Archbishop Charles Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
By Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
2016 Tocqueville Lecture
University of Notre Dame, Sept. 15, 2016
I want to thank Dr. Muñoz and Father Jenkins for inviting me to speak this afternoon. It’s a privilege and a pleasure to be here.
A lecture named after Alexis de Tocqueville will naturally involve politics. That’s a good thing, and we’ll have plenty to talk about. But I don’t want to begin there today.
I spent much of last week helping my brother and his wife with the funeral of their daughter Allison, my niece. Allison was 32. She was intelligent, beautiful and set to be married on October 1. In May she was diagnosed with cancer. Last week she discovered that her medical treatments had failed. She died a few days later. I mention this not to cast a shadow on our discussion today – in fact, quite the opposite. Allison had a great life. She loved well, had a lot of joy and was very deeply loved. And that love will continue to live in the people who knew her.
I mention Allison because the farthest thing from anyone’s mind as she and we measured her life last week was politics.
[hotblock]
Leon Bloy, the great French Catholic convert, once said that — in the end — the only thing that matters is to be a saint. That’s the ultimate task of a place like Notre Dame. It’s not to help you get into a great law school, or to go to a great medical school, or to find a great job on Wall Street, as good as those things clearly are. It’s to help you get into heaven – which is not some imaginary fairyland, but an eternity of life in the presence of a loving God. If you don’t believe that, you’re in the wrong place.
Life is a gift, not an accident. And the point of a life is to become the kind of fully human person who knows and loves God above everything else, and reflects that love to others. That’s the only compelling reason for a university that calls itself Catholic to exist. And it’s a privilege for Notre Dame to be part of that vocation.
My comments this afternoon are simple. They come in three parts. I want to speak first about the impending election. Then we’ll move to the theme of today’s talk: sex, family and the liberty of the Church. Then we’ll touch on a few things we might want to remember going forward as Catholic Christians.
I come from a place where the state attorney general was just convicted of nine felonies. The FBI is investigating Philadelphia’s district attorney. Philadelphia’s second district U.S. Congressman, Chaka Fattah, was forced to resign and then convicted of racketeering and influence-peddling. And several members of the state assembly from the Philadelphia area, as well as three state Supreme Court justices, were caught in various scandals.
This has all happened just in the five years I’ve been archbishop of Philadelphia. Pennsylvania has its own Wikipedia category – “Pennsylvania Politicians Convicted of Crimes” – with 58 separate entries. But the really curious thing about listing these bad actors is this. They’re familiar. They’re almost reassuring in the modesty of their appetites and lack of imagination. Selling your state assembly vote for the price of a necklace is wrong. But it’s hardly a new kind of bad behavior. And it doesn’t shake the foundations of the republic.
Regrettably, other things do.
I turn 72 later this month. I’ve been voting since 1966. That’s exactly 50 years. And in that half-century, the major parties have never, at the same time, offered two such deeply flawed presidential candidates. The 1972 Nixon/McGovern race comes close. But 2016 wins the crown.
Only God knows the human heart, so I presume that both major candidates for the White House this year intend well and have a reasonable level of personal decency behind their public images. But I also believe that each candidate is very bad news for our country, though in different ways. One candidate, in the view of a lot of people, is a belligerent demagogue with an impulse control problem. And the other, also in the view of a lot of people, is a criminal liar, uniquely rich in stale ideas and bad priorities.
So where does that leave us? The historian Henry Adams once described the practice of politics as “the systematic organization of hatreds.” And there’s plenty in our current political season that invites cynicism. But Christians don’t have that option. We’re not allowed the luxury of cynicism for at least five reasons.
First, too many honest public officials already exist who do serve our country well.
Second, even in a year of bad presidential choices, good candidates for other public offices exist in both major parties.
Third, if Christians leave the public square, other people with much worse intentions won’t. The surest way to make the country suffer is to not contest them in public debate and in the voting booth.
Fourth, the essence of a Christian life, as Pope Francis reminds us, is hope and joy, not despair. The choices we make and the actions we take do make a difference. Like Benedict and John Paul II before him, Francis sees politics, rightly lived, as a vehicle for justice, charity and mercy. The political vocation matters because, done well, it can ennoble the society it serves.
Fifth and finally, Christians are not of the world, but we’re most definitely in it. Augustine would say that our home is the City of God, but we get there by passing through the City of Man. While we’re on the road, we have a duty to leave the world better than we found it. One of the ways we do that, however imperfectly, is through politics.
In other words, elections do matter. They matter a lot. The next president will appoint several Supreme Court justices, make vital foreign policy decisions, and shape the huge federal administrative machinery in ways over which Congress has little control. It’s good to remember that Congress didn’t create the politically vindictive HHS mandate. The Obama White House did that.
But here’s my larger point: We’ve reached a moment when our political thinking and vocabulary as a nation seem exhausted. The real effect that we as individuals have on the government and political class that claim to represent us – the big mechanical Golem we call Washington — is so slight that it breeds indifference and anger.
As Christians, then, our political engagement needs to involve more than just wringing our hands and whining about the ugly choice we face in November. It needs to be more than a search for better candidates and policies, or shrewder slogans. The task of renewing a society is much more long term than a trip every few years to the voting booth. And it requires a different kind of people. It demands that we be different people.
Augustine said that complaining about the times makes no sense because we are the times. And that means, in turn, that changing the country means first changing ourselves.
So, what does any of this have to do with sex, family and the liberty of the Church? I’ll answer the question this way.
I’ve been a priest for 46 years. During that time I’ve heard something more than 12,000 personal confessions and done hundreds of spiritual direction sessions. That’s a lot of listening. When you spend several thousand hours of your life, as most priests do, hearing the failures and hurts in people’s lives — men who beat their wives; women who cheat on their husbands; the addicts to porn or alcohol or drugs; the thieves, the hopeless, the self-satisfied and the self-hating — you get a pretty good picture of the world as it really is, and its effect on the human soul.
The confessional is more real than any reality show because nobody’s watching. It’s just you, God and the penitents, and the suffering they bring with them.
As a priest, what’s most striking to me about the last five decades is the huge spike in people — both men and women — confessing promiscuity, infidelity, sexual violence and sexual confusion as an ordinary part of life, and the massive role of pornography in wrecking marriages, families and even the vocations of clergy and religious.
In a sense, this shouldn’t surprise. Sex is powerful. Sex is attractive. Sex is a basic appetite and instinct. Our sexuality is tied intimately to who we are; how we search for love and happiness; how we defeat the pervasive loneliness in life; and, for most people, how we claim some little bit of permanence in the world and its story by having children.
The reason Pope Francis so forcefully rejects “gender theory” is not just because it lacks scientific support — though it certainly has that problem. Gender theory is a kind of metaphysics that subverts the very nature of sexuality by denying the male-female complementarity encoded into our bodies. In doing that, it attacks a basic building block of human identity and meaning — and by extension, the foundation of human social organization.
But let’s get back to the confessional. Listening to people’s sexual sins in the Sacrament of Penance is hardly new news. But the scope, the novelty, the violence and the compulsiveness of the sins are. And remember that people only come to Confession when they already have some sense of right and wrong; when they already understand, at least dimly, that they need to change their lives and seek God’s mercy.
That word “mercy” is worth examining. Mercy is one of the defining and most beautiful qualities of God. Pope Francis rightly calls us to incarnate it in our own lives this year. Unfortunately, it’s also a word we can easily misuse to avoid the hard work of moral reasoning and judgment. Mercy means nothing – it’s just an exercise in sentimentality – without clarity about moral truth.
We can’t show mercy to someone who owes us nothing; someone who’s done nothing wrong. Mercy implies a pre-existing act of injustice that must be corrected. And satisfying justice requires a framework of higher truth about human meaning and behavior. It requires an understanding of truth that establishes some things as good and others as evil; some things as life-giving and others that are destructive.
Here’s why that’s important. The truth about our sexuality is that infidelity, promiscuity, sexual confusion and mass pornography create human wreckage. Multiply that wreckage by tens of millions of persons over five decades. Then compound it with media nonsense about the innocence of casual sex and the “happy” children of friendly divorces. What you get is what we have now: a dysfunctional culture of frustrated and wounded people increasingly incapable of permanent commitments, self-sacrifice and sustained intimacy, and unwilling to face the reality of their own problems.
This has political consequences. People unwilling to rule their appetites will inevitably be ruled by them — and eventually, they’ll be ruled by someone else. People too weak to sustain faithful relationships are also too weak to be free. Sooner or later they surrender themselves to a state that compensates for their narcissism and immaturity with its own forms of social control.
People too worried or self-focused to welcome new life, to bear and raise children in a loving family, and to form them in virtue and moral character, are writing themselves out of the human story. They’re extinguishing their own future. This is what makes the resistance of so many millennials to having children so troubling.[1]
The future belongs to people who believe in something beyond themselves, and who live and sacrifice accordingly. It belongs to people who think and hope inter-generationally. If you want a portrait of what I mean, consider this: The most common name given to newborn male babies in London for the past four years in a row is Muhammad. This, in the city of Thomas More.
Weak and selfish individuals make weak and selfish marriages. Weak and selfish marriages make broken families. And broken families continue and spread the cycle of dysfunction. They do it by creating more and more wounded individuals. A vast amount of social data shows that children from broken families are much more likely to live in poverty, to be poorly educated, and to have more emotional and physical health issues than children from intact families. In other words, when healthy marriages and families decline, the social costs rise.
The family is where children discover how to be human. It’s where they learn how to respect and love other people; where they see their parents sacrificing for the common good of the household; and where they discover their place in a family story larger than themselves. Raising children is beautiful but also hard work. It’s a task for unselfish, devoted parents. And parents need the friendship and support of other like-minded parents. It takes parents to raise a child, not a legion of professional experts, as helpful as they can sometimes be.
Only a mother and father can provide the intimacy of maternal and paternal love. Many single parents do a heroic job of raising good children, and they deserve our admiration and praise. But only a mother and father can offer the unique kind of human love rooted in flesh and blood; the kind that comes from mutual submission and self-giving; the kind that comes from the complementarity of sexual difference.
No parents do this perfectly. Some fail badly. Too often the nature of modern American life helps and encourages them to fail. But in trying, parents pass along to the next generation an absolutely basic truth. It’s the truth that things like love, faith, trust, patience, understanding, tenderness, fidelity and courage really do matter, and they provide the foundation for a fully human life.
Of course some of the worst pressures on family life come from outside the home. They come in the form of unemployment, low pay, crime, poor housing, chronic illness and bad schools.
These are vitally important issues with real human consequences. And in Catholic thought, government has a role to play in easing such problems – but not if a government works from a crippled idea of who man is, what marriage is, and what a family is. And not if a government deliberately shapes its policies to interfere with and control the mediating institutions in civil society that already serve the public well. Yet this could arguably describe many of the current administration’s actions over the past seven years.
The counterweight to intrusive government is a populace of mature citizens who push back and defend the autonomy of their civil space. The problem with a consumer economy though – as Christopher Lasch saw nearly 40 years ago — is that it creates and relies on dependent, self-absorbed consumers. It needs and breeds what Lasch called a “culture of narcissism,” forgetful of the past, addicted to the present and disinterested in the future.
And it’s hard to argue with the evidence. In his inaugural speech of 1961, John F. Kennedy could still tell Americans, quite confidently, to “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Today I wonder how many of us might find his words not only naïve and annoying, but an inversion of priorities.
If we want strong families, we need strong men and women to create and sustain them with maturity and love. And as a family of families, the Church is no different. The Church is strong when her families and individual sons and daughters are strong; when they believe what she teaches, and then witness her message with courage and zeal.
She’s weak when her people are too tepid or comfortable, too eager to “fit in” or frankly too afraid of public disapproval, to see the world as it really is. The Church is “ours” only in the sense that we belong to her as our mother and teacher in the family of God. The Church does not belong to us. We belong to her. And the Church in turn belongs to Jesus Christ who guarantees her freedom whether Caesar likes it or not.
The Church is free even in the worst persecution. She’s free even when many of her children desert her. She’s free because God does exist, and the Church depends not on numbers or resources but on her fidelity to God’s Word. But her practical liberty — her credibility and effectiveness, here and now, in our wider society — depends on us. So we should turn to that issue in the time remaining.
In his classic work Democracy in America, Tocqueville noted that the success of American democracy depended, in large part, on the strong American attachment to family and religious faith.[2]
In effect, families and churches stand between the individual and the state. They protect the autonomy of the individual by hemming in the power of government, resisting its tendency to claim the entirety of life. But they also pull us out of ourselves and teach us to engage generously with others.
As families and religious faith break down, the power of the state grows. Government fills in the spaces left behind by mediating institutions. The individual is freed from his traditional obligations. But he inherits a harder master in the state. Left to itself, as Tocqueville saw, democracy tends toward a kind of soft totalitarianism in which even a person’s most intimate concerns, from his sexual relations to his religious convictions, are swallowed by the political process.
We now live in a country where marriage, family and traditional religion all seem to be failing. And — inevitably — support for democracy itself has dropped. Fewer than 30 percent of U.S. millennials think that it’s vital to live in a nation ruled democratically. Nearly a quarter of those born in the 1980s or later see democracy as a bad way to run a country. And nearly half of Americans surveyed feel that experts, not government, should “make decisions according to what they think is best for the country.” Undemocratic feelings have risen especially among the wealthy.[3]
This didn’t happen overnight. And it didn’t happen by accident. We behaved ourselves into this mess by living a collection of lies. And the essence of those lies is summed up in the so-called “mystery clause” of the 1992 Planned Parenthood vs. Casey Supreme Court decision upholding the Roe vs. Wade abortion decision.
Writing for the majority in Casey, Justice Anthony Kennedy claimed that “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” This is the perfect manifesto of a liberal democratic fantasy: the sovereign, self-creating self. But it’s a lie. It’s the very opposite of real Christian freedom. And to the degree we excuse or cooperate with it, we make ourselves liars.
The Gospel of John reminds us that the truth, and only the truth, makes us free. We’re fully human and free only when we live under the authority of the truth. And in that light, no issue has made us more dishonest and less free as believers and as a nation than abortion. People uncomfortable with the abortion issue argue, quite properly, that Catholic teaching is bigger than just one issue. Other urgent issues also need our attention. Being pro-birth is not the same as being pro-life. And being truly “pro-life” doesn’t end with defending the unborn child.
But it does and it must begin there. To borrow some words from one of Notre Dame’s distinguished alumni: Abortion has been “the beachhead for an entire ethic that is hostile to life, hostile to marriage and, as we see from the [HHS] contraceptive mandate, increasingly hostile to religion, religious Americans and religious institutions.”[4] Abortion poisons everything. There can never be anything “progressive” in killing an unborn child, or standing aside tolerantly while others do it.
In every abortion, an innocent life always dies. This is why no equivalence can ever exist between the intentional killing involved in abortion, infanticide and euthanasia on the one hand, and issues like homelessness, the death penalty and anti-poverty policy on the other. Again, all of these issues are important. But trying to reason or imply them into having the same moral weight is a debasement of Christian thought.
This is why so many Catholics — beginning, to his credit, with Bishop Rhoades — were so deeply troubled when Vice President Biden received the university’s Laetare Medal earlier this year.
For the nation’s leading Catholic university to honor a Catholic public official who supports abortion rights and then goes on to conduct a same-sex civil marriage ceremony just weeks later, is – to put it kindly – a contradiction of Notre Dame’s identity. It’s a baffling error of judgment. What matters isn’t the vice president’s personal decency or the university’s admirable intentions. The problem, and it’s a serious problem, is one of public witness and the damage it causes both to the faithful and to the uninformed.
I mention this less to criticize than to encourage. Unlike so many other institutions that describe themselves as “Catholic,” Notre Dame really is still deeply Catholic not just in its marketing, but in its soul. Brad Gregory, Mary Keys, John Cavadini, Gerard Bradley, Patrick Deneen, Ann Astell, Father Bill Miscamble, Carter Snead, Nicole Garnett, Richard Garnett, Christian Smith, Francesca Murphy, Dan Philpott, Dr. Muñoz and so many others – all of these exceptional scholars teach here. And they privilege the Catholic community with their fidelity, their intellects and their service.
Of course from those who receive much, a lot is expected. It’s quite stunning to walk this campus and see the beauty of the buildings, the scope of the stadium, the energy of the students and the constant pace of growth. But I hope Notre Dame never stops examining the fundamental why of its mission. What kind of success is really success? It seems to me that we already have a Princeton, a Stanford and a Yale. We don’t need a Catholic version of any them.
What the Church needs now is a university that radiates the glory of God in age that no longer knows what it means to be human. What the people of God need now is a university that fuses the joy of Francis with the brilliance of Benedict and the courage, fidelity and humanity of the great John Paul.
I said at the start of my remarks that the task of renewing the life of our nation requires a different kind of people. It demands that we be different people. The power of the powerless, Václav Havel once wrote, consists not in clever political strategies but in the simple daily discipline of living within the truth and refusing to lie. Surely there’s no better way to begin that work than here and now. And creating the “different kind of people” we need is — and should be — the mission of this university.
***
[1] Ironically, millennials are less sexually active than Baby Boomers and Gen X individuals were at the same age and are either delaying child-bearing or avoiding it altogether. See, among other stories, Catherine Rampell, “Bad news for older folks: Millennials are having fewer babies,” the Washington Post, May 4, 2015; Claritza Jimenez, “The sex lives of millennials,” the Washington Post, June 30, 2016; R. R. Reno, “While we’re at it,” First Things, October 2016; Isabelle Kohn, “9 brutally real reasons why millennials refuse to have kids,” The Rooster, September 1, 2016; etc.
[2] See “Democracy and Religion” in Pierre Manent, Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy, Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, MD, 1996, p. 83-107
[3] Rebecca Burgess, “When it’s democracy itself they disavow,” American Enterprise Institute, August 22, 2016; data drawn from Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mouk, writing in the Journal of Democracy
[4] Rachel O’Grady, The Observer, August 30, 2016, interview with William McGurn of the Wall Street Journal
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Great speech. Your words are very true — we do need to be the change we want in the world. To do this we need to turn our minds and hearts totally over to Jesus Christ and deny ourselves take up our cross and follow Him. My concern is that the unique challenges posed by the social media. They are unprecedented and none of us fully understand what its full impact will be on us. Despite instant communication we are increasingly feel more disconnected, isolated and alone. Cell phone screens are turning us into zombies. How many people are smiling? Conversing? Laughing with each other? It still happens but it is rare. Many adults look worn out, stressed out and depressed. Every moment requires cell phone attention.Young adults look emotionally shut down walkin glued visually to a cell phone screen even though they might be sitting next to someone who could be a future best friend. Opportunities for real connection dies in the cell phone screen. Perhaps, the cell phone porn also leads to the decline in sexual intimacy and desire for marriage. Young adults say “I don’t need a person — I got porn. No problems of working out relationships and dates for me. I can have all the sex by myself. I cannot even get aroused by a person — porn is better.” Young Adults say “who has time to invest in another person?” Many adults hardly know ‘who’ they are and rarely have time for quiet reflection. The level of isolation and loneliness is incredible. So to fill this emptiness, more and more connect with every form of distraction in search of pleasures and entertainment — anything — so they don’t feel isolation and loneliness and despair. We have lost our way. We are too afraid to trust and too afraid to be honest about how we really feel. Instead we just argue or fight or yell or insult or just melt away into the background. We as Christians need to form intentional communities built around the Eucharist and Scripture Study and Social justice outreach. We need to encounter Christ and know Him. This escapism and isolation is not working. We are made for intimacy and joy in God and to share that with others. Time to wake up and come back to the Church and encounter Jesus Christ.
I could not agree more with the good Archbishop. Why, then, can’t pastors and administrators preach like and kind from the pulpit instead of the same old boring sermons and homilies taken from the gospels and epistles ,many of which are fairy tales to begin with. Today is now, not 2000 years ago. I’ll tell you why. The local bishops don’t want the faithful to know too much fearing that some might drift away from tradition. Who once said, “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” ? I am not suggesting that anyone abandon the basic truths and beliefs of the Church. What I am saying is that the Church, in order to survive in today’s world, must shake the dust from its sandals and become more pro-active in driving home the points and possible solutions as outlined by Archbishop Chaput.
Thank you Archbishop Chaput for speaking the truth. Our son graduated form ND in 2009 when Fr. Jenkins decided not only to have the most radical abortion president Barach Obama give the commencement address, which would have been fine, but to then give him an award in the name of Our Lady, this was a grave sin I could not reconcile. I did not attend the commencement, but rather participated in a Pro-Life rally outside. My heart was broken. This decision has had far reaching consequences for ND. Beyond ND many of our Bishops and clergy have grown weary and lukewarm on abortion and wish us “Faithful Citizens” to consider the “many issues facing the Catholic voter this election”. Abortion, Euthanasia and redefining marriage are not enough to consider for some of our Bishops and clergy.
“Beyond ND many of our Bishops and clergy have grown weary and lukewarm on abortion and wish us “Faithful Citizens” to consider the “many issues facing the Catholic voter this election”. Abortion, Euthanasia and redefining marriage are not enough to consider for some of our Bishops and clergy.”
To deny that God Is The Author of Love, of Life, and of Marriage, and render onto Caesar what has always belonged to God, is to deny The Divinity of The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity.
What we are witnessing is apostasy from The Truth due to those who deny The Author of Love, of Life, and of Marriage.
“Penance, Penance, Penance.”
One can only have a Great Falling Away from The True Church, Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, outside which, there is no Salvation.
The Charitable Anathema has always existed for the sake of Christ, His Church, all who will come to believe, and those prodigal sons and daughters, who, hopefully, will soon return to Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s2c2a7.htm
The Church’s ultimate trial
675 Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers.574 The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth575 will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.576
Dead on!!! But I continue to ask myself why this message isn’t pronounced daily from every pulpit in every diocese or religious community in the United States and in every other nation where Christianity and other faiths in a Loving God are free to be promulgated?? This isn’t merely a Catholic message to university students where, possibly, 20% will even think about it the next day. It is harbinger of trauma and spiritual destruction if its central message concerning the sanctity and value of the family goes unheeded.
Our call to Holiness, has always been a call to be chaste in our thoughts, in our words, and in our deeds.
It is never necessary to condone sexual acts outside the marital act, which is Life-affirming and Life-sustaining, and can only be consummated between a man and woman, united in marriage as husband and wife, in order to “provide for the basic needs and dignity” of our beloved sons and daughters.
Excellent article. I hope to pass it on. God bless you.
this election is not about Clinton or trump it is about appointing a strong conservative to Supreme Court. What the good Bishop says is right on/.
Dear Archbishop Chaput,
What a blessing to have a Shepard who loves his flock ! Thank you for your clear words of guidance !
You borrowed some words from one of Notre Dame’s distinguished alumni: Abortion has been “the beachhead for an entire ethic that is hostile to life, hostile to marriage and, as we see from the [HHS] contraceptive mandate, increasingly hostile to religion, religious Americans and religious institutions.
I think it would be consistent to say that “acceptance of the use of contraception” was the beachhead that led to abortion …
Surely you know, Your Excellency, that it was the president of this very university, Father Theodore
Hesburgh who was so intent upon our Catholic higher education institutions joining up with and being a player along wit Yale and Harvard and Stanford, et al. Fr. Hesburgh and others, mostly
Jesuits,l wanted independence and autonomy, in the name of “academic freedom>” This is what
led to the abandonment of clear thinking, reason, clarity, Thomism from our Catholic institutions.
I wonder what Fr. Jenkins thought as you spoke about Biden and the Laetare medal and before
that honoring President Obama with distinctive representation on the Notre Dame campus.
As a Notre Dame alumnus, the father of two ND graduates, and grandfather of two ND grads and one St Mary’s grad, I have had serious concerns about just what Our Lady’s University stands for in this present day. In the spring of 2009 my wife and I were proud to be present at our granddaughter’s graduation from ND, but were appalled to see Pres Obama selected as the Commencement Speaker. We could not fathom how someone whose views on such critical issues as abortion, same sex marriage, etc. were so diametrically opposed to what Notre Dame stands for (at least while I was a student there). We sat through his trite speech only because our presence honored our granddaughter. The awarding of the Laetare Medal, our school’s most prestigious award, to Vice Pres Biden was an insult not only to my wife and me, but to virtually every alumni friend I stay in touch with. It also elicited a stream of emails from the alumni within our own family as to just what the university had in mind in making this choice, and what it now stands for. I thank Archbishop Chaput for so clearly laying out the clear path that a truly Catholic university should follow, and what it should be teaching its students to stand up for.
Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, – of the 2 candidates, who should Catholics vote for?
There’s a bigger question. With approximately 70 million Catholics in America it’s my question why Notre Dame (Our Lady) could not find a Catholic worthy to be honored other than Joe Biden who is not only pro-abortion but pro-partial birth abortion. Please name the people responsible for making this decision at ND. Is it Father Jenkins? If so, he should step down. He is giving scandal to all the young men and women who sorely need a role model for strong Catholic teaching. The Catholic universities will never get to the root of this evil until the bishops form a united front and name names. Until then, we the laity are, if you pardon the phrase, “crying in the wilderness” with little alternative methods to make our feelings heard. The slippery slope of moral equivalencies has added to untold confusion among the faithful. This no one can deny.
hopefully fr. Jenkins will heed the archbishops’s advice
especially after inviting Obama and biden
“[36] But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall render an account for it in the day of judgment. [37] For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. [38] Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying: Master we would see a sign from thee. [39] Who answering said to them: An evil and adulterous generation seeketh a sign: and a sign shall not be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet. [40] For as Jonas was in the whale’ s belly three days and three nights: so shall the Son of man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.”
We are living in a period of time in Salvation History where a multitude of persons who profess to be Catholic, deny the personhood of those beloved sons and daughters residing in their mother’s womb, while assigning personhood to sexual desire/inclination/orientation, in direct violation of God’s Commandment regarding lust and the sin of adultery. The objectification of the human person, which demeans the inherent Dignity of all persons, and is consistent with atheistic materialism, has led to a Great Falling Away.
Only The True God can endow us with our inherent Right to Religious Liberty, the purpose of which is so that we can come to know, Love, and serve, The Ordered Communion Of Perfect Love, The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, in this life, and hopefully, be with God and our beloved, forever, in Heaven.
To Love one another as Christ Loves us, is to desire Salvation for ourselves as well as our beloved.
Prayers for your beautiful neice, Allison. You will be in my thoughts and Prayers, Archbishop Chaput.
Beautifully stated. We need this clear instruction from clergy and anyone teaching morals.
100% agreement with the Archbishop’s message and philosophy………. surprisingly, no commenter offered a disparate opinion !
Thank you Archbishop Chaput for your clear message. You are unfortunate to happy two very imperfect candidates, but one has made it clear that she is very pro-abortion. The other will support pro-life, whether or not he believes in the sanctity of life
Your Excellency you should take this talk and write another book, the Catholic community and all Christians need to read it may the Lord continue to bless and keep you
In a nutshell, the sorry state of our country is a direct result of the immoral sex lives of American Catholics. Had we listened to Paul VI in 1968, we would be living in a different world now. The rebellious insistence on the right to use contraception has meant Catholics have had little effect in resisting the culture of Death. “If salt loses is savor, with what can it be salted:”
A MUST READ FOR ALL CLERGY. Actions speak a lot louder than words.
Take your fancy clericals off put on jeans and golf shirt. Availability is so important to the folks, is important along with visibility.
I applaud all such articulate exhortations regarding the role of religion in the public life. I am continually heartened by Archbishop Chaput’s longstanding vision in this regard.
I do view things as a tad more problematical, though, when it comes to politicians like Biden, who apparently submits to church teaching out of religious deference, while otherwise unconvinced of natural law arguments. Perhaps that’s not what Biden’s stance is and, if not, please set that aside. It does seem to nevertheless the position of some, which is not incoherent. Urging a religious submission of will in a pluralistic society is not necessarily the best jurisprudence. Notwithstanding all that, much of the discourse in our country precisely underemphasizes prudential judgments, for example, in deciding whether or not to criminalize abortion. Many implicitly recognize the distinction, though, for example, in drawing distinctions between procurers and providers vis a vis laws and consequences.
As we all strive to follow divine laws, to pursue the realization and to avoid the frustration of the values they foster, philosophically, we are guided by the love of wisdom, contemplatively, we are guided by the wisdom of love, in both approaches guided by the Spirit, when we thus cooperate.
In building the Kingdom, we follow both the dictates of conscience and employ the fruits of practical discernment in devising strategies that might optimally align our approaches to our God, others, the world and even ourselves. We cannot a priori say with certainty whether one strategy or another will best accomplish such an alignment. More concretely, we cannot say whether that strategy should be pastoral, juridical or even left to individual consciences, which may be variously formed.
Should we choose a juridical approach, we cannot a priori say whether such positive laws should be both ecclesiastical and secular, both civil and criminal, uniformly consequential or not, exceptionless or not.
Juridical approaches cannot possibly cover every eventuality or be applied in every concrete circumstance. Particular circumstances require a practical discernment that yields prudential judgments, which is why even the consequences or effects of rules need not necessarily always be the same. Further, the administration of rules should follow the principle of subsidiarity.
But when the only tools one owns are legalistic and rigoristic hammers, I suppose every practical and moral problem will, suspiciously, look like a juridical nail. Amoris Laetitia, as a pastoral exhortation, voiced prophetic protest against such approaches without addressing dogma, doctrines or canons. Those who say our religion should not influence our public life or politics have bought into that militant secularism of the post-Enlightenment, such as we in America manifestly rejected at our very founding. Those who suggest that deliberations regarding HOW that influence must necessarily play out, practically, in the specific forms of positive laws, have no room for prudential judgment dilute the very religious freedom they’d otherwise champion?
(Archbishop) Chaput acts as if the two candidates are equally bad from a Catholic point of view. This is completely false and contrary to the facts. One promises to appoint pro-life, pro-religious liberty judges. The other openly supports partial-birth abortion and believes religious views on these and other issues must be changed! (Archbishop) Chaput is … implicitly encouraging Catholics to feel justified in voting for Hillary or staying home. This helps ensure America will become openly hostile to Catholicism and Christianity for the foreseeable future.
We are filled with gratitude for your courage in speaking Truth to authority, Archbishop! We, the sheep, live on a gruel of light
wisdom and pap in our weekly homilies. We are starved for strong directives, support for our living our Faith.
We add our agreement with the above T. Cross, who sited contraception as the initial wedge, poison pill, first bite of the apple, so to speak, in our cultural decline .( Abortion is the fruit of contraception.)
And then there was the Silence from our Shepherds. Silence and at best, dissent .
God Bless you in your leadership. Make a Mess, as Pope Francis has encouraged. We are with you. We need you.
Thank you for putting what is in my heart so eloquently on a page. Thank you!
One of the truly great speeches of our time. No anthology of contemporary American thought at the beginning of the third Christian millennium will be complete without it.
I am impressed beyond words. The messages in this are so spot on and need to heard. Thank you so much for standing up to societal “norms” that are anything but normal these days. Thanks again and please continue delivering these messages!
Dear Archbishop Chaput, Thank you for this wonderful lecture – I wish I could have heard it! I shared it with my wife and will share it with my high school colleagues. Please accept my prayerful sympathies on the death of your niece Allison. +God bless you!
Dear Archbishop, I am a member of a religious community who, as a body, have voted for and will again vote for the liberal left. These are highly educated and experienced women who claim the “poor” as their justification. I wish every Catholic and esp religious women could hear your spoken word. My persuasion as far as I can be heard is how can you be poor if you are not born. It is a source of great stress to me to continue to be a member of such a body.
Dear Eminence, thank you once again for your teaching on what a Catholic life should be like. Obviously, there are many who disagree with you and who, in fact, flat don’t like you. But, we are sure, that there are many more people who care for you as person as well as a man who believes in the Catholic faith as strongly as you do. It tends to rub off on many of us who are in great need of spiritual direction. You provide this for the lay people in your archdiocese as well as to the clergy, religious and seminarians that you shepherd. We were sorry to hear of your family’s loss and will be praying for her. God bless. We follow this simple direction. “Be not afraid, for I am with you always. Come follow me”.
Musn’t seem to equate both candidates.WWll, 60 year priest (89 old).
Archbishop, your address was courageous, profound, and inspirational. Your assessment of presidential candidates right on the mark; of Notre Dame’s tragic error with Biden correct; and your wide lense analysis of contemporary American culture and its familial roots absolutely accurate. Keep teaching and preaching. The Church in the US needs to hear more of you. May Our Lady guide your continued courageous apostolic ministry for us all.
One of the first comments mentioned the courage and importance of the message from a Bishop. I couldn’t agree more, we need to make such a talk into a book, a series of view graphs etc. so those of us
with shared responsibility can offer these thoughts to our congregations.
Creating a Catholic Culture in our families is a first priority.
Excellent piece Archbishop, thank you! Mother Teresa’s ’94 prayer breakfast speech and this piece should be read by all Catholics before entering the voting booth this November. I will have a Mass said for your niece through the St. John Neumann Shrine. Bob
Your Grace
This is a very tastefully presented merciful correction.
NOTRE Dame is an incredible university that was confused on a few awards but the ground game is pretty incredible thanks to many shepherds some of whom you listed,
Your Excellency, From those of us in the trenches: thank you! For those of us who try to find the right words to touch a lost family member or friend: thank you for giving us this gift to share with them! Thank you for shining light in the present darkness. God bless and preserve you.
This should be made available to all Catholics through our Pastors preaching from the pulpit.
Wow! Where has this kind of message been in the Catholic Church? If Catholics had been hearing this the last 40 years, we may not have near as many CINOs. Awesome address! I pray that the students and faculty who heard this will be able to understand the great truths spoken of in this address. God bless Archbishop Chaput!
I read articles by you every time I get a chance; I always know it will be worth my time! You said a lot of things and expertly in this presentation. Yes, the majority of bishops should be able to write and speak like this all the time. Because the Catholic congregations are not getting it at Mass or meetings, and many diocesan bishops are not passing tradition and doctrine down. Thanks you for your ability to present what’s wrong with our country, pinpointing abortions as a total disruption, and guiding those of us that read your commentaries. Thank you for your vast knowledge and how to apply it to our daily lives.
Your Excellency,
I believe it was in his remarks to the Cardinals assembled for conclave following Pope St. John Paul’s death that then Cardinal Ratzinger spoke of the pernicious, present-day danger of relativism. Your words at Notre Dame and the courage it takes to speak those words would surely win the esteem of our Pope Emeritus Benedict. Thank you for the example you give to us priests and your brother hierarchs. For your beloved niece, Requiescat in Pace!
i wish more studies could be done by/with priests about trends in confessions over long periods in the US and elsewhere. I think it would be fascinating. I have to believe the emphasis on sexual sins in part relates to practicing Catholics’ beliefs on mortal sin. Do people still believe many sins are mortal besides sex and murder? What is their evaluation of economic sins or non-physical cruelty of many varieties?
Archbishop Chaput, now is the time for you to mimic St John the Baptist, crying out as a voice in the desert by invoking the adage “Actions Speak Louder Than Words” as “our” mission……by turning the powerful rhetoric here into active robust leadership involving all the parish pulpits, Catholic university halls,and even the legislatures throughout America and become an outspoken leader for other clergy for all of us to follow with passion to turn the “culture of death” into a vibrant “culture of life”…..we are here to follow! Lead on…….
Beautiful words on the family but truthtopower could have been spoken about Notre Dame, notwithstanding some good faculty. The sexual carnage is a direct result of Catholic bishops failing to call out the fake Catholicism that has been hijacking our country. Notre Dame hides behind the skirts of its orthodox faculty and the bishops tolerate it. NO! If the faculty are good, they’ll find an institutional home that is worthy of the name Catholic.
Holy -Spirit driven and brilliant, Your Excellency.
As for the 1972 election, author John Roche was correct when he said ” A choice between thieves and theocrats “.
As a Notre Dame graduate I can state unequivocally that I do not want them to be the Catholic Harvard. I just want them to be Notre Dame.
As the mother of a Notre Dame graduate, I have been disturbed by the direction of the University by honoring some and inviting some as speakers. I have worried about how ” Catholic” it is today. Your lecture was uplifting and you did not mince the words that needed to be spoken. Perhaps the Blessed Mother can smile down on Notre Dame again with pride in the future.
This is more than an eloquent address – it is the kind of leadership the Church desperately needs in times such as this. Archbishop Chaput can certainly be compared to an Augustine or John Chrysostom. He will probably not be rewarded for speaking this truth
Haven’t we had enough talk already? The VAAAAAST majority of “Catholics” in this country simply aren’t listening. Of course, if the prelates will bother with public calls to Catholic teaching for e.g.: Biden, Kerry, Kaine, Pelosi etc…….then maybe others, including “Catholics” will start to realize the standards are there and that the Roman Catholic Church ain’t just another social do-gooder society with no supernatural purpose.
Superb article. Agree with your response. The Catholic Church, clergy and laity, needs to get its act together. Our sexuality is so intrinsic to our spirituality that without moral standards and restraint in our conduct we destroy ourselves and everyone around us.
The Church needs to fearlessly speak the truth. Many people will not want to hear it but the truth sets us free.
Thank you for speaking sharing such a clear and orthodox message, Archbishop Chaput. Words of hope, encouragement, and exhortation in a time of dire need.
Every Catholic person or better, every Christian needs to see this. No one is speaking out! Thank you so much Archbishop for finally putting this into words. Where is our Catholic leadership and why won’t they speak out. I do not buy the Church and State thing. There is more to it than that. What has happened to the priest in the pulpit? Where is our guidence? Our children are not being educated in their Catholic Faith as they should be. No one speaks about birth control being a sin. No one speaks about sin in general. No one talks about the consequences of our action. You never hear a word about premarital sex being a sin. Come to think of it, you never hear a word about anything we do, right or wrong. I guess most priest take for granted that we know all of this but the majority of us don’t know. I taught PREP for 17 yrs and take my word for it, their parents don’t have a clue.
I want to thank you for standing up for our Church.
I just want to say that there ARE priests talking about these issues from the pulpit, at least in the Arlington Diocese where I live. I grew up in a different diocese and never heard about these things from the pulpit til I came to Northern Virginia, but am grateful to have the priests we have who are well formed and not afraid to upset people by bringing these topics up, even though they inevitably will anger some people by doing so. I don’t know if it is the bishop, the seminary, or the families that our priests come from (probably a combination of all three) but I am so happy to be hearing the truth proclaimed in our churches! I pray that other dioceses around the country and the world may be blessed in the same way.
Whats really flawed is the Johnson amendment tying the tongues of our priests…
Agreed that, as usual, a spot-on lecture. And condolences on your family’s loss. Just goes to show that ANYONE can be going through rough times and be in need of prayers, as you did recently for me, Archbishop.
Brilliant and Holy Spirit-powered, Your Eminence. Praise God for your courage.
At least in 1972, as the author John Roche said, ” It is a choice between thieves and theocrats.”
I commend your Excellency for clearly saying that which must be said to Catholics and especially to Notre Dame
whose invitations to abortion advocates continue to be a scandal.
Thank you! Very true, but why can’t we plainly say ” vote pro life!?” If evangelicals ministers can go on TV and say they are for Trump or Clinton, why don’t the Catholic clergy!! Are we as Catholics, too afraid to do so because we’ll lose funding??
We need to be bold in our public teaching, not just in private!
It has been 40 add years since Roe vs. Wade and the abortion disgrace. Many politicians have asked for our pro-life vote so they can go to congress and put an end to abortions in the United States. Yet they forget why they are there! They do not get positions on social legislation committees, they do not propose bills establishing the personhood of babies in the womb, they do not gather together to form a united front to advance the legal limitation of abortion. They may even vote for legislation with provisions within them to fund Planned Parenthood. The Republican Party has claimed it is pro-life for over 40 years, yet nothing goes past the platform. I almost believe the Republican Party is afraid to tackle abortion because they just might succeed. Without pro-life voters, the Republican coalition is severely weakened! Would you vote Republican with their heavy leanings to the needs of the wealthy which can never be satisfied if they didn’t promise to end abortion? When are we going to realize they never will??? Of course we can’t vote Democrat. At least, though, Bill Clinton did state that abortions should be safe but rare. This suggests that he knows abortion is wrong, and he is “hopeful” that it will be ‘rare.’ The Rare has become the commonplace! The numbers are staggering, far outpacing the numbers of women who died from botched, back-yard abortions. So where does that leave us? I suggest we acquire the means to have abortion as a national issue placed on the ballet box in the form of a referendum where every citizen votes for or against the continuance of abortion in this country. When the votes are tallied, I suggest the issue leaves the arena of the politician. No longer should this issue be a democratic or republican issue, but a moral issue; and it should be dealt with from the pulpit and on billboards should the majority of voting Americans decide to retain abortion. If the killing stops, we should celebrate this victory from the roof tops and then remain ever vigilant that it may never raise its ugly heard again!
Catholic clergy will probably not go on TV to endorse ANY political candidate as Canon Law already forbids them from doing so from the pulpit.
Thank you, your Eminence! Hopefully this will encourage other Bishops to come out strongly and strengthen the priests of their dioceses to speak out! We laity are starved for honest dialog and non wimpy leadership!
Thank you, dear Archbishop Chaput! Your words have stirred an inexhaustible ovation within in my soul! May the mantle of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Star of the New Evangelization, protect you!
Nice article. Yes we do have flawed candidates. We are all flawed. A couple of things that come to the top of importance is protecting our unborn. If you don’t care about it then pull the lever for Clinton. If you want a thief then do the same. If you want a loud mouth who sincerely cares for the poor and wants better for everyone, not just talk as the democrats have done for at least your 50 years of voting, then pull the lever for Trump.
I just wish such good articles showing the flaws of our politicians and government, were done on the abuse within our Church and the serious loss of Catholic teaching at Notre Dame. But as you pointed out, we are all flawed.
Amen, brother.
I agree. Mr Trump has publicly stated he is against abortion while Clinton has stated the complete opposite and worse in favor of partial birth abortion. Gov. Pence`s record against abortion is well documented and this could have very effectively been pointed out in the lecture unless of course you are for open borders. Given the sad and sorry history of Philadelphia`s sex abuse scandals with widely reported prosecutions and a sickening horrible grand jury report, there is not a good deal of high ground to be criticizing any candidate. “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. By the way, where was the good Archbishop when the most pro-abortion, pro-contraceptive anti Catholic candidate
(Mr. Obama), who dragged the Little Sisters of the Poor along with many other Catholic institutions throught the courts when he was running?
Thank you, archbishop for your clarity and leadership in these difficult times. Christian husbands and fathers MUST be truthful leaders in society.
As far as I am concerned, this is *the* exhortation for me, my family, our times, our nation, and generations to come. Epic.
Thank you, Archbishop. Just, thank you.
Thank you Bishop. You eloquently expressed the words in my heart.
Outstanding lecture, Your Eminence. Thank you.
He is not an “Eminence,” as you presumably should know.
I am sorry for your loss, your Excellency. I haven’t read any more than that at this point, but you and yours, and especially Allison, will be in our family rosary tonight.
Dear Archbishop Chaput,
Your letter is very interesting and filled with information and heartfelt concern. I am wondering if you didn’t get some points wrong. When you speak as if abortion is the root of our present state, it seems to me that it is contraception that led to abortion. When you state, ” If we want strong families, we need strong men and women to create and sustain them with maturity and love. And as a family of families, the Church is no different. The Church is strong when her families and individual sons and daughters are strong; when they believe what she teaches, and then witness her message with courage and zeal.” Is it not the Church that teaches the truths that make strong men and women so they can bring about strong families and individual sons and daughters.
Since Pope Paul VI we have had the firm, yet, untaught dogma on contraception.. Do you think Justice Anthony Kennedy could have made his claim had the Shepherds of the Holy Catholic Church been teaching every engaged couple that came to them that the use of contraception would place them in mortal sin?
Abortion is the result of contraception. Fewer children within marriage is a result of contraception. More porn, wife abuse, divorce is a result of contraception. Pope Paul IV told us what would happen; and it did.
You, also, said, “She’s weak when her people are too tepid or comfortable, too eager to “fit in” or frankly too afraid of public disapproval, to see the world as it really is.” I think you were speaking of the Shepherds. I know many of the sheep not concerned about fitting in. They could care less about public approval. They work hard and sacrifice to try to put a roof over head, food on the table and give their kids a good education. These are all families that live by Humanae Vitae.
It is time for Catholics, especially the Shepherds, to speak about the “elephant in the room.”
Meaning no disrespect, and with deep concern,
Peaceful Wife of one man and Mother of five children
Dear Archbishop
As an ND graduate with two children who attended Notre Dame, your words are powerful and to the point.
The list of Catholic faculty at ND still provides hope for the university to reverse course and be a real beacon for Catholicism in the United States.
I also noted Father Jenkins did not make the list. I will also bet he did not hear you speak.
Yes, David, my sentiments exactly. Lately, I have mourned Notre Dame and the direction it appears to have taken in the public eye. How refreshing to see this list of faithful teachers at our beloved university.
Archbishop, your words were a rallying call and a much needed dose of courage and conviction; they spoke truth in a world of darkness.
Hi David. I’m a grandmother and a Saint Mary’s alumna and I attended the talk. It was powerful. The room was packed, mostly with undergraduate students, I would say, although there were also older folks, many of whom were probably faculty, and there were also some religious and clergy. Something which inspired hope was that Archbishop Chaput received a standing ovation, and the first people whom I saw stand were a couple of students, who looked neither to their right nor to their left before taking to their feet. The applause lasted a good number of minutes. Furthermore, in answering the questions from undergraduates and others, the Archbishop did not equivocate or obfuscate and he returned questions. Some of those questions were on tough topics. I was impressed with Notre Dame for welcoming even the Archbishop’s chastisement as crucial for true education. Bravo to Archbishop Chaput, and well done to Notre Dame. I, too, have been disappointed in some of the decisions Notre Dame has made in the past several years but I will make another 8 hour drive for a Tocqueville talk based on this one. This speaker, invited by Notre Dame,through his speech and respectful and nevertheless honest conversation during comments, exemplified, in my opinion, the cardinal and theological virtues!!
Absolutely excellent talk. Just stellar. It was informative, inspiring and gave me renewed hope. Excellent points across the board. Thank you for continuing to speak the truth and doing so in such a way that is honest without offending anyone. We are fortunate to have you and other men like you in the Church. You are rich in faith, knowledge and wisdom. Thank you for becoming a Priest.