Faith Requires Commitment, Not Warm Fuzzy Feelings about the Blood of Jesus!

GK Chesterton, the great English apologist for the faith wrote: "It is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."  I recently received this comment in response to my posting: “Bringing False Christianity Into the Public Square:

You have shown well the shallowness of our commitment to Christ. Your own commitment could be deepened by ceasing to use abortion as a foil to the rest of your argument. It shows that you haven't really taken to heart the realization that abortion is the taking of an innocent life. How else could you describe as 'sanctimonious veneer' the countless hours spent by thousands fighting for the pre-born, helping the newborns and comforting those recovering from the horror of abortion. When using the "what if Jesus walked in" standard, you could speculate on what He would say about the killing of huge numbers of innocent children and its comparative importance to health care and other important needs.

Now the curious thing is that in the postng while I mentioned universal access to health care, immigration, the death penalty, warfare, on the poor both here and abroad, violence as entertainment and weapons of violence, care for the environment, and the gross disparity of wealth in our society, I did not mention abortion.  If I did not mention, it I can hardly be accused of using it as a “foil.” Moreover there were other issues I did not mention, some of because there is no question that evangelicals embrace them.  They are not the contentious issues that can provide a litmus test of fidelity to the preaching of Jesus.  There is no doubt that evangelicals—authentic and phony—oppose abortion.  My denunciation is that opposition to abortion is no guarantee that a person is evangelical.  People are opposed to abortion for many reasons.  Some are opposed for religious reasons—including Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists.  Some are opposed for philosophical reasons—including many atheists and agnostics.  Some—indeed many—are opposed because they see the links between abortion and the collapse of traditional social values: same sex marriage, divorce, pre-marital sex, changing attitudes on gender.  Some even see it as a woman’s health issue and view abortion as potentially dangerous to the health and welfare of women.  All that is well and good.  But all I say to them is “Good luck with your endeavors;  I hope we have some mutual success.”   The only reason that counts in my book for being opposed to abortion is that it undermines the Kingdom of God as proclaimed by Jesus in the Gospels, God alone is the author and giver of life and God alone can directly take a human life.  Life is totally within the authority of God and a disciple of Jesus Christ must be committed to that principle.  In the same sense just because a person is in favor of providing refuge to immigrants or health care to the poor doesn’t mean he or she is an evangelical.  I am happy to see people working for goals I believe are central to the Kingdom of God regardless of their personal religious convictions, but my passion lies not with the issue but the motivation. 

Now I am not going to get into the “seamless garment issue” though I firmly espouse it.  What I am going to say is that the principle of protecting the Life of the Unborn is one jewel in the Catholic Magisterial Crown, it is one jewel and we have to buy the entire package.  If we are authentically Catholic—and for me the person who is fully Catholic is fully evangelical because the teachings of the Catholic Church, though not yet perfect, enshrine the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we must accept the entire magisterium of the Church.  This is neither liberal nor conservative.  The magisterium of the Catholic Church says that the direct taking of an unborn life is a grave sin of injustice.  The magisterium of the Catholic Church says that the sacrament of Matrimony is between one man and one woman for the duration of their lives.  But the magisterium of the Catholic Church also speaks about all God’s children having a right to education.  And it speaks of all God’s Children having a right to migrate to seek better and safer lives.  And it says that the salaries of workers and managers should be in reasonable proportion.  And it says that all life—even the life of the criminal—must be protected, explicitly citing the United States as a particular example where the death penalty is being abused. 

You can be opposed to abortion—that does not make you a disciple of Jesus Christ.  You can be in favor of liberal immigration policies—that does not make you a disciple of Jesus Christ.  It is the whole ball of wax, embraced not because it fits our political agenda or because our friends think that way but because when I encounter Jesus in the Gospel and the community of the faithful that adhere to the Gospel, I realize it can be no other way. 

Now not everyone can equally invest himself in one facet or another of working for God’s Kingdom.  Some will put more of their energy in one cause or another than a third.  What is important is that Jesus’s disciples work together in harmony.  And so when I refer to “the sanctimonious veneer” of those who spend “countless hours fighting for the pre-born,”  I am not referring to true disciples but to those who pick and choose the unborn but turn their back on the immigrant or the person without health care.  I can also speak of the “sanctimonious veneer” of the pants-suited 80 year-old-nun with a pro-choice button protesting at Fort Benning GA.  It is not enough to be liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican.  And the end of the day we have to be disciples, pure and simple, nothing else.

So What's The Deal About This Permission To Absolve Abortion

A More Open-minded Papacy 

Pope Francis’ recent pastoral directive extending to all priests, even those of the semi-schismatic Society of Saint Pius X, the faculty to absolve the sin of abortion has created a remarkable stir on several levels. 

I must admit that I am not sure quite why this was seen to be such a huge step as, at least here in the United States and I presume through much of the world, the reservation of absolution to the bishop or his authorized confessor was largely bypassed for sound pastoral reasons.  The minor flap associated with this “temporary provision” for the upcoming Holy Year of Mercy is how many people didn’t know that there are sins beyond the authority of the priest to absolve.  I am going to use the word “absolve” here rather than “forgive” to differentiate between God’s forgiveness of sins and the Church’s authority to absolve sinners from their sin. God’s power to forgive is not limited to the Church’s sacramental system which is not to say that we should not avail ourselves of Sacramental absolution.

So much of the Second Vatican Council has been overlooked and allowed to lie somewhat dormant and unexplored.  One of these facets of our faith towards which the Council took a radically different stance than had the theologians of the previous four or five previous centuries is about the sacrament of Penance or, as some call it today, Reconciliation. Due heavily to the work of Bartolomé Xiberta, a Catalonian Carmelite professor of moral theology teaching in Rome and a peritus at the Council, there was a return to the Patristic understanding that the Sacrament of Penance reconciles the sinner to the Church. The Church, that is the Christian community itself through the ministry of the Bishop—and by extension the ministry of the priests to whom he gives “faculties” for absolving the people entrusted to his (the Bishop’s) care, forgives sin in the Name of Christ and restores the penitent to the community of the Church from which the sin had separated him (or her).  The Church is the Body of Christ and thus to be reconciled to Christ means also to be reconciled to the Church.  Perhaps even more accurate is to say that in being reconciled to his Body, the Church, we are reconciled to Christ. Christ and his Church cannot be separated; they are indissolubly united.  This puts the sacrament in a whole different context than the popular ideas created by the good Father Simplicius O’Finnegan when he came into Sister Mary Winged Seraph’s fifth grade class at Our Lady of Perpetual Suffering Academy sixty some years ago and told us of his various “magic powers.”   The priest does not—and never did—“forgive” sins in his own name or by his own authority but always as an extension of the Bishop as chief pastor of the local Church. 

When a bishop gives faculties to a priest to absolve the faithful he can hold back certain cases to himself should there be good reason.  Historically it was seen wise for the bishop to “reserve” such sins as abortion, renouncing the faith, or going into schism to himself or to a priest whom he specifically named to deal with more complicated cases.  Frankly this was done because no few priests were too ignorant to deal with the complexity of these issues and the fear that they might be too harsh on the one hand or too cavalier on the other. 

In fact, many priests have always had the faculties to absolve reserved sins.  The Holy See has granted priests of the Mendicant Orders and some other religious communities known for their work in the confessional, in particular the Jesuits, the faculties to absolve most of the sins reserved to the bishop, including abortion.  In addition, any priest—sensing that the person might not return a second time for the absolution from either him (once he had permission from the bishop to absolve the penitent) or from a designated confessor, could presume the faculty so that the sin would not go unabsolved.  This really is not such a big deal.   

There are sins reserved to the Holy See, absolution for which is not granted to priests but which must be referred to Rome for special faculties of absolution.  These are mostly sins by priests: breaking the seal of the confessional or attempting to absolve one’s accomplice in a sexual sin are two such examples.  A bishop who consecrates another bishop without the proper authorization from the Holy See or the bishop who receives such an illicit consecration are other examples.  Desecration of the Blessed Sacrament is also a sin reserved to the Holy See.  A physical attack on the person of the Pope is still another.  These sins have to be referred to Rome as there is never permission granted to any priest, or even a bishop, to absolve them except in danger of death of the penitent. 

What might be more interesting then than this extending a faculty already widely extended and even more widely presumed, is that the Pope also gave this faculty to priests of the semi-schismatic Society of Saint Pius X—the Lefebvre group that rejects the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.  This certainly makes it easier for the faithful from that movement who have had or procured for another an abortion to be given absolution.  But it also is an olive branch to the Society itself in the hopes of reconciling them to the Church.  It is, however, a blind alley as Francis can’t integrate them back into the Church unless they accept the teachings of the Church and that would require an acceptance of certain doctrines—most notably those in the Vatican II Decrees Nostra Aetate and Unitatis Reintegratio and that is most unlikely.  But where there is charity there is hope.  

An Essential Distinction: Tellin' It Like It Is

“I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.”--Sister Joan Chittester, OSB 

Why They Are Afraid of Pope Francis 13

 Ever since his election in March a growing panic among neo-trad Catholics (those who call themselves “conservatives” or “traditionalists” but whose lack of appreciation for the authentic tradition of the Church puts them more in a sort of ecclesiastical Tea Party trying to establish a retro-Catholicism reminiscent of the years immediately before the Second Vatican Council) has led to vociferous and increasingly enraged complaint about Pope Francis and where he is leading the Church.  From the very beginning there was panic and indignation among the neo-trads over his not wearing the traditional scarlet silk mozetta to meet the crowds in Saint Peter’s Square.   His simplified life-style has provoked contempt from the ultra-Catholic minority even as vast numbers of Catholics are cheered by his down-home everyday parish priest ways. Francis has moved away from the elegant remoteness of his predecessor and  it’s clear that the papal tiara is not coming back any time soon.   It was not long before they realized that Francis is no admirer of the TLM (Traditional Latin Mass or the “Extraordinary Form” of the Roman Rite) and it would no longer be possible—at least in this pontificate—to claim papal support for the revival of this antique rite.  Well of course things have only gotten worse.  Or better, depending on your perspective.  A more dialogic approach with Gay Catholics, the interview in La Civilta Cattolica, and then Evangelii Gaudium with its condemnation of “trickle down economics,” has shaken the ultramontane commitment of the neo-trads who suddenly have found themselves in the cafeteria line of Catholicism.  
Surprisingly one crucial moment of Francis’ pontificate that they have overlooked is his homily at Lampedusa, an island off the coast of Sicily, where in October hundreds of Africans perished attempting to immigrate (illegally) to Europe.  On October 3, last year a boat sailing from Libya (the nearest point of Africa to Italy, and overloaded with immigrants from Eritrea, Somalia, and Ghana sunk off the Italian island of Lampedusa.  The Italian Coast Guard was able to rescue 155 survivors but “more than 360” deaths were reported.  A second shipwreck occurred just over a week later within the territorial waters of Malta where at least 34 more victims—these from Syria and Palestine—drowned. 
Ironically Pope Francis has visited Lampedusa in July after an earlier boat wreck in which many died  and the Pope gave a remarkable homily touching on the plight of immigrants.   This is what he said—in part. 

“Adam, where are you?” This is the first question that God addresses to man after sin. “Where are you Adam?” Adam is disoriented and has lost his place in creation because he thought to become powerful, to dominate everything, to be God. And harmony was broken, the man erred – and this is repeated even in relations with his neighbour, who is no longer a brother to be loved, but simply someone who disturbs my life, my well-being. And God puts the second question: “Cain, where is your brother?” The dream of being powerful, of being as great as God, even of being God, leads to a chain of errors that is a chain of death, leads to shedding the blood of the brother!
These two questions resonate even today, with all their force! So many of us, even including myself, are disoriented, we are no longer attentive to the world in which we live, we don’t care, we don’t protect that which God has created for all, and we are unable to care for one another. And when this disorientation assumes worldwide dimensions, we arrive at tragedies like the one we have seen.
“Where is your brother?” the voice of his blood cries even to me, God says. This is not a question addressed to others: it is a question addressed to me, to you, to each one of us. These our brothers and sisters seek to leave difficult situations in order to find a little serenity and peace, they seek a better place for themselves and for their families – but they found death. How many times to those who seek this not find understanding, do not find welcome, do not find solidarity! And their voices rise up even to God! And once more to you, the residents of Lampedusa, thank you for your solidarity! I recently heard one of these brothers. Before arriving here, he had passed through the hands of traffickers, those who exploit the poverty of others; these people for whom the poverty of others is a source of income. What they have suffered! And some have been unable to arrive!
“Where is your brother?” Who is responsible for this blood? In Spanish literature there is a play by Lope de Vega that tells how the inhabitants of the city of Fuente Ovejuna killed the Governor because he was a tyrant, and did it in such a way that no one knew who had carried out the execution. And when the judge of the king asked “Who killed the Governor?” they all responded, “Fuente Ovejuna, sir.” All and no one! Even today this question comes with force: Who is responsible for the blood of these brothers and sisters? No one! We all respond this way: not me, it has nothing to do with me, there are others, certainly not me. But God asks each one of us: “Where is the blood of your brother that cries out to me?” Today no one in the world feels responsible for this; we have lost the sense of fraternal responsibility; we have fallen into the hypocritical attitude of the priest and of the servant of the altar that Jesus speaks about in the parable of the Good Samaritan: We look upon the brother half dead by the roadside, perhaps we think “poor guy,” and we continue on our way, it’s none of our business; and we feel fine with this. We feel at peace with this, we feel fine! The culture of well-being, that makes us think of ourselves, that makes us insensitive to the cries of others, that makes us live in soap bubbles, that are beautiful but are nothing, are illusions of futility, of the transient, that brings indifference to others, that brings even the globalization of indifference. In this world of globalization we have fallen into a globalization of indifference. We are accustomed to the suffering of others, it doesn’t concern us, it’s none of our business.
The figure of the Unnamed of Manzoni returns. The globalization of indifference makes us all “unnamed,” leaders without names and without faces.
“Adam, where are you?” “Where is your brother?” These are the two questions that God puts at the beginning of the story of humanity, and that He also addresses to the men and women of our time, even to us. But I want to set before us a third question: “Who among us has wept for these things, and things like this?” Who has wept for the deaths of these brothers and sisters? Who has wept for the people who were on the boat? For the young mothers carrying their babies? For these men who wanted something to support their families? We are a society that has forgotten the experience of weeping, of “suffering with”: the globalization of indifference has taken from us the ability to weep! In the Gospel we have heard the cry, the plea, the great lament: “Rachel weeping for her children . . . because they are no more.” Herod sowed death in order to defend his own well-being, his own soap bubble. And this continues to repeat itself. Let us ask the Lord to wipe out [whatever attitude] of Herod remains in our hears; let us ask the Lord for the grace to weep over our indifference, to weep over the cruelty in the world, in ourselves, and even in those who anonymously make socio-economic decisions that open the way to tragedies like this. “Who has wept?” Who in today’s world has wept?

Most Americans seem to think that Francis was speaking only to the people of Lampedusa and only in the context of the sinking of one boat, but as universal shepherd of the Church Francis was speaking to us in North America as well.  We have a problem of illegal immigrants and the dangers they face every bit as serious as has Italy and the nations of the European Economic Union.  I am surprised that those Catholics advocating for immigration reform have not picked up on Pope Francis’ remarks at Lampedusa.  I also am surprised that those Tea-Party types that claim to be devout Catholics have not looked closely at the Holy Father’s remarks and have not seen that he is speaking to us as well as to the Europeans.  Every year hundreds of lives are lost in the deserts of our frontiers as well as in the seas that separate Africa from Europe.  One cannot be a “good Catholic” and not be concerned about the situation in which the immigrants find themselves—but then so many who claim to be “pro-life” are not, in the end, pro-life at all.

Inaugural Weekend IV

Cardinal Law, champion

of Common Ground

Well, the inauguration is over and it is time for the President and his administration to move forward—a point I think he well made in his inaugural address.  And he received an important inaugural gift from the Pope last week when the Vatican came out strongly behind his efforts to impose some rationality over access to fire arms.  Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the “papal press secretary,” editorialized in both print and radio supporting the President’s desire to ban assault weapons and “to limit firearms that are making society pay an unacceptable price in terms of massacres and senseless deaths.” 
Of course Father Lombardi, while a Jesuit and may think he is infallible, is not the Pope and does not share magisterial authority.  But then one must understand how the Vatican uses different spokespersons at various levels.  When the Pope speaks it is a matter of teaching to be received.  When a curial official such as a Cardinal or Archbishop who heads one of the Vatican dicasteries speaks, it is a rule—at least if the prelate is speaking in the area where his dicsastery has authority. (Cardinal Law has no such office and Cardinal Burke tends to run at the mouth about any subject that pecks its ways across his somewhat limited intellectual capacity.)  So when the Pope wants to give an opinion on a current matter without binding the faithful, it falls to Father Lombardi.  In other words, he is speaking for the Pope but in a way that does not bind the faithful.  Would that he spoke more often permitting others, including Benedict, to stand in holy silence.  I think we would all do well if we were more often given things to think about and less often directives to follow, but then I foolishly think that most of us can make morally responsible choices.          
In any event, Father Lombardi went on to say that it would be rash to think that the elimination of firearms alone would prevent tragedies such as the Newtown Connecticut massacre, but at the same time he insisted that while such massacres are carried out by people who are deranged by hatred or anger, in the final analysis the victims are killed by guns.  So yes, while people kill people one can also say that guns kill people.  That does make sense to me. 
This call to limit access to guns fits into the long-time policy of the Vatican for disarmament and for bans on the “production, commerce, and contraband of all types of arms;” and the accusation that the weapons industry is fueled by “enormous economic and power interests.”  Ya think?
So here is some common ground between the Catholic Church and the Obama administration.  Of course going back to the days when those giants of moral integrity, Cardinals Law and Hickey, savaged the eminent Cardinal Bernardin, the Katholic Krazies have had no use for common ground.  Hopefully Father Lombardi’s endorsement will prod some of our more audacious prelates to speak up in support of strong gun control laws but they will face the wrath of those who always agree with the Vatican as long as the Vatican agrees with them. 
Tomorrow marks 40 years of Roe v Wade.  Because of the inaugural services being delayed a day, the annual March for Life has been delayed until Friday, January 25^th.  I hope the March is a strong witness for Life in a culture that is fast devolving into the “culture of death.”  But I think Father Lombardi’s editorials seal the deal, that to be pro-life you must also be in favor of some measure of gun- control. It is not enough to be anti-abortion to be pro-life.  There must be a consistency in the ethic of life for one to truly embrace the Catholic commitment to a culture of life. 

The Culture of Violence

In his first address after the Newtown Connecticut shootings, President Obama issued a very moving statement in which he said: 

"Each time I learn the news I react not as a president, but as anyone else would -- as a parent. And that was especially true today, …I know there's not a parent in America who doesn't feel the same overwhelming grief that I do."

I only wish what he said was true.  A tour of the usual Angry Catholic sites shows that the wolves pounced immediately proclaiming the President to be “insincere,”  “hypocritical,” “using this occasion for his own agenda.”  What spiritually sick and emotionally troubled people are those who cannot put aside their anger at the man in the Oval Office to share the horror of a nation and the grief of the bereaved parents and families?  And they think they are good Catholics when they fail to follow Christ and take the heartache of others and make it their own.   
I wrote yesterday about the culture of violence that is destroying our society.  I am not worried about gays and lesbians or Muslims or atheist displays on courthouse lawns.  I am worried about video games that teach children that life is cheap and there to be destroyed.  I am worried about movies that display gore and rage.  I am worried about television shows where guns blaze and life is cheap.  I am worried about music that celebrates death and violence.  This is pornography of the worst kind but it is totally acceptable in most American homes.  Why should we be surprised that people don’t care that babies are ripped out of a mother’s womb by an abortionist when we constantly proclaim in one form of “entertainment” after another that life has no value except to be the target of someone’s rage.  We feed rage and then we are surprised when a disturbed and angry kid commits some sociopathic act?  Who is  “insincere,” “hypocritical,” “using the media for their own agenda?”    
I can understand that people may not like President Obama.  There have been presidents that I have not liked either.  There have been men in that Oval Office whom I think have done a bad job.  There have been one or two whom I think betrayed their oath of office.  I have never wished any of them harm, however and I have never let my anger replace my desire to fulfill Christ’s command to love my neighbor—including my neighbor in the White House—as Christ has loved me.  The late M. Scott Peck—in his book People of the Lie—says that we cannot afford not to face the reality that some people are evil.  That is not to say that they were created that way and it is not to say that they can’t come to see their sin and change.  But they are, in their current state, evil: the good in them has been twisted and distorted into evil.  They become the People of the Lie.  Their anger, their pride, their need for control, their hatreds—whatever their sin is—has distorted the Divine Image in which they were created.   I grieve when I read these websites and see this evil incarnate itself in a blog or a video.  And when they claim a Catholic identity I am embarrassed that we as a Church have so compromised the Gospel that these twisted souls can claim a Catholic voice.