Letter to Bishop McGrattan on abuse at local parish

Dear Bishop McGrattan:

I am writing further to the email that I originally sent you September 19, 2019 about the pastor's liturgical abuse at St Mary’s as well as abuse in the RCIA program there.

A few months back I came across an edifying news story: Toronto cardinal rebukes Catholic school board members for barring Catechism reading.  The lead line reads: 

Cardinal Thomas Collins of Toronto has rebuked members of the local Catholic school board for refusing to allow a passage of the Catechism of the Catholic Church pertaining to ministry to people with same-sex attraction to be read during a recent meeting.

In an open letter to the board chair, dated November 17, 2020, Cardinal Collins wrote:

At a recent meeting of the Toronto Catholic District a member of a delegation attempted to quote from the section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church which concerns the teaching and the pastoral practice of the Church in caring for our brothers and sisters who experience same sex attractions.  Shortly after he had begun reading the quotation, he was interrupted, and it was suggested that to continue reading from the Catechism was to be treading in dangerous waters, and would be putting down a marginalized and vulnerable community, and that the language of the Catechism is not proper.

That a Catholic should be criticized, and effectively be prevented by Catholic Trustees from reading from the Catholic Catechism at a meeting of a Catholic School Board is simply reprehensible.  I highly commend Trustee Crawford for pointing out the significance of this act.

Catholic faith must guide all who are engaged in Catholic education…

If those engaged in Catholic education ... have bought into the fundamentally anti-Catholic narrative... (etc.)

I'd like you to compare this event, including Cardinal Collins’s response, to what happened to me at St Mary’s in Cochrane at the hands of the pastor and a fellow parishioner, the head of the RCIA team. 

I had been observing, enduring, and pondering the pastor's ostensible abuses of the mass at St Mary’s for about a year,  when in September of 2019, preparatory to raising some issues with the pastor himself, I raised the issue with and sought advice about proceeding from the more seasoned parishioners on the RCIA team, of which I was a new member. It seemed fitting, indeed a prompting of the Holy Spirit, to do so, following the RCIA meeting we had just had, at which we discussed the story of the golden calf and I had pointed out the liturgical relevance of the golden calf story, as Cardinal Ratzinger described it in his book The Spirit of the Liturgy. In response to my raising the issue of the pastor's liturgical abuse at St Mary’s, the head of the RCIA team rudely and summarily dismissed me from what she evidently regarded as ‘her’ RCIA team and the pastor seconded her decision. He even assured me that it was my part, in his words, to just “take the slap,” to accept the abuse I had received from her (and from the half of the RCIA team which concurred with her, and evidently from the pastor himself) in the spirit of Christ before Pilate (sic).

We see, however, that when Christ was slapped for speaking the truth before the high priest (the corrupt clergy of his day), he did not merely take it in silence. As St Thomas Aquinas points out in his commentary on Romans 12:19, Jesus did not just “take the slap”:

Even the Lord himself commanded, Mt 5:39: “if someone strikes you on one cheek, offer him also the other.” But, as Augustine says in the book Against Lying, those things which are done in the New Testament by the holy ones serve as examples for understanding the Scriptures, what is contained in its precepts. But the Lord himself, when he was struck by a slap, did not say: “Here is the other cheek”; but rather, “If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong; but if well, why do you strike me?” Whereby he shows that the readiness of the other cheek is to be accomplished in the heart.

Rather than addressing my concerns about his abuses, of the liturgy and thus of us his parishioners (many of whom, admittedly, enjoy and applaud this kind of abuse), in conversation the pastor disappointingly just changed the subject, accusing me of being ‘divisive’ (“some people say you’re divisive,” he said) and asked rudely insinuating questions about my past, completely dismissing the legitimacy of my concerns. He had nothing to say in point of explanation of the actual significance of the gossip he had been participating in about my being ‘divisive,’ which obviously Our Lord also was (“do not suppose I have come to bring peace to the earth,” etc.), and seems to amount only to the thoroughly banal observation that he and I, and in general people in the parish (and out of the parish!), disagree with one another. He refused to address the question of what is the truth of the matter, or what is right and just and to be done, instead insisting that we should just “agree to disagree.” And while claiming to have a vision of an ‘inclusive’ Church, he suggested that my family and I go find a different parish, since evidently his inclusiveness falls short of including people who dare seek, in a spirit of open, honest, well-informed dialogue, to promote the authentic faith and practise of the Catholic Church in their local parish.

For your part, you (in person and via your administrative assistant) and your vicar Fr Wilbert Chin Jon have kindly assured me on several occasions that you would address the issue. But until now, almost a year and a half later, so far as I have been informed, it seems you have, rather like the second son in our Lord’s parable (Mt 21:28), in fact done nothing and said nothing. But tacere est consentire. And as you know, if you say nothing to the wicked man under your charge, he will not only be condemned himself, his guilt will fall also on you. See, e.g., Ez 33: it is the bishop (episkopos), if anyone, who is in the position of sentry (skopos) which Ezekiel describes and to whom he gives fair warning. For my part, I know that my redeemer liveth, I know that “what is veiled will all be revealed, what is hidden will all be known” and that for every idle word that a man speaks he will be held to account on the day of judgement.  But in the meantime I am left discouraged and disillusioned, asking “Where is the faithful and wise steward, whom his master can entrust with the care of the household”?

To return, finally, to the comparison to Cardinal Collins, I will note that some fifteen years ago my wife and I went through a marriage prep course in Edmonton where Collins was archbishop at the time. There were some serious errors in the teaching presented in the course and when we brought these to the archbishop’s attention, he showed real concern and promptly arranged a meeting to discuss our experience, and actively worked to make the program faithful to Catholic teaching. Sadly, however, it is hard to escape the impression that most bishops will only address abuses occurring under the aegis of their authority if there is likely to be a public scandal arising from not addressing it, which is only the case if the issue is something that the media cares about. But the media will of course never care about faithful Catholic marriage prep any more than it will care about faithful Catholic liturgy and catechesis. At any rate, I am grateful for the experience of episcopal integrity we had with Collins. I hope that the current situation has been a matter of oversight, not policy, and that we can eventually find a similar experience of episcopal integrity with you.

Respectfully yours in Christ,

David McPike

Christmas Message 2020: Less 'intellectual understanding,' more 'personal relationship'

The archbishop of Winnipeg, the Most Reverend Richard Gagnon, currently serving as the president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, has published a Christmas Message, wherein he tells us the following:

We celebrate the Sunday liturgies accompanied especially by the Gospel of Mark this year and in this too, we can find great solace. Mark’s Gospel has been called the Gospel of “Discipleship”. He shows clearly how the followers of Jesus struggled with uncertainty in recognizing Him as the Son of God as well as with their call to be Evangelizers in a culture very different from the Gospel ways. Mark records the words of the disciples after Jesus calmed the sea when they said: “Who then, is this?” This is at the very heart of Mark’s Gospel and Jesus affirms this when he says to them: “But who do you say that I am?” It is Peter who responds by saying: “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.” Mark shares with us that it is not enough to intellectually understand our faith; we are to have a personal encounter and relationship with Jesus, above all.

So I realize that last sentence is what you might call pastoral boilerplate. The bishop is just reciting a common cliché: Intellectual understanding is not enough (as if intellectual understanding were something obvious that we can pretty much take for granted); what we need is to go beyond intellectual understanding (as if that's where people tend to get stuck: they clearly understand Jesus and the whole Catholic faith, but...!); what we need is the much more essential and ambitious thing: to have a personal encounter and relationship with Jesus. Allegedly that's what Mark shares with us.

But think about what Mark's gospel actually says. It seems all the disciples (and crowds and pharisees, scribes and lawyers, priests and bishops, etc.) had personally encountered Jesus. They all had their own 'personal relationship' with him. And that's what wasn't enough. What they were precisely missing was an intellectual understanding of who he was, which Peter by the grace of God manages to grasp: "You are the Christ, the son of the living God." He doesn't just encounter Jesus and have a relationship with him, like all the rest. Moved by grace Peter's intellect is enlightened to understand God's revelation to him of who Jesus Christ is.

So the bishop has it backwards. What "Mark shares with us" is that it is not enough "to have a personal encounter and relationship with Jesus"; what we need is "to intellectually understand our faith." The bishop's backwards claim is solidly grounded in the authority of the commonplace, the oft-heard and thoughtlessly repeated cliché. But perhaps we, including even bishops, should not rest content with repeating tired clichés; in truth what we first of all need is to take care to think about what our words really mean, so as, indeed, moved by grace like Peter, to intellectually understand "our faith."

And indeed, "our faith" isn't even "ours," or rather it isn't even "yours," unless and until you have made the intellectual effort and done the intellectual work to appropriate and understand it. Resting content with the extrinsically accomplished "personal relationship" with God is the way of the hard-hearted Jews of John 8. When Jesus tells them that the truth - i.e., the proper object of intellectual understanding - will set them free, they take umbrage: "We are Abraham's descendants!" In other words, we're good! We are the chosen people! We already have our 'personal relationship' with God! Why are you telling us we need to be disciples of the truth?

Why? Well if you really need a reason, here's one (and there certainly are others): Because Jesus, the divine logos incarnate, says so, and his word is truth.

And an aside: You might well wonder about evangelizers, teachers, religious leaders who claim that it's really about personal relationships. As they say: "It's not what you know, it's who you know" -- also known as cronyism. And isn't cronyism a deep rot at the heart of much of the present corruption that plagues the Church? There's no reason why a commonplace religious cliché can't double as a tool of the devil, in this case by subtly insinuating the rightness of cronyism. In John 8 Jesus tells the above-mentioned 'personal relationship' Jews, "You belong to your father, the devil" and "it is because I speak the truth that you don't believe me." Some things to ponder.

Paternalism and covid-19 hysteria

I was having a conversation trying to explain to someone that there isn't just one possible reasonable way to approach the coronavirus pandemic. It's rather like climate change, in that things are actually very complicated, and to pretend otherwise is unreasonable and often outright hysterical (usually not in the sense of being extremely funny). I think it could help a lot of people to understand this if they would watch this Jordan Peterson video: What Greta Thunberg does not understand about climate change | Jordan Peterson - YouTube. While watching, consider what kinds of similar things we might need to say in a hypothetical video entitled: "What covid-19 alarmists don't understand about pandemic public policy."

So in the conversation I was having, my interlocutor says: 

"ok then explain your libertarian approach. The only reason I didn’t accept your answer is because 'libertarian approach' means nothing to me. I can assume that it means that you don’t want to do anything about the spread of the virus. Keep the elderly and immunocompromised isolated. Let the healthy infect themselves and pray for some form of immunity. Correct me if I’m wrong."

He was wrong, so naturally I corrected him. Here's what I said:

"I actually don't think it is necessary to isolate the elderly and immunocompromised either. I think it's okay to risk dying (that's life, bro), and it's unreasonable for the elderly to become obsessed with not dying of covid, just as its unreasonable for anyone to become obsessed with not dying in general. There are always limits, but I think the default position should be to inform people as effectively as possible about 'the science,' such as it is, and let them decide how they want to handle that information. If you want some well-established 'science,' here's a bit to consider: if covid doesn't kill the elderly and immunocompromised, something else will. Haters gonna hate, and old people gonna die -- that's science, man, and that's why people are often afraid of getting old, but it can't be changed. So to be clear, if an old person wants to be isolated, go for it; but condemning an innocent old person to involuntary solitary confinement because you think it's for their own good is actually just wrong."

So what I'm talking about here is what is usually referred to as the issue of paternalism and it's one of the most basic issues in health care ethics (a.k.a. bioethics). And it's really important! Usually forced solitary confinement is considered to be cruel and unusual punishment! But I think the really interesting thing is that it apparently never even occurs to many people as a problem to be reckoned with, including many people who imagine that they're "just following what science says" or some such simplistic nostrum.

Here's a little rant from a real scientist, which is naïve in a number of important ways, but makes the point effectively enough about the rather stupid idea of "just follow the science": Sabine Hossenfelder: Backreaction: Follow the Science? Nonsense, I say.

Be not afraid!

 "Why are people living in fear? 'Be not afraid!' That's what I live by. That's why I make sure my life is continuous unremitting joy and positivity. I spit in the face of fear."

Hmm. I have a suggestion: perhaps the only reason people feel the need to spit in the face of fear is because they're afraid (afraid of fear, usually among other things). But what did fear ever do to you that you should go about denigrating and casting aspersions on it? Oh, I know there's some bathwater involved, but that's no excuse for throwing out the baby. Sometimes fear is your friend! (And we all know this perfectly well, even if sometimes we forget and pretend otherwise.)

Are medical professionals competent?

 Are medical professionals competent? Well? Are they?

Or are they just normal, incompetent human beings? (Surely some deep-seated, fundamental transformation happens when a person is handed a certificate with her name on it: she has graduated, stepped up and out of the domain of the incompetents, the hoi polloi... right? Isn't that how it works?)

I think it's pretty obvious that the answer to these questions (both of them) is, yes, no, and it depends.

I think the basic tendency of many?/most? (I don't know about numbers here) medical professionals, however, without being explicitly asked the question, is going to be basically, "Dammit Jim, of course, I'm competent -- I'm a medical professional!" 

But of course medical professionals are not as a group inherently all especially stupid people. And more especially, they're not all inherently incapable of self-knowledge. So when explicitly asked, I'm sure that they are mostly all perfectly capable of some simple reflection on the meaning of the question and on the reality of their own status as both medical professionals and human beings. And accordingly, if presented with the occasion to explicitly reflect on the question, I don't suppose that in general they're likely to have any special difficulty in arriving at a more nuanced answer than the initial straightforward "of course I'm competent!" 

Okay, so far, so what? 

We could of course say similar things about other professions, from engineers and scientists, to teachers and professors, to priests, lawyers, scribes, and pharisees. And we could even talk about people in the lowly so-called 'trades' -- although delusions of overarching competence is probably less of an occupational hazard in settings that require the very concrete no-nonsense kind of competence which is characteristic of the trades and which our society generally holds in less esteem than the so-called professions.

However, back to medical professions, since that's what I happen to be talking about. So when we say, "yes, medical professionals are competent -- but then again, maybe not, it depends," what distinctions do we need to make? 

Primarily, we're likely to be referring to their competence precisely as medical professionals. Insofar as they are required to have a foundation of education and training in their field in order to be professionally certified, obviously they must have some level of relevant competence here. But of course since they are human, with imperfect powers of memory and understanding, as well as occasionally unruly passions, as are those who trained them in the first place, and since the knowledge field wherein they are trained likewise is, and always will be, an imperfect work-in-progress -- at times more egregiously imperfect than at others! -- obviously even their competence as medical professionals, in the field of medicine, is limited. It is limited in ways inherent to human nature and to the nature of the medical profession, as well as in individual ways, based on the strengths and weaknesses, virtues and vices, of particular individual practitioners.

The evident variability involved in this kind of properly medical competence would seem to be a pretty straightforward thing, since the whole institution of medical training and certification is -- ostensibly and ideally, at least? -- directed towards trying to achieve and guarantee this kind of competence. That fact ensures at least that it's not likely an issue that will entirely fall off the radar.

But we should also note what this whole institution of medical training and certification is not directed towards: it's not directed towards any general competence in understanding the nature and limitations of medical competence. In other words, medical training, and professional training in general, is always and inherently directed towards a specific domain of competence, which is to say: a relatively limited and narrow range of competence. It is not directed towards a general understanding of the world, of society, of the full range of goods and values, and the proper place of medicine within that full range, that larger context. That kind of general understanding is just not what medical training is for. 

And similarly medical training is not directed towards giving the medical practitioner a sound general understanding of herself, whether as a human being in general, or as medical practitioner in particular, who has an important but certainly limited particular role to play -- commensurate with her particular important but narrow range of properly medical competence -- within the promotion of the general well-being of society. While it will always touch on and be related to broader issues, medical training is clearly directed towards a much more narrowly technical range of competence.

Now certainly I don't mean to say that medical professionals are always only narrowly competent, i.e., only competent insofar as they are medical professionals, as if for some reason being a medical professional makes it impossible to be also more generally competent, as a human being. In other words, it's not as if medical professionals can't, besides their medical expertise, also have a well-developed understanding of all of the interrelated aspects of human nature and the general well-being of society (a.k.a. the common good). It's just that as medical professionals, they have no special training and no special competence in understanding and assessing the bigger picture of what makes for human flourishing and of what needs to be done in any given complex situation in order to promote the goal of human flourishing.

The occasion for my offering this reflection is a recent on-line conversation I had with a medical professional. She made what I regard as some rather naive and formulaic pronouncements about covid-19 policies. But more interestingly she prefaced these pronouncements with the following captatio benevolentiae (i.e., a preface designed to capture the goodwill of one's audience -- this is a term from classical rhetoric, and just to be clear, I am using it ironically!): 

"I know this is post is getting stale but I just want to leave this here in case anyone (including OP) would like to look at this situation using science and logic, instead of just pure emotions. Please don't @ me unless you actually have some credible science/health care related background, as this is where this comment is coming from. I have to say this because we nurses have much more experience with communicable diseases than the average person. And feel free, if you're in healthcare, to correct me if needed."

Hmmm, yes. What to make of that? 

To begin with, no one had previously looked at the situation in question using "just pure emotions." To imagine that they even possibly could do so is, if you think about it, clearly just pure nonsense: it just literally doesn't even begin to make sense. So in the very act of claiming that she will examine the situation using science and logic, she fires off a silly and bald misrepresentation of the dialectical situation she is entering into, which in logical parlance is generally referred to as a straw man argument and is something which is precisely illogical to do. Later she also made some naive comments about ethics, so it's also worth pointing out that making straw man arguments is something that is also unethical (morally wrong) to do, since a straw man misrepresents the truth and such arguments certainly fall afoul of the basic principle of loving your neighbor as yourself and doing as you would be done by.

Secondly she also makes an obviously fallacious (i.e., not logical) appeal to authority. Her little preface is a silly and unethical attempt to intimidate and warn off most would-be interlocutors, that is, those who would dare presume to comment unfavorably on her authoritative pronouncements. Since one clearly doesn't need a specific background in the medical field to understand and discuss medical issues, this is clearly silly and dishonest. Consider: If you had to already understand medical knowledge before you were capable of intelligently and critically discussing it, then it wouldn't be possible for anyone to ever acquire medical knowledge so as to become a medical professional, because you would only be able to understand medical knowledge if you were already a medical professional. Fortunately that's not how learning and knowledge actually work. But hey, logic (and more particularly, epistemology)! It can be a tricky business, especially for the untutored and incautious. (Her argument here is on the level of "keep your rosaries off my ovaries" or "if you want the right to say anything about abortion, make sure you have a vagina and ovaries and stuff first" - and no, it doesn't matter if what you're saying is something that lots of women agree with and also say!)

So anyway, I think an important thing to notice and reflect on from this example is the conflation of medical competence with various more general competencies, in this case competence in logic and ethics and science -- not to mention public policy, which is what her analysis was actually about. 

(For the record, none of her post offered any special logical, scientific, or ethical insight. Neither did she offer even a single piece of specialized medical information that would have been news to any remotely with-it person, never mind connecting such information to anything remotely resembling a reasonable attempt to comprehensively evaluate the import of such information in relation to the overall picture of the common good. Instead her overall argument amounted to just, "listen to me, because we medical professionals are the ones who know -- but also don't dare question me (unless you're one of us), because..." Well it turns out she didn't really offer any answer there, just the evidently illogical and unscientific assurance that hers was the logical and scientific point of view in contradistinction to the purely emotional point of view.)

I don't want to make too much of this one person and this one example. But although I think it should be perfectly obvious, I think it would be helpful for a lot of people to reflect on the fact that a nurse may be highly competent as a nurse, and at the very same time highly incompetent in fields in which she has no special training, like logic, or ethics, or understanding the general nature and limits of science and of processes of scientific investigation and justification, or general public policy -- or even just being a decent and humble kind of person who at least makes a real effort to patiently and reasonably communicate with others, even those she rightly or wrongly deems to be beneath her.

If what I've just claimed about the compatibility of competence with incompetence is really so obvious, you might wonder, why bother about reflecting on it? It's because, as the example I mention shows, it evidently is not obvious to many people in their own concrete situations, and it only becomes obvious in virtue of taking some time to intentionally reflect on it. And that reflection on the competence as well as incompetence of medical professionals also has some rather obvious implications, which are also worth reflecting on, implications about how medical professionals worthy of the name ought to conduct themselves in conversation with non-medical professionals (e.g., be not a butthead, know thyself, recognize thy limitations!) and vice versa, for non-professionals talking to professionals (be not a butthead thyself, but also be not overawed by blustery medical professionals who fallaciously appeal to their own authority in matters wherein they may in fact prove to be at least as incompetent as the average Joe).

True for you, true for me, truth about truth

I have a friend who is friends with an old lefty Catholic former professor of his. The professor doesn't believe some of what the Church teaches and of what my friend does believe. So he tells my friend, "what you believe is true for you" even though, he also claims, it's not true for other people. So for other people the opposite "truth" is true, that is, it's "true for them." But here's the truth about truth and this kind of "truth" talk:

"It's true for you" almost always really means "you think it's true; but in reality it might be false." (And it almost always means this as a matter of semantics, i.e., the logic of the language, regardless of the speaker's explicit intention, or attention, or advertence to this logical reality.)

So "it's true for you" doesn't mean "it's true" at all. In regard to truth itself, it really just means "either it's true or it's false."

If that is well understood, then "it's true for you" can be an innocent facon de parler (a "so to speak" kind of thing).

But in its usual usage, it's deployed as a way of ignoring (or pretending to ignore and attempting to bury) the real meaning of "it's true for you," and thus as a means of ignoring (or pretending to ignore and attempting to bury) the real distinction between "it's true" and "it's false" (i.e., between truth and falsity). So "it's true for you" is usually really a means of ignoring (or pretending to ignore and attempting to bury) the real distinction between reality and fiction, the real distinction between the truth and a lie, and the real distinction between what is good and what is evil. And so usually when you hear someone pull out the claim "it's true for you," be forewarned: what you're dealing with may be innocent confusion, but is likely duplicity and hypocrisy at a deep-rooted level. It is effectively, if not intentionally, a foundational attack on our ability to rightly understand anything. It's a faux-inclusive rhetorical move that actually excludes everybody, because it systematically misconstrues everybody's claims, that is, the claims on all sides of a given debate.

Beware Prophets of Doom!

In last Sunday's homily (Gaudete! - Rejoice! Sunday, the third Sunday in Advent), the priest took the opportunity to dismiss the "prophets of doom." Rejecting "prophets of doom," for those unfamiliar with the term, is originally a Pope John XXIII thing (albeit in a questionable translation), and has since become a key "spirit of Vatican II" thing (i.e., a favourite slogan of those who want to promote a "progressive" remake of the Catholic Church). According to Pope John:

"At times we have to listen, much to our regret, to the voices of people who, though burning with zeal, lack a sense of discretion and measure [prudentique iudicio (and prudent judgment)]. In this modern age they can see nothing but prevarication and ruin … We feel that we must disagree with those prophets of doom [his rerum adversarum vaticinatoribus (these prophets of adversity, opposition, hostility)] who are always forecasting disaster [deteriora (deterioration)], as though the end of the world were at hand. In our times, [in which] divine Providence is [seems to be] leading us to a new order of human relations which, by human effort and even beyond all expectations, are directed to the fulfilment of God’s superior and inscrutable designs, in which everything, even human setbacks, leads to the greater good of the Church." (Opening Address To the Council)

Sure, okay. But the problem with this claim is that (a) it looks like decidedly false optimism (especially the last bit -- which is, however, a bad translation of John XXIII's words, whether in the Latin or the Italian version); and that (b) who exactly those are who "lack a sense of discretion and measure" is open to highly divergent and conflicting interpretations, so that the claim in itself about "prophets of doom," especially taken out of context (as it almost always is), becomes more or less empty verbiage, just waiting to be abused precisely by those who "lack a sense of discretion and measure" (i.e., most people, perhaps including on occasion John XXIII himself -- for further examples just read the whole address at the link above, though again with the caveat: it's a bad translation).

The priest on Sunday, in any case, insisted that the Second Coming of Christ is a time of joy, not a time of Armageddon as the "prophets of doom" would have it. In other words -- he implied -- we should pay no heed to Holy Scripture (that's where the Armageddon stuff comes from, John's Apocalypse, the Book of Revelation). Indeed, we should pay no heed to Christ! For in the Christian faith it is Christ himself who is the foremost among the prophets and who is unquestionably himself a "prophet of doom." (See Matthew 24 & 25, for example, noting that "doom" is an old English word for "judgment" -- i.e., precisely what Christ promises will take place at the Second Coming.) And so it goes! Such "in our times" is "the new order" (although frankly it's gotten a little stale by now).

Jacques Philippe on God's love of deficiencies

My wife was telling me that other day that the buzz in her Catholic mommy crowd this lent is about some book on peace by Rev. Jacques Philippe. Philippe is a member of the Community of the Beatitudes in France and a very widely read author of works described as “classics of modern Catholic spirituality.” We don’t have the peace book but we do have his Interior Freedom. I’d picked it up before, read about a quarter of it and lost interest, but inspired by the reported buzz I took another look at it last night. There I read this fascinating doctrine:

“We find it so difficult to accept our own deficiencies because we imagine they make us unlovable. Since we are defective in this or that aspect, we feel that we do not deserve to be loved. Living under God’s gaze makes us realize how mistaken that is. Love is given freely, it’s not deserved, and our deficiencies don’t prevent God from loving us – just the opposite!”

Ah yes, just the opposite: that means deficiencies actually allow, cause, encourage God’s love in some way, evidently, that would otherwise be prevented! So the Catholic doctrine of merit? That’s probably a bit complicated, so maybe some other time. For now just remember, our deficiencies actually allow God to love us more, and thus a lack of deficiencies actually somehow prevents, inhibits God’s love for us, apparently because God is our Father, and as any father will tell you, it is the deficiencies in our children which allow us to love them all the more. (Right??) Thus, by Philippe’s logic, while everyone may like a peaceful, happy baby that makes no trouble, if we have a colicky crying baby that wails inconsolably hour after hour for no discernable reason, much more will our weary hearts spontaneously well up with love for that one! And we may love a child who is cheerful, affectionate, obedient, caring, and conscientious, but how much more does the heart of a father lovingly rejoice in a child who is, say, sullen, selfish, and given to violent tantrums. And the same applies to friends or spouses: we all love someone who is, say, oversensitive, selfish, unreasonable, hypocritical, habitually drunk and disloyal or unfaithful, more than someone who embodies the opposite alternatives – especially if these defective qualities mirror our own. One might have believed that God knows and loves* what is good, and knows and hates what is evil – but no, Jacques Philippe tells us; if anything, it is just the opposite! [*One might consider one of the Latin words that commonly translates ‘love’ in the Vulgate, diligere, meaning to distinguish from among others and choose (elect, eligere) in preference to the others.] So you may have imagined that God loved (and so chose) the Blessed Virgin Mary and her Immaculate (i.e., deficiency-free) Heart more than any other creature; but no, just the opposite: if only she had deficiencies, this would allow God to love her more. So think of the most deficient person you know – I always say it’s a three-way tie between Hitler, Donald Trump, and Satan – and apply Philippe’s logic: these villains with their mega-deficiencies clearly have done nothing that would merit love, but opposite-loving God therefore loves them most of all!

On the other hand, there’s God himself, speaking through the prophet Isaiah (if you buy into that whole ‘divine revelation’ thing): “Woe to you who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” Something to ponder. Anyway, notwithstanding the buzz in the mommy crowd, I obviously have doubts about the soundness of Philippe’s* doctrine of divine love. [*Just to be clear, I don’t mean to suggest that this bleary ‘opposite’-doctrine is original (to Philippe) or unusual. The question is, why is it so popular? Nietzsche offered one intriguing answer: ressentiment (for a brief description see my previous post here).]

Aquinas on the use of reason vs. authority

From the lapidary mind of Thomas Aquinas [my translation, and minor interpolation; for Latin original see here]:

Quodlibet 9, Qu. 4, Art. 3: 

Whether a teacher determining (or deciding) theological questions should make use more of reason, or of authority.

It seems that the teacher determining theological questions should make use of authorities rather than reasons.

 Argument: For in any science, its questions are best determined by the first principles of that science. But the first principles of theological science are the articles of faith, which are known to us through authorities. Therefore theological questions should be mainly determined through authorities.

Sed contra: But against this it is said in Titus I, 9: “that he might be able to encourage others in sound doctrine and refute those contradicting it.” But those who contradict are better refuted by reasons than by authorities. Therefore, it is more necessary to determine questions through reasons than through authorities.

I respond. It should be said that every act should be carried out as befits its end. Now a disputation can be ordered to a twofold end. For one kind of disputation is ordered toward removing doubt whether something is the case; and in such a theological disputation, those authorities should most of all be used, which are accepted by those with whom one is disputing. For example, if one disputes with Jews, it is necessary to introduce the authorities of the Old Testament; if with Manicheans, who reject the Old Testament, it is necessary to use only the texts of the New Testament; but if it be with schismatics who accept the Old and the New Testament, but not the teaching of our saints, as is the case with the Greeks, it is necessary to dispute with them using authorities from the Old or New Testament and from those doctors which they accept. If, however, they accept no authority, it is necessary, for the purpose of refuting them, to take recourse to natural reasons. [And – Thomas forgot to mention – if one is disputing with a woman, who accepts neither authorities nor reasons, and relies only on her emotions, it is necessary to discreetly withdraw from the disputation, lest she upbraid you and slap you in the face. (Relax, I’m kidding! – obviously that's not true of all women. Still, would that it were true of fewer!)]

But another kind of disputation is for the purpose of teaching in the schools, not for the purpose of removing error, but for instructing the hearers, that they may be led to an understanding of the truth towards which it points: and then it is necessary to rely on reasons which search out the root of truth, and which make one to know in what way (quomodo) what is said is true; otherwise, if the teacher were to determine the question on the basis of bare authorities, the hearer would be assured that the matter is thus, but he would acquire no knowledge or understanding and would depart empty.

And from what has been said, the response to the objection is clear.

Not everything is grace, and on the danger of “little-flower”-ism

I had a moment of discouragement and lassitude the other day. A B12 deficiency maybe? (B12 is the cobalt vitamin; it’s essential, you can’t live without cobalt!) Or perhaps the being so beset by falsehoods, for the most part depressingly unoriginal, mere trite clichés, but still so stubbornly defended by people who seem never to tire of kicking against the goad if you dare offer them something different from what they’re accustomed to hearing. How tiresome!

And then there was Peter Kreeft! And St Therese! Et tu? (Et vos?)

I came across this sentence from the pen of Kreeft:

“Everything is grace”, said Saint Thérèse. This is neither pious exaggeration nor false humility; it is utter realism, the confession of clear and certain fact. (Kreeft, Prayer for Beginners (Ignatius, 2000), p. 116.)

Here’s what he was referring to, reportedly spoken by Therese four months before her death:

If you should find me dead one morning, be not troubled: it’s that Papa the good God would have come quite simply to get me. Without doubt, it’s a great grace to receive the Sacraments; but when the good God doesn’t permit it, it’s good all the same, all is grace.

[“Si vous me trouviez morte un matin, n'ayez pas de peine : c'est que Papa le bon Dieu serait venu tout simplement me chercher. Sans doute, c'est une grande grâce de recevoir les Sacrements ; mais quand le bon Dieu ne le permets pas, c'est bien quand même, tout est grâce.” (Carnet jaune, June 4, 1897)]

Commenting on the passage, in the introduction to his book Everything Is Grace, Joseph F. Schmidt writes:

By her comment that everything is grace, she was sharing her spirituality of the Little Way – the spiritual way of accepting with loving surrender and gratitude all the happenings of life as sent by divine providence. [All the happenings of life? Sent? Not just permitted but sent?] If the experiences of life, even the ordinary and trivial, are received in this attitude of surrender and gratitude as gifts of God, then not just appropriate religious devotions and sacramental activities communicate grace, but surely everything is grace.

(Joseph F. Schmidt, FSC, Everything is Grace (2007).)

Well, maybe. The first thing to note here is that that’s a pretty big “if”: If the ordinary and trivial experiences of life (this applies also to the Sacraments, by the way!) are received in the appropriate manner, then in a sense everything is grace (or rather: an occasion of grace). But unfortunately people – including people who are highly religiously and spiritually motivated and devoted – tend to skip right over the “if” and run instead with just the nakedly false claim: everything is grace.

This “utter realism,” this “confession of clear and certain fact,” as Peter Kreeft would have it, in fact looks like a plain contradiction of Catholic truth. Consider, for example, the following passage from Dei filius, Vatican I’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic faith:

Unhappily, it has yet further come to pass that, while this impiety prevailed on every side, many even of the children of the Catholic Church have strayed from the path of true piety, and by the gradual diminution of the truths they held, the Catholic sense became weakened in them. For, led away by various and strange doctrines, utterly confusing nature and grace, human science and divine faith, they are found to deprave the true sense of the doctrines which our holy Mother Church holds and teaches, and endanger the integrity and the soundness of the faith.

Hac porro impietate circum quaque grassante, infeliciter contigit, ut plures etiam e Catholicæ Ecclesiæ filiis a via veræ pietatis aberrarent, in iisque, diminutis paullatim veritatibus, sensus Catholicus attenuaretur. Variis enim ac peregrinis doctrinis abducti, naturam et gratiam, scientiam humanam et fidem divinam perperam commiscentes, genuinum sensum dogmatum, quem tenet ac docet sancta mater Ecclesia, depravare, integritatemque et sinceritatem fidei in periculum adducere comperiuntur.

Now the claim everything is grace implies either that nature just is grace, or that nature is nothing. In other words, the unqualified claim everything is grace seems to “utterly confuse nature and grace.” Pace Kreeft, it is anything but a “confession of clear and certain fact.”

So should “little” Therese (apparently she was actually quite tall!) – for many the doctor of the 20^th/21^st-century Church par excellence – be condemned as a heretic? Hardly. But some of her writings and sayings – as also in the case of St Paul, so not necessarily in bad company! – are certainly easily liable to be misleading for “unlearned and unstable” minds (see 2Pet 3:16). And this observation about the theological caution required in approaching St Therese is not restricted to this one reported saying.

In his Everything Is Grace book Schmidt notes that Therese was not extraordinarily gifted, as many saints have been. If anything, she was extraordinarily ordinary (if that makes any sense!). In fact, as Schmidt writes, “The one capacity Therese possessed is actually often an obstacle to holiness rather than a contributing factor – namely, a capability to be self-preoccupied and self-reflective.” 

Let that sink in: Therese’s outstanding character trait, that for which is admired and loved, is actually often an obstacle to holiness, namely: “a capability to be self-preoccupied and self-reflective” – which is very near to saying a tendency to be narcissistic. (In the myth, Narcissus falls in love with his own self-reflection… and is transformed (go figure!) into a little flower – as in the case of Therese, the question of how little is debatable.) Schmidt continues: “Therese noticed everything about herself, and she was willing to share that not as a display of ego-centeredness, but as a manifestation of God’s work in her.” However: “The difference between these two attitudes constitutes a very fine line, and the temptation to cross the line is always lurking.”

It seems that Schmidt’s observation here would imply that devotion to St Therese may be spiritually dangerous, especially for those with narcissistic tendencies – not necessarily in a clinical sense, of course, but just in the sense of a tendency to self-centeredness. But since most people indeed have a tendency to self-centeredness, it follows that St Therese may be spiritually dangerous for most people. And this implies also that (widespread) devotion to St Therese (“the little flower”) may be as much a symptom of a (widespread) tendency to narcissism (“little-flower”-ism, we might say), as it is of a sign of the extraordinary sanctity of Therese herself – even if it is true, as Schmidt writes, that “Therese’s glory is that she did not give in to that temptation,” that is, the temptation to cross the line from self-preoccupied and self-reflective to self-centered (and narcissistic).

“Little-flower”-ism (compare the recent term “snowflake” – as Schmidt writes of St Therese, “she suffered a great deal from her excessive sensitivity” – ah yes, don’t we all: je suis Therese!) may also be a manifestation of a sick form of Christianity (or more generally, a sick form of relating to the world) fueled by ressentiment, a phenomenon the real existence of which Nietzsche rightly identified, but which he mistakenly thought was essentially Christian.  Max Scheler (a philosopher admired by John Paul II) was taken by Nietzsche’s insight into the phenomenon of ressentiment and developed an extended, more insightful discussion of it, wherein he argues against Nietzsche’s artificial, animus-filled attempt to make of it a specifically and essentially Christian phenomenon. Against Nietzsche, Scheler argues that ressentiment is neither proper to nor characteristic of Christianity. Instead it is an endemic human tendency and not what Christ or Christianity is really about. Nietzsche, in any case, argued that the Christian ethos was nothing other than “le fine fleur [the delicate flower again!] du ressentiment” – an ingeniously insidious way for all that is base, weak, ugly, deformed, sick, inhibited, downtrodden, and needy (“blessed are the poor and hungry!”), and moreover envious and vengeful, to subvert all that shows up it baseness and aggravates its envy, that is, all that is noble, beautiful, strong, self-sufficient, free, powerful, flourishing. The weak and ignoble does this through the artifice of an essentially nature-despising claim to moral superiority. What is naturally good must be despised, and suffering, self-abnegation, and death must be embraced – claim those who are ignoble and powerless by nature’s standard – in order to pass beyond nature to the kingdom of God. The supposed goodness of nature has been swallowed up, according to this form of moralism, by the depravity of sin, and so nature must be rejected. If there is no goodness in nature, nature must be eliminated. By nature, man is totally depraved (Calvinism, anyone?), so grace becomes everything, that is, “everything (good!) is grace.”

But of course Nietzsche was right to condemn this view, just as the Catholic Church always has – even while individual Catholics remain ever susceptible to confusion on this point, with the result that “they are found to deprave the true sense of the doctrines which our holy Mother Church holds and teaches, and endanger the integrity and the soundness of the faith” (see above, Vatican I's Dei filius).

So to conclude: No, not everything is grace! Nature is not grace, although nature is good and necessary in its own right, within the plan of divine providence. Grace presupposes nature, and nature is perfected, not eliminated, by grace. And if you're going by the teaching of the Catholic Church, that, I take it, is a “confession of clear and certain fact.”

Fisher of men? Or fisher of people? On Canadian Catholic Fem-speak

At a recent RCIA meeting I attended, we read the following from Luke’s gospel: “Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’” (Lk 5:10)

One of the RCIA candidates sniffed out something fishy about this. She mentioned that she seemed to remember a more classical reading of “fisher of men.” The leader mentioned something about different translations and one person piped in something about the passage used to apply to just men (male men, that is), but now it applies to women too (including female postal carriers)!

Of course the expression “fisher of men” always did apply to ‘catching’ males and females, and until feminism came along no one was misled into thinking otherwise by the use of the generic term ‘men.’ As philosopher Michael Levin writes (my comments in square brackets):

We may dismiss the idea that masculine pronouns [or masculine nouns, used in a generic sense] are misleading. Words are misleading when they mislead. If nobody is misled by a turn of phrase, it is not misleading, and there is no one over the age of three who has been fooled by “he” [or “fisher of men”] into thinking that women are unpersons [or into thinking the Jesus intended Simon Peter’s mission to be to adult males only]. It is not possible to produce a woman who believed (until feminists cleared things up) that “He who hesitates is lost” did not apply to her. It is universally understood that “he” is used with the intention of referring to both men and women, and that this intention has settled into a convention. Nothing more is required for a purely designative expression like “he” [or “men”] to mean men and women both. (from Michael Levin, Feminism, Freedom, and Language)

However, now that feminist ideology is increasingly being insinuated into our language, and thence into our thinking, people (apparently!) really are increasingly getting confused about some of the basic intentions and conventions that find expression in the English language, and on the basis of the linguistic confusion we are (apparently!) in danger of passing on to some quite farcically naïve suggestions about the scope of the Church’s mission, past vs. present, as noted above. (I say “apparently,” because one should be cautious about reading too much into what were perhaps mere idle remarks.)

The RCIA candidate responded to the vague comments about different translations by saying, in a somewhat uneasy tone, something like, “Okay, so the Church decided to change the translation.” To which some of the leaders responded with something like, “quite so, and indeed it’s important to remember that the Church is always changing.”

Well, something like that. It might have been more accurate, however, if the RCIA candidate had said (still in a somewhat uneasy tone), “So in formulating the lectionary readings for use in Canada, the Church in Canada has decided to follow the advice of feminist ideologues.” Whereas, by contrast, we find in the US lectionary – a lectionary apparently less under the influence of feminist ideologues (see usccb.org) – “Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.’"

Now you might still wonder what happened to the classic “fisher of men” expression. In fact that’s the expression used in the parallel passage in Matthew’s gospel (see Mt 4:19), but in Luke the expression is just “catching men” (the generic ‘men,’ of course – anthropous in Greek and homines in Latin).

You might think that ‘people’ vs. (generic) ‘men’ is perhaps an issue for felicity of expression, for poetry, for tradition, etc., but not necessarily a strictly translation (i.e., accuracy) issue. Granted. So to take a more blatant example of fem-speak in the Canadian lectionary, consider the gospel reading for March 3. From the US bishops’ website we get the following (accurate) translation:

Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye,

but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?

How can you say to your brother,

'Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,'

when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye?

You hypocrite!  Remove the wooden beam from your eye first;

then you will see clearly

to remove the splinter in your brother's eye.

In the Canadian lectionary we find the following:

Why do you see the speck in your neighbour's eye,

but do not notice the log in your own eye?

Or how can you say to your neighbour,

'Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye,'

when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye?

You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye;

then you will see clearly

to take the speck out of your neighbour's eye.

Now brother is clearly stronger, richer, than neighbour/friend. Still, slight differences of meaning, surely! Which might invite the question: Isn’t the advancement of feminist ideology more important than fidelity to the revealed word of God? And really that is the question, and those answering it, unfortunately, are divided. In any case, the CCCB seems to have gone with a “yes.” But this “yes” to the advancement of feminist ideology has consequences. We might consider in this connection clericalism and ecumenism.

First, I think the Canadian lectionary is an embodiment of (bad) clericalism. Scripture has been manipulated and filtered by the clerics before being presented to the laity. This is inevitable in a selective lectionary, because it is selective. But what is selected should at least be presented faithfully. Instead the authentic language of the revealed word of God is effectively hidden, seen only by the diligent few who dare to look behind the veil the Church (in Canada) has drawn over the scriptures read at mass. The clerics, and those who advise them, have taken it upon themselves to bowdlerize the word of God and then, at mass, to dishonestly proclaim this feminist redaction as “the holy gospel according to Luke” (for example) – that is, the hypothetical incarnation of Luke as a 21^st-century feminist, who has been enlightened about the prejudicial, exclusionary import of his original language choices in the composition of his gospel.

This issue matters also from the standpoint of ecumenism. This feminist policy/practice, one may suppose, is helpful for ecumenism with other Church communities whose version of Christian faith has (also) been influenced by feminist ideology. For those separated brethren who are actually closer to the authentic Catholic faith, however, who actually have a deep love and respect for the revealed word of God, for the “full gospel”  (notwithstanding their flawed understanding of it), this practice is surely a stumbling block. It must remind them of the old canard about the Church chaining up scriptures.  Ironically churches used to chain up the scriptures because, given their great value, they wanted to prevent their being stolen. It was about protecting a treasure. Now that treasure of the inspired word of God has been distorted by feminist ideologues (in the Church in Canada, anyway) and is handed out in missalettes like cheap candy! Better, perhaps, were it still chained! But the question is whether ecumenism – or more generally evangelization – should be about catching flies with honey (feminist-devised or otherwise) or about seeking authentic Christian unity through true faith in Christ. And the Catholic Church (notwithstanding various national aberrations) of course teaches that it should be the latter.

Put away childish ways

Parenting brings new challenges as time passes. My oldest (or older ones!) is increasingly bright and knowledgeable. He has a good memory and is beginning to have sound basic reasoning skills. One result of this is that he is able to recognize when the younger ones have said something nonsensical and he is apt to pounce on it when this happens. (My favourite, he once replied to something his brother said with, “That is not grammatical. I will not answer.”) Which is good in a way (he’s exercising his capacity to be rational), but not insofar as it’s unkind. So now part of what I have to help him to learn is that they are young (in particular, younger than him), they haven’t had a chance to acquire the same basic reasoning skills yet, and so it’s silly and mean to expect them to think and understand and reason at his level. It’s okay to gently correct them, but they will only ever learn through the benefit of time and patience and loving encouragement from those who are already further along in their intellectual and moral development. You can’t simply point out their errors to them, because they simply are not old enough to have intellectually developed enough to be able to understand and benefit from that kind of correction.

To some extent I often find myself in an analogous situation to that of my oldest son when I am faced with arguments from adults. But the difference, of course, is that these people aren’t little children who are simply too young to have achieved a mature level of intellectual and moral development, they’re ‘full-grown,’ ‘adults,’ who to look at physically you might expect to be mature intellectually also. But in fact they’re pretty clearly not. Their moral understanding and reasoning skills are often an embarrassingly bad combination of ignorance, arrogance, complacency, irrationality, and lack of self-awareness. (Any of these may not be so bad on its own, but when you put them together...?) So what to do? Should I just tell myself something like I tell my son when dealing with his younger siblings? Should I tell myself to treat such people like they’re three-year-olds or seven-year-olds, tell myself it would be silly and mean to try to interact with them as if they were mature adults in their right minds, who have a reasonable basic grasp of differences between true and false, rational and irrational, good and bad, right and wrong, and a grasp of the basic rules and procedures for making those distinctions in practice? Little children, especially if they’re tired, are prone to bursting into tears if they can’t right this second have that random doodad they happen to see their brother playing with. Should this be our default setting for dealing with adults who are attempting to discuss adult topics: speak as if you are speaking to a little child at nap time, who might well be on the verge of a tantrum, or who is simply incapable of sitting still for one minute to ponder and think something through?

But the problem with such an approach is obvious: you can’t speak with little children about adult topics, so when you’re speaking to someone about an adult topic, you can’t address them as you would little children. Insofar as it’s an adult topic, you have to discuss it in an adult way. And anyway, it’s not (as a rule) silly or mean to do so, because there comes a point in a (normal) child’s development (that is, as soon as it is possible!) when you have to become firmer and when tantrums – behaving as if the only thing in the world that should matter to anyone is pandering to my present passions – can and should be treated firmly as being no longer acceptable. Older children and certainly adults deserve and need to be treated as if they are past that point. Otherwise they won’t feel any need to act as if they are past that point, and instead they will forever remain more or less stunted in their intellectual and moral development. 

(Because we live in a ‘dictatorship of relativism’ – a culture wherein non-relativistic views are often derisively dismissed or angrily shouted down – people are generally very complacent and self-satisfied and inclined to be shocked and offended by the very notion of ‘stunted intellectual and moral development’ – as if there exists any real standard, beyond some vague, implicit appeal to currently fashionable conventions, by which to judge our intellectual and moral state as stunted or not! But this is, of course, just a symptom/evidence of that very arrested intellectual and moral development that I’m talking about, and which is precisely characteristic of a ‘dictatorship of relativism.’)

So adults are not little children and we should not attempt to nurture and indulge adults in the way we would a little child. It’s hardly even possible to do so – you can’t order them to have a timeout – but since adults are not little children, it would be wrong anyway to treat them as such. (Adults who abuse positions of power (e.g., in academia, in making policy/law, in media, in preaching, in politicking, in law enforcement, etc.) by treating other adults like children are pretty despicable people.) We have a responsibility, as adults, to respect others, including strangers, including those whose views we find strange, and to try honestly to understand the views of others when commenting on them. In spite of the childish bursts of outrage and self-righteousness with which we might sometimes be overcome , we remain under the obligation to think and behave in a mature way. If all we are is tolerant of childish behaviour, that's not kindness. If we are afraid ever to enter into debate or risk offering a reproof to someone for his self-righteous tantrum, or even for a very sweet and kind person's willful ignorance, that's not kindness. It's spineless. It's negligence. 

That said, if a man remains like an infant needing milk, go ahead and give him some milk; but also try to impress on him that he should be moving on to solid food (see Hebrews 5). “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I reasoned as a child; when I became a man I put away childish ways.” (1Cor 13:11)* Awake sleeper! Put away childish ways!

*(Note, St Paul’s remark here comes right in the middle of his encomium to – surprise? – love. People love to talk about love, but they seem seldom to consider that love requires (of ourselves and of others) learning to speak, to understand, to reason in a mature way. Love is not a pure formless reaching out of the will but calls for discipline and training of the intellect so as to know the truth so that love may be indeed true love and not a mere blind passion.)