Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 275

Decline and Fall: Thoughts on the meaning of progress

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Decline and Fall | Anthony Esolen | Catholic World Report

It is a common trope of literary history, that of decrying the degeneracy of the times, and looking back with nostalgia upon the virtues of one's forefathers. "O tempora, O mores!" cries Cicero, fulminating before his fellow senators as he delineates the crimes of Catiline, who sought to stir up a civil insurrection to place himself in power. In The Acharnians and Lysistrata, Aristophanes glances at the virtue of those Spartans and Athenians of two generations past who joined forces to fight the common foe, Persia, at Thermopylae and Marathon, rather than fighting one another and cozying up to that same enemy. William Faulkner sees in the American South a transition from a society whose principal virtue was honor, to one in which money is the only thing that talks; a movement from a world that the thoughtful Quentin Compson could both critique and love, to a world ruled by people like his grasping brother Jason, who even when he was a boy kept his hands in his pockets.

In part such criticism bespeaks a willingness, sometimes laudable and pious, sometimes merely obtuse, to overlook the failings of one's predecessors. The Senate that heard Cicero's orations against Catiline had long failed to act for the common good of all Romans. It had ignored the pleas of the Gracchi brothers for land reform. Rome had seized much land in Italy and elsewhere from rebellious peoples after her victories in war. That land, in the late second century, was held by wealthy senators. The Gracchi, seeing the impoverishment of Rome's veterans, and wishing to return wage-earners from the city to the country, tried to compel the Senate to give up some of those lands. They were assassinated for their pains; and the Senate, rich and unwilling to govern, would consign their own authority more and more to warlords like Marius and Sulla, and to ambitious populists like Julius Caesar. The world that Cicero pretended to save had for a long time not existed. Something similar might be said about the generation of Greeks who fought the Persians. It was not true that the Greeks were united; many a Greek polis sided with Persia, for the city-states had long been fighting with one another, and the fighting would not cease until the very institution of the free polis was destroyed by Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander. As for the antebellum South, it was built upon the back of slave labor, as Faulkner well knew, nor would he allow his reader to forget it.

But in part the focus upon cultural decline is warranted, for the simple reason that cultural decline, in one respect or another, is the most common thing in the world. It is an easily noted fact.

Continue reading this essay on www.CatholicWorldReport.com...

St. Ignatius of Antioch and the Early Church

St. Ignatius of Antioch and the Early Church | Kenneth D. Whitehead | From One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic: The Early Church Was The Catholic Church

Sometime around the year 107 A.D., a short, sharp persecution of the Church of Christ resulted in the arrest of the bishop of Antioch in Syria. His name was Ignatius. According to one of the harsh penal practices of the Roman Empire of the day, the good bishop was condemned to be delivered up to wild beasts in the arena in the capital city. The insatiable public appetite for bloody spectacles meant a chronically short supply of victims; prisoners were thus sent off to Rome to help fill the need.

So the second bishop of Antioch was sent to Rome as a condemned prisoner. According to Church historian Eusebius (ca. 260-ca. 340), Ignatius had been bishop in Antioch for nearly forty years at the time of his arrest. This means that he had been bishop there while some of the original apostles were almost certainly still alive and preaching.

St. Ignatius of Antioch was conducted first by land from Syria across Asia Minor (modern Turkey). He was escorted by a detachment of Roman soldiers. In a letter he sent ahead to the Church of Christ in Rome, this bishop described his ardent wish to imitate the passion of Christ through his own coming martyrdom in the Roman Colosseum. He warned the Christians in Rome not to try to save him. He also spoke of his conflicts with his military escort and of their casual cruelties, describing his guards as "ten leopards". The discipline of the march cannot have been unrelieved, however, since Ignatius was permitted to receive delegations of visitors from local Churches in the cities of Asia Minor through which the escorts and Ignatius passed along the way (To the Romans, 5:1).

In Smyrna (modern Izmir), St. Ignatius met, not only with the bishop of that city, St. Polycarp, but also with delegations from the neighboring cities of Ephesus, Magnesia, and Tralles. Each delegation was headed by a local bishop. Ignatius wrote thank-you letters to the Christians in each of these cities who had visited the notable but shackled bishop-prisoner. Chiefly through these letters, St. Ignatius of Antioch is known to us today.

Establishing these letters, written in Greek, as authentic and genuinely from the first decade of the second century was one of the triumphs of nineteenth-century British scholarship. Without them, this bishop of Antioch might have remained no more than a name, as obscure as many another early Christian bishop.

Escorted on to the Greek city of Troas on the Aegean Sea, Ignatius wrote yet another letter to the Church at Smyrna, through which he had passed. He also wrote personally to Bishop Polycarp of that city. Finally, from Troas he wrote still another letter to the Philadelphians; the local Church of Philadelphia had despatched two deacons who overtook his party at Troas.

Shortly after writing these seven letters to Churches in Asia Minor, St. Ignatius of Antioch was taken aboard ship. The remainder of his journey to Italy was by sea. Tradition holds that he won his longed-for martyrdom in the Roman amphitheater during the reign of Emperor Trajan (98-117).

But the letters he left behind afford us a precious and remarkable picture of what that Church was like not even two full generations after issuing from the side of Jesus Christ on the Cross.

The adult life of St. Ignatius of Antioch as a second-generation Church leader almost exactly spanned the period of transition between the end of the first Christian generation and the beginning of the third. Thus, his witness about the nature of the Church of his day is of the most profound and fundamental importance.

What was the Church like around the year 107 A.D.? The Church had already spread far and wide since the days of the apostles. St. Ignatius was conducted over a good part of what, today, is Turkey, encountering local Churches in most major towns. At the head of each of these Churches was a principal leader, a bishop. The geographical spread of individual local Churches, each headed by a bishop, is obvious from the fact that Ignatius was met by delegations headed by bishops from each sizeable town along the route.

That St. Ignatius was met by these "official" delegations indicates that local Churches were in close touch with one another. They did not see themselves as independent, self-selected, self-governing congregations of like-minded people; they saw themselves as linked together in the one body of Christ according to an already firmly established, well-understood system, even though they happened to be geographically separated.

The solidarity with which they all turned out to honor a prisoner being led to martyrdom, who also happened to be the bishop of Antioch, tells us something about their respect for the incumbent of that office. Antioch was to become one of the great patriarchal bishoprics of the Church of antiquity, along with Alexandria and Rome--and, later, Constantinople.





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The letters of St. Ignatius are even more pointed concerning the role that a bishop ("overseer") held in the early Church. The modern reader may be startled at the degree to which these letters exalt the role of the bishop. "It is essential to act in no way without the bishop", Ignatius wrote to the Trallians. "... Obey the bishop as if he were Jesus Christ" (2:2,1). "Do nothing apart from the bishop", he wrote to the Philadelphians (7:2). To the Smyrnaeans, he gave the same advice: "You should all follow the bishop as Jesus Christ did the Father .... Nobody must do anything that has to do with the Church without the bishop's approval" (8:1).

The New Testament shows the apostles appointing others besides themselves to offices in the Church. Peter and the other apostles at Jerusalem very quickly decided to appoint deacons to assist them (cf. Acts 6: 1-6). Paul similarly placed someone in authority in the Churches he founded (cf. Acts 14:23; 2 Tim 1:6). These ecclesiastical appointments were carried out by means of a religious rite: the laying on of hands, either by those who already had authority conferred on them by Christ (the apostles) or those on whom they had conferred authority by the laying on of hands. These rites were sacramental ordinations.

For a period of time in the early Church there seems to have been no entirely clear terminology designating these ordained Church officers or ministers. St. Paul spoke of bishops and deacons (Phil 1:1), though he also mentions other offices, such as apostles, prophets, and teachers (1 Cor 12:29). St. James spoke of elders (5:14). In the Acts of the Apostles (e.g., 11: 30), we hear many times of elders or presbyters. Sometimes the designations bishop and elder seem to have been used interchangeably.

In the course of the second half of the first century, however, a consistent terminology for these Church offices was becoming fixed. The letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch make clear that leadership in the Christian community, in all the Churches, is exercised by an order of "bishops, presbyters, and deacons" (To the Trallians 3:2; To Polycarp 6:1). Of these designations, bishop comes from the Greek episkopos, meaning "overseer"; presbyter from the Greek presbyteros, "elder"; and deacon from the Greek diakonos, "servant" or "minister".

Thus, from that time on, these were the offices in what was already an institutional, hierarchical Church (this is not to imply that the Church was ever anything but institutional and hierarchical, only that the evidence for these characteristics had become unmistakably clear by this time).

By the way, the term priest (Greek: hierus) does not seem to have been used at first for the Christian presbyter; the nonuse of this particular term in the earliest years of the Church was due to the need to distinguish the Christian priesthood of the new dispensation from the Jewish Temple priests, who were still functioning up to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Romans in the year 70 A.D. After that time, the use of the word priest for those ordained in Christ began to be more and more common.

St. Ignatius of Antioch did not know of any such thing as a "Church" that was merely an assemblage of like-minded people who believed themselves to have been moved by the Spirit. The early Christians were moved by the Spirit to join the Church, the established visible, institutional, sacerdotal, and hierarchical Church-the only kind St. Ignatius of Antioch would ever have recognized as the Church.

And it was for this visible, institutional, sacerdotal, and hierarchical Church--an entity purveying both the word and sacraments of Jesus--that this early bishop was willing to give himself up to be torn apart by wild beasts in the arena. He wrote to St. Polycarp words that were also meant for the latter's flock in Smyrna: "Pay attention to the bishop so that God will pay attention to you. I give my life as a sacrifice (poor as it is) for those who are obedient to the bishop, the presbyters, and the deacons" (6:1). To the Trallians he wrote: "You cannot have a Church without these" (3:2).

St. Ignatius certainly did not fail to recognize that, in one of today's popular but imprecise formulations, "the people are the Church." His letters were intended to teach, admonish, exhort, and encourage none other than "the people". But he also understood that each one of "the people" entered the Church through a sacred rite of baptism, and thereafter belonged to a group in which the bishop, in certain respects and for certain purposes, resembled, on the one hand, the father of a family and, on the other, a monarch--more than some democratically elected leaders.

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles, Book Excerpts, and Interviews:

• Selections from Jesus, The Apostles, and the Early Church | Pope Benedict XVI
• A Short Guide to Ancient Heresies | Kenneth D. Whitehead
• Studying The Early Christians: The Introduction to We Look For the Kingdom | Carl J. Sommer
• The Everyday Lives of the Early Christians | An interview with Carl J. Sommer
• Church and State in Early Christianity | Hugo Rahner, S.J.
• His Story and the History of the Church | An Interview with Dr. Glenn W. Olsen
• Are We at The End or The Beginning? | Dr. Glenn Olson
• Who Is A Priest? | Fr. Benedict Ashley, O.P.
• The Church Is the Goal of All Things | Christoph Cardinal Schönborn
• St. Peter and the Primacy of Rome | Stephen K. Ray
• Church Authority and the Petrine Element | Hans Urs von Balthasar

Kenneth D. Whitehead is a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education. He has authored or coauthored several books, as well as many articles for leading Catholic periodicals, and is the translator of some twenty published books.

Novelist Michael D. O'Brien to speak in northern California, November 14th - 20th

Michael O'Brien, acclaimed Canadian novelist, writer and icon artist, will be speaking in various locations in the Sacramento, Santa Rosa, Napa and surrounding towns during the week of November 14-20.

O'Brien will be on a speaking tour in connection with the release of his epic new novel, The Father's Tale, a powerful story that O'Brien calls, "A modern retelling of the parable of the Prodigal Son." This is the 9th novel from O'Brien published by Ignatius Press. His most famous novel is Father Elijah, and others include Strangers and Sojourners, Island of the World, Theophilos, Sophia House and Eclipse of the Sun.

The Father's Tale tells the epic story of Canadian bookseller Alex Graham, a middle-age widower whose quiet life is turned upside down when his college-age son disappears without any trace of his whereabouts. With minimal resources, the father begins a long journey that takes him away from his safe, orderly world on an incredible odyssey to fascinating places, frightening people and perils. Through the uncertainty and the anguish, Graham is pulled into conflicts between nations, as well as the eternal confl ict between good and evil. Stretched nearly to the breaking point, he discovers unexpected sources of strength as he presses onward in the hope of recovering his son—and himself.

MONDAY, NOV. 14, 7:00 PM, SONOMA
St. Francis Solano Church
469 Third St. West, 707-996-6759
"Raising Strong Catholic Children: Countering the Secular Invasion of Family Culture"
No charge – Free will offering

TUES., NOV 15, 7:00 PM, SACRAMENTO
Presentation of the BVM School
4123 Robertson, 916-482-0351
"Readers of the Lost Art: Reviving Culture through Good Reading"
No charge – Free will offering

THURSDAY, NOV. 17, 12:00 NOON -1:30 PM, SACRAMENTO
Easter's Catholic Bookstore
5290 Auburn Blvd, 916-338-7272
Talk on and Book Signing of The Father's
Tale and other novels

FRIDAY, NOV. 18, 7:00 PM, NAPA
Kolbe Academy & Trinity Prep,
2055 Redwood Rd., 707-258-9030
"Catholic Fiction & Restoring Culture in an Age of Escapist Illusions"
No charge – Free will offering

SAT., NOV. 19, 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM, NAPA
St. Joseph's Catholic Store
3369 Old California Way, 707-224-8754
Talk on and Book Signing of The Father's Tale and other novels

SUNDAY, NOV. 20, 7:15 PM, SANTA ROSA
St. Eugene Cathedral,
2323 Montgomery Dr., 707-542-6984
"Longing for the Holy: Finding God in Truth, Goodness & Beauty"
No charge – Free will offering

A full-color, 8.5" x 11" flyer for this speaking tour can be downloaded as a PDF file from www.Ignatius.com.

Read the opening pages of The Father's Tale:

There's Life Beyond Caesar, Death and Taxes

Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, October 16, 2011 | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• Is 45:1, 4-6
• Ps 96:1, 3, 4-5, 7-8, 9-10
• 1 Thes 1:1-5b
• Matt 22:15-21

"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." This well-known saying was first written by Daniel Defoe and then made famous by Benjamin Franklin. It reflects a rather fatalistic view of life, one that wryly admits it is hard to avoid the reach of the State and impossible to escape the cold hand of death.

Sadly, some people do hold to this grim view of life, and many others live as if it is true. For them, life seems pointless, empty, and hopeless; it appears to be a sort of cosmic joke with a casket for a punch line.

While some people despair because they believe this world is all there is, others are desperate to believe and prove that this world is all there is—and any belief in God is a danger to the State and the good of society. For these people, the concept of a separation of Church and State is nearly sacred since they think any and all religious beliefs should be kept out of the public square. The political realm fills the public square, they insist, while the religious realm should stay at home and keep quietly to itself.

Strangely enough, today's Gospel reading has sometimes been misinterpreted in an attempt to uphold this secularist stance. However, the debate over taxes described by Matthew actually presents a much different perspective.

When Jesus was approached by the Pharisee's disciples and some Herodians, it was undoubtedly a strange sight. The two groups were not natural allies; in fact, they did not get along at all. The Herodians supported King Herod and Roman taxes. The Pharisees vehemently opposed those taxes since paying them meant acknowledging foreign, pagan sovereignty over Israel. That they joined together indicated how eager both groups were to be rid of Jesus.

The question—"Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?"—was a clever attempt to trap Jesus. A positive answer would give the Pharisees grounds to condemn him, while a negative answer would allow the Herodians to charge him with stirring up political unrest.

Knowing their intent, Jesus asked to see "the Roman coin." That coin was marked with the image of Tiberius Caesar (A.D. 14-37).  The inscription referred to by Jesus read: "Tiberius Caesar son of the divine Augustus, great high priest." Jesus then uttered the enigmatic words: "Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God."

On one level, this simply means that since the coin contained Caesar's image, it belonged to him. But it goes deeper. Man, who is made in the "image of God" (Gen 1:27) has a duty to give himself to God. This is the greater duty as we owe everything, including our very existence, to God. Jesus' remark implies that if the Israelites had been committed to giving God what was due Him—worship, love, and obedience—they wouldn't be suffering under Roman rule.

The State is necessary for the ordering of temporal affairs and for upholding social order. We should support a properly ordered government, which includes paying just taxes, even if it isn't perfect (cf., Rom 13:6-7; 1 Pet 2:13-15). But, as the Catechism points out, "the citizen is obliged in conscience not to follow the directives of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral order, to the fundamental rights of persons or the teachings of the Gospel" (CCC 2242).

Man's ultimate duty is to God. After all, man is made in the image of God and he is invited to share in eternal communion with God. It is God who gives life and makes sense of life; without Him, our existence is pointless, empty, and hopeless. Our belief in God should direct our actions, including those regarding political and social matters.

Taxes and death may be certain in this world, but in the next world there is this one certainty: the judgment seat and then either heaven or hell. Live accordingly.

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the October 19, 2008, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

Steve Jobs: A god of our age?

Or for our age? Or both? Marvin Olasky considers the mystey of Steve Jobs:

 For adoption advocates he was an adoptee who made it big. His biological mom and dad placed him for adoption soon after his birth in 1955. "My parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: 'We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?' They said: 'Of course.'"

For parents with hyperactive children he was the child rushed to the emergency room after ingesting a bottle of ant poison, and the one who received a bad shock by sticking a bobby pin into a wall socket.

For those with children born out of wedlock he was a man who initially denied paternity and refused to pay child support for his first daughter Lisa, but eventually accepted her and helped her to become a New York writer.

Still other observers emphasized his style and beliefs:

To romantics he was the romantic who gave a lecture to a class of Stanford business students, noticed a good-looking woman in the front row, chatted her up, headed to his car, and ... "I was in the parking lot with the key in the car, and I thought to myself, 'If this is my last night on earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman?' I ran across the parking lot, asked her if she'd have dinner with me. She said yes, we walked into town, and we've been together ever since."

To marriage advocates he was the man who married that woman in a small ceremony at Yosemite National Park 20 years ago, and stayed married as they bore and raised three children.

To a neighbor writing in a Palo Alto paper, he was "a regular guy, a good dad having fun with his kids. The next time I met him was when our children attended school together. He sat in on back-to-school night listening to the teacher drone on about the value of education. ... I saw him at his son's high school graduation. There Steve stood, tears streaming down his cheeks, his smile wide and proud, as his son received his diploma."

To Buddhists and vegetarians he was a fellow-follower of the principles of minimalism, almost always appearing in public in a black turtleneck and worn jeans.

Read the entire piece on the WORLD magazine website.

• Yes, Steve Jobs, R.I.P., was an innovating genius. But... (Oct. 11, 2011)

The words and life of St. Teresa of Avila, who lived what she taught

Here are some quotes from St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), the great Carmelite contemplative, mystic, Saint, and Doctor of the Church, whose feast is celebrated today:

• "There is no stage of prayer so sublime that it isn't necessary to return often to the beginning. Along this path of prayer, self knowledge and the thought of one's sins is the bread with which all palates must be fed no matter how delicate they may be; they cannot be sustained without this bread."

• "It is a dangerous thing to be satisfied with ourselves."

• "Do not be negligent about showing gratitude."

• "Those who in fact risk all for God will find that they have both lost all and gained all."

• "We shouldn't care at all about not having devotion—as I have said—but we ought to thank the Lord who allows us to be desirous of pleasing Him, even though our works may be weak. This method of keeping Christ present with us is beneficial in all stages and is a very safe means of advancing."

• "Everything other than pleasing God is nothing."

• "Our security lies in obedience and refusal to deviate from God's law."

• "Once you are placed in so high a degree as to desire to commune in solitude with God and  abandon the pastimes of the world, the most has been done."

• "Teach by works more than by words. ... We must all try to be preachers through our deeds."

• "Mental prayer in my opinion is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us. In order than love be true and friendship endure, the wills of the friends must be in accord."

• "I don't know why we are amazed that there are so many evils in the Church since those who are to be the models from which all might copy the virtues are so obscurely fashioned that the spirit of the saints of the past has abandoned the religious communities. May it please the divine Majesty to  remedy this as He sees it to be necessary."

• "Now, Lord, now; make the sea calm! May this ship, which is the Church, not always have to journey in a tempest like this."

Those are from the fourth volume of Sermon in a Sentence: A Treasury of Quotations on the Spiritual Life, a series (five, so far) of books featuring quotes from St. Thérèse of Lisieux (vol. 1), St. Francis de Sales (vol. 2), St. Catherine  of Siena  (vol. 3), and St. Thomas Aquinas (vol. 5). The books are edited and arranged by John P. McClernon, who also writes bios of the saints for each book.

And here are a few excerpts from Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel--On Prayer , the late Fr. Thomas Dubay's outstanding study on prayer:

By all accounts, St. Teresa, the foundress from Avila, was a woman extraordinarily gifted, both naturally and supernaturally. In her were combined physical beauty, especially in her youth, and a charm of personality that neither illness nor age diminished. All witnesses seem to agree that she was the type of woman no one can adequately describe in a few pages. She was one of those rare personalities who combine qualities that seem to exclude one another and are seldom found together in one individual. She loved tenderly and affectionately, yet would brook no nonsense from anyone. She possessed both a strong self-image and an astonishing humility. A born leader, she was yet completely obedient to her superiors. She could be a windmill of activity at one time and at another be lost in mystical contemplation. Though she was highly intelligent and amazingly efficient, she gravitated toward simple, humble men and women. (pp. 14-15)

Regarding a woman of prayer and penance who came to visit her, Teresa remarks that "she was so far ahead of me in serving the Lord that I was ashamed to stand in her presence", and she says of the nuns with whom she lived in her first reformed convent that "this house was a paradise of delight for Him. ... I live in their company very, very much ashamed." She was of the opinion that she deserved to be persecuted, and she welcomed even untrue accusations against herself. Foundress though she was, Teresa must have been known widly for choosing to do menial tasks, for that trait comes up more than once in the depositions of her process.

In the very nature of things there is an intimate connection between humility and obedience, and while I am omitting in this sketch many of St. Teresa's heroic virtues, I feel that the latter should be joined to the former. To appreciate both of these virtues in her, we need to recall that she was anything but a timid, passive individual. Diffident people often do not find it difficult to acquiesce to another's decisions either because they are reluctant to assume responsibility for important decisions or because they fear failure and criticism. But as we have noted, Teresa was of an entirely cast of mind: she was full of ideas and abounding in initiative and determination. Criticism bothered her not in the least. Being a born leader, she must have found submitting to another's will naturally irksome. Yet her obedience was legendary. We cannot here detail the many examples of the prompt, joyful carrying out of difficult directions that she must have found extremely painful to her buoyant determination. What she taught, she lived. (p. 27)

Earlier this year, on February 2, 2011, Pope Benedict XVI devoted his General Audience to St. Teresa, saying:

It is far from easy to sum up in a few words Teresa's profound and articulate spirituality. I would like to mention a few essential points. In the first place St Teresa proposes the evangelical virtues as the basis of all Christian and human life and in particular, detachment from possessions, that is, evangelical poverty, and this concerns all of us; love for one another as an essential element of community and social life; humility as love for the truth; determination as a fruit of Christian daring; theological hope, which she describes as the thirst for living water. Then we should not forget the human virtues: affability, truthfulness, modesty, courtesy, cheerfulness, culture.

Secondly, St Teresa proposes a profound harmony with the great biblical figures and eager listening to the word of God. She feels above all closely in tune with the Bride in the Song of Songs and with the Apostle Paul, as well as with Christ in the Passion and with Jesus in the Eucharist. The Saint then stresses how essential prayer is. Praying, she says, "means being on terms of friendship with God frequently conversing in secret with him who, we know, loves us" (Vida 8, 5). St Teresa's idea coincides with Thomas Aquinas' definition of theological charity as "amicitia quaedam hominis ad Deum", a type of human friendship with God, who offered humanity his friendship first; it is from God that the initiative comes (cf. Summa Theologiae II-II, 23, 1).

Prayer is life and develops gradually, in pace with the growth of Christian life: it begins with vocal prayer, passes through interiorization by means of meditation and recollection, until it attains the union of love with Christ and with the Holy Trinity. Obviously, in the development of prayer climbing to the highest steps does not mean abandoning the previous type of prayer. Rather, it is a gradual deepening of the relationship with God that envelops the whole of life.

Rather than a pedagogy Teresa's is a true "mystagogy" of prayer: she teaches those who read her works how to pray by praying with them. Indeed, she often interrupts her account or exposition with a prayerful outburst.

Here are some of the resources from Ignatius Press relating to St. Teresa of Avila:
•  Fire Within: Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross and the Gospel on Prayer, by Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M.
• Drink of the Stream: Prayers of Carmelites , compiled by Penny Hickey
• Teresa of Avila: Personality and Prayer , a DVD series by Fr. Dubay
• St. Teresa of Avila , an ambitious mini-series shot in Spain

"Through social networking we receive not prayers and graces but links and likes."

A new issue of Intercollegiate Review, one of my favorite publications, is now available online. There are, as usual, a number of excellent articles. One of those is titled, "Liberty, Technology, and the Advent of Social Networking", written by Gladden J. Pappin, a doctoral candidate in the department of government at Harvard University. Pappin makes the following observations about the assualt of virtual reality upon reality itself:

The Internet and digital imaging technology allow you to imagine yourself anywhere in the world at any time, doing anything or just about anything. But should you actually travel there, the sights quickly shrink in size to the display screen on your camera. The moments of life become a database, ready for facial recognition software to find you in every digitized picture. The world, emptied of meaning, presents an unbearable situation in which meaning must be imposed—any meaning you can find, any time—an unlimited constant announcement of meaning, available for anyone and inescapable. To see a flow of constant interpretation is to witness the death of events, their memory, their study. If an action did not happen before it was interpreted, if our knowledge of far-away events is greater than our knowledge of events nearby, if events nearby seem dull in comparison, significant only if they are tweeted, then in what sense do events happen anywhere in our life? That was Baudrillard's question, a question that grows more pressing as virtual reality extends itself.5

Although the Internet appeals to the desire for privacy and for liberation from place, it also involves networking around particular, shared goods, and the creation of something like a protopolitical community. Social networking apes the old politics of common goods, but it leads to a manic intrusion of the virtual upon the real. In the phenomenon of flash-mobs the virtual passes over into reality on the condition that the real is momentarily treated as the virtual, a pure resource, full of possibility and consequence-free. As any survivor of a flash-mob knows, the damage is not merely virtual. The low entrance fee of a virtual community, whether formed for a virtuous or a vicious end, has the same effect that any other price does. A place in reality has too high a start-up cost by comparison. The currency of good deeds is driven out by the rigor of Gresham's law. The ease of virtual community is offset by the ease of virtual hooliganism.

The community of the Internet is now as spiritual as the communion of saints once was, so it is fitting that McLuhan thought Thomas Aquinas's angelology was important in understanding the media. Through social networking we receive not prayers and graces but links and likes. The church triumphant appears in virtual reality, where all things are possible and everything is realized virtually in the mystical body of the web. As in the resurrection of the body, logging off from your account gives you your body back, this time not glorified but fraught with anxiety, the church suffering after triumph rather than the reverse. Signed off from your account, you are now unaccounted-for. Reality itself becomes the afterlife, the postmodern No Exit where hell is virtual people. The advent of virtual reality, not to say the beginning of modern politics itself, detaches human beings from the consolations of church, city, and family that wayfarers in this life once thought they had. A late-modern Augustine could not see technology as just another dimension of alienation from our heavenly home. We are now aliens twice removed.

Read the entire piece.

Fr. Andrew Apostoli: "But gradually, all of our religious rights are being taken away...."

From an EWTN article about the 94th anniversary of Mary's appearance on October 13, 1917, at Fatima:

The author of an exhaustive study on the Virgin Mary's 1917 appearances in Portugal says her words are being fulfilled by the rise of aggressive secularism and loss of religious freedom in the West.

"Mary, as I see it, pointed out at Fatima that these things were going to happen," said Fr. Andrew Apostoli, a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal and the author of "Fatima For Today" (Ignatius Press, $19.95), in an interview one day before the 94th anniversary of the last apparition in the Portuguese city.

"She said that an evil will begin in Russia, and will spread its errors around the world," Fr. Apostoli noted, recalling Mary's words in 1917.

"Those errors – an atheistic form of government, life, and society – have come upon us now, in the form of secularism, and the attack on life, the family, and religious freedom." ...

Even the anti-Christian French Revolution had publicly acknowledged a "Supreme Being," whereas Russian Communism went further by making atheism state policy.

The United States, Fr. Apostoli said, "would never have accepted communism if it had that label on it, directly. America would have opposed that."

"But that's being broken down, and we're gradually getting many things that were a part of communism."

"Pope Benedict has said that a wind has come over Western Europe, over North America, and has brought a darkness which prevents people from being able to tell right from wrong, truth from distortions," Fr. Apostoli observed.

"We don't have the secret police, coming into our houses and arresting us for saying the Rosary – we don't have that. But gradually, all of our religious rights are being taken away. Things that we support as part of the moral teaching of Christ are being suppressed, and things are being forced upon us." 

"They'll say, 'Oh, you can worship any way you want, but don't bring it into the public square. Leave it in church on Sunday, and don't bring it to work on Monday. Don't bring it into society.'"

"That, to me, is a sign of communism." 

Read the entire article. And here is an excerpt from Fr. Apostoli's book, Fatima For Today: The Urgent Marian Message of Hope:

Nancy Pelosi, right on cue and completely (or strategically?) clueless

First, if I might, a couple of lines from my post today over on the Catholic World Report blog:

To me, the most maddening and common quality shared by the afore-mentioned issues is the complete lack of logical, practical purpose save power, power, and more power. Pelosi didn't need to know the health care bill details because she knew it would eventually accomplish one thing: increase statism and further cripple the opposition. Keep tearing away at the last vestiges of moral fiber until they are replaced with pseuo-populist pablum that scoffs at responsibility and mocks virtue while demanding an all-regulating, all-controlling, all-everything central State. In the blunt words of the U.S. Court of Appeals (Eleventh Circuit), in an August 12, 2011, ruling (PDF file) against the embattled health care legislation:

In sum, the individual mandate is breathtaking in its expansive scope. It regulates those who have not entered the health care market at all. It regulates those who have entered the health care market, but have not entered the insurance market (and have no intention of doing so). It is overinclusive in when it regulates: it conflates those who presently consume health care with those who will not consume health care for many years into the future. The government's position amounts to an argument that the mere fact of an individual's existence substantially affects interstate commerce, and therefore Congress may regulate them at every point of their life.

Yep, from womb (that is, if you make it out) to tomb. Or, in the direct words of Jeffrey Sachs, the author of The Price of Civilization: "Yes, the federal government is incompetent and corrupt—but we need more, not less, of it." Such a "need" is neurotic; it speaks to a misshapen and warped understanding of man, duty, government, and the purpose of life.

And today, Nancy Pelosi said the following, as reported by LifeNews.com:

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took her pro-abortion rhetoric to a new level, today saying Republicans "want women to die on the floor" in expressing her opposition to a bill stopping taxpayer funding of abortions in Obamacare.

"For a moment, I want to get back to what was asked about the issue on the floor today that Mr. Hoyer address," Pelosi said. "He made a point and I want to emphasize it. Under this bill, when the Republicans vote for this bill today, they will be voting to say that women can die on the floor and health care providers do not have to intervene if this bill is passed. It's just appalling."

Pelosi is bastardizing a portion of the bill that reinstates conscience protections for pro-life medical workers who don't want to be involved in abortions.

For Pelosi, the "right" to kill one's child trumps your right to keep innocent blood off your hands. The fact is, calling her "completely clueless" is not correct, for it understates the severe perversion at the heart of her obsessive commitment to abortion. This is about power and corruption. "Power tends to corrupt", Lord Acton (d. 1902) famously said in his letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887, "and absolute power corrupts absolutely." I'm not sure, but perhaps Acton's statement drew upon an earlier statement by Edmund Burke (d. 1797), who wrote, "Unnatural power corrupts both the heart and understanding."

Oftentimes, when I hear of "Catholic" politicians demanding more "pro-choice rights" and demonizing anyone who objects, I think of two passages of Scripture. There are, the author(s) of Proverbs notes, "six things the LORD hates, seven which are an abomination to him:

haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and a man who sows discord among brothers. (Prov 6:16-19)

And from 2 Peter:

They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption; for whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overpowered, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. It has happened to them according to the true proverb, The dog turns back to his own vomit, and the sow is washed only to wallow in the mire. (2 Pet 2:19-22)

Finally, on a closely related note, see Sister Mary Ann Walsh's post, "The ABC Factor at HHS - Anybody But Catholics", on the USCCB site.

Foggy Controversies, Empty Protests, and Faux Freedom

That's the title for a post I wrote for the Catholic World Report blog about what the health care mandates and Wall Street protests have in common. Here's an excerpt:

"We've come a long way in women's health over the last few decades, but we are in a war," Sebelius said at a NARAL Pro-Choice America luncheon attended by about 300 people, who gave some of their loudest applause at her mention of the Obama administration's support for requiring insurance plans to cover birth control without copays.

No sane person will or should mistake the Republican Party for the Catholic Church (or vice versa), but Sebelius may as well have taken a shot or two at the Catholic Church, as the Church also has some serious issues with tax dollars funding responsibility-challenged fornication and the killing of innocents. Perhaps that is what she intended to do with this bit of cutting rhetoric:

"Forty percent of unplanned pregnancies end in those women seeking abortions," Sebelius said, then grew sarcastic: "Wouldn't you think that people who want to reduce the number of abortions would champion the cause of widely available, widely affordable contraceptive services? Not so much."

Come to think of it, how could this not be aimed squarely at the Catholic Church? In 2009, then-Gov. Sebelius, you'll recall, made the statement: "My Catholic faith teaches me that all life is sacred, and personally I believe abortion is wrong." Two years later, she is talking "war" against those who publicly opposed abortion. Hmmm. The pattern of such "Catholic" politicians is as obvious as it is disturbing: cave on contraception, then collapse on abortion, then openly criticize the Church and her teachings.

The sad fact is this: once you publicly mock your mother, you'll ingratiate yourself to nearly anyone, as long it suits your immediate, power-hungry needs. Pelosi's record on this account is long, but no need to recount it since she provided a perfect example of this past week when bestowed (in less than 1,200 pages, thankfully) her pontificating blessing on the excitable youth loitering, camping, drumming, and—oh yeah!—protesting on Wall Street: ...

Read the entire post on the CWR blog.