Hope in the Wreckage of a Lost War

 

The Man in the High Castle TV show, based on the novel by Philip K Dick, shows a 1962 America in which the Japanese and Germans won the Second World War. The characters’ lives are all defined by the fact that “we lost the war.” Generally, the Americans live impoverished, second class lives while their German and Japanese overlords micromange them, abuse them, and warp their culture for political or indulgent ends. 

While we can avoid false equivalence with Hitler’s Germany and militarist Japan, over and over conservatives have, in Galadriel’s words, fought the long defeat. 

Starting in the 60s, a handful of cultural imperialists on the unelected Supreme Court banned prayer in public schools (even voluntary student led prayer), mandated the legalization of contraception and abortion in all 50 states, mandated the legalization of contraceptive distribution and ads to those under 16, and led most Americans into debt by eliminating interest rate limits on credit cards. The feds generally allowed a massive series of acquisitions in tech, pharma, retail, and many other industries to concentrate wealth and power in a handful of generally liberal hands, leading many small businesses to close and ordinary folk to lose control over their own livelihoods. Then came the more recent redefinitions of basic familial relationships and identity, amidst rising anxiety and suicides, especially among youth.

Nearly every aspect of modern life is dominated by secular liberals. Every major city is controlled by the democratic party. Most media outlets frequented by educated people are controlled by liberals. Most big tech companies and increasingly many wealth management companies are managed by liberals. Even my local library showcases books that are heavily tilted toward secular liberal views. 

Government has grown to an unending degree, under republicans as well as under the democrats. Over the last 10 years, conservative views are increasingly censored on major platforms and can get people fired from their jobs. 

So also goes the Catholic Church in America. Nearly every diocese has had to close a half to two thirds of its parishes, or soon will. Church after church, rectory after rectory, school after school closed. Mass attendance declined by two thirds, most priests over 65, hideous abuse scandals, school enrollment falling. Most of the time, traditional liturgy, catechesis, and orthodox theology have been banned, scorned, and annihilated by those in authority. 

We lost the war. 

But The Man in the High Castle characters find films showing a different outcome. They show the West wining the war, toppling Hitler, defeating the Imperial Japanese, knocking down statues, celebrating in the streets. 

The characters break down into perfectly believable tears at the very idea that the West could have won the war, that their culture could be not just allowed but celebrated and treasured. 

If the Supreme Court’s draft Dobbs opinion is decided and released as advertised, it is a similar moment for conservatives. While overturning Roe and Casey is the beginning rather than the end, it’s a start. 

It’s an opportunity to watch a movie where we won the war. What if we lived in a society where prayer and Bible reading were allowed in public schools? Where we had the power to protect the unborn and the family? Where states, communities, and families could actually govern themselves and live by the guidance of tradition? Where traditional Catholic liturgy, catechesis, and family life were celebrated and supported?

We might never see that world. But Alito’s Dobbs opinion is a glimmer of hope, one that could show conservatives here and elsewhere that a better world is possible and worth fighting for. 

Cathedrae

 

“Some people think You just live in cathedrals made of stone, but I know You live inside my heart, I know that it’s Your home.” So goes a song on my kids’ car-trip-staple Christian radio station. While this is obviously offensive to Catholics, we can be charitable pointing out the error. 

Certainly God lives in the human heart in a sense. But when and how does He come there most intimately? The liturgy. Baptism. The Eucharist. Confession. Prayer, especially public prayer. And for most of Christian history, the Holy Spirit has lifted up cathedrals as the center of liturgical life. 

Once upon a time, cathedrals had whole chapters of priests dedicated to signing the psalm-based prayers of the Roman Office throughout every day. Dante narrated how “Terces and Nones” rang down from cathedrals in his day as a side comment. Augustine Thompson, OP’s, Cities of God relates how in Medieval Northern Italy, communal baptisms would take place at the cathedral font. The cathedrals often maintained the local calendar of saints, local missals (Gallican in France, Sarum in England, and so on). 

Cathedrals were the lifeblood of the faith, and a place where God uniquely spoke to the heart of man and infused him with sanctifying grace. 

Is your cathedral thriving? Is it beautiful? Is it well maintained? Does it have a good schedule of liturgy, is it well attended, does it have faithful priests, is it in a safe neighborhood? Too often, the answer to most or all of these questions is no. 

For most of my life, I ignored my diocese’s cathedral. In college, I was blessed to live a block and a half from a thriving cathedral and attend inspiring Triduum liturgies there. In Arlington, the cathedral’s eyesore wallpaper was mercifully ejected during a renovation a few years back. In my current diocese, the cathedral is beautiful with wonderful priests but in a questionable neighborhood and, I suspect largely for that reason, poorly attended. Last year’s Easter Vigil could not have had more than 40 attendees, and most of those were families from the local Latin Mass (not held at the cathedral) attending because one of the family’s newborns was being baptized at Vigil. 

Our pastor is also the rector of the cathedral and lives in the cathedral rectory. Somewhat high on his enormous to do list is restoring the cathedral rectory, which was damaged by a roof flood years ago, after which nothing was repaired except the roof. 

While unlikely, I cannot help but pray that the Bishop moves our diocese toward a hub model, and makes the cathedral the center. Word on the street is that the diocese, like most, needs to close 50% of parishes given fallen attendance, financing, and vocations. And that was before covid. 

Why not move several priests into a restored cathedral rectory, having them travel to their former resident parishes on Sundays if those churches make the cut to stay open? The priests could pray at least one hour of the Office in public in the cathedral each day. With 4-5 priests during the week, the cathedral could also offer a genuinely pastoral schedule of liturgy: Mass before working hours, Mass during lunch hour, and Mass after working hours, with confession preceding each Mass. Throw in adoration and benediction before the after work Mass, and perhaps Compline and/or a rosary afterward. Open the rectory and have catechesis and adult formation during the week. 

During the recent synod on synodality, the downtown parishes were hapless as to how to form adults in the faith and keep them at Mass and participating in parish life. So many of us just want a place to go to find healthy community and engagement. 

Making the local cathedral a destination with events around the clock and throughout the week, and making space in the rectory for come and go chats, events, community, food, and social life wouldn’t be the worst idea. 

I am convinced that the Pittsburgh Oratory’s almost shocking success with vocations (from 2007 to 2021 at least five ordinations within the community, plus at least four others who became diocesan priests), was due to causes beyond reverent liturgy and perpetual adoration. The Oratory is a lived in space. Students eat there, do homework there, play video games and foosball there, fall asleep in an armchair there. Running into (cassocked) priests for casual conversation is a normal part of daily life.

While a longshot, there’s at least a chance at catching some of that lightning in a bottle in a diocesan setting if we try. Who knows, maybe we’ll one day dust ourselves off from the last few decades of crisis and have strong cathedrals leading the way to the Divine once more. 

Dies Matris

 

For my dance with my mother at my wedding reception, I chose the song Everything I Am by Celine Dion, even though I dislike most of Celine Dion’s music. I chose it because I meant it. My mother was was everything to me growing up, even through years of single motherhood, the loss of her mother, a wayward brother, unstable friends, a prickly sister, and the relocation of her father across the country. For me, it goes well beyond the “I owe it all to Mom” cliche that can be said by just about everyone. 

But there is always a dark side to this picture in my mind. A dark side which my mother more recently takes multiple opportunities to remind me of, albeit indirectly. 

Perversely, this Mother’s Day comes amidst heavy headlines about abortion. Ever since I was a child, my mother has made her unwavering support for abortion rights and like minded politicians clear. 

Every time this happens, I hear one thing, and it took listening to an episode of New Polity to crystallize it. I hear: I could’ve killed you. 

My mother’s stance has always been “I personally am opposed, but I can’t tell other people what choice to make.” The translation for me is “I personally didn’t choose to kill you. But I could have. And if I had, it would’ve been ok. And it’s ok for everyone else to do the same.”

This is a mortifying truth to live under, but this is the sickness of the world we live in. My mother has made fun of my dad for suggesting that babies “count” when in they’re in the womb, in reference to baby’s first Christmas or referencing a baby as having traveled to a state, when they did so in the womb prior to birth. She made clear to me when I attended my first pro life rally in high school that my grandmother (strangely enough, a state paternity lawyer) would roll over in her grave. She has told me that she has stopped attending a church whose pastor used strong language against abortion. She has dutifully taught my sister to hold the same views, and my sister made sure to text me asking about the recent leak surrounding the Supreme Court this week. 

I had the right to kill you. 

I have changed opinions on many political matters in the course of my life. This is not one of them. I have watched my siblings and my own children on an ultrasound. I have been acutely aware of my own status of having begun life as an unwanted pregnancy of a single teen mother in the United States after 1973. For me, the issue is not an academic one of political theory. It is a direct attack on my existence. Mine, and my Godson’s, who was born at 24 weeks gestation and required over three months in the NICU. And on those like Melissa Ohden who were wounded in attempted abortions. 

Whatever dodging, extreme scenarios, rhetoric, gaslighting, and all the rest are employed, that’s what it comes down to. My mother, looking me straight in the eye, and heavily suggesting: “I could’ve killed you.” 

With Jack Nicholson, I must say I am pro life because I have no right to any other opinion. And if I don’t, then neither does anyone else. 

I cannot say I have ever had any successful conversations about this topic. Largely, this is because the need to be moderate, not offend, and above all not push my faith has been beaten into my brain from an early age. 

Yet I wonder if it is time to rip off the bandaid. 

Felix dies matris, vere.