Tuam, Dead Babies, and Modern Morality

So the Tuam scandal became a thing on a friend's Facebook wall a little while ago. I went digging, and found a good reassesment of the story from the Washington Post and an excoriation of what made the story an international cause celebre by the atheist Brendan O'Neill. Fine and good.

And then there was this story from the Guardian.

And I'm kind of stunned.

What sort of tonedeafness leads someone to put out a story headlined: "The horror of Tuam's missing babies is not diminished by misreported details: Tuam's mothers and the unhappily pregnant today are not unconnected. It is time for Ireland to liberalise its abortion laws"?

Really? "I'm so outraged by how awfully the Catholic Church treated unwed mothers and killed their children through neglect that I'm going to call for us to legalize killing the children in the womb. There. Problem solved."

She's not mad about the missing children of Tuam. She's mad that they couldn't all have been made to disappear.

I can understand the outrage at the way unwed mothers were apparently treated in Ireland decades ago, and understand that our failures to be as holy as we should cause all sorts of hell to break loose. Yes. Fine.

But someone's really going to turn this into an argument for loosening restrictions on killing kids in the womb? Really?

Catholics in the Heart of the Land of Islam, and Other Surprising Facts of Global Catholicism

John Allen lays out some interesting points in his recent piece, including the following starkly true statement. Excerpts:

...The typical Christian in the world today isn’t a middle-class white male in Dubuque pulling up to church in his Lincoln Continental. She is an impoverished black mother of four in Nigeria, or a Dalit grandmother in India, or an exploited Filipina maid in Saudi Arabia. They often face hardships that are hard for most American Christians, accustomed to material comfort and lacking any real experience of religious persecution, to fathom.

Until you get that, you won’t see the full story of Christianity in this era...

Click and read.

A Good God is Everywhere — And Provides for Everything with Love

The best recounting of the sacrifice of Maximilian Kolbe I've ever read.  Excerpts:

...The Nazi commandant calls the first name, second, third, fourth. Franciszek Gajowniczek hopes hard that he would live to see 42… live to hold his children close again…seventh, eighth, ninth names…”

He’s only a few years older than I am. And he’s only one name away from seeing the sun rise tomorrow. We turn at Bobby Johnson’s corner.

“And then they barked the tenth name: Franciszek Gajowniczek. And Gajowniczek — he falls to the ground. Near starving, he peels back every shred of dignity and he flat out begs, ‘No, I am married! I have children! I am young! I beg of you!’

The kids are quiet.

“And behind Gajowniczek, a man breaks rank… And he steps forward so all can see his face —- Maximillian Kolbe — a Christian. A Christian who was known to give up his food rations to those less hungry than he was. A Christian known to give his blanket to those not as cold as he was. Maximilian Kolbe, he was known to these incarcerated Jews as the Christ of Auschwitz… and he steps forwards silently, takes off his cap, and before the commandant he says,

“Let me take his place. He has a wife and children. I am not married. I am not a father. He is young. I am old. Take me.” I turn around so that I can see the kids’ faces. “Maximilian Kolbe was only 6 years older than Gajowniczek — 47.”

Hope turns from me, looks out the window. Rain drops start to splat the windshield loud.

“And Gajowniczek, laying there on the dust on a July morning, he would later say, ‘I could only thank him with my eyes. I was stunned and could hardly grasp what was going on.’

And Kolbe, he was dragged off to a wire box like a dog kennel with the nine other men, left to starve.”

This is always the part of the story that gets hard, when the lump grows too large in my throat. The children say nothing and I push the words past the stinging in my throat.

“Kolbe spent the next 14 days singing hymns and praying with those nine other men, as one by one, all of them starved to death… And only one month prior to Kolbe being dragged off to starve, on June 15, 1941, — Maximilian Kolbe had written this to his mother:

‘Dear Mama, I am in the camp of Auschwitz. Everything is well in my regard. Be tranquil about me and about my health, because the good God is everywhere and provides for everything with love.’”

I had memorized that line of the letter. Because if a man in the midst of one the most hideous scenarios known in the history of the world could write a line like that — not from a bad day at the office or a hard day with the kids, but from the death stench of Auschwitz — how can anyone deny this ultimate iron-clad testimony : A Good God is everywhere — and provides for everything with love...

Her kids' reaction here. A reaction from the man whose life he saved. Excerpts:

...Gajowniczek later recalled:

'I could only thank him with my eyes. I was stunned and could hardly grasp what was going on. The immensity of it: I, the condemned, am to live and someone else willingly and voluntarily offers his life for me - a stranger. Is this some dream?

I was put back into my place without having had time to say anything to Maximilian Kolbe. I was saved. And I owe to him the fact that I could tell you all this. The news quickly spread all round the camp. It was the first and the last time that such an incident happened in the whole history of Auschwitz.

For a long time I felt remorse when I thought of Maximilian. By allowing myself to be saved, I had signed his death warrant. But now, on reflection, I understood that a man like him could not have done otherwise. Perhaps he thought that as a priest his place was beside the condemned men to help them keep hope. In fact he was with them to the last.'...

St. Maximilian Kolbe, Martyr for charity, pray for us!

No, Of Couse Churches Will Never Be Forced to Marry Gay Couples

Oh, ye gods and little fishies.  Excerpts:

"...We have a civil partnership, me and my husband Tony," said Barrie, who owns a surrogacy centre in Chandlers Quay, Maldon, and is about to open another in Los Angeles.

"The only way forward for us now is to make a challenge in the courts against the church.

"It is a shame that we are forced to take Christians into a court to get them to recognise us.

"But we don't want to force anyone into marrying us – it is supposed to be the happiest day in my life and that would make me miserable and would spoil the whole thing.

"Aren't Christians meant to forgive and accept and love?"..."

All together, now!

A good comment.  Excerpts:

...“I am still not getting what I want,” cried Barrie, stamping his foot on the plush purple shagpile. And so they are now suing their local parish church - the fellowship where they worship; where their children were baptised; and which supported Tony through the trauma of throat cancer a few years ago - because they can't get married there.

Quite why they think this is the fault of their parish church is unknown, but on this matter they seem to have more money than sense. The Church of England is bound by the law of the land, and it is Parliament which has emphatically prohibited the state church in England (and Wales) from performing same-sex marriages.

But Tony and Barrie are intent on forcing the matter, and so the Church of England will be embroiled in lengthy (and very expensive) litigation. “It is a shame that we are forced to take Christians into a court to get them to recognise us,” said Barrie.

Sod Scripture (1Cor 6:5-7).

He added: “It upsets me because I want it so much – a big lavish ceremony, the whole works, I just don’t think it is going to happen straight away."

Now, this doesn't strike His Grace as a good example to set the children. Throwing a hissy fit because "I am still not getting what I want” is a little childish, to say the least. We all want things very much, Barrie, but we're not all so loaded that we're accustomed to getting them.

Take religious liberty, Barrie.

Why should a free church - or, indeed, any religious institution in a liberal democracy - be subject to the coercion of the wealthy and powerful? Surely the Christian way - since you say you are both practising Christians - is to engage in constructive dialogue and gentle persuasion - with both church and state; not piss everybody off - including some of your co-sexualists - with haughty threats, aggressive lawsuits and interfering demands.

The Church of England is protected in law by a 'quadruple lock', Barrie. Has your (expensive) barrister not told you that? We have been assured by the Secretary of State no less that this is inviolable; that the Gates of Equality and Human Rights shall not prevail against it.

But Barrie isn't getting what he wants.

And neither is Tony...

Our Lady of Walsingham, pray for us.
St. Thomas More, pray for us.
St. John Fisher, pray for us.
St. Edmund Campion, pray for us.
All you Jesuit martyrs, pray for us.
Ugandan Martyrs, pray for us.

Infrastructure of Tyranny--A Citizenry That Excuses or Ignores These Things

In the first part of this survey of what Conor Friedersdorf has called the "infrastructure of tyranny,"  we looked at the practice of extraordinary rendition, which is basically the art of making people disappear.  In the second part of this survey, we looked at black site prisons, or where people have been disappeared to.  In the third part of the series, we looked at secret detention, or simply not acknowledging that a person is in your hands.  In the fourth part, we looked at indefinite detention without trial.  In the fifth part, we looked at assassination without trial.  In the sixth installment, we looked at the goal of Total Information Awareness.  In the seventh installment, we examined the repeated enactment of legal decisions secretly without public knowledge or review.  In the eighth installment, we took a look at the seemingly innocuous spread of political correctness throughout the Western world.  In this ninth post, we'll examine perhaps the most dangerous and deadly part of the infrastructure of tyranny out of all of them: a citizenry that excuses or ignores these things.

Let us begin by observing what should be obvious by now: what once was unthinkably crazy, the realm of the mentally ill and irrationally paranoid, is far from impossible or unthinkable today. Go back through the series, and recognize that I have not touched up all the bits and bobs of the infrastructure of tyranny. Perhaps I'll add more to the series before too long and discuss civil forfeiture, the dangers of eminent domain, or the peculiarities of the Bilderberg gatherings. But I think I've gathered enough information on enough troubling realities to point out that something has gone badly wrong with the way the West works.

The question is whether anyone cares enough to change the direction in which the country is going.  Consider, for instance, the following:

There are columnists reassuring us that Big Brother isn't watching.  Note also the way in which the left vociferously criticized President Bush's Patriot Act and other policies which pursued an "anything in the name of National Security" course, but have remained astoundingly silent in the face of President Obama's expansion of Bush era policies.  The right embraced the notion of anything in the name of National Security under President Bush and are having a hard time doing anything differently under President Obama.  Opposition to these policies, then, are unlikely to come from the institutional right or left.

h/t George W. Obama

To whom, then, shall we go?

There are signs of rising opposition from the USCCB to certain of the government's policies when it comes to religious liberty.  Add to that the religious witness against abortion, the consistent opposition to torture across administrations, and the triumphant religious stances against slavery and for civil rights, and I think the best hope for a renewal of civil liberties and freedoms in this country lies with a religious or at least philosophically motivated defense of human rights and freedoms against the potential for abuse in so many of the structures discussed throughout this series.

Remember a society will either have a citizenry with highly honed consciences or it will have a high level of cops.  But we live in an age which claims for conscience the right to decree good and evil, not merely the responsibility of recognizing right and wrong.  We live in a rising tide of the dictatorship of relativism, identified by Pope Benedict XVI when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger.  As Mussolini purportedly put it:

...Everything I have said and done in these last years is relativism by intuition.
If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and those who claim to be the bearers of objective immortal truth ... then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity... From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable. --Diuturna [The Lasting] (1921) as quoted in Rational Man : A Modern Interpretation of Aristotelian Ethics (1962) by H. B. Veatch

So it may be increasingly difficult to defend human rights when the citizenry doesn't believe in the existence of human nature or the natural law.  It may be impossible to defend that antiquated notion which resides in so quintessentially modern a document as the Declaration of Independence:

...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. ..

The texture of the moment may be seen more clearly when one takes a look at the dystopias of the past and discovers how closely they resemble our daily news, our daily realities.  See, for instance, the following, and mark which moment you finally realize what year it supposedly is referring to:

...It is impossible at this time to determine their whereabouts, due primarily to a policy of total media blackout regarding the more extreme government activities (illegal arrests, incarceration without due process of law, torture and grotesque executions—most of which are carried out in secret). Add to this the media disinformation about the more visible government activities which the public can hardly fail to notice (forced closure of churches and schools, arrests on unsubstantiated charges of treason, and the more socially acceptable forms of execution — all of which are apparently “legal” under the new statutes). It is widely believed that our people are being held in “civilian internment camps”, the euphemistic term for concentration camps used in the president’s Omnibus Anti-Terrorism Act of March, 2108.

How has this come to pass? How has the unthinkable become the ordinary? Although Americans are very different from us, they are human after all, and thus quite susceptible to the psychology of perception. The average citizen strolling down an average street in a totalitarian state does not experience his world in terms of continuous absolute madness. However distressed it may be, the passage of months and years gives to even the most extreme of situations a certain semblance of normality. The image Americans once had of their society was a mental construct. And when more than a century ago it began to mutate, they found it extremely difficult to believe that the land of the brave and the home of the free was becoming a landscape of secret nightmare where millions of children were murdered annually, discreetly, hygienically in the clinics and hospitals of their land. Legalized murder, loss of the transcendent vision, and the death of authentic culture should have been sufficient warning to them, for each is a key symptom of a society’s collapse into totalitarianism. But democracies are not immune from self-delusion, although they tend to forms of oppression which are not overtly violent. Democracies in the final stages of decline, however, will degenerate into overt oppression, but they will do so in the name of freedom. That Americans began to realize this fact only when it was far too late, played no small part in the development of outright tyranny...--Michael O'Brien, "Three Views of the Future: The Church in A.D. 2109"

Still far fetched, thank God.  Still far future speculation, and perhaps a nightmare never to come.  But the powers that have been turned against Al Qaeda and other jihadist terrorists could well some day be turned against other international religious organizations.  The infrastructure exists.  It has been used against American citizens without trial.  Why are we safe, if these others weren't?  Why should we assume that we have done no wrong, that we will never trigger a datamining operation, never be flagged on a no fly list or a kill list, never be indefinitely detained on suspicion of being suspicious, never be disappeared and judged too dangerous to ever be released?  What safeguards do you have against this apparatus?  Innocence?  Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was innocent of anything other than being the son of an extremist cleric who exhorted other men to violence.  Abdulrahman was innocent.  It did nothing to protect him from sudden death from the sky.  No arrest.  No trial.  No Miranda rights.  No chance to prove innocence in court.  No protection of any kind.  Why should you be any different?  Why should I?

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.--attributed to Martin Niemöller

No. We must respond--and that response is the subject of the last post in the series.

Fatima, The Holy Fathers, and The Present

New Evangelization in France

Awesome.  Excerpts:

...Deconstructing this article has proven to be a hard task. On the surface the story of the Cathos 2.0 generation is so strong that it cannot be killed by a skeptical or hostile presentation. It is a French man bites dog story — student revolutionaries in Paris as ultramontane Catholics.

On the surface Le Nouvel Obs seems to have framed the story against the interest of the subject. While it allows the young Catholics to tell their own story, the analysis and commentary is drawn from the left — academics and liberal Catholics who bemoan the conservative political and doctrinal views of Cathos 2.0. Nor do we hear from the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in France. This packaging should have made the issues unattractive and painted the subjects in an unsympathetic light. But  by the end of the story these young people come off well. You like them...

The presentation and the structure the first three quarters the story follows the conventional secular thinking of the French elites. Yet by the end of the piece you’re hooked by these kids – – their enthusiasm, their excitement, their faith. I cannot tell whether this was an accident or was calculated move to bring the reader on board. Perhaps what we are seeing here is a conscious bait and switch.

How do you get a middle-aged left-liberal secular audience to read a story about a youth movement that detests the values and agenda of the ’68 generation now in power? You do it by couching the story in tropes and phrases that are comfortable to the audience — and then you slip them a story about young attractive — chic — students at elite universities whose faith is changing France and shaking up the church...

This might explain this.

The Dangers of Giving the Catholic Church a Fair Hearing

A former atheist, now a Catholic, bears witness. Excerpts:

...As a teenager, I realised that I needed to read beyond my staple polemicists, as well as start researching the ideas of the most egregious enemies of reason, such as Catholics, to properly defend my world view. It was here, ironically, that the problems began.

I started by reading Pope Benedict’s Regensburg address, aware that it had generated controversy at the time and was some sort of attempt –futile, of course – to reconcile faith and reason. I also read the shortest book of his I could find, On Conscience. I expected – and wanted – to find bigotry and illogicality that would vindicate my atheism. Instead, I was presented with a God who was the Logos: not a supernatural dictator crushing human reason, but the self-expressing standard of goodness and objective truth towards which our reason is oriented, and in which it is fulfilled, an entity that does not robotically control our morality, but is rather the source of our capacity for moral perception, a perception that requires development and formation through the conscientious exercise of free will.

It was a far more subtle, humane and, yes, credible perception of faith than I had expected. It didn’t lead to any dramatic spiritual epiphany, but did spur me to look further into Catholicism, and to re-examine some of the problems I had with atheism with a more critical eye.

First, morality. Non-theistic morality, to my mind, tended towards two equally problematic camps: either it was subjective to the point of meaninglessness or, when followed logically, entailed intuitively repulsive outcomes, such as Sam Harris’s stance on torture. But the most appealing theories which could circumvent these problems, like virtue ethics, often did so by presupposing the existence of God. Before, with my caricatured understanding of theism, I’d considered that nonsensical. Now, with the more detailed understanding I was starting to develop, I wasn’t so sure.

Next, metaphysics. I soon realised that relying on the New Atheists for my counter-arguments to the existence of God had been a mistake: Dawkins, for instance, gives a disingenuously cursory treatment of St Thomas Aquinas in The God Delusion, engaging only with the summary of Aquinas’s proofs in the Five Ways – and misunderstanding those summarised proofs to boot. Acquainting myself fully with Thomistic-Aristotelian ideas, I found them to be a valid explanation of the natural world, and one on which atheist philosophers had failed to make a coherent assault.

What I still did not understand was how a theology that operated in harmony with human reason could simultaneously be, in Benedict XVI’s words, “a theology grounded in biblical faith”. I’d always assumed that sola scriptura (“scripture alone”), with its evident shortcomings and fallacies, was how all consistent, believing Christians read the Bible. So I was surprised to discover that this view could be refuted just as robustly from a Catholic standpoint – reading the Bible through the Church and its history, in light of Tradition – as from an atheist one.

I looked for absurdities and inconsistencies in the Catholic faith that would derail my thoughts from the unnerving conclusion I was heading towards, but the infuriating thing about Catholicism is its coherency: once you accept the basic conceptual structure, things fall into place with terrifying speed. “The Christian mysteries are an indivisible whole,” wrote Edith Stein in The Science of the Cross: “If we become immersed in one, we are led to all the others.” The beauty and authenticity of even the most ostensibly difficult parts of Catholicism, such as the sexual ethics, became clear once they were viewed not as a decontextualised list of prohibitions, but as essential components in the intricate body of the Church’s teaching...

Why, yes, the Body of Christ is clothed in a seamless garment, and not one of his bones will be broken.

 It is impossible to be just to the Catholic Church. The moment a man ceases to pull against it he feels a tug towards it. The moment he ceases to shout it down he begins to listen to it with pleasure. The moment he tries to be fair to it he begins to be fond of it.--G. K. Chesterton, The Catholic Church and Conversion

Red Wedding, Song of Ice and Fire, and Blood-Colored Glasses Lie

just as much as rose-colored glasses.

**Language and Spoiler Alerts!**

Why I couldn't get into A Game of Thrones. (**SERIOUS SPOILERS AHEAD!**)

..."So - when you eliminate just about every character that I care about, then continue to kill anyone with any sense of moral compass with such vengeance so as to punish them for even thinking that principles mattered, allow the wretched and evil to win over and over again and gain more power, and basically remove any and all hope of anything good ever happening (because how can I enjoy a show when every character I liked is now dead,) why is it exactly that I should continue watching?" wrote Tony...

Truly hilarious Twitter commentary as well (language and general despair alert.  Oh, and spoilers).  And this is a gem.  Excerpts:

A plane on route to the San Francisco International Airport tonight had to make an emergency landing when passengers watching pirated versions of the HBO series Game of Thrones began hyperventilating, screaming hysterically, and violently damaging their tray tables. The situation turned more volatile when an airline stewardess unintentionally spoiled the ending of the episode for the captain, after which he stormed out of the cockpit shouting obscenities, forcing his co-pilot to land the plane on his own...

“This chick next to me just started freaking out” says Martin Lodge, 39. “She was sobbing and kept saying ‘why, why, why’. At first, I thought maybe her boyfriend had just broken up with her by email or something, but then I heard this guy at the back of the plane yell ‘no way! no f**king way!’ and I knew something was going on. But what really tripped me out was the lady behind me. She started laughing!”

That lady was Angelica George, 32, who says she would have given anything to have had a video camera. “This was one of the most hysterical things I’ve ever seen. I’m a huge Game of Thrones fan and I’ve read the books, so I know exactly what happened in tonight’s episode. I just couldn’t help but laugh at their reactions, especially when the captain ran into the cabin shouting “f**k you George RR Martin!”

After landing, the plane was unloaded quickly and the affected passengers and captain were rushed to a nearby emergency room where they were treated with oxygen, heat blankets, and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Rocky Road Ice Cream.

There is no word yet on their condition...

Anyway, humor aside.  I posted about the whole "slaughter everyone with a conscience; bad guys full speed ahead" problem with the series.  A friend commented:

How like life...GRRM likes to make a mockery of the noble class, who proclaim chivalry and honor but snuff it out wherever they see it. He reminds me of a plebian Cormac McCarthy in a way.

And yet proclaiming that there are no more good guys is no way to generate new good guys. Resigning yourself to the prevalence of vice today is no way to become virtuous yourself. The response of St. Benedict to the collapse of the Roman civilization was heroic sanctity, and he and his helped save civilization. I refuse to accept the counsels of despair. The day we all accept them is the day we collectively commit civilizational suicide. Only in hope is there life, and realism.

The response:

Yet it's not about vice TODAY it's about vice in history--a critical look at the kings and lords of medieval Europe.

An utterly unrealistic one. What role--I mean a real, substantive role--has religion played in Game of Thrones? Where're the great saints, bending history around themselves--Thomas Becket, Catherine of Siena, Benedict of Nursia, Francis of Assisi, Dominic, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas More, Margaret of Scotland, Elizabeth of Hungary, and so on and on and on? Where are the people who won't be bought or bent, and why aren't their triumphs included, as well as their deaths? Because there really have been such people in every century. Bad men haven't always had their way, and sometimes good is so powerful that it shall never be forgotten. Criticize the sins of the Europeans all you want, but unless you at least nod to their saints, you are being as unrealistic as the person who wears rose-colored glasses.

The response:

It's a point, though I suspect secular figures who won't be bent are more common in life as well as art.

It would take a lot of time and effort to prove either way, but I'd bet that, given the prevalence of religion across times and cultures before the modern age, you'd be hard pressed to muster enough folk unmotivated by any religious impulse to make that a really provable point. That debate is irrelevant, though, because it reinforces the underlying problem with the Song of Ice and Fire: namely, he seems to not have room in his world for people who will not bend before temptation or evil, for grace and goodness that wins, rather than simply being eradicated by the ruthless. He's not writing a realistic saga. It's not even Machiavellian--it's barely even modern realpolitik. It's certainly ahistorical and antithetical to human nature. He may be demonstrating John Wright's point about the challenge some writers face when attempting to write realistic human beings. Excerpts:

...[W]hy are my favorite authors, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Gene Wolfe, Mike Flynn, G.K. Chesterton, all members of this monstrous Syriac cult known as Christianity? I do like my freethinker authors just fine, but Bob Heinlein, Ayn Rand, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke seem to have trouble with realism in characterization, both with their invented people, and with their invented societies.

Don’t get me wrong, I love their books, love and reread them many times, but the people who don’t believe in souls don’t seem to be able to portray their characters three-dimensionally and solidly, that is, as if their characters had souls.

Or as if the world were only this:

And this:

And never this:

Pope Francis, Gay Marriage, and the Chief Rabbi of France

And we're off to the races! Excerpts:

Argentina has been a longtime gay-friendly tourist destination, rivaling Rio de Janeiro. Nevertheless, the debate had been fierce, pitting Fernández's government against the Catholic Church's organized marches and verbal attacks on the bill as "a plan to destroy God's plan," in the words of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires. "This is no mere legislative bill. It is a move by the father of lies to confuse and deceive the children of God," Bergoglio declared last week as the legislative debate approached its climax. The President responded with harsh words of her own, saying the Cardinal's statement was "really reminiscent of the times of the Inquisition."

Meanwhile, from across the pond. Excerpts:

...A great many of our fellow citizens see demands for homosexual marriage as just one more step in the democratic struggle against injustice and discrimination, a continuation of the fight against racism. It is in the name of equality, of open-mindedness, of being progressive and right-thinking that we are asked to accept this challenge to the foundations of our society. It seems, moreover, on the basis of public opinion polls, that this challenge is already accepted by a majority of our fellow citizens and thus the question of its establishment as a matter of law has not provoked a debate worthy of the momentous issues at stake.

I believe, on the contrary, that it is a matter of the greatest importance to make clear the true implications of the negation of sexual difference and to debate publicly what is at stake rather than falling back on principles, such as equality, that flatter those who set themselves up as their standard bearers, even though the way these principles are invoked to justify the homosexual-marriage agenda does not stand up to critical scrutiny. This subject deserves better than the court of political correctness, whose authority, advocates of homosexual marriage hope, will prevail until the law is voted on—a tribunal they defend by means of disqualifying caricatures against anyone who dares to question their project and their motives.

I speak as a rabbi, and more particularly as the Chief Rabbi of France...

Deus Caritas Est and Caritas in Veritate: Pope Benedict XVI's Social Teaching

Even though the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church is awesome, it was released before Pope Benedict XVI's papal contributions to the Church's social teaching were published.  So, to round out the series, here's the USCCB's recounting of those contributions:

...Deus Caritas Est (God is Love) 2005, Pope Benedict XVI -- Benedict's first encyclical, that could have been an abstract or scholarly treatise, instead dug deep into the concept of love and cited the connections between love of God and love of neighbor. Pope Benedict said the Church could no more neglect charity than it could Scripture or the sacraments and even called charity a manifestation of Trinitarian love.

Caritas In Veritate (Charity in Truth) 2009, Pope Benedict XVI -- anticipated since 2007, this encyclical is believed to follow up on the themes of Populorum Progressio. Dealing with the ethics of contemporary economics, it's reasonable to think that the global economic crisis will weigh in heavily on what the pope has to say.

Their summary came before the release of Caritas in Veritate. Here's a more detailed summary.  Excerpts:

Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict's third encyclical, is a call to see the relationship between human and environmental ecologies and to link charity and truth in the pursuit of justice, the common good, and authentic human development. In doing so, the pope points out the responsibilities and limitations of government and the private market, challenges traditional ideologies of right and left, and calls all men and women to think and act anew...

Laborem Exercens, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, Centesimus Annus: The Social Doctrine of Blessed Pope John Paul II

From the invaluable Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Excerpts:

...Ninety years after Rerum Novarum, Pope John Paul II devoted the Encyclical Laborem Exercens [187] to work, the fundamental good of the human person, the primary element of economic activity and the key to the entire social question. Laborem Exercens outlines a spirituality and ethic of work in the context of a profound theological and philosophical reflection. Work must not be understood only in the objective and material sense, but one must keep in mind its subjective dimension, insofar as it is always an expression of the person. Besides being a decisive paradigm for social life, work has all the dignity of being a context in which the person's natural and supernatural vocation must find fulfilment.

With the Encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis[188], Pope John Paul II commemorates the twentieth anniversary of Populorum Progressio and deals once more with the theme of development along two fundamental lines: “on one hand, the dramatic situation of the modern world, under the aspect of the failed development of the Third World, and on the other, the meaning of, conditions and requirements for a development worthy of man”[189]. The Encyclical presents differences between progress and development, and insists that “true development cannot be limited to the multiplication of goods and service — to what one possesses — but must contribute to the fullness of the ‘being' of man. In this way the moral nature of real development is meant to be shown clearly”[190]. Pope John Paul II, alluding to the motto of the pontificate of Pope Pius XII, “opus iustitiae pax” (peace is the fruit of justice), comments: “Today, one could say, with the same exactness and the same power of biblical inspiration (cf. Is 32:17; Jas 3:18), opus solidaritatis pax (peace is the fruit of solidarity)”[191].

On the hundredth anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Pope John Paul II promulgates his third social encyclical, Centesimus Annus[192], whence emerges the doctrinal continuity of a hundred years of the Church's social Magisterium. Taking up anew one of the fundamental principles of the Christian view of social and political organization, which had been the central theme of the previous Encyclical, the Pope writes: “What we nowadays call the principle of solidarity ... is frequently stated by Pope Leo XIII, who uses the term ‘friendship' ... Pope Pius XI refers to it with the equally meaningful term ‘social charity'. Pope Paul VI, expanding the concept to cover the many modern aspects of the social question, speaks of a ‘civilization of love”'[193]. Pope John Paul II demonstrates how the Church's social teaching moves along the axis of reciprocity between God and man: recognizing God in every person and every person in God is the condition of authentic human development. The articulate and in-depth analysis of the “new things”, and particularly of the great breakthrough of 1989 with the collapse of the Soviet system, shows appreciation for democracy and the free economy, in the context of an indispensable solidarity.

Other tallies of the social encyclicals include Evangelium Vitae on this list.

Populorum Progressio and Octogesima Adveniens: Pope Paul VI on Economic Development and Post-Industrial Society

From the invaluable Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Excerpts:

...“Development is the new name for peace”[180], Pope Paul VI solemnly proclaims in his Encyclical Populorum Progressio[181], which may be considered a development of the chapter on economic and social life in Gaudium et Spes, even while it introduces some significant new elements. In particular, it presents the outlines of an integral development of man and of a development in solidarity with all humanity: “These two topics are to be considered the axes around which the Encyclical is structured. In wishing to convince its receivers of the urgent need for action in solidarity, the Pope presents development as ‘the transition from less humane conditions to those which are more humane' and indicates its characteristics”[182]. This transition is not limited to merely economic or technological dimensions, but implies for each person the acquisition of culture, the respect of the dignity of others, the acknowledgment of “the highest good, the recognition of God Himself, the author and end of these blessings”[183]. Development that benefits everyone responds to the demands of justice on a global scale that guarantees worldwide peace and makes it possible to achieve a “complete humanism” [184] guided by spiritual values.

In this regard, in 1967, Pope Paul VI establishes the Pontifical Commission “Iustitia et Pax”, thus fulfilling the wishes of the Council Fathers who considered it “most opportune that an organism of the Universal Church be set up in order that both the justice and love of Christ toward the poor might be developed everywhere. The role of such an organism would be to stimulate the Catholic community to promote progress in needy regions and international social justice”[185]. By initiative of Pope Paul VI, beginning in 1968, the Church celebrates the first day of the year as the World Day of Peace. This same Pontiff started the tradition of writing annual Messages that deal with the theme chosen for each World Day of Peace. These Messages expand and enrich the corpus of the Church's social doctrine.

At the beginning of the 1970s, in a climate of turbulence and strong ideological controversy, Pope Paul VI returns to the social teaching of Pope Leo XIII and updates it, on the occasion of the eightieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum, with his Apostolic Letter Octogesima Adveniens[186]. The Pope reflects on post-industrial society with all of its complex problems, noting the inadequacy of ideologies in responding to these challenges: urbanization, the condition of young people, the condition of women, unemployment, discrimination, emigration, population growth, the influence of the means of social communications, the ecological problem...(articles 98-100)

Non Abbiamo Bisgno, Mit Brennender Sorge, Divini Redemptoris: Papal Condemnations of Communism and Fascism

No, the Popes were not silent in the face of Nazism or Communism. From the invaluable Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Excerpts:

...Pope Pius XI did not fail to raise his voice against the totalitarian regimes that were being imposed in Europe during his pontificate. Already on 29 June 1931 he had protested against the abuse of power by the totalitarian fascist regime in Italy with the Encyclical Non Abbiamo Bisogno[155]. He published the Encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, on the situation of the Catholic Church under the German Reich, on 14 March 1937[156]. The text of Mit Brennender Sorge was read from the pulpit of every Catholic Church in Germany, after having been distributed in the greatest of secrecy. The Encyclical came out after years of abuse and violence, and it had been expressly requested from Pope Pius XI by the German Bishops after the Reich had implemented ever more coercive and repressive measures in 1936, particularly with regard to young people, who were required to enrol as members of the Hitler Youth Movement. The Pope spoke directly to priests, religious and lay faithful, giving them encouragement and calling them to resistance until such time that a true peace between Church and State would be restored. In 1938, with the spreading of anti-Semitism, Pope Pius XI affirmed: “Spiritually we are all Semites”[157].

With the Encyclical Letter Divini Redemptoris[158], on atheistic communism and Christian social doctrine, Pope Pius XI offered a systematic criticism of communism, describing it as “intrinsically perverse”[159], and indicated that the principal means for correcting the evils perpetrated by it could be found in the renewal of Christian life, the practice of evangelical charity, the fulfilment of the duties of justice at both the interpersonal and social levels in relation to the common good, and the institutionalization of professional and interprofessional groups...

See also Summi Pontificatus on the brotherhood of all humanity.

Quadragesimo Anno: Response to the Great Depression

From the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Excerpts:

...At the beginning of the 1930s, following the grave economic crisis of 1929, Pope Pius XI published the Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno[152], commemorating the fortieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum. The Pope reread the past in the light of the economic and social situation in which the expansion of the influence of financial groups, both nationally and internationally, was added to the effects of industrialization. It was the post-war period, during which totalitarian regimes were being imposed in Europe even as the class struggle was becoming more bitter. The Encyclical warns about the failure to respect the freedom to form associations and stresses the principles of solidarity and cooperation in order to overcome social contradictions. The relationships between capital and labour must be characterized by cooperation[153].

Quadragesimo Anno confirms the principle that salaries should be proportional not only to the needs of the worker but also to those of the worker's family. The State, in its relations with the private sector, should apply the principle of subsidiarity, a principle that will become a permanent element of the Church's social doctrine. The Encyclical rejects liberalism, understood as unlimited competition between economic forces, and reconfirms the value of private property, recalling its social function. In a society in need of being rebuilt from its economic foundations, a society which itself becomes completely “the question” to deal with, “Pius XI felt the duty and the responsibility to promote a greater awareness, a more precise interpretation and an urgent application of the moral law governing human relations ... with the intent of overcoming the conflict between classes and arriving at a new social order based on justice and charity”[154]...

Gay Paris Joins the Protest Against Gay Marriage

This is very, very interesting.  Excerpts:

Perhaps as many as a million people marched in Paris last Sunday and at French embassies around the world against proposed legislation that would legalize same-sex marriage in France. One of the surprises in the French campaign for traditional marriage is that homosexuals have joined pro-family leaders and activists in the effort.

“The rights of children trump the right to children,” was the catchphrase of protesters like Jean Marc, a French mayor who is also homosexual.

Even though France is known for its laissez faire attitude toward sex, pro-family leaders were quick to organize huge numbers. When President Hollande announced his intentions to legalize homosexual marriage last November, a demonstration against the proposal gathered 100,000 protesters. And then what started as a debate about homosexual rights changed to one about a child’s right to a mother and a father, and the numbers in opposition exploded and has come to include unlikely allies.

Xavier Bongibault, an atheist homosexual, is a prominent spokesman against the bill. “In France, marriage is not designed to protect the love between two people. French marriage is specifically designed to provide children with families,” he said in an interview. “[T]he most serious study done so far . . . demonstrates quite clearly that a child has trouble being raised by gay parents.”

Jean Marc, who has lived with a man for 20 years, insists, “The LGBT movement that speaks out in the media . . . They don’t speak for me. As a society we should not be encouraging this. It’s not biologically natural.”

Outraged by the bill, 66-year old Jean-Dominique Bunel, a specialist in humanitarian law who has done relief work in war-torn areas, told Le Figaro he “was raised by two women” and that he “suffered from the lack of a father, a daily presence, a character and a properly masculine example, some counterweight to the relationship of my mother to her lover. I was aware of it at a very early age. I lived that absence of a father, experienced it, as an amputation."

"As soon as I learned that the government was going to officialize marriage between two people of the same sex, I was thrown into disarray,” he explained. It would be “institutionalizing a situation that had scarred me considerably. In that there is an injustice that I can in no way allow." If the women who raised him had been married, “I would have jumped into the fray and would have brought a complaint before the French state and before the European Court of Human Rights, for the violation of my right to a mom and a dad."

A pro-family coalition that includes homosexuals is certainly different than in the United States and likely most places around the world. It is unclear why at least some French homosexuals would not only favor man-woman marriage only, but would campaign against homosexual marriage. It could be that France has allowed for civil unions, for all couples, for more than a decade. Whatever the reason, this potent coalition may stop homosexual marriage in France...

There's more here on the European situation and the debates on gay marriage. Excerpts:

...Every time Benedict XVI speaks out against marriage between homosexuals, he is immediately besieged with criticism. But the last time he did so, in the annual pre-Christmas address to the curia, this did not happen. Everybody silent.

Acting as shield for the pope was the chief rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, whom he cited in support of his own ideas. And none of the opinionists on the other side felt like taking aim against a luminary of European Judaism, in addition to the head of the Catholic Church.

In effect, the French case is teaching a lesson beyond its borders, in the battle for and against what the Church calls “nonnegotiable principles,” central among which is marriage between man and woman.

The intention of the Hollande presidency to extend legal legitimacy to marriages between homosexuals has seen the lively reactions not only of the Catholic Church, led by the archbishop of Paris, but also of authoritative representatives of other religions and of the secular world, including the feminist philosopher Sylviane Agacinski, wife of the socialist (and Protestant) former prime minister Lionel Jospin, and, of course, chief rabbi Bernheim, with a 25-page document in which he overturns one by one the arguments in support of homosexual marriage and of adoption by same-sex couples.

In citing the manifesto by Bernheim, Benedict XVI called it "carefully documented and profoundly touching.” And with this he extracted it from its French context and offered it to the attention of the whole world.

In Italy, the pope's invitation was promptly accepted by the nonbelieving intellectual Ernesto Galli della Loggia, who in "Corriere della Sera" of December 30 not only reiterated with abundant citations the arguments of the chief rabbi, demonstrating their consistency with those of Benedict XVI, but wrote that he fully shared them and hoped that they could finally be discussed without having to bow to the reigning conformism in favor of gay marriage.

Galli della Loggia is an intellectual who has always been read with attention in the Vatican. His wife, the historian Lucetta Scaraffia, writes regularly for “L'Osservatore Romano,” and is a close friend of its director, Giovanni Maria Vian. And in fact, the newspaper of the Holy See gave great emphasis to this shift in "Corriere," as if it were the symbolic falling of a wall.

Galli della Loggia is not the first nor the only one, among secular Italian intellectuals, to have distanced himself from the chorus of accusations against the “obscurantist” Church.

After him, on January 2, also in “Corriere Della Sera,” a famous psychoanalyst, Silvia Vegetti Finzi, took a stance against the adoption of children by same-sex couples.

And before him there was the declaration of the “Ratzingerian Marxists”: the philosopher Pietro Barcellona, the theorist of operaismo Mario Tronti, the political scientist Giuseppe Vacca, the sociologist Paolo Sorbi, all of them members of the Partito democratico and previously of the Partito comunista, and all of them now converts to the “anthropological vision” of pope Joseph Ratzinger, in defense of life “from conception to natural death” and of marriage between man and woman. They held their last meeting in December in the quarters of “La Civiltà Cattolica,” the magazine of the Rome Jesuits printed with the imprimatur of the secretariat of state...

Something's going on in Europe. This is really unexpected. How will this affect the gay marriage discussion in the US? Will it affect the gay marriage debate in the US?

Some further interesting datapoints to add to the discussion. Excerpts:

...John D’Emilio, noted professor of history and pioneer in the field of gay and lesbian studies has, as a gay man and leading LGBT theorist, been vocally opposed (shown here and more recently here) to the idea of working for the legalization of same-sex marriage. He contends it is contrary to queer ideals and unjust to gays in other types of relationships. D’Emilio and our French friends are not odd outliers. Here is another and another and another and a few more and one more leading gay voices that assert the passage of same-sex marriage can actually be discriminatory and limiting. Uhm...

And more. Excerpts:

...France—the country in which a former head of state could be buried from a Catholic cathedral, with his wife and his mistress in the front pews, and no one showing the slightest discomfort with the arrangements--seems to epitomize the moral fatigue of the West. So why is the French opposition to same-sex marriage so much stronger than anything we have seen elsewhere in Europe or North America? Why has the public opposition come not only from Catholic prelates and defenders of traditional morality, but even from avowed homosexuals, who make the compelling point that they are not the same as heterosexual people?

Could it be because the French—while they are as exhausted as we all are by debates about sexuality—are always ready for an energetic debate about language and the meaning of words?

Unlike Americans, who revel in the use of slang and in the changing patterns of words’ connotations, the French expect a level of precision in their language. For nearly four centuries the Academie Francaise has been issuing authoritative rulings on the meaning of words. The French understand that a change in the meaning of a word can mean a change in the way people think and act; it is a step that should not be taken lightly. The word “marriage” has a meaning, and the French instinctively realize that if that meaning is altered, the institution itself is changed.

French proponents of same sex marriage insist that they are simply opening up the institution to homosexual couples. “Marriage for all” is their slogan. But marriage has always been open to all. A homosexual man has the same legal right as a heterosexual man to enter into a marriage—which, over the centuries, has always been understood to mean a union between a man and a woman. The government does not ask prospective spouses to demonstrate that they are sexually attracted to each other before issuing a marriage license. The state only observes what is obvious—the gender of the two partners—before determining that a legal marriage is possible.

The real debate, in France and elsewhere, has never been about whether everyone should have the right to marry. The important debate has always been about what marriage is. Words have meanings. The French, of all peoples, understand that...