Category: Culture War

It’s remarkable how easy it is for the younger generation of Catholics to get giddy about the graying of the post-Vatican II crowd.
I was looking over the comments to RC’s post and thinking about how we need to be careful not to cross the line from driving the effort to reverse the liturgical, theological and cultural mayhem of the past century to becoming the invading army that lays waste to people and practices.
“But – they squashed our chant! They smashed the communion rail! They gave us stones instead of bread!”
I know “they” did, and I’ve experienced how the 60’s agenda warped decades of religious education, liturgy, faith and morals. R.E. was all cupcakes and crayons for small kids, and big colorful books about love and happiness for a big kids.
And many of “them” are unrepentant.
Still, we need to work in charity, or else we will become like them.

The Reverend romance-novelist Andrew Greeley cites some studies on the attitudes of priests and tells us good news — well, at least from our point of view:

My most recent analysis, based on survey data that I and others have gathered periodically since Vatican II, reveals a striking trend: a generation of conservative young priests is on the rise in the U.S. Church.

Now, the “I and others” in that sentence may be a little stretch: the only data he takes from his own organization’s polling are 34 years old, so they reflect the “then” part of the comparison, not the “now”. Young priests are decidedly different from those of 1970:

These are newly ordained men who seem in many ways intent on restoring the pre-Vatican II Church, and who, reversing the classic generational roles, define themselves in direct opposition to the liberal priests who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s.

The key, perhaps the motivating, issues of the divide are in the understanding of sex:

The divisions created by Vatican II are not new, of course. Caught up in the reform euphoria that followed the council, the lower clergy and the laity almost immediately developed a new ideology based on respect for women and for the freedom (including the sexual freedom) of the laity. On these matters, quietly or loudly, the laity and the lower clergy did resist the teachings of the Church.

The ideology of sexual liberation manifests itself in the usual hot-button issues:

The 2002 Los Angeles Times study reveals that priests of the Vatican II generation overwhelmingly support the idea that priests should be allowed to marry. In the study 80 percent of priests aged forty-six to sixty-five were in favor…. Only about half the priests under thirty-five, however, supported the idea.
The study revealed a clear divide, too, on the ordination of women. Sixty percent of priests aged fifty-six to sixty-five, and at least half of those aged forty-six to seventy-five, supported the idea, but only 36 percent of priests under forty-six did.
…[Y]ounger priests are more than twice as likely as priests aged fifty-five to sixty-five to think that birth control and masturbation are always wrong, and they are significantly more likely to think that homosexual sex and premarital sex are always wrong.

But — and Fr. Greeley is surprised by this – in spite of the older generations’ enlightened liberal views on sex, they don’t seem to respect women as well as younger priests do.

And younger priests seem to have a higher general regard for women than older priests do—an attitude demonstrated most clearly in the 1994 Los Angeles Times study, in responses to questions about support for official condemnation of sexism and for better ministry to women, and concern for the situation of nuns. This attitude, which is in line with the views of the laity, explains some of the clergy’s resistance to the Church’s teachings on sexuality.

I suspect Father’s assumption here — aligning regard for women with moral dissent — is off-base: he doesn’t mention the influence on young priests of Pope John Paul’s “theology of the body”, which brings together a high regard for women and a stronger adherence to the Church’s teachings on sexuality.
Ah, what will we do with these young priests? They even believe that old stuff about an ontological character imprinted by the sacrament:

[Dean] Hoge reports that half the newly ordained priests he encountered believe that a priest is fundamentally different from a layperson—that he is literally a man apart.

Good Heavens, they might even have some elan.
For Greeley, the conflict is all about power, now held by a generation of “moderate men”, but soon to be ceded to those unrealistic reactionaries trying to turn back the clock to 1961: those young priests engaged in a “Restoration” — he writes as if describing a bunch of monarchists (not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you).
The power is slipping away from Greeley’s generation, the precious, precious power. We only wants it a little longer.

Okay, the next sentence is gonna be a little cumbersome and involve heavy name dropping…. A recent piece on homosexual marriage, the suppression of civil liberties and the death of Canadian democracy written by John Pacheco of Catholic-Legate.com and I for a fall issue of Culture Wars is now available on-line at the Sierra Times. Here’s a sample:
“On June 15th, 2001, the Saskatchewan Human Rights Board of Inquiry fined Hugh Owens, an evangelical Protestant, and the Saskatoon Star Phoenix $1500 for violating the equality rights of three gay men. Mr. Owen’s crime? He expressed his opinion on gay and lesbians sex through an advertisement in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix. This advertisement consisted of a pictograph of two men holding hands superimposed with a circle and slash- the symbol of something forbidden-and a list of Bible verses condemning the practice of homosexuality. While Mr. Owens is currently appealing this ruling, if he loses and still refuses to comply with the Board of Inquiry, he will potentially find himself charged with contempt of court. If convicted, he will likely find himself consigned to jail as the first prisoner of conscience in the war between sexual plurism and religious plurism.”
Read the whole piece here

According to the Sierra Times, the Dems have taken their vulgarity to a new low by spouting it off in a Lutheran church. This raises an interesting question, namely, will the 2004 presidential campaign require parental ratings?

Although my Canadian readership will recognize the above title as a play on our national anthem, I am having second thoughts about moving back to Canada. Not too long ago, Mark Steyn – a fellow Canuck – penned an excellent editorial in the Telegraph. It concerned the Islamification of Europe. As Mr. Steyn wrote, “To those of us watching from afar the ructions over the European constitution – a 1970s solution to a 1940s problem – it seems amazing that no Continental politician is willing to get to grips with the real crisis facing Europe in the 21st century: the lack of Europeans.”
As many other commentators within the culture war have noted, the low reproduction rate among native Europeans coupled with increased Muslim immigration are quickly transforming Europe into another Islamic continent. Yet the European secularists refuse to face this problem. Having spent the past thirty years suppressing the consequences of biological coupling, the modern European remains clueless as to the consequences of demographic coupling.
Unfortunately, recent Canadian statistics and demographics demonstrate a similar trend. Thus Mr. Steyn’s observations could easily included our native land. A recent statistic quoted by the Canadian Society of Muslims on its website estimates Canada’s Islamic population at around 650,000. Over the past decade alone, this represents a growth from under one percent of Canada’s total population to well over two percent.
At first two-to-three percent of the population seems statistically negligible. Granted, the Muslim population more than doubled over the past ten years, but it still represents a small minority of Canadians. Yet factor Canada’s declining reproduction rate as well as its liberal immigration policy into the equation. As an aside concerning the latter, in the aftermath of its 9-11 coverage, even Canada’s putatively conservative Globe & Mail questioned our government’s liberal immigration policy. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service, which is Canada’s closest equivalent to the CIA, had reportedly warned Canadian politicians that our loose immigration policy made us an attractive staging ground from which terrorists could easily attack American targets.
But returning to the subject at hand, Canada’s Muslim population is much younger than our general population. Additionally, they enjoy a stronger reproduction rate. Has Pierre Trudeau removed the state from the nation’s bedroom – likely located somewhere in the Burnaby-Douglas riding – only to see it replaced by the Sharia?
Speaking of which, one of my Envoy Encore recently emailed me a story published by Aljazeera. It detailed Muslim efforts to establish an Islamic tribunal in Canada. “Since arbitrators’ rulings can be enforced by the courts,” we read, “the development has raised eyebrows that Sharia will in effect be endorsed by Canada’s secular courts.” The story dismisses any negative reaction to this development as overblown . It then equivocates the proposed Islamic tribunal with various Rabbinical courts already enjoying limited legal recognition under Canadian law.
Setting aside the Sharia’s peculiarities for a moment – and like Kathy Shaidle, a fellow Canadian Catholic author, I find myself among the some of us [who] think stoning rape victims is a bit peculiar – there are other reasons to remain skeptical about this comparison between Islamic tribunals and Rabbinical courts. Does modern Judaism regularly attack civilian targets among the Gentiles? Does Isreal sponsor terrorist activities on western soil? Islam is alone among the five major world religions in employing forced conversion as a legitimate means of evangelization.
Actually, I take that back. Secularism, which is Canada’s new state religion, also imposes forced conversion. Just look at poor Mark Harding. Mr. Harding is a Christian who recently ran afoul of Canada’s hate police for drawing attention to certain peculiarities within the Islamic world. As Doug Coup reports in the Christian Times:
“[Harding’s] offending pamphlets discussed Islamic societies around the world where ‘Muslims are torturing, maiming, starving and killing Christians’ simply because of their faith. Harding argues that Islam ‘is full of hate and violence,’ and that its holy books teach that it ‘will always be at war’ with other religions. ‘Once a state becomes an Islamic state, no other religion is tolerated,’ he says.
“His outspokenness last June landed Harding in trouble with the Muslim community, and he is going to trial next month to face criminal charges on three counts of ‘incitement to hatred.’ Complaints were also lodged with the Canadian Human Rights Commission. He was arrested and spent a few days in jail before a hearing last summer.”
Canadians political and religious commentators need not find Mr. Harding’s situation surprising. After all, the Canadian Human Rights Commission is the same quasi-judicial body that silenced as hate literature certain biblical passages pertaining to homosexuality. It is not too much of a stretch to silence international headlines as well. And thus I am reminded of Mark Steyn’s response to a similar flap over Johnny Hart’s recent allegedly anti-Islamic cartoon:
“Although I agreed of course that Islamophobic cartooning was the most pressing issue of the week, in my usual shallow way I’d become distracted by some of the day’s more trivial stories – the 11 Hindus burnt alive by a Muslim gang in Bangladesh, the 13 Christian churches torched by Muslim rioters in the Nigerian town of Kazaure, and the 27 Turks and Britons murdered by Muslim terrorists in Istanbul. No dead Jews in that particular day’s headlines, but otherwise a good haul of Hindus, Christians and, of course, Muslims…”
Like Mr. Steyn, I too cannot help but these headlines distracting. They may be as trivial as the First Amendment that protects my expression of concern over their content from the Canadian Human Rights Commission, but nevertheless I find them distracting.
Of a similar trivial nature is my concern over Canada’s apparent elimination of free speech from our public discourse. Criticism of another culture can be branded “hate speech” unless the critiqued culture is distinctly Christian or American. Yet if civil liberties in the Middle East are an example of what we can expect in Canada’s tolerant and multi-cultural society, the culture of death propagated by our secularists will eventually give way to the Islamosphere’s culture of fear.