Catholics

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While many Catholics feel politically 'homeless,' Biden Catholics managed a 2020 win

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While many Catholics feel politically 'homeless,' Biden Catholics managed a 2020 win

Conservative patriarch Edmund Burke died in 1797 in Beaconsfield, England.

This didn't prevent columnist Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal, a Catholic conservative, from making Burke her write-in choice in the 2020 White House race. She wasn't the only voter who felt politically homeless, due to religious and moral convictions that clashed with the political and personal choices of President Donald Trump and, the odds are overwhelming, president-elect Joe Biden.

Once again, there was no way to ignore issues linked to faith, morality and, yes, character. This was especially true with Catholic voters who frequent church pews.

Considering Trump, Noonan stressed the coronavirus crisis, where the president finally "met a problem he couldn't talk his way out of. I believe that's what happened: He played down the pandemic, lied, made uninformed claims at briefings that serious people were struggling to keep useful. He produced chaos. The country can't afford any of that in a crisis that is sudden and severe."

What about the Democrat, a lifelong Catholic? Noonan predicted Biden would be a "hapless and reluctant conductor" on a "runaway train," especially on moral and cultural issues.

"The progressive left," she argued, "endorses and pushes for the identity politics that is killing us, an abortion regime way beyond anything that could be called reasonable or civilized and on which it will make no compromise; it opposes charter schools and other forms of public school liberation; it sees the police as the enemy, it demonstrates no distinct fidelity to freedom of speech and, most recently, its declared hopes range from court packing to doing away with the Electoral College and adding states to the union.”

The bottom line: The political realities of 2020 left many Catholics and other active religious believers torn between political options that no longer seemed acceptable.

It was easy to read between the lines in key passages of a new cover letter the U.S. Catholic bishops added to their "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship" document (.pdf here).

"The threat of abortion remains our preeminent priority because it directly attacks life itself, because it takes place within the sanctuary of the family, and because of the number of lives destroyed," the letter stated. "At the same time, we cannot dismiss or ignore other serious threats to human life and dignity such as racism, the environmental crisis, poverty and the death penalty. …

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Al Smith dinner 2020: Trump and Biden make pitches to very different Catholic voters

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Al Smith dinner 2020: Trump and Biden make pitches to very different Catholic voters

During a normal White House race, the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner allows the candidates to don formal attire, fire snappy one-liners and make subtle appeals to Catholic voters.

But nothing is normal in 2020. Thus, Joe Biden and President Donald Trump used this year's virtual dinner to preach to Catholic voters in swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida. The event produced few headlines, coming a mere six hours before Trump announced his positive test for COVID-19.

Saluting Catholic progressive, Biden offered a litany about the pandemic, race, the recession and climate change. He warned that many Americans have lost faith "in one another, in truth, in science and reason."

The current pope, Biden stressed, embraced him during a 2013 White House visit, offering comfort shortly after brain cancer took his son Beau's life.

"Pope Francis took the time to meet with my entire family to help us see the light through the darkness," said Biden. "I live in an amazing country … where an Irish Catholic kid like me from Scranton, Pennsylvania, would one day befriend a Jesuit pope. But that's who we are as a country -- where anything is possible when we care for one another, when we look out for one another, when we keep the faith."

While stressing that he is guided "by the tenets of Catholic social doctrine" -- helping the "least of these" -- Biden didn't mention his vow to codify Roe v. Wade if the Supreme Court overturns that decision or his promise to reinstate policies requiring the Little Sisters of the Poor to cooperate in providing birth control and abortifacients to staff. He didn't mention his decision to officiate at the same-sex wedding of two White House colleagues, an action clashing with church doctrine.

It was logical for Biden to avoid providing fresh ammunition for critics. But the speech, once again, trumpeted his Catholic credentials.

"Joe Biden's choice to run explicitly on the claim that he is a faithful Catholic squarely places on the table his claim to be a faithful Catholic," stressed legal scholar Robert P. George of Princeton University, writing on Facebook. He is a Catholic conservative who has also been a consistent critic of Trump.

“No way out of this, folks," he added. "It's not, or not just, Biden's critics who have raised the issue. It's the Biden campaign. …

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Icons, heroes and even one superhero: Chadwick Boseman was an unusual film star

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Icons, heroes and even one superhero: Chadwick Boseman was an unusual film star

Early in the coronavirus crisis, and this summer's wave of chaos in American streets, Rachel Bulman began paying close attention to the faces in news reports.

She also found herself thinking about a hero -- the Black Panther.

Born in the Philippines before being adopted, the Catholic writer has -- as a daughter, wife and mother -- lived her life in White America. As a child, she didn't look like her family. Now, her children are growing up "knowing that they just don't look like everyone else. … Our family has its own story," she said.

Bulman responded by hanging images of saints from Africa, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere in their home. There was St. Josephine Bakhita from the Sudan and an icon of St. Augustine with darker skin, since his mother was from North Africa's Berber tribe. There was St. Juan Diego of Mexico, who encountered Our Lady of Guadalupe, and Sister Thea Bowman of Mississippi, the granddaughter of slaves, whose cause for sainthood has been endorsed by America's bishops.

"I wanted my children to see all kinds of saints and heroes, including some with faces kind of like their own," she said.

Bulman had also become interested in the Marvel Comics universe and the symbolic role of King T'Challa -- the Black Panther -- for millions of Black Americans, especially children. She was stunned when actor Chadwick Boseman died at age 43 after a long, private fight with colon cancer. He endured years of chemotherapy and multiple surgeries while filming "The Black Panther" and related Avenger movies.

Searching through press reports, Bulman noted colleagues referring to Boseman as a "man of faith," a "beautiful soul" and someone with a "spiritual aura" about his work with others -- including children with cancer.

At a memorial rite for Boseman, his former pastor at Welfare Baptist Church in Anderson, S.C., said the actor remained the same person he knew as a young believer.

“He's still Chad," said the Rev. Samuel Neely. "He did a lot of positive things. … With him singing in the choir, with him working the youth group, he always was doing something, always helping out, always serving. That was his personality."

Digging deeper, Bulman said she "cried all the way through" a video of Boseman's 2018 commencement address at Howard University, his alma mater.

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Faith after COVID-19: How many flocks will survive digital 'worship shifting' trends?

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Faith after COVID-19: How many flocks will survive digital 'worship shifting' trends?

Television professionals who survived the past decade have made their peace with terms like "binging" and "time-shifting."

But how, pray tell, can clergy embrace "worship-shifting"?

The coronavirus crisis has plunged pastors into digital technology while trying to replace analog community life with online worship, classes and fellowship forums. These changes have frustrated many, especially believers in ancient traditions built on rites requiring face-to-face contact. But many worshippers have welcomed online worship.

These changes have altered the "fundamental relationship that many young adults have with their churches," said David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, which does research with a variety of religious groups. "We're hearing about worship-shifting, as people use all the tech in their homes to fit services into their own schedules, just like everything else they watch on all those screens.

"This is another way people are using social media to renegotiate the role the church plays in the lives of their families."

The question religious leaders are asking, of course, is how many people will return to their pews when "normal" life returns. But it may be several years before high-risk older believers decide it's safe to return, even after vaccines become available. Younger members may keep watching their own local services, switch to high-profile digital flocks elsewhere or do both.

In talks with clients, Kinnaman said he is hearing denominational leaders and clergy say they believe that, in the next year or so, some churches will simply close their doors. Early in the pandemic the percentage of insiders telling Barna researchers they were "highly confident" their churches would survive was "in the high 70s," he said.

“Now it's in the 50s. … Most churches are doing OK, for now. But there's a segment that's really struggling and taking a hit, week after week."

After reviewing several kinds of research -- including patterns in finances and attendance -- Kinnaman sent a shockwave through social-media channels with his recent prediction that one in five churches will close in the next 18 months.

In "mainline" churches, he is convinced this number will be one in three, in part because these rapidly aging Protestant denominations have lost millions of members -- some up to 50% -- since the 1960s.

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Memory eternal: Farewell to the sharp pen of Father Paul 'Diogenes' Mankowski

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Memory eternal: Farewell to the sharp pen of Father Paul 'Diogenes' Mankowski

For millions of Americans, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is as familiar as the national anthem and much easier to sing.

Few would need help with: "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He has loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on! Glory, glory, Hallelujah! … His truth is marching on!"

During 1990s fights over updated Catholic liturgies, a Semitic languages professor at Rome's Pontifical Biblical Institute wrote a Battle Hymn for modernists.

This "sanitized" text -- "chanted to no tune in particular" -- declared: "I see God's approach; it is good. God makes wine with God's feet. … Brightness flashes from the decision-making apparatus. God's worldview is currently earning widespread respect. Give honor repeatedly to the god of our tradition. We have owned our values."

Father Paul V. Mankowski put his own name on that First Things piece, since it didn't lance specific institutions or leaders. For decades, Catholics seeking his satirical work learned to look for "Diogenes" at CatholicCulture.org or "Father X" elsewhere.

Mankowski died on September 3 at age 66, felled by a ruptured brain aneurysm. Raised in a middle-class Rust Belt family, he worked in steel mills to pay tuition at the University of Chicago. His advanced degrees included a master's from Oxford and a Harvard University doctorate.

Many researchers, politicos and journalists (like me) knew him through telephone calls and emails, usually seeking documents and statements from nearby Catholic leaders. He was a rarity in the modern age -- a Jesuit conservative -- and his superiors eventually ordered him not to address church controversies. Much of his work was published anonymously or using pen names.

Princeton University's Robert P. George blitzed through years of emails, after hearing about Mankowski's sudden death.

"There are some doozies -- especially the spoofs, send ups and parodies," said George, on Facebook. "His wit was a massive quiver full of poison-dipped arrows, and he was a master archer. … He would not give a pass to fools, frauds, charlatans, hypocrites, rent seekers, time servers, racketeers, manipulators, corrupt scholars, false teachers or weak or craven leaders, especially in the Church."

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Pro-Catechism Catholics are watching Joe Biden's actions, not just listening to his words

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Pro-Catechism Catholics are watching Joe Biden's actions, not just listening to his words

In the summer of 2016, two White House staffers -- Brian Mosteller and Joe Mahshie -- tied the knot in a rite led by one of America's most prominent Catholics.

The officiant was Vice President Joe Biden, who later proclaimed on Twitter: "Proud to marry Brian and Joe at my house. Couldn't be happier … two great guys."

Leaders of familiar Catholic armies then debated whether Biden's actions attacked this Catholic Catechism teaching: "The marriage covenant, by which a man and a woman form with each other an intimate communion of life and love, has been founded and endowed with its own special laws by the Creator. … Christ the Lord raised marriage between the baptized to the dignity of a sacrament."

Conflicts between bishops, clergy and laity will loom in the background as Biden seeks to become America's second Catholic president. Combatants will be returning to territory explored in a famous 1984 address by the late Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York, entitled "Religious Belief and Public Morality."

Speaking at the University of Notre Dame, he said: "As a Catholic, I have accepted certain answers as the right ones for myself and my family, and because I have, they have influenced me in special ways, as Matilda's husband, as a father of five children, as a son who stood next to his own father's death bed trying to decide if the tubes and needles no longer served a purpose.

"As a governor, however, I am involved in defining policies that determine other people's rights in these same areas of life and death. Abortion is one of these issues, and while it is one issue among many, it is one of the most controversial and affects me in a special way as a Catholic public official."

It would be wrong to make abortion policies the "exclusive litmus test of Catholic loyalty," he said. After all, the "Catholic church has come of age in America" and it's time for bishops to recognize that Catholic politicians have to be realistic negotiators in a pluralistic land.

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Christian icons and art before the rise of the blue-eyed Jesus with blond hair

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Christian icons and art before the rise of the blue-eyed Jesus with blond hair

For modern skeptics, the 6th-century icon hanging in the Orthodox monastery in the shadow of Mount Sinai is simply a 33-by-18-inch board covered in bees wax and colored pigments.

For believers, this Christ Pantocrator ("ruler of all") icon is the most famous image of Jesus in the world, because the remote Sinai Peninsula location of St. Catherine's Monastery allowed it to survive the Byzantine iconoclasm era. The icon shows Jesus -- with a beard and long hair -- raising his right hand in blessing, while holding a golden book of the Gospels.

This Jesus does not have blond hair and blue eyes. "Christ of Sinai" shows the face of a wise teacher from ancient Palestine.

"When you talk about ancient icons, you are basically talking about images of Jesus with long hair, a beard and some kind of Roman toga. That's just about all you can say," said Jonathan Pageau of Quebec, an Eastern Orthodox artist and commentator on sacred symbols.

In the early church, he added, believers "didn't ask other questions -- about race and culture -- because those were not the important questions in those days. … Once you start politicizing icons there's just no way out of those arguments. You get into politics and dividing people and then you're lost."

In these troubled times, said Pageau, many analysts are "projecting valid concerns about racism and Europe's history of colonization and the plight of African-Americans back into issues of church history and art that are centuries and centuries old. It's a kind of category error and everything gets mixed up."

But that's what happened when debates about some #BlackLivesMatters activists toppling Confederate memorials -- along with attacks on Catholic statues and even insufficiently "woke" Founding Fathers -- veered into #WhiteJesus territory.

"Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy," tweeted Shaun King, author of "Make Change: How to Fight Injustice, Dismantle Systemic Oppression, and Own Our Future."

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Anglican debate in 2020 crisis: Can clergy consecrate bread and wine over the Internet?

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Anglican debate in 2020 crisis: Can clergy consecrate bread and wine over the Internet?

In the late 1970s, the Episcopal Ad Project began releasing spots taking shots at television preachers and other trends in American evangelicalism.

One image showed a television serving as an altar, holding a priest's stole, a chalice and plate of Eucharistic hosts. The headline asked: "With all due regard to TV Christianity, have you ever seen a Sony that gives Holy Communion?"

Now some Anglicans are debating whether it's valid -- during the coronavirus crisis -- to celebrate "virtual Eucharists," with computers linking priests at altars and communicants with their own bread and wine at home.

In a recent House of Bishops meeting -- online, of course -- Episcopal Church leaders backed away from allowing what many call "Virtual Holy Eucharist."

Episcopal News Service said bishops met in private small groups to discuss if it's "theologically sound to allow Episcopalians to gather separately and receive Communion that has been consecrated by a priest remotely during an online service."

Experiments had already begun, in some Zip codes. In April, Bishop Jacob Owensby of the Diocese of Western Louisiana encouraged such rites among "Priests who have the technical know-how, the equipment and the inclination" to proceed.

People at home, he wrote, will "provide for themselves bread and wine (bread alone is also permissible) and place it on a table in front of them. The priest's consecration of elements in front of her or him extends to the bread and wine in each … household. The people will consume the consecrated elements."

Days later, after consulting with America's presiding bishop," Bishop Owensby rescinded those instructions. "I understand that virtual consecration of elements at a physical or geographical distance from the Altar exceeds the recognized bounds set by our rubrics and inscribed in our theology of the Eucharist," he wrote.

However, similar debates were already taking place among other Anglicans. In Australia, for example, Archbishop Glenn Davies of Sydney urged priests to be creative during this pandemic, while churches were being forced to shut their doors.

During a live-streamed rite, he wrote, parishioners "could participate in their own homes via the internet consuming their own bread and wine, in accordance with our Lord's command."

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Cornel West and Robert George keep asking believers -- left and right -- to be tolerant

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Cornel West and Robert George keep asking believers -- left and right -- to be tolerant

America is so divided that 50% of "strong liberals" say they would fire business executives who donate money to reelect President Donald Trump.

Then again, 36% of "strong conservatives" would fire executives who donate to Democrat Joe Biden's campaign.

This venom has side effects. Thus, 62% of Americans say they fear discussing their political beliefs with others, according to a national poll by the Cato Institute and the global research firm YouGov. A third of those polled thought their convictions could cost them jobs.

That's the context for the efforts of Cornel West of Harvard University and Princeton's Robert George to defend tolerant, constructive debates in the public square. West is a black Baptist liberal and George is a white Catholic conservative.

"We need the honesty and courage not to compromise our beliefs or go silent on them out of a desire to be accepted, or out of fear of being ostracized, excluded or canceled," they wrote, in a recent Boston Globe commentary.

"We need the honesty and courage to recognize and acknowledge that there are reasonable people of good will who do not share even some of our deepest, most cherished beliefs. … We need the honesty and courage to treat decent and honest people with whom we disagree -- even on the most consequential questions -- as partners in truth-seeking and fellow citizens, … not as enemies to be destroyed. And we must always respect and protect their human rights and civil liberties."

They closed with an appeal to Trump and Biden, reminding them that "victories can be pyrrhic, destroying the very thing for which the combatants struggle. When that thing is our precious American experiment in ordered liberty and republican democracy, its destruction would be a tragedy beyond all human powers of reckoning."

It's distressing that this essay didn't inspire debates in social-media and the embattled opinion pages of American newspapers, noted Elizabeth Scalia, editor at large of Word on Fire, a Catholic apologetics ministry. After all, West and George are influential thinkers with clout inside the D.C. Beltway and they spoke out during a hurricane of anger and violence -- literal and verbal -- in American life.