The Catholic Thing

By John M. Grondelski .

The New York Times recently published an op-ed by Jessica Grose entitled "Motherhood Should Come with a Warning Label." A conservative poster on X tweeted about it as yet one more example of the Left's anti-motherhood bias.

Now I would not be surprised if Ms. Grose took that view, but in this case, it's not completely true. Yes, she feints left. But our politics are so polarized that people don't read very carefully (or maybe hope that you don't).

Catholic social thought (CST) is controversial because it does not fit comfortably in the political categories of "right" and "left." Ideological Catholicism from either side cherry-picks CST to further a political agenda. Real Catholicism lets faith shape one's politics.

Although it may gore the sacred oxen of those who worship at the altar of Adam Smith, the Grose essay has important things to say in support of CST. As one woman summed up Grose's thesis: "[O]ur society and economic systems are built off taking my labor as a mother for granted." That's the "motherhood penalty."

Money, of course, isn't everything - especially when it comes to having and raising children - but it's not nothing, either.

In his most famous encyclical, which inaugurated modern Catholic social doctrine, Pope Leo XIII spoke in 1891 of a living and just wage as one "sufficient to enable [a man] comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children. . .[and] by cutting down expenses, to put by some little savings [for old age]." (Rerum novarum, 46)

He spoke of one person as the wage earner (per the custom of his time, the father) to support a family, i.e., feed and clothe them, put a roof over their heads, and squirrel something away for old age. These are not radical wants.

Any observer of modern America must admit that the Leonine vision is almost totally absent from our social policies and even our default assumptions about family life. To achieve the things Leo XIII deemed to be part of what a living wage should afford requires, in reality in today's America, two wage-earners.

The consequences for women are not insignificant. In practice, it means that dedication to raising one's children is out of reach for most mothers, except for a privileged few or those unusually committed to the task, despite the costs. And the consequences for stay-at-home moms are long-term: as Grose notes, they stretch "all the way to retirement."

Some conservatives will say that these consequences are a function of how women choose to work. They generally drop in and out of the job market and often prefer part-time work so that they may also spend time with their children. Their financial profile, therefore, differs from the classical model for men.

That much is true. But the catch in viewing things this way is that "work" by definition means paid economic activity outside the home. And economic activity inside the home in childrearing is regarded as not valuable. It's treated as not valuable because it carries no price tag. And, in a world where the mortgage does, like it or not, parenthood often becomes expendable.

A woman devoting a substantial part of her life to her children is not just not making money. She is actually paying for that devotion. She is financially penalized for being a mother.

She gets no wages in a society whose price structure presupposes two-wage earners. Without wages, she loses contributions in both time and money into Social Security, meaning her eventual old-age benefits will be smaller and she will likely take much longer to be fully vested in terms of qualifying quarters.

If a mother caring for her children could rely on children caring for their mother in her old age (as was once the norm), there might be some balance here. But neither socio-cultural expectations nor the job market for young people support that today.

If she eventually gets into the paid-job market, it is likely to be later and, because of her years outside it, likely result in relegation to lower...

By Rev. Jerry J. Pokorsky.

Like an internecine tribal war, an emerging pastoral problem within the Latin Rite revolves around an alleged irreconcilability between the post-conciliar new Mass (Novus Ordo) and the pre-conciliar, so-called Tridentine Mass, also known as the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). The difficulties affect parish communities and even families. Some of the tension is historical and healthy. Other forms are unjust, uncharitable, and unnecessary.

Those of us who have lived through the post-Vatican II turmoil recall that the pre-Vatican II accusation was paralyzing. A pre-Vatican II person stood accused of legalism, triumphalism, and intolerance. Today, many proponents of the TLM accuse fellow Catholics who attend Novus Ordo Masses as post-Vatican II.

Pope Francis' restrictions on the TLM did not resolve tensions, as he said he intended, but fueled discontent. And recent revelations that most of the world's bishops did not view the older Mass as a problem have stoked fires once more.

The Fathers of Vatican II taught that new liturgical change "should in some way grow organically from forms already existing." (Sacrosanctum Concilium 23) They did not mandate the vernacular, but permitted it (and did not envision that the Roman Canon would depart from the Latin). Pope John Paul II's doctrinal chief, then-Cardinal Ratzinger, tirelessly argued that a "hermeneutic of continuity" in liturgy and doctrine would eventually heal the perceived Vatican II rupture.

Sober Churchmen could have suppressed irreverent innovations: "Hootenanny Masses," folk Masses, liturgical dance, narcissistic priests, and the many violations of liturgical guidelines. But ill-advised changes wounded liturgical practices. Most importantly, faith in the Real Presence suffered.

In the 1970s and 1980s, authorities often labeled an orthodox seminarian as archconservative, pre-Vatican II, and rigid. Although occasionally naïve and immature, he held fast to the doctrines of the Catholic faith, especially the teaching on contraception and abortion. He preferred traditional sacred hymnody and objected to the vapid Glory and Praise Jesuit hymnal. He was a liturgical lawman and hoped priests would faithfully read the words of the Mass, accompanied by the prescribed gestures.

He silently endured the seminary authorities who forced everyone to stand (rather than kneel) during the Canon of the Mass. He rejected the bizarre innovation of liturgical dance, the abomination of clown Masses (sic), and a whole array of liturgical nonsense that haunts elderly Catholics today with flashback memories. A "pre-Vatican II" seminarian read the documents of Vatican II with a critical and faithful mind.

The typical "archconservative pre-Vatican II rigid" seminarian did not oppose the Novus Ordo. He lamented liturgical abuse and bad liturgical translations. In the 1990s, over 2,000 English-speaking Novus Ordo priests raised alarms over the revised liturgical translation. The bureaucratic plan was to desacralize the vocabulary (eliminate words such as spirit, holy, and Only Begotten) and distort the translation towards a feminist ideology. The translation wars continued until proponents of an accurate translation of the Latin Roman Missal declared victory with the release of a good English translation in 2011.

The return to relative liturgical stability and reverence enabled the restoration of the TLM - beginning with the Ecclesia Dei initiative of Pope John Paul II and continuing with the policies of Pope Benedict. Many hoped the reintroduction of the TLM into Church practice would help the Novus Ordo mature with the help of its elder brother.

The widespread celebration of the TLM encourages priests to reinforce and incorporate many of the reverent gestures of the TLM into the Novus Ordo without violence. Among the compatibilities: The crisp and reverent orans posture, downcast eyes (which immunizes a priest from the virus of narcissism), traditional sacred hymnody, celebr...

By Dominic V. Cassella

In the Gospel of John, our Lord is recorded as saying "I AM," the Greek "ego eimi," over forty times. The phrase should call to mind for the reader the episode in Exodus 3:14, when Moses encounters God and the burning bush. Moses asks for the name of God and the voice returns: "I AM."

St. Hilary of Poitiers tells us in his treatise of the Trinity that when he was a pagan and came across these words from Exodus, he knew - because of his philosophical training - that the speaker of these words must be the one and only, true God.

However, not all of the "I AM" statements are without qualification. Among these forty or so "I AM" statements in the Gospel of John, seven are attached to a predicate: "I am the bread of life" (6, Verse 35), "I am the light of the world" (8, Verse 12), "I am the door" (10, Verse9), "I am the good shepherd" (10, Verse11), "I am the resurrection and the life" (11, Verse 25), "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (14, Verse 6), and "I am the true vine" (15, Verse 1).

The names as presented by John seem to demonstrate what is called a "chiastic" structure. The first and the last statement parallel and relate to each other, just as the second and the penultimate statements, as do the third and fifth - each pair mirroring the other until the pattern, like an archway, arrives at its summit and interpretive cornerstone.

Classic examples of chiastic structure exist in both Sacred Scripture and secular literature. The story of Noah, the Gospel of Mark, and many of the psalms, along with Dante's Divine Comedy and Homer's Odyssey, all exhibit this literary form - where ideas are arranged symmetrically to emphasize a central theme or turning point.

Notably, John's prologue uses the literary device to focus on John 1:12 - that believing in God is what makes us children of God. And likewise, it seems that the same literary tool is being used through the "I AM" statements to emphasize the fact that Jesus is the "Good Shepherd."

In fact, if you exclude John 21, that "Jesus is the Good Shepherd" is arguably the central thematic statement of the Gospel. And, when you factor back in John 21, what you have is an epilogue where Jesus now makes Peter his Vicar and Shepherd of His Church.

The Church Fathers frequently saw something important in Jesus' singling out of Peter in the last chapter of the Gospel of John. From John Chrysostom, Augustine, and Jerome to Theophylact of Bulgaria and Thomas Aquinas, those who comment on this Gospel see in Christ's command to Peter to "Feed my Sheep" and "Follow me" a reaffirmation (or even reinstitution) of primacy.

It seems that Peter had abandoned his role as "rock" when, in fear of being attacked by the Jews, he chose to deny Jesus Christ. Such a denial is both a great moral, but also theological failure on the part of Peter. In fact, if we think about where we get our word heresy, that is the Greek haireó, meaning "I choose," we might even call Peter's denial the ultimate heresy.

With the election of Leo XIV, we would do well to remind ourselves and consider deeply the foundations and implications of the Chair of St. Peter, that the pope is to be the Shepherd of Christ who feeds His sheep.

Indeed, in light of Diane Montagna's recent discovery of a CDF report that undermines the rationale of Pope Francis' Traditionis Custodes (which limited the use of the Traditional Latin Mass), allegedly because the bishops of the world were concerned about it (they weren't), understanding the papacy, synodality, and their limits is especially relevant today.

As one finds throughout history, knowing the full extent and limits of papal authority has resulted in a large range of opinions and fiery debate. Ultramontanism and Tradition: The Role of Papal Authority in the Catholic Faith, a 500-page anthology edited by Peter Kwasniewski, gathers together 50 articles that shed light on this subject from authors such as Cardinal Raymond Burke, Thomas Pink, Edward Feser, Bisho...

by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

In these days when everyone talks of rights and few of duties, it is important for us Americans to recall that the Declaration of Independence is also a Declaration of Dependence. The Declaration of Independence asserts a double dependence: dependence on God and dependence on law as derived from God.

Where do we get our right of free speech? Where do we get freedom of conscience? Whence is derived the right to own property? Do we get these rights and liberties from the State? If we did, the State could take them away. Do we get them from the federal government in Washington? If we did, the federal government could take them away.

Whence comes the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Read the Declaration of Independence and there find the answer: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

Notice these words: The Creator has endowed men with rights and liberties; men got them from God! In other words, we are dependent on God, and that initial dependence is the foundation of our independence.

Suppose we interpret independence, as some liberal jurists do, as independence of God; then rights and liberties come either from the State, as Bolshevism contends, or from the dictators, as Nazism and Fascism believe. But if the State or the dictator is the creator of rights, then the State or the dictator can dispossess men of their rights.

That is why in those countries where God is most denied, man is most tyrannized, and where religion is most persecuted, man is most enslaved. It is only because we are dependent on God that we are independent as persons from the total will of any man on earth.

Let us not think that by denying God we will have purchased independence. The pendulum of the clock that wanted to be free from its point of suspension found that on becoming independent of its suspension, it was no longer free to swing. The Communists and the Nazis and the Fascists who denied God as the source of their freedom got in the end the inglorious freedom of State prisoners.

Democracy is based not on the divine right of kings but on the divine right of persons. Each person has a value because God made him, not because the State recognizes him. The day we adopt in our democracy the already widespread ideas of some American jurists that right and justice depend on convention and the spirit of the times, we shall write the death warrant of our independence. . . .

The Declaration of Independence, I repeat, is a Declaration of Dependence. We are independent of dictators because we are dependent on God. Because we are dependent on God, it follows that it is religion's first duty to preserve that relationship between man and his Creator.

Religion and democracy, therefore, are not the same. Some religious leaders never once in their discourses mention the name of God, but they actually define religion as democracy. Certain alarmists, when a personal representative of the president was sent to the Holy Father, shrieked against union of Church and State - but they do not protest against the identification of religion and democracy, which is an insult to both religion and democracy.

If religion is democracy, then let us drop religion and become State servants; if democracy is religion, then let us scrap democracy and enter a monastery. Religion is not democracy. The two are as different as soul and body.

Religion is primarily for the salvation of man's soul, and democracy is primarily for the prosperity and common good of the nation. God is not Caesar, and Caesar is not God. Have our so-called called religious leaders forgotten: "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God, the things that are God's" (Matt. 22:21)?

Once religion abdicates its soul-saving mission as its primary end, it becomes as ridiculous a...

By Michael Pakaluk.

God's plan for a person's support in old age can be stated in five words: children, and the extended family.

The Church teaches that this is affirmed by the Fourth Commandment. "Honor your father and your mother" means to obey them when under their care, and to love and honor them always, which includes providing them with the necessities of life when they are old and infirm. "Children must give their parents material and moral support in old age and in times of illness, loneliness, or distress." (CCC 2218)

It's just that children repay their parents, treating their parents as once their parents treated them. The incentives are sound also: parents have an incentive to have children, to raise them well, to act towards each other so that their children will continue to love them - and to care for themselves, ultimately, by caring for others.

In cases where the couple cannot have children, or where the children have perished by war or disease, then - by "subsidiarity" - the extended family first should step in to act in their stead, much the way Elizabeth's kinswoman, Mary, helped her.

One may consider which is the more serious obligation, to care for the children one has begotten, or to care, when necessary, for those who have begotten you? Certainly, the latter is a highly serious obligation. Christ himself inveighed against those Pharisees who nullified the Commandment, teaching that children could withhold such care on the grounds that the available resources had already been declared "Corban," that is, dedicated to God. (Mark 7:11)

Arguably, our own Corban today is so-called Social Security "insurance." Suppose an elderly couple worked hard to raise, say, four wage-earning children and in justice wished later to claim from them needed support. The children certainly could each give 12.4 percent out of their incomes - a tidy sum - since they are already paying that to the government. And yet those funds cannot be touched, as they are " Corban" - dedicated already to paying for the retirements of strangers who did nothing to raise them.

"You nullify God's commandment by the traditions of men." Up against the claim upon their children in natural law, which parents have, is a tradition of men (i.e., SS) that is very weak indeed. As several SCOTUS opinions have clarified, "Social Security beneficiaries" have no property rights in what they paid into the system, and neither do they have a contractual claim. Congress could decide tomorrow to abolish the whole Social Security system on the grounds, say, that it is no longer wise to borrow from foreign governments (as we must do) to pay the benefits.

It's not that the government needs to step in here to do something lower-level entities cannot do. If a man today at age 25 starts work in a $50,000/year job and, in a compulsory system, puts as much income into an index fund as he's paying for Social Security "insurance" premiums (and suppose he never increases his contributions even if his salary grows), he will nevertheless have $8 million in his investment account when he retires at age 75 - enough so that he can live in luxury with his wife, cover their medical expenses, and have lots besides to bequeath to their children. That's how wealthy we are. I am not imagining an extraordinary case but assigning conservative figures to the most common, widely attainable case.

One arrives at similar grand retirement fund if one imagines that the father doesn't pay in anything himself. Instead, his children, in a compulsory system, as soon as they start work, contribute 12.4 percent of their earnings, until the time of their parents' deaths. The scheme is doable, we know, because we do it already, for strangers, through the government.

Social Security and government schools are of a piece. Parents are the primary educators of their children: they should have the first claim on a family's resources for educating their children. Yet their claim comes second, if there's an...

By Francis X. Maier .

Jacques Ellul, the French Protestant philosopher, sociologist, and theologian, famously argued that technology evolves autonomously. In effect, technology shapes society more than society shapes technology. He warned that humans become servants to efficiency and technical progress. Ellul also worried that technology undermines human freedom by promoting uniformity and reducing moral choices. Ultimately, he was concerned that technology becomes an end in itself, overshadowing human values.

In his book English Speaking Justice, the Canadian political philosopher George Parkin Grant critiqued modern liberalism and technological society along similar lines. He argued that even by its own standards, liberal society is unjust. He focused on how technology and liberal values shape our concepts of justice, and he examined how those values often undermine community and ethical life. In essence, he suggested that the pursuit of individual rights and technological progress often leads to a loss of deeper moral values.

Grant is the man I want to talk about this week. But here's a confession: With a few minor tweaks from me, AI wrote both of the previous two paragraphs. And it got the factual content therein more or less right, without the burden of my having to think about any of it. The program I used is Perplexity. I had a very pleasant editorial meeting with its algorithms, and Perplexity itself generously suggested that Ellul and Grant "might have mixed feelings" about my using it as a shortcut for avoiding any actual work. Which implies that machines, too, can be ironic. More on that in a moment.

Meanwhile, back to Grant. Summer is typically a time for rest and light reading. Yet for anyone more inclined to a challenge - for anyone seriously interested in understanding how our civilization got where it is - the work of George Parkin Grant (1918-1988) is an invaluable resource. He was a keen historian, an engaging writer, and a compelling cultural analyst.

Grant was that peculiarly Canadian creature (now extinct) known as a Red Tory. A committed Christian, he was morally and culturally "conservative." In other words, he actually believed what he claimed to believe, and allowed a Biblically-rooted faith to inform his public life. He opposed both euthanasia and abortion, and was a strong defender of Canadian national identity and its distinct history and culture in the face of American continental dominance. He was also a fierce critic of both the Vietnam War and the damage inflicted on the human spirit by an overconfident and idolatrous cult of technological progress.

In his lecture "Temporality and Technological Man" (collected here), Grant noted: "When Marx wrote of changing the world, he still believed that changing was not an end in itself, but the means to a future society conducive to the good life for all. . . .For all his denial of past [including Biblical] thought, he retained from that past the central truth about human beings - namely that there is, in man, a given humanness that it is our purpose to fulfill."

In contrast, Grant argued, today's secularized, technology-centric culture treats the human will as the only real source of meaning, and change itself as the ongoing proof of that meaning. It implicitly denies any end state, higher purpose, or inherent nature to our species. And this, in turn, destroys human dignity in the name of exalting it, by providing material benefits that only serve as temporary anesthetics for a deeper emptiness.

In his essay "Religion and the State" (collected here), Grant asked

Has the secular state, and the religion of progress that dominates its education, led to widespread happiness in North America in the last forty years? How can we escape the fact that the necessary end product of the religion of progress is not hope, but a society of existentialists who know themselves in their own self-consciousness, but know the world entirely as despair? In other words, whe...

By Sebastian Morello.

But frist a note from Robert Royal: I'm extending this mid-year fundraiser just one day because we're close, but only close. But this is it. Donations are always welcome, of course, but experience says the campaigns are when most people give. If you haven't contributed so far, here's one last chance. You read this site because you value this site. Please, today, show it.

Now for today's column...

For those not living in these Isles, it's very difficult to imagine what it's like here. Depression, bordering on despair, is almost palpable and crops up everywhere. Recently, I got chatting to a stranger in a pub, and mentioned that I was soon to attend the citizenship ceremony of a friend who had immigrated from Eastern Europe. "Why would anyone in their right mind want to join this country?" the chap remarked. "That's like climbing aboard a sinking ship."

Cecil Rhodes said, "To be born English is to win first prize in the lottery of life." A little over a century later, most people living here are in crushing debt. Mortgages are almost impossible to attain for anyone under thirty-five. And anyone who gets one will be paying it off for the rest of his life, spending over half his annual income merely to enjoy shelter from the elements. Monthly bills, groceries, and fuel have all risen over the past two decades while wages have remained stagnant.

The National Health Service (NHS) is failing. It's hard to see a GP, let alone get a hospital appointment for something more serious. Rather than reforming the NHS, the government only throws more of the taxpayers' money at it. Occasionally, the destination of this money is revealed, for example, when the public learned that eye-watering amounts of taxpayers' funds go to removing two penises per day in 'transgender' surgeries, mostly on vulnerable teenagers.

Beyond the ghoulishness of such mutilations, these revelations are disheartening given that taxation is already through the roof. Large portions of taxes are also used to house illegal immigrants in hotels, a significant minority of whom team up with naturalized immigrants in rape-and-torture gangs to prey on helpless native girls. England's towns and cities are overrun with new arrivals, and the country's capital can no longer be described as an English city.

The native English are doing what defeated people do: fleeing to the hills. Those who can, leave the country and never look back. Others move to rural areas, requiring enormous housing developments, in turn rapidly wrecking England's once universally admired countryside.

Owing to the UK's benefits system, an illegal immigrant, or someone who refuses to work, or claims some long-term fatigue or another expedient malady, can flourish here. If, however, you are just a normal person, who wants to get married, have some children, raise them wholesomely and non-ideologically, and acquire some property and security, you will spend your life being hammered by the structurally unjust 'system.'

In essence, this has become a land in which virtue is punished. If you voice your discontent in a clumsy Tweet or Facebook post, the thought police will come knocking, and you might end up with a prison sentence.

England is paradoxical. It's the land of both Darwin and Newman, of Bentham and Belloc, of bohemian transgression and tweedy conservatism, of the adventurous heart of imperial Britain and the rustic paradise of the little Englander. It's the land of mechanization, materialist reductionism, evolutionist progressivism, and all the noxious dogmas that together are called 'modernity', and yet it's the land of the Catholic Second Spring. England has been at war with itself ever since the treacherous attack on the Church's integrity that we've since euphemistically called the 'Reformation.'

Anglicanism distils the inner conflict, wherein Puritanism and Romanization struggle for rights and representation within a single institution whose buildings are stolen, whose offices...

by Robert Royal.

But first a note: We've got two days left and just a few thousand dollars to raise. There's a whole second half of this year that needs your support. One last push, please - and we'll be there.

Now for today's column.

Today is the feast of the First Martyrs of Rome, the mostly unknown group of early Christians who were persecuted and died in 64 A.D. under the Emperor Nero. Some were wrapped in animal skins and torn apart by dogs in public spectacles, others were covered in tar and burned alive as human torches. It was the beginning of anti-Christian violence that, sadly, has cropped up periodically over the past 2000 years and continues even today.

The Roman historian Tacitus lamented the deaths of the early martyrs - but not because of the inhumanity and injustice:

to stop the rumor [that he had set Rome on fire], [Nero] falsely charged with guilt, and punished with the most fearful tortures, the persons commonly called Christians, who were [generally] hated for their enormities. Christus, the founder of that name, was put to death as a criminal by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea, in the reign of Tiberius, but the pernicious superstition [prava superstitio] - repressed for a time, broke out yet again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also, whither all things horrible and disgraceful flow from all quarters, as to a common receptacle. . . a vast multitude were convicted, not so much on the charge of burning the city, as of "hatred of the human race."

And you thought that it's only since the rise of "Wokism" that the Church has been reviled for "preaching hate." Or that Christianity has been charged as a depraved superstition.

Yet martyrdom presents an unexpected paradox. The earliest enemies of the Faith in Jerusalem doubtless thought that crucifying Jesus would put an end to Him and everything He was trying to do. It turned out that His death - and Resurrection - became an even greater spur to the spread of the Gospel. Tacitus noted that the persecutions and martyrs evoked sympathy from the people, which advanced the Faith.

The 3rd-century North African theologian Tertullian famously remarked that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church. It doesn't feel that way for people undergoing persecution or look that way for the few of us who pay attention to such things. But it's true.

Nigeria currently produces the highest body counts (5000 per year) of Christians martyred by Muslims. A little over a week ago, Muslims forced 200 Christians into a building there, which was set on fire. Most died from the flames, the rest were ambushed as they fled.

Yet the Church in Nigeria is the fastest-growing in all of Africa.

Sad to say, this past Thursday, something similar happened to a pair of Christian villages on the West Bank in Israel. Jewish extremists, often wrongly called mere "settlers," attacked Taybeh and Kafir Malik, burning down homes, which resulted in the deaths of three Arab Christians.

It's far from being the only time that Christians in Israel have found themselves under assault. A segment of Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel has demonstrated persistent bias against Christians, spitting on clergy, and intimidating people - typically Christians - who work or travel on Saturdays, the Jewish Sabbath. Christian graves and holy sites have been defaced. In 2012, a Trappist monastery had its doors set on fire and the walls were spray-painted with the insult "Jesus was a monkey."

Though clearly the work of extremist Jews, it was shocking that this could occur in Israel. The Vatican took the unusual step of issuing a formal statement, criticizing the Israeli government for not controlling such expressions of hate. The custodian of the Holy Land at the time, Archbishop (later Latin Patriarch) Pierbattista Pizzaballa, commented, "The time has come for the authorities to act to put an end to this senseless violence and to ensure a 'teaching of respect' in ...

By Anthony Esolen.

I am a restorationist.

When Donatello committed himself to learning from ancient Greek and Roman statuary, he had to dig things up. More than a millennium of dilapidation and sediment had left much of ancient Rome buried under the dirt. Say the word "Renaissance," and your mind may turn toward the glory of Venice upon the waters, or Michelangelo dreaming under the vaulted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or Palestrina directing the polyphony of his papal choir. It might do as well to think of bookworms like Poggio Bracciolini delving into the forgotten shelves of monastic libraries, to discover lost works from the ancient world. It might do best of all to think of Donatello with a shovel.

Man forgets. It is, in part, a mercy that he does so. Each generation enjoys, by forgetfulness, a certain liberty from the previous. We need not repeat the stupidities of our fathers. We can come up with stupidities of our own. We can also, now and then, come up with some new thing that refreshes life, something that makes hard work a little easier, or sheds a brighter light on the life of the mind and the soul.

As long as we do not fall for some foolish ideology that prizes newness for its own sake, we can strike forth with confidence, trusting that if an innovation doesn't work, we can toss it. The most important things in our lives are not new. Human nature, the natural world, and good and evil do not change. God does not change.

The greatness of the Renaissance came not from rejecting medieval ways, though there was some of that, but from remembering and restoring what had been read and thought and done before those ways. It was not a radical break from the past.

Spenser considered Chaucer his leading light in English poetry. Tasso, as did all the great Italian poets, looked to Dante. But everyone drank from the fountains of the ancient world, pagan or Christian. They went behind the schoolmen to recover Augustine and the other Christian fathers. They went behind the medieval romances to read Plutarch's biographies of the illustrious men of Greece and Rome. Their fascination with that ancient world, their gratitude, their emulation, was never merely antiquarian or role-playing. They wanted to learn.

The Renaissance would never have occurred if the poets, artists, composers, architects, theologians, and statesmen of the time had said, "What's past is past and gone, so it's time for new things, because, after all, we know better than did our ignorant and dismal forebears." There is, in human history, no cultural renaissance without restoration. It is the restoration, the recovery of things forgotten or lost, and then their instauration in a fresh time, that brings the bud to full flower.

Man forgets. Sometimes, when I'm watching a film from ninety years ago and I hear birdsong, I can say, "That's a cardinal," or, "That's a mockingbird." The birds don't forget. A hundred years from now, the cardinals will be singing the same songs. That is both their glory and their limitation. But man does forget. In recompense, he can do more than remember. He can do what birds cannot do. He can set about remembering. He can recollect, which is an act of deliberation. He can restore.

So I say that in the Church it is high time for restoration.

We can begin almost anywhere. I've long called for restoring the original texts of hymns, repairing the editorial vandalism. We might also restore whole genres of hymns on the Christian life, particularly those that have to do with the Church as militant: "Christian, Dost Thou See Them?" Or hymns that are refreshingly frank about the fact that the world will not satisfy us: "My Spirit Longs for Thee." Or that remind us of the moment of death: "Abide with Me."

Imagine paintings all in yellow and white. Wouldn't we sicken of them, fast?

Of course there's more. I am struck, when I look into the "Treasury of Prayers" at the back of the old Saint Joseph Missal, by the beautiful and powerful prayers no...

by Father Raymond J. de Souza

But first a note from Robert Royal: Father de Souza takes us through some of the richness of Modern Catholic Social Teaching today, which is doubtless going to inform the current papacy and spur it to new developments. We're going to be here at TCT to guide you through the ups and downs of those developments. And we'll be trying to shape how various figures here and in Rome respond to the many challenges we face in the Church and the world. It's an exciting - if also perilous - time to be a Catholic. Become part of it all. We've got just a few days until the end of this fundraising campaign, which makes it possible for us to continue on for the rest of the year. So, please, make your contribution to this crucial work.

Now for today's column.

The pope's name is Leo, it's a jubilee year, and the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was observed this week. It must be time to re-read Annum Sacrum.

In May 1899, looking ahead to the Jubilee year of 1900 - the annum sacrum of the title - Pope Leo XIII published an encyclical on the Sacred Heart of Jesus, calling for pastors everywhere to join him in consecrating the whole world to the Sacred Heart.

Leo XIII was an epistolatory pope extraordinaire, writing some eighty-five encyclicals, most of them mercifully brief, including Annum Sacrum. The style then was to get more involved in practical problems, and so one finds Leo addressing himself to the spread of Asiatic cholera in Italy (Superiore Anno, 1884), dueling in the Germanic countries (Pastoralis Officii, 1891), and the government regulation of Catholic schools in Manitoba (Affari Vos, 1897).

Annum Sacrum was emphatically universal. Leo favoured popular piety throughout his long pontificate, writing eleven (!) encyclicals on the Rosary alone. Devotion to the Sacred Heart was growing more fervent in the late 19th century, and Leo encouraged that. At the same time, there was a political point to be made.

The Sacred Heart was the favoured devotion of those who rejected the secularizing ideologies regnant in northern Europe, especially France. In 1875, the cornerstone was laid for the basilica Sacré-Coeur de Montmartre, adorning the high point of Paris with a defiant demonstration that France, even when given over to harlotry, remained the eldest daughter of the Church. And Sacré-Coeur has been faithful, marking this summer 140 years of continual Eucharistic adoration, more than 51,000 days, 24/7.

St. John Paul the Great, elected exactly 100 years after Leo's election, followed Leo in many ways. He prepared for the Great Jubilee 2000 by entrusting the whole world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, another pious act touched with political significance.

After Our Lady appeared at Fatima - and with renewed intensity after the assassination attempt against John Paul on her feast day in 1981 - the Immaculate Heart became the favoured devotion of anti-communists.

Leo XIII's most famous encyclical is on the social order, Rerum Novarum (1891), and deservedly so. It should be read in conjunction with Libertas praestantissimum (1888) in which Leo pronounces liberty the "greatest of natural endowments." Leo XIII, after the mid-19th-century suspicion of political liberties, was a great pope of human liberty. The Sacred Heart pours out love freely in superabundance; it calls for a reciprocally free response.

Annum Sacrum can be read as briefly summarizing, in a devotional key, Leo's extended teaching on society and the state, the Church and free people, and politics and economics. In three important encyclicals on the state (Inscrutabili, 1878; Diuturnum, 1881; Immortale Dei, 1885), he took dead aim at the totalitarian impulse, insisting that all civil power was limited and that no human power could usurp all authority in a society.

He defended the libertas Ecclesiae to be sure, but also insisted upon a necessary zone of social and personal freedom. It was there that the wide array of social groups fulfills their miss...