Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 165

"We’re making most of this up as we go."

"In the Light of the Law", the fine blog of canon lawyer and professor Dr. Ed Peters (he teaches at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit), is an essential and trustworthy source at any time, but perhaps especially during this unusual time, on the cusp of Pope Benedict XVI's final day as pontiff and on the verge of the conclave. As Dr. Peters notes, there is a real sense in which the Church is, well, winging it:

Aside from the resignation itself—the
canonical legality of which is incontestable—Pope Benedict’s startling
decision to leave office has occasioned much confusion in Rome and
around the Catholic world. The simple fact is that the Catholic Church,
at every level, has virtually no experience in dealing with ex-popes.

Beyond the barest of canonical points
(c. 332 § 2), almost everything about Benedict’s future—his status under
law (canonical and international), title(s), appropriate dress,
relations with peers (assuming he has any), and so on and so on and so
on—must be fashioned practically from scratch. One should not assume
that any announcements being made about Benedict’s future are
based on the authority of some arcane-but-accessible protocol tome for
dealing with ex-popes, because there is no such tome. We’re making most of this up as we go.

And:

History’s not much help either. Setting
aside some first millennium episodes that are almost too bizarre for
words, the last pope to resign (Gregory XII) had been elected and tried
to govern under conditions that would shock the conscience today. The
only other pope to resign (Celestine V) was promptly arrested and died
in prison. None of this is remotely useful for predicting Benedict’s
future.

Read his entire post, "Some distinctly non-canonical musings on the status of an ex-pope." And be sure to keep up with his blog, which has been invaluable for many years, and will undoubtedly be the same during the eventful weeks ahead.

Cardinal Wuerl: "We cannot do business as usual..."

Cardinal Donald Wuerl talks with Catholic News Service about the October 2012 Synod, Pope Benedict XVI, the upcoming conclave, and the challenge posed by secularism, not only in the West, but also in Asia and Africa:

Reading the Catechism, Rebuilding Catholic Culture

Reading the Catechism , Rebuilding Catholic Culture | Carl E. Olson | Catholic World Report

An Interview with the author of Rebuilding Catholic
Culture: How The Catechism Can Shape Our Common Life 

Dr. Ryan N. S. Topping earned a doctorate in theology at
Oxford, is a Fellow at Thomas More College in New Hampshire, and has written
two books about St. Augustine. His recently published book, Rebuilding
Catholic Culture: How The Catechism Can Shape Our Common Life (Sophia Institute Press, 2012), has been praised by
Fr. Aidan Nichols, OP (“This book deserves to
take its place among the Catholic
classics.”), Joseph Pearce (“Ryan Topping wields the Catechism as a weapon of wisdom…”), and Fr. John Saward (“This
profound work of scholarship is a delight to read.”), among others.

Dr. Topping corresponded recently with Catholic World
Report about his book, and discussed the Catechism
of the Catholic Church, resisting the
modern and secular “masters”, the challenges posed by modernity, the various
assaults on Catholicism and the family, and why Kant rules our days and
Nietzsche our night life.

Catholic World Report: It has now been nearly twenty years since the Catechism
of the Catholic Church was published
in English. How well or how poorly do you think it has been received and used
in that time? How do you hope Rebuilding Catholic Culture will inspire a deeper reading and appreciation of
the Catechism?



Dr. Topping: The work of the restoration of culture is the work
of saints. How are saints born? They are born through grace, to be sure. But
grace is aided by precept and example. The task of reclaiming our culture
for the Church is a battle with many fronts. Far more important than good books
is the renewal of liturgy within our churches and the restoration of order
within our families and schools. Books rarely excite without lively teachers to
place them in our hands.

To explain a doctrine is to teach, but to illustrate how its
meaning can transform action is to excite. I tried to keep both of these aims
in view while writing. My hope is that Rebuilding Catholic Culture will in some small way strengthen the nerve and
excite the imagination of its readers.

CWR:
You write, in the Introduction, that, “Intellectual humility is a great good,
but self-imposed humiliation before our medical, moral, and political masters
is unbecoming.” What are some examples of that “self-imposed humiliation” and
why do so many Catholics embrace it? What are some examples of these modern masters? 



Dr. Topping: We improperly
censure ourselves each time we talk about “faith communities” or “Christian
values” or “gender”. None of these things exist in the Catholic lexicon. We
belong to the Church, believe in good and evil, and are created male and
female. Language shapes our perceptions. We need to recapture once more,
through catechesis and in our schools and colleges, a grounding in the basics
of Catholic philosophy. Not that everyone needs to become a scholar. But good
philosophy is needed if only to counter bad philosophy. And our public
discourse has been dominated for a very long time by those versed in sub-human
philosophy.



How to reverse this trend? Every profession and trade affords its own
opportunities for heroism. If you are a college president, refuse to remove
crucifixes from your classrooms. If you are a principal of a Catholic high
school, hire Catholic teachers. If you are a Catholic doctor, stick your neck
out and refuse to prescribe contraception. If you are a mother, know what your
children are being taught at school, and assert your role as the primary
educator.

 

CWR: A
central theme of your book is the uneasy and often contentious relationship
between modernity and Catholicism. Why are you so hard on modernity? Hasn't it
produced all sorts of wonderful technological, medical, and cultural advances
and accomplishments? Are you simply pining for a golden age of Catholicism when
the Church dominated culture and every other aspect of life? Aren’t you a bit
young to be nostalgic for the Middle Ages?

Continue reading on the CWR site.

From Temptation to Transfiguration

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, February 24, 2013, the Second
Sunday of Lent | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• Gn 15:5-12, 17-18
• Ps 27:1, 7-8, 8-9, 13-14
• Phil 3:17—4:1
• Lk 9:28b-36

What a difference a week
makes! From temptation in the desert to Transfiguration on the mount; from
supernatural battle with Satan to supernatural glory before the disciples. It
is a striking contrast between the respective Gospel readings for last Sunday and today.
But while the temptation in the desert is obviously Lenten—in fact, it is the
inspiration and foundation of this season—why is the Transfiguration a part of
the Sunday readings during Lent?

Of course, the actual time
between the temptation in the desert, which preceded Jesus’ public ministry,
and the stunning event on the mountain was about two years or so. But just a
week prior to the Transfiguration, Jesus had asked the disciples, “Who do the
multitudes say I am?” (Lk. 9:18). After Peter, the head apostle, made his
famous declaration, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt.
16:16; Lk. 9:20), Jesus began to tell them that he would soon suffer many
things, be rejected by the rulers, killed, and then “raised up on the third
day” (Lk. 9:22). In Matthew’s account, the intrepid Peter, stunned by this
revelation, rebuked Jesus, only to be rebuked, in turn, in no uncertain terms:
“Get behind me, Satan!” (Matt. 16:23).

In sum, in the days leading
up the Transfiguration, Jesus had directly confronted and demolished any false
notions the disciples might have had about the nature of his mission. He
strongly expressed the unwavering commitment he had to offering himself as a
sacrifice for the world. His kingdom was not of this world, and he was not a
political leader or a military warrior; he was not promising comfort and
wealth. On the contrary, Jesus was promising a cross: “If any man would come after
me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Lk. 9:23). 

We can only try to imagine
how disorienting and confusing this had to be for the disciples. Suffering,
rejection, and rapidly approaching death were not parts of their plan! In the midst of this confusion and anxiety,
Jesus took Peter, John, and James, the inner circle of the disciples, up to the
mountain to pray, ascending, as it were, toward the heavenly places. There,
above the tumult of the world and an ominous future, Jesus revealed his glory
and gave them a dazzling glimpse of their eternal calling.

But the glory witnessed by
the three apostles was not just about the future. “The Transfiguration,” notes
Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis in Fire of Mercy, Heart of the World (Ignatius Press, 2003), “is the experience of the
fullness of divine Presence, action, communication, and glory now, in our very
midst, in this world of passingness and disappointment.” It is about the
fullness of life now—not ordinary, natural life, but extraordinary,
supernatural life. The Transfiguration is about the gift of divine sonship,
which comes from the Father, who says of Jesus, “This is my chosen Son; listen
to him.”

St. Thomas Aquinas, in
considering whether it was fitting that Jesus should be transfigured, observed
that since Jesus exhorted his disciples to follow the path of His sufferings,
it was right for them to see his glory, to taste for a moment such eternal
splendor so they might persevere. He wrote, in the third part of the Summa, “The adoption of the sons of God is through a
certain conformity of image to the natural Son of God. Now this takes place in
two ways: first, by the grace of the wayfarer, which is imperfect conformity;
secondly, by glory, which is perfect conformity…”

Peter and the disciples had
to learn that Jesus’ death was necessary so his life could be fully revealed
and given to the world. “On Tabor, light pours forth from him,” writes
Leiva-Merikakis, “on Calvary it will be blood.” A week ago we entered into the
desert of Lent; today we get a glimpse of the glory given to every son and
daughter of God—glory conforming us to the Son.

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the February 28, 2010, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

Related articles

"The Transfiguration: Gospel to the Dead" by Frank Sheed
The Image of Man Has Been Raised Up: On the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord
The Feast of the Transfiguration (and the 34th anniversary of Paul VI's death)

Pope Benedict's influence on Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.

That is the subject of this recent National Catholic Register feature by Joan Frawley Desmond, who writes:

As the founder of Ignatius Press, a leading publisher of Catholic theological works, Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio has tackled his fair share of turgid academic prose.

Thus he is especially appreciative of Pope Benedict XVI’s clarity — not only in his writing, but also his public statements.

In both cases, said Father Fessio, the Pope uses simple images and words to present complex themes and teachings.

Father Fessio has known Pope Benedict XVI since 1972, when the American
priest began doctoral studies at the University of Regensburg, where
then-Father Joseph Ratzinger had a strong following among graduate
students.

Father Ratzinger was just 45 years old when the young American Jesuit
from San Francisco arrived at the university, but the German-born
academic had already earned a reputation for explaining difficult
theological concepts in clear, incisive language.

“He was different, and people came to listen to him. He offered a very
personal, meditative reflection. As people now recognize, he
was articulate, organized and coherent,” recalled Father Fessio, during
an interview that shared recollections of Ratzinger’s role as a teacher
and offered an appreciation of his gifts as an author.

But Father Ratzinger’s intellectual gifts were even more striking
during the graduate seminars, “where there would be five or six of us.
In each session, one person would make a presentation, and others would
respond,” Father Fessio remembered. “Father Ratzinger would listen, and
then, in the discussion, he would make sure that others also spoke. My
German was not good, and I couldn’t say very much.”

During the seminars, Father Ratzinger “would sit back, and then, at the
end of the seminar, in two or three sentence, he would summarize all
that was said. He pulled the discussion together into an organic whole
in a way that was always illuminating.”

This section stands out:

“I wouldn’t call him shy; I would call him reserved. He is not someone who would enjoy a cocktail party,” said Father Fessio.

“Yes, he is firm. He has tremendous confidence because he has
confidence in Christ. Friendship in Christ: It is the bass note in all
his work.”

The resulting spiritual serenity sustained him amid the tumultuous
decades following the Second Vatican Council, when the German cardinal
sparked animosity by insisting that the Council did not constitute a
break with the continuity of Catholic Tradition.

Father Fessio recalled a remark the Pope made during a meeting some time after his election.

Another Catholic publisher asked the Holy Father why only Ignatius
Press was publishing his works. Father Fessio recalled  that the Pope
calmly responded, “Because when no one else cared, they published my
works.’”

Read the entire piece on the National Catholic Register site.

"Primacy in Love": The Chair Altar of Saint Peter's in Rome | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

"Primacy in Love": The Chair Altar of Saint Peter's in
Rome | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger | From
Images of Hope



Anyone who, after wandering through the massive nave of Saint Peter's Basilica,
at last arrives at the final altar in the apse would probably expect here a
triumphal depiction of Saint Peter, around whose tomb the church is built. But


nothing of the kind is the case. The figure of the Apostle does not appear among
the sculptures of this altar. Instead, we stand before an empty throne that
almost seems to float but is supported by the four figures of the great Church
teachers of the West and the East. The muted light over the throne emanates
from the window surrounded by floating angels, who conduct the rays of light
downward.



What is this whole composition trying to express? What does it tell us? It
seems to me that a deep analysis of the essence of the Church lies hidden here,
is contained here, an analysis of the office of Peter. Let us begin with the
window, with its muted colors, which both gathers in to the center and opens
outward and upward. It unites the Church with creation as a whole. It signifies
through the dove of the Holy Spirit that God is the actual source of all light.
But it tells us also something else) the Church herself is in essence, so to
speak, a window, a place of contact between the other-worldly mystery of God
and our world, the place where the world is permeable to the radiance of his
light. The Church is not there for herself, she is not an end, but rather a
point of departure beyond herself and us. The more transparent she becomes for
the other, from whom she comes and to whom she leads, the more she fulfills her
true essence. Through the window of her faith God enters this world and awakens
in us the longing for what is greater. The Church is the place of encounter
where God meets us and we find God. It is her task to open up a world closing
in on itself, to give it the light without which it would be unlivable.



Let us look now at the next level of the altar: the empty cathedra made of
gilded bronze, in which a wooden chair from the ninth century is embedded, held
for a long time to be the cathedra of the Apostle Peter and for this reason
placed in this location. The meaning of this part of the altar is thereby made
clear. The teaching chair of Peter says more than a picture could say. It
expresses the abiding presence of the Apostle, who as teacher remains present
in his successors. The chair of the Apostle is a sign of nobility--it is the
throne of truth, which in that hour at Caesarea became his and his successors'
charge. The seat of the one who teaches reechoes, so to speak, for our memory
the word of the Lord from the room of the Last Supper: "I have prayed for
you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen
your brethren" (Lk 22:32). But there is also another remembrance connected
to the chair of the Apostle: the saying of Ignatius of Antioch, who in the year
110 in his Letter to the Romans called the Church of Rome "the primacy of
love". Primacy in faith must be primacy in love. The two are not to be
separated from each other. A faith without love would no longer be the faith of
Jesus Christ. The idea of Saint Ignatius was however still more concrete: the
word "love" is in the language of the early Church also an expression
for the Eucharist. Eucharist originates in the love of Jesus Christ, who gave
his life for us. In the Eucharist, he evermore shares himself with us; he
places himself in our hands. Through the Eucharist he fulfills evermore his
promise that from the Cross he will draw us into his open arms (see Jn 12:32).
In Christ's embrace we are led to one another. We are taken into the one
Christ, and thereby we now also belong reciprocally together. I can no longer
consider anyone a stranger who stands in the same contact with Christ.


These are all, however, in no way remote mystical thoughts. Eucharist is the
basic form of the Church. The Church is formed in the eucharistic assembly. And
since all assemblies of all places and all times always belong only to the one
Christ, it follows that they all form only one single Church. They lay, so to
speak, a net of brotherhood across the world and join the near and the far to
one another so that through Christ they are all near. Now we usually tend to think
that love and order are opposites. Where there is love, order is no longer
needed because all has become self-evident. But that is a misunderstanding of
love as well as of order. True human order is something different from the bars
one places before beasts of prey so that they are restrained. Order is respect
for the other and for one's own, which is then most loved when it is taken in
its correct sense. Thus order belongs to the Eucharist, and its order is the
actual core of the order of the Church. The empty chair that points to the primacy
in love speaks to us accordingly of the harmony between love and order. It
points in its deepest aspect to Christ as the true primate, the true presider
in love. It points to the fact that the Church has her center in the liturgy.
It tells us that the Church can remain one only from communion with the
crucified Christ. No organizational efficiency can guarantee her unity. She can
be and remain world Church only when her unity is more than that of an
organization--when she lives from Christ. Only the eucharistic faith, only the
assembly around the present Lord can she keep for the long term. And from here
she receives her order. The Church is not ruled by majority decisions but
rather through the faith that matures in the encounter with Christ in the
liturgy.





























The Petrine service is primacy in love, which means care for the fact that the
Church takes her measure from the Eucharist. She becomes all the more united,
the more she lives from the eucharistic dimension and the more she remains true
in the Eucharist to the dimension of the tradition of faith. Love will also
mature from unity, love that is directed to the world. The Eucharist is based
on the act of love of Jesus Christ unto death. That means, too, that anyone who
views pain as something that should be abolished or at least left to others is
someone incapable of love. "Primacy in love": we spoke in the
beginning about the empty throne, but now it is apparent that the
"throne" of the Eucharist is not a throne of lordship but rather the
hard chair of the one who serves.



Let us now look at the third level of the altar, at the Fathers who bear the
throne of serving. The two teachers of the East, Chrysostom and Athanasius,
embody together with the Latin Fathers Ambrose and Augustine the entirety of
the tradition and thus the fullness of the faith of the one Church. Two considerations
are important here: love stands on faith. It collapses when man lacks
orientation. It falls apart when man can no longer perceive God. Like and with
love, order and justice also stand on faith; authority in the Church stands on faith.
The Church cannot conceive for herself how she wants to be ordered. She can
only try ever more clearly to understand the inner call of faith and to live
from faith. She does not need the majority principle, which always has
something atrocious about it: the subordinated part must bend to the decision
of the majority for the sake of peace even when this decision is perhaps
misguided or even destructive. In human arrangements, there is perhaps no
alternative. But in the Church the binding to faith protects all of us: each is
bound to faith, and in this respect the sacramental order guarantees more
freedom than could be given by those who would subject the Church to the
majority principle.



A second consideration is needed here: the Church Fathers appear as the
guarantors of loyalty to Sacred Scripture. The hypotheses of human
interpretation waver. They cannot carry the throne. The life-sustaining power
of the scriptural word is interpreted and applied in the faith that the Fathers
and the great councils have learned from that word. The one who holds to this
has found what gives secure ground in times of change.



Finally, now, we must not forget the whole for the parts. For the three levels
of the altar take us into a movement that is ascent and descent at the same
time. Faith leads to love. Here it becomes evident whether it is faith at all.
A dark, complaining, egotistic faith is false faith. Whoever discovers Christ,
whoever discovers the worldwide net of love that he has cast in the Eucharist,
must be joyful and must become a giver himself. Faith leads to love, and only
through love do we attain to the heights of the window, to the view to the
living God, to contact with the streaming light of the Holy Spirit. Thus the
two directions permeate each other. The light comes from God, flows downward
awakening faith and love, in order then to take us up the ladder that leads
from faith to love and to the light of the eternal.



The inner dynamic into which the altar draws us allows finally a last element
to become understandable. The window of the Holy Spirit does not stand there on
its own. It is surrounded by the overflowing fullness of angels, by a choir of
joy. That is to say, God is never alone. That would contradict his essence.
Love is participation, community, joy. This perception allows still another
thought to emerge. Sound joins the light. We think we hear them singing, these
angels, for we cannot imagine these streams of joy to be silent or as talking
idly or shouting. They can be perceived only as praise in which harmony and
diversity unite. "Yet you are... enthroned on the praises of Israel",
we read in the psalm (22:3). Praise is likewise the cloud of joy through which
God comes and which bears him as its companion into this world. Liturgy is
therefore the eternal light shining into our world. It is God's joy, sounding
into our world. And it is at the same time our feeling about the consoling glow
of this light out of the depth of our questions and confusion, climbing up the
ladder that leads from faith to love, thereby opening the view to hope.









Related IgnatiusInsight.com
Articles:








• On the Papacy, John Paul II, and the Nature of the Church
From God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

• Peter and Succession
From Called To Communion: Understanding the Church Today | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger



• Foreword to
U.M. Lang's Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer
| Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger


• For "Many" or For "All"? | From God Is Near Us
| Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

• Music and Liturgy | From The Spirit of the Liturgy
| Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger


• The Altar and the Direction of Liturgical Prayer |
From The Spirit of the Liturgy | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger


• Walking
To Heaven Backward | Interview with Father Jonathan Robinson of the
Oratory


• Rite and Liturgy
| Denis Crouan, STD


• The Liturgy
Lived: The Divinization of Man | Jean Corbon, OP


• The Mass of Vatican
II | Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.


• Liturgy, Catechesis,
and Conversion | Barbara Morgan


• Understanding
The Hierarchy of Truths | Douglas Bushman, STL


• The Eucharist:
Source and Summit of Christian Spirituality | Mark Brumley










Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, was for over two decades
the Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope
John Paul II. He is a renowned theologian and author of numerous books.
A mini-bio and full listing of his books published by Ignatius Press are
available on his IgnatiusInsight.com
Author Page.

Garry Wills' sour screed against the priesthood

by Anne Hendershott | Catholic World Report blog

Review of Why Priests?  A Failed Tradition

By Gary Wills
New
York: Viking Press, 2013.
302 pages.


It was no surprise to see Gary
Wills’ op-ed on the upcoming papal conclave published in The New York
Times, Wills has been a longtime critic of
the Church and her leaders—so when he titled his opinion piece, “New Pope? I’ve
Given Up Hope,” it was nothing new. 
The author of the virulently anti-Catholic book, Papal Sin, Wills—a former Jesuit seminarian—gave up hope for the Church many years ago.  Now, in
his new book, Why Priests? A Failed Tradition, we find that in addition to giving up hope, Wills
has now given up his faith. 
Denying the Real Presence in the Eucharist, the sacrificial
interpretation of the Mass, and the salvific mission of Christ, Why Priests? argues for a “re-envisioning” of the Church which
removes the distinction between the ordained and the laity.  Rather than lobbying for female
priests, or gay priests, Wills chooses instead to do away entirely with
apostolic succession and the God-given power of the priest to consecrate the
Eucharist. 

Indeed, Wills’ hatred for priests and the priesthood is
palpable on nearly every page of his angry polemic.  But it is difficult to understand the source of this hatred
because his examples of “clerical privilege” are so silly.  For example, on page 31 we begin to get
an idea of his early anger toward priests when he describes his days as a young
golf caddie who had to give priests “special treatment” on the golf course:
“Men already prepared to tee off let him go ahead of them. It was presumed he
had to get back to his spiritual tasks.” 
Wills also recalled that priests often abused parking rules: “once when
a priest drove me to the airport to pick up a friend, he stopped in a
no-parking area just outside the entry…he told me he had a clerical sticker on
his car.” (p 31)

So why did Wills enter the seminary and stay for five years
if he had such hostility for the priesthood?

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

Related articles

The Eternal Priesthood of Jesus Christ
"The Crisis of Faith" by Fr. John Hardon, S.J.

Catholics and “the Energy Problem”

Catholics and “the Energy Problem” | William L. Patenaude | Catholic World Report



The moral implications of the world’s energy problem make the Church’s engagement on the subject indispensable.


When a coalition of United States
scientists issued the most recent draft of its National Climate Assessment, it
captured the attention of environmental regulators like me. Two weeks later,
the United States Environmental Protection Agency briefed hundreds of
researchers and policy-makers about findings from more than two dozen climate
indicators.

Both the National Climate Assessment and EPA’s indicators
provide more than 1,000 pages of science and significant online resources that
show trends (mostly negative, but some positive) that align with anthropogenic
climate-change models—trends in increasing temperatures; drought in some places
while, in others, wetter, stronger, and more frequent storms; changes in
agricultural yields; sea-level rise, and other disruptions to the status quo.

My professional concerns relate
to the impact of storms and rising sea levels on water-pollution control
infrastructure. As a Catholic, however, these concerns are illuminated by my
faith. This influences my reaction to mounting evidence and professional
observations of the impacts of a changing world—and this makes me wonder what
we as believers can do about it.

Certainly, the topic of
human-induced climate change brings debate. This is especially true among my
Catholic brothers and sisters who view the topic as a Trojan horse that hides
radical left-wing agendas (which it sometimes can). But given pontifical
statements on the importance of ecology and the seriousness with which organs
in the Church—like the Pontifical Academy of Sciences—consider the subject,
there is a growing responsibility for the faithful to look closely at what
science is showing, as well as to consider the moral implications of what’s
happening, who it’s happening to, and the causes thereof.

When governments and
environmental advocates consider climate change, they do so in one of two ways:
adaptation (which means learning how to live with whatever happens) and
mitigation (which seeks to reduce the causes of what’s changing). While these
categories are ultimately linked, in practice they are quite separate.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

The Orwellian World of Catholic Higher Education

The Orwellian World of Catholic Higher Education | Anne Hendershott | Catholic World Report


A report on the implementation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae reveals next to nothing about the real state of affairs on Catholic college campuses.


In 1990, Pope John Paul II
released Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the
papal document defining the centrality of Catholic higher education. Its title translated
as “from the heart of the Church,” the document called for Catholic colleges to
be faithful to their Catholic mission and accountable to their local bishops. Fiercely
resisted by many Catholic college presidents and faculty members, who viewed Ex Corde Ecclesiae as a threat to their
academic freedom, it took more than 10 years to implement. Last month, the Office
of the Secretariat of Education at the United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops released what they called The
Final Report for the Ten Year Review of the Application of Ex Corde Ecclesiae for the United States.

Unfortunately, the Ten Year Review provides almost no
information about the progress that has been made in implementing the papal
document on the 230 Catholic campuses throughout the country. Rather than providing
facts about the implementation, the Ten
Year Review is a one-page, self-congratulatory, platitudinous document
that lauds “ongoing dialogue” and a “spirit of collaboration,” but says almost
nothing about what is really happening in Catholic higher education. In fact, any
Catholic who has been paying attention to the culture and curricula on many of
these campuses can be forgiven if he felt like he had stepped into a chapter of
George Orwell’s 1984 when reading a
recent headline in the National Catholic
Reporter, which proclaimed: “Bishops, colleges find good collaboration in Ex Corde review.” That same Catholic
must have been even more surprised to read a headline in Our Sunday Visitor that claimed: “Progress seen in boosting
Catholic identity on campuses.”   

Good collaboration with bishops? Boosting
Catholic identity? For faithful Catholics, it must have seemed like just
yesterday there was yet another serious scandal on a Catholic campus. That is
because it was just yesterday. In fact, this month alone included a long list
of scandals on Catholic campuses. Leading the list are the annual productions of
The Vagina Monologues, most scheduled
on or around Valentine’s Day. This year, performances of the play were held on 12
Catholic campuses, up from nine last year; among other things, the play favorably
portrays homosexual relations, adult-child sex, and abortion. 

Beyond these annual events, on many
Catholic campuses students can get class credit through internships at Planned
Parenthood, serving as clinic escorts.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Peter Kreeft's Foreword to F.J. Sheed's "Society and Sanity"

The Foreword to F. J. Sheed's Society and Sanity: How to Live Well Together (Ignatius Press, 2013) | Peter Kreeft

It
is a great honor to be asked to write a foreword to a
masterpiece.

The book you hold in your hands is, I firmly
believe, the single most useful and important book (outside of the
Church’s own official teachings in the Catechism
of the Catholic Church
and the papal encyclicals) that we can possibly read about the single
most important field of conflict between the Catholic Church
and the
increasingly de-Christianized Western world today.

Frank Sheed
was one of the three best Catholic apologists of the twentieth
century, the others being G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis (a
Catholic who thought he was an Anglican). Just as Sheed’s Theology
and Sanity
remains the very best introduction to Catholic theology, Society
and Sanity
remains the very best introduction to Catholic social and political
philosophy, even now, sixty years later. Like Huxley’s
preternaturally prophetic Brave
NewWorld,
it is astonishingly current, though it was published in 1953.

The
Church and the world both face exactly the same most basic problems
and issues today as then. These issues are not only the perennial,
unchanging ones that are many millennia old (good and evil, God and
man, sin and salvation, life and death), but are even the new,
distinctively modern ones that are only a century or two old, the new
crises.

What are these current civilizational crises? For many
centuries the issues that divided the Church and the world were
theological issues. But today they are all “social issues”. All
the “hot-button” controversies today are about man and marriage
and sex and society. This is why the greatest philosopher of modern
times, John Paul the Great, focused on anthropology; what C. S. Lewis
called “the abolition of man” follows necessarily upon the
abolition of God from any area of life—not only theology but also
society, both private (sex, marriage, and family) and the “public
square”. The greatest war today is not in the Middle East but in
the Middle Earth of Europe and North America. It is a war between two
world and life views, especially views of man and society. The new
view was summarized most candidly by Justice Anthony Kennedy of the
U.S. Supreme Court in his support of abortion in the Planned
Parenthood v. Casey
decision: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s
own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the
mystery of human life.” In other words, “Move over, God; you’re
sitting in my seat.”

These conflicts center around three
areas: the Christian and Catholic view of man, of marriage, and of
society. (There is, by the way, almost nothing in this book that
biblical Protestants should not find equally compelling.) It is
really three little books, making it the best available introduction
to Christian anthropology, Christian sexology and marriageology, and
Christian sociology. The foundational principles it lays out in these
three areas are the most basic and essential, both logically and
practically, the most currently ignored and neglected, and the most
urgently necessary-to-restore principles of man, of marriage, and of
social morality—the foundations it is literally insanity to
neglect.

To explain “the three parts of morality”, C. S.
Lewis in Mere
Christianity used
the unforgettable metaphor of humanity as a fleet of ships. Their
sailing orders tell them the three practical things they most need to
know: (1)
how to cooperate, how to work together as a fleet; (2)
how each individual ship is to stay shipshape and afloat; and (3)
what the mission of the whole fleet is. The first is social morality,
the second individual morality, and the third is philosophy,
especially “philosophy of man” or philosophical anthropology, and
of “the meaning of human life”. It is the third that is
studiously ignored today; yet the other two absolutely depend on it.
How can we become good individual human beings and how can we build a
good human society if we do not know, or even ask, what humanity is
and what humanity is for? That is the very first foundational
question. Nowhere will you find a book about that question that is
more clear and commonsensical, more sane and sagacious, more
fundamental and foundational, than this one.

Today it is not
the new, advanced stories of the social building but the very
simplest and most fundamental foundations that are crumbling; and it
is to those foundations that we must first turn if we are to repair
the upper stories. Imagine a China that can no longer understand the
common sense wisdom of Confucius, the philosopher who sounds most
like Mister Rogers from Mister
Rogers’ Neighborhood.
That is today’s China. Imagine a Western educational world that has
forgotten the lessons it learned in kindergarten. (See Robert
Fulghrum’s wonderfully wise Everything
I Needed to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten.)
Imagine bright college students of philosophy who comprehend Hegel
and Heidegger, Marx and Nietzsche, even Derrida and
Deconstructionism, but find Aristotle, the most commonsensical
philosopher who ever lived, to be the very hardest one in history to
comprehend and pass exams on. You have just imagined my students.
Worse, you have just imagined the world you are living in. The
building we live in is big and beautiful but it is collapsing because
its foundations are crumbling.

This is a book about those
foundations. It is so simple that it is stunning, because it is
“radical”, i.e., about the roots. For instance, its very first
and most important point, implied in the title, is that (in Sheed’s
own words)

our
treatment of anything
must depend, in the last resort,on what we think it is: for instance,
we treat people one way and cats another, because of our idea of what
a man is and what a cat is. All our institutions . . . grew out of
what those who made them thought a man was. . . . In every field, the
test of sanity is what
is;
in the field of human relations, the special test is what
man is.
. . . The total ignoring of this question runs all through modern
life. . . . Yet it does not strike people as odd. And the depth of
their unawareness of its oddness is the measure of the decay of
thinking about fundamentals.

The
book will be hated and feared, and therefore ignored, by the
barbarians who have commandeered the formal and informal educational
institutions of our civilization. Why? For the same reason “Great
Books” are hated and feared above all things in “progressive”
educational circles. It is the same reason cavities hate dentists. It
will be feared because it dares to assume that there is such a thing
as truth, and that we can and must know the most important truths
about ourselves and our true happiness. It dares to ask the great old
questions, the currently forbidden questions, like Socrates, or like
the little boy in The
Emperor’s New Clothes.
It will therefore be labeled “dogmatic” by those who dogmatically
forbid those questions and who call themselves “open-minded” and
“progressive”.

If
you care about the “Brave New World” our society is moving
toward, and if you want to know the minimum that you must know in
order to reverse that direction, this is the book you must start
with.