JD and Ed talk about reactions to a synod study group’s final report on ‘emerging issues’ and the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s warning this week to the Society of St.
Just a heads up, the book's website seems like it's described as a middle *grade* book, which is, confusingly, a younger audience thana middle *school* book
GKC said it a century ago: “… and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.”
Tucho’s style always strikes me as that of an old fashioned enforcer: you’re either with the boss or your not with the boss and I’m gonna let you know when you’re not with the boss because the boss is the boss and I’m telling you because I’m not sure you understand the boss is the one making the decisions around here and the boss might have to do something about that capiche?
This really was a great Catholic conversation! I thought Ed’s observations about Francis’ take on the SSPX as the mirror image of Benedict’s was really interesting and hit on something real. I recently reread The End of the Affair, one of my favorite books, and the protagonist reflects that sometimes, God’s mercy looks to us like punishment (or something along those lines). I think the inverse is also true at times — what looks like mercy is sometimes actually punishment, and that may be what Francis consigned the SSPX to by expanding their ministerial faculties. It’s a false mercy.
This is totally off-topic but since you mentioned The End of the Affair, I have to lead my WRM meeting about that book next week and I wonder if you could share why it's one of your favorites? I've gotten some emails from members who are disturbed by what they consider to be graphic content, and I have to admit that while I wasn't disturbed, I didn't find the book's depiction of the characters' redemption arc(s) particularly realistic or compelling in comparison to the intensity of their passion for one another. I didn't get a sense that the author himself found his characters' behavior wicked or that they necessarily needed redemption, and I don't like the idea he seems to be proffering, that what he calls "love" between people committing adultery was exactly what led them to God. (Implying that their adultery was *necessary* for their learning how to love as He loves.)
I feel like I am missing something... I loved Brideshead Revisited, and I admired The Violent Bear It Away even though I would never read it again, so it's not that I'm automatically turned off by disturbing content or sinful characters. I just think that while well-written and a page turner, this book doesn't communicate the hideousness of sin in the way those books did, and so the redemption arc reads contrived to me. But I would really like to hear the opinion of someone who sees something different in it than I (and my other members) do!
I had heard that some members of WRM weren't happy with this selection, which I found surprising, since two other women in my group also rank it in their top 3 of all-time! I will try not to write a novel in response, but I really do love this book a lot. I will say, each time I read the book, I think I hate Bendrix a little more; I exclaimed to my husband several times this time through about how truly awful his behavior was around Sarah's death and cremation. But I think Sarah is really the heart of the book, and her conversion arc, distinct from his, is the one that matters.
-- "I don't like the idea he seems to be proffering, that what he calls 'love' between people committing adultery was exactly what led them to God. (Implying that their adultery was *necessary* for their learning how to love as He loves.)"
I disagree that Greene is implying that their adulterous "love" was necessary for Sarah's conversion; I think his point is that even when we are mired in sin, even in the cheap and tawdry details of an affair, God can and will use every possible opening he can find to reveal himself to us and draw us back to himself. I think it's something more along the lines of "O happy fault, o necessary sin of Adam," than a romanticization of adultery.
-- "this book doesn't communicate the hideousness of sin in the way those books did..."
I think Greene's point is the flipside of that coin actually, because I agree with you, I don't think he really thinks their sin is all that bad (as his personal life attests). I think he's pointing towards how God's grace has a hold on us, even when we are totally unaware of it and living a life of sin. The more times I read this book, the more Sarah's goodness shines through, even though Bendrix tries to smear her character in his narrative account and bluntly, outrightly to Fr. Crompton. Even though she had no idea she had been baptized, God had marked her for himself and didn't let go of her through all her poor attempts to love and to seek love. One half of the heart of this book, in my opinion, is when Bendrix writes, "It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved, when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love," which I think echoes Sarah's repeated cry of the heart, "If I'm a b*tch and a fake, is there nobody who will love a b*tch and a fake?" Greene cares much more about God's hold on us, his love for us, his vision of our innate goodness, than about our human sin.
-- I think the other half of the heart of the book is the universal call to holiness that flows from the grace we receive at our baptism. Bendrix writes, "The priest had said there was nothing we could do that some saint had not done. That might be true of murder and adultery, but could a saint ever have been guilty of envy and meanness?" and a few pages later, "For if this God exists, I thought, and if even you [Sarah]--with your lusts and your adulteries and the timid lies you used to tell--can change like this, we could all be saints by leaping as you leapt, by shutting the eyes and leaping once and for all: if *you* are a saint, it's not so difficult to be a saint."
There was one woman in my WRM group who felt like the book was salacious and didn't like it or find anything admirable about Sarah, and we had a great discussion about that. She asked why God would choose to make Sarah a saint, what about her could possibly be worthy of imitating, and another woman said Sarah's heroic virtue of faith; that she would like to have that kind of faith. I find Sarah's example gives me a lot of hope; her cries of the heart and the rollercoaster of emotions and desires she experiences resonate very deeply with me. I also think Greene's point is that it's better to be a bad Catholic than not Catholic at all.
Okay, looks like I couldn't help myself from writing a novel after all, sorry! I don't expect you, or other WRM readers, to agree with all my points, but I do hope it gives a little food for thought.
Thank you!! I really appreciate the time you took. I may reread the book before the meeting now that I know the ending, and I will take your insights to heart. You quoted some of the sections that jumped off the page to me as well. I certainly don't think there's ever been a WRM book that has left me so completely bewildered by my own reactions to it - I spent most of the first half agreeing with your member who said it was salacious (I would have said "appealing to the prurient interest") and then in Book IV and V kept breaking down in tears. He's an excellent writer.
I think the book definitely rewards reading it through multiple times! Bendrix's account really muddies things, to the point that I sometimes wonder if he's meant to be a stand in for the devil.
I'm so happy to get to talk/write more about WRM with you! I think it's funny how different books hit people so differently; you had mentioned Brideshead Revisited previously -- I hated that book and all the characters in it so much the first time I read it. I was not very happy to see it on last year's reading list, but I can appreciate various parts of it much more now even if it's not a favorite of mine. I think I just like Greene's writing more than Waugh's.
I am blanking on the citation but I recall Card. Ratzinger mentioning his appointment as prefect for the CDF caused him to see his role in the church as one of protecting the deposit of faith instead of the speculative theology he may have done prior to the appointment as a theologian.
I don't have a clue where to even begin looking for that comment though
I like the characterization of the tragic modern orthodox - heterodox tension within the Church as a prioritization of ecclesial Revelation OR human experience. While of course the former must 'win' we surely need to synthesize this with the latter much better than scholastic Natural Law theory did. Newman, Edith Stein, von Hildebrand and Wojtyla certainly saw this need and tried.
I ordered the OSV book instantly, so hopefully you can prove to your clients that your ads are effective. “What if Nancy Drew went to Catholic school?” Take all of my money!
1. Thank you for your reflection on the Study group 9 report. I know 2 things one, from what you both said Cardinal Castillo and Pope Leo do not get along. Was I scandalized and angry about the document initially yes. Any catholic that respects the churches teaching would be. But do we really think the Holy Spirit will allow church teaching to change? Also, everyone says the Synod's response to the document was weak, but to me that is emotions talking. Looking at it rationally, what they did was distance themselves from the doc, saying, "I had nothing to do with its creation I want know part in this document."
2. My dad did not like Cardinal Fernandez because of FS. However, when he heard what Fernandez said to Germans and to SSPX he was impressed.
I think Ed's explanation for the Roman hierarchy's intentions regarding Traditionis Custodes is more logically consistent.
1) Attempts were made to drive the TLM crowd out of regular parishes. They were even banned from celebrating mass in large churches along the Chartres pilgrimage route. When Roche learned that his suppression was canonically defective compared with how he said that it should be implemented, he went out of his way to modify it to ensure that local bishops could not show mercy to TLM Catholics without his dicastery's express permission, which he then refused to give. He made no secret of his hatred and disdain for this group of Catholics.
2) Combining the above with giving weird cutouts for hearing confessions and marrying people (in a valid, approved mass) gives more of the impression that Rome was trying to drive Catholics with a love for the traditional Latin mass into the arms of the SSPX rather than trying to reconcile people.
3) This is especially the case when you compare the reception LGBTQ activists received at the Vatican. Can anyone imagine the pope washing the feet of TLM Catholics on Good Friday instead of trans people, to give just one of many examples? Prominent pedophiles got better treatment in Vatican dicasteries than prominent TLM Catholics.
JD, I have to agree with Ed on the conversation about Francis’s intentions with giving faculties to SSPX. I can’t see how any honest review of the last 13 years could come to any other conclusion. There were examples of hurtful things Francis said for years in his papacy towards traditionalist Catholics (e.g., don’t breed like rabbits) well before Tradiciones Custodes (TC) ever came out. There’s no way he didn’t understand what TC would do. At best he was just trying to force the TLM goers into accepting the Novus Ordo mass and using obedience to him as pope as his means. If he did feel TC had become a flashpoint of controversy, why did he let Roche double down then, instead of pulling back and “walking together” with them? His view of traditional Catholics was very clear. I don’t see any way to interpret his actions as he wanted to be nice to them.
Likewise, I don’t think that he didn’t have the experience of the American church. He made his animus towards US Catholics (largely percieved to be conservative in their views I guess) and even many clergy it pretty clear.
Gosh the reflection on the idea that we just watched the Holy Spirit do indefectability in real time took my breath away. Wow. 💛
The "sausage of indefectability" gave me a different image as we are butchering on the neighbors farm this a.m.
But as we lean into marking Pentecost, come Holy Spirit!
Didn't exist in the ancient world? Read Suetonius on Nero for a different take. But you knew that.
They were being sarcastic, to make the point that it was a problem in the ancient world haha
Thank you.
We know that the Church doesn't stray into mortal error because we can see it come close before the Holy Spirit prevents it. Yes, you got it exactly.
Just a heads up, the book's website seems like it's described as a middle *grade* book, which is, confusingly, a younger audience thana middle *school* book
I think of them as the same age range because what follows middle grade is YA and some of YA is too risqué even for an adult.
GKC said it a century ago: “… and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.”
In truth I saw which Cardinal chaired the aforementioned study group and decided the document had big bottom draw energy…
Tucho’s style always strikes me as that of an old fashioned enforcer: you’re either with the boss or your not with the boss and I’m gonna let you know when you’re not with the boss because the boss is the boss and I’m telling you because I’m not sure you understand the boss is the one making the decisions around here and the boss might have to do something about that capiche?
This really was a great Catholic conversation! I thought Ed’s observations about Francis’ take on the SSPX as the mirror image of Benedict’s was really interesting and hit on something real. I recently reread The End of the Affair, one of my favorite books, and the protagonist reflects that sometimes, God’s mercy looks to us like punishment (or something along those lines). I think the inverse is also true at times — what looks like mercy is sometimes actually punishment, and that may be what Francis consigned the SSPX to by expanding their ministerial faculties. It’s a false mercy.
This is totally off-topic but since you mentioned The End of the Affair, I have to lead my WRM meeting about that book next week and I wonder if you could share why it's one of your favorites? I've gotten some emails from members who are disturbed by what they consider to be graphic content, and I have to admit that while I wasn't disturbed, I didn't find the book's depiction of the characters' redemption arc(s) particularly realistic or compelling in comparison to the intensity of their passion for one another. I didn't get a sense that the author himself found his characters' behavior wicked or that they necessarily needed redemption, and I don't like the idea he seems to be proffering, that what he calls "love" between people committing adultery was exactly what led them to God. (Implying that their adultery was *necessary* for their learning how to love as He loves.)
I feel like I am missing something... I loved Brideshead Revisited, and I admired The Violent Bear It Away even though I would never read it again, so it's not that I'm automatically turned off by disturbing content or sinful characters. I just think that while well-written and a page turner, this book doesn't communicate the hideousness of sin in the way those books did, and so the redemption arc reads contrived to me. But I would really like to hear the opinion of someone who sees something different in it than I (and my other members) do!
I had heard that some members of WRM weren't happy with this selection, which I found surprising, since two other women in my group also rank it in their top 3 of all-time! I will try not to write a novel in response, but I really do love this book a lot. I will say, each time I read the book, I think I hate Bendrix a little more; I exclaimed to my husband several times this time through about how truly awful his behavior was around Sarah's death and cremation. But I think Sarah is really the heart of the book, and her conversion arc, distinct from his, is the one that matters.
-- "I don't like the idea he seems to be proffering, that what he calls 'love' between people committing adultery was exactly what led them to God. (Implying that their adultery was *necessary* for their learning how to love as He loves.)"
I disagree that Greene is implying that their adulterous "love" was necessary for Sarah's conversion; I think his point is that even when we are mired in sin, even in the cheap and tawdry details of an affair, God can and will use every possible opening he can find to reveal himself to us and draw us back to himself. I think it's something more along the lines of "O happy fault, o necessary sin of Adam," than a romanticization of adultery.
-- "this book doesn't communicate the hideousness of sin in the way those books did..."
I think Greene's point is the flipside of that coin actually, because I agree with you, I don't think he really thinks their sin is all that bad (as his personal life attests). I think he's pointing towards how God's grace has a hold on us, even when we are totally unaware of it and living a life of sin. The more times I read this book, the more Sarah's goodness shines through, even though Bendrix tries to smear her character in his narrative account and bluntly, outrightly to Fr. Crompton. Even though she had no idea she had been baptized, God had marked her for himself and didn't let go of her through all her poor attempts to love and to seek love. One half of the heart of this book, in my opinion, is when Bendrix writes, "It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved, when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love," which I think echoes Sarah's repeated cry of the heart, "If I'm a b*tch and a fake, is there nobody who will love a b*tch and a fake?" Greene cares much more about God's hold on us, his love for us, his vision of our innate goodness, than about our human sin.
-- I think the other half of the heart of the book is the universal call to holiness that flows from the grace we receive at our baptism. Bendrix writes, "The priest had said there was nothing we could do that some saint had not done. That might be true of murder and adultery, but could a saint ever have been guilty of envy and meanness?" and a few pages later, "For if this God exists, I thought, and if even you [Sarah]--with your lusts and your adulteries and the timid lies you used to tell--can change like this, we could all be saints by leaping as you leapt, by shutting the eyes and leaping once and for all: if *you* are a saint, it's not so difficult to be a saint."
There was one woman in my WRM group who felt like the book was salacious and didn't like it or find anything admirable about Sarah, and we had a great discussion about that. She asked why God would choose to make Sarah a saint, what about her could possibly be worthy of imitating, and another woman said Sarah's heroic virtue of faith; that she would like to have that kind of faith. I find Sarah's example gives me a lot of hope; her cries of the heart and the rollercoaster of emotions and desires she experiences resonate very deeply with me. I also think Greene's point is that it's better to be a bad Catholic than not Catholic at all.
Okay, looks like I couldn't help myself from writing a novel after all, sorry! I don't expect you, or other WRM readers, to agree with all my points, but I do hope it gives a little food for thought.
Thank you!! I really appreciate the time you took. I may reread the book before the meeting now that I know the ending, and I will take your insights to heart. You quoted some of the sections that jumped off the page to me as well. I certainly don't think there's ever been a WRM book that has left me so completely bewildered by my own reactions to it - I spent most of the first half agreeing with your member who said it was salacious (I would have said "appealing to the prurient interest") and then in Book IV and V kept breaking down in tears. He's an excellent writer.
I think the book definitely rewards reading it through multiple times! Bendrix's account really muddies things, to the point that I sometimes wonder if he's meant to be a stand in for the devil.
I'm so happy to get to talk/write more about WRM with you! I think it's funny how different books hit people so differently; you had mentioned Brideshead Revisited previously -- I hated that book and all the characters in it so much the first time I read it. I was not very happy to see it on last year's reading list, but I can appreciate various parts of it much more now even if it's not a favorite of mine. I think I just like Greene's writing more than Waugh's.
I hope your group has a good discussion!
I am blanking on the citation but I recall Card. Ratzinger mentioning his appointment as prefect for the CDF caused him to see his role in the church as one of protecting the deposit of faith instead of the speculative theology he may have done prior to the appointment as a theologian.
I don't have a clue where to even begin looking for that comment though
I like the characterization of the tragic modern orthodox - heterodox tension within the Church as a prioritization of ecclesial Revelation OR human experience. While of course the former must 'win' we surely need to synthesize this with the latter much better than scholastic Natural Law theory did. Newman, Edith Stein, von Hildebrand and Wojtyla certainly saw this need and tried.
I ordered the OSV book instantly, so hopefully you can prove to your clients that your ads are effective. “What if Nancy Drew went to Catholic school?” Take all of my money!
I have come to look forward to JD's transitions to the final sponsor bit almost as much as he does. Keep up the good work!
1. Thank you for your reflection on the Study group 9 report. I know 2 things one, from what you both said Cardinal Castillo and Pope Leo do not get along. Was I scandalized and angry about the document initially yes. Any catholic that respects the churches teaching would be. But do we really think the Holy Spirit will allow church teaching to change? Also, everyone says the Synod's response to the document was weak, but to me that is emotions talking. Looking at it rationally, what they did was distance themselves from the doc, saying, "I had nothing to do with its creation I want know part in this document."
2. My dad did not like Cardinal Fernandez because of FS. However, when he heard what Fernandez said to Germans and to SSPX he was impressed.
I think Ed's explanation for the Roman hierarchy's intentions regarding Traditionis Custodes is more logically consistent.
1) Attempts were made to drive the TLM crowd out of regular parishes. They were even banned from celebrating mass in large churches along the Chartres pilgrimage route. When Roche learned that his suppression was canonically defective compared with how he said that it should be implemented, he went out of his way to modify it to ensure that local bishops could not show mercy to TLM Catholics without his dicastery's express permission, which he then refused to give. He made no secret of his hatred and disdain for this group of Catholics.
2) Combining the above with giving weird cutouts for hearing confessions and marrying people (in a valid, approved mass) gives more of the impression that Rome was trying to drive Catholics with a love for the traditional Latin mass into the arms of the SSPX rather than trying to reconcile people.
3) This is especially the case when you compare the reception LGBTQ activists received at the Vatican. Can anyone imagine the pope washing the feet of TLM Catholics on Good Friday instead of trans people, to give just one of many examples? Prominent pedophiles got better treatment in Vatican dicasteries than prominent TLM Catholics.
JD, I have to agree with Ed on the conversation about Francis’s intentions with giving faculties to SSPX. I can’t see how any honest review of the last 13 years could come to any other conclusion. There were examples of hurtful things Francis said for years in his papacy towards traditionalist Catholics (e.g., don’t breed like rabbits) well before Tradiciones Custodes (TC) ever came out. There’s no way he didn’t understand what TC would do. At best he was just trying to force the TLM goers into accepting the Novus Ordo mass and using obedience to him as pope as his means. If he did feel TC had become a flashpoint of controversy, why did he let Roche double down then, instead of pulling back and “walking together” with them? His view of traditional Catholics was very clear. I don’t see any way to interpret his actions as he wanted to be nice to them.
Likewise, I don’t think that he didn’t have the experience of the American church. He made his animus towards US Catholics (largely percieved to be conservative in their views I guess) and even many clergy it pretty clear.