Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 76

"The Sacraments as True Causes of Grace: An Ecumenical Obstacle"

 The Baptism of Christ by Paolo Veronese-1661

The Sacraments as True Causes of Grace: An Ecumenical Obstacle | Joshua Madden | HPR

If the Church can be accused of anything at all, (it is that) she attributes too much power to God, for it is only she who proclaims to the world that God is so powerful that he takes up creation and uses it to bring about that which he wills. 

n his treatment of the sacraments in the Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas Aquinas naturally begins the discussion by asking what a sacrament is, 1 and whether they are necessary. 2Immediately following these introductory questions, Thomas broaches the topic we will here be discussing, the question addressed in the very first article of question 62, “Whether the Sacraments Are the Cause of Grace?” In this article, the third objection to this question appears to be the strongest: “what is proper to God should not be ascribed to a creature. But it is proper to God to cause grace, according to Psalm 83:12: “The Lord will give grace and glory. Since, therefore, the sacraments consist in certain words and created things, it seems that they cannot cause grace.” This is a lucid and forceful objection that cannot be swept aside lightly, and it is this exact objection that the Protestant Christian will raise against the Catholic understanding of the sacraments. John Calvin, who will act as our dialogue partner in this treatment, says as much in his defining work, Institutes of the Christian Religion, when he states, “They (the sacraments) do not of themselves bestow any grace.” 3 In response to this objection, Thomas makes clear the distinction in causes relating to the sacraments, distinguishing between a principal cause and an instrumental cause. It will soon become clear why we can say that the sacraments truly cause grace by acting as instrumental causes, deriving their power from the Incarnate Word who has ordained them to confer grace through the mediation of the Church. Understood in this way, the question, “Whether the Sacraments are the Cause of Grace,” can be answered in the affirmative.

Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin on Sacramental Efficacy

It is no secret that one of the main points of contention between Protestant Christianity and the Catholic Church (and the Orthodox churches) is the institution and efficacy of the sacraments. Most of Protestant Christianity will affirm the existence of only two sacraments: baptism and communion, or “The Lord’s Supper,” as it is commonly called

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"Not God's Type" praised as "a beautiful account of the courtship of the living God..."

Michael Bradley, managing editor of Ethika Politika, writes that Holly Ordway’s account of her journey from atheism to Catholicism, Not God’s Type: An Atheist Academic Lays Down Her Arms (Ignatius Press, 2014), is "a delightful and searingly introspective account of the author’s moving journey from unbelief..."

Ordway's book is filled

with anecdotes and details from her early youth and young adult life, a much more robust account of how Christian literature—particularly the works of Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Chesterton, and Gerard Manley Hopkins—impacted and guided her conversion experience, and how her fencing career integrated with her growth in Christian discipleship.

A slim 187 pages (featuring 27 chapters and 7 “interludes,” none of which are longer than 10 pages) and written in the light and fluid prose befitting a former English professor, Not God’s Type is a quick and uplifting read, and eminently readable. Ordway opens with two quotes—one by John Henry Newman and one by Lewis—about “laying down one’s arms” before the sovereign Lord, thus situating the book’s title and its most persistent thematic element within the context not only of conversion from unbelief to belief, but of continual transformation of imagination and heart. Indeed, imagination plays a major role in Ordway’s conversion because it is an integral aspect of the Christian vision itself; each chapter opens with a snippet from a Christian poem or literary work.

"The meat of the book," Bradley notes, "concerns Ordway’s intellectual investigation of fundamental Christian claims. Did there exist a First Mover, a personal Creator through whose agency all things came into being from nothing? The evidence, as Ordway saw it, indicated ‘yes.’ And so forth for a host of claims that Ordway previous would dismiss with nary a second thought. The fortress begins to crumble, largely thanks those literary conduits of grace: Chesterton’s aesthetic sense, Lewis’s apologetic verve, always the poetry of Hopkins and the literature of Tolkien; seeds sown in silence, bearing good fruit in due season."

He concludes his detailed review by stating:

It is a beautiful account of the courtship of the living God, a person to be known more so than a theory to be investigated. Ordway catches herself by surprise in the book’s latter chapters by realizing that while she “tested” God as a hypothesis, he engulfed her with his Holy Spirit, emboldening her to make not a leap, but a joyful affirmation of faith in the God who is nearer to her than she is to herself.

Read the entire review on the Ethika Politika site.

Old Liberals, Young Liberals, and the Breakdown of the Family

(Photo: © peshkova | us.fotolia.com)

Old Liberals, Young Liberals, and the Breakdown of the Family | Dr. James Hitchcock | CWR

Why and how the rejection of Humanae Vitae made all the difference among Catholics

A recent study by the Pew Research Center finds significant differences between younger and older liberals, differences that are not encouraging either to orthodox religious believers or to the older liberals.

The Next Generation Left (NGL) are at one with older liberals on the social issues, notably abortion and homosexual marriage, and it is primarily those issues which hold the Democratic constituencies together. But the NGL is notably less liberal on economic issues. Only nine per cent of older liberals think America’s economic system is fair, while 36 per cent of the NGL does. Over 8o per cent of older liberals think the government should help the needy, as opposed to only 39 per cent of the NGL, 32 per cent of whom think the poor lack initiative and rely on handouts.

As R. R. Reno of First Things says, the Pew study seems to show that the NGL “…marry free market individualism with an affirmation of lifestyle freedom unhindered by and sometimes antagonistic to religion, morality, and social solidarity.”

Older liberals vs. younger liberals

These findings ought not to be surprising, given the meritocratic nature of elite education in America. Intense competition has formed the NGL and confirmed for them that they have arrived at success through hard work and personal merit and have nothing to apologize for.

There is some unease over this among older liberals. Universities still celebrate students and alumni who are successful in worldly terms, but in their publicity they feature equally those engaged in various kinds of social service. At every commencement ceremony speakers congratulate the new alumni on their accomplishments but urge them not to forget the less fortunate. Being involved in social action of some kind is a good career move both before and during college, but how many graduates—burdened by sometimes overwhelming debts—remain committed is doubtful.

The NGL are not eager to sacrifice even for what they consider to be the common good, a small but telling statistic is that, while the NGL consider themselves environmentalists, many also favor the Keystone XL pipeline.

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Non-Negotiables in a Relativistic, Media-Driven Age

Non-Negotiables in a Media-Driven, Relativistic Age | CWR staff | Catholic World Report

Veteran journalist Sheila Liaugminas's new book tackles the roots and meaning of hot button issues from abortion to social justice

Sheila Liaugminas is an Emmy Award-winning, veteran journalist who has worked in both print and broadcast media. She reported for Time magazine in its Midwest Bureau for over 20 years, and co-hosted the Chicago television program “YOU”. Based in Chicago, Liaugminas is a regular contributor to MercatorNet.com, and has been published in the Chicago Tribune, Crain's Chicago Business, Crisis, National Catholic Register, and National Review Online. She currently hosts the daily radio program “A Closer Look” on Relevant Radio.

Her new book, Non-Negotiable: Essential Principles of a Just Society and Humane Culture, was published recently by Ignatius Press. It has been widely praised, with Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I., saying, "Combining the passion of personal conscience and the convictions of reason and faith, Sheila Liaugminas analyzes conflicted points in our culture in the light of first principles. It's a good tool in skilled hands."

Sheila recently took time from her busy schedule to talk with Catholic World Report about her book, the culture and the Church, relativism, human dignity, social justice, and Catholic social doctrine.

CWR: Let’s start with the very first sentence, in your Preface: “We the people are losing our ability to think clearly or reason well.” You also state that we have lost the “art of argument.” There’s surely a lot of blame to go around, but what are some of the foundational factors? And what is the trajectory you’ve witnessed in your years working in secular and Catholic media? Is it simply getting worse?

Sheila Liaugminas: We can look back at any number of periods in the past century, but at least to the Sixties and the rupture in the culture and the Church that seemed to happen suddenly in the chaos of that decade to see where and how the current confusion was sown. It was a revolutionary time when authority was not only questioned but ridiculed and rendered irrelevant, and we rapidly and all too easily lost our reference points to absolute truth and the Judeo-Christian ethics that formed this nation.

It ushered in Roe v. Wade which led to all that Pope Paul VI predicted in Humanae Vitae, redefining life itself and the terms for living a good life to fit the new secular orthodoxy. From then on, we’ve been plummeting further into the ‘dictatorship of relativism’ Pope Benedict XVI warned of, in which things become what culture shapers decide, changeable with the times. Words have been so distorted through that cultural disruption that ‘Choice’ covers abortion, ‘Compassion’ covers euthanasia, and ‘Equality’ covers the redefinition of marriage in law. It is getting worse with each successive movement claiming as its mantle a word that designates empathy and freedom and human ideals. These are persuasive to a population unable to counter with questions that challenge their premises.

CWR: There are, as your book emphasizes, certain truths “so foundational for our life and flourishing that they are simply not open to debate or mitigation—they are non-negotiable.” And yet those truths are, of course, not only debated, they are even dismissed. Why so? How did we arrive at this spot?

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Ignatius Press President: "It's time for the full Gospel of the Family"

Mark Brumley, President of Ignatius Press, has penned an op-ed for CRUX titled, "It's time for the full Gospel of the Family". Here are a couple of excerpts:

Perhaps you’ve noticed that some reporters describe the disagreement between Catholic leaders as between those who want to keep the status quo on marriage and family and those who want merciful and compassionate change.

What nonsense. What political spin.

Many of us dubbed “conservative,” who supposedly peddle a “closed system of theology,” and allegedly confuse the “gospel with a penal code” certainly don’t want the status quo. We believe in change.

In the book “The Gospel of the Family,” the authors, Father Juan Jose Pérez-Soba and Dr. Stephan Kampowski, underscore the transformative power of the gospel on marriage and family life. They want a full engagement of the gospel’s power, which they believe hasn’t been happening in the Catholic Church. That’s hardly status quo. As Cardinal George Pell writes in his foreword, the Church must provide “lifeboats for those who have been shipwrecked by divorce” but the Church must also direct people to a safe port, not toward the rocks or the marshes. And the Church should provide leadership and good maps to reduce the number of shipwrecks to begin with. Again, no status quo.

It’s not a matter of staying the course; it’s a matter of helping people get on the right course. ...

For decades, some Church officials sent mixed messages to young people, to those preparing for marriage, and to married couples about whether the Church really believes what she says. We haven’t collectively directed our creative energies into converting and forming our people. We shouldn’t pretend as if we have. Indeed, in some cases, in the name of being “pastoral”, some leaders formed young people with a vision contrary to the faith. Now we look up and wonder why the world’s problems with sexuality, gender, and marriage and family life so deeply affect the Church.

We need a renewed missionary effort here. How about a, well, New Evangelization? I’m not talking simply about teaching the truth — although that’s crucial. While things have begun to turn around, we have had far too little systematic and engaging teaching in so much of parish life. New resources are available, but we have a long way to go.

No, when I speak of evangelization I mean evangelizing for serious discipleship and doing so in the context of the Gospel of the Family — the good news of what life in Christ says about the family. Catechesis assumes and implies conversion. Conversion is bound up with evangelization. Far from being contrary to mercy, it is, as St. John Paul II, the Pope of Divine Mercy, taught, at the very heart of the Gospel. If we want to live the Gospel of Mercy, then we must convert the family.

Read the entire piece on at CruxNow.com.

For more about Ignatius Press books relating to the Synod, family, and marriage, visit the Synod Resources page.

The Worst Rapture Movie Ever Made

Nicolas Cage stars in a scene from the movie "Left Behind." (CNS photo/Teddy Smith, courtesy Stoney Lake Entertainment)

The Worst Rapture Movie Ever Made | Carl E. Olson | Catholic World Report blog

The "Left Behind" reboot starring Nicholas Cage continues a dubious tradition of Fundamentalist "end times" movies that are unbearable, unbelievable, and unbiblical

A dozen years ago, I wrote an article, “No End In Sight”, for First Things, in which I wrote, perhaps with a dash of sarcasm: “Only two more Left Behind books to go and we’ll finally know how the world ends. I can hardly wait. I feel fortunate that I live at a time when someone finally figured out what the Book of Revelation really means.” I noted that the novel, The Remnant: On the Brink of Armageddon, which was the most recent Left Behind book at that time (it was #13, and three more followed between 2003-2007), had a first printing of 2,750,000 copies. “That’s a serious number of people learning the secrets of the Book of Revelation,” I wrote, “Unfortunately for them, the secrets are stale, recycled, and false.”

Four years ago, Christian Post reported that Cloud Ten Pictures, the company that produced the first Left Behind movie in 2000, starring Kirk Cameron, had finally settled a lawsuit with Tim LaHaye—creator and co-author of the mega-selling novels—that was rooted LaHaye's claim that “the producers made a lower quality film than the contract demanded.” That is funny in it's own right, since LaHaye (b. 1926), a high profile Fundamentalist pastor based in San Diego who has authored or co-authored some fifty books, should know that it's impossible to make a good Rapture movie—or so it appears, based on all available evidence (including the three previous Left Behind movies).

But LaHaye was persistent, saying, “My dream has always been to enter the movie theater with a first-class, high-quality movie that is grippingly interesting, but also is true to the biblical storyline – and that was diluted in the first attempt, but Lord willing, we are going to see this thing made into the movie that it should be.” And so LaHaye had agreed, in 2010, to allow Cloud Ten Pictures “to make a Hollywood version of the New York Times bestseller series.”

Two nights ago, I took two friends to the opening night of the Left Behind “reboot,” the so-called “Hollywood version” of the series. I can safely say, with my right hand on a Bible and a stiff drink in my left, that the new movie is not first-class, high-quality, grippingly interesting, or true to the biblical storyline. It's so bad that Nicholas Cage—apparently the “Hollywood” in “Hollywood version”—looks embarrassed to be in the film, and I'm guessing that Cage has rarely felt embarrassed about much of anything.

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Four Suggestions For Those Following the Synod

Left: The pectoral cross of a Cardinal; right: New spouses exchange rings during a Mass in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican Sept. 14th. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Four Suggestions For Those Following the Synod | Bill Maguire | Catholic World Report

The central task of the Synod on the Family is to evangelize and proclaim the truth and beauty of her teachings concerning the human person, human sexuality, marriage, and family

The Extraordinary Meeting of the Synod of Bishops begins this Sunday, October 5th, and will last for two weeks, concluding on Sunday, October 19th with the Solemn Concelebration of the Holy Mass and the Beatification of the Servant of God Paul VI in St. Peter's Square. As the Synod gets underway, here are four suggestions—with an applicable verse from Sacred Scripture—for those interested in better grasping and more effectively articulating the beauty of the Church’s teaching on marriage and family:

First, listen to the Church’s teaching with fresh ears and avoid excessive preoccupation with controversial issues. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” (Mk 4:9).

It is helpful to acknowledge from the outset that the Church and her teaching will likely come out the loser in mainstream media coverage of the Synod. Many of our reigning cultural elites and the institutions under their charge have too much vested in pushing their own agenda and worldview to give the Church a fair hearing.

Predictably, much of their coverage will focus exclusively on hot-button issues: the reception of Holy Communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics; the redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples; the use of contraception; and so forth. Even these issues, however, will be covered only through a narrow lens: Closed-minded Conservative Prelates vs. Open-minded Progressive Prelates; The Wrong Side of History vs. The Right Side of History; The Church’s War against Women; and the like. 

It is incumbent on serious Catholics, therefore, to seek out thoughtful considerations of the Church's teaching, most of which will be found in faithful Catholic media outlets. Even then, however, it is best to avoid excessive concentration on the controversial issues, but rather listen with fresh ears to the Gospel of the Family. It is only within the context of deep and prayerful reflection on God’s revelation concerning marriage and family that light is shed on how to effectively understand and respond to the pressing moral and doctrinal questions.

Secondly, recognize the real battle over marriage and family is ultimately a spiritual battle. “We are not contenting against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness” (Eph 6:12).

It is good to keep in mind the following rule of thumb:

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"St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis of Assisi" by G.K. Chesterton

St. Thomas and St. Francis | G.K. Chesterton | From St. Thomas Aquinas

Let me at once anticipate comment by answering to the name of that notorious character, who rushes in where even the Angels of the Angelic Doctor might fear to tread.

Some time ago I wrote a little book of this type and shape on St. Francis of Assisi; and some time after (I know not when or how, as the song says, and certainly not why) I promised to write a book of the same size, or the same smallness on St. Thomas Aquinas. The promise was Franciscan only in its rashness; and the parallel was very far from being Thomistic in its logic. You can make a sketch of St. Francis: you could only make a plan of St. Thomas, like the plan of a labyrinthine city. And yet in a sense he would fit into a much larger or a much smaller book. What we really know of his life might be pretty fairly dealt with in a few pages; for he did not, like St. Francis, disappear in a shower of personal anecdotes and popular legends. What we know, or could know, or may eventually have the luck to learn, of his work, will probably fill even more libraries in the future than it has filled in the past. It was allowable to sketch St. Francis in an outline; but with St. Thomas everything depends on the filling up of the outline. It was even medieval in a manner to illuminate a miniature of the Poverello, whose very title is a diminutive. But to make a digest, in the tabloid manner, of the Dumb Ox of Sicily passes all digestive experiments in the matter of an ox in a tea-cup. But we must hope it is possible to make an outline of biography, now that anybody seems capable of writing an outline of history or an outline of anything. Only in the present case the outline is rather an outsize. The gown that could contain the colossal friar is not kept in stock.

I have said that these can only be portraits in outline. But the concrete contrast is here so striking, that even if we actually saw the two human figures in outline, coming over the hill in their friar's gowns, we should find that contrast even comic. It would be like seeing, even afar off, the silhouettes of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, or of Falstaff and Master Slender. St. Francis was a lean and lively little man; thin as a thread and vibrant as a bowstring; and in his motions like an arrow from the bow. All his life was a series of plunges and scampers: darting after the beggar, dashing naked into the woods, tossing himself into the strange ship, hurling himself into the Sultan tent and offering to hurl himself into the fire. In appearance he must have been like a thin brown skeleton autumn leaf dancing eternally before the wind; but in truth it was he that was the wind.

St. Thomas was a huge heavy bull of a man, fat and slow and quiet; very mild and magnanimous but not very sociable; shy, even apart from the humility of holiness; and abstracted, even apart from his occasional and carefully concealed experiences of trance or ecstasy. St. Francis was so fiery and even fidgety that the ecclesiastics, before whom he appeared quite suddenly, thought he was a madman. St. Thomas was so stolid that the scholars, in the schools which he attended regularly, thought he was a dunce. Indeed, he was the sort of schoolboy, not unknown, who would much rather be thought a dunce than have his own dreams invaded, by more active or animated dunces. This external contrast extends to almost every point in the two personalities.

It was the paradox of St. Francis that while he was passionately fond of poems, he was rather distrustful of books. It was the outstanding fact about St. Thomas that he loved books and lived on books; that he lived the very life of the clerk or scholar in The Canterbury Tales, who would rather have a hundred books of Aristotle and his philosophy than any wealth the world could give him. When asked for what he thanked God most, he answered simply, "I have understood every page I ever read." St. Francis was very vivid in his poems and rather vague in his documents; St. Thomas devoted his whole life to documenting whole systems of Pagan and Christian literature; and occasionally wrote a hymn like a man taking a holiday. They saw the same problem from different angles, of simplicity and subtlety; St. Francis thought it would be enough to pour out his heart to the Mohammedans, to persuade them not to worship Mahound. St. Thomas bothered his head with every hair-splitting distinction and deduction, about the Absolute or the Accident, merely to prevent them from misunderstanding Aristotle. St. Francis was the son of a shopkeeper, or middle class trader; and while his whole life was a revolt against the mercantile life of his father, he retained none the less, something of the quickness and social adaptability which makes the market hum like a hive. In the common phrase, fond as he was of green fields, he did not let the grass grow under his feet. He was what American millionaires and gangsters call a live wire.

It is typical of the mechanistic moderns that, even when they try to imagine a live thing, they can only think of a mechanical metaphor from a dead thing. There is such a thing as a live worm; but there is no such thing as a live wire. St. Francis would have heartily agreed that he was a worm; but he was a very live worm. Greatest of all foes to the go-getting ideal, he had certainly abandoned getting, but he was still going. St. Thomas, on the other hand, came out of a world where he might have enjoyed leisure, and he remained one of those men whose labour has something of the placidity of leisure. He was a hard worker, but nobody could possibly mistake him for a hustler. He had something indefinable about him, which marks those who work when they need not work. For he was by birth a gentleman of a great house, and such repose can remain as a habit, when it is no longer a motive.

But in him it was expressed only in its most amiable elements; for instance, there was possibly something of it in his effortless courtesy and patience. Every saint is a man before he is a saint; and a saint may be made of every sort or kind of man; and most of us will choose between these different types according to our different tastes. But I will confess that, while the romantic glory of St. Francis has lost nothing of its glamour for me, I have in later years grown to feel almost as much affection, or in some aspects even more, for this man who unconsciously inhabited a large heart and a large head, like one inheriting a large house, and exercised there an equally generous if rather more absent-minded hospitality. There are moments when St. Francis, the most unworldly man who ever walked the world, is almost too efficient for me.

St. Thomas Aquinas has recently reappeared, in the current culture of the colleges and the salons, in a way that would have been quite startling even ten years ago. And the mood that has concentrated on him is doubtless very different from that which popularised St. Francis quite twenty years ago.

The Saint is a medicine because he is an antidote. Indeed that is why the saint is often a martyr; he is mistaken for a poison because he is an antidote. He will generally be found restoring the world to sanity by exaggerating whatever the world neglects, which is by no means always the same element in every age. Yet each generation seeks its saint by instinct; and he is not what the people want, but rather what the people need. This is surely the very much mistaken meaning of those words to the first saints, "Ye are the salt of the earth," which caused the Ex-Kaiser to remark with all solemnity that his beefy Germans were the salt of the earth; meaning thereby merely that they were the earth's beefiest and therefore best. But salt seasons and preserves beef, not because it is like beef; but because it is very unlike it. Christ did not tell his apostles that they were only the excellent people, or the only excellent people, but that they were the exceptional people; the permanently incongruous and incompatible people; and the text about the salt of the earth is really as sharp and shrewd and tart as the taste of salt. It is because they were the exceptional people, that they must not lose their exceptional quality. "If salt lose its savour, wherewith shall it be salted?" is a much more pointed question than any mere lament over the price of the best beef. If the world grows too worldly, it can be rebuked by the Church; but if the Church grows too worldly, it cannot be adequately rebuked for worldliness by the world.

Therefore it is the paradox of history that each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most. St. Francis had a curious and almost uncanny attraction for the Victorians; for the nineteenth century English who seemed superficially to be most complacent about their commerce and their common sense. Not only a rather complacent Englishman like Matthew Arnold, but even the English Liberals whom he criticised for their complacency, began slowly to discover the mystery of the Middle Ages through the strange story told in feathers and flames in the hagiographical pictures of Giotto. There was something in the story of St. Francis that pierced through all those English qualities which are most famous and fatuous, to all those English qualities which are most hidden and human: the secret softness of heart; the poetical vagueness of mind; the love of landscape and of animals. St. Francis of Assisi was the only medieval Catholic who really became popular in England on his own merits. It was largely because of a subconscious feeling that the modern world had neglected those particular merits. The English middle classes found their only missionary in the figure, which of all types in the world they most despised; an Italian beggar.







So, as the nineteenth century clutched at the Franciscan romance, precisely because it had neglected romance, so the twentieth century is already clutching at the Thomist rational theology, because it has neglected reason. In a world that was too stolid, Christianity returned in the form of a vagabond; in a world that has grown a great deal too wild, Christianity has returned in the form of a teacher of logic. In the world of Herbert Spencer men wanted a cure for indigestion; in the world of Einstein they want a cure for vertigo. In the first case, they dimly perceived the fact that it was after a long fast that St. Francis sang the Song of the Sun and the praise of the fruitful earth. In the second case, they already dimly perceived that, even if they only want to understand Einstein, it is necessary first to understand the use of the understanding. They begin to see that, as the eighteenth century thought itself the age of reason, and the nineteenth century thought itself the age of common sense, the twentieth century cannot as yet even manage to think itself anything but the age of uncommon nonsense.

In those conditions the world needs a saint; but above all, it needs a philosopher. And these two cases do show that the world, to do it justice, has an instinct for what it needs. The earth was really very flat, for those Victorians who most vigorously repeated that it was round, and Alverno of the Stigmata stood up as a single mountain in the plain. But the earth is an earthquake, a ceaseless and apparently endless earthquake, for the moderns for whom Newton has been scrapped along with Ptolemy. And for them there is something more steep and even incredible than a mountain; a piece of really solid ground; the level of the level-headed man. Thus in our time the two saints have appealed to two generations, an age of romantics and an age of sceptics; yet in their own age they were doing the same work; a work that has changed the world.

Again, it may be said truly that the comparison is idle, and does not fit in well even as a fancy: since the men were not properly even of the same generation or the same historic moment. If two friars are to be presented as a pair of Heavenly Twins, the obvious comparison is between St. Francis and St. Dominic. The relations of St. Francis and St. Thomas were, at nearest, those of uncle and nephew; and my fanciful excursus may appear only a highly profane version of "Tommy make room for your uncle." For if St. Francis and St. Dominic were the great twin brethren, Thomas was obviously the first great son of St. Dominic, as was his friend Bonaventure of St. Francis. Nevertheless, I have a reason (indeed two reasons) for taking as a text the accident of two title-pages; and putting St. Thomas beside St. Francis, instead of pairing him off with Bonaventure the Franciscan.

It is because the comparison, remote and perverse as it may seem, is really a sort of short cut to the heart of history; and brings us by the most rapid route to the real question of the life and work of St. Thomas Aquinas. For most people now have a rough but picturesque picture in their minds of the life and work of St. Francis of Assisi. And the shortest way of telling the other story is to say that, while the two men were thus a contrast in almost every feature, they were really doing the same thing. One of them was doing it in the world of the mind and the other in the world of the worldly. But it was the same great medieval movement; still but little understood. In a constructive sense, it was more important than the Reformation. Nay, in a constructive sense, it was the Reformation.

About this medieval movement there are two facts that must first be emphasised. They are not, of course, contrary facts, but they are perhaps answers to contrary fallacies. First, in spite of all that was once said about superstition, the Dark Ages and the sterility of Scholasticism, it was in every sense a movement of enlargement, always moving towards greater light and even greater liberty. Second, in spite of all that was said later on about progress and the Renaissance and forerunners of modern thought, it was almost entirely a movement of orthodox theological enthusiasm, unfolded from within. It was not a compromise with the world, or a surrender to heathens or heretics, or even a mere borrowing of external aids, even when it did borrow them. In so far as it did reach out to the light of common day, it was like the action of a plant which by its own force thrusts out its leaves into the sun; not like the action of one who merely lets daylight into a prison.

In short, it was what is technically called a Development in doctrine. But there seems to be a queer ignorance, not only about the technical, but the natural meaning of the word Development. The critics of Catholic theology seem to suppose that it is not so much an evolution as an evasion; that it is at best an adaptation. They fancy that its very success is the success of surrender. But that is not the natural meaning of the word Development. When we talk of a child being well-developed, we mean that he has grown bigger and stronger with his own strength; not that he is padded with borrowed pillows or walks on stilts to make him look taller. When we say that a puppy develops into a dog, we do not mean that his growth is a gradual compromise with a cat; we mean that he becomes more doggy and not less. Development is the expansion of all the possibilities and implications of a doctrine, as there is time to distinguish them and draw them out; and the point here is that the enlargement of medieval theology was simply the full comprehension of that theology.

And it is of primary importance to realise this fact first, about the time of the great Dominican and the first Franciscan, because their tendency, humanistic and naturalistic in a hundred ways, was truly the development of the supreme doctrine, which was also the dogma of all dogmas. It is in this that the popular poetry of St. Francis and the almost rationalistic prose of St. Thomas appear most vividly as part of the same movement. There are both great growths of Catholic development, depending upon external things only as every living and growing thing depends on them; that is, it digests and transforms them, but continues in its own image and not in theirs. A Buddhist or a Communist might dream of two things which simultaneously eat each other, as the perfect form of unification. But it is not so with living things. St. Francis was content to call himself the Troubadour of God; but not content with the God of the Troubadours. St. Thomas did not reconcile Christ to Aristotle; he reconciled Aristotle to Christ.

Yes; in spite of the contrasts that are as conspicuous and even comic as the comparison between the fat man and the thin man, the tall man and the short: in spite of the contrast between the vagabond and the student, between the apprentice and the aristocrat, between the book-hater and the book-lover, between the wildest of all missionaries and the mildest of all professors, the great fact of medieval history is that these two great men were doing the same great work; one in the study and the other in the street. They were not bringing something new into Christianity; in the sense of something heathen or heretical into Christianity; on the contrary, they were bringing Christianity into Christendom. But they were bringing it back against the pressure of certain historic tendencies, which had hardened into habits in many great schools and authorities in the Christian Church; and they were using tools and weapons which seemed to many people to be associated with heresy or heathenry. St. Francis used Nature much as St. Thomas used Aristotle; and to some they seemed to be using a Pagan goddess and a Pagan sage.

What they were really doing, and especially what St. Thomas was really doing, will form the main matter of these pages; but it is convenient to be able to compare him from the first with a more popular saint; because we may thus sum up the substance of it in the most popular way. Perhaps it would sound too paradoxical to say that these two saints saved us from Spirituality; a dreadful doom. Perhaps it may be misunderstood if I say that St. Francis, for all his love of animals, saved us from being Buddhists; and that St. Thomas, for all his love of Greek philosophy, saved us from being Platonists. But it is best to say the truth in its simplest form; that they both reaffirmed the Incarnation, by bringing God back to earth.

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Saint Francis and the Imitation of Christ

Saint Francis and the Imitation of Christ | Ivan Gobry | From Saint Francis of Assisi: A Biography

The sentiment that would carry Francis away and govern the founding of his religious order was, from the very first moment of his conversion, a delirious love for Christ. Not a contemplative love, which is satisfied with a perceptible, mental vision of the Savior, which dwells at length upon his words and his sufferings, but rather an active love. Of course, Francis habitually possessed that contemplative fervor, too, as all of his biographers assure us. Bonaventure writes: "He devoted such an ardent love to Christ, and his Beloved showed him in exchange such a familiar tenderness, that the servant of God had almost continually before his eyes the physical presence of his Savior."

And we find, in one of his prayers, the accents of all the great mystics: "Lord, I beg thee, let the burning, gentle power of thy love consume my soul and draw it far from everything that is under heaven, so that I may die for love of thy love, O thou who hast deigned to die for love of my love."

Furthermore, this is the desire that he expresses for Christians in general, in a sort of "encyclical letter" that he wrote entitled, "Letter to All the Faithful". To those who truly love Christ, he promises that they will be his spouses, his brethren, and his mothers:

We are spouses when the faithful soul is united to Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. We are his brethren when we do the will of his Father who is in heaven. We are his mothers when we bear him in our hearts and in our bodies through our love, through the purity and fidelity of our conscience, and when we give birth to him by the performance of good deeds, which should be a light and an example for others. Oh, how glorious and holy it is to have such a Father in heaven! Oh, how holy, beautiful and amiable it is to have a Spouse in the heavens! Oh, how holy and precious, pleasing and humble, peaceful and sweet, lovable and desirable a thing it is, surpassing all else, to have such a Brother!

We find the same accents in the writings of Clare, the perfect disciple of Francis, for instance, in a letter to Agnes of Bohemia, who had become the abbess of the convent in Prague:

Happy indeed is she to whom this is granted a place at the divine banquet, for she can cling with all her heart to him whose beauty eternally awes the blessed hosts of heaven; to him whose love gladdens, the contemplation of whom refreshes, whose generosity satisfies, whose gentleness delights, whose memory shines sweetly as the dawn; to him whose fragrance revives the dead, and whose glorious vision will render all the inhabitants of the heavenly Jerusalem blessed.

The 1221 rule had enshrined in its text the duty to belong to Jesus Christ:

Let us not desire anything else, let us not want anything else, let nothing please us or give us joy except our Creator, Redeemer, and Savior, the one true God, who is the fullness of Good, the complete and total Good, the venerable and supreme Good, who alone is good, merciful and kind; who alone is just, truthful and right; who alone is beneficent, innocent and pure; from whom, through whom, and in whom is found all pardon, all grace, all glory for the repentant and the just, and for all the blessed who rejoice with him in heaven.

With Christ, Francis could give free rein to his poetic sensibility. But poetry is not good form in a canonical document, and so that exhortation was deleted from the definitive rule.

Now the love of Christ compels the soul and draws it into a service which is preferential, exclusive, and unconditional. Saint Bonaventure could write, "One word sums up all of Francis: faithful servant of Christ." As a servant, he was entirely subject to his master, as called for in the prayer that concludes his "Letter to the General Chapter":

Almighty and ever-living God, just and merciful Lord, grant to us miserable creatures, for your own sake, that we may know what you will, and that we may always will what pleases you; so that, externally purified and illumined within and inflamed with the fire of the Holy Spirit, we may follow in the footsteps of your dearly beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and by your grace alone may arrive at our destination in you, O Most High, who in perfect Trinity and utterly simple Unity live and reign and are glorified, Almighty God, unto ages of ages. Amen.

To follow Christ is not only to serve him, it is not enough to do his will; it also means becoming like him. This love is a love that consists not only in doing, but in being; a love that thrives not only in activity but in the person. Francis, without having read the Fathers of the Church, follows their teaching in this: Origen, Athanasius, and Gregory of Nyssa demonstrate how the Son is the mediator of the Father: God created man in his image, in a state of perfection; original sin corrupted that image, and the Son, who is the perfect image of the Father, came both to reveal God to us and to teach us the way leading to the restoration of his image in us. Saint Francis adds, however, an original thought to this doctrine about creation: God the Father created us in his image with respect to our souls, and in the image of his Son, the Incarnate Word, with respect to our bodies.

The Friar Minor is someone who must put on Jesus Christ. The first rule states this explicitly: "The rule and the life of the Friars Minor consists of living in obedience, in chastity and without owning anything, by following the teaching and example of our Lord Jesus Christ." It adds, in the concluding admonition, "Our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose footsteps we must follow. . .

Now, Saint Francis himself is not content to call on his brothers in his rule and in his exhortations to imitate Jesus Christ: he proves himself to be his most fervent imitator. So much so that Saint Bonaventure, in the prologue of his biography, considers this fact an essential component of his master's personality:

To all true lovers of humility and holy poverty, the grace of God our Savior has manifested itself in these latter days in the person of Francis, his servant, so that his example might present for their veneration the surpassing mercy of God in his regard, and might teach them to renounce once and for all the impiousness and covetousness of this world, to conform their lives to the life of Christ, and to yearn with an incomprehensible longing for Christ, our blessed hope.

Thus Francis calls his disciples to imitate Jesus Christ, and the disciples find in him the example of imitating the Divine Model. This is precisely the theme of the wonderful anonymous work composed by the friars who were closest to Saint Francis, The Mirror of Perfection. One of the chapters candidly declares, "Francis, faithful servant and perfect imitator of Christ, felt that he had been completely transformed into Christ .

And it concludes as follows: "Thus, having spent twenty years in perfect repentance, on October 4 in the year of the Lord 1226, Francis passed on to the Lord Jesus Christ, whom he had loved with all his heart, with all his mind, with all his soul, with all his strength, with the most ardent desire and most lively affection, following him to complete perfection, running eagerly in his footsteps, and arriving at last in his glorious presence."

Francis claims to imitate Jesus Christ more especially in his lowliness and his suffering. This is the subject of one of his admonitions: "Let all the friars consider the Good Shepherd who suffered death on the Cross for the salvation of his flock. The Lord's sheep have followed him in trials, persecution, and humiliation, in hunger and thirst, in weakness, hardships, and all other sorts of misfortunes."

According to The Three Companions, a devotion to the Passion of Christ was engraved on his soul at that moment in the ruined church of San Damiano when the Crucified Lord spoke to him. "From that day on, his heart was so struck and so profoundly wrenched by the memory of the Lord's Passion that, throughout the rest of his life, he harbored in his soul the memory of the wounds of the Lord Jesus."

He had composed an office of the Passion, along with a "prayer for times of sickness", which has come down to us: "I give you thanks. Lord God, for all my pains, and I ask you, my Lord, to send me a hundred times as many, if such is your good pleasure. For I would very willingly accept it if you did not spare me but overwhelmed me with pain, since my submission to your holy will is for me a surpassing consolation."

And so the mystical gift of the stigmata was the answer to this thirst for a practical union with the sufferings of Christ. A few moments before receiving it, he was praying to the Savior in these words: "Lord, I ask you for two graces before I die: to experience in myself. as much as possible, the sufferings of your cruel Passion, and to feel for you the same love that drove you to sacrifice yourself for us."

Celano reckons that the manifest sanctity of Francis was the result of the martyrdom that he received, not at the hands of the Muslims. as he had hoped at first, but through the intervention of God himself "His perfection equaled that of the saints who had gone before him, but his life shone with still greater brilliance. For our glorious father was marked, in five places on his body, with the seal of the Passion and of the Cross, as though he had been crucified with the Son of God."

We find the same remark in the writings of Saint Bonaventure: "In order to arrive at the firm conviction that Francis, this messenger sent by the love of Christ for us to imitate, is the servant of God, it is enough to contemplate that perfection in his sanctity whereby he merited that he should be presented as a model for the perfect disciples of Christ. And what assures us of this is the irrefutable proof the seal that made him into an image of the living God, Jesus crucified."

Love for Christ leads to love of the Eucharist--the living Christ offering himself on the altar for our salvation and reserved among us for our adoration. Francis left behind an exhortation on the Body of Christ that displays flawless doctrinal knowledge of this mystery:

Every day the Son of God comes to us under humble appearances; every day he descends upon the altar through the hands of the priest. And just as he revealed himself to the apostles in truly human flesh, so too he reveals himself to us now in the consecrated bread. They, when they looked upon him with their fleshly eyes, saw only his flesh, but because they contemplated him with their spiritual eyes, they believed that he was God. May we, too, when we see with our fleshly eyes the bread and wine, be able to see and believe most firmly that they are the most sacred Body and Blood of the living, true Lord. This, indeed, is the manner that he has chosen to remain always with those who believe in him, as he himself said: "Behold, I am with you until the consummation of the world."

In his "Letter to All the Faithful", Francis recalls the institution of the Eucharist and repeats the first words of the formula of transubstantiation. Then he comments: "The Son of the Father wants us all to be saved by him, and to receive him with a pure heart into a chaste body .... We must confess to the priest all our sins and receive from him the Body and Blood of our Lord. Anyone who does not eat his flesh and drink his blood cannot enter into the Kingdom of heaven."

At that time, the Church had not enacted very precise regulations for showing respect for the Eucharist, in particular for conserving the consecrated species, which were often left at random in some corner of a church or an oratory. Saint Francis denounced this scandal and urged clerics, his contemporaries, to venerate continually the Real Presence of God under the appearance of Bread. The Legenda antiqua relates that

Blessed Francis had a great respect and a profound devotion for the Body of Christ. That is why he had it written in the rule that the friars should surround the Eucharist with great care and a lively solicitude in the provinces where they were staying, exhorting and encouraging the clerics and priests to reserve the Body of Christ in a decent, suitable place; and that if they did not do so, the friars should do it in their stead. Nay, much more, he insisted on sending into the provinces friars who brought with them ciboria in which to reserve the Body of Christ.

We find an echo of this preoccupation in the "Letter to All Clerics on the Respect Due to the Body of the Lord". He calls to the attention of all the clerics who habitually surround the altar the sad state of the liturgical furnishings: chalices, corporals, altar linens; he notes that "many leave the Eucharist haphazardly, in dirty places, carry it through the streets unworthily and administer it indiscriminately." He, who was only a lowly deacon, ordered those to whom the letter was addressed that, wherever they found the Body of Christ in an unsuitable place, they should respectfully take it and find for it worthy place. And then he allows his indignation to erupt: "And ye: all these profanations do not move us to pity! Even though our Lord. in his goodness, abandons himself into our hands, and we hold him and our mouths receive him every day! Are we unaware of the fact that one day we must fall into his hands?"

In his "Letter to the General Chapter", the protestations give way to praise:

Let mankind be seized with fear, the whole world should tremble and heaven rejoice, when Christ the Son of the living God is present on the altar in the hands of the priest! O wondrous majesty! O stupendous dignity! O sublime humility! O humble sublimity! That the Lord of the whole universe, God and the Son of God, should humble himself to the point where he hides under the form of a little bread, for our salvation. But you should keep nothing for yourselves, so that he who has given himself entirely to you may receive you entirely.

In another letter, "To the Rulers of the People", addressed to "magistrates, consuls, judges, and governors", Francis exhorts his readers, first, not to forget that the day of death is approaching, and that one must prepare for it by keeping the commandments, and second, to receive the Eucharist and to show great reverence for it.

His "Letter to All Superiors of the Friars Minor", on the other band, takes up again the admonition that he addressed to the clerics concerning the Eucharist: "Ask the clergy with all humility to venerate above all the most sacred Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, together with his holy name and the writings which contain his words, those words which consecrate his Body." Furthermore he recalls the duty of all clerics to keep the Body of the Lord carefully reserved in a tabernacle, to administer it with discernment, and to remind the faithful in their sermons to receive Communion worthily.

Ivan Gobry is a specialist of the Middle-Ages, an emeritus Professor at Universite de Reims, and an author of several books on the Middle-Ages and philosophy. He is considered one of the leading experts on Francis of Assisi.

Bp. James Conley: New Ignatius Press book "provides a blueprint to proclaim the beauty of the family"

From Bishop Conley's review of The Hope of the Family: A Dialogue with Cardinal Gerhard Müller, newly published by Ignatius Press:

The Church soon begins  the synod on the family, an Oct. 5-19 meeting at the Vatican of bishops from across the world who are discussing the meaning of family life in the contemporary world.

Accommodation to secular culture has been the dominant media theme surrounding the meeting. Will the Church change her teaching, her pastoral practice, her disciplines or processes? Will the Church endorse new ideas about family life? Or will she oppose the “progressive” march of Western culture?

Many of these questions are unreasonable — silly, really.

The purpose of the synod is not to change the Church’s teachings. The purpose is to understand family life more clearly, to support it more faithfully and to present it more robustly, more persuasively and more enthusiastically. The purpose of the synod is to witness to the rich beauty of Christian family life.

As a blueprint for this witness, the Church needs to look no further than Cardinal Gerhard Müller’s book The Hope of the Family. Cardinal Müller is the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — an expert and authority on the doctrinal teachings of the faith. He is also a pastor — for 10 years, he served as bishop of Regensburg, a beautiful Bavarian diocese that is a repository of Catholic life and culture.

In Hope of the Family, Cardinal Müller draws from his experience and insight to point to the needs of contemporary families, their role in the life of the Church and the beauty and richness they can offer to the world.

The book is written as an interview, in a style similar to Pope Benedict XVI’s famous Ratzinger Report. And it might be seen as a complement to that book — like the Ratzinger Report, Hope of the Family provides the honest and insightful evaluations of a thoughtful disciple of Jesus Christ.

As a matter of timing, the book is important. Published in anticipation of the synod, Hope of the Family offers a valuable resource for parents, pastors and for the bishops at the synod.

In substance, the book addresses several major topics. On the matter of doctrine, Cardinal Müller defends the unchanging teaching of the Church in a way that is palatable and persuasive. The faith, he says, cannot be “transformed into a new, politically correct civil religion, reduced to a few goals that are tolerated by the rest of society.”

Read the entire review on the National Catholic Register website.