First Things RSS Feed - Brian A. Graebe

Love Among the Ashes

Wed, 14 Feb 2024 06:00:00 -0500

February 14 this year brings the rare convergence of Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day. Rarer still is that it will happen in 2029 as well, twice in one decade. The two observances will not meet again until 2170. That rarity highlights an apparent disparity: “sackcloth and ashes” seem uneasy neighbors with roses and chocolates. What does penitential fasting have in common with romantic indulgence? When we look a little deeper, the coincidence of these holidays unveils a surprising complementarity, as each can bring out the true meaning of the other.

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Cleaning Up the Pope’s Mess

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 10:00:00 -0400

When Time magazine published its issue on the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, the columnist and pundit Peggy Noonan wrote the profile for her former boss, Ronald Reagan. She began by recounting Clare Boothe Luce’s quip that every president is remembered for a sentence: “He freed the slaves.” “He made the Louisiana Purchase.” Sometimes a presidency boils down, fairly or not, to a single word. Watergate. Lewinsky. Obamacare. The same parlor game applies to popes and papacies. “He called the Council.” “He changed the Mass.” “He resigned.” What will Pope Francis’s sentence be? His most famous catchphrase, “Who am I to judge?” appeared early, just months after ascending to Peter’s chair, and set a tone of openness or ambiguity (depending on one’s point of view) that would become a hallmark of his pontificate. His legacy, though, will more likely be captured by another phrase, uttered during that same trip to World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro. During his remarks on Copacabana beach, the Holy Father went off-script and exhorted the millions of young people there, “¡Hagan lío! ”—“Make a mess!” Among the possibilities for Pope Francis’s sentence, a leading contender would have to be, “He made a mess.”

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Notes Toward a Eucharistic Revival

Mon, 12 Jun 2023 06:00:00 -0400

On a Wednesday evening this past Lent, I joined a dozen Catholic young adults for an evening of prayer and friendship at an apartment in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. After we finished praying the rosary, the pizza arrived, and a vigorous conversation ensued. They were hungry to learn, to sink their teeth into the meat of Catholicism. As our discussion turned to the Mass, a young woman shared her own experience and stated that the whole point of Mass is to receive Communion. I offered a different perspective: The primary purpose of Mass is to worship God, to give him the glory and adoration that are his due. That holds true whether or not we receive Communion at Mass.

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Review of Can God Be Trusted?

Sat, 01 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Can God Be Trusted?
Finding Faith in Troubled Times
by Thomas D. Williams
FaithWords, 224 pages, $19.99

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Tolerance and Charity

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 01:18:00 -0400

Tolerance is a nice word, but is it a Christian virtue? Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver doesn’t think so, and his claim has occasioned no small amount of protest. In a smug editorial, America magazine recently chastened Chaput for coarsening the tenor of intra-ecclesial discourse. While no call for courtesy and civility should go unheeded, an apology for toleration that ignores its niceties only furthers the intellectual and moral torpor plaguing the public square.

Proponents of a kinder, gentler discussion on the great issues of our day often attempt a rhetorical sleight of hand, coupling tolerance with charity. Such a pairing is ambiguous at best. The call to charity”loving one’s fellow man as a child of God”is universal and, one hopes, uncontroversial. But what does it mean to be tolerant of those with whom we disagree on serious matters? If used as a synonym for charity, combined patience and magnanimity, one can make a case, but that case remains weak and the term imprecise. Jesus did not say, “Tolerate one another, as I have tolerated you.” Surely, we are called to do more than put up with each other. I put up with the traffic in midtown Manhattan, but I’d gladly be rid of it. And how exactly is someone intolerant of others”not the views of others, but others themselves? One can be uncharitable, nasty, or curmudgeonly, but that’s not quite the same as being intolerant. In the noble aim of a more elevated tone in public discourse, a plea for tolerance somehow misses the mark.

The concept of tolerance forms and is formed by one’s ideas, beliefs, and convictions. Such a realm can hardly be considered innocuous, consigned to some ivory tower and therefore isolated from any real world implication. How we think determines how we act. Richard Weaver wrote some sixty years ago that ideas have consequences”consequences that powerfully impact the moral health and spiritual well-being of society. To take an example from the economic sphere, it would be difficult to overstate the ways in which the ideas of Adam Smith or Karl Marx have shaped human lives over the past century. The more significant the idea, and the more directly it impinges upon human dignity, the more unwaveringly must it be held to the standard of the true and the good.

At root, this litmus concerns fundamental principles of nonnegotiable importance. In a society that has reached a consensus on these foundations, a vibrant diversity emerges in their expression and application”the white light that refracts into the varied colors of the spectrum. When we agree upon a free press and open access to information, for example, means of communication become ever more varied and sophisticated”from courier post to iPhones, from newspapers to this webpage. Augustine’s famous maxim, Ama Deum et fac quod vis (Love God and do what you will), speaks to this holy freedom. On the big questions, however, the public square today affords no such luxury, as we find common ground increasingly less common. And in this arena an assumption of good will simply doesn’t suffice. Aristotle rightly noted that everyone acts for a perceived good. But in the objective order, those perceptions are often misguided, ill-informed, or just plain wrong.

True charity does not permit tolerance in this regard, because it seeks the moral good of another even when that causes offense. Yet charity does not equal niceness. The latter is an unwillingness to offend at any cost, whereas charity, exercised with prudence, casts a wider net. When Jesus ate with tax collectors and prostitutes, he showed charity for those souls regardless of who took umbrage. Likewise, his actions in the temple, which caused great offense, were nonetheless ordered to a greater good that took precedence over the complacency of his coreligionists. It wasn’t nice of Jesus to call the Pharisees blind guides, whited sepulchers, and a brood of vipers. But his forceful articulation of a truth, even an uncomfortable truth, aimed at saving their souls and the souls of his listeners.

True charity not only puts the good of others before your own comfort, it also puts the good of others before their own comfort. This surely flies in the face of popular morality, where the only remaining sin is to offend. (How many public pseudo-confessions begin with the protasis, “If my actions offended anyone . . . ” Rare indeed is the apology for having done something simply wrong.) When truth itself, which alone sustains free society, faces serious challenge, the only recourse can be a steadfast and unyielding intolerance.

With characteristic panache, Fulton Sheen, in his 1931 essay “A Plea for Intolerance,” reveals that this confusion is hardly new:

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Today’s Practical Problem

Fri, 08 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400

In a recently published memoir, The Seal: A Priest’s Story , Fr. Timothy Mockaitis recounts his central role in an unprecedented legal drama. On a fairly routine visit to Oregon’s Lane County Jail, Mockaitis heard the confession of an inmate accused of multiple homicide. Unbeknownst to this priest, he was not the only one hearing the confession. The district attorney, aware of the inmate’s request for the sacrament, had secretly wiretapped the visitors area to obtain that exchange, and planned to submit the tape as evidence in court. When a local reporter tipped Mockaitis off, a dramatic showdown ensued, threatening the precarious balance of church“state relations.

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