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MEMO

To: His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI

From: Laura Jones - http://www.mamaleh-larisa.com

Date: September 13, 2008

Subject: The Catholic problem of Laura Jones

Please, your Holiness, be so kind as to tell me what on earth is going on here!!!

In today’s Time, I find an article entitled “The Pope’s Followup to Regensburg” (by Jeff Israely / Paris, Friday, Sep. 12, 2008). Mr. Israely states, and most emphatically, that “Regensburg had laid out, in forceful language, the keynote theme of Benedict's papacy: his belief that faith and reason can, and must, live side by side, within the individual and in society at large.”

I, myself, cannot recall a time after I reached the age when I tremendously enjoyed working through problems with my own mind – my mind having been steeped in the Bible from my earliest days – I cannot recall a time when it was not my conviction that faith and reason can, and must, live side by side, within the individual and in society at large! My father, an Air Force Colonel, was on the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon during World War II, so that our household was filled with discussions of public policy addressed by reason informed with a lively Christian faith.

When I matured further, and sought out the Catholic Church because I felt that the divisions within Protestantism betrayed a need for some stronger guarantor that our faith remained faithful to that of the Gospels and the early evangelical Church, I was literally in rapture over St. Thomas Aquinas – whom I studied with profit as an undergraduate, taught by Dominican priests. I went on to graduate studies in philosophy at Georgetown, however, and then the time of troubles set in. Before too long, I was “not recommended for continuation” in their graduate program, because I insisted that what they were teaching was not the true Catholic faith – and I was well motivated by my own thirst for divine wisdom to research every point thoroughly and meticulously, so that I was basically irrefutable.

After some years of seeking I found Dr. Herbert Thomas Schwartz, T.O.P. – and discovered that his experience with Catholic officialdom in the U.S. closely paralleled my own.

After Dr. Schwartz’ repose in 1980, I turned to the Russian Orthodox Church – and discovered the teaching to be exactly what I in my studies had discovered, and Herbert in his had also discovered, having encountered Aquinas in the course of writing his doctoral thesis on Aristotle. And, being a New York Jew of Russian extraction, he taught us to live this truth, day by day, moment by moment, in an eminently practical way. But we, while living within the Catholic Church, were always a kind of fringe element, inasmuch as no one could find any error or other irregularity in Herbert’s teaching or our community – although we were thoroughly checked out, notably by Bishop Vaughn of Newburgh, NY (who was sufficiently stringent in his Catholic beliefs that he was arrested and spent a night or 2 in jail, I don’t now recall what exactly was the issue) when he certified our school as a private Catholic grade school within his Diocese.

So I was not really surprised yesterday, when, within the same issue of Time, I came across an article entitled: “Does Biden Have a Catholic Problem?” (by Amy Sullivan). Whatever about Sen. Biden, what Ms. Sullivan relates causes me to have a CATHOLIC PROBLEM bigtime. I quote:

“During a September 7 appearance on Meet the Press, moderator Tom Brokaw asked Biden to answer the question ‘When does life begin?’ From a Catholic standpoint, the Democratic candidate started off well, telling Brokaw, ‘As a Roman Catholic, I'm prepared to accept the teachings of my church — I'm prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception.’

“If he'd stopped there, Biden would have been fine. But he went on to argue that there was a debate about the question in the Catholic Church, throwing in a Thomas Aquinas ‘Summa Theologia’ reference for good measure. It was that extra flourish that got the attention of the bishops, according to Father Thomas Reese, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center. ‘Politicians should not do theology,’ says Reese. ‘Whenever they start interpreting Catholic teaching, they invite Catholic bishops to jump all over them.’ Within days, Cardinal Justin Rigali, who heads the USCCB committee on pro-life activities, and Bishop William Lori, who chairs the committee on doctrine, drafted a statement outlining Biden's theological errors that was released on behalf of the entire bishops conference — a rebuke not even Kerry received in 2004.”

“Politicians [and women, of course, such as myself, or extraordinarily brilliant philosophers such as Dr. Schwartz, or, in general, anyone who is not in holy orders – and only those in holy orders who happen to be in the bishops’ good favor] should not do theology. Whenever they start interpreting Catholic teaching, they invite Catholic bishops to jump all over them.”

Yet virtually simultaneously, you, yourself, your Holiness were maintaining that “Faith and reason can, and must, live side by side, within the individual and in society at large.” Isn’t what, thanks to the USCCB, has become Biden’s “Catholic problem” precisely such an exercise of faith and reason, side by side, within the individual and, because of Biden’s governmental service, in society at large?

Mr. Israely states in his article, “The Pope’s Followup to Regensburg”:

“Two years to the day after Regensburg, Benedict on Friday renewed his warning of the danger he sees of faithless reason taking root in the West. Some in the Vatican press corps even billed the address as Regensburg II.

“He reiterated the warning in the Regensburg speech of a dual threat — the violence that can issue from ‘fundamentalist fanaticism’ and faith not tempered by reason, on the one hand, and on the other, ‘subjective arbitrariness,’ the absence of morality when reason is not infused with faith.”

Cardinal Justin Rigali, Bishop William Lori, and the USCCB which let themselves be manipulated by such prelates, fail on both counts:

1. These bishops promote the ‘fundamentalist fanaticism’ of faith not tempered by reason insofar as they prefer to the authentic Catholic tradition their own interpretation of this, and thus even cast aside with disdain St. Thomas Aquinas, who is revered within the Catholic tradition as the Angelic Doctor, whose authority certainly counts for more than that of Card. Rigali and Bp. Lori.
2. And if we look at the moral track record of the American Church led by the current USCCB – we see the results of the ‘subjective arbitrariness,’ which gives rise to the absence of morality when reason is not infused with faith.

“The Pope called for a "healthy" balance of the secular and religious in public life.

“He concluded his Latin Quarter address by laying out in sweeping terms his view of the stakes for Europe and the West: ‘God has truly become for many the great unknown. But just as in the past, when the question concerning the unknown God was hidden and present, so too the present absence of God is silently besieged by the question concerning him,’ the Pope said. ‘What gave Europe's culture its foundation — the search for God and the readiness to listen to him — remains today the basis of any genuine culture.’”

I am not sure on what basis the USCCB rejects at the present time what St. Thomas Aquinas has to say about “ensoulment”, adopting instead a notion of this taking place at the very instant of conception, a very shaky hypothesis not supported certainly by reason, and argued only intermittently and for polemic purposes, just as at present, in the history of the Church. How did this get to be so “infallible”???

It just so happens that I did an article back in about 1995, I think it was, it was my first web page, and the first article I posted on it. I sent it to Pat. Bartholomew to review, and got in reply a blistering rant about my being – if my memory serves me - hard hearted, a poisoned pen, and the like. But he concluded that he nevertheless in his generosity forgave me and even condescended to give me his blessing. There was only one specific critique he was able to make about the article, and that was my calling Constantinople “Second Rome”. It was never that, he said, but, rather was, and still is, “New Rome”. I’m like: what’s in a name? So it wasn’t that big a deal for me, and I changed my article accordingly and wrote Pat. Bartholomew a thank-you for reviewing and correcting my article – so I could now present it, as approved by him, to potentially millions of readers by posting it on my web page.

I received favorable, even laudatory, responses from two of the other Orthodox Primates I sent the article to, Archbishop Christodoulos, may his memory be eternal, and the martyred Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa, Petros – who, on September 11, 2004, perished, together with the cream of the Alexandrian Partriarchate, 17 persons in all, in a mysterious “accident” which remains unexplained to this day, a helicopter crash in the Aegean Sea near Greece, as they were traveling to Mt. Athos. It is highly significant that Pat. Peter, before boarding the helicopter, gave the keys to the Patriarchate to his assistant, saying, “Life is short, and you never know what may happen.” So he recognized that he was facing martyrdom and embraced it. I am sure his prayers for our continued effort on behalf of the Church will be heard and bear rich fruit.

And so I offer for your consideration an excerpt which the Alexandrian Patriarch specifically alluded to:

According to [the Vatican II document] “Lumen Gentium”, when, in his capacity as Supreme Pastor, the Pope solemnly defines a truth of the Church, such definitions do, indeed, require the assent of the whole Body of the faithful – but not as a kind of “vote of confidence”, as is the case in democratic bodies politic, where power is not from above, but rests with the voting membership. In the words of “Lumen Gentium”:

“The assent of the Church can never be lacking to such definitions on account of the same Holy Spirit’s influence, through which Christ’s flock is maintained in the unity of the faith and makes progress in it. (Vatican II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, ed. Austin Flannery, New York: Costello, 1984, vol 1, p. 380)”

The assent of Christ’s whole flock is thus a SIGN of the influence of the Holy Spirit. What remains unsaid is the very important corollary of this: that if this sign should be absent, if the assent of the Church should be withheld, we would rightfully question whether the definitions thus rejected by the faithful were made under the influence of that Spirit who maintains Christ’s whole flock in the unity of the faith. All that has been said before argues that there is no infallibility whatsoever that can operate independently of this influence of the Holy Spirit in “Christ’s whole flock.”

Nor is mention made [explicitly in “Lumen Gentium”] of an important historical fact: “Popes Liberius (d.366), Vigilius (d.555), and Honorius (d.638) all proposed erroneous teachings, which were subsequently rejected through theological dissent. (“Faithful Dissent”, Charles B. Curran, Kansas City, Sheed and Ward, 1986, p. 57f.)

The ancient Orthodox tradition of autocephaly proclaims most forcefully to Catholics the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit in the whole flock of the Orthodox faithful, and this precisely on the basis of the Vatican II texts from which we have quoted here. In Orthodoxy, unity of practice and belief has not been maintained by a watchful Vatican [let alone a watchful USCCB]; indeed at times, notably in the recent history of Orthodox Russia and of other Orthodox behind the Iron Curtain, it has seemed that the faithful were virtually without a shepherd. Yet in all these years, before and after the break with Rome, the autocephalous Orthodox sister Churches have maintained a unity of faith and practice that Rome herself recognizes as authentic. (Cf. “Decree on Ecumenism”, IV, A, 1, “Sharing in Liturgical Worship with Our Separated Eastern Brothers, Flannery, P. 469ff.)

Thus within our Orthodox Church we have no prohibitions at all a propos of politicians not doing theology.

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