CSVF Blog

The circumstances and consequences of an action are not what specifically make it good or evil. And yet still, it’s important to look at the surrounding phenomena of moral action, particularly when it is structurally engendered, such as in the industry of artificially planned/manipulated parenting. Looking at these circumstances and consequences as they arise in a society or societies different from ours helps us to gain greater perspective on the evil ramifications of a particular object — in this case, abortion. Although the sociological and ethical concerns surrounding the abortion industry (and its allied technologies and activities) in our country are of a somewhat different cast than those of East Asia, both are radically startling.

Consider this recent article from Foreign Policy (27 June 2011), where Mara Hvistendahl details some of the circumstantial and consequential horrors of sex selection — possible because of legal abortion… even as she is unable to identify the evil of the object of abortion, remaining committed to the project of reproductive rights.

Where Have All the Girls Gone?
How did more than 160 million women go missing from Asia? The simple answer is sex selection — typically, an ultrasound scan followed by an abortion if the fetus turns out to be female — but beyond that… [continue reading]

Also check out Dominican Brother, Gabriel Torretta’s commentary on this at First Things (5 July 2011).

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Please join the World Youth Alliance for a lecture by

Dr. Bob Scanlon introducing our new reproductive health program

F E M M !

(Fertility Education + Medical Management)

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

2:30 pm -5:00 pm

World Youth Alliance Headquarters

228 East 71st Street

New York, NY 10021

Please contact Caroline Van Horn at caroline@wya.net 

if you or anyone you know is interested. 

The World Youth Alliance is pleased to introduce Fertility Education + Medical Management (FEMM), a knowledge-based reproductive health program, to New York City. FEMM teaches women of all social, economic, cultural and religious backgrounds how to monitor their reproductive health and manage their fertility by understanding the natural signs of the body. Where health problems are indicated, women are referred to   FEMM-trained medical practitioners for evaluation and treatment where they are informed participants in their own reproductive healthcare.

Dr. Scanlon, a OBGYN working in collaboration with the WYA, will give two lectures introducing FEMM as well as discussing WYA’s approach to maternal health. There will be time to ask questions following both lectures.

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This is a must!

A wonderful way to celebrate the feast and the weekend. Click on the images to learn what the GIGLIO is all about!

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One of the suppositions of the so-called new atheist crew is that reason — most especially scientific reason — positively disabuses humanity of its religious pretensions. I think these guys (and yes, oddly, they’re all guys) are not worth much time in themselves. However, they are lingeringly popular; and their reasoning (or attempt at such) is emblematic of the way many believe themselves to be intelligent, i.e., by a hodge-podge of unjustified principles arbitrarily applied alongside basic commitments that spring from the Christian West as such. So, if somewhat tritely, they’re worth considering.

Sam Harris is known for his ill informed and meandering screed against Christianity in America and for his more recent attempt to speak about being moral from a scientifically hopeful point of view. A recent article of his provides an opportunity to diagnose what’s wrong with his thinking.

Radical Subjectivity
For Harris, everything we do is for the sake of “altering consciousness. We form friendships so that we can feel certain emotions, like love, and avoid others, like loneliness. We eat specific foods to enjoy their fleeting presence on our tongues. We read for the pleasure of thinking another person’s thoughts. Every waking moment—and even in our dreams—we struggle to direct the flow of sensation, emotion, and cognition toward states of consciousness that we value.” In other words, the reason we do everything that we do, the closest thing that could come to our raison d’etre, is (1) to change (2) our consciousness.

The point of view that Harris placidly espouses is inherently radical: The purpose of life is “to alter” whatever it is we experience. In other words, the root of what it means to be human is to change reality–he’s radically radical, to use two senses of the world. According to this view, the life of the mind, of esprit, is constituted by the exertion of the will. We live in order to project our freedom upon reality in such a way as to change it.

To be sure, the wise man has classically recognized the changing nature of the world. Everything changes. Philosophy, in large part, is an attempt to discern the order to this picture of reality as inherently changing.

The modern era changes all this, and introjects reality into the the self, or, the mind and its will. Hence, as Marx famously declares (in a way that is not particular to Marx and Marxism), the purpose of philosophy is not to understand the world but to change it.

So what is reality for Harris? It is what is perceived. “Reality” is simply another word for what the consciousness of the individual’s living processes in terms of physio-chemical categories such as “sensation, emotion, and cognition.”

Harris is both a radical and a subjectivist; and he’s necessarily one because he’s the other. He’s a radical because, as a subjectivist, the only way for man to exercise his freedom is through projecting his will upon “reality” to change it; and he’s a subjectivist, because, as a radical, he has no principle for determining what is worthy of being changed or toward what one should aim his change other than oneself.

Desire for Transcendence
Interestingly, Harris advocates for something that is noble: transcendent experience. How does he get here? By considering the longstanding practice of taking drugs.

He thinks that the taking of psychedelic drugs is not necessarily a bad thing, and can actually be seen as a natural element of the adult’s desire to acquire new experiences. “I have a daughter who will one day take drugs. Of course, I will do everything in my power to see that she chooses her drugs wisely, but a life without drugs is neither foreseeable, nor, I think, desirable. Someday, I hope she enjoys a morning cup of tea or coffee as much as I do. If my daughter drinks alcohol as an adult, as she probably will, I will encourage her to do it safely. If she chooses to smoke marijuana, I will urge moderation. Tobacco should be shunned, of course, and I will do everything within the bounds of decent parenting to steer her away from it. Needless to say, if I knew my daughter would eventually develop a fondness for methamphetamine or crack cocaine, I might never sleep again. But if she does not try a psychedelic like psilocybin or LSD at least once in her adult life, I will worry that she may have missed one of the most important rites of passage a human being can experience.”

Let’s forget about the blithe manner in which Harris underplays the occult damage of psychotropic drugs. Instead, consider that the seeking of these psychedelic experiences has an analog in seeking transcendence in meditation and suchlike. Then realize that the only difference is that the drugging method of altering the consciousness is, according to our guru, chemical, guaranteed, uncontrolled, and more or less taboo. “There is nothing that one can experience on a drug that is not, at some level, an expression of the brain’s potential.” In other words, both varieties of religious experience (alluding quite intentionally here, as Harris himself does in citation, to William James’s modern masterpiece) are functions of the subject’s awareness, which are materially constituted and therefore materially reducible.

(Indeed, Harris does not discount the possibility of a “world” that exists independent of the individual’s mind, or that there isn’t some cosmic Mind … but only that we’re unable to confirm this… since, after all, all judgments of the mind are reducible to the experiences of an individual mind anyway. And even so, this possible “dualism” would not, for Harris, be comprised of any immateriality.)

What’s peculiar about Harris is that he affirms the need for transcendence. The problem, however, is that it’s not clear how “transcendence” could genuinely be transcendent according to his perspective. For Harris, “transcendence” is itself a value that is simply such for the subjective consciousness. It has no objectivity to it. Transcendence is itself radically subjective! It’s not a transcending of the self, but a “ceasing to cling to the contents of consciousness” … but not a ceasing to cling to consciousness as constitutive of reality!

Therefore, even though transcendence is a way to get beyond our own “egoity” for the sake of moral rectitude, given Harris’s principles, it’s not clear how the basis for being moral could be something other than a function of the individual consciousness. Hence, after giving historical anecdotes about the usage of psychedelics from primitive religion and America’s sixties to personal experience, Harris’s discussion of the moral desirability of transcendence is a complete non sequitur.

Harris has a twofold principle that steers the course (radical subjectivity) until certain intuitions pop in, such as the intuited need for transcendence as well as the intuited good of being good. He’s unable to account for the latter as long as “everything is for the purpose of altering consciousness.” In all likelihood, though, the desires for spiritual transcendence and moral goodness are not the result of mere intuitions … but of the passing language of Christendom that has an unalterable resonance with the mystery of being human, even for those who try so hard to eliminate both.

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The well known last words of Alasdair MacIntyre’s book, After Virtue, written some twenty years before the election of our presently reigning pontiff:

A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead . . . was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. . . . This time, however, the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another — doubtless quite different — St. Benedict.

And from our Holy Father’s concluding words of an Audience dedicated to St. Benedict (9 April 2008):

By proclaiming St Benedict Patron of Europe on 24 October 1964, Paul VI intended to recognize the marvellous work the Saint achieved with his Rule for the formation of the civilization and culture of Europe. Having recently emerged from a century that was deeply wounded by two World Wars and the collapse of the great ideologies, now revealed as tragic utopias, Europe today is in search of its own identity. Of course, in order to create new and lasting unity, political, economic and juridical instruments are important, but it is also necessary to awaken an ethical and spiritual renewal which draws on the Christian roots of the Continent, otherwise a new Europe cannot be built. Without this vital sap, man is exposed to the danger of succumbing to the ancient temptation of seeking to redeem himself by himself – a utopia which in different ways, in 20th-century Europe, as Pope John Paul II pointed out, has caused “a regression without precedent in the tormented history of humanity” (Address to the Pontifical Council for Culture, 12 January 1990). Today, in seeking true progress, let us also listen to the Rule of St Benedict as a guiding light on our journey. The great monk is still a true master at whose school we can learn to become proficient in true humanism.

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The EAST VILLAGE ARTS PARTY, brought to you by Arts NYC, is looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow, Sat. July 9th for their highly anticipated event!

Come see dozens of bands, musicians, films, fine artists, and more, and mingle with hundreds of friends, old and new, for THE party of the summer!

Doors Open: 7:00 PM
Admission: $10 and drinks/food to share (21 + unless accompanied by an adult)
Proceeds to benefit: The Meatloaf Kitchen: http://meatloafkitchen.org/
Venue: Courtyard of the Immaculate Conception Church, 414 E 14th St @ 1st Ave.

Performing Artists such as:
Walking for Pennies, Mike Lahey, Paul Tabachneck, Cecilia Schwartz, and more…

Visual Art displays by:
Mary Acosta, Sean Scanlin, Alexander Ponomarenko, Daniel Somarriba, plus several others…

Classical Music performances indoors by:
Kara Vertucci, Scott Tran, Donna Nathan, Joanne Togati, Linda Garrity, Nhi Pham, Joe Shippee to name a few…

Short Film and Trailer screenings by:
Grassroots Films, Juan Reinoso, and Jennifer Cadena, and others…

Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/eastvillageartsparty
Contact: eastvillageartsparty@gmail.com

And be sure to check out the website for details, schedules, and to meet the artists:

http://eastvillageartsparty.posterous.com/

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In this weekend’s cover article of the New York Times Magazine, there’s a clear example of what St. Paul means in Rom 8.12 by living indebted to the flesh (30 June 2011). I won’t expatiate on the doubly unfortunate title, “Married, with infidelities,” which appropriates the harrumph of family life (“married, with children”) in order to replace the gift of progeny with the rape of trust. But I do want to point out the underlying viewpoint of the article: that flesh is the measure of the spirit.

Mark Oppenheimer primarily focuses on the work of Dan Savage, long-known to college co-eds and the alternative anti-culture for his column, “Savage Love,” a candid (read: sordid and graphic) consideration of sex from a homosexualist’s point of view. Over the years, Savage’s column has begun to focus less on sex (at least as such) and more on love… still, of course, from the standpoint of gay relationships.

In other words, the habits of gay sex can be normative for the goals of heterosexual love.

Gently but definitely supporting this opinion, Oppenheimer discusses the possibility that the model of gay “committed” relationships, with their tendency toward “openness,” pornography, and fetishism, could benefit heterosexual marriages with the grace of stability.

(If you for a second thought that the “gay rights” interest in the marriage debate is for merely legal equanimity, think again!)

The critical premise for Savage’s argument, which obviously has experiential probity, is that monogamy is amazingly difficult, especially for (all) men. But the additional and more fundamental premise is that the flesh is the measure of human possibility. The body’s given inclinations, urges, and (according to our superego’s postmodern/postmortem pretense), the body’s indiscretions provide the scope of freedom’s forum.

It ought to be self-evident that moral possibility cannot be delimited by moral tendency, or that philosophical ideals cannot be measured by sociological data. For example, most people have lied at one point or another in their lives. And many people live lives accommodated to variants of lying, i.e., of intentionally deceiving another through the utterance of falsity. But it would be ridiculous to take this and argue that because most people lie, it therefore ought to be positively introduced into a working understanding of truth.

This test’s whiff of Kantian maxim-making is not without cause. For Immanuel Kant, we cannot judge the existence of a transcendent God or that, in light of his benignity, we are actually free. We are left with the imperative to act as if our principles could be made universal laws. But this maxim-making has nothing really to do with reality, but simply the logical testing of subjective postulates for action. Since it is unconnected to God, the world of morality has nothing really to do with the world of nature or of science. Moral responsibility nevertheless has to make sure that it acts in a logically consistent way, since all we have is the rational drive of the mind. Such a life is not only boring, but beset by internal antinomy.

Unwilling to accept this bifurcation between what the mind can tell us about “reality” and what the mind ought to propose for moral action, the late modern (or postmodern, or whatever you want to call our world’s relativism)–the contemporary approach to morality collapses the antimony between freedom and nature or morality and science by declaring the former a function of the latter. Moral intelligence is an endless project of control and experimentation: The mind is the will!

Indeed, is it not the case that in public debates today, political power and moral indeterminacy predominate above all today. Anything goes, as long as the one with the bullying pulpit is saying so.

But the human mind is able to judge the reality of transcendence through its own life… which is transcendent. Transcendence need not be postulated as an internal or mental superstructure in order to secure our good taste for decent behavior. Indeed, that project already failed.

Transcendence is objectively experienced through our body. And that is why, for the Christian, the body is so wonderfully good. Because the body’s experience and prospect is measured by the spirit!

When I find myself in love such that I desire to be what people call “married,” I desire to give my heart to the beloved 100 percent. To be sure, from a material standpoint, it’s a ridiculous investment; but that is what people want to do in being married. There’s something so ultimately good about my beloved that no single experience can exhaust. I can return and return to experience my beloved and the good of the relationship is not itself exhausted. Eventually, I judge that I want to give my heart entirely; that I want to be married.

In giving all of myself, I’ll receive all of myself through the love of the other. Although I am a complete individual, I shall somehow be less than I am if I cannot be with my beloved. And so, ironically, the greatest work of most people’s lives of freedom is the binding of themselves to another in marriage.

But because I am not simply some vague monad of interiority but an embodied soul, I can only give my 100 percent of my heart when I have given 100 percent of my body as well. This side of things, that means that, naturally speaking, I cannot be married unless my body is pledged for the remainder of its bodily existence–i.e., until death.

Furthermore, I cannot give my body and heart to another completely unless that other truly is “an other.” And this otherness must necessarily be physiological. If I am most definitely not only a heart but also a body, and the only way in which I experience the trials and joys of my heart is through my body, then I cannot give all of myself to another if I am giving it to someone who is only another heart. In this case, I would be giving less than myself to someone who is less than another.

Hence, the only kind of loving union that is able to reproduce individuality is that which is physiologically unitive: the heterosexual love-making between a man and a woman (which is properly within the context of a committed relationship for life).

Finally, because my heart or spirit is measuring the good and the use of my body, there is no room for any others. Marital friendship is necessarily exclusive. The one man is bound until death to one woman, and vice versa.

Infidelity, taken as an occasional good, clearly contradicts the intrinsic if generally unarticulated reasons for getting married. In other words, the very nature of what marriage is excludes infidelity as possibly good. Very clearly, what is proffered in the NYT Magazine article is an image of marriage that hates the goods of indissolubility, procreativity, and exclusivity, and therefore hates marriage.

And how is this hatred given voice? Because the individual body (whose icon is that of the gay male) is proposed as the measure of freedom. I want to be with my wife until I die, at least for the sake of our kids; but I have sexual urges that deviate from our relationship. So, according to this logic, the relationship ought to revise its culturally accidental constraints with the granting of licenses for my body’s desire.

But then there is no transcendence, either of myself with the other, or of ourselves and that which makes us both partners in a particular species–i.e., there is no transcendence of human nature.

Ever since the West threw off the shackles of man’s natural sense of transcendence, his activity has been turned in on and against itself. “Man” itself has become the ultimate object to twist into submission. And, because there is no limit to man’s endeavors, there is no limit to what man can make of himself.

He can become anything; and so, he is nothing.

“Organized religion,” and most prominent among those who are organized, the Catholic Church, speaks most loudly in defense of human nature–its specific integrity of nature and its individuated dignity in the person. The Church, therefore, is necessarily invested in the preservation of the natural law. That is, she is with human nature as usch, and with the natively systematic norms that reason adduces for human behavior as the basis for an intelligent society.

Predictably, then, Mr. Savage also happens to be a Catholic, and one in whom the rag-mag’s author sees a positive image of Catholic moralism.

Of course, the Church’s severely attenuated moral authority is hereby evoked. Precisely because of what certain clergy have done, (indeed, most abominable), the measure of the Church’s preaching significance has been established. And, since her men seem to be just as perverted as those who openly apotheosize perversion, one really ought to take direction and guidance from the latter.

The wise and learned of our age would have us believe that there is no such thing as nature or moral standards. Everything is open to anything and everything, such that there is no such thing as “man,” and we can twist “marriage” to mean anything we want. Indeed, in the words of Michel Foucault (who, living for a long time in a committed relationship with “a partner,” died of AIDS, debauched by the San Francisco bath-houses):

Ought we not rather to give up thinking of man, or, to be more strict, to think of this disappearance of man – and the ground of possibility of all the sciences of man – as closely as possible in correlation with our concern with language?

From within language experienced and traversed as language, in the play of its possibilities extended to their furthest point, what emerges is that man has ‘come to an end’, and that, by reaching the summit of all possible speech, he arrives not at the very heart of himself but at the brink of that which limits him; in that region where death prowls, where thought is extinguished, where the promise of the origin interminably recedes. (The Order of Things, 382, 385)

We ought not to give up thinking of man or fighting for “man,” which necessarily involves a way of speaking that is congruent with the way of being. Nevertheless, the purpose of our freedom is not to agitate ceaselessly for social revolution. In fact, the ultimate purpose of our freedom isn’t even to act … but to rest! We have been given freedom on earth to enter into the rest of heaven.

Come to me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Christ speaks these words to all who experience their body as a yoke of the will and burden to the spirit. If we put to death the deeds of the body, if we refuse to vaunt the flesh as our ultimate value, we can be renewed in his Spirit.

God became man, He took on flesh in Christ. The body is not bad; flesh is not evil. But it must be measured by the Spirit. We who feed on Christ’s flesh are able to be renewed in his Spirit, that Spirit of God who raised our Lord from the dead.

Etymologically, “rest” is probably rooted in a word that means “great distance.” Hence, “rest” is what one does after having traversed a great distance. Christ has traveled the distance between God and fallen man by taking on our flesh and raising it anew. Let us not give up on the good fight or on completing the race. In Christ, we are called to be human.

Let us travel the full distance of human trial and joy — uniquely and wonderfully evident through marriage — and expect that the very distance of this journey, recognized and adhered to in the nobility of its natural ideals, promises the possibility of a final rest, where that same humanity will flourish in the finality of a freedom that has been wedded to the most faithful of lovers — God Himself.

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[Our Archbishop's recent plea (14 June 2011)... O God come to our aid.]

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Recently, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice completed its research of the Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the USA 1950-2010. This report follows the one previously conducted and released on the Nature and Scope of the Problem.

The reports are worthy perusing, even if “contexts” do not necessarily yield a scientific determination of “causes.”

Also worth reading is the commentary Archbishop Dolan posted the other day, pasted below.

Today’s release of The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010, a report conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, adds valuable insight and understanding to how and why the crime and sin of sexual abuse occurred in the Catholic Church.

Keep in mind that the study released today is a report to the bishops of the United States, not from them. The sexual abuse of minors is a tragedy that affects every family, religion, school, organization, institution, and profession in our society. The Catholic Church in the United States has been noted as the first group anywhere to contract a professional agency – in this case, the John Jay College here in New York City – to examine the “causes and contexts” of this scourge.

I start with this fact because some of the early reaction has already – no surprise here – criticized the bishops for the conclusions of the study! Once again, they are not our conclusions at all, but those of an acclaimed academic institution specializing in this sensitive area.

The information provided in the Causes and Context study closely mirrors our own experience here in the Archdiocese of New York. The report makes clear that the vast majority of sexual abuse occurred during the 1960’s through 1980’s, even as it examines the various conditions that led to this abuse. It also concludes that the incidence of sexual abuse of minors has declined sharply in the Catholic Church since 1985. The reports of abuse that the Victims Assistance Coordinators for the Archdiocese receive today are almost exclusively from decades ago. This does not minimize the damage done to the victims of abuse, as I once again offer an apology to anyone who may have been harmed by a priest or any other person acting in the name of the Church, however long ago.

The study also points out that there was no single cause that led to the sexual abuse crisis. Neither celibacy, as some have suggested, nor homosexuality, as others have claimed, have been found to be a reason why a person would engage in sexual abuse of a minor. Instead, the Causes and Context report indicates that various vulnerabilities in an individual priest, in combination with situational stresses and opportunities, raise the risk that a priest might abuse.

Here in the Archdiocese, as elsewhere in the Church, many steps have been taken to combat this evil. As the study points out, providing safe environments for our young people is perhaps the most important way to prevent sexual abuse. In the Archdiocese, 74,000 adults have undergone safe environment training, and 82,000 have had background checks, with 170,000 children trained each year. In addition, our seminary formation program provides rigorous screening, and more intensive and comprehensive human and emotional development, which better prepares our future priests to live out their commitment to serving God and His Church. Codes of Conduct, both for clergy and for laity, have been established to clarify what is and is not appropriate behavior for those who work with or are associated with minors.

When an allegation of abuse is made, our policy and procedures are well-established, widely published, and effective. First and foremost, we continue to encourage anyone who has an allegation of abuse against a cleric, an employee, or volunteer of the Archdiocese to report it immediately and directly to the appropriate civil authorities. If the Archdiocese of New York has reason to believe that an act of abuse of a minor has occurred, it immediately contacts the appropriate civil authorities, cooperating with the district attorneys and other civil authority in their investigations of suspected cases of abuse.

Our Independent Lay Board, comprised of judges, lawyers, psychiatrists, social workers, parents, teachers, and those experienced in working with sex abuse victims, reviews these allegations after the civil process has completed. Using all the information that the Archdiocese has been able to gather, they determine if an act of abuse occurred, and advise the Archbishop of New York if the priest can be returned to ministry. Should a cleric be found to have committed even a single act of sexual abuse of a minor, he will never be permitted to serve in ministry again.

Earlier this week, the Holy See released a circular letter to bishops’ conferences around the world, urging them to develop polices for dealing with sexual abuse within their own countries. The letter outlines such steps as listening to and caring for the victims of abuse, creating safe environment for minors, proper formation of priests, cooperating with civil authorities, and taking proper care of priests who have been accused of abuse. It is my hope that the experience of the Church in the United States, as illustrated in this study, might help serve as a model, not only for the Church in other countries, but for all of society which is still learning how to deal with the awful problem of abuse.

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Tomorrow, our Order and, in an especially privileged way, our church and priory will celebrate the feast of St. Vincent Ferrer. The 5:30 Mass will be celebrated at the high altar, beneath the glorious images of our patron; recitation of the Litany of St. Vincent Ferrer and veneration of his relic will follow.

As you know, St. Vincent preached the coming judgment, which we confidently announce before the Kiss of Peace during the liturgy of the Eucharist: “We wait with joyful hope for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ!” Interestingly, and perhaps by our own patron’s very intercession, May 5 has been declared to be a national day of prayer. Here is the President’s proclamation (29 April 2011):

Throughout our history, Americans have turned to prayer for strength, inspiration, and solidarity.

Prayer has played an important role in the American story and in shaping our Nation’s leaders.  President Abraham Lincoln once said, “I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.  My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for the day.”  The late Coretta Scott King recounted a particularly difficult night, during the Montgomery bus boycott, when her husband, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., received a threatening phone call and prayed at the kitchen table, saying, “Lord, I have nothing left.  I have nothing left.  I have come to the point where I can’t face it alone.”  Dr. King said, in that moment of prayer, he was filled with a sense of comfort and resolve, which his wife credited as a turning point in the civil rights movement.

It is thus fitting that, from the earliest years of our country’s history, Congress and Presidents have set aside days to recognize the role prayer has played in so many definitive moments in our history.  On this National Day of Prayer, let us follow the example of President Lincoln and Dr. King.  Let us be thankful for the liberty that allows people of all faiths to worship or not worship according to the dictates of their conscience, and let us be thankful for the many other freedoms and blessings that we often take for granted.

Let us pray for the men and women of our Armed Forces and the many selfless sacrifices they and their families make on behalf of our Nation.  Let us pray for the police officers, firefighters, and other first responders who put themselves in harm’s way every day to protect their fellow citizens.  And let us ask God for the sustenance and guidance for all of us to meet the great challenges we face as a Nation.

Let us remember in our thoughts and prayers those who have been affected by natural disasters at home and abroad in recent months, as well as those working tirelessly to render assistance.  And, at a time when many around the world face uncertainty and unrest, but also hold resurgent hope for freedom and justice, let our prayers be with men and women everywhere who seek peace, human dignity, and the same rights we treasure here in America.

The Congress, by Public Law 100-307, as amended, has called on the President to issue each year a proclamation designating the first Thursday in May as a “National Day of Prayer.”

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 5, 2011, as a National Day of Prayer.  I invite all citizens of our Nation, as their own faith or conscience directs them, to join me in giving thanks for the many blessings we enjoy, and I ask all people of faith to join me in asking God for guidance, mercy, and protection for our Nation.

Timete Deum! quia venit hora iudicii eius…

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[A number of extra preaching assignments as well as the ardors of Lenten preparation led to a hiatus from posting on this blog. For the time being, we're back... Thanks for your patience!]

Here are three examples of thoughtful episcopal commentary, beginning with our own local shepherd (who, by the way, will be here on Saturday Evening to celebrate the Vigil for Passion Sunday).

Archbishop Dolan (New York): A Blessed Holy Week

Let’s see now:  we’ve got a Sunday night series on one of the most corrupt and tawdry families in Church history, the Borgias, with popes, cardinals, bishops, and priests, all part of this big, happy family; we’ve heard non-stop for a decade about abusive priests, (albeit a small minority) and lax bishops who reassigned them; we’ve got front page stories of priests who embezzled money from their parishes; and I saw one not long ago about a priest arrested for DUI.

Continue Reading »

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Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan (Santa Fe): Pastoral Care of Couples Who Are Cohabitating

We are all painfully aware that there are many Catholics today who are living in cohabitation. The Church must make it clear to the faithful that these unions are not in accord with the Gospel, and to help Catholics who find themselves in these situations to do whatever they must do to make their lives pleasing to God.

Continue Reading »

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George Cardinal Pell (Sydney): Some Guadium and No Spes

Father Eric Hodgens’ piece on the Gaudium et Spes [see pp 12-13 here] priests gives us plenty of food for thought. It is well written and provocative, as you would expect of a priest who described his own cohort as possessing “the biggest proportion of intelligent, educated and competent leaders”. But it is unbalanced, misguided, selective and sometimes inaccurate.

Continue Reading »

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Go to the CBS site here to read or watch the story interview with our local shepherd.

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[In addition to reading our local shepherd's urgent clarion call, you can contact your local council member: http://council.nyc.gov/html/members/members.shtml]

Letting Crisis Pregnancy Centers Do Their Work

March 1st, 2011

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It’s not often that I agree with opinions on anything relatively significant published by Slate… but the angry frustration here is uniquely bewildering. On Natalie Portman (Oscar Best Actress) and her gratitude above all for being a mother, Mary Elizabeth [does that sound Catholic?] Williams huffs: “Why, at the pinnacle of one’s professional career, would a person feel the need to undercut it by announcing that there’s something else even more important?” The better question is, why would a person feel this relativity to be “undercutting” and threatening? And why would a popular web magazine think such a feeling to be worth publication?

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And check out St. Dominic at the end…

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This is the first time in 6 years that I haven’t been in DC for the events surrounding the protest of 1973′s Roe v. Wade decision, most especially, the “march for life.” I am continually disheartened by the meagerness of the media’s coverage of this event, which covers many stories of far greater significance, and has covered “marches” that draw far fewer people. The March for Life is the largest annual march in our nation’s capital, and it is significantly comprised of the youth. However, news of a new MTV show that frankly narrates the promiscuous projects of teens is apparently more media-worthy.

Nevertheless, the uplifting dynamics of the weekend remain an effective sign of Christian life: There is an evil that we hate, recognizing it as evil because of reason’s natural judgments, and further inspired by the grace of Revelation. The evil is an object of hatred because of the grave systematic harm it does to individuals–the children killed and the mothers wounded–as well as to the mores that it culturally engenders and enforces.

But it is opposed simply by reason and by love. By the continual projection of argumentation against legalized abortion into the public forum. And most of all by the love of the Christian community for each other and for the world. Thus, it becomes an occasion of rejoicing.  As St. Paul taught, while in prison, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice! Your kindness should be known to all. The Lord is near” (Phil 4.4-5).

Just watch.

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Well preached! Give it a listen!

Vigil Mass for Life: Homily from Rocco Palmo on Vimeo.

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[From the Vatican Information Service; Go here as well for the decree for the beatification from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints]

BENEDICT XVI WILL BEATIFY JOHN PAUL II ON 1 MAY

VATICAN CITY, 14 JAN 2011 (VIS) – On 1 May, the second Sunday of Easter and Divine Mercy Sunday, Benedict XVI will preside at the rite of beatification for John Paul II in the Vatican.

According to a note released by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, “today 14 January, Benedict XVI, during an audience granted to Cardinal Angelo Amato S.D.B., prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, authorised the dicastery to promulgate the decree of the miracle attributed to the intercession of Venerable Servant of God John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla). This concludes the process which precedes the rite of beatification.

“It is well known that, by pontifical dispensation, his cause began before the end of the five-year period which the current norms stipulate must pass following the death of a Servant of God. This provision was solicited by the great fame of sanctity which Pope John Paul II enjoyed during his life, in his death and after his death. In all other ways, the normal canonical dispositions concerning causes of beatification and canonisation were observed in full.

“Between June 2005 and April 2007 the principal diocesan investigation was held in Rome, accompanied by secondary investigations in various other dioceses, on his life, virtues, fame of sanctity and miracles. The juridical validity of these canonical processes was recognised by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints with a decree of 4 May 2007. In June 2009, having examined the relative ‘Positio’, nine of the dicastery’s theological consultors expressed their positive judgement concerning the heroic nature of the virtues of the Servant of God. The following November, in keeping with the usual procedure, the ‘Positio’ was submitted for the judgement of the cardinals and bishops of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, who gave their approval.

“On 19 December 2009, Benedict XVI authorised the promulgation of the decree on John Paul II’s heroic virtues.

“With a view to the beatification of the Venerable Servant of God, the postulator of the cause invited the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to examine the recovery from Parkinson’s disease of Sr. Marie Simon Pierre Normand, a religious of the ‘Institut des Petites Soeurs des Maternites Catholiques’.

“As is customary, the voluminous acts of the regularly-instituted canonical investigation, along with detailed reports from medical and legal experts, were submitted for scientific examination by the medical consultors of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints on 21 October 2010. The experts of the congregation, having studied the depositions and the entire documentation with their customary scrupulousness, expressed their agreement concerning the scientifically inexplicable nature of the healing. On 14 December the theological consultors, having examined the conclusions reached by the medical experts, undertook a theological evaluation of the case and unanimously recognised the unicity, antecedence and choral nature of the invocation made to Servant of God John Paul II, whose intercession was effective in this prodigious healing.

“Finally, on 11 January 2011 the ordinary session of the cardinals and bishops of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints took place. They expressed their unanimous approval, believing the recovery of Sr. Marie Simon Pierre to be miraculous, having been achieved by God in a scientifically inexplicable manner following the intercession of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II, trustingly invoked both by Sr. Simon herself and by many other faithful”.

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Roughly 4 out of 10 births in NYC were terminated in 2009.

6 out of 10 African American babies born in that same year were killed. More black women had abortions than births.

This shouldn’t be all that surprising… i.e., as the outcome of a rather specifically intentioned project. The founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, considered blacks and the immigrant poor “… human weeds, reckless breeders, spawning… human beings who never should have been born” (Pivot of Civilization); thus, the whole purpose of birth control advocacy — of which legalized abortion has always been an integral element — is to yield a “race of thoroughbreds” (Birth Control Review, Nov 1921).

Here’s an article that recaps the press conference held yesterday with Archbishop Dolan and other non-Catholic religious leaders of New York City to speak against this gravely wicked affliction.

Here’s a provocative op-ed by Ross Dothout from a couple of days ago. If you’ve already read it, you might look over the posted comments, and think about which ones are much more “recommended” than others and what they say.

Let us pray.

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Serious thoughts from Our Holy Father on Advent, the priest scandal, the Church in the Middle East, and his apostolic visit to the United Kingdom with the beatification of John Henry Cardinal Newman:

…Prope est jam Dominus, venite, adoremus [For the Lord is near, come, let us adore]! As one family, let us contemplate the mystery of Emmanuel, God-with-us…

Excita, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni [Arouse, Lord, your might, and come]. Repeatedly during the season of Advent the Church’s liturgy prays in these or similar words. They are invocations that were probably formulated as the Roman Empire was in decline. The disintegration of the key principles of law and of the fundamental moral attitudes underpinning them burst open the dams which until that time had protected peaceful coexistence among peoples. The sun was setting over an entire world. Frequent natural disasters further increased this sense of insecurity. There was no power in sight that could put a stop to this decline. All the more insistent, then, was the invocation of the power of God: the plea that he might come and protect his people from all these threats.

Excita, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni. Today too, we have many reasons to associate ourselves with this Advent prayer of the Church. For all its new hopes and possibilities, our world is at the same time troubled by the sense that moral consensus is collapsing, consensus without which juridical and political structures cannot function. Consequently the forces mobilized for the defence of such structures seem doomed to failure.

Excita

– the prayer recalls the cry addressed to the Lord who was sleeping in the disciples’ storm-tossed boat as it was close to sinking. When his powerful word had calmed the storm, he rebuked the disciples for their little faith (cf. Mt 8:26 et par.). He wanted to say: it was your faith that was sleeping. He will say the same thing to us. Our faith too is often asleep. Let us ask him, then, to wake us from the sleep of a faith grown tired, and to restore to that faith the power to move mountains – that is, to order justly the affairs of the world.

Excita, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni: amid the great tribulations to which we have been exposed during the past year, this Advent prayer has frequently been in my mind and on my lips. We had begun the Year for Priests with great joy and, thank God, we were also able to conclude it with great gratitude, despite the fact that it unfolded so differently from the way we had expected. Among us priests and among the lay faithful, especially the young, there was a renewed awareness of what a great gift the Lord has entrusted to us in the priesthood of the Catholic Church. We realized afresh how beautiful it is that human beings are fully authorized to pronounce in God’s name the word of forgiveness, and are thus able to change the world, to change life; we realized how beautiful it is that human beings may utter the words of consecration, through which the Lord draws a part of the world into himself, and so transforms it at one point in its very substance; we realized how beautiful it is to be able, with the Lord’s strength, to be close to people in their joys and sufferings, in the important moments of their lives and in their dark times; how beautiful it is to have as one’s life task not this or that, but simply human life itself – helping people to open themselves to God and to live from God. We were all the more dismayed, then, when in this year of all years and to a degree we could not have imagined, we came to know of abuse of minors committed by priests who twist the sacrament into its antithesis, and under the mantle of the sacred profoundly wound human persons in their childhood, damaging them for a whole lifetime.

In this context, a vision of Saint Hildegard of Bingen came to my mind, a vision which describes in a shocking way what we have lived through this past year. “In the year of our Lord’s incarnation 1170, I had been lying on my sick-bed for a long time when, fully conscious in body and in mind, I had a vision of a woman of such beauty that the human mind is unable to comprehend. She stretched in height from earth to heaven. Her face shone with exceeding brightness and her gaze was fixed on heaven. She was dressed in a dazzling robe of white silk and draped in a cloak, adorned with stones of great price. On her feet she wore shoes of onyx. But her face was stained with dust, her robe was ripped down the right side, her cloak had lost its sheen of beauty and her shoes had been blackened. And she herself, in a voice loud with sorrow, was calling to the heights of heaven, saying, ‘Hear, heaven, how my face is sullied; mourn, earth, that my robe is torn; tremble, abyss, because my shoes are blackened!’

And she continued: ‘I lay hidden in the heart of the Father until the Son of Man, who was conceived and born in virginity, poured out his blood. With that same blood as his dowry, he made me his betrothed.

For my Bridegroom’s wounds remain fresh and open as long as the wounds of men’s sins continue to gape. And Christ’s wounds remain open because of the sins of priests. They tear my robe, since they are violators of the Law, the Gospel and their own priesthood; they darken my cloak by neglecting, in every way, the precepts which they are meant to uphold; my shoes too are blackened, since priests do not keep to the straight paths of justice, which are hard and rugged, or set good examples to those beneath them. Nevertheless, in some of them I find the splendour of truth.’

And I heard a voice from heaven which said: ‘This image represents the Church. For this reason, O you who see all this and who listen to the word of lament, proclaim it to the priests who are destined to offer guidance and instruction to God’s people and to whom, as to the apostles, it was said: go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation’ (Mk 16:15)” (Letter to Werner von Kirchheim and his Priestly Community: PL 197, 269ff.).

In the vision of Saint Hildegard, the face of the Church is stained with dust, and this is how we have seen it. Her garment is torn – by the sins of priests. The way she saw and expressed it is the way we have experienced it this year. We must accept this humiliation as an exhortation to truth and a call to renewal. Only the truth saves. We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustice that has occurred. We must ask ourselves what was wrong in our proclamation, in our whole way of living the Christian life, to allow such a thing to happen. We must discover a new resoluteness in faith and in doing good. We must be capable of doing penance. We must be determined to make every possible effort in priestly formation to prevent anything of the kind from happening again. This is also the moment to offer heartfelt thanks to all those who work to help victims and to restore their trust in the Church, their capacity to believe her message. In my meetings with victims of this sin, I have also always found people who, with great dedication, stand alongside those who suffer and have been damaged. This is also the occasion to thank the many good priests who act as channels of the Lord’s goodness in humility and fidelity and, amid the devastations, bear witness to the unforfeited beauty of the priesthood.

We are well aware of the particular gravity of this sin committed by priests and of our corresponding responsibility. But neither can we remain silent regarding the context of these times in which these events have come to light. There is a market in child pornography that seems in some way to be considered more and more normal by society. The psychological destruction of children, in which human persons are reduced to articles of merchandise, is a terrifying sign of the times. From Bishops of developing countries I hear again and again how sexual tourism threatens an entire generation and damages its freedom and its human dignity. The Book of Revelation includes among the great sins of Babylon – the symbol of the world’s great irreligious cities – the fact that it trades with bodies and souls and treats them as commodities (cf. Rev 18:13). In this context, the problem of drugs also rears its head, and with increasing force extends its octopus tentacles around the entire world – an eloquent expression of the tyranny of mammon which perverts mankind. No pleasure is ever enough, and the excess of deceiving intoxication becomes a violence that tears whole regions apart – and all this in the name of a fatal misunderstanding of freedom which actually undermines man’s freedom and ultimately destroys it.

In order to resist these forces, we must turn our attention to their ideological foundations. In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorized as something fully in conformity with man and even with children. This, however, was part of a fundamental perversion of the concept of ethos. It was maintained – even within the realm of Catholic theology – that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a “better than” and a “worse than”. Nothing is good or bad in itself. Everything depends on the circumstances and on the end in view. Anything can be good or also bad, depending upon purposes and circumstances. Morality is replaced by a calculus of consequences, and in the process it ceases to exist. The effects of such theories are evident today. Against them, Pope John Paul II, in his 1993 Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, indicated with prophetic force in the great rational tradition of Christian ethos the essential and permanent foundations of moral action. Today, attention must be focussed anew on this text as a path in the formation of conscience. It is our responsibility to make these criteria audible and intelligible once more for people today as paths of true humanity, in the context of our paramount concern for mankind.

As my second point, I should like to say a word about the Synod of the Churches of the Middle East. This began with my journey to Cyprus, where I was able to consign the Instrumentum Laboris of the Synod to the Bishops of those countries who were assembled there. The hospitality of the Orthodox Church was unforgettable, and we experienced it with great gratitude. Even if full communion is not yet granted to us, we have nevertheless established with joy that the basic form of the ancient Church unites us profoundly with one another: the sacramental office of Bishops as the bearer of apostolic tradition, the reading of Scripture according to the hermeneutic of the Regula fidei, the understanding of Scripture in its manifold unity centred on Christ, developed under divine inspiration, and finally, our faith in the central place of the Eucharist in the Church’s life. Thus we experienced a living encounter with the riches of the rites of the ancient Church that are also found within the Catholic Church. We celebrated the liturgy with Maronites and with Melchites, we celebrated in the Latin rite, we experienced moments of ecumenical prayer with the Orthodox, and we witnessed impressive manifestations of the rich Christian culture of the Christian East. But we also saw the problem of the divided country. The wrongs and the deep wounds of the past were all too evident, but so too was the desire for the peace and communion that had existed before. Everyone knows that violence does not bring progress – indeed, it gave rise to the present situation. Only in a spirit of compromise and mutual understanding can unity be re-established. To prepare the people for this attitude of peace is an essential task of pastoral ministry.

During the Synod itself, our gaze was extended over the whole of the Middle East, where the followers of different religions – as well as a variety of traditions and distinct rites – live together. As far as Christians are concerned, there are Pre-Chalcedonian as well as Chalcedonian churches; there are churches in communion with Rome and others that are outside that communion; in both cases, multiple rites exist alongside one another. In the turmoil of recent years, the tradition of peaceful coexistence has been shattered and tensions and divisions have grown, with the result that we witness with increasing alarm acts of violence in which there is no longer any respect for what the other holds sacred, in which on the contrary the most elementary rules of humanity collapse. In the present situation, Christians are the most oppressed and tormented minority. For centuries they lived peacefully together with their Jewish and Muslim neighbours. During the Synod we listened to wise words from the Counsellor of the Mufti of the Republic of Lebanon against acts of violence targeting Christians. He said: when Christians are wounded, we ourselves are wounded. Unfortunately, though, this and similar voices of reason, for which we are profoundly grateful, are too weak. Here too we come up against an unholy alliance between greed for profit and ideological blindness. On the basis of the spirit of faith and its rationality, the Synod developed a grand concept of dialogue, forgiveness and mutual acceptance, a concept that we now want to proclaim to the world. The human being is one, and humanity is one. Whatever damage is done to another in any one place, ends up by damaging everyone. Thus the words and ideas of the Synod must be a clarion call, addressed to all people with political or religious responsibility, to put a stop to Christianophobia; to rise up in defence of refugees and all who are suffering, and to revitalize the spirit of reconciliation. In the final analysis, healing can only come from deep faith in God’s reconciling love. Strengthening this faith, nourishing it and causing it to shine forth is the Church’s principal task at this hour.

I would willingly speak in some detail of my unforgettable journey to the United Kingdom, but I will limit myself to two points that are connected with the theme of the responsibility of Christians at this time and with the Church’s task to proclaim the Gospel. My thoughts go first of all to the encounter with the world of culture in Westminster Hall, an encounter in which awareness of shared responsibility at this moment in history created great attention which, in the final analysis, was directed to the question of truth and faith itself. It was evident to all that the Church has to make her own contribution to this debate. Alexis de Tocqueville, in his day, observed that democracy in America had become possible and had worked because there existed a fundamental moral consensus which, transcending individual denominations, united everyone. Only if there is such a consensus on the essentials can constitutions and law function. This fundamental consensus derived from the Christian heritage is at risk wherever its place, the place of moral reasoning, is taken by the purely instrumental rationality of which I spoke earlier. In reality, this makes reason blind to what is essential. To resist this eclipse of reason and to preserve its capacity for seeing the essential, for seeing God and man, for seeing what is good and what is true, is the common interest that must unite all people of good will. The very future of the world is at stake.

Finally I should like to recall once more the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman. Why was he beatified? What does he have to say to us? Many responses could be given to these questions, which were explored in the context of the beatification. I would like to highlight just two aspects which belong together and which, in the final analysis, express the same thing. The first is that we must learn from Newman’s three conversions, because they were steps along a spiritual path that concerns us all. Here I would like to emphasize just the first conversion: to faith in the living God. Until that moment, Newman thought like the average men of his time and indeed like the average men of today, who do not simply exclude the existence of God, but consider it as something uncertain, something with no essential role to play in their lives. What appeared genuinely real to him, as to the men of his and our day, is the empirical, matter that can be grasped. This is the “reality” according to which one finds one’s bearings. The “real” is what can be grasped, it is the things that can be calculated and taken in one’s hand. In his conversion, Newman recognized that it is exactly the other way round: that God and the soul, man’s spiritual identity, constitute what is genuinely real, what counts. These are much more real than objects that can be grasped. This conversion was a Copernican revolution. What had previously seemed unreal and secondary was now revealed to be the genuinely decisive element. Where such a conversion takes place, it is not just a person’s theory that changes: the fundamental shape of life changes. We are all in constant need of such conversion: then we are on the right path.

The driving force that impelled Newman along the path of conversion was conscience. But what does this mean? In modern thinking, the word “conscience” signifies that for moral and religious questions, it is the subjective dimension, the individual, that constitutes the final authority for decision. The world is divided into the realms of the objective and the subjective. To the objective realm belong things that can be calculated and verified by experiment. Religion and morals fall outside the scope of these methods and are therefore considered to lie within the subjective realm. Here, it is said, there are in the final analysis no objective criteria. The ultimate instance that can decide here is therefore the subject alone, and precisely this is what the word “conscience” expresses: in this realm only the individual, with his intuitions and experiences, can decide. Newman’s understanding of conscience is diametrically opposed to this. For him, “conscience” means man’s capacity for truth: the capacity to recognize precisely in the decision-making areas of his life – religion and morals – a truth, the truth. At the same time, conscience – man’s capacity to recognize truth – thereby imposes on him the obligation to set out along the path towards truth, to seek it and to submit to it wherever he finds it. Conscience is both capacity for truth and obedience to the truth which manifests itself to anyone who seeks it with an open heart. The path of Newman’s conversions is a path of conscience – not a path of self-asserting subjectivity but, on the contrary, a path of obedience to the truth that was gradually opening up to him. His third conversion, to Catholicism, required him to give up almost everything that was dear and precious to him: possessions, profession, academic rank, family ties and many friends. The sacrifice demanded of him by obedience to the truth, by his conscience, went further still. Newman had always been aware of having a mission for England. But in the Catholic theology of his time, his voice could hardly make itself heard. It was too foreign in the context of the prevailing form of theological thought and devotion. In January 1863 he wrote in his diary these distressing words: “As a Protestant, I felt my religion dreary, but not my life – but, as a Catholic, my life dreary, not my religion”. He had not yet arrived at the hour when he would be an influential figure. In the humility and darkness of obedience, he had to wait until his message was taken up and understood. In support of the claim that Newman’s concept of conscience matched the modern subjective understanding, people often quote a letter in which he said – should he have to propose a toast – that he would drink first to conscience and then to the Pope. But in this statement, “conscience” does not signify the ultimately binding quality of subjective intuition. It is an expression of the accessibility and the binding force of truth: on this its primacy is based. The second toast can be dedicated to the Pope because it is his task to demand obedience to the truth.

I must refrain from speaking of my remarkable journeys to Malta, Portugal and Spain. In these it once again became evident that the faith is not a thing of the past, but an encounter with the God who lives and acts now. He challenges us and he opposes our indolence, but precisely in this way he opens the path towards true joy.

Excita, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni.

We set out from this plea for the presence of God’s power in our time and from the experience of his apparent absence. If we keep our eyes open as we look back over the year that is coming to an end, we can see clearly that God’s power and goodness are also present today in many different ways. So we all have reason to thank him. Along with thanks to the Lord I renew my thanks to all my co-workers. May God grant to all of us a holy Christmas and may he accompany us with his blessings in the coming year.

I entrust these prayerful sentiments to the intercession of the Holy Virgin, Mother of the Redeemer, and I impart to all of you and to the great family of the Roman Curia a heartfelt Apostolic Blessing. Happy Christmas!

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A friend of mine took me to see Gatz the other night – a theatrical reading (…verbatim!) of The Great Gatsby, a novel many of us probably read in high school. Having by chance just reread the book a couple of weeks ago, I was delighted at the coincidence of the invitation. So, even though I still find Fitzgerald’s nihilistic sangfroid morally distressing , it’s hard for me not to be enticed by the beauty of his writing.

At the play, however, I found that these major dynamics of moral meaninglessness and lyrical beauty were largely absent from the eight-hour experience.

Most of the recitation came from the lips of one man, whose feat of memorization (like that of the audience’s endurance) is nothing less than a marvel. He arrives at work one day to find the computer broken, and so, picking up a random book, begins to read aloud. Various scenarios and dialogues are performed by other, otherwise office workers. Some of the acting, (especially that of the woman playing Jordan Baker), is unfortunately quite weak. But the effect produced is something of a parallel vision, largely slapstick, as the words and scenarios are dramatically expropriated from the text to engage the audience.

This work of textual expropriation is brilliant in dramatic conception and execution. To read aloud The Great Gatsby word-for-word would exasperate just about any audience. So, the creation of parallel scenarios through new emphases and exaggerated gestures ironically helps to keep the audience engaged through distraction.

However, this expropriation is also inescapably unfaithful to the original work. It cannot but make the play, Gatz, another thing than The Great Gatsby, which is why it’s entirely appropriate to have a different title, (something more like an astounded exclamation: “E-gatz!”) What results is that the enervating side of the inane is flipped over into the mere stupid (save, I grant, for the end). For example, after Daisy Buchanan reconnects with her former love, Jay Gatsby (indeed, formerly, Jay Gatz), she beholds the material riches of the onetime poor man. Among other things, he shows her his wardrobe and all the fine clothes he now possesses.

He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher — shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, and monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.

“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such — such beautiful shirts before.”

Now, this passage is not without its wry humor, but it’s also not without a grander perspective about the time period that Fitzgerald’s describing, tragically full of sensuality and despondence. It also artfully conveys the sadness that Daisy, in marrying Tom Buchanan, did not marry for love but for material wealth and status. Daisy is not a serious or even very likeable character. But despite her smallness of mind, and even despite Fitzgerald’s forlornness over the inexorable ebb of human hopes, Daisy’s experience can translate into something much deeper for the reader. In being exclaimed by one of Gatz’s readers, however, she just sounds stupid and pathetic.

***

In our postmodern world, which prospers playful reconstruction and comedic stupidity in a last stab against the ennui of modern relativism, textual honesty is an important value to protect. The creation and preservation of literature is one of the distinguishing marks of civilization, intelligently and aesthetically articulating cultural memories and intuitions so as to become objective (… with the new danger of becoming objectified). Good words lead to great books. Projects of cultural deconstruction, then, seek to divest authorities of their hold upon privileged texts.

Now, in the case of Gatz, I do not suggest there was any motive at work other than aesthetic. But with the Christmas season soon upon us, there is a different case of the textual expropriation I’m trying to describe that is as insidious as it is barbaric.

The American Humanist Association has another trite but well-monied initiative against traditional religion underway. Their own press release states that they are firing salvos “critical of religious scripture” — (“critical,” here, failing to successfully belie the humanists’ baldly uncritical belligerence). The advertisements pick verses from the West’s three monotheistic religions’ sacred texts, presenting putatively enlightened tenets of humanism in parallel.

Now, I won’t comment on what traditional Jewish or Muslim responses to this matter would be, caught up as it is with the nature of Revelation, scriptural inspiration, and religious instruction. But for the Catholic, (and frankly, in a way not for the protestant), there is no “sacred book” as such apart from the Church that preaches and teaches what it says regarding salvation. Regardless, the intent behind the atheists’ work is to subvert scriptural authority, largely through the commercial work of arousing disgust and repulsion. Consider:

From a purely literary standpoint, this is entirely unfair to the context of Jesus’ words. At the very least, it would be self-contradictory for Jesus to ask us to hate our own lives, which our religion teaches us to save, if we were to take him… I don’t say literally, but stupidly. (One can almost imagine a Monty Python dramatization in the background.) And the idea that this massive campaign is only directed against fundamentalist Christians (say) is patently false, not least because the King James Version is not cited in the ads. At any rate, the only hateful ones here are the so-called “humanists.” How “kind” is it to attack religions during their most holy times of year?

Saint Paul tells us that faith comes by hearing (Rom 10.17); and our Lord tells us that no one comes to the faith unless drawn by God Himself (cf. John 6.44). In other words, to hold the Bible as the scriptural witness to supernatural faith depends on receiving the preaching of Christ’s Apostles and the invitation of God Himself in the heart. Both of these are universally ordered: God wills the salvation of all men (1 Tim 2.4); and Christ commanded his disciples to preach the Gospel to all (Mk 16.15). In addition to the external grace of the Church’s preaching and the internal grace of God’s hidden operations, though, there is needed the personal graciousness to give it all a chance. But the humanists’ hate would contravene all of this.

***

This postmodern antagonism, which intentionally subverts texts in order to establish an alternate objectivity, is the historical fallout from a modern trend of relativism. In a world that became much more aware of other cultures and contexts, and did so from a worldview that did not admit that transcendent agency or causality was naturally discernible, the relativism that seems to be cultured intelligence is simply the other side of adolescent despair, which, if not healed—and I do mean healed in the biblical sense—leads to barbaric destructiveness.

At the New York Public Library, there is a genuinely beautiful exhibit on display that gives cultural testimony to the sacred scriptures of the world’s three great monotheistic religions: Three Faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In no way do I want the voice of a callow, discontented cleric to obscure the wonder of such an exhibit. Truly. However, in view of the above observations about textual expropriation and atheistic antagonism, the Catholic is called in these dark days to be aware. We cannot rest content with the following description:

Over the millennia, Jews, Christians, and Muslims have each created a rich body of founding texts and interpretive underpinnings for their respective faiths, each of which derives from the teachings of Abraham.

Now, I don’t expect the anthropological perspective to judge otherwise. However, if it were truly astute, it would further acknowledge that, at least according to the traditional theologies of these religions, monotheism was not “an innovation of the patriarch Abraham.” At any rate, such a pronouncement is emblematic of modern relativism, which tends to see that which is culturally distinct (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) as ideologically commensurable or even tantamount to each other, and reducible to a particular human genius.

But the doorway is thereby opened to the postmodern trend to subvert what it finds distasteful. For, if religion is given a simply mundane perspective, such that we ourselves “created… [the] interpretive underpinnings” of our faith, we can–nay, must!–un-create them as we see fit.

The interpretive underpinning of our sacred book, the Bible, is ultimately its author, God. To be sure, this is a fantastic claim to the unbeliever. But if these are our terms, we should be criticized accordingly. As our Catechism teaches, we are not a religion of the book but a religion of the word, the living word of God (see CCC 108). The “interpretive underpinning” of the entire Bible is Jesus Christ. And the only way to understand the meaning of the scriptures, as the disciples discovered on the way to Emmaus before they ran back to the Apostles in Jerusalem, is if the incarnate Word Himself breaks it open. The question, then, is where do we encounter both the Spirit and Letter of Christ so as to see his signs and hear his words?

The Church, with her sacraments and doctrine.

The best way for someone to attack what Christians believe—that is, Catholic Christians—the best way for someone to attack what we scripturally hold as true, then, would be to vet the way in which the pope, bishops, priests, and their collaborators use the Bible. To be sure, the media is not beyond taking papal words out of context, as we’ve been reminded yet again. But they would face an impossible task were they to take authoritative speeches and documents and their uses of Scripture as fodder for showing our intolerance.

***

A couple of weeks ago, our Holy Father released a post-synodal exhortation, Verbum Domini, on The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church. Verbum Domini is about promoting the significance of the Word of God in our lives, promoting “a rediscovery of God’s word in the life of the Church as well as a wellspring of constant renewal” (n. 1). Part of that renewal involves testifying to the world the riches of our Scripture (see especially Part III, Verbum Mundo). Therefore, in light of the adversaries cited above, and the methodology they would best adopt, I cite the following (and emphasize in bold):

The “dark” passages of the Bible

42. In discussing the relationship between the Old and the New Testaments, the Synod also considered those passages in the Bible which, due to the violence and immorality they occasionally contain, prove obscure and difficult. Here it must be remembered first and foremost that biblical revelation is deeply rooted in history. God’s plan is manifested progressively and it is accomplished slowly, in successive stages and despite human resistance. God chose a people and patiently worked to guide and educate them. Revelation is suited to the cultural and moral level of distant times and thus describes facts and customs, such as cheating and trickery, and acts of violence and massacre, without explicitly denouncing the immorality of such things. This can be explained by the historical context, yet it can cause the modern reader to be taken aback, especially if he or she fails to take account of the many “dark” deeds carried out down the centuries, and also in our own day. In the Old Testament, the preaching of the prophets vigorously challenged every kind of injustice and violence, whether collective or individual, and thus became God’s way of training his people in preparation for the Gospel. So it would be a mistake to neglect those passages of Scripture that strike us as problematic. Rather, we should be aware that the correct interpretation of these passages requires a degree of expertise, acquired through a training that interprets the texts in their historical-literary context and within the Christian perspective which has as its ultimate hermeneutical key “the Gospel and the new commandment of Jesus Christ brought about in the paschal mystery.”

Richard Dawkins asserts, in telling us “What humanists think,” that “There’s all the difference in the world between a belief that one is prepared to defend by quoting evidence and logic and a belief that is supported by nothing more than tradition, authority, or revelation.” This declaration, (which itself provides no evidence or logic for why it is the better position), is cast against a passage from Proverbs, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding” (3.5, NIV). It seems to me that, on his own terms as quoted from the exhortation, our chief shepherd is quite interested in evidence and logic. Moreover, he does not think that scriptural expertise need annihilate the mystery of trusting in the Lord with all one’s heart. Rather, we are called to understand (and therefore lovingly protect and intelligently proclaim) the mystery we believe.

Above all, then, we must live in holy conversation with the Word of God, so that we might know the ever living God and be able to speak of Him. And this is just the time for that preparation. Just as we prepare for Christ’s coming, so too do we ready ourselves to bear him forth into the world. Indeed, it is by the whole Church’s manifestation of that Word’s truth and love that the Bible continues to bear its graceful voice, echoing throughout history.

As our Holy Father says, “we can deepen our relationship with the word of God only within the ‘we’ of the Church, in mutual listening and acceptance.” Let us read that word by listening to God’s voice, such that we might truly be sent and bear His Good News to all the world.

Lo, He comes.

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[By now, you've probably heard some stories about the Pope commenting on the use of condoms as possibly acceptable. Hopefully, the intelligent Catholic knows that he cannot depend on anything but authoritative teachers of the faith to instruct him in the faith. At any rate, the most helpful thing is to read the pope's own words, in the context of a basic teaching that he in no way undermines: The ordinary, human context for sexual intercourse (whether Christian or not) is marital - i.e., the situation between one man and one woman who have publicly manifested their freely rendered commitment to bind themselves to each other for life, for the sake of the furtherance of life and the life-giving flourishing of their friendship.

Here are the pope's own responses to two questions, excerpted from the interview to be released for publication tomorrow (Light of the World, Ignatius). The most important thing to recognize is that the pope is making a judgment about cultural understanding and practice. He entirely refrains from saying that something that might introduce an improvement in secular cultural values and understanding would be morally good in itself. He also refrains from giving positive encouragement in this regard. He recognizes that sexual meaning in secularity is so thoroughly frustrated that it needs to be directed toward humanization and moralization:]

Peter Seewald: On the occasion of your trip to Africa in March 2009, the Vatican’s policy on Aids once again became the target of media criticism. Twenty-five percent of all Aids victims around the world today are treated in Catholic facilities. In some countries, such as Lesotho, for example, the statistic is 40 percent. In Africa you stated that the Church’s traditional teaching has proven to be the only sure way to stop the spread of HIV. Critics, including critics from the Church’s own ranks, object that it is madness to forbid a high-risk population to use condoms.

Pope Benedict: The media coverage completely ignored the rest of the trip to Africa on account of a single statement. Someone had asked me why the Catholic Church adopts an unrealistic and ineffective position on Aids. At that point, I really felt that I was being provoked, because the Church does more than anyone else. And I stand by that claim.

Because she is the only institution that assists people up close and concretely, with prevention, education, help, counsel, and accompaniment. And because she is second to none in treating so many Aids victims, especially children with Aids.

I had the chance to visit one of these wards and to speak with the patients. That was the real answer: The Church does more than anyone else, because she does not speak from the tribunal of the newspapers, but helps her brothers and sisters where they are actually suffering.

In my remarks I was not making a general statement about the condom issue, but merely said, and this is what caused such great offense, that we cannot solve the problem by distributing condoms. Much more needs to be done. We must stand close to the people, we must guide and help them; and we must do this both before and after they contract the disease.

As a matter of fact, you know, people can get condoms when they want them anyway. But this just goes to show that condoms alone do not resolve the question itself. More needs to happen. Meanwhile, the secular realm itself has developed the so-called ABC Theory: Abstinence-Be Faithful-Condom, where the condom is understood only as a last resort, when the other two points fail to work.

This means that the sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalization of sexuality, which, after all, is precisely the dangerous source of the attitude of no longer seeing sexuality as the expression of love, but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves. This is why the fight against the banalization of sexuality is also a part of the struggle to ensure that sexuality is treated as a positive value and to enable it to have a positive effect on the whole of man’s being.

There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection.

That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.

Peter Seewald: Are you saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?

Pope Benedict: She of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality.

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From the Church’s General Directory for Catechesis (1997):
“26. There is a certain number of baptized Christians who, desiring to promote dialogue with various cultures and other religious confessions, or on account of a certain reticence on their part to live in contemporary society as believers, fail to give explicit and courageous witness in the their lives to the faith of Jesus Christ. These concrete situations of the Christian faith call urgently on the sower to develop a new evangelization, especially in those Churches of long-standing Christian tradition where secularism has made greater inroads.”

And now, from Pope St. Pius X’s encyclical in honor of St. Charles Borromeo, Editae Saepe (1910):

17. The reformers that Borromeo opposed … tried to reform faith and discipline according to their own whims. Venerable Brethren, it is no better understood by those whom We must withstand today. These moderns, forever prattling about culture and civilization, are undermining the Church’s doctrine, laws, and practices. They are not concerned very much about culture and civilization. By using such high-sounding words they think they can conceal the wickedness of their schemes.

29. … The sincere and zealous reformer will, like Charles, avoid extremes and never overstep the bounds of true reform. He will always be united in the closest bonds with the Church and Christ, her Head. There he will find not only strength for his interior life but also the directives he needs in order to carry out his work of healing human society. The function of this divine mission, which has from time immemorial been handed down to the ambassadors of Christ, is to “make disciples of all nations” both the things they are to believe as well as the things they are to do since Christ Himself said, “Observe all that I have commanded you.”[46] He is “the way, and the truth, and the life,”[47] coming into the world that man “may have life, and have it more abundantly.”[48] The fulfillment of these duties, however, far surpasses man’s natural powers. The Church alone possesses together with her Magisterium the power of governing and sanctifying human society. Through her ministers and servants (each in his own station and office), she confers on mankind suitable and necessary means of salvation.

True reformers understand this very clearly. They do not kill the blossom in saving the root. That is to say, they do not divorce faith from holiness. They rather cultivate both of them, enkindleing them with the fire of charity, “which is the bond of perfection.”[49] In obedience to the Apostle, they “keep the deposit.”[50] They neither obscure nor dim its light before the nations, but spread far and wide the most saving waters of truth and life welling up from that spring. They combine theory and practice. By the former they are prepared to withstand the “masquerading of error” and by the latter they apply the commandments to moral activity. In such a way they employ all the suitable and necessary means for attaining the end, namely, the wiping out of sin and the perfecting “the saints for a work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.”[51] This is the purpose of every kind of instruction, government, and munificence. In a word, this is the ultimate purpose of every discipline and action of the Church. When the true son of the church sets out to reform himself and others, he fixes his eyes and heart on matters of faith and morals. On just such matters Borromeo based his reformation of ecclesiastical discipline. Thus he often referred to them in his writings, as, for example, when he says, “Following the ancient custom of the holy Fathers and sacred Councils, especially the ecumenical Synod of Trent, we have decreed many regulations on these very matters in our preceding provincial Councils.”[52] In the same way, when providing for the suppression of public scandals, he declares that he is following “both the law and sacred sanctions of the sacred canons, and especially the decrees of the Council of Trent.”[53]

31. Moreover, he seconded every one of [the conciliar] acts with the practical means needed to realize the end in view, namely, the real reform of sacred discipline. In this respect also he proved that in no wise he resembled those false reformers who concealed their obstinate disobedience under the cloak of zeal. He began “the judgment…with the household of God.”[55] He first of all restored discipline among the clergy by making them conform to certain definite laws. With this same end in view he built seminaries, founded a congregation of priests known as the Oblates, unified both the ancient and modern religious families, and convoked Councils. By these and other provisions he assured and developed the work of reform. Then he immediately set a vigorous hand to the work of reforming the morals of the people. He considered the words spoken to the Prophet as addressed to himself; “Lo, I have set thee this day…to root up and to pull down, and to waste and to destroy, and to build and to plant.”[56] Good shepherd that he was, he personally set out on wearisome visitation of the churches of the province. Like the Divine Master “he went about doing good and healing.” He spared no efforts in suppressing and uprooting the abuses he met everywhere either because of ignorance or neglect of the laws. He checked the rampant perversion of ideas and corruption of morals by founding schools for the children and colleges for youth. After seeing their early beginnings in Rome, he promoted the Marian societies. He founded orphanages for the fatherless, shelters for girls in danger, widows, mendicants, and men and women made destitute by sickness or old age. He opened institutions to protect the poor against tyrannical masters, usurers, and the enslavement of children. He accomplished all these things by completely ignoring the methods of those who think human society can be restored only by utter destruction, revolution, and noisy slogans. Such persons have forgotten the divine words: “The Lord is not in the earthquake.”[57]

42. The Catholics of our days, together with their leaders, the Bishops, will deserve the same praise and gratitude as Charles as long as they are faithful to their duties of good citizenship. They must be as faithful in their loyalty and respect to “wicked rulers” when their commands are just, as they are adamant in resisting their commands when unjust. They must remain as far from the impious rebellion of those who advocate sedition and revolt as they are from the subservience of those who accept as sacred the obviously wicked laws of perverse men. These last mentioned wicked men uproot everything in the name of a deceitful liberty, and then oppress their subjects with the most abject tyranny.

43. This is precisely what is happening today in the sight of the whole world and in the broad light of modern civilization. Especially is this the case in some countries where “the powers of darkness” seem to have made their headquarters. This domineering tyranny has suppressed all the rights of the Church’s children. These rulers’ hearts have been closed to all feelings of generosity, courtesy, and faith which their ancestors, who gloried in the name of Christians, manifested for so long a time. It is obvious that everything quickly lapses back into the ancient barbarism of license whenever God and the Church are hated. It would be more correct to say that everything falls under that most cruel yoke from which only the family of Christ and the education it introduced has freed us. Borromeo expressed the same thought in the following words: “It is a certain, well- established fact that no other crime so seriously offends God and provokes His greatest wrath as the vice of heresy. Nothing contributes more to the down fall of provinces and kingdoms than this frightful pest.”[81] Although the enemies of the Church completely disagree among themselves in thought and action (which is a sure indication of error), they are nevertheless united in their obstinate attacks against truth and justice. Since the Church is the guardian and defender of both these virtues, they close their ranks in a unified attack against her. Of course, they loudly proclaim (as is the custom) their impartiality and firmly maintain they are only promoting the cause of peace. In reality, however, their soft words and avowed intentions are only the traps they are laying, thus adding insult to injury, treason to violence. From this it should be evident that a new kind of warfare is now being waged against Christianity. Without a doubt it is far more dangerous than those former conflicts which crowned Borromeo with such glory.

44. His example and teaching will do much to help us wage a valiant battle on behalf of the noble cause which will save the individual and society, faith, religion, and the inviolability of public order. Our combat, it is true, will be spurred on by bitter necessity. At the same time, however, we will be encouraged by the hope that the omnipotent God will hasten the victory for the sake of those who wage so glorious a contest. This hope increases through the fruitfulness of the work of Saint Charles even down to our own times. His work humbles the proud and strengthens us in the holy resolve to restore all things in Christ.

Finally, from our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI’s motu proprio, Ubicumque et semper (2010):

In our own time, [evangelization] has been particularly challenged by an abandonment of the faith—a phenomenon progressively more manifest in societies and cultures which for centuries seemed to be permeated by the Gospel. The social changes we have witnessed in recent decades have a long and complex history, and they have profoundly altered our way of looking at the world. We need only think of the many advances in science and technology, the expanding possibilities with regard to life and individual freedom, the profound changes in the economic sphere, and the mixing of races and cultures caused by global-scale migration and an increasing interdependence of peoples. All of this has not been without consequences on the religious dimension of human life as well. If on the one hand humanity has derived undeniable benefits from these changes, and the Church has drawn from them further incentives for bearing witness to the hope that is within her (cf. 1 Pt 3:15), on the other hand there has been a troubling loss of the sense of the sacred, which has even called into question foundations once deemed unshakable such as faith in a provident creator God, the revelation of Jesus Christ as the one Saviour, and a common understanding of basic human experiences: i.e., birth, death, life in a family, and reference to a natural moral law.

Even though some consider these things a kind of liberation, there soon follows an awareness that an interior desert results whenever the human being, wishing to be the sole architect of his nature and destiny, finds himself deprived of that which is the very foundation of all things.

A future post will deal with the affirming dynamics of the new evangelization, as envisioned by the post conciliar (Vatican II) Magisterium.

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In, “Further Adrift: The American Church’s Crisis of Attrition” (Commonweal, 22 October 2010), Peter Steinfels is inspired by a bona fide personal commitment to the life of “the church” (sic) and “Catholicism.” Due to this very commitment, the established author is gravely concerned about the insufficiently recognized crisis of depopulation afflicting the American Church. Ultimately, he would like to “galvanize and multiply the initiatives” of those who have the most power in the Church but have not acknowledged the disaster upon us–the episcopal hierarchy.

Steinfels accurately points out that our awareness of the crisis as such has been obscured by “sampling error,” which, for example, tends to present the hordes at World Youth Days as representative of young Catholics. (Personally, I think they can be taken as iconic even if not representative.) He also laments episcopal oversight (in both senses), which is insufficiently attuned to the problem as well as engendering of it. The Latino question and America’s highly politicized terms of conversation are also duly addressed.

But one of the problems with culture is that its researcher is necessarily part of that which he is claiming to study. (This vanishing point is part of the reason that the modern critique of perspectives bleeds into the postmodern exhaustion with truth.)

Steinfels nowhere considers that it could be precisely his brand of understanding of what constitutes the life of faith that has also contributed to the loss of religious significance for Catholics. That is, nowhere does he consider the possibility that he is not only a material but somehow formal participant in the corruption, (aside from making a general remark about parental “shortcomings”).

This sense of self-conviction, I believe, must be an essential element of the “new evangelization” (a phrase that is conspicuously absent from the article). Each of us must acknowledge that “I too am part of the de-Christianized phenomenon. I have—however unwittingly—drunk the Kool Aid. And I need supernatural rejuvenation… because we do.” After all, Steinfels would certainly (and rightly) welcome this admonition’s direction to those who reduce their understanding of Christian orthodoxy to affiliation with the GOP or Tea Party movements; But what about those, who, more abstractly, reduce the truth of Christian identity to the establishment of social consensus?

The problem with the otherwise informative and provocative article is that Steinfels reduces the whole problem to a social one. Of course, Steinfels is not a theologian; and he has only authored a four page article about a problem that he has recently addressed in a full-length book. But even so, he could have acknowledged that there are other major factors that have contributed to the crisis and that escape the very possibilities of sociological survey. And so, even though he avers that his data are “not just numbers,” the very terms with which he considers “our siblings, our cousins, nieces and nephews, our friends, neighbors, classmates, and students, our children and grandchildren, even in some cases our parents”—the very terms with which he considers them are numerical percentages and group trends. Hence, he pleads, “while our own firsthand impressions and diligent perusal of news sources are irreplaceable, we badly need surveys based on representative samples.”

To be fair, Steinfels does have rather concrete suggestions, but they too seem caught up with a vision of the Church as simply a social corporation, what theologians call a moral instead of a mystical union, since it is reduced to the programs to which we commit ourselves. He believes that because bishops “direct resources… oversee personnel… grant approval and signal change,” they possess the fundamental authority from which change can and must spring. But is this what the apostolic “authority” is reducible to? Perhaps so for The New York Times (and at best); but not for the person of faith. The theological significance of episcopal authority must be involved in any Christian discussion of their preeminent role in revitalizing the faith. And the very content of the faith and the way that it has been transmitted to the parents whose children are becoming “nones” and drifters with alarming insouciance and at a distressing rate must be considered.

For example, (and the sociologist will excuse my unrepresentative anecdote): I am an adult convert to the faith. At 21 years of age,  I enrolled myself in an RCIA program in upstate NY. What did my class consist of, which was taught by a woman of roughly Steinfels’ age? Scripture sharing: discussing our reflections on biblical passages, (with virtually no reference to morality). In other words, a rather diverse assemblage of converts and reverts to the Catholic faith were trained that membership in the Church is essentially what one makes of the community’s privileged text.

Well, if a Church that teaches papal allegiance, the uniqueness of Christ’s mediating work of salvation, the evil of contraception and in vitro fertilization, and whose members have committed some abominably disgusting crimes is ultimately all for the making, why not remake it or make it elsewhere?

The Church, however, is an hierarchically constituted body of members in Christ, without which the person could not be assured of his salvation, nor have access to the fullness of Christ’s personally willed means of working out our salvation. Hence, after the Consecration and Pater Noster, the priest says, “Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your Apostles I leave you peace, my peace I give you, look not on our sins but on the faith of your Church,” he is confessing that one does not have access to the orthodox faith apart from the teaching, sanctifying, and governing offices of the Apostles and their successors.

Above all, the Church is a gift, not a contract. Indeed, we must represent the truths of the faith anew and provide more “effective worship” (as Steinfels ambiguously puts it); we also need to recognize the amazingly immigrant face of the American Church and call on the personal resources of her members. We can certainly affirm that we need “a quantum leap in the quality of Sunday liturgies, including preaching; a massive, all-out mobilization of talent and treasure to catechize the young, bring adolescents into church life, and engage young adults in ongoing faith formation.” Yet, one wonders what more is being suggested in calling for “systematic assessments… [of] theologically more complex and controversial matters like expanding the pool of those eligible for ordination and revisiting some aspects of the church’s teaching on sexuality.”

The Church’s teachings are not in need of “assessment,” whatever that means. (We already know that so many Catholics don’t believe so much of the faith.) What we need is a renewed approach to handing on and experiencing the good of these truths to render them more communicable and appealing to those who have been culturally trained to be disgusted by their pretense.

One of the greatest challenges to the maintenance of Church membership is the rampantly errant belief that the Catholic faith is reducible to one among many options of religious aggregation. If Robert Bellarmine called the Church a societas perfecta, it was to say that God had invested it with His own divine grace and truth: in some irreducible way, the Church already possesses all that she could ever need to be what she is. I think this is one place to start, and it is a genuine continuation of the ecclesial emphasis of Vatican II. We need a renewed preaching on the nature of the Church,  its christological necessity for salvation, and the way in which nature and grace are distinct but mutually involved in her institutional structure and mystical pregnancy. (This is behind St. Vincent Ferrer’s lecture series on the Threefold Body of Christ.)

Until the misconception that “Catholicism” is simply another social organization is healed, we will continue to lament that our children are not baptizing their children, and we will think that doctrine and morality are really something like an open conversation guided by majority interests.

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I realize some reviews are intended more as digests. But the obstinacy against spiritual insight – which does not require so many more words to express – is upsetting to stomach.

The New Yorker‘s David Denby is usually no slouch, but his latest précis of the films, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger and Never Let Me Go is perfectly lame. I watched Woody Allen’s film the other night and read the book by Kazuo Ishiguro on which the latter is based a couple of years ago. Both are pregnant with great questions and are well crafted. But alluding to the former’s influences in Bergman, Chekov, and Balzac, or mentioning that the latter poses questions about human ensoulment, is simply not sufficient for a review in a magazine of any significance. (There’s a questionable hidden premise in there…)

Allen’s film and Ishiguro’s book – I’ll not comment on the latter’s film version, as I’ve not seen it – are great examples of worthwhile endeavors in modern art… and yes, even and precisely for the Christian to experience. Not because they’re delightful; and certainly not because they’re accordant with our graced sensibilities: But rather because they so artfully present the contrary. Both can be taken as deep meditations on the appearance and interpreted significance of love. As endeavors in what we can grossly call “modern art,” they’re good inasmuch as they pose problems that are existentially and speculatively worth thinking through. “Modern” as they are, their aesthetic value – somewhat by design – rests in how we see beauty.

Although a love comedy, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger is ultimately about death, and the delusory and desultory ways in which we go about dealing with it. (Perhaps this needn’t have been acknowledged in a review of a Woody Allen film; but it seems absolutely remote from Denby’s appreciation of this “perverse and fascinating” film.)

The movie’s title is spoken in harrumph by un romancier manqué to his loopy mother-in-law, Helena (perfectly acted by Gemma Jones). At the encouragement of her daughter, Helena has been visiting a fortune teller in order to deal better with the future, having been left by her husband of forty years. Both son-in-law (Josh Brolin) and daughter (Naomi Watts) know the prediction business is a sham. But whereas Sallie thinks it’s therapeutic, the medical student turned novelist thinks it’s absurd. So, when Helena announces the news that she is apparently to meet someone, (apposite the prediction that Roy’s next novel will not be accepted), Roy unwittingly utters in exasperation the movie’s only sure prediction, “Yeah, Yeah, You will meet a tall dark stranger…”

Death flirts about the entire film. Helena miscarried her only son. One of Roy’s friends suffers a fatal accident. A man experienced in the occult and its séances enters into things. And Sallie refuses, (in a remarkable if serendipitous connection to this theme of death on the part of Allen), to continue contracepting her lovemaking with Roy.

For Woody Allen, we’re all frustrated about death; not simply afraid but repressively neurotic about it. Now, anyone can be more or less Freudian in his diagnoses of anxiety and impetuousity. The question is, how to deal with it?

Well, if we’d simply realize that we can’t escape it in fact, we might be open to the psychotherapeutic acknowledgment that we can, apparently, do so in the mind. And if we were lighthearted enough to appreciate this, perhaps we wouldn’t be so nutty about our ultimate coping mechanism: romance.

Helena’s former husband, Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) was desperate both to convince himself that he had strong genes ordained for longevity, and for his wife to conceive a son for posterity. But Helena would not let him “delude himself” in either regard, however, so he had to leave… and marry a hooker.

Roy will fall for a young neighbor in a red dress, who is herself otherwise engaged. Alfie and Helena’s daughter, Sallie (Naomi Watts) has a bemusing attraction to her boss at the art gallery, played by Antonio Banderas. There’s a clear connection between Roy’s unfulfilled novel and Alfie’s lack of a son… and the twisted and self-defeating ways each goes about securing it.

With all these tumultuous relationships, the movie is full of all-out argument – overdoing it in this respect. (Allen is not Mamet.) Woody Allen’s point is that the only thing that brings a bit of complacent peace, (and even that, but for a little while), is our romantic affairs. For Allen, all loving endeavors are just that, affairs, happenings… subject to the same law of moral confusion and natural corruption that rules our race; (perhaps something like the logic of leaving your wife to marry your adopted Asian daughter.) Hence, the film is bookended by the narrator in (near) quotation of Shakespeare, that “Life was full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

(At least the director implicitly confesses that the teller of the “tale” is “an idiot.”)

So, life is meaningless; ergo, our lives of love are meaningless. However, when we are “in love,” that’s all that matters, and this is the best kind of spirituality or self-help in preparing for the ultimate breakup between being-here and nothingness.

Our souls’ marriages with our bodies are all eventually cuckolded by death. And yet, when we’re in love… who cares about anything else but being in love?

Helena eventually connects with a perfectly unattractive man who runs an occult bookshop, “pious in a new agey sort of way.” But more important is her own ersatz faith, recently revealed by the clairvoyante: the belief that we live many times, that we are re-incarnated. Allen exploits Helena’s situation to dumbfound his audience doubly. When she becomes romantically renewed, she positively entertains the notion that she is someone else from the past (from Victorian England, or perhaps, for her new lover, even Joan of Arc or Cleopatra).

In other words, the satisfaction of romance is a twofold illusion – about who we are and about where we’re going, about our identity and destiny. All of the breakups and unfaithful attractions are rooted in the characters’ misconceptions about themselves and their purpose. So, romance gives us a cipher for ourselves in terms of some attraction to the other. Secondly, however, this is just the grand projection of an ego’s desire to escape and even outlive death.

Both the self and its loves “signify nothing.”

The movie is genuinely funny, and ought’nt leave the person of faith depressed. But in our post-modern age, which Woody Allen well represents, comedy is not about the triumph of the valiant human spirit, able to conquer death; or about the power of human love to conquer hatreds. Our heritage no longer sings of the battles and marriages of dramatic heroes. Rather, we incessantly conjure up a multitude of vignettes (situational comedies) portraying our mundane, muddled misery.

Once we recognize the irrepressibly fictive dynamic of our loving desires, there is furthermore only one option left to deal with it.

To laugh at it all and go home.

And each in (or on) his own way, the believer and unbeliever can both do just that.

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Along with the desire to preach the Gospel, to embrace wholeheartedly the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience, to study holy truth, and to celebrate the liturgy with due sobriety, there is another desire that animates men to seek and join our order.

It is the desire to live in common.

In St. Augustine’s Rule, which we have taken as our own, the Doctor of Grace declares: “The chief motivation for your sharing life together is to live harmoniously in the house and to have one heart and one soul in seeking God” (see Acts 4.32).  Indeed, the first subject that our order’s Constitutions takes up, under the heading of Religious Consecration, is “Common Life.”

There is a particular evangelical need today for the common life, for the sake of personal experience as well as social witness. Among other reasons, this evangelical need for the common life is due to the varied but intense and subtle attacks that have been waged upon the institution of the family – that fundamental cell of personal commonality (and therefore, personal development).

Of course, the common life of a religious order is constituted by concerns largely different than that of a family. Nevertheless, the common life represents the basic forum in which Christ works his reconciling grace upon the soul of each individual in need of natural healing and supernatural uplifting. As our Holy Father taught in his second encyclical, Spe Salvi: “salvation has always been considered a ‘social’ reality. Indeed, the Letter to the Hebrews speaks of a ‘city’ (cf. 11.10, 16; 12.22; 13.14) and therefore of communal salvation. Consistently with this view, sin is understood by the Fathers as the destruction of the unity of the human race, as fragmentation and division. Babel, the place where languages were confused, the place of separation, is seen to be an expression of what sin fundamentally is. Hence ‘redemption’ appears as the reestablishment of unity, in which we come together once more in a union that begins to take shape in the community of believers.”

It stands to reason, then, that one of the primary realities that the Christian family is called to evangelize is itself!

Hopefully, we friars manifest the joy and peace –challenges notwithstanding!– that issues from a life that bears one another’s burdens in faith (cf. Gal 6.2). Certainly, many of us are inspired by the self-sacrificial and happy commitments of so many families that it is our privilege to know. Not incidentally, one of the places where a healthy relationship between friars and families develops is around the dinner table!

Currently, there is being promoted a national initiative called, “Family Day.” Our Archbishop here in New York City has heartily encouraged involvement. In his recent column, Lord, To Whom Shall We Go? he reflected on the significance of the family meal in his personal life as well as for the Church: “Most of us 50 and over can recall that supper together as a family was rather routine and taken for granted, with Sunday dinner the most significant. We know as well that the Sunday meal—the Mass—of our supernatural family, the Church, is indispensable for our fidelity to Jesus and His Church. We Catholics also belong to cherished ethnic backgrounds, which celebrated every Sunday, holiday, holyday and important life event—baptisms, first Communions, birthdays, marriages, even deaths—with family meals.”

Not unlike any other day, this Monday is “A Day to Eat Dinner with Your Children.” And, even for the many families who already make such a commitment, other families with whom we have contact — Christian or not — might be encouraged to do the same.

In this way, we won’t simply be “saying” grace.

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