Punditry

Pope Benedict XVI with Fidel Castro

When the Pope arrived in Cuba in part he said:

We can no longer continue in the same cultural and moral direction which has caused the painful situation that many suffer. On the other hand, real progress calls for an ethics which focuses on the human person and takes account of the most profound human needs, especially man’s spiritual and religious dimension. In the hearts and minds of many, the way is thus opening to an ever greater certainty that the rebirth of society demands upright men and women of firm moral convictions, with noble and strong values who will not be manipulated by dubious interests and who are respectful of the unchanging and transcendent nature of the human person.

Though meanwhile:

So, Cuban state security has sent pro-democracy activists a text message: “As soon as the Pope leaves, we are going to disappear you all.” (“Tan pronto como se vaya el #PapaCuba los vamos a desaparecer a todos ustedes.”) [Source]

I remember reading ahead of time about the ‘Reason Rally’ that was held on March 24th in Washington, D.C.  It was not something that much interested me in that the free assembly of atheists is something I would support.  The freedom of religion really includes the freedom of non-religion.  Though even when I was an atheist the rally is not something that would have much interested me as far as wanting to attend other then well-wishing the assemblage as a sign of right-thinking.

I was thinking tangentially on a related subject on how atheism has it’s own form of clericalism. The high priests of atheism are often scientists such as Richard Dawkins, P.Z. Myers, Stephen Hawkins, along with the late Carl Sagan and  Stephen Gould.  Though while not all the so-called new atheists are scientists, scientists are given an elevated level of respect.  Speaking for myself at one time I would not have desired a Philosopher-King, but a Scientist-King so that we could all live under a rule of reason.  That the philosophy of scientism permeates these high priests of atheists is no surprise since when the only tool you have in your toolbox is science you hit everything with it.  They ignore the limits of science and try to make every question a “how” which at the same time is suppose to explain the “why.”   That explaining chemical and electrical actions in our brains is suppose to explains everything about the brain.

As Blessed John Paul II wrote in “Fides Et Ratio”:

88. Another threat to be reckoned with is scientism. This is the philosophical notion which refuses to admit the validity of forms of knowledge other than those of the positive sciences; and it relegates religious, theological, ethical and aesthetic knowledge to the realm of mere fantasy.

This is why a “Reason Rally” starts off crippled and returning to Fides Et Ratio again.

Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).

There has been some coverage on what Richard Dawkins said at the rally:

WASHINGTON D.C., March 27 (CNA) .- At the March 24 ‘Reason Rally’ in Washington, D.C., an estimated 20,000 atheists and agnostics heard author and activist Richard Dawkins encourage mockery of Catholic beliefs and those of other religions.

‘Don’t fall for the convention that we’re all ‘too polite’ to talk about religion,’ Dawkins said, before urging rally attendees to ridicule Catholics’ faith in the Eucharist.

‘Religion makes specific claims about the universe which need to be substantiated, and need to be challenged ‘ and if necessary, need to be ridiculed with contempt,’ he told the cheering crowd on the National Mall.

‘For example, if they say they’re Catholic: Do you really believe, that when a priest blesses a wafer, it turns into the body of Christ? Are you seriously telling me you believe that? Are you seriously saying that wine turns into blood?’

If the answer is yes, Dawkins suggested atheists should show contempt for believers instead of ignoring the issue or feigning respect.

‘Mock them,’ he told the crowd. ‘Ridicule them! In public!’

Once again Dawkins gives the Church a back-handed compliment. Like most atheists the foil is almost always Christianity and often specifically Catholicism. Also interesting the focus on the Eucharist and how it is something that should be mocked. Well Jesus was mocked and scourged before so there is nothing new under the sun here. Though I can’t really blame atheists in how the doctrine of the Eucharist is so outrageous. Really it is outrageous in that is is shocking, bold, and startling. We should all be so startled out of any bland reception of the Eucharist. The mocking of the Eucharist has certainly been a focus as the case of the desecration of the Eucharist by P.Z. Myers shows. He certainly followed Dawkins template of “ridicule and contempt.”

So Dawkins has an atheist paraphrase for the quote falsely attributed to St. Francis.

“Preach Darwinism at all times and if necessary use ridicule and contempt.”

[Source]

“Marriage equality” has become a buzz-phrase in the advocacy of same-sex marriage in the latest use of relativism to equate what can’t be equated. Equality as a word has been repeatedly used in various advocacies as if it was an argument that can’t be refuted. I mean who can be against equality? Equality is seen as a basic form of justice as any kind of unfairness we naturally respond to. The problem is you just can’t put anything on either side of the equals sign and make the resulting equation true.

Really though the problem with same-sex marriage is with equality itself – it is too equal in fact. The fundamental reality of marriage is not based on equality but that that men and women have complementary natures. It is no coincidence that the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage followed the feminist advocacy of what comes down to making men and women equal via contraception and abortion. Once you render one of the ends of sex null than same-sex sexual activity seems to be as equal as contraceptive opposite-sex activity.

The equality of men and women is based on their personhood. “God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him, male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). God command to “be fertile and multiply” (Gen 1.28) can only be met because of the complementarity of men and women. Same-sex marriage or same-sex relationships can never be fecund because men and men or women and women are too equal both physically and psychologically.

228. Connected with de facto unions is the particular problem concerning demands for the legal recognition of unions between homosexual persons, which is increasingly the topic of public debate. Only an anthropology corresponding to the full truth of the human person can give an appropriate response to this problem with its different aspects on both the societal and ecclesial levels[503]. The light of such anthropology reveals “how incongruous is the demand to accord ‘marital’ status to unions between persons of the same sex. It is opposed, first of all, by the objective impossibility of making the partnership fruitful through the transmission of life according to the plan inscribed by God in the very structure of the human being. Another obstacle is the absence of the conditions for that interpersonal complementarity between male and female willed by the Creator at both the physical-biological and the eminently psychological levels. It is only in the union of two sexually different persons that the individual can achieve perfection in a synthesis of unity and mutual psychophysical completion”[504].

Homosexual persons are to be fully respected in their human dignity [505] and encouraged to follow God’s plan with particular attention in the exercise of chastity[506]. This duty calling for respect does not justify the legitimization of behaviour that is not consistent with moral law, even less does it justify the recognition of a right to marriage between persons of the same sex and its being considered equivalent to the family[507].

“If, from the legal standpoint, marriage between a man and a woman were to be considered just one possible form of marriage, the concept of marriage would undergo a radical transformation, with grave detriment to the common good. By putting homosexual unions on a legal plane analogous to that of marriage and the family, the State acts arbitrarily and in contradiction with its duties”[508]. (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church)

Barbara Nicolosi was forward this request for a screenwriter that she labeled offensive:

The person (or persons) we are looking for needs to able to take what we have and mold it into 100 pages of a screenplay similar to to feel of Liar Liar and Groundhog Day, with major elements of Fireproof and Courageous mixed in. (If you don’t know what Fireproof or Courageous are, please do not apply for this job). This is a paid position, but please keep in mind this is an independent project with a very limited budget. We are also not associated with the WGA so we require an independent writer.

Yikes!

Our team is spread out throughout the country, but you will mostly be working with with our producer in [somewhere far from the hub of moviemaking]. This can be done over Skype or Google.

Requirements for this job:
1. Have written at least 3 full length screenplays, and are proficient at all screenwriting formatting and industry standards of screenwriting
2. You are a writer who uses and believes in “The Hero’s Journey”
3. You know, and have seen Fireproof and Courageous
4. You are an expert at using Final Draft
5. You have collaborated on screenplays with other people before
6. You are willing to work for less than you would normally get paid
7. You know how to write comedies and family films
8. You are a Christian

Now Fireproof and Courageous really can be provided as examples. Examples that well-meaning is not enough. That having dominant Christian themes is not enough. While Sherwood Pictures’ movies have progressively gotten better — they still have a long way to go. People often allude to Chesterton’s “If it’s worth doing, it’w worth doing badly” which Christian filmmakers have apparently taken to heart. But the context of Chesterton’s quote was a defense of hobbies and does not apply here. Now I don’t want to pile on Sherwood pictures, but their director is David Evans — an optometrist whose previous show business experience was producing his church’s annual Easter Passion play. Now surely there is such a thing as the talented amateur, but even they have to bust their chops a bit to grow in their art.

Now the job requirements could be fixed a bit if they used instead of “You know, and have seen Fireproof and Courageous” and requested “You know, and have seen Fireproof and Courageous and understand their flaws and how they could be improved.”

You also get what you pay for and if you can’t hire a writer at the normal salary you are going to have a problem. Sure many Christians do decide to take a lower salary than what the market can bear when working with Christian organizations unless apparently you work for the Archdiocese of Boston (though all things being equal I don’t have a problem with paying people what their skills are worth). But it’s the whole mindset of getting a bunch of amateurs together for a film “worthwhile” project that is problematic. You end up with celluloid or whatever digital medium that is the artistic equivalent of a plastic dashboard Jesus.

Barbara has a nice set of snarky responses to this request.

LAKELAND, Fla. –  A group of atheists in Florida spent part of their weekend washing away a blessing placed upon a local highway by a religious group.

Armed with brooms, mops and “unholy water,” the atheists gathered Saturday to symbolically clean up holy oil that Polk Under Prayer put down on Highway 98 near the Pasco-Polk county line last year, Bay News 9 reported.

“We come in peace,” Humanists of Florida director Mark Palmer announced before he and members of other atheist organizations launched their cleanup. “Now that’s normally what aliens say when they visit a new planet, but we’re not aliens, we’re atheists!”

According to the report, Palmer said Polk Under Prayer’s blessing “sends a very bad signal to everyone in Polk County, and [anyone] who travels through Polk County who doesn’t happen to be Christian.”

The unblessing project, he explained, was “not about atheist rights” but about “welcoming everybody into Polk County.” [Source]

I am glad I got out of atheism when the going was good. This is inline with the idiotic unbaptism using hair drivers.  So let me get this straight.  You claim to live by pure reason and all religion is just nonsense yet you take time to undo what you consider pure nonsense with some more pure nonsense.

Now if they really wanted to undo the effects of Christianity than they sure work to remove all hospitals and universities  which all got their start under Catholic auspices. The development of science has got to go also since the Church was indeed a midwife to science that was stillborn under all other cultures.  Though atheistic cultures do create things such as the Guillotine and the Gulags and are able to kill many more people than bad Catholics ever did in history.

The case of  Fr. Marcel Guarnizo’s continues to provide interesting fodder for the Catholic blogosphere, especially since he released a statement  yesterday.  Unfortunately many of the discussions try to force a narrative where the facts are not fully present.  I pretty much concur with what Fr. Longenecker wrote:

I don’t know Fr Guarnizo and I don’t have enough facts either way to make the judgment in this case, and anyway it’s not my job. It’s easy to jump to Fr Guarnizo’s defense and view the Archdiocese as the Big Bad Wolf (in sheep’s clothing) when the fact is, we really don’t know all the facts and so we can’t make a judgment one way or the other. We have to give both Fr Guranizo and the Archdiocese the benefit of the doubt.

So I will try to stick with what I do know (yes an odd decision for a blogger). Fr. Marcel Guarnizo’s arguments in his statement that what he did was what any faithful priest would do are incorrect as he tries to justify them outside of Canon 915 which he seems to see as not applying in this circumstance. For those who like to try to understand Canon law better from an expert opinion, Canonist Ed Peters again comes to service with a detailed post on the subject. When I read Fr. Marcel Guarnizo’s statement yesterday I was hoping that Ed Peters would follow up on the subject before I posted myself.

So I would see that it is rather apparent that Fr. Marcel Guarnizo has made a mistake and that he has so far refused to admit any error in what he had done.  More than likely he is indeed a faithful priest who did what he thought right, but that faithfulness should also be obedient.  The Archdiocese as I wrote the other day has added to the confusion and from just a PR perspective this was handled rather badly.  The Archdiocese has also framed this discipline as being done for actions other than the withholding of Communion, but they have not specified what this is.  Returning to Fr. Longenecker again, he writes about “intimidating behavior” and what exactly does this mean.  The phrase seems to have been used by the pastor of the Church and not the Archdiocese.

If this is true, is justice being done? Can an Archdiocese withdraw faculties from a priest simply for ‘intimidating behavior’? What on earth does that mean? Any kind of conflict in a parish in which a priest asserts himself might be construed as “intimidating behavior”. For goodness sake, I can name half a dozen priests off the top of my head about whom reports of “intimidating behavior” are reported weekly.

Even if Fr Guarnizo is guilty of “intimidating behavior” what did he actually do? Did he hit someone? Did he threaten them with violence? Did he threaten to blackmail them? What did the “intimidating behavior” consist of? Were there witnesses? What actually happened?

Will “intimidating behavior” become the new “abuse”. Increasingly we hear charges against people of “abuse”. “Abuse” used to mean that a man came home, kicked his kids down the stairs, punched his wife and raped his daughter. “Abuse” used to mean a woman got drunk, burned her kids with cigarettes, tortured the dog and locked her son in a cupboard. “Abuse” used to mean a priest was a drunkard, raped little boys and stole the collection money.

Now the term “abuse” is thrown at people, damning them with a vague and unproved accusation. “My husband was abusive!” I hear a woman complain, and it turns out he didn’t listen to her enough and forgot to take out the trash on a Tuesday. “My mom is abusive!” a high school kid wails, and it turns out she yelled at him to clean up his room and grounded him because his grades were lousy.

This is the heresy of sentimentalism turned violent. The play is on a supposed victim’s feelings. So-and-so was “abusive” or “intimidating” and I’m feeling wounded so the accusation is made, the “abusive” or “intimidating” person is accused, assumed guilty and executed without trial.

The lack of clarity on the story just goes to provide more muddle.  As Ed Peters writes:

I have long believed that the express terms of Canon 915 support its much wider application against certain prominent scandal-giving Catholics, and I have labored to advance the application of Canon 915 ad bonum Ecclesiae et salutem animarum. Serious misapplications of the values underlying Canon 915, however, undertaken by ill-informed ministers and touted by grossly ill-formed partisans, only set back the cause of seeing Canon 915 applied correctly today.

A philosophy professor at the University of Notre Dame has declared in the New York Times that the bishops no longer decide morality in the Church and that “the immorality of birth control is no longer a teaching of the Catholic Church.

Gary Gutting, Endowed Chair in Philosophy, makes the typical muddles of how the teaching magisterium is actually the “faithful” and not the bishops in union with the Pope.  Of course “faithful” is defined as those who agree with my position.  That a majority opinion constitutes truth and you have to wonder why we aren’t all Arians if this is so.  If the Israelites got to vote up and down the Ten Commandments would any have survived?  As G.K. Chesterton stated “Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”

Oh and will anybody be surprised that they professor teaches from the works of Peter Singer?

* The headline is taken from the fine quip at the end of the post from the Cardinal Newman Society.

There has been plenty of reactions concerning Fr. Marcel Guarnizo being placed on “administrative leave” and having his faculties removed by Archbishop Wuerl. For the few people that might not be familiar with the story, it first made news when Fr. Marcel Guarnizo denied Communion to a women at the funeral of her mother. Apparently prior to the Mass the priest learned that this women was a lesbian and he had requested that she not present herself for Communion, which she subsequently did.

Now this story has plenty of red meat for us Catholic bloggers, but it is also the kind of story that prompts a firestorm without actually providing much light on the subject.

It is quite easy to immediately see Fr. Guarnizo as a sort of hero for his actions. As a general rule faithful Catholics have been very upset concerning all the examples of public Catholics whose actions are contrary to the faith and yet present themselves for Communion. People who know little about Canon Law know about Canon 915 and its application in regards to denying Communion to those “who persist in manifest grave sin” or have for example been formally excommunicated. The fact that this Canon is hardly upheld in even the most scandalous of cases (read Rep. Nancy Pelosi) has in itself caused scandal.

The problem is people have been too quick to apply the Canon in this situation. My own untrained opinion is that the application of this Canon in this situation was incorrect. Expert opinions such as the one from Canonist Ed Peters confirm this. As Ed Peters writes Canon 915 relates to pubic consequences for public behavior and the definition of public as understood by Canon Law.

• The fact that it was later revealed that the women in question is a Buddhist does not change this.  Even if the priest knew she was a Buddhist before hand.
• Even if her motives were to set the priest up it does not change this. Whatever her motives were they affect her personal culpability, but not the priest’s decision on this.
• Just knowing that the person is in objectively grave sin, whatever that sin may be, is not enough to deny the Communion except in the more narrow case that Canon 915 covers.  If somebody is in objectively grave sin where possible this person should be informed that they should not present themselves for Communion as a spiritual act of mercy  as prudence concerning the situation would dictate – but not during Mass itself.

So what we have concerning public information is that the priest made a mistake in the application of this Canon.

The reactions to this story imply many things that are not in evidence.  Many people seem to assume that the diocese is unfairly persecuting Fr. Marcel Guarnizo and reacting out of a form of political correctness.  I know this has been the initial knee-jerk reactions I have had myself as the story has progressed.  It is quite easy from the confines of my computer chair to make all sorts of pronouncements regarding motives despite not having any evidence for them.  This is one reason I have not commented on this story prior to now.  It is quite easy as a blogger to just let a post fly as a reaction, but I am posting now due to a reader request.   That somehow those of us who have followed the story mostly via 3rd party reporting know more of the details than Archbishop Wuerl and assume bad faith on his part.

There has also been allegations of “intimidating behavior” by Fr. Guarnizo, but this also falls in the area as something not in evidence or mentioned in the letter from the Archdiocese. This same letters also mentions the hope for his return.

In cases such as this it is better to stick to general principles and when you start diving into motives you have dived off the wrong board.

What I will comment on is that I don’t think the Archdiocese of Washington D.C. has handled this very well. Some attempt at catechesis on the subject has been attempted by the diocese, but it has been not as clear as it could be when it comes to when Canon 915 could correctly be applied.  I can certainly understand why the diocese issued a letter of apology to the women and this was appropriate.  I would have liked to have seen some mention of the fact that she should not have presented herself for Communion, but stating this is a prudential matter.

Related posts worth reading from Ed Peters:

Bp. Knestout’s March 9 letter on Fr. Guarnizo

Remarks on the ‘Catholic Standard’ editorial on the lesbian/Communion controvery

A thought exercise occasioned by the lesbian/Communion controversy

Note on the lesbian Communion case