Weaponizing the Rosary

Much handwringing is underway over Daniel Penneton’s online piece at The Atlantic, “How Extremist Gun Culture Co-Opted the Rosary.” Having a sneaking suspicion that many of those decrying it have not read it, I would recommend they do so. In fact, I recommend anyone who is interested in contemporary American politics and Catholicism take a gander, not because Penneton gets it exactly right (he does not) nor because he exhibits knowledge of the rosary’s history (again, he does not), but because the phenomenon he touches upon is real: the degradation of an authentically spiritual devotion in the service of worldly politics.

Penneton stretches his thesis a tad too far by making direct links between “gun culture” (which is also real, by the way) and the rosary, though certainly there are those involved in the former who like to parade their beads around on social media as a weapon—and not a spiritual weapon. Martial imagery and metaphors have long accompanied the rosary devotion, though the war they pointed toward was a spiritual war against the devil, not a political war, especially a petty political war over the meaning of the Second Amendment or whether one can defend themselves in court as a “sovereign citizen.” This is not to say that there are not legitimate evils in society which at their root are spiritual. Such demons may only be driven out by prayer, repentance, and fasting; posting cringe-worthy selfies with the rosary-as-practical weapon wielded in the service of nothing accomplishes nothing.

Some are curious about the origins of the phenomenon Panneton points to. Online culture can be, well, weird and Catholics are no exception to weirdness, particularly when they embrace it on Twitter and other social-media fora. How that is supposed to attract or edify is beyond me, but it happens nonetheless. What also happens to an embarrassing degree are (mostly young) males, lacking a compass for their (self-)repressed masculinity, promoting the rosary like it’s an actual broadsword that should be run through the gullets of heretics, schismatics, feminists, leftists, Muslims, Jews, and so on and so forth. Some of these folks cling to (neo-)integralism, which loosely aligns with their trite medieval vision of a well-functioning political order. Most appear attracted to more secularized alt-right postures, though as I have discussed elsewhere, these pathologies are not necessarily incompatible with integralism.

It is important to bare in mind that these cyber crusaders are an extreme minority of all Catholics, including Catholics who pray the rosary regularly. Although exact studies are lacking, again it appears that the online “rosary wielders” are primarily angry young man, sometimes derided as “incels” or “edgelords” by their social-media peers, who are grasping for a stature they never had and likely never will. Instead of huffing burn pit fumes like actual military service members, they spew quasi-Tolkienite tripe while giving nods to a romanticized past where men were men; women knew their place; families had a dozen children; and society run on “traditional moral values.” Many of these persons will grow out of this phase. Some will not. And of course, some will dabble in more extreme (and practically dangerous) online cultures.

Traditional Latin Catholics, who are more variegated than Penneton recognizes, often shoulder the brunt of these criticisms, though the are hardly to blame. A well-formed traditional Catholic should be able to distinguish between the rosary as a powerful spiritual weapon and the rosary as a blunt cultural instrument of little value. A so-called rosary crusade for the good of the Church and society is laudable; paying for violence against one’s enemies, real or imagined, is not. For those critical of Catholicism, online cosplaying with rosaries and images of crusader helmets and other such nonsense only feeds into their narrative that Catholics are dangerous, demented, and disloyal to American democracy.

Look How They Love One Another

During several of the many revisions/enhancements/reconsiderations of his philosophy of history, Eric Voegelin drew attention to the uncertainty of life and its effect on the human soul. Life is hard—a banal observation until you start unpacking what that means. Materially speaking, life is exponentially easier today than it was 100 years ago. At the spiritual level, life may be as difficult as it has ever been. Never before have human beings been inundated with so much pneumatic trash. Keeping in mind the plethora of competing religions, sects, denominations, ideologies, and “reasoned” denials of all that once made us three-dimensional persons which work to assail Apostolic Christianity (Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, etc.), it is little wonder that pseudo-intellectuals, grifters, and charlatans prowl about the Internet seeking the ruin of souls (and their money). So-called “defenders of the faith” fall over themselves to convince you not only of the reality of existential threats to “true religion,” but that they possess the means to combat them.

All of this is very performative, of course. Some are better at it than others. Unsurprisingly, many of these individuals and the cyber-enterprises they created in their basements turn on each other regularly. Looking for a second at the microcosm that is traditional Catholicism, it rarely resembles a callback to a “better time.” Rather it appears as bellum omnium contra omnes. Principled disagreements, of which they are legitimately many, are an afterthought in the race to accuse this-or-that person or group of being schismatic, heretical, sowing discontent, disobedient, capitulating, selling out, and so on and so forth.

Many wants to believe that the story of Christianity is mostly neat, linear, and without the sort of massive upheavals that are pervasive today. Sticking with Catholicism, the Second Vatican Council represents just such an upheaval or, perhaps, the gateway to numerous upheavals, both foreseen and unforeseen. Bishop Bernard Fellay, the former Superior General of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), observed repeatedly that when it came to the Council, both the “far left” (liberal Catholics) and “far right” (sedevacantist Catholics) shared a common belief that Vatican II changed things. Moreover, in defending the Council, conservatives (including those who were once referred to as neo-Catholics) joined the liberals in believing the Council is good because it came from the Church. Sedevacantists and some other extreme traditionalists, on the other hand, believe that because the Council is bad, it cannot have come from the Church. Those Catholics stuck in the proverbial middle are left with a mystery, an uncertainty if you will, that is nearly impossible to reason through. Faith is essential, but it is now in short supply. Is it any wonder then that unqualified self-promoters have a fresh opportunity to step into the fray to “make sense” of this dilemma?

This “making sense,” as noted, often means pointing fingers. The SSPX, as the veteran voice of resistance to the modernist pathologies that have invaded the Church, is routinely subjected to fierce criticism. Liberals believe the Society is in outright schism. Conservatives tend to agree with this position, though their tone has softened in light of recent circumstances, including a growing recognition that John Paul II, the pontiff that the Society so “egregiously disobeyed,” may not have been all he was cracked up to be. Traditional Catholics vary. Some, wanting to be seen as obedient and refusing to act in any way that forfeited their ultramontane bona fides, kept the SSPX at arm’s length or denounced the fraternity altogether for the usual litany of tired, unconvincing reasons. Others view the Society as “competition,” which explains why certain individuals and their enterprises expended a disproportionate amount of energy denouncing it.

Although it is not my place to defend the SSPX, especially since it has done an incredible job explaining its positions through books, periodicals, videos, and podcasts, I mention it only because it is a frequent topic of conversation among those who purport to “explain” the Catholic Church’s current circumstances while trying to square the circle by offering a worldly “solution.” Any soul familiar with the history of Catholicism over the past century ought to know that the SSPX is hardly alone in taking extraordinary action to preserve the Faith and minister to the faithful. The saintly patriarch of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), Joyf Slipyj, fortified the UGCC against the brutal persecution of Soviet Russia and the political machinations of the Vatican. Given that few comprehend history well, it is not surprising that Patriarch Josyf’s heroic witness for the Church commonly goes unnoticed.

Besides, understanding others as they understand themselves, and through the lens of charity, rarely draws clicks.

On a Sunday

It is no secret that I have all but ceased web-logging. Despite a few “return trips” to the ring, my interest faded fast. Long gone are the “good old days” of Catholic (and Eastern Orthodox) blogging where bright and eccentric minds from far flung locales across America (and sometimes the world) traded in anecdotes that made Apostolic Christianity in this region of the globe seem equal parts quaint and insane. The blogs I am thinking of did not deal in Communio tropes, nor were they interested in the latest iteration of “Palamism.” These were the places you went to find out some inside baseball about a convert-heavy Antiochian Orthodox parish in the Midwest or which editor at First Things had no problem being a first-rate asshole when patronizing an elite used bookstore. Distributists, communists, hippies, royalists, traditionalists, anti-traditionalists, and a whole lot more lovable wackos populated these cyber lands. A “new guard” never sprang up. Instead, Twitter became the vehicle for ecclesiastical squabbling which, in turn, flung open the doors to grifters who pay for their family vacations on the fears of their followers.

Part of me thought this was a fad. After the predictable fall of Donald Trump, I thought Fearmongering, Inc. would go the way of the dodo. Boy, I was wrong. Nothing doubles-down faster than stupidity. Integralism, that once-fascinating and seemingly noble refreshment of a bygone ideal, degenerated swiftly into Trumpism with Latin; now it is little more than a joke being played by an unscrupulous Ivy League maniac on a cadre of mental midgets with demented dreams of serving before the altar of unchecked violence. The shadow of Trump does not end there; it covers almost all of what may be called right-wing American Catholicism. Even traditional Catholics who ought to know better than to subscribe to another rotten form of “Americanism” cannot help themselves. Without a strongman in Rome, they are desperate for one closer to home, even if every sane soul knows he is never coming back.

Lest I come across as ironically detached from all of this, let me assure you that is quite far from the truth. My sympathies run deep for all Catholics of good will who find themselves, for one reason or many, spiritually homeless. At the same time, I confess that I remain concerned over certain calls from traditional Catholics to seek shelter in the Christian East in light of ongoing crackdowns on the traditional Latin Mass. It is not that I believe Eastern Catholics should lock their doors. However, for decades I have witnessed debacle after debacle erupt from Roman Catholics (typically conservatives and traditionalists) rolling into Eastern parishes and immediately telling everyone what’s what. Whether it is the Latin chauvinist ripping on married clergy or the recently bearded chap whose convertitis compels him to dress like a 19th century serf, the result is too often disruptive. (I am leaving to the side for a moment the lunacy I find among my Eastern brethren when uncharitably attacking Roman Catholics. Rest assured, I am painfully aware of this phenomenon.)

This is probably where I should start singing War’s “Why Can’t We Be Friends,” but nobody wants to hear that. The sky is falling, after all. Everything is terrible. These are the worst of times. Who would have thought we’d be living at the end of days? Nothing will save us unless Rod Dreher’s katechon, Victor Orban, revives the West while Vladimir Putin simultaneously vanquishes it on the banks of the Dnieper. Some opine that we now live in a “post-truth” world. For my part, I prefer Timothy Snyder’s observation that if everything is a lie, nothing is true—which may be the only truth, revealed not through reason but rather an “absolute moment” in crooked history. Perhaps this is what Dreher meant when he molested Solzhenitsyn’s call to “live not by lies.” Live not by the lies that envelop us; live by the absence of truth that frees one from all commitments, creeds, and conscience. Those perplexed by Dreher’s true meaning need only look to how he is publicly living his own life currently to find evidence that this was his intention all along.

Ah, but I digress…willingly…but still, I digress. Should this scribble dislodge me from my blogging slumber remains to be seen. The chances are far better than average I will lose interest quickly. There is a sizable portion of my heart that hopes this will not be the case.

Unrequired Impressions on an Ecclesiastical Standoff

Nota Bene: What follows is off-the-cuff, unrefined, and unapologetically impressionistic. If you feel the need to get angry over anything below or tell me I am full of it, all I have to say is, “Tranquilo.”

I have, for the past few years, been effectively “retired” from web-logging. There is too much going on in my life to keep up with it and besides, “Catholic blogging” (for lack of a better term) has descended into grifterism. Gone are the halcyon days of the 00s-10s when both Catholic and Orthodox bloggers wrote serious pieces (and sometimes not-so-serious pieces) that both challenged each other’s particular stances while exhibiting genuine self-criticism. Sure, some folks were better at it than others, but almost all of them have moved on. Indeed, some have even left their previous confessions for new communions or, in one notable instance, abandoned Christianity altogether. Such is life. Although I am aware of several Catholic and Orthodox blogs that still exhibit a genuine desire to probe “things ecclesiastical” in a charitable, exacting, and critical manner or, in the alternative, present interesting tidbits of history, spirituality, and theology, I think the “glory days” are gone, or maybe just on hold.

All of that aside, the reason I have (temporarily) returned to this blog is because several people asked me to weigh-in on the recent “Mexican standoff” featuring Steve Skojec (1 Peter Five), Rod Dreher (American Conservative), and Edward Feser (academic and writer). I am not going to rehearse in depth their various arguments; you can find their writings easily enough. The short and the long of it is that Skojec, who has fancied himself a champion of traditional Catholicism for a number of years, has been undergoing a somewhat understandable, though sideways, “spiritual crisis” concerning the state of contemporary Catholicism. Having had a couple of those myself over the years, I cannot blame him. Nor do I blame Skojec for being public about it. It seems he is looking for reassurance, though it also seems he may be looking for it in all the wrong places. The online Catholic world of today is not the online Catholic (or, for that matter, Orthodox) world of a decade or two ago. Despite rabid disagreements, folks on both sides of the divide used to be fairly well-meaning, even if their advice failed to hit the mark. Today, online Catholicism in particularly is a terrain littered with hucksters, grifters, and triumphalists looking to advance various agendas to an unprecedented degree. Skojec seems to have left himself vulnerable to their machinations.

Of course, “agendaism” is not unique to Catholics. Consider Dreher: A former Catholic who went through a very public “spiritual crisis” that apparently brought him to Eastern Orthodoxy back in the mid-00s. Realizing that there was not enough public scandal in his own communion to keep-up the clicks, he has spent an inordinate amount of his post-Catholic career harping on Catholicism while also drawing from (plagiarizing?) Catholic thought in order to bolster his pop dystopian screeds. And so, it comes as little surprise that Dreher immediately piggybacked on Skojec’s crisis to retell, for the umpteenth time, his own. Concomitantly, Dreher has invited Skojec to look to Orthodoxy because, according to Dreher, it has all of these bells and whistles that Catholicism lacks. This is where Feser enters the fray. Regardless of what one thinks of Feser’s Thomas-heavy Catholic theology, he is correct that the Catholic tradition, broadly understood, is not lacking in the riches of the East. However, those riches are too often buried under the rubble of modernity, if not marginalized in favor of an attenuated Latinism that has become depressingly normative over the centuries.

All that said, the reason I was asked to comment on this is because it is something of a public record (though perhaps an increasingly obscure point of personal history) that I spent seven years in the Eastern Orthodox Church after returning to Christianity in my 20s before returning to the Catholic fold in 2011. Members of my extended family remain Eastern Orthodox and indeed my brother will likely be ordained to the diaconate in the coming year. I was married in the Orthodox Church and three of my four children received the sacraments of initiation there. Canonically, I have been and remain Greek Catholic, though I maintain strong ties to traditional Latin Catholicism. While I did experience some hostility toward Orthodoxy in the years after I left, all of that has abated. My “spiritual crisis,” if you will, did not become clear to me until years later. It was not a “crisis about Orthodoxy” so much as a crisis in myself, one that invited me to issue public condemnations of my prior confession in return for inordinate public support offered by Catholics who had been looking to get some digs in on their estranged Eastern brethren. I hope that is water under the bridge now. I have apologized for it. And if my apologies were not sufficient, please know I am issuing them again.

Returning to the main point, I cannot stress enough that the grass is not greener, regardless of where you sit on the East/West divide. (Oh, and before I continue, let me make note that “the East” is not monolithic, but since Oriental Orthodoxy is rarely contemplated as an escape route for Catholics and Orthodox, I am leaving it to the side here.) American Orthodoxy is a backwater. That is not an insult; it is empirical reality. Though most American Orthodox jurisdictions inflate their numbers, the truth is there are likely as many Orthodox in the United States as there are Catholics in the Archdiocese of Chicago. For some that is a bug, but for others it is a feature. American Orthodoxy does present itself as an enclave at times, historically ethnic but today increasingly ideological, that resists penetration from some unspecified horror known as “the West.” It often comes across as self-consciously exotic, even if many converts have infused it with bland, sometimes even pernicious, American religiosity. To put it another way, American Orthodoxy is a confederation of churches full of saints and sinners; devotion and destitution; liturgy and lies; holiness and hate; coherency and contradictions; etc. That is, it is not all that different from American Catholicism.

I would, of course, be remiss if I failed to mention that Orthodoxy does have certain advantages on average over Catholicism. The liturgy is pretty, if you are into that sort of thing. Most Orthodox clerics, though typically lacking the training and sophistication of Catholic priests, are disinclined to preach heresy on Sunday or put their own “spin” on the Gospel to make it “relevant.” At the same time, due to a certain insularity imposed by circumstance more than intent, Orthodox priests unwittingly perpetuate any number of harmful myths that only serve to exacerbate Catholic/Orthodox tensions. Even those “learned Orthodox” out there who have penned books claiming to “expose the errors” of Catholicism routinely miss the mark, and sometimes laughably so. As a Catholic turned Orthodox turned Catholic, I cannot tell you how mortifying it was for me to listen to Orthodox priests speak raw nonsense about the Catholic Church, including such disturbing delights as: Catholics believe everything the pope says is infallible; Catholics worship Mary; Transubstantiation is a scientific explanation of the Eucharist; Catholics can buy their way out of hell; Catholics reject theosis; Catholics reject icons; etc. Oh the list goes on and on and on…

None of this is to say that the Catholic Church is without its highs and lows. I doubt I need to repeat them here. As a Greek Catholic, I am painfully aware that in America especially, we are the redheaded stepchildren of Catholicism. (Hey, if we weren’t, there would be no Orthodox Church in America.) Because Catholicism is so much larger than Orthodoxy in America, its sins are magnified exponentially. Clergy sex abuse, financial scandals, doctrinal departures, politicization of the Faith, and so on and so forth, exist in both communions; it is typically the Catholic Church’s gross failures that draw widespread public attention. Nothing is more painful to a Catholic who has departed the “faith of his fathers” for Orthodoxy to come face to face with Orthodoxy’s moral failings. This is why, I suspect, individuals like Dreher have more than once turned a blind eye to them; it disrupts the narrative of “pure holiness” or “purer holiness” to find that sinners prowl about all of Christianity seeking the ruin of souls.

At the close of business, it is not for me to say where Skojec or any other Catholic experiencing some sort of crisis should go. I was admonished by a good friend yesterday for reading the whole affair cynically, and so I’ll try not to. Feser has given Skojec (and others) some fine advice and Dreher, ever the opportunist, is just doing what he does to make money (click, click, click). It makes little sense to me that a Catholic distressed over decentralization (synodality), birth control, divorce-and-remarriage, doctrinal imprecision, and the erosion of legality would embrace a communion that has no problem with any of those things. To accept Orthodoxy is to accept a very messy ecclesiology, at least by idealized Latin lights. Spiritually speaking, solace can be found with a prayer rope just as easily as it can be had with a rosary. St. Seraphim of Sarov taught many beautiful things, but so, too, did St. Francis of Assisi. As the Orthodox priest Alexander Schmemann observed, for the duration of the Church, there have always been more lukewarm Christians than otherwise. Fervency is fleeting, no matter which church doorstep one darkens.

Against Thanksgiving

Some people won’t like this, but I find no reason to celebrate Thanksgiving. Yes, yes, I know, according to Dale Ahlquist over at Catholic World Report, today is allegedly a “Catholic holiday” because the Patuxet Indian Squanto, who converted to Catholicism after being sold as a slave in Spain, arranged a harvest feast with the Plymouth invaders. From there Thanksgiving was born (or so they say). I imagine more than a few Catholics stormed the Bastille, too, but I see no reason why any should celebrate its commemoration. (I do think Catholics should celebrate Guy Fawkes Day, but I’ll save that matter for another time.) Thanksgiving has also become a day when Catholics (and other Christians) celebrate America’s “proud legacy” of religious freedom despite the fact that no such legacy actually exists. It took Catholics centuries to find pockets of toleration in America and once they thought they found it, what happened? Secularization set in and now bishops, priests, and laity alike gladly surrender to the Zeitgeist in order to prove they are “good citizens.”

An Antiochian Orthodox priest I was once acquainted with was told he had to celebrate the Divine Liturgy on Thanksgiving. Vexed at the idea that he would be inadvertently celebrating a bunch of heretics killing indigenous people and stealing their land, he flipped his parish to the Julian Calendar for one day only so the Thanksgiving Thursday would align with the feast of St. Gregory Palamas. This year’s Julian Calendar feast is of another great saint, John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople. St. John pulled no punches during his lifetime, which in no small part explains why he reposed in exile. He admonished the wealthy of his day to first donate to the poor before buying a golden chalice or other ecclesial ornaments for the church. What, I wonder, would the Golden Mouth have to say to contemporary Christians who gorge themselves on sumptuous meals before passing out drunk in front a football game when thousands upon thousands of Native Americans wallow in squalor on barren reservations “furnished” to them by the Government of the United States?

As for religious freedom, is it not time for us to cease genuflecting before that stripped altar? What toleration is left in this country for authentic Christianity is quickly fading. In a generation or less it won’t exist at all. And then what shall we have to be thankful for? What celebrating will occur then? Hopefully the only celebrations that truly matter: the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass or the Divine Liturgy. Instead of being thankful that we live in a country which legally slaughters babies, denies workers their just wages, and refuses to pay true reparations to the original inhabitants of this land, we can instead give thanks to God for Christ’s salvific death on the Cross and the hope of Eternal Life. Perhaps then we can take what meager material wealth we have left and spend it on bread for the homeless instead of beer for ourselves. Or maybe in lieu of griping about our “loved ones” and rolling our eyes at our in-laws, we can spend that time in prayer, asking our Lord to spare this country the wrath it deserves for its innumerable offenses against its only true head, Christ our King and Redeemer.

A Thought on Integralism and Symphonia for Sunday

It has been nearly two years since Rod Dreher infected American religious discourse with The Benedict Option, an under-theorized mishmash of derivative ideas and conclusions meant to finance its author’s extravagant trips to foreign dinner tables. By spawning a litany of lesser-known “Options” in magazine articles and web-logs, Dreher managed to unwittingly play into liberalism’s hands. Liberalism is not concerned with the “right life” or the “best life” per se, but rather with the “right” or “best life” the individual defines for himself. And so the “Benedict Option” (whatever it means) becomes a choice among many, a mere possibility whose goodness is measured by the number of adherents rather than the substance of its claims. Luckily none of the other proposed “Options” ever gained much traction, perhaps because there is nothing more intellectually loathsome than to be a derivative idea of a derivative idea that, in and of itself, is not particularly impressive.

One other related consequence of Dreher’s drivel is the reduction of all things political to “Options” in the minds of contemporary American Christians, particularly Catholics. Take, for instance, the integralist revival inspired in no small part by The Josias and the earlier writings of its contributors. Both friends and foes of integralism have a tendency to treat it as an “Option,” a political posture that is worth adopting — at least in word — on a visceral basis alone. Integralism “sounds cool” to a certain type of 20/30-something Catholic disillusioned with American politics and its two main parties. Integralism seems “edgy,” and the willingness of integralists to callback to supposed “golden ages” in the distant past or more questionable eras of religious-political union in the last century has a polarizing effect that too many of these otherwise well-meaning Catholics revel in. This is contrary to one of if not the most central tenant of integralism, namely that integralists are doing nothing more or less than holding to the Catholic Church’s indefectible teachings. Integralists do not advance new doctrines or novel theological speculation; they merely adhere to the proper ordering of the spiritual and temporal powers.

On its face, that’s incredibly less “sexy” (or shocking) than saying that one longs for the days of the Inquisition or proudly hangs portrait’s of Franco and Salazar in their “study” (ok, fine, parents’ basement). By promoting a caricature of integralism, one that is more fit to be a Right Wing Death Squad t-shirt design than a topic of serious discussion, these unwitting integralists feed integralist’s critics with ample ammunition to gun-down the integralist thesis (or, rather, a certain degraded idea of the integralist thesis). That is unhelpful. For until the time comes that integralism, properly understood, is taken as neither a novelty nor a romantic hope, it will not only fail to gain traction in the wider Catholic Church, but few if any will begin the heavy lifting required to operationalize integralism in a socio-political environment beset by liberalism. To put it another way, for as long as integralism remains mired in useless discussions centered on some of its adherents’ silly social-media excesses and poor rhetorical choices, it will always have the appearance of an idea, of an “Option,” that can be freely chosen (or not) without serious intellectual and moral consequences. If that is all integralism truly is, then we need it not at all.

None of this is to say that integralism is beyond criticism or that integralists cannot disagree among themselves. One challenge to integralism that remains more hypothetical than realized at this stage is the Eastern Orthodox concept of symphonia. Leaving to the side for the moment any criticism of “symphonia in practice” as opposed to “symphonia as proposed,” symphonia does away with the hierarchical structure of the spiritual and temporal powers intrinsic to integralism in favor of an integrated model of ecclesiastical and secular authority. Under symphonia, temporal power is not directly subordinate to the spiritual, but rather interwoven with it. In the Byzantine, and later Russian Tsarist, iterations of symphonia, the emperor is vested with a coordinate role in protecting and promoting the true religion alongside the Church hierarchy (specifically the patriarch). Some argue that this is necessary insofar as the Christian East knows nothing of a central ecclesiastical authority figure in the way Western Christendom does with the papacy. While the bishops may, in theory, all be equal successors to the Apostles, it is the temporal ruler, the emperor, who binds them together and calls them forth with the dogmatic unity of the Church is threatened. Integralism, by symphonia’s lights, goes too far in subordinating the temporal power to the spiritual while also claiming indirect temporal authority to the spiritual power. This hierarchical structure makes the temporal the handmaid of the spiritual, an arrangement that is both theologically unsound and practical untenable.

Integralist adherents, mainly Latin Catholics, may wish to dismiss symphonia’s claims on the thin ground that it belongs to the Christian East, specifically the Eastern Orthodox, and therefore has no say in the doctrinal structure of the Catholic Church. Maybe. However, does not the Christian East no less than the Christian West belong by right to the Catholic Church, that is, the one Universal Church of Christ? Is it so clear at this stage that integralism has vanquished symphonia? Or do both models have room to exist within One Church? There is no space to answer those or a myriad of other questions here. Rather, they are brought up only to suggest that even if integralism should be conceptualized not as an “Option” but rather part and parcel of the Church’s historic social doctrine, then can it stand alone when an equally ancient and arguably more successful model (at least for a time) in symphonia is also available? For those inclined to dismiss symphonia out of hand, remember that without it there would be no Nicene Creed.

A Tiny Postscript to Yesterday’s Post

I confess I was both surprised and heartened by the positive reactions to yesterday’s post. Having not blogged regularly for approximately two years now, it is impossible to predict if anything posted will ever get read. In scanning Twitter, I noticed a few comments concerning the reaction of certain online traditional Catholic males toward fellow Catholic females who, apparently, lost their virginity prior to marriage. (I write “apparently” because I am not sure how these Catholic men know who is or is not a virgin unless these ladies are advertising it.) This led me down a social-media rabbit hole where I found, much to my chagrin, a great deal of “commentary” (loosely defined) on why a “touched” woman is unfit to be a true traditional Catholic wife.

Let me be clear: “touched” is a euphemism of my own design. The adjectives I encountered in my visits to the four corners of online trad-dom included, but were hardly limited to, “corrupt,” “spoiled,” “unclean,” and “immoral.” Not surprisingly, I found scant commentary on traditional Catholic males who lived “Augustinian” lifestyles prior to finding the Latin Mass and even less on what is likely a far more pervasive problem among that demographic, namely pornography. On what basis, I wonder, is a female who has engaged in a monogamous sexual relationship outside of marriage more dirty or foul than the male who makes not-infrequent visits to PornHub to peruse videos that would make Caligula blush? Say whatever you want about Christianity replacing the “Old Law”; traditional Catholicism has its own deeply engrained notions of “ritual purity” that happen to be targeted toward a single sex.

This is not to say that the “slut shaming” traditional Catholic male community found online approaches the matter on the basis of either authority or reason. Their negative reactions to non-virgin Catholic females is almost entirely visceral. These women are “forbidden fruit,” objects of both desire and derision. These attract attention, wittingly or not, because they offer the idea of access to something these males have never had, and yet most of these ladies are now committed to “withholding” said access until marriage. And so the traditional Catholic males, by and large, do not know what to do with that information. Why should they “pay” for something that was otherwise given away “for free”? Compound this sideways view of things with those general feelings of inadequacy so many inadequately socialized males committed to a religious minority are often encumbered with and what you have is a recipe for fruitless resentment.

Since I am disinclined from dispensing advice and find moralizing tedious, let me say that regardless of what gets spewed online, my sense is that at the close of business a lot of the online Catholic rhetoric is not reflective of the on-the-ground reality. There are far more traditional Catholic men than women, and converts-to-tradition are overwhelmingly male. To the extent these men want wives, they are going to have to expand their horizons beyond the Mary Margarets, Catherine Annes, and Ann Catherine Margaret Marys of their imaginations. I do not mean that men should pursue morally casual women (or vice versa). No one in their right mind wants to be wedded to someone who snatches an extra 100 when passing “Go” in Monopoly or believes the infield fly rule extends to the outfield during postseason baseball games.

Jansenists Look East to Combat Protestants

An obscure academic article (aren’t they all?), “From East To West: Jansenists, Orientalists, And The Eucharistic Controversy” by Alastair Hamilton, which appeared in the anthology How the West Was Won (Brill 2010), sheds light on an obscure, but interesting, piece of ecclesiastical history: the Jansenist use of Greek (and other Eastern) first-person sources to combat Protestant polemics against the doctrine of transubstantiation.

When they weren’t engaged in their favorite pastime, namely beating on the Jesuits, Jansenist luminaries Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole enjoyed picking fights with Calvinists, specifically Jean Claude, a Hugenot minister. He maintained, rather unconvincingly, that the Catholic profession of transubstantiation was no older than the 10th or 11th centuries, “the darkest and most polluted centuries, the most lacking in men of piety and learning, which Christianity has ever known.” In response to the Jansenist suggestion that the separated communions of the East professed belief in the dogma, Jean Claude declared that “every Greek on the face of the earth” should be interrogated as to whether their church taught such a thing—and that’s just what the Jansenists did. Over the course of many years, allies of Arnauld and Nicole, along with other Jansenist sympathizers, collected attestations from Russian, Greek, and Oriental Orthodox clerics that their respective communions all upheld the dogma of transubstantiation. Some of the scholars recruited for the project helped lay the groundwork for Oriental studies in the West. These attestations, along with various Eastern professions of faith, were eventually translated into Latin and made their way into ever-expanding editions of Arnauld’s La perpetuité de la foy, which continued on even after the author’s death.

The response from Protestant Europe was mixed. Jean Claud had hung his belief in the Greek rejection of transubstantiation on the controversial catechism of Cyril Lucaris, multiple-time Patriarch of Constantinople whose notorious Western and Calvinist sympathies resulted in him being strangled to death by the Turks. Lucaris’s catechism was rejected by the Greeks and never accepted by the Russians, who instead looked to the 1640 catechism of Metropolitan Peter Mogila. That catechism, which was eventually adopted by other Orthodox patriarchates, defended transubstantiation. Although Mogila’s catechism has been derided by Protestant and even some Orthodox theologians as “Latinized,” the Orthodox never rebuffed it. Moreover, the Jansenists and other Catholics interested in defending transubstantiation, were also able to cite attestations and confessional documents from Eastern churches out-of-communion with the Orthodox to show that the Christian East as a whole, regardless of confessional commitment, held to transubstantiation.

Given that, Protestant polemicists turned to attacking the intellectual integrity of Eastern Christendom, noting examples of where Greek and Ethiopian clerics clearly did not understanding the minutiae and theological subtleties involved in the Western-rooted debates over the Eucharist. To a certain extent, they had a point. Eastern Christians laboring under Muslim rule were largely cutoff from their own centers of learning and their theological-polemical interests were focused on combating Muslim claims, not Protestant ones. Moreover, while Eastern Christians were not inclined to deny the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, they spent little time “theorizing” how bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Jesus. That controversy was not on their radar. Still, many Protestant scholars eventually conceded that even without a specifically Latin theological context or vocabulary, it was a bridge too far to claim that the Christian East rejected transubstantiation outright. This “error” had deep roots in Christian history, East and West.

It is interesting to speculate why this chapter in Christian history is not mentioned more often. The fact that it was the Jansenists, rather than “orthodox” Catholics, who opted to repair directly to the East for theological ammunition may be one reason. Whatever contributions the Jansenists could make the Catholic Church’s wider battle with Protestantism were largely overlooked in favor of condemning them for their hyper-reading of St. Augustine’s theological corpus. In more recent times it has become fashionable for some Orthodox scholars (and too many Western Orthodox converts) to take an absolutist position against “the Latins,” arguing—often unconvincingly—that any dogma, doctrine, or theological concept framed in Latin theological language are unacceptable to Eastern Orthodoxy.

Whatever the reasons, it is clear that the Jansenists are owed a bit of a debt for helping to pave the way for deeper studies into the affinities between Catholics and Orthodox. In so doing, they also shed further light on the extent to which many Protestant sects, rather than returning to “ancient” or “primitive” Christianity, were instead churning out unchecked innovations.

Never Post About Fasting, But…

A recent post appearing over at Taylor Marshall’s web-log compares Islamic fasting practices during Ramadan with those that existed in the Western (Latin) Church during the Middle Ages. Setting aside Taylor’s cringe-worthy commentary on “hot Christian princesses” and the “toughness” of medieval Christians, the post illustrates just how far the Latin Church has drifted from its aesthetical roots. Still, it’s worth bearing in mind that when Western Christendom followed an austere Lenten discipline, life was, well, rather terrible. Food consumption occurred at a radically lower rate than what we experience today and foodstuffs such as meat and dairy were not widely available to most of the population. Moreover, as Taylor’s post highlights, the relaxation of the Latin Church’s fasting discipline came first at the behest of monastics (many of whom lived better lives than laymen) and the rich who exchanged gifts to the Church for dispensations from fasting.

Today, only the Eastern Christian churches (most of which are out of communion with the Catholic Church) mandate regular fasting with a special emphasis on Lent. Before saying anything in its favor, it is important to note that the “fast heavy” culture in the East, particularly among the Orthodox, is often exaggerated and romanticized. A good number of so-called “cradle Orthodox” (i.e. those born into Orthodoxy) take their communion’s fasting rules in stride, and while some will follow them strictly, many do not. This often scandalizes converts to Orthodoxy who sometimes turn fasting into an idol, as well as a point of pride that makes them stand out from other Christians. Too often this degenerates into the unedifying spectacle of converts and cradles arguing over disciplinary minutiae with particularly sensitive souls fretting over whether “the Fathers” would have condoned the consumption of peanut butter during Lent.

The Latin Church, with its penchant for disciplinary legalism, today provides a fairly easy path for its faithful to adhere to the rules strictly under pain of mortal sin. The Orthodox, by contrast, have a far more rigorous conception of fasting, albeit without the attendant penalties—maybe. An Orthodox cleric of note once told his parish that there was no need to confess falling short of Orthodoxy’s fasting prescriptions period. (The exception to this counsel would be breaking Orthodoxy’s Eucharistic fast and still receiving communion.) Another I have come across told me that any deviation from mandated fasting is a sin that should be confessed, though there may be mitigating circumstances such as being a guest in a non-Orthodox home and being served meat or accidentally ingesting a forbidden product because one forgot to thoroughly read the ingredients on the back of the box. All Orthodox appear to agree that any pastor can dispense a member of his flock from all or part of the fast on a case-by-case basis.

In an effort to “upgrade” the prevalent of fasting, at least during Lent, many traditional Latin Catholic outlets and publications will call attention to the Catholic Church’s fasting disciplines as they existed in the first half of the 20th century. Many traditional Catholics, for instance, honor the Ember Days despite their abolishment decades ago. Still, this is a minority of Catholics overall and even these disciplinary rules fall far short of what was expected in the Latin Church a millennium ago.

It is easy, and perilous, to problematize fasting. Instead of becoming an act of self-discipline that assists a soul in drawing closer to God, it turns into a legal debate. One has to wonder if the Latin Church, again with its penchant for legalism, could even redirect Christians toward greater austerity without mentioning fire and brimstone. In other words, without a culture of exhortation with a hefty dose of tolerance toward limitations and weakness, inspiring (rather than threatening) people to do better for their own spiritual benefit will prove difficult. Proposed canonical rules with an “or else” attached will be resisted and likely never come into effect anyways.

Uplifting Year-End Thoughts – Part 3

Accompanied by Q, that immaculate collection of our Lord’s sayings that so many “Biblical Christians” routinely ignore, a man could find his way through this life with nary a worry. For this uncontroversial text, attested to by a great cloud of witnesses for nearly 2,000 years, forms the cornerstone of Christianity. In fact, it is such a powerful collection that it is said at pulpits across the world that it, along with the Gospel of St. Mark, shaped the formation of Ss. Matthew and Luke’s gospels. No doubt this is why children are taught from the earliest age to appreciate the sweet science that is textual criticism, for without it the careless scribal errors of ages past may very well shape the souls of those living today. The horror.

Facetiousness aside (well, not entirely), nobody today contends that Catholics and Orthodox alike are woefully ignorant of the Bible. While some schoolchildren are fortunate enough to be handed cute songs and rhymes to assist them in remembering the titles of the Biblical texts, a vast majority of them will never read a single verse of Scripture outside of what may be contained in either their hand Missals or quoted in a “spiritually uplifting” book. When I come across a Protestant at one of West Michigan’s numerous Christian-themed coffee shops, I have to confess off the bat that they have bells n’ smells Christianity beat when it comes to the Bible just before reminding them that the existence of the Bible presupposes the Church which canonized it. Most folks, particularly young folks, aren’t terribly impressed by that, and for good reason. For if I or any other Catholic/Orthodox take such pride in the production of the Bible, why don’t we make a firmer effort to read it? Woe to us, I suppose.

One common justification for not reading the Bible that circulates among Catholics and Orthodox is that it is up to the Church to determine what Holy Writ means; reading it “alone” will only lead us to commit the Protestant of error of imposing our own subjective meaning on the text. Maybe. Again, given how many Protestants I have met who are sure of what Scripture means and yet offer up wildly disparate readings of the same pericopes does affirm, at a certain level, the reality that Scripture can be manipulated along a number of mutually exclusive lines. A Protestant rebuttal to this line of thinking is that if it is for the Church and the Church alone to interpret the Bible, why bother reading it at all? Why not simply look to what the Church has to say and leave the text of Scripture to the side? While this line of questioning is often intended to instill shame, more often than not it seems to bolster Catholics and Orthodox in holding that “ignorance [of the Bible] is bliss.”

What, I wonder, would become of Christianity were the Bible to be read and read often. Would there be less sin? Would there be a greater thrust to remake the world and evangelize those lost to heathenry? Might streaming television and video games go the way of the dodo as people spent their well-earned hours of leisure in heated but charitable discussions over the meaning of Job or why God would allow his most obstinate prophet, Jonah, to become His most successful one? Perhaps the only magazines and books to be produced would be Biblical commentaries, each one invested not so much in scoring polemical points or advancing careers, but rather disclosing the meaning of the single most important book (or, rather, collection of books) in human history? Maybe, under the guidance of the Word of God, a real effort would be made across the nations to restore all things in Christ. Or perhaps people would just find more reasons to despise, vilify, and ultimately murder one another—just like in the good old days.