Confederate flags and safe spaces ... and a prayer request

Yikes. (Image source: TxDMV/AP)

Within two days, Sunday and Monday, the New York Times has posted two think-pieces that consider different freedom-of-speech controversies: a SCOTUS case concerning Texas' refusal to issue license plates that include the Confederate flag; and "trigger warnings" and "safe spaces" on college campuses.

Let me declare my bias upfront: I thank God and the First Congress for the First Amendment, as it allows me not only to be openly Catholic but to discuss and defend the Catholic faith openly, in a non-Catholic country with significant anti-Catholic prejudices. However, the personal cost of maintaining the freedoms of both speech and religion is to defend others' right of free speech, even when that speech is directed against me and my own, or expresses ideas I find to be not only wrong but offensive or obscene. Sauce for the goose and all that.

Because I'm Irish Catholic, with a touch of Hispanic ancestry and Union soldiers in my family tree, it's difficult for me to see the "Stars and Bars" as anything but an expression of hatred directed against me and my kind. Whatever strides the South has made to overcome its past, the Confederate flag is a reminder of a legacy of racial, ethnic and religious xenophobia, just as is the Confederate memorial in the central square of the city where I now live (yep, I'm a carpetbagger).

However, if we can squelch the display of the rebel flag because other people find it offensive or hateful, then why not the Knights of Columbus logo? Or the papal keys? Must we keep "In God We Trust" off of vanity plates because some non-Judeo-Christian might be outraged by it? Or perhaps the Darwin fish-with-feet or the "Pastafarian" symbol? At what point does a "right to not be offended" simply become a tool for suppressing political or social opposition?

Archbishop Cordileone on Communion and dissent

communion n. [From Old French comunion,  from Latin commūniō (“communion”), from cum (“with”) + mūnus (“gift”)] A joining together of minds or spirits.

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone explains why Catholics who dissent from Church teaching shouldn't present themselves for Communion. Note that Abp. Cordileone cites both Scripture and Tradition to back his points up [emphasis mine]:

Whoever ... eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. (1 Corinthians 11:27-29 RSVCE)

And this food is called among us Εὐχαριστία [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. (St. Justin Martyr, First Apology 66)

[H/T to LifeSite News!]

Francis-haters’ heads exploding in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

© 2015 Vincenzo Pinto/AFP/Getty Images.

From HuffPo:

Pope Francis Will Break Bread With Gay, Transgender Inmates During Prison Visit

Religion News Service  |  By David Gibson

Posted: 03/20/2015 9:13 am EDT | Updated: 03/20/2015 9:59 am EDT 

(RNS) When Pope Francis pays a visit to Naples this Saturday (March 21) he will have lunch with some 90 inmates at a local prison, a contingent that will reportedly include 10 from a section reserved for gay and transgendered prisoners, and those infected with the virus that causes AIDS.
The stopover at the Giuseppe Salvia Detention Center in Poggioreale, near Naples, was originally not scheduled to include lunch, according to a report from Tv2000, an Italian television network operated by the country’s Catholic bishops.
But the pope insisted on the meal, which will be prepared by the prisoners, some of whom will come from two other detention centers. The 90 were chosen by lottery from among 1,900 inmates, according to the Vatican Insider website.

“And the Pharisees and their scribes murmured against his disciples, saying, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’ And Jesus answered them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’” (Luke 5:30-32 RSV)

That is all.

Ask Tony: Am I really Catholic if I can't accept some Church teachings?

Lisa Miller tried to answer this question last September in her "OMG!" column in Crux. Just based on this one column, I can't say anything about Miller's orthodoxy. But considering that Crux also published Margery Eagen's doctrinally-illiterate rant against Pope Francis this last January, I'm beginning to wonder whether the Crux editors are merely indiscriminate in their writer selections or actively dissident in their  ecclesial adherence.

[UPDATE: Crux just published an op-ed by John L. Allen, Jr., in which the latter continually refers to the schismatic Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) as though they were representative of traditionalists. This pretty much confirms Crux's leftward bias, though I'm disappointed in Allen, who ought to know better. (But then, didn't he coin the term "Taliban Catholic"?)]

Miller never really answers the question as asked. At first, it looks like she's on the side of the angels, when she admits that "'conscience' is the tool people use to justify departures from orthodoxy." As I've argued elsewhere, the individual conscience isn't infallible. But she quickly varies from the straight and narrow:

There are women who, in good conscience [??], have taken priestly ordination vows and consider themselves Catholic; and (many more) people who’ve had abortions or supported the right to abortion who do as well. These self-defined Catholics defy official teaching and risk excommunication [in the case of a procured abortion, the excommunication is latae sententiae, i.e., automatically incurred by the offense (CIC 1398)]; yet on some level, the choice to be Catholic remains a deeply personal (and private) one.

Which is all simply a warm-up to her own thesis: "To what extent must the hierarchy heed the consciences of the faithful? ... My unordained advice ... is this:  Hold onto your Catholicism — as well as your conscience — and perhaps your leaders will follow you there." Miller's answer, underneath all the window dressing, is: "You're Catholic if you think you are."

It's bad advice, and a bad definition. If you don't believe what the Church believes, then why would you think you're Catholic? If the Church doesn't teach authoritatively on matters of faith and morals, then why do you need the hierarchy's blessing for anything? Why not just go to some church where they already agree with you?

But if the Church does teach authoritatively, then why don't you try to change?

Wanted: Ideologically-Pure Celebrity Spokesperson(s)—UPDATED

What's the difference between gang rape and a gang bang? Well, in the latter, the victim consents to her debasement; in extreme cases, she convinces herself that it's freeing and even empowering to be used as a spooge rag by three or more men.

In other words, not much save a degree of self-deception.

The question is only interesting because various condemnations of designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana revolve around the 2007 ad to the left. According to America's Next Top Model judge Kelly Cutrone, it's a gang bang. According to Catholic bloggers Katrina Fernandez and Simcha Fisher, it's a gang rape. I suppose it doesn't really matter, because both sides find it sufficient grounds for attainting the designing duo. Just goes to show that no advertising mistake is ever truly forgiven.

"Now you're offended?"

... Though I wonder why it took Cutrone eight years to find outrage sufficient to make her cut up her D&G possessions. I guess implicitly misogynistic ads aren't really offensive unless they're put out by gays who support traditional marriage and family. Or does having really cool designer clothes trump the feminist consciousness?

Now, they're being forced to walk back the "synthetic babies" comment. Yes, it was crass and insensitive ... or is it really painful because it exposes our insecurites about IVF? When Sir Elton John calls IVF "a miracle that has allowed legions of loving people, both straight and gay, to fulfil their dream of having children," doesn't he imply that children exist to satisfy peoples' needs, like cars, TVs, and cruise ships? Isn't that the ugly little utilitarian-materialist fly in the IVF baby ointment — that it makes children a consumer product to which people are entitled (if they have enough money)?

(And when he chastises the designers, "Your archaic thinking is out of step with the times, just like your fashions," what does that say about Sir Elton's Thursdayite sense of right and wrong, save that it's dictated by what's trendy rather than what's true?)

[UPDATE] Two donor-conceived people, Hattie Hart and Alana Newman, agree. Writing in The Federalist, they say:

It is important to note ... that infants, toddlers, and all of these “miracle” beings are too young to protest their own objectification. We [the authors], however, are now of age and in a position to speak for ourselves. “Synthetic” indeed is a harsh and inaccurate description of us offspring born by third-party reproduction. Dolce’s word choice was a mistake. But there is much underlying truth in what he said: “life [does] have a natural flow, there are things that should not be changed.” Emphasis ours.

Those of us conceived non-traditionally are full human beings with equal capacity in every regard — no one need question our humanity. It is not our individual, case-by-case worth as humans that is debatable; rather, it is how we value human beings in general that warrants discussion. Has anyone asked John for how much he purchased his kids? How much money he and Furnish paid the boy’s genetic and birth mother for their absence and invisibility? ...

Team Elton, and the media that surround them, seem to think that this discussion is about gay parents. Team Dolce and  Gabbana are instead trying to draw attention to missing parents. And to what should be the horror of millions, Team Elton is literally promoting the obliteration of mothers—not through vilification, but by pretending they don’t even exist. [Read my Catholic Stand post, "The Man (Or Woman) Who Isn't There"!—ASL]

 

Ultimately, I don't think it's wise to get too involved in these bouts of celebrity narcissistic rage. Probably the designers' business will suffer ... but where clothing fashions are concerned, sorry, I'm fresh out of rat's asses. Besides, freedom of speech doesn't mean you force people to buy from vendors whose views they disagree with; if you've got the cash to afford their clothing and accessories, feel free to engage in a Chik-fil-A-style anti-boycott.

Nevertheless, in a society where the success of social movements is all too dependent on celebrity endorsements, it would be nice to have celebrity spokespersons who don't come with this kind of baggage.

The Crescat and the Chesapeake Eucharistic Massacre — UPDATED

Communicant receiving Host from Pope Francis on the
tongue. (Photo courtesy citadelcatholicmedia.com.)

The story begins last month, when Katrina Fernandez, aka The Crescat, received word that her beloved abuela was in the hospital and not expected to live much longer. Kat decided to let her parish, St. Therese in Chesapeake, Va., know so the parish priest, Fr. Kevin O'Brien, could give her Last Rites. Last Rites typically involves not only the anointing of the Sacrament of the Sick, but also Confession and the dying person's last reception of the Eucharist (the viaticum).

According to Kat, here's how the conversation went:

Kat: My grandmother is in the hospital dying and I would like Father to administer Last Rites.
Secretary: Well, Father stays pretty busy but we have a ministry team of people that regularly visit the sick and pray over them.
Kat: No, I want her to receive Last Rites.
Secretary: Well, the members of this ministry can anoint her for healing.
Kat: Well, that’s lovely but you can’t heal death. She.is.dying. I would like her to receive Last Rites.
Secretary: I have a few members of the ministry available now. Are you sure you wouldn’t like them to visit with her?
Kat: Unless they can hear her dying confession, absolve her, and prepare her soul from one transition to the next, no.

When my younger brother was alive, I had issues once or twice getting priests to his hospital room for the Sacrament of the Sick, so I feel her pain. The parish secretary's job is not to prevent the faithful from getting the appropriate sacraments; no parish priest should be too busy to administer Last Rites to the dying. (Per canon law [CIC 1003], only priests and bishops have "the right and duty" to administer Holy Oils; this was settled definitely at the Council of Trent [D 910, 929]. As far as I know, there is no document or decision allowing this function to be settled on lay extraordinary ministers. If anyone has knowledge of such, I invite him/her to let me know.)

But wait! There's more!

Bad Vegan Math

Is there anything worse than superciliousness connected with a misleading use of numbers?

Every group has members who manage to make membership in their group appear unappealing to outsiders, particularly by making membership a sign of moral superiority. Arguably, it takes one to know one. (In my own defense, I'm well aware of my many deficiencies.) However, I've yet to meet a vegetarian that didn't somehow manage to bring up his/her avoidance of meat in a way that illustrated his/her moral and cultural superiority to the rest of us omnivores.

Am I wrong, or has there never been a time like the last fifty years where so many people feel so little shame about being such lousy liars?

Consider the meme above. Perhaps the Albany Times-Union is the ultimate source of VeganStreet.com's error. However, it just isn't that hard to do the research necessary to blow this little piece of propaganda to smithereens.

There's some variance in the numbers, but here's what I found: 1 cup of broccoli has 31 calories and  2.57 grams of protein (actually about 8.29 g/100 kcal). An 8-ounce New York strip from Organic Valley has approximately 450 calories and 50 grams of protein. 

50 g ÷ 2.57 g ≈ 19.46

19.46 × 31 kcal = 603.26 kcal

603.26 kcal ÷ 450 kcal ≈ 1.34

Breaking it down: To get the protein benefit of an 8-oz. New York strip from eating broccoli, you'd have to eat 19.46 cups; in the process, you'd consume 603.26 calories from the broccoli — 1.34 times the calories from the steak. Again, you can find different values for the calories and protein. However, even in the best-case scenario, you'd still have to pound down more broccoli than you could stomach at one meal before you'd get the same protein value of a broiled steak.

Lesson One: If you gotta lie to make your case, it isn't worth making. Lesson Two: Never try to use numbers to mislead a carnivore who can do math.

Ask Tony: Is opposition to capital punishment “heresy”?

There are some people who can’t be satisfied with just being right — they have to spoil it by going that extra yard, so they’re not only not as right as they could have been, they’re also a bit meshuggeh to boot. It’s almost like watching a player on the defense grab a fumble and down it ... in his own end zone.

Recently, four major Catholic media sources — well, three Catholic and one that insist it’s Catholic — published a joint editorial calling for the end of capital punishment: America magazine, the National Catholic Register, Our Sunday Visitor, and the National Catholic Fishwr — er, Reporter. Naturally, this announcement caught the Catholic Blogisterium by not-universally-pleasant surprise. 

One of the least pleased was Br. Alexis Bugnolo of the blog From Rome, who lashed back with a post titled, “It is a heresy to say Capital Punishment is immoral, or can be abolished”. No, really ... that is the title, and that is his argument:

Rome, March 6, 2015:  The agenda of  Communism* to disarm Christendom more and more has reached fever pitch this week with pronouncements by the Vatican Observer at the United Nations, the Pope, and several media outlets in the United States against the death penalty. [* Marx held that the way to social justice was through class revolution, and that capital punishment was the tool of the rulers to suppress the masses: this error promoted through liberation theology has spread from Europe to most of Latin America. (So how does this make the various calls to end capital punishment “communist”? Damned if I know.)] ...
Patheos a left-wing, [?] source for news and opinion for Catholics in the English speaking world, is running a story today about this, entitled, “Catholic Media Unite in Opposition to the Death Penalty”. [Specifically, the post Br. Bugnolo linked was in Kathy Schiffer’s Seasons of Grace. Whatever else Kathy may be, besides a very pleasant writer to read, she’s no leftist. Neither are Fr. Dwight Longenecker, Kat Fernandez, Elizabeth Scalia, nor Mark Shea; but then, anybody not as far to the right as Br. Bugnolo must appear to be a leftist.] ...
The title of their article is more than misleading, it is implicitly heretical.° [° Inasmuch as it says that such pronouncements are Catholic. (Inasmuch as the title makes no such claim, the charge is explicitly hysterical; the word Catholic modifies Media, nothing else.)] For this simple reason, that it is de fide, that is a truth of Divine Revelation itself, that the State has the authority to punish wicked doers with capital punishment.

Heresy is “the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt after the reception of baptism of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith” (Code of Canon Law 751; cf. CCC 2087 – 2089). Catholics who oppose the death penalty don’t deny that Church teaching permits or tolerates the death penalty. To justify his calling anti-death penalty writings heresy, then, it isn’t sufficient for Br. Alexis merely to argue that Church doctrine tolerates the death penalty; he must show that Catholic teaching mandates the death penalty as a moral duty of the State.

Catholic Stand: Just the Moral Facts, Ma’am

As I write this article, former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling is giving some young cyberpunks a much-needed lesson in moral facts.

Here’s the story: Last week, Schilling’s daughter Gabrielle was accepted by Salve Regina University on a baseball scholarship. (According to Wikipedia, Schilling is a “born-again Christian”.) As proud daddies want to do in the twenty-first century, Schilling tweeted his joy to his followers.

Being social-media savvy, Schilling anticipated some ragging among the congratulations. (When you’re a celebrity, you need to expect and be prepared for trolls among your followers.) However, the usual amateur heckling and expected offers to date Gabby turned ugly, as Schilling described “tweets with the [words] rape, bloody underwear and pretty much every other vulgar and defiling word you could likely fathom began to follow. … Worse yet? No less than 7 of the clowns who sent vile or worse tweets are athletes playing college sports.”

“If I was a deranged protective dad,” Schilling writes, “I could have been face to face with any of these people in less than 4 hours. I know every one of their names, their parents, where they go to school, what they do, what team they are on, their positions, stats, all of it. I had to do almost nothing to get ANY of that information because it is all public.” Emails, tweets, and texts were sent; athletes were suspended, and a college DJ dismissed. Other repercussions to follow; Schilling has also enlisted readers willing to help in the persecution.

Moral Fact #1: In the real world, actions have consequences.
Moral Fact #2: Don’t threaten Daddy’s little girl … not even in jest.

Read the rest at Catholic Stand!

Ask Tony: What if a priest were to bless the entire ocean?

Blessing of the Sea, Whitstable.
(© 2010 Matt S., via Flickr.com)

So there's this question making the rounds that, on first glance, simply confuses Catholic priests with clerics from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons™:

what if a catholic priest were to just bless the entire ocean would it turn the entire thing into holy water or do priests have an effective blessing range? does that range increase based on your level? can the pope bless the entire ocean?

The obvious first response is to ask in return, "Why would any priest want to turn the whole ocean into holy water?" Holy water is confected (the proper term) for specific liturgical purposes; none has yet been found or even thought of that would require every drop in every ocean be consecrated. Priests, generally speaking, don't perform sacred rituals just to satisfy curiosity or scratch an itch. The obvious second response is, "How would the blessing of a Catholic priest differ from that of an Orthodox, or Anglican, or Lutheran priest?" Catholic priests are not the only ones who bless water; so why the question is asked specifically of Catholic priests is itself a question worth pondering ... just not one I'm going to ponder now.

Having cleared that crap out of the way ....

First, let's discuss what holy water is, and what it is not. Holy water is called a sacramental, that is, a sacred sign "by which effects, especially spiritual effects, are signified in some imitation of the sacraments and are obtained through the intercession of the Church." (Code of Canon Law 1166) Sacramentals, generally speaking, weren't instituted by Christ but rather by the Church, in aid of carrying out its mission. (Cf. Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, p. 349) While the ritual of blessing may create an ontological change in the water, giving it spiritual influence, the liturgical point is to reserve the water for sacred purposes; holy water isn't supposed to be used for cooking, or washing your dirty clothes, or as a substitute for your hypertension medication.