A Sound of Sheer Silence

One of the experiences of studying to be a priest is that you get to see priests in their private lives, without the public face on and without the filter on what they say.  Sometimes, this is not a pretty experience.  I remember one such incident on Thanksgiving in Denver, during my novitiate.  As, perhaps unfortunately, tends to happen at such events, the brothers had had a few drinks, and people felt free to speak candidly.  One priest, who was quite elderly (and now deceased, so I will not name him), was beginning to get riled up about how great everything was in Catholicism in the 70s, and how everything had gone to pot since them.  He finished it off, however, with a single comment: "I wish that Turkish guy had finished him (Pope John Paul II) off."  I was horrified, and too stunned to say anything.  But, I should have.  No matter what disagreements one has with someone, it is never, never OK to wish death upon anyone, especially if you are...

First off, here is the best summary of the significance of the Pope's comments that I have found .  I'll just add a couple of additional thoughts. If you look at the reaction from the conservative Catholic blogosphere, the most substantive response is to point out that Pope Francis does not signal in the interview that he is about to change any Church teachings.  That's true (though, one is tempted to add the qualification "yet," at least as to some things like divorce and re-marriage).  Pope Francis is not going to issue a decree that abortion on demand is swell.  Nor, it appears, is he going to say that women can be priests (but deacons?...).  But, that's not the point.  The significance of the interview is not about substantive doctrine, nor is it about the amorphous concept of "tone."  My interpretation of the interview is that Francis's vision of the Church is one that meets people where they are and welcomes them in to the fold as they ar...

Remember how I said that Jesuits like to lob intellectual grenades into the mix to see what happens?  Pope Francis just pulled the pin .  I will probably have a couple of posts about this amazing interview, but I have a couple of immediate reactions.  First, particularly if one reads the entire interview, you see the Jesuit-ness of Pope Francis come right to the forefront.  He has a long discussion of how Ignatian spirituality (the ideas of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits) influences his way of leading and thinking.  So, the take away for me is that he is more or less like all of the Jesuits I've met.  Second, I will be fascinated to see the reaction from the right-wing Catholic blogosphere and conservative Catholic media (EWTN et al. ).  The meme that "Francis is speaking off the cuff and is not serious," seems to be unsupportable by even those in the deepest of denial (Update: or perhaps not ).  It...

There is nothing more inside baseball than the goings-on of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.  While the Bishop's Conference is a vehicle for the U.S. Bishops to speak with a unified voice, it's more like the Chamber of Commerce than a legislature--it can't really tell the individual Bishops what to do. Still, I think it is relevant that today the Bishops elected Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York as the President of the Conference.  This is surprising because the standard practice is for the Vice-President of the Conference to move up to the top spot as a pro forma matter after the sitting President finishes his 3 year term.  Dolan, however, defeated the Vice President, Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson. 

Ave Maria clearly represents the logical end-point for a certain style of Catholicism. Because it is such a grandiose and over-the-top project, I think it makes visible a couple of elements of what some commentators have called “neo-conservative Catholicism” (though I am not sure I like that term) that is not always easy to see in the more run-of-the-mill manifestations. The first thing, which I think is symbolized with the Oratory, is the ambiguous relationship it has to “traditional Catholicism.” Everywhere you look at Ave Maria, you see things that are clearly designed to be homages to traditional Catholicism (the church at the center of the town, the Gothic plan of the Oratory, etc.). But the actual implementation is thoroughly new and modern. The church may be at the center of town, but people are clearly expected to live in “the suburbs”—the subdivisions—and “commute” to work. The Oratory is Gothic in plan but modernist in execution. Compared to my parish in San Francisco, it i...

* Hat Tip to Arturo Vasquez, now of the Reditus blog , for the Title Poor logistical planning, for which my father would be very disappointed in me, led to me finding myself sitting in a coffee shop in the town of Ave Maria, Florida. I took a red-eye flight Thursday night to Fort Lauderdale to go to the wedding of a law school classmate of mine. The wedding was being held in Marco Island, which is on the other side of the peninsula from Fort Lauderdale, across the Everglades. The problem was that my flight arrived in Florida at 7:30 a.m. on Friday, but I couldn’t check into my hotel on Marco Island until 4 p.m. Since it only takes two hours to cross the Everglades, I had 6 hours to kill, and no sleep the night before. As you might expect, there is not much to see when crossing the Everglades, and I felt myself starting to zone out. As if on cue, I saw a large billboard for the community of Ave Maria, just off I-75. A combination of fatigue, the promise of some food and a cup of ...