Goodstein's "smoking gun" a water pistol

Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times is apparently determined to be the Bob Woodward of her generation. She’s picked an issue about which she will seemingly never suffer a loss of credibility no matter how blatantly she distorts her source materials, and a home in which she is free to indulge her journalistic excesses in the name of muck-raking. Moreover, she’s found a devoted audience, the equivalent of Rush Limbaugh’s “dittoheads”, who are ever ready to hail her prophetic wisdom so long as she feeds their sense of righteous indignation.

I need to make it clear right from the start that media investigation of the abuse scandals per se is not a bad thing. We Catholics owe a lot to the many honest journalists who have covered these stories, as painful and embarrassing as they’ve been. It should also be understood that I am not, not, NOT defending the bishops who deliberately paid off victims for their silence, who shuffled predator priests around, who dithered and dallied about removing known ephebophiles from the priesthood until it was too late. No, I’m merely dealing with Goodstein’s ongoing attempts to implicate the Vatican in every sexual-abuse scandal, and the meretricious journalism with which she’s pursuing her goal.

I’m speaking, of course, of Goodstein’s article yesterday (1/19/11) about a 1997 letter from the apostolic nuncio of Ireland, the late Abp. Luciano Storero, to the Irish bishops concerning a working document on child sexual abuse policy. The letter expressed some reservations of the Congregation for the Clergy about the committee’s proposition, which recommended that even suspicions should be reported to secular authorities, and that confidentiality should not be offered even if the lack of confidentiality were a deterrent to someone coming forward with a report (Section 2.2). In the second paragraph, Goodstein immediately signaled where she was heading: “The [letter] appears to contradict Vatican claims that church leaders in Rome never sought to control the actions of local bishops in abuse cases, and that the Roman Catholic Church did not impede criminal investigations of child abuse suspects.”

On the veneration of saints (Part II)

In Part I, we looked at the inaccurate, unjust and uncharitable charge that prayer to saints is idolatry. But more needs to be said about the communion of saints and their role in Catholic theology and prayer life.

Saint comes from the Latin sanctus, which in turn translates the Greek hagios (ἅγιος, = "most holy thing, saint" [Brown-Driver-Briggs]; "sacred (physically, pure, morally blameless or religious, ceremonially, consecrated):—(most) holy (one, thing), saint" [Strong]). While sanctus is ordinarily spoken of as an attribute of God, there are points in the NT letters where Christians are spoken of as "holy ones"; see for example Philippians 4:21-22: "Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The brethren who are with me greet you. All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar's household." Hebrews 13:24: "Greet all your leaders and all the saints." Especially interesting is 1 Peter 1:15-16: "… [B]ut as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; since it is written, 'You shall be holy, for I am holy'" [cf. Lev 11:44-45].[1]

On the veneration of saints (Part I)

One of the motivations for my last post came while I was reading the news yesterday that on May 1 Pope Benedict XVI will beatify his predecessor, Ven. John Paul II. Mainstream-media comboxes aren’t good reading, unless you’re fascinated by the reflections of the uninformed on the misinformation they get. Ordinarily, I skip past the “peanut gallery”.[1] But one comment caught my eye; as I remember, it went something like this: “One of the Ten Commandments is against idolatry. Praying to saints strikes me as idolatry. I have never been able to understand the Catholic Church and its thing about saints.”

Indeed, our audacious Protestant friend doesn’t understand the Catholic Church if he thinks praying to a saint is idolatry. In fact, he doesn’t understand idolatry or prayer, either.

Uncivil Discourse

The smoke from Jared Lee Loughner’s weapon had hardly a chance to dissipate when liberal hate-mongers in the MSM started to accuse Sarah Palin and the Tea Party as accessories before the fact to mass murder. The grounds? One of the victims, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, is a Democrat “targeted” by the Tea Party for unseating in her next re-election bid.

Never mind that Loughner is a paranoid schizophrenic with an established history of drug abuse. Never mind that the only demonstrable concern he had with politics was his alleged anger at being “snubbed” by Giffords at some public function. Had Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann and the New York Times waited just a few days for these facts to come forward, they would not now look like idiots and hypocritical opportunists.

A meandering reflection on regular church attendance

Over on the other blog—“Why do you have two blogs, Layne?” Well, first of all, because I can; second, because the other one is good for quickie observations and YouTube clips—I have posted a copy of Fr. Tim Finigan’s classic lampoon, “Ten reasons why I don’t wash” (props to Fr. Z for pointing it out). Father Finigan posted it at the end of a short rant deriding people who don’t go to Mass because “my parents forced me to go to Mass when I was a kid”. His point—and it’s a darn good one—is that our parents forced us to do many things we didn’t want to as kids that eventually became adult good habits; going to church regularly ought to be such a habit. In fact, someday I hope to write a post on all the various annoying clichés our parents told us when we were kids that we discovered as adults were the basics of wisdom; the most salient fact about truisms is that they are true.

The list points up a basic fact: Once you understand that the point of going to church on Sunday is to worship God, most excuses for not going are pretty lame. Of course, if you really don’t believe in God, you don’t need any other excuse; on the other hand, for every true atheist or agnostic, there’s at least one person who does believe in God to some extent but ranks corporate worship of Him below golf, house cleaning, watching The Game, and—when you’re really bored—having sex with the significant other. You would think, in these situations, going to church would at least be a break from the routine; for that, a megachurch can be great entertainment, although when done properly the Catholic Mass is great theater. Then, when you get back, you can play golf, clean the house, watch the game and—if you’re really bored—have sex with the significant other. Or not. [Please tell me if you missed the sarcasm the first time around.]

Telling the Christmas story

Recently, Jeff Miller (aka the Curt Jester) posted a somewhat-lengthy discussion of the Christmas movies he’s been watching. Along the way, he noted just how many of them hit the same themes over and over: 1) Family is important; 2) Materialism is bad; and 3) Santa Claus is real. On the other hand, the only other option seems to be watching some iteration or other of the Nativity story, the most recent of which Taylor Marshall blasted as “blasphemous and sacrilegious” for its depiction of the Blessed Virgin consulting a palm reader (Gottenyu! Not something a pious Jewish girl would do) and for depicting her as suffering labor pains.[1]  Couldn’t somebody, Miller wondered aloud, manage to write a story that would hit the Nativity themes without being a Nativity movie?

It sounds like an interesting idea. At least, until you ask yourself: How do you separate the Nativity from the birth of Jesus?

Of parachutes and prophylactics

In my last post, I observed that William Saletan seems almost willing to concede that abortion is wrong; however, his obsession with contraception forces him to maintain it as a fundamental right … albeit an unattractive and unpleasant right, one that he would rather see exercised as little as possible. This is almost a textbook example of cognitive dissonance, the moral and psychological tension caused by holding two conflicting principles simultaneously.

Babies are good, but unwanted pregnancy is bad. Killing babies is bad, but making women carry unwanted babies to term is bad too. So women shouldn’t get pregnant if they don’t want to have babies, especially if they don’t like the idea of killing unwanted babies.

Why Roe must go

Recently, William Saletan cobbled together a possible compromise solution to the endless struggle over abortion in America. The interesting thing about his solution is that, while he still doesn’t quite “get” the pro-life position, he makes several key concessions that show he, along with other key pro-choice advocates, is reluctantly learning.

Liar, lunatic, Lord ... or legend?

“In all my life,” C. S. Lewis wrote in the opening paragraph of Miracles, “I have met only one person who claims to have seen a ghost. And the interesting thing about the story is that that person disbelieved in the immortal soul before she saw the ghost and still disbelieves it after seeing it. She say that what she saw must have been an illusion or a trick of the nerves. And obviously she may be right. Seeing is not believing.”

I remembered this paragraph after I first read of Emile Zola’s encounter with the miraculous. The defiantly atheistic journalist went to Lourdes, announcing that he wanted to see a miracle, even so small a healing as “a cut finger”. What he did see was a woman cured so thoroughly of lupus that patches of skin were still slightly red from healing. Zola was so horrified at the sight of a woman he had seen badly disfigured now whole and healthy that he turned away: “I cannot look at her; she is still too ugly.” He later stated that he would not believe in miracles even if confronted by all the miracles ever recorded.

These two incidents were brought back into my mind by a discussion on Father Z’s blog about the miraculous healing attributed to the intervention of St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (“Talking Eagle”), the Aztec peasant to whom Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared, and to whom the tilma which bears her icon belonged. Or at least to whom she is supposed to have appeared and the tilma is supposed to have belonged.

Thoughts on the inerrancy of Scripture



Saul Meets Samuel (artist unknown)



In “Another reason why sola scriptura is bad doctrine”, one could argue, I evaded a very sticky wicket. One could even accuse me of deliberate obfuscation.

Okay, grant that Christianity is not based on Scripture, that you can’t derive the authentic beliefs of the first Christians from Scripture alone, and that Scripture by itself is as likely to lead to errors as it is to truth. Still, if Scripture is the inerrant, indefectible Word of God—and postulating that God would not lie about Himself—then does that not require you, Mr. Layne, to believe that God commanded the total destruction of the Amalekites (1 Sam 15:2-3)? That He ordered homosexuals to be put to death (Lev 20:13)? Doesn’t that require you, Mr. Layne, to believe that rock badgers are ruminants because God said they chew the cud (Lev 11:5)? That the universe and everything in it was created in six days (Gen 1:1-2:1)? In sum, does this not require you, Mr. Layne, to believe everything the Bible says without reservation and qualification, no matter how silly or demonstrably counterfactual a statement might be, no matter how one text might contradict another?

Yes or no?