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T h e A p o l o g i s t ' s E y e
Lay-Abouts Nay, Gay-Abouts Yea
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This Rock
Volume 13, Number 8
 October 2002 
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It was widely reported in the press when Rowan Williams, the newly designated archbishop of Canterbury, donned a white cloak, stepped into a stone circle at sunrise, and became a druid. More specifically, he became honorary white druid in the highest of the three orders of the Gorsedd of Bards, a society of Welsh-speaking poets, writers, and musicians.
Stung by criticism of paganism from within his own Anglican church, Williams described the druidic award as "one of the greatest honors which Wales can bestow upon her citizens." (The actor Richard Burton and Queen Elizabeth II's mother also were white druids.) Williams said the ceremony had no links with the "pot-smoking, lay-about" pagan druids who meet regularly at Stonehenge.
Lost in the hubbub was a more problematic.aspect of the new Archibishop of Canterbury's theological orientation. Rev. Richard Kirker, general secretary of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LGCM), told the BBC, "Lesbian and gay Christians have many good reasons to believe that Rowan Williams will be our friend and an unapologetic ally rather in the way that South Africa's inspiring Desmond Tutu has become."
For over twenty years, Kirker said, "Williams, a noted theologian, academic and author, has eloquently advocated that Christianity and homosexuality should be viewed as wholly consistent with each other. God's gift to human beings includes, for some, homosexuality as well as for others, heterosexuality. To him lesbian and gay people should not be made into a 'problem' nor, of course, should they be stigmatized, demonized or marginalized. Neither should clergy be expected be celibate just because they are gay or lesbian."
We're assuming the whole homosexual thing is okay with the druids too.
That Hideous Foolishness
C.S. Lewis once wrote a rather weird science fantasy story about a demonic corporation (the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments or N.I.C.E.) seeking eternal life through devilry and a scheme to keep a human head alive as a spokesman for the "Macrobes" (demons). Now the New York Times reports the members of the real-life Foresight Institute are devoted to, among other things, having "their bodies or heads frozen in liquid nitrogen until the day they can be resurrected, either into flesh or silicon, by a herd of nanobots." In the words of Gregory Stock, an enthusiast for "redesigning humans," the worldview of the Foresight Institute reflects an unexpected spiritual longing-a "strange urge in us to transcend our biology."
"If you can't buy Christianity," he said, "there is a strong desire to create those same visions of heaven and transcendence through our technologies."
Our suggestion for the Foresight Institute is a new name and motto: Babel: Yesterday's Theology Tomorrow.
Diversity Means We All Think the Same
Miss Betsy Hansen, who graduated from Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in June with highest honors, was censured for violating the public school's pro-homosexual agenda. Taking up her cause, the Thomas More Law Center public advocacy law firm has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on behalf of the student and her mother, who are practicing Catholics.
School officials also prevented Betsy from expressing her view on homosexuality at a panel on "Homosexuality and Religion." School officials claimed that Betsy's religious view toward homosexuality was "negative" and would water-down the positive (meaning "tolerant") religious message they wanted to convey-namely, that Christianity and homosexual practices are compatible.
Peter Kreeft has observed that one of the tricks of the Father of Lies is that you always wind up with the exact opposite of what he promises. So it is that radical feminism produces masculine women, sexual liberation produces the bondage of "zero tolerance" policies, dissent groups like Voice of the Faithful banish critics from their Internet message boards, and the Communist slogan of "nothing to lose but your chains" creates the Gulag Archipelago.
Now homosexual "diversity" gives us censorship. Old Scratch: He doesn't abandon a successful formula.
From the "Vibrant Faith" Department
At World Youth Day recently, some reform group or other decided to wander around handing out free condoms to kids arriving in Toronto to see the Pope. Annoying and insulting? Yes. But far so was the response of Msgr. Peter Schonenbach, the general secretary of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. "It's a free country," said Msgr. Schonenbach. "They can do what they want. . . . The Church is stuck with its position on this."
Stuck. Now there's a stalwart defense of the Church's teaching on human sexuality.
Creating False Controversy
Whenever some orthodox Catholic (such as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia) differs from a prudential judgment (such as the preference voiced by Pope John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae that the death penalty only be inflicted when absolutely necessary), the American media react as though the Church is coming apart at the seams and "even conservative Catholics are cafeteria Catholics who defy Rome." And so, of course, we are told that Catholics are "free" to believe anything about anything so long as it doesn't violate their consciences and that this proves "conservatives" don't listen when Rome tries to tell us what to think, so why should Catholic abortion supporters, et cetera.
Not quite. John Paul is proposing a prudential judgment in his teaching on the death penalty, not a binding doctrine. Scalia's job requires him to try to think with the U.S. Constitution. His faith requires him to think with the Church. John Paul does not condemn the death penalty as intrinsically evil. Catholic faith does not say that those who implement the death penalty are doing something that is intrinsically gravely sinful (assuming, of course, the crime being punished is one worthy of death). In short, there is no parallel with abortion, which is always gravely sinful because it is the taking of innocent human life.
Speaking of Abortion . . .
The champions of "choice" are strangely silent about this display of enlightened treatment of women in the People's Republic of China: Chinese brides of Taiwanese men who went to China to visit their families were ordered by Beijing to have abortions or to undergo surgery to have their fallopian tubes tied. They were also fined and threatened with punishment under China's one-child policy if they had more children
Radical feminism is basically the hobby of upper-middle-class white women. Its slogan with regard to those who happen to be born with something other than lily-white skin could easily be "Just enough of us, way too much of you." Observe the endless population planning conferences put on by representatives of nations that consume three quarters of the world's resources going to place like Cairo and Beijing to tell the locals to have less children.
Bishops and Baby-Killers
Police in Buena Vista County, Iowa, believe the local Planned Parenthood clinic may have information that could help investigators identify the mother of a newborn baby who was abandoned at the county recycling center in May. The baby's remains were found in a garbage shredder.
But the Planned Parenthood Federation of America says it will not sacrifice patient confidentiality for "the Iowa police dragnet." According to Planned Parenthood president Gloria Feldt, "Planned Parenthood will exhaust all legal remedies to protect our patients' medical privacy."
When American bishops did this sort of thing to protect priests who abused children, people rightly screamed about obstruction of justice. When Planned Parenthood does it, though, the same pro-abortion people who decry the bishops' actions think it's "heroic."
To be sure, there is a fundamental difference between Planned Parenthood and the bishops: When bishops protect evildoers, they pervert their mission. When the Planned Parenthood bureaucrats do it, they fulfill their mission.
Wiccan Work It Out
Somebody wrote the Diocese of Wheeling, West Virginia, to say they wanted to marry a Wiccan. They were told they could, a response that scandalized a number of Catholics as being a capitulation to paganism.
Nonetheless, it's okay. From the Church's perspective, it's just another mixed marriage (provided the canonical ducks are in a row). It is worth noting that St. Monica was married to a pagan too, and her kid-Augustine-turned out okay. So the Church in Wheeling is not off its rocker in allowing it in theory. (Still, it's not what we would recommend unless you are reasonably certain you are a saint.)
Priest, Not Prophet
Author Thomas Cahill is miffed at the Pope. "It is this habit of certitude that makes the man so impossible," wrote Cahill. "For in nothing is he more certain than the realms in which his experience is least: sex and women."
Cahill reflects a common notion in popular culture: The person who has no personal experience of something is thereby utterly unqualified to speak of it or do something about it. Thus, according to conventional wisdom, no heterosexual has the right to comment on homosexuality, no Caucasian can discuss the plight of the black community, and no priest can ever speak of human sexuality.
This is silly for a number of reasons. After all, would you insist that your cancer surgeon have to have suffered cancer before the operation? Would you insist that somebody who has suffered cancer but is not a surgeon is more qualified to operate than a surgeon who has never had cancer? Would you demand that your chef like the food you eat before he prepares it? Or that a builder has to have lived in a house just like yours before he builds it?
But more than this, Cahill is without a clue about the nature of John Paul II's office. He does not bother to ask why the Pope is so very confident of his message. If he did, he would discover that John Paul's confidence spring from the fact that his message is not his.
Moderns respect prophets but not priests. We tend to think the only truly authentic religious wisdom is that which is received directly from God either by personal experience or mystic revelation. But a priest is not a prophet. He has nothing of himself to say. He is merely handing on a Tradition he did not invent and may not change. He stands in the place of Another.
John Paul is confident in what he has to say because he knows he is not saying it and did not think it up. Holy Church handed it to him and Holy Church got it from the apostles who got it from Christ. And Christ, it is worth noting, was also not married, yet had some rather pointed remarks about sex and women. Since he invented both, it's a good idea to pay attention.
Pope's Mental Acuity Linked to His Prayer
Cardinal Eduardo Somalo said recently that John Paul II's intellectual ability must be attributed to prayer because "humanly, there is no other explanation." As chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church, Cardinal Martínez Somalo would oversee the goods and temporal affairs of the Holy See between the death of one pope and the election of the next. He said John Paul II's health and activity "continues to be a gift and a mystery."
"We can see how he walks in the television pictures, but the mystery of his intellectual activity, of that psychological and profound intuition that he has of Church and world issues is intact," the Cardinal said.
Russian Orthodox: "Nyet" to Catholic "Proselytizing"
The Russian Orthodox Church has denied the Catholic Church the right "to preach the Gospel to all people." The Moscow patriarchate made that announcement through its department for external church relations, which accused the Church of "proselytism."
"Catholic hierarchs insist on the right of their Church 'to preach the Gospel to all people,'" the Orthodox patriarchate said. "This position is unacceptable for the Russian Orthodox Church. From the experience of the last years, we know that by this they mean missionary work aiming to convert to Catholicism as many people as possible, including those who belong to Orthodoxy both by baptism and national and cultural tradition."
Walter Cardinal .asper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and Catholic Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz at Moscow said that a key to the dispute consisted in defining the world "proselytism."
"The Church itself is missionary, but it does not 'proselytize,'" said Cardinal .asper. "The Holy See's policy with the Russian Orthodox Church is clear: We want dialogue, we want collaboration, we want ecumenism, we reject proselytism, and we want to promote the pastoral care of our Catholics."
Noonan on Johannes Paulus II
It's not apologetics, but a recent piece by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal was so moving we encourage anyone who has Internet access to check it out (www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110002074). Noonan analyzes the great appeal of Pope John Paul II, why "on the streets of Mexico City they sobbed as he went by." Her account of her own meeting with the Pope a couple of years ago ends this way:
"When you see the Pope something happens. You expect to be moved, but it's bigger than that and more surprising. It feels like a gaiety brought by goodness. It feels like a bubbling up. I think some people feel humbled by some unseen gravity and others lifted by some unknown lightness. It's like some great white dove flutters from your chest, emerges, and flies upward. And you didn't even know it was there. And all this leaves you reaching outward, toward one [the Pope] who is broken, ungainly, without grace. And it fills you with tears. Or so it seems to me. At least that was my experience."
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