The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission’s Agreed Statement, “Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ,” offers fine resources for reflecting on Catholicism’s Marian “sensibility.” Here is one excerpt:

[T]he 20th century witnessed a particular growth in convergence as many Anglicans were drawn into a more active devotion to Mary, and Roman Catholics discovered afresh the scriptural roots of such devotion. We together agree that in understanding Mary as the fullest human example of the life of grace, we are called to reflect on the lessons of her life as recorded in Scripture and to join with her as one indeed not dead, but truly alive in Christ. In doing so we walk together as pilgrims in communion with Mary, Christ’s foremost disciple, and all those whose participation in the new creation encourages us to be faithful to our calling (cf. 2 Cor 5:17, 19).”

The full Statement may be found in Origins, vol 35, no 3 (June 2, 2005).

Joseph Bottum, editor of First Things, rightfully takes issue with some statements that appeared in the comments boxes of our threads on Charlotte Allen’s critique of Commonweal. After quoting some of the more outlandish comments–left by readers of the blog, not by its contributors–Bottum writes:

Here’s what Commonweal magazine thinks of us: “Who appointed First Things the guardian of orthodoxy? I wouldn’t want to see Commonweal
start responding to Allen, et. al., as though it had something to prove
to these people. We don’t need their stinking inquisition.”

I had always thought of Paul Baumann and Peter and Margaret Steinfels, and others associated with Commonweal,
as friends and co-religionists with whom I have productive intellectual
and political disagreements. And now I know that they think of me—and
you, all of us—as Nazis and enemies and undereducated fools. It’s a
sadness.

I want to be clear: what Bottum quotes wasn’t written by a Commonweal editor or contributor to the blog, but was posted as an independent response to the blog. I can assure him that neither I nor my colleagues agree with such calumny.

AMDG (for those worried aboout whether this is Catholic)

Seymour Hersh, who seems to have an inexhaustable supply of leakers and informants, writes in this week’s New Yorker about U.S.-Israel cooperation on Lebanon and seems to draw a line from that cooperation to a faction in the Bush Administration waiting to go after Iran. Even if only half of Hersh’s informants is right, there is much here to gnash our teeth over. 

Most notable for me (I have just finished reading Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq), is the resistance, according to Hersh, of the Pentagon military (except for the Air Force) to an Iran adventure and perhaps even a cautionary stance by Donald Rumsfeld (maybe he too has read Fiasco).

Here is the link (I think) http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/060821fa_fact

I’ll look forward to the discussion (if not, I am going back to my sermons on Fiasco! by Thomas Rick and available on Amazon.

I am painfully aware that it should be Fr. Joe Komonchak rather than me mounting a defense of episcopal conferences. But I came across the following translation of a Vittorio Messori article on Amy Welborn’s blog about his interview with the incoming Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. Bertone had made the statement that “(There is need) to turn back from the specificity of local churches to the universality of the Catholic church.”

Worrying that this will be misunderstood, Messori tries to “elaborate” for Bertone by recalling conversations he had with then-Cardinal Ratzinger some years previously:

The future Benedict XVI told me that among
the unforeseen and contradictory effects of Vatican-II was the
diminution in the importance of bishops, which on the contrary, the
Council wished to re-emphasize. In fact, however, the autonomy and the
freedom itself of a bishop over his own diocese were caged in and
coopted by the establishment of national bishops’ conferences.

These
conferences, Ratzinger pointed out, have no theological basis; they are
not part of the Church structure as are parishes, dioceses and the
papacy. They are simply institutions, of recent origin, which were
created for practical reasons but which have gradually created a
weighty structure of their own, becoming in effect “little Vaticans.”

I think there are some problems here. First of all, I am hard pressed to identify a real live example of a bishop being
prevented from exercising his responsibilities to “teach, sanctify, and
govern” because of a national bishop’s conference. The recent sexual abuse
crisis made clear how little power, for example, the USCCB has over individual bishops. If
individual bishops feel hemmed in by their conferences, that is their own
perception, but it does not correspond to any canonical realities that I am
aware of.

Secondly, this quote from then-Crdl. Ratzinger that the bishops’ conferences
have “no theological basis” is badly misunderstood in the paragraph
excerpted above. By “no theological basis,” the Cardinal meant that
national bishops’ conferences do not exist iure divino, as does the
office of bishop. By this measure, parishes and many other elements of the church’s structure (e.g. the College of Cardinals) don’t qualify either. But there is
no question that episcopal conferences were explicitly mentioned in Vatican
II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church and the Decree on the Pastoral Office
of Bishops in the Church (Para 38). They are also mentioned in the Code of Canon
Law. They may not have a “theological basis” if one uses an extremely narrow reading of that term, but they certainly have a doctrinal and canonical basis.

Episcopal conferences became a point of controversy in the wake of the 1985
Extraordinary Synod. In the final report, the bishops had suggested a study of
the theological status of the conferences. An instrumentum laboris
issued by the Congregation for Bishops in 1988 took a highly restrictive view
of the role of the episcopal conferences, arguing that they cannot be properly
considered collegial in character and do not therefore have a magisterial role.
The instrumentum drew a distinction between the “effective collegiality”
exercised by the college as a whole and the “affective collegiality” exercised
by the conferences, which are said to be collegial only in an analogous sense.

This position was criticized by a number of theologians, including Avery
Dulles, who noted in a 1989 article entitled “Doctrinal Authority of
Episcopal Conferences” that CIC Canon 753 clearly implies that under some
circumstances, bishops gathered together in conference are “authoritative
teachers and masters of the faith.” He conceded, though, that an episcopal
conference would not be able to define doctrine in a way that engages the
assent of faith (although its teaching could require religious submission of
mind). At the same time, Dulles noted that—in the United States at least—the USCCB
has never used its authority to define doctrine.

I’ll also note in passing that our own Joe Komonchak wrote a fine article entitled “The Roman Working Paper on Episcopal Conferences” in 1989 that criticized the “all or nothing” approach to collegiality expressed in the instrumentum laboris, but rather than speak for him, I’ll let him add further comment if he desires. For myself, I’ll say that I tend to assume peoples’ good faith and I would not say that the episcopal conferences are beyond criticism. But in this
case, it is very hard for me to believe that criticism of bishops conferences
is not at least partially motivated by a desire to remove a stumbling block to
Roman centralism.

ERRATA: The post below assumes that Charlotte Allen and I shared a similar upbringing and catechetical formation.  I have since been informed that this is not the case, so that affects at least part of the analysis below.  I apologize to Ms. Allen and to our readers for the error.

As noted by Grant below, Charlotte Allen has posted something of a critique of Commonweal over at the First Things blog. I want to take the discussion in a slightly different direction than the combox discussion seems to be heading.

I hope Charlotte will not mind if I deal with some of her points quickly. She questions what is distinctively Catholic about Peggy Steinfels’ views on the current conflict in Lebanon or Clayton Sinyai’s opinions about union organizing among undocumented workers. But as far as I can tell, the opinions of both authors are solidly within the Catholic mainstream. Outside the United States, the Church’s support for labor unions, migrants, and the concerns of Christians living in Arab nations is taken more or less for granted. It cannot be denied that these are issues of prudential judgment about which Catholics of good faith can differ, but it’s fair to say that Commonweal hews closer to mainstream Catholic opinion on these matters than does, say, First Things.

But these are minor points, because what I really want to address is the broader question she raises about whether Commonweal lacks a distinctively “Catholic perspective.” Here, I think, Charlotte reveals the generational divide that exists between Catholics (like Charlotte and myself) who grew up in the wake of Vatican II, and those whose formation was prior to the Council.

In my experience, the latter group of Catholics tends to have a deep and abiding sense of ecclesial identity. The “Catholic perspective” that they bring to bear is not the result of a conscious choice. It is the way that they reflexively think. Even if they are estranged from the Church, they tend to think about this estrangement in Catholic categories.

The writers and intellectuals of this generation no more needed to stamp “Catholic” on everything they wrote anymore than Flannery O’Connor needed to populate all her stories with Catholic characters to explore Catholic themes. They didn’t think this way. Their Catholicism has a taken-for-granted quality, and Commonweal was founded by—and to a great extent remains guided by—people with this kind of sensibility.

Charlotte and I (and the generations that have followed us) were raised in a very different period. Even for those raised as cradle Catholics, the sense of Catholicism as something constitutive of our identity has been attenuated. One can argue that there are positive and negative aspects of this change, but the fact that there has been a change seems inarguable. We’re more inclined to ask questions about what is distinctively Catholic because our decision to remain Catholics is more of a choice than it was for previous generations.

I teach adult Confirmation classes, which regularly brings me into contact with baptized Catholics who have received little in the way of formal catechesis. They, too, often want to know what is “distinctively Catholic.” In some cases, this has been prompted by their inability to respond to aggressive questions posed by Christians of other denominations. In other cases, it has been prompted by their inability to respond to questions posed by their own children!

I disagree with Charlotte’s suggestion that Commonweal somehow lacks a Catholic perspective. The magazine positively oozes with Catholic sensibility. But because of the deficiencies of my own formation (I was confirmed in 1980—do the math!), it took me a long time for the magazine’s distinctiveness to impress itself upon me. I often felt the writers were using terms and references that I was supposed to know, but didn’t.

So while many of us here will probably disagree with Charlotte’s conclusion, I think she is raising some questions that any of us who are writing for an educated Catholic reader need to think about.

She likes us. She really likes us.

Consider it in full effect here, dotCommonwealers.

I am midway through Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, by Thomas Ricks. The book offers many examples of the incompetence, stubbornness, and ignorant denial of civilian authorities, i.e., Cheney, Rumsfeld, and (last but not least) George W. Bush.

What is unexpected—since the book depends on the accounts of military men and women as well as official after-action reports of battles, minor incidents, and encounters with insurgents—is how those same vices show up in the armed forces, going from the top down. General Tommy Franks and then his successor, General Ricardo Sanchez, whether out of loyalty to the civilian view or incompetence, etc., badly failed to read the situation on the ground after the famous victory. Sanchez’s division commanders who had charge of specific areas of Iraq appeared, with one exception, to suffer the same inability to read the situation and to respond appropriately.

When the dust settles, if it ever does, the military will rightly claim the civilians were in charge and they messed up (echoes of Vietnam). But in some critically important ways the military messed up too, not simply because they obeyed civilian orders, but because some of them were incompetent military leaders.

Here is how Ricks sums up the issue:

“Civilian leaders and top military commanders had failed to define what kind of war was being fought, and publicly had insisted that it was something other than it was. Seen in this light, the abuses that occurred later in 2003 at the Abu Ghraib prison [Ricks has a whole chapter on this] weren’t an anomalous incident but rather the logical and predictable outcome of a series of panicky decisions made by senior commanders [reporting to Sanchez], which in turn had resulted from the divided, troop-poor approach devised months earlier by Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Franks.”

Two issues here:

Where are the mechanisms in the military for information to go up the chain-of-command as well as come down it? If Ricks has learned all that he was from interviews, reports, and testimony, how come the chain of command didn’t or hasn’t learned it?

If our military leaders are in this instance as incompetent as our civilian leaders, what exactly is the power of the last standing superpower? Smart weapons controlled by stupid people?

“If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out by a date
certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people
who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England. It
will strengthen them and they will strike again.”

–Joe Lieberman

Given the interest in Latin on this blog, I thought people would like to know that Reginald Foster, OCD, the well-known Vatican Latinist, will be speaking at Notre Dame soon.

Is Latin Really Dead?
Why the Academy and the Church Should Preserve the Latin Language

An informal conversation with
Reginald Foster, O.C.D.
Department of Latin Letters
Secretariat of State
The Vatican

Date: Thursday, August 24, 2006

Time: 4:30 p.m.

Place: Notre Dame Law School, Room 120

Reggie is really amazing; here is a story written after B16′s election.

No one has touched the Mel Gibson episode so I’ll start the ball rolling with a tough-minded but also fair discussion by Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times. Rutten asks: shouldn’t graphic evidence of Gibson’s anti-Semitism force those who defended Gibson’s Passion of the Christ – one of the most popular and culturally important films of the past thirty years — to rethink their position?

The Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, has released a brief report (warning: PDF) from the Special Panel on Clergy Misconduct, convened by Bishop George Lucas to review the results of an investigation into allegations against priests in the diocese. (The investigation was limited to charges involving only adults, not minors.)

Lucas, who was installed in 1999, commissioned the report last year “amid a climate of increasing doubt and mistrust,” brought on by the 2004 assault on then-Chancellor Msgr. Eugene Costa, after he allegedly solicted his attackers in a park, and by Thomas Munoz’s later charge that Bishop Lucas had slept with him, five diocesan priests, and three seminarians. Munoz’s claims were deemed false by the panel, but Msgr. Costa has been removed from public ministry, and Lucas is taking canonical steps to make that suspension permanent.

The panel’s report indicates that the investigation results may be released in the near future. The diocese would do well to follow Chicago’s model and release this audit unedited and as soon as possible. Once released, the investigation may fill out the panel’s “particular concerns” regarding the last bishop of Springfield, Daniel Ryan.

Bishop Ryan engaged in sexual misconduct with adults and used his authority to conceal this misconduct. Although denied by Bishop Ryan, this behavior did occur and caused scandal in the Church by leading others to do evil. It resulted in feelings of hurt and anger, as well as thoughts of doubt and mistrust both in the Church as an institution and in its leaders. There is anecdotal evidence of local Catholics abandoning the faith as a result of that behavior. Bishop Ryan no longer resides in the diocese and no longer participates in public ministry.

An interesting battle of numbers and perceptions is occuring in regard to perhaps the most controversial (at the time) Clinton-era domestic policy initiative, the 1996 welfare reform bill. If you’ll recall, the US Catholic Conference helped organize opposition to the bill, winning much applause from then Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, among others. Were the bishops right? The Economist flatly says no. Catholic Charities offers a more measured yes, although I think it’s fair to say that the tone of even this press release suggests surprise at the diminished number of Americans on welfare. And The Economist is surely right in arguing that the issue is no longer a political albatross for the Democrats.

Here’s a sure-fire test, as offered by Stephen H. Webb, professor of religion and philosophy at Wabash College, courtesy of the new First Things blog:

You know you are a liberal if you think that the poor need money more than they need moral discipline.

Over the weekend, I saw Strangers with Candy, the movie based on the cult tv series of the same name. It was written by Stephen Colbert, Amy Sedaris, and Paul Dinello. It was crude, rude –and I have to say, very funny. Two things:

1. I once thought that conservative Catholic apologists (e.g., Amy Welborn) would be reasonable in thinking Stephen Colbert thinks like them. I no longer think that is the case. Here’s the NCCB review of the movie ,which it rated “O” for morally offensive. Personally, I think the review misses the “spoof” element of the movie.

2. You know you’re middle-aged when the entertainment industry starts making reference to, and making fun of, things that you experienced as a child . Here’s what the Wikipedia article says about the series:

“The series was first envisioned by Dinello and Colbert, both of whom had seen a public service “Scared Straight”-type film called The Trip Back, in which motivational speaker Florrie Fisher recalled her days as a New York street whore to a group of high school students. Seeing that Fisher strongly resembled their friend Amy Sedaris, they showed her a copy of the tape, and suitably impressed with Sedaris’ imitation of Fisher, began developing a series based around the idea of Fisher going back to high school herself. The three, along with Mitch Rouse, combined this concept with lampooning the after school specials they had all been subjected to in high school along with the short-lived mid-nineties teen series “My So-Called Life.”"

So the proper way of interpreting Strangers with Candy is getting back at all those people who subjected us to moralizing after-school specials that interrupted our daily mindless routine of television. I expect that thirty years from now, the corresponding generation of middle aged people will be making fun of something else.

Another former priest and seminarian with the Legionaries of Christ has come forward with allegations against Fr. Marcial Maciel, the suspended founder of the Legionaries. Brian Mershon has the story, and the letter alleging the abuse. Mershon also notes that Jim Fair, U.S. spokesman for the Legionaries, repeats the familar refrain that allegations of abuse made against Maciel are akin to the persecution of Jesus.

They have lists, those e-mail spammers, and after finding this link in my morning mail, I fear they may have me pegged.

(Google shortcut for “Christian lending network” right here.)

Ur-Diogenes is back from vacation. Today he posts on a dustup regarding the happy subject of divorced Catholics and Communion.

Fr. Alberto Bonandi, Ur-Diogenes summarizes, “has proposed that divorced and remarried Catholics can be admitted to Communion even if they are not ‘living as brother and sister.’” Sandro Magister reported much more of this here; Villanova assistant professor of law Robert T. Miller, who’s working on a PhD in moral philosophy at Columbia University, takes umbrage at Bonandi’s moral theology here.

Ur-Diogenes approvingly quotes in full the response by Donald Keefe, SJ–yes, a Jesuit of whom he approves–and it’s certainly worth reading, not only for his energetic argument with Bonandi, but also for the dramatic turn he takes at its conclusion:

Bonandi’s position is a direct assault upon
sacramental realism. It cannot survive serious scrutiny. There was a
time when the editors of theological journals provided that scrutiny,
by which exercise of responsibility such fluff as Bonandi produces
rarely found its way into print. However, the politicization of
theology, not least by the priority given diplomatic agendas over
orthdoxy during the past forty years, has made it impossible to rely
upon the probity of the journals. Bishops in the United States have
lived in terror of liberal theologians since the Council: they are
generally more concerned for media approval than for orthodoxy.

Benedict
XVI is facing a schism long nourished by the unwillingness of his
Polish predecessor to govern the Church. A decade or so after John Paul
II took office, a well known and highly influential theologian had
observed this reluctance sufficiently to remark in my presence that he
did not care what the pope said, only what he did. This stance is now
nearly universal.

I doubt that any of this is news, but I’ve
been fighting the Bonandis of this world for too long to let this one’s
insolence go by.

Update

Miller has returned with more on Bonandi. I know more than a few credentialed moral theologians regularly read dotCommonweal, so have at it. I’m particularly intrigued by Miller’s lesson in the true end (not plural) of sexual acts–and their causal roles.

Rather, the normative significance of sexuality arises from its natural
connection to the transmission of human life—its “procreative end,” if
we must use such language—and it is this procreative end that does all
the work in sexual ethics. Treating the unitive end as being on a par
with the procreative is a theological error, and it encourages other
errors, too, including Fr. Bonandi’s

Update 2

The Heart, Mind, and Strength blog is hashing some of this out, finding fault with the argument, not the conclusions. Have a look.

Daniel Levy writes on “Ending the Neoconservative Nightmare” in the Israeli Haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/746312.html Read the whole thing, but here is a brief quote:

“Finding themselves somewhat bogged down in the Iraqi quagmire, the [American] neoconservatives are reveling in the latest crisis, displaying their customary hubris in re-seizing the initiative. The U.S. press and blogosphere is awash with neocon-inspired calls for indefinite shooting, no talking and extension of hostilities to Syria and Iran, with Gingrich calling this a third world war to ‘defend civilization.’

Disentangling Israeli interests from the rubble of neocon ‘creative destruction’ in the Middle East has become an urgent challenge for Israeli policy-makers.”

Too bad U.S. pundits can’t speak quite as boldly as this Israeli one!

Since we’ve been talking about proposals to repeal or reduce the Estate Tax, I thought I would provide a little update. Congressional Republicans are supporting a bill that would tie reductions in the estate tax to an increase in the minimum wage.

Some things just leave you speechless. I wonder how the Catholic Social Teaching experts over at Mirror of Justice would parse this one…:-)

A journalist, that is. Columbia Journalism School dean Nicholas Lemann has a few choice words for self-aggrandizing bloggers. This ought to send them into a fugue state.

One of the more amusing examples of bloggish journalism Lemann offers is an “interview” with New York Times tech reporter John Markoff, which was conducted by Jeff Jarvis, whose responses to Markoff were added after the fact.

MARKOFF:
I certainly can see that scenario, where all these new technologies may
only be good enough to destroy all the old standards but not create
something better to replace them with. I think that’s certainly one
scenario.

JARVIS:
Pardon me for interrupting, but that made no frigging sense whatsoever.
Can you parse that for me, Mr. Markoff? Or do you need an editor to
speak sense? How do new standards “destroy” old standards? Something
won’t become a “standard” unless it is accepted by someone in power—the
publishers or the audiences. This isn’t a game of PacMan.

MARKOFF:
The other possibility right now—it sometimes seems we have a world full
of bloggers and that blogging is the future of journalism, or at least
that’s what the bloggers argue, and to my mind, it’s not clear yet
whether blogging is anything more than CB radio.

JARVIS:
The reference is as old-farty and out-of-date as the sentiment. It’s
clear that Markoff isn’t reading weblogs and doesn’t know what’s there.

Hey, fool, that’s your audience talking there. You should want to listen to what they have to say. You are, after all, spending your living writing for them.
If you were a reporter worth a damn, you’d care to know what the
marketplace cares about. But, no, you’re the mighty NYT guy. You don’t
need no stinking audience. You don’t need ears. You only need a mouth.

Jarvis will be a professor of journalism at the City University of New York this fall.