Jeffrey Miller

I have long suspected E.J. Dionne Jr. of comedic abilities. This time he surpasses himself.

In giving up the papacy, Pope Benedict XVI was brave and bold. He did the unexpected for the good of the Catholic Church. And when it selects a new pope next month, the College of Cardinals should be equally brave and bold. It is time to elect a nun as the next pontiff.

Now, I know this hope of mine is the longest of long shots. I have great faith in the Holy Spirit to move papal conclaves, but I would concede that I may be running ahead of the Spirit on this one. Women, after all, are not yet able to become priests, and it is unlikely that traditionalists in the church will suddenly upend the all-male, celibate priesthood, let alone name a woman as the bishop of Rome. (source)

Well during the interregnum we will have none for pope, but not nun after it.

Well either comedic abilities or just typical progressive Catholic disconnection from reality and the true nature of the Church. Although wouldn’t it be a hoot if a nun was named such as Mother Angelica? That could be a great Conclave practical joke before they announced the real Pope. It would be hilarious to see the faces of those so wanting a women pope. As much as dissident Catholics love to proclaim their love of religious sisters, it is only love of religious sister of a certain stripe. They moan on and on about the treatment of “American nuns” and yet would treat religious women faithful to the magisterium as persona non grata.

During the time period when we all become Sede Vacantists it is a time of such dreamy hope and optimism for dissident Catholics. As if finally after over two millenniums the Church will finally go right. That all their pet sins will finally become virtues. The possibilities that come to their mind predict a Catholic Church that is finally in step with the world. Forgetting that as things become in step with the world they also fall out of step with it as all fads fade. The eternal temptation that instead of preparing ourselves for Heaven we make Earth our Heaven and bring it down to our level. After all when so many sins are excused, we make more excuses not to repent.

Dionne’s article goes on to basically conflate the Catholic Church as a social service whose only purpose concerns the poor and downtrodden. Salvation and sanctity are not part of his apparent vision of the Church. Once again a problem of not seeing the Church large enough and to try to make her mission a single bullet point. Our love for the poor is not a single dimension, but a necessary facet of our love of God and neighbor.

A sister as pope could also resolve what might seem a contradiction in Catholic theology. More than Protestants, Catholics are profoundly devoted to the Virgin Mary — and few were as devoted as the late Pope John Paul II, who declared that Mary “sustains the spiritual life of us all, and encourages us, even in suffering, to have faith and hope.” A church for which the Blessed Mother plays such an important role should certainly be comfortable with female leadership.

And yet Jesus did not make his mother an Apostle or priest. As Wordsworth wrote Mary was “Our tainted nature’s solitary boast” and Dione just doesn’t understand how the priesthood is nourished not only by Mary, but so many other saintly women. That so many women saints had a devotion to praying for priests as we saw for example considering St. Therese and Blessed Mother Teresa. That like the men who held up Moses’s hands, the same is true of so many women either consecrated or not.

He then goes on to pull the sex abuse scandal card as if it was a problem of an “all-male hierarchy” and not a sinful deletion of duty. Funny also how it is often notice that and “all-male hierarchy” was involved and not that fact that the victims were mostly males. Still last I checked in other institutions from public schools to other religious denominations without an “all-male hierarchy” have the same problem at a magnified level.

Now just when I thought Mr. Dionne couldn’t get any funnier he writes:

If the college were inspired to elect a woman, it could arrange for her consecration and leave the broader question of whether women should become priests — a change that I both hope and expect will happen someday — open for debate during her pontificate.

Typical liberal thinking, “Let’s go ahead and do it and think about the underlying parts later on.” Thus totally missing the connection between the papacy and the priesthood. He might as well say that anybody can be elected Pope. Why stop at nuns by this understanding? Maybe part of the typical dissident tension of demanding women priests while at the same time wiping out distinctions between the priesthood and the laity.

Still lets pretend for a second that the ordination of women was not as then-Cardinal Ratzinger responded “This teaching requires definitive assent …”. Pretend that this this was something that people could have differing opinions on. Let us look at the practical aspects of the College of Cardinals electing a women religious. Just on a practical level it would be a violation of Canon Law at the minimum Can. 1024. An election that violated Canon Law would be null. Mr. Dionne even mentioned this requirement, but not the outcome of it. Still when you see the Church as a human institution and not a Divine one it is easy to make many mistakes. A human instituted “church” can contradict itself and reverse itself over time. Only a human instituted church can do what Mr. Dionne and others want. They want a club more than a Church.

I do wonder if a thousand years from now what people will make of the Catholic Church? After all that time, and in fact to the end of the world, she is indefectible and will not change dogmas with the times. It is mostly within the last century that we have more fully seen the shattering of Christendom as Protestantism continues to fragment in so many directions. For now the Catholic Church just looks a bit out-of-place in the world and this lack of compromise with the false teachings of the world can just be put down to motives other than what is the real vitality of the Church. As time goes on it might become more of a wonder as her teachings remain the same while constantly adopting to how best to preach the good news of the Gospels. Jesus guaranteed that the gates of Hell will never prevail over the Church, not that she would be a Church growing larger over the course of time. A thousand years from now, if Jesus has not yet come, the Church might be small or large but the only aspect of her teachings that might have changed is that they will have come to a deeper understanding of them. No doubt future E.J. Dionne Jr’s will still be annoyed that there are no women priests or popes.

A week after Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, stated that the Obama administration’s most recent “compromise” on the HHS mandate fails to preserve the religious liberty of Catholic individuals and Catholic institutions, the president of the Catholic Health Association (CHA) stated that the proposal represents “substantial progress.” (source)

So what progress did the compromised-compromise make relating to Catholic hospitals? Well the new rules make absolutely zero changes regarding Catholic hospitals. The changes made some clarifications regarding entities run directly from a “house of worship”. So for an organization that is suppose to represent Catholic healthcare says there is “substantial progress” when there is zero progress relating to what they lobby for.

Although this is SOP for the CHA.

Throughout this sometimes challenging period, CHA has remained in constant dialogue with the leadership of the Unites States Conference of Catholic Bishops, individual Bishops who had concerns and suggestions and the Administration. We believe that our commitment to dialogue to an acceptable solution is matched by all parties and we are committed to completing resolution of this issue. (source)

Yes that “constant dialogue” with the USCCB has born so much fruit in that they have opposite characterizations of the changes made. This is the same tactic of all dissident style organizations in that “constant dialogue” means absolutely nothing.

About to be fired as assistant principal at Purcell Marian High School, Mike Moroski says he doesn’t regret voicing his support of gay marriage on his blog.

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati placed Moroski on administrative leave Feb. 4 and plans to fire him, Moroski said. He says he has hired a lawyer.

Moroski refused to take down his statements on the blog.

“I believe in Catholicism,” Moroski said in an interview. “But my conscience will not permit me to recant my statement.

“I put it up there because I really truly honestly believe it,” he added. “I’m absolutely willing to lose my job over this. The only difficult thing for me now is the students.”

Moroski, 34 who is married and lives Downtown, acknowledges that he violated the Archdiocese’s social media policy.

The contract he signs every year also requires him to “comply with and act consistently in accordance with the stated philosophy and teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.”

Moroski said he “knew the statement I was making was not in accordance with Roman Catholic beliefs,” but he does not think he violated the contract because he was following his conscience. (source)

He has since been dismissed and has lawyered-up.

Of course it will be a situation where he will demand that that Archdiocese allows him to follow his conscience, but the Archdiocese is not allowed to follow theirs.

I always have mixed-feelings about such stories as this in that while I will hopefully never support error, somebody acting on their conscience, even a badly formed one, is at least somewhat positive. When it comes to Catholic schools I think we will find more and more cases of this at least will have the effect of dissenters self-identifying themselves. The issue of same sex marriage no doubt will be a central issue in regards to this dissident self outing.

Mr. Moroski says “I believe in Catholicism”, or more likely the spirit of Catholicism like the spirit of Vatican II. A broad nebulous idea of Catholicism where you don’t have to look too closely at details. The Catholic Church is like a Mandebrot set where the closer you look the more details you see. The spirit of Catholicism is just the opposite.

I think that you would also find that if you talked with Mr. Moroski you would not find that he believes in everything the Church teaches except the sinfulness of homosexual acts. This almost always goes with a whole host of connected issues. I don’t think I have ever heard of anybody who supported homosexual acts, but condemned contraception as an intrinsic evil. The dissident treats the Church like a stack of Jenga blocks and yet thinks taking a block from the bottom has no effect on the rest. The Church’s teaching on human sexuality is consistent, because truth is always consistent. The Church’s teaching on marriage flows into so much else.

I just wished Mr. Moroski had thought to contact a spiritual director instead of a lawyer. This individualistic my conscience against the Church is pure hubris with no docility. If you are going to be “Athanasius against the world” it might be a good idea to make sure you are right first.

As for the “spirit of Catholicism”:

“Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. (Mt 7:21–22)

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. (Jn 14:15)

“He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.” (Lk 10:16)

Catholics who eulogized Pope John Paul II for serving to the bitter end now praise Pope Benedict for quitting. Make up your minds.

I noticed this post from William Saletan at Slate that referenced my post in passing yesterday.

One thing I love about being Catholic is the both/and approach that doesn’t try to flatten all things into a decision tree with simple yes/no paths. Some try to treat prudential decisions as routes with only one path. The charge of hypocrisy assumes that in this case different people could not come to different approaches or that both paths can’t be valid. It also assumes all the variables and individual circumstances are the same in both cases.

It is easy to respect the decision of both of these popes because of our respect for them in the first place. That we realize both men took up the subject in prayer and discernment regarding first of all the good of the Church. It is certainly not hypocrisy to believe that both men choose what they perceived as the best path. Armchair poping of what people thing they would have done is their prudential assessment. It would be nice if we could load up a possible futures like we would create a virtual machine on a server. To be able to inject different decisions to see how they would turn out. Until then taking up a decision with prayerful discernment is the best we can do.

Days like this make me so wish that I was independently wealthy so I could have blogged my reaction to the Pope’s resignation and not having to go to work. That reaction has been bubbling up through me all day.

I remember when he was elected and when I first heard the word “Joseph” I was already jumping up and down and screaming for joy. Whatever the exactly opposite reaction to this is what I experienced this morning. When I first saw a reference to this on Twitter I thought surely this is typical bad media coverage, but I soon found out this was not so. I felt that buzzed feeling you have when you come close to having an accident where both your mind and body reacts.

I am both shocked and yet not surprised. There has certainly been clues to this possibly happening and I thought that just perhaps at a later date this might just be an option he might choose. That he choose it now is what mostly surprised me. It is one thing to think about such a possibility and another to see it happen. Most of my reaction was quite selfish. I felt a disturbance in the force and thought “noooooooooooo” this can’t be! I so love pretty much everything about Pope Benedict XVI. I greedily soak up everything he says and writes and so it is like a blow to have this taken away. Still you also have to wonder about what he would have written if he not become Pope and was able to retire. Perhaps we will find some of this out. There has always been a tension in him in regards to serving the Church from the time he was first appointed bishop, his years as Prefect of the CDF, and then becoming Pope. His coat of arms with the bear of St. Corbinian has been an indicator of this and he has long carried the pack for his beloved Church. To carry and to go where he did not personally choose, but to live a life of service to the Church. Yet even St. Corbinian’s bear was finally loosed to return to the forests.

I certainly won’t be second-guessing his decision. If he thought this was the best for the Church then who am I to disagree? His decision will also certainly have some influence on future Pope’s as another possible route. The path of suffering that Blessed John Paul II took was a blessing for the world and perhaps even this act of humility by the current Pope will also be in its own way. So much of the world only see the office of Pope as a power and not the weight of the world the office holder assumes.

Now once his resignation takes effect what do you refer to him as? Is it like political office where you would still refer to him as “Pope” and “Holy Father”? Or would he simply become Cardinal Ratzinger again?

I am though annoyed by all the talk of who is “papabile.” Right now I just really don’t want to talk about it. It feels in some ways like he died and speaking of his successors feels to me like having your wife die and talking about possible girlfriends. This is a silly metaphor, yet it has some validity in my own reaction. Still the Church is not a personality cult and whoever fills the shoes of the fisherman will be Peter. When Blessed John Paul II died it was Cardinal Ratzinger that I most wanted to be pope. As a convert he was the one most familiar to me and the one I admired the most. This time around I don’t really have a favorite. The fact that we had Blessed John Paul II who is arguably the greatest philosopher to be Pope followed by Pope Benedict XVI arguably the greatest theologian to be Pope will certainly be a tough act to follow. That is if the papacy was an “act” or a historical competition against previous claimants.

It is hard to believe that when Easter does come that it is almost assured that it will be with a new Pope. His resignation has led me to that Lenten feeling of loss two days early and this Lent is going to be exceptionally penitential in one dimension. The media and the talking heads are the penitential aspect I am thinking about. The collective low IQ of the media will take a logarithmic downturn over the coming month or so in regards to the conclave.

No doubt we are already hearing and will be hearing constantly how the election of a new pope will change the Church. If they only pick the right guy then all those annoying doctrines well be shed like the skin of a snake and sloughed off with the shiny new skin of progress. There is a part of me that could almost with for the election of a Cardinal who would be described in political terms as a progressive and liberal. One that was a darling of dissenters. I could almost wish for this because of the fun that would ensue as the progressive pope would do no such thing. When Empress Theodora arranged the election of Pope Vigilius she thought she had a like-minded pope-in-the-pocket that she could control. When he subsequently defended orthodox theology she was not amused. Watching possible this aspect of the charism of infallibility in action might be fun as dissenter freak out over not getting what they want.

As a convert I remember feeling some jealousy before when some Catholics would be able describe the day of election of multiple popes. Now I don’t feel quite the same way that while I was glad to rack up one experience of white smoke and Habemus Papam, I would have preferred to delay by more than a decade the need of white smoke again.