Denver Catholic

22 JUNE 9-22, 2018 | DENVER CATHOLIC Perspectives Craving approval isn't evangelization T he bizarre comment and the weird gesture have not, until recently, been associated with high-ranking churchmen. Both, alas, were on vivid display last month when Cardinals Reinhard Marx and Gianfranco Ravasi had more than a few of us scratching our heads in wonder- ment. Cardinal Marx is the archbishop of Munich and Freising, a local church su§ ering from severe defi cits in Sunday Mass attendance and voca- tions. The cardinal has many opin- ions on many subjects, and on the 200th birthday of that other Marx, Karl, Reinhard Marx opined that, without the author of the Communist Manifesto, "there would not be any Catholic social doctrine." That curi- ous judgment was repeated in the pages of the Vatican's semi-o± cial newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano — and therein expanded to include the auxiliary claim that you can't blame Stalin on Marx. Well. Surely a credentialed German theologian like Cardinal Marx knows that one of the intellectual founders of modern Catholic social thought was the 19th-century Bishop of Mainz, Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ket- teler — the man whom Pope Leo XIII, father of Catholic social doctrine in its papal form, called "my great predecessor." But perhaps, it will be replied, Car- dinal Marx was suggesting that Karl Marx's work impelled von Ketteler and Leo XIII to develop Catholic social doctrine. There's perhaps a fl yspeck of causality visible under the historical microscope here, in that those two great Catholic thinkers certainly knew what the Communist Manifesto taught (and both rejected it, vigorously). But are 21st-century Catholics so desper- ate for the approval of the left-leaning western intelligentsia that we should think of Catholic social doctrine as merely reactive to Marxism? Will Cardinal Marx next suggest that Lord North, not John Adams, Thomas Jef- ferson, George Washington, and the rest, was the author of the American Revolution? As for Marx and Stalin, perhaps Cardinal Marx could dedicate a portion of his vacation reading this summer to the works of Friedrich Hayek and Anne Applebaum. Hayek explained decades ago that state- run economies necessarily imply tyranny; more recently, Applebaum demonstrated how the GULAG slave-labor system was an integral part of Stalin's Marxist economy. Then there is Cardinal Ravasi. I've learned a lot from his biblical exegesis, drawing on it in several books. But his work at the Pontifi cal Council for Culture has been less edifying. The "Courtyard of the Gentiles" project he led under Pope Benedict XVI — promoted as an e§ ort to dialogue with open-minded non-believers — frequently featured the media-savvy philosopher Julia Kristeva. A recent article, however, suggested that Ms. Kristeva was not always the champion of freedom she long claimed to be: She was quite likely an informer for the odious Bulgarian secret intelligence service during the Cold War, and she had a nasty habit of providing pseu- do-intellectual cover for some of the twentieth century's worst regimes. Then there was the recent loan of Vatican-owned copes, tiaras, pectoral crosses, papal rings, and other vest- ments to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art — another brainstorm of Ravasi's Pontifi cal Council for Culture. Was the cardinal really sur- prised that the opening of an exhibit devoted to the impact of liturgical vestments and Catholic art on con- temporary fashion turned into an exercise in louche camp and vulgarity that bordered on the blasphemous? If not, what precisely does Cardinal Ravasi know about contemporary culture, presumably the remit of his Vatican o± ce? Beneath all this weirdness may lurk the assumption that the Church has to get with it if we're to sow the leaven of the Gospel in the postmod- ern world. But how does pandering to the glitterati evangelize? Doesn't this pathetic grasping for approval — from people whose lives manifest their disdain for the Catholic idea of the sacred and the Church's teach- ing about the dignity of the human person — signal that, hey, we're not really serious about the stu§ you cul- tural elites fi nd objectionable? For a decade and a half, I've been criticizing "Catholic Lite" for its evangelical fl ac- cidity. The shenanigans of Cardinal Marx and Cardinal Ravasi suggest that Catholic Lite has decomposed into Catholic weightlessness: with apologies to Milan Kundera, the unbearable lightness of chic. Toadying to the talking heads of postmodern intellectual confusion and to the tastemakers of decadent postmodern culture is not the way to be the Church of the New Evangeli- zation, or the "Church permanently in mission" that Pope Francis calls us to be. It's the way to become a laugh- ingstock, en route to the boneyard of irrelevance. Consenting to sex R ecent news articles explor- ing the post-#MeToo world of romance have noted the phenomenon of cell phone "consent apps," allowing millennials to sign digital contracts before they have sex with their peers, sometimes strangers they have just met. Many of these apps are being refi ned to include a panic button that can be pressed at any time to withdraw any consent given. Lawyers reviewing the practice, as might be anticipated, have urged caution, noting that consent apps are not able to provide defi nitive proof of consent, because feelings may "change throughout an evening, and even in the moments before an act." When we look at modern views about sex, it's not a stretch to sum them up this way: As long as two con- senting adults are involved, the bases are covered. When it comes to "sex in the moment," consent is touted as key, allowing for almost all mutual- ly-agreed upon behaviors or practices. Yet, this approach to sex is fun- damentally fl awed, and it's often the woman who is the fi rst to notice. Even when consenting unmarried couples scrupulously use contraception, there remains an awareness, particularly on the part of the woman, that a preg- nancy could follow, and a concern about who will be left holding the bag if that were to happen. Sex between men and women involves real asym- metries and vulnerabilities, with men oftentimes being, in the words of sociologist Mark Regnerus, "less dis- criminating " in their sex drives than women, eager to forge ahead as long as there appears to be some semblance of consent. Women often sense, rightly, that consent for a particular sexual act ought to be part of something bigger, a wider scope of commitment. Consenting to sex, of course, sig- nifi es the surrendering of our self to another. Sex ultimately speaks of giving our self, and receiving another, in a total, rather than a fragmentary, way. This is part of the reason why this unique human activity holds a perennial fascination for us; it goes far beyond other forms of commu- nication, exchange, and bonding. To give our self fully to another, and to receive that person fully, forms a The Catholic Di¨ erence George Weigel is a distinguished senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. GEORGE WEIGEL Making Sense of Bioethics Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D., serves as director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, www.ncbcenter.org. FATHER TADEUSZ PACHOLCZYK, PH.D. PHOTO BY RYAN FRANCO | UNSPLASH

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