Bishops: July 2009 Archives

If you thought you knew John Calvin--who turned 500 last week--you probably don't know enough. For example, that he was French, born Jean Cauvin. And if he was in fact scandalized by dancing, he was also a lot more complex than that. I explored the new look Calvin in an essay at PoliticsDaily, "Patron Saint of the Recession."

So can anything rescue Calvin from his reputation? Some big names are giving it a good shot. Marilynne Robinson, whose 2004 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "Home," is one of the most convincing portraits ever of a Congregational pastor, spends a good deal of time in her essay collection, "The Death of Adam," trying to rehabilitate Calvin, and doing an admirable job. And a spate of new books timed for the anniversary includes works that highlight Calvin's pastoral side, and one, from Princeton Seminary professor William Stacy Johnson, that calls Calvin a "Reformer for the 21st Century." Biblical scholar Roland Boer weighs in with perhaps the most provocative thesis, arguing in "Political Grace: The Revolutionary Theology of John Calvin," that Calvin was at heart a political radical, not a conservative.

Read the rest here...

The meeting between the spiritual and political leaders is on shortly. Which one is spiritual, which political? Obama has invoked Jesus more than Bush did, at this point. And with his pointed encyclical on the economy this week, Benedict ruffled some political feathers.

But the meeting at the Vatican this afternoon is fraught for Catholic conservatives in this country, as I explain in this PoliticsDaily piece:

Perhaps the only good news for conservatives was White House spokesman Robert Gibbs' preemptive declaration that Obama would not be joining a church in Italy during his visit. Gibbs was joking of course, but not everyone is laughing.

 

So can a photo-op at the Vatican change the political dynamic in Washington?

 

Generally speaking, that would be a stretch. But in reality there's much more going on than a friendly handshake. Ever since Obama was elected, in fact, church officials in Rome have signaled a much greater and much more public openness to Obama than church leaders in the United States. Indeed, Obama received a telegram of congratulations from Benedict on the day of his election -- "historic," the pope called it -- and the two men later chatted by phone. The Vatican daily, L'Osservatore Romano, has been almost glowing in its coverage of Obama, especially compared to the dim view of Catholic theocons, some of whom have lobbied for the L'Osservatore editor to find a new job.

 

Such an argument would be tougher to make against Cardinal Georges Cottier, who for years was the official theologian to the papal household, meaning he vetted all papal pronouncements for orthodoxy.

 

In a lengthy essay in a prominent Italian Catholic periodical, "30 Giorni," Cardinal Cottier rejects the talking point of Obama as "pro-abortion" and praises his "humble realism" and the president's apparent reflection of the thinking of Saint Thomas Aquinas. High praise indeed. Or, as veteran Vatican-watcher Sandro Magister put it: "Cardinal Cottier seems almost to exalt Obama as a new Constantine, the head of a modern empire that is also generous toward the Church."

 

It is a good question, and an honest question that many may wonder about, both inside and outside the Catholic orbit. I wince at the "social" qualifier," but Joe Carter, a Baptist, poses the questions well at the First Things blog:

If you had asked me as a young Baptist boy to explain the difference between Protestants and Catholics, I would have said that Catholics were the Christians who "have to do what the Pope tells them to do." Now I'm an old Baptist and realize how naive I was. (I'm more likely to agree with the Pope than some American Catholics I know.)

I'm still unclear, though, on where Catholics draw the line of demarcation between complete freedom of conscience and deference to magisterial authority. After all, if a Catholic can support abortion and still receive communion, what is off-limits?

Stephen M. Barr responds with a useful (to my layman's eye) explanation, and this caveat:

I do think that it would be better if Catholics were not so disposed to pick these documents apart like an English teacher grading a student paper. A little more obsequium would be nice, even as we recognize that not everything in these documents is of equal weight.

I wonder if Jody Bottum, who is diligently deconstructing and re-writing Caritas in Veritate in a series on posts, caught that monito.

I very much like the writings of Richard Gaillardetz on authority, but I'd welcome other amplifications. Of course any concession to different levels of authority opens the gate to the slippery slope to dreaded cafeteria Catholicism. But it's interesting to see many who would confer the status of near-infallibility on lesser papal statements they like now pick apart a major statement they don't like quite so much. So say we all, eh.

Parody is hard, but over at Vox Nova, Morning's Minion nails it with this "fabulous" version of George Weigel's red-pencil deconstruction of the encyclical. A taste:

Justice and Peace was angry. Very angry. Skulking in the darkest corners of the Vatican, they plotted their revenge. With an evil cackle, they hatched their malicious plots. And when John Paul died and Benedict was elected pope, they saw their opening.

"Your Holinessss," they whispered, "don't you think you should issue a document to mark the anniversary of that great encyclical, Populorum Progressio? We could help you, you know, it would be your greatest achievement ever, Holinessss,". Pope Benedict saw the evil gleam in their eyes and he was most disturbed. They gave him a document, but he said no. He did not trust them. They hissed in frustration, but held back their anger. They handed him a second document, and he rejected it again. They tried a third time, and again the answer was no.

Check it all out here.

Is the pope's new encyclical on economics and social justice the proverbial tree falling in the unpopulated forest?

That's the question I pose in my follow-up at PoliticsDaily on what, if any, impact Caritas Veritatis might have. An excerpt:

This is the first papal encyclical in 18 years dedicated to the church's social justice teachings, and it comes in the midst of the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression. In fact, the encyclical was supposed to come out a year ago to mark the 40th anniversary of Paul VI's landmark social encyclical, Populorum Progressio ("On the Development of Peoples"). But Benedict held it a year to take account of the financial meltdown, making it likelier that he will have an audience for his prescriptions.

Moreover, the leaders of the top eight industrialized countries -- who could actually turn the papal principles into policies -- are meeting this week for the G8 summit in L'Aquila, a short distance from the Vatican. One of those leaders, Barack Obama, will head to Rome Friday for his first meeting with the pope as president. There are many synchronicities between the economic visions of the two men -- the common good, solidarity as well as subsidiarity, regulation of the marketplace, and so on -- and Obama could be seen as a convincing medium for Benedict's message.

In the U.S. context, one can detect a growing openness to Catholic social teachings, usually regarded as the church's best-kept secret, although not always among Catholics. Along with Obama, the emerging "religious left" consciously adopts core tenets of the Catholic social justice tradition, and evangelicals, especially young adults, are also exploring and embodying those teachings in often radical ways. In addition, there seems to be a growing push in American Christianity to reconnect pro-life and social justice teachings -- a division that Pope Benedict lamented. In fact, his whole encyclical could be read as an argument for integrating the opposing agendas of left and right, economic determinists and moral absolutists, around the unifying principle of human dignity, which is inseparable from human development. In a Twitterized world of atomized messages and fragmented communities, such a holistic vision, confidently expressed, can have mass appeal.