: I know several of these people, including myself, well enough to know we're anything but socially handicapped. So I was basking in the glow of such accomplishment early today when, alas, I came upon these two news items:

• Anna Nicole Smith dies at 39


• The nomination of Bruce Bawer's clarion-call book Why Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West From Within as a finalist for the annual National Book Critics' Circle award is greeted with howls of outrage from the Left, which calls the book "racist." (Hat tip to Rod Dreher.)

Well, it seems our influence is even more limited than the non-bloggers generally think.

Admittedly, Smith's death was tragic even as her life was mostly farce. Like her idol Marilyn Monroe, she had looks and money most people can only dream of yet was riddled with problems that led to her early demise. I'm sure she was devastated by her 20-year-old son's death, in her own hospital room no less, last year; more tragic still, she leaves behind a 6-month-old baby whose paternity is still uncertain, probably because it was even to her. Her problems, not least her struggles with her weight, almost made her a sympathetic figure despite the deep vulgarity of how she usually carried on. Even I find myself sympathetic: in spite of everything, I think of her as a child of God whose life and death are not to be dismissed with a snort of contempt. I've even said a prayer for her. But really: is the death of a minor celebrity anywhere near as important as so much of what has been going on in the world, even on this very day? So one would think from the headlines. To be sure, the savvier media types know better. But they are under pressure to draw eyes and ears to the advertisers who pay their salaries; and from that viewpoint, the relevant fact is that more Americans care more to hear about Anna Nicole Smith's death and life than about the majority of weightier matters. Let's face it: to judge from ratings and print sales, more Americans care more about how Jennifer Aniston feels about Brad Pitt than about the real nature of the so-called "war on terror." They should be reading instead about the doleful European front in the new war with radical Islam. In such a culture, serious bloggers have their work cut out for them, especially given how outnumbered they are by unserious bloggers.

Sad as it is, that's just a problem at the level of popular culture. Sadder still is the reaction of secular-liberal academia to the nomination of Bawer's much-needed book.

They call the book and its author "racist" even though he's a bona fide liberal, an openly gay American expatriate living in Europe, and even though militant Islam, which Europe allows in the name of "tolerance" and "multiculturalism" to threaten its liberties from within, is not limited to any one race or ethnic group. Some Islamists are Arabs; some are black Africans; some are Persians; some are from South Asia; as Western intelligence agencies are learning, one can find militant Islamists in every race and in every corner of the globe. So why is it "racist" to issue a clarion call to Europeans about what such people are doing in their very midst? For a long time, of course, the term 'racist' has served as just the handiest epithet to throw when one wants to win a debate by discrediting one's opponent; but why want to debate and discredit the Bawers, when all they're saying is the obvious?

This is where it gets even worse. As Bawer points out on his own blog:

One of the most disgraceful developments of our time is that many Western authors and intellectuals who pride themselves on being liberals have effectively aligned themselves with an outrageously illiberal movement that rejects equal rights for women, that believes gays and Jews should be executed, that supports the coldblooded murder of one's own children in the name of honor, etc., etc. These authors and intellectuals respond to every criticism of that chilling fundamentalist code – however cogent and correct the criticism may be – by hurling the "R" word.

And he concludes:

Some people think it's terrific for writers to expose the offenses and perils of religious fundamentalism – just as long as it's Christian fundamentalism.

And Rod Dreher, whose snobbery and Catholic-bashing can get tiresome, gets it just right with this commentary (I've added the emphasis):

This is how the left works: yell "bigotry" to silence critics who confront them with arguments they don't wish to have. In Holland, Pim Fortuyn -- an openly gay hedonistic libertarian with a wicked sense of humor -- ran for prime minister on a platform that in large part warned the Dutch that they were going to lose their liberal democracy if they didn't confront the growing forces of Islamic extremism within their country's immigrant population. The hysterical left -- which is to say, the media and academic establishments in Holland -- called him a fascist, and left it at that. Fortuyn was so far to the left he made Barney Frank look like the Queen Mother, but none of that mattered to the left-wing Dutch establishment.

I honestly don't get this. Shouldn't liberals be the most concerned about Islamic fundamentalism, given that the things they profess to value are the first things they would lose under Islamist pressure? It's hard to avoid the conclusion that this sort of liberal hates political conservatives and orthodox Christians more than he loves his own liberty. And he wishes to cling desperately to his own self-image as a defender of the poor, oppressed minorities, even when some of those poor, oppressed minorities would just as soon see him and his kind swinging from the gallows.

It isn't just hard to avoid said conclusion: in many particular cases, it's impossible. This is why I've never been able to be a real leftist, despite my occasional agreement with left-wing criticisms of this-or-that government policy or cultural prejudice. It seems the Left hates those who defend what it enjoys even more than those who would destroy it. It's suicidal. It's a death-wish from hell. Like all things from hell, it hates traditional Christianity the most.

But how many Catholic bloggers are saying that? I sometimes think we get too caught up in intramural issues of our own, such as the liturgy wars, then with what is really happening in the world. We need to be more concerned about spiritual combat: first in ourselves, and in the Church certainly, but not to the neglect of the forms it takes in the wider world. It's all of a piece. If we apply ourselves from that perspective, we'll deserve the attention we not-so-secretly desire.

The filioque issue narrowed

Often our vocations are not what we would have thought they were. On this blog, the posts which get by far the most attention are those addressing issues between Catholicism and Orthodoxy; thus I find myself having to accept dialogue on them as my ecclesial vocation—or at least avocation—for the time being. And the most discussed among them seems to be dat ol' bone of contention, the filioque.

Most of my vast readership knows that I've written fairly substantially about that issue before. (To find my articles thereon, just do an internal blog search on the phrase.) While I believe the doctrine is true as formally defined by the Catholic Church, I have at the same time made clear my belief that Rome's insertion of the phrase, a millennium ago, into the creed recited in the Latin Church was a needless blow to church unity. I have also made clear what ought to be uncontroversial: that rehashing old debates, whether about the phrase's insertion or the substance of the doctrine itself, is worse than useless. My interest in the topic is mostly to come up with a construal of it that is compatible with what both sides are dogmatically committed to affirming. And I am more convinced than ever that such is quite possible.

The longest thread ever seen on this blog was a combox on the latest article I've done on the issues dividing the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Unsurprisingly, over 50 of the comments were about the filioque. In his last comment therein, directed to me, the Orthodox theologian-in-training "Photios" Jones wrote (words between quotation marks are mine):

Mike,

"As my earlier filioque article implied, to say that the Father breathes forth the Spirit "as" Father of the Son entails that the Spirit is caused by the Father..."

Okay. I think we've agreed here before. The Father causes the Spirit as Father of a Son.

"...Father of the Son entails that the Spirit is caused by the Father just in case the Father both generates..."

Let me ask a few question here: Are you implying that generation is a necessary condition for Spiration? I would also like to know if the reverse is true: is spiration a necessary condition of generation given that the Spirit is also "Spirit of the Father?" Or perhaps, you are only wishing to state the "condition" simply as the taxis (trinitarian order) relationship of the Persons?

"and has a perichoretic relationship with the Son.."

Same thing: Is perichoresis (of Father and Son) a necessary condition for Spiration? This is where I have the biggest problem because the perichoresis is absolutely in common between Father, Son, Holy Spirit. It would seem that for Them to have the same perichoretic nature, that perichoresis is dependent on spiration instead. Are you placing a middle [natural] attribute between Father-Son and Spirit as follows:Father - Son ---perichoresis--- Holy Spirit?

Given what I take to be the only legitimate purpose in discussing the filioque ecumenically, Photios' questions are fair. Herein I shall do my best to answer them.

The generation of the Son and the spiration of the Holy Spirit by the Father, which are the primordial instances of ekporeusis, are necessary conditions of each other. The Father not only breathes forth the Spirit as Father of the Son; he begets the Son as the one who breathes forth the Spirit. But even though we may thus say that the Holy Spirit "proceeds" (procedit) from the Father and the Son "as from one principle" (Lyons 1274: tamquam ex uno principio), we may not say that the Son is begotten by the Father and the Holy Spirit, as if it could be said that the Son is the Son of the Holy Spirit as well as the Father. We may and should say, however, that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father and the Son. This implies something about the order (taxis) of the Persons: the existence of the Spirit depends on that of the Son in a way in which the existence of the Son is not dependent on the Spirit. Although the existence of each is a necessary condition of that of the other, there's something more involved which would explain why the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father and the Son but the Son is not the Son of the Father and the Holy Spirit.

That something, I submit, is the perichoresis of the Persons: their mutual indwelling in love. That the Spirit is Spirit of the Father and the Son does not mean merely that it is only as Father of the Son that the Father breathes forth the Spirit; it also means that a necessary condition of the breathing forth of the Spirit is that there be a perichoretic, and thus "energetic," relationship between the Father and the Son. Some Latin theologians have suggested that the Spirit just is that energetic relationship between Father and Son; that, at any rate, is what some have meant by following Augustine's dictum that the Spirit is the "bond of love" between the Father and the Son. The difficulty with that is not so much with what it says as with what it doesn't say: it does not afford clear grounds for presenting the Spirit as hypostasis, not merely energeia. Of course we can and must say that the perichoresis of all the Persons, like their existence, is eternal and thus unalterable, so that the perichoresis of all the Persons is logically equivalent to the existence of all the Persons. But that, in turn, doesn't capture the difference between the ekporeusis of the Spirit and the begetting of the Son. The Cappodocian Fathers were indeed most reluctant even to allow speculation about the difference. So, Houston, we still have a problem.

What I offer as a tentative pointer to a solution is this: the difference in taxis I've described is accounted for by whatever-it-is that accounts for why the Spirit is Spirit of the Father and the Son but the Son is not the Son of the Father and the Holy Spirit. I do not profess to know the difference; and I suspect that, even if somebody knew it mystically or by some special revelation, they would not know how to state it and would find it almost blasphemous to try. Perhaps a metaphor of St. Maximus' would help: the Father speaks his thought by begetting the Word and breathing forth the Holy Spirit. The "breath" of God's self-expression thus has a certain order in which the Son comes before the Spirit, even though the former does not and cannot exist without the latter.

From hell to heresy

In the December and January issues of First Things, theologians Alyssa Pitstick and Edward Oakes, SJ debated the question whether the late, great Hans urs von Balthasar was heretical for saying that Christ's descent ad infernum, professed in the Apostles' Creed, meant that he went to hell for the sake of our salvation. Like many such debates, that one seemed to me largely a matter of definition—in this case, of 'hell'. But eventually and equally typically, it turns on the definition of 'heresy' itself.

If one assumes that the term infernum always and only refers to that permanent state of alienation from God incurred by those who die reprobate, then vB was only being sloppy, not heretical. For he was saying something that he didn't believe any more than any other Christian does. To me, though, vB seemed to be arguing only that the Paschal Mystery had to include some experience on Jesus' part of radical alienation from the Father; that experience, he suggested, began on the Cross and was consummated, but only temporarily, when his soul went ad infernum. Pitstick found such a proposal incoherent, on the ground that one cannot experience, even subjectively, an alienation that ex hypothesi never existed; but I must say I find her arguments to that effect unpersuasive even apart from Oakes' replies. One can simply say that the experience of what it's like to be alienated from God suffices as the soteriologically effective kind of alienation. To the extent they have merit, Pitstick's objections better indicate how certain things should be said than what, in the end, we are permitted to say. The object lesson here extends further.

Pitstick and Oakes are now debating what heresy itself consists in. Far more than the original one, this matter is of great interest within that contentious portion of the Church known as the Catholic blogosphere.

Once again, my sympathies are more with Oakes; but as before, and as physicist Stephen Barr points out, he is being annoyingly sloppy where she is being precise. For instance, I largely accept Oakes' informal account of how the debate with Protestantism about justification "raged inside the ancient precincts of the Church" throughout the Counter-Reformation. He is right on the mark to point out that St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Doctor of the Church, expressed such truth as there was in the then-usual Lutheran understanding of justification. Thus:

I am very happy that I am going to heaven. But when I think of this word of the Lord, “I shall come soon and bring with me my recompense to give to each according to his works,” I tell myself that this will be very embarrassing for me, because I have no works. … Very well! He will render to me according to His works for His own sake.

And, in prayer:

In the evening of this life I shall appear before Thee with empty hands because I do not ask Thee, Lord, to count my works. All our just acts have blemishes in Thine eyes. Therefore I want to wrap myself up again in Thy justice, and to receive from Thy love the eternal possession of Thee Thyself.

As Oakes points out:

Not surprisingly, these passages were suppressed from the first edition of her writings (edited by her fellow nuns at the Carmel in Lisieux) but were restored by more scientifically inclined scholars in the 1950s. These restored passages brought about a revolution in the interpretation of Thérèse, showing her to be a theologian of remarkable depth and uncanny insight, though unschooled in every way except in the crucible of her own experience. In fact, it was these very passages that led Pope John Paul II to declare her a Doctor of the Church.

This is the sort of thing that helps to explain why we could get the Lutheran-Catholic "Joint Declaration" on justification. And it's not the only thing that makes me share Oakes' reluctance to call Protestants—and a fortiori, the Orthodox—"heretics."

According to Vatican II's Unitatis Redintegratio, Catholics may not presume most non-Catholic Christians to be morally responsible for rejecting, or at least doubting, distinctively Catholic doctrines. But when we use the word 'heretic' for any particular individual or group, that's exactly what we're heard as doing even when we don't intend to do it. And so the word 'heretic' should be used very sparingly if at all for non-Catholics.

But of course there is such a thing as heresy, and it's not an endangered species. Some Catholics, for example, believing what they know to be incompatible with what the Catholic Church teaches as de fide, are guilty of heresy in the formal, canonical sense of the term: "the obstinate denial or doubt, after baptism, of a truth which must be believed by divine and catholic faith" (CIC §751). The Church does not need to rule, juridically, that they are heretics in order that we may know them as such; such a ruling is merely useful for ensuring that use of the H-word be taken as more than just an expression of private opinion. A bigger problem, though, is that countless Catholics, though not heretics in the formal sense, are material heretics. I.e., some of their beliefs are objectively incompatible with de fide teaching; but since they don't know that, they can't be held subjectively accountable for heresy. Here use of the H-word is even more inadvisable; for it generates emotional responses that make it all the harder for the real truth to be heard.

Nonetheless and etymologically, the H-word is quite apt for describing the attitude of "cafeteria Catholicism." It comes from the Greek hairesis, meaning "choice." Heresy is choosing to believe this but not that tenet of what is, objectively, the faith-once-delivered; or, in the consumerist American version, it is to choose a little of this, a little of that, and none of the rest. And so, even though the present social ethos in the Church makes the H-word largely unusable, perhaps it's time for that to change. It would be part-and-parcel of the general restoration of clarity that is so desperately needed.

The vocations solution

It ain't marketing. It ain't scholarships. It ain't even broadening the applicant pool to include the usual suspects. God is calling plenty of young men to the priesthood. So why aren't we seeing more of them?

Fr. Philip Powell, OP, has an excellent homily up on a theme suggested by today's Gospel in the Latin Church, which have the apostles called to be "fishers of men." In his inimitable style, he well explains why some young men who are called to the priesthood are put off:

I hear the question all the time: “Father, what can we do to get more priests? Is it allowing priests to marry? Ordaining women? What do we do?” Yesterday, I spent the whole day with the UD Serra Club on retreat. We read sections of JPII’s Pastores dabo vobis, his document on priestly formation. Our Holy Father accurately diagnosed the vocations crisis as both a cultural disease and an ecclesial malaise. In the culture, we are more apt to hear the gospels of corporate marketing, faux individualism, narcissistic prattle, relativist and subjectivist gibberish, hyper-sexed panting, the near-fundamentalist gospel of scientism and rationalism, and the always destructive and fear-mongering extremes of feminism. Each of these, just as dark spirits always do, specialize in digging under the faith of those called to serve and weakening the foundations of trust and the desire to sacrifice.

Corporate marketing begs us to worship mass produced objects by convincing us that each of us is a unique consumer, all the while shaping us into a corporate eater, a corporate buyer—just like millions of others. Narcissistic individualism preaches the power of ME, the source and summit for MY universe, a universe where I select my sounds, my tastes, my textures, my flavors, my images and a universe where I am ME and you are (if you in fact exist) you are here to mirror me to me. Relativism and subjectivism are routine postures for those who know that the truth of the matter doesn’t report what they want to hear. There is no argument here, only a sly redefinition what “truth” is and the casual dismissal of anything so medieval. Rationalism, and its religion scientism, work to kill the supernatural so that the bond btw Creator and creature is broken. And feminism in its extreme forms adopts most of these other “ism’s” and undermines the natural, created order of sexual differences. To even utter such a sentence is blasphemy in most churches and universities these days!

These are the dark spirits that are tearing our vocation nets; these are the demons of the age that turn our young men’s heads and whisper fear and loathing in their ears. How do you say yes to sacrificial service to the people of God when on a daily basis for 18, 22, 28 years you have heard that you, as you are, you are the center of the universe; powerful as a purchaser, truly unique as a consumer; virile as a man only to the degree that you are sexual; educated only to the degree that you are committed to scientific-rational inquiry; and deeply afraid of saying anything remotely critical of the feminist dogma that “to be equal” is “to be the same.” With all of that riding on your back, you’d strain the vocations net too!

Such is our culture, which happens to be inhabited by the laity, who are called to leaven and transform it.

Fr. Powell accordingly calls on the laity, in their own lives, to model what's needed: sacrifice for others in a spirit of love, hope, and truth. Many of us have failed egregiously in that; no surprise, since our culture does not reward it much with what is generally considered reward. So the solution to the vocations shortage is not to jazz up recruitment campaigns or improve the financing of seminary education. And it surely is not to ordain women or even married men. It is for all of us to put the Kingdom of God first, by how we live. We cannot expect priests to make us holy; only when we live out the priesthood of believers ourselves in humble, unordained fashion, will we get "enough" and holy enough priests. The solution to the vocations problem is to be priests ourselves.

That's the vocation I know I have, and I'm working with God to remove the numerous obstacles to my answering it.

The problem of evil for atheists

Everybody who has studied philosophy, or done the far easier thing and got angry with God, knows that theists can and must do grapple with what is called "the problem of evil" as an objection to theism. What's usually overlooked is that atheists have a problem here too.

Dr. Alan Rhoda presents it as the following trilemma:

Either (a) the atheist affirms that there is objective evil or (b) he affirms that there is none or (c) he remains agnostic on the matter.

If (a) then the atheist is committed to an objective standard of goodness, but whence does this standard of goodness come from?

If (b), then the atheist flies in the face of moral commonsense and gives up any objective basis for moral complaint.

If (c), then the atheist has the burden of explaining how it is possible that there be objective evil and also flies in the face of moral commonsense, which takes it as obvious that some things (e.g., torturing a baby for fun) are wrong.

That's a fairly clear example of a broader strategy I developed during innumerable college debates and bull sessions: try to get the atheist to paint himself into a corner he doesn't want to stay in. In that and later, more disciplined experience, I have found that most atheists eschew (b) as a matter of common sense. The smarter ones also eschew (c) because they don't want to be seen as failing to see the obvious. Which leaves us with the corner most of them, if they're sincere, will choose to paint themselves into: (a).

Here's what Rhoda says about that:

If, like nearly all modern Western atheists, he believes that the physical universe is all there is, then it is really hard to see where objective moral laws could come from. What arrangement of matter, energy, and space-time could give rise to a moral obligation? Of course, he can try to give an evolutionary explanation of why we have the moral intuitions we do, but at most that explains why we think that some things are moral and others aren't. It does nothing to explain how something could be moral or immoral.

While all that is perfectly true, the atheist has still some plausible options here. I know several, or think I do. But I invite suggestions and will post again on this topic once I receive some.

HT to Bill Vallicella.

The pilgrim's (small 'p') progress

Well, my vast and faithful readership, I took Tuesday and Wednesday off from work to move my possessions into storage and rest myself before vacating my old place. Its lease could be and was terminated at the landlord's pleasure, with a month's notice, but I wasn't able to save enough to pay both deposit and rent on a new place of the sort I could reach without sidestepping junk cars and young men with suspicious bulges in their jackets. So I've been staying at a cheap hotel for several days while resuming my normally insane work schedule, which this week has entailed delivering special-order auto parts on third shift. Although the room's showerhead and clock radio are quite unpredictable, there are no detectable insects—which is more than I can say about a few hotels I've stayed at in my time—and there is cable, sort of, as well as heat. As one who has raised complaining to a fine art, I could complain; but there's no good reason to.

I'll be crashing with a friend near Belmont Abbey for the next few days while I ponder my options. By a week from now, thanks to the generosity of other friends as well as hard work, I'll have enough cash to get a room somewhere in town. But I'm not sure I want to. After taxes and child support, I live on about half of what I earn; on my current job as a courier, that means I need to work at least 60 hours a week to keep a roof over my head. Often I get that, but sometimes I don't; because of the holidays, I didn't. (I was only able to get my hotel room because First Things paid me more than I expected for my book review. Thanks, Fr. Neuhaus.) Even when I get enough hours, their distribution is impossible to predict; hence I cannot commit to a second job with fixed hours or, more generally, plan my time or budget my money. My life has to change, and change radically, if only so that it can regain enough order to enable me to re-establish myself professionally.

Communion and Liberation, of which I am proud to be an active member, is more heavily concentrated in Washington than in any other American city. I love it there, having taught at CUA in 1989-90 while staying at the Dominican House of Studies. I've been discussing with the CL "responsibles" the possibility of moving back. In the DC area, somebody like me would have far more opportunities than in North Carolina, where I've never had any luck landing a professional-level job. The cielinis seem more than willing to help on the job and housing fronts, but this is not the sort of decision one makes hastily unless a plum awaits, which it isn't. Even though this pilgrim definitely feels heaven sustaining him, he still needs everybody's prayers so that the right decision is made at the right time.

Thanks for hanging in there with me. I will post tomorrow on more usual and less personal matters.

Please bear with me...

My blogging will be probably be sporadic for the next several weeks as I search for a new place to live. My month-to-month lease ran out at my current place and I don't have quite enough saved yet for a new one. Still, while my computer is in storage I will have Internet access at the Belmont Abbey library, when they're open and I'm free.

Please pray that I get my situation regularized.

The Indian of the Gaps?

Over at Uncommon Descent, an "intelligent-design" blog, Barry Arrington has posted a perfectly silly reaction to my review, in the current issue of First Things, of John Haught's book Is Nature Enough? Meaning and Truth in an Age of Science. Lest I gain a reputation for saying perfectly silly things I didn't say, I believe I should respond.

According to Arrington, I wrote that "agency cannot show up within the layers of scientific explanation, for to do so would invoke the rightly dreaded God of the gaps" (I have added the emphasis). Now if that is what I had actually written, I would deserve the ridicule and other pummelling that Arrington and his combox contributors give me. I would be the worst sort of eliminative materialist, a là Daniel Dennett or Patricia Churchland. But that isn't what I wrote, and even a cursory reading of my review would show that I believe science and belief in "agency," not only human agency but divine, are perfectly compatible.

Here's what I actually wrote (again, I'm adding the emphasis): "God as final cause cannot show up within the layers of scientific explanation, for to do so would invoke the rightly dreaded God of the gaps." Of course I admit that "agency" in some generic sense, and in some cases in the sense of design, can and must show up in scientific explanation. Indeed, scientific explanation is itself an instance of agency with design. What I wrote is perfectly compatible with that. All I'm suggesting, unoriginally, is that God as designer of the universe as a whole does not and should not figure in scientific explanations—for God is not an object of scientific knowledge. As a theist, of course, I firmly believe that God as primary efficient cause is what ultimately accounts for the existence of the universe, and God as final cause is what ultimately accounts for why the universe observable by natural science is structured as it is. But that is a metaphysical position, not a scientific one. It is a position compatible with natural science, and thus not excluded by natural science; but neither is it dictated by natural science.

I must say that I have a hard time understand the hostility of ID advocates to such a position. I believe that science alone cannot answer the sorts of questions that theism does. I just don't think that the true answers are scientific. They can and should make use of scientific results, but in so doing they pick up where science leaves off. Obviously, some scientific advocates of ID demur. But their disagreement with me is philosophical, not scientific.

The (belated) feast of St. Thomas Aquinas

I overlooked this feast on its correct day, the 28th, because that was a Sunday this year and I was quite taken with the Liturgy of the Word for Sunday. But I think it especially appropriate to honor my greatest intellectual mentor with the following words from Pope Benedict XVI, who did not forget the feast on its correct day. (Emphasis added.)

Dear Brothers and Sisters:

The liturgical calendar remembers today St. Thomas Aquinas, great doctor of the Church. With his charism of philosopher and theologian, he offers a valid model of harmony between reason and faith, dimensions of the human spirit, which are fully realized when they meet and dialogue.

According to the thought of St. Thomas, human reason, to say it as such, "breathes," that is, it moves on a wide, open horizon in which it can experience the best of itself. Nonetheless, when man limits himself to think only of material and experimental objects, he closes himself to the questions of life, about himself and about God, impoverishing himself.

The relationship between faith and reason is a serious challenge for the present prevailing culture in the Western world, and it is precisely for this reason that our beloved John Paul II wrote an encyclical, which was entitled precisely "Fides et Ratio" -- "Faith and Reason." I also took up this argument recently, in the address to the University of Regensburg.

In reality, the modern development of the sciences brings countless positive effects, which must always be acknowledged. At the same time, however, it must be admitted that the tendency to consider true only that which can be experienced constitutes a limitation for human reason and produces a terrible schizophrenia, evident to all, because of which rationalism and materialism, and hypertechnology and unbridled instincts, coexist.

It is urgent, therefore, to rediscover in a new way human rationality open to the light of the divine 'Logos' and to its perfect revelation that is Jesus Christ, Son of God made man. When Christian faith is authentic it does not mortify freedom or human reason; then, why should faith and reason be afraid of one another, if on meeting one another and dialoguing they can express themselves in the best way?

Faith implies reason and perfects it, and reason, illuminated by faith, finds the strength to rise to knowledge of God and of spiritual realities. Human reason loses nothing when it is open to the contents of faith; what is more, the latter calls for its free and conscious adherence.

With an amply extended wisdom, St. Thomas Aquinas established a prolific confrontation with the Arabic and Jewish thought of his time, in such a way that he is considered as an always-present teacher of dialogue with other cultures and religious. He knew to introduce this Christian synthesis between reason and faith that represents a precious patrimony for Western civilization, to which recourse can be taken also today to dialogue effectively with the great cultural and religious traditions of the East and South of the world.

Let us pray so that Christians, especially those in the academic and cultural realm, are more able to express the reasonable character of their faith and to witness to it with a dialogue inspired by love. We ask this gift of our Lord through the intercession of St. Thomas Aquinas, and above all Mary, Seat of Wisdom.

The Gospel according to St. Narcissus

From Fr. Philip Powell, OP's homily for today:

Praise be to me and me alone!

My wretched Slaves and convenient Tools, you have heard that love is patient and kind, forgiving and humble; that those who love seek the good for the Other and rejoice in the truth. You have heard many things about the world that will not serve you well. And among these is the foolish sentiment that love is anything but Selfishness writ large across the Ego—a passion that will not be saddled and ridden like a domesticated tiger but loosely bridled and allowed its furious run. Love is impatient for love in return. Love is cruel because it must end. Love cannot be generous or polite. It is a passion, obsessive, possessive, and rude. Love is a grandiose tale, a violent power, a torrent of abusive lies aimed at your tender heart.Love has a temper and most certainly nurses hurt. Love will bear nothing, believe nothing, hope nothing, and endure even less. Love fails. My face in a gilded mirror tells the truth of love: distrust, despair, delusion. Love is vengeance on the weak for being vulnerable to need.Need nothing, want nothing. Be strong! And heal yourself. Enlighten yourself. Give yourself peace. Save yourself. Build idols to your silenced need and keep control. Finally, Slaves and Tools, remember and act: love is a desperate ruse, a way to see you bowed. If you must love, love my god…love Me.

That reflects not what many people say, but which many people, including many ostensible Christians, really believe. Read the whole homily, and believe the opposite of the above. It's not as easy as you may think. But it can be done.

Buffaloed

I have called Alexandra Pelosi "the perfect living synecdoche of AmChurch." But if she is that, it is only as an individual. If one is looking for an event that serves as well, indeed better, one need look no further that what happened at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Buffalo, NY on Sunday the 21st. You can read the details for yourself. Whether you're Catholic or not, the event perfectly encapsulates what's wrong with the Church in the U.S., of which the sex-abuse scandal and its devastating aftermath are but one symptom, albeit a major one.

I'm tempted to say we need to get matters of etiquette out of the way first. Yes, Deacon Tom McDonnell was wrong to confront a particular individual present at Mass, in this case Congressman Brian Higgins, in a homily. There are good reasons why that sort of thing just isn't done, and I do not gainsay them. Yes, Higgins was wrong to walk out of Mass in protest, and wrong for the reasons he himself gave. Higgins apologized and McDonnell will doubtless be disciplined. It was bad form all around. But much more significant is the fact most of the attention, including that of the local bishop, seemed to center more on how the event made everybody feel—i.e., bad—than on the content of the deacon's message. The applicable etiquette is designed, among other things, to protect people's feelings, which it should; but to carry on as though the event's emotional fallout is its most important aspect is itself wrong.

The most important aspect is whether what the deacon said is true. Unassailably, it is. But that does not seem to be uppermost in the minds of those directly involved, including Bishop Kmiec's. That's the symptom of what's wrong.

A faith community in which feelings trump truths is sick. We should look to bishops to help cure that disease. But in this case the bishop is part of the problem. He has said: "It is my belief that in situations like this, we are more effective when we have substantive, one-on-one conversations with individuals outside the context of the Mass." While true, that is also irrelevant. If Bishop Kmiec has indeed had such a conversation with Congressman Higgins, which we don't know because nobody is saying, what has it accomplished? It has had no visible result; if it's had any result at all, it's been to make Higgins all the less excusable for seeking to fund something, i.e. embryonic stem-cell research, the Church says is intrinsically evil. His culpability is thus increased. I don't think it can seriously be maintained that his salvation aided by that. So, who loves the man more: the one interested in protecting his feelings to the point of being unwilling to call him, concretely, to account? Or the one who calls him publicly and specifically to account?

Kmiec's attitude is the usual one among American bishops. Not even Archbishop Wuerl of Washington will withhold the Eucharist from anti-life CINO politicians; no, he prefers the way of "teaching," as does Kmiec. But for the reason I've suggested, that is not, objectively, the loving path. So I can explain it only as a desire not to rock the boat. That's the problem across the board. It is the problem which explains why all the sex abuse scandal was covered up for so long. It is the problem which explains why the Church evangelizes adults so little in comparison with the evangelical and pentecostal churches, many of whose adherents are former Catholics. It is the problem which explains a great many things. Until it is effectively addressed, the Church in this country will not regain her moral credibility with the public at large.

The tightrope of evangelism

Some neocon wag once said of the first President Bush: "He manages to steer a middle course between the Scyllla of principle and the Charybdis of pragmatism." Sometimes it seems that many informed Catholics, especially the clergy, are into doing just that. The way many American bishops try to justify giving communion to politicians who formally cooperate in abortion is a good example. But there's a still more basic challenge here.

Tom Kreitzberg of Disputations has been musing of late about an apparent dilemma that I've been confronted with periodically in my catechetical and apologetic work. In one post he observes:

It's as though we can't find any ground between, "Non-Roman Catholics are damned, so we need to convert everyone," and, "Non-Roman Catholics aren't necessarily damned, so we don't need to convert anyone."

In another post soon after, he calls our attention to a 1964 sermon given by then-Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, in which the latter said: "Anyone who looks on the loss of salvation for others as the condition, as it were, on which he serves Christ will in the end only be able to turn away grumbling, because that kind of reward is contrary to the loving-kindness of God." Tom responds:

Fr. Ratzinger had in mind the grumblers who resent sharing salvation with non-Catholics. But what about the sluggards who are delighted by the thought, because of all that evangelization work it saves them?

Here I want to share my response to the problem.

The key is to recognize, with Vatican II, that the Catholic Church is the "sacrament" of unity with God for all humanity. The Church as Mystical Body of Christ is thus the ordinary sign and instrument of salvation, so that being in full communion with her puts one in a better position to belong to Christ than one would be otherwise, ceteris paribus. But as Vatican II also taught, the salvific work of the Holy Spirit is not limited to the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church. All the baptized are in some degree of communion with her; those brought up as non-Catholics cannot be held responsible for not being in full communion; and it would be unwise to assume that most people who voluntarily leave the Church know just what it is they're leaving, so that they too could be held culpable. Moreover, since the Passover of Christ offers to all people grace enough for salvation, the unbaptized can belong to him, and therefore to his Mystical Body the Church, if their responses to grace are such that they would seek baptism if all involuntary obstacles to their knowledge of its necessity were removed. Yet the grace to which the unbaptized can respond so salubriously is only offered to people through said Mystical Body, which is precisely why she is the "ordinary" sign and instrument of salvation. Hence, people who live without being in some recognizable form of communion with her are only saved by extraordinary means; by the very nature of the extraordinary, that puts them, in the words of then-Cardinal Ratzinger, in a "gravely deficient" position.

Accordingly, while we may and should hope for the final salvation of non-Christians, we cannot responsibly presume that it will often occur. It is a work of charity to evangelize so as to try to remedy their situation. But it would also be contrary to charity simply to write them all off if or when evangelization is not done or doesn't seem to bear visible fruit; and of course it would be prideful for Catholics to assume they've got final salvation locked up unless they do something particularly ugly. "Many of the last shall be first, and many of the first shall be last." We must always evangelize, beginning and ending with ourselves; but we must not presume that those who haven't heard the Word at all, or can't hear it because of our sins, have no salvific relationship with the Logos. All we must presume is that they don't have the advantages that make us all the more accountable.

I don't think that walking such a tightrope makes the mistake that Bush I did, or was said to do. I think it's the only logical conclusion to draw from what the Church teaches.

Feminism and abortion: a vignette from the March

Two Washington Post reporters noticed this awkward moment at the rally for January 23's March for Life in Washington, D.C.:

As the sun set in front of the Supreme Court at the end of the march, a group of women took to the microphone, one after another, holding black signs that said: "I regret my abortion." . . . As the women spoke, some in English and some in Spanish, their words were interrupted by about 100 abortion rights advocates linking arms and holding signs saying: "Trust women."

Teresa of Blog by the Sea asks: Which women?

Quite.

I suppose feminists would reply that we should trust women to make the best "choices" regarding abortion, whichever choices those turn out to be. One celebrates her abortion? Fine. Another regrets it? That's fine too. But such putative moral equivalency is sustainable only if what is chosen matters far less than the freedom to make the choice; and that's precisely what's at issue, is it not? So, once again, which women do we trust? The ones who think their own freedom is what ultimately matters most, and is thus more important than the life they've helped to create? Or the ones who have come to believe that what they chose, namely death for their children, does not begin to be justified by their having chosen it?

There's another problem here too, and it's almost as big. How many feminists have you heard say "trust men" about choices which have, traditionally, been made mostly by men? You don't have to answer that; the question answers itself. And are these women prepared to allow men, who have a lot to do with begetting children, any veto about abortion if they don't want their children aborted? For that matter, are they willing to allow men to choose to escape child support for born children they wanted aborted? If you say yes to either, I've got a fertile patch of Sahara sand to sell you.

You catch my drift. Feminist support for abortion, and for most of its other goals these days, is becoming more and more openly based on the premise that women are more trustworthy than men, at least about the matters that matter most. As in Victorian times, it's all about the moral superiority of women, which of course entitles them to greater rights and privileges than men. Don't let feminists tell you they've been liberated from Victorian mores. They just want to bring back, and back with the power of the state, a Victorian more we really should be liberated from.

Looking for a good synecdoche?

Thanks to Mark Shea, I just read a news story about Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of that
Pelosi. Here are a few tidbits, which only professional Catholics (as distinct from Catholics who are also professionals) would find juicy:

Pelosi was already in an introspective mood, re-examining her own spirituality as she approached parenthood. When she completed the documentary less than two weeks before giving birth, Pelosi says she had a "personal revelation: I have to take my son to church." A baptism is planned. "Because if I don't, he will be called 'unchurched' and (those are the people) most susceptible to some of the more extreme religions later in the life," Pelosi says. "You have to give your children something that they can reject if they want to."

And:

"I was not trying to get into a political debate with the evangelicals about their belief," Pelosi says. "They interpret the Bible the way they want to." But Pelosi was quick to add, "I don't interpret it to say the things that they're saying it says. I don't believe that the Bible says we shall be gay-bashers."

Learning about that divide was a shock to the woman who spent her childhood in progressive Catholic schools. "We were taught just to accept people, that was just a given," Pelosi says. "I don't ever remember being told at Convent of the Sacred Heart that gay was wrong. They never even told us there was anything wrong with abortion. They were just choices.

So there we have it. Alexandra wants her son baptized so that there will be something for him to reject when he's old enough. And she was never taught that "gay" was wrong or even that "abortion" is wrong. They're just "choices." Her mother must be proud.

Alexandra Pelosi affords the perfect living synecdoche of AmChurch. If you didn't grow up Catholic during the last half of the twentieth century, all you have to do to know the nature, and the fruits, of "progressive Catholicism" is listen to her and her story. Are you evangelized by such an example? Of course you're not. If you're impressed all the same, is that because you care passionately about the truth?

This is not a religion anybody would die for. It is a religion destined to die. Its dilution of truth in a soup of relativism and individualism proceeds apace by the generation. For the most part, the Nancy Pelosis produce only the Alexandra Pelosis. Still, I am comforted by the fact that progs, be they lay people or clerics, are not good at reproducing themselves. Alexandra had her first child at 36; he may well end up being her only child. And he will not be evangelized by his parents' example or beliefs. As of now her name is legion, but it will cease to be within her son's lifetime. The Catholics left will be those who, unlike her, know and care about what it means to be Catholic.

Iran and spiritual warfare

I know, I just got through posting about Iraq and spiritual warfare. These two posts should really have been one, but I didn't think of Iran until I saw this.

You got it, folks. The Thug-in-Chief, pictured left, predicts that the United States as well as Israel will "soon" be "destroyed." It is known of course that Ahmadi Nezhad subscribes to a Shi'ite form of millenarianism according to which the return of the Mahdi is now imminent. He also seems determined to stir up enough trouble to create what he takes to be the conditions for that. He probably thinks the Mahdi will destroy the U.S. after Israel is destroyed by its neighbors as a warmup. I'm not familiar enough with the bizarre theology of all this to know why the TIC thinks the Mahdi needs a little preliminary help from his friends, and I'm not disposed to acquire the necessary expertise. But in the final analysis, the TIC's intellectual development hardly matters. What matters is what spirit animates him and what he proposes to do.

It gets ugly indeed: the rush to nuclear armament, the concrete as well as rhetorical support of Hezbollah and Hamas, the funding and inflitration of Iraqi Shi'ite militias, the hosting of a Holocaust-denial conference, and other actions doubtless confined to the shadowy world of covert warfare. When he says he wants to see Israel "wiped off the map," we should not only take him at his word but expect him to do something about it. Most of the facts I just cited are what he's doing about it. He's got plenty of oil money for such mischief, and our adventure in Iraq has actually made things easier for him. Moreover, I have read stories, purportedly based on sources in U.S. and Israeli intelligence, saying that this man was a major torturer, executioner, and terrorist during the Khomeni days. I don't know that that's true, but I'm inclined to believe it. If the TIC were just a psycho, the Iranian clergy under the current Supreme Leader would not have pulled out all the stops to put him into the presidency. He's not just a psycho we must tolerate until he does something crazy enough to get himself removed by his associates. He represents the thinking and values of the ayatollahs who ultimately rule Iran. He's a religious fanatic with real and growing power.

If this situation were an isolated deviation in an otherwise stable region, there would be no cause for great concern. We could just wait it out. But it's not.

• Iraq is a theater of spiritual warfare that explains the nature of the physical war.
• Israel blew it in the brief Lebanon war last summer, when the hesitancy and ineptitude of its leadership ended up leaving Hezbollah, also pledged to Israel's destruction, stronger than it was before. That is why Hezbollah now leads a determined effort in the streets to force out Lebanon's democratic, pro-Western government.
• Despite the growing poverty and chaos in the Palestinian territories, Hamas continues to attack not only Israelis but Fatah, which I doubt they would have the confidence to do without Iranian support.
• Using Iranian money, Syria is buying the most sophisticated conventional weapons in the world from the Russians, who will sell almost anything to almost anybody for a high enough price. And this after it's become clear to all the world that Assad murders his opponents in Lebanon.
• Despite its reverse in Somalia several weeks ago, Al Qaeda remains active throughout the Middle East; its goals and Iran's often converge.
• Pakistan has given up trying to root the Taliban out from its mountainous border with Afghanistan, thus allowing the insurgency to reheat.

No, the TIC is not just a solitary irritant. He's at the head of a large and growing boil hatched in hell.

It astounds me that more Christians don't see that. A lot more energy is devoted to excoriating President Bush for seeking victory of sorts in Iraq, and to blaming him for the sad plight of Iraqi Christians, than in discerning the true spiritual contours of what's going on in the Middle East. I'm certain that one of Satan's top lieutenants is encouraging and coordinating all of it. We're not going to protect ourselves from it by just pulling out of Iraq, as if doing that would merely leave that wretched country to its own devices. Those capable of discernment need to discern with prayer and act with prophetic courage.

Iraq and spiritual warfare

Like just about everybody else, I greatly admire the new U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus. He represents the best of America. Whatever hope there is of suppressing the wanton killing in that tortured country now rests on his shoulders, along with the uncertain ones of the Iraqi Government. But I get a deep feeling of sadness for him. He's walking into an outpost of hell; given as much, the weapon needed is prayer even more than counterinsurgency tactics and political realignments. That may sound trite, but I speak literally when I speak of prayer as a weapon.

To be sure, the terrorism and sectarian violence we see in Iraq is murder on a significantly smaller scale, even per capita, than what we saw in many conflicts during the twentieth century. But the nature of it is about as openly demonic as Satan's tactical judgment is likely to permit. Regardless of target, suicide bombing is a directive of hell; car bombs that randomly kill the innocent are directives of hell. Torture and murder by death squads, with the aim of sectarian as distinct from ethnic cleansing, are old hat in human history and thus not so quite obviously from hell. But the provenance is obvious enough all the same in the context of what else is going on. And the criss-crossing lines of division are so irrational that neither mental illness nor lack of conscience are nearly enough to explain them.

For example, the Sunnis don't trust the Shi'ites, who as the majority sect in Iraq happen to control the government. Sunnis want protection from Shi'ite death squads and a fair share of resources and influence in a federal Iraq. And they have every reason to know that American political and military pressure on Shi'ite factions is necessary for reaching those goals. But it is Sunnis, in Baghdad and Anbar Province, who inflict most of the casualties suffered by American troops. Do Sunni insurgents seriously believe that, by causing the Americans enough pain to get them to withdraw, they will end up in a better position to protect themselves from the Shi'ites? Their behavior makes no sense unless what we're dealing with is pure, demonic lust for blood. And similarly with the Shi'ites. It has become obvious that, so long as they use their new power to kill and oppress Sunnis, Iraq will not be at peace. Some Shi'ites, both in and out of government, seem to realize that. But the sectarian cleansing goes on, and the Sadrists want the Americans out. What do they imagine themselves to be accomplishing? Do they really think they can maintain as well as create a regime that oppresses Sunnis as much as the Sunnis once oppressed them? They probably don't know it, but all they're accomplishing is the will of their unseen master: death and hatred for its own sake.

And then there's the Christian flight from Iraq. A disproportionate number of refugees are Christians, who comprised much of the middle and upper classes in Iraq and actually enjoyed more protection under Saddam than they do now. That's one of Satan's jokes. What's happening to them now, i.e., the destruction of a very ancient Christian community, is just what he wants.

What the good guys in Iraq, from Petraeus and al-Maliki on down (assuming the latter is a good guy, which is not yet proven), need most of all in this fight is prayer and fasting from everybody, Muslim as well as Christian. That's what all the debate about military and political tactics ignores. The warfare, at bottom, is spiritual, and only spiritual weapons will suffice.

More Chick fodder

Here's a factoid the Jack-Chick crowd will have a field day with: there is more crime per capita in Vatican City than in any other place on earth. Of course, most of that consists in pickpocketing and purse-snatching by Roman hoodlums, the victims being tourists, who themselves always outnumber the Vatican's resident population. Being designed for a purpose other than law enforcement, the Swiss Guard is ill-equipped to deal with the problem. Nor are the Italian authorities much interested in prosecuting petty crimes committed in another sovereign jurisdiction. They've never dealt all that well with petty crimes within their jurisdiction.

But you won't hear about such subtleties from the Pope-is-Antichristers. They'll just seize on the headline as yet another example of the Vatican's satanic perfidy. The apologist's work, like a mother's, is never done. And it doesn't pay much as Jack Chick has got, I'll wager.

The divide over the divide

I'm starting to enjoy God's sense of humor, tinged as it is with an irony too deep and subtle for most of us to bear. (If you don't believe the point about irony, contemplate this: the Almighty Creator saved us by letting us torture and execute his divine Son, who is equally almighty and through whom he created all things, as a threat to public order. That's what enables me to thank him for the joke that is my life. For some reason, Jews tend to get that better than most Christians.) An Orthodox blogger who calls himself The Ochlophobist, with whom I have had some friendly and fruitful interaction over the past year at various blogs including this one, has graciously and generously taken up, in a new post, some comments I made on an earlier post of his about the issues at stake in conversions between Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Apparently, he found the trouble worth taking because, in his words, I am "the most formidable and clear expositor of neoCath thought in blogdom." Well. I've never received a compliment like that from a Catholic; apparently it takes an ex-Catholic like Och to come up with it. I like such irony. It makes other ironies easier to bear.

Before I get to the substance of the matter at issue, allow me to explain the term 'neoCath'. Och is also unlike Catholic bloggers in that he has adopted the vocabulary I use to broadly categorize the divisions in contemporary Catholicism: those between progressives or "progs," traditionalists or "trads," and neoCaths. Progs and trads both believe that the post-Vatican-II Catholic Church is theologically discontinuous with the Church as she existed before. The former group celebrates such imagined discontinuity and wants it further entrenched; the latter laments it and wants it reversed. The "neoCaths," on the other hand, are those who fully embrace Vatican II (hence the 'neo' part) but find no such discontinuity. So, the neoCaths are those who adopt the "hermeneutic of continuity" also adopted by the present and previous popes, both of whom were present and active at Vatican II. We are neither more nor less Catholic than the Pope, and don't think we need to be. In other words, we are Catholic in the only sense that really matters.

Now that I've dissed a goodly segment of the Catholic world, I proceed to Och's main point. It seems to be that neoCaths just don't understand how deep the chasm between Catholicism and Orthodoxy really is. If he's right, then ecumenism with a view to reunion rather than mere friendly co-existence is illusory. I do not agree with that conclusion. Since you can follow his arguments for yourself, I shall confine myself to quoting only his last few paragraphs, drawing a few fairly obvious sub-conclusions that are needed to support the main one, and then criticizing them.

He writes:

While the Catholics are seen as nice with regard to their generous definition of Orthodoxy's relationship to the RCC, it is important to remember that Catholics, especially neo-Caths, believe that what Orthodox truly affirm dogmatically can only be determined as true through the office of the papacy. Thus while we Orthodox are told that we would have to relinquish no belief or practice essential to authentic Eastern Orthodoxy in order to be brought into communion with Rome, we must remember that according to RC belief this is because, finally, only the papal office has the final authority to determine what is authentic and true Eastern Orthodox dogma and praxis. When an Orthodox states that such and such theological point amounts to a dogmatic difference while the Catholic maintains that very point is only a rhetorical difference the final authority on the matter is the Pope. If the Pope says authoritatively that it is only a rhetorical difference then it is only a rhetorical difference, and the Orthodox must therefore be an incorrigible person, or ignorant, as the Catholic mind would have it. Thus when Orthodox are in agreement with Rome or in keeping with what Rome allows on any given theological issue, it is almost historically accidental, because they have not looked to the modern papacy to find that truth. And when Orthodox (truly) disagree with Rome on a substantial theological issue, they must then be held to be using some form of private judgment because such a determination cannot finally be held to be ecclesially grounded, according to the Roman schema. Thus there are entire synods, Patriarchates, and national Churches which are then guilty of private judgment. Those who are prone to wax reverently on the great lengths to which Rome goes to accept Orthodoxy into her arms would do well to remember that it is always on Rome's terms, as Rome acknowledges no terms other than her own. Rome will accept authentic Orthodoxy because only Rome can define authentic Orthodoxy, from a Roman point of view. I say the Orthodox way is better. We have no right to determine who Rome is, such is Rome's free determination, but so long as she is who she is, there will be no reunion or conversion. In the Orthodox schema it is the Holy Spirit who directs ecclesial consensus on what is true (which for us revolves around the question, Who is Jesus Christ?), and the Holy Spirit does not determine that our relationship to truth be limited or isolated to the determinations of the office of one bishopric which acts as the final and singular arbiter of theological truth and ecclesial order. Even if, as some suggest she should, Rome were to agree to suspend such a role for the sake of reunion, virtually all Orthodox would still have a problem with Rome viewing such a role as integral to herself, as it offends Orthodox belief regarding the manner in which the Holy Trinity's uncreated energies work in this world. But alas, RCs, especially neo-Caths, tell us that Orthodox Trinitarian thought is not really offended by the papacy, because only the Pope can determine what is really Orthodox Trinitarian thought. How nice.

Things are not always as they seem my friends. There are no irreconcilable differences when people are willing to change their minds. Ah, but we are told that we don't really have to change our minds (at the very least only a tittle) as the Pope has already made up our minds for us, really. He knows us better than we know ourselves. Quite like someOne else, I'd say. Yes, the Catholics have the ecumenical documents of VatII and Dominus Iesus and some nice papal encyclicals on things Eastern Christian. But VatI is not going away. Nor is Trent; nor Florence. And in a certain sense VatI was slightly less dubious a bitter pill before it was so suger coated. Niceties do not a dogmatic change make.

Now Och is right about one thing he said prior to that: for reunion to take place, one or the other side is going to have to admit that it lacks something essential to being, fully, the Church of Christ. That is because each communion clearly believes itself to be nothing less than the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church Christ founded. If Catholicism is true, then Orthodoxy, even as a communion of "true, particular churches," is not the Church but only a part of the Church that lacks the necessary communion with her visible head as willed by her Divine Head. If Orthodoxy is true, then Catholicism, whether or not Rome remains truly "a" church and the Roman communion truly one of true, particular churches, has long since departed from the Church. There is no getting around that. Hence, for reunion to take place, one or the other communion is going to have to give up its belief that it is the Church.

As a Catholic, I believe that the Catholic Church will never give up her claim to be the Church. It makes no difference that Vatican II said the Church of Christ only "subsists" in the Catholic Church; as used by the Council Fathers, that verb is a technical, scholastic one meaning that the Church of Christ continues to exist as an integral whole in the Catholic Church, even though some parts belonging properly to that whole are, sadly, in schism with her. That verb was chosen in order to accommodate what the Catholic Church has also and always acknowledged as the reality that the Orthodox churches, unlike Protestant ones, are true apostolic churches even though not in full communion with Rome. Given that belief, which no Catholic as such can consistently reject, what about the Orthodox? Could they ever give up their belief that the Orthodox Church is the Church?

As of now, that seems highly unlikely. I say "highly unlikely" rather than "inconceivable" partly because no council recognized as ecumenical by Orthodoxy states that the Orthodox Church just is the Church, even as more than one council recognized as ecumenical by Catholicism has indicated that the Catholic Church is the Church. Of course Orthodox usually insist that their traditional, internal consensus, as expressed in both liturgy and theology, makes their belief that the Orthodox Church is the Church just as "irreformable" for Orthodoxy as the corresponding belief is for Catholicism. Not being Orthodox, I can't say whether that insistence is justified or not. What would clinch the matter for me is a pan-Orthodox synod which defined the point as dogma. Of course, no such synod has taken place for over 1,200 years; and despite some calls within contemporary Orthodoxy for such a synod, it isn't likely to take place anytime soon. That's partly because there is no agreement in Orthodoxy on who has the authority to convoke such a synod and make its decisions anything more than a mere proposal to the Church at large. Which, from the Catholic standpoint, is part of the problem. There having been no Byzantine emperor for over five centuries, there is only one remotely realistic candidate for the needed authority; we know which one that is, and it's exactly the one whose claims to authority are now rejected by Orthodoxy.

Och opines, in effect, that Catholic hopes for reunion rest on an assumption that is at best question-begging and arguably insulting: according to RC belief this is because, finally, only the papal office has the final authority to determine what is authentic and true Eastern Orthodox dogma and praxis. Now I agree that if reunion is to occur even on the ostensibly generous terms that then-Cardinal Ratzinger proposed, that is where the final authority resides. And I happily concede that the reunion of Catholicism and Orthodoxy is not going to take place on any more generous terms. But it follows that reunion will not take place at all only if Orthodoxy proves permanently unable to overcome the sort of thinking that the larger passage I quoted from Och evinces.

He says: In the Orthodox schema it is the Holy Spirit who directs ecclesial consensus on what is true (which for us revolves around the question, Who is Jesus Christ?), and the Holy Spirit does not determine that our relationship to truth be limited or isolated to the determinations of the office of one bishopric which acts as the final and singular arbiter of theological truth and ecclesial order. That, I'm afraid, poses a false dichotomy. In the Catholic schema too, "the Holy Spirit directs ecclesial consensus," and the "relationship" of believers to the truth is not "limited or isolated to the determinations of...one bishopric." The papacy is only one instrument—albeit one that has had to become increasingly important in modernity—of the Holy Spirit in securing said relationship. The papacy does not and should not purport to invent any aspect of the deposit of faith, which itself both predates and is far wider than any ecclesiastical formulations of it; even when the papacy has unilaterally defined dogma, which is more the exception than the rule, that has only been on matters where there's been an already existing consensus in the Catholic Church. It is idle, therefore, to object that Rome arrogates to itself the authority to define Orthodoxy when one can't even get right what Rome considers its authority to define Catholicism. But I don't believe that such an error is inherent in Orthodoxy. It is merely the most troublesome instance of a habit of thought explaining why, despite serious investigation as a college student, I decided not to become Orthodox.

The habit in question is what I would call, for want of a snappier term, "treating negatives as positives." Rome insists, rightly, that she affirms everything that Orthodoxy is, formally and as a whole, committed to affirming. The Orthodox object that Rome has unjustifiably added certain affirmations to the faith-once-delivered, including and above all the affirmation of her own authority to add the other ones. And ever since the reunion council of Florence was repudiated by the Orthodox faithful, that objection has hardened: the Orthodox world now takes for granted that its affirmations somehow entail negations of Catholic distinctives. That much is obvious. What is apparently not at all obvious to most Orthodox, including Och, is that it doesn't take a naked appeal to papal authority to reach a different conclusion about the logic of the situation.

Even when I was considering Orthodoxy a serious option for myself, and exploring that option in liturgy and in conversation with a few Orthodox heavyweights, my study of theology and Church history led me to conclude that Orthodoxy's rejection of distinctively Catholic dogmas was not logically necessitated by what it was dogmatically committed to professing. Thus, I agreed with Orthodoxy's confession of "the monarchy of the Father"—i.e., that the Father is the sole source of the being of the Son and the Holy Spirit; but I could not agree that the Western dogma of the filioque—i.e., that the Spirit proceeds from the Father "and the Son"—required interpretation that is incompatible with the monarchy of the Father. Quite arguably, many influential Catholic theologians have interpreted it that way; but the dogma itself does not require such an interpretation and should not admit one. Similarly, I liked the Orthodox model of "synodality" for handling certain issues of supra-diocesan significance in the Church. I have even come to believe that the Catholic social teaching about "subsidiarity" could and should be applied to the Catholic Church's own inner workings, which would end up looking a lot like Orthodox synodality. But I could find no good reason back then, and can still find no good reason, to believe that Vatican I's understanding of papal authority is logically incompatible with synodality as the normal way of addressing the relevant sorts of difficulites. Just as the filioque seems to me logically affirmable in addition to, not instead of, the monarchy of the Father, so the doctrine of papal authority defined at Vatican I is logically affirmable in addition to, not instead of, synodality. What finally led me to decline the Orthodox option was the apparent inability of the Orthodox to see things that way. Their attitude struck me as one of giving certain affirmations a negative spin that needn't and shouldn't be there. And I thought so not because of what any pope said, but because that's how the logic of the situation struck me.

In the end, I suppose, the question for me came down to where the fragrance of the Holy Spirit is more likely to be detected. I find it more in the positive than the negative, and I find more of the positive in Catholicism than in Orthodoxy. My saying that is by no means an attempt to attack Orthodoxy or proselytize its members. I am under no illusion that anybody whose mind is made up will find their mind changed by it. I say it because I cannot believe that the habit of thought in question need be permanent in Orthodoxy. I deeply respect Orthodoxy as an authentic manifestation of Christianity and, for that reason, cannot believe that what I consider its logically unwarranted negativity is inherent in it. For that reason in turn, I don't share Och's pessimism about the prospects for reunion. If only by God's miraculous intervention, the divide over the divide will not persist. When it closes, so will the divide itself.

Amy Welborn on Archbishop Wuerl

I was pleased to learn yesterday from my brethren in Communion and Liberation that Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington was an active participant in our national Diakonia in San Diego the weekend before last. All the more reason for me to wish I could have been there. I would have found a way—indirectly and discreetly, of course—to make him aware of what many faithful Catholics think of his handling of the Nancy Pelosi and her ilk. I've made myself clear on that here, as Christopher Blosser notes in his roundup, as well as here. But, as she so often does, Amy Welborn of Open Book says it best:

I think what Archbishop Wuerl and others fail to understand is the impact of things like this on the lay Catholic who is struggling to be a faithful disciple in the world. The message that is sent by silence is strong, in terms of the lay apostolate in the world, in terms of the unity of faith and life.

Nancy Pelosi is not "struggling" with the Church's teaching on abortion, trying to work for the protection of unborn human beings within the constraints of the current U.S. law. As we noted before, she is unapologetically, strongly supportive of abortion-rights and unborn children don't even enter into her radar (publicly, at least) as human beings. . . .

But resting on Archbishop Wuerl's statements alone, which do not indicate that there's anything problematic about Nancy Pelosi's way of living a Catholic life, and which, I admit, simply might be an expression of a reticent style that only answers the questions posed, I'll just say this again.

If this woman, engaged in a public role, very publicly works against the teachings of the Church to which she professes a very public tie isn't publicly challenged by even one of the primary teachers of the Church - the bishops - the rest of us - lay Catholics, living and working in the world, every day facing decisions on how to be faithful disciples of Jesus in the midst of the complexities of our professions, some of us who really suffer because of the things they refuse to do because of their fidelity to Christ - we get a message.

And the message we get is that - it doesn't matter. Do whatever you want.

"Rejoicing in the Lord is how we must endure"

Today's readings at Mass—if you haven't heard them, click the box in the right sidebar—communicate the true grounds for authentic self-esteem and joie de vivre. That was clarified for me today both by the homily I heard at a perfectly ordinary Catholic parish and by Fr. Philip Powell, OP's podcast homily for today.

Our value consists not in what we do, what we have, or even on who on earth happens to love us. It consists in being loved by God; and what God loves in each of us is what he creates, irrevocably, in creating us. That is often disbelieved and, even when believed in principle, often obscured by psychological handicaps or chronic misfortune. Thus over the years I have learned that a great many people, including many Christians, think rather little of themselves and even less of life in general. Even among the successful and attractive, one often finds deep insecurity: they fear having nobody and nothing because they believe that, having nobody and nothing, they would be nothing—or at least nothing worth bothering with. As for life in general, not for nothing have I heard it said, more than once, that if this is what the gift of life is, then God would do better to take it back and stick it. And I am certain that such a thought is far more widely harbored than stated. When we are fundamentally insecure or disgusted with life, we tend to either hide that with stratagems that can't be counted on, or settle more or less openly for muddling through until what is hoped will be a merciful end. Little wonder that, when neither works, suicide is not infrequently the final resort. But there is an alternative to all the above: a real encounter with Jesus Christ.

I cannot tell you how to make that happen if you haven't had it. I am not a saint, and I very much doubt that it can be made to happen anyhow. Being sovereign, God cannot be manipulated. But it is always a real possibility because he is always seeking us out. Perhaps the best most of us can do is learn, in prayer and by whatever other means are given us, how to stop running and be found. When we are found, we can and will rejoice. When we rejoice, we neither can nor will settle for just muddling through. We will endure; and we will triumph.