Christopher Buckley, the Obama loving publicity seeking son of the great William F. Buckley, writes a 500 word snicker about Newt Gingrich becoming a Catholic, the Catholic Church, and conversion in general in his piece “The Audacity of Poping” for The Daily Beast.
From the term “poping” to accusing the Church of thinking “like a $700-an-hour K Street lawyer,” the piece only succeeds in being offensive and sad.
Some lowlights of Buckley’s childish rant follow:
BTW: “Poping” in the headline above, which—sorry—I couldn’t resist, is the traditional, British pejorative for “becoming a Catholic.” Did you hear the news? Bertie just Poped! There will be an undercurrent of anti-Catholic bias in the commentary about Mr. Gingrich’s embrace of Rome. As the saying goes, anti-Catholicism is the anti-Semitism of the intellectual class.
Firstly, among much of the “intellectual class” anti-semitism is the anti-semitism of the intellectual class. Anti-Catholicism is just as popular but in no way does it replace anti-semitism.
Buckley admits that the term “poping” is a pejorative but then uses it anyway. Classy. And by using it is he saying he’s a member of the intellectual class? I always wonder about people who have to tell you they’re members of the intellectual class. If Christopher Buckley is a member of the intellectual class his membership is certainly because of his “legacy” status.
As for Mother Church, she’ll come in for drubbing this weekend for seeming two-faced about the sanctity of marriage. As you know, divorce is still not allowed in the Catholic Church. But here insert a large “however”—she is liberal in the granting of annulments.
You see how he shifts blame by saying the Church will come in for a drubbing while he himself is the one doing it. That’s what children do.
Mother Church can be rigid, but at times—bless her—she can think like a $700-an-hour K Street lawyer.
Name calling?
The stated reason for it is that he wishes to worship alongside his wife, who is described on her husband’s Web site as “a devoted Catholic.” To the extent her devotedness is assessed alongside her early relationship with the then-married Mr. Gingrich, it should be borne in mind that to be “devoted” is not the same as being “perfect.”
Then why bring it up? We are all sinners. This is just gossip. This is essentially the old, “She says she’s Catholic but she’s not perfect and therefore all religion is a lie and I don’t have to feel guilty anymore for doing anything I want to do.” Because those with standards will eventually fall short of them, allowing others to call out “hypocrisy” as those without standards often can and will do.
March 29, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Dear Anonymous,
Thank you for your reply to my comment. I have read your lengthy reply, and would like to reply to it in kind. Since you have been candid about very personal matters in a public forum, allow me to be equally sincere in my reply. Since what you wrote will be read by others, I will likewise write to you personally, but also with the thought of other readers in mind, as what I will say might be useful to others also.
I want to tell you that you have my greatest sympathy for the very real wrongs perpetrated against you. I want to tell you that many of the thoughts that you express are not foreign to me, that I think I can now understand (at least is a general sense) the type of anger and resentment you have towards the Church. Several of your statements resonated with me deeply, and I feel I really need to reply to your comments in detail.
I would like to level the field so to speak by telling a little about myself that might be relevant (of course within the confines of anonymity) to our discussion – I know much about you, you nothing about me. I am a young single man in my late twenties, born and raised Catholic. I fully believe in and love the Church’s teachings. I am also suffering from a non-fatal but very painful and debilitating (and randomly reoccuring) disease that more or less requires me to live with my parents. I can work only part-time and my travel is very limited. The possibility of marriage and children (both of which I desire very much) is a big question mark for me. I have also been betrayed by a priest I trusted very much, and several close “very religious” people.
Now that you know a little about me, I hope you will not mind me giving some thoughts on what you wrote.
a) You reveal that you are an ex-Catholic. Reading through your long reply, I do not see any criticism of: the Bible, the Cathechism (i.e. official church teaching), the Code of Canon Law, any church pronouncements. If I may say so, you do not criticise any _theoretical_ aspect of the Church, which is a common reason
offered for rejecting the Church.
b) As far as you write, there is no sin on your part (except perhaps some excessive resentment, but that I leave up to your conscience). You do not reject the Church for shedding light on some sinful habit that you would rather indulge in (another typical reason for rejecting the Church) – quite the contrary. You are angry at others for having sinned against you.
c) The reason you reject the Church is that some of its members have sinned against you, specifically:
1. Your wife for having destroyed your valid marriage, taken away your children and requiring you to pay for thier support, and having, as you rightly called it, taken a lover.
2. The priest, who sided with your wife to actively destroy your marriage, bore false witness against you, and broke moral and canon codes against you. You write he is now a “Pastor” – do I understand correctly that this means he left the Church to become a Protestant?
3. Several clergy from the judiciary branch of the church (from vicar to pope), some of whom ignored your pleas or made a mockery of the judicial process.
I am understanding that you left the Church for this reason. I want to understand what exactly did it and which of these three is the most prevalant.
1. Your wife: this is of course the most emotionally painful of the betrayals. What she solemnly promissed on your wedding day she has now blatantly rejected. Furthermore, she has damaged your children in ways that we cannot even know. This is real human evil. It is not, however, a striclty religious problem, and though I can well understand how this pain might contribute to drive you to rash decisions (leaving the Church), you will I think agree that it is not a rational move. I can understand such a mood, and I have sometimes hated God and everyone around me, simply because of very strong pain that I could not stand. Pain can break any man, and God knows what really happens inside us. But all pain is finite, and eventually subsides. I am learning (painfully) that I cannot allow myself to be controlled by
my pain, I cannot use it as an excuse for anger and bad and self-destructive behaviour, as much as I may feel my life is unfair. I have too much too lose, in this life and the next. All this is a shot in the dark – I don’t know if it pertains to you – but I know it pertains to me, so I know it is a possible factor.
2. The priest-became-pastor: this is probably the least significant one – you mention him fairly briefly, and then he leaves the Church anyway, so he was never ‘with the program’, so he doesn’t properly represent the church anyway. Probably a mediocre man overall, there is little to worry about him.
3. The the various tribunals of canon judges who handled your case: I understand that this is your main gripe with the Church, and it is mainly this that I want to address.
d) You wrote that the first (American) tribunal declared nullity, then the case went up to the Roman Rota, where nullity was twice rejected, and your official status within the Church is currently ‘validly married’, which corresponds to the truth. _De facto_ this status is not enforced by your local Church. Furthermore, you were not able to rectify this by appeals at any level. Let me say a few things:
1. You are, officially in the Church, and truly in the eyes of God, married to your wife, and she to you, and nothing anyone says or does changes that reality. This is worth something. You are in the right, however you are treated by others, including clergy. Does not at least part of you feel, as the philosopher said, that it is better to suffer wrong than to commit it. Would you truly envy your wife’s situation? Is she not the one who is most destroying herself, however superficially happy she might seem?
2. The church only has a legislative and judiciary branch – no executive branch. The Church can throw anathemas, refute, argue, explain, criticise, persuade, at worse excommunicate – these are all just words – ‘sticks and stones’, it cannot coerce. The Church did nothing actively to stop you from leaving it, and it cannot really ‘make’ your wife, or her lover, or Fr. X or Mgr. Y – these people may well endanger their souls by disobedience to Church teaching, but there is nothing the Church can do to stop them, except say she excludes them. Even if someone is refused communion, in practice they can go to a church where nobody knows them, and receive anyway – how do you propose to stop them?
3. Your rights have been violated – this is correct. But what exactly do you propose to do if a right that you legitimately have cannot be in practice enforced? Specifically:
i) As you are no doubt well aware, we are suffering a dearth of priestly vocations (this is a complex topic all on its own). It is impossible for one million men to adequately shepherd to one billion faithful, though many truly outdo themsleves. It really sucks, but the Church might well not have the manpower to deal with your situation. When the 911 call center is ringing off the hook, it doesn’t matter how large your fire is, you might well find it busy.
ii) That the Church in America has major issues is no big secret – you mentioned appealing to the Pope. I assure you that the problems of the Church in America are a priority for the current Pope as they were for the previous one – and also a major headache. The Pope has essentially only diplomatic means at his disposal (and of course, he prays a lot), to fix an american church that (in its bishops, priests, and laity) often is blatantly disobedient to basic Church and moral teaching, never mind discipline.
iii) You mention how the judges pulled a religious “no-fault divorce” on you. Well yes, but no-fault divorce is bread and butter in regular unchurched society. As a male, what chances do you think you stand in a secular divorce or custody battle? (Oh, sorry, I guess you know the answer to that one.) Radical feminism has gripped the judiciary process by the throat, and every male is considered a monster, until proven… oh wait, never mind. By moving away from the Church, you are not moving away from the problem, but deeper into it. I think of the betrayal by that priest I mentioned at the beginning. And then I think of several close friends (atheists) I had in high-school – these back-stabbed me twenty times over. The Catholic friendships I have now are not perfect, but are qualitatively different from the previous ones – much more trustworthy. I’ve read quite a bit on Church history, and the one conclusion that always struck me is: while things can be quite bad ‘inside’ the Church, things outside are much worse!
iv) This leads us to problems not only with the clergy but also with the laity. The american laity is often disobedient to the church. This complicates matters in many ways:
(1) One of our favorite points of disobedience is ‘reproductive rights’, which leads directly to small families: this aggravates the shortage of priests.
(2) Priests are not a separate caste: they are male-only and celibate (in the latin rite), and
thus do not reproduce. Priests are men of woman born – they grow up in the same society all of us do, go to the same schools, watch the same TV shows, until they become priests as adults, and even then are influenced by outside culture. Do you find it surprising that clergy can also succumb to worldliness? Can they not also be
seduced by the appeal of a divorce mentality?
(3) I am glad to hear how you played by the Church’s rules and did all you could to keep your marriage. Many do not. Many date and ‘re-marry’ without waiting for an annulment (e.g., your wife). Do you not think that this might make some canon judges a little bit cynical after a while? If everyone treats the process as a joke, might they not come to feel that same way too, after a while? Need I tell you (a reader of CMR) the number of pressure groups of semi-Catholics always trying to
destroy the Church by idotic pseudo-arguments and prideful protests? Do you think being a
faithful, solid, just priest in all this is easy and fun? Exactly how much moral courage do you expect from others?
v) You argue that the Church should err on the side of declaration of non-nullity in cases. This may be, but it is only an argument of proportion, not of principle. In any judgement you can make an error on both sides. There are tragedies of poeple in legitimately void marriages in very bad circumstances that are not recognised as null by a due canonical process – don’t these people deserve justice too? The
ideal case would be that each case would be judged properly and given the correct verdict. In practice, this will not be the case. The
process needs to become more just (as you also say) – not by always leaning on one side, but by being properly balanced.
vi) Judicial errors, abuses, incompetence have always existed, in all the tribunals of history. As pertaining to the Church, the trial of St Joan of Arc is of course famous, and I encourage
you to study her story closely. She was first approved by the Church at the court at Poitiers,
and was also rehabilitaded shortly after her death, and now she is canonised. And a fat load of good it did to her, because in the middle of it she was burned by Bishop Cauchon on trumped charges of heresy and witchcraft. Cauchon had sold his soul to France’s enemies, and Joan’s petition to seek the Pope’s opinion was denied. Yet she remained obedient to the disobedient judges (to thier great shame) without compromise, and is now a great saint, enjoying the Beatific Vision forever.
The judicial process of the Church is not guaranteed by any form of infallibility. It requires our obedience, so that anarchy does not arise, but the Church does not pretend it cannot fail.
And of course, how could I forget, right in the center of our Gospels, the trial of Christ – is
this not the greatest travesty of justice that we can find. Yet God-made-man was ready to bear
this humiliation willingly. Can we not learn from this at least that our Faith doesn’t guarantee us a smooth ride, nor any fairness in
life. Christ was sold by one disciple, thrice denied by another – is this not betrayal from within? Who are we to expect any less?
4. It is not fair. No it bloody well isn’t. It’s a cliche but it’s true: life isn’t fair. It can
be grossly unfair: millions of people die each year, from gross negligence, imbecility or cruelty from others. Young people were deported to Siberia to die in work camps. African children die from starvation because of the corruption of leaders. Millions of babies are chopped up into little pieces in their mothers’ wombs, and people call it good. The world is often a cruel horrible place where everyone suffers a lot, most evildoers get away with it, the nice guy doesn’t get the chick, _homo homini lupus_. It tell myself this everyday: who am I
not to suffer? Many better people than I suffer much more!
e) I want to ask you not to do one thing. You mention “the Church” several times, notably in your first comment where you call it a “two-faced liar”. I am glad you later clarified the reasons for your anger, but I must ask you,
for my sake, and that of all Catholics, not to make such statements. When saying “the Church” coloquially, we may mean many things, notably:
1. The official teachings of the Church (the deposit of Faith, the Catechism).
2. The Pope(s), the Magisterium.
3. All the clergy.
4. All the faithful.
Now which of these is meant is of course unclear, perhaps even to you. Who is the culprit? You seem to have no gripes with #1, and #2 seems apathetic, but not antipathetic. So it is some members of #3. Do you really believe that your accusation is valid for the one million clergy living today, and so many others
over two millenia? Do you want to include us billion lay people as well? I don’t believe you do. You have been failed by a select number of specific people. It is natural for the human mind to deduce a pattern, but I think you would not like to be captured in such a generalisation yourself. In fact, this is exactly what happened to you – you were steamrolled by a generalisation of the dominating divorce paragdim in your vicinity. You demand justice
that would have to look in your case specifically. But this would require work and effort on somebody else’s part, and that just might not happen. So what are you going to do: haunt Catholic blogs, jeering when something reminds you of your life story? Is it worth it? What will it solve? You sound like a good honest man – why throw your diginty away?
f) I do not say you are wrong to criticise the canonical process and those who effect it. What I want to understand is why you feel you need to step outside the Church in order to do this. You seem to have no problem with Catholicism as such. On the contrary, you wish its members played more by its rules (don’t we all!). Some people have clericalistic scruples of being incapable of pointing out clergy’s sin, thinking this somehow contradicts legitimate religious obediance. Let us not fall into that trap. There is nothing to prevent you to write as you write, duly replacing ‘the Church’ by ‘certain clergymen and judges and lay-people’, which would be more accurate. As a regular reader of CMR and other sources, I am not particularly surprised by the facts you present (saddened, yes). I don’t have a crisis of faith over it, and perhaps you needn’t either. It is important as Catholics to learn what religious obedience does and does not ential, what infallibility does and does not cover, what are the proper methods of criticism (and improvement) of the Church’s practical aspects. Saints like Catherine of Siena can help us understand this. Mgr. Burke’s writings on church authority helped me here too.
Otherwise, if they are not explained in justice and truth, your criticisms will sound like the usual anti-clerical background noise that most of us have learned to filter out. Nothing will change if you throw general insults in “the Church”‘s direction. We won’t know if your issue is legitimate or not, we won’t even know what it
is. Nothing will change, except you will become more bitter – and really only you lose then.
g) Again, I want to emphasize that you have been hurt by particular people, not “the Church”. Nor the Bible, nor any Church teaching guarantees that the annulment court will always be fair, or for that matter that its decisions will always be obeyed by all involved. No one can guarantee
the behaviour of these other people, because of these little facts we call “free will” and “Original Sin”, as well as the dumb bad luck factor. These people will be judged by God in due time. And so will we. We cannot say we failed because of others – that is not an option given to us.
Now if you look at some of what I’ve written, you might think: the Church, what a mess, why would I have any part in this?
h) One of the mental images I have of the Church is a boat (not very original, I know). Now this ship is sometimes full of treacherous rogues and backstabing fiends (sometimes, they are the captains; sometimes, they are also me), and life can be less than fair or dandy. However, I have God’s guarantee that this ship will not sink, and that I will live as long as I stay on it. I also see that the ship is the only game in town:
some people on rafts or treading water are only delaying the inevitable when the storm comes. Therefore, I _must_ stay on the ship in order to survive.
Specifically: the Church offers you her teachings on how to live well and receive salvation. Her priests offer you the sacraments
of confession and of the Eucharist – it doesn’t matter if Fr. X is a drunken liar: he may dispense valid sacraments: they are powered by God and their benifit to you will depend on _your_ disposition to them. (Read about the Donatist heresy for more info) Also, I know one person who will not betray you: Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament (Eucharistic Adoration) – please tell your troubles primarily to Him – He can take it. We poor sinners not so much – we
tend to judge and despair at too much bad news. Sorry, that’s who we are.
Therefore, nothing in your position really prevents you from continuing in communion with the Church, reaping great benefits from her teachings and sacraments, while bearing courageously your misfortune. This can be a path
to sainthood, and perhaps to a not-too-shaby life. Your status in the Church is in no way complicated, so there’s nothing you really need to do, except receive absolution and come back home, which we all have to do more or less regularly anyway.
Understand I have _not_ come to tell you: “You have left the Church, shame on you!” – I would never say such a thing. I have come instead to tell you: “You need to get back to the Church,
it’s your only hope!”, which I also tell myself. Please don’t fail your life just because it has often sucked! This is the only one you get.
The source of evil is not in all or any institutions – it is in each and every human heart – and there is nowhere we can hide from
this. Our only hope is to receive the antidote: the risen Christ, who only resides in fullness
in the Catholic Church. So hold on to the Church, not because she is nice and comfy, but because you are hanging by your fingernails
above the void, and she is the only thing that keeps you from plunging into the abyss below.
i) Furthermore, while you do not have an absolute obligation to be reuinited with your wife (which might be beyond your control), perhaps this is still possible. I don’t know how, but short of commiting sin, you have all your creativity at your disposal. You can see it as a great puzzle to be solved, rather than merely a tragedy to be suffered. You have a
moral right to fight for your marriage (and children), and you might well help to save your wife’s soul in the process. It will take a lot of brains and a lot of guts, but there is so much to gain!
———–
I have told you all these things – it is because most of them I need to tell myself every day. I used the words as I meant them, and all of them honestly. Because I believe that goodness and peace will come from truth and justice: not denial, not self-pity, not excuses for others’ sins nor revenge against them. Forgiveness is not pretending that others haven’t sinned against us, but rather refusing to be determined
by them. Others can sin – too bad for them. We each have our own soul to worry about.
I am thinking of some literature that might be interesting:
1. The book of Job – I suggest you read the Introduction to the Book of Job by G.K.Chesterton. I read it often and it brings me great comfort.
2. The Bible, the Cathechism and the Code of Canon Law – you will find here (as you know) intellectual tools to defend your rights. Perhaps you will not convince others, but at least you will know what is right and true, and others’ words and deeds will start to matter less to you, while God’s opinion (which is always just) will matter more.
3. I like to pray the Pslams – they are very cathartic. “Lord, avenge my wrongs, etc.”
4. One of my favorite movies, Kieslowski’s ‘Trois Couleurs:BLANC’ i.e. ‘WHITE’ – in French and Polish, but should be subtitled. Not explicitely religious, but very to the point and honest about marriage and suffering. At the very least, it will make you smile.
That’s all. I wish you well.
March 29, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Dear Sebastian,
Yours was quite an interesting response. I have so many people that I TRY to pray for, with ever varying amounts of success, but your situation is a difficulty I have not had to face, other than the ever increasing “disabilities” that come with aging, inactivity and indulging in favorite foods too much.
You wrote so much, for which I am humbled at the effort you took for a stranger, yet grateful as well, for the detail(s) presented. I’ll try to re-read your words a few times over, later.
It was an interesting, yet very sad conversation, at least for me, when I hand-delivered my letter of defection from the faith, two years ago, to the pastor of the Church where I was baptized. It was important for me, although I did not tell this priest what I was trying to say by following the formal procedure, since I am told it is rare to be done, in the extreme. I wanted to tell the Church that my love for it required me to respect its good order, even as I formally resigned from its, official, ranks. It has ceased being something that I will accept to be disciplined about or lectured about, regarding the sufficient justification, or lack thereof, for what I have done by leaving the Catholic Church. It is ONLY when a person responds as you have, which is quite rare, but does happen, that I will accept (and agree, to myself and even in word or writing with you (or whomever takes such a tack) that it is not good what I have done in leaving the Church, nor, at least for the time being, will I act to undo what I have done) my obligation to listen to what you have to say. When I spoke my piece with the pastor he asked me, I think in retrospect and still do, as I thought when he asked me, that it was entirely appropriate for him to say, “What is it that the Church teaches that you cannot accept?” It was to his surprise that I told him that it was not what it taught that I could not accept, but it was how its practice was at variance with its teaching that I could no longer tolerate. He could not understand how my having the Catholic Church tell me that our marriage was valid, as that what I had asked of it, in an extremely superficial and I think, heretical and very damaging way of looking at these tragedies (which is exactly how the vast majority of clergy and laity feel based upon my experiences and those I have shared with more than a few others, nullity respondents, whom I have come to know over the years) was not enough for me to be satisfied and remain a practicing Catholic.
I was in too much pain, for having to tell him that I was leaving the Church to make the effort to try to get him to see what this all has done, in the lives of my family and friends. The minds of clergy will not be opened, EXCEPT IN A DISTINCT MINORITY OF CASES AND EVEN THESE MEN LACK THE COURAGE, GENERALLY, TO OPENLY CHALLENGE, EVEN CRITICIZE, THEIR BISHOPS, FROM THEIR PULPITS, AS THEY SHOULD IF THE BISHOP DOES NOT COME TO UNDERSTAND HIS COMPLICITY IN THE DESTRUCTION OF MARRIAGE WHEN HE FAILS TO DO EVERY SINGLE THING IN HIS POWER TO HEAL WOUNDED MARRIAGE, INCLUDING THE USE OF EXCOMMUNICATIONS, to the horrors they are about and that they are perpetrating against valid marriages, spouses and the children of those marriages.
There is no interest in healing with regards to the valid marriages that are thoroughly destroyed in this process, on the part of the Church. The “healing” involved is finding a better piece of tail, male or female, as often as the Church allows.
At least the Orthodox are not so duplicitous in their embrace of clear adultery and mockery of marriage. They do it, straight forward. They just have the better sense not to raise adultery to a sacrament.
I am not opposed to annulments. I was opposed to this particular one.
I will remain outside the Catholic Church, God willing, until my bishop, asks my forgiveness, on his knees(only if he is physically able), in the place of his predecessors, and in the name of the Holy Father, for the failure of the Catholic Church to respect our Domestic Church and to defend it properly. But he must commit, as part of his apology, to radically reforming his diocesan practice regarding annulments, his pastoral approach to difficult martial situations, and he must tell me that he will summon my wife and her lover to his office, almost immediately, or wherever he would deem it appropriate, to inform them that they must divorce, repent, apologize, make a commitment to complete disclosure of their actions over the past twenty years and commit to making full restitution as is humanly possible or face immediate, formal excommunication. The Bishop must also commit himself to a full internal investigation, which can be monitored, independently and not run solely by the Church, with the commitment from Rome to hold to account ALL involved in this nightmare.
My wife already knows that it has always been my desire to restore our marriage, but it is up to her to act to do it. It has never been a question of whether I should forgive her or not. It is a question of her ability to face herself and her actions. This will never be done without the Bishop being involved, personally. Not ever. He must act to facilitate it.
Either the Bishop is part of helping to heal this marriage or he throws his lot with adultery and corruption.
What is needed to be done by the Catholic Church is quite possible. I doubt the new Archbishop coming to New York is up to it, as it would be a radical departure from business as usual. He already has my request for his actions, in writing, since my requests have been ignored by his two immediate predecessors. He has my email and he has my phone number.
And he has my prayers.
Thank you to those who have been kind in your responses. Please pray for us all, including Archbishop Dolan, upon whom, the salvation of many in my family may depend.
March 30, 2009 at 9:23 pm
He’s certainly wrong about one thing. K street lawyers usually make about $800 to $1k per hour.
March 31, 2009 at 7:37 am
Dear Anonymous,
I want to give you the time to think over our exchange, and perhaps continue it at a future date. I have many more things to say pertaining to your last reply, but this will have to wait.
All I want to say right now is that both the contents of my reply and the fact that I wrote it are not a product of my genius or good nature, but of the influence the Church has had on me. The same Church that you are angry at. So in this sense, it is not so much me writing to you, as the Church (as imprinted on me) writing to you. And the gratitude that you feel towards me should really be redirected to the Church who taught me to behave and think this way. Of the clergy you are angry at for failing you, know that they have also done much good (by way of teaching and sacraments) to many souls, and we do not know how much good has come from this, also for you.
Sincerely Yours.