Denver Catholic

10 JANUARY 31-FEBRUARY 6, 2015 | DENVER CATHOLIC Perspectives " Sixty Minutes," the CBS News "magazine" that helped redefi ne television journalism, prides itself on challenging conventional wisdom, discomfi ting the com- fortable, kicking shibboleths in the shins, and opening new argu- ments. No such chal- lenge, alas, was evident in the program's recent segment on Pope Francis, which aired last Dec. 28. One of the principal interviewees in that piece was Robert Mickens, formerly of the London-based Tablet and currently of the National Catholic Reporter. Here's a part of what Mickens had to say about the "Francis E« ect:" "What he has done is he's opened up discussion in the Church. There had been no discussion on issues like birth control, about premarital sex, about divorced and remarried Catholics. None whatsoever. There's been no discussion for the last probably 35 years on that …" Now, truth to tell, that's been a long- standing (and endlessly repeated) complaint on the port side of the Cath- olic Church. The question is whether it's true. "Sixty Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley gave Mickens a pass, as if the truth of Mickens' assertion were self-evident. But if there's anything self-evident about Mickens' claim, it's that it's self-evidently not true. For far longer than 35 years, there has been intense "discussion" in the Catholic Church on the issues Mickens cited. Moreover, intense dissent from Catholic teaching on these questions has been central to that discussion: dissent in virtually every theology department in every prestigious Catholic university in North America and western Europe; in professional theological societies and Catholic pub- lications; in certain episcopates. What Robert Mickens and similarly-situated Catholics are really complaining about when they say there's been "no discus- sion" on these issues is that they've lost the argument: they don't like the fact that the teaching authority of the Church has declined to repeal Catholic settled moral understandings about the morally appropriate means of family planning, the nature of human love, and the indissolubility of marriage by taking the counsel of those who have di« erent (and defective) ideas on those matters. Constant harping on all this by the self-identifi ed "progressive" wing of the Catholic Church strikes me as a tacit confession of intellectual impov- erishment. Pope Francis is trying to put serious questions on the Church's agenda: How does the Church more e« ectively proclaim the "yes" that underwrites the "no" Catholicism must say on occasion? How does the Church teach the truth about marriage and the family in a culture which imagines that everything in the human condition can be changed by human willfulness? How does the Church o« er those wounded by the sexual revolution the medicine of the divine mercy, so that those healed by mercy can come to know the truth about love? How can the Church call the men and women of the developed world beyond a "throwaway culture" that disrespects and devalues vulnerable human life, whether that life is unborn, poor, unem- ployed, handicapped, elderly or otherwise "other"? How does Catholicism reclaim its essentially evangelical character, so that it's once again a "Church in permanent mission," as the pope often puts it? Those are Francis' issues and those are the questions at the center of this pontifi cate. Yet those are the issues and questions that often go unex- plored when Catholic "progressives" scratch those 60s itches again and again and again. How does such scratching advance the missionary and pastoral agenda the pope laid out in Evangelii Gaudium? "Sixty Minutes" would have had a much livelier program if Scott Pelley had questioned Robert Mickens' claim that there's been "no discussion" of contraception, divorce and premari- tal sex in the Catholic Church for 35 years. He could easily have done so by showing Mr. Mickens the fare regu- larly on tap in the newspaper for which Mickens writes. But that didn't happen: the shibboleth stood, and a potentially fascinating discussion of how Catholic progressives are responding to Pope Francis' most urgent challenges to the Church was stillborn. And viewers were left, at the end of the day, with a cartoon pope and a car- toon Church: not exactly the kind of groundbreaking journalism of which "Sixty Minutes" boasts. Nonsense on 'Sixty Minutes' George Weigel is a distinguished senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. The Catholic Di¡ erence GEORGE WEIGEL Send letters to DenverCatholic@ archden.org, via www. DenverCatholic.org, or mail to Denver Catholic Letters, 1300 S. Steele St., Denver, CO 80210. Please include full name, city and phone number. Letters may be edited. Opinions are those of the author and not the Archdiocese of Denver. CORRECTION A 10-year educator at Shrine of St. Ann School was incorrectly identifi ed in an advertisement in the Jan. 24-30 issue of Denver Catholic. The cor- rect name is Tara Murphy. People deserve better than doctor- prescribed suicide The recently proposed bill to allow physician-as- sisted suicide is the next element of social engi- neering which will lead us to "a more perfect world—a world without su« ering, where every- one has enough delicious food to each, a warm safe place to lay their heads every night, friends to talk with and work to give meaning to life." Right? Wrong. To believe that it is a worthy cause to end a life early because it has su« ering in it, would be to believe most people in the world don't deserve or have the dignity to be supported through their su« ering at any stage of life until their natural death! Now it is "termi- nal illness." Tomorrow it will be "terminal birth." When is it right to expect early, arranged death? Let's work on reducing su« ering in life, and allow everyone to die with the peace and the knowledge that we are loved and wanted by all of humanity. THERESA A. SCHOLZ, M.D. Arvada Feedback on new Denver Catholic Thank you for a more readable, and more inviting news- paper. In the past, some stories seemed diª cult to read, so I didn't read them. I think that the reformat helps the archdiocese to better fulfi ll its mission to spread the word of God. Thank you. TOM ASPINWALL Parker The one glaring neg- ative feature that stood out is the excess of white space on most of the pages. I also noticed other areas had some shrunken print (the crossword being annoyingly tiny). Article content was well-done. Too bad there wasn't more. ANNA-MARIE BERGER Boulder I enjoyed reading the issue of Denver Catholic which recently reached my family's mailbox. Kudos on trying a fresh approach, although you will no doubt hear grum- bling from some readers who had become used to the Register and its o« erings, on balance I believe the publication has taken a step up. In my view, a small but appreci- ated improvement is the reduction/elimination of carryover articles/col- umns. How refreshing to be able to begin and end a single piece on a single page! In our short-atten- tion-span age, why give readers an excuse not to fi nish reading the closing thoughts of the arch- bishop, Mr. Weigel, et al.? MATT RITA Denver A viral graœ ti drawing in Rome last year depicts Pope Francis as a cartoon superhero. According to George Weigel, viewers of a Dec. 28 segment of "Sixty Minutes" were left with "a cartoon pope and a cartoon Church." Photo by Lauren Cater/CNA Nonsense on 'Sixty Minutes' 100s of voicemails » 10 Response to Teleforum beyond expectations Light of the World » 8-9 New Church 36 years in the making How could this happen? » 7 Speaker refl ects on losing child to abortion VOLUME XCI - NO. 1 | 114 YEARS OF SERVICE TO THE GOSPEL | JANUARY 17-23, 2015 www.DenverCatholic.org | @DenverCatholic | www.facebook.com/DenverCatholic | DenverCatholic@archden.org Watch Trevor and Hayley Lamoureux tell their daughter's story in "30 Hours," available on www.DenverCatholic.org ONLINE Renamed, redesigned Let us know what you think. #DenverCatholic DenverCatholic@archden.org seconds minutes 30 HOURS years days weeks months W hen doctors told Hayley and Trevor Lamoureux halfway through their pregnancy their baby had a life-threatening kidney disease, they asked: "What if ?" What if their daughter beat the odds? What if she were born healthy enough to survive? What if they could hold her, just for a few minutes? "I don't know what her life will be like. You might get an hour, you might get 10," Hayley recalled the doctor telling them. "But I can't say that one hour won't be the greatest hour of your life." "We went in there knowing what ever time we got, it would be a blessing," she added. They were blessed with 30 hours. Thirty hours after their daughter Veyda Faith entered the world, she died in their arms. And those 30 hours have changed their lives. "Our hearts are 10 times bigger than they were before," Hayley told the Denver Catholic Jan. 9 at the couple's lower downtown apartment. TRUSTING GOD'S PLAN The winding road of Veyda's journey began last August when Hayley, 27, went for a routine 20-week BY JULIE FILBY 303-715-3123 julie.fi lby@archden.org www.twitter.com/DenCathJulie » 4 Trevor and Hayley Lamoureux believed what ever time they had with their daughter would be a blessing Photo by Andrew Wright/Denver Catholic LETTERS

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