Contra Conservatives

 

Wherein is demonstrated how many, if not most, of the bad things to befall the United States came from conservatives and republicans. 

Traditionalists and conservatives could use some advice from Jimmy Buffet: “Some people claim that there’s a woman (Hilary, Pelosi, Susan from the parish council) to blame, but I know: it’s my own damn fault.”

Republicans do not have a great record in the last 100 years when it comes to modern threats to the faith and to conservatism. Economics and treatment of the poor that would give the prophets Isaiah and Amos fits, the masonic FBI director who created the modern American police state, the Supreme Court justices who mandated legal contraception, abortion, then redefined marriage and who banned prayer in public schools, the Governor who started no fault divorce, the destruction of ancient Christian communities in Biblical lands, the initial go aheads to China, big tech, and big pharma; and an opening salvo justifying the rejection of magisterial teaching by practicing Catholics. 

Hoover

It’s safe to say the 1920s were the last time American conservatism was truly dominant, with Republican Presidents winning the vote in New York City and Supreme Court rulings rolling back earlier progressive decisions. Americans wanted a “return to normalcy” after the dizzying progressive era and the First World War. 

Republicans ruled for almost all of the 20s. And did a fine job enabling debt-financed materialism, giving rise to conniving tycoons like Joe Kennedy, and hollowing out the economy. They also presided over the organized crime of John Dillinger and Al Capone en route to handing the growing Bureau of Investigation to a 20-something Freemason named J. Edgar Hoover. 

When the chickens came home to roost, President Hoover raised taxes and tariffs to stave off deficit spending. The resulting deathblow to the money supply turned what should’ve been a short-term crash into an epoch-defining depression. The depression handed the country to the progressives for 50 years while giving Europe a shove toward fascism and communism. Membership in the American Communist Party swelled in the 30s, as did support for FDR’s alphabet soup, and Huey Long’s tyrannical “Share Our Wealth” program. 

Eisenhower

The greatest damage was done by his appointment of Earl Warren as Chief Justice in 1953. Warren may be the most influential man in the history of America in the 20th century. Warren was Governor of California, and not a judge, before his appointment. Eisenhower likely viewed his political skills as necessary to push the Court to hand down tough but necessary rulings on civil rights for racial minorities (and needed to pay Warren back for getting Eisenhower nominated for the Presidency). But what happens when the fire you use to warm your house and cook your food starts burning down your living room? 

The Warren Court handed down ruling after ruling reengineering American social norms. Griswold struck down laws prohibiting contraception (and opened the door to Roe), Aaron v. Cooper gave the Court unlimited authority over the US Constitution, Yates v. United States struck down laws aimed at suppressing communists, Engel banned prayer as part of the school day in public schools. It’s worth noting that these rulings came years before the countercultural explosion of 1968. Warren was also in charge of investigating the Kennedy assassination, and did such a good job that today no one questions who killed JFK. 

This is not even to mention the interstate highway system. This beauty started its life by physically destroying hundreds of neighborhoods (often poor ones), and matured by hollowing out urban centers, eliminating more efficient public transit, and magnifying concentration of poverty and racial segregation. 

William Buckley

In many ways, I find William Buckley and National Review inspiring for their educated, conservative take. Nevertheless, it was Buckley and National Review writer Gary Wills who planted the seed for modern cafeteria Catholicism by publicly rejecting Pope John XXIII’s encyclical on Catholic social teaching Mater et Magistra in 1961. It was not surprising when Wills made common cause with the liberals a few years later to reject Humanae Vitae. 

It has gradually become clear that Buckley and the National Review Catholics of today are Americanists who support the basic moral teachings of the faith but reject anything that contradicts the agnostic American Constitution and materialist neoliberal economics. Reaganism apparently supersedes magisterial teaching. This is ultimately self defeating, because if magisterial teaching on economics can be set aside, then it’s artificial to claim the Church’s moral and family teaching are somehow in a different, more binding category for the faithful. 

One either accepts magisterial teaching, even in areas that go against one’s preferred politics, or one does not. Buckley and National Review did not, and do not. Hence the good theology and ideas they do hold are unlikely to be taken seriously by working class folks trapped in cycles of unjust wages and usury. 

Nixon

Where to begin? Watergate, opening the door to communist China, getting guys killed by slow rolling the Vietnam withdrawal, and appointing Justice Blackmun, who wrote the Roe v. Wade opinion. 

Reagan

Where to begin? Governor Reagan made California the first state with no fault divorce, and signed an early permissive state law on abortion. 

As President, he did nothing substantive or lasting to roll back massive increases in government, nor was he ever able to lead the Republicans to a majority in Congress. He did, however, preside over searing government deficits and refuse to enforce antitrust law, leadening to ridiculous increases in executive pay and stagnating middle class incomes. He failed to do much to prosecute what Michael Lewis in Liar’s Poker called “an unprecedented era of greed, gluttony, and outrageous fortune” throughout Wall Street. 

Under Reagan, greed was good, Wall Street was king, and families were hollowed out as men spent more time hitting quarterly numbers than building and protecting their families. Paeans paid to Christian values were largely lip service as major cities suffered under dreadful waves of crime and drug addiction. 

There was also the matter of the Supreme Court justices Sandra Day O’Connor (an early concession to identity politics) and Anthony Kennedy (who would manage to be on the wrong but winning side of just about every landmark ruling in the 2010s). 

Newt Gingrich

Just when a Republican Congress comes in to rescue us from 60 years of progressivism, we find out the Congressional Emperor has no clothes in front of women who are not his lawful wife. Wonderful. And a nice touch shutting down the government chasing an unattainable conviction of a President for… sexual misconduct. What was so important about securing the presidency for Al Gore that conservatives had to be associated with such obvious hypocrisy?

Bush 43

Bush did a better job than most destroying Christianity in the Middle East with his war in Iraq that destabilized the entire area. Christians who were at least getting by in the past left the area in droves if they weren’t killed. 

It was difficult to listen to Bush fanboys bleat about abortion when even a 2007 survey estimated that the Iraq War directly led to over 1.2 million deaths, not counting the depredations of ISIS that followed. 

When I was growing up, religion was at least respected if not widely practiced. By the time Bush left office, it was positively held in contempt after my generation (who always hated the Clintons and were ripe for the picking for conservatives) watched 8 years of deadly incompetence. 

If you’re wary of standardized testing and massive federal spending and deficits, thank Bush who expanded Medicare and led us into the No Child Left Behind boondoggle. Under a Republican Congress no less. 

Do the same if you’re scared stiff about China, which joined the World Trade Organization in December 2001 and swelled to a quasi superpower during the Bush administration. 

The early warning signs of tech company oligopoly were happily ignored by Bush, who had no issue watching Google acquire YouTube and DoubleClick. The same goes for pharmaceuticals, with several massive Pfizer acquisitions getting smooth approval by the Bush administration. 

There’s also the Supreme Court, as his choice of Chief Justice has turned what should be a solidly conservative Supreme Court into a overtly political institution since the Chief cares more for the Court’s public image among college educated liberals than fulfilling his oath to the Constitution. 

Trump

It was hard to watch traditional Catholics cheer lustily for a man whose goons tore Catholic immigrant children away from their families, who was widely known for his libertine ways, used all sorts of shenanigans to escape paying incurred debts to his creditors like Deutschebank, and did little to give conservatives a good name or shore up his chronically poor favorability ratings. 

Within just a few years he managed to repeatedly attack lifelong conservatives, hounding quite a few from Office, and losing conservatives their supposedly bulletproof House majority as well as Senate elections in Arizona and Georgia of all places. The January 6 thing was bush league banana republic nonsense, though it mercifully put an end to the embarrassment the country suffered on his Twitter account. 

His first Supreme Court nominee Gorsuch teamed up with Roberts to hand the social engineers a victory in the Clayton County case that rewrote the 55-year old Civil Rights Act, giving the Left a sledgehammer to use on any conservative employer or coworker who dares to uphold the reality of biological sex. With “textualism” logic that wouldn’t work on most five year olds. 

But hey, at least we achieved long term normalization of relations with Russia and aren’t about to go to war or anything.

If the Catholic alliance with the democratic party was a disaster from the start, the modern alliance of “conservative” Catholics with the republican party is almost as bad. While political compromises are sometimes necessary to survive, traditional Catholics should take a hard look at the last century and ask the serious question of whether remaining in the republican fold is truly the best for the faith and for the country. 

A Right-Friendly Covid Strategy

 

I’ve been skeptical of everything covid since April 2020. I am aware that makes me come off as the old Groucho Marx “Whatever it is, I’m against it” type. 

So what should we do, Sherlock? For this article, I’m thinking the Biden administration, given the administration’s self-professed competence and adherence to science. But parts also apply to Trump and state governments.

Treat proof of recovery the same as or better than proof of vaccination

Scale up healthcare infrastructure 

Invoke the Defense Production Act to order the mass production of rapid covid and antibody tests, reusable N95 masks, and treatments like monoclonal antibodies, ivermectin, etc. 

The only way to get covid “under control” is to quickly and reliably figure out who has it, limit spread using credible measures, and save lives/shorten infections through proven treatments. 

Use OSHA or relevant federal and state agencies to mandate filtering and ventilation standards, especially within multifamily buildings

Every single time I bring this up to a vax-focused relative it is dismissed as too hard. It’s not too hard. Every building manager can install a MERV 12 or higher filter, open the building’s dampers, and measure the results with a CO2 sensor that doesn’t cost more than a couple hundred bucks. 

Having worked on sustainability in buildings for years I am positive that a huge driver of infections in urban areas in the US and Europe is concentrating people in multifamily apartments where the disease spreads freely through the air ducts between units. 

Focus restrictions and punitive actions on those who have tested positive, been exposed, or are in a known vulnerable category

If you test positive and break quarantine, that’s on you, and you should be liable to fines. Applying the same restrictions to the rest of us, when statistically over 75% of us don’t have covid at any given time is not viable or sustainable. 

Provide free or reduced price delivery service and house calls to the elderly and those diagnosed with diabetes or respiratory illness

Anyone not living under a rock has surely seen that many of the people in grocery stores, in restaurants, and in elective healthcare offices at the height of covid were elderly people who had no business doing so. Provide reduced price delivery to anyone whose driver’s license number identifies them as over 65 or whatever threshold you want to set. 

Distribute vitamin D and C kits at every testing center

If someone is concerned enough to get tested, they should be taking vitamin C and vitamin D supplements. This is an easy way to save hundreds of lives. 

Focus direct financial assistance on those with required in-person jobs below regionally appropriate income levels

Throwing out money to every household, including relatively affluent households with the breadwinner working from home (such as mine) is insane when you have lower income individuals out of work for extended periods. 

Forbid administration officials from speaking publicly about vaccines and masks without speaking about ventilation and the preference for n95 masks

The reason no one wears n95s or thinks about ventilation is because no one talks about them. Talk about them. 

Forbid administration officials from speaking about surface sanitization, plexiglass screens, and handwashing

These things were proven not to work over a year ago. It’s time to move on. 

Uphold constitutional rights by avoiding restrictions on churches, other places of worship, freedom of assembly, and freedom of speech

The constitution is not suspended during the pandemic, and those of any political persuasion should be allowed to publicly protest, speak their mind, and worship without discrimination disguised as public health guidance. 

Create livable quarantine centers in vacant hotels, resorts

Some, particularly in multigeneration households, need pleasant, social places to quarantine when they get sick. Instead of wasting money on boondoggles like contact tracing, create spaces where people want to go to discourage them from going elsewhere and infecting others.

Demand competence from local and state governments

Why was Seattle and the state of Washington permitting Seattle Sounders games when multiple nursing home residents were dying of covid in February 2020? Why were states not allowed to administer their own tests during the same timeframe? Competent state governments are a must to implement and enforce any public health guidelines, and it does no good to create the expectation that they are empty shells that punt everything to the feds. 

Enforce Accountability

A comprehensive response to a pandemic requires people across the political spectrum to make sacrifices and endure restrictions they hate for a prolonged period. 

Getting people in a country like America to follow through requires universal trust from everyone. A plan and a set of administrators that have lost credibility with large chunks of the country are not good enough. 

Americans need the government to acknowledge and address the abject incompetence and lying they’ve been forced to live with for two years. Otherwise they will not take those officials and their guidance seriously. 

Briefly:

The officials at the FDA who botched the US’s initial covid tests in February 2020 should be named and fired. 

To stay on as Chief Medical Officer Fauci should be removed from any position of influence over NIH grant funding, a clear conflict of interest. 

He should also be ordered to stop playing semantic games about gain of function research, the public availability of his financial disclosures, or his clear denial that masks are effective on 60 Minutes in March 2020.  

If he refuses to comply, fire him. 

Censure politicians who fail to abide by their own covid restrictions, such as Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom. 

Publicly name and fine hospitals that are proven to have lied about their covid statistics. 

Do the same to those who have engaged in malpractice by refusing to use treatments proven to be effective, ranging from vitamin D to ivermectin. 

Demand that officials in the FDA, CDC, and media with links to the pharmaceutical companies disclose these links publicly and, where feasible, recuse themselves from pharmaceutical-related guidance and reporting. How many people know that the head of Reuters for most of 2020 is a Pfizer board member? 

Admit fault

Missteps early in any war are understandable. But the government needs to provide clear answers to basic questions. 

Why did the trained, experienced public health establishment contradict itself on everything from surface transmission to masks for months? Surely these are basic questions that a public health official should be expected to get right from the get-go? Fauci needs to take the lead here and eat some humble pie. 

Get real about masks

Masks are dubiously effective at best. If you’re going to insist on them, provide defensible standards around mask material. When your mask mandates result in most people wearing unfitted cloth masks, your mask mandates get people killed because they encourage some vulnerable people to go places they shouldn’t be going under the false pretense that masks will keep them safe. 

People hate masks. They are uncomfortable and are a barrier to communication. Instead of demonizing people who point out these commonsense issues, address their concerns. Manufacture n95 standard masks with soft, adjustable straps, that are see-through. 

Deal even-handedly with misinformation

Franklin Templeton pointed out in summer 2020 that people vastly overstated the risk of covid, and this was more common among democrats and those who used social media for news. Yet it is only ever right-leaning voices like Robert Malone who are censored. 

Start flagging voices who proclaim vaccine and cloth mask effectiveness that does not really exist. Do the same to any voices and guidance that are still talking about sanitization and hand washing. Call out groups like teacher unions that refuse to return to work when approved guidelines are in place. Do the same to those who exaggerate the risks of covid well beyond the scientific evidence. 

There is no clear cut way to “end” the pandemic. But the current approach of lurching from crisis to crisis is not working. Nor is the Obama-era trope of sticking to failed policies and blaming one’s political opponents and using dorm room meme level language. Governments need to stick to the facts, focus on those directly infected and vulnerable, and restore trust across the political spectrum through honesty and accountability. Covid is not going anywhere, and we need to establish long-term measures to take the edge off that we can agree on and implement successfully. 

Jubilees and Baileys

 

Yesterday’s Bible study focused on the passage in Luke where Christ declares the prophecy in Isaiah 61 fulfilled in the hearing of the Nazareth synagogue:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." 

After listening to Father Mike Schmitz’s gentle tones on the Bible in a Year, it seems natural that this passage is supposed to refer to the Year of Jubilee. This is a topic fit to give any self-respecting American conservative fits. Highlights from Leviticus 25.

And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants; it shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his family. 

A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be to you; in it you shall neither sow, nor reap what grows of itself, nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines. "In this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his property. 

And if you sell to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, you shall not wrong one another. According to the number of years after the jubilee, you shall buy from your neighbor, and according to the number of years for crops he shall sell to you. If the years are many you shall increase the price, and if the years are few you shall diminish the price, for it is the number of the crops that he is selling to you. 

You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God; for I am the LORD your God. "Therefore you shall do my statutes, and keep my ordinances and perform them; so you will dwell in the land securely. The land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill, and dwell in it securely. And if you say, 'What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop?” I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, so that it will bring forth fruit for three years. The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with me. And in all the country you possess, you shall grant a redemption of the land. 

"If your brother becomes poor, and sells part of his property, then his next of kin shall come and redeem what his brother has sold. If a man has no one to redeem it, and then himself becomes prosperous and finds sufficient means to redeem it, let him reckon the years since he sold it and pay back the overpayment to the man to whom he sold it; and he shall return to his property. 

But if he has not sufficient means to get it back for himself, then what he sold shall remain in the hand of him who bought it until the year of jubilee; in the jubilee it shall be released, and he shall return to his property. 

"And if your brother becomes poor, and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall maintain him; as a stranger and a sojourner he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or increase, but fear your God; that your brother may live beside you.  

You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit. 

I am the LORD your God, who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God. "And if your brother becomes poor beside you, and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave: he shall be with you as a hired servant and as a sojourner. He shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee; then he shall go out from you, he and his children with him, and go back to his own family, and return to the possession of his fathers. 

For they are my servants, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves. You shall not rule over him with harshness, but shall fear your God. 

It would be difficult to find a passage more scandalous to American conservatism than the above passage. God repeatedly links acknowledgement of His lordship with restoring property to the poor, canceling debts, paying fair wages, refusing to pursue wealth and sustenance for a full year, and giving the poor what they need out of charity, foregoing any profit. 

The Lord is God, and we are not. It is not our ingenuity, money, economic systems, or productivity that sustain our lives but God. The Levitical economy revolves around God and His justice, not human contracts, pareto efficiency, or GDP statistics. We require a regular interruption to the workaday cycle that prioritizes wealth and commerce over justice and faith. 

This is an early Biblical example of a kind of socio spiritual physics. Our modern world should understand what this means:

You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God; for I am the LORD your God. "Therefore you shall do my statutes, and keep my ordinances and perform them; so you will dwell in the land securely.

Surely we’ve seen this movie before. A society grows economically, abuses the poor, the poor become disenfranchised and radicalized, and then some popular figure takes advantage and topples the existing order. It happened in Israel and Judah repeatedly, with the Gracchi and Caesar in Rome, in communist countries worldwide, and it is happening in the United States right now. 

Traditionalists should ask themselves the honest question of how the United States would look different morally, culturally, and politically had Catholics fully put the social teaching of Leo XIII and Pius XI into practice by working to restore and retain the poor in their property and by demanding just wages and contracts as a condition for participation in the American economy. 

The Catholic and Levitical ideal looks an awful lot like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. In one scene, rich man Potter’s rent collector informs him that George Bailey built a whole neighborhood of homes valued at twice what it cost George to build them. In another scene George tells the bank examiner that his Building and Loan firm is broke. The implication is clear: George spent a life in economic hardship and anxiety because he sold homes at break even prices to enable the poor of Bedford Falls to afford to own their own property. 

Instead, most self-identified orthodox Catholics appear to have sold out to the neoliberal philosophy. Economic anarchy and self indulgence is fine, as long as you’re giving something to the Church (well I can’t tithe because, don’t ya know, my family and all) and not funding Planned Parenthood. 

This is neither Scriptural nor Catholic teaching, both of which make it clear that usury (which powers credit card companies and good deal of retirement investing) is always morally wrong. Both also demand the payment of a just wage to the laborer and fair contracts. They also insist on living a simple life focused on the necessities. 

The stock market portfolio, 401k dependent lifestyle is explicitly condemned in the story of the man in Luke 12 who built larger barns to store his excess. Isaiah 5 proclaims woe to those who join house upon house, field upon field. 

We cannot just ignore the fact that this Reaganist approach to economics directly contradicts Scripture and has trained society to focus on dollar amounts as the only acceptable measure of value. This has created a whole murderer’s row of corporations who have no values at all, or whose only values are those opposed to tradition. 

Former Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia (yes, from that Scalia family) personified this selling out of Catholic values in 2020 with an infuriating rule to ban retirement plans from considering Environmental, Social, and Governance factors of companies they invest in. 

Private employer-sponsored retirement plans are not vehicles for furthering social goals or policy objectives that are not in the financial interest of the plan,” Scalia says. “Rather, ERISA plans should be managed with unwavering focus on a single, very important social goal—providing for the retirement security of American workers.”

It should bother us that a public figure from a prominent, mostly orthodox Catholic family used his position to force companies to consider only financial value when investing billions of dollars into the economy. 

Another path would be to take God’s commands seriously, even when they don’t align with convenient partisan politics. Think intentionally about how to apply teachings on the sabbatical year, year of jubilee, and ensuring property and just wages to the poor in one’s own financial investments, purchases, and career decisions. And call out Catholics who think they can justify themselves by separating the Church’s moral teaching on family and intimacy from moral teaching on economics. 

The Progressive Playbook

 

Attending a hearing today on “medical assistance in dying” really brought the progressive playbook into sharp relief. Feel free to put on the musical Hamilton’s “10 Duel Commandments” while reading this. 

Number one: Frame the matter as offering a free choice when everyone knows full well there’s massive coercion involved. 

A prime example is abortion. It’s safe to say most if not the vast majority of abortions are coerced in some way, often by men. 

It’s not like this is a secret or a conspiracy theory. In The Fab Five by Mitch Albom, a story of the University of Michigan basketball team in 1991-93, player Eric Riley openly tells a story of how he heard that he got a girl pregnant and immediately told her to get an abortion. Her christian mother prevented it. 

Intentionally induced death is no different. When a medical professional tells the patient that intentional death is a valid medical option, that is applying influence to a patient who views the medical profesional as an authority figure. And we have plenty of examples from the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada where people feel pressured toward death, Roger Foley in Canada for one. 

Number two: Stage manage to limit dissent

The hearing was from 11 AM to 2 PM on a Wednesday. Obviously most working folks are unable to attend a meeting at that time, weighting the attendees toward a combination of professional activists and retirees favorable to the bill. This is a common progressive technique of pushing through milestones when most normal people are unavailable or unlikely to get involved. Fivethirtyeight pointed out that democrats are standouts at voter suppression by deliberately scheduling off-cycle elections for local officials and school budgets to engineer a favorable electorate. 

Further, the first hour was taken up by witnesses, neither of whom was from the state nor a medical professional. The next chunk was taken up by waffling from the reps. Leaving less than two hours for 62 public commenters. In a civilized polity, this kind of hearing would begin at 7 PM and stretch to 1 AM given the gravity of the matter and the number of interested constituents. But not today. 

Number three: Redefine language, then label anyone who uses real language as dangerous

Quickly the bill’s sponsor and his witnesses moved to stifle dissent by banning the use of legitimate terms to describe the bill and its effects. We were told that calling “medical aid in dying” suicide was shameful and dangerous because it equates the very different “traditional” notion of self-inflicted death to this new action of ending a terminally ill life with dignity on one’s own terms. 

The bill itself says that “medical assistance in dying” is not to be understood as assisted suicide or euthanasia. 

This is nonsense. Ending one’s life in the midst of suffering is suicide, whether it is done after a terminal diagnosis in a hospital bed or after a searingly depressing life experience as a physically healthy teenager. Intentionally inducing death through pharmacological means is euthanasia, whether it is motivated by eugenics and done on a young person with a genetic disability or whether it is done on an elderly person suffering from a significant illness. We use the exact same term in the exact same sense when speaking of animals, it is unreasonable to suggest it cannot be used in the same context when speaking of people. 

Number four: Use one-sided identity politics to exclude dissenters

The sponsor boldly told all of us that we didn’t have standing to argue against the bill because we were not terminally ill. Standing is a defined legal term. A friend of mine who is a practicing attorney made a public comment asserting that the sponsor had no idea what the word standing meant. 

Had I the chance, I would’ve asked the bill’s sponsor, cosponsors, and favorable witnesses if they were terminally ill. Of course they are not, yet that does not bar them from speaking about the bill.

This is the same garbage “no uterus no opinion” approach followed by the pro abortion lobby. By that logic, neither lesbian women nor standout pro abortion leaders like Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy, Andrew Cuomo, Ralph Northam, or the seven Supreme Court justices who issued Roe v. Wade could speak about abortion. Of course men can speak about abortion, especially those who have survived abortion or those who began life post Roe as an unintended teen pregnancy (such as myself). 

Number five: Lie. 

At least four times, educated adults in the public square looked me in the eye (via Zoom of course) and told me with a straight face that the protections in the current bill would limit legally approved suicide to those terminally ill who were mentally competent to choose that “option” and would have no broader impact on the disabled or the quality of healthcare. 

Stared straight into my eyes. And lied. 

It wasn’t true in Belgium. It wasn’t true in Canada, where such limits on legal suicide were struck down last year, using the same equity logic that the sponsor used to support this bill. Even the UN has called out Canada for their gross violation of the rights of the elderly and disabled in connection with assisted suicide. People have chosen assisted suicide in Canada after weeks of laying in urine-filled bedsheets.

The notion that healthcare professionals repeatedly suggesting to patients the possibility that they intentionally end their lives does not change the culture and quality of healthcare is asinine. And willfully dishonest. 

This too is common. To push the Supreme Court to ban public schools in Engel v. Vitale in 1962, the plaintiffs’ legal team lied in identifying one of the plaintiffs as an atheist. The pro abortion lobby often lies about abortion statistics in places and times where abortion is illegal. Norma Mccorvey was pressured into lying on the affidavit that launched Roe v Wade. 

The Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court case mandating state acceptance of same sex acts was also based on a lie. The plaintiffs of the case were having a drunken fight, not sex. 

If you like your healthcare plan you can keep it. I don’t think vaccines should be mandatory, and I will not demand that they be mandatory. And so on. 

Number six: Slant the debate with bad polls.

We were told that 7 in 10 Catholics support the provisions of the suicide bill. Really? What was the poll question and were respondents informed about the contents of the bill? 

The liberal media subjects us to endless polls about how most Americans favor upholding Roe. But Gallup has made it clear time and again that 48% of poll respondents think abortion should be legal only under certain cases while 19% believe it should be illegal in all cases. So 66% favor Roe, which mandates that abortion be legal in all 50 states, while 67% believe it should be outright illegal or illegal in many cases. 

Obviously most polled individuals don’t understand what Roe v Wade says, and most want more restrictions on abortion. The Pro Wade polls are junk data because they’re asking respondents about a case most know nothing about. The same can be said for the polls on suicide bills. 

And yes, the innumerable and hilariously wrong “Trump down by 10 points” polls for both the 2016 and 2020 elections were absolutely used as voter suppression tactics. 

Number seven: Claim a monopoly on science. 

We were subjected to a witness who is not a medical professional or a statistician asserting that there are no evidence based cases against the suicide bill. It took me about two minutes to find this heart-wrenching story of an Italian man who died by euthanasia after an incorrect terminal illness diagnosis. The story goes on to quote the former Chair of the New Zealand Medical Association confirming that autopsies show 10-15% of terminal diagnoses to be incorrect. 

This is no surprise, surely everyone knows someone who was doomed to die in short order by the medical establishment only to live for at least another few years. 

Yet today’s legislators flatly ignored real, verifiable scientific evidence provided by a qualified public health professional in favor of spotty testimonies from professional activists. Follow the science indeed. 

Number eight: Use tilted equity arguments to demolish self government

The sponsor asked his activist witness if it was equitable that individuals with terminal illness in New Jersey had a right to suicide while those in Delaware did not. 

In essence any state that has any restriction based on a social norm that is not shared by another state is viewed as guilty of discrimination. This is the standard liberal approach to forcing compliance with their ideology using the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection clause. 

Funny how this doesn’t throw out California’s punitive environmental or tax laws because they’re not equitable when viewed against more relaxed laws in Texas and Florida. 

Number nine: Use biased academia to create an aura of authority

Everyone knows that academia is heavily biased toward the political left. This enables liberals to bring in credentialed experts to back their initiatives. This is confirmation bias, and we should be perfectly comfortable pointing out that this is like running a victory lap around a Republican tax plan with economists from the American Enterprise Institute and Cato Institute. 

Stacking the deck with support from politically biased institutions does not mean your position is stronger. It means liberal academics are good at maintaining political control of their universities. 

So there you have it. Should traditionalists use any of these tactics? No. But we would be fools not to recognize them and arm ourselves against them. 

Let’s go…

 

I pride myself on being woefully behind on urban dictionary type terms and social references. And so it is that I’ve only recently become acquainted with the real meaning of an outwardly benign expression of support for a chap named Brandon. 

All in good fun many of my friends would say, and definitely well earned. 

I understand the snark, but do we take God seriously only when he conforms to our political views?

“You shall not revile God, nor curse a ruler of your people.”- Exodus 22:28

“Then Paul said to him, "God shall strike you, you whitewashed wall! Are you sitting to judge me according to the law, and yet contrary to the law you order me to be struck? Those who stood by said, "Would you revile God's high priest? And Paul said, "I did not know, brethren, that he was the high priest; for it is written, ' You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people.' “- Acts 23:3-5

“Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them.”- Romans 12:14

I suppose I’ll get the usual eyerolls and comments of “You’re taking this too seriously/literally.” Or the old standby “But it’s different now. Look at this guy!” 

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments… He who does not love me does not keep my words; and the word which you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me.”- John 14:15, 24

I simply recall that the quotes from Acts and Romans speak of such men as these, according to Josephus and the Catholic Encyclopedia. Not so very different from our own rulers and high priests I think. 

At a time when high-priests were made and unmade by officials of Rome, and when the principal quality required seems to have been subserviency, it is no credit to the character of Caiphas to have enjoyed their favour so long.

Contrasts in Obedience: John of Parma and Marcel Lefebvre

 

Should we obey? This question comes to the fore for traditional Catholics today. Amidst the handwringing it is easy to forget that there are precedents we can draw from as we work through such questions. 

Recent events have led many Catholics to wonder if Marcel Lefebvre was right after all. Though he signed most of the documents of the Second Vatican Council, Lefebvre became the face of opposition to Conciliar reforms and the post Conciliar papacy. After setting up a traditional seminary in Econe, Lefebvre came out swinging with a public declaration in 1974 that in essence accused Pope Paul VI and the Council fathers of heretically modifying Church doctrine and practice. More ominously, he said:

It is therefore impossible for any conscientious and faithful Catholic to espouse this Reformation or to submit to it in any way whatsoever.

The only attitude of faithfulness to the Church and Catholic doctrine, in view of our salvation, is a categorical refusal to accept this Reformation.

Still, Lefebvre was not suspended until his ordination of priests in 1976 against the express warning of Paul VI, and was not excommunicated until his consecration of four bishops in 1988 against the express warning of John Paul II. 

To this day, Lefebvre’s Society of Saint Pius X is not canonically reconciled with Rome, in large part because the Society worries that Rome will appoint a leader who will damage the Society’s charism and traditions. 

In contrast, we consider the example of Blessed John of Parma. 

John was an early Franciscan who joined the order at some point in the 1230s. He was elected Minister General in 1247. Saint Francis’ early companions rejoiced at his election, correctly hoping that he would do much to restore the order’s original charism of complete poverty. John zealously visited provincial houses from England to Spain to Germany. He appeared at the first Council of Lyons in 1245. Later, he was recalled by Pope Innocent IV on an embassy to heal the schism with the Greeks, which bore some fruit in the 1274 Council of Lyons. 

Reliable sources suggest that he resigned the position of Minister General in 1257 by suggestion from Pope Alexander IV, perhaps prompted by moves against him from professors at the University of Paris. Thereafter, he retired to Greccio, where Saint Francis had reenacted the first Christmas. During this time he was prosecuted for allegedly subscribing to the Joachimist heresy, with the trial managed by his successor as Minister General Saint Bonaventure. 

Hearing that the Greeks reneged on their reunion with Rome, he received permission from Pope Nicholas IV to go to Greece only to die en route in 1289. 

Blessed John of Parma voluntarily resigned the position of Minister General of the Franciscan Order knowing that his successor would undermine the original rule of the order dedicated to strict poverty. He knew that this would jeopardize the many graces God intended to bestow on the Church and the world through the Franciscan order. 

John also knew that in doing so he was placing himself at personal risk of persecution by his successors. Still, he consistently obeyed papal requests despite the demands of his station, and even sought out papal sanction prior to taking any initiative. He also submitted to persecution by Rome based on a very spotty pretense of heresy, knowing that the persecution likely stemmed from his total to commitment to Saint Francis’ original rule of poverty. 

What are we to make of this? Was John wrong to submit to papal pressure and curial persecution? Did doing so fatally undermine the grace God wished to grant to the Church? 

I cannot help but see in John’s life a better path for faithful priests and bishops chafing against authority. God’s grace can come through patient suffering and obedience as we see in the example of Saint Rita of Cascia and many others. I think we have to trust that God will always give us a path to keep and proclaim the faith while submitting to legitimate authorities in essential matters. 

Untouchables: When Saints Do Wrong

 

Pope Saint Gregory VII is everything I should like in a saint and pope. A man who freed the Church from being “under the thumb of the state” by sheer force of will, whose tomb read “I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile,” words that may well adorn my own tomb. I vividly remember celebrating his feast and imploring his intercession at Mass last year during covid mania. 

So it was with distress that I learned that he supported the brutal Norman invasion of the Byzantine Empire while also ginning up support for the eventual crusades. The specifics are complicated, but it’s a bit rich for Catholics to maintain the “Crusades to free the Byzantines from the attacking Turks” narrative when the same popes were supporting the proto crusade of stabbing the Byzantines in the back. 

Canonization is not an endorsement of every action taken by a saint during his lifetime. Biblical examples of saints like Peter’s lapse under pressure from the “circumcision party” in Acts and John’s attempted worship of the angel in Revelation are provided to illustrate this. 

Modern canonizations and venerations sometimes seem to be used as a weapon to brand anyone who dares to criticize the holy man or woman as an unhinged extremist. I have seen this done with John Paul II and Fulton Sheen. 

But saints have done dreadful things, and basic honesty and spiritual maturity demand that we reckon with these things. By blinding ourselves to real faults of the saints, we block our ability to flag real problems and real solutions in the Church today. Realizing that canonized saints have indeed made grave lapses in judgment can also free us from the modern argument over the infallibility of recent canonizations without forcing us to accept every decision made by those canonized. 

Oddly, this hangup doesn’t seem to apply to saints before the modern era. Faithful Catholics today feel at ease with heavy criticism of the Crusades, even though the first two were preached by Blessed Urban II and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Many likewise criticize Saint Ambrose for refusing to pay to rebuild a Jewish synagogue that was destroyed by a Christian mob. The same goes for Saint Thomas More’s burning of protestants while Chancellor of England. 

But try to make a suggestion that Pope John Paul II’s stewardship of the Church was less than perfect, or that Fulton Sheen’s enthusiasm for Conciliar reforms may have been misguided and inconsistent with his previous views, and you’ll be accused of schism and sedevacantism. 

I share this series of brief vignettes as part of my own journey of coming to terms with serious imperfections among the canonized and arriving at a deeper understanding of what canonization means and what it does not.  

The Eastern Church reveres Constantine as a saint, and Constantine murdered his wife and son by asphyxiation.

Saint Jerome was such a vicious trash talker that his Contra Helvedius on the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Mother began with “ I was requested by certain of the brethren not long ago to reply to a pamphlet written by one Helvidius. I have deferred doing so, not because it is a difficult matter to maintain the truth and refute an ignorant boor who has scarce known the first glimmer of learning, but because I was afraid my reply might make him appear worth defeating.”

Gregory VII, as we have said, encouraged barbarian Norman raids on the Byzantines and did nothing to repair the East-West rift in the Church, even though the 1054 bull of excommunication 20 years before his pontificate was invalid. 

James Larson makes a compelling case that Saint Bonaventure knowingly destroyed the rule of poverty of the Franciscan order given to Saint Francis by Christ and built a whole theology justifying his moves.

Pope Saint Celestine V knowingly handed over the Church to a brood of vipers by resigning and refusing to use the power of his office to push back against the mafiosi in the hierarchy terrorizing the faithful. 

Saint Thomas More wrote a letter contra Luther laced with profanity that would be shocking to hear from a raunchy teenager: “For I am ashamed even of this necessity, that while I clean out the fellow’s (Martin Luther’s) sh*t-filled mouth I see my own fingers covered with sh*t.”

More seriously, Pope Saint Pius V encouraged harebrained schemes to invade England and reestablish Catholic supremacy that got many killed, and also released a bull that implicitly threatened excommunication to anyone who acknowledged Elizabeth as Queen. This was a death sentence to already struggling English Catholics, persuaded the mass of the English people that Catholics were violent traitors, and was so problematic it was dialed back 10 years later by Gregory XIII. 

Saint John Henry Newman flirted with the idea that the doctrine of papal infallibility that had been declared at the First Vatican Council could be walked back by the bishops. 

Saint Pius X established a cabal that went on a witch hunt of modernists so indiscriminate that Saint John XXIII, then Angelo Roncalli, was flagged for supporting workers’ right to organize. 

This seems to be the line at which it becomes impermissible to criticize saints without being verbally attacked and cast out of polite Catholic society. 

It is disingenuous to suggest that criticism of saints, including popes, is inherently wrong and schismatic. Moreover, the obvious reason that people feel comfortable criticizing saints prior to our modern era is because those saints are criticized for transgressing against the liberal, pluralistic values under which we live today. Those who defended orthodoxy with force can be freely judged as too excessive while those who embraced religious tolerance are shielded from complaints under threat of censure. 

This is one reason why it is imprudent to canonize saints within the lifetime of those who knew them, except in extreme cases (such as Saint Francis of Assisi). It is even worse with Popes, since it often involves people who worked under them or knew them personally priming the pump of the canonization process. Politicization of canonization is always present, whether it is Pius V in an attempt to canonize Trent or every founder of a religious order after the 16th century to canonize the Counterreformation. But it is particularly dangerous when Popes are canonizing predecessors who promoted them to positions of power. Canonization is the highest honor the Church can bestow. When it is watered down, fast tracked, and handed out by those with a vested interest for clearly political reasons, it deals a blow to the credibility of the faith. 

The answer, besides praying for future papal restraint, is to realize that canonization does not affirm every act of a saint’s life and to celebrate the good while charitably recognizing the bad. 

Will you do Exodus 90?

 

At some point in 2018 I was referred to the website Catholic Gentleman by a friend and began reading the articles there. 

Later, the website promoted a program called Exodus90 and just before it began in 2019 a friend reached out to me spur of the moment asking if I’d like to join a group he’d organized. 

What is Exodus90?

Exodus90 is a 90-day program for men leading up to Easter (Day 91) that builds up the “exodus man’s” spiritual life through prayer, asceticism, and fraternity. Originally geared toward seminarians, the program now boasts having formed over 50,000 men. 

The “prayer” aspect focuses on a daily holy hour (not necessarily in front of the blessed sacrament) or a minimum of 20 minutes of silent prayer. 

The “asceticism” aspect is by far the heaviest. No use of technology outside of work, paying bills, and checking in on your group. No sweets. No alcohol. No eating between meals. Abstinence from meat and a modern Ash Wednesday/Good Friday style fast all Wednesdays and Fridays. Cold showers daily and three stints of intense exercise per week. Of course, black coffee is still allowed, and the disciplines say nothing about smoking. 🙄 You are allowed to relax one discipline on Sunday but encouraged not to relax the abstinence from technology. 

The “fraternity” aspect is the lightest. One fraternity meeting per week and periodic fraternity activities like hikes, Mass, holy hour in an adoration chapel. Each man is supposed to have an “anchor” with whom he checks in via text message daily. 

My Exodus90 Experience

Exodus90 was a significant boost to my spiritual life. It pushed me to develop a daily prayer life for the first time in years. The asceticism took the edge off my worldliness and short circuited my addiction to professional sports and tunnel vision on money and professional success. The fraternity built relationships that have lasted for years (and gave my third child his godparents). 

The readings and reflections instantly made sense. Day 1 said “You are in Egypt. The surrounding area has grown progressively more hostile over the years.” Oh, I see what you did there. 

The first week was miserable because I didn’t realize the extent of the disciplines and I was at a work retreat for my California startup in which I was surrounded by beer and snacks the entire week. I ended up being designated driver home from the bar for 15 people while one coworker felt up my arm from behind the driver’s seat, the CEO hid in the trunk, and my boss in the passenger seat calmly helped me navigate through Palm Springs at 2 AM in a party van past a police officer. 

Thereafter we had weekly fraternity meetings in my friend’s garage. Occasionally we would rotate. Guys typically struggled with the cold showers, reflections, and daily prayer. I typically struggled with the exercise and the technology. I would go on nightly walks in the cold praying the rosary and trying to invoke the intercession of my favorite saints. One time we set up a card table and ate dinner in a church parking lot before rushing into the adoration chapel when we heard police sirens. Another time all our families went to Mass at one guy’s church in Amish country and went on a country hike following Mass. I admitted my hangups were a thirst for freedom and time, and that I felt oppressed by the burden of raising two young children. 

Easter was a tremendous relief, and I still have a photo of my family with my bright, smiling face wearing a bowtie and pocket square following Easter Mass that year (the last, it would turn out, before the dark night of covid). 

We stayed in touch to an extent, and the group leader and I are still good friends and see each other at least once a month. We didn’t follow any formal programs after Exodus90, though I’ve retained the cold showers, abstaining from meat on Fridays, daily prayer, and generally don’t eat between meals. 

The following year I was asked to do Exodus90 again. I agreed to do it but only for Lent, which meant about half of the full 90-day period. It was the height of covid and meetings were exclusively on Zoom, with conversations dominated by covid. 

The Good

At its best, Exodus90 is a great example of stimulating the spiritual life by adapting traditional disciplines to the needs of modern man. The theology behind it is brilliant and taught me clearly for the first time how sin is bondage and holiness is freedom. The readings did a great job of emphasizing that, as well as the importance of reverent liturgy, self control, and accountability to one’s family and community. The saints are mentioned from time to time. And the program acknowledges that we modern people have a need to step back from technology.

I’ve heard that Exodus90 has the reputation of being an antiporn initiative, and I can see why given the heavy emphasis on letting go of technology and checking in with an anchor daily. 

And it has certainly spread organically. I know multiple men who called me crazy for doing it in 2019 who had signed on in either 2020 or 2021. 

Critique

The Catholic faith is not meant to be an independent research project or a commodity. It is meant to be handed down organically through families and parishes. 

Exodus90 recognizes that Catholic men are not receiving spiritual nourishment and renewal through the disciplines the Church currently asks us to take on during Lent. Unfortunately its solution is to reinvent a program that leaves out much of the richness and community of the Church’s traditions. A cynical person might say that this is because simply handing down the Church’s traditional disciplines is not as easy to monetize. One can discover and practice traditional Lenten fasting, Mass, and Divine Office readings without a $10 membership fee. 

90 days is too long. The program states that the timeline is based on the psychology of how long it takes to form and break a habit. The problem is that this ignores the Church’s season of Lent and traditional penitential season of Septuagesima (a traditional liturgical season that begins 70 days before Easter). This elevates modern psychology ahead of the Church’s time-tested tradition. That logic exacerbates the problem Exodus90 is trying to solve: men have been led to addictive, destructive behaviors by trusting the wisdom of the world over the wisdom of the Church. 

Exodus90 demands that men begin a period of (by modern standards) heavy penance barely a week after the Epiphany, smack dab in the middle of the traditional season of Christmas. This means that men are already worn down by 45 days of discipline, and often fatiguing, before Lent even starts. This inevitably makes it harder to fully enter into the penance of Lent and harder to connect our penance with the 40-day fasting of Christ. 

I downloaded their latest guide to making a holy hour this morning. It makes no mention of the Divine Office, rosary, novenas, or meditations handed down to us by saints like Francis de Sales or John of the Cross. Instead, men are left to largely make up their own prayer life based on a loose outline. 

I tried this for years and struggled to get my prayer life off the ground. Exodus90 tends to target spiritual beginners, and we spiritual beginners should not and often cannot invent our own prayer life. The Divine Office, available online at Universalis (1970 Liturgy of the Hours) and Divinum Officium (traditional) would be a perfect way to give men a strong prayer life rooted in the daily psalm rotation of the Church. Christ himself prayed the psalms on the way to the Agony in the Garden and on the cross. The Office would also unite them in prayer with the priests throughout the world and the saints through the ages. “Teach us how to pray.”

It’s hypocritical that a program banning most technology is run through a smartphone app. They have a book with the readings and reflections, just send that to everyone in the program if you really want to get them off their phones. 

The readings and reflections are very good. Yet I cannot help but think that they should more fully include commentary by the saints, and especially the fathers. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel, let the saints unpack the meaning and depths of these passages rather than trying to to do ourselves. And point us in the direction of other strong saints’ commentaries on Scripture so we have something to feed on after the program is over. There is plenty available for free on New Advent and Sensus Fidelium. 

The disciplines are too legalistic. An FAQ on their website clarifies that podcasts are indeed banned under their “nonessential technology” rule. This is silly because it prevents men seeking spiritual formation from accessing healthy Catholic content from groups like the Institute of Catholic Culture, Saint Irenaeus Institute, Father Mike Schmitz’s Bible in a Year, and Thomistic Institute. Us working fathers often do not have time to sit down and do spiritual reading given the prayer and fraternity commitments and we’d like the option of having content spoken to us through technology. And is an exodus man really supposed to go incommunicado to all friends outside his Exodus90 group for 90 days to fulfill the ban on “unnecessary” texting and emailing? 

Only relaxing one discipline on Sunday is silly. Sunday has never been a fasting day in the West, and Exodus90 essentially makes it so for a quarter of a year. On St. Patrick’s Day my first go round this meant not being able to have a guinness after I ate a cupcake at a Church social. It also means that most men who opt for warm showers on Sundays then have to abstain from all sweets and alcohol even on Sundays for the entire 90 days. If you get an ice cream with your family are you violating two disciplines by eating sweets and eating between meals? Just tell people they can relax the food and drink disciplines on Sunday and have the anchors manage any excesses. 

The program does clarify that if your anniversary or wife/child’s birthday occurs during the program, you can make an exception. I would expand this exception to include major feasts like Candlemas and St. Patrick. 

The fraternity piece is solid yet it is also the most lacking of the three areas. Is it too much to ask for one in-person meeting per week and 2-3 Zoom meetings that include common prayer? The practical experience ends up being a lot of individualized devotion with a one hour meeting a week, and cutting oneself off from friends outside the group. This is tough given that our fragmented modern life means that Exodus men almost never live in walking distance of each other. 

There is also a risk that Exodus90 creates a clique that excludes men who wish to grow spiritually but who decide the program isn’t the right fit. 

It is also bizarre to me that I know several guys who are making this an annual thing. I don’t think that’s quite the point. Exodus90 is supposed to shock a man out of his doldrums and start him on the path to a deeper spiritual life. Repeating a program for beginners seems like it’s keeping us at level 1. 

All in all, I plan to send them a message highly recommending that they work with a branding expert to build a 70 day program beginning on Septuagesima that is more liturgical in nature, focusing more on communal liturgical prayer like the Divine Office and Mass readings and on traditional dietary rules and less on heavy restriction of technology. 

Day 91…

By the following year I discovered Septuagesima and the traditional Lenten discipline surrounding fasting and the traditional Mass readings. I realized that Exodus90 was, intentionally or not, cribbing some elements of traditional practice without fully explaining what those older practices were. 

It was grueling and I had to lighten up at times (thank goodness the traditional calendar is heavier on major saints’ feasts during Lent) but felt unity with the Church through the ages and deeply renewed come Easter. 

As Romano Amerio points out, there is simply no replacement for the experience of heavy fasting from food for a prolonged period. It is humbling in that it points out how fragile we are and how reliant we are on God and our fellow man to meet our bodily needs. It is also a visceral way to tear down our need to focus our lives on feeding our appetites and to create room to pay attention to God and to those around us. 

A friend once talked about how he never gives up coffee for Lent because of how nasty he becomes to his family. But that is precisely the point. Achieving perfect charity requires us to confront and fight our selfish urges, both the appetites and then the negative reaction when they aren’t fed. You’re not going to have your morning coffee in purgatory. 

In the end, I think a traditional Lent of reading the daily Mass readings, reading the patristic commentaries from Matins, saying the hours of the Divine Office, and intensive fasting provides the spiritual cleansing and renewal that men need to unite themselves to Christ and celebrate the mystery of Christ’s Resurrection. 

Though I will always be grateful to Exodus90 for serving as one of my many gateways to tradition. 

Speaking the Language

My High School jazz band teacher began our experience with jazz music by insisting that we “learn the language.” Doit, daht, dau. Tone. Time. Jammin’. Swing. Improv. Syncopation. “Mr. Kaiser, they’re learning the language!”, he shouted enthusiastically to the other jazz teacher when we showed signs of progress. 

There is something irreplaceable about speaking the same language.

Language drives how we see reality. English speaking cultures are legalistic. How could we not be with all of our language’s adverbs? Italian is a very musical language, hence Italian opera. Ancient Greek was heavy on word choice. So, the ancient Greeks highly valued philosophy and cleverness. Latin was far more sparing and succinct. The Romans spent less time “with their heads in the clouds and more time with their feet in the mud”.

Can one fully enter into Shakespeare without English? Dante without Italian? Luther without German? The verb “translate” in many Romance languages is close to the word “betray.” There is always some loss of meaning in translation. No two languages are precisely aligned.

The importance of shared language is why the modern state of Israel restored the Hebrew language and made it the official state language.

It is why a brief vignette from Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton reveals that students attending university learned Latin grammar, Cicero’s orations, and enough Greek to translate any part of the four Gospels from Greek to English. Men entering public life were expected to be able to speak the common language of the classics. They also had to understand and apply the wisdom of the ancients. Alexander Hamilton refused to quote Grotius in a legal case until he reviewed his work in the original Latin. 

In a preview of what he expected from the Second Vatican Council later that year (1962), Pope John XXIII gave the Apostolic Constitution Veterum Sapientia. An Apostolic Constitution is the same type of document Paul VI issued to promulgate the 1970 Missal. Kind of a big deal.

Highlights:

Before Church students begin their ecclesiastical studies proper they shall be given a sufficiently lengthy course of instruction in Latin by highly competent masters, following a method designed to teach them the language with the utmost accuracy. 

Why? So they can fully understand doctrine and take place in scholarly disputations to defend the faith. To repeat:

No one is to be admitted to the study of philosophy or theology except he be thoroughly grounded in this language and capable of using it.

The major sacred sciences shall be taught in Latin, which, as we know from many centuries of use, “must be considered most suitable for explaining with the utmost facility and clarity the most difficult and profound ideas and concepts.” For apart from the fact that it has long since been enriched with a vocabulary of appropriate and unequivocal terms, best calculated to safeguard the integrity of the Catholic faith, it also serves in no slight measure to prune away useless verbiage.

Future ministers of the altar must be instructed in Greek in the lower and middle schools. Thus when they come to study the higher sciences — and especially if they are aiming for a degree in Sacred Scripture or theology — they will be enabled to follow the Greek sources of scholastic philosophy and understand them correctly; and not only these, but also the original texts of Sacred Scripture, the Liturgy, and the sacred Fathers.

Over and over my men’s Bible study runs into a stumbling block where we are unable to understand a passage of the Gospel because we do not know the Vulgate Latin or the original Greek. And the consensus is that you cannot fully enter into Aquinas without knowing Latin, as stated on Corpus Thomisticum. 

And frequently I see single parishes segregated by lack of a common language of worship. 

This is what Good Pope John meant by bringing in a breath of fresh air: a restoration of the Church’s sacred languages to open the pages of the doctors and fathers, first to priests, and, through them, to the laity. This empowers us all to know and defend the faith in the modern world. It also unites us across national and ethnic lines. 

As it stands, we are high school freshmen who brought knives to a machine gun fight and can’t even understand each other. 

The saintly Pope’s command is also backed up by canon 249 in the current Code of Canon Law:

The program of priestly formation is to provide that students not only are carefully taught their native language but also understand Latin well and have a suitable understanding of those foreign languages which seem necessary or useful for their formation or for the exercise of pastoral ministry.

Current canon law requires that seminarians be trained first in Latin, then in other languages that might help their pastoral work. 

Since I began attending the traditional Mass, I have dabbled in Latin. And my little experience has brought joy and a profound understanding of English. If you want to know what an English word means, from pecuniary to liberty to charity to justice, chances are its original form and meaning came from Latin. Learning Latin makes my English vocabulary more meaningful and real. This is why the legal and scientific worlds still use Latin heavily.

Besides, there is a profound excitement in being able to read and understand some passages from the Latin Vulgate Bible, used by the Church for 1,600 years. It is a deeper and more mature version of the thrill I felt when unlocking new worlds in a video game. 

There are some who, as I used to, interject with the tired “Well then you really should be speaking Aramaic since that’s what Christ spoke.” 

We’re all adults here. God came to Earth as a man within a district of the Roman Empire and instructed his Apostles to go forth and preach the Gospel to all nations. The official language of imperial administration in the empire in which they lived was Latin. Common sense tells us that the formulation of Christian doctrine, liturgy, and administration in the Latin language over the centuries was providential from the beginning. And popes right through the Second Vatican Council and current Code of Canon Law agreed and insisted that it be used and restored. 

Romano Amerio in Iota Unum posits that the crisis in the Church is caused by a decline of Latin. Latin’s slide over the centuries denied the Church a stable language to clearly express and preserve the truths and beauty of the faith. The quality of priestly formation, administration, and papal documentation broke down because clerics no longer had the linguistic foundation to think, speak, and write well of the faith. The resulting surge of ignorance and, in some cases, heresy, led to the top-down ham-handed modernization we’ve seen ever since. 

Language differences are a driver of the East West schism as well, notably in the filioque controversy. I can think of no step on the Catholic side more constructive toward genuine ecumenism than Pope John’s directive that Roman rite seminarians learn Greek.

We are commanded to love God with all our minds. Surely in our era of leisure and technology that means taking a fairly short amount of time to learn the language of the Church to open the riches of the faith to our minds, and those around us, in a fuller way. 

“For any member of laity, who is at least somewhat literate, the ignorance of the Latin tongue, which we can call a truly Catholic language, indicates a certain lack of affection towards the Church.”- Pius IX

Sancte Ioanne XXIII, ora pro nobis.  

Resources:

-Jenney’s First Year Latin: Available free here. A great guide that slowly goes through the vocabulary and grammar in approachable lessons that don’t take much more than 15 minutes. 

The Jenney’s series has four years of Latin, you can find the remaining three on the book website of your choice. 

-Lingua Latina per se Illustrata Pars I Lingua Latina, also available at the book outlet of your choice. This is a brilliant, and sometimes hilarious, book written entirely in Latin and approachable for beginners through its slow start and clever symbols and drawings in the margins. 

-Veterum Sapientia Institute

-Memoria Press (for kids)

The Pope who politicized the Liturgy

 

Sometimes when bored during work meetings I check out online maps. One of those times I decided to figure out where St. John Lateran, the cathedral church of Rome, is. I was shocked to find that it’s 4 miles from the Vatican, on the other side of the Tiber. 

Because that would mean that the popes were absent from their cathedral for almost 60 years. When the Italian nationalists took over Rome in September 1870, Pope Pius IX responded by declaring himself a prisoner of the Vatican. Thereafter, popes refused to leave the Vatican, not even appearing in St. Peter’s Square or giving the Urbi et Orbi blessing from the balcony facing the square. This continued until Pius IX and the Italian government signed a concordat in 1929 to resolve “The Roman Question.” 

No papal cathedral Holy Week liturgy, or papal cathedral liturgy of any kind for 59 years. No act of popes formally taking possession of the Lateran cathedral. 

The stated reasons for this self-imposed imprisonment vary. The popes did not want to appear to accept the illegal, violent seizure of the City of Rome by the Italian army. They also did not want to give the appearance of submission to a secular government, which could be seen to bias their spiritual leadership of the Church. 

These seem like weak reasons. It’s not like the legal status of the pope was any different within the Vatican, since that also was not recognized by the Italian government as a sovereign state. And the Italian government was offering significant financial reimbursement and privileges to the popes in the 1871 Law of Guarantees. 

The liturgy, both the Mass and the Roman Office, is the lifeblood of the Church. This is shown immediately in the Gospels, where Christ celebrated the first Mass at the Last Supper followed by the singing of psalms en route to Gethsemane. In Acts, the early Church devoted herself to the breaking of the bread and the prayers. 

The center of the liturgical life of the diocese is the cathedral, beginning with the Upper Room. The Pope, as Bishop of Rome, is expected to celebrate sacred liturgy in his cathedral regularly. There may have been some limited times where prudence would suggest keeping a low profile in the face of anticlerical mobs, as with Leo XIII’s coronation in 1878. 

But one also remembers Pope Gregory VII, who was kidnapped by assassins during a Christmas midnight Mass, only to be freed in short order, returning to the church and completing the Mass. Why not set out for St. John Lateran with the swiss guards and the toughest of the faithful and dare the government or the mobs to intervene? One senses an overweening aversion to physical danger on the part of the modern popes. Are the modern popes who live in pagan times greater than the martyr popes who lived in pagan times?

Pius IX’s bitterness at losing the papal states and grudge against the Italian government created a toxic prisoner mentality throughout the whole Church and set the precedent for placing personal politics above the duties of sacred liturgy. 

While there has been much debate about the whats, whys, and whens the current crisis in the Church started, it’s fair to say some of the first visible aspects came under Pius IX. It was he who spawned the modern cult of personality around the Pope, pushed through a much misunderstood declaration of papal infallibility, and cheapened the spiritual leadership and liturgical life of the papacy with political showmanship and bitterness. 

Not for nothing did John Henry Newman write the following in a letter in 1870, which many Catholics might echo today:

“But we must hope, for one is obliged to hope it, that the Pope will be driven from Rome, and will not continue the Council, or that there will be another Pope. It is sad he should force us to such wishes.”

Book Review: The Undermining of the Catholic Church

 

In the early 1990s, Mary Ball Martinez did a better (though still problematic) job than most answering the question any thinking Catholic should be asking: what happened to the Catholic Church in the 20th century? I’ve read through the book twice here. 

The Gist

What sets this book apart from the many tired narratives is that, for the most part, it keeps a laser focus on the men in charge of the institutional church during the 20th century. It provides valuable context on their families of origin, education, professional associations, and track record. 

This approach allows the book to dodge the threadbare myopia around the Second Vatican Council, which is mercifully discussed very little. 

The book traces Ms. Ball’s opinion on the origin of the crisis back to the 19th century. She begins by focusing on a close-knit group of men around Cardinal Mariano Rampolla, Vatican Secretary of State from 1887 to 1903. Rampolla’s protege was Giacomo Della Chiesa, the future Pope Benedict XV. Rampolla was also responsible for the education and early clerical life of Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pius XII. 

Pope Benedict XV would appoint Cardinal Pietro Gasparri as Secretary of State shortly after his own election. Gasparri would be Pacelli’s boss until Pacelli himself became Secretary of State in 1930 en route to becoming Pope nine years later. Pacelli would grow very close to Gianbattista Montini, the future Paul VI, working closely with him at the Vatican Secretariat of State for over 30 years before Pius XII named Montini Archbishop of Milan in 1954. 

Much of the book is a full on broadside against Pope Pius XII. It begins with his largely secluded private education to his later education at the Liceo Visconti and then the Almo Collegio Capranica, to his actions as Secretary of State and Pope. 

Ms. Martinez claims that Capranica (also the alma mater of Pope Benedict XV) was and remains a well known liberal seminary whose parties in response to liberal election victories (including a referendum in favor of abortion) would draw regular complaints from neighboring residents. 

She runs through a series of vignettes showing how the Vatican continually intervened to gut traditional, orthodox Catholic bodies in favor of secular liberal governments and liberal, modernizing trends within the Church. 

The Vatican Secretariat of State under Gasparri and Pacelli gutted Action Française’s attempt to restore a more traditional, Catholic government in France by excommunicating its members. The Secretariat also withdrew support from the cristeros in Mexico, who were fighting a socialist government that banned Catholic education, required registration of churches with the state, limited the number of clergy, forbade wearing clerical garb, and deprived violators of trial by jury. 

Once pope, Pius XII pushed modernization after modernization, without which the Second Vatican Council’s excesses and aftermath would have been unthinkable. 

From radically rethinking the way the Church saw herself in the encyclical Mystici Corporis, to giving tacit endorsement to biblical criticism that was undermining the foundations of the faith in Divino Afflante Spiritu, to opening the door to papal (and curial) micromanagement of the liturgy in Mediator Dei, to driving the formation of national and regional bishop’s conferences, to pushing nuns to modernize, first in the early 50s and then again in 1956 with the Vatican-driven formation of the Conference of Major Superiors of Women, to encouraging an overhaul of traditional catechesis by the Jesuit Lumen Vitae Institute and rapidly liberalizing Louvain University. 

Pius XII organized the liturgical conferences in Assisi that would lead to the gutting of the calendar and Holy Week liturgy in the 1950s, the reduction of the Office in the early 60s, and eventually the Novus Ordo, which Paul VI proudly proclaimed was the end goal of Pius’s reforms. 

He also organized the study groups that would lead to the calling of a Council. 

Perhaps most damning, and underappreciated, are Ms. Martinez’s compelling claims that Rome did not condemn Communism for 12 critical years, from Pacelli’s meeting with President Roosevelt during his 1937 visit to the US to the 1949 Italian elections in which the communists were threatening to beat Montini’s Christian democrats. During that time, the Soviets took over and destroyed much of the institutional Church in Eastern Europe, in part due to Pius’s work supporting the Allies in the Second World War in their fight against Axis countries that had majority Catholic populations. 

Following this are lesser charges toward the later popes. John XXIII is cast as something of a useful idiot who saw himself as a compliant bridge between Pius and Paul. 

Paul VI is cast as a weak man who could not emerge from the shadow of his liberal political activist parents and modernizing boss but who lacked the strength to face the nightmarish consequences of his changes to the Church. 

John Paul II is allegedly exposed as a theatrical liberal at heart, whose shady relationship with Poland’s communist government gave him full travel and teaching privileges at a time when other priests in the area were being jailed or worse and whose public moves and episcopal appointments were meant to shore up the Conciliar revolution. 

The Good

The Undermining of the Catholic Church goes where few traditionalists dare to tread and does so by tracing influences, digging deep into historical backgrounds of the men involved, and naming names when it comes to sources of the more controversial allegations. The book is at its best when busting the myth that would blame all of the modern Church’s ills on the 60s, John XXIII, Paul VI, and Vatican II. 

It also asks honest, fact-based questions that few are willing to ask regarding the education and career track of the early 20th century popes, the politically sanitized biography of Pope John Paul II that most of us have been given, and the sudden death of John Paul I. 

The book also gives us refreshing perspectives from normal people. In rejecting Ratzinger’s comment about the supposed longing for renewal in the 1960s, Ms. Martinez rightly points out that this longing existed in elite, intellectual clergy, while the vast majority of Catholic faithful wanted stability and friendly political regimes to support them in the difficult struggle of keeping the faith in the modern world.

The book gives a solid hat tip to the modern Jewish people who have remained true to their identity and successfully built a nation state, resurrected the Hebrew language, and built an industry celebrating Jewish martyrs and educating the world about them. This is in stark contrast to the modern Catholic Church which has opposed a Catholic state for over 100 years, stigmatized and suppressed its own sacred language of Latin, and focused on apologizing for its fights with its enemies rather than highlighting martyrs who suffered and died at the hands of those enemies (Father Walter Ciszek and Father Emil Kapaun come to mind).  

The Bad

This book is not a balanced consideration of the men involved. While this might be necessary in the case of Pius XII who gets glowing and uncritical treatment from most traditionalists, it becomes downright schizophrenic when it comes to John XXIII. 

While the book does well to highlight the formation and professional relationships of Pope John (Angelo Roncalli) it fails to confront the reality that he was a good deal more traditional than Pius XII in many ways. The book does raise episodes where Roncalli hesitated to follow through on Pius XII’s support for zionism and staying silent in the face of Soviet advances into Catholic Europe. 

But it does not address Pope John’s rejection of some of Pius’s reforms to Holy Week and the Psalter, his Apostolic Constitution demanding that priests be taught in Latin, or his wish that the Council start and finish within two months using documents pre-prepared in line with Trent and Vatican I. 

The book fails to make real distinctions between the men involved in Church reforms, from those who favored reform but still held to a mainly traditional line in liturgy and politics to those who wanted to overturn the apple cart. Thus Cardinal Mercier’s initial Malines Conversations with members of other faiths in Brussels are equated with the idolatrous excesses of the World Day of Peace in Assisi in 1986. Ratzinger is equated with Montini is equated with Rampolla as though they were all a hive mind. 

This points to a larger hole in the author’s long-term historical context. Though Ms. Martinez does point out how the faithful had little sense of the treasures they were losing, she does not dig further into this point. Liturgy was due for healthy reform given the laity had little understanding of the Mass or the Office. Catechesis did need to be enhanced, but by enriching the question and answer catechisms with deeper Biblical and Patristic sources, not by throwing them out entirely. The Church’s embrace of royalist and authoritarian regimes caused more problems than it solved, as evidenced by the backlash against the faith following clerical collaboration with the Nazis, Salazar, and Franco. 

The Ugly

The most grating part of the book is its failure to distinguish between established fact and rumor. It is an established fact that Cardinal Rampolla’s potential election as Pope in 1903 was vetoed by the Austrian Emperor. It is a rumor pushed by French Monsignor Rouin that this was because Cardinal Rampolla was a member of the masonic Ordo Templi Orientis, which revolved around a cult of sex magic. The book initially says the latter was conjectural, but then goes on to speak of it as established fact. 

While much of the book is factual, this happens often enough that it detracts from the book’s reliability. Examples include allegations that Pius X’s canonization was a concession to conservatives to get them on board with liturgical reforms, that the Ratzinger Report was a ploy designed to smoke out conservative opposition, that Pius IX (yes that’s right) joined a masonic lodge, that John Paul I was definitely poisoned, that apostolic visitors to the SSPX in Econe questioned the Resurrection of Christ, and more. 

The ugliest subtext of the book is its tacit support of Nazism. The book does confront the damage done by Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger and his disciples within the church during and following the war. However, it very clearly makes the claim that Pius XII erred in his overt support of the Allies during the war due to his political bias and that it would’ve been better for the Church had he stayed fully neutral or even supported the Axis to defeat the Soviets. One can sense nostalgia in Ms. Martinez’s recounting of how crucifixes went back on the walls of schools and public buildings in Mussolini’s Italy and Vichy France, and in describing how John Paul II’s theological education went underground only when it was clear that the Nazis were pulling out of Krakow and leaving it to the Communists. 

Closing Out

The Undermining of the Catholic Church has its holes, but if one is able to look past them and step back from its conspiratorial, rightist excesses, it shines a much more penetrating light on the history of the crisis in the Church than one finds elsewhere.