Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 37

Mother Nature is One Unreliable Lady

(us.fotolia.com | ValentinValkov)

Mother Nature is One Unreliable Lady | Bishop-elect Robert Barron | CWR

The consistent Biblical message is that this Creator God is not like the arbitrary and capricious gods of the ancient world; rather, he is reliable, rock-like in his steadfast love

Conservation International has sponsored a series of videos that have become YouTube sensations, garnering millions of views. They feature famous actors - Harrison Ford, Kevin Spacey, Robert Redford, and others --voicing different aspects of the natural world, from the ocean, to the rain forest, to redwood trees. The most striking is the one that presents Mother Nature herself, given voice by Julia Roberts.

They all have more or less the same message, namely, that nature finally doesn't give a fig for human beings, that it is far greater than we, and will outlast us. Here are some highlights from the Mother's speech: "I've been here for over four and a half billion years, 22,500 times longer than you; I don't really need people, but people need me." And "I have fed species greater than you; and I have starved species greater than you." And "my oceans, my soil, my flowing streams, my forests-they all can take you or leave you."

I must confess that when I first came across these videos I thought, "just more tree-hugging extremism," but the more I watched and considered them, the more I became convinced that they are fundamentally right and actually serve to make a point of not inconsiderable theological significance.

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

Spiritual Hunger and the Bread of Life

Jesuit Father Michael Schultheis distributes Communion during Mass held in a camp for internally displaced families inside a U.N. base in Juba, South Sudan, in this April 2014 photo. (CNS photo/Paul Jeffrey)

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, August 12, 2012, the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• 1 Kgs 19:4-8
• Ps 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9
• Eph 4:30—5:2
• Jn 6:41-51

“I’m hungry! I’m starving!” What parent hasn’t heard this (often exaggerated) complaint?

It is common to young children, but certainly not limited to them. When I was in high school I went on a ten-day hiking trip with a small church group. On the seventh day, due to poor planning, the food ran out and the complaints began. For a couple of days I had a very small taste—so to speak!—of what the Israelites experienced while wandering in the desert. Like them, I murmured and grumbled about the leaders: “But you had to lead us into this desert to make the whole community die of famine!” (cf. Ex. 16:2-4).

That complaint was part of the Old Testament reading last week. In today’s Gospel we find that the Jews—those religious leaders ardently opposed to the person and message of Jesus—were murmuring and complaining. They were upset by his claim to be the “bread of heaven that came down from heaven.” The basis for their murmuring disbelief can be summarized quite simply: “We know who this Jesus really is!” This exchange, after all, took place near Capernaum, which was the center for much of Jesus’ public life and ministry (cf. Jn. 2:12; Mk. 2:1).

Jesus responded to the complaints by appealing to the two authorities found throughout his discourses in the Fourth Gospel: the Father and the prophets. Belief in the Son, he said, is a gift from the Father, and testimony to this fact is given by the prophets, whose entire mission was to exhort the people to hear God, learn from Him, and obey Him. The Son was sent to draw men to the Father; likewise, no man comes to the Father except through the Son.

This exclusive claim, which was just beginning to come into focus for the Jews listening to Jesus, is just as demanding and divisive today as it was two thousand years ago. This is why the Church, from the day of her birth, has had to address every sort of skewed understanding and false teaching about the person of Jesus Christ.

Jesus then uttered the third, “Amen, amen,” of this discourse. The first (v. 26) had been a rebuke of the selfish motives and lack of faith shown by those following him. The second (v. 32) prefaced the revelation that he is the bread of life. The third is an invitation to faith: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life.” The manna in the wilderness was indeed miraculous in its source, but natural in its substance; those who ate it were physically nourished for a while, but eventually died.

The new manna, said the ordinary-looking Jewish carpenter to the murmuring crowd, is not a material object, but a divine person: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” Having earlier performed a miracle involving simple bread, Jesus provided the spiritual basis for the stunning sacramental reality that would come to fruition at the Last Supper, on the eve of his crucifixion: “the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

In the words of Moses, spoken many generations before to those complaining in the desert, this “is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat” (Ex. 16:15). Yet the bread of life can appear to be so ordinary, so commonplace, that who and what it is escapes our earth-bound gaze. Although the people listening to Jesus had hungered for ordinary bread, many of them did not hunger for spiritual bread. “For this bread,” wrote St. Augustine, “requires the hunger of the inner person.”

The great joy of our heavenly Father is to hear us say, as we come forward to receive the body, blood, soul, and divinity of his Son: “I’m hungry! I’m starving!” Instead of a murmuring complaint, this should be a cry of joy, a prayer of thanksgiving, and a public expression of faithful recognition.

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the August 9, 2009, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

August 9, 1945: Our Lady of Sorrows, Takashi Nagai and "A Song for Nagasaki"

Left: Atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, taken by Charles Levy; right: Urakami Cathedral sometime after the bombing (Wikipedia)

August 9, 1945: Our Lady of Sorrows, Takashi Nagai and A Song for Nagasaki | K.V. Turley | Catholic World Report

The bombing of Nagasaki, viewed through the lens of eternity, became a mystical foreshadowing of the Apocalypse and, therefore, paradoxically, a preamble to the coming of the Lamb

It is often the case that global events are best understood when viewed through the prism of the individual lives caught up in them. With the coming of the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki, the life of Takashi Nagai, as told in Fr. Paul Glynn’s A Song for Nagasaki (Ignatius Press, 2009), does just that, with the events of August 9, 1945—their repercussions, consequences, and even their spiritual meaning—explored in a way that few would have imagined or even dared do. 

Fr. Glynn is an exceptional writer. He takes the reader—the Western reader, that is—into a world hidden from many of us, namely Japanese society. His book, or rather the subject of his book, is on one level unremarkable. A young man grows up in a traditional bourgeois Japanese home. He is educated and cultured. In due course, he becomes a doctor. Then something quite remarkable commences. There is an inexplicable attraction to Christianity, and it grows. Eventually, the young doctor lodges with a Catholic family in Nagasaki. This city is to be a place of transformation, and in more ways than Nagai could have ever imagined.

A Catholic family in Nagasaki was not such a novelty at the time. Catholicism had been brought there by Jesuits in the sixteenth century and had survived, albeit for many centuries underground, through years of suffering, persecutions, torture, martyrdom even—but survive it did. By the 1930s, the city had a Catholic cathedral, with indigenous priests watching over a devout and active community of believers. It was into this world that Nagai entered.

The picture painted of this young man is far from flattering. He was typical of young men of his generation and background. Thus it is all the more interesting to read of his encounter with a very different culture within his native land, a culture that could be summed up as both attracting and baffling him in equal measure. At the center of this attraction was not simply an ‘ideal’, such as Shinto or Buddhism could have supplied; instead, he was propelled forward by observing the lives and goodness of those around him living what many Japanese considered a foreign religion.

In this encounter his life was changed completely. First, in a very human way, through human love. The woman who became his wife, Midori, was an exceptional person. She was his Catholic landlord’s daughter, and was charming and tender-hearted, beautiful and refined—attributes many of her countrywoman also shared. But she had a quality different from most. This other ‘quality’, however, is something only glimpsed by ‘eyes that can see’. It was piety, certainly, but it was more than that; it was holiness. Unknowingly, Nagai was being drawn to this as much as to any of her other qualities. Theirs was not to be simply a union of bodies and minds, or even wills; it was instead two souls that found each other, and then walked a spiritual path together, one that for all eternity had been mapped out for just these two. In short, it is what constitutes a Christian marriage.

The book, like the life of its subject, is shaped around the events of August 9, 1945.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

The Divinization of the Earth: A “Religion” Without a “God”

(us.fotolia.com | Elena Ray)

The Divinization of the Earth: A “Religion” Without a “God” | Fr. James V. Schall, SJ | CWR

The direct connection between theories of earth primacy and brutal control of human beings through abortion, sterilization, and euthanasia simply cannot be avoided

"With cries that pierce me to the heart, / my enemies revile me, / saying to me all the day long: / ‘Where is your God?’” — Psalm 42.

"In paganism, the Divine is that to which sacrifices must be offered. This is almost a definition. In this recent movement, Man is something that should be sacrificed on behalf of the Earth. The divinization of the Earth is an extremely consequential move, since it is supposed to be higher than Man.” — Rêmi Brague, “Are There as Many Gods as Religions?” (Modern Age, Summer 2015)

I.

With so much current discussion in panic mode of “earth warming” and “environmental” issues, along with the selling of fetal parts and massive abortions, we need to ask ourselves: “What is going on here?” The popular view is that man, by his very presence on it, is “abusing” the earth. Earth is said to be “greater” than man. In the context of so many billion human beings, each life is insignificant and can be replaced. Thus, morality starts, not with man, but with the earth. Man is second, not first. This human “earth-exploitation” thesis seems to be in conflict with the biblical view that man has “dominion” over the goods of the earth. Those goods are there for man’s use to achieve his purposes, which are not primarily “earth” centered, even though they take place on this planet.

The earth itself, however, has no inner consciousness of itself. It does not behold itself. Unlike man, it has no possibility of being other than it is. There are those who want to hold both sides of this issue. That is, they do not want to “abuse” the earth, whatever that means, but they also want to use the goods available for human needs. This usage seems to be what they are for (that same approach seems also to be Aristotle’s position). But this view brings up the controverted issue: “Just what cohort of mankind are these given resources designed to support?” The current one? All those of past and future? The future but not the present? The entire human race is constantly replicating itself; this steady reproducing of itself is how mankind stays in existence on this planet. One way, no doubt unpopular, to stop human “pollution” would simply be to stop reproducing—a kind of universal vow of chastity. This is not a widely heard view!

The human race has already lived on this planet for thousands upon thousands of years. Man himself appears on the earth as a late-comer but still as both properly belonging to it and yet, because of his intelligence, transcendent to it. If we assume that some ninety to a hundred billion human beings have already lived on the earth, we see that they have been “sustained” more or less well by the earth’s abundance. Contrary to expectations, individual members of the species are generally much better off the later they appear on the planet, at least as far as their physical conditions. Few past eons realized how richly the earth was endowed from its beginning by whatever caused it to be rather than not be. And even today this abundance cannot be understood and used except by insightful human intelligence.

Thus, it is increasingly realized that what is available to man is itself a function of man’s knowledge and craft. When we piously talk of “preserving” resources for “future” generations, we encounter something of an enigma.

Continue reading on the Catholic World Report site.

Why You Need Spiritual Food

Why You Need Spiritual Food | Bishop-elect Robert Barron | CWR

Though materialists of all stripes want to deny it, there is a dimension of the human person that goes beyond the merely physical, a dynamism that connects him or her with God

Every third summer, the Catholic lectionary provides a series of readings for Sunday Mass from the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John. This is the magnificently crafted chapter in which the evangelist's Eucharistic theology is most fully presented. It is a curiosity of John's Gospel that the Last Supper scene includes no "institution narrative," which is to say, the account of what Jesus did with the bread and cup the night before he died. But as many scholars have indicated, the Eucharist is a theme that runs right through the entirety of the Gospel and which finds richest expression in the famous chapter six.

I won't focus in this essay on the great issue of the real presence -"My flesh is real food and my blood real drink"- but rather on the more general matter of spiritual nourishment. A few months ago, I spent a week in the hospital recovering from surgery, and for about three days, I was not permitted to eat any solid food. What amazed me was how rapidly my body shrank. The muscles of my arms and legs began quickly - and rather alarmingly - to atrophy, and it proved difficult even to cross the room and sit up in a chair.

Almost twenty years ago, I undertook, with a good friend of mine, a bicycle trip from Paris to Rome, covering about seventy miles a day. We really pushed ourselves to the limit. One day, somewhere in the south of France, after about five hours of pedaling, I hit the wall. Though I had heard of this phenomenon, I had never experienced it before. When you hit the wall, you don't gradually slow down or calmly realize that you have to take a rest; you just stop, your body simply unable to go on.

May I suggest that these examples are very exact analogies to spiritual health and spiritual nourishment?

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Faramir’s Rangers and the 21st-century Church

Faramir, as portrayed in Peter Jackson's adaptation of "The Lord of the Rings"

Faramir’s Rangers and the 21st Century Church | Thomas M. Doran | CWR

Today, we don’t know whether the Western democracies will keep drifting away from faith and virtue, or if a turning will occur

I’m not much for writing sequels to my own novels (though I’ve read some good ones by other authors), but feedback from my recent Catholic World Report article, “Denethor’s Ghost”, prompts me to offer a “Denethor’s Ghost” Part 2 that shines a brighter light on the character of Faramir in J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of The Rings”.

Though they aren’t called rangers in Tolkien’s story—that designation is reserved for Aragorn’s kin in the north—Faramir’s band functions as rangers, ranging far and wide in a former garden land turned wilderness east of the river Anduin, keeping the Ithilien border lands as free and as clean as possible with the few men and resources available to him, all this while Sauron’s forces are on the move and rapidly multiplying. Thus, Faramir skirmishes when he can, retreats when he needs to retreat, and hides when he needs to hide.

What does this have to do with 21st century Christians? In “Denethor’s Ghost”: “storytelling is altogether different (than rational argument, religious tracts, etc.) in the way it affects our thoughts, emotions, and imaginations. While a story may not say anything new, truths are depicted in a new way, a way that allows us to see them in a different light”, even when the story is drastically different from the here and now, as is Tolkien’s story.

Faramir has a demanding life, with few consolations. He’s realistic about the dire threats he faces but he doesn't let them break his spirit, a mark of humility. His father Denethor’s pride stokes the despair that comes from gazing into a Palantir, while Faramir’s humility ameliorates the darkness that comes from his impossible mission, and even from the Ringwraith’s attack on him on the Pelennor fields.

Likewise for us, when we are confronted with assaults on faith and culture, pride pulls us toward despondency, while humility—not rose colored glasses—keeps us attentive to what we can do and can influence.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

The New Manna is a Man!

Detail from "The Gathering of the Manna" (1621) Guido Reni [WikiArt.org]

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, August 2, 2015, the Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• Ex 16:2-4, 12-15
• Ps 78:3-4, 23-24, 25, 54
• Eph 4:17, 20-24
• Jn 6:24-35

“The sign of the feeding of the thousands,” wrote Monsignor Romano Guardini in The Lord, “shatters the narrowness that has been closing in on Jesus.”

What does that mean? Those in the crowds following Jesus viewed him through a cramped and selfish set of lens. Having witnessed amazing signs, they wondered how they could benefit materially or politically, perhaps by setting Jesus up as king (Jn. 6:15). Having seen bread multiplied before their eyes, they could think only of getting even more, and of satisfying their physically hunger.

The shattering was, in today’s Gospel reading, going to become a sort of spiritual explosion, which would begin to destroy mere material ambitions and challenge the people’s understanding (or absence of understanding) of God’s ways. Although Jesus had compassion on the hungry crowds and fed them, he knew far more was needed. The Son of God did not become man just to fill stomachs, but to awaken, save, and fill souls. “Our Lord made bread in plenty from just a little bread in the desert and changed water into wine at Cana,” wrote Ephrem the Syrian, “He first sought to accustom their mouths to his bread and his wine until the time would come for him to give them his blood as well as his body.”

Just as he spoke of natural birth with Nicodemus and natural water with the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus began, in this instance, with natural bread. But it was just a starting point, for he was intent on showing the people their spiritual starvation and their need for heavenly nourishment. And so he took a further step when he offered a stiff rebuke. “Amen, amen, I say to you,” he declared as he exposed their earth-bound thinking, “you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.”

This is the first of the four “Amen, amen” statements made in John 6. Each builds on the previous; each is a profound pronouncement. The Hebrew word “amen” (sometimes translated “truly” or “verily”) indicated a solemn statement of truth and veracity. It was, in essence, a sacred oath. In this first instance, the rebuke was followed by an exhortation to not work for food that perishes, but “for food that endures for eternal life.” What is required? What is needed? Belief in the One sent by God.

The response to this call to faith was astounding: “What sign can you do …? What can you do?” They had seen him multiply five loaves and two fishes to feed thousands and they still demand a further sign, further proof! Their reference to their ancestors in the desert with Moses is, of course, quite ironic, for the Israelite community—as today’s Old Testament reading recounts—continually doubted and second-guessed the authority of Moses. Given manna—“bread from heaven”—the Israelites had asked, “What is this?” (Ex. 16:15).

Their descendents, likewise, failed to recognize the supernatural character of the Incarnate Word and the heavenly origin of the God-man. In order to comprehend where he was from, they had to be corrected about Who gave the bread from heaven. It was God the Father, not Moses, who sustained the people in the wilderness.

The woman at the well, not yet comprehending the spiritual nature of Jesus’ words, had said, “Sir, give me this water” (Jn. 4:15). In a similar manner the people in the crowd insist, “Sir, give us this bread always.” But they, like their fathers, still did not understand “that man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord” (Deut. 8:3). Having eaten the bread miraculously multiplied before them by the hands of God, they still tried to force God into a box—a lunch box.

That box—the destructive illusion of selfishness, political schemes, and materialism—was shattered with a few simple words: “I am the bread of life.” The new manna was a man!

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the August 2, 2009, issue of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

Extremists execute the unborn, Christians seek truth and justice

(us.fotolia.com | @ivan kmit)

CWR Editorial | Carl E. Olson

The White House says David Daleiden and the CMP are "extremists on the right"; Daleiden, a 26-year-old Catholic, says he's inspired by Pope Francis

Yesterday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest, when asked about President Obama's reaction to the series of undercover videos released by the Center for Medical Progress in which Planned Parenthood officials discuss selling fetal organs for profit, "said the videos were released in a 'fraudulent way' with 'not a lot of evidence' behind them." (The entire press conference can be viewed on the C-SPAN site.) Earnest stated:

There is ample reason to think that this is merely the tried and true tactic that we’ve seen from extremists on the right to edit this video and selectively release this edited version of the video that grossly distorts the position of the person that’s actually speaking...

Earnest clearly indicated that his talking points were coming from Planned Parenthood, admitting, "I’m merely repeating what I’ve seen that they [Planned Parenthood] have said..." He then offered the defense that "any review of the policy that Planned Parenthood says they implement indicates that the views expressed in the videos is—or at least the way they are depicted on the videos—is entirely inaccurate. ... But for those policies and for the way that Planned Parenthood implements them, I'd encourage you to contact Planned Parenthood." In other words, there's nothing to see here—move along!

"The President," he added in a defiant shout out to pro-abortion supporters, "certainly will not support another effort by Republicans to try to defund an organization that offers important and needed healthcare services to women across the country." I wonder: is there any institution in the U.S., at this very moment, that enjoys greater support and cover from the President of the United States than does Planned Parenthood? While Obama has wavered and flopped on many issues during his time office, he has held fast to the pro-abortion faith, even if he has long insisted that no one is really pro-abortion.

If you do a search for "Obama" and "extremists" you'll find that the POTUS often uses the term "extremists" to identify terrorists who have apparently "twisted" and distorted the teachings of true Islam. For example, in a February 17, 2015 op-ed in the LA Times, Obama wrote:

Groups like al Qaeda and ISIL promote a twisted interpretation of religion that is rejected by the overwhelming majority of the world's Muslims. The world must continue to lift up the voices of Muslim clerics and scholars who teach the true peaceful nature of Islam. We can echo the testimonies of former extremists who know how terrorists betray Islam. We can help Muslim entrepreneurs and youths work with the private sector to develop social media tools to counter extremist narratives on the Internet.

He even stated that such "violent extremists"—who, again, have nothing to do, he says, with "the true peaceful nature of Islam"—have authentic, legitimate gripes:

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Planned Parenthood, Cecil the Lion, and the Wisdom of Serpents

(us.fotolia.com | crazycolors)

Planned Parenthood, Cecil the Lion, and the Wisdom of Serpents | Mary Jo Anderson | CWR

The juxtaposition of these shocking videos and the disgust over the killing of Cecil should provide a public relations coup for the pro-life message. Instead, it appears we are about to sabotage ourselves.

The just released fourth video of a Planned Parenthood official haggling over aborted baby organs could be cataclysmic for the abortion crowd. The revelation of what Planned Parenthood is really about should be the golden opportunity for pro-life movement.

But will it be? Will we pro-life advocates squander this perfect storm?

Immediately after viewing Savita Ginde, M.D., Vice President and medical director of Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood, negotiate pricing strategies for infant organs, I had a conversation with one of my sisters regarding the controversy surrounding the killing of the "beloved lion" known as Cecil.  She remarked with dismay that pro-life voices were blundering badly with their sneering tone toward those who were enraged by the death of Cecil, but who seemed unmoved by the callous slaughter of babies in utero. "Their tone is critical of all who love animals, who see the beauty and worth in that lion. Don't they realize that you can care for innocent babies and for animals?"

I was quick to defend the pro-life comments; they were meant to indict the culture—not individuals—that spares few tears for babies but weeps publicly for lion. But as she expanded on her own reaction to recent negative pro-life comments I realized there is a very real disconnect. The juxtaposition of these shocking videos and the disgust over the killing of Cecil should provide a public relations coup for the pro-life message.  Instead, it appears we are about to sabotage ourselves.

The message that adversely compares the public reactions to Cecil's death ("Cat lives matter!") and the grizzly butchery (yawn) of Planned Parenthood may be true, but it is not effective. Worse, it may be squandering a rare opportunity.

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

Graham Greene’s Cobbled Road from St. Mary’s

Graham Greene’s Cobbled Road from St. Mary’s | James Casper | IPNovels.com

Graham Greene, often mentioned in these pages, had a troubled and chaotic relationship with the Catholic faith to which he converted the year before his marriage, so much so that his motives for conversion have even been questioned. At the same time, more than any writer of his day, he wrote novels rich in Catholic themes seeming to reflect his personal moral conflicts, some of which were British tabloid news of his era.

Absent his problematic Catholicism, would the Greene we know today, be recognizable at all?

Perhaps Greene wrote about matters Catholic precisely because by some standards he was not a very good one. His faith was the shoe that did not quite fit. His novels endure for the very reason that he had more questions than answers, more doubts than convictions, and found more pain than most as he limped his way along. It’s a strange business, though, for a writer to wander into a world where he could feel so little at home and ultimately found so little comfort.

His conversion made him the novelist he was. His struggle with matters Catholic may have been all the more penetrating because of his own misgivings and lapses. He was not reluctant to wade into murky waters where his lean prose belies his struggle to simply stay afloat.

Complacency might make for a good night’s rest, but it never leads to much when it comes to writing once morning arrives. And it never makes for a good novel.

My wife and I encountered the Graham Greene story in a personal sense, at almost its beginning when we lived in Hampstead a few years ago, and attended Mass at St. Mary’s Church.

Continue reading at IPNovels.com.