Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 288

New from Fr. Robert Barron: The Catholicism Series!

Fr. Robert Barron created this groundbreaking program as a thematic presentation of what Catholics believe and why, so all adults can come to a deeper understanding of the Catholic Faith. Not a video lecture, Church history or scripture study, this engaging and interesting formational program uses the art, architecture, literature, music and all the treasures of the Catholic tradition to illuminate the timeless teachings of the Church.

This stunning new CATHOLICISM series presents the strong, ecclesial dimension of the Catholic Faith – God's revelation through Jesus Christ and His Church. It is comprehensive, deeply inspiring and faithful, and appropriate for a wide variety of uses including:

Individual Study
Family Inspiration
RCIA
Adult lay formation
Training adult catechists
Deaconate and other ministerial training
Mature high school or college/university course-work

The CATHOLICISM formation journey includes:

[image error]Catholicism

A Ten Part Series - DVD
For the first time, in breathtaking, high-definition cinematography, the beauty, goodness and truth of the Catholic Faith are illustrated in a rich, multimedia experience. Journey with acclaimed author, speaker and theologian Fr. Robert Barron to more than 50 locations throughout 15 countries. Be illuminated by the spiritual and artistic treasures of this global culture that claims more than one billion of the earth's people. From the sacred lands of Israel to the beating heart of Uganda...from the glorious shrines of Italy, France, and Spain, to the streets of Mexico, Kolkata, and New York City, the fullness of Catholicism is revealed.

 

 

[image error] Catholicism

Study Guide and Workbook
This study guide and workbook takes each student of Catholicism deeper into the Faith and into the film series. It is appropriate for individual or group study. The Catholicism Study Guide and Workbook contains ten lessons, which correspond to each episode of Fr. Barron's DVD series. Each study guide lesson provides commentary on the theological content of each episode, plus "Questions for Understanding" and "Questions for Application." The "Questions for Understanding" incorporate references from Scripture and from the Catechism of the Catholic Church to build on topics featured in the series. The "Questions for Application" help you reflect on how Father Barron's message is relevant to your own life and experiences. The study guide commentary and questions were written by Catholic author and Ignatius Insight Editor, Carl Olson.

 

[image error]Catholicism

A Journey to the Heart of the Faith
Fr. Robert Barron
This companion book complements the DVD series and study program.
The book is based on the scripts for the series, but delves more deeply into the content, including over 100 photos of the art used in the documentary. In this book Father Barron seeks to capture the body, heart and mind of the Catholic faith. Starting from the essential foundation of Jesus Christ's incarnation, life, and teaching, Father Barron moves through the defining elements of Catholicism-from sacraments, worship, and prayer, to Mary, the Apostles, and Saints, to grace, salvation, heaven, and hell-using his distinct and dynamic grasp of art, literature, architecture, personal stories, Scripture, theology, philosophy, and history to present the Church to the world.

 

Announcing the International Symposium, "Council and Continuity", Oct. 3-4, 2011

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The Worship and Liturgy office of the Diocese of Phoenix (AZ) is hosting an international symposium, "Council and Continuity", on October 3 and 4, 2011, that will focus on "the interim missals and the immediate post-conciliar liturgical reform."

Addresses and speakers include:

• Opening: Greetings and Introduction – Bishop Thomas Olmsted, M.A.Th., J.C.D.
• The Historical Development of the Mass from its Origins to Sacrosanctum Concilium – Prof. Dr. H.-J. Feulner, S.T.L., S.T.D.
• The Historical Development of the Mass from Sacrosanctum Concilium to the Present – Prof. D. Martis, M.Div., S.T.L., Ph.D., S.T.D.
• The Latin-English Missals of 1964/66 (US) – A. Bieringer, M.A., M.A.Th.
• The Liturgical Renewal and the Ordo Missae (1965) – Rev. Deacon Prof. Dr. H. Hoping, S.T.D.
• Vespers with Homily – Bishop S. Cordileone, B.A., S.T.B., J.C.D
• Liturgy – Continuity or Rupture? Possibilities for Further Liturgical Development and Its Pastoral Relevance – Bishop P. Elliott, M.A., D.D., S.T.D.

There are also a number of minor lectures. Full details and information about registration can be found on the Diocese of Phoenix website.

Your birth, O Virgin Mother of God, heralded joy to the universe...

... for from you rose the Sun of Justice, Christ our God.
He took away the curse,
He gave the blessing and by trampling Death, He gave us everlasting life.

Through your holy birth, O Immaculate One,
Joachim and Anna were freed from the reproach of childlessness,
and Adam and Eve from the corruption of death.
Delivered from the guilt of sin, your people celebrate this when they cry out to you:
"She who is barren gives birth to the Mother of God and the Sustainer of our Life.

Mothers cannot be virgins,
nor virgins be mothers;
but in you, O Mother of God,
both virginity and motherhood were present.
Therefore, all the people of the earth unceasingly extol you.

O my soul, extol the Virgin Mary, wondrously born.

— Hymns  from the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom on the Feast of the Nativity of the Most Holy Lady, the Mother of God.

And here are some of the opening paragraphs of Blessed John Paul II's 1987 encyclical, Redemptoris Mater, in which the late Holy Father remarked upon the birth and unique calling of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

In fact, even though it is not possible to establish an exact chronological point for identifying the date of Mary's birth, the Church has constantly been aware that Mary appeared on the horizon of salvation history before Christ. It is a fact that when "the fullness of time" was definitively drawing near—the saving advent of Emmanuel—he who was from eternity destined to be his Mother already existed on earth. The fact that she "preceded" the coming of Christ is reflected every year in the liturgy of Advent. Therefore, if to that ancient historical expectation of the Savior we compare these years which are bringing us closer to the end of the second Millennium after Christ and to the beginning of the third, it becomes fully comprehensible that in this present period we wish to turn in a special way to her, the one who in the "night" of the Advent expectation began to shine like a true "Morning Star" (Stella Matutina). For just as this star, together with the "dawn," precedes the rising of the sun, so Mary from the time of her Immaculate Conception preceded the coming of the Savior, the rising of the "Sun of Justice" in the history of the human race.

Her presence in the midst of Israel—a presence so discreet as to pass almost unnoticed by the eyes of her contemporaries—shone very clearly before the Eternal One, who had associated this hidden "daughter of Sion" (cf. Zeph. 3:14; Zeph. 2:10) with the plan of salvation embracing the whole history of humanity. With good reason, then, at the end of this Millennium, we Christians who know that the providential plan of the Most Holy Trinity is the central reality of Revelation and of faith feel the need to emphasize the unique presence of the Mother of Christ in history, especially during these last years leading up to the year 2000.

4. The Second Vatican Council prepares us for this by presenting in its teaching the Mother of God in the mystery of Christ and of the Church. If it is true, as the Council itself proclaims, that "only in the mystery of the Incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light," then this principle must be applied in a very particular way to that exceptional "daughter of the human race," that extraordinary "woman" who became the Mother of Christ. Only in the mystery of Christ is her mystery fully made clear. Thus has the Church sought to interpret it from the very beginning: the mystery of the Incarnation has enabled her to penetrate and to make ever clearer the mystery of the Mother of the Incarnate Word. The Council of Ephesus (431) was of decisive importance in clarifying this, for during that Council, to the great joy of Christians, the truth of the divine motherhood of Mary was solemnly confirmed as a truth of the Church's faith. Mary is the Mother of God (= Theotókos), since by the power of the Holy Spirit she conceived in her virginal womb and brought into the world Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who is of one being with the Father. "The Son of God...born of the Virgin Mary...has truly been made one of us," has been made man. Thus, through the mystery of Christ, on the horizon of the Church's faith there shines in its fullness the mystery of his Mother. In turn, the dogma of the divine motherhood of Mary was for the Council of Ephesus and is for the Church like a seal upon the dogma of the Incarnation, in which the Word truly assumes human nature into the unity of his person, without cancelling out that nature.

5. The Second Vatican Council, by presenting Mary in the mystery of Christ, also finds the path to a deeper understanding of the mystery of the Church. Mary, as the Mother of Christ, is in a particular way united with the Church, "which the Lord established as his own body." It is significant that the conciliar text places this truth about the Church as the Body of Christ (according to the teaching of the Pauline Letters) in close proximity to the truth that the Son of God "through the power of the Holy Spirit was born of the Virgin Mary." The reality of the Incarnation finds a sort of extension in the mystery of the Church-the Body of Christ. And one cannot think of the reality of the Incarnation without referring to Mary, the Mother of the Incarnate Word.

In these reflections, however, I wish to consider primarily that "pilgrimage of faith" in which "the Blessed Virgin advanced," faithfully preserving her union with Christ. In this way the "twofold bond" which unites the Mother of God with Christ and with the Church takes on historical significance. Nor is it just a question of the Virgin Mother's life-story, of her personal journey of faith and "the better part" which is hers in the mystery of salvation; it is also a question of the history of the whole People of God, of all those who take part in the same "pilgrimage of faith."

The Council expresses this when it states in another passage that Mary "has gone before," becoming "a model of the Church in the matter of faith, charity and perfect union with Christ." This "going before" as a figure or model is in reference to the intimate mystery of the Church, as she actuates and accomplishes her own saving mission by uniting in herself—as Mary did—the qualities of mother and virgin. She is a virgin who "keeps whole and pure the fidelity she has pledged to her Spouse" and "becomes herself a mother," for "she brings forth to a new and immortal life children who are conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of God." (pars. 3-5)

Related on Ignatius Insight:

• The Blessed Virgin in the History of Christianity | John A. Hardon, S.J.
• Mary in Byzantine Doctrine and Devotion | Brother John M. Samaha, S.M.
• The Past Her Prelude: Marian Imagery in the Old Testament | Sandra Miesel
• Fairest Daughter of the Father: On the Solemnity of the Assumption | Rev. Charles M. Mangan
• "Hail, Full of Grace": Mary, the Mother of Believers | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• Mary in Feminist Theology: Mother of God or Domesticated Goddess? | Fr. Manfred Hauke
• Excerpts from The Rosary: Chain of Hope | Fr. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R.
• Mary and the Moslems | Bishop Fulton J. Sheen | From The World's First Love
• Immaculate Mary, Matchless in Grace | John Saward
• The Medieval Mary | The Introduction to Mary in the Middle Ages | by Luigi Gambero
• Misgivings About Mary | Dr. James Hitchcock
• Born of the Virgin Mary | Paul Claudel
• Assumed Into Mother's Arms | Carl E. Olson
• The Disciple Contemplates the Mother | Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis

The Mass: The Gift of the Father | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.

"In the Mass all that we receive is a gift of the Father. It is never ours to shape as we please." — Archbishop Vincent Nichols, Diocese of Westminster, June 7, 2011.

In the Adoremus Bulletin for August, 2011, Helen Hitchcock republished the sermon of the English Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols. The Archbishop was speaking to priests of his diocese about the spirit in which they should welcome the new translation of the Mass. Speaking of John 16, Nichols said that "the wonder of our calling, the wonder of the mystery we minister to (is) that we human beings are welcomed into the intimacy and love of the Father and Son, which is the life of the Holy Spirit." Priests enter "most powerfully" through the celebration of Mass.  In the Mass all is "gift of the Father." These are the key words that Nichols uses to remind us of what Mass means. The Mass that Nichols was celebrating at the time used the new translation.

This new translation, Nichols thought, would suddenly awaken us to new words or to see old ones new again, to be even more alert to what is being said. But what Nichols was primarily concerned with, as was the Vatican Instruction, Redemptionis Sacramentum, of 2004, was what we do, how we look on the celebration of Mass. Nichols gives some very excellent advice. "My first conviction is this: Liturgy is never my own possession, or my creation. It is something we are given by the Father." These are noble, precise words. The Mass, while it is in a human language with human movements, is never simply what this priest makes up.  Nichols adds: "We don vestments to minimize our personal preferences, not to express or emphasize them. Liturgy is not ours." That is a refreshing idea. Vestments are meant to diminish the personality of the priest so that the priesthood of Christ becomes central. Liturgy is not "self-expression."

Though much can be said for memorization of texts, I have always thought that the priest should largely "read" the Mass as it is set in the Missal so that the faithful, listening to him and watching him, will know that what he says and does is not his, but the action of Christ in the Church. "The Mass is the action of the Church," as Nichols puts it.  At this point, Nichols has an aside memory. As he recalls, he once heard that John Paul II "never commented on a Mass he had celebrated. It's the Mass. My task is to be faithful." That is really profound. Blessed John Paul II, as we read in his encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, spells out the whole theology of the Eucharist. But the Mass is not "his." It is the Sacrifice of the Cross, what Christ told us to do in His memory. We do not say "Schall said a fine Mass." The Mass is the Mass. It is public. The priest is to be faithful to what the Mass is, not to his views.

Nichols then points out that "the Liturgy forms us, not us the Liturgy." We do not "use" the Mass as an excuse to get people together. The togetherness at Mass is a result of what it is: an assembly of those who believe that it is the Memorial of the Crucifixion of the Lord. Those present at the Mass who do not believe are mere spectators. With regard to priests who keep changing the wording of the Mass to suit their style, Nichols adds: "The words of the Mass form our faith and our prayer. They are better than my spontaneous creativity. At Mass my place is very clear. I am an instrument in the hands of the Lord." 

Redemptionis Sacramentum repeats what is a long tradition in the Church, namely that each priest should say his own Mass frequently, indeed he is encouraged to say Mass each day (#110). Archbishop Nichols says: "My celebration of the Mass each morning shapes my heart for the day ahead." The Instruction adds: All priests, to whom the  Priesthood and the Eucharist are entrusted for the sake of others, should remember that they are enjoined to provide the faithful with the opportunity to satisfy the obligation of participating at Mass on Sundays" (#163). The "shaping of the heart" by Mass belongs to everyone. Archbishop Nichols puts it well: "Our (priestly) part is to offer the Mass as a service of the people. "

In his book, The Spirit of the Liturgy, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger stated that the priest needs to "decrease," to use words of John the Baptist. The Mass is not about him. One of the upsetting effects of turning the altar around was its inducement to turn the priest into an actor or a commentator. He too easily sees himself as the center. This is why the Pope has said that there should be a crucifix on every altar that faces the people, just to remind everyone what the real center is. The traditional setting of the altar is when everyone, priest and congregation are all facing the same direction, toward the Lord.

"The fashion of our celebration of the Mass," Nichols repeated, "should never be dominating or over-powering of those taking part. It should be well judged, respectful of its congregation, sensitive to their spiritual needs." The Archbishop adds something about the beauty and inner order of the church itself. A church should be beautiful. "A beautiful, cared for church is the best preparation we can provide." He cites one of his predecessors, Cardinal Hume. Churches are not just other buildings. They are "building with which we worship the Lord." This is what the great cathedrals are, as well as so many lovely "ordinary" churches.

Archbishop Nicholas has a final, moving point that goes to the very essence of Christianity. Christianity is not a "religion," which properly means an aspect of the virtue of justice by which all men set aside some sign of acknowledgment of the divine source. The point of view of Christianity is from top down. That is, it is something that has been given to us, unexpectedly, unanticipated.  This understanding is what lies behind the emphasis on the fact that the priest is not the one who is the center. He stands in place of something. It is not "his" Mass. "In the Mass all that we receive is a gift of the Father," the Archbishop tells us. "It is never ours to use and shape as we please. In the Mass all is to the glory of the Son. In this we are no more than instruments, humble and delighted to play our part…. In the Mass we who know Him also know that we are in this world to serve its humanity, in His name, until He comes again."

Archbishop Nichols, I think, has it just right. We have received a gift that explains ultimately what we are. We will not concoct something better. In the meantime, we are asked to keep the reality, the memory, of what the Last Supper is, with its leading to the Crucifixion and our redemption before us. We do this primarily at Mass when we know what it is, when we, in the end, can say simply, that we are obedient servants. It is our obedience that opens our eyes. Like John Paul II, we do not "comment" on a Mass we have said. "It is the Mass. My task is to be obedient." The fact is that nothing we change, subtract, or add makes it better (RS #31).

"In the Mass, all that we have is a gift of the Father." Once we have understood this reality, little more needs to be said.

Fr. James V. Schall, S.J., is Professor of Political Philosophy at Georgetown University.

He is the author of numerous books on social issues, spirituality, culture, and literature including Another Sort of Learning, Idylls and Rambles, A Student's Guide to Liberal Learning, The Life of the Mind (ISI, 2006), The Sum Total of Human Happiness (St. Augustine's Press, 2007), The Regensburg Lecture (St. Augustine's Press, 2007), and The Mind That Is Catholic: Philosophical and Political Essays (CUA, 2008). His most recent book from Ignatius Press is The Order of Things (Ignatius Press, 2007). His new book, The Modern Age, is available from St. Augustine's Press. Read more of his essays on his website.

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles and Excerpts:

• "Benedict XVI has dared to do it." | The Preface to The Old Mass and The New: Explaining the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum of Pope Benedict XVI | Bishop Marc Aillet
• Foreword to U.M. Lang's Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• The Reform of the Liturgy and the Position of the Celebrant at the Altar | Uwe Michael Lang | From Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer (2nd edition)
• The Altar and the Direction of Liturgical Prayer | Excerpt from The Spirit of the Liturgy | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• How Should We Worship? | Preface to The Organic Development of the Liturgy by Alcuin Reid, O.S.B. | by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• Learning the Liturgy From the Saints | An Interview with Fr. Thomas Crean, O.P., author of The Mass and the Saints
• The Mass of Vatican II | Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.
• Walking To Heaven Backward | Interview with Father Jonathan Robinson of the Oratory
• Does Christianity Need A Liturgy? | Martin Mosebach | From The Heresy of Formlessness: The Roman Liturgy and Its Enemy
• Music and Liturgy | Excerpt from The Spirit of the Liturgy | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• Rite and Liturgy | Denis Crouan, STD
• The Liturgy Lived: The Divinization of Man | Jean Corbon, OP
• The Latin Mass: Old Rites and New Rites in Today's World | Anthony E. Clark, Ph.D.
• Worshipping at the Feet of the Lord: Pope Benedict XVI and the Liturgy | Anthony E. Clark, Ph.D.
• Reflections On Saying Mass (And Saying It Correctly) | Fr. James V. Schall, S. J.
• Liturgy, Catechesis, and Conversion | Barbara Morgan

Benedict XVI reflects on Psalmist's lament and prayer of supplication

From Vatican Information Service:

VATICAN CITY, 7 SEP 2011 (VIS) - This morning Benedict XVI travelled by helicopter from the Apostolic Palace in Castelgandolfo to the Vatican for his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square.

Continuing a series of catecheses on the subject of "the school of prayer", the Holy Father turned his attention to Psalm 3 which recounts David's flight from Jerusalem when Absalom rose against him. "In the Psalmist's lament", the Pope said, "each of us may recognise those feelings of pain and bitterness, accompanied by faith in God, which, according the biblical narrative, David experienced as he fled from his city".

In the Psalm, the king's enemies are many and powerful, and the imbalance between David's forces and those of his persecutors "justifies the urgency of his cry for help". Nonetheless his adversaries "also seek to break his bond with God and to undermine the faith of their victim by insinuating that the Lord cannot intervene". Thus, the aggression "is not only physical, it also has a spiritual dimension" aimed at "the central core of the Psalmist's being. This is the extreme temptation a believer suffers: the temptation of losing faith and trust in the closeness of God", the Holy Father said.

Yet, as the Book of Wisdom says, the unrighteous are mistaken because "the Lord ... is like a shield protecting those who entrust themselves to Him. He causes them to raise their heads in sign of victory. Man is no longer alone ... because the Lord hears the cry of the oppressed. ... This intertwining of human cry and divide response is the dialectic of prayer and the key to reading the entire history of salvation. A cry expresses a need for help and appeals to the faithfulness of the other. To cry out is an act of faith in God's closeness and His willingness to listen. Prayer express the certainty of a divine presence which has already been experienced and believed, and which is fully manifested in the salvific response of God".

Psalm 3 presents us "a supplication replete with faith and consolation. By praying this Psalm we share the sentiments of the Psalmist: a just but persecuted figure which would later be fulfilled in Jesus. In pain, danger and the bitterness of misunderstanding and offence, the words of this Psalm open our hearts to the comforting certainty of faith. God is always close, even in times of difficulty, problems and darkness. He listens, responds and saves.

"However", the Pope added, "it is important to be able to recognise His presence and to accept His ways: like David during his humiliating flight from his son Absalom, like the persecuted righteous of the Book of Wisdom and, finally and fully, like the Lord Jesus on Golgotha. In the eyes of the unrighteous it appeared that God did not intervene and that His Son died, but for believers it was at that precise moment that true glory was manifested and definitive salvation achieved".

The Pope concluded: "May the Lord give us faith, may He come in aid of our weakness and help us to pray in moments of anguish, in the painful nights of doubt and the long days of pain, abandoning ourselves trustingly to Him, our shield and our glory".

Related, on Ignatius Insight:

• Lord, Teach Us To Pray | Fr. Jerome Bertram | From Jesus, Teach Us To Pray
• Contemplation and the Liturgy | 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.
• "Lord, teach us to pray" | Gabriel Bunge, O.S.B.
• 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

"One reason the early Christians liked the codex ...

.... was that it helped differentiate them from the Jews, who kept (and still keep) their sacred text in the form of a scroll. But some very alert early Christian must also have recognized that the codex was a powerful form of information technology — compact, highly portable and easily concealable. It was also cheap — you could write on both sides of the pages, which saved paper — and it could hold more words than a scroll. The Bible was a long book.

The codex also came with a fringe benefit: It created a very different reading experience. With a codex, for the first time, you could jump to any point in a text instantly, nonlinearly. You could flip back and forth between two pages and even study them both at once. You could cross-check passages and compare them and bookmark them. You could skim if you were bored, and jump back to reread your favorite parts. It was the paper equivalent of random-access memory, and it must have been almost supernaturally empowering. With a scroll you could only trudge through texts the long way, linearly. (Some ancients found temporary fixes for this bug — Suetonius apparently suggested that Julius Caesar created a proto-notebook by stacking sheets of papyrus one on top of another.)

Over the next few centuries the codex rendered the scroll all but obsolete. In his "Confessions," which dates from the end of the fourth century, St. Augustine famously hears a voice telling him to "pick up and read." He interprets this as a command from God to pick up the Bible, open it at random and read the first passage he sees. He does so, the scales fall from his eyes and he becomes a Christian. Then he bookmarks the page. You could never do that with a scroll.

Right now we're avidly road-testing a new format for the book, just as the early Christians did. Over the first quarter of this year e-book sales were up 160 percent. Print sales — codex sales — were down 9 percent. Those are big numbers. But unlike last time it's not a clear-cut case of a superior technology displacing an inferior one. It's more complex than that. It's more about trade-offs.

On the one hand, the e-book is far more compact and portable than the codex, almost absurdly so. E-books are also searchable, and they're green, or greenish anyway (if you want to give yourself nightmares, look up the ecological cost of building a single Kindle). On the other hand the codex requires no batteries, and no electronic display has yet matched the elegance, clarity and cool matte comfort of a printed page.

That is a lengthy quote from an engaging and thoughtful essay, "From Scroll to Screen", written by Lev Grossman for the New York Times (Sept. 2, 2011). Grossman puts his finger directly on something that I've experienced over the past few months as I've tested, used, and formed a wary like/dislike relationship with my Kindle (a Christmas from "the family"): the unique ability the reader of a traditional book (codex) possesses in jumping to and fro throughout the book, something that so far has not been replicated in any real way on devices such as Kindle. It is, for me, the biggest drawback and most frustrating aspect of the Kindle; it also gives me hope, however, that the physical, traditional book will long be with us, as it possesses several characteristics that really cannot be reproduced or truly replaced by a digital device.

This really came home to me when I made the mistake of buying the first volume of Bruce Waltke's excellent commentary on Proverbs for use on my Kindle, to use in teaching the weekly Bible study I lead at my parish. I quickly realized how much, in using commentaries, Bibles, dictionaries, and various reference works, I jump around—sometimes frenetically—flipping from this section to that section, index to page, page to endnotes, and so forth. With a book, this is easy and natural; I've been doing it for decades, and I've long enjoyed being able to glace through a book quickly or more leisurely, randomly or more systematically, depending on the book and my reason for looking through it.

Not so with the Kindle, which is, as Grossman states, completely linear and therefore noticeably limited:

But so far the great e-book debate has barely touched on the most important feature that the codex introduced: the nonlinear reading that so impressed St. Augustine. If the fable of the scroll and codex has a moral, this is it. We usually associate digital technology with nonlinearity, the forking paths that Web surfers beat through the Internet's underbrush as they click from link to link. But e-books and nonlinearity don't turn out to be very compatible. Trying to jump from place to place in a long document like a novel is painfully awkward on an e-reader, like trying to play the piano with numb fingers. You either creep through the book incrementally, page by page, or leap wildly from point to point and search term to search term. It's no wonder that the rise of e-reading has revived two words for classical-era reading technologies: scroll and tablet. That's the kind of reading you do in an e-book.

The codex is built for nonlinear reading — not the way a Web surfer does it, aimlessly questing from document to document, but the way a deep reader does it, navigating the network of internal connections that exists within a single rich document like a novel. Indeed, the codex isn't just another format, it's the one for which the novel is optimized. The contemporary novel's dense, layered language took root and grew in the codex, and it demands the kind of navigation that only the codex provides.

Granted, e-book technology is going to change and improve; it will do so, I suspect, constantly in the years to come. But I think this matter of linear and non-linear reading is will long be an issue for many people, including myself. It is related to another issue: with books, I can have several open on the desk/table in front of me, and I can therefore multi-task, so to speak, when researching or studying. Books are amazingly flexible in this regard. In addition, physical books have a certain, dare I say, personality, a singular quality that is more than the sum of their size, paper weight, font, cover, and so forth.

Or, put another way: I like to work and write in a room filled with books. To me, there is something singular and special about walking into a room filled with books, whether a bookstore (preferably used), public library, or (the best) a personal library.

That said, there are some definite pluses to a Kindle. Most of these are fairly obvious:

• The ability to have hundreds of e-books and texts in a single device. Invaluable, obviously, for travel and storage.

• The ability to acquire available e-books immediately, and usually at prices comparable to or less than the cost of a book. A huge plus, without a doubt. However, there are, I believe, certain subtle dangers inherent to such instant gratification, one of them being a failure to really appreciate the value (not simple monetary in nature) of a book. Put another way, it feeds a certain "fast food", hyper-consumerist mentality, in which more and more things become disposable.

• The ability to read samples of books that you might not be able to find right away in the local bookstore or library. I've downloaded many samples, and then have bought the physical book.

• The Kindle is very easy to read, and the text can be sized and leaded according to personal tastes.

• The ability to view Word documents, PDF files, and other personal files on the Kindle. Very helpful.

I'm sure there are more, but those stand out to me at the moment. What do you think?

Abp. Thomas Gullickson recommends YOUCAT for "every Catholic home bookshelf"

Apostolic Archbishop Thomas Edward Gullickson, who is papal nuncio in Ukraine (and who hails from Sioux Falls, South Dakota) has a new blog, "Deo Volente Ex Animo", and one of his first posts is about the Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church (YOUCAT):

I finally managed this vacation to take a look at YOUCAT, The Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church, English edition from Ignatius Press. The book did not disappoint. Although I cannot claim that I did more than breeze through it, this is one for every Catholic home bookshelf. If you find the CCC, The Catechism of the Catholic Church, too monumental at times, this book is for you, young or old. I would venture to say that there is not and never has been since I've been a priest (1976) a catechism on the market as well organized and useful as this one.

The question and answer format with references to the more ample teaching of the CCC, no small amount of great commentary and lots of quotes in the outside columns, are complemented by lovely and lively photography all through the book. My reservations over some of the little line-drawings (stick-men) in the margins are not even worth mentioning. The index is far superior to that of the CCC and if you know the general structure of the CCC this book will soon be at your command as a handy reference, and especially via the 10 Commandments to the whole spectrum of fundamental moral teaching and much more. It is definitely something Father should keep on hand when he is preparing his Sunday homily, because the definitions are crystal clear and succinct; many of the marginal quotes from popes, great saints, philosophers and otherwise great thinkers are ready at hand for almost every topic.
Read the entire post. Also see his review post of the book, Mary: The Church At the Source (Ignatius Press, 2005), by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar. (HT: Chris Burgwald).

Only Part of the Story: Shaw on Social Justice and Virtue

Only Part of the Story | Russell Shaw | Catholic World Report

The conventional wisdom operative in American Catholic social justice circles neglects the role of virtue.

What is social justice? In Catholic circles, the expression is much in use these days, but is it used correctly—used, that is, according to its meaning in the Catholic tradition and the Magisterium of the Church? A lot more than you might expect depends on the answer to that.

Recently I received, unsolicited, a 39-page booklet called What Is Social Justice? According to this popularly written account, published by Acta Publications in Chicago, the essence of social justice is expressed in collective action to reform social structures on behalf of the common good.

In support of this understanding, the author approvingly quotes Ronald Krietemeyer, a justice and peace executive at the United States Catholic Conference in the '70s and '80s now with Catholic Charities in St. Paul: "Social justice is not about private individual acts. It is about collective actions aimed at transforming social institutions and structures in order to achieve the common good."

Krietemeyer isn't the only one who thinks that. Along with others who are cited in What Is Social Justice? as sharing this point of view, the collective-action school includes Father J. Bryan Hehir, another USCC justice and peace guru of three decades ago, who now heads Catholic Charities in Boston and teaches at Harvard. In an article on social justice written for Father Richard McBrien's HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism (1995), Father Hehir says:

The function of social justice is to evaluate the essential institutions of society in terms of their ability to satisfy the minimum needs and basic rights of the citizenry…. It is usually expected that social justice will be accomplished through organized activity rather than individual action.

Two things stand out in all this: collective action and reforming social structures. According to What Is Social Justice? the source of this vision of social justice is Father William Ferree, SM (1905-1985), an American Marianist priest who published several influential books on Catholic social teaching. In expounding social justice, however, Father Ferree also had a source: Pope Pius XI. Especially important is the landmark social encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (On Reconstruction of the Social Order), which he published in 1931. The question then necessarily becomes: What did Pius XI mean by "social justice"?

Fortunately, that question receives an exhaustive discussion in Church, State, and Society by theologian J. Brian Benestad of the University of Scranton (newly published by the Catholic University of America Press). Subtitled An Introduction to Catholic Social Doctrine, Benestad's scholarly volume deserves to become a standard work in its field.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com...

The unwieldiness of G. K. Chesterton, a "literary cornucopia"

One of my favorite contemporary authors, Roger Kimball, co-editor of New Criterion (see my 2005 interview with him), has written a review essay about new books by William Oddie and Ian Kerr about Chesterton. He begins:

In life, there was always something unwieldy about Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Mentally as well as physically, he was a man who tended to . . . overflow. Like Flambeau, the criminal mastermind of his Father Brown mysteries, Chesterton was fully six-foot-four. Vertically, he left off growing in adolescence. Horizontally, he kept going. Slender in youth, he was solid as a young man and positively rotund in his thirties. His body was the perfect correlative for the drama he enacted. Chesterton always seems to have favored pince-nez, but it was his wife, Frances, who advocated the familiar equipage that defined his public image. With billowing cape and wide-brimmed hat, brandishing a sword stick and often sporting a pistol from his pocket as he strode up and down his beloved Fleet Street, Chesterton cut a figure as imposing as one of his famous epigrams.

And:

Chesterton was a literary cornucopia. The tally includes some 100 books. His first two volumes, published in 1900 when he was in his mid-twenties, were collections of poems (of Greybeards at Play, the first, W. H. Auden said, that it contained "some of the best pure nonsense verse in English"). There followed many collections of columns and essays (he wrote some 4,000), biographical studies (of Browning, the Victorian painter G. F. Watts, Aquinas, and St. Francis Assisi, among others), hundreds of short stories (including the Father Brown series), more collections of poems, several plays, a clutch of famous phantasmagorical novels (The Napoleon of Notting Hill, The Man Who Was Thursday), and several classic—if also idiosyncratic—works of Christian apologetics. No less an authority than Etienne Gilson called Orthodoxy (1908) "the best piece of apologetic the century produced." "I did try to found a heresy of my own," Chesterton cheerfully acknowledges; "and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy." If you can read only one of Chesterton's nonfictional works, make it Orthodoxy: it is as eloquent as it is insightful. (Although posterity regards Chesterton as Catholic through and through, he was raised Anglican and wasn't received into the Church until 1922: Orthodoxy is a Catholic work by a practicing Protestant.)

Read the entire essay, "G. K. Chesterton: master of rejuvination", on www.NewCriterion.com.

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) Author Page | Ignatius Insight

• Articles By and About G. K. Chesterton
• Ignatius Press Books about G. K. Chesterton
• Books by G. K. Chesterton

Fifteen Songs about Work (that work for me)

Now for something really serious. There are thousands of pop songs with the words "love" and "loving" in the titles. Of the 48,500 songs in my iTunes, almost 1600 have one of the two words in the title. But songs with "work" and "working" or "labor" are a bit harder to come by; I have less than eighty. The plus side is that it takes much less work to select some favorites:

• "I've Been Working" by Van Morrison, originally on the outstanding album, "His Band and The Street Choir", and live on at least two other releases. Lyrically simple, but a really fun song live, as this 1979 video indicates.

• "Working On The Highway" by Bruce Springsteen. From my favorite Springsteen album, "Born in the U.S.A.".

• "Working on a Building" by Cowboy Junkies or John Fogerty. The CJ version of this gospel classic has been covered by numerous artists. The CJ version, from "The Trinity Sessions", is muted and haunting; the JF verision, from his criminally-underrated "The Blue Mountain Rangers" album, is a stompin', raw bit of swamp magic.

• "Working Late" by Lone Justice. If you don't think the term "cowboy punk" makes sense, you've never heard the great Maria McKee ripping it up with Lone Justice.

• "Working for the Weekend" by Loverboy. A slice of mid-1980s power pop-rock nonsense. But fun, sing-along nonsense.

• "Working For The Man" by Roy Orbison. One of many classic cuts by the great Orbison, whose unique vocals were equally dramatic and melancholy.

• "Working Man" and "Workin' Them Angels" by Rush. The first cut is from the first Rush album, with basic working man blues set to a Led Zep/prog vibe; the second is from the recent "Snakes and Arrows" CD. Bonus fact: Geddy Lee, lead singer of Rush, had a song titled, "Working At Perfekt", on his solo album, "My Favorite Headache". It seems rather fitting as Rush is one of the hardest-working bands of the past thirty years.

• "Nice Work If You Can Get It" by Frank Sinatra/Count Basie, or Mel Tormé. Another song covered by numerous artists, but it's hard to get better than Sinatra and Tormé. Sinatra's version, which is live, is upbeat, while Tormé's rendition is a more leisurely, coy take, from the fabulous 1956 album, "Mel Tormé Sings Fred Astaire".

• "This Woman's Work" by Kate Bush (covered by Maxwell, Greg Laswell; new version by Bush for "Director's Cut"). A gut-wrenching, beautiful song about labor—as in childbirth. One of Bush's most emotionally direct songs, from "The Sensual World".

• "We Work The Black Seam" by Sting. From the Police's frontman's first solo album, "Dream of the Blue Turtles," a dark but beautiful tune about the 1984-5 United Kingdom miners' strike.

• "We Can Work It Out" by The Beatles. A Lennon/McCartney hit with "work" in the title that is actually about love, recorded and released in 1965.

• "Worked It Out Wrong" by Chris Isaak. Another working song about love, from "Always Got Tonight". Gorgeous vocals by Isaak, an underrated songwriter.

• "Worksong" by Avishai Cohen. From the the Israeli bassist's just released album, "Seven Seas", based heavily on Yiddish folk melodies. Quite lovely.

• "Labor Day" by John Patitucci, from the album "Now". A fitting song for the day, from another great jazz bassist. Here's a live version on YouTube.

Speaking of love and work, country singer and songwriter Radney Foster gets special mention for having the only song (in my collection, that is) with both words in the title of a song:  "Labor Of Love", by the album of the same name.

"Work is one of the characteristics that distinguish man..."

... from the rest of creatures, whose activity for sustaining their lives cannot be called work. Only man is capable of work, and only man works, at the same time by work occupying his existence on earth. Thus work bears a particular mark of man and of humanity, the mark of a person operating within a community of persons. And this mark decides its interior characteristics; in a sense it constitutes its very nature.

That is from the opening of Blessed John Paul II's 1981 encyclical, Laborem exercens (On Human Work), issued thirty years ago this month (Sept. 14), which is a must read for anyone interested in a Catholic understanding of work and a "theology of labor" (my term, not JPII's). Here are just a few passages worth mulling over for a few moments on Labor Day:

It is not for the Church to analyze scientifically the consequences that these changes may have on human society. But the Church considers it her task always to call attention to the dignity and rights of those who work, to condemn situations in which that dignity and those rights are violated, and to help to guide the above-mentioned changes so as to ensure authentic progress by man and society. (#1)

The Church finds in the very first pages of the Book of Genesis the source of her conviction that work is a fundamental dimension of human existence on earth. An analysis of these texts makes us aware that they express-sometimes in an archaic way of manifesting thought-the fundamental truths about man, in the context of the mystery of creation itself. These truths are decisive for man from the very beginning, and at the same time they trace out the main lines of his earthly existence, both in the state of original justice and also after the breaking, caused by sin, of the Creator's original covenant with creation in man. When man, who had been created "in the image of God.... male and female", hears the words: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it", even though these words do not refer directly and explicitly to work, beyond any doubt they indirectly indicate it as an activity for man to carry out in the world. Indeed, they show its very deepest essence. Man is the image of God partly through the mandate received from his Creator to subdue, to dominate, the earth. In carrying out this mandate, man, every human being, reflects the very action of the Creator of the universe. (#4)

 

Man has to subdue the earth and dominate it, because as the "image of God" he is a person, that is to say, a subjective being capable of acting in a planned and rational way, capable of deciding about himself, and with a tendency to self-realization. As a person, man is therefore the subject ot work. As a person he works, he performs various actions belonging to the work process; independently of their objective content, these actions must all serve to realize his humanity, to fulfil the calling to be a person that is his by reason of his very humanity. (#6)

Everybody knows that capitalism has a definite historical meaning as a system, an economic and social system, opposed to "socialism" or "communism". But in the light of the analysis of the fundamental reality of the whole economic process-first and foremost of the production structure that work is-it should be recognized that the error of early capitalism can be repeated wherever man is in a way treated on the same level as the whole complex of the material means of production, as an instrument and not in accordance with the true dignity of his work-that is to say, where he is not treated as subject and maker, and for this very reason as the true purpose of the whole process of production. (#7)

And yet, in spite of all this toil-perhaps, in a sense, because of it-work is a good thing for man. Even though it bears the mark of a bonum arduum, in the terminology of Saint Thomas, this does not take away the fact that, as such, it is a good thing for man. It is not only good in the sense that it is useful or something to enjoy; it is also good as being something worthy, that is to say, something that corresponds to man's dignity, that expresses this dignity and increases it. If one wishes to define more clearly the ethical meaning of work, it is this truth that one must particularly keep in mind. Work is a good thing for man-a good thing for his humanity-because through work man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his own needs, but he also achieves fulfilment as a human being and indeed, in a sense, becomes "more a human being". (#9)

It must be remembered and affirmed that the family constitutes one of the most important terms of reference for shaping the social and ethical order of human work. The teaching of the Church has always devoted special attention to this question, and in the present document we shall have to return to it. In fact, the family is simultaneously a community made possible by work and the first school of work, within the home, for every person. (#10)

Therefore, while the position of "rigid" capitalism must undergo continual revision, in order to be reformed from the point of view of human rights, both human rights in the widest sense and those linked with man's work, it must be stated that, from the same point of view, these many deeply desired reforms cannot be achieved by an a priori elimination of private ownership of the means of production. For it must be noted that merely taking these means of production (capital) out of the hands of their private owners is not enough to ensure their satisfactory socialization. They cease to be the property of a certain social group, namely the private owners, and become the property of organized society, coming under the administration and direct control of another group of people, namely those who, though not owning them, from the fact of exercising power in society manage them on the level of the whole national or the local economy.

This group in authority may carry out its task satisfactorily from the point of view of the priority of labour; but it may also carry it out badly by claiming for itself a monopoly of the administration and disposal of the means of production and not refraining even from offending basic human rights. Thus, merely converting the means of production into State property in the collectivist system is by no means equivalent to "socializing" that property. We can speak of socializing only when the subject character of society is ensured, that is to say, when on the basis of his work each person is fully entitled to consider himself a part-owner of the great workbench at which he is working with every one else. (#14)

Man ought to imitate God both in working and also in resting, since God himself wished to present his own creative activity under the form of work and rest. This activity by God in the world always continues, as the words of Christ attest: "My Father is working still ...": he works with creative power by sustaining in existence the world that he called into being from nothing, and he works with salvific power in the hearts of those whom from the beginning he has destined for "rest" in union with himself in his "Father's house". Therefore man's work too not only requires a rest every "seventh day"), but also cannot consist in the mere exercise of human strength in external action; it must leave room for man to prepare himself, by becoming more and more what in the will of God he ought to be, for the "rest" that the Lord reserves for his servants and friendsThe Christian finds in human work a small part of the Cross of Christ and accepts it in the same spirit of redemption in which Christ accepted his Cross for us. In work, thanks to the light that penetrates us from the Resurrection of Christ, we always find a glimmer of new life, of the new good, as if it were an announcement of "the new heavens and the new earth" in which man and the world participate precisely through the toil that goes with work. Through toil-and never without it. On the one hand this confirms the indispensability of the Cross in the spirituality of human work; on the other hand the Cross which this toil constitutes reveals a new good springing from work itself, from work understood in depth and in all its aspects and never apart from work.

Is this new good-the fruit of human work-already a small part of that "new earth" where justice dwells? If it is true that the many forms of toil that go with man's work are a small part of the Cross of Christ, what is the relationship of this new good to the Resurrection of Christ? (#27)

Read the entire encyclical.

Also see:

• Rerum Novarum and Seven Principles of Catholic Social Doctrine | Barbara Lanari