The Hermeneutics of Bafflegab

I assumed that both "sides" in the synod subscribed to the Hermeneutics of Continuity, but they differed on what they were in continuity with. One side was holding fast to the traditions of the Church has preserved by the Holy Spirit, and one side was holding fast to the Spirit of Vatican II and ditching whatever traditions got in their way.  Then Pope Francis scolded the synod fathers for reading events with a hermeneutic of conspiracy and I thought I'd heard it all.

But Cardinal Wuerl apparently has framework that I hadn't even considered where ambiguity is a feature, not a bug and we'll hold on to the teachings, but who can actually say what that means? It's all about encountering and accompanying.   What do we do after we encounter and accompany people? We lead them to Christ! How do we do that? By encountering and accompanying them.  When do we share the Gospel message and the teachings preserved by the Church? Well...

 

Raymond's look of confusion is priceless.

A Thought about the Synod

A couple of years back, when all the world was exercised about gays marching in New York's St Patrick Day Parade (which now seems like such a quaint time), Anthony Esolen had this to say.
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/serpents-gone

At the time it came out, I found much wisdom in the piece.

In the parade are liars, cheats, gossips, Sabbath-breakers, and people who drink too much. In the parade are adulterers, a thief or two, a pleasant civic-minded taker of bribes, a man who beats his wife, and a wife who beats her husband. In the parade are people hooked on porn, and at least one woman who has produced some of it herself. In the parade are parents who have hurt their children and children who have hurt their parents. In the parade are fornicators, and some who have snuffed in the womb the natural result of their fornication. In the parade is a doctor who let an elderly patient die of an overdose of morphine because her relatives wanted it. In the parade are the angry, the false-hearted, the covetous, the slothful, the vain, the blasphemous, the licentious, the ambitious, the perverse, the cruel, the petty, the lukewarm, and the obscene.

Dr Esolen's point is that in any group of people, there will be sinners o'plenty.  This is perfectly illustrated in a subsequent paragraph.

In the town next to mine when I was a boy, the Italian immigrants had brought over from Gubbio a great festive parade, the Race of the Saints. Three teams of men, carrying seven-hundred-pound statues of Saint George, Saint Anthony, and Saint Ubaldo, Gubbio’s patron, would race up and down the hilly streets, to the cheers of most of their four thousand townsmen. Sin was carrying sanctity; sinners bent their backs and strained their legs to give honor to the saints. 

That is why we have a parade. We who are not always honorable show our appreciation for honor. We who are not always holy show our reverence for holiness. We who are small pay our respects to what is great. We who have received great benefits show some modest gratitude for those who have conferred them upon us.

So we're all sinners. What could go wrong?

Now let us suppose that the Royal Order of Wife-Beaters wants to add their float to the parade, with a jaunty young lady bending over to invite the man with the big paddle. Let us suppose that the Fornicators for Freedom want to march, dancing to “Paradise by the Dashboard Lights.” Let us suppose that a group calling itself Porn Again Christians wants to strut, with bikini underwear and thongs. Let us suppose that the Rumor Rustlers want to march, advertising their raison d’etre, to ferret out other people’s ugly secrets and to spread them abroad in gleeful caricatures.

Now suppose that the parade were ostensibly held to celebrate the feast day of a saint, and that a leader of the saint’s faith were to occupy the seat of honor. That would not be a case of sin carrying sanctity. It would be a case of sin marching right over the backside and the head of sanctity. Saint Patrick, according to legend, cast all the serpents out of Ireland. The new Patrick is more “inclusive.” He welcomes the serpents back in.

I've been thinking about this in terms of the recent synod.  What I'm about to say may be unpopular, but it's surely true.  Those who are divorced and remarried can, in large part, already receive Communion.  They can either just go up the aisle and deal with the looks and occasional comments, or they can change parishes.  In a large urban or suburban setting, it's possible that the great majority of people in Mass don't even know who they are or if they are married, dating, cohabiting or what.  If so they might be able to fix that by going to different mass than the one their acquaintances do.  Only people in small rural settings -- with maybe 200 parishioners and no other parish within twenty miles would everyone know their business and there's no option for another parish.

Surely the scenario I'm lining out is happening today.  It's like Dr Esolen's parade of sinners.  It's not right, and it's dangerous for the souls of the "remarried" couple that does it, but it's typical of humanity.  And it in no way impacts the teachings of the Church.  That a Church doctrine would be ignored is about as surprising as morning following night.

In the synod, however, what was being proposed is the accommodation of sin.  Now not only the couple is in jeopardy, but presumably the entire Church.  If divorce and remarriage is sinful ("remarriage" meaning marriage without annulment), then if the Church endorses it in any way, it's complicit in the sin.  In the case of the large urban or suburban parish I mentioned, the impact is, again, minimal.  Most people are unaware of the couple situation anyway. In the case of the small rural parish, the impact is more dramatic, but those are small numbers as well.  So we're not talking about widespread scandal.  But it's qualitatively different.

I'm not in favor of a remarried couple running off to another parish where no one knows them and taking part in the sacraments.  I want all people to go to heaven, and if Our Lord said that something is a sin, I'd prefer all people avoid it.  However, I can't deny that it happens, and in a way I'm OK with it.  Their sin is, after all, their sin.  As long as the Church isn't endorsing or publicly tolerating it, I can sit next to the couple in Mass and offer the sign of peace in blissful ignorance.  By the same token, I don't know if the person sitting next to me in Mass is a thief, a lier, a bigot or a scoundrel.  I know he's a sinner, but I don't know what kind of sinner.  Some day, God will work on them to the point that they will make things right.  Hopefully.

But if the Church finds an accommodation -- something that makes their sinful state not sinful -- then it does affect me.  The Church is saying that a vow I took on my wedding day doesn't apply sometimes. Suddenly there's a category of sin that the Church publicly acknowledges as sad but inevitable.  Now there's a third category of sin: Venial, Mortal and Acceptable.

That would destroy any legitimacy the Church has left to talk about sin and redemption.

Second Coming

For some reason, I've been thinking about this poem a lot in the last three weeks.

http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. 

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

A synodal Church

Yesterday the internet was all a-flutter with the news that Pope Francis had called for a more synodal church and a redefinition of the role of the papacy.

I'm not sure there's much to worry about at this point.  Francis says a lot of things and little of it sticks around.  He has a well-known habit of preaching to the choir.  For instance, while on a plane with journalists, most of whom are secular in outlook and lifestyle, he famously criticized people who breed like rabbits only to turn around a few days later when speaking to a Catholic audience and say that large families are a blessing.  So last week he spoke to a bunch of people involved with the synod on the anniversary of Pope Paul VI establishing the synod as a permanent feature in Church life and said synods were awesome and the Pope is just a guy, you know?  Sure.  This after unilaterally changing the annulment process in the Church a month ago.  Next week he'll be wrapping up a divided and fractious synod by telling them that his opinion is the only one that counts.  Like he did last year.

So who knows what he's going to do.

This has been dealt with in some depth by the "Letters from the Synod" published in the United States on First Things magazine's website.  The "Doubts about Devolution" segments were written by George Weigel, who I am hardly worthy to read, let along critique, so I'll take a slightly different tack.

The first thing to say is that you're thoughts about devolution probably depend on where authority is devolving from and where it's devolving to.  If you think your local Bishop or Bishop's conference can be trusted to uphold the faith and, perhaps are even being held back by flacks in Rome, then you're probably OK with it.  If you think your local Bishop or conference won't do the job, then you'd probably rather keep the authority in Rome. If you don't think either group is up to the task, then you're probably not really Catholic anyway.

So in the United States most Catholics are skeptical of the USCCB and are hard pressed to see any upside in giving them more authority.  Most liberals only see Bishops like Chaput and Dolan and Cordelion using the USCCB to further their culture wars.  Most conservatives remember with dismay the activist conference from the 1970's calling for unilateral disarmament and the current banality that is the USCCB voter's guide.

Theoretically, liberals should be loving the idea of a more synodal Church because, with more Francis appointments on the way, they can anticipate the day that their issues will find favor with the majority of the USCCB which can then ram that policy down the throats of the remaining B16 Bishops. In theory, conservatives would fear synodality for the same reason, but with the added tedium of endless discussion groups and committee reports that the liberals will force on the Church until the conservatives are ground down.

The second point is that there's a tiresome fascination with Churchy matters that don't much apply outside the parish grounds.  If the New Evangelization is supposed to be more than a marketing gimmick (which looks less and less likely), then we should quit focusing on internal battles and turn our attention to where the real work needs to be done.

Father Barron addressed this when speaking about the reason Ratzinger et al left the Concilium journal (today seen as a liberal "Spirit of Vatican II" outpost) to form Communio (today seen as a rock-solid orthodox journal)

...Balthasar, Ratzinger, and de Lubac decried the “Concilium” board’s resolve to perpetuate the spirit of the council. Councils, they stated, are sometimes necessary in the life of the Church, but they are also perilous, for they represent moments when the Church throws itself into question and pauses to decide some central issue or controversy. We think readily here of Nicea and Chalcedon, which addressed crucial issues in Christology, or Trent, which wrestled with the challenge of the Reformation. Councils are good and necessary, but the Church also, they contended, turns from them with a certain relief in order to get back to its essential work.

The progressives in the 1960's and 1970's wanted an eternal Council.  They wanted to push ahead with the momentum from Vatican II and keep on talking until the Church was just how they wanted it.  But Ratzinger and the rest saw that internal struggles can suck up all the oxygen in the room.

In the United States we have the USCCB and can readily see how useless and irrelevant it is.  Perhaps that is not the case in other countries.  Maybe they are blessed not to have a national bureaucracy that gets in the way of the local Ordinary and his flock.  So perhaps they simply don't know what they are wishing for when they want more synodality.

Sunday Readings, 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time

I'm up to give a reflection on the readings at RCIA this weekend. Here are my notes.  Two Romano Guardini quotes, but they are from the same chapter in The Lord, so I'll only count them as one.  Still, better than none!

Notes on Google Docs

I'm a contrarian, so I avoid the easy way out and say "Ancient Jews thought money mean blessing, but Jesus says no, so ha!"  That may be true but it seems too simple.  And I have to stretch this out for 30 minutes.  But I was always skeptical of that.  Like the ancient Jews were all a bunch of health-and-wealth megachurch-goers.  When you're ruled by a foreign power that likes to pin people up on a cross to demonstrate its power, it's hard to believe there'd be a lot of people in the synagogue listening to Joel Osteen.  But I could be wrong.  I wasn't there.

Furthermore, the essential Guardini argument does not go there and there's little of the health-and-wealth notion in Lapide either. (Link to Matthew 19, as the parallel account in Matthew has a much fuller explanation by Lapide).

NLM on Holy Cards

Thanks be to God for Pope Benedict XVI.

http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2015/10/a-tale-of-three-holy-cards.html

Each man must prepare himself for nothing less than martyrdom

Powerful stuff from Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix.

Let us look to John the Apostle and Beloved Disciple for insights into this battle. In his first Letter to the Church, St. John speaks of the three-fold temptation faced by all of us: temptations to the passions of the flesh, to possessiveness, and to pride (1 John 2: 16-17). Are not all sins tied to these three temptations? John puts his finger on the battles that each of us must fight within ourselves. In fact, Christ fights specifically against these temptations during His encounter with Satan in the desert (Matthew 4), and then gives us instruction in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6) on how we are to fight against them.
Turning away from the passions of the flesh, Jesus rejected Satan’s offering of bread in the desert, and in the Sermon on the Mount, twice He instructs us to fast (Matthew 6:16). Notice that the Lord does not say “if you fast” but rather “when you fast.” Fasting is training in self-knowledge, a key weapon for mastery over oneself. If we do not have dominion over our passions, especially those for food and sex, we cannot possess ourselves and put the interests of others in front of our own.
Tempting Jesus to possessiveness, Satan offered Him “all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them” (Matthew 4:8), but once again, Jesus refused. This shows us that Christ calls us to freedom from the temptation to gain the world at the cost of our souls. Often, Satan tempts not through persons but through objects like a car, a house, or the latest high-speed technologies. There is no shortage of messages that tempt us to grasp for happiness through possessions. We recall how the Rich Young Man left his encounter with Jesus as “sad” because “he had many possessions” (Luke 18:23). Pope Francis reminds us, “The emptier the person’s heart is, the more he or she needs to buy, own, and consume.”[13] With Jesus, we are called to seek out, not to “settle for,” a simplicity of life which frees us for our mission in Christ.
In Satan’s third attack upon Jesus in the desert, the Lord was tempted to pride. Satan enticed our Lord to use his power for selfish purposes, but Jesus rejected this cross-less glory and chose the path of humility. In the Sermon on the Mount, He exhorts us to humility not once but twice when He repeats, “when you pray” (Matthew 6:5). Indeed, the greatest protection from pride and self-reliance is turning humbly to God in prayer. The new technologies of social media where we can constantly display and discuss ourselves can lead to a type of idolatry that consumes us. Honest prayer will keep us grounded and help us to avoid this temptation.

 He recommends adopting a patron saint based on the virtues we need or the weaknesses we suffer

Each man should make a decision to have a patron Saint. While there are many more, I offer the names of ten saints with whom each and every Catholic man should become familiar. Next to each saint’s name is listed the virtue with which he is associated, as well as the sin which opposes that virtue. When we identify our sin and the needed virtue, we can identify which saint’s intercession will be particularly helpful:

• Joseph (Trust in God – selfishness)
• John the Baptist (Humility – arrogance)
• Paul (Adherence to Truth – mediocrity)
• Michael the Archangel (Obedience to God – licentiousness and rebelliousness)
• Benedict (Prayer and Devotion to God – sloth)
• Francis of Assisi (Happiness – moralism)
• Thomas More (Integrity – double-mindedness)
• Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati (Chastity – lust)
• Josemaría Escrivá (Boldness – worldly fear)
• Pope St. John Paul II (Defending the Weak – passivity)

It's simply awesome.  I wonder how this is being received in the Diocese of Phoenix: is it mailed to each house?  Are there parish-level programs based on this document?  Bishop Olmsted mentions in the document that many men do not attend Sunday Mass.  So how are they reaching those them with this document?  Is there an organized publicity campaign of any sort? 

Good to see on the eve of the synod

Principle of Apologetics: Positive and Negative Information

Anyone who has seen me speak at RCIA can say that I don't know what I'm doing.  And that is strictly true: I've never taken a course or workshop on public speaking, let alone catechesis.  One of the things you pick up in such courses is technical language for the things you do naturally and I am woefully ignorant of such things.  So while I'm sure I calling this by the wrong names, and probably skipping a few steps, but I wanted to write here a bit about what I call "Positive Information" and "Negative Information".

When I use the terms "positive" and "negative", I don't mean that in a emotional sense.  I simply mean that positive information says what something is and negative information says what something is not.  It is my intention to demonstrate that both are necessary to effectively communicate an idea.  I won't say they are necessary in equal measure, but as you'll see if the scale is tipped to far to one side you can have problems.

Let's start with a stupid example.  "I was born in Ohio, lived in Ohio for 23 years then moved to Texas where I've been ever since."  That's positive information.  It describes what my history is.  If I were to say "I was not born in Texas, I never lived or spent time in Texas for the first 23 years of my life".  That would be negative information.  It describes what my history is not.  It's also somewhat nonsensical.  Why would I stipulate whether I spent the first 23 years in Texas?  Furthermore, "I wasn't born in Texas" doesn't imply that I was born in Ohio.  I'd have to tick off all the states that I was not born in to establish the fact that I was born with a buckeye in my mouth.  That's clearly inefficient.

So my first statement is: Positive Information is the most effective way of conveying an idea.  Negative information tends to leave a hole in the story that raises more questions than it answers.

However, there is a situation where my negative statement above would make sense.  Suppose someone accused me of committing a crime when I was 18 and living in Texas. In this case, positive information does not help me.  "I lived in Ohio until I was 23" does not mean that I lived only in Ohio, that I didn't visit Texas or even spend a few months here with relatives with I was 18. In that case a person could understand that I was living in Texas, but still a resident of Ohio and considered that my home.  In that case, negative information is the most efficient way to refute the argument.  To do so with positive information leads to the same issue as above: I'd have to enumerate each and every state I visited for even an hour to prove that I was never in Texas.

But note: the statement that I committed a crime in Texas when I was 18 is a positive statement.  This leads to my second point.  A positive statement is hard to refute with another positive statement, and vice versa.  Positive information and negative information each have their purposes.

This leads to something that I can't explain but I have experienced it over and over again: Both positive and negative information are annoying, but negative information is more annoying.   Texans are proud of Texas.  Ohioans are proud of Ohio too.  If I was standing in front of a group of Texans and mentioned that I wasn't born in Texas, there'd be no issue.  If I said it twice, no problem.  If I said it three times, four times, definitely by the fifth time people would be wondering "what's wrong with Texas?  If he doesn't like it here, why doesn't he leave?"  Maybe not everyone, and depending on how I said it I could probably drag that out a little more.  But eventually people would hear something in my words that I didn't say.  On the other hand, if I was standing in a group of Texans and mentioned repeatedly that I was born in Ohio, eventually people would think "What's so great about Ohio? If he likes it there so much, why doesn't he move back?"  My contention is that people will get annoyed with negative information before they get annoyed with positive information.  It may not be by much: maybe they put up with "I wasn't born in Texas" and "I was born in Ohio" four times, but if I keep hammering on that point eventually I'll lose the crowd.

Again, I'm sure there's a technical term for that but it basically stems from preconceived notions and biases that your audience has.  When you speak, that information gets filtered through those notions to some extent before it gets into your audience's heads.  Eventually, though, that filter clogs and no more information can get in. For some reason, it seems that negative information offends or clogs a person's preconceived notions faster than positive information does.

Let's consider this in light of the issues the Church is facing today.  Many people would only like to talk about positive information: the Church is in favor of life, the Church promotes the dignity of the man-woman union, the Church loves everyone.  In doing so, they can avoid condemning anything that anyone had done in the past.  This is incomplete.

As an example: it's possible for someone to be pro-life and favor abortion in some cases.   Two positive statements: The Church is pro-life and Abortion is OK in some cases.  Can these co-exist in a person's mind?  Of course it can.  We see it every day: people feel abortion is nasty business and they'd prefer not think about it, but they can always think of a scenario where it's the compassionate thing to do.   In my example above, I said I'd have to enumerate every place that I ever lived if I was to disprove the fact that I was in Texas when I was 18.  The analogous situation here is to enumerate that the Church favors life in every imaginable situation. What if the mother is 12 years old? The Church is in favor of life. What if the mother was raped? The Church favors life. What if the child is deformed? The Church favors life.  And on and on.  And in the process there's the impression that the Church is OK with abortion in some cases, we just haven't figured out what they are yet.  But nothing has indicated so far that it's an absolute prohibition.  It's much simpler to say "Direct abortion can never be morally justified."

Another example.  Marriage is a unique bond between a man and a woman and Marriage can be established between any consenting adults.  Can both be believed at the same time by the same person?  Sure. A man and a woman are consenting adults, after all.  So are two men and three women.  Better to say "marriage is only between a man and a woman" which is kind of a positive and negative statement rolled into one ("only" implying "this and nothing else").

My final example on this point is the Kasper proposal, that says that marriage is indissoluble and permanent, but it is possible in some cases to divorce and get remarried anyway.  Cardinal Kasper has these two ideas firmly in his head and will not be shaken from either one of them. So if someone way "Marriage is indissoluble" Kasper is the first to shout "Amen!" because he believes it.  But when someone else says "people can get remarried in the Church" Kasper will be the first to shout "Credo!" because he believes it.  The only way to counter that is to say "People can NOT get remarried in the Church after divorce without an annulment".  Then Kasper will shout something else, which probably sounds even worse in German.

I mentioned that both positive and negative information can be annoying.  It's true in the Church as well.  If we only say "abortion is wrong" then eventually we'll prick someone's conscience or biases and we'll get no further with them.  And if we only say "all life in sacred" we'll do that same.  In fact, given our current political climate, it's possible that both are equally annoying at this point.  So it's necessary to use both statements, at least for the purposes of avoiding a shut-down of the dialog for as long as possible. Maybe a statement about the sanctity of life, followed by another statement, followed by a condemnation of abortion, followed by another statement about life, followed by a condemnation of the death penalty, and so on.  Alternating back and forth to give not only a complete view of Catholic morality, but also give people a break to recover from the last blow to their sensibilities.

Perhaps it's easy to see how negative information ("abortion is wrong") can be annoying, but how can positive information be annoying?  For one thing, it looks like you're avoiding an issue, which you are.  Most people will understand that if you are "prolife" that means you are opposed to abortion and if you're "pro-marriage" -- and we need a better term for that -- that  you're opposed to gay marriage. But if you don't actually say that, then  you're taking the easy way out.  And you are.  For another thing, you're implying that something doesn't meet the Catholic moral code, but you're not saying how.  "Yes, yes, you love babies. I get that. I'll buy you an Anne Geddes print for Christmas.  But how is abortion not allowable in some situations?  After all, I'm in favor of animal rights, but I still want to kill the rats in my house. Why can't you draw the line in some situations?"  By leaving that hole in the discussion, you create tension and frustration.

But in the end you'll still get yelled at.  It's no shame having people walk away from the Church's message, as long as you presented it as well as you could. If they walk away from your delivery, then you need to humbly seek to improve your own performance.  But never seek to change the message to gain favor with the crowd.