The Christian Review 2018

Senator Feinstein, Is There Anything You Won’t Say or Do?

Deal W. Hudson

September 24, 2018

Dear Sen. Dianne Feinstein, I am writing to you to ask a simple question, Is there anything, morally speaking, you just would not do? I ask because what you are doing to Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court nominee is something I could never do, no matter how much I detested a liberal court nominee.

‘What did I do? you ask.

You introduced an allegation about Kavanaugh in the last days of a long Senate integration. This allegation of Prof. Ford was known to you since July! Why did you wait so long to “bring it in as evidence?” Basic fairness to both parties required you to bring to light right away. No, you waited until neither parties would be able to speak to the issue. I can only conclude you deliberately inserted the allegation to derail Kavanaugh’s nomination and, in the process, ruin his reputation, traumatize his wife and children, and dishonor your sworn oath as a U.S. Senator:

I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

Your withholding of so-called evidence against Brett Kavanaugh for several months is a clear violation of your promise to “well and faithfully discharge” your duties as a Senator.

So I ask you again, Senator Feinstein, how were you able to act in a way that most people would consider morally repugnant, even at first glance?

That you were able to do this tells me that you have no real moral conscience — your actions are guided purely by political outcomes. Facts do not matter; procedural fairness does not matter; slander and calumny do not matter; all that matters to you is your advancement — a tough reelection is coming up — and the advancement of the Democratic Party’s agenda.

For you, Senator Feinstein, getting the results you want is your only ‘moral compass.’ Do you realize what kind of person that makes you? Do it even matter to you that you have sold your soul as clearly as if you had met Beelzebub in Daniel Webster’s farmhouse. You’ve made yourself into the stereotype of the corrupt politician directors like Frank Capra made movies about. Remember, Jimmy Stewart in Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). You were six years old when that film was released.

You remember that film, don’t you, Senator Feinstein? You might remember the famous scene of Jefferson Smith’s (Stewart) filibuster when he said:

Get up there with that lady that’s up on top of this Capitol dome, that lady that stands for liberty. Take a look at this country through her eyes if you really want to see something. And you won’t just see scenery; you’ll see the whole parade of what Man’s carved out for himself, after centuries of fighting. Fighting for something better than just jungle law, fighting so’s he can stand on his own two feet, free and decent, like he was created, no matter what his race, color, or creed. That’s what you’d see. There’s no place out there for graft, or greed, or lies, or compromise with human liberties. . . . And it’s not too late, because this country is bigger than the Taylors, or you, or me, or anything else. Great principles don’t get lost once they come to light. They’re right here; you just have to see them again!

This country is bigger than you, Senator Feinstein, in spite of your attempt, along with your collaborators, to drag it through your mud of lies and deceptions. Whether this good man, Brett Kavanaugh, is confirmed or not this country will not belong to you or the likes of you. Why? Because Frank Capra knew something about America you don’t — we have plenty of people who deal in corruption and self-aggrandizement but they are gradually mown down by the deeply-rooted decency of the American people, decency that does not depend on political affiliation.

I will understand if you don’t answer this letter, Senator. We all know why you are fighting without honesty or honor — It’s all about abortion, isn’t it, Senator? It’s all about protecting your supposed right to kill innocent children in the womb.

From this perspective, Senator, knowing your bottom line, I suppose I should not be surprised at all. In being a long-time, a militant supporter of abortion you destroyed your conscience long ago — so, why not try to ruin the life of a good man his family while spreading toxic scurvy tall through our public discourse. For you and your collaborators, nothing is more important than continuing to kill babies. There’s no place in your world for the likes of Jefferson Smith or any other honest man or woman.

When Catholics Lost Their Cultural Clout — A Lesson for Today

Deal W. Hudson

September 21, 2018

Catholics of my generation probably only dimly remember, if at all, the furor provoked among Catholics by films in the 1950s directed by Luis Buñuel, Los Olivados (1950); Roberto Rossellini, The Miracle (1951); Otto Preminger, The Moon is Blue (1953); Elia Kazan, Baby Doll (1956); Roger Vadim, And God Created Woman (1956); and Billy Wilder, Some Like It Hot (1959).

Most people to think of today’s “culture wars” began in the 60s — Vietnam War protests, Hippies, and Nixon’s Watergate — but the tremors of that struggle can be traced back to the postwar period when major filmmakers decided to free themselves from the bonds of the Catholic-inspired Motion Picture Production Code that had governed Hollywood productions since 1930.

It was Hollywood’s fear of Catholic opinion that led to the creation of the Code in the first place. Martin Quigley, a Catholic layman and film writer, had been pushing for such a code since the early 20s. He asked Rev. Daniel Lord, S.J, of St. Louis University to draft something for moguls at Warner Brothers, MGM, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, and RKO. Father Lord had already been a technical advisor to Cecil B. DeMille for his silent film version of King of Kings (1927). What Father Lord draftedis far from a puritanical screed. Though it does set definite limits on what films can show on the screen, especially about sex, the MPPC is highly sophisticated in a way that reflected the work of a deeply educated and aesthetically sensitive Jesuit.

The major studios, however, assumed they could play fast and loose with the Code’s requirements, but Catholics, in particular, did not let them get it away with ignoring it. The National Legion of Decency was founded by Catholics in 1933 to fight against the immoral influence of Hollywood films, which, it must be said, were challenging the moral boundaries of mainstream America. That led to the hiring in 1934 of another Catholic layman, Joseph Breen, to head of a new Production Code Office. (The films between 1930 to 1933 are now called the “Pre-Code” era mainly due to the sex, homosexuality, lesbianism, and unredeemed violence that they portrayed.)

Breen had to approve every script before it went into production which gave him considerable power. Breen himself was neither a prude nor an unreasonable man, but producers, directors, screenwriters, and actors naturally grew weary of his ‘censorship.’ One magazine wrote in 1936 that Breen had “more influence in standardizing world thinking than Mussolini, Hitler, or Stalin.”

The power of the Production Code Office held sway through the end of WWII. As the “Mad Men” decade of the 50s began, filmmakers began to challenge Breen, the Code, the power of the National Legion of Decency. The first direct challenge came from the Italian director, Roberto Rossellini and the U.S. film distribution company that brought to film to be screened in New York City.

It was 1950, Rossellini’s film, The Miracle (Il Miracolo) opened at the Paris Theater, on 58th just west of 5th Avenue, one of the oldest ‘art houses’ in the United States. The National Legion of Decency denounced the film as “anti-Catholic” and a “blasphemous mockery of Christian-religious truth,” giving it the C rating — signifying “condemned” — a judgment that was previously feared by Hollywood studios. The Legion’s rating led the New York State Board of Regents, in charge of film censorship, to revoke its license to be shown in movie theaters.

Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York never saw the film but issued a statement to be read at every Mass in every parish of the New York Archdiocese. He condemned it as “a despicable affront to every Christian” and “a vicious insult to Italian womanhood,” eliciting demonstrations in front of the theater where it was being shown. The protesters carried signs which read, “This Picture Is an Insult to Every Decent Woman and Her Mother,” “Don’t Be a Communist,” and “Don’t Enter the Cesspool.” Nine years earlier, Cardinal Spellman’s public condemnation of Greta Garbo’s Two-Faced Woman (1941) had caused MGM to withdraw and re-release an edited version.

But a sea-change had occurred in American culture following World War II, and the movie’s distributor Joseph Burstyn, sensing this, initiated a lawsuit that made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, the Court ruled the film’s artistic expression was guaranteed by the First Amendment — freedom of speech. At the same time, the Court’s decision overthrew legal precedents going back to 1915 that allowed the public censorship of films.

The Supreme Court decision marked not only an end to the power of the Code but was also a sign that the cultural clout of Catholics was coming to an end. However, by putting it so bluntly, I don’t want to be misleading. It was a certain kind of clout, a form of Catholic Puritanism, that was defeated.

The sophistication seen in the original Code written by Rev. Daniel Lord, S.J., had been turned into a fear-driven attempt of the Legion to act as parents looking out for a nation of impressionable children. In doing so, the Legion’s condemnations showed no appreciation of, or respect for, film as an art form, in the manner contained in Rev. Lord’s original Code.

It was by “crying wolf” too often about artistically important, well-made films, the Legion and its supporters became irrelevant. These denunciations were based not on seeing the actual films but what was read about them. Thus, a simple, one-sentence summary of The Miracle, certainly makes the condemnation sound plausible: “A poor shepherdess named Nanni who believes herself to be the Virgin Mary is seduced with liquor drink by a wanderer whom she thinks is St. Joseph.”

Yet, after viewing the film itself, one Catholic critic called The Miracle a story of “unregenerating suffering.” What is still considered a consummate performance by Anna Magnani, as a “holy fool,” demonstrates how easy it is to caricature in verbal terms what is far more complex when seen on the screen. As was mentioned, Cardinal Spellman never saw the film about which he required all his priests to read a statement from their pulpits.

It should be added that the same year, 1950, Roberto Rossellini made what is arguably the best film ever made about the life of St. Francis, The Flowers of St. Francis (Francesco, giullare di Dio). Also co-written with Fellini, the film about St. Francis was called, in l995 by the Vatican, one of the 45 greatest films ever made.

The moral of the story? Catholics lose cultural influence when they act like parental arbiters of public taste, especially when they refuse to acknowledge excellence in works of art they find somehow objectionable or dangerous.

Less than a decade after the furor over Rossellini’s film, the United States would elect its first Catholic president, and during the same period a number of Catholic writers would become celebrated among the elites of the literati, including Flannery O’Connor, J. F. Powers, Graham Green, Muriel Spark, Thomas Merton, Walker Percy, and Paul Horgan. All of these writers would not have passed the scrutiny of those at the National Legion of Decency.

Merely contrasting the work of these celebrated Catholic writers with the narrow Catholic mentality behind the condemnation of films by Buñuel, Rossellini, Preminger, Vadim, Kazan, and Wilder provides a lesson that many Catholics, 67 years later, have still not yet learned.

Washington Post Praise for McCarrick in 2014 Contains an Ironic Comment by Pope Francis

Deal W. Hudson

September 4, 2018

When Pope Francis refused to comment on the letter by Archbishop Vigano enumerating his cover-up of ex-Cardinal’s sexual abuse, the public was bemused, if not angered. Now the Holy Father has explained the reason for his refusal — it’s too mystical to talk about.

In his Monday homily at Casa Santa Marta, Pope Francis pronounced, “the truth is humble, the truth is silence.” At first glance, this is strange comment given the issues at hand — charges he ignored the criminal past of McCarrick and sanctions imposed by Pope Benedict XVI that McCarrick that end his public ministry.

How can the truth be ‘silence’ on these charges? Pope Francis either did, or his didn’t know about McCarrick’s actions.

Yet, Pope Francis goes further, he identifies this claim with the virtue of humility — “truth is humble.” What is he recommending here? Perhaps he believes that anyone possessing truth should never express it publicly? He may have in mind the humility described by St. Thomas Aquinas, which, “Consists in keeping oneself within one’s own bounds, not reaching out to things above one, but submitting to one’s superior” (Summa Contra Gent., bk. IV, ch. lv.).

However, Pope Francis would be contradicting himself according to St. Thomas — his notion of humility would imply the Pope does not know if Vigano’s charges are true or not. The Pope, however, would not not be going outside of “one’s bounds” in addressing the charges: Pope Francis knows the answers, and he won’t say anything about them. Why? Because, presumably, the truth is humble and silent.

Even more strange is how the Pope concocted his description of truth from Luke 4:16-30. In this passage, Jesus begins his ministry by visiting the Synagogue in Nazareth where he reads a passage from Isaiah and concludes, “This day is fulfilled this scripture in your ears, adding, “ Amen I say to you, that no prophet is accepted in his own country.” When the crowd was angered and wanted to throw him out of the city, “he passed through the midst of them and went away.”

The passage does not mention Jesus’s silence, rather Pope Francis infers it and bases his entire commentary on it. In doing so, the Pope is comparing himself to Jesus under attack for his claim that he represents the prophecy of Isaiah. How is that a fair comparison? In the passage from Luke, Jesus had just proclaimed the truth about himself — he did not remain silent, he spoke the truth aloud, and it provoked the anger against him!

Yet, Pope Francis ignores what Jesus said and focusses on his supposed silence after he had spoken to those in the Temple. The Pope, evidently, thinks Jesus was able to pass “through the midst of them” because he remained silent. Didn’t those in the Temple just see him and identify him while he was speaking? “Isn’t he Joseph’s son?”

It doesn’t make any sense to credit a supposed silence for Jesus getting away from the crowd when it was his speaking that aroused the crowd in the first place. Clearly, for Jesus Christ, the truth is NOT found in silence.

So what does Pope Francis really mean? Those familiar with the Catholic traditions of spirituality will know that ‘silence’ has a privileged place. As with the celebrated “silence” of St. Thomas, it denotes that boundary between what the mind can grasp, conceptual, and discuss and the supernatural reality that exceeds its power.

St. Thomas Aquinas stopped working on his Summa Theologiae after telling his longtime secretary Reginald of Piperno, “After what I have seen today I can write no more: for all that I have written is but straw.”

Remaining in silence about what lies beyond the power of the mind, about a vision of the Divine, is revered in the tradition of Christian, and non-Christian, mysticism.

What do the facts about the McCarrick scandal have to do with mysticism, with the silence provoked by an encounter with the supernatural? Pope Francis’s attempt to play a mystical trump card would be laughable if it were not so pathetic.

One can imagine those hearing it on Monday at the Casa Santa Marta: the groupies present would start tearing up, others would scratch there heads, while others would be thinking, “How can he equate an experience of God with the facts about McCarrick’s sexual abuse of young men and boys?”

What’s next? Will all Catholic clergy be given the command – “the truth is silence” – regarding Archbishop Vigano’s letter about Pope Francis?

From 2002 — Washington Post Calls Cardinal McCarrick, ‘Vatican’s Man of the Hour’

Deal W. Hudson

July 25, 2018

I am posting this article from the Washington Post as a reminder of how Cardinal McCarrick took hold of drafting the sexual abuse policy adopted by the U.S. Bishops at their June 2002 meeting. I have bolded some of the more interesting observations made by the authors, Carlyle Murphy and Alan Cooperman — about McCarrick’s ‘zero tolerance policy’; his ‘not tainted by scandal’ record; his filling the ‘leadership vacuum’; and how he would want ‘wiggle room’ in cases where the victim was not a child but an adolescent.’ The remainder speaks for itself as well.

Deal Hudson, Publisher/Editor, The Christian Review.

Vatican’s Man of the Hour

By Caryle Murphy and Alan Cooperman

Washington Post, April 28, 2002

Resplendent in their red hats and elegant black robes, the American cardinals stepped into the Roman sunshine and swept down the stairs of the fortresslike Pontifical North American College. Most passed in silence before a gaggle of TV crews and boarded a shuttle bus to their next meeting.

Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick was in no hurry, however. On a shady patch of grass off to one side, the 71-year-old Washington archbishop chatted amiably with reporters last Tuesday. After a half-hour, his press secretary gently stepped in to warn him that he had to move on — or he might miss the bus.

At a time when many leaders of the U.S. Roman Catholic Church have been criticized as arrogant, secretive and uncaring, McCarrick has given the scandal-battered institution what it so badly needs: an attractive public face.

Assuming the role of leading spokesman for the U.S. cardinals during their meetings with Pope John Paul II on the sexual abuse crisis, McCarrick came across to many as candid, compassionate and committed to strong reform. In one interview after another, he spoke of a uniform national policy of “zero tolerance” toward priests who molest minors.

“I think he has emerged as a national leader, and I thought his voice was the most sensible voice,” said Scott Appleby, director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame. “He does get it, and he understands the depth of the problem and the need to address it transparently. . . . If his style of leadership were emulated, I think the church would be in better shape.”

But at times it seemed that McCarrick’s public outspokenness was greater than his influence behind the scenes. A few hours after he told journalists that the U.S. cardinals had agreed on a “one strike you’re out” policy toward priests who abuse children, the cardinals issued a final communique that did not go that far. And though he was one of the four men who drafted the communique, McCarrick did not seem to realize, until a reporter pointed it out, that the document did not contain any reference to lay involvement in disciplinary decisions.

“We had it in there last night, but words are in and words are out,” he said, momentarily flustered. “We certainly want to tell the laity they must have a role.”

McCarrick’s political skills will be put to the test over the next six weeks. He will be actively involved in drafting proposals on sexual abuse policy that will be presented to the nation’s nearly 300 active bishops at their June 13-15 meeting in Dallas. The bishops’ challenge will be to adopt a policy tough enough to satisfy Catholics angry about past leniency toward priestly abuse, yet acceptable to Vatican officials who are protective of priests’ due process rights.

McCarrick, a former university president who speaks five languages, arrived in Washington 16 months ago after serving 14 years as archbishop of Newark. Although the Rome summit gave him a new prominence, he is a veteran of politically sensitive missions. The New York-born prelate has made Vatican-sponsored trips to China, Vietnam and Eastern Europe, among other places, and he has been an advocate for the church on human rights, religious freedom and Third World debt relief.

While in Newark, he also won favor with the pope by ordaining more priests than any other U.S. bishop. And he has been a prolific fundraiser, demonstrating an ease with the rich as well as the poor.

At last week’s meeting of the U.S. cardinals, McCarrick filled a leadership vacuum. Traditionally, the most influential voices in that group have been those of the most senior U.S. cardinal, currently Boston’s Cardinal Bernard F. Law, and the archbishop of New York, now Cardinal Edward M. Egan.

But Law and Egan are embroiled in the sexual abuse scandal, facing criticism for failing to report priests’ misconduct to civil authorities and for shuttling the priests from one parish to another. Another prominent cardinal, Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, riled the Vatican just before the summit by calling for a reconsideration of mandatory celibacy for priests.

By contrast, McCarrick does not question papal doctrine. He is a staunch defender of celibacy and the male-only priesthood. He is effusive in his praise of the pope. And he has not been tainted by the scandal.

When he arrived in Washington, the archdiocese had stringent child sexual abuse policies that had been in place for several years. They require the reporting of allegations to police and immediate suspension of the accused from priestly duties. As archbishop of Newark, McCarrick instituted similar policies there in the early 1990s.

Before that, as bishop of New Jersey’s Metuchen Diocese, McCarrick allowed a priest from Boston who had pleaded guilty to raping an altar boy to work in Metuchen parishes for seven years. McCarrick said he had been assured by the Boston archdiocese and by medical personnel that the priest was rehabilitated. The priest was not accused of sexual misconduct again. In a recent interview, McCarrick said he “would never” agree today to accept such a priest.

Although McCarrick achieved his visibility at the Rome summit in part by default, his folksy style and affable personality also played a part.

“He’s got a winsome way about him,” said the Rev. James Coriden, who teaches at Washington Theological Union, a Catholic seminary in Northwest Washington. “He’s articulate, cheery . . . and he speaks in ordinary human language, not like a lawyer. He sounds like a pastor.”

Part of McCarrick’s charm is his self-effacement. “It’s the dumb ones who give a lot of interviews,” he said last week of his propensity to talk with the news media. “I believe in the ultimate goodness of people, including the press.”

The five-point program that McCarrick wants the U.S. bishops to adopt in June includes reporting all allegations of child sexual abuse to civil authorities; placing the accused priest on administrative leave pending an investigation; having the priest undergo therapeutic evaluation; caring for the victim; and appointing a review board of lay people to advise the bishop on the priest’s future.

Yet while urging a policy of zero tolerance last week, McCarrick also sought some flexibility on that issue, introducing what some may see as necessary nuance and others as wiggle room.

McCarrick said he supports zero tolerance for future instances of abuse. But, like many bishops, he left open the possibility that some priests accused of abuse in the past might be allowed to remain in ministry if the incident took place long ago and there had been no whiff of misconduct since. He also suggested that some leniency might be appropriate if the victim was an adolescent rather than a small child.

“If the person has been diagnosed as a pedophile, goodbye. But if he hasn’t been diagnosed as a pedophile and if there have been no other incidents, do you say, ‘One strike you’re out’? I don’t know the answer to that,” McCarrick said. He added that in such cases, he would pray for guidance and “talk to the laity.”

McCarrick could well have been describing a recent case in his own archdiocese. Last month, Monsignor Russell L. Dillard, the popular pastor of St. Augustine Roman Catholic Church in Northwest Washington, was placed on administrative leave after a woman accused him of having a romantic relationship with her almost 20 years ago when she was a teenager. McCarrick has not decided Dillard’s future.

McCarrick’s high profile in Rome last week was evident to his flock, the half-million Catholics living in the District and five Maryland counties that make up the Washington Archdiocese.

“Hey, what about Theodore McCarrick? I tell you, he’s front and center!” said Andy Ellis, a spokesman for the Prince George’s County police and a Catholic. “I think it’s a positive thing.”

Although there was some griping among Newark’s 1.4 million Catholics that McCarrick spent too much time traveling and was perhaps too close to the rich and glamorous, those complaints have not followed him to Washington. In his brief tenure so far, he has won points with priests for asking their advice and showing his appreciation of their work, sometimes telephoning them to pass on a compliment. He also has made it a goal to visit every parish, hitting two or three on many Sundays.

Within weeks of his installation in January 2001, McCarrick hosted a dinner at his home for newly arrived President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura. The archbishop demonstrated his political savvy, noted one observer, by also inviting to the dinner the then-president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“The really important thing to say about Theodore is that he is a collegial fellow,” said the Rev. Raymond Kemp of the Woodstock Theological Center in Washington. “He is a great believer . . . that all the guys together will make more sense out of this than a few cardinals.”

McCarrick’s performance in Rome was not without blemishes. He used a poor turn of phrase while describing the pope’s love for children, saying that “the Holy Father is turned on by children.”

“I didn’t know whether to cringe or laugh,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, editor of the Catholic magazine America. “But when people see him on TV, they say, ‘This is an honest man who is answering the questions that are given to him to the best of his ability.’ “

Bishop Gracida Calls Excommunication Over Immigration Policy “Scandalous”

Deal W. Hudson

June 20, 2018

In a radio interview taped today with me, Bishop Rene Henry Gracida, Bishop Emeritus of Corpus Christi, sharply criticized comments made by Bishop Edward Weisenburger of Tuscon regarding canonical penalties for civil servants implementing present immigration policy.

“It’s scandalous for the bishop to say that! They did not write the law but are enforcing it….it’s absurd and it’s idiotic.”

In the early 1970s, Bishop Gracida was appointed Chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on Migration and Tourism with the responsibility for overseeing the work of the large Migration and Refugee Services Department of the N.C.C.B. During his spent 14 years in that position, he worked with both the United States and Mexican governments, and their border patrols, on immigration reform — “to relieve the suffering of people crossing the deserts led by ‘coyotes.’”

He knows what he is talking about.

Bishop Gracida went on to say that Catholics must recognize, first of all, that the “current administration is charged with enforcing laws passed by President Obama.” Neither the Trump Administration nor the GOP has passed any immigration laws, he added.

This above is only a portion of what Bishop Gracida had to say about the present controversy over immigration. The conversation naturally turned to the issue of abortion which he said had become “toxic” among his fellow bishops.

My interview with Bishop Gracida on ‘Church and Culture‘ will be broadcast on the Ave Maria Radio Network this Saturday at 3 pm and Sunday at 7 am.

Prepare for some straight talk!

Remembering My Father — How John Wayne Grew Old

Deal W. Hudson

June 6, 2018

He was the strongest man I ever knew. He had will-power of iron. The doctor said to stop smoking. After that day he never smoked another cigarette. Years later a different doctor banned alcohol—not another drink passed his lips for more than thirty years. Of all the money he inherited from his mother and aunt, not a penny of these assets was spent on himself; all of it was saved and reinvested for his three children. Heart failure and a stroke put him in a hospital bed. I went to his bedside in Houston, where I cut up his dinner and placed it in his mouth, piece by piece.

I guess you could call my dad part of the Saving Private Ryan generation. Fresh out of Texas in his early twenties, a captain in the Army Air Corps, he flew his missions over Germany and Yugoslavia and, I was told by my mother, never lost a man. Dad never talked about the war, but over the years it became clear his soul had suffered much from the experience. After seeing the Spielberg movie, and listening to the reaction of many World War II veterans, it was also clearly an emotional catharsis of sorts had been long overdue for them.

I took the occasion of that film for my daughter, Hannah, and I to interview him about his war experience. Dad seemed finally ready to talk about those years where every morning these young men wondered if they would survive another day. No wonder, he said, they all learned how to drink, pretty hard. His best story was about his plane being shot down in Yugoslavia and the local women who hid the flyers in hay wagons until they were rescued.

I already knew that story because a few months earlier providence had arranged for Dad to play golf with my friend and Crisis supporter, the late Jim Matthews. On the 18th hole, I noticed that Jim and my father were still on the tee by the time I reached my ball in the fairway. When they arrived at the green, I asked why they were dragging behind. My father looked up from the ground with a look on his face I had never seen. “Remember that story about being picked up after being shot down in Yugoslavia? Jim, was the pilot of that plane.” The last few words were almost inaudible because my father, this strong man, was choking with emotion.

Age did not diminish Dad’s will-power. In the summer of 1998, I went to Rockport, Maine, to play with him in a two-day golf tournament at the local country club. This had become a yearly ritual for us—we had never played that well but we knew we were running out of time, and we were determined to make a good showing.

Dad was 78 that summer but still a solid mid-80s player. He loved to make putts under pressure. After making them, he would almost dance to the hole to pick up the ball.

After the first day’s scramble format, we were in the lead. We always liked scrambles, where you pick the best shot and play from there since I usually drove well and Dad has always been an extraordinary putter. The second day was the best-ball of our twosome, meaning we choose the best of our two scores in each hole. I played well for about 13 holes but then started to fall apart. My trusty driver was letting me down. We knew we were probably in the lead for the championship flight but could not afford a single bad hole.

To this day I have no idea how he summoned the strength. While I looked for my lost game, Dad parred the last five holes, making all the putts required of him. We had been teaming together since I was eleven, and now father and son had finally won a golf tournament.

Two weeks later, at a hospital in Houston, my father was told he suffered from congestive heart failure, and his heart was pumping only 20 percent of the blood his body needed. How did he do it at Rockport? These men from ‘the greatest generation’ had guts, a courage acquired in the midst of the ultimate self-sacrifice — fighting against tyranny that threated the freedom of nations and peoples, country, a cause that outweighed their need for home, family, and their very lives.

Many readers, I am sure, have been down this road of watching a father, or a mother, become child-like through the ravages of age and disease. I was once told losing a father is like standing in a clearing where all of a sudden the last row of trees are blown away and you feel a storm smacking you in the face. I have gone back to that image many times to understand the strange reversal of roles. My father died not long after, I felt the force of the wind rising against me.

At his burial service in Austin, I felt conflicted because my admiration for my father was mixed with bitterness over years of conflict with him over finances and my choice of occupation. Much to my regret, my eulogy did not do him justice. I described his ‘toughness’ more as a rebuke of how he treated me than the making of a man who was born in the Depression, who lost his father at age 12, who loved breaking horses, who was part of the Corps at Texas A&M, and who captained a B-24 over Europe in his early twenties.

Since his death nearly twenty years ago, I have thanked him in my heart hundreds of times for the strength and perseverance he passed on to me. Not everyone is given that gift by their parents. And, when given, it’s a gift rarely wrapped in a pretty package. My father cared little about packaging of any kind, only what’s underneath, what could be called character.

For all this, as Father’s Day once again approaches, I am grateful. I pray I have passed on some of his patrimony to my two children, with, perhaps, some kinder packaging.

Pope Francis Gives the Democrats a Gift — But It Won’t Work

Deal W. Hudson
April 11, 2018

Writing for NEWSMAX, I explained why Pope Francis’s recent attempt to set abortion and immigration on the equal moral ground cannot be rationally defended. Yes, they have the principle of ‘loving thy neighbor’ in common, but they are distinctly different kinds of moral judgments.

Pope Can’t Equate Caring for Immigrants with Abortion

Deal W. Hudson

April 10, 2018

Pope Francis get’s it. He understands why 52 percent of Catholic voters helped to elect Donald Trump in the face of fierce resistance from nearly all the of the U.S. Bishops, and the pontiff himself.

What Pope Francis gets is precisely what has historically pushed Catholic Democrats to vote for Republican presidents such as Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump — the abortion issue.

To remedy this, the pope has published an Apostolic Exhortation, “On the Call to Holiness in Today’s World,” with the resulting headline from The New York Times: “Pope Puts Caring for Immigrants and Abortion on Equal Footing” (Jason Horowitz, April 9, 2018).

The headline, unlike most on the Catholic Church, is not an exaggeration, as seen in the following from the Pope, “Our defense of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate. Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned.”

This is no mere throw off the line; he reiterates it, connecting the issue of abortion and immigration directly to politics: “Some Catholics consider it [migrants] a secondary issue compared to the ‘grave’ bioethical questions. That a politician looking for votes might say such a thing is understandable, but not a Christian, for whom the only proper attitude is to stand in the shoes of those brothers and sisters of ours who risk their lives to offer a future to their children. (Emphasis added) “Such a thing is understandable,” yes, Pope Francis gets it — he realizes that a political candidate who is pro-life will attract Catholic voters when pitted against a rival who supports abortion-on-demand while insisting our national borders remain porous for the thousands of illegal immigrants who cross it each month.

The context of these statements in an exhortation on the “Call to Holiness,” suggests Pope Francis realizes the issue of abortion for Catholic voters is not a “single issue” at all — abortion connects to concerns about the moral dissipation of the culture in general.

Catholics regard a pro-life candidate as someone who will stand against the increasing tawdriness of culture which mocks religion and puts deviance on display. In other words, a pro-life candidate resonates with the still socially conservative America. (This is why I predicted pro-life Catholics would support Trump as early as February 2016).

In 2016, Catholic voters rocked the liberal, Democrat-aligned, Catholic establishment by ignoring the nonstop attacks on Trump and his “wall” by Catholic bishops, priests, nuns, professors, and journalists. Indeed, their voices chimed in with the same message throughout the campaign: Immigration is a “life issue,” putting it on par with the defense of innocent life. Pope Francis now seeks to codify that message. But it won’t succeed, and I will explain why.

His apostolic exhortation ignores the basic moral problem in equating immigration with abortion: prudential judgment (see my explanation here). Any Catholic’s opinion and action on what the bishops have called “Welcoming the Stranger Among Us” has no single answer.

Do we support the “catch and release” ordered by President Obama? Do we support enforcing our laws pertaining to entering the United States? Do we build walls? No church teaching obligates a Catholic to a specific answer to these questions of public policy.

On the other hand, the question about whether to abort or not to abort has only one answer — no. Abortion is not a prudential matter. Some have called it one of the “non-negotiables,” others a “settled issue,” but the moral difference is clear.

Certainly, Pope Francis is right about this: at a general level, both abortion and immigration do meet on equal ground — the principle of loving one’s neighbor. But, as has been explained, that moral equality doesn’t confer equality on the type of moral judgments Catholics are obliged to make, one is liable to a variety of answers, the other is not.

To give an example of the distinction, here is a portion of letter written by the President of the USCCB, Archbishop Wilton Gregory to President Bush about the Iraq War: As Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory, then president of the USCCB, wrote to President George W. Bush: “People of good will may apply ethical principles and come to different prudential judgments, depending upon their assessment of the facts at hand and other issues” (“Letter to President Bush on Iraq,” Sept. 13, 2002).

I’m not convinced that Pope Francis recognizes the “goodwill” of those Catholics who disagree with his view of immigration. As he puts it, “This is not a notion invented by some Pope or a momentary fad. In today’s world too, we are called to follow the path of spiritual wisdom proposed by the prophet Isaiah to show what is pleasing to God.”

Pope Francis has done his best to prop up the those Catholic Democrats who continue to promote abortion, support government funding of Planned Parenthood, and ignore the church’s teaching on life. His apostolic exhortation does not change Catholic moral teaching because, as I have shown, the claim the Pope is trying to make cannot be rationally defended.

In spite of the headlines, the Pope’s gift to the Democrats will not be of much use to them in propping up their Catholic credentials. Lay Catholic voters will see through this claim just as they saw through the church’s barrage of anti-Trump rhetoric in the historic 2016 presidential election.

Deacon Keith Fournier: Editor of Catholic Online, talks to me about his views on the Catholic Church and the first principles of its social teaching, the “four pillars.”, May 3, 2014

Why I’m Watching “The Thin Man” Rather Than the Oscars

Deal W. Hudson
February 21, 2018

The title above may appear to be of trivial importance, or of no importance at all. But to me, as a lifelong film buff, it’s akin to declaring a change in sexual orientation. All of my adult life, I have placed the date of the Academy Awards on my calendar, making sure that night would be free, no matter where I might be traveling or what responsibilities I had to honor. Oscar night was sacrosanct.

After the 2017 Golden Globe and SAG Awards, I’m certain the 2017 Academy Awards will be nothing less than a President Donald Trump hate-fest. I voted for Donald Trump and Mike Pence, along with another 61,201,03 American citizens. I wish him, his family, his administration, and our nation well. I want to make “American Great” again. I will not subject myself to the bait-and-switch of an Academy Awards show turned into a political theater to attack the newly-elected President of the United States.

To give you a foretaste of what Oscar night will offer: Judd Apatow tweeted that after the election of Trump, “I feel like I’ve just been raped and I just don’t know if I’m going to get murdered.” This comes from the writer-director of some of the highest-grossing comedies of the past decade: The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), Knocked Up (2007), and Funny People (2009),

Some might ask why it took me so long to turn the channel. I would like to think it’s a testimony to my love of movies that I lasted this long. When I started watching the Oscars, Bob Hope was the master of ceremonies which lasted, with a few exceptions, until 1968 when I was a college freshman. Hope would return one more time in 1978, but the next year Johnny Carson took over for five of the next six years. In 1985 Jack Lemmon would host one more time after being a host or co-host three previous times.

The only political excitement I recall during the Hope-to-Carson era was the surprise appearance of Sacheen Littlefeather to receive Marlon Brando’s Oscar for “The Godfather” in 1973. Both Liv Ullman and Roger Moore, presenters for the Best Actor Award, looked appropriately surprised, but the statement about Native Americans was made and the show went on.

Two years later, 1975, when Bert Schneider, the winner for Best Documentary, used his acceptance speech to make an anti-Vietnam statement, co-host Bob Hope handed a note to co-host Frank Sinatra to read in response: “I’ve been asked by the academy to make the following statement regarding a statement that was made by a winner. ‘We are not responsible for any political references made on the program, and we are sorry they had to take place this evening.’” Another co-host, Shirley MacLaine, fumed.

I would, however, date the politicization of the Oscars beginning in 1977 when the Best Actress winner, Vanessa Redgrave, declared her support for the Palestine Liberation Organization: “the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression.” I recall being shocked by the virulence of her words in the context of an event to celebrate filmmaking.

Later in the evening, Paddy Chayefsky responded to Redgrave, “I would like to say, personal opinion, of course, that I’m sick and tired of people exploiting the Academy Awards for the propagation of their own personal political propaganda. I would like to suggest to Ms. Redgrave that her winning an Academy Award is not a pivotal moment in history, does not require a proclamation, and a simple ‘thank you’ would have sufficed.”

Chayefsky’s plea has not been heeded by subsequent generations of Academy Award participants.

There have been other excellent hosts, notably Billy Crystal (9 times), whose self-deprecating humor ameliorated the rising tide of politicized acceptance speeches. For example, Crystal was the host in 1993 when Richard Gere, talked about Tibet before presenting the award for Art Direction. The same evening Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins used the stage to demand the closure of the U.S. government’s internment camp in Cuba for Haitians with HIV and AIDS.

The Oscars started to hit their nadir in 2003. Accepting his award for Best Documentary, Michael Moore blasted President George W. Bush for the invasion of Iraq: “We live in fictitious times that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man who sends us to war for fictitious reasons. Shame on you, Mr. President.” And in 2005, politics invaded the host’s traditional opening monologue when Chris Rock went after the just reelected president. “When Bush got into office, there was a surplus of money. Now there’s like a $70 trillion deficit. Now just imagine you worked at the Gap. You closin’ out your register and you’re $70 trillion short. The average person would get in trouble for something like that, right? Not Bush—no…”

Since Hollywood idolized him, the Obama years brought some relief, but there will still the contentious social issues, particularly abortion and gay marriage, requiring the expert comment of actors. Best Actor and Best Screenwriter winners in 2009, Sean Penn, and Dustin Lance Black, used their allotted time to tout gay rights. Patricia Arquette used her time in accepting the Best Supporting Actress Award in 2015 to tout women’s “rights.”

The line-up of Oscar presenters this year includes the rank-and-file of the Trump-haters — Emma Stone, Amy Adams, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Dakota Johnson, Shirley MacLaine, and Hailee Steinfeld. First-time Oscar host, Jimmy Kimmel, is trying to lower the political temperature of the show by telling the Hollywood Reporter that he doesn’t “think the [Oscar] audience in its entirety is as liberal as people in Middle America imagine it is.” Given the egos involved, it’s highly doubtful any of the celebrity presenters or award recipients will take the hint. And Kimmel knows it — “the celebrities, most of them are pretty liberal.”

But, thankfully, we have an alternative to the 89th Academy Awards. At 8 pm on the same Saturday evening of February 26, Turner Movie Classics (TCM) will be showing “The Thin Man” (1934), starring Myrna Loy, William Powell, and Asta. I won’t be alone in switching the channel from the Oscars to “The Thin Man.” Why? Because of W. S. Van Dyke’s comedy classic, based upon the novel by Dashiell Hammett, will far greater tribute to the movies than sitting through three hours of self-important tantrums. As the great screenwriter, Paddy Chayefsky put it, “winning an Academy Award is not a pivotal moment in history, does not require a proclamation, and a simple ‘thank you’ would have sufficed.”

The Whitman Option: “Bathe me O God in thee”

Deal W. Hudson
May 14, 2017

Over thirty years ago, I left the Southern Baptists and was confirmed as a Roman Catholic. There were many reasons for my conversion but among the most important was their suspicion and fear of culture. I was taught God spoke only through the “Bible,” properly interpreted of course, and Catholics believed in “idols” beginning with the Virgin Mary.

The Catholic Church that I discovered didn’t believe in idols but embraced God’s presence in culture and history, beginning with the saints and including the arts, sciences, humanities, philosophy, and even politics. His presence was encountered throughout creation and among the descendants of Adam and Eve, in all that they did, thought, made, imagined, dreamed, and what they created made the limiting of Christian wisdom to Scripture both unnecessary and “downright un-Biblical.”

While Scripture and tradition remained normative among Catholics, both the knowledge and experience of God were viewed as ubiquitous, literally everywhere.

Thus, when I encounter the same a negative attitude towards culture among fellow Catholics I get cranky. Over the past thirty years, I have watched as good people bailed out of the “culture wars” either because the good guys were losing or it just no longer appealed to them, while others have decided to “say goodbye” to the division between “left and right.” (And I have lost count of the number of times in the past 30 years this has been announced.)

The so-called “Benedict Option” takes another approach to erasing the tension between faith and culture — the retreat to the safe environs of a home and community where the incoming cultural “stimuli” can be intercepted and repelled.

That these sentiments emerge among Catholics from to time to time testifies to the Puritan-Protestant roots of our nation’s culture. As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote after his American visit in the 1930s, “methinks I see the destiny of America embodied in the first Puritan who landed on those shores, just as the human race was represented by the first man” (Democracy in America, Ch. 17.1). As a result of this pervasive influence, Catholics in America have been attacked head-on throughout our history, think of the Blaine Amendment (1875) and Prohibition (1917). But instead of Catholics reaffirming their unique heritage, and in spite of the exclusion, persecution, and prejudice, they self-appropriated much of the Protestant criticism which led them to find a safe refuge in self-doubt and conformity.

Let me propose another option, one both more Catholic as well as being American in the best sense: The Whitman Option, named for one of the greatest of our native poets, Walt Whitman (1817-1889). More than reprinting his words from “Leaves of Grass” (1855-1892), I’m posting his words set to music by the composer Ralph Vaughn Williams, an Englishman, who like many artists of his generation, were inspired by Whitman’s unabashed poeticizing in free verse about the body, soul, nature, and God. In A Sea Symphony (1910), Vaughn Williams found the music to match the irresistible desire, unforeseen exultation, and the expanding vision of a soul seeking God.

The Whitman Option goes in the opposite directions from those who seek either refuge from, or a faux reconciliation of, the tensions between faith and culture: a radical openness to seeking and embracing all that is good, beautiful, and true in our world. Rather than a theological argument, two lines of Whitman will guide us: “Bathe me O God in thee” and “Are they not all seas of God,” lines which combine the desire for God with His ubiquitous presence.

In the final section of the “A Sea Symphony,” called “The Explorers,” the two solo voices announce their intention to “launch out on the trackless seas . . . singing our song of God.”

O we can wait no longer,
We too take ship O soul,
Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas,
Fearless for unknown shores on waves of ecstasy to sail,
Amid the wafting winds, (thou pressing me to thee, I thee to me, O soul,)
Caroling free, singing our song of God,
Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration.

The voices pause for a moment of reflection before both the poet and his soul are slowly and unexpectantly drawn upward with a prayer, “Bathe me O God in thee, mounting to thee.” But we have not yet reached the place of vision. That arrives as the most powerful moment of the symphony: “O Thou transcendent . . . Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou centre of them.” These last four words are punctuated with the crash of cymbals.

O soul thou pleasest me, I thee,
Sailing these seas or on the hills, or waking in the night,
Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time and Space and Death, like waters flowing,
Bear me indeed as through the regions infinite,
Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear, lave me all over,
Bathe me O God in thee, mounting to thee,
I and my soul to range in range of thee.

O Thou transcendent,
Nameless, the fibre and the breath,
Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou centre of them.

Such a vision cannot last, the poet and his soul “shrivel at the thought of God,” shrinking for a moment before regaining footing, “turning, call to thee O soul, thou actual Me,” the one who has “swellest full the vastnesses of Space.” The chorus singing, “Greater than stars or suns,” declares that God’s being transcends the whole of His creation. But in spite of infinite vastness ahead of them, and its mystery, they, “hoist instantly the anchor!”

Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God,
At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death,
But that I, turning, call to thee O soul, thou actual Me,
And lo, thou gently masterest the orbs,
Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death,
And fillest, swellest full the vastnesses of Space.

Greater than stars or suns,
Bounding O soul thou journeyest forth;

Away O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!
Cut the hawsers — haul out — shake out every sail,

After hints of a mystical vision, their searching will continue in “the deep waters only.” Here they “will risk the ship, ourselves, and all.” After all, they ask, “are they not all the seas of God?” so why not “farther, farther sail.” The poet and his soul continue on.

Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,

Sail forth — steer for the deep waters only,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

O my brave soul!
O farther farther sail!
O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God?
O farther, farther, farther sail!

There will be those who predictably read The Whitman Option with exactly the suspicion that makes them live safely indoors, so to speak. They will accuse me of recommending the words and deeds of a pantheist and accused homosexual in the place of a saint. They will be missing the spirituality of Whitman’s text and how it is deepened and amplified by the beauty of Vaughn Williams music, who himself professed agnosticism in spite of editing the English Hymnal (1906) and composing a large corpus of sacred music.

Yes, these two, Whitman and Vaughn Williams, hardly stand for role models in Christian saintliness. Yet, the beauty they created has stood the test of time, in part because each of them gave expression to our infinite desire for God in a way that made that desire palpable. We are convinced not by argument but by the extraordinary experience of encountering what they, as artists, made for us. This can be an experience of ekstasis in which we are taken out of ourselves for a time. As I once put it in an essay on Jacques Maritain’s aesthetics: in a work of art, the ecstasy of the artist meets the ecstasy of his viewer.* Needless to say, such encounters can be life-changing.

The Whitman Option is offered on behalf of those whose intellectual curiosity, aesthetic hunger, political participation, artistic creativity, and social activism is part of their daily bread. This bread feeds their souls and those who are in their care. They pray “Bathe me O Lord in thee” and live their lives in expectation of joy. They’ve decided that joy is possible, even in a wicked world. Yes, these are “reckless” souls, but they know wherever they choose to journey, “are they not all the seas of God??

****

*”The Ecstasy Which Is Creation: The Shape of Maritain’s Aesthetics,” in Understanding Maritain: Philosopher and Friend, eds. Deal W. Hudson and Matthew J. Mancini, Mercer University Press, 1987.

These clips are taken from a performance of Ralph Vaughn Williams “A Sea Symphony” at the 2013 BBC Proms conducted by Sakari Oramo with the BBC Orchestra and Chorus, and soloists Roderick Williams and Sally Matthews.