No Choice but Pacificism in the Pope Wars

Michael Voris of Church Militant TV is proving to be a tremendous disappointment to many of his followers because he won’t come out and criticize what they consider to be some of the more egregious papal missteps and misstatements of Pope Francis.
There is no doubt that Pope Francis has thrown the Catholic neo-trads into a tizzy with a variety of comments from his “who am I to judge?” regarding gay clergy to his obvious disinterest in restoring the pre-conciliar liturgy to a place at least alongside—if not  exclusive of—the revised rites in the Church’s worship.  For months now, the Blogosphere has been asparkle like Fort McHenry  under British Bombardment with some of the most outrageous attacks imaginable on the Holy Father. 
The neo-traditional site Mundabor’s Blog, for example, printed this comment about the Holy Father:  There is no week now without this disgraceful man reaching for a new deep from the gutter in which he has already put himself.
Life Site News was perhaps less alarmist but still questioning:
What in God's Holy Name are Catholics supposed to think about this pope?????
The Tenth Crusade, a particularly vicious blog of a dyspeptic Bostonian, published this remark:  First of all, I think we're beyond the apprehension stage. We were apprehensive during the eight months of commentary undermining and insulting the 2000 years of the Deposit of Faith and those who love and evangelize It.  Though Pope Francis has issued numerous clarifications, he then went ahead and contradicted said clarifications with an apostolic exhortation which ratified the trajectory of his original statements.  Pope Francis selected a spineless bishop who operates a chancery that persecutes faithful priests and teaches Church laws can or should be ignored and disobeyed at our own will.
Our choleric Bostonian  also carried this remark
As many concerned Catholics have expressed, the silly statements from the Pope are damaging to catechists, parents, grandparents and Catholics who are intimately aware that the mission of the Deposit of Faith is to teach the substance that gives every person right judgment about their actions as they relate to the salvation of their soul.
Rorate Caeli, a blog that usually has more substance than the run of the mill neo-trad diatribes, lost its cool and published this remark: With all due respect he sounds like a typical Latin American Jesuit who has a kind of benign contempt for orthodoxy in favor of an exclusive focus on orthopraxis - - as if the two could ever be separated in Catholic life or thought. I'm surprised because as he has well said previously, the Church is not some glorified NGO. Her doctrine matters. This should be obvious to someone who attains that office.

Michael Voris has refused to cross the line,  however, and join in what he has termed the "Popewars."  This has been a tremendous disappointment to the winged monkeys of neo-Traditionalist Oz who looked to Voris to give the leadership in protecting the faith against a pope gone rogue.  But should we be surprised?

Michael Voris is in a very difficult spot—one that will determine whether his Church Militant TV project will rise or fall.  We need to take a look at Mr. Voris and see beyond the public relations mask to determine his agenda.
Michael Voris is the founder and president of St. Michael’s Media, a corporation that advances a neo-traditionalist agenda among Roman Catholics disaffected with the Church’s direction after Vatican II.  Voris is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame where he majored in journalism.  in 2009 he earned the STB (Sacrae Theologiae Baccalaureus, Bachelor’s in Sacred Theology) granted from the Angelicum University in Rome.  Mr. Voris did not study in Rome, but received the degree from Sacred Heart Major Seminary which is authorized by the Angelicum to grant the degree in its name.  A Bachelor’s in Sacred Theology represents less theological study than the average Religious Education Director in a local parish would have.  It would not qualify a person to pursue a doctoral program, nor would it match the requirements for ordination to the priesthood.  In other words, it is simply a bachelor’s degree in Theology.  “Would you like fries with that order?”
Mr. Voris’ comparatively shallow theological background often manifests itself in his ability to comprehend the more complex issues facing the Church today whether regarding the role of Religious women, Canon 915, the authority of the local Bishop over liturgical matters, or the relationship of the local Church (Diocese) to the Universal Church (The Holy See.) 
While he is no theologian, what Mr. Voris is is an entrepreneur.  And a potentially good one.  Voris saw the lacuna in Amercian Catholic tele-journalism left by the incapacity of Mother Angelica Rizzo, PCPA.  Mother Angelica’s network, EWTN, lost much of its spark when the fiery and street-savvy nun had to retire behind the cloister grille due to a stroke and subsequent problems.  The network struggled on, but without Mother’s voice often yelling “fire” in crowded theatres, lacked the sort of drama that could turn devout novena-saying Catholics into a pitchfork and torch carrying mob yelling for the blood of one or another Bishop or even a Cardinal.   EWTN had become simply another pious voice while the neo-trads saw the Barque of Peter foundering in the waters of modernism.  There was room for a new prophet and Voris determined to fill it.  He didn’t have the resources to start a new television network but, hey—it’s the 21^st century and there are new channels of communication and channels that transcend the limited scope of television into the much wider world of the internet.  And so we have Church Militant TV.  It was originally called Real Catholic TV until Archdiocese of Detroit officials made Voris take away the word “Catholic” as he and his network do not in any way represent the Catholic Church but are an independent venture answerable only to Mr. Voris. 
Detroit took some action, but the bishops have found themselves powerless to face Voris’ attacks on their leadership—or lack thereof.  Voris has made the most outrageous (and usually unsubstantiated) charges against a wide range of American prelates, but with a particular focus against Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York.  For awhile he climbed aboard Judie Brown’s revenge-wagon against Catholic Relief Services and spread her lies and half-truths about CRS and about the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.  When you go after targets as high as these, it is difficult to find the mechanisms to shut you down without it looking like a unilateral cover-up from on high.  And right now I am not sure that Voris isn’t too powerful for any retaliation this side of the Atlantic—including the Nunciature. 
But should Michael Voris go after Pope Francis—ah, that would be a different kettle of fish.  At that point, Dolan and his fellow victims of Voris’ attacks could easily move to make it clear that Michael Voris does not represent an authentic voice of Catholicism.  And Michael Voris knows that.  He can mumble about how crazies on the left—and on the right—are distorting what the Holy Father says, but he can’t acknowledge any papal misstatements or he will find himself on the wrong side of the good Catholic line.  He is between the proverbial rock and a hard place as his blog advocates are growing increasingly frustrated at his waffling. 
Of course the various bloggers: The Chairman’s Blog: The Latin Mass Society of England and Wales LMS Chairman:(http://www.lmschairman.org/), Mundabor’s Blog  (http://mundabor.wordpress.com/), 
That the Bones You Have Crushed May Thrill (http://thatthebonesyouhavecrushedmaythrill.blogspot.com/),  
Creative Minority Report (http://www.creativeminorityreport.com/), and of course my favorite squeaky wheel, the Gaithersburg Cassandra, disingenuous Janet from Restore DC Catholicism (http://restore-dc-catholicism.blogspot.com/) are furious with Voris for his lack of fortitude to rush in where Angels fear to tread.   Of course these various blogosphere critics of Pope Francis have nothing to lose—their following draws from the same crowd of pitchfork and firebrand katholik krazies that migrate through their parallel universe with its alternate reality coordinates, but Michael Voris is trapped between survival and the expectations of his former faithful who had posted episode after episode but who are now angry with him for not joining them in condemning a papacy they are convinced has gone rogue.  

 

Rageoholics and Religion

Cardinal O'Malley greets President

Obama at the funeral of the late

Senator Ted Kennedy

Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, making his swan-song after twenty-four years in the United States Senate, recently said:

I’m not saying I was always right,” he said at his Senate office. “I’ll leave that to God and history. But I believed I was doing what I thought was right and people didn’t just disagree with me. There was hatred. But I’m not alone in that. You can take the last three presidents — Clinton, Bush, Obama — and people haven’t just disagreed with them, they’ve hated them. And to me, that’s really terrible. That’s a cancer that’s eating at our politics.”

As I would also say about Mr. Justice Scalia on the political right, while I have not always agreed with Senator Lieberman, I have always had a lot of respect for him because he is a man who is not afraid to speak up for what he believes to be right.   And I find that people of small intellects and narrow spirits have met both the Justice and the Senator with a personal animosity that is nothing less than pathological.  And if that is true for the lesser lights, such as Justices and Senators, how much more so for Presidents—Clinton, Bush, and Obama most of all.

I must admit that I have never cared for Mr. Clinton personally though I think he had a successful presidency and will go down in history as one of our better Presidents.  Mr. Bush I think is a good man but was a terrible president not only because of the disastrous policies that led both to a national financial shambles and two immoral wars with the consequent socio-political chaos of the implosion of the Middle-East, but even more so because he allowed himself to be surrounded by evil persons who manipulated their access to power for personal gain at the cost of national ruin.  As a professional historian, I have no doubt that the Senior President Bush and his predecessor, President Reagan, will be evaluated very differently in the long-run than they have been in the short.  When archives are opened and the definitive history of the 1980 election and subsequent presidencies of the winning candidates can be written, Americans will be appalled at the way in which the Republican Party undermined our constitutional government.   And to be honest and fair, the roots of the evil that like a cancer is eating out the democracy from within our republican form of government go back further and deeper and are not limited to one party.   I only wish there were more Joe Libermans and Antonin Scalias whose integrity I trust.  All this is a way of saying that while I while I wouldn’t buy a used car from Bill Clinton, and I think George W was in way over his head, and while I think Ronald Reagan and George H.W., and Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Ashcroft are (or were) evil people—and I don’t use that term lightly—I don’t have any personal animosity, much less hatred, for them.  I don’t wish them harm or even misfortune.  Like evil people I have personally encountered in my life—in the Church, in academics, in business, as neighbors, or as relatives—my disappointment in them doesn’t fester into rage or even an abiding anger.  My perception of them as “evil” is precisely that—my perception—and I don’t expect that God sees them the same way I do.  In fact, I am aware that if I saw them as God did I might better understand where their moral failure—or what I perceive to have been their moral failure—comes from and having a context for it I might better understand it.     

On the other hand, the rage we see today directed by some towards President Obama baffles me.  I can understand people disagreeing with him.  I can see their being disappointed in their fellow citizens choosing him for a second term.  I can see people worrying for the future of the country as I did under the last three Republican administrations.  I can even see people not liking him, as I obviously have disliked some of his predecessors.  What I cannot see is healthy people being enraged by everything the man does from spending a Christmas vacation with his family to his occasional attendance at a Church service to his appearance at a Catholic Charities benefit to his visits to our wounded warriors to his remarks at a memorial service for the victims of the Newtown Connecticut gun murders.  When everything an individual does inspires rage in a person, one begins to see that the problem is not with the individual but with the person who becomes angry.  

Regular readers know that one of my bête noires is the author of a blog under the title of “Les Femmes.”   Twenty years ago when I worked in Northern Virginia this woman had a certain reputation and her little home-printed newsletter circulated quarterly among the various parishes and organizations to which she mailed it, unsolicited and gratis.    She used it to excoriate various priests and nuns and diocesan officials that didn’t meet her criteria for orthodoxy or whose read on canon law differed from her own.  Though “Les Femmes” entitled themselves “Women of Truth,” she never hesitated to use lies, half-truths, innuendos, and out-of-context quotes and stories, to pass judgment on her spiritual betters.  Over the years her organization, never more than a handful, has dwindled down to what pretty much appears to be a one-woman campaign to attack a range of foes from Jesuit Father James Martin to Benedictine Sister Joan Chittester to local prelates and priests such as Father Tuck Grinnell or Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.  But these last few years, foes within the Church have been eclipsed by an increasing and incredible personal animosity towards not only President Barack Obama but towards his wife.  When, during a question and answer period after a talk I gave recently, I used her blog and newsletter as an example of pathological anger hiding beneath a cover of religion, a member of the audience told me:  

" I have known this woman for over forty years.  We had children together at St X School in Y, Virginia.  She is a rageoholic.  For her, religion—her religion, not the Church-- is the fuel that drives her anger.  Her anger blinds her ability to see reality in any way other than she constructs it and she constructs it to feed her anger.”

I found this insight fascinating.  A colleague of mine who is a psychotherapist often speaks of rageoholics.  Some people, more than a few in our society, are addicted to anger even as others are addicted to alcohol or drugs or are compulsive in their sexual acting-out, or their use of food, or their self-mutilation.   Like other addicts, rageoholics construct their realities to support or justify their addictions.  It is not that they are conscious of their lies or deliberate in their evils—reality becomes for them that which they need it to be to feed their addiction.  The roots of this addiction, like the roots of other compulsive  behavior, can be many—incidents of abuse, fear, depression, loneliness, anxiety or a thousand other experiences that produce a need for whatever gratification the addiction gives or angst it soothes.  Anger releases many of the same endorphins as sex and even as sex-addicts find their compulsions soothed by sexual release, anger-addicts find comfort in their release of those endorphins by giving rant to their rage.  The moral culpability for such behavior needs to go not towards the addict—whose loss of moral freedom has been diminished by the addiction—but to those who fan the flames of this anger.  For those who find in pseudo-Catholicism a justification for hating—not disagreeing with, but hating—someone we must find the sources that are feeding that compulsive rage.  Those who use the pulpit or the press for demagoguery or voices like that of Michael Voris and his “Real Catholic T.V.” are the ones who need to be held responsible for the epidemic of hatred under the cover of “religion,” that is becoming part of the warp and woof of our society.   There is no way that the Gospel of Christ can be used to justify the sort behavior that can swell ideological disagreement into personal hatred and as a Church we do not want to be known for this sort of attitude.  By this shall know you are my disciples—that  you have love for one another.  There is enough evil in the world already; we don’t need Westboro Baptist Catholics.              

More on Myers: What is the Agenda?

Archbishop Myers in a delusional

world: proving the axiom that once

one becomes a bishop one has had

his last bad meal and will never hear

the truth again.

Why would a bishop tell Catholics that they should not present themselves for Holy Communion?  Archbishop Myers of Newark is certainly not the brightest votive candle in the rack but he certainly knows that total doctrinal conformity is no requirement for Holy Communion.  The essential doctrines of the faith are set forth in the historic Creeds and the Nicene Creed was included in the Liturgy in the 11^th century precisely to be a statement of faith for believers to subscribe to before approaching the Eucharist.  Of course by the 11^th century the reception of Holy Communion was in decline with few people receiving the Eucharist more than once or twice a year, and many not even that often which is why the fourth Lateran Council in 1215 had to mandate an annual communion (at Eastertide) for all Catholics.   

In the seventeenth century communions were still rather rare and becoming ever more so due to the influence of Jansenism.  We have often discussed the Jansenist heresy in this blog (March 6,  and November 27, 2011, February 28, March 1, August 19, September 13, 16 and 20, 2012) and I have said that I believe that it is alive and well and thriving in certain sectors of American Catholicism.  Michael Voris of ChurchMilitant.TV (formerly Real Catholic TV) is one proponent of the heresy which is one of the reasons he was ordered to remove the title “Catholic” from his productions and why he is not given an audience in many dioceses.  Christendom College in Front Royal Virginia has a reputation for being tainted with Jansenism as does the seminary at Mount Saint Mary’s Emmitsburg, but these reputations may be due more to individual graduates than actual academic philosophies, courses taught, or faculty teaching.  That being said, there are some that claim that Germain Grisez, professor emeritus of Mortal Theology at Mount Saint Mary’s, picked up the Jansenist mantle of the late Monsignor Gommar de Pauw who had taught at the Mount in the 50’s and 60’s before establishing the Catholic Traditionalist Movement, but I have not read Grisez and while he seems quite rigid, rigidity alone does not make one a Jansenist.  This idea however that in order to approach the Eucharist one must agree in theory and not merely conform in practice to the Church’s moral teaching certainly opens wide the door to Jansenism, especially when the admonition is applied to every detail of every issue.  When one hears the rants that it is necessary to deny the Eucharist to those who disagree with Church teaching in order to “prevent sacrilege,” there is sufficient smoke of self-righteousness to surmise the fires of Jansenism are burning brightly somewhere nearby.

Now, that being said, I doubt that Archbishop Myers is a Jansenist.  Jansenists are usually gaunt and dour folk, rarely suffering from gout.  I would look for another reason.  His Grace knows that at age 71 he is no longer a candidate for a higher see with an attached and much longed for red-hat and while he is not, as I said, bright, neither is he so unobservant as not to see that it is the Donald Wuerls and Timothy Dolans and Sean O’Malleys that get entrusted with the crucial sees.  (Though Charlie Chaput is probably headed for a cardinal’s galero and he can be a bit restrictive on the Eucharist, but I don’t believe Chaput has gone so far out on the crazy limb as Myers.)

“Farmer John” as he is known to his priests (it is that East-Coast snobbery about Midwesterners)  may simply have been bored and wanted some attention before his impending retirement relegates him permanently to the obscurity of an ecclesiastical has-been.  His remark that he felt it necessary to issue the statement because of the lack of clarity on the issue by his brother bishops was not designed to win him support from his peers but it sure has gotten him some attention.  Anyone who has taught second graders knows that infantile minds find negative attention preferable to no attention.  I suspect, however, that His Grace was playing to the Republican bleachers, knowing that that is where the big donors sit.  Like the steward of Luke 16,he is about to be out of a job and may know that he had better make friends fast with the mammon of iniquity as his days of service are coming to an end.  Jesus praised the crafty steward for his astuteness and I don’t disparage the Archbishop for his foresight.  I have met him often enough to know there is no malice in him and we all know well where our own bread is buttered.  Furthermore, I think that he—like many of his colleagues—honestly believe in the Republican philosophy and think it better for America.  I myself find certain planks in the Republican platform that I prefer over the alternatives and in particular I can’t support “abortion rights.”  I believe that a fetus is a human person with an inalienable right to life and that laws that permit that life to be taken at whim are unjust.  I don’t believe this because the Church says so—I believe it based on my (albeit limited) knowledge of biology.  Unlike many of the moral vocal in the anti-abortion camp, I support a consistent life-ethic.  It is not that I think the Church’s teachings here are “true” because the Church says that they are but rather I see that they reflect a Truth that is greater than the teaching of any particular religion.  Well, enough of that sermon; I am getting sidetracked.  I do intend to come out of my political closet in a future entry just for the sake of full-disclosure, but let me say that I believe a Catholic can be a Democrat in good faith and I believe that a Catholic can be in good faith a Republican. Either one requires some compromise with our faith as neither party can claim to be consistent with our Catholic (or even Christian) values but if one had to follow everything the Church teaches when one entered the voting booth either no one of us could vote or no one of us could receive Holy Communion.  ‘nuff  said.     

Okay, Torquemada, Enough Already--Take Care For Your Own Soul



Tómas de Torquemada

Grand Inquisitor



My last posting—the letter to a friend whose Catholicism was being challenged by self-appointed authorities on our faith drew a spike in readership.  One person sent me a link to a video of Michael Voris and a lecture on his “ChurchMilitant TV” (formerly “Real Catholic TV”) where Mr. Voris makes his claims about who is in and who is out.  Mr. Voris, of course, has no canonical authority to make such claims but that is not my point.  Listening to him, I was appalled to see the out-of-context quotes, the misquotes and misattributions, the selectively edited references, and the historical distortions he uses to make his point.  But then, a video clip or a Facebook page, or even a blog like this one is no place to find the Church teaching in its authenticity—not necessarily because people are actively trying to deceive others, but simply because our Catholic faith is not something that can be condensed in a ten minute video or a 200 word posting.  (I must admit that Father Barron’s Word on Fire Catholic Ministries does come awfully close to doing a great job at it though.)   Some of us have spent our lives studying the faith: reading book after book, going to lecture after lecture, taking course after course, subscribing to journal after journal, and most of all seriously praying and reflecting every day on the Word of God and how our faith—living faith, our relationship with Christ found in his word and sacrament and the communion of his disciples—brings together the life-giving Word of God in Sacred Scripture with the body of teaching passed down through the ages and forges from them a path of discipleship we can live in the world today. 

I think if there is anything that truly troubles me about people like Michael Voris and the host of bloggers and Facebook junkies that subscribe to his sort of Catholicism is that it comprehends “faith” only as doctrine and submission to their own authority.  Note—I say their own authority not magisterial authority, because while they claim to be obedient and faithful to the magisterium it is only the magisterium as they choose to present it.  They ignore certain precepts of the Church’s teaching and distort others—I think of Michael Voris’ misuse of papal documents to speak of the “common good” as no more than the aggregate of individuals’ goods—to advance their own agendas.  Many priests and some bishops are no better.  Convinced that they, and they alone, know the entire body of Christian doctrine they make decrees that are seriously troubling to the consciences of good Christians.   They presume the worst motives of those with whom they disagree and are so presumptuous as make judgments about the spiritual welfare of others.  Have they ever read the Gospel of Matthew? 

We have a great need for dialogue in the Church today.  The late Cardinal Martini said that the Church is 200 years behind the times.  Yes—the ancien regime has fallen, absolute monarchy has no credibility in the world today.  There is a need for those on top to listen to those in the ranks.  I am not calling for democracy here, just reminding you and me that the Church is a body and that the various parts of the body need listen to one another (1 Cor 12: 21) to hold the body in unity.  The mouth may have the function of doing the talking, but it had better be acting in harmony with the brain, with the heart, the eyes, the ears, and other body parts if it does not want to make a fool of itself.  Moreover, while the hierarchy does have the role of teaching the faith nobody has appointed Michael Voris or me or any Facebook flash mob to speak for them or to pass sentence in their name.  I have had enough of the good MaryBeth’s who always were raising their hand in sixth grade to say “Sister, Sister, Donald is chewing gum and we aren’t supposed to chew gum in school, are we Sister?”  Grow up people, take responsibility for your own lives and faith, respectfully dialogue about your faith with all who will listen, but don’t name yourself the Grand Inquisitor.  Ain’t your job.   

Freedom From Religion and Freedom of Religion IV

Anti-Catholic cartoon by American polotical

cartoonist Thomas Nast (1840-1902) illustrating

fear of Catholic Takeover of the United States

Well, as we have pointed out in our last entries, the Catholic Church was opposed not only to the Separation of Church and State as outlined in the United States Constitution but opposed to the idea of religious liberty or “freedom of conscience” itself.  This put the Church square in conflict with the American constitutional tradition which Americans, including Catholic Americans, for the most part overwhelmingly embraced.  Conflict of ideologies was inevitable and finally came to a head in 1954 when the Holy See silenced Jesuit Father John Courtney Murray for his views on the subject.  In a surprising reversal of the Magisterium, however, the Magisterium itself abandoned its long-held tenet and in the 1965 Conciliar Decree Dignitatis Humanae subscribed to the principle that each person should be free to follow the directives of his or her own conscience in matters of religious belief and be granted in civil law the freedom of worship according to individual conscience.  

    Until the notoriety of the Murray silencing, most American Catholics were unaware of the conflict between the United States Constitution and Catholic Magisterial teaching.  American Protestants, however, knew it. Anti-Catholicism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was primarily linked to anti-immigrant sentiment.  If you look at the right hand column where it is marked “Labels” you will see thirteen postings on “anti-Catholicism.”  One of the reasons that so many Americans feared the growth of the Catholic Church in the American Republic is that they saw that Catholicism posed a danger to American liberties.  We ridicule the idea that Catholics, if they attained a political majority, would take away Freedom of Religion in the United States—but remember, that is precisely what the papacy expected them to do.  I doubt it ever would have come to that.  I think Americans of whatever religious faith make a clear distinction in their public and political life between one’s religious convictions and the commitment we have to the freedoms outlined in the Bill of Rights.  While we might vote our faith, and while our electoral choices should—like all decisions in our lives—reflect the values our Christian and Catholic faith has given us, I think the civic values of the American Constitutional tradition are a firewall against religious extremism. 

     Now although Catholic doctrine has changed to embrace freedom of conscience, this question does have relevance today.  Just as Catholics can expect neither their faith nor the canon law of their Church to determine the laws of the Nation or of any State, County, or local jurisdiction, we must also insist that no other creed or religious law find its way into public legislation.  There must be no more room for Sharia than there is for Canon Law or the Mosaic Law in public life.  Individuals are free, indeed should be encouraged, to follow religious precepts in their individual lives and within the framework of their particular religious community,  but the anti-establishment clause of the first amendment protects us from having any one religious philosophy imposed on the American people.    

      Sharia law might be the obvious threat today but there are Catholics who still want to see Catholicism established as the official religion of the United States.  I used to think they were all crazies like Solange Hertz, a Leesburg Virginia doyenne with more bats in her belfry than Hogwarts at Halloween but then a couple of years ago along came Michael Voris from Real Catholic TV suggesting that what we need now is a Catholic Monarchy to replace our Republican Government.  Fortunately Voris has no support from the Church for his bizarre ideas and little influence among everyday Catholics but he is articulate and, adjusting for the observation that his reality coordinates are off kilter, within his own world of factoids he invariably has a well thought out and philosophically consistent patter.   Indeed he is not alone in his parallel universe.  There is a considerable faction among the neo-traditionalists who reject the Second Vatican Council whose fundamental opposition to the Catholic Church is not about the liturgy but about the Conciliar Decrees, especially Dignitatis Humanae and its assertion of Freedom of Conscience.  In the end, the ascendancy of Catholic Law over the larger society would be as fatal a blow to the Human Dignity with which our Creator has endowed us as would be Sharia law.  We may be more familiar with Catholic theology and law than Sharia Law, and Catholic hegemony might require less adjustment on our part, but are we willing to yield to any outside force the sovereignty of our conscience, the consciences of which God has made us each a steward and for which God will hold us accountable?

     Religion cannot be banned from public life—nor should it be. We are guaranteed the free exercise of religion.   There is no effective way in a democracy to keep religion out of public life because religious citizens will (hopefully) have their political philosophies shaped by their religious faith.  Even non-believers have their attitudes and values shaped by their non-belief.  Religion (or lack thereof) will all come to the lawmakers’ table but it must only come to the table through the agency of the individual citizens and never through the direct influence of religious institutions over government.   And if the Churches (and Synagogues and Mosques and various Atheistic Associations) are performing their role in raising the consciousness of their individual members, making convincing arguments for the political consequences of their beliefs, those beliefs will be reflected in the democratic process.   But the attempt to coerce believers into voting blocs sorted by religion undermines the constitutional processes.  I expect my pastor to tell me that abortion is wrong.  I expect my pastor to tell me that same-sex marriage is not consistent with our Christian understanding of matrimony.  I expect my pastor to tell me that we have a responsibility to provide for the needy and vulnerable among us.  I expect my pastor to pass on the Church’s teaching regarding immigration and the death penalty as well as contraception and divorce. I hope my pastor will have the coglioni to tell me to vote my conscience (not my religion [collective] but  my conscience [individual]) and not my wallet.  And I hope I will have the intelligence to know the difference and the integrity to be truthful as to which is which. 

Of Gnostics, Carmelites, the Incarnation, and Communion in the Hand

Two Carmelites, sisters by blood as well as in religious

life, at the Detroit Conference

I mentioned in the last entry that heresy sometimes lurks just beneath the surface of trumpeted orthodoxy.  Let me give an example.  Some years ago I was in Detroit to do some research on the infamous Father Coughlin who had a very popular radio show in the 1930’s which he used as a platform to attack Franklin Roosevelt  as well as to proclaim his anti-Semitic views.  I was staying, courtesy of a friend of mine, at a retreat center run by the Passionists.  Coughlin was very popular with a large segment of the American people though he was a huge embarrassment to the Church.  Coughlin had no endorsement from the Archbishop of Detroit –to the contrary.  The Osservatore Romano, the semi-official Vatican newspaper condemned him in 1935, but Coughlin remained popular with anti-Roosevelt Americans, Catholics and Protestants alike.   Cardinal Pacelli, papal Secretary of State discussed the matter with American officials on his 1936 visit to they United States but was unable to silence him.  Cardinal Mooney was appointed to Detroit in 1937 with the mandate to silence him but was unable.  American Catholics are notorious for listening not to the Church but to those voices in the Church with which they agree.  There must be something in the water in Motown as we currently have Michael Voris setting himself up against the hierarchy with his “Real Catholic TV.”   O well, I digress. 
     While I was staying at the Passionist Retreat Center there was a conference of Carmelite nuns going on—a meeting of about a hundred cloistered nuns—mostly the Prioresses (mothers superior) and Formation Directors (novice-mistresses) of various monasteries in the United States and Canada, though I did see some younger nuns with the white veils of novices.  It was interesting seeing these women outside their monasteries.  They were anything but a somber group.  There was much laughter and a strong sense of family.  They looked very traditional—almost all in the same habit their predecessors had worn  for centuries though a few had modified veils that showed a wisp of hair.  They were very serious when it came time for prayer and it was a privilege to attend their Mass each morning.  I served the Mass—or rather I served the old priest who celebrated the Mass for them each morning.  I was surprised to note that at communion not a single nun received communion on the tongue.  Young and old, reverent all, but each nun extended her hands to receive Holy Communion.  I mentioned this one day at lunch—I had my meals with them in the retreat dining room—and the nuns at the table all thought for a moment and then began to discuss it.  They had never given it much thought, they agreed, it just seemed natural to them.  Then one older nun—the prioress of a Carmel on the West Coast—said “Well, why wouldn’t we?  The Incarnation is the central mystery of our lives.  Holy Mother (Saint Teresa of Avila) says that we should meditate on either the Passion or the Incarnation.  When you meditate on the Word Becoming Flesh, you burn with desire to hold the Flesh of the Lord for yourself.    In this sacrament, his Flesh becomes our Flesh and our Flesh becomes his.  Why should be afraid to touch him?  He is our Spouse, the deepest Desire of our being.”  I was impressed at her fervor as well as her insight.
     Several years before while in Minneapolis I had been taken to hear a young priest, a Father Robert Altier, who at the time was something of a seven day wonder.  Father Altier drew huge crowds to Saint Agnes Church where he celebrated what at the time was the “indult” mass.  A college buddy of mine who had just returned to the Church after three “marriages” (only one of them with a woman if you get my drift)  would go only to Saint Agnes.  Saint Agnes with the Latin Mass facing the wall represented the Church he had left forty years ago and it was the only Church to which he was willing to go back now that he had religion again. (That is the danger in being a historian: the temptation is to restore the past, a futile effort, rather than build the future on the past.)   Father Altier told us in his talk that day—it wasn’t a sermon but a talk in the hall after mass as I recall—that receiving Communion in the hand was “an abomination, a sacrilege”  The Blessed Mother, he assured us, had never received Communion in the hand.  I almost laughed out loud.  She who had changed Jesus’ diaper (I could use a more graphic phrase) was too awestruck to take his flesh in her hand in Holy Communion?   Who is this Christ in Whom this young priest believed?  Is it the Christ of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, the Christ whose human nature is preserved intact in the hypostatic union?  Or does this Christ have a different sort of human nature than we do?  Sure he is “consubstantial” with the Father according to his Divinity.  What I wonder if people believe is whether he is “consubstantial” with us regarding his humanity?  Here again is Gnosticism lurking behind orthodox piety.  It is perfectly all right to receive Communion on the tongue if that your choice, but can we say that it is wrong or sacrilegious to receive Christ in our hands?   If so, what is that implying about human nature?  What is that saying about material creation?  Beneath such “orthodoxy” lurks some very dark beliefs. 

What Makes "Real (?) Catholic T.V." Real Catholic?

And then there’s Michael Voris and “Real Catholic T.V.”  Michael Voris might be a real Catholic but “Real Catholic T.V.” is not really Catholic—at least in any sense that the Catholic Church recognizes.  Let me explain.  What Sister Never Knew and Father Never Told You is not a Catholic Blog.  O sure, it’s author is a Catholic in good standing, very good standing.  But the blog itself: it is neither endorsed nor sponsored by the Catholic Church.  I have no authorization from the Holy See or the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), or a local bishop to produce this blog.  Of course, I wouldn’t want one—nor do I need one.  This blog is about history—not faith or morals.  I make no pretense of doctrinal authenticity in matters of faith and/or morals.  I wouldn’t deliberately lead people astray regarding the Magisterium but even when dealing with matters of faith and/or morals, I will only present them from a historical point of view.  And history falls outside the authority of the Magisterium—which is one reason, by the way, that I went into history and not theology.  But Mr. Voris works very hard to give the (false) impression that he speaks for the Church when in fact he speaks only for himself.  There is no guarantor that he is, in fact, “orthodox” or that he accurately represents the position of the Holy See or the teachings of the Church.  In fact, he is often at odds with the Church in some of the claims that he makes especially on the “flash points” of ecumenism, inter-religious dialogue, sacred worship, canon law, Church authority, and several other topics. No one, at any level of Church authority, has granted Mr. Voris recognition as being an authentic channel of Catholic doctrine.  Mr. Voris, like others such as Father Maciel of the Legionnaires of Christ, Father Fessio, Mother Angelica, the former Father Corappi, and various others, has discovered that a neo-traditionalist message brings considerable financial advantages.  I believe however that unlike Father Fessio and Mother Angelica, Mr. Voris is not acting in (mistaken) good faith but simply establishing himself in a niche in the neo-con market for his own financial and career purposes.  The primary aim of the vortex is to suck money out of the pockets of those who mistakenly believe their support of Mr. Voris is a support of an “authentic” Catholicism.