Author: Gabriel S. Sanchez

February 16, 2017 Eastern Orthodox Church

The Problem of Staying Orthodox

Over at the old Opus Publicum site, I wrote a brief commentary on Steve Robinson’s Ancient Faith Radio podcast episode about his decision to stay in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Here’s what I had to say.

Steve Robinson, the great wit and honest soul behind the sadly defunct Pithless Thoughts web-log, returned to his Ancient Faith Radio podcast earlier this year. Robinson’s “re-debut” came accompanied with a moving, albeit general, account of where he had been spiritually for the past few years. His latest installment, “Staying Orthodox,” provides one of the best accounts I have ever encountered about why people convert to the Eastern Orthodox Church and how to stay there. Robinson’s reflection on these sensitive matters is open and non-polemical, which is as refreshing as it is rare. Many of Robinson’s thoughts can be applied to the experience of converts to Catholicism, particularly those who entered the Catholic Church during the comparatively steady reign of Pope Benedict XVI and now find themselves being thrown about in the sea of chaos which is the Pontificate of Francis. Some, however, are fairly limited to the unique challenges which attend to trying to be a first-best Orthodox Christian amidst a second-best reality.

Personally speaking, I cannot identify directly with Robinson’s book-based or intellectual conversion experience because for me, becoming Orthodox was more like switching teams between divisions after a prolonged period on the Disabled List rather than going from the American League to the National League (or even to another sport altogether). With that said, I quickly shared Robinson’s affinity for attempting to grasp the ways and means of Orthodoxy through thick theological tomes, collections of spiritual writings from ages past, and a scrupulous understanding of canons, customs, and cockamamie spiritual advice. Robinson, having seen much more of “on-the-ground” Orthodoxy than I ever did, fought the good fight to stay faithful to his conversion as long as he could before realizing that retreating away from the beauty and banality, greatness and grotesqueness, and surety and senselessness of the Orthodox Church was the only option he had left.

I’ll stop there. I don’t want to spoil Robinson’s account any further, and there is no way I can recreate the power of words which so clearly emanated from his heart. Although I share a different confessional commitment than Robinson, I can sympathize with what he has gone through and the great trials any man must undergo to follow their conscience amidst the confusion of the present age.

Despite frequent requests to do so, I have largely refrained from discussing publicly why I left the Eastern Orthodox Church in 2011 to rejoin Catholicism. My reasons for this are twofold. First, I have little-to-no interest whatsoever into turning my blog into a repository for Catholic/Orthodox polemics. Some years ago, when I opted to start writing critically on certain trends in the Orthodox Church, I found my combox flooded with angry rants, accusations, and all sorts of unedifying statements. Since then, people have either grown tired of fighting or, I hope, accepted the fact that my frank discussions of Orthodoxy are not intended to be triumphalistic. As I have maintained and still maintain, my love for the Eastern Orthodox Church runs deep; and though I cannot, in good conscience, profess adherence to Orthodoxy while it remains outside of communion with Rome, I do not wish ill on her or her followers. Like many Catholics, I hope and pray for the day when Catholics and Orthodox will come together, united by Christ in the Eucharist and professing the fullness of the Apostolic Faith.

Second, I don’t think my “conversion story” is all that interesting.

What is interesting, however, is reading and listening to others account for why they have decided to stay Orthodox despite the many difficulties they face in doing so. Orthodoxy, particularly in America, is often “sold” as a safe haven from the problems of (post)modernity; it also has the benefit of retaining a valid hierarchy and sacraments without the socio-cultural baggage associated with Catholicism. Liturgically speaking, Orthodoxy has a leg up on Catholicism and for those who don’t care for “pelvic matters,” its moral instruction is loose enough to allow for behaviors once condemned by all Christians, everywhere. On the flipside, American Orthodoxy is beset by poor oversight and leadership due to a limited resource pool for bishops; many of its priests lack the education and discipline to properly pastor a parish; a significant number of parishes, if not entire jurisdictions, remain ethnic ghettos or cultural centers; Orthodoxy’s “magisterium” extends no further than the church building’s front door; and the wave of conversions that have occurred since the 1990s has infected certain segments of American Orthodoxy with a Protestant mindset. Moreover, Orthodoxy, both in the United States and throughout the world, often lacks the capacity for self-criticism, resulting in alarming streaks of anti-intellectualism, chauvinism, and triumphalism.

While many who choose to remain Orthodox are cognizant of these realities, a noticeable number either are not or choose to ignore them. How long they can maintain this ignorance is an open question. For those who stay Orthodox with their eyes open, it seems that they have found a way to reconcile their faith with where they are at concretely. That is to say, instead of “escaping to Byzantium” or LARPing a Russian peasant from a Dostoevsky novel, they embrace Eastern Christianity within their decidedly Western context. Not content with pious myths about Orthodoxy’s “glorious past” or the belief that Greece or Russia represents a “Holy Mothership” where Orthodoxy flows free and pure, these Orthodox Christians recognize the contradictions, compromises, and capitulations found within their communion. In short, they know that the Orthodox Church is both a divine and all too human institution that must come to terms with its own past if it wishes to be anything more than a museum in the present.

At the same time, I suspect that more than a few Orthodox decide to remain where they are because the other options are less-than-appealing. For instance, I have conversed with several Orthodox Christians at length who have long considered uniting themselves with Rome only to be turned off by the ongoing and very public crisis which has gripped the Catholic Church for more than 50 years. While some were heartened by the liturgical decisions taken by Pope Benedict XVI, they view Francis’s pontificate with deep suspicion. Like many traditional Catholics, these Orthodox do not see Papa Frank as a beacon of humility, but rather an unhinged autocrat whose rhetorical excesses and meddling confirm their worst fears about the papacy. And though Orthodox converts to Catholicism are not, by the terms of canon law, Latin Catholics under the Church of Rome, the relative scarcity of Greek Catholic parishes in the West means that they will have to get by in a predominantly Latin environment. What this means is that outside of traditional or “reform of the reform” parishes, they will be exposed to banal (if not sacrilegious) liturgies, poor catechesis, and heterodoxy from pew to pulpit.

None of this is to say that I believe anyone should stay Orthodox; but I do understand and sympathize with many Orthodox Christians who believe they cannot “go Rome” at this time. One of the great failures of American Catholicism, starting in the 19th century, was its refusal to open its arms and embrace Eastern Christian emigres. Today, American Catholicism falters by refusing to reach out openly and honestly to the Orthodox while continuing to treat Eastern Catholics as second-class citizens. Although it’s impossible to know how many might leave Orthodoxy for Catholicism were conditions better, the sheer size and scope of the Catholic Church, coupled with her immense resources, would likely draw more than a few into her fold. In the meantime, for those committed to Orthodoxy, the road is rough and uncertain. What that means for American Orthodoxy’s demographic future remains to be seen.

February 14, 2017 Political Economy

The Right Form of Capitalism?

Much has been made of Steve Bannon’s (President Donald Trump’s chief strategist) 2014 talk for a conference at the Vatican where, inter alia, he laid forth his vision of the crisis of the West, including the problems associated with both “crony capitalism” and “libertarian capitalism.” Eric Posner, a University of Chicago law professor, has already penned a sterling commentary on Bannon’s remarks and how they relate (or not) to Trump’s personal predilections. With respect to capitalism in particular, Posner concludes that Bannon and Trump hold divergent views; the former “thinks that faith should guide the capitalist but he does not know what it should tell the capitalist to do” while the latter “celebrates all the features of capitalism that moralists like Bannon detest: its glitz and superficiality, its Darwinian obsession with ‘winning,’ and its contempt for ‘losers.’”

While Bannon’s precise religious views are unclear, his critique of certain forms of capitalism is not dissimilar from those which emanate from the faith-based (and primarily Catholic-run) Acton Institute. In fact, during his Vatican talk, Bannon singled out Acton for being “a tremendous supporter of” what he calls “entrepreneur capitalism.” Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, Bannon doesn’t define “entrepreneur capitalism” except by negation; it apparently relies neither on direct government support (cronyism) nor adherence to an ostensibly free market, stripped bare of regulation and taxation (libertarianism). What Bannon failed to realize, however, is that Acton, by and large, subscribes to the libertarian vision of capitalism, albeit one with occasional references to “the Judeo-Christian tradition” (whatever that means). In fact, in a November 2016 commentary on Bannon’s talk, Joseph Sunde of the Acton Institute expressed worry over how Bannon’s views would dovetail “with the protectionist priorities and nationalist blind spots of the alt-right and Trump’s stated policy agenda.” At the end of the day, Acton sees little-to-no room for government interventions into the market, even if such interventions are expressly contemplated by Catholic social teaching.

According to Posner, one of the problems with Bannon’s critique of “crony capitalism” (a problem that can also be associated with the general orientation of the Acton Institute) is that it “appeals to a mythical age of smallholder capitalism.” This is a common tactic employed by Actonites and other Christian free-market apologists: they decry the dominant form of capitalism we see today while positing the benefits of an alternative form which has never actually existed. Actonites heap praise upon the “benefits of capitalism” without acknowledging that whatever concrete benefits may have emerged came from the very form of “crony capitalism” they claim to despise. Even when they concede as much, they are quick to opine that such benefits would flow more abundantly if only “cronyism” was eliminated. But why can’t the opposite be true? Perhaps if “cronyism” ceased and “libertarianism” took root, the concrete benefits of capitalism that we have witnessed historically would dry up. Actonites, like Bannon, are guided more by a priori ideological commitments than empirical reality.

To be fair to Bannon, his pro-capitalist ideology is not entirely devoid of a religious understanding as evidenced by his belief that “if you look at the leaders of capitalism [in the past], when capitalism was I believe at its highest flower and spreading its benefits to most of mankind, almost all of those capitalists were strong believers in the Judeo-Christian West.” Posner refers to this as “religiously based smallholder capitalism.” Even though Bannon’s history might be a little shaky, his instincts are in the right place. Without religion, or more specifically Christianity, to shape and guide it, any economic system is bound to be captured by diabolical interests concerned with greed over justice. The market supplies much, but not its moral contour. This reality has been long recognized by the Catholic Church, especially in the great social encyclicals of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI. Regrettably, fewer and fewer Catholics living under the banner of capitalism are willing to recognize as much; they prefer instead to pledge allegiance to the apparent “hard findings” of “economic science” over-and-against the guidance of Holy Mother Church.

February 12, 2017 Church

Four Years Ago (and Then Some)

Four years ago I awoke to the stunning news that Pope Benedict XVI would abdicate the Throne of St. Peter, unintentionally paving the way for Jorge Bergoglio to be elected as Pope Francis. At the time, it had only been two years since I returned to the Catholic Church after seven in Eastern Orthodoxy and four as a “weak atheist” (or “strong agnostic”—take your pick). While Benedict’s reign had very little to do with my decision, I certainly believed in 2011 that the Church was in (relatively) safe hands, particularly given the former pontiff’s decision to liberate the traditional Latin Mass from the exclusively ghetto existence it enjoyed following the promulgation of the Novus Ordo Missae. My rather naïve belief at the time was that the Tridentine Mass would continue to spread and that within a generation, the New Mass itself would be organically reformed along traditional lines. Growing up as I did my own ghetto—an Eastern one—I was never that invested in the politics of the Latin Church. Since most Latin Catholics I met expressed genuine admiration for the beauty and solemnity of the Byzantine Rite, I reasoned that the second they were able to have access to the splendor of their own tradition again, they’d jump at it. Boy, was I wrong.

It had not occurred to me that 40 years of liturgical banality could have such a deleterious effect on Catholic consciousness, nor did I consider that the very same post-Vatican II prejudices about “the bad old days” which were alive and well in the 1980s and 90s had survived. Granted, an increasing number of Catholics I came across after 2011 freely admitted that “mistakes were made” after the Second Vatican Council, but very few outside of traditionalist circles were willing to pin the blame on the Council itself. Instead they wanted to keep faith with Benedict’s “hermeneutic of continuity” (HoC), arguing that the problems in the Church were caused not by Vatican II, but by the “interpretation” and/or “application” of the conciliar documents. Having what I feel is a fairly good grasp of the law of noncontradiction, I could never bring myself to accept the HoC; it struck me as overly optimistic, if not absurd. If indeed the conciliar documents can be read in continuity with the traditional doctrines of the Church, then the burden of proving as much is on the proponents of HoC. It is little wonder then that those who champion HoC typically spend an inordinate amount of time tarring-and-feathering their critics as quasi-schismatics or crypto-Protestants; proving the HoC to be anything else other than a pleasant fiction is too difficult.

But I digress. Returning to that fateful day in 2013 when the Sovereign Pontiff announced his plans to step down, my initial reaction was a mixture of disappointment and sympathy. I sympathized with Benedict’s decision because the truth was that he had lived far longer than most of the men who had stood in the Shoes of the Fisherman and, more likely than not, he did not wish to see the Church fall into turmoil as it did during the closing, and largely ineffectual, years of John Paul II’s pontificate. Some warned that Benedict had set a “dangerous precedent,” but it was a warning that was lost on me. Other patriarchs and local church heads retired before death all of the time, especially when they were no longer physically or mentally fit to do the job. Why should the papacy be any different? Yes, the papal office carries unique authority over the Universal Church and, with that authority, greater responsibilities than those assigned to other bishops; but is that not itself an argument that popes should be especially circumspect about whether or not they have the strength to discharge their duties?

Here in 2017 I still don’t know what to think about papal abdication, even if I have some very strong ex post facto thoughts about Benedict’s choice—thoughts informed by what has occurred in the Church during the Francis’s unsettling reign. I confess that not a day goes by when I don’t hold the hope that he will announce his own resignation for the good of the Church. Whatever their faults, neither John Paul II nor Benedict XVI saw themselves as “great reformers” of the Catholic Church even if both allowed far too many reform-minded prelates and priests run roughshod over tradition. Still, as I have opined to numerous friends, I have little confidence that the next pope, regardless of his convictions, will be able to undo the damage wrought by Francis; that will take several generations, if not more. And then there is still the problem of the Second Vatican Council, though part of me still believes that its importance to the life of the Church will begin to fade as more and more of its champions move on to their eternal reward.

Knowing what I know now, would I have still chosen to make my way back to Catholicism six years ago? While there was a period where I could not answer that question honestly, particularly in light of my own personal struggles and failings, I am at full peace with the decision even if the decision itself has been anything but peaceful. To be clear, this peace comes not from some hubristic confidence in my own intellect nor as a byproduct of pro-Catholic, anti-Orthodox triumphalism. Rather, it is the unmerited peace that can only be felt through God’s grace and the assurance He gives to the weakest of his sheep that despite the capitulations, contradictions, and compromises which are prevalent in the Church today, she will never submit fully and that it is only by the light which she possesses, the Light of Christ, which can lead us out of the present darkness.

February 10, 2017 Church

A Reply to Adam DeVille on Fatima

Let me begin by making two distinct but interrelated claims (at least for the purposes of this response).

First, I have the utmost respect for Adam DeVille, an associate professor at the University of St. Francis and author of Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy (University of Notre Dame Press 2011), a book I recommend to all who wish to gain a fuller understanding of the Catholic/Orthodox divide. His online resource, Eastern Christian Books, is a great asset to a bibliophile such as myself and his various opinion pieces, which typically cover issues related to ecclesiology and Eastern Christianity, are uniformly thoughtful, if not excellent.

Second, I have no love for Fatima hysteria.

And so I confess that I was deeply disappointed by DeVille’s recent web-log posting, “If She Was Silent, Why are Her Followers So Gruesomely Garrulous?” In it, DeVille heaps criticism upon the “avalanche of apocalyptic emoting about Fatima” that he predicts will take place this year, the centenary of Our Lady’s apparitions to three shepherd children in Portugal. His term for this? “Marian Mischief Making.” I like it. What I don’t like or, rather, what saddens me is to see DeVille rightly warn against falling into hysterics over the Fatima anniversary while apparently trying to deny that the apparitions occurred at all. He notes that in 1917, in the midst of the Great War, “everybody was claiming visions of some sort” (emphasis his). Well, sure, but so what?

There has probably never been any point in Christian history where the authentic visions, apparitions, and miracles approved by the Church did not occur side-by-side with false claims of visions, apparitions, and miracles, both within and beyond the boundaries of Christianity. (This is not to mention the innumerable demonic delusions that over occurred over the past 2,000 years, ranging from the visions of the false prophet Mohammed to the madcap religious awakening of Joseph Smith.) Moreover, following the East/West schism, both Catholics and Orthodox have claimed a range of divine interventions; are they all false because they were happening at the same time, perhaps even around some of the same global events? DeVille doesn’t say, which is too bad since it would be nice to know what his criterion for authenticity is.

DeVille’s next step is to posit a series of six questions which, surprisingly, read like a standard secularist (or, at the very least, non-Catholic/Orthodox) attack on any vision, apparition, or miracle. For example, DeVille questions why the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared only in 1917 rather than 1914, when she could have “attempt[ed] to avert the war” or “predict[] the rise of Hitler.” Similarly, DeVille is puzzled that Our Lady, being a Jewish woman, “was . . . apparently so anxious about as-yet unseen Russian dangers, but would see and say nothing about the impending Shoah?” Setting aside that these questions might strike some as almost blasphemous, why does DeVille believe he or anyone is entitled to ready-at-hand answers? Why not ask, “If the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, why are there two creation accounts in Genesis? If the Gospels are true, why are there differing accounts of Christ’s temptation in the desert in Matthew and Luke?,” etc. Instead of taking the apparitions and the message of the Immaculate One for what they are, DeVille casts doubt on them because they don’t address his ex post facto concerns.

It gets worse from there. Not content to remain dissatisfied that Our Lady failed to predict everything from Truman defeating Dewey to the Chicago Cubs’ 2016 World Series Championship, he tendentiously attempts to link Fatima to both Catholic hostility toward Russian Orthodoxy and “the mounting personality cult surrounding the papacy” which he traces to the pontificate of Blessed Pius IX. How much Catholic hostility there was toward the Russian Orthodox Church in 1917 is debatable, especially in Portugal which was both geographically and politically far removed from the historic tensions between the Russian state and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (and, later, the Austro-Hungarian Empire). If one was going to look for a potentially fabricated, anti-Orthodox Marian miracle to occur in the early 20th century, wouldn’t one expect to find it in Poland or Galicia? As for the personality cult surrounding the papacy (something I have never been a fan of), the fact there was such a personality cult growing does not mean that Our Lady wouldn’t have something to say about the papal office, particularly since—like it or not—it holds the immediate reins of power over a vast majority of Catholics in the world.

The ultimate problem with DeVille’s critique of Fatima is that it attempts to explain (or, really, explain away) the things of God with the things of this world. I agree wholeheartedly with DeVille that far too many Catholics place far too much stock in Fatima and the meaning of the Blessed Virgin’s three secrets. At the same time, I support honoring the Fatima apparitions no less than I support remembering Our Lady’s apparitions at Lourdes, her appearance at Blacherna in the 10th century, or her numerous miraculous icons. As a Catholic, it is a great joy to me that Christ continually sends His Blessed Mother into the world to warn, console, and—when need be—rebuke us. Mary comes not, as DeVille opines, with “narcissistic and repetitive demands” but rather with concern for our salvation and the salvation of the world burning in her Immaculate Heart. Although the hysteria and apocalyptic ravings surrounding Fatima can sometimes obscure this love, they cannot destroy it. I hope in the end that DeVille would agree with that much.

February 10, 2017 Church

A Needless Distinction?

There is no sense in giving Emma-Kate Symons’s hyperbolic, over-the-top Washington Post op-ed too much attention. Riddled with factual errors and mischaracterizations, it is another in a long line of newspaper, magazine, and web-log pieces which, intentionally or not, attempt to conflate American politics with Catholic ecclesiastical politics. Give Symons some credit, however. Realizing no doubt that her anti-“far right” rant, which singles out Cardinal Raymond Burke, won’t stand on its own, she opts to reach back into the complicated history of the European Catholic Church in the 1930s and 40s in order to suggest, nay, declare a historic link between Catholicism and fascism. Given that, Symons “reasons,” Pope Francis, and indeed all Catholics of good will, must be on guard against “the virulently anti-Islam (“capitulating to Islam would be the death of Christianity”), migrant-phobic,  Donald Trump-defending, Vladimir Putin-excusing Burke is unrepentant and even defiant, continuing to preside over a far-right, neo-fascist-normalizing cheer squad out of the Holy See.” If only!

The truth of the matter is that though conservative to the core, Cardinal Burke barely represents anything close to “far right” or fascist. If anything, he is a continuation of the conservatism on sexuality and life issues found during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, which explains why he has applauded Vladimir Putin and Russia for instituting laws intended to protect the integrity of the family. Granted, Burke’s outspokenness on Francis’s reform agenda is atypical for a Prince of the Church, but that’ because most hierarchs have taken to cravenly falling in line behind anything the Pope wishes. Whether she agrees with his views or not, Burke’s open criticisms of Francis should hearten Symon insofar as they represent a rebuke to the Pontiff’s authoritarian tendencies. And yet, in the end, Symon ironically longs for Francis to wield his authoritarian power to thwart an ostensibly authoritarian/neo-fascist Burke.

Despite all of the political turmoil currently afflicting the Catholic Church, it is safe to say that there is no concentrated movement within her walls to roll back the clock to a period before the controversial Vatican II documents Dignitatis Humanae and Nostra Aetate which, inter alia, let loose a wave of religious indifferentism that continues to drown souls to this very day. Instead, the Church continues to do everything it can to “play nice” with non-Catholic (even non-Christian) religions, particularly in the United States. Cardinal Burke, as a staunch defender of libertas religionis (rather than libertas ecclesiae), has no problem showing his liberal side out of a perhaps well-intentioned though ultimately misguided attempt to protect the rights of Catholics to be Catholics in an increasingly hostile, secularized environment. Perhaps the Trump Presidency will ease hostilities for a time, though judging by Symon’s piece, any Catholic who has something positive to say about the current administration and its policies is likely to be in the Left’s crosshairs going forward.

Still, to his credit, Cardinal Burke, along with a few other brave prelates and priests, have spoken out about the renewed threat to Christianity from Islam, both in the West and Middle East. However, such statements usually come packaged with a distinction between “radical Islam” and “real Islam,” the latter being seen as relatively peaceful and capable of “getting along” with Western liberal values. Scant attention is paid to how “real Islam,” that is, the normative Islam that has reigned supreme in the Middle East for 1,000 years has relentlessly turned Christianity into a river of blood. The price for “peace” in the region has often been Christians being relegated to second-class status (or worse), their institutions of learning closed, and their hierarchs reduced to puppets. So yes, Cardinal Burke is quite correct: “capitulating to Islam would be the death of Christianity.”

Most Catholics living in the West don’t see it that way, or at least not yet. While there are now heightened fears over terrorism due to the recent attacks in the United States and Europe, the dominant belief remains that if only “radical Islam” can be distinguished from “real Islam” in advance, then everything will be fine. Those Muslims adhering to “real Islam” will—so the story goes—embrace libertas religionis, too, and perhaps even lock arms with Christians to keep the forces of secularism at bay while upholding “traditional values.” This is the liberal Catholic dream—a dream that anyone with eyes to see knows won’t come true. More unsettling still are those few Catholics who have no interest in the false promises of liberalism and, perhaps out of an inferiority complex, see in Islam, including “radical Islam,” an anti-liberal force that ought to be admired. But addressing that problem will have to wait for another day.

February 9, 2017 Church, Eastern Orthodox Church

Heaven Forbid

Given that every traditional argument for becoming a Catholic comes accompanied with an asterisk, I have suspended all efforts to kick-up any dirt over somebody choosing to join the Eastern Orthodox Church. What I mean is, it is difficult to expect a non-Catholic to easily embrace the “surety of Catholicism” and the “importance of the Papacy” during an unprecedented period of doctrinal chaos. Though it may be fashionable to look back into history and hold that today’s crisis “isn’t as bad” as the era of Arianism or the reign of Iconoclasm, the hard fact of the matter is that those tragic periods in Church history dealt primary with one central dogmatic issue (and then a host of peripheral theological ones). This time out, everything under the sun seems to be on the discussion table, with Catholic prelates all over the world sowing error on everything ranging from “same-sex marriage” to the historicity of the Resurrection. Maybe this could all be accounted for and endured if the Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Francis, took affirmative steps to combat these problems, but he hasn’t—and nobody expects him to. Indeed, a mass of evidence has already accumulated that he knowingly contributes to the present crisis under a grossly distorted concept of “mercy.” Catholics of good will everywhere should, of course, give thanks to God that the Church still has good shepherds in her midst, but only after recognizing that those shepherds are few and far between. The hard reality today is that most Catholics are still lost in the wilderness.

As I have opined before, the Orthodox Church, by and large, has more doctrinally sound bishops, priests, and laity than contemporary Catholicism does. (I should note here that it appears that all of the Eastern Catholic churches, by and large, have more doctrinally sound bishops, priests, and laity than contemporary Latin Catholicism does.) What I have meant—and still mean—by this is that on any given Sunday, one is less likely to hear raw nonsense, if not objective heresy, preached from the pulpit in an Orthodox temple compared to a Catholic parish. Although I have witnessed many an Orthodox priest struggle to mutter an intelligible homily, what often makes it out of their mouths are simple, everyday reminders of what the Gospel message means coupled with a bit of history (depending on the liturgical day). Maybe it’s not “profound,” and certainly at times the Orthodox fall prey to clouding up basic points with useless mystical jargon and ahistorical declarations, but all of that is much easier to swallow than a cleric who begins his sermon with, “Today’s reading concerns what the author of the Gospel we attribute to John placed on the lips of Jesus . . .”

This is not to say that Orthodoxy—particularly American Orthodoxy—is not without its troubles. Just the other week, the Greek Orthodox Church presented pro-abortion, pro-homosexualist New York Governor Andrew Cuomo with the “[Patriarch] Athenagoras Human Rights Award.” Why? Because he helped the Greeks get the permits necessary to rebuild St. Nicholas Church, which was destroyed on 9/11. As most should know by now, the Greek Orthodox in America, much like their estranged Catholic brethren, have a long history of cozying up to Democratic politicians. Maybe this was all fine and well during the days when “Democrat” meant “New Deal” and “New Deal” meant social safety nets and industrial restraints intended to help laborers and the under-privileged, but those days are long behind us. No less than many average American Catholics, the Greek Orthodox seem content with the “privately opposed/publicly accepting” dichotomy on most pressing moral issues and cannot be bothered to take a stand against the rising tide of secularism in America.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are those Orthodox who seem to align politically with certain traditionalist Catholics in believing Donald Trump and the alt-right will save them. Most of these poor souls are infected with “Russophilia” and believe, contrary to all available evidence, that “Holy Russia 2.0” is upon us. (If anybody needs a sobering account of why “Holy Russia 1.0” was not all that and a bag of chips, please see about purchasing a copy of the late Metropolitan Evlogy’s two-volume memoirs from St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.) For them, Kirill of Moscow is Pope, Vladimir Putin is Tsar, and the only crucial political issue of the day is, “How can we appease Russia?” Now, granted, many of these Orthodox have their instincts in the right place. There is, after all, no benefit in following Hillary Clinton’s plan of picking a war with Russia so that jihadists can control Syria, nor can any Christian be blamed for being leery of the Democratic Party after what it has done to help raze Middle Eastern Christianity over the past eight years. Still, it is unsettling how easily a noticeable segment of American Orthodoxy can have its political orientation steered by romanticism.

All of this is to say that while the choice to choose Orthodoxy over Catholicism makes sense on a certain level, particularly as far as “basic orthodoxy” is concerned, those wishing to acquire a “total package” of “pure Christianity” with an unbreakable moral compass may wish to take a few steps back. As confused as Catholic thinking is today on a great many issues, no one can seriously contend that the Catholic Church has not spoken—and spoken forcefully—on matters such as abortion, contraception, homosexuality, just war, just wages, and so on and so forth. While Orthodoxy has exhibited moral clarity in the past, its confederate-style makeup coupled with (uncanonical?) jurisdictional overlap has created something of a free-for-all when it comes to moral choices. For instance, if a couple doesn’t care for what Fr. Barsanuphius has to say about the pill and rubbers, Fr. Panteleimon down the street can put their consciences at ease.

At the political level (the lowest level?), American Orthodoxy is weak—so weak as to be almost nonexistent. And that’s fine. Those faithful bands of Catholics truly dedicated to what the Church teaches regarding the common good are also weak numerically and materially. The vast majority of Christians living today, regardless of confessional adherence, have made their peace with liberalism; they have no use for a Gospel that still speaks literally of living in the world and not being of it. Orthodoxy, for all of its apparent “other-worldliness,” is just as susceptible to secularism as Catholicism. What is still unclear is that if Orthodoxy, in its modern American iteration, has the capacity to step outside of these times, to find that horizon beyond liberalism, and then push forth with the Great Commission in hand. Or, in the end, will its seemingly most faithful adherents retreat from the moment of decision to dwell in figurative caves where they might cry out to the sky to be saved from the absolute corruption into which they have been thrown? And will the Catholics join them? Heaven forbid.

February 9, 2017 Church

In the Mire Below

Much has been written about the revival of “white nationalism” in the United States due to the ascendency of the alt-right. Most of it isn’t very good. Originating as a mixture of dark humor, trolling, and unaccountable venting on forums such as 4chan, the alt-right, according to many in the Left, is a political force to be reckoned with. That some, if not many, of those who claim to identify with the alt-right are both white and nationalist is not in dispute. What’s not entirely clear is if the alt-right represents a distinct and coherent political movement rather than just an amalgamation of dissenters, online troublemakers, and old-fashioned fever-swamp racists.

The only interest I have in the alt-right is why so many Catholics (many of them traditional) are drawn to it, especially given the Church’s historic condemnations of liberalism, racism, and nationalism. Keep in mind that despite its ostensibly extreme views, the alt-right is a liberal movement; it buys into the idea that democracy is a proper vehicle for political change and that religion has, at best, salutary function in maintaining social cohesion. (It is worth noting that many alt-righters, at least those who inhabit some of the darker regions of the Internet, are virulently anti-Christian.) As best as I can tell, the alt-right fills a certain vacuum for Catholics who have long felt disenfranchised from mainline American politics, liberal or conservative. Instead of banding together to form authentically Catholic political organizations in the United States, these individuals are leaping aboard the alt-right bandwagon in the hopes of gaining some measure of relevance in today’s fractured political landscape. Will it work? I’m skeptical. For though the alt-right or, really, the forthcoming Trump Presidency may deliver on certain promises relating to health-care reform, stricter immigration rules, and trade, “pelvic issues” such as same-sex marriage and abortion are unlikely to be touched.

Some might object here and claim that nationalism is no bad thing; it’s just an expression of patriotism, which the Church has never condemned. Indeed, Catholic teaching holds that patriotism can be a virtue (within limits). The problem with nationalism, particularly in its American guise, is that it often degrades into a political religion; the nation takes primacy of place over God and the Church. Even heavily Catholic areas, such as Galicia (west Ukraine) during the interwar period, risked succumbing to nationalism as a political religion due to both the passions of the people for self-determination and the uncertainty which loomed on the horizon due to the rise of Soviet Russia and the reassertion of Polish control of the region following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. While Ukrainian nationalists could not be prevented in full from carrying out terrorist attacks, including ethnic cleansing operations, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) was able to serve as a check on nationalist ideology by both condemning violence and asserting the priority of the Church over politics. Without deep roots in Galicia, however, it is doubtful the UGCC would have had any success, and whatever success it did have dissipated by the 1940s with the invasion of the Soviets and the destruction of the Ukrainian Church.

What certain UGCC churchmen proposed at the time was a form of Christian nationalism, perhaps best exemplified by St. Mykola Konrad’s declaration: “The sword and the cross—this is the only hope of nations and humankind for a new and better tomorrow.” Konrad, like other UGCC clerics who supported Ukrainian independence within the limits of Church teaching, envisioned a social order that rejected both capitalism and communism; it was not built upon secular nationalism, but rather Christianity. Such a vision was sustainable only to the extent that the UGCC was willing to assert indirect temporal authority over Galician society by not only reminding the faithful of their duties before God, but also building-up the necessary infrastructure for a Christian state (e.g., schools, literacy programs, charitable organizations, etc.). What was sorely lacking during this period was meaningful and sustained external support, the sort which would have checked Polish nervousness over Ukraine and provided the fledgling nation with the means to defend itself from Soviet encroachment. It is little wonder then that the entrance of Nazi Germany into Galicia, and its promise to combat the Russians, was met initially with approval from Greek-Catholic authorities, including Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky. That approval quickly dissolved into disgust once it became apparent to Metropolitan Andrei and others what the Nazis truly intended to do to the peoples of Ukraine, Jew and Gentile alike.

In America, despite what certain campfire stories claim, the Catholic Church has no deep roots. It is not, how shall I say, an integral part of the American enterprise, nor has it exercised any meaningful influence on society in politics, local or national, in a great number of years. If indeed more and more disaffected Catholics begin flocking to nationalism, either in its alt-right variety or some other equally unsettling form, the American Church can do very little about it. Oh, perhaps some liberal bishop or cardinal may opt to speak out against the alt-right, nationalism, or Trump’s policy platform, but their voice will be easily ignored. Why? Because the Catholic Church in the United States mortgaged its authority a long time ago. Between the still-ongoing sex-abuse crisis and gross revelations about the sexual behavior of seminarians, priests, and bishops, the American Church is bereft of moral credibility. Moreover, intentional injections of confusion into what the Church has always taught concerning marriage, divorce, and the sacraments has left many conservative and traditional Catholics feeling shepherdless. If the Church is so disorganized, corrupt, and beholden to liberalism, what does it matter if her leaders today are uncomfortable with nationalism? Nationalism, for all of its faults, at least provides the hope of surety, the promise of binding people together for a common destiny even if it is intramundane.

Nothing will change until the faithful are awakened from their secular slumber. The problem that remains is who will lead this awakening? If the “approved authorities,” either in America or Rome, cannot speak with credible voices, then who can? It is not enough to run, hide in a ghetto, and “wait for St. Benedict.” Now more than ever we need to be roused by St. John the Baptist. But if such rousing occurs, it will come with great personal and professional costs to the faithful. The time has long past for Catholics to live as Catholics and do so in harmony with the secular-liberal order. The nationalism now running amok in America is a temptation for Catholics, and like all temptations it comes from the devil. Like other modern ideological manifestations, it dangles the dubious hope that Christians can be both in the world and of it, that we can indeed have an earthly home, and that our greatest reward lies not in Heaven above but down in the mire below.

February 9, 2017 World

Critical and Unclear

Critical theory is a fun little tool that will get you published, maybe even laid on a college campus, but not much else. Pick whatever you wish off the shelves of any Left-leaning library and run with it. If you should be endowed with better-than-average literary chops, you might even be able to secure tenure, or the next best thing: a well-trafficked web-log. Although it stands to reason that there have been critical theorists over the past century who genuinely believed that their largely masturbatory pet projects were actually in the service of “human liberation” (whatever that means), the harsh reality is that most of what emerged from, and following, the so-called “Frankfurt School” remains a niche academic interest for graduate students who don’t really understand life and undergraduates who understand neither life nor the theories that ostensibly elucidate it. Rather, under the critical gaze, all of life is reduced to a series of power struggles, deceptions, interpersonal conflicts, and epistemological anarchy and communication becomes little more than an empty exchange of jargon-filled platitudes parading as insights.

Had I, more than a decade ago upon leaving undergrad, thought that I would still be running across the critical-theory crowd, I might have been inclined to go live in a shack in Montana. It had been my assumption that children’s things would no longer be relevant once I entered the “real world,” and for a time my “real world” was legal academia as both a student and faculty fellow. Sure, legal studies, like most disciplines at one time or another, flirted with critical theory, but by the time I was hard at study that movement had been suffocated by the equally noxious “Law & Economics” movement (one, which I am sorry to say, I actually got behind). Penning law-review pieces that quoted Marx, Horkheimer, Barthes, Habermas, etc. stopped being “edgy” 25 years ago. Sure, for obvious reasons there was still room for some Foucault, but who today wants to admit they spend serious time with the likes of Catharine McKinnon, Duncan Kennedy, and Roberto Unger?

I write this despite the fact several acquaintances of mine believe that what we need now more than ever is a refresher on critical theory, specifically its roots and the social movements some believe it inspired. I imagine this sentiment has emerged out of a general frustration with the contemporary Left, specifically the contemporary young Left and its obsession with the pettiest form of identity politics and melodramatic declarations of oppression. Although less visible, and probably not front-and-center in the mind of any Leftist, is the small but apparently growing body of Christian Leftists who, in an often confused and contradictory manner, adopt what they think is a Leftist posture in order to make themselves appear relevant in a cultural milieu that really has no interest whatsoever in what “Jesus Kids” have to say about poverty, racism, war, and so forth. Might it not be possible, some hope, for the Left to be reinvigorated by a return to a more serious time, a period when critically engaging the world and its power structures meant more than sending out Tweets and discussing “polity” with your fellow white, Ivy League graduates?

Maybe, but it seems to me that a return to seriousness is a return to the days when men would kiss their wives, hug their children, and take to the streets, mountainsides, or forests with knives, guns, and Molotov cocktails to not simply “make a point” but literally take apart the machinery of their misery. Not that I endorse such a course of action, mind you, at least not for all of the purposes and interests that often motivated such otherwise well-meaning men, but there is a great deal to be said for having, as they say, “skin in the game.” For nearly a century, a good number of anarchists, communists, and socialists of all shapes and sizes had a great deal of “skin in the game”; if you don’t believe me, just spend a bit of time perusing the history of Western Europe and the United States from the 19th Century onward. Tales of government-backed manipulation, maiming, and murder—all in the name of upholding the fruits of liberalism—fill the history books or, rather, ought to. Actually, what fills the history books even to this day is one long lie about the “progress” of human history and our arrival at its “absolute moment,” an era of unfettered access to porn, booze, and reality television.

During long stretches of highway driving, or even in just a quiet moment of personal reflection taken while in line to buy cigarettes, I have found myself wondering that if/when the “revolution” comes, who will be lined up against a wall and shot first: Me or the coffee-shop commie kid? I jest. There is no revolution coming, at least not from the Left. The steady erosion of life—its meaning and transcendence—that is and has always been part of the liberal project will likely continue unabated during my sojourn on this earth. To hope for anything else seems unreasonable, and yet it is terrifically easy to imagine three or four moves on the global chessboard that could quickly turn the relative passivity of Western (post)modern existence into a bloodbath. Perhaps that’s already happening and for reasons which are still unclear to me, I don’t want to see it.

February 9, 2017 Meta

Opus Publicum on the Move

Crossposted from Opus Publicum’s new home: http://www.gssanchez.com

After nearly six years and two resets, Opus Publicum is making a move to my personal website. While the second iteration of my web-log and its contents will remain dormant online for the indefinite future, this “version” of Opus Publicum is intended to house longer, more detailed pieces with a greater emphasis on examining law, politics, and religion through an authentically integralist lens. This decision has been made for primarily two reasons.

First, as proud as I am of much of my writing (and the combox discussions it generated) on the old Opus Publicum, the blog came to be cluttered with too many asides, ephemeral remarks, and incomplete observations for my tastes. That’s on me, of course. At this juncture, it seems best to make a semi-clean break with the hopes of attracting a larger audience likely unconcerned with what I have to say on professional wrestling and watching the movie Silence with Protestants.

Second, and more important, I have come to realize that if I have something to say on a given topic, then I should do everything in my power to say it well. Blogging, like other forms of social media, can lend itself to a certain degree of irresponsibility when it comes to truth. Although I have never intentionally misquoted, misreported, or mischaracterized any other writer’s position when responding to them critically, the ease with which a blog post can be penned and published sometimes does not allow certain ideas to percolate. I hope to rectify that matter here.

As you may notice, I have migrated some recent content from the old Opus Publicum over here and may, on occasion, populate this blog with revised archival material as need be. Fresh additions to the website as a whole will be made in due course.

Though I hesitate to seek any favors, if you enjoy reading my material, then I please ask that you do what you can to promote Opus Publicum‘s move online. And for those interested, you can follow me on Twitter @OpusPublicum.

P.S. If you notice anything wonky on the website, feel free to let me know through the Contact form.

February 9, 2017 World

Reeling Forward

During a bout of insomnia last night, I felt compelled to reread Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 Harvard Commencement Address, “A World Split Apart.” Several passages jumped out at me, particularly the following.

Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counterbalanced by the young people’s right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.

And what shall we say criminality as such? Legal frames, especially in the United States, are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also certain individual crimes. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency with the support of thousands of public defenders. When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorist’s civil rights. There are many such cases.

Before you assume that I intend to directly connect Solzhenitsyn’s penetrating observations with the ongoing uproar over President Donald Trump’s recent executive order temporarily banning the citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, grant me a moment to explain myself. The Trump ban, which many have argued is not only imprudent but ultimately ineffective for thwarting terrorist attacks on American soil, may or may not survive a legal challenge; what has certainly not survived, even in Solzhenitsyn’s time, is our collective capacity to confront evil. Obviously a vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists per se, that is, they do not wear suicide vests, gun or knife people at random, or set off homemade explosive devices in public places. That does not change the fact, however, that all Muslims profess religious error and that these errors, like all errors, pose a danger to all societies at all times and in all places. While the political situation today demands tolerance, it is always tolerance of some evil, not a tolerance of some good. However, even tolerance has its limits, particularly when confronting a false religion that has spread violence, misery, and immorality over the globe for more than 1,000 years.

This reality is ignored by the good liberals and deluded Christians of our day. The only thing that seems to matter is the “rights” of Muslims in positive, legal sense, not the fact that Islam itself is inherently dangerous. In an effort to (weakly) combat such claims, liberals will point to the history of Christianity, claiming that A, B, C, etc. atrocity was carried out by Christians and therefore Christianity is no less (and may even be more) dangerous than Islam. What’s missing from this analysis is a fair reading of what the Church actually teaches and, from there, an evaluation of whether or not this-or-that action, carried out at some point in history, comported with Church teaching. Tomorrow, I could go out my front door naked, covered in peanut butter, flinging sacks of dog feces at people in the name of Buddhism, Hinduism, Rastafarianism, and so forth, but that doesn’t necessarily mean my barking-mad behavior has any connection whatsoever to those or any other extant religions on the planet.

Islam, on the other hand, has a long and storied history of aggression toward non-believers with periods of relative calm coming at the expense of non-Islamic persons. The Christians of the former Byzantine Empire were not all forced to convert by the sword, but their continued existence depending upon living as second-class human beings under the Ottomans and watching as their church degenerated into an ethnic enclave, cut off from the wider Christian world. In more recent times, we have witnessed the Islamic State (ISIS)—a highly organized politico-religious movement that has managed to hold significant ground in Syria and Iraq precisely because its iteration of Islam is attractive to other Muslims—carry out one of the bloodiest persecutions of Christians since the days of the Soviet Union. People protest and call it an aberration without bothering to look back over centuries upon centuries of similar actions carried out in the name of the false Prophet Muhammad and his dirt deity Allah.

Even if it were possible, by the waive of a magic wand, to distinguish the “good Muslim” from the “bad Muslim,” that is, the terrorist, the liberals of today would opine that that such wand-waiving violates the terrorists’ rights. Where is the due process? What laws are being cited and what is their proper interpretation? Is there not a way for the text of the Constitution—or any other foundational document—to be read upside down, sideways, and inside out to protect these poor terrorists from being singled-out a priori and prevented from carrying out their terrible acts? If you think such questions would not be asked, then please let me encourage you to peruse social media; the idiocy that is now running wild is astounding.

Of course, terrorism and the scourge that is Islam is not our only challenge today. And, truth be told, it may not be our biggest problem. Returning to Solzhenitsyn, it must be acknowledged that our “[s]ociety appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence,” especially now, in the digital age, where “pornography, crime, and horror” come packaged together in a single streaming video from any number of online “adult” websites. Consumerism, and the destructive capitalism which feeds off of it, is no longer condemned by Christians, even Catholics, but rather propped-up by churchmen and “think tanks” who believe, without reason, that “human flourishing” is not only an end in itself, but can be secured materially rather than spiritually. As perverse as their theology is in parts, can any of us blame the ISIS fighter for looking upon our works, our empire of smut and entertainment (or smut-as-entertainment), and feeling nothing but revulsion—the sort that easily elicits violence?

The promise of liberalism, which many believe was renewed in 1989 with the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, rings hollow today, and yet those intoxicated with liberal ideology still control the machinery of society. In fact, liberals now control the machinery of the Catholic Church, meaning that the truth of things, the very truth of life and what it is for, must now take second place to securing an unimaginative, prepackaged “living space” in this fallen world. We clamor on about rights without reference to obligations, rarely contemplating the doom we have secured for ourselves in exchange for transient pleasures, many of which are not even available to those consigned to destitution and depravity by an intrinsically immoral socio-economic system.

Ours is not merely “a world split apart,” as Solzhenitsyn said, but a world gone mad. The United States in particular is not “a shining city upon a hill” but rather—to paraphrase Carl Schmitt summarizing the counterrevolutionary thinker Juan Donoso Cortes—“a ship that reels forward, piloted by a crew of drunken sailors, who dance and howl until God decides to sink the ship so that silence can rule the sea once again.” When that day comes, no doubt there will be some of us, perhaps many of us, standing before the Throne of Christ weeping about our rights.