SNAP Shutdown

The continuing shutdown of the federal government has interrupted SNAP payments. SNAP is a federal program to provide food money to the poor. There are currently more than 41 million SNAP recipients. This seems to be one of those areas where the priority of the poor comes into play: bellies are not designed to defer food pending resolution of government shutdowns. That said, this seems to be the only thing churchmen — Catholic and not — are talking about. Yes, it is important. But so, too, is discussion of how we arrived at a situation where 12% of the American population has its food bought by the government. Is it lack of personal responsibility? A skewed economy? Both? How do we address this situation, which should not be regarded as normal, no matter its cause? LBJ declared a “war on poverty” in 1964. Almost 62 years later, we’re still in a war that makes the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq look like cakewalks. Is this the post-World War II new normal: “wars” that have no ends?

“The poor you will have with you always” should be a reminder that the best of anti-poverty efforts will not inaugurate an earthly paradise this side of the Parousia. But in 1963, LBJ claimed 19% of Americans lived in poverty. If, after all the money we have spent in more than six decades, yet 12% of Americans in 2025 still need the government to feed them, is there something wrong with this picture?

Part of it may be how we define “living in poverty.” Part of it may be what SNAP should cover. Some states are now experimenting with banning use of SNAP benefits for junk food and soda. Others have suggested restrictions on prepared foods. A recent social media post proposed limiting SNAP to essentials: meat, fruit and vegetables, and staples. Another proposed providing SNAP in those commodities rather than money. Proponents of these programs object, calling restrictions “poor shaming” (for more, see here). Writing over a decade ago, Jesuit Thomas Massaro criticized such limits in the name of today’s new but ambiguous Vatican talisman of “dignity.” He also argued that such categories tend to promote a mindset that social welfare is some kind of discretionary charity rather than a moral obligation towards the poor.

Care for the poor is an obligation — but not every program that carries the label “poor” gets a free pass. Christopher Hale (see more on him, below) wants you to believe “defending programs like SNAP isn’t partisan politics — it’s pure Christianity.” No, it’s pure demagoguery. Calling something “for the poor” does not immunize it from critique. The federal government spent just short of $100 billion in fiscal year 2024 on SNAP. A country running a $35 trillion deficit will also be poor unless it controls spending. Which means that once we get beyond the current shutdown, a discussion of what taxpayer dollars put on the table has to be on the table.

Another Holy Day Hodgepodge

This year’s All Saints Day was not a holy day of obligation in the U.S. because of the USCCB’s “Saturdays-and-Mondays-Don’t-Count-for-Some-Holy-Days” rule. (The English and Welsh bishops did a shuffle along number: All Saints Day moved to Sunday, November 2, while All Souls was shunted to Monday.) Having to attend or say two Masses in one weekend — well, that clearly makes Christ’s yoke sour, His burden too much to bear. Apart from the illogic of this arrangement (except, perhaps, to some liturgists) to me it’s symptomatic of a real problem in the Church, both in the United States and more universally: the exercise of “raw canonical power” (to adapt Byron White). The floating precept about participation in Mass on these holy days is not the result of good theological justification but simple canonical fiat: the bishops have agreed. What is paradoxical is that these same men ready to wield canonical power with ease are often the ones most vocally lecturing Catholics about the baneful effects of “clericalism.”

Signa temporis

Stopping in the grocery store on Nov. 1, I expected to find Halloween candy on deep discounts. Much to my surprise, the shelves of gremlins and candy corns were gone, already replaced by chocolate Santa Clauses and gingerbread. Just past checkout, a “holiday tree” was already decorated.

In the Eastern Christian tradition — Orthodox and Uniate — Advent is normally preceded by a fast, starting November 15. In the reformed (i.e., post-1969) Catholic Advent, all penitential signs (except purple vestments) are shorn. Those who define Catholicism by canon law will quickly announce that the “penitential seasons” are (DIY) Fridays and Lent (canon 1250).

Secularism is clearly in the season of “preparation” for “holiday season.” Given that there seems to be an ecclesiastical party that expects modernity in some “spirit” to teach a backwardist Church how to respond to the signs of the times, one might note that the secularists seem already in preparation for December 25.

Mary as Rorschach Test

Pardon me if I take exception to Synod.va’s “theology by tweet.” In a recent post (here) we are assured that Mary is “guardian” of the “synodal Church” because she “meditates and dialogues.” Is this the same Mary who, “at the first of His signs in Cana of Galilee” (Jn 2:11) seemed rather prescriptive: “Do whatever He tells you” (v. 5)? Yes, Mary asks questions. But Mary’s fundamental posture is one of obedience, of doing whatever Elohim told her. She doesn’t equivocate about what He wants. And she is entrusted to the Church as its Mother (Jn 19:26) to “accompany” souls by leading them to conversion in her crucified Son, not primarily as “guardian” of dialogue. I take exception because I don’t think Our Lady should be somebody’s theological Rorschach test.

The Spirit by Appointment?

The same Synod.va posted another tweet (here) extolling people sitting in circles talking. “Glimpses of this afternoon’s Conversations in the Spirit session at the Jubilee of Synodal Themes and Participatory Bodies 2025.” (What a mouthful!) I recently voiced doubts about what I called the “inverted pneumatology” that seems to be afflicting today’s Church: the idea that the Holy Spirit today primarily teaches the Church from the Zeitgeist (see here). Secular modernity now seems to be the locus of divine action, while the Church is the “backwardist” resistance only synodality can reform. Consider the mouthful phrase: “this afternoon’s Conversations in the Spirit.” With all due respect, doesn’t it seem presumptuous to anoint something as the “Spirit’s” work, much less maybe His prompted speaking? It prompts the further question: Does the “Spirit” now have scheduled inspiration times?

What Church Is This?

In his homily at Mass for the Synodal Jubilee (link here), Pope Leo called for “more humble Church,” not one “triumphant and inflated with pride,” one that thinks not that “truth is… possessed, but sought together…” With all due respect to the Holy Father, I do not know what Church he is describing. It seems less the Church the average Catholic is a member of than a synodalist’s strawman. It’s not the Catholic Church I recognize or have worshipped in for decades, though the Pope and I are roughly of the same generation. Nor does it seem that many Catholics today see today’s Church as “triumphant and inflated with pride.” One can argue they see it rather as timorous and uncertain. They don’t think that truth is an unending quest for some flag ever marching ahead but that, with due humility, is something already possessed, at least in part. They wonder whether a Church unsure whether the truth is either possessed or true is an uncertain herald. And I suggest they think that continuing down such a path, far from “reforming” the Church, is one leading her into a dead end.

A New RSV?

Chris Hale is a Democratic operative who now generates “Letters from Leo.” I suspect he was somehow related to the Obama-era John Podesta effort to coopt Francis (and now Leo) with DNC talking points rechristened as the new Catholic theology. He hailed Leo’s October 26 homily at the “Jubilee of Synodal Themes and Participatory Bodies 2025” Mass as the “Magna Carta” of his and the Church’s new ecclesiology (see here). I saw a lot of quoting of Leo’s line, by “clothing ourselves with the sentiments of Christ, we expand the ecclesial space so that it becomes collegial and welcoming.” As on immigration, it seems there’s as much of the story in what’s unsaid (e.g., legal status) as what is said. “Welcoming” is preliminary to healing, but you have to do the latter, too, which is dependent on diagnosis, not self-diagnosis. The synodal vocabulary seems to have lost the diagnostic manual, the Physician’s Desk Reference. In lieu of “sentiments,” I’m inclined to stick to Christ’s words. Because in my version of the Bible, His first ones spoken in what some think was the first written Gospel were “Repent” (Mk 1:15), not “Accompany”! Unless we now have a new RSV (Revised Synodal Version)?

How to Reconcile Contradictions

Damian Thompson at First Things has an insightful article about why, despite periodic gloom and doom (most recently over the appointment of a “bishopess” to be Archbishop of Canterbury), the Church of England can confidently coopt Mark Twain’s line, “reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated” (here). Outsiders wonder how Anglicanism keeps limping along despite irreconciliable theological differences. Is this person a priest or not, even on Anglican terms? How do Anglicans celebrate transgender baptisms and give approval to homosexual acts while claiming to be Biblically rooted? If C of E faithful think this activity is sinful or this priestess a fake, how do they relate institutionally? Thompson’s explanation appeals to ethos: it isn’t so much the theology as the climate, the ethos in which we have grown up and which has not demanded too much apart from civility. Accommodation is a lot easier when your criterion is good manners rather than good.

Catholics should hardly be surprised. While many might abstractly affirm the indissolubility of marriage (and I suspect that “many” isn’t so many), more and more defang indissolubility’s demands by castrating it, making it the eunuch of an “ideal.” And, in practice, our approach to divorced-and-remarrieds doesn’t really differ from the average Anglican’s “no women priests” parish ready to let Bishopess Sarah Mullally sit in choir dress. Am I arguing for some kind of Amish ostracism? No. The Church is a church filled with sinners. But an “accompaniment” whose good manners eschews mention of the sin and, increasingly, that those doing these things — like us all — are sinners, also castrates the call to conversion. “I’m OK, you’re OK” is bad psychology, but even worse Christianity.

Swimming the Thames

Buckingham Palace has decreed that Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth’s younger son and brother of Charles, is now no longer royal: all his titles are stripped. We haven’t seen a HRH go so fast to “Mr.” Andy Windsor since His Eminence turned into “Mr.” Uncle Teddy. Charles acknowledges that Andrew denies his guilt but insists “their Majesties… thoughts and utmost sympathies have been, and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse.”

On a natural level, one wonders about the Windsor Family: brothers across generations seem to have problems getting along. Good thing the Tower of London is now but a museum. On a “spiritual level,” one’s initial reaction towards somebody claiming to “govern” a Christian church might be: Have you ever read the line, “See how they love one another!” A social-media critic quoted Marlowe: “Thou hast committed – Fornication: but that was in another country, And besides, the wench is dead.” Clearly fornication abroad gets you demoted. Does domestic adultery get you promoted?

On a public level, however, we have noblesse oblige. One wonders, apart from the “utmost sympathies,” whether many Catholic bishops would be as firm as the King of England. Cardinal Fernandez has apparently finished his months-long Diogenes hunt for a couple of honest judges. Will it take another couple of months to get them together to start a trial? And meanwhile, Priest-of-the-Diocese-of-Koper Marko Rupnik apparently continues to do his own thing in Rome. And Roman canonists’ first priority is the good name of accused pedophiles, not necessarily of the Church.

Maybe on disciplinary matters some might swim the Thames?

German Synodal Progress

A Dominican whose opinions I value pointed out that, in the very early Nazi period, the Catholic bishops of Germany refused Communion to those who publicly manifested themselves as or perhaps even voted for Nazis. It’s why, he says, Nazi support was generally low in Catholic regions of Germany. (Don’t leave out the role of the Center Party.) Yes, the bishops eventually caved, especially after the Concordat with the Vatican, but I was struck: those German bishops in 1931 weren’t especially “welcoming” or “accompanying,” were they? They in fact “weaponized” the Eucharist! If they could only experience the fruits their successors brought to Deutschland through German synodality…

Religion (Not Just Catholicism) Is Sacramental — Or It Isn’t Religion

Over at La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, an Italian Catholic website, Luisella Scrosati makes a critical point: If man’s contact with the world comes through the senses, the senses — all five of them — must be engaged in religion or else man loses not just religion but a sense of God: “If my ears do not hear melodies that are discontinuous with the profane, if my nostrils do not smell a perfume other than the common one, if my body does not enter a space other than that of my home or a public, civil, or commercial place, the result will not be a more spiritual and purer religion, but the disappearance of God from the human horizon. And that is precisely what has happened. If the five senses no longer experience the divine mediated by sacredness, then man will experience what his five senses communicate to him, that is, a reality devoid of the divine.”

Vaccine Hesitancy

In the wake of mandated COVID shots, many Americans have become skeptical about vaccine mandates, a trend now being blamed on HHS Secretary Kennedy as a “threat to public health.” Neue Zuercher Zeitung, the leading Swiss paper, now reports a new vaccine hesitation: It seems people are now not vaccinating their pets. “Fur babies” are now off the vaccine schedule?

Man’s Apotheosis

Europeans turned back their clocks to standard time October 25; Americans did November 2. The Spanish newspaper El Paίs ran an editorial cartoon October 26 (here) showing the rising sun with two people looking at it and the inscription: “Once a god, now an employee that does what he’s told.” The reference was to how once the sun was worshipped but now is “regulated” by human needs. Pride. Get in a spaceship, fly too close to Helios, and moderns might find the sun just as threatening as once did Icarus with wax wings. I’m not making the sun into a god but trying to cut down to size humans that want to play god. Behind the cartoon lies an idea that everything is just a technical problem waiting for man to solve it. Even life and its transmission. Icarus still might have pertinent advice to such moderns: fly too close to the sun and get burned — individually or as a humanity.