Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 272

What Steve Jobs said about Christianity, Jesus, and faith

Since penning the post titled, "Yes, Steve Jobs, R.I.P., was an innovating genius. But...", I've been interested in finding out a bit more about Jobs' thoughts about or attitudes toward Christianity. This USA Today article about a new and detailed (650 pages) biography of Jobs written by Walter Isaacson contains this little nugget:

The book begins with a portrait of the young Jobs, who was rebellious toward the parents who raised him and dismissive of the ones who gave him up for adoption. Such feelings of abandonment probably contributed to Jobs' controlling nature as an adult, Isaacson writes, but he mercifully does not psychoanalyze in the book.

Jobs fell out with Christianity early in life. "The juice goes out of Christianity when it becomes too based on faith rather than on living like Jesus or seeing the world as Jesus saw it," he told Isaacson. "I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don't. It's the great mystery."

It's hardly surprising that Jobs apparently embraced the tired "all paths are equal and lead to the same place, etc." approach that came into its own when he was in his youth. The comment about Jesus and faith is more interesting to me because it suggests that Jobs wasn't well acquainted with what Jesus actually said about faith; my guess is that he (raised Lutheran) suffered through rotten catechesis (as did many Catholics) as a child. Whatever the case, it seems he didn't know that the person and message of Jesus were intimately bound up with the necessity and reality of faith:

• Jesus chastised people for not exhibiting faith (Mt 6:30; 8:26; 14:31; 16:8; 17:20; 23:23; Mk 4:40; Lk 8:25; 12:28; etc.)
• Jesus praised and acknowledged those, especially Gentiles, who displayed faith (Mt. 8:10; 9:2, 22, 29; 15:28; Mk 2:5; 10:52; Lk 5:20; 7:9, 50; 8:48; etc.)
• Jesus exhorted his disciples to have faith (Mt 21:22ff; Mk. 11:22, etc.)

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus specifically tells his head apostle, Peter: "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren" (Lk 22:31-32).

Meanwhile, one of the key themes in the Gospel of John is that of belief in Jesus Christ and the gospel vs. disbelief and rejection of Jesus as Son of God and Savior. For example:

• Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent." (Jn 6:29)
• Jesus answered them, "I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. (Jn 10:25-26)
• "Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me." (Jn 14:1)
• Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe." (Jn 20:29)

Yes, it is a great mystery. But it is a mystery that can be known, encountered, touched, and experienced because the mystery is the Incarnation, as the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy: "Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of our religion: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory" (1 Tim 3:16).

I don't write this only because Steve Jobs believed this or that, but because I'm fairly certain that was he said in the quote above is what a great number of people believe—or at least will find agreeable. As I said in my first post, Jobs was a great innovator in many ways, but when it came to theology and philosophy, his public remarks were rather trite and run of the mill and very much reflect the dominant Zeitgeist.

Just to be clear (for all of those who struggle with careful, critical reading): I am not a Steve Jobs hater; I don't think Steve Jobs is in hell (that's not my business); I don't wish for Jobs to be in hell (quite the contrary); I don't think I'm a better person than Steve Jobs; I don't think Steve Jobs is the antiChrist, nor do I think he is a god. Still, having provided such a disclaimer, I'm sure there will be some curious comments!

The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace steps to the plate, swings, and ...?

The big news today is the release of a document by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace with the wonky title, "Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority" (aka, TRTIFAMSITCOGPA).

I've given it a quick read, and need to read it again more carefully. However, I'll be the first to admit that economics, global public authorities, and the backmasked lyrics on Queen's "Another Bites The Dust" are not areas of expertise. Then again, Bishop Mario Toso S.D.B., secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, also admits that the Church's competence in the realm of economics must be kept in proper perspective (something not conveyed very well in many of the headlines about the document), as reported by News.va:

Bishop Toso explained that the aim of the note is "suggest possible paths to follow, in line with the most recent social Magisterium, for the implementation of financial and monetary policies ... that are effective and representative at a global level, and which seek the authentic human development of all individuals and peoples".

The Church does not wish to enter into the technical issues behind the current economic crisis, but remains within the ambit of her religious and ethical functions. Thus she highlights not just the moral causes of the crisis but, more specifically, the ideological causes. Old ideologies have been replaced by new ones, "neo-liberalist, neo-utilitarian, and technocratic which, by reducing the common good to economic, financial and technical questions, place the future of democratic institutions themselves at risk".

Thomas Peters of CatholicVote.org has written a very good post, "Pope Benedict Calls For "Central World Bank … Only He Didn't. Here's Why", about how the document is being presented in some quarters, and he rightly takes Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J., to task for trying to skew the place of the document within Magisterial teaching and seeking to highjack the document's actual contents:

In a scenario which will surely strike some as deja vu, the liberal jesuit Fr. Tom Reese previewed the contents of the document last week, in much the same way that the liberal Fr. Charles Curran* "previewed" Humanae Vitae for the mainstream media before the document was actually released (the pope overruled Fr. Curran's claims that the Church would endorse contraception — but the media had already made up its mind and few bothered to actually read what the pope had to say). * I originally misstated that Fr. Curran was a Jesuit. He was ordained by the Diocese of Rocherster. Sorry for the error. ...

Notice that Fr. Reese does NOT correct the news anchor that this document comes from a vatican congregation — not the pope! Fr. Reese seems perfectly happy to help the mainstream media fundamentally misunderstand the authority of teaching this document enjoys. He claims that the pope has "more in common with the people at occupy wallstreet" than the tea party, even though he has to immediately walk back that claim when it is pointed out to him how violent (and anti-Catholic!) the Occupy Rome demonstrations were (as I blogged about last week). I think it's no surprise that Fr. Reese spends so much time talking about the 60′s — that's still his cultural frame of reference.

Read Peters' entire post on CatholicVote.org.

The document, of course, can be (and should be) read alongside Pope Benedict XVI's social encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate", and in light of the Church's growing body of social doctrine, especially as sythesized and articulated in the "Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church". That's a no brainer.

But, that said, the document raises a lot of questions. For instance, it refers to "the crisis" numerous times, but never really addresses the rubber-meets-the-road problem of massive debt (perhaps you've heard about the debt problems sweeping across Europe and now visiting the U.S.?). However, there is talk of new taxations and regulations, as if the massive growth of taxes and regulations over the past few decades in the West has had nothing to do with the present economic crisis. And the sense I get is that the document wants to express real concern about the massive control exerted by modern nation-states, but then suggests the best solution to this problem is to work toward the establishment of a a single, massive "world political authority." Yes, this general idea has been around for a while in Catholic social thought, as expressed by Bl. John XXIII and others. But in what world, exactly, does this really work?

Samuel Gregg, research director at the Acton Institute, puts some of these concerns into a more detailed and direct fashion in a NRO post, "Catholics, Finance, and the Perils of Conventional Wisdom", writing that

this document displays no recognition of the role played by moral hazard in generating the 2008 crisis or the need to prevent similar situations from arising in the future. Moral hazard describes those situations when people are effectively insulated from the possible negative consequences of their choices. This makes them more likely to take risks they wouldn't otherwise take — especially with other people's money. The higher the extent of the guarantee, the greater is the risk of moral hazard. It creates, as the financial journalist Martin Wolf writes, "an overwhelming incentive to privatize gains and socialize losses."

If PCJP were cognizant of this fact, it might have hesitated before recommending we consider "forms of recapitalization of banks with public funds, making the support conditional on 'virtuous' behaviours aimed at developing the 'real economy.'" Such a recapitalization would simply reinforce the message that Wall Street can always turn to taxpayers to bail them out when their latest impossible-to-understand financial scheme goes south. In terms of orthodox Catholic theology, it's worth reminding ourselves that the one who creates an occasion of sin bears some indirect responsibility for the choices of the person tempted by this situation to do something very imprudent or simply wrong.

Third, given this text's subject matter, it reflects one very strange omission. Nowhere does it contain a detailed discussion of the high levels of public debt and deficits in many developed economies, the clear-and-present danger they represent to the global financial system, and their negative impact upon the prospects for economic growth (i.e., what gets people out of poverty).

Gregg concludes his post by pointedly stating, "Unfortunately, many of its authors' ideas reflect an uncritical assimilation of the views of many of the very same individuals and institutions that helped generate the world's most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression. For a church with a long tradition of thinking seriously about finance centuries before anyone had ever heard of John Maynard Keynes or Friedrich Hayek, we can surely do better."

I tend to agree. And Mark Brumley, my boss and President of Ignatius Press, expressed similar thoughts in an e-mail sent to me earlier today:

Let's grant the desirability of the ideal behind all this--an international political/economic order that promotes the genuine universal common good by defending basic human rights, including participatory self-government, appropriate subsidarity, economic development, etc. (I say that's the ideal behind all this but of course not everyone advocating a World Authority would agree with that ideal.)

Between that ideal and the real world there is a chasm so large it boggles the mind anyone could read the newspapers and discuss a world political/economic authority without intending thereby either to be considering an abstract thesis in a political philosophy seminar or sketching out the plot of a science fiction Hollywood Blockbuster. 

Set aside Iran or China.  Ignore the problems with the EU or the US economy. Say nothing about Mexico or the rest of Latin America. Pretend like North Korea or Syria doesn't exist. Can anyone look at the situation of, say, the various internally and externally divided nations of Africa alone and seriously talk about World Government as a goal to be achieved in anything less than half a millennium--if that? That is, unless by a World Authority one means a Global Hegemon.'

And, unfortunately, many people are going to interpret the document (or what they learn about it in the media) as a call for some sort of imperial One World Government. Granted, that's not what the document intends and there's simply no way to present complex, nuanced teaching without being misunderstood by some or misrepresented by others. But, speaking for myself (and, again, based on a first impression), I don't see what practical and long-term good, exactly, this document can or will accomplish, especially when it fails to address some very basic, fundamental problems while muddying the waters with an abstract and wonkish approach that seems very far removed from the here-and-now real world.

UPDATE: Dr. Robert Moynihan, editor of Inside the Vatican magazine, writes:

The positive thing: this document, in keeping with all of the Church's social teaching, wishes to defend  honesty, transparency, truthfulness and justice in financial dealings over against dishonesty, opacity  false representations and injustice.
 
In this, the document is to be praised, and praised highly. We need honesty and truth-telling in a global economy that is seemingly careening toward a train wreck which will inevitably hurt the poor and weak most of all.
 
The negative thing: the global economy, and especially the global derivatives market, is big, enormous, in fact, so big, so opaque, so complex, that literally no one knows what the situation really is, or what measures to take to undo the financial detonator that seems ready soon to go off.
 
In this sense, the Vatican office's policy recommendations are inevitably insufficient.
 
No one knows what to do about this looming financial train wreck, not even the Vatican.
 
That said, there is no doubt that the virtues of honesty, truthfulness and fair-dealing must be at the center of any possible global solution, and we all will be well-served if thoughtful, honest, good and competent men and women can be placed in a position where they can help unravel this time-bomb before it detonates, or salvage what is left of our economy after it detonates.
 
And this is the essential, laudable meaning of the Vatican's suggestions in this document.

Read more.

UPDATE: Fr. Z. rants (his word, not mine):

Some of my favorite points in the new "white paper" include the suggestion that there should be global monetary management and a "central world bank" to regulate it and that the United Nations should be involved. National banks have, after all, done such a good job that we should now make the effort transnational! And is this the same UN that had nations such as Saudi Arabia and, till recently, Libya on the their human rights commission? Wasn't there a UN financial corruption investigation still going on? Is this the same UN that is pushing contraception pretty much in every poor country on earth? Was that a different UN?

Another high point in the new "white paper": "These measures ought to be conceived of as some of the first steps in view of a public Authority with universal jurisdiction; as a first stage in a longer effort by the global community to steer its institutions towards achieving the common good."

Uh huh.

Read the entire post.

UPDATE: Geroge Weigel remarks at The Corner:

As for the document itself, no morally alert person objects to bringing discussions of global finance within the ambit of moral reasoning; that is an entirely worthy intention. Catholics (and others) are entirely free to disagree — as many already have, and vociferously — with the specific suggestions of the Justice and Peace document. Father Reese and other advocates of the Catholic Revolution That Never Was will likely try to brand those critics "dissidents," which is more "rubbish, rubbish, rubbish." That the specific recommendations of the document reflect what will seem to many an uncritical internationalism of a distinctly Euro-secular provenance is an interesting matter that will doubtless be discussed, vigorously, within the Catholic family for some time to come. So will the tension between more recent Catholic discussions of transnational and international political authority and the core Catholic social-ethical principle of subsidiarity, with its settled opposition to political and economic megastructures and concentrations of power.

Bottom line (so to speak): This brief document from the lower echelons of the Roman Curia no more aligns "the Vatican," the Pope, or the Catholic Church with Occupy Wall Street than does the Nicene Creed. Those who suggest it does are either grossly ill-informed or tendentious to a point of irresponsibility.

Read his entire post.

Why are politics so vicious?

In the past few days I've had heard these questions voiced several times: "Why are politics are so vicious and nasty? When did politics become so ugly? Has it always been this way?" My initial reaction is to think, "Well, sure, politics have always been ugly!" But while human nature is consistently flawed and the temptations inherent to the world of power and politics are numerous, the past few decades have witnessed a real and notable turn for the worse, I think, especially when you compare (as well as one can) the very best of political discourse with the very worst. There is, to put it another way, a lot of politics (and a lot of nasty politics), and not much in the way of statesmanship. 

All of which to preface this excerpt from a New York Times op-ed, "The Ugliness Started With Bork", by Joe Nocera, which proposes a very specific event that took place 24 years ago yesterday: the Senate's vote to reject Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court. Nocera writes:

The Bork fight, in some ways, was the beginning of the end of civil discourse in politics. For years afterward, conservatives seethed at the "systematic demonization" of Bork, recalls Clint Bolick, a longtime conservative legal activist. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution coined the angry verb "to bork," which meant to destroy a nominee by whatever means necessary. When Republicans borked the Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright less than two years later, there wasn't a trace of remorse, not after what the Democrats had done to Bork. The anger between Democrats and Republicans, the unwillingness to work together, the profound mistrust — the line from Bork to today's ugly politics is a straight one.

It is, to be sure, completely understandable that the Democrats wanted to keep Bork off the court. Lewis Powell, the great moderate, was stepping down, which would be leaving the court evenly divided between conservatives and liberals. There was tremendous fear that if Bork were confirmed, he would swing the court to the conservatives and important liberal victories would be overturned — starting with Roe v. Wade.

But liberals couldn't just come out and say that. "If this were carried out as an internal Senate debate," Ann Lewis, the Democratic activist, would later acknowledge, "we would have deep and thoughtful discussions about the Constitution, and then we would lose." So, instead, the Democrats sought to portray Bork as "a right-wing loony," to use a phrase in a memo written by the Advocacy Institute, a liberal lobby group.

The character assassination began the day Bork was nominated, when Ted Kennedy gave a fiery speech describing "Robert Bork's America" as a place "in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters," and so on. It continued until the day the nomination was voted down; one ad, for instance, claimed, absurdly, that Bork wanted to give "women workers the choice between sterilization and their job."

Bork, in his fascinating book, The Tempting of America:  The Political Seduction of the Law (1990), wrote the following about the reaction that he and Howard Baker (Reagan's chief of staff) had to Sen. Kennedy's speech:

We were incredulous.  Not one line of that tirade was true.  It had simply never occurred to me that anybody would misrepresent my career and views as Kennedy did.  Nor did it occur to me that anybody would believe such charges.  The conventional wisdom in Washington then and for some time afterward was that Kennedy had made a serious tactical blunder.  His statement was so outrageous that everyone said it helped rather than hurt me.  I should have known better.  This was a calculated personal assault by a shrewd politician, as assault more violent than any against a judicial nominee in our country's history.  As it turned out, Kennedy set the themes and the tone for entire campaign.

Thankfully, Kennedy eventually apologized to Bork and later in life even publicly renounced his nearly diabolical support for abortion over the last thirty years of his life. Oh, wait—that never happened.

Nevermind. And yet the man, upon dying, was eulogized (even by himself!) as both a great statesman and a wonderful Catholic. I believe that to call Edward Kennedy "cynical" is almost an insult to cynicism; to say, as some do, that his life was about being Catholic is surely an overt exercise in cynicism.

Back to Bork: he writes of visiting the office of Sen. Robert Packwood (a man, like Kennedy, who treated women like pretty possessions to be awed and then pawed):

[He] told me he had no problems with any of the rest of my record but if there was the slightest chance I might vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, he would vote again my confirmation. He made it abundantly clear that that was the only issue.

Others, including Harry Reid, said the same thing. The god named "Abortion" demanded complete obedience, and those men prostrated themselved before the bloody altar. In a certain sense, Roe v. Wade tore the mask from the monster, and attempts since to cover that vicious visage have further revealed the desperation and duplicity of Abortion's minions. (See the chapter, "Why the Campaign Was Mounted", in The Tempting of America, for a good analysis of the ideological roots of the attacks on Bork.)

Bork, for those who might not know, converted to Catholicism in 2003.

Long story made short, it's frustrating, even maddening, to consider that a major reason political discourse today is so banal, insulting, vicious, petty, vindictive, manipulative, and filled with half truths and fully formed lies is because a Catholic senator who had sold himself for a pot of "right to privacy" pottage was willing to attack, defame, and slander one of the finest legal scholars of the past fifty years. And now? It is ordinary and common. We almost don't know better. Alas, we continue—to borrow from the title of another one of Bork's books—to slouch toward Gomorrah. 

Jesus Christ: The Inexhaustible Treasure

Jesus Christ: The Inexhaustible Treasure | Hans Urs von Balthasar | From Prayer

In this way the person who prays within the Church is already sharing, at the level of being, in the mysteries of the object of contemplation and in the mysteries of the act of divine revelation. Not only may he behold these things from outside: he is privileged to experience them from within. He is privileged to understand that the Father's self-revelation in the Son, through the Son's descent into flesh, takes the form of a sacrifice of love in which the Son makes himself poor (2 Cor 8:9); through his total abandonment of
himself the Son becomes an unmistakable sign of the origin and nature of divine love, which thus glorifies itself.

Consequently the contemplative's gaze continually returns with great attention to the humanity of Jesus. It is the inexhaustible treasure entrusted to us by the heavenly Father. In a true sense he has "despoiled himself" (Jn 3:16) of him to whom he is always pointing: ipsum audite! Listen to Him! (Mt 17:5). 

The Son is no floating interstellar body; he is the fruit of this earth and its history; he comes from Mary (who is the exponent of the Old Covenant and of all humanity) just as he comes from the Father. He is grace ascending just as much as grace descending; he is just as much creation's highest response to the Father as he is the Father's Word to creation. He is no God in disguise, acting "as if", simply to give us an example, like the teacher who has no difficulty in writing the solution on the blackboard because he no longer shares the difficulties of his toiling pupils.

No; He is the apex of the world in its strivings towards God, and he cuts a path for all of us, gathering up all men's efforts into himself' the pioneer, the spearhead. He can do this only by being "in every respect tempted as we are, yet without sinning" (Heb 4:15), by bearing our burdens as the scapegoat (Heb 13:11f), the Lamb brought to the slaughter, slain from the foundation of the world (Rev 13:8 AV).

Thus he stands at the summit of heaven and earth. The fact that everyone "recognizes" him as the son of Joseph and Mary (which he himself acknowledges: Jn 7:28) is just as important as the fact that they all fail to recognize him and realize that he comes from above. The Messiah the Jews were looking for as an interstellar body, coming "out of the blue": "When the Christ appears, no one will know where he comes from" (Jn 7:27). For them, the fact of Christ's human origin spoke against the authenticity of his mission. By contrast, the Christian will make this whole context the subject of his contemplation.

Here is man, sinless, because he has lovingly allowed the Father's will full scope in his life. Here is a man with an utterly free interior life under the most restricted and oppressive conditions, simply through from the sovereign self-consciousness he prayer, as we see displays in dialogue with his disciples and, even more, with his enemies. Here is a man whose love is perfect, although he often makes of others the same inflexible demands he makes of himself.

Here is the complete man; not a man who fits in with all and sundry, but a strong and distinctive personality, utterly unforgettable, whose words and deeds are unique and inimitable, whose influence on history is supreme. The perfect friend, the perfect leader, whose energy, however concentrated, never distorted his character, who always remained fresh and even childlike, with no false sophistication, loving children (a sure sign!) and commending their outlook on life to those who liked to think themselves "adult". He never reacts in a banal, predictable way; all that he does is original and creative.

Indeed, the gospels and the whole New Testament pulsate with "spirit", in the literary sense as well as the philosophical and religious sense. How empty and relatively poor in imagination, by contrast, are such writings as the Koran or the Speeches of Buddha—once one has the "feel" of them, one can make them up oneself!

Now of course, all these epithets are false to some extent; Liberalism applied them to the gospel in genuine admiration, but felt it had said all there was to say. But it is a fact that the believer, for whom Christ is the Son of God, mostly tends to skip over them in his haste to come to the divine.

Or else (which is even more perverse) he exaggerates them out of all proportion, so that they are no longer human attributes but pseudo-divine (Monophysite) monstrosities. We must not override the human sphere of the Lord in the gospels, even in our contemplative prayer; this would be to fail to see the seriousness of the incarnation, and it would make it impossible for the gospel to have any genuine historical influence in our time.

The Lord desires to be loved and taken seriously as man too; as a man he wants to inspire men and—why not?—arouse their enthusiastic discipleship.

There will be plenty of time to purify the flame, for the young disciples to acquire maturity, which is much easier than trying to transform an undernourished, rancid religiosity into genuine Christian faith. True holiness in the Church, with its influence on history, has always been connected with the straightforward endeavor to take the humanity of Christ seriously, and all the kitsch to be found in Christian life and Christian art arises from the failure to take it seriously. Why do we take the sacraments (which are human realities) so seriously, while we have so little awareness of the human world of Christ—the human side of his love and his commandment of love, for instance? Why do we pay so little attention to this commandment?

For the spread of Christianity depends (and always has) on our taking it absolutely literally, as the sense demands: "I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.... By this all men—all men!—will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

The disciples are never guaranteed that Peter's power of the keys and the institutional side of the Church will convince and convert people. But love can do so; and, wherever it has been taken literally, it always has done so. The saints who genuinely loved even succeeded in making the keys seem appealing and in reconciling those who were distrustful of them, for they are the keys to love and must be used in love.

We only have a right to describe the Church as the total sacrament of salvation provided we take the humanity seriously. For the sign-quality—the rite, the matter, the sanctifying word—is essential to the sacrament. And this is only the case because the whole Christ, with all he has done and bequeathed to us, has genuine, undiminished humanity.

Christ's perfect humanity is the efficacious sign revealing the Father, the language employed by the divine Word in hypostatic union in order to set forth the world of God to man. His humanity, in its totality, is made the vehicle of an even greater truth, an eternal and absolute truth.

What an ineffable dignity this imparts to our nature! What a source of joy, penetrating even to the dreary corners of everyday life! Christianity is not only truth from heaven mediated through human communication: it is the truth of man. it is not an unreal make-believe composed of ritual and mere commandments which has its validity "somewhere or other"—only not in prosaic everyday reality. Christianity is this everyday life as it is conceived by God and given to us.




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Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles and Book Excerpts:

• Love Must Be Perceived | Hans Urs von Balthasar
• Thirsting and Quenching | Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M.
• St. John of the Cross | Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M.
• Seeking Deep Conversion | Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M.
• The Confession of the Saints | Adrienne von Speyr
• Catholic Spirituality | Thomas Howard
• The Scriptural Roots of St. Augustine's Spirituality | Stephen N. Filippo
• The Eucharist: Source and Summit of Christian Spirituality | Mark Brumley
• Liturgy, Catechesis, and Conversion | Barbara Morgan
• Blessed Columba Marmion: A Deadly Serious Spiritual Writer | Christopher Zehnder

Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-88) was a Swiss theologian, considered to one of the most important Catholic intellectuals and writers of the twentieth century. Incredibly prolific and diverse, he wrote over one hundred books and hundreds of articles.

Read more about his life and work in the Author's Pages section of IgnatiusInsight.com.

Here is a reader...

... after my own heart and reading interests:

Over the last several days, I think I've received at least 20 holiday catalogs.  I'm not really sure how I get on these lists, but they are fun to browse through and dream about the things I would purchase....if I ever won the lottery!  Now, don't get me wrong, I would give the majority of it away, but I would most definitely spend some on myself!  Well, wouldn't you?

My favorite catalog of all of them is the Fall 2011 Ignatius Press (Books, Films, Art, Music, Audio)!  I could go nuts with this one!  I don't think I will ever live long enough to read all the books on my list.

Just remember the wise saying (with apologies to Tennyson): 'Tis better to have read and lost/Than never to have read at all.

The Fall 2011 Ignatius Press catalog, as well as other catalogs and flyers, can be downloaded in PDF format from www.Ignatius.com. 

"Extreme Makeover" is not just for women

Gary Zimak of FollowingTheTruth.com reviews Teresa Tomeo's new book, Extreme Makeover: Women Transformed by Christ, Not Conformed to the Culture:

When I first heard about Teresa Tomeo's new book from Ignatius Press, Extreme Makeover (Women Transformed By Christ, Not Conformed To The Culture), I assumed that it would be a "woman's book".  Accepting that fact, I still wanted to read it in order that I could recommend it to the ladies.  After reading this book, however, I was pleased to discover that everyone (including men) can benefit from her powerful message.

One of the main reasons I appreciate Teresa Tomeo's work is that she just flat out "gets" the Catholic Church and the culture in which we live.  More importantly, she understands that they are at odds with each other.  Society tells us to "do whatever feels good" and the Church tells us to imitate the example of Jesus.  The media tells us that the Church is "old fashioned" and that babies are an inconvenience while the Church reminds us that truth doesn't change and that life is a precious gift from God.

I found this book difficult to put down.  In the opening chapter (What's a Girl Like Me Doing in a Church Like This?), Teresa gives her personal testimony and offers first hand proof that "the Truth will set you free" (John 8:32).  That "Truth", of course, is found in Jesus Christ and His Catholic Church.  In the pursuit of happiness and freedom, Tomeo bought into the lies put forth by the media: career first, total self centeredness, and the irrelevance of the Church.  Now, after finding out for herself that this approach won't bring happiness or even freedom, she can honestly declare that "God and His Church have it right"!

Read the entire review. Gary will be interviewing Teresa this Wednesday, October 26th, at 8:00 pm Eastern.

"What was at stake was the Church's unity in faith and the ecclesial communion..."

From Catholic News Agency:

The Australian Catholic bishops' delegation to Rome has issued a statement about the Vatican's response to the dissenting bishop of the Diocese of Toowoomba. They described their multiple "candid" meetings with Vatican officials about the matter and urged the healing of divisions.

The delegation has issued a one-page letter (Word doc format), which includes the following:

These meetings have given us a more adequate understanding of what was done by the Holy See in an attempt to resolve the difficulties with Bishop Morris, which concerned not only matters of Church discipline but also of Church doctrine definitively taught, such as on the ministerial priesthood.  What the Holy See did was fraternal and pastoral rather than juridical in character.  Although efforts continued over many years, a critical point came when Bishop Morris failed to clarify his position to the satisfaction of the Holy See and then found himself unable to resign as Bishop of the Diocese when the Holy Father made the request.

What was at stake was the Church's unity in faith and the ecclesial communion between the Pope and the other Bishops in the College of Bishops. Eventually Bishop Morris was unable to agree to what this communion requires and at that point the Pope acted as the Successor of Peter, who has the task of deciding what constitutes unity and communion in the Church.

In other words, Bishop Morris, despite years of dissenting and thumbing his nose at Church authority, was given chance after chance to do the right thing and act like a real Catholic and a real bishop. But he refused. Be assured, however, that this story will be reported by most media outlets as a case of the impatient, narrow-minded, and reactionary Catholic Church, lorded over by an authoritarian and dictatorial Pope, failing to give Bishop Morris adequate time to respond, a proper forum for his serious and deep concerns, etc. and etc. Count on it.

The Greatest Commandment

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, October 23, 2011 | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• Ex 22:20-26
• Ps 18:2-3, 3-4, 47, 51
• 1 Thess 1:5c-10
• Mt 22:34-40

What is the most common subject of popular music? Answer: love.

The Beatles claimed "All We Need Is Love." Robert Palmer confessed he was "Addicted to Love." "I Want To Know What Love Is" admitted the rock group Foreigner. Mariah Carey had a "Vision of Love." Queen pondered that "Crazy Little Thing Called Love." A full listing would require a book.

But how many Top Forty songs have been about love for God? You don't need to be a music critic to recognize that the love referred to in most pop and rock songs is either romantic love or something mistaken for love: infatuation, sexual attraction, or simply lust. What so often passes for love in our culture is actually the complete opposite of authentic love. Instead of being sacrificial, it is self-seeking; rather than giving, it takes; instead of long-suffering, it is short-term. As Pope Benedict XVI remarked in his encyclical, "God Is Love" (Deus Caritas Est), "Eros, reduced to pure 'sex', has become a commodity, a mere 'thing' to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity" (par. 5).

The love spoken of by Jesus in today's Gospel is agape, that is, the Holy Father states, a "love grounded in and shaped by faith" (par. 7). When human love—whether love for a spouse, a child, a friend, or one's country—is informed, shaped, and filled with God's love it becomes whole and authentic. Put another way, it is rightly ordered to its proper end, which is God.

The scribe sent by the Pharisees to test Jesus was an expert in the many technical details of applying the Mosaic Law in specific cases. There were 613 commandments in the Law, so the answer to his question—a question meant to trick Jesus and provide an opening to denounce Him—was neither simple nor obvious. In responding, Jesus referred immediately and directly to the First Commandment: "Therefore, you shall love the LORD, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength" (Dt 6:5).

It was this commandment, more than any other, which marked the Hebrews as a unique, chosen people.

"Jesus united into a single precept this commandment of love for God," writes Pope Benedict, "and the commandment of love for neighbour found in the Book of Leviticus: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself' (19:18; cf. Mk 12:29-31). Since God has first loved us (cf. 1 Jn 4:10), love is now no longer a mere 'command'; it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us" (par. 1). How we treat our neighbors reveals something essential about our love, or lack of love, for God. And as today's first reading from Exodus suggests, our neighbors are not merely people we know or we like, but include strangers, widows, orphans, the poor, the homeless, and the downtrodden.

In speaking of Jesus' response, the Holy Father emphasizes that this love "is not simply a matter of morality." After all, atheists can give money to the poor and agnostics can build homeless shelters. "Being Christian," Benedict explains, "is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction" (par. 1).

Our love is really love when it flows from the heart transformed by the One who first loved us, who created us, and who gave His life for us. This love is not abstract or academic but concrete and personal.

Love is so powerful because it God is love and He made us to be loved and to love others. "God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him" (1 Jn 4:16). Sadly, we live in a world that is out of tune when it comes to real love. It is our joyful duty to sing, with the Psalmist, "I love you, Lord, my strength!"

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the October 26, 2008, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

Teresa Tomeo talks about...

• ... the lies of pop culture, especially about the sexuality and self-image of young women:

"I bought into these lies for a long time," Tomeo told LifeSiteNews in an interview. "I wanted to share what I have learned with other women and blow the lid off of many of the tales that have been told about these issues."

Extreme Makeover, which was released October 7 by Ignatius Press and currently sits at Number 3 on Amazon's list of bestselling books in the "Roman Catholicism" category, addresses a host of issues that affect women, including abortion and contraception. In the book, Tomeo offers encouragement and affirmation "for any woman who seeks the true foundation of her dignity."

The book, "pulls together the latest research on social behavior and trends in order to demonstrate that women are harming themselves and their chances for true happiness by adopting the thoroughly modern, sexually liberated lifestyle portrayed in magazines and movies," according to its description.

Read more on LifeSiteNews.com.

• ... the false reality presented in "reality" television show:

Teresa Tomeo, author of Extreme Makeover: Women Transformed by Christ, Not Conformed to the Culture, said "maybe the genre should be called 'Fantasy TV.'" Tomeo, who is a Catholic radio show host, often speaks at events about the impact of media on culture.

"What was most alarming were the percentage rates of just how many girls in the survey actually believe that these shows reflect real life," Tomeo told The Christian Post. "Many in the Girl Scout study also said they see the bad behavior often exhibited in some of the reality shows as normal. This is, well, disturbing – especially if we're talking about shows like 'The Jersey Shore,' which was actually mentioned in the report."

Read more on ChristianPost.com.

• ... the ugly slur uttered by actress Susan Sarandon about Pope Benedict XVI:

"No amount of foundation or age-defying makeup can hide the ugliness verbalized by actress and Revlon spokeswoman Susan Sarandon against the leader of the Roman Catholic Church," said Tomeo, bestselling author of the new book Extreme Makeover. "Sarandon needs to apologize to the pope and the Catholic community at large for calling him a Nazi, not once but twice. This is over the top even for Sarandon -- who's not exactly known for her conservative views.

"Sadly, one has to wonder whether there truly will be an outcry beyond the many Catholics who are outraged... because of the media mania of today's culture," Tomeo said.

Read more on the California Catholic Daily website.

For more about Tomeo's book,Extreme Makeover: Women Transformed by Christ, Not Conformed to the Culture, visit the book's website.

"What Would She Want?" | Preface to "Mother Teresa of Calcutta—A Personal Portrait"

What Would She Want? Monsignor Leo Maasburg | The Preface to Mother Teresa of Calcutta—A Personal Portrait: 50 Inspiring Stories Never Before Told

Mother Teresa is one of the truly great and influential personages of the twentieth century. She is, as even unbelievers and critics readily admit, an outstanding figure in the history of our times and in Church history. Above all, however, she was and remains a fascinating woman. I see this in the shining eyes of the many people who, as soon as they learn that I was privileged to work closely with Mother Teresa for several years, ask me to tell them something about her.

Why are modern people of the twenty-first century interested in a saintly woman of the twentieth century whom they themselves never met? In our hectic, fast-paced era that rushes from one fashion to the next, what can possibly be so interesting and inspiring about a religious Sister who, when a critic impertinently remarked that she was two hundred years behind in her theology, smiled and replied, "No, two thousand years!"

On the numerous trips on which I was able to accompany Mother Teresa during her later years, I experienced something of the radiance and fascination of her personality. For our media world, which craves celebrities of every sort, she was an extraordinary, irreplaceable, shining "star"—surrounded not by the rich and the beautiful but rather by the poorest of the poor, the deformed, the outcasts of society. She was a forceful, shrewd, charismatic and humble personality who did not try to dominate but wanted to serve, and she was an innovative character whose greatest visible success was the fact that, through her works and example, so many young women throughout the world cheerfully joined the ranks of Jesus' disciples and thereby found the meaning of their lives. Many men and women of all generations allowed themselves to be inspired by Mother Teresa's love for Jesus. She was a "star" who was a reluctant public figure yet used publicity quite effectively for her cause.

Mother Teresa never made herself the center of attention. But when she was put in the spotlight by others—after she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979—that was practically a perpetual state. She used the opportunity to point attention away from herself and toward Christ. From various quarters there was, and still is, a tug-of-war—motivated more by nationalism than by Catholicism—over who could claim Mother Teresa as his own. She herself would certainly not have wanted that, though she never denied her roots. One of Mother Teresa's rare statements about herself was: "By birth I am Albanian. I am an Indian citizen. I am a Catholic nun. In what I do, I belong to the whole world, but my heart belongs entirely to Jesus." That makes her position unmistakably clear.

Doesn't all this argue against writing a book about Mother Teresa? A book, furthermore, which makes no claim to be either scholarly or biographical, but rather draws on the experiences, memories and notes of the author? Or, to put the question differently, what would Mother Teresa want me to write in this book?

I suspect that she would give me the same answer as she did on that beautiful autumn day in Vienna, when I was a newly ordained priest. Never before had I given a retreat for anyone, much less for religious Sisters. Then Mother Teresa surprised me with a question: "Father, could you give the Sisters a retreat?"

Honored and at the same time uncertain, I asked when it would be.

She said, "Tomorrow."

And I, even more uncertain, replied, "But, Mother, I have never given a retreat! What should I talk about?"

Her reply came as though shot from a pistol: "Speak about Jesus! What else?"

When people asked her about her life and biographical details, Mother Teresa usually declined: "I don't really like to talk about myself, because when people speak or write about me, then they speak or write less about Jesus."

And so, I hope that this book shows Mother Teresa's work and personality in the correct light, and especially how, in everything she did, she always pointed toward Christ. I hope it shows her ultimate aim: to lead everyone to Jesus Christ.

Monsignor Leo Maasburg

Mother Teresa of Calcutta—A Personal Portrait: 50 Inspiring Stories Never Before Told

by Fr. Leo Maasburg

• Also available in Electronic Book Format

Mother Teresa's life sounds like a legend. The Albanian girl who entered an Irish order to go to India as a missionary and became an "Angel of the Poor" for countless people. She was greatly revered by Christians as well as Muslims, Hindus and unbelievers, as she brought the message of Christian love for one's neighbor from the slums of Calcutta to the whole world.

Fr. Leo Maasburg was there as her close companion for many years, traveling with her throughout the world and was witness to countless miracles and incredible little-known occurrences. In this personal portrait of the beloved nun, he presents fifty amazing stories about her that most people have never heard, wonderful and delightful stories about miracles, small and great, that he was privileged to experience at Mother Teresa's side. Stories of how, without a penny to her name, she started an orphanage in Spain, and at the same time saved a declining railroad company from ruin, and so many more.

They all tell of her limitless trust in God's love, of the way the power of faith can move mountains, and of hope that can never die. These stories reveal a humorous, gifted, wise and arresting woman who has a message of real hope for our time. It's the life story of one of the most important women of the 20th century as it's never been told before.

"Mother Teresa's daily life, as described by Msgr. Maasburg, can be put in two powerful words: holy daring. The mysterious language spoken between God and the saints is the firm belief that everything, absolutely everything, is a message of His love. Do I need to say more: tolle, lege."
- Alice von Hildebrand, Author, The Privilege of Being a Woman

"Msgr. Leo Maasburg gives us such great insight into this very human and very holy saint. Read this book!"
- Fr. Larry Richards, Author, Be a Man!

"With her "ammunition"-Miraculous Medals of the Blessed Virgin Mary she handed out-and determination to change the world one person at a time, Mother Teresa became an icon for charitable work in the latter part of the 20th century. Maasburg, an Austrian priest, came along for the ride as Mother Teresa's confessor and translator. His 50 stories ramble across several continents and through the decades, when this woman truly seemed to perform one miracle after another to get what she wanted and to build the Sisters of Charity into a worldwide organization. The stories of her ministry in the Soviet Union during the 1988 earthquakes in Armenia will be new to readers of the history of this amazing nun. "Mother Teresa was a missionary through and through who saw God's omnipotence and love of Jesus at work in everything and everyone," Maasburg writes. She stood down the popes of the church and even the Sandinista rebel leaders in Nicaragua as she built a religious family that consisted of five congregations and 592 houses. This is a book for readers who want an intimate portrait of a saint in the Catholic Church."
- Publishers Weekly

Fr. Leo Maasburg, born 1948 in Graz, Austria, studied law, political science, theology, canon law and missiology in Innsbruck, Oxford and Rome. In 1982, in Fatima, he was ordained a priest. He was a close friend of Mother Teresa for many years, as her spiritual advisor, translator, and her confessor. He travelled with her in India, Rome, and on many journeys ranging from Moscow, to Cuba to New York. Since 2005 he has been National Director of the Pontifical Missionary Societies in Austria.