Barry Hudock's Blog, page 37

A healthy dose of realism

I find that I see things differently than Fr. Dwight Longenecker a bit more often than not. But his most recent blog post, “Abortion and Politics – The Plain Facts,” is full of good sense. It’s a healthy dose of realism in season of much unrealistic talk. The money quote, for me:

What response should a Catholic take? A Catholic should weigh up the two candidates and ask not so much which one will make the country exactly the way we want it to be, but which one will do less harm?

I’ve been wringing my hands in recent weeks over whether I might need to resort to voting for a third party candidate in the presidential election, just so I don’t have to feel grimy on election day. Fr. Longenecker’s post has provided an occasion for me to take a breath, relax a bit, and think, “Maybe not.”

The full piece is here.

A decade of Luminous Mysteries

It’s ten years ago today that Pope John Paul II introduced the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary to the Catholic faithful, with his apostolic letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae. He published the document on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his election to the papacy, so it really was in a sense a very personal gift of the Pope to his people. He wrote:

With these words, dear brothers and sisters, I set the first year of my Pontificate within the daily rhythm of the Rosary. Today, as I begin the twenty-fifth year of my service as the Successor of Peter, I wish to do the same. How many graces have I received in these years from the Blessed Virgin through the Rosary: Magnificat anima mea Dominum! I wish to lift up my thanks to the Lord in the words of his Most Holy Mother, under whose protection I have placed my Petrine ministry: Totus Tuus!

Today is, in my opinion, a moment to give thanks for this gift, one that I have myself enjoyed and benefitted spiritually from in an ongoing way. I know many, many others would heartily agree.

The entire letter is well worth another look!

At U.S. Catholic: on the universal destination of goods

[image error]U.S. Catholic has posted an article I’ve written on Catholic teaching on the universal destination of goods, titled “How Much Do You Really Own?”  Here’s a snippet:

If you think folks scream “Stay out of my private life!” at the mention of Catholic teaching on abortion, contraception, or marriage, just wait until word gets out—and it hasn’t—that the church’s understanding of what it really means to own something is different than that of most Americans. And the church has something to say about what each of us morally can and can’t do with what we own.

Make no mistake, the universal destination of goods is an idea that pope after pope has insisted must have a place in our public life. John Paul II called it “the first principle of the whole ethical and social order.”

Let’s be clear: the church supports our right to own private property. Pope Leo XIII argued in the Catholic Church’s first social encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891) that this right is found in natural law. He said people need private property to live a decent life, a life of dignity. We have to provide for ourselves and our families, and to do this effectively, he said, we need to be able to own stuff, to possess things in a stable and permanent way. But Leo XIII went on to say that while it’s one thing to have a right to possess things, it is entirely another to think we have a right to do whatever we want with what we own.

But isn’t that what “owning something” means? It’s mine to do with whatever I want? Nope, says the pope.

Read the entire piece here.

Theologians speak up on protecting the common good

Catching up after being at the GU conference I mentioned in the last post (which was quite good), I see that a few days ago, a group of more than 150 Catholic theologians from universities around the country offered “On All of Our Shoulders: A Catholic Call to Protect the Endangered Common Good.” It’s well worth a read.

Charles Camosy responds well to the question, “Is it partisan?”, here. It’s clear that these theologians would not have felt the need to issue this statement in the first place had some prominent American bishops not chosen, in recent months, to focus with laser-precision on certain issues, and with specific approaches to those issues, that put Republican politicians and policies in the best light possible. Camosy writes of “the context out of which this statement comes”:  “There is no confusion about how the views of Biden and other pro-choice Democrats line up with Church teaching. However, there is tremendous confusion about the matters of Catholic Social Doctrine brought up in ‘On All of Our Shoulders’ — and this is why we crafted and circulated it.”

50 years ago today: Vatican II begins

It was 50 years ago today that Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council. He did so with an address that remains historic in its own right (but is not available in English in the Vatican’s website for some reason).  Today, in fact, is also Blessed John XIII’s feast day!

My full-time work at Liturgical Press has allowed me some good opportunities to think more deeply about the Council and understand it better. Several months ago we published — for the first time in English – the fascinating My Journal of the Council, the personal journals kept by Fr. Yves Congar, OP, throughout the four years of that historic event. Congar was one of many remarkable theologians who participated as theological experts. Others included Joseph Ratzinger, Karl Rahner, Henri de Lubac, and John Courtney Murray. Despite having a place among these luminaries, few could argue with the assertion of John O’Malley, SJ, who wrote recently in America magazine, “When account is taken of Congar’s writings before the council and of his influence on so many of the final documents, he must be ranked, in my opinion, as the council’s single most important theologian.”

Anyway, his journal makes for fascinating reading! We get his very personal take on many of the prominent people and events of the Council and great insights into the behind the scenes work that went on. (Because he “names names,” Congar himself insisted in 1968 that it could not be published before the year 2000.) Fr. Robert Barron, who calls My Journal of the Council “one of the most theologically fascinating and just plain entertaining books I’ve read in a long time,” comments on the book here.

Then there’s the new book, True Reform: Liturgy and Ecclesiology in Sacrosanctum Concilium, by Massimo Faggioli, also worth a read. Faggioli argues that we too readily “reduce” the Council’s Constitution on the Liturgy to the one that spurred the liturgical renewal that followed the Council, sort of a nuts-and-bolts document rather than a theological-doctrinal one. Rather, says Faggioli, Sacrosanctum Concilium is the key to understanding the theological vision of the Council, especially with regard to the nature of the Church itself. After all, the maxim is lex orandi, lex credendi, “the law of prayer is the law of faith,”: what we pray in our liturgy is central to understanding what we believe.

Faggioli writes, “The profound ecclesiological meaning of the liturgical movement and liturgical reform has been lost.” In True Reform, he aims to recover that meaning and does so in some fascinating ways.

Last weekend I was able to attend a conference marking the Vatican II anniversary at John Carroll University, titled “A New Cloud of Witnesses: The Laity 50 Years after Vatican II.” Participants had the pleasure of hearing some excellent keynote addresses from such notable presenters as John Allen, Jr., Margaret Steinfels, Edward Hahnenberg, E.J. Dionne, and Richard Gaillardetz. As the title suggests, the main topic was the laity. Hahnenberg is an especially noted and engaging scholar on the theological aspects of this topic, and his talk may be the one that I found most interesting and enriching, though each was certainly well worth the time.

Now this weekend I’m off to Georgetown University for another Vatican II conference, this one called “Vatican II after Fifty Years: Dialogue and Catholic Identity.” I’m looking forward to presentations by John O’Malley, SJ, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, Catherine Clifford, Elena Procario-Foley, and Massimo Faggioli, as well as Mass celebrated by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Should be another rich experience!

The Council was surely the most consequential event for the Catholic Church since the Protestant Reformation. May the Spirit continue to guide us in understanding its message and making that message a reality in the Church and the world of our day. Happy anniversary!

Dude, just ask

To the curious person who ended up at this blog today via the search term “is barry hudock a democrat or a republican?”: Hey, all you need to do is ask.

The answer is: neither one.

I have been registered at different points in my life as Republican (in my younger years), Democrat (later in life), and with no party (nowadays). Perhaps I’ll blog about the reasons for that sometime.  (I didn’t realize it was of any interest to anyone other than me!) But the short answer to why I now belong to no party is that I figure it’s a good expression of the fact that I’m Catholic first, that my moral convictions and the political convictions that flow from them are not determined by the party or politicians I support, but the other way around.

And by the way, I love the fact that the answer to the question is not obvious from the content you find on this blog. That tells me I’m doing something right in my approach to political questions and issues that I mention here.

On voting responsibly and facing reality honestly

I’ve touched on issues of voting and moral responsibility frequently here on this blog. They are important but also complex and can’t be boiled down to bumper sticker solutions and conclusions — at least not if we’re to take them seriously and also to remain faithful to the Church’s teaching and moral tradition. Cathleen Kaveny’s article, “The Single-Issue Trap,” in the September 28 issue of Commonweal, brings all of this out quite well. It is well worth a read.

She examines the U.S. bishops’ document Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, which includes some important points I’ve highlighted. The bishops note, for example, that “A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who takes a position in favor of an intrinsic evil, such as abortion or racism, if the voter’s intent is to support that position.” The italics there are mine; that final phrase includes an important point that has been ignored by many, including some of the bishops themselves in recent months. The bishops’ document teaches that faced with a choice between candidates who both support intrinsic evil by their policies, a voter might choose not to vote at all “or, after careful deliberation, may decide to vote for a candidate deemed less likely to advance such a morally flawed position and more likely to pursue other authentic human goods.”

Kaveny points out the weight that the bishops give to the issue of abortion today. It is indeed a grave and crucial issue. But she points out some important considerations that they might not have considered carefully enough in their presentation of the matter. (They are considerations that have been weighing on my own mind as I look toward next month’s presidential election.)

Kaveny writes,

The bishops do not even raise, for example, the possibility that a particular candidate (or party) might fabricate a commitment to end abortion for strategic political reasons. Forming Consciences does not caution voters to evaluate the sincerity with which a candidate holds a particular position; rather, it seems simply to assume candidates will enact their platforms if elected to office.

That’s not a “liberal” or unorthodox thought. No one who pays any attention to today’s political landscape can doubt that there are politicians out there who would not hesitate to say what needs to be said to win votes, even if the words do not represent strongly held convictions or even anything the candidate seriously intended to act on if elected. To ignore that possibility is naive, at the very least.

And so Kaveny writes,

In assessing candidates for a particular office, four considerations are paramount: 1) Competence—does the candidate have the intellectual capacity, the experience, the temperament, and judgment to do the job? 2) Character—does the candidate have a good set of moral values and the integrity to pursue them in situations of temptation and fear? 3) Collaboration—can the candidate work well with other people, both political allies and opponents? 4) Connections—what are the moral and practical ramifications of the candidate’s political and financial connections for the manner in which he or she will carry out the job? Politicians, after all, do not act alone; they operate within networks of political power, including party affiliations, lobbyists, and big corporate and individual donors.

Consider a hypothetical situation. We must choose between two candidates: one who says he is pro-life solely for the sake of votes and who lacks all four of the above qualities; and one who is pro-choice on abortion, supports by his policies a wide range of other Catholic moral teachings, and possesses all four of the above qualities in spades? Can a Catholic still vote for the “pro-life” candidate, responsibly and intelligently? Can a Catholic vote for the pro-choice candidate, responsibly and intelligently? Isn’t this a clear illustration of why a politician’s statement of being against abortion can’t be the sole litmus test of who a Catholic should vote for?

Finally, Kaveny makes this crucial point, which we ignore at our peril and the peril of our society, including the very ones we seek to protect through our choices in the voting booth:

Issues, then, are not abstract propositions about the community; they are action items, indicating the problems that can be addressed by the tools available to political officeholders. Instead of evaluating the relative significance of issues in the abstract, voters should consider whether and to what degree the problems identified by the issues can be ameliorated by the particular candidate seeking a particular office.

The full article is here.

There’s no question, it would be much easier if we could simply ignore questions and considerations like this. They are complicated and nuanced, and that can be frustrating. But such the reality of life.

President Obama designates Cesar Chavez’s home a national monument

President Barack Obama honored the memory of Cesar Chavez yesterday by designating the property at Nuestra Señora Reina de la Paz (in Keene, California) as a national monument. La Paz was Cesar’s home from the early 1970s until his death in 1993 and the headquarters from which he directed the United Farm Workers union. It is also the site of his grave and where his widow, Helen, continues to live today.

In the photo at the right, the President and Helen Chavez lay a rose at Cesar’s gravesite.

Here’s a snippet of the comments the President offered yesterday:

Cesar cared.  And in his own peaceful, eloquent way, he made other people care, too.  A march that started in Delano with a handful of activists — (applause) — that march ended 300 miles away in Sacramento with a crowd 10,000 strong.   (Applause.)  A boycott of table grapes that began in California eventually drew 17 million supporters across the country, forcing growers to agree to some of the first farm worker contracts in history.  Where there had once been despair, Cesar gave workers a reason to hope.  “What [the growers] don’t know,” he said, “is that it’s not bananas or grapes or lettuce.  It’s people.”

It’s people.  More than higher wages or better working conditions, that was Cesar’s gift to us — a reminder that we are all God’s children, that every life has value, that, in the words of one of his heroes, Dr. King, ‘we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.’

The full text of the President’s comments are here. More resources:

A press release from the U.S. Department of the Interior here;
Commentary by Cesar’s grand-daughter, Julie Chavez Rodrigues, here;
My own recent article, published in the August 27, 2012, issue of America magazine (available by subscription only), here.