Thy Kingdom Come!
Mary Magdalene and the Rest of Us
Today is the memorial of St. Mary Magdalene. Thanks to our friends of the Da Vinci Code, she is very well known today, and rumors of who she really was abound. But Mary Magdalene was a somewhat complex figure even before Dan Brown got his hands on her. Most Catholics still tend to presume that Mary Magdalene, mentioned by Mark and John as the first to see Jesus after the Resurrection , is the same as Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, who anointed Jesus' feet with her hair. This is not supported in the text of Scripture, but suggests itself because of their common name and the tender devotion both Marys show to Jesus. This Mary Magdalene/Mary of Bethany is further traditionally identified with the unnamed sinful woman who, in Luke 7, washes Jesus' feet with her tears, an obvious connection because of the similar hair-foot-washing gesture.
Catholics may or may not continue to identify these different women with each other, but the idea that Mary Magdalene had a somewhat checkered past seems to be borne out by Mark's statement that seven demons had gone out from her. One thing is for sure: when Fathers of the Church like Gregory the Great first identified Mary Magdalene with the repentant prostitute of Luke 7, it was in no way part of a smear campaign aimed at degrading Magdalene for the sake of the patriarchal hierarchy of the Church! That claim is made by some writers today, but it just doesn't make sense: no one in Gregory's time would have even suggested that Mary Magdalene was the same as one of the apostles, or the wife of Jesus, or any other such thing; why would he have felt a need to dishonor her? Gregory's identification of Magdalene as a penitent sinner is not a putdown, in any case, because the Scriptures clearly give us both St. Peter and St. Paul as men who turned from denial or persecution to follow Jesus. In fact, that is still one of the great lessons of this feast: whether we take Magdalene to be the repentant prostitute, or just go with the seven demons story, we see someone who had been freed by Jesus from the grip of evil, and who clung to him with undying gratitude and affection. In this respect, she serves as a model for all of us, that those who love Jesus most and are most favored by him will be those who are most able to recognize their sinfulness and their need for him.
What about Mary's status vis-a-vis the apostles and the priesthood? No one who takes seriously the authority of the New Testament will deny that as remarkably close as Mary Magdalene was to Jesus, as highly as he favored her, he nonetheless didn't include her or any of his other faithful women among the Twelve, whom he entrusted with the priesthood. Is this a denigration? Only if greatness in the Kingdom of God depends on one's function of leadership, which we know from Jesus' own words isn't the case. But Mary Magdalene, even if she wasn't a sharer in the apostolic priesthood, was essential in God's saving plan: she was the "apostle to the apostles"! Mary Magdalene's relation to the Twelve, in fact, bears out the truth that behind every great man of God there is a great woman of God. Jesus came to us through his Mother, the Immaculate Virgin. The Easter faith of the apostles Peter and John followed upon the Easter witness of Mary Magdalene. And the same, I would bet, is true for every one of my fellow seminarians: where did most of us learn our faith from, if not from the strong women of faith who are our mothers? Putting modern-day polemics aside, the feast of Mary Magdalene is a great opportunity to be grateful for the feminine genius in the Church, as embodied in this woman who, like the penitent in Luke 7, "loved much."
Thy Kingdom Come! Sizing Up Mr. Roberts--and His Prospects From what we've been hearing, it seems you have to hand it to the President for political savvy. In John Roberts, he may have found just what he needed for his first Supreme Court nominee: a reliable conservative who nonetheless offers very little that the Senate Democrats will be able to take aim at. There is, first, the matter of his resume, professional qualifications, and overall personal impression. And on this score, the president hit a home run: everyone who knows Judge Roberts seems to consider him just about the most talented legal mind around, he enjoyed wide bipartisan support from the Bar Association for his current seat on the prestigious D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and he is, by all accounts, a wonderful human being. All of this makes him a person who is hard to attack, and it's coupled with the most fascinating part of this whole dance: the fact that after such a distinguished career as Judge Roberts has already had, it is hard for the opposition to dig up any statements that would prove he's an "extremist." Nonetheless, in the current climate, where confirmation is going to involve being grilled by Ted Kennedy on your views on just about everything, the Democrats won't let it rest at that. This means that there will be an unbelievable amount of scrutiny put upon Roberts' words, written as Deputy Solicitor General in a brief for the earlier Bush administration, that "the court's conclusions in Roe that there is a fundamental right to abortion and that government has no compelling interest in protecting prenatal human life throughout pregnancy find no support in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution." These words are critical, both for the pro-life and the pro-abortion camp. For both, they seem to indicate that Roberts does indeed support overturning Roe, which makes him exactly the man pro-lifers have been looking for, and the one pro-abortionists are ready to tear apart in committee. But the plot thickens: these words were written as a lawyer for the Bush administration, and in response to questioning at his Court of Appeals confirmation in '03, Roberts said it would be unfair to saddle a lawyer with all the views he argued for on a client's behalf--even when the client is the government. And when questioned about Roe at that time, Roberts said there was nothing that would prevent him from abiding by Roe's precedent. At this point, it begins to seem that Roberts may very well have the potential to be a David Souter: a promising young conservative judge who shows his true colors on the Supreme Court and comes down solidly in favor of Roe. And yet, these words to the committee also need qualifying: Roberts was right to say that, as a LOWER court judge, he had to abide by the Supreme Court's precedent. So it leaves the question of his record on abortion as unclear as ever. Well, the left doesn't seem to have any problem figuring him out: Adele Stan's article in the American Prospect Online yesterday has him pretty much nailed down as someone with a "scary record", who is " a threat to women's rights--and the Constitution." And Stan's reasons for believing Roberts to be solidly anti-Roe are, I think, compelling: "with such integrity as a hallmark of his personality ... it's difficult to imagine Roberts simply acting on orders at odds with his conscience in the abortion cases he argued for the first Bush administration." As Walter Dellinger III was quoted saying in the NY Times this morning: "it is fair to assume that one who joins an administration at a senior level agress with the most fundamental positions espoused by that administration." If Roberts wasn't really prepared to espouse pro-life principles as a judge, it's unlikely he could have brought himself to argue so persuasively for them in the Bush administration--even writing a friend of the court brief in a case involving Operation Rescue which has pro-abortion groups livid. But suppose this is the case, and Roberts is solidly pro-life: how will he fare before the committee? Evading the question will not work, I fear. First, because this is the Supreme Court, and hence Roberts will be making precedent, not having to defer to it, as an appeals court judge. But more fundamentally, to refuse to own before the Senate the belief that Roe v. Wade should be overturned is to play right into the Democrats' hands, allowing them to rule out from the get-go anyone who believes thus. There will be more open seats in the near future, and some of Bush's other potential nominees have much more outspoken views than Roberts. Roberts, it seems to me, must be willing to admit before the Senate that he opposes Roe, and the Senate Republicans, even if they like to be thought "moderates," must have the guts to stick up for him and for the fact that opposition to Roe is a thoroughly legitimate position for a rational person to take. To attempt to cover over the abortion question would be to admit that the Democrats are right, and that the minority of the Senate should be allowed to disqualify a nominee for not agreeing with NARAL. And if the Senate Republicans should succumb to that, then we must admit that there is precious little point in having a Senate majority-- and precious little resolve left in the Republican party.
TKC!
The President announced earlier this evening his choice of John Roberts to succeed to Sandra Day O'Connor's seat on the Court. By all accounts, a pretty good choice, and a man whose excellent credentials will make it hard for the Senate minority to stop his confirmation. Let's all keep praying hard in the important days ahead.
Thy Kingdom Come!
Judicial Review in History
As the country continues to prepare for the upcoming Supreme Court nomination, I have been doing some reading on the history of the Court in an excellent book by David Barton entitled Original Intent: The Courts, the Constitution, and Religion. Barton's main concern is with the way the Court has perverted the original notion of Church-state relations in recent times, but his observations apply very well to pro-life issues as well.
In essence, we have a two-fold collapse of what was intended for the federal judiciary. First of all, there is the fact that judicial review as practiced today has essentially made the separation of powers a dead letter. The fact that the legal status of abortion still is determined by one Supreme Court decision 32 years ago shows that the Supreme Court is currently by far the most powerful branch of the federal government, at least on domestic affairs. This, Barton points out, seems rather strange granted the fact that the Constitution spends about ten times as much space on Congress as on the Court. And even more strange in the light of abundant statements from the Founders to the effect that "the Judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power." (Alexander Hamilton in Federalist #78).
This immense concentration of power in the Court has come through the use of judicial review to invalidate laws deemed unconstitutional. Interestingly enough, the Founders who saw the judiciary as being weak didn't have a problem with judicial review. However, in their conception, review of laws and interpretation of the Constitution, which someone certainly has to do, was not an exclusive prerogative of the Court: when Jefferson was elected, he used his presidential power of pardoning to effectively nullify the Alien and Sedition Acts signed by his predecessor John Adams, because he believed them to be unconstitutional violations of free speech and considered himself just as bound as the Court to defend the Constitution. President Andrew Jackson later refused to carry out certain decisions of the Supreme Court, on the grounds that "Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others." Hence, "the opinion of judges has no more authority over the Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the President is independent of both. The authority of the Supreme Court must not, therefore, be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive." (Veto Message, July 10, 1832)
Hearing these revered presidents expound the view that the Supreme Court has no more authority than other branches to interpret the Constitution strikes us as odd today, but the fact is it is what the framers of the Constitution had in mind. Unfortunately, long before we came to our present crises, the nation began to supinely acquiesce to the Court's dictation--a danger which the Founders were aware of, and expressly alluded to, only to dismiss it as something which a free people would certainly never submit to. Hamilton alluded in Federalist #81 to the fear of some that the Court could make laws "into whatever shape it may think proper." Hamilton thought this was a "phantom" which the power of impeachment entrusted to Congress would be sufficient to guard against. That's right: judges who used their power to subvert the Constitution should be impeached and removed from office! Numerous other Founders wrote similarly that impeachment could appropriately be used against those who used their power to advance unconstitutional opinions. That we've never even had a justice impeached in recent times shows clearly how far the other branches, directly responsible to the people though they are, have abdicated their constitutional responsibilities.
In addition to the fact that judicial review has allowed the Supreme Court to become the final arbiter of just about everything, our century has suffered particularly from the fact that the judges now reviewing laws have, since the early twentieth century, been heavily infected with legal positivism. Under the influence, it would seem, of an Darwinistic evolutionary philosophy of man, judges in the early twentieth century began to believe that law needed to evolve to adapt to society's changing standards (fair enough)--and the JUDGES were the ones who had to move things along when the majority was too hidebound to see the progressive truth of the matter. The sanctity of the Constitution as intended by the framers, indeed the very idea of the rule of law, became irrelevant. As John Dewey put it, "The belief in political fixity, of the sanctity of some form of state consecrated by the efforts of our fathers and hallowed by tradition, is one of the stumbling-blocks in the way of orderly and directed change." Under Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Court increasingly came to see the Constitution as "drawing its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." (Warren's words in Trop vs. Dulles) And the march of "progress" has continued relentlessly, from contraception (Griswold vs. Connecticut) to abortion (Roe v. Wade) and now homosexuality (Lawrence vs. Texas).
We've got a twofold problem, then: a power of constitutional interpretation that should have belonged to all three branches being concentrated in the Court, and the Court subsequently adopting a view of the Constitution which renders the intent of its framers irrelevant in light of society's progress. To restore respect for the Constitution will require, ultimately, not just the appointment of justices who don't put their ideas about societal evolution above the Constitution's intent (which we can hope for in the upcoming weeks), but also a recognition by all branches of government that interpreting the Constitution is something that ultimately cannot be safely left to one branch, and the one least responsible to anyone, at that.
TKC
On the Practical Side...
Re my remarks piece below, a bit more productive than simply venting one's frustration at the Senate Democrats would be to visit the American Center for Law and Justice (www.aclj.org) and sign their online petition to the President for "No Consensus" on the judicial nomination -- because, as the petition explains, this is a code word for compromise.
I'm against compromise in this matter to begin with, of course, but besides that there's the intrinsic dishonesty of the defenders of Roe v. Wade and the rest of the left's agenda: Roe, which they seem to consider only a cut below the Declaration of Independence as a foundational American statement of rights, does not enjoy and never has enjoyed a "consensus" of the American people behind it -- yet no one who opposes it can think of sitting on the court! The way in which Justice O'Connor has been hailed by so many as a voice of "moderation" displays the same incoherence: what is moderate about a person who could invalidate a ban on partial-birth abortion which was passed by overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress?
I'll stop here, because otherwise I'll still be on this topic an hour from now. . .
Thy Kingdom Come!
A Double Standard
While the nation waits with bated breath, President Bush continues to deliberate about his Supreme Court pick. (As anyone can attest by reading the "Bench Memos" at National Review Online, the only thing that gets the blogosphere more excited than speculating on a Supreme Court justice is speculating on a papal conclave. Too much excitement for one year!) Most recently, it seems the President has had a breakfast meeting with Senate leaders from both parties in an effort to make the upcoming confirmation as smooth as possible.
I understand the President's reasoning, and the political capital to be gained by trying to appear bi-partisan, but it's utterly ridiculous that we are in this situation to begin with. Could someone remind the Democrats that they lost the last election very thoroughly in both the executive and the legislative branches? Usually when a party is elected into control of the government, it is expected that they will do what they were elected to do--which in this case includes appointing and confirming justices who share the president's judicial philosophy. That the President feels he needs to reach out in this fashion--and that the Senate Democrats are practically demanding they should be allowed to preview any potential nominee--shows how thoroughly the Democratic minority has succeeded in convincing themselves that they have the right to handcuff the president in historically unprecedented fashion. The judicial filibuster, which is still looming in the distance, is an utter novelty in Senate history, invented when President Bush began to appoint federal judges who shared the values of the very large portion of the American electorate which had voted for him as President.
Things have not been thus in the past, regardless who was in the Oval Office. Many Senate Republicans surely disagreed with President Clinton's judicial philosophy, yet his appointees made it through almost without controversy. (If I'm wrong on this, I'd be glad to be corrected; I was young then, but I don't ever remember hearing any.) When, in 1992, President Clinton was elected, along with a Democratic House and Senate, we didn't really hear the same calls for bipartisanship and consensus that we hear unceasingly from Democrats today. The Republicans knew they were in the minority because they had lost, and they just dug in to fight (until they won a majority two years later). But now, we're presented with constant calls for "consensus" which basically translates into the President giving up on his principles in a way that the Democrats would never dream of in his position.
I apologize if this is souding like a partisan rant; one could say plenty of unpleasant things about Republicans too, and there is always enough dirt to go around. But (as you may have guessed) the reason that I find the Democrats in the Senate (who I realize have different values than many of the rank and file of their party) so irritating at this juncture is that, as one can tell from the various emails John Kerry still sends out (the former candidate has set up a sort of "shadow presidency," to borrow a British phrase), this situation boils down to the fact that this President pretty clearly thinks Roe v. Wade is bad law, and is likely to appoint a justice who agrees. And the fact that the President would dare to tamper with Roe makes him so "extreme" as to merit an entirely different treatment from what any president's nominations have ever received before. I think it's safe to say that no president, Reagan included, ever incited as much virulent animosity on the left as President Bush, and while there are many reasons behind that (environmental issues, foreign policy, etc.), I can't help thinking that his opposition to abortion-on-demand is often the most deep-seated one. With all his flaws, he's a man we should appreciate in some respects, and certainly be praying for very hard right now.
Thy Kingdom Come!
The Mandatory Qualifier
I read in the papers this morning about the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' rejection of the federal partial-birth abortion ban. This is distressing enough in itself, and shows what an absurd situation the outgoing "moderate" Justice O'Connor has left us in, when something as barbaric as partial-birth abortion can't be banned for lack of a health exception.
What I find particularly frustrating, however, is the language by which these laws are always referred to. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch begins its story by saying "The St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday against the two-year old federal law banning an abortion procedure that critics call partial-birth abortion." The New York Times headline reads simply, "Appeals Court Voids Ban on 'Partial Birth' Abortions."
Ah, yes, the mandatory qualifier or sneer quotes. We at the Times wouldn't dare suggest that this procedure actually involves the partial delivery of an infant before crushing its skull. As the Post-Dispatch is at pains to point out, "partial-birth" is just what "critics" call this procedure.
The rhetoric of the abortion debate as it's given in the major media outlets is usually frustrating, but I've always found it particularly annoying in this case--because we invariably hear about "so-called partial-birth abortion" without ever hearing what the other side suggests we call it instead! Why? Because there is no other appropriate name for this, unless you want to resort to technical terms like "dilation and extraction" which mean nothing to most people. I guess it's a good thing that they haven't come up with a sanitary sounding term to describe partial-birth abortion, because as it is, sneer quotes or no sneer quotes, the public at least gets some reminder of what we're really talking about in the abortion debate: children preparing for birth being visited instead with death. This latest development makes all the clearer the stakes riding on the upcoming Supreme Court appointment.
Thy Kingdom Come!
England, Again--and Islam
I have posted several times in recent weeks on England's Catholic heritage and its martyrs. But England as she is today has been much in the news in the last 48 hours: first getting the 2012 Olympics, but now with these horrible bombings.
London is for me, ever since the semester I spent in Oxford in 2001, a familiar city, more so than many American cities like New York or Chicago. I recognized the name of just about every underground and bus stop which was a target in these attacks, and could recall many a trip on the famous Tube (the slang term for the underground system). Hearing about the carnage and destruction in such a familiar place really hit home, more so than the Praxair explosion which rocked St. Louis not five miles from where I am about two weeks ago. That was a random accident in which no one, amazingly, was seriously injured; this attack has a casualty list in the hundreds, I hear, and is a deliberately planned reminder that even in the heart of civilization, the forces of barbarism and blind hatred are ready to strike.
I don't know what Britain's reaction to this will be. But I certainly hope they show a bit more reason than Spain, which almost immediately ousted its pro-American government after the attacks there last year and pulled out of Iraq. The war in Iraq is a complicated affair, and its hard for me to say whether it was right or where precisely it fits in to the war on terror. But that America or its allies is attacked by terrorists is not a sign that the war is wrong; to back down just because of these attacks, or the many attacks of the insurgency in Iraq, would be to concede victory to those most willing to be utterly unscrupulous in the use of force. It would be to buy into the cultural suicide of those who blame the West itself for the hatred Islamic terrorists show. We in the West have our vices, but we ignore history and the real nature of some sectors of Islam if we don't recognize that war upon non-believers (including Christians and Jews) has been a characteristic feature of Islam from day one, in a way that is not true to the same degree for other religions. I appreciate the efforts of John Paul II and other Church leaders to establish dialogue with Islam, and hopefully to promote some kind of peaceful co-existence. Yet in the end, we should not be so naive as to think that an anemic West unwilling to fight those bent on destroying our civilization can survive in competition with the expansion of Islam, which will dominate Europe in fifty years, barring a huge change.
Our Crusading forefathers understood the threat that faced the West, and while their wars, like our own today, included much to regret, I believe their cause was an honorable one. But even more honorable was the determination of the early Franciscans, who were determined to preach the Gospel of Christ to the Islamic world, or die as martyrs trying. Will there be any in our day called and willing to undertake the mission ad gentes even to the Muslim world? Their conversion to the Gospel would be the most practical solution of all. I know it sounds like wishful thinking, but it's really too bad that a billion worshippers of the God of Abraham should have to live in ignorance of the redemptive Incarnation. The fervor of the Muslim world, channeled to the service of Christ, would be unstoppable (in a non-violent way, of course).
Thy Kingdom Come!
Back to Dialogue
The story linked below is welcome news indeed. The greatest disappointment of John Paul II's pontificate was that he did not live to see full communion restored between Eastern Orthodoxy and Rome, and indeed, the ongoing dialogue broke down in 2000 over the status of Eastern Catholics (sometimes called "Uniates"). Pope Benedict, who has a great love for the East and a clear commitment to ecumenism, seems to be wasting no time in wanting to move forward on this. I pray that his efforts will be blessed, because God knows this split has gone on far too long, and a reunion would be good for both of us. For one, just think what the impact of full communion with the Eastern Churches could be for renewing the Western liturgy in a spirit of reverence and respect for tradition! Of course, there are still huge obstacles from a human point of view, but after living through something like the fall of communism, I don't think we should doubt that God's grace can bring about unity when he wills it.
Catholic-Orthodox Theological Talk to Resume This Fall
I mentioned last Friday St. Francis de Sales Oratory here, where I recently attended a Solemn High Mass. I don't have any pictures of the Mass itself, but below is a picture of the Oratory itself, a gorgeous church known as the "Cathedral of the South Side." As you can see, it really dominates the city-scape in that part of town. It has an interior to match, of which I unfortunately can't find any pictures.
The Latin Mass apostolate was just recently moved to St. Francis de Sales under the direction of the Institute of Christ the King, whom Archbishop Burke invited to St. Louis for this purpose. The Church itself is in need of many repairs, but the Institute and the Latin Mass community are committed to preserving this great monument of the faith in St. Louis.
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