Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 327

The Opening Chapters of "Poor Banished Children: A Novel"

The Opening Chapters of Poor Banished Children: A Novel | Fiorella De Maria | Ignatius Insight

Dreams of the Dead

Death has come for me again. The others are already lost. I heard their screams as I was cast into the night; I heard them cursing as they burned or drowned before the roar of the explosion stopped up my ears and I fell into a world of silence. I am burnt by fire and stifled by the black, icy waters that drag me down. There is merciless darkness everywhere, which even the flames tearing the ship cannot pierce. I spin and struggle, raising my head for air as my blood freezes, and I know the sea will take me in the end.

The ship is gone now, and all that remains are burning fragments scattered like votive candles in the night. And I remain—the fragment of a human life, drifting to its close. I am not afraid to die, even though I will die  unabsolved, but I am afraid to be alone. I fear the loneliness of the last journey down to the depths of the sea, where I will take my place among the dead, and no one will know that I came to such a pass. There will be no Requiem for me and no resting place, only a troublesome memory in the minds of a few old friends who believe that I died long ago, at the hands of another aggressor.

There are faces all around me; the spectral images of those I have loved dance around my head, taking their leave of me, whilst those I have lost gaze at me in silent accusation. I will die with so many lives to account for, so much blood I never meant to spill, but it cries out for vengeance nonetheless.

Death is so slow in coming that I find myself fighting. If I had desired death as I yearned for it once, I would not have run onto the deck when I knew the end was truly coming; I would not cling now to splintering driftwood, praying that it will hold me. The very motion of lifting my head to take a breath is an act of defiance. I feel no pain, the chill takes away all sense, and I feel only the weariness of death as it reaches out to me. I have died so many times and been returned to the land of the living that I could almost believe I am not meant to go down with the ship—but I am cold. I am cold and weary and cannot draw breath any longer. In the gloom above my head a single star shines. Stella ... Stella Maris. I am lost. Stella Maris. I call out to the Star of the 'Sea but cannot hear my own voice ringing out across the murderous water. Perhaps this is death, then—cruel death from which I can never awaken. I cannot hold onto the driftwood any longer. My hands grow limp and numb with the cold, so that I cannot feel my own fingers as they uncurl.

"Mother? Mother, I am dying!"

"Hush", says a voice I can hear. "I am holding you."

Dreams again, the dreams of the dead.

Continue reading on Ignatius Insight...

Cardinal Francis George chastises, suspends Fr. Michael Pfleger

From today's edition of the Chicago Sun-Times:

Cardinal Francis George suspended Rev. Michael Pfleger from his ministry at St. Sabina Catholic Church and barred him from performing Catholic sacraments over public statements Pfleger made about a possible reassignment.

In a letter from George to Pfleger released to the media on Wednesday, the Cardinal said Pfleger's public remarks that he would leave the Catholic Church rather than accept a position outside of St. Sabina led to his decision.

"If that is truly your attitude, you have already left the Catholic Church and are therefore not able to pastor a Catholic parish," George wrote.

Pfleger didn't speak publicly Wednesday, but St. Sabina church leaders said they are upset at the Cardinal's decision and offended that Pfleger had to learn about his suspension through the media.

"He was ambushed," said Associate Pastor Kimberly Lymore, flanked by more than a dozen church leaders outside the church. Lymore said Pfleger has "given his life to this community." She said Pfleger is "upset," and "in shock, just as we all were."

Ambushed? Really? I'd say he should have been shocked that it took this long for the long-suffering Cardinal George to finally reach the end of his rope. And it seems fairly obvious that Fr. Pfleger wanted it to happen, judging by his recent comments, which Cardinal George directly mentions in his letter:

That process has now been short-circuited by your remarks on national radio and in local newspapers that you will leave the Catholic Church if you are told to accept an assignment other than as pastor of Saint Sabina Parish. If that is truly your attitude, you have already left the Catholic Church and are therefore not able to pastor a Catholic parish. A Catholic priest's inner life is governed by his promises, motivated by faith and love, to live chastely as a celibate man and to obey his bishop. Breaking either promise destroys his vocation and wounds the Church. Bishops are held responsible for their priests on the assumption that priests obey them. I have consistently supported your work for social justice and admired your passion for ministry. Many love and admire you because of your dedication to your people. Now, however, I am asking you to take a few weeks to pray over your priestly commitments in order to come to mutual agreement on how you understand personally the obligations that make you a member of the Chicago presbyterate and of the Catholic Church.

With this letter, your ministry as pastor of Saint Sabina Parish and your sacramental faculties as a priest of the Archdiocese are suspended. The official rescript will follow, but this suspension permits you to retain the office of pastor while temporarily without permission to function. ...

Father Pfleger, I deeply regret that your public remarks have brought you to a moment of crisis that I pray will quickly pass. This conflict is not between you and me; it's between you and the Church that ordained you a priest, between you and the faith that introduced you to Christ and gives you the right to preach and pastor in his name. If you now formally leave the Catholic Church and her priesthood, it's your choice and no one else's. You are not a victim of anyone or anything other than your own statements. To avoid misrepresentation and manipulation on anyone's part, this letter will be released to the parish, which is to publish it in its entirety, and to the media after it has been delivered to you.

Here is the direct link to the letter from Cardinal George to Fr. Pfleger (PDF file).

Music lovers will be happy to hear...

... this bit of news from Robert R. Reilly, the outstanding music critic for InsideCatholic.com:

Earlier this month, I stopped in London for three evenings of concerts, accompanied by meetings with five composers. I had the good company of the brilliant young German music critic Jens Laurson, who joined me from his home in Munich.

Ignatius Press has agreed to bring out an expanded and revised edition of my book, Surprised by Beauty: A Listener's Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music (initially published by Morley Press in 2002), and Laurson has generously consented to collaborate on it. We have already conspired on a list of composers whom we wish to add, including Walter Braunfels, Paul Juon, Robert Simpson, Joly Braga Santos, Ahmed Saygun, Othmar Schoeck, and Joseph Jongen. If you have not heard of these composers . . . well, that is the point of writing about them.

Read the entire column on the CNA site.

Ignatius Press sale on books and films about Pope John Paul II

Celebrating the Beatification of Pope John Paul II with 20% off!

Offer ends Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011 at 12:00 midnight EST.
These prices are available online only through Ignatius.com

Pope John Paul II had a profound theological, spiritual and moral impact on countless Catholics and non-Catholics alike. He was an amazing charismatic spiritual leader who helped bring down Communism and renewed the life of the Church.  In honor of this great man, whose Beatification will be performed by Pope Benedict on May 1 in Rome, Ignatius Press is offering 20% off many powerful books and films. Learn more about the man who was a defender of all that is true, good and beautiful, especially of marriage and family life, with any of these inspiring products listed below.

See the full listing of books and films now on sale.

Watch the trailer for "Toward the Gleam: A Novel" by T. M. Doran

The trailer for T. M. Doran's new novel, Toward the Gleam, which I started reading a couple of days ago and am enjoying very much:

 

To read the first 100 pages of the novel for free, visit TowardTheGleam.com.

To hell with Hell?

James Kirk Wall, author of Agnosticism: The Battle Against Shameless Ignorance, seems to think he has come up with a clever line of agnostic apologetics to pursue in getting rid of Hell:

Pastor Rob Bell is arguing that there may be no Hell. Would Christianity still be able to sell without Hell, or would membership plummet?

Heaven and Hell make up the greatest marketing campaign ever created by man. If you buy what we're selling, you will live forever in happiness. If you don't, fire and brimstone for all eternity!

Uh, yeah, that's a perfect to way to put it—if you're into flippant, theologically-challenged, and historically-illiterate snarkiness. Which I'm sure is appealling to many people. Personally, I've never had a problem with belief in Hell; my issue, as a Fundamentalist, was with purgatory. But once I read what the Catholic Church actually teaches about purgatory, as opposed to the all of the Jack Chick-type silliness I was fed growing up, it made sense. (In fact, the fact that so many Catholics dismiss purgatory as superflious or silly shows just how rotten catechesis has been generally since the 1960s.)

My experience is that people (some of them avowed atheists) who are dismissive of Hell have both a faulty understanding of what it is and isn't, but also a warped understanding of who God is and is not (or what orthodox Christianity says about God). This is understandable to a certain degree, as some Christians do indeed portray God as something of angry old man who can't wait to shoot sinners out of his celestial cannon into the fires of damnation. But if there only heaven, or no afterlife at all, it does beg the question: can we really speak meaningfully about good and evil, as well as justice? The short answer is, "No" (as I touched on a bit in this post yesterday). Ross Douthat, in his April 24th column, "A Case for Hell", writes:

Atheists have license to scoff at damnation, but to believe in God and not in hell is ultimately to disbelieve in the reality of human choices. If there's no possibility of saying no to paradise then none of our no's have any real meaning either. They're like home runs or strikeouts in a children's game where nobody's keeping score.

In this sense, a doctrine of universal salvation turns out to be as deterministic as the more strident forms of scientific materialism. Instead of making us prisoners of our glands and genes, it makes us prisoners of God himself. We can check out any time we want, but we can never really leave.

The doctrine of hell, by contrast, assumes that our choices are real, and, indeed, that we are the choices that we make. The miser can become his greed, the murderer can lose himself inside his violence, and their freedom to turn and be forgiven is inseparable from their freedom not to do so.

As Anthony Esolen writes, in the introduction to his translation of Dante's "Inferno," the idea of hell is crucial to Western humanism. It's a way of asserting that "things have meaning" — that earthly life is more than just a series of unimportant events, and that "the use of one man's free will, at one moment, can mean life or death ... salvation or damnation."

Hell make perfect sense if we have a sense of perfection desired, a hope for justice fulfilled, and a recognition of free will granted. To quote, once again, from Benedict XVI's Spe Salvi:

To protest against God in the name of justice is not helpful. A world without God is a world without hope (cf. Eph 2:12). Only God can create justice. And faith gives us the certainty that he does so. The image of the Last Judgement is not primarily an image of terror, but an image of hope; for us it may even be the decisive image of hope. Is it not also a frightening image? I would say: it is an image that evokes responsibility, an image, therefore, of that fear of which Saint Hilary spoke when he said that all our fear has its place in love. (par. 44)

Returning to Wall's question, I think that much of the evidence is in: those churches and Christian groups that deny the existence of Hell—that is, the real possibility of being able to freely reject God to live with that choice for eternity—don't have much long-standing appeal. Mainline Protestant denominations that have abandoned belief in Hell (along with other basic doctrines) are dying or dead. Why? There is the matter of Jesus and the New Testament writers making plenty of references to Hell; there is also the nagging suspicion (confirmed, upon thought and investigation) that promising heaven without the need to freely choose love, life, and goodness is a cop-out, a con job, and a contradition. It fails to make sense of sin and it fails to provide real hope:

From the earliest times, the prospect of the Judgement has influenced Christians in their daily living as a criterion by which to order their present life, as a summons to their conscience, and at the same time as hope in God's justice. Faith in Christ has never looked merely backwards or merely upwards, but always also forwards to the hour of justice that the Lord repeatedly proclaimed. ...

In the modern era, the idea of the Last Judgement has faded into the background: Christian faith has been individualized and primarily oriented towards the salvation of the believer's own soul, while reflection on world history is largely dominated by the idea of progress. The fundamental content of awaiting a final Judgement, however, has not disappeared: it has simply taken on a totally different form. The atheism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is—in its origins and aims—a type of moralism: a protest against the injustices of the world and of world history. A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering, and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God. A God with responsibility for such a world would not be a just God, much less a good God. It is for the sake of morality that this God has to be contested. Since there is no God to create justice, it seems man himself is now called to establish justice. If in the face of this world's suffering, protest against God is understandable, the claim that humanity can and must do what no God actually does or is able to do is both presumptuous and intrinsically false. It is no accident that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice; rather, it is grounded in the intrinsic falsity of the claim. A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope. (Spe Salvi, 41, 42)

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Links:

• Hell and the Bible | Piers Paul Read | An excerpt from "Hell" in Hell and Other Destinations
• The Brighter Side of Hell | James V. Schall, S.J.
• Socrates Meets Sartre: In Hell? | Peter Kreeft
• Are God's Ways Fair? | Ralph Martin

"Ruth's story is likewise one of holiness, extraordinary virtue..."

Dwight G. Duncan, professor at UMass School of Law Dartmouth, writes in the The Boston Pilot newspaper about the life and witness of Ruth Pakaluk:

Ruth Pakaluk died of metastatic breast cancer in 1998 at the youthful age of 41. She had seven children (one of whom died of sudden infant death syndrome), and was married to Michael Pakaluk, professor of philosophy at Ave Maria University (and columnist for The Boston Pilot). Ignatius Press has just published a magnificent volume of her letters and talks entitled "The Appalling Strangeness of the Mercy of God," edited with a biographical overview and notes by Michael.

One might think that her life, marked by the untimely deaths of her son Thomas, followed by her own, was tragic. Actually, it is more a divine comedy that has a happy ending, manifesting "the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God," one of her favorite lines from a Graham Greene novel.

This is because, as Michael documents in his introduction, Ruth's life was one of continual conversion and joy amidst the ups and downs of daily life. She showed "the greatest love in the smallest things," as Pope Benedict recently said of St. Therese of the Child Jesus. Gifted with a great sense of humor, a powerful and penetrating intellect, and a dynamite writing style, Ruth reminds me of Flannery O'Connor, the great American writer whom Thomas Merton compared to Sophocles.

Okay, I'm biased. I knew Ruth the last ten years of her life, and have always been close to Michael and the Pakaluks. Ruth, Michael and I were all active in Opus Dei as well as the pro-life movement, and we all had Harvard bachelor's degrees. Funny to think of Ruth (or Michael, for that matter) as a bachelor of anything, since they got married as undergrads. Ruth went on to serve as president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life for a number of years, as if being a mother and homemaker didn't give her enough to do. ...

The pope could easily have been explaining Ruth when he said earlier this week: "Christian holiness is none other than charity, fully experienced." However, in order that charity might, "like a good seed, grow in the soul and there bear fruit, the faithful must listen gladly to the Word of God and, by its grace, carry out His will through their works, participate frequently in the sacraments, above all the Eucharist and the Holy Liturgy; they must constantly apply themselves in prayer, in the abnegation of their selves, in the active service of their brothers and in the exercise of every virtue" (Pope Benedict XVI, general audience of April 13, 2011).

Get this book. Read this book. It couldn't be more timely: A Hollywood movie out next month entitled "There Be Dragons" depicts the origins of Opus Dei in the early years of St. Josemaria Escriva, its founder. Ruth's story is likewise one of holiness, extraordinary virtue, lived amidst ordinary concerns in modern America. Her story, though practically here and now, is nonetheless timeless and radiant.

Read the entire column. On Ignatius Insight, you can read Peter Kreeft's Introduction to The Appalling Strangeness of the Mercy of God: The Story of Ruth Pakaluk: Covert, Mother, Pro-life Activist, edited by Michael Pakaluk:

Watch the trailer for "Bakhita: From Slave to Saint"

Here is the trailer for the DVD,  "Bakhita: From Slave to Saint":

 

More about the film:

In 1948 Aurora Marin arrives with her family at the convent of the Canossian Sisters of Schio, Italy, where Sister Bakhita has just died. Aurora was hoping to see her before she died. She gathers her children around the picture of Bakhita and tells them of the incredible life of the woman that had raised her as her nanny.

Born in a village in Sudan, kidnapped by slavers, often beaten and abused, and later sold to Federico Marin, a Venetian merchant, Bakhita then came to Italy and became the nanny servant of Federico's daughter, Aurora, who had lost her mother at birth. She is treated as an outcast by the peasants and the other servants due to her black skin and African background, but Bakhita is kind and generous to others. Bakhita gradually comes closer to God with the help of the kind village priest, and embraces the Catholic faith.

She requests to join the order of Canossian sisters, but Marin doesn't want to give her up as his servant, treating her almost as his property. This leads to a moving court case that raised an uproar which impacts Bakhita's freedom and ultimate decision to become a nun. Pope John Paul II declared her a saint in the year 2000. Directed by Giacamo Campiotti (St. Giuseppe Moscati, Doctor Zhivago) and stars Fatou Kine Boye, Stefania Rocca, Fabio Sartor, Ettore Bassi, and Francesco Salvi. Includes a 16 page collector's booklet by Daria Sockey.

This DVD contains the following languages: Italian with English or Spanish subtitles.

This is a Region 1 DVD (playable ONLY in Bermuda, Canada, the Cayman Islands, United States and U.S. territories).

A Guide for Those Unwilling to Know Themselves

A Guide for Those Unwilling to Know Themselves | Fr. James V Schall, S.J. | Ignatius Insight | April 26, 2011

"The reason it is so difficult to argue with an atheist—as I know, having been one—is that he is not being honest with himself."
— J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know. (Revised and Expanded Edition; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 66.

"If Sophists are to run the courts and the civil service, they need plenty of help. From somewhere there must come a stream of people, who think as they do, to fill vacancies as they open up. Universities fill this need. Ordinary people who have not spent time on college campuses find it difficult to believe just how thoroughly they subvert the mind and how little they train it."
— J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know. 181.

I.

Among those scholars who write so well on natural law—Rommen, Lewis, Finnis, George, Matlary, Hittinger, Veatch, Kries, Simon, Grisez, Maritain, Kreeft, McInerny, Fortin, Syse, Dennehy, Koterski, Bradley, Glendon, Smith, Rice, Sokolowski—J. Budziszewski, at the University of Texas, holds a special place. In addition to a first-rate mind, he is probably the best rhetorician of them all. He leaves no argument before he has taken it step by step to its logical conclusion.

Budziszewski does not allow those who refuse to see the truth of an issue to have the satisfaction of thinking that the problem is with the truth and not with their own minds and souls. The only protection against the Budziszewski logic is to refuse to listen, to refuse to engage in argument, mindful of those fierce men in the Acts of the Apostles who, at the stoning of Stephen, held their hands over their ears lest they hear the truth they refused to listen to (Acts 7). In argument, Budziszewski combines the tenacity of a Georgia Bulldog with the weight of a Texas Longhorn. It is thus not surprising that he is a professor of philosophy and politics at the University of Texas.

Budziszewski's first book on natural law—Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law (InterVarsity Press, 1997)—was published while he was a Protestant. It is a remarkable book that I have used in class. It is an especially useful book that approaches natural law with the full armor of Scripture behind it. Obviously, as mentioned in the introductory citation above, before Budziszewski was a Protestant, he was an atheist. So he has been around the bend with considerable experience, which happily shows in this book, What We Can't Not Know. He became a Catholic a number of years ago, much to the relief of his admirers. The notion that someone with the noble name Budziszewski was a Protestant or an atheist, with all due respect to both, just did not sound right, especially since everything he said seemed so Catholic. But that is another story.

A book that should be given as a Christmas gift to your favorite lawyer or law student is Budziszewski's short, to the point, Natural Law for Lawyers. His recent study from ISI Books, The Line Through the Heart: Natural Law as Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction, begins with the profound sentence from Alexander Solzhenitsyn: "The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being," a passage with an obvious debt to Plato. And, of course, it is the theme of this book. All things, both of order and disorder, begin and end in the wills and souls of men and—even more obviously in this book—women.

We are used to hearing that the natural law is old hat, that no one agrees with it any more, that we have a "new" morality. This is pretty much the case. But that is precisely the point where Budziszewski begins the argument. Is it really possible to deny the natural law? What happens when we do seek to justify our "reasons" for rejecting it? What happens is that someone like Budziszewski will come along to examine just what we use for arguments against the natural law.

In every case, it turns out that the denial of any element in classical natural law depends on the natural law for its validity. When we sort out the meaning of the argument that is purportedly against the natural law, we find that we are necessitated to claim some basis in truth that justifies our position that opposes the natural law. When we dance around this issue, we find ourselves implicitly affirming one natural law principle against another. Once we straighten out this confusion or deliberate blindness, we can see that classical natural law position was in fact the correct one and the more human one.

The present book has eleven chapters and four appendices, and is divided into four sections: 1) "The Lost World," 2) "Explaining the Lost World," 3) "How the Lost World Was Lost," and 4) "Recovering the Lost World." The "lost world" obviously refers to Budziszewski's provocative title, What We Can't Not Know. Clearly, there are things that we do not know, or do not know yet, or have forgotten. Likewise, there are divine things that we only know if they are revealed to us. But once they are revealed, much of our ingenuity is spent on avoiding the implications that what God intended for us to know is either important or required of us. We find that this revelation and thinking about it makes us more philosophical, not less.

Budziszewski does not confuse reason and revelation. His first three appendices are devoted to brief but accurate statements about how the Decalogue, and the Noahide Commandments, as well as Isaiah, several of the Psalms, and Paul are related to the natural law. Basically, the natural law and revelation on these basic points say the same thing. This agreement suggests to us that they are both from the same source. Indeed, this fact of the same content suggests that revelation was directed to the human mind itself as it thinks what it means do "do good and avoid evil."

Read the entire review essay on Ignatius Insight...

"How did the beatification process assess John Paul II's life?"

How does his record as pope bear on that assessment?

The purpose of this beatification process, as with any such process, was to determine whether the life under study was one of heroic virtue. Over 100 formal witnesses were consulted and the four-volume study includes their testimonies, as well as a biography of the late pope and an examination of what were termed "special questions" — issues that arose during the beatification process itself, such as the charge (likely planted by former Stasi operatives) that young Karol Wojtyla had been involved in the assassination of two Gestapo agents during World War II. The charge was ridiculous, and it was refuted.

Evidently, the overwhelming judgment of those responsible, including Pope Benedict XVI, was that this was indeed a life of heroic virtue. I think that judgment is correct. It doesn't mean that, as pope, John Paul II got everything right. No pope does. The question is whether he made his decisions prudently, according to his best judgment, and without fear or favor. In The End and the Beginning, the second volume of my biography of John Paul II, I explored that question over some 90 pages. My judgment is that John Paul consistently used his best judgment, without fear or favor, even in decisions I think he got wrong.

3. What were the chief qualities of John Paul II? What were his principal faults?

John Paul II's radical Christian discipleship, and his remarkable capacity to let that commitment shine through his words and actions, made Christianity interesting and compelling in a world that thought it had outgrown its "need" for religious faith. He was a man of extraordinary courage, the kind of courage that comes from a faith forged in reflection on Calvary and the murder of the Son of God. He demonstrated, against the cultural conventions of his time, that young people want to be challenged to live lives of heroism. He lifted up the dignity of the human person at a moment when the West was tempted to traipse blithely down the path to Huxley's brave new world of manufactured and stunted humanity. And he proclaimed the universality of human rights in a way that helped bring down the greatest tyranny in human history.

He was, like many saintly people, too patient with the faults of others. His distaste for making a spectacle of anyone, and his willingness to give people a second, third, and fourth chance, were admirable human qualities that arguably worked against the efficiency of his governance.

Read the entire piece, "The John Paul II Beatificiation Catechism", by George Weigel, at NRO.com.

Books by George Weigel available through Ignatius Press:

• The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II - The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy
• Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II
• God's Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church
• The Courage to be Catholic
• Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God
• Letters To a Young Catholic