Catholic Sensibility

One bishop muses on Notre Dame, the president, and the protest generated by their convergence:

I am more alarmed that the rhetoric being employed is so uncivil and venomous that it weakens the case we place  before our fellow citizens, alienates young college-age students who believe the older generation is behaving like an angry child and they do not wish to be any part of that, and ill-serves the cause of life.

Bishop Lynch, no doubt, for this blast of “calm and dignity” will be on the receiving end of some venom. Presidents Jenkins and Obama, also no doubt, are grateful some internet ire will be detoured from heading their way. If only for a day.

For the past several months, I’ve been mostly disappointed in the fiction I’ve been picking up at the public library. I’ve also exhausted the astronomy section there, too–at least the books published in the past ten years for adults. Earlier this month, I investigated getting borrowing privileges and the university library. Good move.

In the astronomy stacks at ISU I found lots of delicious volumes, including two dedicated to single moons of Jupiter.

Io After Galileo: A New View of Jupiter’s Volcanic Moon was a most enjoyable read. Dr Lopes and Dr Spencer compiled a book from numerous scientists exploring the results of the Voyger and Galileo probes. They also give some of the scientific history: what astronomers discovered and thought before the arrival of robot explorers. Some of the chemistry and geophysics was a bit beyond what I remembered or studied in college, but I followed closely enough.

The challenge with sending space probes to explore Io is the high-radiation environment near Jupiter will fry delicate electronics. More exploration is needed at Jupiter’s innermost large moon.

Richard Greenberg’s Unmasking Europa is more accessible to the ordinary reader. Working in its favor is the topic: the most interesting moon of Jupiter. Another good point is the enthusiasm for the subject matter plus Greenberg’s obvious affection for his students.

It’s a good story well told that’s flawed by the author’s bad experiences with the politics of science. That said, his case for “thin ice Europa” is convincing scientifically, which is good news for future exploration: a higher likelihood of penetrating the ice crust to get to the ocean below.

An e-mail correspondent asked me to comment on the situation of Ruth Kolpack and Bishop Robert Morlino.

I’m not sure I have anything constructive to say. One, I haven’t read her thesis. Two, I’m not privy to the accurate or inaccurate rendering of her private conversations to the bishop via tattletales. Three, clergy can pretty much do whatever they want and the laity, despite rumblings in Connecticut, pretty much have no recourse. Four, I’ve never met Ruth Kolpack or been taught by her, so I can’t say her teaching is orthodox, non-lame, wingnut, or whatever.

The bishop concedes he read hardly any of her thesis. That would seem to indicate his mind was made up to fire her and the thesis was merely an excuse. The difficulty for Bishop Morlino is that he really has to tread lightly because if his reason for firing the woman is unjust or illegal, he may be liable to a legal judgment. Therefore, he can’t tell us the real reason it’s been set in his mind to pink slip the Beloit pastoral associate.

In a healthy work environment, a supervisor and an employee have mutual rights and responsibilities. The supervisor is responsible for setting standards of work and conduct. Problem is, bosses can change and the standards may get altered in the switch. Sometimes new expectations are communicated, and sometimes not.

Fairness would seem to dictate that a professional person in danger of losing a job would have an opportunity first, to know the employment is in jeopardy, and second, to be given explicit goals, tasks, or achievements to accomplish in order to bring performance to an acceptable level.

Employers, however, are not always fair. Sometimes they permit themselves to be swayed by the testimony of others who have ulterior motives. What is interesting about this episode is that it seems that the complaints of a minority fueled this personnel decision. If so, it would seem that the minority accomplished the termination and that the bishop only served as the tool, the pink slip itself, if you will. Does that speak of strength, or of orthodoxy? Or does it indicate something different?

14. The priest who baptizes an adult or a child of catchetical age should, when the bishop is absent, also confer confirmation, (Rite of Confirmation, Introduction no. 7b) unless this sacrament is to be given at another time (see RCIA 24). When there are a large number of candidates to be confirmed, the minister of confirmation may associate priests with himself to administer the sacrament. It is preferable that the priests who are so invited:

1. either have a particular function or office in the dicoese, being, namely, either vicars general, espicopal vicars, or district or regional vicars;

2. or be the parish priests (pastors) of the places where confirmation is conferred , parish priests (pastors) of the places where the candidates belong, or priests who have had a special part in the catechetical preparation of the candidates.

If the bishop is present, the bishop presides. But priests other than the main presider may assist, as this section indicates. Note that the relationship of this assistance is ministerial, not family. If a priest has had a role in the pastoral or catechetical formation, he may assist with confirmation. Roles for relatives are not provided for in the rite.

… but did they take the threat seriously?

NCR reveals prelates and a pope heard from the founder of a religious order whose apostolate was working with “problem priests.”

It’s one instance, but given Father Fitzgerald’s extensive work with many priests from many dioceses, it shows the Church had a serious problem before the Pill, Vatican II, the Summer of Love, the explosion of homosexuality, and other convenient scapegoats.

It’s all about addiction to power, and the addicts seeking out and victimizing the weak. Sex is just a tool to achieve that end. Other addicts in the Church and the culture  at large have other tools of choice.

South African bishop Edward Risi takes a publicity campaign to the readers of The Southern Cross and explains some of the thought behind the new English translations. Whether or not the bishops there have to pull the translations now or not, there will need to be considerably more catechesis on it. This piece is a start.

My friend Father Paul Turner, whom I respect as a scholar and a liturgist, also touts the advanced connections with Scripture in the new translation. But the argument is an empty one. The laity of South Africa don’t object to the references to the Bible. They don’t like the exalted tone rendered into unintelligibility.

If there’s a concern about the connection of the Roman Missal to Scripture, it doesn’t require a close translation to Latin (which isn’t a Biblical language at all). ICEL produced a translation of Roman Missal II in the 80′s that harmonized the opening prayer with the three-year Lectionary cycle. That effort was vetoed by the curia, and eleven years later we’re still stuck with what nearly everyone concedes is a weaker translation.

Bishop Risi also makes a case for “saying ‘please.’” And this is a good point. The way of saying please and Latin construction transliterated into English changes a short text with two periods and four commas:

Deliver us, Lord, from every evil, and grant us peace in our day. In your mercy keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

to one period and ten commas:

Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days, that, sustained by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope, and the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Let me tackle one significant comment from Bishop Risi:

The new text requires more effort to be attentive to the meaning of whole sentence and to what is being said prayerfully. But the effort may be well worth it! The same can be said for most of the new translations.

The bishop, others on ICEL, and most advocates of Liturgiam Authenticam (LA) have lost track of an important liturgical principle: progressive solemnity. While usually applied to the overarching celebration of the liturgical year and the implementation of singing and other features of solemnity, the principle has no less application within a single celebration of Mass.

The highlight texts of the celebration of Mass are the Scriptures and the Eucharistic Prayer. They deserve more attention, reverence, and effort by all celebrating the liturgy. The peripheral texts do not operate on the same level. While these texts cannot be omitted from the Mass, their mandated inclusion doesn’t mean they have equal importance to all other required texts.

The serious flaw in the new approach to translation is that, as Bishop Risi concedes, it takes effort. Scholars and contemplatives might well embrace the effort. But is a concentrated effort through the whole celebration of Mass really a desired quality? People should make the effort during the Eucharistic Prayer to understand what is happening and what is being prayed. Gesture and tone should always highlight the epiclesis as it does for the institution narrative. Acclamations should be well-introduced and vigorously sung by the assembly. The intercessions should be clear, and the Amen and Lord’s Prayer offer a certain closure here. A ten-comma sentence is not what the liturgy needs to follow this “effort.”

Put simply, within a thirty- or sixty- or two hundred-minute liturgy there are times when worshippers should be challenged. And there are times when people will simply tune out. It’s not a question of intelligence or perceptibility or education. It’s a matter of pacing. A marathon runner doesn’t sprint for twenty-six miles. Like a challenging run, good liturgy needs to provide a certain pace to ensure the really important moments are engaging the people, and the less important moments don’t call undue attention to themselves.

I believe the principles of LA are open to question and debate. That debate may be ineffective at present I’ll grant. But within the goal of making the liturgy more meaningful, I think applying LA will fall far short of the potential a thoughtful and crafted whole of the Missal would be.

If we want to say “please” to God more often, it can be done without LA. If we want more Scripture allusions, we need more prayers composed in the vernacular, and we can draw those Scriptures out with approved translations … without LA. I don’t feel any less loyal to the Church or to good liturgy by saying that these justifications are just a policy in search of a theology–any theology–that can back up a decision made in secret in the mid-90′s. This isn’t about prayerfulness or reverence. This is about the politics of control, and the addiction to power.

Archbishop Chaput compares internet correspondence:

The left mail I get will use terrible words but be less vitriolic. They use the F-word and things like that, call me names like that. But the right is meaner, but they’re not as foul.

The pro-life effort at parental notification has been a bit of a mystery to me. Given the numbers in the general populace being “okay” with abortion, I always wondered if this was an issue pro-lifers really wanted to emphasize.

I’ll state upfront that I certainly want to know when my daughter has any sort of medical exchange with a professional. As a matter of parental responsibility, we should know everything going on with our kids. A few months ago, someone informed me that some notification legislation was only aimed at abortion clinics. Given that, I can see why some would find that unfair. As a parent, I certainly would expect any medical professional to inform me about anything they did professionally with or to my daughter.

Let’s assume that any fair-minded legislation would apply across the board to all medical personnel in every setting. Any time a minor went to a doctor, a nurse, a clinic, and spoke to any medical professional about any medical issue, the parent would be informed. So here’s the dilemma:

If notification legislation were proposed that included both teens seeking an abortion and teens opting for pregnancy and birth, would that be a good thing for the pro-life movement? In other words, do you think fewer parents, if they found out their underage daughter were intent on keeping the child (or giving her or him up for adoption after birth), would try to pressure her to abort? And if you think abortion clinics only should inform, how do you justify the position to parents who would want to know everything?

Kevin from Texas makes a very germane and important comment on the latest Bishop Tobin thread:

As a point of reference, I’ve searched in vain over the archives of your blog for the past few weeks to see even one single post directly critical of the Obama administration’s anti-life policies, political appointments, or even the State-level issues where the Church is being attacked (e.g., the brouhaha in CT a few weeks back, as well as the anti-Prop 8 bullies vandalizing churches and harassing/threatening Prop 8 supporters in California). To be sure, you have indirectly criticized some of these things, but you tend to do so in posts that first take aim at the Catholics with whose tactics you disagree.

I suppose if I were writing for a mainstream audience rather than the Catholic corner of the internet, I would need to adapt and change the focus. I would want to. When I’ve written for the secular media on religion my tone is totally different. My site statistics, which I do track fairly carefully, tell me almost all of my traffic comes from Catholic sites, mostly conservative ones, with the occasional Google search for wedding information. So I have a sense of who’s reading me.

I have no doubt that Catholic conservatives believe I’m more critical of them than of either pro-choice or anti-life folks outside the fold. I’ve made it a practice, as Liam notes, not to parrot what others have said sooner and better than I. This blog was begun as a challenge to me by many who noted that I had commented on discussion sites and other blogs since 1998 or so, but had never begun one of my own. I’m assuming my readers frequent the big and small Catholic blogs and if you want to read outrage against pro-choice citizens and politicians, there are places to go. If the whole Catholic blogosphere were a soup, I might be a flake of red pepper: you don’t want to pick me out of the mix and rely on the spice for your daily intake requirement. But I’m a good complement to cream or meat or vegetables or other flavorings in the mix.

Right from the start, my writing continued what I contributed on other people’s web sites:  an alternative take on Catholic issues from what I view as a majority conservative community on the internet. It’s not terribly different from the role I play in parish committees, including my staff. I try to offer a different perspective from the mainstream. In a professional setting, I wonder about parishioner views on the matter discussed. With parishioners, I urge them to consider what the pastor or larger parish will feel as an impact. With musicians, I ask them to ponder how the singing congregation will respond. Among musicians, I encourage them to listen to others and offer their own distinctive contribution in context. It’s largely governed by my own personality: inquisitive, restless, dissatisfied, unconventional, and sometimes contrary.

In other words, my role has been to be the idea person: to build on discussions by offering options, different insights, and the like. Once they get comfortable with me, conservatives especially appreciate that I can be trusted to bring their sensibility to the table. As a long-time booster for the underdog, I actually relish the role.

Kevin also wrote:

You’ll forgive the easy assumption, I’m sure, that some Catholic conservatives make that you are more critical of Catholics with whom you disagree politically than with the clearly anti-life and anti RC Church policies being drummed through the secular media almost non-stop since Obama’s seating as POTUS.

He has stumbled into an ongoing ten-year tussle. Or feud, if you will. For whatever reason, the internet has spawned a subculture where people are more open, more biting, and less nice than they are in person. I make some confessions at this point. I’m just as guilty of it as anyone else. I can deliver sarcasm and humor in a way I wouldn’t in real life. Even private e-mail exchanges I’ve had are generally more polite than discussion group and combox chatter. It is something I think about frequently. I also know the tone I’ve taken here the past few months has been a little more harsh. I notice it. I’m concerned. But for the moment, it is as it is.

I don’t mind admitting publicly I’ve felt stung by other internet Catholics over the years. Some web sites seem to draw a huge number of extremists, folks who don’t really know their faith, theology, or politics, but will let you know you are an evil heretic and a troll. The insults delivered from these people don’t really mean a lot to me. It’s clear to most people they harm themselves more than me. And I’ve been on the delivery end of idiot exchanges, too. I’m not proud about it, but there it is.

As for people I do admire or consider a friend or intelligent or thoughtful enough to be above that, it does bother me more that some extremists are more welcome than I on their web sites. I can confess I struggle not to hold a grudge. While I do lurk on some liberal sites and comment there occasionally, I have felt far more ill-treatment at the hands of conservative Catholics. I have no doubt this is all very obvious to St Blog’s regulars, people who have known me for years.

I’ve often felt we bloggers could take matters into our own hands, to have frank, firm, but respectful exchanges and to minimize the crazy element. As a point of fact, I have approached a number of conservative bloggers over the years for a combined or collaborative approach. These attempts have been almost totally fruitless. Only on one occasion, was I approached for a serious experiment from the “other” side. Aside from an occasional spot on Brian Craig’s Catholic Radio, and the very occasional group effort, there’s pretty much nothing going on in Kevin’s “middle ground” that I’ve been asked to be a part of. About the only thing I can hang my hat on is that it’s not been for lack of invitation or effort on my part. The level of trust is not high, not nearly high enough for most anyone to commit to something substantive or long-term to give it a real chance to work out.

So when some Catholics talk about being more strident and aggressive in their politics and other interpersonal dealings, I have to shake my head in wonder. What that’s about? Many bloggers I know have been off their nice pills for a decade or more. Their commentariats trend worse. I hear others complain about “the most anti-Catholic … policies ever proposed in this country’s history,” I recall reading of Catholic prejudice in history and the de facto exclusion of Catholics from US democracy, and it’s hard to take seriously. The pope as a Catholic leader and many cultural aspects of Catholicism are fondly considered by many non-Catholics. Society at-large doubts the crazies.

To wrap it up for today, let me offer this little parallel for my conservative readers. You and I are a microcosm of the society at large. You criticize the culture, then complain the populace and its politicians ignore you. It’s probably not far different from the dynamic you and I share. I criticize and sting you; you prefer not to deal with me. 

Final question: why should you expect to be treated any differently than you treat others? Who has the greater potential for being more fair and just: society at large, or the Catholics who desire passionately to be the leaven the world needs?

Here’s a question for pro-lifers (and others, too) in the reading audience:

If you had a choice between public media (print, tv, radio) that permitted no abortion ads or PSA’s, either promoting choice or life, or having it be open season for whatever group or corporation wanted to advertise or throw up a PSA, which would you choose?

Naturally, the extremists on the issue would opt for their view and the censorship of the opposing, but for the sake of this exercise, which would benefit the pro-life effort more: all or none?

Like the bishop, the priest has a particular role in the process of initiation:

13. Priests, in addition to their usual ministry for any celebration of baptism, confirmation, and the eucharist (see Christian Initiation, General Introduction, 13-15) , have the responsibility of attending to the pastoral and personal care of the catechumens (see Presbyterorum Ordinis 6), especially those who seem hesitant and discouraged. With the help of deacons and catechists, they are to provide instruction for the catechumens; they are also to approve the choice of godparents and willingly listen to and help them; they are to be diligent in the correct celebration and adaptation of the rites throughout the entire couse of Christian initiation (see no. 35).

How do you read this? This is what I see: going the extra mile beyond the ordinary pastoral care provided to parishioners. If the parish has “troubled” persons, it is to be a special care of the pastor to address those troubles. Catechesis is a shared ministry with deacons and lay people–that’s how it usually falls in a parish. How often should a pastor or other priest be on the line to teach catechumens? Probably somewhere between every week and a token appearance. Once a month?

The part about listening to and helping godparents is easy to get lost. That’s not a usual detail for pastors working in RCIA, but it does relieve the lay staff of the exclusive role of forming sponsors. My sense on godparents is that a particular formation should be part of their role, and that the pastor should take a part in that.

Note that correctness extends to adaptation of rites. A pastor really needs to be on the discussion and discernment end of that, especially if he is presiding. Some priests, sadly, just accept whatever is handed to them.

Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence has a go at reactions to his “interview” with President Obama. I blogged earlier that I simply didn’t find the essay very good, even though on the issue of the morality of abortion, the bishop and I would likely be in total agreement. He seems to be reaching in this latest column. It’s a simple thing to cherry-pick through one’s objectors and find the ones with easy answers. More difficult, surely, would be these:

Bishop Tobin, your serious pro-life objectors aren’t concerned with being nice so much as being as effective as we possibly can be in the public realm. After all, I haven’t been very nice to you: I’ve said your original piece is poor journalism, unimaginative, and shows laziness. We simply need better writers than you, people able to persuade who needs to be persuaded rather than provide fodder for narcissistic cheerleading.

Because we’re criticizing you (at least for a few minutes), you rightly deduce we aren’t criticizing President Obama 24/7. You assume that because we aren’t criticizing the president and others all the time for their immoral stances, our consciences are somehow deficient compared to yours. But tell us: do you spend every waking moment of ministry on this particluar issue, the life of the unborn? Or are there other priorities, like writing a media column, for instance? You seem to assume that because we criticize you we haven’t written to the president or to other politicians who represent us.

Confronting moral evil was not a selective process for Jesus. When he was presented with a woman caught in the act of adultery, he was aware of the person’s sin, but also the undercurrent of self-righteousness of the woman’s accusers. The accusers were certainly correct in pointing out the woman’s sin, but there may have been a little too much enjoyment. That, I think, is one of the flaws of many in the political pro-life movement: an adoption of the cultural glee we have in America over one person stumbling and failing. We can bypass that and say, “Oh, but I pray for them.” Is that enough? And is it believable?

While being nice may be an overrated virtue, a Christian is called to be fair and just. Is it fair to put words in the mouth of one’s opponent, to make someone else appear stupid, wrong, dense, or immoral in comparison to our own insight, correctness, wittiness, and morality? That is where, Bishop Tobin, I think your original piece fails on moral grounds. I don’t care that you weren’t nice. My concern is that your pretense was unbecoming of a bishop and a Christian.

My final summation, Bishop Tobin, is not that you’re wrong on the issues, but that you’re not good enough to make this communication as effective as it needs to be. Of course, if the point of preaching is that the preacher preach the message and to hell with the listeners, then by all means, continue this line of reasoning. It’s for your own good anyway.

I enjoy these fluffy attempts of those on the right to justify the state of the world and what it needs by mindless critiques of “liberalism.” What Mr Kalb is grasping for is actually a basic flaw in human nature. It’s a flaw, by the way, found equally often on the right as it is on the left. Everything Mr Kalb decries as a product of so-called liberalism: tyranny, the impersonal, the pursuit of satisfaction, eradication of standards (deregulation, in other words), an expert elite (such as a Nixon or Bush presidency above the law), corruption and suppression of family life (sweatshops, the imprisonments of the so-called War on Drugs), getting fit into a managed system, the bedmates of tv and internet–it’s all found on the Right, too. In other words, pretty much everything Mr Kalb describes as the excesses of liberalism, are in fact also excesses of the conservative ideology. How on earth can it be so?

Mr Kalb is correct on one thing, though he glosses over it. Moderation is one key: the avoidance of extremism. The worst of the conservative extremists exhibit nearly all of the problems described in the interview. The problem isn’t a tyranny of liberalism. It’s a tyranny of extremism. And let’s think back to our own experiences of life: we’ve all known people who have made others miserable by their single-minded bullheadedness on certain issues.

One perfect example: take my mom. She was a fear fanatic, and passed on fear of many things to me and my siblings. Now sure, there are things a child should be afraid of: candy from strangers, playing in the street, juggling sharp objects, stuff like that. Other things carry a certain risk, like playing football or kissing a girl, but you live through the risk. You live with the risk because of the potential good: chumming with friends, playing sports, or having a romance. My mother wasn’t a liberal; she was just tilted toward having irrational fears.

So sure, liberals setting up a truth commission is a problem. But so is an enemies’ list. Joe McCarthy, for example, took a perfectly reasonable thing: suspicion of a communist dictatorship, and turned it into a job deprivation program (one of the Republicans’ favorite tools then and now) fueled by irrationality. Was Joe a liberal because he was a tyrant? Heck no. He was a tyrant because he was an extremist.

The other caution I have about these self-congratulatory conservatives is that the passion for their cause (some might say extremism) they lose the ability to self-examine. Has the conservative ethos been so perfect that it can’t abide correction? Could that inability to reform have contributed in some way to the mass of fencesitters to leaping on someone else’s bandwagon?

The Right is laboring under a massive tyranny of its own making right now. Many people have been given an opportunity to turn political defeat into a time for being forged in the wilderness. Instead, they see it as a time of martyrdom. It’s no surprise that the rhetoric from the Right is getting louder. And that they’re calling for others to be cast into the wilderness (denial of Communion). It’s not a smarter ideology. When you see yourself stranded in the wilderness, you have to yell to make yourself heard and you’re pretty lonely for company besides.

Here’s what I think is going to have to happen if the liberals are to be saved from following down the road of conservative tyranny of the past decade. The Right needs a searching and fearless self-examination: what went wrong and how much of it was their own fault. A concession that demonizing the opposite (or complementary) ideology is the height of hubris, not insight.

The Church has a more difficult time of this. Self-proclaimed experts reinforce the tyranny we suffer. They don’t reveal that it might be that Pope Benedict and others are looking for and labelling tyranny because they themselves have acted in tyrannical ways. It’s also tough for some people to untangle the Church’s profession of truth in Christ from what is truly of human manufacture.

That’s why dialogue is important: not for the opportunity of convincing the opposite ideology, but as a part of the exercise of self-correction. Without the perspective of the whole community, the catholic community, the danger is a certain congregationalism. Isn’t that a kick? The advocation of a small church, getting smaller, is itself a sign of self-deception. Trim away the difficult and challenging voices that force uncomfortable realities to be confronted.

So next time you read one of those critiques, take it with a serious grain of salt. If it feels comfortable, consider how a recliner chair and a cool drink jive with the wilderness of the pilgrim way.

George Wesolek is back from Hawaii and thinks everybody else who chadded in blue should be, too.

Let me state as a consistent thirty-year third-party voter, I had no undue hopes for the new 2009-2013 administration, whatever it was to be. I think the Republicans were and are still a disaster on several fronts: as the ruling party 2000-06, they showed themselves unable if not unwilling to protect the homeland (Exhibit #1: Katrina), their arrogance and corruption damaged the nation, their policies violated the constitution. If I’m given a choice to vote for an unrepentant representative of a corrupt, opportunistic, and immoral party I must refuse.

I appreciate the handwringing on the alternative, a representative of a political party almost as corrupt and almost as deeply in the pockets of those who are seeking world domination economically. Life issues are almost a wash in my thinking. The previous administration was up to its armpits in immorality, a direct link to murder that is hard to dismiss. The Democrats’ sin is standing by and allowing millions of mothers to opt for abortion. To the best of my knowledge, President Obama and other Democrats on the firing line have never actively cooperated in procuring an abortion for someone, a sin that is worthy of excommunication.

As a cynic, I have little hope of seeing change on the national level in this country. I’ll admit I voted for Senator Obama, and I don’t mind saying I didn’t think I had a third-party alternative this year. I still think that independent, non-party local politics is the way to get things accomplished. I will be active in my local community and in my parish. And to a small degree, on the blogosphere, too.

I can’t really end a honeymoon I never went on to start with. Some people vote (or get married) and they go off the work the next day as if nothing happened when they marked their ballot (or exchanged vows). When I married my wife, to a degree, my feelings didn’t change on the honeymoon in the sense I still loved this woman just as I did the day before and the day before that.

What I’d like to do is say my honeymoon is over with my sister and brother Catholics who continue to embarrass me and the rest of the Church with their self-promotion to ecclesiastical court. But the readers here know I saw through the worst deceptions of the political side of the pro-life movement.

Since the election, we’ve seen some prominent pro-lifers used by political operatives for personal profit and showmanship. Sam Brownback’s name allowed one Republican group to generate cash for its coffers. Archbish0p Burke was used by another public figure for his own gain. FOCA is still missing nine-and-a-half weeks after it was presumably the new president’s number one priority. It’s a tough economy, and I’m sure those poor Republicans were hurting for donations after the double whammy of a crushing political defeat and a self-created economic disaster.

My line from the beginning is to expect little from politicians, either elected or lobbyists, and turn attention, compassion, and resources to the local level to help women with unexpected pregnancies who are considering abortion. Birthright, other organizations, and their volunteers will get more done for real people. The people who will be helped will be our neighbors, friends, and folks who ride our busses, eat in our restaurants, and worship in our churches.

Few people are going to be martyrs, at least not unless the US turns into China with its forced abortions, death squads, and such. The harder work of sainthood is the day-in, day-out tenacity of prayer and serving others. Mother Teresa knew well the darkness of endless hours and years of labor not knowing if God was there to make any kind of difference. It seems as if too many rank-and-file pro-lifers expect some leader (Archbishop Burke, Sarah Palin, or Randall Terry) to come riding in and rescue the world from sin and death.

The defect in this ideology is that Jesus came as Savior and Messiah twenty centuries ago. He put the onus on us, the community of believers. It’s hard and, unlike Archbishop Chaput’s book tours, not very affirming. But the work of ministry, of reaching out to individuals, is essential to the Gospel. If, however, your Gospel is a political manifesto, then, by all means, continue on the same path. It hasn’t really worked in thirty years. But if you shout a little louder, stamp your foot a little harder, scream till you’re a little hoarser, who knows?

For a guy who’s been shipped off to Rome, possibly to the relief of his brother bishops, he’s been getting lots of press lately. I found this spot by Austin Ruse on supposed attempts by the American executive branch to quiet Archbishop Burke. A few things:

- It might be said the Obama Administration official is trying to do the archbishop a favor. The Apostolic Signatura head is an embarassment, undercutting bishops abroad in his role as the top canon law official in the Church. The Randall Terry episode will convince no fence-sitter, make no converts, save no infants in the womb. It’s a political ploy, and as such, falls entirely within the realm of prudential judgment.

- If I were a pro-abortion, anti-Catholic politician, I would give the archbishop more rope. Given the wars in Asia and the economy in turmoil, HHS is going to be more low profile than ever in the sense of the overall political scene in Washington. Secretary Sebelius will find some low profile church to attend and that will be the end of it.

- The most curious aspect is that Burke and those likeminded seem to have abandoned people who are directly responsible for procuring abortions, as well as companies that profit from the abortion industry worldwide. If we’re talking about any sort of cooperation with evil, do these bishops have certainty their diocesan investments have completely avoided corporate abortion supporters? The reason why this is a political issue and not a canonical one is the mixed application to others who provide a freedom of choice and financial support for those who choose abortions. To be entirely consistent, bishops and political pro-lifers would need to decline doing business with anyone who provides abortion as a health care option for employees. That they don’t says this issue is more about politics than about any alleged desecration or spiritual medicine by denying Communion.