But here’s one last post until this afternoon:

McCarrick and Neuhaus in Pittsburgh, covered by the excellent Ann Rogers:

In interviews, McCarrick and Neuhaus gave differing assessments of a proposal by Bishop Donald Wuerl of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh regarding the public differences some bishops had in 2004 over whether to deny communion to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Wuerl called for all U.S. bishops to consult with each other before taking public stands on the Catholic status of national political figures who support abortion rights.

Wuerl’s proposal "is right on target," said McCarrick, who shares Wuerl’s view that Catholic legislators who support abortion rights should not ask to receive communion, but that the priest should not refuse it if they do come forward, on the chance that they might have had a conversion. McCarrick expected Wuerl’s proposal to receive significant discussion among the bishops.

Neuhaus praised the dozen or so bishops who would not allow Kerry to receive communion, but said that is not the only way to handle the problem.

"The bishop has to show in each and every case that he is in a very serious posture of pastoral care and concern for that politician — and that has to be seen by the Catholic people. When something is a public scandal, it has to be remedied publicly, but there are many different ways in which bishops might exercise that pastoral care and concern," Neuhaus said.

He praised Wuerl for addressing a serious subject, but did not endorse his proposal.

The article makes reference to a recent Garry Wills piece in the NYReview of Books attacking Neuhaus. I looked – it’s in the 10/6 issue, and is available only to subscribers or for purchase. So I shelled out 3 bucks.

Here’s a link, in case you’re a subscriber. The article is really all over the place, mostly taking on the Fantastic Four: Novak, Weigel, Neuhaus and Fessio – for their supposedly untoward influence on Catholicism and (in the case of Neuhaus) the Bush Administration. It’s the usual: They represent:

-a minority view of Catholicism

and, again, in Neuhaus’ case, a risible and unholy alliance between evangelicals and Catholics. Wills needs to read more carefully and immerse himself in this scene. That alliance is terrifically fragile, applies to only a few issues, and is liable to crack-up at any moment, in my opinion. I’m not entranced with the administration’s consistent yet somehow frantic use of religious figures and themes in its "policy"- making, but interest groups are interest groups, and in the end, the people that will be hurt most are those who thought that politicians and government figures could accomplish what in the end, they can’t.

But then we get to the real crie du coeur…Garry’s church, with choirs that are somehow not quite so bare, not quite so ruined anymore, but..extremely distasteful:

How then do you govern an apostate church? From the fringes. Like Karl Rove, the Pope has cultivated intense little extremist groups—Opus Dei, the Legionaries of Christ, the New Catechumenate, and Communication and Liberation, well-financed, semi-secretive, ascetical, ultrapapalist. Karol Wojtyla, as cardinal, spoke to Opus Dei groups when he visited Rome. Joseph Ratzinger spoke to a Communication and Liberation group just before his election to the papacy. The Vatican equivalent of the executive branch has been stocked with extreme loyalists, and debate on their actions has been suppressed. In a 1998 Motu Proprio—or document issued by the Pope on his own initiative—called Apostolos Suos, national conferences of bishops were ordered to pass no legislation except by unanimous vote and after Vatican approval, reducing them to little more than rubber stamps of the Pope, after the Second Vatican Council had increased their importance.

The Vatican has adopted a literally marginal strategy. While still Cardinal Ratzinger, the current pope said that the Church may have to become smaller in order to become truer to itself. Just as the religious right in America has declared itself an embattled minority, Ratzinger said, "The word ‘subculture’ should not frighten us."^[19] The fringe will be activated in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, about which the Vatican has a romantic notion of forming a circle of extremists— though the priest shortage is greater in these regions than in Europe and North America, the Vatican has warned against "syncretism" with other cultures, and Catholics compete with evangelicals there who have a married ministry and a nonhierarchical structure.

As nuns disappear and priests age, the Vatican’s response is to become ever more extremist. Pope John Paul changed a long Catholic teaching tradition when he supported the need for life support in terminal cases. The hierarchy has changed its long acceptance of the theory of evolution as a scientific account—after being attacked by rightist Catholic groups for being too lax on the subject.^[20] These are odd moves for authorities who claim they never change. The notion of infallibility has been expanded to cover things like the all-male priesthood and non-Catholic ordinations to the ministry. The use of "backdoor infallibility" has been evident in Stakhanovite beatifying and canonizing, sometimes of those with dubious and/or anti-Semitic records (Pius IX, Maximilian Kolbe, Josemaría Escrivá). John Paul even canonized a man, Juan Diego, historians say never existed.^[21] Like American evangelicals drawing their recruits from the home-schooled, religious schools, and institutions like Patrick Henry Community College, the Vatican has converted Catholic seminaries into ultraconservative schools turning out priests at odds with their future congregations on matters like contraception and homosexuality.^[22]

Superstitions like the cult of the Lady of Fatima have been inflated— then Cardinal Ratzinger claimed that the Virgin Mary, appearing to subteen children in Portugal, predicted in 1917 the 1981 attempt on John Paul’s life.^[23] The old war between the Church and science has been revived. The current pope joined American evangelicals who attack Halloween by warning the world against Harry Potter. Pope John Paul performed three exorcisms, not all of them successful.^[24] On the use of embryos for stem cell research, the Vatican is even more extreme than President Bush, who welcomes babies from "adopted" embryos—the Vatican teaches that in vitro fertilization is aways wrong, among other reasons because getting the necessary semen involves masturbation.^[25] The Pope announced in August that he would again grant numerous indulgences (passes out of Purgatory)—a practice some had thought as obsolete as papal interdicts (the denial of sacraments to whole regimes).^[26] If indulgences are back, can interdicts be far behind?

On condoms, the Pope agrees more with American evangelicals than with Catholics—though the National Review, not to be out-extremed, published an article defending the reversal of Griswold v. Connecticut, which made condom sales legal.^[27] The de-nial of condoms to those with AIDS in Africa has led to deaths—causing more hostility to the Church, in some circles, than the pedophile scandals did. In fact, both the fringe power systems, holding together their own extremist networks, have drifted apart from or alienated the rest of the world.

The Bush administration had a world ready to cooperate in the hunt for terrorists after the attacks of September 11, but it drove them off by its unilateral obsession with brushing aside the UN investigations which had tied Saddam’s hands and would have shown in time the absence of weapons of mass destruction. In a similar way, after the Second Vatican Council, Rome had world religions ready and anxious to join in the struggle with immoral practices around the world, but it blighted the ecumenical energies with things like Dominus Jesus (2000), the condemnation of pluralism that called other Christian faiths "gravely deficient." (General Boykin would just say, "Our God is greater than your God.")

Given the resemblances between the strategies for governing from the margins, it is easy to see how well placed is the Catholic gang of four I began with. Its members are perfectly able to serve as both the Pope’s men and Rove’s men, for reciprocally strengthening reasons. They are at the interface between two systems of power exercised from the fringes.