Good Stuff: CRNC- The Break-up

Here's the College Republican National Committee's new video for the election season. Funny stuff!

HuffPo Interview on the Catholic Church

The Huffington Post did an interview with Fr. Mark Massa, SJ, the dean of the theology school at Boston College. Naturally, I can't find much to like in what HuffPo printed... I'm going to fisk through this one (though I'm sure I won't do nearly as good a job as the brilliant Fr. Z. did here on the fine wdtprs blog.)

My comments will be in [Bracketed Blue Italics]

How The '60s Transformed The Catholic Church Forever: An Interview With Rev. Mark Massa

(RNS) For generations, thousands of Catholics -- from archbishops to people in the pews -- saw the Catholic Church as eternal, timeless, and unmoved by the tides of history.

[In what sense? It was less than 100 years between Vatican I and Vatican II, and there were numerous momentous decisions made in between. The Church is everlasting and its doctrines are the Truth... The Word of God... and do not bend to the times... but the procedures and worship have undergone frequent changes.]

But the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s unleashed a sea of changes -- none more significant than the recognition that Catholicism has, and continues to be, shaped by historical events, argues the Rev. Mark Massa in a new book.

[WHAT gets shaped by historical events? "The Church" is a little vague here.]

Massa's intellectual history, "The American Catholic Revolution: How the '60s Changed the Church Forever," describes how celebrating the Mass in English, butting heads with the pope on birth control, and priests protesting the Vietnam War opened new possibilities -- and controversies -- in the church.

[Note that these three things are not equivalent.]

Massa, dean of Boston College's School of Theology and Ministry, spoke about his book; some answers have been edited for length and clarity.

[I wonder if perhaps some of the problems below were introduced by the editor...]

Q: Why should American Catholics care what happened in the 1960s?

A: Starting with Vatican II, Catholics became aware that the church, its worship, and its beliefs change -- that the church develops over history. The current battles between the left and the right are really between those who want to press a historical awareness of change and those who want to view the church as timeless.

[No. This is an overly simplistic dichotomy. First, we have to consider what's changing. The Word is the Eternal Truth and does not change. The Church's human components have been in constant change, but some wish for the Church, its liturgy, its structure, to float with the currents of the times, while others think that change should be more careful in order to protect the transmission of the Word.]

Q: Why did the "Catholic Revolution," as you call it, begin in 1964?

A: The new Mass (which was introduced in America that year) made real, or concrete, the changes that Vatican II made in ways that theology, or other declarations from the council could not.

["New mass" ? Something bothers me about that term. And, also, people should look to the V-II documents and consider whether the changes were ever driven by the intentions of its declarations. Read Sacrosanctum Concilium and consider how much it resembles the lousy build-your-own-Masses that so many Catholics have inflicted on them.]

Q: Why is change -- not sex -- the church's dirty little secret?

[I'd have a comment here, but it might sound uncharitable...]

A: A great majority of Catholics (once) thought of the church as outside of time altogether -- that what they did on Sunday is what Jesus did at the Last Supper, and early Christians did in the catacombs. Vatican II attacked this notion of the church as providing a timeless set of answers to life's questions about meaning.

[The liturgy is partially outside of time... or what I've read referred to as a "collapse" of time. It's also important to recognize that some artistic trappings aside, what Catholics did at mass was quite similar to what early Christians did in the Catacombs (it remains, of course, essentially the same). Oh... and about this idea of V-II "attacking" the notion that the Church has timeless answers to life's questions... huh? I don't need to go to divinity school at Harvard to be able to read what the V-II documents say and realize that's absurd. Plus, of course the Church has timeless answers! It still bears the Good News of Jesus Christ! The things that really matter haven't changed at all!]

Q: And that became a personal crisis for Catholics in the 1960s?

A: Catholics, like all believers, want security. The world seems, and can be, a very scary place; and they want their religion to provide them with some form of certainty, security, and peace of mind. But faith is a stance in history; it doesn't preserve us from messiness, or from change, including to religious institutions.

Q: How much was the "Catholic Revolution" affected by the cultural tumult of the'60s?

A: There was always an international dimension that made the Catholic '60s different from the general culture, because of this long devotion to Rome and the primacy of the pope. My sense is that most of the important stuff wasn't a reaction to events and ideas outside the church but to things happening inside the church itself.

[Really? I've tended to think the 60s had quite an impact, and more than they should have. Perhaps he's right, though. I'd be interested to hear his thoughts on that.]

Q: Pope Benedict XVI has been among those arguing that Vatican II was not a disruption in the church's usual course of business, right?

A: I think, basically, Benedict is a classicist and he thinks that human essence and things like that stay the same.

[Had the "human essence" changed? I don't believe it has.]

Q: So, is he trying to put the "change" genie back in the bottle, or does he deny there is any genie to bottle up?

A: I think he knows the genie exists. He's very smart, a world-class theologian -- he knows the stakes. I think he see that the changes made by Vatican II led to fewer priests and fewer (members of religious orders) and so something went really wrong.

[Is that all that went wrong? Plummeting Mass attendance, plummeting belief in and understanding of Christ's presence in the Eucharist, widespread dismissal by supposed-Catholics of Church teaching on abortion, birth control, and other moral issues... I think it's safe to say that something went seriously wrong. Also remember that "the stakes" aren't the Church's membership stats... the delivery of the Christian message is at stake, bringing with it the Salvation of souls!]

Q: As a Jesuit, are you worried about publicly disagreeing with the pope?

A: No. I'm a historian. I'm only laying out the past. The argument stands or falls according to whether it makes the most sense of the most data from the past. I'm not making moral judgments.

[Well, it's certainly clear where he stands on things, though.]

Q: How does Benedict's recent reform of the Mass in English and support for the Latin Mass fit into your theory?

A: It's partly personal preference. He's Austrian, and likes looking back to the past. He likes the smells and bells. I do, too. I suspect there's more to it than that, but I don't know.

[OK... 1) Yes, it's partly personal preference, but it's also partly whether what's being said is accurate! 2) He's not Austrian! He's a German from Bavaria! 3) You "suspect there's more to it" but you're not sure about that? The Holy Father has written about it extensively... With all due respect, how do you rack up this guy's academic cred. while remaining so clueless about liturgy? I'm going to hope that it was the editor's trimming... that really DOES happen to people.]

The Most Critically Important Must-Read Eye-Opening and Earth-Shattering News Story of the Day! (#1)

This is the first in what I intend to be a frequent series of posts on this blog.

In the off chance you hadn't noticed, while there are plenty of important things going on in the world, the media doesn't cover any of it. Instead they drone on for days straight about the horrors of Muslims using a building they bought in downtown NYC, or about the slightly unhinged leader of a 50 member church that no one's ever heard of burning some books he ordered off Amazon.

With these pressing matters dominating nearly the entire 24-hour news cycle, they barely found time to tell me that, yes, Senate-candidate Christine O'Donnell has in fact had sex at least once in her life, or to speculate about why President Obama's wedding ring was at the jewelers... but, thankfully, they did.

For anyone who feels like they just don't have time to catch all of the critical stories, I'm dedicated to making this blog a one-stop source for each day's most important story! And today's story is...

Hillary Clinton's hairstyle! The Secretary of State has decided to do something new with her hair and *gasp,* she used a hair clip! I'm not sure that this is appropriate for meetings at the UN... after all, that hair clip could be used as a weapon and I'm sure the UN has a zero-tolerance policy for that sort of thing!

I want you to all give as much consideration to this issue as your schedule allows. I know you might have to give up some family time to do justice to this weighty matter. I'm sure, however, that your kids will understand that you must do your civic duty... the Huffington Post needs your opinion!

If you value democracy, click your way over there and... VOTE OR DIE!!!1111!!!1!!!1111!!!!!!!

About the Blog

This will be a typical self-indulgent kind of narcissistic blog that presumes that there must be a large number people in the world who actually care to spend their time reading what I think about politics, religion, art, and really, whatever else I want to talk about (whether I have any expertise on the matter or not).

I'm Catholic. I'm politically conservative. I'm basically using this free corner of the web to make light of the many things in our society that annoy me, and when I can't make light of it anymore, to air my complaints and grievances.

Enjoy!