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Pomp and Plainness

Pomp and Plainness

May 22, 2025 | 329 words | Papal Politics, World Economics

The Catholic Church just selected a new Pope, amid much pomp and circumstance.  Some 133 old guys who had achieved the rank of “Cardinal” cast their votes in the Sistine Chapel, one of the world’s most intricately decorated sacred spaces, while dressed in flowing red vestments and matching caps.

Once the ‘winner’ was announced all the participants changed into flowing white vestments with pointy white hats, to formally acknowledge the elevation of one of their own into this new, very demanding role, leading an organization with 1.3 billion members.  As it did for many people around the world, this announcement and the accompanying ceremony brought tears to my eyes.

But the Catholic right in the United States responded with fear and alarm, as reported by Kathryn Joyce in Vanity Fair magazine.  She quotes a variety of ‘traditionalist’ pod casters who are not fooled by Leo XIV’s decision to wear the formal vestments Francis shunned when greeting the multitudes for the first time as Pope from the balcony in St. Peter’s Square.  They don’t care if he will be more amenable to the Latin Mass that Francis was trying to quell near the end of his papacy,

Instead they ruminate about what they feel is a new liberal status quo.  They sense Leo will follow what for them is a heretical path, where the word ‘ecumenicism’ is hijacked to mean all religions will get you to heaven.  They brood over the continued implementation of Amoris Laetitia, Francis’s 2016 apostolic exhortation that opened the door for divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion.

Meanwhile, far away from both the majesty of the Sistine Chapel and the strain of traditionalist complaint, much of the world’s Catholic population contents itself to worship in quite modest structures, amid a daily struggle for one or more of life’s necessities – food, clothing, and shelter.  Things the most ardent conservative podcasters here in the privileged United States already have in abundance, and therefore take for granted.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.

www.robertjcavanaughjr.com

bobcavjr@gmail.com

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Redefining Usury

Redefining Usury

May 21, 2025 | 1,298 words | Papal Politics, World Economics 

Another worth-your-while entry in this overview of the incoming Leo XIV is The New Pope Might Be Somewhat Like The Old Pope, written by Daniel Gibson and published in The New York Times.  In it he gently chides conservatives who fault Francis for sowing confusion among the faithful and surreptitiously undermining established doctrine through ‘synodality.’  He rightly notes the Catholic Church has always changed and is always changing, even though it prefers to classify this activity under the heading of “developing the teaching” and “building on the deposit of faith.”

Mr. Gibson then goes on to observe “Under previous popes more to their liking, the Catholic right demanded that Catholics toe the line on papal pronouncements or be considered bad Catholics.  But now that they find themselves in a church led by popes they disagree with, they are stuck.  They defined dissent as wrong, so it must be the pope who is the bad Catholic.  It’s an awful mess.”

Gibson cites a few big-time examples of this “development” in his article: slavery, religious freedom, and usury.  Most of us immediately recognize the change in official teaching regarding slavery and religious freedom.  Slavery is a no-brainer, while religious freedom, at least as it is sometimes invoked, does still occasionally require some sorting out.  But when was the last time you heard anything about usury?

It’s an old-timey word, a vestige of a long-ago time that no one remembers.  Yet once all faith traditions shared a prohibition against the charging of interest on a loan.  What we have now is a rather mild, modern-day caution against charging of “exorbitant” interest that “unfairly enriches” the lender.  

But who decides what constitutes exorbitant?  Delegated to the legislatures, that determination has been left exposed to lobbying efforts by vested interests (a.k.a. the banking industry).

If ever there was an area in which Catholic social teaching was in dire need of further development, it is this one.  Last we checked, the ancient prohibition once shared by all faiths had evolved into what might be called a clever Christian work-around:  a limited prohibition against charging anything more in interest than what the money lent could be expected to earn if used elsewhere by the lender during the term of the loan.  

But given the widespread speculation in today’s financial markets, how does one determine “anticipated earnings”?

In his book Moral Philosophy published in 1918, Joseph Rickaby describes the early development of mercantile enterprises in relation to usury.  As commerce increased in the great cities five centuries ago, conditions that rendered interest lawful, as apart from usury, presented themselves.  

But things were different outside of those cities because the level of commercial exchange was not as robust.  “Hence the same transaction, as described by the letter of the law, might mean lawful interest in the city, and usury out in the country – the two were so disconnected.”

Rickaby then gives the following view of the development of Catholic practice: “In such a situation the legislator has to choose between forbidding interest here and allowing usury there; between restraining speculation and licensing oppression.  

“The medieval legislator chose the former alternative (restraining speculation).  Church and State together enacted a number of laws to restrain the taking of interest, laws that, like the clothes of infancy, are not to be scorned as absurd restrictions, merely because they are inapplicable now, and would not fit the modern growth of nations.  

“At this day (1918) the State has repealed those laws, and the Church has officially signified that she no longer insists on them.  Still she maintains dogmatically that there is such a sin as usury, and what it is, as defined in the Fifth Council of Lateran (1512-1517).”

*

The conditions or opportunities for usury – as apart from legal interest – have increased exponentially since the publication of Joseph Rickaby’s book Moral Philosophy in 1918.  Consider the introduction of widespread consumer credit, or the murky landscape of international finance.  In their best guise the former enables people of modest means to enjoy more of life’s conveniences, and the latter is an important mechanism for economic growth.

But exorbitant interest rates make it impossible for individuals, or nations, to ever get out from under their debt obligations.  And so it has always been.   

In an attempt to define legal interest as apart from usury, The Fifth Lateran Council that Rickaby refers to in his book decreed that a lender could charge a fee for services rendered, ”provided it is intended exclusively to defray the expenses of those employed and of other things pertaining to the upkeep of the (lending) organizations, and provided that no profit is made therefrom.”

Obviously the phrase “no profit” sounds unduly to our ears, in 2025.  It might help to keep in mind this papal decree was making a distinction between monte di Peita organizations, which in 15th century Italy gave poor people access to loans with moderate interest rates, as an alternative to what was thought to be the usurious money-lending practices associated at the time with Cahorsins and Lombards.

It should also be noted the source of these acceptable loans, the “Mount” in the Mount of Peity, came from voluntary donations by financially privileged people who had no intention of regaining their money.  Which, needless to say, speaks of a unique mindset on the part of those financially privileged individuals.

The contemporary international version of monte di Peita might be ‘micro-lending,’ which seeks to make start-up investment capital available to poor people or nations who otherwise would not have access to such capital.  Which is a good thing.  Except that this capital is being offered at excessively high interest rates, to offset the increased risk of that capital not being paid back.  Which is not such a good thing.

I think most of us would agree that some lending is “predatory” and some loans “unfairly enrich the lender.”  But trying to parse that out is a very sticky wicket.  One the one hand, the Wolves of Wall Street should not be left in charge of watching the hen house.  On the other hand, no one is going back to the Fifth Lateran Council of 1512, expecting that definition of usury to make sense for us today.

So, then, if the Catholic Church is going to “maintain dogmatically” in 2025 that usury is still a destructive force having a deleterious effect, especially on the poor and downtrodden of the world – which by the way is still very much the case – then it needs to up its game.

It is incumbent on the Catholic brain trust to once again utilize the resources of its rich tradition, this time to engage the modern world of complex economic transactions.  It is time for the Catholic Church to define “usury” in the 21st century.

*

We should not allow the concept of usury to be scorned and dismissed out of hand, just because the old understanding of the term no longer applies, and does not fit the modern growth of nations.  The problem remains one of “restraining speculation” (so that people are not taken advantage of), and “licensing oppression’ (which assures that people will be taken advantage of).

Much like regulators at the SEC, who lack the sophistication needed to oversee the wily financiers they are assigned to regulate, economists and finance majors of a Catholic bent need to hit the books and come back with a sharper perception of the corrosive aspects of usury as it is practiced today.  So as to effect positive change for all those of modest means who lack resources and have no leverage whatsoever when negotiating terms.

That the new Pope has selected the name Leo XIV leads me to hope he might add this issue to his already-overloaded agenda.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.

www.robertjcavanaughjr.com

bobcavjr@gmail.com

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The New Pope’s True Colors

The New Pope’s True Colors

May 14, 2025 | 1,334 words | Papal Politics, World Economics 

Having beaten the odds to be selected as the first Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church from the United States, the low-key, little-known Bob Prevost is now an object of the world’s attention, as we all wonder what he will do next as Pope Leo XIV.  

Some are encouraged by Prevost’s decades spent ministering in Peru, as a parish priest and then a bishop, along with his opening pronouncements after being tapped at the conclave.  The unmistakable first impression is that he will advocate on behalf of the world’s poor and downtrodden – and especially on behalf of immigrants – just as his immediate predecessor, the Argentinian-born Francis, did.

Others are heartened by how much more reserved our new Pope seems to be compared to Francis, is not as “charismatic” as some have put it, and will therefore be less inclined to rock the boat or stir the pot.

Traditionalists may be smitten by the new man’s choice of a name, since the previous Leo’s time in the big chair (1878-1903) came well before the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), when they think their church took a dire turn for the worst.  To such believers, anything pre-conciliar is ipso-facto good, while everything post-conciliar is questionable at best.

Then there are the savvy conservatives who were not taken in by the newly elevated pontiff’s measured tone, even for a moment.  They have quickly identified the hey-I-just-got-here Leo XIV as another social justice softie in the vein of Francis, predicting he will be “just another Marxist” in the Vatican.

Of all the hot button cultural issues of the last 60 years that have divided faithful Catholics into bitterly opposed partisan camps, one might say it is the idea of ‘social justice’ that lies at the heart of all the disputes.   And for me what lies at the heart of social justice is economic justice.

This connection was brought home a few years ago by a piece Christopher Manion had published in The Wanderer newspaper.  Mr. Manion was holding forth in a familiar way on how too many Catholics have strayed from the straight and narrow in one well-known form or another.  

In a novel twist, Manion suggested this laxness on the part of the faithful had actually been encouraged over the years by the legislative agenda of the Democratic Party, under the guise of ‘social justice.’  He traced what he saw as this nebulous, hard-to-define concept back to the 1930s and the 12-year reign of FDR, as many before him have done.

But then Christopher Manion pulled a rabbit out of his hat, and informed his readers the root cause of what he considers our contemporary dithering over social issues – at the expense of unencumbered orthodox belief and practice – actually started with Pope Leo XIII, who first introduced the concept of social justice into the lexicon in 1891, with an encyclical entitled Rerum Novarum.

That Latin translates as “On New Things,” or “On Revolutionary Things.”  The document carries the subtitle “On the Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor.”

Mr. Manion is correct, of course, in citing the origin of the phrase.  And, of course, Rerum Novarum is a towering work on the subject of social justice, cast in the much larger framework of economic justice.  It is gratifying to hear and see this document being referenced so much again, now that Leo XIV is stepping into his new job.  Even better would be if anyone was taking the time to read it.  

*

Dan Hitchens reminds us in The Last Modern Pope, recently published in the journal First Things, that the Catholic Church has been in an all-out war with the modern world since 1864, when Pius IX came out with his Syllabus of Errors.  That Pope condemned the notion that “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization.”  I guess for Chrisotpher Manion writing in The Wanderer, Leo XIII made a regrettable concession in that war some 27 years later, in 1891.

But in discussing the importance of the new Pope’s choice of a name, Bishop Robert Barron offers a slightly different take: “When the revolutions in the 18th century happened, and the philosophical revolutions of the 19th century, the (Catholic) Church initially said ‘no’ to much of that.  Leo XIII represented a very nuanced, intelligent engagement with modernity – not caving into it, not saying yes completely, but not saying no – using the resources of our own traditions to engage modernity creatively.  That makes him (Leo XIII) a bridge figure.”

I love Barron’s perspective on this, because I think that’s what every single Pope since Leo XIII has been trying to do.  

One alternative interpretation of the topsy-turvy, back-and-forth Francis years that The Last Modern Pope captures so well in its opening mash-up might go something like this:  

Francis spent his pontificate trying to engage modernity creatively as did his predecessors of the last 150 years.  His formal writings reflect a careful, nuanced approach.  But all that nuance hadn’t gotten through.  Especially when the subject is economic justice.  And especially when the audience are conservatives who refuse to admit free-market capitalism has some rough edges.

In 1961 William Buckley issued a very public rebuke of Pope John XXIII on this score.  Since then, the preferred tactic of Buckley’s acolytes has been to politely reframe what both John Paul II and Benedict XIV wrote on economic matters, to assure one and all that Catholicism is four-square behind the grand American Experiment in “economic freedom.”

Which brings us to Francis, who appears to have made a conscious decision to “amp up” the rhetoric.  I would suggest he may have done this at least in part out of frustration, since nobody had taken the admonitions of his predecessors to heart, specifically as they pertain to economics. 

An example would be his 2015 address in Bolivia.  In a case of exaggeration for the purpose of illustration, Francis declared unfettered capitalism to be the dung of the devil.  We are told he was quoting his favorite Bishop from the 4th century, who at that time had directed his ire more broadly at the pursuit of money, since capitalism was still a millennium away from being invented.

That remark, and many others like it, were taken as unwarranted provocations by Catholics in the United States who follow the Gospel according to The Wall Street Journal, and who are convinced the vexing problem of greed has been solved for all mankind, since it was successfully re-purposed as ‘enlightened self-interest’ by Adam Smith in 1776.

Francis did indeed have a tendency to present himself as the “scourge and critic” of conservative Catholics, as Ross Douthat described him just the other day.  The man had good reason to do so, in my opinion, but a case could be made that perhaps he enjoyed the role of provocateur a little too much at times.  And he did occasionally overshoot the mark.  Like Mr. Douthat, I too thought the sort of last-minute attempt to cancel the Latin Mass amounted to a thoroughly unnecessary – and almost petty – gesture.  

But I guess I gave Francis a wide berth on most everything else, because deep down I was convinced – even with all the unexpected twists and turns – his ultimate objective was worthy:  an earnest, faithful attempt to carry Catholic principles forward and apply them to the modern world, just as his predecessors had tried to do.

Here’s hoping the new Pope will walk through the door the last Pope managed to pry open.  Maybe the First World needed someone ‘noisy’ like Francis to get its collective attention.  And maybe now Leo XIV can follow up with a quieter, more disciplined manner that will yield better results in getting through to conservatives regarding economics.  This is what all Catholic pontiffs have been trying to do since 1891 – get through to the conservative contingent when it comes to their economic behavior.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.

www.robertjcavanaughjr.com

bobcavjr@gmail.com

Use the contact form below to email me.

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Donald “Lonesome Rhoades” Trump

Donald “Lonesome Rhoades” Trump

April 9, 2025 | 802 words | Politics, Vintage Movies

Last month Donald Trump was seen reprimanding the President of Ukraine in a televised sit-own at The White House that was positively cringe-worthy to watch.  He berated the beleaguered foreign leader with remarks such as “you have no cards” and “you should have taken the deal,” as if talking to a recalcitrant child.

This month President Trump is busy trying to re-engineer world trade by way of “shock and awe,” without consulting any of our trading partners.

Say what you will about his second presidential incarnation, but there is certainly no grass growing under Mr. Trump’s feet.

It has been a roller-coaster first three months, providing plentiful grist for the mill of many an esteemed political and social commentator. Amateur and professional observers alike are struggling to understand how things got to this point, how such an individual could have gotten elected not once, but twice, to the highest office in the land.

Allow me to turn your attention to an old movie from the 1950s about the meteoric rise of a crude populist through the power of first radio and then television, and suggest how it might offer up a little window into the bizarre Trump phenomenon we are living through right now.

My local independently-owned film emporium recently featured a showing of A Face in the Crowd, the award-winning 1957 movie written by Budd Schulberg, directed by Elia Kazan, and starring Patricia Neal, Andy Griffith, Walter Matthau, and Tony Franciosa.

At first glance the disheveled two-bit drifter by the name of Larry Rhoads we meet in a backwater jail cell bears no resemblance to the handsome young on-the-rise real estate mogul Donald Trump who first burst onto the society pages in the 1980s.

The movie’s small Southern town boasts a little radio station, and that station has a cub reporter whose job is to uncover local color.  She discovers a drunk Larry Rhoads sleeping it off in a jail cell, shoves a microphone in his face and gives him a chance to sing a song, and maybe spout off a little.  Our down-on-his-luck protagonist comes to life and we are introduced to a natural born story teller full of folk wisdom that goes down easy with the listening audience.

Patricia Neal’s cub reporter christens Andy Griffiths’ character “Lonesome Rhoads,” and the branding begins.  He is a ratings star, and it’s not long before an advertiser wants to move the radio program to a larger market (nearby Memphis) and sponsor Mr. Rhoads folksy diatribes.

Lonesome has an uncanny ability to read any room and knows where his bread is buttered.  His relationships are all strictly transactional, as we say today.  When a hot shot young ad man (Tony Franciosa) offers to bring the Lonesome Rhoads act to New York City and to television, our small-town hero is able to adapt, and he soon extends his appeal to a national audience.

Before long captains of industry are seeking his sage advice on how to appeal to the common man and increase their market share in the process.  A veteran politician who eyes a presidential run is introduced to Mr. Rhoads by a wealthy doner, and Lonesome schools this man on how elections are now going to be won or lost on television, and how he – the veteran politician – needs to loosen up and let his hair down, so as to broaden his appeal among the common folk.

Mind you this script was written a few years before the infamous Nixon-Kenndey televised debates, where Nixon went on to lose a close race after coming off as uptight and extremely uncomfortable in front of the camera.

The script is prescient on a number of fronts, not least of which is how unreliable and unstable our political life has become in an age when public opinion is so easily manipulated.

In the movie, the hero we initially root for as he rises through the ranks through endearing blend of charm, native intelligence, and force of will eventually falls from grace and loses his mass appeal.  And he loses our sympathy, too, as the story reveals him to be someone with no moral core, who doesn’t believe in anything beyond ratings.  

Lonesome Rhoads is eventually overwhelmed by fame and it corrupts him.  He turns into a megalomanic and becomes cynical.  He takes the little people who gave him his popularity for granted.  Once that cynicism is exposed, his time at the top is over.  

The movie ends in the middle of the night, with our hero screaming his slogans from a balcony to an empty room below, with an applause machine going off on cue.  The proto-typical echo chamber.  It remains to be seen how the Donald Trump story will end, but the vintage film A Face in the Crowd may have pointed the way.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.

www.robertjcavanaughjr.com

bobcavjr@gmail.com

Use the contact form below to email me.

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On Electoral Mandates

On Electoral Mandates

Jan 6, 2025 | 597 words | Politics 

80-year-old James Carville is a veteran Democrat political operative from Louisiana who just published a little post-mortem on this past November’s tumultuous presidential election, in which he offers some tips on how his party can win back those all-important swing voters who recently strayed.

It is all good practical advice, but towards the end he indulges in what strikes me as a demonization of the opposition.  He wants to see Democrats regain legislative power, because Republicans are a scourge upon the nation.

52-year-old Mike Johnson is a Republican congressman from Louisiana who just narrowly retained his position as Speaker of the House.  After the close vote, during which two or three radical right-wing congressional hold-outs decided to support him at the last possible moment, Mr. Johnson spoke of getting on with the people’s business.  He wants to implement President Trump’s America First agenda, replacing what he described as the outgoing administration’s America Last policies.  The quote I heard went something like, “Those policies were a failure, and they need to be buried.”

I get that our two major political parties see things differently and have different priorities when it comes to legislation and tending to the common good.  But why does the language we use to discuss these differences have to be so adversarial so much of the time?

This unwarranted combativeness expresses itself every time an election winner describes their triumph as a mandate, which is then put forth as a repudiation of everything the outgoing office-holder stood for. 

But that is hardly ever the case.  Landslide elections are few and far between these days.  More often than not, things are split pretty much right down the middle.

This past November Donald Trump received 77,303,573 votes to Kamala Harris’ 75,019,257 votes.  That translates into 49.9% of the vote for Trump, and 48.4% of the vote for Harris.

Here in Pennsylvania the Senate race was even tighter.  Good guy three-term Democrat Senator Bob Casey, Jr. garnered 48.6% of the votes cast, while the Republican challenger Dave McCormick topped him with 48.8% of the vote.

With a race that close, it feels as if just enough people wanted to turn the page on the perfectly acceptable politician they were used to for the last 18 years, and give a new individual a shot behind the wheel.  It almost boils down to a whim, which is why I am not quite as enamored of democracy and the “democratic process” as I am supposed to be.

The first rule of marketing is to differentiate what you are selling from what a competitor is also trying to sell.  The objective is to tout the benefits and advantages of your product, without necessarily dragging your competitor’s product through the mud.  In fact, it’s best if you can make a case for your product without mentioning the competition at all.

But human nature being what it is, politicians and their handlers and consultants often resort to broad caricatures of an opponent’s policy proscriptions.  This is known as “going negative” in the trade, and it can be very effective in firing up the electorate and increasing voter turnout.  It amounts to a cynical variation on the tried-and-true rule of broadcast journalism – if it bleeds, it leads.   And so it goes, on and on.

I am convinced James Carville and Mike Johnson (and Donald Trump and Kamala Harris) both have the best interests of the country at heart.  If only they could exert some added discipline when articulating their positions, so as to avoid painting the other side as being sent here from Hell.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.

www.robertjcavanaughjr.com

bobcavjr@gmail.com

Use the contact form below to email me.

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Doctrinal vs. Pastoral

Doctrinal vs. Pastoral

Dec 24, 2024 | 784 words | Religious Politics 

If you style yourself a secularist who shuns organized religion, you may not have a rooting interest in the great debate that rages within sectarian circles: whether it is better to be doctrinally pure, or pastorally sensitive.  From what I can gather this is an active source of tension in most every faith tradition.

It boils down to that age-old choice management types and administrators have had to make in trying to maintain order up and down the ranks – stick to the letter of the law and let the chips fall where they may, or step back occasionally to suss out what might be called the spirit of the law, in an attempt to ameliorate certain controversial situations in a somewhat less severe manner.

The wisest men and women among us, some of whom we have come to identify as saints or mystics, find a way to do both simultaneously.  Or come as close as possible to doing both, given the constraints of our intrinsically flawed human nature.

(King Solomon in the Old Testament being one historical example of wisdom-in-action that springs to mind.)

In the Catholic tradition, which is the one I have signed onto, we have come to set up this doctrinal/pastoral dichotomy up as a stark contrast between “teaching the faith” and “preaching the Gospel,” and we indulge in a parlor game of grading our Popes on this adversarial curve.  

But how can you teach the faith if you are not also preaching the Gospel?  And how can you preach the Gospel without teaching the faith?

The late Pope Benedict is viewed as an exemplary teacher of the faith by those who admire what they take to be his doctrinal integrity, while being found somewhat lacking in pastoral skills by others who say they appreciate a more nuanced approach.

Pope Francis, who at first glance gives the impression of specializing in being pastoral, drives those who held Benedict in high esteem up a wall.  Commentators I respect have gone on record as saying “Francis will be judged by history as having failed to teach the faith,” an assessment I find to be utterly preposterous.

There are many ways to be authentically Catholic, just as I imagine there are probably many ways to practice any faith tradition.  As a Christian, I follow a God-made-man of many moods and colors, who chased the money lenders from the Temple in what comes across as a fit of pique, but who also unfurled the gentle Beatitudes to an attentive crowd gathered on a grassy hillside.

His admirers see Benedict as ardently chasing the money-lenders, while fans of Francis see him as promulgating the Beatitudes.  Is one Pope more-or-less Catholic than the other? Many Catholics today seem to think so.

I loved Benedict, thought he was plenty pastoral in what he wrote, and felt he got a bad rap as a hard-ass and a doctrinal Nazi.

I love Francis, think he is doctrinally sound in what he writes, and feel he has been written off as a “loose cannon” by different people for different reasons.  Some don’t appreciate his non-stop reference to Third World realities, and see in those references an unapologetic critique of our comfortable First World sensibilities.

Others consider themselves strict originalists who believe the Ten Commandments and all other Church teaching need only be applied in a consistent manner, with no interpretation required.  This belies the fact this teaching has been undergoing unrestrained development for over two thousand years.

Some see the great threat of the present moment as one of acquiescence, with Francis guilty of the unforgivable sin of fudging unalterable doctrine to suit the times.  Such a concept is anathema to “trad” Catholics (and to me, too, by the way), and they deplore a wishy-washy implementation of Church teaching.

But I see the present moment as part of a larger, much richer and more diverse tapestry.  For me the big picture comes into focus when we acknowledge our human nature as intrinsically flawed, which means our understanding of what Christ was trying to tell us in the first place, two thousand years ago, is always going to require continual refinement.

I wish we could all get past what strikes me as a false dichotomy of either fearfully clinging to tradition or bravely embracing progress.  We don’t automatically know better than our religious ancestors and therefore should not be too be quick to change course, just because we are here now and boast the best of intentions.  

But let’s also realize those ancestors didn’t necessarily get everything right, either, even though they may have been trying their darndest to do so, and no doubt believed the angels were on their side.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.

www.robertjcavanaughjr.com

bobcavjr@gmail.com

Use the contact form below to email me.

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