Aeroplanes, advent, and ‘power made perfect’
The Tuesday Pillar Post
Pillar subscribers can listen to this Pillar Post here: The Pillar TL;DR
Hey everybody,
Today’s the first day of the O Antiphons, and you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post.
And 121 years ago today, December 17, 1903, two Ohio brothers changed the world, at the base of a sand dune on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
It wasn’t that Orville and Wilbur first flew the Wright Flyer that day. They’d had a successful takeoff a few days early, but the engine stalled quickly and the landing was hard.
What they did on Dec. 17 was to both take off and land.
They took off at Kitty Hawk, and landed again, and then they did it again, flying four times that day, once for nearly a minute, and for almost a quarter of a mile.
The Wright Flyer was ruined by the end of the day, destroyed by some gusts of wind — but they were the first in flight that day, and within two years, they could stay aloft for 39 minutes, and fly for almost 25 miles.
By the time in Orville died in 1948, the sound barrier had been broken, a world war had been shaped entirely by aviation, and 12-year-old Bas Wie had become the first person to stow away in an airplane wheel well, traveling in 1946 from Indonesia to Australia, where he was adopted into a Catholic family, and became an Australian citizen.
Those Wright brothers changed the world. For better or worse is a matter of prudential judgment, I suppose.
But if you ask me, their unflappable confidence — and their willingness to try something dangerous and never done before — is one of the best elements of our American culture.
Sure, there are probably philosophic roots to that confidence which are problematic — we are awash in the technocratic idea that we can control nature itself, control our mortality, master time and the laws of the universe. Any Catholic sees how those things are ultimately destructive.
But we needn’t throw away the biplane with the bathwater.
I’m glad to be from a culture where a pair of bicycle mechanics from Ohio, of all places, could use their superior knowledge of physics, their willingness to live in tents on a wind-swept beach, and their ignorance of how the TSA would eventually torment us, to change the course of history.
The news
The trouble is that a 2023 change to federal immigration policy has put many foreign-born priests — and religious sisters, too — at risk of imminent temporary deportation. Dozens of priests and religious have already left the country, putting immense strain on the clerics who are picking up their assignments.
So with a coming change in presidential administrations, Catholic leaders are urging the government to address the clerical conundrum. The Pillar has confirmed that USCCB and state Catholic conference directors have been lobbying on Capitol Hill, and looking toward the prospect of a bipartisan bill to be introduced next month by two U.S. senators.
Could the visa problem finally be coming to end? Michelle La Rosa reports.
While the Church’s liturgical law restricts mention in the Eucharistic Prayer to the pope, the diocesan bishop, and auxiliaries/coadjutors, the Archdiocese of Mechelen-Brussels has decided that at least one lay person in a leadership role —Rebecca Alsberge — should be included as well.
Why is this a big deal? Well, if you ask me, the issue is this: It is often good for lay people to collaborate in episcopal leadership ministry. But imbuing such lay people with the symbols of episcopal ministry muddles the Church’s expression of our ecclesiology, and our theology of orders.
This has the effect of undermining our theology of baptism, by the way, by making lay people who work in the Church something like “junior clerics” rather than expressing and understanding fully and positively the collaborative potential between laity and clergy in the work of the Gospel.
In other words, lay people who serve the mission of the Gospel should be seen as living their baptismal call, rather than see their Christian life framed condescendingly as quasi-clerical
Francis has decried the “clericalization of the laity” in the Church’s life. I wonder if this is what he means.
The push for the new institution dates back to September 2022, when the synodal way adopted a resolution calling for a national “advisory and decision-making body,” known as the “synodal council,” by 2026.
Read what Statutes 2.0 might look, with reporting from Luke Coppen.
Lai, who has been in prison since 2020, is accused of colluding with foreign powers and publishing seditious materials. If convicted, he faces life in prison.
The “sedition” he was asked about in court this week? Retweeting a tweet back in 2020 that called for the U.K. government to impose sanctions on members of the Hong Kong government.
Twitter.com can be bad for you, but using it is no crime in a free society.
Lai has been in prison, largely in solitary confinement, since 2020.
The priest is due to be sentenced in federal court this week. While he initially said the stolen money belonged to him, not the parish, he changed his tune, telling a judge that he wanted to avoid diocesan assessment and oversight — that the money was more or less resting in his account, so that it could be used for parish projects.
One issue — his sister, who got a $100,000 check from the parish, had no idea about a plan like that. Another issue — the priest has a credibility problem, having been canonically convicted last year of solicitation in the confessional.
Now here’s the rest of the story: From my view at the moment, the Diocese of Jefferson City, Missouri, has handled this theft well. The FBI was called in relatively quickly, the diocese undertook a canonical criminal process (the priest was found guilty), and the diocese has been forthcoming and transparent with the media (including getting back to me fairly quickly).
It should be stated that theft and embezzlement from Catholic institutions is relatively rare. But Pillar readers know it does happen, from both clerics and lay employees. In fact, just yesterday, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee acknowledged that four Catholic Charities employees stole $1.7 million from their workplace over the past two years. That’s a lot of money, all of it meant for the poor.
And when theft happens, dioceses are often reluctant to push for criminal prosecution or incarceration. So far as we can tell, canonical prosecutions undertaken by bishops — while called for in canon law — rarely get under way. And bishops have intervened in some recent cases to urge that thieves and embezzlers not go to prison. Sometimes, dioceses discuss thieves — in court or with the media — as people who are unwell, in need of treatment, not sanction.
Sound familiar?
If you paid attention to the scandals of 2018 or 2002, it should. We have a “make excuses” problem in the Church, and it allows harmful criminal activity to flourish in our culture.
In some places, that is changing. The handling of this case in Jefferson City seems to be one such example. And The Pillar keeps reporting on these financial cases because we think they’re a largely unappreciated phenomenon in the Church — one that, without facing them head on, and building both better safeguards and a culture of justice, will only get worse.
If we’re to be a poor Church for the poor, it probably shouldn’t be because we got robbed.
Here’s what’s happening in Missouri.
Some notes
With my prayer group, I am making today a one-day Advent retreat up in the Colorado mountains west of my home.
The retreat comes at just the right time, as I find myself sliding into the O Antiphons with the disposition of a Grinch, and it would be good to affix my heart on the coming of Christ — next week, and in the fullness of time.
So if this newsletter seems a bit abbreviated, you should know I’m banging it out in the predawn hours so I can head to retreat as soon as I’m done.
Be assured that I’ll pray for you — mostly in gratitude — and please pray for me. I’d be grateful.
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If you would, please pray also for three men who celebrate birthdays today.
The first is Pope Francis, who turns 88 years old today.
The second is an unsung, and mostly unseen, hero of the Catholic media world: Kevin Knight, the founder of news aggregator and theological library NewAdvent.
The third is a relatively young man: My son Max, who turns 13 today.
Readers of The Pillar know that my son is a treasured gift to us.
Max, whom we adopted when he was 11 days old, has Down syndrome, and some other serious neurological disabilities that combine to become a frequent cross for him.
He is a tender, funny, creative, loyal, gentle boy, who suffers more — and better — than anyone I know. In fact, Pillar readers may well remember that Max was sick enough this summer that we worried we’d lose him — and then grace intervened to restore him to health.
Max, more than any other person, has taught our family what it means to bring our suffering to the Cross: not in some sentimental piety, but as a surrender absolutely necessary to survival. I don’t know who Max would be without Jesus, nor who any of us who love him would be.
St. Paul says that God’s power is made perfect in our weakness. As a cliche, that sounds sweet. As lived reality, it’s really hard. And it’s only in knowing and loving Max that I’ve learned anything about what it means to be “content with weaknesses,” so that “the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
He’s a gift, because my son’s disabilities have brought our family to Jesus Christ, in a kind of raw dependence I could not have previously envisioned.
I don’t know what his future holds — and that’s a worry I need to give to the Lord ever more often. But I know in his present, the power of God is made manifest in the joy of my son.
I’m grateful to know and love him. And he’d be grateful for your prayers.
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Some of you have written in recent weeks to suggest that The Pillar aim to interview ska-heroine Gwen Stefani, whose Catholic faith is in the news this month because of her partnership with prayer app Hallow. Well, I got the official word yesterday that an interview isn’t going to happen — and not for Hallow’s lack of trying. It seems someone on Gwen’s team must have suggested she Don’t Speak.
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Finally, if you’re not listening to the reboot of Sunday School, you should. Every week, the great Scott Powell unpacks the Sunday readings with me and Kate Olivera. If you need to write homilies, this will help. If you don’t, this is still a great way to jump more deeply into each Sunday’s scripture.
Go to Sunday School, right here.
And unfortunately, I have to make a pitch. We’re nearing the end of the year, obviously, and still not quite at our end-of-year subscription goal. The value pitch of The Pillar is this: We do the best news reporting and analysis on the Church bar none. We also do two newsletters a week, and the best podcast you know. All of that is free, and all of that depends on our paying subscribers. We depend on you so that we don’t have to depend on clickbait ad revenue or deep-pocketed special interests.
To thank you, we make bonus podcast episodes, the daily Starting Seven, Look Closer analyses, and other paid subscriber gifts. Those are great perks, and worth the money. But the real thing you do when you become a paying subscriber is keep The Pillar singularly focused on our mission — which is to use journalism to help the entire Church live in the holiness to which she is called, which is made possible by the grace of Jesus Christ,
Can you join up?
I’ll be praying for you on my retreat. Please pray for us. We need it.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
JD Flynn
editor-in-chief
The Pillar
Hey JD, praying for you and your fellow retreatants, and for Max as well. Thanks for letting people know of Kevin Knight's work at New Advent. That page has been my homepage for years, a great Catholic news aggregator as well as a Catholic reference source.
You asked for prayers at the end of the post. Might I suggest you repeat your substack post to subscribers from back in September of 2023? You asked us to post prayer requests so that we could pray for one another. That might be a nice, monthly post to make. You certainly have lots of holy men and women supporting The Pillar financially and with prayer.
I stupidly had not considered that people with intellectual disabilities have their own crosses to bear. I regret that and I thank you for pointing it out. Prayers for Max.