Hard Times Call For Clarity, Not Comfort
By CHRISTOPHER MANION
On the first Sunday in July 1980, I attended Mass at Georgetown’s Holy Trinity Parish. It’s one of Washington’s oldest parishes, and liberals all over the Washington area call Holy Trinity home.
The celebrant that day, Fr. Francis X. Moan, SJ, gave a homily reflecting on a recent pastoral letter from a bishop in Florida. The letter roundly condemned the death penalty, as well as those who supported it.
After Mass, I said hello to Fr. Moan. After explaining that I was from out of town, I asked him why he’d talked about politics, and not the Gospel. After all, the Gospel that day told the story of the woman who had suffered from a hemorrhage for twelve years. When she touched the hem of His cloak, the flow of blood immediately ceased.
“Father,” I said, “everybody in this town is in politics and that divides people. But today’s Gospel was about the saving power of Jesus Christ, and that unites people. Why didn’t you talk about the Gospel?”
Fr. Moan didn’t look pleased. “That’s what the Gospel is all about — politics!” With that, he executed a very smart about-face.
Fast forward forty years.
At Holy Trinity this past Sunday, another Jesuit priest, Fr. William Kelley, SJ, celebrated noon Mass.
Joe Biden and his wayward son Hunter “entered through the front entrance,” PBS reports, “where a Black Lives Matter banner was hanging on one side and a banner with a quote from Pope Francis was on the other: ‘We cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life’.”
Fr. Kelley’s sermon picked up where Fr. Moan’s left off. “In the run-up to President Biden’s inauguration last week, we watched in horror as the Trump administration, with obscene haste, put to death four men and one woman, breaking with a 130-year-old precedent of pausing executions amid a presidential transition,” he said.
“These deaths made Mr. Trump our country’s most reckless execution president in more than a century, overseeing the executions of 13 death row inmates in the past seven months.”
Noting the 48th anniversary last week of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, Fr. Kelley took the opportunity to criticize those who focus on objective evils without endorsing the Left’s “Social Justice” political agenda. “Many Catholics continue to interpret the Church’s pro-life stance far too narrowly,” Fr. Kelley said. “In fact, they focus almost exclusively on strategies to eliminate abortion. While the laudable effort to protect life in the womb is an essential element of the Church’s doctrine, it does not exhaust our concern for human life. Our concern for the sacredness of life must also include the quality of life after birth.”
Fr. Kelley did not mention the nature of the crimes involved the victims of those executed. Nor did his homily articulate the vital distinction between policies addressing objective evils like abortion and those involving prudential approaches to budgets, taxes, and immigration law. [Fr. Kelley did not respond to an email sent by the author].
Upon leaving Holy Trinity, Biden told reporters that he thought the Mass was “lovely.”
Canonizing The
Casual Catholic
Well, reporters think that Catholic Joe is lovely too. After four years of their nonstop campaign of genuine hatred, they’re pleased finally to wallow in the trendy treacle that bears the comfortable trademark of Catholic Joe.
For The New York Times, Joe’s “ascendant liberal Christianity” qualifies him as “perhaps the most religiously observant commander in chief in half a century.” The Times doesn’t pause to consider what religious teachings Joe is observing. Why bother? Hey, “he quoted Augustine in his inaugural address,” didn’t he? (Wherein Joe cites the City of God on “love” — omitting the part about love of God — sort of discussing abortion without mentioning that it kills the baby.)
But not to worry, the Times insists that Joe’s “a president who has spent a lifetime steeped in Christian rituals and practices” (abortion is evidently a “Christian ritual and practice” in the Times’ editorial stylebook).
Like Ted Kennedy, Joe has a bevy of fans in the Jesuit order. Politics and politicians seem to attract them. Some are seduced, while others, like our beloved, departed friend Fr. James V. Schall, SJ, masterfully penetrate the mysteries of power and the timeless temptation to what Augustine identified as amor sui, the love of self to the exclusion of love of God — the love of power for its own sake that is the driving force of the City of Man whose ruler is Satan.
By the way, in Joe’s copy of the City of God, that’s on the very first page. In fact, that’s what the whole book is about — amor sui and amor dei. Did Catholic Joe skip that class?
Well, moving right along: On the morning of Inauguration Day, the Times reports, “the Rev. Kevin F. O’Brien, [SJ], the president of Santa Clara University and friend of the Biden family, compared Mr. Biden’s upcoming inaugural message to the words of Jesus.”
Curious that the Times couldn’t conjure up the same high regard for the words of Donald Trump just three days before, when he signed the proclamation declaring January 22, “National Sanctity of Human Life Day.”
“As a Nation, restoring a culture of respect for the sacredness of life is fundamental to solving our country’s most pressing problems. When each person is treated as a beloved child of God, individuals can reach their full potential, communities will flourish, and America will be a place of even greater hope and freedom,” President Trump wrote.
Just hours after he entered the Oval Office, Catholic Joe Biden removed the presidential proclamation of “National Sanctity of Human Life Day” from the White House website.
Now, where were we?
Ah yes. “With Mr. Biden, a different, more liberal Christianity is ascendant,” the Times exults, “less focused on sexual politics and more on combating poverty, climate change, and racial inequality.”
Fact Check: Among Biden’s first official actions were his initiatives promoting abortion, LGBT “rights,” and his appointment of a man dressed as a woman to be nominated Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine to serve as his Assistant Secretary of Health at HHS.
“So what?” asks the Times. Biden’s “arrival comes after four years in which conservative Christianity has reigned in America’s highest halls of power, embodied in white Evangelicals laser-focused on ending abortion and guarding against what they saw as encroachments on their freedoms.”
And now the freedoms of us Evangelicals will once more be encroached upon, with a resounding cheer from The New York Times.
Oh, and it’s unanimous, of course. Catholic Joe is “a devout, churchgoing liberal,” The Washington Post coos, even though a lot of Catholics “don’t even see him as a legitimate Catholic at all, because of his support for abortion access and LGBT equality.” After all, Joe is “less tied to doctrine,” so he might someday “redefine what it means to be a Catholic in good standing,” although, like the Times, the Post already has.
A Lenten Appeal Of Our Own
Will our bishops silently allow Catholic Joe’s “redefinition project” to proceed? Or will they come to their senses and boldly proclaim the objective truths that unite the Church to Jesus?
Perhaps they fear that hard truths will divide the faithful.
So they should lie?
What will unite us with Jesus — comfort or clarity?
A few doses of Humanae Vitae will blow away the fog of error that is suffocating the faithful and the public at large. Let’s call it a “spiritual vaccination.” Demand that it be distributed free in every diocese and every parish.
Let us pray that our bishops — and the Jesuits! — will pull that brilliant light of truth out from under the bed and put it on the lamppost.