The Personal Nature of Charitable Giving

My in-laws were up from Florida visiting for the week and I got to spend quite a bit of time with my father-in-law. I have often referenced my father-in-law on this blog; he is an fundamentalist Protestant and often provides me with a lot of fodder to delve into on here. This weekend, however, as we went out to breakfast at a local diner, we had a really great conversation in which we were both in general agreement. This conversation was about the state of charitable giving in America, both Protestant and Catholic.

My father-in-law was pointing out that, in the parable of the Prodigal Son, the son is enabled to live a licentious lifestyle so long as he has money to blow:

The younger son, gathering all together, went abroad into a far country: and there wasted his substance, living riotously (Luke 15:13).

However, it is only when his money is gone, and furthermore, when nobody was found that would give to him, that the son repented and returned home:

And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks the swine did eat; and no man gave unto him. And returning to himself, he said: How many hired servants in my father's house abound with bread, and I here perish with hunger? I will arise, and will go to my father (Luke 15:16-18).

Notice how it is immediately following the statement that "no man gave unto him" that the son returned to his senses? My father-in-law took this and made the case that perhaps when we give to the poor we are actually enabling their poverty by creating dependency. Perhaps, he said, it would be better to not give to them, or to only do so conditionally, and to allow them to get to the point where "no man gave unto them" and hopefully bring about a conversion.

Well, I could not fully agree with this line of thinking, which to me sounded too much like changing the Gospel to suit the palate of American conservatism.

I pointed out that the command to feed the poor is universal and without restraint, even if you are taken advantage of ("If someone takes your coat, give him your cloak as well"); furthermore, I reminded him that the parable of the Prodigal Son is meant to be a story about the Father's forgiveness and mercy, not a blueprint for how we are to treat homeless people. The command to reach out and help the poor trumps any concerns we might have about the social impact of charitable giving. Certainly there are prudent and imprudent ways to give, but everybody agrees that we must give. Also, who are we to decide when someone "needs" to hit rock bottom? I leave that to God.

He agreed with these qualifiers, I think, but it got me to thinking about the nature of charitable giving, dependency, cycles of poverty (especially in light of our current President and the looming welfare state he endeavors to establish). Even though I don't adopt my father-in-law's thinking here, I agree with him in that I think the manner in which charitable giving is carried out can breed dependency and a welfare mentality.

Almost all of our major charitable giving today, in the Church or the world, is carried out by institutions; St. Vincent de Paul, Salvation Army, Meals on Wheels, Charity Motors, Purple Heart, etc. These institutions exist because they can gather resources and distribute them to the poor with much greater efficiency than could any one individual.

Though this is in itself a good, it leads to two negatives: (1) Christians end up not giving to the poor directly but giving to an organization which then gives to the poor (2) The process of charitable giving becomes institutionalized; i.e., it becomes subject to the same shortcomings as any bureaucracy, because it is no longer people giving but a "system" which is "distributing" aid.

Consider this: all of the corporal works of mercy in the Scriptures are very personal acts. Feeding the poor; clothing the naked; giving drink to the thirsty; visiting the imprisoned, etc. These are all very human acts that require person-to-person contact and an element of compassion. Perhaps we are giving in a bit too much to our American pragmatism and focusing too extensively on the end alone: "Who cares how they get the aid? The important thing is that they get it!"

But is the end really all the matters in charitable giving? When Christ commands us to succor the poor, is He saying this simply because it is the most expedient means of getting aid to poverty stricken persons, or is there perhaps another reason for this, one that has to do with the compassion and person-to-person interaction involved in any work of mercy?

When we perform a corporal work of mercy, we see the humanity of the other - we make a real human connection. In doing so, if we are spiritually minded, we can also discern the presence of Christ. This is very valuable; almost as important as the actual deed itself. Caring for the poor is an extension of the command to love all men and is meant to be an act of compassion and personal charity.

In other words, the command to care for the poor is about us as much as it is the poor.

How does this change when we run our giving through an organization? Well, the poor may still get the aid, but the human element is completely siphoned out. Now you never see the poor person, or the hungry person. You write a check from your kitchen table, pop it in an envelope and get a nice bi-monthly pamphlet explaining how your money is being put to work. That's better than nothing, but have you really learned compassion as much if, say, you would have had to literally clothe a naked person or feed the hungry physically? The human-contact element is gone.

This also puts the giver in the dangerous place of feeling like he has fulfilled Christ's mandates because he has written some checks. I'm not saying the checks aren't important, but I am asking whether or not charitable giving through third parties kind of sucks the spiritual value out of the act somewhat - while the poor still get fed, we don't get to interact with them on a personal level.

In the old days, the medieval kings used to fill their halls with beggars and feed them or sometimes (as is told of St. Louis IX) personally put a gold coin in each of their hands. The modern scoffs and asks, "How does giving one beggar a gold coin address the underlying issues of poverty?" I say, "By reminding the king that he, too, is but a man, equal in dignity with the very least." At least much more so than a president ordering a grant for $1 billion to some UN fund or something...

Once I had a friend who was hurting financially. He needed assistance with his mortgage payments. We were talking with a third friend about the problem, when my third friend pulled out his checkbook and wrote the man a check for $500, no strings attached. My friend was flabbergasted that another just so easily handed him a check, with no means of expecting it back. He was profusely thankful, and I think my other friend won some serious treasure in heaven for the act.

Not everybody can do that - but how different is that from what could have happened: my friend could have pulled out a business card and referred the other to some aid organization where his "case" would have been processed bureaucratically: fill out these forms, interview with this "case worker," get some contact info, start your "file", etc. etc. Everything spiritually vivifying about the work is lost.

One more thought: third party giving can turn the charitable works into bureaucratic systems, and like any system they are capable of being "played." Sometimes these organizations do create a dependency in people, as they go from organization to organization, knowing they can get their weekly ration of bread and noodles here, their soaps and hygiene products there, their free dinner over at that place, etc. We all know of people who have played the charity system this way. Because they are coming to get their food not from a person immediately but from an institution who disburses it, there is less gratitude and no chance for the giver to make a connection with the poor.

If we all simply watched out for one another and took the corporal works of mercy to be models for behavior in a very personal and immediate sense, I think things would be a lot different. Sure, we need big organizations to get food and aid to out of the way places, but we can't let these organizations exhaust our charity - nor can we think of giving solely in terms of sending money to some group who then disburses it at their discretion. To do so promotes unhealthy dependence on charity and makes what is supposed to be a very personal act into another administrative action of some bureaucracy.

Priests who don't know why they're priests

In the recent Vatican report on the state of United States seminaries, the Apostolic Visitation reported that though there were some areas that needed improvement (specifically knowledge of patristics and a better understanding of the place of the priest in the Church), the United States seminaries had shown a marked improvement since the previous two decades and that they were "overall" sound.

However, one area of concern cited by the report and that stuck out to me as well was the statement that a great many of today's seminariams say they come "from backgrounds with little faith experience or knowledge of Catholic doctrine" (source).

Now that is very interesting. Becoming a priest is a huge commitment, perhaps the greatest any man can make on this earth. It is a vocation that takes as many years of study as a medical doctorate, takes up one's entire life and goes on into eternity. It also means, eschatologically, that the priest will face a stricter judgment and be held to a more rigorous standard by God: "Let not many of you be teachers, my brothers, knowing that we will receive heavier judgment" (James 3:1). Becoming a priest is no light matter.

Therefore, why would so many seminarians come to the priesthood with "little faith experience or knowledge of Catholic doctrine"? What would possess them to say, "Wow, this is an almost superhuman commitment that is often full of perils and snares and gives little reward on this life. Well, I don't know anything about it, but it sounds good to me!" How is it that we get seminarians interested in making this commitment with little knowledge of Catholic dogma?

I think there are two answers for this. First has to do with the nature of modern ecclesiology. I think a great many of these men, though they may lack intellectual and dogmatic formation, feel an intense desire to serve. They may believe that the Catholic Church and the priesthood especially is entirely about service, and therefore desire the priesthood as a means of serving and helping their brother. In such a scenario, doctrinal elements would take a backseat, and indeed could even be perceived as a stumbling block to true service. I'd imagine this is how we get a lot of the social justice types in the priesthood. Their ecclesiological concept is more weighted horizontally than vertically, to use the common expressions.

The second element I think has to do with admission procedures within the seminary system. I know nothing about the internal functioning of a seminary, but I am going with a hunch here. It can't be the case that nobody but social justice horizontalists show up as candidates for the priesthood. In any Diocese I'm sure there are plenty who come with a real understanding of the Church's ecclesiology, wanting the priesthood not only as a means to serve (which it certainly is) but also as an answer to a call - a call to worship and adore God and sanctify souls by being dispensing the sacraments and offering the Sacrifice of the Mass. Now, I think that in many seminaries, these applicants are given a much shorter shrift than the horizontally focused social justice oriented ones. In short, I think many seminaries weed out doctrinally minded priests in favor of socially oriented ones.

I know a lot of work has been done in this area and I'm sure that this does in fact happen: the orthodox seminarian is rejected for rigid inflexibility while the doctrinally questionable but amiable social justice type is admitted, thus tilting the demographic of the seminarians. The thing I don't know about is how much is this a formal mandate from some seminaries that is carried out methodically as a matter of praxis and how much is it an unspoken, unwritten bias that works itself out in the personal likes and dislikes of the Director of Seminarians?

Well, praise God we have seminarians! But if you want to solve the vocations crisis, start promting an ecclesiology that is vertically oriented on the worship of God and less on social service and I guarantee the problem will be solved within a decade.

Critique of Obsession

Like many other Catholics I have talked to, I recently received a complimentary copy of the DVD Obsession: Islam's Radica; War Against the West in the mail from the Clarion Fund. For the most part this DVD was very good - it had some great eye-opening scenes of radical Muslim clerics inticing their followers to become suicide bombers and of children in Muslim schools being taught hatred for Jews and Christians. It also showed the duplicity of certain Muslim spokemen is claiming to be moderate and pluralistic in public while privately holding violent anti-Western views. This is an example of the practice of al-Taqiyya, or lying to the infidel, and the video catches some Muslim cleric right in the act. Most of those who read this blog already know this stuff, but it was refreshing (and chilling) to see it again in this video.

However, I have to take this DVD to task for an assumption that lays beneath much of what it exposes about Islam. It presents the radical jihadists in their native element and shows how dangerous they are, and then gives the viewer several warnings about radical Islam's desire for world domination. We are rightfully supposed to be concerned about the desire of jihadist Islam to dominate the world, but what is it about their intended domination that we object to and what does it say about our own beliefs when we object to it?

For the conservative, pop-Catholic, neo-conservative mentality, the desire of radical Islam for world conquest is one of the most offensive things about Islam. When they look at radical Islam, they say, "Isn't that terrible! Those people want the whole earth to convert to their religion and they won't stop at anything until they rule the world!" Too often I think we just nod our heads and say, "Yeah, that's awful."

But what are we objecting to? Is it the principle of one religion dominating the world? Or is it a question about the nature of the religion that wants to dominate the world? I would argue that as Catholics, we cannot object to the concept of a religion wanting to dominate the world. This is the objective of the Catholic Church in the end, after all. This very weekend at my parish one of the general intercessions was , "That the entire human race may be converted to the Lord Jesus Christ and the Gospel spread to the ends of the earth." How can we say "Lord, hear our prayer," to a petition like that and then huff and puff when Islam says it wants to take over the world?

Well of course, the nature of Islam's dominance and the type of dominance that the Church desires are entirely different - one is based on submission and one on charity. But the idea is similar: each religion is evangelistic, believes it is the only true faith, and sees its mission as to convert the entire world. Let's be clear about this: Catholicism is a religion that seeks world domination. But it is a domination based on the proclamation of the Good News, the movement of grace, and the free joining of peoples into the Kingdom of Christ, a kingdom which is built on charity and is not of this world.

When neo-cons object to Islam on the basis that it wants to dominate the world, what they are really saying in effect is that religious pluralism is the ideal state of affairs, something no person who loves the Lord Jesus could say. Christ said to preach the Gospel to all men, to the very ends of the earth, and promised through the Spirit that in the end "every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father" (Php. 2:8-10). But the neo-con ideal is a world in which different religions coexist and no one is put forward as being more right than any other, because after all, religion is a private affair.

Catholics need to be aware that this is what we are implying whenever we take issue with Islam's desire to dominate. Instead, we ought to say, "Yes, it is horrible to think about that religion dominating the world, but let us pray instead that Christ's Kingdom is established to the ends of the earth." Our issue should be not with Islam's will to dominate, but with the type of domination Islam proposes and the nature of the religion of Islam.

It is tempting to simply accept religious pluralism as the ideal just because that is what we have in America - this is an ideal that was condemned as "Americanism" by Leo XIII in the bull Longinqua, where he stated:

"[I]t would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced." (Longinqua, 6)

So, when we approach the question of Islam, do we take it for granted that our own state of affairs here in the normative one? If so, we are in for failure. A pluralistic society has never managed to stand up to the assault of a culture that demands total religious conformity. In opposing Islam, we have to take as our fixed point not the religious status quo of America, as Sean Hannity would have us believe, but the perennial vision of the Church: a vision that culminates in the establishment of the kingdom to the uttermost ends of the earth.

So, Obsession is a pretty good video. But don't be lulled into taking the default position that it seems to adopt. It also tries to show how only some Muslims are violent and that the peaceful Muslims are the "real" Muslims. Well, whatever. It certainly makes it more easy to convert them if they are peaceful, but conversion is the end goal. Let's not forget that!

Here's an earlier article I wrote on this same topic and an explanation of the Muslim "duty" to lie in the cause of religion.

Is charity still a mandate?

A few days back I was driving the long, rural commute between my house and my parish when my crummy, 1992 Dodge Caravan rust-bucket broke down on the side of the road. Breaking down is always inopportune, but this happened to be right in the height of the great Michigan blizzard of 2008 (see this post for some pics). Being that I am a frumpy anti-modernist with a strong streak of neo-Luddite in me, I of course have no cell phone, so my only plan of action was to get out and walk somewhere. The temperature was 10 degrees, and about 7 below zero with wind chill. Being that it is Michigan and winter, I did have a pair of snow boots, and I did have my winter coat and scarf. But through two odd flukes I did not have my winter hat and gloves, which I usually would have had with me. Therefore, I ventured out into the cold and began walking south towards the nearest town, probably a two mile walk.

Well, without boring you with all the details of that horrible walk, let me just say that I almost froze to death. I've never been so cold in all my life. My ears hurt so bad I thought they'd have to be amputated (do they amputate ears for frostbite?). I had to keep my hands in my pants against the flesh of my thighs to keep them warm. At first I was not too intimidated by the two mile walk: most humans walk three miles an hour at their normal walking pace. But in this frigid wind in seemed like a desperate distance. I decided to try hitch-hiking, and wouldn't you know it, car after car after car drove by me without so much as a second look.

I wasn't dressed shabbily. I was in my work clothes (office attire) with a very nice black dress coat on. I can understand single women passing me by, but time again I saw trucks with grown, burly men drive by and ignore me. There was also a lot of wimpy looking little guys in Hondas and Jettas as well. Everybody knew there was a town only two miles up. Everybody saw I was walking that way. Everybody knew it was 7 below zero. Everybody saw me frigid with no gloves or hat. Everybody saw my broken down van sitting on the side of the road. Yet nobody stopped. I couldn't help thinking of the parable of the Good Samaritan, and between my prayers for a ride and prayed, "Lord, don't hold it against them!" I even thought that perhaps I'd have better luck getting picked up if I layed down and pretended to be dead - then somebody would see the body, stop to call the police or something, and I could get up and say, "Hey, thanks for stopping!" But I was so cold that I thought I might actually die if I layed down and stopped walking. So, I lumbered on through the freezing air and biting wind.


To make a long story short, I did get picked up a half mile from town by a guy on his way to work. He was a lot bigger than I and could have easily taken me out had I been one of those evil hitchhikers of urban myth. Everything worked out okay in the end, but not before at least thirty cars passed me by and my fingers almost froze. I was a little indignant at society that nobody would have mercy on someone obviously in dire need.

But then I was even more shocked when I told my parish priest about it later in the day and he said, "Well, I don't blame them. In today's world you can't pick up hitchhikers. I probably wouldn't have picked you up if I were them either. You just can never be sure." It has been several days since I had this conversation with my pastor, and it has been rubbing on me all week. I knew I disagreed with something about his position there, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

This, I think, is the crux of why my pastor's words irked me so: do we or do we not have an obligation to exercise charity when it is possible? Obviously we do. One of the corporal works of mercy is "clothe the naked." Now, I wasn't naked, but I think shelter someone who is freezing could be an extension of this precept. You will notice that there is no disclaimer, "Unless you live in 21st century America." This rule is binding at all times universally - to suggest that circumstances are different because we are modern and live in America would be, I think, a hint of the belief known as Americanism: that the doctrines and disciplines of the universal Church need to be interpreted differently in this country because we are somehow a "special case."

Now, I'm not accusing my pastor of Americanism or anything. He's a great guy who is the most orthodox priest around. Since he is a pastor, he was coming at the problem from a pastoral angle that prioritized the safety of the persons involved. It is true, charity obliges us to love our neighbor, but it does not oblige us to recklessly put ourselves in danger (although that can be an act of heroic virtue at times). I understand that picking up hitchhikers has dangers inherent to it. I understand that I would not expect a woman driving alone who was 5'2" and 100 pounds to big up a 5'10", 178 lbs guy like me. But it is to the men who passed me by that I am addressing: to the construction guys, laborers, roofers and burly men that passed me by the dozens. Realistically, how much inherent danger is there for a big guy like that to pick up somebody? Is picking up a hitchhiker a "reckless" activity?

"Boniface, it doesn't matter how big they are. You could have had a gun or something."

True, true, but why do we apply this logic only when it comes to hitchhikers and not to so any other aspects of social interaction? Most people will answer their door if the doorbell rings. This is a much more threatening situation, I think. Why do you answer the door? After all, "he could have a gun?" What about when you are at the gas station pump and somebody comes up asking for directions? He could have a gun! Do you jump in your car and lock the door? Of course not; you give directions if you can. It's only with hitchhikers that we jump to this conclusion that they may be murderers - as if there is something inherently shady or devious about a person with no car needing a ride!

I know what you're thinking. "Those all happen in day-time out in public. That's different." Well guess what, I was broke down in day-time in public too! It was 8:45 AM on a rural road that had plenty of houses all around and dozens of cars going by because it was that time of day. What type of murderer hitchhikes at 8:45 AM? The especially irking thing is everybody could see my broken down van sitting there with my footprints in the snow leading right from the van to me. It was painfully obvious to any unbiased observer that I was in need - the fact that it was 7 below made my need even more urgent.

"Well, no matter what you say, I just never pick up hitchikers."

Like I said, if you are a defenseless woman, okay, fair enough. That may be prudent. And I'm not even saying that men should pick up all hitchhikers. I've seen some hitchhikers with scraggled beards and wild-eyes that sent chills down my spine. I've also picked up a lot of decent ones who were just having a hard day. In my opinion, there is no reason why a man should not pick up a hitchhiker when:

a) You see somebody outdoors improperly dressed when it is below zero and they are in obvious discomfort.

b) Their car is broken down right down the road in plain sight.

c) It is the middle of the day.

There's just no excuse. We can't let our society's own fears and paranoia's be some kind of justification for not exercising charity, especially if life could be on the line and the weather is extreme. I should also mention that its only Americans who have these scruples. In Europe hitchhiking is a commonly accepeted mode of transportation. I hitchhiked in Austria once and got picked up in about two minutes.

But what about the possibility that the person could be armed or dangerous? Really, you never know. You can't make judgments based on appearances that are full proof. But there are two examples from the lives of the saints where men were shown hospitality, despite the fact that they were rogues.

From the Little Flowers of St. Franics:

Now at that time three notorious robbers frequented the district, the which wrought many ill deeds therein; and upon a day they came to the said Place of the friars and besought Friar Angelo, the guardian, that he would give them something to eat; whereupon the guardian answered them after this manner, rebuking them harshly: "You robbers and cruel murderers, not only are ye not ashamed to rob others of the fruits of their toil, but, presumptuous and impudent that ye are, ye would even devour the alms which are sent to the servants of God. Unworthy are ye that the earth should bear you up; for ye have no reverence for men or for the God who created you. Go, then, about your business, and never show yourselves here again." Therefore were they wrath and got them thence in indignation.

And lo! St. Francis returned from without, with his wallet of bread and a small vessel of wine, which he and his companion had begged; and, when the guardian had told him how he had driven those men away, St. Francis rebuked him severely, saying that he had borne himself cruelly, inasmuch as sinners are better led back to God by gentleness than by cruel reproofs; " For [said he] our Master Jesus Christ, whose Gospel we have promised to observe, saith that they that are whole need not a physician but they that are sick, and that He was not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance; and therefore often did He eat with them. Seeing, then, that thou hast done contrary to charity and contrary to the Holy Gospel of Christ, I command thee, by holy obedience, that thou forthwith take this wallet of bread, which I have begged, and this vessel of wine, and seek them diligently, through mountains and valleys, until thou find them, and give them all this bread and wine in my name; and afterward do thou kneel down before them and humbly confess to them thy sin of cruelty; and then pray them in my name to do evil no longer, but to fear God and offend Him no more; and, if they will do this, I promise to provide for their needs, and to give them to eat and drink continually; and when thou shalt have told them this, return hither humbly." While the said guardian went to do his commandment, St. Francis betook himself to prayer and besought God that He would soften the hearts of those robbers and convert them to repentance.

The obedient guardian came up with them and gave them the bread and wine, and did and said that which St. Francis had laid upon him. And, as it pleased God, while yet those robbers ate the alms of St. Francis, they began to say, one to the other: "Woe unto us, unhappy wretches that we are! how sore are the pains of hell which await us! for we not only go about robbing our neighbours and beating and wounding them, but also slaying them; and yet, notwithstanding all the enormous wrongs and wickednesses which we do, we have no remorse of conscience, nor fear of God; and lo! this holy friar, who hath come to us on account of a few words which he spake unto us justly by reason of our wickedness, hath humbly confessed his fault to us; and more than this, he hath brought us bread and wine, and so gracious a promise from the holy father."... And, when one of them had spoken these and like words, the others aid: "Verily thou speakest the truth, but what then ought we to do?" "Let us go," said one, "to St. Francis; and if he gives us hope that we may be able to turn from our sins to the mercy of God, let us do that which he commands us, if so be we may deliver our souls from the pains of hell." (Chapter XXVI)

Obviously Francis had in mind their repentance and conversion, but note how he said the friar who drove the away was guilty of the "sin of cruelty." And Francis made this statement concerning men who were known to be robbers and brigands. If the friar was guilty of cruelty by treating known criminals this way, what are we guilty of who ignore the needs of someone in the freezing wind just because we are scared they might be evil?

Another great example is the 9th century St. Meinrad of Einsiedeln, Martyr of Hospitality. He lived alone as a hermit upon a mountainside in Germany. One day, he was warned in a vision that two men were coming to see him who would bring about his death. Indeed, soon enough two men approached his hermitage. Their names are recorded as Richard and Peter, and the were notorious bandits from the region. Nevertheless, St. Meinrad went out and welcomed them and invited them into his house for food and drink. When the men went inside with him, they beat him to death with clubs. St. Meinrad knew the men were robbers, and knew by a vision that they would do him violence. Yet he thought this a lesser evil than to offend against charity by denying them hsopitality. If St. Meinrad acted thus for murderers, how should we act towards our fellow man?

One last thing: I'm not just mad about this because it inconvenienced me. Like I said, I turned out okay. Somebody picked me up. I'm upset because of the mentality that we give in to fear by not assisting people, the idea that our fundamental, default attitude towards strangers is one of fear and wariness until they prove otherwise: an attitude of guilty until proven innocent. I'm upset because I'm sure this happens to a lot of people everyday who maybe never get picked up, and I don't think we ought to make justifications as to why the command to clothe the naked or feed the hungry somehow doesn't apply strictly to us. Wasn't the Middle Ages or the time of Christ more violent and dangerous than our own? Yet these rules applied then. Today really is no different.

So, this is going to be one of those times (rarely) when I respectfully disagree with my pastor's opinion.

Just to answer a questions I know will come up: no, that's not me in the picture. And, no, I'm still not going to get a cell phone.

Please feel free to tell us about your own nightmarish hitchhiking stories.

This time of year is so depressing...

As I mentioned last year at this time, I always seem to fall into a depression as Christmas approaches. Last year I pondered this in the context of Christmas carols, and why many of our most treasured carols seem to have a melancholy aire about them which is both wistfully nostalgic and softly depressing. I cited as reasoning for this a perceived rupture between the ideal of a traditional, pleasant Christmas with family and the harsh reality of an indvidiualistic, commercially driven holiday which we actually experience.

I'd like to expand these thoughts beyond just the realm of music and state that after another year of reflection and another season enduring an even more commercialized Christmas, I think the disconnect runs throughout every element of the holiday, not just the musical aspect of it.

People tend to get frustrated and upset when the reality of anything falls short of the ideal. This is perhaps the root philosophical source of the discontent of many Trads at the state of the Church: the fact that the sad reality of the Church's condition falls so far short of the glorious ideal to which she is called and has been given the means of grace to attaint to. I think one reason Christmas time can be so depressing for people is that the reality of a politically-correct, commercialized Christmas falls far short of the ideal of the Spirit of Christmas and what a worthy celebration of this holiday should look like. In fact, I'd say one would be hardpressed to find a sharper divergence between reality and ideal than in the American approach to Christmas.

Even if a family decides they are going to not get sucked in by the commercialism and tries to do the holiday a little bit more traditionally (integrating Christmas within the preperatory season of Advent, focusing more on the spiritual aspect of it, dumbing down the amount of merchandise purchased), the lesson is going to be a bitter one for children whose friends, cousins (and anyone else who is is secularized but close enough to your family that they can't be ignored) will be showing off all of their new gadgets at the family gatherings, giving rise to a kind of confused envy in the children who understand that mommy and daddy celebrate Christmas differently but nevertheless wish they could have the cool stuff that secularized Uncle Jeff always seems to buy for spoiled Cousin Jake.

This brings to mind a conversation that I had recently with a Catholic literature professor: it is not enough that individual families agree to practice the faith and hold fast to our Catholic Traditions. It takes a whole community and a surrounding culture to create a climate in which those customs and mores are taken as the norm. Sure, I can do Christmas traditionally if I want, but as long as I am surrounded by secular family and friends, my kids are going to have the painful realization that our way is not the norm but a deviation from the norm. That in itself is not bad -- I am perfectly fine being considered a social deviant. But it causes the children to think of our ways as odd eccentricities that they may grow up to be embarassed by or at least apathetic to.

This is why organizations like homeschool groups and like associations are so essential. I am blessed to be part of a large homeschool group in my area that has created a kind of Catholic subculture that permeates everything done by these families. Catholicism is not then restricted to the family alone, but it is seen and practiced by every other adult the child comes in contact with, creating the (accurate) perception that traditional, faithful Catholicism is the ideal and normative means of human existence. Whiel their education remains personalized and specialized for their particular needs (since they are homeschooled), their upbringing can hardly be said to be individualistic. It is communal in the truest sense. There is much truth in the old saying that it takes a village to raise a child.

Which brings us back to individualism, perhaps the biggest thing standing in the way of reclaiming a truly Catholic Christmas. Individualism is hard to shake once one has tasted of it and experienced the addicting satisfaction of putting oneself first. Only prayer and penance can defeat it. The Pope has expressed hope that the financial crisis will help to roll back consumerism and allow people to experience the true meaning of Christmas. Let us hope so.

So, while I am finding myself depressed this Christmas, I also have great reason to be thankful. It is the paradox of Christian life: the surface can be blown from pleasure to sadness, contentment to depression at times, but there is an underlying substrata of joy that comes from the indwelling of the Spirit and the knowledge that everything will be put right in the end.

Voting is not intrinsically good

We all know that one shortfall of modernity is its tendency to treat absolute, timeless truths as merely relative. But there is also another aspect to this, for the opposite is also true: there are many things that our society treats as things intrinsically good which are only relatively good. For example, reading is treated as good in and of itself, regardless of what a person happens to be reading. This, of course, is false; the content of what we read is extremely important (otherwise, why would the popes have thought it good to institute an Index of Forbidden Books?).

But perhaps the biggest thing that Americans hold to be good in and of itself and at all times is voting. "Regardless of which candidate you support, the important thing is that you get out there and exercise your right to vote." Why is that so important? There are so many tired old canards about voting repeated ad nauseam in this country that I am shocked that anybody still says them, much less believes them. Let's look at some of these worn old phrases.

"Voting is a sacred right. Our forefathers fought and died so that we could have the right to vote."

What exactly does this refer to? Which forefathers? Are you talking about the American Revolution? We had elected our leaders for a long time before the Revolution, and before the Revolution, people had a keener sense of the importance of local government, as well. In fact, I'd say people had a much better understanding of and participation in the democratic process prior to the American Revolution. Our forefathers of 1776 certainly weren't fighting for the right to vote. We had local government by election for a long time prior to 1776. After the French and Indian War the British began appointing colonial governors, but the local governing bodies, assemblies, etc. were all popularly elected for decades. The Revolution was not fought for the purpose of getting the right to vote.

Was it those who fought in the War of 1812? I don't think so; that was about stopping British impressment and (in a sloppy sort of way) about conquering Canada. The Mexican War? Nope, voting wasn't on the line there, either? Perhaps the Civil War? Only if you were black could this apply to the Civil War I suppose, but even in that war, nobody was fighting over a right to vote. Freeing the slaves wasn't even contemplated until half way through. World War I wasn't about the right to vote. Yes, I know Germany and the central powers were monarchies, but they all had elected bodies as well, and realistically it takes a person completely ignorant of history to think that the United States proper was ever threatened in World War II, at least the way the history played out. Our "right to vote" was never threatened in World War II.

I would say the case is a little stronger in World War II that we were "fighting to keep our democracy." But it can (and has) been argued that there was never much of a chance that Hitler could have actually invaded the United States, especially after 1942. Goering wanted to bomb New York, but nobody seriously talked of an invasion of America, and contrary to popular belief, Hitler was not out to "conquer the world."

Korea? Vietnam? One of the dozens of measly little conflicts of the Reagan or Clinton or Bush eras? Where are these wars that were fought so that we'd have the right to vote? The fact is that no war was ever fought to preserve Americans' right to vote.

"The important thing is that you exercise your right to vote, regardless of who you vote for."

We are very used to hearing this, but it is kind of nonsensical. Of course it matters who you vote for! That's the whole purpose of voting is to be able to vote for somebody! There's no intrinsic value in voting itself that renders it automatically virtuous apart from the person for whom the vote is cast. This line about "the important thing is that you exercise your right" is a line used by liberals because they know that the larger the franchise, the more likely it is that they will get into power. Why? Because the more prisoners, illegal immigrants and other down-and-out, uneducated people they can grant the power to vote to, the greater chance there is that they will swallow their insane agenda.

I'll tell you something: I hope more people stay home on election day. I honestly do. Why? Let's be honest: I think most people are too incompetent to vote, and that you ought not to be allowed to have a say in how the country is run unless you have a stake in the welfare of the country. This was the original idea behind property qualifications for eligible voters: if you owned no property, you were not trusted to vote in the best interests of the country but only out of self-interest.

But that aside, the fact remains that we are fully capable of exercising our right to vote to elect an evil person to the highest office in the land. If the majority of people will be swayed by evil, then I hope they stay home. Turning out en masse to vote for someone who promotes evil is not a good. It is good, as the Catechism says, that people be allowed to participate in the political process. But, as we all know, democracy is only good insofar as the people doing the electing (and the elected) are themselves committed to goodness and morality. As soon as that is no longer the case, voting no longer is universally good, but derives its goodness (or badness) from the person you are voting for.

I would be in favor of greatly restricting the franchise in this country. Isn't it a rule of thumb in business and administration that the more people you involve in decision making the bigger the mess you wind up with?

"How do you respond to the claim that you cannot complain about the actions of the elected government if you did not vote? It makes a bit of sense to me."

This argument does seem to have some sense to it on the surface, and it is hard to have a comeback to this if you have not taken a lot of time to think about this issue. As I wrestled with this question over the years, I came to the conclusion that this argument is errant for several reasons.

First, it is ultimately saying that only those who participate in electing the government have a right to complain about it, but fails to distinguish that though many people may vote in an election, only the majority actually elects the government.

Think of it this way: If there are two candidates, only one can win. What about the minority whose candidate lost? Can they not complain? After all, technically, they had nothing to do with electing the person in power since they voted for somebody else, yet nobody suggests that people who voted for a losing candidate cannot complain...in fact, it is commonly accepted that they have even more cause to complain because their complaints then have an added "See, I told you so" strength to them. Granted, this does not really prove why people who do not vote have a positive right to complain, though it does show that the argument that they can't complain is illogical.

Second, if voting is the criteria for who can complain, are we going to suggest that children under the age of 18 cannot complain about the political system? I doubt it: teens are commonly encouraged to understand and critique the political system as a type of initiation into the responsibilities of political citizenship that come with attaining majority.

Third, we could point out that most people don't vote in their city elections, or for the school board, things like that. The numbers are that around 80% of people do not vote locally. If that is the case, then we can retort that most people would then have no right to complain about their local school districts, local road construction projects, local scandals or anything else locally. Of course, if any of these people are caught in the midst of an irritating and useless construction jam, they will still complain anyway, even if they didn't vote for the County Road Commissioner, and they will still feel justified in complaining if the actions of government are inconveniencing them, whether or not they voted. That is my point and the crux of this post: if somebody suffers because of government, the burden is on government to explain why it is harming people, not on us to justify why we are complaining.

But can we establish a positive right to complain apart from showing that denying that right to people who don't vote is illogical?

Well, anybody has the right to complain about anything anytime they please-that's one of our First Amendment rights, and actually, the right to criticize the government was closer to what the Founder had in mind when they wrote the First Amendment (as opposed to those who interpret it to justify smut and filth).

But beyond our First Amendment right, I'd say that the argument "if you didn't vote don't complain" suffers from a very fundamental flaw: it mistakes the act of voting for the totality of participation in government. In other words, too often "participating" means nothing over and above the act of voting. We are encouraged in the Catechism to "actively participate" (nice choice of words, huh?) in our government. What is active participation? Many would reduce the idea of participation to voting alone. This is a gross misunderstanding of what participation in government is. If voting alone were participation, then why did the Founders restrict the franchise so narrowly? Voting was originally accorded only to white property-owning males. How could they claim to set up a government "by the people and for the people" if voting was so stringently restricted? Modernist interpretation would just say that it was because the Founders were all racists and hypocrites. Or perhaps they had a different understanding of participation than we do now?

So what is our expanded definition of participation in our republic? First and foremost, the right to criticize the government, which has been denied people in totalitarian countries. The right to freely discuss and talk about politics without fear or recrimination and to publish your ideas. The right to form organizations for the end of influencing the political system or attaining political goals. The right to run for political office yourself. The right and ability to contact your representative and make your grievances known to him. The right to know what is going on in government and to make all government records public. The right to be treated fairly and humanely by your government and to protest when you are not treated fairly. The right to be educated about politics and make yourself knowledgeable about our own political system and about the abstract concepts of politics in general.

All of these rights can be exercised apart from the right to vote. A person could still do all of these things and not vote, as I know many Catholics do. In fact, I'd say a person who does all of these things but refrains from voting participates in government much more than a person who only votes and doesn't do anything else mentioned above. Therefore, the idea that voting alone constitutes participation is fatally flawed. It may be important, but it is not the only thing.

"If voters should be competent, what criteria you would propose to determine voter competence? Suppose, for example, only citizens who have completed post-graduate studies were allowed to vote. I think the outcome of the upcoming presidential election would be quite clear in that case. And if that is not a good criterion, would you instead require a minimum income?"

No, I would not require a minimum level of education nor any sort of minimum income, per se. With this question, we must distinguish between what I would propose in a vastly different, perfect society, or what I would propose realistically in our current system.

In a perfect world, I would propose as criteria for voting the solemn recitation of the Nicene Creed before the Blessed Sacrament, coupled with an abjuration of Communism and another solemn, deprecatory oath upholding the truthfulness of one's profession. That would be ideal. The goal (in my mind) is to make sure that only moral people are voting, and I think this would be a good way.

But, realistically, that would not be feasible in our current system. I realize now, however, that when I said most people were too incompetent to vote, I was not primarily referring to intellectual capacity (as our commentator said, if only people with advanced degrees could vote, we know how that would go); rather, I think I was referring to one's moral trustworthiness. We want people to vote who have good morals and will not compromise them. Ultimately, I want people who have Christian morals to vote and everybody else to stay home. I don't care if certain persons are disenfranchised, because I don't see voting as an ultimate good. But anyhow, what criteria would I propose for voting in our current system?

1) A property qualification: you must own some kind of property. Some may object that this is the same as an income qualification. It is insofar as you must have some kind of income to purchase property, but it is not the same thing. There are a lot of poor people out there who own their own home, because their homes are in cities where property is cheap.

2) An oath of loyalty to the Constitution, much like our military personnel swear upon enlistment. It would not stop subversives from voting, but it would at least remind people of what a serious matter voting was.

3) 100 hours of community service prior to being allowed to register to vote

4) You must have been a citizen in this nation for a least 4 years prior to being allowed to register (this would apply only to immigrants, not to people born here). In other words, you can't vote as soon as you get your citizenship. You have to live as a citizen for four years before being allowed to exercise that right.

In addition to these qualifications, I would propose the following changes to our existing system:

1) As one person suggested in the comment box, military service would accord one the right to vote irrespective of all of these other requirements (except 2, which is part of military enlistment).

2) Voting would not be a "have it or don't have it" type of thing where you either can vote unconditionally or you can't ever. It would be like a license: it could be suspended for certain things and then restored.

3) In keeping with number 2, I don't think felons ought to universally lose their right to vote forever. They ought to get it back sometime after their release from prison, provided they meet the five requirements above.

4) If a person who could vote failed to exercise their right for a period of six years, it would be revoked and would only be restored in exchange for another 100 hours of community service and a fine.

I'm sure I could think of a lot more things, but these are some preliminary ideas. Many of you will probably think they are stupid, and I welcome any critiques or complaints (or compliments!).

Designing ideal political systems is a venerable and ancient tradition in Western Culture.

"Contemporary" music isolates elderly

This past weekend I went on vacation to Grand Haven, Michigan with my family. Grand Haven is a lovely little jewel on the coast of Lake Michigan that is well known within the state but that I'd imagine many persons outside Michigan don't really know about (click here for a pic of the lighthouse in the Grand Haven park). It was a very nice time, despite the fact that the tiny lakeside town was stuffed to the brim with teething masses of humanity there for fourth of July.

Since we were gone, we of course had to go to a parish other than the one we usually attend. I looked a few local ones up on the web, but nothing seemed appealing. One was advertising classes for guided Buddhist-influenced meditation. Finally, we settled on a pretty normal looking NO church near where we were staying.

The music was "contemporary." This parish had a big beautiful choir loft, but it was being used for storage. The "choir" sat down to the left of the altar and consisted of a keyboardist, two guitarists, a drummer and three female singers. They processional song was a cover of a song by the Protestant band Newsboys (click here to see the music video of the song they played and then try to imagine it in Mass). All the rest of the Mass music was contemporary rock as well, with drums, keyboards and everything.

Now, my intention here is not to write another horror story of abuses; we have enough of those! I want to emphasize something about the nature of "contemporary" Christian rock used in liturgical settings. The whole reason this music was introduced in the first place was to facilitate greater participation by the congregation. The idea was that this type of music was more "in touch" with what people were listening to out in the world, and so it would be more "relevant" and thus make the liturgy more meaningful. The modern Church is very sensitive about not isolating people or giving the impression that they are not inclusive enough, and this is part of the reasoning behind the use of contemporary music.

Yet in doing so, the Church is actually isolating a huge demographic of people, many of whom are some of the most faithful Mass attenders. I am speaking of course of the elderly. The elderly are horribly isolated, marginalized and ignored when parishes choose to adopt a contemporary format. I watched with discomfort as many old people stood there downcast while the rock music jammed on, not even attempting to read the lyrics from the provided "worship aids." Even had they tried, contemporary Christian rock music is usually orchestrated to that the words are forced into the music, often resulting in added verses or phrases to familiar Mass prayers, in addition to rhythms that are too complex for the uninitiated to pick up on their first hearing.

Why would the Church, who is so understanding about not being elitist or unwelcoming, persist in isolating one of its largest demographics? I argue that it is because in this manner the Church is buying in to the modernist-Americanist "cult of youth" that dominates so much of how our nation views age.

Traditionally, children were brought up to be nourished on the wisdom of their elders, to sit at their feet and imitate them. In most cultures, it was believed that the highest thing a person could do was to live up to the great deeds perfomed by ones ancestors. Youth learned at the stool of age. Now, it is turned on its head. It is the elderly and the old who are expected to conform their standards and lives to the fads of the young. The technology, music and pop-culture of the youth are put forward as role models, and everybody is supposed to adapt themselves to them.

This is, I think the fundamental error of adapting contemporary music to liturgical settings (besides all of the theological and canonical difficulties). Instead of bringing the youth to learn from those before, and thus exalting and honoring the old, the old are shoved aside with arrogance. Perhaps some think (in classic, utilitarian mindset) that the future belongs to the youth and that the elderly do not contribute anything anymore. I tell you, they pray more rosaries than the young, I guarantee! Also, we should keep in mind the words of St. Paul:

"The parts of the body which seem to be weakerare indispensable" (1 Cor. 12:22).

How should a Catholic approach the Founding Fathers?

Fourth of July and the yearly celebration of the indepenedence of the United States from Great Britain bring to mind the problem of Catholic patriotism in a historically anti-Catholic nation. How are Catholics to approach the Founding Fathers and the origins of this country? Sometimes, we experience a little bit of schizophrenia, identifying ourselves very strongly as patriotic Americans when the situation calls for it, but often times having to step back and recall that the America we are celebrating has not always been friendly to our Faith, either in past or the present. Our primary fidelity is to Christ and His Church.

I notice two prominent schools of thought in the relationship of Catholics to the nation of America. First comes what I might call the conservative patriotic position, which is held by many conservative, popular Catholic writers and thinkers. This position tends to identify itself with the conservative Republican mold and therefore professes many of the things that Republicans also profess: the great goodness of capitalism, the inherent goodness of democracy, the justification of the Iraq War.

On the other hand, there is the extreme traditionalist viewpoint (which I only call extreme in relation to other views, not because I believe it to be unstable or illogical). This is the view that the United States is thoroughly corrupt and has always been an enemy to the Catholic Church. These persons would advocate a return to some sort of institutional Catholic government, possibly even a monarchy, if that were possible. The Founding Fathers are little better than Cranmer and Luther as far as they are concerned.

I take neither of these two positions. I acknowledge that many of the founders of this country, especially the Massachussetts pilgrims, were among some of the most bigoted and ignorant anti-Catholics to ever walk the earth. This, I do not deny. However, on a natural level, I admire any person who is willing to travel thousands of miles over the sea to an unknown land to hack a living for themselves out of wild and hostile woods, facing starvation and Indian attack just to live as they please. Religious conviction aside, I think we could use more men of this caliber in our world today, at least as far as concerns their willingness to suffer hardship and labor for the ability to live as they choose. I think it is a regrettable accident of history that these men were Puritans, for I do admire them despite their anti-Catholicism.

But this is no different that the dilemma that the Church Fathers often faced when looking back at their national heritage. Rome had a great tradition of patriotic and civil heroes, before and after the Christian era. How were the Fathers to view these men? With most of them, especially those who came earliest, the Fathers have nothing but praise. Consider St. Augustine's praise of the heroic virtue of the pagan Marcus Regulus in the first book of the City of God. Though Augustine knows that Marcus Regulus worshipped false gods, he is able to recognize natural human virtue and thus praises Regulus for his heroism during the Punic Wars, though he points out that sacrifice for fatherland was the highest type of sacrifice known to the Romans and thus fell short of Christian sacrifice for love of God.

Nevertheless, we must draw a distinction: there is a difference bewteen a pre-Christian pagan and a post-Reformation Protestant. Regulus did not have nearly as much responsibility before the throne of God as did the anti-Catholic Puritans who left England. Remember, they left the Church of England because they perceived it as being too "papist" for their liking.

I am more concerned with modern issues affecting our relationship with the State. I would much rather withold my partiotism based on current issues touching on abortion and homosexual so-called marriage than I would because some guys 400 years ago didn't like Catholics. But ultimately patriotism does not call us to love the country unreservedly, but to praise what is good while deploring what it wrong. It is precisely because Lincoln hated one fact about his country (slavery) so much that he is remembered as a great president. Therefore, I say let us love our Motherland and rejoice in all the good we have gotten from it, both then and now, but never cease to deplore the evils of the past and present and pray for her prosperity.

More on NCYC

As many of you recall, my report on the National Catholic Youth Conference in November, 2007 created quite a stir on the Net and got this blog about 10,000 hits in a week. At that time, I tried desperately to find some video of this event (known as NCYC) to put up on the blog, but it was so soon after the fact that none was available. But, I knew that if I waited a few months, stuff would start to trickle out, and so it has.

Here is a video of several snippits of NCYC 2007 in Columbus, Ohio, brought to my attention by blogger Zach (thanks!); I will not make any comment on this because there is so much that could be said. Just watch and leave your comments in the comment box if you want.

Here are two videos of two different songs performed at NCYC, which emcee Steve Angrisano ignorantly described as being sung in the "African language," as if there were only one in Africa! The first was from day two, the second is "Nza mu ran za" which was a kind of theme song that was played every time the kids were supposed to pray.

Last but not least, here is a video of Fr. Tony Ricard of the New Orleans Diocese dancing:

Click here for the original post on NCYC from November, 2007

Washington Times article on Catholic Tradition

On February 28th of this year, the Washington Times had this interesting article on something we have all known about for years: that Catholic tradition is fading the America and that the demographics for the Church are not good. This article is interesting because it contains some commentary about what happens to Catholics after they leave the Church. As it turns out, it looks like the exodus from the Church is what is keeping evangelical Protestantism alive. Many Protestant churches are made up of almost 80% ex-Catholics (or we ought to call them backslidden Catholics). Here is the article with my comments and emphases:

Catholic Tradition Fading in US

by Julia Dunn (28 Feb 2008)

Evangelical Christianity has become the largest religious tradition in this country, supplanting Roman Catholicism, which is slowly bleeding members, according to a survey released yesterday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Evangelical Protestants outnumber Catholics by 26.3 percent (59 million) to 24 percent (54 million) of the population, according to the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, a massive 45-question poll conducted last summer of more than 35,000 American adults.

"There is no question that the demographic balance has shifted in past few decades toward evangelical churches," said Greg Smith, a research fellow at the Pew Forum. "They are now the mainline of American Protestantism."

The traditional mainline Protestant churches, which in 1957 constituted about 66 percent of the populace, now count just 18 percent as adherents [by traditional mainline, I think she means the denominational Protestant Churches like Presbyterian, Congregational, etc. Those that are "Reformation era." These are losing adherents even quicker than the Catholic Church because of their compromise with modernism and biblical criticism which goes back to the German theological school of Protestantism that flourished from around 1880-1930 adn changed the shape of Protestantism].

Although one in three Americans are raised Roman Catholic, only one in four adults describe themselves as such, despite the huge numbers of immigrants swelling American churches [this is because religious immigrants, who are often devout but ignorant, quickly lose their piety once they get accustomed to our secular consumerist culture] researchers said.

"Immigration is what is keeping them afloat," said John Green, a Pew senior fellow. "If everyone who was raised Catholic stayed Catholic, it'd be a third of the country" [What a sad statement! We could run this country if we (a) were faithful to our Tradition and (b) actively tried to evangelize others. I'd also point out that the immigrants who are "keeping us afloat" are hardly the caliber of Catholics we need. I'm planning a future article on the state of Catholicism in Latin America when I get more time, but the point is that oftentimes Catholicism in South America and Mexico is little more than paganism with a veneer of Catholicism, as we shall soon see. Of course, there are faithful and educated Catholics among them as well, but as is the case with America, I think they are the exception, not the norm].

Those who leave Catholicism mostly either drop out of church entirely or join Pentecostal or evangelical Protestant churches, Pew Forum director Luis Lugo said. One out of every 10 evangelicals is a former Catholic, he said, with Hispanic Catholics leaving at higher rates; 20 percent of them end up in evangelical or Pentecostal churches.

"It's a desire for a closer experience of God," he said. "It's not so much disenchantment with the teachings of the Catholic Church but the pull of what they see in Pentecostalism" [It is not disenchantment with the teachings of Catholicism because most of them have no idea what the teaching of Catholicism is, otherwise they wouldn't have left. It is not that Pentecostalism has somethign we do not, but that we are not giving them what we do have. Unfortunately, many who see this trend this errantly that the solution is therefore to adopt more "Pentecostal" practices into Catholicsm].

Switching denominations is not unique to Catholics. More than one-quarter of American adults have left their childhood faith for another religion or none [I would like to see if these statistics were the same for pre-Vatican II Catholics. I somehow doubt it]. Factor in changes of affiliation from one form of Protestantism to another, and the number of switchers rises to 44 percent.

The survey, which reveals the rapidly shifting religious leanings of some 225 million American adults, has a margin of error of less than one percentage point. It also revealed there are twice as many Jewish adults (3.8 million) as there are Muslim adults (1.3 million).

Black and Hispanic Americans were the two most religious ethnic groups, although not all of the historically black churches are monochromatic. More than 10 percent of the Church of God in Christ are white and 13 percent are Hispanic.

And the group with the highest losses? [Here's some good news, at least] Jehovah's Witnesses: Two-thirds of those raised in the faith depart it as an adult. At the other end, three out of every four U.S. Buddhists is a convert [Mostly yuppies I'm guessing].

The survey, the first of several parts to be released this year, comes with an array of graphs and maps posted on http://www.pewforums.org/ by which one can determine America's "religious geography": what percentage of each state's population is affiliated with various religious groups.

The country's religious mix changes so quickly that "if you rest on your laurels, you'll soon be out of business," Mr. Lugo said.

One of the fastest-growing groups is Americans unaffiliated with any religion, now at 16 percent, although just 4 percent of the population identified itself as agnostic or atheist. The West Coast shows the highest percentage of nonchurched people [Did we need a survey to tell us this?]. Even this group experiences huge shifts; more than half of those polled who were raised outside a religion ended up affiliating with one as an adult, and the unaffiliated also showing the highest rates of marriage to someone outside their group.

Hindus and Mormons showed the lowest rates of intermarriage. Hindus stood out for their unusually high education levels, with 48 percent having post-graduate degrees, the survey said.

The Episcopal Church may have the most gray hairs: more than six in 10 are older than age 50 compared to a national average of four in 10 Americans that age [This is because the Episcopal Church has absolutely nothing to offer people. It most clearly exemplifies a Church shorn of all its substance, conformed to the changing winds of the politically correct landscape and populated by devotees who are there because it is a half-way house between various other religious groups].

Well, we ought not to get too upset by surveys like this, despite the bleak news. Surveys only give us brief glimpses into cross-sections of society and are fond of using language like "If current trends continue," which really don't mean anything because nobody can predict if current trends continue. If Pew Research was around in the old days, they might have reported these statistics:

Future Grim for Catholic Church in Europe

In Ireland in 380 AD, 95% of the population identified itself as pagan with only 5% claiming to be Catholic.

In The Roman Empire c. 313 AD, only 10% of the population identified themselves as Catholics. Of that 10%, about 2% belonged to various heretical sects and schismatic groups.

Around 320 AD, 80% of bishops polled identified themselves as Arians.

If current trends continue, Catholicism in Europe is doomed.

Now, we see of course that things changes, and that demographics give way to shifts in culture and thinking. Of course, the Irish statistic did not take into account the arrival of St. Patrick soon after, nor did the second one take into account what would happen because of Constantine, nor the third one the zeal and piety of men like St. Athanasius and others. In the end, Catholicism triumphed in Europe, regardless of what demographics might have said. It happened once, it can happen again, but it depends on us. Will we make it happen?

More garbage on dismantling historic churches

Fr. Paul Turner, Diocese of Kansas City, MO

I recently ran across an online article by Fr. Paul Turner, priest of both St. Munchin Church and St. Aloysius Church in Maysville, MO (diocese pf Kansas City). This article is not new (I think it was 2006), but it expressed what I would call the opposition view on Church architecture: that we ought to use the round, ampitheater model in our parishes, that we ought to have movable altars, etc. However, this priest goes a little further in saying that we ought to remodel or tear down our existing pre-Vatican II Churches because they do not conform to the spirit and practical necessities of the Novus Ordo Mass. On destorying or remodeling old Churches, Father Turner says:

"Still, very few congregations have had the courage to say something more theological: “We need to retire our old building because it does not permit us to celebrate the new liturgy in its fullness.” They will consider major surgery, but they may discover that the patient is beyond repair. Some buildings need to be retired because the sanctuary is too remote, the acoustic is too bad, communion under both forms is too difficult to administer, and the area outside the church is too small for the liturgy’s ancillary rites and processions. It has fallen to this generation to do something about it. Never before in the history of Catholic architecture has the church been faced with such a profound dilemma. .."

I find it particulalry interesting that he says the old Churches do not allow for the NO to be celebrated in its fullness. We can only imagine what he believes the "fullness" of the NO is. The reasons he gives for tearing down these old Churches are utterly trivial: bad acoustics, "remote" sanctuary (that's an ambiguous term!) and finally, "communion under both forms is too difficult to administer." Thus, the older Church is "beyond repair." Think about what this priest is saying: he would rather tear down an old Church than give up the optional practice of Communion under both kinds. I guess even our most treasured historic Churches are to be sacrificed at the altar of the "spirit of Vatican II." Let's see what else Fr. Turner recommends; for example, what if we decide we want to preserve our old buildings instead of tearing them down?

"Not to change our building may seem as though it honors the past, but it handicaps the present and hobbles the future. This old church has served us well, but history has selected our generation to make a difference in architecture that will help future generations pray. Centuries from now, people will look back on us and thank us for having the courage to change the course. Because we did, we enable our children and grandchildren to engage in all that Catholic worship has to offer.” Our generation needs to say that."

Haha! I think he is fooling himself if he thinks future Catholics will thank this generation for what it has done to the Church. I know that I am so irate with the previous generation of Catholic for what they did to the faith that I find it amusing that anybody would "thank" the V2 generation for these changes, but I guess everyone's entitled to their opinion. By the way, in this excerpt and the last, notice all the talk about the importance of "this generation" and modern man? How arrogant to think that we are somehow different or special from every other generation that has come before us! Look what Fr. Turner says about the aesthetic features of older Churches, like great acoustics, stained glass windows, hardwoord floors:

"That was then. This is now. We have electricity. We don’t need windows. We don’t need resonance. We have sacrificed what nature offers and created basement churches illuminated by neon and carpeted with polyesters. Some people blamed the new mass for the loss of a sense of sacred and the poor quality of prayer in many of our churches. But we have new technologies, and we have not always employed them well. The new mass probably rescued us from becoming completely lost in a world of artificial light and sound."

Rescued us from being lost in artificial sound and light? I don't know about that. According to Fr. Turner, the new Mass and the abuses that followed are not to blame for the loss in piety. No, he claims that this is due to the fact that we have not properly utilized technology. So what model does he propose we follow in integrating technology with our worship?

"Many nondenominational seeker churches are finding success through an aggressive use of electrically produced sound and light. Big screens allow thousands of people to watch small actions; electronic music raises the decibels and the heart rate. Far from resisting artificial light and sound, some churches are diving into it, and they are succeeding in drawing numbers and fulfilling the spiritual needs of many people. Catholic churches have resisted this movement, often with a lame and ecumenically offensive excuse such as “It’s too Protestant.” What should drive our liturgy is not what makes us different from other Christian believers whose baptism we should revere; rather, what should drive our liturgy is the kind of incarnational piety that gives the Catholic Church its juice. The people are ministers. Everyone has a part to play…But let’s face it, for centuries we have distanced people from participating at mass; we are only now inviting them to take a stronger role in singing and praying. But if we use the old models of church architecture, we can expect the old models of Catholic behavior to endure."

Grr...Okay, so Joel Olsteen, Rick Warren and Benny Hinn are to be our models then. Look, just because we revere their baptism doesn't mean they get everything right. I mean, c'mon, even a Seventh Day Adventist or a Pelagian can administer a valid baptism. I don't have anything else to say on this matter. I'm just glad I live in a diocese where at least our older Churches are revered as historic treasures and not slated for destruction just because they are old. Destroying the old because it is old is the most antithetical idea to Catholicism that I can imagine. Notice from the first paragraph that Fr. Turner is the pastor of two parishes. This means that parishes have been clustered or closed in his diocese. I guess the reforms are working great in his area. Yet he thinks the problem is that the "reforms" of Vatican II have not yet gone far enough. I"m not so much angered as I am shocked that these people still don't get it.

The worst Mass ever?

Today we have several candidates vying for the dubious title of being the worst Mass ever. Who will win? First, we have these photos from a Mass in France:










Then, there's this communion service led by clowns:

Then, perhaps not the worst Mass ever, but certainly still terrible, is Bishop Tod Brown of Orange County California denying Holy Communion to a woman just because she decided to reverence the Lord. It happens around 20 seconds into the scene, after which the Bishop grabs are by the arms and compels her to stand up.

Of this scene, the woman later said: "I was sitting on the side of the Church, 3rd row, where Bishop Tod Brown distributed the Holy Eucharist, (in the video, I am the woman with short brown hair and glasses, wearing a black sweater and long white skirt sitting on the opposite side (from the camera) of the aisle in the center of the church) and upon approaching the Bishop to receive, I genuflected, out of reverence for the Sacred Species and remained on one knee to receive the Blessed Sacrament. Bishop Brown refused to give me Holy Communion. Bishop Brown said, "You need to stand up."

I was in shock and didn't move or respond. He then reached out and took hold of my folded hands, attempting to physically pull me to a standing position, and said more sternly, "You need to stand."

I looked up and whispered, quietly and respectfully, "Please, bishop", and he then grabbed my arm, and pulled me, as though to physically pull me up to a standing position (although obscured, you can see where he bends down and extends his right arm to grab mine) as he stated more loudly, "Get up".Still on one knee, I then asked very quietly and with genuine ignorance, "Why?"As he stood up straight he responded, very loudly and sternly, "Because THAT'S the way we receive communion. Now, GET UP, you're causing a scene.'"

Here's another snippet from Bishop Tod Brown's Diocese of Orange County, including a homily given by a member of the teen band at a "Teen Mass."

Why a return to Tradition is sorely needed.

Saints are mentally ill, according to "The View"

Joy Behar (above) from the decadent ABC show "The View" (which a FOX article properly refers to as a "daily chafest") came under scrutiny recently for her remarks that Catholic saints of the past were mentally ill. Here are the offending comments:

"I have a theory that you can’t find any saints anymore because of psychotropic medication. I think that [in] the old days, the saints were hearing voices and they didn’t have any Thorazine to calm them down," Behar said on ABC's daily chatfest. "Now that we have all of this medication available to us, you can’t find a saint anymore."

"That’s why Mother Teresa had issues. Let’s not forget, she didn’t really believe 100 percent like those saints who were hearing voices. She didn’t hear voices. So the church said ‘OK, she does good deeds. Let’s make her a saint.’ In the old days it used to be you heard voices. You can’t do that anymore."

Behar immediately came under scrutiny for the comments, which were deemed insensitive to Catholics and stupid from a historical standpoint. Fr. Jonathon Morris, contacted to comment on the remarks, said, "Clearly she is no church historian. Saying 'she didn't believe 100 percent' is a simplistic and superficial reading of the news," said Morris. "Why would you spend 60 years in a slum in the name of Jesus out of love for God if you don’t believe in Jesus or God 100 percent?"

Behar's spokespeople defended her, saying it was only a joke and protesting that Behar was a Catholic: "She said very clearly it was just a theory — she has lots of really funny theories that she kind of gives on a daily basis. She’s a Catholic, and she loves to talk about the Catholic Church. It’s one of her favorite subjects." This is the kind of stuff she says about "one of her favorite subjects?" I wonder what kind of drivel she says about something that is not one of her favorite subjects!

Apparently we ought to just forget about the whole thing because Behar said it was "only a joke." Oh, so if we are joking then it is okay? Let me ask you a question: did the media forgive Michael Richards when he insulted African Americans in his famous 2007 nightclub tirade? Was Mel Gibson simply forgiven by the establishment when he made some drunken anti-semitic remarks? No. In both cases, the offending persons were ostracized and their careers called into jeaopardy. Now, at least Gibson and Richards made their comments in a semi-private settings (to a police man, and in a small night club). Neither Richards nor Gibson knew that the population at large would find out about their comments. But Behar makes these comments on national television, knowing she is being heard by millions of viewers! And she just wants to say, "I was only joking!" Did that cut it with Don Imus? He actually lost his job over his slip of the tongue. Protesting that it was meant in good humour did not help him.

The sad thing is, people will simply forget about this. Anti-Catholicism is the only socially acceptable form of discrimination left in America, and this is another example of it.

Please take our survey above regarding what should become of Joy Behar.

Religious relativism & syncretism in America

I just read a good article on religious relativism in America from USA today by Kathy Lynn Grossman. The article is pretty good because it causally mentions how silly religious relativism is by pointing out that people often accept multiple religious systems which contradict each other. Here's the full article below with my commentary:

A new survey of U.S. adults who don't go to church, even on holidays, finds 72% say "God, a higher or supreme being, actually exists." But just as many (72%) also say the church is "full of hypocrites" [People who accuse the Church of being full of hypocrites demonstrate that they do not understand ecclesiology at all. If by hypocrite you mean somebody who fails to live up to what they profess, then of course, everybody is guilty! 1 John 1:8 says "If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." Jesus did not say that the Church would be full of the perfect (this is actually a heretical idea held by Cathars, Quakers and Manicheans) but that it was a field full of wheats and tares. People who refuse to attend Church because of other "hypocrites" are really just being prideful because they are saying that they are too good to mingle with their fellow man].

Indeed, 44% agree with the statement "Christians get on my nerves" [What kind of objective polling is this? Can you think of a more ambiguous question?]

LifeWay Research, the research arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, based in Nashville, conducted the survey of 1,402 "unchurched" adults last spring and summer. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

The survey defines "unchurched" as people who had not attended a religious service in a church, synagogue or mosque at any time in the past six months.

More than one in five (22%) of Americans say they never go to church, the highest ever recorded by the General Social Survey, conducted every two years by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. In 2004, the percentage was 17% [ I bet the number would be a lot higher if they asked how many do not go to Church weekly].

Many of the unchurched are shaky on Christian basics, says LifeWay Research director Ed Stetzer [Duh].

Just 52% agree on the essential Christian belief that "Jesus died and came back to life" [Kudos to this author for at least realizing that the essential Christian belief is in the death and Resurrection of Jesus and not in being tolerant or non-judgmental].

And 61% say the God of the Bible is "no different from the gods or spiritual beings depicted by world religions such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.," although Buddhist philosophy has no god and Hindus worship many [I love the way this last sentence tacitly points out the absurd contradiction in such syncretist beliefs].

Non-churchgoers "lean to a generic god that fits into every imaginable religious system, even when (systems) contradict one another," Stetzer says. "If you went back 100 years in North America, there would have been a consensus that God is the God in the Bible. We can't assume this any longer [Even from the standpoint of reason alone, wouldn't you be suspicious of a god who fit all the desires and whims of the public? Wouldn't that seem a bit contrived?].

"We no longer have a home-field advantage as Christians in this culture" [Catholics never had the home-field advantage in this country].

Most of the unchurched (86%) say they believe they can have a "good relationship with God without belonging to a church" [That's great that they "believe" that, but what doe sit have to do with what the truth is? It's like saying I can have a good relationship with my family without ever going to visit them], And 79% say "Christianity today is less about organized religion than loving God and loving people" [Okay, so the people who just a few sentences ago admitted they were "shaky on Christian basics" are now telling us what Christianity is about?] .

"These outsiders are making a clear comment that churches are not getting through on the two greatest commandments," to love God and love your neighbor, says Scott McConnell, associate director of LifeWay Research. "When they look at churches … they don't see people living out the faith" [And so they're going to live it out better by not going at all? Chesterton famously said that if something was worth doing, it was worth doing badly].

But despite respondents' critical views of organized religion, Stetzer is optimistic. He cites the finding that 78% would "be willing to listen" to someone tell "what he or she believed about Christianity."

They already know believers — 89% of the unchurched have at least one close friend who is Christian, Stetzer noted.

And 71% agreed that "believing in Jesus makes a positive difference in a person's life."
"What surprised me is the openness of the hard-core unchurched to the message of God and Christianity — just not as expressed in church," Stetzer says [The knee-jerk reactions against "Church" and "organized religion" seem to be manifestations of rebellion against authority, a fruit of the Protestant Reformation. Everybody is open to hear about what someone else believes, just so long as you don't try to insist that they have to give up their sin. That's when it gets ugly!].

"It's a personal thing, not an institutional thing. It's a matter of starting conversations" [Sounds like Cardinal Dulles' vision of Catholic evangelization!] .

Still, most of Christian belief has seeped into popular culture outside church walls and denominational tethers, says Philip Goff, a professor and director of the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University in Indianapolis.

New forms of community, such as Internet Bible study and prayer circles, also mean some people don't believe they need a church, Goff says [Seems that most persons falsely think the Church exists solely to serve them; if they don't "feel" they need it, it is therefore dispensible].

"Is there a workshop for churches in being less annoying, less hypocritical?" asks Arthur Farnsley, administrator for the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and a fellow at Goff's center [Why was this comment included? Would they include a comment that said, "Is there a way to make Muslims less murderous, less fanatical?" Again, anti-Christian bigotry is accepted while any criticism of other faiths is intolerant].

"So much of American religion today is therapeutic in approach, focused on things you want to fix in your life," he says [That should be a warning sign to anybody seeking objective truth. Do people even believe in objective truth anymore?].

"The one-to-one approach is more attractive [Me n' Jesus] . People don't go to institutions to fix their problems [They don't seem to comprehend the possibility of going to God through and in an institution].

"Most people have already heard the basic Christian message [Or they think they have. Clearly they need to hear it again]. The question for evangelism now is: Do you have a take that is authentic and engaging in a way that works for the unchurched?" [It's not about what "take" I have on religion; it is about the Way, the Truth and the Life Who is a Person and Who has revealed the truth through His Church]

After I read this article, the pervading thought in my mind was, "What a nation of fools we are!"