Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 30

Law and Lawfulness, Obedience and Justice

(us.fotolia.com | bernie_moto)

Law and Lawfulness, Obedience and Justice | James Patrick | CWR

Although the post-modern, secular state may write codes, exact penalties, and levy punishments, these legal entities are ultimately responsible before a higher court

When a moral norm that had been honored in Christendom for two millennia came tumbling down, to my knowledge only one person in any official position, a county court clerk in Ashland, Kentucky, protested its enforcement to the extent of risking imprisonment.

When the decision of the Supreme Court was questioned, the answer was, “It’s the law of the land.” This is an answer that would have been given in Rome, Constantinople, Wessex, Georgian England, and in the United States, but it is also an answer that would have been given in the Third Reich and that is now given in China, Russia, Cuba, and various other tin-pot tyrannies, which suggests that to the question at hand “It’s the law” is an answer so ambiguous as to be morally useless.

The right answer to the question why must any law be obeyed is that it must be obeyed because it is just. There have been other attempts to stake political positions on the grounds that positive law, court decisions, or custom, being only enactments of courts or legislatures, were in fact unjust. The abolition movement, the suffragettes, and the anti-war protests all in some way represented or claimed to represent an appeal against positive law to a (usually poorly defined) higher law.

Whether or to what degree those who make such appeals know it or not, they are invoking one of the most ancient principles known to jurisprudence, at least until day before yesterday: the principle that positive law should, but sometimes may not, reflect or represent natural law. Now this is not a principle that can rightly be used to justify every complaint or grievance, or to justify civil disobedience—there is always a practical assumption in favor of authority—but nonetheless the appeal to natural law is the principle that underlay the vast medieval texture of claims to legitimacy or lawfulness. The same appeal to the natural law was implicit in Magna Carta and the charges brought by the Declaration of Independence against George III.

The classic structure of law upon which the lawfulness of positive law rests, while assumed by Cicero, Saint Paul (it underpins Romans 2:14-16), and by Saint Augustine, was stated comprehensively in St. Thomas in the Summa Theologica, Ia-IIae.

Continue reading at CWR's "The Dispatch".

New: "Subverted: How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women's Movement"

Now available from Ignatius Press:

Subverted: How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women's Movement

by Sue Ellen Browder

Contraception and abortion were not originally part of the 1960s women’s movement. How did the women’s movement, which fought for equal opportunity for women in education and the workplace, and the sexual revolution, which reduced women to ambitious sex objects, become so united?

In Subverted, Sue Ellen Browder documents for the first time how it all happened, in her own life and in the life of an entire country. Trained at the University of Missouri School of Journalism to be an investigative journalist, Browder unwittingly betrayed her true calling and became a propagandist for sexual liberation. As a long-time freelance writer for Cosmopolitan magazine, she wrote pieces meant to soft-sell unmarried sex, contraception, and abortion as the single woman’s path to personal fulfillment. She did not realize until much later that propagandists higher and cleverer than herself were influencing her thinking and her personal choices as they subverted the women’s movement.

The thirst for truth, integrity, and justice for women that led Browder into journalism in the first place eventually led her to find forgiveness and freedom in the place she least expected to find them. Her in-depth research, her probing analysis, and her honest self-reflection set the record straight and illumine a way forward for others who have suffered from the unholy alliance between the women’s movement and the sexual revolution.

Sue Ellen Browder is a freelance writer who has appeared on Oprah, the Today Show, and hundreds of radio talk shows. Her work forCosmopolitan, New Woman, Woman’s Day, and other magazines has given her a lifetime of experience with the women’s movement as it unfolded in the media, both on the public stage and behind the scenes.

"Subverted offers a window into our uniquely disturbed historical era. Generations of readers will turn to Subverted when they want to know what turned the tide." 
— Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D., Founder and President, the Ruth Institute

"Browder combines a compelling personal narrative with piercing observations from her work in women’s media, resulting in a book you can’t put down."
— Jennifer Fulwiler, Author, Something Other Than God

"Subverted is a game changer for our culture, and in particular, for women."
— Abby Johnson, Author, Unplanned

"What a romp—through the offices, the backrooms, and even the personal lives that brought you the sexual revolution!"
— Helen Alvaré, Professor of Family Law, George Mason University

"Here are two books, two stories in one. The first opens your heart, the second opens your eyes."
— Peter Kreeft, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy, Boston College

"Here is the eye-opening account of how the feminist movement got hopelessly off track, and how a one-time Cosmo writer managed to find her way back to God’s reality."
— Steven Mosher, President, Population Research Institute

"This is a courageous book!"
— Vicki Thorn, Founder, Project Rachel

"A gripping story that uncovers the dirty secrets behind the women’s movement. A must-read for Millennials." 
— Kristan Hawkins, President, Students for Life of America 

"Browder’s understanding of the human person, the intrinsic need for relationship, is beautiful and deep." 
— Jeanne Mancini, Director, March for Life

"Sue Ellen Browder is silent no more about her role in promoting a distorted feminism; you will be refreshed by her courage." 
— Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director, Priests for Life

Interview with Sue Ellen Browder:

Pope Francis and True Mercy

Pope Francis poses with clergy and women religious during his general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican Oct. 7. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Pope Francis and True Mercy | Bishop Robert Barron | CWR

Why I balk at the suggestion that the new Pope represents a revolution or that he is dramatically turning away from the example of his immediate predecessors

Having just returned from a week covering Pope Francis's triumphant journey to the United States, I can confidently tell you that the news media are in love with the Vicar of Christ. Time and again, commentators, pundits, anchorpersons, and editorialists opined that Pope Francis is the bomb. They approved, of course, of his gentle way with those suffering from disabilities and his proclivity to kiss babies, but their approbation was most often awakened by this Pope's "merciful" and "inclusive" approach, his willingness to reach out to those on the margins. More often than not, they characterized this tenderness as a welcome contrast to the more rigid and dogmatic style of Benedict XVI. Often, I heard words such as "revolutionary" and "game-changing" in regard to Pope Francis, and one commentator sighed that she couldn't imagine going back to the Church as it was before the current pontiff.

Well, I love Pope Francis too, and I certainly appreciate the novelty of his approach and his deft manner of breathing life into the Church. In fact, a number of times on the air I commented that the Pope's arrival to our shores represented a new springtime after the long winter of the sex abuse scandals. But I balk at the suggestion that the new Pope represents a revolution or that he is dramatically turning away from the example of his immediate predecessors. And I strenuously deny that he is nothing but a soft-hearted powder-puff, indifferent to sin.

A good deal of the confusion stems from a misinterpretation of Francis's stress on mercy.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

"The Surrender upon Sex": If G.K Chesterton were writing today...

Chesterton may not have been able to foretell the future but this essay—"The Surrender upon Sex"—indicates that he was surely prophetic. From the collection In Defense of Sanity: The Best Essays of G.K. Chesterton:

I have explained that these are sketches of six separate occasions, on which I should have become a Catholic, if I had not been the one and only kind of human being who cannot become a Catholic. The excitement of conversion is still open to the atheist and the diabolist; and everybody can be converted except the convert. In my first outline, I mentioned that one of the crises, which would in any case have driven me the way I had gone already, was the shilly-shallying and sham liberality of the famous Lambeth Report on what is quaintly called Birth Control. It is in fact, of course, a scheme for preventing birth in order to escape control. But this particular case was only the culmination of a long process of compromise and cowardice about the problem of sex; the final surrender after a continuous retreat.

There is one historical human fact which now seems to me so plain and solid, that I think that even if I were to lose the Faith, I could not lose sight of the fact. It has rather the character of a fact of chemistry or geology; though from another side it is mysterious enough, like many other manifest and unmistakable facts. It is this: that at the moment when Religion lost touch with Rome, it changed instantly and internally, from top to bottom, in its very substance and the stuff of which it was made. It changed in substance; it did not necessarily change in form or features or externals. It might do the same things; but it could not be the same thing. It might go on saying the same things; but it was not the same thing that was saying them. At the very beginning, indeed, the situation was almost exactly like that. Henry VIII was a Catholic in everything except that he was not a Catholic. He observed everything down to the last bead and candle; he accepted everything down to the last deduction from a definition; he accepted everything except Rome. And in that instant of refusal, his religion became a different religion; a different sort of religion; a different sort of thing. In that instant it began to change; and it has not stopped changing yet. We are all somewhat wearily aware that some Modern Churchmen call such continuous change progress; as when we remark that a corpse crawling with worms has an increased vitality; or that a snow-man, slowly turning into a puddle, is purifying itself of its accretions. But I am not concerned with this argument here. The point is that a dead man may look like a sleeping man a moment after he is dead; but decomposition has actually begun. The point is that the snowman may in theory be made in the real image of man. Michelangelo made a statue in snow; and it might quite easily have been an exact replica of one of his statues in marble; but it was not in marble. Most probably the snow-man has begun to melt almost as soon as it is made. But even if the frost holds, it is still a stuff capable of melting when the frost goes. It seemed to many that Protestantism would long continue to be, in the popular phrase, a perfect frost. But that does not alter the difference between ice and marble; and marble does not melt.

The same sort of Progressives are always telling us to have a trust in the Future. As a fact, the one thing that a progressive cannot possibly have is a trust in the Future. He cannot have a trust in his own Future; let alone in his own Futurism. If he sets no limit to change, it may change all his own progressive views as much as his conservative views. It was so with the Church first founded by Henry VIII; who was, in almost everything commonly cursed as Popery, rather more Popish than the Pope. He thought he might trust it to go on being orthodox; to go on being sacramentalist; to go on being sacerdotalist; to go on being ritualist, and the rest. There was only one little weakness. It could not trust itself to go on being itself. Nothing else, except the Faith, can trust itself to go on being itself.

Now touching this truth in relation to Sex, I may be permitted to introduce a trivial journalistic anecdote. A few years before the War, some of my fellow-journalists, Socialists as well as Tories, were questioning me about what I really meant by Democracy; and especially if I really thought there was anything in Rousseau’s ideal of the General Will. I said I thought (and I think I still think) that there can be such a thing, but it must be much more solid and unanimous than a mere majority, such as rules in party politics. I applied the old phrase of the Man in the Street, by saying that if I looked out of the window at a strange man walking past my house, I could bet heavily on his thinking some things, but not the common controversial things. The Liberals might have a huge majority, but he need not be a Liberal; statistics might prove England to be preponderantly Conservative, but I would not bet a button that he would be Conservative. But (I said) I should bet that he believes in wearing clothes. And my Socialist questioners did not question this; they, too, accepted clothes as so universal an agreement of common sense and civilisation, that we might attribute the tradition to a total stranger, unless he were a lunatic. Such a little while ago! To-day, when I see the stranger walking down the street, I should not bet that he believes even in clothes. The country is dotted with Nudist Colonies; the bookstalls are littered with Nudist magazines; the papers swarm with polite little paragraphs, praising the brownness and braveness of the special sort of anarchical asses here in question. At any given moment, there may be a General Will; but it is an uncommonly weak and wavering sort of will, without the Faith to support it.

As in that one matter of modesty, or the mere externals of sex, so in all the deeper matters of sex, the modern will has been amazingly weak and wavering. And I suppose it is because the Church has known from the first this weakness which we have all discovered at last, that about certain sexual matters. She has been very decisive and dogmatic; as many good people have quite honestly thought, too decisive and dogmatic. Now a Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is. And the most striking and outstanding illustration is perhaps to be found in the Catholic view of marriage as compared with the modern theory of divorce; not, it must be noted, the very modern theory of divorce, which is the mere negation of marriage; but even more the slightly less modern and more moderate theory of divorce, which was generally accepted even when I was a boy. This is the very vital point or test of the question; for it explains the Church’s rejection of the moderate as well as the immoderate theory. It illustrates the very fact I am pointing out, that Divorce has already turned into something totally different from what was intended, even by those who first proposed it. Already we must think ourselves back into a different world of thought, in order to understand how anybody ever thought it was compatible with Victorian virtue; and many very virtuous Victorians did. But they only tolerated this social solution as an exception; and many other modern social solutions they would not have tolerated at all. My own parents were not even orthodox Puritans or High Church people; they were Universalists more akin to Unitarians. But they would have regarded Birth-Prevention exactly as they would have regarded Infanticide. Yet about Divorce such liberal Protestants did hold an intermediate view, which was substantially this. They thought the normal necessity and duty of all married people was to remain faithful to their marriage; that this could be demanded of them, like common honesty or any other virtue. But they thought that in some very extreme and extraordinary cases a divorce was allowable. Now, putting aside our own mystical and sacramental doctrine, this was not, on the face of it, an unreasonable position. It certainly was not meant to be an anarchical position. But the Catholic Church, standing almost alone, declared that it would in fact lead to an anarchical position; and the Catholic Church was right.

Any man with eyes in his head, whatever the ideas in his head, who looks at the world as it is to-day, must know that the whole social substance of marriage has changed; just as the whole social substance of Christianity changed with the divorce of Henry VIII. As in the other case, the externals remained for a time and some of them remain still. Some divorced persons, who can be married quite legally by a registrar, go on complaining bitterly that they cannot be married by a priest. They regard a church as a peculiarly suitable place in which to make and break the same vow at the same moment. And the Bishop of London, who was supposed to sympathise with the more sacramental party, recently submitted to such a demand on the ground that it was a special case. As if every human being’s case were not a special case. That decision was one of the occasions on which I should have done a bolt, if I had delayed it so long. But the general social atmosphere is much the most important matter. Numbers of normal people are getting married, thinking already that they may be divorced. The instant that idea enters, the whole conception of the old Protestant compromise vanishes. The sincere and innocent Victorian would never have married a woman reflecting that he could divorce her. He would as soon have married a woman reflecting that he could murder her. These things were not supposed to be among the daydreams of the honeymoon. The psychological substance of the whole thing has altered; the marble has turned to ice; and the ice has melted with most amazing rapidity. The Church was right to refuse even the exception. The world has admitted the exception; and the exception has become the rule.

As I have said, the weak and inconclusive pronouncement upon Birth-Prevention was only the culmination of this long intellectual corruption. I need not discuss the particular problem again at this point; beyond saying that the same truth applies as in the case of Divorce. People propose an easy way out of certain human responsibilities and difficulties; including a way out of the responsibility and difficulty of doing economic justice and achieving better payment for the poor. But these people propose this easy method, in the hope that some people will only use it to a moderate extent; whereas it is much more probable that an indefinite number will use it to an indefinite extent. It is odd that they do not see this; because the writers and thinkers among them are no longer by any means optimistic about human nature, like Rousseau; but much more pessimistic about human nature than we are. Considering mankind as described, for instance, by Mr. Aldous Huxley, it is hard to see what answer he could possibly give, except the answer which we give, if the question were put thus: “On the one side, there is an easy way out of the difficulty by avoiding childbirth; on the other side, there is a very difficult way out of the difficulty, by reconstructing the whole social system and toiling and perhaps fighting for the better system. Which way are the men you describe more likely to take?” But my concern is not with open and direct opponents like Mr. Huxley; but with all to whom I might once have looked to defend the country of the Christian altars. They ought surely to know that the foe now on the frontiers offers no terms of compromise; but threatens a complete destruction. And they have sold the pass.

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Read more of G.K. Chesterton’s stirring, prophetic, humorous, and profound essays in the book In Defense of Sanity: The Best Essays of G.K. Chesterton, featuring essays selected by Dale Ahlquist, Joseph Pearce, and Aidan Mackey.

The True Mercy of Christ is the Real Promise of Sainthood

Bishops arrive in procession for the opening Mass of the Synod of Bishops on the family in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican Oct. 4. (CNS photo/L'Osservatore Romano, handout)

The True Mercy of Christ is the Real Promise of Sainthood | Dr. Leroy Huizenga | CWR

The Synod fathers face a choice between the empty moralism of liberal religion and the radical, transformative, and merciful commands of Christ

Pope Francis has made “mercy” the leitmotif of his pontificate, going so far as to declare a holy year of mercy as an extraordinary jubilee, beginning on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception this December 8 and running to the feast of Christ the King on November 20, 2016.

And this is a jubilee with real teeth. It is no accident that Francis’ significant canonical reforms of the annulment process, issued for the Western Churches in the form of a motu proprio entitled Mitis Iudex Dominus Iesus and designed to make the process more efficient in service of justice, truth, and mercy, take effect the same day the holy year of mercy commences.

But mercy nowadays is misunderstood. Not necessarily by the Holy Father, but, I think, certainly by some who would trade on Pope Francis’ popular persona to advance their own ideas about doctrine and practice under the banner of mercy. Pope Francis has repeatedly affirmed and defended fundamental Christian teaching on marriage, sex, and family; others employing the theme of mercy, not so much.

St. Thomas Aquinas, representative of the broader Catholic tradition, regards mercy as a true virtue (ST II-II.30.3) that involves “heartfelt sympathy for another's distress, impelling us to succor him if we can” (ST II-II.30.1). For Aquinas, of course, the virtue of mercy functions hand in hand with other human and theological virtues so that it serves salvation, the return of the creature to God the creator. Succoring the sinner in distress would involve setting him on the path of salvation.

Reducing mercy to laxity

In our contemporary situation, however, high-ranking prelates, some with serious theological training, seem bent on reducing mercy to laxity. Chesterton famously observed, “The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.” Mercy suffers this fate at present. It is pitted against justice, against discipline, against doctrine, against truth, even against what seems the obvious teaching of Jesus. How did we come to this point?

The answer is that for many, experience trumps revelation. Experience with fallen, fallible, frail human beings gives many clergy—including those who become theologians, bishops, and cardinals—deep sensitivity to the real pain people feel when others wound them, when they fail, when they feel the have nothing left. Life is hard, even in the modern age, and clergy have a genuine desire to alleviate emotional and spiritual suffering.

And so we have bishops, archbishops, and cardinals discussing openly how the Church might approach those they believe cannot live by the Church’s teaching.

Pause, and let that sink in.

On one hand, this attitude sounds compassionate, merciful, and missional. On the other hand, it involves the subtle assumption that the promises of Christ really aren’t for everyone, that sanctification isn’t possible, that conformity to the will of God and mind of Christ is the province of an elite.

The result is a two-tiered Christianity, in which a few people can live the Christian life fully as taught by Jesus and his Church, while most others cannot and are left mired in their sin, struggles, and failings, suffering the soft bigotry of the low expectations elite churchmen have for them.

Continue reading at CWR.

The Quebecoise Alternative to the St. Gallen Mafia

Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, talks during an April 20 press conference to announce the canonization of Blessed Junipero Serra at the Vatican. (CNS photo/Tony Gentile, Reuters)

The Quebecoise Alternative to the St. Gallen Mafia

Cardinal Marc Ouellet, author of Mystery and Sacrament of Love, does not think it possible to allow Communion to the divorced and remarried without doing violence to the sacramental ontology

One of the sobering thoughts about our present times is that two of the top papabile candidates at the last conclave were scholars who had devoted their intellectual work to the development of the Church’s understanding of the sacrament of marriage: Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan, and Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the former Primate of Canada who is now the Prefect for the Congregation of Bishops.  

These two men were definitely not members of the “St. Gallen mafia”, the name Cardinal Danneels recently used to describe his club of senior clerics who plotted to undermine the theological work of the JPII-BXVI papacies.  They were and remain men close to the heart of St. John Paul II’s theological vision of the Catholic family as an icon of the love of the Holy Trinity and as the foundation of a re-evangelised western civilisation, based on a union of Christian charity and Christian reason.

A synthesis of Cardinal Scola’s theological vision can be found in his book The Nuptial Mystery, published by Eerdmans in 2005.  It was followed by Ouellet’s Divine Likeness: Toward a Trinitarian Anthropology of the Family, also published by Eerdmans, in 2006.  Now, in 2015, Eerdmans has published a further work by Cardinal Ouellet entitled Mystery and Sacrament of Love:  A Theology of Marriage and the Family for the New Evangelisation.  

The three works complement each other.  Along with St. John Paul II’s Catechesis on Human Love, these three books offer the richest and most mature expression of the post-conciliar Catholic theology of marriage.  The trilogy makes a great gift to newly minted priests as ordination presents.

The Nuptial Mystery focuses on the notion of nuptiality and its significance for the discipline of theology in general, not merely for the theology of marriage.  Divine Likeness is focused on the relationship between the Holy Trinity and the human family and is, technically speaking, a work of theological anthropology.  The latest book, Mystery and Sacrament of Love, amplifies and deepens themes in the earlier works with particular attention given to issues in sacramental theology, including the relationship between marriage and the Eucharist and the relationship between the priesthood and the sacraments of Eucharist and marriage.

At the risk of sounding polemical, one could say that it is the theological vision outlined in these three works, built as it was on St. John Paul II’s Catechesis on Human Love, that Cardinals Kasper and Danneels and their colleagues in the St. Gallen mafia want to suppress as all too lofty and difficult.

Cardinal Ouellet however hopes that the ideas presented in The Mystery and Sacrament of Love will offer a blue-print for a ‘pastoral conversion’ rooted in a ‘theological conversion’.  

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

"Christ and the Rich Young Ruler" (1889) by Heinrich Hofmann [WikiArt.org]

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, October 11, 2015 | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• Wis 7:7-11
• Ps 90:12-13, 14-15, 16-17
• Heb 4:12-13
• Mk 10:17-30

“Once we see Jesus as a teacher of enlightenment, faith changes its focus,” wrote New Age guru Deepak Chopra in his 2008 best-seller, The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore (New York, 2008), “You don't need to have faith in the Messiah or his mission.”

[My lengthy review and critique of Chopra's book can be read on Ignatius Insight: "Chopra's Christ: The Mythical Creation of a New Age Panthevangelist".]

Chopra’s statement is a perfect summation of the way many people today claim to accept Christ while actually rejecting him. And although the language of “enlightenment” might be modern and monistic, Chopra’s approach is hardly new. In fact, it bears a strong resemblance to the path chosen by the rich young ruler, whose encounter with Jesus is described in today’s Gospel reading.

Kneeling in respect, the man addressed Jesus as “Good teacher” and asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” It was a good start. After all, many people of the first century and the twenty-first century (and every century between) have failed to appreciate Jesus as a teacher. Many of them, it seems, don’t even ask the basic, essential questions about their existence: “Who am I? Why am I here? What or who am I made for?”

“Why,” Jesus asked the man, “do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” This response is often misunderstood or misinterpreted.  Some skeptics say, “See! Jesus denied that he was God!” But this misses how Jesus used questions to prompt deeper answers, and how he offered in his response an invitation to deeper reflection and recognition. Put another way, Jesus was asking the rich young man to more clearly identify the basis for his recognition that Jesus was good.

In reciting some of the core commandments of the Law, Jesus further opened the doors of invitation. He knew—as the one of gave the Law and fulfilled it perfectly—that the Law was a signpost, not the destination. The Law, as Paul often pointed out, reveals our desperate need for God, but cannot save us.

The young man seemed to implicitly understand the incomplete nature of the Law, for he had observed the Law his entire life, yet wanted something more. Jesus then took the invitation to the next level, asking him to sell his possessions, “then come, follow me.” It is here that the rubber meets the road, for it is one thing to give your attention to a teacher for a few hours, days, or semesters; it is quite another to give yourself completely to the Savior. It’s nice to have a good teacher; it’s frightening to a put your life in the hands of the Messiah and to join in his mission.

“He did not follow,” wrote St. Augustine of the rich young man, “He just wanted a good teacher, but he questioned who the teacher was and scorned the identity of the One who was teaching.” Jesus seems so agreeable as long as he agrees with us. It is so much easier to make him a mere teacher, or to remake him in our image and according to our likes and dislikes. Jesus, however, will have none of it, for he came not just to teach but also to transform.

The treasure of earth is so tangible, while the treasure of heaven can seem remote and unobtainable. Pleasure is so immediate, while God can sometime seem so distant. Power is intoxicating, while humility can appear dry and dull. We can be tempted to despair, like the disciples, and exclaim, “Then who can be saved?”

In response to this question, Jesus offered a third invitation—or, better, a third overture of the same essential invitation: “For human beings it is impossible, but not for God.” This is the invitation to total faith and familial trust in God the Father, who sent the Son as Savior, and who gives the Holy Spirit as a seal “in our hearts as a guarantee” (cf. 2 Cor. 1:21-22).

Many men—rich, famous, and otherwise—have rejected the invitation. Will we depart in sadness or accept in gladness?

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the October 11, 2009, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

Issues beneath issues at Synod 2015

A Swiss Guard salutes as Bishop Anton Bal of Kundiawa, Papua New Guinea, Bishop Jaime Rafael Fuentes Martin of Minas, Uraguay, and Cardinal Daniel Sturla Berhouet of Montevideo, Uruguay, leave a session of the Synod of Bishops on the family at the Vatican Oct. 6. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Issues beneath issues at Synod 2015 | George Weigel | CWR

There has been much talk and discussion about divorce, remarriage, and nullity, but more attention should be paid to the serious matters “beneath the surface” of those debates

ROME. Since Pope Francis announced that two Synods would examine the contemporary crisis of marriage and the family and work to devise more evangelically dynamic responses to that crisis, a lot of attention has focused on issues of Catholic discipline: How does the Church determine that a marriage never existed and thus grant a decree of nullity? What is to be done about the sacramental situation of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics? How does the Church best prepare its sons and daughters for marriage?

Beneath these visible questions lie more basic questions of the Church’s self-understanding. So one hopes that Synod 2015 will focus some of its attention on these very serious matters “beneath the surface” of the current debate.

1. Can Catholics be both sinner and saved?

Proposals to admit divorced and remarried Catholics to Holy Communion, after a penitential period but without a decree that the prior marriage never existed  (an “annulment”), seem to some to reflect Martin Luther’s old claim that Christians are always simul iustus et peccator, “both sinner and saved.” Fifty years of ecumenical dialogue and serious theological work have not found a way to square this claim with classic Catholic understandings of sin and grace. Would the admission of the divorced and civilly remarried to Holy Communion eviscerate the Church’s classic understanding of God’s life within us, how we can reject that grace by certain grave sins, and how we are restored to friendship with God?

2. How does the Church help its people climb the ladder of love?

Continue reading on the CWR site.

New: "Signs of the Holy One: Liturgy, Ritual, and Expression of the Sacred"

Now available from Ignatius Press:

Signs of the Holy One: Liturgy, Ritual, and Expression of the Sacred

by Fr. Uwe Michael Lang, of the Oratory

Catholic liturgy is far more than its texts. It is a synthesis that also includes several other elements—gesture, music, art, and architecture—which are aspects of the non-verbal language of the sacred and are what make the liturgy beautiful.

Father Lang’s consideration of the beauty of the liturgy addresses the modern notion that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, that the experience of beauty is entirely subjective. This idea makes it difficult to articulate criteria for what is beautiful, yet sacred liturgy does indeed have objective measures for evaluating its principal elements. Reflecting upon these and quoting from authoritative Church documents, Father Lang discusses sacred music, art, and architecture, and demonstrates how the beauty of these elements makes present the sacred.

Pope Benedict XVI said, “The greatness of the liturgy depends—we shall have to repeat this frequently—on its non-spontaneity.” Continuous liturgical experimentation is unable to induce a sense of meaning or peace, writes Father Lang, because novelty does not satisfy the yearning for the Transcendent within the human psyche, which is rarely far from the surface.

Fr. Uwe Michael Lang, a native of Germany, is a priest of the Congregation of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in London. He holds a Mag. Theol. in Catholic theology from the University of Vienna and a D.Phil. in theology from the University of Oxford. Fr. Lang is a staff member of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, a Consultor to the Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff and Academic Coordinator of the Master program in "Architecture, Sacred Art and Liturgy" at the Universita Europea di Roma. Turning towards the Lord has been published in several languages, including German, Italian, French, and Spanish. Recently, Fr. Lang has edited the volume Die Anaphora von Addai und Mari: Studien zu Eucharistie und Einsetzungsworten (2007).

Praise for Signs of the Holy One:

"In this wonderful book, Fr. Lang explores the beauty of sacred symbols and actions in the Catholic liturgy and explains why their rediscovery is important in our modern age. Deserves to be widely read."
— Cardinal George Pell, Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy

"There are many reasons to recommend this book, including its convenient gathering together of many sources and documents of the Church, its ample footnotes and bibliography, its concise summaries of key issues, and its evaluation of various viewpoints concerning the sacred in contemporary theology."
— Fr. Samuel F. Weber, O.S.B., Author, The Office of Compline

"Fr. Lang reminds us that the liturgy is first and foremost the action of Christ Himself. He provides a welcome resource for that formation in the spirit and power of the liturgy for which the Second Vatican Council called."
— Dom Alcuin Reid, Author, The Organic Development of the Liturgy

"Fr. Lang urges us to think about liturgy as an event, not merely a collection of texts. After providing a comprehensive anthropological and theological foundation for sacred worship, he invites his readers to reflect on how the liturgy is performed."
— Milton Walsh, Author, In Memory of Me: Meditations on the Roman Canon

"This is an original synthesis, based upon a sound grasp of modern anthropological and theological foundations, showing the intrinsic connection between the beautiful and the sacred."
— Professor William Mahrt, Stanford University

"The Ignatius Press books have been indispensable ..."

From a National Catholic Register article, "Ignatius Press and Its High-Profile Authors Still Inform Synod Debate", by Joan Frawley Desmond:

SAN FRANCISCO — In October 2014, on the eve of the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family at the Vatican, Ignatius Press organized a fast-track printing job for a new title, Remaining in the Truth of Christ: Marriage and Communion in the Catholic Church.

The book featured essays by Cardinal Raymond Burke and four other cardinals who defend Church discipline that bars divorced-and-civilly-remarried Catholics from receiving Communion.

In order to get the book out in time for the start of the 2014 synod, the publishing house printed hundreds of copies in Rome and then sent them to the mailboxes of synod participants.

But Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary general of the synod, claimed the books had arrived “irregularly” and ordered their removal. Few of the intended recipients received a copy in time.

Leaked to the press, Cardinal Baldisseri’s action sparked headlines and raised questions about whether the extraordinary synod, the first in a two-step process, would be as transparent and collegial as Pope Francis had promised.

Now, as the ordinary synod commences just a year later, a fresh batch of Ignatius titles are poised to inform the debate inside and outside the proceedings at the Vatican.

“The Ignatius Press books have been indispensable in creating the open conversation for which Pope Francis called in convening the two synods on the family,” George Weigel told the Register in an email message from Rome. “Their impact will be felt not only throughout the synod, but long afterwards.”

The new titles run the gamut, starting with God or Nothing, a book-length interview with Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea, the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

The Rigging of a Vatican Synod? An Investigation Into Alleged Manipulation at the Extraordinary Synod on the Family, an e-book by Edward Pentin, the Register’s Rome correspondent, examines claims that the 2014 synod was manipulated to favor changes in pastoral policies for Catholics with same-sex attraction or those who are divorced and civilly remarried.

“Pentin’s is probably the first breaking news e-book we have published,” Mark Brumley, the president of Ignatius Press, told the Register.

Some of the publisher’s authors probe arguments calling for a relaxation of Church practices that affirm the indissolubility of marriage, and others present the biblical and historical foundations of Catholic teaching on marriage.

Read the entire feature on at NCRegister.com.