Back to the future: Communion on the tongue

Card. Caffara of Bologna: in certain churches only Communion on the tongue (WDTPRS, May 7, 2009):

... His Eminence Carlo Card. Caffarra, Archbishop of Bologna, has made the decision ... wait for it ...

... to require that in the certain great churches of Bologna Holy Communion will be distributed only on the tongue.

I find this interesting and encouraging.

In a time when Pope Benedict distributes Communion only on the tongue….

In a time when liturgical leaders such as the Secretary of the CDW, Archbishop Ranjith, has written about Communion and the Holy See’s own publishing arm printed a book by Bishop Anastasius Schneider Dominis Est...

In a time when many American dioceses are hurrying to recommend that Communion shouldn’t be given on the tongue because of risk of disease…

... we read of this decision.

Read the English translation of the communique from the Archdiocese of Bologna here.

Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith's second exile

First exiled in 2004 when, as adjunct secretary of Propaganda Fide, he was suddenly nominated Nuncio to Indonesia by Pope John Paul II. Now, under mounting pressures against the formidable Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, it looks like Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, will be going back to his native Sri Lanka, as Archbishop of Columbo, its capital city. See:

• The Scapegoat Rajnith to Columbo (Rorate Caeli, April 30, 2009)
• Rajnith to Columbo? Follow-up (Rorate Caeli, May 7, 2009),

Apparently Cañizares, the former Archbishop of Toledo, nicknamed 'the small Ratzinger', wished that Ranjith would remain in Rome.

Benedict in Israel: a preview

"The walls of the old City of Jerusalem from Mount Zion."
A preview of the Pope's pilgrimage to the Holy Land (May 6, 2009), by a longtime contributor to the Benedict Forum, who writes:

A pilgrimage to the Holy Land is a life-changing experience for those who believe in Christ. Even though the sites we revere today we may not be the precise spots mentioned in the Gospels, when you visit Galilee, Nazareth, Bethlehem, Jerusalem and other ancient places in modern-day Israel, the presence of Jesus , Mary and Joseph, the Apostles and the disciples -as well as the "villains" in the story of our salvation-becomes palpable. Galilee and Jerusalem, especially, make indelible impressions on the heart and soul.

When I first visited Israel I had only a point and shoot 36mm film camera. On my second, I had better digital equipment. In anticipation of Pope Benedict's visit, I thought I would share with the forum some of my impressions of the places where he is scheduled to go.

A preview of Pope Benedict XVI's pilgrimage to the Holy Land - photos and impressions from Yad Vashem; The Dome of the Rock; The Western ("Wailing") Wall; The Upper Room; The Mount of Olives, Gethsemane, Kidron Valley; Basilica of the Nativity, Nazareth and Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Less skin. More virtue. Not bad.

Saudis' "Miss Beautiful Morals" Pageant (CBS, May 7, 2009): No Swimsuit Competition At Saudi Arabia's Only Beauty Contest.

Babylon

Babylon Ruins Reopen in Iraq, to Controversy (NYT, May 2, 2009): great slide show of one of the most renown cities of ancient history, home of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (one of the 'Seven Wonders of the World'), ancient capital of the Assyrians, Chaldeans, Persians, the city of Hammurabi, Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel, Cyrus, Darius, Alexander the Great ... Sadam Hussein. Wonder when they'll finally open a McDonalds and get civilized ...

Obama on National Day of Prayer

Obama plans a scaled back National Day of Prayer (AP, May 6, 2009): The man with no qualities on prayer: Sheesh! 'nuff o' that mumbo-jumbo: Who's got time for talkin' to the walls and ceiling when you could be out talkin' to real people with political clout (campaigning)!

Contemporary culture and the question of sanity

There are those in our world who believe wholly, but they are a minority; they do not affect the atmosphere, only breathe it. There are militant atheists, they too a minority, but they do affect the atmosphere. For they strengthen its dominant characteristic--namely to conduct life without reference to God. Moral, social, political decisions, like personal decisions, are made as if God did not exist. It is a kind of practical godlessness, God in a cloud not of his own too much light, but of man's too small interest.

There is no deliberate exclusion; it simply does not occur to the mass of public people that God's will could have any bearing on the public well-being; and the needs within a man that only God can meet are no longer felt as needs, but as an undiagnosed malaise, discomfort, unsatisfaction which they do not connect with any absence of God. All the affairs of the world they see as to be settled within the boundaries of the world, either because there is no other; or because the other is other, a world to be lived in separately by such as choose, the two worlds not impinging, only this one really mattering.

Seeing the time we live in analyzed like that, we are not likely at first to realize how much we are immersed in it. Yet it is a miracle if we are wholly untouched by it, even in our deepest certainties. We do not accept its denials or its doubts; but we are almost certainly affected by its emphases--unconsciously, for the most part. We believe in the Mysteries totally; we know that all holiness is in them, that death would be better than the denial of any syllable of them. And yet...

Let us look at the word 'Totally'. We feel the glory of having the Mysteries... but have we any equal feeling of the destitution that goes with *not* having them? ... Not what we *should* feel if others' starvation was bodily; for we do know the value of the bread that perishes. The world thinks that bodily starvation really matters and spiritual does not. It looks frighteningly as though we thought so too.

If we do not see God's revelation as mattering to everybody, then we have not grasped reality; we then believe it, but not totally. That this is not a fanciful inference from our behavior is shown by the phrase we too often use to dismiss their destitution--and our own inaction: they do not know that God has revealed our doctrines and our sacraments, we tell ourselves, therefore they are not sinning by not receiving them. Their starvation need not be relieved because it is not sinful--a strange reaction to starvation. There is such a thing as invincible ignorance, though there may be some responsibility in those whose refusal to reach insures its invincibility. People will not be lost eternally for what they invincibly did not know, true. But what of the richness, light, and nourishment they might be having here upon earth?

The mysteries, then, are not a luxury for the spiritually-minded (like us!); they are necessities of life for everyone. Not to see them as so is a key example of the damping and discoloration I have talked of...

... Insanity is all about us. I do not mean that men individually are madmen, but they add up to a society which is not truly sane. Sanity means seeing what’s there and planning life accordingly. And as a society ours does not see the major part of reality at all, therefore does not see aright the minor part that it is aware of, shapes its activities as though the mis-seen fraction of reality were the whole of it. Secular ethics means deciding our actions as though there were no God, while not settling the question whether there is or not. I do not mean that men of this mind are acting evilly: they may act nobly, (just as believers may act appallingly). But they would add a fuller rationality to their nobility if they knew the true order of reality.

To act without full vision is a formula for chaos. And in chaos we live, exhibited to us by every newspaper we read, yet disguised from us by the care and intelligence and good will expended upon the understanding and ordering of the fraction; disguised again by the mental muscularity, the almost blinding scientific and technological brilliance, with which the seen part of reality is analyzed, is formulated and systematized, packaged, and offered for acceptance. The chaos is amiable so far; but chaos cannot be relied on to stay amiable--there are parts of the world in which it has not.

Even short of some such catastrophe befalling our own part of the world, it is not good to be the sane minority in a society that has lost contact with God. We hold our own mental health precariously when sanity so partial and defective is accepted as the norm. Insanity is catching: we grow uncertain of the cadences of normal speech when all around us men are gibbering, and gibbering so learnedly and so gravely and so confidently. Our world at its best has all the airs and graces, the rationalizations and courtesies and card indexes of sanity, so that the notion that it might not be sane may not occur to us. The card indexes especially, so tidy, so efficient, so inclusive: only a fanatic would question the rationality of the mind that produces them.

‘Fanatic’ is the word. We can frighten ourselves with it. I have talked of assumptions and seepage that we are unaware of. But there is something else: the Catholic can be consciously embarrassed at his difference. There are those who feel out of step, self-conscious because out of step, self-questioning because out of step. If they have not made the mysteries of revelation truly their own, they may see life fluid and free, theology all bones. There is great psychological value in a strong affirmation, said Belloc. No affirmation was ever stronger than our world makes of its own rightness.

The temptation is to try to get into step with everybody else, while somehow hanging on to the truths. Short of denying them, there is a kind of scaling down and shading off, a resolute switching of the mind away from doctrines at which the world would raise an eyebrow. At all costs, one must not be a fanatic. St. Paul had met this attitude, right at our beginnings: “Be not conformed to this world, but be re-formed by the newing of your mind” (Rom. 12.1).

It is not only Faith that demands this, but sheerest common sense. On remembers a stock joke of the last fifty years—the old lady watching a line of soldiers on parade and saying proudly, “They’re all out of step except my George.” We all smile, we all assume without the shadow of a second thought that it is George who is out of step. But if everybody else in the battalion happened to be deaf, then George might well be the only one marching in time to the music of the band.

The parallel is exact. The follower of Christ does hear a music that does not reach the ears of other men: he is bound to be out of step with them, for they are out of step with it. But in our world we must listen to that music with unflagging attention: partly that it may not be drowned out of our own ears by all the tomtoms of chaos, partly that others may begin to catch from us first some hint of the rhythm, then some hint of the tune.

--Frank Sheed, God and the Human Condition, 36 (NY: Sheed & Ward, 1966).

[Hat tip to J.M.]

Jack Kemp dies of cancer, 73

Jack Kemp, football star and politician, dies (MyWay, May 3, 2009):

"Jack Kemp, the former pro quarterback who turned fame on the gridiron into a career in national politics and a crusade for lower taxes, has died of cancer at age 73 [yesterday evening].

... Former President George W. Bush expressed his sorrow after hearing of Kemp's death.

"Laura and I are saddened by the death of Jack Kemp," he said. "Jack will be remembered for his significant contributions to the Reagan revolution and his steadfast dedication to conservative principles during his long and distinguished career in public service. Jack's wife Joanne and the rest of the Kemp family are in our thoughts and prayers."

... Kemp was a 17th round 1957 NFL draft pick by the Detroit Lions, but was cut before the season began ... [He] led Buffalo to the 1964 and 1965 AFL Championships, and won the league's most valuable player award in 1965.

Kemp was born in California to Christian Scientist parents ... [but] became a Presbyterian after marrying his college sweetheart, Joanne Main.

... Through his political life, Kemp's positions spanned the social spectrum: He opposed abortion and supported school prayer, yet appealed to liberals with his outreach toward minorities and compassion for the poor. He pushed for immigration reform to include a guest-worker program and status for the illegal immigrants already here.

De Deféctibus – Part 2 of 4

[See: De Deféctibus – Part 1 of 4" (Musings, April 26, 2009).]

Tridentine Community News (May 3, 2009):

We continue our presentation of the 1962 Roman Missal instruction, De Deféctibus (On Defects Occurring in the Celebration of Mass), which displays the Church’s concern for the Blessed Sacrament and the validity of the Eucharist that the faithful may receive.

IV. Defect of Wine (con’t.)

17. If he finds out, before or after the Consecration, that the wine is completely vinegar or otherwise corrupt, he is to follow the same procedure as above, as if he were to find that no wine had been put into the chalice, or that only water had been put in.

18. If the celebrant remembers before the consecration of the chalice that there was no water added, he is to put some in at once and say the words of the Consecration. If he remembers this after the consecration of the chalice, he is not to add any water, because the water is not necessary to the Sacrament.

19. If a defect either of bread or of wine is discovered before the consecration of the Body, and the material needed cannot be obtained in any way, the priest should not continue any further. If after the consecration of the Body, or even of the wine, a defect in either species is discovered, and the material needed cannot be obtained in any way, then the priest should continue and complete the Mass if the defective material has already been consecrated, omitting the words and signs that pertain to the defective species. But if the material needed can be obtained with some little delay, he should wait, in order that the Sacrament may not remain incomplete.

V. Defects of the Form

20. Defects on the part of the form may arise if anything is missing from the complete wording required for the act of consecrating. Now the words of the Consecration, which are the form of this Sacrament, are:

HOC EST ENIM CORPUS MEUM, and HIC EST ENIM CALIX SÁNGUINIS MEI, NOVI ET ÆTÉRNI TESTAMÉNTI: MYSTÉRIUM FIDÉI: QUI PRO VOBIS ET PRO MULTIS EFFUNDÉTUR IN REMISSIÓNEM PECCATÓRUM.

If the priest were to shorten or change the form of the consecration of the Body and the Blood, so that in the change of wording the words did not mean the same thing, he would not be achieving a valid Sacrament. If, on the other hand, he were to add or take away anything which did not change the meaning, the Sacrament would be valid, but he would be committing a grave sin.

21. If the celebrant does not remember having said the usual words in the Consecration, he should not for that reason be worried. If, however, he is sure that he omitted something necessary to the Sacrament, that is, the form of the Consecration or a part of it, he is to repeat the formula and continue from there. If he thinks it is very likely that he omitted something essential, he is to repeat the formula conditionally, though the condition need not be expressed. But if what he omitted is not necessary to the Sacrament, he is not to repeat anything; he should simply continue the Mass.

VI. Defects of the Minister

22. Defects on the part of the minister may arise with regard to the things required in him. These are: first of all the intention, then the disposition of soul, the bodily disposition, the disposition of vestments, the disposition in the rite itself with regard to the things that may occur in it.

VII. Defect of Intention

23. The intention of consecrating is required. Therefore there is no consecration in the following cases: when a priest does not intend to consecrate but only to make a pretense; when some hosts remain on the altar forgotten by the priest, or when some part of the wine or some host is hidden, since the priest intends to consecrate only what is on the corporal; when a priest has eleven hosts before him and intends to consecrate only ten, without determining which ten he means to consecrate. On the other hand, if he thinks there are ten, but intends to consecrate all that he has before him, then all will be consecrated. For that reason every priest should always have such an intention, namely the intention of consecrating all the hosts that have been placed on the corporal before him for consecration.

24. If the priest thinks that he is holding one Host but discovers after the Consecration that there were two Hosts stuck together, he is to consume both when the time comes. If after receiving the Body and Blood, or even after the ablution, he finds other consecrated Pieces, large or small, he is to consume them, because they belong to the same sacrifice.

25. If, however, a whole consecrated Host is left, he is to put It into the tabernacle with the others that are there; if this cannot be done, he is to consume It.

26. It may be that the intention is not actual at the time of the Consecration because the priest lets his mind wander, yet is still virtual, since he has come to the altar intending to do what the Church does. In this case the Sacrament is valid. A priest should be careful, however, to make his intention actual also.

VIII. Defects of the Disposition of Soul

27. If a priest celebrates Mass in a state of mortal sin or under some ecclesiastical penalty, he does celebrate a valid Sacrament, but he sins most grievously.

IX. Defects of the Disposition of Body

28. If a priest has not been fasting for at least one hour before Communion, he may not celebrate. The drinking of water, however, does not break the fast.

29. The sick, even though they are not bed-ridden, may take non-alcoholic liquids as well as true and proper medicine, whether liquid or solid, before the celebration of Mass, without any time limit.

[Comments? Please e-mail tridnews@stjosaphatchurch.org. Previous columns are available at www.stjosaphatchurch.org. This edition of Tridentine Community News, with minor editions, is from the St. Josaphat bulletin insert for May 3, 2009. Hat tip to A.B.]

Obama's talent: Léger de main

Mark Steyn, "Obama looks moderate, acts radical" (Orange County Register, May 1, 2009):

We're still in the first hundred days of the joyous observances of Barack Obama's first hundred days, and many weeks of celebration lie ahead, so here are my thoughts:

President Obama's strongest talent is not his speechifying, which is frankly a bit of a snoozeroo. In Europe, he left 'em wanting less pretty much every time (headline from Britain's Daily Telegraph: "Barack Obama Really Does Go On A Bit"). That uptilted chin combined with the left-right teleprompter neck swivel you can set your watch by makes him look like an emaciated Mussolini umpiring an endless rally of high lobs on Centre Court at Wimbledon. Each to his own, but I don't think those who routinely hail him as the greatest orator since Socrates actually sit through many of his speeches.

On the other hand, if you just caught a couple of minutes of last Wednesday's press conference, you'd be impressed. When that groupie from The New York Times asked the president about what, during his first hundred days, "had surprised you the most … enchanted you the most … humbled you the most and troubled you the most", Obama made a point of getting out his pen, writing it down and repeating back the multiple categories: "Enchanted," he said. "Nice." Indeed. Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger, you may see a stranger across a crowded room, but then he scribbles down your multipart question to be sure he gets it right, and he looks so thoughtful, and suddenly he's not a stranger anymore, and the sound of his laughter will ring in your dreams.

The theater of thoughtfulness is critical to the president's success. He has the knack of appearing moderate while acting radical, which is a lethal skill. The thoughtful look suckered many of my more impressionable conservative comrades last fall, when David Brooks and Christopher Buckley were cranking out gushing paeans to Obama's "first-class temperament" – temperament being to the Obamacons what Nick Jonas' hair is to a Tiger Beat reporter. But the drab reality is that the man they hail – Brooks & Buckley, I mean; not the Tiger Beat crowd – is a fantasy projection. There is no Obama The Sober Centrist, although it might make a good holiday song:

"Obama The Sober Centrist
Had a very thoughtful mien
And if you ever saw it
You would say it's peachy keen …"

And it is. But underneath the thoughtful look is a transformative domestic agenda that represents a huge annexation of American life by an ever more intrusive federal government. One cannot but admire the singleminded ruthlessness with which Obama is getting on with it, even as he hones his contemplative unhurried moderate routine on prime time news conferences. On foreign affairs, the shtick is less effective, but mainly because he's not so engaged by the issues: He's got big plans for health care, and federalized education, and an eco-friendly government-run automobile industry – and Iran's nuclear program just gets in the way. He'd rather not think about it, and his multicontinental apology tours are his way of kicking the can down the road until that blessed day when America is just another sclerotic Euro-style social democracy, and even your more excitable jihadi won't be able to jump up and down chanting "Death to the Great Satan!" with a straight face.

Read the other half of the article here.

[Hat tip to S.K.]

Dashboard rocket science?

I hate smelling the noxious fumes of vehicles in front of me. Michigan, of all environmentally-conscious, 'progressive' places, has no state-mandated annual vehicle inspection (like Jesse Helms-lovin', 'yahoo' North Carolina does), so vehicles in and around Detroit often not only look like they are held together by Scotch Tape, but emit billowing plumes of nefarious toxic fumes.

Here's the rub: I've driven a variety of different American automobiles, but I have yet to find one that effectively shuts out external air when switched to recycle inside air. I've driven Fords that didn't even have this as an option, though one could cut off the outside air by turning on the air conditioning and switching it to Max/Cold (not very convenient in the winter).

I hate this. None of the Hondas or Toyotas or Subarus I've driven ever had this problem. They all had clear controls indicating how one could switch to recycle cabin air, and they effectively shut out external fumes. Does anyone know whether Ford or GM has mastered the rocket science behind this sophisticated technology in any of its products?

Report: Obama revelling in imperial power

So much for modest backgrounds and humble beginnings: Steve Holland gives the President's perspective on his first 100 days (Reuters, May 1, 2009):

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Barack Obama is revelling in presidential power and influence unseen in Washington for decades.

Barely 100 days in office, the U.S. president and his Democratic Party have firm control over the White House and Congress and the ability to push through ambitious plans.

Now, with the coming retirement of a Supreme Court justice clearing the way for him to appoint a successor, Obama already is assured a legacy at the top of all three branches of government -- executive, legislative and judicial.

On the corporate front, the federal government's pumping of billions of dollars in bailout money into banks and auto companies has given Obama the power to force an overhaul in those industries, a remarkable intervention in capitalist industries by the state.

Americans are giving him leeway as well. His job approval ratings are well over 60 percent, giving him political capital to undertake big challenges.

His political opponents, the Republicans, are in disarray, reduced in numbers and engaged in an internal struggle over how to recover from devastating election losses in 2006 and last year.

From democracy to tyranny: it's all in Plato's Republic, Book VIII.10—IX-3 (555b—576b).

Investiture controversy redivivus

Well, not quite the "Investiture Controversy," maybe, but something close. In the latest issue of the Knights of Columbus periodical, Columbia (May 2009), Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson has an article entitled, "A Direct Attack on the First Amendment" (p. 3), addressing a Bill no. 1098 in the State of Connecticut, which, if passed, would have exclusively targeted the Catholic Church and "wrested authority over parish affairs from our bishops and priests and instead turned over control to a series of elected boards (trustees), explicitly excluding bishops and pastors."

As Anderson mentions, the First Amendment of the US Constitution, however, declares that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercize thereof...." He continues:

Although one in four Americans is Catholic, the country still has a very Protestant outlook on certain issues.

... While the stated purpose for the Connecticut bill was to prevent financial mismanagement of parishes, its proponents seemed unaware that such mismanagement is rare and is addressed effectively by regulations already in place. In the end, the bill was both unconstitutional and unnecessary.

This attack was surprising, but not unprecedented. In Connecticut, Catholics were legally forbidden from holding public office or owning land, even in the 19th century.

After ratification of the First Amendment in 1791, Catholics in the Constitution state hat to wait nearly three decades for religious freedom....

,,, Bill 1098 would have turned the clock back more than 150 years, proving that Catholics must guard against a return to bigotry. The lesson from the 19th century is that the power to impose structures that grant or take away authority from Church leadrs is the power to intimidate and ultimately to destroy.

If a state can ignore the First Amendment and tell the Catholic Church how it must be organized and operated today, it can easily do the same tomorrow to any religion.

As you probably know, the Bill 1098 awoke a "sleeping giant" in the response of the state's Catholic population. Knights and their families formed a crowd of more than 5,000 with other Catholics and concerned citizens who gathered at the State Capitol on March 11. The bill was ultimately tabled.

Yet Bill 1098 was the second attempt in recent years to directly attack the Catholic Church in the State of Connecticut. The fist attempt was a bill some years back that would have eliminated the seal of confession. As Anderson observes: "We can only expect that here, and elsewhere, such attacks -- and more subtle ones -- are likely."

In closing, Anderson writes: "I want to thank all my brother Knights in Connecticut who worked so hard to defeat this attack on our Church and our religious liberties. Vivat Jesus!"

Clouds on the horizon?

Norman Podhoretz, "How Obama's America Might Threaten Israel" (Commentary, May 2009):

Is there a threat to Israel from the United States under Barack Obama? The question itself seems perverse. For in spite of the hostility to Israel in certain American quarters, this country has more often than not been the beleaguered Jewish state’s only friend in the face of threats coming from others. Nor has the young Obama administration been any less fervent than its last two predecessors in declaring an undying commitment to the security and survival of Israel.

Nevertheless, during the 2008 presidential campaign, friends of Israel (a category that, speculations to the contrary notwithstanding, still includes a large majority of the American Jewish community) had ample reason for anxiety over Obama. The main reason was his attitude toward Iran.

... The upshot is that, barring military action by Israel (or a miracle), Iran will get the bomb, and sooner rather than later. What then? For some time now, many pundits with the ear of the Obama administration have ... fallen back on the position that we can “live with” a nuclear Iran. In line with the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), they soothingly tell us, the mullahs can be deterred by the fear of retaliation much as the far more heavily armed Soviets and Chinese were deterred during the cold war....

... Ahmadinejad’s predecessor as president and the current Speaker of the Assembly of Experts, the Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, known far and wide as a “moderate,” has declared that his country would not be deterred by the fear of retaliation:

If the day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in its possession . . . application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel, but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.

If this is the position of even a reputed Iranian moderate, how could Israel depend upon MAD to keep the mullahs from launching a first strike? Much anxiety has been voiced over the nuclear arms race that would be triggered throughout the region if Iran were to get the bomb, but in all truth we would be lucky if there were enough time for such a race to develop.For consider: if the Iranians were to get the bomb, the Israelis would be presented with an almost irresistible incentive to beat them to the punch with a preemptive strike—and so, understanding this, would Tehran. Either way, a nuclear exchange would become, if not inevitable, terrifyingly likely, and God alone knows how far the destruction would then spread.

Measured against this horrendous possibility, even the worst imaginable consequences of taking military action before the mullahs get the bomb would amount to chump change. But to say it again, with American military action ruled out, the only hope is that such action—which could at the very least head off the otherwise virtually certain prospect of a nuclear war—will be taken by Israel.

... if there is a threat to Israel coming from Obama, it is that, having eschewed the use of force by the United States, he will follow through on his Vice President’s declaration that the Israelis would be “ill-advised” to attack the Iranian nuclear sites and will prevent them from doing the job themselves.

[Hat tip to E.E.]

Public symbols: Woodward & Jenkins on Notre Dame

As a follow-up on our recent post, "Kenneth Woodward on Notre Dame: a critique" (Musings, April 30, 2009), a friend and correspondent from the West Coast writes:

From Ken Woodward's defense of ND's Obama invite (The Washington Post, March 30, 2009): "He will receive an honorary degree because it is the custom, not as a blessing on any of his decisions."

Dear. God. In. Heaven.

A custom with meaning, or a custom without meaning?

If without meaning, then by all means let Fr Jenkins open the ceremony with, "What we are about to do is simply a custom without meaning. Let us proceed."

If with meaning, then what does it mean?

Re: said meaning, Fr Jenkins tells us that ND's proposed honors (incl. the honorary doctorate) do not signify (that is, mean) an endorsement of any evil policy of Obama's. Well, I'm sure they don't... in Fr. Jenkins' mind. Otherwise, Fr. Jenkins would himself be in dissent from the Church's moral teaching.

Both these gentlemen are displaying an obtuseness regarding the nature of a public symbol, that I am sure neither would display in other contexts. Fr Jenkins says, in effect, "This honorary doctorate means what I wish it to mean, neither more nor less" (cf. Humpty Dumpty). Indeed, in Fr. Jenkins' little private world of symbols, this honorary degree may mean (or not mean) whatever he wills. But it is not up to him to determine the meaning of a public symbol, said meaning being... well, public. And the public is letting him know what it means.

Therefore, it would be wrong (though tempting to some pessimistic souls) to say that public symbols are generally empty of meaning in our culture. On the contrary. Our elites employ such symbols with venal cynicism, precisely in order to trade on the public meaning they still retain. People like Woodward and Fr Jenkins are, we hope, not cynics. But they are myopic, and both the cynicism and the myopia are symptoms of our time.

[Hat tip to K.K.]