Pax et bonum everyone! I have been very busy with travel and have had little time to post lately. But I have had a lot on my mind for sure, per usual. Here I am presenting a miscellany of thoughts I've been mulling over for awhile. I'd been marinating these for future articles, but I don't think I'll ever have the time, so I'm just giving them to you here in seed form. None of these are entirely fleshed out, so they are somewhat rough and ripe for criticism. Enjoy.
1. Whenever a prominent Catholic loses faith and goes agnostic or atheist, I notice that online Catholics will generally respond by trying to find reasons why the person's faith was deficient all along. "He never really knew Christ to begin with." "He got too caught up in the doom cycle of news." "His view of the papacy was always a little skewered." And so on. It seems that people need to find an explanation for why the person lost faith. I think they want to convince themselves that if that person had simply done something "right," then their faith would have remained intact. They do not want to admit that sometimes people lose faith for no reason—at least no reason discernible to the intellect. Because if a person can lose faith for "no reason," can lose faith simply because one day they stopped believing, then one's own faith suddenly becomes that much more precarious. If Bob can wake up tomorrow and just not believe anymore despite not doing anything "wrong," then could the same happen to me? I am not suggesting faith simply disappears, nor that we can't take positive efforts to strengthen our faith. Obviously. But I am suggesting that when people lose faith, it's not always for some discernible reason. Sometimes, people simply...stop believing. You can't always point to something and say, "Ah. If they only would have done that, their faith would have remained intact." To always feel like we must do this is a sign of immaturity. Accept that some people simply stop believing, we don't always know why, and praise God that your faith has not similarly suffered.
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1. Whenever a prominent Catholic loses faith and goes agnostic or atheist, I notice that online Catholics will generally respond by trying to find reasons why the person's faith was deficient all along. "He never really knew Christ to begin with." "He got too caught up in the doom cycle of news." "His view of the papacy was always a little skewered." And so on. It seems that people need to find an explanation for why the person lost faith. I think they want to convince themselves that if that person had simply done something "right," then their faith would have remained intact. They do not want to admit that sometimes people lose faith for no reason—at least no reason discernible to the intellect. Because if a person can lose faith for "no reason," can lose faith simply because one day they stopped believing, then one's own faith suddenly becomes that much more precarious. If Bob can wake up tomorrow and just not believe anymore despite not doing anything "wrong," then could the same happen to me? I am not suggesting faith simply disappears, nor that we can't take positive efforts to strengthen our faith. Obviously. But I am suggesting that when people lose faith, it's not always for some discernible reason. Sometimes, people simply...stop believing. You can't always point to something and say, "Ah. If they only would have done that, their faith would have remained intact." To always feel like we must do this is a sign of immaturity. Accept that some people simply stop believing, we don't always know why, and praise God that your faith has not similarly suffered.
2. As a divorced Catholic, it really annoys me that so much discourse on divorce within the Church exists on the plane of either defending or subverting Church teaching. The result is that divorced Catholics themselves often get lost in the tussle, becoming mere tokens in an ideological struggle. While I certainly affirm the Church's traditional teaching in this conflict, I wish more discussion focused on actually engaging with divorced Catholics themselves—discussing their situation with them, helping them feel integrated into their parishes, or helping them in difficult times. Listening to them instead of lecturing them or using them as talking points or statistics. In other words, refocusing our attention on the human element. And I think this is desperately needed. You wouldn't believe the boorish, insensitive, and just plainly rude things other Catholics often say to me with a straight face, completely oblivious of how disrespectful they are behaving. I could write a lot about this; I might have a book in me about this topic.
3. Throughout history, Catholics have employed different paradigms to understand the Church in its relation to the world. These paradigms are not "teachings," per se; rather, they are assumptions held by people of different times about how the Church fits into the bigger picture of human society. For example, in the era of the Roman martyrs, the paradigm was understanding the Church as an elite supernatural fraternity whose values were counter-cultural to the Roman Empire it existed within. After Constantine, the Church and state came to be conceived as mirror images of one another, a "one Church, one Empire" model, where the Christian Empire was the saecula, a kind of temporal reflection of the sacra which existed in the Church. As God ruled the heavens, the emperor ruled the earth. In the medieval times, the Church was viewed through the lens of the prevalent feudal system. Concepts of vassalge, oaths, service, hierarchy, lordship and so on were all employed in the ecclesiastical and spiritual worlds as surely as they were in the temporal. The post-Tridentine Church saw the adoption of the paradigm of the embattled fortress of truth, the Church standing boldly against the forces of heresy and disorder, like the ship St. John Bosco dreamed of, persevering on its voyage though tossed on stormy seas. What happened at Vatican II was that another paradigm was adopted, which I would call "the Church as the People of God." A paradigm shift within Catholicism is nothing new; what was novel at Vatican II was not the paradigm shift itself but its implementation by bureaucratic fiat. In all the other examples provided, the paradigm shifts were gradual changes that happened incrementally and organically as society gradually evolved. But at Vatican II, the powers that be simply imposed a new paradigm upon the Church by naked decree, from the "top down," so to speak. This itself had proven tremendously destructive, and that's without even considering the merit of the new paradigm.
4. People really seem to struggle with the concept of mystery. They consider mystery as essentially anti-rational. To suggest we accept something as "mystery" is tantamount to saying we believe despite its inherent irrationality. But this is an impoverished way of viewing mystery, as there is a stark difference between something being irrational and something being poorly understood. To say that a puzzle has not yet been solved is fundamentally different from saying it cannot be solved. People who denigrate the "mysteries" of our religion—be it theodicy, transubstantiation, free will and divine providence, or whatever—often do so because they cannot allow mental space for things that cannot be fully grasped by the intellect in our current state. They have adopted a rationalist mindset, even if they will not admit it. There are things that go beyond reason but remain reasonable. Our inability to see how the pieces interlock is not an argument against rationality, anymore than my inability to solve a complex math equation is an argument against math. We have to be comfortable with simply not understanding some things.
5. Speaking of rationality: There really are two aspects of apologetics. One is what I might call "academic apologetics." This is scholarly apologetical arguments crafted against imaginary interlocutors (e.g., a book that takes the angle, "Protestants say this, but here's why they're wrong and Catholics are right"). But then you have what I would called "lived apologetics," which consists of apologetical conversations with real people in the context of actual, human relationships (e.g., you go out with your agnostic friend for lunch and end up having a friendly discussion about the existence of God). People who spend too much time exclusively in academic apologetics tend to overestimate the persuasiveness of their arguments. They tend to assume the unassailable rationality of their arguments, then conclude that anyone who does not accept them is either (a) acting illogically, or (b) in bad faith.
But anyone who has spent a lot of time in lived apologetics knows that the rational force of an argument is not as cut and dry as we initially think. We've all had the experience of presenting an argument to someone that we think is crystal clear, but they just don't see it that way. Not because they are being obstinate or illogical, but because they don't find the argument as persuasive as we do. Rationality, in actual human experience, is a bit more elastic than we give it credit for. I am certainly not saying truth is subjective or any such nonsense, but I am suggesting that there's quite a bit of variability in what "makes sense" to people. Have you ever had the experience of staying at someone else's house and trying to find things in their kitchen and you just can't? Can't find the salt. Can't find the spatula. Can't find the pans. Surely they must be here somewhere! When you finally locate what you need (often by asking your host), you think, "Why would you keep it there? That makes no sense." And, vice versa, when people come to our house, we see them mystified by our kitchen organization. They open our drawers looking for what they need and are confused by our organization. We all have our own logical schema of what "makes sense" in how our kitchen is organized, but we are disoriented to find that other people work from a completely different schema in their own kitchen organization. People are like this mentally as well. When we beat people over the head with apologetical arguments simply because they work "for us," it is akin to going into someone else's kitchen and saying, "Your salt should be here," when it clearly isn't and they don't want it there. It's best to try learn something about the person's life and experiences so you can understand why their intellectual "kitchen" is arranged as it is. Then, feeling more at home there, your arguments will conform more to their understanding. You two will be standing in the same kitchen, more or less.
5. Speaking of rationality: There really are two aspects of apologetics. One is what I might call "academic apologetics." This is scholarly apologetical arguments crafted against imaginary interlocutors (e.g., a book that takes the angle, "Protestants say this, but here's why they're wrong and Catholics are right"). But then you have what I would called "lived apologetics," which consists of apologetical conversations with real people in the context of actual, human relationships (e.g., you go out with your agnostic friend for lunch and end up having a friendly discussion about the existence of God). People who spend too much time exclusively in academic apologetics tend to overestimate the persuasiveness of their arguments. They tend to assume the unassailable rationality of their arguments, then conclude that anyone who does not accept them is either (a) acting illogically, or (b) in bad faith.
But anyone who has spent a lot of time in lived apologetics knows that the rational force of an argument is not as cut and dry as we initially think. We've all had the experience of presenting an argument to someone that we think is crystal clear, but they just don't see it that way. Not because they are being obstinate or illogical, but because they don't find the argument as persuasive as we do. Rationality, in actual human experience, is a bit more elastic than we give it credit for. I am certainly not saying truth is subjective or any such nonsense, but I am suggesting that there's quite a bit of variability in what "makes sense" to people. Have you ever had the experience of staying at someone else's house and trying to find things in their kitchen and you just can't? Can't find the salt. Can't find the spatula. Can't find the pans. Surely they must be here somewhere! When you finally locate what you need (often by asking your host), you think, "Why would you keep it there? That makes no sense." And, vice versa, when people come to our house, we see them mystified by our kitchen organization. They open our drawers looking for what they need and are confused by our organization. We all have our own logical schema of what "makes sense" in how our kitchen is organized, but we are disoriented to find that other people work from a completely different schema in their own kitchen organization. People are like this mentally as well. When we beat people over the head with apologetical arguments simply because they work "for us," it is akin to going into someone else's kitchen and saying, "Your salt should be here," when it clearly isn't and they don't want it there. It's best to try learn something about the person's life and experiences so you can understand why their intellectual "kitchen" is arranged as it is. Then, feeling more at home there, your arguments will conform more to their understanding. You two will be standing in the same kitchen, more or less.
6. If you're looking for some good literature for your Catholic teenager, my I humbly recommend my book on St. Genevieve from TAN Books. Matron of Paris: The Story of St. Genevieve is a historical fiction novel about the life of the famous saints of ancient Paris. Don't be deceived by the little kiddish illustration on the cover; this book has some deep spiritual messages, relating to suffering, happiness, purpose, and yielding to God's will. It's actually my favorite piece of fiction I have ever crafted. The blog Gloria Romanorum did a nice review of it a few years back if you're interested. If your child (or you) wants some mature historical fiction, this is the book you're looking for.
7. I have noticed that Catholics tend to dump on romantic love alot. It's almost always denigrated. There is constant talk about subverting romantic feelings to reason, about the fickleness of romance, and the inherent untrustworthiness of romantic affection. When marriage enters the discussion, the focus is always on sacrifice, labor, commitment, work, and suffering, almost to the total exclusion of anything pleasant. We all understand that we can't be guided entirely by our emotions, and we all understand that marriage can be a cross. But the way some people talk about love and marriage, it seems like they see it as only a cross, as if one if selfish and unrealistic for daring to expect to actually be happy in a romantic relationship. Listening to some Catholics talk about marriage, I think, "Good Lord, why would anyone want to get married the way these people describe it?" Cross. Suffering. Pain. Sacrifice. Yes, there are sacrifical aspects to it for sure...but how about we remind ourselves that love is supposed to also be sweet? That it is supposed to lighten our load. That we are meant to delight in our loves. The our romantic emotions are important in themselves and mean something valuable. That romance brings something special into our existence—especially in those aspects that cannot be explained in purely rational terms. That men and women were created to help each other and be a joy to one another. That the happiness of the spouses is one of the legitimate ends of the spouses. That we are meant to find some degree of fulfillment, joy, and completeness in our romantic relationships. That we are meant to be inspired by them. That they are not meant to be raw suffering and continual pain. I have come to suspect that Catholics who are only capable of speaking of marriage as a cross are simply miserable in their marriages and express this emphasis to recontextualize their misery into some kind of private martyrdom as a lame-ass cope. Instead of saying, "We are miserable, something must be wrong," they say, "We are miserable, this is what God created marriage to be."
7. I have noticed that Catholics tend to dump on romantic love alot. It's almost always denigrated. There is constant talk about subverting romantic feelings to reason, about the fickleness of romance, and the inherent untrustworthiness of romantic affection. When marriage enters the discussion, the focus is always on sacrifice, labor, commitment, work, and suffering, almost to the total exclusion of anything pleasant. We all understand that we can't be guided entirely by our emotions, and we all understand that marriage can be a cross. But the way some people talk about love and marriage, it seems like they see it as only a cross, as if one if selfish and unrealistic for daring to expect to actually be happy in a romantic relationship. Listening to some Catholics talk about marriage, I think, "Good Lord, why would anyone want to get married the way these people describe it?" Cross. Suffering. Pain. Sacrifice. Yes, there are sacrifical aspects to it for sure...but how about we remind ourselves that love is supposed to also be sweet? That it is supposed to lighten our load. That we are meant to delight in our loves. The our romantic emotions are important in themselves and mean something valuable. That romance brings something special into our existence—especially in those aspects that cannot be explained in purely rational terms. That men and women were created to help each other and be a joy to one another. That the happiness of the spouses is one of the legitimate ends of the spouses. That we are meant to find some degree of fulfillment, joy, and completeness in our romantic relationships. That we are meant to be inspired by them. That they are not meant to be raw suffering and continual pain. I have come to suspect that Catholics who are only capable of speaking of marriage as a cross are simply miserable in their marriages and express this emphasis to recontextualize their misery into some kind of private martyrdom as a lame-ass cope. Instead of saying, "We are miserable, something must be wrong," they say, "We are miserable, this is what God created marriage to be."
8. The level of respect we owe to a pope is distinctly different whether he is alive or dead. While he lives, we owe him obedience, obsequium religiosum, the reasonable benefit of the doubt (I stress "reasonable") and all that good stuff. But when a pope has died? All I owe him at that point is the basic charity we owe to any of the deceased—to pray for the repose of his soul, and to not spread malicious lies about him. But some people act as if there is some sort of special deference due to a dead pope. There isn't. I don't have any obligation to protect a dead pope's reputation, to explain away his statements, to defer to his purely prudential judgments, or cover his nakedness like a son of Noah. Once a pope has passed beyond the veil, his soul is judged by God, but his deeds are scrutinized by the ruthless lens of history, and this is fitting.
Of course, we must adhere to the magisterial teaching of previous popes, but the submission we owe to magisterial teaching is due to the teaching, not the man. When I assent to, say, the propositions of Clement XI's bull Unigenitus (1713), it is not because I owe some personal submission to a pope that has been dead for over three hundred years. Rather, it's because Clement XI's document authoritatively expresses the teaching of the Gospel. Yes, yes, I realize that it is only authoritative because it was issued by a pope, but don't get Jesuitical here; the point is, once a pope is dead, I don't have to watch what I say about him in any special way beyond the bounds that govern how Christians speak about the dead in general. There's no special category of "pope respect" due to dead pontiffs.
Of course, we must adhere to the magisterial teaching of previous popes, but the submission we owe to magisterial teaching is due to the teaching, not the man. When I assent to, say, the propositions of Clement XI's bull Unigenitus (1713), it is not because I owe some personal submission to a pope that has been dead for over three hundred years. Rather, it's because Clement XI's document authoritatively expresses the teaching of the Gospel. Yes, yes, I realize that it is only authoritative because it was issued by a pope, but don't get Jesuitical here; the point is, once a pope is dead, I don't have to watch what I say about him in any special way beyond the bounds that govern how Christians speak about the dead in general. There's no special category of "pope respect" due to dead pontiffs.
9. In that vein, I think Traditionalists need to admit that the popes went too far in stressing papal authority during the pontificates of Pius IX to Pius XII. I am not speaking of any official magisterial teachings, by any means. I am speaking, rather, of what I might call the "culture of submission" that was cultivated between around 1870 and 1958. Under Christendom, papal authority was generally enforced in Catholic countries by the civil authorities, whose duties and responsibilites to the Holy See were spelled out in concordats made with the Roman pontiffs. As first the Papal States and then the monarchies of Christendom fell, the popes were compelled by necessity to lean heavily into the moral and ecclesiastical authority of their office to leverage obedience. This is understandable; with every other bastion of Catholic civilization falling into ruins, it stood to reason that the papacy would become a point of rallying for beleagured Catholics the world over. What emerged was a culture of submission, nursed by the popes and eagerly embraced by Catholics. In my opinion, this culture of submission was characterized by ecclesiastical statements, assumptions, and processes that can best be described as exaggerating or inflating the pope's importance. We all know from our experience of the post-Conciliar world that there can be a non-official "spirit" of the age active within the Church that goes far beyond anything justified by dogmatic teaching. Why should we assume this is unique to our own time? There seems to have been a Spirit of Vatican I just as surely as there's a Spirit of Vatican II.
10. As society continues to progress (or regress?) at breakneck pace, it is becoming increasingly clear that the way of life we knew is rapidly coming to an end. Many things that most of us took for granted are vanishing. Recently I was thinking about how the age of the great novel is over. Books are still a thing and likely to be around for a while yet, but the age of the great culturally relevant fiction novel has come to an end. When was the last time someone published a novel that was culturally impactful? Heck, when was the last time anyone published any novel that a substantial segment of the literate public has read? It seems like the only broadly read fiction works these days are in the genre of serialized youth fiction—works like The Hunger Games, Rangers Apprentice, or the Percy Jackson stories. But the era of the compelling adult fiction novel is long past. Nothing is being produced akin to The Great Gatsby, Brothers Karamazov, To Kill a Mockingbird, Pride and Prejudice or Slaughterhouse Five. There are no contemporary Jane Austens or Charles Dickenses writing the next compelling work of English literature. And I'm not even speaking in terms of the quality of such works (indeed, I often talk to people who hate The Great Gatsby, while I love it, so I realize there is room for debate on content). Rather, I'm speaking just in terms of any novel that is culturally relevant regardless of its message. The stand-alone adult fiction novel itself is passing away as a medium of art. As a writer, I find this quite depressing. Even if we don't admit it, most writers tend to feel that a great novel is buried somewhere deep within—that if only we had the free time, the right working environment, and a little motivation, we could birth it into existence. I nursed such dreams for a long time. Maybe I still believe such a novel is in there somewhere. I guess it doesn't matter anymore. Of course there's nothing stopping me nor anyone else from writing something good. But there's no longer any hope of good writing becoming impactful at a cultural level. This is partially because people no longer read novels, and partially because we no longer have a culture.
11. I recently did an article questioning whether there were not some merit in the idea that Holy Communion should not be offered on occasions where sacrilege was likely, as, for example, at weddings. People complained that not offering communion on such occasions would be depriving someone of their canonical right to receve the Eucharist; one fellow even said it would amount to an "excommunication" of faithful Catholics. This line of thought is ridiculous and not at all what Canon Law says. The CIC says in canon 912, "Any baptized person not prohibited by law can and must be admitted to holy communion." This means that on occasions when Holy Communion is offered to the congregation, anyone who is not otherwise prohibited has the right to receive it. It does not mean that Holy Communion must always be offered to the entire congregation. It essentially means that anyone in good standing has the right to receive Holy Communion when it is offered, but without implying that it must always be offered.
12. This week it was reported that Pope Leo XIV intends to declare St. John Henry Newman a Doctor of the Church. I personally don't think we ever should have advanced beyond the Four Doctors of the West and the Three Doctors of the East. But, given that we have long passed that boundary, Newman is a good addition. It has saddened me in recent years to see Newman becoming an increasingly divisive figure, due to the unfortunate way his concept of "development of doctrine" is misused. On the one hand, progressives continually invoke Newman to justify every hideous novelty. This is so commonplace that many Traditionalists have become suspicious of Newman's ideas, some scoffing at the entire concept of doctrinal development as modernistic nonsense. We have progressives inflating development of doctrine beyond anything Newman imagined while Trads express hostility to it. I'm sure most of them have never read Newman's Essay on the Development of Doctrine. They are fighting not about what Newman said but about an entire galaxy of ideas that have become associated with the phrase "development." What a profoundly sad state of affairs.
13. There is a tension in the spiritual life between "seizing the initiative" and "waiting on God." A healthy spiritual life needs to maintain this tension in equilibrium. On the one hand, if we charge in bullishly without prayer, discernment, or patience, we make a mess of our circumstances through our own willfulness. On the other hand, if we are too passive, forever hanging back in hopes that God will somehow just make everything right, we will actually miss God by failing to see how He manifests His will through our circumstances. This is why the dictum of St. Ignatius Loyola is so truly beneficial: "Work as if everything depended upon you, pray knowing that everything depends upon God." While we should always pray and discern and see the will of God in all things, we should have a lively awareness of how God manifests His will providentially through the circumstances we find ourselves in—which doors are open for us, which are shut; when we can fight, and when fighting is futile; what people accept, and what they reject. The relationship between our will and God's providence is very much like a dance in which God leads. If we try to assertively take charge, we ruin the dance. But if we are too passive and just hang limp, our partner cannot lead us and the dance likewise becomes impossible. Rather, we must exert our own thought and energy to move ourselves, carefully attentive to the way our partner (God) is leading the dance through His own movements.
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