While We’re At It

♦ Henri de Lubac writing in Paradoxes of Faith: “When the ecclesiastical world is worldly, it is only [a] caricature of the world. It is the world, not only in greater mediocrity, but even in greater ugliness.”

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♦ De Lubac, from the same source: “There is nothing more demanding than the taste for mediocrity. Beneath its ever-moderate appearance, there is nothing more intemperate; nothing surer in its instinct; nothing more pitiless in its refusals. It suffers no greatness, shows beauty no mercy.”

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♦ Douglas Farrow writing in his Substack newsletter, “Desiring a Better Country”:

It is sound doctrine, even sound political doctrine, to say that none but the virtuous are good and that none but the good are free. The vicious may know and enjoy a form of freedom, derived from the works of the virtuous, but they remain bound by their own vices, as if their feet were in the stocks. Their politics, and perchance their religion, represent vain attempts to liberate themselves.

Thus the paradox of a free society (a happy paradox, not a debilitating one): It must shepherd its members toward virtue in order to sustain a culture of freedom, and at times the shepherd must thwack the recalcitrant with his crook.

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♦ The mainstream press is catching up with reality. In early May, Tim Sullivan penned a report for the Associated Press on the rising tide of conservative Catholicism. Guitar masses are out; Palestrina and Gregorian chant are in. Women are wearing head coverings. Priests are preaching about sin and redemption. There’s more Latin and more incense. By Sullivan’s reckoning, the changes, though by no means universal, are significant. Mass attendance is down. Today, many from Catholic backgrounds do not bother to have their children baptized. Against this larger trend of decline, those who remain engaged grow in importance and influence. A Georgetown University research center reports that only 9 percent of nominally Catholic millennials attend Mass at least once a week. It goes without saying that this small group, many of whom have large families and adhere to doctrinal norms, will shape the future of the Church—and that future won’t be to the liking of guitar-strumming Baby Boomer Jesuits. More often than not, the young people in the pews are the “backward-looking” and “rigid” types whom Pope Francis censures. Sullivan cites a study of theological and political attitudes held by priests. It shows marked differences between the older, now retiring clergy, who tend to be liberal, and younger men at the outset of their vocations, who hold conservative views. As one priest told Sullivan, the young priests “say they’re trying to restore what us old guys ruined.” Another older cleric was more direct: “They’re just waiting for us to die.” I urge fraternal solidarity, not enmity, not just among priests, but among all Catholics. But the impulse toward restoration is sound. As C. S. Lewis observed, when you’ve gone a long way in the wrong direction, to get back on course, the first thing to do is turn around and go back the way you came.

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♦ Marijuana has surpassed alcohol as America’s favorite addiction. In 1992, fewer than one million Americans were daily smokers of pot. In 2022, the number had soared to 17.7 million. In the same year, 14.7 million Americans reported drinking alcohol daily. Writing for UnHerd, Mary Harrington speculates that the ascendancy of marijuana bespeaks a cultural change. In Anglo-American culture, coffee, cigarettes, and afterwork booze were part of a culture of work. Factory workers chugged Budweiser at the corner bar when their shifts ended. Corporate managers poured martinis at home after a long commute. By contrast, here in New York, I often smell pot as I walk to work in the morning. It’s not the aroma of productivity.

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♦ The political scientist Ryan Burge keeps his eye on data about American religious trends in his Substack newsletter, “Graphs About Religion.” He notes that a 2023 Pew National Public Opinion Reference Survey reports a small decline in “nones” (those who say that they have no religious affiliation). This trend includes younger people. Burge plots data showing that among people born after 1980, there has been no growth in nones since 2020. He speculates that we’re experiencing “the end of an era in American religious demography.” His assessment: “The rise of the nones may be largely over now.”

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♦ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “The meaning of life lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul.”

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♦ On his LinkedIn page, Piero Tozzi, staff director of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, posted a call for Google and YouTube to restore a Hong Kong protest song that the tech giants had taken down at the request of the Chinese Communist Party. He notes that the ready compliance with the CCP’s dictates runs counter to the corporations’ stated commitments to human rights. Below the posting, the AI function recommends reading about the role of human rights in corporate activities. Click through and you get instruction about how diligently Google and YouTube adhere to human rights in their corporate decision. I suppose AI stands for “artificial indoctrination.”

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♦ Reflecting in the European Conservative on the present fixation on racial identity in film and on the stage, Anthony Daniels makes a trenchant observation:

The obsession with social justice (a moving target if ever there was one)—of which the absurdities and contradictions of theatre casting outlined above are but a minor example—is inconsistent, hypocritical, absurd, boring, literal-minded, unsophisticated, divisive, intellectually nugatory, humourless, trivial, and narcissistic, as well as power-mad. It destroys everything it touches, including the stage.

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♦ In 2023 Christopher Rufo exposed the fact that Texas Children’s Hospital was maiming minors in the service of transgender ideology. The Texas Legislature passed a bill prohibiting transgender medical procedures for minors. Now Rufo reports that the Texas Children’s Hospital has persisted in practicing “gender-affirming care,” committing Medicaid fraud in order to fund the prohibited procedures (“The Murky Business of Transgender Medicine,” City Journal). Federal officials have not stood idle. As the controversy became public in 2023, they were “busy assembling information.” The target? The whistleblowers! “A federal prosecutor, Tina Ansari, threatened the original whistleblower [Eithan] Haim with prosecution.” Then, in early June, “the stakes intensified. Three heavily armed federal agents knocked on Haim’s door and gave him a summons. According to the documents, he had been indicted on four felony counts of violating medical privacy laws. If convicted, Haim faces the possibility of ten years in federal prison.” A sadly familiar story. The rule of law turned into an ideological weapon.

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♦ Gen Z writer Freya India writing in her Substack newsletter, “GIRLS”:

It’s hard to put this into words but I think, in some ways, what we actually want is to be humbled. People say Gen Z follow these new faiths [namely social justice, climate activism, and other urgent progressive causes] because we crave belonging and connection, but what if we also crave commandments? What if we are desperate to be delivered from something? To be at the mercy of something? I think we underestimate how hard it is for young people today to feel their way through life without moral guardrails and guidance, to follow the whims and wishes of our ego and be affirmed by adults every step of the way. I’m not sure that’s actual freedom. And if it is, I’m not sure freedom is what any of us actually wants.

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♦   John Hilton-O’Brienseeks to form a ROFTers group in Edmonton and Calgary in Alberta, Canada. His email is hiltonjohn[at]yahoo.com.

Patricia Zander of Lisbon, Portugal also seeks to form a ROFTers group. Get in touch: pattizander[at]gmail.com.

Nathan Williams of Cullman, Alabama wishes to gather readers for a regular ROFTers group: nswpublic[at]gmail.com.

A ROFTers group in Brentwood/Franklin, Tennessee is looking for new members. To join, get in touch with the convener, Robert Turner: aslanfarm[at]gmail.com.

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♦ Our spring campaign is underway as this issue goes to press. We’re blessed with a generous readership. To date, more than six hundred people have given nearly $600,000. We are almost certain to exceed our goal. I’d like to extend my thanks to everyone who donated.