Letters to the Editor: April 2026

Obedience? To Whom?

Welcome to the NOR, Marcus Peter!

His first column, “Mater Populi Fidelis & Titles Proper to Mary” (Covenant & Civilization, Jan.-Feb.), is a nice summary of the document from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF). I always struggled with “Co-Redemptrix,” though I never used it much in faith conversations. This was probably a good move by the DDF.

I was especially struck by this paragraph in Dr. Peter’s column: “Mater Populi Fidelis will disappoint some and frustrate others…. Yet this is an opportunity to exercise intellectual humility and ecclesial obedience. The faith of the Church is not a matter of sentiment but of assent to revealed truth. Each believer must learn to bring his personal interpretation to the foot of the cross and allow it to be judged by the wisdom of the magisterium. That discipline safeguards the unity of the Church and ensures that devotion never drifts into sentimentality detached from doctrine.”

Gosh, I wish Peter had been around in 1968 when Humanae Vitae was promulgated, or in 1994 when Ordinatio Sacerdotalis first saw the light of day. Maybe someone could share this admonishment with the participants at the Synod of Synodality (and all the other troublemakers to whom Francis gave a voice in the Vatican during his reign), many of whom seem to have no trouble providing “personal interpretations” or “drifting into sentimentality,” and who do not seem like they will ever give “assent to revealed truth.” Rather, they seem hellbent on ecclesial disobedience and overturning Church doctrine.

Eugene Kania

Wheaton, Illinois

After reading “Mater Populi Fidelis & Titles Proper to Mary,” I feel called to come to the defense of Our Lady, Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of All Graces. Marcus Peter urges us to yield our “emotions, preferences and private opinions” to the Church’s magisterial guidance when Pope Leo XIV’s Vatican tells us these titles are “always inappropriate.” Further, he tells us to “exercise intellectual humility and ecclesial obedience.”

I would ask Dr. Peter if he would exercise ecclesial obedience and recognize that, for centuries, tradition, along with many saints, more than a dozen popes (in some cases through the weight of encyclicals, not merely doctrinal notes like Mater Populi Fidelis), and at least seven doctors of the Church clearly explained, taught with authority, and promoted these two titles of Our Lady. Of these, here is just a small sampling:

•  St. Irenaeus, doctor of the Church
•  St. Ephrem the Syrian, doctor of the Church
•  St. Augustine, doctor of the Church
•  St. Bernard of Clairvaux, doctor of the Church
•  St. Bonaventure, doctor of the Church
•  St. Bernardine of Siena
•  Pope Leo XIII
•  St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort
•  St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, doctor of the Church
•  St. John Henry Newman, doctor of the Church
•  Pope Benedict XV
•  Pope St. Pius X
•  Pope Pius XI
•  Pope Pius XII
•  Pope St. John Paul II
•  Pope Benedict XVI

Does Peter really believe that nothing before a modernist pope and his pornography-writing (Lord, help us) head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith is to be considered “magisterial guidance”?

Cyrille Velasco

Ave Maria, Florida

MARCUS PETER REPLIES:

To Eugene Kania

Thank you for your kind welcome and for taking the time to engage my column. I am grateful that it resonated with you, especially its call to intellectual humility and ecclesial obedience. Those virtues are never easy, and they are rarely fashionable.

I appreciate your candid admission that you struggled with the title “Co-Redemptrix.” Many faithful Catholics have felt a similar tension. Marian devotion runs deep in the Church’s bloodstream, and when questions arise about terminology, it can feel personal. My hope in writing the column was precisely to help distinguish between authentic devotion and doctrinal precision, so that love for Our Lady is firmly anchored in revealed truth.

You raise an understandable frustration about other moments in recent Church history, particularly surrounding Humanae Vitae and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. Those episodes, too, reveal how difficult ecclesial obedience can be when teachings challenge prevailing cultural currents or personal expectations. In both cases, the Church asked for assent grounded in fidelity to the Deposit of Faith rather than in shifting public sentiment.

The principle I tried to articulate is this: The faith of the Church precedes us, and it outlasts us. We do not inherit a blank slate upon which to write our preferences. Whether we are tempted toward doctrinal innovation or devotional overstatement, the same standard applies. Our interpretations must kneel before the wisdom of the magisterium. If that standard had been more widely embraced in 1968 and 1994, many wounds might have been avoided. If it is embraced today, many future wounds may yet be prevented.

May we all continue to grow in that difficult and beautiful discipline of trusting Christ to govern His Bride, even when the path forward seems complicated.

To Cyrille Velasco

Thank you for taking the time to engage my column. I recognize and respect the love for Our Lady that animates your concern. Anyone who speaks about Marian titles must do so with reverence, theological precision, and deep ecclesial sensitivity. That includes me.

Let me begin by clarifying something important: I do not deny the rich theological tradition that reflects on Mary’s unique cooperation in salvation history. The Church has long spoken of her as the New Eve, drawing from figures such as St. Irenaeus. Saints and theologians across the centuries, including Bernard of Clairvaux, Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, and others, have used strong devotional language to express Mary’s maternal mediation and intimate participation in Christ’s redemptive mission. That theological development deserves respect. However, the key question is not whether saints used elevated Marian language. The key question is how the Church, in her living magisterium, chooses to regulate theological expression for the good of the faithful and the precision of doctrine in a given historical moment.

Lumen Gentium, the Second Vatican Council’s “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church,” gives us the authoritative framework. It affirms that Mary “cooperated in a wholly singular way” in the work of the Savior (no. 61), and it teaches that her maternal mediation “flows forth from the superabundance of the merits of Christ” (no. 60). At the same time, the Council Fathers deliberately refrained from defining titles such as “Co-Redemptrix” or “Mediatrix of All Graces” as dogma. That was deliberate. It was out of pastoral prudence and theological concern, especially regarding the unique and unrepeatable mediation of Christ, as articulated in 1 Timothy 2:5.

Furthermore, though several popes have used the term “Co-Redemptrix” in various allocutions or devotional contexts, none has ever defined it doctrinally, nor has the ordinary and universal magisterium formally taught it as binding doctrine. There is a theological distinction between papal devotional language, even in encyclicals, and a definitive doctrinal act. That distinction matters. As I’m certain you know, the Church speaks at different levels of authority.

You ask whether I would exercise ecclesial obedience. My answer is yes, and that is precisely what I attempted to do. Ecclesial obedience means receiving the current authoritative guidance of the Church regarding how Marian doctrine is to be expressed publicly and pastorally. It does not require erasing history. It does require submitting our theological preferences to the Church’s prudential judgment about theological clarity, ecumenical sensitivity, and pastoral precision.

With respect to your final remark about a “modernist pope,” I would gently caution against language that undermines the visibility of communion. Even when we disagree with prudential decisions, we must guard against rhetoric that fractures ecclesial charity. The office of Peter, regardless of the personality occupying it, is a visible principle of unity. The Church’s doctrinal development does not reset every time a new pope is elected, nor does it canonize every devotional expression that appeared in prior centuries.

The saints and popes you list were not operating as isolated catechetical authorities. They were theologians and pastors working within the life of the Church. Their theological insights contribute to tradition, yet tradition itself is interpreted and regulated by the living magisterium. That is how Catholicism avoids both antiquarianism and novelty. The Church is a living organism, guided by the Holy Spirit.

It is also important to note that affirming Mary as Mother of the Faithful, or embracing titles the Church currently promotes, does not diminish Mary’s unique participation in redemption. In fact, grounding Marian doctrine carefully protects her true greatness. When we emphasize her radical dependence on Christ, we exalt her rather than reduce her. As I believe you know well, every Marian doctrine is Christological at its core. Therefore, my call to intellectual humility and ecclesial obedience was not a dismissal of Marian devotion. It was an invitation to trust that the Holy Spirit guides the Church not only in what she defines but also in what she chooses not to define.

If, in time, the Church were to define “Co-Redemptrix” in a precise and safeguarded manner, I would gladly receive it. Until then, I believe fidelity means speaking where the Church speaks definitively, and exercising prudence where she exercises prudence. That’s what my column affirms.

Our Lady’s greatness does not depend on our preferred titles for her. Her glory is secure in the divine plan. And her maternal care for the Church is constant. Let us continue this conversation as sons and daughters who love the same Mother, and who desire above all to remain in full communion with the Church she herself loves.

We Are Powerful Peacekeepers

Jason M. Morgan’s conclusions in “DEFCON, Neocon, Katechon” (Cultural Counterpoint, Dec.) are not credible. He writes, “So, here we are today, in a faltering empire that, in clamoring about Vladimir Putin’s being the Devil incarnate and insisting that the mullahs in Iran must be wiped off the face of the earth, still repeats the oldest plotline in Western political history. We need enemies more than anything else. Our enemies let us keep the relative peace. Without enemies, we are doomed.”

The illegitimate, murderous Iranian regime has been butchering its own people by the tens of thousands. The Rwandan genocide wiped out half a million to a million Tutsis, while the world stood by on the sidelines. Stop it with the neocon-warhawks line! Are we our brother’s keeper? Yes, we are Christians. America is the most powerful nation in the world. We are a people with deep roots in Judeo-Christian moral principles. We are not warmongers when we engage evil to aid the downtrodden and persecuted human family. We are peacekeepers. Isolationism is as much an offense against our faith as warmongering.

The U.S. government has been extremely restrained regarding the fanatic, violent, theocratic jihadists in power in Iran who’ve been oppressing their own citizens for over 40 years while fomenting and subsidizing terrorism through proxies worldwide. This is all too obvious if you diligently follow news on the Mideast.

Philip Sevilla

San Antonio, Texas

JASON M. MORGAN REPLIES:

My explication of the concept of the katechon was apparently lost on Philip Sevilla. That Washington needs enemies because of a subliminal hangup about keeping the Antichrist at bay was my point, but if it did not get across, then I am to blame.

Maybe history will help. Sevilla accuses Iran of “fomenting and subsidizing terrorism through proxies worldwide.” Washington did not like the elected government of Iran and overthrew it in August 1953 with the help of the British. Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh had been preventing foreign petroleum firms (mainly British) from stealing oil and money from his country. He did so on the basis of the 1951 Oil Nationalization Law, the ratification of which he had made a condition for his accepting leadership of his country. Having thus placed himself between Washington and its lackeys and the foreign wealth they coveted, Mosaddegh signed his own political death warrant. The “protests” that broke out in Iran in favor of deposing Mosaddegh were largely funded and organized by the CIA and MI6. The ensuing Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi-dominated government gave the Americans and British all the oil they wanted; in exchange, Washington propped up the Shah’s regime, allowing it to torture Iranians at will. Henry Kissinger, with the help of Wall Street (in particular, Chase Manhattan Bank), kept the Shah in business (which was also good for the business interests of Kissinger and Chase Manhattan — go figure).

This story of “fomenting and subsidizing terrorism through proxies worldwide” repeats, well, worldwide. Sevilla mentions Rwanda. In 1996 Rwanda, though still reeling from the genocide Sevilla mentions, invaded the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Zaire), which precipitated a regional conflict, known as the First Congo War, that led to the downfall of Joseph Mobutu. The fighting between those two countries stretched back decades. After the assassination of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in 1961 (the CIA wanted to kill Lumumba, but the Congo’s former colonial masters, the Belgians, beat them to it), Washington backed Mobutu, who went on to oversee a decades-long spree of corruption, torture, and the general ransacking of his country. The fallout in the Congo continues to this day, the recent peace treaty with Rwanda notwithstanding.

Washington’s ostensible justification for supporting Mobutu was that it was necessary to stop the spread of communism. I would return here to my original point about the katechon, but I wouldn’t want to trouble Sevilla unduly.

Washington has trotted out “stopping the spread of communism” as the reason for intervening in any number of countries. American bullets and bombs killed more than a million people in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Some half a million people died in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War (which Washington, in its righteous might, prolonged). The killing continued in 1990, when Washington invaded Iraq in defense of Kuwait, and again in 2003, when Washington invaded Iraq based on a lie Washington concocted about weapons of mass destruction. In those last two wars, it was Saddam Hussein, not Moscow, whom Washington held up as the devil in need of restraining. The Soviet Union had bowed out of Antichrist contention, and so a new contender was ushered in by the Washington strategists, who are nothing if not Sisyphean in their endeavors.

Finally, about those “fanatic, violent, theocratic jihadists,” does Sevilla mean the Puritans? They and their progeny swept a continent clean of natives and established hundreds of boarding schools where Indian children, often kidnapped from their homes, were forbidden from speaking their native languages or dressing in anything other than Victorian-style clothing. Coming to the western end of the continent did not spell the end of their fanatic, violent, theocratic jihading. I am reading a book about the Americans’ war on the Philippines that tells how U.S. Protestant soldiers stripped Catholic church altars of valuables and burned the buildings during their “liberation” of those islands some 12 decades ago. Washington’s “Judeo-Christian moral principles” did not stop the plunder or slaughter. Ditto for the Belgians in the Congo, the French in Indochina, the Spanish in Tenochtitlan, the Portuguese in Angola, and the British in Bengal.

“We are peacekeepers,” Sevilla writes. “Isolationism is as much an offense against our faith as warmongering.” It is theology like this that has soaked the world in blood. Sevilla is in luck, though, as that theology is now blowing up girls’ schools in Minab. I hope he will “diligently follow news on the Mideast” to see what Washington’s version of Judeo-Christian peacekeeping looks like in practice.

Have We Sped Past Our Exit?

Frank Sheed in A Map of Life says the Last Day is “an end to the term upon earth of the human race,” a signal that “the Mystical Body of Christ shall have grown to its full stature.” Not to commit the sin of despair, but it’s hard to believe we haven’t sped past our exit and are steadily (to borrow the title of Judge Robert Bork’s book) “slouching toward Gomorrah.” Jason M. Morgan (“Everything Rises, Nothing Converges,” From the Narthex, Jan.-Feb.) is not wrong that the tech-elite get richer while feeding everyone a steady diet of cat videos and porn, meant to numb the masses into being…what? Into being addicts to their drug, we may conclude.

On that score, the danger of TikTok isn’t in China’s farming user data but that it turns users’ minds into mashed potatoes. Is this us headed in the direction of our “full stature”? Not bloody likely. Have you seen what’s going on with artificial intelligence (AI)? Will Hoyt in his (mixed) review of Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity (“Is AI the Anti-Christ?” Jan.-Feb.) mentions the book’s author’s asking what “consenting to participation” in a “machine” will entail. It’s hardly a mystery. People of my generation (late boomer) may still be uncomfortable saying (vs. pressing) “one” for customer service, but our kids and grandkids have ChatGPT, Grok, and so on as their constant conversational companion — not just to look up when Thomas Jefferson was born or when the nearest Starbucks opens but to decide all variety of things for them and immerse them in, with hi-def animation, whatever alternate reality they might prefer to real reality. The benefit of AI’s being as smart as the Internet is actually the weakness of being only as smart as the Internet, the content of which is gate-kept by an alarmingly small cadre of rich-and-getting-richer wheelers and dealers.

What’s next? At a conference I attended recently, a tech expert detailed where all the R&D money is going nowadays: humanoid robots. Not just things that look and move like people, not just AI tools that can hear and speak — both of which are already mostly developed — but a “realistic” marriage of the two. Anyone who thinks people will finally find such a development a bridge too far hasn’t been paying attention. Consent to participate? More like demand to participate. Throw in advanced weaponry, labs where viruses are made more deadly (gee, I hope nothing leaks out!), abortion (back up to a million a year in the U.S. after being “outlawed” at the federal level), euthanasia (and, uh, “dignified” self-euthanasia), and a host of other suicidal tendencies, and it sure seems like God could’ve gotten us at our best a few software updates ago, and that we’ll slouch toward our own obliteration long before He decides to hit the “delete” key.

Paul Tormey

McKinney, Texas

Authority in Context

Monica Migliorino Miller begins “The Meaning of Feminine Submission” (Jan.-Feb.) with a citation from 1 Timothy 11-12: “Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” Dr. Miller attempts to show that this teaching is, in fact, routinely ignored in the Catholic Church, offering as an example that she herself has taught men, including seminarians, and judged their work, thus exercising authority over them. But the weight of traditional exegesis, both official and unofficial, shows that these verses refer to teaching within a liturgical setting (cf. 1 Cor. 11:5).

St. Luke relates that Priscilla and Aquila gave Apollos, a Jewish convert who himself was teaching others, explanations of “God’s new way in greater detail” (Acts 18:24-26). Veteran apologist Jimmy Akin comments, “In fact, Priscilla seems to have taken the lead role, since she is mentioned before her husband, Aquila, in the passage.” But she was teaching outside a liturgical setting, Akin notes. He draws the logical conclusion that women are not to take over “teaching functions proper to the ordained” (“Should Women Keep Silence in Church?” National Catholic Register, Sept. 10, 2012). This conclusion is confirmed by various authorities, including the notes in standard Catholic Bibles (such as Ronald Knox’s translation) and the instruction Inter Insigniores (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1976). Thus, only priests and deacons are permitted to give homilies, and Miller’s professorial activities are in no way an example of disregarding St. Paul’s injunction.

In addressing feminine submission, Miller begins with Genesis. As an amplification of her reflections, it is important to note that before Eve was created, God gave Adam the authority to name the creatures of the Earth and addressed to him the prohibition of eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. After the Fall, God holds Adam responsible for the sin of violating this prohibition. Eve was created as Adam’s helpmate and received her name from him, an indication of his authority. She was clearly in a supportive role, which could be termed subordinate when compared to the headship of her husband. This in no way means that Eve was inferior. Scripture designates Eve as ezer, which Miller translates as “savior,” in the sense that Eve rescues Adam. But there are no Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish Bibles in common use that have this translation of ezer. Even though some scholars advocate for the use of this word, it is a modern interpretation, contravening a tradition that dates back millennia. Miller cites one of these from the Hebrew-language blog of Sarah E. Fisher, a doctoral student in biblical studies, who admits, “I am by no means an expert.”

Where ezer is applied to God in the Bible as our helper, it obviously portrays Him as a savior. The very instance Miller gives to legitimate her translation of ezer — that of archers coming to help David as he fights Saul (cf. 1 Chron. 12:1) — is an example of those in a subordinate position to the one they are assisting. In all commonly used versions of the Bible, ezer is translated in this instance as the archers’ helping, assisting, or joining David.

Eve did rescue Adam from what Pope St. John Paul II termed “original solitude,” the condition of both man and woman. It is thus a mutual rescue (general audience, Nov. 7, 1979). Eve, by her very presence, provides companionship for Adam, and since he was created first, he reaped an enormous initial benefit from her creation. Yet Adam still maintains his position of headship. St. Paul’s words that “wives should be submissive to their husbands as if to the Lord because the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is the head of his body the church” (Eph. 5:22-23) refer to this hierarchy in the marital relationship.

Indeed, as Miller points out, St. Paul gives us the corrective for any tendency of the husband to dominate his wife (cf. Eph. 5:22-25), as the husband is to love his wife as Christ loves the Church, even as she is to be submissive to him. John Paul II in his apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem (1988) refers to a “mutual subjection,” noting that “in the relationship between Christ and the Church the subjection is only on the part of the Church.” However, Miller holds that “Christ already subjected Himself to her” by totally giving Himself up for her. This is interpreting Christ’s total gift of Himself as an act of subjection, which it was not, except in the sense that it was submission to His Father’s will, and thus not in any way analogous to the mutual subjection of the spouses. Also, it is important to note that in his apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio (1981) John Paul clearly assigns a leadership role to the husband, who, he says, reveals and relives “the very fatherhood of God” and ensures “the harmonious and united development of all members of the family.”

Miller ends by restating St. Paul’s teaching on the headship of the husband, who, in her words, “leads the wife to what is good for their marriage and leads her to holiness,” and noting the injunction to wives to be obedient to their husbands. Then she refers to the life-giving authority possessed by women, as discussed in her book The Authority of Women in the Catholic Church, a well-researched, comprehensive treatment of the subject. We need not agree with all her inferences to appreciate Miller’s conclusion that women possess moral authority (in some cases, influence might be a more apt term) in the family and the Church. Of particular interest in this volume are Miller’s portraits of Old Testament and Christian heroines such as Judith, Deborah, SS Perpetua and Felicity, St. Margaret Clitherow, and Joan Andrews Bell, a heroic witness to the evil of abortion. We might add Miller herself to this list, as, like the latter figure, she has endured persecution, including imprisonment, for defending the unborn.

Inez Fitzgerald Storck

Westerville, Ohio

I suggest that Monica Migliorino Miller avoid self-interpretation, as it changes the intended meaning of Scripture. She appears to encourage readers to adopt a perspective influenced by her personal views and supposed insights, instead of simply accepting the plain meaning of Scripture as definitive. She says, “I reject any interpretation” that doesn’t align with hers.

Miller also tries to convince readers that the Semitic term ezer “literally means” the woman is man’s “savior.” This is simply a feminist fantasy. Indeed, her article seems intended to introduce concepts of the “divine feminine,” as discussed in books like The Da Vinci Code.

Eugene V. Rozgonyi Jr.

Boulder, Colorado

MONICA MIGLIORINO MILLER REPLIES:

To Inez Fitzgerald Storck

When St. Paul instructs, “I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man,” the standard interpretation is that this admonition is restricted to liturgical settings. However, many translations give the impression that Paul intended it to have a broader application. For example, the New American Bible (NAB) translates the original Greek as a woman may “not have authority over a man in any way” (italics added). The revised NAB says a woman is under a man’s “complete control.” When I stated that the Church does not interpret this teaching literally, I was referring to these translations.

Storck argues that Adam’s prerogative to name the animals is a sign of his authority and extends to Eve. Thus, Storck says, Eve’s status “could be termed subordinate when compared to the headship of her husband.” However, Adam’s naming of the animals is entirely different from his “naming” of Eve. According to the well-respected Scripture scholar Kenneth A. Mathews, “The dignity of the woman is heightened by the monologue of God’s creative contemplation. This stands in opposition to the creation of man and the animals, which are described in the third person…. The animal world is a foil for the creation of the woman to distinguish her from the animals…. She is the first creation to come from a living being” (The New American Commentary: Genesis 1-11:26). Adam was “looking for a human match” among the animals but “found” none. “The woman therefore is distinguished from the animals. She is not of the order of the animals over whom the man is to dominate (v. 23)…. Although naming indicates authority in the Old Testament, the narrative of Eve’s creation as a whole takes steps to show that woman is not subject to the man in the sense that animals are subject to him. Rather the text presents them as partners who together exercise rule, fulfilling the mandate of 1:28.”

In the first human speech, Adam announces who he is (ish), and who Eve is in direct relation to him (isha), “for out of her man this one has been taken.” Adam “names” Eve and himself as equals — something he certainly did not do with, and that cannot be said about, any of the animals he names.

Genesis 2:24 also illuminates who Eve is in relation to Adam. As the great Scripture scholar Gerhard von Rad points out, contrary to the social custom within Judaism, it is the man who “leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife” (Genesis: A Commentary). Adam’s directionality is toward the woman, who is presented as a kind of anchor to which he must cling — indicating that he must hold on for dear life lest he fall back into the “not good” of solitude.

Storck’s sharpest criticism has to do with ezer as it applies to Eve in the verse in which God announces, “I will make a helper fit for him” (Gen. 2:18). Storck says I wrongly translated the word as “savior,” and she argues that “there are no Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish Bibles in common use that have this translation.” However, I did not translate ezer as “savior.” Rather, I demonstrated that the meaning of ezer, translated as “helper,” is “savior” within the very clear context of what Eve does for Adam in this verse. Ezer appears 21 times in the Old Testament, 17 as a description of who God is in relation to Israel: their “help,” their “rescuer,” their “deliverer,” often coming to their aid when they are in dire circumstances. As Mathews indicates, “In what way would Eve become a ‘helper’ to the man? The term means ‘help’ in the sense of aid and support and is used of the Lord himself aiding his people in the face of enemies (Pss 20:2[3]; 121:1-2, 124:8) and Moses spoke of God as his ‘helper’ to deliver him from Pharaoh (Ex. 18:4), and it is associated with ‘shield’ in describing God’s protective care of his people…. What the man lacks the woman accomplishes.”

Eve as a “savior” figure to Adam is hardly a revisionist or “modern” exegesis. Any cursory Internet search of the meaning of ezer in the Old Testament will yield post after post explaining that Eve, as Adam’s helper, in a sense saves him from extremity, demonstrating the status and dignity of woman in relation to man. A particularly well-done commentary can be found at catholicshare.com/the-woman-created-as-a-helper.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, too, makes a connection between what Eve does for Adam and what God does for Israel: “The woman, ‘flesh of his flesh,’ i.e., his counterpart, his equal, his nearest in all things, is given to him by God as a ‘helpmate’; she thus represents God from whom comes our help” (no. 1605). However, Storck is correct that once Eve brings Adam into the one-flesh unity of human communion, they mutually aid each other.

Storck calls the marital relationship a “hierarchy,” based on Ephesians 5:22-32, meaning, undoubtedly, that it is like Christ’s relation to the Church in that one party, the male, has authority over the female. If the head-to-body unity occurs within such a hierarchy, it is a hierarchy qualified by its being a covenantal relationship. The hierarchical headship of the husband to the wife is a hierarchy of service modeled on Christ, who “gave himself up for her.” Though Storck might rightly not accept this sacrifice as Christ’s “subjecting” Himself to the Church, it is absolutely inescapable that if there is a “Gospel innovation” of mutual subjection as taught in Mulieris Dignitatem, male “subjection” is modeled on Christ’s sacrifice of love when St. Paul exhorts husbands to “love your wives as Christ loved the Church.” John Paul II teaches that when Paul states, “Wives be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife,” he knows that this way of speaking, so profoundly rooted in the customs and religious tradition of the time, is to be understood and carried out in a new way: “as a ‘mutual subjection out of reverence for Christ’ (cf. Eph. 5:21). This is especially true because the husband is called the ‘head’ of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church; he is so in order to give ‘himself up for her’ (Eph. 5:25). And giving himself up for her means even giving up his own life” (no. 24; italics in the original).

Finally, I thank Storck for her kind words regarding the last chapter in my book The Authority of Women in the Catholic Church.

To Eugene V. Rozgonyi Jr.

I must say, this is the first time in my career, now spanning over 40 years, that I have been accused of being a feminist. I am a theologian completely faithful to the teachings of the Church. My books on the role of women in the Church bear this out. Anyone who wishes to get the full sense of my thinking may refer to Sexuality and Authority in the Catholic Church (University of Scranton Press, 1995) and The Authority of Women in the Catholic Church (Emmaus Road Publishing, 2015).

The “plain meaning of Scripture” is that Adam’s original solitude is called “not good,” and so God creates Eve, who brings an end to Adam’s isolation and, as the ezer, brings him into human communion — and he celebrates her existence in relation to him. God Himself refers to Eve as ezer (“helper”) because she has aided Adam, saving him, according to her God-given feminine role, from the “not good.” I am curious to know what Mr. Rozgonyi honestly thinks Eve is doing for Adam. In any case, when someone actually saves another, that person is performing a service to the other, who is an equal.

Threats From Within & Without

The “Symposium on the Greatest Threats to the Church” (Dec.) presents a highly useful review of the primary but separate prongs employed in the ongoing attacks on the Church. I would rank the threats presented as follows:

1. failure to explain why the Church is worth dying for (by Sarah Cain)
2. synodality (by Fr. John A. Perricone)
3. retreat from the intellectual life (by Fr. Robert McTeigue)
4. distortion of the facts of life (by Pete Jermann)
5. artificial intelligence (by Alexander Riley)
6. denial of the existence of the Body of Christ (by Edmund B. Miller)
7. Islam (by Timothy D. Lusch)
8. unwillingness to set forth the Church’s mission with clarity (by Thomas Storck)
9. refusal to assert that the Church’s mission is to save souls (by James Noel Ward)
10. the need for better Catholics (by Robert James Stove)
11. feminization of the Church (by Pieter Vree)

Taken together, these suggest an overarching theme: infiltration. There is ample evidence that the primary attacks are coming from within the Church. I don’t know what Pope Leo XIV can do to address this, but the current approach of ignoring it and pretending it doesn’t exist is clearly failing to retard its advance.

Norb Plassmeyer

Westphalia, Missouri

Sarah Cain’s contribution to the symposium (“The Great Erasure”) was an excellent commentary on the plague of rampant presumption and indifferentism. Indeed, what might be called a “catechetical vacuum” regarding a soul’s possible entry into Heaven has been ravaging the Church during these post-Vatican II decades. The disturbing “pass” given by Bishop Robert Barron in his conversation with the Jewish Ben Shapiro, and Pope Francis’s 2024 dismissal of the unique and singular salvific role of Our Lord Jesus Christ, are proofs enough of this gravely serious trend. The ubiquitous instances in present-day parish life of Funeral Masses essentially constituting “impromptu canonizations” of deceased parishioners, complete with the inviolable practice of using white priestly vestments, homilies assuring those present that the deceased is already strumming a harp in Heaven, and so on, constitute concrete evidence of Cain’s concerns.

In summary, a real “acid test” of the true validity of any new or emerging catechetical texts (or, for that matter, OCIA program) is simply whether they fearlessly teach the timeless observation that extra ecclesiam nulla salus — outside of the Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ, with her essential sacramental system, salvation is unattainable, except in the rare circumstances Cain mentions. She alludes to counsels given that one should “follow one’s conscience.” But if a Catholic’s conscience has been formed by seriously deficient and compromised catechesis, or not at all, how can he understand how indispensable his Catholic faith is for his salvation, and that even the most diligent adherence to the faith requirements of any one of the more than 40,000 Protestant sects is insufficient for the attainment of eternal life?

Let us pray for Catholics’ return to an awareness of the unique salvific nature of our Catholic faith. If and when that happens, we will see an end of that to which Cain refers, the exodus of 840 Catholics for every 100 who enter.

Fr. Joseph Klee

St. Philip the Apostle Church

Columbus, Ohio

Sarah Cain writes that “for every 100 Catholics who join the Church, 840 leave. This should not surprise us, because for decades the mission of the Church has been articulated in such a way that Catholics have little reason to stay. Under the auspices of ecumenism and ‘interfaith dialogue,’ clergy and Church leadership have taught a religious indifference that amounts to self-erasure.” Just because 840 leave doesn’t mean they’re becoming Protestants. Protestants are leaving their communions at much greater rates than Catholics. Those who leave are simply not practicing their faith. According to the Catholic League, the main reason Catholics don’t go to Mass is because they’re lazy! Not that they don’t agree with the doctrines of the Church or hate the Church. That’s not represented here.

Robert A. Jançart, M.D.

Grove City, Pennsylvania

Alexander Riley’s contribution (“The Existential Threat of AI”) has serious problems. I am a STEM professor and teach engineering and IT courses at George Mason University, among other things. So, I know my way around technology. Dr. Riley makes the same mistake nearly everyone who talks about AI makes — namely, he doesn’t look first at what is theoretically possible with large language models (LLMs), the engine of generative AI. For any technology, not only is it important to grasp theoretical possibilities and limitations, but also to know what those limitations impose on current and foreseeable technology, what realistic economic and financial factors affect the technology, and how or whether society will accept and use it. Today, only the second of these, the technological issues, is given serious consideration (though recently some people have become disturbed by the economic issues, which are extremely serious).

It seems obvious that one needs to utilize a theory of human knowing when talking about “intelligence,” but philosophy is not a subject most in the tech and associated financial fields understand. So, nearly all who write about AI are blissfully ignorant of the limitations this implicit epistemology imposes. Generative AI (including chatbots) is based on David Hume’s badly flawed theory of knowing and, therefore, shares its many problems. In effect, those who think they can create “superintelligence” are trying to square the circle or build a perpetual motion machine, completely unaware of the insuperable obstacles in their way, which show up as hallucinations and other problems.

Thomas B. Fowler, President

Xavier Zubiri Foundation of North America

Washington, D.C.

Pieter Vree’s contribution (“The Great Feminization of the Church”) was 100 percent spot-on. Although Michael S. Rose used it as the title of his very good book, Vree’s diagnosis is the embodiment of goodbye to real good men. I have a feeling that this illness in the ranks of the priesthood will remain for a long time to come. It will certainly outlive me. When dining with the cardinals on the evening of his election to the papacy, Francis quipped, “May God forgive you for what you have done.” So true.

Dr. J. Robert Bois

Foley, Alabama

Pieter Vree points out a true problem in the Church. Regarding the clergy, he writes, “Feminized men have given us laxity and ambivalence in pastoral matters, a studied reluctance to hold anyone to fixed standards.” Vree finds support for his commentary from Helen Andrews, who wrote that “wokeness is simply feminine patterns of behavior applied to institutions,” such as empathy over rationality, safety over risk, and cohesion over competition.

I’m sure Vree didn’t intend to insult the female sex; however, the insult occurred at least indirectly. After all, characterizing the trend of clergy’s being lax and ambivalent as “feminization” is hardly a positive view — indeed, it is a mischaracterization — of what it means to be female.

“Feminization” exists in real women, and we can hardly accuse women of being lax, soft, or ambivalent when we consider the likes of SS Perpetua, Felicity, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Ávila, Teresa of Calcutta, Frances Xavier Cabrini, Elizabeth Ann Seton, Joan of Arc, Katharine Drexel, and Hildegard of Bingen, as well as others like Dorothy Day, Harriet Tubman, and Susan B. Anthony. I hope I am not being overly sensitive on this point, but when the clergy’s negative traits are associated with the female sex, perhaps readers can see how this skewed and stereotyped characterization is insulting.

Vree sheds light on an important ecclesial problem, but he could have employed another word to illuminate the issue, such as “de-masculinization,” and thereby not degraded the female sex when, ironically, the Church is Bride and Mother.

Monica Migliorino Miller

South Lyon, Michigan

Much of the symposium can be summed up with a current Internet meme: “Angry man shouts at clouds.”

A pseudonymous prelate, called Demos but now known to have been the late George Cardinal Pell, summarized (prophesied?) the entire theme of the symposium succinctly in his 2022 memo. None of the contributors to the symposium added much to his content. Summarizing Demos: The greatest threat to the Church is the weakening of her Christ-centered focus, silence regarding dissent, and overall erosion of trust in the administration and leadership.

My hope is that the next NOR symposium will turn toward where the green shoots are sprouting and offer real recommendations that could once again point the Church back toward Christ, in whom all things are created and renewed by His grace. The way to change the Church is to live Christ-like, and His Church will grow through us.

Kevin O’Toole

Chamblee, Georgia

Ed. Note: To read more about the Demos memorandum, see “The Great Deformer” (New Oxford Notebook) in our online Archives or by purchasing a hard copy of our Jul.-Aug. 2022 issue. To do so, visit newoxfordreview.org/documents/the-great-deformer or phone 510-526-5374.

I read the symposium with close interest. The contributors raise serious concerns: doctrinal instability, technological disruption, the Islamic challenge, clerical feminization, sexual confusion, intellectual weakness, ecclesial misgovernance, and more. Each diagnosis has merit. Yet read together, the contributions reveal a common pattern of omission.

Nearly every response identifies an external threat. Christianity, however, has rarely been undone by its external enemies. The Church has survived persecutions, heresies, intellectual revolutions, and scandals. She falters not when the world grows hostile but when her interior life grows weak. The greatest threat facing the Church today is the erosion of interiority — the diminishing capacity of believers to enter silence, listen for God, confront faults honestly, and undergo genuine interior transformation in union with Christ. Without this grounding, religious doctrine becomes brittle and reactive. Without growth in holiness, pettiness and confusion take hold.

I write this not as a theory but from experience. Years ago, at St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, I met privately on several occasions with the abbot, whose life was devoted to the classical Christian disciplines of silence and interior prayer. I saw how such practices form Christians who are grounded rather than anxious, discerning rather than reactive, and charitable rather than ideological.

Every authentic reform in the Church’s history began in deep prayer — and every reform of a religious order that abandoned its interior life eventually failed. That is why the greatest threat to Christianity is not the various Quixotic windmills identified in the symposium but the diminishing depth of the inner life, among both clergy and laity, the very eye of the needle through which every authentic thread of repair must pass.

Richard M. Dell’Orfano

San Marcos, California

The greatest threat facing the Church today is a lack of the fear of God. I’m a pre-Vatican II Catholic from the old school. The Act of Contrition then included the line, “I detest all my sins because of the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell.” When I made my confession recently, I picked up a handout titled A Brief Guide to the Sacrament of Reconciliation/Penance, in which the updated version omits any mention of pains or Hell. Instead, it says, “I despise all my sins because of your just punishments.” What are those just punishments? It’s no wonder people no longer fear God or fear for their souls when He is presented simply as a loving God. “He will understand my faults.” Millions of Catholics have chosen the secular route because they no longer fear God.

A return to hellfire-and-damnation homilies isn’t the answer, but I think we should restore some sense of God’s judgment. The emphasis in the Church since Vatican II has been on community, service, and God’s love. There’s nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but it gives us an easy excuse for our own bad behavior. “After all, God loves me.”

The Church must ask: Do we still believe in the Last Judgment mentioned in the Nicene Creed? If so, why are we afraid to proclaim it in the current secular world?

Michael Hoyt

Silver Spring, Maryland

The December issue was very, very good. The contributors to the symposium explored many serious topics facing our Church. I will keep and reread this issue until my time here is up.

The main reason for our Church’s downward spiral is the suppression of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). If I read history correctly, most of the time at Vatican II was spent in “renewing” the Mass into something else, something that would bring more people into the Church and possibly reunite us with our Protestant brethren. None of that happened. In fact, the opposite happened, and our priests left in droves, seminaries closed, and Mass attendance cratered.

Though the Latin language is important, it’s the rubrics that kept the Mass the same throughout history and prevented parishes from doing their own thing, such as having guitar Masses, choirs right next to the altar, laymen handling the Holy Eucharist, priests facing the people, and the Mass treated as a social gathering rather than the unbloody renewal of Christ’s sacrifice at Calvary. Now, instead of facing the crucified Christ, the priest faces the people.

In my day, the priest was in charge and assisted Christ in saying the Mass. Now we have laymen in all manner of dress (miniskirts, blue jeans, revealing clothing, etc.) reading Scripture that was historically reserved for the priest. And the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar have been done away with. These prayers obtained for our priests and altar servers the grace needed to assist at Holy Mass. I cannot blame priests for becoming disillusioned with their vocation.

I hope Pope Leo will restore the TLM to the communities that want it. Only good can come out of it.

Robert Popiel

Mount Pleasant, South Carolina

The questions posed in the symposium are the wrong ones to ask:

1. What is the greatest threat facing the Church today, whether internal or external?

2. Is the Church equipped to overcome that threat?

3. What can Leo XIV do to address the threat?

That said, these are the obvious responses:

1. The greatest threat to the Church has never changed. It is the pride of her members.

2. This is a hopeless and faithless question that merits a reprimand. Christ is at the helm of the Barque of Peter in the invincible strength of the Holy Spirit.

3. The vicar of Christ can do only one thing: lead the pursuit of the lost sheep.

The real question to ask is: How am I, a member of the Body of Christ, serving God in my daily life?

For the NOR editor, in his introduction, to accuse Pope Francis of causing “a curial body in disarray, a distinct lack of doctrinal clarity, an intensified Liturgy War, a burgeoning financial scandal, and system-wide uncertainty regarding what’s permissible and even what’s possible” is clear and obvious instigation of ill will. With these false and uncharitable accusations, you reveal the lack of responsibility of the individual lay Catholic who makes up the Body of Christ and, in its stead, point the finger at Christ Himself. It is as though you’ve forgotten the words of Christ: that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

May the soul of our Holy Father Pope Francis rest in the love of Christ. He was a Pope with a heart for the lost sheep, vicar of the Turbulent Barque, and a faithful Soldier of Christ. Give thanks and praise to God for Francis, who stirred the hearts of Christians into becoming self-reflective once again. Any “confusion” lies in the minds of the proud, the ignorant, and the slothful.

Susan Stewart

Nipomo, California

THE EDITOR REPLIES:

I, too, have prayed and continue to pray for the repose of the soul of Pope Francis, and I bear him no ill will. It can’t be denied, however, that during his time as captain of the “Turbulent Barque,” his steering was haphazard, and on many occasions he piloted the Holy Vessel into dangerous waters, putting his crew and passengers in peril. Any clear-eyed assessment of his pontificate would observe as much. Interestingly, Francis either promoted or abided all the “threats” the contributors to the symposium identified.

To dispel the notion that the “accusations” in my introduction to the symposium are false, I refer readers to our online dossier “Pope Francis” (newoxfordreview.org/topics/pope-francis), which collects everything written about him in these pages from the beginning to the end of his pontificate — over 100 entries. By and large, it’s not a pretty picture, but it’s an honest one.

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