The Catholic Thing

By St. Pope John Paul II

Excerpted from Address of John Paul II to the members of the Pontifical Council for the Family, June 4, 1999

The theme of fatherhood, which you have chosen for this plenary meeting, refers to the third year of preparation for the Great Jubilee, dedicated precisely to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is worthwhile reflecting on this theme, since in today's family the father figure is in danger of becoming more and more hidden or even absent. In the light of the paternity of God "from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named" (Eph 3:15), human fatherhood and motherhood acquire all their meaning, dignity, and greatness. "Human fatherhood and motherhood, while remaining biologically similar to that of other living beings in nature, contain in an essential and unique way a 'likeness' to God which is the basis of the family as a community of human life, as a community of persons united in love (communio personarum)." (Gratissimam sane, n. 6)

We can still hear the vivid echo of the recent celebration of Pentecost, which moves us to proclaim with hope St. Paul's affirmation: "All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God." (Rom 8:14) Just as the Holy Spirit is the life of the Church (cf. Lumen gentium, n. 7), he must also be the life of the family, the little domestic church. For every family, he must be the inner principle of vitality and energy, which keeps the flame of conjugal love ever burning in the spouses' reciprocal gift of self.

It is the Holy Spirit who leads us to the heavenly Father and enables the trusting, jubilant prayer "Abba, Father!" (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6) to rise from our hearts. The Christian family is called to be distinguished for its atmosphere of shared prayer, in which God is addressed with the freedom of children and called by the affectionate name of "our Father"! May the Holy Spirit help us discover the Father's face as a perfect model of fatherhood in the family.

For some time now, the family institution has been under repeated attack. These attacks are all the more dangerous and insidious since they ignore the irreplaceable value of the family based on marriage. They have reached the point of proposing false alternatives to the family and of calling for legislative recognition of them. But when laws, which should be at the service of the family, a fundamental good for society, turn against it, they acquire alarming destructive power.

Thus, in some countries, there is a desire to impose on society so-called "de facto unions," reinforced by a series of legal effects which erode the very meaning of the family institution. "De facto unions" are marked by instability and the lack of the irrevocable commitment which gives rise to rights and duties and respects the dignity of the man and woman. Instead, there is a desire to give juridical value to a will that is far removed from any form of definitive bond.

With these premises, how can we hope for truly responsible procreation which is not limited to giving life, but also includes that training and education which only the family can guarantee in all its dimensions? Arrangements of this sort ultimately put the meaning of human fatherhood, of fatherhood in the family, seriously at risk. This happens in various ways when families are not well established.

When the Church explains the truth about marriage and the family, she does not do so only on the basis of the data of Revelation, but also by taking into account the demands of the natural law, which are at the foundation of the true good of society and its members. In fact, it is important for children to be born and raised in a home where parents are united in a faithful covenant.

It is quite possible to imagine other forms of relationship and cohabitation between the sexes, but none of these, despite some people's contrary opinion, offers a real juridical alternative to matrimony, but rather a weakening of it. In the so-called "de facto unions," we see a more o...

By Auguste Meyrat

Among the greatest challenges that Jesus poses to His disciples are His prescriptions on wealth. On the one hand, Jesus extolls poverty. He begins the Beatitudes with the declaration, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Elsewhere in the Gospels, He tells a rich man to give away all his possessions since "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

On the other hand, Jesus also acknowledges the need for productivity, especially in the parable of the talents, where the third servant is punished for not generating a profit with the one talent with which the master had invested him. Jesus also recognizes the need to pay taxes to Caesar ("Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's") and even does so Himself without complaint.

Christians have traditionally reconciled these two views by treating money as a means and not an end. You should indeed work and produce wealth, but must never idolize money or fall into greed.

Unfortunately, instead of maintaining this balance, Catholic progressives (among others) now idolize the poor and condemn wealth. They, therefore, ignore the actual causes of poverty (social and political dysfunction, lack of education, indolence, addiction and vice, etc.), and focus their ire on the ultrawealthy and capitalism because this fits a false political "narrative."

The main problem with this view, however, is that it frames poverty as a material rather than a spiritual phenomenon. In truth, behind every rich tycoon and penniless pauper is a story that involves certain beliefs, values, and perceptions, i.e., the immaterial part of themselves. To better understand this dynamic, one would do well to read Theodore Dalrymple's modern classic Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass.

As a psychiatrist working in the slums and prisons of England, Dalrymple was close enough to see what really afflicts the poor. It is usually not various systems of "oppression," the lack of economic opportunities, or the rise in CO2 levels; it's more often an attitude that rejects discipline, gratitude, and personal agency.

Of course, Dalrymple recognizes that this mindset does not arise spontaneously, but has been inculcated by popular media, public education, and ideologues and demagogues. Growing up in unstable households, rife with domestic abuse, alcoholism, and criminal neglect, the children who make it to adulthood are completely unequipped to cope with reality and blame others for their problems. They cannot control impulses, work a steady job, or make sacrifices. Many of them cannot read, write, or do arithmetic, and few of them are part of a religious community.

As a result, hardly anyone in this class has a moral compass to guide them. When Dalrymple talks to a group of murderers in a prison where he worked, he notes they were "so convinced of the gross injustice of the world that they were convinced also that nothing they did themselves could add significantly to its sum."

This distorted moral outlook also comes out in many stories of women staying with abusive and unfaithful men because they learned to equate love and commitment with lust and wrath: "In the absence of a marriage ceremony, a black eye is his promissory note to love, honor, cherish, and protect."

Many souls are thus condemned to live in squalor in an otherwise developed country like England. The men end up unemployed and frequently in prison; the women have children out of wedlock and continue coupling with different partners; and the children internalize the chaos around them, forming gangs, bullying others, and committing crimes with impunity.

Sadly, this situation is only made worse by the poor's supposed champions in the British upper classes. Like their counterparts in America, they call for more welfare payments, more social services, more subsidized housing, and less policing.

They believe that poverty is de...

By Richard A. Spinello

There are many crises in the Catholic Church today, but one of the most serious is the dismal state of moral theology. That crisis has its roots in the confusion and intellectual ferment that ensued in the aftermath of Vatican II. Progressive moral theologians proposed questionable moral theories like proportionalism and the "fundamental option," while prominent scholars like Bernard Häring dissented on vital issues of received moral teaching such as the inadmissibility of contraception and the indissolubility of marriage.

These dissident theologians had differing visions, but one common theme: the Church had no authority to proclaim specific, exceptionless moral norms based on natural law. The best it could do was to teach formal moral principles. Specific moral precepts such as "adultery is always wrong" are highly problematic, in their view, because there may be valid exceptions. A corollary is the autonomy of conscience along with "discernment" in making moral decisions. In place of natural law, they recommended more flexible theories that allow for moral compromise in some situations.

John Paul II sought to correct these errors in his encyclical Veritatis splendor. The fundamental option, proportionalism, the sovereignty of conscience, and moral subjectivism – all the heterodox doctrines – were thoroughly refuted through principled reasoning. He also reaffirmed the Church's commitment to natural law and its anthropological premise of a common and fixed human nature that is a bridge to that law. Intrinsic goods such as life and health, marriage and friendship, constitute our human flourishing. A set of moral norms flows from the first precepts of the natural law and prohibits intrinsic evils such as adultery or the taking of innocent life.

For a time, it looked like the philosopher-pope had succeeded in his herculean effort to renew moral theology. But then came the papacy of Pope Francis, which consistently sought to dethrone the principles of traditional natural law theory. Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia admits as much in his recent interview, "My Reforms with Francis." He recounts how Pope Francis dispatched him to reinvent the John Paul II Institute in Rome to overcome the rigid and moralistic natural law framework that was at the center of the curriculum. What was necessary, declares Bishop Paglia, "was the rethinking of the concept of 'nature,' which underpinned a static and immutable vision of the natural law, and with it the questioning of the essentialist and ahistorical paradigm that had supported. . .moral theology."

Pope Francis' Amoris Laetitia was an attempt to move in this direction, and it replaced Veritatis Splendor as the guiding text at the JPII Institute. Pope Francis' encyclical clearly sides with the progressive wing of the Church on issues like intrinsic evil. In chapter eight, he explains:

It is reductive simply to consider whether or not an individual's actions correspond to a general law or rule, because that is not enough to discern and ensure full fidelity to God in the concrete life of a human being. . . .It is true that general rules set forth a good which can never be disregarded or neglected, but in their formulation they cannot provide absolutely for all particular situations. (304)

The relevant "general rule" is Jesus' prohibition against remarriage for someone divorced from his or her spouse because it is tantamount to adultery. But Amoris laetitia clearly does not consider this rule to be exceptionless, nor does it consider adultery to be an intrinsic evil, something always, objectively, wrong and harmful even if there is no subjective culpability.

Since Amoris Laetitia, there have been many other assaults on traditional natural law and absolute moral norms. During an international conference on moral theology at the Gregorian University in Rome, the keynote speaker, Father Julio Martinez, spoke about the need to "untie the knots Veritatis splendor made in moral th...

By Michael Pakaluk

During the high point of investment clubs – back in the dark ages, long ago, in 1998! – mom and pop investors would gather and use a tool such as the NAIC's "Stock Selection Guide," to pick stocks based on a ten-year record of sales, earnings, and profitability.

These sober "retail investors" wouldn't even look at a prospectus. A newly launched company was simply too speculative. They were looking for long-term plays, as reliable as interest on deposits, but with better returns. Their problem was not, "How do we make 20 percent in a few days?" but "What company deserves our hard-earned money, if we do not spend it on household needs?"

But if such folks had considered an "initial public offering" (IPO), they would have regarded it as insane not to study the prospectus.

Remember what a prospectus is? After the stock market crash in 1929, Congress mandated that any new company raising money from the general public needed to file a report ("S-1") detailing its business plan and risks, with audited financial statements.

One might naively suppose that corresponding to a company's duty to file such a report is the public's duty actually to read it. But no one does, in a world where, in an instant with a smartphone, you can bet via Kalshi as to who wins the next game or next election.

Surely, a "Catholic ethics of investing" begins with sobriety.

Does a prospectus perhaps deserve greater weight when demand for a company's stock seems absurdly high, given the fundamentals – as in the case of Elon Musk's SpaceX?

It's trading at more over 100x its trailing sales (sales, mind you, not earnings, because so far it is not profitable), and its leverage is high. And yet as of yesterday it had become the fifth most valuable public company by market capitalization, only behind mega-giants like Nvidia and Apple.

The size of its IPO was so disproportionately great that it must say something about our character and even our civic religion. To get a sense of the size: if the previous largest IPO were a city bus, the SpaceX IPO would be an Airbus jumbo jet.

Its prospectus also seems important because of the governance of SpaceX. Shareholders are shut out from suing the company, and Elon Musk controls 85 percent of the votes. Therefore, to buy SpaceX is effectively to hand money over to Elon Musk. His vision governs. And his vision is in the prospectus.

The whole spectacle looks so bizarre to me that I want to ask what religious belief, what faith, is inspiring it.

Faith in a "paradigm shift," not surprisingly: "We believe the next paradigm shift for humanity is the creation of a resilient, perpetually expanding spacefaring civilization that drives continuous innovation across new frontiers, ultimately propelling us to Kardashev Type II status – we believe we are capable of unlocking an era of unprecedented economic expansion, while also contributing to the safeguards of humanity's future against existential risk."

Kardashev was a Russian scientist who ranked civilizations as more or less advanced, not on the basis of their philosophy or art, but rather on how extensively they harnessed the energy of their local sun, or even their entire galaxy.

The prospectus in many places reads like a religious tract, not a plain business plan. It has two sections entitled "Why This Matters Now," with language like this:

For the entirety of its existence, human civilization has lived on a single celestial body: Earth. The current paradigm, in which human civilization is confined to one planet, exposes humanity to existential threats that are unpredictable and uncontrollable on a planetary scale. These threats include naturally occurring catastrophic events – such as asteroid impacts, volcanic activity, or solar fluctuations – as well as man-made global conflicts. Geological and astronomical records indicate a non-zero probability of extinction-level events occurring over periods measurable in millions of years. Reliance on a single planetary ...

By Francis X. Maier

On a cool October evening some years back, a young woman – let's call her Jenny, age 18 – checked into St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica and gave birth to a baby boy. Her friends had urged her to have an abortion. So did her boyfriend, Jack, also 18, who waited with us now outside the delivery room, his eyes red with feelings he didn't expect and couldn't put a name to.

I sat next to him and listened while he explained that yes, he really loved Jenny, but it just hadn't worked out. He drank too much. He liked to fight. He couldn't hold a job. And now he was in trouble with the law for driving his car through the plate-glass front window of a gas station, boozed to oblivion. The idea of being a dad – well, it just seemed crazy.

Jenny, who'd followed Jack from the Midwest, fended off her friends through the sixth, seventh, and into the eighth month, agreeing that sure, abortion was the sensible route, and yes, she'd get the problem taken care of. And then, on a rainy afternoon, she walked into a local Catholic church instead.

The priest referred her to a support group who, at her request, connected her with a young woman lawyer who did prolife adoption work. The lawyer explained some options: She knew quite a few Catholic and other Christian couples seeking to adopt. But Jenny already knew what she wanted. A week or so later, the phone rang in our home.

What I remember most about the next few weeks is Jenny's courage. She had no money. She loved Jack but had no illusions about building a life with him. Her friends thought she was a fool for putting herself through the birth and never showed up at the hospital. Her family back home in Wisconsin didn't even know where she was.

Yet in the midst of her turmoil and anxiety, and completely alone, she focused on just one thing: giving her baby a chance to live.

Why Jenny chose us, or more specifically my wife Suann, was simple. She'd seen Suann on local TV talking about the humanity of the unborn child. What moved Jenny was some grace or goodness that she sensed, correctly, in my wife – qualities Jenny herself shared.

She could have turned her baby into a profit; many other good couples were eager for a child and could pay. Instead she went with two people who were living month to month on writing and odd jobs. We had to borrow the money for her hospital bill. The doctor and lawyer, both Catholic, worked gratis. Jenny asked only for the cost of a ticket home to the Midwest.

Looking back, all this sounds implausible. But it happened.

In the hospital waiting room, that autumn night, a nurse finally came along to fetch my wife and me. And in that moment, the roads that had briefly brought us together with Jack – the baby's natural father – parted ways. He grabbed my hand and thanked us, but stayed behind. We went ahead to meet the newborn. When we came back later, he was gone. We never saw him again.

As for the baby: Well, as the days flowed on into the first months of his life, and we held and played with him night after night, our unexpected gift from God, he seemed (at least to me) to have his mother's eyes, the eyes of the mother who would raise and love him – my wife's eyes.

All of the above happened nearly half a century ago. Our son is a grown man now. He has a good job, a gifted, beautiful wife, a ferociously talented son of his own, and a daughter, Veronica, who owns his heart.

"Vero" is wheelchair bound. She was born severely disabled. She can't speak. She can't feed or clean herself. Yet beneath those burdens is a being with a distinct personality, a young woman with a forever purpose in the mind of God, conscious of the world, with her own likes and dislikes, joys and frustrations. Now 21, her smile can light up the room. Her displeasure can be equally vivid. But she knows that she's loved, and watching the everyday devotion – the unapplauded heroism – of her parents is a master class in what it means to be human for anyone who enters the family's orb...

By Anthony Esolen

The Department of Defense recently made waves over a decision to remove Mormons from the category of "Christian," to distinguish more clearly among the chaplains and the servicemen as to who might best minister to them in matters of faith and morals. The label seems to be intended as a generic marker, as the department went on to separate Catholics, Lutherans, and Pentecostals from the category also, granting each a distinct status.

The decision caused a ruckus, and a lot of hurt feelings among Mormons who insist that they are Christian, and that they do look upon Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. I am disposed to credit their earnestness, though what their church teaches about the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, the angels, and other planets seems to me a jungle of nineteenth century American mysticism and utopianism.

It's as if northern American religious sensibility met a fork in the road, and the Unitarians went one way, towards trading the faith for social amelioration, conventionality, and vague inner feelings, while Joseph Smith went the other way, towards myth-making and building up a society from its foundations. Which of them prevailed seems obvious. Where is the Unitarian Tabernacle Choir?

The real question for Catholics is not whether Mormons are Christian, but whether all of us Catholics are Catholic, or Christian, for that matter. What is the minimal standard that divides Christian from not-Christian?

It must be in answer to the question, "Who is Christ?"

We have that question answered for us in Scripture. "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," says Peter. (Matthew 16:16) "He is the image of the invisible God," says Paul. (Colossians 1:15) He is the Word, who was in the beginning with God, and who is God, says John. (John 1:1)

Only as such can He be our Savior, rather than a merely great man whom we should emulate; though for a long time, Unitarians and their cousins the Quakers wished very much in their hearts to honor Christ as Lord, though their doctrines had demoted Him. And now, it appears, they no longer trouble themselves over it. Jesus may as well be Buddha, or Buddha be Jesus.

What answers you may get from Catholics whose attendance at Mass is spotty. No doubt they will vary from nation to nation. I would like very much to believe that in Italy, the land of my forebears, the Son of God has not been relieved of His throne beside the Father, embosomed with Him in the Holy Spirit from all eternity. But perhaps I am underestimating the corrosion that sets in with the creed of humanitarian and technological progress, which must relegate even Jesus to but a stage along the way.

Suppose we go farther, and, among Catholics who agree that Jesus is the Son of God, co-eternal with the Father, ask them about his full and real presence in the Eucharist.

Martin Luther, I am told, frustrated with Ulrich Zwingli's anti-sacramentalism, took a knife out of his pocket and carved the words Hoc est corpus meum on the table they were sitting at, asking him, "Which of these words do you not understand?"

Is the American Catholic less sacramental than Luther? Or rather, at which churches will you find such Catholics who do not embrace this teaching with full assent and joy? They either must not attend to what they are saying, or must hedge it with reservations, or must say it with an uneasy conscience when they pray, "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof."

Central to all Catholic teaching on the social life of man is marriage, inscribed in the bodily nature of male and female, instituted by God in the beginning before the Fall, and confirmed by Jesus and elevated to a sacrament that cannot be undone. Without marriage and family, there is no real society for which social teachings may be applied, just as medicine is not applicable to a body blown to bits.

What we see instead among us is a wraith, a simulacrum of the social. Rifle all the assets of the rich and spread th...

By Robert Royal

But first a note from Robert Royal: Thanks from the bottom of our hearts to all of you who donated to our mid-year fundraising campaign. From what we've received and what we can anticipate will still arrive, especially monthly donations, we're confident that TCT is good now for the rest of the year. So, let's carry on together!

Now for today's column...

The proverbial Martian visiting America in this 250th year (a whole quarter millennium) of our existence would be struck by many things. But probably by nothing more obvious than the large gap between what, on the one hand, we daily say and do – and on the other, what we would like to be. We're worried about how technologies like AI are coming to define us, but are mostly blind to how we've already defined ourselves – confined ourselves, really, even before the devices took over – to a materially prosperous but flat view of the world and ourselves. The Church, in recent years, has been trying to compensate with terms like Dignitas infinita and Magnifica humanitas, concepts that, in their argumentative way, do try to get at the problem. But they fall well short because what we desperately need now is not yet more arguments, but serious and artful poetry.

The incomparably great Dante Alighieri already understood all this at the beginning of his Paradiso:

Trasumanar significar per verba non si poria; però l'essemplo basti a cui esperïenza grazia serba.

To transhumanize in words Cannot be done; but let the example suffice For those whom grace reserves the experience.

(RR trans.)

It's been said by some scholars that, by some inexplicable inspiration, Dante invented this idea of "transhumanism." Perhaps so. But he certainly meant something different, something Christian, by it, unlike the grotesque transmodern projections emanating from the thickets of AI in our day.

And nota bene: he recognized several deep questions as well, even as he was embarking on writing a poem about the only realm in which we achieve real happiness, a state for which the term human "dignity" is a pale and distant shadow – as if we were all merely Victorian ladies and gentlemen claiming a decorous position in polite society.

But we are His sons and daughters.

Christianity, which is to say the truth about human existence, is much more fierce, and on a wholly different plane, than that. And to grasp that truth at all requires considerable skill, indirection – and poetry. (See Emily Dickinson's "Tell all the truth but tell it slant.")

Dante Alighieri by Giotto di Bondone (attributed), c. 1333-37 [Cappella del Podestà of the Bargello Palace, Florence: source: Wikipedia]

We need arguments, of course, to keep from falling into "subhumanism." And to prevent poetry from turning into sentimentality or idolatry. And also to remind us that what exceeds human reason is not, therefore, irrational, but participates in something that, beyond us, paradoxically makes us more ourselves. Because it brings us into the presence of the Truth beyond truths. This has long been understood in the Christian tradition. Modern rationalism and scientism see the transcendent as something unwarranted; within the Faith, that transrationalism is precisely what shows Christ's very power and truth.

As St. Ambrose, who knew a few things about such matters, put it: Non in dialectica complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum ("It pleased God to save his people not through dialectics [i.e., argument]"). His follower, the great St. Augustine, wrote Si comprehendis, non est Deus ("If you understand, it's not God.") And in more recent days, St. John Paul II urged that we rediscover a more ambitious reason, a reason that appreciates its limits and seeks answers that it needs, but goes beyond what human powers can achieve solely on their own. These can only come to us as revelation ("thoughts beyond their thought to those high bards were given") or, in its way, what we might call a kind of poetry.

That few people read or value poetry...

By Brad Miner

A recent, brief exhibit at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City highlighted the life and work of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. J.P. Morgan, the famous financier, built his library on Madison Avenue in the 19th century as a place to house, preserve, and make available to scholars Morgan's burgeoning collection of rare books and manuscripts, among them copies of musical scores in Mozart's hand.

"Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Treasures from the Mozarteum Foundation of Salzburg" included some of those scores and, thanks to the Mozarteum, several of the great man's musical instruments, numerous portraits of Mozart, his family, and his patrons, and many letters and other documents across the span of W.A. Mozart's all-too-brief life (1756-1791).

And once again, it got me wondering about the Catholic Mozart's affiliation/flirtation with Freemasonry. More about that diversion from the One True Faith shortly, but first: Mozart the Catholic.

Begin with the fact that he wrote five dozen Catholic liturgical compositions, the most famous of which is the last thing he wrote: his nearly hour-long, unfinished Requiem Mass. In my opinion, however, his most beautiful work is the four-minute eucharistic hymn, Ave verum corpus ("Hail true body"), a four-part SATB, meaning the music is arranged for four distinct vocal ranges: Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Bass. It's lovely with orchestra and large chorus or as an a cappella quartet. Here's Leonard Bernstein conducting Ave verum corpus (and drawing, as he often did, nearly more attention to himself than to the music):

In childhood, the Mozart family – Wolfgang's father (Leopold), mother (Anna Maria), sister (Maria Anna), and Wolfgang – were devoted Mass-goers. (Five other Mozart children died in infancy.) Wolfgang never really ceased being a faithful Christian.

So, why – at 28 – did the genius from a devoutly Catholic family decide to join Zur Wohltätigkeit (the "Beneficence") Masonic lodge in Vienna? Well, why does Masonic imagery persist on America's currency? To the second question, the answer may be as simple as: Ben Franklin, who was a Mason and a free thinker, and (as Mr. Jefferson might say – and did say about his Declaration) Masonic ideas were "in the air" 250 years ago.

In Vienna as in Philadelphia, liberty, fraternity, equality, and scientific inquiry were seemingly irresistible Enlightenment ideals, and there's no doubt their basis was largely secular, often even anti-Catholic. But it's also true that, for statesmen and artists, religious faith was rather more in their bones than simply in the air.

Mozart's lodge was a social club with rituals and mysteries that parodied Roman Catholic rites. The Church had been the ground upon which the culture of the West was based. Some scholars speculate that Masonic Temples, secular in nature, were meant to be refuges from the Catholic/Protestant conflicts that had been roiling in Britain and in Europe since the 16th century (mostly settled by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, but still haunting regional conflicts through the religious affiliations of the combatants). The Lodge became a place where Protestants, Catholics, and men of no faith could gather in peace.

Of course, Mozart and his friends may also have attended Mass on Sunday. But composing, like writing, is a solitary profession, and Mozart may have found the lodge more relaxed and congenial than church.

Pope Clement XII had banned Catholics from becoming Freemasons in the 1738 bull, In Eminenti apostolatus, and the penalty for being a Mason was excommunication. None of the documents in the Morgan exhibit (nor any known to exist elsewhere) suggest Mozart read the bull and chose to ignore it.

A peculiar historical fact is that Zur Wohltätigkeit was a kind of reform-Catholic lodge based upon the teachings of the liberal Italian priest-theologian Ludovico Antonio Muratori (1672-1750). Muratori was solidly Catholic in most respects but eschewed popular piety and was particularly co...

By David Warren

But first a note from Robert Royal: We had a site failure yesterday morning, which our tech people resolved quickly. And many of you somehow connected and donated anyway. If you wanted to, but didn't, today is the last day of our formal mid-year fundraising. So you still have a chance to add your support to The Catholic Thing. I'm prejudiced, but how can you not?

Now for today's column...

Among the most distressing things about the Catholic Church is her (really, OUR) failure to take advantage of the many opportunities that the "modern world" accidentally offers us. We have made ourselves smaller and more inconsequential by choice, chiefly by assuming that the times are unpropitious. In fact, the times cry out to be rescued. And this, particularly, in an institutional way.

There is a task, quite distinct from that of environmental lunacy, or economic lunacy, or any others of the fashionable lunacies that afflict the world. And this task only occasionally requires a bit of imagination or courage.

Why do we run, when either of these qualities are asked for? For that matter, why do we run when any of the seven "lively virtues" – i.e. the seven holy remedies for the seven deadly sins – present themselves, and as more than novel possibilities?

I am of course referring to humility against pride, generosity against greed, chastity against lust, gratitude against envy, temperance against gluttony, patience against wrath, and diligence against sloth.

All of these come into play in what should be a continuing Catholic project, to meet the challenges of the modern world, and decisively to defeat them. This is a pitched battle, a seven-front war, and yet we do not take it seriously.

My exemplary thought for this morning is on our modern systems of education, specifically post-secondary education, out of whose student pool we find our priests.

The modern universities were, everywhere, designed to be a bureaucratic nightmare, and on almost every point, the opposite of what Saint John Henry Newman prescribed in The Idea of a University.

Newman did not describe an institution that would be absolutely concentrated upon theological studies, but one in which this "queen of the sciences" would enjoy the centrality that we humans of the Catholic faith naturally give to it.

This is not a shallow endeavor, as it has become in most of our university "programs," and all of the courses, including religion and theology, in our secular schools.

They exist for nothing but the pointless accumulation of credentials. They might claim to make you a better Catholic, as if the study of electrical engineering will make you better with sparks, although maybe it won't. Perhaps it will improve your theoretical skills, except that theoretical skills have always been worthless.

To be a practitioner requires a much broader understanding of a trade. To make yourself useful, in any other way than as repairman for hire, or in some other secular activity, is to expose the purpose of university training.

It is equally available, and for much less money, outside of a university campus. The campus, true, is a source of much money, for the teachers and administrators; and it is a source of many other evils, as a bureaucracy will inevitably become.

And true, there is the possibility that some of the teachers, even the full professors, may be sincere in their trades. Yet there is a higher sincerity in which "staff" are called upon to participate in an end exceeding mere instruction.

For instruction, in and of itself, is teaching the monkey how to fetch bananas, and need not include even sharing bananas justly. Moreover, the only relation to cosmic truth is that God has made bananas, and this may not be included in the course.

The instruction in theology may be similarly shallow, and almost certainly will be, unless that sort of deadly seriousness exists which is present in a prayerful life, and towards prayerful purpose.

It is not just that theology and reli...

By Matthew Walz and Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM, Cap.

But first a note from Robert Royal: Two more days should do it - if we make it. So let's end this campaign with a bang and get back to the chief business of The Catholic Thing.

What is the "heart"? The Catechism proves helpful here. In a section on the unity of man, the Church teaches that man is "at once corporeal and spiritual" and that "man, whole and entire, is. . .willed by God." (CCC 362) Then, having unpacked these assertions, the section concludes:

The spiritual tradition of the Church also emphasizes the heart, in the biblical sense of the depths of one's being, where the person decides for or against God. (CCC 368)

The heart, then, names what is profoundly singular about each human being, a principle that underlies both body and soul. At the depths of every human being's existence lies a heart from which arises the decisive direction of his or her life in relation to God.

Unfortunately, the last portion of the translation above could be more precise. The typical Latin edition of the Catechism says that the heart is ubi persona se decidit aut non decidit pro Deo, "where the person decides or does not decide himself for God." Deciding or not deciding oneself for God differs importantly from deciding for or against God. The more precise translation indicates that ultimately no person is really able to decide against God, because doing so would entail existing somehow outside God's created order – which is simply not to exist at all. Thus the Latin text says that a person is able not to decide for God, i.e., able to fail or fall short in deciding for God. Theologically speaking, much rides on this distinction pertaining to the nature of evil, sin, and damnation – important topics, but for another day.

This more precise translation reveals a significant truth that Augustine articulated long ago when striving hard against the Pelagians. Pelagians thought that human beings control their own destiny, or at least control their first movements toward God and salvation. Pelagianism expresses a sort of default human approach to the hidden God, rooted in a craving for control. So often we deem ourselves free to work out our salvation on our own terms. Few among us can claim, then, not to be a "practical Pelagian."

To such Pelagian self-aggrandizement, Augustine, taking his cue from St. Paul, responds: "Our sufficiency is from God, in whose power is our heart and our thoughts." (De dono perseveratiae, 20)

Our heart exists within God's potestas, His creative power that freely releases every human being from the abyss of nothingness into the giftedness of existing. Our heart abides within God's generative and generous power, prior to any consciousness we have of that heart or any choosing that derives from it.

We can and sometimes do achieve awareness of our hearts, and we have been given leave to direct our lives this way or that. After all, we are created in God's image. But always preceding such consciousness and freedom stands the unfelt, infinitely dynamic Power that continuously gives us existence, which He just as continuously draws toward Himself. Is not this wondrous existential exchange between God and man the ultimate case of "Heart speaking to heart"?

Thus the Catechism also teaches:

The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully. The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as image of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant. (CCC 2563)

To consider the heart is to cast out into the deep, into the metaphysical profundity of our createdness. Yet the heart is also something so easily recognizable, so accessible, so close to our inward, lived experience. Some of us even wear our hearts on our sleeves! Indeed, is there any anthropological meta...