God's Anger; our Anger

In my most recent posting, I mentioned the pseudo-revelations given to Melanie Calvet, one of the seers of the reported vision of Our Lady at LaSalette in France on September 19, 1846.  I mentioned that the local bishop, Philibert de Bruillard, did a careful investigation of the children and their story and in 1851, after submitting the details of the vision to a commission of distinguished theologians, announced that the children’s stories were most likely true and permitted a cult to Our Lady of La Salette.  Later that same year, Pope Pius IX approved of devotion to Our Lady of LaSalette.  The revelations reported at that time by Melanie Calvet and her fellow seer, Maximin Giraud, are well within the realm of orthodoxy.  The problem is that Melanie seems to have been a very troubled individual and as the years passed she kept adding to the “revelations.”  These additions not only were not approved by Church authorities, but in fact ended up being condemned by  the Holy See.  The condemnations were not without some self-interest on the part of Church authorities as they tended to be increasingly anti-clerical and undermine the authority of the hierarchy. But they also tended to reflect the anti-Semitic and monarchist views of the French political right wing of the late 19^th century.  Nevertheless, they have enjoyed a certain popularity in certain Catholic circles and especially since the Second Vatican Council have been used to “prove” the “disastrous” course the Church has taken with the Council’s program of reform and renewal in the Church. 

It might be interesting to take a bit of a retrospective on the reform of the Church over the last fifty years, but for this posting what I want to consider is the question: why does the apocalyptic view of history which is represented by Calvet’s revelations have such a hold over certain Catholics?

What do I mean by “apocalyptic view of history”?  There is a theme that emerges in Calvet’s alleged revelations that God is angry with the world for its abandonment to sin and, were it not for the Blessed Virgin Mary holding back his divine wrath, would destroy the world.  This theme is by no means limited to Calvet but has been extremely popular in many circles through the 20^th century and still surfaces among certain factions and to advance certain agenda—particularly those of a rigid and unexamined moralist cast that sees not only the world but often the Church in apostasy.  This later idea that the Church is in apostasy is the basis of the sede-vacantist claim that popes since the Second Vatican Council are not legitimate and this claim of the Church falling into apostasy, or the threat of it falling into apostasy, has found a new audience in those alarmed by the direction of the Church under Pope Francis.  I have, in my previous posting, referred to one blog that consistently refers to Melanie Calvet’s ramblings to attack the papacy of Pope Francis.

How can the problem of the Divine Wrath be stated in a way consistent with sound Catholic theology?  Again, I am a historian and not a theologian but the danger in this sort of apocalyptic view of history is the denial of the efficacy of Christ’s redeeming sacrifice.  This view of God, ready and anxious to inflict punishment on the world for its sinfulness, implies that the redeeming sacrifice of Christ at Calvary has not, in fact, been sufficient atonement for human sinfulness and that God’s patience is thus worn out again and he is about to wreak retribution on the world for unatoned sins. On the other hand, we need to take off the rose colored glasses of our post-modern world and acknowledge the serious moral crisis our world is in. 

When I say that our world is in serious moral crisis I am not limiting this to the effects of the sexual revolution as do most of those who are fascinated by the idea of an impending divine punishment.  I do believe, however, that we must reestablish for ourselves a sound standard of private moral behavior.  I do not think this is a simple task.  There are serious moral issues that need to be looked at today and given a thorough moral re-evaluation.  The breakdown of the family threatens the fabric of society itself.  We need to look and see why marriage is no longer a stable institution.  We need to look and examine the consequences of raising children outside the family structure.  What are the consequences of divorce for the raising of children?  Why is commitment seemingly beyond the capacity of so many in our society?  We need to look at contraception and evaluate its effects on the family and on the larger levels of society.  We need to ask ourselves if contraception has broken the link between sexual intimacy and marriage, thus removing commitment from the equation of intimacy.  We need to ask serious questions about whether pre-marital sexual relations trivialize sexual intimacy in such ways that it has negative consequences for the ability of people to seriously bond.  We need to look and see if children can be healthily raised in families by same-sex couples.  We need to look scientifically at same-sex attraction and let our moral understanding of same-sex relationships be shaped by scientific facts beyond cultural prejudices.  These are not simple questions with simplistic answers and they need serious re-thinking from scientific, philosophic, theological and sociological perspectives. But private morality is only one aspect of today’s moral crisis.  We need to look at the pervasiveness of violence in our society—in our entertainment, in the entertainment of our children, in music, film, video games, literature.  We need to look at how our culture addicts so many to anger and its manifestations.  We need to address corporate greed, the disparity of wealth, and the systemization of a permanent under-class.  We need to look at the collapse of political discourse and the factionalization of our society along socio-political lines.  We need to look at the morality of capital punishment, the prison system, and mania for litigation in our society.  We need to look and see why our medical expenses have gotten out of control and put good medical care beyond the ability of the poor and the elderly.  We need to look and see how our economic system is responsible for so much suffering in developing countries.  We need to take responsibility for racism which still thrives in our society.  We need to look at why women do not have equal pay for equal work or why they still have to suffer harassment in corporate and academic life.  We need to look at violence against women and children—and sometimes men. We need to look and see why higher education is not possible for talented young people who do not have the financial resources.  We need to see why child labor is still a common practice in much of our world.  We need to seriously address the issue of human trafficking. 

I could, of course, go on.  But suffice it to say that there is much reason for God to be angry with us if it were compatible for the Divine Nature to be angry in the same way that we are angry.  But in fact, Christ has redeemed the world. God does not wish to destroy the world, but that it be saved—that is, that the redemption paid for by Christ on the Cross be appropriated by each and every human person in a choice to live justly and in charity towards all.  But the image of an angry God is a popular one in certain circles because it justifies the anger of those who believe in an angry God.  Rousseau claimed that “God created man in his own image and man, being a gentleman, returned the compliment.” Our theology can, if carefully examined, tell us much about our anthropology.  For those who are ruled by anger, nothing is as validating as an angry God.  On the other hand, if God is merciful, we must be merciful.  If God is reconciling, then we must be people who forgive.  If God is compassionate than we must be compassionate.  All of that can be extremely threatening if I am not willing to let go of my anger, if I do not wish to be merciful; if I do not want to let go of my grudges and forgive; if I am unwilling to pay the price that being compassionate will demand.  Unfortunately our theology does not shape our anthropology but we permit our anthropology to shape our theology.  Now, that is something that God could get angry about.  If it were his nature to be angry.   

"The Pill" --and a World Gone Upside Down

Paul VI--the Pope who decided

against the Pill in his encyclical

letter, Humanae Vitae

Someone recently brought to my attention an essay on “how the Pill changed everythying.”  George Weigel was the essay’s author but at first I could not remember that and so I googled  “the pill changed everything.”  Lots of articles came up, most in praise of the Pill and its changes to better the lives of women.  Weigel’s article was not so generous in its laudatory remarks about contraceptive pharmaceuticals.  I personally have mixed feelings about the effects of the Pill, but my primary purpose as a historian is to note them and let the reader make his or her own judgments.  That is not to say that I am objective—no one is every truly objective and every historian has his or her bias, especially on an time as crucial to our modern world as the Pill.  We need to be aware of our biases and to try to be as transparent about them as we can—or at least to let our readers be aware of them so that the reader can compensate in making his or her evaluation.

      Ironically the main scientist in developing “the pill” was John Rock, a Catholic obstetrician and gynecologist.  Rock wanted to develop a method of contraception that worked within the Catholic Church’s concept of using the natural fertility/infertility cycle so that women could make a choice in becoming pregnant while remaining sexually active.  To be honest, Rock had always pushed the boundaries in regard to birth control.  Actually, as a scientist and academic (he was a professor at Harvard) he did not support Church teaching on contraception.  As early as 1931 he signed a petition advocating the legalization of birth control (which at that time was illegal in Massacusetts) and in 1949 he co-authored a book teaching methods of contraception.  Moreover he was a pioneer in the fields of freezing sperm and of in vitro fertilization.  He was, however, a practicing Catholic, he had founded a clinic to teach the rhythm method, and he attended Mass and received the sacraments regularly.  His motivation in developing the Pill was to make available a means of contraception that worked within the boundaries of Catholic moral teaching—i.e. a “natural” method, a method that employed the feminine fertility cycle to cause or avoid pregnancy.  

     Well, the Pill did cause a stir when it first became available in the’60’s and the Church had to consider it independently of previous papal teaching which condemned contraception that did not follow “natural” methods.  The Pill, with its interdependency on the ovulation cycle, was a complex issue that had not been anticipated by previous papal teaching.   Shortly before his death, Pope John XXIII convoked a commission to study the issue.  Paul VI enlarged this commission to 58 members, including married persons, men and women, in addition to scientists, theologians and bishops.  That alone was a remarkable choice—not for centuries had laity been given such a significant voice in developing Church doctrine.  In 1966 the commission issued its report to the Pope suggesting that hormonal contraceptives might be acceptable.  A minority of the commission who disagreed issued a report forwarding a contrary argument.  In the end, Paul VI went with the minority report. 

     I am not anxious in this entry to write about Humanae Vitae. We will do that at some other time.  What I am writing about is the Pill.  Even though the Pill was rejected by the official levels of the Catholic Church, it has been embraced by Catholics and non-Catholics alike.  All studies show that at least in the developed world there is no substantial difference in the percentage of Catholics who use the Pill (or now other means of contraception) than in the general population.  But contraception is only part of the consequences of the Pill.

     The Pill became the occasion where Catholics began making their own decisions regarding everyday questions in their lives rather than unquestioningly following Church authority.  I don’t think it was just the Pill.  There were other questions of the day in which many rank and file Catholics were not willing to follow the lead of the hierarchy but were starting to think for themselves.  The Church’s embracing of a fairly radical “social justice” agenda in the 1960’s put the hierarchy ahead of the average American lay Catholic when it came down to questions of economic justice, peace, and even civil rights.  As Catholics climbed into the ranks of the professions and rose into economic and political power, their opinions became quite independent of the magisterium.  Even today on questions of distributive justice or of the death penalty most American Catholics reject Church teaching  

      But even more serious than encouraging Catholics to think independently of the Church’s magisterium, the Pill has broken the connection between sex and reproduction and this has made us redefine the purposes of sex.  This affects not only questions of family planning, but of the very nature of sexual relationships. Americans—and probably most people in the developed world, no longer acknowledge that there is an inherent connection between sexual intimacy and reproduction/ family life.  This works various ways.  With sex and reproduction no longer two sides of the same coin we are not only very open to in vitro fertilizaiton or even surrogate parenthood, but genetic engineering.  At the same time that we are willing to create life by design, we have lost our scruples about destroying life that is somehow or other defective or even superfluous.  And then, since we have changed the nature of sexual relations from essentially reproductive to purely recreational, we are far more encouraging of non-committed sexual relationships.  We now find that the majority of American households are “non-Traditional” and in this we are “behind” Europe.   Only a generation ago the heir to the British throne had to marry a woman who had no previous sexual experience.  That same heir’s son was able to live with his fiancée before their marriage without any social stigma.  But then the Brits have always been loony.  More to the point, here in America there is no social stigma whatsoever to a couple’s living together before marriage and the attempts of some clergy to require couples to live apart for six months before the wedding leads only to deceit and ridicule.  And then there is the issue of same-sex couples and—since sexual intimacy is no longer linked to reproduction—why not?  

     Traditional Christian morality has been turned upside down by “the Pill.”  Now, despite the tone of the above paragraph, I am not sure this is all bad. That is not to say that I agree with the new morality—because I don’t.  It isn’t morality at all. It is just making one’s life choices without much moral reflection.  But the situation invites us to construct a moral framework from the ground up.  In fact, the situaiton not only invites us to give serious thought to today’s complex questions and to build anew a moral framework on the foundation of the Gospels, but it requires us to do so.  The old answers aren’t working.  It doesn’t mean that the new answers will be all that different, only that they must be rethought and expressed in ways that are consistent with the modern sciences—both the physiological and social sciences—if the Gospel is to have credence in our contemporary world. 

Fractured Leadership in the Amerian Church -1

Francis Haas, 1889-1953, Bishop of

Grand Rapids who championed the

rights of the working classes

You might remember from earlier postings (particularly March 5, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17 and April 5, and 10) that there was a strong division in the American hierarchy at the end of the nineteenth century between the “American” party and the ultramontanes or Europeanists.  The Americanist party, led by Gibbons, Ireland, and O’Connell (of the North American College and later Richmond) wanted Catholicism in the United States to adapt itself to American cultural patterns.   In fact, the Americanists thought that the American experience of democratic government, freedom of religion, and social equality had something to teach the old European hierarchical, monarchical, and religiously bigoted nations.  Rome was not so sure.  Well—that isn’t the whole story.  Leo XIII was of two minds as we shall see in a minute.  More to the point of this entry, the Americanists  in pushing their agenda of how great American institutions are, got behind the labor unions and were very outspoken in defending the rights of the working class (largely Catholic and immigrant) from the machinations of the industrialists (largely Protestant and blue-blood).  The Ultramontanes, on the other hand—led by Corrigan and McQuaid, took up the cause of Capital and championed the Social and Political Establishment.  They were more than surprised—they were left naked out on a limb—when Leo XIII wrote Rerum Novarum and clearly outlined Church treaching on the rights of labor.   Of course, Leo would later write Testem Benevolentiae which did not retract any of the social program he had laid out in Rerum Novarum but which did make it clear that American ideas of democracy and religious freedom where not to be exported to fan the ideological flames European liberals, especially the French. 
     Through the course of the twentieth century the American hierarchy has usually been of two minds regarding social matters.  Gibbons and Ireland found their heirs in such liberal prelates as John McNicholas, (1877-1950) Francis Haas (1889-1953), Edward Mooney (1882-1958), Bernard Shiel (1888-1969) and Richard Cushing (1895-1970) to name the more prominent.   There were also Monsignors John Ryan (1868-1945), George Higgins (1916-2002), and Geno Baroni (1930-1984).  Somewhat behind the scenes and usually not recognized for their support of liberal social reform, should be mentioned Cardinals George Mundelein (1872-1939),  Francis Spellman (1889-1967) and Patrick O’Boyle (1896-1987).  A key to this list is to not confuse social liberals for theological liberals.  Many of these prelates, and the last three in particular, were anything but theological radicals but they were very effective in championing social reform in their day.  O'Boyle merits special note for his desegrating the Washington DC Catholic Institutions when he became the City's second Archbishop in 1948. 
     Corrigan and his party found their heirs as well.  Cardinals Glennon of Saint Louis (1862-1948) and McIntyre of Los Angeles  (1886-1979) along with Archbishop Thomas Toolen (1886-1976) were notorious opponents of social change in general and racial integration in particular.  William O’Connell (1859-1944) and Denis Dougherty (1865-1951) were champions of the old East Coast Establishment that had no room for “ill-bred paddies” like themselves.   Ironically, you can even move Spellman from the social progressives (which he was in general) and lump him with Corrigan’s heirs when it came to how he treated Archdiocesan employees who went out on strike—not holding himself to the same standards to which he held others.   But don't we all do that.
     By and large by the mid-twentieth century the American episcopacy was liberal on labor, cautious on civil rights, and staunchly opposed to the first signs of the sexual-revolution that would strike in the late ‘60’s.  In this they reflected the values of their flock which were still for the most part from labor rather than management.  When the Civil Rights movement picked up steam in the ‘60’s the Catholic Church was slow to get behind it—embarrassingly slow.  When the picture of the Greek Orthodox Primate, the should-be-sainted Archbishop Iakovos, appeared walking alongside Dr. Martin Luther King at Selma in 1965 some Catholic bishops finally woke up and realized that we had better stand with the righteous on that issue or we would be left on the moral low road.  As the anti-Vietnam War movement then gathered speed Catholic participation was all the more difficult because most bishops were terrified of the wrath of Francis, Cardinal Spellman, who was not only Archbishop of New York, but Archbishop for the American Military as well and who was not without influence in Rome.  His death in December 1967 paved the way for stronger hierarchical leadership in the anti-war movement.   Catholics, at least led by the hierarchy, were late in coming to both these causes, but come they did eventually. 
     The sexual revolution provided the greatest challenge to the leadership of the Church and it merits multiple entries of its own.  For this entry let us simply say that the American Bishops have stood consistently with conservative social values, reflecting the universal magisterium of the Church.  The early battles were about birth control with the 1968 Encyclical Letter Humanae Vitae, but as the decades have passed the sexual revolution has become ever more complex  dealing with abortion, in-vitro fertilization, surrogate parenting, homosexual rights, transgender issues,  same-sex marriage, genetic engineering and dozens of wrinkles in each of these topics and more.  As if that was not complicated enough, the issue of Gender Roles is not confined to matters sexual but has raised serious issues both within the without the Church as the traditional roles assigned to women and to men are not so clearly delineated anymore. 
    Other challenges have risen as well with end-of-life issues involving nutrition and hydration protocols, brain-death, assisted suicide and a host of incredibly complex questions.    The growing international condemnation of the Death Penalty has demanded moral response from Church leadership—a response that is often muted, whispered, actually non-existent.  The excesses of American wars ranging from Vietnam down through our various covert and not-so-covert operations in Latin America and beyond to Iraq I and II, Afghanistan, and the war on terror have all cried for moral commentary.  Then there are environmental issues that have serious moral aspects and consequences.  I am sure that the bishops would love to return to the simple days of supporting the rights of labor but the moral complexity of our society requires serious study and clear teaching.  So where is it? and why is it so slow in coming?