This website is the home site of my criminal reformation apostolate; here you can find details about the Lampstand Foundation which I founded as a 501c (3) nonprofit corporation in Sacramento, California in 2003.

I have written twelve books, one being about Lampstand and each one of the other eleven being a response to a likely objection to Catholicism that will be encountered when doing ministry to professional criminals; and for links to all of the Lampstand books which are available—free to members—and at Amazon, go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=david+h+lukenbill

I also maintain a daily blog, The Catholic Eye, https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/

Lampstand also keeps track of rehabilitative programs that fail, and the one or two that appear to work, with the findings available at https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/evaluation-of-reentry-programs-3/

The work connected to the apostolate is listed under the home page categories (to your left) which I will be expanding as needed.

___________________

The Transformed Criminal’s Ministry

The transformed criminal, as defined by Lampstand, is a criminal who has spent many year as a professional criminal (committing crimes for money) and is not an informer, pedophile, or rapist, has spent as least five years in a maximum security prison, possesses a graduate degree, has a solid working knowledge of Catholic social teaching, is Catholic and married.

These standards ensure credibility within the criminal/carceral world, as well as the acquisition of the deep knowledge—experiential knowledge paired with academic and religious knowledge—needed to become an effective Catholic criminal reformation ministry.

I believe the transformed criminal’s ministry is deeply important; those who have survived and transcended the criminal/carceral world ministering to those still there.

It is also a dangerous ministry because the often powerful love and respect the transformed criminal carries in his heart for the world he spent so many years living in, can pull him back into its embrace; resulting in spiritual dryness and shaking of the pillars of his faith.

There are no effective antidotes to this for it is a hallmark of the lives of saints and perhaps even a necessary companion, for in that dryness and shaking of faith, the one who stays the course, will claim the glory.

Since becoming Catholic I have not experienced this and I am thankful for that, though I also realize that I have not the opportunity—to this point in my life—of sharing the saint’s dark nights of the soul; while those who have should feel thankful, perhaps a place of understanding further along the road from the darkest nights.

The most powerful model we have of a transformed criminal and the penitential life, is Mary Magdalene, whose criminal life was transformed into that of the apostle to the apostles, and the human being who—except for the Holy Mother—was closest to Christ during his earthly ministry.

One of my favorite books about St. Mary Magdalene is the Life of Saint Mary Magdalene by Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, OP, (available online) where we find in the preface this paragraph:

It is about this woman I am writing. Praised in the entire universe by the Gospels, she has no need for a mortal hand to revive in the shadows of the 19th century her glory for all time. No name more than hers has resisted indifference, because sin itself opens paths to men’s admiration, and because virtue carves for her another pathway amongst the generations of pure hearts. Mary Magdalene touches both sides of our life: the Sinner anoints us with her tears, the Saint with her tenderness, the one soothes our wounds at the feet of Christ, the other tries to exalt us to the ravishment of her ascension. But if Mary Magdalene has no need of being praised by any other mouth than that of God, we can take joy in doing what is of no use to her, and in offering her incense which comes back to our heart like a benediction.

Retrieved March 14, 2018 from http://www.lifeofmarymagdalene.com/lifeofmarymagdalen.html

Another important source for her is the book: Mary Magdalen In the Visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich:

Magdalen was spoiled by her mother and her nurse. They showed her off everywhere, caused her cleverness and pretty little ways to be admired, and sat much with her dressed up at the window. That window-sitting was the chief cause of her ruin. I saw her at the window and on the terraces of the house upon a magnificent seat of carpets and cushions, where she could be seen in all her splendor from the street. She used to steal sweetmeats, and take them to other children in the garden of the castle. Even in her ninth year she was engaged in love affairs. With her developing talents and beauty, increased also the talk and admiration they excited. She had crowds of companions. She was taught, and she wrote love verses on little rolls of parchment. I saw her while so engaged counting on her fingers. She sent these verses around, and exchanged them with her lovers. Her fame spread on all sides, and she was exceedingly admired.

But I never saw that she either really loved or was loved. It was all, on her part at least, vanity, frivolity, self-adoration, and confidence in her own beauty. I saw her a scandal to her brother and sisters whom she despised and of whom she was ashamed on account of their simple life.

3. Magdalen Inherits the Castle of Magdalum

When the patrimony was divided, the castle of Magdalum fell by lot to Magdalen. It was a very beautiful building. Magdalen had often gone there with her family when she was a very young child, and she had always entertained a special preference for it. She was only about eleven years old when, with a large household of servants, men and maids, she retired thither and set up a splendid establishment for herself.

Magdalum was a fortified place, consisting of several castles, public buildings and large squares of groves and gardens. It was eight hours east of Nazareth, about three from Capharnaum, one and a half from Bethsaida toward the south, and about a mile from the Lake of Genesareth. It was built on a slope of the mountain and extended down into the valley which stretches off toward the lake and around its shores. One of those castles belonged to Herod. He possessed a still larger one in the fertile region of Genesareth. Some of his soldiers were stationed in Magdalum, and they contributed there share to the general demoralization. The officers were on intimate terms with Magdalen. There were, besides the troops, about two hundred people in Magdalum, chiefly officials, master builders, and servants.

The castle of Magdalum was the highest and most magnificent of all; from its roof one could see across the Sea of Galilee to the opposite shore. Five roads led to Magdalum, and on every one at one half-hours distance from the well-fortified place, stood a tower built over an arch. It was like a watchtower whence could be seen far into the distance. These towers had no connection with one another; they rose out of a country covered with gardens, fields, and meadows. Magdalen had men servants and maids, fields and herds, but a very disorderly household; all went to rack and ruin. (pp. 3-4)

Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerich. (2005). Mary Magdalen in the Visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824). Tan Books Publishers; Rockford, Illinois.

The penitential life the Magdalene modeled, draws us to Christ, and paired with the experiential, academic, and Catholic social teaching knowledge of the transformed criminal, will also draw those criminals seeking redemption to the ministry and the Church.

Lampstand Prayer to St. Mary Magdalene

Saint Mary Magdalene, penitential criminal, apostle to the apostles, by your faith and devotion y0u became the first, after our Holy Mother, to see our resurrected Lord, sharing in his glorious presence. Please intercede for all criminals that they may someday share everlasting joy through their penance and redemption. Amen.

This website is the home site of my criminal reformation apostolate; here you can find details about the Lampstand Foundation which I founded as a 501c (3) nonprofit corporation in Sacramento, California in 2003.

I have written twelve books, one being about Lampstand and each one of the other eleven being a response to a likely objection to Catholicism that will be encountered when doing ministry to professional criminals; and for links to all of the Lampstand books which are available—free to members—and at Amazon, go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=david+h+lukenbill

I also maintain a daily blog, The Catholic Eye, https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/

Lampstand also keeps track of rehabilitative programs that fail, and the one or two that appear to work, with the findings available at https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/evaluation-of-reentry-programs-3/

The work connected to the apostolate is listed under the home page categories (to your left) which I will be expanding as needed.

________

Skull and Bones & Carceral World Culture

There is very little accurate information about carceral world culture out there, for good reason; but one important fact is to know that the elite prison gangs are the Skull and Bones Society—in its traditional sense—of the criminal/carceral world, and in the process of providing an effective criminal reformation ministry, not understanding this makes your work much more difficult.

Here’s what Wikipedia says about Skull and Bones.

Skull and Bones is an undergraduate senior secret society at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. It is the oldest senior class landed society. … The society is known informally as “Bones”, and members are known as “Bonesmen”.

Skull and Bones was founded in 1832…. William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft co-founded …. The first senior members included Russell, Taft, and twelve other members.

Retrieved January 22, 2018 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_and_Bones

An excellent movie with Skull and Bones playing center stage is The Good Shepherd and one of my favorite lines in there is when the protagonist—a CIA counter-intelligence executive and a Bonesman—is speaking with a Mafia Don who tells him that all of the nationalities that have come to the United States have something they call their own, but you have nothing; to which the protagonist responds: (paraphrasing) “We have the country, the rest of you are just tourists.”; a sentiment concerning the carceral world that could be made by the elite prison gangs.

Of course, the major difference between the secret society of the carceral and that of the free, is that the elite prison gangs, especially the leadership, has nothing to lose and will accept death to pursue their aims; whereas the free elite secret societies have everything to lose and will risk death more haltingly.

Within ministry, a few things related in this way are important to remember.

One, is comparing the existential power of the acceptance of death for gang culture with the spiritual power of saints and martyrs who accept death for faith can be a powerful argument.

Two, as can the world of absolutes each lives in, for it is absolutes that can convert criminals, not maybes.

Three, each member of an elite prison gang is a warrior, having taken a life to gain membership, and the lives of the warrior monks of the Church, such as the Templars, are powerful models for conversion and my favorite source book for that is The Monks of War: The Military Religious Orders, by Desmond Seward.

This website is the home site of my criminal reformation apostolate; here you can find details about the Lampstand Foundation which I founded as a 501c (3) nonprofit corporation in Sacramento, California in 2003.

I have written twelve books, one being about Lampstand and each one of the other eleven being a response to a likely objection to Catholicism that will be encountered when doing ministry to professional criminals; and for links to all of the Lampstand books which are available—free to members—and at Amazon, go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=david+h+lukenbill

I also maintain a daily blog, The Catholic Eye, https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/

Lampstand also keeps track of rehabilitative programs that fail, and the one or two that appear to work, with the findings available at https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/evaluation-of-reentry-programs-3/

The work connected to the apostolate is listed under the home page categories (to your left) which I will be expanding as needed.

________

Capital Punishment is a Deterrent

There is a false narrative about the deterrent effect of capital punishment—that it doesn’t deter—which has long been a staple of the anti-death penalty crowd.

As I and anyone else who has spent any substantial amount of time around criminals—having gained enough trust not to be lied to—knows, it most certainly is a deterrent, and this superb article from Catholic World Report, How and why the death penalty deters murder in contemporary America by Joseph M. Bessette explains:

“Fifteen years ago I was asked to give an empirical overview on the use of capital punishment in the United States at a conference on Catholicism and the death penalty held at a Catholic college. Though I had been devoting three weeks to capital punishment in a course I regularly taught on “Crime and Public Policy” at my own secular liberal arts college and though I was Catholic myself, I had not paid close attention to developments within the Church in the 1990s on the death penalty. I had heard of Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae (1995) and knew that there was a new universal catechism for the Church, but I could have told you nothing about the two versions of the catechism (1992 and 1997) and how Evangelium Vitae had led to some subtle changes in the language on capital punishment between the first and second.

“It was around the time I was preparing for the conference that one of my students said in class, “Well, I am Catholic, so I am against the death penalty.” This came as a bit of a shock. I had been raised on the venerable Baltimore Catechism and had attended a Jesuit high school and college in the 1960s; so I knew that that the Church taught that the state had the right to impose the death penalty for heinous crimes. I respectfully corrected the student, informing him that the Church had always taught the principled legitimacy of the death penalty. He responded that that was not what he had learned in his own Catholic education. This set me to the task of learning more about whether anything had changed (or could change) in the Church’s teaching.

“At the conference my empirical overview was the first formal presentation. After I finished, I sat quietly and learned from the experts in attendance. At the general discussion that ended the conference, I decided to ask a question that had been nagging me the whole time on an issue that none of the speakers had addressed: “If we knew that the death penalty deterred murder, wouldn’t the Church have to support it? Hasn’t the Church always taught that public officials have an obligation to protect the innocent and to promote the common good, as long as they use legitimate means? And hasn’t the Church always taught that the death penalty is a legitimate form of punishment for murder and other heinous crimes?” As Edward Feser and I maintain in our recent book By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment (Ignatius, 2017), that question about deterrence and Church teaching on capital punishment is as pertinent today as it was when I asked it fifteen years ago.

“Recent pontificates and deterrence

“It is well known that the last three popes have urged the worldwide abolition of the death penalty. None of the three, to the best of my knowledge, has expressly denied that capital punishment deters murder, though they seem to have presumed as much. Consider Pope John Paul II’s treatment of the subject in Evangelium Vitae, the encyclical he issued in 1995. Relatively early in the document, before he turned to his formal treatment of the death penalty, John Paul praised the “growing public opposition to the death penalty,” holding that “[m]odern society in fact has the means of effectively suppressing crime by rendering criminals harmless without definitively denying them the chance to reform” (Section 27). Certainly the pope was right that we can render convicted murderers harmless in our super-maximum security prisons by isolating them from all direct human contact, an extreme and costly measure that some consider cruel and inhumane in itself. Yet, incapacitating dangerous criminals is not the only purpose that punishment (including capital punishment) serves; for it also promotes justice by giving the offender what he deserves and it deters others from committing similar crimes. Ed Feser and I devote the bulk of our book to the “just deserts” defense of the death penalty; yet here I want to keep the focus on deterrence (which we also cover but at less length).

“Though justice and deterrence have always been central considerations in Catholic treatments of the death penalty, John Paul II simply ignored them when he first briefly addressed the topic early in Evangelium Vitae. Yet if the death penalty deters murder, then this would seem to contradict the pope’s assurance that society can be effective in “suppressing crime” without it. When he returned to the death penalty later in EV (Section 56), John Paul broadened the discussion but again failed to mention deterrence. Catholic abolitionists tend to interpret the discussion of the death penalty in Section 56 as simply restating the narrow incapacitation defense in Section 27; but in our book Ed and I show that John Paul reaffirmed the Church’s traditional teaching that, quoting the pope, “[t]he primary purpose of the punishment which society inflicts is ‘to redress the disorder caused by the offence,’” thereby “defending public order and ensuring people’s safety.” It would follow, then, that if the death penalty is in fact necessary to defend public order and ensure the people’s safety it should be used. Note that John Paul’s formulation of the doctrinal principle, which itself drew on the language of the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, was virtually identical to that in the old Baltimore Catechism, which held that “human life may be lawfully taken . . . [b]y the lawful execution of a criminal, fairly tried and found guilty of a crime punishable by death when the preservation of law and order and the good of the community require such execution.”

“Now, there is no denying that John Paul II did not believe the death penalty was necessary, except in the rarest of cases, to defend public order and ensure the people’s safety, else he could not have lent his powerful voice to the abolition movement. But this conclusion was a prudential judgment, not a doctrinal one, and implicit in this judgment was the presumption that the death penalty does not deter murder. To be clear, the doctrinal principle at issue allows for the serious consideration of deterrence, but the pope’s conclusion that lesser punishments will equally well secure public order and the people’s safety simply presumes away the potential deterrent effect of punishing murderers with death.

“Although John Paul II’s immediate successor, Pope Benedict XVI, said relatively little about the death penalty, he did use his office to promote abolition. In November of 2011, he addressed those who had come to Rome to attend a conference on the death penalty and expressed his hope that the group’s efforts would “encourage the political and legislative initiatives being promoted in a growing number of countries to eliminate the death penalty.” Pope Francis has been more forceful (and more frequent) in denouncing capital punishment. Perhaps his fullest treatment of the subject was the letter he wrote in March of 2015 to the International Commission against the Death Penalty. The letter details a long list of critiques: the death penalty “contradicts God’s plan for man and for society”; it punishes for past offenses rather than present dangers; it “fails to conform to any just purpose of punishment”; it denies the opportunity for repentance; and it is subject to the possibility of “judicial error.” As with John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis simply presume away the deterrent effect of the death penalty (as is the case with Francis’s most recent statements). It is clear, then, that our last three popes sincerely believed that abolishing the death penalty will not lead to more murders, but why should Catholics and others agree with them? The possible deterrent effect of the death penalty is a purely empirical issue, and neither popes, nor bishops, nor other clerics have any particular expertise that would qualify them to speak authoritatively on such a highly contested matter.

“This view that the death penalty does not reduce murders would have surprised many leading figures in the life of the Church. In his Letter to the Romans, St. Paul wrote that rulers are a “terror” to bad conduct and do “not bear the sword in vain.” In his Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, St. Augustine praised the “great and holy men” in ancient Israel who “punished some sins with death” because “the living were struck with a salutary fear.” Augustine specifically defended Moses’ order at the foot of Mt. Sinai to execute the worshippers of the golden calf: “he impressed their minds at the time with a wholesome fear, and gave them a warning for the future, by using the sword in the punishment of a few.” In his Lectures on the Letter to the Romans, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that many men “have no love for virtue and . . . must be compelled to avoid evil by punishments.” Rulers legitimately use the “fear of punishment” to “keep us from evil conduct.” Such punishment may well include the death penalty. “[W]hen a thief is hanged,” Aquinas wrote in Summa Theologiae, “this is not for his own amendment, but for the sake of others, that at least they may be deterred from crime through fear of the punishment.” (Note that the Latin translated here as “thief” is better rendered as “robber” or “bandit.”) And the Roman Catechism of the sixteenth century, the first universal catechism of the Catholic Church, taught that “the just use of [capital punishment] . . . is an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder” (presumably because it saves lives through deterrence). Though these examples are all from the Catholic tradition, it is not too strong to say that the deterrent effect of capital punishment was nearly universally accepted in the West until recent decades.”

Retrieved January 12, 2018 from http://www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/01/04/how-and-why-the-death-penalty-deters-murder-in-contemporary-america/

This article—and his co-authored book—touched on many of the points I made in my book about the subject, Capital Punishment & Catholic Social Teaching: A Tradition of Support

This website is the home site of my criminal reformation apostolate; here you can find details about the Lampstand Foundation which I founded as a 501c (3) nonprofit corporation in Sacramento, California in 2003.

I have written twelve books, one being about Lampstand and each one of the other eleven being a response to a likely objection to Catholicism that will be encountered when doing ministry to professional criminals; and for links to all of the Lampstand books which are available—free to members—and at Amazon, go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=david+h+lukenbill

I also maintain a daily blog, The Catholic Eye, https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/

Lampstand also keeps track of rehabilitative programs that fail, and the one or two that appear to work, with the findings available at https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/evaluation-of-reentry-programs-3/

The work connected to the apostolate is listed under the home page categories (to your left) which I will be expanding as needed.

________

Lampstand E-Letter,

This is a really great book and adds to your existing social teaching library with updated and corrected texts.

A Reader in Catholic Social Teaching, published in 2017—edited and prefaced by Peter A Kwasniewski, Ph.D.—brings together all of the important documents from the Holy Fathers from 1864 to the present; which have been corrected by fixing typographic errors, bad citations, missing phrases, and shoddy translations.

Here is an excerpt from the Preface:

“This collection of major documentary sources for the social doctrine of the Catholic Church has been in the works for many years. Its remote origins go back to the academic year 1993-1994, when I had the opportunity to participate in extracurricular seminars at Thomas Aquinas College on many of the documents included here, which gave me a first unforgettable experience of the grandeur, critical force, coherence, and fertile adaptability of Catholic social teaching (CST). The collection has evolved over many years of teaching, culminating in a set of readings used for a senior theology course at Wyoming Catholic College, “Life in Christ,” which begins with fundamental moral theology, moves into marriage and family as natural and supernatural reality of the moral order, and then devotes the lion’s share to political and economic matters. Experience has shown that this complex approach significantly enriches the conversation about social ethics and the reign of Christ in the world. To be most complete, one would need to included discussion of the priesthood and consecrated life, but as any collection must have its limits, this book does not contain any ex professo treatment of these.

“If one wishes to become more than superficially acquainted with CST, there is simply no substitute for reading the original documents of the popes, who from Leo XIII onwards are the real masters in this area of moral theology. Their ideas, terminology, critiques, and counsels have left a permanent mark not only on Catholic thinking, as is to be expected, but perhaps more surprising on a wide variety of secular schools of thought and political institutions. There is always a need—especially now in the third millennium, when such deep shadows loom across the modern world—to return ad fonts, to drink from these pure papal streams, and not to allow mountains of secondary literature, most of it superficial or agenda-driven or both, to stand between us and the wisdom of the Church’s magisterium.” (p. i)

As I wrote in my first book, The Criminal’s Search for God: Criminal Transformation, Catholic Social Teaching, Deep Knowledge Leadership, and Communal Reentry:

“I began my study with the concept of social justice, which I had some familiarity with through my years of working in the nonprofit sector but I had never delved into the deeper discussion of its implications and historical development.

“I learned that social justice is one of the central concepts in Catholic social teaching and eventually found my way to the source documents, the papal encyclicals. The Catholic Church is a hierarchical structure, and when we have confusion or uncertainty about the interpretation of Christ’s teaching, we ultimately need to rely on the Magisterium, that body of teaching composed of the papal encyclicals, church tradition and scriptural study.

“The papal encyclicals are difficult but deeply rewarding reading. I developed a habit of studying only five pages at a time, after having downloaded the documents from the Vatican website to my computer as a Word document, so that I could make notes and highlight as I read.

“One of the tenets of the faith I grew up in was that Christ would return once everyone had been exposed to the Christian doctrine.

“I felt at the time and more so later in life, that surely Christ would be returning soon, as who hadn’t heard the Christian truth? The answer to that question shocked me—as I soon learned studying Catholicism— that many had not heard the Christian truth, including me, for the fullness of Christian truth is Catholic.

“I had been studying all of the religions of the world when right in front of me was the true and only church Christ founded.

“For me conversion was primarily an intellectual progression through the social teaching and by the time my wife and I entered the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults—the year-long process of study that precedes baptism—I was certain I had found what I had been seeking for so long.” (pp. 39-40)

A Reader in Catholic Social Teaching is an excellent addition to your library, but don’t forget the must-have foundation of your Catholic Social Teaching library; Christian Social Witness: The Catholic Tradition from Genesis to Centesimus Annus, the magnificent two-volume work by Rodger Charles, S. J.

This website is the home site of my criminal reformation apostolate; here you can find details about the Lampstand Foundation which I founded as a 501c (3) nonprofit corporation in Sacramento, California in 2003.

I have written twelve books, one being about Lampstand and each one of the other eleven being a response to a likely objection to Catholicism that will be encountered when doing ministry to professional criminals; and for links to all of the Lampstand books which are available—free to members—and at Amazon, go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=david+h+lukenbill

I also maintain a daily blog, The Catholic Eye, https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/

Lampstand also keeps track of rehabilitative programs that fail, and the one or two that appear to work, with the findings available at https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/evaluation-of-reentry-programs-3/

The work connected to the apostolate is listed under the home page categories (to your left) which I will be expanding as needed.

________

Lampstand E Letter: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Greatest Catholic Book of the 20th Century

In a recent article from the Catholic Herald the author notes how studying the Catechism brought him to conversion and I heartily echo that claim.

I love this book and have several editions—the 1992 First Edition plus its two supplemental volumes, the 1997 Second Edition, the 1556 Council of Trent Edition (both translations, McHugh/Callan & Donovan), the 1941 Baltimore Catechism, and a pocket edition of the First Edition I keep bedside.

I recently added the Didache Bible: With Commentaries based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church to my library and suspect I’ll add other Catechism related works as time goes on.

It truly is, in my mind, the greatest work published by the Church in the last century.

My absolute favorite is the First Edition https://www.amazon.com/Catechism-Catholic-Libreria-Editrice-Vaticana/dp/0819815195/ref=sr_ , though I often defer to the online Second Edition on the Vatican website when quoting from it, http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM

Part of what I love about the first edition is The Companion to the Catechism of the Catholic Church: A Compendium of Texts Referred to in the Catechism of the Catholic Church https://www.amazon.com/Companion-Catechism-Catholic-Church-Compendium/dp/0898704510/ref=sr_ .

This 980 page volume, whose “purpose of the present volume is to gather together in a single source this wealth of reference texts and documents for the convenience of the English-speaking reader of the Catechism” (p. 7) is invaluable.

Another supplemental volume is the Introduction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Catechism-Catholic-Cardinal-Ratzinger/dp/0898704855/ref=sr_ by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger & Christoph Schonborn.

All three volumes have matching beige covers and represent a complete and full means of exploring this greatest of all Catholic books from the last century.

Here is an excerpt from the Catholic Herald article.

I have never argued more with a book than the one that sits before me now. When I open my dog-eared copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, I see page after page covered in pencil marks. The comments, written almost 20 years ago, read like those of a stranger: someone trying to argue his way out of becoming a Catholic.

As I flick through the book, with its yellowed and broken spine, I see expressions of bafflement and even outrage. I dismissed one section (83) as “Essentialised tradition”. Next to another (107) I simply wrote “difficulties”. But as the pages turn, there are fewer objections.

I remember marvelling at the Catechism’s elegant structure: its four parts – the Profession of Faith, the Celebration of the Christian Mystery, Life in Christ and Christian Prayer – serving as a firm foundation for the soaring tower of Catholic teaching.

I was impressed that the book not only explained what Catholics believe, but also how to be a Catholic. I had expected it to be a dry-as-dust manual, but it had such zeal and beauty that my objections to Catholicism collapsed one by one, until none remained.

It was only later that I discovered how controversial the Catechism had been within the Catholic Church. As Cardinal Christoph Schönborn explains in an interview marking the book’s 25th anniversary, there were “violent discussions” over whether a universal Catechism was desirable or even possible.

“The main argument of the opponents of this project,” he recalls, “was: it is impossible to create a book of faith for the entire world – a Catechism for the whole world Church – today, in the face of the pluralism of cultures, theologies and narratives. This was the most massive counter-argument against the project.

“I think Cardinal Ratzinger took this challenge very seriously. It was ultimately a question of a fundamental theological opinion: can faith today be formulated as one faith in a common form?”

Retrieved November 4, 2017 from http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2017/10/11/without-the-catechism-i-might-never-have-become-catholic/

This website is the home site of my criminal reformation apostolate; here you can find details about the Lampstand Foundation which I founded as a 501c (3) nonprofit corporation in Sacramento, California in 2003.

I have written twelve books, one being about Lampstand and each one of the other eleven being a response to a likely objection to Catholicism that will be encountered when doing ministry to professional criminals; and for links to all of the Lampstand books which are available—free to members—and at Amazon, go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=david+h+lukenbill

I also maintain a daily blog, The Catholic Eye, https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/

Lampstand also keeps track of rehabilitative programs that fail, and the one or two that appear to work, with the findings available at https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/evaluation-of-reentry-programs-3/

The work connected to the apostolate is listed under the home page categories (to your left) which I will be expanding as needed.

________

Lampstand E Letter, October 16, 2017, The Rosary, Fatima, & the Consecration of Russia

In this, the month of Fatima, let us pray the rosary in its traditional 15 decade version, as our Holy Queen Mother asked, where she also asked for the Consecration of Russia.

However, as Cardiant Burke stated recently, the Consecration of Russia, as Mary intended, has not yet occurred. This article from Life Site News reports:

IRVING, Texas, October 9, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — “It is evident that the consecration (of Russia) was not carried out in the manner requested by Our Lady,” said Vatican Cardinal Raymond Burke in his keynote address marking the highlight and conclusion of the Fatima Centennial Summit held over the weekend.

“I do not doubt for a moment the intention of Pope St. John Paul II to carry out the consecration on March 25, 1984,” said Cardinal Burke. He noted that Sister Lucia stated that “Our Lady had accepted it.”

He continued nonetheless, “Recognizing the necessity of a total conversion from atheistic materialism and communism to Christ, the call of Our Lady of Fatima to consecrate Russia to Her Immaculate Heart in accord with Her explicit instruction remains urgent.”

The former head of the Vatican’s highest court reissued his call, first made at the Rome Life Forum in May, for the faithful to pray and work for the consecration of Russia according to Our Lady’s specific instruction. He quoted the end of the famous secret to the children where Our Lady Herself predicted: “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.”

With some 700 attendees, the conference was the largest Fatima centennial celebration in North America. To a standing ovation both before and after he spoke, Cardinal Burke delved deeply into the message of Our Lady of Fatima, her predictions and the consequences of failing to heed her warnings to the world.

The Cardinal drew a direct line from the famous Third Secret of Fatima’s dire predictions for the massacre of priests, religious and the death of the Pope to the current crisis in the Church.

“The teaching of the Faith in its integrity and with courage is the heart of the office of the Church’s pastors: the Roman Pontiff, the Bishops in communion with the See of Peter, and their principal co-workers, the priests,” he said. “For that reason, the Third Secret is directed, with particular force, to those who exercise the pastoral office in the Church. Their failure to teach the faith, in fidelity to the Church’s constant teaching and practice, whether through a superficial, confused or even worldly approach, and their silence endangers mortally, in the deepest spiritual sense, the very souls for whom they have been consecrated to care spiritually.”

Retrieved October 10, 2017 from https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/cardinal-burke-russia-was-not-consecrated-in-the-manner-requested-by-our-la

Fatima was the greatest event of the 20^th Century, yet, as Prof. Roberto de Mattei, wrote in 2017 for the Conference, Fatima 100 Years later. A Marian call for the whole Church: The historical framework of the Message of Fatima, Buckfast Abbey, Devon, England, 12-13 October 2017:

From 1917 to 2017, nine Popes have acknowledged Fatima. All of them, following Benedict XV, approved of the devotion. Six of them visited the Sanctuary, as popes or cardinals. Some of them, like Pius XII and John Paul II, manifested great devotion to the 1917 apparitions. Not one of them, however, complied with our Lady’s insistent requests. …

The reasons for the failed Consecration to Russia, do not only lie in the will not to meddle in the politics of a foreign country. The reticence of recent Popes in consecrating Russia explicitly is also due to the concern of harming the ecumenical reunification between Christians of the East and West. Thus, as Professor José Barreto notes, “The Post-Communist, Russian Episcopate, accused of proselytism, sustains that the Fatima message of the conversion of Russia, doesn’t consist in making Russia a Roman Catholic country”

Retrieved October 15, 2017 from https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2017/10/de-mattei-fatima-100-years-later-marian.html#more

I cannot understand—in the actions of the Holy Fathers—the influential power of politics over that of the divine power of the Holy Queen Mother.

Let us pray for the Holy Father to fulfill the request of the Holy Queen Mother.

This website is the home site of my criminal reformation apostolate; here you can find details about the Lampstand Foundation which I founded as a 501c (3) nonprofit corporation in Sacramento, California in 2003.

I have written twelve books, one being about Lampstand and each one of the other eleven being a response to a likely objection to Catholicism that will be encountered when doing ministry to professional criminals; and for links to all of the Lampstand books which are available—free to members—and at Amazon, go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=david+h+lukenbill

I also maintain a daily blog, The Catholic Eye, https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/

Lampstand also keeps track of rehabilitative programs that fail, and the one or two that appear to work, with the findings available at https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/evaluation-of-reentry-programs-3/

The work connected to the apostolate is listed under the home page categories (to your left) which I will be expanding as needed.

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The Lampstand Foundation E-Letter

No. 128, September 16, 2017

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Zen Catholicism, Suchness, & the Rosary

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I believe the heart of Catholicism is, as Fr. Thomas Merton surmised, similar to the heart of Zen, a mystical and precious space words are unequal to; and Zen’s Suchness—the nameless reality in its central nature—is captured in many ways by Catholics, including the praying of the traditional fifteen decade rosary.

1. R. Reno, writing in the August/September 2017 issue First Things. Wrote:

“God’s revelation in Christ has a sheer thatness, a particularity that can never be framed, explained, or reduced to a cosmological or anthropological role or meaning.” (p. 62)

When our Holy Queen Mother told us to pray the rosary daily at Fatima, it was the fifteen decade rosary she was talking about; the ancient rosary connected to the Old Testament of the Psalms and Israel of the Prophets, the New Testament Israel of Christ, and the deepest roots of our Church.

Praying the fifteen decade rosary is entering into the central spirit and acts animating our Church and causing them to resonate, even if unconsciously, within us.

Solange Hertz, in an article published in Remnant Newspaper, writes:

“One of Pius XII’s favorite theologians, Fr. Matthias Scheeben, had this to say in the first chapter of his Mysteries of Christianity:

“If by mystery we mean nothing more than an object which is not entirely conceivable in its innermost essence, we need not seek very far to find mysteries. Such mysteries are found not only above us, but all around us, in us, under us. The real essence of all things is concealed from our eyes. The physicist will never fully plumb the laws of forces in the physico-chemical world and perfectly comprehend their effects; and the same is true of the physiologist with regard to the laws of organic nature, of the psychologist with regard to the soul, of the metaphysician with regard to the ultimate basis of being. Christianity is not alone in exhibiting mysteries in the above-mentioned sense. If its truths are inconceivable and unfathomable, so in greater part are the truths of reason.”

Retrieved June 27, 2017 from http://www.remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/3255-the-real-world

In a very interesting book, the author connects Zen Buddhism and Catholicism:

“To be reconciled, not blindly but with a mind enlightened, to the inevitable—that, if I have rightly understood, is the heart of Zen Buddhism. But this also, in its depths at least, is the message of Catholicism. Such, at any rate, is the “suggestion” offered in these ages. Nothing in the way of religious syncretism is called for; the aim is to evaluate, sympathetically, Zen from a Catholic point of view; and in the process, though incidentally, to present Catholicism at its mature level. The approach is not that of an orientalist, for which I have no competence, but of one formed in the oldest monastic tradition of the West, familiar with a truly “existential” Christian philosophy, and really interested in the contemporary world.” (p. xiii)

Dom Aelred Graham—Prior of the Benedictine Community, Portsmouth, Rhode Island—(1963). Zen Catholicism: A Suggestion. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.

As Fr. Thomas Merton was to share with us through so many beautiful books, it is a suggestion well followed.

This website is the home site of my criminal reformation apostolate; here you can find details about the Lampstand Foundation which I founded as a 501c (3) nonprofit corporation in Sacramento, California in 2003.

I have written twelve books, one being about Lampstand and each one of the other eleven being a response to a likely objection to Catholicism that will be encountered when doing ministry to professional criminals; and for links to all of the Lampstand books which are available—free to members—and at Amazon, go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=david+h+lukenbill

I also maintain a daily blog, The Catholic Eye, https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/

Lampstand also keeps track of rehabilitative programs that fail, and the one or two that appear to work, with the findings available at https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/evaluation-of-reentry-programs-3/

The work connected to the apostolate is listed under the home page categories (to your left) which I will be expanding as needed.

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Diversionary Illusions of the Left

There are so many of them piled one upon the other as the years go by but let us focus briefly on those within the criminal justice system, as a superb article from City Journal does in their Summer 2017 issue.

For a long time liberal criminologists from the academy touted “root causes” as the public policy key to addressing crime and, as the article notes:

“On this thinking, billions of taxpayer dollars poured into ambitious social program—yet crime went up, not down.” (p. 50)

Then the mantra was that the police couldn’t really do much to stop crime either, and:

“In the 1970s and 1980s and into the 1990s, as crime rates continued to spike, criminologists proceeded to tell us that the police could do little to cut crime, and that locking up the felons, drug dealers, and gang leaders who committed much of the nation’s criminal violence wouldn’t work either.” (Ibid. p. 50)

But reality intervened and:

“These views were shown to be false, too, but they were held so pervasively across the profession that, when political scientist James Q. Wilson called for selective incapacitation of violent repeat offenders, he found himself ostracized by his peers, who resorted to ad hominem attacks on his character and motivations….In the real world policy arena, however, Wilson attained significant influence: the Broke Windows theory of policing and public order, which Wilson developed with criminologist George Kelling, became a key part of the proactive policing strategies that would be largely responsible for the great crime decline starting in the mid-1990s.

“In short, while academic criminology has had much to say about crime, most of it has been wrong. How can an academic discipline be so wrongheaded? And should we listen to criminologists today when, say, they call for prisons to be emptied, cops to act as glorified playground attendants, and criminal sentences to be dramatically reduced, if not eliminated?” (Ibid. p. 50)

The leftist criminologists—there are hardly any others—constantly create new narratives to drive the discussion in the academy and one they are particularly fond of is described:

“Most criminologists follow a “penal-harm” narrative, which seeks to account for all the ways that the criminal justice system hinders the lives of offenders and their communities, generating and reinforcing social inequality and harming minorities, since they are the primary targets. Purveyors of the penal-harm narrative assert that conservative legislators demagogically used the upswing in crime rates during the late twentieth century—including more than 20,000 murders and hundreds of thousands of rapes, robberies, and assaults per year—to incite racial animosity and arouse support for overly punitive crime policies.” (Ibid. p. 53)

But, in the end, the biggest problem with the criminologists of the Left, is, as noted:

“To understand why many criminologists refuse to acknowledge criminal behavior as potent predictor of life outcomes—including premature mortality, health disparities, arrest and incarceration, and even being shot by the police—one must understand that most liberal criminologists feel strangely protective about criminals. Criminologists who work collaboratively with the police have done important work in understanding how best to respond to crime and how to prevent it. Their research, which often includes complex spatial analyses of crime patterns and which targets specific, high-rate offenders for arrest and prosecution, has been rigorously evaluated and confirmed. Yet liberal-minded criminologists dismiss these scholars as “administrative criminologists”—meaning that they help the state impose unfair social and economic arrangements.

“Liberal criminologists avoid discussing the lifestyles that criminal offenders typically lead. Almost all serious offenders are men, and they usually come from families with long histories of criminal involvement, often spanning generations. They show temperamental differences early in life, begin offending in childhood or early adolescence, and rack up dozens of arrests. Their lives are chaotic and hedonistic, including the constant pursuit of drugs and sex. They produce many children with different women and rarely have the means—or inclination—to support them. Active offenders exploit others for their own benefit, including women, children, churches, and the social-welfare system. They commit many crimes before getting arrested, and they move in and out of the criminal-justice system for decades. Many report enjoying acts of violence; the social-media accounts of martyred gangsters shot by police often illuminate this subculture. Perhaps not surprisingly, they see the police as another competing tribe that has to be manipulated, controlled, and sometimes confronted. In sum, the lives of persistent criminal offenders are often shockingly pathological. The nature of this world is hard to grasp without witnessing it firsthand.” (Ibid. p. 56)

As someone who was a professional criminal—meaning virtually all of my criminal acts were for money—for about 20 years, with 12 of those years spent in maximum security federal and state prisons; then some years after my final release entering college and earning degrees in criminal justice, organization behavior, and public administration; developing and managing a criminal reformation program that used education and peer-counseling as reformative tools; I can verify that all of what is quoted here from the article in City Journal is accurate; and it is important that more articles like this continue to be published to counter the diversionary illusions of the left.

I would strongly recommend—to get a running start—the past work of James Q. Wilson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Q._Wilson and the current work of Heather Mac Donald https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Mac_Donald .

Reference: John Paul Wright & Matt DeLisi. (2017, Summer). What Criminologist Don’t Say, and Why: Monopolized by the Left, academic research on crime gets almost everything wrong. City Journal: Summer 2017. Published by the Manhattan Institute. Volume 27, Number 3. (pp. 50-57)

This website is the home site of my criminal reformation apostolate; here you can find details about the Lampstand Foundation which I founded as a 501c (3) nonprofit corporation in Sacramento, California in 2003.

I have written twelve books, one being about Lampstand and each one of the other eleven being a response to a likely objection to Catholicism that will be encountered when doing ministry to professional criminals; and for links to all of the Lampstand books which are available—free to members—and at Amazon, go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=david+h+lukenbill

I also maintain a daily blog, The Catholic Eye, https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/

Lampstand also keeps track of rehabilitative programs that fail, and the one or two that appear to work, with the findings available at https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/evaluation-of-reentry-programs-3/

The work connected to the apostolate is listed under the home page categories (to your left) which I will be expanding as needed.

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Lampstand E Letter: July 16, 2017, The Romance of Communism & Why the Left Still Loves i

A few months ago I wrote two pieces about Communism focusing on Dorothy Day and the Soft Communism in the Catholic Church, which she played a major role in developing.

Today I want to focus on why the left still loves Communism and the major reason, I believe, is that the Romance of Communism, the Romance of the Rebel, the Outlaw, has taken up pretty much permanent lodging in the American Left’s mind and spirit.

It has taken up that home, I believe, through the use of the actual language of the Communist narrative, which is powerful and stresses all people being together and fighting injustice—One Big Union, McCarthyism, Healthcare for All, Abolish Prisons, Tolerance, Diversity—and even though this language has little real connection to Communist-run countries, the words are effectively used.

A 1978 book by Vivian Gornick,

From the 1917 book by John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World, to the 1981 movie, Reds, commemorating him, the American Left has adored and supported Communism; a tragic reality that continues today, well outlined by the series of articles in the New York Times, called Red Century: Exploring the history and legacy of Communism, 100 years after the Russian Revolution; of which there are at this point ten, one every week since March 6, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/column/red-century

American Communism is still the meta-narrative that underlies the American outlaw narrative, and has deeply penetrated the social justice narrative of the Catholic Church.

This centrality is captured in one of the Red Century articles:

My parents were working-class socialists. I grew up in the late 1940s and early ’50s thinking of them and their friends as what they themselves called “progressives.” The sociology of the progressive world was complex. At its center were full-time organizers for the Communist Party, at the periphery left-wing sympathizers, and at various points in between everything from rank-and-file party card holders to respected fellow travelers.

Vivian Gornick (2017. When Communism Inspired Americans, New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/29/opinion/sunday/when-communism-inspired-americans.html?rref=

That time, the early ‘40s and ‘50s were when the full force of Communist’s romantic power hit, as Gornick (2017) writes:

It is perhaps hard to understand now, but at that time, in this place, the Marxist vision of world solidarity as translated by the Communist Party induced in the most ordinary of men and women a sense of one’s own humanity that ran deep, made life feel large; large and clarified. It was to this clarity of inner being that so many became not only attached, but addicted. No reward of life, no love nor fame nor wealth, could compete with the experience. It was this all-in-allness of world and self that, all too often, made of the Communists true believers who could not face up to the police state corruption at the heart of their faith, even when a 3-year-old could see that it was eating itself alive. (Ibid)

Thornton (2017) notes two reasons for Communism’s continued allure:

There are two reasons for the continuing mystery of this affection for a murderous ideology. One is, as many commentators pointed out decades ago, communism was and is a political religion, a secular substitute for a discarded Christianity. Historian Michael Burleigh details the similarities:

It is relatively easy to transpose some of the key terms from the Judeo-Christian heritage to Marxism: “consciousness” (soul), “comrades” (faithful), “capitalist” (sinner), “devils” (counter-revolutionary), “proletariat” (chosen people) and “classless society” (paradise). The ruling classes were also going to face a revolutionary form of “Last Judgement” . . .  But there were far deeper and unacknowledged correspondences, including nostalgia for a lost oneness and the beliefs that time was linear . . . , that the achievement of higher consciousness brought salvation, and that history was progressing with its meaning and purpose evident to the discerning, knowledgeable vanguard.

Bruce Thornton. (2017, May 5) The Left’s Continuing Homage to Communism: Why progressives pay no price for clinging to their murderous ideology. Frontpage Mag. http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266596/lefts-continuing-homage-communism-bruce-thornton

This article from The Catholic Thing puts it into a correct context with the Pro-Life Movement

To perpetrate a great evil it takes a great lie portraying the evil as a great good. That was the con man’s trick of Communism. Even though Communist theory imagined a laughable utopia (for anyone who thought it through), and the reality was demonstrably more murderous than anything in modern history, lots of people – sophisticated intellectuals and ordinary working folk who sought a more just society – continued to defend it well past the point when the evil was impossible to deny. Some still do.

Something similar has been going on for the past half-century and more with abortion and the sexual revolution. In the heyday of Communism, you would hear from people suffering under Marxist regimes how leaders made it seem like down was up, right was left (or wrong), repression was liberation. Any criticism was either naïve or the work of dark capitalist forces.

For decades, pro-lifers have thought that they were merely trying to defend life in the womb. For their pains, they have been accused of wanting to control women’s bodies, defend patriarchy, destroy the environment, perpetuate Western imperialism – and now (in crazier but ever more influential circles) to disrespect alternative forms of family and human life via hetero-normativity and transphobia. (I know, I don’t get the connection either – can’t you be gay or trans and pro-life?)

Let’s recall some hard facts. Communist ideology killed roughly 100 million globally in the 20th century and has not yet entirely finished its run. The pro-abortion ideology has killed 60 million in America alone, 6 million in Italy, and by reasonable estimates close to 1.5 billion worldwide since 1980. It’s no wonder abortion advocates, like the old Communists, try to cloak the carnage in terms of a warped moral crusade and to divert attention to side issues from the central reality – the innocent child in the womb.

Retrieved May 22, 2017 from https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2017/05/22/defending-life-in-rome/

And to provide one answer to the question implicit in these observations—why do some intellectuals love dictators—comes this article from City Journal:

Though Hollander does not claim that there is a single explanation for intellectuals’ attraction to dictatorships such as those of Stalin, Mao, and Castro (or Khomeini, in the case of Foucault), let alone to have found it, he nevertheless believes, in my view plausibly, that the longing for quasi-religious belief in an age when actual religion has largely been rejected is a significant part of the explanation. The totalitarian dictators were not the typical politicians of democratic systems who, whatever their rhetoric, seem mainly to tinker at the edges of human existence, are ready or forced to make grubby compromises with their opponents, reveal themselves to be morally and financially corrupt, are more impressive in opposition than in office, have no overarching ideas for the redemption of humanity, and make no claims to be panjandrums of all human knowledge and wisdom. Rather, those dictators were religious leaders who claimed the power to answer all human questions at once and to lead humanity into a land of perpetual milk, honey, and peace. They were omniscient, omnicompetent, loving, and kind, infinitely concerned for the welfare of their people; yet at the same time they were modest, humble, and supposedly embarrassed by the adulation they received. The intellectuals, then, sought in them not men but messiahs. Retrieved May 23, 2017 from https://www.city-journal.org/html/crushing-crushers-15207.html

Finally, don’t forget to read a few of the pieces of the series, The Red Century, from the New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/column/red-century, where, underneath the scholarly veneer, the boundless love pours off the page.

This website is the home site of my criminal reformation apostolate; here you can find details about the Lampstand Foundation which I founded as a 501c (3) nonprofit corporation in Sacramento, California in 2003.

I have written twelve books, one being about Lampstand and each one of the other eleven being a response to a likely objection to Catholicism that will be encountered when doing ministry to professional criminals; and for links to all of the Lampstand books which are available—free to members—and at Amazon, go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=david+h+lukenbill

I also maintain a daily blog, The Catholic Eye, https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/

Lampstand also keeps track of rehabilitative programs that fail, and the one or two that appear to work, with the findings available at https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/evaluation-of-reentry-programs-3/

The work connected to the apostolate is listed under the home page categories (to your left) which I will be expanding as needed.

________

The Lampstand Foundation E-Letter

No. 123, April 16, 2017

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Dorothy Day & Catholic Soft Communism

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I was not familiar with the writings of Dorothy Day until I became a Catholic, but then became a fervent fan after reading much of her published work and eventually have pretty much collected everything she wrote in book form.

However, since I read the shocking 2010 book by Dr. Carol Byrne, The Catholic Worker Movement (1933-1980): A Critical Analysis and followed up with my own research, I realized how devoted she remained to Communism throughout her life.

Dorothy Day’s published writings, which is what most of us base our opinion of her on, are filled with devotional service and Catholic oriented content; but her writings to her fellow workers, those writings specifically in the Catholic Worker—which Dorothy Day edited from its beginning in 1933 to her death in 1980, clearly stood on the side of Communism against Capitalism, as did her many speeches, people she honored and her activism.

As I wrote in my book, Catholicism, Communism & Criminal Reformation:

As Earl Browder, who headed the Party during its heyday in the 1930s, would later boast:

Entering the 1930s as a small ultra-left sect of some 7,000 members, remnant of the fratricidal factional struggle of the 1920s that had wiped out the old “left wing” of American socialism, the CP rose to become a national political influence far beyond its numbers (at its height it never exceeded 100,000 members), on a scale never before reached by a socialist movement claiming the Marxist tradition. It became a practical power in organized labour, its influence became strong in some state organizations of the Democratic party (even dominant in a few for some years), and even some Republicans solicited its support. It guided the anti-Hitler movement of the American League for Peace and Democracy that united a cross-section of some five million organized Americans (a list of its sponsors and speakers would include almost a majority of Roosevelt’s Cabinet, the most prominent intellectuals, judges of all grades up to State Supreme Courts, church leaders, labour leaders, etc.). Right-wing intellectuals complained that it exercised an effective veto in almost all publishing houses against their books, and it is at least certain that those right-wingers had extreme difficulty getting published.

While Browder’s boast contained a lot of truth, he could hardly take full credit. The Communist Party USA only broke out of its isolation in 1935, when the Comintern [Lenin’s Bolsheviks believed that unless socialist revolutions triumphed world-wide, they would be defeated by international capitalism, so they organized the Communist International—abbreviated as Comintern—in Moscow in 1919 to foment revolution around the world.] taking advantage of the widespread legitimate fear of German Nazism, ordered the international Communist movement to adopt an ecumenical attitude and stretch its hands out to those it previously hated, including socialists and Catholics. (Italicized section added.) Romerstein, H. & Breindel, E. (2000). The Venona secrets: Exposing Soviet espionage and America’s traitors. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc. (pp. 98-99)

David H. Lukenbill. (2013), Catholicism, Communism & Criminal Reformation. Sacramento, California: Chulu Press, The Lampstand Foundation. (pp. 84-85)

Byrne (2010)—virtually alone with an insightful and penetrating understanding of the deep Communist orientation of this seminal organization and its founders—writes about the Catholic Worker Movement in the introduction to her book:

The Catholic Worker Movement was co-founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in New York, on 1st May 1933, to provide food, clothing and shelter for the destitute during the years of the Great Depression. It was a movement built on the long-term despair of Americans who turned to radical political and social movements for a solution to unemployment, homelessness and poverty. For Day and Maurin it was an opportunity to fulfil their dream of starting a radical mass movement that might one day reverberate around the world. But in the intervening period they devoted their energies to fomenting a revolution against the US government, immersed as it was in upholding all the social and political institutions which they wanted to abolish: Capitalism, industrial corporations, big business and the armed forces. These they regarded as the causes of poverty and injustice in the world.

Key to the technique of protest was to project an image as a victim in the “class struggle” described by Karl Marx, then to seize the moral high ground by attacking the other side as the greedy, guilty “bourgeois.” It is essential to keep in mind that Day’s theories for a new social order share a common identity: they were all part of a “culture of victimization” which claims that any kind of social disadvantage is due entirely to “oppression” by the “bourgeoisie”. That explains her presumption that in the struggle for “liberation” the poor and the workers were by definition always innocent even when they resorted to armed violence, and rich capitalists always the guilty party even when they contributed notably to the common good. Carol Byrne, (2010). The Catholic worker movement (1933-1980): A critical analysis. United Kingdom: AuthorHouse UK Ltd. (pp. ix-x)

Lukenbill Ibid. (pp. 89-90)

I think that in Dorothy Day’s case, she had conflated Communism with Catholicism so deeply in her own mind and spirit that they were virtually one and the same thing to her—a classic case of being duped—a form of thinking still very prevalent within the Catholic left, especially those still, and they are many, enamored with Liberation Theology.

Now that her cause for sainthood has been approved by the American bishops to move her from the current designation as Servant of God, to the next step in the canonization process, the history of the Vatican’s connection to Russian Communism through the period when the Fatima call from the Holy Virgin to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart was not responded to, due, in large part, to the Vatican influence of Orthodox Russian Metropolitans now known to have been KGB directed, will perhaps be examined.

Lukenbill Ibid. (p. 92)

I trust soundness will prevail and Dorothy Day will not become a saint, though admiration for her work with the poor, even tinged at it is with the anger and hostility against capitalism and the American way, is warranted and it is an admiration I share.

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David H. Lukenbill, President, The Lampstand Foundation

Post Office Box 254794   Sacramento, CA 95865-4794

Website: https://davidhlukenbill.wordpress.com/

Blog: www.cathliceye.wordpress.com

E-Mail: Dlukenbill@msn.com

With Peter to Christ through Mary