Category: Culture

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On Artistic Genius and Music as Onomatopoeia

Musical expression is a particular gift and genius of the human person. And our capacity for music is not just to make crude sounds. Rather we are possessed, at least collectively, of creative genius in this regard. The video below illustrates this genius.

Do you remember your grammar and the grammatical term Onomatopoeia? An Onomatopoeia is a word that sounds like the object it describes. Words like oink, meow, Wham! Sizzle, and my personal favorite:”Yackety Yak”

There are times too when music takes up a kind of onomatopoetic quality. In the video below Moses Hogan, one of the great modern arrangers of the old African American Spirituals describes his arrangement of “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho.” He has the male and female voices in a frenetic dialogue with lots of staccato notes dominating in the male voices. This creates the very sound of an intense battle! The song sounds like what it is describing. It’s a kind of “musical onomatopoeia.” There are other aspects of the same concept, you’ll hear the trumpet in the soprano and the battle reach climax in a moment of dissonance. And wait till you hear the walls fall at the very end in a cascade of notes!

In this three minute video Moses Hogan describes his intent of echoing the sound of a battle and then the song is sung. Enjoy this brilliant and beautiful arrangement of the Spiritual. Admire too the wonderful discipline of the choir that is necessary to execute this spiritual flawlessly.


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Civilization Killers – On the Decline of Three Basic Cultural Indicators and What it Means for America

Recently, there was a remarkable article over At Real Clear Politics which summarizes important social trends in the United States. The article by Rich Lowry summarizes the views of Charles Murray who gave a talk at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Murray focuses his data on White America only to avoid the sticky wicket of race politics that so often clouds a conversation on social and moral trends that are wider than race.

The recent unpleasantness in New York where the high rates of abortion in the Black community (simply a statistical fact) were featured in a billboard, quickly devolved into a discussion of race, rather than abortion. Hence, to avoid this sort of thing, Mr. Murray used data only on the White community.

And what he has discovered is that there are significant differences between economic classes in this Country that sheds important light on the cultural crisis we are facing. In effect, economic class is a big indicator in moral behavior today. This was not the case in the past and the class division in America has led to two very different Americas, two increasingly parallel worlds in effect. Likewise, it becomes increasingly clear which world is influencing which.

I would like to presents excerpts of the article by Rich Lowry and make comments of my own. Lowry’s original remarks are in bold, black italics, my remarks are plain text, red. The full article is here: Coming Apart at the Seams.

The social threat to the American way of life is…dire….it is [also] insidious, and…complicated. No grassroots movement has mobilized against it, and no high-profile bipartisan commission is suggesting remedies. Yet it proceeds apace, all but ignored except in the lives of Americans – Lowry refers here to the decline in important “founding virtues” which have made this country strong: marriage, industriousness, and religiosity. And he is right that almost no one wants to talk about the decline of these things. If we had a reform program only half as committed as the anti-smoking campaign of the past 25 years, we’d be well on our way to recovery, I suspect. But sadly there is little agreement on such a campaign, even in the Church where too may pastors, catechists and leaders seem to emphasize not offending, over being real clinicians and doctors with real and clear direction for what ails us.

If there is ambivalence in the Church, it is far worse in the wider civic world where a consensus on good behavior has broken down.

A personal story comes to mind here. I was in a meeting with some local activists here in DC and we were discussing the social structures of poverty. The usual list was announced in the room to include things like, capitalism, the greed of (rich) people, racism, not enough Government action, even lead paint. I happened to interject that the chief cause of poverty is single motherhood and also wondered if we ought no counsel sexual abstinence, and encourage marriage. The room was suddenly silent, and all eyes were on me. Most of those eyes were glaring, some dismayed. Only a few showed understanding or agreement. Some one finally broke the icy silence and suggested that I leave such controversial views to my own pulpit and stick to things where there was real consensus and which was less…ahem… “judgmental.”

Yes, the lack of a grassroots movement seems directly tied to a loss in common moral vision. We do not seem to agree on what is vice, and what is virtue. Here again, I fault the Church and Protestant denominations for failing to hand on the vision and to insist upon it among their (our) rather sizable number. I think we are improving in the Catholic Church and some of the evangelical denominations are doing a better job. Collectively, the Catholic moral vision is being better articulated by many bishops and pastors who see no choice but to speak out.  But for a long time we have been too silent, and there still is to much silence from Catholic pulpits as a whole. If there is going to be any sort of grassroots movement it is going to have begin with us.

Among those trying to sound the alarm is Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute…..In a bracing lecture on “The State of White America,” he notes that America has long had an exceptional civic culture. “That culture is unraveling,” he warns. “America is coming apart at the seams. Not the seams of race or ethnicity, but of class.” – It does seem that class, even more than race, has become a large dividing line in this country and the question of virtue and vice is significantly influenced by it, as we shall see.

Murray takes whites as his subject to avoid the question of whether racism is responsible for the problem he describes, namely the “emergence of classes that diverge on core behaviors and values.” – Good move, as stated above. If this discussion gets tagged with race, the question of race will rob all the oxygen from the discussion and the moral questions will be unaddressed.

Murray identifies what he calls the “founding virtues,” such as marriage, industriousness, and religiosity, which have always been considered the social basis of self-government. He looks at whites aged 30-49 and divides them into the top 20 percent socio-economically and the bottom 30 percent. The top tier is basically the upper middle class, the bottom the working class. He finds two worlds, increasingly separate and unequal. – So the basic groups we are dealing with in this reflection are upper middle class and working class.

Notice, the very rich are not mentioned. It seems to me that they are a group unto themselves when it comes to the moral life. They (e.g. Hollywood, national politicians, and the very rich) often manifest poor moral values but are more able to “get away with it,” not often suffering all the usual social ills that go with bad behavior. The very poor seem also not on the radar here. Their problems in the moral realm are very often even more complicated and tied in with a very corrupt welfare system that rewards bad behavior and punishes good.

So let’s look at the data of the middle range of classes, the upper middle class and the working class:

 

In 1960, everyone was married – 88 percent of the upper middle class and 83 percent of the working class. In 2010, 83 percent of the upper middle class is married and only 48 percent of the working class. This gap “amounts to a revolution in the separation of classes.” – Now stable marriage is a key indicator and component of a strong culture. And we can see here that it is the working class that has taken a huge hit in the marriage statistics. In the Church we have noticed this too. In 1974 there were approximately 400,000 weddings in the Catholic Church. In 2004 there we about just under 200,000. The drop in Catholic weddings was attributable to numerous factors including a fall-off in general Church attendance, but the trend is similar to the overall working class, where marriages have dropped by almost half.

In 1960, births to single mothers in the working class were just 6 percent; now they are close to 50 percent. Interesting that our author does not give the number for upper middle class single mothers. My own thought on this is that, while the number is not as high as among working class people, the number is still a lot higher than 1960. Single motherhood began as a problem in the inner-cities and was influenced by a perverse welfare system that rewarded single mothers and comparatively punished married mothers. But the trend of out of wedlock birth has long since reached the suburbs, where the numbers as not as high (close to 80% of children on welfare are born to single mothers), but the numbers have trended much higher.

 

When it comes to industriousness, there’s the same divergence. In 1960, 1.5 percent of men in the upper middle class were out of the workforce; it’s 2 percent now. In 1968, the number for working-class men hit a low of 5 percent; even before the spike in unemployment after the financial crisis, it was 12 percent in 2008. “The deteriorations in industriousness,” Murray notes, “have occurred in labor markets that were booming as well as in soft ones.” – OK, so Mr. Murray has screened for unemployment. What we’re talking about here is the number of people who simply don’t bother to look for work anymore but live off others or the State. So the “loafers” have doubled in number. The ethic of hard work has taken a hit. However, I would note here that the 12% figure, though higher, is still fairly low, and America remains a nation of hard workers. We still have a work ethic, it would seem, almost to a fault, since many Americans have their career as more important that their vocation (IMHO). Thus children are in day-care and many marriages are strained by overwork and long hours.

Although secularization has long been on the rise, it’s more pronounced in the working class. Among the upper middle class, 42 percent say they either don’t believe in God or don’t go to church. In the working class, it’s 61 percent. In other words, a majority of the upper middle class still has some religious commitment, while a majority of the working class does not. Now this is very paradoxical to some I am sure. I happened to discover the truth of this when I lived among the poor of Southeast Washington for 7 years. I had always thought that the poor were very religious. I think the Scriptures themselves influenced me in this as they warned of riches and indicated God’s loving favor to the poor. But one of the discoveries I made about the very poor was that almost none of them ever went to church! I came to see this as one of the things that contributed to their poverty. For what it indicated was their disconnectedness from others. Churches, among other social functions, serve to knit people together in a socially supportive structure. Having severed themselves from such a community, the poor were even more vulnerable.

Here too, government welfare has had a deleterious effect since many of the poor look to an impersonal government for “the check” rather than to others around them. The advantage of course is that the Government doesn’t ask too many questions or insist upon weekly attendance at services or social functions.

I did not see or experience these poor as atheists in any way. But religion and faith were simply not a big part of their lives. I often had long talks exhorting the poor I met to reconnect with God and the Church. I would even eventually tie on-going help to attendance.

It would seem that the trend of irreligiosity has also reached the working class in higher proportions too. Some will tie this to bad work schedules and the like, rooted in the fact that everything is open on Sundays now. But most churches have a wide variety of things on the schedule including Saturday evening masses, Sunday evening Masses, mid-week bible studies and the like. The fact is people in general are more secular, and this does not bode well for them of for this country as a whole.

These trends mean, just as it is suffering economically, the working class is getting cut off from the richest sources of social capital: marriage, two-parent families, and church-going. More people are falling into a lower class characterized by men who can’t make a minimal living and single women with children….. And this goes back to my point raised in that room of social activists. The fact is that living a life rooted in biblical and natural virtue is just better for you. It leads to fewer complications, greater stability and prosperity, better health, and a higher degree of satisfaction.

Social activists who want to make life better for the poor should reconsider their “agnostic” position regarding sexual choices, and the role of marriage and traditional family values.

In re-proposing the Gospel to an increasingly secular and cynical culture  we should not forget to “sell” the Gospel and traditional moral norms as just plain smart, even from a worldly point of view. That is not the only reason we seek to live them, but the fact is, blessings come from following God’s plan, burdens and hardships multiply to those who fail in this regard.  Mr. Lowry says it succinctly and well: the working class is getting cut off from the richest sources of social capital.

He quotes the 19th-century observer of American life Francis Grund: “The American Constitution is remarkable for its simplicity; but it can only suffice a people habitually correct in their actions, and would be utterly inadequate to the wants of a different nation. Change the domestic habits of the Americans, their religious devotion, and their high respect for morality, and it will not be necessary to change a single letter of the Constitution in order to vary the whole form of their government.” I believe De Tocqueville said something very similar: Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?

In other words, if freedom is to be politically advanced, then the self control of most Americans must be a presupposed foundation. If that foundation of morality and self-control is lost, the foundations of democracy are threatened.

And we see this in our times. As the decency and self control of more and more Americans diminishes, legal restrictions and punitive measures increase, lawsuits ensue, legal fears increase, and political liberties are gradually eclipsed. Our growing and increasingly intrusive Federal Government does seem very tied to our inability, or unwillingness, as citizens to curb and govern our behaviors. The Constitution, and the freedoms it ensures are thus gradually eroded.

Some consider the Constitution too dated, others see it not permitting enough Government restrictions to curb the bad or unpleasant behaviors of people today. Perhaps this is so. But the solution is not to disregard the Constitution but to reform our lives. We shouldn’t need a nanny state, we ought to grow up and do what is right and proper.

When it comes to saving the American way, balancing the budget is the easy part. -Yes, being saved from ourselves would seem much more difficult.

Murray argues that America can maintain its national power even if these trends continue. – I disagree. I think these downward trends are civilization killers.

If the family is not strong and continues to slide into disarray, we cannot continue as a strong nation and, like ancient Rome, will fade away.

Our work ethic remains strong and there is some hope here.

But as for secularization, that we can have an intelligible and reasonably unified culture without a common “cult” seems  dubious. We need not be united on every particular dogma, but, we must have someone and something above us, as a culture, to unite us. The source of our unity cannot be within us, it must transcend us. Pretending that we can have real unity when increasing numbers reject that transcendent vision is fanciful in the end, for with nothing bigger than “us” to unite us, we end in power struggles and endless divisions. The disunity may ultimately be too strong for the great American experience to continue. I do not say it will come soon, but the trend lines do not currently point in promising directions.

As always I am interested in your thoughts.



This song says, America! America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law!

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Without the Truth, We are Left Only With Power. A Reflection Based on the Pope’s Teaching in Jesus of Nazareth

Jesus had been brought before Pontius Pilate for trial and in a pivotal scene there is this memorable dialogue:

“You are a king, then!” said Pilate. Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” “What is truth?” asked Pilate. (Jn 18:37-38)

I have generally interpreted Pilate’s remark about truth to be highly cynical and dismissive, almost as though he said it with a wave of the hand. Further, I have thought it well reflects the cynicism of our own times that so dismisses the notion that there is such a thing truth or that it can be known. While many claim this rejection is liberating, the fact is, without a common consensus on a basic framework of truth to which we must all assent, things reduce to a power struggle where the strongest and loudest win. This does not actually seem very liberating in the end.

Pope Benedict in his new Book, Jesus of Nazareth (vol. 2), ponders the implications Pilate’s question and what it means for us, who, at least culturally struggle with the same question, “What is Truth?”  I’d like to give a few excerpts from the Pope’s reflections and add some commentary of my own. As usual, the Pope’s text will be in black, italic bold, and my comments will be plain text red.

The Pope begins by pondering if Pilate’s question is not somewhat understandable given that Jesus indicates his kingdom is rooted in the Truth. But since there are often endless arguments as to what truth is, Pilate, as a politician, asks, “What is truth? As if to say, How can a kingdom be built on something that is so debated? The Pope writes:

[Since] Jesus bases his concept of kingship and kingdom on truth as the fundamental category, then it is entirely understandable that the pragmatic Pilate asks him: “What is truth?” (Jn. 18:38).

It is the question that is also asked by modern political theory: Can politics accept truth as a structural category? Or must truth, as something unattainable, be relegated to the subjective sphere…? By relying on truth, does not politics, in view of the impossibility of attaining consensus on truth, make itself a tool of particular traditions that in reality are merely forms of holding on to power?

In the last 50 years or so, the West has struggled greatly under the dissolution of a common moral and religious vision. Though we have long had sectarian differences, the basic Judeo-Christian vision held sway and tended to unite us in the essentials of a moral, and even political vision. That common vision, that grasp of the common truth, to which most assented, has dissolved. But, as the Pope articulates,  there are some who celebrate this dissolution, since; some argue that traditional and religious views excluded many from “power” or a place at the table. A united vision was/is to narrow for them.  So they not only celebrate the abandonment of truth as a category, but many actually seek to undermine and attack it. This is usually done through an un-nuanced call for diversity and the labeling those who seek to maintain a common vision as hateful, bigoted, narrow-minded, and so forth. Perhaps with this in mind, the Pope goes on to say:

And yet, on the other hand, what happens when truth counts for nothing? What kind of justice is then possible? Must there not be common criteria that guarantee real justice for all—criteria that are independent of the arbitrariness of changing opinions and powerful lobbies?…..

In effect, when there is no common basis from which to act, when there is no commonly accepted truth, no basis on which to reason, what we end up with is a power struggle. In the vacuum of a truth-free zone, what is reasonable does not hold sway. Rather, the one with the most power, money, and influence, the one who can shout the loudest or is most politically connected, wins the day. Truth thus yields to power, and without a common truth, mere power moves to the center.

And yet, it is one thing to assert that a common truth should unite us, but it is another to define what that truth is and should be. The Pope continues:

What, then, is truth? Are we able to recognize it? Can it serve as a criterion for our intellect and will, both in individual choices and in the life of the community?

The classic definition from scholastic philosophy designates truth as “adaequatio intellectus et rei” (conformity between the intellect and reality); Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 21, a. 2c). If a man’s intellect reflects a thing as it is in itself, then he has found truth: but only a small fragment of reality—not truth in its grandeur and integrity.

It seems here we have an appeal to what we have come to call the “Natural Law.” There is an “is-ness” to things, a nature that we must come to perceive and be in conformity with. In a pluralistic culture such as America, Natural Law is likely the essential basis from which we could build consensus. But, sadly, here too, there has been a breakdown in a Natural Law basis as many in our society have come to doubt that reality is intelligible at all.

St. Paul lamented the same thing in his day when he wrote of the Gentile world: The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their senseless minds were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools (Rom 1:18-21).

In rejecting the Natural Law, and that reality itself should be a guide for us, the modern discussion retreats primarily to the mind and the realm of opinion. And, as in Paul’s day, we have a lot of senseless thinking that is highly disassociated from reality.

Paul pointed to the approval of homosexuality in his time as a chief symptom of the problem.  Paul called homosexual acts “paraphysin” (contrary to nature). Any simple investigation into the anatomy involved makes it clear that the man is not made for the man, rather the woman is made for the man. But simple natural observation seemed to escape many of the people of his time and he describes their minds as “darkened.”

In our own time, as Natural Law recedes, we also, as a culture, retreat into the mind and lose touch with reality.  And sure enough, homosexuality is approved by increasing numbers as the simple truth expressed by nature is replaced by thought and opinion.

The Pope next moves to a more theological answer to the question, “What is truth?”

We come closer to what Jesus meant with another of Saint Thomas’ teachings: “Truth is in God’s intellect properly and firstly (proprie et primo); in human intellect it is present properly and derivatively (proprie quidem et secundario)” (De Verit., q. 1, a. 4c).And in conclusion we arrive at the succinct formula: God is truth itself, the sovereign and first truth (“ipsa summa et prima veritas”); Summa Theologiae I, q. 16, a. 5c). This formula brings us close to what Jesus means when he speaks of the truth, when he says that his purpose in coming into the world was to “bear witness to the truth”.

….. Man becomes true, he becomes himself, when he grows in God’s likeness. Then he attains to his proper nature. God is the reality that gives being and intelligibility. “Bearing witness to the truth” means giving priority to God and to his will over against the interests of the world and its powers. God is the criterion of being…..

Hence, to increasingly know the Lord is to know the truth, and to have that truth set us free (cf John 8:32). For we who believe, truth is not merely a set of facts, but it is found in a personal relationship with God who, through the Holy Spirit,  leads us to all the truth (Jn 16:13). Further, to know Jesus is to increasingly know the truth for he said plainly I am the truth (Jn 14:16)

We may also say that bearing witness to the truth means making creation intelligible and its truth accessible…..Let us say plainly: the unredeemed state of the world consists precisely in the failure to understand the meaning of creation, in the failure to recognize truth; as a result, the rule of pragmatism is imposed, by which the strong arm of the powerful becomes the god of this world.

This was said above but repeated here for emphasis: to abandon the truth found in Natural Law, and in God for believers, is cede the field to the most powerful. It is not the reasonable who win the day, it is the strongest, richest or most powerful.

What is truth? Pilate was not alone in dismissing this question as unanswerable and irrelevant for his purposes. Today too, in political argument and in discussion of the foundations of law, it is generally experienced as disturbing. Yet if man lives without truth, life passes him by; ultimately he surrenders the field to whoever is the stronger.

A good summary statement.

“Redemption” in the fullest sense can only consist in the truth becoming recognizable. And it becomes recognizable when God becomes recognizable. He becomes recognizable in Jesus Christ. In Christ, God entered the world and set up the criterion of truth in the midst of history.

The criterion of truth this time in the discussion should seem plain to us. Although, in a pluralistic society we may struggle to easily define truth, coming to some broad consensus is  essential for us. The word , “criterion” means, standard, principle or rule. Without some common basis, things reduce to power struggle. We see this increasingly to be the case as the West loses any common basis to discuss matters. What we are increasingly seeing are shrill debates, protests, advocacy journalism and the like. When conversations rooted in reason and commonly held truth can no longer be had, it’s “turn up the volume” time in America.  The one with the most money and power wins.

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More Data on the Lost Generations and the Urgent Task for the Church

It has been clear for some time now in the Church that Catholics, as a group, are growing more distant from the Church teaching on sexual matters. It seems well demonstrated that most Catholics form their view on these matters more from the culture than the scriptures or the teachings of the Church. The culture shouts promiscuity and normalizes both the heterosexual and homosexual expressions of it. Meanwhile, I’m sad to say, many clergy and catechists remain quite silent and vague about it. This is not true of all, but I know that a common complaint on the part of the faithful is, that what they hear from the pulpit, is filled with vagaries and generalities. Only rarely do they hear straightforward teaching on sexual matters and other important topics as well, such as the need to attend Mass, go to confession, the reality of hell etc.

With the combination of a loud culture and quiet pulpit and classroom, it is no surprise that that recent statistics show that a growing number of Catholics do not hold the Catholic faith when it comes to moral issues, especially the sexual ones. Here are some excerpts from a recent article over at the CARA (Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate) blog written by Mark Gray:

In 2010, 20% of adult Catholics “strongly agreed” that “homosexual couples should have the right to marry one another.” An additional 28% “agreed.” Thus, overall 48% of Catholic respondents indicated some level of agreement with this statement. The margin of error for the 2010 Catholic data is ±5.8 percentage points. Thus, the point estimate for agreement could range as high as 54% or as low as 42%. ….Levels of agreement with the statement have grown [over the years] as disagreement has diminished.

There is another [General Social Survey] GSS question that has a longer history that is related to the results of the marriage question shown above. The GSS asks respondents if “sexual relations between two adults of the same sex” is wrong. In the 2010 GSS, for the first time, the percentage of adult Catholics indicating this is “not wrong at all” outnumbered those who said it was “always wrong” (44% compared to 42%)…(margin of error was ±5.9 percentage points).

As one can see from the trend in the figure [above right], the real point of change occurs somewhere in the early 1990s and has continued to evolve to this day. Responses to this question differ by age with younger Catholics being more likely than older Catholics to say this is “not wrong at all.” However, the sharp change in the population overall in the early 1990s cannot be explained by generational replacement alone.

It is the case that frequency of Mass attendance correlates with responses to these questions….The only complication to this…. is that Mass attendance varies by age and generation ….So is it Mass attendance that makes one more likely to oppose civil unions or marriage for same-sex couples or is it something generational? It is likely both but which matters more? And again the figure above indicates some sort of “period effect” in the early 1990s that is also likely important. Margin of error for sub-groups is the biggest obstacle to understanding and disentangling these effects.

The full article is here: Catholic Attitudes. Please note, Mr. Gray’s purpose in the article is to report the numbers not to advocate for or against what they say.

My own thoughts are that the generational factor is very significant. I understand that Mr Gray above thinks there are other factors too. I accept that but would still highlight the generational factor. There are increasing numbers of young people who have never known a time when the wider culture did not approve of homosexual behavior. Those of us about 45 and older DO remember such a time, but the younger ones have largely had a steady diet of  “there’s nothing wrong with homosexual behavior and if anyone thinks so, they’re a bigot.” And as they have heard this, the Church has only vaguely set forth a principled case for the wrongness of promiscuity in general, and homosexual activity in particular.

To paraphrase a well known quote from the last election, The Church’s chickens are coming home to roost. To put it Biblically: For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? (1 Cor 14:8).

In the Church I think we have to accept that a generational shift has occurred, both in the Church and in the culture. And it has happened on our watch.

Rear-guard action? With the increasing move to give legal recognition to (so-called) gay marriage, the Church is scrambling to teach the faithful again on the basics of marriage. But, truth be told, it’s something of a rear-guard action. Marriage has been in trouble for a long time in this country, family sizes have decreased, divorce has skyrocketed and cohabitation and single parent families are becoming as common as marriage. Gay “marriage” is just the latest confusion, polygamy is surely next.

Yes, we have returned to the battle late. When the first no-fault divorce laws went into effect in 1969 and the ten years following, I am unaware that there was much of a collective effort by the Church to oppose and turn back that horrible idea.

Inward focused! Of course in 1969 we were rather inwardly focused. We were moving around the furniture in our sanctuaries, tuning up guitars and having endless debates about women’s (lack of) ordination, Church authority and the like. And while we looked inward and debated among ourselves, we lost the culture. We stopped evangelizing and articulating a clear moral vision for our culture in a way that was effective.

I am told the situation is worse in Europe. Both Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict have said we have to start all over again there and completely re-evangelize Europe.

But start we must. And while we do so, we will called all sorts of names by a culture that now finds the Gospel and its moral vision to be obnoxious, even hateful. It will be our task to re-propose the Gospel in creative and thoughtful ways, and to present why it makes sense and is not, in fact hateful.

I think some of the younger clergy, religious and laity have become better prepared to do just this. I am impressed with the dedication, fidelity, creativeness and zeal of many of the younger and emerging leaders in the Church. In a way their presence and numbers is something of a paradox, since, as the numbers above show, there seems to be an overall generational shift away from the Church. It is almost as if these younger and emerging leaders, (clergy, religious and lay), have been snatched by the Lord from a raging torrent and set on solid rock. And now they have zeal to snatch others from the torrent and draw them to the solid rock of the Church and Christ. It is a small but significant army. And the trumpet the Church is sounding is becoming clearer too, more and more are mustering for the great struggle to re-evangelize the culture.

In tomorrow’s blog I’d like to address the Biblical teaching on homosexual activity as well as heterosexual promiscuity. I do this in an attempt to answer those surveyed above who think there is nothing wrong with either. Just my own little way of trying to turn back some of the numbers and not be among those who have been far too silent.

Here is Fr. Barron’s take on how we lost the culture and what we might do to re-evangelize it.

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God Only Knows – On the Great Discovery of Our Very Selves

Today’s post is brief due to the fact that my own computer crashed – Disk error….Cache flaw….divide by zero….error….error….

Alas and despite my Computer Science Degree from 30 years ago, I am often mystified by the complexity of our modern devices. Most of us who use them really have very little idea of how they basically work!

But if you think these mere computers are complex, how about you? The Scripture from Thursday of this week at Mass says this:

More tortuous than all else is the human heart, beyond remedy; who can understand it? I, the LORD, alone probe the mind and test the heart (Jer 17:9).

One of the greatest discoveries that we are onis the journey to discover our very own self. And only the Lord can really do this for us. For, it is so often the case that we allow illusions to dominate our sense of our self.

The world and so often tells us that we were made to be rich, powerful, beautiful, popular and so forth. And we run after these things, only to eventually discover their emptiness.

We too build up expectations for ourselves that are often wrong and misguided. We often try to be what others are, to have gifts that others have, to look like others etc. Perhaps it is the movie star or sports hero we feel drawn to imitate. Perhaps it is the media-driven body-type we must be. Perhaps there is some one we admire, and we have to be just like them.

But here is the real question: Who is the man or woman God made you to be? What are the gifts He gave you? What is His plan for your life?

This is the real and great discovery. And it is not merely a discovery, it is an acceptance, a whole hearted and grateful acceptance for the gifts that God has given me and the “self” he has made me to be.

In Lent this journey, this great discovery is intensified. But in the end it is a life-long journey that we must make, and God alone can show us the way.

I conclude with a story about Rabbi Eleazar who thought, one day:

Eleazar, why are you not more like Moses? Moses was a great man! But then I thought again, that if I try to be Moses, I will one day face God who will say to me, Eleazar, why were you not more like Eleazar?

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Setting the Record Straight – Mass Attendance Has Dropped, But Not as Much as We May Think. Reflections on a Recent CARA Report

We usually think of the 1950s as an era when just about everyone went to Church. But the cover from the 1959 Saturday Evening Post at the right indicates that even at that time there were already trends underway that indicated not all was perfect in paradise. It is a long and unfortunate trend that men have often left the spiritual upbringing of the Church to their wives and stayed home on Sundays.

A recent CARA blog post written by Mark Gray takes a closer look at the data of Mass attendance from the 1950s and indicates that our perceptions of the high mass attendance in the 1950s may need some adjustment. This is due to the fact that much of the data was based on self-reporting of Catholics. Such reporting is often unreliable since, bluntly stated, people tell fibs to survey takers. Sometimes they tell fibs to themselves. Consider the scenario:

  1. Poll taker: Do you go to church on Sundays?
  2. Respondent: Sure! (Which really means sometimes).
  3. Poll taker: Of the 52 Sundays a year, how many would you say you are in Church?
  4. Respondent: Oh, at least 50 (Which really means more like 10).

The fact is, people like to look good to poll takers, and often answer the question in flattering ways rather than purely truthful ways. This was even more likely the case in the 1950s when Sunday Church attendance was more of a social expectation than today.

Even today, 42% of Catholics polled say they go to Mass each Sunday. But we know from harder data (such as head counts) that the number is closer to 30%

I’d like to put some excerpts of the CARA blog post here and make a few comments along the way. The actual article is fairly long and you can read the rest here: Deconstructing Mass Attendance Numbers

As usual, the Article excerpts will be in bold, black italics, and my remarks in plain text red.

Didn’t everyone go to church in the 1950s?…. But the fact that [the Norman Rockwell Painting above] made it on to the cover of America’s magazine of record at the time indicates that it resonated with the culture of this period [1959]. This issue of the Post was published at a time when weekly Catholic Mass attendance was peaking, as measured in Gallup telephone surveys (74% in 1958 and 72% in 1959).

[But] in 2008, Gallup surveys estimated Catholic Mass attendance in any given week had fallen to 42%. Don’t giggle. I know you don’t believe that 42% of Catholics nationally attend Mass in any given week and you’re right. But why do we believe 74% did in 1958?  [Well said. Many of us who quote statistics on Mass attendance exaggerate the 1950s number upward and the current numbers downward because it suits our point. I have been guilty of this. It reminds me of an old GK Chesterton sayings, Many people use statistics like a drunkard uses a light pole, for support rather than enlightenment].

You can only get an attendance percentage by dividing the Mass attendance count….by the number of self-identified Catholics in the parish boundaries that could have attended. [And this sort of data is harder data than self reporting Catholics called on the phone who will tend to exaggerate the frequency of their attendance. This sort of data is a lot harder to come by and requires careful headcounts in parishes. Many dioceses conduct an October headcount. But even four weeks of data is not, of itself enough since there are great seasonal swings in many parishes. Real data collection is hard work].

Perhaps more can be said by taking a second look at a researcher who was in many Catholic parishes studying Mass attendance in the 1950s. Joseph H. Fichter, S.J., (granduncle to current CARA research associate Fr. Stephen Fichter) famously studied parish life by going door to door and taking censuses, making Mass attendance head counts, observing parish life, and documenting everything possible both qualitatively and quantitatively. [Like I said, data collection is hard work]

Fichter estimates Mass attendance levels based on the number of individuals registered with the parish. But he also provides the counts for dormant Catholics…. people who self-identify their religion as Catholic but who do not attend Mass [at all]. Thirty-eight percent of the Catholics within the parish boundaries he studied in this book were dormant. Thus, at the outset we know that typical weekly attendance by the measure of this study could have been no more than 62%. But [the number drops further when we consider that only] 79% of the non-dormant Catholics attended Mass on a typical weekend. So [in combining these two facts] the total percentage of self-identifying Catholics attending Mass in this study was estimated to be about 49%. [OK, I see your eyes crossing with all the numbers. But the critical number is that  the number of Catholics attending Mass EVERY  week was really closer to 49% in the 1950s when properly adjusted.  So the 74% number is too high. Mark Gray explains why in the next paragraph].

Attendance over-reports [in Gallup-like surveys] occur as people being interviewed over the phone respond to their interviewer with answers about their behavior that they believe to fit socially desirable expectations. So typically the respondent has just told the interviewer their religion and then they are asked how often they attend services. Many respond in a way that they believe is socially acceptable—even if it does not fit their actual pattern of attendance.

We have some early evidence of this in the Americans’ Use of Time Study, 1965-1966. Here, 57% of Americans when asked directly about their church attendance reported that they had attended in the last week. However, only 39% of these respondents actually indicated attending religious services when recording their time use hour by hour in diaries (i.e., an indirect measurement)…. [OK, so basically people lie, err….fib. Fact is we do tend to over estimate how good we do   🙂 ].

Father Fichter’s observations also indicate that some of the Mass attendance of the 1950s was not as “active” [i.e. devout] as we might remember it. Here is a passage that likely still resonates with your observations of parish life today:

“A measure of the parishioners’ devotion to the Mass and of their fulfillment of this obligation is seen in the numbers who arrive late and who leave early. By actual count it was noted that, at all Sunday Masses, 8.37 per cent of the congregation arrived after Mass had started and that 6.35 per cent left before it was completed. … Although we have no accurate count, we have noticed that many of these persons are duplicated in both categories. In other words, those who come late also tend to leave early. … The younger males constitute the majority of those who omit part of the Mass, while older females make up the majority who arrive in church well in advance of Mass” (1951, pg. 138)……“By actual count, 35.08 per cent of the congregation read the missal all during Mass, while another 22.08 per cent read some sort of prayer-book while following the priest’s reading of the Gospel. … The remaining persons simply stare off into space, although several men in the last pews sometimes read a copy of Our Sunday Visitor during Mass” (1951, pg. 138). [Oops, maybe a little less devout than some of us remember. I DO remember the silly legalisms of the past where people asked questions like, “How late can I be to Mass and still fulfill my obligation?” My sense is that the trends noted here are a little worse today despite the Mass being in English. A lot of Catholics still give the impression that they are at Mass merely to “check off the God box” and that they seek the fastest Mass possible. Many are devout today, but many are not].

Over a year of Masses, on average, attenders were much more often female (about 7 in 10 or more) than male—a composition that can only result from some men, perhaps like the man in the Rockwell illustration above, staying home. [I want to post on this topic sometime soon].

Many cite CARA’s weekly Mass attendance figure in the low 20 percent range. Some also then cite Gallup’s figure from the 1950s and attempt to argue that Mass attendance has fallen from nearly 80% to just above 20%. This is misleading and inaccurate…..as shown above, the Gallup numbers for the 1950s are inflated…. [Again, I plead guilty to some of this].

Currently, CARA surveys indicate that 23% of self-identified adult Catholics attend Mass every week. Yet, in any given average week, 31% of Catholics are attending…. Note there is considerable local variation in Mass attendance levels with higher levels in the Midwest and lower in coastal urban areas). During Lent and Advent, Mass attendance increases into the mid-40 percent-range and on Christmas and Easter, an estimated 68% of Catholics attend. [This is a good distinction. I sometimes hear the 23% number and other times the 31% number and wonder which it is].

[OK, so what’s the Bottom Line?]

Thus, if one is seeking to make a comparison of Mass attendance in the 1950s to now, the drop is not 80% to 20%. Instead it is from a peak of 62% in 1958 to about 31% now. This is still a remarkable decline. It means that the Mass attendance you see at Christmas and Easter is a lot like the attendance you might have seen in a typical week in the late-1950s.

OK I know, it was a lot of numbers, but in the end, the report suggests that we need to trim a bit off the extremes and bring both numbers a little more toward the middle. In the end, we have still suffered an enormous decline and the recent wave of church and school closings demonstrates that. In these leaner times we do well to consider that it is more important than ever that we be at our posts. It is simply a fact that we need one another to survive.

Photo Credit: Sunday Morning; Norman Rockwell; Published: May 16, 1959; © 1959 SEPS

This song says, I Need You To Survive

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The Rising of the Roses: A Reflection on How the Lord is Restoring His Church

It is often a fact that we have had to discuss difficult subjects on this blog. For, it is also a fact that our culture is in serious trouble.  But it is also a notable trend that God is renewing his Church. I am seeing increasing signs of a springtime for the Church, at least here in America.

As I walk past the rose bushes out front of the rectory I see the first red shoots emerging from the pruned stumps. Last October my rose bushes were over seven feet tall. In November they were pruned all the way back to one foot. But, the young red shoots are emerging.

And in this I see an image of the Church. The overall numbers in the Church still seem troubling, especially for those of who remember the days of packed Churches and waiting lists to get into Catholic Schools. In those days, the Church stood tall and proud. But the days of pruning came, as a cultural winter set in, and we have seen closings and very lean years. Yet, the young red shoots of a new season are appearing on this rosebush of the Church, if you ask me.

1. Vocations to the Priesthood in many areas are returning. Here in Washington we are preparing to open a new pre-theologate. Our ordination numbers are up and many superb men are presenting themselves for service of the Church. I am very impressed with our new priests of the last 15 years. They are solid men who love the Church, are obedient to the Magisterium and liturgical norms, and have zeal to proclaim Christ.

2. In my parish the convent became so full the Servant Sisters of the Lord had to seek larger quarters. 25 of them moved. Only four remain in our convent, but I expect the convent to fill again soon.  Many Religious orders that have retained their traditions such as the habit, communal life, and a focused apostolate are doing well, if not thriving. The Dominican Sisters in Nashville and those in Michigan are over-flowing with vocations.

3. One of my apostolates is the Traditional Latin Mass and I find an amazing number of young people who are attending. They are also meeting each other and marrying. More than half my weddings these days are from the Latin Mass community. They are solid couples, committed to the Church’s teaching on marriage. A good number of the couples I have wedded have gone on to have nice, large Catholic families.

4. The Catholic blogosphere has lit up with many outstanding, faithful and informative sites. Yes, there are some bad ones out there that feature dissent. But frankly, it is clear that the real energy is at the faithful sites. There is a graying of dissent and a thirst for the truth.

5. EWTN and Catholic Radio have a great presence and authentic voice throughout the world.

6. Great publishing houses like Ignatius Press, OSV,  and fine Catholic Publications are available to the faithful in abundance.

7. There are many thriving movements in the Church that both reflect diversity and manifest great devotion for the Lord and the Church.

8. Better sense of the Battle – I think an increasing number of Catholics who remain, (remember only 25% go to Church), have an overall better sense that they are in a battle. They are, increasingly sober and serious about the state of the world and the necessity of being distinct from it. Too many Catholics of the past just wanted to fit in and get along. I think this attitude is beginning to diminish. This is certainly so among the younger clergy and religious and a growing fact among especially the younger faithful.

9. Many younger Catholics are more open to the Church’s teaching. They see the disastrous and often ruined lives of the generation that preceded them  and seem more open to admitting the errors of modernist tendencies.

10. There are many  new and flourishing Catholic Colleges and Universitiesthat have risen to replace many of the seemingly unreformable ones. Likewise, there are many good movements on College campuses such as Newman Centers, and groups like the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS). Groups like these give Catholics a fighting chance on many secular (and even some Catholic) campuses where the moral and academic setting is hostile and poisonous. Other groups such as the Cardinal Newman Society (CNS) keep an eye on Catholic Colleges and both praise the good ones and warn parents of the bad ones and bad trends.

11. Open Dissent and Liturgical Abuses seldom go unanswered now. Many Catholics now zelously step forward to set the record straight and demand on-going reform.

Yes, the red shoots are beginning to appear on the pruned rosebush of the Church. My list is just a quick one, anecdotal and incomplete. I would be grateful if you would add to this list. Where do YOU see signs of growth and spring?

Little by little the Lord is raising up men and women in the Church who, by his grace, are ushering in reform and purification. Who do you know like this and what do you see?

I realize that some of you will also want to differ with my view or add areas where we need further improvement (e.g. greater love for and direct service of the poor). Please do so. My picture is incomplete; the rose shoots are just now appearing.

I want to finish with a Scripture from last Saturday’s Mass that speaks with joy of the work of God to rebuild the ruins:

[L]ight shall rise for you in the darkness,
and the gloom shall become for you like midday;
Then the LORD will guide you always
and give you plenty even on the parched land.
He will renew your strength,
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring whose water never fails.
The ancient ruins shall be rebuilt for your sake,
and the foundations from ages past you shall raise up;
“Repairer of the breach,” they shall call you,
“Restorer of ruined homesteads.” (Is 58:9-14)

Photo Credit: Flickr (Right click on Photo for URL)

This video depicts the work of FOCUS, mentioned above. It illustrates well the kind of reform I see springing up in the Church. The Video is very inspiring.

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The Sexual Revolution Reconsidered in a New York Times Article?

Columnist Ross Douthat at the New York Times has posted some interesting information and reflections on the sexual revolution. I want to present excerpts from both his column and blog. The bold black italics are his remarks, the red normal face type are my reflections.

My column todaymakes what I hope is a non-utopian argument for why social conservatives are right to welcome the recent evidence that American teens and twenty-somethings are waiting somewhat longer to have sex…. [I]t makes a huge difference not only whether people have premarital sex, but how early and how often and how casually, and that this is what social conservatives think changed for the worse starting in the 1960s…. It is a helpful distinction to indicate the trifold: whether, how early and how often. It would be preferable if there were no-premarital sex at all, for it would refelct God’s clear teaching on this. But even if we can’t fully roll back the fact that some do have pre-marital sex, at least its impact can also be minimized by chipping away at how early and how often young people engage in sexually sinful behaviors.

But I think it’s worth saying something about [another] question, because it’s crucial to the debate over how we should think about the sexual revolution and its consequences: Did the social trends of the last 50 years bring about “unprecedented gender equality”? Absolutely. Did they bring about “unprecedented personal fulfillment”? Well … for some people they did. But it’s very easy to find indicators that paint a more complicated picture. Female happiness has dropped since the 1970s, despite enormous female economic gains. Marital happiness has dipped as well, even though fewer people get married and it’s easier to leave an unhappy union. And then of course there’s the impact of higher divorce rates on children’s psychological well-being, the impact of rising single parenthood on child poverty, and so forth.All this is a way of saying that the only obvious gains women have made are economic and career related. Big whoop….It seems clearer, in other areas, that women are generally the big losers in the sexual revolution. Mr. Douthat has detailed a few of them here. I might add that women are far more likely to contract STDs, be used and cast aside, be left to largely raise children alone, and have far less social leverage over men. Men pretty much come and go as they please and for some reason women seem to tolerate it. Most of the social structures, that in the past, insisted that men do right by women have been stripped away. Pregnancy places few obligations on a man. He may have to pay some child support, but even here, many men get away with underpaying, paying late, or not paying at all.  

In many cases women have fewer options, if you ask me. Many, if not most HAVE to work. Many feel strong pressure to have sex casually in our promiscuous culture. Many feel strong pressures, economic and social to (sinfully) take strong medicine that radically alters their hormonal balance and suppresses the perfectly normal and healthy process of ovulation. Many are pressured to have abortions when “inconvenient” pregnancies occur. Women, perhaps as never before, because of our strongly visual and media driven culture, feel enormous pressure to look perfect and have bodies that are unnaturally thin and yet also curvaceous. This has always been the case to some extent but it has gone into high gear due to the widespread celebration of lust that has come from the sexual revolution. In so many ways, women have been the losers in the sexual revolution IMHO. Some will say, as a man, I cannot really have an opinion here. But perhaps some of the women who read will want to express their view.

The crucial question, to my mind, is whether all of the social changes that swept America in the 1960s and the 1970s are a package deal. [Some feminists and progressives] seem convinced that everything goes together — that the cultural shifts that have made our personal lives more unstable and (possibly) less fulfilling are inextricably bound to the shifts that made female equality a possibility, and then more or less a fact. Hence their reflexive hostility to the idea that anything could have changed for the worse in American sexual culture: To suggest that the general welfare might be enhanced if teenage sexual activity were a little more stigmatized or divorce a little harder to get, in their eyes, is to implicitly suggest that women belong in kitchens and finishing schools, rather than boardrooms and the Senate. It’s the slippery slope in reverse: Many progressives and feminists have committed themselves to an absolute defense of everything that changed during the sexual revolution, out of a fear that one concession will cost women every gain…..[T]he fact that smart feminists… feel compelled to act all blasé about the pornography industry, lest they give an inch to the forces of reaction, seems like one of the more regrettable aspects of the contemporary cultural debate. This is very well said. There is a kind of all-or-nothing thinking that seems to dominate the feminists and other progressives. It leads them to a strange sort fo silence about things that actually harm and degrade women. They make this deal with the devil for their economic gains and seem almost to fear common-sense traditional morality.

I don’t think this is the right way to look at it. The connection between feminism and sexual permissiveness strikes me as historically contingent rather than strictly necessary, and the economic and social gains that women have made since the 1960s seem robust enough to endure — or, more likely, continue apace — even amid a reconsideration of some of the social changes that accompanied them. Yes, an ethic of sexual restraint can be turned to patriarchal ends, but so can an ethic of sexual permissiveness, as anyone who’s hung out in a frat house for any length of time can attest. Exactly.

Mr Douthat then turns his attention to the relationship between traditional morality and happiness.

Two sociologists, Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker, in their recent book, “Premarital Sex in America.”….look at sexual behavior among contemporary young adults, [and] find a significant correlation between sexual restraint and emotional well-being, between monogamy and happiness — and between promiscuity and depression. This correlation is much stronger for women than for men. Female emotional well-being seems to be tightly bound to sexual stability — which may help explain why overall female happiness has actually drifted downward since the sexual revolution. Imagine that! Following the norms that God and Natural Law prescribe actually might make us happier! How can this be? We were all taught by the social revolutionaries of the 1960s that free love and a casting off of the restraints would be liberating, and bring for contentment without guilt, and happiness. Now after all that, some forty years later, we come to find that God’s had it right after all.  🙂

When social conservatives talk about restoring the link between sex, monogamy and marriage, they often have these kinds of realities in mind…..The ultimate goal is a sexual culture that makes it easier for young people to achieve romantic happiness — by encouraging them to wait a little longer, choose more carefully and judge their sex lives against a strong moral standard. And I would add, wait till marriage. Because the bottom line is that promiscuity is destructive of marriage. Most men figure, “Why get married?” After all they get what they want, or what they think they want, without it. Why commit? So I would just go a little further than Mr. Douthat here and encourage women to insist that men wait until the wedding night. Of course, until a significant number of women start insisting on this, it is likely men will continue to stray and shun commitment. Now, some will comment that I am putting the onus on the women here. Perhaps I am. Men should behave and, Lord knows,  I’ve surely preached this to them. But I’m also being realisitic here. Women hold the cards in this matter and need to set the limits. I’m not excusing men, I’m just saying that women have most of the power and that men will, and are able, to follow their lead here.

Liberals argue, not unreasonably, that Planned Parenthood’s approach… — in which teen sexual activity is taken for granted, and the most important judgment to be made about a sexual encounter is whether it’s clinically “safe” —…. is tailored to the gritty realities of teenage sexuality. But realism can blur into cynicism, and a jaded attitude can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, the Christian view is rooted ultimately in hope and the vision that chastity is possible. Realism can be a virtue but, as Mr Douthat rightly points out, there is a false “realism” which is actually not realism at all but is cynicism in disguise. The theological virtue of Hope is the confident expectation of God’s help. Showing young people the way and having high expectations of them is rooted in a confidence that comes from Hope .

Social conservatives look at the contemporary sexual landscape and remember that it wasn’t always thus, and they look at current trends and hope that it doesn’t have to be this way forever. In this sense, despite their instinctive gloominess, they’re actually the optimists in the debate. Amen!