Yes and no, picking a wife, and still dead to me

The Friday Pillar Post

Pillar subscribers can listen to Ed read this Pillar Post here: The Pillar TL;DR

Happy Friday, friends,

I cannot be the first father to view their kid as the most beautiful puzzle box ever fashioned by the Divine craftsman, surely. But it doesn’t stop me feeling like the experience of trying to figure this gorgeous little girl out is unique to me.

She had a recent birthday, which was lovely and exhausting for all of us in equal measure. And, what with her notching up another solar lap, I suppose it is normal to spend a little time wondering when she grows up, what will she be, as the lady sang.

I’m not giving up on my quietly nourished hope she will pursue veterinary science. It’s a good living and would dovetail nicely with my equally cherished and probably equally delusional ambition to one day move to a small farm. 

But over the last few months, I have grown to suspect my daughter might be better suited to espionage or politics — I’d prefer the former as the more honorable, though dangerous, of the options — because whatever other talents she may possess or come to possess, she has a supreme ability to resist answering direct questions. 

She can, and will, repeat your question back to you perfectly, and communicate what she wants by tone and inflection as she does, but “yes” and “no” are simply not in her vocabulary.

No matter how obvious the inquiry or great the inducement to answer, there is nothing that can make her give an actual answer to a straight question of any kind. 

And believe me, I have tried everything. The bloody KGB couldn’t drag an answer out of this kid.

Frankly, I was beginning to wonder if she was struggling at some conceptual level to understand giving assent or making a choice. 

I say “was.”

Her birthday present was a robust and colorful dolls’ house of the Scandinavian variety. She delights in it, happily sitting in total absorption for hours, playing with total sincerity of purpose. 

But imagine, if you can, my reaction when, lurking in the doorway, I observed her pick up two dolls, one “Daddy” and the other named after herself, and have the former enquire of the latter, “Would you like to sit at the table?” to which she ventriloquized the answer “Yes, please,” before sitting them both in the dining room.

Of course, I went in to join her and immediately tried to recreate the scene, assuming my proper role and doll and asking her (in doll form) if she would like to sit at the table. 

She just stared at me with those coal-dark Koala bear eyes and shrieked back the crescendo “Would you like TO SIT AT THE TABLE?!?!” 

Why is she holding out on me? Is this about asserting control? Is this some parlor game she’s playing with my sanity for her own amusement? I have no idea. 

It’s totally fine. I love her with all my soul and I am just grateful she is here and happy and safe and healthy. 

She doesn’t have to answer my questions or perform for me.

Here’s the news.

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The News

When Hurricane Helene hit Appalachia last week, entire towns flooded in a matter of hours — roads were washed, homes were destroyed, utility infrastructures were destroyed. 

The death count from the hurricane is more than 200 people, and hundreds of people reportedly remain missing.

The catastrophic effects of the hurricane have been especially grave in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. And the small town of Erwin, Tennessee, has suffered some of the worst damage in the country.

Brother Corey Soignier is a member of the Glenmary Home Missioners, and is assigned to St. Michael the Archangel Parish in Erwin, where he’s been deeply involved in relief efforts. 

Soignier spoke with The Pillar this week about the local community, the damage, and the work that is underway to bring help as fast as possible.

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Just a reminder: the people in these communities need our prayers, and we should give them unsparingly. But they also need our practical help. 

We consider The Pillar to be more than just a business; it needs to be a part of the society of the Church. And to be part of that society it needs to do its part, too. 

So in addition to our own donation, right now for every new or upgraded subscription to The Pillar we are giving $10 to the disaster relief efforts at the Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Charlotte.

Of course, you can also just give to them yourself directly, right here.

Either way, remember to pray, too, please.

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Africa’s bishops will discuss a draft document on the Church’s pastoral response to polygamy.

Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo announced the new document on Wednesday as the synod on synodality’s second session got underway. The document will offer “a comprehensive answer” to the question “What is the most appropriate form of pastoral care to support people in polygamous relationships?”

The cardinal underlined that the Catholic Church in Africa upheld monogamy. “However, affirming the doctrinal elements is not enough,” he said. “Pastoral accompaniment for polygamists is urgently needed.”

So, why is the cardinal previewing such a text at the synod? Read all about it here.

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Speaking of the synod, just before the session opened, I published an analysis asking, now that the end is in sight, what this whole thing is likely to achieve in the end.

My basic thesis was that hot-button issues like the female diaconate, LGBT issues, and moves for a kind of reimagining of the Church’s ecclesiastical structures have been taken off the agenda and appear destined to go nowhere, thanks to the combined force of synodal consensus and papal discernment.

Noisy minority calls for epochal change appear to have been given their moment at the mic and are now being quietly led off stage and cabined into the cul-de-sac of working groups from which we might get more dramatic demands but little actual action.

As though to underline my point, Cardinal Fernández told the synod this week that whatever historical lessons there were to be learned from the ancient office of “deaconesses,” sacramental ordination for women was (still) an absolute no-no, whatever some people might want.

For years, the ironic meme has been kicking around in response to synodal word salad documents asking archly if maybe the real synod is just the friends we made along the way — but I think that might actually be true, and no bad thing.

Read the whole analysis here.

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Last week, the Vatican announced that it raised the apostolic administration of Tallinn  - covering the whole country of Estonia - to a diocese, with Phillipe Jourdan, a French Basque, as its first bishop.

Estonia was one of the last territories in Europe to be reached by the Catholic Church, and while it is traditionally Lutheran with a strong Orthodox minority, it’s now one of the most secular countries on the continent — some 60% of Estonians report professing no religion at all.

Nevertheless, the Catholic Church has seen a steady growth there since the ‘80s when Soviet restrictions against religion were slowly loosened. So what’s going on? 

Edgar Beltran sat down this week with Bishop Jourdan to talk about a remarkable and unlikely ecclesiastical success story.

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The Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) came first in Sunday’s national parliamentary election, and is frequently described as “far-right” and compared to the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Both parties have made real electoral gains in recent months, both want a sharp reduction in immigration, a curb on the powers of the supranational European Union, and an end to sanctions against Russia. Both are leading what German-speaking media call a Rechtsruck (“rightward shift”) in their respective countries.

But while the German bishops have taken a strident tone against the AfD, telling Catholics not to vote for them and issuing guidelines for sacking AfD members from Church positions, the Austrian episcopate has taken a more low-key approach.

So why the differing approaches? Luke Coppen reported this week on the parallels and key differences in how local Churches are dealing with the Rechtsruck.

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A public spat between the personal prelature Opus Dei and the Spanish Diocese of Barbastro-Monzón has now escalated to the Vatican.

The Dicastery for Clergy has been asked to weigh in and decide for good and who has the right to run the popular pilgrimage site of Our Lady of Torreciudad, which technically belongs to the diocese but has been made over to the Opus Dei for decades to administer — turning a sleepy site into a national destination of devotion.

The bishop and the prelature are at odds over who should be the rector of the site, its proper canonical designation (it’s currently considered a semi-private oratory for the Opus Dei, despite walking and quacking like a public shrine), and, of course, money.

It’s a complicated row, but thankfully we have Filipe d’Avillez to unpack it all for us.

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Picking a wife

Reflecting on the news of the forthcoming document on the pastoral accompaniment of polygamous… I’m not sure what to call them: “couples” is obviously inaccurate, “families” when referring narrowly to the multiple spouses does not pass the “Ick Test,” “persons” seems a little sterile, “throuple” is both numerically presumptive and a revolting New York Times neologism.

Let’s go with polygamous “arrangements.”

Reflecting on the news of the forthcoming document on the pastoral accompaniment of polygamous arrangements from Cardinal Ambongo, it occurred to me that many Pillar readers (in the good way) would likely have questions.

There will be questions about how widespread the practice is in different parts of Africa, and how pressing a matter polygamy is to be addressed. There will also likely be questions about whether polygamy is an issue in the wider culture, which the Church has to navigate and evangelize, or actually within the local Churches themselves — which would obviously present as a problem of a different nature.

But the best kind of Pillar readers, I expect, likely found themselves asking if — needed as a pastoral plan for accompaniment might be in these cases — this wasn’t first a canonical issue to be dealt with legally?

Well, you’re right. The Church does need a comprehensive legal plan for dealing with people in polygamous arrangements, especially when one of them presents themselves for baptism. 

Marriage, after all, is a union between a man and a woman, a partnership of the whole of human life ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of children. So you have to have some way of deciding who is married to whom, or free to marry whom, when these things crop up in pastoral practice.

As it happens, the Church is way ahead of the game here. However urgent may be the need for a pastoral plan of engagement, and I can easily accept the need is both real and urgent in places, the law has been in place for some time — since the 16th century, in fact.

The first canonical treatment of the issue was issued by Pope Paul III in 1537, followed by Gregory XIII 34 years later. Both popes folded their treatments of the issue into wider provisions for missionaries to what they used to call “the Indies.”

Paul offered the basic premise which we still keep today: 

“Concerning their marriage, We decree that this is to be observed: That those who before conversion had several wives, in accordance with their customs, and do not remember which one they took first should, when converting to the faith, take from one among them, whichever they will, and should contract a marriage with her using words related to the present in the usual way; but those who remember whom they took first should retain that one and send the others away.”

Basically, there was a presumption in favor of the “first wife,” so to speak, but when in doubt you could just pick one and marry them.

The 1917 Code of Canon Law made these provisions for “the Indies” applicable wherever “the same circumstances” made them appropriate. 

The 1983 Code made things a little more nuanced, introducing the option to pick a wife, any wife, if remaining with the first one would be “hard,” but added the obligation to provide for the needs of the other now dismissed wifelettes according to the norms of “justice, Christian charity, and natural equity,” and keeping in mind the “moral, social, and economic conditions of place and persons.”

Of course, all this operates under the presumption that the man (or woman) with many “wives” (or “husbands”) is converting to faith on his (or her) own, and will be entering a new, non-sacramental mixed marriage with his (or her) unbaptized wife (or husband) of choice.

If they are converting together, intending to form a sacramental union, and none of the rest are seeking baptism, a somewhat different calculus might apply. 

But if, for example, the man and the “first wife” are both converting and seeking baptism, but he doesn’t want to stay with the first wife but would prefer to pick one of the others who isn’t going to be baptized, you’d be into a whole other kind of canonical mess for which there are complicated possible arguments and answers. 

But speaking as a canonist, I would simply decline to take the case.

Anyway, there it is. Now you know.

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Still dead to me

Pete Rose, Mr. Charlie Hustle the Hit King, died this week, may he rest in peace. 

Pete, for those of you who are unfamiliar with his unique place in the lore of baseball, is the man with the most career hits in the game: 4,256 over 3,562 games. 

Along the way, he won three World Series, was named National League MVP, and was on the roster of 17 All-Star teams. His place in the record books is indelibly inked, as is his name in infamy. Despite his initial vehement and public denials in 1989, evidence emerged that Rose had, for years, been betting on baseball games — including on his own team.

He subsequently accepted being placed on the game’s list of permanent ineligibility — banning him from the sport for life. In 1991, the Hall of Fame voted to formalize the unwritten tradition of blocking players on the ineligible list from being inducted into baseball Valhalla. 

Rose, at that point, still refused to admit to betting on games, but accepted there was some “factual basis” for his excommunication, while regularly reapplying for reinstatement. It was only in 2004 that he finally admitted in public (for the sake of goosing book sales) what had long ago been proven — that he bet, for years, on games in which he participated.

All along the way, Rose’s legion of fans, and they are legion, have supported his rehabilitation, glossing over his dishonesty and trying to downplay his crimes against baseball: he only (allegedly) ever bet on his own team to win, baseball is now in bed with the betting industry so his exclusion is hypocritical, he’s a flawed genius etc., etc.

Following his death this week, there has been a renewed call for Rose to be allowed past baseball’s pearly gates — including from people I otherwise like and respect and who, frankly, ought to know better.

I wrote here a few weeks ago about the particular nature of the game of baseball, what makes it a more noble, elevated, and qualitatively different pursuit from other sports. My basic thesis was (and is) that baseball elevates, values, and rewards how you play the game in a particular way — almost (and sometimes even) above the actual result.

It’s why the Baseball Hall of Fame exists: Entry isn’t just about raw numbers and results, it’s about playing the game the right way, with respect, as Ryne Sandberg explained in his own induction speech. Ironically, Sandberg name-checked Rose as a childhood hero.

Famous cheats like the 2017 Houston Astr*s or home run record-holder Barry Bonds, I wrote, didn’t have their records stricken from the books or their championships stripped from them. Theirs is a special kind of spiritual punishment, a simple agreement that their accomplishments are tainted, that they have betrayed something more noble than simple winning or losing.

Pete Rose is no different. Indeed, he is in many ways the bridge between them and the Ur example of baseball betrayal, the 1919 Chicago “Black Sox,” whose own involvement in gambling gave rise to the written rules Rose was found to have flouted. 

And flout them he did. It is, from a baseball standpoint, neither here nor there that Pete Rose was an inveterate and degenerate gambler. We all have our sins and crosses to bear — the fact that MLB is now institutionally complicit in the same vice absolves neither party. 

But Rose didn’t just bet, he bet on baseball, and he bet on his own games. And then he lied about it, for more than a decade, in the face of all evidence. His admission and supposed contrition, when it eventually came, was more grift than grovel. 

In the week before his death, he was still flogging “sorry, not sorry” memorabilia, coining cash off his transgressions. 

His perennial applications for rehabilitation weren’t expressions of sorrow but suits based on his actual and ultimate sin: he believed he was better than the game, that the rules didn’t apply to him.

For those who argue Rose has been punished enough, I would argue the opposite — he never learned anything at all. A “lifetime ban” from the game was just, but exclusion in perpetuam memoriam is no less necessary.

His records stand, and so they should. But there is nothing to honor about the way he played the game, and thus no home for him in Cooperstown. Let his baseball ghost wander an Iowa cornfield forever, along with the likes of Joe Jackson, dragging his gambling gains and losses behind him, strung out on a chain forged of his many lies, like a sporting Jacob Marley, as a warning to all others who come after. 

Our national pastime is made up of its own history, a history which cannot be rewritten. The same commitment to the past, to what happened, preserved his hitting record. Let it preserve, too, how he did it. Rose was an exceptional baseball player, but he played with contempt for the game. 

As a Catholic, I hope Rose’s soul finds peace and a loving welcome into Heaven, there to meet our eternal Father. 

As a baseball fan, his legacy and memory belong where they are, locked in limbo, unrepentant and unredeemed.

See you next week,

Ed. Condon
Editor
The Pillar