On Praying for the President

 "I pray for the President.  May God Bless Joe Biden."

You have probably heard this.  You have probably said this.  If not, you probably should say it.  Yet what does it actually mean?  

In the annals of American civic religion, it goes something like the following:  we pray that Joe Biden unite this country, bring about an era of friendship, and see America "succeed."  If anyone notices that this is awfully non-descript, well, it is.  The entire point of civic religion in America has been to be as minimalist as possible, so that everyone can ascribe to it.  Praying means whatever you want it to mean, just as the office of the Presidency is a vehicle for your own hopes and ambitions.

Catholics should reject this.  I'd even say we can't "pray" for the President in this manner.  Its an empty prayer that places far too much of a prominence on secular matters.  It also prays for something that in some cases should not even be desired.  There is an obsession with "unity" that implies that everyone should submit to a basic set of principles that the administration outlines.  We see this often in the Catholic Church as well, where Catholics are expected to change how they practice their Catholicism because of who occupies the papal throne.  So we have to act one way when one individual is president, another way with his successor, and so on.

That's not how politics works.  On a certain level one has to agree that the sovereign is, well.... sovereign.  In the United States, sovereignty (for better or worse) flows through a rather complicated patchwork of the President, Congress, and the courts.  That patchwork is further amplified by state vs federal matters.  So when we agree with unity, we agree that those invested with authority should use that authority.  Which begs the question:  how?  In those discussions, there will be debates, often bitter ones.  Far from being bad for a government, this can be healthy.  What is needed to make it work (and what is sorely lacking) is an understanding of fraternity (that those involved are all working from good intentions), and legitimacy.  (That government is serving the ends of the governed.)  Perhaps those are two things worth praying for.

Most importantly, when one prays for the President, one prays for His soul.  I pray that he makes it to heaven.  Most importantly, I pray that he renounces his errors.  The way to heaven is narrow, even for those who do not support evil.  We know of no way outside of God's mercy for those who support evil to obtain heaven, and God has made clear time and time again we should not presume His mercy will save you from those errors.  This is more than just issue such as abortion or gay marriage, though they are two prominent issues.  Often Americans don't want to confront just how united both parties have been in neglecting large swaths of their populace, to often disastrous results.  In many nations, when Republicans and Democrats are united, it means a wedding in their backyard is about to get a drone strike.  

In these instances, one should pray that the President, as well as Congress, is resisted.  Not for some partisan end, but because what they are advocating will be injurious to souls.  We shouldn't expect perfection from our elected leaders, but it has been some time since we have had an executive, from either party, focused on the common good of all citizens, much less on creating an environment that allows them to serve God unhindered.  That's what a Catholic should pray for, and it is a prayer that almost certainly cannot be fulfilled by a political party.

Shiny Happy Traditionalism

 If you're a trad, you've heard this before.  "If you look at the lives of the saints, they radiate with joy.  Meanwhile trads just want to be be bitter.  Traditionalists just need to be more joyful!"  You still see this from time and time.  Indeed, I know I've given that talk myself over the now 2 decades I've been involved with this trad business.  I don't talk like that anymore, and I haven't for some time.  I think it gets just about everything wrong.  It gets the saints wrong. It gets joy wrong.  It misunderstands why there is occasionally a lack of joy among trads.

- It Gets the Saints Wrong

Somewhere, and I'm not sure where, we began viewing the saints less as human beings, and more as avatars of a certain disposition.  Ergo saints were never angry, they were just quiet people who smiled and prayed without ceasing.  That's not what a saint is.  Saints have personalities.  In the Bible, sometimes those saints were angry with God.  Sometimes they argued with God.  Sometimes they argued with each other.  While that was occasionally a problem, God never seemed to be bothered by Habakkuk's questioning him, Paul's rebuke of Peter probably helped Peter (eventually) see the light on the Gentiles.

The reverse is also true. Just as anger can pass, so can feelings of joy and euphoria.  This is why the Charismatic movement ultimately fails:  it places as the height of Catholicism moments of emotion in time, intense euphoria that eventually passes.  The answer isn't to keep seeking out greater moments of euphoria.  That's not Catholicism:  that's spiritual cocaine.  What makes a saint is to not let these moments tell the whole story.  Our existence is not euphoria or crankiness, although both emotions are part of the human experience, and can be healthy!  The Bible doesn't say "don't be angry" it says "be angry but do not sin."

- It Gets Joy Wrong

Joy is not something you can just will into being.  You can't say "I'm going to be more joyful" like you would when you say "I'm going to set my alarm to wake up earlier every day."  Joy comes not from thinking joyful thoughts, but in doing things that give a cause for joy.  Mary is the cause of our joy not because she thought about being joyful, but because she said yes to God, and partook in His plan with a complete and total commitment.

If we want to promote joy, we need to promote a more active traditionalism.  We need more parishes celebrating more masses and more events.  We need more traditional devotions, a better family life, etc etc.  None of that involves thinking happy thoughts, and its often frustrating and annoying.  Yet it provides joy.

- It Gets Traditionalism Wrong

Traditionalism can be a lot of things to many people, but fundamentally, it is about being a means to an end.  This is opposed to a certain train of thought (big among converts and media companies promoting traditionalism) that treat traditionalism as the be all end all of the faith.  It is our exodus from the awfulness that is contemporary Catholicism.  Let's give them a point:  contemporary Catholicism is awful.  If you've already found traditionalism, which is the be all end all, why are you still so angry?  We've got it made!

That's not Catholicism, and its not traditionalism.  The Latin Mass and our rich heritage is a gift given to us from God, for the purpose of honoring Him, and in doing that, we find our own purpose.  Compared to contemporary Catholicism, it provides a better framework.  Yet in honoring God, we're going to become aware of injustice, of wrongdoing, of the effects of sin.  That is going to anger us.  It is going to cause us to occasionally become cranky.  We should not look down on this for one very big reason

- People will just be cranky somewhere else, somewhere darker

There was once a pretty well known priest blogger who said that traditionalists need to throw the cranks out, to show to the wider Church that "this is not who we are."  Heeding this priests advice, several parishoners went to their parish priest and asked him to expel a certain bitter Catholic who espoused a lot of things.  Things which, while not heretical, were still a bit ridiculous.  They told the priest he was a crank, and everyone knew he attended Mass there, and it was damaging their reputation.

The parish priest, a man who spoke with a deep firmness in his voice (a firmness that would occasionally unnerve people) responded  "cranks need the sacraments as well, though not as much as you clearly do."  He understood something fundamentally true about human nature:  humans will always be cranky.  You can't eliminate cranky anymore than you can eliminate gravity.  What you can do is provide an environment that channels those feelings into something better.

We don't do a very good of that.  As a result, Catholics turn to your Taylor Marshalls.  They get deep into American politics.  They surround themselves with people who understand its okay to be cranky, because there's plenty to be cranky about.  Yet they are often caught in a circle of crankiness, and they become increasingly bitter and cranky.  There's no channeling that crankiness into something more productive, because in many ways they are isolated from that which is more productive.  Most cranky traditionalists don't have a nearby parish they can go to.  The local parish might offer a diocesan Latin Mass, which is great.  Yet they don't view that person as part of the community, as part of the family.  At best, they are an honored guest.  At worst, a nuisance to be tolerated.  It is incumbent upon the Church to give them something to do, or they will find something to do.  When I say the Church, I mean all of us.  

Want to reduce the influence of Taylor Marshall, or of those for whom they feast on urine and vinegar?  In addition to making the Latin Mass more widely available, just grab a bottle of scotch, sit them down, and talk about how we live our faith.  Have a barbecue.  Go visit another parish and have drinks/food with people there.  Come up with ideas for service.  See if you can talk with leaders at other parishes about why the Latin Mass is great.  Ask other Catholics if they'd like to pray a rosary together.   Go help an overburdened parent with their kids.  None of these things are going to get rid of people being cranky.  But they will help them manage that better, and give them something to do beyond imbibing nonsense that just makes them even angrier.

But first, give me all the shiny trads, and the happy trads, and let me know who to avoid, because that isn't real.  Its kayfabe, and not very good kayfabe.

EWTN's King of Ashes

 As Christopher White details, there is a storm going on at EWTN, a civil war brewing.  Or maybe not.  I think that is something people should at least consider.  For all the talk of what this entails for the purposes of the narrative, there's little actual journalism detailing what is going on within the company.  Even for those who work in the various parts of the EWTN empire, there's a lot of speculation of what these moves could mean, but very little speculation on what it does mean.

This should be a big red flag for anyone involved that you might be getting a narrative, and a narrative that benefits certain individuals who, much to ones surprise, are those talking about what these various moves could mean.  The first thing you should always remember when dealing with Catholic organizations, especially those that involve donations, is that they are a business.  The first thing to remember when dealing with Catholic writers is that they are showmen, and everything they are doing should be viewed through the lens of self-promotion.  Even the praiseworthy stuff has an angle.  So when you hear that Gloria Purvis was sidelined for this or that reason, always be aware of the levers of benefit and influence that would flow from this or that narrative, and that involves not just Purvis but her critics.

As interesting as this might be to some people (and they will try to convince you its even more interesting), its worth understanding just how very online this is, and how little it matters about the overall state of the Catholic Church.  The state of the EWTN empire matters greatly to everyone involved, because by influencing that empire, they influence themselves.  Yet how much does that matter in the overall grand scheme of things?

The race to see who claims the EWTN empire I do think is instructive in another way: the perils of what happens when Catholicism and self-promotion mix.  This is nothing new to EWTN.  Mother Angelica started EWTN to give people a venue for Catholic spirituality, but from the very beginning she was crafting a brand for EWTN:  that of a fearless advocate of Catholicism when so many otherwise Catholic institutions (universities, bishops, etc) were quite fearful advocates of Catholicism, to the point of timidity or worse.  There is always going to be a tension between promotion of yourself as a witness for Christ and the Gospel you are meant to be a witness to.  St. Paul struggled with precisely this in 2 Corinthians and Galatians.

I'm not sure where, but I think EWTN over time lost that balance. Slowly over time, they became less about fostering Catholic spirituality, and instead fostering a specific type of spirituality.  No, this isn't the culture war battle you think it is.  In a time of unparalleled collapse for global Catholicism (its retreat from Europe, its auto-demolition in Latin America in a single generation, the era of the abuse scandal in the US), EWTN was selling a narrative that not only were things not bad.....   things were GREAT.   It really was a New Springtime.  To sell this new springtime, EWTN brought in a lot of new Catholic personalities, many of them converts, to sell their own conversion story, and to give others the hope they had that not only were we in a New Springtime, but that they were the vanguard of renewal.  Whether it was John Corapi, Mark Shea, Robert Sungenis, Greg Popcak, Dawn Eden, for a span of roughly 20 years (from the mid 90's to around 2015 or so), people from all across the ideological spectrum all had one thing in common:  they were EWTN celebrities or heavily touted being featured on EWTN.

Very few questions were ever asked about if this was a sustainable model of Catholicism, or of the inherent dangers of having a "model" of Catholicism to follow.  Outside of one or two exceptions, nobody is looking at the various media personalities on EWTN over the years and thinking "these are the people I want to model my life after."  Deep down, that includes their biggest fans.  Devotion to kayfabe is the only reason they say otherwise.

Finally, and I cannot stress this enough, a lot of this crap simply doesn't matter.  When Dawn Eden and Mark Shea demanded that their previous shows be removed from EWTN's library, everyone's reaction was "oh yeah, 10 years ago they did something of value" that was otherwise forgotten.  Most people watching EWTN aren't watching because they are or aren't promoting racial identity politics:  they are watching to view Daily Mass or get a chaplet in.  Sure, The World Over is lucrative business, but most people outside the online bubble still know EWTN as that station that was ran by a nun or that had religious stuff on it.  

This discussion is useful mostly as a reflection of the US Church, a Church that is becoming increasingly insular, polarized, and very online.  It is a race between various factions to wear the crown of ashes, to shape a once glorious Church and company now a shell of its former self.  They just hope they are the ones getting paid as it implodes.

Have nothing to do with it.