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Sunday, December 13, 2015

Joy! Anticipation! Fire?

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Joy! Anticipation! Fire? | Carl E. Olson

Gaudette Sunday, the Third Sunday of Advent, is a day of joy and rejoicing (the Latin word for “rejoice” is gaudere), and the readings reflect this theme

Readings:
• Zep 3:14-18a
• Is 12:2-3, 4, 5-6
• Phil 4:4-7
• Lk 3:10-18

“Great joy,” wrote G. K. Chesterton, “has in it the sense of immortality…” Joy, like love, hope, and goodness, cannot be adequately or convincingly explained through material processes or properties. Joy is a gift pointing to a transcendent giver. And that giver is the Lord, the giver of both natural and supernatural life.

Gaudette Sunday is a day of joy and rejoicing (the Latin word for “rejoice” is gaudere), and the readings reflect this theme. The reading from the prophet Zephaniah contains an exultant call for Israel to shout and sing for joy. Why? Because the Lord had staved off judgment, rebuffed Israel’s enemies, and stood as King and Savior in the midst of the chosen people.

The responsorial Psalm, from the prophet Isaiah, echoes the same: “Cry out with joy and gladness, for among you is the great and Holy One of Israel.” And the Epistle, from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians, has a hymnic, even rhapsodic, quality: “Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice!” The reason, again, is due to the immediacy of God’s intimate, life-giving presence: “The Lord is near.”

The Gospel reading does not directly refer to joy, but instead anticipates and points, through the words of John the Baptist, toward the source of joy. The anticipation has two different but connected qualities. The first is external and focuses on the natural moral virtues; it is drawn out through the question asked by the crowds, the tax collectors, and the soldiers: “What should we do?” John’s response, in essence, is that they should act justly toward their neighbors and those in their communities.

Treating others with respect and acting with justice are, of course, moral and virtuous actions. However, they are lacking to the degree they are solely human. The need for something more is hinted at in the raised expectations of the people, who “were asking in their hearts whether John might be the Christ.” Having recognized the need for natural goodness, they now hunger for supernatural goodness, that is, for the Christ. Having tasted the joy that comes from seeking the good for others, they wish to receive the joy that comes from the good given by God (cf. CCC 1804).

The distinction and relationship between the human and supernatural virtues is highlighted further in comparing the baptism of John the Bapist to the baptism of the Messiah. The first is an external sign, a washing of water symbolizing the need for purity and the desire for holiness. The second is an efficacious sign, a sacrament, which accomplishes what it signifies. “By the action of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit,” explains the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the sacraments “make present efficaciously the grace that they signify” (par 1084).

What about the fire mentioned by John? While water symbolizes birth and life, “fire symbolizes the transforming energy of the Holy Spirit's actions” (CCC, 696). Both water and fire can destroy, but both are also necessary for life. And in the case of baptism, this life is supernatural, divine, Trinitarian. In baptism, original sin is destroyed, the chasm between God and man is closed, and the soul is ignited with divine fire. Joined in the death of the Son (cf., Rom. 6), those who are baptized are transformed by the Holy Spirit into sons of God, made anew for the glory of the Father, and prepared for life in the new heavens and new earth.

Here, then, is the source and heart of our Advent joy. The season anticipates the celebration of Christ’s birth, but it also illuminates the purpose of the Incarnation: to remove judgment, to destroy sin and death, and to grant intimate, life-giving communion with God. “All seek joy,” said St. John Chrysostom, “but it is not found on earth.” It is found instead in the Son, who comes from heaven to earth—to the crowds, tax collectors, soldiers, and us. Great joy flows from immortality. Rejoice!

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the December 13, 2009, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

Posted by St. Ignatius of Loyola on Sunday, December 13, 2015 at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thursday, December 10, 2015

What Makes the Church Grow?

Pope Francis leads a ceremony to open the Holy Door as the begins the Holy Year of Mercy before a Mass with priests, religious, catechists and youths at the cathedral in Bangui, Central African Republic, Nov. 29. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

What Makes the Church Grow? | Bishop Robert Barron | The Dispatch at CWR

While Catholicism is withering on the vine in many European countries, the center of gravity for Catholicism has shifted dramatically to the south, especially to the African continent

Just recently on the website maintained by the episcopal conference of Germany there appeared an editorial concerning Pope Francis's apostolic visit to Africa. As many have pointed out, the piece was breathtaking in its arrogance and cultural condescension. The author's take on the surprisingly rapid pace of Christianity's growth on the "dark continent" (his words)? Well, the level of education in Africa is so low that the people accept easy answers to complex questions. His assessment of the explosion in vocations across Africa? Well, the poor things don't have many other avenues of social advancement; so they naturally gravitate toward the priesthood.

What made this analysis especially dispiriting is that it came, not from a secularist or professionally anti-religious source, but precisely from the editor of the official webpage of the Catholic Church in Germany. It is no accident, of course, that the article appeared immediately in the wake of a very pointed oration of Pope Francis to the hierarchy of Germany, in which the Holy Father indicated the obvious, namely, that the once vibrant German Catholic Church is in severe crisis: its people leaving in droves, doctrine and moral teaching regularly ignored, vocations disappearing, etc. Thus it might be construed as a not so subtle shot across the Papal bow.

But it was born too, I think, of an instinct that is at least a couple of hundred years old that northern Europe -- and Germany in particular -- naturally assumes the role of teacher and intellectual leader within the Catholic Church. In the nineteenth century, so many of the great theologians were Germans: Drey, Döllinger, Mohler, Scheeben, Franzelin, etc. And in the twentieth century, especially in the years just prior to Vatican II, the intellectual heavy-weights were almost exclusively from northern Europe: Maritain, Gilson, Congar, de Lubac, Schillebeeckx, Bouyer, Rahner, von Balthasar, Ratzinger, Küng, etc. Without these monumental figures, the rich teaching of Vatican II would never have emerged.

But something of crucial importance has happened in the years since the Council. The churches that once supported and gave rise to those intellectual leaders have largely fallen into desuetude.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Posted by Carl E. Olson on Thursday, December 10, 2015 at 03:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday, December 09, 2015

Cdl. Sarah: “Without God, there is nothing but wars, division, and bewilderment”

Cardinal Robert Sarah

Cdl. Sarah: “Without God, there is nothing but wars, division, and bewilderment”

“The real crisis that our world is going through now is not essentially economic or political, but a ‘crisis of God,’” says prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

The following remarks were delivered by Cardinal Robert Sarah at the November 20 presentation in Rome of his book God or Nothing, published in English by Ignatius Press and translated by Michael J. Miller. Miller also translated Cardinal Sarah’s speech for CWR.

***

Allow me first of all to express my most sincere gratitude to Cardinal George Pell, to His Excellency Abp. Georg Gänswein, and to His Excellency Abp. Rino Fisichella for having accepted the invitation to present my book. In particular I thank you for your kind words of praise in my regard, and especially for what you said about my book, God or Nothing. Moreover I wish to thank those who promoted and organized this fine presentation ceremony: Dr. Paul Badde and Dr. Davide Cantagalli. Finally I wish to thank each one of you for your presence. His Excellency Abp. Georg Gänswein reminded us that today we celebrate the memory of Pope Saint Gelasius. This is a sheer coincidence, because today is my fifth anniversary as a cardinal.

How did the book God or Nothing come about?

To tell the truth, I had never thought of writing a book, until now. One day Dr. Nicolas Diat came to see me for an exchange of ideas about various questions and, at the end of a second meeting, proposed that I write a book about my life. I replied that it was not at all interesting, that there were so many lives finer and richer than mine, but—I added—by means of an interview we might possibly touch on some current ecclesial and social questions about our increasingly globalized and confused world. Even in the Catholic Church we no longer have a safe doctrinal and moral path. Everyone proclaims his own opinions and value with absolute freedom. I too would like to proclaim my faith and my fidelity to Jesus, to the centuries-old Magisterium of the Church. We began therefore with the first two chapters that relate my personal experience, lived out in a particularly difficult socio-political context—that of the revolution in Guinea with Sékou Touré, with extremely tense relations between the Church and the State of Guinea, difficulties and tensions that resulted in the expulsion of the first archbishop of Conakry, Msgr. Gérard de Milleville, the arrest and incarceration of the second archbishop of Conakry, Msgr. Raymond Marie Tchidimbo, the expulsion of all the missionaries in May of 1967, and 26 years of dictatorship and persecution. I, myself, in April 1984, was put on a list of persons to be eliminated, but was spared death thanks to Divine Providence. When I think back on my life, on my “nomadic” vocational journey—Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea again, France, Senegal—I clearly discern in it concrete proof of divine predilection toward me.

After these first two chapters, there are some reflections on the popes, the Church, Rome, the modern world, Africa, the profound crises in anthropology and faith in the Western world, morality, truth, evil, prayer, etc. But God is truly the heart of God or Nothing. Why this title? Because today we observe an eclipse, an absence of God from the political, economic, and cultural world. The real crisis that our world is going through now is not essentially economic or political, but a “crisis of God.” Of course, people talk today only about the economic one: in the development of the economic power of Europe—although its original orientations were more ethical and religious—the economic interest has become more and more exclusively decisive. The man of yesterday, like today’s man, without distinction as to race, skin color, culture, country, or continent, is oriented almost exclusively toward the possession and use of material goods. And in the more specific cultural context of Western society, it is no exaggeration to say that man works, organizes, and manages human, political, economic, and commercial relations, starts wars, produces weapons of mass destruction, invades and conquers countries solely or almost exclusively to exploit and accumulate their material riches, in support of his own authority and hegemony. Under the pretext of bringing democracy, peace, and freedom, the West has created chaos in many countries, especially in the Middle East. My judgment may be inaccurate or exaggerated, but we cannot deny the present reality. Above all, Western culture has progressively organized itself as though God did not exist: many today have decided to do without God. As Nietzsche declares, for many in the West, God is dead. And we are the ones who killed Him, we are His assassins, and our Churches are the crypts and tombs of God. A lot of believers no longer attend them so as to avoid smelling the putrefaction of God; but in doing so, man no longer knows either who he is or where he is going: there is a sort of return to paganism and idolatry; science, technology, money, power, unbridled freedom, and endless pleasures are our gods.

I maintain that what we are experiencing today, especially but not only in the West, results from the fact that we have abandoned God in order to assign importance to “nothing.” Of course, the economy, politics, science, technology, and major advances in the fields of health care and social communications are not “nothing,” but in comparison to God they truly are “nothings.”

In God “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). In him, all things continue to exist. He is the Beginning, the seat of all Fullness, Saint Paul tells us; apart from him, nothing reigns: everything finds in God its own being and its own truth; otherwise it is “God or nothing.” Certainly, there are enormous problems, often painful situations—human life can be difficult and distressing; and yet we must recognize that God is the one who gives meaning to everything. Our worries, our problems, our sufferings exist and preoccupy us, but we know that everything is resolved in him, we know that it is God or nothing, and we perceive this as a self-evident truth that impresses us not from outside, but from within the soul, because Love is not imposed with violence, but by seducing the heart with an interior light.

With God or Nothing I would like to manage to put God back at the center of our thoughts, at the center of our action, at the center of our lives, in the one place that he should occupy, so that our journey as Christians might revolve around this Rock who is God, around this solid certitude of our faith.

Without praise, without prayer, without adoration and therefore without God, there is nothing but wars, division, and bewilderment. Without God in the heart of man, there is only hatred, strife, and conflicts, as we see today. I would like to illustrate this assertion of mine with this story taken from the hagiographic legend of the Muslim “saints.” We know from experience that having an unfriendly or bad neighbor can make life unpleasant. But this difficulty can last 20, or at most 50 years, and then death separates us. But living with a bad neighbor for eternity is much more unpleasant, and so it is better to know him first. Abdalwânid Ibn Zeid wanted to know who would be his neighbor in paradise. He was told: “O Abdalwânid Ibn Zeid, you will have as your neighbor Maïmouna la Nera.” “And where is this Maïmouna?” he asked. “She is from Banou un-Tel, in Koûfa.” Abdalwânid Ibn Zeid arrived in Koûfa and inquired about Maïmouna. They answered that she was a madwoman who pastured her sheep near the cemetery. Abdalwânid Ibn Zeid went to the cemetery and found Maïmouna in prayer. Maïmouna’s sheep were grazing by themselves, but what was even more astonishing and marvelous was that the sheep were mingled with wolves, and the wolves were not devouring the sheep and the sheep were not afraid of the wolves. When Maïmouna had finished praying, Abdalwânid Ibn Zeid asked Maïmouna: “How is it possible that the wolves get along so well with the sheep?” And Maïmouna replied: “I improved my relations with God and He improved the relations between my sheep and the wolves.”

Human efforts, political or diplomatic negotiations alone, will not succeed in attaining unity and reestablishing peace among men, because there is a virus of division, of disunity that is harbored in the hearts of men since original sin. The unity of the sons of God is a work that only Jesus can accomplish through the Holy Spirit, but without prayer the Spirit runs into a closed door in our souls. Let us therefore make more room for prayer and adoration in our lives, and then each one of us will be able to say: “I improved my relationship with God and He improved and pacified the relations among men and among peoples.”

Posted by Carl E. Olson on Wednesday, December 09, 2015 at 11:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tuesday, December 08, 2015

Bestselling author provides invaluable guide toward embracing Divine Mercy

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 8, 2015 – The Jubilee Year of Mercy begins today on the feast of the Immaculate Conception and the 50th anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council. Pope Francis has called us to “live lives shaped by mercy,” and benefit greatly from the Year of Mercy.

The ideal resource for the Year of Mercy is bestselling author Vinny Flynn’s soon-to-be-released book 7 SECRETS OF DIVINE MERCY, which draws from Scripture, the teachings of the Catholic Church and the Diary of St. Faustina — Flynn was one of the original editors of the official English edition of the diary — to reveal the heart of Divine Mercy. Flynn offers an inspirational road map to help us experience the overflow of transforming love from the Holy Spirit during the Year of Mercy.

“It is absolutely essential for the Church and for the credibility of her message that she herself live and testify to mercy,” said Pope Francis. Mercy, he says, is “the beating heart of the Gospel” To live mercy, we must rediscover both the spiritual works of mercy (counsel the doubtful, instruct the ignorant, admonish sinners, comfort the afflicted, forgive offenses, bear patiently those who do us ill and pray for the living and the dead) and the corporal works of mercy (feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, heal the sick, visit the imprisoned and bury the dead).

Divine Mercy is the key devotion, the umbrella devotion over everything else. Every other devotion in the Church, every ritual, every activity, every teaching, is under that umbrella of Divine Mercy. As Flynn shows us in 7 SECRETS OF DIVINE MERCY, everything in our lives can become more meaningful, more powerful and more life-changing once we really embrace the gift of Divine Mercy — the overflow of love from the Holy Trinity.

For more information, to request a review copy or to schedule an interview with Vinny Flynn, please contact Kevin Wandra (404-788-1276 or KWandra@CarmelCommunications.com) of Carmel Communications.

Posted by Carl E. Olson on Tuesday, December 08, 2015 at 02:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The empiricists and their rubes

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The empiricists and their rubes | Thomas M. Doran | The Dispatch at Catholic World Report

Or why atheists don’t have a corner on reason

Catholic World Report recently published my mischievously titled “Why we’d all be Catholic if we really thought about it”, to which no small number of atheistic empiricists replied with loud roars.

There’s no lack today of atheistic empiricists who loudly and insistently proclaim that they’re the only ones who know how to think and reason, and that religiously inclined people can’t, or don’t. When I speak of empiricists, I’m talking about people with a materialistic view of the world and life, where only what we can measure is real, often combined with anti-religion. They are proud and evangelizing atheists. And many of them are productive members of society, colleagues, family members, and friends. So long as the conversation doesn't descend to name-calling or bluster, I enjoy talking to them, debating them, listening to their perspective. And yes, I myself have to be vigilant against bluster.

First, a few of the atheistic empiricists’ blind spots. Others have ably demonstrated that atheism—the assertion that God doesn’t exist—is irrational. To deny (as compared to agnostic questioning) the existence of God requires conclusive proof that God doesn’t exist. As the universe is a pretty big place and as there are more than a few things we don’t know about it and as many of the things we once thought we knew are now known to be other than what we once thought, making the bold statement that there is no God is irrational, according to the definition of the word. Think of how hard it would be to conclusively prove there are no 6-toed purple, yellow, and red frogs on Earth, just one planet in one galaxy. In what little nook or cranny might such a frog exist, even if just one mutation?

Second, many atheistic empiricists accept on “faith”, i.e., the witness of people they deem credible, scientific principles such as black holes and related theories about the retention of fundamental particle information in black holes or at their event horizons, dark matter, string theory, that they themselves don’t understand, meaning they can’t follow the advanced mathematical proofs themselves. Thus, these beliefs become a matter of trusted testimony rather than evidence.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Posted by Carl E. Olson on Tuesday, December 08, 2015 at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saturday, December 05, 2015

Living Between the First and Final Coming of Christ

Icon of Second Coming, c. 1700 [commons.wikimedia.org]

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, December 6, 2015, Second Sunday of Advent | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• Bar 5:1-9
• Ps 126:1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 6
• Phil 1:4-6, 8-11
• Lk 3:1-6

"There are three distinct comings of the Lord of which I know," wrote St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the great twelfth-century doctor of the Church, in one of his Advent sermons, "his coming to people, his coming into people, and his coming against people."

He added that Christ's "coming to people and his coming against people are too well known to need elucidation." Since, however, today's Gospel reading mentions both groups—those Christ comes to and those he comes against—a bit of elucidation is in order.

St. Luke took pains to situate the fact of the Incarnation within human history. He did so by providing the names of several different rulers, beginning with Caesar Augustus (Lk. 2:1), who reigned from 27 B.C. to A.D. 14, and who was ruler of the Roman Empire when Jesus was born. In today's Gospel, the Evangelist situates John the Baptist's bold announcement of Christ's coming in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar. Tiberius, the stepson of Augustus, reigned from A.D. 14 to 37. Pontius Pilate was appointed procurator of Judea by Tiberius in 26, and served in that post for ten years. Those men and the others mentioned by St. Luke—Herod, Philip, Lysanias, and the high priests Annas and Caiaphas—ruled the known world while the ruler of all creation walked the dusty roads of Palestine and announced the kingdom of God was at hand.

The Roman rulers were ruthless and often violent men who established rule and kept order through military might and political power. They did, in fact, establish and keep a sort of peace—the pax Romana—which lasted about two centuries (27 B.C. - c. A.D. 180). Yet that peace was both uneasy and fragile; it had been won by the sword and often relied on fear, intimidation, and persecution. St. Luke's mention of these rulers was, on one hand, meant to support the historical nature of his "orderly account," which was to be "a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us..." (see Lk. 1:1-4).

But it was also meant to establish a deliberate comparison and contrast between the rulers of this world and the ruler of nations, between the kings of earthly realms and the King of kings. The Roman rulers used force and relied upon fear, but the Incarnate Word came with humility and love. Emperors were announced and escorted by armed soldiers, but the birth of the Christ child was announced by heavenly hosts offering songs of praise, not swords or spears. "What the angel proposes to the shepherds is another kyrios [Lord]," wrote Fr. Robert Barron in The Priority of Christ (Brazos, 2007), "the Messiah Jesus, whose rule will constitute a true justice because it is conditioned not by fear but by love and forgiveness..."

The Lord came against injustice, fear, violence, and death, and would himself experience each of those dreadful realities for the sake of all men. Such would be "the salvation of God" spoken of John the Baptist, who quoted from Isaiah's beautiful and moving hymn-like reflection on the glory and goodness of God (Isa. 40). John, like Isaiah, was pointing toward the comfort, peace, and joy that only God can give.

Yet the final rest and joy is not yet fully known. We live, St. Bernard explained, during the time of the "third coming" of Christ, between the Incarnation and the final coming, or advent, when all men will finally see the pierced but glorious Lord. "The intermediate coming is a hidden one; in it only the elect see the Lord within their own selves, and they are saved." Christ comes to us in spirit and in power; he most especially comes to us under the appearance of bread and wine.

"Because this coming lies between the other two," wrote St. Bernard, "it is like a road on which we travel from the first coming to the last." That winding road is the way of the Lord, the path of Advent.

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the December 6, 2009, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

Posted by Carl E. Olson on Saturday, December 05, 2015 at 02:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Unbearable Oppression of Yoga

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The Unbearable Oppression of Yoga | Dr. Christopher S. Morrissey | CWR

What to make of the current craze of student activists who seek explicit institutional enforcement of “safe spaces” on campus?

Traditional logic is famous for classifying human beings as “rational animals.” What would traditional logicians make of the current craze of student activists who seek explicit institutional enforcement of “safe spaces” on campus?

Student protests have erupted in recent weeks, most notably at Yale University and the University of Missouri. As fascinating demands are made, much tumult has ensued. The president of the University of Missouri has even resigned.

The wave of activism has spread to many campuses besides Yale and Mizzou. Student temperament is perhaps best illustrated by the first demand made by the uprising at Amherst College:

President Martin must issue a statement of apology to students, alumni and former students, faculty, administration and staff who have been victims of several injustices including but not limited to our institutional legacy of white supremacy, colonialism, anti-black racism, anti-Latinx racism, anti-Native American racism, anti-Native/ indigenous racism, anti-Asian racism, anti-Middle Eastern racism, heterosexism, cis-sexism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, ableism, mental health stigma, and classism. Also include that marginalized communities and their allies should feel safe at Amherst College.

If you are wondering where this sort of thing will wind up, perhaps the student leaders at the University of Ottawa, who recently voted to shut down a yoga class, have given us a glimpse of the politically correct reductio ad absurdum. Since Canadians like to congratulate themselves on being more forward thinking and liberally enlightened than their southern neighbors, it might be the shape of progressive things to come in America.

The Ottawa yoga class was to be offered to about 60 students through the university’s Centre for Students with Disabilities. Although apparently no one had complained, the university’s Student Federation president Romeo Ahimakin said the yoga program was suspended in order that students could be consulted about how “to make it better, more accessible and more inclusive to certain groups of people that feel left out in yoga-like spaces.”

Yoga instructor Jennifer Scharf had been offering the course since 2008 through the Centre. On its website, the Centre for Students with Disabilities describes its commitment to “challenge all forms of oppression”, and professes that while “working to dismantle ableism, we also work to challenge all forms of oppression including, but not limited to, heterosexism, cissexism, homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, queerphobia, HIV-phobia, sex negativity, fatphobia, femme-phobia, misogyny, transmisogyny, racism, classism, ableism, xenophobia, sexism, and linguistic discrimination.”

In an email, explaining their new challenge aimed at yoga’s oppressiveness, staff at the Centre said that “while yoga is a really great idea and accessible and great for students ... there are cultural issues of implication involved in the practice... Yoga has been under a lot of controversy lately due to how it is being practiced”; that is, the practice of yoga is apparently an oppressive form of cultural appropriation, since yoga comes from cultures that “have experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy ... we need to be mindful of this and how we express ourselves while practising yoga.”

However, the yoga instructor, who was rebuffed when she had offered to change the name of the class (from “yoga” to something perhaps more palatable to political correctness: “mindful stretching”), summed up her view of the situation by commenting, “People are just looking for a reason to be offended by anything they can find.”

What I find most interesting about this risible episode is the fact that rational animals are the only animals that go looking for reasons. What then has happened with student rationality, bringing it to where it is in this yoga case?

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Posted by Carl E. Olson on Saturday, December 05, 2015 at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Homilies for December 2015: Second Sunday of Advent, December 6th

by Fr. Thomas McQuillen | Homiletic & Pastoral Review

Adoration of the Shepherds by Francois Boucher, ca. 1761-62.

Second Sunday of Advent—December 6, 2015
Readings: http://usccb.org/bible/readings/120615.cfm

Experiencing New Life through Christ’s Coming this Christmas
This coming week, Pope Francis will open the holy door at St. Peter’s basilica and start the Extra-ordinary Jubilee of Mercy. And thus in this extra opened door of the church will be symbolized the hope of the Church. The hope that more people will be able to enter and receive the mercy of God. The hope that more people will be able to come and behold the face of God.

As the Pope states: “Jesus Christ is the face of the Father’s mercy.” (Misericordiae Vultus, 1) But this season of Advent recalls the events leading up to the birth of Christ, to Christmas. They recall the events before the face of Christ was revealed, and to help us understand the meaning of these events, let us start by recalling the meaning of being born.

Many years ago, before the advent of ultrasound, I had a conversation with a friend who was in her eighth month of pregnancy. As we met, I asked her how she was doing.

She began to talk about how wonderful she felt. This was her second child and she never felt better—there was no morning sickness or drowsiness, indeed her faced radiated. She said that she loved being pregnant, she loved how she felt physically, and she loved the mystery and wonder of it. And here the conversation began to shift.

She then started to talk about the child and related how she and her husband, would marvel about this new life about to come into their lives. Here was a new life, a new member of their family, already so much a part of their lives, already greatly loved, yet they knew so little about this person.

Continue reading at HPRweb.com.

Posted by St. Ignatius of Loyola on Saturday, December 05, 2015 at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday, December 02, 2015

Why the Unreality?

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Why the Unreality? | James Kalb | CWR

Making sense of the position and power that secular progressivism holds in public life today requires understanding both its theoretical side and its institutional side

People who reject secular progressivism, especially in its more highly developed forms, are often puzzled by its proponents. Do they really believe what they say they believe, for example that diversity is always strength, or traditional religion and morality are dangerous and irrational bigotries, or there are no significant differences between men and women?

Some say they don’t really believe such things, at least the informed and intelligent ones don’t, but just find them politically useful as claims. That view would make secular progressivism a matter of cynical demagogy and power seeking.

Others say they believe what they say they believe, but do so because of psychological quirks or historical particularities. Leftists are perpetual adolescents always in rebellion, or they’re so horrified by slavery, segregation, colonialism, Nazism, or the Wars of Religion that they find anything other than compulsory equality and rejection of transcendent claims intolerably dangerous.

Such views don’t explain the position secular progressivism holds in public life today: its increasing grip on institutions and professions, its extension to ever more aspects of life, its success in remaking mainstream political and religious movements in its image, its ambition to silence all opposition, its resilience that enables it to come back from all reverses. When non-progressives say some new initiative is silly and won’t last—“gay marriage,” “micro-aggressions,” or whatever—they’re routinely proven wrong, at least on the second point.

Such successes argue for an outlook that is rooted in basic and enduring features of modern life and how modern people look at the world. They show that even what seem like absurdities can’t be laughed off, but must be taken very seriously, because there’s more thought and institutional momentum behind them than might appear.

What I’m calling progressivism, which is the dominant view of our time, has a theoretical and an institutional side. On the theoretical side it might be summed up as a tendency toward scientism, the view that an idealized version of modern natural science is the unique model for knowledge and reason. That view denies qualitative distinctions and turns goods into preferences, because it wants to accept only what is publicly observable and quantifiable. It also implies a sort of moral egalitarianism: preferences define what is good, and all preferences are equally preferences, so they are equally valid and have an equal claim to satisfaction. To reject a preference is baseless discrimination against the person whose preference it is, and thus a form of hatred and oppression.

It’s worth noting that scientism is not scientific, and often aligns itself with obfuscation.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Posted by St. Ignatius of Loyola on Wednesday, December 02, 2015 at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saturday, November 28, 2015

Advent orients us to the heart of the Nativity

"La Nativite a la Torche" ("Nativity with the Torch") (17th century) by Le Nain brothers [WikiArt.org]

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for November 29, 2015, the First Sunday of Advent | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• Jer 33:14-16
• Ps 25:4-5, 8-9, 10, 14
• 1 Thes 3:12-4:2
• Lk 21:25-28, 34-36

“We preach not one advent only of Christ,” wrote St. Cyril of Jerusalem in the fourth century, “but a second also, far more glorious than the former. For the former gave a view of His patience; but the latter brings with it the crown of a divine kingdom.”

The term “advent,” as we’ll see, is drawn from the New Testament, but when St. Cyril (named a Doctor of the Church in 1883 by Pope Leo XIII) was writing his famous catechetical lectures, the season of Advent was just starting to emerge in fledgling form in Spain and Gaul. During the fifth century, Christians in parts of western Europe began observing a period of ascetical practices leading up to the feasts of Christmas and Epiphany. Advent was observed in Rome beginning in the sixth century, and it was sometimes called the “pre-Christian Lent,” a time of fasting, more frequent prayer, and additional liturgies.

One of the prayers of the Roman missal from those early centuries says, “Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to prepare the ways of Thy only-begotten Son: that by His coming we may be able to serve him with purified minds.” This echoes today’s reading from St. Paul’s first letter to the Christians in Thessalonica, in which he exhorts them “to strengthen your hearts, to be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones. Amen.”

The Greek word used by St. Paul for “coming” is parousia, which means “presence” or “coming to a place.” The Vulgate translation of the phrase “the coming of our Lord Jesus” (1 Thess 3:13) is rendered “in adventu Domini.” The word parousia appears twenty-four times in the New Testament, almost always in reference to the coming or presence of the Lord. It appears in Matthew 24 four times, the only place the term appears in the Gospels; that chapter records the Olivet Discourse, Jesus’ prophetic warnings about a coming time of trial, destruction, and “the coming of the Son of man” (Matt 24:27). Today’s Gospel reading, from Luke 21, is a parallel passage warning of distress, startling heavenly signs, and “the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.”

What connection is there between the foment of earthly tribulation and cosmic upheaval, and preparations to celebrate Christ’s birth? If we consider the Christmas story cleared of sentimental wrappings, we see events as dramatic, raw, bloody, and joyous as can be imagined: the birth of Christ, the slaughter of the innocents, the praise of angels, the murderous rage of Herod. Christmas is about birth, but also death; about rejoicing, but also rejection. It is the story of God desired and God denied. It is the story every man has to encounter because it is the story of God’s radical plan of salvation, the entrance of divinity into the dusty ruts and twisting corridors of human history.

Advent orients us to the heart of the Nativity—not in a merely metaphorical way, but through the reality of the liturgy, the Eucharist, the sacramental life of the Church. It is a wake-up call, perhaps even an alarm rousing us from “carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life.” The birth of Christ caught many by surprise. Likewise, we can find ourselves trapped in the darkness of dull living and missing Christ’s call to raise our heads as salvation approaches.

“Advent calls believers to become aware of this truth and to act accordingly,” said Pope Benedict XVI in a homily marking the beginning of Advent in 2006. “It rings out as a salutary appeal in the days, weeks and months that repeat: Awaken! Remember that God comes! Not yesterday, not tomorrow, but today, now!” Jesus told his disciples to be vigilant, prepared, and prayerful.

The same is true for his disciples today, so they might escape the tribulations of spiritual darkness and stand purified and prepared before the Son of Man, the son of Mary.

(This "Opening the Word" column appeared originally in the November 29, 2009, issue of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

Posted by Carl E. Olson on Saturday, November 28, 2015 at 06:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Friday, November 27, 2015

Sacred Liturgy: Great Mystery, Great Mercy

The Ghent Altarpiece “Adoration of the Lamb”, by Jan Van Eyck.

Sacred Liturgy: Great Mystery, Great Mercy | Bishop Peter J. Elliott | Homiletic & Pastoral Review

Archbishop Peter Richard Kenrick Lecture, Kenrick Glennon Seminary, St Louis, MO, October 8, 2015

Reflecting on the state of divine worship in the Church, I believe that this is a good time for Catholics of the Roman Rite, a very good time. Fifty years after the Second Vatican Council initiated a liturgical reform in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, we now inherit the eucharistic project of the last years of Saint John Paul II, and the liturgical project and “pax liturgica” of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Pope Francis respects this inheritance. His liturgical style may be simpler than his predecessor, but he has maintained what he achieved. Benedict and Francis both revere the German scholar Romano Guardini, a deep influence on sound liturgical renewal.¹

CATHOLIC WORSHIP TODAY
The papal projects are gradually correcting a misapplication of the post-Conciliar liturgical reform, discontinuity, or rupture from our tradition, with many errors and abuses. However, in surveying where we are, I do not wish to dwell on poor liturgy. I emphasize examples of how the situation is improving, leading into my major themes, mystery and mercy.

Liturgy, Made or Given
One major misinterpretation of Sacrosanctum Concilium is that we make the liturgy, that worship is something we fabricate or put together, not a gift of the Church handed on to us within a living tradition. To all of us is entrusted this gift of liturgical worship, with its own patterns, plan, laws, logic, and cultural qualities.

In this context, myths linger such as the “gathering rite,” implying that we gather ourselves for worship. Pope Benedict insisted that God gathers us for worship, just as he called his Chosen People out of Egypt, to assemble in the wilderness, there to learn how to worship, through sacrifice to the true God, and how to live justly, following the Commandments of God’s Law.² In the Third Eucharistic Prayer, we address God the Father: “You never cease to gather a people to yourself,” a people later described as “this family, whom you have summoned before you.”

Didacticism
In not a few parishes, the liturgical reform drifted away from worship, to teaching and edifying instruction, to didacticism. The church became an auditorium for imparting messages—and doing what you are told. This was underlined by an irritating commentator, a histrionic cantor (she of the upraised arm and the glinting eyes) and, especially, when the celebrant acted like a television compere, or an earnest coach giving his team a pep talk. This liturgical decadence is fading, even if not everywhere.

Continue reading on the HPR site.

Posted by St. Ignatius of Loyola on Friday, November 27, 2015 at 01:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Fr. Spitzer's Brilliant Examination of the Whole of Reality

by Fr. James V. Schall, S. J.

We have, with the publication of Fr. Robert Spitzer's quartet of books on "Happiness, Suffering, and Transcendence”, a major event in Catholic intellectual history, indeed in the history of philosophy.

We began…by noting that our view of consciousness is the new field upon which the academic and cultural battle between materialism, panpsychism, and transcendentalism is being waged. We now see that the outcome of this battle will not only affect our personal view of life’s purpose, the world, human dignity, and human value, but also the culture’s outlook on these important ideas and ideals. Jesus’ proclamation that ‘the truth will make you free’ (Jn. 8:32) is particularly important here—for if we and the culture falsely underestimate our purpose, dignity, value, and destiny, we will also unnecessarily restrict our freedom and potential to reach beyond the material world into the domain of perfect truth, love, goodness, and beauty.” — Fr. Robert Spitzer, SJ, The Soul’s Upward Yearning: Clues to Our Transcendent Nature from Experience and Reason (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2015), p. 267.

Let me begin by saying that these remarks are not properly a “review” of the extraordinarily brilliant book cited above. Robert Spitzer is a Jesuit colleague from many years; we taught together at Georgetown for a number of years where he was a most popular and effective teacher. He studied at Gonzaga University, St. Louis University, the Gregorian University in Rome, the Weston School of Theology and the School of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America under Paul Weiss and other members of that most distinguished faculty. His dissertation on the objective nature of time remains something of a classic.

Spitzer is currently at the Magis Center in Southern California where he has continued to develop a coherent overall synthesis of all branches of knowledge into one intelligible whole. I know that sounds impossible but no other way is adequate to describe the work and mind of Robert Spitzer. His academic background covers almost every field from business to science to literature to metaphysics to studies in Scripture. His earlier books, especially his Cosmological Proofs for the Existence of God along with his work in questions of life and ethics, are themselves testimony to a most comprehensive mind. He is frequently on EWTN and runs the Napa Institute; he lectures widely to business and professional audiences. Besides these accomplishments, Fr. Spitzer’s eyesight has been such that he can barely see. He has learned to remember what he needs to know. Yet, he seems to remember everything by being read to or using various devices on the computer.

Robert Spitzer, in addition to being a mesmerizing speaker and teacher, has, as this book attests, a clear and organized mind that knows, like Aquinas, where everything belongs in its proper order. One of the pleasures in reading The Soul’s Upward Yearning is surely its awareness of the reader who can be overwhelmed with the technical language and demonstrations necessary to make its points. Everything is repeated, reduced to clear argument—then said in another way, then repeated, later summarized. Spitzer deals with the most difficult of concepts in physics, cosmology, psychology, and philosophy. To read him is itself a philosophical education of a kind that few teach anymore, not merely because they do not have Spitzer’s range of knowledge, but they do not see how things from differing disciplines fit together. Spitzer was also, to add another dimension to his career, president of Gonzaga University. He can recount vividly the continued rise of its famous basketball team in which he had a hand.

This book is Volume II of a Quartet of four books under the general heading of “Happiness, Suffering, and Transcendence”. Volume I is titled Finding True Happiness: Satisfying Our Restless Hearts (Ignatius Press, 2015). What I deal with here is the second volume of this quartet of books. The first volume is on happiness, a thorough and complete analysis of this reality in our lives. The second volume deals with what goes on inside of us, what do we know and how do we know it. The third volume addresses revelation, that is: What is it that is revealed to us and how does it relate to what we are and know? The final volume concerns the consequences of our freedom, both the questions of suffering and those of evil, along with the opposite of what our final destiny looks like. All together they simply provide a liberal education the likes of which can be found in few if any colleges today.

II.

The first thing to note in reading Spitzer is that the word “clue” often appears in what he is presenting. The word appears in the sub-title of this book on Yearning, a word he takes (as his introductory passage indicates) from St. John of the Cross. But, as the similar introductory passage in Volume I attests, the theme also comes from Augustine’s “restless hearts”. The questions of most concern to human beings begin here—inside of us. Spitzer’s approach commences with what we experience in ourselves and how we explain what we find. Unlike Aquinas and Aristotle, though not opposed to them, he begins with introspective desires and longings which we all have whether we like it or now, the desire for happiness, the longing for an explanation of things, ourselves, our existence, included.

But Spitzer is nothing if he is not at the same time thoroughly scientific and reasonable. This is where the word “clue” comes in. Spitzer knows scientific method backwards and forwards; he respects what it is and what it claims for itself. In this sense, this book is a thoroughly scientific book, provided with all the daunting scientific evidence needed to make his points. But these books are not only “scientific arguments”. They are also meditative reflections, even catechetical lessons and apologetic inquires. These books are thus multi-layered. They are meant for the scholar, the well-educated, and the common man, as well as for those who doubt that any case can be made for reason or the coherence of the Catholic understanding of things. Yet, it all fits together. There is something quite exhilarating in seeing these relationships spelled out in a manner that, with a little effort, we can follow.

Spitzer follows Newman’s famous notion that many strands of thought, many different arguments and experiences can come together to provide a “proof” that each of the arguments by itself may not be able to provide.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Posted by Carl E. Olson on Friday, November 27, 2015 at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

The Catholic Origins of Thanksgiving

Images via Wikipedia and us.fotolia.com

The Catholic Origins of Thanksgiving | Dale Ahlquist | CWR

Myths about the pilgrims and religious freedom have obscured some surprising truths about this great American holiday.

Did you know that Thanksgiving is a Catholic holiday? True, it’s not on the Church calendar. And it is celebrated only in America, whereas Church holidays are universal.

Our national holiday is certainly an event that has taken on a life of its own, with an established tradition involving turkey and mashed potatoes, football, shopping, and a four-day weekend—which is fascinating since none of those things have anything to do with the original event that gave rise to annual celebration on the fourth Thursday in November. But any time a nation does anything in unison that involves families getting together and counting their blessings, it is a good thing. “Thanks,” says G.K. Chesterton, “is the highest form of thought.” And he mentions the fact that the worst moment for an atheist is when he is thankful and suddenly realizes he has no one to thank.

But what is the origin of this holiday?

What most people believe is a variation on what I was taught in public school in the 1960s. The Pilgrims came to Plymouth on a ship called the Mayflower. They were the first English settlers in America. They came for religious freedom. And they had a big feast with Indians, and that was the first Thanksgiving. That about sums it up. And that is what Chesterton calls “The Myth of the Mayflower.”

First of all, they were not known as “pilgrims” till about 200 years afterwards. They were Puritans, a radical Anglican “low church” sect that loathed the “high church” Anglicans that happened to include the King of England. In fact, about 30 years after the Puritans arrived in America, some of their fellow Puritans back in England arranged for King Charles I to have his head chopped off.

Secondly, there were at least nine other British settlements before the Plymouth colony.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Posted by St. Ignatius of Loyola on Wednesday, November 25, 2015 at 01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

New from Ignatius Press: "The Lost Mandate of Heaven"

Now available from Ignatius Press:

The Lost Mandate of Heaven: The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Vietnam

by Dr. Geoffrey DT Shaw

Ngo Dinh Diem, the first president of the Republic of Vietnam, possessed the Confucian "Mandate of Heaven", a moral and political authority that was widely recognized by all Vietnamese. This devout Roman Catholic leader never lost this mandate in the eyes of his people; rather, he was taken down by a military coup sponsored by the U.S. government, which resulted in his brutal murder.

The commonly held view runs contrary to the above assertion by military historian Geoffrey Shaw. According to many American historians, President Diem was a corrupt leader whose tyrannical actions lost him the loyalty of his people and the possibility of a military victory over the North Vietnamese. The Kennedy Administration, they argue, had to withdraw its support of Diem.

Based on his research of original sources, including declassified documents of the U.S. government, Shaw chronicles the Kennedy administration's betrayal of this ally, which proved to be not only a moral failure but also a political disaster that led America into a protracted and costly war. Along the way, Shaw reveals a President Diem very different from the despot portrayed by the press during its coverage of Vietnam. From eyewitness accounts of military, intelligence, and diplomatic sources, Shaw draws the portrait of a man with rare integrity, a patriot who strove to free his country from Western colonialism while protecting it from Communism.

"A candid account of the killing of Ngo Dinh Diem, the reasons for it, who was responsible, why it happened, and the disastrous results. Particularly agonizing for Americans who read this clearly stated and tightly argued book is the fact that the final Vietnam defeat was not really on battle grounds, but on political and moral grounds. The Vietnam War need not have been lost. Overwhelming evidence supports it."
— From the Foreword by James V. Schall, S.J., Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University

"Did I find a veritable Conradian 'Heart of Darkness'? Yes, I did, but it was not in the quarter to which all popular American sources were pointing their accusatory fingers; in other words, not in Saigon but, paradoxically, within the Department of State back in Washington, D.C., and within President Kennedy's closest White House advisory circle. The actions of these men led to Diem's murder. And with his death, nine and a half years of careful work and partnership between the United States and South Vietnam was undone."
— Geoffrey Shaw, from the Preface

Geoffrey Shaw, Ph.D., received his doctorate in history from the University of Manitoba, with a focus on US diplomatic and military history in Southeast Asia. From 1994 to 2008 he was an Assistant Professor of History for the American Military University. He has written and spoken widely about US military involvement in Vietnam and the Middle East. Currently he is the President of the Alexandrian Defense Group, a think tank on counterinsurgency warfare.

Praise for The Lost Mandate of Heaven:

"This masterpiece will likely emerge as the definitive work on this troublesome subject. An exceedingly well-written and engaging read, replete with significant revelations and exposés."
— William L. Stearman, Ph.D.,Director of the National Security Council's Indochina staff, 1973–1976

"A remarkable book that finally sets the record straight with copious documentation on the assassination of Diem, which was ultimately responsible for our loss of the war. A must read."
— Admiral John M. Poindexter, U.S. Navy (ret.), National Security Advisor to President Reagan

"Shaw has produced a truly monumental and highly readable account. Any serious student of the Vietnam War must read this book."
— Colonel Andrew R. Finlayson, U.S. Marine Corps (ret.), Author, Killer Kane

"It took half a century for someone committed and brave enough to unravel the Machiavellian plot to assassinate President Diem."
— Nghia M. Vo, Director of Saigon Arts, Culture, and Education Institute (SACEI)

"Amidst a new time of national strategic misdirection and hubris, the case of Diem demands to be revisited. This book is essential reading."
— Thomas A. Marks, Ph.D., Author, Maoist People's War in Post-Vietnam Asia

"Geoffrey Shaw has done a commendable job in unraveling the intricacies of the most wrong-headed political decisions of the Vietnam War."
— Stephen Sherman, Editor, Vietnam Veterans for Factual History, Indochina Series

"In this important book, Geoffrey Shaw illuminates the critical conflicts within the U.S. government over support for South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem prior to his assassination."
— Mark Moyar, Author, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965

"Utilizing newly released documents, Professor Shaw, in his riveting book, reveals how the anti-Catholic crowd in the U.S. State Department manipulated President Kennedy to authorize the removal of South Vietnam's first president, Ngo Dinh Diem."
— George J. Marlin, Author, Christian Persecutions in the Middle East: A 21^st Century Tragedy

Posted by Carl E. Olson on Tuesday, November 24, 2015 at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Monday, November 23, 2015

Why we’d all be Catholic if we really thought about it

(us.fotolia.com | Sergey Nivens)

Why we’d all be Catholic if we really thought about it | Thomas M. Doran | The Dispatch at CWR

And why the only rational alternative to Catholicism is fatalism-hedonism

In the modern world, where we shouldn’t presume to tell others what’s true and false, good and bad, or right and wrong, saying we’d all be Catholic if we really thought about it is sure to provoke scorn and ire. What about happy and generous Buddhists, Muslims, Lutherans, atheists? Didn't this sort of close-minded thinking go by the board a hundred years ago? Isn’t this the problem with ISIS and Al-Qaeda, that they think they have a corner on the truth?

The novelist and essayist Walker Percy, who converted to Catholicism from secular humanism, once wrote a self interview in which he had the following exchange with himself:

Q: How is such a belief [in Catholicism] possible in this day and age?
A: What else is there?

Q: What do you mean, what else is there? There is humanism, atheism, agnosticism, Marxism, behaviorism, materialism, Buddhism, Muhammadanism, Sufism, astrology, occultism, theosophy.
A: That’s what I mean.

So, here goes. And yes, those with other belief systems share some of these things. And no, no other belief system embodies all of them.

• Catholicism insists that every person is created to be great, a hero, to rise above human weaknesses and mistakes, to be more than just a smart animal, and that becoming this hero has permanent significance.

• Catholics are convinced that heaven is a glorious adventure, not eternal boredom or conformity or mindless obedience, and if heaven is real, as Catholics believe, even the longest and most fruitful life on Earth is just a speck compared to life in heaven as your best self.

• What if hell—the misery of self-absorption and separation from your Creator—is real, and people actually go there, as Thomas Aquinas, Dante, C. S. Lewis, and others have described and depicted? For Catholics, hell is the willful rejection of the means the Creator gives us to get to heaven, where our Creator ardently desires us to be.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Posted by Carl E. Olson on Monday, November 23, 2015 at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Cardinal Sarah: "God is disappearing from society...no one is interested in God"

The African cardinal's new book addresses gender ideology, the definition of marriage, the mission of the Church, the joy of the Gospel and loss of faith

At the presentation of his new book Cardinal Robert Sarah said that Western society is rapidly forgetting God, and expressed his desire to help people rediscover him through both prayer and witness.

“I would like to help people discover God in their lives, because many of us have lost God,” Cardinal Sarah told CNA at the Nov. 20 presentation of his new book, God or Nothing.

“God is disappearing from society, from culture, from the economy, no one is interested in God,” he said, which is why he thought of the need to bear witness to the fact that “God exists, that God is our life.”

Without God, the cardinal said, “we are nothing. Without God man doesn't know where he is, where he is going and therefore it's a testimony of faith. Without God we are lost.”

Released last month, “God or nothing” was officially presented yesterday in Rome’s Santa Maria dell'Anima church.

In addition to Cardinal Sarah, brief interventions were also given by Cardinal George Pell, Prefect of the Secretariat of the Economy; Archbishop Georg Ganswein, Prefect of the Papal Household and Archbishop Rino Fisichella, President of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization.

Published so far in French, English, Italian and German, the book offers Cardinal Sarah’s insights on current hot-button issues, such as gender ideology and the definition of marriage, as well as the mission of the Church, the joy of the Gospel and the “heresy of activism.”

Cardinal Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, spoke with CNA before the event began, saying that although it’s not easy to put God back into the minds that have forgotten him, “through our testimony, through our life, we can help people to love God.”

“Not only by reading my book, because it’s not enough to read a book. But you must have an experience… a personal encounter, a personal experience with God.”

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Posted by St. Ignatius of Loyola on Sunday, November 22, 2015 at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saturday, November 21, 2015

Christ the King deserves our praise, obedience, and adoration

Stained glass window at the Annunciation Melkite Catholic Cathedral in Roslindale, Massachusetts, depicting Christ the King in the regalia of a Byzantine emperor (John Stephen Dwyer/Wikipedia)

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, November 22, 2015, The Solemnity of Christ the King | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• Dan 7:13-14
• Ps 93:1, 1-2, 5
• Rev 1:5-8
• Jn 18:33b-37

“Would Jesus feel at home among the opulence of The Vatican?” The question was put to me recently after I’d written defending the Church’s ownership of cathedrals, churches, and artwork.

My article, in turn, was in response to remarks made by a professional baseball player—a fallen away Catholic, it turns out—who had visited the Sistine Chapel and later remarked to a reporter: “They could sell all those things, auction them off and probably feed half that world's starving population. There is that much wealth stored in the Sistine Chapel. For it just to be sitting there I think is a crime.”

There are numerous flaws with such myopic thinking, including the athlete failing to recognize that no other Christian group in the world operates as many charitable organizations, orphanages, schools, hospitals, hospices, and shelters as does the Catholic Church. And what about his multi-million dollar contract, paid for by fans coming to watch grown men throw and hit baseballs in huge, expensive stadiums?

Yet, if the stadiums and the teams were sold, what then? Are sporting events evil? Is it wrong to make a good living being an athlete? Of course not.

Which brings up a point directly related to this great feast day: cathedrals, churches, and works of art were created over the course of many centuries as essential features of the Church's worship of Jesus Christ, who is the King of kings. Today’s reading from the opening chapter of The Apocalypse describes Jesus as “the firstborn of the dead and ruler of the kings of the earth.” If Jesus really is God, he deserves our praise; if he is King of all, he deserves our obedience; if he is the Alpha and Omega, he deserves our adoration.

Sacrosanctum concilium, Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, observed that “the fine arts are considered to rank among the noblest activities of man's genius … These arts, by their very nature, are oriented toward the infinite beauty of God which they attempt in some way to portray by the work of human hands; they achieve their purpose of redounding to God's praise and glory in proportion as they are directed the more exclusively to the single aim of turning men's minds devoutly toward God.” (par 122). Man was created out of God’s overflowing love, and man returns that love by expressing his love for the Lord, who is king and “robed in majesty,” through prayers, words, songs, art, and architecture.

Ultimately, the cathedrals and statues and artwork belong to the King. This is all the more meaningful when considering that the Eucharist—the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ—is kept in the houses of God. Sure, the Eucharist could be kept in a closet or a gymnasium, but is that any way to show respect and love for the King?

Jesus told Pilate, “My kingdom does not belong to this world.” Some Christians have mistakenly thought this means they should have no part of churches, vestments and artwork. But it should be understood in light of the Incarnation, which Jesus referred to a moment later, saying, “You say I am a king. For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.”

The Son was not of this world, yet he came into the world. He had no beginning, but was born a babe in a manger. He was all-powerful, yet suffered and died. And when he rose from the dead and ascended to the Father, he did not shed his humanity. He is standing in heaven—the Lamb, human and divine, “as though it had been slain” (Rev. 5:6)—surrounded by cherubim and elders singing ceaseless praise.

In other words, Christ’s Kingdom does not belong to the world, but his Church—the “seed and beginning of this kingdom” (CCC 567)—is in the world. And it is growing, mysteriously, not through bloodshed, tyranny, or coercion but through the body and blood of the King, through truth, and through conversion.

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the November 22, 2009, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

Posted by St. Ignatius of Loyola on Saturday, November 21, 2015 at 04:22 PM | Permalink

The Eucharist and the Rule of Christ

The Eucharist and the Rule of Christ | Fr. James T O'Connor | From The Hidden Manna: A Theology of the Eucharist (2nd edition) | Ignatius Insight

God the Father has put everything under Christ's dominion, and he shall rule until all powers opposed to him have been subdued, the last of them being death itself (cf. 1 Cor. 15:25-26). This present stage of Christ's rule is something we often profess in the liturgy (especially in the Feast of Christ the King) and in private devotion.

The meaning of the Lord's subjection of all reality in its present stage is, however, something upon which most of us do not often reflect. It means that, in some mysterious but real way, the risen Jesus influences, shapes, and directs all things so that out of all persons and things he is shaping the future visage of creation as that creation moves toward his glorious return. Even the sinner—whose very sin is at least implicitly an attempt to thwart the sovereignty and dominion of Christ—operates now within the overall plan of the Lord for the establishment of his Kingdom.

The ways in which Jesus exercises this dominion vary. Over creatures to whom he has given intelligence and free will, his action is such that it respects his natural gifts. Nonetheless, his power to move us by attraction, the arranging of circumstances, the example of others, the holy inspiration that comes from the reading of Scripture, interior grace that conveys the delectatio spoken of by Augustine— these and many other ways are some of the means by which he reigns efficaciously over intelligent creatures. As Vatican Council II said:

Constituted Lord by his Resurrection. Christ, to whom all power in heaven and on earth has been given, already works in the hearts of men by virtue of his Holy Spirit, not only stirring up a desire for the age to come but by that very fact also animating, purifying, and strengthening the noble intentions by which the human family strives to make its life more human and to subject all the earth to that goal. [16]

Over the lesser beings of creation his power sometimes is not necessarily more powerful (for his attractiveness and inspirations are powerful indeed) but more direct and immediate. And such is the case with the elements of bread and wine, simultaneously products of his creation and of ours, "fruit of the earth and work of human hands". At the Consecration of the liturgy, the heavenly King touches these elements directly by and through the power of his Spirit. He touches them so mightily that—if we may put it this way—he extracts from them their very reality, dominating it and attracting it (forcefully pulling it even) toward himself, so subjecting it to himself that its own true being is lost to it as it becomes the very Lord who has mastered it.

The mystery of transubstantiation is a totally marvelous change but not one wherein the Lord descends from heavenly glory to "enter" under the appearances of bread and wine. Rather it is one in which he, not coming down, lifts the creaturely realities to himself, drawing them up to where he is now with the Father. He draws them to himself in such a fashion that he subjugates them and so transforms their own being that it becomes identical with his. The very being of bread and wine is lifted out of itself in a mighty spiral of ascent, is subsumed by and converted into the reality of Jesus seated in glory. By drawing the reality of all the elements scattered throughout the world unto and into himself, Jesus maintains his own bodily unity. The elements are changed into him, not he into them. If he did to the appearances, the species, what he does to the very reality of the bread and wine, then, once the Consecration of the Mass was finished, the priest would be left with nothing before him on the paten or in the cup, and Christ would appear in glory. For then not only the being but the very appearances that manifest that being to the world would have been subsumed into the exalted Lord, and human history on earth would have reached its conclusion. [17]

Myles Connolly has caught this truth well in his little book Mr. Blue. There the book's hero, Blue, gives an imaginative scenario of the kingdom of the Antichrist. The last priest on earth, hunted by a universal dictatorial government, has determined to offer the Mass one last time. He goes to the roof of a building, vests, and begins the liturgy. His "treason " discovered, a plane is sent to bomb the building on top of which he is celebrating. The target sighted, the bomb is prepared for deployment just as the priest reaches the consecratory words of the Roman Canon: Hoc est enim corpus meum.

There was a moment of awful silence. Then, a burst of light beside which day itself is dark.... The earth burst asunder. And through this unspeakably luminous new day, through the vault of the sky ribbed with lightning, came Christ as he had come after the Resurrection. It was the end of the world! [18]

It is fantasy, of course, but it is also real in that it is founded on a truth. Were Christ to let happen to the sacramental Species or appearances what should follow from the change of reality in which they formally had their being, it would be the Parousia, the Second Coming in bodily appearance of [he Lord. If, developing the imagery of St. John Chrysostom, [19] we may use yet another fantasy, one created by Lewis Carroll, to help with an analogy to illustrate what is being said, then let us imagine what it would be like not to have the Sacred Host or the Precious Blood pass into our mouths but rather to have us be enabled to pass directly into them.

To have us pass, that is, through what remains of the bread and wine, viz., their appearances. Were we able to do this, we should find that, having passed through the appearances, we would be standrng with Christ in heaven itself, at the Father's right hand. And not only would we be standing there, but everyone who, anywhere in the world, was capable of doing the same thing, would be standing there with us united in Christ. This would be so because the Eucharistic appearances are themselves the boundary between the visible and invisible orders of creation, the horizon at which earthly time and the everlasting aeon of the blessed touch. The appearances are the window whose far side holds "what God has prepared for those who love him" (1 Cor 2:9).

The analogy may appear to contain more of Lewis Carroll than of reality. In fact, however, the reality of the Eucharistic Presence is in itself and in its consequences (for time, geography, spatiotemporal relationships, and interpersonal relationships) more fantastic than fantasy. It is more true, more real than the narrow, almost one-dimensional view of reality from which we often suffer because of contracted intellectual vision. It was a wideness of vision vis-à-vis reality that nourished the imaginations of a Leonardo da Vinci, a Jules Verne, and so much of yesterday's "science fiction". The first glimpse may at times have distorted the reality, but so much of yesterday's fantasy is, in essence, the quickly superseded "fact" of today. The potentialities latent in God's universe have only begun to be realized by mankind . Indeed, one of the "side benefits" of his revelation of some aspects of his Mysteries is that it compels us to stretch our minds and imaginations to make room for the not-yet-experienced, the wonderful, the awesome.

By the Christian Mysteries philosophy is enriched and experiential science is challenged. And certainly this is preeminently true of the Mystery of the Eucharist. By its very nature, this Mystery touches upon the natural and philosophic "mysteries" of time, place, the nature of matter and of human bodies, their physical and metaphysical structures, the visible and invisible realms of the universe, their relatedness and compenetrability, etc. Just as he stretches the heart, so the Eucharistic Christ stretches the mind. The analogy given above limps, not because it is "fantastic" but simply because it is not daring enough.

By his power, then, as Universal Lord to attract all things to himself, Christ "lifts" the creaturely realities of bread and wine, draws them to himself, changes them into himself, leaving the appearance of the earthly realities as vehicles for the heavenly exchange by which he physically comes to us as our food while drawing us to himself through and in the Eucharistic species.

In this way we can be helped to understand the affirmations of Aquinas and Paul VI. The Lord himself is not moved locally, nor is he locally "in place"; what "happens" to the Sacrament happens to the appearances. It is they that are doubly consecrated, moved, broken, multiplied in many ciboria and churches throughout the world, etc. Having been, however, "destructured" of any real being of their own and preserved miraculously, the appearances of what were bread and wine mediate to all who touch them, receive them, worship before them the Person whose Flesh and Blood they contain and whose reality their own former reality has become.

Thus, what happens to the appearances directly happens to the Lord's Body and Blood per accidens, since it is only through the sacramental species that he is physically accessible at all on this side of the divide that separates the visible and invisible dimensions of creation, both of which already contain spiritual and material-physical elements.

ENDNOTES:

[16] Vatican Council II, Guadium et Spes, 38.

[17] St. Thomas (Summa Contra Gentes, IV, 63, 12) appears to contradict this opinion. His remarks, however, are predicated on the presumption that Christ would not will the end of the world at such a moment.

[18] Myles Connolly, Mr. Blue (Garden City, N.Y. ; Doubleday, Image, 1961), pp. 63-64.

[19] Cf. above. Section I, pp. 46-48.

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles and Book Excerpts:

• The Spirit of the Liturgy page
• For "Many" or For "All"? | From God Is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• Foreword to U.M. Lang's Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• Music and Liturgy | From The Spirit of the Liturgy | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• The Altar and the Direction of Liturgical Prayer | From The Spirit of the Liturgy | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• Benedict and the Eucharist: On the Apostolic Exhortation, Sacramentum Caritatis | Carl E. Olson
• Abbot Vonier and the Christian Sacrifice | Aidan Nichols, O.P.
• The Meaning and Purpose of the Year of the Eucharist | Carl E. Olson
• The Doctrine (and the Defense) of the Eucharist | Carl E. Olson
• Walking To Heaven Backward | Interview with Father Jonathan Robinson of the Oratory
• Rite and Liturgy | Denis Crouan, STD
• The Liturgy Lived: The Divinization of Man | Jean Corbon, OP
• The Mass of Vatican II | Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.
• The Eucharist: Source and Summit of Christian Spirituality | Mark Brumley
• Eucharistic Adoration: Reviving An Ancient Tradition | Valerie Schmalz

Fr. James O'Connor was a professor of theology for twenty-three years at St. Joseph's Seminary, Dunwoodie. He is now the pastor of St. Joseph's Parish, Millbrook, New York.

Posted by St. Ignatius of Loyola on Saturday, November 21, 2015 at 03:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

"Bridge of Spies" and the Path to Virtue

Tom Hanks stars in a scene from the movie "Bridge of Spies." The Catholic News Service classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13. (CNS photo/DreamWorks)

"Bridge of Spies" and the Path to Virtue | Bishop Robert Barron | The Dispatch at CWR

In recent years, Steven Spielberg has emerged as a latter-day Frank Capra, a celebrator of core values and the courage required to defend them

My great mentor Msgr. Robert Sokolowski told a class of eager philosophy students many years ago that we should read Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics every year of our lives. As we grew older, he explained, new dimensions of the book would continually present themselves.

I can't say that I've followed Sokolowski's advice perfectly, but I have indeed returned often to Aristotle's great text for inspiration and clarification. One of the Philosopher's principal insights is that the best way to understand virtue is not through abstract study but rather by watching the virtuous man in action. Learning the moral life is, for Aristotle, something like acquiring artistic skill through apprenticeship or like becoming an actor through understudying to an established thespian. Finding a master and striving to imitate him is the key. It seems only fitting, by the way, that I learned the craft of philosophizing largely by watching Sokolowski in action.

I thought of all of this as I watched Steven Spielberg's latest film Bridge of Spies. Especially in recent years, Spielberg has emerged as a latter-day Frank Capra, a celebrator of core values and the courage required to defend them. In this most recent movie, Tom Hanks (the Jimmy Stewart of our time) plays James B. Donovan, a New York insurance lawyer who is pressed into service to provide a defense for Rudolf Abel, a man very credibly accused of spying for the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. Donovan does this, not because he's convinced Abel is innocent, but because he believes in the moral principal that, in a free society, everyone deserves a fair trial. In so doing, he exemplifies the most fundamental of the classical virtues, namely, justice. Plato famously defined justice as "rendering to each his due," and Thomas Aquinas refined that definition as "a constant will to render to another his right." To state it as simply as possible, it is doing the upright thing.

So Donovan defends Abel because Abel is owed this privilege; to give him legal counsel is due to him.

Continue reading at CatholicWorldReport.com.

Posted by Carl E. Olson on Wednesday, November 18, 2015 at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Robert Royal offers insightful overview of vast Catholic intellectual tradition in the 20th century

Comprehensive book examines philosophy, theology, literature, history, and more

San Francisco, November 17, 2015 – In this wide-ranging and ambitious volume, A Deeper Vision, author Robert Royal, a prominent participant for many years in debates about religion and contemporary life, offers a comprehensive and balanced appraisal of the Catholic intellectual tradition in the twentieth century. The Catholic Church upholds both faith and reason, and Catholicism has given risen to extraordinary ideas and whole schools of remarkable thought, not just in the distant past but throughout the troubled decades of the twentieth century.

Royal presents in a single volume a sweeping but readable account of how Catholic thinking developed in philosophy, theology, Scripture studies, culture, literature, and much more in the twentieth century. This involves great figures, recognized as such both inside and outside the Church, such as:

• Philosophers Jacques Maritain, Bernard Lonergan, Joseph Pieper, Edith Stein, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Charles Taylor
• Theologians Romano Guardini, Karl Rahner, Henri du Lubac, Karol Wojtyla, Joseph Ratzinger, and Hans Urs von Balthasar
• Literary artists Charles Peguy, Paul Claudel, George Bernanos, Francois Mauriac, G. K. Chesterton, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Christopher Dawson, Graham Greene, Sigrid Undset, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Czeslaw Milosz
• Historian Christopher Dawson, and many more

Royal argues that without rigorous thought, Catholicism – however welcoming and nourishing it might be – would become something like a doctor with a good bedside manner, but who knows little medicine. It has always been the aspiration of the Catholic tradition to unite emotion and intellect, action and contemplation. But unless we know what the tradition has already produced – especially in the work of the great figures of the recent past – we will not be able to answer the challenges that the modern world poses, or even properly recognize the true questions we face.

This is a reflective, non-polemical work that brings together various strands of Catholic thought in the twentieth century. A comprehensive guide to the recent past - and the future.

Francis J. Beckwith, Professor of Philosophy and Church-State Studies at Baylor University, explains, “There is no better expositor of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition than Robert Royal. Intimately acquainted with its sources, history, and contours, Royal offers the reader a compelling account of the tradition and the role that it plays, and ought to play, in the Church’s encounter with the world.”

Fr. Matthew Lamb, Professor of Theology at Ave Maria University, calls A Deeper Vision, “A pivotal book. Royal shows how each generation in the great Catholic intellectual tradition processes down the centuries in millennial long conversations with those preceding them. This ongoing procession contributes to a vast and complex cathedral of mind and heart, far more enduring than those of stone, wherein human dignity is discovered to be a gift, a finite participation, in the very mystery of the Triune God.”

“This masterful book makes clear that the past century, for all its terrible horrors, was also a time of extraordinary Christian fruitfulness” says Matthew Levering, Professor of Theology, at Mundelein Seminary. He continues, “Royal is a cultural commentator with rare scholarly breadth and balance. His judgments regarding major 20th century theologians and theological movements should be required reading for all graduate students and seminarians. Royal is even more in his element when he assesses the great Catholic poets, historians, and novelists who graced the past century. This masterful book comes as a much needed encouragement in the midst of the deepening storms of our own time. For if the twentieth century shows that where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more, surely this too will be the ultimate story of our own century.”

About the Author: Robert Royal is the president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington DC and editor of the online column series The Catholic Thing. He is the author, editor, and translator of more than a dozen books, and he writes and speaks frequently on questions of culture, religion, and public life. His work has appeared in a wide variety of publications in the United States and abroad.

Robert Royal, the author of A Deeper Vision, is available for interviews about this book.
To request a review copy or an interview with Robert Royal, please contact:
Rose Trabbic, Publicist, Ignatius Press at (239) 867-4180 or rose@ignatius.com

Product Facts:
Title: A DEEPER VISION
The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century
Author: Robert Royal
Release Date: November 2015
Length: 619 pages
Price: $26.95
ISBN: 978-1-58617-990-8 • Softcover
Order: 1-800-651-1531 • www.ignatius.com

Posted by Carl E. Olson on Tuesday, November 17, 2015 at 06:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Monday, November 16, 2015

ISIS at the Doors: Erasing the Memory of a Christian Europe

Soldiers pass the main entrance of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris Nov. 15.Sunday Masses were celebrated amid tight security outside the cathedral in the aftermath of Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris that killed129 and injured 352. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

ISIS at the Doors: Erasing the Memory of a Christian Europe | Diogo Miguel Machado | CWR

By indulging our fetish for spiritual and cultural forgetfulness, we have permitted the coming-to-be of a hell on earth under the reign of ISIS.

In the wake of last weekend’s terror attacks in Paris, Europe continues to fall deeper into her spiritual and cultural torpor. As I write these words, the continent is still absorbing the shocking news that some 129 people will never see the sun rise again. For the second time this year, terrorism has struck at the heart of France. However, this time President François Hollande has declared a state of emergency and ordered all borders closed.

But more than France, the entire continent of Europe has been embroiled in a bitter border debate. It was sparked by the refugee crisis brought on by the rise of ISIS in the Middle East. And now, at least one of the Paris assailants has been identified as a refugee. The debate has vacillated between two opposing poles. Just after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, people demanded the borders be shut. Then, the dead body of a young child washed ashore at the edges of the continent and people clamored for them to be opened. With Paris in flames, we have returned again to the first position. It would seem that each new incident in this tragic narrative pushes Europe from one pole to the other.

At the heart of the debate about Europe’s borders, the refugee crisis, and immigration policy stands a question about the continent’s identity and its responsibility for the plight of Middle Eastern Christians wanting to seek safe refuge among us. For as long as they have been living side by side with radical Muslims, they have borne a bullseye target on their backs. But, this history goes back to the foundations of Islamism. For our part, we give no heed to this history, forgetting the stated goal of the reconquest of Europe in the fifteenth century: to wrest the continent from militant Muslims and return it to the Christian faith at its origin.

How did we come to this point of forgetfulness? When did we become lethargic about our spiritual heritage and start to submit to those who overtly want to impose their Sharia Law?

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Posted by Carl E. Olson on Monday, November 16, 2015 at 01:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sunday, November 15, 2015

The Son of Man and the Little Apocalypse

"Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem" (1867) by Francesco Hayez [WikiArt.org]

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, November 15, 2015 | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• Dn 12:1-3
• Ps 16:5, 8, 9-10, 11
• Heb 10:11-14, 18
• Mk 13:24-32

At the start of this month, On the Solemnity of All Saints, the first reading was from The Apocalypse, the Book of Revelation. It described the saints from the perspective of heaven, showing them to be marked and sealed by God, set apart as holy. Next Sunday, on the Solemnity of Christ the King, the epistle reading is from the opening chapter of the same book. It describes Jesus Christ as the ruler of kings of the earth who “is coming amid the clouds” to judge all men at the end of time.

Today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark is closely related. It is from the Olivet Discourse, sometimes called a “little apocalypse” (see Mt 24-25 and Lk 21) because it contains difficult teachings by Jesus about the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in A.D. 70 and the final day of judgment. Like The Apocalypse of John the Revelator, the little apocalypse is filled with strong imagery and a complex web of allusions drawn from the Old Testament, especially from the prophets.

The challenge of making sense of today’s Gospel reading (and many related passages) is highlighted in Jesus, The Tribulation, and the End of the Exile (Baker Academic, 2005), written by Dr. Brant Pitre, a Scripture scholar who teaches at Our Lady of Holy Cross College in New Orleans. Pitre’s impressive study draws together a host of interwoven themes rooted in the Old Testament and referred by Jesus in his discourse, including the exile, the tribulation, the elect, the temple, and the messiah. I’ve chosen three insights provided by Pitre that will, hopefully, help readers better understand today’s Gospel reading.

The first is that the images of darkened sun and moon, falling stars, and the shaken powers of heaven were frequently used by Isaiah, Jeremiah, Joel, Amos, and other prophets. They referred to one or several of the following: a day of divine judgment, the destruction of a foreign city (Babylon, for example), the destruction of Jerusalem (Isa 24:10-23; Jer 4:11-31), the restoration of Israel from exile, and the coming of the Messiah (Isa 13:10-14:2). Put simply, Jesus was not employing heavily coded language, but the heavenly language of the prophets. “A close study of the similar images of heavenly tumult,” writes Pitre, “shows that Jesus’ forecast stands directly in line with the oracles of the ancient Israelite prophets and early Jewish eschatological writings.”

Secondly, Jesus used this language to describe his approach Passion and death, through which he, the promised Messiah, would deliver his people from tribulation and inaugurate the restoration of Israel. The prophecies of Daniel are essential, for they speak of “the son of man coming in the clouds” (Dan 7:13), a figure Jesus clearly identifies with himself (Mk 13:26; 8:38). The Son of Man will “gather his elect” and lead a new exodus out of sin and death and form the new Israel, the Church, through the new covenant of his blood.

Finally, the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple are central events, both historically and theologically, in this epic plan of salvation. Recall that Jesus, in considering the spiritual state of Jerusalem, said, “Behold, your house is forsaken and desolate” (Mt 23:38). This desolation, Pitre argues, refers to the cessation of sacrifice, which is the “abomination of desolation” referred to by Daniel (Dan 9:27; 11:31; 12:11). The sacrifices of the temple, having ended in sacrilege, were fulfilled and replaced by the perfect sacrifice of the Lamb of God, which takes away the sins of the world.

“Just as the first Exodus had been preceded and set in motion by a paschal sacrifice during a time of great trials and plagues,” Pitre explains, “so too Jesus saw his death as setting in motion the great paschal and eschatological trial that would bring about the restoration of Israel.” Today’s reading from Hebrews indicates this trial and restoration is still ongoing, as Jesus “waits until his enemies are made his footstool.” Meanwhile, we worship and serve a risen Lord and look to the return of the Son of Man.

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the November 15, 2009, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

Posted by St. Ignatius of Loyola on Sunday, November 15, 2015 at 10:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Vatican II and Religious Freedom: Rupture or Authentic Development?

People hold candles in the form of a cross during avigil in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican Oct. 11, 2012, to mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. (CNS photo/Giancarlo Giuliani, Catholic Press Photo)

Vatican II and Religious Freedom: Rupture or Authentic Development?

The authors of a new book on “Dignitatis Humanae” argue one of Declaration's great achievements is to develop an understanding of human dignity and human freedom grounded in the human person's constitutive relation to God

One of the most contentious and heavily debated topics in the Church during and following the Second Vatican Council is that of religious freedom. In recent years, questions about the nature, parameters, and recognition of religious liberty have become even more timely and pressing in the United States and other Western nations. In Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity (Eerdmans, 2015), Dr. David L. Schindler and Dr. Nicholas J. Healy offer a rigorous and detailed examination of Dignitatis Humanae, the Council's “Declaration on Religious Freedom”, providing a new translation, a redaction history, and a rich and provocative interpretation of the text.

Dr. Schindler, who is the Edouard Cardinal Gagnon Professor of Fundamental Theology at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at The Catholic University of America, Washington DC, and Dr. Healy, assistant professor of philosophy at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at The Catholic University of America, recently responded to written questions from Carl E. Olson, editor of Catholic World Report, about their book, Dignitatis Humanae,

CWR: In the Preface to Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity, you state that the book "seeks to promote a deeper understanding of the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Freedom." What are some specific reasons that such an understanding is important fifty years after the Council?

Dr. Healy: The Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, was the most controversial document of the Second Vatican Council. A significant minority of Council fathers harbored reservations on the grounds that the Declaration seemed to depart from established Catholic doctrine on the duties of the state toward the Catholic religion. Within the majority that supported an affirmation of religious freedom, there were deep disagreements about the nature and foundation of the right to religious freedom and the relationship between freedom and truth. Although approved by an overwhelming majority of Council fathers and commended by Pope Paul VI as "one of the greatest documents" of the Council, Dignitatis Humanae has remained a source of controversy and debate. Behind Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre's schismatic act of consecrating bishops without papal mandate was a conviction that the Declaration represented a departure from Catholic doctrine and a capitulation to the heresy of modernism. Among the supporters of religious freedom, the disagreements that accompanied the drafting of the Declaration have served as a fault line for differing accounts of the nature and ground of religious freedom, and the significance of this teaching for the relationship between the Church and modernity.

One reason why the Declaration continues to generate interest and debate is the central importance of the question of freedom for the Church's encounter with contemporary culture. “The era we call modern times,” Joseph Ratzinger observed, “has been determined from the beginning by the theme of freedom; the striving for new forms of freedom.” Both Gaudium et spes and Dignitatis Humanae acknowledge the legitimacy of this aspiration for freedom. At the same time, the Council fathers recognized the need for a critical discernment of the modern idea of freedom in light of the truth of human nature and the Christian mystery of redemption in Christ.

Freedom is not simply the capacity to choose between alternatives; it is a sign of the ontological dignity of the human person who is created in love and called to live in communion with the truth. One of the great achievements of the Declaration is to develop an understanding of human dignity and human freedom that is grounded in the human person's constitutive relation to God. In the words of John Paul II, "the freedom of the individual finds its basis in man's transcendent dignity: a dignity given to him by God the Creator and Father, in whose image and likeness he was created." There is no freedom without truth, and no truth without freedom.

In the face of new challenges and new threats to religious freedom, it is important to rediscover the Council's authentic teaching on the right to religious freedom as grounded in the obligation to seek the truth about God. As Gaudium et spes teaches, once God is forgotten, the creature is lost sight of as well. Especially in our time, it is necessary to uphold the transcendent and relational dignity of the human person, who is created by God and destined to share in the "glorious freedom of the children of God" (Rom 8:21).

CWR: What are some of the resources that your book provides to help readers understand and interpret Dignitatis Humanae?

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Posted by Carl E. Olson on Thursday, November 12, 2015 at 05:53 PM | Permalink

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Now available: A new edition of "Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G.K. Chesterton" by Joseph Pearce

New from Ignatius Press:

Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G.K. Chesterton

by Joseph Pearce

Paperback, 544 pages

Through years of meticulous research and access to the literary estate of G.K. Chesterton, Joseph Pearce presents a major biography of a 20th century literary giant, providing a great deal of important information on GKC never before published.

This is a thoroughly readable and delightful biography of a multi-faceted author, artist and debater who loved the friendship of children, idolized his wife and enjoyed great friendships with the likes of Hillaire Belloc, Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells. Illustrated.

Joseph Pearce is the author of numerous literary works including Literary Converts, The Quest for Shakespeare and Shakespeare on Love, and the editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions series. His other books include literary biographies of Oscar Wilde, J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

"An astonishing biography of an astonishing man. Pearce has done his research thoroughly and well, bringing to the reading public a superb biography containing information and material heretofore unknown about one of the truly influential men of his time—G. K. Chesterton."
— Midwest Book Review

"Pearce celebrates Chesterton’s happy family life, successful marriage, and friendships with Belloc, Shaw, and other Victorian and twentieth-century writers. Also detailed are Chesterton’s social and political activism, as well as his romanticism and childlike joie de vivre ."
— Library Journal

"This book is a fresh reminder of how good Chesterton could be."
— The Sunday Telegraph

Posted by Carl E. Olson on Wednesday, November 11, 2015 at 02:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

New Belgium Archbishop: Mercy is "somewhat condescending...I like words like 'respect' and 'esteem'"

(Photo: us.fotolia.cop | siraanamwong)

New Belgium Archbishop: Mercy is "somewhat condescending...I like words like 'respect' and 'esteem'" | Carl E. Olson | The Dispatch at CWR

Archbishop-elect Jozef De Kesel also indicates his hope that the Church will soon allow "divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion."

If an archbishop-elect thinks the word "mercy" is "somewhat condescending", what must he think of words such as "sin", "damnation", "hell", and "orthodoxy"? Alas, we don't know for certain, but perhaps that just as well, if only for the sake of keeping one's stomach under control. The prelate in question is Jozef De Kesel of Mechelen-Brussels, interviewed by Kerknet and translated into English by Mark de Vries of "In Caelo et in Terra", who covers Catholic news in the Netherlands. The fuller quote:

You did not take part in the Synod on the family, but will probably get to work with its proposals. What will stay with you from this Synod?

“The Synod may not have brought the concrete results that were hoped for, such as allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion. But it is unbelievable how much it was a sign of a Church that has changed. The mentality is really not the same anymore.

I may be a careful person, but I do not think we should be marking time. Mercy is an important word for me, but in one way or another it is still somewhat condescending. I like to take words like respect and esteem for man as my starting point. And that may be a value that we, as Christians, share with prevailing culture.”

Yes, the phrase "Belgium waffles" did come to mind—and heavy with syrup, please!—while reading this over breakfast. Not that a sensitive stomach can handle too much of this nonsense first thing in the morning. Alas, this sort of thinking—or feeling, which is more apt—is quite prevalent. I recently had a Catholic tell me that he thought the word "sin" was too harsh to use in speaking to his secular friends; he preferred the term "reconciliation". Again, the intent is to be "relevant", and the working assumption, apparently is that people today are so complicated and fragile, that the wrong word is going to trigger some sort of spiritual combustion.

But isn't that the point?

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Posted by Carl E. Olson on Tuesday, November 10, 2015 at 09:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)