Female Deacons

The debate continues as this story from The Pillar reports.

An excerpt.

“A Vatican synod official raised again this week the possibility of female deacons being introduced into the Church in an interview with a German Catholic newspaper. 

“In an interview with the German publication Die Tagespost, synod undersecretary Sr. Nathalie Becquart said that the introduction of female deacons on a regional basis was “a possibility” following the synodal process.

“The religious sister has emerged as a kind of roving booster for the global synodal process since her appointment to the permanent secretariat in Rome in 2021. 

“In her interview, previewed April 24, she stressed that the issue of female deacons remains a divisive point, one unable to command a consensus in the October synodal assemblies. 

“Instead, she told the newspaper, “the synod could emphasize this diversity with further decentralization,” and cited the reinstitution of the permanent diaconate following the Second Vatican Council, which was left to bishops’ conferences to implement, or not, as they found suitable.

“While she did not personally back the institution of female deacons, Becquart’s comments are likely to stir controversy fueling expectations that such a move is even possible, since there seems to be little consensus among synodal participants or advocates for a female diaconate more broadly about what, exactly, a female deacon would be.

“That lack of agreement on what a “deaconess” could be might prove to be a greater impediment to their introduction than the general opposition to the notion of a female diaconate.

“The question of female deacons has been discussed in the Church for more than a decade, often within the context of meetings on the synod of bishops in Rome, amid wider discussions of how to open new roles and paths to leadership for women in the Church.

“For many, including prominent leaders of the Church in Germany’s controversial “synodal way,” full female sacramental ordination is a stated ambition — often presented as a demand — for the “modernization” of the Church in the third millennium.

“To that end, advancing female diaconal ordination is often seen as a necessary first step towards female priestly ordination which, as Becquart stressed in her interview, Pope Francis has clearly stated is not possible in Church teaching, even if he is apparently willing to listen to the case for “deaconesses,” for which there was some precedent in the ancient Church.

“In 2016, Francis set up a commission at the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to examine the historical role of “deaconesses” in the early Church. While that commission did not issue a conclusive finding, Francis himself noted that the historical role was not akin to sacramental ordination, and was closer to the role of an abbess in many cases.

“The issue surfaced again during the Synod on the Amazon, with the final synodal document asking that the issue be revisited, something the pope agreed to do.

“In the meantime, the Church has repeatedly stated that the reservation of priestly ordination to men alone is a function of divine law, and beyond the power of the Church to change or depart from. 

“But the extent to which there is theological or doctrinal room for maneuver between the ordination of female priests and deacons remains at the center of the current debate.” 

The impossible synodal debate on ‘deaconesses’ (pillarcatholic.com)

Crime Statistics

Always argued about, as this article from City Journal explains.

An excerpt.

“Americans are worried about crime on their streets, but President Biden and the mainstream press corps don’t think that they should be. ABC News claims that “violent crime is dramatically falling.” NBC News asserts that “the drop in crime does not appear to be well understood by large majorities of Americans.” And in his State of the Union address, Biden bragged about a purported drop in crime that was allegedly a result of his efforts.

“While the administration and its allies are trying to convince Americans that the crime spike that they think they’ve seen in recent years has been a mirage, the public should trust its own judgment. The best available figures, from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), show a whopping 58 percent rise in violent crime in urban areas from 2019—before the summer of George Floyd, BLM, and the “defund the police” crusade—to 2022, the most recent year for which finalized federal statistics are available.

“The numbers are even worse on closer inspection. If one removes from that period the bar fights and other similar encounters that make up much of the “simple assault” category, urban areas have seen a 73 percent spike in more serious violent crimes. That’s a huge rise in violence in the nation’s cities that the media aren’t interested in acknowledging. They are also unwilling to admit that cities have retried the experiment in lax law enforcement first attempted roughly a half-century ago. The verdict is in, and once again, the results are not pretty.

“Much as with inflation, however, Biden and his media allies are pushing the notion that Americans should be happy, because the worst of the spike could be in the rearview mirror. That’s a tough sell. While the recent homicide spike appears to have peaked in 2021, and the recent inflation spike in 2022, overall violent crime in urban areas and consumer prices across the nation are both noticeably worse now than they were just a few years ago.

“Biden nevertheless has insisted that crime has generally been brought under control, and that his policies are to thank for it. In his State of the Union address in March, the president said, “The year before I took office, murders went up 30% nationwide.” While Biden wants to pin that huge increase on Donald Trump, the combination of policies that led to that historic homicide surge—lax prosecution, Covid lockdowns, and the stoking of race-based grievances—were clearly pushed by progressives far more than by conservatives.

“Later in the speech, Biden suggested that his massive Covid stimulus package has helped reduce crime: “Now, through my American Rescue Plan, which every Republican voted against, I’ve made the largest investment in public safety ever.” In fact, less than 1 percent of the first $1.1 trillion in borrowed money disbursed under that bill went toward public safety.

“Finally, Biden asserted, “Last year, the murder rate saw the sharpest decrease in history, and violent crime fell to one of the lowest levels in more than 50 years.” This statement is puzzling—in fact, one wonders what Biden is talking about. The FBI statistics released last year, which report 2022 figures, don’t show a record-setting decline in murder rates. They do report that 2022’s violent-crime rate was higher than 2014’s, the year that the Ferguson, Missouri riots—and President Obama’s reaction to them—sparked the anti-policing movement.

“If Biden were instead relying on preliminary FBI figures for 2023, rather than on the 2022 data released last year, that’s problematic, too—especially since he made it sound like he was using fully processed, validated, and finalized federal statistics, as one would expect from a president during a formal address to Congress. The preliminary FBI figures for 2023, which contain no reporting from 21 percent of the nation’s law enforcement agencies, haven’t been fully processed or validated. There’s a reason such figures haven’t yet been released as final.

“In truth, it’s hard to compare even the FBI’s 2022 numbers with any years prior to 2021, when the FBI switched to a new reporting system. Thirty percent of the nation’s law enforcement agencies in 2021, and 17 percent in 2022, didn’t use the new reporting system and therefore weren’t included in the FBI’s stats. Among the missing agencies in 2022 were giants like the New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco police departments.

“Reliable federal statistics for 2023 likely won’t be released until September, when the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) typically publishes the NCVS. Around that time, the FBI will also release its finalized statistics for 2023. Those figures won’t easily lend themselves to comparisons with the FBI’s 2019 figures, compiled under the previous reporting system, and even comparisons with 2022 and 2021 could be distorted by the different mixes of reporting agencies involved. It’s also worth noting that FBI statistics don’t include crimes not reported to police. As self-identified victims tell the NCVS, nearly 60 percent of violent crimes, and about two-thirds of property crimes, aren’t reported to the authorities….

“This surge in urban violence, of course, comes amid the scourge in many areas of tent cities, drug addicts on streets, marijuana stench, and orchestrated shoplifting, giving the cumulative impression that great cities are abandoning civilized norms. Cities today are pursuing the opposite of “Broken Windows” policing, ignoring pettier crimes, inviting a general sense of disorderliness, and effectively encouraging more severe acts of lawlessness. This reality is not a figment of Americans’ imaginations.”

The Urban Violent Crime Spike Is Real | City Journal (city-journal.org)

St. Catherine of Siena, April 29

A great saint and Doctor of the Church; article from Catholic Online.

An excerpt.

“St. Catherine of Siena was born during the outbreak of the plague in Siena, Italy on March 25, 1347. She was the 25th child born to her mother, although half of her brothers and sisters did not survive childhood. Catherine herself was a twin, but her sister did not survive infancy. Her mother was 40 when she was born. Her father was a cloth dyer.

“At the age of 16, Catherine’s sister, Bonaventura, died, leaving her husband as a widower. Catherine’s parents proposed that he marry Catherine as a replacement, but Catherine opposed this. She began fasting and cut her hair short to mar her appearance.

“Her parents attempted to resist this move, to avoid marriage, but they were unsuccessful. Her fasting and her devotion to her family, convinced them to relent and allow her to live as she pleased. Catherine once explained that she regarded her father as a representation of Jesus and her mother as Our Lady, and her brothers as the apostles, which helped her to serve them with humility.

“Despite Catherine’s religious nature, she did not choose to enter a convent and instead she joined the Third Order of St. Dominic, which allowed her to associate with a religious society while living at home.

“Fellow Dominican sisters taught St. Catherine how to read. Meanwhile, she lived quietly, isolated within her family home.

“St. Catherine developed a habit of giving things away and she continually gave away her family’s food and clothing to people in need. She never asked permission to give these things away, and she quietly put up with their criticisms.

“Something changed her when she was 21. She described an experience she referred to as her “mystical marriage to Christ.” There are debates over whether or not St. Catherine was given a ring with some claiming she was given a bejeweled ring, and other claiming the ring was made of Jesus’s skin. St. Catherine herself started the rumor of the latter in her writings, but she was known to often claim the ring itself was invisible.

“Such mystical experiences change people, and St. Catherine was no exception. In her vision, she was told to reenter public life and to help the poor and sick. She immediately rejoined her family and went into public to help people in need.

“She often visited hospitals and homes where the poor and sick were found. Her activities quickly attracted followers who helped her in her mission to serve the poor and sick.

“St. Catherine was drawn further into the world as she worked, and eventually she began to travel, calling for reform of the Church and for people to confess and to love God totally. She became involved in politics, and was key in working to keep city states loyal to the Pope. She was also credited with helping to start a crusade to the Holy Land. On one occasion, she visited a condemned political prisoner and was credited with saving his soul, which she saw being taken up to heaven at the moment of his death.

“St. Catherine allegedly was given the stigmata, but like her ring, it was visible only to herself. She took Bl. Raymond of Capua has her confessor and spiritual director.

“From 1375 onwards, St. Catherine began dictating letters to scribes. She petitioned for peace and was instrumental in persuading the Pope in Avignon to return to Rome.

“She became involved in the fractured politics of her time, but was instrumental in restoring the Papacy to Rome and in brokering peace deals during a time of factional conflict and war between the Italian city states.

“She also established a monastery for women in 1377 outside of Siena. She is credited with composing over 400 letters, her Dialogue, which is her definitive work, and her prayers. These works are so influential that St. Catherine would later be declared a Doctor of the Church. She is one of the most influential and popular saints in the Church.”

St. Catherine of Siena – Saints & Angels – Catholic Online

St. Louis Grignion de Monfort, April 28

From Tradition in Action.

An excerpt.

“When St. Louis Grignion (1673-1716) was in Poitiers preaching spiritual exercises to the Sisters of St. Catherine, the Bishop, influenced by Jansenism, sent him an order to immediately leave the Diocese. The saint obeyed. At his leave-taking, since he could no longer speak to the inhabitants of Montbernage, he directed to them a letter worthy of the zeal of St. Paul.

“Remember, then, my dear children, my joy, my glory, and my crown, to have an ardent love for Jesus Christ and to love Him through Mary. Let true devotion to our loving Mother be manifest everywhere and to everyone, so that you may spread everywhere the good fragrance of Jesus Christ. Carrying your cross with constancy following the steps of this good Master, thus gain the crown and the kingdom that await you. Do not fail to faithfully fulfill your baptismal promises and all that they entail, pray your Rosary every day either in private or in public, and receive the Sacraments at least once a month.

“I beg my cherished friends of Montbernage, who possess the statue of Our Lady, my good Mother, and my heart, to continue praying even more fervently, and not to tolerate in their company those who swear and blaspheme, sing immoral songs, and become drunk…

“I stand in face of many enemies. All those who love and esteem transitory and perishable things of this world treat me with contempt, mock and persecute me, and the powers of evil have conspired together to incite against me everywhere all those powerful ones in authority. Surrounded by all this I am very weak, even weakness itself. I am ignorant, even ignorance itself, and even worse that I do not dare to speak of. Being so alone and poor, I would certainly perish were I not supported by Our Lady and the prayers of good people, especially your own. These are obtaining for me from God the gift of speech or Divine Wisdom, which will be the remedy for all my ills and a powerful weapon against all my enemies.

“With Mary everything is easy. I place all my confidence in her, despite the snarls of the world and thunders of hell. I say with St. Bernard: ‘In her I have placed unbounded confidence; she is the whole reason for my hope.’ …. Through Mary I will seek and find Jesus; I will crush the serpent’s head and overcome all my enemies as well as myself for the greater glory of God.

“Farewell then but not goodbye, for if God spares me, I will pass this way again.”

St. Louis Marie Grignion de Monfort, Plinio Correa de Oliveira commentary on the Saint of the Day, April 28 (traditioninaction.org)

Important History

Things are not always as they seem, as this post from the must-read series by Dr. Carol Byrne at Tradition in Action reveals.

An excerpt.

“How exactly the theological Manuals suddenly fell from grace, and were just as suddenly reduced to the status of mere quisquiliae (useless things to be discarded) after being hallowed by long tradition, is not a subject generally known today, even among traditionalists. We can take it as true that most priests do not know how and why they disappeared, and show little interest in finding out. They prefer, apparently, to cling to the unflattering portraits repeated by progressivists that depict the Manuals as a blot on the Church’s intellectual landscape.

“Few post-Vatican II conservative-leaning Catholics realize that Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, in collaboration with Fr. Karl Rahner, was the main theologian in the opening months of the Council who rejected most of the initial draft documents, and who demanded that they be reworked to suit modern sensibilities. It is important to keep in mind that these official drafts, prepared by the Central Preparatory Commission under the direction of Card. Ottaviani, were based on the authentic Catholic doctrines taught by pre-Vatican II Popes, which crucially, represented the theological content of the seminary text-books or Manuals.

“Before going on, a further point needs to be made on this subject. Ratzinger was in the strongest position to exert immense influence on the formulation of the Council documents because he was the personal adviser to Card. Frings, Head of the German Bishops’ Conference. He rejected the “Manualist tradition” in favor of greater theological freedom to reformulate doctrine. In his Introduction to Christianity, first published in 1968, he made a harsh denunciation of “fixed formulas” (an oblique reference to the “Manualist tradition”) and their use in passing on the Faith to future generations. Ratzinger stated:

“[Modern disbelief] cannot be countered by merely sticking to the precious metal of the fixed formulas of days gone by, for then it remains just a lump of metal, a burden instead of something offering by virtue of its value the possibility of true freedom. This is where the present book comes in: its aim is to help understand faith afresh as something that makes possible true humanity in the world of today, to expound faith without changing it into the small coin of empty talk painfully laboring to hide a complete spiritual vacuum.” ¹

“As he mentioned in the Preface, the content of his book was taken from a lecture he gave in 1967 to students at the University of Tübingen. Paradoxically, he seems to have considered that his role as Professor was to teach them to despise the “Manualist tradition.” For that is the inevitable outcome of denouncing as a now useless anachronism the Church’s revered (and highly successful) Scholastic method of teaching the Faith with Manuals.

“Ratzinger’s complicity with radical revolution

“Prof. Ratzinger’s 1967 lecture could not have come at a worse time. West Germany was at the centre of the European student protest movement of 1968, and was led by the Socialist student activist, Rudi Dutschke. (It was he, incidentally, who formulated the term, “Long March through the Institutions” as a strategy for working against established structures while working within them).

“Many students at the University of Tübingen, where Ratzinger had been teaching for two years, were among those who took an active part in the ensuing widespread riots, violence and destruction. Their rebellion was essentially a protest against all “fixed formulas” (as found, for instance, in Humanae vitae which was a particular flashpoint) that supported patriarchal structures, lifestyle patterns and traditional morals operating in the Church and society.

“As with similar lectures by his contemporaries, Fr. Karl Rahner and Fr. Hans Küng, Prof. Ratzinger’s were packed with hundreds of radicalized students attracted like bees to a honey pot. (In later life, he put a euphemistic gloss on his popularity with the students by saying that they “reacted enthusiastically to the new tone they thought they heard in my words.”) ²

“But what they actually heard and reacted to was a new theological orientation that would justify their revolutionary impulses for “liberation,” and help them devise plans for radical action in the Church and society. This sort of anti-authority rebellion is amply demonstrated to have been the case in the 1968 student movement in Germany.³ Moreover, it cannot be denied that all three progressivist theologians – Ratzinger, Rahner and Küng – exploited the relatively immature intellectual development and gullibility of young people, for the most part still in their teens, to pump them with anti-traditional propaganda by presenting opinion as fact.

“Ratzinger’s determination to rid the Church of “fixed formulas” ‒ which had acted as the glue that helped keep the Christian order of Church and society from dissolution ‒ did nothing to improve the situation, and even helped to fan the flames of revolt. With so much pressure from all sides for “emancipation,” the University descended into a maelstrom of revolution and radical theology, and the Church itself followed suit, fracturing in the process its common bonds of tradition, custom, culture and morality.

“This parlous situation can be seen as an early stage of the abdication of clerical authority that would become evident after Vatican II when bishops and priests simply gave up the fight for the interests of the Church against revolutionary forces that sought to destroy her. There can be no doubt that keeping the “Manualist tradition” with its “fixed formulas” would have been a sure bulwark against the revolution.

“Mid-20^th century crisis of the ‘Manualist tradition’ in seminaries

“Referring to his own seminary days, Ratzinger commented with obvious relish:

“All of us lived with a feeling of radical change that had already arisen in the 1920s, the sense of a theology that had the courage to ask new questions and a spirituality that was doing away with what was dusty and obsolete and leading to a new joy in the redemption.” ⁴

“His opinion that “courage” was needed to ask new theological questions in the early 20^th century was a veiled critique of the Roman authorities who were attempting to crush the Modernist movement. He did not distinguish between questioning as enquiry (as in “faith seeking understanding”) and questioning as implying either doubt or outright incredulity (as in Modernism’s scepticism towards accepted doctrine). And yet the distinction is crucial, for right understanding and effective communication of ideas always involve making careful distinctions, as he would have found in the Manuals, had he consulted them.

“The point of Ratzinger’s opinion was obviously to reinforce the usual progressivist stereotype of the pre-Vatican II Church as a hidebound, obscurantist institution propping up a tyrannical regime that suppresses progress by stifling intellectual enquiry and debate. What he failed to appreciate was that the Scholastic method of explaining the Faith does not require people to refrain from asking questions; but it does prevent them from arriving at wrong answers in the sense of drawing conclusions from initial premises that are contrary to Catholic principles.

“In fact, the value and legitimacy of asking questions were always recognized in the Church. St. Thomas’s Summa, for instance, was constructed on that method: it contains as many questions as there are answers. Then there were the great Disputationes and Controversiae of the Counter-Reformation period which were dedicated to solving quaestiones about theological matters. These gave rise to much intellectual ferment and debate, all of which was subsumed in the Scholastic system, eventually emerging in the “Manualist tradition.”

“The Church, then, never had a problem with asking questions. The problem was with progressivist theologians who did not want to hear the answers.”

Sudden Demise of the ‘Manualist Tradition’ after Vatican II – Dialogue Mass 137 by Dr. Carol Byrne (traditioninaction.org)

Lived Experience

Relevant article from Aeon for today’s identity struggles.

An excerpt.

“Everywhere you turn, there is talk of lived experience. But there is little consensus about what the phrase ‘lived experience’ means, where it came from, and whether it has any value. Although long used by academics, it has become ubiquitous, leaping out of the ivory tower and showing up in activism, government, consulting, as well as popular culture. The Lived Experience Leaders Movement explains that those who have lived experiences have ‘[d]irect, first-hand experience, past or present, of a social issue(s) and/or injustice(s)’. A recent brief from the US Department of Health and Human Services suggests that those who have lived experience have ‘valuable and unique expertise’ that should be consulted in policy work, since engaging those with ‘knowledge based on [their] perspective, personal identities, and history’ can ‘help break down power dynamics’ and advance equity. A search of Twitter reveals a constant stream of use, from assertions like ‘Your research doesn’t override my lived experience,’ to ‘I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed to question someone’s lived experience.’

“A recurring theme is a connection between lived experience and identity. A recent nominee for the US Secretary of Labor, Julie Su, is lauded as someone who will ‘bring her lived experience as a daughter of immigrants, a woman of color, and an Asian American to the role’. The Human Rights Campaign asserts that ‘[l]aws and legislation must reflect the lived experiences of LGBTQ people’. An editorial in Nature Mental Health notes that incorporation of ‘people with lived experience’ has ‘taken on the status of a movement’ in the field.

“Carried a step further, the notion of lived experience is bound up with what is often called identity politics, as when one claims to be speaking from the standpoint of an identity group – ‘in my lived experience as a…’ or, simply, ‘speaking as a…’ Here, lived experience is often invoked to establish authority and prompt deference from others since, purportedly, only members of a shared identity know what it’s like to have certain kinds of experience or to be a member of that group. Outsiders sense that they shouldn’t criticise what is said because, grounded in lived experience, ‘people’s spoken truths are, in and of themselves, truths.’ Criticism of lived experience might be taken to invalidate or dehumanise others or make them feel unsafe.

“So, what is lived experience? Where did it come from? And what does it have to do with identity politics?

“Lived experience’ is a translation of one of the two German words for experience: Erlebnis. The other German word for experience, Erfahrung, is the older of the two. It has as its root fahren, ‘to journey’. When one calls someone ‘experienced’, it is this kind of experience that is being appealed to. Erfahrung is experience that is cumulative – as one who has long journeyed a path knows the road – and is associated with practice, skill and know-how. Erfahrung can sometimes be translated as ‘learning’, and suggests experience that might be gathered in the form of practical wisdom and passed on as tradition.

“Erlebnis, by contrast, has Leben or ‘life’ as its root. Rather than experience that accumulates over time or is held in the form of tradition, Erlebnis connotes experience that is living and immediate. It is the province of the pre-reflective and innocent, as opposed to the refined and distilled. Erlebnis implies experience that is new, fresh and sometimes disruptive – what doesn’t easily fit into the public, cultural patterns associated with Erfahrung.

“In the late 19th and early 20thcenturies, German philosophers developed and exploited the contrast between these two kinds of experience. This led philosophers and translators in other languages – most notably, for our purposes, English and French – to add the qualifiers ‘lived’ or ‘vécue’ to signify when they were invoking Erlebnis as opposed to Erfahrung. So, while the multifaceted English word ‘experience’ can be used to translate both Erlebnis and Erfahrung, when someone wants to refer to the distinctive form of experience picked out by Erlebnis, they often use ‘lived experience’ to do so.

“According to Richard E Palmer in his book Hermeneutics (1969), Erlebnis first appeared in the plural form Erlebnisse in the work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, while Hans-Georg Gadamer suggests in Truth and Method (1960) that the first singular use can be found in one of G W F Hegel’s letters. But the word really didn’t come into common usage until the 1870s. It was then that the German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey brought Erlebnis into the mainstream, when he used it in his 1870 biography of Friedrich Schleiermacher and in an 1877 essay on Goethe, a version of which was later included in his highly regarded work Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung (‘Poetry and Lived Experience’; 1906).

“While himself a staunch empiricist, Dilthey was part of a Romantic movement reacting to earlier empiricists, positivists and Kantians, whom he believed relied on an unduly narrow conception of experience. Since these philosophers were primarily concerned to provide an epistemological foundation for the budding natural sciences, they focused on the cognitive aspects of experience – that is, how experience can be used as the basis for scientific knowledge of the kind produced by natural philosophers such as Isaac Newton.

“At the risk of oversimplification, these thinkers focused primarily on sensation – the ‘objective’ world encountered by the senses and, in particular, those aspects of sensory experience that could, through abstraction, be quantified, measured and shared. Other features of experience, such as meaning, significance, value, purpose, feeling and the like, were ignored and relegated to the ‘subjective’ realm of ‘inner experience’. This epistemology created a split between subject and object, mind and world, fact and value. The external or objective world became the realm of ‘facts’, while meaning, significance, value, purpose and feeling were increasingly thought of as subjective.

“While a Romantic, Dilthey was also insistent upon being more empirical than earlier empiricists. He saw his task as getting back behind the subject/object, mind/world, fact/value split to embodied, full-blooded, living experience. In a line from his work Introduction to the Human Sciences (1883), Dilthey writes: ‘No real blood flows in the veins of the knowing subject constructed by Locke, Hume, and Kant, but rather the diluted extract of reason as a mere activity of thought.’ Dilthey believed we have to return to conscious lived experience, not because the content of lived experience is indubitable but because we have no alternative. The only way we can know anything is through conscious experience.

“Dilthey maintained that the subject/object split led us to the false belief that the world of the natural sciences was the true or fundamental reality. By contrast, Dilthey argued, since our original access to the world is through conscious experience, so-called objective reality is only the husk that remains by exsanguinating lived experience. This means that the world of the natural sciences is not fundamental, but necessarily derivative. Dilthey designed the concept of Erlebnis (lived experience) to reflect the fact that, in our original experience, we know the world as a meaningful, coherent whole – a composite of inner and outer, subjective and objective, facts and values. One can analyse the original whole of lived experience into subjective and objective elements, but this analysis is only possible because subject and object are originally bound up together in the fundamental reality of lived experience.

“Contemporary usage of lived experience still bears the mark of Dilthey’s original formulations (a point I’ve developed in more detail in other writings). For Dilthey, lived experience should first be taken to signify the view from the inside, the ‘what it’s like’ to be a human being. There is a stark difference between learning about the physics of colour and being awestruck by the prismatic beauty of a sunset; one thing to know about the biochemistry involved in love and another to experience the extraordinary, ineffable thrill of actually falling in love.”

On lived experience, from the Romantics to identity politics | Aeon Essays

Criminal Reformation, the Lighted Lamp Theory

Several years ago, two criminologists, James Q, Wilson and George Kelling developed their “broken windows” theory of crime. A neighborhood where broken windows in buildings are not repaired sends a signal that no one is in charge here, that breaking more windows cost nothing, that it has no undesirable consequences. The broken window is their metaphor for a whole host of ways that behavioral norms can break down in a community.

The truth of the broken windows theory has been well proven, in New York under Police Chief Bratton and Mayor Giuliani the police focused on enforcing laws against relatively minor offenses – graffiti, public drinking, panhandling, littering, and what was discovered is that when order is restored, a signal is sent out. This is a community where behavior has consequences.

As in most truths, the opposite is also true. In places of deepest suffering and great darkness where evil lives and breathes openly, a lighted lamp of goodness and hope will attract other lighted lamps of goodness and hope will be lit and human lives will change in response to the lighted lamp, for it says by its flame, there is light here, light is welcome here and hope rewarded.

When someone living in darkness is redeemed and brought back into the light through the grace of God, those living in the darkest places imaginable, even in a stone and steel cell in a maximum security prison, or in a mud-strewn, rain-soaked homeless camp in the thorny bushes along the road, or in a shimmering chrome pit of wealth and decadence; when the lamp of their redemption is lit, goodness will occur as their light shines forth.

When a lamp is lit by that person, through their redemption and through their work to bring the light blessing them to others, then in that dark place a hundred lamps come into light and darkness reigns no longer as hearts are awakened and spirits strengthened.

A criminal is best helped by a friend. The deep knowledge leader is from the community of the criminal. He has come from the darkness, following the light from the lamp of his being and brings the solution of good from within the problem of evil.

Helping the criminal brings us into work of great peril, moment and consequence, where the best guide is one having already trod the path, lighting the way.

The light from the lamp is a light of social justice, an active state of human consciousness, based on our divine patrimony, in which respect for each person’s human dignity governs all our social action, where each individual’s rights existed prior to society and must be recognized by it, and where each of us are called by God and our Church to defend the dignity of human beings, in every moment of our lives, and at every moment in history.

“Mankind’s moral sense is not a strong beacon light, radiating outward to illuminate in sharp outline all that it touches. It is, rather, a small candle flame, casting vague and multiple shadows, flickering and sputtering in the strong winds of power and passion, greed and ideology. But brought close to the heart and cupped in one’s hands, it dispels the darkness and warms the soul.” (James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense, p. 251)

“If Christ could befriend a former prostitute to the point of immortalizing her and appearing to her in his risen form before showing himself to any of his apostles, then the quality of divine mercy that led Our Lord to open paradise to the good thief is well in sight. ” F. Marks, John the Clarifier, Homiletic & Pastoral Review, July 2007, p. 15)

A professional criminal who transforms his life and seeks to help others is a lighted lamp capable of great work within the field of criminal reformation.

The professional criminal is a person who commits crimes for money, to whom crime is a way of life, habitual, as in—“of the nature of a habit; fixed by habit; constantly repeated or continued; customary” (Oxford Dictionary)—and prison time an occupational hazard.

A criminal, as we use the term, is a professional criminal.

The term criminal is used by Lampstand rather than other terms used such as: offender/ex-offender, convict/ex-convict, or felon/ex-felon because none of those specifically define the act of crime which is committed for economic reasons, while excluding those offenses of lust and perversion, addiction, momentary rage, mental illness, or accident.

The use of this term creates a clear line of demarcation between the individuals to whom our work is directed, and from who we look for innovative and effective solutions to solve the social problem of criminal reentry into the community.

We consider time served in maximum security prison as a qualifying factor in identifying criminal world leaders from the same perspective national business leaders would be identified by their involvement in nationally important business organizations.

Transformation and reformation are the primary terms used rather than the more commonly used term—rehabilitation—because the term rehabilitation implies a previous state of being when one was not a criminal and with most of the criminals Lampstand works with, they were essentially born into the criminal world, so the previous state of non-criminal-hood hasn’t really existed.

Professional criminals become part of the communal community when they make the choice to transform themselves, to create from within a different person than what they were previously, to become a person whose motivation is based on an eternal truth potent enough to overturn the truth of the criminal world and this eternal truth is only found in the Catholic Church.

Those penitential criminals who have found this truth, and also taken the steps necessary to become community leaders in the reformation of other criminals—becoming lighted lamps—are those to whom our work is directed.

For a transformed criminal to retain his balance within the world he must daily practice those ancient rituals dedicated workers of the apostolate have relied on for centuries to strengthen themselves, he must walk the eternal path seeking the deepest knowledge of all.

It is the knowledge gained from continuous communion with God; the continual prayer and daily practice set forth by the reach for perfection to which each Catholic is called through baptism and communion within the Kingdom of God.

In olden times, the paths humans made to travel here and there were made by human feet, traveling the same way through the forest and over the plain as the day and year before, and as the years deepened the path, it became a hardened way that remained for guidance through the woods and mountains to the way home.

As it is with our own path, made daily through the rituals established by the Church to feed her saints and priests the food divine—morning prayer, communion, midday angelus, praying the rosary, evening prayer, examination of conscience, sacrifices to the Church, to God, to Peter, fighting against sin and building virtue; and through this daily practice, the armor of God is slowly crafted as the penitential, transformed criminal aspiring to community leadership—for whom this is a vital journey of lifetime atonement from the years of harm caused to others through his criminality—enters into the hardened path of the priestly soul and saintly temperament on the long journey home, becoming a lighted lamp to his brothers.

David H. Lukenbill, President

The Lampstand Foundation

It takes a reformed criminal to reform criminals.

Post Office Box 254794

Sacramento, CA 95865-4794

Website: https://davidhlukenbill.wordpress.com/      

Email: Dlukenbill@msn.com

Blog: https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/

With Peter, to Christ, through Mary

Better to light up than merely to shine, to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate. (St. Thomas Aquinas)

Saint of the Day – 19 April – St Pope Leo IX (1002-1054)

From Anastpaul.

An excerpt.

“Saint of the Day – 19 April – St Pope Leo IX (1002-1054) – known as “Apostolic Pilgrim.”  Born on 21 June 1002 at Eguisheim, Alsace, France as Bruno of Eguisheim-Dagsburg – 19 April 1054 in Saint Peter’s Basilica, Rome, Italy of natural causes.

“St Leo was born to Count Hugh and Heilwig and was a native of Eguisheim, Upper Alsace (present day Alsace, France).   His family was of noble rank and his father, Count Hugh, was a cousin of Emperor Conrad II (1024–1039).   He was educated at Toul, where he successively became canon and, in 1026, bishop – he administered the Diocese of Toul for twenty years.   In the latter capacity he rendered important political services to his relative Conrad II, and afterwards to Emperor Henry III.    He became widely known as an earnest and reforming ecclesiastic.

“When the German Pope Damasus II died in 1048, Bishop Bruno was selected by the Emperor, Henry III, to succeed him.   Bruno agreed to go to Rome and to accept the Papacy if freely elected thereto by the Roman people.   He wished, at least, to rescue the See of Peter from its servitude to the German Emperors.   When, in company with Hildebrand he reached Rome and presented himself to its people clad in pilgrim’s guise and barefooted but still tall and fair to look upon, they cried out with one voice that him and no other would they have as Pope.   Assuming the name of Leo, he was solemnly enthronedon 12 February, 1049.

“One of his first public acts was to hold the well-known Easter synod of 1049, at which celibacy of the clergy (down to the rank of subdeacon) was required anew.   Also, the Easter synod was where the Pope at least succeeded in making clear his own convictions against every kind of simony.   The greater part of the year that followed was occupied in one of those progresses through Italy, Germany and France which form a marked feature in Leo IX’s pontificate.   Leo chose a body of capable and reform-minded advisers from outside the Roman Curia:  Hildebrand, who was to become Pope St Gregory VII; Frederick of Liege, who was to become Pope Stephen IX;  and Humbert of Moyenmoutier.   He also took advice from reformers such as St Hugh of Cluny and St Peter Damian.

“Pope Leo did not just write letters or give sermons to announce his reforms.   He travelled to major dioceses to conduct meetings and discuss why the reforms were necessary.   He travelled so much that he was nicknamed the “Apostolic Pilgrim.”   Leo also appointed men who believed in the reforms to important Church positions.   Leo knew that the changes he wanted would not be accomplished in his lifetime.   He trusted the men he appointed to carry out the needed reforms and they did.”

Saint of the Day – 19 April – St Pope Leo IX (1002-1054)

Modernizing the Church??

Another outstanding post in the must-read series from Dr. Carol Byrne from Tradition in Action.

An excerpt.

“How exactly the theological Manuals suddenly fell from grace, and were just as suddenly reduced to the status of mere quisquiliae (useless things to be discarded) after being hallowed by long tradition, is not a subject generally known today, even among traditionalists. We can take it as true that most priests do not know how and why they disappeared, and show little interest in finding out. They prefer, apparently, to cling to the unflattering portraits repeated by progressivists that depict the Manuals as a blot on the Church’s intellectual landscape.

“Few post-Vatican II conservative-leaning Catholics realize that Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, in collaboration with Fr. Karl Rahner, was the main theologian in the opening months of the Council who rejected most of the initial draft documents, and who demanded that they be reworked to suit modern sensibilities. It is important to keep in mind that these official drafts, prepared by the Central Preparatory Commission under the direction of Card. Ottaviani, were based on the authentic Catholic doctrines taught by pre-Vatican II Popes, which crucially, represented the theological content of the seminary text-books or Manuals.

“Before going on, a further point needs to be made on this subject. Ratzinger was in the strongest position to exert immense influence on the formulation of the Council documents because he was the personal adviser to Card.Frings, Head of the German Bishops’ Conference. He rejected the “Manualist tradition” in favor of greater theological freedom to reformulate doctrine. In his Introduction to Christianity, first published in 1968, he made a harsh denunciation of “fixed formulas” (an oblique reference to the “Manualist tradition”) and their use in passing on the Faith to future generations. Ratzinger stated:

“[Modern disbelief] cannot be countered by merely sticking to the precious metal of the fixed formulas of days gone by, for then it remains just a lump of metal, a burden instead of something offering by virtue of its value the possibility of true freedom. This is where the present book comes in: its aim is to help understand faith afresh as something that makes possible true humanity in the world of today, to expound faith without changing it into the small coin of empty talk painfully laboring to hide a complete spiritual vacuum.” ¹

“As he mentioned in the Preface, the content of his book was taken from a lecture he gave in 1967 to students at the University of Tübingen. “Paradoxically, he seems to have considered that his role as Professor was to teach them to despise the “Manualist tradition.” For that is the inevitable outcome of denouncing as a now useless anachronism the Church’s revered (and highly successful) Scholastic method of teaching the Faith with Manuals.

“Ratzinger’s complicity with radical revolution

“Prof. Ratzinger’s 1967 lecture could not have come at a worse time. West Germany was at the centre of the European student protest movement of 1968, and was led by the Socialist student activist, Rudi Dutschke. (It was he, incidentally, who formulated the term, “Long March through the Institutions” as a strategy for working against established structures while working within them).

“Many students at the University of Tübingen, where Ratzinger had been teaching for two years, were among those who took an active part in the ensuing widespread riots, violence and destruction. Their rebellion was essentially a protest against all “fixed formulas” (as found, for instance, in Humanae vitae which was a particular flashpoint) that supported patriarchal structures, lifestyle patterns and traditional morals operating in the Church and society.

“As with similar lectures by his contemporaries, Fr. Karl Rahner and Fr. Hans Küng, Prof. Ratzinger’s were packed with hundreds of radicalized students attracted like bees to a honey pot. (In later life, he put a euphemistic gloss on his popularity with the students by saying that they “reacted enthusiastically to the new tone they thought they heard in my words.”) ²

“But what they actually heard and reacted to was a new theological orientation that would justify their revolutionary impulses for “liberation,” and help them devise plans for radical action in the Church and society. This sort of anti-authority rebellion is amply demonstrated to have been the case in the 1968 student movement in Germany.³ Moreover, it cannot be denied that all three progressivist theologians – Ratzinger, Rahner and Küng – exploited the relatively immature intellectual development and gullibility of young people, for the most part still in their teens, to pump them with anti-traditional propaganda by presenting opinion as fact.

“Ratzinger’s determination to rid the Church of “fixed formulas” ‒ which had acted as the glue that helped keep the Christian order of Church and society from dissolution ‒ did nothing to improve the situation, and even helped to fan the flames of revolt. With so much pressure from all sides for “emancipation,” the University descended into a maelstrom of revolution and radical theology, and the Church itself followed suit, fracturing in the process its common bonds of tradition, custom, culture and morality.

“This parlous situation can be seen as an early stage of the abdication of clerical authority that would become evident after Vatican II when bishops and priests simply gave up the fight for the interests of the Church against revolutionary forces that sought to destroy her. There can be no doubt that keeping the “Manualist tradition” with its “fixed formulas” would have been a sure bulwark against the revolution.”

Sudden Demise of the ‘Manualist Tradition’ after Vatican II – Dialogue Mass 137 by Dr. Carol Byrne (traditioninaction.org)

Pope St. Leo the Great, April 11

“St. Leo the Great, who reigned as Pope from 440 to 461, was one of the greatest Popes of History. He fought against numerous heresies that agitated the Church, principally against the Manicheans and Pelagians. In 452 he faced Attila and convinced the scourge of God and his Huns not to attack Rome and to leave Italy. He was also able to thwart the destruction of Rome by Genseric three years later.

“Many Africans who had been driven away by the Vandals had settled in Rome and established a secret Manichean community there. When St. Leo discovered them, he denounced them to priests and religious, and warned the people to be on their guard against this reprehensible heresy.

“In Spain the heresy of Priscillianism still survived and was attracting new adherents, provoking countless riots and general agitation. St. Leo was informed of this situation by St. Turibius, Bishop of Astorga in Spain. The Pope wrote him a long letter in which he refuted the errors of the Priscillian heresy and qualified it as the “sewer of all the prior heresies.” In particular he condemned its denial of free will and the influence of astrology, considered infallible. St. Leo also showed the connection between the Priscillians and the Manicheans, and sent St. Turibius the conclusions of the juridical processes that he had made against the latter in Rome.

“In these processes one can see the seed of the future Inquisition. They were presided over by the Pope, who was assisted by Bishops, clergy, senators and other illustrious personages. During them, he would declare to the faithful their obligation to denounce the heretics; question those under suspicion; try to make them retract from their errors; give penances to those who returned to the Church; and deliver to the civil authorities those who were obstinate in their positions so they might be adequately punished.”

Pope St. Leo the Great, Plinio Correa de Oliveira commentary on the Saint of the Day, April 11 (traditioninaction.org)