The Catholic Thing

by Michael Pakaluk

But first a note from Robert Royal: At The Catholic Thing, we are advocates for Faith - and reason. Which is why we bring you careful and consequential arguments like the one Professor Pakaluk makes today about kneeling for Communion. It's regrettable that we even have to make such arguments in the Church, but it's where we are. And why we cannot let up in such work. But if you're reading this, I think you know that. And you also know that we need your help. There are only three days left for this fundraising campaign. The time to act is now. Please, do.

And now for today's column...

By I never thought about the "ontology" of processions, or whether a norm could permit its own violation, until I looked at Blaise Cardinal Cupich's pastoral letter (here) from last week in which he appeared to forbid the faithful from kneeling to receive Communion, on the grounds that this would "disrupt the flow of the procession" and, contrary to the corporate spirit of Holy Communion, "call attention to oneself."

The day after reading the letter I counted time during Communion. To receive standing, I found, takes on average 3 seconds, and kneeling 5 seconds. Therefore, if 100 faithful received and half of them knelt, less than two minutes would be added, which hardly seems a disruption.

A cavil, perhaps. For sheer process, I expect the old Communion rail cannot be bested.

But here's where the ontology of processions enters in. Can the end point of a procession be a candidate for a disrupter of that procession? People are walking forward to receive, and I stick out my leg to trip someone, Then, yes. Chairs are placed in the aisle so that people must take a detour around. Also, yes. But suppose I receive standing, and I take the time necessary to ensure that the minister has seen that I am consuming the host (a neglected requirement of Redemptionis Sacramentum, n. 92)?

Would doing so "disrupt the procession"? If so, then the bride and groom disrupt the wedding procession when they arrive at the front of the Church and take their seats. And the priest and servers disrupt the procession when they bow and take their places around the altar.

No, it seems impossible for the goal of a procession to count as a disruption of that procession.

And then note the distinction in English between, on the one hand, "processing," and, on the other, "walking in a procession." The former means simply moving forward with others rather than walking back ("recessing"). The latter means the deliberate formation of a group that conceives of itself as walking together.

The latter is what Redemptionis Sacramentum means in the only passages in which it speaks of "processions." For instance, it enjoins "devout participation of the faithful in the eucharistic procession on the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ." (n. 143) The latter, too, is what the priests and acolytes do at start of the mass. The latter is what the laity also do, when they bring up offerings during the mass. But most definitely the former, in contrast, is what the laity do when they go up to receive Communion.

"The Priest then takes the paten or ciborium and approaches the communicants, who usually come up in procession," so says the General Instruction on the Roman Missal. (n. 160) But this is just to say that typically they come forward. That is to say, they no longer follow the most ancient form of Communion, mentioned in the Catechism, which is distribution: "When he who presides has given thanks and the people have responded, those whom we call deacons give to those present the 'eucharisted' bread, wine and water and take them to those who are absent." (n. thirteen forty-five)

The Cardinal conflates these two distinct things when he writes, "This is why we process into the church, process up to bring the gifts, process to receive Holy Communion and process out at the end of Mass to carry the Lord into the world." No, the faithful "process forward" to receive Communion bu...

by Francis X. Maier

But first a note: Just four more days until the end of this fundraising campaign. We're very close now and need to finish strong. It's all up to you.

And now for today's column...

Year in and year out, the weeks of Advent and Christmas are a time for carols. In our home, they begin the day after Thanksgiving. They continue, more or less constantly, through the Baptism of the Lord. We never tire of them. We're Christmas addicts. Over the past few years though, one particular carol - "God rest ye merry, gentlemen" - has caused an escalating itch in my Santa suit. Kindly note the comma in the carol's title. Why the comma, and why place it exactly there in the wording? The carol is God rest ye merry, gentlemen. Not God rest ye, merry gentlemen.

Serious questions arise therefrom. Aren't we "merry" every December already? The retail industry certainly tells us we are, and if not, how to get there. And what does "merry" even mean? After all, this is the carol that claims to offer us "tidings of comfort and joy." But doesn't that smack, just a bit, of fraudulent marketing?

Based on empirical data, those two words - comfort and joy - don't even belong in the same sentence. We live in the most materially advanced culture in history. Even our poor are well-off by half the world's standards. Compared to other advanced nations, we're also still (if too often tepidly) a "religious" people. We have a wide range of liberties and opportunities. Our lives are stuffed with emollients, distractions, mood lifters, painkillers, and comforts unimaginable just a century ago.

And yet at the same time, U.S. rates of loneliness, porn usage, sexually transmitted disease, and suicide, along with gender dysphoria among young people, have all increased. More than 20 percent of American adults now seek some form of mental health assistance each year. A presidential candidate claiming - implausibly - to represent "joy" just got jackhammered. Our public life is a civil war of irreconcilable convictions, and joy is clearly not the mood of the country. In fact, given the evidence, "comfort" seems eminently compatible with frustration, anger, and psychic misery.

In his 1950 essay "Three Riders of the Apocalypse" (collected here), the philosopher and political theorist Aurel Kolnai, a Catholic convert from Judaism, described what he saw as the primary modern forms of totalitarianism: Communism, Nazism. . .and "progressive democracy." While the differences among the three systems are striking, Kolnai wrote, so are certain similarities.

Each tends to destroy or render irrelevant the transcendent dimension of life. And each tends to cocoon the individual, and society at large, in an all-consuming set of materialist ideas or appetites to the exclusion of everything else. He further argued that the "progressive" element in the triad:

really outstrips the totalitarianism not only of the Nazis but even of the Communists, assimilating as it does (under the deceptive verbal cloak of liberalism and tolerance) the thinking, moods, and wills of everybody to a wholesale standard of the "socialized" mind more organically and perhaps more durably [than its rivals]; eliminating all essential opposition to its own pattern by incomparably milder methods, but so much more effectively and irrevocably.

Put simply, for Kolnai, "progressive" democracy in its purest form ends in Huxley's Brave New World rather than Orwell's brutish 1984 - a world full of comforts, but absent any higher purpose to life, and thus empty of hope and joy. The result is a crippled soul, because pleasure is not joy. Contentment is not joy. Material abundance is not joy.

When C.S. Lewis described his own Christian conversion as "surprised by joy" he captured the real nature of the word. Joy is numinous, a taste of the merriment of heaven. It's an experience of unexpected, transforming beauty and unearned, transcendent meaning. And these, in turn, are the qualities that provide the only tru...

By Robert Royal.

But first a note: The Church needs to be woke - in the right way, as explained below - and here at TCT we're working on it. If you'd like to see that happen too, now's the time to help us move things along. We're in the last days of our funding campaign this week. We know you come here because you value what we do. What are you waiting for?

Now for today's column...

Among the many things that the current Church seems no longer awake to is a crucial trinity: the Church Militant, the Church Penitent, and the Church Triumphant. If you didn't learn about those three growing up, they're not so hard to understand. The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, simply, under the rubric The Communion of the Church of Heaven and Earth: "The three states of the Church. 'When the Lord comes in glory, and all his angels with him, death will be no more, and all things will be subject to him. But at the present time some of his disciples are pilgrims on earth. [i.e., Church Militant] Others have died and are being purified [i.e., Church Penitent], while still others are in glory [i.e., Church Triumphant], contemplating 'in full light, God himself triune and one, exactly as he is.'"

It's worth noting, among other notables in this passage, that the Church Militant is not just out for a stroll; it's headed in a definite direction and, given the threats within and without, is engaged in what used to be called spiritual combat. It would be hard to say that the recent focus on "walking together" gets all that. The Church Militant pilgrimage includes much more than endless conversation, in which the process itself is more important than the final destination. It's about the literal - and in the deepest possible sense - struggle to arrive, in the end of time, at the unity of Heaven and Earth.

All this used to be understood as the very reason for the Faith and the Lord's coming into the world, as we will remember at Christmas: to redeem us from sin and death.

Perhaps the present writer has spent too much time lately contemplating the eccentricities in Rome. But all this came, unbidden, to mind when I saw recently that Pope Francis, as part of his Borgo Laudato Sì Project is building an "eco-village" near Castel Gandolfo for the 2025 Jubilee. That eco-village will provide an "immersive experience" in order "to share with as many people as possible the beauty that there is in caring for creation."

I'm a fervent believer in the general direction of Pope Francis's efforts at an integral human ecology, which is to say, waking people up (the right way to be "woke") from the obsession with screens to the fact that we live within a Creation, an order designed by God. And as many saints and sages have remarked, that order teaches us about the Creator and about ourselves as creatures. Indeed, what we call "nature" has sometimes been referred to as God's second book of revelation - properly understood - alongside His fuller revelation in the Scriptures.

But it's in the specifics, as opposed to the general direction, that my worries begin about the eco-village.

One report, for instance, explains:

Trees will guide the visitors through the park, [Donatella Parisi, communication coordinator of Laudato Si Higher Education Center] said. They will be greeted by Mathusalem, a 700-year-old oak. "Trees have a lot to teach us about human relations," she said, pointing to how they communicate in a horizontal model and warn each other of threats.

Really? Any lover of Tolkien - indeed, any human being who loves the world - should appreciate anything at this juncture in human history that wakes us up to the beauty and value of trees and everything growing on earth. But you can already feel the straining towards a manufactured, almost ideological significance here. Yes, love trees. But as teachers about "human relations"?

And it doesn't stop there. We're told that "the Borgo will teach vulnerable groups - including migrants and refugees, former prisoners, d...

By Dominic V. Cassella.

But first a note from Robert Royal: This is the final week for our end-of-year fundraising campaign, and we need one last push to get where we need to be going forward. We all know that 2025 will be an especially challenging year for many reasons in both the Church and the world. Help us to meet those challenges. It's only your generosity that makes what we do possible. Please do what you can do. Today.

Now for today's column...

This year, I have been teaching a course on the Gospel of John at a local Roman Catholic parish. As one might expect, John's Gospel - with its depth and richness and outright mysteries - is not without its difficulties and challenges. For example, John 3:13: "No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man." This is a good verse to contemplate in these final days before Christmas.

If the Son of Man referred to here is Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, we can understand that He is the person spoken of. If, however, only the one who descended from Heaven can ascend into Heaven, how can anyone other than Jesus Christ ascend into Heaven? Since none of us, non-divine humans that we are, have descended from Heaven, are we then unable to ascend? What does this mean for the call to holiness? How can we be welcomed into the Kingdom of God?

The answer to this problem lies at the heart of the Gospel message, which St. Paul proclaims when he says in Galatians 2:20 that, through baptism, he has "been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

It is only by becoming fully Christ-like as partakers of the mystical body that we can be "one in Christ" (Galatians 3:28), and those who ascend into Heaven are "heirs according to promise" (Galatians 3:29). To put off the old man and become another Christ (Ephesians 4:22), to have our old self crucified with Him (Romans 6:6), is a process that we might call Christification - that is, to "become" Christ.

I bring all this up because - not only is "becoming Christ" an important theme for me and my Gospel of John class - but the topic of Christification is the central theme, driving force, paradox, and solution in Fr. Robert Imbelli's book Christ Brings All Newness, published by Word on Fire Academic.

Throughout the book, Fr. Imbelli stresses the importance of setting Christ at the center of our life. We must find our source for living, not by any natural means, but through a ressourcement in Christ.

Re-Sourcement was one of the guiding principles at Vatican II. For Fr. Imbelli, it means going to that source of living water, which is eternal and becomes a wellspring within (John 4:14). Once we have returned to the source and we have become lamps burning and shining (John 5:35), we must go out and meet others where they are. We have a mission as Christians to cry out and spread the Good News (Mark 16:15) in a manner accessible to modern man, with all his errors and misconceptions. This new evangelization is also an aggiornamento (another key principle at the Council), the bringing of Christ the new Day (John 9:3-5).

Fr. Imbelli introduces early on the antithesis to the Christification of re-Sourcement and evangelization: what he calls the "excarnation."

Excarnation - a term which Fr. Imbelli adopts from the Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor - expresses the estrangement of modern humanity from its embodied and incarnational roots. It is the alienation of faith and spirituality from the tactile, sacramental, and relational aspects of life. Taylor's term underscores how modernity has favored a disembodied sense of self - one that views religion as abstract and private, disconnected from the communal and sacramental life of the Church.

In Imbelli's framework, excarnation is not merely a cultural shift but a spiritual crisis, one that has dulled the Christian imagina...

By Msgr. Robert J. Batule.

Back in 1999, the Cable News Network (CNN) featured something called Voices of the Millennium. The voices chosen were historians, politicians, actors, musicians, athletes, scientists, and a great many others. Some of these figures were well-known and others almost completely unknown, but they all voiced commentary on events, ideas and movements that were changing the way we look at ourselves and the way we view the world.

What brings us to church at Christmas is a voice too - a voice not from late in the second millennium, but from early in the first millennium, calling us to truth - and to God's freedom. That voice made its debut when it pierced the stillness of the night air in Bethlehem of Judea. It was the voice of a baby crying. But how could the people of first-century Palestine know that this particular baby was their long-awaited Savior?

Some may have known of Isaiah's prophecy that a child would be born, a son given, who would be called Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, and Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:5) But could people in His time know that this prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus?

The people of first-century Israel had to wait until the beginning of Jesus' public ministry when he announced: "The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel." (Mark 1:15) We hear these last few words on Ash Wednesday, too, about repenting and believing, as ashes are imposed on our foreheads, marking the beginning of our Lenten journey, which ends at the Cross.

The juxtaposition of Christmas and Good Friday isn't as odd it may first seem. Because these two commemorations - one of birth and the other of death - are joined together by wood. The manger in which the Virgin laid the Christ Child at his birth was made of wood as was the Cross on which he died.

While hanging on the wood of the Cross, Jesus hears this request from Dismas, the "good thief": "Remember me when you come into your kingdom." (Luke 23:42) Dismas is a truthful man. He knows that he had been condemned justly and that his sentence accords with his crime. He also knows that Jesus had not done anything wrong. The Savior then lifts his voice and says to Dismas: "Today, you will be with me in Paradise." (Luke 23:43)

More than two thousand years ago, Paradise did indeed come to Bethlehem as the angel proclaimed the Gospel of great joy. But this joy would be short-lived. In Salvifici doloris (1984), Pope Saint John Paul II refers to Jesus as the Man of Sorrows. Our Lord is called this because He had taken upon himself the sins of us all. (Isaiah 53:4-6)

They are sins both old and new, except that often the new sins have now been redefined - and promoted - as acts of "compassion." What else would you call the passage of a new law in the United Kingdom recently that removes criminal liability for physicians who assist persons in taking their own lives? We in the United States have already had physician-assisted suicide for some time now in several States, most notably in Oregon.

We take such occurrences in stride now, seemingly because we have found an endless reservoir of "compassion" to assuage our consciences when yet another moral boundary has been crossed. But why this obtuseness? Just like ancient Jerusalem, we have failed to recognize the time of our visitation. (Luke 19:44)

How great a loss we have suffered in not taking proper account of our sins. We underestimate the gift of divine mercy given to us in God's Son, Emmanuel, that is, God dwelling with us. (Matthew 1:23) We presume upon the mercy that became man and take it for granted. In this case, we have acted more like the criminal hanging alongside Jesus (not Dismas) who mocked the Lord and wanted to be saved without the Cross. (Luke 23:39)

Not everyone during Jesus' ministry was like the unrepentant criminal on Calvary. There's also, for instance, the rich young man who poses the question: "What good must I do to gain eternal life?" (Matthew 19:16) This question ...

By Fr. Raymond J. de Souza.

But first a note from Robert Royal: Christmas approaches, and I'd like this to be the last week of our 2024 fundraiser. So we need to step up the pace to get the several thousands of dollars we still need. The Catholic Thing comes to you with the very best commentary and news we can produce 365 days a year - 366 in leap years as readers sometimes remind me - and never charges anyone a single cent to read. Now's the time to make sure that we can keep it that way, not only for those with means to donate, but for those who aren't as fortunate. So please, dig deep. You support our publication, our courses, our outreach to young people, and much more. And don't forget about the 25th anniversary of the Faith & Reason Institute on January 23, 2025, in Washington - the evening before the Pro-Life March - featuring the Papal Posse and other amusements. Tickets are still available by clicking here. This has been a great year in many ways; let's make next year even better.

Now for today's column...

From his first trip as pope to Lampedusa, the travel destinations of Pope Francis have been idiosyncratic. But none quite as much as this week when, after declining the invitation for the reopening of Notre Dame in Paris, he is visiting Corsica on Sunday.

Pope Francis has decided not to visit the major European capitals, except if obliged by necessity, as when he visited Krakow and Lisbon for World Youth Day. So his European visits are off the usual papal track.

Corsica will be his third visit to France. He visited Strasbourg in 2014 to address the European Parliament, but declined to visit Notre Dame de Strasbourg, even though the cathedral was celebrating its millennium! He was in and out of the city in a matter of hours. He visited Marseille in 2023 for a conference on Mediterranean migration, but insisted: "I'll go to Marseille, but not to France." And now Corsica - which is a "region" of France - a week after not going to Paris for Notre Dame.

The headline at Jesuit-run America was blunt on the juxtaposition: "Pope Francis will visit Corsica Dec. 15 after skipping Paris reopening of Notre Dame." The Corsica papal Mass will be in a square that includes a large statue of Napoleon, the most infamous of all Corsicans.

Napoleon also figures prominently in the history of Notre Dame de Paris, where he arranged to have himself crowned emperor in the presence of Pope Pius VII.

All the recent attention to the history of Notre Dame meant attention too for Napoleon who, after the Terror, seized power and moderated some of the bloody extremism of revolutionary France. He concluded a concordat with the Holy See, negotiated by Pius VII's secretary of state, Ercole Consalvi.

Those negotiations are most remembered for the exchange between Napoleon and Consalvi. Inflated with a sense of his own power, Napoleon tried to intimidate Consalvi, threatening to destroy the Church Cardinal Consalvi replied that no emperor could accomplish what eighteen centuries of French clergy could not do. It was a reminder of the limits of state power, and that the greater danger to the Church is always from within.

This year marks the bicentennial of Consalvi's death, and it was marked in Rome by a celebratory conference. Consalvi is a legend in Vatican diplomacy, not only for the concordat with Napoleon but, post-Napoleon, for winning back the papal states in Italy at the Congress of Vienna.

The praise is deserved. In 1798, Napoleon's troops invaded Rome, kidnapped Pope Pius VI and eventually conveyed him to France as a prisoner, where he died in 1799. That two years later Napoleon would sign a concordat with the Holy See is evidence of Napoleon's willingness to make enemies and allies as needed, as well of Consalvi's skill.

When Pope Francis sees Napoleon's statue in Corsica, he might think about whether Consalvi has lessons for papal diplomacy today. He was a model of realistic engagement with hostile powers. He negotiated with tyrants. He ma...

By David Warren.

But first a note from Robert Royal: The always entertaining David Warren makes a crucial point today: the best education is when we educate ourselves. By coincidence - but we know there are no coincidences under God's Providence - a reader wrote in yesterday, while making a very generous donation: " I'm delighted to receive an essay from The Catholic Thing each morning. Education is an essential route to advancing the work of the church." Readers may not appreciate how much writing or editing TCT is an education for us as well, in addition to our interactions with all of you. Look. We've got a great "Thing" going here. Let's keep it going. You know how.

Now for today's column...

One of the most encouraging aspects of contemporary life is the sudden drop in university enrolments. This is unambiguously an improvement in human affairs, at least in the United States.

The steep decline - "very large and very discouraging," according to Mr. Bill DeBaun, senior director of the National College Attainment Network - reverses all signs of recovery from the Batflu ("COVID") infestation, in which students were actually shut out of residences, and deprived of "services" for which they had paid.

Speaking on behalf of the higher education bureaucracy, Mr. DeBaun cited various other bureaucratic setbacks, such as the progressive withdrawal of various racial diversity schemes; and it is true that "minorities" are, proportionately, among those most absenting themselves.

But the "trend" is apparent among all classes of freshmen registering, and I can hope it will also be found among more senior students.

I read recently that the number of post-graduates in American universities is - simply as a proportion of population - approaching 100 times what it was only a century ago. Apart from my glee, I have no way of checking these statistical dazzlements, but from general observation I would guess that this is approximately true.

This means that along with the counter-revolutionary government that Americans elected in November, the New Year will bring yet another thrilling novelty.

Of course, we must expect more Antifa and Intifada demonstrations in the Ivy League, together with a fresh round of rioting and protests against the triumphant "Far Right." But this will have the effect of accelerating the student disappearances.

I had been waiting for it, perhaps impatiently, for some time. That the professoriate is, overwhelmingly, made up of donors to the Democrat party (as much as 100 percent among the most elite institutions) has been true and increasing for some time. I have watched while university teachers and administrators became a closed camp of what we used to call "commies and perverts."

I had thought it inevitable that while all kinds of university courses except technical training - and much of that now - became less advantageous to applicants, the financial pressures they exerted would grow.

The House hearings last year of leading college governors (for instance Harvard, UPenn, MIT) became a theatre of the absurd. Anyone who watched would have been marvelously enlightened by the lying.

Yet it would seem that the rise of leftist fanaticism has generally peaked, and we may look forward to descent on many fronts, together with much more resistance to climbing, for at least the coming year.

The implications of this development are broad. The abandonment of "Woke Marxism" is proving contagious in the near term, and perhaps will continue.

In my view, which may be somewhat controversial, the implications for Christianity and specifically for the Roman Church may not be permanent, but are nevertheless quite exciting.

For they are international, as well as continental. Not only in the States, but in Europe and even in Syria and Iran, it has suddenly become more acceptable to be a Christian.

There is plenty of room for further advances, and certainly the reconquistas who once reclaimed Spain and Hungary for the Church, though not y...

By Stephen P. White.

But first a note: Be sure to tune in tonight - Thursday, December 12th at 8 PM Eastern - to EWTN for a new episode of the Papal Posse on 'The World Over.' TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal and contributor Fr. Gerald E. Murray will join host Raymond Arroyo to discuss the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, the Vatican's "Palestinian" Nativity scene, Nancy Pelosi's chiding of the pope over his China policy, as well as other developments in the Universal Church. Check your local listings for the channel in your area. Shows are usually available shortly after first airing on the EWTN YouTube channel.

Now for today's column...

The earliest history of the Catholic Church in the United States is decidedly Marian. The first recorded Mass in what is now the United States proper was celebrated at present-day St. Augustine, Florida in 1565. The date was September 8: the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin. The English-speaking colonies would have to wait almost seven decades for their first Mass, which was celebrated in what is now Maryland, in the year 1634. The date was March 25: the Feast of the Annunciation.

Of course, the history of Catholicism in the New World goes back even farther. We know Christopher Columbus brought several priests with him on his second voyage, and the first recorded Mass in the New World was celebrated in 1494, on the Feast of Epiphany, in what is today the Dominican Republic. (Consider that the first Mass in the New World was celebrated less than 100 years after the death of Geoffrey Chaucer.)

Epiphany, the Annunciation, the Nativity of Mary - Our Lady was decidedly present for each occasion. It shouldn't surprise us that, everywhere the Church goes, everywhere the Gospel is proclaimed, everywhere the Mass is celebrated, there is the Mother of God, pointing the way to her Son. Which brings us to the feast we celebrate today, The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

In 1531, Our Lady appeared to the Nahua peasant, Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, on the hill of Tepeyac. Juan Diego had been born near the Aztec capital and lived half his life in that pre-Columbian world. He was nearing fifty when the conquistadores arrived, and Hernán Cortés and his little army turned the Mesoamerican world upside down. Juan Diego spoke no Spanish, though he was an early convert to Christianity and took a Spanish name at his Baptism. It was through this humble man that Our Lady would make her most indelible mark on the New World.

It is typical of Our Lady that the story of Guadalupe would be so simple and accessible that even a young child can understand it: the peasant Juan Diego, the beautiful lady, the understandably skeptical bishop, the tilma, the miraculous image. (I first heard the story of Guadalupe from my parents, who would read to me Tomie dePaola's beautiful book, The Lady of Guadalupe. What a treasure that book was and is!) And it is typical of Our Lady that, beneath the simple surface of her story, one finds profound depths, which invite constant reflection.

Mary humanizes the great mystery of the Incarnation. That's so literally true I'm not even sure it qualifies as a pun. It is one thing to say God became man, that He was born, that He died or even that He rose again. It is something altogether more human to say Jesus had a mother. Perhaps this is because, like most people, I have no memory of my own conception, or of being born, nor have I yet experienced death, let alone rising from the dead. But I do have a mother, and so does the Incarnate Word.

In 1999, Pope John Paul II visited the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe during an apostolic trip that took him to Mexico and the United States. On that occasion, he reflected (as he so often did) on the Incarnation and God's intervention in history, "By becoming man, God in a certain way has entered our time and has transformed our history into the history of salvation. A history that includes all the vicissitudes of the world and of mankind, from c...

By Thomas Farr.

But first a note from Robert Royal: Longtime advocate for religious freedom around the world, Tom Farr, reminds us today of something we shouldn't need reminding of: our first freedom. One of the greatest challenges facing us today is the way that many have tried to paint that fundamental liberty - and the things that flow from it like parental rights, the right to life, the traditional family, and much more - as an excuse for bigotry and hate. Defending such things is one reason why The Catholic Thing has been here all these years. We're going to be in the midst of many tussles next year trying to fix the many recent departures from our central political and religious traditions. Are you interested in being part of that effort? If so, please, act today. Do your part to help us return to our great tradition of faith and reason.

Now for today's column...

God created all of us in His image and likeness. Each of us, therefore, has a dignity that no one, and especially no government, may violate. God wants us to follow Him, but He endows us with free will. He does not coerce. He beckons. No just government, may coerce anyone in matters of religion.

Fortunately, the Founders of America agreed. They believed in a God who not only creates us equal, but endows all of us with certain natural rights that must be protected by government. And for them, the first of those rights was religious freedom. They guaranteed this right in the First Amendment and called it the "free exercise of religion." For two centuries it was known as America's "first freedom."

It's difficult to overstate the importance of the first freedom for our nation, and the world. The Founders' way of dealing with religion and religious freedom was not only unprecedented, but a turning point in the recognition of human dignity for all mankind.

No other nation, before or since, has ever protected the right of religious liberty for all of its citizens. No other nation has justified its commitment to religious freedom in a way that applies to every human being - an inalienable right given by God, not the state. No other society has ever revered religious freedom as the first freedom, the one on whose shoulders all other freedoms stand.

Unfortunately, in today's America, religious freedom is no longer taught in our schools or valued in our cultural institutions. It's often scorned and repudiated. The vile scourge of anti-Semitism is rampant on American campuses. We are in trouble.

Of course, the protection of religious freedom in America has never been perfect. But it has yielded extraordinary benefits. Here are just four brief examples, that were welcomed by most Americans as major contributions to our nation. . .until recently.

First, until recently, religious freedom was understood as having produced the most compassionate faith-based civil society in history, in which thousands of religious organizations provide loving care for people in need: abandoned children, the poor, the sick, the aged, the dying, and the victims of natural disasters.

Samaritan's Purse, the Little Sisters of the Poor, and countless other religious organizations work tirelessly to care for others. Today such groups are increasingly reviled. And they are sued over and over again. Why? Because they are morally traditional and their love of God inspires them to obey Him, rather than Caesar.

Second, until recently, religious freedom protected the rights of traditional believers who refuse to abandon the truth about human nature - that males and females are beautifully different and complementary, that marriage is the union of one man and one woman, that the unborn child is a human being, and that parents, not the state, have natural authority over their children.

Today, such views are excoriated in politics, schools, and businesses. Pro-lifers are imprisoned. Parents are denied by law knowledge of their child's intent to have an abortion or to change their sex. Those who believe in tr...

By Randall Smith.

But first a note from Robert Royal: We're starting to close in on our targets for this fundraising campaign but we need a bunch more of you to act immediately. You don't want to see me beg. Do you?

Now for today's column...

Ignoring bottlenecks, multiplying touchpoints, creating information silos. These are widely discussed practices that result in organizations becoming more bureaucratic, less efficient, and more likely to fail.

If, like me, you need some help with this vocabulary, here are the accepted definitions:

Bottleneck: A point of congestion in a workflow that creates a backlog.

Touchpoints: Points of contact between customers and delivery of service.

Information silo: When information is compartmentalized and not easily communicated across different departments or individuals within an organization.

These are also common practices among America's managers and university administrators.

As a professor of theology, I don't read business books - I prefer Augustine and Aquinas - but even I know about bottlenecks, multiplying touchpoints, and information silos, so why don't so many highly remunerated managers of American institutions?

From Good to Great is a best-selling book on business management. The story written by most managers should be called From Good to Mediocre - and then Gone. The addendum would cover "How to Bankrupt Your Institution, put Employees out of Work, and Walk Away with a Bundle."

We are facing a crisis of leadership. Too many managers of institutions are highly paid and barely competent. Too many boards of directors are asleep at the wheel, allowing institutions for which they are responsible to drift and fail. A whole class of managers is protected from failure by the system. They are rarely fired, even when clearly incompetent, and when they do lose a job, they often receive the kind of healthy severance denied to blue-collar workers. Often, they "fail up" and land a better position elsewhere where they can continue doing poor work.

One soon recognizes on search committees, for example, that many institutions are simply passing around their failed, second-rate managers to other institutions because most search committees are looking for people "with experience." Chancery offices are too often staffed with priests who couldn't be trusted with a parish assignment but who, because of this management "experience," later become candidates for even higher office. Principals of bad schools were often poor teachers who took some "academic management" classes. These aren't leaders; they're managers. Bad ones.

I was once invited to attend a business school presentation on what the students would propose as "consultants" to a non-profit organization. Perhaps they thought that, as a theology professor, I would be against "profit." But I'm with Pope Saint John Paul II who wrote in Centesimus annus: "The Church acknowledges the legitimate role of profit as an indication that a business is functioning well. When a firm makes a profit, this means that productive factors have been properly employed and corresponding human needs have been duly satisfied." It amazes me how often "profit" in the sense identified by the pope is less a factor in business than personal aggrandizement, rent-seeking, and the pointless turf battles of people who shouldn't be anywhere near a leadership position.

What I saw in these presentations were students taught to think of business problems as something to be treated with new branding, different marketing, alternative financing, and the shifting of responsibilities, as though business problems were all a matter of shifting entries on a spreadsheet. No one said a word about the people who work or the people for whom the work was being done. No one drilled into their heads my wife's basic motto: "The answer is always people."

What does the Catholic Church have to offer in this time of crisis? One answer would be to recover the wisdom of a true leader like Pope Saint...