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July 1, 2015 Integralism, Politics

Integralism Visits First Things?

Today, over at First Things (FT), Brandon McGinley’s article “Liberal Limits—And Our Opportunity” represents another in a growing line of (mostly) Catholic commentary expressing exhaustion with liberalism. Now that same-sex marriage is perfectly legal and fresh attention is now being paid to stripping religious institutions of their tax-exempt status if they fail to fall in line, it is now a tad more respectable to suggest that the promise of liberalism was never more than a lie. Concepts like pluralism, relativism, and tolerance made for easy consumption when people—including many devoutly religious persons—believed their absence could only mean insularity, persecution, and hatred; now it’s starting to become clear that all three will be dealt out freely against any man, woman, or child who dares to speak ill of the Supreme Court’s attempt to do the impossible, namely redefine the meaning of marriage. Liberalism, according to McGinley, is giving way to a more destructive post-liberalism, but in the midst of this post-liberal chaos McGinley sees an opportunity. Here are his words:

July 1, 2015 Church

In and Of

More than a few people I know have been less than thrilled with Bishop Blase Cupich’s official statement on the forced legalization of same-sex marriage by the Supreme Court of the United States. Perhaps he should have kept quiet. As the head of the fourth largest Catholic diocese in the U.S., his words carry a great deal of weight — much more than they deserve. They also carry the capacity to confuse the faithful. Still, to the bishop’s credit, his words are honest. There’s no good reason to doubt that he believes what he writes. Depressing though that may be for some, it’s not nearly as depressing as those who intentionally obfuscate their message, seeming to remain orthodox all the while holding tight to the Zeitgeist. Unimpressive academics-turned-bloggers, bloggers who think they are academics, and other charlatans of good cheer have begun circling around this ostensibly singular “cultural moment” in the hopes of generating some cheap hits. Let us be in the world and of it. That way our lives can continue as most people do: As if Christ never came at all.

June 27, 2015 Law

Posted Under a Rainbow Banner

Preface: The title of this post, which was not the original title I had intended, comes from the fact that I can only post to WordPress today underneath a rainbow banner. It’s there, on the screen, staring at me. Perhaps it’s there to remind me that I should be celebrating, or admonish me for not doing so.

June 26, 2015 Politics

Courtly Things

Update: Here it is. Everybody can now comfort themselves with the knowledge it was never going to be any other way.

Will the Supreme Court legalize same-sex marriage? For some, that is the only question that matters right now. The Affordable Care Act still has its opponents, but the opposition is largely ideological at this point. Despite its many defects and shortfalls, Americans now believe, by and large, that the country is better off for having the legislation in place. Some inevitable tweaking will have to take place down the line. That’s how these things go. But it will not go away. The integrity of marriage, naturally defined, won’t go away either. Legally speaking, however, it’s already on its way out. When that process began is difficult to discern. Some say it was the moment no-fault divorce became normative. Others hold that a larger cultural shift, one commonly associated with the so-called sexual revolution, is responsible. People rarely contemplate the closing of our horizon, the loss of a vision that includes justice and duty, right and wrong, and God. That is, the real God, not the “god” of political convenience or the “god” of metaphysical surety or the “god” of irrational carping, and so on and so forth.

June 22, 2015 Eastern Orthodox Church

Where Thy Glory Dwelleth

Christ the Savior (Orthodox Church in America) on LaSalle St. in Chicago, Illinois has undergone a surprising, even miraculous, transformation over the past decade. When I first darkened its doorway in 2004 it looked as it was: an abandoned Anglican-style church with dingy walls, poor lighting, and a makeshift iconostasis that was just attractive enough to take one’s mind off the surroundings. Had a city building inspector paid it any serious mind, the place probably would have been condemned. But then things started to come together. Minor improvements were made which gave way to a larger vision of how a temple to God could be erected out of, or rather in place of, dust and decay. Many good souls sacrificed a great deal to bring a beacon of light to downtown Chicago. My contribution was anything but significant, though I still have a scar on my right bicep from my amateurish foray into ripping up carpet. No one warned me that it was affixed with rusty nails.

Christ the Savior, or CTS (as most called it), benefitted greatly from the iconographic work of Fr. Theodore Jurewicz, a priest from the Old Rite Church of the Nativity in Erie, Pennsylvania and arguably the greatest living iconographer in North America. Although he had accomplished a great deal at the parish when I parted in 2011, I was astonished to see the final results. I am not sure I will ever have the opportunity to see it again face to face, but digital testaments like this are perhaps one reason God allows the Internet to exist.

The other reason of course is MLB.TV.

June 20, 2015 Orthodox Social Thought, Politics

Some Solzhenitsyn for Saturday

[I]n early democracies, as in the American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. . . . All the glorified technological achievements of Progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the 20th century’s moral poverty which no one could imagine even as late as in the 19th Century.

– Alexander Solzhenitsyn, A World Split Apart (Harvard Address 1978)

Much has changed in the 40 years since Solzhenitsyn delivered those words, including the number of Christians open to the idea that the American Founding had much of anything to do with God. There is a small but vocal minority of Catholics (and a few Orthodox and Protestants) who oppose all liberal-democratic institutions on the grounds that they are essentially godless and, further, that their triumph has meant the decline of Christian belief in the West. Most still claim to be Christian, but very few live it out in any discernable manner. God, at most, provides some soft spiritual comfort, but that type of belief really has very little to do with Christianity and much more to do with trite existential security. As for the moral poverty of which Solzhenitsyn speaks, I believe we can all agree that none of the technological achievements of this century, which has given us iWatches and unfettered access to “revenge porn,” has done anything other than bankrupt the entire culture. A few decades ago it was still possible to believe that the most rank and unnatural absurdities would never be front and center in society; now they are enshrined in law. Some still say it didn’t have to be this way. Others, contra Solzhenitsyn, hold that this was inevitable. God’s glory and truth weren’t radiant at the Founding; they were eclipsed by it.

June 19, 2015 Meta

On Drinking

There are many who say that drunkenness is no sin. It is not considered by those outside the Church as a sin, but as a weakness : men speak of it as a misfortune ; physicians class it as a simple mania, to be pitied rather than condemned. Instead of giving to it, as a moral disease, a moral remedy, they encourage it by taking away its enormity. But what says the “Word of God”? It tells us that drunkenness is a mortal sin. St. Paul says : “The drunkard shall not possess the kingdom of God.” And why shall not the. drunkard possess the kingdom of God? Because the sin of drunkenness of which he becomes guilty is a grievous sin against nature, against religion, against himself, against the family, and therefore against God, the Author of nature, the Spirit of religion, and the Founder of the family. It goes against nature, be cause it ruins the body, corrupts the soul, and changes the image of God in man into the likeness of a brute.

– Fr. Michael Mueller, C.S.S.R., Sinners Return to God