The Colonial Williamsburg Approach To Catholicism

I love small town America.  I have a little vacation time and I am sitting on the veranda of a country-style coffee shop in East Aurora New York having my breakfast and looking out into a different world of a lazy hazy summer far from the maddening crowd of my normal place of work.  This is so different than my everyday rush and bother and the confused world of a metropolitan area. There are “traditional” families having a 10:00 am weekday morning breakfast together with teenagers who look like they are actually happy to be with their parents.  I don’t see anyone texting or checking their emails.  In fact, I am getting a bit self-conscious about sitting here with my laptop even though I am alone at my table.  Across the street is the white clapboard Presbyterian Church with its tall New-Englandy tower and Palladian widow.  A large American flag hangs from the tower.  I know the time because the bell in the Episcopal Church up the street just sounded the hour.  Lawns are green and tightly clipped; summer gardens filled with hollyhock and painted daises and pink cleome and hydrangea.  This is a world in which the issues of post-modern U.S.A. seem totally removed.  I am sure there are same-sex married couples somewhere in this town, and probably some of these nice ladies in their garden-hats having their coffee and laughing with one another have a Salvadoran of questionable legal status cleaning their homes, and there probably are a few children of color in the in the public schools, but it is all hidden from sight and duly out of mind.   One might think that Dwight Eisenhower is still President and June and Ward Cleaver live just around the corner.  I grew up in a somewhat idyllic world in which everybody went to Mass—and the ladies wore hats and gloves to do so—and divorce was an unknown quantity.  Yes, there was some domestic violence and even more alcoholism and the man across the street wore his wife’s underwear but it wasn’t talked about, at least in front of the children.  Sunday dinner was a roast and we could play outside until dark without anyone worrying.  I miss that world.  In retrospect it was an artificial world: closet doors were nailed shut and to reach the age of reason meant to buy into the web of ever-bigger lies, but it was all so simple as long as you didn’t rock the boat.   And it is wonderful to retreat into a facsimile of that world if only for a few days of vacation; but that world is gone and gone for good.  It was only a frame in social history and despite the efforts of those who wish to see their children and grandchildren safe and secure in their own particular variant of colonial Williamsburg, the toothpaste won’t go back into the tube and we Christians know that our discipleship must face the challenges of today’s world and not hide in some magic wardrobe among the tattered silks and shabby furs of Grandma’s day. 

I think this is the stumbling block for today’s Catholic neo-cons.  The memories of pre-Vatican II Catholicism represent for them a safer, less complex world of back-porch ice-cream and rosary crusades where one didn’t have to look at life’s complexities so squarely in the eye.  We didn’t have to question then, we could just trust the powers-that-be to keep us safe and free.  It all began to come apart when Camelot collapsed and we were left with Viet Nam and Civil Rights.  At first it all seemed so clear and many of us even climbed on the liberal bandwagon.  We wanted to protect our Little Brown Brothers in South-east Asia from the grasp of Khrushchev and Mao.  Who knew that a law that required us to serve lunch at the Woolworth’s Lunch Counter to Miss Savannah, the Black lady who cleaned Aunt Ethel’s house, would one day require us to bake a wedding cake for a Gay couple?  Oh, J.Edgar tried to warn us.  Yes he did.  Martin Luther King was a communist and the Kennedy brothers were sleeping with Marilyn Monroe—but did we listen?  No.  And our whole world began to unravel.  There were the Beatles and the Beatles led to Pot and Pot to Coke—and I don’t mean Cola—and then all hell broke loose at Woodstock.  And those protestors against Viet Nam began to question our government and the next thing you know we had Eugene McCarthy and Eugene McCarthy led to Walter Mondale and Mondale to Clinton and the next thing you know we got ourselves a Kenyan in the White House.  And all the walls have come tumbling down.  Why I have a doctor who is half-German and half-Korean!  And my niece married an African American (but he can passé blanc and fortunately their child looks like us.)  And my uncle divorced my aunt after 35 years of marriage and is living with a woman whose brother is a priest and he goes over to their house for dinner and on vacation with them!  And two lesbians just bought the house across the street and have come over to ask if they can take a clipping from the fig tree in our yard.  If I give them a clipping, will my pastor deny me Holy Communion?   I just love being in East Aurora—it is the next best thing to the Tridentine Mass for forgetting that it is 2015 and following Jesus isn’t as simple as it used to be. 

At the end of the day—or the vacation—Colonial Williamsburg Christianity is not Christian Discipleship.  If God wished us to live in 1950’s America he would have had us born a generation or two earlier.  We are placed in our specific time and place to make the Kingdom of God a reality in that specific moment and location in history.  While the Christian is not called to embrace the peculiarities of culture, we are called to evangelize in the everyday world in which live.  To do this we need to live in the world around us and not to try to take refuge in our memories of an easier, better day. 

I think the single most memorable—and “shaping”—book I read during the entire course of my education was Creative Fidelity by the French Existentialist, Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973).  Marcel’s thesis, at least as I remember it and as it has shaped me, is that faithfulness (fidelity) requires change.  As the world around us changes, so too must we change if we are to keep our values fixed on the unchanging. To fail to change is to be the servant who takes his silver coin and buries it for fear of the returning Master’s wrath.  Let me explain it this way.   I am on the people-mover that carries pilgrims past the tilma containing the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe that hangs over the altar in the shrine of the same name in Mexico City.  If I am to keep my eye on the image of Our Lady I have to constantly shift my position as I stand on the people-mover as the carrier moves me along otherwise my eyes will see only the blank wall as I move beyond the space directly below the image.   This is what John Henry Newman meant when he said: “To live is to change and to have changed often is to have lived well.”  I am enjoying my time up here in small-town Americana; it’s letting me off my tilt-a-whirl world with all its complexities and challenges, but going to Mass yesterday and hearing the priest remind me about the challenges Jesus faced surrounded by people whose hunger was not just spiritual reminds me that I need to go back into the realities of life and meet people where they are at and not where I think they should be.

Keeping The Faithful Faithful

Pope Francis at World Youth Day

I was reading an interesting article about why people—and often entire congregations—are leaving mainline Protestant churches and either dropping out of formal religious practice altogether or affiliating with more “evangelical” groups.  The reasons given for the breakdown of the mainline churches is

Bullying tactics by denominational leaders

A perceived abandonment of foundational principles of scripture and tradition

A devaluation of personal faith

It is interesting to look at the crisis of American Catholicism and ask how and to what extent these same issues have affected Catholics in the United States and led them to make other religious commitments (or non-commitments).

Bullying tactics by denominational leaders.  The Catholic hierarchy in the United States has a long history of oppressive and even “bullying” behavior towards the faithful.  While John Carroll, in the flush of excitement of the new American Republic, tried to set a democratic tone to American Catholicism, by and large American bishops after him followed the monarchic style of their European counterparts.  With the exception of the rare bird such as John England of Charleston (bishop 1820-1842), the American bishops have more often than not been heavy-handed tyrants.  Even the liberals such as John Ireland of Minneapolis St. Paul (1875-1918) or Patrick O’Boyle of Washington  (1948-1973) were most often unabashed autocrats while the conservatives such as William O’Connell of Boston (1906-1944), James McIntyre of Los Angeles (1948-1970), or Michael Corrigan of New York (1880-1902) were ecclesiastical despots.  Pope Francis has adopted a radically more open style of leadership as pope and it can be hoped that his episcopal appointments’ for the United States will reflect this change of approach in leading the Church.  Blase Cupich of Chicago certainly seems to be of this new Francis generation.  Coadjutor Archbishop Bernard Hebda of Newark is another Francis appointee who seems to have won the confidence of the clergy and faithful.  The new bishops of Fall River (Massachusetts) and Gary (Indiana) are also signs of hopeful change in the hierarchy.  For the most part, the Catholic faithful seem enthusiastic by Pope Francis’ style of leadership.  At the same time there are loud and strident voices that lament that there are not more dictatorial prelates in the style of Raymond Burke when he was Archbishop of Saint Louis or Fabian Bruskewitz, former bishop of Lincoln Nebraska whose resistance to change in the Church is legendary.  I think the message is clear that under Pope Francis bullying will not get a bishop or priest any desired advancement in his ecclesiastical career. Hopefully the Church will be  blessed by having this Pope long enough to make a permanent change in the style of leadership not only in Rome but in local chanceries as well.

The second issue I think is a bit more pertinent—actually much more pertinent—to our Catholic situation.  I don’t doubt that there is a perceived—and, in fact a real—break with the best of the Catholic intellectual tradition. I am not sure, however, that the American Church was ever as strong on biblical and theological scholarship as was ancient and medieval Catholicism or pre-WWII European Catholicism.  The state of homiletics in the average Catholic parish in this country was horrendous before Vatican II and it is still poor; what is worse is that today’s poor preacher is too often speaking to the very poorly catechized Catholic.  For all its pedagogical faults, the Baltimore Catechism in its day provided a thorough survey of Catholicism 101.  That is not to say that the average Catholic of the past knew, much less understood, his or her faith.  But there was a definite curriculum of doctrinal content available.  The state of religious education in American Catholicism is abysmal and has been abysmal for two generations now.  I remember studying secondary education as an undergraduate—it was one of my minors as, at the time, I thought I might end up a high-school teacher.  We were taught to always teach just above the student’s level so that reaching for comprehension would keep their interest in the class.  I always followed that in my decades of teaching—which turned out not to be secondary school but mostly at the post-graduate level.  But these years since Vatican II Religious Education both in Catholic Schools and parish Religious Ed programs has always gone just the other way and so grossly oversimplified things as to make the doctrinal content of our faith ridiculous to anyone with a critical mind.  Today in most parishes children have yet to master “The Lord’s Prayer” by Confirmation—forget any understanding of the Scriptures or the Deposit of Faith.  What can we do?  Well we need to put an emphasis on Adult Faith Formation (as distinguished from Adult Education.)  I am not a fan of the neo-Catechetical movement as I think the doctrinal thrust of the “neo-Cat’s” has been tainted by a certain level of Gnosticism, but the methodology of developing a post-baptismal catechumenate is, I believe, brilliant.  And while saying that, let me also give a plug for Father Robert Barron’s video series on Catholicism.  It is both a thorough presentation of basic Catholic doctrine and a profound introduction to our rich Catholic culture—both historical and contemporary. 

Finally, the matter of the devaluation of personal faith is another thing that I think we Catholics need to look at.  In the pre-conciliar Church we had little access to a mature spirituality but we did have a rich piety that sustained our immigrant parents and grandparents through the struggles of an economic Depression and devastating wars.  Among the babies that went out with the bathwater over the last five decades is a healthy mature spirituality suited for modern Catholics.  The old devotionalism won’t do, but neither does it have to.  We have in our Catholic heritage a rich heritage of being introduced to the great mystics.  We have a rich sacramental/liturgical life.  We have superb biblical scholarship of the last seventy+ years.  Modern religious movements like the Community of Saint Egidio and the Monastic Community of Jerusalem as well as the Ecumenical fellowship of Taizé have developed magnificent prayer-forms.  In addition to the Classics of Catholic Spirituality we have the writers of the 20^th century like Merton and Houselander.  Today’s writers like Rohlheiser, Rohr, Keating, and Chittester are sources of spiritual guidance for those who are seekers.  We hear a lot about secularism, but people today are as anxious as ever to bridge the everyday for the Transcendent.  There is much we can do in our parishes to meet these hungers, but until and unless we do we should not be surprised that the hungry are looking elsewhere and the searchers have become disillusioned.  

Y'ad Think They Were Proddies For How They Hate The Pope

Recently a number of Katholic Krazie blogs have ceased publishing.  In one case, a deacon who maintained a blog was instructed by his bishop not to publish anymore.  In another, the blogger’s confessor suggested that she cease publishing at least temporarily for her own spiritual welfare.  In other cases bloggers of the Katholic Krazie persuasion have just give up, having become discouraged by the significant change of direction in which Pope Francis is taking the Church.  But there are some, fortunately for my entertainment value, who are resolved to slog on through this winter of their papal discontent in their determination to keep the Church on what they determine to be its orthodox track when we have Mad Max at the helm of Peter’s Barque.  Dymphna’s Road, a peculiar little blog from Virginia that more frequently is given to somewhat maudlin pictures than to serious thought, published a posting a few months ago “Screaming in Pain” about the plight of those Catholics who are struggling with the current Pope and his style.  It was quite mild and an honest acknowledgement that there are those in the Church who are bewildered by the current course. Janet Baker, the doyenne of the Katholic Krazies in the Washington Archdiocese, through her blog Restore DC Catholicism, published a response regarding “a lot of defeatist attitudes among bloggers and other Catholics” and exhorting them to keep up the battle against this papacy.  Janet, who was described to me by a priest from the Washington Archdiocese who has long been familiar with her, as “a deeply troubled soul” (which, in a prescribed tone of voice, is priest-code for “#*@$ing nuts”) and who apparently has caused more than her share of strife in the parish of Saint John Neumann in suburban Gaithersburg, recently published a new exhortation to her fellow bloggers in the Krazie Katholic Kamp to keep up their blogging in the face of “despondency, discouragement, and even cynicism.”  It sounds like the Krazies are settling in for a long, hard war against Pope Francis and the direction in which he is leading the Church.    There is a determined core ready to fight on, one of whom maintains the Boston-based blog recently re-named What Did the Pope Really Say?   
Our Boston Krazie, who is a kindred wacko to Janet, has migrated her blog through at least three re-incarnations now.  In the days when she was focused on getting President Obama out of the White House and Democrats out of Congress, she was Throw the Bums Out in 2010.  When she was unable to dislodge the forces of Satan in Washington, she changed the name of the Blog to The Tenth Crusade, a not-insignificant name given her near hysteria when the subject of Islam comes up.  She recently morphed again into What did the Pope Really Say?  By no means is this an homage to the Holy Father.  To the contrary: she has made it clear that she believes this papacy to be an absolute disaster. Each posting on the subject is more vituperative that the previous.  Here is how she sums up the pontificate:    
A counterfeit church where dogma and doctrine is forbidden and replaced with a battalion of washed up women and sissified men constantly distracting you from your pursuit of entering into deep mystical communion with Christ. These people don't have any idea what the whole thing is about. While we are running into the building where we put everything else out of our minds to concentrate on going to the mystical world where we are met and greated (sic) by angels and saints, Our Truine God, the Blessed Mother and we immerse ourselves - they're trying to find ways to plug into each other and grab something to help them overcome the sick feeling they have in their soul from sleeping with somebody they're not sacramentally married to. They've been coming to the parish for years and the priest has never told them what that feeling is all about and the only way to get rid of it.…Isn't this what the Pope is turning our religion into?
Attracting with a welcome wagon, withholding and undermining doctrine and the tools to get people into a state of Grace, ridiculing doctrine and dogma and turning it all into a welcome wagon so people can find a personal relationship with Jesus on Sunday morning after they roll off of their lovers?
There's nothing like a Sunday morning breakfast after having your adultery affirmed by your local Catholic priest. That kind of a 'personal relationship with Jesus' really gets your juices going for the week.
Golly Gee, she certainly has her agenda—and her suspicions about everyone else in Church.   She brings it home at the end of the post and explains her real concern..
My main concern is about how to get my own children/grandchildren/relatives/people/friends around the larceny. I'm feeling kind of resentful 'bout 'dat. For years, when Fr. SoandSo encouraged dissent and I flew the coop with them, I always had a Pope to point them towards to explain the mess on the ground and give them the ability to mentally process how to apply doctrine to the judgments they make every day when faced with temptations. It has all been turned upside down for them. That is what I am upset about and what I am focused on. The Pope has ripped my children from the intellect and sound judgment of Christ. Possibly for the rest of their lives. I couldn't be any more disgusted and upset about it.
The plight of the parent who sees their children and grandchildren abandoning our Catholic faith is heart wrenching, I certainly agree.  We see a legacy, a treasure that has been in our families for generations being discarded without a second thought.  But it isn’t Pope Francis who is to blame.  And it isn’t Vatican II.  And most likely it isn’t our parish priest.  Perhaps it could be our own narrow pharisaical pieties that present a Christianity that is most unattractive to the genuinely Christian heart—repulsive not for its doctrine but for its prejudice and self-righteousness.   I talk to people who have left the Church all the time—perhaps now they are Protestants, perhaps agnostics, perhaps just lazy about Sunday mornings—but almost invariably what has turned them off to the faith is the lack of charity on those who profess to be “good Christians.”  Sorry Granma, but the problem might just be you and not the Pope.   
Let’s go back to Janet from Restore DC Catholicism and see she what she has to say about Pope Francis.  In a particularly audacious attack on the Pope, Janet channels Sarah Palin (why am I not surprised?) and says “You Cannot Put Lipstick on a Pig.”  Janet’s attack is a response to Krazy-Katholic journalist Michael Voris, but the “Pig” she refers to is, of all people, Pope Francis. I never would have thought two years ago that once-oh-so-faithful Janet would be calling the Vicar of Christ a “Pig.”  But at least she capitalized it, which would perhaps show some lingering respect for the office if not the man.    Voris, for his part, is caught between his Krazy Katholic Konstituency and the fear—very real—that he will be publically silenced by Church authority.  While going after everything Pope Francis has stood for in his papacy, Voris is very careful not to attack the Holy Father himself.  As Janet points out in her rant, however, Voris will have soon to take sides or lose much of his following.  Janet’s conclusion: Moral of story? Pray that the pope learn from these disasters and take responsibility for what issues forth from his mouth. Real spiritual peril can result. Obviously Janet does not believe that Francis is a worthy successor to Saint Peter.
Perhaps the most offensive of the anti-papal blogs, and one that clearly believes that Francis is no successor to Saint Peter, is Mundabor’s Blog, the grumblings of a dyspeptic Englishman (ok, ok, I know, “dyspeptic” and “Englishman” is redundant; have you seen the movie Unfinished Song?).  Mundabor has been attacking Francis from the beginning of his papacy and has referred to the Pope as “a fool,” implied that Francis’ refusal to condemn gays indicates that he himself is homosexual, and that the Pope is an atheistic secular humanist rather than a faithful Catholic who offers a “man-centered” religion rather than Christocentric faith.   Mundabor derides “this disgraceful pontificate” for caving in to the values of modern society.  Here is a sample of his venom
I doubt Bergoglio reads the Gospel other than to try to extract some of the stupid, populist, socialist, childish, or simply unintelligible nonsense he regales us so often with. I know he very probably does not believe in God, does not think he will stand in front of his Judge, and does not care a straw about doing his job as a Pope is (sic) expected to do. But I do wonder: if Francis were – perhaps after drinking a grappa too much – to make an effort to read the Gospel seriously….
 The attacks on Francis, both personal and for his orthodoxy, have brought Mundabor right to the verge of sede-vacantism and perhaps it would be more honest of him to join those who believe the Chair of Peter is now empty rather than to have him constantly undermine the authority of the man who holds the office.   
There is more—plenty more—of anti-Francis material among these Katholic Krazies;  both more blogs and more diatribes from the various bloggers mentioned.  What does this barrage of anti-Francis material mean?  The neo-trads are losing ground in most quarters.  Several neo-trad blogs have mentioned that the move to restore the Pre-Conciliar liturgy seems to have reached its high water mark and that interest in the pre-Conciliar Rite is now in decline.  A stronghold of pre-Conciliar Catholicism is the Diocese of Arlington VA.  There are fifteen churches in the Diocese of Arlington where the TLM (Traditional Latin Mass/Tridentine Latin Mass) is offered every Sunday—representing about one parish in five.  Yet sources in the Diocese tell me that few, if any, congregations get more than 150 people and most get less than 100. This would represent less than 2.4 % of Sunday Mass goers in the Diocese.  Both bishops and priests who felt that Popes John Paul II and Benedict were steering the Church to the right and it was necessary to go along as that seemed to be the future, now feel that Pope Francis’ approach means a change in direction for the parishes as well.  “My parishioners are so enthused about Francis, I have no choice but to go in his direction,” said one Monsignor.  “I didn’t expect this resurgence of the old Vatican II mentality—but it is here, the faithful are on board, and frankly I am finding that it is bringing renewed energy to the parish.” 
I wouldn’t get my hopes up just yet that Francis’s vision of Church will prevail.  Popes come and go and as they do, the barque of Peter seems to rock a bit.  Francis is not a young man and shows signs of physical weakness.  The battles are not over; the victory of Vatican II is not yet won.  In fact, the neo-trads are digging in strong with conferences and congresses to keep their fans devoted to the cause of restoring all things to 1950.  They are well organized, well-funded, and ready for a long season in the underground.  Moreover time is on their side.  There is no missing the observation that a significant number of younger clergy, in many dioceses even a majority, are silently with them and ready to dig out the maniples and birettas at the first tolling the big bronze bell that hangs over the arch of the bells at St. Peter’s.  For those who are delighted that Francis has us back on course again, don’t take it for granted.  We need to use the time given us in this papacy build strong faith communities in our parishes.  We need to know the Conciliar Documents.  We need to know the various encyclicals and decrees. We need to continue to work on developing the Liturgical Prayer of the Church. We need to have a strong sense of mission and be committed to it.  Above all we need to be rooted in a strong spirituality founded in the Word of God and with a deep appreciation for the Sacramental Life of the Church.  The battles will be won not by those who have right on their side—or we would not have to worry—but by those who are best prepared. 

The Trojan Horse in the Tridentine Mass

Franciscans of the Immaculate

meeting with Pope Francis at

Casa Santa Marta June 10

I have written before on the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, a group originating in the Friars Minor Conventual (OFM Conv.) but becoming an independent Institute of Religious Life of Pontifical Right in 1998 with Father Stefano Manelli as their Superior General. Last year Pope Francis removed Father Manelli as Superior and put the community under the governorship of Capuchin Father Fidenzio Volpi OFM Cap.  It is not an extraordinary gesture for the Holy See to remove a Superior General and appoint a Vicar of the Holy See’s own choosing, but it is exceptional to bring in a superior from outside the congregation itself.  It seems that the fuss is because the Franciscans of the Immaculate—or their leadership—made the decision that henceforth they would celebrate only the pre-conciliar rite known as the TLM or “Traditional Latin Mass” or the “Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.”  But it turns out it is far more complicated and involves the issue of whether or not the friars accept the magisterial authority of the Church as expressed in the Decrees of the Second Vatican Council.
Of course, for a religious community entrusted with parish churches and public shrines to decide that it will no longer celebrate the “ordinary” Rite of the Mass, that is the Novus Ordo, is problematic for any bishop who knows the pastoral needs of his people require the ordinary form as the ordinary every-day rite.  The bishop must provide for those of the faithful who want the “extra-ordinary form” but even more he must provide for the far greater numbers who want Mass in their own language and according to the 1970 Missal.  But it turns out that the problem runs deeper than the rite.
The Holy Father met with a delegation of Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate on June 10.  The meeting was a bit tense on both sides though all remained cordial.  What is interesting though is that after the meeting with the Pope, a considerable number of young friars who were present—novices and those in temporary profession—applied to leave the Order.  One spilled the beans, saying that he left “because he (the young friar) does not accept the Second Vatican Council.”
This is the problem—not with the Franciscans of the Immaculate Conception, the majority of whom I am sure accept the Second Vatican Council, but with many who “hide out” from the Church in the TLM.  The problem is not the rite; it is the Council just as the Council is the sticking point with the quasi-schismatic Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X.  (I say “quasi-schismatic” because though the excommunication against them was lifted, they have still not been restored to the unity of the Church, and this is because they refuse to accept the teachings of the Council.)  We can no more accept in the Church those who reject the authority of the Council than we can accept those who reject the authority of the Pope.  One might disobey a Council (we do every time we kneel in a Sunday Liturgy or during the Easter Season) or one might disobey a Papal teaching (contraceptive Catholics, for example) but disobeying is not the same a rejecting the authority.  As regards the Second Vatican Council, for example, one might personally choose not to have anything to do with non-Catholics, but neither now can one deny the authority of the Church to enter into fraternal dialogue with Protestants or with non-Christians, or criticize a bishop or priest who permits non-Catholic Christians to use a church for their worship, or who participates in non-sacramental worship with them.  That, of course, is only one example but for the majority of those who reject the Second Vatican Councils, the rejection is on matters of Ecumenism or Inter-Religious Dialogue.  
The problem is not only with the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate.  I know a parish in the Arlington Diocese which hosts a weekly TLM Mass and which permits parents to “home-school” their children according to the Baltimore Catechism rather than participate in the Religious Education program of the parish.  (The same parish does not have a Catholic School because the pastor does not want to provide an education subject to the diocesan guidelines which would require too many “concessions to modernism.”)  The Baltimore Catechism, a book which provided the basic religious education for many of us, has not been revised to bring it into accord with the teaching of the Church these fifty years since Vatican II and consequently differs from the magisterium on any number of points. 
If the TLM continues to provide an alternative Catholicism, a Catholicism without the Council, it will end up being suppressed.  There is room for a variety of Rites in the Church—we have always had a variety of Rites—but there is no room for rejecting the teachings of an Ecumenical Council.  Ultimately,  unless a conformity of catechesis is maintained across the Roman Rite, Pope Francis or one of his successors will end up suppressing the Rite and the secret schism within the Church will be forced into the open. 

The Glories of Catholicism Before Vatican II --And Why I Am Not Going Back

Anthony Lee, Philomena's son, with

one of the nuns at Sean Ross Abbey

I am going to take a short break from our history of the Church of England even though we probably have only two more postings on the reign of Queen Mary and the Catholic Restoration, to bring up several contemporary issues. 

A few weeks ago a horrifying news release appeared regarding a home for unwed mothers in Tuam, Ireland, where the Bons Secours Sisters allegedly had buried almost 800 infants in a disused septic tank before the home was closed in 1961.  Originally the story claimed that children in the home died on the average of four a week from a variety of causes, among them neglect and malnutrition, as well as whooping cough, influenza, tuberculosis and convulsions.  As it turned out when a number of Catholic journalists—including Father James Martin of America Magazine—pursued the story, the death records showed a loss of 22 children a year over the time period which the institution was opened from 1925 until 1961.  While this number still seems extraordinarily high,  the extreme poverty of Ireland in those years and the high infant mortality rate throughout the country must be remembered.  Local historian, Catherine Corless, who had uncovered the story and diligently searched the records, denied that she claimed that the children had been buried in the septic tank, claiming that the tank held perhaps 20 skeletons, but rather that they were buried in unmarked graves on the property.

Several films in the last few years have brought up the plight of unmarried mothers in 20^th century Ireland.  The Magdalene Sisters (2002) tells stories of the incredible humiliation and pain inflicted on the inmates in one such home.  Though fictional, the story is not an exaggeration of the abuse to which these young women were subjected by nuns and clergy.  The stories also reveal how parents turned on their daughters when the daughters became pregnant out of wedlock, disowning them and even savagely beating them.    Philomena (2013), staring Judi Dench and Steve Coogan, is the substantially true story of Philomena Lee, a woman sent in 1951 to Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, a home run by the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts.  Philomena’s son, Anthony, is taken from her and given for adoption to an American family.  Despite both Philomena’s search for her son, and the son’s search for his mother, the nuns—while cordial—stonewall mother and son so that they never meet.  The son dies of AIDS before his mother can find him.   In one particularly dramatic scene—and this scene is fictional but telling none the less—an aged nun proudly declares that she has kept her vow of chastity for seventy-plus years and this puts her above the judgment of Philomena and the journalist assisting her in the search for not having revealed the whereabouts of the mother to the son who was searching for her. 

It was not only the Catholics who ran these homes for unwed mothers.  The Evangelical wing of the Church of Ireland also ran a home for “fallen women” called Bethany House and located in Blackhall Place, Dublin.  222 children died at Bethany House between 1922 and 1949, an average of a child every six weeks.  Of course Dublin was a major city with better access to health care than rural Tuam, but we see the problem of inadequate care pervaded the culture. 

What was an even bigger problem pervading the culture was the disdain for unmarried women who became pregnant.  There was a harsh and judgmental approach to women at a time they most needed help, healing, and compassion.  It was an ugly Catholicism that instead inflicted pain and humiliation on them in their time of need. 

There is a tendency among some to glorify the Catholicism of the early 20^th century with its full seminaries and convents, with its great building projects of cathedral-like churches, with its elaborate ceremonies and refined music.  In fact, that Church was often the whitened sepulcher Christ spoke of in the Gospels: polished and elegant on the outside, but inside fill with the bones of the dead.  There were many good habited nuns and there were many miserable and unhappy bitches in wimples.   There were many fine priests: and there were many drunks and abusers with roman collars.  There were many pious communicants and there were many hypocrites who marched up the aisle to kneel at the rails before going home and getting on the telephone to rip reputations left and right.  Today we have—in most places—a kinder, gentler Catholicism.  I think putting the Mass into our daily language has given us all a deeper exposure to the words of Jesus in the Gospels.  Some who are unhappy that this old fashioned rigid “faith” has passed refer to the Church today as “The Church of Nice.”  They mean it disparagingly, but I think Christ must look on the Church and breathe a sign of relief that his words seem finally to be sinking in.