Catholic Ambassador Resigns

I've wondered from time to time whatever happened to Doug Kmiec, the supposedly pro-life Catholic Pepperdine law professor who campaigned hard back in 2008 to convince Catholics and Americans in general that Obama's presidency would be consistent with the Catholic Church's position on abortion. It's hard to believe that a scholar of Kmiec's stature would be gullible enough to be such a useful idiot. Yet, that's what Kmiec did, fawning over Obama in the process and receiving for his efforts, the ambassadorship to the very Catholic country of Malta, a position from which Kmiec has just resigned. Apparently, Barack has had his fill of Kmiec who must no longer be of any use to the administration on rounding up Catholics for Obama. American Papist blog has a thorough account of the matter.

Catholics Address Spiritual Roots of Overeating

With all the hand-wringing in the White House over obesity and diet, here is one diet solution that makes sense. The program is called Light Weigh.

I view it as vindication of my own views which are based on limited information, anecdotal evidence and scant background knowledge, none of which have stopped me from long being a proponent of the view that, in general, weight problems can usually be traced to eating problems, or, in a word, gluttony.

Gluttony has, might we say, two possible sources, the first one stemming from a lack of interest in and awareness about food (as in what's a fat vs. a carbohydrate or what sausages are made of) and the other stemming from a desire for food that has nothing to do with being hungry. It's this latter type of gluttony that a parishoner in Eagle River, Alaska addresses in Light Weigh. Among other things, her program helps people identify "stomach hunger versus heart hunger" and the program incorporates the teachings of St. Ignatius and St. Therese of Lisieux. Moderation and prayer are important and no foods are denied.

This second type of gluttony is one that I think we all struggle with, whether we happen to be fatties or not. Think about any one of those open houses you've attended where refreshments were served. Ever notice the rush to the food table? I do it myself precisely to see what's there and to make sure that I get what I want. (I am not, however, a hard-core glutton who stands and eats at the serving table.) At an all-you-can-eat buffet, watch diners load up their plates with every kind of meat, potato and vegetable, a jumbled heap of protein, fat and carbs that common sense tells us will be sickening.

I still remember being bitterly taken to task by my older sister for taking the last pork chop at dinner one night. She called out to the table, but really to my parents, that I had already gotten two pork chops and now I was going after more than my share! I ate the third, escaping the justice that my sister expected to be meted out to me by my parents showing that their love for us was equal, that I was no more deserving than she. Sounds silly, but it really isn't. That's why I always had to count out the strawberries for my kids, in front of them, so that there were no arguments over who got more. Or, more to the point, who mom loved more and so gave the greater portion to.

I'm not suggesting, nor do I necessarily think the Light Weigh program is suggesting, that if we take three pork chops or race to the dessert buffet we have lost faith in God. I think it just means that, in that moment when we reach for too much, we're responding to our baser instincts and we are, for that moment, reducing ourselves to mere material beings who have lost sight about the sort of happiness we'll get from a piece of chocolate cake.

First Things

Five years of a magazine subscription means that it's time to cull through all the back issues, re-read the favorites, toss the unwanteds and pass along the ones worth-reading all in order to create a few inches of shelf space for the new magazine subscriptions.

First Things is the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus's creation that deals with religion in public life. It's difficult to throw the magazine away since every issue is chock full of pithy, cerebral articles by heavy-weight thinkers in theology, economics, literature, Judaic studies, jurisprudence and more. There are articles by Nobel prize winners and judges and of course, there was the entertaining (and easier to read) "The Public Square" by Fr. Neuhaus in the back of every issue. However, the purging must be done, and, it's done with some relief as I confess to a certain impatience with the publication, a certain difficulty with it and even a feeling of opprobrium when each issue shows up in the mailbox. To put it bluntly, the fact is that I can't understand the majority of the articles. I get a good start with something like, "Theology After Isaac Newton", thinking that it should be really engaging, but by the third paragraph, I'm lost. Nonetheless, there are several articles that I did actually read from beginning to end--and understood ---so here's a compendium of First Things Articles To Be Remembered.

China's Catholic Moment 2009

An Apology For Democratic Capitalism 2009

The Sixties, Again and Again 2008

Children's Books, Lost and Found 2008

How Pedophilia Lost Its Cool 2008

The Vindication of Humanae Vitae 2008

What Marriage Is --And What It Isn't

What Really Happened At Vatican II 2008

December 2007 (Review of Marriage and Caste in America by Kay Hymowitz)

October 2007 (Review of The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier)

As I cull through a few more stacks, the compendium may grow.

Chris Christie and Teachers' Union Fracas

Pope Benedict Comments on Condoms

As early as Saturday afternoon CBS News was reporting that the Pope, in a Vatican letter, had approved the use of condoms. Surprise.

American Papist usually has the best coverage of such matters and points out that the Pope's comment about condoms is, first of all, part of a book-length interview to be considered within a larger context, and, second, that the Italian news media leaked portions of the interview.

It seems that the Pope didn't approve the use of condoms either in general or as a way to combat AIDS and he didn't make his remarks as part of official Church teaching. Instead he was responding to the interviewer's comments about AIDS in Africa. The Pope was re-stating that the Catholic Church helps those who suffer from AIDS "up close and concretely." He pointed out that the Church " does not speak from the tribunal of the newspapers, but helps her brothers and sisters where they are actually suffering." Naturally, CBS News didn't report any of that. Nor did they report the Pope's remarks on how the use of condoms feeds into the root problems of sex divorced from love and the "banalization of sexuality."

Here is the relevant passage and what the Pope actually said in the interview:

On the occasion of your trip to Africa in March 2009, the Vatican’s policy on AIDs once again became the target of media criticism.Twenty-five percent of all AIDs victims around the world today are treated in Catholic facilities. In some countries, such as Lesotho, for example, the statistic is 40 percent. In Africa you stated that the Church’s traditional teaching has proven to be the only sure way to stop the spread of HIV. Critics, including critics from the Church’s own ranks, object that it is madness to forbid a high-risk population to use condoms.

The media coverage completely ignored the rest of the trip to Africa on account of a single statement. Someone had asked me whythe Catholic Church adopts an unrealistic and ineffective position on AIDs. At that point, I really felt that I was being provoked, because the Church does
more than anyone else. And I stand by that claim. Because she is the only institution that assists people up close and concretely, with prevention, education, help, counsel, and accompaniment. And because she is second to none in treating so many AIDs victims, especially children with AIDs.

I had the chance to visit one of these wards and to speak with the patients. That was the real answer: The Church does more than anyone else, because she does not speak from the tribunal of the newspapers, but helps her brothers and sisters where they are actually suffering. In my remarks I was not making a general statement about the condom issue, but merely said, and this is what caused such great offense, that we cannot solve the problem by distributing condoms. Much more needs to be done. We must stand close to the people, we must guide and help them; and we must do this both before and after they contract the disease.

As a matter of fact, you know, people can get condoms when they want them anyway. But this just goes to show that condoms alone do not resolve the question itself. More needs to happen. Meanwhile, the secular realm itself has developed the so-called ABC Theory: Abstinence-Be Faithful-Condom, where the condom is understood only as a last resort, when the other two points fail to work. This means that the sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalization
of sexuality, which, after all, is precisely the dangerous source of the attitude of no longer seeing sexuality as the expression of love, but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves. This is why the fight against the banalization of sexuality is also a part of the struggle to ensure that sexuality is treated as a positive value and to enable it to have a positive effect on the whole of man’s being.

There may be a basis in the case ofsome individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of
responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.

Are you saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?

She of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality.

Still, as one clever reader points out, one wishes the Pope had just responded to that last question with a simple 'no.' But Pope Benedict isn't a simple person and these aren't simple times, so we're once again left to slug this out with the mainstream media and other Catholic bashers.

The International Baccalaureate--Infiltrating?

I certainly had no intention of rushing to the defense of the International Baccalaureate (IB) program when I read this article on the website of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-Fam), but it was a poor editorial choice for a worthy organization and the IB, though flawed and left-wing, deserves a better shot.

C-Fam is active at the United Nations with its mission of promoting a "proper understanding of international law, protecting national sovereignty and the dignity of the human person." I am familiar with their work just as I am familiar with the IB curriculum. Consequently when C-Fam linked the IB and the UN to the "biggest educational scam perpetrated on American schools today" I couldn't help but take notice.

The problem as C-Fam reports it seems to be that the IB is trying to work its way into American public schools in order to disseminate its UN, internationalist, socialist, left-wing ideas while masquerading as legit education. Leading the charge is a Long Island parent, Lisa McLoughlin, who has her own website, Truth About International Baccalaureate.

One has to wonder just how much the IB's admittedly secular, multi-cultural curriculum differs from what passes for education in many of today's American public schools. (I'm thinking of the young man in California who was told to remove the American flag from his bicycle. I doubt if either the UN or the IB was behind that.) Even if it were the case that the IB and the UN are in collusion to wreak (further) havoc on American public education, both C-Fam and Ms. McLoughlin have been sidetracked from the underlying problem by attacking the IB rather than the American public education bureaucracy.

Among the innumberable ills of our public education system is that it is essentially a government monopoly that dictates to America's parents what their children will be taught and penalizes those of us who choose to opt out of the system by denying us the opportunity to use our tax dollars toward the education of our choice. For those public schools out there that are choosing to adopt the IB curriculum, the decision lies at the feet of America's educators, themselves in many cases so steeped in the culture of relativism, secularism, and multi-culturalism that they no longer know enough or care enough to provide curriculums that teach American history, American exceptionalism, Judeo-Christian ideals and the nuts and bolts of the three Rs. Even if the IB and the UN were beating down the door, these educators have the choice to just say no.

Given that there are so many truly nefarious things that the United Nations promotes and that C-Fam reports on so well, this detour to the IB curriculum is a distraction. Parents like Lisa McLoughlin would do more good by devoting their efforts to exposing the public schools for the failures that they are and crusading for school vouchers, tax incentives for home schoolers and an end to teachers' unions.

(By the way, the IB curriculum is a bona fide school curriculum whose students fare quite well academically. When my own kids took math, chemistry and physics in college, their freshman year college material was largely review. The preparation they had from their IB math and science courses was not the exception. Their IB history and English courses emphasized reading, writing and research. By 10th grade most IB students are accustomed to writing 1200-word essays on a regular basis. In foreign language exams from French to Chinese, IB students are able to score competitively on internationally normed tests. Subjects like anthropology, philosophy, economics and psychology are all taught at a challenging level.)

Catholicity in Higher Education

Oy vey ist mir. It's another Catholic-bashing article from Inside Higher Ed!

The article begins with a false premise that sets up an opposition between Catholic teaching and academic freedom by asking "whether allegiance to church orthodoxy trumps the free spirit of inquiry celebrated in academe."

One has to wonder first of all at the bold claim that there exists a "free spirit of inquiry" on today's campuses. But, more to the point, Catholic orthodoxy by its nature never "trumps free inquiry." It promotes it.

Here are three things Pope Benedict XVI said in his 2008 address to Catholic educators at Catholic University of America:

"I wish to reaffirm the great value of academic freedom. In virtue of this freedom you are called to search for the truth wherever careful analysis of evidence leads you."

"God's desire to make himself known, and the innate desire of all human beings to know the truth, provide the context for human inquiry into the meaning of life."

And the Pope also said:

"[Catholic educators]have the duty and privilege to ensure that students receive instruction in Catholic doctrine and practice. This requires that public witness to the way of Christ, as found in the Gospel and upheld by the Church's Magisterium, shapes all aspects of an institution's life, both inside and outside the classroom."

What this article should have been about is first, the fact that many Catholic colleges and universities are not ensuring that their students receive Catholic-inspired instruction, and, lamentably, many so-called Catholic colleges actually prevent Catholic teaching from shaping their institutions.

Secondly, there is in fact a conflict over academic freedom that warrants discussion though it isn't the conflict that the author sets up. The conflict is between on the one hand, the secular, relativism of academia which denies that truth exists,and, on the other hand, the Catholic Church's teaching which avers that truth does exist, that we are each called to search for it using our intellect as inspired by our faith in God and guided by Catholic teaching. The secularism and relativism of today's culture is the road block, placed intentionally, that "trumps the free spirit of inquiry" and denies us the freedom to search for the truth.