Punditry

The Anchoress contrasts temporary vows in religious life to a news story title ‘‘Til Death Do Us Part’ Is Dying Out. From the article

Vows like "For as long as we continue to love each other," "For as long as our love shall last" and "Until our time together is over" are increasingly replacing the traditional to-the-grave vow — a switch that some call realistic and others call a recipe for failure.

The Anchoress nails it when she calls this a matrimonial loophole. In fact I would think that a vow such as this would mean that no valid marriage was ever contracted. This would certainly be a rejection of marriage on God’s terms and specifically denies as Jesus says that two become one flesh. This type of vow is also a self-fulfilling prophecy. By having at the start such a temporary and really negative view of marriage it will become even easier to bail when you run into trouble. This form of a "vow" is just catching up to the reality of how marriage is being viewed in our society. The only good thing about it is that it acknowledges a true disposition towards marriage, though this view of marriage is objectively false.

Now I am not sure what the readings used for a wedding Mass are. For me it was a couple weeks shy of 25 years ago that I was married in a Catholic Church and being an atheist at the time I didn’t pay any attention to the readings. If I was the one to pick the readings I would certainly include Luke 9:23 "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." Liturgies have suffered because the idea and reality of sacrifice has largely been lost and the same goes for marriages. The idea of marriage without sacrifice is to have some idealized concept of marriage more suited to Ozzy and Harriet. Marriage is sacrificial because it is a total giving of self to another, not a mechanism for having every need meet to your requirements.

The recipe of marriage is one man and one women both with original sin. The false modern view of marriage argues on a different composition or quantity, but all of the modern views ignore original sin. The only remedy for original sin is grace. The disciples understood the seriousness of Jesus’s teaching on divorce when they replied "it is not expedient to marry." Going into a marriage denying the indissolubility of the marriage bond in a faux vow is the consequence of society’s view of marriage. Long before the advent of same-sex unions and marriages we have been cutting away at the very foundations of marriage. The great scandal is that the majority of Christian churches allow divorce and remarriage without ever determining if a valid marriage ever came into existence. It is sad that so many Bible Christians have abandoned the Bible for a destructive and corrupt view of marriage. Marriage will always be under attack but worse is that the attacks have come from the interior of Christendom. No barbarians at the gate needed to apply.

One of the major problems of how the idea of love has come to mean is that it has become divorced (pun always intended) from the will. St. Thomas Aquinas defined love as "To love is to will the good of another." Love has been confused with an emotional gooey feeling. We can certainly feel the good and positive emotional effects of love, but should never forget that love can still be present without the warm feelings. The problem is that when we fall out of the honeymoon stage is that without a constant warm feeling that we can also consequently stop willing the good of another. That an effect of romantic love is confused with love itself. To say that you have fallen out of love is really to say that you have stopped willing to love. It is no surprise that this syrupy view of love has become so destructive to marriages. One of the most hideous movie lines ever devised was "Love means never having to say your sorry." I can imagine Satan having this quote in a frame done using needlepoint in his office in Hell.

Being the product of a divorced family I know from personal experience the tragedy of this view of marriage on children. I wonder what children of couples that take such phony vows must think? Each day they might wake up wondering if there parents had still "continue to love each other" or whether their parents might be moving on. They must also reason that if their parents can stop loving each other than they also can stop loving them. This is the obvious consequence of divorcing love from the will.

Michelle Malkin notes this comment to the above story (and she is about to have her 12th wedding anniversary).

The commenters at Absinthe and Cookies offer more alternatives. I liked this one:

"Until a ‘home-cooked meal’ means ‘Hot Pockets’…"

In a wide-ranging, two-hour interview in which he discussed his vision and dreams for the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph as well as his decisions to reorganize some agencies within the chancery, Bishop Finn said he hopes to build on the diocese’s legacy of lay empowerment to energize Catholics in their love of Jesus Christ to live their faith fully in the broader community.

"Jesus Christ is going to save us," he said. "Bishop Finn isn’t going to save us. Salvation is going to be worked out in the context of the church. Jesus Christ established the church for us to know and love him, and ultimately to get to heaven."

Echoing a theme he delivered last year at a Mass for Catholic school principals and teachers at the opening of the 2004-05 school year, Bishop Finn said it is the vocation of every member of Christ’s church to become saints themselves "and to bring as many people with them as possible."

"You can’t say it more simply or profoundly than that," he said. "Our goal is to get ourselves and everyone else to heaven."

Bishop Finn said that ordained ministers alone can’t transform American culture.

"We are in a culture of death. Who is going to change that?" he said.

"I can stand up and preach about it, but that’s only going to go so far," Bishop Finn said.

"We have to understand where the power of the laity is," he said. "It’s in the family, the workplace, the marketplace. That’s where it has to happen.

"We need lay people in church leadership. But only a very small percentage of lay people will be involved in that," he said. "Sometimes, we tend to focus on that very small percentage and forget about the rest of the flock.

"But if we are not serious about those laity who do not work in the church, then we are missing the whole thing. We have to keep broadening our vision." [Source][Via Dappled Things]

The article continues with this:

Bishop Finn said he wants The Catholic Key to be an important component of ongoing diocesan catechesis and evangelization, and an instrument of reconciliation.

For that reason, he said, he directed The Key to discontinue Father Richard McBrien’s often controversial syndicated column.

"Father McBrien likes to stir the pot," Bishop Finn said. "He approaches things with a certain skepticism and cynicism. You can get that in a lot of places, so go get it somewhere else.

"We need clear expressions of the meaning of faith, why we believe and how we can inspire each other," he said. "We’ve got to give people hope and direction, and we don’t have a lot of time and space (in the newspaper) to do that. I think we can do a whole lot better."

It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. You can almost hear the whispering of progressives about the silencing and the coming inquisition. The cries about open dialogue and the restrictive narrow view being imposed. Though I am sure Father McBrien will continue to have an outlet for his columns in the LA diocese magazine The Tidings for years to come.

Today being the feast of St. Mary Magdalene Dr. Marcellinio D’Ambrosio posts a tribute to her by St. Gregory the Great.

When Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and did not find the Lord’s body, she thought it had been taken away and so informed the disciples. After they came and saw the tomb, they too believed what Mary had told them. The text then says: The disciples went back home, and it adds: but Mary wept and remained standing outside the tomb.

We should reflect on Mary’s attitude and the great love she felt for Christ; for though the disciples had left the tomb, she remained. She was still seeking the one she had not found, and while she sought she wept; burning with the fire of love, she longed for him who she thought had been taken away. And so it happened that the woman who stayed behind to seek Christ was the only one to see him. For perseverance is essential to any good deed, as the voice of truth tells us: Whoever perseveres to the end will be saved.

At first she sought but did not find, but when she persevered it happened that she found what she was looking for. When our desires are not satisfied, they grow stronger, and becoming stronger they take hold of their object. Holy desires likewise grow with anticipation, and if they do not grow they are not really desires. Anyone who succeeds in attaining the truth has burned with such a great love. As David says: My soul has thirsted for the living God; when shall I come and appear before the face of God? And so also in the Song of Songs the Church says: I was wounded by love; and again: My soul is melted with love.

Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek? She is asked why she is sorrowing so that her desire might be strengthened; for when she mentions whom she is seeking, her love is kindled all the more ardently.

Jesus says to her: Mary. Jesus is not recognised when he calls her “woman”; so he calls her by name, as though he were saying: Recognise me as I recognise you; for I do not know you as I know others; I know you as yourself. And so Mary, once addressed by name, recognises who is speaking. She immediately calls him rabboni, that is to say, teacher, because the one whom she sought outwardly was the one who inwardly taught her to keep on searching.

It is unfortunate and ironic to see dissenters who are disobedient the Christ and his Church hold up St. Mary Magdalene as a role model for them. So many have hijacked her from the likes of the Da Vinci Code to those who support women’s ordination. It is also ironic that St. Mary Magdalene was originally unable to recognize Jesus when he first appeared that modern day admirers of the saint also don’t seem to be able to recognize her. St. Mary Magdalene mistook Jesus for a gardener and moderns do her one better by mistaken St. Mary Magdalene for a radical feminist.

Also on site is an article by Amy Welborns on the Da Vinci Code

From an article in the Tablet about Charlie Angus who is the Canadian Catholic MP

No bishop will publicly contradict Bishop Henry’s damaging rhetoric, in large part because his template is the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s rejection of same-sex marriage in “Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons”. It is only the most glaring example of how the CDF document threatened the Canadian Church’s outreach to politicians – and, in the process, virtually scripted the drama surrounding Mr Angus’s vote.

The Church’s outreach to politicians was threatened? Well I guess in fact truth usually does make outreach to politicians problematic. If only truth would stop getting in the way of Church/State relations.

To begin with, the document’s timing could not have been any worse. Exactly one week after its release in June, 2003, an Ontario court struck down the traditional definition of marriage because it violated gays and lesbians’ equality rights. Whatever the merits of their theological and anthropological arguments, its defenders now had to contend with the official verdict that heterosexual-only marriage was legally (and, by extension, politically) unacceptable in Canada.

Actually the document’s timing was pretty good since it coincided with the legal maneuvering for same-sex unions and marriages. The Vatican is usually criticized for releasing documents long after a threat appears, for example just last year the Vatican was criticized just for that in relations to documents relating to radical feminism and new age movements. Of course the document proposed no new teachings and only affirmed what the Church has always taught, so it isn’t exactly as if the document was any surprise theologically in any way.

As the policymakers started to react to the court rulings, the bishops’ lawyers urged them to plead the best case they had: that in a diverse, pluralistic country like Canada, the most equitable way to reconcile the equality demands of gays and lesbians with the vital need for freedom of religion and freedom of conscience was to take marriage out of the public realm and to adopt a new system of governance for adult interdependent relationships. Reportedly, several bishops – notably Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic of Toronto – quietly favoured this strategy.

In the end, though, it was something the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) proved unwilling to pursue, either in the courts or with politicians, many of whom liked the idea but needed the Church’s blessing to give it political life. Where their lawyers cited constitutional law, the bishops cited the CDF.

I am surprised that they didn’t bring up the fact that when the document was released Cardinal Ratzinger was the head of the CDF.

I don’t really expect cogent arguments when it comes to the LA Time’s and this commentary maintains that consistency. The article titled "At risk: Roe, rights and religion" continues the screamfest about overturning Roe as if the majority of Americans were pro-abortion at all costs. In the last couple of days from Sen. Barbara Boxer down to many liberal pundits we have heard the cry of danger to abortion "rights" and they talk as if everybody is on their side and that everybody should be upset at this possibility. This is one instance when I hope that they are right and that our current abortion-on-demand laws are either seriously restricted or sent back for a state-by-state decision.

Getting back to the article of the three R’s I wondered how they were going to say that under Judge Roberts that religion was at risk.

Third, religion. Though O’Connor voted with the conservatives to allow school vouchers to fund religious schools, she joined the moderates in enforcing the separation of church and state in other areas. Roberts wrote briefs for the George H.W. Bush administration urging a less rigid separation between church and state and argued in favor of permitting prayer at high school graduation ceremonies, a position the Supreme Court later rejected.

To the extent his views match his former boss’, Roberts could provide the fifth vote to return prayer to schools, allow a significant expansion of government-sponsored religious displays and funnel more money to faith-based service providers. This agenda is crucially important to the religious right, which has been particularly aggrieved by O’Connor’s middle-of-the-road church-state jurisprudence. In many cases that jurisprudence turns on one vote.

It is worth noting that Roberts was acting as a Bush administration lawyer when he took his positions against Roe and in favor of school prayer, and it may be that they do not reflect his personal beliefs. Nevertheless, it is all we have to go on at the moment — our best indication of his thinking.

And after actually reading the pertinent paragraph I am still wondering where the argument was that religion was at risk. Is the argument that religion is at risk if prayer is returned to school or that faith based organizations work with the government? Gee I would have thought that it was the other way around. Or perhaps the thrust is that liberal religion is at risk. That the sacrament of abortion is under fire and that the high priestesses at NOW and NARAL are upset at this possible infringement. A liberal religion that has no use for a God that knew us before we were knitted in our mother’s womb. So if they are worried that a religion that worships a God who is down with aborting his individual unique persons is at risk, well it is always at risk without worrying about what Judge Roberts might do. This type of religion is always at risk in the light of day.

WASHINGTON — There was a rare personal attack on the floor of the Senate.

Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy accused Pennsylvania Republican Rick Santorum of being self-righteous and insensitive for a column he’d written three years ago.

In that column, Santorum linked Boston’s liberalism with the sex abuse scandal in its Catholic diocese. Santorum had written that promoting alternative lifestyles feeds such aberrant behavior as priests molesting children.

"Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture," Santorum wrote. "When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm."

Kennedy is calling for Santorum to retract his remarks and apologize to the people of Boston and Massachusetts — and the nation.

A spokesman for Santorum said his boss recognizes that the church abuse scandal was not just in Boston, but all over the country. The spokesman said Santorum "was speaking to a broader cultural argument." [Source]

Complaining about a three year old column? Wouldn’t that be water under the bridge? (Sorry couldn’t avoid Chappaquiddick reference) Well the scandal certainly was all over the country, but it certainly appears to be more heavily concentrated in less than orthodox diocese and it should be no surprise that people willing to abandon the faith in one area will be less constrained to abandon it in others. This is not to say that there haven’t been fairly orthodox priest who have fallen in this direction, but they do seem to be the minority in these cases. Temptation to sin is an equal opportunity employer and it is only through the grace of the faith, prayer, and the sacraments that these temptations can be destroyed. Once you weaken the ability to resist temptation obviously there will be problems.

Update: WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., yesterday accused Democrats of dredging up 3-year-old remarks on the Catholic Church’s clergy sex-abuse scandal for purely partisan reasons.

Santorum refused to apologize for statements that blamed the church’s scandal on Boston’s liberalism.

Santorum, a devout Catholic, shot back at U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., who upbraided Santorum Wednesday in an unusually personal attack on the Senate floor.

"I don’t think Ted Kennedy lecturing me on the teachings of the church and how the church should handle these problems is something I’m going to take particularly seriously," Santorum said during a conference call with Catholic media.

Santorum also questioned Kennedy’s following of church doctrine and said he is unaware of Kennedy or Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., getting involved to address the church’s problem. [Source]

Hub voters would be asked if the Archdiocese of Boston “has failed” in its handling of church closings in neighborhoods under a nonbinding ballot question to be proposed by a trio of city councilors today.

“In the past we’ve had nothing but failure and breakdown in communication and in the future we need to have better communication,” said Brighton City Councilor Jerry P. McDermott, the lead sponsor.

The measure, which will be introduced at today’s City Council meeting, will be on the Nov. 8 ballot if it passes. Also sponsoring it are South Boston City Councilor James M. Kelly and North End Councilor Paul J. Scapicchio.

Councilors said the archdiocese has gone ahead with closings without thought for the city’s most vulnerable citizens, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, who use church-based food pantries and 12-step programs.

An Archdiocese spokesman could not be reached for comment yesterday. [Source]

Still waiting for separation of church and state activists to get riled up about this one – definitely not a breath holding moment.

On the heels of Christoph Cardinal Schönborn’s letter on evolution.

WASHINGTON Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick says Catholics don’t have to believe in Creationism — the Bible’s account of God creating Adam and Eve and the universe in six days.

McCarrick told reporters at the National Press Club that instead of what he called "the beautiful story of Genesis," Catholics can believe in evolution — as long as it’s understood to have been guided by God rather than chance.

The archbishop of Washington said that was the view of the late Pope John Paul, which was echoed last week by a leading European cardinal.

Cardinal McCarrick said the church cannot accept the belief that "this is all an accident." But he added that "as long as in every understanding of evolution, the hand of God is recognized as being present, we can accept that." [Source]

One thing cool about being Catholic is that I am free to believe in a literal six day creation or a God guided evolution. Or if another new and better scientific theory comes out I am also free to accept that too. I was a lot less free and more dogmatic when I was an atheist. Meaningless random evolution was pretty much all I was allowed or allowed myself to believe. As a Catholic I am free to believe in miracles and in certain Church approved apparitions, though I am also free to disbelieve those apparitions. As an atheist I was not free to believe in apparitions or miracles. Yet it is generally Catholic who are called dogmatists. Chesterton said that man is a creature who creates dogmas and that is certainly true since everybody holds to dogmas, they just vary on what are to be held as dogmas. Or they at least hold to the dogma that there are no dogmas.

One quibble that I have with with what Cardinal McCarrick said is "the beautiful story of Genesis," which might have not been the most enlightening or prudential choice of words in front of the National Press Club. The modern idea of story is mainly confined to fiction and using story in this context can be misleading. The Genesis account is likely a story in the mode of the story that the Prophet of Nathan told to King David about the rich man who took the poor man’s ewe lamb. The story represented the factual truths of what King David had done by having Uriah killed and taking Bathsheba as his wife in a figurative way. The Genesis account also relates factual truths in the mode of a story of what could be called true myth. But unfortunately the word myth has also come to mean totally not real and we have mainly lost the concept of true myth.

ON THE eve of a critical vote on the creation of women bishops in the Church of England, a senior figure has warned he and hundreds of priests will quit if the move is approved.

Andrew Burnham, Bishop of Ebbsfleet, this weekend becomes the first leading churchman to state that he would be likely to defect to the Roman Catholic Church.

The General Synod will tomorrow be asked to vote on the first stage of the process for “removing the legal obstacles to the ordination of women to the episcopate”. A vote in favour will set in train church legislation that may take three years.

“A woman bishop wouldn’t be a bishop because a bishop is someone whose ministry is acceptable through the ages to all other bishops,” said Burnham. “A Church of England with women bishops would no longer have a united episcopate. Bishops would no longer be what they say they are. I would have to leave.”

He said he would be forced to quit if Anglicans did not make proper provision for opponents of women bishops, and indicated that he believed 800 priests would follow suit. [Source]

I just don’t understand the problem here. Once you have abandoned scripture and apostolic tradition enable to ordain women as priests – what is to prevent the view that women’s episcopal ordination would also be valid? It seems to me that originally the women as priests and not as bishops was a compromise solution and that its only goal was to prevent more people from leaving. Just what theological, scriptural or quote from the Church Fathers could you use to split those hairs in the first place? Surely those who stayed in the Anglican Church because they didn’t ordain women bishops at that time knew that eventually that day would come. Though I guess we all blind ourselves to consequence when they become uncomfortable for us.

Though in some ways an Anglican church that continues down this path does more for Anglican to Catholic conversions than just about anything we have done apologetically. A hundred years ago the branch theory could be bought without too much contradiction. Now the branch theory applies to Anglicanism itself since it keeps splitting off with new branches, such as provinces. As in this case some want a third province in addition to Canterbury and York that would only have male bishops.

In a related note. Welcome home Al Kimmel of Pontifications who was received into full communion with the Catholic Church a month ago.

Sometimes those that call themselves pro-choice let the mask slip a little and we see behind the false words and platitudes. A case in point is this banner [via K Lopez at The Corner]

As President Aristotle said "Well, we always knew that our pro-abortion friends had a couple screws loose" and that the "screwy attitudes of the NARAL clinch the point."

Many times those of use who are called pro-life call the other side pro-abortion. More accurately they are "pro-sex without babies." Abortion and contraception support is a consequence of this view. Their view on abstinence follows the same path and instead of saying what they are really advocating they hide behind strange theories. For example their hatred of abstinence is shrouded under the champaign view of sexuality. That is if you don’t pop the cork early it is going to explode. Since abstinence education has mainly been at the high school level it also betrays their view that sex among teenagers is to be encouraged and that nothing must get in the way of it. They have reversed Darwin. We have not evolved from the animals but are moving back towards them. That if we don’t have sex worse things will happen to us. They attack abstinence because they say people won’t be prepared when they fall and then will have "unsafe" sex. Of course to them unsafe sex is more than STDs it includes pregnancy. They deny that man is a moral creature that can control its appetites or behaviors. Yet at the same time they think that we can control our appetites and behaviors by first training us to use a condom and other anti-baby control measures. We have devolved back to animal instinct since "we are going to do it anyway." Of course their Screw Abstinence Party is restricted to those aged 21 or older which is ironic considering their stance on sex education. If sexually explicit sex ed in high schools with the agenda of encouragingly sexual activity is perfectly acceptable than why should they restrict access to their raunchy party with sex toys? If teenage sexuality activity is perfectly fine then why is there this demarcation of adults only?

When I first saw this banner I thought of doing some really snarky banner such as "Nail NARAL" or something in that vein. I quickly realized that this is the wrong approach.

Update: Updated the banner due to reader suggestions to make it less ambiguous.