Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 202

Fairest Daughter of the Father: On the Solemnity of the Assumption

Fairest Daughter of the Father: On the Solemnity of the Assumption | Rev. Charles M. Mangan

The Solemnity of the Assumption, celebrated annually on August 15, presents a golden opportunity to reconsider the person of the Ever-Virgin Mary and her singular mission in the Church. We often contemplate the relationship between Mary and her Son; this reflection will focus on the relationship which Our Lady enjoys with the First Person of the Most Blessed Trinity.

Mary has been hailed as the "first-born" daughter of the Father. This reality is evident if one remembers that God--and in a specific way the Father--has created Mary, just as He has created us. She is "one of us" because she is fully human. We are children of the Almighty in a similar vein in which she is His daughter. As we rely on God for our very existence, so, too, does our Immaculate Mother.

What do the Father and His sinless daughter share? Venerable Pius IX (1846-1878), in his Apostolic Constitution Ineffabilis Deus (December 8, 1854) in which he once-and-for-all defined the truth of Our Lady's Immaculate Conception, wrote: "To her did the Father will to give His only-begotten Son--the Son Whom, equal to the Father and begotten by Him, the Father loves from His Heart--and to give this Son in such a way that He would be the one and the same common Son of God the Father and of the Blessed Virgin Mary."

The Father gave many overwhelming spiritual riches to Mary to strengthen her in her inspiring vocation as the Mother of His Son. Yet, He gave no greater gift than that of the Lord Jesus. Mary, in turn, imitated the Father in raising Jesus from before infancy to manhood. Jesus knew well the best of all gifts which His Mother faithfully imparted: the boundless love of His Beloved Father. Now, as the Son of Mary, Christ came to experience the love of His Mother which was patterned after that of His Father.

One may rightly assert that Jesus Christ is the link between the Father and Mary. We often claim that children receive much of their identity from their parents. Eye color, physical build and even disposition are often traced from the child back to its parents. Truly, the offspring rely on their father and mother for multiple and varied things. (And, of course, the Messiah willed to come forth from Mary and be dependent on her and Saint Joseph.) However, the Holy Family of Nazareth is a different case. Mary and her loving husband discovered their purpose in the Divine Child. In Jesus, they found their identity--unto everlasting life!

From her Immaculate Conception to her glorious Assumption body and soul into Paradise (and even now), Mary never lost her sense of utter dependence on the Father. Yes, she was chosen to be the Virgin Mother of Emmanuel. But, she always recalled that she needed God each moment of her life. When exclaiming the Lord's unparalleled goodness in the Magnificat (Saint Luke 1:46-55), this humble maiden declared: "The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is His Name" (Verse 49). She did not contend: "Holy is my name." Mary was entirely convinced that God alone is the source of all we are and all that we have.









Father Jean Galot, a French theologian and member of the Society of Jesus and professor emeritus of Christology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, recently explored in an article the intimate bond between the heavenly Father and Mary. We are able to locate this connection "in the attitude of the Baby Jesus." Father Galot argues: "In His Infancy, He (Jesus) developed a double fundamental love. He said 'Abba' to the celestial Father and 'Mamma' to the earthly Mother. Other babies unite in the affection for father and mother, who are both human; Jesus associated a divine Father and a human Mother in the same filial love."

These two cries, "Abba" and "Mamma," came from the very same Person--Jesus Christ. It is apparent that the Child recognized in His Mother the care, concern--yes, charity!--which springs from the very Heart of the Father.

If we grant that God never does anything without a sufficient and the most excellent of reasons, then we must conclude that His choice of Mary as the Mother of the Master has certain spiritual ramifications for those who are the brothers and sisters of Jesus.

1) Mary teaches us how to love the Omnipotent One as we ought. Again, Mary is fully human. She is of the same "stuff" as we. Hence, we implore her powerful intercession in learning how to love the Holy Trinity as she does, our weaknesses notwithstanding.

2) The Father has a plan for our lives that we are to yield to immediately if we wish to be content. Imagine what Mary would have missed had she refused the Lord's tender mercy? He summoned her to become Jesus' Mother; she readily accepted. What we forego when we say "no" to our Creator! What we gain when we submit to His unfathomable will!

3) Only in Jesus Christ will we discover our identity and be filled with authentic happiness. The Redeemer teaches us the truth about Himself, His Father, the Paraclete, His Mother, and ourselves. He waits to form us in His Sacred Word. He will never compel us to consent to his desires, but how He wants us to! Mary saw in Christ the splendor of truth. Although she suffered intensely, especially on Calvary, her pure soul was steeped in joy because she courageously adhered to the designs of the Lord, no matter how challenging. The Holy Spirit granted her an abiding tranquillity which is indescribable.

The same Father Who sent His Son to Mary through the power of the Consoler invites us, as He did Mary, to find in Jesus the answer to all our questions and the balm to all the illnesses of our souls. We can seek to imitate in some way, with the Holy Spirit's assistance, Mary's sublime love of the Father. Our wholehearted acceptance of His love and compassion means that we will flourish spiritually in our day as the Mother of Christ did--and continues, now assumed into Heaven--in hers.

This article originally appeared in a slightly different form in the July/August 1999 issue of Catholic Faith magazine.

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles and Excerpts:

• The Blessed Virgin in the History of Christianity | John A. Hardon, S.J.
• "Hail, Full of Grace": Mary, the Mother of Believers | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• Mary in Feminist Theology: Mother of God or Domesticated Goddess? | Fr. Manfred Hauke
• Excerpts from The Rosary: Chain of Hope | Fr. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R.
• The Past Her Prelude: Marian Imagery in the Old Testament | Sandra Miesel
• Immaculate Mary, Matchless in Grace | John Saward
• The Medieval Mary | The Introduction to Mary in the Middle Ages | by Luigi Gambero
• Misgivings About Mary | Dr. James Hitchcock
• Born of the Virgin Mary | Paul Claudel
• Assumed Into Mother's Arms | Carl E. Olson
• The Disciple Contemplates the Mother | Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis

Monsignor Charles M. Mangan is a priest of the Diocese of Sioux Falls (South Dakota). He was ordained to the Priesthood in 1989. He currently works in the Vatican Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. Access more of his articles online here.

Msgr Ronald Knox: "For myself, I have never doubted the doctrine of the Assumption..."

The Assumption | Mgr. Ronald Knox | From Pastoral and Occasional Sermons | August 15th | Ignatius Insight

A cave Jeremias found there, in which he set down tabernacle and ark and incense-altar, and stopped up the entrance behind him. There were some that followed; no time they lost in coming up to mark the spot, but find it they could not.—2 Machabees 2:5-6.

After this, God's heavenly temple was thrown open, and the ark of the covenant was plain to view, standing in his temple.—Apocalypse 11:19.

The Son of God came to earth to turn our hearts away from earth, Godwards. The material world in which we live was, by his way of it, something immaterial; it didn't matter. We were not to be always worrying about our clothes being shabby, or wondering where our next meal was to come from; the God who fed the sparrows and clothed the lilies would see to all that. We were not to resent the injuries done to us by our neighbours; the aggressor was welcome to have a slap at the other cheek, and when he took away our greatcoat he was to find that we had left our coat inside it. Life itself, the life we know, was a thing of little value; it was a cheap bargain, if we lost life here to attaIn the life hereafter. There was a supernatural world, interpenetrating, at a higher level, the world of our experience; it has its own laws, the only rule we were to live by, its own prizes, which alone were worth the winning. All that he tried to teach us; and we, intent on our own petty squabbles, our sordid struggle for existence, cold-shouldered him at first, and then silenced his protest with a cross.

His answer was to rise from the dead; and then, for forty days in the world's history, that supernatural life which he had preached to us flourished and functioned under the conditions of earth. A privileged few saw, with mortal eyes, the comings and goings of immortality, touched with their hands the impalpable. For forty days; then, as if earth were too frail a vessel to contain the mystery, the tension was suddenly relaxed. He vanished behind a cloud; the door of the supernatural shut behind him, and we were left to the contemplation of this material world, drab and barren as ever.

What was the first thing the apostles saw when they returned from the mount of the Ascension to the upper room? "Together with Mary"—is it only an accident that the Mother of God is mentioned just here, by name, and nowhere else outside the gospels? The Incarnate Word had left us, as silently as he came to us, leaving no trace behind him of his passage through time. No trace? At least, in the person of his blessed Mother, he had bequeathed to us a keepsake, a memory. She was bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, the new Eve of the new Adam. That body of hers, still part of the material order of things, had housed and suckled God. As long as she lived, there would still be a link, a golden link, between this lower earth and Paradise. As long as she lived; and even if it was God's will that she, Eve's daughter, should undergo the death that was Eve's penalty, the penalty she had never incurred, her mortal remains would still be left with us, an echo from the past, an influence on our lives. We men, since we are body and soul, do honour even to the lifeless bodies which have housed the dead; Napoleon rests in the Invalides, Lenin at Moscow. The day would come when there would be pilgrimages from all over the world to the shrines of Peter and Paul at Rome, of James at Compostela. Was it not reasonable to hope that somewhere, at Jerusalem, perhaps, or at Ephesus, we should be privileged to venerate the mortal remains of her through whom salvation came to us? Or perhaps at Bethlehem, Bethlehem-Ephrata, this new Ark of God would rest, as the ark rested of old; "And now, at Ephrata, we have heard tidings of what we looked for" [1] —the old tag from the Psalms should still ring true.

God disposed otherwise. Jewish tradition recorded that when Jerusalem was destroyed by the armies of Babylon, the prophet Jeremias took the ark of God away from the city, and buried it in some secret cleft of the rock; it was never seen again. Never again, except by St John, in his vision on the isle of Patmos; he saw the ark of God, but in heaven. And so it was with this new Ark of God, the virgin body that had been his resting-place. When and where she passed away from this earth, or in what manner, nobody can tell us for certain. But we know where she is. When Elias was carried up into heaven, the sons of the prophets at Jericho asked Eliseus if they might go out in search of him; "it may be", they said, "the spirit of the Lord has carried him off and left him on some hill-top or in some cleft of the valleys." He consented grudgingly, and when they returned from their fruitless errand, greeted them with the words; "Did I not tell you not to send?" [2] So it is with the body of the blessed Virgin: nowhere in Christendom will you hear the rumour of it. So many churches, all over the world, eagerly claiming to possess the relics of this or that saint; who shall tell us whether John the Baptist sleeps at Amiens, or at Rome? But never of our Lady; and if any of us still hoped to find that inestimable treasure, the Holy Father has called off the search, only the other day. We know where her body is; it is in heaven.

Of course, we knew it all along. For myself, I have never doubted the doctrine of the Assumption since I heard it preached forty-four years ago, in an Anglican church over at Plymouth. You see, we get it all wrong about body and soul, simply because our minds are dominated by matter. We think it the most natural thing in the world that soul and body should be separated after death; that the body should remain on earth and the soul go to heaven, once it is purged and assoiled. But it isn't a natural thing at all; soul and body were made for one another, and the temporary divorce between them is something out of the way, something extraordinary, occasioned by the Fall. In our blessed Lady, not born under the star of that defeat, human nature was perfectly integrated; body and soul belonged to one another, as one day, please God, yours and mine will.

Long ago, in those fields of Bethlehem, Ruth had gleaned in the footsteps of her beloved; and he, secretly, had given charge to the reapers to drop handfuls of corn on purpose, so that she might fill her bosom the sooner. So he, whose reapers are the angels, would leave for his blessed Mother a special portion of those graces that were to enrich mankind. The child-bearing which brought, to us others, redemption from the fault of our first parents should bring, to her, exemption; the empty tomb, which assures us that our bodies will rise at the judgment, was for her the earnest of an immediate resurrection; Christ the first-fruits, and who should glean them, but she? For that, heaven is the richer, earth the poorer. We can go to Lourdes, and offer adoration in the place where her feet stood; we cannot press with our lips some precious reliquary containing the hand that swaddled Christ. In a world so dominated by matter, in which matter itself seems to carry the seeds of its own destruction, there is no material object left that can link our destinies with hers.

And yet, is the loss all loss? When the dogma of the Assumption was defined a friend of mine, a very intelligent Mohammedan, congratulated me on the gesture which the Holy Father had made; a gesture (said he) against materialism. And I think he was right. When our Lord took his blessed Mother, soul and body, into heaven, he did honour to the poor clay of which our human bodies are fashioned. It was the first step towards reconciling all things in heaven and earth to his eternal Father, towards making all things new. "The whole of nature", St Paul tells us, "groans in a common travail all the while. And not only do we see that, but we ourselves do the same; we ourselves although we have already begun to reap our spiritual harvest, groan in our hearts, waiting for that adoption which is the ransoming of our bodies from their slavery." [3] That transformation of our material bodies to which we look forward one day has been accomplished—we know it now for certain-in her.

When the Son of God came to earth, he came to turn our hearts away from earth, Godwards. And as the traveller, shading his eyes while he contemplates some long vista of scenery, searches about for a human figure that will give him the scale of those distant surroundings, so we, with dazzled eyes looking Godwards, identify and welcome one purely human figure close to his throne. One ship has rounded the headland, one destiny is achieved, one human perfection exists. And as we watch it, we see God clearer, see God greater, through this masterpiece of his dealings with mankind.

(A sermon broadcast from Buckfast Abbey, Devon, on the Feast of Our Lady Assumption, 15 August 1954.)

ENDNOTES:

[1] Psalm 131:6.
[2] 4 Kings 2:16, 18.
[3] Romans 8:22-3.

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Links:

• IgnatiusInsight.com Author Page for Monsignor Ronald Knox
• The Modern Distaste for Religion | Ronald Knox
• The Mind of Knox | David Rooney
• The School of Ronald Knox | An Interview with David Rooney
• The Monsignor and the Don | An Interview with Fr. Milton Walsh
• Monsignor Ronald Knox: Convert, Priest, Apologist | An Interview with Fr. Milton Walsh
• Experience, Reason, and Authority in the Apologetics of Ronald Knox | Milton Walsh | From Ronald Knox As Apologist
• The Four Marks of the Church | Ronald A. Knox
• Review of The Belief of Catholics | Carl E. Olson
• Ronald Knox, Apologist | Carl E. Olson
• A Lesson Learned From Monsignor Ronald A. Knox | Carl E. Olson
• Converts and Saints | An Interview with Joseph Pearce

Monsignor Ronald Knox (1888-1957) was the son of the Anglican Bishop of Manchester and it appeared that he, being both spiritually perceptive and intellectually gifted, would also have a successful life as an Anglican prelate. But while in school in the early 1900s Knox began a long struggle between his love for the Church of England and his growing attraction to the Catholic Church. He converted to Catholicism at the age of twenty-nine, became a priest, and wrote numerous books on spiritual and literary topics, including The Belief of Catholics, Captive Flames: On Selected Saints and Christian Heroes, The Hidden Stream: The Mysteries of the Christian Faith, Pastoral and Occasional Sermons, and many more. Visit Knox's IgnatiusInsight.com author page for more information about his life and work.

"Hail, Holy Mother!" by Fr. David Vincent Meconi SJ

The following homily is from Homiletic & Pastoral Review, which is edited by Fr. Meconi. See all of his homilies for the Sundays and feast days of August on the HPR website.

Feast of the Assumption (and Queenship of Mary, August 22)—August 15

Readings: Rev 11:12a; 12:1-6a, 10b • 1 Cor 15:20-27 • Lk 1:39-56
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/081512-mass-during-the-day.cfm

The closer any Christian soul is to God, the closer that one will also be to God’s people.  There is an inescapable overlap between how we are with God, and how we are with one another.  No Christian, we are told repeatedly in the scriptures, can truly think he loves God while hating his brother or sister. No Christian can possibly refuse the forgiveness of others, while expecting God to forgive him.  This is our great dignity: God chooses to treat us as we choose to treat ourselves, and one another.  And, so it is with our Lady.  Because she is so intimately close to God, she is inevitably close with every one of God’s children, who are now made to be her children in the perfect sacrifice of her Son.  In this regard, the Holy Father is often quoted on this day, as Benedict once proclaimed, that: “Precisely because Mary is with God and in God, she is very close to each one of us.  While she lived on this earth, she could only be close to a few people.  Being in God, who is actually ‘within’ all of us, Mary shares in this closeness of God.”  The readings this feast day point us in this direction, in the direction of love.

My mother is suffering from cancer right now. One of my teenaged nephews commented that: “Don’t you think it’s weird that Grammy is in the hospital, so sick, and she is worrying only about us.  She apologized for ‘ruining’ my summer and was worrying that I was spending too much time visiting her.” I listened, struck by his youthful wonder, and replied: “Don’t you see?  Love is always other-directed, always looking out for the other.”

Today’s Feast of the Assumption of Mary is commemorated through her Magnificat, spoken during her visit to Elizabeth.  As the “perfectly beloved,” Mary knows that this feast is not ultimately about her, but about her in union with Jesus.  St. Augustine confessed that, alone, we have only our sins; but in union with Christ, we have everything, everyone!  This is why Mary’s soul reflects not herself, but the Lord.  This is why Mary does not stay home, reveling in this new way of God in the world, but rushes outward into the world, bringing him to all who open their homes and hearts to her.

This Feast of the Assumption is followed by the Feast of the Queenship of Mary, a week later (Aug 22: Ez 34:1-11 • Psalm 23 • Mt 20:1-16).  Both of these celebrations were developed over the centuries of the Church. However, both are based, of course, on the work of Christ in Mary’s life, and her single-hearted acceptance of her Son, and Savior.  While today is Mary’s great feast, nothing of her passing from this world is taught definitely by the Church.  The first definitive claim we have of her bodily assumption into heaven is by St. John Damascene in the first half of the 8th century, although many earlier fathers hinted at it, and brought the possibility to light.  The theology is, of course, that the separation of body and soul is the “unnatural” punishment of our sinful rebellion, If one was, in fact, conceived and lived without sin, this indecorous division between one’s body and one’s soul would prove unfitting.  Thus, today, Mary enjoys what all the elect will one day experience: the eternal reunion of body and soul. As such, Mary is, once again, the foretaste and promise of the whole Christian body.

There is a pious tradition, in the early and medieval Church, that suggests that the reason Christ is not readily apparent at the empty tomb on Easter morning, is due to the fact that he was out visiting his Mother, the first human to know of the resurrection, the first Easter Christian. This captures perfectly the “proper order” of our faith: from Jesus through Mary to us (“Christ, the first fruits; then, at his coming, those who belong to Christ; then comes the end…”).  She is, therefore, not only the first to witness the Resurrection, but the first after Christ to become it, and, therefore, the first to bring this new life from Christ to us.  Or in the word’s of the Solemnity’s Collect: “… grant, we pray, that, always attentive to the things that are above, we may merit to be sharers of her glory.”  By sharing in Mary’s glory, we participate in Jesus’ glory; through the grace of Jesus Christ, she opens herself up entirely and wholly to him, and necessarily to the whole of Christianity.  More perfectly than any other disciple, Mary is sent out to witness to the power of love, witnessing to the ecstatic nature of eros—going out of herself so as to come into union with another, first with Christ, and then with you and me.

In this way, today’s feast is not a lamentation, bemoaning the absence of Mary, but a celebration of her new way of being the perfect Mother to her scattered children.  Just as the Ascension of Our Lord is a time of his new presence with us in his Spirit, today’s “departure” is really testimony to how Our Lady can now be with every sanctified soul, regardless of place or time.

Christ’s ascension does not mean that he has left us to our present condition, since he has gone only to prepare a place for us, that where he is we also may be; no more does Mary’s assumption mean her separation from us.  As her son is represented in the letter to the Hebrews as always living to intercede for us, so she remains, as the constant belief of the Church assures us, at his side, the interceder par excellence.  Already her blessedness is perfect, present, as she is, with God who has placed in her his delight.  But, more than ever, the contemplative prayer which raises her above the angels, in the bliss of an eternal eucharist, carries an irresistible intercession, on her part, that sinners, all of us countless children of hers, may come to be united with her Son (Louis Bouyer, The Seat of Wisdom, 202).

Given such intimacy between Mary and God, today’s feast must then give way to her Queenship.  Our Lord did not remain content in simply restoring to Mary what was due originally to Eve, but wanted to elevate his own mother even higher. No longer daughter and mother only, but now she is Queen.  It was not enough to restore what is every rational creature’s due, but the Lord also longed to elevate Mary, recognizing her, before all, as his the covenanted regnant and mediatrix of all his graces.

Doubting Thomas (Jefferson) and The Founders’ Great Mistake

Doubting Thomas (Jefferson) and The Founders’ Great Mistake | Edmund J. Mazza, PhD | Catholic World Report

The Enlightenment marked a fundamental shift from faith and focus on an afterlife to the material world and the pursuit of happiness in this life

Editor’s Note: The beliefs of Thomas Jefferson continue to create controversy even though the Founding Father and third President of the U.S. died nearly two centuries ago. Just this past week, for example, World magazine reported that the large Evangelical publishing house, Thomas Nelson, decided to cease publication and distribution of David Barton’s controversial book, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed about Thomas Jefferson, saying it has “lost confidence in the book’s details.” Barton is the president of the WallBuilders organization and a frequent guest on the Glenn Beck radio program; his book has been criticized for portraying Jefferson as sympathetic to Christianity while downplaying, or even ignoring, Jefferson’s criticisms of orthodox Christianity. The following essay, written by Dr. Edmund Mazza of Azusa Pacific University, situates Jefferson within the broader context of the Enlightenment, which was generally antagonistic to what Jefferson dismissed as the “monkish ignorance and priestly superstition” of the Catholic Church.


Most Americans know Thomas Jefferson as the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the nation’s third president. But Jefferson is also the famed founder of one of America’s oldest institutions of higher education, the University of Virginia. In this connection he is reported to have quipped that he hoped it would never retain a faculty of theology,
Jefferson, however, was a man of his age, a period in history known as the Enlightenment. An ironic appellation to be sure, for it ushered in unprecedented shadows of doubt, obscuring centuries of illumination by the medieval masters of higher education. John Locke, another “luminary” of the Enlightenment took a similarly “dim” view of medieval or “scholastic” thinking when he wrote:

the Schoolmen… aiming at glory and esteem, for their great and universal knowledge, easier a great deal to be pretended to than really acquired, found this a good expedient to cover their ignorance with a curious and inexplicable web of perplexed words, and procure to themselves the admiration of others, by unintelligible terms, the apter to produce wonder because they could not be understood: whilst it appears in all history, that these profound doctors were no wiser nor more useful than their neighbours, and brought but small advantage to human life or the societies wherein they lived…

The key phrase in Locke’s statement is that the scholastics were not “useful” to their neighbors and brought almost “no advantage” to their practical lives as individuals or society writ large. Whether or not Locke’s statement is an accurate one, it betrays a fundamental shift: from faith and focus on an afterlife to the material world, to the pursuit of happiness merely in terms of this life instead of the pursuit of the God Who bestows happiness in the next.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Coren on Conversion, Canada, and Lies About Christianity

Coren on Conversion, Canada, and Lies About Christianity | Catholic World Report

The veteran journalist and commentator Michael Coren reflects on his past, the present state of the West, and the future of the Church

Michael Coren is a television host, radio personality, syndicated columnist, author, and speaker based in Canada. He is the best-selling author of fourteen books, including biographies of G.K. Chesterton, H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. His book, Why Catholics Are Right, was on the Canadian best-seller list for three months. His latest book is Heresy: Ten Lies They Spread About Christianity.

Michael has received several honorary doctorates and awards for his writing and broadcasting. In 2005 he won The Ed Murrow Award for Radio Broadcasting, in 2006 The RTNDA Radio Broadcasting Award, in 2007 the Communicator Award in Hollywood and in 2008 the Omni Award for his television show. He has received several honorary doctorates and awards for his writing and broadcasting. In 2005 he won The Ed Murrow Award for Radio Broadcasting, in 2006 The RTNDA Radio Broadcasting Award, in 2007 the Communicator Award in Hollywood and in 2008 the Omni Award for his television show. In 2012 The Catholic Civil Rights League gave Coren the Archbishop Adam Exner Award for Catholic Excellence in Public Life.

He recently spoke with Catholic World Report about his journey into the Catholic Church, the state of Christianity in Canada and the West at large, and his most recent books.

Catholic World Report: You converted to Catholicism as a young man, then spent some time in Evangelical circles. What brought you back to the Catholic Church? How has that influenced your recent books, which are apologetic and controversial (in the old-school sense) in nature?

Michael Coren: I was asked to speak at a G.K. Chesterton conference in Toronto back in 1986, met a wonderful Canadian woman, fell in love, married her, and left Britain to Canada. I’d come into the church a year earlier. The Canadian Church was in a poor state, and at the height – depth – of its liberalism.

After a few years I felt so distant, so rejected. It was my fault, and better people than me stayed and continued the fight, but I think I was still vulnerable in my faith and simply drifted away into Evangelical worship. But as so many others have written and explained, it was never the full truth, never the entire picture. I longed for Christ, for His body, for the Church He left us, and that twitch upon the thread drew me back. That journey, than struggle, certainly influenced my writing, and turned me into an apologist really. I’d had to do the work, years of it, and wanted to convey all of that effort to other people, to give them what I had been given.

Catholic World Report: You've written several biographies, including of G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis, two of the finest defenders of Christian orthodoxy of the past century. What are some of the best insights and strengths of those two men when it comes to explaining and defending Christian doctrine and practice? What are your favorite works by Chesterton and Lewis?

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Contraception and Public Policy

Contraception and Public Policy | Rob Agnelli | Homiletic & Pastoral Review

One can readily see why there is an insistence against “artificial” methods of birth control, while something like Natural Family Planning is in accord with the natural law. It is not because they are artificial, per se, but because they are unnatural. In other words, they violate human nature.

In what many regard as the most prophetic work of the 20th Century, Brave New World, Aldous Huxley presents a culture in which fertility is seen as a nuisance, with women carry contraceptives with them everywhere they go on their “Maltusian Belts.”  Perhaps, the last major obstacle to making this prediction a reality is the Catholic Church.  That is why the recent HHS mandate that requires religious institutions to subsidize free contraceptives for their employees is seen by many as a shot over the bow of the Bark of Peter in the United States.  Not surprisingly, one Catholic GOP candidate for President was peppered with questions related to the mandate, and birth control in general.  He attempted to address the immorality as well as the societal consequences, but his support of public policy was inconsistent with his personal views.  This is especially true with his support of the Title X program that provides access to contraceptive services, supplies and information.  Clearly, he felt the pressure of speaking to a society that has become dependent upon the widespread availability of contraception.  It seems that the only recourse is to fall back on the safety net of:  “I am personally opposed, but I can’t impose my beliefs on others.”  But given our contraceptive culture, is there a realistic public policy that respects both the common good and the natural law?

To begin, one might simply say that the government ought to give the people what they want.  This is a foundational principle of a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”  Those that do not want to use contraception have a right not to make use of the service, but that should not take away the rights of those who do.  Although this is the prevailing mentality, it rests upon two erroneous assumptions.

Running from the Natural Law?
The first is a misunderstanding of self-government.

Continue reading at HPRweb.com.

Spiritual Hunger and the Bread of Life

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, August 12, 2012, the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• 1 Kgs 19:4-8
• Ps 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9
• Eph 4:30—5:2
• Jn 6:41-51

“I’m hungry! I’m starving!” What parent hasn’t heard this (often exaggerated) complaint?

It is common to young children, but certainly not limited to them. When I was in high school I went on a ten-day hiking trip with a small church group. On the seventh day, due to poor planning, the food ran out and the complaints began. For a couple of days I had a very small taste—so to speak!—of what the Israelites experienced while wandering in the desert. Like them, I murmured and grumbled about the leaders: “But you had to lead us into this desert to make the whole community die of famine!” (cf. Ex. 16:2-4).

That complaint was part of the Old Testament reading last week. In today’s Gospel we find that the Jews—those religious leaders ardently opposed to the person and message of Jesus—were murmuring and complaining. They were upset by his claim to be the “bread of heaven that came down from heaven.” The basis for their murmuring disbelief can be summarized quite simply: “We know who this Jesus really is!” This exchange, after all, took place near Capernaum, which was the center for much of Jesus’ public life and ministry (cf. Jn. 2:12; Mk. 2:1).

Jesus responded to the complaints by appealing to the two authorities found throughout his discourses in the Fourth Gospel: the Father and the prophets. Belief in the Son, he said, is a gift from the Father, and testimony to this fact is given by the prophets, whose entire mission was to exhort the people to hear God, learn from Him, and obey Him. The Son was sent to draw men to the Father; likewise, no man comes to the Father except through the Son.

This exclusive claim, which was just beginning to come into focus for the Jews listening to Jesus, is just as demanding and divisive today as it was two thousand years ago. This is why the Church, from the day of her birth, has had to address every sort of skewed understanding and false teaching about the person of Jesus Christ.

Jesus then uttered the third, “Amen, amen,” of this discourse. The first (v. 26) had been a rebuke of the selfish motives and lack of faith shown by those following him. The second (v. 32) prefaced the revelation that he is the bread of life. The third is an invitation to faith: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life.” The manna in the wilderness was indeed miraculous in its source, but natural in its substance; those who ate it were physically nourished for a while, but eventually died.

The new manna, said the ordinary-looking Jewish carpenter to the murmuring crowd, is not a material object, but a divine person: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” Having earlier performed a miracle involving simple bread, Jesus provided the spiritual basis for the stunning sacramental reality that would come to fruition at the Last Supper, on the eve of his crucifixion: “the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

In the words of Moses, spoken many generations before to those complaining in the desert, this “is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat” (Ex. 16:15). Yet the bread of life can appear to be so ordinary, so commonplace, that who and what it is escapes our earth-bound gaze. Although the people listening to Jesus had hungered for ordinary bread, many of them did not hunger for spiritual bread. “For this bread,” wrote St. Augustine, “requires the hunger of the inner person.”

The great joy of our heavenly Father is to hear us say, as we come forward to receive the body, blood, soul, and divinity of his Son: “I’m hungry! I’m starving!” Instead of a murmuring complaint, this should be a cry of joy, a prayer of thanksgiving, and a public expression of faithful recognition.

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the August 9, 2009, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

Napa Institute conference emphasized formation, freedom, faith

From the National Catholic Register's recent article about the 2012 Napa Institute Conference:

Individual formation as a Catholic is integral to making the collective Church stronger and better able to engage the increasingly secular culture.

Several speakers stressed this important factor at the Napa Institute’s second annual prayer-and-apologetics conference.

The theme was “Equipping Catholics in the Next America” — an emerging secular America that is much more hostile to Christian faith and witness than it has been in the past.

Held July 26-29 at Catholic entrepreneur Tim Busch’s elegant Meritage Resort and Spa in Napa, Calif.’s wine country, the conference’s mission was to equip lay and religious leaders to defend and advance the faith in today’s increasingly secular society.

Consecrated to Our Lady of Guadalupe, the conference drew more than 300 Catholic religious and lay leaders, including priests, nuns, monks, entrepreneurs, educators, lawyers and media from throughout the United States and five foreign countries.

The piece, written by Sue Ellen Browder, provides a synopsis of each of the major addresses given by speakers including Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput, Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison, Wis., Magis Institute President Father Robert Spitzer, Augustine Institute President Tim Gray, entrepreneur and philanthropist Frank Hanna III, Boston College philosopher Peter Kreeft, radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt and Father Robert Barron.

Browder reports, "EWTN videotaped the conference, and many of the talks will be available on DVD in mid- or late-September. Beginning Oct. 6 on Saturdays at 2pm, selected talks from the Napa Institute conference will also air on EWTN."

Archbishop Chaput's talk is available in full on the Register's site. Here are a couple of excerpts:

Critics of the Church have attacked America’s bishops so bitterly, for so long, over so many different issues — including the abuse scandal, but by no means limited to it — for very practical reasons. If a wedge can be driven between the pastors of the Church and her people, then a strong Catholic witness on controversial issues breaks down into much weaker groups of discordant voices. ...

We also need to change the way we act. We need to understand that we can’t “quick fix” our way out of problems we behaved ourselves into. Catholics have done very well in the United States. As I said earlier, most of us have a deep love for our country, its freedoms and its best ideals. But this is not our final home. There is no automatic harmony between Christian faith and American democracy. The eagerness of Catholics to push their way into our country’s mainstream over the past half century, to climb the ladder of social and economic success, has done very little to Christianize American culture. But it’s done a great deal to weaken the power of our Catholic witness. ...

Critics often accuse faithful Christians of pursuing a “culture war” on issues like abortion, sexuality, marriage and the family and religious liberty. And, in a sense, they’re right. We are fighting for what we believe. But, of course, so are advocates on the other side of all these issues — and neither they nor we should feel uneasy about it. Democracy thrives on the struggle of competing ideas. We steal from ourselves and from everyone else if we try to avoid that struggle. In fact, two of the worst qualities in any human being are cowardice and acedia —and by acedia I mean the kind of moral sloth that masquerades as “tolerance” and leaves a human soul so empty of courage and character that even the devil Screwtape would spit it out.

Read the entire address.

Finally! A "truly definitive edition of the Old Testament"

After thousands of years, as The Times of Israel reports, the real Old Testament will be available (okay, I'm being a bit glib):

For the past 30 years, Israeli Judaic scholar Menachem Cohen has been on a mission of biblical proportions: Correcting all known textual errors in Jewish scripture to produce a truly definitive edition of the Old Testament.

His edits, focusing primarily on grammatical blemishes and an intricate set of biblical symbols, mark the first major overhaul of the Hebrew Bible in nearly 500 years.

Poring over thousands of medieval manuscripts, the 84-year-old professor identified 1,500 inaccuracies in the Hebrew language texts that have been corrected in his completed 21-volume set. The final chapter is set to be published next year.

The massive project highlights how Judaism venerates each tiny biblical calligraphic notation as a way of ensuring that communities around the world use precisely the same version of the holy book.

According to Jewish law, a Torah scroll is considered void if even a single letter is incorrect or misplaced. Cohen does not call for changes in the writing of the sacred Torah scrolls used in Jewish rites, which would likely set off a firestorm of objection and criticism. Instead, he is aiming for accuracy in versions used for study by the Hebrew-reading masses.

That last sentence puts this interesting news in proper perspective, along with this:

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

Light in the Dark Knight

Light in the Dark Knight | Meryl Amland | Catholic World Report

The most recent installment in the Batman franchise transcends the superhero genre.

Christopher Nolan’s superior genius has done it again. The Dark Knight Rises combines intellect with action to make a film that is certainly worth watching again and again. This is not your typical superhero movie—it reaches beyond the comic-book character and dives deep into the wounded human condition. While The Avengers was entertaining and certainly left me satisfied, The Dark Knight is much darker and goes a few steps further. With an impressive cast including Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Marion Cotillard, Morgan Freeman, Anne Hathaway, and Tom Hardy, this is a film to be reckoned with. (However, it is definitely not kid-friendly; parents, you have been warned.) While there is not much gore, the violence ranks an eight out of ten, and the terrorist villain, Bane, is terrifying. But through the darkness, it is a movie about hope.

The Batman has not shown his face for nearly eight years after taking the blame for Harvey Dent’s actions in the previous movie, The Dark Knight. Incidentally, billionaire Bruce Wayne has also been in hiding. After Rachel Dawes’ death and saving Gotham City, Bruce doesn’t seem to have anything to live for anymore. That is, until a new terrorist, Bane, reportedly born and raised in a dreaded prison known only as The Pit, appears in Gotham. Much of the peace and control of organized crime has been due to the death of former District Attorney Harvey Dent, whom everyone believes to have died a hero. But Commissioner Gordon and Batman are the only people that know the truth. Harvey Dent died a corrupted man and a murderer—and Batman took the blame for his actions. Now Bane and his army must reveal the truth in order to sow discord among the people and set them against the corrupt aristocracy as well as the police force, which appears to be built on a lie.

Alfred, played by Michael Caine, is one of the most important characters in all three films; he delivers what I think is the best performance in the entire film. Alfred is the only person who truly understood the motivation behind the infamous Joker in The Dark Knight, and he’s the only one who truly understands Bane and what he stands for. Alfred also believes the truth is meant to be shared. But Bruce, as always, does not listen. So, Alfred does the unthinkable—he decides to leave Bruce. After explaining to Bruce that all he ever wanted was for him to be happy and continue living, he says, “Maybe it’s time we stop trying to avoid the truth and let it have its day.”

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.