Mankowsi: Why the Immaculate Conception?

The truth is often at right angles to the common perception. Fr Paul Mankowski sj asks "Why the Immaculate Conception?" in Women for Faith & Family, Vol v.1 (1990).

There is a strain of feminist Mariology which feels repugnance at the dogma of the Immaculate Conception because it views the notion as demeaning to women. Orthodox theologians were so scandalized by the particularly feminine dimension of sinfulness (according to this school) that they found it necessary to cook up the idea of an immaculate conception in order to sanitize the event of the incarnation. I hope I have shown that this way of thinking has got things exactly backwards. In articulating its belief that Mary was free of original sin, the Church is thrusting the Blessed Virgin into the heart of the problematic struggle of temptation and grace; it is the opposite of insulation. It is not some angelic perfection, but her humanity which is vindicated by Pius IX’s definition - her dependence on merits of Jesus Christ, her constant reenactment of the drama of Adam’s choice, a drama which is no less dramatic for its happy ending, a drama which ultimately includes us all, in the vision of the Woman clothed with the sun, crushing the serpent at the worlds’ end.

The introduction punctures a number of balloons:

Further, if we speak of the Virgin Mary as constitutionally incapable of sin, it is all the more difficult to discover in her the humanity which is by its very weakness transparent to God's power. Consequently, in an age like our own especially, she is all the more likely to be treated as precisely that sort of Ideal which cannot warm our affections or stir our courage.

One obvious, all-too-predictable solution, is to deny the Immaculate Conception and the sinlessness of Mary, under the fatuous pretense that by doing so, she will become more "human", and so more accessible to the rest of us sinners. Wrong on all counts, the most obvious being that a human who sins is less human after he succumbs that he was before. Still, there is a persistent, though imbecile, way of speaking in which some public figure who has an adulterous affair or a personal foible come to light thereby reveals a "human side" of himself. In fact, it is in keeping his commitments and displaying evidence of virtue that a man is most fully human; in giving in to temptations, even trivial or petty ones, he becomes that much more bestial.

When we fall, we fall from a human dignity, not an angelic one; our skid may well end at a level of animal savagery, but we never "tumble down" into humanity. It was natural indeed that the Legion inside the Gerasene demoniac pleaded to be cast into swine -- not because pigs are of themselves wickeder then men, but because the elevator, so to speak, was already at that floor. There is no point, then, in exploring this avenue further. I think the way out is more direct. A friend of mine is fond of saying, "Whenever I hear the word 'dialogue', I reach for my dogma." Let us, in the same spirit, reach for our dogma and see if it has anything to say to us.

Mankowski: Silk Purses & Sow's Ears

(I am sure the apostrophe in the title is misplaced)

Arguing with inclusive language loonies, the best I could come up with is that they never seem to worry about the gender of Satan, all his works and all his empty promises. For a better essay see "Silk Purses & Sows' Ears: 'Inclusive Language' Comes to Mass" from Women for Faith and Family viii.4 & ix.1, by Fr Paul Mankowski sj.

This is one of those essays when you want to keep cutting and pasting (funny that, considering the first paragraph). But here is a line of argument that had not already occurred to me:

Consider this sentence: "The men and officers of the second battalion will return to winter quarters on Monday." Here the word "man" is being used exclusively (i.e., non-generically), but it means, of course, not "non-females" but "non-officers." The word "man" is not only unmarked for gender but unmarked for military rank. Accordingly, in different sentences it can serve the broader or the narrower function, usually without ambiguity. There are, of course, certain linguistic situations in which it may be difficult to tell which use is intended. For example, in a pub you overhear a stranger say, "Jack's a man in my regiment." Does he mean man/non-officer or generic man? A speaker of even modest skill can ordinarily indicate his meaning clearly.

Now suppose for a moment you're serving as a military chaplain somewhere and have just conducted a Mass in which you recited the Nicene Creed according to the conventional translation. How would you deal with a red-eyed infantry colonel who buttonholes you in the sacristy and complains in a trembling voice that he feels the words, "For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven", exclude officers from the ambit of divine salvific activity? If you have bought into the standard inclusive-language mindset you're in a tough bind, for according to the mindset it is the listener's subjective impressions that take precedence over standard usage and over the intentions of the speaker. So if you refuse to change the Creed to read, "for us men and officers he came down from heaven," you're at a complete loss to explain your previous concessions to feminist critics. And if you do make the requested change you're incapable of refusing with rational consistency the next madman who feels himself excluded by your language.

Mankowski: What Went Wrong?

Robert Conquest says somewhere that the “behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies". Of couse, he means enemies of the organization: the idea of a bureaucracy being taken over by its enemies fills me with a mixture of hilarity and dread.

That reminds me of Fr Paul Mankowski SJ's paper from July 2003 (I blog slow but exceeding fine): What Went Wrong?

In thousands and thousands of pages of records one scarcely, if ever, is edified by a pleasant surprise, by discovering that a bishop’s or superior’s concern for the victim or for the Faith was greater than that known to the public, that the engines of justice were geared up and running at full throttle, but in a manner invisible to those outside the circle of discretion. Didn’t happen.

It is not surprising that something by an American priest in 2003 should smell of cynicism of all Ecclesiastical bureaucracies:

When the scandal is sexual or financial, it seems the Holy See can move quickly to remove the offender. When the scandal is in the arena of heresy or administrative irregularity or liturgical abuse, there is almost never enough secular interest generated to force the Holy See’s hand. Bishops Milingo and Ziemann and Roddy Wright have many brethren; Bishop Gaillot has few.

These differences between the Vatican's policy towards immoral Bishops and that towards dissenting Bishops may be due to the differences between the applicable canon law. That became clear when it took the Pope five years to remove Bishop Morris of Toowoomba.