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~ If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity. – Arthur Schopenhauer

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Category Archives: George Weigel

George Weigel – Making Heros from Heretics

13 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by Paul Bassett in Catholicism, George Weigel

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Catholicism, George Weigel, John Courtney Murray

It is a source of continuing amazement just how malleable history is for Roman Catholics.  There is apparently no longer even the pretense to objectivity or constancy when representing Catholic history.   Francis Oakley describes this phenomenon as “the empire that the present continues to exert over the past in so much of Catholic institutional thinking” and went on to make this prescient observaton:

Under certain circumstances, moreover, casual forgetfulness (by Catholic institutions) has betrayed a disagreeable tendency to mutate into a proactive politics of oblivion reflective of the Orwellian conclusion that if he who controls the past controls the future, then he who controls the present would be well advised to control the past.1

So it is with great interst that we observe he preeminent Catholic spokesperson of the day, George Weigel reaffirming Oaklley’s thesis in his  recent National Review article    Weigel weighs in on the recent SCOTUS marriage case (Obergefel) by channeling the late Fr. John Courtney Murray.  Weigel captions his article, “What would Father John Courtney Murray say?” and describes the late Fr. Murray as, “one of the intellectual architects of the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom and author of what remains today the best Catholic explication of the moral-cultural foundations of the old American democracy, “We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition.””1.  There is no better extant example of historical oblivion than this.

In order to better understand either the tragic or comic nature of Weigel’s prounouncements it will be helpful to review who John Courtney Murray was and how the Roman Catholic Church actually treated him during his lifetime.

A simple Google search will allow the reader to ascertain the bare facts or Murray’s existence. He was born in 1904, was highly educated at an early age, became a Jesuit priest in 1933 and went on to earn advanced degrees in Rome.  And Murray’s area of special interest was how Roman Catholics could make sense of the American political system.  Why did that require the efforts of so great a scholar?  Because the American political system was described as “very erroneous” by Pope Leo XIII. and condemned as heresy.  (Google ‘Heresy of Americanism” and you will find lots of information.)  So how, exactly, were Americans to exist under a political system condemned by the pope?  Enter, John Courtney Murray.

Whle it is beyond our present scope to outline Murray’s thought on the topic, it is necessary to describe how vehemently and vociferously the Roman Catholic Church opposed his work and used every trick possible to thwart Murray in his teaching, speaking and writing.

Americans in the first half of the 20th century were well aware of Catholic doctrine regarding church-state relations.  They were also well aware of the disaster that this doctrine had wreaked on Italy, Spain and other heavily Catholic countries.  Fr. Murray, realizing this, understood that ecumenical cooperation was indeed necessary for Catholic progress in the U.S.  In 1943 he sought permission to address an ecumenical group at Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Such permission was denied by the auxiliary bishop for the Catholic archdiocese of New York.  Later speeches given by Murray were shadowed by professors from the Catholic Univeristy in America and from other Catholic seminaries. The end result was that the Vatican working through American Catholic universities had Murray’s books pulled from the shelves and, working through Murray’s Jesuit superiors, had his speeched banned and his further printing contracts cancelled.  Murray was essentially forbidden to speak or write further because of his “heretical” views and became persona non grata to the Catholic world.  Murray was predictably banned from attending the Second Vatican Council

There is one more very interesting twist to the story and that has to do with the rise of America’s first Catholic President, John F. Kennedy.  Murray was well known to the Kennedy clan and, if memory serves, was actually sought out as an adviser to the then Senator’s Presidential campaign.  That fact put theVatican in an extremely precarious position. If they persisted in forcing Murray into the Gulag, it would look bad at precisely the time a Catholic was poised to become President of the most powerful country on earth.  Realizing the terrible optics that Rome had created for the American political situation, Cardinal Spellman had to intervene to get Fr. Murray out of his ghetto and on to the Vatican Council – which he did.  However, Murray was not in attendance until the Second Session of Vatican II.  (Oh, to have been a fly on the Vatican wall at that time!)

So I hope the reader will see with me that when Weigel goes on to muse about how Murray might have “counseled the bishops” of America, he is engaging in the worst sort of anachronism.  Murray was not even allowed to “counsel” college students let alone bishops.  When Weigel begins his essay, “What would Father John Courtney Murray say?” he exits the bounds of Catholic propriety by openly contradicting the Magisterium.  And when he refers to Fr. Murray as the “architect” of anything with regard to the Vatican Council II, he ignores how the Vatican did what it could to preclude his very presence.

Maybe some knowledgeable Catholics will stand up and correct Weigel before he draws more discredit to Catholic historical research.

====================================================

1 Oakley, Francis.  History and the Return of the Repressed in Catholic Modernity: The Dilemma Posed by Constance in “The Crisis of Authorityin Catholic Modernity” ed. Lacey, Michael J. and Francis Oakley.  New York: Oxford University Press; 2011.  Kindle Location: 677

1 http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420711/obergefell-catholic-church?target=author&tid=900911

George Weigel – Lost in Time

08 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by Paul Bassett in Abortion, George Weigel, Religious Freedom, Roman Catholicism

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For those of you who may not be familiar, George Weigel is an uber-Catholic who writes regularly about all things pertaining to the Roman Catholic Church.  He has an engaging – if pointed – style and he intends to see to it that Catholics, by golly, get their religion right.  And it is apparent from his frequent offerings that George knows what is right!

In his most recent article, “Notre Dame Punts” , Weigel is alarmed that America’s leading Catholic university could have done something so heinous as to squander a free 30 second commercial at last night’s BCS championship game – a commercial that might have reached “the largest audience ever to watch a college football game.”  And what would Weigel have advised Notre Dame to promote in that illustrious half minute ad?  His answer,

one or another (or both) of the two causes that define serious, culture-forming Catholicism in 21st-century America: the pro-life cause and the cause of religious freedom.

(I don’t know about you, but I am certainly gratified to know that Catholicism is now defined by two causes in the 21st century because they were certainly defined by only one in the last part of the 20th!)

I find that admission to be quite staggering.  If we may recall of all the grandiose claims that Rome reserves for herself – i.e. she is the only church founded by Christ whose message comes to us today in “unbroken” succession from the Apostles; she has the only group on earth whose leadership is protected from error by the Holy Spirit; her CEO, the pope, has reserved the right to himself to make immaculate pronouncements – the only two that Weigel finds appropriate to bring to a large American audience are abortion and religious freedom.  Those are the defining issues this century.

But it is safe to say that those two issues are historical anomalies in the Roman communion.

The first issue is abortion.  Adman Weigel’s recommended copy for the ad Notre Dame “should have” used is thus: “We’re Notre Dame: We help women in crisis pregnancies and we defend the right to life for all, from conception until natural death.”  But that is not – I say again, not – the historic view of the Roman Catholic Church.  As we have noted here Pope Innocent III defended one of his priests who had caused his mistress to abort.  St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “We conclude therefore that the intellectual soul is created by God at the end of human generation….”  In other words man, the perfect union of body and soul, is not achieved at conception but “at the end of human generation”.  When we add to that Pope Leo XIII’s absolute endorsement of Thomism as official Catholic philosophy at the end of the 19th century, it is ever so clear that the Holy Spirit saved Msgr. Weigel from making an egregious and embarrassing historical mistake in his ad.  To sum the matter in a way reminiscent of recent U.S. political campaigns, Rome voted for abortion before it voted against it.

And Mr. Weigel suffers from a similar historical myopia with regard to the issue of religious freedom.  It must be remembered that Pope Boniface VIII in his infamous bull of 1312 (Unam Sanctam) declared that there is no salvation outside the Church of Rome.  Now that is hardly ecumenical language!  And it’s hard to describe the murder by Rome of the Waldensians and others as honoring their “religious freedom”.  And what of the seven hundred years where the Bishop of Rome oversaw the enslavement of the Jews in the ghettos throughout the Papal States?  Was that a concern for religious freedom?

Here is the official view of religious freedom as written by the same Leo XIII:

it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced.

According to Leo XIII, Weigel’s position is “erroneous”.  The State is to be either united with, or subservient to, the Roman Church and its pope.  Period.

Weigel tells the amusing story of an opposing team’s chaplain remarking, in a game against Notre Dame, the God doesn’t care who wins a football game.  The then-coach of Notre Dame, in his best Will Rogers persona, replied, “Yes, but his Mother does!”  Well, if last night’s 42-14 rout of Notre Dame by Alabama is any indication, she must not care anymore.  But maybe she cares enough to keep her university from making blatantly erroneous claims about the history of Catholic teaching.

Maybe their ad should have said, “We’re Notre Dame.  We have a history department.  George Weigel doesn’t.”

Soli Deo Gloria

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If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity. - Arthur Schopenhauer

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If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity. - Arthur Schopenhauer

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If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity. - Arthur Schopenhauer

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If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity. - Arthur Schopenhauer

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If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity. - Arthur Schopenhauer

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If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity. - Arthur Schopenhauer

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If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity. - Arthur Schopenhauer

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If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity. - Arthur Schopenhauer

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