As President Biden makes his way to the Glasgow COP26 climate summit, I have run across two articles in the last 24 hours, one by conservative Jonah Goldberg at The Dispatch and the other by conservative-ish Andrew Sullivan at the Weekly Dish, Both attempt to make the case that, in nuclear power, we have a ready-made solution to sustain our economy and our way of life without adding to the carbon load in the atmosphere.
Presumably together with thousands of other alumni, I receive a newsletter from my Catholic high school alma mater a few times each year. This article by a current student caught my attention. I hope she doesn't mind my pasting her brief reflection here.
Personally, I find it heartening to encounter such vibrant Catholic faith, so earnestly stated. I don't detect even a trace of cynicism or world-weariness or pandering to the regnant anti-religious culture.
Here it is:
The Blessed Virgin Mary, who brought our Lord into the flesh, plays a very important role in the lives of Catholics. As our spiritual mother, Mary is a figure in our lives who protects and nurtures us just as our own mothers would. It is Mary who we can send our sorrows, worries, joys, pains, and happiness to and she will receive them with open arms. Mary’s intercession is something that should be prayed for daily, for it is a powerful gift that performs miracles and strengthens our prayers. All throughout salvation history, the miracles and apparitions of the Blessed Mother have transformed lives and saved many from the fires of hell. Praying to Mary and asking for her grace and guidance is crucial in our lives as Catholics. The Blessed Mother is the perfect role model of holiness and faith for all, especially women. It is so important to remember that Mary’s influence in our lives is necessary for complete formation as believers in Christ. Believing in Christ also means believing in His divine Mother, our Mother, the Mother of the Church. In my own life, the Blessed Virgin Mary strengthens me every day to live in the image of her Son. Her protection and faithfulness will never fail us, for she loves us in incomprehensible ways.
From the NYT opinion column By Katherine Eban, an investigative journalist; a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, where she covers Covid-19; and the author of “Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom.”
Even as cases decline again and vaccination numbers rise, a once-unthinkable idea is breaking through any assumptions that we would vanquish Covid-19. Dr. Anthony Fauci laid it on the line at a White House press briefing this month: “It is going to be very difficult — at least in the foreseeable future and maybe ever — to truly eliminate this highly transmissible virus.”
That SARS-CoV-2 could be with us forever is a dark thought. But pulling that mental lever may be just what we need to organize effectively for the very long haul, dramatically improve our pandemic response and embed safeguards into our everyday lives.
Even if you haven't read George Orwell's Animal Farm, you're probably familiar with the plot setup: the animals on Farmer Jones's farm stage a coup and drive him off. The animals then try to self-govern. The pigs, the cleverest of the animals, take charge.
Whenever the other beasts show signs of dissatisfaction with pig rule, Squealer, the pig regime's flack, is trotted out before the animals to make a clinching argument:
Do you know what would happen if we pigs failed in our duty? Jones would come back! Yes, Jones would come back! Surely, comrades," cried Squealer almost pleadingly, skipping from side to side and whisking his tail, "surely there is no one among you who wants to see Jones come back?"
Thus the false dilemma: the only possible alternative to pig rule is a return to farmer authoritarianism - ignoring the multitude of other possibilities.
Somehow, in the United States at this moment, we've managed to bring about that dilemma in real life, only it doesn't seem false. President Biden's presidency has not been going well. And yet, the only realistic alternative on the horizon for 2024 is the return of Donald Trump. That latter possibility is difficult to countenance, but it's one we'll probably have to face in three years.
A friend of mine went through a brutal divorce. His ex-wife is now seeking an annulment. He participated in the interview and recorded it secretly which is allowed in his state. This is because, given his experience in the divorce, he trusts no one. He let me listen to the recording and, of course, being Catholic, I was curious. The questions pretty much seemed as I would expect within the context of trying to prove both parties were able or unable to form a valid intent for a sacramental marriage. The one thing that stood out was the priest's question after my friend informed him that the ex-wife had cheated on him. The priest asked him if he had done anything to precipitate it. I thought rules are rules and doing wrong had no relation to external causation, not that there was any. He honored his vows. She didn't even have that for a reason. But I wondered if that was a conventional question or an overextension of me-too where all evil and crime are the fault of the guys. Even Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos fame tried to blame her Man for making her defraud investors of hundreds of millions.
Anyway, it will be interesting to see what the outcome is. He testified that he thought both of them were adults, not especially young, and that he thought the full intent to fulfill the sacrament was there. He definitely tried to save the marriage but, in the process, he was set up in many ways and paid dearly.
It is my opinion that she is incapable of making a commitment superior to what she did before. But I guess that is not relevant to Church law and the annulment outcome.
Last night after dinner, I raced to my car, started it, pointed it toward the parish, and drove as fast as I dared. As usual on Wednesday evenings, I was running late for choir practice
As I rolled along through the darkness, I noticed that the sun visor was in the down position, so I flipped it up. And then my heart did a triple somersault. I happened to be driving due east, and as the visor went up, the rising moon suddenly appeared in my field of vision. It looked full. To say it was beautiful is not to do it justice. It knocked my socks off. All my preoccupation with being late for choir melted away - the little dysfunctional dialogue I was having with myself inside my brain went mute. And I just sort of soaked in the beauty as I drove along.
In that moment, I understood the effect the moon has had on human beings. I wanted to howl. I wanted to start a family. My hair curled, and my whiskers grew out a quarter inch. Well, I may be exaggerating. But it brought out something very human in me, from the animal side of the spectrum.
What's more, I felt momentarily as though I was a vessel, capturing the moonlight and then shooting it forth in all directions so that the inside of the car glowed.
There is a lot of imagery in the New Testament about Jesus being the light shining in the darkness. To get a vivid idea of that, check out the moon.
File this under, "Item found while looking for something else." In September, America Magazine reported that Jonathan Goodall, the Anglican Bishop of Ebbsfleet in England, has resigned from his office in order to become Catholic.
There is a good article on the Washington Post site by Jennifer Rubin on what needs to happen to prevent a repeat of the Jan. 6 attempt to overthrow the election. We need to think about what specific reforms are needed to protect our democracy.
From the article: Opinion | A step-by-step guide to heading off the next coup attempt - The Washington Post
This is my homily for yesterday, the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B. The readings for yesterday are here.
What is going on with China and Taiwan? The Chinese military has recently been sending about 150 war planes into Taiwan's air defense identification zone (ADIZ), an area which is technically not their airspace, but extends past it in a zone in which aircraft still have to identify themselves.
From this article on the Vox News site, in an interview between Raymond Kuo, an expert on international security and East Asia, and Vox reporter Jen Kirby: The many signals China is sending with its Taiwan flyovers - Vox :
"The White House announced Oct. 8 that President Joe Biden intends to nominate former Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly, a pro-life Democrat, as the new U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See":
As has been widely reported, including here at NewGathering, within the next two weeks the Catholic Church will initiate a worldwide synodal process, which will culminate in a synod of the bishops of the world in 2023. The topic of this synodal journey is synodality itself. It seems Francis's hope is that, through this journey, the church will discern a synodal way of making decisions. The synodal way will involve consulting with the whole people of God, carefully listening, and trying to discern the will of the Holy Spirit. In these ways, it is profoundly in the spirit of Vatican II.
In June, 1985, National Catholic Reporter broke the story of sexual abuse of minors committed by Rev. Gilbert Gauthe of the diocese of Lafayette, LA. Since then, stories have been broken periodically from virtually every region and corner of the church. This week, in 2021, news continues to break - most recently in France. This period of 36 years (so far) of breaking bad news covers virtually the entire span of my adult life.
It has been abundantly clear, for many years now, that the church authorities are not able to get ahead of this story. There are many reasons for this, some of them rooted in the nature of bureaucracy, some of them in the nature of church culture, organization and structure, some of them due to bad decisions and poor judgment. Much of it is an attempt, perhaps misbegotten, to avoid lawsuits and their attendant devastating publicity and ruinous payouts.
What we have witnessed over the last three+ decades is one failed attempt after another by church authorities and their advisers to control the story of the sexual abuse of minors. It's past time to conclude that these stories are not manageable. The bad news of clerical sexual abuse is too toxic to be contained. The sex abuse story is an untamable dragon.
Francis's proposal to establish a synodal way offers the church a fresh way to try to address the problem of sexual abuse which has occurred in its past. A synodal way would be, in some ways, the opposite of the control-and-conceal managerial approach which has failed so spectacularly until now. A synodal approach would require that church authorities meet with victims, and then try to discern what to do about their testimony. It would require that the authorities listen to the entire people of God about the problem. And it would require them to be open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
A synodal path doesn't guarantee that the church finally will get in front of the story of the sexual abuse of minors. But all the other ways the church has tried so far have failed. Why not give synodality a try?
I don't have a lot to say about this. Headlines this week report that, over a 70 year period, somewhere between 220,000 and 330,000 minors were abused by French clergy and/or in a French church setting. This is pursuant to an investigation by an independent commission. It seems that only a small fraction of those numbers of abuse victims actually came forward to report abuse; the 220K-330K is an extrapolation done by experts and victims advocates. In truth, we don't know exactly how many were abused; it could be those numbers, or even more, or many less.
One news account described this collection of cases as "systemic". Probably that is accurate: it's difficult to believe that tens of thousands of cases of abuse could occur without church authorities being alerted to at least some of them, with the authorities failing to take sufficient corrective action. It is systemic in the same way that police misconduct is systemic: there are bad actors in the rank and file; others in the rank and file are aware of the misdeeds but are disincentivized from doing much about it; and those in leadership have strong incentives to look the other way. This is precisely how social structures enable sinfulness, and then prove to be resilient in the face of attempts to reform the sinfulness out of them.
70 years is a very long time horizon. 70 years ago was 1951. Presumably, almost no abusers and their leaders from 1951 still are alive today. For that matter, a teen who was abused 70 years ago would be an old man now (the commission report notes that the majority of victims are male). Whether French law includes statutes of limitation, and whether they can be lifted, and whether the church would agree to compensate victims even if statutes of limitation remain in place, are details I don't know. Certainly, younger victims whose abuse falls within the statutory window can expect whatever the French church can offer: compensation, payment for counseling and other treatment, an apology, a plea for forgiveness. Any abusers still in ministry should expect to be removed, laicized, sued and possibly charged with crimes.
I don't know of a reason to expect this story will develop along different lines than it has previously in the US, Australia, Ireland, Germany, etc. Those in favor of fundamental church reform will call for fundamental reform. Those not in favor of fundamental reform will resist those calls. Church leaders will try to say the right things, and will leave many people unsatisfied. Francis will say empathetic things and point to church law reforms he already has implemented. Most of the abusers will turn out to be retired or dead. The victims will continue to be embittered. People who are not stakeholders in the church will be frustrated that nothing more gets done. The media will have a field day. Politicians will try to leverage the situation for their political advantage. Some of the faithful will care, and some won't. Some will stay, and some won't.
These investigations, reports and all that flow from them are necessary. I've commented before that I've seen this play out so many times now that I can't really muster shock or surprise anymore. But the sour, sick feeling in my stomach hasn't abated. I expect that the same sequence of reckoning could, and should, play out anywhere the church has been present - which is most of the nations in the world. Every diocese and religious order has its sins it has tried to keep secret. This exhausting, infuriating, interminable shining of light into dark places needs to continue until there are no more dark corners in the labyrinth which is the institutional Catholic church worldwide.
My wife and I were out of town this past weekend, visiting kids. We stayed overnight Saturday into Sunday, something we don't usually do on these trips. So Sunday morning, I rolled out of bed early (I rise early, my wife rises late), Googled "catholic churches near me", picked one out, and headed off to mass.
