Moral Theology – Page 7

Condom Zombies Hijack Pope Benedict!

No doubt you remember the firestorm that erupted when Pope Benedict appeared to express some form of openness to the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS in the case of prostitutes having sex with clients. We blogged about that a good bit.

The firestorm was caused by the fact that a lot of people either unwittingly or intentionally misrepresented this as some kind of blanket endorsement by the pope of condoms.

It was nothing of the kind. Responsible parties debated precisely what the pope’s meaning was, as there was some ambiguity to what he said, but it was clear that whatever he was saying was extremely limited in scope and certainly nothing like the broad aspirations of “safe sex” advocates.

At most, he was presenting the use of condoms by prostitutes as a way of limiting the evil done in the act of prostitution—because, y’know, prostitution is kinda like a soul-destroying mortal sin to begin with—so that in addition to destroying the soul through sin the act might not also destroy the body through a horrible disease.

Indeed, the pope spoke of this as being only a “first step” in taking responsibility for one’s actions, a step along a path that would lead one to cease the immoral sex altogether, making condoms unnecessary.

And then there was the fact that he also stressed that condoms are not the solution to the overall problem, which is a defective view of human sexuality.

It was really tough to get these points across—the limited nature of what Pope Benedict appeared to be expressing openness to—amid the throng of condom advocates mindlessly chanting that the pope had “approved condoms” much in the manner of a swarm of zombies mindlessly chanting “Brains . . . ! Brains . . . !”

Now the hordes of the spiritually undead have returned to their mindless chant with a new ad campaign designed to hijack Pope Benedict’s words and turn them to their own evil ends.

Thus the infamous “Catholics for Choice” and its “Good Catholics Use Condoms” campaign (condoms4life.com) have taken out an ad in a major Italian daily newspaper. Their press release is headlined,

Catholics Stand Behind Pope’s Statement that Condoms Save Lives — Urge Conference Attendees to Resist Minority Dissent

The occasion is a conference being held by the Vatican on HIV/AIDS.

Now consider the sheer willful malice and misrepresentation that is present in the headline alone:

* Catholics stand behind pope’s statement? Implies that all Catholics, or at least all faithful Catholics, endorse the goals of CFC, and that if you want to be a faithful Catholic, you must, too.

* Pope’s statement that condoms save lives? Implies that the pope issued a standard “safe sex” ideology endorsement of condoms, a reading only a brain-dead zombie could give to his remarks.

* Urge conference attendees to resist? Implies that conference attendees should rebel against traditional Catholic moral teaching—in spite of what the pope said about condoms not being the overall solution, etc. In other words, they should rebel against the pope in the name of the pope’s words.

* Resist minority dissent? Double-stigmatizes their opponents as both members of a minority and as dissenters—when in fact they are upholders of traditional Catholic morals and they include Pope Benedict himself among their number. In actuality, it is the CFC zombies who are themselves the dissenters.

The quality of chutzpah has often been defined as that of a person who kills his parents and then pleads for mercy on the grounds that he is an orphan. The sheer level of malice and deceit present in just the headline of the CFC brings this definition to mind.

But whatever chutzpah it may display, there is no way it constitutes a legitimate moral appeal. No one with a functioning conscience could so deliberately misrepresent the pope’s remarks in this way and, in fact, urge people to dissent from the pope’s teachings about sexuality on the grounds of the pope’s teachings about sexuality, all in the name of being a good Catholic.

The kind of conscience that could make that kind of pitch as a moral appeal has something about it that is seriously disordered—unhealthy—dead.

And so the condom zombies go shuffling on, trying to bite and infect as many other people with their deadly moral contagion.

Things go downhill from the headline of the press release, and it proceeds to tell us about an advertisement they’re placing in a major Italian newspaper in which they thank Pope Benedict in the following words (except in Italian):

We believe in God.
We believe that sex is sacred.
We believe in caring for each other.
We believe in using condoms.
We thank Pope Benedict for acknowledging that condoms save lives.

You can view the ad here (.pdf).

And read the rest of the press release here.

Watching a group like this so soullessly trying to subvert Pope Benedict’s words is just disgusting.

I’ll have more to say about this gang of moral miscreants soon, but in the mean time . . .

What do you think?

Who Would Jesus Whip?

A story caught my eye on Catholic News Agency, according to which:

Archbishop Gregory Aymond of New Orleans said that a local Catholic school must permanently ban corporal punishment for student misbehavior, even though many parents and alumni support the practice. …

Since 1951 teachers and administrators at the historically black all-boys school have used an 18-inch-long wooden paddle, known as “the board of education,” to administer punishment to students for tardiness, sloppy dress or other minor infractions.

However, Archbishop Aymond and Josephite superior general Fr. Edward Chiffriller, who heads the school’s board of trustees, ordered an end to the practice.

A town hall meeting assembled to discuss the change attracted an audience that numbered over 600 and included current students from grades six to 12, current and former parents, grandparents, benefactors and friends of the school.

“Board of education.” Heh. Definite points for that.

Personally, I do not have an opinion on whether corporal punishment should be administered at St. Augustine High School—the school in question. My own conviction is that the issue of corporal punishment is one for parents to decide. I have known some parents who have successfully raised children using it seldom or never. I also know there are parents who feel it is has played an important and needed role in raising their children. The fact is that children are different, and some respond to different things. To one child a time out may be far more agonizing (and motivating) than a paddling. To others just the reverse will be the case. Whether corporal punishment is to be used in the case of their own children—and how much and when—is something that I view as within the natural law rights of the parents.

Because of that, I can see why a school might choose not to have corporal punishment on campus, simply in respect of the rights of parents who do not wish it administered to their children (quite apart from issues of lawsuits and such). I can also see a school having a policy of allowing corporal punishment for those children whose parents do not object to it (such a policy could be a little tricky, but doable). And I can see a school saying, “It is our policy to use corporal punishment in disciplinary cases. If you have a problem with that policy, feel free to place your children with another school that has a different policy.”

So, I don’t have a problem with schools taking different policy positions on this, just as I don’t have a problem with parents doing so. I think reasonable people can have a legitimate diversity of opinion.

I also don’t have a problem with Archbishop Aymond deciding not to have corporal punishment at St. Augustine. As the local bishop, that’s within his purview.

I would, however, offer some thoughts on some of the claims made in the CNA story. I have to say that I wasn’t at the town hall meeting, and so I don’t know exactly what was said or in what context, but based on the coverage provided by CNA, several things leapt out at me:

Corporal punishment can cause unintended physical injury and studies indicate it can cause physical, emotional and psychological damage, including loss of self-esteem and increased hostility toward authority, the archbishop said.

I couldn’t blame the parents at the town hall meeting who may have questioned this kind of claim. While scientific studies can tell us many useful things, something like a third of them turn out to be wrong, and they can often be skewed by the agendas of the scientists who perform them. There have been all kinds of social science and psychological studies that have been “cooked” to support claims like abortion doesn’t leave lasting emotional damage, divorce doesn’t really hurt the children, homosexual couples are just as capable of being good parents, etc., etc. The anti-corporal-punishment movement intersects in a significant way with the same constellation of agendas that has cooked the studies just named. It is not much of a stretch of the imagination to suppose that anti-spanking studies have been similarly cooked.

That’s not to say that they’re automatically wrong. They could be right. This is an empirical question, and the solution cannot be decided in advance. If reliable studies have been or are in the future conducted that show a net detriment to moderate spanking—for all children in all American cultures and subcultures—then that’s an important finding that needs to be taken into account. But there is reason for caution here.

I’d be rather doubtful that such studies would find this as I, like many, was the recipient of moderate spanking as a child. I was even paddled in junior high school by one of the teacher/coaches, and I don’t perceive it to have done lasting damage to me. I suspect the experience of many—including many of the pro-paddling parents at St. Augustine’s—is similar.

Along related lines:

The archbishop explained that he believes that “hitting a young man does not build character.”

Phrased in those terms, the claim has the ring of plausibility. Hitting people is not generally recognized as a way to build character. But one could suggest that this is prejudicial language, because we are not talking about hitting, stripped of all context. There is a difference between giving someone a swat when they’ve behaved badly and to motivate them to be have better and just randomly hitting a person for no reason.

Further, this argument might prove too much. All forms of childhood discipline involve causing some kind of pain in order to motivate the child not to behave badly in the future. Spanking uses physical pain. Time outs, grounding, docking an allowance, deprivation of TV or Internet privileges, and adding chores use another form of pain. But couldn’t one just as easily say, “Inflicting pain on a young man does not build character”?—or even more provocatively, “Torturing a young man does not build character”? Despite their surface plausibility as phrased, we can recognize them as using prejudicial language. And surely we cannot infer from such claims that all forms of childhood discipline are wrong.

But if that’s the case, what makes the use of moderate physical pain different from the others? Why is it disallowed while the others aren’t? It doesn’t seem intrinsically worse than the others. I know I’d much rather have a couple of swats than, say, be grounded for a month, or even a week. A lot of children, I imagine, would feel the same way. So it doesn’t seem that corporal punishment is intrinsically cruel compared to other forms of punishment.

In any event, sacred Scripture takes a positive attitude toward childhood discipline, for the author of Hebrew writes:

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it [Heb. 12:11].

The author of Hebrews doesn’t specify that he’s talking about physical discipline, though he surely wasn’t excluding it. There simply was no anti-spanking ethic in ancient Hebrew culture. Indeed, Proverbs counsels:

He who spares the rod hates his son,
but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him [Prov. 13:24].

That’s not to say that we must use these methods today, but it does show that they are not foreign to the Judeo-Christian tradition, including in the New Testament period in which the author of Hebrews was writing. And even if the author of Hebrews (very implausibly) didn’t have corporal punishment in mind, he clearly acknowledged the use of painful discipline to train towards proper conduct.

Archbishop Aymond also reported that he had received a letter from an activist who wrote from Ireland, which is suffering an abuse scandal. The writer singled out the continued corporal punishment at St. Augustine.

This apparently met with significant opposition from local parents:

A statement published at the school website reported that the community “overwhelmingly supports” the punishment. Attendees at the town hall expressed “outrage” that “persons from a different culture,” such as the activist from Ireland, were discussing St. Augustine’s policy and were “attempting to undermine” the school without significant input from those affected.

“Many expressed outrage that African American parents have to haggle with non-African Americans about how to raise their own sons,” the statement said.

I can’t blame the parents for feeling this way. I am sure that the archbishop meant to cite the Irish activist’s letter in a positive way, perhaps as an illustration of how the Church need to go the extra mile to prove it is not abusing children, in light of the current abuse scandals.

But I can easily see how local parents would be outraged at the idea of a foreign activist, a person of a different culture, getting the local bishop’s ear and then he announces a policy change without the input of the people most involved and affected. If I were a parent at the school, my natural response would be one of outrage. (Though I hope I’d be open to an alternative presentation of the facts if it could be shown that something else happened.)

Though I think I see what the bishop may have been getting at by citing the letter from the Irish activist, I am puzzled by something else he said:

“I do not believe the teachings of the Catholic Church, as we interpret them today in 2011, can possibly condone corporal punishment,” he explained to a Feb. 24 a town hall meeting at the Josephite-run St. Augustine High School in New Orleans. While parents have the authority to administer such punishment, he could not “possibly condone” the school doing so, the archdiocesan newspaper the Clarion Herald reports.

One of the sources of my confusion is the statement that “parents have the authority to administer such punishment” (the Clarion Herald adds, “in their homes to discipline their children”) followed by the claim that the bishop could not “possibly condone” the school doing so (“especially in a Catholic school,” the Clarion Herald adds).

Huh?

If a parents have the authority to do something in their own home for the benefit of their children then why can’t the delegate the authority to do the exact same thing to teachers? Isn’t that the whole principle on which non-home schools operate? Parents have a natural law right to train their offspring (including the right to discipline them—childhood discipline is part of the overall education of a child, regardless of whether it’s corporal punishment or something else) and then they delegate that function or some of those functions to the teachers and officials at schools where they enroll their children.

So I don’t get that.

Perhaps the archbishop meant that they have the authority to do this in their own homes in the sense of “I think what you’re doing is wrong, but I can’t stop you in your own homes,” but then why point this out to them? Wouldn’t saying that they have the authority to do this in their homes and leaving it at that undermine his message that this is wrong and give permission to parents to do something in their homes that he views as wrong?

So I remain puzzled by this.

I am even more puzzled by the statement that “I do not believe the teachings of the Catholic Church, as we interpret them today in 2011, can possibly condone corporal punishment.” Really? I must confess that I don’t know what the archbishop is thinking of here.

I am unaware of any statement in the Catechism, the Compendium of Social Doctrine, any papal encyclical, any curial document, or any other magisterial document whatsoever that says corporal punishment cannot be used as a method of childhood discipline.

A search of the Vatican web site turns up only a handful of references to corporal punishment, and only one of them appears to deal with the use of corporal punishment with children. That one reference is in a remark made in passing by a participant in a panel discussion on democracy hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, the proceedings of which are expressly flagged as “although published by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, only represent the points of view of the participants and not those of the Academy.”

Of course, as a member of the magisterium, the archbishop could invoke his own teaching authority on the matter, in which case his own subjects would have to wrestle with the question showing the deference due to the local bishop’s individual teaching authority, but the archbishop appears not to have done this.

He did not say, “By virtue of my teaching authority as a successor of the apostles and as the shepherd of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, I declare my judgment that corporal punishment of children is wrong.” Instead, he appealed more generally to “the teachings of the Catholic Church.” He further enhanced the communal appeal by referring to how “we” interpret them today.

I am unaware of any doctrinal development that has occurred on the part of the Church’s magisterium as expressed in its official documents concerning this point, so I am simply at a loss.

I can also imagine counter-questions that might be posed, such as, “If the Church acknowledges that physical force can be used to achieve the end of self-defense or the defense of others, why can’t moderate use of physical force be used to keep children away from dangerous and potentially life-threatening situations (e.g., swatting a four-year old on the rear to train him not to run out into a traffic-filled street)?” or “If other forms of painful discipline can be used to properly train a child, why can’t moderate physical discomfort be used if that is what this particular child responds to?”

Finally, there is this statement by the archbishop:

“My image of Jesus is that he said, ‘Let the children come to me.’ I cannot imagine Jesus paddling anyone.”

I can imagine parents having several responses to this statement.

First, although I am sure that the bishop didn’t intend it to come across this way, there is always a danger when using an “I can’t imagine Jesus doing X” argument that it will come across as playing a kind of trump card with the intention of shutting off further discussion. If it is said that Jesus wouldn’t do something, that strongly implies that we shouldn’t either. We shouldn’t even talk about doing something Jesus wouldn’t do, right?

Further, because the person making the argument puts himself on the side of Jesus and—by implication—implicitly suggests that those on the other side of the discussion are not with Jesus, it can unintentionally convey a holier-than-thou impression, as well as being a discussion stopper.

I’m sure the archbishop had no intention of conveying such impressions, but it would be human for parents at St. Augustine’s to take such impressions away from the discussion.

There is another reason I am generally uncomfortable with arguments of this form, which is that they are not very reliable.

Jesus is most certainly a crucial point of reference for us morally. He is the all-holy, infinitely holy Son of God incarnate. But not every moral dilemma can be settled by simply asking, “What Would Jesus Do?”

For one thing, Jesus as the Son of God and the Savior of mankind had a very different mission than our own personal vocations. His situation was quite different than ours. He had a different mission, different responsibilities, different resources, and different rights. He also lived in a different century and a different culture. This facts create major asymmetries between his situation and ours, making any straightforward application of WWJD problematic.

Further, we tend to read what Jesus would do in terms of our own preferences and aspirations. There is a famous saying in biblical circles (a saying quoted by Pope Benedict in the first volume of Jesus of Nazareth), which is this: “By Their Lives of Christ Ye Shall Know Them.”

This is a reference to the fact that biblical scholars have a tendency to write biographies of Jesus (Lives of Christ) in which the portrait of Jesus that they end up painting just coincidentally happens to reflect their own personal ideology. If you want to know what a particular scholar’s personal ideology is, read his Life of Christ and see what portrait of Jesus he paints. This happens over and over again in biblical studies—so much so that it has become proverbial.

The same thing happens outside the scholarly community, in the ordinary world of pew-sitting believers. “I don’t think Jesus would do that!” has been used by many pious moralizers to object to all kinds of activity that is perfectly legitimate.

“I don’t think Jesus would watch television/go to a movie/attend a sporting event/read a secular book/etc. when he could be praying or reading the Bible.”

The ultimate end of that line of reasoning is Jansenism or scrupulosity—o r both.

Reading our own personal pious intuitions into what Jesus would do is simply not reliable. Jesus shocked the people of his own day by eating with prostitutes, sinners, and tax collectors. He could well shock us by watching TV, going to a movie, attending a sporting event, or reading a secular book. We just don’t know what he’d do in those situations.

Jesus is much less like our pious intuitions and much more like C. S. Lewis’s depiction of Aslan, who refused to be predictable or be boxed in by promises to behave in a predictable and harmless way. Like Aslan, you know that what Jesus would do would ultimately turn out to be good, but you don’t know what it’s going to be, and it may be quite surprising and even shocking.

Even if we knew exactly what Jesus would do in all circumstances, though, we still should not follow his example in all particular outcomes. It is not God’s will that we do this. It is not God’s will, for example, that we all follow Jesus’ example of being celibate in this life, or that we all try to walk on water, or perform miracles, or announce teachings on our own authority. We may (and must) look to Jesus for the fundamental principles that inform our life and conduct, but these cannot be applied in a simplistic WWJD manner.

So what about the claim that Jesus wouldn’t paddle anyone?

I don’t know that they had paddles in his day, but they did have comparable devices: belts, rods, and whips.

And we know that Jesus used at least one of those. According to St. John’s account of the clearing of the temple (quoted from the NAB):

He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, as well as the money-changers seated there. He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen, and spilled the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables, and to those who sold doves he said, “Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.” His disciples recalled the words of scripture, “Zeal for your house will consume me” [John 2:14-17].

These people presumably weren’t children, but they were behaving badly, and our Lord saw fit not only to spill their coins and overturn their tables (leading to a hopeless confusion and probable loss of income for the money-changes in question), he also saw fit to make a whip and start swinging it at people.

And note that he is swinging the whip at people. The text says that he “made a whip out of cords and drove them[i.e., those who sold … as well as the money-changers], with the sheep and oxen.” So he didn’t just use the whip on the animals. He swung it at the people, too.

It’s easy to say that it’s hard to imagine Jesus paddling someone, just as it’s easy to suppose that he wouldn’t splatter people’s money, overturn their property, and physically attack a group of businessmen. Surely the meek and mild Jesus would never do those things! Our God is a God of order, not chaos, after all. And violence never solves anything.

Yet here we have the Savior of mankind brandishing a whip.

It seems like Jesus might be willing to paddle quite a few people.

What do you think?

Before I go, two further notes. Catholic News Agency reports that the no-spanking policy may not be working out as hoped:

St. Augustine High School principal Don Boucree told the Clarion Herald that discipline at the school has suffered since the school stopped paddling five months ago. It has had to resort to a “zero tolerance” policy for unacceptable behavior.

“What has happened is that the infractions that would have stopped by now have continued to rise, causing the severity of the penalties to increase,” Boucree commented.

Fortunately, the parties may still find a mutually acceptable solution:

Fr. Chiffriller [head of the school board of trustees] said the decision would be revisited and discussed, while supporters of corporal punishment said that the discussion was not over.

Archbishop Aymond suggested prayer and dialogue as a way to determine God’s will and to resolve the issue.

Let’s pray for those on both sides of the discussion, that they may be openminded and charitable and together find the best policy for this school—whatever that may be.

The Morals of Killing bin Laden: Catholic Perspective

So it has been announced that Osama bin Laden is dead.

Good.

The twisted, evil mastermind responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent human beings has been shuffled off this mortal coil.

This provides a measure of justice. Not full justice. That’s in God’s hands. But some justice.

Of course, Our Lord’s command to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us still applies. We must hope that Osama bin Laden repented at the last second, or that he had been crazy for years and not responsible for his actions, or that God might provide for his salvation in some other way.

And we must remember that Christ himself died to make salvation possible for all men, Osama bin Laden included.

But possibility does not equal actuality. As Pope Benedict has reminded us in various works, evil is real and hell is a real choice. If anyone, judging by outward, human appearances, was ripe for going there, Osama bin Laden was a plausible candidate.

This may have even applied to his final moments. Reports are still sketchy, but it is reported that he died resisting the offensive against his compound, which may mean he was wielding a weapon. It is also reported that a woman who was one of the five people killed in the compound was used as a human shield. This may mean — and future reports may clarify this — that bin Laden himself grabbed the woman himself and tried to use her as a shield while he pointed a weapon at her or at others.

Not the kind of choices one wants to make just before one meets one’s Maker.

After his death, steps were reportedly taken to confirm bin Laden’s identity, including the taking of a DNA sample that is still being processed. Then his body was taken out of Pakistan and buried at sea.

That’s a good choice, actually. It denies future Islamist fanatics of a burial site where they could alternately go on pilgrimage or bomb something.

Of course, they will be trying to bomb things anyway, but they would have done that even if bin Laden were alive. It’s what they do.

The question is: How do you minimize that?

Burial at sea is one measure. Another is found in the response issued today by the Vatican spokesman, Fr. Federico Lombardi, and reported by my colleague Edward Pentin:

Osama Bin Laden—as everyone knows—has had the gravest responsibility for spreading hatred and division among people, causing the deaths of countless people, and exploiting religion for this purpose.

Faced with the death of a man, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibility of everyone before God and man, and hopes and pledges that every event is not an opportunity for a further growth of hatred, but of peace.

I was surprised that the Holy See had a statement so quickly and that it was so well done. This is what the Vatican needed to say, something that did not appear to let bin Laden off the hook morally but also did not appear to rejoice at his passing and that was an appeal for interreligious harmony and peace.

The statement that a Christian never rejoices at the death of a man is a positive affirmation that the Vatican needed to make. It’s also true in the sense that death as a physical evil is not to be wished upon anybody for its own sake. That is not to say that one cannot be glad that justice has been in some measure served, that bin Laden won’t be masterminding any more plots, etc.

Of course, it would be foolish for the Vatican to point out those things. They would be precisely the things that would inflame anti-Christian anger in the Muslim world and subvert the peace message the Holy See is trying to send.

We will, of course, have to see how well that works out. According to Wikileaks, bin Laden’s lieutenant Khalid Sheikh Mohammad said the organization had a nuke hidden in Europe for use if bin Laden were captured or killed.

Let’s hope that’s bad intel. And let’s pray that if such a device exists that it is quickly found and the plot to use it disrupted.

In fact, let us all pray hard about this and other potential reprisals, both here in the West and in Muslim-majority countries, where Christian minorities are at risk (Pakistan, where bin Laden was killed, is one such country; so is Iraq).

The fact that we may now face reprisals — and the fact that we might even get hit hard — may be cause for people to wonder whether killing Osama bin Laden was worth it.

Let’s hope so. Let’s pray so.

The decision required a judgment call, weighing the potential risks and benefits. History teaches that killing your enemies, and especially their leaders, is a good way to discourage them from attacking you. On the other hand, making a martyr of someone doesn’t always work (cf. Roman Empire, Christianization Of).

There are other moral dimensions to the decision to kill bin Laden. According to some sources the mission was to kill, not capture. That’s a potentially defensible choice based on the heightened risks that would be involved for the personnel responsible for trying to bring about a capture rather than a kill. Also, and even more so, a capture would create a security nightmare by having a live, captured bin Laden as the focus of “Free Osama” reprisals.

A mysterious disappearance would result in the same thing. Even if we didn’t announce his capture, his own people would know he’d been snatched and assume he was still alive.

“He’s dead. He was buried at sea. Move on with your lives” is a better message for the Islamist community.

The big question, still, is what kind of reprisals may be coming and whether bin Laden will long-term be perceived as a martyr or a failure.

Let’s pray.

What do you think?

When You Don’t Have to Say Something in Confession

Properly catechized Catholics know that, when we have committed mortal sins, we are obliged to confess them, how many times we committed them, and any circumstances that affect the moral species of the act (e.g., stealing from a church is different than ordinary stealing because of the element of sacrilege is involved, ditto for lying after having taken an oath before God as opposed to ordinary lying, adultery vs. fornication, etc. Note that these distinctions all involve the kind of sin being committed, not the degree of sinfulness; the Church has not required that we confess circumstances that affect the degree of sinfulness, only the kind).

Often times it is difficult for one reason or another to make this kind of confession, and if you read older moral and pastoral theology manuals they offer extensive discussions of the situations in which penitents are excused from making this type of confession.

Recently I received an email inquiry about how this fact relates to the 1983 Code of Canon Law’s statement that:

Can. 960 Individual and integral confession and absolution constitute the only ordinary means by which a member of the faithful conscious of grave sin is reconciled with God and the Church. Only physical or moral impossibility excuses from confession of this type; in such a case reconciliation can be obtained by other means.

Individual confession and absolution is the kind of sacramental confession we normally make: One person (an individual) talking to a priest, who absolves him. This is opposed, for example, to a priest offering a general absolution to a bunch of people at once in a grave circumstance (e.g., they’re all in an airplane that is about to crash and there is no time for individual confession). This latter is allowed in rare and grave circumstances. By nature it is an extraordinary situation, as opposed to individual confession and absolution being the “only ordinary means” of reconciliation.

The term “integral” confession is less familiar. What “integral” means is “complete.” In other words, the kind of confession we talked about at the top of the post, where for all your mortal sins, you say what each sin was, how many times it was committed, and anything that affected the species or kind of sin it was.

Why my correspondent was wondering was—since Canon 960 says that “only physical or moral impossibility excuses from confession of this type,” does the 1983 Code of Canon Law override all of the treatments given in older works of moral and pastoral theology about when one is excused from integral or “complete” confession.

The basic answer is no. The 1983 Code is not trying to change prior Catholic practice on this point. It had been the common teaching of Catholic theologians long before the 1983 Code that only physical or moral impossibility excused from making an integral confession. The Code is recognizing and incorporating this common teaching and thus giving canonical expression to what was already the traditional view. It thus does not override prior moral and pastoral thought on when one is excused from an integral confession. Whatever the older manuals said about this subject, to the extent it was sound then, is sound now. The 1983 Code didn’t change anything.

Of course, readers will wonder what some of these principles were, so let’s talk about that (which will allow me to answer some related queries sent by my correspondent).

The first concept we need to mention is physical impossibility. What’s that? Pretty much what it says. If, for example, you are in a crashing plane and there is no time to make a complete confession, you’re excused from doing so and can be absolved anyway. If you’ve had a stroke and are unable to communicate, you are similarly excused on grounds of physical impossibility.

What about moral impossibility? This category is meant to cover situations where it is physically possible to make an integral confession but there is some other factor that makes it very difficult to do so. Where the precise line on the next obvious question—“Just how difficult are we talking about?”—is a question that requires a judgment call, and it is here that the old moral/pastoral theology manuals play a useful role. This is exactly the kind of question they explore, using examples and principles to sketch out the answer.

For example, to take a very common example, let’s suppose you have forgotten how many times you committed a particular sin. Theoretically, you might be able to think harder and longer on the question and maybe come up with the exact number, but maybe that wouldn’t happen. Maybe you’d never get the exact number—or know with confidence that you had gotten it—and waiting to go to confession in that case would deprive you of the grace of the sacrament indefinitely, which is itself a grave thing. It could also send you tumbling off into the pits of scrupulosity—also a grave thing. Consequently, sound moral and pastoral theologians down through the ages have judged that one should only make reasonable efforts to determine the number of times one has committed a sin. If you’ve made a reasonable effort (i.e., what a normal faithful Catholic, not a living saint, would do) and can’t name the exact number, you are excused from doing so. You should, to the extent possible say things like, “I did this at least once” or “I did it a few times” or “I did it a lot of times,” but you are not bound to name any specific number.

Another situation—again very common—that excuses from an integral confession is scrupulosity. People suffering from this condition often get in destructive patterns of confession where they repeatedly confess sins over and over, go into agonizing and unnecessary amounts of detail, confess numerous sins of a venial nature because they can’t tell whether they were mortal, etc. Sound confessors have, down through the ages, developed rules for helping penitents fight such scrupulosity, such as telling (or even ordering) the penitent not to confess a sin unless he is absolutely sure it was mortal and that it was committed since the penitent’s last confession. If there is doubt about either of these points, the penitent should not confess it. (Note: This is the opposite of the advice given to people who don’t have scrupulosity, in which case a “confess it just to be safe” rule applies; it is the condition of scrupulosity that makes the difference in what is appropriate for the penitent to do).

Another common example—closely linked with scrupulosity—is obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Sufferers of this condition have painful and distressing thoughts, and the more they dwell on these thoughts, the worse they become. They need, to the best of their ability, to ignore them, relax, and move on. Thus if a penitent with OCD (or anyone, for that matter) is having compulsive sexual thoughts or disturbing religious thoughts or similar things and if confessing them would tend to stir up these thoughts, it is very easy to justify a non-integral confession regarding them. First, if they are compulsive then the person is not fully consenting to them and they are not moral. Even if the person has consented to them, if mentioning the details in confession would stir them up then the penitent should not go into detail. If he can get away with saying, “I’ve had impure thought” or “I’ve had bad thoughts” with out stirring them up then he should do that, but in principle even that can be omitted if the danger of stirring them up is significant enough.
rom an integral confession. If the tendencies are strong then there may well be.

For people who have conditions like this, I recommend that they discuss the matter with their priest or spiritual director and ask the question directly, “Should I confess this kind of material.” That way, if they are later confessing to a new or unfamiliar priest and he says, “What kind of bad thoughts are you talking about?” they can reply, “I have scrupulosity/OCD and my priest/spiritual director has told me not to go into detail on this because it will only stir up the thoughts.” That will satisfy almost any confessor (actually, it will satisfy any confessor who is exercising sound judgment).

My correspondent asked about the situation of a penitent with “tendencies toward scrupulosity” but not full-blown scruples or OCD. Here there is a judgment call that must be made by the penitent and his confessor or spiritual director. If the tendencies are only mild then there may not be an excuse from integral confession. If the tendencies are strong then the penitent may well be excused.

Of course, the penitent should always maintain the attitude that he would confess the sins, with number and species-changing circumstance, if there wasn’t a situation preventing this (e.g., if I remembered, if it wouldn’t stir up these thoughts). If he has the attitude that he willfully would not confess a particular mortal sin no matter what then he is deliberately withholding something from confession that must be confessed. That would invalidate the sacrament. But as long as he has the will to confess everything he is supposed to then the confession will be valid, even though there are reasons that excuse him from confessing certain things.

There is a lot more that can be said on this subject. Indeed, there are whole chapters in the older moral and pastoral theology manuals. But I hope this much brings comfort to those who find themselves in such situations.

POPE: Don’t Evangelize Jews! Really?

Pope Benedict’s remarks concerning Jewish individuals in his recent book Jesus of Nazareth (vol. 2) (GET IT HERE! GET IT HERE!) have attracted considerable attention.

For example, the book contains a passage which some have interpreted as saying that the Church should not seek to convert Jewish individuals. It is not at all clear to me that this is what the Pope is saying. The passage is complex and bears more than one interpretation. So let’s dive in and see what we can make of it.

The beginning of the discussion (which is not usually quoted by people commenting on the text) is this. Starting on p. 44 of the book, Pope Benedict writes:

At this point we encounter once again the connection between the Gospel tradition and the basic elements of Pauline theology. If Jesus says in the eschatological discourse that the Gospel must first be proclaimed to the Gentiles and only then can the end come, we find exactly the same thing in Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “A hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in, and so all Israel will be saved” (11:25–26).

The full number of the Gentiles and all Israel: In this formula we see the universalism of the divine salvific will. For our purposes, though, the important point is that Paul, too, recognizes an age of the Gentiles, which is the present and which must be fulfilled if God’s plan is to attain its goal.

So Pope Benedict is contemplating the two-stages of phases of history that precede the end of the world. First, there are what Our Lord refers to as “the times of the gentiles,” in which the Gospel is preached to all nations and the gentiles are given the chance to convert, and then the second stage in which the partial hardness that has come upon Israel is removed and so “all Israel will be saved”—a reference to a corporate conversion of the Jewish people at the end of history.

Note how this viewpoint differs from two rival viewpoints: First, it differs from the “Jews don’t need Jesus, they have their own covenant” perspective. This idea, which has been trendy is some Catholic circles of late, is manifestly contrary to the teaching of the New Testament and to the historic teaching of the Church’s Magisterium. It also is not what Pope Benedict is advocating here. He is not saying that Jews don’t need Jesus or that they don’t need to become Christians. He is saying that they will corporately convert to Christ, but not until the end of time. Prior to that point, individual Jews may become Christians—as with the apostles and the very first Christians and with other converts from Judaism down through history. But the full, corporate conversion of Israel (which even then might not involve every single individual without exception) is something to be found only at the end of the world.

Secondly, the viewpoint that the Pope is articulating is different than the “Jews don’t matter anymore; they don’t have any special relationship with God or mission; their role has been completely supplanted by the Church and they have no further special significance.” Again, this position is contrary to the New Testament, which ascribes an ongoing special place for the Jewish people in God’s plan (as illustrated by the end of the world being contingent on their corporate conversion), and it is not the viewpoint that Pope Benedict is articulating. He recognizes, as we will see him say even more explicitly in a moment, that the Jewish people has a special and ongoing mission.

He then speaks of the early Church’s attitude toward this two-phase understanding of Christian history (the preaching of the Gospel to the gentiles, followed by the corporate conversion of Israel):

The fact that the early Church was unable to assess the chronological duration of these kairoí (“times”) of the Gentiles and that it was generally assumed they would be fairly short is ultimately a secondary consideration.

The essential point is that these times were both asserted and foretold and that, above all else and prior to any calculation of their duration, they had to be understood and were understood by the disciples in terms of a mission: to accomplish now what had been proclaimed and demanded — by bringing the Gospel to all peoples.

The restlessness with which Paul journeyed to the nations, so as to bring the message to all and, if possible, to fulfill the mission within his own lifetime — this restlessness can only be explained if one is aware of the historical and eschatological significance of his exclamation: “Necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16).

In this sense, the urgency of evangelization in the apostolic era was predicated not so much on the necessity for each individual to acquire knowledge of the Gospel in order to attain salvation, but rather on this grand conception of history: If the world was to arrive at its destiny, the Gospel had to be brought to all nations. At many stages in history, this sense of urgency has been markedly attenuated, but it has always revived, generating new dynamism for evangelization.

What the Pope says in the last paragraph is quite interesting. The idea that individuals in the apostolic age were motivated to evangelize “not so much on the necessity for each individual to acquire knowledge of the Gospel in order to attain salvation, but rather on this grand conception of history,” is quite interesting.

It is certainly true that the early evangelists, including Paul, were motivated by the fact that Christ had indicated the Gospel must be preached to all the nations and that this plays a role in God’s plan of the ages. If it’s part of God’s plan and Christ said to do it, that’s reason to get to work evangelizing! And the first evangelists certainly understood that.

It’s questionable, however, how much they also saw “the necessity for each individual to acquire knowledge of the Gospel in order to attain salvation” as playing a role. Certainly later in Church history the theological tides shifted very strongly in favor of the idea that concrete knowledge (and acceptance) of the Gospel is necessary for salvation. In our own day the tides have shifted back a bit, with the Magisterium indicating (especially from the mid 20th century onwards) that an explicit knowledge of the Gospel is not an absolute necessity and that people can, if they otherwise cooperate with God’s grace, come to salvation if they are in innocent ignorance of the Gospel.

Similar themes are found in the writings of the Church Fathers, who hold that some gentiles prior to the time of Christ could be saved if they lived according to the Logos or “Reason” of God, though they lacked knowledge of his word in the Scriptures.

In the apostolic age, it would be fair to assume that something of this idea was present as well. In the early chapters of Romans, Paul alludes to some gentiles potentially being excused by their consciences on the day of judgment because they followed the law of God written on their hearts, even though they didn’t have knowledge of the Mosaic Law.

On the other hand, Paul also uses language that suggests knowledge and acceptance of the Gospel is quite important for salvation, saying that he preaches the Gospel so vigorously, in part, to provoke some of his Jewish brethren to envy of the grace God is working among the gentiles and thus, via their conversion, “save some of them” (i.e., Jews end up accepting the Gospel). On other occasions, he spoke of those who reject the Gospel as considering themselves “not worthy of salvation.”

Given the strong connection made between accepting the Gospel and salvation in the New Testament, it is hard to simply set aside the salvation motive as a significant part of the impetus toward preaching the Gospel in the first century.

I don’t know that the Pope is doing that. In the English translation, his language (“not so much”) suggests at least something of a downplaying of the salvation motive, but it does not rule it out altogether. (Also, this is precisely the kind of exegetical point on which he indicated people are free to contradict him. “How much did the salvation motive play a role in first century evangelization according to the New Testament?” is an exegetical question, not a dogmatic one.)

Now Pope Benedict takes up the question of Israel’s ongoing mission:

In this regard, the question of Israel’s mission has always been present in the background. We realize today with horror how many misunderstandings with grave consequences have weighed down our history. Yet a new reflection can acknowledge that the beginnings of a correct understanding have always been there, waiting to be rediscovered, however deep the shadows.

Here is something we need to note very carefully, because this is the hinge that takes us into the passage about evangelizing Jewish people. The subject at hand is not (certainly not primarily) the evangelization of Jews. It is the recognition of Israel’s unique role in history. Christians have, the Holy Father indicates, often failed to recognize that role and this has resulted in many horrific “misunderstandings with grave consequences [that] have weighted down our history.” Despite that, he indicates “the beginnings of a correct understanding” of Israel’s role “have always been there, waiting to be rediscovered, however deep in the shadows.”

Pope Benedict is thus about to cite an example designed to show how—even at a much different stage in Church history—there was nevertheless a shadowy, partial understanding of Israel’s unique role. That is the Pope’s primary point:

Here I should like to recall the advice given by Bernard of Clairvaux to his pupil Pope Eugene III on this matter. He reminds the Pope that his duty of care extends not only to Christians, but: “You also have obligations toward unbelievers, whether Jew, Greek, or Gentile” (De Consideratione III/1, 2). Then he immediately corrects himself and observes more accurately: “Granted, with regard to the Jews, time excuses you; for them a determined point in time has been fixed, which cannot be anticipated. The full number of the Gentiles must come in first. But what do you say about these Gentiles? … Why did it seem good to the Fathers … to suspend the word of faith while unbelief was obdurate? Why do we suppose the word that runs swiftly stopped short?” (De Consideratione III/1, 3).

So Bernard of Clarivaux at one point alluded to the two-phase understanding of Christian history, with the set time of Israel’s conversion being confined to the unknowable future. This the Pope documents his major theme (it’s what started out this section, remember?) has been understood in Christian history, and thus there has been at least some recognition of Israel’s unique and ongoing mission, whatever crimes and misunderstandings concerning the Jewish people have also accompanied it.

St. Bernard also seems to suggest that Pope Eugene has an excuse not to evangelize Jews as vigorously as gentiles because their corporate conversion is still future, and Pope Benedict appears to give support to this view, saying that this observation of St. Bernard’s is more accurate than his initial summary. The Holy Father then cites Hildegard Brem (a German nun of our own day):

Hildegard Brem comments on this passage as follows: “In the light of Romans 11:25, the Church must not concern herself with the conversion of the Jews, since she must wait for the time fixed for this by God, ‘until the full number of the Gentiles come in’ (Rom 11:25). On the contrary, the Jews themselves are a living homily to which the Church must draw attention, since they call to mind the Lord’s suffering (cf. Ep 363) . . .” (quoted in Sämtliche Werke, ed. Winkler, I, p. 834).

This passage, at least as it is translated in English, contains the strongest statement in the entire passage concerning evangelizing Jews. What does it mean? Romans 11:25 is one of the base texts that undergirds the two-phrase conception of Christian history that the pope has been discussing. It is where St. Paul says:

Lest you be wise in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery, brethren: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in.

In light of this, what does it mean to say that “the Church must not concern herself with the conversion of the Jews”? It could mean any number of things.

I think it would be reasonable to say that the Church should not worry or be concerned or upset if the Jewish people do not corporately convert in our own age. It would also be reasonable to say on the basis of Romans 11:25 to say that the Church should not expect the corporate conversion of the Jewish people in an age prior to the end. If any of these are the kind of “concern” the Church shouldn’t have then the statement is quite reasonable.

On the other hand, if what is meant is that the Church should not share the Gospel with Jewish people prior to the end then the statement is highly problematic. One reason is that we won’t know when the end has arrived until it really does arrive. At any point prior to the Second Coming we could be facing a situation that looks like the end but really isn’t. If this is the criterion the Church would never share the Gospel with the Jewish people.

Further, this understanding would be flatly in contradiction with that of the apostles and other New Testament authors who were themselves evangelized Jews!

And it’s not as if acceptance of the Gospel has nothing to do with salvation. Even if we recognize the possibility of salvation for the innocently unaware, the Church has repeatedly stressed that this is no reason to slack off in our efforts to evangelize! What’s good for the Jew is good for the gentile in this regard, for we all deal with the same merciful God, and if his mercy to the innocently unaware is reason to slack off evangelizing Jews then it’s reason to slack off evangelizing gentiles, too. (Which we know not to be the case.)

It also rubs against the grain of St. Paul’s characterization of the Jewish people in Romans 11 as olive shoots from a cultivated olive tree, whereas gentile believers represent wild olive shoots that have been grafted on to the cultivated tree. The tree nevertheless remains a cultivated one, and St. Paul comments that on account of this Jewish people who embrace the faith will be all the more readily grated onto “their own tree.”

In this light, suggestions that the Church ought not to evangelize Jewish people have (rightly) provoked comments from Jewish Christians like, “How dare you suggest that the fullness of my own faith not be shared with me! How dare you suggest that I as a Jew shouldn’t be taught about my own Messiah and all of his teachings! Your proposal would effectively disinherit me from the fullness of my own heritage!”

Most fundamentally, though, any suggestion that the Church should not evangelize Jewish people because of the hardness that has come upon Israel would contradict Romans 11:25 itself. It doesn’t say that Israel has become completely hard. It says that a hardness has come upon it “in part.” But only in part. Thus St. Paul makes the point that God has not rejected the Jewish people and that he himself is a Jew. The fact that Israel has been hardened in part toward the Gospel does not change the fact that part of it has not been hardened and is receptive to the Gospel.

The Church thus has an obligation to preach the Gospel to all mankind, including the part of Israel that has not been hardened.

Any total non-proclamation-of-the-Gospel-to-Jewish-people view is thus a non-starter.

What about a middle position?

Could one say, “Well, we know that Israel is partly hardened and partly not, so we should put some efforts into evangelizing Jewish people but not apply as much of our efforts there as elsewhere, with nations that do not display this hardening in the present age?”

Economics is the study of the use of limited resources that have alternative uses, and since there are a limited amount of evangelistic resources at our disposal and since they could be used to evangelize other peoples, so evangelization is subject to the laws of economics as much as any other field. This means we must make choices about who to evangelize and when. We even see decisions of that nature being made in the New Testament itself, as when Paul has a dream of a man from Macedonia and turns to evangelize there rather than in Asia Minor. One could argue that the two-stages of Christian history as they have been revealed to us constitute a similar revelation with implications for where we should spend the bulk of our evangelistic resources.

But there are only a few million Jews in the world, and there are over a billion Catholics. We’re not going to save that much of our evangelistic energy by adopting a limited evangelization policy for the Jewish people.

There is also something repugnant about the idea of hindering Christ’s own people, as a matter of policy, from learning about him. Certainly this was contrary to St. Paul’s practice, which was to preach to the Jewish community first and then to the gentiles.

So there is considerable ambiguity on this point. I don’t know what Hildegard Brem meant. If she meant we must not evangelize Jewish people or that we should be unconcerned about that subject then I think she is wrong. If she means that we should adopt a policy of minimal evangelization toward them, I am quite uncomfortable with the proposal. If she means that we should make reasonable efforts at evangelization but not be concerned that these will not bear full fruit until the end then I am entirely in agreement.

I know that, in view of the history of anti-Semitism, many Europeans (even moreso than Americans) are quite uncomfortable with the idea of evangelizing Jewish individuals. This discomfort is all the more acutely felt among many in Germany, for whom the Holocaust can be a powerful source of guilt and shame, even if they were not personally involved and even if they personally resisted it. This may play a role in coloring some statements regarding the question of evangelizing Jewish people, and sometimes these statements can be poorly phrased. That could be playing a role here with Hildegard Brem’s. I don’t know. I don’t know her or her work (or what is said in the original German!) well enough to assess that.

But what about Pope Benedict’s use of her work here?

He seems to cite her to build on the previous remarks of St. Bernard concerning the Jews’ unique role in history. Presumably he views what Brem says as elaborating more fully the general theme established with the quotations from St. Bernard. That includes Brem’s ambiguous statement regarding the Church not needing to be “concerned” with “the conversion of the Jews” (not the same thing as the evangelization of the Jews). It also includes Brem’s statement that “the Jews themselves are a living homily to which the Church must draw attention, since they call to mind the Lord’s suffering.”

This statement would not be described as “politically correct” from an interfaith standpoint. Brem is speaking from a uniquely Christian standpoint that would not be shared by non-Christian Jews. She appears to mean that the Church should call attention to the Jewish people because of their special role in God’s plan of the ages. This makes them “a living homily” (what Isaiah called “a light to the nations”), and the sufferings they have endured through history call to mind the sufferings that Christ also endured. She thus seems to suggest a form of historical, mystical identification between the suffering nation of Israel and the suffering Messiah who is its eschatological head. Thus through the innocent sufferings of Israel—both the nation and its Messiah—God brings about his plan for the world.

Or maybe she means something else. The quote is brief, and we do not have much context.

However that may be, the statement that the Church should not be “concerned” with Israel’s “conversion,” coupled with her distinctly Christian take on Israel’s role in history, do not add up to anything like a clear statement that the Church should refrain from sharing the Gospel with Jewish people or even that it should limit it as a matter of deliberate policy.

A more sensible approach would be to say that we should preach the Gospel always, in and out of season, to all, including Our Lord’s own people, and leave the results up to God, knowing that the corporate conversion of Israel is something that will only happen at the end of time.

We also shouldn’t prejudge the idea that we are not at the end of time. We might be. We also might not be. The Catechism stresses that the Second Coming is unpredictable as to its time. If God wanted, it could happen with amazing suddenness (that would affect the interpretation of some prophecies, but the nature of prophecy is such that its correct interpretation is often only determinable in hindsight).

In view of the ambiguity of Brem’s statement, I think we need to be cautious in what we attribute to Pope Benedict.

I also think it is significant that he chose to quote her rather than speak in his own voice. One of the things characteristic of his writing is he often borrows what others have said when he wishes to propose an idea without imposing it. He knows that people will take what he says in his own voice as if he is speaking with papal authority even when, as in this book set, he has said everyone is free to contradict him and that it is not a matter of magisterial teaching.

So even if Brem is saying something more than what I think can reasonably be concluded from Romans 11:25, I think Pope Benedict is likely proposing it for consideration rather than imposing it as a matter of obligatory belief.

I also would cite to final pieces of evidence regarding Pope Benedict’s handling of this subject.

First, he drops the discussion of the conversion of Israel and what concern the Church should have for it. He concludes by returning to the general theme of the two-stage understanding of Christian history—the same theme he began with—and the fact that the gospel must first be preached to the nations. He concludes:

The prophecy of the time of the Gentiles and the corresponding mission is a core element of Jesus’ eschatological message. The special mission to evangelize the Gentiles, which Paul received from the risen Lord, is firmly anchored in the message given by Jesus to his disciples before his Passion. The time of the Gentiles — “the time of the Church” — which, as we have seen, is proclaimed in all the Gospels, constitutes an essential element of Jesus’ eschatological message.

Finally, this is the same pope who in 2008 re-wrote the Good Friday prayer for the Jewish people that is part of the extraordinary form of the Mass. That prayer, as he personally re-wrote it, reads:

Let us also pray for the Jews: That our God and Lord may illuminate their hearts, that they acknowledge Jesus Christ is the Savior of all men. (Let us pray. Kneel. Rise.) Almighty and eternal God, who want that all men be saved and come to the recognition of the truth, propitiously grant that even as the fullness of the peoples enters Thy Church, all Israel be saved. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.

He wrote this knowing that it would not please many in the Jewish community, who would have preferred no prayer at all or at least a more muted one.

Whatever else may be the case, it does not seem to me that Pope Benedict is opposed to reasonable efforts to share the Gospel with Our Lord’s own people.

What do you think?

Lent Fight Update!

In the years I have been maintaining this blog, I have uploaded something over 4700 posts (according to current statistics). This makes it a bit hard to remember everything I've put up.

Fortunately, I have the memories of readers to remind me, and one reader in particular has reminded me that there are some posts that I had forgotten to include in the Annual Lent Fight that I uploaded yesterday.

These posts concern, in particular, the Church's laws concerning Ash Wednesday and its laws regarding fasting.

As a result, I've done some link updating.

Since Ash Wednesday is a day of both fast and abstinence, I have chosen to repeat here the relevant links, along with this introductory note citing the main differences.

I hope this helps, and I wish all a tranquil and spiritually productive season of Lent.

GENERAL

DURATION

THE DURATION OF LENT
LET'S COUNT THE DAYS OF LENT
"FORTY" DAYS
THE INFAMOUS SUNDAYS IN LENT CONTROVERSY: I, II, III, IV,V

PENANCE IN GENERAL

FASTING

ABSTINENCE

ASH WEDNESDAY

HOLY THURSDAY

SEVEN CHURCHES VISITATION

GOOD FRIDAY

WHY IS IT CALLED "GOOD" FRIDAY?

FRIDAY PENANCE OUTSIDE OF LENT

MORE ON FRIDAY PENANCE

What do you think?

Kissling: Abortion Advocates Must Evolve Or Fail

Frances Kissling, who made her career and her reputation by sticking a finger in the Catholic Church’s eye for decades as head of the inaccurately named “Catholics for Choice,” has written a piece for the Washington Post in which she argues that abortion leaders are inflexible, change-resistant ideologues who are stuck in a timewarp and are using outdated, myth-based arguments that have caused them to lose ground, ground she says they cannot recover, and that they risk losing the abortion fight entirely.

Let’s hope she’s right!

Especially about that inflexible change resistance leading to losing the abortion fight entirely. That’s the best part.

Unfortunately, she hasn’t seen the light and switched sides. She’s urging them to be less inflexible and more reality-acknowledging in their approach—so that they can avoid total failure as a movement.

Some excerpts:

[T]he opposition to legal abortion has increased dramatically. Opponents use increasingly sophisticated arguments – focusing on advances in fetal medicine, stressing the rights of parents to have a say in their minor children’s health care, linking opposition to abortion with opposition to war and capital punishment, seeking to make abortion not illegal but increasingly unavailable – and have succeeded in swinging public opinion toward their side.

Meanwhile, those of us in the abortion-rights movement have barely changed our approach. We cling to the arguments that led to victory in Roe v. Wade. Abortion is a private decision, we say, and the state has no power over a woman’s body. Those arguments may have worked in the 1970s, but today, they are failing us, and focusing on them only risks all the gains we’ve made.

The “pro-choice” brand has eroded considerably. As recently as 1995 it was the preferred label of 56 percent of Americans; that dropped to 42 percent in 2009 and was 45 percent in 2010, according to Gallup polls. And abortion rights are under attack in Congress. . . .

Pro-choice advocates have good reason to oppose legislation that restricts abortion in any way, but unfortunately we’re not going to regain the ground we have lost. What we must do is stop holding on to a strategy that isn’t working, and one that is making the legal right to abortion more vulnerable than ever before.

We can no longer pretend the fetus is invisible. . . . We must end the fiction that an abortion at 26 weeks is no different from one at six weeks.

These are not compromises or mere strategic concessions, they are a necessary evolution. The positions we have taken up to now are inadequate for the questions of the 21st century. We know more than we knew in 1973, and our positions should reflect that.

The fetus is more visible than ever before, and the abortion-rights movement needs to accept its existence and its value. It may not have a right to life, and its value may not be equal to that of the pregnant woman, but ending the life of a fetus is not a morally insignificant event. Very few people would argue that there is no difference between the decision to abort at 6 weeks and the decision to do so when the fetus would be viable outside of the womb, which today is generally at 24 to 26 weeks. Still, it is rare for mainstream movement leaders to say that publicly. Abortion is not merely a medical matter, and there is an unintended coarseness to claiming that it is.

We need to firmly and clearly reject post-viability abortions except in extreme cases. . . .

Those kinds of regulations are not anti-woman or unduly invasive. They rightly protect all of our interests in women’s health and fetal life.

Even abortions in the second trimester, especially after 20 weeks, need to be considered differently from those that happen early in pregnancy. . . .

We should also work to sensibly regulate abortion facilities – not to prohibit access, but to ensure safety.

Kissling also has a bunch of recommendations to advance the abortion cause, things like cozying up to the government, getting funding for abortions for those in the military, handing out a lot more contraception, focusing on the plight of poor women as a way of keeping abortion legal for rich women, etc.

She concludes:

Some of my colleagues in the abortion-rights movement will resist even this modest shift on post-first trimester abortions, fearing that any compromise reflects weakness. Give the opposition an inch and they will take a yard. I believe most in the movement share my concerns and hold more moderate positions on abortion than their rhetoric or silence implies. These shifts I am suggesting are not about compromising or finding common ground with abortion opponents. Compromise assumes that there are two parties prepared to give up something in return for settling an issue. Neither opponents nor advocates of legal abortion are willing to do that. But, for pro-choice advocates, standing our ground will mean losing ground entirely.

For too long, abortion has been treated in black and white. Any discussion that deviates from legal or illegal, women or fetus, faces criticism from the twin absolutes of choice or life. If the choice movement does not change, control of policy on abortion will remain in the hands of those who want it criminalized. If we don’t suggest sensible balanced legislation and regulation of abortion, we will be left with far more draconian policies – and, eventually, no choices at all.

I have to say that I’m with her colleagues who would view fear that her proposals reflect weakness. They do.

And she’s right that the less extreme abortion advocates are, the less out-of-alignment-with-reality their position would be. The less out of alignment a position is with reality, the harder it is to attack and the easier it is to defend. That’s why successful lies always contain elements of truth. Otherwise they wouldn’t be believable.

Frances, may you be heeded by your fellow abortion advocates the same way that Cassandra was heeded by the Trojans. You deserve no less. You’ve been involved in an epic tragedy that has taken far more lives than theirs.

Readers: What do you think her chances are?

“Vatican Warned Bishops Not To Report Child Abuse”!

That’s the sensationalistic headline of this story in the New York Times. As usual, it’s by Laurie Goodstein, and as usual she makes significant errors in her reporting that make the story more sensationalistic in a way that (just coincidentally) paints the Holy See in an unfavorable light. (So . . . what’s up with that, Laurie? You’ve been on the beat long enough that you should be better informed on these matters.)

As with previous stories of the same nature, this one involves a document from back in the 1990s that has now come to the attention of the press. It was a letter written by the Apostolic Nuncio of Ireland (that’s basically the Holy See’s ambassador to Ireland, though he also has a liaising role with the local bishops). In the letter the Nuncio—then Luciano Storero—communicated a message to the Irish bishops from the Congregation for Clergy concerning a document that the Irish bishops had drafted on child sexual abuse.

This letter was immediately hailed by groups like SNAP as the “smoking gun” they’ve been waiting for, showing that the Holy See took part in the cover up of sexual abuse, allowing it to be sued in court, humiliated, and have money extracted from it.

You can read (a tiny, low resolution image of) the letter itself here.

Now let’s walk through it and see how the claims made about it stack up against the document itself . . .

APOSTOLIC NUNCIATURE IN IRELAND
N. 808/97
Dublin, 31 January 1997

Strictly Confidential

To: the Members of the Irish Episcopal conference
—their Dioceses

Your Excellency,

The Congregation for the Clergy has attentively studied the complex question of sexual abuse or minors by clerics and the document entitled “Child Sexual Abuse: Framework for a Church Response”, published by the Irish Catholic Bishops Advisory Committee.

So here is what has happened at the time the letter was written: Priests and religious in Ireland abused children. This came to light and caused an enormous scandal. (In fact, it brought down the Irish government.) In response, the Irish bishops conference (in conjunction with the Conference of Religious in Ireland) created an Advisory Committee to draft a document proposing how to respond to cases of child sexual abuse. The result was the document referenced above, which is online here in .pdf form. At least that’s a version of the document. Whether it was the version referenced in the letter is not 100% clear. In any event, this document came to the attention of the Congregation for Clergy in Rome, and now the Congregation for Clergy has asked the Irish nuncio to convey its impressions to the Irish bishops.

Note well: The Congregation for Clergy is not the same as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict) was the head of the doctrinal body, not the Congregation for Clergy. The head of that in 1997 was Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos. More on him in a bit. For now the important point—given the press’s invariable attempt to read everything Vatican in terms of the pope himself—is that Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict has no connection with this letter. It wasn’t his department that was involved.

The congregation wishes to emphasize the need for this document to conform to the canonical norms presently in force.

So: The Congregation for Clergy has concerns that provisions in the document did not conform to canon law as it was in 1997. Fair enough. That’s not anything sinister. To give a civil law analogy, it’s a little like warning someone that parts of his proposed law appear to violate the U.S. Constitution. Warning someone that parts of his law appear unconstitutional is not a sinister thing. It’s a way of ensuring justice and avoiding a lot of headaches for everybody.

One might be wrong, and provisions of the law in fact might be fully constitutional (read: canonical), but saying, “Your policy needs to be legal in terms of Church law” is not evidence of evil intent.

The text, however, contains “procedures and dispositions which appear contrary to canonical discipline and which, if applied, could invalidate the actions of the same Bishops who are attempting to put a stop to these problems. If such procedures were to be followed by the Bishops and there were cases of eventual hierarchical recourse lodged at the Holy See, the results could be highly embarrassing and detrimental to those same Diocesan authorities.

So the Congregation for Clergy (who is being quoted in this paragraph; note the open quotation marks) is concerned that some proposals in the Irish Advisory Committee document appear to be contrary to canon law. As a result, bishops acting on those parts of the proposal might take canonical actions against priests that are legally invalid. In other words, there could be miscarriages of justice. So what happens if miscarriages of justice occur? Well, the priests might appeal their case to Rome, and Rome might agree that there was a miscarriage of justice because the law was not applied correctly. In that case the bishop would be put in an embarrassing position.

And that’s quite true. A bishop would be put in an embarrassing and detrimental position if he violated canon law and a miscarriage of justice resulted and his actions had to be undone. There’s nothing sinister about telling a bishop that. People in positions of power need to be reminded regularly that their authority has limits and they must provide justice for those whose cases they handle. The law needs to be followed closely so that we (a) don’t have innocent priests being wrongly convicted and (b) we don’t have predator priests escaping punishment because the law wasn’t followed. The exact same concerns apply in civil courts: We need to follow the law to avoid miscarriages of justice.

Now, you’ll notice something that hasn’t yet been mentioned in this letter: the issue of reporting predators to the police. That hasn’t come up yet. All the discussion so far has been about making sure the Church’s own internal legal system is followed so that we don’t have miscarriages of justice.

How did Laurie Goodstein frame this in her article for the Times? She wrote: “It [the letter] said that for both ‘moral and canonical’ reasons, the bishops must handle all accusations through internal church channels. Bishops who disobeyed, the letter said, may face repercussions when their abuse cases were heard in Rome.”

WHOA! MAJOR MEDIA DISTORTION!

The only “repercussions” mentioned in the letter is the embarrassing situation a bishop would find himself in if he failed to follow the law and a miscarriage of justice resulted and Rome overturns it on appeal. Yet Goodstein makes it sound as if the letter is threatening bishops with some kind of retaliation if they don’t “obey” the letter. This is wrong on several levels. First, the letter is not an ultimatum. It is not a set of orders. It is an advisory statement cautioning the Irish bishops that they need to make sure they follow canon law so that miscarriages of justice don’t happen and then get overturned on appeal. There is no threat of retaliation here.

Worse, Goodstein makes it appear that the Vatican is threatening bishops with retaliation if they report predators to the police. The subject of reporting pedophiles hasn’t even come up yet. And she is wrong when she says that the letter states that “the bishops must handle all accusations through internal church channels,” as opposed (presumably) to reporting predators to the police. But the document says nothing of the kind. There is nothing in the document saying that a bishop must keep information about predators secret. What the Congregation objected to was mandatory reporting. One can think what one likes about the wisdom of mandatory reporting, but there is a big difference between saying, “You must keep all cases of this from the eyes of the police on pain of Vatican retaliation” and saying, “Hey, maybe there needs to be some discretion exercised and it shouldn’t be automatic reporting.”

Goodstein thus implies that the letter suggests something it doesn’t. The letter doesn’t state that the Congregation for Clergy is opposed to reporting predators to the authorities. Instead, it says . . .

In particular, the situation of ‘mandatory reporting’ gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature”.

This is the end of the quotation from the Congregation for Clergy. Note the closing quotation marks.

So the Congregation for Clergy is saying, “We’ve got reservations about the situation of ‘mandatory reporting’ on moral and canonical grounds.” That’s an expression of concern. It’s a cautionary statement, but it is not an order. It’s telling the Irish bishops about an issue that could come up down the road. And how unreasonable is the concern expressed? An overzealous application of a mandatory reporting policy could result in entirely innocent people being put through the wringer and having their reputations and livelihood destroyed.

Would that be moral? Would you like to be on the receiving end of a policy like that? It is easy to see how one might have moral concerns about automatic reporting policies and want to make sure that there are appropriate safeguards to keep innocent people from having their lives destroyed.

It also is easy to see how such a policy could fall afoul of canon law, which contains provisions protecting an individual’s right to his good reputation. An overzealous application of a mandatory reporting policy could unjustly deprive innocent people of their reputation—and more.

And these moral and canonical concerns don’t just apply to priests. Think about the repercussions of a mandatory reporting policy for the victims!

It has been a common experience in years past for people to come to Church authorities to warn them about the behavior of a particular priest but only on condition of confidentiality. They don’t want to get involved with the authorities. They don’t want to be hauled into court and put on the witness stand and forced to relive horrible things that were done to them under cross examination. They don’t want to come to the attention of the media and have their private sexual trauma exposed for the whole world to see.

But a mandatory reporting policy would prevent Church authorities from giving these people the assurances of confidentiality that they seek. It thus could deter them from reporting predators and result in more sexual predation.

Before we get back to the nuncio’s letter, let’s detour for a moment and look at what the proposed Irish policy actually says about reporting:

2.2. Recommended Reporting Policy

2.2.1 In all instances where it is known or suspected that a child has been, or is being, sexually abused by a priest or religious the matter should be reported to the civil authorities. Where the suspicion or knowledge results from the complaint of an adult of abuse during his or her childhood, this should also be reported to the civil authorities.

2.2.2 The report should be made without delay to the senior ranking police officer for the area in which the abuse is alleged to have occurred. Where the suspected victim is a child, or where a complaint by an adult gives rise to child protection questions, the designated person within the appropriate health board/health and social services board should also be informed. A child protection question arises, in the case of a complaint by an adult, where an accused priest or religious holds or has held a position which has afforded him or her unsupervised access to children.

2.2.3 The Advisory Committee recognises that this recommended reporting policy may cause difficulty in that some people who come to the Church with complaints of current or past child sexual abuse by a priest or religious seek undertakings of confidentiality. They are concerned to protect the privacy of that abuse of which even their immediate family members may not be aware. Their primary reason in coming forward may be to warn Church authorities of a priest or religious who is a risk to children.

2.2.4 The recommended reporting policy may deter such people from coming forward or may be perceived by those who do come forward as an insensitive and heavy-handed response by Church authorities. This is particularly so where the complaint relates to incidents of abuse many years earlier.

2.2.5 Nonetheless, undertakings of absolute confidentiality should not be given but rather the information should be expressly received within the terms of this reporting policy and on the basis that only those who need to know will be told.

WOW!

If this policy means what it says then just on suspicion that abuse may be taking place (suspicion being a subjective state that is very easy to come by) you’ve got to report the priest or religious to the police. No provision is made (at least in this section) for distinguishing between suspicions that are credible or well-founded and those that aren’t. Similarly, no provision is made for doing a preliminary investigation. Instead, Church workers are to make the mandatory report “without delay.”

Furthermore, the Advisory Committee is aware that this policy will put victims on the spot and force them to relive their traumas as the authorities handle the case. It is further aware that the policy of mandatory reporting may seem “insensitive and heavy-handed,” “particularly so where the complaint relates to incidents of abuse many years earlier.” Nevertheless, the policy says, if someone comes to you and says, “I want to report a predator priest but I also want to do so confidentially so that I’m not traumatized and humiliated in public or among my own family members” then Irish Church authorities would be supposed to say, “I’m sorry, but our reporting policy does not admit of exceptions, and I can receive your information only under the terms of our reporting policy, so I cannot promise you confidentiality.”

Can you imagine someone in the office of the Congregation for Clergy having concerns of a moral and canonical nature about how such a policy might be implemented?

I can!

In fact, the Advisory Committee itself can recognize why people would have concerns about this exceptionless policy. Otherwise it wouldn’t have gone out of its way to respond in advance and at length to the concerns victims were sure to have.

HAS LAURIE GOODSTEIN EVEN READ THIS POLICY? DID SHE DO THE TEN SECONDS OF GOOGLING IT TOOK ME TO FIND IT? IF SO, WHY DIDN’T SHE SHARE THE REPORT’S CONCERNS ABOUT THE FEELINGS OF VICTIMS OF SEXUAL ABUSE WITH HER AUDIENCE? THESE ARE QUESTIONS HER BOSSES AS THE NEW YORK TIMES SHOULD ASK HER.

Now, back to the nuncio’s letter:

Since the policies on sexual abuse in the English speaking world exhibit many o[f] the same characteristics and procedures, the Congregation is involved in a global study of them. At the appropriate time, with the collaboration of the interested Episcopal Conferences and in dialogue with them, the Congregation will not be remiss in establishing some concrete directives with regard to these Policies.

So . . . the Congregation for Clergy is hardly coming off as sinister here. To try to find an effective way to deal with these situations, it’s doing a study of how these things are handled in the English-speaking world. It plans to involve the relevant bishops’ conferences in the discussion, so they will have their say. And when this is all done it will issue concrete directives.

This is not the language of coverup. It’s the language of, “We want to find an effective solution to this problem, and we want to work with you to make that happen.”

For these reasons and because the above mentioned text is not an official document of the Episcopal Conference but merely a study document, I am directed to inform the individual Bishops of Ireland of the preoccupations of the Congregation in this regard, underlining that in the sad case of accusations of sexual abuse by clerics, the procedures established by the Code of Canon Law must be meticulously followed under pain of invalidity of the acts involved if the priest so punished were to make hierarchical recourse against his Bishop.

Asking you to kindly let me know of the safe receipt of this letter and with the assurance of my cordial regard, I am

Yours sincerely in Christ,
+Luciano Storero
Apostolic Nuncio

And so the final part of the letter gently reminds the individual Irish bishop that the Advisory Committee’s proposal is just that—a proposal, a study document, not something that has been passed and approved and that the bishop is obliged to follow. Further, it’s a problematic document and if the bishop acts on some of its provisions it could lead to a miscarriage of justice that might blow up in his face on appeal. But the Congregation for Clergy is working on a solution for how to handle this kind of horrible situation. Please don’t implement the flawed document; give us the time to work with the relevant bishops’ conferences to find the needed solution.

That’s the takehome message of this letter.

Contrast that to Laurie Goodstein’s opening paragraph:

A newly disclosed document reveals that Vatican officials instructed the bishops of Ireland in 1997 that they must not adopt a policy of reporting priests suspected of child abuse to the police or civil authorities.

This is highly misleading. The document was of an advisory nature that expressed cautions and concerns. It did not “instruct” the bishops that they “must not adopt a policy of reporting priests suspected of child abuse to the police or civil authorities.” It advised the bishops that there were serious moral and canonical reservations about the specific reporting policy that had been proposed to them.

And it expressed those concerns with good reason!

If I were a priest or a victim, or someone who just knew a priest or a victim, or just a bystander (which is what I am), I’d have concerns about that policy.

Now, please bear in mind that I am not saying that the Congregation for Clergy’s concerns were all well founded. The letter is so brief and is expressed in such general terms that we don’t know what their specific concerns were, either regarding the reporting policy or other aspects of the proposal. They allude in addition to multiple concerns of a canonical nature (apparently concerning the Code of Canon Law’s penal provisions).

Whether they were correct in all their concerns I don’t know. I do know that they were headed at this time by Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, who has a particular history on this subject. And I also know that the letter does not come off as the sinister, “under no circumstances tell the authorities” document the press is representing it as.

Of course, that won’t stop the New York Times and other media outlets, and lawyers, from trying to milk this for all it’s worth.

What do you think?

Fr. Cutie: What Options Did Fallen Priest Have?

In our previous post, we looked at the situation regarding Fr. Albert Cutié, who has written a self-justifying book regarding the scandal he created by having an inappropriate romantic (and presumably sexual) relationship with a woman and, when this relationship was revealed through the press, abandoned his role as a Catholic priest, joined the Episcopalian church, and civilly married the woman, by whom he has subsequently fathered a child.

The previous post looked at the Catholic Church’s general discipline of celibacy (remaining unmarried) for the priests of the Latin Church that exists within it (the celibacy requirement operates differently in many of the Eastern Catholic churches also in union with the pope). In this post we will look at the options that were open to Fr. Cutie at different stages of events and the choices he made.

We will begin with the stage where he first began to be attracted to Ruhama Buni Canellis, the divorced woman with whom he eventually attempted civil marriage. What options did he have at this stage?

1) Just Say No.

This was the only morally legitimate option open to Fr. Cutie upon the onset of attraction to Buni Canellis. We do not know at this point in time (though his forthcoming book may reveal more about the matter) whether she first pursued him or he first pursued her or whether they simultaneously began pursuing each other, but Fr. Cutie had an obligation to neither make amorous advances toward her nor to respond to amorous advances on her part.

As part of the rite of ordination, Fr. Cutie had freely assumed the obligation to remain celibate (unmarried) and thus, via the virtue of chastity (behaving in a sexually appropriate manner) to remain continent (not have sex). This obligation is further canonically specified by Canon 277 §1 of the Code of Canon Law, which states:

Clerics are obliged to observe perfect and perpetual continence for the sake of the kingdom of heaven and therefore are bound to celibacy which is a special gift of God by which sacred ministers can adhere more easily to Christ with an undivided heart and are able to dedicate themselves more freely to the service of God and humanity.

Basic principles of moral theology also require that if one is not a potential, legitimate sexual partner (i.e., spouse) for another person, one also must not engage in behavior oriented toward generating romance, fostering sexual temptation, and raising hopes of a union with that person that one is not free to contract. Consequently, §2 of Canon 277 also specifies:

Clerics are to behave with due prudence towards persons whose company can endanger their obligation to observe continence or give rise to scandal among the faithful.

As was documented in part one of this series, Fr. Cutie was caught on film allowing Buni Canellis to amorously wrap her legs around him and also putting his own hand down Buni Canellis’ swimsuit to fondle her behind. Both of these actions were clear violations of his moral and canonical obligations, as discussed above.

While becoming ordained is not in every respect the same as becoming married, both involve the free assumption of a state of life that involves a sacred commitment regarding sexual matters. In the case of ordination, one makes a sacred commitment that one will not pursue sexual or romantic relationships with anyone, while in the case of matrimony one makes a sacred commitment that one will not pursue sexual or romantic relationships with anyone but one’s spouse. Fr. Cutie’s violation of this sacred commitment is thus analogous to a husband’s pursuit of a sexual or romantic relationship with someone who is not his wife. It counts as the violation of a grave obligation, freely undertaken (canon law is explicit that both ordination and matrimony must be freely chosen commitments), and in this regard it is thus analogous to “cheating” on one’s spouse.

There are also serious moral and canonical questions to be raised regarding the abuse of Fr. Cutie’s spiritual office as a priest in this regard.

In the realm of moral theology, it is gravely sinful for a priest in particular to cooperate with another person in sexual sin, particularly if that person is one of the souls entrusted to his spiritual care, but also in regard to anyone in general. The priest by virtue of his ordination has a sacred position that elevates him above the ordinary faithful in a way paralleling Jesus’ words:

“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of things that cause sin! Such things must come, but woe to the one through whom they come! (Matthew 18:6-7).

On the canonical side, the Church is quite concerned that its ministers not abuse their sacred office by using it for purposes of seduction, or even for the willing subversion of another’s soul. This is illustrated by the canonical penalties to which a priest is subject if he solicits a sexual sin in conjunction with the sacrament of confession or if he sacramentally absolves one who is his accomplice in sexual sin, both of which are regarded by the Holy See as graviora delicta (Latin, “graver offenses”) that are reserved to the competence of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome to deal with (cf. this resource).

We do not know at this point, and may never know, whether Fr. Cutie committed either of these offenses specifically, but the two illustrate the Holy See’s concern that priests not abuse their sacred office toward sexual ends.

Given that Fr. Cutie failed to exercise the morally legitimate option to “just say no” to the attraction he was feeling toward Buni Canellis (and please note: feeling attraction is not a sin; the question is how one chooses to deal with it) and dug himself in this deep, what further options were open to him? The morally legitimate one was . . .

2) Repent

Having cooperated with his own fall into sexual sin, as well as that of Buni Canellis, what should Fr. Cutie have done at some point—either when the press publicized his relationship or before or after this point?

An obvious solution would have been to repent—which is what we all need to do when we have fallen into sin, whether sexual or otherwise. Such an action is required by the terms of the gospel:

Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news [gospel] of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:14b).

Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).

A clear and obvious way in which his act of repentance could have been expressed would be to break off his romantic (and possibly sexual) relationship with Buni Canellis.

Given that the matter had now been made public, there would remain questions regarding his ability to function as a priest. He certainly would have had to accept a lesser role, certainly retiring from the high-profile work he had been doing on radio and television, and quite likely retiring from any exercise of priestly ministry apart from certainly highly specialized cases (e.g., hearing the confession of a person about to die).

Even if the matter had not become public at the time of his repentance, however, there would be various factors that could make the exercise of ministry doubtful—e.g., if Buni Canellis would not accept his decision and threatened to expose him to the press.

We do not know, and likely will never know, whether that would have been the case, but a simple “call off the affair” course of action may have been difficult for any number of reasons, including Cutie’s emotionally attachment to Buni Cannelis and commitments he may have made to her regarding their future. In that case, what options would be open to him? The obvious one would be . . .

3) Pursue Laicization

While the Church recognizes the sacred commitment that is entailed through ordination to the priesthood, it also recognizes that the ordained may be or become unsuitable for the role of priest.

In other words: There can be mistakes. Sometimes a man may be ordained to the priesthood who is not truly suitable for it. Alternately, a man can through his actions make himself unsuitable for priestly ministry. It could be the case that Fr. Cutie was unsuitable from the beginning for priestly ministry or that, though his actions, he had made himself such.

In such cases, the remedy that canon law provides is a procedure known as “laicization” or, more technically “loss of the clerical state.” This does not (automatically) mean that his ordination was invalid, but it does mean that—in the cases of a valid ordination—a laicized priest apart from certain carefully subscribed situations (e.g., hearing the confession of a dying person), is returned to the lay state such that he is prohibited from exercising his faculties as a priest. It also can (but does not always) involve release from the obligation of celibacy. (See this part of the Code for more on the loss of the clerical state in general.)

After reflection on his situation, Fr. Cutie thus could have deemed that he was unsuitable for priestly ministry from the beginning and pursued laicization. He also may have (with a very high degree of plausibility) thought that his actions with regard to Buni Canellis had made him unsuitable for it and pursued laicization on those grounds, including an appeal to the Holy See to allow him to be released from the obligation of celibacy so that he could marry Buni Canellis in view of the emotional/other attachments and obligations he felt existed between them.

Such a path would not have resulted in an instantaneous way of rectifying their situation, or an easy and quick means of resolving the situation (such decisions are left to the discretion of the Holy See), but pursuing this path could represent a fundamental act of repentance and an intention to “make things right.”

Regrettably, Fr. Cutie did not choose even this path. Instead, according to Wikipedia:

By the end of [May, 2009] Cutié announced that he had been in the process of discerning entering The Episcopal Church for the last couple of years, which in turn helped him consolidate marriage and his calling to serve God.

Father Alberto Cutié was received into the Episcopal Church on May 28, 2009, by the Rt. Rev. Leo Frade, the Cuban-born bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Southeast Florida, and became the administrator and pastoral minister of the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection in Biscayne Park, Miami, where he was licensed as a pastoral assistant. He was subsequently received as an Episcopal priest and instituted as priest-in-charge of the congregation on May 29, 2010.

On June 26, 2009, Cutié and Ruhama Buni Canellis married in a church ceremony at St. Bernard de Clairvaux Church in North Miami Beach. [Episcopalian] Bishop Frade officiated, assisted by the Rt. Rev. Onell Soto (retired Episcopal Bishop of Venezuela) and several other Episcopal clergy.

Cutié is presently serving as the Priest-in-Charge at the Church of the Resurrection in Biscayne Park, Florida. On November 30, 2010, Canellis gave birth to the couple’s first child, daughter Camila Victoria Cutié. Canellis has one other child from a previous marriage.

Cutie thus chose to “jump ship”—to defect from the Catholic Church and enter the Episcopalian Church, where he attempted marriage with Buni Canellis.

Was this a legitimate option for him?

On objective moral and canonical grounds, the answer is no.

While one can never judge the subjective state of a person’s heart, from the perspective of objective moral theology, the answer is no. Objectively speaking, many non-Catholic communities retain elements of the patrimony willed by Christ for his followers, but only the Catholic Church retains these elements in their fullness. While a person in good conscience may find salvation in many faith communities, to deliberately to separate oneself from the fullness of truth and grace that the Catholic Church represents is gravely sinful. As an informed Catholic to whom God would provide sufficient light and grace to retain his faith, Fr. Cutie’s abandonment of the Church represents an objectively grave situation that could only be a non-mortal sin through a lack of due knowledge or a lack of due consent.

Further, from the canonical perspective, Fr. Cutie’s situation does not mean that he is validly married to Buni Canellis. According to Canon 1087:

Those in sacred orders invalidly attempt marriage.

The fact that Fr. Cutie was ordained and has not—so far as we know—been laicized with the ability to contract marriage—means that his attempt to contract marriage in the Episcopalian Church is just that—an attempt, and not a successful one.

Unless there are facts regarding the case that have not yet become public, his present civil marriage to Buni Canellis is invalid and thus in the category that Jesus warned us against, telling us that divorce does not entail an automatic right to marry someone else and can, thus, lead to situations of adultery.

From what is presently publicly known (so far as I can determine), Fr. Cutie is living in an invalid marriage and thus is engaging either in objective fornication or objective adultery (given Buni Canellis’s previous marriage).

Either way, things look bad.

In this part of the series, we have looked at the options available to Fr. Cutie at different steps in his life history. In the next part we will look at the book he has chosen to write, as represented by its press release.

In the meantime, what do you think?

Abortion Hospital Decree & Pushback

The Diocese of Phoenix has now made available the decree of Bishop Olmsted revoking his permission for St. Joseph’s Medical Center to use the name “Catholic.” This is a welcome development, since it is always good to see the instrument itself by which such things are done (and they are only very rarely done)—as opposed to an explanatory text, which is what we initially got yesterday.

One of the things that had been missing from the public discussion up to now was the canonical basis on which Bishop Olmsted acted. The leaked correspondence did not contain references to the possible canons on which he could act. I assume that those canons were mentioned in other, unleaked correspondence with Catholic Healthcare West (CHW).

As I suspected, the Bishop was exercising his authority under Canon 216 (there are other potential canons that could have been cited, but this was the most relevant). This canon, as you will recall, states:

Can. 216 Since they participate in the mission of the Church, all the Christian faithful have the right to promote or sustain apostolic action even by their own undertakings, according to their own state and condition. Nevertheless, no undertaking is to claim the name Catholic without the consent of competent ecclesiastical authority.

So, with that as background, here is the official decree itself . . .

DECREE

Revoking Episcopal Consent to Claim the “Catholic” Name according to Canon 216

By virtue of my Episcopal authority as the Ordinary of the Particular Church of the Diocese of Phoenix, and in accord with Canon 216 of the Code of Canon Law, I hereby revoke my consent for the following organization to utilize in any way the name “Catholic.”

• St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, Phoenix, AZ

After much time and effort in cooperation with the leadership of Catholic Healthcare West and having studied the matter carefully with the assistance of experts in medical ethics, moral theology, and canon law, it has been determined that the aforementioned organization no longer qualifies as a “Catholic” entity in the territory of the Diocese of Phoenix. For the benefit of the public good, particularly amongst the Christian Faithful, I decree that the organization listed above may not use the name Catholic or be identified as Catholic in the Diocese of Phoenix.

The reason for this decision is based upon the fact that, as Bishop of Phoenix, I cannot verify that this health care organization will provide health care consistent with authentic Catholic moral teaching as interpreted by me in exercising my legitimate Episcopal authority to interpret the moral law.

This Decree of Removal of my consent goes into effect as of this day, and will remain in effect indefinitely, until such time as I am convinced that this institution is authentically Catholic by its adherence to the Ethical and Religious Directives of the United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops, in addition to the standards of Catholic identity set forth in official church documents,
Caholic theology, and canon law.

Given this day, December 21, 2010 at the Chancery of the Diocese of Phoenix

+ Thomas J. Olmsted
Bishop of Phoenix

Sr. Jean Steffes, CSA
Chancellor

The Diocese of Phoenix has materials devoted to the case on its website, HERE. This includes video of a press conference with Bishop Olmsted.

Meanwhile, St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center has done its own press conference and issued its own statement. You can find them here.

Finally, the National Catholic Reporter (not Register) is reporting that the Catholic Health Association is backing the hospital over the bishop:

Daughter of Charity Sr. Carol Keehan, CHA president and CEO, said, “St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix has many programs that reach out to protect life. They had been confronted with a heartbreaking situation. They carefully evaluated the patient’s situation and correctly applied the ‘Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services’ to it, saving the only life that was possible to save.”

NCR received Keehan’s statement in an e-mail late Dec. 21. [SOURCE.]

So, the pushback to the Bishop’s decision has begun. The story will grow more involved.

What do you think?