Building on the Rock

President Obama recently gave a speech in which he referenced the Sermon on the Mount, in which Our Lord told the parable of the two men who built their houses, one on sand and the other on solid rock. The floods came and swept away the house built on sand, but the house built on rock remained standing.

The President went on to propose five pillars of rock on which we need to build our economy:

1. New rules for Wall Street - he says that the old rules rewarded reckless risk-taking. Investors aren't likely to jump back into the market if they know that the rules are going to be changed. They'll wait to see what the rules are, and then base their investments decisions on whether they can make money playing by the new rules. In other words, he's guaranteed stagnation in the markets.

2. New investments in education - when a Democrat says "investment" he means "spending," even though there's no guarantee that increased spending yields any better results.

3. New investments in renewable energy and technology - this might eventually have some benefit, but in the short term it's going to drive up energy costs, effectively acting as a brake on economic recovery.

4. New investments in health care - more spending for what, exactly? He says he wants to cut costs for families and businesses, but then who pays? The Government? With what? Oh yeah, taxes from families and businesses, but don't worry, he'll only tax the families and businesses that deserve to be taxed!

5. New savings in the federal budget - with all this "investment" going on, he still thinks he's going to save money in federal budget? Care to guess where he plans to "find" those savings?

I don't think that the five points proposed by the President are what Jesus had in mind when he told the parable.

On the other hand, Pope Benedict XVI proposes that we build our house on the Rock of Christ, which means to build on Christ and with Christ. "Building on Christ means basing all your desires, aspirations, dreams, ambitions and plans on his will. It means saying to yourself, to your family, to your friends, to the whole world and, above all to Christ: “Lord, in life I wish to do nothing against you, because you know what is best for me."

He warns that there will be rejection and misfortune. "Maybe it is easier to base one’s life on the shifting sands of one’s own worldview, building a future far from the word of Jesus and sometimes even opposed to it. Be assured that he who builds in this way is not prudent, because he wants to convince himself and others that in his life no storm will rage and no wave will strike his house. To be wise means to know that the solidity of a house depends on the choice of foundation. Do not be afraid to be wise; that is to say, do not be afraid to build on the rock!"

We need to build our personal lives on the Rock of Christ. As followers of Christ, it is our responsibility to carry our Christian principles into the marketplace. To endure, the economy needs to be built upon Christian principles as well. Even so, we cannot expect that there will be no storms, just that we will weather them.

SSPX Still Rejects Vatican II

When Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the man who led the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) into formal schism, died, leadership of the SSPX passed to Bishop Bernard Fellay. Fellay was one of the four men illicitly ordained to the episcopate by Archbishop Lefebvre, thereby earning for all five of the men an automatic excommunication.

In an effort to move efforts toward ending the schism, Pope Bennedict XVI recently rescinded the excommunication of the four bishops ordained by Lefebvre, including Fellay. The move hasn’t worked out very well for the Vatican. One of the four has now become widely notorious for denying that millions of Jews were killed by the Nazi regime in Germany.

The attempt at rapprochement has not produced any apparent movement toward reunification by the SSPX. Indeed, it appears that Bishop Fellay continues to refuse to accept the authority of the documents of the Second Vatican Council.

From the National Catholic Register:

Hopes of reconciliation between Rome and the Society of St. Pius X appear to have suffered a serious setback.

The Italian news agency ANSA has reported that Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior general of the traditionalist society, told the Swiss daily Le Courier yesterday that the society will not accept the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

Vatican officials have made it clear that, even in the wake of Pope Benedict’s lifting of the excommunications of Bishop Fellay and three other Society of St. Pius X bishops, reconciliation with the society is possible only if it accepts the authority of all of the Council’s documents.

But Bishop Fellay told Le Courier that the Second Vatican Council has caused the Church “only damages,” ANSA reported.

“The aftermath of the Council has been to empty seminaries, nunneries and churches,” Bishop Fellay said. “Thousands of priests have left their orders and millions of faithful have stopped being practicing Catholics and have joined sects.”

Bishop Fellay stressed the SSPX is not prepared to budge on its opposition to the Second Vatican Council before the start of discussions with the Vatican about coming back into full communion with the Church.

“The Vatican has acknowledged the need for preliminary talks aimed at dealing with basic issues which stem from the Second Vatican Council,” said Bishop Fellay. “Making the acceptance of the Council a preliminary condition is putting the cart before the horse.”

According to the ANSA article, there was no immediate comment from the Vatican about Bishop Fellay’s remarks.

Shocking News of the Day

I don't ever want to be accused of avoiding the hard truths.

The Catholic News Agency is reporting that Legionaries of Christ spokesman Jim Fair has confirmed "that there are aspects of his (Legionary founder Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, who died in January 2008) life that weren’t appropriate for a Catholic priest." For extensive commentary on what this could mean for the order and for the Church, I refer you to Patrick Madrid's post from this morning.

Fr. Maciel also founded the apostolic movement Regnum Christi, of which I have been a member since October 2001. In the wake of these new revelations into the life of the founder, many people are asking what the attraction of a movement like Regnum Christi is. I fully intend to take that up in a future post, but not right now.

Concerning the future of the order and the movement, Mr. Fair noted to CNA that their particular charism was given by Fr. Maciel and approved by the Church. The Legionaries of Christ and Regnum Christi will continue to serve Christ and the Church according to that charism.

It is disappointing to me personally that the admission that the founder might not have lived up to the ideals of holiness that he proposed to others was only made after the new allegations became public.

It is also somewhat shocking that, today of all days, I received via email a letter from the General Director of the Regnum Christi movement that begins, "I would like to begin this letter by congratulating you on the occasion of these holy days we have lived, and by wishing you a very happy New Year of 2009, as we thank God for all the blessings that he has granted us during this period." It would have been appropriate three or four weeks ago. Today, it was highly inappropriate. The letter did contain one paragraph that caught my eye.

Lord, we ask you to halt our hand and tongue before hurting our brothers and sisters. Don’t allow my words to harm or wound you, who dwell in those around me. We ask your pardon for everything that may have hurt or offended anyone, and we ask you for the courage and strength never to hold onto grudges or resentment. We offer you our lives so that we may always do good, as you have taught us, and so that our words may be words that you sow in the hearts of your children.

The Council, the Society, and the Pope

The big news out of Rome last week was the lifting of the excommunication of four bishops from the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). I know that there are a couple of people (hi Mom) who actually read my blog, and they might not be aware of the history behind the excommunications or the SSPX.

In brief, there were a lot of Catholics who thought (with the aid of the press) that the Second Vatican Council represented a departure from traditional Catholic teachings. They took advantage of the chaos following the council to run amok, pushing a lot of changes that the Council documents never authorized. In the midst of this craziness, Pope Paul VI revised the rite of the mass. I was born in 1969. I don’t have any personal memory of any of this, but it was a painful time for a lot of faithful Catholics. Many of them had their faith damaged.

A group of French seminarians really didn’t like what they were seeing, and they gathered around Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. They formed the Society of St. Pius X in 1970 and established their own seminary in Sweden Switzerland. By 1974, Lefebvre was challenging the authenticity of both the Pope and the Council. In 1975, approval of the SSPX was withdrawn and the seminary ordered closed by Rome, with the approval of Pope Paul VI. The SSPX ignored the Pope. The next year, 1976, the Pope reminded Lebebvre that under Canon Law, he could not ordain his seminarians. Lefebvre ordained his seminarians anyway. The Pope suspended Lefebvre’s faculties, to no effect. By its refusal to submit to the authority of the Pope, the SSPX had placed itself in schism.

By 1986, Pope John Paul II was seeking a way to end the schism and bring the SSPX back into union with the Church. An agreement was signed in May 1988. Under the agreement the SSPX would get one bishop, to be consecrated from among its own priests. The day after signing the agreement, Lefebvre backed out. After announcing that he would ordain four bishops, the Pope warned Lefebvre that, should he do so, he would incur excommunication latae sententiae, per canon 1382. Lefebvre consecrated his four bishops and all five received upon themselves the penalty of excommunication.

Archbishop Lefebvre has since died, but the four SSPX bishops ordained by him have had their excommunications lifted. Pope Benedict XVI hopes that this step will renew discussions with the SSPX, with an aim toward reuniting them with the Church. However, it does not appear that any of the four bishops has expressed any contrition or willingness to submit to the authority of the Holy See, and one of the four is now enjoying media scrutiny for denying the holocaust in an interview on Swedish television.

The old Latin mass of 1962 is now widely available for those who wish to attend it, although some travel might be required. There are approved apostolates within the Church devoted to practicing and preserving the old mass. The issue, for the SSPX, is whether they are willing to accept the primacy of the successor of Peter. At the moment, it looks as though the traditional Anglicans are closer to reunion than is the SSPX.

See Holier Than Thou in the April 2003 issue of This Rock. Be sure to read the angry letters from SSPX fans in the July-August 2003 issue as well.

Elections Matter

On one hand, we have a President who has stated that he doesn't want women and girls who are unfortunate enough to get pregnant to be punished with a baby; therefore, abortion on demand must be available. The United States is now going to promote abortion and contraception in its foreign policy.

And we have the nominally Catholic Speaker of the House, who defends the inclusion of funding for contraceptives in an emergency economic stimulus package because it will save costs. Babies cost money. They are a drain on the economy. We must reduce the number of babies.

And then we have PBS, the government broadcaster, arguing that feeding tubes should not be given to Alzheimers patients. We're told not to think of it as starving the patient. "The patient will die, but they will die of dehydration, not starvation. When you think about it, that’s how God designed most of us to die. We get some kind of disease. We stop eating and drinking. It’s the lack of water will kill us within a couple of weeks, not the lack of calories."

53% of Catholics voted for these people.

The Idiossey by Iowahawk

This post is not related to Catholicism in any way (did somebody just sigh in relief?).

Is this man hewn from Olympus,
Sent by Zeus to save our souls?
Or a plastic dashboard Jesus
In a car he can't control?

Will this Adonis save the planet?
Or is he fleecing golden sheep?
Ask another Muse tomorrow,
Hell if I know, it's all Greek to me.

Burma Shave

Iowahawk has written a wonderful parody. If you have twenty minutes to spare, it's well worth a read. There were several lines that had me laughing out loud.

People's Peace Pastoral

It is with a degree of sadness that I read the February 2009 issue of First Things, knowing that there won't be any more comments from Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, who died last week. It will be entries like this one that I will miss the most.

In 1983, the Catholic bishops issued, to much media applause, a pastoral letter, "The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response." It is now viewed as an embarrassment that almost everybody would like to forget, including most bishops. Riddled with the language of appeasement and coexistence and addressing geopolitical and military details in which the bishops had no plausible competence, the letter was a direct assault on the policies of the Reagan administration that are generally recognized as having been vindicated five years later, with the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union. Not all the bishops are embarrassed, however. Speaking at Jesuit-run Seattle University, Bishop Gabino Zavala, auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles and president of the Catholic peace group Pax Christi USA, called for a celebration of the 1983 letter, asserting that the only thing that has changed is that the "war on communism" has been replaced by the "war on terror," and we have yet to learn that "violence only begets violence." The bishop is calling for a grassroots consultation that, in honor of the 1983 letter, will produce a "people's peace pastoral." I can curb my enthusiasm, but it's likely to do less damage to the Church's credibility than another peace pastoral by the pastors.

It's worth noting that Seattle University employed Ann Holmes Redding as an associate professor teaching New Testament. Miss Redding was in the news a while back for seeing no contradiction in being, at the same time, an ordained Episcopalian priest and a practicing Moslem.

A Stern Warning

If the National Transportation Safety Board confirms that US Airways flight 1549 was, indeed, brought down by birds, and those birds are determined to be geese, then I expect the incoming administration to issue a stern warning to our neighbors up north.

Thanks be to God and to the pilot of the plane that everyone was rescued.

Praying for the President

Part of ritual of night prayers with the kids involves a litany of people for whom we ask God's blessing. We pray for our pastor, and our neighbor with cancer, and our President. I've thought a bit about whether we should ask for God to bless President Obama, given his apparent commitment to extending an unlimited "right" to abortion. I've concluded that we will continue to pray for our President after January 20.

I think that Russell Shaw put it pretty well in a recent column, which he begins by likening to the just completed season of the Washington Redskins football team:

Like Obama, moral conservatives also need to learn a lesson from football: Don't let your guard down on abortion with this administration or they'll probably go for the bomb. Hope and pray President Obama succeeds on many things. Hope and pray he fails on this. Work hard to bring that about.

Let us all pray that God's hand will guide the actions of our incoming President.

St. Paul, pray for us.

Israel and Gaza

Having just recently written about resisting the temptation toward blog overreach, I now find myself compelled to attempt posting way above my weight class. What prompts this sudden reversal is an article by Richard Vandewater appearing on the front page of Catholic Exchange. Vandewater is a priest of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. If I read his concluding paragraphs correctly, Fr. Vandewater considers the state of Israel to be a criminal entity for it’s oppression of the Palestinian people. The United States, in supporting Israel, is violating the laws of God and humanity.

Before I start digging into his arguments, I must defend my reasons for doing so. Why am I bothering to comment on international affairs half a world away?

In the United States, we live in what can be described as a republic or a representative democracy. We elect our legislators and executives in free elections. Even political appointees are appointed and approved by elected officials who are supposed to be answerable to the will of the public. As a citizen of the republic, I vote in elections and can lobby the government to make policy (foreign and domestic) in agreement with my beliefs. If somebody tells me that my government has an immoral policy, I have a responsibility to make my displeasure known. Having read an article in which my government is criticized for supporting a criminal (i.e., immoral) policy, I must take it seriously and at least give it some thought. Since this is a blog of the thoughts and reflections of an ordinary Catholic (me), I’m choosing to share those thoughts.

First off are the reported comments of the president of the Vatican’s Council for Justice and Peace, Cardinal Renato Martino, that Gaza “looks more and more like a big concentration camp.” A concentration camp is like a prison, only the inmates aren’t criminals. I think the cardinal is trying to suggest that the population of Gaza is being held prisoner, but by whom? Israel tightly secures its border with Gaza because of the frequency of suicide bombers. Even then, the border is not closed altogether. If Gaza is like a concentration camp, it is like one in which the prisoners can come and go, provided they are willing to wait in line and follow directions.

The cardinal “accused the combatants of thinking only of their own interests.” This should not be a surprise to anyone. Israel looks after Israel’s interests, which consist of ensuring the security of her people, that they might not have rockets fired at them. Israel’s interest is to stop the rockets. What are the interests of Hamas? Israel’s action was precipitated by weeks of Hamas firing rockets into Israel. What was Hamas hoping to accomplish? The unguided rockets were fired at Israeli population centers. They surely couldn’t hope to inflict any real damage on Israel, other than to kill a few civilians and terrify the populace. How did they expect the Israeli Defense Forces to react? In terms of the interests involved, I am sympathetic to those of Israel and left wondering why anyone would suggest that Israel should just accept the rocket fire.

In a follow-up interview, the cardinal “lamented the deaths of so many Palestinian civilians and children and Israel’s destruction of nonmilitary targets like the U.N. school.” Nobody suggests that civilian deaths are anything other than a tragic affect of urban warfare. However, the Israelis are not targeting non-combatant civilians, and are making every effort to minimize such casualties while completing their military objectives. Some would suggest that if a rocket launcher is located in a civilian area, that it cannot be targeted. Unfortunately, it’s still going to be fired. If a mortar team sets up in a school yard, then guess where the return fire is going? Hamas knows this, and is intentionally putting residents of Gaza at risk. In the absence of the rockets or the mortars, the apartments and the school are never targeted. Such losses could have been avoided only by letting Hamas get away with using human shields for cover. If some launchers are untargeted because of where they are placed, guess where all of the launchers will eventually be placed. I simply do not believe the cardinal’s assertion that Israel has “technology that can let them identify an ant on the ground,” although I suppose that even I could do that if I get close enough.

Pope Benedict XVI, appropriately, laments the damage and suffering that the violence has brought. The terrible thing about violence is that it escalates. Israel doesn’t realistically have the option of turning the other cheek (a Christian concept). If Israel does nothing or tries to negotiate, Hamas is emboldened and more Israelis die. What would happen if Hamas were to renounce violence? Peace. Hamas doesn’t want peace.

Vandewater then quotes Congressman Dennis Kucinich, of all people!

Today U.S. tax dollars, U.S. jets and U.S. helicopters provided to Israel are enabling the slaughter in Gaza. The Administration enables Israel to press forward with the attack against defenseless civilians, blocks efforts promoting a ceasefire at the U.N. and refuses to make Israel comply with conditions that arms shipments not be used for aggression. Israel is going to receive $30 billion in a ten-year period for military assistance, without having to abide by any humanitarian principles, international laws or standards of basic human decency. Wake up America.

Where to begin? Kucinich seems to believe that the Israelis are attacking and slaughtering innocent civilians. Where does Hamas fit into Kucinich’s world? When the Israelis call ahead to inform families that there building will be fired upon and they should leave, that hardly seems like an affective way to target a population for slaughter. Abstaining from a UN vote is hardly the same as blocking efforts to promote a ceasefire. If we wanted to block efforts, we could use our Security Council veto. As far as aggression is concerned, it was Hamas who provoked Israel by firing rockets at Israeli settlements. What humanitarian principles, international laws, or standard of basic human decency does Hamas abide by? Wake up Congressman Kucinich.

The Palestinian people have suffered for a long time and continue to suffer, but I don’t accept that Israel and the policies of the United States are the cause of their suffering. The U.S. has spent much diplomatic effort over the years trying to broker peace. Unfortunately, when Yassir Arafat was offered everything that he said the Palestinians wanted, he refused. Peace will come to Palestine when the Palestinians reject groups like Hamas and start seeking peace.