If you’ve seen all my posts this week, you already know:
• The percentage of Catholics in the population of Latin America has been dropping. Why? For years we’ve been hearing reports that aggressive Evangelical missionaries were drawing Catholics away from the flock. But that’s not really the story, a new Pew Research study finds. Catholics aren’t leaving to become Evangelicals, they’re drifting away from any church affiliation.
• Newark’s Cardinal Tobin called for de-funding of ICE. That’s obviously a partisan stand, likely to divide rather than unite the faithful. Meanwhile in Germany, a lay politician who was ousted from a parish-council seat because of his partisan political affiliation lost an appeal to the Vatican. So what’s the message here: That it’s OK for prelates to indulge in partisan politics, but not for the laity? That’s back-front!
• At his Wednesday public audience, Pope Leo offered a definition of what “deposit” means, when we refer to protecting the deposit of the faith. It implies the duty of the hierarchy to preserve the faith “and to transmit it intact.”
• Did you know that most of the religious orders active in the US today had no new members take perpetual vows last year? That’s more evidence (as if we needed it) of the grave crisis in religious life. But a new study offers some interesting notes about the men and women who did take their perpetual vows. You won’t be surprised by the characteristics many of them have in common, but you may not realize how quickly the differences jump out of the data.
• Peter Kwasniewski posted an unusually clear and concise summary of the question facing Pope Leo regarding the Traditional Latin Mass. Kwasniewski rejects the proposal for an “ordinariate” solution, and concludes that the best option would be the revival of Summorum Pontificum. I agree with his analysis, but quibble about one sentence.
• On a new CatholicCulture podcast, I talked at length with Thomas Mirus about the glaring problems facing Catholic journalism, and my own career in the field. Trot down memory lane with me, and hear me explain why I was fired from my job as editor of Boston’s archdiocesan newspaper, how I negotiated with Mother Angelica, what led me from supply-side economics to Catholic journalism, and more!
• In a column for CatholicCulture, I reflected on the “unalienable” rights listed in the Declaration of Independence, and argued that if the right to life if “unalienable,” laws allowing for physician-assisted suicide violate the spirit of the American Founding.
• Two weeks ago I pointed out that when Mary McAleese, the former president of Ireland, condemned the baptism of infants, she ran afoul of the Council of Trent, which said, of people holding that view: “let them be anathema.” This week I observed that McAleese was nevertheless invited to speak at a Catholic school, and pictured in conversation with a smiling Catholic archbishop.
• In my seminar on just-war thinking— which will soon wrap up, after a 6-month engagement— I asked some questions about asymmetrical warfare: conflicts in which the opposing powers are not evenly matched. Such circumstances sharpen questions about just cause, proportionality, and the prospect of success.
• This week on the Home Front Leila and I discussed the uproar in Minnesota, the limits of ‘peaceful’ protests and of the 1st & 2nd amendments, and the critical facts the media ignore. (And then we reviewed the new ‘Knives Out’ movie.)
• And last but not least, I was outraged by a statement that Washington’s Cardinal McElroy signed, along with other religious leaders, about the conflict in Minnesota. By now every responsible public figure recognizes the need to de-escalate the confrontations there. Instead, Cardinal McElroy and his co-signers irresponsibly fan the flames. Disgraceful.
