Church

Exhortation “Amoris laetitia” to be released April 8

Today, the Vatican issued the following press release:

Accredited journalists are informed that on Friday 8 April 2016 at 11.30 a.m., in the Aula Giovanni Paolo II of the Holy See Press Office, a Press Conference will be held for the presentation of the post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation of the Holy Father Francis, “Amoris Laetitia”, on love in the family.

The panel will be composed of:

– Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, general secretary of the Synod of Bishops;

– Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, O.P., archbishop of Vienna;

– The married couple Professor Francesco Miano, lecturer in moral philosophy at the University of Rome at Tor Vergata, and Professor Giuseppina De Simone in Miano, lecturer in philosophy at the Theological Faculty of Southern Italy in Naples.

A simultaneous translation service will be available in Italian, English and Spanish.

* * *

The Press Conference can be seen via live streaming (audio-video) on the site: http://player.rv.va (Vatican Player, Vatican Radio) where it will subsequently remain available on demand.

* * *

The Apostolic Exhortation “Amoris laetitia” is to be considered under embargo until 12.00 p.m. on Friday, 8 April 2016.

The text of the Apostolic Exhortation in Italian, French, English, German, Spanish and Portuguese (in paper and/or digital format) will be available to accredited journalists from 8.00 a.m. on Friday 8 April 2016.

[00485-EN.01]

(Emphases in original.)

Veni, Sponsa Christi

Mother Angelica, who founded, in addition to several religious orders, EWTN, died on Easter, March 27, after suffering the aftereffects of a stroke for nearly fifteen years. Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J., has a remembrance at America. He concludes:

The history of Catholicism in the United States will need to include a section, if not a chapter, on Mother Angelica. Hardly any other woman has had so much influence, except Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. St. John Paul II once said, “Mother Angelica—she is very strong woman.” No physical pain, opposition from inside or outside the church, no overwhelming odds or threats stopped that strong woman in love with Jesus. Following her troubles with cardinals and bishops, St. John Paul personally sent her a monstrance to mark the end of the threats of interdict and other conflicts with the Roman Curia. He knew her strength came from her love of Jesus and he gave a gift to encourage the Eucharistic adoration that nourished and strengthened her. May she rest in peace.

(Emphasis supplied.) Her obituary at the National Catholic Register, itself an offshoot of EWTN, tells her life story in great detail. Remembrances have poured in from around the world.

It is far too soon to encapsulate Mother Angelica’s legacy, other than to say that she influenced almost every aspect of the American Church. Indeed, there are aspects of the modern American Church that would be almost unthinkable without Mother Angelica’s enormous, indefatigable labors.

Hunwicke on Tissier’s biography of Lefebvre

Fr. John Hunwicke has a very lengthy, very interesting post, ostensibly recommending Bishop Tissier’s definitive life of Marcel Lefebvre, and arriving at some broader reflections. (It is worth noting that the Holy Father is reputed to be a fan of Tissier’s book, having read it twice, according to reports. One wonders whether the Holy Father’s evident sympathy for the SSPX is rooted in sympathy for its founder.) A selection:

But is it true that Marcel Lefebvre was faced with a situation of grave disorder? I think we can avoid just loudly shouting at each other about our own individual subjective judgements; instead we can simply consider objective, Magisterial  decisions. Summorum Pontificum confirmed juridically that the Latin Church had lived for some four decades under the dominion of … yes … a lie. The Vetus Ordo had not been lawfully prohibited. Much persecution of devout priests and layfolk that took place during those decades is therefore now … officially … seen to have been vis sine lege. For this so long to have been so true with regard to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which lies at the heart of the Church’s life, argues a profound illness deep within the Latin Church. And that Big Lie was reinforced by multitudes of Little Lies … that the Council mandated reordered Sanctuaries … that the Council mandated exclusive use of the vernacular …

So, I suggest, we can read Bishop Tissier’s book as a narrative of how a good, but very often puzzled, man coped with the incomprehensible. And we can do this to our own benefit. Many Catholics find our present situation incomprehensible. As in the situations which Lefebvre faced, some Catholics may naturally feel inclined to act as though the rule-book does still apply (and so to treat the Church’s current office-holders with the same obsequium as if we were still in the pontificate of S Pius X); on the other hand, others may discern the dysfunctions and ask their consciences what God expects of them by way of resistance, as many did during the Arian crisis and the Great Western Schism.

(Formatting in original.) Read the whole thing there.

Surrexit Christus spes mea!

Happy Easter to You and Yours from Semiduplex.

Victimæ paschali laudes
immolent Christiani.

Agnus redemit oves.
Christus innocens Patri
reconciliavit
peccatores.

Mors et vita duello
conflixere mirando.
dux vitæ mortuus
regnat vivus.

“Dic nobis, Maria,
quid vidisti in via?”
“Sepulchrum Christi viventis,
et gloriam vidi resurgentis,

“Angelicos testes,
sudarium et vestes.
Surrexit Christus spes mea;
praecedet suos in Galilaea.”

[…]

Scimus Christum surrexisse
a mortuis vere;
tu nobis, victor rex, miserere!

(Wipo of Burgundy’s Easter sequence “Victimæ paschali laudes,” 11th c., has survived nine hundred years of liturgical reforms, beginning with Pius V’s Tridentine reforms and concluding most recently with the retranslation of the Roman Missal under Benedict XVI.)

Good Friday and the Annunciation

Today, March 25, is Good Friday. It is also the Annunciation. This concurrence has long been held to be deeply significant, for obvious reasons. It last occurred in 2005, as St. John Paul was suffering tremendously in full view of the world, and the calendars show the next such concurrence in 2157. This connection between the Passion and Death of Our Lord and the Annunciation has deep, deep roots. Father Raymond De Souza explains,

“Astonishingly, the starting point for dating the birth of Christ was March 25th,” wrote Cardinal Ratzinger. “The decisive factor was the connection of creation and cross, of creation and Christ’s conception. These dates brought the cosmos into the picture.”

What is the connection between creation, cross and Christ’s conception?

“Jewish tradition gave the date of March 25 to Abraham’s sacrifice,” explained Cardinal Ratzinger. “This day was also regarded as the day of creation, the day when God’s word decreed: ‘Let there be light.’ It was also considered, very early on, as the day of Christ’s death and eventually as the day of his conception. The mysterious words in Revelation 13:8 about the ‘Lamb slain from the beginning of the world’ could also perhaps be interpreted in the same way. … These cosmic images enabled Christians to see, in an unprecedented way, the world-embracing meaning of Christ.”

So drawing upon March 25 as the traditional Jewish date of creation and Abraham’s sacrifice, the first Good Friday — which varies by date, according to the lunar cycle — was believed by early Christians to be March 25. From that intuition, the same date was assigned to the Incarnation — the Solemnity of the Annunciation. That is why, in the Roman Martyrology, both the Annunciation and the feast of the Good Thief are assigned to March 25. Feast days for saints are usually assigned on the day of death, the day of the Good Thief’s crucifixion. Because that is the solemn feast of the Annunciation, the Good Thief’s feast day is never observed — one might say that it is “stolen” from him every year. But it expresses liturgically that March 25 is the date of both the Annunciation and the Crucifixion, thereby bringing together in a unique way the merciful redemption and its Marian dimension.

(Emphasis supplied.)

At A Clerk of Oxford, the author explains in interesting detail the fascination the concurrence of Good Friday with the Annunciation held for medieval and Elizabethan authors. He also explains some of the deep roots of this connection:

This year Good Friday falls on Lady Day, the feast of the Annunciation. This is a rare occurrence and a special one, because it means that for once the day falls on its ‘true’ date: in patristic and medieval tradition, March 25 was considered to be the historical date of the Crucifixion. It happens only a handful of times in a century, and won’t occur again until 2157.

These days the church deals with such occasions by transferring the feast of the Annunciation to another day, but traditionally the conjunction of the two dates was considered to be both deliberate and profoundly meaningful. The date of the feast of the Annunciation was chosen to match the supposed historical date of the Crucifixion, as deduced from the Gospels, in order to underline the idea that Christ came into the world on the same day that he left it: his life formed a perfect circle. March 25 was both the first and the last day of his earthly life, the beginning and the completion of his work on earth. The idea goes back at least to the third century, and Augustine explained it in this way:

He is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since.

This day was not only a conjunction of man-made calendars but also a meeting-place of solar, lunar, and natural cycles: both events were understood to have happened in the spring, when life returns to the earth, and at the vernal equinox, once the days begin to grow longer than the nights and light triumphs over the power of darkness.

(Emphasis supplied and hyperlink omitted.) Read the whole thing there.

This concurrence is a wonderful event, to say the least, and it provides a very concrete opportunity to meditate, even if briefly, upon the entire mystery of the Incarnation itself.

“The document’s key word is ‘integration.'”

At Rorate Caeli, there is a translation of a new article by Roberto de Mattei. It begins:

In this Holy Week of 2016, the sentiments and pain of Christ’s Passion being renewed is mingled with deep apprehension about the distressing situation the Church is in. The greatest worries regard the impending Apostolic Post-Synod Exhortation Pope Francis signed on March 19th and which will be published just after Easter. According to the Vatican journalist Luigi Accattoli “rumors foresee a text of no striking doctrinal or juridical affirmations, but rather will include many innovative practical choices regarding marriage preparation and couples in irregular situations: not only for the divorced and remarried but also for cohabiters, marriages with a believer and non-believer and for those only civilly-married.” (Corriere della Sera, March 20th 2016)

What will these “innovative practices” be? The document’s key word is “integration”. Those who are in an irregular situation will be “integrated” into the community: they could become catechists, liturgical animators, godparents for Baptism and Confirmation, best men/bridesmaids at weddings and so on; all activities the traditional praxis of the Church to this day has forbidden them owing to their state of public sin. Yet, Alberto Melloni writes in “La Repubblica”, March 19th “on Communion for the divorced and remarried no novelties are expected. Seeing as the problem is to legitimize a praxis (…), not establish it theologically”. The document does not anticipate a “general rule” of access to the Eucharist, but would allow confessors and individual bishops to permit admission to the Sacraments “case by case”. The novelty, Melloni explains, is based on facts not on words, “by giving responsibility and restoring effective powers to bishops, marking, as Cardinal Kasper said, a real “revolution”.

(Emphasis supplied.) Read the whole thing there.

Pentin assesses papal appointments three years in

We note, briefly, that Edward Pentin has, at the National Catholic Register, kicked off a three-part examination of the Holy Father’s various appointments. The first installment deals primarily with Francis’s diocesan appointments throughout the world. A brief selection:

Father Goyret thinks these choices are a consequence of placing at the center what the Pope considers overriding pastoral concerns, rather than safeguarding doctrine. The Pope, he believes, is “neither conservative nor progressive,” stressing he doesn’t like to use such labels for a pope. Nor is he “against traditional theology or doctrine,” he said. “He just skips these categories and wants pastoral and missionary bishops.”

After Benedict XVI paid close attention to sound doctrine, Francis is trying, at some risk, to “find a different way because he believes that evangelization has to change,” Father Goyret said. “He says we’ve been worried too much about sound doctrine, but that does not mean he goes against sound doctrine.”

But even if the Pope’s appointments may be doctrinally solid, the change of emphasis is having other consequences. A senior Church source in Italy told the Register on condition of anonymity that although recent appointments in the country have been “good parish priests,” they don’t have the “personal gravity to be bishop.”

He said many of the new Italian bishops are “great at the fatherly gestures, hugging, kissing babies, but they are not teachers of the faith, they’re not prepared for that.” He added that the bishop has to be “a strong and courageous pastor and be able to govern the Church,” and that failing to appoint those “willing to make hard decisions makes the flock ill provided for.”

(Emphasis supplied.) Read the whole thing there.

We will be following this series with interest, especially when Pentin turns his eye toward the Curial appointments.

 

 

The triumph of the Cross

Fr. John Hunwicke has a fascinating post about certain philological aspects of Venantius’s hymn, Pange lingua gloriosi, not to be confused with Aquinas’s hymn, Pange lingua gloriosi. (There is, as you might imagine, a fascinating article in the old Catholic Encyclopedia about both hymns.) Pange lingua is in trochaic tetrameter catalectic meter. And it is about that meter that Fr. Hunwicke makes this point, after explaining some of the low, low origins of the meter, which is especially important during Holy Week:

So how did this frivolous, indeed indecent, metre come to be used for what we might think of as the stateliest and most dogma-laden hymns of our Latin tradition? One possibility: Think Roman Squaddies. Think Roman Squaddies in a happy mood, particularly after a great victory; they have returned to Rome; the Senate has voted a Triumph; and so the troops, heavy with gold and alcohol, are singing in the Triumph Procession as they process behind their general. You may be surprised by this; but they are singing obscene songs insulting the general, probably to avert from him divine jealousy. And Suetonius preserves for us three lines in just this metre which were sung during C Iulius Caesar’s Gallic triumph (interesting that, just as with the Christian hymnographers, three lines seem to make up a stanza):
Gallias Caesar subegit, Nicomedes Caesarem:
Ecce Caesar nunc triumphat qui subegit Gallias;
Nicomedes non triumphat qui subegit Caesarem.

Which is best left untranslated; well, anyway, I am going to leave it untranslated.

(Emphasis supplied.)

In other words, Venantius’s meter is the exact same meter that Caesar’s troops used at his Gallic triumph. This fact cannot have been lost on Venantius when he composed Pange lingua, just as it could not have been lost on Prudentius when he composed the hymn upon which Pange lingua was based. This is, of course, one of those fantastic bits of Romanitas that have been preserved in the Church.

Read the whole thing there.

Worshippers of the machine

Sam Kriss has a delightful takedown of Neil deGrasse Tyson and I F—–g Love Science*. He makes this point:

A decent name for this tendency, for stars and spaceships recast as the instruments of a joyless and pedantic class spite, would be I F—-g Love Science. ‘Science’ here has very little to do with the scientific method itself; it means ontological physicalism, not believing in our Lord Jesus Christ, hating the spectrally stupid, and, more than anything, pretty pictures of nebulae and tree frogs. ‘Science’ comes to metonymically refer to the natural world, the object of science; it’s like describing a crime as ‘the police,’ or the ocean as ‘drinking.’ What ‘I F—–g Love Science’ actually means is ‘I F—–g Love Existing Conditions.’ But because the word ‘science’ still pings about between the limits of a discourse that depends on the exclusion of alternate modes of knowledge, the natural world of I F—–g Love Science is presented as being essentially a series of factual statements. There are no things, there are only truths. The fact that the earth is a sphere is vast and ponderous: you stand on its grinding surface, as that fact carries you on its heavy plod around our nearest star. The fact that the forms of organic life emerge through Darwinian evolution is fractal and distributed, so that little fragments of that fact will bark at you in the street or dart chirping overhead. The fact that there is no God, being a negative statement, is invisible, but you know for certain that it’s out there.

(Emphasis supplied and profanity redacted.) Read the whole thing, of course.

Kriss makes several incisive points in the paragraph we quoted above. First, he is one-hundred-percent correct in identifying a strongly classist element to pop-scientism (perhaps there’s a better phrase for the phenomenon, but for our purposes here, this is the phrase we will use). We admit that this connection had not necessarily occurred to us (perhaps this is a function of some bias on our part), but once Kriss says it, its obvious. Of course there’s a classist element to pop-scientism. We’ll come back to that in a minute or two. Second, he is also correct in noting that the understanding of science in pop-scientism is hugely reductive. For pop-scientism, science is not a way of investigating the world—which is all the scientific method can credibly, though not always coherently, offer—science is a way of being in the world. As Kriss notes, the adherent to pop-scientism, reduces the world to a collection of facts, which process already asks too much of the scientific method, and then declares that the world consists only of those facts.

In reading Kriss’s critique, the Holy Father’s recent social encyclical, Laudato si’, came to mind (as it often does in this context). It seems to us that Laudato si’ contains an extended discussion and critique of the basic assumptions of pop-scientism. Or, to put it another way, pop-scientism seems to be an expression of the mentality that the Holy Father critiques in Laudato si’. Indeed, it seems as though the Holy Father had this phenomenon clearly in mind when he discussed the technocratic, anthropocentric mentality that worships technology—and science, for that matter—as a mode of existing in and in relation to the world. And his critique absolutely knocks the stuffing out of it.  Recall one of our favorite passages from Laudato si’:

The basic problem goes even deeper: it is the way that humanity has taken up technology and its development according to an undifferentiated and one-dimensional paradigm. This paradigm exalts the concept of a subject who, using logical and rational procedures, progressively approaches and gains control over an external object. This subject makes every effort to establish the scientific and experimental method, which in itself is already a technique of possession, mastery and transformation. It is as if the subject were to find itself in the presence of something formless, completely open to manipulation. Men and women have constantly intervened in nature, but for a long time this meant being in tune with and respecting the possibilities offered by the things themselves. It was a matter of receiving what nature itself allowed, as if from its own hand. Now, by contrast, we are the ones to lay our hands on things, attempting to extract everything possible from them while frequently ignoring or forgetting the reality in front of us. Human beings and material objects no longer extend a friendly hand to one another; the relationship has become confrontational. This has made it easy to accept the idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology. It is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit. It is the false notion that “an infinite quantity of energy and resources are available, that it is possible to renew them quickly, and that the negative effects of the exploitation of the natural order can be easily absorbed”.

It can be said that many problems of today’s world stem from the tendency, at times unconscious, to make the method and aims of science and technology an epistemological paradigm which shapes the lives of individuals and the workings of society. The effects of imposing this model on reality as a whole, human and social, are seen in the deterioration of the environment, but this is just one sign of a reductionism which affects every aspect of human and social life. We have to accept that technological products are not neutral, for they create a framework which ends up conditioning lifestyles and shaping social possibilities along the lines dictated by the interests of certain powerful groups. Decisions which may seem purely instrumental are in reality decisions about the kind of society we want to build.

(Emphasis supplied and footnotes and formatting omitted.)  Pop-scientism is just another expression of this process of mastery over objects; indeed, it is the purest expression of this process. For the person enamored of pop-scientism, nothing could be simpler than to approach an external object and gain mastery over it through the scientific method. Why? Because it is presumed that the scientific method is the only way of approaching something. Better still is when someone else has approached an object through the scientific method. Because of the irrefutable presumption in favor of “science,” pop-scientism simply uses the scientific work of others to reduce external objects to facts, as Kriss noted.

The Holy Father also quite perceptively notes that this anthropocentric, technocratic outlook becomes hermetic and ultimately self-contained:

The specialization which belongs to technology makes it difficult to see the larger picture. The fragmentation of knowledge proves helpful for concrete applications, and yet it often leads to a loss of appreciation for the whole, for the relationships between things, and for the broader horizon, which then becomes irrelevant. This very fact makes it hard to find adequate ways of solving the more complex problems of today’s world, particularly those regarding the environment and the poor; these problems cannot be dealt with from a single perspective or from a single set of interests. A science which would offer solutions to the great issues would necessarily have to take into account the data generated by other fields of knowledge, including philosophy and social ethics; but this is a difficult habit to acquire today. Nor are there genuine ethical horizons to which one can appeal. Life gradually becomes a surrender to situations conditioned by technology, itself viewed as the principal key to the meaning of existence. In the concrete situation confronting us, there are a number of symptoms which point to what is wrong, such as environmental degradation, anxiety, a loss of the purpose of life and of community living. Once more we see that “realities are more important than ideas”.

(Emphasis supplied.) Kriss, it seems, hints toward this myopic specialization in the snippet we quoted above. The pictures of nebulae and tree frogs to which he refers—if humorously—represent in a real sense the fragmentation of knowledge. For pop-scientism, there is to delve into the mysteries of creation, either here on earth or in the universe at large. The broader horizon is, as the Holy Father says, irrelevant. The picture, the back-of-the-envelope summary of this experiment or that project is enough. More than enough, really. It does not matter whether there are connections between tree frogs and nebulae. Still less does it matter whether or not other fields of study could draw connections between the tree frog and the nebula. (We are reminded of a profoundly silly cartoon from the “humor” website The Oatmeal likening various fields of study to searching for a black cat in a dark room.)

And what of class spite? Consider this bit from Laudato si’:

The idea of promoting a different cultural paradigm and employing technology as a mere instrument is nowadays inconceivable. The technological paradigm has become so dominant that it would be difficult to do without its resources and even more difficult to utilize them without being dominated by their internal logic. It has become countercultural to choose a lifestyle whose goals are even partly independent of technology, of its costs and its power to globalize and make us all the same. Technology tends to absorb everything into its ironclad logic, and those who are surrounded with technology “know full well that it moves forward in the final analysis neither for profit nor for the well-being of the human race”, that “in the most radical sense of the term power is its motive – a lordship over all”. As a result, “man seizes hold of the naked elements of both nature and human nature”. Our capacity to make decisions, a more genuine freedom and the space for each one’s alternative creativity are diminished.

(Emphasis supplied.) In a real sense, pop-scientism draws a line in the sand and calls it science. On the right side of the line are people who accept fundamentally the claim that science works endlessly for the progress of humanity. Every capsule summary of research represents a major advancement. Every new gadget, brought about by science, is another step toward some better future. And people who refuse to accept all of the consequences of pop-scientism, even if they ultimately accept most of the claims of mainstream scientists today, are put squarely on the other side of the line. Pop-scientism therefore creates a twofold path to power. On one hand, it offers a cheap and easy way to achieve dominance over external objects and reduce them to mere facts. On the other hand, it offers a cheap and easy way for its adherents to achieve dominance over the countercultural reactionaries who are not as taken with it. This is Kriss’s class spite, we think: wealthy, educated Americans can look down on poorer, less-educated Americans because they have not accepted the basic truths of pop-science. And the condescension is merited, because, as every child knows, science brings progress.

Thus, we see in Laudato si’, three clear aspects of pop-scientism explained in clear, critical terms. If a Catholic wants to push back against the tide of Facebook memes and other notes in the social-media chorus of pop-scientism, as, indeed, a Catholic may well want to do, Laudato si’ is a good place to start.

* NOTE: Given the general purpose of Semiduplex, it never occurred to us that we’d need a profanity policy. However, the issue has come up a bit in recent days. While we see the need for occasional earthy language, it is our view that we ought not to use it or reprint it here unredacted, given the potential for causing scandal or serving as a near occasion of sin for you, dear reader.  

The Christian response to March Madness

At First Things, Valparaiso University professor Gilbert Meilaender argues that colleges serious about their Christian identity ought to skip NCAA tournament play on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. This argument is, in and of itself, not especially interesting. However, Meilaender makes an interesting connection:

Fast forward to March 2015: The state of Indiana passed its Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), in the midst of that year’s March Madness, offered ­obeisance to the great gods of inclusivity and diversity, issuing not-very-veiled threats to remove its headquarters and future events from Indianapolis. Nor was this the first time the NCAA had used its considerable corporate heft to try to shape public opinion on social issues.

Look forward now to March 2016: The tournament’s first full weekend of play, in which sixty-four teams are reduced to (the sweet) sixteen, will take place from Thursday, March 17, to Sunday, March 20. The second weekend of play (March 24–27) will reduce the Sweet Sixteen first to the Elite Eight and then to the Final Four, who will have to wait yet another week before the tourney is finished and a champion crowned. True fans immerse themselves in the entire tourney, of course, but they may have different opinions about which weekend is most exciting. The second full weekend happens to be my own favorite. By that time the remaining sixteen teams are in large part the cream of the crop, and the competition is intense.

But there is a case to be made this year for suggesting that Christians should pass on this weekend—and perhaps on the entire 2016 tourney. Their God, after all, is not the NCAA’s god. And the dates for the games on the second full weekend should concern us. They are March 24 (Maundy Thursday), March 25 (Good Friday), March 26 (Holy Saturday), March 27 (Easter). Could it be that other things—things more earthshaking than March Madness—should occupy our attention in that span of days?

(Emphasis supplied.) We will have to think on this connection a little bit, since it seems that Meilaender’s point is that at least in part because the NCAA weighed into Indiana’s RFRA debate, Christians ought to recognize the holiness of Holy Week by refraining from tournament play.

To that end, we have a couple of observations. First of all, Indiana’s RFRA—indeed, all RFRA-type statutes—are in some regard incompatible with the rights of Christ and Christ’s Church. The State does not have a duty to protect all religions; it has a duty to protect and promote the true religion. Now, Aquinas tells us that permitting other religions’ to persist may well be justifiable, particularly if the evils arising from suppressing the religion outstrip the evils created by the religion itself. For example, no one would suggest that suppressing a benign sect such as Zen Buddhism ought to be a particularly high priority for a rightly ordered state.

But such toleration does not require, nor could it require, adopting a general position that all religion no matter what is supposed to be protected and favored by the state. Such a position would be the inadmissible error of indifferentism. Last summer, The Josias made available a translation of Pius IX’s allocution, Maxima quidem, in which that great pope said,

In addition, they dare to deny any activity of God in men and in the world. And they rashly assert that human reason, without any reference to God, is the only judge of truth and falsehood, good and evil, and that human reason is a law unto itself, and suffices by its own natural power for the care of the good of persons and peoples. But since they perversely dare to derive all truths of religion from the inborn force of human reason, they assign to man a certain basic right, from which he can think and speak about religion as he likes, and give such honor and worship to God as he finds more agreeable to himself.

(Emphasis supplied.) It was this sharp rebuke in Maxima quidem that formed the basis of one of Pius’s definitive condemnations of indifferentism in Syllabus (#15). Thus, while we agree with Meilaender that the NCAA took a stance incompatible with orthodox Christianity, we cannot agree that RFRA is a permissible expression of orthodox Christianity. Indeed, it is not. It is steeped in error.

And this leads us to our second point: does the NCAA’s stance on RFRA actually have anything to do with whether or not Christian schools’ teams should participate in the games scheduled during Holy Week? Let us assume that the NCAA opposed RFRA for the right reason (i.e., that it is a product of erroneous indifferentism) or, less fantastically, that the NCAA supported RFRA; would it make playing basketball on Good Friday any less unseemly?