Christian Renaissance Movement

Some months ago I was in a Twitter feud (actually several) with an individual who has been something of a representative of the best there is in the world of lefty moral thought which is trying very hard to convince people just how orthodox it is to think that sometimes it is just so difficult to avoid committing adultery (after a divorce and attempted remarriage) that it might not be seriously sinful. (I’ve left Twitter for various reasons, so don’t bother looking. This despite having been followed shortly before my departure by the former co-host of what was at that point, back in 2020, for some time the most popular podcast in the world. Alas.)

We’re not talking about a case of severe cognitive impairment like schizophrenia or some other dissociative disorder that would render one minimally responsible or completely innocent, or some kind of extreme scenario involving physical violence (which would then arguably reduce to the former through inducing overwhelming fear or pain). We’re talking, “But I really like this man/woman and it would be really hard to leave him/her and really hard not to commit adultery, and/or I’m really afraid what he/she would do/not do to the children/me if I withheld myself, and it’s just too difficult to procure an annulment for some reason and rectify the situation.” Not over fractions of a second. Over weeks, years, decades.

The argument basically goes that because there are elements in the situation which make virtue difficult, such as social pressure, conditioning, anxiety, and similar factors. Therefore, the person is not entirely free to make a moral choice. (The hinge text for this argument is the CCC’s paragraph on self-abuse – #2352.)

One must either thus consign all of human agency to the whims of circumstances out of one’s control, which is to succumb to a kind of determinism which renders the will some kind of illusion, or one must accept that in fact real deliberation (or its seriously blameworthy absence) of itself suffices to provide the kind of freedom necessary for serious guilt in materially grave sins.

The Catholic answer is the latter. St. Thomas explains this in the ST I-II q. 77 a. 8:

Mortal sin, as stated above (I-II:72:5), consists in turning away from our last end which is God, which aversion pertains to the deliberating reason, whose function it is also to direct towards the end. Therefore that which is contrary to the last end can happen not to be a mortal sin, only when the deliberating reason is unable to come to the rescue, which is the case in sudden movements. Now when anyone proceeds from passion to a sinful act, or to a deliberate consent, this does not happen suddenly: and so the deliberating reason can come to the rescue here, since it can drive the passion away, or at least prevent it from having its effect, as stated above: wherefore if it does not come to the rescue, there is a mortal sin; and it is thus, as we see, that many murders and adulteries are committed through passion.

There is a lot to talk about with respect to Thomas’ treatment of the reason vis-a-vis external action (i.e. passions’ ability to forestall reason, the relationship between deliberation and the eternal types of the moral law, his treatment of sudden murders), but here we can simply point out that he has noted that both the “sin itself” (sinful act) and the “wanting to sin” (a deliberate consent) with regard to grave matter (i.e. murder, adultery) are only able not to be grave sins if the deliberating reason cannot come to the rescue and prevent the passion from having its full effect (which would be the case with someone who is insane). The passion (fear, desire, a mix of both) inclines one towards a certain action (such as adultery), and the reason will either repel the action (virtue) or not (grave sin) – certainly, over days, months, years, a sane person’s deliberating reason is being brought to bear upon their external actions.

In short, if you are able to think meaningfully about an action – which a sane person can certainly do if given days or even years to do so – then you are meaningfully responsible for choosing it.

My interlocutor was finally cornered on this and just refused to accept it. I then left him to his own counsel. There’s no point in arguing about this.

Sometimes we cut down trees we should have left alone, and they become our crosses. And those crosses are sometimes very large – but it puts the bearer in a position to go from a very bad place to a very good place extremely quickly, with the heroic courage required of them. We need pastors who will accompany people in making that hard, quick, large jump from death to life. We don’t need soothsayers telling people that it’s not all that serious if it’s difficult.

No amount of books, conference papers, journal articles, footnotes, or other texts can change this. It is the truth about human agency, and such truth is not subject to textual amendment.

Yesterday evening I was at the Rome premiere of a film worth your time to watch and pass along to friends. It was the second time I’d seen it… Definitely worth the rewatch. Perhaps a third will be in the cards as well.

Freedom isn’t free. It is within living memory that all of Europe was engulfed in war… These times can return just as easily as they left. It’s important we not take for granted our nearly unprecedent stretch of peace and prosperity in the West.

“China’s getting weaker.” Yes. Okay. But it’s not weak, and wounded animals are often much more dangerous.

-Eamonn

This morning I was perusing the canons of the early Roman ecumenical councils – Lateran I (1123), Lateran II (1139), and Lateran III (1179).

I live around the corner from the great basilica – I can see it from my roof very clearly. I went today for mass and confession. I can’t help but marvel how much times have changed.

Don’t get me wrong. The infamous Cadaver Synod was also held at the Lateran, as well as any number of unbelievably debauched parties (in the palace or basilica itself, I don’t know). But at least there was a certain kind of formality and seriousness to things… I just don’t know how we can be spending millions on the Synod on Synodality but can’t afford real candles for the railings by the high altar at the mother church of all Christendom.

The early Lateran councils are odd events. The first two were not so clearly ecumenical, at least for a long while. None of the first three even issue real teaching content – just laws. So, no, Vatican II was not the first ecumenical council like that (viz., definitive, infallible teachings by anathemas/teaching canons – obviously Vatican II issued teachings).

We don’t have the “acts” or proceedings of these councils. They might yet be discovered. It sometimes happens that things fall behind a shelf in the great archives of the Church and sit there – yes, even for centuries. And sometimes things just go missing… A friend who works with such things in the Vatican informed me not long ago that he can’t find the original copies of the proceedings of the canonization of St. Thomas Aquinas… It’s just gone. Poof.

Lateran III could hardly be clearer or more severe in its treatment of certain unnatural acts against the 6th commandment. See canon 11 for yourself. It was evidently pressing enough of an issue in 1179, this despite the Council coming near the end of almost 20 years of uncertainty and controversy about who was actually the Pope.

The concerns of these councils centered largely on ecclesiastical revenues (who gets money and how) and the right order of ecclesiastical governance. (Suffice it to say that it is not foreseen to have laity particularly involved with ecclesiastical administration.) There are also many concerns over peace.

Some legislation was very particular, such as Lateran I’s treatment of fraudulent exchange (canon 13): “Whoever knowingly makes or intentionally spends counterfeit money shall be separated from the communion of the faithful as one accursed, an oppressor of the poor and a disturber of the state.” Or, take Lateran II’s treatment of arson (canon 18): “We completely detest and forbid, by the authority of God and the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, that most dreadful, devastating and malicious crime of incendiarism. For this pernicious and inimical calamity surpasses all other kinds of destruction. Nobody is unaware of the extent to which it is injurious to the people of God and the damage it brings to souls and bodies. It is necessary, therefore, to oppose it and to labor with all one’s might, that so great a harm and danger be eradicated and suppressed for the sake of the people. If anyone, then, after the publication of this prohibition of ours, from some wicked design born of hate or vengeance, starts a fire or causes it to be started, or knowingly provides counsel or help to those starting one, let him be excommunicated. And when an arsonist dies, he is to be deprived of a Christian burial. Nor is he to be absolved unless, having first made reparation for the loss according to his means, he swears that he will never raise a fire again. Moreover, let him be given the penance of remaining a whole year in Jerusalem or Spain in the service of God.” Canon 19 continues, “If any archbishop or bishop relaxes this decree, he is to make restitution for the loss and abstain from his episcopal office for a year.”

Lateran II also contains an allusion to the famous rule of “sanctuary,” in canon 15: “In the same way we have decided to legislate that if anyone, at the instigation of the devil, incurs the guilt of the following sacrilege, that is, to lay violent hands on a cleric or a monk, he is to be subject to the bond of anathema; and let no bishop presume to absolve such a person unless he is in immediate danger of death, until he has been presented before the apostolic See and submits to its decision. We also prescribe that nobody dare to lay hands on those who flee to a church or cemetery. If anyone does this, let him be excommunicated.“

There’s so much more. Go learn what these councils said about pilgrims, crusaders, the Templars… and jousting.

The older ecumenical councils remain relevant. They cannot be forgotten. They are the greatest moments in the history of the Church’s life as a whole, in governance and teaching. They deserve our attention, our study, our serious consideration and reflection.

Even the obscure ones.

Happy Monday…

-Eamonn

“But we’ve always done it this way.”

Institutional models in the Church serve a purpose. They keep things going despite internal and external changes. They also make people feel safe – sometimes too safe.

Imprudence cuts both ways… both rash or hasty judgments about what ought to be changed against prevailing custom, and also the refusal to consider that the old methods just don’t work anymore and that there might be a better way available that deserves real exploration. The famous warning in the Book of Proverbs (22:28, 23:10-11) about not moving ancient boundary stones does not apply to mass times on Wednesdays, or to whether Ethel should still be choir director, or to the precise arrangement of tables at the annual parish picnic.

It also shouldn’t apply to the way we think about the relationship between the Church and business. Just like the renaissance popes were patrons of the arts, the fruits of which we still reap today, I think that right now we need good investments from dioceses and wealthy believers in businesses that can both promote the Gospel and create income for the Church and Her sons and daughters.

Don’t you? I have opportunities if you want to be part of that. Food, drink, cosmetics, tech… Just let me know what interests you!

My dream these days can be summed up in a photograph. Or, a contrary image of a particular kind of photograph.

You’ve all seen the photo. Maybe you’ve even been in one yourself. It’s the young, white humanitarian missionary who’s gone abroad to build a house, surrounded by kids from Honduras or Botswana or Nepal.

Those poor people… Shouldn’t we help them? Educate them? Get them heading in the right direction so they can live their lives more freely?

…I mean the missionaries.

There are loads of problems with the international aid industry. I won’t get into all of it here… I just want to say that my dream is to have a photograph of a group of American or Europeans surrounding a young man from Haiti who’s visiting them to discuss a business venture which he’s leading back home that they’ve decided to invest in. That’s the dream.

And I’m happy to say I’m working on it.

I had a great conversation this morning with a provincial of a large religious order about their operations in Africa, who’s known me now for some 7 years. I hope there are tea and coffee snobs among my readers, because we are going to be doing some of that. We will be employing local, Catholic farmers – people who make 40 cents after very long days full of hard manual labor, half of that going to food for their family, half of that going to rent for the little hut they live in with 5 other people. Single-source, even single-farm premium coffee and tea.

You can find out more about it at my fundraiser website, here. Sorry-not-sorry, I am going to be talking your ear off about it for the next few months. And yes, I AM asking you for money. Not for me, but for our partners – both donations for locally proposed projects which are actually needed, well thought-out projects sponsored and overseen by clergy which have a personal connection to yours truly, and investments. The donation goal (around $15 million) sounds enormous and unattainable such that you might think, “Well, that sounds nice…” – but there is more going on than meets the eye. You will be part of something real by giving.

This IS happening. Right now. Don’t miss the boat!

Do you want to be the right kind of missionary? Be a donor for something that has been locally identified as a need, or be an investor in a viable commercial enterprise. That way you tell people they know what they need, and that they are able to do things for themselves.

THAT matters. And it makes a real difference.

Qoheleth says, “Ask not why former days were better than the present, for it is not in wisdom that you ask this.” (Ecclesiastes 7:10)

I don’t wish to ask why former days were better, but I do wish to affirm that our own days are particularly troubled. I do think that in 1,000 years, when they’re facing their own major crisis, people will say, “Let’s remember that the Church got through the early 2000’s.”

We have several large global conflicts occurring and a looming major global financial downturn centered around the inevitable collapse of the US dollar. There are serious questions about the relationship (including financial) between the Holy See and China, no doubt emanating in no small part from the machinations of a now-laicized cardinal, one of several high-profile sexual deviants that seems to have been recently populating the halls of Roman power. We have a cadre of American and European bishops which in large part seems unaware of the gravity of the duty to guard the sacraments and to preach the necessity of the pain and resulting glory of the Cross, exacerbated by a culture of self-referential appeals to being “merciful,” “welcoming,” and so on by men whose consciences are often so seared by their own past mistakes in ministry (or in their personal lives) that they now seek to paper-over them retroactively by taking advantage of their fleeting moments of ecclesiastical power to tell others that real suffering is not actually obligatory for a good Christian, at least when, you know, it’s difficult and there’s an easier path.

Meanwhile, we are told that climate change and the 1962 missal are the real problems, and that a Meeting about Meetings is going to help pave the way for the Church to flourish in the third millennium… A Church where apparently we are not supposed to use the prayers of the saints of old and are able to ponder whether we have been misled all these centuries about the proper recipients of both sacraments and sacramentals, and where we are supposed to think that the one-time murderer Moses didn’t really understand the true meaning of the 5th Commandment which he handed down from Sinai but that he was really on to something by not forbidding divorce and remarriage.

What to do? Pray, fast, study, grow in personal virtue, assist each other as we can… Preach without fear, if you are a cleric. But remember too that we are always doing better than Good Friday. The Cross is more absurd than anything – and it is there that we find the highest Wisdom, with Christ’s love most on display.

So there’s a little zing to get things moving. Don’t expect posts this spicy every day.

Have a good weekend…
-Eamonn

Dear Readers,

This is a bit of a different post. And it’s inaugurating something of a new chapter in the life of this little blog and the silent community that’s been built up around it.

Let me tell you, I’ve come to resent very deeply a phrase which I hear all the time.

“I’m busy.”

Nope.

The truth is, nobody is “just busy.” Everyone is busy with some particular thing, and your proposed action-item (“come to my party,” “let’s watch a movie,” “will you wash my car,” etc.) is not as important as whatever else that individual is doing. If it were more important to go to your party, they would be busy doing that rather than going to a cooler party, going to bed early, or filing their taxes.

They are not busy – they are busy with something else. They are busy with something of a higher priority.

Maybe you think their priorities are mixed up. Maybe you think they could reorganize their schedule to fit in your action item, but they’re just not aware of that or are too lazy to bother. And you might be right about all that. But unless you are going to kidnap them and hold them hostage at your party you lost the negotiation of their time.

The great thing about a blog is that it is a party you can go to whenever you want. But the host has to keep things going.

I’ve been slacking on that….. I’ve been busy! I have not prioritized the party, because I have not prioritized the partygoers. So, I apologize for that.

A light has gone on in my mind today. But let’s back up a little bit.

I do have a lot of things going on. People tell me all the time that I have too much to do. That’s usually because they think things which I take on are more complicated or time-consuming than they really are, and/or they expect a much different pace of life for themselves than I myself can tolerate and even enjoy. These days, I go to sleep thinking about how to set up a warehouse in Karachi to handle leather and pink salt exports, and I wake up thinking about what kinds of agriculture I can leverage in eastern Zimbabwe. That’s no joke, and that’s only some of a single element of one large project I have going on. I can’t even really talk about some of the things I’m involved with these days… Big stuff.

The point is this. I’ve undervalued two things.

First, I’ve undervalued you as a community… as a party.

Second, I’ve undervalued you as an individual… as a partygoer.

As a party, we can have a much better time. The party can get bigger, too, and we will do some amazing things together if you’re interested. It’s not just anyone who reads these pages – it’s mostly a particular kind of person. That creates particular kinds of opportunities. I want to explore that together, in due time.

As an individual, you decided to be a reader, even a subscriber. You showed up for the party… I should provide you with some food, some drinks, some music. You’re owed a good experience for having bothered to show up.

I started this blog in a room next to a parish office in west Baltimore in 2016 to talk about art, science, and the Catholic faith. From there, it quickly grew into a general theology and “culture-ish” blog. Occasional personal posts, but mostly academic-leaning stuff. The pace has been around a post every other week or so over the years.

Today, things are changing.

It’s a great moment for me, because there is indeed a lot going on in my life – things which could easily make me “busy.” Since I have so many things to do, one of the best things for me, knowing my own psychology, is to add another thing to do. It forces me to be disciplined, especially if I’m accountable to someone – or to a whole room of partygoers.

The party has liked the more personal, culture-ish, travel-ish blog posts historically. Awesome, I like writing them. So get ready for more.

And get ready for a whole lot more posts in general… I mean, every single day. Every. Single. Day.

Even if it’s just a few lines, or sharing a cool video clip, I’m going to create and share something every day. I have to. It’s becoming an interior need.

The daily posts will go until the day of my ultramarathon race for my fundraiser in early April. (The run could go well over 24 hours… So, I will “take a break” to focus on running 100 miles.) After that, we will see how it’s been going and re-evaluate. Maybe I will miss a day or two for really extraordinary reasons… But I am really going to strive to be consistent.

What I need from the party – and from you as a partygoer – is two things. First, prayer. Second, cooperative engagement. I’m confident that many of you hate as much as I do the persistent calls from social media influencers to “like, subscribe, and share,” but the fact remains that these posts are not getting nearly as much exposure as they could because my readers aren’t passing them along to friends. This isn’t to guilt any of you! It’s to present the opportunity to be part of something more than where we are at now as a community. If you think I’m writing something valuable, why not take the 10 seconds to share it with some friends? And pray a Hail Mary for me too.

Here is the bottom line. I like rewarding people who take me seriously and give me a chance. You’ve done that. I now want to reward you not only with more frequent posts but with posts which go beyond the speculative and theological (although those will continue) and build up the experience of each other as individuals who are interested in the Church and Her affairs from the particular kind of perspective which animates the takes on this blog.

I am telling you right now that I am “inside” some things which you WILL want to know about. And you’ll hear about it HERE, if anywhere. Not from one of the big guys in Catholic media, not from the parish bulletin, but here. I can’t promise you that sort of experience every day, but if you stick around, I will tell you what I can when I can about… things… Not goofy tabloid stuff or Roman gossip – yawn – but meaningful initiatives which are actually going to help the Church flourish in the 21st century, things which all of you can be part of if you want to be.

So, that’s the update. You will be hearing a lot more from me. And if you think it’s too much, no problem. I understand. But if you’re interested in a more engaging experience of like-minded individuals, this blog is now going to become a more useful forum for that. I LOVE when people comment or send me emails (Contact). You have no idea, it makes my day! And I usually like to respond too! I’m a real person, you know… I would like to be busier engaging with you.

Buckle up. The Christian Renaissance Movement is just beginning. And I’m happy you’re already part of it.

God bless you,
-Eamonn Clark, STL

Dear Readers,

Please take a look at a massive fundraising (and investment) effort I have just launched after months of preparation.

It’s The St. Francis 100…

There is a lot of news about it which I can’t yet share. But I can tell you that it’s the real deal. I get a lot of blank stares and messages not replied to these days – I think people are of the opinion I’ve lost my mind a bit with the things I’ve been taking on… But again, it’s the real deal. More news to come soon.

I don’t actually like being front and center, on camera, the one directly responsible, the one people praise, etc… I would have preferred to get someone else to be the poster boy. But, that’s not the way it is. So I’m putting myself on the line.

I hope you will consider being an early partner in a movement which will reshape the world of Catholic philanthropy…

God bless you,
-Eamonn