(Part Eight: SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL) 12 Days on Pilgrimage in August
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn. 14:6).
Our Marian Franciscan Pilgrimage brought us to Germany. This reflection is to aid Catholics beyond Germany about the “Synodal Path” of Pope Francis. In sum, on 21 July 2022, a “Declaration of the Holy See” to the Catholics in Germany, clarified that it would not be licit “to initiate in the dioceses, before an agreement at the level of the universal Church, official new structures or doctrines, which would represent a wound to ecclesial communion and a threat to the unity of the Church.”[1] The modality of Vatican II has an optic to help resolve the contours.
On 11 October 1962, Pope St. John XXIII opened the Council beside St. Peter’s tomb: “Mother Church rejoices that, by the singular gift of Divine Providence, … under the auspices of the virgin Mother of God, …. The magisterium (teaching authority) is unfailing and perdures until the end of time. Christ is the center of history. For two thousand years the great problem remains, i.e. people are either with Him and His Church or without Him. Some deliberately oppose His Church and give rise to confusion. History is the teacher of life. Prophets of gloom had not learned from history. He lamented for the bishops who were absent because they were imprisoned for their faithfulness to Christ.[2]
“The greatest concern of the Ecumenical Council is this: that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be guarded and taught more efficaciously. …The Christian, Catholic, and apostolic spirit of the whole world expects a step forward towards a doctrinal penetration and a formation of consciousness in faithful and perfect conformity to the authentic doctrine, which, however, should be studied and explored through the methods of research and through literary forms of thought. The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another.”
“The truth of the Lord will remain forever. …Often errors vanish as quickly as they arise, like fog before the sun. The Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity … to meet the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching rather than condemnations. Fallacious teaching, opinions and dangerous concepts… contrast honesty and have produced lethal fruits, that it would seem humanity is inclined to condemn. The Catholic Church has the great duty to work actively so that there may be fulfilled the great mystery of that unity, which Jesus Christ invoked with fervent prayer from His heavenly Father. The mystery of unity animates those who follow non-Christian religions.”
Recall the plan for the Council brought a complex of problems to the center of theological questioning. Long gone is the shift to catholic from focus on Roman at Vatican I (1869-1870). Pope John set out to bring a shift of attention to catholic. The Council began to rebuild a dialogical and fraternal Church imbued with Charity in Truth [3] for the development of every person and of all humanity. The Church’s successes and failures are perforated, not a secret. Pope Francis’ vision of “synodality” requires listening to the Holy Spirit and the Gospel. The credibility of Church authority, including papal authority, Christian anthropology and sexual morality, and the reliability of Scripture are always in the center of theological questioning.
From Pope John, Vatican II, to Pope Francis the Church has never lost sight that her inmost nature is communio, a sharing of and fellowship in the body of the Lord. Developments may have appeared to, yet never contradicted what has been constant in the doctrine taught by the Church before and since John XXIII opened the Council. The Council analyzed Tradition as never a simple and anonymous handing on of teaching, but as linked to a person, a living word, with a concrete reality in faith. Successio and traditio were originally neighboring terms, practically synonymous. Succession is never the taking over of some official powers that are then at the fancy of the office bearer. The official powers are at the service of the word. The person with the office testifies to what has been entrusted. Official power overshadows the bearer, who fades into the background.
In the second century, the anti-Gnostic polemics challenged the purpose of succession. Gnostics contrasted the true apostolic tradition of the Church with the pseudo-apostolic tradition of Gnosis (knowledge). They taught secret information as part of a secret tradition passed down from the apostles. A line can be traced to the communities in which the apostles themselves had been at work or had received letters from the apostles.The head of the community now traces his spiritual ancestors. If there could be any knowledge anywhere of the oral heritage from the apostles, it is found in these apostolic communities. Succession is equal to tradition. Succession holds fast to the apostolic word. Tradition continues the existence of authorized witnesses. The reality of the Word of God and the reality based upon it always makes use of human circumstances to express itself in the community.[4] Hence, Gnostic secret information and traditions (plural) has a Catholic answer: traditio. Tradition is singular.
Peter and the apostles were to preach the word. Sixty years after the start of Vatican II, anxiety in relation to the future seems more pervasive in the West. [5] Agree? Kierkegaard, in a Protestant tradition, saw anxiety everywhere with no exception. His deep reflection is on the demonic as unfreedom that wants to close itself off, which is impossible. Anxiety manifests itself when there is contact with the good. Inclosing reserve is silence. A person will not say what needs to be said. In reply, knowledge of truth-filled love moves Christians from silence.
[1] “Declaration of the Holy See,” Vatican Press Office, 21 July 2022 [2] Examples: we visited the Czech Republic, St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague, where Joseph Cardinal Beran is buried. He was only allowed to attend the Council after 1964. We visited the Slovak Republic where Jan Chrysostom Cardinal Korec, Nitra, Slovakia, was imprisoned until 1969 when the Vatican succeeded in having him released. When he met Pope Paul, the Holy Father wept and gave him his ring and crosier. [3] Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate (Encyclical on Integral Human Development, 29 June 2009) [4] Pope Benedict XVI, God’s Word (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), 20-22. [5] S. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 111 – 162. His psychological treatment is a rebelling against the appropriation of Hegel in Danish Lutheranism.
Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual
Research Fellow Pontifical Faculty of St. Bonaventure, Rome
Visiting Scholar, McGrath Institute for Church Life
University of Notre Dame
October 12, 2022
October 11, 2022 marks the 60th Anniversary of the Opening of the Second Vatican Council as well as the Feast Day of Saint John XXIII
(Part Seven: What to Think about an Erring Conscience; How it Differs from a Muffled Conscience; How They Relate to Invincible Ignorance and Truth) 12 Days on Pilgrimage in August
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn. 14:6).
In part six I began with Pope Emeritus Benedict’s pastoral clarity about Catholic teaching that a person must follow an erring conscience. I emphatically agree and ask: how can I help a searcher who may or may not understand and identify an erring conscience? The question of an erring conscience is a mega-question. Benedict does not develop the theme of how the voice of God becomes incapacitated in a person with an erring conscience. He knows a longer conversation is needed when he states: “the removal of truth, which took place earlier and now takes its revenge in the form of an erring conscience, is the real guilt that lulls man in false security and ultimately abandons him to solitude in a pathless wasteland.”[1]
I am highlighting Benedict’s “narrative” approach about an erring conscience. Recall his colleague’s theory (see part six of this series) of the justifying force of the subjective conscience with the premise: a firm subjective conviction includes lack of any doubts and scruples. Benedict continues with his colleague: if it is generally true that an erring conscience could lead to salvation, the SS troops under Hitler would have been justified and would now be in heaven. They had committed their evil deeds out of fanatical conviction and without the least disturbance to their consciences. At that, another colleague intervened: “Yes, that is so!” Hitler and his collaborators were deeply convinced of their cause and could not have acted differently. Despite the objective horror of their deeds, they had acted morally, from a subjective perspective.
Benedict did not buy it. If you keep before you the theory of the subjective conscience and that it might lead to salvation; if you have not shut out the memory of World War II that is hard to revisit, then ponder deeply. Clear headed thinkers, from Pope Emeritus Benedict to one’s grandmother and mother, reply. The latter use simpler words than Benedict, yet their thought converges. The theory of the justifying force of the subjective conscience and concept of conscience that leads to such inferences is false, he concludes. To say that one has a subjective conviction without any doubts or scruples does not justify a person.
By using World War II as a symbol, Pope Emeritus Benedict is applying the lessons to our day with deep existential and spiritual gravity. He is awakening the problem of not listening by stirring up guilt feelings that shatter a conscience’s false security. If my existence lacks criticism made by my self-satisfied existence, maybe remembering or experiencing physical pain will wake me up. Several biblical texts (e.g. Lk 18: 9-14) debunk the theory of justification by means of an erring conscience that was put forward by Benedict’s two colleagues. Memory of the lie to neighbor, to self, to nation, the denial of responsibility that information of evil was known and deemed inconvenient truth amounts to: not listening being willed as not listening.
Related speculative problems need a theological cleanup about the erring conscience and how the voice of God in the person becomes incapacitated. Complacency in the modern age interlocks with listening to how we enjoy the gifts of modernity, while simultaneously not listening to one atrocity after another. More than the flag that Benedict has given is needed for a longer conversation. His essays offer a narrative style to decode why a person may never try to get to the truth that is intrinsically correctible. Formation of conscience is a luxury item, in the sense that a genuine conscience has and learns a correct and distinct vocabulary. Modernity pretends that conscience is incapacitated. Modernity rules out that “not willing to listen” is antecedent to inaction that has consequences of devastating evil on the world. Modernity excuses a counterfeit conscience. Modernity dampens down conscience.
A historical cleanup is needed as well. In the early 1990’s, a more peaceful time before the unjust Ukraine war (24 February 2022), Benedict praises the Patriarch of Moscow for lamenting the system of deceit that kept the people who lived in it as having lost much of their powers of perception. “Society had lost the ability to feel compassion, and human emotions had withered away…. We must bring society back to the eternal moral values.”[2] The Patriarch was pleading to develop anew the capacity to hear God’s voice in one’s heart, a capacity he saw as almost extinguished. Pope Emeritus Benedict parsed the Patriarch’s lament: It is only in an initial phase that error, the erring conscience, is comfortable.[3] He praised the Patriarch for drawing attention to the dehumanization of the world and a deadly danger when conscience falls silent and nothing is done to resist it. When I say that this forward looking vision of the Patriarch of Moscow needs a historical clean up, I mean that today Patriarch Kyrill and the Russian Orthodox clergy who are in league with him are complicit in Putin’s unjust invasion of Ukraine. Their plan is to liquidate the Greco-Catholic Church in Ukraine. Forgotten is the Christianization of the Kievan Rus in 988, which includes Ukraine, before Moscow was born.
Pope Emeritus Benedict’s “narrative” style embraces the conversation style of Vatican II. Truth wins because it is truth, with gentleness and power.[4] His critique of the German nation in World War II is for willfully not listening to conscience. By the willful ignoring of conscience, guilt has no excuse. Muffled consciences found truth[5] inconvenient. Nor can America as a winner get a free pass. Most urgently, Patriarch Kyrill once lamented and pleaded to develop anew the capacity to hear God’s voice in one’s heart, a capacity he saw as almost extinguished.[6] Yet now he has agreed with Putin’s invasion. What is the truth to the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kyrill?
[1] Pope Benedict XVI, Values in a Time of Upheaval (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 81. [2]Values, 83. The Soviet Union dissolved on Christmas Day 1991. Putin seeks its reversal. [3]Values, 83. I find this insight of Pope Emeritus Benedict about the erring conscience riveting. [4]Dignitatis Humanae Personae, Documents of Vatican II. [5] Inconvenient truth is a soft word for total evil: what led up to, who were targeted for extermination, when, where, why, realities of transport to slave labor camps, decisions who will live, mass killings, disposal, lies, attempts to cover what few could believe was the truth, etc. Documentation continues to shock. See Ken Burns’ et al documentary: The United States and the Holocaust. My point is: no one gets a free pass. [6] Is the Patriarch acting as Putin’s altar boy? Francis used the image fraternally. Kyrill was to meet Francis in Kazakhstan in September but canceled. Recall their meeting in Havana. Solely theater?
Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual
Research Fellow Pontifical Faculty of St. Bonaventure, Rome
Visiting Scholar, McGrath Institute for Church Life
University of Notre Dame
60th Anniversary of the Opening of the Second Vatican Council
and the Feast Day of Saint John XXIII – October 11, 2022
With the St. Kateri Reliquary placed on the altar of the Kolbe Pavilion, the 4:30 p.m. October 8th Vigil Mass, and the 10:30 a.m. October 9th Mass were celebrated by Bishop Lucia, and concelebrated by Friar Gary and Friar Joe (pictured above), with a talk during Mass by Sister Kateri Mitchell, SSA, a Sister of the Sisters of Saint Anne and member of the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne. After the 10:30 a.m. Mass, Bishop Lucia and Friar Gary led the annual burning of prayer petitions, on the grounds of the Shrine (pictured below).
(Part Six: A Conversation About the Erring Conscience and Truth) 12 Days on Pilgrimage in August
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn. 14:6).
None of us will disagree that one must always follow a clear verdict of conscience; one may not act against such a verdict. Nor will we disagree that it is quite a different matter to assume that the verdict of conscience, or what a person takes to be such a verdict, is always correct. The difficulty is: if that were so, there is no truth in matters of morality and religion.[1] In our way of living, verdicts of conscience often seem to contradict each other. Some ask: are verdicts of conscience mere reflexes to antecedent social circumstances? The Catholic answer is not “kind of”; one must follow a clear verdict of conscience. To reduce truth to the truthfulness of a person, how could one person share truth with another? St. John Henry Newman holds that truth cannot contradict itself, although it often appears to contradict itself. Each person discovers answers to the apparent contradictions. Newman engages truth and the time needed and the many ways taken to arrive at truth. The thought of Pope Emeritus Benedict aligns with that of Newman, which is a natural opening to a comparative study of their writings.
Benedict chooses a “narrative” path to discuss the erring conscience and to offer initial conclusions. Conscience leads to the core of the moral problem which is what makes us profoundly human. A “narrative path” will win more listeners than a strictly conceptual reflection about the erring conscience that is abstract. Abstraction fails to engage young and old. Benedict begins with the story of his own interest in the problem. An older colleague, who had experience listening to the difficulties of being Christian today, stated that we ought to be grateful to God for giving so many people the gift of being unbelievers with a good conscience. The colleague had the opinion that if their eyes were opened and they became believers, they would not be able to live the Christian faith and all of its moral obligations. He concluded that they were traveling in good conscience along another way, and that way would lead to salvation.
Think of the shock to Pope Emeritus Benedict, a listening pastor, gifted academic, comprehensive catechist, and head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the penultimate authority in service to the Pope. His colleague’s view made it appear as if God bestowed an erring conscience to save everyone by blinding their eyes. The idea that faith was a virtually intolerable burden which only the extraordinarily strong could shoulder, made it appear as if faith was a punishment. To be a person of faith had such high demands that salvation was harder. The morality of the Catholic Church was an extra weight in living that has enough weight already. What an easy solution! An erring conscience makes life easier. The erring conscience would be a genuine grace from God. It is not far from saying that the erring conscience would be the normal way to find salvation.
Benedict critiqued his colleague for a lack of understanding that conscience makes possible shared knowledge that could generate a shared will and a shared responsibility. Conscience is the power to perceive the highest and most essential of all realities, not a cloak to throw overboard human subjectivity that allows a person to elude reality and to hide from it. Benedict identifies his colleague as buying into the idea of conscience found in liberalism. Conscience does not reveal the road of truth, which we chose to take and can be saved. Liberalism holds that either truth does not exist at all or that it is impossible to meet its demands, which means there is no need to feel obliged to look for the truth. A person is reduced to holding superficial conviction.
In part three I told of the German students in the White Rose Movement, Sophia Scholl and companions, who were reading the new translations of John Henry Newman on conscience. To know Newman is to know Benedict. Newman grew up with the rise of modern science in the nineteenth century. Several years before Darwin, in 1845, he had written an unsurpassed historical work on how doctrines develop. He was always calm about the connection between science and Christianity. Science would correct itself. In contrast, Protestants, with sola scriptura, had difficulty reconciling the Bible with science and with Darwin. Benedict is calm in the same way as Newman. He knows Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure were using cutting edge thought, the newly discovered and translated works of Aristotle. They study calmly how, from the outset, Christianity finds pearls of rationality throughout history. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle help with the formulation of doctrines and dogmas.
It may come as a surprise to see how Benedict, in his “narrative” conversation about an erring conscience and the truth, understands and incorporates Thomas Aquinas, yet finds Bonaventure more persuasive in the formation of conscience. The Franciscan difference is the focus on charity in conscience. Another surprise is that Benedict vis-a-vis Newman “on conscience” owes a great debt to Bishop Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion (1736) for its formative structure. Bishop Butler is Protestant. Think back along that line to Luther: “Here I stand in answer to God’s will.” For Luther, the fact that conscience could be in tension with the Church’s teaching is reduced to a zero sum game. Luther always stands against the official Church, while Newman and Benedict answer with both / and. The Church has a prerogative that is not aggressive in the end. In due course, maybe not now, a resolution is reached revealing the compatibility of Church and conscience, while Luther is either / or. Luther segregates conscience from the constraint of the Church and makes conscience a free radical.
“We did not know,” was the cry after World War II in Germany, not only in the military but by the civilians. Their claim was invincible ignorance. If that can be proved, there is no moral wrong. This version of the grounds of Pope Emeritus Benedict’s critique is that the voice of God in conscience does not ebb and flow. The claim of invincible ignorance of the many was a deliberate choice not to know. The removal of truth, which took place earlier, now takes the form of an erring conscience and is the real guilt that makes the choice deliberate and convenient.
Fr. Ed Ondrako, OFM Conv. Univ of Notre Dame eondrako@alumni.nd.edu
________________________
[1] See J. Fichte, (System der Sittenlehre, 1798), vol 3, sect 15. “The conscience never errs and can never err,” since it is “ itself the judge of all convictions” and “knows no higher judge above itself. It bears the responsibility for the final decision, and there is no appeal against conscience.”
Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual
Research Fellow Pontifical Faculty of St. Bonaventure, Rome
Visiting Scholar, McGrath Institute for Church Life
University of Notre Dame
St. John Henry Newman Feast Day – October 9, 2022
“Remember that when you leave this earth you take nothing with you that you have received, only what you have given; a full heart, enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage” – St Francis of Assisi
Friar Bryan Hajovsky, OFM Conv. (Instructor) during the Transitus Service at St. Francis High School, in Athol Springs, NY
Fr. Luis Palacios Rodriguez, OFM Conv. (Parochial Vicar)~ Adoration during the Transitus, at St. Julia Parish, in Siler City, NC
Fr. Nader Ata, OFM Conv. (Parochial Vicar at Assumption and Chaplain for FrancisCorps) with the FrancisCorps volunteers who celebrated Transitus by reading different reflections from Francis’ followers, during the Transitus service, at The Franciscan Church of the Assumption, in Syracuse, NY.
From the Transitus Service of our friars of our Blessed Agnullus of Pisa Province Custody ~ Franciscan Friary, in Wexford Ireland
Led in prayer by Friar Bob and Friar Richard, with a reflection by Friar Germain {29:55 mark in video} the friars of our St. Mark Friary (Fr. Richard Florek, OFM Conv., Fr. Germain Kopaczynski, OFM Conv., Fr. Bob Benko, OFM Conv. – pastor, Fr. Carl Zdancewicz, OFM Conv. – parochial vicar (photo cred), Fr. Michael Sajda, OFM Conv. – parochial vicar, and Fr. Joe Dorniak, OFM Conv.) gathered to celebrate the Transitus with the people of St. Mark Catholic Church, in Boynton Beach, FL.
With the friars leading them in prayer: Fr. Richard-Jacob Forcier, OFM Conv. (Shrine Rector/Director), Br. Paschal Kolodziej, OFM Conv. (Shrine Staff Friar), and friar Joseph Krondon, OFM Conv. (student friar), the pilgrims of The Shrine of St. Anthony, in Ellicott City, MD who gathered in our chapel, with many of our friars of the Ellicott City friaries to celebrate the Transitus together in community, heard a beautiful reflection by Br. Douglas McMillan, OFM Conv. (friar in residence) [26:48 mark in video] on the life of our Seraphic Father, St. Francis of Assisi.
The Catholic church is not a daily news item. When it does hit the headlines, it is often for the wrong reasons. Surely, the most sustained and intense media scrutiny of the church came following the disclosure of the extent of clergy sex abuse and the bishops’ woeful response to the victims and their lack of accountability to the faithful.
Traditionally, as we prepare for today’s Transitus and for the October 4th Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, throughout our province ministries, our friars hold a Blessing of the Animals. Here are a few photos from Feast Week’s events:
The friars of St. Francis Friary, who serve in ministry in Syracuse, NY (Assumption Church, Franciscan Place Chapel & Gift Shop at Destiny USA, FrancisCorps, and Syracuse University) gather with the faithful and their pets on the friary lawn, for this year’s blessing. (video)
The Friars and Postulants of our Inter-Province Postulancy (Chicago, IL) started a new tradition in their neighborhood this year; for the first time, hosting the Blessing of Pets. (more photos)
The friars of St. Paul Friary, serving in ministry at ST. Paul Parish (Kensington, CT) gathered with the faithful in the school’s parking lot. (more photos)
Friar Pedro’s 1st Blessing of the Animals at our newest province pastoral ministry, Our Lady of Fatima, in Ludlow, MA, (more photos)
Fr. Joseph Angelini, OFM Conv. (Director & Chaplain), and Melissa Miscevic Bramble (Director of Operations) with the pilgrims of Saint Kateri National Shrine and Historic Site, enjoyed a chilly day of blessing.
Fr. Richard Florek, OFM Conv. (Pastor Emeritus), Fr. Michael Sajda, OFM Conv. (Parochial Vicar) and Fr. Bob Benko, OFM Conv. (Pastor) at St. Mark Catholic Church in Boynton Beach for Blessing of Household Pets on Saturday October 1, 2022
Creatures great and small were blessed by our friars serving at UNC Chapel Hill Newman Catholic Student Center Parish (more photos)
On Friday, October 7, 2022, Fr. Vincent Rubino, OFM Conv., pastor of Blessed Sacrament Catholic Community, in Burlington, NC, spent a joyous time, blessing the family pets of the parish school’s families this morning, in honor of the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi week.
To keep up with the events held throughout our province, including photos and more information, follow our province Facebook page, and utilize our “Locations” page on this website, for hyperlinks to our many province ministries. For more information on vocations, email vocations@olaprovince.org.
(Part Five: IS LIBERAL DEMOCRACY PRETENDING TO STAND FOR JUSTICE WHILE IT IS ACTUALLY ON AUTOMATIC PILOT?) 12 Days on Pilgrimage in August
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn. 14:6).
Would you agree that Pope Emeritus Benedict is thinking about liberal democracy today as if it were on automatic pilot? That he is asking if liberal democracy is holding absolute values or pretending to stand for values as absolute justice? Is Benedict “spooking” us? Let’s take a closer look at his “spooking.” Modern liberalism and democracy are synonyms. The logic is procedural, i.e. making arrangements. That means the official way of doing something has no claim to what is good or true. Find the maximum number who are looking for happiness and protect them from their happiness being taken away.[1] Moreover, procedural means having rules, a juridical system, and prisons for those who break the rules. However, the procedural definition does not raise any questions about absolute values. Rather it recognizes the historical rise of liberalism, science and capitalism. How might Benedict be out to “spook” Europe and us? Is he alerting us that a group can come in and take away liberal democracy? Is he “spooking” us to look closely and ask: why is taking another’s freedom away wrong, on what basis, and to counter the efforts of any group? I have tipped my hand.
Why and how? For Pope Emeritus Benedict: reason has to engage faith. He worries about the growing sense of the absolute autonomy of reason and its self-sufficiency. If reason does not look for truth; if reason is procedural, i.e., reduced to making arrangements; if reason is instrumental, i.e. pro-science, pro technology, concerned with creating the greatest number of happy people; where is the balance? That is the problem for Benedict. In a sense it is a neutral problem, but is it? If society is not callous and violent, if society does not exclude from office those with a Christian view, liberal democracy might or might not have absolute values. He never denies history. I suggest that he sees liberal democracy in the West, including the USA, on automatic pilot, and the West only pretending to be committed to absolute justice.
The historical facts in the last century demonstrate that liberal democracy has not always been that great. Nor is it clear that liberal democracy is holding the value of absolute justice. How liberal democracy was almost lost is remembered by the seniors still living in what was East Germany for a while, and East Central Europe.[2] They like to sanitize, forget, and, understandably, look ahead. Pope Emeritus Benedict wants the West to think about absolute values, as “absolute justice.” Benedict wants the West to remember the thought of his predecessor, Pope St. John Paul II, and his encyclical Veritatis Splendor.[3]
They both have psychological anxiety [4] because of the attenuation of religion, not the loss of religion totally. John Paul II addresses the tendency of the people to wander away from the moral absolutes and the guidance of the Church in matters of morality. Benedict teaches moral absolutes vis-a-vis relativism. Benedict’s essays are an echo: without moral absolutes and an orderly political arrangement, something abominable will violate absolute human rights.
What tends to be overlooked by Christians is why and how Benedict points out that liberal democracy intersects with Christianity. The lens of the Popes is to fight off authoritarianism in its various forms from 1933 through 1989, the breakup of the Soviet Union,[5] and beyond. If liberal democracy gets saturated with moral relativism, if liberal democracy simply massages the idea, history discloses the abrogation of personal freedom. Someone or some group with power always overwhelms,[6] as the National Socialists and Bolsheviks did.
Benedict sees an attenuation of moral authority due to lack of knowledge and conviction about absolute values. Without it, where will your allegiance go, what is left that can be described as “Christianly”? If authoritarianism is picking up Christian support, isn’t authoritarianism almost being protected as if it were laminated? His worry is: where is Christianly resistance if not founded on moral absolutes? [7] To me, his claim that liberal democracy is not holding the value of absolute justice but only pretending to do so, is “thick.” To claim that liberal democracy is on automatic pilot and pretending to stand for absolute justice aligns with the poet T. S. Eliot’s image of “hollow men,” and that of W. B. Yeats: “the best lack all conviction; the worst are full of passionate intensity.”[8]
Is the West as “hollowed out” a grave cause for worry? Is being hollowed out applicable to the Church’s moral authority and her absolute values? I suggest a leakage. Who listens to Pope Francis when reporters ask about moral absolutes? On September 15, flying from Kazakhstan, he was asked about the loss of faith in countries such as Germany, especially among the youth. He replied: “It is true that the spirit of secularization, of relativism, challenges these things; it is true. What you have to do, first of all, is to be consistent with your faith.”[9]
Pope Francis echoes Pope John Paul II: “Truth enlightens man’s intelligence and shapes his freedom, leading him to know and love the Lord” (Veritatis Splendor). Francis told reporters: “It is true that the West, in general, is not at the highest level of exemplarity right now. The West has taken wrong paths.” Are the three Popes missing anything? Are they consistent with Catholic belief?
[1] Putin’s unjust war in Ukraine is how one can try to take rights away. President Mikhail Gorbachev, 1931-2022, introduced glasnost. He visited and knelt at the tomb of St. Francis in Assisi for a half hour. Closer to home, it is not difficult to enumerate efforts to take away freedom. We ask: on what basis? [2] Our pilgrimage began in Prague, circled through Germany and Austria, and to Bratislava, then a respectful visit to the tomb of Jozef Cardinal Mindszenty at Esztergom and ended at Budapest. [3] On the feast of St. Alphonsus Marie Liguori in 1987, John Paul II set out to write an encyclical letter on absolute values as the very foundations of moral theology, …. Veritatis Splendor, 6 August 1993. [4] Think of the father of modern existentialism, Soren Kierkegaard, and the reasons for his anxiety. [5] Putin’s unjust war in Ukraine is his effort to reset the breakup of the Soviet Union on Christmas 1991. [6] Think of the classic antiChrist in the Book of Revelation. [7] Benedict’s Values in a Time of Upheaval, Truth and Tolerance, and many more essays, may be indicating that he sees, for the first time, this problem is true and becoming amplified in the West. [8] The Pope Emeritus’ readers often want more details about how he is constructing his arguments and diagnoses. His theological, philosophical, and historical training include underdevelopment as his style. [9] I will refrain from taking the bait to apply the image of “hollowed out” to the political parties in the USA.
Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual
Research Fellow Pontifical Faculty of St. Bonaventure, Rome
Visiting Scholar, McGrath Institute for Church Life
University of Notre Dame
Feast of the Guardian Angels – October 2, 2022
Our Lady of the Angels Province friar, Fr. Gerry Waterman, OFM Conv. serves the university community as the Catholic Chaplain for Syracuse University. Through his ministry, he helps to provide “dynamic programming that encourages community and faith-building.” In addition to celebrating Mass and facilitating the sacraments for the Catholic community at SU, the Catholic Center provides many opportunities for enrichment and service. One such weekly event is the Thursday Night Dinners, when every Thursday of the semester, the students and greater community gather for Mass, free dinner & dessert, and fellowship. On the last Thursday of the month, the evening includes one of the many Service Initiatives at SU; the Sandwich Ministry through which hundreds of sandwiches are made and distributed by Assumption Food Pantry and Soup Kitchen (an outreach of our pastoral ministry – Assumption Church) and the Samaritan Center on W State Street, in Syracuse.
Pictured Above: The first Sandwich Ministry event of the Fall Semester was held on Thursday, September 29, 2022. Joining the SU community were our Syracuse based FrancisCorps 24 Volunteers and Br. Tim Blanchard, OFM Conv., who serves in the Office of Institutional Advancement our St. Francis High School, in Athol Springs, NY.
(Part Eight: SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL)
