Jeffrey Miller

The Catholic Thing looks to be a great new website that provides excellent commentary.

The Catholic Thing, a program of the Faith & Reason Insitute, is in the process of developing its editorial structure. Its current publication committee includes: Hadley P. Arkes, Jason Boffetti, George Marlin, Ralph McInerny, Michael Novak, Robert Royal, Austin Ruse, William L. Saunders, and Michael Uhlmann. Kirk Kramer is the web administrator.

I assume that they take their name based on G.K. Chesterton’s book “The Thing.” I just wish they would get an RSS feed.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is about to launch his latest outreach to religious voters, but the name of the group could land him in legal trouble.

First reported on Friday by Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody, Obama’s “Joshua Generation” is designed to help the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee appeal to young evangelicals.

But “Generation Joshua,” a division of the Home School Legal Defense Association, has been established since 2003 and is pursuing legal action against the Obama campaign.

I guess Generation Moloch didn’t have the same ring. Though thanks to pro-abortion politicians like Obama Generation Joshua is much smaller than it should have been. In other news Catholic League president Bill Donahue wonders if Obama’s Catholic Advisory Council has been dissolved.

Pete Vere at Catholic Exchange updates the story Fr. Alphonse de Valk.

In a decision that foreshadows the possible fate of Fr. Alphonse de Valk, Canada’s leading pro-life voice among Catholic clergy, the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal has forbidden evangelical pastor Stephen Boisson from expressing his moral opposition to homosexuality. The tribunal also ordered Boisson to pay $5,000 “damages for pain and suffering” and apologize to the “human rights” activist who filed the complaint.

The complaint stems from Canada’s debate leading up to state legislation recognizing so-called same-sex marriage. In 2002, the pastor wrote a letter to the editor of his local newspaper in which he denounced the homosexual agenda as “wicked” and stated that: “Children as young as five and six years of age are being subjected to psychologically and physiologically damaging pro-homosexual literature and guidance in the public school system; all under the fraudulent guise of equal rights.”

The activist subsequently filed a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission – a quasi-judicial body that investigates alleged discrimination within the Canadian province. The government tribunal published its decision [http://albertahumanrights.ab.ca/Lund_Darren_Remedy053008.pdf] on May 30.

While agreeing that Boisson’s letter was not a criminal act, the government tribunal nevertheless ordered the Christian pastor to “cease publishing in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals.” Moreover, the tribunal’s decision “prohibited [Boisson] from making disparaging remarks in the future” about the activist who filed the complaint and witnesses who supported the complaint. Many of Canada’s religious leaders and civil libertarians have expressed concern that the government’s human rights tribunals are interpreting any criticism of homosexual activism as ‘disparaging’.

The tribunal also ordered Boisson to provide the complainant with a written apology for his letter to the editor. This last requirement threatens civil liberties in Canada, said Ezra Levant, a Jewish-Canadian author and lawyer. Levant, himself the target of an Alberta Human Rights Commission investigation, is facing the possibility the state may order him to apologize as well.

“Ed Stelmach’s ‘conservative’ government now believes that if it can’t convince a Christian pastor that he’s wrong, it will just order him to condemn himself?” Levant wrote on his blog. “Other than tribunals in Stalin’s Soviet Union and Mao’s China, where is this Orwellian ‘order’ considered to be justice?”

“This is like a Third World jail-house confession – where accused criminals are forced to sign false statements of guilt,” Levant wrote. “We don’t even ‘order’ murderers to apologize to their victims’ families. Because we know that a forced apology is meaningless. But not if your point is to degrade Christian pastors.”

St. Louis, Jun 8, 2008 / 03:06 pm (CNA).- An excommunicated board member of a breakaway St. Louis Catholic parish has reconciled with the Church after meeting privately with the Archbishop of St. Louis, Raymond L. Burke. Archbishop Burke has said he is “profoundly happy” about the man’s reconciliation.

Edward Florek was excommunicated in December 2005 for his membership on the St. Stanislaus Kostka Corporation board of directors, which opposed Archbishop Burke’s parish restructuring plan and brought in a renegade priest to staff St. Stanislaus Kostka Church.

Thanks be to God. This is great news!

There are certain things that are almost certain to get my ire up. One of them is putting a picture up of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux as a header in an article on women’s ordination. The scandalous lie that Saint Thérèse advocated women priests is bandied about in progressive quarters as if it is the truth instead of calumny against a great Doctor of the Church.

“If only I were a priest! How lovingly I would bear You in my hands, my Jesus, when my voice had brought You down from Heaven. How lovingly I would give. You to souls!” “Yet while wanting to be a priest, I admire St. Francis of Assisi and envy his humility, longing to imitate him in refusing this sublime dignity.”

I myself have often thought of being a priest and what it must be like to hold Jesus in your hands during the consecration. So I guess I must be advocating that married men who have never had a vocation to the priesthood be priests. And what about those single men without a priestly vocation? I guess they are also not equal and it is just not fair until the “institutional Church” allows everyone to be a priest regardless of a simple thing like a vocation. In fact maybe I should start a “Single and Married Men Without a Priestly Vocation Ordination Conference.” How long must men without priestly vocations have to await for equality. We are not truly free until we can live peacefully in a vocation-blind society.

Now back to the article in question. I doubt if it will surprise my readers that it was in the America Magazine blog, those that aren’t surprised will at least be disappointed. Admirer of all things Jesuit (except dissent) Karen Hall is not much pleased either. In this post Francis X. Clooney, S.J. laments about the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith recent decree on those who attempt to confer or women who receive ordination are automatically excommunicated.

We all know that there are Catholic women with a very deep conviction that God is calling them to priestly service in the Church. Many of these women, during long years of service to the Church, have discerned the matter over and over again, tested it in community — and still affirm, “God is calling me to ordained ministry, to the priesthood.” Some of these women have suffered very patiently and quietly in a Church that says it cannot ordain them; some have left, often sadly, and welcomed ordination in another Christian community; and some, reports tell us, have been ordained by bishops — and for this, they are to be counted as excommunicated.

What advocates of women’s ordination never mention is that it is not the deep conviction of the person that is primary in discerning a vocation. Not all men who enter seminary go on to be ordained since they either discern that they have no priestly vocation or that their bishop or seminary discerns this. The discernment process is mediated by the Church and it is not the individual alone who determines their calling. This is such a weak argument in so many ways. What about the various people such as Kansan David Bawden (Michael I) who consider that they are the current Pope. Surely they have “very deep convictions” that God is calling them to papal service in the Church. The sad truth is that there are many people who have deluded themselves into believing something that is simply not true. They need to be charitably corrected and objectively it is not charitable to go along with or support them in their mistake.

This blog is not the place to debate the merits of positions on women’s ordination. But it seems obvious that very many of us feel strongly on this issue — including, surely, many who are ordained 3 or 13 or 30 or 50 years — and we are not likely to change our minds now. This issue — does God call women as well as men to ordination? — seems likely to remain one of the great divides in the Church of the 21st century, and we all, men as well as women, are, or should be, suffering through the experience. That the Vatican has definitively ended the discussion does not make it less likely that many will continue to have hearts rent by the issue. I am sure God hears many a prayer, many a day, on the topic.

Wow I guess the apostolic tradition and magisterial teaching on this subject must be all wrong since many people feel strongly on this subject. I guess the fact that those such a myself who support Church teaching and feel strongly on the subject don’t count. In this case suffering is being caused by a lack of obedience and pride that assumes they know better than the Church. Pope Michael 1 is not the only one who thinks they are Pope.

Then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in a dubium that “This teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium. But even if you don’t accept the dubium, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis requires “Religious submission of intellect and will” as taught by the Second Vatican Council. Blog posts like this one at America Magazine show a total disobedience even to Vatican II which they seem to always talk about, but never read. The question of women’s ordination is settled, please move on to the vast areas of theology that are not settled or can be more deeply reflected on and more light shed upon.

For those who want to look at the reasons why the Church does not have the authority to change this teaching I would highly recommend Catholic Priesthood and Women: A Guide To The Teaching Of The Church by Sr. Sara Butler, MSBT which I reviewed here.

In an article by John L. Allen Jr. with Maureen O’Connell an assistant professor of theology at Fordham University titled Young theologians today face ‘paranoia,’ new Fordham prof says

Asserting that church leaders are today attempting to return the church to a “culture one” model, Davidson said that because the socio-economic status of American Catholics is not in decline and because “laity are not willing to grant control” to the hierarchy, “the percentage of Catholics who are culture one will continue to decline.”

If older liberal Catholics are over-represented in reform groups such as Call to Action and Voice of the Faithful, Davidson said, younger conservative Catholics are equally over-represented among new priests, seminarians, and even theologians.

Speaking specifically about theologians, Davidson said that a growing tendency for younger theologians to reflect a “culture one” mentality reflects “a larger pattern of separation between the laity and the leaders of the institutional church.”

O’Connell largely agreed, saying that one distinguishing feature of her generation of theologians is that it came of age in an era of a “near-total disconnect between a culture one hierarchy and a culture two laity.”

Facing that situation, O’Connell said, many younger theologians today feel a need to try to be of pastoral service to the church – working with disparate movements such as Voice of the Faithful, the Focolare and Sant’Egidio, for example, or writing for non-specialized audiences outside the academy. Those activities, she said, represent an attempt to “fill in the pastoral gaps.”

In that light, O’Connell proposed that amid today’s tensions over Catholic identity, perhaps a defining characteristic of what constitutes a “good Catholic theologian” ought to be what she called “pedagogical excellence” – meaning a commitment to teaching and formation.

I don’t think I buy this “culture one” and “culture two” distinction as something defining younger Catholics. For me a good theologian, priest, member of the laity, etc would think in terms of the body of Christ. Certainly throughout history there has been emphasis on one part of the body of Christ over the other and at times unhealthy emphasis. Whether it is clericalism or the unfortunate laity against the “institutional church” – they are both errors. The last 40 years has placed too much emphasis on the laity while at the same time wiping out distinctions between the ordained priesthood and the priesthood of the faithful. Ignoring ontological differences is not healthy and we should instead be seeing the glory in all parts of the mystical body of Christ and not playing off one part of the body against another. A sort of class warfare between the clergy and the laity. Of course St. Paul already saw this tendency in the early Church and preached against it. in 1st Corinthians 12:14-20

For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the organs in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single organ, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.

As for “pedagogical excellence” that is of course required, but the most important commitment in theology is the commitment to truth in theology the “mother of sciences” and what St. Augustine described as “reasoning or discourse about the divinity.” Formation in error is not a real formation. Maureen O’Connell seems to have a dread of the younger seminarians, priests, etc, similar to Fr. Greeley who tries to dismiss them as “Young fogeys” and this “culture one” distinction is much the same in my opinion. I prefer a “culture of life” that requires everyone in the mystical body of Christ to fulfill their God given roles.

With the recent display of St. Padre Pio’s body I think many people are under the impression that Padre Pio ‘s body is incorrupt. I see this statement made on some Catholic blogs from time to time where they look at the recent photos and assume this is the case. The multiple reports I have seen have stated that they used a wax mask in his case.

“When Pio’s crypt was opened earlier this year, the head was described as partly skeletal, though the hands were reportedly in perfect shape, with no traces of stigmata. A wax mask was ordered from a London company that once supplied Madame Tussauds. They worked entirely from photographs.”

The Church has never seen the incorruptness of a body as proof of anything and is not considered as part of the process for canonization. It certainly appears that God has done this as a miracle from time to time such as in the case of St. Bernadette and others.

To put recent events in some perspective, I have asked Father Michael Pfleger, Pastor of St. Sabina’s Parish, to step back from his obligations there and take leave for a couple of weeks from his pastoral duties, effective today. Fr. Pfleger does not believe this to be the right step at this time. While respecting his disagreement, I have nevertheless asked him to use this opportunity to reflect on his recent statements and actions in the light of the Church’s regulations for all Catholic priests. I hope that this period will also be a time away from the public spotlight and for rest and attention to family concerns.

I hope also that the life of St. Sabina’s parish may continue in uninterrupted fashion. Fr. William Vanecko, Pastor of St. Kilian’s parish, will be temporary administrator of St. Sabina’s and will assure the full complement of ministerial services during this period. I ask the members of St. Sabina’s parish to cooperate with him and to keep him and Fr. Pfleger in their prayers. They are in mine.

It is rather interesting that the Cardinal even brought up Fr. Pfleger disagreement on this. I do hope this "Sabinattical" does him some good.

Whispers in the Loggia