Stop the Presses!

There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.

Are you saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?

She of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality.

Problem One

People are asking if the Pope approved condom use.
Lots of analysts are saying "no."
Balderdash.

The Pope says in the first part of the answer that "[the use of] a condom can be... a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility."

Can any of these fine-feathered analysts explain why taking a first step in the direction of moralization or a first assumption of responsibility is NOT an endorsement of condom use?

Since when do we consider either moving towards morality or taking on responsibility BAD?

He says the USE - not the intention, but the USE - of the condom is "a first step" towards these wonderful goods of moralization and assumption of responsibility.

Are we saying the Pope does not recommend anyone become more moral or responsible?
Doesn't he himself say condom use may make someone move towards morality and being responsible? And isn't being more moral and more responsible the sign of becoming more human, that is, isn't it humanizing to take on these characteristics?

So how is that not a recommendation?

Of course it's a recommendation. The only reason we would think differently is that he contradicts himself when he answers the next question. If we look at the contradictory sentence, in the next answer, then we can draw the conclusion that condoms are not recommended, but in order to draw that conclusion we have to look at the answer to the next question and entirely ignore this answer.

After he recommends condom use as a way of improving moral understanding, the Pope then moves on to discuss how condom use relates to the very specific problem of HIV infection. But the two sentences of his answer don't seem clearly related.

That is, you can read the response to this first question as saying "In general, the use of condoms by male prostitutes brings the user closer to being responsible, but in the case of HIV specifically, we need to bring in a more human sexuality."

Which is, when you think about it, a darned weird answer.

Precisely because the journalist doing the interview sees this disconnect in the answer, he asks his follow-up question, "Are you saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?" That is, the journalist is asking precisely if the first part is a general principle and the second part a specific digression.

Problem Two

The Pope answers by contradicting himself.

He says, in principle, condoms aren't a real or moral solution, but the intention to use them may be a "more human way of living sexuality."

But this contradicts what he said in the first answer.

After all, what on earth is the difference between "the humanization of sexuality" which is really, really what Catholics are supposed to be working towards, and a "more human way of living sexuality" which, apparently, is to be rejected as not being a "real or moral solution"? Why is moving towards moralization and responsibility not "humanization"?

Benedict seems to be making a distinction without a difference.

Isn't "the humanization of sexuality" the same as "a more human way of living sexuality" which is the same as "taking on responsibility"?

In order to humanize something, don't we have to live it in a more human way?

If we move towards being moral and taking on responsibility, aren't we becoming more human?

First, the use of the condom brings responsibility, then no....wait... the intent to avoid infection (by using the condom) is the humanizing thing.

So, intending to use the condom is good, but actually using it is not?
At least, not when HIV is involved?

A male prostitute who uses condoms is moving towards being more human except when he uses it in regards to HIV, unless he intends to "reduce the risk of infection", but not necessarily with condoms, which the Pope (according to apologists) isn't recommending even though the use of them might bring some of us towards being more responsible in certain cases?

The answer isn't nuanced, it is barely coherent.

Obviously the Church doesn't regard condom use as a complete solution, but how can anyone say the Pope hasn't endorsed condom use in at least some limited fashion as a means of "humanizing" sexuality, a way of moving towards the good?

If the Pope's first answer is wrong, if it is not the use of the condom that brings more responsibility and moralization, then he needs to explicitly say that and the first answer has to be amended to reflect that. But then he has to explain how intending to use something can be a movement towards the good while actually using it is not such a movement. Good luck with that.

And notice, the Pope never qualifies the statement to tell us that the prostitute encounter has to be just homosexual - all the commentators are assuming that, but the Pope never says it. That's a huge lacunae, and secular analysts are going to make hay with it.

The apologists can try to spin this one all they want (I would personally LOVE to put a good spin on these answers), but anybody who looks honestly at the Pope's discussion here cannot conclude anything except the Pope screwed up.

Ignatius Press should halt the release of this book until this passage is fixed.

Releasing it now, without correcting these statements and more fully qualifying them, is an offense to the Pope and to the Church Universal. In order to prevent further embarrassment to both, Ignatius Press has a duty to put off the release, shred whatever copies have been printed, and reprint after the answers have been corrected.

Look, there's no shame in this.

If the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which had hundreds of eyes looking at it for years, needed some corrections, expansions and better explanations, is it any surprise that a book-length interview might have a bit of a bobble in an explanation?

The only reason this particular bobble is a big deal is because it involves a hot-button topic. But to stand around and deny that corrections need to be made is simply absurd. It makes Catholics look stupid, which... well... let's just say we don't really need the additional help.

Ignatius Press, I know you got the Pope's go-ahead before publication, but you need to go back to him, explain the situation and FIX THIS.

The Pope And Condoms

To illustrate his apparent shift in position, Benedict offered the example of a male prostitute using a condom.

"There may be justified individual cases, for example when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be ... a first bit of responsibility, to re-develop the understanding that not everything is permitted and that one may not do everything one wishes," Benedict was quoted as saying.

"But it is not the proper way to deal with the horror of HIV infection."

Benedict reiterated that condom use alone would not solve the problem of HIV/AIDS. "More must happen," he said.

"Becoming simply fixated on the issue of condoms makes sexuality more banal and exactly this is the reason why so many people no longer find sexuality to be an expression of their love, but a type of self-administered drug."

This is what the Pope will be quoted as having said in a forthcoming book-length interview coming out Tuesday, entitled "Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times." It is based on 20 hours of interviews conducted by German journalist Peter Seewald.

What the Heck Is Going On?

The first question, of course, is how on earth could the Pope say this?

As an orthodox Catholic, you have two options:

Option One:

At the risk of being jejune, it is important to point out that the Pope may simply be wrong on this one. He is not teaching ex cathedra on a matter of faith and morals to the Church universal. He is simply expressing a private opinion to a journalist - not exactly the thing from which papal bulls are made.

Catholics are free to say that he's stark raving mad in having made this statement and move on. In that regard, the statement itself would not be a problem, as we would all disregard it. We would have bigger problems to consider.

Option Two:

But, if you prefer not to make quite that quick a judgement, we can study the statement in a little more depth.

The statement is problematic precisely because it is not heavily qualified enough. While the Pope was careful to make the distinction that condom use would be appropriate only for a male prostitute, he failed to expressly say that this male prostitute would necessarily be engaged in sodomy.

In order for the Pope's statement to make any sense, he has to have meant that.

That is, if we assume that he was referring only to the very narrow sphere of a sodomitical prostitution, then Pope Benedict XVI's statement may be defensible, although it is still, at the very least, startling to pious ears.

How does it work?

If the male prostitute were consorting with a woman, then the use of the condom would not be defensible, as it would be an attempt to close off the procreative act from procreation, which is not a permissible act or attitude.

But, the act of sodomy already is, by definition, closed off to procreation. Thus, the condom cannot contribute to the intent to close the act off from procreation, since male-male sex is never procreative and everyone involved presumably already knows this.

The only possible intent that could be associated with condom use in the sodomitical act is to reduce the possibility of disease transmission.

In this regard, although we don't normally consider condoms a medical solution to any known problem, condom use would be treated very much as the hormonal pill is when that pill is used primarily to treat an illness, and not primarily used or intended to be a contraceptive.

We already know that a medication which has the unintended side effect of infertility can be acceptable via the principle of double effect. The use of the condom here does not invoke the principle of double effect, since there is no double effect - the condom isn't preventing procreation, all it is doing is reducing the probability of disease transmission. It is acting as a preventive medicine or pill would that might likewise reduce disease transmission.

Reduction of physical danger to the human person is a good intent.

Thus, the use of a condom in this situation would be a sign that the male prostitute at least valued his own life to some minimal extent. The ability to recognize the inherent value of your own life is a good thing. Thus, "one may not do everything one wishes" especially if that wish involves suicide via sodomy.

Now, it should further be pointed out that the Pope did not say the use of a condom between any two sodomites is acceptable. He specifically qualified his remark to restrict it to the use by prostitutes, and male prostitutes at that.

This qualification is important. The prostitute is usually reduced to this state because of gravely serious circumstances in his life, a complete breakdown of support from others, the need to earn enough money to avoid starvation and a life lived in the elements. It is often accompanied by serious risk of harm from the pimp who controls the life of the prostitute. Not only is the sodomitical life so utterly destructive that it generally results in an early death, the life of prostitution is equally destructive with equally grim results. Combined, the life of a male prostitute is definitely ugly, brutish and short.

That is, male prostitution (like female prostitution) is a situation which is really a form of slow suicide. However, male prostitution is even worse than female prostitution precisely because there is no hope life may come from the evil being done. Thus, the use of a condom in this case - a situation in which the condom only has meaning as a device to avoid the transmission of disease and death - the use of a condom by the male prostitute in such a situation may actually represent an attempt to value one's own life.

But isn't the use of contraceptives intrinsically immoral?

Yes. But the decision to engage in sodomy is already the decision to engage in contraceptive sex, in the sense that it is a sexual act that has no possibility of transmitting life and thus not properly a sexual act in the full sense at all. The presence or absence of the condom doesn't add to or subtract from the life-giving aspect of the act (since it doesn't exist to begin with). Condom use is, so to speak, gilding the lily, in every meaning of the phrase. So, even though a male prostitute uses a condom, in a sodomitical act he's technically not using a contraceptive.

The problem, of course, is that this unexplained and un-nuanced papal statement seems to build a slippery slope.

If this argument can be used to support condom use between sodomites one of whom is a prostitute, then why could it not also be brought forward to defend the use of condoms by sodomites who are not prostitutes?

The difference here is that in a cooperative sodomitical act, the men are not forced into doing this for money, but instead choose to do it for pleasure. But that distinction will be lost on most.

If it can be used by male prostitutes, then why not by female prostitutes, who also value their own lives in their encounters with the men who exploit them?

The difference, of course, is that of procreative possibility, but that distinction will also be lost on the larger public.

Thus, although it may be true, the Pope's statement by itself certainly makes the life of the Catholic who would explain Catholic Faith to a non-Catholic rather harder than it was.

Even if the Vatican comes forth with further nuance, this papal statement will be pointed to as a "change in teaching" because no one will want to hear the nuance or the deeper explanation.

You could argue, and some undoubtedly will, that the use of a condom is always and everywhere wrong. That's a perfectly Catholic position to hold. And, as I said before, the Pope may easily be flat wrong in what he said.

But, for those who wish to provide an apologetic for the Pope in this instance, it is possible to construct one, even if additional qualifications (i.e., references to sodomy) have to be added to his original statement in order to make it orthodox, even if the reality that he lays out makes it harder for us to explain human sexuality to others.

If he failed to qualify his statement well enough, it wouldn't be the first time a Pope failed to be fully explanatory in a statement. Indeed, Pope Honorius I was proclaimed a heretic by the Third Council of Constantinople and the liturgy of the Church for roughly a thousand years due to his failures to fully qualify his statements. Will Pope Benedict XVI fall into this same category? That remains to be seen. But this is the line his defense will take when the time for defense comes.

In any case, if the sodomy qualification is not added, and the Pope's statement is taken to mean that a male prostitute can use a condom regardless of whether his exploiter is a male paying money for sex or a female paying money for sex, then the papal statement would have been taken to have a meaning that directly violates the ordinary infallible Magisterium of the Church.

As it stands, the papal statement is not sufficiently nuanced and it definitely needs to be explained in greater detail by the Vatican.

The Only Real Catholic Parishes

A brilliantly incisive comment from a dear relative of mine set me to thinking about the Latin Mass parishes around the country.

I think what made something like Newman special or a parish with a school is the commonality of people's experiences. Once you graduate or move beyond what many people are doing, you have chosen something different than the common experience, which automatically makes for an outsider feeling. It's exceedingly difficult to overcome. I once was a member of the church choir. Maybe I need to rejoin to have commonality with my fellow parishioners.

Now, what is said here is absolutely correct. Common experiences are what make for community. Once you have chosen something else (to be a commuter on a college campus that is mostly residential, or vice versa, for instance), you are instantly an outsider, not part of the life of the community.

According to Catholic theology and praxis, the liturgy is the height of Catholic community, and the Mass the height of the liturgy. Catholics are bound together as Catholics by the Mass. Yet is that really the case in most Novus Ordo parishes?

In my experience (and I've lived in four states and eight parishes in the last twenty years), it isn't. Far from being a unifying experience, the Mass is absolutely incidental to the community experience.

Isn't That Typical?
Think about the typical "parish life" - it's built around choir, Bible studies, mothers' groups, Scout troops, Knights of Columbus, and pre-eminent among all activities, THE SCHOOL.

Indeed, if you ask most parishioners who have children in the school which came first, the parish or the school, they would answer "the school." And they would sometimes be literally correct.

In the United States, it was not unusual for the school building to be erected first, with Masses celebrated in the gymnasium or cafeteria until the parish church got built. Most parishioners think the parish exists to support the school, that the school is the pre-eminent purpose of the parish, when it is actually quite the reverse. Indeed, I've seen pastors specifically instruct parish councils in the correct understanding after the parish council expressed the backward understanding and yet also have seen the parish council so dumbfounded by the instruction that they all uniformly refused to accept it could be true.

Now, to be fair, this pre-eminence of school over parish happened well before Vatican II was even a twinkle in John XXIII's eye, well before John XXIIII was a twinkle in the eye of the cardinals who elected him, in fact.

Predictably Protestant
But, it is the case that this mis-ordering of priorities is now a commonplace in Catholic parishes. No one, and by that I mean literally NO ONE in the typical Catholic Novus Ordo parish thinks the Mass is what forms their community. Despite their lip service, it's plain that even most of the bishops don't believe it.

After all, if the bishops and priests believed it, they wouldn't spend tens of thousands of dollars on programs like RENEW or Christ Among Us or whatever this year's "small group parish renewal" project is. None of these things are ever centered on liturgy of any kind, much less (God forbid!) the Mass.

Instead, the "small group projects" always center on creating small groups of families who gather in each others home to break bread, speak of Scripture (generally without benefit of guidance from priests, bishops or Magisterial documents), etc. In short, the Catholic parish renewal projects are always very Protestant in character.

And the effect is always predictably Protestant.
It works great the first year or so, starts to decline the second and third years, and when the boxed material from the publisher runs out, the groups disband. Everyone comments about "how great that was" and can't figure out why it deflated like a child's party balloon.

It never occurs to anyone that the whole experience was artificial to begin with, held together by dollars and the paper glue of some wit's Bible study. The "sense of community" was literally purchased with an invoice, and was therefore as solid as the exchange of goods and services between a man and woman interested in... mmmm.... ahem.... temporary mutual enrichment...

The Difference
But with an Extraordinary Form parish, it is not so. The people there are not there because they much like each other (although they may, they often don't) or because they have shared experiences (although they might, they often won't). No, they are all there because of the liturgy. If the pastor didn't offer the Mass according to the 1962 Missal, they wouldn't go, no parish would exist. Whatever community life flows from this parish (and it can be quite good), flows from it because the Mass brought these people together first.

Now, there are a couple of exceptions to this rule. For instance, I know of at least one pastor who offers the Novus Ordo in Latin ad orientem, and I think it can honestly be said that his parish has a large number of members who are there precisely and only because of the beauty and fidelity of the Mass he offers.

The point is, it is only the parish whose community joins together because of its common love for the Mass, it is only that parish community, which can be called a real Catholic community. Only the community which sees liturgical preparation in general, and sacramental preparation most especially, as the common binding heritage of the whole community, only that community really understands itself. Only the community which joins together primarily and precisely to celebrate that for which it has prepared itself is joined together by Christ Himself.

Every other parish, every parish that builds its "community" on the basis of its school, its choir, its small groups, its Scripture study, its Cub Scouts or Knights of Columbus, every such parish is not Catholic in any real or permanent sense at all, because it is not bound by that which is peculiarly Catholic - the sacraments, the sacraments and the liturgy which wraps itself around the sacraments like swaddling clothes around the Christ Child.

The first Catholic community came together in a stable, not to share coffee and donuts or to swap tips on how to tend sheep, but to worship the living God become the Son of Man, the Christ.

Let us imitate them.

Famous TOB Proponent of Westianism on Trial

The recent trial in Utah demonstrates how prudish Mormons can be.

They were the words Elizabeth Smart waited eight years to say, and when she spoke them from the witness stand Wednesday, they poured out with an intensity that brought jurors to the edge of their seats.

Brian David Mitchell was no prophet, she said. He was an unholy hypocrite.

You see? Calling a man an unholy hypocrite is just divisive, mean-spirited and an act of pure jealousy on her part. If she were pure like him, she wouldn't speak that way. The man was just using sound TOB ideas. He had a "hunger in his heart" and he resolved that hunger using Westian principles.

"Smart said she initially was tethered to a cable strung between two trees. She was raped on a daily basis, forced to smoke and drink and parade around naked in a game Mitchell and wife, Wanda Barzee, called "Adam and Eve." She said he called himself Immanuel and wrote a book outlining his religious beliefs called the "Book of Immanuel David Isaiah." He called his private parts "Immanuel's Pride," and his bed "Immanuel's Altar," she testified."

Remember, West espouses the idea that spouses should walk around naked like Adam and Eve, there are reports that West considers himself the ... hmmmm... how to say this delicately.... the "generative organ" of the Body of Christ and he certainly insists that the bed is an altar.

So, what we have here is a man following the natural Westian principles found in his heart, as Chris has described so often to his followers. Sure, his understanding may be a little distorted, but no more than Hef and John Paul II, who used to flog himself. Ah, if only Hef and JP II had listened to Chris, they would have become pure like Chris.

The big problem here is that we see typical American Puritanism and Manicheanism on display in this trial. These unenlightened folk just make us sad.

Why Not?

Over in the UK, Damien Thompson has discovered what no Catholic reporter over here noticed: Marco Rubio is no longer a practicing Catholic.

Though raised an Hispanic Catholic, he apparently stopped practicing about six years ago and now goes to some evangelical ecclesial community in Florida, which sees more of his money than any Catholic bishop ever did.

Now, here's my question.
On what grounds does any priest or bishop deny this man the Eucharist?

After all, our bleeding heart liberal priest/bishop friends are insistent that the communion rail is not the place for political fights.

They insist that Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi should receive.
So why not Marco?

I mean, sure, Marco hasn't been to Mass in a few years, but Joe and Nancy haven't been to a valid confession in decades (you have to be truly sorry for your sins for the absolution to be valid), and that doesn't seem to bother anyone.

Sure, Marco no longer believes in the Real Presence.
That's different from the majority of Catholics... how?

Marco is closer to Catholic teaching in his opposition to abortion, his support for subsidiarity and his understanding of government than any Catholic-schooled freak politician we've had since... well... since.... ok, help me out here...

So, honestly, what separates this man from reception of the Eucharist, according to our bishops?

I would truly like to know.

UPDATE:
Some people are upset that Rubio gave tens of thousands to a Protestant church.

Yes.

Well.

How is he different from the US Bishops CCHD, which gives millions to frankly anti-Catholic organizations? One could easily argue that Rubio's donations are much MORE Catholic than the USCCB's donations.

Janet Smith's Mortal Sin

A fortiori if it is permissible to see the priest as the “fertilizing organ”, why not the candle and why not the candle even in that context?

A month ago, I asked Dr. Janet Smith, among other things, to support her 18-month old contention that the Fathers and Doctors of the Church taught the Easter candle as phallic symbol.

I didn't bother to ask Chris West because Chris may be GREAT at self-promotion but - at least as far as theology goes - he can't think his way through a swinging door in the wall of an empty room.

Remarkably enough, Smith was loathe to reply.

Instead, she got her compatriot, Fr. Loya, to float the balloon that such evidence is not needed because it is self-evident.

Yeah.
Well.
If it's self-evident, then evidence would be easy to demonstrate, nicht wahr?
"Nicht wahr" is German - it means "isn't it true"?
I throw in that note because Westians claim foreign languages are repressive. If you don't speak/write in English, you apparently get ingrown toenails and stuff.

Anyway, when Smith finally grew the cojones to write a critique of Dawn Eden's masterful thesis (that's a pun, by the way), Smith caught so much hell on Catholic Exchange for the stupid-level of her reply that she found it necessary to re-write her entire response and move it to CERC (no comment boxes at CERC),.

While there, she got a CERC editor who knows nothing about West or TOB to commission an ex-cop who says, in writing, that he knows even less about TOB to - get this, because I can't believe I'm even writing this - Smith got the CERC editor to commission a self-professed completely ignorant ex-cop to write a critique of an expert on TOB!

I haven't seen anything that inane since the HuffPo crowd used the structural engineering analysis of a professional pastry chef to prove that 9/11 was an inside job.

And, amazingly, Smith's CERC's editor's ex-cop came up with the same crashingly ignorant points Smith made.

I swear I'm not making this up.
Couldn't be.
Fiction has to be believable.

Again, anyway, Smith having triumphed over Dawn Eden (at least, in her world, where the sky is a wonderful mango), has apparently now seen fit to attack Alice von Hildebrand.

And during the course of her comments/critique, she came up with the winner of a quote that heads this essay.

Notice.
She doesn't quote a Father or Doctor of the Church, as she claimed she could and all of us asked her to do.

She instead quotes ONE priest who produces ZERO references to support his OPINION.

And his OPINION was not about the Paschal candle, it was about the priest, so it's not relevant in any case.

Now, she throws around all the commissions and stuff the priest was on, just like Ed Peters threw around all the commissions Smith was on when I pointed out that Janet Smith is completely unqualified - from a formal theological perspective - to be a seminary professor.

And, given how brilliantly she has demonstrated the accuracy of my critique of her theological ability, I'm amazed she would try to whip up the same argument in support of her pet priest, especially given that his entire line of argument has nothing to do with the original question she was tasked to answer.

The mountain groaned and produced a mouse.
What did Dr. Janet Smith produce?

We have a seminary professor who can't tell the difference between a person (subject) and a candle (object).

Hint: a person has a spirit soul. A priest - who is a person - can spiritually vivify or enliven another person via the sacramental charism irretrievably burned into his very soul, the Christ-branding charism that makes him in persona Christi (which, for you Westians, is a repressive Latin way of saying "in the person of Christ" - remember Christ? Ah.... never mind then.)

A candle, on the other hand, is a lump of wax that comes, as my grandfather used to say in his bucolic way, from bee droppings.

Some people notice the difference between a subject (priest) and an object (bee droppings).

Other persons, like seminary professors who are completely unqualified to comment despite that fact that Rome made the mistake of putting them on some commissions on occasion, don't.

Now, all of that would be bad enough.
I mean, when a seminary professor seems to think the candle has more functionality than the priest holding it, an orthodox man could be forgiven for coughing up his teeth.
But it gets worse.

You see, the seminary professor's comment context is JP II's theology of "personalism."
In fact, if you believe her, she's one of the experts.

That is, she's supposed to be an expert in the difference between:
(a) a candle made of unmelted wax which, although it represents the risen Christ, is intended primarily to become melted wax and
(b) an immortal person made in the image and likeness of God, who is conformed by the charism of his sacrament to be Christ, and who will, with the gift of sanctifying grace, make other human beings gods by means of the sacraments, and himself join them to praise and glorify the living God for all eternity.

Sigh.

Now, to be fair, she did do something I had specifically requested she do: she asked West to stop using the analogy:

In the meantime, I would recommend that West cease to speak of the Easter Candle in this way because it causes such a ruckus.

That was wonderful, and she should be applauded for the bare request. One might take issue with how she phrased the request - she doesn't want him to stop because the claim is impossible to support. She wants it stopped because "it causes such a ruckus."

Think about that.

If this really IS a point of Catholic doctrine, then it can't be dropped simply because "it causes a ruckus." The Resurrection also causes a ruckus (let's not even start on the Eucharist), but it is not Catholic to say bits of doctrine should be thrown overboard because people don't like them or don't tend to agree with them. So, when a catechist says something should be dropped because it "causes a ruckus" that catechist really means "this should be dropped because it isn't the teaching of the Church." After all, if it were the teaching, we couldn't drop it.

Dr. Smith is certainly smart enough to realize that she has publicly admitted what West critics have been saying for some time: West's and her own claims in this regard are absolutely insupportable and have to be repudiated. The bit about letting the "liturgists work this out" is merely a face-saving phrase meant to obscure the fact and save public face.

It only took 18 months of caterwauling before a Westian (although not West himself) admitted a single error. Great. One down, a hundred to go. Now you can see why it takes the Church decades to respond to reform movements. In any case, I do hereby publicly applaud Dr. Janet Smith for admitting, however circumspectly she did it, that Chris West is theologically nuts at least on this point.

But, back to her essay.

I would write more, but I can't - and here we come to the nub of the problem.

Dr. Janet Smith has committed the worst sin a writer can commit.

It's not just that her essay is stupid - although it is that, and in spades. After all, any essay that spends time defending a thesis that is ultimately repudiated by the same author in that same thesis is stupid beyond repair.

It's catastrophically worse than stupid.
It's boring.

She's channeling Jimmy Carter, which is remarkable, given that he claims he's not even dead yet. But, since she claims she can't tell the difference between someone who has a soul (like a priest) and something that doesn't (like a corpse or, perhaps, Jimmy), she is probably not the one to judge Jimmy's vim and/or vigor.

If she keeps it up, however, we may have to ship her to Georgia so she can shuck peanuts.
I'm just sayin'.

They Rose Up To Play

Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.” We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer.

Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. (1 Cor 10:7-14)

When Moses went up on the mountain to get the Ten Commandments, he was gone for a long time. The people left at the foot of the mountain thought he was dead. So, they had Aaron, Moses' brother, make an idol of gold, and they bowed down and worshipped it, then "rose up to play" - Hebrew idiom for "Let's have an orgy."

When Chris West went on sabbatical, he was gone for a long time. Indeed, he's been gone since before he left on sabbatical. The people he left behind have only his Sphinx-like silence and the Scriptures he leaves them - his holy writings.

So the academics have risen up to play.
They have started discussing what West would have theoretically said or might once have said or might one day say if he deigns to eventually reveal himself to us.

One academic hypothesizes about what he might have meant.

When a statement is made, one of the nuns who worship the receipts he brings in anxiously ask, "Is that in the Holy Scriptures of the Chris?" No longer does she ask for evidence from tapes or CDs or YouTube video or witnesses at his talks or his be-a-mystic-for-a-grand seminars.

Now she is just concerned if the offending statement can be found in the product she personally sells.

Another academic hypothesizes about what his followers heard, "When he said 'Blessed are the cheese-makers,' did he mean to include the makers of all dairy products? Many of his followers think so. I wonder." What could it mean?

A third waxes eloquent about what Chris would have meant if he had ever bothered to read Aquinas. The fact that he hasn't bothered doesn't bother anyone.

We have risen up to play.
We hypothesize over tea and buttered crumpets, two cubes, no lemon, little finger raised.
We do it gently, primly, properly.

In short, we have a bunch of academics nattering over ... well.... nothing.
Literally nothing.
Not what West has said, not what West's followers have said, but over what the silent West might once have said if only he had thought of X.

How would the world be different if the sky were green?
Discuss.

No one asks where West is.
No one asks why he can't speak for himself.
No one points out the contradictions when he has, in the past, spoken for himself.
No one mentions the damaged lives of the people who have tried to follow what they believed he said - the failures, mortal and venial, due to concupiscence that proved to be a little trickier to conquer than West's thousand-dollar course led them to believe.

We ignore his crudity, his malice, his inability to defend himself, much less defend himself academically.
Instead, we give him the honor of being considered academically.
As if any claim he has made can be supported in any fashion at all, much less academically.
As if even his academic supporters have brought forward the least trembling shred of evidence, much less the necessary weight of academic evidence.

No, it's so much tidier, so much neater, if we all speculate about what he would say if he were us, and if he were proper, for we are proper, so of course he would be proper.

It is much tidier to ignore his actual words, to ignore his actual ineptness, to ignore the vapid, empty, contentless posturing and assertions of his "academic" supporters and ..... it is so much more proper to play!

We need not deal with his nasty name-calling, his charges of Manicheanism and Pelagianism and Puritanism and prudishness. We won't mention his constant attacks on those who critique him, we will silently leave behind the way he questions the very sexual identity of any audience member who dares to question him publicly after a talk.

Because Chris doesn't talk.
Not anymore.
He's mute.
He's dead.
He cannot be questioned, in much the same way JP II is mute, dead.

But he's not only dead, he's risen.

In short, Chris is on national tour with his rock band.
His dream is fulfilled.
He's finally the rock star he always wanted to be.
Why speak, why break the silence?
The Gospels tell us nothing of what Christ taught the apostles after the Resurrection.

Like his new-age muse, Mother Tessa, I channel the Chris and hear his thoughts:

"Let the academics play, let them hypothesize, debate my legacy, as English literatteurs debate the meaning of Ulysses."

"This academic play enhances my mystery, my ego... If I break the silence, I destroy the mystery. If I say nothing, they dangle my mystery before everyone like jewels. Let them play their words while I play my music and the flashing lights and the empty video images."

So nice and neat, so proper.

This follows Biblical precedent.
This prim and proper discussion between parties is exactly the way Moses dealt with the people when he found them at the foot of the mountain:

Now when Moses saw that the people were out of control—for Aaron had let them get out of control to be a derision among their enemies— then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, “Whoever is for the LORD, come to me!” And all the sons of Levi gathered together to him. He said to them, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘Every man of you put his sword upon his thigh, and go back and forth from gate to gate in the camp, and kill every man his brother, and every man his friend, and every man his neighbor.’” So the sons of Levi did as Moses instructed, and about three thousand men of the people fell that day. Then Moses said, “Dedicate yourselves today to the LORD—for every man has been against his son and against his brother—in order that He may bestow a blessing upon you today." (Exodus 3:-25-29)

Oh, my!
But that can't be!
That Moses thing - that's just Moses acting out!
That wasn't of God!
God is so genteel!
Just like us!

Besides, that's the OLD Testament, which is just the slavish adherence to the Law.
We live in the NEW Testament, which is LOVE.

Yes, of course, we forgot.
God changes as a result of the Incarnation...

After all, in the Old Testament, God allowed His prophets to be beaten, tortured and killed.
This is much different then the New Testament, where God allows His apostles and saints to be beaten, tortured and killed....

And that's the key to understanding, you see.
God doesn't change.
He's not genteel.
Never has been.

God treats us now exactly the same way He treated the Chosen People then.
There is no difference between the two Testaments in how His people are treated.
The only thing that changes is our understanding.
When we view our suffering through the prism of the Cross, we begin to understand that suffering is not purely punishment, that it can also be work, necessary salvific work.

Suffering still remains a natural evil, but it can be transformed so that it is not a moral evil. The Cross is what makes us realize that Love is not genteel, Love is bloody suffering. Love does not lie on a marriage bed of pleasure, but of pain.

When dealing with a man who denies Catholic virtue is a virtue at all - a heretical position - we must at least consider the answer the Scriptures and the Church herself offer us: put your sword on your hip.

Tea and crumpets following are purely optional.

The Emperor's New Clothes

"I have rewritten my critique and will publish the revised version soon."
~ Dr. Janet Smith, October 4, 2010

Dr. Janet Smith has made known her august intention to re-write her response to Dawn Eden, as Smith's first response was apparently so fatally flawed and absolutely lacking in content that Dr. Smith looked to many like a raving Westian loon. It certainly generated a lot of negative press in the blogosphere.

So, as the imposing doctor of classical languages re-writes her theology undergrad paper, we would pose a dubium or two...

Perhaps she could incorporate her thoughts on these matters into her most serene response?

A) Why is a woman with a Ph.D. and an international reputation so deeply concerned about commentary from a freshly-minted MA about somebody ELSE, a third party who ALSO has both an international reputation AND the backing of a Cardinal? What's up with that?

Why does a nobody with an MA frighten the living beelzebub out of two internationally acclaimed "theologians"? What kind of soft targets ARE you two that one person with a less than buttery word on her lips for your antics makes you bring out enormous canons to shoot down the obstreperous fly?

It's kind of like Barack Obama getting all het up about what a local radio show has to say about the operations of the Presidency... could you explain your weirdly disproportionate response/concern...????

But, passing on from this extremely interesting first question, we have a technically unimportant second question:

B) Why does a woman with a Ph.D. who has written literally dozens of articles, hundreds of speeches, etc., get the opportunity to re-write HER first public response, and the person she's defending, who has written several multi-million selling books gets to re-write HIS public responses... and these re-writes are considered laudable.

But, why is it that the poor little nobody they are both attacking is taken to task because HER initial response allegedly wasn't spot on? At least, her initial work wasn't spot on according to the judgement of the people with international reputations and the backing of a cardinal. Who are both apparently scared spitless of the little nobody.

Everyone else seems to have thought the little nobody did a rather good job.

It puts me in mind of something, although I can't quite remember the whole story, but there was this little kid - a nobody - who yelled something at the emperor about his wardrobe.... nope, can't remember the story. All I remember is that the tailors made out like bandits through the back door with their pay before the king got back to the palace.

I always wanted to be the tailors in that story.
They were the only ones who came out ahead.

Apparently, Janet, you and Chris remember the story.
So do your publishers, Pauline Books and Ascension Press and Catholic Exchange.

Now, I mean, I know we are supposed to judge you and Chris by a different standard - you are both pure, the rest of us are scum, you are holy, we are not, you deserve a pass, none of us do, etc.

I know the people who criticize West, that we're jest second-class trailer trash n' all, but I jest thought that this bein' America n' sech, n' maybe we could try them same rules out for everybody jest this once, h'it bein' the way Americans generally act, y'know?

Sigh....

Now, I'm sorry for having been so mean, divisive, ill-spirited, cantankerous and rude as to point any of this out, and I realize my sorrow counts for dirt, that I should simply silence myself and bow, weeping before you both, to kiss your feet in order to show true contrition while I humbly write an article for the silent journals, which is where this debate should really take place, but I thought I'd ask the questions before I did any of that.

Not that I expect an answer, Janet.
Someone so august and pure as yourself shouldn't be expected to have to answer questions from the likes of me, a wastrel laying at the gates, full of scabs and filth.

I have no right to enter into your august banquet to request even this crust from you.
And I dare not even lift my eyes to the all-hallowed, all -silent purity of THE CHRIS! But.....

I can't help it!
My concupiscence gets the best of me!

So, whatcha' got, Janet?
Anything?
Or am I talking to a great, big empty here?

UPDATE:
In the spirit of Westianism, Janet re-wrote her old essay so that it's now a new essay but she managed to say nothing new in it.

That takes rare skill.

Unless you're a Westian, in which case it appears to be an in-born genetic trait.

And, to show she didn't just fall off the turnip truck yesterday, she had it put up where none of those pesky blog commentators can comment on it directly.

It's so annoying to have to listen to critics tear your thesis apart, isn't it, Janet?
So un-scholarly of them.

That was the problem with Catholic Exchange - you write this BRILLIANT piece, then picayune logicians wade in via the comments section and demonstrate line-by-line failures that make a Ph.D. look like a Post-Hole Digger.

Humph.

CERC is much safer.

For one, Janet is on the advisory board, so she can force CERC to carry her stuff.
For two, CERC has no comments section, so nobody can critique her on the same page as her embarrassing work appears.

I don't think Janet gets this whole "Internet" thing...

A Disturbing Indicator

[Dr. Janet Smith] argued that it was “unjust” for someone of Schindler’s influence to raise “very serious objections” in a public forum. “I believe here that he is stepping outside of the arena where the kinds of concerns he raises are best and appropriately addressed – the academic arena where issues can receive patient reflection and prolonged and careful assessment; not the arena of the Internet blog which invites hasty and unreflective judgment,” she wrote... (June 17, 2009, CNA)

I have commented at length on the errors in Dr. Janet Smith's critique of Dawn Eden, but one small detail of her essay deserves greater scrutiny: the idea that the Latin language is somehow a sign of "repression."

As I noted earlier, this is an absolutely odd view for a woman with a Ph.D. in classical languages to take. Why would anyone denigrate their own profession like that?

Eden repeatedly rejects West’s characterization of preconciliar Catholics as “often repressive” and finds that here too West has “set up a hermeneutic of discontinuity” (ET, 64). She does not argue that it is false that there was at one time and may be even now in some places, a tendency to teach the Church’s teaching about sexuality in a repressive fashion. I believe it would be difficult to contest that claim and in fact Eden notes West’s characterization “no doubt resonates with certain members of his audience” (ET, 63).

Let me note that when some ancient texts and moral theology textbooks were translated into English the portions on sexual morality were left in Latin. (e.g., Chapter 10 of Book II of The Instructor by: Clement of Alexander: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/02092.htm and Part VI, Chapt III of A Manual of Moral Theology by Rev. Thomas Slater, S.J.: http://www.archive.org/stream/MN5034ucmf_1/MN5034ucmf_1_djvu.txt). That suggests some “repression” to me.

In the comments section at Catholic Exchange, DCS questioned her on this point:

Why does this suggest repression? Would not a priest-confessor (for whom, after all, these books were written) be expected to know Latin? And other moral theology manuals, contemporaneous with Fr. Slater’s (such as Prummer or Jone), *were* fully translated into English. In fact the section in Jone on sexual morality is quite frank without a hint of “repression” about it.

But Dr. Smith doubled-down, refusing to admit error:

Yes, priests were “expected” to know Latin and thus they could have kept all of the manuals in Latin and not translated them at all. Why did they keep only the portions about sex in Latin? There may have been many reasons for keeping the sections about sex in Latin, but a reticence about speaking of sex openly was not an unlikely reason. I have heard from priests trained by those manuals that they had the impression that sex is something you just don’t talk about or read about.

Now, notice.

She admits there may be "many reasons for keeping the sections about sex in Latin" but she does not list what any of them might be. Instead, she continues to emphasize the decidedly dim view - one might even say the decidedly antagonistic view - of the authors'/Church's reasons for maintaining the Latin in those sections.

She isn't giving the authors or the Church in general the Christian charity of the doubt on this.
Let us endeavor to remedy that lack.

Why might the original Latin have been kept for some manuals?
And, notice, not all manuals treated sex this way, only some of them.

Reason One: It's Our Language
Let us assume English is the national language of the US (I do not say it is or it should be, I merely use this for example).

If you are a native speaker of Spanish, and I write an article that may be of interest to the Spanish-American community, but the article I write is written in a mixture of Spanish and English, is the presence of the English passages a sign that I want to repress the truth of those passages from the Spanish speakers in the nation?

Well, no, it isn't. In fact, this is a decidedly unusual view of foreign languages - treating language as if it were a secret code known only to certain intelligentsia who have been enlightened to its mysteries. Children who are first discovering that there may be other languages often view foreign languages this way, but it is rare for the educated adult to take this view.

Worse, such a view would make no sense in this situation. As an American, it is natural for me to reply in English. Insofar as I wrote in Spanish, it would be out of condescension to Spanish speakers, to make certain that they at least got the gist of the conversation. It would be the odd reader who would accuse me of trying to "hide" or "repress" portions of the article by writing those portions in my native tongue and not their own.

The official language of the Church is Latin.
This is not new.
It has been true for essentially the entire history of the Church.
Even during the Second Vatican Council, some bishops made their entire address to the council in Latin.

So, following Dr. Smith's thoughts here, were these fathers of the Second Vatican Council trying to repress the truth contained within their addresses from their fellow bishops or from the public at large? Or were they merely emphasizing the connection this council had with all the 20 previous ecumenical councils which preceded it? The very fact that one chooses to use one language instead of another is a way to emphasize a connection with a particular population, in this case, the vast democracy of the dead, the saints in heaven and the souls in purgatory, a great many of whom spoke, wrote or read Latin.

And, ultimately, how secret and "repressive" can this language be, given that it was commonly taught in Catholic grade schools and high schools up through the 1960's, and that between one-quarter and one-half of all Catholic children in the nation attended these schools, so were trained in the use of this language?

Reason Two: It's Expected
If you read books, fiction or non-fiction, written prior to World War II, you will frequently find passages written in Latin, Greek, and French without translation in either the text or the footnotes. Were those authors trying to hide portions of their texts from their readers?

No.
Quite the reverse, in fact.

The authors simply assumed their readers were well-educated enough to read the original Greek, Latin, or French on their own. Their assumption was not unfounded. Roughly 1-2% of the population were college-educated in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but college classes were not infrequently conducted in Latin and/or Greek. These tongues were taught in high school and grade school. You were not considered educated at the turn of the century unless you could read these languages.

To quote something in the original Latin, Greek or French was a trick used by the author to evoke the entire work from which the quote was taken. Not infrequently, these quotes were taken from common works which most students translated during the course of their studies - Cicero's orations, the Iliad and Odyssey, etc. So, such quotes were actually a way to pack in more information through evocation than would be convenient or stylistically wise to include verbatim.

So, to say that a pre-Vatican II manual for confessors retains some Latin is to say that it retains some connection to the ancient traditions of the Church and that it assumed a moderately well-educated reader. It could well be that using the Latin would allow evocation of certain concepts and connotations that would simply be unavailable in a foreign tongue.

Now, a classical languages scholar would certainly know all this history. It is the history of her own discipline, after all. But most modern readers don't know any of this and Dr. Janet Smith refused to enlighten anyone, even though she had ample opportunity in her follow-up comments.

Why did she not mention this?

But, before we wave it away as a simple case of thoughtlessness, let us continue to contemplate the problem.

Reason Three: Accuracy and Precision

Which is better?
To read a passage in translation or to read a passage in the original language?

As even the lowliest undergrad knows, reading the original is superior - it contains nuances of meaning that no translation or summary, no matter how good, can carry. Every language has its own nuances, connotations and flavors which are often simply untranslatable. Many a novel, play and movie has been based on these well-known translation problems.

Now, when a confessor is considering giving pastoral advice to someone involved in sexual activity and possibly sexual sin, it is extremely important that exact understanding be his. He can't afford to miss necessary nuance or shades of meaning.

This is the basis for Vatican II's insistence that all priests be very well-versed in Latin. This is the official language of the Church, in which all documents are either produced are into which they are translated.

The insistence on retaining the Latin phrasing for an extremely delicate and nuanced subject is an insistence on rigorous accuracy on the part of the both the author and the reader.

Far from repressing the meaning, to leave a passage in the original Latin accentuates the meaning and adds to the emphasis that it is extremely important to fully understand this section.

Sections which are not as critically reliant on nuance and exact meaning might be permitted to be translated into a foreign language, but obviously certain authors were so concerned about the translation problem, the sections involved were so crucial or dealt with so pastorally stressful a problem in the confessional, that the authors felt these did not permit the luxury of translation.

Again, anyone trained in a foreign language (or several, as is the case with Dr. Smith) would know this.

Reason Four: Subduing Prurience
As Kevin Tierney points out, the particular passages left in Latin in the works cited by Dr. Smith concern how the priest is to deal with hearing a confession involving sins against nature, such as bestiality. Does Dr. Smith feel that this discussion - a technical work intended for the technical audience of the priest-confessor - would be rewarding to the average Catholic? Are lay Catholics being repressed when they are not offered a discussion of how to hear the confession of someone who has had unnatural relations with livestock?

If this is repression, then exactly what kind of discussion does this seminary professor and educator of future priests, think lay Catholics should be having on this and similar topics? Certainly Luther supported a more open discussion and acceptance of both bigamy and polygamy, but we now see he was a prudish piker compared to Dr. Janet Smith and the Westians.

Questions and Concerns
Dr. Janet Smith has her Ph.D. in classical languages.
As such, we can expect that she is fully aware of the history of her field, the problems with translations, the reasons for which translations might not be made, and - as someone who has for so long laid claim to being a theologian - she is certainly aware that the Latin language is the official language of the Church.

So, several questions arise.
1) If she knows all this, if she knows that many manuals did, indeed, translate everything into English, while others retained the Latin for certain sections, why does she only mention the manuals which did not translate everything? It certainly makes it easier for her to claim, both explicitly and implicitly, that this was done for repressive reasons. But this leads to a bigger problem.

2) Out of all the reasons given above, why does she pick the least favorable interpretation for why the authors and/or the Church might have refrained from translating from the native tongue of the Church into a foreign language? As noted above, she isn't giving the Church anything close to the benefit of the doubt. Quite the reverse. Why?

3) When questioned on this point, and given the opportunity to explain the alternate reasons, why does she pointedly refrain from doing so? Indeed, she mentions one reason "Yes, priests were “expected” to know Latin and thus they could have kept all of the manuals in Latin and not translated them at all." But she mentions it only to double-down on the idea that the motive was repressive.

Very few people read old books, books that date from the time when these manuals were written, so very few people would know of or think of the points given above. One would think a scholar interested in the truth would have fairly pointed out the other possible reasons, so as to assuage the concerns of a modern audience that knows little of the history of her discipline. Instead, she left most other reasons unmentioned and thereby left her audience in the dark as to what possible reasons the authors and the Church might have had apart from repression.

4) Dr. Smith claims that many priests of her acquaintance had certain impressions of what was appropriate to discuss in reference to sex. Perhaps this is true. But we should recall that when she has defended other points of Westian theology in other contexts, she has made similar claims and has never actually substantiated them.

For instance, in defense of anal sex foreplay, she stated, " few seem to know that there is a tradition of approval of such behavior as foreplay to intercourse." Though she has been asked on numerous occasions to substantiate this claim in both private and public forums, she has always failed to do so.

In a second instance, in defense of the idea that the Easter candle is a phallic symbol, she is reported to have said, "she was surprised to learn that liturgists and theologians “from the early days of the Church” have understood the Easter Candle “just as West does.” And again, though she has been asked on numerous occasions to substantiate this claim in both private and public forums, she has always failed to do so. In fact, one of her supports, a Father Loya, insisted no such proof was necessary.

So, how much should weight should we give Dr. Smith's testimony in this instance? It is not unreasonable to request to see the evidence she claims she has, yet she never actually provides any of the evidence she claims to have. And the man she defends is apparently unable to respond at all.

5) On a related point of refusal, why does Sacred Heart Seminary, the seminary where she is employed, refuse to entertain the Holy Father's plea for generosity towards the Extraordinary Form? Sacred Heart Seminary not only does not offer its seminarians training in the Extraordinary Form, it doesn't even offer that form of the Mass on its campus. Seminarians who want to assist at such a Mass have to travel off campus to do so on their own dime. On the other hand, several of the Sacred Heart seminary employees are associated with the "charismatic" Mother of God cult in which Chris West grew up.

6) Is there any connection between the obvious distaste for Latin shown by Dr. Smith, the obvious distaste for traditional liturgy shown by her employer, the obvious distaste for evidence shown by promoters of the Westian version of TOB, the obvious cult-like character of the charismatic Mother of God community which influences both Chris West and Sacred Heart Seminary, and our current discussion? Or is this all simply (un)happy coincidence?

Ultimately, however, there is a deeper foundational question to raise.

Dr. Janet Smith's charge is resonant of something else, something we've heard before in the history of the Church...

In the past, who was it that said "Latin is repressive"?

If we cast our minds back, there was grumbling about the Scriptures being in Latin vs. the common tongue...

There was once a movement that found the ancient Mass a burden, a travesty...
There was once a movement that ended in discontinuity and rupture instead of continuity and real reform.... Hmmmm.....

In her constant content-less defenses of Westianism, in her railing against the repressive Latin language and the repression of "yesterday's" Church, Dr. Janet Smith is beginning to sound disturbingly like someone... can anyone think who it might be???

Dr. Smith demanded evidence be given to show that Westians support a hermeneutic of rupture with the past, a hermeneutic of discontinuity. In the past, Dr. Smith was a lion in defense of Humanae Vitae and the ancient traditions of the Church regarding contraception and abortion.

Does Dr. Janet Smith's current situation and her public defense of Chris West inspire us to have confidence in her current attitude towards the Church's ancient traditions?

There are only two possibilities here:
A) Dr. Janet Smith really did not consider any of these other possible reasons for why Latin was used in the manuals, that is, she really thinks "yesterday's Church" (her words) is, or was, repressive,
B) She really did consider these other possibilities, but decided to silently suppress them in order to make her defense of West stronger.

In either case, a disinterested observer might remark on the way in which exposure to Westianism has substantially altered the way even a former defender of Catholic Faith now thinks about the Church.

A Public Letter to the Westians

For years, a theological debate has raged over the relative merits of Chris West's theological teachings. This debate has brought bishops, priests and lay people into public and private opposition to one another as the relative merits of his teachings have been discussed.

In order to bring unity to the Church, I propose that those in the debate formally request their bishops to pose a minimum of the following questions to the appropriate Vatican congregations:

"Can the Easter Candle legitimately be taught to be a phallic symbol?"

"Can the baldachin legitimately be taught to be a symbol of the altar as marriage bed?"

"Is continence to be taught as a virtue?"

"Are the Theology of the Body audiences to be considered the centerpiece of catechetical importance?"

If the CDF or CDW ruled in favor of the Westians, then West's critics would be forced into apology and silence.

Of course, if either congregation ruled against the Westians, we would expect necessary changes to be made in the presentations the Westians make to their audiences.

I am perfectly willing to submit myself to Rome in this fashion.
Are the Westians?

Descent Into the Maelstrom

Janet Smith has unleashed one of the most disjointed, unscholarly attacks of her career. It is a sad thing to see someone who was once a great defender of the Church fall into the hands of a personality cult.

Smith, who has zero formal education in theology, who has never even done undergraduate work in the discipline, much less gone through the rigorous examination of a graduate degree in theology, believes Dawn Eden's master's thesis is seriously flawed. Keep in mind that by saying this, Smith not only denigrates Eden, she directly denigrates the entire board of theologians who judged Eden's thesis and found it acceptable, and indirectly denigrates the entire teaching institution which gave Eden her degree.

Dr. Janet Smith, classical languages scholar, now informs us that she has become the standard to which graduate theology programs must submit themselves. Truly, Dr. Janet Smith is the very model of fairness, humility and docility.

Smith begins her tirade by stating that she is unhappy a master's thesis is published for public reading. We may recall that she was previously unhappy that a man with an actual doctorate in theology, Dr. David Schindler, the man who actually taught Chris West theology, made public his concerns about West's distortion of Catholic theology. Indeed, Smith has expressed disappointment about any public criticism of her idol.

But that is as far as Smith has ever gone. She has never adequately answered Dr. Schindler's concerns about West, nor has she ever produced the evidence that she claims she had concerning any of West's more outrageous claims. Smith has entirely failed to engage anything Dr. Schindler has said in any substantive way.

Instead, Smith has decided to go after a "soft" target, a freshly-minted MA in theology - someone who has exactly the same credentials Chris West has, with the obvious exception that none of Eden's instructors have publicly condemned Eden's work.

So, Smith - with all of her myriad formal qualifications in theology - decides to fill that lacunae.

Tone
As is so often the case with the Westian cult, Smith begins with an ad hominem attack. Instead of engaging in a substantive discussion of issues, Smith takes issue with the non-issue of "tone." Numerous Westian critics have been taken to task for their "tone", including Fr. Geiger, Wade St. Ong, and myself. Every time anyone says anything remotely critical of West, that individual is attacked as vicious, divisive, hateful, jealous, envious and ridden with dandruff.

If the critic has read West's works, he is attacked for not having attended his public lectures. If he has read his works and attended his lectures, he is attacked for not having attended the extremely pricy private audiences West makes available through his institute. If materials from West's Institute are used, the critics are attacked because they aren't quoting directly what Wast says right now. West is apparently impossible to critique because you have to have shadowed him for the last ten years in order to be qualified to critique him.

We know this is true because a woman with zero formal training in theology, a paid employee of Chris West, tells us it is so.

You see, Westians don't need to even study theology in a formal way in order to know that a West critic has to have been by West's side every minute of the past ten years for a critique to be valid.

Inconsistency
Smith then goes on to say that West has refined and re-written portions of his work, and Eden hasn't taken that into account. She completely mis-quotes Eden - "Eden responds to those who have called her on her false statement that West refuses to reflect on his presentations. " Actually, Eden has said West refuses to correct his presentations, she has never said he refuses to reflect on his presentations.

And, in fact, Smith's "defense" is incoherent on this point.

Either West substantially re-wrote the portions of his work that Smith refers to or he only did a cosmetic re-write without changing anything substantive.

If it is the latter, then Eden is correct - West refuses to correct his presentations.

If it is the former, then what is Smith upset about? West certainly wouldn't need to substantially re-write something that was already correct - that would be absurd. And if he really did substantially change what he was saying, then all of his critics were correct in the past in their assertion that West distorted Catholic theology and those same critics may well be correct now, again.

Furthermore, to say that he substantially re-wrote sections of his work is not to say that he corrected his work. A man can re-write something and still be in error.

So, for Smith's charge against Eden to work, Smith has to show that the original passage is substantially different from the re-worked passage and that the re-worked passage is correct.

Smith does neither.

Instead, we are just supposed to take her word that West is fine and always has been fine. We know this is true because she has consistently failed to provide any of the evidence she has herself said exists, despite numerous private and public pleas to do so. Indeed, other Westians have replied instead by insisting no evidence is necessary.

Teaching Authority
Smith then takes Eden to task for daring to critique West, given that Eden is not a bishop (i.e., she continues the ad hominem). Now, Eden doesn't have to be a bishop to offer fraternal correction, either publicly or privately.

But, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. On what grounds does Smith critique Eden, for Smith is no bishop either? What level of hubris does it take to attack Eden for critiquing West, and charge her with an error (if it is an error) that Smith herself makes?

Yet we are meant to take no notice of this - Smith is being generous and helpful, while Eden is being hateful and divisive. Smith doesn't need to be a bishop to critique Eden. Smith does, after all, have all the requisite formal credentials in theology (no.... wait.... strike that), while Eden only has an MA in theology... the same theology degree Chris West has... and a much higher theology degree than Janet Smith has. And, of course, Eden's teachings have not been publicly condemned by her own instructors, as West has.

Now, notice that if Smith were being consistent, this charge of "not being a bishop" could be raised equally against Dr. David Schindler, West's own theology instructor, who (along with other members of the faculty) condemned West's work publicly. Yet Smith has never had the cojones to raise such an objection to Dr. Schindler.

Why not?

Because Dr. Janet Smith, classical languages scholar, would have her teeth handed to her if she tried it. West's own instructors have said he is untrustworthy. Eden merely expands on that thesis.

Besides which, even if one were to admit that only bishops could undertake this kind of criticism, it still wouldn't help Smith's case. Bishops can be wrong. They often are wrong. As anyone with formal training in theology could point out, most of the major heresies of the Church have been started or promoted by bishops, including several patriarchs (Constantinople leaps to mind). So, West may have the approbation of bishops, but this means absolutely nothing from the standpoint of whether or not his work is trustworthy.

Janet knows this, or should know it.

But she deliberately introduces this red herring about authority because.... well, why would a good theologian bring forward such a stupid objection, unless she hoped that the common folk wouldn't notice the error?

Marketing Genius
Smith is upset that Eden charged $10 for her thesis for a period of roughly two weeks.
She is not upset that West has offered substantially flawed theology for thousands of dollars for years on end.

And if it wasn't substantially flawed, why did he re-write it?
And if he didn't re-write it in a substantial way, why does Smith pretend he did?
Ahh... the horns of the dilemma...

Faulty Evidence
She provides no evidence of any faulty evidence.
NONE.
It's breathtaking, really.

Several ad hominems later, she chastises Eden for pointing out that imprimaturs are not canonizations. Yet this is a point that even those with theology degrees often fail to remember.

Indeed, it seems to me that Smith herself, in this same essay, had just pointed to the bishops' approbation of West's work as a sign of its orthodoxy. Now she denies that it is.

So, which is it, Janet?

Is the bishop's approbation - which you attacked Eden for daring to question - is that a sign of orthodoxy, or is Eden to be attacked for reminding us that such approbation is no necessary sign of anything, even though you yourself seem to have trouble remembering this salient fact?

It's a wonderful argument that can be used to attack the same victim from both directions.

Smith than goes on to say

A bad tone can convey to the reader that the critic has a personal agenda against a particular author; that the critic has produced a polemic rather than a sober scholarly analysis.

Exactly, Janet.
Exactly.

Substantive Analysis
Janet begins her substantive analysis with the classic logical fallacy "poisoning the well." She addresses "only one" problem while implying that there are scads and scads more. Of course, she doesn't provide any evidence for her implication, because she has none (just as she has no evidence from the Magisterium to support West).

Dr. Janet Smith just wants the reader to walk away from her polemic with the impression that there's a lot more wrong in Eden's thesis than Smith can actually identify.

I would have thought Eden would be pleased that West says the Theology of the Body “isn’t just about sex and marriage,” because elsewhere she accuses him of presenting the Theology of the Body as though it were only about sex and marriage. He can’t win!

Here, Smith demonstrates either that she is not competent to read a master's thesis in theology or she intends to deliberately misrepresent Eden's points.

Eden's demonstrates, through West's own words, that West wants to make TOB the lens through which all Catholic teaching is seen. Since West's argument has essentially been that sexual activity is the center of TOB, his approach sexualizes all of Catholic teaching. This results in such errors as turning virtue into vice, turning the Easter candle into a phallic symbol, turning the baldachin into a bedroom, and calling the virginal womb "useless." Eden points out that this is rank stupidity (my words, not hers), and exceedingly dangerous.

Smith seems unable to grasp this point.

Smith then goes on to attribute to John Paul II something West created:

West quotes John Paul II as saying that “Since our creation as male and female is the ‘fundamental fact of human existence’ (Feb. 13, 1980), the theology of the body affords ‘the rediscovery of the meaning of the whole of existence, the meaning of life’ (Oct. 29, 1980).”

Now, a good scholar would be very interested in seeing the context of two quotes slammed together from two audiences given nearly eight months apart. But Smith apparently has no curiosity in this direction.

I do.
Let's look:

1. For a long time now, our Wednesday reflections have been centered on the following enunciation of Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount: "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Mt 5:27-28)....

6. Rereading it, this appeal contained in Christ's words in the Sermon on the Mount cannot be an act detached from the context of concrete existence. It always means—though only in the dimension of the act to which it referred—the rediscovery of the meaning of the whole of existence, the meaning of life, which also contains that meaning of the body which here we call "nuptial." (October 29, 1980)

So, John Paul II was not, in fact, referring to the whole of TOB, but only to a specific statement made in the Sermon on the Mount. Worse, JP II specifically restricts its meaning to "only the dimension of the act to which it referred."

When we look at the February audience, the same problem arises:

In the mystery of creation, man and woman were "given" in a special way to each other by the Creator. That was not only in the dimension of that first human couple and of that first communion of persons, but in the whole perspective of the existence of the human family. The fundamental fact of human existence at every stage of its history is that God "created them male and female."

John Paul II ensconced this "fundamental fact of human existence" within the context of "the whole perspective of the existence of the human family." This changes the whole meaning, especially given the fact that the TOB audiences say essentially nothing about the human family.

So, upon examining JP II's actual words and their contexts, Eden's critique is demonstrated to be accurate. West did, indeed, distort JP II by quoting him out of context, eliding the comments, slamming disparate comments together as if they were one comment and Smith bought it!

The degree to which Smith has drunk the koolaid is evident in her next set of remarks, in which she attempts to get John Paul II to say that everything is connected to human marriage.

In light of Ephesians 5, he even says that the ultimate truth about the “great mystery” of marriage “is in a certain sense the central theme of the whole of revelation, its central reality” (General Audience 9/8/82). This is to say that everything God wants to tell us on earth about who he is, the meaning of life, the reason he created us, how we are to live, as well as our ultimate destiny, is contained somehow in the meaning of the human body and the call of male and female to become “one body” in marriage.

Of course, to make her thesis work, she has to avoid the Pope's "weasel words" - "in a certain sense."

As Dr. Schindler has already pointed out - and NO ONE has refuted - our salvation is related primarily to our filiation, our adoption as sons and daughters of God. Nuptiality, the marriage relationship, is important, but it is necessarily secondary to the primary sonship relationship. We are logically speaking, sons and daughters before we are spouse, or, to put it another way, we are spouse because we are first son/daughter.

The reason is obvious.
You can't marry a gerbil.
You can't get engaged to your horse.
In order to become spouse, you must first share the same nature as your beloved.
God gives us His own nature through baptism, in which we are deified, divinized, allowed to participate in God's own nature.

Once we share in His nature, then He can marry us, but not before.
Now, in the space-time continuum we inhabit, both of these things happen simultaneously in baptism.
But in terms of logical sequence, filiation must precede nuptiality.
So, nuptiality must be secondary.

John Paul II knows this, as West and Smith do not, so he knew he had to add the "weasel words", "in a certain sense", in order to avoid being a heretic.

2. So then this analogy which permeates the text of the Letter to the Ephesians (5:21-33) has its ultimate basis in God's salvific plan. This will become still more clear and evident when we place the passage of this text analyzed by us in the overall context of the Letter to the Ephesians. Then one will more easily understand why the author, after citing the words of Genesis 2:24, writes: "This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the Church" (Eph 5:32).

The mystery which is the ultimate basis of God's salvific plan is the union of Christ and His Church, not of man and woman. This is important because the union of Christ and His Church, like the union of Joseph and Mary, is an asexual union, a continent union, a celibate union, and all the more fecund precisely because of its celibacy.

Sex is a means by which the three goods of marriage may be achieved (procreation, union, remedy for concupiscence), but it is not necessary to attain any of those goods, as both Joseph and Mary, and Christ and His Church demonstrate. In both of those marriages, all three goods are attained without sex.

If, as West/Smith aver, "sex plunges us headfirst into the Christian mystery" then Mary and Joseph are sadly un-introduced to this mystery, and so is Jesus and His Church. No one argues that sex is anything other than holy - what we would like to point out is that sex is not central to the Christian mystery, and, insofar as it "plunges us" into the Christian mystery, it does so not because of itself, but because of its consequences, the procreation of immortal persons and the creation of family, the ability it has to help accomplish the three goods of marriage. But it is never required to establish those three goods, and, indeed, Thomas points out that the remedy for concupiscence is better achieved through other means (namely mortification and prayer).

Maturation
Smith then swallows whole the idea that the Church is (a) maturing in Her understanding about sex and (b) we know this because West is an obviously well-qualified judge of exactly how mature the Church is.

Because he's so brilliant, he can stand in judgement of the Church and applaud how well She is coming along in matching his understanding of sex. She has a long way to go of course - I've personally heard West describe the Church as a teenager in her level of sexual understanding - but with West's help, She will undoubtedly get there.

Smith finds it remarkable that Eden apparently mocks West's position.
Why, Dr. Smith, why would anyone mock such an open, loving, generous person as Chris West?

Now, West says elsewhere that what the Church is teaching is nothing new.

But if that is true, then why does Weigel call this a "timebomb" that will require a rethinking of all the tenets of the Creed?

If this isn't new, why does Smith apparently agree with West and Weigel that this will, indeed, require a re-thinking of all the tenets of the Creed?

Either it's new, and requires such a rethinking, or it isn't new, and doesn't require a rethinking.

You can't say that it's really, really ancient teaching, thus it forces us to rethink the way the Creed has always been understood.

But, this is precisely and essentially what West, Smith and Weigel say.
Eden finds their position problematic, essentially incoherent.

Latin is Repressive
Smith goes on to essentially say that she finds Latin, the official language of the Church and of the Mass (both Ordinary and Extraordinary Form), the "suggestion" of repression.

That's a remarkable stance for a seminary instructor to take, especially one whose only degrees are in classical languages (she might want to point this out to Google, which recently added Latin to its translation tool set).

So, Dr. Smith asks, what evidence do we have that West's teachings cause people to resent "yesterday's" Church?

Well, how about the evidence of a seminary that refuses to teach the Extraordinary Form to its seminarians, the kind of inadequate seminary that Dr. Janet Smith's Sacred Heart Seminary currently offers?

What about seminary instructors who find Latin suggestive of repression, even though Vatican II required all seminarians to be well-versed in Latin?

What about using the phrase "yesterday's Church" to describe the current, official and ancient language of the Church?

Isn't the very idea that (a) human sexuality lies at the heart of human existence AND (b) the Church is only now deepening her understanding of human sexuality - both Westian themes - a possible cause of resentment, even mistrust of the Church and her teachings?

But Dr. Smith is unable to grasp the connection.

Conclusion
What can we say?
Dr. Janet Smith presents an immature, non-theological, virtually incoherent defense of Chris West. Her essay is almost entirely ad hominem, infrequently buttressed by very few and grossly misunderstood passages from John Paul II's general audiences. It would get, perhaps, a barely passing grade in a sophomore theology class.

This is the depths to which Westianism has brought Dr. Janet Smith.
Who will follow her into this maelstrom?