The Catholic Response

THE CATHOLIC RESPONSE

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 VOLUME XIV • NO. 4 THE CATHOLIC Table Of Contents RESPONSE Duc in Altum— Put Out into the Deep Volume XIV • No. 4 Reverend Peter M.J. Publisher & Editor: Stravinskas 1 The Reverend Peter M. J. Stravinskas The Truth about Mary: Managing Editor: Part XIII Reverend Nicholas L. The Reverend Nicholas L. Gregoris Gregoris, S.T.D. 7 (ISSN 1553-0221) Copyright © 2018. The Catholic Breaking New Ground Response is published bi-monthly Michael Ward 19 by the Priestly Society of the Blessed John Henry Car- The Face of Capraesque dinal Newman. Editorial Of- fices: 601 Buhler Court, Pine Capitalism Beach, New Jersey 08741. Pub- Gilbert Colon 33 lishing/Subscription Office: P.O. Box 10, New Hope, KY 40052. Questions & Answers 39 Subscription rates in U.S. and Possessions: one year, $30.00; Short Reviews two years, $55; three years, $70. by the Editor 52 Outside the U.S.: one year, $35; two years, $65; three years, $85. For bulk rates, call 732-914-1222. Amoris Laetitia and Periodicals postage PAID at New the Nature Of Mercy Haven, Kentucky and additional Most Reverend mailing offices.Postmaster: Send Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap 54 address changes to The Catholic Response, P.O. Box 10, New Hope, KY 40052 Duc in Altum— Put Out into the Deep

With the new year comes our annual “Duc in Altum” campaign. If not already, very soon, you will be receiving an invitation to participate in that endeavor, which is so necessary for the financial security of The Catholic Response. Anticipating your usual gener- ous response, I thank you for your support. Unless you have been living under a rock, you have been bom- barded in recent weeks by daily reporting of the sexploits of the rich and famous – which disclosures coincide with the fifteenth anniversary of similar reporting about the clergy sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. Permit me to reflect on both phenomena. As clergy sex abuse revelations were emerging with nerve- wracking regularity during what the late Father Richard John Neuhaus dubbed “the long Lent” of 2002, several elements formed what might be called a composite picture. With the older priests, it was generally a case of a formation which took no account of one’s sexuality, assuming that priests were as asexual as angels. With the younger brethren, it was almost universally a case of bad (no, let’s call it by its right name, “heretical”) moral theology taught in the seminaries of the sixties and seventies (to which theology I was subjected). The vast majority of the accused lived alone or were “loners”. In the cohort of younger priests, again, heretical views in ecclesiology had been presented, as well as little to no exposure to the meaning and dignity of the priesthood, so that one would never want to bring shame to the Church or one’s holy vocation (once more, I lived through such “formation” or lack thereof). In other words, sinful and shameful behavior was inevitable; the great miracle is that so few men actually succumbed – a fact rarely if ever acknowledged by the media. Consult the John Jay study for further documentation. Presently we have the media darling, Jesuit Father James Martin, serving as the spokesman for the very positions that got us into the mess, to begin with. Now, as to how bishops handled the problem. In short order, it became eminently clear that the cases coming to the fore were not instances of pedophilia; rather, they were homosexual acts engaged in by priests with young men (post-pubescent teens). I

The Catholic Response 1 advised numerous bishops not to refer to these acts as pedophilia – because, in the vast majority of cases, they were not. Calling them by a wrong name was inaccurate, misleading and bound to reap the whirlwind. Truth be told, if they had been labeled as homosexual, most media outlets would have buried the stories, lest they be accused of “gay bashing.” It is certainly true that the main source of public anger stemmed from the fact that bishops shuttled abusing priests from assignment to assignment. And here, I have some degree of sympathy for bishops. Why? Because they were told by “professionals,” that is, psychologists and psychiatrists, that these men had been rehabilitated and were apt candidates for reintegration into active ministry. Bishops were caught between a rock and a hard spot. Many of them doubted that true rehabilitation had oc- curred or was even possible; their instinct told them not to return such offenders to public ministry. On the other hand, had they not followed the counsel of the “professionals,” they would have been pilloried in the media as prime examples of a backward, medieval, science-denying institution. Where bishops cannot be excused is how so many priests were treated. All too often, an accusation was treated as fact. In not a few cases, priests exonerated by civil authorities were nonethe- less declared guilty by bishops and/or diocesan review boards. Many bishops threw priests under the bus by agreeing to financial settlements without the knowledge and consent of the priests in question, thus exposing these men to the appearance of guilt (why else dole out thousands or even millions of dollars?). Yet again, such episcopal behavior came about due to the advice of lawyers and insurance companies – with the result that the reputation of clergy and the patrimony of a diocese were wrecked. Violating the legal axiom of “testis unus, testis nullus” (one witness is no witness), a simple accusation of a single individual was deemed valid. Equally problematic was the refusal of the hierarchy as a whole to fight fire with fire by suing those who had made false accusations – and even forbidding priests from suing to vindicate their own good name. Likewise, eliminating the statute of limitations in church law was an egregious error; ironically, though, dioceses fought tooth and nail against eliminating the statute of limitations in civil law! In short, hysteria prevailed. I am writing this editorial a day after the death of Cardinal Bernard Law, an outstanding churchman who, unfortunately, is totally identified with missteps of his in regard to clergy abuse. He was a leader in the civil rights struggle, a promoter of ecumenical 2 The Catholic Response and interreligious dialogue, the man most responsible for Pope John Paul’s decision to commission a catechism, a staunch defender of Catholic orthodoxy. Truth be told, Cardinal Law did nothing different from any other bishop in the country; he was merely the scapegoat. As a matter of fact, he did nothing different from every other entity in society. I hope that God’s judgment of him is more just than that of so many human beings. Now a new round of hysteria is in evidence. Not a few of the current accusations in society-at-large border on the absurd. A media mogul invites you to his hotel room at ten o’clock at night to discuss your bright future. Did you really think you were going to be praying the rosary there? A congressman opens his office door in his underwear. Did you really think he wanted you to pick up his slacks at the cleaner’s? The legitimate accusations, on the other hand, should come as no surprise. The current drama of Hollywood stars, media types, athletes and politicians is the fruit of the hyper-sexualization of society as a whole for decades at every level. As I have written before, when the Catholic Church of the fifties and sixties coun- seled against suggestive language and jokes or “dirty” books and magazines and movies, the Church was ruthlessly mocked as being grossly out of step with modernity. In the present moment, a puritanism is surfacing which will make the Catholic approach of an earlier era look permissive. Further, when Blessed Paul VI in Humanae Vitae warned that a contraceptive mentality would bring in its wake the degradation of women, along with a rise in fornication and adultery, he was classified as a Cassandra. In 1981, St. John Paul II, in his landmark document, Familiaris Consortio, offered the antidote: “… husbands and wives should first of all recognize clearly the teaching of Humanae Vitae as indicating the norm for the exercise of their sexuality and they should endeavor to establish the conditions necessary for observ- ing that norm” (n. 34). It is perversely humorous to recall that clerical sex abuse was blamed on celibacy. How many of the current crop of the accused are celibate or even know what that means? When priests sought legal assistance from their dioceses, they were told it would be unseemly for the diocese to assist them; they were on their own. We now discover that the Congress of the United States has had a slush fund all along to provide funding on behalf of accused members of Congress both for legal assistance and compensation for accusers.

The Catholic Response 3 Self-righteous Hollywooders currently express amazement and disgust at what has been uncovered. Really? Hollywood has had a reputation for licentiousness as far back as my boyhood – and they have certainly produced every kind of filth imaginable for decades. The advertising industry has also promoted smut for years on end. As I write, Dolce & Gabbana has a commercial in which a woman is undressing a man. Is this not dehumanizing? Is this not making someone an object of one’s passions? A new film, a winner at the Cannes film festival, “Call Me by My Name,” glorifies a relationship between an adult male and a teenage boy. IMDB (International Media Data Base) proffers this bland assess- ment: “In Northern Italy in 1983, seventeen year-old Elio begins a relationship with visiting Oliver, his father’s research assistant, with whom he bonds over his emerging sexuality, their Jewish heritage, and the beguiling Italian landscape.” Other reviews are even effusive about it all. Indeed, the esteemed Catholic psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons, has opined on this matter based on years of observa- tion of patients demonstrating what he terms “sexually aggressive behaviors” (SAB). He concludes that “this personality disorder is widespread in our time and results in the belief that one has the right to use others as sexual objects.” He regards this reality as “definitely of epidemic proportions.” How has this happened? The leading cultural factor in this epidemic is the media – particularly television shows and movies whose goals are celebrating sexual ‘freedom.’ Hostility toward Judaeo-Christian morality among politicians, educators, celebrities and public figures is also a con- tributing factor to SAB.” How pervasive is this problem? Allow me to share but four of many possible anecdotes from my personal experience. A few years ago, I was on a shuttle bus to Newark Airport. A family of husband, wife and three children boarded. Apparently the thirteen-or-so-old boy was not enamored of the trip to Florida for a winter vacation. The father tried to improve his attitude by saying, “Hey, kid, listen: You’ll be able to find all kinds of hot girls there. You won’t want to leave!” Seeing me across the aisle, the father said, “Well, padre, you know how kids are today!” To which, I responded, “My problem is not with the kids but with their parents.” The response of silence was deafening. A mother approached me with great concern and fear that her daughter was a lesbian, and she wanted to send the girl to a therapist (the father opposed the plan). Naturally, I asked what

4 The Catholic Response made her think that. “She’s the only girl in her class who doesn’t have a steady boyfriend.” “I would thank God for that, if I were you,” I replied. “How old is she?” I inquired. “She’s in third grade,” came the response. “Ah, I agree that psychotherapy is indicated. For you, not for her!” An eighty-year-old woman confessed adultery – the one and only time of her sixty-year marriage. “Why would you want to ruin such a wonderful record of fidelity?” asked I. “Well, Father, when my grand-daughter tells me about all her sexual experiences, I begin to regret everything I have missed out on.” And these are the people that Pope Francis tells us whom young people ought to be consulting and emulating! For a number of years, I was the “go-to” guy for Larry King. Whenever he had some Catholic deviant scheduled, he had me come on to provide “the Catholic response.” One day, Larry said, “What’s with the Catholic Church’s hang-up on sex?” I replied that I was unaware of any. He pressed: “The Catholic Church is obsessed with sex.” I thought it was important to provide an intelligent rejoinder. “Larry,” I asked, “have I ever asked to be on your show?” “No.” “When asked to be on, did I ever suggest a topic?” “No.” “I have been on six or seven times to date. For the first show, we had a Jesuit womanizer from Los Angeles, who was expelled from his order. The second show featured a Jesuit psychiatrist who was a dissenter from Church teaching on same- sex relations and who revealed that he had been living with his

The Catholic Response 5 male lover for years. On the third show, we heard about the former Archbishop of Atlanta and his long-term relationship with a woman. The fourth show highlighted a Michigan priest who had been secretly married to a woman. Who’s obsessed with sex?” Silence. With all the sectors of society being dragged out of their closets of sexual aber- rations, bishops and Catholics in general ought to offer society-at-large our experience of how to deal with this epidemic (after all, out of roughly 48,000 priests in our nation, fewer than a dozen accusations surfaced last year). Of course, the untouchables to this moment have been public school teachers, who have been shuffled around school districts for decades. In New York City, a credibly accused teacher is not fired; he or she is sent to “the rubber room” to record attendance figures, all the while collecting the same salary. Lest we forget, all too many accused priests were given two hours to vacate their rectories and often left penniless (until not a few bishops decided to bribe them with a few thousand dollars into seeking laicization, so as to make the problem go away). One of the mandates given Pope Francis by the cardinals who elected him was to deal with clerical sex abuse around the world. His handling of the situation has been under-whelming. Bishops who have protected errant priests have been promoted by him; priests who had been laicized were reactivated by the Pope (who eventually had to be re-laicized!). Members of the pontifical commission for the protection of minors have resigned because of his ambivalent signals. With all the above said, what some people have failed to understand is that abuser-priests (like all other abusers) come from sick families and a sick society. What can and should committed believers be doing? Speak out against the sexualization of every aspect of life. Insist on public portrayals of children and adults as subjects, not objects for self-gratification. Promote and defend the tried and true Christian view of marriage, family and sexuality. Live those norms yourself. If you do these things, you will duc in altum. Father Peter M. J. Stravinskas Editor and Publisher

6 The Catholic Response The Truth about Mary: Part XIII

by the Reverend Nicholas L. Gregoris, S.T.D.

The Reverend Nicholas L. Gregoris, a member of the Priestly Society of the Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, holds theological degrees from the Pontifi- cal Gregorian University and the Pontifical Faculty Marianum, both in Rome. He is the managing editor of The Catholic Response.

Lent, which begins this year on February 14, is the primordial time for conversion of mind and heart. Given Our Lady’s status as the primordial Christian, she is the ideal model of Christian perfection. Here offered are six aspects of the Marian life which stand as powerful examples of discipleship, which should be the goal of Christian transformation aimed at during the Holy Season of Lent. 1. Mary as the loving mother who offers Christ and presents Him to others In Marialis Cultus (“On Marian Devotion,”the 1974 Apostolic Constitution of Blessed Paul VI), the Pontiff highlights Mary’s example as one who both presents the Christ-Child to the humble shepherds and wise men and likewise offers Him in the Temple of Jerusalem in the presence of the humble Simeon and Anna. According to Lumen Gentium (the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of the Second Vatican Council) and St. John Paul II’s Encyclical Redemptoris Mater (“Mother of the Redeemer), Mary is said to have united herself in a mysterious and silent manner to the immolation of her Divine Son for our redemption. Mary leads others to Christ; she does not point to herself. She is, as the Greek title of the venerable icon indicates, “Hodegitria” (“She who points the way”). We too are called to lead others to Christ, Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. We present Christ to others when we bear witness to Him by holy words and deeds. Our evangelization is not a “solemn nonsense,” precisely because it is evangelization and not proselytism. In the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the priest leads the lay faithful in uniting their own sufferings to those of Our Crucified Lord and Savior. At Holy Mass, we stand on Calvary in the blessed

The Catholic Response 7 company of Mary and John the Beloved Disciple insofar as the Mass is the unbloody re-presentation of the self-same sacrifice of Our Lord, by which He redeemed us and thereby made possible our eternal salvation through participation in the divine life of grace, especially as we pray without ceasing; read and study God’s Word, without adding to it or subtracting from it as we may be tempted to do in order to appease some sort of misguided sense of mercy and compassion divorced from the objective and often difficult demands of Gospel truth; receive the sacraments of salvation, especially the Holy Eucharist of Our Lord’s Body and Blood, in a state of grace with true repentance for our sins and a firm desire of amendment lest we receive the Sacrament unto our own condemnation rather than eternal salvation (1 Cor 11:27). 2. The Freedom of Mary’s Perfect Humility Mary’s humility is a virtue that stands out in a particular way at the Annunciation when she declares her consent before the Angel of the Lord to become the Virgin Mother of the Incarnate Word and Son of God. Mary does not go out of her way to perform ostentatious acts that call attention to herself, so that others will take notice of her. She knows (as do we instinctively) that humility doesn’t manifest itself in this way. Rather, it is the Archangel Ga- briel who acknowledges Mary’s humility as he greets her as “highly favored,” that is, “full of grace,” (“gratia plena”), as he states that Mary has found “favor” (charis, gratia, grace) with the Lord. The Virgin Mary herself states: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord,” so as to say that she is humbly and devoutly ready to carry out not her own agenda based on preconceived notions and ideology but the Lord’s Will – no matter how difficult it may be to comprehend and, more, to fulfill. In her Canticle of Praise, the Magnificat, Mary declares that God has looked on His handmaiden in her lowliness (tapeinosis). At the Annunciation, there takes place a wonderful, marvelous exchange involving the divine initiative and Mary’s own cooperation in the Lord’s plan or economy of salvation. Notice how there is no intimidation on the Angel’s part. He makes no threats. He sows no seed of fear threatening Mary with retribution if she doesn’t do what the Lord is asking of her. On the contrary, the Angel Gabriel expects Mary to respond in full freedom. And when she does so by pronouncing her “fiat” on her own behalf and that of the entire human race, as St. Thomas Aquinas described Mary’s “yes,” she does so freely, under no constraint whatsoever. The English word “humility,” derives from the Latin word “humus,” meaning the “dirt” or “ground” which we tread underfoot. (continued on page 10) 8 The Catholic Response …It’s finally here! FAITH of the EARLY CHURCH by Fr. Nicholas Gregoris NEW! An excellent overview of the lives of the Fathers of the Church and what they taught on major doctrines. Traces the early heresies, councils, creeds and major writings. Great for high school students, seminarians, inquirers into the Catholic faith, and anyone interested in what the early Church actually taught and believed. Includes a map, topical index, apologetical index of Scripture quotes, and suggested further reading list. Color photos and illustrations. 348 pp. Softcover. $22.95 $14.95 Father Gregoris has established Faith of the Early Church not only that Christianity had a is a beautifully illustrated glorious dawn in the early first volume, enhanced with maps, millennium, but that whatever classical religious art and light shines forth from the recommendations for further second millennium city set on reading, wherein we are invited the hilltop is due to the good to return to the roots and and extensive foundations of the discover again the sources of first millennium. the faith. — J. Francis Cardinal Stafford — Sean Cardinal O’Malley, OFM Cap Former President, Archbishop of Boston Pontifical Council for the Laity Faith of the Early Church is a treasure of history, art and prayer …. In Father Gregoris’ hands, the Apostolic age becomes a fascinating story. — Donald Cardinal Wuerl Archbishop of Washington

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The Catholic Response 9 (continued from page 8) We recall that God created Adam from the clay of the earth. When God created Mary, the New Eve, He formed by a special interven- tion which preserved her from original sin, the sin of Adam, from the first instant of her earthly life. The pro-life implications of this Marian dogma of our Catholic Faith could not be any more obvious. Mary’s Immaculate Conception, whose liturgical solemnity we celebrate each year on December 8, is a powerful reminder that contrary to what Martin Luther erroneously taught over 500 years ago, we are not “simul justus et peccator” (“justified and sinner at the same time”) for the power of God’s grace at the Annunciation did not impute extrinsic righteousness or justification to Mary; rather, that grace acted as a transformative movement of Trini- tarian love that refashioned her, body and soul, as a new creature without subjecting her in any way to the rule of Satan’s pride. Sadly, Luther had a life-long obsession with the rule of Satan’s pride, so much so that he could only seem to boast of his own sinful- ness with a hubris that negated the real power of God’s mercy to convert his wayward heart which he saw as pertaining to a corrupt rather than only debilitated human nature. The starting point of Luther’s anthropology is an unwarranted humiliation of man as always mired in sin – that dung hill covered over by the Blood of Christ upon which the Father gazes so as to avert His righteous anger from our sins. Mary’s humility at the Annunciation sets a new and higher standard of Christian anthropology as she is, in the words of the poet William Wordsworth, “our tainted nature’s solitary boast.” Without the virtue of humility, we cannot become saints like Mary; we cannot please the Lord. Humility is not something we claim for ourselves. A person who calls himself humble, or who strives to make people around him consider him as such, is most probably not a humble person in reality. Genuine humility, too, should be distinguished from false humility. False humility is a denial of one’s legitimate accomplishments and God-given abili- ties. True humility, as Bishop Sheen taught, consists in recognizing one’s own greatness in the sight of God’s greatness. In other words, humility does not consist in self-annihilation or in the mean-spirited annihilation of others whose gifts we may envy, but rather in self-actualization, a self-realization that takes place in subordination to God’s Will for our temporal and eternal happiness. We can add here that the humble saint is also one who, like Mary, is genuinely joyful. Have you ever seen an image of Our Lady with a scowl on her face? Mary, we can imagine, exuded joy and not 10 The Catholic Response just when she found herself in a crowd surrounded by people who admired and looked up to her. Indeed, one of the humble Virgin’s most beautiful titles in the Litany of Loreto is “Causa nostrae laetitiae” (“Cause of our joy”). 3. Mary’s docility Docility derives from the Latin “docere,” meaning “to teach.” Docility is the willingness to be taught. Mary was docile because she was willing to be taught by God speaking to her through His messenger, the Angel Gabriel. We too must be open to God’s leadership in our lives, especially as He speaks to us in Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the authentic Magisterium of the Church, which distinguishes itself as being of one accord with the writings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church and those of the holy pontiffs like St. John Paul II (e.g., Familiaris Consortio and Veritatis Splendor) throughout the ages. If God is the number one priority in our daily lives, then we will never be misled. Docility implies meekness and mildness – but meekness in imitation of Christ and His Blessed Mother does not mean weakness. Jesus accepted John the Baptist’s appellation of “Agnus Dei” (“The Lamb of God”). The second-century Father of the Church, Melito of Sardis, termed Mary the “beautiful ewe,” who gave birth to the “beautiful Lamb of God.” During Holy Mass the priest, elevating the consecrated host exclaims: “Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb.” Ultimately, this is where Mary wants our attention to be focused; she wants us to adore the Real Presence of her Divine Son in the inestimable gift and mystery of the Holy Eucharist unto whose altar of un- blemished sacrifice we should approach with fear and trembling, ever conscious of our unworthiness as was the Centurion in the Gospel who exclaimed: “Domine, non sum dignus ....” (“Lord, I am not worthy ....”). Mary is the Mother of the Eucharist, Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament. We should allow Mary to lead us closer to Christ present in the Eucharistic Sacrifice and Banquet. Let us not hesitate to bend our knees in humble adoration of the One Who was led away to Calvary like a lamb led to the slaughter, like a sheep silent before its shearers (Prophet Isaiah, Songs of the Suffering Servant). This is the docility that wrought our salvation. This is the docility that will save us (not just during the Lenten season) but at all times from falling off the path of salvation like so many lost sheep who carelessly heed the voices of false shepherds in their

The Catholic Response 11 midst. Mary, “Vanquisher of Heresies,” can defend us from those sheep in wolves’ clothing who preach a distorted version of the Gospel, especially as regards marriage and family matters, one that conforms more to an earth-bound secular and sinful mentality than to the mind of Christ, the ever-faithful Bridegroom of the Church, and to the lofty expectations of the Holy Spirit, who is “the Lord and Giver of life.” 4. The Blessedness of Mary’s Faith Lent is an ideal time to echo Mary’s “fiat” at the Annunciation with our own resounding “yes” to God’s Will each and every day. Our Blessed Lord exhorted His disciples to let their “yes” mean “yes” and their “no” mean “no,” for anything else comes from the Evil One. We live in a world of ambiguity where identity politics and gender ideology collide with the precepts of the natural law and the Ten Commandments. We belong to a contemporary Church in which certain members (even high-ranking officials) sometimes prefer to speak in nebulous terms: demythologizing the miracles of the Bible; calling into question the historicity of the Gospels; and the very veracity of Jesus’ teaching on such fundamental teachings as divorce and remarriage. What shall our response be? It needs to be one inspired by the “fiat” of Our Lady, a “yes” that proceeds from both a properly informed and formed conscience steeped in the wisdom of God’s inerrant Word and in the timeless and perennial wisdom of our Catholic forefathers who adhered to that orthodox and apostolic faith, “which was taught always and everywhere and believed by everyone” (St. Vincent of Lerins). St. Augustine of Hippo taught that Mary was more blessed for having conceived Christ through a reasonable act of faith than for having subsequently conceived Him in her virginal womb. Mary’s faithful discipleship of Christ (in fact, Our Lord’s first, best and most faithful disciple) is our primary model of human faith. Mary’s last words recorded in Sacred Scripture appear in a rather blunt command form. When she instructs the wine stewards at Cana, “Do whatever He tells you,” her words recall those spoken by the Israelites at Mt. Sinai in response to the commands of Moses as the Old Covenant was being ratified. The miracle of Cana, changing the water of Jewish ritual purification into the choice (better!) wine of Christ’s grace in the New Covenant, was the first of Jesus’ seven signs in the Gospel of John, by which the Lord inaugurated a new creation. In this new and eternal covenant, in this new

12 The Catholic Response creation, Mary is our mother. The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council described Mary as our mother “in the order of grace.” Mary’s spiritual maternity was a theme dear to Blessed Paul VI who, at conclusion of the Second Vatican Council proclaimed Mary as “Mater Ecclesiae” (“Mother of the Church”). That theme later received greater exposition in the sublime writings of St. John Paul II, the Marian Pope par excellence. Together, these holy pontiffs called us to heed in our own time Mary’s imperative, “Do whatever He tells you,” by obeying the teachings of Our Lord in the Gospel and the teachings of the Church He Himself established with that blessed assurance of the act of faith, wherein we pray to the God Who “can neither deceive nor be deceived.” And this blessed assurance is inexorably linked to the one given by Our Lord to the Apostle Peter in Matthew’s Gospel, according to which the gates of hell will never prevail against the indefectible Church. As Abraham is our father in faith, so Mary is our mother in faith. Mary’s “obedience of faith” (“obedientia fidei”) is encapsu- lated in her “fiat” (“yes”). Fathers of the Church like St. Irenaeus of Lyons taught that Mary’s “obedience of faith” constituted her the “New Eve,” whose obedience “loosed the knot of Eve’s disobedi- ence.” (See Blessed John Henry Newman’s reflections on this topic in his famous “Letter to Pusey”). Our English word “obedience” derives from two Latin words “ob” (intently) and “audire” (“to listen”). “To listen intently” is to obey. To listen is to hear with the intent of understanding the true Gospel message and not just to what might tickle our ears and strike our whimsical fancy. Like Mary, we must strive to hear the Word of God; to listen intently so as to obey its authentic message wholeheartedly and unreservedly, no matter how challenging it may be to put it into the the concrete circumstances of our lives. Our job, the Church’s job, is not to water down the Gospel message, so that we can feel comfortable about it. Rather, our task – our solemn duty – as disciples of the Lord and some of us as successors of the Apostles is to preserve wholly intact the purity and integrity of the Gospel for every generation that never ceases to call Mary blessed for her unwavering and exemplary faith. 5. Mary’s Solicitous Charity We turn to the Lucan account of the Visitation (Lk 1:39-56), in which the Evangelist recounts how the Virgin Mary pregnant with the Christ-Child went in haste to visit her cousin thought to be barren had conceived St. John the Baptist and was now in the sixth month of pregnancy. Mary’s haste to share the good news

The Catholic Response 13 of the Incarnation with her cousin Elizabeth is paradigmatic of the evangelization to which all members of the Church are called. Evangelization, not proselytism, has always been a hallmark of Christianity and is the very means by which the religion first spread from its roots in the Holy Land to the European continent and far beyond to all corners of the globe. One need not be a missionary in a foreign land to engage in evangelization. Evangelization in a certain real sense begins at home among our relatives, friends and co-workers. Sometimes words are necessary; sometimes a ministry of presence suffices. We need the virtue of prudence, coupled with the joyful and enthusiastic spirit of the Virgin Mary as demonstrated in the second joyful mystery of the Holy Rosary, to become effective in our mission of evangelization. Another key ingredient to evangelization is the virtue of charity, for we always must endeavor to bear witness to the fullness of truth in charity. It is charity, love of God and neighbor, that compels us to spread the sweet fragrance of the Gospel to all whom we encounter along our pilgrim way to the heavenly Jerusalem. In the mystery of the Visitation, the Blessed Virgin does not simply bring glad tidings to Elizabeth but she decides to stay on for the remaining three months of her cousin’s pregnancy in order to serve as Elizabeth’s midwife. This detail of Luke’s account drives home the importance of keeping truth and charity always tethered in our evangelistic apostolates. Moreover, this beautiful mystery of the Rosary should serve to inculcate a singularly pro-life message as the unborn Messiah and his precursor meet for the first time, causing the latter to leap in his mother’s womb for joy. Involvement in the pro-life movement is a pro-active way to keep evangelization alive and well in our communities where it is most desperately needed to combat the culture of death so prevalent today. Lent is an opportune time for us to re-examine our pro-life commitment, taking Mary as our primary model of evangelization to advance a culture of life and a civilization of truth and love. Finally, we can recall that the root of the Latin word “charitas” is the Greek word “charis,” meaning “grace,” or “gift freely given.” For charity to be charity, it must be freely given and freely received. The Bible teaches us that God loves a cheerful giver, not one who gives begrudingly. And so, during Lent, when we are called upon to make many sacrifices; to engage in self-mortification and pen- ances; and, most especially, to pray, fast and give alms, we do well to remember that our attitude must correspond to our charitable

14 The Catholic Response action. For this grace, we ask the intercession of the Blessed Virgin who visited her cousin Elizabeth as the living and definitive ark of the new and eternal covenant. 6. Mary as model of purity, modesty and chastity The Blessed Virgin exemplified virginal purity, modesty and chastity, which are under such vehement attack in today’s society. Not only young people, but adults too, are tempted to violate purity, modesty and chastity in an ill-fated attempt to conform themselves to worldly expectations that leave us entangled in temptation, en- snared in sin, and potential slaves to the world, the flesh and the Devil. Mary, immaculate from her conception, was free from all sin and all concupiscence, that disordered desire of fallen man which, if left unchecked, can lead us into sin. In times of temptation, and as we struggle to curb our bad habits especially during the sacred season of Lent, we call upon Mary’s powerful intercession. She can help us remain pure in God’s service in keeping with our state in life. Mary wants to aid us in living to the full our particular vocations and thus to experience the joy of chaste love in all our relationships. Whether we are married or celibate, heterosexual or homosexual, Mary assists us in being pure, modest and chaste. We should consider how we treat our bodies (which, by biblical defini- tion, are temples of the Holy Spirit) not as something indifferent or meaningless, but as a reality that has a definite and lasting impact on the state of our souls. Certainly, this is at the core of what has come to be known as the “theology of the body” formulated most fully in the catechetical writings of St. John Paul II. To create a false dichotomy between the holiness of our souls and the purity of our bodies is to fall into the error of neo- gnosticism. The Gnostics of the early Church belonged to a wide range of heretical Christian sects, whose common tenet involved pitting the spirit against matter, the latter being reviled by the Gnostics as impure, unholy and ungodly. Fathers of the Church, like St. Augustine, rejected Gnosticism (e.g., Manicheeism) because it eviscerated the core Christian belief that the mystery of the God-Man’s Incarnation initiated the redemption of our fallen humanity, so that, in the words of St. Athanasius of Alexandria, “God became man, so that men might become gods.” It is this divinization of man which shocked and scandalized the Gnostics which Mary embodied in a most singular fashion among human creatures because already at the moment of her conception she existed, body and soul, in the fullness of grace. Our bodies, so St. Paul teaches us, were bought at the price of Our Lord’s Most Precious Blood shed on the Cross. Jesus derived The Catholic Response 15 His Sacred Humanity from the Virgin Mary. His Body and Blood, crucified, risen and ascended into Heaven, His Body and Blood, our heavenly food and drink in the Holy Eucharist, are derived, as Blessed Newman meditates, from the Blessed Virgin Mary. To put it in terms comprehensible to modern-day science, Mary’s DNA is Jesus’ DNA, and vice versa. Who, then, better to teach us how to show proper respect for our bodies and those of our fellow human beings than the Blessed Virgin Mary, now assumed body and soul into the glories of Heaven. To dishonor our bodies through acts of selish impurity, immod- esty and unchastity is to dishonor Our Lord and His Holy Mother. Purity means safeguarding our every thought, word and deed, so that they correspond to the Divine Thought, the Divine Word and the Divine Example which informed Mary’s entire existence from her conception to her death. Chastity means not treating ourselves or anyone else as a mere object for achieving self-gratification. Even spouses are called to observe and maintain chastity by preserving the indissoluble bond of Holy Matrimony. Chastity, therefore, excludes immoral actions like fornication, adultery and masturbation, not to mention the use of pornography, so pervasive in contemporary society. At its very heart, chastity is opposed to all forms of sexual immorality and lust, including homosexual activity and artificial contraception that both separate the unitive from the procreative purposes of conjugal love. Modesty means dressing and acting (behaving!) in a way that is becoming of serious, practicing Catholic Christians who look to Jesus, Mary and Joseph as their principal models of how to live in this passing world. We should not do anything with our external appearance that would incite unholy and unlawful passions in others. Men and women, young people and old who are impure, immodest and unchaste are not pleasing to the Lord; they need to change their mentality and way of life, undergoing a conversion of heart such as we all seek, especially as we embrace the rigors of Lenten discipline in preparation for the celebration of paschal joy. Mary reminds us of all this and so much more. She reminds us that purity of mind and body begins with purity of heart and intentions. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” St. John, in his epistles, teaches us that nothing impure shall enter into God’s presence. Mary, who was conceived without original sin, and who was assumed body and soul into the glories of Heaven, is the icon of our eschatological hope. What she is now is our “mirror of justice” (“speculum justitiae,” in the Litany of Loreto). Mary is the mirror of original holiness and justice before the fall of Adam 16 The Catholic Response and Eve in the Garden of Eden. For this reason, Blessed Newman referred to Mary as the “Daughter of Eve Unfallen.” What Mary is now in the heights of Heaven, the Church longs to be at the end of time – when the Lord Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead to recapitulate all things in Himself. The Church professes belief in the resurrection of the body. This resurrection will entail not merely the resurrection of our bodies, but their definitive reunion with our individual souls. Our Lord’s Resurrection and Ascension was the guarantee of both Our Lady’s Assumption and the pledge of our future glory, the blessed assurance of our own bodily resurrection and the fullness of redemption, body and soul, on the Last Day, the Day of Final Judgment. During this Lenten season, as we journey toward the empty tomb of Our Lord’s “Anathasis” (“Resurrection”), we implore Mary’s maternal intercession. We pray for the grace to imitate her virtues and, most especially, to exhort our young people to consecrate their whole lives even now in their prime, in the spring time of the their lives, to the Most Sacred and Eucharistic Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. We can conclude these reflections with these two venerable Marian prayers: O pure and immaculate and likewise blessed Virgin, who art the sinless mother of thy Son, the mighty Lord of the universe, thou who art inviolate and altogether holy, the hope of the hopeless and sinful, we sing thy praises. We bless thee as full of every grace, thou who borest the God-Man: we all bow low before thee; we invoke thee and implore thy aid. Amen. Holy Mary, succor the miserable, help the faint-hearted, comfort the sorrowful, pray for the people, plead for the clergy, intercede for all women consecrated to God; may all who keep thy holy commemoration feel now thy help and protection. Be ever ready to assist us when we pray, and bring back to us the answers to our prayers. Make it thy continual care to pray for the people of God, thou who, blessed by God, merited to bear the Redeemer of the world, who live and reign for ever and ever. Amen.

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18 The Catholic Response Breaking New Ground

by Michael Ward

[Editor’s note: The following was the Convocation Address for Hillsdale College in Michigan. The speaker is a fellow of Blackfriars Hall at Oxford and professor of apologetics at Houston Baptist University.]

“There’s a time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones together.” [Ecclesiastes 3:5] It’s a great delight for me to be back here at Hillsdale, to speak at this Spring Convocation and to mark the groundbreak- ing for the new chapel, a building which I believe will be not only the jewel in the crown of the college estate but a fine example nationally and indeed internationally of church architecture in an educational setting. On my last visit two years ago, when I spoke at Commence- ment, I drew attention to the one serious deficiency of Hillsdale College – and it’s the only one I’m aware of – namely, the strikingly inadequate attention given here to the life and work of Winston Churchill. Now, I was joking, of course! I have full faith in your Churchillian credentials. And all the more so now that I see you’re building an actual … Church on a Hill! You didn’t need to go that far! (I know it’s a Chapel on a Hill not a Church on a Hill, but Church Hill is funny and Chapel Hill is not, – begging the pardon of all Tar Heels present.) This morning, as I was admiring the statue of Churchill in Grewcock, and the statue of Margaret Thatcher in the quadrangle, and reflecting on the fact that you’ve invited this Englishman to give the Convocation address, I began to wonder whether Hills- dale had received the right memo from the White House. The aim, remember, is “Make America Great Again” not “Make America Great Britain again!” Shortly after Convocation is over, we’ll go to the site of what will be the new building, Christ Chapel as it’s to be known, and with all due ceremony various people will pick up a spade and lift a small pile of earth from one place to another. When all that’s done, a sliver of dirt, a little gash of brown, will lie freshly exposed to the sky. New ground will have been broken. And so, the College will have formally declared the start of its latest and in some ways perhaps its greatest ever enterprise: the building of a chapel to the glory of Christ. This chapel will be built – not to the glory of Hills-

The Catholic Response 19 dale (though it will redound mightily and rightly to the credit and renown of the college); nor to the glory of the benefactors (though their generosity and public-spiritedness can hardly be saluted with sufficient gratitude); nor to the glory of the students who in future will worship there, graduate there, perform music there (wonderful though all those things most certainly are). It will be built to the glory of Christ, who himself glories in our educational endeavours, our philanthropic benefactions, our pupillary activity. For God is no man’s debtor. I feel fondly towards this new chapel and it’s not even been built yet. And that’s because two years ago I was in Houston one Sunday morning, and I went for the very first time in my life to a church called St Theresa’s in a part of Houston called Sugarland. And I went there, I must confess, partly to see what they make churches of in Sugarland. Candy? Pillars of licorice, walls of mar- zipan, roofs of chocolate? Would Willy Wonka give the sermon? Would a jelly baby be baptized? Would we have communion with bread or with gingerbread? The reality was far better than any Hansel-and-Gretel fantasy I could’ve entertained. St. Theresa’s was beautiful, – at any rate, it was beautiful inside; outside it was no great shakes. But I asked and discovered that the interior had recently been renovated from top to toe, and so impressed was I, after I got home, that I spent a long time browsing the website of the architectural firm who did the job. The more I looked at the work of this architect (whom I’d never heard of before: I’d never heard of any American architects before, I must confess), the more I was impressed, indeed aston- ished by its quality. Here was architecture that lifted the spirits, that assisted you in worship, rather than causing you to wonder whether God exists. (We’ve all been in those kinds of churches.) Here was an architect who evidently knew and respected the history and traditions of architecture, and who was bringing the timeless principles of that art-form to new life in the modern day. Not long afterwards, I was in California, and I took a deliberate three-day detour to see another commission by this same architect, the chapel at Thomas Aquinas College, which was his work both inside and out. It was stunning. Miraculous – that something like that could be put up in today’s world. So when, in May of that year, 2015, I came to Hillsdale to give the Commencement Address and Dr. David Whalen told me of the plans to build a new chapel here, I said to him, almost dreamily, “You are going to get Duncan Stroik to design it, aren’t you!” And he said, “Yes, we are!” What are the

20 The Catholic Response chances of that! At Oxford we’re trained to make a little knowledge go a long way, and here the one single fact I knew about American architecture went straight in the bull’s-eye, as if I knew all about the subject. So I’m very fond of this chapel. I think it’s got a great future ahead of it. It’s also got a great past behind it. Hillsdale College, as you know, was founded in the first half of the nineteenth century at sixteen minutes to seven … sorry: I mean 1844. Article 6 of the College Constitution states: Religious culture in particular shall be conserved by the College and, by the selection of instructors and other practicable expedients, it shall be a conspicuous aim to teach by precept and example the essentials of the Christian faith and religion. Those “practicable expedients” are now being understood with a whole new level of seriousness and holy ambition. 173 years after its founding, Hillsdale formally begins today what I understand will be a two-year process of building a suitably sized, suitably special, suitably sacred space, thus helping to fulfill that original aim of the founders. 173 years! Yes, good things come to those who wait; sometimes, you just have to be patient. There are flowers, cacti, I’m told, that bloom only once every couple of centuries. I know we’re always told that Americans and Brits have different perspectives: that in America a hundred years is a long time while in Britain a hundred miles is a long way. But that’s not always true. I’ve travelled nearly 4,000 miles to be with you today and that’s no distance at all to be among friends in sunny Hillsdale. And Hillsdale itself, as I know very well, has a rooted historical sense; you’re fully aware that 173 years is not a great delay in the grand scheme of things. Indeed, it could be regarded as rather hasty. I used to be chaplain of Peterhouse, the oldest college in Cambridge, which, though founded in 1284, didn’t get round to building its own dedicated chapel till 1628. That’s nearly

The Catholic Response 21 half past four … I mean, that’s 344 years! 173 is almost exactly half that number. So really, what you’re doing is terribly hasty: you should slow down … Incidentally, that chapel at Peterhouse was built under the presidency of Matthew Wren, who was uncle of none other than Christopher Wren, builder of St. Paul’s Cathedral. I note with interest that President Arnn’s daughter has studied at Notre Dame under Duncan Stroik. If Mr. Stroik is not already America’s Christopher Wren, let’s hope Miss Alice Arnn one day will take that laurel herself. This building, this church, College Baptist Church, where we are today, has served Hillsdale well for most of those 173 years. But now the time is ripe for the full flowering, to move from the good to the best: to the College’s own purpose-built, suitably sized chapel. The quadrangle will be completed, that providentially preserved gap between Grewcock and the Dow Center will be filled up, and a permanent place of worship, place of ceremony, place of beauty and dignity will emerge. “Religious culture” shall – more hospita- bly than ever before – be conserved by the College. The founders’ aim is fructifying. But though we’re breaking new ground today, there’s no absolute novelty occurring. It’s not mere change that’s happening, but a synthesis of change and continuity. The nature of the College is being more fully realised, becoming more itself, finding a more developed way in which to teach by precept and example the essentials of the Christian religion. “Religion” tends to get a bad rap these days – and from two directions. On the one hand, we hear people say that they’re spiritual not religious; they may be interested in Christianity but not religiosity. “Religion” here has come to mean “ritualism, mere formalism, the externals of faith.” On the other hand, some people take “religion” to mean folly, superstition, even fanaticism, as when Richard Dawkins says that “religion flies planes into buildings but science flies rockets to the moon.” That is surely one of the most fatuous things I’ve ever heard said by an Oxford professor (and I’ve heard a lot of fatuous things in Oxford; I’ve said quite a few of them myself). Why’s it fatuous? Firstly, because religion and science – being abstract nouns, not people – don’t actually do anything, good or bad; they’re not agents. And secondly because, if we’re going to play that game of ascribing agency to abstract nouns, one might just as well say “religion gives us Mother Teresa while science gives us mustard gas.” Much better simply to say there can be bad religion and good religion; bad religion done well; good

22 The Catholic Response religion done badly; mediocre religion done well or badly, – just as is the case with science. So, for many years now I’ve been on a mission to reclaim the word “religion” from this verbicide it’s been suffering. “Religion” doesn’t mean either “formalism” or “fanaticism.” Etymologically, it means rather something like “tying back together,” re-ligion: “re-ligamenting,” “re-ligaturing,” finding the unifying reality behind disparate appearances, seeking oneness, integration, wholeness, “a theory of everything” (as Stephen Hawking might say). Religion in this sense is the opposite of analysis. Analysis, from the Greek analusis: loosening up. There is a place for analysis, of course: we do often need to loosen things up, pull things apart, dissect, – but analysis serves synthesis, doesn’t it? It’s not an end in itself. You disassemble the engine of your car when it’s malfunction- ing in order to find out the problem and then put it back together in working order. It wouldn’t run more smoothly if you just left it in pieces on the garage floor. You cut open the human body to remove the tumour or the bullet or whatever it may be. Then you sew up the incision, reli- giously, to bring back health to the organism, health that depends on integration, health that won’t survive perpetual “loosening up.” You break new ground for a similar reason. You dig up a whole load of earth and rocks and roots. You loosen it and scatter it about, removing some bits, relocating other bits. And not only physi- cally with earth, but intellectually with architectural principles: you analyse what makes for a good building; you analyse what makes for a good building in this particular place; you analyse what makes for a good building for this particular body of people. All this analysis takes a long time. There’s mess and noise and expense and disagreements. And people look at you like you’re crazy. The interruptions to normal life go on, for years. All sorts of unexpected problems crop up along the way. And this is when it’s going well! But strength rejoices in the challenge. And the true crop is not these disturbances, these echoes of primordial chaos, when the earth was formless and void. Rather, the true harvest of all these efforts will be a noble building, a thing of beauty and a joy forever, in which Hillsdalians shall flourish both individually and corporately, and from which the God who’s given us everything in Christ can be given back the best we have to offer, which is all too little, but in which offering we transcend ourselves and therefore most truly find ourselves.

The Catholic Response 23 So, analysis, I maintain, is not an end in itself. But is religion an end in itself? Isn’t it possible to be too religious, to be so interested in unity and oneness that you never look for change? Can’t the religious impulse devolve into a kind of frigidity or frozenness, a paralysis, in which the way we’ve always done things must be the way we always do things, forever and ever, amen? That is a danger, yes: obscurantism, the Luddite impulse, – tying things back together so tight that life becomes one big strangulating corset. True religion should always be corrigible: both self-critical and open to criticism from without, open to revision in the light of new knowledge, in response to new situations. Not cramping in on itself, or incessantly ratcheting up the interior tension, but periodically relaxing, taking stock, surveying new horizons. Like the beating human heart – that now contracts, now expands. In the history of Christianity, Saint Peter and Saint Paul are the great archetypes we’d do well to have in mind when we think like this. Peter is the rock. That’s what the name Peter means. You don’t have to be a Catholic to recognize that Peter was the first Bishop of Rome, and the defining function of any bishop is to sit, rock-like, stationary, in a chair, a cathedra, to be a focus of unity for the flock which he regulates with his shepherd’s crook. “Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me” [Psalm 23:4]. The Petrine principle provides for fixity, certainty, a still point in a turning world. Paul is the missionary, the Apostle to the Gentiles, who travels all over the Mediterranean, spreading the word, founding new churches, tackling practical problems, developing new theological understandings, firing off letters, left, right and centre, and once even challenging Peter to his face. This Pauline principle is important because I recognize that not everyone at Hillsdale calls himself Christian: you may not be much interested in the life of the new chapel when it comes. You have other fish to fry. You may even wish respectfully to challenge this or that aspect of Hillsdale’s priorities. That’s a good role to fulfill in a community. Every human organisation needs Pauls as well as Peters; Paulas as well as Petras. If it was all about Peter, things would petrify. If it was all about Paul, things would be appalling. You need both. The rock in Rome, and the one who roams and rocks. Two principles, in tension with each other, respecting each other, but both seeking

24 The Catholic Response one ultimate goal, serving the same beating heart. The heart itself is more important than whether the blood within it happens to ebbing or flowing. True religion therefore needs to be understood in two senses: it both does and is. There’s the particular religious impulse, the specific function: the tying back together. And then there’s religion itself: the overall pattern in which the religious and the analytical impulses alternate, the continual, rhythmic, regular process of now tying back, now loosening up. Neither Peter nor Paul was an end in himself. Each was a servant of Christ. The two pointed to the One, the unity beyond themselves. And that greater unity, that final or ultimate religa- menting, is why it’s so fitting that the new chapel will be known as Christ Chapel, for Christ is the one in whom “all things hold together” [Colossians 1:17], both the tightening and the loosening, both the systolic and the diastolic, both the rock and the rocking. Today we break new ground. We challenge the rock, so to speak. We do something very Pauline, very analytical, scattering earth this way and that. But we do so with an aim in mind: to develop and extend that ground into a new unity, an enlarged oneness, – we have a Petrine end in view. There is a time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones together. May earth be better and Heaven be richer for the life and labour of Hillsdale College. Amen.

The Catholic Response 25 Newman House

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32 The Catholic Response The Face of Capraesque Capitalism

By Gilbert Colon

GILBERT COLON has contributed to Cinema Retro, Filmfax, Strand Mystery Magazine, Film.Music.Media, RELEVANT Magazine, Mockingbird, Sentieri del cinema, and MercatorNet. Read him at Gilbert Street (www. gilbert-colon.tumblr.com/) and send comments to gco- [email protected].

There is an over-arching premise shared by The Founder (2016) and Flash of Genius (2008). Taken together, the two movies are true-life portraits of old-fashioned American ingenuity and obvious testaments to the entrepreneurial spirit. Both Bob Kearns from Flash of Genius and the McDonald brothers from The Founder, the protagonists of these films, exude an all-American can-do optimism, drive, and decency that find expression in their business endeavors, and the films find the humor in this without depicting these men or their qualities – or even their dreams, for that matter – with ridicule or irony. In another era, men like Jimmy Stewart might have played these characters. Kearns, played by Greg Kinnear in Flash of Genius, was the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper, a standard car fea- ture since 1969 – taken largely for granted today. When the Ford Motor Company infringes on his patent, he takes them to court. Because he is the Little Man, he ends up representing himself. Christianity Today suitably describes it as “a tale of a lowly David taking on corporate Goliath.” Along the way, he refuses astronomi- cal settlements and shares all his self-taught patent law knowledge with other budding tinkerers. In many ways, Kearns’ struggles parallel those of another Capraesque hero, maverick auto designer Preston Tucker who battled Detroit’s Big Three when they conspired against his revolutionary “Tucker torpedo” roughly two decades earlier. His story is told in Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), another film lionizing American small businessmen and innovators. (Its director, Francis Ford Coppola, even recruited one of Frank Capra’s screenwriters for the project when he could not enlist Hollywood legend Capra himself.)

The Catholic Response 33 The McDonald brothers, Dick and Mac (Nick Offerman and John Carroll in The Founder), were examples of that pioneering combination of entrepreneur and innovator. It was not just their concept of a stripped-down hamburger stand engineered for maximum efficiency, but the introduction of the “Speedee Service System,” which allowed for 30-second assembly-line burger pro- duction. This food-service miracle catches the eye of Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), a milkshake salesman who sees this as the way to duplicate and proliferate the triumph of this lone little burger stand with military precision. The genius of McDonald’s lay in the visionary wholesome- ness of Dick and Mac McDonald. Their simple idea was to create a family-friendly restaurant. To them, that meant making a hamburger stand that was not based on the old drive-in model. “Drive-ins…attract…a less-than desirable clientele,” Dick coolly explains to Kroc. Mac fills in the blanks: “Teenagers.” Dick elabo- rates: “Hot-rodders and hooligans. Juvenile delinquents in blue jeans.” Banished were not only the carhops “too busy dodging gropes to remember you[r]…strawberry phosphate,” but jukeboxes and cigarette machines: “Drive out the riff-raff,” Dick reiterates. Proving that McDonald’s succeeded because it was as much a vision as it was an innovation of mechanical efficiency, Dick asks Kroc at the film’s end, “We showed you …[t]he whole system, all our secrets … So why didn’t you just—” Kroc finishes Dick’s thought. “Rip you off…and start my own place using your ideas?” Because everybody who tried “replicat[ing] your success…all lack[ed] that one thing that makes McDonald’s special.” Dick does not even know the secret to his success; it is left for Kroc to fill him in: “It’s not just the system. It’s…[t]hat glorious name. McDonald … It sounds like... America … A fine, handsome, all-American name. That’s a winner’s name.” A disgusted Dick says, “And if you can’t beat ’em...” Kroc again finishes his sentence: “Buy ’em.” Which is just what Kroc did, commandeering the brothers’ creation, cheating them out of royalties, and usurping the title of “Founder.” If the films do not question the hopes and aspirations of these men, they do thoughtfully weigh the worth and toll it took upon them. Kearns suffered a mental breakdown and was forced to collect disability. His marriage ended in divorce, and he never remarried. John Seabrook’s New Yorker article, “The Flash of Genius,” upon which the film is based, quotes his son Tim as say-

34 The Catholic Response ing, “I guess you could say the lawsuit has ruined my father’s life, but I don’t choose to look at it that way. It is his life. [The] tragic aspect…is that my father has never invented anything else. It would be interesting to know how many people’s lives have been saved by the intermittent wiper, and how many more lives could have been saved by his next invention. We’ll never know, because he couldn’t let this one thing go. But he just couldn’t.” In the end, Kearns’ single-minded genius proves a sacrifice for his whole family as it is torn asunder by his obsessive pursuit of courtroom justice for himself and future inventors. When told in the film, “Bob, it’s just a windshield wiper,” Kearns responds, “But to me it’s the Mona Lisa.” As the McDonalds lose control of the fast-food empire they created, The Founder depicts the stress inflicted upon Mac in particular. Mac is hospitalized for near kidney failure, exacerbated by the pressures of building the business and the souring partnership with Kroc. The film’s postscript informs us: “In 1971, Mac died of diabetes-related illness.” In spite of a life of alcoholism, adultery, and divorces, Kroc came out on top by seizing the company from its true founders, taking it national, and marrying the wife of a business associate, Joan Smith. (“Contracts are like hearts,” Kroc says in the movie. “They’re made to be broken.) What is not so obvious about Flash of Genius and The Founder is that Kearns and the McDonald brothers were Catholic. It is in the background of the two films, but when one considers the raw deal both received at the hands of rapacious and cut-throat big business, the portraits begin to take on a dimension of martyrdom alongside the patriotic mom-and-pop capitalism they espouse. It would be an exaggeration to call McDonald’s and the intermittent wiper “Catholic inventions,” but both cultural contributions were informed by a mixture of these men’s Catholic faith and their American ideals. The chief visual clue in The Founder is the crucifix hanging in Mac’s hospital room. Kroc, exploiting the McDonalds’ piety and love of country, cynically tailors his sales pitch with an anecdote about travelling through small towns along Route 66. Taking stock of their Main Streets, he always noticed “the same two things: a courthouse…topped with a flag. A church topped with a cross. Flags and crosses, crosses and flags.” He admits his salesmanship “flirts with blasphemy,” but to Kroc, McDonald’s Golden Arches “share a great deal in common with the Chris- tian cross and the American flag” atop the buildings serving as

The Catholic Response 35 “gathering place[s]…where decent, wholesome folks can come together and be with others who share their values.” How so? “[B]uilding[s] flanked by…your arches…mean more than simply ‘delicious hamburgers inside.’ They signify family. Community. The ties that bind. They represent goodness, togetherness, a place for Americans to gather and break bread. McDonald’s can be [t]he new American church, feeding bodies and…souls. And not just on Sundays. Seven days a week.” Soon Kroc is scouring the country for franchisees, targeting churches and synagogues, Shriners halls, Boy Scout groups, Amway meetings, and civic organizations with his pitch. Though not detailed in the film, Kroc loosened restrictions to allow an enterprising Catholic, Lou Groen, to introduce the now standard Filet-O-Fish sandwich at his franchise using his own homemade special batter and tartar sauce. This was pre-Vatican II, and the idea was to increase sales on “Fish Fridays” in the Catholic neighborhood of Cincinnati (which it did). When in The Founder Kroc sells ad space on McDonald’s menu boards to increase revenue, Dick criticizes the strategy as “crass commercialism” and “distasteful,” rejecting the proposal because “[i]t’s not McDonald’s.” Kroc is puzzled, but Dick explains, “There are plenty of things we could do to make a quick buck, but that doesn’t mean we should.” In a humorous exchange, Kroc balks, “I didn’t realize I was partnering up with a beatnik.” Dick protests, “I happen to be a card-carrying Republican,” a fact historically true about both McDonalds (and Kroc). Kroc spits, “You coulda fooled me!,” setting the stage for a clash of business philosophies with the brothers representing old-time integrity versus Kroc as the progress of Pottersville. As for Kearns, a daily Mass-goer, that film introduces him taking up collection at church. His “flash of genius” strikes in the form of almost religious epiphany (probably explaining why he called himself “God’s engineer”). “I was riding back from church with my family,” he relates, “and it was drizzling outside, and I had a thought. Why couldn’t a wiper work like an eyelid?” Kearns, legally blind in one eye due to a freak champagne cork accident on his wedding night, understandably dwelt on the workings of the human eye. “God doesn’t have eyelids move continuously,” he told the Baltimore Sun. “They blink.” These musings provided him the inspiration for his “Kearns Blinking Eye Motor,” and us the insight into what drove Kearns – it was an inspiration born of personal sacrifice.

36 The Catholic Response Just as Kroc links crosses, flags, and arches as an integral part of the American landscape, Kearns’ personal story does likewise with cathedral and factory. The New Yorker recounts that “Kearns grew up in River Rouge, a working- class neighborhood…of Detroit. Two things about the place captured Kearns’ imagination. One was Our Lady of Lourdes Cathedral, a big red brick Catholic church, which…imported water from the real Lourdes. The other…was the Ford Motor Company’s Rouge plant, the largest industrial complex in the world.” One “Sunday, after church, Bob drove Phyllis and the kids around Detroit, scouting out sites for the Kearns wiper factory. ‘Dad had picked out jobs for each of us,’ his son Tim recalls,” demonstrating that Kearns envisioned a family business. His children wound up assisting their father with his lifelong litigations, and Tim told The Sun, “God has a plan, and if you’re part of Bob Kearns, you’re part of the plan.” Following in their father’s footsteps, Kearns’ surviving children are today embroiled in their own court battle, trying to reclaim from a salvager the Lourdes stained-glass windows Kearns once obtained so that Tim, an architect, could design a private chapel he hoped to erect. In Flash of Genius, Kearns’ son urges him to say his own prayer after grace, and Kearns obliges in a way consistent with a scientific inventor. First, he instructs his six children, “When you say a prayer, you’re supposed to fold your hands,” then prays: “Dear God, thank you for all the sunshine you’ve been sending. We know in your infinite wisdom, you managed to create the elasticity of rain water different than tap. If you could see it in your good graces to…send us some rain so that we can test the Blinking Eye in real-life conditions, we’d appreciate it. Amen.” When his son asks, “Do you think He heard you, daddy?,” Kearns responds with the flip quip, “With my luck, he’s a GM man.” One is reminded of the idealistic George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life who gets one look at Clarence and remarks, “Well, you look about like the kind of an angel I’d get.” In Flash of Genius’ next scene it does, however, rain for Kearns. The Kearns’ family priest in the opening scenes of Flash of Genius, Father Rooney, delivers a homily that exemplifies a more authentic version of Kroc’s “new American church” Gospel: “As I look out over this sea of familiar faces, I see men from GM, AMC,

The Catholic Response 37 Ford, Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge all under one roof, as it should be. And it brings to mind the apostles. What was it that brought these very different men together as one?” Kearns ultimately bequested $140,000 to his parish of Lourdes where he served as an altar boy and from which he rescued the stained-glass (along with its altar and gold doors) before they demolished the original building. But the main way he used his time and talent to give back was by spending the remainder of his life championing intellectual property rights for patent holders everywhere, pursuing precedent-setting lawsuits that extended beyond Ford (he took on Chrysler next). In Kroc’s case, he may not have founded McDonald’s, but for all his unscrupulous ways, he did fund Ronald McDonald House, established the Kroc Foundation, and donated generously to the Dartmouth Medical School as well as hospitals, churches, librar- ies, and museums. His third wife earned the nickname “St. Joan of the Golden Arches” for her instrumental role in founding the Salvation Army’s Kroc Community Centers and, in an ironic be- trayal of the Republican politics of all three of McDonald’s origi- nators, redistributing much of her deceased husband’s fortune to NPR, Democrats, and anti-war activism. While not all causes and charities are equal, the point is that many a successful capitalist has traditionally regarded philanthropy and public spirit as com- ponents of civic obligation and part of the package of prosperity. Knowing Hollywood, these two films are probably meant to be damning indictments of American capitalism or corporate America, at least to some degree. But they could equally be viewed as brash celebrations of audacious free enterprise and the ambitious small businessmen who used their God-given talents to invent and deliver a product that benefited millions of fellow Americans. These are the kinds of industrious men who staked their claim on a slice of the pie that is the American dream and in doing so turned postwar America into a global superpower.

38 The Catholic Response Q & A Dear Readers, This is really your column, for you direct it by the questions you send me. I want to encourage you to do so for many reasons, not the least of which being that without your questions, there is no column! Here are a few simple notes to keep in mind: 1. Your letter may deal with any topic connected to the Church and her theology; you may “piggy-back” on previous questions to seek further clarification or take issue with a response I have given. 2. It is necessary that you keep your inquiry or comment to a single page. 3. To qualify for inclusion in the column, a letter must be signed, however, you may ask that your name and/or address not be published—and that will be honored. 4. Due to the volume of mail, it is impossible to respond personally to our inquirers. Obviously, not all letters can or will be used. Look for a reply in a future issue and realize that a response may take several months to make its way into print. Questions may be emailed to: [email protected] or sent by regular mail to: The Catholic Response • 601 Buhler Court • Pine Beach, NJ 08741 Thanks for your continued interest and support. Father Peter Stravinskas, Editor & Publisher

The Rubrics of the Mass Rev. Peter M. J. Stravinskas This is a “guided tour” of the Sun- day Mass, with rubrics and explanations for all who participate in the Sacred Liturgy. It addresses the most frequently asked questions about options, deviations, etc.

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The Catholic Response 39 Fashion police When Jesus rose from the dead and visited His disciples, Q. what was He wearing? I pose this seemingly impertinent question to provoke a discussion of the nature of the Resurrection. While we do not know what Jesus wore after the Resurrec- A. tion, we do know that He ate and drank (see Lk 24:42f). It would appear that the evangelists did not consult a fashion expert, perhaps supposing that food was more important than clothing. Seriously, though, the clearest reason for the insertion of information about the “bodiliness” of Christ in the post-resurrectional period was apologetical in nature – that is, to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that He was truly alive and that He had risen in a human body, albeit one that had been glorified and which thus transcended the limits of time and space, as seen in His ability to pop in and out at will (see Jn 20:19, 26). Mixed meaning Enclosed is the prayer of the faithful, which our parish used Q.last Sunday. The third item really struck me as bordering on the heretical: “For all Catholics, that they recognize that no single group or viewpoint in the Church has a complete monopoly on the truth, we pray.” Please let me know if I am reading this correctly or being overly critical. One reading of the above petition can be harmless, if one means A.that personal agendas should not be presented as normative for everyone. For example, praying with Scripture versus praying the Rosary. If both come under the Catholic tent of spirituality, we ought not to dogmatize one over the other. Another reading could lead one to believe that all contending viewpoints are co-equal, so that what one believes or does not believe about artificial birth control, divorce and remarriage, or the ordination of women is a matter of indifference. This is obviously impossible for a Catholic to hold or to teach – since the Magisterium has spoken decisively on such matters, thus closing the door to further debate and alternate opinions. Eucharistic norms I have been attending a pastoral ministry workshop that is Q. basically reaching out to the sick and homebound. Through- out the discussion, the topic of giving these people the Eucharist came up. Most of the people in this program are already Eucha- ristic ministers. Several people asked if the wife or husband of the person you were visiting were not Catholic, if he or she could receive the Eucharist, if requested. It was my understanding that

40 The Catholic Response we Eucharistic ministers cannot give Communion to someone who is not Catholic even though he may believe in the Real Presence of Christ. I know, through reading the canon laws and Ceremonies of the Modern Roman Rite, that priests are allowed to give someone Communion not from our Church, but it never addressed the use of extraordinary ministers being allowed to do that. After much discussion in our group, we decided to ask the priest whether or not we, as Eucharistic ministers, could decide to give Communion to a “good person” who wants to receive but is not Catholic. The priest said he would give Communion to someone like that, implying that it was permissible. What is the teaching of the Church on this subject of priests and Eucharistic ministers giving Communion to non-Catholics? I feel that the priest did a disservice to the group by causing more confusion about the teachings of the Church. First off, let’s once again get the terminology straight. A A. non-ordained person who distributes Holy Communion is not a “Eucharistic minister,” but “an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion.” This is not toying with minutiae; on the contrary, the very name the Church gives to such a person indicates the Church’s mind about the exercise of the office, namely, that it should happen only in “extraordinary” circumstances. That said, a very good reason not to use extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion is that judgment calls such as you describe are not within the competence of the laity. The general theological and canonical principle is simple: Only baptized Catholics in the state of grace are to be admitted to Eucharistic Communion. Exceptions run along these lines: The non-Catholic Christian in question professes the same Eucharistic Faith as we; he has no access to a minster of his own ecclesial community for a prolonged period of time or it is an emergency situation; he makes a spon- taneous request for the sacrament. In most parts of this country, one or more of those conditions would be very difficult to verify. Certainly, my pastoral experience does not bear out the normative nature of such exceptions – if that is not a contradiction in terms. In sum, I do not think the non-ordained ought to be making judgments on the suitability of others for Eucharistic Communion, and I think the response of your priest was, at best, inadequate. Cautious approach One of my sisters and several friends from her parish started Q. a prayer group, which meets weekly to pray for vocations. They had been using a program from the Marian Movement of Priests, which included an opening prayer, the Rosary, a read-

The Catholic Response 41 ing from one of the Blessed Mother’s revelations to Father Ste- fano Gobbi, and a closing prayer. Some disgruntled parishioner contacted the archdiocese and received a response, which he/ she anonymously forwarded to each of the participants in the prayer group, which called into question the “suspect” nature of the group, and said that Father Gobbi “has been cautioned by Vatican officials not to present his own words and insights as if they were revelations or inspired messages.” Naturally, none of those involved in the prayer group would want to continue in an activity considered to be of a “suspect” nature. Could you please provide a little information on why, if true, the Vatican considers the activities inappropriate? I have not made an in-depth study of the Marian Movement A. of Priests, but I, too, have heard of Vatican skittishness about some of the “revelations” and that the movement has been asked not to equate Father Gobbi’s musings with those of heavenly revelation. To bring people together to pray for priests; to pray the Rosary in common; to learn more about the Faith – these are all good things that I know are part of the movement. Relying on private revelation is something I always shy away from – no matter from whom, just on the fundamental Catholic principle that all such revelations are “suspect” until categorically approved by the Church. A book on this topic comes from the pen of Kevin Orlin Johnson, entitled Apparitions: Mystic Phenomena and What They Mean, published by Pangaeus Press. “Pastoral provision” Several years ago, you wrote about the Vatican’s “pastoral Q. provision” that gave permission for “Anglican-use” parishes to continue using elements from the Book of Common Prayer in Catholic liturgies. Is anything in the works for a similar provision for former Lutherans, or converts from other denominations? To the best of my knowledge, no. I think that the almost A. unique attachment of Anglicans to the Book of Common Prayer and the large numbers of them involved in coming into full communion with the Catholic Church (relatively speaking) made the Holy See more open to the maintenance of some kind of liturgical reality that allowed them to remain connected to their roots – especially since Anglicanism is such a liturgical communion, and since the genius of the Book of Common Prayer was precisely that it could always be interpreted in a Catholic sense. Since those early days of the pastoral provision, Pope Benedict XVI promulgated Anglicanorum Coetibus in 2009, which actually

42 The Catholic Response established ecclesiastical jurisdictions for former Anglican clergy and laity. One exists in England, another in Australia, and a third in North America. Not appropriate I am wondering if it is proper to underline or use highlight- Q. ers in my Bible. There are people I know who have such a love and respect A. for books in general that they would think it nearly sinful to mark up any book, let alone the Bible. I don’t fall into that class of individuals, As far as the Bible is concerned, it needs to be ac- corded profound respect, but it is not to be worshiped. As such, I believe that noting the fruits of one’s reflection and meditation or an insight gained is hardly destructive, let alone sacrilegious. In my opinion, it actually enhances the value of the volume. Word of caution I have been dating a man who is twice divorced. He is a bap- Q. tized Catholic; his first marriage was to a non-Catholic; his second marriage was also to a non-Catholic; and other marriages were by civil ceremony. I am Catholic, and I never married. Can I marry this man in the Catholic Church with a Mass and also receive Communion? My first word would be one of caution. With all these unions, A. should we not pause to consider the proverb, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire”? I cannot answer your question because I lack an essential piece of information: Did his first marriage take place in the Church? If it did, it is presumably valid and, therefore, he is not free to marry. Surely, the subsequent unions were not valid, but the first one holds the real question mark. On your last point, if you are free to marry him in the Church, then there is no question about Mass and Communion. Games of Chance A non-Catholic relative, in response to my remark that the Q. Church says gambling is a sin, said many Catholic parishes have offered bingo games on a regular basis for many years and asked why that isn’t considered gambling. I can’t answer this ap- parent inconsistency and even wonder if there is any difference between a person playing bingo and, say, someone who goes to Atlantic City for a day of enjoyment, part of which includes spending $10 on slot machines?

The Catholic Response 43 Gambling is not considered necessarily sinful. The Catechism A. of the Catholic Church is clear on this (see n. 2413). If someone has extra money and enjoys gambling, he is free to participate in that form of entertainment. The problem comes in when people use money destined for necessities (food, shelter, etc.) to gamble or when the activity becomes compulsive. In this sense, gambling is like alcohol consumption; in and of itself, it is neutral, but it can become sinful when abused. Territoriality Is there a Church law that states that we, as Catholics, must Q. belong to a particular parish? Canon 518 reads: “As a general rule a parish is to be territo- A. rial, that is, it embraces all the Christian faithful within a certain territory; whenever it is judged useful, however, personal parishes are to be established based upon rite, language, the na- tionality of the Christian faithful within some territory, or even upon some other determining factor.” So, yes, the Church considers the parish to be the basic cell of ecclesial life and, even if the membership is not rooted in territoriality, it should be a stable and ongoing reality. Prison not a war I now have the privilege of volunteering for prison ministry. Q. The first time I went, we gave Communion, and I was ap- palled to see everyone receiving Communion, except one person. I do not believe they were all Catholics. When I said something about this. I was told that this was considered like wartime and was permitted. I told a Dominican priest about this, and he stated that under no circumstances should I give Communion to a non- Catholic. What are your views on this important subject? Being in prison is hardly comparable to a wartime scenario. A. Even if it were, the three standard conditions must prevail, to wit: the would-be non-Catholic communicant must have the same Eucharistic Faith as we; he must be deprived of a minister of his own for a prolonged period of time; he must make a sponta- neous request for the sacrament. I don’t see any of these criteria verified in your case. Group canonization The Pope often canonizes a group of people. When this Q. happens, is each individual in the group investigated as thoroughly as in a one-person canonization? Are there miracles required through each person, or as a group? When we read about

44 The Catholic Response canonizations, sometimes we have never heard of the person(s) before and never hear of them again. Also, sometimes in reading, there will be a beautiful quotation from more obscure saints. We are inspired to know more about them and their writings. Is there a place to find out more about newly canonized and obscure saints? Catholic bookstores are filled with books about the most famous only. To the best of my knowledge, it is normally only martyrs who A. have ever been canonized in globo. Otherwise, each person within a potential group canonization must be thoroughly investigated; this was done, I presume, with the Seven Holy Founders of the Servite Order. For the more recent canonizations, I have found the short bi- ographies that appear in L’Osservatore Romano (the semi-official newspaper of the Vatican) to be both helpful and interesting. Another worthwhile resource would be the respective religious congregations to which the newly canonized saints may have belonged. For instance, the Claretian seminarians martyred in the Spanish Civil War are presented in a vivid and edifying manner by a publication done by the Claretian Fathers in Chicago. Pope John Paul II canonized the married couple Quadrocchi, and Pope Francis canonized the parents of St. Thérèse of Lisieux; however, both partners had to be individually scrutinized. Consultative in nature I am the parish council president of a military chapel Q. overseas in Puerto Rico. In that role, I am often put in the uncomfortable position of having to question the practices of an assigned priest. I find this uncomfortable because I was always taught that the parish priest was the final word and authority on all religious matters, and that he would never go against Church law. While I am no longer that naïve, I still have qualms about questioning pastoral practices. Are there any specific guidelines or suggestions for the role of the parish council? I would like to establish a role for our successors to minimize future confusion. It is a sad commentary on the present moment that lay A. people have to take on the role of watchdog for the parish priest but, if necessary and if done with respect and charity, a vital role is played. The Code of Canon Law mandates a finance council for every parish; it does not do so in regard to a parish or pastoral council. Individual dioceses may have a particular law that does do that;

The Catholic Response 45 in some places, the same people may serve on both boards. That having been said, it is critical to know and accept the fact that all these bodies are consultative, or advisory, and have no deliberative status. In other words, the parish priest is required to consult, but he is not required to follow the advice that is offered. This is the same situation as the relationship between the diocesan bishop and a presbyteral (priests’) council. The role of the president or even of the body itself is not spelled out in universal law because it would be impossible to take into consideration the myriad possibilities that could surface from diocese to diocese, let alone from country to country. Particular guidelines are usually given by diocesan officials. Blurred distinctions At the end of the Litany of the Saints, the names of the pa- Q. rishioners who had died during the year were added to the list, followed by the customary, “Pray for us.” Now, I can see where it would be of consolation to the living to imagine that their loved ones are already in Heaven, but I couldn’t help but think that if, by some chance, any of the deceased happened to be in Purgatory, isn’t it we who should be praying for them instead of vice versa? This is more of the confusing stuff that is foisted on people A. by priests and liturgists who feel compelled to be clever, instead of just doing what the Church’s liturgy stipulates. Listing deceased parishioners in a “Book of the Dead” is a nice idea, and reading out their names on All Souls’ Day is equally worthwhile, for instance, during the prayer of the faithful. Treating them like saints, however, is not a good idea for many reasons, not the least of which is that it deprives them (if they are still in Purgatory) of the benefit of our prayers for their purification. What has happened in recent years on the part of some is a collapse of Heaven and Purgatory into one reality, which is why all too often we hear funeral homilies that sound like decrees of canonization. While it is possible for the souls in Purgatory to pray for us, inclusion of them in the Litany of the Saints is an inadmissible mixture of two spheres of the Communion of Saints – the blurring of a distinction important for Catholic doctrine and practice. Apostasy a problem Here’s a scenario: A child is raised in the Catholic Faith. As Q. an adult he leaves the Catholic Church because he does not like the Catholic teachings. He joins a different religion. Will that individual be saved?

46 The Catholic Response The first question we have to determine is just what you A. mean by “a different religion.” Many people use that expression with some degree of imprecision. Often, they mean that Johnny has abandoned Catholicism for Lutheranism or fundamen- talism, for instance. While either scenario would be regrettable, neither constitutes “joining a different religion.” Why? Because both bodies are still Christian. Apostasy, the technical name for your term, means giving up the Christian Faith completely, either to embrace another religion – for example, Islam, Judaism, or Buddhism – or to live as an atheist or agnostic. Next, one does not join or leave a religion because one likes or dislikes a religion’s teachings; that decision is made because a religion’s teachings are either true or false. Therefore, the question about our young would-be apostate is whether he clearly knew and understood the doctrines of the Catholic Faith and then consciously rejected them; or, whether he never really had an intelligent grasp of them and, therefore, left in ignorance. If it is the first case, the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council have some pretty strong language for that kind of action: “Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it, or to remain in it” (Lumen Gentium, [Dogmatic Constitution on the Church], n. 14). Erudite Orthodox Just when I thought I was on the right track recognizing Q. the people who have influenced the radical and un-Catholic teachings and liturgy in the Church today, you throw me a real curve! You once reviewed a book by Father Avery Dulles, S.J., published by Paulist Press. You highly recommended this book as must reading for every priest and seminarian. I thought Father Dulles was one of the Jesuits who helped to give and promote some of the extreme liberal interpretations of the documents of the Second Vatican Council. Isn’t he a follower of the Teilhard deChardin/Karl Rahner school of thought? I have been following recommendations through EWTN and Franciscan University at Steubenville in my study of the teachings and history of the Church. I found these two entities are truly following Rome. It was through EWTN that I found your publication and have enjoyed it immensely. Now, however, I do not know what to think. Am I wrong about Father Dulles? Like many theologians of the immediate post-conciliar period A.(including Cardinal Ratzinger in many ways), I suspect that

The Catholic Response 47 Father Dulles was a bit starry-eyed about the prospects of reform and the Church’s potential to engage in the secular dialogue. As time has gone on, such theologians (who were never even bordering on heretical views) have come to see the complete picture much more clearly and have adjusted their thinking and writing accordingly. At times, too, these men produced works which were not problematic in themselves but which were used by others in very problematic ways; I think this applies very strongly to Father Dulles’ situation. Like Cardinal Ratzinger, I believe Father Dulles had a “meta- noia” experience – which is probably why Pope John Paul II named him a cardinal in 2001! Purgatory, Hell For the past fifteen years or so, I have never heard about Q. the subject of Hell or Purgatory mentioned by a priest or by the prayer books at Mass. Does our Church still recognize Hell or Purgatory? Yes, the Church does still teach and believe in the existence A. of both realities. I agree that the two doctrines have received short shrift in both preaching and catechesis in the past three decades, prompting then-Cardinal Ratzinger to assert that the greatest post-conciliar theological crisis is one of eschatology. His point is simple: If we do not have a perspective on life grounded in eternity, nothing makes any sense. The liturgy does, however, continue to witness to these teachings. For example, All Souls’ Day (if its meaning is not subverted by deficient preaching) is the most forceful statement possible on the existence of Purgatory, and every Eucharistic prayer has a prayer for the dead, that they might be admitted to eternal bliss – which is a recognition of their need for release from Purgatory. On Hell, the most obvious liturgical testimony comes from the Roman Canon (Eucharistic Prayer I), which asks that we “be delivered from eternal damnation.” Capital punishment My question concerns the debate on capital punishment. Q. Where in the Bible does Christ defend capital punishment, if at all? Does He make any mention or inference to the validity of this kind of punishment? If not, where do we receive the permission to impose capital punishment? From time immemorial, the Church (following Old Testament A. teachings and even New Testament passages on the rightful duties and responsibilities of civil government) has acknowledged

48 The Catholic Response the right of the state to exact the death penalty – all the while expressing less-than-enthusiastic support of it. In recent times, Church teaching has become even more uncomfortable with this practice, so much so that we read Pope John Paul II’s very strong and nuanced position presented in Evangelium Vitae (“The Gospel of Life,” n. 56). That teaching was subsequently incorporated as a revision to the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor. If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human person…. The cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity ‘are very rare, if not practically non-existent’” (n. 2267). What the Church is saying, then, may be summarized thus: Although the state has the right to demand the death penalty in certain situations, it ought to be used rarely, if ever, since alternate forms of punishment exist to guarantee the welfare of society as a whole. Its use contributes to a climate of disregard for the sanctity of human life (and even a convicted criminal’s life is still sacred in God’s eyes). There is no evidence that it serves as a deterrent (except for the one executed); and gross inequities are found in its application, largely based on access to political power and money for top-notch lawyers. Last, but not least, it is not easy to reconcile with the Lord’s injunction to “turn the other cheek.” So- ciety has both the right and responsibility to protect its members from hardened criminals, but the Church is asking us to consider whether capital punishment is the most moral and effective way to achieve that very legitimate and necessary goal. Undoubtedly, you read about Pope Francis’ desire/hope to change the Catechism’s very careful and nuanced statement to something much more radical – a total ban on capital punishment. Of course, this would not be possible, given the clear endorsements of it found in the Old Testament and in the entire theological tradition of the Church – as explained very lucidly by none other than the late Cardinal Avery Dulles (considered above). Liturgical day I am puzzled, and here is why. We Catholics are obligated Q. to attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation. The The Catholic Response 49 Church has adopted the Jewish way of telling time – that is, that the next day begins at sundown (not midnight). Therefore, those who attend evening Mass on Saturday fulfill their obligation to attend Mass on Sunday (this is also true for holy days). Now, here’s what puzzles me. My parish church has a Mass on Saturday at 5:30 p.m. and then several on Sunday morning, plus an additional Mass at 5:30 Sunday afternoon. Since the 5:30 p.m. Mass on Saturday fulfills one’s obligation for Sunday, then it seems logical to say the 5:30 p.m. Mass on Sunday is actually the first Mass on Monday. The poor guy in attendance thinking that he is at Sunday Mass is wrong because it is already Monday. Do I make sense? Sorry, but you’ve missed an important piece in the calcula- A. tion puzzle: Sunday is the longest liturgical day of the week, beginning at sundown on Saturday (as you stated), but not ending until midnight on Sunday. So, “the poor guy in attendance thinking that he is at Sunday Mass” really is at a Sunday Mass. Ordinary minister Is it correct for a pastor, in whose church a deacon is a pa- Q. rishioner, to conduct the Rite of Benediction when both the pastor and I (another priest) are present with him? A deacon is an ordinary minister of Holy Communion, which A.means that he can conduct Benediction on a par with a priest. I would add, however, that an appreciation for hierarchy – and a spirit of humility – would recommend that the deacon defer to the pastor, just as the pastor would presumably defer to the local bishop, were he present. Holy days’ folly Once again, another holy day of obligation has been deleted: Q.All Saints’ Day. Is this a common practice in dioceses outside the Northwest? I’ve posed this question to several clerics in our area, but their answers are varied. One area vicar explained that the dispensation would mean that no people would miss their obligation, and thus nobody would be guilty of mortal sin. Another deacon informed me that he thinks eventually the U.S. Catholic Church will celebrate only two or three holy days of obligation, anyway. As I have expressed before, I think the decision to transfer A. holy days or to remove the obligation was a pastorally and psychologically bad decision. It cannot but hurt our observance of all the holy days and, eventually, of Sundays. It seems to me that this awareness prompted the presbyteral council of the Archdiocese of New York many years ago to petition the Cardinal to eliminate these dispensations in the future; the Cardinal acquiesced. I think

50 The Catholic Response this request of the priests is significant because they are, liter- ally, the “men in the trenches” and they have seen the disastrous effects of this practice. Very recently, a priest of the Diocese of Pittsburgh got consider- able attention for giving a blanket dispensation to his parishioners for the Fourth Sunday of Advent (since in 2017 that coincided with Christmas Eve). Not only was this confusing, but he did not have the authority to grant such a dispensation and was thus required by the Bishop of Pittsburgh to rescind his permission. Eucharistic fast Could you comment on the Church’s official requirements Q. in regard to the Eucharistic fast for the elderly who are in retirement homes and the hospital? This is treated in the Code of Canon Law (c. 919, para. 3): “The A. elderly, the infirm, and those who care for them can receive the Most Holy Eucharist even if they have eaten something within the preceding hour.” This is a change from the old practice of a fast of a quarter of an hour being required of the infirm. Latin hymns Where can I find some Latin hymns (especially psalms, Q. antiphons, and canticles)? Not long ago, I received a booklet from Mother Angelica writ- Q. ten by Pope Paul VI, entitled Jubilate Deo. I presented it to our pastor and others on the worship/spirituality committee, and was essentially told that it has been rendered obsolete by other more recent documents. Could you speak to this issue? The St. Gregory Foundation for Latin Liturgy has many A. resources to promote the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy in Latin – according to the mind and legislation of the Second Vatican Council. Pope Paul did not write the work in question, but he did promulgate it, which means he ordered it published, so alarmed was he that Latin was being lost in the Western Church. As recently as January 1998, Pope John Paul II called for a renewed appreciation of Latin in the life of the Church. If your “worship/spirituality” group asserts that subsequent, more up-to-date documents oppose Jubilate Deo, ask them to bring forth those documents. May I tell you that they will not be able to do so? I would also encourage you to join the St. Gregory Founda- tion for Latin Liturgy which makes available many resources for clergy, liturgical musicians and lay faithful facilitating a broader use of Latin in liturgy.

The Catholic Response 51 Short Reviews by the Editor

Channah Barden, The Bride: One Woman’s Walk through Judaism and Catholicism. St. Louis: The Miriam Press, 2017. 84 pages; $7.95. Channah Bardan has made a major contribution to Catholic spirituality with “The Bride.” Her grasp of Jewish theology is exceeded only by her understanding of Catholic theology. St. John Paul II famously encouraged Catholics to “breathe with both lungs,” referring to the Churches of the East and West. One might say that Channah Bardan is urging us to “breathe with both lungs” in terms of our Jewish heritage. Unlike some enthusiasts who play loose and reckless with Church teaching, she glories in the fullness of the truth found in the Catholic Church, all the while making an appeal for us to dig deep into our roots and there discover the Jewishness of our faith to our spiritual advantage and as a helpful means to present the Gospel of Christ to Jews in search of the Messiah. Very accessible, very enjoyable, highly recommended.

Francis Cardinal Arinze, Marian Veneration. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017. 122 pages; $14.95. The redoubtable cardinal is at it again. If this is retirement, I would hate to see full-time work! Readers of TCR will delight in yet another contribution from one of the outstanding church- men of our time, and one whom I am proud to call a long-time friend. In this work, Cardinal Arinze makes Our Lady accessible to devotees and seekers alike. In a wonderful union of scholarship and devotion, he presents a positive image of the Virgin of Nazareth, relying on Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the best of our centuries-long devotional practices. This book will be of particular value to those exploring the possibility of “swimming the Tiber” but for whom Marian doctrine and devotion are an obstacle.

52 The Catholic Response Ambrogio M. Piazzoni, with Francesca Man- zari (ed.), The Bible: From Late Antiquity to the Renaissance. Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2017. Hard cover; 365 pages; $79.95. The serious scholarship of this volume is matched only by the beauty of the re- productions of dozens of images of biblical manuscripts found in the Vatican Library. The writing is technical but not inflated, so that the average, well-informed Catholic can understand and appreciate the various articles. This is not the kind of work one necessarily reads from cover to cover over a few sittings; rather, it is a reference work, which one can and will want to consult for personal enrichment. That said, scholars will find the material up to their expectations.

Monika Jablonska, Wind from Heaven: John Paul II, The Poet Who Became Pope. Brooklyn: Angelico Press, 2017. 202 pages; $17.95. Another biography of Pope John Paul II? Hasn’t everything already been said? Yes and no. Most of us know the thought of John Paul through his vast and all-inclusive papal magisterium. In this work, the author gives us access to the thought of the Pope through the lens of his literary output – his poetry and plays. It is a unique perspective, one that has not been sufficiently mined until now. It is a great pleasure to become reacquainted with the Pope who was both a gentleman and a scholar.

The Catholic Response 53 Amoris Laetitia and the Nature Of Mercy

By the Most Reverend Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap, Archbishop of Philadelphia

[Editor’s Note: The following was delivered by Archbishop Chaput to the National Assembly of Filipino Priests US, in Houston on November 8. 2017.]

Last month the Wall Street Journal covered the fighting around the Philippine city of Marawi. The story was riveting, and I was struck by the violence of the Muslim militants who had seized the city. It reminded me of how many hardships Filipinos have faced over the 73 years of my lifetime. Japanese occupation, the Huk insurgency, the NPA insurgency, dictatorship, corruption, martial law, and now Islamic extremism. The list of sufferings is a long one. But as I read about Marawi, I also recalled the four million people who jammed the streets of Manila for John Paul II at World Youth Day 1995. Despite their hardships, Filipinos have always been a people of joy, enthusiasm for life, and deep Catholic faith. Those same qualities have always marked Filipinos in the United States. The Filipino community in Philadelphia is a great bless- ing for our local Church. So it’s a particular pleasure to be here. My job today is to talk about Amoris Laetitia. Papal documents are always important. But – if we can be candid for a moment – some have the energy of a lead brick. Amoris Laetitia is very different. It has passages of great wisdom and beauty on marriage and on family life. And it has other passages that have caused some obvious controversy. The controversy has obscured much of the good in the document. So we need to engage the text with open hearts and the discipline of clear thinking. The specific issues I want to deal with today are three: the pastoral challenges Amoris Laetitia seeks to address; the pastoral challenges the text itself may seem to create; and how we as priests need to respond as “missionaries of mercy.” But let me start first with some background. Some of you probably took part in the World Meeting of Fami- lies two years ago in Philadelphia. It was a great success and a wonderful gift for our people. I think Pope Francis was surprised

54 The Catholic Response by the faith and enthusiasm of the Philadelphia crowds. I’m sure he was pleased. Three days later, I left for Rome as a delegate to the 2015 Synod on the Family. I served as secretary to one of the Anglophone working groups. I shared my thoughts on the synod floor. And I worked with other bishops in suggesting improvements to the synod’s final document. I was also elected to the synod’s permanent council. My point is this. I took part directly in the synod discussions on marriage, sexuality, conscience and the family as a synod father myself. And back at home in Philadelphia, that experience helped us draft our local guidelines for applying Amoris Laetitia promptly and accurately once it appeared. We developed our guidelines in consultation with pastors, lay couples, our Marriage Tribunal, and many others in the process. And we based our work on paragraph 2 from Amoris Laetitia which reads, in part, with these words: “The thinking of pastors and theologians, if faithful to the Church, honest, realistic and creative, will help us achieve greater clarity” in addressing the issues that face today’s families. The key words there are “if faithful to the Church.” Fidelity to the received and constant wisdom of Catholic teaching is para- mount. So the spirit behind our Philadelphia guidelines, grounded in Amoris Laetitia, is the following. As a Church, we need to meet people where they are. We need to listen to their sufferings and hopes. We need to accompany them along the path of their lives. That demands from us as priests a spirit of patience and mercy. We need to have a bias toward welcoming, and a resistance to seeing individual persons merely as parts of alien or alienated groups. The divorced and civilly remarried are not exiles from Church life. They need to be invited back. The same applies to persons with same-sex attraction. Jesus Christ died for all of us, and we need to behave in a manner that embodies His love. At the same time, “accompanying” people also means that we need to guide them in the right direction – gently but also hon- estly, speaking the truth with love. It does no one any good if we “accompany” someone over a cliff, or even worse, to a fatal separa- tion from God. We can’t simply confirm people in their mistakes. Scripture is very clear about right and wrong sexual relationships and behavior. We’re very poor disciples if we lack the courage to speak the truth as the Church has always understood it.

The Catholic Response 55 We live in an age of studied ambiguity – at times, even within the Church – and in such an age, clarity about the truth, made gentle by patience and understanding, is a treasure without price. So let’s turn to the problems Amoris Laetitia seeks to address. Much of this you already know. American culture is rapidly becoming less religious. One of the big reasons is a steady diet of distractions offered every day by a mass media-driven consumer economy. The average adult is exposed to about 5,000 commercial messages a day. The average child sees 40,000 ads a year, and that’s just on television. There’s no way to compete with that kind of catechesis in materialism – except by turning it off. And most families don’t. The results are no surprise. Jean Twenge’s new book, iGen, is a study of young people born between 1995 and 2012. They’ve never known a world without iPhones and iPads. And statistically, they’re the least religious generation in American history. This isn’t really news. Researchers like Christian Smith have been tracking the behavior and beliefs of young people for years. And they come to the same conclusion: The implications for marriage, family life and religious institu- tions are not good. Philadelphia is seen as a fairly traditional diocese. So consider these facts as evidence. In the year 2000, the Philadelphia Archdiocese had 441,000 registered Catholic households. By 2015, that had dropped to 389,000. In 2000, we had 283 parishes. In 2015 we had 219. In 2000, we had 6,000 marriages and 15,400 infant baptisms. In 2015 we had about 3,200 marriages and 9,100 infant baptisms. Our parish schools had 81,300 students in 2000. They had 43,000 in 2015. And so on. Now, the picture I just drew can be misleading. Demograph- ics are always changing. Other dioceses, especially in the south and west of the country, are growing. Overall, though, American religious faith is weakening. And plenty of social research tells us that people who practice their faith and attend religious services regularly have more stable marriages and families than people who don’t. But a paradox of our national personality is this: Even at our most religious, Americans have always had a deep streak of individualism, a distrust of authority, and a big appetite for self- invention and personal happiness unencumbered by obligations to others. As religion loses its hold on people’s behavior, all of these

56 The Catholic Response instincts accelerate. And that leads to exactly the kind of personal and social suffering that Amoris Laetitia seeks to heal. One of the main messages in the Holy Father’s text is that life, marriage, children and family are joys to be treasured – not problems to be solved. This seems obvious, and in normal times, it would be. But we don’t live in a “normal” time. For 50 years since Vatican II, the Church has been locked in disputes over doctrine and practice. And these have been compounded by deep and rapid changes in the world around us. Conflict can become a habit. Every issue can become a nail that needs a hammer. We can get comfortable in our anger. And that’s dangerous, especially within the Church, because frustration and resentment can start to feel normal, and then to feel good. C.S. Lewis would describe the pleasure we take in an unhealthy taste for argument as a pretty clear mark of the demonic. There’s nothing more poisonously delicious than trashing an enemy in the name of the Gospel of love. So for me, at the heart of Amoris Laetitia, and a key to the whole document, is paragraph 28, where Francis writes: “Against [the] backdrop of love so central to the Christian experience of marriage and the family, another virtue stands out, one often overlooked in our world of frenetic and superficial relationships. It is tenderness.” Tenderness, personal contact, listening instead of just hearing, and intimate attention to the needs of the other – these are the priorities Francis weaves throughout his text. It explains why he stresses in paragraph 22 that “the Word of God is not a series of abstract ideas but rather a source of comfort and companionship for every family that experiences difficulties or suffering.” And it gives a context to his paragraphs 36 and 37, where he warns against “a far too abstract and almost artificial theological ideal of marriage, far removed from the concrete situations and practical possibilities of real families.” Francis urges us again and again to deal lovingly with people and situations as they really are. In my reading, that leads to one of the central ironies in com- municating the message of Amoris Laetitia. We live in an age of the laity. The text deals very heavily with marriage and the family, major features of Christian lay life. But to succeed, Amoris Laetitia depends profoundly on the zeal and sensitivity of the priest. The priest has the freedom of action, the pastoral experience, and the overview of human relationships to be the presence of Jesus Christ in so many of the complex situations Francis describes. In other

The Catholic Response 57 words, the vocation you have, brothers, has never been more vital for family life than it is right now. That might sound curious because I’ve never had more priests voice uncertainty about their value to the Church than I’ve heard in recent years. I’ve had many priests approach me feeling confused or hurt by something the Pope has said about priestly indifference or harshness. And these are good, solid men – not whiners or cra- zies – experienced in their parishes and committed to their people. How can we make sense of that? Part of their priestly frustration comes from the constant beating the priesthood has taken in this country since 2002. The clergy abuse crisis has caused a lot of innocent priests to suffer. And some of the Pope’s more painful comments surely come from his own pastoral experiences in Latin America, which seem to have been very different from the realities in the United States. In my own experience, cruel confessors and harsh “doctors of the law” have been rare, and a very long way from the American norm. But I do think Francis is right in pushing all of us as priests to engage our people more directly, personally, with an open heart and a patient spirit. And we need to really listen to the truth in the Holy Father’s words. There’s a great temptation in ecclesial life, including parish life, to hide behind staff and offices and com- mittees and programs and schedules. Jesus was captured by none of those things. He was always present to His people. And while we can’t escape our material duties as priests, we can find ways to keep them from dominating our pastoral service. To put it another way: We can’t be missionaries of mercy if our main focus is running the machinery of an institution. I know very well that hitting the right balance in priestly life can be very difficult. I deal with it myself every day. But it’s possible, and Francis is urging us to put mission and people first. It’s not my purpose today to go through Amoris Laetitia paragraph by paragraph. But the text has some beautiful passages on the needs of the elderly, the poor, migrants, persons with special needs, the importance of children and openness to new life. It’s important for all of us to read the text with an attentive mind and study its strengths. Chapter Four on “Love in Marriage” is especially rich. And his reflection on St. Paul’s thoughts on the nature of love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 is perfect material and easily adapted for parish study groups of four or six sessions. I want to spend my remaining time on the pastoral challenges the text itself may seem to create; some general comments on the 58 The Catholic Response state of our Church; and how we as priests need to respond as “missionaries of mercy.” Ground Zero is this: For Christians, sexual intimacy outside a valid marriage can never be morally legitimate. And it’s the Church that determines what a valid marriage is. Scripture’s clearest words about the indissolubility of marriage come from Jesus Himself in Matthew 19. They can’t be softened, or reinterpreted, or contextualized. Christian marriage is a covenant between one man and one woman. When valid, it endures until the death of one or the other spouse. And our task as priests is to uphold and advance that truth as a message of liberation, even when it’s difficult. The most widespread concerns voiced about the content of Amoris Laetitia – in public, but even more urgently and commonly in private – focus on Chapter 8, including footnote 351. Critics see in the text a preference for ambiguity over clear teaching and a resentment toward defenders of traditional Church teaching that seem out of sync with the rest of the document. Since at least some of the people raising these issues are persons of fidelity and substance, their concerns can’t – in justice – be dismissed. And the resulting confusion is regrettable, because the whole purpose of Chapter 8 is to provide a merciful outreach to decent persons entangled in irregular marital situations. So how should we proceed? First, as with all papal documents regarding faith and morals, if any confusion exists in a text, it must be interpreted consistent with the magisterium of previous popes. Second, I’ve been a priest for 47 years and a bishop for nearly 30. In all that time, I’ve met very few priests who like punishing anyone, kicking anyone out of their parish, or keeping anyone from taking part in the sacraments. But I’ve met hundreds of priests who worry that their people, while loving God, don’t really know their faith, don’t understand the sacraments, don’t catechize their children, and don’t know what a properly formed Catholic conscience is. Poorly formed, immature consciences are among the biggest pastoral challenges facing the Church. This is what makes delegating decisions about the nullity or validity of a first marriage to the internal forum a matter of real concern. The Christian virtue of mercy flows out of charity and depends on the existence of justice and truth. Romano Guardini argued that mercy is a greater virtue than justice. And rightly so. But he also

The Catholic Response 59 stressed that truth undergirds and is essential to both virtues. In other words, real mercy is always more than mere sentiment. It can never exclude careful moral reasoning about right and wrong. It can never be set against, or elevated above, the other virtues that are key to life-giving human behavior. Otherwise, it becomes just another source of confusion. Permanent truths exist about human nature, sexuality, behavior and relationships. Those truths apply to all of us, in all circumstances, and justice involves living according to those truths. But, of course, all of us fail many times every day. Thus, mercy is God’s outreach through the Church to offer a way back to grace. It’s a living expression of His tenderness. But mercy does not abol- ish God’s justice any more than it can soften or adjust the demands of truth in order to be more congenial to our weaknesses, to our culture, or to our times. Christian marriage is never simply an “ideal.” Describing it as an “ideal” tends to open the door to excusing and then normalizing failure. Clearly, many married couples do fail, especially in today’s world of institutionalized selfishness. They need our understanding and support, especially in cases of domestic violence.

The Widow and Her Priest by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, 18th century

60 The Catholic Response But if grace is real, and God’s Word is true, then the joy of a permanent marriage is possible for anyone called to the vocation. This is why better preparation and support for couples consider- ing marriage are so vital. It’s also why we need to defend the permanence of the marriage bond, wherever and whenever we reasonably can. The permanent, loving bond between a man and a woman open to new life is the glue of a culture and the guarantee of its future. We need to fight for it, and not collapse – like so many other Christian communities – into the confusion of a society based on compromises, caveats and alibis. That’s the message we need to preach and teach. More than 70 years ago, the economic historian Karl Polanyi wrote a book called The Great Transformation. It’s one of the seminal works of the last century. It chronicles the deep changes that took place during the Industrial Revolution – not just in economics but in politics, law, patterns of thought, and all kinds of human relationships. We’re living in that same kind of moment right now. So much of life can seem out of our control and beyond our influence. As Joseph Ratzinger saw five decades ago, the Church of the future will very likely be smaller, poorer, and empty of prestige – not everywhere, but certainly in the nations that like to posture themselves “advanced.” We might mitigate that outcome with smart thinking and good Church leadership. But we probably can’t prevent it. The reason is simple. We can’t quick-fix ourselves out of moral and social problems we behaved ourselves into. And knowing that can easily lead to frustration and despair. But God doesn’t ask us to save the Church or fix the world. That’s in His hands. What He asks is much simpler and more important. He asks each of us as priests to be faithful, and to be His healing presence to His – and to our – people. In the midst of confusion, He asks us to speak and live the truth. In the midst of conflict, He asks us to be peacemakers. In the midst of distress, He asks us to be sources of hope. The curse of our age is loneliness; a loneliness wrapped in relentless noise to muffle the worry that our lives and sufferings have no meaning. No matter how intractable or unfixable the problems of a marriage or family might be, the priest who listens and counsels with a spirit of mercy guided by truth is doing what God called him to do: to be the presence of God’s love in the world. There’s no greater mission of mercy than that, and no greater joy in the life of a priest.

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