The Anchoress

Fausta is feeling depressed about the inability of our young adults to develop relationships of mature intimacy.

A young woman in college, having sexual encounters with dozens of men who are little more than strangers to her, yearns for a guy to at least say he is going to stay.

I find that extremely depressing: She wants not love, not intimacy (and forget about a spiritual component to a union - that hasn’t even crossed anyone’s mind). Just permanence. How sad.

She’s talking about this young woman, whose - indeed, sad - essay was choses from over 700 submitted by college students asked to write about love and relationships.

But noncommittal is what we’re all about

Siggy writes about love and the higher-self - the perfect union of love which is not simply a physical formula but one of the spirit. Two persons creating a single entity through both physical union and spiritual commitment.

Truly, it is an idea almost as old as civilization - monogamy, family, the unit, which blends two families and then extends out. Given the determined effort of the know-it-all boomers to “deconstruct” all of the worthless and bourgeois establishment norms that went before them - marriage and family were emphatically “out” and “repressive” - it is not surprising to see a generation unable to process the idea of commitment to anything other than “whatever there is today.”

“It’s your thing, do what you wanna do.” “If it feels good, do it.” “Make yourself happy,” and “the church of what’s happening now” have led us to:

Sometimes I don’t like them, or am scared of them, and a lot of times I’m just bored by them. But my fear or dislike or boredom never seems to diminish my underlying desire for a guy to stay, or at least to say he is going to stay, for a very long time.

And even when I don’t want him to stay — even when he and I find each other as strangers and remain strangers until we stop doing whatever it is we are doing — I still want to believe that two people can meet and like each other well enough to stay together exclusively, without the introduction of some 1960s rhetoric about free love or other noncommittal slogans.

But noncommittal is what we’re all about.

I while back I wrote:

We have now had several generations growing up with either missing parents or well-meaning but “barely-there” parents. A lot of what we learn regarding intimacy we learn from Mom and Dad and Grandma. If they’re barely in the picture, from whom will we learn it? The Nursery school teacher?”
[…]
intimacy has been defined downward, especially for our young girls, to mean little more than a “hook-up.” Children, especially girls, are being sexualized at ever-earlier ages…most of Buster’s generation grew up watching Friends and Sex in the City and thinking that this was what life was: a series of sexual encounters with no emotional attachments, no repercussions, no pain, no loss of oneself.
[…]
While the girls are untethered and confused balls of sexuality, too many boys are learning to see the girls not as young women to be respected, admired and (in a chivalrous sense) looked after, but as disposable spittoons for their disregarded and misunderstood sperm. I’ve heard my sons and his friends complain about it - that their generation is very screwed up about how to relate to each other, that too many of both gender have no idea what self-respect is, that they treat themselves, and each other, badly. They crave intimacy but have no idea how to achieve it when they’ve been raised to throw everything - their virginity, their standards, their drive to succeed (it’s not cool to get good grades) - their potential, their very selves away…This is not an overnight problem, it’s yet another fruit of the sexual revolution and the world-tilting sixties - the overcorrection to the 1950’s.

Dick Meyer, writing on the same issue and about our isolationism, in The Lonely States of America:

“I suspect…this study overlooks one simple contributing factor, the decline of real geographic communities — places where people grow up where their parents grew up, where non-nuclear relatives live near by, where friendships and acquaintances go across generations.

Explaining social isolation will be controversial, but not as difficult as repairing it.

Indeed. How do we repair it? All of the old social safeguards are no longer in place; instead of communities wherein live several generations of families and friends, everyone is transient and most of us have only a nodding acquaintance with our neighbors. Church? Secularists who correctly identify the problem do not like to consider that answer, but there might be some help there.

I like this bit from God and the World - by the man my son Buster refers to as “The Artist Formerly Known as Ratzinger”:

Man is created with a need for others, so that he may pass beyond his own limits. He needs to be completed. He is not made to be alone - that is not good for him - but is made to turn toward someone else. He must look for himself in the other person and find himself in him. … there follows the prophetic declaration that the man will on this account leave his father and his mother and will become one flesh with the woman. They will be one flesh with each other, one united human being. The entire drama of the two sexes’ need for each other, of their being turned toward each other, is contained within this declaration. In addition it is also said hat they are there in order to give themselves each to the other, so as to make the gift of new life in doing so, and then finally to devote themselves to this new life. In this sense, the mystery of marriage is contained within it, and basically the family is likewise envisaged.

He goes on like that - very politically incorrect, of course. But sensible.

If you don’t like the religious perspective, you can look at the trends in pop-culture to also see where defining down the differences between men and women have altered our perceptions of each other. Check out this post about the dearth of “women’s” films and strong, respected actresses:

These are women who remain iconic because — are you ready for this? — they command the respect of both men and women. Command, not demand with tired lectures. They also don’t cuss like sailors, show us their tatas, or take whomever to bed in a fit of some twisted definition of empowerment at the expense of respect. For we men, these women were worthy of worship. Most of today’s female stars, on their best days, are mere objects of fantasy.

The comments section is especially good. And it even offers a solution of a sort, different from Pope Benedict’s but it might be a start. I recall that one of the biggest movies in recent years was My Big Fat Greek Wedding - which had for its heroine a real, imperfectly beautiful woman, living in a real imperfect family, with embarrassing parents and nosy aunts and with involved neighbors in their ethnic enclave. To me, when the heroine’s WASPY future husband gets baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church and smiles at her, “I’m Greek, now,” and goes on to blend in beautifully with all the madness, lunacy, sorry and exasperated joy that makes up family - this is totally believable and real. And it is a clue as to how we might go on and go forward.

If religion and authority are - for some - too scary a means by which we may begin to repair this lonely mess we’ve allowed to develop in our society, then maybe the popular culture - which certainly profited from helping to tear our social fabric apart - may figure out that there is profit to be made in restoring it, as well.

UPDATE: The Curmudgeon Porretto says:

Damn it all people, learn from your mistakes!: Sex is much too serious an undertaking to be casual about it. You have to expose yourself to too many hazards — and the bacterial and viral ones are far from the worst.

Yes…and it is the only thin we can do that ultimately assists in creation and in the continuance of the world. Something that powerful really ought to be respected, don’t you think?

“God loved you first…”

You should take this sentence as literally as can be, and I try to do that. For it is truly the great power in our lives and the consolation that we need. And it’s not seldom that we need it.

He loved me first, before I myself could love at all. It was only because he knew me and loved me that I was made. So I was not thrown into the world by some operation of chance, as Heigegger says, and now have to do my best to swim around in this ocean of life, but I am preceded by a perception of me, an idea and a love of me. They are present in the ground of my being.

What is important for all people, what makes their life significant, is the knowledge they are loved. The person in a difficult situation will hold on if he knows, ‘Someone is waiting for me, someone wants me and needs me.’ God is there first and loves me. And that is the trustworthy ground on which my life is standing and on which I can myself construct it.
— Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) God and the World

Excerpt from God and the World; A Conversation btween Peter Seewald and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.

Seewald: Is faith, in principle, always present in man?

Ratzinger: So far as we can learn about the history of mankind, through excavations right back into prehistory, we can see that there has always been an idea of God. The Marxists had professed the end of religion. With the end of oppression we would no longer need the medicine of God, we were told. But even they have had to recognize that religion never comes to an end, because it is present in man as such.

This inner sensor does not, in any case, work automatically, like some piece of technology, but is a living thing that can either develop with the person or, on the other hand, become desensitized and almost dead. With a progressive inner fulfillment the sensor becomes ever more acute, more alive and interactive. In the opposite case, it becomes dull and, as it were, anaesthetized. Nonetheless, even in an unbelieving person there remains somehow a vestigial question of whether there is after all something there. Without taking this inner sensitivity into account we just cannot understand the history of mankind.

There was an article in the news the other day, and I thought I’d saved it, but apparently not, about how researchers are confirming the idea that our tissue, our cellular makeup, holds memories. When I read it I thought of this Ratzinger quote on the “idea of God” throughout the life of man, and wondered - as I have many times before - whether our deep inclination to consider God, and our longing for Him, is not rooted in that moment of creation when God “breathed into Adam,” the merest bit of himself, his essence. Does our instinct for God reside there, in that tiny divine spark that departed from Himself into us - burned, as it were, into our DNA; is it that spark that moves within us and keeps us questing and longing, the spark that intuitively finds comfort in the notion of Christ wishing to “reconcile all things to Himself?”

This is how I used to explain it to my kids:

“When we are Created, the Creator puts a bit of himself in us - the Divine Spark - think of one of those cartoons where the sun spits a ray of light somewhere. Imagine God spitting his light into us, “ptooooie!” For our whole lives, we have that inside us, and since it is the part of us that belongs to God, is made from God, we long all our lives to find our way back to God, to be reunited - to be whole. We are like plugs looking for the main outlet to which we can attach ourselves, forever.”

And I like what Merton said, quoted here:

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is, so to speak, His name written in us…It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.

There’s something wonderfully comforting about all of that mystery. Sometimes, when I am at Adoration, lost in the mist and bliss that feels like Heaven on Earth (and renders me mute for anything but praise) the connection - the sense of “home” feels nearly complete.

From Deacon Greg, from whom I shamelessly crib the photo.

“St. Bernard and German Shepherd” (from PackerBronco)

And Buster in a Fez, about a million years ago. Why? Because he calls me from school at 2AM (he knows I’m reacquainting with my old friend, insomnia) and announces, among other things, that he is walking the campus enjoying a cigar, and wearing an anti-Che tee shirt and a fez.

“Where’d you get the fez?” I asked.

“A friend was wearing it and I took it off him.”

It sometimes amazes me that Buster has friends.

“You just took it? You shouldn’t steal fezes.”

“Yeah. He knows I’ll give it back. It’s been a long time since I wore a fez, and I’m liking it.”

My children are ever-eccentric. Elder Son once wore a fez to the sixth grade. Picked up at Epcot, of course. Buster - about age 6, here, appears not to have lost the taste for them, either. And who’d have thought it? He has friends who wear fezes. I feel very old and boring.

You’ll note the ad for VISION Vocation Match at the right sidebar. They were recently profiled on CBS Evening News (you have to go here and press the “Featured on CBS News” button) as part of a story on late vocations to the priesthood, and on how the church in America is hopeful that the visit of Pope Benedict XVI will help inspire more people to consider the priesthood or religious life.

That is not a completely silly hope. If you scroll down a bit at Roman Catholic Vocations (the blog has a long intro section) you’ll find this story about a fellow who is about to be ordained thanks to seeing John Paul II with about 800,000 other people, during the remarkable 2002 World Youth gathering in Toronto, which so energized the ailing pontiff. And it is almost commonplace to hear young sisters and nuns talk about how they heard the call for their own vocations during a papal visit to their country, or a WYD.

Actually, the Diocese in NYC is reporting a “tsunami” of inquiries and applicants for the priesthood since Benedict’s visit. This is a good thing.

In other news, Benedict has ordained an Iraqi. Recall last year we began to see Christian Iraqis coming home and practicing the faith, encouraged by their Muslim neighbors.

The very interesting Rosalind Moss, a Catholic convert who was born into a non-religious Jewish household, then became an Evangelical Christian before crossing the Tiber, is forming a completely new religious order in St. Louis, Daughters of Mary, Mother of Israel’s Hope. She’s describing a fully habited, traditional order contemplative/active, meaning they will have a strong commitment to and basis in prayer - both in community and privately - but also a charism “in the world.” This will be interesting to watch. There are quite a few new religious communities (both male and female) emerging - and all of them seem to be reclaiming some of the devotions and counter-cultural trappings that were lost in the 1970’s (all while keeping technologically current - but Moss’s seems to me to be one to really keep an eye on. They’re not all about youngsters, either.

And monastics are going gangbusters, too, with the strictest of orders desperate to knock down walls and add cells for incoming vocations. This gang gets four new postulants this summer.

Karen Hall is joking around on her blog that when her husband dies, she is becoming a Carmelite. What’s weird is, I hear that “when my husband dies, I’m becoming a nun” stuff from more women than you’d suspect, lately. And it is becoming less rare all the time.

As I wrote back here:

“Contemplatives want to do the work of active orders, the active orders of lay people,” said Abbot Bernard.

“Perhaps the lay people will turn to contemplation,” said Abbess Catherine.

“Then they will need the very grilles your progressives are seeking to take down; renew the solitude and silence, the prayer we are letting decay with all this busyness. They should read the Rule - and the Council documents that tell us to go back to our sources - but it seems they cannot read anymore, not with their minds.”

“Yes. They have forgotten the meaning of things,” said Dame Agnes.
- In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden, published 1969.

Everything goes around, like a wheel, back and forth, like a pendulum. Every movement inspires a correcting movement. That’s how things stay balanced.

Continuing the Q&A started here, although these questions become less about Giuliani as they go on…

Q: But Giuliani is an abortion supporter! There is no doubt about the state of his soul!

A: There’s always doubt about the state of someone’s soul, but let’s look at that for the moment. Rudy is a politician and he is “pro-choice”, but he does not currently hold office and - since he has never been either a legislator or a judge - his political stance has not in any way involved him in the procuring/legislating/legalizing of abortion availability. At the most, in his career, all Rudy has done is followed the law and done nothing to change it. That is not, perhaps, in the same league as a pol who legislates against the free-speech of pro-lifers or votes in favor of RICO laws being applied to them, or in any way makes abortions easier to come by. In that sense, the ‘big scandal’ then, is about his being divorced-and-remarried which - while rightly precluding communion - is hardly an earthshaking event within the Catholic community. He is nowhere near on par with Pelosi, Kerry and Kennedy who have actively legislated on abortion. We’re just focusing on him because Cardinal Egan - after some prompting - releasd his statement. As Deacon Greg rightly wonders:

If Robert Novak had never written on the subject, would Egan have said anything?

I’m betting he wouldn’t have. Cardinal Egan may be “correct” on this issue, but he’s basically been in hiding for most of his tenure in NY and I imagine he’d have hidden on this, too. What a disappointing successor to the Mighty John O’ Connor.

I must add, there was no sense of the pope - during his visit here - telling the Cardinal or the Archbishop - “hey, get your capos to withhold communion from those heretics.” That was not Benedict’s vibe at all. I got the sense that Benedict - who is a teacher of the first water - intends to teach us and he’d rather not have to battle headlines and hyperpartisan hysteria as he goes about it.

Q: Anchoress, you’re a hypocrite; you don’t mind Catholics in sin receiving communion, but you had a fit when Bill Clinton did it!

A: Well, I didn’t say I didn’t “mind” Catholics taking communion no matter what - I simply said there was another way to think about it that keeps me from getting upset. As to President Clinton taking communion, why shouldn’t I have minded that? He’s not a Catholic! What Clinton did was the equivalent of me going into a Hindu ceremony, partaking in everything I didn’t believe and then, when asked to respect their customs, saying “nah, come on, that’s not how I understand it.”

Q: My father left my mother and got the marriage annulled; the church said it wasn’t a Christian marriage but it didn’t mind taking their money and their volunteer help! The church has no business telling people about marriage when it’s run by a bunch of celibates.

A: If the marriage was annulled, that means the judicial body of the church, having examined it through testimony and evidence, found that the marriage was not “sacramental,” which is entirely different than saying it is “not a Christian marriage.” The church has the authority of Christ in teaching about marriage, and he - not the pope or some priest you hate - is the one who gave the demanding teaching in Matthew 19:

“Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate…I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) and marries another commits adultery.”

Annulments are the response to Jesus’ admonishment - during the process what is determined is if the marriage was indeed “sacramental” (and thus “lawful”) within the church. Celibacy has nothing to do with it. You can read more about them here.

Q: Isn’t Confession just a “get out of jail free” card for Catholics?

A: Oh. How funny. Confession is a sacrament of the church, instituted by Christ and meant to instill abundant graces within us to both strengthen us against those sins for which we have a proclivity, and allow us the release and freedom whereby we are unshackled by naming the sin and accusing ourselves. In Matthew, Jesus told the apostles “Amen, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Even the pope has a confessor. In Romans, St. Paul said, “confession on the lips leads to salvation.” Some may argue that he was speaking only of “confessing Jesus on the lips” - well…perhaps…but perhaps he meant both. If you’re really interested, I have a whole category devoted to confession right here.

Q: What business does Egan have telling anyone else about sins when he shuffled pedophile priests around in Connecticut?

A: Well, I’m no defender of Egan, that should be clear, but I will say only this: he and many other bishops were quite frankly, “men of their times” in one respect - the pederasty that has so roiled us in the 21st century was not recognized as the high-rate recidivist crime that we understand it to be today. Recall that as recently as 20 years ago, the conventional wisdom was that these deviations in behavior could be “fixed” with therapy and a change of surroundings. Thankfully, our understanding is much more finely tuned, I think, these days, but it came very very late in the 20th century. It does not excuse what is abhorrent, but it does explain why - not knowing what else to do with these priests - some bishops thought therapy and moves would be the answer; some bishops dismissed the therapy and simply made the moves - all were excruciatingly bad decisions. That said, Egan is still the bishop, and he has - as near as anyone can tell, given his tendency to hole-up - been faithful and very careful in his handlings of these matters since coming to NY.

Last one, because it is irresistible - fresh and hot off the email:

Q: You’re writing about humility while exhibiting the sin of pride in daring to set yourself up as an authority. Who died and made you pope?

A: Heh. No one, thank God, and they never will. But I am appalled that anyone would think I’ve presented myself as any sort of authority. I’ve always been very clear that I don’t like apologetics or do them well, and that my thoughts are simply that: my thoughts. Anyone can buy a catechism and a bible and find out what the church teaches. An emailer once wrote that I “meander and imagine and reason and always end up squarely on Catholic Orthodoxy.” Maybe. I’ve only ever offered Catholicism as I know it and live it and understand it by my lights, and I hope I’ve done it without pride - although I’ll admit to sometimes being a little fractious while I’m at it. But if I am sinning in pride, I wonder if you’re not sinning in presuming to know that. Beams and splinters - ain’t they a bitch!

I wasn’t going to write about this because - while I know it gets a lot of Catholic blood running - I can’t get that excited about it.

SOME CLARIFICATION FOR THOSE WILLFULLY MISREADING ME: That does not mean I do not CARE about the issue. It simply means that I think we’ve all managed at times to insult and offend the Lord in various ways, and sometimes Eucharistically, and so I prefer to leave the scolding to the ones who seem most comfortable with it. While I’ve often been called a “self-righteous prig” on some issues (daring to disagree with some on solutions to the illegal immigration problem comes to mind) and I don’t mind wagging fingers politically, I’ve never been much of a spiritual scold. I know that’s true because I’m always getting scolded by other, better, Catholic and non-Catholic Christians for not scolding enough! Quite opposed to those charging me with “not caring,” I think I make abundantly clear that I do care, and I do both accept and support the church’s teaching here, and I agree that the complaints are valid. I simply respond to these things differently than others. If that’s wrong, well…Jesus knows there is no malice in my heart and will judge me as he will us all. END CLARIFICATION

But between some emails I’ve gotten from angry Catholic readers, confused (or smuppity) non-Catholic readers, and a few internet forum comments I’ve read that display both astounding anti-Catholic bigotry or a clear lack of understanding, I feel like I should. Here’s a can of worms I’d prefer not to open, but in doing so, I’ll stick to the Q&A style, since they reflect (or are directly taken from) my email.

For the uninitiated, there is a scandal of sorts brewing because former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani received Communion at the Yankee Stadium mass celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI. Note that Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry and Ted Kennedy all took communion at the mass at National’s Stadium without all this brouhaha. The reason we’re hearing about Rudy is because Robert Novak, took NY’s Cardinal Egan and DC’s Archbishop Wuerl to task, pubically scolding them for the fact that these grown-up Catholics, Pelosi, Kerry, Kennedy and Giuliani, communed.

Immediately after the column appeared, Cardinal Egan - who can’t retire soon enough for my money - released a statement criticizing Giuliani, most particularly for Rudy’s not abiding by what was apparently a private agreement between the two men, that he would not commune at the mass.

I know “conservative” Catholics tend to get scrappy on this issue, and more “liberal” Catholics tend to think it’s not much of a deal. Typically, I fall somewhere between the two, which is why I have no friends. So, here we go.

Q: What is the big deal, here? Isn’t Communion just a symbol and a way to “cleanse ourselves of sin?”

A: No and no. Catholics do not believe that the Eucharist is a “symbol” of anything, but rather the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, truly Present. And Communion is meant to draw us into deeper and more personal interaction with Jesus; by the grace of the sacrament, we are strengthened both physically and spiritually and that may help us in our sinfulness, but it is not the “means” by which we “get rid of” the sins we have already committed.

Q: Does that mean all the people receiving Communion are in a state-of-grace and free from sin?

A: Not by a long shot. None of us can know the state of anyone else’s soul…but can assume some are. Those who have recently been to confession for absolution of their most grievous sins and participated in the mass (where the lesser sins of our everyday humanity and brokenness are absolved within the Rite) are in a state of grace, but plenty of people taking communion do not fit that “ideal”. In 1 Corinthians 11:27, Paul writes of the seriousness of the issue:

Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord

For some Catholics, when a public figure receives “unworthily” this creates a public scandal; they fear that others in the church, seeing known proponents of abortion or divorced-and-remarried politicians take communion will both inspire others toward irreverence toward the Lord and weaken understanding of what the Eucharist truly is.

Q: And you think they’re wrong?

A: No, not at all. They certainly have a valid point, and intellectually I can go there. Emotionally, however, I always have a problem with Catholics pointing the finger at other Catholics and going, “ummmmmm…I’m telling!”

Q: Right, because in the end it’s between the politician and God!

A: Well…yes and no. It’s true that - ultimately - what Rudy did was “between him and God”, but - and it’s a big but - Rudy still publicly professes himself a Catholic, and so this is also between him and his Catholic community. This is the problem with community; it is something to answer to, in the same way that a Protestant pastor who leaves his wife for another must answer to his congregation, or a teenager who breaks the speed limit must answer to the judge. The rules are the rules, and Rudy, or Pelosi, or Kerry and Kennedy know full well that when they commune while the cameras are clicking, they’re deliberately riling that community up.

Q: So, you agree with the Novaks and the “conservative” Catholics, then?

A: Errrmrmrmrm…not really. As I said, I see their point, and it is a valid one, but there’s also that part about not knowing what is going on in one’s soul or in one’s heart - what sort of turmoil or even humility may be residing there. I know some would say that real humility would express itself in refraining from communing and, again, in the ideal that is precisely right.

But then there is Jesus, and there is this man or this woman. It seems to me that there is also a humility to be found in letting Jesus be Jesus and do what he does, in trusting that - whatever the condition of the soul of the receiver - Jesus is both larger and deeper than what we (or even the recipient) can know.

I keep remembering that Jesus said he “came for sinners; the well do not need a physician.” We must never be so protective of Jesus that we begin to think Him too small or fragile to be able to do the heavy lifting required to turn a heart. These pols know the score; they’ve had the doctrine explained. If they’re still receiving then we may assume two things - 1) that they are hard-hearted, do not care and wish only to score points with their constituents or 2) they are in dire need of a one-on-one encounter with the Living Christ - even if they do not consciously realize it or express it - and they will thus seek Him out, and take their lumps for it.

I think I will always err on the side of believing the best, rather than the worst of their motives, and give them the benefit of the doubt that they’re looking for the Encounter. And then we must remember, that Jesus had less patience for the Pharisee who stood at the front of the Temple and crowed about how he did everything just right, not “like that tax collector over there…” than for the sinner who kept his head bowed.

Q: So, then you agree with the “liberals!” You don’t think it’s a scandal.

A: Errrrrrrm….not really. There are lots of ways to scandalize a church or to desecrate the Holy Eucharist, and many people who are not public figures commune “unworthilly.” As near as I could tell Giuliani was the only one of the recipient pols caught on television cameras. I have to be honest, when I saw it, I thought, “he’s not supposed to be doing that…” but I also thought his mien and demeanor, his whole attitude was serious, thoughtful and yes, reverent - moreso than some of the others participating. I knew I was right smack dab in the middle of an abiding Mystery.

In the Apostles Creed, we’re told that Jesus “descended into hell” before he rose. In communion He descends into the hell of our own lives - all of our confusion, all of our sins those declared and those unfaced, all of our doubt, all of our love and our hate, all of our fear, our conscience, our deepest longings and our conscious and sub-conscious minds; our very souls - Jesus descends into it, and then we rise with Him. His very Blood courses through our veins.

This cannot leave us unchanged. Even if outwardly, we seem the same, inwardly, we have been penetrated. Some of us are very, very thick-walled; some of us have built astounding fortresses and battlements within us, and Jesus may very well want to go head-to-head, one-on-one so to speak, to tumble them. To descend into our personal “hells” in order to help us rise from them. He is, after all, the Divine Physician. Paul gave us an ideal and a basis for law. But Jesus has always been - ultimately - bigger than all of it.

And so, no…for all that I accept the validity of those crying “scandal,” I cannot cry it myself.

More to follow…here.

Q: Anchoress, if someone tells you that you cannot be credibly pro-life until you adopt a sick baby, and then you go out and adopt a sick baby (and then a second) and that person - who promised to become “pro-life” if you did it - never kept his end of the bargain, what does that mean?

A: It means you can’t form a conscience in fits and starts. You cannot become “pro-life” because of what someone else does, unless you are really willing to let their actions open up within you what you have previously closed and locked tight. And since Jim Caviezel gives witness that picking up on this friend’s cynical prompting has enriched his life and blessed him, it also means that God speaks to us through anyone - in any way - he chooses, even if they seem unlikely candidates for the job, so you might as well listen up respectfully and be sweet to everybody.

Q: Will there always be an England?

A: Starting to look a little doubtful, isn’t it? Within the last week we’ve seen the nation all but cancel St. George’s Day for fear of insulting their Islamist population, and they allowed the EU to issue a map without Great Britain. Note “The English Channel” is now “The Channel Sea.” My Celtic ancestors must be spinning in their graves. Brits at their Best has more on all that.

Q: So, Anchorage is digging out from yet another massive snowjob snowfall. But these folks say global warming is not cooling. Do you still say it’s all hoo-hah?

A: Yes, I say whether we are in any sort of “preventable” weather cycle is debatable, whether we can actually affect the earth’s weather is dubious (we can’t even predict next week’s weather accurately) and whether any of the interesting weather anomalies is “manmade” is hoo-hah, especially since we steadfastly ignore the sun. Mark Steyn is looking at ethanol ethics, as I did last week and last month. IBD wonders if we can undo the ethanol mistake. There’s all kinds of inconvenient truths out there, but the really troubling one, to my way of thinking, is people going hungry.

Q: Why do you refer to “Manmade” Global Warming as “hoo-hah” - don’t you know that’s a slang for a woman’s private parts?

A: Not in my neck of the woods. I don’t know who calls vaginas and vulva’s “hoohah’s;” on this blog we just call them what they are, and routinely mock the vulvic-worship. I learned “hoo-hah” at the knee of my Jewish neighbors, and I love the way it dismisses nonsense with beautiful and semitic simplicity. Kipling said “a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.” I say a vagina is just a vagina, but a surpassing bit of absolute blarney is a hoo-hah!

Q: Are you missing William F. Buckley?

A: Actually I do mean to read God and Man at Yale, but as with Ronald Reagan, I came to appreciation of Buckley rather late. However, there is a new piece up on the man by Fr. George W. Rutler. Rutler, you may remember, was the man who said to Christopher Hitchens, “you will either die a Catholic or a madman…”. Rutler offered to tell Hitchens the difference at that point, and I wish Hitchen had allowed him to, because I really want to know what it is. Hitchens, however, busily plugging his book with a “Whack-a-Christian” tour, did not allow Rutler to explain. This disappointed me. I think as a rule Hitchens’ very curious mind (and his sense of humor) would have looked forward to the answer as a whole new point of debate; but strangely, he didn’t want to know. Speaking of atheism, I notice that Pajamas Media has a feature piece on the Scientific embrace of Atheism, which looks like a good read. I have no problem with atheists, myself. I just think they should be as tolerant of my creed as I am of theirs, and stop trying to force their beliefs on me..

Q: Last week you were unhappy with Lisa Miller at Newsweek for her piece about Pope Benedict; do you like them any better this week?

A: You mean that incredibly tone-deaf piece on why Benedict didn’t “connect” with people? Too funny in retrospect, isn’t it? I have no animus toward Miller or Newsweek; I just think the magazine’s writers are supremely out-of-touch - almost endearingly so - with a huge portion of the country. They prove it again this week with this startlingly bigoted piece by Michael Hirsch in which he basically disses and dismisses people who are not like him and don’t live in the elitist coastal enclaves:

“…what we know today as Red State America. This region was heavily settled by Scots-Irish immigrants–the same ethnic mix King James I sent to Northern Ireland to clear out the native Celtic Catholics…Southern frontiersmen never got over their hatred of the East Coast elites and a belief in the morality and nobility of defying them. Their champion was the Indian-fighter Andrew Jackson. The outcome was that a substantial portion of the new nation developed, over many generations, a rather savage, unsophisticated set of mores. Traditionally, it has been balanced by a more diplomatic, communitarian Yankee sensibility from the Northeast and upper Midwest.

He also calls his fellow countrymen “yahoos” and goes on blathering like that for a while. Well, goldarnit, Barack shure did warned us ’bout folks like this ol’ boy, clingin’, bitterly, to his’n identity n’his secular-humanist creed!

Q: Um, aren’t you a New Yorker?

A: I am, born here and live here now, but there was that whole adolescence spent in the unnamed place among the cowpokes and prospectors, and I will forever have some real perspective into the south and west which allows appreciation. Hirsch should get out more and broaden his horizons a little. There is a whole interesting world beyond the Smuppity West Side.

Q: Aw, did you just invent a word? Smuppity?

A: Why yes, I did. Smug & Uppity = Smuppity. My word, as of right now. But you can use it.

Q: You’re awfully quiet on the Hillary-front, lately.

A: Well, I am busy inventing new words for the lexicon, but Hubbard is both amusing and smart on Hillary today.

Q: So, Anchoress, then you’ve had your fill of writing about Pope Benedict XVI?

A: Well, actually, I am going to be quoting rather extensively from his tremendous book God and the World (which is actually a three-day conversation with writer Peter Seewald, and it’s fascinating) during the week, but for now others are doing Benedict, or things papal, very well indeed. Check out Deacon Greg’s links about the book of victim names which Cardinal Sean O’Malley handed the pontiff in Washington DC (somehow I’d envisioned a yellow legal pad, but I’m not artistic), and this interview with a Jewish journalist covering the pope’s visit. Never forget to check out the Deac’s homily for the week, which is always an insightful gift.

Then check out Irene Lagan’s coverage of the pope’s Regina Caeli address to the audience following his ordination of 29 new priests, during which he mentioned some trouble spots in the world (particularly Africa) and also his recent visit to the US:

I thank God who greatly blessed this unique mission and allowed me to make be an instrument of hope of Christ for the Church and for the country. At the same time I thank him because I myself was confirmed in the hope of American Catholics: I found it a great vitality and determination to live and bear witness to the faith in Jesus.

The tireless Rocco Palmieri has the full text of the address.

Most surprisingly - and worth mentioning in light of Benedict’s ongoing, full-on engagement of both Islam and the Arab peoples - one of the newly-ordained is an Iraqi.

Meanwhile, I totally agree with this comparison between John Paul II and Benedict. And I agree with Rod Dreher that this is a great “commercial” for Catholicism.

Q: Well, you just live in a sunny, “everything-is-beautiful” la-la land, dontcha?

A: No, I don’t, and I’ve had my forays into the darkling company, but I’ve never written about it with Gerard’s power and unstinting honesty. And for a sad but also rather lovely and uplifting story, check out Okie on the Lam’s tribute to his late mother-in-law. The greatness of the Greatest Generation was not gender-exclusive.

Q:Get any interesting review copies, lately?

A: Well…yes and no, but mostly no. I have an advance of A Persistent Peace by Fr. John Dear, S.J., which will soon be released by Loyola Press, (forward by Martin Sheen) and I will talk more about it when I’ve finished it, but so far…well, I’m trying very hard to appreciate the good father’s ultra-pacifist philosophy (and I’m sure some regular readers of the blog may enjoy it) but - perhaps because I am Irish - I don’t quite get it. I know all the intellectual arguments for pacifism (it reduces us to the behavior of the aggressors, violence begets violence, love is the answer) and I even agree with that to a point. There there is that point, where I must say that “yes, love, love, love is the answer but it is not expedient.” And sometimes - as when you have people plotting to release poison in a subway, or something, expedience is the other answer. This is why I can never fully embrace either the “full pacifist” stance or the warrior mentality. Too much of either seems out-of-balance to me, and Fr. Dear’s book - page after page of noble pacifism drenched with hero-worship of Ghandi and Tutu - after a while makes me feel rather clammy. Oh. I guess I did just review it!

On the other hand, Instapundit has received a review copy of a book I wish they’d have sent me: Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II. Insty calls it: A collection of essays, including one on a particular breed of pacifist that Chesterton saw as new in the 20th Century: “He does not so much believe in his own conscience as disbelieve in the common conscience which is the soul of any society. His hatred for patriotism is very much plainer than his love for peace.”

Indeed. Heh.

Speaking of Chesterton, Maureen Martin has some fun with him, here:

Chesterton joked that while his friends Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton led lives that convinced people to help the poor and commune with God, that he, Flannery O’Connor, and Walker Percy were quickly becoming the patron saints of people “who just read all the time.”

Very cute.

Q: Don’t you think Chesterton and Antonin Scalia would have hit it off?

A: Absolutely. I’d love to have seen Stahl interview both of ‘em.

Q: Was that you I saw last Friday night at Carnegie Hall singing Molly Malone with Bryn Terfel?

A: Yep! I agree with Nordlinger, too, that his Mozart was the unintended highlight of the night. Bryn’s voice and Mozart are a match made in heaven.

I just finished (and loved) The Last Secret of Fatima by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, which will be coming out in early May but may be pre-ordered.

If you followed coverage of Pope Benedict’s XVI’s recent visit to America, you saw a lot of Cardinal Bertone, the Vatican’s SecState; you’ll recall he told informed the pope, in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, of the moment of the anniversary of his election, at which the pope spoke so eloquently and extemporaneously.

The Last Secret of Fatima is actually a book-length interview (along the lines of God and the World) between Cardinal Bertone and Giuseppe De Carli, the head of Vatican broadcasting - one initiated by De Carli, and addressing the endless speculation about the “last secret” given to Lucia de Santos by the Virgin Mary nearly a century ago in Portugal. The Vatican, under John Paul II’s orders, made that “secret” public in 2000, but for some the revelation has never satisfied. I ate the book up and even found the forward (by Pope Benedict) and the introduction to be interesting and compelling.

Because it is in interview form, The Last Secret of Fatima is a fast and entertaining read - at times its two participants interrupt each other, get testy or teasing, and once they abruptly fall into a quick discussion about an Italian soccer team, but all the while they are giving us some tantalizing glimpses into the thinking and personalities of John Paul I, John Paul II, Joseph Ratzinger (both as Cardinal and as Pope Benedict) and Sr. Lucia, herself. It also goes into surprising medical and political detail about the assassination attempt against John Paul, and how that event, coupled with his finally asking to see Lucia’s letter, shaped the remainder of his papacy. If we always knew that John Paul was a first-class mystic, we meet his stubbornness, and Lucia’s liveliness. Also very interesting, particularly in light of his recent visit, we get to see Ratzinger the careful theologian and scholar as obedient servant.

A few excerpts:

Bertrone: As Cardinal Ratzinger correctly explained, a prophecy, even a catastrophic or apocalyptic one, cannot be inevitable. Our Lady called for “Penance, Penance, Penance!” Prayer and penance are stronger than evil and bullets. Prophecy does not predict some inevitable fate that is deterministically bound to happen no matter what. Otherwise, we would be at the mercy of dark forces dangling us over an abyss of nothingness. That would make absolutely no sense given everything that we know about theology, spirituality, or the Church…On the contrary, prophecy is an urgent invitation to conversion, penance and prayer, and the point is that these things have the power to change the course of history. The mistake made by some of the Fatamists after the publication of the Third Secret was to give the text a literal, fatalistic interpretation. They hastily concluded that the Vatican had withheld the Third Secret until the year 2000 because John Paul II had survived the assassination attempt, whereas, in their view, the pope’s actual death was a requirement for the prophecy to be fulfilled. They seemed to assume that everything is governed by chance, and not by the God who “delivers us from evil.” The freedom to do evil is not the last world. True freedom is the freedom to be on God’s side.
[…]
Q: For the first time ever, the custodian of the Catholic faith Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was making public statements about a private revelation. This alone would have been enough to underscore the exceptional nature of the event. After all…the same Ratzinger had said, “Fatima will not be the origin of the apocalypse. That is impossible. No apparition is indispensable to the faith, because Revelation ended with Jesus Christ. Secret messages add nothing to what a Christian needs to know of Revelation.” Your Eminence, I have the distinct impression that if Ratzinger had had his druthers, the Secret would have stayed a secret. Or am I mistaken?

Bertrone: I think you are. Pope Benedict XIV had already given the Church a carefully worked out distinction between public and private revelation. So it wasn’t as if we were jumping over a cliff with no safety net. Moreover, Cardinal Ratzinger was not opposed to revealing the Third Secret. He didn’t have any doubts or objections. The assassination attempt and the pope’s illness were signs. The last postscript to the shooting was the pope’s offering of forgiveness to Ali Agca at the Rebibbia prison on December 27, 1983. We were almost overwhelmed by the abundance of very meaningful signs. So why not transmit the call of Fatima to the broader Christian community? After all, it is the call to conversion, prayer and penance issued by Our Lord’s Mother, herself. The Fatima message is saturated with the Gospel. [emphasis mine - admin]

The book is very nearly up to the moment, discussing Pope Benedict’s Regensberg address and how quickly his remarks were jumped on and misreported by the press both in Europe and in America, the pope’s visit to Turkey, and what Fatima means to Islam. I knew that Fatima was named for Mohammed’s favorite daughter, who married a Christian and made her stand on that bit of land in Portugal, but I was not aware, for example, of this:

Q: …Fatima plays a role for Shiite that is similar to the role of Mary in Catholicism. For instance, Shiite theology assigns Fatima a part in the end-times. The Shiites believe that the Fatima shrine belongs by right to the Muslims and that the Catholics have stolen it form its rightful owners. They argue that if a Lady dressed in shining white appeared there, then it’s because she had a message for Muslims and not for Christians…[the question continues and goes into behavior De Carli has witnessed by Muslins at the Fatima Shrine]

Bertone: Let’s stick with the prophecy and not stray into other areas…when I met with Lucia the second time she showed absolutely no interest in drawing connections between Fatima and the attack on the Twin Towers…

The conversation between Bertone and Di Carli is lively and far-reaching, at one point one of them even quotes Magdi Allam who we know since Easter as Magdi Christiano Allam.

I will admit that Fatima has never held much fascination for me as it has for others. These apparitions are not articles of faith and while the Church very carefully investigates them and either recommends them as “worthy of belief” or not, (as it says in the book, between 1928 and 1975 there were 232 reported apparitions in thirty-two countries; the Church has recognized only 15 as authentic) Catholics are under no compulsion to pay heed to any of them. Even so, I found eavesdropping-with-permission on Cardinal Bertrone and Giuseppe De Carli to be irresistable, fascinating and ultimately very satisfying both to the spirit and to the intellect. It’s a good ‘un!

Curt Jester has his review here.