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Caritas Christi Update

June 14, 2009

Here is the text of an article in this week’s Pilot, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston. The headline, Caritas discussing changes to healthcare agreement, reaffirms commitment to Catholic teaching, appears to say it all. Obviously the current agreement in place is unacceptable; the showdown, such as it is,continues. For more on the roots of this crisis see here. It looks as though an agreement got signed that shouldn’t have been; particularly while it was being reviewed by the National Catholic Bioethics Center (if that were the case). Almost as many questions remain here as started at the beginning of the day — but the Archdiocese has now reaffirmed its position.

Posted: 6/12/2009

BRAINTREE — The Archdiocese of Boston released the following statement to The Pilot at press time June 10 in relation to the agreement between Caritas Christi and the Centene Corporation to partner in the Massachusetts Commonwealth Care Health Insurance Program starting July 1.

During the last two months there has been widespread discussion of whether participation of Caritas Christi in a joint venture with Celtic Group, Inc. and CeltiCare Health Plan Holdings, LLC (‘‘CeltiCare”) that would allow Caritas Christi Healthcare System to participate in the Massachusetts Commonwealth Care Health Insurance Program (the “Connector”), is consistent with Catholic identity. As a result of those discussions, and to ensure full compliance with Catholic moral teaching as well as social justice, Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley, Archbishop of Boston, submitted this arrangement for analysis to the National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC), a nationally known institution that provides guidance for Catholic health systems across the country. Caritas is in active discussions with Celtic Group and CeltiCare with a view to making acceptable modifications to their arrangement.

In the meantime, questions continue to arise with respect to whether Caritas Christi will participate in the Connector in a manner which is inconsistent with Catholic identity. Responding to such inquiries, Cardinal O’Malley reaffirmed today that “it has always been clear to me that Caritas Christi has been consistently faithful in its commitment to comply with Catholic moral teaching. In any revised agreement among Celtic Group, CeltiCare and Caritas Christi, under no circumstances will Caritas either perform procedures prohibited by the Catholic Bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services or refer any patient to other providers who perform or procure such procedures. Ministry to the poor and those in need, as with care for the unborn, are central tenets of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services and at the very heart of Catholicism.”

Dr. Ralph de la Torre, President of Caritas Christi, stated that “when a patient seeks such a procedure, Caritas health care professionals will be clear that (a) the hospital does not perform them and (b) the patient must turn to his or her insurer for further guidance. This, in fact, is the practice currently in place in the Caritas system as we work with other insurance companies under state laws that mandate access to procedures not provided within the Caritas system. It is the path that Caritas has always followed and will follow in its engagement with CeltiCare. Caritas Christi is dedicated to providing quality health care to the citizens of the Commonwealth, especially the poor, in a way that expresses our unwavering commitment to Catholic teaching. Now more than ever it is important that Catholic health care be at the forefront of ensuring care for all people. Many of our communities are expressing an unprecedented need with unemployment approaching 18 percent. It is our time to be there for our communities.”

Posted in The State of the Catholic Church | Tagged Archdiocese of Boston, Caritas Christi, Celtic Group, CeltiCare, Centene Corporation, Massachusetts Commonwealth Care Health Insurance Program, National Catholic Bioethics Center | Leave a Comment »

Sin In The Therapeutic Society

June 12, 2009

Finding Our True Selves

Yesterday in my introduction to this series on Sin, I made reference to the fact that our modern secular “Therapeutic Society” has, for the most part, banished Sin. At best it is considered a quaint relic of an earlier non-scientific age. At worst, it functions to create guilt and enforce mainstream behavior on those who should discover their “freedom” or “independence.” While yesterday’s posts explored the Christian anthropology found in Gaudium et Spes and the thought of Thomas Aquinas, I’d like to move to the other end of our reflection, the modern secular state and its elimination of Sin along with its corresponding emphasis on the therapeutic.

The “Therapuetic Society” is, in fact, a phrase set forth by Philip Rieff in “The Triumph of the Therapeutic”, first published in 1966. In it Rieff contended that western history is a product of several defining models of human life and community that it has passed through: in the Greco-Roman period the model was that of political man; in Christendom it was religious man; in the Enlightenment it was what he called economic man, meaning the life of rational calculation. After Freud, we have psychological man. And psychological man has brought us the triumph of the therapeutic: a condition in which there is no publicly acknowledged good beyond that of a “sense of well-being.” The good society is one in which no ego is offended or constricted, and most certainly not constricted by moral judgment: William Jefferson Clinton really is the representative man of our time.

“The wisdom of the next social order [The Therapeutic Society], as I imagine it, would not reside in right doctrine, administered by the right men, who must be found, but rather in doctrines amounting to permission for each man to live an experimental life. Thus, once again, culture will give back what it has taken away. All governments will be just, so long as they secure that consoling plenitude of option in which modern satisfaction really consists (the choice of pro-choice). In this way the emergent culture could drive the value problem clean out of the social system and, limiting it to a form of philosophical entertainment in lieu of edifying preachment, could successfully conclude the exercise for which politics is the name. Problems of democracy need no longer prove so difficult as they have been. Psychological man is likely to be indifferent to the ancient question of legitimate authority, of sharing in government, so long as the powers that be preserve social order and manage an economy of abundance. The danger of politics lies more in the ancient straining to create those symbols or support those institutions that narrow the range of virtues or too narrowly define the sense of well-being; for the latter seems to be the real beatitude toward which men have always strained. Psychological man, in his independence from all gods, can feel free to use all god-terms; I imagine he will be a hedger against his own bets, a user of any faith that lends itself to therapeutic use.”

Psychological man, in his independence from all gods, does not recognize sin (and least of all Sin) because Sin is by definition that independence. So psychological man “medicalizes” his human behavior. You want to freak a shrink: start talking about sin. There is no prescribed pharmacology to deal with the presence of it. A recent essayist in the New York Review of Books dutifully repeated the progressive mantra about the non-existence of evil, but added that an exception might be made for Hitler (thereby blowing the whole mantra). The rest of us, apparently, are the victims of circumstance and maladjustment. So there is a therapeutic model for us.

John Paul II in “Reconciliatio et Paenitentia” wrote of a “sensitivity and an acute perception of the seeds of death contained in sin, as well as a sensitivity and an acuteness of perception for identifying them in the thousand guises under which sin shows itself. This is what is commonly called the sense of sin. This sense is rooted in man’s moral conscience and is as it were its thermometer.”

Thus, without a healthy sense of sin, man’s conscience becomes clouded, and he easily goes astray. When this happens on a large scale as in American society, it can be disastrous. Indeed, many writers have commented that “sin” has all but dropped out of modern American discourse. John Paul II analyzed this situation and concluded that modern society has indeed lost its sense of sin for which he largely blames secularism. More quotations now follow:

Talking About Sin
There is one sphere of discourse – religious language – where we speak of sin without embarrassment, without having to overcome an inner resistance, as if the matter were quite obvious. Here sin is woven into the very fabric of the ordinary language of the believer. But is that not itself a problem? To hear of sin spoken of so unproblematically in the language of faith and yet so rarely elsewhere prompts one to ask whether such a “disconnect” from everyday language has not itself become the central issue. Perhaps, though, this contrast is overdrawn. For there is yet another realm we might mention where people use the word “sin’ without inhibition or self-consciousness, the entertainment industry…coy expressions such as “night of sin” or “sinful woman,” terms spoken with a wink and a nod….

In a scholarly essay…one Dutch author claims from his survey that the religious concept of sin no longer had any vital reality for Romans living in the Golden Age of the Empire. Words denoting sin (nefas, piaculum, peccatum, culpa) had by then become…”museum pieces.” What’s more, in a remarkable parallel with today ,the term peccatum was used more often than not in a pointedly ironic sense for misdeeds of a sexual or erotic nature scarcely taken seriously anymore….Thomas Mann captures both the underlying reality and surface light-heartedness of the term when he apologizes to his older colleague for having portrayed him in a rather dubious light in his novel, The Magic Mountain: “I have a guilty conscience and admit that I have sinned,” he confesses. “I say sinned,” he goes on to say, “because the word has a double dynamic: on the one hand, it is strong and hard, as is quite appropriate to the concept, yet is also, in certain contexts, a half jovial , familiar and mildly facetious word.” These lines are, I think, a sharply perceptive formulation of the semantic range lurking behind the uses of the word “sin.”

The Hidden Depth-Dimension Of The Word “Sin”
The meaning of one’s statements doesn’t so much depend on what someone thinks he means as on what he is really thinking… This is because what “really” is meant by such a basic word as “sin” is generally not just what is objectively included, but also the subjective connotations implied by the speaker – even if most cases this connotation is not “realized” or made explicitly present to the speaker’s reflective consciousness. Only occasionally will this meaning emerge into the light of day – perhaps without the speaker even realizing how it happened –when a strongly existential tremor brings the hidden depth-dimension of the semantic field into view.

T.S.Eliot has brilliantly depicted a transition of this sort in The Cocktail Party: at a crucial moment in the play, the concept of sin suddenly shifts from its dismissive “salon” sense to its true, ultimate core. One might even claim that this shift constitutes the very center of Eliot’s unsparing serio-comedy. The plot deals with the figure of the young Celia Coplestone, who in a moment of flashing insight suddenly realized that an amorous affair she has been pursuing with the husband of another woman (a connection that she had previously found to be entirely fulfilling) has just dissolved into nothing. Or more accurately, she suddenly sees that the relationship has been entirely vain from the very beginning. This unsought yet completely irrefutable insight shakes the life of this young woman down to its foundations….She turns for advice to a physician…. There’s something, she tells the doctor, not quite right:

CELIA: I should really like to think there’s something wrong with me — Because, if there isn’t something wrong Or at least, very different from what it seemed to be, With the world itself – and that’s so much more frightening! That would be terrible. So I’d rather believe There is something wrong with me, that could be put right.

She tries to name this disorder. Finally after a lot of hemming and hawing, she comes up with the only diagnosis that seems to her to specify her symptoms, the unavoidable explanation for her dilemma:

CELIA: It sounds ridiculous – but the only word for it that I can find, is a sense of sin.

DR. REILLY: You suffer from a sense of sin, Miss Coplestone? That is most unusual.

CELIA: It seemed to me abnormal… my bringing it up was pretty conventional – I had always been taught to disbelieve in sin. Oh, I don’t mean that it was ever mentioned! But anything wrong from our point of view, was either bad form or was psychological…And yet I can’t find another word for it. It must be some kind of hallucination; Yet, at the same time, I’m frightened by the fear. That it might be more real than anything I believed in.

DR. REILLY: What is more real than anything you believed in?

CELIA: It’s not the feeling of anything I’ve ever done, Which I might get away from, or anything in me. I could get rid of – but of emptiness, of failure Towards someone, or something, outside of myself; And I feel I must…atone – is that the word? Can you treat a patient for such a state of mind?

What is happening here, without flinching words, is that the true and ultimate meaning of the word “sin” – which despite everything has never been forgotten – is now being retrieved from its hidden lair into the clear reflected presence of consciousness. The reality that up to now had never been pronounced, indeed not even so much as thought about (precisely because it seems so unthinkable!) now suddenly becomes formulable: namely that sin is warping, a contortion so twisted and twisting that it must hurl man into total despair, and irrespective of whether this sin can be healed or is entirely “normal.” Sin is an inner contortion whose essence is misconstrued if we interpret it as sickness or to descend into an even more trivializing level, merely as an infraction against conventional rules of behavior.
From The Concept of Sin – Josef Pieper

Sin
I had meant to destroy this diary but on thinking it over have decided only to get rid of those pages which seemed to be useless; in any case I know them by heart, ‘having repeated them so many times. It’s like a voice always speaking to me, never silent day or night. I suppose this voice will cease when I do? Or else –

For several days I have been thinking a great deal about sin. In defining sin as a failure to obey God’s law, I feel there is a risk of conveying too abstract an idea of it. People say such foolish things about sin, and as usual they never take the trouble to think. For centuries now doctors have been discussing disease. If they had been content to define it as a failure to obey the rules of health, they would long since have been in agreement. But they study it in the individual patient in the hope of curing him. And that is just what we priests are also attempting. So that really we aren’t very impressed by sneers and smiles and jokes about sin.

And of course people always refuse to see beyond the individual fault. But after all the transgression itself is only the eruption. And the symptoms which most impress outsiders aren’t always the gravest and most disquieting.

I believe, in fact I am certain, that many men never give out the whole of themselves, their deepest truth. They live on the surface, and yet, so rich is the soil of humanity that even this thin outer layer is able to yield a kind of meagre harvest which gives the illusion of real living. I’ve heard that during the last war timid little clerks would turn out to be real leaders; without knowing it, they had in them the passion to command. There is, to be sure, no resemblance there with what we mean when we use the beautiful word ‘conversion’ – convertere — but still it had sufficed that these poor creatures should experience the most primitive sort of heroism, heroism devoid of all purity. How many men will never have the least idea of what is meant by supernatural heroism, without which there can be no inner life! Yet by that very same inner life shall they be judged: after a little thought the thing becomes certain, quite obvious. Therefore?…Therefore when death has bereft them of all the artificial props with which society provides such people, they will find themselves as they really are, as they were without even knowing it — horrible undeveloped monsters, the stumps of men.

Fashioned thus, what can they say of sin? What do they know about it? The cancer which is eating into them is painless — like so many tumors. Probably at some period in their lives most of them felt only a vague discomfort, and it soon passed off. It is rare for a child not to have known any inner life, as Christianity understands it, however embryonic the form. One day or another all young lives are stirred by an urge which seems to compel; every pure young breast has depths which are raised to heroism. Not very urgently perhaps, but just strongly enough to show the little creature a glimpse, which sometimes half-consciously he accepts, of the huge risk that salvation entails, and gives to human life all its divinity. He has sensed something of good and evil, has seen them both in their pristine essence unalloyed by notions of social discipline and habit. But of course his reactions are those of a child, and of such a decisive solemn moment the grown-up man will keep no more than the memory of something rather childishly dramatic, something mischievously quaint, whose true meaning he never will realize, yet of which he may talk to the end of his days with a soft, rather too soft a smile, the almost lewd smile of old men. .
From The Diary Of A Country Priest – Georges Bernanos

The Enemy Of The Spirit/Body Is Sin
We are challenged to turn away from sin, not from the body or from the world. The enemy of the spirit is not the body; the enemy of the spirit/body is sin. We must take care not to make cults of either body or soul. Today, it is more often than not the soul, sickened by fear, despair or addiction, which drags the body down, not the other way around! And not only our own bodies, but the body of our mother earth. The church, which has often fostered a one-sided preoccupation with the soul, faces a great challenge and must undergo continued conversion if it is. going to be able to respond credibly to the equally exaggerated cult of body, youth and health which characterizes American society today.

In the process, let us not forget what, at its best, the traditional language of body and soul tried to express and remind us of: the divine depth and destiny of the ordinary, and the unique capacity and responsibility we have as transcendent beings to enter into free and active relationship with others, with the world and with God, and so to shape in some way the future to which God calls all of creation.
From The Christian View of Humanity – John Sachs

Secular Psychology Theories Deny The Sense Of Sin
Secular psychology has produced many theories of personality. These theories have contributed to the loss of the sense of sin in two ways: by their secular view of the person and by their misconceptions regarding human freedom.

Dr. Paul Vitz has noted many times that all of the major theories of personality in psychology are secular in nature. In other words, they attempt to give an explanation of human existence, development, fulfillment, and obstacles to that fulfillment without any reference to divine or sacred realities. These theories focus on the immanent happiness of the individual without any reference to the transcendent or to objective truth.

They portray a humanism totally without God. Thus, these secular theories of the person reduce one’s sense of God. As John Paul II and others have pointed out, the sense of God is closely related to the sense of sin. When the former withers, so does the latter.

The other way in which these theories of personality undermine the sense of sin relates to how they conceive of human freedom.

Many psychological theories conceive of the human person in a deterministic fashion. That is, they regard the human person and his actions as pre-determined results of his childhood experiences, his genes, his neural circuitry, the pressures of environmental reinforcements and punishments, and so on.

Within a deterministic framework, human freedom soon disappears, and if man lacks freedom, moral notions such as sin likewise become meaningless.

Other psychological theories absolutize human freedom conceived as autonomous choice. These theories deny the reality of original sin stating that the human self already possesses everything it needs to be self-actualized. It only needs to be freed from any constraints placed on it by external forces.

The problem with these theories is that they embrace an ethical subjectivism that denies the existence of moral absolutes other than, perhaps, the “commandment” to self-actualize. Duties and obligations toward others are secondary at best. With this mindset, any sense of sin quickly vanishes.
From The Lost Sense of Sin in Psychology Andrew Sodergren

Posted in Understanding Sin | Tagged "Reconciliatio et Paenitentia", Georges Bernanos, John Paul II, John Sachs, Josef Pieper, Sin, T.S.Eliot, The “Therapuetic Society”, The Christian View of Humanity, The Cocktail Party, The Concept of Sin, The Diary Of A Country Priest | Leave a Comment »

Understanding Sin 1: From “Thomas Aquinas, Spiritual Master” by Fr. Robert Barron

June 11, 2009

Fr. Barron is a nationally-renowned speaker, author and professor of theology at the University of St Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary in the Archdiocese of Chicago. One of his earlier books is titled Thomas Aquinas, Spiritual Master and from that I taking five quotes that deal with the topic of Sin in Aquinas thought.

This will be part of series I’d like to introduce on the subject of Sin, which is, in turn, part of a particular vision of the world and of humanity, a vision that is founded upon the relationship between God and God’s creation as revealed in the person and ministry of Jesus Christ. It is one of the great contributions of Christian thought to man and, sadly, is little thought of in the current secularism of our modern world. Being Catholic is learning how to become a Saint, and being a Saint acknowledges knowing that you’re a sinner. So, it would seem, the more you can find out about Sin, the more you will know your faith. To the extent that the secular world has banished Sin, you will also find its estrangement from how the world actually works.

Gaudium et Spes, (Latin: “Joy and Hope”), the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, was one of the chief accomplishments of the Second Vatican Council and it sets forth a basic Christian anthropology in its first three chapters. The key elements of this anthropology are found in

(1)     the inviolable dignity of every human person
(2)     the essential centrality of community and
(3)     the significance of human action.

The dignity of all men and women, created in God’s image, is grounded in their unique relationship of intimacy with God (12). Human persons are spiritual, embodied creatures (14-15) who, above all, are blessed with freedom which, guided by conscience (16), comes to its fulfillment in love of God and neighbor. Because this freedom has been damaged by sin and is threatened by death, it can only come to its fulfillment through God’s grace (13, 17).

Its fulfillment is an endless sharing in God’s own divine life (18). Because the dignity of human persons is rooted and perfected in God, faith’s recognition of God is not hostile to human freedom and dignity, as some forms of atheism claim. Christians must work with all who labor for the dignity of human beings and basic human rights (19-21). In a spirit of dialogue and cooperation, they look to Jesus Christ, the final Adam, where for the eyes of faith, the mystery of humanity is revealed (22).

The dignity of every human person does not diminish the fact that one can be human only in community with others. Apart from relationships to others, we can neither live nor develop. From the very beginning humanity is created as community and all men and women are called as a single family to universal communion with one another and with God (23-24). This requires a social order based not on individualist ethic (30) but on the common good. It must be “founded on truth, built on justice, and animated by love” (26). Social structures must grow from and express a basic reverence for others, especially for those who think or act differently, so that the basic equality of all is recognized (27-29), and the fruitful participation of all in society is ensured (31).

Human action is understood to be an unfolding of God’s own creative work (34). Therefore, Christian faith demands that human beings labor to build up the world, attending to the genuine good of the human race and so develop themselves as truly human persons according to the divine plan (35). The rightful autonomy of the different arts and sciences is willed by God and to be respected by all (36). Christians will, however, adopt a critical attitude in their endeavors recognizing the real and pervasive power of sin. The perfection and happiness which God wills for the creation cannot be identified naively with “progress,” especially where technology is developed and implemented without moral principles (37). Finally, the transformation of the world can come only from the power of love. Convinced in faith that the effort to bring about a universal communion of justice and peace is not a hopeless one, the church summons believers to dedicate themselves to the service of the earth and its peoples and so to prepare for that final act in which God will receive the world and bring it to perfection as God’s Kingdom (38). The expectation of the “new earth” is precisely what should strengthen concern for cultivating this earth, in which the Kingdom is already present and growing in mystery (39)

In light of this Christian anthropology we can broach the thought of Thomas Aquinas, as presented by Father Barron. Here are five reflections that show the nature of Sin and how it impacts the human condition:

The Human Being Is A Unity Of Spirit And Matter
The most influential philosopher of the supposedly anti-humanist Middle Ages – and the one who was of decisive importance for Thomas Aquinas – was Aristotle. And it was Aristotle who pointedly disagreed with the dualism of Plato, affirming again and again the fundamental unit of the human being, the coming together of body and soul in an inseparable harmony. In fact, when the radical doctrine made its way into the Christian world in the thirteenth century, it was immediately condemned as irreconcilable with belief in the immortality of the soul. But it was this pro-body, this worldly doctrine of Aristotle that young Thomas embraced with enthusiasm and never stopped defending even in the face of violent opposition. Thomas will say throughout his writings that the human being –precisely as a unity of spirit and matter — is a beautiful reflection of the divine and a creature destined for deification. So close is the rapport between flesh and spirit that even in the rapture of the beatific vision the human soul will be unsatisfied until it is reunited with the body. …

The teachings of Aquinas are anything but dualist…they are far more humanist than much of the art of the Renaissance. Thomas thought is a celebration of the human, a consistent and thorough reiteration of the great patristic adage that “the glory of God is human being fully alive.”…In many of his writings Thomas insists that the soul is not a thing separate from the body but is rather the “form” of the body…

In saying that the soul “informs” the body, Thomas implies that the spirit is the unifying and organizing energy by which a particular conglomeration of bone, flesh, and nerve becomes properly human. As such the spirit is not a self-contained and self-sufficient ghostly “substance” that mysteriously and temporarily unites itself to a body. On the contrary, it is intimately tied to and oriented toward the body that it “contains” and animates: “the whole human soul is in the whole human body and also in every part of the body, just as God is present to the entire universe.” (Summa Theologica 1a, question 93 article 3)

Just as God is no closer to the angel than to the rock, just as God immediately and creatively fills every corner of the universe, so the soul is intimately and fully present to all expressions of bodiliness, to all sensation, to all feeling. There is nothing in the body that is unworthy of the soul or beneath its dignity; rather, the soul enters into all bodily functions and expressions energizing and enlivening them: “We ought to celebrate the wonderful communion of body and soul.” (Summa Theologica 1a, question 91 article 3)

The implications of this radical view for the spiritual life are profound. First we must make peace with our bodies. …That the body and its pleasures might be intertwined with the “things of the spirit” is unthinkable to the dualist. …Thomas even states that the “sensible delight” that comes from sexual intercourse was greater in paradise than it is now. Fresh from the hand of God, the human being was, if anything , sexier than it is at present, sin having diminished some of the “sensibility of the body”…Sin has only rendered the bodily passions disordered and hence less intense, less deeply satisfying. The human ideal is hardly a disembodied spirituality, but rather an enspirited bodiliness, a sensuality in union with the proper impulse toward love and nurturance.

Inordinate Lovers Of This World
Thomas speaks of “inordinate lovers of this world” and those whose “eyes are fixed on the ground,” that is to say, whose minds are mired in the world of everyday experience, This fallen mind is simply overwhelmed by the intensity of the light that comes from God’s self-disclosure:

“It may well happen that what is in itself the more certain may seem to us the less certain on account of the weakness of our intelligence, which is dazzled by the clearest objects of nature as the owl is dazzled by the light of the sun.”

The Intolerable Situation Of The Sinner
For Thomas the great paradigm and archetype of this non-aggressive, noncompetitive relationship between God and the world is the Incarnation itself: the two nature of Christ are present together in a personal unity, but neither is mixed or mingled or confused with the other, neither is compromised or overwhelmed by the other. And therefore the absolute control of the divine will over the human will in Christ is not a negation of Jesus’ humanity but rather an elevation of it. The human being, Jesus Christ, finds the deepest meaning of his life and will in his complete dependence upon the will of God, in his surrender to the direction of God.

It was Anselm of Canterbury who gave classic expression to this principle when he reminded us that authentic freedom is not to hover sovereignly above the “Yes” and the “No,” but instead to be bound to “Yes” alone. To be torn between Yes and No is, says Anselm, to be caught in the intolerable situation of the sinner. What appears to be freedom in the eyes of the world – the inability to choose this or that, good or evil – is, in fact, the deepest type of slavery. God’s freedom is equivalent to God’s fidelity to in love, to his capacity to say nothing but Yes, and our freedom is found in imitation of that divine liberty. For Thomas, we know this in light of Jesus Christ, his complete openness to, and passivity before, the will of God. The excessus, the ecstasy or self-surrender, of Christ is what allows the excessus of God to manifest itself in him…The great tragedy of sin is forgetting this mutual ecstasy and imagining God and oneself as self-contained rivals and competitors. In the heart of the sinner is the conviction that letting go of himself is tantamount to loving himself. The more the sinner affirms himself over and against God, the more he asserts the independence of his mind and will from God, the more he thinks he “finds himself.” What is disclosed in Christ in the unmasking of that illusion: the humanity of Jesus is elevated and fulfilled precisely in Jesus’ willingness

Love As The “First Movement Of The Will.”
What appears in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ is, for St. John the Evangelist, the stunning fact that God is love. …Thomas attempts to articulate the same insight…Thomas spells out the nature of love as the “first movement of the will.” Love is the will’s basic affection for the good, whether possessed or not. When someone has the good, he loves it as something he delights in, and when someone lacks the good, he loves it as something he hopes for. In either case, love is the elemental and grounding force, the deepest “personality” and energy of the will. Even when the will turns against evil, it does so out of more primordial love for some other good. …God is fundamentally a passion, an energy, an activity. God is a whirlwind, an appetite, a hunger…it is the perfectly realized ground of all there is who is a great wave of love.

It is obviously the sinner, resistant to the lure and attraction of God, who would happily imagine that God is devoid of love. Were God not loving, the sinner could go about his business in self-absorption and self-elevation without fear of divine interventions or interference. However, a God who is Love, we all realize in the depths of our hearts, is a God who will not leave us alone in our sin, a God who will bother us and prompt us and push us to transformation. Not only is God endowed with the personalizing qualities of intellect and will; God is, above all, possessed of a driving passion toward the world that he has made, especially toward those rational creatures whom he wants to elevate to a share in his own life.

It would indeed be a fantasy of the sinful ego to identify God’s love with a sort of feeling or passion of the body, since, by the very nature, passions are fleeting, unreliable, and manipulable. Were the divine love something analogous to a bodily passion, it would come and go, fluctuating according to mood and whim. It would also be subject to enormous manipulation and control on the part of the sinner.

Sin As A Sort Of Illusion
“Because the divine goodness could not be adequately represented by one creature alone, God produced many and diverse creatures that what was wanting in one in the representation of the divine goodness might be supplied by another. For goodness, which in God is simple and uniform, in creatures is manifold and divided. Thus the whole universe together participates in the divine goodness more perfectly and represents it better than any single creature whatever.” (Summa Theologica 1a, question 47 article 1)

In more Thomistic language, God engages in this explosive and irrepressible creativity because he is determine to show, as fully as possible, some of the intensity of his own beauty. No one creature could ever demonstrate the splendor of God; indeed, no million or trillion creatures could do so, but God never tires of trying. God is like a concentration of pure light that — in creation — passes through a prism and is then reflected and refracted in a fantastic array of hues. Each creature is a piece of a mosaic designed to depict the fullness of the divine glory, a thread woven into a tapestry reflective of God’s beauty….The basic energy of the created realm is a relationship of love, God continually pours out the gift of being, and the world is at every moment a sheer receptivity, an openness toward that gift…Indeed, at the heart of the spiritual life, for Aquinas, is the struggle to see authentically who we are, in relation the God who perpetually offers us “newness of being.” When we realize, in imitation of Christ, that we are “nothing” in the presences of the creating God, we become “everything,” a full reflection of the divine glory. Sin is thus a sort of illusion, a stubborn clinging to the falsehood, an insistence that we stand over and against God, the supreme being. Let go of yourself, implies Thomas, in an ecstatic acceptance of creatureliness, and you will find the security that you so long for. In the face of your greatest fears, give yourself away.

When we grasp the reality of creation, we see that the divisions between the “sacred” and the “profane,” between the “holy” and the “secular” are, for the most part, arbitrary and misleading. All reality is sacred, from the angels to subatomic particles, because all things are equally close to the creator God who dwells in every aspect of being. The sacramental imagination, which sees the divine lurking in every corner of the real, is fed and strengthened by the Thomistic doctrine of creation.

Even the profoundest expressions of evil cannot shake our confidence in this intoxicating vision. Though psychologically overwhelming, evil should never be spiritually debilitating, since we appreciate it against the ever greater background of God’s gift of being. With eyes cleansed and purified by the revelation contained in Christ Jesus, we can see the divine beauty everywhere in creation; we can appreciate the light and harmony that are sacraments of the perfect luminosity and orderliness of the creator God.

Posted in Understanding Sin | Tagged Christian Anthropology, Gaudium et Spes, Sin, Spiritual Master, Thomas Aquinas | Leave a Comment »

Trials Of Heresy: Led Astray By Luke Timothy Johnson

June 9, 2009

creedCover I was recommended a Luke Timothy Johnson book by my New Testament course professor when I gave an answer in class that seemed to indicate my faith was too rooted in the historical Jesus. Anyways Johnson’s writing, almost a playbook of current biblical scholarship was an eye-opener. I read both The Real Jesus (1996) and Living Jesus (1999), both strongly critical of the Jesus Seminar, a group I’d been unaware of.

Later I purchased LTJ’s volume of Luke in the Sacra Pagina series and a large volume of his titled “The Writings of the New Testament An Interpretation.” I liked reading him. This was all a few years back, certainly prior to a Commonweal article in which LTJ sort of went “off the reservation” with regards to Church teachings on homosexuality. Despite that, I had a way of regarding these topics (homosexuality, women in the priesthood, etc) as “political,” separate from the faith related readings that were the object of my study.

I have a habit of scanning in things I like and labeling them for future reference. On another LTJ book “The Creed” I did just that. I recently quoted a passage with regards to Mary’s Virginity on a Catholic Forum that earned me cries of “Blasphemy!” and “How dare you quote heretics!” I asked these folks to provide some authority so I could understand their fiery judgments, but none was really forthcoming. Some Church dogma and some attempts to link Johnson’s writings but nothing that was sufficient enough for me to buy in. Although their attempts to paint LTJ with the broad brush of “Heretic” were polemical in tone, I really felt that outside of the recent dustups on the socio-political issues of gender and women in the priesthood, it seemed to me that Johnson was still the conservative scriptural scholar with numerous tomes to his credit, someone that my professor at St. John’s Seminary had recommended to me.

Finally I put a plea out on another forum and got a detailed response that explained what I wanted to know. The source is Carl Olson, who blogs and writes for Ignatius Publishers. Let me quote from it liberally here, because it will show how insidiously Johnson has mixed conservative and liberal stances and how difficult it is for a newbie convert like myself to judge for himself these things.

Here’s Carl’s intro:

“The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why It Matters (Doubleday, 2003), the latest book from Catholic Scripture scholar Luke Timothy Johnson, is a reflective, popular commentary on the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. Johnson has gained recognition in recent years for his books The Real Jesus (1996) and Living Jesus (1999), both strongly critical of the Jesus Seminar. Johnson’s affirmations of orthodox christological doctrines are fairly conservative theologically. But his support of women’s ordination, dislike for Humanae Vitae, and openness to “the possibilities of committed covenantal same-sex love” (a phrase from his homepage on the web site of Emory University, where he teaches) definitely fall on the liberal end of the spectrum.

The Creed is a mixture of these conservative and liberal stances. Ostensibly written from within the “Roman Catholic tradition” the book is sometimes insightful, occasionally muddled, and often marred by strong polemics against Church doctrine. An examination of some of Johnson’s attacks on Church teaching provides a helpful glimpse into how some Catholic theologians, convinced of their superior understanding of doctrine and theology, can lose their moorings and become a stumbling block for Catholics and non-Catholics alike.”

Johnson’s stumbling blocks revolve about Sex, Gender, and Power, the narcissistic cocktail of his own generation, enamored as it is with radical feminism, pro-homosexuality, and disgust with the notion of celibacy.

Here’s more:

“When Johnson agrees with Church teaching, his writing is measured and his arguments are logical. But when Johnson parts ways with Church teaching, the tone becomes polemical and he shows little if any respect for the thinking and logic behind those teachings. For example, in speaking of gender-exclusive and gender-inclusive language, Johnson quotes radical feminist Mary Daly approvingly and writes:

“Within Christianity, gender-exclusive language about God has served to support ecclesiastical sexism and power structures that have been bad for women. Recent arguments from the Vatican that support the refusal to ordain women to the Roman Catholic priesthood because priests represent Christ, and Christ is male, only make the point by reducing it to the absurd. As Elizabeth Johnson has noted, sexism is truly revealed when even the theoretical possibility of God’s incarnation as a woman is rejected” (83).

This jab at Pope John II’s apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis raises a question much larger than the priesthood. If the teaching “that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone” that has been “preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church” (OS 4) is “absurd” in some way, then what other historical, consistent teaching of the Church might we consider “absurd” and in need of correction? The Church’s definition of marriage? Its condemnation of artificial contraceptives? Johnson says yes to those as well. But what about the Church’s teachings about Jesus and his divinity? Or the Trinity? Or the Resurrection? Cannot those beliefs also be considered absurd, outdated, and in need of change? Johnson vigorously resists these suggestions, not seeming to notice the inconsistency in doing so.

In addition, Johnson must know that there is more to the Church’s teaching about the priesthood than a glib appeal to Jesus being male, as if the Church has no interest in the deeper meaning of gender. Many fine Catholic theologians have delved into the depths of sexuality, gender, ecclesiology, and Christology and have explored the dynamic relationships between Christ and the Church, Christ and Mary, and man and woman. Many of these theologians are women, including Edith Stein, Gertrud von le Fort, Alice von Hildebrand, Monica Migliorino Miller, and Janet Smith. Unfortunately, Johnson ignores those contributions.

Discussing gender, Johnson writes, “It is a form of generational narcissism to change texts to suit one’s own needs” (85). Indeed, but what about changing doctrines and dogmas to suit one’s needs?”

I had not really realized how much these views above needed a twisted version of the Incarnation to become rational. The problem for Johnson is that how can mainline scholar retain his conservative status by questioning these things? At some point doesn’t it affect your livelihood? I guess not if you are able to fudge your pronouncements enough. Note the distinctions drawn below, the references to “biblical” and “progressive” Christians — or “fundamentalists” and “modernists.” Neither of these code names are used to refer to the Catholic Church and even if they were, I am so used to my seminary Professors telling me how the Church is never either/or but BOTH, the lively paradoxes of a Chesterton, the embracing of mystery that I passed right over it when I read the Creed a few years back.

A Significant Defeat For The Pro-Life Movement Inflicted By The Catholic Church In Boston

June 8, 2009

Statue of Mary Outside St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Boston

I must begin by confessing to all that I have no knowledge at all of the Health care industry, insurance issues, hospitals or care providers. I can barely manage my own precarious situation. I can, however, read, and am pretty good at finding reliable sources and rewriting a story so that others can more quickly assimilate it – which is what I plan to attempt to do here about an issue that I find enormously troubling.

First to say that I admire our Archbishop Sean O’Malley here in Boston greatly. He is a very gentle man and a spiritual leader. He has acted resolutely in many ways to navigate the archdiocese out of the treacherous waters he inherited from Cardinal Law, having to make some tough decisions on church closings and other matters. I know he has a talented and dedicated man serving as Vicar General. I’ve spent most of my time learning my faith since conversion in 2006 and very little concerned with Archdiocesan politics or Catholic politics in general.

Back in 2004, faced with rising costs and some shaky management Archbishop Sean made some dramatic changes at Caritas Christi, a network of six hospitals that were owned and managed by the Archdiocese of Boston. He dismissed its president, Dr. Michael Collins, for no particular reason other than the fact he was “dissatisfied with the doctor’s management style.” I’ve always thought the Archbishop to be a very practical man; he exudes an ability to judge men and I think he simply could have smelled a nitwit. But the next hiring was botched: an Emmett Murphy was forced to step down after the accuracy of his resume came into question – always a clear indication that an organization is in trouble when they can’t even hire someone to pass a media-led credential examination. What, no one looked at the resume as they passed it out before the press conference?

Next came a Dr. Robert Haddad who was forced out in 2006 amid accusations of sexual harassment of female employees(I mean, really.) — another hiring blunder. As you can see, there is no charitable history to write here. I will give the new Archbishop a pass as he had yet to be able to put any personal stamp on the organization he was heading. I imagine the bureaucracy of a religious organization must be even slower to navigate than an aircraft carrier in rough waters. I would hope no one involved in those hiring decisions is currently working in the Archdiocesan offices today. Needless to say, I’m not holding my breath on that.

All during and prior to this spasm of ill-planned hirings, financial losses were mounting in Caritas Christi. But, as fate (we call it Providence) would have it, an angel had appeared in the form of a buyer, the much larger Ascension Health, the nation’s largest Catholic health care system. It looked like the problem might find a way to solve itself but once again defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory when it was discovered that Caritas Christi had overstated its revenues by $10 million. Nice. Talks, as they say, “trailed off.”

At this point, sensing blood in the water, state Democrats began to follow that unspoken rule of political life, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” They stepped in to piously pronounce that they could no longer watch the archdiocesan health care system flounder. Attorney general of Massachusetts, Martha Coakley, a future Governor in skirts, issued a report recommending the Archdiocese “relinquish direct and indirect control over strategic, operational, and financial matters, and focus only on moral and ethical issues.” A partnership with Centene Corporation was arranged and magically a lucrative state contract from the Massachusetts state government also appeared. It’s amazing what those boys at the state house can do when the motivation is right. Control of the Board of Directors and a slice of the health care industry to boot, not bad work for a bunch of cretinous hacks. I persist in calling these guys stupid when there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Stupid? That’s us, the Massachusetts’ voters.

Through its own incompetence the Archdiocese had lost control of its fate and Catholics were once again confronted with a Church that looked like it should check into one of its own hospitals for a brain transplant. The Archdiocese meekly acceded to the proposed reforms the Attorney General dictated. In the new deal, the archbishop of Boston lost his traditional place as chairman, and the archdiocese was allotted only three seats on the 16-member board. The archdiocese announced that its control over the affairs of Caritas Christi would henceforth be “limited to matters pertaining to Catholic identity, mission, and the implementation of the religious and ethical directives of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and any transaction that would involve the sale or transfer of the system.” They wish it.

This month it appears to have lost even that.

Here is Philip Lawler, editor emeritus of the Catholic World Report, writing in this month’s online edition: “The involvement of Caritas Christi in the bidding for this government contract drew careful scrutiny from both the pro-life movement and the abortion industry. Pro-lifers in Massachusetts asked for assurances from Church leaders that the Catholic health care system, which operates six hospitals and enlists the services of 2,000 physicians in the Boston area, would not perform abortions or make abortion referrals. Abortion advocates, on the other hand, demanded assurances from state regulators that the Catholic agency would not interfere with women’s unrestricted access to abortion. The abortion advocates soon received the guarantees they wanted.

Pro-lifers did not…

Barring some sudden change in plans, on July 1 their joint venture — called the Commonwealth Family Health Plan (CFHP) — will begin administering state health care benefits. Although the exact workings of the plan have not yet been revealed, women covered by CFHP may receive taxpayer-subsidized abortions, contraceptive services, and voluntary sterilizations on request. Concerned Catholics in Boston are nervously hoping for some sign that the program is not what it appears to be: a deliberate surrender of moral principle for the sake of financial gain.”

Throughout all of this has been a series of heavy handed public relations tactics to block transparency, buy time and diffuse and suppress pro-life opposition — the very tactics used to cover up homosexual abuse by Archdiocese priests in the 80’s and 90’s. Sadly, as one commentary put it: “The evil that has gone unaddressed by Cardinal O’Malley, and persists in the context of unanswered questions and absent policies based on Catholic doctrine is scripted by the devil himself.” The Catholic Action League called the development “a significant defeat for the pro-life movement, inflicted not by secular society, but by the Catholic Church in Boston.” Once again, Boston area Catholics are forced to look to Rome for help as its own governance has failed them.

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I usually don’t post over the weekend but all throughout this weekend I was just sick about this story. I understand that Catholics live in a secular society that is hostile to its beliefs but I like to think that as Catholics we do no harm. This is a story that on the face of it appears to contradict that. I pasted together this story from three (now four) sources:

http://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2009/06/will-caritas-christi-be-involved-in-the-abortion-business.html

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/may/09052604.html

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/may/09052712.html

http://www.lifenews.com/state4213.html

I have a simple suggestion to make. I’m sure the Archdiocese is hardly making enough money on this any longer to hide its embarrassment or the tragic loss of its hospital system from which it has served the needs of the Catholics of the commonwealth and New England all these many years. Not to mention the loss of such historical gems as St. Elizabeth’s Hospital which began in 1868 when five laywomen, members of the third order of St. Francis, founded and dedicated it to the care of women from Boston’s South End.

Yet there is one thing, even greater than its fundamental own self respect it should be fighting for and that is the right of conscience of the 2,000 physicians in the Boston area and many more in the surrounding New England area not to participate in abortion related procedures if they so decide to. Surely this can be arranged somehow.

Let Archbishop Sean know you care at http://www.bostoncatholic.org/ContactUs.aspx and tell him to keep our doctors free to choose pro-life.

UPDATE: June 11, 2009

Celticare Health Plan of Massachusetts, which describes itself as “a partnership between Celtic Group, a subsidiary of Centene Corporation, and Caritas Christi Health Care” — the network of six Catholic hospitals affiliated with the Archdiocese of Boston — has revealed on its website (here) that all three of its Commonwealth Care health plans will include abortion coverage (details here).

On March 12th the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, the state agency which administers the Commonwealth Care program for low income Bay State residents, awarded a contract to the Commonwealth Family Health Plan Inc. CFHP is a joint venture between Caritas Christi and Celtic Group. On May 6th, the partners established Celticare as a for-profit HMO to manage the state awarded Commonwealth Care contract.

Four of the ten directors of Celticare are officials of Caritas Christi, including Mark J. Rich, the Chief Financial Officer of Caritas, and Dr. Justine M. Carr, Chief Medical Officer of Caritas. The other six directors are affiliated with either Centene Corporation or its wholly-owned subsidiary, the Celtic Insurance Company. Caritas CFO Mark Rich is listed as the Secretary of Celticare.

Celticare also listed on its website the names of “Family Planning and Reproductive Services Providers”, including Planned Parenthood, to which it will refer plan members.

The Catholic Action League called the revelations “final and conclusive proof that Caritas Christi will be a participant in state subsidized abortions.”

Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle stated: “This is the fourth time since February 26th that the Caritas/Centene partnership has indicated that abortion will be part of its Commonwealth Care contract. The question of Caritas Christi’s involvement in practices which violate fundamental Catholic moral teaching has now been answered repeatedly and definitively. Four officials of Caritas Christi serve on the board of a health maintenance organization (jointly founded by Caritas and its partner Celtic Group) which will refer women to Planned Parenthood for taxpayer funded abortions, as part of a government program which requires abortion coverage.”

“It is now unmistakably clear that the Archdiocese of Boston has spent the last three months cynically misleading Catholics in this controversy. The time is long overdue for Cardinal O’Malley to apologize for his assertion of March 6th that ‘Caritas Christi will never do anything to promote abortions, to direct any patients to providers of abortion or in any way to participate in actions that are contrary to Catholic moral teaching and anyone who suggests otherwise is doing a great disservice to the Catholic Church.’ ”

Posted in The State of the Catholic Church | Tagged Archbishop Sean O’Malley, Caritas Christi, Catholic Action League, Catholic World Report, Commonwealth Family Health Plan, Philip Lawler, St. Elizabeth's Hospital | 1 Comment »

The Goodness of God

June 5, 2009

Psalm 145
¹I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever.
²Every day I will bless you, and praise your name forever and ever.
³Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; his greatness is unsearchable.
⁴One generation shall laud your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.
⁵On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.
⁶The might of your awesome deeds shall be proclaimed, and I will declare your greatness.
⁷They shall celebrate the fame of your abundant goodness, and shall sing aloud of your righteousness.
⁸The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
⁹The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.
¹⁰All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord, and all your faithful shall bless you.
¹¹They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom, and tell of your power,
¹²to make known to all people your mighty deeds, and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.
¹³Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations. The Lord is faithful in all his words, and gracious in all his deeds.
¹⁴The Lord upholds all who are falling, and raises up all who are bowed down.
¹⁵The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season.
¹⁶You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing.
¹⁷The Lord is just in all his ways, and kind in all his doings.
¹⁸The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.
¹⁹He fulfills the desire of all who fear him; he also hears their cry, and saves them.
²⁰The Lord watches over all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy.
²¹My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord, and all flesh will bless his holy name forever and ever.

Authenticity And Sanctity: Superlative Goodness
Authenticity coincides with sanctity. The saint alone is fully real, honest, faithful, loving, genuine. He alone is immersed in beauty, truth, ecstasy. The classical, theological way of thinking about authenticity was to think of virtue, especially heroic virtue.
What is heroic virtue?
It is goodness to a superlative degree, a degree that far surpasses the mere natural resources of the human person. Over the course of the centuries the Church developed a detailed theology of saintliness, a theology that included definite criteria for determining in canonization processes the eminent perfection to which God calls us (Matthew 5:48). Heroic goodness is a specific human quality (humility, patience, purity, love) that shows itself in actions which are 1.) promptly, easily, joyfully done; 2.) even in difficult circumstances; 3.) habitually, not just occasionally; 4.) present actually, not just potentially; 5.) found mingled with all the virtues. A few examples will make the concept easy to grasp. A person possesses heroic humility when promptly and easily he avoids vanity in dress, domination in conversation, desire to impress. He experiences little difficulty in accepting correction — indeed, he desires it. He is content and at peace with accusation, neglect, blame, rejection. He quite literally finds a joy in all this after the word of Jesus:
“Happy are you when people abuse you and persecute you and speak all kinds of calumny against you on my account. Rejoice and be glad . . . “ (Matthew 5:11-12) This heroic humility is practiced even in difficult circumstances (e.g., when one is alone without human support) and habitually, not just occasionally. It is not merely potential, a being able in one circumstance or another. Rather it is an actually lived reality. It is found with the totality of the virtues: patience, gentleness, frugality and all the others.
Another example: faith. Faith is heroic when one accepts God’s revelation in Scripture and in the teaching of the Church not simply as a cultural heritage but because of his divine knowledge and truth. The acceptance is not selective, but entire, and it is prompt, easy, joyful. One adheres to the divine self-disclosure not only when one’s companions also adhere but even when, for example, the Church’s teaching is widely rejected, when one may be persecuted for fidelity either psychologically and/or physically. The man or woman of heroic faith stands by the biblical word and the teaching Church day by day, not only when he has the human support of his friends. Like Thomas More, he is ready to stand up to kings and bishops who reject the Holy See, and he is so joyful in his confession of truth that he may be able to joke, as Thomas did, with his executioners.
A third illustration: purity. The heroically chaste person is not the little boy or girl who has no idea of what impurity is all about, who has suffered no unchaste allurement or temptation. Rather he or she is the person who even in the midst of sensual advertising and immodest dress readily and easily and joyfully resists the degradation and cheapening of the human body. This is the man or woman who so reverences the divine gift of sexuality that he experiences no great problem in loving others in a pure delight. This chastity has nothing of rigidity or coldness about it, but is easily warm, gentle, strong, joyous. Needless to say, it is rooted in a profound faith, hope, love, humility.
A fourth example: obedience. Heroic obedience is neither reluctant nor selective. One happily carries out all the directives of his superior because he sees the divine hand in them. The execution of a command is prompt, not delayed. The task is easily, joyfully done, habitually done. He makes it a joy for the superior to be in charge (Heb 13:17), and he obeys even when the director is unworthy to be in a leadership position (Matthew 23:1-7). This submission is humble, gentle, trusting, loving.
A final example: patience. The average individual can on rare occasions bite his tongue in annoying circumstances and perhaps barely restrain a sharp word if not a disapproving glance. The heroically patient person is habitually calm in aggravating situations and he readily, even joyfully responds to the unkind remark or gaze or action. He knows how to turn the cheek and he does it easily. He is joyful with those who rejoice and is sad with those in sorrow. He treats all, friends and enemies alike, with equal kindness (Romans 12:15-16) even though he may be closer to some persons than to others.
And so it goes with all the theological and moral virtues. It takes little imagination to see that the Church’s age-old criteria for determining who is a saint and who is not are so many indicators of authenticity. The picture is demanding but it is beautiful. A close analysis of St. John of the Cross’ teaching on the transforming union discloses the almost incredible beauty of a person who has been transformed by an entire immersion in God. Advancing prayer brings about what St. Paul speaks of as a growth from one glory to another as we are transformed by the indwelling Spirit into his own image (2 Corinthians 3:18).
Authenticity – Fr. Thomas Dubay S.M.

The Ground Of Being And The Good: The Ultimate Cause Of Creation
God does not produce the world naturally because he is God, which would then mean that the world would be in the same measure divine and necessary as God himself; rather it is an absolute freedom which is the ground of the self-effusion of the ultimate good. This in turn has two consequences: that God in himself and independently of his relationship to the world is the good, or in Christian terms is love, and that the ultimate cause of the creation of a world can only be the free, loving communication of divine goodness to created beings. If one thinks this through, then one will have to say, over and above this, that precisely in the freedom of the love of the divine ground of being lies the possibility of there being such a thing as a world (which is not God, not the infinite and the all) at all. Indeed the final point may emerge dimly as a kind of limiting concept which will find its confirmation in the central assertions of the Christian faith: The ground of being can be called the good as free love only if it possesses in itself a spiritual life of love; that is to say, if there is within it a self-giving, a communing, a communality that does not impugn the identity of the absolute but indeed is the necessary condition of its truly being the absolute good.

The Intentions Of A Free Divine Good
If (a man) encounters the idea that he …is the image of the freely loving God who consequently also wills him of his freedom, then a strange and remarkable light will be shed on his existence. On the one hand, it will become clear to him that the free divine good has intended him to be this particular person, this unmistakable person, and has consequently freely given to him his freedom insight and responsibility; but that this, on the other hand, cannot be simply a matter of dismissing him, of sending him off without further interest into an estrangement from God. Rather he must realize his being as a man with free, rational responsibility precisely by relating the image to the original, not by turning away, but by turning to God. Here a realm of intimate inwardness is opened up which may take many forms and names: contact with the primal image, cherishing an d contemplating memories and recollections, prayer, the attempt to make human insight and freedom in every situation transparent to absolute insight and freedom. It is an openness, ready to be formed and fulfilled; it is making room for the one who may come to dwell, a readiness to the be the womb which shall bear fruit each in one’s own particular human world activity and efforts.
Elucidations – Hans Urs Von Balthasar

The Fundamental Schism Of Man
We all share in a shattering duality – and by this I don’t mean that soggy, superficial split that one so often sees: the kind of thing, for example, where the gangster sobs uncontrollably at an old Shirley Temple movie. I mean the fundamental schism that Newman referred to when he spoke of man being forever involved in the consequences of some “terrible aboriginal calamity;” every day in everyman there is this warfare of the parts. And while all this results in meanness and bitterness and savagery enough, God knows, and while only a fool can look around him and smile serenely in unwatered optimism, nevertheless the wonder of it all is to me the frequency with which kindness, the essential goodness of man does break through, and as one who has received his full measure of that goodness, I can say that for me, at least, it is in the long succession of these small, redemptive instants, just as much as in the magnificence of heroes, that the meaning and the glory of man is revealed…
The Edge of Sadness – Edwin O’Connor

An Insight Into God’s Playfulness
Dionysius, a theologian to whom Thomas Aquinas is deeply in debt, described God as “the good which is diffusive of itself.” For the great mystic Dionysius, goodness is like a fountain, constantly overflowing, or like the sun, naturally radiating out, communicating almost in spite of itself. Or in more psychological terms, it is like a joyful person who simply cannot keep his good cheer to himself. The good spills over speaks itself, shines forth …For Thomas it is precisely this insight into God’s playfulness and capacity for self-offering that convinces Christians of the unspeakable goodness of the divine power. It is this self-forgetfulness of God, made visible in Jesus, that persuades us finally of God’s superabundant generosity. If God had not joined us in our creatureliness, God would remain a limited, finite good, still to some degree restricted in love. In a word, the Christian discovers in Jesus Christ that God’s being is fully ecstatic. God’s nature is to go beyond himself, to step outside of himself, to forget himself in love….For Thomas, Jesus Christ, God made human, is the light by which the goodness, the power, the strangeness, and especially the ecstasy of God are revealed. In his great leap out of himself, God discloses, superabundantly and overwhelmingly, who he is. In this ecstatic leap, God opens up the human mind and heart, illumines and heals the eyes of the human spirit, and thereby sets us on the path that leads to him.
Thomas Aquinas, Spiritual Master – Fr. Robert Barron

Discrediting The Goodness Of God
One of the tendencies of our age is to use the suffering of children to discredit the goodness of God, and as soon as you have discredited his goodness, you are done with him…Ivan Karamazov cannot believe, as long as one child is in torment; Camus’ hero cannot accept the divinity of Christ, because of the massacre of the innocents. In this popular pity, we mark our gain in sensibility and our loss in vision. If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror, It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chambers…
Flannery O’Connor — Collected Spiritual Writings

Man Is Held To Goodness
The meaning of the law has been transfigured: they no longer command bad men to be good and to grow into something which they are not; rather do they command good men not be bad and not to fail in that which they already are, not to fall back into that state of slavery from whence they have been freed. Justification is received through faith, quite apart from works. But once justified man is more than ever held to do good works…And this is not because the works of man would have power to save man by themselves, but because good works proceed from the charity which has been given to man and which is his life – his new and eternal life – and which is joined to faith when faith is living: “faith working through charity.” And also because the works of charity, serving of life, to the extent that man, acting freely under the inflowing of grace, receives from God’s mercy the dignity of being a cause – secondary and instrumental – the matter of his own salvation.

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

“Everything is permissible for me”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me”—but I will not be mastered by anything. “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food”—but God will destroy them both. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body. . [1 Corinthians 6:9-12; 15-20]

And in like fashion, Paul writes:

Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace. [Romans 6:2-14]
Saint Paul – Jacques Maritain

Posted in Variety | Tagged 1 Corinthians 6:9-12; 15-20, Authenticity, Authenticity And Sanctity, charity, Dionysius, Discrediting The Goodness Of God, Edwin O’Connor, Fr. Robert Barron, Fr. Thomas Dubay, God’s Playfulness, goodness, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, heroic virtue, Ivan Karamazov, Jacques Maritain, Man Is Held To Goodness, massacre of the innocents, Psalm 145, Romans 6:2-14, sexual immorality, The Fundamental Schism Of Man, The Ground Of Being, you were bought at a price, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit | Leave a Comment »

Revealed to Infants

June 4, 2009

At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants;
Matthew 11:25

A Stupendous Riddle
They call him Master and rightly so, but in washing their feet the Master deliberately abases himself in order to demonstrate that greatness lies not in self-assertion, but in self-abnegation. Earthly authority displays itself in giving orders, in magnificent apparel, in hordes of servitors, in sycophantic addresses; the authority Jesus disposes of is, by contrast, spiritual, and expresses itself in serving, not in being served, in seeking to be the least instead of the greatest, the last instead of the first, in finding wisdom in the innocence of children and truth in the foolishness of men rather than in those who pass for being sagacious and experienced in the world’s ways. When we want to adulate men, we say they are godlike; but when God became Man, it was in the lineaments of the least of men…

If the greatest of all, Incarnate God, chooses to be the servant of all, who will wish to be the master? If he receives orders, who will venture to give them? If those who climb are descending, and those who descend, climbing, who will aspire after eminence? These are the questions Jesus leaves with us; not to answer – because they have no answer – but to live with and by. Christianity is a stupendous riddle without a solution; a stupendous joke without a point; a stupendous song without a tune; a stupendous waking dream that we lose in sleeping; a death in life and a life in death.
Jesus – Malcolm Muggeridge

The Witness Of The Church In The Little Ones Of The Earth
“People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.” [Mark 10:13-16]

The point of Jesus’ last statement is different here than in [Matthew 18:3] who uses the wording: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven,” is making the point we must become childlike. Mark’s point, on the other hand, is that the way we receive a child, welcome a child, is the measure of our reception of God’s rule. Not to welcome a child, and by extension any of the worlds’ lowly and outcast – is in effect to reject Jesus himself….In the worlds’ oppressed and outcast and marginalized, the face of Jesus is to be discerned.
Living Jesus – Luke Timothy Johnson

Perhaps God Is Strong Enough To Exult In Monotony
All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire.

A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstasy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction.

Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy.

A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.

It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical ENCORE. Heaven may ENCORE the bird who laid an egg. If the human being conceives and brings forth a human child instead of bringing forth a fish, or a bat, or a griffin, the reason may not be that we are fixed in an animal fate without life or purpose. It may be that our little tragedy has touched the gods, that they admire it from their starry galleries, and that at the end of every human drama man is called again and again before the curtain. Repetition may go on for millions of years, by mere choice, and at any instant it may stop. Man may stand on the earth generation after generation, and yet each birth be his positively last appearance.
Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton

We Pretend We Are Doing The Best We Can.
I think we are capable of fooling ourselves in a lot of different ways. People talk about what makes a child an adult, as if there is some physical or emotional or mental threshold we cross, but I tell you this, and if you are honest with yourself you will know it is true: the thing that makes us adult is our ability to delude ourselves. That’s all. Children know what they are. Try telling a fat kid he looks good, or a child who is a bad athlete that he just needs to try harder. He knows better.

But as adults, we start to believe the bullshit. We tell ourselves that cheating on our taxes isn’t really stealing and that the job candidate with long legs is really a better fit of the company. We look at our lives and pretend that we aren’t money hungry and consumed by status, that we have kept the morals and ethics of our college years, that we are healthy and not fat, distinguished and not old, that gray looks sophisticated in our hair, that it doesn’t hurt her if she doesn’t know, that it’s not really lying if he doesn’t find out, that we deserve a break now and then, that we had no choice, meant no harm, didn’t know what would happen, would take it back if we could, that we are still liberal and open minded and easy going and not afraid.

We come up with rationalizations and justifications after the fact, and then we convince ourselves that these things are true. We pretend we are doing the best we can.
Land Of The Blind – Jess Walter

Reconciliation
Mr. Head stood very still and felt the action of mercy touch him again but this time he knew that there were no words in the world that could name it. He understood that it grew out of agony, which is not denied to anyone and which is given in strange ways to children. He understood it was all a man could carry into death to give his Maker and he suddenly burned with shame that he had so little of it to take with him He stood appalled, judging himself with the thoroughness of God, while action of mercy covered his pride like a flame and consumed it.

He had never thought himself a great sinner before but he saw now that his true depravity had been hidden from him lest it cause him despair. He realized he was forgiven for sins from the beginning of time when he had conceived in his own heart the sin of Adam, until the present, when he had denied poor Nelson. He saw that no sin was to monstrous for him to claim as his own and since God loved in proportion as He forgave, he felt ready at that instant to enter Paradise.
The Artificial Nigger Flannery O’Connor

Revealed to the Childlike
About Mary — “Humble and great, more than a creature,” was the way Dante defined her. She possessed none of the requisites of human greatness. Her sole value lies in the fact that she was chosen by God to play a role of superior importance to any human exaltation whatsoever (who has the power to raise a woman to the dignity of Mother of God?) and she always corresponded fully, with intelligence and freedom, to the will of her Lord.

About us — Each one of us has also been thought of by God from all eternity and must accomplish that salvific role, for ourselves and for others, which God assigns to us and makes known to us through the various circumstances of our lives, as well as through the “talents” (material goods and personal gifts) which we have received from the Lord. Our greatness will depend on how we correspond and how we stand before the eyes of God.
Father Gabriele Amorth
Father Amorth is the Chief Exorcist of Rome, Italy, and the author of four books about the Blessed Virgin Mary

Posted in Variety | Tagged "Living Jesus", "The Artificial Nigger", bullshit, Dante, Flannery O'Connor, Fr. Gabriele Amorth, G. K. Chesterton, God and Monotony, Luke Timothy Johnson, Malcolm Muggeridge, Mark 10:13-16, Mary, Matthew 11:25, rationalizations | Leave a Comment »

Fr. Romano Guardini: Four Meditations from The Lord

June 3, 2009

: Fr. Romano Guardini

Just over forty years ago, Romano Guardini (1885-1968) died in Munich. In her biography of him, Hanna-Barbara Gerl called the Italian-German philosopher and theologian “a father of the 20th-century Church.” Guardini’s books nourished the most lively segment of Catholic thought during the 1900′s. And one of his students was special – he’s the current pope. When he was a student not much over the age of twenty, Joseph Ratzinger had the chance not only to read, but also to listen in person to the man he chose as his great “master.” As theologian, as cardinal, and also as pope, Ratzinger has repeatedly acknowledged in his books that he intends to proceed along the pathways opened by Guardini. In “Jesus of Nazareth,” he declares from the very first lines that he has in mind one of the classics by his master: “The Lord.” Here are four selections from that great work, part of a series listed under Scriptural Exegesis.

Baptism: A Spiritual Event
Jesus arrives at the Jordan, the profound experience of childhood and the long process of maturity behind him. He is fully aware of the stupendousness of the task before him and of the powers that rise to meet from the depths of his being. Yet his first gesture, first words are an expression of deep humility. No claims to special privileges; no: that may be the law for others, but not for me! He goes up to John and asks to be baptized. To demand baptism implies readiness to accept the word of the baptizer, to admit oneself a sinner, to do penance, and accept willingly all that God sends, however difficult. No wonder John is startled and tries to dissuade him! But Jesus quietly takes his place in line. He refuses to be an exception; voluntarily, he places himself within the law that is valid for all.

This humble descent to the human level was immediately answered by an outpouring from above. Since the fall of man (and the resultant corruption of nature — Romans 8:20-22) a barrier had separated us from the beatific presence of the omnipresent God in his heaven. For a moment this barrier was removed. While Jesus stood there praying, writes Luke, stressing that it was a spiritual event, an infinite encounter took place: the illimitable abundance of the divine Father streamed into the Son’s heart. Event “in the spirit” obviously; yet also an act as real, or more real, than any tangible reality.

The Holy Spirit lifts man beyond himself in order that he may experience God the Holy One and his love. We have already spoke n of the mystery of Jesus’ existence: he is the actual Son of God, bearer of the living godhead which streams though him, illuminating every cell of his being; yet he is also true man, like us in all things, sin excepted. In other words, he grows, he increases with the years in wisdom and grace, and not only in the eyes of the world, but also in the eyes of God… At this point the mystery deepens: Jesus is the Son of the Father. At all times “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” (John 14: 11-12). Yet it is also said that he “comes” from the Father and will return to the Father, and what is still more baffling, upon the cross he cries out in an agony of forsakenness (Matthew 27:46).

Jesus’ every act is governed by the Father; hence the Spirit (through which the Lord was conceived and made man) is always with him, for it is the bond of love uniting Father and Son. Yet we read that the Holy Spirit “comes’ over Jesus, just as one day, sent forth from the Father, it will come to all whom Jesus calls his own. The intellect cannot cope with such paradoxes, though it somehow senses the reality beyond all reality, the truth beyond all truth. Precisely here lies the danger. The mind must never allow itself to be misled into seeming ‘comprehension,’ into facile sensations or phrases with nothing solid behind them. The whole problem is a mystery, the sacred mystery of the relationship of the triune God to his incarnate Son. We can never penetrate it, and the knowledge of this incapacity must dominate our every thought and statement concerning Jesus’ life.

The Father’s Will: Following The Logic Of God
Again and again Jesus speaks of his Father’s will. This paternal will is not to be understood as a fixed, preconceived program including everything that will ever occur in the course of time. Rather, it lives, takes shape in Jesus, directing him during the progress of events according to the need of the hour; The Father and his will are with him always, upholding, surrounding, fulfilling and urging him constantly on. Jesus, who stands alone in the world, is at home in this will; so much so that its fulfillment is “food” to him (John:4:34).

From time to time this volition condenses’ to a specific demand or will issues its precise instructions. It is to these that Jesus is referring when he speaks of his “hour”. This direct and intimate bond between the Father and Son is wonderful, but it is heavy too, and often inflicts severe pain. We are reminded of the conflict that is the prophet’s constant lot. He stands squarely in the turmoil of a daily life moved by necessity, pleasure and earthly values. Men desire to eat and drink; to live and possess; to work, create, reap honor and power. In a world of such desires, comprehensible to all, the prophet is necessarily a foreign body. He obeys a different logic, the logic of God: “For as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so are my ways exalted above your ways, and my thought above your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:9).

Thus the prophet’s acts must seem folly, if not a source of actual danger to those about him (Jeremiah). He reacts to a different stimulus, that of the Spirit, wind that “blows where it will” (John 3:8) The sudden, inexplicable words and actions that it inspires must often seem arbitrary and senseless to those ‘outside’ that will.

If this is already so true of the prophets, how entirely true must it be of Jesus! John’s gospel is filled with references to the impression Jesus makes on the practical Pharisees and Sadducees. They are uneasy, shocked , indignant. They feel their order shaken and the safety of their people dangerously undermined. This alone explains that otherwise blasphemous passage: “Are we not right in saying that thou are a Samaritan, and hast a devil?” (John 8:48) — in other words, half pagan and at mercy of demonic forces.

A ray of light falls from hereupon that strange verse in Mark’s account (3:20-21): “And they came to the house, and again a crowd gathered so that they could not so much as take their food. But when his own people had heard of it, they went out to lay hold of him, for they said ‘He has gone mad.’ And the scribes who had come down from Jerusalem said, ‘He has Beelzebub,’ and, ‘By the prince of devils he casts out devils.’” Then follow the lines telling how his mother and brothers, alarmed, appear outside and call him.

From incidents such as these we sense something that holy, awful law under which Jesus stands; the deep , intimate, inexorable power that guides him, slashing like a sword into his daily life and into that of his loved ones, causing infinite pain to all. We feel the terrible loneliness about him and realize what it must have cost to believe in him and to follow him to the end.

And yet, the Father’s will is the Father’s love. Though his complete acceptance it, Jesus enters into the intimacy of God, where all things are luminous with his tenderness and power. This will is constantly forming directives for all needs as they present themselves.

Thus also here at the wedding-feast Jesus’ hour is to come. Mary is little daunted by her Son’s rebuke. She feels the approaching moment of decision and instructs the servants: “Do whatever he tells you.” Then it happens: water is transformed into choicest wine — symbol of the divine abundance which streams from above, waiting to find its way into human hearts.

Scandal
Mark notes that Jesus teaches as one “having authority not like the Scribes” and Luke points out that all “marveled the words of grace that came from his mouth.” Here ”grace” must be understood in its full Greek sense; simultaneously pure heavenly gift that came neither demanded nor forced, and loveliness, delicate, mobile beauty. The words amaze and delight his hearers with their power and charm. Yet swift as an adder, the objection strikes: “Is this not Joseph’s son?” Into the moment, luminous with the beauty and holiness of Jesus’ message, darts something malignant. It comes from the blackest, basest dregs of human nature. The Lord recognizes it at once: the enemy…

Here counter-revelation — revelation of scandal and hate. Outburst of man’s irritation against God and the essence of God: holiness. Scandal is a revolt against the living God. At the bottom of the human heart , side by side with the human longing for the eternal source and fulfillment of all things, lurks resistance to that source: elementary sin its lair. Seldom does it confront holiness openly; almost always it strikes at the bearer of holiness; at the prophet, the apostle, the saint, the confirmed believer. Such people do irritate. Something in us finds the very presence of one dedicated to God unbearable. We revolt against him, ‘justifying’ our distaste with his shortcomings (naturally, there are always shortcoming) or with his sins. How could such a person be the bearer of sanctity! Or perhaps it is only his weaknesses (which from our dour viewpoint of rejection immediately swell perniciously), or his eccentricities that are so maddening — nothing is more trying that the eccentricities of a saint! In short ,the fact that he is a human, finite being is too much to bear.

Jesus and Human Suffering
Jesus is not merely a great figure of charity with a boundless heart and tremendous capacity for service. He makes no attempt to track human suffering to the root in order to eradicate it. He is no social reformer fighting for a more just distribution of material wealth. The social reformer aims at lessening suffering; if possible at removing it. He tries to meet human needs in a practical manner: to prevent misfortune, to readjust conditions in order that happy, physically and spiritually healthy people inhabit the earth.

Once we see this clearly, we realize that for Jesus the problem is quite a different one. He sees the mystery of suffering much more profoundly — deep at the root-tip of human existence, and inseparable from sin and estrangement from God. He knows it to be the door in the soul that leads to God or at least can lead to him; result of sin but also means of purification and return.

This is obviously what is meant by his words about taking up the cross and following him (Matthew 16:24). Perhaps we come nearer to the truth when we say: Christ did not avoid pain, as we try to. He did not ignore it. He did not insulate himself from it. He received it into his heart. Sufferer himself and realist, he took people as he found them, with all their shortcomings. Voluntarily he shared their afflictions, their blame, their need.

Herein lies the immeasurable depth and breadth of Christ’s love. Its power is the triumphant power of truth in a love which seizes reality and lifts it out of itself. Jesus healing is divine healing; it reveals the Universal Healer and directs towards him. It is inseparable from faith. In Nazareth he is unable to work miracles because the people there do not believe. To force the supernatural upon them would be to destroy its intrinsic sense: the faith from which it springs.

Posted in Fr. Romano Guardini, Scriptural Exegesis | Tagged Jesus and Human Suffering, Jesus' Baptism, Scandal, The Father’s Will, The Holy Spirit, The Logic Of God | Leave a Comment »

Obama and Notre Dame

June 1, 2009

Fr. Jenkins and Ironic New Friend For Life

…a topic that is eating up the Catholic forums. As a recent convert (2006) to the Catholic Church and motivated in no way by political or cultural concerns, it came as somewhat of a surprise to see the range of political views that currently exist in the Catholic Church.

In fact my first attempts to locate an RCIA program proved instructive as the first Church I went to in Boston informed me that their Church tended to be more “liberal” in outlook and that I would probably prefer to attend the Church in my neighborhood parish. I admit to looking like a right wing extremist but was quite frankly surprised (and a little put-off) by the RCIA director’s overt political approach to what I thought was going to be a spiritual or soulful activity (locating a Church to join). Well this is three years later and I’ve come to see how messy things really are. Happily it in no way affects my faith or commitment to my Church.

Joseph Bottum is an editor at First Things and the Books & Arts editor of The Weekly Standard. A native of South Dakota, he is a graduate of Georgetown University, with a Ph.D. in philosophy from Boston College. His essays, reviews, and poetry have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic Monthly, Nineteenth-Century Literature, First Things, Commentary, National Review, Philosophy & Literature, and elsewhere. He is a host of Book Talk, a nationally syndicated radio program. This is a selection from a spot on commentary on the Obama/ND dust up:

“The role of culture — American Catholic culture, in particular — is what Fr. Jenkins at Notre Dame, and John DeGioia at Georgetown, and many other presidents of Catholic colleges seem not to understand. Indeed, their lack of Catholic culture is what makes them appear so un-Catholic to the people they antagonize, and it is what so befuddles these college presidents when the charge is made. They know they are Catholics: They go to Mass, and they pray, and their faith is real, and their theology is sophisticated, and what right has a bunch of other Catholics to run around accusing them of failing to be Catholic?

But, in fact, they live in a distant world, attenuated and alone. Opposition to abortion doesn’t belong at the absolute center of Catholic theology. It doesn’t belong at the perfect center of Catholic faith. It exists, however, at the center of Catholic culture in this country. Yes, that culture is thinner than many that Catholics have known before, and yes, it seems in some ways an unpromising foundation for establishing a broad Catholic identity. For that matter, the pro-life core has only in the past twenty years begun to spread to the more distant reaches of the Church in America.

Still, opposition to abortion is hard and real, the signpost at the intersection of Catholicism and American public life. And those who — by inclination, or politics, or class distinction — fail to grasp this fact will all eventually find themselves in the situation that Fr. Jenkins has now created for himself. Culturally out of touch, they rail that antagonism must derive from politics or the class envy of their lesser-educated social inferiors. But it doesn’t. It derives from the sense of the faithful that abortion is important. It derives from the feeling of Catholics that, however far they themselves may have wandered, the Church ought to stand for something in public life — and that something is opposition to abortion.

They do not necessarily have bad theology — although the bishops have argued that they do — when they equate the life issues with other concerns. They do not have bad faith just because they see the war and capital punishment as matters of equal weight with the million babies killed every year in this country by abortion. But they lack the cultural marker that would make them distinctively Catholic in the minds of other Catholics. Abortion is not the only life issue, but it is the one that bears most directly on the lives of ordinary Catholics as they fight against the current to preserve family life. And until Catholic universities get this, they will not be Catholic — in a very real, existentially important sense.

What’s more, they will not be politically effective. Notre Dame and President Obama created the present situation by attempting to use each other in the normal political way, but Notre Dame has gained nothing from the exercise. If anything, Notre Dame has lost ground. What political capital has it earned with the White House from the embarrassment of Mary Ann Glendon’s withdrawal and the open sniping of the bishops and the protesters camped outside the college gates? Nothing that will do the school any good.

From the White House, the situation looks different. John Kerry managed only 47 percent of the Catholic vote in 2004. Barack Obama brought home much more in 2008, and the Democratic party wants to keep those hard-gained votes. The bad economy may have turned some Catholics against the Republicans, but it hasn’t necessarily bound Catholics back to the Democrats. The sticking point remains abortion: Catholics are against it, Democrats are for it, and nothing on either side looks likely to budge. Enter the Catholic universities and colleges. In recent years, the bishops have proved generally unwilling to downplay the life issues, and, as a result, they have been systematically shut out by the Obama administration and the new Congress. No one in power in Washington feels the need to give in to the bishops about anything — or to compromise with the bishops, or even to consult the bishops. Much as Republicans over the past eight years never bothered with the National Organization for Women, considering it a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic party, so the Democrats now do not bother much with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which they imagine mostly as a partisan opponent on the life issues and a sideshow on everything else.

Still, the Democrats need to keep their Catholic voters. They need Catholic cover — and they are seeking it among the Catholic schools: Georgetown and Xavier and Sacred Heart and, yes, Notre Dame. The people at these institutions do not all approve of legalized abortion; some do, some don’t, and the percentages vary, with Georgetown probably high toward approval and Notre Dame certainly high toward disapproval. But, in general, the Catholic colleges have proved themselves willing to set aside the question of abortion when giving honors to politicians they otherwise support, while the bishops have gradually settled on refusing to grant those honors.

As the Democrats try what all political parties try — to turn a single electoral victory into a long-lasting majority — the lures they offer the Catholic colleges will grow larger and larger. Politics, taken all by itself, offers some explanation for how President Obama’s honorary law degree from Notre Dame grew to become the central scene of a power struggle between the bishops and the Catholic colleges.”

I imagine Fr. Jenkins has scored all kinds of federal funding for his institution over the next few years – would love to read a follow-up article that follows the money on these things. The cover he has offered Obama is huge but how this plays out to the Catholic base is the real issue here. I agree with Bottum that ND has gained nothing here and when the American electorate wakes up to how cynically the Pelosi/Reid/Democratic Party/White House has played the country’s economic problems to their own advantage, the mood for a third party will dramatically escalate. These are serious times we are in and in need of a serious political response. I think Americans will come up with one.

Posted in The State of the Catholic Church | Tagged Abortion politics, American Catholic culture, Barack Obama, Catholic universities, cultural markers, Fr. Jenkins, Notre Dame, the pro-life core, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops | Leave a Comment »

Paying Attention To The Sky

Archive for June, 2009

Caritas Christi Update

Sin In The Therapeutic Society

Understanding Sin 1: From “Thomas Aquinas, Spiritual Master” by Fr. Robert Barron

Trials Of Heresy: Led Astray By Luke Timothy Johnson

A Significant Defeat For The Pro-Life Movement Inflicted By The Catholic Church In Boston

The Goodness of God

Revealed to Infants

Fr. Romano Guardini: Four Meditations from The Lord

Obama and Notre Dame

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