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The Holy Spirit and Pope Francis

the holy spirit and Pape FrancisWho is the Holy Spirit?

In December of 2016, Papal preacher Father Raniero Cantalamassa preached his first Advent sermon on the second “post-concilior” period. With the passage of fifty years since Vatican ll, we’ve ended a period “characterized by problems with reception” of the litiurgical changes and entered, the Franciscan Capuchin theologian declared, “new innovation in theology and the life of the church with a specific name: the Holy Spirit.” His is a radical, provocative and compelling statement, is it not?

Before moving on to my subject, “Pope Francis and the Holy Spirit,” we’ve got to stop and ask ourselves, “Who is the Holy Spirit?”

“What do we know about him?”

The third Person of the Trinity, right.

The effusion of the Love between God the Father and His Beloved Son, yes.

But do these help us understand this third Person?.

A read of the catechism’s definition of Baptism, offers comprehension of the Holy Spirit’s power and majesty. When baptized, each of us is left with an indelible spiritual mark.

“No sin can erase this mark, even if sin prevents Baptism from bearing the fruits of salvation. Given once for all, Baptism cannot be repeated. Through the sacrament, the Holy Spirit has marked us with the seal of eternal life…Baptism is God’s most beautiful and magnificent gift. . . .We call it gift, grace, anointing, enlightenment, garment of immortality, bath of rebirth, seal, and most precious gift. It is called gift  because it is conferred on those who bring nothing of their own; grace since it is given even to the guilty; Baptism because sin is buried in the water; anointing for it is priestly and royal as are those who are anointed; enlightenment because it radiates light; clothing since it veils our shame; bath  because it washes; and seal as it is our guard and the sign of God’s Lordship.”

Catechism of the Catholic Church

Although I’ve written about the sacrament of baptism before, this first still sentence jolts. And seems to command a repeat. “No sin can erase this ‘indelible spirtual mark, even if sin prevents Baptism from bearing the fruits of salvation.”

The second ‘post concilor’ period

is a far from evocative phrase. And yet all of Christianity has entered a ” new innovation in theology and life of the church with a specific name: the Holy Spirit.”

Wowza.

We can say that the intuition of St. John XXIII about the Council as “a new Pentecost for the Church” found its actualization only later after the conclusion of the Council, as has so often happened in the history of the Councils…In the coming year, the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Charismatic Renewal in the Catholic Church will occur

It is one of the many signs—the most noticeable because of the magnitude of the phenomenon—of an awakening to the Holy Spirit and charisms in the Church. The Council had paved the way for this reception, speaking in Lumen gentium of the charismatic dimension of the Church alongside the institutional and hierarchical dimension and insisting on the importance of charisms.  In his homily for the Chrism Mass of Holy Thursday in 2012, Benedict XVI affirmed,

Anyone who considers the history of the post-conciliar era can recognize the process of true renewal, which often took unexpected forms in living movements and made almost tangible the inexhaustible vitality of holy Church, the presence and effectiveness of the Holy Spirit.

Papal Preacher Gives First Advent Sermon

Quickly, Father Cantalmassa explains the new theology is no substitute for traditional theology but rather inclusion of what has been lacking: affirming the Holy Spirit as the “light of dogmas.” And exhorting the Creed ‘from the ground up.’ By that the priest means renewed appreciation of the Holy Spirit as third person of the Trinune God. Observing that Protestant theologian Karl Bath named this renewed emphasis on the Holy Spirit as Third Article Theology. the Papal Preacher emphasizes the universality of the doctrrine. This develpment has occured throughout all of Christianity.

Eloquently, the Papal Preacher explains the ‘unknowablity’of the Holy Spirit:

The Holy Spirit, nevertheless, will always remain the hidden God, even if we can know him by his effects. He is like the wind: no one knows where it comes from and where it will blow, but we can see the effects of its passing. He is like the light that illuminates everything around it but remains invisible.
This is why the Spirit is the least known and least beloved of the three Persons, despite the fact that he is Love in person.

Papal Preacher

The Holy Spirit and Pope Francis

Although we know we should accept what’s happening as God’s will for us, we kvetch. About too much rain, not enough, or too hot or cold. And all too often, about whether the priest and/or parish is too liberal or too orthodox. And so for each of the popes I’ve ‘known’, John Paul ll and Benedict, people complained.

But it’s impossible to miss the negative–at times, scandalous, opinions of Catholics regarding Pope Francis’s encyclicals, decisons, off-the-cuff comments and just about everything he says or does. Most recently, the simmering negativity erupted into a raging boil with his New Year’s missive on blessing ‘irregular’ couples–same-sex married men and women. Reminiscent of his apparent softening on the church’s stance on reception of the sacraments by divorced Catholics, the resulting cacophany of shock and outrage has been deafening. Countless priests, scholars and a few bishops are claiming that Pope Francis has comitted heresy and cannot remain as pope.

But could there be something else happening here?

“The Holy Spirit, nevertheless, will always remain the hidden God, even if we can know him by his effects. He is like the wind: no one knows where it comes from and where it will blow, but we can see the effects of its passing. He is like the light that illuminates everything around it but remains invisible.

Father Cantalmassa is referring to Jesus’ exhortation to Nicodemus when the elder questions how one can be reborn. “How can a man enter his mother’s womb a second time?” The leader of the Pharissees approached Jesus secretly, in the night…frightened yet irresistably drawn.

“How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!”

Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.

Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.

You should not be surprised at my saying, `You must be born again.’

The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

“How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.

“You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things?

I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony.

I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?

No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven–the Son of Man. 

Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up,.

Could there be something else happening here?

Only after a friend–Catholic but doesn’t practice his faith–commented about the “Communistic theories of Pope Francis” in his encyclical on the envirnoment, did I read Laudato Si. And wondered how anyone could read “Communistic theory” into a document staunchly based on Saint Francis’ love for creation and the writings of previous popes about the wounds on the earth caused by our excessive exploitation. But I suspect, like my friend, they didn’t bother to read the document. But just took the opportunity to jump on a bandwagon of criticism

A few years later, when Pope Francis delegated to parish priests authority to discern whether divorced Catholic parishioners merit exception from the church’s prohibiton of the Body and Blood of Christ to divorced men and women, I was delighted. I have not read Pope Francis’ 264 page document concerning this decision nor do I feel the need to. This merely seemed a reasonable, just and merciful decision.

When the Pope placed limits on the Tridentine Mass because adherence to the Latin Mass was obstructing universal acceptance of Vatican ll, I believed he was correct in doing this. I know Catholics who believe Vatican ll to be heresy–refusing to accept the Novus Ordo Mass as licit.

And finally, Pope Francis’ with recent declaration of blessing ‘irregular couples,’ a most disturbing pattern reveals itself. The language of Pope Francis’ document, once again, is reasonable, just and merciful. That is, if we take the time to find an interpretation not fueled by anger, rebellion or disobedience. Like theolgian Father Joseph Iannizzi’s fine Theological Explanation and Clarification of Fiducia Supplicans. In just twenty-two pages, Father Ianuzzi dispenses with all the garbage. Quite clearly this is something else happening here-its symptoms are division, disunity and deceit.

The secular media has a track record of perpetuating a false narrative of the Church to the dismay of many Christians who often fall prey to dishonest reporting. Indeed, no sooner had the Vatican released its FS Declaration than the secular press, faster than the truth got its boots on, distorted the Declaration’s message by putting into the mouth of the aging Roman Pontiff words he never uttered. Such false headlines, emerging from the press and reiterated by far-right and far-left secular, Catholic and Christian journalists read, “Vatican Approves of Gay Unions with its Blessing,” “Pope Endorses Same-Sex Marriage,” “Sin is no longer sin in the Catholic Church,”etc. To better grasp the magnitude of the spiritual harm
generated by false journalistic reporting, consider its foreseen consequences by both St. Don Bosco and Pope
Pius XI.

Theological Explanation and Clarification of Fiducia Supplicans

Here’s a better lens than mine with which to view Pope Francis:

“Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 
Jesus heard this and said to them,
“Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.
I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

Gospel Mk 2:13-17

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Thinking about the Rule of Benedict-And the Baptism of the Lord

Thinking about the rule of Benedict and the Baptism of the LordThinking about the Rule of Benedict and the Baptism of the Lord.

The Prologue of the Rule of Benedict contains some of the most lryical, lush and arresting prose ever written. These words from the 5th century summon, urge and admonish with utmost delicacy.

L I S T E N carefully, my child,
to your master’s precepts,
and incline the ear of your heart (Prov. 4:20).
Receive willingly and carry out effectively
your loving father’s advice,
that by the labor of obedience
you may return to Him
from whom you had departed by the sloth of disobedience.

To you, therefore, my words are now addressed,
whoever you may be,
who are renouncing your own will
to do battle under the Lord Christ, the true King,
and are taking up the strong, bright weapons of obedience.

And first of all,
whatever good work you begin to do,
beg of Him with most earnest prayer to perfect it,
that He who has now deigned to count us among His children
may not at any time be grieved by our evil deeds.
For we must always so serve Him
with the good things He has given us,
that He will never as an angry Father disinherit His children,
nor ever as a dread Lord, provoked by our evil actions,
deliver us to everlasting punishment
as wicked servants who would not follow Him to glory.

Prologue-The Rule of Benedict

Even though it’s been over twenty years, I can clearly visualize that small red booklet,

The Rule of Benedict. I became Catholic at St. Benedict’s Abbey in Still Water, Massachusetts and grabbed the red booklet from the gift shop to adopt as my own. Along with the two tomes I’d been assigned by Brother Andrew, the monk who was assigned the task of teaching me the rudiments of our Catholic faith, I was ready to work. I wanted it all: Now.

In those early years, I bought and lost at least five of those small booklets. Hoping with each new purchase, it wouldn’t feel like reading gibberish. That I could make sense of these words.

But I couldn’t.

Of course not!

I could barely spell Catholic.

So quickly I forget that I can’t do it alone, that the timing is not mine.

It would be another six years before the Rule became my school. Yes, school:

…And so we are going to establish
a school for the service of the Lord.
In founding it we hope to introduce nothing harsh or burdensome…

For as we advance in the religious life and in faith,
our hearts expand
and we run the way of God’s commandments
with unspeakable sweetness of love (Ps. 118:32).
Thus, never departing from His school,
but persevering…

During my years as a Benedictine Oblate, I’ve read the little rule over fifty times. Three times each year, we read through its seventy-three chapters. And yet each time we begin anew, I look forward eagerly to the Prologue.

Always, it feels new-thinking, yet again about the rule of Benedict.

When it happened, my initial conversion felt sudden, impetuous even precipitous-as if I’d jumped off a cliff. That is until pondering all that came before and accepting that the real precipice had been the one of unbelief.

It’s odd, isn’t it, how clearly we can see when looking through the rearview window?

My favorite phrases in the Prologue?

“…by the labor of obedience you may return to Him from whom you had departed by the sloth of disobedience…my words addressed to you who are renouncing your own will to do battle under the Lord Jesus Christ, and are taking up the strong, bright weapons of obedience…

Therefore we must prepare our hearts and our bodies to do battle under the holy obedience of His commands; and let us ask God that He be pleased to give us the help of His grace for anything which our nature finds hardly possible. And if we want
to escape the pains of hell and attain life everlasting, then, while there is still time, while we are still in the body and are able to fulfill all these things by the light of this life, we must hasten to do now what will profit us for eternity.”

Obedience.

That word’s a lightning rod and has been for almost as long as I remember. But is there a virtue more critical than is obedience?

Or it’s cousins habit and discipline?

It’s why He came, right?

He came to show us that the only path back to God the Father is obedience.

Maybe it’s easier for converts like me to grasp the need for ongoing conversion: Conversion as in repentance-rethinking. Especially so for those of us whose faith did not just become lukewarm, but decided that it was all a myth: the Bible, faith, God. And walked away.

I remember, as a brand new Benedictine Oblate, many years ago, being fascinated by the word stability. Axiomatic of Benedictine spirituality, it’s a promise made at our oblation. The word connotes stasis…an inner permanence despite external turbulence. We vow to stay put, regardless of what is happening in our marriage, our body, our family or the world.

To many in this change-loving culture of ours, this concept of permanence, of a changeless inner core, evokes a trap, oppression-even that word we see everywhere: slavery. But I’ve learned that it is when I am most uncomfortable, even frightened, that if I stick there, accept the terror…that the view from the other side is breath-taking.

If…only if, I refuse my turbulent emotions. Stomp on my will and trust His Spirit…desiring only His Will.

Used by permission copyright 2020 Jeff HaynieOur Byzantine friends call tomorrow Theophany

Theophany is defined as a visible manifestation of a deity, a visible manifestation of God to man by actual appearance. The glory of these Christmas days which end with this day.

Can we ever even glimpse the immensity of the graces showered on humanity with His Baptism?

Saint Maximus, Bishop of Turin, explains in the Second Reading of the Office for last Friday, why God became man:

Here is the reason why God became a perfect man, changing nothing of human nature, except to take away sin (which was never natural anyway). His flesh was set before that voracious, gaping dragon as bait to provoke him: flesh that would be deadly for the dragon, for it would utterly destroy him by the power of the Godhead hidden within it. For human nature, however, his flesh was to be a remedy since the power of the Godhead in it would restore human nature to its original grace.

  Just as the devil had poisoned the tree of knowledge and spoiled our nature by its taste, so too, in presuming to devour the Lord’s flesh he himself is corrupted and is completely destroyed by the power of the Godhead hidden in it.

  The great mystery of the divine incarnation remains a mystery for ever. How can the Word made flesh be essentially the same person that is wholly with the Father? How can he who is by nature God become by nature wholly man without lacking either nature, neither the divine by which he is God nor the human by which he became man?

  Faith alone grasps these mysteries. Faith alone is truly the substance and foundation of all that exceeds knowledge and understanding.

From the Five Hundred Chapters by St Maximus the Confessor

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Christmas Wake-Up Call: Stoning, Massacre and a Trump PS on Becket

Christmas Wake-Up Call: Stoning, Massacre and a Trump PS on Becket

Wake-up call? Why do we need a Christmas wake-up call?

Consider that for much of the world, Christmas starts right after Thanksgiving. Christmas music plays everywhere, shopping ads begin and the Christmas trees go up. Weeks later, when Christmas Day finally dawns, the excitement’s extinguished in a few hours. Scattered strips of ribbon, wadded up wrapping paper and tinsel are swept up and discarded. Along with a vast number of dirty dishes waiting to be done.

On the day after Christmas, decorations are taken down and put away.

It was just a day, fun and special but nothing more. “The four walls and the prison windows of their gray days,” return.

For Christians though, Christmas Day begins the two to three week Christmas season. But our celebration differs from the world’s. It’s a strange admixture of joy and sorrow unique to Christianity. Sure we love watching at least two versions of The Christmas Carol, Miracle of 34th Street and It’s A Wonderful Life. And listening to the corny Christmas music.

However, throughout the Christmas season Masses, the gigantic crucifix looms prophetically over the tender scene of the new-born Jesus lying in the manger surrounded by Mary, Joseph and the animals. We’re both joyous at Jesus’ birth and intensely sorrowful at the agonizing crucifixtion we cause.

The Church presses with the liturgy of the subsequent days.

On December 26th, the first martyr, Saint Stephen, stoned to death by enraged Jews because Stephen had been a follower of Jesus. The Gospel passage carefully notes that Saul was there, watching.On December 28th, we commemorate the Holy Innocents. Herod’s jealousy and fear of Jesus impels him to order the deaths of all infant Hebrew boys under two. The week ends with the memorial of Saint Thomas Becket on December 29th. Our Christmas wake-up call rouses us from the torpor of the feast to plunge us in the blood of the martyrs– lest we think this life is some kind of game. Saint Thomas Becket

My reread of Murder in the Cathedral, like most of my best ideas, wasn’t mine but that of Father Derek Sandowski. Each Christmas, the priest reads TS Eliot’s play about Thomas Becket’s internal battle over the temptation to submit to his king and former friend, Henry ll, that culmiinates in Becket’s murder. Eliot writes in the style of a Greek tragedy, with chorus and in metered verse, which should preclude our understanding but strangely doesn’t. Rather its rythm sets up a pace, one that accelerates and grows weightier as we read. We can almost hear the galloping hoofbeats of the approaching assassins’ horses in the metered cadence.

Some malady is coming upon us. We wait, we wait,

And the saints and martyrs wait, for those who shall be

martyrs and saints.

Destiny waits in the hand of God, shaping the still un-

shapen:

I have seen these things in a shaft of sunlight.

Destiny waits in the hand of God, not in the hands of

statesmen.

Becket’s internal battle is revealed though the introduction of four successive tempters, each arguing more and more persuasively that he should submit to the king. Eerily foreshadowing Saint Thomas More’s attempts to appease King Henry the Vlll, Becket wasn’t eager to die. The archbishop considers whether he could compromise, even return to being Chancellor again. He’d returned from exile in France due to false promises that the king had softened, that he could return to his beloved Canterbury in peace. With this declaration, Thomas Becket speaks for each human soul:

All my life they have been coming, these feet. All my life I have waited. Death will come only when I am worthy, And if I am worthy, there is no danger. I have therefore only to make perfect my will.

Murder in the Cathedral

Eliot ends his play in exquisitely painful irony and satire. Each of the murderers explains why there was no choice but to kill the archbishop. One soldier’s comment, “No one regrets the necessity for violence more than we do. Unhappily, there are times when violence is the only way in which social justice can be secured,” reads like a maxim for our times.

It’s impossible to read Murder in the Cathedral as merely history. The battle to bound the majesty of the King of the Universe within our deformed human wills rages, ever more intensely as 2023 winds down.

A PS from Trump

On December 29, 2020, President Donald Trump invited schools, churches and customary places of meeting, to commemorate the 850th year of the martyrdom of Saint Thomas Beckett. The proclamation is extraordinary and begins with these words: “Today is the 850th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket on December 29, 1170. Thomas Becket was a statesman, a scholar, a chancellor, a priest, an archbishop, and a lion of religious liberty.”

The wording of this proclamation is strident and sounds likes something a pope would write. Or a bishop.

Our former president can best be described as an enigma wrapped up in a mystery. Many have far more colorful ways to describe the former president with good reason. However, then President Trump’s decision to honor a Catholic martyr as one of his last presidential acts is at least curious, if not something other. I’ve read it a few times and have to wonder at the prescience shown in these remarks about American religious liberty and protection of the unborn.

Consider that it’s nearly his last day in office.

And he’s lost the election he was sure he’d won.

And yet he looks back to Saint Thomas Beckett.

We pray for religious believers everywhere who suffer persecution for their faith. We especially pray for their brave and inspiring shepherds — like Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong and Pastor Wang Yi of Chengdu — who are tireless witnesses to hope.

To honor Thomas Becket’s memory, the crimes against people of faith must stop, prisoners of conscience must be released, laws restricting freedom of religion and belief must be repealed, and the vulnerable, the defenseless, and the oppressed must be protected. The tyranny and murder that shocked the conscience of the Middle Ages must never be allowed to happen again. As long as America stands, we will always defend religious liberty.

A society without religion cannot prosper. A nation without faith cannot endure — because justice, goodness, and peace cannot prevail without the grace of God.

President Trump Proclamation Thomas Becket

Canterbury Cathedral Beckett’s “Crown chapel.”

Now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain:

Temptation shall not come in this kind again.

The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason

Murder in the Cathedral

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How Shall I Know This?

How shall I know this?

The elderly priest Zachariah listens to an extraordinary, thrilling, joyous message from an angel of God. But when the angel finishes his magnificent prophetic message, instead of rejoicing at the news, the priest asks, “How shall I know this?”

The angel’s unhappy with the priest’s disbelief and renders Zachariah mute for the nine months of his elderly wife’s impossible pregnancy.

This past week in the Christian liturgy, we’ve heard the angel Gabriel declare messages to that priest and the young Nazarean girl Mary. Each asks a question of the angel. At first, Mary and Zachariah sound as if they’re both doubting Gabriel’s message. Upon relfection though, Mary’s not doubting that she will bear the Son of God, she’s asking how. Somehow understanding that her vow of virginity–a covenant–between her and her Lord could not be breached.

Each year I hear both of these readings and puzzle at them. This is the first one that I’ve been able to see the distinction.

Clearly.

We’re Zechariah: Begging for miracles but when they show up, disbelieve. “I’m too old…too young, too…”

But this girl Mary merely asks, “How?”

“The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.
Therefore the child to be born
will be called holy, the Son of God.
And behold, Elizabeth, your relative,
has also conceived a son in her old age,
and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren;
for nothing will be impossible for God.”

For nothing will be impossible for God

Nothing close to “How shall I know this?” enters Mary’s mind or heart.

Why?

It’s not as if Zachariah wanted to disobey, ignore or defy the angel of the Lord. We’re given a detailed description of his character and faith. The priest Zachariah is from the “priestly division of Abijah. His wife Elizabeth was from the daughters of Aaron. Both were righteous in the eyes of God, observing all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blamelessly. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren and both were advanced in years.” To these holy people of ancient Israel, Elizabeth’s barreness was the result of sin.

So why wouldn’t Zachariah rejoice?

Distrust…a perverse comfort in the knowledge of his sinfulness made him incapable of believing a supernatural blessing.

Like all of us, you, me and all human souls Zachariah suffered from the “same aboriginal calamity.” There’s no better explanation of original sin than that of Saint John Henry Newman.

To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history, the many races of man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts … the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race, so fearfully yet exactly described in the Apostle’s words, “having no hope and without God in the world,”—all this is a vision to dizzy and appal; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery, which is absolutely beyond human solution.

What shall be said to this heart-piercing, reason-bewildering fact? I can only answer, that either there is no Creator, or this living society of men is in a true sense discarded from His presence … if there be a God, since there is a God, the human race is implicated in some terrible aboriginal calamity. It is out of joint with the purposes of its Creator. This is a fact, a fact as true as the fact of its existence; and thus the doctrine of what is theologically called original sin becomes to me almost as certain as that the world exists, and as the existence of God

Cardinal John Henry Newman

How is it that she believed the impossible?

It’s prose, not poetry that I think in. With a lengthy exception: the months preceding and following my conversion to Catholic Christianity. Then only poetry could express the tumultous, terrifying, awful experience. This poem written two decades ago, suffices.

A Canticle for Mary

At your appearance in the Temple today,
The celestial choirs chorus Holy, Holy, Holy
In praise of the majesty and mercy of Our Lord
May we raise our hearts and souls in song
This day
To thee, most exalted of all God’s creatures
In anticipation of your perfect oblation
Through a soul despoiled of our parents sin
Emptied of all but the Lord, an echo of He
Who Is
All creation waits, Oh Blessed Lady, in hushed
And wondrous silence, the sound of your
Glorious let it be done according to Your Will.
Though child, more wise than Solomon, than
Moses.
Let us pray for a New Advent, a springtime amidst
The death of December and destruction of innocence.
You who witness betrayal, filth and perversion,
Intercede for this twisted and depraved generation
This day
You who walk on the clouds and are seated on the moon
Know the depths of sorrow no other creature has known,
Child yet wiser than all the Magi, accept our offering,
We who have no myrrh, no gold, no frankincense, only
Our sin.

This is no Hallmark story,

nor is Christ’s decision to be born in a manger a cute accident of a full inn, at this specific time in Israel, in Bethlehem, King David’s city. Consider the well-known Gospel passage from the second chapter of St. Luke that begins: “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. So all went to be enrolled, each to his own town.” Read more.

In the Baby King Who Takes On Caesar Bishop Robert Barron comments on the surely intentional prophetic nature of Saint Luke’s words. Beginning with reminding us of the power of Caesar, the sheer arrogance of a “count.” And the contrast of that ruined Roman Empire with this salvific church the Christ founded that “weirdly survives.”

Without this baby, his miraculous and paradoxical way of becoming one with humanity, that “terrible aboriginal calamity. It is out of joint with the purposes of its Creator,” overpowers each and every human soul. But Jesus, our savior, is born again. Let us soften our hearts and minds to receive this miraculous gift.

This infant Child asks nothing from us and everything;

All at once.

He enters into our hearts and souls softly,

Quietly, almost without sound.

Once there, He offers peace, Life, wisdom

At no cost; just ourselves, whole, entire,

All at once.

Fr Chuck Durante

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The Shock, Awe and Banality of Evil

The shock, awe and banality of evilThe shock, awe and banality of evil

Secular, Christian and Catholic media are filled with the shock, awe and banality of evil of late. In this case, the inability to name anti-semitism as evil…or even a violation of conduct. After weeks of demonstrations on college American campuses supporting the terrorist group Hamas, Congress not only condemned antisemitism, but formed a bi-partisan task force to investigate its exponential rise in American college campuses.

Appearing before the congressional committee, the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania waffled when asked this simple question.

“Does calling for the genocide of the Jewish nation violate a code of conduct at your school?”

Each president replied with a variation of, “It depends on context.”

That the shock and awe emantes from both sides of the chasm dividing this country is ironic, even perversely amusing. Religious and secular writers alike have vehemently condemned these three women. The unusual concensus is disturbing for it highlights our quickness to judge and criticize regardless of our faith or lack of it. Each president refused to answer the loaded question with either a “Yes.” Or a “No.” Clearly, all three would have been schooled–pun intended–by their institutional counsel in the art of speaking without saying much. Certainly not to questions for which there’s no answer that would go unpunished.

Unfortunately some Catholic Christians

indicted their collapse of moral reasoning. Although John Grondelski in his Catholic Thing piece gives passing mention to the legal gamesmanship at stake, he quickly moves on to outrage.

How can any of us be shocked at this moral equivocation of the three college presidents?

For years, we’ve watched academia impugn Socrates, Aristotle, many authors of the Great Books as irrelevant and racist. We know of the calamitous decision to remove these great thinkers from the college curricula.The relentless spread of atheistic ‘isms’ whether activism, socialism, racism, transgenderism across college campuses is glaringly evident.As is the antipathy to America’s primary values, even of its constitution, among academic faculties.

All of which recalles the famous line from the movie Casablanca: “What? There’s gambling here?”

The originator of the wonderfully phrase desciptive phrase, “banality of evil,” is Hannah Arendt. Banal because our demonic enemies tactics never change their tactics: hatred, disunity, envy. Arendt’s phrase, “the banality of evil” came from her witness of the trial of Alfred Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust. For Arendt, Eichmann and the Nazi’s ‘final solution personified a failure to think. “What had become banal – and astonishingly so – was the failure to think,” Butler writes.

Butler’s interest in the failure of thinking is curious. Her several-decade-long crusade against our God given natures as men and women could look like a similar failure to think. For Butler, gender is determined by behavior. Her 1993 book Gender Trouble and the Subversion of Identity, is considered a classic of feminist and queer theory.

Upon diving into queer theory I was immersed in its obfuscatory language. An unsurprsing fact because in order to persuade ourselves that what we see in the mirror, a woman or a man is not real, we need a gigantic number of words. Especially polysyllabic and esoteric ones. Words whose meaning is a moveable feast, like gender ideology. For example, consider this quote from Butler’s book Gender Trouble. “The idea that sexual practice has the power to destabalize gender emerged from my reading of Gayle Rubin’s Traffic in Women and sought to establish that normative sexuality fortifies normative gender.” Or, clearly stated, “same sex sexual activity practiced over time is normal.’

Butler’s takeaway from Arendt could plausibly be “never stop thinking.” The untrammeled human will and intellect- unbounded by our natural fear of God are far more dangerous weapons than are bullets or bombs. In fact, we could call them the most powerful force in the world.

Why?

Because only we-of all His creatures-have the capacity to deny the Creator!

It’s all of one piece:

Antisemitism, abortion-on-demand, transgenderism and persecution against those of us who hold God’s law as sacred. And our battle isn’t with people. As related below by my fictional characters, criminal defense attorney Zach Cunningham and Father John Tobin.

“Like Lindsey noted earlier, and Kate wrote in her articles, the concept of evil hasn’t been in my lexicon. But none of us can look at the details of this case and not understand this is something different … other.” Zach leaned forward. “But when you said we’re not dealing with people, did you mean you think the people involved aren’t responsible? That they’re somehow possessed by dark spirits pulling their strings?” As he listened to his own words, Zach felt ridiculous, foolish, and yet eager to hear Father John’s response.

“I suppose one could say they’re not responsible, Zach.” The sorrow deepened in Father John’s intelligent gray eyes. “For the same reason that Christ begged the Father to forgive those who tortured and crucified him. If they’d known that the Galilean Jew was the King of the Universe, they would never have done what they did.”

It wasn’t cold in the room, but Zach shivered.

“You and I could spend the rest of our lives trying to understand evil and why it’s permitted and never get any farther than we’ll get here. Now.” The priest fingered the crucifix that hung around his neck. “Each human being is created in the Creator’s image and likeness. When he breathes life into us, he also breathes knowledge of his law: our conscience. Uniquely among all God’s creatures, we have an intellect and a will to develop that conscience.” The volume of his voice dropped. “His great gift to humanity: free will, Zach. Either we choose to follow the laws we know to be true—or declare ourselves gods.”

Plausible Liars

If anyone can teach us believers about our new status in America, it’s Jews.

Newly persecuted?

Yes, that’s us, we who believe that the Commandments don’t change. That He meant every word recorded in the Gospel.

Consider the Justice Department targeting of orthodox Catholics as “violent extremists. And then there’s Hillary Clinton’s label of prolifers as domestic terrorists and war criminals. Of course, those Christians and Catholics who’ve adapted God’s law to their own are exempted. It’s us “Biblical Christians and Jews who are now the public enemy.

Leil Leibowitz writes last week in his article, Pagan Hamas: “The years that have separated the holocaust and the Hamas terrorists have been focused on the disintegration of God’s creation: humanity. “Rights” like killing ourselves and our children exemplify the “separation of personhood and embidiment.” If we’re not God’s creation then human bodies are simply a substance to mutilate and terminate at will.

What can we do, asks Leibowitz?

Stop being shocked. Italics mine.

Those of us who keep God’s commandments are emissaries of his sanctifying power. We shine a light into the darkness. Our duty right now isn’t just to fight the pagans in courtrooms and voting booths and anyplace else where we can make a difference in civic life. We have a higher calling, that of obedience to God’s will. This obedience allows us to consecrate all that has been desecrated. Instead of a culture of mutilation, let us foster a culture of life, one that regrets the need for lethal force to ensure peace rather than rejoicing in the death of the innocent, one that disciplines the sword with strict principles of justice rather than rampaging without regard to moral constraint. This work will be hard, given the perversions we face. But, hallelujah, it isn’t complicated: Our faith traditions have left us very detailed instructions, tried and perfected over the centuries. All we have to do is follow the script. 

Pagan Hamas

A blessed Gaudete Sunday!

The post The Shock, Awe and Banality of Evil appeared first on Lin Weeks Wilder.

What would it look like if?

What would it look like if?What would it look like if

we treated everyone with authority and humility?

Monday’s 6am Mass at Saint Matthew’s was celebrated by Fr. Paul who issues a challenge at the end of his early Monday morning Masses. Monday’s was, “What would it look like if we treated everyone with power and humility?” Everyone: the HEB checkout person, the driver of the car that just cut us off causing us to slam on our brakes, the politician (s) who personifies all that we detest.

What would it look like?

The Gospel reading for Monday morning was one we know intimately. We repeat the words of the Roman centurion at each Mass. “I am not worthy for you to come under my roof. Just say the words and my soul shall be healed.”

It’s one of those Gospel readings that is readily visualized. Jesus in the midst of a crowd, as he always is. A woman kneeling on the ground having grabbed onto the edge of Jesus’ cloak in desperation. A Roman Centurion approaches, concerned about his servant. After watching the woman with the hemorrhage, the soldiier leaps off his horse, impelled by an irresistable power.

Before I could stop myself, I jumped to the ground and strode up to Jesus. His disciples looked annoyed, but he looked merely curious, ignoring his followers as he waited for me. I, a Roman soldier, was intent on begging for his intervention for Marius. Standing in front of him, looking into his face, I was astonished at my own great belief that this man— who resembled all others but spoke like no other— could heal Marius. “Lord, one of my servants is dying. He is grievously tormented.” His reply was instantaneous. “I will come and heal him. Show me where he lays.”

Shocked, I thought, I cannot bring him into a Roman soldier’s barracks! “Lord,” I said, “I am not worthy that you should come under my roof. But speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. Like you, Sir, I am a man with authority. I have hundreds of soldiers under me. I say to this man, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

Jesus looked surprised… and pleased. “Then go your way,” he said. “And as you have believed, so will it be done.” I was unsurprised when I got back to the barracks and found Marius sitting up and drinking tea. From that moment, he had been healed.

I, Claudia-A Novel of the Ancient World

Just say the word

“Do I believe that?”

“Do you believe He can heal your soul with just one word?”

No.

At least, far too rarely. Too frequently, my mind sticks on the “I’m not worthy” part. And so I think about my fictional character Quintillus and the decision he made…the gigantic risk the man took. A Centurion commanded at least 100 Roman soldiers–recognizable in his bright crimson and feared by many. Yet he cared enough about his servant to beg.

All of which takes me back to my conversion; how abrupt it felt but the reality was that I’d been searching for God from the moment I first walked away. Just like you and each of the almost 8 billion souls on earth.

Bishop Barron calls it the invasion of grace. A splendid and perfectly fitting phrase for us converts and reverts. If you’ve an extra fifteen minutes, listen to his homily embedded in that phrase.

Back to Quintillus though, conversions like his, mine and yours are not one-time-events. In fact, at times it’s minute by minute for me. Especially when I forget to race back to Jesus when I’ve fallen, yet again. Gossiped or complained or given into one of the dizzying arrays of sinful pleasures a mere finger tip away. During those times, the self-disgust can take on the weight of an avalanche as it rolls faster and faster, collecting more and more of my past sins. Until…

In the letter of Paul to the Romans, the saint writes, “The law came in order to increase offenses; but despite the increase of sin, grace has surpassed it, so that, as sin reigned through death, grace may reign by way of justice leading to eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Think about that first phrase for a moment or a lifetime: “the law came to increase offenses…”

On the altar at Saint Matthews, there are long sheets of advent purple hanging on each side of the massive crucifix. A twisted purple ribbon emerges from each and drapes over the crucified Christ. It evokes Father John Riccardo’s Christ as the “ambush predator.”

The divine child soon to be born

is a warrior. “God became a man to fight, to rescue us, to get his creation—you—back. He landed on earth in order to vanquish the enemy, but here’s the challenge: the enemy won’t fight God. Satan isn’t stupid. Satan knew he couldn’t beat God and wouldn’t try, so God designed a plan: a plan he knew would involve piercing, nails, and a cross. Then he hid himself as a man. And he waited…Jesus on the cross is not the poor, helpless victim, and he is not the hunted. Jesus on the cross is the aggressor and the hunter.”

It’s all true: we’re sinners, all of us. Even the best of our good works are nothing in the abyss of a majestic love we cannot comprehend. Our Lord told many of the saints that we are far worse than we can possibly imagine. And yet, Holy Father God sends us His Beloved Son in whom He is well pleased.

In the manner of the centurion, you also must say, “I am not worthy to receive You; I merit nothing; I am an abyss of weakness and cowardice; I make resolutions and do not keep them; I fall over and over again. But Jesus, say only one word, and my soul shall be healed.” Jesus was so delighted by the centurion’s words that he willed them to be fixed in the Liturgy of the Mass, to be forever the most perfect preparation for Communion.

I Believe in Love

I am frequently flattened

by God’s answer to prayers I don’t even know I’m praying. Because of a recent Magnificat meditation, I discovered an exquisite book: I Believe in Love: A Personal Retreat Based on the Teachings of St. Therese of Lisieux.

The French priest author feels like he’s speaking directly to me with admonitions like,

“I shall come back to this, but I should like to ask you urgently, from now on, that you never let your past sins be an obstacle between you and Jesus. It is a ruse of the Devil to keep putting our sins before our eyes in order to make them like a screen between the Savior and us. Think of your past sins for your own humiliation or to persuade yourself once again of your weakness, of your unworthiness; think of them in order to find happiness in expiation, in order to confirm your firm resolution not to fall again—….Do not go looking for them at the bottom of the sea! He has wiped them out; He has forgotten them. His Blood has been shed; the flames of His mercy have done their work: they have burned up all of them, consumed them all while renewing you.”

Relying on the inspired wisdom of that very young yet very old soul of St. Therese, St. Augustine, St. John of the Cross and many others, Father Jean C.J. d’Elbee created a masterpiece worthy of reading repeatedly. Because yours and my sins emanate from the same source: lack of trust.

Jesus says, “Let me do.” But I don’t hear him.

Jesus’ whole purpose is to restore the divinity we lost through disobedience by returning us to our original perfection. But we can do nothing without him.

“Here is a sublime thought which I expressed to you in my first conference. All the merits of Jesus are mine. He covers me with His Blood. He fills my empty hands with His own virtues and transforms me into Himself. I present myself thus before the Father, and, in all justice, the Father receives me as His beloved Son.”

I Believe in Love

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It’s Advent: Don’t Waste These Precious Days!

first candle lit during advent represents the candle of hope! it’s Advent: don’t waste these precious days!It’s advent: don’t waste these precious days!

Quietly competing with the banal and boring commercialism of Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays extended sales is another invitation. But it cannot be heard outside in the streets or while listening to CNN. Instead we must silent all the shouts of the marketplace to listen to another voice…more like a whisper. This is a different kind of celebration –quieter, more intimate…a refuge. Lighting our Advent candles in hope, not naive optimism but the Hope that derives from faith.

I know, Christmas music, gifts and holiday parties are everywhere. The pressure to buy, buy, BUY! is palpable…whether a new tree, more and better decorations or an explicit promise “This year, I’ll have cards done and gifts bought by the second week in December!”

Or maybe Christmas evokes memories and images that sadden or anger from childhood or more recently recollections cause annoyance and disgust at Christmas in our wounded memories and imaginations. And so , we lash out at those closest to us, not understanding that anger and rage provide fuel to our demonic enemies.

Don’t.

Waste.

This.

Time.

The “shaking reality of Advent.”

Many of the things that are happening today would never have happened if we had been living in that longing, that disquiet of heart which comes when we are faced with God, and when we look clearly at things as they really are. If we had done this, God would have withheld his hand from many of the things that now shake and crush our lives. We would have come to terms with and judged the limits of our own competence.

But we have lived in a false confidence, in a delusional security; in our spiritual insanity we really believe we can bring the stars down from heaven and kindle flames of eternity in the world. We believe that with our own forces we can avert the dangers and banish night, switch off and halt the internal quaking of the universe. We believe we can harness everything and fit it into an ultimate scheme that will last…

If we want Advent to transform us – our homes and hearts, and even nations – then the great question for us is whether we will come out of the convulsions of our time with this determination: Yes, arise! It is time to awaken from sleep. a waking up must begin somewhere. It is time to put things back where God intended them. It is time for each of us to go to work – certain that the Lord will come – to set our life in God’s order wherever we can. Where God’s word is heard, he will not cheat us of the truth; where our life rebels he will reprimand it…

Advent Of the Heart

Father Alfred Depp, author of Advent of the Heart, was hanged for treason a few months before WW ll ended, at the age of thirty-seven–on the same day as Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

But these words don’t read as irrelevant, as belonging to another time and place. Rather, we can hear, almost taste the urgency…”a waking up must begin somewhere. It is time to put things back where God intended them. It is time for each of us to go to work…”

How do we open ourselves up to the shaking reality of advent? Focusing not on Christmas but instead, it’s advent, don’t waste these precious days?

The most important work of all: set our lives and hearts in order. The Christian church gives us these days to do precisely that. We see the penitential colors on the altar and the robes of the priests. And know .we must silent all the shouts of the marketplace to listen to another voice…more like a whisper. Lighting our Advent candles in hope, not naive optimism but the Hope that derives from faith. Only hope permits our escaping the ‘four walls and prison windows of gray days.’

I had never heard of Advent before I became a Catholic. Nor did I grasp its extraordinary riches. Pondering sinless, Immaculate Mary: the first and only human being who is true to her nature: the likeness and image of God.

In his 2002 apostolic letter, On the Most Holy Rosary ,

St. Pope John Paul ll wrote the rosary “blends easily into the spiritual journey of the Christian life, which, after two thousand years, has lost none of the freshness of its beginnings and feels drawn by the Spirit of God to “set out into the deep” (duc in altum!) in order once more to proclaim, and even cry out, before the world that Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour, “the way, and the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6), “the goal of human history and the point on which the desires of history and civilization turn”.(1)

The joyful, sorrowful, glorious and luminous mysteries of the holy rosary of the blessed Virgin Mary are the life of Christ as seen through the eyes of the Virgin who bore him. Saint Pope John Paul writes that

The contemplation of Christ has an incomparable model in Mary. In a unique way the face of the Son belongs to Mary. It was in her womb that Christ was formed, receiving from her a human resemblance which points to an even greater spiritual closeness. No one has ever devoted himself to the contemplation of the face of Christ as faithfully as Mary. The eyes of her heart already turned to him at the Annunciation, when she conceived him by the power of the Holy Spirit. In the months that followed she began to sense his presence and to picture his features. When at last she gave birth to him in Bethlehem, her eyes were able to gaze tenderly on the face of her Son, as she “wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger.

We know, do we not, the fact of the divine infant’s manger is no sentimentalized Hallmark story? The method and place of the birth of Christ is no happenstance because there was no room at the inn.

No, we grasp that the Divine Will decreed that Christ, the King of the Universe incarnated to become food for those who were lost.

You.

Me.

And all human souls who have ever lived.

Therefore Fr. Delp’s chilling phrase: “the shaking reality of advent.” But as I write those words, my mouth twists into a rueful smile. How can I or any of us comprehend this extraordinary act of the Triune God?”

We cannot.

Just as Mary knows not to try to explain the Angel’s declaration, Hail full of grace…The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you…to Joseph or anyone.

There were no words.

Therefore an angel of God was summoned to explain to Joseph in a dream.

Pope John Paul ll quotes a former Satanic priest who became a saint: In this regard Blessed Bartolo Longo has written: “Just as two friends, frequently in each other’s company, tend to develop similar habits, so too, by holding familiar converse with Jesus and the Blessed Virgin, by meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary and by living the same life in Holy Communion, we can become, to the extent of our lowliness, similar to them and can learn from these supreme models a life of humility, poverty, hiddenness, patience and perfection”.(18)

Our purpose, as Catholic Christians is to conform ourselves to Christ. Pope John declares no better way than the school of Mary: the rosary.

“The Rosary mystically transports us to Mary’s side as she is busy watching over the human growth of Christ in the home of Nazareth. This enables her to train us and to mold us with the same care, until Christ is “fully formed” in us (cf. Gal 4:19). This role of Mary, totally grounded in that of Christ and radically subordinated to it, “in no way obscures or diminishes the unique mediation of Christ, but rather shows its power”.(20) This is the luminous principle expressed by the Second Vatican Council which I have so powerfully experienced in my own life and have made the basis of my episcopal motto: Totus Tuus

Numerous Christians and Catholics criticize the rosary prayers as too repetitive. And that the prayers address Mary, treating her as if she, not her Son was God. But for Saint Padre Pio, his daily rosary was a weapon against the powers of hell.

Is there another living soul who experienced the powers of hell as profoundly as did Mary?

It’s advent: don’t waste these precious days!

Make room for the divine child

Because of the emphasis on eschatology or the impending end times by so many Catholic and Christian bloggers, these several-century-old words of wisdom from St. Bernard feel critically necessary.

We know that the coming of the Lord is threefold: the third coming is between the other two and it is not visible in the way they are. At his first coming the Lord was seen on earth and lived among men, who saw him and hated him. At his last coming All flesh shall see the salvation of our God, and They shall look on him whom they have pierced. In the middle, the hidden coming, only the chosen see him, and they see him within themselves; and so their souls are saved. The first coming was in flesh and weakness, the middle coming is in spirit and power, and the final coming will be in glory and majesty.

St. Bernard

Listen with me:

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Why Reason is Required for Faith

Why reason is required for faith

Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves

Faith and Reason

Today it feels like the majority of people looks at those of us addicted to the daily Mass as foolish, maybe nuts. Especially during these days when the news is filled with ‘believers’ whose expressed sole purpose is death and destruction. And I understand…kind of. There was a time when I too, viewed Christians as ignorant, the bible as fantasy and religion hypocrisy. I viewed animals as more worthy of saving than people. I was obsessed by the injustices and horrors wrought by people on one another and the planet. Hence the arguments of those who think the planet would be improved if humans no longer inhabited it are not unfamiliar. It was simple: people of faith were irrational.

But even in my most radically antireligious phases, there was a hunger–yearning that couldn’t be expressed, just denied. Of course the denial has consequences: none of them good. Only in the last few years have I been able to look with compassion on my younger self, making it possible to feel not just tolerance but love for those stuck in denial of God.

True because I remember the many years when I was addicted to certainty: I didn’t say it that way of course. But I was open only to affirmation that what I think and believe, even insist, is the truth.

This piece, why reason is required for faith, was prompted by:

The conversion of a ‘famous atheist’The discovery of the delightful Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe, Returning to Pope John Paul ll’s magnificent Fides et RatioAyaan Hirsi Ali

recently published her declaration, “Why I am now a Christian.” It’s an obvious reference to Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not A Christian and familiar since Russell’s essay attracted me too as an brand new eighteen-year-old atheist.

In a sense, her conversion isn’t at all surprising. In light of this woman’s intellectual gifts and the courageous, life-threatening, stands she has taken during her life, her dedication to truth is inspirational. With the publication of her autobiography, Infidel, death threats from radical Islam forced Hirsi-Ali to leave Holland and seek asylum in the United States. But fear did not stop her from working tirelessly to persuade the west that radical Muslim groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS and Hamas are committed to the destruction of western civilization. And that ignoring or mitigating the threat was perilous to our survival.

In an arresting interview with Dave Rubin, The West is Running Out of Time, Ayann Hirsi Ali states that the worldwide marches supporting Hamas, filled with people agitating for genocide for the Jews repeat what occurred in Europe prior to the holocaust in Nazi Germany. “We are,” Hirsi Ali exclaims, in a the midst of a “brutal clash of civilizations….but western pundits and leaders dismiss my two-decade warnings as I’ve been ‘hijacked by the right,’ ‘I’ve been scarred my my experience…”

“What is truly astonishing is ‘progressives’ on the left are cluelessly enabling the terrorists.” As she says this, demonstrators carrying signs proclaiming, “Queers for Hamas” flash on the screen.

I like her phrase, “cluelessly enabling terrorism” but believe it inadequate. Antisemitism isn’t new among intellectuals nor is it surprising. By their very existence, the Jewish people call up a god who spoke to Abraham, Moses and a Bible that predicted the state of Israel. Pundits securely enthroned on their secular humanistic tautology get itchy at the notion of the chosen people. It offends their sense of equality. Antisemitism is a spiritual evil, as is much of what the deranged, absurdly called ‘progressive,’ agenda.

Stop us from talking nonsense

The scholar’s Herbert McCabe’s exhortation about God could be read hundreds of times: ….”is no God who is a being, an item in the universe, a rival person; there is just the unknown beyond and behind the whole universe itself, the mystery at the heart of my being myself. In Christ, says St. Thomas, we are united to God as to an unknown.” And still remain mysterious.

The Dominican priest studied the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas. He who was asked by Christ, “Thomas, you have written well of me, what would you have as a reward?” And was heard to reply, “Only you Lord, only you.”

Hence McCabe had no tolerance for those the theories of post-modern theologians which reduce the Bible to allegory or even fantasy. In fact, he wrote that theology is “not concerned with trying to say what God is but in trying to stop us talking nonsense.” Unknown here in the states, the Irish priest and scholar’s interest was in battling the ‘nonsense’ of modern theologists and scholars. His book, Faith and Reason is considered a classic. The first chapter, Is Belief Wishful Thinking? begins by suggesting that it’s the unbeliever who is engaging in wishful thinking. In an intriguing reverse of the claim by atheists. “I am quite sure that religious disbelief is wishful thinking in this sense: I think that many people cease to believe because they find it too uncomfortable to believe that certain doctrines are true.”

Matthew Nelson writes, “McCabe insists rightly that faith involves at least holding that a certain proposition is true; this is a necessary—but not sufficient—component of faith. Put another way, there is no such thing as believing something without believing it to be true. Saying “I believe that . . .” is synonymous with saying “I believe it is true that . . .The most rational among us reject neither faith nor reason, allowing each to assume its proper place in the life of the intellect. While faith without reasons make truth inapplicable, contends McCabe, faith entirely dependent on reasons makes faith inapplicable. So faith must be something in between. Here—as so often in Catholic theology—we see manifest an apparently “either/or” scenario that is really, in the final analysis, a “both/and.”

All of which leads me to

Pope John Paul ll’s splendid 1998 Encyclical letter, Fides et Ratio. The sixty-eight page ‘letter’ is quintessentially Saint Pope John Paul ll in that each paragraph, sometimes each sentence warrants thought. Sometimes extensive meditation. I read it shortly after my conversion to Catholicism. But find on reread, it’s even more magnificent. I wonder if there’s another man more suited to speak and write about the impossibility of uncoupling faith from reason or reason from faith. We know enough about the early life of Karol Wojtyla to sense his profound understanding of communism and fascism: of atheism and of its implicit danger to humanity.

For Pope John Paul, like Father McCabe, it’s Saint Thomas who explicates the contingent relationship of faith and reason.

In an age when Christian thinkers were rediscovering the treasures of ancient philosophy, and more particularly of Aristotle, Thomas had the great merit of giving pride of place to the harmony which exists between faith and reason. Both the light of reason and the light of faith come from God, he argued; hence there can be no contradiction between them.44

More radically, Thomas recognized that nature, philosophy’s proper concern, could contribute to the understanding of divine Revelation. Faith therefore has no fear of reason, but seeks it out and has trust in it. Just as grace builds on nature and brings it to fulfilment,45 so faith builds upon and perfects reason. Illumined by faith, reason is set free from the fragility and limitations deriving from the disobedience of sin and finds the strength required to rise to the knowledge of the Triune God. Although he made much of the supernatural character of faith, the Angelic Doctor did not overlook the importance of its reasonableness; indeed he was able to plumb the depths and explain the meaning of this reasonableness. Faith is in a sense an “exercise of thought”; and human reason is neither annulled nor debased in assenting to the contents of faith, which are in any case attained by way of free and informed choice.46

Faith and Reason

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Joseph Ratzinger and the Divine Project

Surreal digital art. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and the Divine ProjectJoseph Ratzinger and the Divine Project

“And in this He [Christ] showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, “What may this be?” And it was answered generally thus, “It is all that is made.” I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God.  In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it.”

Julian of Norwich-Book of Showings

Fourteenth-century mystic Julian of Norwich’s oft-quoted attribution of Christ’s attitude toward sin as “All will be well,” is compelling. And unnerving. But the truth or falsehood of that vision isn’t my subject today. Rather, it’s her vision of creation as a hazelnut. It is–well, magnificent.

Discovering it in John Grondelski’s Recovering Passion for the Divine Project, prompted–more accurately, compelled my read of the book. In 1985, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger published a series of lectures: The Divine Project: Reflections on Creation and the Church. Ratzinger asks how we moderns can read Genesis “without doing violence to the text, inquire into its relevance for the present?”

After describing ancient Israel’s place among pagan nations, each worshipping their particular, local god, Cardinal Ratzinger does a deep dive into our recent history, specifically the effects of science and technology upon our understanding and interpretation of the Bible.

In doing so, Cardinal Ratzinger explains precisely why Genesis and much of the Bible is perceived as allegory among priests and many Christian and Catholic faithful.

.

“Parallel to the rise of the scientific way of thinking came the rise of a historical way of thinking

that attempted to apply to texts and to history more or less the same methods used by the natural sciences on nature. Thus, in accord with its scientific idealism, this emerging form of historical thinking now sought to read each text in isolation, purely in terms of its historically literal meaning…The integrity of the Bible as such is a matter of faith, which has its place and its empirical justification in the way that it roots the path of the people of God. As a purely historical matter apart from this life context, it is not a matter of historical reality, but as nineteenth-century exegesis had it (and which, objectively speaking, is correct in a purely historical sense): it is an extremely heterogeneous collection of literature gathered under a single book cover…various generations—but backward, as defined by the methodology.

This meant always looking for the more ancient source, the true origin, the oldest stage of development, and permitting this alone to be considered valid content for interpretation. The texts were no longer read forward, but backward—not with a view to Christ, but back toward the presumed origin of the text. No longer did one look to the ultimate form to discern the meaning of a text or the nature of a thing; but one looked to the beginning, to its origin. The Fathers’ way of reading in view of Scripture as a totality came to be disparaged as “allegory.”. And because reading in light of the totality of Scripture was mere “allegory”, and thus the very antithesis of the scientific approach, this approach soon just vanished from theology as a scholarly discipline…”

I know woefully little about Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict. But the curious reaction of pundits upon his death prompted my search into the why of his alleged ‘rigidity, Islamophobia and racism’ naming just a few of the claims about Pope Benedict. Led to the now infamous Regensberg address, I found that his intellectual honesty, courage along with his consistent searing, soaring discourse startles–even alarms, so thorough is his unambiguous reasoning. Of course, many would hate hearing or reading the words.

This book is no different. The then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s approach to those of us schooled in the ‘enlightenment’s’ mechanistic thinking is gracious and compassionate. And inescapably reasonable. Our love of disassembling the whole in order to weigh, measure and examine the parts and its consequences is laid bare, kindly but relentlessly.

It’s a whole fabric–the Bible.

Unafraid of science or the grandiose and beloved scientific method of our culture, Ratzinger draws on scientists like Einstein and Nobel Prize winner Jacques Monod to elucidate the evident limitations on our scientific understanding of creation. In doing so, he leads his readers to see that the Bible is “the truth that does not dissipate in a fog of pious pleasantries but remains the firm ground on which we stand.”

Fully aware that I’m doing injustice to Ratzinger’s exegesis, I’ve no choice in this these thousand plus words but to extract titillating excerpts. Like this one:

We are able to recognize in the immense objects that make up the world of the stars and other heavenly bodies a great and powerful Reason that holds the universe together. And as we penetrate ever deeper into the smallest of things, into the cell, into the primordial units of life, there, too, we discover a reasonableness that is truly astonishing, so that today I believe we can no longer say that Saint Bonaventure was merely being pious; rather, he was also being reasonable, when he said—very much in the tradition of the Wisdom Books, I might add—“Whoever does not see all this is blind. Whoever does not hear all this is deaf. And whoever does not begin to worship and praise the Creator Intelligence based on all this is dumb.”

Cardinal Ratzinger’s careful, precise exposition on worship as the purpose of Creation warrants extensive meditation. Just so, the unwillingness of ancient Israel to observe the Sabbath and the consequences of their refusal can’t help but indict the new Israel: you and me, all of us who so weakly and cravenly follow Christ.

But it’s his lectures, Man, the Divine Project and it’s successor, Sin and Redemption that raze the secular nihilism of our day.

What is man?

“Being human is a task that is given to each and every one of us, an appeal to our freedom. Sartre portrayed this quite dramatically as the lot to which man is condemned: that, having no intrinsic nature, it is up to him to invent himself. While we should certainly object to the radicality of this view, even on empirical grounds alone, it remains true that what it means to be human is not something that is just predetermined for us. Rather, it is a question that needs to be explored anew, and each of us must decide who or what we wish to be as human beings. Thus, the question “What is man?” is not a matter of philosophical theorizing but is the most practical question of all, the one that precedes all other questions and in all other questions is asked and answered.”

And:

Given the prevailing intellectual climate in which we currently find ourselves, it makes a certain amount of sense that the topic of sin is one that has been suppressed, yet it nevertheless remains quite real. The symptoms of this are manifold—one that I have noticed has become increasingly prevalent in our society is this aggressiveness where people are always ready to pounce, this ever-ready willingness to insult the others, to blame them for our own misfortune, or to condemn society as a whole and seek to change the world through violence. It seems to me that the only way to understand all this is to understand it as an expression of the suppressed reality of guilt, which man does not want to acknowledge. But since it is nevertheless still there, he has to attack it and crush it. And because man suppresses the truth but is unable to do away with it, he becomes sickened by this suppressed truth. This is why Jesus says that it is the task of the Holy Spirit to “convince the world of sin” (Jn 16:8).

I have to chuckle at myself because more than two-thirds of this book is highlighted, far more than can be discussed here. I hope your appetite has been whetted to read for yourself, Joseph Ratzinger and the Divine Project,

One might ask if all this isn’t just pointless philosophizing?

Of course. That’s a primary point of Ratzinger’s lectures: in this culture, we’re human because of what we do. The notion of being is nullified. Our worth is in our actions-our knowledge and capabilities have no bounds. But for me, this is real, critical and personal. I suspect I’m one of the few people who, upon completing their doctorate at the school of Public Health in Houston sat on the steps of the school and sobbed.

It took close to ten years to complete the course work, the qualifying exams and the dissertation-while working full time. So why not joyous celebration?

A very simple answer. My goal had been wisdom, in undergrad and then the doctoral program. But with each degree I knew less and less. I couldn’t find what I searched for in a classroom or a professor’s theory or the receipt of letters after my name. At the time, it felt that all that study, sacrifice and energy had been an exercise in futility.

Of course this humiliation was ginormous grace from God.

I had to be flattened to get back on my knees. And see there is just one source of wisdom.I had to understand there are just two answers to the questions imposed on us in this life: Yes or No? [Thank you Bishop Robert Baron for “The Great Yes and the Great No.”]

To live in the only safe space that exists, we live between the two extremes: the dualistic, puritanical hatred of the world and the idolization of it.
We must live in the tension between The Great Yes and The Great No.

The World: The Great Yes and the Great No

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Thinking About Holiness: Its Simplicity

Thinking about holiness: its simplicityThinking about holiness: its simplicity

Wednesday was All Saints Day and Thursday, All Souls Day. Each November 1st and 2nd, we celebrate our friends in Heaven and pray for those who wait in Purgatory as we begin this month of the dead.

Depressing?

Morbid?

Yeah, both if we ignore the reality–our bodies will die. But not our souls.

Our souls–even if we don’t believe we have one– will face the judgement of our Creator.

How well did we use the gifts we were given?

The grace?

Did we listen to our conscience?

How well did we love?

You do not have to be learned or extraordinarily talented to become holy. All you need is the grace of God and your own determination. Yet the reason so few people become saints is because it is easier to become learned than to change one’s whole life in order to become holy.

The Road of Hope-The Gospel from Prison

Really?

I can make holiness far too complex. Especially when thinking about my friends in heaven; I forget they also had just twenty-four hours in their days. Or that much of their lives consisted of dirty dishes, sweeping the floor and pushing themselves to pray when they’d rather sleep. Hence I can get down on myself because I’m not accomplishing great things.

Heroic sacrifice.

Saving the world as was my ambition at nineteen.

And then Venerable Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan showed up. {Astounding how that happens, isn’t it?} His Magnificat meditation, Already Planted in the Kingdom of God, exhorts the simplicity of holiness. “I see clearly that every saint has his or her particular ‘style,’ no one of them resembles another. Yet a common way exists that everyone, without exception, must undertake. I must resemble the Lord Jesus…Thus, my specific role will assume its proper splendor, modestly but with the greatest audacity!”

Cardinal Van Thuan spent thirteen years in a Communist Vietnamese prison, nine in solitary confinement. That phrase warrants a repeat: nine years in solitary confinement. During those years, he secretly celebrated the Mass daily with a drop of wine in the palm of his hand. And wrote the maxims on duty, prayer, the supernatural life that would constitute The Road of Hope: A Gospel from Prison.

In September 2007, the cause for  was opened in Rome. As a prisoner he underwent the most brutal torture and dehumanization, but Van Thuan always strove to love the very prison guards who abused him. Some of the guards were so moved by his example they later converted to Christianity. Van Thuan would later write,

“…only Christian love can change hearts, not weapons and not threats…it is love that prepares the way for the announcement of the gospel. Omnia Vincit Amor “Love conquerors everything.”

Making holiness complicated

serves a purpose. One that makes me squirm; especially when my frenetic, easily distracted mind makes it almost impossible to pray. When that happens, instead of simply accepting my weakness, I can get down on myself, assuming that none of my committee—St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Francis, St. Thomas More, St. Teresa Benedicta or St. Pope John Paul ll–had problems like mine. They were holy men and women. Not wrecked like me.

Whine, whine.

Then I read this from Cardinal Thuan in his Gospel From Prison: “In your soul are two persons, John and Judas. Whenever you are striving to persevere, you are following the loyal, faithful John. Whenever you cravenly give up the struggle, you are choosing Judas as your patron and you are burning incense, as it were, in honor of that patron of traitors.”

…”Cravenly give up the struggle…” gets our attention, doesn’t it?

The saints lived on earth as much as I do…swept along by the same current of time….they recognized that time had the value of eternity…We build holiness in the present moment not by turning to the past or anticipating the future….

Already Planted in the Kingdom of God

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