Night of the Long Knives

What Was He Thinking?

My friend Kathy commented at dinner the other evening that “we are supposed to bring our faith to our politics but it seems that most people bring their politics to their faith.”  I thought this was a comment worth reflecting on.  I remember the election of 2008 when so many Catholics were voting against Barack Obama supposedly for religious reasons when it fact, embarrassed by their Republican politics (and in the cases of two friends of mine, their racist prejudices), they were hiding behind the skirts of Mother Church as justification for their choice.  But the current flap over the issue of religious exemptions to President Obama’s Health Care Laws demonstrates that politics trumping faith is not simply the sin of the “religious” right.  The estrogen-deprived stridency of a range of voices from Nancy Pelosi to the internet chatter mavens show us that bandwagon-riders, liberal or conservative, crash the gates of faith with wacko political views.  We need people who will use well-informed reason to bring faith to politics. 
     I cannot conceive of why President Obama has put himself in this untenable position “between a rock and a hard place” over the issue of exempting Catholic institutions from the particular clauses of the health-care mandate that would require Catholic schools, universities, health-care facilities, diocesan offices, and other Church employers to provide employee coverage for contraceptives, sterilization, and abortifacients that are contrary to Catholic moral values.  All sorts of other establishments —Alliance One Tobacco, Ruby Tuesdays’s, Local 802 Musicians Health Fund,  CIGNA, Baptist Retirement, Denny’s, Aetna, UFT Welfare Fund, Cracker Barrel,  and about one hundred other employer groups were granted exemptions from the Health Care mandate in part or in full.  So why not Catholic institutions?  But the President has put himself in the middle of it now.  If he backs down, an alliance of groups as diverse as Planned Parenthood and the American Nurses Association will turn on him.  If he pushes on—well, there is no monolithic Catholic vote but he will lose valuable allies in the Catholic community.  Granted, he won’t lose all Catholics, but he will lose those who have most influence over others.  By that I don’t mean the bishops—they lost their influence over the Catholic faithful during the sex-abuse scandals.  He will lose Catholic teachers, professionals, writers, editors, journalists, social workers, and what clergy he has—mostly among the monastic and religious orders who are generally better educated than the diocesan clergy and have more influence over the laity they serve.      
      I was at a cocktail party the other evening—I hate parties of any kind and this was a particularly dull group of moneyed suburban liberal types —and there was plenty of chatter about this, most of missing the point as bandwagon riders have a tendency to do.  I have no doubt from the circles in which I am often trapped that the bandwagon liberals will support the President in ’12 just as the bandwagon conservatives opposed him in ’08 (and will again in ’12).  But as I posted on February 7^th, the progressive Catholic intelligentsia—Sean Winters from National Catholic Reporter, Douglas Kmiec, America Magazine, E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post, Los Angeles Cardinal Mahoney, Notre Dame President John Jenkins, Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine, as well as top officials of such agencies as Catholic Relief Services, Catholic Charities USA, and others feel betrayed and angry.  How does the President get out of this mess?  It’s beyond me.  What isn’t beyond me is that someone (ok not an individual but various advisors) got him to drive the getaway car for a hit on the big ol’ ugly Catholic Church 
     And don’t doubt for a moment that this is a slam on the Church.  Markos Moulitsas, in his political blog “The Daily Kos” is perhaps the most explicit in posting this vitriolic piece by one Kaili Joy Gray.  It tells us a lot about what the issue is for many in the “no-exemption camp.”
“… Catholic leaders who are outraged—outraged!—that women in this country will be receiving full, comprehensive health care through their insurers. Church leaders started whining last year that being forced to provide health care to women oppressed their First Amendment right to deny health care to women. And so, for the next several months, the Obama administration hemmed and hawed about whether to implement the new policy, as promised, thanks in no small part to the lie repeated by the bishops, Republicans, and even supposedly liberal commentators like E.J. Dionne at the Washington Post that such a decision would alienate the president's Catholic supporters. 
     Thank you Ms. Gray for your insightful and articulate comments.  Are you a raving maniac or just the ordinary everyday garden variety jerk?  Have you read the arguments supporting exemption?  Do you have any idea what they are about?  Well, I suppose facts would probably only clutter your pretty little mind anyway so why bother, but Kos why do you print  the brainless raves  of a religious bigot who doesn’t even understand that that the issue isn’t access to contraception but freedom of conscience?   As I asked yesterday: would you deny a Muslim woman the right to wear the  hijab? Wouldn’t you consider a person who wanted to make her act contrary to her religion a bigot?   Do you know anyone who thinks a yeshiva should be forced to serve pork barbeque to their gentile employees?  Wouldn’t you regard that as insulting and contemptuous towards Jews?  But it’s ok to tell not individual Catholic employers but the Catholic Church itself as an employer: we demand that you violate your tenets?  Why would you do that except to insult and degrade a particular religion?  Well, Ms. Gray isn’t the only one using inflammatory language.  The National Organization for Women (NOW) posted on their website:
TAKE ACTION: Tell President Obama: Free The Pill From the Bishops!  Will Obama through (sic) birth control under the bus.  (Obviously NOW needs to find a high-school graduate to check their spelling.  Maybe Kaili Joy  Gray needs a job and NOW will provide her with the coverage she covets). 
They also posted this slant:
Catholic Bishops Fail to Take Birth Control from More Women. In an important decision that ensures access to affordable birth control for millions of women, the Obama administration announced today that it would not expand an unconstitutional refusal clause that will already deny contraceptive coverage to some women under the Affordable Care Act.
     I am not sure what makes the refusal clause unconstitutional but until the Courts declare it to be so it is no more than NOW rhetoric designed to slant the issue.  And are the bishops taking birth control from more women or simply saying that if an individual wants birth control, sterilization, or abortifacients  please arrange for someone else who does not think these things to be immoral  to pay for them.  I don’t see Cardinal Dolan sweeping down to grab these pills from some sweet lady’s clenched fist.  
      Planned Parenthood, no friends with the Catholic Church (to be fair, the enmity is mutual)  has launched a nationwide television ad campaign encouraging Americans to back the President’s refusal to exempt Catholic institutions from requirements that violate Catholic moral doctrine, insisting that women have a "right" to have the Church provide them with birth control, sterilization, and abortifacients.  What right?  Who gives such a right?  Is it a right given by God? Is it a right inherent in nature?  Right?  Rights may be things recognized by law but they are not things conferred by law.  The Law may require the Church (or anyone else)  to do something but there is no intrinsic “right” to birth control or abortifacients.   Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, I grant you—but “the pill.”  No, not a right.  A law perhaps but laws are what we make them.  Rights transcend the law.  But I guess you have had to have  philosophy course or two to know the difference. 
One blogger, a Cecilia Bruck, wrote:
Exactly! First the Catholics try to force the rest of the world to live by their religious views, against our will, and take away our freedoms, then they are outraged when others do it to them. Can you hear the denials? This in no way forces catholics (sic)  to use contraceptives if they choose not to. The catholics (sic) are trying to force the rest of us to live according to a religion we don't want to be a part of.  …  we are entitled to the same respect as you are in our own religous (sic) freedoms and beliefs. If not, then you are discriminating against the rest of us because of our religion and because of our sex, and that is not only illegal, it is also against the constitution you claim to love so much.   (Well, I guess Ms. Bruck is not a winning candidate for that editing post so needed at NOW.) 
The Feminist Majority Foundation posted this on their website:  
Beginning today, women's rights groups - including the Feminist Majority Foundation, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the National Organization for Women (NOW), the National Council of Jewish Women, and others - have launched a campaign and blog carnival to support the Obama Administration's decision to maintain full contraceptive coverage under the Preventive Care package of the Affordable Care Act. The administration has been under enormous pressure from the Catholic bishops to broaden the religious exemption. The campaign, which will include a blog carnival this week and other actions, aims to correct misinformation generated by negative newspaper editorials and other media outlets. The request to broaden the religious exemption, primarily pressed by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, would have denied millions of American women contraceptive coverage, including students, teachers, nurses, social workers, and other staff (and their families) at religiously-connected or affiliated schools, universities, and hospitals, as well as social service institutions like Catholic Charities.
And so the vultures gather. 
I could go on and perhaps will post more on this in the near future.  But the question remains: what provoked the President to step into this pile of ****.  He is anything but dumb.  Why has he consented to drive the getaway car for those fiends who are fueled by a hatred for the Catholic Church?  This sort of divisive politics is against everything he has stood for to date.  How will he get himself out of this mess?   

Speaking of German Reform Popes: Let's Look at Ours

Benedict XVI appearing

on the Balcony of Saint

Peter's immediatetely after

his election

We have been talking about German Reform popes in the eleventh century—Leo IX, Clement II, Damasus II, and we will shortly take a passing look at Gebhard of Calw (or actually Gebhard Graf (C0unt) von Calw, Tollenstein und Hirschberg who reigned as Victor II from 1055-1057.  Let’s jump to the present and look at our current German Reform Pope. 
     When Josef Ratzinger was elected to the papacy as Benedict XVI, there had been much talk that he didn’t want the papacy, but frankly , to paraphrase Shakespeare, The pope doth protest too much, methinks.  I was living in Rome and at the time of the death of John Paul II and the election of Benedict and my historical background led to being hired as a consultant to several international teams of journalists covering the events.  Frankly it is very difficult for me to believe that Josef Ratzinger did not do everything canonically in his power to secure his election to the Holy See.  I emphasize canonically: he played hardball but he played within the rules.  In fact, he made the rules work for him. 
     In the first place, Cardinal Ratzinger was the Dean of the Sacred College at the time of the death of John Paul and the subsequent conclave.  While it is not usual for the Dean to be elected Pope (the time previous to the election of Cardinal Ratzinger was the 1555 election of Paul IV), in the electoral process the Dean is the most powerful of the Cardinals.  Several of the ceremonial duties previously assigned to the Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church were transferred to the Dean by the Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis of John Paul II in 1996.  This increased the visibility and the authority of the Dean in the interregnum.  The Dean is the public face of the Church during the papal vacancy.  It is the Dean’s duty to summon the conclave and to chair the daily meetings of the Cardinals during the period of sede vacante.  While for centuries the Dean was traditionally the longest serving Cardinal-Bishop, Paul VI changed this practice in 1965 empowering the Cardinal Bishops to select the one of their number they wished to hold this office.  In 2001 at the urging of John Paul, the Cardinal Bishops selected Josef Ratzinger for this position.  Ratzinger had been named to the Sacred College by Paul VI in 1977 and 1993 he was elevated within the College to the rank of Cardinal Bishop making him eligible for the Deanery.  Named vice-Dean in 1998, he was made Dean in 2002 upon the retirement of Bernardin Gantin. 
     During the period of sede vacante in 2005 Josef Ratzinger kept a very high profile.  He called on the other Cardinals to take an oath of silence, not speaking to the press or giving interviews during the interregnum, but he himself released a new book during the week between the funeral of John Paul and the conclave, bringing considerable attention to himself while the other Cardinals remained in the background.  Of course, since the election process was confined to members of the College of Cardinals, such a publicity move had little effect on the subsequent election.  Nevertheless, it was one of several events that week the kept his name in the forefront.  As Dean, Cardinal Ratzinger had the responsibility of preaching both at the funeral of John Paul and the opening of the conclave.  He preached a remarkably fine funeral homily for the dead pope, but it was the opening homily of the conclave that is really worth noting.  On the Saturday evening before the conclave opened, April 16, Cardinal Walter Kasper preached a homily at the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere.  This Mass always draws a crowd as it is the weekly Eucharist for the Sant’Egidio Community, a fellowship of committed Catholics who do outstanding work on behalf of the poor in Rome and throughout the world.  The Community numbers many bishops and Cardinals among its friends and customarily invites a distinguished prelate to preach at its Saturday evening liturgy. 
     Cardinal Kasper supposedly was one of several German and American Cardinals anxious to find an alternative candidate to Ratzinger for the papacy.  Ratzinger was the acknowledged front runner, but there was a significant block in the Sacred College that did not want to see him elected fearing that his ideas, particularly on ecumenism, inter-religious dialogue, and liturgical reforms—three very important areas of Vatican II Reform—would reverse much of the renewal accomplished in the four decades since the Council.  It was Good Shepherd Sunday and Cardinal Kasper preached a very pointed sermon on the qualities of the Shepherd needed by the universal Church.  It was never said, of course, that Cardinal Ratzinger was not the man who fit Kasper’s bill, but it was clear that the Church needed a pope who would advance the agenda set by the Council in ways that did not match the ideology of Cardinal Ratzinger.   Kasper’s audience was not large—perhaps seven or eight hundred people.  His text was not, to my knowledge, published.  There were probably very few who heard his homily who were also present for Cardinal Ratzinger’s homily at the opening Mass of the Conclave on Monday, April 18^th.  Cardinal Ratinger gave a point by point rebuttal of the Kasper homily.  This may have been a coincidence; it may even have been divine inspiration.  Whatever the inspiration, Cardinal Ratzinger did a remarkable job in laying aside any fears that one might still have had that his papacy would not carry out the projects of the Second Vatican Council.  Having heard both homilies I would say that Ratzinger was the more skillful preacher; Kasper the prophet. 
      I do not mean to imply in this posting that Cardinal Ratzinger was in any way personally ambitious for the papacy.  I do not believe that he was.  The papacy is not fun.  It is long days, no  hope of retirement, confined—in a palace—but confined none the less. it meant and end to his every-day post luncheon walk through the Borgo and Prati districts; no longer would he go to his favorite German Restaurant just outside the Vatican walls. Being pope requires virtual separation from family, from friends, from the normal joys of human relationships.  It is life under the microscope of public opinion and while you will always have your fans, you will have your detractors as well.  
     I think Cardinal Ratzinger was genuinely concerned about some directions the Church had taken in the years since the Council—directions he once had advocated but now thought better of—directions he questioned even under the conservative John Paul II.  Ratzinger clearly thought, and seemingly still does think, that his predecessor had gone way too far on matters of interreligious dialogue.  Both towards Islam and towards Eastern Religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism, John Paul’s cordiality and lack of rigid adherence to Vatican policy on no shared “prayer” with those outside the Abrahamic faiths has been troubling to many, not least Josef Ratzinger.  John Paul also had somewhat muddied the waters between “Churches” and “Ecclesial Communities,” welcoming Anglican and Lutheran Bishops (whose Apostolic Orders are not recognized by the Catholic Church) with the same protocols accorded to Orthodox prelates whose Orders the Catholic Church recognizes.  For example, at various ceremonies such as the opening of the Holy Door for the Jubilee year of 2000, John Paul was flanked by the representative of the Patriarch of Constantinople on one side and the Archbishop of Canterbury on the other. Even before assuming the papacy, at the funeral of John Paul, Cardinal Ratzinger as Dean made subtle changes in the protocol of how the various prelates were ranked.  Most significant, I think, was Cardinal Ratzinger’s determination that the Novus Ordo of Paul VI was seriously (though certainly not fatally) flawed.  He is well known for his opposition to translating pro vobis et pro multis (literally “for you and for many”) as “for you and for all.”  This is one of the “corrections,” actually the premier correction, in the new translation coming out this autumn for our English speakers.  He has written extensively on the subject of the priest taking an ad orientem position at the altar; that is the priest facing eastwards which in a traditionally oriented church (a church with the altar at the east end) would place the priest with his back to the people.  (This is a very complex issue both historically and theologically.)    Benedict has been much in favor of restoring usage of the pre-conciliar rite, initially as an alternative to the Missal of Paul VI, but eventually using the elements of the traditional rite to restore to the Rite of Paul VI a continuity with the Tridentine Rite that Benedict and others believe was broken by the Missal of 1970.  Benedict has been a frequent visitor to the Tridentine abbey of Fontgombault and has spoken at its conferences on the pre-conciliar rite.  While the Pope himself has not yet celebrated the Traditional Rite, at least publically, he has widely expanded its use even usurping the authority of the local bishop to govern the pastoral practices in his diocese.  I think that Benedict sees these steps as Reform—or as it is often called The Reform of the Reform.  Others see it as a reneging on the Reforms of the Second Vatican Council.  How history will see it—as Reform or backing away from Reform is anyone’s guess.  Probably more important a gauge of Reform than matters of liturgical translation or positioning, is getting at the root issues of how power and authority are exercised in the Church.  Will Benedict get to the abuses of power that encouraged bishops to cover up the sex-abuse crisis?  Will Benedict mandate fiscal transparency in the Church?  Will Benedict introduce structures of accountability?  And, perhaps most crucial, while the Pope certainly has the authority, does he have the power to effect needed structural reforms or has the power already fallen into others’ hands?  Benedict is the White Pope, but is there are Black Pope (or more likely a Scarlet Pope) lurking behind his throne and forcing his hand?      Hmmmm.  Politics and Intrigue have long trumped the Gospel in the shadowy corridors of the Vatican.