Peace, Baby!

     In his indispensable book Why Catholics Can’t Sing Thomas Day recounts an incident that occurred shortly after the ancient practice of the Sign of Peace had been reinstated in the Latin Rite Mass after an absence of many centuries.  He turned at the appropriate time to an elderly woman who had been piously praying over her rosary beads and extended his hand.  The woman, says Day, responded with a curt “I don’t believe in that s - - t”, and returned to her rosary.

     While not everyone has quite as negative a view as Day’s pious fellow congregant, there have continued to be concerns about the role of the Sign of Peace (also known as the Kiss of Peace) in the Mass.  Nine years ago the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments made a formal decision to examine the role of the Sign of Peace, especially whether it should be moved to another part of the Mass.  According to the Catholic News Service, the Congregation has finally issued its report (article here).

     As to the question of whether to move the Sign of Peace, the Congregation has decided to leave it where it is, for now at least.  That is not to say, however, that all is well as it is.  According to the CNS article, the Congregation

asked bishops to study whether it might be time to find “more appropriate gestures” to replace a sign of peace using “familiar and profane gestures of greeting.”

That sounds good to me.  I’m all for anything that leads to more reverence at Mass and makes it seem less like a business meeting – or a cocktail party.  The letter also asks bishops to discourage abuses, such as congregants (or priests) leaving their places to give the sign of peace, or using it as an occasion to exchange other greetings (“Peace be with you – and happy birthday!”) or even (this is a new one on me, but someone must be doing it) accompanying it with a “song for peace”.

     This sounds like a step in the right direction.  The Sign of Peace should not be obtrusive.  Really, it doesn’t need to be done at all: it’s optional.  All the same, I can’t recall ever seeing it omitted at an Ordinary Form Mass*, but I have seen most of the disruptive abuses noted above on many occasions.  At high school student Masses the Sign of Peace generally erupts into a frenzy of wide-ranging glad handing, backslapping, and general good fellowship that could, and would, go on for a very long time if permitted.  While things rarely get so rowdy in the parish church, one will often see the same thing on a smaller scale.  It’s conceivable that some people might get the impression that the Sign of Peace is really supposed to be one of the high points of the Mass.

     Well, what if they do get that impression?  Would that be so bad?  Yes, it would.  Here’s the problem: for most of us, the Mass is our most direct and profound encounter with Jesus Christ in this world, and it is centered upon the Eucharist, the “Source and Summit of the Christian life” (Lumen Gentium 11).  A raucous outbreak of joviality among ourselves between the Consecration and the reception of Communion not only detracts from an appropriate sense of reverence at this most solemn part of the Mass, but also draws our attention away from the miracle of the Eucharist.  We need to remember that the word “communion” when we speak of the Eucharist means communion with Christ, the God made Man, through the reception of his body and blood; our communion with each other is only through Christ.  This is most emphatically what we call a “vertical” relationship: we people “down here” directing ourselves to God, in the person of Jesus Christ, “up there”.  The interruption of a very “horizontal” relationship, that is you and I directing attention to each other, threatens to distort our understanding of the true significance of what we are experiencing, particularly if the horizontal seems to be receiving more emphasis.

     So, yes, the letter from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments is a good first step.  We should hope to see some real follow-up on its recommendations.  In explaining why the Sign of Peace will remain where it is in the Latin Rite Mass, the Congregation says that it relates to “the ‘paschal kiss’ of the risen Christ present on the altar”, and points out that it immediately precedes the moment in which “the Lamb of God is implored to give us his peace”.  The letter further explains:

Christ is our peace, the divine peace, announced by the prophets and by the angels, and which he brought to the world by means of his paschal mystery.

And so, the Sign of Peace is really all about Christ, not about us.  If that reality can be clearly taught and practiced, maybe even Thomas Day’s skeptical pew mate will be satisfied.


*Since I first published this post last August I have attended one Ordinary Form Mass that omitted the Sign of Peace, a beautifully planned and conducted liturgy at Thomas More College; to read more see my post "The Reform of the Reform" 

Are We Collaborators in the Culture of Death?

Abortion Good, Religion Bad?  

   I don’t like to get into partisan politics too much on this blog, although I do deal fairly often with moral or social issues that have become politicized.  There are times, however, when partisan politics forces itself upon us so insistently that it cannot be avoided (which is happening with greater frequency in recent years).  This is one of those times.   

     I’ll start with a speech delivered by Hillary Clinton last Thursday (story here) – if you read religious blogs or more conservative news outlets you’ve heard about it already (numerous times); if you rely on more established media, probably not. Mrs. Clinton is the (so far) unchallenged Democratic candidate for President of the United States, and she said something that would have been unthinkable just twenty years ago when her husband was president.  First, she opined that: 

Far too many women are still denied critical access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth.  All the laws we’ve passed don’t count for much if they’re not enforced. 

Safe childbirth is not really what she’s concerned about, as we shall see; she's really talking about  what she refers to as “reproductive health care”, which is newspeak for abortion.  The interesting part is what she sees as the obstacle to, ahem, "reproductive health care"; she said: "deep seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.”  Except for some tiny fringe groups,of course, religious beliefs etc. do not affect access to “safe childbirth”, the the issue is, obviously, abortion.  Allow me to translate from the pro-choice dialect into standard English: the right to destroy unborn human life in the womb is a fundamental good, and since religion tends to hinder the fullest realization of that good (after all, only about 1.3 million women are able to abort their babies every year in the U.S.), religion has to bow to the pro-abortion regime or be crushed. 

Not All Issues Are Equal

     Now, it’s not really news that she believes that, or that the leadership of her party believes it.  What is newsworthy is that she is comfortable putting the matter so bluntly. Such a thing, as I mentioned above, would have been unthinkable a couple decades ago.  Her husband, President Clinton, did not want to offend the religious or moral sensibilities of potential voters, so he often softened the message, saying that “abortion should be legal, safe, and rare”,  as if it were a sad, unfortunate necessity.  No longer.   Mrs. Clinton is convinced, apparently, that she can publicly promote abortion, upholding it as a blessing greater than  freedom of religion (the first item in the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights), and that tens of millions of voters will simply shrug and vote for her anyway . . . including about 50% of those voters who identify as Catholic.  Just as they did for Barack Obama, who as an Illinois state senator led the fight to keep it legal to “abort” babies even after they’ve been born.
      Can we agree that this is a problem?  If I may quote once more Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter to Cardinal McCarrick On The Worthiness To Receive Holy Communion: 

There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia. 

According to the then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (and soon-to-be Pope) our preferred prudential judgments about economic or foreign policy cannot outweigh matters of intrinsic evil like abortion (and we can add to that  the dismantling of the institution of marriage).  It should not be that half of all Catholics are voting for candidates who actively promote these evils, whatever poverty programs they favor.  And it doesn’t have to be this way: if even a somewhat larger proportion, let's say 60%, of Catholic Democrats refused to vote for candidates who were not prolife, the party would change, because that’s what parties do (at least in the United States) when they keep losing elections.  Just look at the number of leading Democrats who were pro-life in the early seventies, but changed to pro-abortion as the party moved in that direction: Ted Kennedy, Mario Cuomo, Jesse Jackson, Al Gore.  One wonders whether such prominent party members might have prevented or slowed that anti-life slide if they had stood by their supposed principles? Instead, the party’s likeliest presidential candidate doesn’t even seem to think that directly attacking the teachings of their Church will drive Catholics away. 

Evil Is Never Satisfied

     As I said at the outset, I'm really not that interested in the partisan aspect of all this, because the real problem goes far deeper than a particular political party or candidate (my own state is represented in the U.S. Senate by a pro-abortion Catholic Republican).  Hillary Clinton is who she is, but she wouldn't be in a position to influence, much less make, public policy (or her own positions would be very different) if enough of us didn't allow her to do it, either by downplaying the seriousness of the evils involved, or even by promoting them.  
     We also see a real-life example of the nature of evil: it is never satisfied. If Christians tolerate abortion and the complex of other evils associated with it (pornography, prostitution, promiscuity, contraception, et.al.) the supporters of those things will not tolerate Christian morality in their turn, they will keep pushing until their views are all that remain.  We see a similar trajectory in the movement that started by seeking to end persecution of homosexuals, proceeded to demanding social acceptance, and now threatens to destroy the reputation and even the livelihood of any who disagree. 
     One last thing: supporters of abortion, same-sex marriage, etc. will try to dismiss all opposition as mere "politics", or as irrational "hatred"; they will not concede that there are any moral dimensions to these issues at all, or that opponents are motivated by any sincere concerns.  We can't let those assertions go unchallenged.  We need to be outspoken in our opposition, but also be clear that our position is rooted in love: love of God and his law, but also love of those, including those with whom we disagree, who will be harmed by the evils we oppose.  As St, Paul tells us: "Let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we do not lose heart." (Galatians 6:9)

African Choir Sing - Up from the Grave.He Arose! & Weekly Roundup, Good Shepherd Sunday 2015

He is Risen, Alleluia!  Today is the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Good Shepherd Sunday.  To continue the celebration of the Resurrection of our Shepherd, here is a joyful Easter song, sung by an African Choir in Aberdeen, Scotland.




And, our free gift to every customer, links to the posts from the past week:

Weekly Roundup, 3^rd Week of Easter 2015

Monday – “Cardinal George, Patron of Christian Hope” Chicago’s Cardinal George passed away last week – here’s a farewell to a fine Catholic leader, and another look at his most famous remark.

Wednesday – “St.Paul’s Autographs” St. Paul had a big, expansive personality, and used big, expansive handwriting. Which is rather fascinating . . . 

and “Abortion Myth # 11”  Yes, we’re all just clumps of cells in the end, aren’t we? 

Thursday – “The Liturgy of the Hours: Sanctify Your Day” The first installment in a series about the Divine Office for busy, busy, busy lay men and women. 

and “Why Would You Want Satan As A Mascot?” We choose the lion for its courage, the ram for its toughness; what qualities do we admire in the Prince of Lies?   

Friday – “Saint of the Day: St. Mellitus & The Sweetness of the Gospel” One of the most consequential Saints you’ve never heard of.

Saturday – “Those Who Love Him Will Keep His Commandments” How the reductionist approach to Christianity leads, in the end, to only one place and, friend, you don’t want to go there. 

Those Who Love Him Will Keep His Commandments

Where there is no prophecy the people cast off restraint, 

but blessed is he who keeps the law.   (Proverbs 29:18)  

     Many years ago, shortly after I had returned to the Church after my youthful sojourn among the secular agnostics, I read a book called The Education of Henry Adams.  Although it doesn’t sound like it from the title, it is an autobiography, and the author was  the grandson of U.S. President John Quincy Adams, and the great-grandson of the second President and revolutionary leader John Adams.      The one thing from Adams’ book that made the largest impression on me was the author’s dissatisfaction with (among other things) the spiritual emptiness of the Unitarian churches which his family attended; here, the drama of Salvation had been reduced to little more a moral code.  It struck me that these same churches, just a few generations earlier, had been peopled by zealous Calvinists fleeing the Anglican Church because it had, in their view, strayed too far from the Gospel.  What had happened?  How had they changed so much, so quickly?

     I concluded that the cause of the erosion of their faith was that they had cut themselves off from the Catholic Church, the power of its Tradition and its infallible Magisterium, the Church that St. Paul had named “The pillar and the foundation of the Truth” (1 Timothy 3:15).  After all, however zealous our belief, however sincere our intentions, we fallible humans tend to wander off course without direction from above. We can see the proof not only in Henry Adams’ Unitarians, but in Protestantism in general.  All the historic Reformation churches have gone through numerous changes, not just in externals but in doctrine, and have continued splintering until it is impossible to say how many separate ecclesial bodies there are.  Whatever the eccentricities or errors of individual Catholics, however,  and despite the two thousand years'  worth of baggage, the Catholic Church today is still, in its essentials, the Church of St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, and the Apostles.

A cafeteria is not a Wedding Feast

     Let me emphasize that this has nothing to do with the virtue or sincerity of individual Christians of any denomination.  I know and have worked with many non-Catholic Christians who live their faith in an exemplary way, and many Catholics who do not (including, sometimes, myself, I am sorry to say).  Over the long run, however, we can’t do it ourselves: we need Christ’s help, in the guidance of his Church and by the Grace that he confers through the Sacraments administered by that Church. More than that, it is through the Church and its sacraments that we most directly encounter Christ in this world.

     Of course there are Catholics, too, who don’t understand how essential the Church is to their relationship with their Lord.  They want to strip her of the things that they don’t like, but still receive the sacraments (when it suits them) and present themselves as Catholic.  The American Spectator recently republished an essay by David Carlin called “Reducing Religion Down”, subtitled “How Liberal Christians Shrink the Faith”, in which Carlin dissects this phenomenon, which he calls “Liberal Christianity”*, among both Catholics and other Christians.  He explains that

            Liberal Christianity is made up of three reductions:

1.      The reduction of religion to morality.

2.      The reduction of morality to love of neighbor.

3.      The reduction of love of neighbor to tolerance plus welfare programs.

Notice that each of Carlin’s “reductions” becomes less demanding, and has less to do with our relationship with God.  Christian Faith becomes only a minor encumbrance, as Carlin explains:

The reduction of love of neighbor to tolerance plus welfare programs makes it relatively easy for very busy men and women to be good Christians.  Being tolerant of almost everything except murder, rape, arson, bank robbery, child molestation, and a small number of other crimes – this is something you can do, at least once you’ve developed a knack for it, with a minimum expenditure of time and energy.  As for loving by means of welfare programs, all you have to do is pay your taxes and vote the straight Democratic ticket.

     This is not so different from the process we saw at work in Henry Adams’ Unitarian Church, and it’s internal logic leads, in the end, to only one thing.  Here’s how Carlin wraps up:

Speaking roughly and generally, liberal Christianity (and liberal Judaism too, for what I’m saying applies mutatis mutandis to Judaism as well) is a way-station – a temporary motel, so to speak – on the great ideological highway that leads from classical Christianity at one terminus to atheism at the other.

     It makes perfect sense, once you think about it: having reduced the fullness of Christian faith to a mere moral code, and a pretty minimal one at that, there is no longer any perceived need for salvation: we can save ourselves by following “the law” (take that, St. Paul!).  There is therefore no need for the Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and in fact no need for God at all; we’ve got it all covered, thank you very much.

Diseases of the Soul

     Naturally, morality is very important: immoral acts lead to bad consequences in this world and can separate us and others from God forever; we are quite capable of sinning our way into Hell . . . but we cannot, by any effort of our own, earn our way into Heaven.  For that we need God’s Grace, which is administered through his Church . . . which, as we have seen, is just what those whom David Carlin calls liberal Catholics are ready to jettison in all but name.

Henry Adams

    I am reminded of Ursula LeGuin’s novel The Lathe of Heaven, in which the character called Dr. Haber, having discovered the power to turn dreams into reality, eventually turns the world into a living nightmare composed of fragments of different times and different realities, in which nothing really fits or works. At one point, hoping to remove sources of division between people, Haber creates a world in which everyone is the same shade of gray, with the vast variety of different characteristics that make each of us distinct persons erased.  I don’t think that LeGuin was a believing Christian, but she created a perfect picture  of what happens when we, with our finite understanding, try to remake God’s world in our own image: a monstrous absurdity in which, in the end, the human person is crushed.

     Finally, let’s return briefly to poor old Henry Adams.  His autobiography exudes ennui and malaise  (what Ursula LeGuin called “French diseases of the soul”), a sense of boredom, pointlessness, and dissatisfaction.  He seems acutely aware of his own insignificance in the shadow of greater forebears.  He has been given a moral code, but no sense that he plays a unique but indispensable role in the vastness of creation . . . and no realization that he is loved eternally and infinitely.  The thing is, if we want to be loved, we must be prepared to love in turn, and Jesus says, “Those who love me will keep my commandments”  (John 14:15).  If we only keep the commandments that suit us, however, we don’t love Jesus, we really love ourselves; except we don't, because true love can only be directed to an Other.  That, in the end, is a very sad, lonely way to spend eternity.

    

*Let it be noted that I’m not trying to slam people who identify themselves as “liberal”, a term which, as I explain in a recent post [here], belongs to secular politics and distorts the reality of what is happening in the Church;  I use the term here because that is what Carlin uses.  The difference here is not simply a matter of opinion and certainly not political philosophy, but is the difference between embracing the fullness of faith or reducing it down to whatever one finds agreeable.

    

Saint of the Day: St. Mellitus & The Sweetness of the Gospel

TThere's an old saying that you catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than you do with a vat of vinegar.  I couldn't help but think of that old saw when considering the life of today's Saint, Mellitus of Canterbury (died April 24th, A.D. 624), whose name in fact means "honeyed".  We see in his mission to convert the Saxon conquerers of Britain in the 7th century (he was sent by Pope Gregory the Great to assist St. Augustine of Canterbury) an example of the Church explicitly choosing to put the "Honey Strategy" into practice.

St. Mellitus of Canterbury

     But first, we need a little background on Saint Mellitus.  Despite being little-known today, he was in fact a very consequential Saint. Mellitus first arrived in Britain in the year A.D. 601, bringing with him books and other things considered necessary for Christian instruction and worship.  St. Augustine consecrated him Bishop of London, which at that time was the capital of the East Saxon kingdom.  Somewhere around the years 616-618 the Christian East Saxon king died, after which Mellitus was driven from his episcopal see in London; shortly thereafter the Christian king of Kent died as well, and Mellitus was forced to flee from Britain all together, although he was able to return a few years later after Laurence, Augustine's successor as Archbishop of Canterbury, had converted the new Kentish king.  Mellitus never returned to London, which would not see a Bishop again until 654, thirty years after the Saint's death.  St. Mellitus himself became Archbishop of Canterbury at the Death of Laurence in 619, and occupied the see until his own passing five years later.  He is credited with miraculously saving his church from a fire shortly before his death.

     St. Mellitus played an important part in the conversion of the English ; in this capacity he received instructions in the form of a letter from the Pope, called the Epistola ad Mellitum. In this letter St. Gregory urges Mellitus and Augustine to rely on persuasion in converting the pagan English, destroying idols but consecrating the temples that housed the idols for use as churches, and adapting pagan practices to Christian uses so that the English nation might "set aside error from her heart, and, acknowledging and adoring the True God, might assemble more familiarly at the places which she was was accustomed (to use)."  This letter is a particularly explicit statement of an approach that has been more or less the rule (albeit with some notable exceptions) for most of the history of the Church (which I explain in more detail in my Halloweeen post, "Christ Is King Of All . . . Even The Holidays").  And it fits well with the way our Lord works: God breathed life into the mud of the earth to create Adam, and through baptism he makes former non-believers into his adopted sons and daughters; why can't his Church "baptize " what is good in pagan societies and consecrate it for use in His service?
     I think the story of St. Mellitus and his "honeyed" approach has a lesson for us today as we go about our own missions of evangelization.  I know how frustrated I can become when someone just can't, or won't, listen; I find myself brimming over with vinegar, as it were.  I've found that if I stay calm, listen patiently, and try to focus on the love of Jesus (in other words, spread a little honey), I'm more likely to have a fruitful exchange.  St. Mellitus, pray for us, that we might avoid the bitterness of our own pride, and to speak with the sweetness of Divine Love. Amen.

     

Why Would You Want Satan As A Mascot?

“When you think about it, why would you want Satan as a mascot?”  This question was casually put to me twenty years ago or more by a high school student.  At the time I was the faculty moderator of a high school newspaper, and the student was leafing through a book of clip-art (do such things exist anymore?) when, in the mascot section, he came across several pages of “devils”.  I had never thought about it in those terms before, but he had a point; I’ve never since been able to consider devil logos as innocent and harmless.

     Now, there are many folks out there who will say that I’m making a big deal out of nothing.  As Catholics, however, we should know better: we of all people should understand the power of images. As I explain in an earlier post [here]:

This is something the Church has always understood: why else the great art, stained glass windows, cathedrals and Gregorian chant, the whole “smells and bells” routine?  Why else the traditional condemnation of “impure” images, and the stern warnings to steer clear of their dangers?

I go on to point out that current brain research that shows that images have a profound, often unconscious, impact on the psyche.

     In the case of mascots the connection is explicit. They are the modern-day descendants of the ancient tribal totems, which were believed to confer their most prominent qualities (e.g., the bear’s strength, the wolf’s ferocity, etc.) on the people that had adopted them.  While we no longer attribute numinous powers to them, groups still choose mascots (today mascots are often people as well as animals) because they represent certain desirable qualities that that the group would like to associate with themselves, and that they would like their members to emulate.  For example, American Indians have long been a popular mascot for athletic teams in the United States because of their reputation as brave and tenacious warriors.

     Images and logos on clothing serve a similar function for individuals: they depict things and ideas with which we want to associate ourselves, such as admired athletic teams and players, schools which we have attended, maybe a political message of some kind or some other symbol of personal importance (marijuana leaves are popular among a certain set).  The point is that we wear images on our person to tell the world something about us (and, usually, to tell ourselves something about ourselves).

     It was for this reason that my lovely bride was somewhat dismayed the other day when she went online to look for t-shirts for our children.  She visited the site of a well-known retailer that she had often used before, but found that this time a wide array of children’s clothing was adorned with skulls and similarly macabre images.  Now, I know that such images have been around for a long time, although usually only among a very narrow segment of the population; today they are becoming ever more pervasive, and less and less remarkable.  What does it say about our culture that we seem to think nothing of decorating our children, even little girls, with images of death and corruption?  What qualities are we holding up for emulation to these young people who are still forming their sense of self?

    This is the bottom line: if we surround ourselves with ugliness and grotesquerie, we shouldn't be surprised to find our world growing more ugly and grotesque; if we dress our children that way, why should we expect them to aspire to beauty and nobility?  That's no way to evangelize the world.  We need to say "no!" to the Culture of Death, even in a matter as "trivial" as a Jolly Roger t-shirt (don't they always say "the Devil is in the details"?). St. Paul tells us:

     Finally, brethren, what is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (Philippians 4:8)

Not only is that Holy Scripture, it's plain common sense.

P.S, A final thought: The baseball team known as the Tampa Bay Rays played for the first time in 1998.  For their first ten years the name was actually the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (named after a fish, to be sure, not the Prince of Darkness himself); in those first ten seasons they finished in last place nine times, second to last once.  In 2008, the first season after the team had exorcised the word “Devil” from its name, they went to the World Series as American League champions.  Now, I’m sure that’s just a coincidence but, hey, just sayin’ . . .

These Guys were losers . . . 

    

. . . and these guys were American League Champs

Abortion Myth #11

MYTH: “Pro-lifers don’t care about women, and do nothing to help babies after they are born.”

TRUTH: The reality is just the opposite – the abortion industry offers women little beyond destroying their children and taking their money, while pro-lifers actually do quite a lot for women before during, and after their pregnancies.  Consider the following:

Photo from cradlemyheart.org

-Abortion clinics (even “non-profits” such as Planned Parenthood, see here) charge women a fee to abort their babies, and make millions of dollars from abortion every year.  Pro-life pregnancy resource centers, in contrast, offer their services for free and are staffed by volunteers who donate their time and money.  There are thousands of pregnancy resource centers, both independent and affiliated with larger networks such as Care-Net [link], and they outnumber abortion clinics by a wide margin.

-From the Life Site summary of Planned Parenthood’s 2013-2013 annual report: “In 2012, abortions made up 93.8% of Planned Parenthood’s pregnancy services, while prenatal care and adoption referrals accounted for only 5.6% (19, 506 [as opposed to 327,166 abortions]) and 0.6% (2,197), respectively.  For every adoption referral, Planned Parenthood performed 149 abortions.”   

-Contrary to misleading statements from pro-abortion sources (including President Obama), Planned Parenthood performs NO mammograms.

-Pro-life volunteers provide numerous services both before AND after the baby is born, including free maternity and baby clothes, supplies, free or low cost medical and legal assistance, adoption referrals, parenting support and assistance, and child care.  An increasing number of pregnancy centers offer free ultrasounds. Some pro-life organizations, such as The Nurturing Network [link], even provide help finding employment, housing, and education opportunities for women.

-Pro-life volunteers have helped numerous women seeking peace after the trauma of abortion through programs such as Project Rachel and Rachel’s Vineyard.  Abortion providers offer nothing comparable.

DON’T BUY THE LIE!

Essential Pro-Life Resources:

Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments (link)  

The Elliot Institute (link)  

National Right To Life Committee (link)  

Care-Net (link)

The Nurturing Network (link)


To See The Entire Abortion Myths Series Click HERE 

Cardinal George & Christian Hope (from Principium et Finis)

Cardinal Francis George, one of the outstanding American churchmen of recent years, passed away last week.  Many commentaries I have seen in the Catholic press and blogosphere have, understandably, highlighted the following quote:

I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.  His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the Church has done so often in human history.

Cardinal Francis George

     The first part of the quote has generated the most attention.  Some people have dismissed it as overblown or sensationalistic, but I’m not so sure.  George Washington and John Adams warned that a people not grounded in the practice of religion and morality would be unable to maintain a republic as free citizens; our current age seems determined to put that assertion to the test and, quite frankly, the preliminary results are not promising.  And while we here in the U.S. are not facing the sort of violent persecution that our Christian brothers and sisters in other parts of the world must endure, things have nonetheless reached a point that would have seemed unthinkable just a couple of decades ago, when anyone who suggested that American Christians might be forced to lose their jobs and businesses simply for living according to their faith would have been dismissed as a hopeless crank . . . 

(Please read the entire post HERE at Principium et Finis)

Our Eternal Destiny: Armed Robbery, or A Warm Place By The Fire?

     Analogical thinking, it would appear, is a dying art.  I recently heard Catholic apologist and scholar Peter Kreeft on Catholic radio, and he was pointing out that brains which spend a lot of time interacting with videogames and various other electronic devices simply don’t develop in the same way as those formed by extensive reading.  Among the those things that are undernourished are linear and analogical thinking.  Professor Kreeft has found that this makes it difficult to teach a subject like Theology that requires dealing with a lot of difficult and abstract ideas.

Is this your image of God?

     Over my own nearly 30 years of teaching high school students I’ve observed the same trend.  Fortunately, we still have a long way to go: while many people, especially young people, may not be as quick to grasp them as they might have been several decades ago, analogies are still the most effective way to communicate many ideas.  They have always been a preferred way of explaining Christian Doctrine: think of the parables of Jesus, or St. Paul's comparison in 1st Corinthians of the Church to a body, with all the members working together at their own assigned tasks; not only that, but one of the four traditional Levels of Meaning in scripture, the Allegorical, relies very heavily on analogical thinking.  Analogy is often the only reliable way for us who are composed of both spirit and matter to understand spiritual realities.

     Not surprisingly, analogies are also an essential tool in any dialogue with atheists and agnostics.  I recently became aware of the following analogy, which is appears to be in vogue in atheist circles: God, as we Christians envision Him, is like an armed robber with a gun to our heads, and he is offering a choice between giving him all our money (i.e., living according to the Gospel and spending eternity in Heaven), or having our brains blown out (which is spending eternity in Hell).

     Now, clearly, there are some very obvious problems with this analogy.  The vast majority of people, even many non-Christians, will have a hard time seeing going to Heaven as equivalent to getting mugged, even if we accept the premise that living a Christian life “robs” us of pleasures we might otherwise enjoy: Heaven promises something infinitely better than anything available here, whereas an armed robber does not even pretend to make our life better than it was before we met him.  And of course there is quite a lot of secular, sociological evidence that following God’s law actually makes us happier in the here-and-now.  Also, the robber analogy depicts Hell as something that God imposes on us, in which we take no initiative at all, when in fact the Catholic conception of Hell is that it is something that we choose for ourselves, contrary to God’s wish, by our rejection of his freely offered love.

Wouldn't you rather be inside?

     I propose a better analogy to communicate the eternal choice which God presents to us.  Imagine that we are standing outdoors on a cold, rainy night.  Somebody opens a door and invites us to come inside with them, where it is warm and dry (although, of course, we need to take off our wet muddy boots and our wet, dripping coats).  That’s God’s offer of eternal salvation.  We can say yes, although we are equally free to say: “No, you can’t tell me what to do! Besides, can you prove it’s really warm and dry in there before I go in?”  and remain out in cold, wet darkness.  That’s Hell, the product of nothing but our own pride and stubbornness.

     The second analogy presents a much more accurate image of the Catholic view of our eternal destiny.  Not only that, when juxtaposed to the “armed robber” scenario, it also casts light behind it, as it were, giving observers a vivid illustration of the different worldviews that have generated each analogy: the atheist worldview which is concerned with power, force, and will, and in which one party must be the loser, and the Christian perspective, which envisions a reality in which love can triumph, and everyone can win.  Which is likely to appeal to more people in the end?

This Week’s Links

I’ve grown accustomed to posting a weekly digest of posts every Sunday, but I’m having a hard time coming up with a clever, snappy name for it.  Well, no matter, here’s what I posted over the past week (with a couple of bonus days):

“Morality and Poverty” There once was a left-wing rabble-rousing magazine that published an article detailing how immoral and irresponsible behavior exacerbated the problems of the poor, and how government programs incentivized said behavior . . . neither of which follows the part line.   

“Is The Church A Political Animal?” There’s politics, and then there’s  Politics.  If you think the Church is just another political party, you need to check in with Prof. Ratzinger. 

“Eucharistic Adoration: sitting at the Feet of the Lord”  A quick meditation on why Adoration is good for us and our Church. 

“Mozart, Herbert, John The Baptist, and Why We Can’t BeAngels” An eighteenth century composer, a seventeenth century poet, and a first century prophet walk into a bar . . . o.k., not really, but they do join me in a discussion of why what (if anything) angels wear doesn’t matter, but it does for us humans 

“Abortion Myth #10” Believe it or not, so-called “counselors” at abortion clinics still tell desperate pregnant women that the child growing inside them is no more than a “clump of cells”, to be disposed of at will. Here’s a quick run-down of some counter-arguments  

Finally, a couple of beautiful, joful music clips for the Easter Season: “J.S. Bach – Sinfonia, Oratorio” & “King’s College Choir –Thine Be The Glory (Haendel)” 

King's College Choir - Thine be the glory (Haendel)

This was originally part of Handel's oratorio Judas Maccabaeus, but its suitability to the season has made it into an Easter favorite.  The Lord is truly Risen, alleluia, alleluia!

Abortion Myth # 10

MYTH: “Abortion doesn’t kill a child, it just terminates a pregnancy; after all, the unborn isn’t a human being, it’s just a clump of cells.”

TRUTH: The unborn is, by any objective measure, a human being from the moment of fertilization. Every abortion kills not just a "clump of cells", but a human being.

First, a “being”, that is, a living entity:

- Jerome LeJeune, the professor of genetics who discovered the chromosome pattern of Down Syndrome, was simply expressing the nearly unanimous scientific consensus when he said “After fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being.”

-When the U.S. Senate judiciary committee invited pro-abortionists to present experts to testify about when life begins, they were unable to produce even one expert witness to specifically state that life begins at any point other than conception or implantation (from Pro-life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments).

Not only is the unborn indisputably alive, he or she is incontestably a human:

-The living entity in the womb has human DNA; were a lab to test a DNA sample, it would be indistinguishable from that of a newborn, a twelve year old or a sixty year old.

-From the first moment of fertilization, the entire genetic blueprint for a unique individual is already present; the child’s sex, hair and eye color, height  and skin tone are already determined.

-Before the earliest surgical abortions the unborn child already has every body part and organ he or she will ever have (females already have all their own eggs in their ovaries).

The unborn child is not a part of the mother’s body: no part of the mother’s body has different DNA or blood type, or its own heart lungs or liver.

The unborn child is simply a human being at a particular stage of development, as is toddler, an adolescent, or an adult.  The only objective, verifiable scientific conclusion is that human beings begin their lives at conception.

DON’T BUY THE LIE!

Watch an amazing 3D ultrasound video of an unborn child at 14 weeks after conception posted by Dr. Rafael Ortega Munoz:

Essential Pro-Life Resources:

Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments (link)  

The Elliot Institute (link)  

National Right To Life Committee (link)  

Care-Net (link)

The Nurturing Network (link)


To See The Entire Abortion Myths Series Click HERE 

Mozart, Herbert, John the Baptist, And Why We Can't Be Angels (from Principium et Finis)

All in the Head

     The great composer W.A. Mozart (who, I must admit, has made more than one appearance on this blog) is reported to have said that “Protestantism was all in the head”, and that “Protestants did not know the meaning of the Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi [Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world]”.  I would not put it so harshly, but with all due respect to my friends among the separated brethren, there is at least an element of truth to this observation.   Protestantism on the whole is very uncomfortable with the corporeality of more traditional expressions of Christianity, starting with the Protestant rejection of the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the efficacy of sacraments in general, and carrying that same mind-set through to a suspicion of any physical expression of faith apart from the Scriptures themselves (and, in some congregations, speaking in tongues).  As a consequence, the Sign of the Cross, genuflection, rosaries, icons and statues all seem foreign to them. It almost appears that many of our Protestant friends, relying on Sola Scriptura and focusing on just The Word, are trying to uncarnate (so to speak) the Word made Flesh.

Sure, they may not look naked . . . 

     Many of them, but by no means all: there have always been some members of the reformation churches who understand and embrace the sacramental outlook that has been preserved in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.  One such is the 17^th century English religious poet George Herbert.  Herbert was an Anglican cleric in addition to being a poet, and so he devoted a portion of his poetry to defending his church.  Being an Anglican, he directed some of his fire at the Catholic Church, as one would expect, mostly criticism of the papacy and what he considered a certain superficiality (needless to say, I don’t concur in these objections).  He reserves his harshest and most substantive criticism, however, for the protestant Puritans, whom he accuses in his poem “The British Church” of being “undrest” . . . 

(Please read the entire post HERE at Principium et Finis)

Eucharistic Adoration: Sitting at the Feet of the Lord

 

Vermeer's Christ in the House of Mary and Martha

   As Catholics, we are blessed to have some wonderful devotional practices that help us grow closer to Christ.  One of the most profound of these is Eucharistic Adoration.  My wife and I were recently asked to help encourage participation in Adoration in our parish, in the course of which we ourselves came to see dimensions of this great gift that we hadn’t considered before. 

     For one thing, we both thought immediately of scriptural connections. My lovely bride thought of the passage from First Kings (1 Kings 19:10-13) where the Lord tells the prophet Elijah to stand on the mountain, for “The Lord is about to pass by”.  There’s a mighty wind, an earthquake, and a roaring fire, but God is not in any of those things; instead, Elijah encounters the Lord in a “gentle whispering”. 

     Just as God does not appear to Elijah in any of the grand and dramatic forms we might expect, so Jesus enters the world as a tiny baby, and continues to manifest himself to us as a simple piece of bread.  Eucharistic Adoration gives us a chance to shut out all the storm and stress of our daily lives while we contemplate the infinite God embodied in that piece of bread, and hear his gentle whisper.

     My own first thought was the passage from Luke’s Gospel (Luke 10:38-42) where Jesus is visiting the sisters Martha and Mary.  Martha, who is “worried about many things”, is frantically bustling about the house, while Mary simply sits at the feet of Jesus, watching and listening.  When Martha complains that Mary isn’t helping her, Jesus answers that Mary has chosen “the better part, and it will not be taken away from her”. 

     Most of us can probably identify with Martha: always “worried about many things”, and too distracted to notice the Lord.  Adoration is a great opportunity to give our “inner Martha” a rest and, like Mary, choose “the better part”. After all, what is Eucharistic Adoration, if not watching and listening at the feet of Jesus?

     What’s true for us as individuals also applies to us communally.  However important, even necessary, all of our various activities, committees, and causes may be, they can overshadow “the one thing”, as Jesus tells Martha, “that is needful”.  What better reminder that Christ is the Center than a parish putting aside twelve hours in the middle of the week to sit at the Master’s feet?  It keeps us from becoming nothing but noisy gongs and clanging cymbals (1 Corinthians 13:1).

     My brief comments here can’t even begin to explore the depth of meaning contained in the Eucharist. God who created us knows what we need; having given us both body and soul, he knows we need material means to understand spiritual realities.  The opportunity to kneel in adoration before our Eucharistic Lord is a gift we can’t afford to pass up. 

(This post first appeared on my blog Principium et Finis July 18th 2014)

Is The Church a Political Animal?

     You’re going to find politics wherever people gather, or so someone once told me when I had objected to using the secular political terms “liberal” and “conservative” to describe different factions within the Church.  And he was right, if by “politics” we mean the small-p wrangling that unavoidably accompanies any human enterprise requiring two or more people.  But that is a very different thing from Politics, of the partisan variety.  The Church is not a political party, and does not work like a political party.

The Synod on the Family, 2014

     That may seem an obvious point to you, but it’s not at all obvious to very many people.  It’s a distinction lost on most people outside of the Church for instance, for many of whom politics has taken the place of religion, and so has become the lens through which they interpret everything. Many such people have come to dominate the secular media in the developed world, with the result that the mass media projects the secular political model onto the Church, with “bad guys” called conservatives working to thwart the “good guys”, the liberals (sometimes referred to as progressives), who are fighting to bring about a kinder, better future.  This is the only image of the inner-workings of the Church most people see, including most ordinary Catholics, unless they intentionally seek out Catholic publications which reject this distorted view (sadly, many self-identified Catholic outlets do not).

     This is not to say that there isn’t a wide range of legitimate differences of opinion within the Church; there most certainly is.  Unlike a political party, however, where major policy planks can change overnight with a vote of the membership (and why not? They’re only opinions), there are many things in the Church which are grounded in Divine Revelation, and are therefore not up for negotiation.  This vital distinction was expressed very clearly by then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) in 2004.  Senator John Kerry, the nominee of the Democratic Party for President of the United States, was widely criticized for receiving communion and touting his Catholic bona fides despite his open advocacy for legal abortion and other positions contrary to Catholic moral teaching.  Accordingly, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote a letter (later published by the Holy See under the title “Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion: General Principles”) to Kerry’s ordinary, then Archbishop of Washington, D.C. Theodore McCarrick,  which gives an excellent example of how the Church is different from a political party, as when it says:

Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia.  For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion.  While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment.  There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

The difference between abortion and euthanasia on the one hand and war and capital punishment on the other is that the Church has always taught that the first two are intrinsically evil, and so never permissible; this teaching is part of the deposit of faith and cannot change, and to publicly oppose it is to separate oneself from the Church (hence the unworthiness to receive communion).  In the case of war and capital punishment, the Church has taught that, in some instances, they may be morally licit, a teaching that likewise cannot change.  While there are certain moral principles that bind a Catholic here (e.g., the Just War Doctrine), the actual application of these principles belongs to the prudential judgment of individual Catholic decision makers.  It is in matters of prudential judgment that legitimate differences of opinion may arise.

     This crucial difference can be obscured by applying secular political terms to church “politics”.  Political parties often change even basic positions, and this is sometimes a good thing: consider that, when I was a child, many prominent leaders in the Democratic Party in the United States were unapologetic White Supremacists; such a position would be unthinkable today, and yet nobody doubts that the Democratic Party is still the Democratic Party.  Using the political analogy can create the impression that proposed changes in the Church are benign or even desirable changes of the same sort.

     So-called liberals in the Church today, however, are not advocating simply the more “liberal” application of unchanging principles in prudential situations, but are pushing for changing more foundational things like the teaching on marriage, the meaning of priesthood, sexual morality, etc.  The Catholic Church, however, can’t change its teachings and still remain the Catholic Church. One can usually make a case for being either a conservative or a liberal in political matters, but when it comes to Church Doctrine, we can only be Catholic, or Not.