In which Natalie finds the fallacy

One of the better Wondermarks in recent days, which is saying something (click to enlarge and clarify):

All of ‘em are pretty much worth reading, though, so go check it out.

Around and even more about

While the temptation to just not deal with this anymore is great, given how despairingly little I can do about any of it, there are two things that fairly cry out to be read.

First, here’s something of a bombshell: the ecclesial judge – Fr. Thomas Brundage, JLC, the Judicial Vicar for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee – who presided over the trial of Fr. Murphy, sets the record straight on the New York Times‘ reportage on the matter, which – it is becoming increasingly clear – was sloppy, agenda-driven, and contemptible.

Most significantly, in spite of the fact that Fr. Brundage has been liberally (and inaccurately) quoted by numerous media organs concerning this matter, not one of them has ever actually bothered to contact him.  Words being attributed to him are handwritten additions to his own notes – in a hand other than his own – and there seems to have been insufficient effort made by those compiling the Times piece to determine just what was happening on this juridical level during the times in question.  The whole shape of the situation changes with this new information, and it’s an absolute disgrace that, barring some deserved mea culpa on the part of the Times, not one person in a thousand, among those who read the original story (or – worse – just skimmed the headline), will ever see it.

The whole piece is full of the sort of stuff that is gratifying when read on its own, but which, when one considers its scandalous absence from the Times‘ leading article and the degree to which that article further added to the absurdly unjust and slanderous burdens under which the Holy Father continues to operate, the effect is somewhat more enraging than pleasing.

Read all of it.  You ought to.

Next, via Whispers in the Loggia, we have comments offered by Abp. Vincent Nichols of Westminster at the conclusion of the Mass of Chrism earlier today.  I have little to say about them apart from calling them good, but he brings it all home in this:

There is a vivid phrase to recall: Trust comes on foot but leaves on horseback.

Amen.

Around and about

- CatholicCulture.org‘s Phil Lawler offers a fitting response to a recent piece of reportage in the New York Times – an article in which the decades-long freedom of a serial clerical abuser in Wisconsin is blamed on a man on the other side of the world rather than the numerous levels of clerical (and secular) authority in his own backyard who were aware of his actions and did nothing much to stop them.  When an article tries to paint former (infamous) Archbishop Rembert Weakland as a lone, heroic voice crying out in the wilderness, the suspicion that there is An Agenda at work in the piece is inescapable.

- Along similar lines, Ross Douthat has an editorial in the Times pleading for a saner approach to these issues than has been widely seen.  His summation of the absurdity of the charges made in the Wisconsin situation is noteworthy:

The case was finally forwarded to the Vatican by the archbishop of Milwaukee, Rembert Weakland, more than 20 years after the last allegation of abuse. With the approval of then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s deputy, the statute of limitations was waived and a canonical trial ordered. It was only suspended because the priest was terminally ill; indeed, pretrial proceedings were halted just before he died.

Nevertheless, there’s plenty of blame to go around elsewhere.

- Neverevenmoretheless, blame is one thing and irresponsible lies are another.  Sean Murphy at the Catholic Education Resource Center has a lengthy and detailed (and extensively annotated) response to the typical petulant nothings of Christopher Hitchens.

- Speaking of petulant nothings, Maureen Dowd’s latest column for the Times has found at least one critic in the National Catholic Reporter‘s Michael Sean Winters, whose weary contempt for the material to which he responds is palpable.  I sympathize.

- John Allen, also at NCR, offers some of his typically solid reporting concerning the need to get the facts straight on certain issues before flying off the handle, and then offers those facts in abundance.  It’s a good read.

- Finally, Thomas Peters at CatholicVoteAction offers a different round-up of material, this time focusing mostly on the more strident and not-to-be-reasoned-with critics of Benedict and their predictable responses to the situation.

FINALLY

[I had meant to post several things today, but it has become unusually busy, here; more later, probably, and if not then - tomorrow]

After however long we’ve waited, the first real trailer for Edgar Wright’s (Shaun of the Dead; Hot Fuzz) upcoming adaptation of Brian Lee O’Malley’s excellent Scott Pilgrim comics has at last been revealed, and it’s… well, just look:

It’ll a kung-fu hipster-nerd freak-out with a heart of gold, if the books are anything to go by, and Wright and his team seem to have captured the spirit of them admirably.

You can take it as a given that I recommend it all heartily, but I guess there are ways in which it might not be for everyone.  If you have no nostalgia for early 90′s video games, or no regard for the sometimes unbearable malaise that lies upon the modern young adult, or are simply not interested in weirdness, I’m not sure what to say.  Something else will probably come out that weekend too; I wish you all the joy in the world of it.

A Lynchburger responds

Reader-of-this-blog Steve Nicoloso has kindly replied to my post about the novel tendency to “infiltrate” the university and church in Lynchburg, VA.  He and his wife are themselves Liberty U graduates, though they have since converted to the Romish creed of popery, and he offers an insider’s perspective on the matter.

In related news, I now have my copy of Gina Welch’s In the Land of Believers – in which she, a “liberal atheist Jew”, (as she has been described) conducts undercover research in the heart of the Evangelical church – and will post a review here as soon as I can.

A sad song

[Sorry to post so many of these (not that two, so far, is really "so many"), but I'm in the process of reading through the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time and these nuggets of excellence are too great to forget.]

Where now the horse and the rider?  Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the sea returning?

- Song of the Rohirrim, The Two Towers

Benedict’s Letter – some replies

Earlier this week I wrote a fairly unsatisfied (and likely unsatisfying) response to Pope Benedict XVI’s recent letter to the people of Ireland concerning the decades-long abuse crisis they were forced to face in silence and without aid.  Though Benedict pleases me greatly, the letter did not.  Check it all out, if you haven’t already; the link is above.

In the meantime I became distracted by other things, but I owe some people some answers.  This post will attempt to provide ‘em – or point to ‘em – to whatever degree.

First, friend-of-this-blog Brian Visaggio, of Saint Superman, posted a thoughtful and rightfully scornful reply; read it now.  My own reply to him can be found on that very post, so I won’t go to the trouble of reprinting it here.

Next, there’s Mark Shea’s thoughtful, contrary and slightly regretful reply here.  I sympathize with the position he takes, but I don’t know if I entirely accept it.  This line of argument, in particular, sticks in the craw:

…the Pope is about a thousand years too late to go all Innocent III on us and imagine that it is his role to effectively take over the management of every diocese in the world and expel a huge number of bishops from their sees, not only for being fools when it came to the culture of secrecy in the abuse scandals, but for all sorts of other reasons as well.

[...]

…the Pope is not the Supreme Maximum Leader who can run about treating brother bishops as mere underlings who work for him. If I’m right (and I’m pretty certain I am), the Pope feels himself very hindered by the Church’s teaching on collegiality.

While the emphasis on the collegiality of the bishops is important, it’s also the case that the Code of Canon Law seems to allow for a great deal of superseding authority on the part of the Pope.  For example (all emphases mine; taken from the Canon Law Society of America’s “New English Translation” [1999]):

Can. 331: The bishop of the Roman Church, in whom continues the office given by the Lord uniquely to Peter, the first of the Apostles, and to be transmitted to his successors, is the head of the college of bishops, the Vicar of Christ, and the pastor of the universal Church on earth.  By virtue of his office he possesses supreme, full, immediate, and universal ordinary power in the Church, which he is always able to exercise freely.

[...]

333.1: By virtue of his office, the Roman Pontiff not only possesses power over the universal Church but also obtains the primacy of ordinary power over all particular churches and groups of them.  Moreover, this primacy strengthens and protects the proper, ordinary, and immediate power which bishops possess in the particular churches entrusted to their care.

333.2: In  fulfilling the office of supreme pastor of the Church, the Roman Pontiff is always joined in communion with the other bishops and with the universal Church.  He nevertheless has the right, according to the needs of the Church, to determine the manner, whether personal or collegial, of exercising this office.

333.3: No appeal or recourse is permitted against a sentence or decree of the Roman Pontiff.

334: Bishops assist the Roman Pontiff in exercising his office.  They are able to render him cooperative assistance in various ways, among which is the synod of bishops.  The cardinals also assist him, as do other persons and various institutes according to the needs of the times.  In his name and by his authority, all these persons and institutes fulfill the function entrusted to them for the good of all the churches, according to the norms defined by law.

[...]

337.3: It is for the Roman Pontiff, according to the needs of the Church, to select and promote the ways by which the college of bishops is to exercise its function collegially regarding the universal Church.

And, even more importantly, from BkVII.PtV.SecII of the Code:

Can. 1740: When the ministry of any pastor becomes harmful or at least ineffective for any cause, even through no grave personal negligence, the diocesan bishop can remove him from the parish.

1741: The causes for which a pastor can be removed legitimately from his parish are especially the following:

1. a manner of acting which brings grave detriment or disturbance to ecclesiastical communion;

[...]

3. loss of a good reputation among upright and responsible parishioners or an aversion to the pastor which it appears will not cease in a brief time;

4. grave neglect or violation of parochial duties which persists after a warning;

5. poor administration of temporal affairs with grave damage to the Church whenever another remedy to this harm cannot be found.

The Roman Pontiff’s ability to assume ordinary power over any of the individual churches under his bishops, outlined above, would seem to grant him the authority to make decisions of the sort outlined in those canons and articles – even when it’s a bishop at fault rather than a parish pastor.  This being the case (or at least, this being my understanding of the case), I cannot agree with Mark’s insistence that the Pope is prevented by the limitations of collegiality from cutting off their goddamn heads – in a figurative manner, of course.

When Piuses IX and X promulgated their respective Syllabi of Errors (Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors [1864] and Pius X’s Lamentabili Sane [1907] – as far-reaching and dogmatic a pair of documents as one might ever expect to read – were they being inappropriately uncollegial?  Were they overstepping their authority?  Were they wrong?  Pius IX went so far as to declare that the very idea that the Church should be separate from the State was one of the “principle errors of [his] time,” and was to be proscribed and condemned; did he make this decision in consultation with his mealy-mouthed bishops?  Did he give a shit about them at all? Or were they part of the problem he was trying to solve?  Could the same not be said of his nominal successor?

To go back even further, when Boniface VIII declared in Unam Sanctam (1302) that it was absolutely necessary for salvation for every human creature to be subject to the authority of the Roman Pontiff, he wasn’t saying (or, at least, wasn’t apparently saying) that being subject to the authority of the bishops of anywhere was good enough, or that the Bishop of Rome was really just a spokesman for a bunch of equally powerful peers after all.  He was rather saying something very definite – something that the lesser bishops and parish priests of today would be wise to keep in mind.

Whatever the canonical norms – and it  at least seems as though they support considerable papal authority in these matters – it would be very difficult for a priest or bishop to continue functioning after it had become known that the Pontiff had explicitly told them to resign.  Even if the actual authority is not there, the perceived authority certainly is.

Nevertheless, if any readers with more experience with Canon Law have counter-arguments to this, I urge them to post them.  I’d rather be right after correction than wrong without being challenged.

Anyway, that’s my response to Mark Shea.  My response to Kyle Cupp, who commented on the post itself, is substantially the same, as he was substantially in agreement with Mark.  Nevertheless, I thank him for taking the time to reply; he is a busy man, and I’m glad of the kind attention.

To my friend Godescalc: I can only thank him for his comments, which are mostly supportive, and admit that his point about the primacy of “the wounds of Christ” as a response to the so-called “problem of evil” is compelling.  Of course such a point should be present in the Holy Father’s attempt to deal with this problem, and it would be highly compelling if the people to whom this letter is really addressed were all highly catechized Catholics.  But many of them will have been driven away from the Church by the abuse they suffered, and perhaps even driven from their belief in God; this being so, the insistence that they should meditate upon the wounds of a Being in whom they do not necessarily believe at all seems grossly insufficient when compared to other more practical insistences that might have been made – such as that those guilty of the abuse the Irish people suffered will, if it’s still possible, be exposed and punished.

Benedict’s suggestion that those who have suffered this abuse should meditate upon the wounds of Christ will likely carry as much weight as would a secular counselor’s potential effort to succour me in my depression through the reminder that I will face a harmless and gentle oblivion when I die.  It’s not easy to buy, all other things being what they are.

Finally, to Joseph D’Hippolito’s somewhat contemptuous remarks on my “astonishing naivete”:

First, I’m sorry to have disappointed you.  I wasn’t writing this for you in the first place, but you clearly found it insufficient and that’s something with which I’ll just have to deal.

Nevertheless, I do not entirely agree with your appraisals.

1. Given that the Code of Canon Law is first and foremost a manual of ecclesial – mostly and specifically clerical – matters, it is not at all surprising that it includes no defined norms for the treatment of victims of clerical malfeasance.  What’s more, such malfeasance would by necessity be so varied in nature that a codified system of response would be basically useless.  It is easier – and frankly better – to respond to such problems on a case-by-case basis rather than to try to establish set responses in advance.  The Code allows for the removal of pastors for the mere loss of reputation even when they’ve done nothing specifically to merit that loss; how could anyone possible formulate a set restitution for that in advance?  It’s impossible.

2. I resolutely deny the accusation that I have “forgotten” what this scandal has done to the reputation of God.  That has always and throughout been my concern, but I am convinced that – when we are dealing with people who have had their faith in God shaken or perhaps even destroyed – the proper pastoral response is one that emphasizes the manifestly practical rather than the abstractly theological.  An abuse victim who has been turned into an atheist by the crimes that were perpetrated against him is not going to get anything out of an encouragement to pray more, and may indeed (hell, will almost certainly) resent and scorn such a suggestion.  The name of God has certainly been tarnished by these events, in a temporal sense, but God Himself remains utterly unsullied by it – as He is by anything we do – and is even now as powerful and magnificent as ever He was.  The problem is one of how He and His representatives are now perceived, and solving that problem of perception, in this case, requires domestic and earthly rather than theological measures.

3. You should not be so presumptuous about any “cards” I may or may not play in the Church’s defense.  There was little reason to articulate it here, but I can tell you, since you’ve brought it up, that my understanding of the “gates of Hell shall not prevail” promise is that it has never precluded the destruction and dispersal of the Church as we know it.  We are authoritatively taught that he who will save his life must lose it; I can quite easily envision the Church surviving her greatest trial, but not remaining as she currently is in the survival.  Or, to put it somewhat more poetically, I can see the Church dying in her final defense of the Good, only to be reborn in a glorified body (of whatever sort) thereafter.  One of (but not the only) shameful elements of the abuse crisis is that the Church’s strength has been severely weakened by something that was both utterly stupid and utterly unnecessary. There are many better battles to fight, for the greater glory of God, and an indelible shame lies upon the stupid sensuous traitors who have undermined the ability to effectively fight them.

4. I welcome the advice to read the Old Testament with greater assiduity, and wish that everyone would do the same.  Nevertheless, I am quite aware of the burning and unstoppable wrath of Yahweh Sabaoth (or Elohe Tzevaot, or however you’d like to spell it), and the terrible warnings He laid upon the cities of old, and the terrible choices those warnings occasioned.  All of this is true, and awful, and beautiful – but the jaded atheist who is the result of clerical sexual abuse doesn’t give a shit.  I’m sorry that we can’t reach him this way, but that’s just how it is.

5. Finally, I do not agree with your statements on the institutional Church as a whole.  The Church has enjoyed the things you describe – power, prestige, influence, wealth – not in exchange for a practical fidelity to Christ, but in addition to that same fidelity.  These gifts have often problematized that fidelity, it’s true, as Scripture has always maintained would be the case, but they have never yet invalidated it.  When the Church has prized these things above God she has justly suffered, as the rich young man in the parable was grieved at the words of Our Lord, but when she has simply prized them as aids in serving God, like the woman with the precious oil, she has excelled.

I cannot agree that all of this demonstrates an “institutional arrogance;” there’s too much unawareness – too much lack of knowledge of what either hand is doing – for the abuse of children to have been a matter of institutional pride.  Was Pius XII really sitting on the throne, chortling in glee?  Was John XXIII?  Was Paul VI?  Of course not.

Finally, I must suggest that, if the just wrath of God is to fall upon the Church for her actions in these abuse scandals, could it not be the case that this wrath might take the form of the very real and very debilitating afflictions she is currently suffering?  Some of her national branches face bankruptcy as a result of these scandals, and – what’s more – the reputation of the Gospel and its custodians has been dramatically tarnished.  If Yahweh Sabaoth was willing to harden hearts against His own truth so many centuries ago, why shouldn’t he do it again?

You’re right that this is a real concern, but I think you misjudge the way in which it might come about.

Anyway, I thank you – and everyone else – for responding.

Will THEY be shouted down too?

The University of Ottawa’s administration has released a statement declaring that they in no way opposed Ann Coulter’s presence on campus, and that she and other controversial speakers are in fact “always welcome.”  The U of O campus is a venue for all ideas and expression, and is always grateful for the opportunity to host provocative speakers.

Check it out.

I like this weary addendum at the end:

Please note that this is the University of Ottawa’s official statement and no further comments will be issued.

Anyway, good for the admin!

Still: will the same rabble that was out there on Tuesday be screaming outside of the administrative offices, now?  Clogging entrances?  Pulling fire alarms?  As SFUO president Seamus Wolfe quite firmly told me, there can be no neutral ground on this; either you condone it, or you’re against it.  Clearly the administration condones it, and if a mere poster informing students that the event was taking place is fair game for suppression and protest, how much worse an identifiable group of people who have actual authority when it comes to such matters?  Worse, they don’t just condone Ann Coulter, but indeed, in their own words, “any other speaker” as well.  That’s a lot of potential outrage, guys.

When will these protests start?  If I find out, I assure you that I’ll be there to cover them.

[Note: I do not expect that these protests will ever, ever happen.]

Support from an unexpected source

In a move that utterly surprises me – that’s sincerity, not sarcasm – the University of Ottawa’s weekly student paper, The Fulcrum, has published a leading editorial condemning without reservation the events of Tuesday night, and lamenting the cancellation of Ann Coulter’s intended speech.

In part, but do read the whole thing:

Students, members of the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa (SFUO) executive, and at least one U of O vice-president were inspired to take action against Coulter’s presence on campus because of her reputation for disseminating extremely controversial and outrageously conservative opinions. They insinuated Coulter would promote hate speech on campus and decided it would be in all students’ best interests to stifle her provocative rhetoric.

Thanks for looking out for us.

In doing so, they managed to insult about 35,000 students. That’s not an easy task. Are we so susceptible to contentious prose that we are incapable of determining the validity of an argument for ourselves? Now, instead of allowing U of O students the opportunity to weigh the strength of her arguments, or at least the opportunity to listen to the outrageousness of her claims, they have deprived students of an excellent opportunity for debate and learning.

We can think for ourselves, thank you.

Good show.

Crossing the threshold

Sometime during the morning, The Daily Kraken finally passed the 100k mark in terms of hits, buoyed along, no doubt, by the broad and positive response to the report on Coulternacht.  Thanks for all your visiting – and revisiting; here’s to the next 100k!

I’ll have more actual content later today, as I mentioned earlier; certain offline obligations have to be fulfilled first.