Breivik the Consequentialist

in Moral Theology, terrorism 3 Comments Tags: ,

Breivik saw a threat to European civilization and decided to commit a crime to call attention to the danger to Europe and thereby to avert an even greater evil. That is, he killed 80 people so that a whole civilization might be saved. He was a practical exponent of proportionalist consequentialism. He ignored the moral absolute: you shall not murder.

Similarly the Unabomber and eco-terrorists were so certain that our way of life threatens the planet that they committed crimes to call attention to the danger we are facing. It looks like Ivins saw that the U.S. could be devastated by bioterrorism, and conducted the anthrax attacks to call attention to the danger that Congress was neglecting.

We too often think we understand history, and do wrong so that good may come of it.

But is Edward Abbey responsible for ecoterrorism? Should we not talk about dangers to the environment for fear that it might inspire ecoterrorism? Should we not consider what effect the combination of the demographic winter and Moslem immigration will have on Europe for fear it might inspire people like Breivik?

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Heroic Terrorists

in Masculinity, terrorism 1 Comment Tags: , , ,

In working in my new book, Meek or Macho? Men and Religion, I have been reviewing all the many, many ways that masculine development can go wrong.

Wolfgang Schmidbauer a German psychoanalyst, wrote a book, The Psychology of Terror: Why Young Men Become Assassins. He has these comments on Breivik:

Fanatical criminals like the Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik, according to the insights of the psychoanalyst Wolfgang Schmidbauer, mostly want to go down in history as heroes. “Hero-myths have always exercised a great power of attraction on young men,” said Schmidbauer.

He referred to the fact that Breivik explained his act in a detailed ideological pamphlet and did not shoot himself after the attack.

To the question, why such perpetrators obviously show no compassion, Schmidbauer said : I think they dissociate.” According to all appearances the perpetrator during the crime finds himself in a trance-like condition. ”In that condition he plays the role of the heroic killer,” said Schmidbauer….

The psychoanalyst assumed that during the planning of the crime the perpetrators lose all their empathy – that is, the ability to put oneself in the place of another human being. “Empathy develops in childhood. These perpetrators almost always come from a broken family and often have parents who were so preoccupied with their own problems, that they had no possibility to empathize with the child.”

Often these perpetrators have no empathetic father and have had no positive image of masculinity. Later they eventually have problems themselves with their own masculinity, which they seek to understand with their delusions of grandeur. They are dissatisfied and unhappy, They look at other persons who find joy in life, and develop a deeply rooted hate and envy of these persons.”

The perpetrators occupy themselves for a long time with fantasies of the role of hero, for example when they play corresponding computer games or watch action films. Then when in reality they take up weapons, in their self-image they do not consider themselves criminals. “They want to be heroes and saviors. That makes them so dangerous and at the same time so inconspicuous,” Schmidbauer said.

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Fundamentalist, Zealot, or Fanatic

in terrorism No Comments Tags: , , , ,

The media are describing Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist, as a Christian fundamentalist.

Fundamentalism has a specific theological meaning, and I doubt that Breivik has any strong opinions on the Virgin Birth or Substitutionary Atonement.

What the media seem to mean by a fundamentalist is a person with strong beliefs in a traditional religion of any sort, especially a person who takes those beliefs literally. But obviously a Thomist or a von Balthasarian can hold to Catholic doctrines strictly without thinking that Genesis describes 7 days of 24 hours each.

Zealot might be a better world – a Christian zealot, a Moslem zealot, a Jewish zealot, an environmentalist zealot, a Marxist zealot. Zeal is a virtue, but a minor one and one too easily disconnected from other virtues, such as justice and charity.

An even better term might be fanatic – that word conveys the disconnection from reality that terrorists usually manifest as well as a willingness to use violence on other people. It became a term of praise in Nazi Germany.

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The Media and Terrorism

in terrorism No Comments Tags: ,

Terrorists have used the media to spread their message, from the Unabomber to Breivik.

Terrorist attacks, however horrible, do not threaten society or lead to seizures of power. What they do is draw attention to the terrorist’ message.

The media are in a bind. It is impossible to ignore the destruction of the World Trade Center or the slaughter of a hundred Norwegians. The terrorists put out their message, and everyone studies it to get clues to what motivate the terrorists and how to stymie them. But attention to their message is what the terrorists want, and are willing to engage in mass murder to get it.

The maximum sentence in Norway for any crime is 21 years. Breivik will be 53 when he gets out. Is he insane? He is a sociopath, but he certainly knew what he was doing and he knew right from wrong, however mistaken his political analysis may have been.

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Jihad and Crusade

in Islam, Masculinity, Voluntarism, war 7 Comments Tags: , ,

When cultures collide, sometimes they borrow good ideas from each other, and sometimes bad ideas.
The encounter of Islam and the Christian West has given us algebra, but we have also taken over some of the unlovelier products of Islam.
Islam spread the idea of jihad as meaning not only an interior struggle against evil but physical, military operation against the enemies of true religion, against the infidel. The West thought this was a good idea and developed the idea of a crusade, a war that was not simply just but holy, to counter the jihad that had conquered large sections of the Christian world. Christians killed in the name of God.
Islam, submission, developed the idea that God was absolutely unknowable, that our only response to him was to submit to his will, that is will was arbitrary, that all occurred because of his will, and that he could change his will as he pleased because it did not express his nature, which is absolutely unknowable. Hydrogen and oxygen combine to produce water because God wills it; the independence of secondary causes was neglected. God could change the moral law, and command what he had forbidden, and forbid what he had commanded. Our only duty is to submit to his inscrutable will.
The lines of influence are not clear, but I suspect that nominalism and voluntarism in the West are the result of an encounter with this Islamic idea. It sounds so pious.
Slavery had died out in the West, but then Islamic slavers – the Barbary pirates – enslaved perhaps a million Europeans, a process that continued until the nineteenth century. In desperation the papacy allowed slavery to revive in Catholic lands.
And now the Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik has, as the newspapers point out, issued a manifesto that is the mirror image of Al-Queda. Islamic terrorism has created Christian terrorism.
A recent survey of the values of European youth confirmed that young men are less religious than young women – no surprise there. The report is in somewhat opaque sociological language, but it also indicates that young men are more hostile than women to other religions, even if the men do not believe in the traditional religion of their country. That is, the young men may be indifferent or hostile to Christianity, but they are even more hostile to intruding foreign religions, such as (the report did NOT go on to say) Islam.
In fact, historically European men have been hostile to the clerical-feminine manifestations of their religion. Instead men feel an identification with the religious community, whose identity they have celebrated and defended in their own way. Mussolini was asked to allow the construction of a mosque in Rome; he said certainly, as soon as a Catholic church was built in Mecca.
And so we have a Norwegian, who seems to have shown little interest in prayer, liturgy, or other clerical-feminine manifestations of Christianity, observes Al-Queda and decides he is going to defend the Christian identity of Europe by provoking a civil war between Christianity and Islam.
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Bishop Accountability

in clergy sex abuse scandal 17 Comments

As a board member of BishopAccountability.org, I agree with Chaput, the new archbishop of Philadelphia. John Allen interviewed him:

What about the issue of the accountability of bishops inside the church itself? Critics often argue that recovery from the crisis can’t happen until bishops who covered up the abuse are punished as severely as the priests who committed it.

I understand that, and I think it’s a legitimate concern. We should have accountability for our actions in the church, and bishops should be as accountable as priests and laity. I’m sympathetic to the idea that there should be real consequences, with teeth, to acting contrary to the law of the land, the discipline of the church, or the moral law of God.

Do you think there are sufficient accountability provisions for bishops right now?

I’ll say something that many people in the church aren’t saying, which is that we ought to study this question and reflect on it very seriously. We should take up the issue of accountability, including accountability for bishops, in a formal, clear, and decisive kind of way.

Any sense of what that might look like?

No, because we haven’t done the study yet. In terms of the disciplining of bishops, that’s traditionally under the responsibility of the Holy Father. Since the question has been raised, I think the details of how someone can be held accountable ought to be developed and the Holy Father ought to give his approval when the appropriate time comes. I think it would be useful to him, and to all of us in the church, if there were clear principles and procedures.

I will assume that Chaput is sincere in these statements; buy how widely his view is shared by bishops and Vatican officials is uncertain; all indications are that being a bishop means never having to say you’re sorry, much less having to suffer any consequences for your actions and inactions.

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The Decline and Fall of Catholic Marriage

in Catholic Church 21 Comments Tags: ,

Commonweal has a discussion of the decline in the number of Catholic marriages; they have declined 60% since 1972, even as the Catholic population has grown by 17 million. Our Sunday Visitor has the data and some speculation about the causes.

There are parallel declines in mass attendance and reception of the sacraments.

Everyone has his favorite target. Liberals blame the failure to follow through what they see as the logic of Vatican II, which seems to mean the acceptance of contraception, abortion, divorce, women priests, and gay marriages.

Conservatives blame Vatican II for breaking good habits of sacramental and prayer life that had taken centuries to develop and replacing them with incoherence. But these habits were so easily broken one has to wonder how deeply rooted they were.

The Episcopal Church and other mainline churches, which have followed the liberals’ prescriptions, have suffered similar declines, so something apart from failure to update the Church has caused the decline.

Conservative churches seem to be doing better, because they attract new converts to replace the members who leave. That is what the Catholic Church in the US  has failed to do. Catholic numbers grow because of Hispanic immigrants, who have replaced the 1/3 of baptized Catholics who leave the Church. But Hispanic populations have never accepted all the church discipines of the post-Tridentine Church, such as getting married in a church ceremony. The Hispanic male aversion to the clergy is probably also starting to affect Catholic practice in the U.S. – in general, Hispanic men do not go to church or to confession – the book on which I am working, Meek or Macho? Masculinity and Religion, examines the hostility that Hispanic men have long felt to the clerical version of Christianity. Hispanic and Spanish men, if they are Catholic, have their own way of being Catholic, a way which often does not include going to Church or receiving the sacraments.

My hypotheses is in short: whatever is causing the decline in the mainline churches is also affecting the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is replacing its lost adherents with a population that has a lower level of sacramental practice. Hence the decline in the number of marriages

A good sociological survey could confirm or disprove this; if the problem is the lack of Hispanic practice, a approach must be adopted to their background and culture, which is different from that of Euro-American Catholics who have undergone secularization.

This table from Our Sunday Visitor suggests this is the explanation:

Marriages in the Church per 1,000 Catholics by diocese in 2010

Highest Rates

Salina, Kan. 7.3

Owensboro, Ky. 7.3

Wichita, Kan. 6.2

Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo. 5.9

Oklahoma City, Okla. 5.8

Belleville, Ill. 5.7

Bismarck, N.D. 5.7

Yakima, Wash. 5.7

Tulsa, Okla. 5.6

Rapid City, S.D. 5.6

Lowest Rates

Las Vegas, Nev. 0.9

Brownsville, Texas 1.0

El Paso, Texas 1.2

Dallas, Texas 1.2

Sacramento, Calif. 1.2

Juneau, Alaska 1.2

Laredo, Texas 1.3

Gallup, N.M./Ariz. 1.4

Brooklyn, N.Y. 1.5

Orange, Calif. 1.6

Most of the cities with the lowest rates have large Hispanic populations.

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Corrections from Bishop Morris

in Australia 8 Comments Tags: ,

Bishop Morris wrote to The Record that they had misreported his diocese’s use of general; absolution and that he had never said that he was in favor of ordaining women or “recognizing” Protestant orders. He had simply said that there was a discussion going on about these matters.

As the original statement no longer seems to be available, I do not know whether The Record misreported or not.

If it did, it seems that Morris was the victim of a contest of wills: the Vatican wanted him to come to discuss matters, and he refused. In these contests of wills, usually both parties are wrong to some extent.

Of course, there may have been more to it; transparency in these matters is almost always for the best, a lesson the Vatican has not learned.

In Baltimore a priest was removed from the priesthood because he allowed an Episcopal minister, a woman, who was connected with the family of the deceased, to read the Gospel at the funeral mass and perhaps to offer her communion. (The Pope gave Tony Blair communion when Blair was still an Anglican) At least that was the public explanation.

Either the bishops and Rome are acting in a high-handed and arbitrary fashion (entirely possible) or they are using trivial incidents to provide cover for the real reason for disciplinary actions. Neither possibility is very edifying.

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Two Religions in One Church?

in Catholic Church, demography 17 Comments Tags:

Maureen Fiedler reports in the NCR about the American Catholic Council that just met in Detroit: 

1.     The issue of women’s ordination, and gender equality generally, has risen to a new level of prominence on the roster of reform. It is at the top of many reformers’ lists — men as well as women. It’s clear as never before: the denial of women’s equality just makes no sense to most Catholics anymore, especially these Catholics.

2.     The issue of gay and lesbian rights has become mainstream in the movement, just as in society at large. It’s not a “fringe” issue for Dignity or New Ways Ministry; it’s everybody’s issue. And of course, over the years, Call to Action has had a lot to do with that.

3.     New and independent communities are flowering as never before. If the Church is a garden, new sprouts are proliferating. There have always been tall trees and shrubs (cathedral and parish communities) in the church. But now, there are new flowerings: intentional communities — lots of them, the communities of the Roman Catholic Women Priests’ movement, the “Ecumenical” and “American” Catholic churches and dioceses, even new religious orders like Green Mountain Monastery in Vermont. Most of these are outside the purview of the hierarchy.

4.     The “priesthood of the faithful” was visible. When the celebrant at the Pentecost Sunday mass said the words of consecration, hundreds of people in the congregation chimed in without prodding or instructions in the program. Why? I suspect that many do it routinely in their intentional communities, and they believe that they have the power, along with the priest, to call for the presence of Christ.

It is hard to see how these people can remain in the Catholic Church: they are on a collision course with Rome. They want women priests, married homosexual priests, and lay celebration of the Eucharist.

 

Their theology puts them outside the bounds of historical Catholicism. Rome might ignore that, but their practice threatens the integrity of the sacramental system, at least as Rome sees it.

 

 

Sociologically, this movement is aging. I have noticed that as people age their minds sometimes get stuck. My late father-in-law (a Harvard, Harvard Law graduate) could never believe that Communism had really ended in Europe – he continued to fight the battles of his youth.

 

Similarly, I think these people are fighting the battles of their youth, not realizing that conditions have changed. They also are very parochial geographically and historically – they seem to have no concept that unity with the Orthodox is the highest priority in healing the unity of the Church , and that their proposals would end any possibility of unity. They lack any historical perspective of the post-Enlightenment feminization of Christianity and the chronic lack of lay men in the Church; and they have no sense of the needs and culture of the Hispanic community which will be the Church in the United States.

 

 

Also these small, intentional communities (read splinter groups) are susceptible to manipulation by narcissistic con artists, even more than communities that have a structure of accountability and discipline  – however much they have been ignored by the hierarchy.

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Why We Need a Catholic-Jesuit Interfaith Dialogue

in Uncategorized 30 Comments

 The Jesuits are not aware that the Koran is not the Scripture of the Catholic Church. Perhaps interreligious dialogue between Jesuits and Catholics would help the Jesuits to understand Catholicism better.

 A plan to allow for the reading of the Quran from the pulpit during a Mass at St. Peter Church in Charlotte June 26 has been canceled, with an interfaith dialogue planned for October instead. St. Peter Parish had agreed to take part in an event called Faith Shared, in which priests, rabbis and Muslim scholars are scheduled to read sacred texts in each other’s houses of worship. The event is a project of two groups, the Interfaith Alliance and Human Rights First. In announcing the cancellation June 7, Jesuit Father Patrick Earl, pastor of St. Peter, noted that a 2004 Vatican document, “Redemptionis Sacramentum” (“The Sacrament of Redemption”) expressly forbids the reading of texts from other religions during the celebration of Mass.

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Success of the Doctrine of Succession

in Uncategorized 13 Comments

 

Some women in Catonsville, Maryland, were supposedly ordained by a women  bishop of dubious lineage, who emphasizes that 

Roman Catholic Womenpriests traces its origins to the so-called Danube Seven, a group of women who were ordained aboard a ship in the river in 2002 by three male bishops. Two of those bishops were never publicly identified, while the third, an Argentine named Romulo Braschi, was called a “founder of a schismatic community” by the Vatican. The seven women were excommunicated, but RCWP believes their ordinations were legitimate, providing the “apostolic succession” that made all subsequent ordinations legitimate. 

I wonder why the one doctrine  that such irregular ordinands focus upon is the necessity of apostolic succession of bishops for a valid ordination. If the Catholic Church is wrong about not being able to ordain women (and about a large variety  of other matters on which such people usually disagree with the Church) why do they think it is right about the issue of apostolic succession?

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Great Headlines of the Day

in Uncategorized No Comments

From The New York Times

 France is Scolded over Care of Great Hamster of Alsace 

 and 

Illinois: Priest Accused of Helping Mobster Keep Violin

The violin in question was probably safer with the mobsters than with the feds. Perhaps the priest was a musician .

 

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Tightening Up Disciplne

in Australia 46 Comments Tags: , , , ,

Bishop Morris’s Anglo-Catholic Model for Mass?

(PS – This is NOT Morrris, although he did say a clown mass, according to The Australian)

(PPS Gabrielle Saide (see comments below) says that Morris did NOT say a clown mass; in which case my only sartorial objection to him is the odd tie – Jeeves would no approve)

(PPPS It is odd that people object more to the allegation that he said a clown mass than the allegation that he differed seriously from the Vatican on doctrinal and sacramental issues)

Although Pope Benedict has not done enough, he is tightening Church discipline much more than John Paul ever did.

He has just suppressed the Cistercian monastery in Rome because of financial and moral irregularities.

He has also removed William Morris, the bishop of Toowoomba in Australia. Some the points of disagreement were trivial; on other points something could be said for Morris, and something for the Vatican.

See this, this, this, this, this this, and this.

From The Australian

His sartorial style can be seen in a photograph of him with a clown face, sent to The Weekend Australian by his critics.

Bishop Morris has a certain lack of good taste and common sense: he wore a tie with the archdiocesan coat of arms, and gave similar ones to his priests. If he wants priests to dress as laymen, they should wear regular clothes, not imitation secular clothes – although my wife is much in favor of clerical dress, because bachelors should not be allowed to choose their wardrobes. Morris also celebrated mass while dressed as a clown – that shows that he has a lack of liturgical understanding, common sense, and good taste – lacks common among priests and laity, who too often want to entertain or be entertained at mass. But bishops, for better or worse, are not removed because they lack common sense and good taste.

The sacramental and doctrinal points were:

Morris allowed the rite of general absolution in his diocese. Rome set up this rite and then started having second thoughts about it, and tried to restrict it to only emergency situations like war.

Morris also said that the Church, to deal with the declining number of priests, should discuss: 1. ordaining married men, 2. ordaining women, 3. allowing laicized priests to return to ministry, and 4. “recognizing” Anglican, Lutheran, and Uniting Church ministries.

I have been looking into the abuses of auricular confession and how it has alienated the laity, especially men. The Vatican has decided that auricular confession is necessary; Morris disagreed. I would tend to side with Morris, although I wonder if those who received general absolution performed penances appropriate to their sins – the spirit of penance is not much in evidence these days. It is a debatable point, and it would seem bishops should be given the leeway to decide what is best for their diocese in this disciplinary matter. Or the Vatican should make a compelling case for the importance of auricular confession.

Ordaining married men and allowing laicized and married priests to return to ministry is debatable. These are disciplinary matters; Eastern Catholic Churches already ordain married men; whether the Latin Church should follow their practice is a legitimate point for discussion.

What really got Morris in trouble were his remarks in 2006 about the possibility of ordaining women and “recognizing” Anglican and Protestant orders.

John Paul is issued a document, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, that said that the Church was not authorized to ordain women. He also went further and forbad discussion of it. Leo XIII in Apostolicae Curae had declared that Anglican orders were invalid because of defect of form: that is, the Anglican texts made it clear that the intention of Anglicans was not to ordain bishops and priests as the Catholic Church had always understood those offices.

Morris seems to have a voluntaristic concept of church law. That is, laws are not judgments if reason but acts of the will. But Leo XIII and John Paul both made it clear they were not promulgating a disciplinary law but making a judgment, and as they were popes exercising their ordinary magisterium, this judgment was guided by the Holy Spirit. Benedict has called these decisions infallible (others disagree). Morris seems to think that the non-ordination for women and the non-recognition of Anglican orders are acts of the will, which could be reversed.

One if his supporters proposes an Australian Council of laity (mostly women) and priests:

The Council’s mandate will be to review and reform the Church’s ecclesiastical structure, including the present papal positions on papal primacy, selection and infallibility and to restore democratic accountability to the laity. The Council will also review and reform all of the Church’s policies on gender and sexual matters, including on optional celibacy, female ordination, homosexuality, contraception and abortion, and make its decisions solely by majority vote.

This is almost pure voluntarism. Doctrines are reduced to policies, and policies are acts of the will of a majority.

Anyone who had taught in middle school could have told the Vatican that it is always a lot easier to loosen discipline than to tighten it. The Vatican let discipline get very loose and is now trying to restore order without provoking a schism. In developed countries the majority of laity and priests (and some bishops) have a different idea of Catholicism from the one dominant in the Vatican, and see little reason to cede to the Vatican’s judgments. And this situation is itself the result of Vatican policies. Both Vatican II and rapid and extreme changes in liturgy and discipline gave Catholics the idea that the pope had the ability to change anything he wanted, and that if he didn’t change what people wanted to change, he was just being stubborn and power-hungry.

The Vatican also has no sense of PR and how its actions will be perceived. If it wanted to restore discipline it should first have acted against sexual abusers (it did this for priests but not for bishops), secondly, it should have acted against the bishops and religious superiors who enabled sexual abuse and only then acted against those who were involved in liturgical abuse or doctrinal error.

So bishops and religious superiors who have enabled abuse get a free pass, and bishops who deviate in liturgical and doctrinal matters are removed from office. Morris, whatever his faults, took the right actions when dealing with a sexual abuse scandal in his diocese. The same could not be said for Pope Benedict when he was archbishop of Munich.

Bishop Morris with episcopal cravat

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