All posts by Rob Agnelli

Guest Post: Against the Institution of Female Acolytes and Lectors

Church, Church Authority, Eucharist, Guest Post, Magisterium, Sacraments, Women's Ordination, , , , ,

Recently, the Holy Father promulgated a ruling which allows for laywomen to be formally accepted into the to roles of lector and acolyte, roles which for sometime they have already been filling in practice. Up to this point, however, the formal acceptance was restricted to men. The move, while having very little visible effect on the current state of the liturgy, formalizes growing problems that will now be explored.

Why is Reading a Big Deal?

In the liturgical tradition of the Church, the priest reads from Sacred Scripture from the altar while facing away from the people. This liturgical choice preserves two important ideas: 1) the sacredness of the Word of God and 2) the offering of the Word to God. The first idea, the sacredness of the Word of God, is shown by the fact that only a person that has been in some way consecrated to God is able to the proclaim the word of God in the Church’s public worship. In the past, a distinction has existed between those possessing sacramental ordinations (deacons, priests, and bishops) and those that had received non-sacramental ordinations (lectors, porters, acolytes, exorcists, and subdeacons). Those receiving non-sacramental ordinations (also called minor orders) were understood to be acting as an extension of the ministry of the deacon, who possessed a sacramental ordination.

It is also important to note that, keeping in mind the principle that liturgical actions often have both a practical and symbolic purpose, the restriction of the ability to read publicly to those who will have a clear reading voice and will be knowledgable enough to correctly pronounce the more difficult words in Scripture will stop the proclamation of the divinely revealed Word of God from becoming an event the faithful laugh about on the car ride home.

Why do you hate Altar-girls?

With regards to the second idea, it must be kept in mind that the priest is offering the entire Mass as a sacrifice to God. This reality is reinforced by the priest facing towards the tabernacle while he is proclaiming the Word. The addition of women to the role of lector, in addition to the problems created by reading while facing the people, destroys this because God has always indicated that He desires the priestly ministry of offering sacrifice to be reserved to males.

In the liturgical tradition of the Church, only men are allowed to approach the altar, be it as bishops, priests, deacons, or even humble altar servers. Why is this? Is it because the Church fell to the spirit of past ages and has reinforced in its liturgy sexist ideas? The answer is a clear ‘No.’ To see why this is, one only needs to open a Bible and observe the patterns of worship that have been in place since the beginning and have been shown to please the Lord. (Exo. 28-29, Num. 3) They all contain male-only clergy because they are types of Christ Who will be both Priest and Minister in the New Testament. Those who participate in that liturgy act as sacramental signs of Christ, Who is male. This practice continues into the New Testament when Jesus and His Apostles continued the practice of male-only clergy even though they could have changed it. This change would not have even been perceived as strange outside the Jewish community as female clergy already existed in other religions in other parts of the Roman Empire, e.g., the vestals.

While the change only allowed for female acolytes, the formalization of an altar server, the principle on display is one that would eventually advocate for the female diaconate, priesthood, and episcopacy. This principle is rooted in the denial of the different roles of men and women in the Church, roles that have been clearly established in Scripture and vindicated by two millennia of tradition.

What about the Priesthood of the Baptized?

Forgetting the problems introduced by these changes discussed above, let us ask ourselves the question, ‘To what end are these changes made?’  Some would advance that it is desire to teach the doctrine of the priesthood of all the baptized. In response to this, it must be realized that this method will never achieve that goal because it obscures that reality more than it reveals it.

The sacrifice of the Mass is the perfect prayer of the Church and it is the meeting of Heaven and earth. All the faithful ought to hear Mass and offer this most perfect offering to God. An authentic teaching of the doctrine of the priesthood of all the baptized would teach the faithful how to more perfectly offer this sacrifice, because offering sacrifice is exactly what priests do. However, the priesthood within the liturgy is not the same as the priesthood outside the liturgy.

The ordained priest has been given the honor of offering the Mass and the faithful participate in the Mass to the degree that they spiritually unite themselves with him in his offering. This, however, is precisely the opposite of what is shown by allowing more and more faithful on the altar. Does the man or woman that reads at Mass participate more fully than one that doesn’t? If so, does that mean that we need to multiply roles until everyone attending the Mass is able to more ‘fully’ participate? This, again, is exactly the mindset forwarded by the increase of the roles of the laity in the Church’s liturgy.  From this, confusion emerges and we are left with a faithful that has traded true spiritual participation for a visible and ‘active’ participation and reduced the ability of others to spiritually participate in the liturgy by needlessly multiplying distractions.

Stripping down the Priesthood

What these changes leave us with, in addition to a liturgy less able to lead the faithful to union with God in prayer, is a sacramental priest stripped down and lacking identity. The priest has a sacred duty to offer sacrifice to God, namely the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. At the center of his spirituality must be this sacrifice and his entire life must be conformed to this sacrifice such that his entire life becomes a sacrifice. Just as a married man must lay down his life daily for his wife (who is the altar upon which he offers himself to God) and they are so conformed together that they become one flesh, so to must the priest become so conformed to the sacrifice of the Mass that he becomes a Victim-Priest just as Christ was. These changes, however, lead him more towards the roles of presider and orchestrator. One by one, his sacred duties are ‘contracted out’ to the laity and therefore lose their priestly character and change the character of the priest. The retractions are even more impactful to the diaconate, who has the duty to preform the exact ministerial actions that are being given to the laity.

The clergyman (be him a deacon, priest, or bishop) is a man chosen by God and consecrated such that he is given God-like powers, e.g., forgiving sins, calling down Christ from heaven, and strengthening a soul to endure death. Why are we stripping him of his duties and making him seem like an ordinary man? The evidence of this transformation is clear from priests being uncomfortable with saying, “I absolve you”, and replacing the ‘I’ with ‘Jesus’ or something similar. How can a man unconvinced of the massive amount of supernatural grace given to him and unwilling to proudly proclaim, with St. Paul that, “by the grace of God, I am what I am,” (1 Cor. 15:10) going to be able to fill the souls entrusted to his care with supernatural grace. We, the faithful, must support our clergy in living out their vocation by insisting that they keep the clerical duties for themselves.

About the Author

Connor Szurgot is currently a senior study for his BS. He has given multiple talks to the Catholic Campus Ministry at his university on topics such as Eucharistic reverence and mental prayer. He is a member of the Thomistic Institute and is a regular participant in their intellectual formation. He enjoys discussing the practical and philosophical aspects of politics as well as religion, particularly systematic theology.

Plot Holes in Reality

Culture, Evolution, Moralilty, Natural Law, Science, , ,

In his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, St. Thomas makes the observation that when Aristotle reckons that  “art imitates nature,” he means that man, because he is an intellectual creature, can make things that help him fulfill his nature.  For example, a beaver builds a dam by instinct, while man uses his reason to fashion a house.  But it doesn’t just pertain to servile arts like building a house, but fine arts like making a movie or writing a book.  But because man is also fallen, he can also use those same arts to distort and do harm to his nature.  In this way we might say that, in addition to imitating nature, “art forms nature.”

Examples abound on how this uniquely human capacity is abused, but there is one way that has a profound effect in our age.  The aforementioned storytelling arts use the inherent power of storytelling to activate wonder and convey important truths about what it means to be human.  One way in which this art abuses our nature has been covered previously regarding “Drag Queen Story Hour.”  While this is still somewhat rare, thee is a more common abuse of story that may not even be on our radar at first—it wasn’t on mine until a friend of mine pointed it out.

Tolerating Plot Holes

We have all seen movies in which there are both subtle and gigantic plot holes.  Sometimes they are too much and we turn off the movie, but most of the time we simply tolerate them for the sake of moving the plot along.  We might think that the producers of the movies are simply lazy in not tying up loose ends, but in truth we should expect them when the story presents a falsehood about human life.  The problem is that if we watch enough movies, then we eventually learn to overlook them.  We become, in a very real sense, conditioned to overlook them—not just in the movies but in the rest of life as well.  Point of evidence is the current Covid crisis which is riddled with plot holes that the majority of people of good will simply accept. 

More on this particular example in a moment, but there is something further here that needs to be pointed out.  We accept the plot holes for the sake of the plot and to move the story along.  But if we look at it from the perspective of the producer, he has a plot in mind and includes the plot holes in order to make his story fit together.  In a certain sense then we can say that the plot holes actually reveal the plot and the intention of the producer.

This principle is important because it is applies to the incongruous in real life as well.  We will usually have one of two tendencies; to overlook the plot hole completely or to point out that it makes no sense and then, like the fist tendency, simply move on.  The point though is that it makes perfect sense because it moves the story along.  In other words, if we pay close attention to the incongruities rather than dismissing or mocking them, the plot that the artist is advancing will come into relief. 

Focusing on the plot holes themselves then will enable us to see through the agenda of those who insert them into reality.  These holes may look different in the various arenas of public life, but the principle is always the same.  If we consider three examples from the fields of morality, science and politics then we can learn how to see the plot holes for what they really are.

Plot Holes in the Moral Realm

Any number of examples could have been chosen to demonstrate moral plot holes, but a recent one from Pope Francis is particularly helpful here.  In a documentary that aired in October, the Holy Father was quoted as saying that “we have to create a civil union law.”  While not a tacit acceptance of gay marriage (few things, unfortunately, are tacit with Pope Francis), the comment caused an uproar because he was suggesting that the civil realm should create space for gay couples.

Let us assume that the Holy Father’s “plot” is promotion of the Gospel and true human thriving in this world so as to be residents of the next.  From within that context we would say marriage is a fundamental human good that helps to fulfill human nature.  But not any “union” between two people will do, but only one that is in accord with nature.  In short, as Catholics, we know that only monogamous marriage between a man and a woman leads to authentic happiness.  Any other domestic arrangement leads away from this.  The laws and the practices of the Church herself are reflective of this awareness.  The Church teaches what she does about marriage because she knows that it is a good thing for those involved to act according to nature.

To suggest that this is just a “Church law” or only binding on Catholics with no effect in the civil realm creates a giant plot hole.  No law should be made to protect or promote something that we know will ultimately lead to unhappiness.  By suggesting that there should be some civil law, the Holy Father is really expressing that he doesn’t believe that marriage is a true human good. 

Pope Francis in choosing the name Francis has seen his role as one who would reform the Church.  He has been open about this from the beginning of his pontificate.  Applying our principle of looking along the plot hole (at this and many of his other ones), we can discern what that reform consists in.  The Holy Father is attempting to reform the Church, not according the Holy Spirit, but the spirit of the age. The plot holes reveal the plot.

Plot Holes in the Scientific Realm

Plot holes in the scientific realm are usually more difficult to discern for the layman, but usually become apparent once you check assumptions.  When a scientific theory is full of unsubstantiated claims that are labeled as “assumptions” the plot of the Scientists are unmistakable.

A good example of this is what we is commonly referred to as the Big Bang Theory.  This theory claims that the universe began as a dense ball of primordial matter that exploded and over billions of years organized into the universe that we observe today.  This cosmology is accepted as scientific fact, but once we pull back the curtain we find that it rests on many untested and untestable assumptions.  There is a growing gap between observation and theory and in order to advance the plot, several plot holes needed to be introduced.  According to Big Bang Cosmologists, ~95% of the universe is composed of Dark Matter and Dark Energy.  The problem is that these hypothetical entities have never been observed and they can’t be measured.  Instead they are theoretical constructs that hold the Big Bang Universe and its accompanying theory together.  You can read more about these two things elsewhere, but the point is that in order to use the theory to explain what we observe in the universe, physicists had to make up an unobservable “force”.  As one physicist observed,

Big bang theory relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities – things that we have never observed. Inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent. Without them, there would be fatal contradictions between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory. In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory…the big bang theory can’t survive without these fudge factors.

 Eric Lerner, “Bucking the Big Bang”, New Scientist

The point is that we hold as scientific fact a theory that only explains 5% of what we observe in the universe.

Viewed as plot holes, these assumptions reveal that Big Bang Cosmology is not about the science but about scientism and the ability to explain natural phenomena using only natural causes.  It is an attempt to discredit the Genesis account of creation and theology and create an atheology that is completely devoid of God.  It is essentially the theory of Evolution on a cosmic scale.  The plot holes reveal the plot.

Plot Holes in the Political Realm

 

As is becoming increasingly obvious, the political realm is not devoid of plot holes either.  In fact one could say that the plot holes in this arena of life will be the way in which 2020 is best remembered.  Covid-19 itself is not a plot hole, but the way in which it has been managed has revealed the plot holes in reality.  If we examine them carefully then we can come to see the plot more clearly. 

We will discuss the vaccine some time in the near future, but the manner in which masks, social distancing and closures have been implemented have represented serious plot holes because of their lack of consistency and scientific justification.  I already discussed this with relation to masks, but it also applies to social distancing.  This has never been tried before and it is based on a simulation.  Yes, you read that right, not an experiment, but a simulation.  Drs. Jay Richards and William Briggs cover this in their book Price of Panic in detail, but in short the CDC went with recommendations from this paper in which found that social distancing would “yield local defenses against a highly virulent strain” in the absence of effective treatment. The “science” behind it was simple; you create a model to simulate an environment in which closing schools and implementing social distance measures lower the rate of infection and then you test to see if the rate is in fact lower. Besides proving that you are a good programmer, this also, surprisingly proved that social distancing worked. The fact that it is a simulated environment and not a real one should have no bearing on our decisions, right? This is, after all, Science.  No matter anyway because we now have effective treatment and thus no more need for social distancing, right?

Once we view these inconsistencies as plot holes related to the plot, we can see that there are powers that be that have chosen not to waste a good crisis and to implement their grand plot—The Great Reset—which we will discuss in the coming weeks. The plot holes reveal the plot.

In conclusion, we might be willing to tolerate plot holes in our movies, but we should never overlook them in real life.  If we do, we may find that we are caught up in someone else’s story for how the world should be. The plot holes reveal the plot.

Masking and the New Religion

Apologetics, Church and State, Church Authority, Conscience, Culture, Human Dignity, Magisterium, Marxism, Moralilty, Natural Law, New Age, Paganism, Politics, Sacramentals, Sacraments, Virtue, , , ,

We have been hearing for decades that we are living in a post-Christian society.  This has mostly been a way to describe the fact that Christian values have been in decline.  But Christianity has still been the dominant religion; dominant, that is, until the Covid-19 crisis hit.  The arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in our society marked the official changing of the guard.  While we have been hearing about the emergence of a post-Christian society for decades, Christianity was still the dominant religion.  No longer is this true, however.  Christianity has been toppled and replaced by a new Gnosticism that we call Science. 

To be clear, the issue is not against science per se, but what is more accurately described as religion masquerading as science.  After all, as Aquinas says “He who neglects the experimental order in natural science falls into error” in all aspects of knowledge.  To solve the Covid-19 crisis, natural science plays a necessary, although not sufficient, role.  The peddlers of the new religion, would have us believe that it is sufficient because all we need to do is “trust the science.”  We are saved by faith, not in Christ, but in Science.

The New Priesthood

Nor should we be quick to dismiss expert opinion.  But expert opinion is not fact, it still must be based on solid reasoning.  The problem is that expert opinion is often treated like dogmatic truth because the Scientific Elite are the new priests.  Based on their secret knowledge that only “experts” such as themselves can understand, they dictate religious dogma.  Spoken word becomes fact.  Thus says the Scientist—“Masks don’t work” and it is so.  Thus says the Scientist two months later—“Masks do work” and it is so.  The Shepherds have spoken and the Sheeple must follow suit.  Laws are made to punish heretics who dare to question the spoken word.

This, by the way, is why masks have elicited such a strong response.  The High Priest initially said that they don’t work.  Then he spoke again saying they did and that the Priests lied because they were worried about a shortage.  But if a person unapologetically lies once, how do you know they are telling the truth now?  Actually, a leading Priest at Johns Hopkins says, it wasn’t lying but that “[A]t first, researchers and scientists did not know how necessary mask wearing would be among the general public. Now we are aware that wearing masks is an effective way to help prevent spread of this coronavirus” (Emphasis added).  Given the timeframe and the rather dramatic shift from no-mask to mask, where did this awareness come from? Changing your mind is fine. But changing your mind without a change in the data is based not on science, but fiat.  If you search prior to the dogmatic declaration, scientific opinion for the most part deemed them ineffective.  The fact is that the Priests exercised their hidden knowledge (because there was no new data) and declared them so.  I would probably be clothed in a scarlet mask for this statement alone, but let me go a little further as a statistician and speak about what a reasonable approach to this question would look like.

The Statistician Speaks

First, proving a negative is extremely difficult.  To conclusively say “masks don’t work” is a practical impossibility.  Having said that, there is little data to suggest that they do work (a complete summary that is thoroughly documented can be found here).  There have been studies in the last few months that have suggested they might, but these are inconclusive at best.  They are all very poorly done because they are being done in the midst of the crisis.  To study the problem properly you need to set up what would be something akin to a clinical trial in which you had a placebo group to compare it to.  But you also have the problem that mask usage is almost certainly confounded with social distancing.  Is social distancing the thing that helps, or is it masks, or is it both?  You’d have to set up a study to separate them.  Secondly, not all masks are created the same or are equally effective.

Carnegie Mellon tracks (among many other things) mask compliance here.  Notice that many places are in the high 80ish% for compliance and yet “cases” continue to increase in all of those areas.  If any intervention works, then you should expect the slope of the line of increase to decrease (“flatten the curve”).  But the data suggests that the lines are actually steeper.  For example, see the plot below of my home state of North Carolina which instituted a Mask Mandate on June 26th and has had above an 85% mask compliance rate (currently 91%).  North Carolina is far from unique in this regard and you can find similar data for all your favorite states.

If we were true to “Science” we would look at this medical intervention and determine that it does not work.  A drug company running a clinical trial (where they are using their own money) would stop the trial and might even decide that the intervention is actually making it worse.

This might mean that…wait for it…masks are making it worse.  You would again need to study this, but it is a reasonable supposition given the data.  It also makes sense in that it could easily be creating a false sense of security or become a petri dish of germs just waiting to be deposited on someone else or an aritficial barrier suppresses the body’s natural barrier of the immune system.  To be sure though, if we were testing a drug and the data looked like this, we would stop giving it to people.

This tangent was necessary because it speaks to the reasonableness of mask mandates.  Law, according to St. Thomas, is “an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community and is promulgated.”  Any law that does not fulfill those four requirements—reasonable, aimed at the common good, proper authority, and made known—is not, properly speaking, a law.  Therefore, because they are not reasonable (or at least can not be proven to be at this point reasonable) we have no obligation to obey them.  As true Shepherds of the Flock, Bishops and Priests need to stop being so deferential to mask mandates precisely for this reason.

The New Sacrament

The revolt against masks then is really a revulsion to what they symbolize.  They have been made into sacraments through the words of the New Priests.  They are said to protect and so therefore they do.  Those who do not want to subscribe to this religion therefore will not want to wear them.  It seems like a small thing to do, but it plays a key role in the overall narrative that Science can save us.  As a sacrament it symbolizes the fact that the Coronavirus is a serious threat to our overall well-being.  If you are tempted to think “well 99.99% of people that get this will survive”, then you only have to look around at everyone wearing a mask to tell you that you should be scared anyway.  The smiling face of your neighbor, which would normally comfort you, is now hidden from your sight.  The masks will permanently disfigure us because when the next virus comes along, and it will, they will tell us “this is more serious than the Coronavirus (which it likely will be) you must put the mask back on.” 

By blessing the mask, the Priest also makes it into a Secular Scapular.  Through the words of Mary to St. Simon Stock, we know that the Brown Scapular helps to save you eternally.  Through the words of the Scientist, the mask saves us from Covidoom.  The Brown Scapular is an aid to our growth in virtue, the Covid Scapular signals that we have virtue.

One of the things that the totalitarian regimes of the 20th Century was their exaltation of Science as the new religion.  Lenin, Stalin, Chiang Kai-Shek, and Hitler all committed their atrocities using “Science” as their justification.  Had someone stood up to them early on, one has to wonder whether things would have been different.

The Religion of the Antichrist

Abortion, Church, Church and State, Culture of Life, Defending the Faith, Devils, End Times, Marxism, Spiritual Warfare, , , , , , , , ,

When the wall separating east from west in Berlin fell, millions of people were freed from the shackles of Communism in Eastern Europe and Russia.  The man who was instrumental in this happening, St. John Paul II, saw it as part of his divine mandate to facilitate this monumental event.  But as a Catholic who had a great devotion to Our Lady of Fatima, he knew that was not the end of the story.  Russia had spread her errors practically unabated for 75 years; reaching even into our own country.  These errors were not Communism itself, but instead the ideology that underlies it—Marxism.  Marxism is alive and well and is poised to become a global religion through the likes of not just China’s hegemonic aspirations, but the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset, WHO’s universal healthcare plan (led by Marxist Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus), Black Lives Matter and a whole host of other organizations.

A Global Religion?

To call Marxism a global religion, may, at first glance, seem to be an exaggeration.  Of course, properly speaking, it is not a religion at all.  Religion is always ordered to God which means that there can be only one true global religion.  It is the one founded by God Himself in the Catholic Church.  But the Devil is always on the prowl to ape Christ including by forming his own global religion.  Marxism is the “religion” of choice and should properly be seen as the religion of the Antichrist.

That Marx himself was under demonic influence can hardly be disputed.  Several of his biographers, many of whom are sympathetic to his cause, have mentioned this.  Paul Kengor, in his new book The Devil and Karl Marx, does a thorough job of compiling the case for Marx’s diabolical connections.  Viewed in this way, it also helps to understand the beguiling effect that Marxism has on a lot of people because of its inherent power of mass Demonic Oppression.  The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council were aware of this as they included several schemas on “The Care of Souls with Regard to Christians Infected with Communism” in their preparatory documents.  Unfortunately, these schemas never saw the light of day and would have been a great aid in fighting an “invention so full of errors and delusions.”

The Great Imitation

Besides the global aspirations of Marxism, there are other, more insidious ways in which it will imitate the true religion.  In taking on human flesh in the Incarnation, Christ sought to both repair and elevate human nature making it capable of sharing in the Divine Nature.  In simplest terms, Marxism is an attempt to fundamentally transform human nature through the instruments of politics and culture.  It may have failed to control economics, but that was not the end of it.  Using the Sexual Revolution, Cultural Marxists have been wildly successful in “transforming” human nature in the sexual realm.  No longer does human nature thrive through monogamous marriage, the family, and private property.  Parents are not uniquely suited to mold their children according to their nature, but instead human nature is malleable and should be molded into the image deemed useful by the State.  Free will, the mark of the Divine image in man (c.f. CCC 1704-1705), is an illusion and replaced through conditioning according to their social structure (or through the correction of “Unconscious Bias” as the remains from obsolete social structures and implemented through “Corporate Training”). 

Christianity worships Christ Who made Himself a victim for our sins (c.f. 2 Cor 5:21) while Marxism worships the Victim Class.  Man’s nature is not social and marked by complementarity but instead is competitive.  It is to be informed by the narrative of oppressor versus oppressed.  There is a never-ending search of the new victim class in order to keep the worship going.  Virtuous men and women, those who are most like God are scorned and those who have been intersected by the most “axes of oppression” are exalted. 

Finally, just as Catholics offer the blood of the Innocent Lamb of God to the Father, Marxists offer the blood of innocent children through abortion to the Devil.  Marxism and abortion are always a package deal because Marxism, like all religions, needs to offer sacrifice.  The Devil throughout history has always demanded the blood of the innocent in sacrifice.  Marxism in all its instantiations always includes abortion.  It was Russia that became the first country to legalize abortion in 1920 and thanks to the Marxist feminists of the 1960s, the United States followed suit.  You can often identify a Marxist by how insistent they are that abortion is a “right”.

The Spirit of Christ animates the Christian religion and so the spirit of the antichrist animates the religion of Marxism.  The globalists who seek a One World Order are Marxists at heart.  Once a critical mass is met, then the world will be ready for the antichrist.  This is not an inevitability however and so Catholics must fight against Marxism in all its manifestations.  The Church was once instrumental in fighting Communism, but now it too has been infected with Marxists.  We need to pray that Christ will once again cleanse the Temple by setting his sights not on the money changers but the Marxists.  We have Our Lady of Fatima on our side and we can fight its spread through the First Saturday Devotion.  We can also zealously combat the errors where we see them and educate ourselves on this most pernicious enemy because there is one other thing the religion of the antichrist does—seeks to wipe out the believers of the True Faith.

Politcal Parties and Cooperation with Evil

Abortion, Conscience, Culture, Culture of Life, , , , , , , ,

At the beginning of 1931, the German Bishops collectively excommunicated members of the Nazi party and barred all Catholics in Germany from joining.  The excommunication did not extend to those who voted for Nazis, but only those who joined the party.  This ban was put in place even though not all the party platform was evil.  In fact, there were certain policies that were in accord with the Common Good.  Nevertheless, the party protected and promoted certain intrinsic evils that could never be overlooked and washed away in the political give and take that is inevitable in a party system.    Although the ban was walked back slightly after the election of 1933, the German Bishops demonstrated a long-standing Catholic belief that political party affiliation can put one’s soul in jeopardy.

Party Affiliation and Formal Cooperation

Why this is the case can be seen once we examine the principle of formal cooperation.  Recall that the principle of cooperation acknowledges that a number of people often participate in bringing about some evil action.  Moral philosophy makes the distinction between formal and material cooperation.  Formal cooperation means that a person aligns their will with the intention of the principal moral agent.  Material cooperation means that a person offers some material support in the carrying out of an action, even if, they may not be willing participants in the evil itself.

The act of abortion offers an illustrative and relevant example.  Suppose a woman is pondering an abortion so she seeks counsel with a friend.  The friend says she should do it but says she cannot help her get one.  The friend has formally cooperated in the abortion and thus bears the guilt of the act itself in uniting her will to the will of the woman.  She did not, however, offer material support and thus her material cooperation is minimal if non-existent.  When the woman gets to the abortion mill, she is greeted by the janitor outside who is emptying mop water.  He hates abortion but only works here because he needs to feed his family and is unable to find another job currently.  His cooperation too is material, he provides a clean environment for the abortion, but it is remote since it is not vital to the carrying out of the abortion (which is truer than most people would like to admit).  Finally, she enters the abortion mill and is greeted by the nurse.  The nurse too hates abortion (thus no formal cooperation) but her material cooperation is so proximate and vital to the act that she is guilty of cooperation with the evil of abortion.

In summary, because guilt lies in the will, a person is always guilty of sin when they formally cooperate with evil.  A person who formally cooperates with a grave evil bears a proportionate level of guilt for that evil.  They may or may not be guilty when they cooperate materially, depending on their role and their proximity to the act itself.  Related to the topic at hand, a person who is Pro-Choice, even if they never directly assist or counsel a person to get an abortion, simply by making their position known, has formally cooperated with that evil and bear culpability.

The Democratic Party platform, in no uncertain terms, promotes and protects the evil of abortion: “Democrats…believe unequivocally…that every woman should be able to access…safe and legal abortion.”  And because political party affiliation is a free association, any person who joins the party consents to all of the party’s platform.  There is no “I am personally opposed, but …” type logic because of the principle of formal cooperation.  A member of the Democratic Party is aligning their will with that of the other members of the Party.  Why else would they join?  If they did not believe in any of the tenets, they simply need not join.  This was the logic of the German Bishops in 1931, a logic that can likewise be applied to members of the Democratic Party today.

An All-Important Distinction

Please note what has been said and what hasn’t.  The contention is that because joining the Democratic Party constitutes formal cooperation, it is gravely sinful.  This does not mean that voting for a Democrat is always and everywhere gravely sinful.  To extend the arm of sin beyond formal cooperation is a bridge too far.  This was the point that Cardinal Ratzinger made when in 2004 he said,

“A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia.  When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.”

The key word related to material cooperation is proportionate.  There must be not only a good reason to vote, but a proportionate reason.  On this level this means that if Candidate A is in favor of one intrinsically evil action and Candidate B supports a different intrinsically evil action, then we might vote so as to limit the amount of overall evil present in society.  For example, suppose Candidate A supported abortion but was against Euthanasia and Candidate B supported Euthanasia but was against abortion, you might vote for B because abortion constitutes a greater evil on society as a whole.  The point is that you cannot simply perform moral calculus adding up the evil on each side, but instead the proportionately is related to the presence of intrinsically evil actions, or as the Church has put it, “non-negotiables”.

But just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.  In fact, it is really a natural outlook that would motivate a Catholic to vote for a Democrat.  A supernatural outlook of the world would never allow us to vote for someone who we know to be in an objective state of grave sin.  The reason for this is simple—a person in a state of mortal sin is the Devil’s pawn.  Mortal sin places a person under his dominion and they are very likely to commit further evil.  If Christ is not King of their heart, then most assuredly they will be working against making Him King of our Country.  This principle really goes for any politician.  If the person is known to be in a state of grave sin then you should never vote for them.

This sounds “judgmental” to modern ears, but it is simply a statement of fact.  A person who directly wills that abortions be provided remains in a gravely sinful state until such time as they repent.  Because the support of abortion was public, true repentance would have to be public, causing the person to separate themselves from the sinful Party.  A person who remains in the Party has thus remained in their sinful state.

As the November election is fast approaching, we must as Catholics, come to understand that voting is not just a political action, but a moral one and thus we must shine the light of Catholic morality on our voting decisions.    

The Eucharistic Remnant

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Finding that love for God had greatly cooled in his time, St. Ignatius of Loyola placed the blame squarely upon a lack of devotion to the Eucharist.  This, of course, makes perfect sense for they are one and the same thing—“every one who loves the Father, also loves the Son” (1 John 5:1).  The Eucharist keeps our love for God from becoming abstract and always ensures that it remain fully human.  Returning to Ignatius, he says that

“the early Church members of both sexes received Communion daily as soon as they were old enough. But soon devotion began to cool, and Communion became weekly. Then after a considerable interval of time, as devotion became still more cool, Communion was received on only three of the principal feasts of the year. . . . And finally, because of our weakness and indifference, we have ended with once a year. You would think we are Christian only in name, to see us so calmly accepting the condition to which the greater part of mankind has come.” 

In short, we must return to our roots and receive Our Lord daily in the Eucharist.

Our Lord, on the Cross, gave all that was possible to mankind, emptying Himself of every ounce of blood, the symbol of life.  This sacrifice will always remain distant to us individually until each one of us climbs the Mount of Calvary to receive it.  Each Mass situates us really and truly, even if sacramentally, at the foot of the Cross.  But it is not enough to merely be there, His blood must come upon us so that His life becomes ours.  This is not symbolic, for the Creator of all that is needs no symbols, but real.  “unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, you have no life in you” (John 6:53).

Meeting Our Lord’s Desire Head On

It should come as no surprise then that Our Lord so earnestly desired to give the Church the Eucharist (Luke 22:15).  For our part, we should earnestly desire to receive Him.  The Communion rail should be the place where the two desires collide and are consummated, igniting the fire of Divine Love in our souls.  This holy desire should be wholly consuming.  St. Catherine of Siena compares it to a candle that one carries to Communion:

“If you have a light, and the whole world should come to you in order to take light from it — the light itself does not diminish — and yet each person has it all. It is true that everyone participates more or less in this light, according to the substance into which each one receives the fire. I will develop this metaphor further that you may the better understand Me. Suppose that there are many who bring their candles, one weighing an ounce, others two or six ounces, or a pound, or even more, and light them in the flame, in each candle, whether large or small, is the whole light, that is to say, the heat, the color, and the flame; nevertheless you would judge that he whose candle weighs an ounce has less of the light than he whose candle weighs a pound. Now the same thing happens to those who receive this Sacrament. Each one carries his own candle, that is the holy desire, with which he receives this Sacrament, which of itself is without light, and lights it by receiving this Sacrament.”

Receiving Our Lord in the Eucharist is so vital to our existence that it was the first thing He told us to ask for ourselves; “Give us this day, our daily bread.”  The Eucharist is the only “Daily Bread”.  He tells us to ask food because He hungers to give.  His hunger converts our hunger.  As Christ tells St. Augustine, “I am the food of the strong; grow and thou shall feed on Me.  But you shall not convert Me into yourself as the nourishment of your body, but you shall be changed into Me.” (Confessions Book 7 Ch 10).

Pope St. Pius X in his Decree Sacra Tridentina exhorted the Faithful to receive Our Lord daily in the Eucharist.  But in order to do so fruitfully “one should take care that Holy Communion be preceded by careful preparation, and followed by an appropriate thanksgiving, according to each one’s strength, circumstances and duties.”  We must “approach the Sacred Table Holy Table with a right and devout intention” that is animated neither by “custom, vanity or any human reason but with the desire to satisfy the good pleasure of God while growing ever closer to Him in charity.”  We must receive Our Lord in order to quench His desire to give.

Tying together St. Ignatius sentiment with that of St. Catherine Siena helps us to grasp the ecclesiastical importance of fervent and daily Communion.  Both the sign of and the cause of the mass tepidity is a lack of desire for the Eucharist.  But when a Eucharistic remnant emerges that receives with St. Catherine’s holy desire, the love of Our Lord begins to spread like a flame as more and more candles are lit.  The Early Church was filled with Daily Communicants and they set the world on fire with the love of Christ precisely because they were Daily Communicants.  They gave what they received by bringing new converts to meet Our Lord in the Eucharist.  If you want to change the face of the Earth then commit to living a thoroughly Eucharistic life.  Catholics are Eucharistic Christians and thus meet Our Lord face to face every day.

Our Lady’s Army

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Given the present turmoil, devout Christians can’t help but wonder whether the End is near.  We are probably not alone in this consideration as history is replete with Saints and Sages who thought the same thing.  Our Lord, on the other hand, sought to curb such speculation when he declared that “of that day and hour no one knows, not the angels of heaven, but the Father alone” (Mt 24:36).  The speculation is not without its fruit however.  Wondering can lead to wakefulness—”Watch ye therefore, because ye know not what hour your Lord will come” (Mt 24:42).  While we should close the door on conjecture, Our Lord wants us to always live as if the End is right around the corner. 

Like the Apostles in the Garden, our battle is to stay awake.  The Satanic Sandman wants to lull us to sleep.  His battleplan is to make us woke so that we won’t be awake.  Knowing how he does this will enable us to enter the fray with eyes wide open.

Staying Awake

In a very real sense we could say that it is of the nature of Man to be a warrior.  When the Enemy entered the Garden and caused the Fall of Adam and Eve, the battle was begun.  It may have been the Fall of Man but it also marked the battle lines by which Satan’s downfall would occur.  Turning first to the Serpent, God said “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed” (Gn 3:15, DR translation).  Just as God in creation separated the light and the dark, He made a permanent enmity between the Serpent and his offspring and the Woman and hers.  The Woman of course is not the Eve of the Old Creation, but the Eve of the New Creation, Mary (c.f. John 2:4, 19:26-27 and this entry).  Once having set the commanders in the two armies, God set forth the foot soldiers—Satan’s demonic and human minions and the blessed angels and Jesus’ beloved disciples. 

In his True Devotion to Mary, St. Louis de Montfort offers and important reflection on what this enmity.  He says it is the only enmity that God has made; He did not merely permit it, but positively created it.  It would be total, indomitable and eternal.  The great Marian Saint says:

God has never made or formed but one enmity; but it is an irreconcilable one, which shall endure and develop even to the end. It is between Mary, His worthy Mother, and the devil—between the children and the servants of the Blessed Virgin and the children and instruments of Lucifer. The most terrible of all the enemies which God has set up against the devil is His holy Mother, Mary. He has inspired her, even since the days of the earthly Paradise, though she existed then only in His idea, with so much hatred against that cursed enemy of God, with so much industry in unveiling the malice of that old serpent, with so much power to conquer, to overthrow, and to crush that proud impious rebel, that he fears her not only more than all Angels and men, but in some sense more than God Himself. It is not that the anger, the hatred, and the power of God are not infinitely greater than those of the Blessed Virgin, for the perfections of Mary are limited, but it is, first, because Satan, being proud, suffers infinitely more from being beaten and punished by a little and humble handmaid of God, and her humility humbles him more than the Divine power; and, secondly, because God has given Mary such a great power against the devils, that, as they have often been obliged to confess, in spite of themselves, by the mouths of the possessed, they fear one of her sighs for a soul more than the prayers of all the Saints, and one of her menaces against them more than all other torments.   

This battle isn’t just between Mary and the Devil, “but between the race of the holy Virgin and the race of the devil; that is to say, God has set enmities, antipathies, and secret hatreds between the true children and the servants of Mary, and the children and servants of the devil. They do not love each other mutually. They have no inward correspondence with each other. The children of Belial, the slaves of Satan, the friends of the world (for it is the same thing), have always up to this time persecuted those who belong to our Blessed Lady, and will in future persecute them more than ever…”

If we are to battle on God’s side, under the Standard of the Cross, we must submit to Christ and His Battle Commander.  We must join Our Lady’s army, and because the war is total, we must do so through a total consecration.  That is the only way because God has declared it as such.  When John describes the War in Heaven (Rev 12), Our Lady once again leads her offspring into battle.  For St. Louis de Montfort, this enrollment, especially in the End Times becomes crucial.  These Apostles of the End Times will be the only ones who are able to remain faithful because “the devil, knowing that he has but little time, and now less than ever, to destroy souls, will every day redouble his efforts and his combats. He will presently raise up new persecutions, and will put terrible snares before the faithful servants and true children of Mary, whom it gives him more trouble to surmount than it does to conquer others.”

Living as if the End is Near

If we are to live then as Our Lord commanded, that is, as if the End is near, then we should live consecrated to Our Lady as part of her army.  This consecration also enables us to see the weapons that Satan uses.  Once we realize that this enmity is total, the war absolute, we realize that there can be no compromise between the two armies.  We may actively pursue defectors from the Enemy’s camp, but they must come on Our Lady’s terms.  We can make no compromises with the world or provision with the flesh (Romans 13:13-14) because those are the Enemy’s landmines.  We must take upon ourselves the yoke of Our Lord from the hands of Our Lady.

The Devil’s battleplan is always the same and we would do well to know the diabolical rhythm.  Before he unleashes hell on believers in total persecution, he denies the ontological character of the enmity.  He creates structures and systems that promise a false peace; always false because it goes against reality as God has constructed it.  “Peace” that consists in compromise with the devil, the world and the flesh.  But “Christ must be all in all”  and until His reign is complete we must continue the fight.  We must reject the false messianic hopes of things like Marxism, One World Orders, and technocracy because they are diabolical landmines.  This is his chosen tactic for now, that if we yield, will lead to total persecution.  Those in Our Lady’s Army can never compromise.  It is Our Lady sitting at Our Lord’s right hand (Ps 45:9) that will protect us and obtain for her children true wisdom that never yields to false promises. 

The Church and Democracy

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When Woodrow Wilson lead America into World War I, his battle cry was that America needed to “make the world safe for democracy.”  Resting upon the unquestionable assumption that democracy is not only the best, but ultimately the only form of government, democratic principles have come to animate the Western mind.  It has a habit of doing that because it seeks to impose equality by force of the mob.  In a previous post we discussed why this might be not only unjust, but ultimately dangerous.  In this post we would like to pick up on that theme by examining the Church’s teaching on democracy, a teaching that like all things Catholic, takes a “both/and” nuanced approach that also keeps the world safe from democracy, or at least safe from the threat of absolutism that looms over it.

The Church’s political philosophy rests not only upon the teaching of St. Augustine in The City of God, but also St. Thomas Aquinas in his De Regno as well as his Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics.  St. Thomas, despite favoring monarchy was not opposed to democracy because he thought that “all should take some share in the government: for this form of constitution ensures peace among the people, commends itself to all, and is most enduring.”  Nevertheless the “best form of polity, being partly kingdom, since there is one at the head of all; partly aristocracy, in so far as a number of persons are set in authority; partly democracy, i.e. government by the people, in so far as the rulers can be chosen from the people, and the people have the right to choose their rulers” (ST I-II q.105, a.1).

Democracy in the Ideal Government

This ideal, mixed regime that included democracy was based upon a vastly different conception of democracy than we are used to.  “Government by the people” in St. Thomas’ mind is based on how leaders are chosen and not on how they govern.  Once chosen, the leaders are not representatives of the people but instead real leaders.  A leader assumes responsibility and it not a mere spokesman of the people or a party. 

Modern sensibilities reject all other forms of government for two reasons.  First, because each man is “equal”, each must have an equal say in governing and selecting representatives.  Secondly, because authority comes from below, from the individual himself, and not from God, each man can only cede his authority over to some chosen representative.  When these two things are accepted as “givens” then democracy becomes the only just form of government.  Thus, the mission to “make the world safe for democracy” becomes a demand of social justice.

The Church on the other hand, because she views authority as coming from above, thinks any of the three regimes mentioned by St. Thomas is acceptable if justice is maintained.  As St. Pius X said, “Justice being preserved, it is not forbidden to the people to choose for themselves the form of government which best corresponds with their character or with the institutions and customs handed down by their forefathers….Therefore, when he said that justice could be found in any of the three aforesaid forms of government, he was teaching that in this respect Democracy does not enjoy a special privilege” (Our Apostolic Mandate).

The Demon Hidden in Democracy

Francis Fukuyama thought that the rise of democracy marked the “end of history”.  Democracy, viewed as the end of history, is really the beginning of absolutism.  When democracy takes upon itself the mantle of only legitimate regime, it becomes susceptible to becoming tyrannical.  Nearly all of the totalitarian regimes of the 20th Century had democratic roots and this is because it has no mechanism that checks the will of the people.  A system of “horizontal pressure” develops in which the majority drowns out the minority.  Unless one is conditioned to self-government, that is virtuous, he can become irrational and passion-driven.  Through appeals to the passions and through propaganda, the people become easily manipulated by those in power, all while maintaining the guise of freedom and equality. 

The key then becomes checking democracy against the moral law.  Absent appeals to the natural law, a corrupted democracy becomes the worst of all regimes.  A tyranny of 1 or of few is far better than a tyranny of many.  It was in this spirit that Pope Pius XII examined Democracy as a means of lasting peace.

In his Christmas message of 1944, Pope Pius XII cautioned against blind acceptance of democracy as the only acceptable form of government.  He pointed out that it is only a cause of peace when it is well-ordered to justice.  This ordering to justice can only happen in what he calls “a sound Democracy” which is “ based on the immutable principles of the natural law and revealed truth, will resolutely turn its back on such corruption as gives to the state legislature in unchecked and unlimited power, and moreover, makes of the democratic regime, notwithstanding an outward show to the contrary, purely and simply a form of absolutism.”

The susceptibility of democracy to descend into Ochlocracy is also hastened when it tries to enforce political equality.  Because of the natural inequality in mankind, not everyone should be involved in the political process.  Extending the right to vote based solely upon citizenship is a dangerous proposition.  Most people are not politically engaged enough to make educated votes and thus they are more likely to become a mob rather than an electorate.  Late night TV hosts may find it funny to ask the average Joe questions about various candidates and laugh at their answers, but these people are also the same ones whose votes count as much as the person who learns of different candidates and seeks the common good.  This is one reason among many why a democracy is not the best means for protecting freedom and maintaining natural equality.

Looking with Lust

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Our Lord would most accurately be labeled, at least according to modern standards, a total prude.  He reached a puritanical pinnacle by inventing a totally new category of adultery which he dubs “adultery in the heart” that occurs when a man looks at a woman with lust.  This divine priggishness makes it practically impossible for men and women to even be around each other, or at least that is how it seems.  The modern mind, trapped in a world without virtue, can only see two options: puritanical or prurient.  But Our Lord is really offering a third option, one that ultimately leaves us with the power to love freely and not free love-ers.

Anyone encountering the Sermon on the Mount for the first time must immediately be struck by the unbelievable idealism of the mode of life Christ is putting forth.  He would be the world’s most moralistic man except for one important detail.  Whenever Our Lord issues a command, He never simply leaves us to our own devices, but also seeks to give us the power to fulfill His commands.  His coming to “fulfill the law” isn’t just a matter of prophecy but a matter of grace.  Through the power of His grace we are able to fulfill even the most idealistic of His commands, the command not to look upon a man or woman with lust included.

Christ the True Moralist

Herein lies a major point of misunderstanding about Christ the moralist.  His commandments are such that they both contain the path to freedom while simultaneously leading us to freedom.  He is the Truth and the Way.  What Christ is commanding is really an offer that will free us from looking upon another person with lust.  The power to see the other person as a person and not merely an object of pleasure.  This power then opens the gates of freedom that enable us to love purely as the only true path to happiness.

This pathway to love however also requires us to properly understand what it means, and more importantly what it doesn’t mean, to look at someone with lust.  Lust is not just looking at person of the opposite sex, but is a gaze that is filled desire to use the other person.  In this regard it is helpful to turn to Pope St. John Paul II’s teachings in Love and Responsibility.

Love and Responsibility and Lust

The former Fr. Wojtyla sought to explain how attraction is felt between members of the opposite sex.  In encountering a person of the opposite sex, a man or woman has a natural response to the sexual value of the other person.  These responses come in two forms: sensuality or the reaction to the sexual value in the other person’s body, and sentimentality or the reaction to their perceived masculinity or femininity.    This spontaneously felt response, without the governing of reason, finds its culmination in the desire to possess the value.  Notice that it is the value itself that we desire to possess regardless of the person who possesses that value.  The other person becomes an object of use, rather than a subject to love.  John Paul II labels this phenomenon subjective egoism because it is based completely on how the person feels in response to the other person.  Lust then is the expression of the desire to possess the value, it is the choice to use the other person.

This distinction between interest and expressing the desire is important because merely acknowledging the sexual value of the other person (we might call this interest) is not the same thing as lust.  Interest is perfectly natural and in a very real way something that happens to us rather than something chosen.  It is not just the seed of lust but also the seed of love.  Once the interest is piqued, desire is sparked.  Desire sees the person as an object to be enjoyed but still is not sinful as long as the will resists that desire to use the person.  This too is an important element of love, but it must always be purified such that it is directed to the whole person.

A few examples might help.  A man sees a woman and is drawn towards some perceived sexual value in her body.  His emotional response brings him pleasure and he must now make a decision.  Will he continue to linger on the fact that she is “hot” and the pleasure that looking at her brings or will he remind himself that it is a person and that using her (even though all he is doing is looking at her) is wrong?  If it is the former, then he has lusted.  If it is the latter then he has, even in a very primitive way, expressed love for her by willing her good in choosing not to treat her like an object for his own enjoyment. 

Notice that what is being suggested is not repression.  The attraction is natural and there can be no love without it.  What has to be “repressed” is the urge to use the person.  The man may feel the attraction and move to meet her, but in order not to be lust, he must go to her as a person and treat her as such.  The attraction is still there, but it must move the man towards its proper end—the woman who has stirred his heart and not just her body.  In being free from lust, he is now free to love the woman and not his own emotional response to the sexual value of the woman.

Adultery in the heart has everything to do with what is happening interiorly in the man and it is from this that Christ offers freedom.  How this happens can be shown by two further examples. 

Imagine a married man meets another woman with whom he has regular contact and she awakens sexual interest in him.  He begins to develop sexual desire for her and so now he chooses to avoid her because he fears that he may lust after her.  To avoid the near occasion of sin is a good thing, but it is not yet freedom.  Freedom comes when there is no threat of lust, that is, when the man is chaste. 

Like all virtues, chastity governs the spontaneous arising of the emotions attached to attraction.  The man is simply able to acknowledge the woman’s beauty without being stirred to lust.  He is free now to see her as a person who is beautiful without any desire to possess either her or her beauty.  He can simply appreciate it as beautiful and move on.  The truly chaste married man only feels attraction for his wife. 

Likewise, the chaste unmarried man will feel the emotions of attraction, but they will be moderated such that they do not move him to use the person.  Instead he is drawn towards the person and able to pursue her purely based on her personality and not solely on her attributes.  He can see her in truth and not be blinded by those attributes.  He is completely free in his love for her.

Our Lord’s prudery then is nothing less than an offer for authentic freedom.  Our Lord practiced chastity to the perfect degree and has offered us each a share in His virtue in order to free our hearts to love to the full.

On Snitching

Conscience, Moralilty, Sin, , ,

What parent hasn’t told their child “don’t be a tattletale”?   What child hasn’t gone to great lengths, including getting in trouble themselves, to avoid being a “snitch”?  What adult has turned the other way to avoid becoming a narc or a whistleblower?  Whether a child or an adult, a teen or a parent, it seems that we never quite know how to avoid pledging our allegiance to what might aptly be called the Canary Code of Honor.  For Catholics, especially those committed to living a moral life, this represents a serious challenge that, unfortunately, we do not give enough thought to.  How can we avoid being a “snitch” while still doing the right thing?  Thankfully, St. Thomas Aquinas has already done much of the intellectual and moral legwork on this question and gives us a set of rules we can live by.    

In one of his Quodlibetal questions, St. Thomas addresses the issue of correcting an erring brother.  In his usual cogent manner, the Angelic Doctor takes two seemingly conflicting Scriptural commandments and helps to reconcile them.  On the one hand, Our Lord says, “if thy brother shall offend against thee, go, and rebuke him between thee and him alone” (Mt 18:15).  On the other hand, St. Paul tells Timothy that “them that sin reprove before all: that the rest also may have fear” (1 Tim 5:20).  To reconcile them, St. Thomas begins by reminding us that the order of charity gives more weight to the common good than the good of individual reputation or conscience.  Therefore, a public sin that is, one that is manifestly known and draws other people into it (through scandal and the like) takes a certain precedence over the private sin.  In general then “if your brother sins against you”, that is, it is private (Mt 18:15) then it should be corrected privately.  If it is public then you should rebuke publicly following 1Tim 5:20 “Rebuke the sinner before all.” 

As a side note, someone might go to the individual in private to rebuke them for a public sin first.  This is because it is always better for the person who committed the public sin to correct themselves in public rather than to be corrected.  Nevertheless, if the person obstinately refuses to acknowledge their wrongdoing then it remains for another person to correct them. 

When snitching pertains to a public sin, then it is manifestly appropriate that a man turn the offender over to some authority figure.  In fact, St. Thomas says it is morally obligatory.  But when it is a private sin then the snitching becomes problematic.

Snitches get…

Snitching is almost always done, not for the improvement of the offender, but in order to punish the person, get revenge upon them, belittle them or win the favor of someone in authority.  When it is done for these reasons, St. Thomas says that snitching would constitute a grave sin.  But he says it is also a grave sin not to follow Our Lord’s prescription for fraternal correction.

It is not that denunciation has no place within the realm of fraternal correction, but its place is not primary.  It requires that there first be fraternal admonition.  This admonition might come from another individual with whom the offender is more likely to receive the correction well.  As St. Thomas says, “in all these cases charity should be preserved, and what seems best and most expedient should be done.”  It is only when the person does not receive the correction, according to Our Lord, that denunciation to an authority figure may occur. 

Forming the Potential Snitch

A young person’s abhorrence to snitching is well founded then, even if for the wrong reason.  Understanding how fraternal correction works then is vitally important, especially because Aquinas thinks that a failure to properly observe the manner in which fraternal correction occurs is a grave sin.  There is an art to fraternal correction and it is something that we rarely teach young people how to do.  They think that the only choice is between minding their own business or becoming a snitch.  Fraternal correction is an act of charity and thus it binds the corrector and the correctee more closely together. 

Rather than correcting the potential corrector as a tattletale, it is a formative moment to teach them how to properly correct another person whenever they come to tell on one of their peers.  In larger families and Catholic schools children often seek acceptance from the adults by snitching on their siblings and peers.  It is then an obligation of parents and formators to teach the children how fraternal correction works.  Any adults who encourage, or at least do not correct snitching without fraternal correction are likely to earn a giant millstone for themselves. 

If we are to finally undo the Canary Code of Honor then we need to learn the art of fraternal correction.

On Contrition

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If you are a “chalice is half-full” kind of person, you might be able to find a silver lining in the Sacramental suppression that the Church has to endure thanks to, what one Prelate has called, the “dictatorship of the sanitary”.  With ready access to the Sacraments, there is always the danger of them becoming mere formalities.  It is, after all, hard to do things well when we do them regularly.  The optimist sees this as a way to overcome this temptation. 

Regular Confession is a good example of this.  There are many of us who go to Confession regularly, yet rarely see the kind of growth that we would expect from these regular encounters with Our Lord.  When access becomes limited, we are forced to examine both our desire and our real motives.  In the case of Confession that desire and motivation are one and the same thing—Contrition.

When the Confessionals were sealed, the faithful were instructed to make an act of perfect contrition and go to Confession when they could.  Thanks to bad Sacramental Theology and poor catechesis over the past half century, hardly anyone knows what that means, let alone how to do it.  That is why it behooves us to examine the topic of Contrition more closely in hopes that this great gift will grow in our hearts.

What is Contrition?

Contrition is the grief of soul brought about by the hatred of sins committed and marked by the resolution to avoid them in the future.  This “grief” is primarily effective, that is, it is an act of the will to leave our sins behind and run into the embrace of the Father.  It need not be affective to be true contrition, although often we will feel sorrow or even have tears.  This internal grief may express itself in words through prayers like the Act of Contrition, but no mere lip service will do.  Furthermore, true contrition is always a supernatural gift because it is based on a supernatural motive, namely a love of God.  Because it is based on this motive, it must also be universal in that it covers not just a sin, but all our sins.

The supernatural motive of love of God occurs in degrees.  We may love God for what He can give us or help us avoid.  This mercenary love is still love, even if it is imperfect.  Out of this love comes imperfect contrition or attrition.  This is a sorrow for sin based on the loss of heaven or the fear of hell.  What makes this imperfect is that it is still tinged with self-love.  When our love is completely focused on God and we experience sorrow for our sin then it will always be based the fact that we have offended God, independent of any benefits He might bestow upon us.  This is perfect contrition.  Although we might not be aware of it, we make this distinction every time we pray the tradition Act of Contrition when we “detest our sins because of Your just punishments [attrition] but most of all because You are all Good and deserving of all my love [perfect contrition].” 

We might be tempted to think that an act of Perfect Contrition is impossible.  But God does not command the impossible.  Instead He makes it possible through the gift of grace.  Perfect contrition, while outside of our natural grasp, may be bestowed upon us if we ask.  St. Charles Borromeo, no stranger to Sacramental crises brought on by pandemics, offered us what he called the “Three Visits” in order to prepare our souls for the gift of perfect contrition.  The first two visits, one to Heaven and one to Hell, are meant to stir up imperfect contrition.  We should meditate both on what we risk losing and what we are gaining so as to be sorry for our sins.  The third visit is to the foot of the Cross to look upon the sufferings of Jesus all brought about by your sins.  He says to stay there until you are sorry for the pain you have caused Our Lord.  In so doing you have made an act of Perfect Contrition.

“Perfect” contrition then might be a somewhat of a misnomer in that it makes it seem like you have to love God perfectly, rather than loving the God Who is perfect.  The Scholastics avoid the terms perfect and imperfect contrition and instead use contrition for the former and attrition for the latter.  This distinction helps us to grasp that contrition may occur in degrees, degrees that are proportional to our charity.  We need not be St. Mary Magdalene, whose sins were forgiven because “she loved much” and wiped Our Lord’s feet with her tears, but there can be no contrition without some degree of charity.  We need not be anxious if we struggle to make such acts, but only ask God to bestow upon us that great gift.

Contrition and Confession

If an act of contrition then forgives sins, even mortal sins, then what is the connection with Confession?  Contrition may have the same effect as Confession, but its effects are not independent of the Sacrament.  Contrition may be sorrow expressed, but Confession is sorrow received.  Even if we may an act of perfect contrition in response to mortal sin, we must still go to Confession before we can receive the Eucharist.  Perfect contrition then is an extraordinary means of forgiveness provided that we avail ourselves of the ordinary means, Sacramental Confession. 

The advice to “make an act of perfect contrition until you can get to Confession” that has been given during the pandemic is very dangerous without all of the proper qualifications.  A person, no matter how hard they try, cannot make a perfect act of contrition without the necessary grace.  To act as if God always grants it immediately when it is asked for is to be guilty of presumption.  God may withhold such a gift for reasons only His loving Providence could explain.  This is why Canon Law protects the Faithful from Prelates who would withhold the Sacrament.  The Sacrament does not require that we have contrition; only attrition is needed to be valid.  As Fr. Alfred Wilson reminds us in his classic book Pardon and Peace, when we go to Confession, Christ has already confessed those sins.  He has sorrowed for them.  Your task is to supplement His perfect confession and contrition the best you can.

This connection with Christ’s confession and sorrow brings us to the whole point of contrition.  Perfect contrition comes from Christ Himself and thus is best understood as a participation in His sorrow.  This understanding is important because it takes any of the focus off us and our faults. leaves us standing squarely on the solid ground of His Mercy.  Genuine contrition is a habit then that grows out of this.

St. Therese on her death bed offers us the best example of this.  The sisters had gathered around her and were singing her praises.  She requested that they stop and instead to list her faults, not because she was worried about her humility, but because she wanted to have more reasons to praise God in His mercy.  She was quite literally filled with Contrition because she loved God.  Let us beg her intercession that during this time we might likewise receive and develop such a precious gift.

Why We Need Churches

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As we endure continued lockdowns, masks and church closings, a new consensus has arisen—“we don’t need a building to be a Church.  We don’t need a structure to be Catholic.”  I say new, but in truth it is old, half a millennium old.  It is simply the Protestant spirit rearing its ugly head once again.  Protestants don’t need a building because they aren’t, at least properly speaking, a Church.  Catholics on the other hand do need a building to be a Church and the fact that we don’t immediately recognize this truth shows how deeply infused the Church has become with this Protestant spirit.

All true religion requires the offering of a sacrifice to God.  St. Thomas even goes so far as to say that sacrifice is a precept of the natural law.  A true sacrifice begins with an inward act in which a man “should tender submission and honor…to that which is above man.”  But because man’s person is both interior and exterior, spirit and matter, his mode of offering inward acts of sacrifice must also include an outward expression.  “Hence it is a dictate of natural reason that man should use certain sensibles, by offering them to God in sign of the subjection and honor due to Him, like those who make certain offerings to their lord in recognition of his authority” (ST II-II, q.85, a.1).

This helps to explain the near universal phenomenon within ancient religions of every ritual act of worship including as a constitutive element sacrifice.  It also explains why the religion of the Old Testament portrays a continual groping for the perfect sacrifice that only finds its fulfillment in Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross.  Only in Him do we find a perfect fit between the interior and exterior acts; the perfect victim making the perfect sacrifice.  The New Adam sets the sacrificial standard and becomes mankind’s representative.  Through His representation, it remains for each man to re-present that sacrifice in order to make it his own.

Sacrifices must be offered from within a temple.  A temple is the dwelling place of God and the place where God and man meet.  The believer who is in a state of grace, that is one who has “put on Christ’ is one such meeting place enabling the man to offer a sacrifice to God.  For the Protestant and our Catholic friend who has no need of a church building, this is sufficient.  But for God, this is not yet sufficient.  To be “a Church”, that is the People of God, they must also offer a sacrifice. 

Making the People of God

What exactly makes the People of God a People?  Unlike the Jewish People who were united by blood, the Church is truly catholic, uniting men and women of many different races.  The Church then is a People because it is united by the Blood of Christ, the Blood poured out on Calvary and of which we partake in the Eucharist.  As Saint Paul says, it is “The bread which we break, is it not a communion in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor 10:16-17).  It is the “bread that we break” that creates the communion that is the Church. 

The Eucharist is what makes the Church the Church.  Without it, there would be no Church because there would be nothing that unites us.  St Thomas says that the Eucharist is the cause of “Ecclesiastical unity, in which men are aggregated through this Sacrament; and in this respect it is called ‘Communion’ or Synaxis. For Damascene says that ‘it is called Communion because we communicate with Christ through it, both because we partake of His flesh and Godhead, and because we communicate with and are united to one another through it’” (ST III q.73, a.4). 

In commenting on St. Paul’s passage, Pope Benedict XVI says that “the Eucharist is instrumental in the process by which Christ builds Himself a Body and makes us into one single Bread, one single Body…It is the living process through which time and again, the Church’s activity of becoming the Church takes place…The Church is a Eucharistic fellowship.  She is not just a people: out of the many peoples of which she consists there is arising one people, through the one table that the Lord has spread for us all.”  If the Church were to cease making this living process which is the Eucharist manifest, then the Church would cease to be the Church. 

The sacrifice of the Eucharist needs a Temple in which it may be offered.  Therefore, the church is not “just a building”, but the fulfilment of the Jewish Temple and the sacrament of the Temple in Heaven.  It offers a real experience of Heaven, even if it “only” does so sacramentally.  So while the church building itself does not make us the Church, it is a necessary element for the formation of the Church.  In short, without churches in which the Eucharist is offered there would be no Catholic Church.      

Eliminating the Other Police Force

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While we are about the project of reforming the civil police force, we are allowing the Thought Police to run amok.  The Thinkpol are slowly rendering certain ideas unutterable simply because they do not conform to the Ochlocratic Orthodoxy.  Not only do they have ritual humiliation at hand, they have co-opted corporations so that private views now have become fireable offenses.  The mob silences dissenters by threatening livelihood and so most people simply conform.  Free speech has come under attack in America in ways that would make even Woodrow Wilson blush.  Like the previously discussed freedom of conscience, freedom of speech also needs defending.  And like freedom of conscience, only Catholics who have a proper understanding of it, are in a position to lead the charge.

On the one hand, it is not wholly unexpected that free speech in our country has taken such a sharp left turn into a ditch.  The Founders had an absolute faith in the power of the popular mind.  Individuals might err, but the entire society could not.  Free speech, coupled with democracy, serves as a recipe for finding the truth.  All debate, they thought, would eventually lead to the truth.  All ideas, even bad ones, then must be protected in order to keep the debate moving.  In Gertz vs Welch, the Supreme Court declared that “”Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea … (it) requires that we protect some falsehood in order to protect speech that matters.”

Captivity to the Mob

Any freedom that is directly linked to democracy is always susceptible to becoming captive to the mob.  If debate over an issue ceases then it is assumed that the truth has been reached.  Now those who do not accept the orthodoxy become a threat to the well-being of society and need to be shut up.  Thus we have things such as “hate speech” becoming punishable offenses.    

A vicious circle is formed so that truth as a democratic matter always ends in an assault upon true liberty including free speech.  It is as if they must saw off the limb they are sitting on.  Liberty can only be connected to purpose and the purpose of speech is to utter truth.  Therefore, there is such thing as liberty to speak falsehood.   Freedom of speech is not unlimited but instead is not then a justification to say anything. 

Truth is not democratic but is strictly governed by the dictatorship of reality.  Truth, that is, the accordance of mind with reality, is necessary for liberty. Summarizing, Leo XIII says that the right to free speech “is a moral power which – as We have before said and must again and again repeat – it is absurd to suppose that nature has accorded indifferently to truth and falsehood, to justice and injustice. Men have a right freely and prudently to propagate throughout the State what things soever are true and honorable, so that as many as possible may possess them; but lying opinions, than which no mental plague is greater, and vices which corrupt the heart and moral life should be diligently repressed by public authority, lest they insidiously work the ruin of the State” (Libertas, 23).    

This abuse of free speech eventually leads to its destruction as ironic as that seems.  The problem is that there is no set of public truths that are immune to criticism, no intellectual foundation upon which debate may be carried out.  Leaving everything open to debate actually closes it, a situation that Leo XIII anticipated when he said “The excesses of an unbridled intellect, which unfailingly end in the oppression of the untutored multitude, are no less rightly controlled by the authority of the law than are the injuries inflicted by violence upon the weak. And this all the more surely, because by far the greater part of the community is either absolutely unable, or able only with great difficulty, to escape from illusions and deceitful subtleties, especially such as flatter the passions” (ibid).

Americanism and the Fallout

Eventually, “nothing will remain sacred and inviolate; even the highest and truest mandates of natures, justly held to be the common and noblest heritage of the human race, will not be spared. Thus, truth being gradually obscured by darkness, pernicious and manifold error, as too often happens, will easily prevail. Thus, too, license will gain what liberty loses; for liberty will ever be more free and secure in proportion as license is kept in fuller restraint” (ibid).  This is exactly where we find ourselves.

Because many prelates in the Church in the United States are infected with the Americanist heresy, they often confuse the authentic Catholic (i.e. true) understanding of free speech with the American model.  The former leads to peace and justice while the latter leads to further division.  One prelate recently said that our religious principles demand that we “defend the rights of all people even those with whom we might disagree.”  Such a statement is misleading at best.  What we are disagreeing about absolutely matters.  Some topics are still open to debate, or as Leo XIII said, “In regard, however, to all matter of opinion which God leaves to man’s free discussion, full liberty of thought and of speech is naturally within the right of everyone; for such liberty never leads men to suppress the truth, but often to discover it and make it known” (ibid).  Others, such as the right to religious liberty and the immorality of racism God has not “left to man’s free discussion”.  Both sins against God cry out for justice.  Therefore, it is neither “baffling nor reprehensible” that a Catholic institution, faced with playing a role in rectifying either, would seize the opportunity; unless, that is, you think the Thinkpol, rather than God, has closed the discussion.  

Cutting Ourselves Off at the Knees

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In his book The Spirit of the Liturgy, the future Pope Benedict XVI frets over the fact that believers have grown unaccustomed to kneeling.  Not prone to hyperbole, Ratzinger said that a “faith no longer familiar with kneeling would be sick at the core” because it “no longer knows the One before Whom kneeling is the right, indeed the intrinsically necessary gesture” ( The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 194). His is a clarion call to the Faithful to rediscover both the necessity and power of kneeling during prayer.

By referring to kneeling as an “intrinsically necessary gesture,” Cardinal Ratzinger is making a profound point, that given our cultural malaise, we are prone to miss.  A gesture can be necessary; necessary because as body-soul composites we are incapable of being “spiritual” without accompanying bodily postures.  To divorce our bodily actions from our spiritual ones does not make us more spiritual, but makes us less human.  Worship for man is done in his body and therefore must be reflected by his body bodies.  Not only that, but his bodily posture affects his soul and disposes it to receive Divine gifts.  Common sense would tells us that a man lying in a recliner and addressing Almighty God is far less likely to be disposed to receive the Divine Guest than a man standing at attention or kneeling.  Summarizing then, St. Thomas Aquinas says, “thus external, physical symbols are shown to God for the purpose of renewing and spiritually training the inner soul. This is expressed in the prayer of Manasse: ‘I bend the knee of my heart.’ ‘For every knee shall be bowed to me: and every tongue shall swear’ (Is. 45:24)” (Commentary on Ephesians, Chapter 3, Lecture 4).

If our bodily posture conveys a message both to the outer and inner world, then what makes kneeling specifically necessary?  There is, of course, the argument from authority.  We kneel before “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph 3:14) because God has commanded it.  “Kneeling,” Ratzinger says, “does not come from any culture—it comes from the Bible and its knowledge of God.  The central importance of kneeling in the Bible can be seen in a very concrete way.  The word proskynein alone occurs fifty-nine times in the New Testament” (The Spirit of the Liturgy, p.185).  St. Paul in his letter to the Philippians says that “In the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth” (Phil. 2:10). Kneeling is our response to Christ, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. This helps to explain why it is also the preferred position of Christ Himself when He prays, especially when He prays in the Garden of Gethsemane (c.f. Luke 22:42).  Since all of our prayer is simply a participation in His prayer, we should assume the same posture.  More accurately, when we kneel down to pray, we are kneeling beside Christ Himself and praying with Him.

Why God Wants Us to Kneel

But God does not command us to perform anything without reason so that the reason for kneeling also matters.  Kneeling is an exterior manifestation of our interior humility.  It is a recognition, and even at times a reminder, of the fundamental chasm between us and God.  Prayer, in order to be heard, must come from the place of humility (c.f. Ps 101:18, Sirach 35:21).  For “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).  Kneeling is an act of recognition of one’s weakness and insignificance.  Also, because strength is found in the knee, to bend the knee is to make oneself weak and vulnerable.  As Ratzinger says, to bend our knee is to bend our strength to the living God in acknowledgment of His lordship over us.

Kneeling then is good for us because it disposes us to receive God as He is and as we are.  It is when we are on our knees that we are strongest—“for when I am weak, I am strong.”  Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History gives us two examples of kneeling that further demonstrate the point.  He tells of St. James the “brother of the Lord” having callouses on his knees from his constant prayer for others.  Likewise, he gives an account of a certain Abba Apollo who saw the devil as a hideous creature with no knees.  The Devil has no knees because he has rendered himself incapable of adoration.  He cannot stoop at all because of his pride.  He is, to use modern parlance, spiritual but not religious.  At the heart of religion is giving to God what is due to Him so that modern man has lost the ability to kneel because he has ceased to be religious. 

Kneeling is the only way in which we might see God.  We must make ourselves smaller to see the Big Picture.  This is why when Christ reveals Himself to soldiers who seek to arrest Him in the Garden, His words of self-revelation knock them to their knees.  Likewise the Wise Men when they journey to meet the King of Kings must stoop to enter the cave in which He was born.  It is only from that vantage point that He can be recognized.  Kneeling is necessary to see God.