Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 35
August 29, 2015
Read the first chapter of "We’ll Never Tell Them" by Fiorella de Maria
Read the first chapters of the novel We’ll Never Tell Them by Fiorella de Maria. If you like what you’re reading, visit the novel’s page to learn more or order!
PROLOGUE
She had been to this place before. That was why, in her darkest hour, Kristjana had returned; she remembered the city from some far away dream of happier times and had come searching for it as though it were still to be found. She had not felt lost the last time she had stepped through Damascus Gate and walked among the hot, narrow, noisy streets of old Jerusalem, or if she had, she had not cared then. At eighteen years old, everything—even loneliness—had felt like an adventure. The space of a few short years could change everything, and Kristjana told herself that she might as well be an old woman, walking cautiously down the stone steps to a crypt where she felt more at home than among the jostle of the living.
She found the place she had sat on her last journey, partially hidden by a wall of smooth rock. It sheltered her from the gaze of anyone else who might wander round, and it was close to the tabernacle and the glow of the sanctuary lamp. When she had sat there as a gap year traveller, her head had still been full of the literary classics she was cramming for university, and she had thought in a pretentious moment that it would be a good idea to do what Sebastian Flyte had suggested in Brideshead: leave something precious in that place so that if life did not turn out as she had so hopefully planned it, she could return again and find the object. That way she could remember for a moment what it had felt like to be young and free and contented.
Kristjana was still young, though she had never been truly contented with life and was certainly not free. She was Scheherazade, a woman with a story to tell or to discover, whose only weapon to evade death was to be found in the weaving of stories. And somewhere in amongst all those mysterious threads of memory and make-believe, she thought she could discover a powerful enough reason to stay alive. Kristjana knew that if she stepped outside into the heat she had so recently escaped, she would find a stone pool where long ago a blind man was sent to wash the mud from his eyes and saw the world for the first time. That was why they all came, the tourists and the pilgrims in their orange baseball caps, visitors by the air-conditioned coach load. They were all explorers of a kind, hoping that in this most sacred and most divided of cities they might find the world and all its meaning in a blaze of overpowering light.
Kristjana was not like them, she was not an explorer by nature. If she was anything, she was a deserter hoping to hide among this forest of humanity—and where better for a refugee than a land of refugees? She was not even sure what she was running from, but in that worst year of her entire life she felt desperately frightened, not of the past, the place from which most people run, but of the future and what might be in store for her.
When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see;
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.
It was never easy to know where to start any tale. That was why writers and storytellers relied on formulas to get the narrative moving: “Once upon a time”, “In the middle of the journey of my life”, “Tell me, Muse”. Kristjana’s story began with the words of Tennyson: “When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see”. That was how she had come to find herself hundreds and hundreds of miles away from home, sitting in ponderous silence. That was how it had started, far away in London, the city she called home, when she had looked into the future and seen nothing. Nothing, the sum of all human fears. She had convinced herself that she had no future, that there was nothing to look forward to, nothing to work for, and it was in that bleak, bewildered frame of mind that she had committed the craziest act of her entire life.
1
There is a little part of every person that dreams of doing this, but most adults are too rational and too anchored by life to contemplate actually going through with it.
August 27, 2015
A Synod Is Not a Council—and Other Canonical Facts
(CNS photo)
A Synod Is Not a Council—and Other Canonical Facts | David Salvato | CWR
Vatican II instituted the Synod of Bishops in order to provide, more adequately and more effectively, for the increase of the Faith and the maintenance of discipline in the particular Churches
Since the 2014 Synod of Bishops a growing theological divide has become apparent. This divide, evident among a small minority of cardinals and bishops present (and not present) at the Extraordinary Assembly, has been recognized through their views on how to “pastorally” apply Catholic teaching regarding marriage, family and sexual relations. It has also come to light that a so-called secret planning group, seemingly consisting of this small minority together with some theologians and journalists, has been meeting to discuss such progressively theological opinions before the October Synod of this year.
The Church, since its inception, has been forced to define, and at times reiterate, the objective truth of the Faith in relation to error, hence the deposit of Catholic doctrine which has guided us for nearly 2000 years. Such definitions, in the face of error, have primarily been discussed and defined in Ecumenical Councils. Due in part to the media buzz the Synod of Bishops has received, the Synod's role in relation to Church teaching has become inflated and even exaggerated. One of the primary guarantors and promoters of the true Faith is, and has always been, the College of Bishops (in communion with and under the Roman Pontiff) as ontologically always existing and governing the Body of Christ. Indeed, the Second Vatican Council affirmed the three ways by which the Church can pronounce her teaching infallibly: through the College of Bishops spread throughout the world (when the Pope, having consulted all bishops’ opinions regarding a topic, declares a particular dogma; for instance when Pope Pius XII declared the corporeal Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary as a dogma of the Faith in 1950); in an Ecumenical Council (in which the entirety of the College of Bishops, with and under the Pope, is present); and by the Pope ex cathedra.
With the upcoming Synod of Bishops pronounced by Pope Francis to discuss issues related to the family and evangelization, and with confused understandings of what a Synod is, even among Catholics, it seems very timely to look at how the Church has officially defined it and what power it actually holds according to her own law.
The Synod of Bishops was instituted by Paul VI in 1965 in order to offer a more “efficacious collaboration” with the Roman Pontiff on the part of the entire Catholic Episcopate from all areas of the world.
August 26, 2015
Here's why Planned Parenthood's "only 3%" claim is so diabolical
by Carl E. Olson | CWR blog
I rarely watch "The O'Reilly Factor" (which too often comes off as an hour-long infomercial for books titled Killing So-and-So), but I just caught a few minutes of a segment on the Planned Parenthood videos. And, once again, some morally-challenged hack—pretty, tough, and wearing a red power dress—trotted out the tired "97% of what Planned Parenthood does has nothing to do with abortion", which is the more positive way of claiming that abortions make up only 3% of what that vile cabal does behind closed doors.
Those numbers, of course, have been challenged. Rich Lowry of National Review recently wrote, in a New York Post opinion piece:
Practically every defender of the organization, fighting to preserve its federal funding, reverts to the 3 percent figure. How could you possibly, they ask, defund a group that devotes itself overwhelmingly to uncontroversial procedures and services for women?
The 3 percent figure is an artifice and a dodge, but even taking it on its own terms, it’s not much of a defense. Only Planned Parenthood would think saying that they only kill babies 3 percent of the time is something to brag about.
The group performs about 330,000 abortions a year, or roughly 30 percent of all the abortions in the country. By its own accounting in its 2013-2014 annual report, it provides about as many abortions as Pap tests (380,000). The group does more breast exams and provides more breast-care services (490,000), but not by that much. The 3 percent figure is derived by counting abortion as just another service like much less consequential services. So abortion is considered a service no different than a pregnancy test (1.1 million), even though a box with two pregnancy tests can be procured from the local drugstore for less than $10.
Lowry likens this to Major League Baseball teams saying "that they sell about 20 million hot dogs and play 2,430 games in a season, so baseball is only .012 percent of what they do." But in doing so, he pushes aside the key issue at hand: the morality of the action involved.
What if Jared Bogle, who recently plummeted from Subway sandwich fame to child porn infamy, were to make the argument, "I only photographed and touched 3% of the children I was around"? How would that fly? Do you think it might sway people to think he really isn't that bad of a guy?
Or, what if sadistic serial killer, kidnapper, rapist, and necrophile Ted Bundy had made the statement:
August 25, 2015
Sincerity in a Nuns’ Cemetery
Sincerity in a Nuns’ Cemetery | James Casper | IPNovels.com
No quality in art and fiction writing is more elusive and perplexing than sincerity.
No cemetery is quieter than one where nuns lie buried.
No school memories are richer or more compelling than those the Sisters left for us.
Insincerity ought to be easy to detect, there being so much of it close at hand in the form of self-deception and self-promotion. It is not easy, though. I first saw its ghostly presence years ago under the watchful eyes of Sister Almeda, SSND. I hear her saying, “Don’t rationalize, James. Don’t make things up!” It was not the first time she said it to me and to others. She would have embroidered those words on a school patrol flag lowered down over a street named Self-serving Excuses.
This is tough love, Sister Almeda, especially for school children and writers and readers of fiction. After all, what do kids and novelists do but make things up? What do readers want these days but pleasure and escape?
It is almost too easy for a novelist to deceive. When confronted with a few doozies, Dan Brown reminded his critics again and again that The Da Vinci Code was fiction. No matter that readers by the thousands went to Paris and London expecting to see what he saw. More than a few must have scratched their heads as they searched for that huge Opus Dei complex under construction in New York City. For Dan Brown, fact and fiction are as enigmatic as Mona Lisa’s smile.
Sister Almeda would have shaken a finger in his face.
If truth and honesty are not ever-present in fiction, if all that matters is making things up for the sake of selling books, what is wrong with an entire story being a pack of lies? Brown is a talented writer and an accomplished storyteller. His novel is far from a pack of lies, but honesty is especially called for when stories are wrapped in appearances of competent scholarship blurring the line between fact and fiction. (See The Da Vinci Hoax, Ignatius Press 2004).
The Da Vinci Code, Fifty Shades of Grey, and other ‘blockbuster’ novels often hyped as mesmerizing are just that, the works of modern day Svengalis. Anyone reading George Bousant du Maurier’s Trilby, a nineteenth-century best seller, will know that du Maurier’s Svengali employed a mixture of science, superstition, gullibility, and guile to mesmerize his victim. Svengali was anything but sincere. Brown and E. L. James are not evil geniuses, but they know how to cast spells, and they both strike me as disingenuous.
I suppose there are many ways to distinguish sincerely written novels from those playing tricks on the reader. Certainly the latter seem more at home in the flotsam and jetsam of screaming hype—Mesmerizing! Riveting! Sexy! Five Star! Some so touted seem fit for pitching by the carnival barker on an old-fashioned midway, the sort our parents cautioned us to avoid. Imagine that.
Which novels give us hope and while entertaining, also uplift and inspire? Which ones would you feel comfortable reading near the grave of Sister Almeda or maybe the grave of your mother?
August 24, 2015
Prominent Cardinal Robert Sarah shares his life story and answers tough questions about issues facing the Church
San Francisco, August 24, 2015 – In a new book from Ignatius Press, Cardinal Robert Sarah, known as one of the most prominent and outspoken Cardinals in the Catholic Church, gives witness to his Christian faith in a fascinating autobiographical interview, God or Nothing: A Conversation on Faith with Nicolas Diat
.
Just in time for the upcoming Synod on the Family in October, Cardinal Sarah answers tough questions facing the Church and comments on many current controversial issues. The mission of the Church, the joy of the gospel, the “heresy of activism”, and the definition of marriage are among the topics he discusses with wisdom and eloquence.
Cardinal Sarah explains, “The idea of putting Magisterial teaching in a beautiful display case while separating it from pastoral practice, which then could evolve along with circumstances, fashions, and passions, is a sort of heresy, a dangerous schizophrenic pathology. I therefore solemnly state that the Church in Africa is staunchly opposed to any rebellion against the teaching of Jesus and of the Magisterium. . . . The Church of Africa is committed in the name of the Lord Jesus to keeping unchanged the teaching of God and of the Church.”
Cardinal Sarah also answers personal questions about his unique experience growing up in Guinea, West Africa. Inspired by the missionary priests who made great sacrifices to bring the Faith to their remote village, his parents became Catholics. Robert discerned a call to the priesthood and entered the seminary at a young age, but due to the oppression of the Church by the government of Guinea, he continued his education outside of his homeland. He studied in France and nearby Senegal. Later he obtained a licentiate in theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, followed by a licentiate in Sacred Scripture at the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum of Jerusalem.
At the age of thirty-four he became the youngest Bishop in the Catholic Church when John Paul II appointed him the Archbishop of Conakry, Guinea, in 1979. His predecessor had been imprisoned by the Communist government for several years, and when Archbishop Sarah was targeted for assassination, John Paul II called him to Rome to be Secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. In 2010 Pope Benedict XVI named him Cardinal and appointed him Prefect of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum. Pope Francis made him Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in 2014.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI says, “I have read God or Nothing with great spiritual profit, joy, and gratitude. . . .[Its] courageous answers to the problems of gender theory clear up in a nebulous world a fundamental anthropological question.”
“There’s an ‘African moment’ unfolding in Catholicism, and Cardinal Robert Sarah is among its most important voices. If you want to understand the forces shaping the Church’s future, you need to read this book,” says John L. Allen, Associate Editor of Crux/Boston Globe.
Raymond Cardinal Burke, Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, calls this book, “A remarkable testimonial of the Catholic faith in the face of many serious contemporary challenges.”
“No one reading this magnificent book of Cardinal Robert Sarah, a true witness of a Church marked in its history by severe persecution, cannot but be fascinated by his profound faith in Jesus Christ. . . . [The] mission countries have themselves become an invaluable source of evangelization and inspiration for the lands from which its missionaries originally came,” says the Most Reverend Carlo Maria Viganò, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States.
Raymond Arroyo, EWTN Anchor of The World Over, affirms, “Cardinal Sarah's voice carries the unmistakable ring of a prophet.”
About the Author:
Robert Cardinal Sarah was born in Guinea, West Africa. Made an Archbishop by Pope John Paul II and a Cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI, he was named the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments by Pope Francis in 2014.
Nicolas Diat is a French journalist and author.
Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J., the Editor-in-Chief for Ignatius Press, is available for interviews about this book. To request a review copy or an interview with Fr. Joseph Fessio, please contact:
Rose Trabbic, Publicist, Ignatius Press at (239)877-3034 or rose@ignatius.com
Product Facts:
Title: GOD OR NOTHING: A Conversation on Faith with Nicolas Diat
Author: Cardinal Robert Sarah, Nicolas Diat
Release Date: August 2015
Length: 284 pages
Price: $17.95
ISBN: 978-1-62164-050-9 • Softcover
Order: 1-800-651-1531 • www.ignatius.com
What Kind of Evil?
(us.fotolia.com | fresnel6)
What Kind of Evil? | Thomas S. Hibbs | CWR
Planned Parenthood supporters are progressive, instrumentalist rationalists, intent on implementing enlightenment policies of science and freedom
"The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered… in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.” — C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Theologian Stanley Hauerwas once posed the following question concerning fetal tissue to a medical researcher: If it were a delicacy, could you eat it? Beyond the horrifying “medical” practices described in the Planned Parenthood videos, their most disgusting feature is not the nonchalant tone, for which Planned Parenthood issued an apology, but the fact that at least some conversations took place over a meal. Aside from calling to mind Hannibal Lecter’s predilection for liver, fava beans and a nice chianti, the setting of the videos makes clear that however refined may have been the upbringing of the Planned Parenthood employees, they apparently did not have parents who said of this or that topic, “Not at the dinner table!”
Disgusting? Disturbing? How about barbaric and evil? Even some who reject the pro-life cause describe the content of these videos in dark terms indeed. But what kind of barbarism?
A number of commentators have made analogies to the Nazis. Some of it is darkly humorous twitter commentary. Riffing on Molly Ivans’ comment about a Pat Buchanan speech, National Review’s Kevin Williamson tweeted: “I thought Planned Parenthood's explanation sounded a lot more convincing in the original German”. Some have noted the connection between Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s support of eugenics and that of the Nazis. Others have cited interesting historical facts such as Mengele's post-Holocaust employment as an abortionist. Perhaps the most telling similarity is a shared philosophy of what the Nazis called "life and unworthy of life."
And yet, I’m not sure the Nazis analogy is entirely apt. There are broadly two dominant strains to modernity. There is the original myth of modernity, which is that of an enlightenment liberation from the evils of tradition; this strain is progressive, universalist, technocratic, and rationalist. The Nazis come from the other side of modernity, the romantic-nationalist reaction against progressive, universalist enlightenment.
Whatever might have been the historical roots of the organization, contemporary Planned Parenthood supporters are not nationalists; they are not reacting against modernity; they are not asserting the superiority of one race over another. They are implementing enlightenment goals. They are progressive, instrumentalist rationalists, intent on implementing enlightenment policies of science and freedom.
August 23, 2015
Doctrine, Dissent, and the Eucharist
"Triumph of the Eucharist" (The Man of Sorrows in Chalice with Two Angels);
Artist: Anonymous, Italian, 16th century (www.metmuseum.org)
A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for August 23, 2015, the Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time | Carl E. Olson
Readings:
Jos 24:1-2a, 15-17, 18b
Ps 34:2-3, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21
Eph 5:21-32 or 5:2a, 25-32
Jn 6:60-69
“Through the centuries,” notes Fr. James T. O’Connor in The Hidden Manna: A Theology of the Eucharist (Ignatius Press, 2005, 2nd ed.), “the Church has consistently refused to mitigate the shock contained in the words of the Lord at Capernaum.” He explains that “dissent to the Church’s teaching is not only a phenomenon of the twentieth century; it has always existed.”
Today’s Gospel reading, from the conclusion of John 6, records how dissent from the teachings of Jesus took place in the very first century. This, 
revealingly, is the only instance in the Gospels of disciples leaving Jesus over a matter of doctrine.
There is little doubt that St. John, in describing that tense scene, also had in mind Christians of the mid and late first century who struggled to accept the shocking words of the Lord. It is sometimes tempting to think of the early Christians as a homogenous group of loyal heroes and willing martyrs. But they, like those of us living in the twenty-first century, struggled with doubts, fears, and temptations. We all know that polls indicate many Catholics today either doubt or even reject the Church’s teaching that “under the consecrated species of bread and wine Christ himself, living and glorious, is present in a true, real, and substantial manner: his Body and his Blood, with his soul and his divinity” (CCC 1413).
Jesus’ teaching that his followers must eat his flesh and drink his blood is indeed a hard saying. Who can accept it? The answer to this vital question is, simply, every man who accepts God’s gift of faith. Just as baptism and entrance into the kingdom of God comes by being “born of water and the Spirit” (Jn. 3:5), so faith in the mystery of the Eucharist comes from the Spirit and the Father. The Father sent the Son and testified on his behalf (cf. Jn. 5:31-32); the Son sent the Holy Spirit, who also testified on his behalf (cf. Jn. 15:26).
Jesus posed two questions to those struggling with doubts: “Does this shock you?” and “What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?” The first question, I think, is somewhat rhetorical in nature. Jesus knew his words were shocking, but he wanted the disciples to know that he meant them to be shocking. He had not misspoken, nor had he resorted to hyperbole.
The second question harkens back to when Jesus first met Nathanael and promised him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man” (Jn. 1:51). The Ascension helped the disciples comprehend both the Incarnation and the Eucharist, in part because it showed that Jesus’ glorified body is not constrained by normal physical limits. Yes, it is flesh and blood, but it is also glorified and transformed; it is, in short, beyond our comprehension, and we must not force God into a box of materialist assumptions.
There are two other important questions in this reading. After some of the disciples had left, Jesus asked the Apostles: “Do you also want to leave?” Just as Joshua, many centuries before, had asked the people of Israel to renew their covenantal vows and swear allegiance to the Lord, Jesus asked the future leaders of the New Israel, the Church, to show their loyalty and commitment to the Kingdom. It was, without question, a great test of faith. Peter, as he had at Caesarea Philippi (cf. Matt. 16:16-20), spoke for all of them, answering with his own rhetorical question: “Master, to whom shall we go?”
Indeed, to whom? What are the options? The novelist Walker Percy once wrote that when he was ever asked why he became Catholic, “I usually reply, ‘What else is there?’” Who else has the words of eternal life? Who else can give the Spirit and life? Who else has descended from heaven, died on the Cross, rose from the dead, and ascended back to heaven?
(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the August 23, 2009, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)
August 20, 2015
"Ex Corde Ecclesia" and "Donum Veritatis": Twenty-Five Years After
Statue of pope John Paul II in Nitra (Photo: us.fotolia.com | vrabelpeter1)
"Ex Corde Ecclesia" and "Donum Veritatis": Twenty-Five Years After | Adam A.J. DeVille, Ph.D. | CWR
Though many academics put up a firestorm of controversy over having a mandatum when Pope John Paul II wrote "Ex Corde Ecclesia" in 1990, their objections are utterly silly and juvenile
2015 offers Catholic universities two silver anniversaries which are of particular importance. First, this year marks a quarter-century since Pope John Paul II issued his landmark apostolic constitution Ex Corde Ecclesia, a charter describing a profoundly important and necessary vision for how Catholic universities are to be fully Catholic and fully academic at the same time—without diluting their faith or diminishing their intellectual excellence. (On this, see George Weigel’s recent column, “Catholic Higher Education and the Perils of ‘Preferred Peers’”.)
Second, this year also marks the silver anniversary of a lesser known but clearly connected document, Donum Veritatis, published in May 1990 under the signature of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on behalf of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and with the full approval of the pope. This document in English bears the title “On the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian.” Let us briefly consider each one in turn.
The first document generated controversy immediately upon publication, and that controversy has dimmed only slightly in the last twenty-five years. For the pope issued, especially to American Catholic universities, a direct challenge to reverse direction from the one adopted in 1967 at the infamous and pernicious Land O’Lakes conference in July of that year.
The danger and the damage of the Land O’Lakes statement has been far-reaching in the last 48 years and it is almost impossible to overstate. The threat may be discerned in its very first paragraph:
To perform its teaching and research functions effectively the Catholic university must have a true autonomy and academic freedom in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community itself.
Hindsight is perfect, of course, but nonetheless this claim must be seen as utter nonsense that no serious academic today could possibly accept. For no academic is ever “truly autonomous” and no research is ever free of “authority of whatever kind.” That is so fatuous a claim that I am astonished anybody could have subscribed to it in the first place.
If I am, say, a psychologist licensed by the state of Indiana to perform research here at the University of Saint Francis, I am accountable not only to the state, but also to the American Psychological Association not to do certain things and to abide by certain professional codes of conduct and ethics. I am “free” and “autonomous” in ignoring those only if I want to lose my license, my job, and my livelihood. This is what the Catholic moral theologian Servais Pinckaers, OP (1925-2008), called the “freedom of indifference”: I am indifferent to any and all others outside myself even at severe cost to myself. That sounds perverse, and it is, but such is the nature of sin.
These two bodies—Indiana and the APA—are both “external to the academic community itself,” and have authority over me in very important ways. One could easily call to mind comparable examples for the health sciences, the biological sciences, the other social sciences, and almost all academic fields.
Autonomy and authority
Theology can and must be no different in this regard, though here the “external authority” is not an academic accrediting body, and in fact, properly understood, is not “external” at all.
August 19, 2015
Catholic Men Need Priests Who Will Lead
A man prays during Ash Wednesday Mass at St. Andrew's Church in the Manhattan borough of New York March 5, 2014. (CNS photo/Carlo Allegri, Reuters)
Catholic Men Need Priests Who Will Lead | Matthew James Christoff | CWR
A recent survey shows many Catholic men are ready to engage more deeply in the Faith—when priests make a commitment to actively evangelize them.
The New Evangelization has been a major effort in the Catholic Church for more than 40 years. Unfortunately, it has failed to stem several significant downward trends among faithful in the United States. Since 2000, 14 million Catholics have left the faith, parish religious-education participation of children has dropped by 24 percent, Catholic school attendance has dropped by 19 percent, baptisms of infants has dropped by 28 percent, baptism of adults has dropped by 31 percent, and sacramental Catholic marriages have dropped by 41 percent. Something is desperately wrong with the Church’s approach to the New Evangelization.
The New Emangelization Project has documented that a key driver of collapse of Catholicism in the US is a serious and growing Catholic “man-crisis.” Large numbers of baptized Catholic men have left the Faith, and many of those who remain Catholic neither know nor practice the Faith and are not committed to passing the Faith on to their children. Recent research shows that large numbers of young Catholic men are leaving the Faith, becoming “Nones,” men who have no religious affiliation. The growing losses of young Catholic men will have a devastating impact on the US Catholic Church in the coming decades, as older Catholic men pass away and young men fail to remain and marry in the Church, accelerating the losses that are already taking place.
While there are massive cultural forces outside of the Church (secularism, pluralism, anti-Christian bias, radical feminism, pornography, etc.) and missteps within the Church (failure to make men a priority, sex abuse scandals, etc.) that have contributed to the Catholic “man-crisis,” the New Emangelization Project has conducted dozens of interviews with top men’s evangelists that suggest a critical reason for the crisis is that bishops and priests have not yet made the evangelization and catechesis of men a clear priority. Men are being ignored by the Church, and they know it.
To gain deeper insight into the role of priests in the evangelization and catechesis of men, the New Emangelization Project conducted the Helping Priests Become More Effective in Evangelizing Men Survey in the fall of 2014. More than 1,400 practicing Catholic men from more than 1,000 parishes in the US participated in the survey.
Overall, the survey results suggest that only about one in five priests have made the commitment to actively evangelize and catechize men, but those who do have a dramatic impact on the faith lives of men. A large majority of men are ready to follow their priests, and in fact are longing for their bishops and priests to call, teach, and lead them. The survey underscores that large numbers of Catholic men are dissatisfied with the lack of attention from their bishops and priests.
Seven themes have emerged from the survey results.
August 18, 2015
How Augustine Made Us More than Matter—and Immortal
The Conversion of St. Augustine, by Fra Angelico (c. 1395-1455).
How Augustine Made Us More than Matter—and Immortal | Brother Justin Hannegan, OSB | HPR
St. Augustine was fascinated by the human soul. Before and after his conversion to Catholicism, he strove to understand its nature, its relation to the body, and its duration. Augustine’s thinking on the soul, like the rest of his life, followed a tortuous path. In this article, I retrace the steps that led him to his developed understanding of the soul—an understanding that would shape subsequent Catholic teaching.
In his early days, Augustine thought that the soul was a fine material substance dispersed throughout the body. He could not accept the existence of a substance that lacked spatial dimensions: “Whatever was not stretched out in space, or diffused or compacted or inflated or possessed of some such qualities, or at least capable of possessing them, I judged to be nothing at all.”1 Augustine, therefore, starts off a materialist. But he changes his mind upon reading Plotinus, who teaches that God is an immaterial substance. Augustine reasons that, because we are made in the image and likeness of God, the human soul is also an immaterial substance: “when speaking of God, no one should think of him as something corporeal; nor yet of the soul, for of all things the soul is nearest to God.”2
Augustine, however, does not merely rely on the Christian doctrine of the imago Dei to prove his point. Instead, he develops a number of philosophical arguments to demonstrate the soul’s immateriality. One of these arguments is that because the soul’s cognitive objects are not limited spatially, the soul itself cannot be limited spatially; and because the soul cannot be limited spatially, it, therefore, cannot be a material body.3 Another argument is that because the soul thinks and wills, but a material body cannot think or will, the soul, therefore, cannot be a material body.4 A third argument is that we attribute moral qualities to the soul, but moral qualities cannot be spatially extended properties of a material substance (e.g., “justice cannot be three-dimensional”); so the soul cannot be a material substance.5
Augustine’s doctrine of the immateriality of the soul leaves him with a conceptual puzzle: how is the immaterial substance of the human soul related to the material substance of the human body? Neo-Platonic philosophy holds that the soul is independent of the body and, regrettably, trapped in the body, as if in a prison: “the body is (the soul’s) fetter and tomb.”6 The soul’s proper place, therefore, is apart from the body, and it should endeavor to escape the body at the earliest opportunity. Augustine cannot accept this view. His Christian faith teaches that God created man with a body, and that man’s body will rise on the last day and be united with the soul in paradise. So the body is not a mere prison. Augustine must part ways with the Neo-Platonists on this point.
Another option for Augustine is to follow Aristotle, as Aquinas does many years later, by averring that the soul is the form of the body.
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