Reflections

Some remarks on Kaveny and Neuhaus

A sharp young Catholic of our acquaintance has pointed us to an interesting exchange over the past couple of weeks. At Commonweal, Cathleen Kaveny argued that the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus sowed division in the Church by articulating a vision of conservative Catholics collaborating with evangelicals and Jews on points of agreement for political reasons. In Kaveny’s opinion, Neuhaus led conservative Catholics away from progressive Catholics for political reasons, and this fundamental rift has become more obvious since the Holy Father marked out a course in his reign not wholly consonant with the political views of these conservative Catholics. In other words, political expediency drew Neuhaus and his circle away from Catholics and toward protestants and Jews, laying the groundwork for the debates we see in the Church today.

This argument was, well, received as well as one would expect. At First Things, R.R. Reno responded with a thorough rebuttal, making the essential point that, in some respects, conservative Catholics do, in fact, have more in common with conservative protestants and Jews than they do with their progressive Catholic brethren. Robert George responded, a little haughtily, and suggested that Caveny was running at Neuhaus only because she could do so without fear of hearing back from Neuhaus. And, at the National Catholic Reporter, Michael Sean Winters has responded a couple of times, first by sort of coming to the point that there’s division in the Church because the conservatives are no longer in good odor in Rome, and later by suggesting that progressive Catholics also made political deals that weren’t good for the unity of the Church. (Although how Neuhaus could have sown dissent is unclear, since the conservative faction of the Church was itself in good odor in Rome from October 1978 to March 2013. But we’ll pass over the anachronism.)

Read through the posts when you get a free minute. It’s practically a who’s-who of Catholic thought leaders.

For our part, it is really unclear what Kaveny thinks her argument is, since it seems to us that she has argued, more or less, that Neuhaus agreed with people he didn’t really agree with because they took similar political positions, and he turned his back on people he really agreed with because they took different political positions. But—and this is the problem—she compares apples and oranges to get there. As for her points of commonality between conservative and progressive Catholics, she looks toward the broadest possible points of agreement:

Does honoring Jesus as the Son of God count as a commonality? Like their conservative counterparts, progressive Roman Catholics acknowledge the divinity of Jesus Christ, and find the interpretive key to the Hebrew Bible in the New Testament. Orthodox Jews do not—indeed, must not—treat Jesus as the Messiah foretold in the Book of Isaiah. It would be blasphemous for them to do so.

Does living in the grace imparted by the sacraments count as a commonality? Both progressive and conservative Roman Catholics believe that God’s grace is channeled through the seven sacraments. Many Evangelical Protestants do not have the same view of grace or the sacraments; they often view the Eucharist as a memorial of a past event, not a way of being present with Christ here and now.

(Some of these things are exceptionally weird ways of expressing these commonalities, but we will pass over that quickly and assume that she means essentially what an orthodox Catholic would mean by these expressions.) But as for the points of agreement between conservative Catholics and conservative protestants and Jews, she looks to some very specific issues to find hidden disagreements.

Neuhaus’s defenders might say that he was concerned with commonalities among conservative Christians and Jews on hot-button issues: the ordination of women, contraception, same-sex marriage, and abortion.  But how deep are those commonalities? Many Evangelical Protestants, for example, believe that women should never exercise authority over men, especially but not exclusively in an ecclesiastical context. But the Catholic Church officially and vehemently denies that its exclusion of women from the priesthood is based on their inferiority to men—and points to the centuries old tradition of powerful, independent women religious as evidence. Orthodox Jews may oppose abortion—but not because they believe the fetus is an equally protectable human being. Under Jewish law, full protection for a new human person is triggered at birth. But in Catholic circles debates about abortion are usually about when a human life comes into being biologically.

In other words, Kaveny’s argument is that conservative and progressive Catholics agree on the broadest possible issues about Christ and his Church, but conservative Catholics reach the same conclusions as conservative protestants and Jews for different reasons. (So what?) She does not contend—and could not contend—that all progressive Catholics are on the same page as conservative Catholics about women’s ordination, contraception, marriage, and abortion. They are manifestly not in many instances. That they might agree about broad issues does not change those disagreements. (However, those disagreements cast real doubt on whether the broad areas of consensus are as they appear, even though we said we’d pass over that issue briefly.) So, Neuhaus collaborated, according to Kaveny, with people he agreed with on specific issues instead of people he agreed with on the broadest issues.

Apples and oranges. (Like we said.) And, accordingly, R.R. Reno has the better argument when he notes that a doctrinally conservative Catholic may, in fact, have more in common, especially in terms of outlook and approach, with a doctrinally conservative protestant or Jew, notwithstanding some serious differences, than he does with a progressive Catholic, who, often as not, holds Modernist and indifferentist views.

But the reason why Kaveny has to compare apples and oranges is because she won’t make the (easier) argument that the traditional social teaching of the Church is actually more consistent with some things that progressives are fond of. For example, both Leo XIII in Rerum novarum and Pius XI in Quadragesimo anno express real reservations about economic liberalism and unrestrained capitalism. And Pius XII affirmed in the strongest language—particularly in La solennità della Pentecoste, his 1941 radio address commemorating Rerum novarum, and Exsul Familia Nazarethana, his lengthy apostolic constitution on migrants—the right of individuals to migrate between countries and the positive effects of such migration. Certainly economic justice and immigration have consistently been traditional concerns of the Church and progressives in the Church tend to be more in tune with the Church’s traditional teaching on these points.

In fact, this point has come up a few times in the context of the Holy Father’s contemporary social teaching. Rorate Caeli ran a piece, almost two years ago, noting that the Holy Father was not far from the traditional social teaching of the Church. (Whether “New Catholic” would make the same argument after Laudato si’ is not clear to us.) And Pater Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., has argued that Laudato si’ contains echoes of Pius IX’s monumental Quanta cura and its annexed Syllabus errorum in the Holy Father’s devastating critique of the individualist-technocratic rot at the heart of modernity. (He later pointed out that other authors made the same connection between Laudato si’ and Syllabus, though they didn’t understand what praise they were heaping on the encyclical and may even have thought that comparisons to Syllabus were negative.) But we digress.

In other words, Kaveny could have argued that Neuhaus ought to have cooperated with socially progressive Catholics because their views (generally) are actually fairly close to what the Church has traditionally taught about income inequality, poorly restrained markets, and the social obligations of capital. (But even this argument is essentially the seamless-garment argument articulated by John Cardinal Dearden, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, and other progressive Catholics, which has not met with uniform success. Or any success.) But she didn’t. Instead, she argued that, because conservative and progressive Catholics have some broad things in common, Neuhaus and the First Things set shouldn’t have cooperated with protestants and Jews on specific points that they have common with conservative Catholics (even if they have different reasons for having them in common).

And that sounds political.

Everything stays down where it’s wounded

The Holy Father today (yesterday?) in Rome gave a brief catechesis at his general audience on the subject of mercy and justice. It is in Italian, but excerpts have been translated by the VIS. (You can obtain a machine translation of the whole thing from the usual sources.) One bit in particular might catch the attention of those who like to read tea leaves:

The Bible, he explained, proposes a different form of justice, in which the victim invites the guilty party to convert, helping him to understand the harm he has done and appealing to his conscience. “In this way, recognising his blame, he can open up to the forgiveness that the injured party offers. … This is the way of resolving conflicts within families, in relations between spouses and between parents and children, in which the injured party loves the guilty and does not wish to lose the bond between them. It is certainly a difficult path: it demands that the victim be disposed to forgive and wishes for the salvation and the good of the perpetrator of the damage. But only in this way can justice triumph, as if the guilty party acknowledges the harm he has done and ceases to do so, the evil no longer exists and the unjust becomes just, as he has been forgiven and helped to find the way of good“.

“God treats us sinners, in the same way. He continually offers us His forgiveness, He helps us to welcome Him and to be aware of our evil so as to free ourselves of it. God does not seek our condemnation, only our salvation. God does not wish to condemn anyone! … The Lord of Mercy wishes to save everyone. … The problem is letting Him enter into our heart. All the words of the prophets are an impassioned and love-filled plea for our conversion”.

(Emphasis supplied.)

“Octogesima adveniens” and socialism after the Iowa Democratic caucus

We have so far refrained from discussing secular politics. (We have not refrained from discussing Church politics, though perhaps we ought to have done.) As of the time of writing, CNN reported that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State (and New York Senator) Hillary Clinton tied in the Iowa caucuses, 50-50. Later in the day, CNN reported that Clinton beat Sanders. That’s consistent with the reporting of the Des Moines Register that Clinton beat Sanders, 49.86% to 49.57%. The New York Times reported early today essentially a tie, though that became a narrow victory as the day wore on. In any event, Sanders did very well in Iowa, considering Clinton’s commitment to winning the caucus and the fact that, at one point, she led him in polls by nearly fifty points. And Sanders will likely do well in New Hampshire, barring some unforeseen shift in that state’s electorate. Recalling that Sanders is a self-professed democratic socialist, it seems like a good time to mention again Paul VI’s Octogesima adveniens, which we have discussed previously at some length.

We mention this largely because Sanders’s economic policies seem at least not inconsistent with some of the traditional teachings of the Church on economic matters. (Notwithstanding the Actonistas’ insistence that the free market is de fide tenenda, if not de fide credenda, and notwithstanding some of the frankly hysterical criticism of the Holy Father for suggesting that the rising tide of capitalism has not yet lifted most boats, much less all boats.) Consequently, there are many sharp Catholics of our acquaintance, very traditionally minded, who are at least open to supporting Sanders. Now, there is another very serious issue with supporting any Democratic candidate (who is likely to receive any serious support from Democratic primary voters), but the resolution of that issue is generally fairly complex and we will accordingly pass over it quickly. Given Sanders’ self-identification as a democratic socialist (whatever that means, and we’ll come back to that in a minute), it is appropriate to consider the extent to which Catholics can support a self-identified democratic socialist.

And that is the question that Paul VI addresses briefly in Octogesima adveniens. In some sense, as we may have noted previously, Octogesima adveniens was Paul’s attempt to walk back some of the more extreme interpretations of Populorum progressio, his encyclical commemorating Rerum novarum. (Octogesima adveniens was not, in point of fact, an encyclical letter.) At any rate, he discussed the extent to which Christians may cooperate with “socialist currents”:

Some Christians are today attracted by socialist currents and their various developments. They try to recognize therein a certain number of aspirations which they carry within themselves in the name of their faith. They feel that they are part of that historical current and wish to play a part within it. Now this historical current takes on, under the same name, different forms according to different continents and cultures, even if it drew its inspiration, and still does in many cases, from ideologies incompatible with faith. Careful judgment is called for. Too often Christians attracted by socialism tend to idealize it in terms which, apart from anything else, are very general: a will for justice, solidarity and equality. They refuse to recognize the limitations of the historical socialist movements, which remain conditioned by the ideologies from which they originated. Distinctions must be made to guide concrete choices between the various levels of expression of socialism: a generous aspiration and a seeking for a more just society, historical movements with a political organization and aim, and an ideology which claims to give a complete and self-sufficient picture of man. Nevertheless, these distinctions must not lead one to consider such levels as completely separate and independent. The concrete link which, according to circumstances, exists between them must be clearly marked out. This insight will enable Christians to see the degree of commitment possible along these lines, while safeguarding the values, especially those of liberty, responsibility and openness to the spiritual, which guarantee the integral development of man.

As we have noted before, none of this necessarily forbids a Catholic from cooperating with socialist currents. However, such cooperation involves a serious, intelligent consideration of the “various levels of expression of socialism,” recalling, of course, that one cannot really separate the broad-stroke, solidarity-and-equality stuff from “an ideology which claims to give a complete and self-sufficient picture of man.” Thus, a Catholic interested in supporting Sanders must consider the level of expression of socialism that Sanders himself articulates. And it is unclear to us that Sanders’s notion of socialism extends beyond “a generous aspiration and a seeking for a more just society,” though a society that is still terrifyingly unjust to some people. (Recall that the right to private property is not absolute, whatever else it may be.)

However, due to broader currents in American politics, it is awfully difficult to get an understanding of how Sanders conceives of his socialism. To put it another way, Sanders does not seem especially interested in running as an ideological socialist. (Even when it would be to his benefit to do so: for example, a Marxist would have a more coherent answer to the nagging attacks from Sanders’s “left” on race relations.) And without that ideological element, it is hard for a Catholic to get a good read on just how far Sanders’s democratic socialism runs. And without that good read, it is hard to conduct the careful analysis called for by Octogesima adveniens.

In other words, it is possible for a Catholic to come, in good conscience, to the conclusion that Sanders can be supported due to his economic positions. (Other positions he has marked out are, of course, a different story.) However, given the difficulty in having a discussion about socialism, the process of coming to that conclusion remains murky. But that Catholics are forced into sort of complicated situations like this at all is to be deplored. We recall, of course, the great Divini Redemptoris of Pius XI, in which Papa Ratti, the great prophet of the twentieth century, noted,

Procul dubio asseverari potest Ecclesiam, acque ac divinum eius auctorem, « bene faciendo » aetatem suam traducere. Neque socialistarum, neque communistarum errores usquequaque serperent, si Ecclesiae praecepta maternaque eius adhortamenta populorum moderatores non detrectassent; qui quidem, cum Liberalismi ac Laicismi, ut aiunt, principia ac normas complexi essent, ad istiusmodi placita atque fallacias, publicae rei ordinationem temperationemque ita instruxere, ut, quamvis primo oculorum obtutu aliquid magnum se effecisse viderentur, evanescere tamen pedetemptim finita ab se consilia ac proposita cernerent; quemadmodum quidquid in uno illo non consistit primario lapide, qui Christus est, necessario oportet miserrime collabi.

(Emphasis supplied.) We give the Latin here at least in part because the English translation of this passage is really—weirdly—unsatisfactory:

It may be said in all truth that the Church, like Christ, goes through the centuries doing good to all. There would be today neither Socialism nor Communism if the rulers of the nations had not scorned the teachings and maternal warnings of the Church. On the bases of liberalism and laicism they wished to build other social edifices which, powerful and imposing as they seemed at first, all too soon revealed the weakness of their foundations, and today are crumbling one after another before our eyes, as everything must crumble that is not grounded on the one corner stone which is Christ Jesus.

(Emphasis supplied.)

Indeed. 

St. Agnes’s Second Feast

If you recited lauds according to the 1960 Breviary the day before yesterday, as we did, then you made a commemoration of St. Agnes “secundo.” You may have found it slightly perplexing, as we did. Yesterday, at New Liturgical Movement, Gregory DiPippo had a (typically) erudite explanation of this “second” feast of St. Agnes. He explains,

In liturgical books, the formal name of the feast is “Sanctae Agnetis secundo”, which literally means “(the feast) of St Agnes for the second time.” This title is found on the calendar of the Tridentine Missal and Breviary, as also seven centuries earlier in the Gregorian Sacramentary. The single Matins lesson in the Breviary of St Pius V tells us that after her death, Agnes appeared first to her parents to console them, and then to the Emperor Constantine’s daughter Constantia, who suffered from an incurable sore, while she was praying at her grave, exhorting Constantia to trust in Christ and receive baptism. Having done this and been healed, Constantia later built a basilica in the Saint’s honor.

The original purpose of the second feast, however, is not at all clear; theories abound, but evidence is lacking. In the Wurzburg lectionary, the oldest of the Roman Rite, January 21 is “natale S. Agnae de passione – the birth (into heaven) of Agnes, of her passion,”, while January 28 is simply “de natali.” One theory is that the actual day of her death was the 28th, and the 21st originally commemorated the beginning of her sufferings, starting with her trial and condemnation. However, we would then expect something similar for other prominent martyrs, particularly St Lawrence, whose passion also extended over a variety of days and events. The next oldest lectionary, Codex Murbach, doesn’t mention the second feast at all, nor does the Lectionary of Alcuin. In the Gregorian Sacramentary, the titles are simply “natale” and “natale…secundo.”

(Emphasis supplied.) He heightens this liturgical mystery by rejecting the idea that St. Agnes Second constitutes a primitive octave, which, to be honest, was our first guess upon seeing it in the book:

The most common theory, the least convincing but probably the most influential, is that the second feast represents a primitive form of octave, a theory which I find problematic on several grounds. St Agnes was the most prominent female martyr of ancient Rome, very much on a par with other great Roman martyrs like Ss Peter and Paul and St Lawrence. Pope Honorius I built her current church in the 7th century to replace an earlier one that had fallen into ruin. (It has subsequently undergone numerous restorations.) The original, however, was one of the basilicas built by the Emperor Constantine in the very early years of the Peace of the Church, along with those of the two Apostles, Lawrence, and the cathedral of Rome at the Lateran. The early manuscripts mentioned above all refer to the “octaves” of Ss Peter and Paul and St Lawrence; it seems very odd that the octave of such a prominent Saint as Agnes, and hers alone, should be called instead a “feast … for the second time.”

(Emphasis supplied.) Read the whole thing there and come to your own conclusions.

For our part, we love feasts like St. Agnes’s two, St. Cecilia’s (unfortunately impeded last year by the 24th and Last Sunday after Pentecost, Fifth Sunday of November), and St. Lawrence’s, and tomorrow’s feast of St. Martina. These saints’ feasts retain special features even into the 1960 Breviary, preserving in some way the early Roman Christians’ admiration for these saints. In other words, the special aspects of these feasts serve as a connection between believers today and their forebears in the early Roman Church. They also serve as a connection to Rome itself; that is, everyone celebrates the feasts of these distinctively Roman saints. (Or they did until fairly recently.) The Church of Rome is just that.

————

By the way, in case you’re playing along at home, here is the commemoration of St. Agnes’s second feast in the Breviary of 1960.

Et fit commemoratio S. Agnetis Virg. et Mart. secundo:

Ant. Ecce, quod concupivi, iam video: quod speravi, iam teneo: ipsi sum iuncta in cælis, quem in terris posita, tota devotione dilexi.

V. Diffusa est gratia in labiis tuis.
R. Propterea benedixit te Deus in æternum.

Oratio

Deus, qui nos annua beatæ Agnetis Virginis et Martyris tuæ solemnitate lætificas: da, quæsumus; ut, quam veneramur officio, etiam piæ conversationis sequamur exemplo. Per Dominum Nostrum…

Septuagesima

Father John Hunwicke has a nice piece on Septuagesima, in which he notes,

I incline to believe that S Gregory has left us his own explanation of his liturgical creation, Septuagesima, in the passage from his writings of which the old Breviary gives us a portion in the Third Nocturn (Hom 19 in Evang.; the full text of which is handily available in PL 76 coll 1153sqq.). Speaking, according to the manuscripts, in the basilica of S Lawrence one Septuagesima morning, he explains the different times of the day referred to in the Sunday’s EF Gospel (the parable of the Husbandman hiring labourers for his vineyard): “The morning of the world was from Adam to Noah; the third hour, Noah to Abraham; Sixth, Abraham to Moses; Ninth, Moses to the Lord’s Advent; eleventh, from the Lord’s Advent to the end of the world”.

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

One of our very, very few objections to the liturgical reforms of Bl. Paul VI (up there with the four-week psalter) is how smoothly everything seems to hum along, particularly in Tempus Per Annum. We just saw it, in fact. Christmas ends with the Baptism of Our Lord, and then you skate along in Tempus Per Annum until Feria IV Cinerum, and then Lent (and Eastertide and Pentecost). Then, after Pentecost, you’re right back where you left off on Fat Tuesday, skating along until Christ the King and Advent.

The nice thing, then, about Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima, preserved as they are in the Forma Extraordinaria, is the sense that they create that things might not be so well-oiled as they look in the Forma Ordinaria. The penitential progress toward Easter may not be so squared off, glass smooth, and air conditioned as all that. You’ve got to have your head right to appreciate what is going on. And the Gesimas help with that. As Father Hunwicke notes, “During Lent, of which Septuagesima is the preamble, we repent of the Fall and the mark which it has left on each successive age of human history and on each one of us.” We get the range of the Fall and its destructive effects during the Gesimas, so we can better repent during Lent, and so we can better prepare ourselves for the sorrow of Holy Week and the unrestrained joy of Easter.

Just think what tomorrow will do

On January 22, Archbishop Arthur Roche, secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship, had a lengthy commentary in L’Osservatore Romano on the decree In Missa in Cena Domini, the official document that permitted women to be included in the rite of the washing of the feet on Maundy Thursday. Archbishop Roche, formerly bishop of Leeds in England, offers an interesting historical discussion of the rite, from its origins as a separate ceremony to its inclusion in 1955 as part of the Maundy Thursday Mass, including the gradual development of the requirement of 12 viri selecti. One statement in his commentary leapt out at us,

La lavanda dei piedi non è obbligatoria nella Missa in cena Domini. Sono i pastori a valutarne la convenienza, secondo circostanze e ragioni pastorali, in modo che non diventi quasi automatica o artificiale, priva di significato e ridotta a elemento scenico. Neppure deve diventare così importante da catalizzare tutta l’attenzione della messa nella cena del Signore, celebrata nel «giorno santissimo nel quale Gesù Cristo nostro Signore fu consegnato alla morte per noi» (Communicantes proprio del Canone romano); nelle indicazioni per l’omelia si ricorda la peculiarità di questa messa, commemorativa dell’istituzione dell’eucaristia, dell’ordine sacerdotale e del comandamento nuovo dell’amore fraterno suprema legge per tutti e verso tutti nella Chiesa.

(Emphases added.) In the partial translation at CatholicCulture.org, this is rendered,

“The washing of feet is not mandatory,” he added, and pastors should “evaluate its suitability” in their circumstances. The rite should not be “automatic or artificial, deprived of meaning,” nor should it become “so important that all the attention of the Mass” is focused on it.

There you have it, from no less a personage than the Number Two Man at the Congregation for Divine Worship: the washing of feet is not obligatory. In addition to this, one must remember that the Missa in Cena Domini is hugely important and significant, and it is so whether or not a single foot is washed; the Mass commemorates both the institution of the Eucharist and the institution of the priesthood of the New Testament. These are important things by themselves. It also opens the door to the grave solemnity of Good Friday. For this reason, Archbishop Roche suggests, the washing of feet should not become the central event in the Missa in Cena Domini. But the washing of feet has value of its own, and that value ought not to be degraded by turning the rite into an automatic chore that Father has to get through to get back to the “real part” of the Mass. And if a priest thinks that there’s a risk of either happening, then he should feel free to omit the rite altogether.

It seems to us that, whatever the washing of feet now symbolizes (we would have said that the Holy Father has chosen to emphasize the humble service aspect over the ritual cleansing as part of the institution of the priesthood, but Fr. John Hunwicke disagrees with that), it is better emphasized outside of the Missa in Cena Domini. Some pastors will likely choose to omit the rite, but we don’t see why it needs to go that far. We have written—and written and written—about the importance of the Divine Office, particularly public celebrations of the Divine Office. Perhaps a priest could arrange for a celebration of Tenebrae to be followed immediately by the washing of feet. (With breakfast following in the parish hall afterward.) Or he could arrange for the celebration of vespers in the afternoon, followed by the washing of feet. (With a light supper following in the parish hall afterward to fortify Father and others for the evening’s liturgy.) One could get fairly creative about these things and come up with services that manage to point up whatever it is that the washing of feet now symbolizes. (Mercy? Humble service?)

One can speculate as to why Pius XII felt compelled to move the washing of feet rite to the Missa in Cena Domini (we suspect that his advisers wanted to get laity inside the communion rail as part of a broader project), but there’s no reason, really, why that has to be the case.

It falls like tears, like wasted years

At Rorate Caeli, there is a very lengthy, very interesting piece about the probability of a unified date for Easter. The author’s assessment: nil. In short, the Church of Rome has long insisted upon the Gregorian calendar for the date for Easter, and the Orthodox churches have long insisted on the Julian calendar. While there have been favorable noises from both the Holy Father and the Ecumenical Patriarch about a unified date for Easter, the Moscow Patriarchate, which does not take orders from the Ecumenical Patriarch, to put it mildly, prefers the retention of the status quo. And if Moscow doesn’t go along, the proposal will be dead in the water in Constantinople—dead in the Bosphorus, as it were. Read the whole thing there.

We add briefly that the talk of a unified Easter seemed to come out of nowhere, and that the mentions we saw were awfully enthusiastic. While ecumenical dialogue is one of the great loves of the Church after Vatican II, it should be noted that very few results are actually achieved. Certainly, enthusiastic joint statements, lengthy joint declarations about shared beliefs and stumbling blocks to full communion, and the like are regularly produced, but, as far as results in the ut unum sint sense, well, that’s another story. And the Rorate Caeli piece shows why: ecumenical dialogue involves not only the Church and her doctrine but also the other institution and its doctrine. In this case, the Orthodox have a long, complex history about their calendar preferences. And a surge of ecumenical enthusiasm is not likely to overcome those preferences.

I was shocked to find what was allowed

Recently, a sharp Catholic woman of our acquaintance inquired whether St. Alphonsus Liguori had held that a parent with the care of children was dispensed from the obligation to hear Mass. Others noted that the great Doctor Zelantissimus addresses the subject in Theologia Moralis III.3.3.5 where he holds, essentially, that mothers who do not have a safe place to leave their infants or who cannot bring their children to church without causing a notable disturbance, are excused from attending Mass. Of course, if there’s a parent with whom the children may safely be left while the other attends Mass, one imagines that the relaxation tightens back up pretty quickly.

This subject has been on our mind over the past few days, given the exchange between Tommy Tighe at Aleteia and Steve Skojec at One Peter Five. Tighe makes the points, not wholly novel, that (1) he knows his kids are messy and distracting and (2) the woman who rebuked him was being un-Christian and thereby missed an opportunity to improve the state of her own soul by rising above the distraction. Or something. He also suggested that, well, he didn’t know what was in that woman’s life that led her to rebuke him. (Maybe she’s infertile! Maybe they’re each other’s crosses to bear! Or something.) Skojec, perhaps predictably, was having none of this, and responded point by point to Tighe. He also updated his post, moderating the snark a little bit, but standing by the substance of his argument. But the thrust of the discussion is this: how do parents deal with potentially loud, usually messy children at Church? (Especially in Forma Extraordinaria parishes, where there are certain norms of conduct that are usually a little more stringent than what’s going on at the “contemporary choir” Mass.)

This is not the first go-round on this debate, either, though this may be the first time that Tighe and Skojec have been the disputants. (We don’t know, though. We are more familiar with Skojec’s commentary on other issues in the Church and we had not heard of Tighe before now. Perhaps we ought to pay more attention.)

And the easy answer, of course, would be to point to St. Alphonsus and say, well, if you can’t leave the children at home safely and if you’re pretty sure that they’re going to cause a major disturbance, then you are excused from hearing Mass. Of course, parents who can watch children in shifts can surely safely leave their children at home. But, as the Holy Father and the Synod of Bishops have reminded us repeatedly in recent months, there are all manner of families that have suffered injuries and no longer have both parents living under the same roof. And, even then, the inquiry is not as straightforward as one might first imagine. That is, whether one can more safely leave children at home than in Alphonsus’s time and whether children are less likely to raise a ruckus than in Alphonsus’s time are open questions—though we suspect, with respect to the latter question, that toddlers’ ruckuses are probably pretty comparable across the years.

But, we wonder to what extent do we owe it to each other to help out? (Cf. Gal. 5:14.) When our acquaintance raised the issue, our first thought was that it would be nice if suitable men and women without children offered to help out. (Suitability is obviously an important criterion in all this, and that cannot be understated.) For example, if a couple without children at home habitually attended the vigil Mass on Saturday night, it would be awfully nice of them to offer to watch their neighbor’s toddler while he heard Mass on Sunday morning. Or vice versa, if an unmarried woman without children habitually heard Mass on Sunday mornings but rarely made plans for Saturday evenings that would conflict with the vigil Mass, she might offer to watch the neighbor’s children while their mother heard the vigil Mass. There are any number of permutations to the arrangement. Such an offer may well obtain graces for the men and women who help out or serve as penitential offerings, in addition to potentially obtaining the Jubilee Indulgence attached by the Holy Father to all the physical and corporal works of mercy during the Year of Mercy.

But more than that, it seems to us that this sort of cooperative childcare arrangement, which, for all we know, happens in almost every parish in Christendom (except, seemingly, our own), is exactly the sort of thing that helps build the sort of community that Rod Dreher has talked about at staggering length in recent years. You know, the so-called Benedict Option. While we disagree with Dreher about some of the particulars of his idea, not the least of which is the fact that you need a priest willing to play along, we certainly do not dispute the basic contention that Christians need to form tighter-knit communities to deal effectively with an increasingly hostile culture. This goes double for traditionally minded Catholics who are usually, to quote Magazine’s 1978 single, shot by both sides. But it seems to us that a sense that the world has moved into another, more aggressive phase in its doomed campaign against Christ and Christ’s Church is probably not the sort of thing that really knits a community together. But a tradition of charity, especially when it takes the form of looking after each other’s children, seems like the sort of thing that just might do the trick.

Of course, justice, whether it’s distributive or commutative, consists of giving each person his due. (E.g., ST IIa IIae q.58 a.1 obj. 1 & co.; q.61 a.2 co.) By those lights, maybe the arrangement we have discussed above isn’t justice—that is, maybe we don’t owe each other this sort of cooperation, though certainly one could find precedents for it throughout the life of the Church and the life of Christendom before things went off the rails—but if it’s charity, it seems like the sort of charity that seems like it would serve the common good of the community tremendously. And, even if one isn’t interested in forming a tight-knit community of Christians in any given setting, it’s the sort of charity that may well make common life a little smoother. Instead of getting shirty with the parent of a rambunctious brood or making comments in a stage whisper about those ill-bred children, it may well be good for the life of the parish to offer politely to sit with the children at home next week while the parent hears Mass. (And to provide one’s references!)

 

Should I be fractured by your lack of devotion?

We have read at Rorate Caeli—and elsewhere, we think—that the next Synod of Bishops is to take up the question of married Latin-rite clergy. (Among other questions.) Rorate tells us that Sandro Magister reports that a dearth of priests in some parts of South America, and Germany’s age-old obsession with innovation in the direction of, say, the liberal Lutherans, will be the thin end (thin ends?) of the wedge this time. But of course.

And Fr. John Hunwicke tells us what’s really at issue here:

Be in no doubt: the call for Married Priests is but a surrogate and a tactical preliminary for the real battle: the struggle for the admission of women to Holy Order.

Women Priests; and Abortion; and Dissolution of the bonds between Sexuality, Matrimony and Fertility; are the unholy and inglorious Triad with which the Enemy at this particular historical moment plots the de radicibus destruction of the whole state of Christ’s Church militant here in Earth. People who can’t see that are a major part of the problem.

Believe me, I know. I’ve spent most of my life as an Anglican; and we refugees from Old Mother Damnable know exactly how these things are managed. The tools include Gradualism (give people time to get used to the idea: if you spring things on them too abruptly they might discover that they have principles). And Dialogue (“We just want our voices, our experiences to be heard; why can’t we all just talk?”). 

At the heart of it is getting the whole jigsaw complete except for just that one last piece … which now so easily and so naturally slips into its allotted slot.

(Emphasis and colors in original.) The problem, of course, with this plan is Ordinatio sacerdotalis, which has generally been seen as an infallible pronouncement. But have no fear: the infallibility of Ordinatio sacerdotalis, as Cardinal Ratzinger pointed out in his doctrinal commentary on the Profession of Faith required by Ad tuendam Fidem, stems from the fact that the limitation of ordination to men has been set forth infallibly by the Church’s ordinary and universal Magisterium, not an exercise of the pope’s extraordinary Magisterium (as governed by Pastor aeternus). Ah, they’ll say, John Paul never proclaimed it as a dogma! Even Ratzinger said so! It’s up for debate!

This, of course, is in keeping with what Raymond Cardinal Burke has identified, correctly, as part of the obliteration of John Paul’s pontificate. Remember that the tendentious misquotation (or partial quotation) of John Paul’s Familiaris consortio is one of the key pillars of the Kasperites’ argument. In a recent interview with The Wanderer, Cardinal Burke observed:

I was truly disheartened that the final report stopped short of presenting the full teaching of Familiaris Consortio in the matter. First of all, the truth as presented by St. John Paul II in Familiaris Consortio was misrepresented in the Synod’s document as was the truth as illustrated and underlined in the Pontifical Council’s document. That in itself discouraged me very much, especially in consideration of the fact that it was done at the level of a Synod of Bishops.

At the same time, I was also disturbed because I knew this would be used by individuals like Fr. Spadaro and others to say that the Church has changed her teaching in this regard, which, in fact, is simply not true.

I really believe that the whole teaching in Familiaris Consortio should have been addressed through the final document of the Synod. During my experience of the 2014 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops, it was as if Pope John Paul II never existed. If one studies the Synod’s final document, the richness of the magisterial teaching of Familiaris Consortio, which is such a beautiful document, is not there.

(Emphasis and some formatting supplied.) And, really, that seems to be what the last few years have been—a forgetting, one way or another, of John Paul’s pontificate.

Obviously, John Paul’s teachings are hugely inconvenient to the progressives—especially his teachings about birth control, priestly ordination, and divorce and remarriage, to say nothing of his Rotal jurisprudence (which most progressives probably don’t know too well)—but orthodoxy usually is. The desire to obliterate John Paul’s memory, while raising him to the altars and recalling the extraordinary scenes that accompanied him wherever he went, seems to go beyond that, however.

What was it about John Paul, then, that provokes such a desire to forget him?

Vespers at Hampton Court Palace on Feb. 9

Late last week, the Catholic Herald reported that vespers will be sung in the Chapel Royal at Cardinal Wolsey’s great Hampton Court Palace for the first time since the English reformation. From the Herald,

On Tuesday February 9 Cardinal Vincent Nichols will celebrate Vespers in King Henry VIII’s chapel.

The Vespers, at Hampton Court Palace’s Chapel Royal, will be celebrated in the Latin Rite and the Anglican Bishop of London will deliver a sermon.

The service will be dedicated to St John the Baptist, as the Chapel Royal was built by Cardinal Wolsey on the site of a chapel of the Knights of St John Hospitaller, dedicated to that saint.

The music will be performed by Harry Christophers and his ensembles The Sixteen and Genesis Sixteen.

Before Vespers is celebrated, Cardinal Nichols and the Bishop of London will host a discussion on the bonds between their churches and the dialogue they have had over the centuries.

(Emphasis supplied.)

We suspect that the point of this service is not to sing vespers in a Catholic rite at the Chapel Royal, but to provide an edifying and pleasant liturgical framework for a Catholic-Anglican prayer service in the aftermath of the meeting of Anglican primates this month. Had we been asked, we might have suggested bringing in some Benedictines from Farnborough to sing vespers according to the traditional Benedictine rite, which would be, for the most part, very familiar to Henry VIII, Cardinal Wolsey, and the rest of the men and women who made Hampton Court Palace so famous. It would also be a nice way of nodding to the long, rich history of the Benedictines in England.