The sedevacantist problem

Recently, Father Dwight Longenecker, a former Anglican priest (and the most prominent of a relative handful of married men to be ordained within the Latin rite) has been writing some angst-ridden blog posts concerning his former communion. The most recent was a “personal offer” to Anglo-Catholics, exhorting them to follow the logic of their position and cross the Tiber: “If you were to become a Catholic it would be both more glorious and more awful than you think. Awful because you really do submit yourself to the Catholic Church and that is hard. More glorious because the graces you will receive through this submission and this step of faith will overwhelm you with goodness.”

Most of the respondents, at the time of this composition, were to the point, discussing the reasons why they went either Catholic or Orthodox. However, one troll, exercising the freedom of the Internet to engage in hysterical jeremiads, let loose with this screed:

Apostate! You are not remotely Catholic. The last 5 “popes” have been antipopes and we are in the Great Apostasy prophesied in the Bible. Vatican II was a false and heretical council. Things are completely out of control right now and most people don’t even know what’s going on or even have a clue about it.

The fall of the Western Empire … redux

I was standing in the smoking area with an acquaintance who commonly brings his Kindle™ to work. As we commented on that, and on the construction of the new Pizza Hut corporate offices across the street, a thought akin to despair enveloped me like the steamy heat of the Dallas morning. I couldn't help but say it: "When we were growing up, we were afraid that we'd destroy the world with nuclear weapons. That's not going to happen. The Western world is going to collapse from within."

David smiled ruefully. "It's already started."

I've been reading more of the writings of G. K. Chesterton; the more I read, the more I notice just how much more things have degenerated than I once suspected. Whereas once I traced most of the evils of the present to the malign influence of quasi- and proto-Marxists on the counterculture of the ̉'60s, which group has taken over much of our legal and educational systems, I now see that the seeds were active and sprouting even a century ago when the "Apostle of Common Sense" was very much in his prime, and that much of his indictments of the patent silliness he witnessed can be easily transposed to condemn the conventional wisdom of this age.

The root of the Catholic difference

The Crescat posted on Thursday (June 10) about her best friend, who “is fond of referring to Catholics as private club members. … Maybe she just doesn’t understand the intrinsic nature that Catholicism enmeshes itself into your very core. It’s not something to do on a Sunday or simply a preference for liturgical styles. Catholicism is so much more than just another denomination to chose from in the spiritual gumbo of religions.”

Perhaps.

On one level, many Catholics do seem to treat Catholicism as a “religion of choice”, as if their attendance at Mass were simply one of convenience and social connections. They blush, shudder, wail or become irritated whenever the Pope or some prominent bishop insists on some doctrinal point that, within the modern cultural context, seems hopelessly outdated or unfriendly. When they feel compelled to worship, they do so at a Catholic church because that’s what they’re used to; fortunately, there’s still quite a few parishes where the priest avoids preaching on the hard topics and chooses to emphasize love and forgiveness so as not to offend.

Of rebels and bishops

We Americans have a soft spot for rebels. I think the soft spot is in our heads.

On any ordinary day, we subject ourselves to Authorities, sometimes with tacit approval, sometimes with grudging acceptance, most often without any thought one way or another. Our rebellion rarely goes beyond violating the speed limit; when we’re caught, we pay the fine with a smile of sheepish chagrin. Occasionally our financial circumstances force us to play chicken with the law until we have a chance to “get legal” again. We obey our bosses; we obey our parents; we obey the law; in the military, we obey both the commissioned and non-commissioned officers in our chains of command.

A public confession of anger

Over on the irrepressible Father John Zuhlsdorf's page, What Does The Prayer Really Say?, there is a post of a story taking place in Rockford, Illinois.

Since 2008, a group of priests has been showing up to pray—apparently prayers from the rite of exorcism?—at the local abortion mill, which has since suffered a decline of patients and profits. The abortion mill, which is apparently not only staffed by anti-Catholics but also renting space from an anti-Catholic, started posting insulting signs within a month of their appearance.

A hypothetical question about Hitler

One of the hard truths of orthodox Christianity, one that gets ignored by the liberals and pounded on by certain Evangelical sects, is this: Some people whom we think of as basically good, decent human beings will go to hell. On some level of their psyches, they shut God’s grace out, and leave the door locked until death. Those of us raised in more liberal parishes—especially those of the “Kumbaya” era—tend to tiptoe around this particular stumbling block, or just flat-out refuse to believe it. Nevertheless, it remains a truth of the faith … if we don’t like it, tough noogies.

The corollary to this truth is even harder to swallow: Some people whom we think would merit damnation will instead enjoy the Beatific Vision … whether we like it or not.

The fallacy of the "independent thinker"

There must have been a time when the expression “Think outside the box” meant something. I’m not quite sure, because many expressions that have passed into and out of corporate-speak seem to have been crafted to obscure, if not drain, meaning from a statement.

From my experience, the cliché once captured the idea of changing one’s perspective or approach to problem-solving as a means to achieving a goal. No matter how fecund a particular style of management or problem-solving normally is for you, occasionally you find a situation where it doesn’t produce results easily, if at all. Or, it may work for a while but lose its effectiveness over time. Or it can lead to a lot of wasted time and resources chasing avenues of approach into blind alleys. As one writer put it (back in the days of the typewriter), “Some days the words won’t come; other days, they can’t get to the wastebasket fast enough.”

A multinational (small) business

The mainstream media seems to have a problem with translations. In his ongoing battle with the press over recent allegations against Pope Benedict XVI, the papal spokesman, Fr. Federico Lombardi, stated, “The Catholic Church is not a multinational corporation.”

At least, that’s what he would have said had he been speaking English. Alas, he was speaking Italian. Impresa—“firm, business”—was translated as “entity”. The resulting phrase made it look as if good Fr. Federico was making the Church something local.

The crucifixion of the Pope

I suppose, given that the furor has been going on for over a week, I should comment on the scandal of the New York Times.

No, I didn’t miswrite that. The scandal I’m addressing is the insane allegations and factual misrepresentations by the Times concerning Pope Benedict's alleged involvement in a Wisconsin case of priestly sexual misconduct. The scandal I’m addressing is the failure of the Times’ editors to impose any kind of substantive journalistic standards of fair, accurate and unbiased reportage. The scandal I’m addressing is the (sadly successful) attempt by reporter Laurie Goodstein to create a cover-up of a scandal out of whole cloth, to charge protection of an abusive priest where none was offered, and to lay the blame for these notional outrages upon Pope Benedict XVI.

Here are the salient facts of the matter:

After twenty-four years of ministry at St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee, Father Lawrence Murphy was under investigation by the local authorities for sexually assaulting some of the minors in his charge, possibly as many as 200, although Fr. Murphy later only admitted to abusing 19. It should be stressed that there was never any accusation by the district attorney’s office or the police that the Archdiocese of Milwaukee was anything less than cooperative, nor was there  any allegation by victims that they were pressured or bribed into silence by Church officials.

No cover-up there.

Bringing philosophy to a new low

It must be a requirement among the new breed of atheist spokespersons to not know what they’re talking about.

Sam Harris—who is presented as a philosopher, and for all I know may very well have a degree in philosophy—recently told CNN: “We should be talking about real problems, like nuclear proliferation and genocide and poverty and the crisis in education. … These are issues which tremendous swings in human well-being depend on. And it’s not at the center of our moral concern. … Religion has convinced us that there’s something else entirely other than concerns about suffering. There’s concerns about what God wants, there’s concerns about what’s going to happen in the afterlife. And, therefore, we talk about things like gay marriage as if it’s the greatest problem of the 21st century. We even have a liberal president who ostensibly is against gay marriage because his faith tells him it’s an abomination. It’s completely insane.”