Public Figures, Repentance, and Down Time.

The Last General Absolution of the Munsters.

This blog isn't intended to be a blog of Catholic apologetics or a blog on theology, although both have shown up here from time to time.  Indeed, as noted somewhere on the face page of the blog, it's really a history blog focused on the period from 1890 to 1920. . .which means that some of the daily updates here are now "out of time".  They have been before, we'd note, and that's in overall keeping with our general historical focus.  I.e., we looked quite a bit at 1968 in 2018 and there are some posts on 1940-41 showing up now that these events are hitting their 80th anniversary.

Probably not nearly as well noted yet, the updates that started with the 100 year mark for things occurring in 1916 and carrying on up till now are slowing down. That's also for a variety of reasons, but they'll largely end in March on the anniversary of another event.  You'll have to keep reading into March to catch that.

Anyhow, we also post on a lot of other topics including current events, and we've been living through some really weird current events, to say the least.

Earlier on this blog there are entries about "the Catholic vote" in 2020.  There are also entries on the turmoil of the times including the turmoil caused by the sitting President's refusal to acknowledge the results.  The comments are one sided by any means and there are more than one thread up on the failure of Catholic politicians to adhere to the expressed tenants of their faith.  On December 13, 2020, we had a long post on this that came up in the context of a post that was developed from an article written by Archbishop Chaput on the Catholic concept of scandal.

This isn't on scandal, and my guess is that some of the people that this article may touch upon in some ways would read the Archbishop's post and cheer.  This article touches upon repentance and measures.

The measure by which you measure shall be measured out to you.

Matthew 7.

It's been noted by people both Catholic (or Orthodox) and non Catholic alike that the Apostolic faiths generally have the easiest, if you will, beliefs about being forgiven for sins of nearly any religion.  Protestants sometimes hold fast to a "once saved always saved" theology, but nobody who has listened to the words of St. Paul could be very comfortable with that.  Rather, relying on the conveyance of the keys and the right to bind and loose, the Apostolic faiths hold that a person can be forgiven for their sins, including their serious ones, by somebody holding a commission that descends from the original one, i.e., a Priest.  This year some people have learned of the concept of "perfect contrition", which doesn't absolve a person of confessing, but which may forgive sins prior to confessing, but frankly, unless a person has a very relaxed view of things, perfect contrition is hard to achieve.

Indeed, the Apostolic faiths don't hold that a person has to confess out of perfect love or perfect contrition, they have to confess honestly but they can do it out of a sense of duty or a sense of fear.  The confession is the key.

For the vast, vast majority of Apostolic Christians the confession solves everything.  But there's also a duty to repent.  For most people, that's a frame of mind in which they resolve to try not to repeat the sin, but even if its a serious one they're habituated to, they don't have to guaranty mental success in that effort.

A bigger problem, however, exists for Catholics in the public sphere.

That gets us back to Catholics like Biden and Pelosi who publicly take positions outside of the established view of the Church on grave moral matters.  I'm not, as noted, a moral theologian but I've heard it stated by Catholic apologist that in that case, as they remain in a position to address the evils that their positions have brought about that they remain obligated even after confessing to do something about it.

As noted, some above probably are nodding their heads about this. . . .

He's a Catholic and goes to my parish

That's a statement I've heard more than once about Catholic public figures in a debate.  It only comes up between two Catholics and its supposed to end the debate through a logical fallacy, that being "you and I are Catholics and so is so and so, therefore we must presume that his actions are correct".

Years ago, as a child, I heard a minor debate between my parents on something of this type.  Both my parents were loyal orthodox Catholics.  My mother stated the "he's a Catholic" line about somebody, and my father replied "so was Al Capone".

Al Capone.

My father didn't like arguing and rarely did, and I've inherited that view from him although due to my occupation, I'm acclimated to it.  My father would not have written a blog.  But he was good at arguments if he chose to engage in them, and that line ended the debate.

Now, did Al Capone attend Mass?  I have no idea whatsoever and I sort of doubt it, save for the end of his life.  Right at the end, after he was back out of prison and dying, he did and is known to have gone to Confession.  By that time, there was nothing that Capone could have done regarding his prior life.  He didn't need to drop out of the bootlegging business as Prohibition was long over.  Therefore, Capone's situation, as dramatic as it is, would be little different than most other Catholics.

And, beyond that, the frequent statement that "so and so was a Catholic" about somebody infamous is often quite wrong.  Frequently such statements are about people who placed themselves many years prior to their infamy well outside of the Church.  Indeed, I heard a while back an careful informed discussion on the claim that "Hitler was a Catholic" claim you often hear by a Priest who took the position that this was pretty debatable, from a Catholic prospective.  He may well be regarded as having left the faith more or less officially decades prior to his role as the horrific leader of Nazi Germany.

Claus Von Stauffenberg.

Indeed, that examples circles back to members of the July 20 plot to assassinate Hitler, which included a lot of Catholics as well as some members of other Christian faiths.  They'd concluded that they had an obligation to act even to the point of committing tyrannicide, an act which cost most of them their lives.  Von Stauffenberg is known to have been a frequent confessor.

So, what's the point and where is this going?

Well, again, fortunately for most of us, the burden of being a common man is a lot less than that of being a public figure.  So for most of us, none of this discussion brings up any real problems.

But if you are engaged in advancing something based on a lie, and you are publicly espousing the lie, it might.  Or it might not.

Again, I'm not a theologian, but Catholic concepts on lying are really strict but not universal.  Some Catholic theologians have held that all lies, no matter what their nature, are sinful. The degree to which they are sinful would vary with their seriousness.  Some others have held that lies that are told in context, such as lies that are deceptions told in just wars, are not sinful.  You get the point.  But lies that are simply mistruths to achieve a goal. . .well that's pretty dicey.

I note this as we're in such a weird time right now and there are so many things in public debate, with public figures doing a lot of the debating, this is simply worth considering.  If a person advances a lie and tells the lie. . .that seems pretty clear.  If a person advances a challenge based on a legal technicality which is also advanced by people telling a lie. . . well that might not be.  If a person advances something that tears at societal fabric and has no chance, and is based on that technicality?  

Fortunately for me, I'm not burdened with any of those problems.  But I am a lawyer and I've frankly long been bothered by the assumption in the legal community that nearly anything, as long as it follows the rules, is allowed in the law because we have "an adversarial process".  Wars are also an adversarial process but not everything is justified in them.  Having said that, the recent example of the law has shown the law to really shine through. The Courts have done a magnificent job.

At this point, anyhow, it's pretty hard to tell who believes the challenges they are asserting, and who is advancing them simply for personal political gain and positioning.  According to Senator Ben Sasse, he hasn't heard a single Republican Senator actually state that he or she believes any of the things being said in public about the election, which means that in his view its 100% politics.

So that brings us back to this.  Being a politician, like being lawyer, or being a soldier or being a policeman, doesn't license a person to do everything for their party or their own position.  A person can insist that it's "for the process", but at some point do you have to say that you'll stand down before completely exhausting the process?  In wars the just war theory says you must, but wars are extreme.  

All of which goes to a greater point.  St. Pope John Paul the Great banned Catholic clerics and religious (Priests and Nuns) from serving in public office as he thought that moral compromise was inevitable and that it took them outside of their proper roles.  This was back in the 1970s, which is now a long time ago, but at which time there were already some significant moral issues in the public sphere.  Since that time they've grown greater, even as progress has been made on some.  At some point it became clear that Catholics couldn't serve in some roles in society that they had in the past, but something that has never happened is an overall discussion on what the role of the elected public servant is in regard to the process and what is done in the name of the process.

We know, based on solid apologetics, that a loyal Catholic can not advance goals that are contrary to the faith and morals of the Church if they're grave matters.  But what about the vast grey area for Christians beyond that.  Can Christian politicians take positions that they know, or should know, are simply wrong?   Can they endorse deception in the name of politics, and if they aren't doing that, can they endorse efforts that are fueled by deception.  If they state their efforts are grounded solely in the process and nothing else, and do not endorse the deception, are they fully in the clear, morally?  Are some goals so overarching, for some reasons, that deception is merited in their name?  If a position is suspected to be false, and doomed, does a person have a duty to investigate the degree of its falseness and whether than can support it in any fashion?  If you become aware that you've endorsed a false view, when do you have the obligation to clear that up publicly?  If your position isn't based on a falsehood, but on something else, but its confused with a falsehood, must you make it clear that you aren't endorsing the falsehood?  Where does strategy separate from morality?*

Anyway you look at it, it takes us back to the fact that being a Christian isn't a set of three or four ideas, or something of the type.  The Pharisees were observant Jews, but their example is often held to a negative light in the New Testament.  

Being honest means telling people a lot of things they don't want to hear.  Honesty is the best policy, as frequently noted, and oddly enough, long term, it's the easiest policy as well.  But its often not the short term popular one.  All that is obvious in the secular world.  But when we go beyond that, it gets even more important.  One Saint who had been a lawyer noted when he gave it up he was doing so as it was too easy to loose ones soul in the occupation. That might be even more true in politics.  And indeed, when laying down one path, it's not an easy thing to publicly back track on it even when that might be a moral obligation.

Georgy Malenkov

Georgy Malenkov graduated school in 1917, just before the Russian Revolution, and he served in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. He became a commissar in 1920.  He rose steadily in the Communist party, surviving Stalin's purges, and was the head of its nuclear missile program when that era arrived.  He became a member of the Central Committee, the real ruling body in the USSR.  He suffered a downfall, however, when he tried to stage a coup against Khrushchev, and was accordingly expelled from his positions.

Khrushchev was decidedly an opponent of the Church.  Malenkov had never been adherent in his adult life.  But upon his release from position, he converted to Russian Orthodoxy and became a lector, which in the Russian Orthodox Church is a minor order of clergy.

I'm not saying, of course, that anyone needs to follow this path, or even that its a clear example.  Malenkov was not in a position to rectify any of the wrongs he brought about in any fashion.  But this is a remarkable example of somebody confronting and acting upon a moral duty when it finally became clear to him.  He didn't need to become a lector and indeed, becoming one, and even simply joining the Church, was counter to his daily good.

Sometimes, losing gives people a chance to think things over, if they'll avail themselves of that opportunity.

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*Added to that, simply as a matter of strategy, at what point does endorsing a doomed effort merely for position purposes turn out to be a really bad idea?

History is full of "last stands", some of which are identical and some of which are intentional, but rarely noted in the analysis is that they largely don't work out. Sometimes they do, but more often than not they're a "last stand" as somebody has made a major tactical blunder.  Custer's Last Stand is a good example as it didn't have to happen and Custer is now negatively remembered, although it took quite some time for history to arrive at that point.  None of the officers associated with that day in 1876 really came out looking great.

We could look at Dien Bien Phu, or even Khe Sanh, or any number of less militaristic examples, but no matter what glory may seemingly be conveyed by going down in defeat to the last man, its almost always the case that last man could have been better used somewhere else if he'd been taken out before there was a last stand.