In the year 1140, an Irish bishop named Malachy visited Rome with a group of monks. They climbed the Janiculum Hill to thank God for the safe completion of their journey. While there (so the story goes), Malachy had a vision in which he “saw” 111 Popes to the end of time. Each Pope was chronicled with by a short, cryptic epigram in Latin. And with the resignation of Benedict XVI, the last Pope on Saint Malachy’s list is about to be elected.The prophecy for the last Pope contained a alarming vision: “During the last persecution of the Holy Roman church there shall sit Peter of Rome, who shall feed the sheep amidst the many great tribulations, and when these have passed, the City of the Seven Hills shall be utterly destroyed and the awful Judge will judge the people.”
Conspiracy theorists and Nostradamus nuts love poring over the prophecies of Saint Malachy, straining to make sense of his cryptic messages. The epigram for Benedict XVI was “the glory of the olive,” so after his election the prophecy hounds pointed out that there is a famous Benedictine monastery called Monte Oliveto. He chose his papal name after Saint Benedict. Saint Benedict is the glory of Monte Oliveto. It’s totally clear right?
It’s all very exciting to think that the last Pope is about to be elected, so the second coming and the end of the world is nigh!
The problems, however, are manifold. First of all, the prognosticators behave like all conspiracy theorists and prophecy lovers: Begin with the theory or prophecy and make the facts fit.
The second problem is something called documentary evidence. Although Saint Malachy was a historic figure from the twelfth century, there is no mention of his prophecies before 1590, and, surprise, surprise, the prophetic mottos for the Popes are quite accurate up to the late 1500s. Then they become obscure and inaccurate. In addition, the seer Nostradamus lived in the late 1500s, a time when there was a fashionable fascination with prophecies expressed in cryptic language. Scholars have judged the prophecies of the twelfth-century St Malachy to be a rather poor 16th-century forgery — probably produced to influence a papal election at the time.
So you can probably sleep peacefully tonight. The end of the world is probably not nigh.
On the other hand . . . why not prepare your soul, just to be on the safe side?
The Archbishop of York has released the following statement regarding the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI...It was with a heavy heart but complete understanding that we learned this morning of Pope Benedict’s declaration of his decision to lay down the burden of ministry as Bishop of Rome, an office which he has held with great dignity, insight and courage. As I prepare to take up office I speak not only for myself, and my predecessors as Archbishop, but for Anglicans around the world, in giving thanks to God for a priestly life utterly dedicated, in word and deed, in prayer and in costly service, to following Christ. He has laid before us something of the meaning of the Petrine ministry of building up the people of God to full maturity.
In his visit to the United Kingdom, Pope Benedict showed us all something of what the vocation of the See of Rome can mean in practice – a witness to the universal scope of the gospel and a messenger of hope at a time when Christian faith is being called into question. In his teaching and writing he has brought a remarkable and creative theological mind to bear on the issues of the day. We who belong to other Christian families gladly acknowledge the importance of this witness and join with our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters in thanking God for the inspiration and challenge of Pope Benedict’s ministry.
We pray that God will bless him profoundly in retirement with health and peace of mind and heart, and we entrust to the Holy Spirit those who have a responsibility to elect his successor.
+ Justin Cantuar:
"With the news that Pope Benedict XVI will resign at the end of February, the Christian world will miss a great theologian with great spiritual depth.
"We should remember Pope Benedict communicated the revelation of God in a characteristic way as a true successor of St Peter. He was unafraid to proclaim the Gospel and challenge a culture that is so self-referential, managing to lift our eyes to God's glory.
"Let us all lift our eyes to the glory of God, embracing his love and care for this world."
Pope Benedict XVI this morning encouraged the hundreds of thousands of pro-life advocates attending the March for Life by taking to Twitter to announce his support for the pro-life event.
The Pope pledged his support for the March for Life in the United States using his @pontifex Twitter handle.
He said, “I join all those marching for life from afar, and pray that political leaders will protect the unborn and promote a culture of life.” He offered prayers in English and Spanish.
This year’s March for Life is marking the 40th anniversary of the US Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Roe v. Wade, which made abortion legal in all fifty states. Earlier this week, the Holy Father issued his Message for World Communication Day, in which he called on Catholics to be engaged through all forms of social media, especially new media, in spreading the Good News and building up public discourse.
On November 28, 2012 Archbishop Robert Duncan, accompanied by Bishop Ray Sutton, was invited to Pope Benedict XVI’s weekly public audience in Rome. Archbishop Eliud Wabukala, Primate of Kenya and chair of the GAFCON Primates Council, was also invited, but the arrival time of his flight prevented his attendance at the audience. As a sign of the “special relationship” between Roman Catholics and Anglicans, articulated by the Second Vatican Council, three chairs were set in front of the entire audience hall for the Anglican leaders to occupy. At the conclusion of the audience, Archbishop Duncan and Bishop Sutton were afforded the opportunity to bring greetings to His Holiness on behalf of the Anglican Church in North America and the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans.
The entire Christian calendar is based on a miscalculation, the Pope has declared, as he claims in a new book that Jesus was born several years earlier than commonly believed.Um, no. The "miscalculation" made by Dionysius has been well documented and it has been "commonly believed" for years that Jesus was, in fact, born precisely within the time frame offered by the pontiff. He is not raising any doubts about "one of the keystones of Christian tradition." As the article goes on to point out, most scholars agree with the pope, not only on the date of Jesus's birth but also on the fact that there were likely no oxen or donkeys present to witness the blessed event. Again, no threat to any "Christian tradition" except, perhaps, the always popular children's Christmas pageant.The 'mistake' was made by a sixth century monk known as Dionysius Exiguus or in English Dennis the Small, the 85-year-old pontiff claims in the book 'Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives', published on Wednesday.
"The calculation of the beginning of our calendar – based on the birth of Jesus – was made by Dionysius Exiguus, who made a mistake in his calculations by several years," the Pope writes in the book, which went on sale around the world with an initial print run of a million copies.
"The actual date of Jesus's birth was several years before."
The assertion that the Christian calendar is based on a false premise is not new – many historians believe that Christ was born sometime between 7BC and 2BC.
But the fact that doubts over one of the keystones of Christian tradition have been raised by the leader of the world's one billion Catholics is striking.
Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, has been banned from meeting the Pope as a result of his plans to legalise gay marriage. The Vatican has distanced itself from Mr Salmond, with Catholic leaders saying a visit to Rome would send out the “wrong message” after the SNP gave its backing to the same-sex marriage.
Referring to a potential visit, which had been on the cards since Pope Benedict XVI visited Scotland in 2012, a senior church official told The Scottish Daily Mail: “the Vatican was keen but same-sex marriage completely destroyed it.”
Colin Hart, Campaign Director at the Coalition for Marriage, says: “Once again we can see just how divisive and controversial the issue of gay marriage is. This is an ill-judged and unnecessary proposal which is causing real harm to the relationship between politicians and the churches.
“The rifts created by this proposal are now spilling over international borders and the consequences of these tensions could be serious. Nearly half a million people in the UK have signed our petition against gay marriage and still the political class press ahead without any consideration for the growing tensions and difficulties caused.”
Pope Benedict XVI issued a solemn warning about the erosion of religious freedom in the United States, in a January 19 address to visiting American bishops.
The Holy Father told the American prelates, who were making their ad limina visits, that “it is imperative that the entire Catholic community in the United States come to realize the grave threats to the Church’s public moral witness presented by a radical secularism which finds increasing expression in the political and cultural spheres.” He added: “The seriousness of these threats needs to be clearly appreciated at every level of ecclesial life.”
The US should be a land thoroughly committed to religious freedom in light of its history and the fundamental principles of the nation’s founding, the Pope argued. He said:At the heart of every culture, whether perceived or not, is a consensus about the nature of reality and the moral good, and thus about the conditions for human flourishing. In America, that consensus, as enshrined in your nation’s founding documents, was grounded in a worldview shaped not only by faith but a commitment to certain ethical principles deriving from nature and nature’s God. Today that consensus has eroded significantly in the face of powerful new cultural currents which are not only directly opposed to core moral teachings of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but increasingly hostile to Christianity as such.
The loss of religious freedom, the Pontiff warned, is “a threat not just to Christian faith, but also to humanity itself.” He explained: “When a culture attempts to suppress the dimension of ultimate mystery, and to close the doors to transcendent truth, it inevitably becomes impoverished and falls prey, as the late Pope John Paul II so clearly saw, to reductionist and totalitarian readings of the human person and the nature of society.”
Pope Benedict urged the American bishops to take every opportunity to defend religious freedom and to promote moral reasoning based on the natural law. He reminded them that the natural-law tradition does not impose restrictions on true human freedom. That tradition, he said, should be properly understood as “a ‘language’ which enables us to understand ourselves and the truth of our being, and so to shape a more just and humane world.”
The Pope said that he was dismayed by reports from the American bishops about new threats to religious freedom. He mentioned especially the initiatives that would “deny the right of conscientious objection” to people who are morally opposed to “cooperation in intrinsically evil practices.” Here the Pontiff was obviously referring to policies that would require health-care personnel to cooperate in abortions, or force both public officials and private individuals to participate in the celebration of same-sex marriages or refer children for adoption by gay couples. The US bishops have sharply criticized the Obama administration for its unwillingness to afford "conscience clause" protections to religious believers.
An AP story on the Pope's address accurately reported that American Catholics have been divided on the duties of Catholic lawmakers regarding policies that violate the precepts of Church teaching. The AP story concluded: "In recent years, a small but growing number of local bishops have publicly told Catholic lawmakers who support abortion rights not to present themselves for communion because of their stance on the issue."
Phrases like "distributive justice" and "guaranteed universal access to health care" are anathema to Republicans (and might send Glenn Beck into apoplexy), but they are especially problematic for many conservative Catholic Republicans such as incoming House Speaker John Boehner. These Republicans are often cast as more loyal to the pope than Catholic Democrats, even though they oppose universal health care and other church priorities, such as immigration reform.Let us consider the first cited paragraph in light of the full context of Benedict's remarks.
Many Republicans did cite claims (widely disputed) that health care reform would fund abortion as one reason for their opposition. In his message Thursday, the pope specifically objected to any health care policies that would include abortion coverage, in-vitro fertilization (which can entail the destruction of embryos) or "legalized euthanasia." But Republicans, and most Catholics among them, opposed health care reform because of its expansion of government regulation, a position that put them at odds with the Catholic bishops of the United States, with Catholic teaching, and with the pope.
Important also in the field of health, integral part of each one's existence and of the common good, is to establish a true distributive justice that guarantees to all, on the basis of objective needs, adequate care. Consequently, the world of health cannot be subtracted from the moral rules that should govern it so that it will not become inhuman. As I stressed in the encyclical "Caritas in Veritate," the social doctrine of the Church has always evidenced the importance of distributive justice and of social justice in the different sectors of human relations (No. 35). Justice is promoted when one receives the life of the other and one assumes responsibility for him, responding to his expectations, because in him one grasps the face itself of the Son of God, who for us was made man. The divine image impressed in our brother is the foundation of the lofty dignity of every person and arouses in each one the need of respect, of care and of service. The bond between justice and charity, in the Christian perspective, is very close: "Charity exceeds justice, because to love is to give, to offer of my 'own' to the other; but it is never without justice, which induces to give the other what is 'his,' that which is due to him by reason of his being and his acting. [...] He who loves others with charity is first of all just to them. Not only is justice not foreign to charity, not only is it not an alternative or parallel way to charity: Justice is 'inseparable from charity,' intrinsic to it. Justice is the first way of charity" (Ibid., 6). In this connection, with a synthetic and incisive expression, St. Augustine taught that "justice consists in helping the poor" ("De Trinitate," XIV, 9: PL 42, 1045).There is a fine line between "distributive justice" advocated by Benedict and "redistributive justice," which is a basic tenet of socialist states. The former is brought about through individuals acting freely out of charity with a sense of justice; the latter is brought about by government coercion through unjust means. There is not so fine a line between "guranteed universal access to healthcare" and "universal healthcare coverage." The two are not one and the same, by a long shot. Contrary to (David) Gibson's claim in the second cited paragraph, opposition to "health care reform because of its expansion of government regulation" does not put one "at odds with the Catholic bishops of the United States, with Catholic teaching, and with the pope." At the height of the healthcare debate last year, a joint statement by Archbishop Joseph Naumann and Bishop Robert W. Finn of Kansas City stated clearly and succinctly the difference between the rights and responsibilities of individuals and the government's obligations with regard to healthcare.
The right of every individual to access health care does not necessarily suppose an obligation on the part of the government to provide it. Yet in our American culture, Catholic teaching about the “right” to healthcare is sometimes confused with the structures of “entitlement.” The teaching of the Universal Church has never been to suggest a government socialization of medical services. Rather, the Church has asserted the rights of every individual to have access to those things most necessary for sustaining and caring for human life, while at the same time insisting on the personal responsibility of each individual to care properly for his or her own health.Had he done the slightest bit of research, (David) Gibson would undoubtedly have found this statement on any number of websites and blogs. Whether it would have changed the relative nature of his column is doutful, however. Insufferable journalists are always more eager to create facts than to report them.
What a rich coincidence we Roman Catholics got to experience at Mass on Sunday, July 18. The scheduled Gospel passage was Luke's story about Jesus visiting the sisters Martha and Mary of Bethany (who Catholic tradition says was Mary Magdalene). Many biblical scholars believe the narrative shows Jesus encouraging Mary to assume the role of a disciple, like Peter and the guys. That notion lent some cable-news significance to the reading — coming as it did just days after the Vatican issued an avowal, as obtuse as it was malicious, that ordaining women into the priesthood was a sin on par with pedophilia.What should be obvious to anyone who has ever been acquainted with self-identified "Roman Catholics" like Padgett is that something is bugging him and it has nothing to do with the Vatican's views on women. That is a veneer behind which he would like to hide, but his tone blows his cover. It is something more serious than a simple difference of opinion that is motivating Padgett to characterize the Vatican's declaration as "obtuse," "malicious," and "misogynous." His choice of words is intended, rather obviously, to convey the impression that Rome is behaving irrationally, but it is Padgett who is being irrational here. Whatever one's own opinion, the teaching of the Catholic Church (as well as the Eastern Orthodox Church and most confessional Protestant churches) on the ordination of women is rooted in 2,000 years of biblical and Apostolic tradition and has far more to do with an historical understanding of the priesthood than with an adverse opinion of women. It cannot be dismissed by a handful of twenty-first century revisionists simply because it is offensive to their post-modern notions of "equality" and "inclusiveness."
Rome's misogynous declaration, tossed into its new guidelines on reporting clerical sexual abuse, did more than just highlight the church's hoary horror at the idea of female priests — or its penchant of late for sticking its papal slippers in its mouth every chance it gets. It also pointed up an increasingly spiteful rhetoric of bigotry. When Argentina in mid-July legalized gay marriage, the country's Catholic bishops weren't content to simply denounce the legislation; they used the occasion to argue for the subhumanity of homosexual men and lesbians, the way many white Southern preachers weren't ashamed to degrade African Americans during the civil rights movement. Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio not only called the new law "a scheme to destroy God's plan"; he termed it "a real and dire anthropological throwback," as if homosexuality were evolutionarily inferior to heterosexuality.
How did it come to this? The answer lies in why the Vatican felt compelled to throw its antifemale jab into the sexual-abuse directives. When any institution is as convinced of its own moral infallibility as the Catholic Church is, it tends to lash out at criticism — especially charges as serious as the priestly rape of children — with Dostoyevskian paranoia. And the church then fortifies its less popular stances, like an all-male priesthood or the condemnation of gays, in the process becoming even more uncompromising. Most Catholics, according to polls in the U.S. and abroad, support women's ordination, but the church peevishly views that trend as an insidious subagenda of its sexual-abuse accusers. Hence last week's astonishing aside from Rome that both the ordination of female priests and pedophilia are graviora delicta, or grave crimes
* * * *
And it's sounding that way to Catholics as much as it is to non-Catholics. Many if not most of us Catholics remain Catholics today not because of the church's leadership but in spite of it. In a new Gallup poll, 62% of U.S. Catholics say gay relationships are morally acceptable. Which means we're not thrilled to have our religion represented by a bunch of homophobes wearing miters. Even those of us who sharply disagree with the church on a number of doctrinal issues still want to believe it can be a helpful, contemplative guide in matters spiritual and social. But if it keeps up the hateful discourse, it will lose whatever modicum of attention my generation of Catholics still pays it — and it can forget about my children's generation.For someone who claims himself to be a Catholic, Padgett seems a little too willing to embrace so many popular caricatures of the institution to which he claims membership. Jack Chick couldn't have said it better. But, all caricature aside, there is something uniquely American, in the worst sense of the word, about Padgett's reference to opinion polls. To begin with, such polls are probably much like pre-election polls where numbers fluctuate considerably when the sampling is broken down between "adults," "registered voters," and "likely voters." The different categories into which "most Catholics" would fall are innumerable. Lapsed and disgruntled Catholics are a dime a dozen and, in all likelihood, vastly over-represented in polling samples.
My daughter happened to be serving as an altar girl at Mass on Sunday. She was smart enough to sense that in the gospel reading, Jesus was relating to Mary as if she were a disciple. And she'll learn that the New Testament is full of other passages that indicate Jesus believed women could be alteri Christi, or "other Christs," as priests often call themselves. Real Catholicism encourages that kind of enlightened thinking — and it certainly doesn't call it, as the Catholic Church does, a crime.This deserves fuller examination in a future post. For now, suffice it to say that Tim Padgett's paper trail leading up to his more recent article on the "ordination" of a female "priest" indicates that he has a decidedly anti-Catholic agenda (although he calls himself a Catholic) which calls into question his objectivity as a reporter.
Has someone been slipping some kind of illegal substance into the Foreign Office officials’ tea?
In preparing for the Pope’s visit to Britain later this year, British diplomats circulated a memo which put forward a bizarre and highly offensive list of ‘ideal’ ways in which Benedict XVI might occupy his time in Britain, as well as other events to mark his visit.
These included launching a range of ‘ Benedict’ condoms and inviting the Pope to open an abortion clinic or bless a gay marriage.
The diplomats also suggested he might launch a helpline for abused children, apologise for the Spanish Armada or sing a song with the Queen for charity.
Such gratuitous mockery has now created an acute diplomatic embarrassment for the British Government.
It has been forced to make a grovelling apology to the Vatican which, not surprisingly, takes an exceedingly dim view of this affair.
Indeed, the Pope’s advisers are reportedly regretting that he ever agreed to come to Britain at all.
For not only is he at the centre of raging criticism over the way the Church has dealt with paedophile priests, but he is being threatened with public protests and even arrest by militant atheists.
Given that he is also being accused of attempting to poach disaffected members of the Church of England, the papal visit is clearly a deeply sensitive matter requiring the maximum diplomatic skill.
Yet the response by the representatives of Her Majesty’s Government has been effectively the equivalent of an obscene gesture.
So what on earth has got into the normally bland-to-a-fault Foreign and Commonwealth Office?
Apparently, the proposals were made by a group of junior officials, one of whom has now been hauled over the coals. This raises more questions than it answers.
How junior is junior? The Vatican insists these officials were more senior.
The disciplined official is said to have been ‘transferred to other duties’. Other duties than what, precisely, apart from insulting the Pope? Why haven’t all the officials involved been sacked?
After all, how can diplomats who have shown such an astonishing lack of judgment or propriety, not to say an eye-watering absence of diplomatic skills, continue to be employed in their country’s foreign service?
If they’d proposed something like this about South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma or Syria’s President Assad, for example, does anyone doubt that their heels would not have been seen for dust?
So, at the highest levels in the Foreign Office — which are said to be ‘appalled’ — it would appear that insulting the Pope doesn’t really matter as much as insulting the corrupt or the tyrannical.
In any event, what does this say about the FCO that it employs people who do such a thing?
Once upon a time, it recruited the brightest in Whitehall who had to pass a demanding entrance test to qualify.
Yet apart from their insults, these officials appeared to believe — vacuously — that the singer Susan Boyle was a more influential person for the Pope to meet than the Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols, the most senior Catholic in Britain.
Some in the Catholic Church are dismissing all this as a joke, a kind of internal office prank that somehow got out of hand.
On first reading, this is certainly how it seems. After all, surely no one could have put forward in all seriousness suggestions which read like a Monty Python sketch.
One retired diplomat, commenting on the furore, has written that those who have been shocked by this document are suffering from a ‘sense of humour failure’, since this was merely the kind of in-joke that is made all the time among diplomats.
The only thing wrong with it was that, through some oversight, it was circulated too widely.
But given that the Foreign Office is desperately apologising and the Vatican is now thinking of calling off the visit altogether, to call this a ‘sense of humour failure’ would seem to reflect precisely the kind of supercilious Foreign Office cynicism revealed by the document itself.
In any event, this doesn’t seem to have been an email which was sent around by accident. It was a document that was sent to a senior Foreign Office official, 10 Downing Street, the Department for International Development and the Northern Ireland Office.
And when you look at its covering note, it seems even less likely that it was meant as a joke. For it says these suggestions were ‘the product of a brainstorm which took into account even the most far-fetched of ideas’. In other words, however far-fetched they were, these ideas were apparently being offered for serious discussion.
This appears to have been a different kind of brainstorm altogether. For these suggestions could not have been more carefully and deliberately designed to be as offensive and insulting as possible. Something like this could not have happened in the past, when a very different type of mandarin — stuffy, upper-class, punctilious to a fault — typified the Foreign Office.
Such a type was hardly ideal. But then, like the rest of the Whitehall establishment, the FCO moved from one extreme to another.
A concerted effort began to recruit from beyond the ranks of the privileged — in other words, those who had a reliable standard of education because they had been to the best schools — in favour of those from every kind of disadvantage. For whom, of course, the standard had to be lowered.
Even among those educated at good schools and Oxbridge, however, the general collapse of educational and moral standards has meant public service is now populated by a certain type of young official who is callow, shallow and politically correct to a fault.
Among such people, the orthodoxy is a world view in which minorities are axiomatically to be respected while Christianity is treated with contempt. The Catholic Church in particular is to be despised because of paedophile priests and its ban on contraception and abortion.
For sure, there are troubling aspects of this papacy which should legitimately be questioned. But the double standard here — quite apart from the insolence — is breathtaking.
Can you imagine a group of officials making such suggestions, light-hearted or not, about Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists or other minorities associated with the Third World?
Of course not. But the Catholics are fair game.
This world view is by no means confined to the Foreign Office, but is widespread in fashionable circles, where bullying of Christians is rife.
While the Vatican’s failure to deal with paedophile priests offers real cause for concern, the hysteria this has provoked is wildly disproportionate.
Compare the threats to arrest the Pope with, say, the absence of similar loathing directed towards Margaret Hodge, who has been able to serve for years as a government minister despite her failure to deal with the paedophile ring at Islington council when she was its leader.
Even if the diplomats’ paper was meant to be a joke, the fact that our supposedly brightest civil servants think like this is a dismal commentary on the state of the nation, its educational standards and its values.
It shows how flippancy and shallowness coexist with a brutalised arrogance. Among those who purport to be the most liberal, educated and enlightened, minds are actually closed and display a vicious illiberalism and gross absence of respect for other points of view, particularly mainstream European religious faiths.
No wonder the Pope is having second thoughts about visiting Britain. Diplomats are popularly scoffed at for telling lies abroad for the good of their country.
But now it would seem that they are intent on showing the world the most ugly face of Britain.For what it's worth, this Anglican believes the pontiff has more than enough justification to call off his British visit as a matter of principle. Idle threats from a few atheist blowhards are not enough to keep him away. But rude and insulting comments coming from "diplomats" in official government documents raises the stakes considerably. Knowing Benedict, however, he will balance the diplomatic concerns with his own pastoral concerns for the British people.
The health-care debate is a perfect example of why Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical on the economy is calledNot only Catholics, but Christians of all traditions should be united in opposition to any "healthcare" plan which demeans, devalues, and dehumanizes the most helpless among us.Caritas in Veritate — Charity and Truth.
Think of it this way: Psychologists who have attempted to care for people’s mental health without regard to the reality of sin end up leaving people at the mercy of the worst psychological disasters. A medical community that rejects the sacredness of human life ends up killing more people — embryos and the elderly — than they save.
And economists who reduce people to economic entities — ignoring human love and the truth about the human person — find that they just make problems worse.
Health care is a perfect example. Charity and truth are why we have health care in the first place. The modern health-care system started with Christ’s command to “heal the sick.” Dedicated religious invented hospitals. Catholic nuns and brothers staffed them and allowed them to proliferate. Health care was affordable to all who needed it because, at its heart, it was a service of charity that responded to the dignity of the human person.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Catholic organizations provided education and health care that were practically free. At the beginning of the 21st century, the atheistic movements that worked so hard to unshackle society from the chains of the Church are faced with a society searching for, and not finding, lifelines to replace the ones the Church once provided.
Of course, there are plenty of other factors in the health-care situation America faces.
In order to head off labor unions, employers in the early 20th century started to add benefits, among them medical plans. Today, it is an expectation that employers will provide health-care benefits. That, in turn, means that health-care costs have been hidden from consumers for years: The money for the insurance comes out of their paycheck (and their employer’s account) before they see it.
The litigation explosion in the past 50 years in America has also caused a new dynamic in health care: Providers have to pay huge malpractice insurance rates, a cost they pass on to the medical insurers, who pass it on to you and me and our employers — or to prospective employers if we lose our job.
Yet health care remains a right. “The political community has a duty to honor the family, to assist it, and to ensure especially,” says the Catechism (No. 2211), “in keeping with the country’s institutions, the right to medical care, assistance for the aged, and family benefits.”
That doesn’t mean that all health care must be government-provided. After all, the Catechism is careful to use that phrase “in keeping with the country’s institutions” and also stresses the right to private ownership, housing and emigration — none of which are expected to be provided at government expense.
What, then, does it mean? How can we ensure the right to medical care in the face of our gargantuan, overpriced mess of a health-care system?
Pope Benedict’s encyclical gives his fundamental answer. “Love — caritas — is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace. … Development, social well-being, the search for a satisfactory solution to the grave socioeconomic problems besetting humanity, all need this truth.”
In particular, Catholic social thought has translated this love and truth into the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity.
The principle of solidarity means we ought to love our neighbor, feed the poor, clothe the naked, and care for the sick.
On the one hand, the market alone will not achieve solidarity. “In fact, if the market is governed solely by the principle of the equivalence in value of exchanged goods, it cannot produce the social cohesion that it requires in order to function well,” writes the Holy Father (No. 38). He emphasizes: “Without internal forms of solidarity and mutual trust, the market cannot completely fulfill its proper economic function.”
On the other hand, “Solidarity is first and foremost a sense of responsibility on the part of everyone with regard to everyone,” he writes, “and it cannot therefore be merely delegated to the State.”
The principle of subsidiarity, on the other hand, is the Catholic belief that the person closest to a need has the strongest ability — and clearest duty — to provide care.
These two principles are at the heart of the health-care question: We are meant to help each other, and the person closest to the problem is responsible for assistance.
Pope Benedict XVI is careful not to place this responsibility solely on the shoulders of the marketplace or the state.
He nicely distinguishes between an over-reaching state on the one hand, and a laissez-faire approach on the other, when he writes (No. 58), “The principle of subsidiarity must remain closely linked to the principle of solidarity and vice versa, since the former without the latter gives way to social privatism, while the latter without the former gives way to paternalist social assistance that is demeaning to those in need.”
These two principles are helpful when assessing the health-care legislation being proposed in Washington.
Questions to ask: Does the proposal help us expand health care? In other words, does it allow us to cut the true factors that drive health-care costs — or does it kowtow to those who are responsible for those costs, for instance trial lawyers and pharmaceutical companies?
Also: Does the proposal put decisions about assistance in the hands of those closest to the need? Or does it move those decisions to Washington?
Of course, all of those questions are moot if a health-care proposal fails to protect the right to life. Health care that pays for abortion or pressures older patients to forgo necessary treatment isn’t a health-care system at all, but a death machine.
No matter how it is structured or how many benefits it provides to people, Catholics must oppose any legislator who proposes or supports a death machine.
Love and truth demand that.
Washington D.C., Jul 20, 2009 / 01:40 pm (CNA).- In remarks on the House floor last week, Congressman Chris Smith argued that President Obama purposely misled Pope Benedict XVI when he said that he “wants to reduce abortion” at their July 10 meeting.Rick Lobs offers some further thoughts.
Smith recalled the president's statement to the Pope and pointed out that Obama has repeated it several times to different audiences. And yet, Smith charged, Obama’s actions have not aligned with his words. “He says one thing and does precisely the opposite.”
Now, the New Jersey Congressman said, Obama is offering a plan for health care reform that is a thinly veiled attempt to increase access to abortion on demand. The plan would increase funding for abortions and allow abortion services to be considered part of “basic health care” required by all insurance plans, including private plans.
Smith pointed to information from the Guttmacher Institute, which has stated that “when taxpayer funding is not available, between 20 and 35 percent of Medicaid abortions that would have been procured simply don't occur.”
These children go on to be born, he explained, referencing the millions of children throughout the country who are able to live their own lives and pursue their own hopes and dreams “because taxpayer subsidies didn't effectuate their demise.”
“The ugly truth is that if his so-called health care reform care bill, if enacted, will lead to millions of additional deaths to children and millions of mothers will be wounded,” Smith said.
Rep. Smith concluded his remarks by encouraging his fellow congressmen to vote against the health care bill and insisting that “[t]here will be children who will die if this legislation becomes law simply because the subsidies are there to effectuate their deaths.”
President Obama says, nea he even tells the Pope, that he wants to reduce the number of abortions. That is a lie. It is probably the most damned lie he tells. The abortion industry (not some pro life group) readily acknowledges that government funding of abortion increases the number of abortions. Pay for the abortions - get more abortions. Period.For anyone with discernment, however, Obama's penchant for duplicity should come as no surprise. A person who cannot, indeed will not, respect the dignity and sanctity of life of the most vulnerable among us--the innocent unborn child--is a person without shame and, consequently, without character.
Benedict’s scope is broader. He’s focused on the Church, on souls, on eternity. “We have all time and all eternity,” he says, “so let’s buckle down and make the most of it.”I'll take Benedict over Barack anytime, any place, anywhere.
Given what is at stake, it’s not enough for religious people to simply find a way to get along with each other in a world run by secularists.
We must find a way to help the world better understand the constant, enduring source of peace who Benedict didn’t hesitate to name in his interreligious address at Washington: Christ.
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