Fr. Robert Sirico @ Theology on Tap (Rome, Italy)

Fr. Robert Sirico recently headed a "Theology on Tap" in Rome:

. . . Here in Rome, Theology on Tap has been gaining momentum ever since it was started last year. Last Thursday, a particularly interesting talk demonstrated even greater values to Theology on Tap than just getting young people to talk about God in the pub instead of just sports or movies.

Father Robert Sirico, president of the Michigan-based Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, opened the 2006 lectures with the provocatively titled talk, "Can a Rich Man Go to Heaven?"

With hundreds of business students arriving that week to get their dusting in humanities, the talk couldn't have been better timed. The aptly-named Scholars Lounge in Rome was packed.

Father Sirico approached the scriptural question with scriptural answers. He reminded the young people of Genesis, the creation of the world and that God deemed it "good." He spoke of Adam and Eve and the dignity of human work. He reminded a rapt audience of how "God takes the material world seriously." So much so that the Redemption took place in the material world.

With a few well-delivered phrases, Father Sirico knocked down the barriers between business students and theologians, and he then went to on to find common ground for the politically left or right. Elucidating the dangers of "canonizing the poor while demonizing the rich," Father Sirico also warned against "Calvinism on steroids" policies, which imply that attainment of wealth is a sign of God's favor.

In one of the most engaging moments of the evening, Father Sirico waxed autobiographical, revealing that briefly in his youth he had worn tie-dye and dreamed of redistributing wealth. The crowd, their jaws dropped in wonder, stared at the starry-eyed socialist turned captain of a Catholic think tank.

The discovery of Father Sirico's remarkable transformation also answered the question that had brought everyone to the pub that night -- "with God all things are possible."

Source: "Strong Brew, Theologically", by Elizabeth Lev. Zenit News Service. January 26, 2006.

Michael Novak's Memories of JPII; New Website by Rocco Buttiglione

From Michael Novak's website, remembrances by the Catholic philospher on his friendship with the Pope, with some great stories: discovering his mutual "Polish" ancestry"; the underground publication of The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism by the movement Solidarity, and meetings over dinner to discuss economics and Catholic social doctrine:

One night in the autumn of 1991 I was invited to have dinner with the Holy Father. It would be difficult to describe my excitement. I think I barely said a word at dinner, set for just five of us, as I recall: the Pope, his two secretaries, my Italian friend Rocco Buttiglione, and me. Rocco and I were planning a seminar on the free society, to help bring young Americans and Eastern Europeans together. He had been a friend of Karol Wojtyla for years, ever since their mutual philosophical work in Poland, well before the young bishop/philosopher was elected Pope. Rocco and the Pope did most of the talking — and joshing — that evening. The Pope did ask me what I would recommend as the best way to help the millions of poor whom he had just seen in Latin America. I don’t recall his being terribly convinced by my three points, telegraphically put forth. They had much to do with micro-enterprises, and changing education and the law to favor the starting of many small businesses. (Today I note with pleasure that, for instance, India and China between them have raised more than half a billion people out of poverty since 1980. So it can be done, where enterprise is permitted and rewarded.)

I do recall praising the Pope for the good words he had put into his recent letter-to-the-world, Centesimus Annus. As we were leaving, he told me he liked very much the article of mine that had been translated in the Polish Catholic paper Tygodnik Powszechny just that week. It had been translated from my lecture in London, on the theme of the shift in the Pope’s understanding of “capital” from Laborem Exercens (1981) and the 1991 letter ten years later. You understand my thought very well, he said generously — words that have warmed my hear ever since, in many a cold and difficult season.

In Laborem Exercens, he linked capital solely to things, to matter. In Centesimus Annus he pointed to the capital fostered within the human subject: human capital, in the form of knowledge, know-how, invention, and other fruitful economic habits. The virtues he listed are not unlike the habits Max Weber had pointed out in The Protestant Ethic, but with a new, original emphasis upon the creativity of the human person, made in the image of the Creator. A neat emphasis for a Pope living so near the Michelangelo ceiling of the Sistine chapel.

From many more meetings with the Pope, I have the impression that he was skeptical about my hopes for a creativity-informed and law-abiding capitalism, but interested. He and his secretaries used to press me quite hard, and test me and my friends, on this and other issues. We used to have lunch or dinner with him, not every year, maybe an extra time or two in a given blessed year, and nearly always on his days off, when there was a little more time and he had on his calendar no one more important or long-ago-scheduled.

"To the best of my knowledge," Novak recalls, "we at Crisis were the first to put the name "John Paul the Great" in print." I remember the publication of the Crisis Magazine special edition years ago -- 1997, to be exact -- with the cover proclaiming him "John Paul The Great." I still have it. It's a great issue, with stirring tributes by a host of Catholic authors. Worth getting if you can.

Novak's friend, the Italian Minister of Culture Rocco Buttiglione has started a new webpage -- www.pensarecristiano.org -- which tanslates as 'Thinking Christian.'

The Catholic news Agency blog Catholic Outsider has the details behind this fascinating figure, "Formed by the movement Communione e Liberazione and its late Founder, Msgr. Luigi Giussani, key advisor in the writing of Centesimus Annus," published in Crisis and by the Acton Institute . . .

WHAT?!? a member of 'Communion and Liberation' fraternizing with dreaded Catholic neocons and proponents of liberalism?

Say it is not so! ;-)

Kevin Tierney on Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum

Kevin Tierney has published a six-part commentary on Leo XIII's social encyclical Rerum Novarum:

In many respects, this was the Catholic Churches answer to socialism.  While it had been touched in various fashions before now, it was here Leo XIII provided a point by point rebuttal to the socialists on the issues of private property, class distinctions, and the role and nature of government.  After doing this, he broke new ground in treating at length the way the Catholic Church views the relationship between capital and labor, employee and employer.  There are few works in the Church that have had as profound an impact as Rerum Novarum.  So profound is this impact, in 3 instances various Popes paid tribute to this specific work.  On the 25 year anniversary of the encyclical Pius XI released Quadragesimo Anno, John XXIII paid glowing tribute to it in Mater et Magistra, and finally on the 100th anniversary of the work, John Paul II released Centesimus Annus.  Despite the fears of Leo XIII on the nature of some labor unions (in that they were subtly Masonic or blatantly Anti-Catholic) he endorsed the principle of labor unions, and if a good lot for workers could be achieved through them, he favored it. Unfortunately, today his teaching is not received by the Church.  In all too many areas, the "social justice" movements that have come into being, in many ways, are no different than the socialism Leo XIII condemned with his eloquence.  Calling this to mind, I have attempted to offer a commentary on Rerum Novarum that sets the record straight on social concerns.  The following will be that commentary.

Rerum Novarum, Part I
Rerum Novarum, Part II
Rerum Novarum, Part III
Rerum Novarum, Part IV
Rerum Novarum, Part V
Rerum Novarum, Part VI

I. Shawn McElhinney on John Carroll, Freemasonry and the American Founding

"On the Subject of America's Founding With Christopher Blosser and David Jones" -- Part I; Part II; Part III -- by I. Shawn McElhinney. Rerum-Novarum.

Shawn revisits (and critiques) the thread How Charles Carroll Influenced U.S. Founding Fathers on David Jones' La Nouvelle Theologie Nov. 2, 2005 -- a two-part interview with Scott McDermott on the Catholic Signer of Declaration of Independence , which evolved into a debate over the alleged Masonic membership of the Carroll family (including Daniel Carroll and his brother, John Carroll, appointed first bishop of the United States by Pope Pius VI on 6 November, 1789.

See also John Carroll and the American Founding, another collection of links at Religion & Liberty Nov. 6, 2005.

McElhinney calls into question David Jones' line of reasoning that Bishop Carroll's "resistance to apply this automatic excommunication in the United States is evidence of the close relationship Masonry had with the Carroll family. It would have resulted in his own brother being excommunicated," which he believes to be a rather uncharitable reading of events in light of the historical account of how they occurred.

Latest Archived Issue of Journal of Markets & Morality Vol. 7, No. 2

The contents of the Vol. 7, No. 2, Fall 2004 issue of the Acton Institute's Journal of Markets & Morality have been made available on their website, including much which may be of interest to our readers:

• "The Influence of Kant on Christian Theology: A Debate About Human Dignity and Christian Personalism", an exchange between Derek S. Jeffreys and Robert Kraynak concerning his critique of liberalism, with special attention to Kraynak's use of "Kantianism to caricature and undermine personalism."
• Reviews of Wealth, Poverty and Human Destiny, edited by Doug Bandow and David Schindler; On Ordered Liberty: A Treatise on the Free Society, by Dr. Samuel Gregg;
• "Is There Only Secular Democracy? Imagining Other Possibilities for the Third Millennium", by George Cardinal Pell, an abbreviated version of an address given to the Acton Institute on October 12, 2004.

View the full contents of Vol. 7, No. 2; view the contents of the current issue (available to subscribers). Thanks to Jordan Ballor for the update.

A Prayer for Government, by Bishop John Carroll

A Prayer for Government, by Bishop John Carroll (circa 1791-1798). (Posted to Rerum Novarum by I. Shawn McElhinnney.

NOTE: See also Tracking the Ever-Elusive Neocon, a two-part correspondence with a reader who responded to his inquiry on the subject.

Fr. Neuhaus & Caleb Stegall - A Brief Exchange

Natural Law, the Death Penalty, and Political Theology: An Editorial Response to First Things, by Caleb Stegall. The New Pantagruel Vol. 2, No. 3, Summer 2005. Analyzing the recent correspondence of First Things editor Jody Bottum and editor-in-chief Fr. Richard J. Neuhaus, Caleb Stegall observes a disjuncture of positions:

So what’s going on at First Things? In sum, Bottum contends that accepting the modern state requires the abandonment of any political theology and the concurrent abandonment of natural law in favor of the positive law. Bottum does accept the modern state and therefore is compelled, by intellectual honesty, to abandon man’s experience under nature and within a cosmic narrative, at least in its political form. Neuhaus, on the other hand, contends that to abandon political theology altogether is social suicide, resulting in politics as naked power grabs and constant warfare by other means, and he prescribes as a remedy a renewed attention to natural law.

If it is true that a demythologized modern state has no room for political theology or natural law as Bottum says, and if it is true that a state without a political theology will devolve into raw power politics, either in the open or more likely hidden behind lip service paid to positive law, as Neuhaus says, then the sheer circularity of their contradictory conclusions is dizzying. The fact that Bottum and Neuhaus are so hung up in this intellectual feedback loop is useful for what it reveals: namely, that despite all the valiant efforts of the First Things crew over the years, the modern public square really is naked–which is to say, shorn of any real political theology or mythology–and will always remain so. Better to abandon the liberal project altogether, at which point a penitent, Christian, political theology will again be possible.

Fr. Neuhaus offers a rather curt response here:

Stegall’s is an interesting argument, and he raises a few questions deserving of detailed attention. But that is for another time. Very briefly, what he calls the demythologized modern state is not capable of bearing “the story of the world,” namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ. No state is. That is the mission of the Church. I am not at all sure that we should want the kind of “political theology” that Mr. Stegall apparently has in mind. The goal, rather, is a secular state in a confessional society in which government is democratically held accountable to the moral truth to which the Church bears witness.

While Mr. Bottum and I decline the invitation to fight, it should be noted that the New Pantagruel, while not as Rabelaisian as the title may suggest, is a lively Internet quarterly well worth a look.

(Well, let's hope for more substantial engagements in the future).

Weigel on 'A Realist Sensibility' - Necessity & Caution

A realist sensibility is an essential component of the intellectual furniture of any Christian analyst or practicioner of international politics who would observe, in that dangerous arena, the first principle of sound medicine: first, do no harm. Idealism untethered to an Augustinian sense of the limits of human perfectability can erode into romanticism, and the bill, ultimately, will be paid in human lives and suffering. Neither the defeat of Nazi totalitarianism or the collapse of Marxism-Leninism has invalidated the enduring importance of the realist sensibility.

But realism absolutized carries its own dangers. It can lead to a prematurely foreshortened view of the possible. It can obscure the potential for good that arises from the ideas and activities of individuals and movements who work "off the headlines" of diplomacy and commerce, and whose impact cannnot be readily calculated according to the standard realist weights and measures of military power and economic capability. An absolutist form of realism can bifurcate the worlds of politics and morality by creating the false (and, in classic Catholic moral terms, unacceptable) image of international public life as an "amoral" arena. Finally, by minimizing the fact that, while it is certainly true that man sins, it is equally true that it is man who makes the judgement that he sins, absolute realism can blind itself to the opportunities for incremental improvement in the human condition that do exist because of the tug of conscience.

George Weigel, "Pacem In Terris: The Human Rights Revolution"
From Building a Free Society: Democracy, Capitalism and Catholic Social Teaching
edited by George Weigel, Robert Royal. Eerdmans Pub Co (October 1994).

Thanksgiving 2005

"...WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLIC THANSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:" NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and assign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation..."

From the Thanksgiving Proclamation of George Washington, President of the United States. October 3, 1789. Source: The Massachusetts Centinel, Wednesday, October 14, 1789.

[Thanks to Padre of the "Not So Quiet" Catholic Corner].

"Geneological Jitters"

Geneological Jitters" and "Geneological Jitters Redux", from the blog Endlessly Rocking, on the criticism of modernity or perhaps characterization thereof as a unique event and a look back at a 'golden age' of synthesis.

(Much to ponder -- thanks to Chris Burgwald for recommending this post).