A good wife and loving mother survived the 1968 cultural hurricane, but now prays alone

Daniel and Sidney Callahan

The Callahans attended the finest schools in the land. While carving out brilliant careers, they raised a large family an hour north of New York City.

Daniel was a pioneer of biomedical ethics, and was sometimes called the most influential Catholic layman of the 1960s. He evolved into an atheist who defended abortion rights.

The Second Vatican Council finished its work in late 1965. Its unintended message to millions of the faithful: everything is up for grabs. 

Here is a "cry of the heart" written a few years ago by Mrs. Callahan. The winds of 1968 jolted her, just as surely as Dorothy was upended in The Wizard of Oz:



Today alienated Catholics do not gently "lapse" or nostalgically "fall away," they decisively and definitively leave for good. Forget "once a Catholic, always a Catholic" or a "Come Home for Easter" campaign. Every poll shows the nonreligiously affiliated—now called "nones"—increasing in number. That number includes all my grown children. But it wasn’t always this way.

In 1967, my husband Dan and I, along with our five sons and one daughter (all born between 1955-65), could be found each Sunday at Mass. Everyone was baptized, the three oldest confirmed. I had been teaching in the CCD program for seven years. We were a full-court-press Catholic family, members of the Christian Family Movement (observe, judge, act), Catholic Worker enthusiasts, and eager advocates of Vatican II reforms. Dan was an editor of Commonweal and we both wrote for and participated in exciting Catholic intellectual circles. Forty-six years later, I sit alone in the same pew on Sundays, and have been doing so for decades. I remain a grateful Catholic convert, while everyone else in the family is long gone from the church.

I date 1968 as the onset of the cultural hurricane that beset our family and New York City suburb. One year we were a ’50s-style American family with suits, ties, and dancing lessons; the next we were battling countercultural chaos and hippie mayhem. The ’60s’ swirl of riots, protests, assassinations, promiscuity, drug use, and dropouts could not be held at bay. This produced predictable disasters. My children’s classmates died from drug overdoses, jumped out of windows on LSD, and got arrested for smoking pot in the woods. Quite a few were carted off to jail, rehab, and mental hospitals. The schools, police, church, and most middle-class families were not prepared for this youth revolt. Certainly, our ordinary and relatively conservative parish could not cope.

As each of our children got older they were captured in turn by the counterculture, stubbornly refusing to cut their hair, dress properly, work in school, or attend church.  One son, a devotee of Nietzsche, departed from our CCD program with a Nazi salute and a “Heil Hitler, I quit.” No more Catholic Family of the Year after that! I was deeply shamed by this out-of-control adolescent behavior, but I was even more frantic and fearful for their physical and mental survival. To this day that era’s walking wounded can be seen around town. Many never recovered. Thank God our children, like most others, came through alive, but that was only after years of struggle.

Our parental battle was to fight against the moral relativism and permissiveness of the youth culture. I still loathe Jimi Hendrix. Using every stratagem at our command, we urged dropouts to go back to school, others to stay in school, and all to stay away from addicted and aimless peers. We devised ways to expose our children to attractive young adult worlds and included them in our own work activities. Our affectionate family bonds were strengthened by frequent celebrations, trips, and happy vacations. But church was a lost cause. Since my husband’s faith had faded, he wasn’t worried over the religious defections of the children. In fact, he wanted all of us to leave the church when he did. Now he hardly remembers all the grief he gave me for staying, and those long-ago arguments about Catholicism have gradually evolved into a general détente. Mom is the designated believer in the family—and that is that. Let’s all just love, support, and be grateful for one another every day.

When it comes to Catholicism and my children, I have learned humility from parental failure. But I have also learned about hopefulness. Hopefulness, patience, and perseverance are now at the top of the list of the virtues I esteem. If death or permanent damage at an early age can be avoided, disasters can be turned around, rifts healed, and weaknesses overcome. Today my middle-aged children are happy, morally upstanding people. Our five grandchildren are blessed with super parents. Our children all love and help one another and seem devoted to their old parents.

Here, amidst the remains of the day, we who believe are confronted with the mystery of faith. Clearly, no one can answer God’s call for someone else. But social and cultural factors can play a part in nurturing faith. In hindsight, I can now see how crucially important Catholic peer groups are for faith development. In our town the educated professionals were mostly secular or Jewish, the Catholics mostly working-class people. Going through the excellent public schools, none of my children had a close Catholic friend or peer group that could support his or her faith. Did we choose the wrong town, the wrong parish, and the wrong schools?

Looking back I see that there was no structured way in our parish for my children to get what I had gotten in my intellectual journey to the Catholic faith. I always had access to the sophisticated historical, intellectual, and theological dimensions of the faith. I’ve always known exemplary, magnetically attractive Catholics who inspire me. With these wellsprings of truth and joy, the faith and the Sunday liturgy sing. But I can’t seem to communicate such religious experiences to my skeptical family and friends. For many of them the church remains a medieval, male-dominated, and authoritarian institution that’s focused on unintelligible rituals. Worse still, it is repressive, corrupt, and power-hungry. Needless to say, the horror of the sexual-abuse crisis has confirmed such anti-Catholic attitudes among many people.

Fortunately, despite their rejection of religion, my children have continued to develop in moral sense and sensibility. With the aid of providence, conscience and morality can still flourish outside religious communities. Reason, experience, and goodwill generate good people. Through trial and error persons discover for themselves that virtuous commitments to love and work do indeed lead to happiness. The Holy Spirit continues to transform the hearts and minds of believers and nones alike. Where love is, God is. As the gospel says, "A bruised reed he will not break and a smoldering wick he will not quench."

Jimi Hendrix died from drugs at 27

Religion and Geopolitics Review for April 14, 2018

By Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

WEEKLY BRIEF

THE STORM BEFORE THE CALM
In response to the use of chemical agents in Eastern Ghouta on April 7, 2018, President Trump ordered a one time attack on select Syrian targets in conjunction with Britain and France.
 "Marine Lt. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, said the April 13 nighttime airstrikes "took out the heart" of Assad's chemical weapons arsenal. He said 105 U.S. and allied missiles were fired, of which 66 were Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from aboard three U.S. Navy ships and one Navy submarine. U.S., British and French attack aircraft, including two U.S. Air Force B-1B strategic bombers, launched stealthy, long-range missiles from outside Syrian airspace."
  On April 12, Russians announced that rebels in the village of Douma were given safe passage and the Eastern Ghouta region would come under the full control of the Assad government. Russian troops were instrumental in the safe passage and separation of forces. This is a huge step toward the reassertion of governmental authority in Syria.
The US attacks were done in a manner that minimized civilian and Russian damage.  This attack will give President Trump breathing room from US neoconservatives, Israel, Saudi and British forces who want US troops to commit to regime change in Syria.  The rebel forces in the southwestern part of Syria seen in the map below are serving as a buffer between Israel and Syria. Israel will not want to see those areas of Syria return to Syria. The Golan Heights are essential but an added buffer is even better.  Israel's goals with Syria are much more bellicose and destabilizing than ours. Nor can we minimize the aversion that the British security establishment has against any new alliance between the US and Russia. When the Brits say "The WEST"  they meant the White English Speaking Twosome and whoever else will go along.
 The President has actually given himself some room to meet with the Russians. There was a punitive gesture while there was also US Russia cooperation (none dare call it collusion) which limited the interaction. We are closer to ending the Syrian Civil War than a week ago. The overwhelming fact in a news world that doesn't care for facts is that the only legitimate government of Syria is now in control of a region that has been in a state of rebellion since 2011.  Nationalists believe that America and Israel should be safe and secure within defensible borders. Nationalists should also be clear that Syria, Lebanon, and Iran are sovereign nations as well. They must be allowed to establish authority within their own borders and be secure from foreign attacks.          

 

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

GAUDETE ET EXSULTATE - THE POPE ON THE CALL TO HOLINESS: In this beautiful and poetic exhortation, Pope Francis reminds us there is a real devil but first he grounds the universal call to holiness in our shared life with the saints and martyrs who have gone before us. He acknowledges the hidden stream of holiness all around us and reminds us of mother and grandmother who while not perfect kept us on the path. Read this beautiful message. It seems the best manifestation of how Pope Francis wants to proclaim the Good News of Christ's resurrection and his continued presence on earth in the Eucharist and our fellow humans in need. He reminds us there is no " God without Christ; no Christ without the Church ; and no Church without the people."  The Catholic conservative talking class lent a tepid reception. They are to the Pope what CNN is to the President.

THE POPE'S EXTRAORDINARY APOLOGY ON CHILE ABUSE CHARGES AND HIS SHAMEFUL SUPPORT OF BISHOP BARROS
Raymond de Souza at National Catholic Register.

"CONFERENCE ON CONFUSION" CHANNELS  "THE VOICE OF THE FAITHFUL": Final statement from those speaking with their authority as the baptized and confirmed.

AT CHRISTMAS THE WHOLE WORLD JOINS US, BUT FOR EASTER THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH BEARS THE WITNESS: Michael Pakaluk on the apostolic character of the Easter season - a penetrating insight from the Catholic University professor. Chesterton said Christianity is an empirical religion based on a fact reported by credible witnesses. Materialism is an ideology that asserts as a dogma there are no supernatural beings and no-one can rise from the dead. The facts of the matter as reported are to be dismissed in deference to the dogma which must believed. .. Ideology rules out the empiric event. Which approach holds better to the principles of knowing we associate with the sciences? When light was observed to act as BOTH a particle and a wave, it was the old dogma not the observed fact that was discarded.

THE FEMINIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY: The problem not the solution says Rod Dreher at American Conservative.

II. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

INTERVIEW WITH MbS BY JEFFREY GOLDBERG: An interviewer who has heard of the Wahhabis - though the Crown Prince hadn't. Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic magazine is the best foreign policy interviewer in journalism. He is a standard Democratic party liberal but he is also a serious journalist.

HOW THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION MADE A DEAL WITH MUHAMMED BIN SALMAN: Excellent reporting - a believable and frightening story.

PRESIDENT TRUMP AND UAE: A very tiny base supports the young leaders of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The Israelis see them as all they have got. The US has many more options.

PRESIDENT TRUMP, SYRIA, AND THE GENERALS: Since his campaign President Trump has had a different take on Syria then the Republican and military establishment. They want a long term presence for US with goal of overthrowing President Assad. As nationalists we must learn that national sovereignty applies to more nations than our own. The legitimate state authority in Syria is the Assad government. Shall we ally with Saudi Arabia and Israel and overthrow Assad or give him back his country as ISIS is finally being removed? Pat Buchanan presents the crucial policy dispute.
Syria was bombed today (see above).

III. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

DAY OF DELUSION AT PENTAGON: A roundtable of female officers.

CARDINAL BURKE AND A PREDATOR BISHOP: IS EARLY RETIREMENT A SENTENCE? Homosexual clerics are safe with that prissy fellow they called "gay Ray" in his seminary years. The "scourge of Pope Francis", the "courageous defender of orthodoxy," Cardinal Ray Burke is unfortunately very much of the ilk of deposed Archbishop John Nienstedt of St Paul and well-fed capitalism guru Fr Robert Sirico of Acton Institute. Why Archbishop Apron of Guam was treated so politely by the Burke-led court has much more to do with the character of Cardinal Raymond Burke than the crimes of Anthony Apron (which are revolting). This story is just beginning. Cardinal Burke will be featured at the "Confusion in the Church" conference in Rome. He is all in on condemning the Pope on the "Hell interview". We had a somewhat different take.

T.H. WHITE AUTHOR OF THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING: “The Destiny of Man is to unite, not to divide. If you keep on dividing you end up as a collection of monkeys throwing nuts at each other out of separate trees.”

YADIER MOLINA STANDS UP FOR HIS MOMMA AND TEACHES AMERICA A LESSON ON LANGUAGE: St. Louis catcher Yadier Molina was surprised when Arizona manager Torey Lovullo came out to protest a strikeout and in arguing with the umpire looked at Molina and referred to him as a mother...r. Molina went after the Diamondback manager and in doing so had contact with the umpire. Sportswriters in this "no hit, no spank, no touch" era interviewed Molina on the possibility of his being fined for the "physical contact" with the umpire. Mr. Molina was much more focused and still angry about the "fighting words" which led to his anger. The umpire got between him and the object of his charge. Molina took the expression as a profound insult against his mother. Indeed his English is impeccable because the phrase is meant as an accusation of incest. It is a fighting insult. In the 1960's as the black civil rights movement became the black racial pride movement, the widespread use of that deeply transgressive and misogynist phrase became a badge of blackness. What a deep degradation of our language that the f-word became the ultimate utility player as an all purpose part of speech. That horrific phrase of "mf" once shocked. The abomination became commonplace. Words lost their meaning and the truth was slain again. God bless you, Mr. Molina. (The umpire said he understood he had placed himself between the men and he saw no reason to punish Molina. Lovullo apologized to Molina after the game.) A new series - Baseball as a Road to God.

BELGUIM AND EUTHANASIA: Belgium and Euthanasia - a very ugly tale of an ex-priest playing Dr Death. An excerpt:

In Belgium, euthanasia is embraced as an emblem of enlightenment and progress, a sign that the country has extricated itself from its Catholic, patriarchal roots. Distelmans, who was brought up as a Catholic and then rejected the Church, told me that his work is inspired by an aversion to all forms of paternalism. “Who am I to convince patients that they have to suffer longer than they want?” he said.

IV. ROUND THE WORLD - R&G ROUND UP

JORDAN PETERSON: A classical liberal is a better description than a modern conservative.

JACOB REES-MOGG OF THE UK: That peculiar blend of Catholic traditionalist and libertarian capitalist. An Acton Institute profile.

HUBERT HUMPHREY - A MORAL AND JOYOUS LIBERAL: A good reminder of the anti-Communist pro-civil rights "happy warrior" by James Traub.

THE CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND: Here is a good remembrance of that 1969 book about the destruction of souls in American universities.  It was an era in which the canonical works of western civilization were being abandoned and the demands of violence threatening radicals were being embraced. The other truth in this story is that the 1950's intellectual life of the atheist European influenced professors (like the author) was not strong enough to quell rebellious teens. The Great Books professors shorn of religious authority and national loyalties were easy pickings for black male students who came from tough neighborhoods and their white male counterparts who were looking for action. The author of the book, Allan Bloom (1930-1992) was a homosexual and non-believing Jewish University professor. He was a student of Leo Strauss and a friend of Saul Bellow (Bellow's book Ravelstein was based on Bloom.) Bloom described his intellectual life as "beginning with Freud and ending with Plato". He was admitted to academic life at age 15. Allan Bloom passed as a "conservative thinker" in those days of rage. He never used that label for himself.  His fame as a "conservative" reveals the poverty of intellectual life divorced from religious, military, and masculine sensibilities.

JOHN BRENNAN AND THE KILLER DRONES: There was once a time that the liberal media saw CIA head or "Deputy President" John Brennan as a highly dishonest purveyor of the drone warfare. This "kill from the air" program minimized US casualties but made a lot of enemies in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. It was first initiated as the feminist way of war under Madeline Albright and Bill Clinton bombing the Orthodox Christians of Serbia.  When anyone writes about the "war on males" of the feminist left they might recall the peculiar foreign policy version of the Obama/Brtennan strategy. All males 18 and over killed in drone strikes were counted as combatants.

VIKTOR ORBAN OF HUNGARY: ...is probably today's most important European national leader. In preparation for the Hungarian elections in April 2018, this Washington Post profile was meant to be a severe criticism. However, it is factual enough to show why Christians and nationalists would reelect him. (He and his nationalist party was reelected in a landslide).

CHRISTIAN CATEGORIES, GERMAN WORDS AND HEGEL'S GENIUS: From Hegel's Wikipedia page:
Of special importance is his concept of spirit (Geist: sometimes also translated as "mind") as the historical manifestation of the logical concept. 
{This is closely allied with the Christian notion of the Logos acting out Divine Providence.}

His notion of  "sublation" (Aufhebung: integration without elimination or reduction) of seemingly contradictory or opposing factors; examples include the apparent opposition between nature and freedom and between immanence and transcendence. 
{This is a very Catholic and sacramental sensibility. It applies to the most fundamental reality-- the three in one Trinity. Pope Francis employs this synthetic approach to many problems he associates with "Mary, the Untier of knots." }

Hegel has been seen in the 20th century as the originator of the thesis, antithesis, synthesis triad. That is a misreading of a phrase originating with Johann Gottlieb Fichte. "
That notion is actually  quite different than  Aufehebung.

Pope Francis and the reality of Hell: Communion or Oblivion

by David Pence

Moderns don't believe in Hell. For many, their disbelief is simply part of not believing in God. For others, the notion that God would allow perpetual torture for any human (a lot of humans if you read Scripture) seems a contradiction. "I've lived a careless life, sometimes done some pretty bad things. Torture me for a week. Waterboard me every minute of every day for a year, slowly burn me  for a century...but at some point... are you serious?" The perpetual torture story doesn't scare people into morality; it convinces them there is no Hell or it leads them to say only the Devil could be so sentenced. Thus another conclusion. Hell exists because it is in Scripture... but no human is there. That's a very popular position today. A more realistic depiction of the universe would help Christians better explain creation, contest, violence, and dissipation as fundamental spiritual and physical realities. In a similar way, a better description of Hell might bring back the Four Last Things to Christian consciousness.
                                             

Pope Francis has been very clear about the existence of Satan as a real and active Being. In his "Rejoice and be Glad" Apostolic Exhortation, he reminds us that the "deliver us from evil" phrase in the  Our Father is more accurately translated "deliver us from the Evil One". He  specifically corrects the false modern notion that Satan is an idea. "We should not think of the devil as a myth, a representation, a symbol, a figure of speech or an idea." The Evil One is a real living being acting in the world, prowling like a lion after souls.

 In a recent conversation with his friend Eugenio Scalfari, the Pope talked about Hell.  Scalfari is the 93-year-old leftist/atheist former editor of Italian newspaper The Republic. After his conversations with his friend, the Pope, Scalferi usually writes a essay about what they discussed and what he thinks he heard. As any doctor who has explained to a patient his new diagnosis of cancer or as any Christian who explains the world to an atheist, we know that what you say and what the other hears are not always quite direct quotes. Discussing Hell with an atheist is like talking color shades with a blind man; so if something is lost in translation, we shouldn't be surprised. Any honest report of the conversation  reveals clearly that the Pope does not argue "there is no hell" or "if there is a hell, it is empty".  Pope Francis is saying "Hell as perpetual torture" doesn't describe reality. Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict implied as much. In Revelation, Hell is described as "a lake of fire" which is "the second death." Thessalonians described an "everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord." The Old Testament is relentless in contrasting eternal life with God vs death away from Him. Eternal life is the ingathering of Israel, while hell is being left out. Christ said,"Do not fear he who kills the body but cannot kill the soul, but fear he who destroys soul and body in Gehenna." Isaiah asserts: "The transgressor and sinners will be crushed together.. and those who forsake the Lord will come to an end." Even Dante rebelled against perpetual fire. He froze Lucifer in ice, so no warmth could exude and no word could be spoken. Dante, too, painted isolation and the extinction of communication as the defining characteristic of Hell.

                                                             

The Pope knows well. There is Heaven, Hell, Death, and Judgment. Hell is eternal separation from God. It is unfortunately a path taken by many, especially those who do not believe it is a real option. He is proposing a believable Hell for the many. The Pope is a chemist. He has looked out in the cold entropic universe. He knows the dissipation of matter predominates overwhelmingly in the physical world. He knows too that diabolos is separation. Hell is not disappearing from our conversation. The Pope has punctured a Christian misconception (like the 6000 year old universe) which has kept people from more adequate Christian categories to explain realities like hell. As we understand the violence and isolation of outer space, won't that become a better description of Hell than down below in the fire of the inner earth? So called "communio theology" describes humanity's interpersonal incorporation in the Body of Christ as the key to understanding both the Kingdom of God and the reality of Heaven. This is not the language of a soul "going up to Heaven" but a person being incorporated in a love relationship called the State of Grace or the Body of Christ. Should it surprise us that Hell might be better described as isolation and dissipation?  "Going to Heaven" is the soul being drawn into a proper relation in the Body of Christ.  The Liturgy of the Eucharist was given us by Christ to be "heaven on earth".  Possibly Hell is better thought of as a loss of status (a proper social relationship) rather than a place. The mutual gravitational attraction  of love is loosened as our minds and hearts and actions turn farther and farther away from the reality of God.  Communion or Oblivion! Those are still the Heaven or Hell verdicts at the Last Judgment. The hollowed out shell of a creature no longer bound in personal relations-after the wrenching pain of that realization-then what? Can that gruesome creature ever feel beyond that numbing shock?  Would being erased from the Book of Life be one last mercy?

                                                     

There is in man a very deep fear of the infinite. It even has a name: Apeirophobia. Maybe deep in our emotions that is a hint. Like hatred of the devil, fear of hell is a very necessary and instructive emotion. Pope Francis is trying to teach his atheist friend about a fundamental reality. Hell is real; Judgment  is forever; it is irrevocable. The fact that this very necessary and quite unfinished conversation has been twisted into headlines "Pope Francis says there is no Hell" is more proof that Fake News isn't reserved for Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. As always the best way to understand Pope Francis is to listen to him in his own words. 

The People of God as Mankind, the Jews, and the Church. Reflections on 'Lumen Gentium' and Thomas White O.P.

by David Pence


Christianity divided against itself a thousand years ago in the Greek and Slavic countries of Eurasia, and then 500 years later in  German-speaking Western Europe. Over the last several centuries the Gospel form of social organization entered Asia, but not as deeply as the Western economic forces of Marxism and mercantilism. The divisions of Christianity bore bitter fruits in the 20th century.

From Germany, the heart of the Protestant Reformation, there came a pagan warrior hybrid of Hegel, Darwin, and Nietzsche. From Orthodox Russia, a westernized scientific materialism took shallow but terrible root and expelled the public expressions of Christianity in Czar and Patriarch. In Asia, a Shinto racial cult of the Japanese super-race employed western technology and drove out the white British, Dutch, and Russian imperialists while dividing China into new racial entities of a Greater East Asia co-Prosperity Sphere. The two countries who did the most to defeat the racial empires of Nazi Germany and Shinto Japan suffered the most casualties of the wars. Both Russia and China emerged as powerful military Communist states. The White Anglo-Saxon Protestant powers of the United States and the British Empire with the old white Dominions (Australia and New Zealand and Canada) joined a rebuilt Catholic Europe as an integrated union in a military-economic alliance called the West. They rebuilt and integrated their German and Japanese enemies in the alliance and declared a sometimes religious, sometimes economic, war against their previous allies -- the new Communist states of China and the Soviet Union.

In the midst of this bloody century, in the shadow of growing nuclear arsenals, the Catholic Church as the visible worldwide expression of Christianity assembled a Council. What could the Christians say to humanity after such devastating violence and evil ideology had risen within Christendom itself?

More than 2,400 Catholic bishops from 116 countries speaking more tongues than were present at the first Pentecost presented the good news again of Jesus Christ, Son of God -- the light to the nations. At the first Pentecost, Peter surrounded by his fellow apostles and filled with the Holy Spirit braved the streets of Jerusalem and spoke to the "Men of Judea." The King of the Jews and his sacral brotherhood went first to the Jews and proclaimed that the Scriptures had been fulfilled and the Jewish Messiah had come. He had been killed, had been raised from the dead and was establishing the Kingdom of God on earth as it was in heaven. Some 2,000 years later that apostolic brotherhood as Council Fathers would address their opening message (Oct 20, 1962) to all men. Previous Councils addressed the bishops of the Church or the faithful. This Council spoke to all men. It marked a crystallization for the Church in understanding her perfection and mission were tied to a reconstituted humanity.  
      
Thomas White, a Dominican priest, calls Vatican II (1962-1965) the third  council of modernity after Trent (1545-1563) and Vatican I (1869-1870).  In his article, The Tridentine Genius of Vatican Two, he proposes John Henry Newman as the best guide to understanding these "modern Councils."

Newman described the mysterious reality of the living Church: "Through time, the Church goes from being herself more intensively to being herself more fully, from stem to blossom. It is not merely that there are common ideas that persist, though this is true and especially important. It is also that there is a common dynamic development of the inner life of the Church in the world, a mysterious life spanning across ages, growing in a consistent fashion. Not human political art, but divine supernatural life, is the essence of Catholic Christianity."

The 16th-century Council of Trent

Father White described the Council of Trent asserting the visible unified nature of the Church against the centrifugal momentum of the Protestants: "The Church is as visible as the kingdom of France. The unity of the Christian religion is grounded in something very visible and particular: the seven sacraments. Water, oil, the Eucharist, spoken words of forgiveness, a society of ordained clerics, the grace of married love, these are the humble vehicles, encountered in concrete instances, that communicate to the world the grace of communion with God. In defining the seven sacraments as both signs and true causes of grace, the Council of Trent made everything very tangible: This sacramental economy is at the heart of the Christian life."

Three centuries later, Vatican I faced the totalizing claims of nation states conscripting their adult males into the powerful national armies and the new elevated status of citizen soldiers. Armed Political Community would reorganize Public Life. To answer Napoleon and his offspring, says White, "the Catholic Church insisted on the visible bond among all Christians, in visible communion with the pope, the center of all Christendom. His juridical authority to govern and unite the faithful is the living sign of a deeper vitality that transcends the secular state and the particularities of nationalist politics." The Church unites humanity over and above the totalizing ideologies of the modern nation-state. The Papal States fell, the papal claims grew.

Italy around the time of Christopher Columbus (born in Genoa c. 1450)

At Vatican II the Church met as a concrete and visible reality. There were three corporate bodies referred to as the People of God. The People of God in history and nature were first and foremost all of humanity under Adam and Eve, and then Noah and his sons. The Jews were then elected as a separated people. The Jews were forged into a new covenant by a series of separations that kept them holy for the laws of God and presence of God which they experienced in a unique way. The sacred always implies separation; and the election of the Jews was just such a setting aside. This necessary separation allowed the matrix within which the message of the angel could be delivered to the virgin. The third group called the People of God is the Church. She would play a more integrative role as both a template and scaffolding for humanity. If Noah's Ark had to keep the drowning out, the Church's Ark was throwing lifelines everywhere. Father White describes the Church as "the key to the mysterious working of grace in all of humanity." He then turns this around to make a statement about the human race: "This is the deeper mystery of the human race: the visible, sacramental ecclesiality of life in Christ… is the key to unlocking the inner secret at work in that world. At the heart of the world is the mystery of Christ and the Church."

The Second Vatican Council's document on the Church, Lumen Gentium, put it this way: "The Church is in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race."

[From White's essay] "Vatican II  universalizes or expands the comprehension of what is already present at Trent. The human person is called into a visible and invisible fellowship with God, within a unified ecclesial body...

"Trent taught that the infusion of faith, hope, and love together turn the human person freely and voluntarily away from sin and back toward God, all through the power of Christ.  Charity, however, is not only interior but lived out in the street... The inner core of this Catholic militancy is based on a deep understanding of the all-embracing character of religion. Since charity impels the human person toward the service of God in all things, it is not feasible to ask the religious person to quarantine his or her belief behind the walls of private life. Catholic charity bears fruit through public, Christian institutions.

"A plant under attack from disease will protect the roots and the stem and let the flowers go. These earlier configurations of Catholicism are like the root and the stem of modern Catholicism, wherein the life of the modern Church is expressed in concentrated fashion. But we cannot do without the Second Vatican Council. The stem and the root are meant to flower, and the flowering of the Church occurs through the Christian life of charity and the public, credible proclamation of the truth, the realities of her life developed and articulated at Vatican II. "...Both Divine authority and human rationality flowers at Vatican II, bringing to greater fullness what is in seed at Trent and stem at Vatican I."

The October 20, 1962 Opening Message of the Council was addressed by:

                                          The  Fathers of the Council to all men:
"This very councilor congress of ours so impressive in the diversity of races, nations, and languages -does it not bear witness to a community of brotherly love and shine as a visible sign of it? We are giving witness that all men are brothers, whatever their race or nation."
"We trust the Holy Spirit, call on our brethren, fellow Christians and all men of good will that through love, God's Kingdom on earth may may already shine out on earth in some fashion as a preview of God's eternal kingdom."  

The Council demonstrated an apostolic masculine love, a form of Charity which is the public manifestation of Christian culture. It is seen in every diocese as a bishop and his presbytery, every monastery with an abbot and his monks, every religious order with a Superior and the members. This is the Pope and his bishops. It is Christ and then Peter and the apostles. It should come as no surprise that this form of love is grounded in the natural order of humanity. These same brotherly bonds of affection are the masculine sinews of political fraternity and citizenship in nations under God.

                                                                 

The Church has been convoked by a Divine Authority as a sacramentally visible order. The nations (both explicitly Christian and those drawn into a larger matrix shaped by Christian forms) are being called into an ordered love to embrace God as Father and all men as brothers while rejecting and expelling the Evil One with his murder and deceit. The Church, indeed, is a great mystery -- it is a seed that can only be fully perfected in the ordered blossoming of the human race as a fraternity of nations protecting a universal Church. The original People of God were Adam and Eve and their descendants. After the great diabolical scattering, a new People of God were set apart to flower in Mary, Mother of the Church. Then the third People of God were given birth to reintegrate the sons of Adam in our final perfection as the Body of Christ.

Religion and Geopolitics Review for April 7, 2018

By Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

JESUS CHRIST IS RISEN TODAY - THE POPE'S MESSAGE: His message in the homily is about  the "surprise" of the good news. Outside of the liturgy, he delivered the yearly papal message to the nations in Urbi et Orbi.  (To the City and to the World).

POPE JOHN XXIII ON DIVINE PROVIDENCE; HEGEL ON NEW FORMS OF THE WORLD SPIRIT; THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH AND THE TERRITORIAL NATIONS AS THOSE FORMS: "In the present order of things, Divine Providence is leading us to a new order of human relations which... are directed toward the fulfillment of God's superior and inscrutable designs. And everything, even human differences, leads to the greater good of the Church."
                                                                                     Pope John XXIII opening Vatican II (1962).
“We stand at the gates of an important epoch, a time of ferment, when spirit moves forward in a leap, transcends its previous shape and takes on a new one.”
                                                                                      Georg Wilhelm Frederick Hegel (1770-1831)

The Church is a patriarchal fraternity. So are the nations from Russia to China to Japan. The fraternal form of national brotherhoods and a universal Church built on a male priesthood is the sign of the Cross in which Christ conquers in obedience to His Father. Out of the bloody racial and scientific empire ideologies of the 20th century the Church and the nations emerged as the enduring communal forms of prayer, protection, and production.

IN EUROPE, IS CHRISTIANITY AWAKENING? A different take.

CATHOLIC CAMPUS GROUP FOCUS: An article on their funders is a little breathless about "conservative big money" but informative.

NEW YORK TIMES CATHOLIC "CONSERVATIVE" ROSS DOUTHAT ON POPE FRANCIS: Michael Sean Winters for the nays.

Russ Douthat in Atlantic Monthly

II. CULTURE OF LIFE, A CULTURE OF PROTECTION

CATHOLIC SOLDIER PATRIOT IN FRANCE: These are the men who will reunite the Europe of Christian nations.

FEMINISM - FROM MAIDEN TO MATRON TO CRONE: A beautiful descriptive essay from a woman who left the world of Wicca-Unitarianism to enter the deeper reality of Christianity.

NORMAN BORLAUG: He saved more lives than any man of the 20th century. Do you know his story?

BISHOP-CARDINAL BLASE CUPICH ACTS WITH UNPRECEDENTED AUTHORITY AGAINST HOMOSEXUAL CHICAGO PRIESTS: Pro-immigrant Hispanic priest with ties to Democrats in high places is removed. Traditionalist hero Fr. Phillips removed for consensual adult male sexual relations. Kick the Bums Out: An AOA response.

FR Z AND HIS BIZARRE DEFENSE OF THE TRADITIONALIST PRIEST REMOVED FROM MINISTRY BY CARDINAL CUPICH IN CHICAGO: "However, Fr. Phillips has been removed as pastor of the parish and Superior of the Canons. He also had to leave the parish. An interim superior has been chosen from among the group itself. Given that Phillips seems not to have broken any civil laws the move against him seems pretty sudden and draconian, but I guess that’s what they do around there." [The Cardinal is accusing Fr. Phillips of an improper sexual relationship with an adult male. The priest denies it and Fr Z does not believe the charges.]

Fr Z apparently thinks it is "draconian" to prevent a priest from desecrating the Eucharist as he participates in abominations. The excuse apparently to the online blogger priest is that the abomination against nature and church law "hasn't broken civil laws." What makes this so understandably difficult for many faithful Catholics is that many have worshiped at this church in a reverent and beautiful manner. The purpose of Fr. Phillips' order and parish was TO RESTORE THE SACRED. What is very hard to understand is the possibility that the best way to restore the sacred may be to remove the priest who did so much good in bringing one kind of reverence back to the Mass.

TO PUNISH THE GUILTY IS TO NAME THEM AND SHAME THEM: The real culprits in the sin of abortion are not Democrats or politicians who do not vote according to pro-life requirements. The agents of evil  are the mothers who abort their children and doctors who desacralize their profession by playing the role of executioner. Let us get focused and get real.

The real culprit in the desacralization of the Eucharist is not the Democratic party politician who goes to Communion  or the one in hundred divorced and remarried ladies who sneak into Mass so her kids can get religion. It is the active homosexual and careerist priests who have polluted the sacral priesthood for their own ends. They have desacralized the Eucharist from the priest side of the altar. Maybe we should cast out some of those clerical log beams first and work on the parishioner splinters later. Let us get focused and get real.

The real culprits in terms of  foreign governments causing chaos in American political life are agents like Christopher Steele of British intelligence. Even if the guy is white and speaks English, he is working to promote the interests and policies of his nation not ours. The globalist English speaking "Five Eyes" intelligence community (Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, US)  are enemies of a US Russian alliance. They are not in any way operatives of Hillary Clinton--they are quite capable of acting on their own initiative and saw her as non threatening and malleable to their world view.
The other faction of foreign governments trying to bend US policy toward their interests are the  Likkud party of Israel and the Saudi royal family of Saudi Arabia. They are both against a US policy that would focus on eradicating the Wahhabi Sunni jihadists who planned and executed the 9/11 attack.  They (for different reasons) want the US to focus on the nation of Iran and the Shiites of Lebanon (Hezbollah) as the principal sources of terror in the Mideast. These are the foreigners who further their well thought out national policies by manipulating the status hungry careerists who pursue their own shallow aspirations amidst the US foreign policy and think tank swamps.  These different foreign governments want to prevent a US alliance with Russia which would redraw the Christian world map. They want us to go to war with Iran. These foreign goals are not our own. Let us get focused and get real.

The real culprits in dividing the American people from each other are those who work to prevent a multi-racial, cross-class brotherhood emerge as a fruit of our Christian heritage and national patriotism.  Patriarchy (the rule of God the Father) and fraternity (the territorial brotherhood of American men) are forms of love and union. The sexual revolution, the racist excess of black power movements, and the new careers in the diversity industry are the real enemies of love and community. Let us get focused and get real.

THE DIURNAL CYCLE IS FUNDAMENTAL: The sleep of the beloved.

C.S. LEWIS NOT A TAME LION: Jerry Salyer takes on the cosmopolitan right and pro-life feminists in his invigorating defense of C.S. Lewis' "right wing provincial views" on the sexes and patriotism.

ROBERT NISBET - THE QUEST FOR COMMUNITY: An early critic of the tendency of modern liberal democracy to break the bonds of community. Here is an excellent review of his seminal work. Some selected quotes from the review:

..the history of the Western world since at least the Renaissance has been dominated by an unceasing battle between traditionalism and modernism; the former is most often associated with such values as “community, moral authority, hierarchy, and the sacred” and the latter with “individualism, equality, moral release, and rationalist techniques of organization and power”;

...he sees the desiccation of community, the decline of authority, the devaluation of hierarchy, and the avoidance of the sacred by the overemphasis, and the often distorted emphasis, on the victorious values of modernism “By community,” Nisbet writes, “I mean something that goes far beyond mere local community. The word . . . encompasses all forms of relationship which are characterized by a high degree of personal intimacy, emotional depth, moral commitment, social cohesion, and continuity in time.” Community involves the whole man. It endures. It “achieves its fulfillment in a submergence of individual will that is not possible in unions of mere convenience or rational assent.” It is at the opposite pole from the ad hoc committee.

Tonnies(a sociologist) typology of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft there is the characterization of Gemeinschaft as the closely knit, organic, custom-oriented form of communal living that “roughly corresponds” to traditional society, and the characterization of Gesellschaft as “a special type of human relationship: one characterized by a high degree of individualism, impersonality, contractualism, and proceeding from volition or sheer interest rather than from the complex of affective states, habits, and traditions that underlies Gemeinschaft” that approximates modern society. Tonnies wonders over the fact that so few see the connection between the advance of democracy and progress, led by natural law and the universalization of rights, and the decay of the family and of other traditional associations of life.

Nisbet describes the strong concern of still another major figure in sociology with the influence and the possibilities of community. In Emille Durkheim, the community is prior to the individual in that it is the communal that shapes the individual’s reason. Thus the community inevitably has a powerful influence, and truly an unbreakable hold, on the individual. This influence is most convincingly demonstrated by Durkheim in his famous study of suicide. Periods of social decay and atomization bring on increased suicides, according to Durkheim. The chief forms of suicide encouraged by communal disintegration Durkheim calls “egoistic suicide” and “anomic suicide.” The first form is associated with the decline of communal life to the point that it no longer gives the individual ego sufficient support. Closely related to egoistic suicide in its connection with social disintegration is “anomic suicide” which is “caused by the sudden dislocation of normative systems, the breakdown of values by which one may have lived for a lifetime, or the conflict between ends desired and abilities to achieve them.”

The Renaissance faith in man, the Protestant spirit in religion, the Rationalist trust in reason, unmitigated by the influences of authority, community, and tradition, had largely destroyed the sense of security and belonging the individual once had had. And, as Nisbet recalls, “in almost all of Dostoevsky’s novels we learn that the greatest of all vices is to claim spiritual and moral autonomy and to cast off the ties that bind man to his fellows.”

The emergence of the territorial nation state has replaced other deeper forms of community. However ...the origins of the State in the early relationships of warrior-chiefs and their followers in France, England. This has developed from a primarily military arrangement to its current gigantic condition through its progressively taking over more and more functions once carried out on the local level by individuals and small agencies. “The conflict,” he writes, “between central political government and the authorities of guild, village, community, class, and religious body has been, of all the conflicts in history, the most fateful.”

Robert Nisbet would appreciate the more recent attacks on expressive individualism as the dominant ideology of the Modern West. (See AOA review of Deneen on Liberalism) It is not clear how he would treat the rise of nationalism as a communitarian response to the globalism/individualism nexus. We would argue that just as a huge, billion-member Catholic Church can be lived out in a face-to-face parish, so the territorial American nation state is expressed by asserting that original military bond of warriors under a leader as the essential political bond. The local policing function of the city or town as well as the protective institutions of the states are the local forms where the national protective pact is lived out. That bond runs wide and deep precisely because it has been lived out is so many State and local forms.

III. THE NATIONS R&G ROUND UP

GLOSSY MAGAZINE ON THE SAVIOR KING HITS US NEWSSTANDS: Just in time for MbS visit. Pumping up the 32-year old Saudi Prince in a hurry.

ITALY, THEIR ELECTION AND CATHOLIC IDENTITY: Good analysis from First Things.

WHO IS HUMA ABEDIN? Maybe she is a more important lady than Stormy Daniels. Did the Saudis have a special relationship with the Clintons? The Muslim World League and Abedin family business are close. No problem, the Saudis are our allies.

LESSON FROM IRAQ: Matt Purple of American Conservative - a short useful reflection.

COMMUNISM: ..is a Germanic western idea that overwhelmed Russia and China in the name of scientific modernity promising to replace their "ancient and failed traditions" of Orthodox Christianity and Confucianism. When a Russian official with the Putin government was asked if they would  stop trying to influence foreign elections, he replied, "Will the West promise not to send anymore German philosophers to influence our form of government?"

WORLD WAR TWO: ..was a war in which "Germany was largely defeated by Russia and Japan by China". Both lost millions of citizens and fought against their invaders while organizing their armies and government under the new ideology of scientific materialism. After the war the United States rebuilt Germany and Japan. We went to war against the new Communist States. Both Russia and China have repudiated the materialist ideology of Marxism.  The Chinese have retained the Communist Party as its administrative and governing apparatus. The United States is organizing alliances against both nations as dominant  regional powers. We do this in the name of a real politique trying to prevent regional hegemony.   There is a Christian tradition in American foreign policy  seeking a global order based on the common Fatherhood of God and Brotherhood of Men. We once waved such a banner when we turned against our former allies and fought them as atheist Communists.