Punditry

I have not written anything since the initial news concerning Bp. Zurek and Fr. Pavone. From my sofa-eyed view of the situation there seemed to be much fault on both sides and I was not exactly thrilled with the actions of either.

The latest news that Fr. Pavone had not attended a private meeting with his bishop due to his canon lawyer’s advice added a new wrinkle to this conflict. Fr. Pavone is adept at using media to get information out so I really wonder why he did not announce that he was not going to attend this meeting ahead of time? I also wonder why exactly he feels he needs a mediator when talking with his bishop. This action is more like somebody who is lawyering-up before meeting a district attorney. This makes the bishop-priest relationship an adversarial one and that he feels he must be protected from his bishop. That it seems his greatest fear is that he will be given a parish. With first Fr. Corapi and now Fr. Pavone is canon-lawyering-up to be the latest phrase.

Now I have long admired Fr. Pavone’s pro-life work and the good he has done, but doing pro-life work does not excuse you from Holy Obedience. Even if your bishop throws around words like “suspended” when they are canonically incorrect. Even if your bishop might not be making the most prudential choice in this matter. Would having Fr. Pavone step down from his leadership roles in the pro-life movement to be a parish priest be the most prudential use of his talents? Maybe not, but a parish priest is simply not a low-rung on the ladder as many great saints and St. John Vianney in particular have shown.

I was hoping that Canonist Ed Peters would post more on the subject of mediation. I certainly wanted to understand the subject of mediation in the view of Canon Law since I know nothing on the subject.

His post is informative and answers my questions and confirms some initial thoughts on the subject.

VATICAN CITY — A U.S. Catholic priest who supports ordination for women has been detained by police after marching to the Vatican to press the Holy See to lift its ban on women priests.

The Rev. Roy Bourgeois and two supporters were taken away Monday in a police car after their group marched down the main boulevard leading to the Vatican and chanted outside St. Peter’s Square “What do we want? Women priests!”

One of Bourgeois’ lawyers, Bill Quigley, says police had tried to take the group’s banners and members resisted.

Bourgeois and members of the Women’s Ordination Conference and other groups that support women priests had come to Rome to deliver a petition backing Bourgeois, who is facing dismissal from his Maryknoll order for his support of women’s ordination. [Source]

“What do we want? Priests faithful to the magisterium!”

“Bourgeois and members of the Women’s Ordination Conference and other groups”

Considering that there were three people including Fr. Bourgeois involved that statement seems off.

I reckon something good is coming out of the Wall Street occupation: it’s getting people talking about one of the seven deadly sins. We really should be talking about greed. We should be talking about how violent a sin greed is. It is violent because the greedy person will invariably do some sort of violence against another person in order to advance his avarice.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker writes something I have been thinking about myself.

From my point of view there are some other odd competing messages in the Occupy Wall street Movement. My purpose is not to sneer at this protest or pick out loony signs or philosophies of specific protesters. Do corporate CEOs and Wall street bankers need reform? Surely since we all need reform. Greed like all the seven deadly sins hurts not only the person with such a vice, but the community also. Unfortunately the direction of the criticism seems to have no concern for the effects of sin on the persons they criticize, but on what they can get out of it. Last I checked envy was also one of the seven deadly sins and class warfare rhetoric that concentrates on what they feel is owed to them. There is covetousness involved in the underlying attitudes. The whole “We are the 99%” invokes a less than charitable view of the so-called 1%. Besides it is rather odd to have such a small demographic of protesters say they are speaking for the 99%. I am also reminded of G.K. Chesterton’s “The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right.”

Besides I find it interesting that they want to force their values on Wall street bankers. Rather ironic in such a relativistic culture that stresses individualism over moral virtues. Being that we are fallen creatures I would certainly suspect that greed exist among the targeted person, though it oversteps to assume greed is the driver among every individual that has amassed a fortune. So what is their plan to help those suffering from the effects of greed? There is really no call for conversion, but instead a call to extract money from them and transfer it somewhere else. Taking money from the actual greedy won’t reduce their greed. Even more regulation won’t affect greed. Transferring their wealth to the government is a great idea since we know politicians don’t suffer from greed or the love of power themselves – oh wait. The fact that so many in Washington are supported by the same “greedy” people seems to be lost on the protesters. The President who they are so sympathetic with has taken more money from the so-called 1% than anybody else in history. Again the driving force seems to be transfer of wealth to the government to be dispensed into some program that is seen as boon for the protesting individuals. The cost of a college education and the resulting student load debt seems to be one focus, yet they don’t talk about greed educational administrations and the gigantic increase in the cost of an education. I guess occupying Harvard, etc, just doesn’t sound as good. The effects of government on the economy is another area that seems to be totally ignored. The collusion of bankers and government and the resulting bailouts is certainly something I object to whether it is President Bush or President Obama at the helm. The economy is a complex thing and there is plenty of blame to go around.

Alexis de Tocqueville statement “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” has much to recommend it. We have become more and more a less virtuous nation with an underlying luke-warm Christianity. Moral relativism and individualism has undermined this nation. The common good now means “what’s in it for me.” Forced charity is no charity at all and what we really need is a call to conversion rooted in our own lives. We need to occupy the confessional and the adoration chapel. To intercede for those suffering from greed, envy, and the other deadly sins.

It showed up in a letter from HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to advise the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Office of Migration and Refugee Services (MRS) that it would not receive a grant to continue its services for victims of human trafficking.

Instead the grant was given to a company that is not fully operational and is still hiring despite what is demanded of the contract. Not only that it appears that the people who received the contract are in no way prepared to receive it or in any way provide a smooth transition.

Sr. Mary Ann Walsh concludes:

Apparently HHS rules about the benefits of experience and cost effectiveness can be waived. So can rules about being fully operational by a certain date. What can’t be waived is the new, albeit unwritten rule of HHS, the ABC rule – Anybody But Catholics.

We’ve seen this at the state level where Catholics are being excluded from adoption services and the same principals are being applied at the Federal level. A religious test of conformance to accepting homosexuality, contraception, abortion, etc is now a criteria in government. Liberal Christians and secular groups are fine – others need not apply.

In related news:

There was some just criticism of President Bush’s faith based office partly on what would happen with the office in a later administration. President Obama gave the Reductio ad absurdum when he appointed a self-proclaimed “spiritual activist, pastor and lesbian” Rev. Dr. Nancy Wilson to the Faith Based office.

I think none of my readers will be shocked to find out that she has has written what Thomas Peter calls a “600-word screed against Catholic teaching (and Archbishop Dolan in particular)” in the Huffington Post.

The thrust of her letter is that her church does great good and the Catholic Church a slave to evil dogma does great harm. We have a government official writing “Bishop Dolan, hit the restart button on the Gospel.” and –

“…like most threatening letters, [Arch]bishop [Dolan]‘s words actually pulled back the curtain on the hierarchy’s not-so-veiled efforts to impose Catholic dogma on all U.S. citizens.

Though what could you expect from an article headlined “Should DOMA Dogma Be Law?”.

Like most bigots she knows not what she rails against and does not make any distinctions. Technically I believe marriage between a man and a woman is part of the Natural Law and not directly part of divine revelation. Divine revelation including Sacred Scripture and Tradition of course supports the Natural Law but marriage is certainly not a Catholic dogma as she means it. While the Catholic Church is the greatest defender of marriage, this view of marriage is certainly not specific to only the Catholic Church.

But the word “dogma”is red meat for liberals as they dogmatically state that only the Church is dogmatic. As G.K. Chesterton said “There are two kinds of people: those who accept dogmas and know it and those who accept dogmas and don’t know it.” Though the dogma referenced is in the general and not the technical sense.

Lifetime Apple user Domenico Bettinelli writes on the subject of Steve Jobs’ death.

I’m not going to write a hagiography of Jobs here or canonize him. I’m sure he was flawed and had his failings. But you can’t deny that he’s changed the world as we know it. In the past 30 years, he has completely changed four major industries: computers, telephones, music, and animated movies. And his influence has extended deeply into dozens of others.

While much has been written on the subject of his passing and the effect he had I want to add a Catholic take. The Catholic blogosphere has done fairly well with the pro-life aspect being that Steve Jobs was adopted. Umberto Eco had the famous essay “Mac is Catholic, DOS is Protestant” which I will expand upon. Eco also saw Windows more like “an Anglican-style schism.”

For the majority of my life the world of Apple was not one I paid any attention to much cared about. If anything I was a common Apple-bigot full of inaccurate opinions about Apple computers. I was also an early adopter of MP3s and the first players that came out and went through various makes and models. In addition I started listening to podcast early on and getting those podcasts on my mp3 player was a daily chore. It took some overcoming of bias to take a serious look at the iPod and so in 2005 I bough my first Apple product. Two years later I bought my first Mac.

Now as someone who makes a living writing Windows based software this was a bit like heresy to me. But there were serious reasons I moved into the Apple ecosphere other than just “new and shiny!”.

By all accounts Steve Jobs seems to have been not only a perfectionist, but a visionary in the area of design. In the past these qualities did not always mesh well with what was the state-of-the-art in hardware at the time. Many companies talk about user experience, but Steve Jobs really did seem to see that as an overriding focus.

So what are the Catholic aspects I see? It is Apple’s design philosophy that really drew me in. For one they talk about the philosophy of UI design and create specific guidelines such as the “Human Interface Guidelines.” There is a canonical aspect to how software designers and programmers are to write user interfaces. So often I find that when it comes to form and function one side of the equation is more represented than the other. For the human person aesthetics are not something that is just to be an afterthought. We have lost so much beauty for example when we design churches more like auditoriums than places of worship. The considerations seem to be more to the physical than with having beauty help your spirit rise up in worship. When it comes to hardware and software this is also quite evident. Sure a skin or a gloss might be added to something at the end of production, but it is something grafted on and not a coherent whole of form and function. There is something almost Gnostic about so much design. In Gnosticism the body is evil and the spirit is good and in design Gnosticism the material aspects are all that really matters.

What I discovered with Apple products and the Apple software development community is that they have a very Catholic both/and as a philosophy. Form and function both drive the end product. The attention to detail in their products is at a level I had never seen before. Sure they might constantly tempt us with the latest model, but there is no planned obsolescence built into their products. I never kept a computer longer than the Mac I am typing this on. Yet it still looks as aesthetically pleasing as the day I bought it and has not experienced any of the problems I have had before involving parts going bad or pieces of the case coming off. Apple’s attention to detail is what drove them to add a speaker to the iPod just so you could hear an audio click with you pressed on the classic iPod’s click wheel.

This type of attention to detail is also found on the software side where again how the user interacts with the program is given great importance. As a long-time geek I worked with hundreds of programs with confusing and/or ugly interfaces. Sure the underlying program might have done it’s job quite well, but again as human persons we should expect more than just function as in an atheistic materialist way. Though things have improved in the Windows world as the importance of design has become more prevalent and tools like WPF and Silverlight helping to focus on that.

Apples products are certainly a team effort, but it is quite evident that Steve Jobs set the bar when it came to sweating the details so we don’t have to. His leadership brought a company that was on the verge of bankruptcy to a world leader in consumer electronics it is today. It takes more than leadership to bring this about, it took having a vision and a philosophy and imparting it as a part of the DNA of the company. As Catholics there is much we can learn from this. Are attitudes should always take in account the whole of the human person. Each individual is the intended target of the Gospel and when the world of Catholic art and literature is substandard it is no surprise that so are the results.

There is much talk about how the Catholic faith “baptized” various things and brought them into use within the faith. Apple did not create the first personal computer, mp3 player, GUI, tablet, or phone – yet they took each to a new level. Again as Catholic we need to do the same with all the tools at hand looking for opportunities to spread the Gospel with the highest levels of professionalism.

Link: Good article on Steve Jobs at the National Catholic Register

A novel approach by Associated Press reporter Tom Breen.

My father is a journalist, though, and it was his influence that steered me toward news. After college, I was working at the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, Mass., at the time the most recent sex abuse scandals began to break in Boston. Partly because I had some Catholic bric-a-brac on my desk, my editor assumed I actually knew something about the church, and so I was assigned to cover a few local stories related to the scandal.

I quickly realized that I didn’t know anything about Catholicism, and so to avoid embarrassing myself and the paper I resolved to learn what I could. In addition to reading everything I could get my hands on, I started pitching stories on religious topics that had nothing to do with the abuse scandal, hoping to bring myself up to speed.

I call this a novel approach considering how bad much of religion coverage is which is full of ignorance and axes to grind. The full story is well worth reading as found at GetReligion.

Tom Breen reminds of a former AP reporter Matt Baglio whose coverage of exorcism led him tow write the book The Rite which later resulted in the movie of the same name. He truly worked to cover the story with an investigative eye and ended up writing a informative and theologically concise book.

Okay, maybe it is British humor. Really though the use of a Dalek to promote women Bishops in the Anglican Church? Instead of “Exterminate” they have “Con-se-crate.” Though maybe a Dalek is appropriate. It is easy to imagine the raspy electronic voice of the Dalek as to how these women talk. The Daleks had every emotion removed except hate and the tone of the Women’s ordination movement reminds me of this.

Though I don’t know what they are worried about. The Anglican Church always caves and unlike the Catholic Church it really is only a matter of time since the governing General Synod has already decided this was to be allowed. I guess their chant is “We want women bishops now and not just in the next year.”

Via Father Z

The president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the second-largest church in America, announced today that come next year, they might not be the Southern Baptist Convention anymore.

President Bryant Wright said the “Southern” part of their name might need to go since it implies a regional focus, and he’s launched a task force to consider new options for the 166-year-old body, Baptist News reported.

Their findings will be shared with SBC leaders in February, and any change would have to be approved by delegates at its annual meetings.

Across the Baptist blogosphere, Southern Baptists seem to be thinking that Wright may be right, supporting his claim that without the regional modifier, Southern Baptists may have further reach across the continent.

Interesting, but it does seem to me that outside of the Catholic Church all forms of Christianity are geographical in nature.

For example the Protestant fathers all created competing forms of Christianity and adherence pretty much formed regionally or in areas where their regions projected spheres of influence. Martin Luther, John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, King Henry VIII all established churches which largely became national churches. After the Protestant revolt you did not see countries with roughly equal amounts of Lutherans, Calvinists, Anabaptists, Anglicans, etc; you see pretty much geographical dominance. Colonization plays a role in projecting regional Christianity, but eventually as is always the case with Protestantism geographical fracture occurs. For example no one would compare Anglicanism as practiced in England with Anglicanism as practiced in Africa. For now African Anglicanism is more like historic Anglicanism in belief. Really geographical fracture becomes so extreme that the local non-denominational denominations are tied to neighborhoods and not regions.

This is also certainly so in the Orthodox Churches in that they are pretty much tied to national versions of Orthodoxy and their spread to other countries is pretty much confounded to expatriates. Being that the Orthodox have valid Holy Orders and have retained the sacraments their geographic fracturing is largely kept in check as compared to Protestant churches.

The latter half of the first century use of the word Catholic to describe a particular and universal Church is an escape from being tied to the geographical. This is one of the reasons I dislike and don’t use the term “Roman Catholic” a term which rose from Anglican quarters. Being a Catholic of the Roman or Latin Rite is more accurate terminology and I dislike prefixes that would limit the word Catholic. Besides in the 1300s we didn’t suddenly become “Avignon Catholics.” Certainly there is much to appreciate in the historic association of the Catholic Church and the city of Rome. The reality though is that the Catholic Church is the Church established by Christ and geography does not limit its universality.

That is part of the beauty of the Catholic Church is that we can be a universal Church and at the same time have some geographical and cultural distinctions. These distinctions mainly occur with the different rites where you have different emphasis on theology and liturgical expression. These distinctions don’t resolve into totally different theology as we find in the myriad Protestant churches.

Though to be more accurate there is geographical fracturing that does occur within the members of the Church. These fractures occur whenever there is departure from the Magisterium of the Church. The Dutch Bishops and their infamous Dutch Catechism did not bring about a more universal church, but regional dissent from the Church. In the United States the heresy of Americanism was and is a departure from the universality of the Church. The Church is universal because the truth she teaches is universal and the Church’s teaching authority maintains that universality. That authority from Christ and protected from the gates of hell will keep the Church universal despite the ebb and flow of the adherence of her members. Dissent from that authority results in individualism and geographical fracturing.

Getting back to the renaming of the Southern Baptist Convention they will have a difficult time coming up with a name devoid of both geographical associations and having a form of Baptist specificity. Maybe they can do what Prince did and change their name to a symbol. The ecclesial community formerly known as the Souther Baptist Convention. Joking aside I really should be joining Jesus in his high priestly prayer to the Father.

“I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom thou hast given me, may be with me where I am, to behold my glory which thou hast given me in thy love for me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world has not known thee, but I have known thee; and these know that thou hast sent me. I made known to them thy name, and I will make it known, that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.” John 17:20-26

The Inaugural Saint Paul University Pride Centre Event: Queer and Christian, A Conversation with Jan Braun.

A group of students at St. Paul and SPUSA are collaborating to create the Saint Paul University Pride Centre a welcoming place for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Two Spirit, Queer, Questing and Asexual students and staff at Saint Paul University and their allies.

I bet welcoming to everybody but orthodox Catholics.  It is also hard to keep up with all the politically correct terms they throw in. First it was LQBT and each week they seem to throw in another letter of the alphabet.  Plus do the asexual students bud?

We are excited to launch our centre with a conversation with Jan Braun who has walked the balance between her faith and her sexuality as a Queen Mennonite. She is coming to share parts of her book Somewhere Else, and her experiences with us.

Anytime you see the word balance used with faith it means that the faith is actually in what ever it is being balanced with. Somebody with some level of same-sex attraction can live the faith just as anybody else can by answering the same call to holiness without a balancing act. Now did they mean “Queen Mennonite” or “Queer Mennonite”? Or is it a difference without a distinction?

Jan Braun wrote a novel called “Somewhere Else”

Jess is sixteen and aware that she is in an impossible position—being the homosexual daughter of the president of the Mennonite college. She hits the road in search of a language and the freedom to speak it. On the train to Winnipeg she is found by Freya, the Icelandic princess of her dreams. Halfsteinn, fisherman and expert in the fine art of hand-rolling cigarettes, enters Jess’ life, helping her escape emotional captivity. Jess embraces pothead, videogame—playing housemates in the world away from her Mennonite being. Then, she meets Shea. Jess can barely utter the name—afraid of the word, the woman, the possibility, and her own past.

Please tell me the novel is a comedy because the description is really cracking me up.

Aren’t you glad to know that Saint Paul University is one of the only two pontifical universities in North America?

Let’s play “Guess the University Mission”

A. We embrace the teachings of Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium with a spirit of Christian humanism that relates all learning to Jesus Christ. At …, you’ll grow in mind, body, and spirit through the integration of faith and reason.

B. As a Catholic institution, … is dedicated primarily to an understanding and integration of Christian faith and life. It intends to pursue this task in a spirit of ecumenical openness and with a critical awareness of the forms of Christian life already existing or now emerging within modern cultures and societies.

I know this is a hard one – but jus try to guess which Mission statement is for the University of St Paul located in Ottawa, Ca. Well they do both have the word “integration” in them.

At a rally on the campus of North Carolina State in Raleigh, N.C. Wednesday where President Obama went to drum up support for his jobs bill, this happened.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I love you, Barack!

THE PRESIDENT: I love you back. (Applause.) But first — but if you love me — if you love me, you got to help me pass this bill. (Applause.) If you love me, you got to help me pass this bill.

Here’s John 21:15, the New International Version, describing a scene between Jesus and his disciples:

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter,”Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”

“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” [Source]

Hmm, not sure if NPR is mocking Obama’s MESSiah-like status or just noting the comparison. Though this is not the verse I would have chosen to make a comparison with – but hey with NPR it is amazing they would have any verse in mind. Much more fitting I think is:

“If you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15)

Surely this idea is more what the President has in mind. Though I think the cruelest thing that could be done to the President was to pass his jobs bill, not to mention the American people. It won’t be passed and the President can then blame the Congress for the worsening economy. The effects of passing the “More of the same – American Jobs Bill” would not give him this out. Though like most politicians he is quite apt at blaming someone else as usual.

I find the whole idea of this type of appeal to love for political reasons rather odd. For one the response for love is not always to acquiesce to what somebody wants. If an alcoholic tells you “If you love me, bye me a bottle”, giving him a bottle is not love. To love is to will the good for the other and there a prudential considerations to be dealt with when considering this. The only demands love can make is for love. To use it as a coercive demand is not love.

The prudential merits of the Presidents economic plans has nothing to do with supporting his plan. I would consider the President to be an enemy for his culture of death policies, yet I can still love him and will the good for him without supporting his plans.