It Was Practically a Foregone Conclusion

That some "Catholic" college president would write something like this.

Link courtesty of Mark Shea, who responds inimitably.

My advice to Rev. Stephen V. Sundborg, S.J., president of Seattle University, on how to revise his advice to the bishops, using fewer words with a more direct approach:

Capitulate! Don't you guys understand? The only we can win is to capitulate! Cave! Succumb! Give in! We can't change the world until we have been changed by it! What the Catholic Church really needs now is to renounce the Catholic faith! Swallow the liberal, humanistic, secularistic viewpoint, part and parcel! I'm living proof it works: I am a priest, and a Jesuit, and the president of a Catholic College, who despises what the Catholic Church stands for: follow me!

Move over, McBrien and Gumbleton: I nominate this Jesuit for official Subversive Traitor status.

Who'da Thunk It!

Somebody likes my poetry: “E. L. Core is a gifted poet: See for yourself here.”

Thank you, Mark Sullivan.

Online Uprising!

A long and very good article in American Journalism Review, June 2002, including this:

Obviously, it's easy to waste an appalling amount of time in Blogland. But I find it's rarely time completely wasted. I write regularly about TV and find more useful information on the tvtattle.com blog, which assembles links to television coverage from around the country, than in the Hollywood trades. Any reporter covering education would be foolish not to regularly check the news links and commentary on readjacobs.com, a blog by former San Jose Mercury News reporter Joanne Jacobs, who left to write a book about a charter school. My clip files for three long stories (besides this one) I was working on this spring are filled with items and ideas found on blogs.

(Link courtesy of Media Minded.)

Great Pictures

Wait till you see the photos for next week's The View from the Core! Pictures from this year's May Day ceremony at my high-school alma mater. I just got done preparing them for the site, and I am very happy with them.

The Eve of June

One of my poems is 12 years old today.

The Eve of June

Russ Reeves to the Rescue

Both Amy Welborn and Eve Tushnet have posted a link to a Gary Wills hatchet-job on Philip Jenkins. (I say "a Gary Wills hatchet-job on Philip Jenkins", because there are more than one.) Both Amy and Eve seemed to be largely uncritical of Wills' article. Sorry, I don't have the references right now. I never bothered to tell either of them of my... shall we say... considerable doubts about Wills' reliability, because they would have asked me why, and I haven't had time to adequately research and sufficiently analyze.

Mostly in consequence of his having thus snookered two fine Catholic women bloggers, I have had it in the back of my mind to write a column about Wills' misrepresentation of Jenkins' book Pedophiles and Priests. Courtesy of Mark Shea's blog today, I find that Russ Reeves of Tolle, Blogge has just done something like that.

Oh, I did write a little bit about this, in my April 15 column, which I guess I could have referenced to Amy and Eve:

First, from author Gary Wills, from whom I quoted last time. He had a two-part article published in the Boston Globe, Mar. 24. The first part is notable for its egregious misrepresentation of Philip Jenkins’ book Pedophiles and Priests, from which I quoted extensively in Part One. (Wills has quite the reputation for egregious misrepresentation.) Now, Jenkins’ book is a remarkably even-handed treatment of the subject. Perhaps it is this very even-handedness that Wills fears, for he does his very best — which, by the standard of honest men, would be the very worst — to portray the book as a one-sided “conservative” diatribe. I myself would not defend Wills from the charge of lying about Jenkins’ book.

Moreover, in the second part of his column, Wills numbers Jenkins among “protectors of the hierarchy”. He conveniently neglects to mention that Philip Jenkins is an ex-Catholic Episcopalian: had he done so, Wills would have to explain why such a man would have any interest whatever in “protecting” the Catholic hierarchy. For which, of course, there is no explanation. And, thus, Wills would not have been able to dismiss the man, his book, and those (such as me) who cite and quote it. Had he been honest and forthright, Wills would have had to write quite another column.

I quote Jenkins several times, in different places, in Wolves in Shepherd's Clothing.

Veritas and The Bomb

Chris Burgwald posted some remarks on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including this:

The fact of the matter is this: if we consider the moral act of dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki objectively — i.e. apart from the subjective factors involved for those who ordered & carried out the attacks (more on this below) — there is no doubt that it was an immoral act, in that thousands of innocent non-combatants were deliberately killed (as is well-known, neither city had any real military value). I don't care that it (may have) saved lives, both American and Japanese. On the objective level, there is no moral ground for deliberately killing an innocent non-combatant.

I agree with this analysis. Especially since (1) I cannot believe that other potential targets, entirely of the Japanese military, were not available and (2) I cannot believe that destruction of Japanese military targets by atomic weapons would not have had the same effect, though perhaps not in such a short time.

I do not mean, by this, to lend aid and comfort to America Haters who beat their breasts (and try to beat us over the head) at the beginning of August every year.

Review of Goodbye, Good Men

A very interesting review of Michael Rose's new book, by a priest of the Kalamazoo diocese who knows some of the individuals interviewed for the book — including some whose interviews didn't make it into the book.

Reviewed by Rev. Robert J. Johansen, M.A. in Culture Wars, June 2002.

We Had Better Pray

For peace between Pakistan and India.

From the Sacramentary of the Roman Missal, the opening prayer from one of the Masses for Peace and Justice:

God of perfect peace, violence and cruelty can have no part with you. May those who are at peace with one another hold fast to the good will that unites them; may those who are enemies forget their hatred and be healed. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

(This is also number 22 in Appendix III of current volume of the Liturgy of the Hours.)

But We Still Need Documentation

I have been given conflicting accounts of the vows taken by Benedictine monks: one reader, who had been in temporary vows himself, says they do not take a specific vow of poverty; another, a priest who had considered that order and has many Benedictine friends, says they do specifically take a vow of poverty.

We Have Some Documentation!

Re: whether Benedictine monk Rembert Weakland would have had to get a dispensation from a vow of poverty to hold diocesan properties. A reader has informed me that an entire chapter of the Code of Canon Law is devoted to this very issue, of religious raised to the episcopate.

Oh, how could I ever have forgotten that?

We can see that a religious who has been vowed to poverty "now has the use and enjoyment and the administration of the goods which he acquires". However, if he is a diocesan bishop, "the particular Church [that is, the diocese] acquires their ownership" (emphasis added) and "any goods he receives which are not personal gifts must be disposed of according to the intention of the donors."

P.S. How does it make you feel, knowing what you now know about Weakland's past, that canon 705 stipulates, for a religious raised to the episcopacy, that "He is not bound by obligations which he prudently judges are not compatible with his condition." Makes me cringe.

If I Could Write Like Jonah, I Would Be a Writer

I have to admire a writer who makes me bust out laughing while discussing a very serious topic, and making me think about it straighter than I had before:

What's my point? Simple: These people are frickin' nuts. If they were allowed to drink booze, I'd say they were talking with their beer muscles. I know it's fun for these loons to imagine a bunch of Dervishes pouring into downtown Cleveland whirling their scimitars as we fat and spoiled Americans drop our Big Macs and run for our lives, but that will never, ever, happen.

Think of the "best case" scenario for these terrorists: The entire Muslim world rises up for a jihad against the United States. This what they wish for, right? Well, this alone qualifies them as idiots.

(Wanting a War They Can’t Win: Pointless jihad dreaming.)

Legibility is Definitely a Plus

One of my correspondents, who had complained about the typeface being difficult to read, has written to say that the new template is much, much better. I have not gotten a new verdict from the other who had complained, too. Actually, they were both too polite to complain: they said they had a "suggestion" for my blog. :-)

By the way, if you sent me an e-mail between, say, 11:00 a.m. EDT and 3:00 p.m. EDT, you may have to send it again: problems at my webhost.

A Study in Contrasts

Two bloggers have recently posted links to very interesting articles. From Mallon's Media Watch, Don't end celibacy for priests, by Joel Mowbray in The Washington Times, May 28. And from Orthopraxis, a long, tiresome, and boringly predictable article, A Time to Change, in The Atlantic, May 8. They are especially interesting if you read them one after the other: the contrast in assumptions, approach, ideology, claims, and conclusions could not be more opposite.

Since I think Mowbray is right on target, I will confine my comments to the Atlantic article. It is basically a rehash of every left-wing, pop-psychology "argument" ever brought forth against Catholic faith and life, citing and quoting four previous articles in The Atlantic. Of which they seem to be proud. For some reason.

First. Authors who can say that Vatican II was held in 1962, and that an article that was published in 1967 came out "five years after the Second Vatican Council" are either (1) so ignorant about Catholic history that they ought to be writing for, say, Jack Chick or (2) so bad at saying what they mean that they ought to take up, say, computer programming instead of journalism. (The first session of Vatican II was held in the fall of 1962; the fourth and final session, in the fall of 1965.)

Second, the article says "Services could now be performed in parishioners' native languages, for example, rather than in Latin, and rules surrounding the Eucharist became somewhat relaxed." The latter claim is true; but the former is exaggerated, for Vatican II explicity decreed that "The use of the Latin language... is to be preserved in the Latin rites." (Sacrosanctum concilium 36.) True, some leeway was given to allow the vernacular for certain parts of the liturgy. But the wholesale abandonment of Latin in favor of the vernacular was instituted by Pope Paul VI and his curial officials, despite the wishes of the Fathers of Vatican II. (Whether this was good or bad or indifferent is another question.) If the writers are ignorant of this, why are they writing about this? In The Atlantic, no less?

The article then informs us — I summarize in haste, which I think is justified considering that I have already established that the authors cannot get simple historical facts straight, which anybody could verify, or falsify, in a few minutes — it then informs us, by way of citing and quoting the previous articles, that the real problem with the Catholic Church is stupid stubborn (not to say scheming) conservative bishops and a stupid stubborn conservative Polish pope.

If the authors could have been as blunt as I have been, it would have saved them a lot of effort. :-)

And why, exactly are they the problem? Oh, do I have to tell you? Because... they won't, they just won't, change the Church's teaching on abortion, artificial contraception, divorce and remarriage, celibacy of the priesthood, male-only priesthood, (insert any other favorite topic of liberal activism).

Those are the changes, you see, to which the authors (Meg Weber and Sage Stossel) referred at the beginning of the article:

Many perceived Vatican II to be revolutionary, and believed that it was a prelude to further changes that would render the church more accessible and relevant to the lives of modern worshippers.

(Translation: some radical activists wanted to subvert the teachings of the council, and did their very best. Which was very good. In fact, they accomplished, practically and effectively, much, much more than we want you to know. We are just doing what we can to help further their cause.)

The implication — the accusation — is this: if the pope and bishops hadn't stymied the implementation of Vatican II, Catholics would have been emancipated and liberated long ago. Meaning, they would be even more indistinguishable from the average American Protestant or Jew or Agnostic or Atheist than they are already WRT abortion, artificial contraception, and divorce and remarriage, etc. Just like McBrien and Curran, et al., think we should be.

The Catholic Church would be so much better, don't you know, if it would just stop being Catholic and a Church!

Beware

I am going to experiment with the blog's template today. :-)

Proposed Novena of the Litany of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Priest and Victim

I am proposing a novena before the bishops' meeting in Dallas, June 13-15. To conclude the novena on the day before the meeting begins, it will have to start a week from today, June 4.

The Litany of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Priest and Victim, is a favorite of the pope's, and it is very profound. In his book Gift and Mystery, he says that it has been used traditionally at the seminary in Cracow, especially on the day before ordinations. It is available at several websites. (Do a search on the full title.) But I have recently added it to ELCore.Net.

Beginning next Tuesday, I will post a link here to the Litany each day, along with a suitable prayer from the Sacramentary/Breviary. Deo voluntas, some of the other Catholic bloggers will chime in with me.

Also, as Mark Shea pointed out today, Michael Dubruiel has posted a proposal from a Michigan priest for a "Prayer Vigil for Holiness" during the meeting. I think that's a great idea, and our two proposals do not conflict, but rather complement each other.

Typeface

I have received a couple of complaints about the typeface being too small. Especially in the blockquoted text, which had been even smaller than the normal text. I have changed the blockquoted text so it isn't smaller. But I'm not sure yet what more I'm going to change. So, if you are having trouble reading this, feel free to let me know.

More on Weakland

A reader informs me that Benedictines do not, strictly speaking, take a vow of poverty. They take a vow of obedience, of course, and one of stability (which I had known, but forgot about). And a vow of conversatio morum, of continuing conversion.

I have been close friends with Benedictines. Monks of Weakland's own house. It was my understanding that they took a vow of poverty. Explicity. I recall a specific conversation with one of them particularly about Weakland's appointment as archbishop, that it required a dispensation from the vow of poverty.

But this is a conversation of 20+ years ago. :) What we need is documentation....

Weakland Stiffed Milwaukee $450,000, No Matter How You Look at It

Mark Shea also quotes a reader, concerning the hush... er... settlement between Rembert Weakland and James Marcoux, of $450,000.

What personal funds? Did he have a personal bank account with that much money in it? If not, he took it from the archdiocesan bank account, no matter what the origin of the sum was. Who knew about that at the time? Who authorized such a withdrawal? Is an archbishop authorized to draw that kind of money on his own responsibility, without telling anybody? Don't they have auditors out there? Under ordinary circumstances, the party from whom the money was drawn would be on its way to the DA with a serious complaint. What the hell happened? I feel bewildered and for some reason extremely pissed off.

Weakland has made a very weak attempt to make the expenditure of $450,000 of archdiocesan funds cancel out by claiming that he has donated to the archdiocese more money than that over the years from his earnings from... what?... books, lectures, seminars? I don't know for sure. But I do know two things for sure.

(1) The archdiocese is still out $450,000, no matter how much Weakland may have donated from his personal income: he would have donated it anyway, wouldn't he have? (See next point.) Had there been no settlement ($450,000 out of archdiocesan coffers), then added together with Weakland's alleged donations ($450,000 into archdiocesan coffers), the two amounts would add up to $900,000, instead of $0.00.

(2) Rembert Weakland is a monk of the Order of Saint Benedict. (He used to be Archabbot of St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and Archabbot Primate of all the Benedictines.) He had, therefore, taken vows not only of chastity and obedience — but also of poverty. Now, if the Milwaukee Archdiocese is a corporation sole, Weakland would have had to be dispensed, to some degree, so he could be the legal owner of diocesan properties. (I believe I recall somewhat of a conversation about that, from many, many years ago.) But I doubt very much if he would have been dispensed so that he could have money and property belonging to him personally. Perhaps somebody knows for sure?

I Warned Ya

Thanks to Mark Shea for the link to an AP article in The Boston Globe, May 23:

The Roman Catholic Church must ordain women as priests or forfeit its federal tax-exempt status, claims a lawsuit filed in US District Court yesterday. The church's refusal to ordain women amounts to sexual discrimination, asserts lawyer Susan Rockwell, who filed the suit on her own behalf, claiming the church's policy violates her right to free expression and religion. And by granting the church tax-exempt status, the federal government subsidizes the church's discriminatory policies, said Rockwell, a Catholic who has sought to become a priest but was told the church's policy bars it.

As I wrote at the conclusion of my April 15 column:

We will not, I think, have to face the executioner for restoring and maintaining Catholic faith and life in fidelity to the Church Universal and the Holy See. But we will have to face the wrath of our secular culture, expressed every day in mainstream media. And — I do not mean to exaggerate — perhaps even the wrath of the courts if activists ever make it illegal for the Catholic Church to "discriminate against" homosexuals (by refusing to "bless" their "unions") and women (by refusing to "ordain" priestesses). Do not be so foolish as to think that to be impossible.

All it takes to cause a world-beyond-imagining of trouble is one bad ruling from one judge with an axe to grind. Look for much more fun stuff ahead.

P.S. Susanna Cornett wrote a fine piece about this (which I was able to find in my Webpages Trove.)

Questions for Gail Buckley

Gail Buckley, who has a column in Sunday's New York Daily News (for some reason, not apparent from the column itself), says that it's time for Vatican III.

Here are some questions for Buckley, based on that column:

• "Catholics are said to be leaving the church in droves." Says who? You?
• "On the other hand, to blame abuse on sexual orientation rather than sexual behavior seems both cruel and un-Christian." Who is "blaming" sexual orientation? I'm not. Most careful observers are not. But many are, indeed, blaming homosexuals who become or remain priests (or bishops) with no intention of being chaste, and sometimes with the intention of subverting the Church's teaching. Why didn't you address these real issues?
• "I'm not asking for the immediate ordination of women...." How long do you want to wait?
• "Before Pope John XXIII convened Vatican II in 1962, the church had last officially changed its mind in 1870." Perhaps you could explain that 1870 remark? Keep in mind that there are actually people (such as me and many Catholic bloggers) who know something about history and theology. Something more than you do, apparently.
• "John tried to be a bridge between East and West, Christians and Jews and the First and Third World. 'What are ideas among friends?' he famously replied to the problem of Protestant-Catholic doctrinal differences." I don't suppose you have some documentation for that "famous" reply.
• "Garcia and I could agree on that. Maybe we could also agree, despite his dislike of Vatican II, that a Vatican III might be good for both of us." How often have you, yourself, personally, read the documents of Vatican II?
• Finally, don't you think it would be a better idea to actually implement the teachings and directions of Vatican II before we have a Vatican III?

That's enough for now. Thank you for your kind attention to these matters.

P.S. Why don't you read something that we both can actually know for sure was written by Pope John XXIII: Ad Petri Cathedram, his first encyclical. Especially Part III. Here is a little bit of it:

67. Indeed, the Catholic Church is set apart and distinguished by these three characteristics: unity of doctrine, unity of organization, unity of worship. This unity is so conspicuous that by it all men can find and recognize the Catholic Church.

68. It is the will of God, the Church's founder, that all the sheep should eventually gather into this one fold, under the guidance of one shepherd. All God's children are summoned to their father's only home, and its cornerstone is Peter. All men should work together like brothers to become part of this single kingdom of God; for the citizens of that kingdom are united in peace and harmony on earth that they might enjoy eternal happiness some day in heaven.

Pardon me if I prefer an encyclical I can quote to an alleged off-hand remark I find in a New York Daily News column.

E-mail Announcement of Latest Issue of The View

The View from the Core 05/27/02 is now available.

Column: "Habemus Papam! How Come Everybody and His Brother Slammed the Pope for Saying What He Never Said?"

Featured Webpages: 24 new links posted

Featured Websites: 8 new links posted

Poetry: "The Peacemaker", "Rouge Bouquet", and "Prayer of a Soldier in France" (all written by Alfred Joyce Kilmer while serving in the Army in France). Kilmer was killed in action, July 30, 1918.

Prose: "The Safe-Keeping of the Faith" (Newman) and Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds (1662 Book of Common Prayer)

Photography: Choppers Over the Hudson (Susanna Cornett)

Guest Column: "Time to Draw Down the Wrath of the Thin-Skinned Whiners at CAIR" (Mark Shea)

NEW FEATURE: The Blog from the Core: Needless Commentary from Small-Town America

Dear Amanda from Aunt Susanna

Don't miss the latest Saturday Ramble from Susanna Cornett, one of my favorite bloggers, especially the advice she gives to her high-school-graduating niece towards the end: words of wisdom for everybody.

Yeah. Sure. Right.

Although they lack statistics showing gay students outperform their peers, admissions officers say anecdotally that, for the growing number of high school students who identify themselves as gay, the ''coming out'' experience in high school can breed self-confidence, leadership abilities, cultural awareness, and other characteristics that colleges want. ''Schools are inviting these students because they question the norms,'' said Judith Brown, director of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center at Tufts. ''They make people question their own assumptions, and that's a key to learning and growing as people.''

What are the norms? On college campuses these days, the norms would seem to include (1) there is no God, (2) there is no absolute truth, and (3) there are no moral absolutes, either. Unless, of course, you want to say that (1) there is a God, or (2) there is absolute truth, and (3) there are moral absolutes. Then you run into the peculiar notion that the only absolute truth is that the only moral absolute is that you may not question the norms on college campuses, and God help you if you do.

And don't miss the implied message: "gays" aren't just different from others; they're better than others. That's what college admissions officers say. Anecdotally. Two of them, probably. At left-wing colleges, probably.

This is supposed to be a news story. Probably.

Mark Shea Told Ya

Amy Welborn referred her readers to a NYT article, May 22:

Most evangelical Christians would say they have no interest in capitalizing on Catholicism's woe. But when asked, they do not hesitate to find the scandal's roots in Catholic dogma, and some go even further. In a few cases, priests say, the scandal is being thrown in Catholic faces by proselytizing neighbors. And others who study the evangelical world suggest that the scandal will be used as a wedge in the long struggle between Catholics and evangelicals for Latino souls.

I don't fly off the handle over every accusation of ecclesial malfeasance in the media. I know those guys hate the Church. That's why it drives me nuts that the Church leaders and its media seem to be deliberately choosing a course guaranteed to give the Church's enemies a stockpile of weapons-grade uranium for years, perhaps centuries, to come. Don't think I exaggerate: look at the everlasting nature of slanders based on the Inquisition and the Crusades.

Andrew Smackdown

Andrew Sullivan rather consistently loses his mind when discussing (1) sex or (2) the Catholic Church but especially (3) sex and the Catholic Church.

MORE PAPAL PRIORITIES: The Pope doesn't want to deal with the profound issues of priestly celibacy, ecclesiastical abuse of power and sexual morality that are wreaking havoc in the American church. He has far more important things to do - like complain about some celebrities wearing crucifixes and tend to his sparse flock in Azerbaijan. There are two priests in Azerbaijan. Two. This papacy is now descending into self-parody. While Rome burns ...

(I would provide a permalink, but it doesn't work. I usually find that they don't work on Sullivan's blog.)

Minute Particulars revealed to the Blogosphere the truth behind Sullivan's remarks: unbeknownst to him, it seems, the pope didn't say Word One about celebrities wearing crucifixes. The head of an Italian film organization is the one who did that. Sullivan seems to have taken as accurate a blurb in This is London.

One would think that a Big Shot Professional Journalist would know to check the accuracy of his sources. But, then, he wouldn't have been able to take a cheap shot at the Vicar of Christ, which must have been his priority. Talk about self-... parody?

On May 24, Sullivan further pontificated:

THE WEAKNESS OF WEAKLAND: .... The problem, as I have tried to emphasize, is not so much the abuse of sex as the abuse of power. And solving that dynamic is exactly what Rome has no intention of doing.

Seeing as how Sullivan doesn't even know what the pope or somebody else — anybody else? — has or has not said, he obviously has no idea what "Rome" intends to do.

Mahony Baloney

A post by Amy Welborn was the trigger for starting this blog. She referred her readers to an article in the May 16 LA Times, from which I quote:

On Tuesday, [Roger Cardinal] Mahony faxed a two-page letter to about 1,200 priests in the archdiocese, acknowledging that he had mishandled the case. "As your archbishop, I assume full responsibility for allowing Baker to remain in any type of ministry during the 1990s," Mahony wrote. "I offer my sincere, personal apologies for my failure to take firm and decisive action much earlier."

I just had to say something about this.

Because I don't understand. Mahony is still archbishop of Los Angeles, isn't he? So, what exactly did he mean, then, by saying I assume full responsibility? Did he put a letter of reprimand from himself to himself in the archdiocesan archives?

I'll tell you what it means: I assume full responsibility in this case means that nobody will take any real responsibility. I assume full responsibility: words. Just words.

Oned with the Blogosphere!

Today, I inaugurate The Blog from the Core.

It is Trinity Sunday, so in honor of the solemnity, here are selections from Ven. John Henry Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermons concerning the mystery:

• The Christian Mysteries
• The Gospel, a Trust Committed to Us
• The Mysteriousness of Our Present Being
• Faith without Demonstration
• The Mystery of the Holy Trinity
• Peace in Believing

That list was compiled by the indefatigable Bob Elder for his monumental Newman Reader.