Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 23

The hijacking of the women’s movement, and the resurgence of pro-life feminism

Young people hold signs outside the U.S. Supreme Court building during the March for Life in Washington Jan. 22, 2015. (CNS photo/Leslie Kossoff)

The hijacking of the women’s movement, and the resurgence of pro-life feminism | CWR

Sue Ellen Browder was there when the women’s movement bound itself to pro-abortion politics. Today she sees hope in a new generation of pro-life feminists.

Sue Ellen Browder has worked as a journalist for more than 40 years, writing for several decades for Cosmopolitan and other women’s magazines. Her articles from that period were calculated to “soft sell” the Cosmo lifestyle and all that it entailed—including casual sex, contraception, and abortion. Her new book SubvertedContinue reading on the Catholic World Report site...

"A Deeper Vision" reveals the abandonment of the Catholic intellectual tradition

by Russell Shaw | Catholic World Report

Catholicism, Robert Royal writes in his new book, is “no longer a significant part of the cultural dialogue, as it was in the first half of the twentieth century."

In one of his informative dispatches from Rome during the Synod on the Family last fall, Robert Royal remarked with regret on the extent to which the synod fathers appeared to have taken their prescriptions for families from a secular playbook instead of from their own Catholic tradition.

Most synod participants, Royal wrote, “seemed to look at problems of marriage and family from the kind of thin rationalist standpoint of politicians in democratic countries….That shallow rationalism is precisely what gave us contraception, abortion, no-fault divorce, gay marriage, and much else that threatens the future of our societies.”

Dismayed though he may have been, Royal, a notably astute observer, nevertheless was hardly surprised. As his important new book A Deeper Vision (Ignatius Press) makes abundantly clear, the secularizing of the synod that he observed last fall was only a symptom of something that’s been happening for over a half a century now—the shunting aside of the Catholic intellectual tradition by people in leadership positions and academic life who ought to have absorbed that tradition and worked to promote it.

A prolific author, president of the Faith and Reason Institute, and proprietor of a website called The Catholic Thing, Royal delivers this critique in a volume that is encyclopedic in scope yet at the same time eminently readable. And also entirely realistic about the present state of Catholic culture.

Catholicism, Royal writes, is “no longer a significant part of the cultural dialogue, as it was in the first half of the twentieth century. Indeed rifts have entered the Catholic tradition itself from the secular world that make it less coherent and effective in making its own case.”

Some people will hasten to say Pope Francis is changing this state of affairs. But whether or not that is so remains to be seen. A gifted popular communicator the Holy Father undoubtedly is. But we are a long way from knowing whether his pontificate heralds a cultural resurgence for the Church.

It wasn’t always this way. A Deeper Vision sees the past century as divided into two distinct parts: the era up to the 1960s, when Catholicism flourished as a cultural agent, and the years since then, which have been a time of cultural collapse. The causes of that collapse have their roots in the cultural revolution of the ‘60s and its destructive absorption into the Church, abetted by a false but alluring view of Vatican Council II as a definitive break with the Church’s past. (The correct view, Pope Benedict XVI wisely insisted, stressed continuity with the tradition alongside openness to change.)

Royal’s book is not just an analysis of a process, however. More important, it is an attempt—a remarkably successful one—to introduce (or reintroduce) Catholics to some recent high points of their own tradition. Distinguished figures like Maritain, Guardini, Chesterton, Belloc, Greene, Mauriac, Bernanos, and others receive close and illuminating attention. Royal’s leanings can be seen in the fact that he considers Evelyn Waugh perhaps the greatest English novelist of the past century and Waugh’s World War II trilogy Sword of Honor as the author’s finest work. Since these are judgments I share, I naturally applaud them.

Note that A Deeper Vision focuses on Catholic culture in Europe. There will be another volume, Royal tells us, devoted to American Catholic culture. Here is good news, for this first volume deserves to be read not only in its own right but as an exciting introduction to an extraordinary tradition with which many Catholics today have largely lost touch.

When the U.S. Abandoned a Catholic President

When the U.S. Abandoned a Catholic President | Kevin Schmiesing | CWR

An Interview with Geoffrey Shaw, author of The Lost Mandate of Heaven: The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Vietnam

On November 2, 1963, shortly after they attended Mass in the city of Cholon, Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu were taken from a nearby Marian grotto and executed. They had fled Saigon in the face of a military coup, a revolution encouraged by the United States government, which had repeatedly pledged its support for Diem. In retrospect, Diem’s fall was a pivotal moment in the Vietnam conflict, a significant cause of the “quagmire” that so divided Americans during the 1960s and 1970s and cost the lives of more than 50,000 U.S. soldiers.

During the Cold War, Vietnam was seen as a key battleground between the free world and Communism. As the United States became more deeply involved in the early 1960s, one critical question was whether and how the U.S. should partner with President Diem. Diem, the scion of a prominent Catholic family, was not a proponent of liberal democracy in the Western vein, but he was staunchly anti-Communist and enjoyed widespread popular support.

He was, according to diplomatic and military historian Geoffrey Shaw, the best leader that could be hoped for in the Vietnam of the 1960s, and the U.S. was wrong to abandon him. In The Lost Mandate Of Heaven: The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Vietnam, Dr. Shaw investigates the person and regime of Ngo Dinh Diem and finds that conventional histories have obscured the truth about him and his government. CWR spoke with Dr. Shaw about his research, focusing on how and why so much misinformation has clouded the historical record on this point.

CWR: The last Americans fled Saigon in 1975, more than forty years ago. It seems that this country is finally healing from the civil strife and rancorous disagreement that characterized that period in our nation’s politics and culture. Why revisit that poisonous time and reignite one of the contentious debates: the character of President Diem and the wisdom of American policy toward his regime?

Shaw: The foremost reason for revisiting this terrible time is that the truth must be honored and, in so doing, yes, an unhealthy, festering scab may be torn off the old wound in the process, but the purpose here is not to re-injure but to heal, and only the truth can bring about real healing. Perhaps Confucius held the best perspective on this (as did the early Doctors of the Church): When a society starts to fail, it is because it has failed to call things by their right name (i.e., tell the truth) and the only way to go back from the precipice of catastrophic failure, where all is lost, is to start calling things by their right name again; in short, tell the truth again!

Related directly to this is the fact that U.S. foreign policy, in the post-1945 era in general and post-1963 Vietnam in specific, has careened from disaster to disaster because its very foundations have been built on an erroneous view of the world that has emanated from activist liberal humanists within the U.S. Department of State. Dr. Robert Hickson has called these folks Liberal Imperialists and they seem driven to recreate the world in their own liberal image via strenuous social engineering. (Remember, in more recent times, their claims that they were going to make Iraq “the aircraft carrier of democracy in the Persian Gulf?” To paraphrase old ‘Winnie’ Churchill: “some aircraft carrier; some democracy!”).

This, of course, is idolatry and it has led America’s good intentions by the hand down some very dark paths. The murders of Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, on All Souls Day, 1963, became one of those critical ‘hinges’ of history upon which everything that follows swings. Rather than face up to what had been done via these murders—nothing short of the murder of South Vietnam—the perpetrators, and those of like liberal/humanist mind, have dug in and re-victimized the victims, Diem and Nhu, by blaming them for what their killers have brought down on the heads of all Vietnamese and, indeed, all Americans who suffered and died or were left wounded or scarred for life by what followed.

And how they have ‘dug in’! They have worked quite literally like demons (and, in my estimation, were inspired by the cadres of the evil one) to make the lie, their narrative, the ‘truth’ about the history of that conflict and, conversely, they have ‘moved mountains,’ via their infernal zeal, to make the factual truth appear as a lie. But they are undone because the truth, like water, does not like to be compressed and squished into some dark, small corner; inevitably, it bursts out and breaks the bonds of the lie. Darkness cannot extinguish the light, though it strives mightily to do so. The release of all the U.S. Government documents, held classified for over three decades, has brought a devastating light upon the lie that the liberal news media and U.S. Department of State activists tried to maintain; indeed, all they can do in reaction is call the messengers of these facts by various derogatory names, such as ‘revisionist’ (always, a pejorative amongst the left who hold sway in academe).

Perhaps, their greatest tactic is to simply ignore the truth; for example, two of the finest and most truthful accounts written about Ngo Dinh Diem and the unholy alliance between apparatchiks within the State Department and mutinous South Vietnamese military men have been generally ‘panned’ in academe. I am referring here to Ellen Hammer’s A Death in November and Maggie Higgins’ Our Vietnam Nightmare. Both of these authors, expert in their own particular ways on Vietnam, with much more experience under their belts than the celebrated liberal press journalists, David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan, were deliberately ignored in academe’s history departments from coast to coast while Halberstam and Sheehan’s ‘histories’ (and I use that term advisedly) were hailed as ‘compelling.’

I hope the point is well made that, starting with this rotten foundation of lies that led to Diem’s persecution and death, the superstructure of U.S. foreign policy built upon said shoddy foundation, has been crumbling ever since. And this is because it has no truthful basis upon which to stand and reality, from Kosovo, to Iraq, to Afghanistan, back to Iraq, Benghazi and on to Ukraine, has made this so manifest that only the truly delusional can continue to cling to this failed superstructure as if all were just fine in the world. In short, the liberal/left/humanist worldview has been exposed as the same complete deceit that Communism was revealed to be with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The only thing that keeps it going in the west, ironically, is that capitalism has given our dishonest and idolatrous view deeper pockets upon which it can draw than Communism permitted the Soviets. But to be absolutely clear, both ideologies have been exposed as frauds and, in many ways, are remarkably similar in spirit and effect.

CWR: Much of the story revolves around the conflict between the views and actions of two key American figures: US ambassador to Vietnam, Frederick Nolting, and Assistant Secretary of State Averell Harriman. In sum, Nolting had a favorable view of Diem and was committed to building a positive relationship with him, while Harriman lost faith in Diem and sought to undermine and eventually replace him. In your view, what are the most important factors that account for this radical difference of opinion about the best way forward in Vietnam, circa 1963?

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com

Two Catholic Presidents and the escalation of the Vietnam War

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (from left) greet South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem at Washington National Airport in May 1957. (Wikipedia/Department of Defense)

by K. V. Turley | The Dispatch at Catholic World Report

Geoffrey Shaw's The Lost Mandate of Heaven recounts how Ngo Dinh Diem, the first president of the Republic of Vietnam, was taken down and murdered by a military coup sponsored by the U.S. government

Early on November 2, 1963, the then President of Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, and his brother, Nhu, had just heard Holy Mass at a church in a suburb of Saigon. They had fled there the previous evening having received word of a military coup. After Mass, the brothers remained for some time, deep in silent prayer. For Diem, there was nothing unusual in this. He had been a daily communicant for most of his life, and this early morning routine of Mass and private prayer had become an integral part of his life and indeed of his presidency. That morning, however, was to be different.

Soon, there came the sound of American Jeeps and an armored personnel carrier driven by Vietnamese soldiers no longer loyal to the legitimate head of state. They found their president, alongside his brother, still knelt in prayer before an image of Our Lady. Both men were seized and bundled into the back of the personnel carrier. There, awaiting them, was a soldier with bayonet drawn, who proceeded to cut out Diem’s gallbladder. Once this torture had been completed, both brothers were summarily shot. 

Why did the plotting general want Diem and his brother Nhu, a trusted advisor and confidante, dead? One of the generals said later: “They had to be killed. Diem could not be allowed to live because he was too much respected among simple gullible people in the countryside, especially [by] the Catholics and the refugees [from North Vietnam]”. Just over ten years later, the penultimate President of South Vietnam, Tran Van Huong, was to remark as his country’s slid inexorably towards capitulation to the Viet-Cong: “The generals knew very well that having no talent, no moral virtues, no political support whatsoever, they could not prevent a spectacular comeback of [Diem]” if he had been left alive.

A new book from Ignatius Press, The Lost Mandate Of Heaven: The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Vietnam by Geoffrey Shaw, examines these events, placing the shocking murder of the two Ngo Dinh brothers in its historical context. Also on display is the part American foreign policy played in this. Furthermore, and more disturbing still, the book points the finger of blame for complicity in these murders not at some shadowy group working outside the bounds of legitimate political control, but at the US President, and fellow Catholic, John F. Kennedy.

From Hanoi in the north, the Communist leader, Ho Chi Minh, reportedly said on hearing of the assassination: “I can scarcely believe the Americans would be so stupid.” What had just taken place was far more than short-sighted stupidity, however, as what had been sanctioned in the murders unleashed upon Vietnam and her neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos (and, indeed, America herself) a bloody nightmare that haunts to this day.

The Lost Mandate of Heaven is a formidable piece of scholarship. Mr Shaw has left no stone unturned in putting together the pieces of the jigsaw of the last days and final betrayal of Diem by the Vietnamese Generals and their American collaborators. If one wishes to retain a benign view of American foreign policy then it’s best not to read further. If, however, one is not surprised by the political machinations that lead to a just man dying – with its echoes of the call for one man’s death to benefit a whole nation – then this account will only confirm one’s belief in the nature of this fallen world in which global and national politics are but the reflections, for better or worse, of what is in men’s hearts.

Born on January 3, 1901, Diem was raised a Catholic. He came from a family and background that combined Christian faith and Catholic social teaching with the Confucian ideals of serving the common good. It was to prove a formidable combination in his political career.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

New: "The Contemplative Hunger" by Fr Donald Haggerty

Now available from Ignatius Press: 

The Contemplative Hunger

by Fr Donald Haggerty

A soul desiring to give itself in love to God faces great challenges that require understanding and some encouraging advice. Written in a style of short and effective meditations on prayer and contemplative spirituality, the concise reflections in this book address the heart of a soul's interior response to God. God's desire to draw souls to a deeper gift of themselves is inseparable from his desire to draw them into a deeper encounter with the sacred mystery of his presence.

Offering an abundance of insights into the value of silence, deep faith, trust and interior surrender to God, Father Haggerty also illumines the link between contemplation and love for poverty and the poor, and makes a strong appeal to the importance of prayer as the primary answer to the crisis of faith that afflicts so many people today.

The longing of souls for a deeper contemplative encounter with God is indeed a sign of the times. When it is nurtured properly and begins to burn as a passion of the soul, the love for prayer becomes a lifelong quest.

Fr. Donald Haggerty, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, has been a Professor of Moral Theology at St. Joseph's Seminary in New York and Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Maryland. He has a long association as a spiritual director for Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity. He is the author of the book Contemplative Provocations.

"May Father Haggerty's reflections assist many to 'put out into the deep' of the life of prayer."
— Raymond Cardinal Burke

"A great invitation stirs within these pages to embark on the ultimate quest for God and holiness."
— Fr. Augustine Di Noia, O.P.

"That a book like this one has been written in our times is an unexpected joy and a cause for enormous gratitude. Read this book, rejoice, and be reawakened to the Gospel."
— Matthew Levering, Ph.D., Professor of Theology, Mundelein Seminary

"Fr. Haggerty provokes, encourages, and reassures Christians who struggle to remain faithful to prayer when the Lord seems to be silent. This work offers a very fresh, attractive, and compelling challenge, inviting readers to take heart, to expect more, and to give more to the Lord."
— Sr. Sara Butler, M.S.B.T.

"Father Haggerty reveals that the most active of saints found the wellspring of their energies in the prayer of contemplation, by developing the habit of talking to God, intimately."
— Fr. Romanus Cessario, O.P.

Cana, Signs, and Sacraments

"Marriage at Cana" [c. 1304] by Giotto di Bondone (WikiArt.org)

Cana, Signs, and Sacraments | Carl E. Olson | On the Readings for Sunday, January 17, 2016

Readings:
• Is 62:1-5
• Ps 96:1-2, 2-3, 7-8, 9-10
• 1 Cor 12:4-11
• Jn 2:1-11

The Gospel of John contains some seventeen direct references to signs (semeia), which is St. John’s term for the miraculous deeds of Jesus. St. John is especially interested in how these various signs are manifestations of God’s new and transforming intervention in human history through the Word, the Logos. His Gospel is a profound reflection on the fact and mystery that God became man and dwelt among us, “full of grace and truth” (see Jn 1:1-14).  

Chapters 2 through 12 of John’s Gospel are sometimes called collectively “The Book of Signs,” for they contain seven signs, or miracles, performed by Christ. These signs include the healing of the official’s son (Jn 4), the healing of the paralytic (Jn 5), the multiplication of the loaves (Jn 6), walking on water (Jn 6), the restoration of the blind man (Jn 9), and the raising of Lazarus (Jn 11).

The first sign, however, is the miracle at the wedding at Cana, proclaimed in today’s Gospel, which is found only in the Fourth Gospel. The exact location of Cana is unclear, but it was probably just a few miles north of Nazareth. The identity of the bride and groom are unknown, although a later tradition from about the third century states that Mary was the aunt of the bridegroom.

What is known, for it forms the crux of the story, is that something embarrassing had taken place: the wedding party ran out of wine. Mary, ever attentive to the needs of others, intercedes on behalf of the bride and groom, telling her son, “They have no wine.” She prays—that is, entreats—in faith, for the needs of those gathered for the feast. This foreshadows her prayers, as “Mother of all the living” and Mother of the Church, at the foot of the Cross, the saving way to the marriage feast of the Lamb (cf.Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2618, 1335, 963).

Jesus’ response is puzzling, perhaps even perplexing: “Woman, how does your concern affect me?” But the term “Woman” is not an insult, as some have argued incorrectly; it is actually a formal title of respect (cf. Matt 15:28). What is unusual is how Jesus, in speaking to his mother, uses the term without any qualifier. It indicates a changed relationship between son and mother (cf. Jn 19:26). Further, in using it, Jesus identifies Mary as the new Eve, whose obedience and faith will be an essential part of the new creation and a new family, the Church.

Jesus stated that his hour—the time of his passion, death, resurrection, and ascension (Jn 13:1)—had not yet arrived. Mary does not question him, or protest. Her words to the servers are words of invitation to all of us: “Do whatever he tells you.” She trusts her son, knowing he will do what is right and necessary. “The Mother of Christ presents herself as the spokeswoman of her Son's will,” observed Blessed John Paul II in Redemptoris Mater, “pointing out those things which must be done so that the salvific power of the Messiah may be manifested. At Cana, thanks to the intercession of Mary and the obedience of the servants, Jesus begins ‘his hour.’” (par 21).

The Church sees the miracle at Cana as a “confirmation of the goodness of marriage” (CCC 1613). But there is also a connection to baptism, for the jars used in the miracle were for ceremonial washings, for ritual purification from defilement. In the waters of baptism, we are cleansed by God’s grace and transformed by his power. Through baptism we become members of the Church, the bride of Christ, and are invited to partake of the blood of the bridegroom (CCC 1335).

“Now we all partake at the banquet in the church,” wrote the sixth-century saint, Romanus Melodus, “For Christ’s blood is changed into wine/And we drink it with holy joy/Praising the great bridegroom.”

First water, then wine; first baptism, then Eucharist. By these sacraments, perceptible signs, we are changed, cleansed, fed—and wed.

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the January 17, 2010, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

"Risen" Depicts the Resurrection as Historical and Theological Mystery

Joseph Fiennes stars as a Roman centurion trying to find out what happened to the body of the crucified Christ (Sony Pictures)

"Risen" Depicts the Resurrection as Historical and Theological Mystery | CWR Staff | Catholic World Report

The cast and crew talk about AFFIRM Film’s new movie, starring Joseph Fiennes, which follows a Roman centurion’s hunt for the risen Christ

The Biblical epic, once a mainstay in the film industry of a bygone era, may be poised for a comeback. 2014 saw the release of Darren Aronofsky’s Noah as well as Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings. While these large scale films were being developed to give Old Testament stories a cinematic facelift for a post-Lord of the Rings audience, AFFIRM Films—Sony Pictures’ faith-based production house—had been tinkering around with a project pitched loosely as a follow-up to Mel Gibson’s landmark 2004 film The Passion of the Christ. That film, set to be released on February 19th, is Risen.

The film follows a hardened Roman Centurion named Clavius, played by Joseph Fiennes, who is tasked by Pontius Pilate with tracking down the stolen body of Yeshua, the recently crucified “Nazarene” whose followers claim has risen from the dead. Taking a page from such classics as The Robe, the film abstains from following a straightforward Resurrection narrative that might remain focused on Christ and the disciples, instead opting to frame the story from the perspective of a non-believing Roman.

Making a film that harkened back to the age of the religious epic is precisely what producer Micky Liddell had intended to do. “I grew up on The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur and all those incredible movies,” says Liddell. Trying to recapture films of those caliber is in fact one the reasons the producer embarked into Hollywood. “They’re why I wanted to move here. But when I got here, for some reason, I felt like there was a backlash and people were not making those movies at that kind of quality. So that was the goal of it, was to try to emulate some of those great movies of the past that are loved and play every year and still hold up.”

Liddell’s company LD Entertainment is helping to distribute the film alongside Columbia Pictures. The film’s production is nearly ten years in the making, as the script ran through some overhauls as development unfolded. The team vetted the story with everyone from priests to academics to try and whittle it down to the most authentic representation of time, place, and characterization. “There have been, over ten years, so many drafts it would take over ten minutes to name all the people we had shown them to,” says Pete Shilaimon, another producer on the film. “It was really important to get as many people’s feedback before we started shooting this movie with this script.”

While approaching the story of Christ from the perspective of an outsider character has a firm precedent in classics such as Ben Hur and The Robe, taking a modern film in this direction could have the faith-based target audience cautious about “artistic license”. With films such as Noah and Exodus: Gods and Kings taking liberties with the Old Testament to make their films more accessible to wider audiences, such a concern is not completely unfounded.

There’s no proselytizing agenda, but we do want to present the creative vision of the writer, director and the producers,” says Rich Peluso, Senior Vice President at AFFIRM.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

How the Synod of 2015 Ignored the Real Problem, 50 Years in the Making

How the Synod of 2015 Ignored the Real Problem, 50 Years in the Making | Fr. Regis Scanlon, O.F.M. Cap. | HPR

It’s hard to believe now, but at the beginning of the year, Synod 2015 was predicted to be a possible game changer for the Church. According to various media reports, the Synod promised to be: “stormy,” “intense,” a time of “great expectations,” and (the ultimate, irresistible comparison), “the equivalent of the Super Bowl.”1 Instead—to continue the game analogy—it may be more accurate to say the Synod ended in a draw.

Yes, it did result in some direct exchanges, even challenges, and produced an acceptable document. The bishops who were so eager to raise the “red flag” questions about the irregularly married being able to receive communion, have returned to their cathedrals and universities, apparently satisfied that they were able to make their case. While they did not convince the majority of the bishops, they continued to voice words of dissent about the decisions of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.2 In other words, it appears that we’re back to business as usual.

It’s probably too much to ask that sophisticated, self-confident bishops, who feel secure in their theological positions would change their minds about anything. No, the real danger to the Faith is the likelihood that “ordinary” Catholics around the world are still confused about the truth when it comes to divorce, remarriage, and communion. If you doubt that this is the case, here’s a test: round up a small group of Catholics and ask them: “What was the main message of the Synod? What did the Synod finally say about Church teachings about the Eucharist, and Catholics who had divorced and remarried outside the Church?”

I think you’ll find that everybody believes exactly what they believed before the Synod—and that the Synod’s final document didn’t do a thing to change their “opinion.” That’s because the Synod failed to inspire. The Synod should have been a rousing defense of the Catholic faith. It should have strengthened Catholics, and focused their minds on the truths of the faith, so they could stand up and defend the Church’s teachings on faith and morals in the midst of a degenerate society—in fact, in a degenerate world. But most of all, the Synod should have resulted in strong, unambiguous, concrete action by the Pope and the bishops, aimed at solving the faith and moral divisions occurring within the Church. Yes, that’s right—within the Church.

The bishops knew this—at least, we can assume most of them did—but for some reason they drew back from engaging in the fight for truth. They sorely needed the famous reminder from St. John Paul II: “Be not afraid.”

Perhaps, fear is the real problem in the Catholic Church today. It certainly looks like that. There is a fear that the world will hate us. There is a fear of ridicule. There is a fear that to stand up against modern ideas will produce a backlash that cannot be contained. Fear is a powerful force, and when it’s combined with a pride that is rooted in the desire to be loved and accepted by the world, the result is that the Church appears to be powerless. (We know the Church isn’t truly powerless—“The gates of hell will not prevail” (Matt. 16:18)—but at this point in history, she is appearing that way to the world, and sadly, to many Catholics.)

This problem—fear, combined with a pride that seeks the love of the world—is as old as the human race. But when it invades the heart of the Church, it becomes like a cancer. It goes to the core of our Catholic faith. In other words, it’s unhealthy that so many bishops and pastors are worrying about winning approval from the world, and from each other, as if they were members of a stuffy country club. Whether it’s caused by fear, ambition, or “political correctness” doesn’t matter. It would be healthier if they would have a roll-up-the-sleeves, knock-down, drag-out fight about what they really believe.

Could it be that the desire to get the fight started, and to bring it out in the open, was what Pope Francis had in mind when he chose Cardinal Walter Kasper (a key radical) to give one of the initial talks at Synod 2015? It certainly seems to fit with Pope Francis’ advice to the young on July 25, 2013, at World Youth Day. He told them to go back to their dioceses, and make a “mess.” He said: “I want trouble in the dioceses.”3 Even though the official Vatican translation of the Pope’s words toned down his speech, everyone knows this Pope has come to stir things up.4

It’s my belief that, yes, the Holy Father is trying to breathe some fight into the Church by showcasing what we’re up against, as for example, by clearly showing the desire by some powerful bishops (like Cardinal Kasper) to transform the Church into the world’s “buddy.” The Holy Father’s tactics have caused many Catholics (I hear from them all the time) to think that this Pope is weak. I do not agree. I am persuaded that, in his own clever way, Pope Francis is drawing out all the opponents into the open, onto the battlefield. It’s as if he’s silently encouraging the Church: “It’s time to fight back!”

But fighting back takes strength, and right now the Church appears to be weak because fear, worldly ambition, and pride have resulted in a sickness of leadership called “dissent.” I believe the sickness of dissent can be traced to three very specific moments in history: when numbers of bishops, theologians and teachers decided to reject three Church documents. This rejection, on a worldwide scale since the mid-20th century, has resulted in a growing sickness in the Church, whose main symptom is a lack of will. This sickness has led to a widespread, institutionalized dissent which now has come out into the open, most recently in the events surrounding Synod 2015.

I would like to explore, in detail, the effects of dissent from these three core documents. They are:

Continue reading on the Homiletic & Pastoral Review site.

"Born to Win": Students for Life of America at Walk for Life West Coast

"Born to Win": Students for Life of America at Walk for Life West Coast | Gibbons J. Cooney | Catholic World Report

“We want to make abortion unthinkable and this is the pro-life generation that is going to make that happen.”

Each year, San Francisco’s Walk for Life West Coast, which began in 2005, has attracted more attendees. The Walk has been defined since its inception by the participation of young people, not only at the Walk itself, but at the ancillary events that have grown up around the Walk. It has become the largest weekend of Catholic and pro-life activism on the West Coast, with special Masses, prayer services, eucharistic adoration, youth rallies and conferences.

One major activist presence at the Walk is the Students for Life of America. On January 23, following the Walk, Students for Life will host a Youth Rally and movie screening of Voiceless at 5:00 pm at San Francisco’s St. Mary’s Cathedral. On Sunday, January 24, beginning at 9:30 am, Students for Life will host their Third Annual Students for Life of America West Coast National Conference “Born to Win”, also at St. Mary’s Cathedral.

Catholic World Report spoke with Tina Whittington, Executive Vice President of Students for Life of America.

CWR: One of the most important things that has happened in the pro-life movement over the last year has been the series of videos by the Center for Medical Progress exposing the trafficking in the body parts of aborted babies by Planned Parenthood and other abortion businesses. David Daleiden, the founder of the Center for Medical Progress, will be one of the speakers at this year’s Walk. Can you tell us what you think these videos have meant to the pro-life movement?

Tina Whittington: The Center for Medical Progress videos were a game-changer because while many pro-lifers suspected the abortion industry of selling baby body parts, David proved it and proved it dramatically. This time, it wasn’t a pro-lifer saying that Planned Parenthood betrays women – it was the abortionists themselves by admitting they don’t always get full consent from the mother and change up the abortion procedure to get the best organs, which can cause complications for the mother.

This time it wasn’t a pro-lifer holding up graphic images of aborted babies – it was Planned Parenthood themselves holding the tiny, identifiable parts of aborted babies. This time it wasn’t  pro-lifers telling the world that the abortion industry finds any way to make a profit – it was Planned Parenthood high-level executives themselves negotiating the best price for the body parts of aborted babies.

CWR: Students for Life have become a regular presence at the Walk. Two years ago you had the first annual Students for Life of America West Coast Conference. This year will be the third annual confcerence—and a pro-life Youth Rally as well. What results do you hope to see from the Rally and Conference?

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Theory, Practice, and the Church

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Theory, Practice, and the Church | James Kalb | CWR

Doctrine articulates faith, and makes it usable as a path to truth, so the Church must take it very seriously even in the face of difficulties.

There has been a great deal of talk in the Church lately about a supposed opposition between rules and reality, theology and life, doctrine and pastoral considerations. Some of the talk has gone to extremes, suggesting that rules, doctrine, and organized thought matter little in comparison with the pastoral needs of the immediate situation.

Such talk, like other extreme positions, can sometimes be useful to make a point, but made habitual the approach would destroy order and rationality by substituting the Deed for the Word . Within the Church it would lead to a combination of willfulness and tyranny, since those in authority and those on the spot could do whatever seemed good to them at the moment, while in relation to the world at large it would deprive the Church of her specific mission, which has to do with things that rise above immediate goals, and reduce her to a humanitarian NGO with unusual rituals and a quirky way of talking about things.

The Church's pastoral approach and ways of thinking should of course be based on reality, but what reality? Are we speaking of the reality of people's situations as they interpret them, or perhaps of secular trends or sociological studies? Or are we rather speaking of the realities with which the Church has always been most concerned, for example the reality of what men and women are, of what marriage is, and ultimately of the Most Real Being?

With respect to marriage, for example, it seems that the key point is not rules proposed by Pharisaical doctors of the law, but the reality marriage brings into being, the physical, social, and spiritual union of man and woman, which is the basis of the family and therefore as real, permanent, and undeniable as the relation between parent and child or brother and sister. To detract from that reality would not only promote falsehood but attack the position and dignity of ordinary people in their family connections. For the rulers of the Church to do so would be a betrayal that would help the wealthy and powerful reduce the people to an aggregate of production and consumption units, with no connections among themselves that need be respected. Why would that be pastoral?

Still, talk that sometimes suggests practical antinomianism, like most talk among experienced people in responsible positions, points to genuine issues. There is always a gap between the formal teachings of the Church and the actual or at least practical beliefs of her members, including many hierarchs. That gap seems unusually wide today, but even with the best will it could not simply be abolished, since there is always a tension between theory and practice.

It's an awkward tension to deal with, in part because it's so resistant to clear understanding. As someone said, in theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is. That means theory can't see the issue, so it can't comment on it, but practice can't explain it either, because practice acts rather than explains.

The awkwardness becomes all the greater in a religious setting.

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