The Action of Grace

“I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil,” wrote Flannery O’Connor.

This is hard for readers to grasp, for O’Connor’s stories are so shocking, violent, and disturbing that we wonder how they can be about grace. This is because we see grace as being a “nice thing”, like quietly saying grace before meals, like the “graceful” moves of a figure skater, like the “social graces”, which are about soothing and calming people and situations. We really believe the message of all the Scriptures is “Jesus was nice; you be nice, too.”

But the Grace of God is a man clothed in rags with a wild gleam in his eye eating locusts in the desert and warning his people to flee from the wrath to come. The Grace of God is the zeal of Phineas, who slew the Israelite and his wife who were flaunting God’s commands. The Grace of God is St. Paul, blinded, knocked down, humiliated.

When the hand of God reaches out to us, we usually see it as a disturbance in our otherwise orderly lives. We want to do things our way, and so we want no interference. We usually think of the strident atheist as railing against God, but in fact we are the ones railing against God quietly when we take the awe of Him out of our parish architecture and when we castrate our homilies and when we gay-up our liturgical music; we rail against God when we choose a life devoted to nothing but bourgeois comfort, when we placate our lusts with private porn and shut out the silence with headphones and texting. We come to feel satisfied that grace is a predictable thing we can keep in a box, that God is a feeling we can turn on or off whenever we want, that the prophets are wrong, that zeal is a bit much, that St. Paul is best left ignored, that he’s a tad embarrassing.

Now here’s the surprising thing. When we invite God out of our lives in this way, He sometimes exercises a great Grace on us – by going. The Grace of God is not always an active thing. He is content to be passive, as passive as a good man hanging on a cross. He is content to give great Grace by removing His Grace.

And what happens then?

In Psalm 106:15 we read, “And He gave them their request, but sent leanness into their soul.” In Hosea 4:10, “They shall eat, but not be satisfied; they shall play the whore, but not multiply.” Isaiah 9:20, “On the right they will devour, but still be hungry; on the left they will eat, but not be satisfied.” These are three penetrating descriptions of the modern world, of people filled with every activity but never able to be made full by this activity, of people working to crawl out of the hole, but never being able to pay the debt, of never being able to say, “It is enough”, of people who have been given what they want - sterility.

It is a great grace for God to remove His Grace and show us how empty we are without Him.

But then when the active Grace comes, when the great gift is given … we cry out, “Mountains and hills fall on us!” and we flee, as if from the wrath to come.

The Beast Advances or The Attack on Reason

This is part one of what will be posted in two parts on The St. Austin Review Ink Desk.

The Beast Advances or The Attack on Reason

by Kevin O'Brien


Hilaire Belloc, in “The Great Heresies”, pointed to a disturbing feature of the Modern Attack on the Catholic Church: the attack upon Reason.

Nowhere is this more clearly displayed than on the internet - yes, on Facebook in particular, but also everywhere on the internet. And though I have written about Facebook before and my on-again off-again love-hate relationship with her, I’m beginning to see that the enemy is not Facebook. The enemy is us!

Let me try to categorize the problems I’ve noticed:


1. BEING FORCED TO EXPLAIN THE PUNCHLINE

A friend of mine on Facebook can not post even innocuous quotations such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s, “The Saints are the Sinners who keep on trying,” without a barrage of comment box (combox) attacks nitpicking at all sorts of things the quote never intended to convey. In this case, commenters insisted such things as “saints do not sin; they are not sinners”, or “it’s not the efforts of sinners ‘trying’ but God’s grace that does all”, or other such picayune objections that miss the entire point of the quotation and are willfully tone-deaf to its verve and its fun.

If I were to post my Facebook status update as Henny Youngman's "Take my wife, please!" I'd get the following comments ...

"Certainly by take he can't mean ravish, as that's simply the sin of adultery."

"Since in heaven we are neither married nor given in marriage, Youngman must be referring to our ultimate end, thereby longing for the absence of his wife as he gazes forever at the face of God."

"If he said simply, 'Take my wife', I'd go along with that. But the word 'please' implies free will, which, as a Calvinist, I find offensive."

"Take her where? To the Obamacare Death Panel?"

... and so forth.

I think we've come to the End of Civilization as We Know It - hence we must always find ourselves explaining the joke.



2. HIT AND RUN

A person I never knew “friended” me on Facebook, apparently for one reason: to post this on my wall:

“And what exactly is the church doing these days to keep priests away from little boys? ...or is it all just imaginary dust underneath a giant magick carpet?” (sic)

In a series of combox back and forths, I began by conceding that pedophilia is indeed a serious sin, and that the Church should be doing public penance, and that the Church has indeed done much to address this, most especially with Pope Benedict now creating bishops who are actually Catholic and not sympathizers of pederasty.

This fellow responded derisively, and kept bringing up what a terrible scandal this was and began to make fun of the sacrament of Confession as a make-believe way of sweeping things under the “magick” carpet. So I continued with this …

“By the way, may I remind you that it's the Catholic Church that condemns child molestation and perversion, not the culture at large. If Church members do not live up to this standard, then by all means we should seek to repent - but you put yourself in an awkward position when you attack the Church with a weapon she herself endorses, the condemnation of sin. If you're so eager to endorse the Church's teaching on the evils of child molestation and sexual perversion, I assume you also endorse all the other teachings of the Church, teachings which its members fail again and again to live up to.”

He then replied – astonishingly:

“I do not condone nor condemn the said priests (sic) actions. Pedophilia is merely a (sic) human nature, i.e. Greek traditions of initiation, that the church (and some conformists) oppose ... My apologies if I antagonized you.”

So I couldn’t resist:

“Wow. Glad to know you don't condemn any actions, despite what you wrote on my wall and in the combox. Consistency was never to be expected from this, I see. … Meanwhile, keep focusing on sin. It’s good for the soul.”



3. E. E. CUMMINGS WITHOUT SPELL-CHECK

Another mark of the abandonment of reason is indicated by all these “sics” above. People who argue foolishly on the internet display and flaunt their foolishness not only by what they say but by how they say it. Not only do they abandon any attempt at punctuation, as E. E. Cummings and many of the modern poets did, they also refuse even to use spell-check, apparently.

Take, for instance, someone who attacked me by commenting on a youtube video of mine, telling me that if I read the Bible cover to cover I would be “de-converted”, by which he apparently meant converted back to atheism, where I started. When I replied that I have indeed read the Bible cover-to-cover, perhaps a dozen times, and asked him if in fact he had himself read it even once, he replied with …

“Yes I read it from cover to cover the first when I was 12. And thta was th eend of me believing in thta fairytale. My morals could not accept your god to be all loving and all that bs when he orders? genocide in men women and innocent childre and at age 12 I was pretty sure I didnt need an invisible friend. Adults shred their imaginary freinds you know.. part of growing the f*** uo.”

I present this comment exactly as he posted it (it’s actually an amalgam of two of his comments), although I have put asterisks where he used letters. The phrase was “part of growing the f*** up.” He spelled the F word right, but not much else. Not even “up”.

My only thought was, while God chose the foolish of this world to put to shame those who are wise, when the devil tries to use the foolish of this world, they only end up shaming themselves.



4. FOLLOW THE SIN

One of my Facebook “friends” is in the midst of denying his own gender. He uses a female name and is objecting to not being allowed to wear a dress to work. So he won’t work; he sits at home (in heels and hose, I’m guessing) hopping on Facebook, praising Ayn Rand and Nietzsche and railing against something he calls “Christian Privilege” and the paternalistic oppressiveness of “definition” and “reason”.

He uses reason to attack reason because reason and definition are essential to understanding identity, and identity (a thing being what it is) is central not only to our being, but to God’s vocation for us and to our ultimate destiny. But if we can re-define even “definition”, if we can deconstruct the most basic construct that we have – who we are – then by God we are gods!

Sad that we want to be gods not to live forever or to rule the world, but just so we can go to work with lipstick on.

Facing up to Facebook

On the St. Austin Review Ink Desk, Sophia Mason has written an post in which she both pans and praises Facebook. How I empathize with Sophia!

As regular readers know, Facebook and I have had a tumultuous relationship. She and I have split a few times after ugly public shouting matches, she pushed me down the stairs once, I have accused her of infidelity, her algorithm had originally sized me up as a loser and drug abuser simply because I was an actor, and so forth.

But we’ve settled into something rather permanent of late. Facebook and I are not exactly “married”, nor “single”, we are “in a relationship” and “it’s complicated”.

So I do indeed empathize with Ms. Mason over her tendency to love / hate this thing called Facebook.

But how much is Facebook as a mode of communication to blame for Facebook’s shortcomings? As the internet blogger Dr. Thursday pointed out to me once, “Objecting to the internet is like objecting to a road or a highway. The internet is simply a pathway to a variety of destinations.” This is true, but certain kinds of roads encourage certain kinds of traffic and it’s easier to take some roads to particular destinations than it is to take others.

For example, when men had to take a physical road to find a pornographic book store or a strip club, they had to risk the dangers of going into a seedy neighborhood and risk the shame of being seen doing so. But if someone can instead take a virtual highway across cables linking computers to one another, so that pornography can be viewed in the safety and privacy of one’s own home, then naturally the use of pornography will mushroom and men will indulge their lust far more so than had such technology not been around.

Likewise, in the early days of printed books, reading and writing were more careful and more deliberate. With the advent of the dissemination and popularization of the printing press, you begin to see such things as magazines, newspapers and pamphlets, which by their nature allow for more immediacy in communication, which leads both to the use of printing for political agitation and for capitalizing on sensationalism.

And thus we see that new developments in technology lead to the cultivation of new kinds of behaviors. Even in the development of literature, we see that when the technology available to Drama was the stage only, scripts tended to be less intimate and sensational than they became when written for the new technology of film. Likewise, when the new (or “novel”) technology enabled “novels” to appear, we find the beginnings of a kind of fiction that is detailed, complex, and intensely psychological. And yet the novels that first appeared in serial form in periodicals, such as the novels of Dickens, have a different structure and feel than novels written to be read from start to finish all at once.

So technology, itself a development of culture, does indeed impact the further development of culture. Roadways are not neutral. Different kinds of paths are conducive to different kinds of traffic and different kinds of purpose. You can’t safely ride your bike on the freeway, for instance; nor can a rutted gravel road in the country allow for the development of a fancy new suburb in that area.

Likewise the technology of Facebook makes certain kinds of behaviors easier than others. The emphasis on pictures and the brief space allowed for “status updates” encourage a trivializing of relationships. But the ability of users to post links to articles and blogs that interest them means that if you have a variety of friends who read good things, you will be treated to a variety of posts linking to some very good stuff. And while “threads” of discussion can be compelling, the nature of comboxes seems to draw out a kind of defensive argumentation that makes it hard to develop points formally and carefully.

All in all, however, the benefits of Facebook for me have outweighed the drawbacks. It still remains the best technology out there for photo sharing and for keeping up with friends who otherwise I would not keep up with.

Still, I don’t completely trust the gal. She’s a bit of a tramp. So, yes we’re back together, but “it’s complicated”.

What is James O'Keefe Doing?

There is awash in the world today a kind of idealism that’s loosed from its moorings. I suspect this is because the cynicism against which the idealism reacts is so strong and entrenched that it’s provoking reactions that are unrealistic.

A case in point is James O’Keefe, a young man who spoke at this year’s American Chesterton Society Conference. O’Keefe is best known as the video journalist who brought down ACORN and who exposed the racism inherent in Planned Parenthood’s abortion agenda by means of undercover videos in which he posed as a pimp or a racist, and elicited responses that were shocking enough to cause a few tremors. He struck us at the Conference as a quixotic idealist carrying on against the windmills of corruption while under assault from the mainstream media, lawyers and other nasty bugbears.

However, it was a bit disturbing when, in the Q & A session following his speech, O’Keefe was asked, “How do you justify your technique? You lie to people in your undercover videos. You pretend to be something or someone you’re not, and they react to you based upon that falsehood,” and O’Keefe answered, in effect, “the end justifies the means: I am lying to bring down a greater lie.” – which, of course, is consequentialism - poison to any society, any individual, or any attempt at reform.

I later spoke publicly before our performance at the conference, and tried to give a better defense of O’Keefe’s activities. “It’s a kind of guerilla theater,” I said, “in which, as in all theater, masking is used to reveal the truth.” In other words, as in Candid Camera we get to see how people would react in a given fictional situation, but not simply (as in Candid Camera) for cheap laughs, but as in Shakespeare, the fiction, the mask, the pretense, serves to reveal a greater truth that would otherwise remain hidden. But I was not entirely satisfied with this defense, which seemed to be perhaps a bit Jesuitical to me. For one thing, in actual drama the participants and audience are all aware of the charade and no one is victimized by being deliberately fooled. In O’Keefe’s videos, there is a kind of victimization going on, even though the victim might himself be a victimizer, and even though O’Keefe’s guerilla theater might be doing a good by revealing that.

But now we learn it’s not just O’Keefe’s tactics that are in question. He seems, in light of some recent revelations, to be a young idealist utterly overwhelmed by the forces that are preying upon him. These forces are both external – including his financial supporters who appear to be exploiting him, and his critics who are viciously opposed to him – as well as internal: he is being undone by a lack of mature judgment at the very least. His latest attempts at investigative journalism / guerilla theater are far from Shakespeare’s “the virtue of IF”, far from using a mask to reveal a truth, far from even the cheap laughs of Candid Camera, and almost below the level of Punked on MTV.

To wit: the news this week is that O’Keefe had planned on luring a female CNN reporter onto his boat and “faux seducing” her while surrounded with sex toys and pornographic magazines and filming this encounter – to what end being rather unclear. What is clear is that the script outline for this “prank”, obtained and released by CNN, reads like a bad idea for a frat house comedy night sketch.

Suddenly O’Keefe and company seem much more like teenagers with cameras than anything resembling investigative journalists. Give a frat boy a camera, and this is what you’ll get – bad self-indulgent theatrics on the one hand, and nothing resembling journalism on the other.

Of course there’s always the chance that CNN is twisting this to serve its own liberal bias and to bring down O’Keefe, but I doubt that. O’Keefe’s cohort who wrote the scenario has admitted to the plot and the authenticity of the script CNN obtained; another of O’Keefe’s cohorts who “outed” him seems to have legitimately done so out of concern for the pointlessness, perverseness and potential harm of this prank, and so on.

Meanwhile, James O’Keefe is trying to defend himself from what he thinks is a serious misunderstanding concerning his failed mission in Louisiana, in which he and some cronies disguised themselves as telephone repairmen and tried to gain access to a Louisiana senator’s phone system – to catch the senator in a lie. O’Keefe ended up arrested and charged for this one, and he is now serving out his probation. And he’s upset that when the news hit, it was inaccurately reported that he was engaged in wiretapping – which he wasn’t. Of course, this also shows a lack of maturity on his part, for if you enter government property under false pretences and in disguise attempt to gain access to the phone system of a U.S. Senator while surreptitiously filming said event ... well, that’s not much better than wiretapping. Our buddy Bill Clinton can gloat over the fact the he didn’t technically have “sex” with Ms. Lewinsky, but he’s only fooling himself when he flaunts this kind of narrow innocence, and so is James O’Keefe.

Still, O’Keefe is offended by the wiretapping misnomer, and so he wants to set the record straight. And how do you suppose he intends to do this? How does he hope to clear his name and let his viewers know the purity of his intentions before his Federal arrest and guilty plea? By producing and starring in a music video.

A music video.

Well, I think the upshot of all of this is that Distributism is a dangerous thing. It’s a great good, having electronic information technology, once controlled by a handful of megalithic corporations, now in the possession of the people. But like all great goods, it can really sting.

If O’Keefe were an investigative journalist fifteen years ago, neither the telephone scheme nor the sex prank would have gotten past the first editorial review. But now Distributism in media has given ordinary people what was once extraordinary power – the power to be your own producer and your own editor, a dangerous mix; the power to expose corruption and the power to make an ass of yourself; the power to use proper means to achieve an end and the power to use illicit means to achieve an end – in both cases for all the world to see; the power to engage an audience in a virtuous and responsible way and the power to indulge infantile fantasies that are painful and repulsive for your audiences even to hear tell of.

James O’Keefe struck us all at the Chesterton Conference as being a young idealist, and he struck some of us as being distracted, burdened and troubled in spirit – whether from the persecutions he was enduring or from some other issue which was not clear. He was astonished that so many people were telling him they would be praying for him. He was clearly on some sort of Faith journey. He has the potential to be a kind of monk, living frugally, at risk, on the edge, all for the sake of the truth.

But he won’t get there the way he’s traveling now. If G. K. Chesterton is indeed a hero of James O’Keefe’s, then we should continue to pray for O’Keefe that he focus, as Chesterton did, on what is true, on Him who is Truth, on His way, and not on all of the various temptations that can bring a budding young Christian down, from adolescent self-indulgence to using bad means to achieve good ends.

And in the meantime Mr. O’Keefe has to decide if he is a crusading journalist or a Penthouse Magazine version of “Borat”; if he is the child who points out that the emperor is wearing no clothes or the teenager who won’t turn down his crappy music; if he is serious about what he’s doing or if he’s just (like most actors I know) working out his “issues” on a very big stage – in a very sad way.

Condom-Nation

First, I was given the great privilege of recording the official audio version of the Holy Father's new book, Light of the World as published by Ignatius Press, which can be ordered on audio CD or downloaded here.

And I said two weeks ago to Jim Morlino, my co-reader for the audio book, "The Pope's comments about condoms will be the comments the press will run with." It did not take much prophetic insight to predict that.

The situation is simple: All the Holy Father is saying is that if a man who is steeped in sin to begin with and is having sex for reasons contrary to God's will and the Natural Law, then if this particular man begins to have a pang of conscience that says, "Perhaps getting physical pleasure is not what this is all about. Perhaps I should be concerned about my partner here. Maybe I should use a condom so as to protect my partner from the ravages of disease," this is clearly (as charity and common sense will tell you) a movement in the right direction.

Is the Pope saying the use of artificial birth control is virtuous? No.

Is the Pope saying that if you use a condom you are allowed to have promiscuous sex? No.

Is the Pope saying that it's better to be sexually active and use condoms than it is to abstain? No.

All the Pope is saying is that in this particular case, condom use, subjectively speaking, is a movement in the right direction for THIS PARTICULAR MAN. It is still a sinful act, objectively speaking, but it may indicate the work of God's grace in the heart of the sinner.

Likewise, if a thief decides to steal less frequently from here on out, he is still sinning when stealing, but if he is trying to lessen the harm he is causing, he is moving in the right direction.

It's obvious. It's simple. But no one will get it. The noise will drown out the common sense. The book will be discussed by those who will never read it. The quote will be dissected by those who have never heard it. Judgment will be rendered by the right wingers who hate the Pope for being "liberal" and by the left wingers who hate the Pope for being "traditional". The circus will continue.



And what is lost in all of this is the concern for souls expressed by a shepherd of souls.

Fruits of Fiction - Cardinal Newman, Flannery O'Connor and The Unreal

The word is “unreal”.

I had been looking for this word for a long time. You see, we have a few odd linguistic quirks here in St. Louis, where I live. For one thing, we use the word “hoosier” to mean “urban white trash” – the only place on earth where you’ll find this word used in this way. And when I was growing up we used to use the word “fruit” to mean not what “gay” means now, but to mean “contrived, artificial, self-indulgent in a stupid way”. For instance, the music of Marty Haugen is “fruit”. Catholic Schools Week is “fruit”. Movies on the Hallmark Channel are “fruit”.

And for a long time this was the only word I could use to describe what was wrong in the Catholic Church.

I had come into the Church having been inspired by the writings of G K Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, and so by the time I was Catholic and regularly attending Mass and sending my kids to the parish school and especially after experiencing nine months of purgatory with our RCIA non-faith non-formation non-classes, I began to say to myself, “Why is this all so fruit?”

This really is a mystery, on par perhaps with what St. Paul calls the “mystery of iniquity”.

And again. Today the priest at Mass preached on the Wise Men and Epiphany. “We’ve all got our own star we need to follow,” he said. “What’s your star? That’s what you need to find out! What’s your inner star?” Now this is just fruit. Why would anybody sit through this, you have to wonder. The only good word for it is “fruit”.

But there’s another one. “Unreal”.

It comes from Blessed John Henry Newman, who uses it a number of times in his Plain and Parochial Sermons (most of which I have recorded for Ignatius Press Audio Books). But while Newman uses the word rather sparingly, the concept permeates the book.

Newman apparently saw his primary task as preacher one of encouraging his flock to lead a truly Christian life and thus to avoid the greatest pitfall to that, which is when both holding the Faith and living the Faith become unreal.

How easy it is to understand what this word means. How often in our own breasts do we seem to be only going through the motions when it comes to prayer or self-sacrifice or what have you. A certain inability to realize God’s grace is endemic to our fallen condition. But more than that, the true danger of Unreality is when you stop struggling against it, when on the contrary it becomes an idol. The danger is kicking out the Real and replacing it with the Unreal.

When devotion is replaced with platitudes, it’s Unreal. When the Gospel is replaced with vague pop psychology affirmations, it’s Unreal. When the pungent and dangerous virtues of Christ are replaced with “just be nice”, it’s Unreal.

And the liberalists are guilty of all of the above, but the traditionalists don’t get off free either. When externalized ritual-by-rote replaces worshipping in the Spirit and in Truth, it’s Unreal. When following rules replaces circumcision of the heart, it’s Unreal. And when art, drama and literature becomes saccharine, dull, and pedantic, it’s Unreal.

The last business is what prompted me to write this blog post, for over on Facebook a fascinating discussion ensued over a quote I put up from Flannery O’Connor (this is the post and the discussion, though you may have to “friend” me to see it here. )

O’Connor says, “It is when the individual's faith is weak, not when it is strong, that he will be afraid of an honest fictional representation of life; and when there is a tendency to compartmentalize the spiritual and make it resident in a certain type of life only, the supernatural is apt gradually to be lost." This comes at the end of an essay (quoted fully here ) in which O’Connor is toying around with literary theory as applied to the question “What is Catholic Fiction?”

And her answer is, in so many words, Catholic fiction must deal with life as it is and not as we would wish it to be. It must deal with the messy truth of sin and the awesome and uncomfortable truth of God’s grace operating in the midst of a world that’s full of sin, in hearts that are devoted to sin. In other words, Catholic fiction, and all Catholic art, must continue the work of the Incarnation.

I have myself, elsewhere, written about the Catholic Ghetto mentality (most recently here ) and this is related to the fact that once you begin to ask the question, “What is Catholic Fiction?” you are already admitting that there’s a ghetto, that the culture at large is no longer Catholic. If it were, Catholic fiction would be all around us; it would be a natural product of the soil of the society, its culture. Thus, prescinding from the question of Shakespeare’s religion, his plays are entirely Catholic, for they are a product of a late Medieval worldview not yet turned Protestant and secular, despite the official established church and politics of the day. They are naturally Catholic for they spring out of a culture that was wholly Catholic.

Of course this is a question I’ve often considered from the point of view of my production company, Theater of the Word Incorporated. As I wrote on Facebook, “So can you create Catholic Drama that is overtly evangelistic when your audience is expecting your work to be sanctimonious compartmentalized artificial non-offensive tripe, and hence (if they're normal) they will avoid it? If you call it Catholic or Christian doesn't that alone telegraph, ‘Oh, it won't be very good. It certainly won't be real. Nothing about Church these days seems very real. I'll go if I have to, but real life is found elsewhere.’”

The question comes down to Reality. Whether in theater, short stories, novels, or films, the question comes down to how best does this work of art reflect and honor the hidden truths of Reality? In so far that a work of fiction fails to do this, the work is Unreal. When the secular film The Big Chill glorifies adultery and “open marriage” and overlooks the pain and sickness that goes with such behavior (as at the end when the husband beds another woman so she can conceive), such a film is Unreal. When the Protestant film Facing the Giants indicates that with Christian Faith comes worldly prosperity and riches (the protagonist gets a nice new car once he’s confessed his Faith in Jesus), such a film is Unreal. When viewers of EWTN complain so that the network is reluctant to air anything that deals with the fact that priests sometimes struggle with their faith and their calling, such a situation is Unreal. When Puritans confuse the depiction of sin with the endorsement of sin, such a situation is Unreal. When the cartoon version of Moses (a Disney film, I think) has him kill the Egyptian accidentally, such a story becomes Unreal.

And when people really don’t believe, then at Mass you find bad music, insipid homilies, desecration of the Eucharist, and priests devoted to play acting. You find Catholic Schools run by female principals who have no principles and who bully parents to shut up about their kids being taught to love the great Earth Goddess in “faith” class. You find normal people avoiding church and power-hungry volunteers with miserable home lives trying to take over the lay council and run things for their own agendas.

In short, it all becomes Unreal.

This post will be mirrored at The Ink Desk

I'm an Intentional Christian - and You're Not!

We've been talking much lately about "intentional disciples" and of the need for parishes to foster "true discipleship", to encourage the formation of capital D Disciples and not just neo-pagan lukewarm modernists disguised as Christians. The problem is Wormwood pulls up a pew and says to us, in his cloying and flattering tone, "According to most pastors, only five percent of all their parishioners are serious about following Christ. You're one of those. You're a capital-D Disciple. You're an intentional Disciple. You're a true Disciple. These fat church ladies with their pot luck dinners and their parish picnics, they're not even Christians in any meaningful sense of the word. Look at that chubby grocer in the pew beside you. He nods off during the homilies. He's not a True Disciple. Look at that pierced kid at the Teen Mass, with glowing hair and a condom in his pocket. He's not a True Disciple. But you are! You may be the only one here who is. God knows your pastor isn't! If he were, he'd kick these hypocritical sinners out of here. But you're for real! You're one of the remnant! You must feel so lonely! So special! "

Moral Theology? Bah! Humbug!

Yesterday I posted what ended up being my most controversial post in two years on Facebook. It was simply a quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

“A good intention (for example, that of helping one’s neighbor) does not make behavior that is intrinsically disordered, such as lying and calumny [slander], good or just. The end does not justify the means” (CCC 1753).

In less than 24 hours, this post has generated 138 comments. Some of them from conservative Catholics who are angry at what the Church teaches.

Now, seeing that, and knowing what a firestorm we're in on the internet over this issue, I would like to summarize a few things and then make a new point.

The issue has arisen over the undercover video sting techniques of James O'Keefe and Lila Rose, aimed at exposing Planned Parenthood. This is a highly charged issue, as it appears to many people that Lila and James are being attacked or judged; it appears as if the voices of caution are standing in the way of the laudable goal of exposing Planned Parenthood; and it appears that the Catholic Church must be wrong in its moral teachings.

In fact, a number of typical defenses have arisen from those who are seeking to answer the moral theologians.

1. The consequentialist defense. The end justifies the means, so whatever means these journalists using are good, since their goal is good. (Answer: no, the Church is very clear that the end can never justify the means).

2. The warfare defense: all's fair in love and war and this is war; or at least this is a situation akin to war. (Answer: all is not fair in love and war; neither doing evil nor using bad means for a good end is justified in war; though there may be something more to this defense if pursued).

3. The double effect defense. The journalists are not intending to deceive. The deception is a side-effect of what they're doing. (Answer: on the surface this doesn't hold water, but again there may be more to this line of arguing).

4. The ad hominem defense: you are a Lila hater and a judgmental bigot. (Answer: I know James O'Keefe and I admire the intentions of both him and Lila Rose. But if they're doing wrong, we must be clear about that.)

5. The Protestant defense: "we are not bound by what the Catechism teaches" or "the Catechism is not magisterial, or at least it is only provisionally so, thus it may be ignored". (Answer: there are a LOT of Protestants in the closet in conservative Catholic circles.)

6. The equivocation defense: equivocaton is not exactly virtuous, therefore direct lying is good. (Answer: I personally say that equivocation is less than virtuous because it is close to lying. It is the taint of falsehood that makes equivocation smell bad. If equivocation is bad, it's because lying is worse.)

7. The nature of the act defense: what the journalists in these cases do is not lying. (Answer: this is possibly true and the best defense of the lot, though I'm quite skeptical.)

8. The anti-intellectual defense: those examining this issue from the perspective of moral theology are Pharisees - splitting hairs, wringing their hands, counting angels on the head of a pin, and mentally fiddling while Rome is burning and children are dying. 

Well, we're trying to figure this out, so it's not a question of arguing about angels on the head of a pin, but of the pinning down of many heads so that we begin to think like angels.

From the Biography of George Washington

MRS. WASHINGTON: George, did you chop down that cherry tree?

GEORGE: I can not tell a lie. Then again, maybe I can. How authoritative are the teachings in the Catechism? Aren't there conflicting traditions on this? Doesn't Scriptue itself encourage lying? Isn't the whole issue just too much for a common man to grasp? Let me get back to you on that, Mom.

Truth and Our Enemies

OK, here we go.

Sean Dailey has made this case in the Gilbert Editorial despite my telling him he was going to far, but he was right and I was wrong.

Here's Sean's latest comment at the ACS website:

***

Finally, the worst part of Live Action’s lies is that those lies had the effect of leading the Planned Parenthood workers deeper into sin, of undermining their-God given free will to choose good, if given the opportunity. CCC 2489 speaks of “charity and respect for the truth.” Yes, now we know that Planned Parenthood aids and abets teen prostitution and teen abortion and contraception. Is it really any surprise? In other news, water found to be wet. But if the Live Action actors had entered the PP facilities with “charity and respect for the truth” in their hearts, rather than intending to commit evil so good may come from it, how much more might they have accomplished? Could they maybe have converted a soul or two?

As I wrote in my editorial, we are called to be salt and light to everyone we meet. Can you justify exempting Planned Parenthood workers from that mandate? If not, then how can you justify Live Action’s tactics? As our Lord said, “Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it to me.” What good are we as Christians if the best we can do with the least of Christ’s brethren is help usher them into hell? How will we answer for that at the Judgment?

Remember, the majority of Planned Parenthood’s employees could very well be there because they have been lied to. Now the employees in the videos have been lied to by people who should know better. For shame.

***

My fear was if people have been ripping me a new one for saying, "Don't lie" they'll freaking crucify me for saying, "Love your enemy".

They did that to someone else once, I hear. Sean Dailey may be next!

Fr. Corapi's Superior Speaks

This is from the website of the Society of Our Lady of the Trinity.

Official SOLT Statement Regarding Fr John Corapi

As the Regional Priest Servant of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT), I issue the following statement on behalf of the Society.


On 16 March 2011, the Bishop of Corpus Christi, Texas, and the SOLT received a complaint against Fr. John Corapi, SOLT. As is normal procedure and due to the gravity of the accusation alleging conduct not in concert with the priestly state or his promises as a member of a society of apostolic life of diocesan right, Fr. Corapi was suspended from active ministry (put on administrative leave) until such a time that the complaint could be fully investigated and due process given to Fr. Corapi. In the midst of the investigation, the SOLT received a letter from Fr. Corapi, dated June 3, 2011, indicating that, because of the physical, emotional and spiritual distress he has endured over the past few years, he could no longer continue to function as a priest or a member of the SOLT. Although the investigation was in progress, the SOLT had not arrived at any conclusion as to the credibility of the allegations under investigation.


At the onset, the Bishop of Corpus Christi advised the SOLT to not only proceed with the policies outlined in their own constitutions, but also with the proper canonical procedures to determine the credibility of the allegations against Fr. Corapi. We reiterate that Fr. Corapi had not been determined guilty of any canonical or civil crimes. If the allegations had been found to be credible, the proper canonical due process would have been offered to Fr. Corapi, including his right to defense, to know his accuser and the complaint lodged, and a fair canonical trial with the right of recourse to the Holy See. On June 17, 2011, Fr. John Corapi issued a public statement indicating that he has chosen to cease functioning as a priest and a member of the SOLT.


The SOLT is deeply saddened that Fr. Corapi is suffering distress. The SOLT is further saddened by Fr. Corapi’s response to these allegations. The SOLT will do all within its power to assist Fr. Corapi if he desires to seek a dispensation from his rights and obligations as a priest and as a professed member of the SOLT. We request your prayers and the intercession of the Blessed Mother for the healing of Fr. Corapi and for any who have been negatively affected by Fr. Corapi’s decision to end his ministry as a priest and a member of the SOLT.


Fr Gerrard Sheehan, SOLT
Regional Priest Servant

Michael Voris behaves with Less than Christian Charity

His latest video slamming bloggers who are critical of Fr. Corapi is slanderous and insipid.

In the past I've only made fun of his hair.

To imply that he is above the fray because he's not a "professional Catholic on the internet" (which is exactly what he is, as he claims we are) is absurd. He has slammed me and all of you who love Christ and His Church and who are upset about the hypocrisy of Fr. Corapi and Father's abandonment of his priesthood, Father's frustrating the investigation against him, and Father's slander of his bishop.

Let's just say this: if we are partisan enough to support this Voris and his "Real Catholic TV" (and his hair), if we are partisan enough blindly to defend Fr. Corapi after he has shown that he's a disturbed personality at least and an outright fraud at best, if we are partisan enough that we consider ourselves Vorisians or Corapians rather than Christians, than all this is mere politics and to hell with it and with all of us.

Everybody's been saying "thou shalt not judge" when it comes to Fr. Corapi. Well, Voris is judging Father's critics, claiming we have ulterior and shadowy motives. I will not stoop to Voris' level. I assume his own motves are pure and zealous for the Church. But I do call on him in charity to realize that those of us who have criticized Fr. Corapi are not doing it for money or fame or popularity - just read Mark Shea's comboxes if you want to know what kind of money, fame, and popularity he must be reaping over this. 

We are doing this out of love for the Church and the priesthood. Call us wrong-headed, Micheal Voris, but don't insult our motives or our love for the Church.

How dare you.

And how dare your hair.