Denver, Colo., Apr 25, 2019 / 03:51 am (CNA).- Do you remember the last poem you read, or heard?
Statistics suggest it has probably been since high school that the average American took the time (or was forced by a teacher) to read a piece of poetry. The rise of the internet and the correlating decline in the number of people who say they’ve read a poem in the past year has fueled an ongoing debate among those who still care: is poetry dead? Whether it is dead, or dying, or not, should Catholics care?
“Yes, emphatically they should,” said Joseph Pearce, the director of book publishing at the Augustine Institute in Denver, and editor of The Austin Review and of the Faith & Culture website.
“Up until relatively recently in the history of Christendom, poetry was the main form of literature that people enjoyed and read,” Pearce said. “The best-selling works of literature up until Shakespeare’s time were poetry…so you can’t talk about the legacy or the heritage of Christian literature and leave poetry out of the equation without doing violence to what Christian literature is.”
What happened to poetry?
Poetry used to be memorized in schools and was a central, normal part of people’s literary lives – something they would just “bump into” on a regular basis.
“I can remember growing up…we would get Reader’s Digest at home and it would have poetry in it, so would the newspapers, and The Christian Science Monitor…there were a lot of places where you would just bump into it,” said Tim Bete, who serves as poetry editor for the website Integrated Catholic Life (ICL). ICL is a website that provides articles, spiritual reflections, blogs and resources that strive to help Catholics better live lives of faith, according to its description.
So what, exactly, has contributed to its decline?
Pearce blames the so-called “death” of poetry on the “rather pathetic culture in which we find ourselves,” with decreased standards of literacy and decreased attention spans brought on by technology.
“The thing about our modern culture is that most of us spend most of our time wasting it in the dust storm and the desert of modern secular social media,” he added.
Dana Gioia is a Catholic by faith and a poet by trade, and has served as the Poet Laureate of California since 2015.
Gioia spent much of his career as a poet in the secular world, but told CNA that he has become an increasingly vocal Catholic, as it has become harder to be a Catholic in the world of poetry and literature.
The decline of Catholic poetry in the United States, for example, is in part because of Catholicism’s “very complicated position” in American literature since the beginning of the country, he said.
“Catholics were initially banned from coming to the U.S., and then they enjoyed very little rights where they were allowed at all for a long time,” he told CNA. “And there persisted to be – persists to this day – a kind of anti-Catholic prejudice in the U.S. for a variety of religious, cultural, economic and political reasons.”
“American Catholics largely represent poor, immigrant communities from Europe, Latin America and Asia, and to this day if you go to most Catholic Churches you are sitting among the poor,” he added.
For these reasons, there was no “significant” Catholic American poetry (that is still being read today) until the 20th century, Gioia said. Then suddenly, around the 1950s, there is an explosion of Catholic literature in the United States, he said.
Writers such as Robert Lowell, Flannery O’Connor, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Walker Percy, William Tate and Brother Antonitus were leading the way (many of them converts from Protestantism), Gioia said, and Catholicism was being taken seriously for the first time in American cultural life.
“You have a huge list of these really significant thinkers who reshaped American intellectual life…a moment in the 1950s when Catholicism is part of the conversation of American literature,” he said.
But by the early 2000s, that was already gone.
“By 2000 it had fallen apart. In 2010, Catholics are marginalized in American literary lives,” he said.
The reasons for this were several, Gioia suggested: firstly, as Catholics became accepted into American society, they became increasingly secularized. Secondly, the world of art became increasingly anti-Christian, and finally, Vatican II caused “schisms” in the Catholic Church in America, turning her focus to internal debate rather than to an external, unified identity.
“I’m the uncomfortable truth-teller in the room,” Gioia added as an aside. “The contemporary Catholic Church in America, and everywhere, lost its connection with art and beauty.”
“For centuries, millennia really, the Church was a patron of the arts, and understood that beauty was an essential medium for its message,” he said.
“Now the Church is so caught up with practical necessities, that it considers beauty an unaffordable luxury. But beauty is not a luxury, it is a central and essential element of the Catholic faith. And we know this, because if we have anything at all to say about creation, it is that it is beautiful – nature is beautiful, the world is beautiful, our bodies are beautiful. So we’ve lost this essential connection because we’re so busy funding the parish school, keeping the homeless center running, and paying the mortgage on the church – all good things, but useless if the message of the Church is not heard among its own congregations and secondly in the modern world,” he said.
It’s a problem that has been identified by many in the Catholic Church who are concerned with the New Evangelization – Fyodor Dostoevsky’s maxim “beauty will save the world” has become the battle cry of many Catholics who want to reconnect the Church and the arts.
But “healthy” Catholic culture has two cultural conversations going at once, Gioia said – one internally, and one that reaches out to the world – “and both of those conversations have become greatly diminished in the last half-century.”
What poetry has to say to Catholics
The thing about being Catholic, Bete noted, is that if you’re going to Mass and reading the Bible, you are probably are more immersed in poetry than you realize.
“About 30% of all scripture is poetry,” Bete said. “Even (Catholics) that say oh, I never read poetry, well, if you’re praying the Divine Office (a Catholic form of prayer centered on the Psalms), it’s almost all poetry.”
“We’re hearing poetry preached at Mass every week,” he added, and so becoming familiar with all kinds of poetry “helps you understand scripture better because it gets you in tune and trains you to think about metaphor.”
“So much of (scripture) is poetry but I think we kind of race through it sometimes and we don’t really kind of appreciate it for being poetry,” he said.
“In my mind, one of the reasons that there’s so much poetry in there is it’s so difficult to define who God is, and God is so much greater than any author can put down on paper, but poetry…it provides a different type of truth.”
Bete added that poetry is often the fruit of silence and prayer, and vice versa – one can lead into the other. An example of this in scripture, he said, is the Canticle of Mary, when the pregnant Blessed Virgin Mary is visiting her cousin Elizabeth and bursts into poetic song about how God has blessed her by calling her to be the mother of Jesus.
“When Mary really has to explain to Elizabeth what is going on, what does she do? She speaks in poetry. It’s very powerful…and so one of my hopes is that if people read current poetry, it trains them to look at things differently and will translate back to scripture and really help to bring the scripture alive for them,” Bete said.
Pearce said another reason Catholics should engage with poetry is because God himself is a poet.
“The word ‘poet’ comes from the word ‘poesis’ which means to make or to create,” he said.
“So when we are being poets in that broader sense of the word of being creative…it’s God’s creative presence in us, so we’re actually partaking in the divine when we write poetry or read it and appreciate it.”
Many great works of literature, from Beowulf to The Divine Comedy to The Canterbury Tales and the works of Shakespeare, are works of Christian and Catholic poetry, Pearce said.
Many saints, too, have written great works of poetry, Pearce said, such as St. Patrick’s breastplate poem or St. Francis of Assissi’s Canticle of Brother Sun.
Bete, a secular Carmelite, said he loves to read poetry by Carmelite saints – “it’s actually hard to find one who was not a poet,” he said.
“Elizabeth of the Trinity, Therese the Little Flower, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, they all wrote poetry,” Bete said, including some that was prayerful and some that was more lighthearted.
“Almost always it came out of their prayer life,” Bete added. “I think it has to do with the closer that you get to God, especially if you’re a writer, I think it just comes out.”
“I would say poetry is like going to Mass or saying your prayers,” Pearce said. “The writing of it and the reading of it is time taken and not time wasted, its something which is worth doing in its own right, as is prayer.”
Poetry 101: How can Catholics start a poetry habit?
Pearce has made it easy for Catholics who are looking for an introduction to Catholic poetry, with his book “Poems Every Catholic Should Know.”
“That book is very popular, and I think it’s popular because people are very aware that they don’t know poetry very well, because they haven’t really been taught it, and they are perhaps intimidated by it or they have misconceptions about it,” he said.
“So they see a book called ‘Poems Every Catholic Should Know’ and they think well, I should at least own one book of poetry and perhaps this is it,” he added.
The book goes through 1,000 years of Christian poetry, from the year 1,000-2,000, Pearce said, from both well-known and lesser-known poets, and it includes short biographies of each poet and how they fit into the broader context of the Christian poetry and literary world.
“A personal favorite of mine is a 20th century war poet, Siegfried Sassoon, who was a convert to the Catholic faith, so we published some of his post-conversion poetry in the book which I’m very fond of,” Pearce noted.
It was because of the sharp decline in the reading and writing of poetry that Bete pitched the idea for Integrated Catholic Life to start publishing poetry, to provide a new opportunity for visitors to the site to once again “bump into” poetry.
“The response has been great,” he said. “I think it just goes to show that when people see…beauty, and they see something that is of interest to them,” they respond, he said. “It doesn’t take a huge time commitment. It’s not like reading War and Peace or anything.”
Bete said he thinks it’s important for Catholics to come up with new and creative ways to reintroduce people to Catholic poetry.
“On Instagram where you’re seeing some of these Instagram poets who are up and coming, and I haven’t seen any Catholic ones yet, but I think what they’re doing is they’re putting poetry where people already are,” Bete said.
Another innovative concept that brings poetry to the people is the “Raining Poetry” project in Boston, Bete said, which paints poetry on the sidewalk with clear paint so that it only shows up when it rains.
“And I love that as a concept. Where are people, and then how do we find ways to get poetry in front of them? And I don’t think we’ve been very good or innovative at that.”
Gioia said the most important thing Catholic creatives can do is to create communities for Catholic artists.
“This country is full of Catholic writers and artists who feel isolated,” Gioia said. “If we can create communities for them, they will understand their own art and its possibilities much better. We are stronger together than we are alone.”
Pearce, Bete and Gioia all said they have been heartened by what seems to be the start of a Catholic cultural revival, in which Catholics are talking more about the need for the Church to reconnect with beauty and the arts and to create great Catholic art again.
“I find this very encouraging,” Pearce said. “One of the things I’m doing with ‘Faith and Culture’ at the Augustine Institute and with the magazine The Austin Review…is to try to engage this new Catholic revival in the arts that we see going on. Certainly there’s a Catholic literary revival going on, so there’s an increase not just in the quantity, but more importantly in the quality with Catholic literature written today in the 21st century.”
Gioia said that while he’s encouraged by these movements, he would also caution against the notion of “homemade” culture.
“I worry that they sometimes have a kind of homemade version of culture that needs a shot of energy and perspective you only get by studying masterpieces, especially contemporary masterpieces,” he said. “Any serious writer must engage with the broader literary culture.”
“So I think one of the things to do is we need to identify the very best contemporary writers. What that doesn’t mean is saying here’s a list of 65 writers. It’s – who are the three or four best fiction writers? Who are the three or four best poets?”
“If we had a (Catholic literary) community, we’d invite everyone in, because that’s the right thing to do,” he said. “But when we write about literature we have to be ruthlessly discriminating, because the best work is what will speak most loudly. That’s what a critic does, that’s what an editor does, that’s what an anthologist does. Right now we do not have enough anthologies, or magazines; we do not have enough Catholic writers conferences. We need to build the infrastructure.”
Gioia started the first Catholic Imagination Conference for this reason – to bring together serious Catholic writers as a community.
“Four hundred people came, and they looked around and they were astonished and heartened by how many serious writers they saw in the same room,” he said. “Each one is bigger than the one before, and some of the people who came to the first conference created magazines, book clubs, discussion groups, and so once again, we’re stronger as a community than we are separately.”
The third such conference will be held at Loyola University this fall.
Ultimately, Gioia said, while he is concerned about the state of Catholic poetry and literature in the U.S., he has hope.
“I believe that our Church and our tradition embodies in it a great central truth of existence. And so if you believe that, how could you not be optimistic?”
[…]
When Catholic leaders weigh in on political and social issues that they know absolutely nothing about, they damage their own credibility.
And, in my opinion anyway, with the Bergoglio debacle in full swing, they have precious little credibility to spare.
Anyway, here are a few brief points about climate change that people should know. (I have contributed this information before when know-nothing Church officials have spouted off about climate change.)
• The earth’s climate is changing. Indeed, the climate has always changed. Look at a graph of the earth’s average temperature that goes back a few million years. It looks like a yo-yo. Yet life on earth has always adjusted. It’s what life does. In fact, the earth’s climate today is colder than it has been for most of earth’s history. But even if it weren’t, devastating the economies of entire nations in an impossible quest for an unchanging climate is needlessly imposing misery on humanity. Indeed, climate alarmists never even say how they ever came up with the idea that the earth’s climate is generally stable.
• A 1.5-degree warming of the climate in a century is hardly the “existential threat” that the warmists claim. Think of the people now living 60 miles south of your home. That’s what your hometown will be like after a century of warming. What is their lifestyle like with a climate that’s 1.5 degrees warmer than yours? Is their town an uninhabitable hell-on-earth? Are they bursting into flames atop thousand-foot-high sand dunes? No? You might want to think about that.
• Carbon dioxide is not a poison. It’s not a pollutant. It’s a necessity for life on earth. Indeed, carbon is the molecule of life. In eons past, the earth did experience significantly higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than we have now. The difference then? Plants thrived, food was plentiful and large dinosaurs literally covered the earth, from pole to pole. In sum, more carbon dioxide equals more plants equals more animals equals a better, less stressful life for all. It’s hardly the “existential threat” that the climate stooges claim.
• The “scientists” we keep hearing about who are sounding the climate alarm are meteorologists — weathermen. Their climate hysteria is based on computer programs that are not validated. They are closed loops with no way to account for all of the parameters that determine climate at this point in time, let alone decades from now. (Such as solar activity, the earth’s magnetic field, etc.) These are the same types of computer programs that predicted that the deaths from COVID-19 would be exponentially higher than what actually came to pass. Lowering all of humanity’s living standards based on such flimsy computer modeling is irresponsible.
• There are indications that the sun may be entering a period of relative dormancy, as it did for a few hundred years, starting in the fourteenth century. The inactive sun meant less energy released, which led to the Little Ice Age in America and Europe. Rivers and canals in northern Europe froze, vineyards were destroyed, cereal production in Ireland was devastated, and famine hit France. (Interestingly, the cold also caused hardwood trees to grow denser and harder, leading to the remarkable tone of Stradivarius’ string instruments.)
I could go on and on. And on.
For example, about the indications that the earth’s magnetic field may now be in the process of flipping. This will affect how much of the sun’s energy strikes the earth. The problem is, the last time such a thing took place — an event known as the Laschamp excursion — was more than 40,000 years ago. So information on how earth’s climate was affected is hard to come by.
Anyway, it is quite clear that Bishop Broglio and his USCCB confrères know next to nothing about the climate. What’s surprising is that they offer such a definitive opinion about a field that is totally unknown to them. Honestly, it makes them look quite foolish.
Perhaps someone should send his excellency a very balanced, and readable, book on the actual science of climate change. I highly recommend Dr. Steven Koonin’s “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters.” Koonin isn’t a liberal or conservative hack. He served as Undersecretary for Science in the US Department of Energy under President Obama, where his portfolio included the climate research program and energy technology strategy. He took considerable heat (sorry) from liberal friends for writing a book that didn’t contain climate change hysteria, and was backed up with real science. Finally, and I say this with all respect, maybe his excellency should stay in his lane.
He accepted the lead position in a bureaucracy which seeks Caesar’s coin. The USCCB has nothing to do with the salvation of souls. Simply follow the money.
The Conference of Bishops that was formed was a way to equate Church authority to bishops as much as possible to the pope.
In other words:
To decentralize the papacy.
Not to “decentralize the papacy.”
But, instead, Vatican II (Lumen Gentium) established the relationship between the papacy as the successor of St. Peter, and the individual bishops each as a successor of the other apostles—and not as delegates of the papacy.
The national bishops’ conferences are mostly administrative conveniences and do not displace the institutional and personal responsibility of individual bishops. How this works is already and further articulated in Apostolos suos (1998). https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/motu_proprio/documents/hf_jp-ii_motu-proprio_22071998_apostolos-suos.html
The latest twist was the typically ambiguous effort, by the Synod on Synodality, to cast local dioceses as possibly subordinate to hybridized (bishops and laity) national and even continental “synods.” The Final Report acknowledges that legitimate synodality doesn’t work if the bishops abdicate from their responsibilities as bishops. As noted in the Final Report which explicitly restores reference to the entire Preparatory Document of the International Theological Commission (2018):
“…It is essential that, taken as a whole, the participants give a meaningful and balanced image of the local Church, reflecting different vocations, ministries, charisms, competencies, social status and geographical origin. The bishop, the successor of the apostles and shepherd of his flock who convokes and presides over the local Church synod, is called to exercise there the ministry of unity and leadership with the authority which belongs to him” (n. 79).
So, in now implementing the verbose 52-page Final Document, one riddle is how to square the circle? That is, other than through consultative (!) archdiocesan and parish pastoral councils—already routine for decades—which legitimately can have lay members not included in a real “synod of bishops”.
SUMMARY: A decentralized Church is not a decentralized papacy; and doctrine in faith and morals remains of the one, hole, catholic and apostolic Church–of which the irreducible papacy and bishops remain the guardian, together.
You have just expressed the exact feelings that many feel…It is all truth. We have no control over the weather, or climate for that matter. I too have to be blunt. The church no matter what affiliation you are should keep their nose and opinions out of politics. As far a immigration. Since the pope thinks it is wrong for our country to get itself back on its feet and deport illegals, stop and think. They came over and invaded our borders. They did not apply for citizenship. The women, and some hardly I would say very young were with child, no husband. In fact a bus load pulled up to the south border and there had to be 25-30 get off all women and girls, all pregnant, no husband. When interviewed they said they were not worried, the president was going to take care of them. Is the United States a global welfare program. Not most practicing Catholics are angry, they intentionally are with child just to get money and stay in the US. Come in the right way, apply for citizenship and learn American and take the test –that is the right way. In fact I know of 2 people that became citizens, doing the right thing.
a) bishops who oppose death penalty are responsible whenever a hardened criminal who would otherwise have gotten death penalty kills a fellow inmate or a guard while in prison. These killings by killers who were not killed happen all the time.
b) Aquinas accepted the death penalty whenever it made a society more secure (see a above)
Thank you for reiterating these scientific truths.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I struggle with our Bishops in general these days. They are backseat drivers too concerned with losing their 501c3 privileges to lead the flock. In this case, the assumption is made that US citizens aren’t good stewards of the blessings God has given us if we disagree with the politics of climate change. To me, it’s a money grab and a way for governments around the world to lessen freedoms that are God-given.
I am disappointed with Trump bringing back the death penalty.
As for the migrants, getting the criminals out first is our Governments responsibility. I’m all for giving the poor help and a chance at a better life, but until the Pontiff and the Bishops come up with a better plan than their appeals, their judgement seems ludicrous to me. Our parish (and our K of C ) spend countless hours volunteering, raising money, and distributing all we can afford to the homeless and single mothers. Our Pastor is very involved. And we are losing the battle. For this particular Bishop I would ask what has he and the others done beside taking up collections and talking about it while eating good food on nice china every night.
The only comment needed about these irrelevant Bishops!! Well said!
The problem with climate change, and all related with nature, is stay away of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church. Those (atheist woke) that use the Earth to their bizarre theories, and those (protestant sionists wild capitalist) that use the Earth in the Old Testament way denying any problem.
All that are not in the truth of the Christ New Testmament and the Apostolic Tradition are wrong.
Climate change is a problem (Greenland interest e.g.) with many uncertainties (is a theory, based in science, but not science). Is a problem created by wild capitalism and marxism materialism, with many uncertainties that no woke cannot understand. Only us, the Catholics, are able to manage the situation. Let us lead the world.
St Alphonse Ligouri maintained that the death penalty was a redemptive act given that it focused the mind wonderful upon God’s mercy and the positivity of redemption.
It’s true that Catholic Bishops’ Conferences everywhere tend to jump on the current trendy opinions. On the issue of immigration to the US, their voice is largely beneficial, however, While they, and the Pope, make no distinction between the Christian immigrant, and the pagan, the Muslim of the Sikh, in the US it doesn’t make much difference, because over 90% of “illegal” immigrants are Christian, hardworking, family oriented etc. (in Europe it runs 90% the other way). Trump would like to replace millions of hardworking Catholic families with millions of Hindus and Sikhs. In such a situation I say, let the bishops speak. They’re on the right side.
No to unvetted criminals, no to unvetted unaccompanied single males of military age. No to the unvetted disease carriers and unvetted agents of enemy foreign governments.
The bishops never met an illegal it didn’t like. Why? Just follow the money.
A real Christian would follow the laws of the country they are wanting to live in. Illegal is criminal right out of the gate. Where does their respect for their country’s laws start??
Yes we should follow the compassionate example of the Vatican (sarcasm):
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2025/01/16/vatican-promises-stiff-penalties-for-illegal-aliens-crossing-its-border/
Vatican Promises Stiff Penalties for Illegal Aliens Crossing its Border
“…in the US it doesn’t make much difference, because over 90% of “illegal” immigrants are Christian, hardworking, family oriented etc.”
This is incorrect bordering on propaganda. Hard working people would not need taxpayer funded hotel rooms and debit cards for food, and they would certainly be paying their own medical bills. Illegals are taking more than they are contributing, so they need to be deported immediately. The bishop’s you support are actually on the wrong side of the issue. The voters have spoken, and elections have consequences.
Anybody would use any services made available. “Illegals” work for less money (and harder) than the rest of the population. Therefore, through the profits engendered by the businesses that employ them and which do have to pay taxes, “illegals” generate more wealth than they receive than the average resident. There are also many benefits they cannot access, despite the proportionately higher contribution they make, with respect to what they earn. The US economy is very much dependent on cut price wages.
Trumps immigration catechist, Stephen Miller would exchange millions of “illegal” Catholics for millions of Hindus and Sikhs. Is that really what you want?
The voters have also spoken on both national and state levels on abortion. The vast majority of them, including Trump himself, support abortion. So…?
NAFTA and the US based drug market have made life extremely difficult for many Mexicans. Also remember that almost half the United States was once Mexico, and only became the US after massive “illegal” immigration of WASPS. Catholics need to get back their own mind and stop thinking like WASPS.
You are right in some way. Maybe the point (everywhere) should be in the middle: no disorder immigration, that means in the two ways, no undocumented immigrants but only christian (catholics) inmigrants.
I want strong and secure borders that keep uneducated and unskilled people out of the country. Illegal aliens do not work harder than Americans, that’s a leftist talking point. They should not have access to any services, period. And access to even one taxpayers funded service is one too many. The fact that life in Mexico is difficult is irrelevant. Put yor own house in order.
Mr. Miguel, I think you make a good point about most immigrants/ migrants being hardworking people. We need immigration and we need more young people in our work force. But turning our immigration over to trafficking and drug cartels isn’t the way to go about it. And it just enables organized crime in Latin America to become stronger and more profitable. That’s creating more violence, extortion, and migration South of the border. It’s a never ending cycle and we have to put the brakes on for everyone’s safety.
The folks coming to the US today are for the most part assets . Just as our immigrant ancestors were. But they’re coming here in the wrong way.
Bishops, each of you, including the National Cathedral’s Episcopalian Bishop Budde, take in two illegals into the residency where you live. Feed them, clothe them, cover their healthcare needs, and infinitum. If you expect a nation to do this surely you can lead by example. You can shows us how the cross of mercy should be carried.
I AGREE AS TO ALL PEOPLE….ALL THESE PEOPLE AND POLITICIANS WHO PREACH, YOU TAKE THEM I AND SUPPORT THEM, EVEN THOUGH THEY MAY ROB YOU AND BEAT YOU UP…HOW CAN ONE EXPECT TO BE HUMANE TO PEOPLE THAT COME INTO OUR COUNTRY ILLEGALLY AND DO NOT RESPECT OUR RULES.
Where was Brolio and the rest of the USCCB when Biden unceasingly promoted and imposed unlimited abortion for 4 years? Crickets. These hirelings have squandered their moral authority and are now following Bergoglio’s buffonish example in pontificating about subjects in which they are completely ignorant.
Great comment.
The Bishops are indeed taking up Political Positions on themes that are beyond the Catholic Truth which they were ordained to defend. Less time implementing Bergoglioism, asset-stripping tradition, and rather time focussed on restoring Catholicism would rekindle a little legitimacy.
Peddling Weather-Fear is not Catholicism, it is Synodal New Church Bergoglioism.
Bishops are called to Obedience to the Word, not the WorLd; to Catholicism not Bergoglioism.
The hierarchs of the US Catholic Church (with a few exceptions, like the late Bishop Morlino), and the Pontiff Francis, have spent the last 23 years (and more), proving that they couldn’t care less about “the most vulnerable” who get sexually abused by their friends in the clerical caste system.
And they are likewise complicit in their abusive financial boondoggling in the illegal immigration program of the Biden “gangster-government.”
Their moral authority is as deep as the layer of wax on the floor of their millionaire metropolitan apartments.
Biden paid the Catholic church over 1 1/2 billion dollars to bring in and contribute to this chaotic mess…..Just follow the money as usual…..
Once again, if the USCCB is AGAINST something, it is almost invariably something good, decent, logical, sane, and Christian. If the USCCB is FOR something, it is almost invariably bad, appalling, absurd, loopy, or outright evil. Good bishops, wherever they may be, should disassociate themselves from this Marxist organization if they wish to retain any credibility.
I was thinking about the magnetic poles shifting this week Nr.Brineyman.
I’m snowed in again for the third day in the Deepest South after a blizzard. It was 1 degree above zero yesterday morning. Last year I had an alligator in my pond, now it’s got ice. I had to use a pickaxe to bust the thick ice in my cattle’s water tank. Our entire state hasn’t a single snow plow but I read more northerly states were sending some down to help.
A little bit of global warming would be very much appreciated here today. The good news is that it looks like things will be gradually getting back to normal. Whatever “normal” may be these days.
I wish our bishops would concentrate more on saving souls and less on faddish climate narratives.
My past respect for Bp Broglio is now near zero. Four silent years re Biden and now this. Speaks volumes, but once you get used to the palace that is the USCCB HQ in Washington, well, you know who butters your bread.
Sad.
As successors of the apostles our bishops have moral authority, but by their actions (and inactions) they have squandered credibility. Give the Eucharist to Catholic politicians who promote the killing of the unborn, but criticize Trump for withdrawing from a useless climate agreement? Pathetic!
When pressed the bishops say they are for secure borders, but when asked if an illegal who manages to get through the secure border should be sent back the answer is no. How honest is that?
In the bishops’ voting guide last year they said that, “We should stand with newcomers, authorized and unauthorized.” These are not words meant to inform, but rather to shape acceptance of illegals.
I am a lifelong Catholic, and Catholic to the inner marrow of my bones. I find it very sad that one frequently cannot look to our bishops, and even the pope for moral guidance.
I vehemently disagree with a good portion of this. Indoctrination is not good. They are listening to the press not the engineers on climate and a misinformation on deportations from within our Church. Sad.
Thanks, Briney!
“It is our hope that the leadership of our country will reconsider those actions which disregard not only the human dignity of a few, but of us all” (Archbishop Broglio). Fine. It’s true that some migrant situations require compassion. Although the complaints require specificity.
Example. Is he referring to the executive order that prohibits gay banners on government buildings as threatening the few? If so, then does that mean the USCCB acquiesces to gay rights, permitting gay banners in churches, on religious bldgs? Why hasn’t the USCCB seriously addressed the human trafficking that comes with open borders? Or the many migrant children who simply disappeared? Why hasn’t it addressed the exploitation of immigrant cheap labor?
If concerned with environment, why hasn’t it criticized California’s mismanagement of ecological, environmental requirements, fire protection agencies that were the major conditions that led to the LA inferno? USCCB policies continue to reflect this Vatican’s priorities, and appears a Democrat controlled body.
Just curious but do we ever hear from our Bishops on normal challenges of the day? Like sin? Sexuality?kindness and honestly?? What we owe to God? Or is it always just about opposition to Conservative thought and pushing their very clear leftist agenda and largely ignoring the distortion of sexuality we have witnessed the last 4 years?? I have zero interest in their voting advice, which will suggest i do opposite of every catholic thing i have ever lesrned, as well as opposing everything which is positive for my country. I am an American. Not a globalist.
CV NEWS FEED // In a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter) Tuesday, Catholic priest Father Peter Totleben, O.P., explained the Catholic Church’s nuanced teaching on “deportation.”
The definition of the “deportation” explicitly opposed in certain Catholic texts “does not apply to deportation in the colloquial sense that Americans use the term,” Father Totleben wrote.
The Dominican friar wrote that when recent Church documents use the Latin word “deportatio” – usually translated to English as “deportation” – they are not referring to simply repatriating migrants to their country of origin.
He specifically named the 1965 pastoral constitution Gaudium et spes and Pope St. John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical Veritatis splendor.
“According to the dictionary (and its references to Roman Law), ‘deportatio’ is displacing people from their native land,” the priest explained. “So, in condemning ‘deportatio,’ the Magisterium is thinking of things like the displacement of the Jews, or various displacements that occurred in Europe right after World War II, or things like ethnic cleansing.”
“This should be obvious,” the Dominican stressed. “The Church teaches both that people have a right to migrate both for asylum and economic reasons.”
However, he emphasized that the Church also teaches “that the welcoming country has the right to regulate immigration for economic and cultural reasons,” which “obviously entails a right to repatriate.”
“And it should be pretty clear that if border authorities apprehend someone in the very act of illegally crossing the border, they are allowed to send the person back across the border, they don’t necessarily have to give him residency,” Father Totelben continued, summarizing the common 21st-century American definition of “deportation.”
The priest added it should “be clear that ‘sending a person back to his home country who has no legal right to be in the present country’ and ‘exiling a person from his native land’ are two different species of moral action.”
“Also, notice how no Church authority when speaking out in favor of immigrants has ever said that no immigrant may ever be sent back to his home country, because it is intrinsically evil to do this,” Father Totelben highlighted.
“As always, you have to find out what the people who formulated the Church teaching meant by a term,” the priest wrote. “You can’t apply your own definitions to Church teaching.”
Moreover, he cautioned that not all deportation policies are justified by Church teachings: “Just because deportations, understood as repatriations, are not intrinsically immoral does not mean that a particular plan for mass deportations meets the demands of justice or prudence.”
“To resolve that question,” he wrote, “you would have to weigh a variety of factors” including “the evil of family breakup, the potential injustice of any procedures used to effect the deportation,” as well as “the effect on the economy.”
“And the weighing of these goods and evils are matters that Catholics can in good faith disagree on, and still be good Catholics who are following Catholic social teaching,” he wrote.
I believe that issues like a proper and sensible immigration policy (so obviously lacking in the Biden administration), the Paris Accord and capital punishment are matters for the prudential judgment of each informed and discerning Catholic. When the U.S. Bishops pontificate about these matters, they just further lose credibility.
There are moral issues that the Bishops can and should address in the public arena. This week the Democrats in the Senate killed a bill that would have required care for infants born alive during attempted abortions. Where was the USCCB on this political action of unadulterated intrinsic evil?
About the “environment” or the natural science of ecology, yours truly has settled on three propositions: (1) conceptual clarity; (2) the incomplete sciences; and (3) cultural/systemic interactions and (given the uncertainties) the for “prudential judgment”—a moral principle of Catholic Social Teaching.
FIRST, about clarity, St. John Paul II acknowledged the ecology of natural science, however incomplete, but also distinguished this “natural ecology” from the distinct but interrelated “human ecology”.
The first applies to such significant details as tipping points (the Buffalo hunter ethic, the Dust Bowl event) and feedback loops (thawing of permafrost and release of millions of years of methane); and the latter based on “moral theology” (the family, the common good, etc.). Laudato Si proposes a somewhat conflated “integral ecology” which to critics kowtows to politicized science, and implies a blurred new world ethic where consequences and proportionalism might override moral absolutes (as articulated in Veritatis Splendor), and where Solidarity overrides Subsidiarity. So, maybe a work in progress…
SECOND, about disdain by some for the metric average 1.5 degree global temperature change, and about the oscilating climate record of world history and, yes, about the deficiencies of simplistically modeled climate projections…
One key deficiency of the modeling seems to be that attention is limited to the First Law of Thermodynamics, at the expense of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. That is, first, that energy cannot be created or destroyed (therefore, atmospheric heat entrapment and the rising temperature since industrialization) and, second, that the entropy of the universe or our closed system also increases. So, under the second law, instead of heat entrapment, what we also get instead is global weather turbulence in the form larger and more droughts, multiple tornadoes, and even mrscrackers ice pond this year (comment above) where last year she had alligators.
THIRD, from the Church’s perspective, the case can be less limited to the “science (?)” of ecological Armageddon, and more about the “prudential judgment” of adaptive actions, and possible mitigation—given the long lead time it takes to get anything done.
Yes, the rushed Laudato Si could have said more about positive matters such as the public-private and international work of the Nature Conservancy, and the sometimes corporate “third bottom line.” Preventive actions already include land set-asides and forest restoration. Adaptive actions already include construction of massive sea walls in the Netherlands and in Venice where the sea levels are in fact rising. Not hysterical fiction, many regions need much better management of water—as a scarce resource. How to adjust to prolonged droughts, glacial disappearance, and the replacement of snowpack runoff by untrapped rain runoff? Also nonfiction, the mining of non-replenished groundwater is a ticking clock, as in Beijing with its population of 22 million. And then, of course, wildfires.
Ecological problems calling for ingenuity and more, rather than catcalls…
About which, in Centesimus Annus (1991), St. John Paul II defended property ownership (as under Rerum Novarum, 1891), but newly affirmed: “In our time, in particular, there exists another form of ownership which is becoming no less important than land: THE POSSESSION OF KNOW-HOW, TECHNOLOGY AND SKILL [italics]” (n. 32). He goes on to suggest much else, however, including but not limited to, “…a change of lifestyles, or models of production and consumption, and of the established structures of power which today govern societies” (n. 58).
SUMMARY: Orange flags matter, and application of “know-how and skill” is part of what’s needed.
Yes, nature is resilient and adaptable, but within limits. Scientifically, in our compact world, what are those limits? Theologically, God is infinite, but Nature is not. With the configuration of world crises now exceeding the impact of historical industrialization on society (Rerum Novarum), the perennial Catholic Church now must defend the human person against not only the direct ideological dead ends of Marxism and myopic versions of capitalism, but also the indirect dangers to regional populations from ecological sinkholes of probably many sorts and sizes.
There are many other problems.
Probity
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/03/01/exclusive-a-third-of-u-k-met-office-temperature-stations-may-be-wrong-by-up-to-5c-foi-reveals/
https://co2coalition.org/news/hidden-behind-climate-policies-data-from-nonexistent-temperature-stations/
Deceptive trade/economic practices
https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_7bd71ee0-cdfd-11ef-99e9-4761c552738f.html
https://fintech.global/2025/01/06/major-u-s-banks-exit-net-zero-banking-alliance-amid-political-pressures/
Consistency/inconsistency prejudices – random walk exploits
https://financialpost.com/fp-finance/banking/bmo-first-canadian-bank-leave-un-climate-alliance
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Banks-Ditch-Net-Zero-as-Climate-Alliances-Crumble.html
No trade-off – trading-off trade-offs
https://www.stocktitan.net/news/IDCC/sustainable-solutions-have-the-potential-to-reap-huge-energy-savings-rlsyk6hr02z1.html
https://www.allianz.com/en/economic_research/insights/publications/specials_fmo/2024_01_11-Climate-Change-Trade-Offs.html
Leading or lagging compensating/compliance?
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/crucial-role-leading-lagging-indicators-ehs-systems-nathan-hammer-g85kc
[The Role of Forward-looking Climate Metrics in Decarbonization Portfolios]
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4135443
Has Broglio ever openly, loudly and boldly objected to the imposition of the death penalty upon millions of innocent, wiggling, kicking babies? For that matter, how many of you have ever heard a bishop simply make the point that the state has no authority whatsoever to legalize the murder of innocent humanity?
Yes, Broglio has addressed this more than once. See here and here, for example.
Thank you for that, Mr. Olson.
You are correct Carl. But Pope Francis has also appointed pro-abortionists to Vatican committees. Words vs. Actions?
My take in one sentence…The Church keep its own house in order. Have they not been embarassed enough the last few decades with their cover ups, of their priests. The church should keep its nose out of politics. They have know right to add fuel to the fire. The president has a big job ahead and I would think they should mind their own business.
The Church was infiltrated by Freemasons, communists and some Satanists in the Church-in past decades Still cleaning that mess up; most have retired or died. The younger generation is hopeful. So many Catholic men going into seminary, especially over a decade ago, hav no idea of this history of the infiltration, which is key for history to not repeat it self or while our current Pope is part of it making messes.
Watch YT documentary Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing, read Infiltration – Dr Taylor Marshall,
Windswept House & The Jesuits-Malachi Martin
Windswept 98% truth in story form and names changed.; I think 1-2 characters were fictitious. You can figure out who they were at that time, by looking up who was in what position; or look up Fisheaters.
harry, more accurately stated, the question should be: “Has the USCCB (meaning EVERY BISHOP) ever openly, loudly and boldly objected to the imposition of the death penalty upon millions of innocent, wiggling, kicking babies?” And the answer to that would be NO!
Those executive orders are among the many reasons I voted for President Trump. I make no apologies.
All the US bishops care about is the hundreds of millions of dollars the Feds have been pouring into the Catholic Church over illegal aliens invading our country. I should know as I was the Director of Catholic Charities for my diocese.
If you ever want to deal with nasty people hungry for government money just try working with CLINIC, Catholic Charities USA, Catholics Relief Services and those working for CCHD an agency of the USCCB. All a bunch of liberal Democrats who believe in Big Government who writes the checks for much of their budgets. Someday Joe Pewsitter will smarten up.
Trumps appointments overturn roe vs wade and he gets castigated by Christ’s “apostles”. Meanwhile Biden ordered abortion (executive order #14076) and not a peep from any of the apostles successors. Other signs of apostacy: the 24 months of COVID; shuttering churches & literally forbidding the sacraments while crowds throng inside Home Depots, grocery stores & gas stations. History tells us the all bishops of England likewise committed apostacy save John Fisher. More recent history; every single bishop in Austria & Germany gave tacit approval to the atrocities of the national socialists. Before Hitlers election it was forbidden to receive holy communion if one was a member of the NAZI party. After his election the bishops and pastors literally received monthly stipends from the party. They shut their mouths. The more things change the more they stay the same. Let’s stop looking to these clowns for leadership when they are merely masquerading as Christ’s chosen elders.
The dishonest and manipulative use of language is a hallmark of the progressive mindset. I noted this with the references to human “dignity.” Lying to people about the climate and silencing opposing scientific viewpoints does not honor people’s dignity. Viewing murderers who commit heinous crimes as victims and shielding them from the just consequences of their sins dishonors the victims of those crimes and makes a mockery of justice. Wasting valuable resources on illegal aliens when those resources could be used to support and assist taxpaying citizens dishonors hard working people who are trying to save for their family’s needs. Sorry bishops, but your priorities are way off here. It is not your place to use your position to advance a leftist agenda under the pretense that that is somehow the gospel of Christ. As usual, you are on the wrong side of the issues here. Please repent and get your own houses in order before you presume to lecture us.
This message is a reminder, as former Australian PM Tony Abbott once said, that while Bishops can transform wine and wafers into the Body and Blood of Christ, they cannot transform bad logic into good logic.
So our bishops are becoming more forcefully opposed to the precepts of the Catholic religion. I can’t say I’m surprised. They’ve been at it for years. Few demonstrate a knowledge that would make them qualified young students for a First Communion. If they were ever to obtain such knowledge, it would be refreshing to see images of them walking down the aisle, all in white, with a genuinely humble and prayerful attitude for once.