Category: The Church

Europe may be in its spiritual death throes, but the resurrection of Catholicism across the pond has already begun:

"Vatican officials say young people’s thirst for moral direction is driving a resurging interest in Catholicism. ‘There’s a reawakening after a time of secularization,’ says Sister Giuseppina Fragasso, vice president of the Vatican’s association for cloistered monks and nuns.

"The number of Catholic clergy has dwindled worldwide since peaking in the late 1960s. In particular, it’s getting harder to attract new blood to the priesthood. According to the Vatican’s statistics office, monasteries have been closing too fast for their researchers to keep track. While other Christian sects attract priests by allowing them to marry and by inviting women to ordination, the Catholic church still prohibits such activities.

"But the tide is turning in Italy. Nearly half of adult Catholics attend mass at least weekly, up from 35 percent who did so in 1980.

"Clergy credit much of young people’s interest in Catholicism to the late Pope John Paul II, stressing the impact of the World Youth Days he started in 1984. Catholic fervor reached a crescendo with his death in April 2005. ‘This pope really brought the faith closer to young people; there was a strong bond between him and us,’ affirms Giovanna, a young biologist praying by John Paul II’s tomb in Rome."

GET THE STORY.

A reader writes:

Are the Old Testament Prophets considered saints? And, if so, why aren’t they spoken of with the title of St Jeremiah, Isaiah, etc. I thought they were raised from the netherworld by Christ after His crucifixion and brought into heaven.

Anyone who died in God’s friendship before the time of Christ is now glorified with Christ in heaven, so they are saints in that sense.

For some reason, however, the custom of referring to Old Testament figures as saints never developed in Christian circles. This is a matter of linguistics and devotion more than theology, though.

With a few exceptions, we also don’t know for a fact which Old Testament figures made it to heaven and which didn’t. That, however, wouldn’t have been the reason that the custom didn’t arise. Most of the saints who are in the Roman Martyrology got there because of popular acclaim, not because of a papal intervention. Since the Old Testament presents many of these people as if they were God’s friends (even if we don’t have knowledge of the very ends of their lives in omst cases), there was certainly as much evidence for regarding them as saints as many in the Christian age who were canonized by popular acclaim.

I suspect that part of the reason early Christians didn’t acclaim them in this way is that they weren’t viewed as examples for us as directly as people living in our own age. They seemed more distant from us in a certain way because of the age in which they lived.

It also may be partly because–as revered figures from the Old Testament–their salvation was never really questioned, and so there was no push to have the recognized as saints. The approval that the Old Testament seems to give them may have been considered approval enough, so there was no need to get them extra recognition.

(The latter would also apply to those in the New Testament, but they’re closer to us in time; as dwellers in our own age, they’re more direct examples for us to follow.)

This is all just speculation, though. I don’t think we can say with certainty what the reasons were that the custom of who get’s called a saint developed as it did.

As someone who has surveyed the various Catholic singles sites and even posted a profile on one of them, I know the difficulty of finding marriageable like-minded Catholics. Although the Internet match services are somewhat distasteful for me — although the ticking of my biological clock overrode that personal distaste for a while — they have been very successful in matching people who would otherwise never have met. I know couples who have been the beneficiaries of the good these sites can accomplish and so I’m hardly one to seek to tear down good services.

That said, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes when I surfed into TraditionalSingleCatholics.com, a site that seeks to match you with the RadTrad Catholic man or woman of your dreams:

"Begin meeting other Traditional Catholic singles from around the country today. With a full membership, you are able to email and chat with other members and post on our Message Boards; plus, you’ll be notified of new emails as you receive them, as well as upgraded services our website will offer in the coming months.

"The owners of this website are Traditional Catholics, and we, as well as many all over the world, continue to pray that the Traditional Latin Mass and Catholic Faith will be made available to all for the salvation of souls."

VISIT THE SITE.

"Michelle," you might be murmuring, "Aren’t you being a bit harsh? Just because these proprietors like the Latin Mass and think the Catholic faith should be spread throughout the world hardly makes them RadTrads."

True. That’s why you need to know that the site links to the schismatic Society of St. Pius X, the sedevacantist Society of St. Pius V, and the sedevacantist Novus Ordo Watch. It hosts an article that seriously proposes that the canonization of John Paul II would be "a large slap in the face to all the saints who did defend the Catholic faith."

GET THE STORY.

"Okay, okay," you’re saying, "The site’s loony. You’re not going to find the man of your dreams there. But why do you care if RadTrad Catholics do find the man or woman of their dreams at that site?"

Fair question.

I care because it saddens me that there are Catholics so isolated from the mainstream of life within the Church that they cannot find marriage partners on a mainstream Catholic singles site. And I care because the couples that form on that site will likely perpetuate that sense of isolationism into the next generation.  A Catholic isolated from his own Church is like a blood cell isolated from the body through which it is supposed to flow.  The more Catholics who are so isolated, now and in future generations, the more blood there is being drained from the mystical body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:12-27).

Newsweek eyes Tom Monaghan’s Ave Maria University and the planned surrounding town with some alarm:

"For Tom Monaghan, the devout Catholic who founded Domino’s Pizza and is now bankrolling most of the initial $400 million cost of the project, Ave Maria is the culmination of a lifetime devoted to spreading his own strict interpretation of Catholicism. Though he says nonbelievers are welcome, Monaghan clearly wants the community to embody his conservative values. He controls all the commercial real estate in town (along with his developing partner, Barron Collier Cos.) and is asking pharmacies not to carry contraceptives. If forced to choose between two otherwise comparable drugstores, Barron Collier would favor the one that honored that request, says its president and CEO, Paul Marinelli.

[…]

"The ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] of Florida is worried about how he’s playing the game. ‘It is completely naive to think this first attempt [to restrict access to contraception] will be their last,’ says executive director Howard Simon. Armed with a 1946 Supreme Court opinion that ‘ownership [of a town] does not always mean absolute dominion,’ Simon will be watching Ave Maria for any signs of Monaghan’s request’s becoming a demand. Planned Parenthood is similarly alarmed. So far, Naples Community Hospital, which plans to open a clinic in Ave Maria Town, says it will not prescribe any birth control to students. Will others be able to get the pill? ‘For the general public, the answer is probably yes, but not definitely yes,’ says hospital point man Edgardo Tenreiro. The Florida attorney general’s office says the issue of limiting access will likely have to be worked out in court. Barron Collier and Monaghan say they’re following Florida law."

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to the reader who sent the link.)

So, unless contraceptives and abortion are available on every corner, the ACLU and Planned Parenthood are going to be frightened that their constituents do not have "legitimate access"? For the sake of argument, let’s briefly set aside the question of the morality of contraceptives and abortion: Who says that everything a person could be expected to have access to must be in his hometown? Surely most people have recourse to cars and other forms of transportation to take them to the products and services they demand?

Unless, of course, they are poor, and the poor are the major customersprime targets of groups like the ACLU and Planned Parenthood.

Suppose that a conservative Catholic newspaper–let’s say The Wanderer–approached Tony Spence, the editor-in-chief of Catholic News Service (which operates under the auspices of the USCCB) and asked him to respond to unsourced allegations that Catholic News Service is infested by theological dissidents.

Suppose that The Wanderer then ran a piece headlined "Editor denies Catholic News Service ‘infested by theological dissidents.’"

And suppose that nowhere in this piece did it cite anyone as having made this allegation. It simply seems to be something that The Wanderer wants to suggest even though there is apparently no one willing to go on record making the claim.

Would that be responsible journalism? Of course not. That’s an attack piece.

Why then has Catholic News Service just used this exact tactic in an article on the Cardinal Newman Society, an organization that points out problems in various Catholic universities?

Disclosure: I have no connection to the Cardinal Newman Society, nor have I been more than dimly aware of its existence prior to the publication of this piece. I know next to nothing about it, have no prior impression of it, and have no opinion on it one way or the other. I support fostering the Catholic identity of Catholic universities, but whether the Cardinal Newman Society does so in a constructive manner is something I do not at this point know.

That being said. . . .

As soon as I started reading the CNS piece–titled Cardinal Newman Society head says group operates within magisterium–it was immediately obvious that the piece represented a hit piece apparently written in gross violation of journalistic ethics (either that or it’s gross journalistic incompetence). Both the reporter who wrote it (Agostino Bono) and the editor who approved it are severely at fault.

Here’s how the article begins:

WASHINGTON (CNS) — A self-described watchdog organization that claims many Catholic colleges are losing their Catholic identity is not setting up a teaching authority independent of the bishops, said the head of the group.

The Cardinal Newman Society is exercising a "concurrent magisterium" in keeping with the church’s teaching authority, said Patrick Reilly, the society’s president.

You’ll note that the article goes after the Cardinal Newman Society from the very beginning. It lobs allegations at them and does so without naming anyone who is making these allegations.

Nor does it go on to name those making these allegations in subsequent paragraphs. They are completley unattributed.

This is a hallmark of hit piece journalism. You simply cannot lob unsourced allegations at someone and claim to be doing responsible journalism.

A reporter’s job is — get this — to report the news. If some
bishop or university president has accused the Cardinal Newman Society
of setting up its own teaching authority, and a reporter gets a
statement from the Cardinal Newman Society denying said charges, that is reporting the news.

If as far as we know nobody
has accused the Cardinal Newman Society of setting up its own teaching
authority — at least, not on the record, not in any way that would
make it a news story — and a reporter up and decides out of the blue
to ask the president of the Cardinal Newman Society whether his group
is setting up its own teaching authority, then runs a story all about
how the Cardinal Newman Society denies setting up its own authority,
then that is not reporting the news, that is slime journalism.

This is a breathtaking lapse of ethics (or a breathtaking act of incompetence). Even secular journalists wanting to slime a group have the brains not to make such a blatant attempt. They at least go out and find someone willing to publicly mouth the accusation that the reporter wants to lob at the group.

The fact that the piece was a brazen attempt to slime the Cardinal Newman Society was thus immediately apparent, though I also recognized that if Patrick Reilly really said some of the things attributed to him in the article that he did himself no favors, and I began to form a negative impression of his group.

The comment about the society seeking to exercise a "concurrent magisterium," for example, was an immediate danger signal, as were other commenets attributed to him, and I began to view him and his society in a negative light.

But it turns out that Mr. Reilly disputes the attribution of these quotations. A response on the Cardinal Newman Society web site denies that Reilly said this, and it makes some of the same points I would in critiquing the phrase "concurrent magisterium."

READ THE RESPONSE.

The response on the Cardinal Newman Society web site also mentions a prior encounter with the Catholic News Service, in which the latter attempted to get the former to stop using the acronym CNS, as if there weren’t at least fifty-two other uses of that acronym.

This further calls into question the motivations of Catholic News Service in running the piece.

One can only hope that Tony Spence or his superiors will immediately take steps to correct and apologize for this outrageous breach of journalistic ethics and to discipline the reporter and any subordinate editor who approved the piece.

If Spence is himself the editor who approved it then he needs to be disciplined by his superiors.

Standard contact info:

Catholic News Service
(202) 541-3250
cns@catholicnews.com

Rumors have been going around about an effort to reconcile the SSPX (Society of St. Pius X) with the Catholic Church.

SEE HERE, FOR EXAMPLE.

JOHN ALLEN HAS MORE.

Ed Peters has the canonical angle on the story and considers what scenarios might be possible that would allow a reconciliation, along with some commentary on how likely they respectively are.

GET THE (CANONICAL) STORY.

I’d also add another scenario that strikes me as a possibility (at least hypothetically).

What we’re dealing with here is healing a schism, and the approach that has been taken in recent years in efforts to do that (i.e., in authentic ecumenism) has been to not worry about who was at fault in the past and instead make sure that we share those elements (or grow toward sharing those elements) that are needed for ecclesial communion.

Thus, for example, the joint declaration on Christology that was signed with the Assyrian Church of the East sidestepped the question of who was at fault back when the split occurred and instead said, in effect, "Look, regardless of what was said in the psat, we agree on this now, so this no longer a point that would bar us from ecclesial communion with each other."

A similar approach is used with the churches of the Reformation when it is possible to make common cause with them.

Since those in schism don’t like to admit that they’re in schism, this word also wouldn’t be used should we be able to reunite with the Assyrians. The Church would note the "separation" that existed historically between two groups but say that we now recognize that we share what is needed for full ecclesial communion, and so we’re announcing that fact.

(Forget being able to ever visibly reunite with any significant Protestant bodies–at least any time in this millennium. There’s just too much that’s not there at present.)

The thing that makes this "let’s not focus on the past" approach possible in a case like the Assyrian Church of the East or the Reformation churches is that the splits occurred so long ago that the original actors aren’t around any more.

That’s not the case with the SSPX. We’re talking about trying to heal this schism in its first generation, and that makes it a lot harder to take a "let’s not worry about who was at fault" approach.

Some version of this reasoning, though, could come into play if the SSPX schism is healed. It’ll certainly be a temptation since that’s the approach being used with others.

But it may not be prudent to proceed in that fashion with the SSPX.

A question that B16 should ask himself (and the SSPX bishops) is: "You guys disobeyed the direct orders of my predecessor in a grave matter pertaining to the structure of the Church, so what assurances do I have that you won’t do the same thing all over again?"

Only if B16 gets serious and credible assurances of fidelity should a face-saving method like the one mentioned above be considered.

The head of the Jesuit order, Fr. Hans Kolvenbach, has announced his resignation.

This is a very unusual move, as Jesuit superior generals normally hold office for life. According to some reports, he’s been trying to resign for the last ten years, but JP2 wouldn’t let him.

Now B16 has.

In announcing his resignation, Fr. Kolvenbach also announced the calling of a general congregation to elect his successor and to deal with other (apparently unnamed) serious problems affecting the order.

In view of the opposition that many in the Jesuit order have been giving to authentic Catholic teaching and practice in recent years on many issues but notably in recent months on the issue of whether homosexuals should be ordained, it will be interesting to see how the pope may intervene in this matter in the runup to the general convention in 2008.

This may be the beginning of the shakeup folks have been predicing under B16.

GET THE STORY.

In related news, B16 has approved the resignation of Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit, who is now 76 and past the age for turning in his retirement letter (which the pope can accept or decline). Bishop Gumbleton has expressed his discomfort with the Church’s teachings on homosexuality, suggested future doctrinal change on this point, advocated the ordination of homosexuals, and been known for once wearing a mitre with a pink triangle on it in solidarity with homosexuals.

Maybe there isn’t a truce of 2005 after all.

A reader sent an email about an old post I did on a Catholic community in Arkansas, called Star of the Sea Village. The reader writes:

"I just read your blog [post titled It Takes A Catholic Village…] about ‘Star of the Sea’ and found it interesting to hear others’ opinions on … a Catholic community. I am sorry that I was not aware of it earlier so I could also repond. However, if in the future you would like to open another blog [post], the residents here would love to comment and let others know what it is like to live here at Star of the Sea."

Done. Let the comments begin!

A reader writes:

Do you know if there is a website that has a directory of parishes around the country and how they rate with respect to orthodoxy and liturgical fidelity? It would be valuable for people who travel around to determine which parish they should attend.

I know that there’s a lot of demand for this kind of thing, but I don’t know of any that exist. The closest thing I am aware of is MASSTIMES.ORG, which offers basic parish information (like, uh, what times the Masses are) and links to individual parish web sites. I’ve found this to be very helpful, and not only when I’m travelling (e.g., if I just want to know when the Masses are at a particular local parish or when I want to find a parish web site).

There are a number of major problems that would confront somebody actually trying to do a nationwide parish ranking site, though. Among them are these:

1. The bishops would HATE the site. I mean HATE, HATE, HATE it. And not just the bishops as a whole. I mean EVERY SINGLE BISHOP, NO MATTER HOW GOOD THE BISHOP IS. Partly because nobody likes it when someone publicly points out the weak spots in something they’re responsible form, but also for a bunch of reasons that have nothing to do with the natural human desire not to be criticized. Like these . . .
2. Who’s doing the evaluating? Unless a multi-millionnaire decides to fund such an initiative, it’s going to have to rely on locals to do the evaluating of their own parishes. But how good will the locals’ estimations be of their parish’s orthodoxy and conformity to liturgical law? Most folks aren’t trained in such matters. Furthermore,
3. Opinions will differ WIDELY among the people who actually attend the parishes. Some people would rate the parish highly because of the hip, zippy, perky teen guitar Mass with all the hip, zippy, perky teen tunes written by Haugen and Haas and the St. Louis Jesuits that get played there. Others will rate it low for precisely the same reason.
4. The folks who are most unhappy with the parish might be the ones who would be most motivated to provide data to the site, skewing the ratings low. Or,
5. If the people who like the parish get involved then there will be battles between them on individual parish pages (possibly starting disputes in the parish).
6. Some people who have vandettas against their parish or priest or DRE will try to use the system as a way of striking back at their parish.
7. There will be complaints from parishes about inaccuracies (and non-inaccuracies) on the pages, which at the very least will be a huge administrative headache for the people running the site.
8. The data will go out of date. I mean, sure St. Paul’s parish used to have a flaky pastor, but that was three years ago, and all the data still reflects things while he was here. Meanwhile, St. Peter’s parish used to have a really great pastor, who has since been replaced by a lemon with a collar.
9. We’re talking about a HUGE undertaking, given the thousands of parishes
   there are in the country. Further, we’re talking about a project that
   will require an INDEFINITE TIME COMMITMENT from those who run it. Both
   of those mean that real money is likely to be required to run the
   project and make it useful.
10. Without going into a lot of detail, I can even see the potential for BOTH civil AND canonical actions against the site.
11. How useful will the site really be? Given challenge #1 (above), the people running the site are likely to be the kind of folks who don’t care what the bishops think about them. This means that they may have some kind of axe of their own to grind, which could harm the usefulness of the site.

This is not to say that such a site couldn’t be done or will never be done. In fact, it’s probably inevitable–given the way that the Internet works–that some people will start a site or sites like this. Heck, we even have sites for tracking individual dollar bills! But how useful and successful the site will be will depend on how well it deals with the above challenges.

The parish church in the picture above may not be very awe-inspiring on the outside, but it does boast some interesting stained-glass windows on the inside, including one of Pope John Paul XXIII — which is either a misnamed tribute to Pope John XXIII or an imaginative portrait of a pope to be elected sometime in the fourth millennium of the Catholic Church.

Even more interesting are the windows dedicated to ecumenism and interreligious dialogue, one window being dedicated to non-Catholics and the other to non-Christians. The latter window, in addition to portraying historical figures such as Buddha and Mohammed, also pays tribute to the Egyptian mythological god Horus, son of Isis.

SEE MORE OF THE WINDOWS.

SEE THE PARISH.

This is the kind of thing that makes me ever more grateful for my own parish, built in the 1950s. The mission-style architecture, the cruciform layout of the interior, the stained-glass windows of the stations of the cross and of Catholic saints, the life-sized crucifix….. The interior is a bit stark when compared to how it might have looked a few decades ago, but it is still a lovely church. Compared to the Modern Office-Complex style of this parish that is decorated with stained-glass of questionable theological and artistic taste, my parish is heaven on earth.

(Nod to the friend who sent me the links.)