Hillsdale College: America the Beautiful

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Father George Rutler: Barbarism vs. Civilization

Father George Rutler

The film Cabaret is better known these days than the novel The Berlin Stories on which its screenplay is based. Christopher Isherwood described the dissolute culture of a demoralized people, which gave rise to the National Socialists. Heroes in the German Church defied the Nazi outrages, and thousands became martyrs. Bishops who honored the apostolic witness included Felhauber, Galen, Preysing and Frings, while some others were satisfied to adjust to those barbaric times. The heroes had not much support from the papal nuncio, Cesare Orsenigo, who told Preysing: "Charity is well and good but the greatest charity is not to make problems for the Church." The German bishops made a better showing than the Tudor bishops who caved in to Henry VIII, save for John Fisher, who became the only saint among them.

Pope Benedict XVI, who lived during those hard days in Germany, said in 2002: “Heroic virtue properly speaking does not mean that one has done great things by oneself, but rather that in one’s life there appear realities which the person has not done himself, because he has been transparent and ready for the work of God.” This is the universal call to holiness of which Saint Francis de Sales preached so solidly.

The German cardinal Walter Kasper has described a “Revolution of Tenderness and Love” that would seem paler than the bold summons of Pope Benedict and St. Francis de Sales. In 2014, Cardinal Kasper said: “Heroism is not for the average Christian.” Many seem to have accepted that, for the German Church is in demographic meltdown: priestly ordinations have dropped by half in the last decade, and Mass attendance has plummeted to 10.4%. This contrasts with the amazing growth of the Church in Africa, but Cardinal Kasper has said: "They should not tell us too much what we have to do."

Last Sunday a parade down Fifth Avenue with its raucous obscenities surpassed in decadence anything described in The Berlin Stories. At the same time, I was accompanying a group of visiting “wounded warriors” from Walter Reed Hospital unable to get through the traffic. One young soldier strove to carry his luggage with two prosthetic arms, while trying not to look at the street vulgarity. Such heroism is precisely what bewilders those who take pride only in their lack of heroism. Hilaire Belloc wrote:

“The Barbarian hopes—and that is the very mark of him—that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilisation has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is ever marveling that civilisation, should have offended him with priests and soldiers . . . .”

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Father Rutler’s book, He Spoke to Us – Discerning God's Will in People and Events, is now available in paperback through Ignatius Press. 

Father Rutler’s book, The Stories of Hymns – The History Behind 100 of Christianity’s Greatest Hymns, is available through Sophia Institute Press (Paperback or eBook) and Amazon (Paperback or Kindle). 

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Happy Canada Day on the 150th Anniversary of Your Nation's Founding

Warmest greetings and good wishes to our Canadian friends and neighbors on this very special Canada Day, the sesquicentenary of your nation's founding.

 

Melanie Phillips: An Open Door is Swinging for the Anglosphere

A couple of days ago, I appeared on BBC TV’s This Week show talking about whether the Anglosphere, the shorthand term for the English-speaking world led by Britain and America, was in decline given the ongoing uproar over Brexit and President Trump. You can watch this discussion here.

Since my remarks were very compressed, what follows here is a fuller version of my observations – or what I would have said had I not been confined to such a short space of time.

The Anglosphere has been in decline for the past several decades due to a deep cultural demoralisation. Since the Brexit vote, I have allowed myself a modicum of optimism that this decline might at last be halted and reversed.

And Our Kid of the Year 2017 Award Goes To ...

If the Dubia Go Unanswered, the Consequences Could Be Catastrophic

From The Catholic Herald (UK)
By Father Alexander Lucie-Smith

It is dangerous to the credibility of the Church, that what should be considered good in Germany should be considered wrong in Poland

The Four Cardinals show no sign of giving up, and neither should they. It might at this point be useful to present a chronology of the Four Cardinals and the dubia. It goes like this.

• On 19^th September 2016, four Cardinals – Caffarra, Burk, Brandmueller and Meisner – present 5 dubia or requests for clarification to the Pope concerning certain ambiguities in Amoris Laetitia.
  
  
• On 19^th November 2016, having received no answer, the four Cardinals publish their dubia.
  
  
• On April 25^th 2017, the four Cardinals write to the Pope asking for an audience, enclosing an “audience sheet” setting down what they wish to discuss with him.
  
  
• On June 19^th 2017, the letter of the four Cardinals, which has received no response, is published.
  
  

So what is going on here? It is really very simple. The Pope does not want to answer the five dubia, all of which are simple yes or no answers. The reason for this is equally simple. If the Pope answers one way, he contradicts the Magisterium of his predecessors. If he answers another way, he effectively destroys what he has tried to do with Amoris Laetitia, that is, introduce a change of practice in the Church which per se means a change of doctrine. So, the Pope continues to sit on the fence, trying to have it both ways, while the four Cardinals try to push him off it, one way or another, hoping, or knowing, that if forced off the fence there is only one possible way for him to jump.

Interestingly, by refusing to answer the dubia, the Pope has in a certain sense given an answer of sorts. His refusal to answer effectively means that he is not endorsing, at least not officially, the guidelines of the Maltese bishops and others. What the Maltese bishops say remains a local pronouncement, not official Church teaching, even if it may have been published in the Osservatore Romano. What the Maltese bishops teach in their guidelines can be nullified by the Pope or his successors in the Chair of Peter.

But here we run into the chief concern of the Four Cardinals. It is confusing, indeed more than confusing, it is intolerable, for it is dangerous to the credibility of the Church, that what should be considered good in Germany should be considered wrong in Poland. This is not Catholicism, it is rather national churches on the Anglican or Orthodox model. If this ambiguity is allowed to continue, the consequences will be catastrophic.

Furthermore, it simply cannot be the case, for it has never been the case before, that one Pope can contradict the Magisterium of his predecessors. Amoris Laetitia has to be read in continuity with Familiaris Consortio and Veritatis Splendor. If it somehow “replaces” Familiaris Consortio and Veritatis Splendor, are people like me, whose teaching in seminary was based on those two documents, now to “unlearn” them? Have they been corrected? Were they for a time only? Or were they of permanent significance? But if Amoris Laetitia is to replace the previous magisterial documents, then what may replace Amoris Laetitia twenty years from now?

As the dubia make clear, one interpretation of Amoris Laetitia strikes at the heart of Catholic moral teaching as everywhere and always understood. In a sense there can only be one answer to the dubia, and that is that the traditional teaching must stand, and that Amoris Laetitia must be read in the light of that teaching alone.

Anyone who has been reading what I have written on this subject knows by now that I stand with the four Cardinals. So do many others, Cardinals, bishops, priests, deacons and laity.

Holy Father, answer the dubia! For the good of the Church, and for the good of the papal office, please answer the dubia!

 

Alexander Lucie-Smith is a Catholic priest, doctor of moral theology and consulting editor of The Catholic Herald. On Twitter he is @ALucieSmith