Why I can't support CRS

Several years ago a news story broke about a CRS executive who was charged with assault after running over a pro-life protester in Washington DC.  While laughing. In the first link above CRS makes mention of several other questionable hires, but I want to focus on Ms. Glassman for this post.

Last week the news broke about a VP of CRS who is in a gay "marriage".  CRS is said to be in "deliberations" over the matter.

"Well," you say, "that's only two employees.  CRS is a big organization. Surely in any large organization you can expect a few rogue operators," and that's fair.  I don't know how many staffers CRS has but it's surely in the thousands.  The various scandals that they find themselves in suggest a more systematic problem but I'd like to focus on just these two.

Let's say that you found yourself working for an organization that upheld ideas you disagree with.  I don't mean that the organization gives to charities that you don't care about, or their United Way appeals get on your nerves (been there, done that).  I mean the company values something that you find abhorrent.  Let's say the founder and executive committee is made up of neo-Nazis.  Let's say there are posters up around the building advocating The Final Solution, or Racial Purity.  Let's say that all the executives are distinctly Arian in complexion.  The break areas are littered with anti-Semitic literature.  Perhaps the men tend to have little Hitler mustaches and wear brown shirts.  But you, as a good God fearing American whose father went to war to fight such evil can't abide it.

Let's tone it down a bit.  Maybe it's not obvious that the company is run by neo-Nazis.  Maybe you just notice as you walk down the halls that a few of the employees have small momentos of Nazism. Perhaps one of the women has a little swastika necklace.  Or you see a reproduction of some of Hitler's watercolor paintings around.  Or you sit in on a discussion about a candidate for an open position and his racial background is discussed in frank detail.  And eventually you figure it out.

Would you stay?  Once you knew what was going on, how many days would you stick around?  Would you want your friends and family knowing that you worked for the Nazis in town?  Would it bother you?

Now let's say your Ms Glassman.  Your advocacy of abortion is so pronounced that you proudly carry the banner of the pro-abortion political party in a (minor) election and ram your car into a crowd of pro-life marches, laughing while your foot's on the accelerator.  Now consider that you work in a Catholic charity that "upholds Catholic principals" to quote CRS's webpage.  Perhaps you see pro-life posters on the wall. Emails come out announcing a carpool to the annual March for Life.  People have Baby Banks sitting on their desks.    People talk about praying the rosary outside an abortion clinic during their lunch hour.  Do you stay?  Can you tolerate such an environment?

Let's say you're Mr Estridge.  You are living the gay lifestyle so completely that you go off an get married to your gay partner.  But you work for a Catholic organization.  Maybe you get emails about some speaker coming to the area to talk about religious liberty.  People organize letter writing campaigns to their elected officials to oppose bills that would redefine marriage.  You see marketing material from the National Organization for Marriage sitting around.  Can you handle that? Do you stay?  For 16 years? And work your way to the post of VP?

My example of Ms Glassman may be extreme, but Mr Estridge's cohort frequently compare people who uphold the Catholic understanding of marriage as bigots and haters.  The Southern Poverty Law Center branded NOM as a hate group.  If you work for such a group, but enter into a gay union, doesn't that seem a little inconsistent?

In fact, it seems more likely that Ms Glassman and Mr Estridge stayed with CRS because they didn't see any inconsistency in their position and CRS's position.  They saw no "provocative" posters or literature around.  CRS, for them, was Home on the Range: where never is heard a discouraging word.  The "Catholic" in "CRS" was so completely suppressed it never caused a ripple of consternation. In fact, the Catholics that they met in CRS may have been a detriment to the Church's mission: "Oh, don't worry. We're not that kind of Catholic."  Meaning they are the same kind of Catholic that currently occupy the halls of power in DC: Biden, Pelosi, Sotomayor and the rest.

So I can't support CRS.  I don't care if they hire people who aren't Catholic.  But I expect the environment to have so much Catholic identity that someone who wants to run over pro-lifers wouldn't feel comfortable working there. I want the people who work there to be so aligned with the Bishops that anyone opposed to the Bishops' agenda won't feel comfortable working there.

And that's clearly not the case today.

A troubling statement by Cardinal Kasper

Cardinal Kasper is a Cardinal.  I am, as one Bishop on Catholic Answers put it derisively, "A guy with a computer and a catechism."  Cardinal Kasper is college educated, a noted scholar with a long academic career who's published numerous books and has engaged in theological debate with all manner of similarly smart people.  I have done none of those things.  So I'm hardly qualified to comment on his theological ideas, but I think I am qualified to make a few qualified criticisms about something he said.

Recently First Things published a review of Cardinal Kasper's book Mercy.  The original review can be read here.  The good Cardinal responded to that review and it was published (along with a response to the response) here.

The troubling passage that I would like to comment on is in Cardinal Kasper's reply.

As Christians, we should keep to the rule of St. Ignatius of Loyola, and instead of ridiculing each other we should interpret each other in the best possible orthodox way.

On the face of it, this seems unremarkable. In fact, it seems like a bit of good advice.  However, at the risk of (ironically) ignoring the advice, there's a darker possibility here.  One of the known tricks of modernists is to say something that can be understood in more than one way.  They are deliberately vague.  They can spout their modernist nonsense in such a way that their fellow travelers will know what they are talking about, but if they are criticized they can truthfully deny ever saying anything wrong.

This is illustrated, to some extent, in an old post by Father Longenecker. But what I'm talking about is a bit more insidious.  There was an example a few years ago about a book by Sister Elizabeth Johnson that was condemned by the USCCB because it taught the heresy of modalism.  Her supporters in the liberal press were not amused.  (It's not clear to me why liberals would be attracted to this particular heresy. I suspect it is simply a matter of resentment over magesterial oversight.)  Sister Johnson objected saying that she never taught the things that the USCCB said she taught.  But it was all slippery language.  She clearly taught heresy, but if she were to go line by line through her book (and her previous books, of which I've read a few snippets only) I'm confident she could argue the precise meaning of each word in such a way that it's actually the most orthodox thing in the world.

Is this was Cardinal Kasper is doing?  Writing about God's mercy in such a way that will lead people to think that there is no such thing as mortal sin while giving himself enough wiggle room to avoid charges of modernism?  In the sentence I quoted above, given Cardinal Kasper's reputation, it seems that he's inviting people to interpret him as they will, rather than seeking to say something in an unambiguous manner that would avoid confusion.

Now, as I said at the start, I am no theologian.  For all I know, this is normal theological debate: make some statement than can be taken multiple ways and then argue about the premises of the statement.  It's possible that this is not as troubling to a trained theologian as it is to me.  Having said that, I'm not sure who the audience was for Cardinal Kasper's book. Perhaps it wasn't meant for laypeople and so I'm simply getting worked up for nothing and First Things may be doing a disservice by having this discussion in a casual forum.

But it looks shady to me.

Killing Jesus

We watched Killing Jesus on Good Friday (last night).  It was ... OK.  It had the feel of a movie about Jesus by someone who didn't actually believe in Jesus.  There were some interesting parts of the movie and I especially liked the depiction of Caiaphas, but there were some whoppers too.

(note that I have not read the book so these may only apply to the movie)

The idea that Jesus didn't know he was God was first proposed to me in high school by one of nuns who taught religion (of course).  It still has the feel of a hippy-Jesus image from the 1970s.  I can't figure out how this theory came about, given the text of the New Testament, nor can I figure out the benefit of such a situation. How does that help explain Jesus' unique role in history?  How does it make Christianity more appealing?  It seems a big gnostic to me (Sophia revealing the truth to those open to it) but I don't think that people holding that theory mean to embrace gnosticism.  It just seems so ... disco and bell-bottoms.

When promoting the book, Bill O'Reilly said that during his research he found that Jesus was a political radical.  That's no surprise: Bill O'Reilly is a political commentator and is surrounded by political wonks so he'd be expected to see Jesus in political terms.  I was braced for that in the movie and was relieved that Jesus-the-radical was not to be found.  It was interesting that his antagonism towards the Jewish authorities was triggered by the arrest of John the Baptist.  I don't know that the New Testament would support that theory, but since the Gospels were written in a non-linear fashion I don't know that I can rule it out either.  It never occurred to me.

 There was nothing sacramental about Jesus: no breaking of bread at the last supper, no blood and water at the crucifixion, no wedding at Cana.  He did promise to build His church on Simon who, when renamed "Peter" was told helpfully by another apostle that "Peter" means "rock" in Greek.  That was a strange, but probably necessary, literary device.  The only "hard teaching" was a scene where Jesus was apparently preaching for the first time and told people in the market place to love their enemies.  They rejected that and walked away.  Later on when He had attracted a following, He was preaching "blessed are the poor" and "blessed are those persecuted for righteousness".  It gives the impression that His first attempt at preaching didn't go so well, so He had to punch up His delivery some and possibly punch up the message as well.

In the movie, Jesus did not appear physically after the resurrection, but answered the prayers of Peter in the boat leading Peter to shout out "He is here!" That's incredibly bizarre.  The tomb was empty just before that so presumably Jesus ascended immediately upon resurrection? Or Jesus was now in a state that transcended time and space and is with us always?  But that's how God is described in the movie, so what was the point of the crucifixion and resurrection?  That also seems a bit gnostic to me and particularly seems taken from the skeptical tradition of Rudolph Bultmann and Raymond Brown.

There have been a few movies about Jesus running in the Easter season: The Passion of the Christ, The Bible (and it's sequels) and now Killing Jesus.  Clearly The Passion of the Christ is the best of them all.  Without a doubt.  I can't decide of Killing Jesus is better than The Bible or not.  Some parts I clearly thought were better, but I thought the Bible dealt with the trial of Jesus in a much more believable way.