Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 311

"Chesterton's genius lay in the fact that he was a deeply Catholic thinker ..."

... and, more than that, a deeply Catholic man.  He did not enter the Church until 1922, but he thought as a Catholic long before then.  His astonishing output of books, magazine articles, poetry, mysteries, literary criticism, and plays reveals the mind, heart, and soul of what Dale Ahlquist, President of the American Chesterton Society, calls a "complete thinker".  He was as at home (and as profound and funny) talking about theology as he was dealing with politics, the works of Dickens, the American Experiment, or the latest kook insisting on vegetarianism.  He could, he said, find his way to a discussion of the deepest truths of the Faith beginning with anything from pork to pyrotechnics, because he deeply believed in (and was profoundly grateful for) the fact that everything in this world is a gift of a loving Creator who is also Father.

Chesterton has been called the "Laughing Prophet", and with good reason.  He was one of the most consistently funny writers in English.  But he is also one of the most insightful.  Reading his writing from a century ago, one is struck again and again by how much of the 20th Century he foresaw – and how blind his trendier contemporaries were to the outcome of their fashionable philosophies. 

Chesterton was also a profoundly humble man.  He enjoyed no joke so much as one at his own expense.  And he had a brilliant ability to see what is good, even in thinking and deeds of people with whom he deeply disagrees.  He had the knack of being friends with a whole host of leading lights of his day, even as he carried on disputes with them in which he reduced their arguments to dust.

From Mark Shea's column, "G. K. Chesterton: An Appreciation", on Headline Bistro, written to mark the 75th anniversary of Chesterton's passing from this life to the next.

There is much that has been and can be said about Chesterton. Here is a bit from my essay, "Chesterton and the 'Paradoxy' of Orthodoxy":

My favorite passage of Chestertonian brilliance is the sixth chapter of Orthodoxy, titled "Paradoxes of Christianity." It should be required reading for all critics of Christianity, especially those self-anointed, enlightened folk who, gazing back (and down) upon two thousand years of dogmatic darkness, have figured out all that is wrong and insulting about the Church and now eagerly take up sticks with which to beat down the crude absurdities embraced by the followers of Jesus.

In that chapter the young Chesterton (just in his early thirties when he penned Orthodoxy), described his own intellectual journey from paganism to agnosticism to theism. Along the way he examined various challenges to Christianity, noting, "It was attacked on all sides and for all contradictory reasons." His observations are just as illuminating today as they were one hundred years ago—perhaps even more so—for they outline the flawed nature of the biases of skeptics and scoffers, and are therefore of no small assistance to anyone defending Christianity in today's hostile public square

Read the entire piece. For much, much more about Chesterton's life and work, see these various links on Ignatius Insight:

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

"The Failure of Liberal Catholicism (Part 2)" by Dr. James Hitchcock

The Failure of Liberal Catholicism (Part 2 of 2) | Dr. James Hitchcock | Catholic World Report | June 2011

This is the second installment in a two-part series. The first part may be read here

For decades conservatives have been marginalized in groups like the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA), which do not even pretend to be hospitable to "all points of view." People have been denied tenure, lost their jobs, were never hired in the first place, or were otherwise penalized for upholding Church teaching, not only in academia but even in official Church agencies.

As documented in Michael Rose's book Goodbye Good Men, for years orthodox young men were denied entry into certain seminaries, despite the urgent need for priests. A common ploy was to ask the candidate his views on the ordination of women and, if he said he accepted the official teaching, to reject him as "insensitive to women." Conservative members of religious orders have suffered severe marginalization over almost five decades.

Church bureaucrats are situated midway between the hierarchy and the laity, and after the Council they began to claim a kind of authority over both. While bishops are constantly told that they must humbly seek to learn from their people, bureaucrats often reject or ignore criticism of their work, because they are qualified professionals. Conservative lay people learned very quickly that it did no good to raise questions about the education of their children or dubious liturgical practices, because even many conservative bishops automatically supported the "experts."

After decades conservative Catholics have at last received a sympathetic hearing from some bishops, but liberals have an almost reflexive reaction against hierarchical authority, with every issue immediately defined as the "interference" by that hierarchy in the life of the Church.

Dolores Leckey, who for years used her position as executive director of the US bishops' Secretariat for Family, Laity, Women, and Youth to promote feminism, in effect now denies that there even is such a thing as legitimate episcopal authority—bishops act only because they are "afraid" and "insecure," not because of their religious convictions.

Manifestations of traditional Catholicism elicit emotional reactions from liberals all out of proportion to their cause. The priest-theologian Richard McBrien denounces the revival of Eucharistic adoration as a "step backwards," and to Rick Marren, an editor of the National Catholic Reporter, Eucharistic and Marian devotions constitute a "betrayal" of Vatican II. The Benedictine liturgist Anscar Chupungco laments, "The church is now experiencing the cold chill of winter…."

But no one is forced to participate in Eucharistic devotions—McBrien is offended merely because some people choose to do so. One woman told the NCR that she finds the acceptance of former Anglicans into the Church "worrisome," because "They're kneeling for Communion, the priest facing the altar…we are regressing from the Vatican II model of going with the spirit of the law to the letter of the law. There used to be more heart."

Read the entire essay at www.CatholicWorldReport.com...

Fr. Richard McBrien proves that illiterate "ultraconservative Catholics" are smarter than...

... dissenting, self-identified "Catholics" with doctorates, theology chairs, and—like, wow!—books and stuff. I'll show you how so in a moment.

First, frankly, I think Fr. McBrien should consider firing whatever eighteen-year-old college freshman is apparently writing his columns for him (I say "apparently because she could, in fact, be a sophomore in high school). I know that sounds harsh, but surely it would benefit her in the long run. But, seriously, how else to explain this sort of laughable, embarrassing nonsense, freshly flung up on the National "Catholic" Reporter website:

One of the most perplexing aspects of the sacking of William Morris, bishop of the Australian diocese of Toowoomba, Queensland, is Pope Benedict XVI's claim that the Catholic Church's prohibition of the ordination of women to the priesthood is the product of an infallible teaching. ...

However, if it were not for the constant drumbeat of criticism on the part of ultraconservative Catholics -- most or all of whom have had no formal education in theology, Scripture, liturgy, or canon law -- and the appointment of another ultraconservative as Apostolic Visitor -- Charles Chaput, Archbishop of Denver -- Morris would not have been removed from his diocese.

My interest here is not really the ins-and-outs of how and why Morris was removed from office (see pieces by Dr. Jeffrey Mirus and Fr. Z for background and details) but on this bizarre claim by McBrien:

Ratzinger noted that the teaching on women's ordination "has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal magisterium," as well as by the 1998 apostolic letter of Pope John Paul II, Ad Tuendam Fidem ("For the defense of the faith"), accompanied by a commentary written by Ratzinger, who said essentially the same thing as he is now saying as pope.

But canon 749.3 stipulates that if there is any doubt about the infallible nature of a teaching, it is not infallible. The canon reads: "No doctrine is understood to be infallibly defined unless it is clearly established as such."

Therefore, even if then-Cardinal Ratzinger concluded that Pope John Paul II's teaching on women priests in Ordinatio sacerdotalis was infallible, it could not be considered infallible because it was not "clearly established as such."

And even if a pope, such as Benedict XVI, wished to argue that a specific teaching of one of his predecessors was infallible, canon 749.3 would also seem to preclude such an argument.

Actually, McBrien's "argument" is not so much "bizarre" as blatantly silly. And even disingenuous. Here's why (see if you illiterate ultraconservative Catholics can follow!):

1. Pope John Paul II wrote the following in his 1994 apostolic letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis ("To the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Reserving Priestly Ordination to Men Alone"):

Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church's judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.

Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful. (par. 4; emphasis added)

2. In 1995, then-Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith wrote a "Respondum ad Propositum Dubium Concerning the Teaching Contained in 'Ordinatio Sacerdotalis":

Dubium: Whether the teaching that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women, which is presented in the Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis to be held definitively, is to be understood as belonging to the deposit of faith.

Responsum: Affirmative.

This teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium (cf. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium 25, 2). Thus, in the present circumstances, the Roman Pontiff, exercising his proper office of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32), has handed on this same teaching by a formal declaration, explicitly stating what is to be held always, everywhere, and by all, as belonging to the deposit of the faith.

3. McBrien, in his June 13, 2011, column, writes: "But canon 749.3 stipulates that if there is any doubt about the infallible nature of a teaching, it is not infallible. The canon reads: 'No doctrine is understood to be infallibly defined unless it is clearly established as such.'"

4. But—surprise!—his quote is selective and misleading as the entire canon 749 states the following (emphasis added):

Can. 749 §1. By virtue of his office, the Supreme Pontiff possesses infallibility in teaching when as the supreme pastor and teacher of all the Christian faithful, who strengthens his brothers and sisters in the faith, he proclaims by definitive act that a doctrine of faith or morals is to be held.

§2. The college of bishops also possesses infallibility in teaching when the bishops gathered together in an ecumenical council exercise the magisterium as teachers and judges of faith and morals who declare for the universal Church that a doctrine of faith or morals is to be held definitively; or when dispersed throughout the world but preserving the bond of communion among themselves and with the successor of Peter and teaching authentically together with the Roman Pontiff matters of faith or morals, they agree that a particular proposition is to be held definitively.

§3. No doctrine is understood as defined infallibly unless this is manifestly evident.

5. Return to point #1 above. What did John Paul II write? "I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful."

Did you follow that? Was it incredibly complex? Does your head hurt? Do you need a bottle of smart water?

Naaaaaw, of course not, because you, unlike the immensely learned Fr. McBrien, are able to understand that the phrase, "this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful", actually fulfills the clear criteria that the Holy Father is making an infallible declaration when, "as the supreme pastor and teacher of all the Christian faithful", he "proclaims by definitive act that a doctrine of faith or morals is to be held." Anyone who can read and think with any sort of objectivity and integrity knows this is "manifestly evident."

The only way someone could doubt that John Paul II meant this to be an infallible declaration is if he:

1. Can't read English.
2. Rejects the authority of the Catholic Church.
3. Rejects the doctrine of papal infallibility.
4. Refuses to acknowledge that they are simply wrong—dead wrong, with sprinkles and fairy dust on top—about what John Paul II said, what Cardinal Ratzinger reiterated, and what the ordinary Magisterium and the Church's Tradition has always taught and held.
5. Is a dissenting theology professor who writes for the National "Catholic" Reporter, which is so shameless it makes Lady Ga Ga blush.

A few days ago I wrote about how McBrien's half-hearted attempt to defend the Church's teaching about the Resurrection was shoddy, ineffective, and third-rate theologically and philosophically. Now we see that McBrien's whole-hearted attempt to deny clear Church teaching about the ordination of women is shoddy, ineffective, and third-rate theologically and philosophically. His "arguments"/rants consist of some mixture of the following:

1. Insults and personal attacks ("most or all of whom have had no formal education in theology, Scripture, liturgy, or canon law")
2. Emotive grandstanding ("However, if it were not for the constant drumbeat of criticism...")
3. Misuse or misrepresentation of the facts.
4. Partial or incorrect reading of key texts.
5. Drawing false conclusions from #3 and #4 ("canon 749.3 would also seem to preclude such an argument...")
6. Appeal to fallible and very limited authority over against infallible and definitive Magisterial authority  ("Moreover, individual Catholic theologians, major Catholic theological organizations in the United States, and the Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland have expressed serious doubts...")

You know what? Forget firing the ghost writer. Ask Fr. McBrien to retire. And replace him with Lady Ga Ga—at least she doesn't try to hide behind a veneer of intellectual elitism (come to think of it, she doesn't hide behind much at all. Nevermind.)

Related Ignatius Insight Articles and Book Excerpts:

• On the Papacy, John Paul II, and the Nature of the Church | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• Good Shepherd: Living Christ's Own Pastoral Authority | Most Rev. Samuel J. Aquila, Bishop of Fargo
• What Is the Magisterium? | Thomas Storck
• St. Peter and the Primacy of Rome | Stephen K. Ray
• Church Authority and the Petrine Element | Hans Urs von Balthasar
• Authority and Dissent in the Catholic Church | Dr. William E. May

Watch scenes from "Lourdes: A Story of Faith, Science and Miracles"...

... a 200-minute long film about Saint Bernadette, Lourdes, and the Virgin Mary that is available in North American from Ignatius Press. I designed the booklet that accompanies the DVD, and Sandra Miesel and I wrote the essays in the booklet, which include a piece about the film, an overview of Bernadette's encounters with Our Lady of Lourdes, a piece on the miracle of Lourdes, selected quotations from pontiffs on Lourdes, and discussion questions. As I wrote earlier this year:

I was impressed and often moved by the film (which is actually a 200-minute mini-series), which artfully interweaves a fictional storyline about a skeptical young physician into a portrayal of St. Bernadette's incredible experiences at Lourdes in 1858. I wrote, of the film, "Lourdes is a story of faith and reason, of God and man, of saints and sinners. It is a story of human and divine love, by which and for which we were each created. 'My sweet Jesus,' wrote St. Bernadette in her private notes, 'give me a great love for the cross, and if I do not die at the hands of others as you did, may I die by the intensity of my love.'"

Here are some scenes from the film:

More about the film:

Bernard Guillaumet, a non-Christian French journalist, is assigned the job of doing a story on Lourdes in the late 1990s. Just before he leaves for Lourdes, Bernard learns that his wife is pregnant. However, he is not told that this pregnancy could put her life at risk-and that doctors are suggesting an abortion.

While researching for his report on Lourdes, Bernard comes across the pages of an old family manuscript.

The manuscript was written by his ancestor, Henri Guillaumet, a positivist scientist and nonbeliever who met Bernadette at Lourdes in 1858, a meeting which profoundly affected Henri and forced him to reconsider the miracles performed following the apparitions of the Madonna of Lourdes. One of the most important miracles Giullaumet had to reconsider was the healing of his wife Claire, who had been on her death bed as a result of tuberculosis, and was completely restored by the miraculous waters of the grotto in which Bernadette saw the Our Lady.

This intriguing film uses the pages of the manuscript to trace the stories of three lives- Bernadette, Henry and Bernard, three characters whose lives intertwine as they pursue parallel journeys according to the designs of Providence. Directed by Lodovico Gasparini (St. John Bosco, Don Matteo), stars Alessandro Gassman, Angele Osinski, and Sydne Rome, and written by Vittorio Messori (The Ratzinger Report). 

"Every now and again I receive a book which I genuinely cannot put down. ..."

... Fiorella de Maria's latest, Poor Banished Children was one. It tells of a girl ostracised by her superstitious family, adopted by a kindly and learned priest (she learns to speak Latin), and trying her vocation as an anchorite. She is kidnapped and enslaved by Barbary pirates and finally washes up dying on the coast of England. Threaded throughout the plot is a series of extracts from her general confession.

Poor Banished Children is written with a lively pace and some challenging twists. The characters take on a life of their own and one can easily form a mental picture - this could be made a stirring film. From a Catholic point of view, the priests are shown as human beings with dilemmas and faults but as people one can be in sympathy with. The villains are odious but understandable and the central character, Warda, is about as powerful a woman as you could get. Heartily recommended for your holiday reading with the warning that if you get it when you are not on holiday, you may find, as I did, that you have to catch up on some work after being absorbed by it.

Read the entire post, written by Fr. Tim Finigan of "The Hermeuntic of Continuity" blog. For more information about Poor Banished Children—which is available in hardcover and e-book format—visit the book's website.

"Male Nuns Defy Catholic Church by being 'Nun-fied'!"

This just in from NPR (National Pah-lease Radio), with a special nod to this National Public Radio "news piece" for inspiration:

In 1993, seven men were secretly turned into nuns by two Roman Catholic bishops in Toledo. After their transformation, a kind of domino effect ensued.

Those seven nuns went on to make other men into nuns, and a movement to create male nuns all around the world was born. The movement, named Roman Catholic Men-to-Nuns, says more than a hundred men have been nun-ified since 1993, and five-thirds of them are in small towns in Oregon.

On a recent January day in Bozeman, Montana, five more men were turned into nuns. The gallery at the Second Community Church of Anybody Who Shows was filled with four news reporters, three from NPR, and six family, half of them there to support the men and their nun-icization movement, though visitors were asked not to photograph them. Witnessing the ceremony was enough to risk outbursts of laughter.

The audience turned to watch as the men-nuns (or "nun-men", as some call them) strutted down the aisle in action-nun-wear, beaming like fugitives from the early 1970s. The six-minute ceremony ended with with a whole lot of dancing and prancing. Each nun-man performed tasks such as advocating for "more social justice", demonstrating their abilities to handcuff themselves to fences (for demonstrations again nuclear weapons), and saying the name "Gaia" in seven languages, all of them made-up on the spot.

Bill Bonkers was one of the nuns created that day, and like his fellow nun-oids, he was raised in the Catholic Catholic ("Well, not really in it", he explained, "My family drove ten minutes to Mass and were always very late."). His mother had a black dress at home, and when Bill was a child, she would sometimes wear it and mutter things in Latin while giving him with fertive glances.

"I think she was trying to perform an exorcism. Or something," he said, admitting the action nunwear chafes his legs, but is also "slightly slimming".

"My brother and sister would be kneeling behind me, and if I said, 'Dominus vobiscum,' I would turn around and say, 'You're supposed to say 'Et cum spiritu tuo,'" Bonkers said.

Fellow nun-fellow Rocky Smith III, had a similar experience growing up. He came from a close-knit Italian family, and always felt comfortable in the Catholic Church. In the late '70s he got married, had two kids, and was working as an assistant at a local boxing training facility.

Several times a week he would watch "The Sound of Music" during his lunch, and one day he realized, "I'm supposed to be a great singer." But since he had a horrible voice ("I'm a passable baritone", he insists, "but a weak soprano"), he decided to become a nun. "After all," he said, "most of the nuns I knew had their own apartments, dressed like men, didn't do much except complain about the Church, and didn't have to take care of families. Sweet!"

As members of the Roman Catholic Church, these men are breaking all church rules, which allow only women to be nuns. No member of the Roman Catholic Men-to-Nuns has been excommunicated by the Church, but they have felt a certain sense of chagrin wearing polyester jump suits and carrying icons of Ghandi and Mick Jagger. "I'm a David Bowie guy myself," admits Bonkers, "I'm a Ziggy Stardust spirit!" But they have been threatened by people offended by their poor taste in clothing, and they've lost friends and colleagues within the Church.

"I thought being a Catholic meant doing whatever made me feel good," said Smith, "and it feels good to be a nun. God called me to be a singer, but I couldn't sing. So God then called me to be a nun, because I look good in action nunwear."

Oh, sure, that's a nun-sensical story. But it has just as weight and value as the actual NPR piece (here's the link again) about women "secretly ordained as priests by two Roman Catholic bishops", as anyone remotely familiar with Catholic doctrine knows. It's like a possible story about how Catholic priests are turning beer and pizza into the Eucharist, or how Catholics are being baptized in the name of the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker: they might be curious or even sensational, but they aren't substantive and they aren't written because they are worthy news. They are written in order to undermine the facts (the Catholic Church cannot and will not ordain women), confuse bystanders and onlookers, and encourage the "faithful" who seek to remake the Catholic Church according to their subjective whim and self-absorbed image.

To repeat (by cutting-and-pasting) what I wrote about another such story back in September 2010, but it worth highlighting once more:

This must be what it's like to be trapped walking eternally on Escher's famous staircase:

• The priestette's demand that their "ordinations" be recognized by the Church and they be accepted as Catholic priests. Put another way, they want the blessing and backing of the Church and her authority.

• When excommunicated for knowingly violating Church law in a grave manner, said preistettes brazenly "reject" the law and acts of the Church.

• They say their conscience is supreme without qualification, which is directly contrary to clear Church teaching, which describes their position as a "mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience" and a "rejection of the Church's authority and her teaching" (CCC, par. 1792; see this post for much more).

• If their conscience is supreme, without qualification, it logically must have greater authority than the Church, which means 1) they have no need for the Church (so why do they seek the Church's approval?) and/or 2) the Church's authority is seriously flawed, even morally bankrupt, which also begs the question: why bother to be recognized and accepted by such an institution?

• Put simply, these priestettes go on and on about their desire and need to be a Catholic priest, yet always demean and even denounce the authority upon which the priesthood rests. If they can indeed "reject" Magisterial authority, that same authority is, logically, powerless to ordain them in any real and meaningful way. This is akin to Dan Brown's claim that Jesus was a simple carpenter who had, by virtue of some unknown quality, power over his goddess wife, Mary Magdalene. Right. And I have a bridge in southern Utah that you should buy.

Which means one or more of the following:

1. They are theologically ignorant. ("Here is the badge of heresy," wrote Blessed Cardinal Newman, "its dogmas are unfruitful; it has no theology.")

2. They view the Church primarily in terms of human authority and position, not as a divine institution founded by Christ for a specific end, with certain functions and roles established by Christ within the Church for the good of the Church and the salvation of souls.

3. They act in bad faith, or lack real faith. This is evidenced in their dismissal of Magisterial teaching; it is the "Magisterium's task to preserve God's people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error" (CCC, par. 890).

4. They are immature, attention-seeking, delusional, and narcissistic, with no demonstrable love or concern for the Church, her teachings, and her mission. Like the Pharisees, they demand attention and recognition, claiming they have a superior ability to know, interpret, and live the law. Yet they lack the gravitas of the Pharisees; there is a self-absorbed flippancy to these priestettes that is both sad and sickening.

On Ignatius Insight:

Veteran Hollywood writer/producer: popular culture is incoherent, contradictory, "a serious challenge to the Church"

Ron Austin has been a writer and producer in Hollywood for over fifty years, he is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science, and he is a founding member of Catholics in Media. Austin knows Hollywood. And so it is quite interesting to read his recent (May 21, 2011), Address at Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology's 79th Annual Commencement, in which he made several strong, even fascinating, remarks. Here are a couple of excerpts:

Timing is important in show business. As an adult convert, my engagement with the Catholic Church began in the last years of the Second Vatican Council, and our present timing is, I believe, significant because, now that fifty years have passed, there is, in my judgment, a need to re-assess the relationship of the Church to the misnamed "popular culture."

I refer to the term "popular or mass culture" as being misleading and a misnomer because I don't believe that it is a "culture" by any standard definition.

I'm not just being semantically fastidious. This is one of the significant changes that has taken place.

The word "culture" is variously defined but the term assumes at least some minimal degree of coherence, at least a loose matrix of symbols, language, models and ideas that have continuity. Culture points to what more or less tells us who we are and maybe even where we're going. The "popular culture" of the media doesn't do this, if, indeed, it ever really did.

This is a judgment that I admit is severe and perhaps even rash, and will and should be challenged, but I offer it as a starting point more than a firm conclusion. To the extent that the so-called popular culture is incoherent and contradictory, it is not a reliable guide to life or beliefs. If it is no longer able to offer or sustain hope, and this is crucial, if this pseudo-culture no longer offers hope then this is a serious challenge to the Church, that is, to those of us in and of the Church.

When I entered the Catholic Church over thirty years ago, the goals of the post-conciliar period were articulated in terms of "enculturation," the integration if not assimilation of Christians and their Gospel ideals into the present-day society. But can one speak of "enculturation" if there is, in effect, no "culture"? At the very least this objective needs to be seriously reconsidered in the light of the degree of alienation and the increasing social fragmentation. And I'm not just speaking of talk radio. ...

From the earliest days in Hollywood there have been attempts to turn the caprices of entertainment into a stable and rational business. Most have been frustrated, but in the 1950s the loss of the adult audience to television and other factors produced an even more desperate search for a reliable mass audience. This led to the creation of what was called the "youth market" – the shaping of a largely adolescent audience with, in the post-war era, unprecedented disposable income.

This was perhaps the first time in history that adolescents were targeted as a distinct consumer group. They were an ideal audience, very susceptible to mass marketing due to the natural adolescent dependency upon peer approval. This became the mass base upon which movies and music increasingly depended, and there were profound effects on society in general.

It led in time, for instance, to a change in the nature of fame and celebrity. The previous iconic figures of the movies were adult romantic heroes and heroines, but they were replaced, in time, by the restless adolescent rebel and finally the "anti-hero." Figures such as James Dean, Marlon Brando, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and later The Beatles, whatever their talent, did not represent the aspirations of adulthood, and this marked a change in the very concept of what was desirable and acceptable.

Mimesis, the imitative factor, is quite naturally powerful among the young, and a phenomenon that Jacques Barzun observed with prescience then emerged – the oxymoronic "conformity of dissent" – an attitude of rebellion and a rejection of past standards that was, if anything, more conformist and compulsory than anything an adult authority could mandate.

The "rebel without a cause" was then, in effect, commodified and absorbed into advertising. By the end of the 1970s, an advertising agency appealed to major corporate sponsors by offering the image of a young, handsome, disaffected youth, staring defiantly at the camera. The appeal to the corporate advertisers was "buy this twenty-one year old and you get his friends free."

This "youth orientation" has had a lasting effect not just on entertainment but on everything from clothing to food and soft drinks, but, most importantly, it led to an increased sense of disaffection and, equally significant, a separation if not break between generations.

Teilhard de Chardin said that the most difficult thing to determine is when something actually began, so I don't want to imply that the growing divisions and broken bonds within American society were primarily due to the effects of the mass media. I'm not defensive about Hollywood, but my experience suggests that the "counter-cultural" attitudes that later promoted indiscriminate sexuality and even drug use were themselves the effects of underlying social factors -- war, divorce and urban isolation. Hollywood wasn't selling ideas; it was selling products. And to this day the mass media mindset doesn't promote an oppositional "value system" but an aggregate of attitudes, many of them contradictory and confused.

Read the entire address on the DSPT website.

Watch the trailer for "Poor Banished Children: A Novel"...

... by Fiorella de Maria Nash, recently released by Ignatius Press (available in hardcover and e-book format):

For more information about Poor Banished Children, visit the book's website. You can also read the opening of the novel on Ignatius Insight:

"Faith is a tongue of fire that burns us and melts us..."

An excerpt from Joseph Ratzinger's  Images of Hope: Meditations on Major Feasts (Ignatius Press, 2006):

The Holy Spirit points to the Trinity, and thereby he points to us. For the trinitarian God is the archetype of the new united humanity, the archetype of the Church, as the prayer of Jesus may be seen as its word of institution: "that they may be one, even as we are one" (Jn 17:11b, cf. 21f.). The Trinity is measure and foundation of the Church. The Trinity brings the word of creation day to its goal, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Gen 1:26). In the Trinity, mankind, which in its disunity became a counter image of God, should become once again the one Adam, whose image, as the Fathers say, was defaced by sin and now lies about in pieces. The divine measure of man should again come to prominence, unity, in it, "as we are one". So the Trinity, God himself, is the archetype of the Church. Church does not mean another idea in addition to man, but rather man on the way to himself. If the Holy Spirit expresses and is the unity of God, then he is the real vital element of the Church in which distinction is reconciled in togetherness and the dispersed pieces of Adam are fit together again. ...

A tongue of fire has been added to being human. We must now correct this expression. Fire is never something that is simply due to another and therefore exists beside him. Fire burns and transforms. Faith is a tongue of fire that burns us and melts us so that ever more it is true: I and no longer I. Whoever, of course, meets the average Christian of today must ask himself: Where is the tongue of fire? That which comes from Christian tongues is unfortunately frequently anything but fire. It tastes therefore like stale, barely lukewarm water, not warm and not cold. We do not want to burn ourselves or others, but in this way we keep distant from the Holy Spirit, and Christian faith deteriorates into a self-made world-view that as far as possible does not want to infringe on any of our comforts and saves the sharpness of protest for where it can hardly disturb us in our way of life. When we yield to the burning fire of the Holy Spirit, being Christian becomes comfortable only at first glance. The comfort of the individual is the discomfort of the whole. When we no longer expose ourselves to the fire of God, the frictions with one another become unbearable and the Church is, as Basil expressed it, torn by the shouts of factions. Only when we do not fear the tongue of fire and the storm it brings with it does the Church become the icon of the Holy Spirit. And only then does she open the world to the light of God. Church began as the disciples assembled and prayed together in the room of the Last Supper. Thus she begins again and again. In prayer to the Holy Spirit we must call for this anew each day. 

Here is more information about Images of Hope.

Pentecost, the Harvest of the Holy Spirit

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Pentecost Sunday, June 12, 2011 | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• Acts 2:1-11
• Psa. 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34
• 1 Cor. 12:3b-7, 12-13
• Jn. 20:19-23

After many years of leading a weekly Bible study at my parish I am more convinced than ever of a simple fact: if you do not appreciate the Old Testament, you will fail to understand nearly anything and everything in the New Testament. The New Testament is like a treasure chest of priceless jewels, but without the map of the Old Testament, it is very difficult to find and open that chest. Saint Augustine put it this way: "The New lies hidden in the Old and the Old is unveiled in the New."

Today's reading from The Acts of the Apostles, which describes a pivotal, transforming event in the early Church, is a perfect case in point. Even though The Acts of the Apostles and the third Gospel were written by a Gentile, Saint Luke, they are deeply rooted in the history and beliefs of the Jewish people. And Luke assumed that his readers would know and appreciate the key events, beliefs, and practices of the Jews.

First, there is the feast of Pentecost, which the Israelites called "the feast of weeks", a reference to the seven weeks from the Passover to the celebration of Pentecost (cf., Lev 23:9-21; Deut 16:9-12). The number seven signified completion and fullness. Originally, the feast focused on giving thanks for the harvest; it later was associated with the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai, traditionally believed to have occurred fifty days after the first Passover in Egypt. The description of the coming of the Holy Spirit upon those in the Upper Room is concise, but is clearly meant to invoke a connection to the great theophanies, or appearances by God, that took place on Mount Sinai (also known as Mount Herob), which were accompanied by noises from heaven, strong winds, and fire (Ex 19:16-19; 1 Kngs 19:11-12; cf., CCC 696).

In addition, the breath or voice of God is closely associated with fire: "The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire" (Ps 28:7). Following the Resurrection, as recounted in today's Gospel reading, Jesus, the Word made flesh, came to the apostles, breathed on them, and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit." He thus gave them the authority to forgive and absolve sins. On Pentecost, God sent the Holy Spirit—marked by the appearance of "tongues as of fire"—so that the disciples could speak in different languages and proclaim the Gospel to all men. This gift of tongues was not so much about spiritual ecstasy as it was about spiritual transformation, which led to the bold, public communication of person, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Acts 2:14-47).

Jesus had promised the disciples that the Holy Spirit would teach them "all things" and help them remember his words (Jn 14:26). Likewise, Paul told the Christians at Corinth—a difficult and unruly bunch!—that no one can proclaim, "Jesus is Lord," unless he is led by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is sent by the Father and the Son so as to give witness to the Son and to draw men to the Father. "The gift of the Spirit," states the Catechism, "ushers in a new era in the 'dispensation of the mystery' the age of the Church, during which Christ manifests, makes present, and communicates his work of salvation through the liturgy of his Church, 'until he comes.'" (CCC 1076). Thus Paul wrote, "For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body…" The Holy Spirit preserves the unity of the Church, and he is described as the soul of the Mystical Body of Christ (CCC 809).

The feast of Pentecost, then, is a celebration of the harvest—the spiritual fruits given by God—and the recognition of New Law of Christ, which is established in divine love and through the Holy Spirit. As Saint Leo the Great observed, we "may easily perceive that the beginnings of the Old Covenant were at the service of the beginnings of the gospel and that the same Spirit who established the first established the Second."

(This "Opening the Word" column originally in a slightly different form in the May 11, 2008, issue of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)