X-Catholics

Something good on "Nothing"

2010-09-10T13:58:00.002-05:00

Ratzinger was Right #327

2010-07-04T20:04:00.003-05:00

"The present day crisis is due to the fact that the connecting link between the subjective and the objective realms has disappeared, that reason and feeling are drifting apart, and that both are ailing because of it."

_Truth and Tolerance_, 143.

This reminds me of the following saying, which I'm reconstructing from memory, so it might be different from the original.

"Reason without feeling leaves one like a ship with a rudder but no sail: It goes nowhere. Feeling without reason leaves one like a ship with a sail but not rudder: it goes wherever the wind blows."

What we want, of course, is both motivation and direction. We want a vector. The love of God serves as both motivation and guide. The inner essence of God is Love and Reason: self-giving and self-consistency. All contradictions are satanic. If Christianity is true, then it never contradicts science. If some scientific theory is true, then it never contradicts Christian doctrine. In any case of apparent contradiction, either the appearance is mistaken or we have misinterpreted either the Book of God's Word or the Book of God's World.

Obama Drops Gauntlet to Pro-lifers

2010-07-02T21:21:00.002-05:00

From CNN.com

White House ties new pregnancy assistance fund to 'common ground' abortion plan

It's definitely a good thing and cause for celebration, but it's got little to do with abortion politics. Or rather, it has a very bizarre connection: "See, we like babies too. I mean, kill them if you want to, but if you want to keep them, we want them to flourish." That's a very strange logic.

More than anything, it's a gauntlet thrown down to pro-lifers: "You say you care about unborn babies? Then fund this." From that standpoint, I totally approve. It's both clever strategy and and a good way to keep the heat on Republicans who talk a good talk but tend to fail to deliver on Pro-life pledges while going to the mat for large corporate donors.

Now let's see if Obama's "seamless garment of life" actually extends to so-called *unwanted* babies. It is, after all, a human rights issue. "Unwanted" humans are humans.

Yet More on Faith

2010-06-20T19:07:00.001-05:00

I was thinking about the usage of "faith" in which it clearly does not convey certainty and the usage in which it conveys something like that. Here's a gambit in keeping with a lot I've written.

Consider the prologue to the Catechism of Trent (*obligatory chuckle*)

"Though the word faith, has a variety of meanings in the Sacred Scriptures,* we here speak only of that faith by which we yield our entire assent to whatever has been divinely revealed."

What stood out to me for the first time tonight were the words "by which." I haven't looked up the Latin yet, and it might be making too much anyway, but it could well be that the property expressed by usages of "believe"/"faith" which do NOT convey certainty could be that BY WHICH we yield entire assent. This seems to me to fit nicely into Pascalian faith. Even sub .5 belief could be that by which one gives total assent, given one has appropriate utilities.

Also, I think one of my previous theses has come in a bit more clearly. Not more clearly true, just more clearly articulable.

The object of total assent is "whatever has been divinely revealed". So it seems to me that one has an orthodox level of credence in doctrine X when one's credence in it is at least as high as it is in the proposition "X has been revealed." This would indicate complete and total trust in God's word, which seems to be what the parts of the Magisterium which employ the usage of "belief"/"faith" which convey something like certainty.

Faith, Assent, and Certainty

2010-06-12T03:55:00.003-05:00

I was thinking about the usage of "faith" in which it clearly does not convey certainty and the usage in which it conveys something like that. Here's a gambit in keeping with a lot I've written.

Consider the prologue to the Catechism of Trent (*obligatory chuckle*)

"Though the word faith, has a variety of meanings in the Sacred Scriptures, we here speak only of that faith by which we yield our entire assent to whatever has been divinely revealed."

Also, I think one of my previous theses has come in a bit more clearly. Not more clearly true, just more clearly articulable.

Catholic Sex Abuse: Blunt Q & A

2010-05-18T17:39:00.011-05:00

Catholic Sex Abuse: Blunt Q & A

Blunt Question 1: Why do we keep hearing about so much sex abuse in the Catholic Church?

Blunt Answer 1: Because the Catholic Church is the most hated entity that has ever existed.

Blunt Answer 2: Because, as the visible body of Christ on Earth, founded by Jesus himself, the Church is and ought to be held to a higher standard.

Blunt Question 2: Doesn’t all this show that the Catholic priesthood is a refuge for pedophiles?

Blunt Answer 3: No. The rates of abuse are at or below the average for relevant contrast classes, based on current information.

Blunt Question 3: But then why don’t we hear about sex abuse in other groups like the Scouts, public schools, Protestant clergy, etc.?

Blunt Answer 4: Because none of these entities is hated to nearly the same degree as is the Catholic Church, the most hated entity that has ever existed.

Blunt Answer 5: Because none of these other organizations has anything like the number of adherents, broad geographical distribution, or detailed record keeping as the Catholic Church. [For example, Western Europe is going to have many more Catholics than the US, so we must expect similar figures there, whereas there are relatively few--to say the least--Baptists or Rabbis.]

Blunt Answer 6: Because none of these other organizations have voluntarily and at their own expense paid investigatory bodies to conduct massive investigations of themselves for the sake of accountability.

Below, I’ll give some relevant information gleaned from the City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice report (available on their website here or the US Council of Catholic Bishops’ website here).

Top 10 Points of Interest from the Study, mostly gleaned from the Executive Summary

1. The study ranged over the period from 1950-2002, that’s 52 years, over half a century.

2. It covered 195 dioceses and there territories across the country, and 142 religious communities. (For example, my home state of Missouri would have the following deoceses: Saint Louis, Jefferson City, Kansas-City/Saint Joseph, Springfield-Cape. Smaller towns surrounding these cities are in their diocese. For example, the small town where I began high school, Savannah, MO is in the diocese of KC/St. Jo. So we are talking about a network that covers the country, coast to coast.)

3. There are currently about 80,000,000 (eighty million) Catholics in the US. How many there have been in the US over the last 50 years I don’t know, but it is surely over 100,000,000 (a hundred million people). This *dwarfs* the size of other bodies where the same kind of conditions that led to the crises occur.

4. There were 4,392 credible allegations in the more than half-century. This is not the number which proved to be actual cases of abuse. We don’t have that number. It is only the number of credible alegations. And the allegations ranged from “sexual talk” to rape.

5. That comes to about .43 (less than half) credible allegations per year per diocese. And recall, one state might be divided into only a few dioceses. Per my example above, the State of Missouri, which has about 6 million people, is divided up into only four dioceses. So that’s 1.6 million people per diocese. (Of course not everyone in the diocese is actually a formal member of the Church. In my home diocese of Kansas City/St. Jo, actual membership is about 10%, which is typical in the state, so they have about 150,000 registered Catholics.)

6. 25% of allegations were made more that 30 years after the alleged incident.

7. The decade of the 70’s was the major spike in allegations. It declined rapidly in the 80’s and 90’s and very few allegations occur today even in the presence of constant reporting.

8. The majority of the accused were ordained before John Paul II was even elected Pope.
They were mostly younger, associate pastors.

9. BAD APPLE SYNDROME This fact is not to be missed. 149 priests were responsible for 2,960 allegations, that’s more than 25% of the total allegations reported in the more than half century of the study!!

10. Nearly 40% of the alleged participated in treatment programs, so this was not going completely ignored as is often reported.

Now ask yourself, in all the constant reporting of the subject, how many of these facts have been mentioned...

This is especially egregious in light of a Wall Street Journal-NBC news poll in which 64% of respondents reported believing that priests commit acts of abuse "frequently"!

UPDATE: The USCCB 2009 annual report (here, reproted by Newsweek here) contains allegations of six (6) incidences of sexual misconduct toward people under 18.

One thing all child abuse stat orgs agree upon: Abusers are most likely to be a family member or close family friend (not including priest).

Further Reading

Sexual Abuse in Context: Catholic Clergy and other Professions

This report is by the Catholic League, which is roughly the Catholic equivalent to the Jewish Anti-defamation league. So they are partisan, but you can read the footnotes.
It reports that the incidence of sexual misconduct allegations among Catholic clergy is well below that for non-Catholics and school teachers.

First Things Online Article by George Weigel

Weigel is a traditional Catholic and famous biographer of Pope John Paul the Great. He is quite politically coservative and is hated very much for both these things. I’ve only met him once, for lunch, and he was very nice and extremely informed and connected. This is the Catholic side of the story, the OTHER side, the side you almost never here in the press.

Priests Commit No more Abuse than Other Males

This is a Newsweek article written by a noted child justice journalist.
“Since the mid-1980s, insurance companies have offered sexual misconduct coverage as a rider on liability insurance, and their own studies indicate that Catholic churches are not higher risk than other congregations.“

UPDATE: My colleague Frank Beckwith sent me this article which also has a very frank assessment of media mishandling of sex abuse in America from Catholic World Report.

Ralph McInerny, resquiescat in pace

2010-01-29T15:09:00.004-05:00

Noted Catholic philosopher Ralph McInerny died this morning. One present said "It was, from what I can discern, a happy death, serene and full of he acceptance that comes from a sure and strong faith."

I might try to organize some information on him but in the mean time here are some links.

Bio from the Center for Ethics and Culture at Notre Dame
Maritain Center Bio, Notre Dame

Good summary from Gifford Lecture Website

I have learned more than I can say from him on a variety of issues and life in general over the years. He was involved in one of the first book projects I ever worked on, and was a
gracious interlocutor and teacher.

He really was a living legend, a man from another time and world it seemed, but still battled for the redemption of the culture he was a part of. Irreplaceable, he'll be missed.

UPDATE: My good friend Tom Hibbs has an obituary up at First Things (LINK)

"Adlent"

2009-12-01T17:30:00.002-05:00

My youngest daughter kept accidentally saying it was finally Lent on Saturday, when she meant Advent.

However, all the good sources on the meaning of Advent reveal that it is more Lenten in nature than we typically think.

We are called to prepare ourselves for Christ's coming, and this involves reflection and purification.

The linking of Christ's First Coming and his Second Coming makes this pretty explicit. This theme is heavily emphasized in all the Advent devotions we do as a family.

We might think of a more general theme called "Adlent" to remind us that though this is an exciting time of hopeful watching, we should be motivated to be found laboring in the field on Christmas day, just as we will on the Last Day.

Fetal Crying Video

2009-08-30T15:49:00.002-05:00

Discovery Channel News has this video of fetal crying. Pretty amazing stuff.

Everybody just calm down now.

2009-07-09T11:19:00.003-05:00

The recent encyclical CARITAS IN VERITATE or "Charity in Truth" is going to cause some apoplexy on both the left and right.

In evaluating it, we must pay very careful attention to the precise langauge and contextualize it as an encyclical, which means not giving it the emotional and theoretical associations as if it were written by someone from the Democratic Underground (does that still exist?).

I have absoluely no measurable doubt (none) that someone is going to use this encyclical to argue that Benedict is the Anti-Christ. In fact, I'll give 235 points to the first person to find someone making this claim.

There is absolutely nothing new in the text (at least the portion I've read). Benedict is re-affirming and emphasizing. What needs emphasizing at what time is a prime pastoral concern.

In defense of slavery

2009-06-28T08:44:00.002-05:00

http://blogs.suntimes.com/marin/2009/06/obama_meets_the_pope_lets_pray.html

Just substitute cognates of "slavery" for cognates of "abortion."

Sadly Ensnared by Idiology

2009-06-28T08:03:00.000-05:00

This is very sad. I honestly don't know if she realizes hoe she's being used and victimized. She has no idea how she's harming the Church she claims to love.

http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/born-again-in-brooklyn/

Good article on Augustine on Creation

2009-06-24T15:37:00.002-05:00

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/may/22.39.html

With special consideration to Darwinian theory.

Saint Darwin?

2009-03-05T14:31:00.003-05:00

As this year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, people are turning to reflect on the relationship between his pet theory and the Truth of the Catholic Faith. I find the topic sociologically fascinating. Nothing, not even discussions of sexuality, lead to so many ridiculous statements based on complete ignorance. I might have to rant about that sometime, but for now I'm just going to list some fairly good recent news and some wisdom from the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Rome - The Catholic Church does not seek to contradict Darwin's theory of evolution, but it rejects as "absurd" attempts by atheists to use it as proof that God doesn't exist, a Vatican cardinal said Tuesday. "We believe that however creation has come about and evolved, ultimately God is the creator of all things," Cardinal William Levada said (full story)

Catholic evolutionist argues science and religion compatible

Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday has sparked celebrations all around the world, and surprisingly enough, this year, the Catholic Church is no exception. Next month, a papal conference in honor of Charles Darwin will be held at the Vatican and Swarthmore’s very own biologist, Professor Scott Gilbert, will be in attendance.
As reported by the Times Online, the Catholic Church has officially endorsed evolution as a theory that is both scientifically sound and reconciliable with Christianity. (full story)

And, unsurprisingly, the old Catholic Encyclopedia puts it very well:

"If God produced the universe by a single creative act of His will, then its natural development bylaws implanted in it by the Creator is to the greater glory of His Divine power and wisdom. St. Thomas says: "The potency of a cause is the greater, the more remote the effects to which it extends." (Summa c. Gent., III, c. lxxvi); and Francisco Suárez: "God does not interfere directly with the natural order, where secondary causes suffice to produce the intended effect" (De opere sex dierum, II, c. x, n. 13). In the light of this principle of the Christian interpretation of nature, the history of the animal and vegetable kingdoms on our planet is, as it were, a versicle in a volume of a million pages in which the natural development of the cosmos is described, and upon whose title-page is written: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth."" (citation)

The whole article from which that's taken Catholics and Evolution is very short and very well worth reading.

Last Things

2008-11-22T17:18:00.000-05:00

While I have generally resisted the tide of growing pessimism that has been reflected in various corners of blog-world regarding the state of our society, I think it's safe to say that, when the normally-sanguine Richard John Neuhaus starts openly discussing Kulturkampf, then things are very bad indeed.

For myself, I think Cardinal Stafford's recent remarks at CUA are a comprehensive summary of why we as a society have lost our way, and why there very well may be no return. I recommend reading the entirety of his remarks, and reflecting on them in conjunction with the close of the liturgical year.

Chesterton was right again, of course.

2008-09-22T19:57:00.001-05:00

He said that when a man stops believing in God it's not that he believes in nothing, it's that he'll believe in anything. The Wall Street Journal reports a Bayor study confirming this.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178219865054585.html

Regio Dissimilitudinis

2008-09-13T14:20:00.001-05:00

" For Benedict, the words of the Psalm: coram angelis psallam Tibi, Domine – in the presence of the angels, I will sing your praise (cf. 138:1) – are the decisive rule governing the prayer and chant of the monks. What this expresses is the awareness that in communal prayer one is singing in the presence of the entire heavenly court, and is thereby measured according to the very highest standards: that one is praying and singing in such a way as to harmonize with the music of the noble spirits who were considered the originators of the harmony of the cosmos, the music of the spheres. From this perspective one can understand the seriousness of a remark by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who used an expression from the Platonic tradition handed down by Augustine, to pass judgement on the poor singing of monks, which for him was evidently very far from being a mishap of only minor importance. He describes the confusion resulting from a poorly executed chant as a falling into the “zone of dissimilarity” – the regio dissimilitudinis. Augustine had borrowed this phrase from Platonic philosophy, in order to designate his condition prior to conversion (cf. Confessions, VII, 10.16): man, who is created in God’s likeness, falls in his godforsakenness into the “zone of dissimilarity” – into a remoteness from God, in which he no longer reflects him, and so has become dissimilar not only to God, but to himself, to what being human truly is. Bernard is certainly putting it strongly when he uses this phrase, which indicates man’s falling away from himself, to describe bad singing by monks. But it shows how seriously he viewed the matter. It shows that the culture of singing is also the culture of being, and that the monks have to pray and sing in a manner commensurate with the grandeur of the word handed down to them, with its claim on true beauty. This intrinsic requirement of speaking with God and singing of him with words he himself has given, is what gave rise to the great tradition of Western music. It was not a form of private “creativity”, in which the individual leaves a memorial to himself and makes self-representation his essential criterion. Rather it is about vigilantly recognizing with the “ears of the heart” the inner laws of the music of creation, the archetypes of music that the Creator built into his world and into men, and thus discovering music that is worthy of God, and at the same time truly worthy of man, music whose worthiness resounds in purity."

From "The Origins of Western Theology and the Roots of European Culture," address to Representatives from the World of Culture, Sep 12, 2008

Go read the whole thing. And then get on your knees and thank God for Pope Benedict.

One of the reasons I have a deep fondness for Benedict's work is that he consistently transcends the disorders and schizophrenia that are rampant in the modern Church. His discussion here of liturgical music is a perfect example of this phenomena. In the modern Church, the topic of liturgical music is a common battleground for intelligent Catholics who take the Church seriously. On the one side, you have the "liberals" who see liturgical music as yet another religious form that must be updated to conform with the vagaries of modern culture. Hence the provenance of the liturgical crimes of Marty Haugen. On the other side, one has the conservatives, who insist that the Mass must be accompanied by beautiful music. They happily attend liturgies with chamber symphonies that perform classical German masses from the 18th and 19th century, or Renaissance polyphony, or some other brand of classical music.

In the midst of the logorrhea over that state of liturgical music in America, a crucial fact often gets overlooked: the liberal and conservative approaches to liturgical music are opposite sides of the same coin, and both represent a distorted view of the function of music within liturgy. A Schubert mass is no less of a distortion, liturgically speaking, than a work from David Haas' corpus. For both parties, music is seen as an accompaniment to the mass, as if it served an analogous function to a film score. For both camps, the primary reference for determining the suitability of a given piece of music is the Self. Whatever musical style is deemed most beautiful by the Self is therefore deemed to be most suitable for the liturgy. To see this phenomena for yourself, go into the conservative Catholic webforum of your choice and pose the question "what's so bad about Marty Haugen music?" I'm wiling to wager that he overwhelming number of responses will be something along the lines of "I don't think his music is very pretty, and we should have pretty music at Mass." Thus, the Self triumphs over all.

I think Benedict's brief remarks listed above show a way out of this mess. As Benedict makes clear, true liturgical music serves a theological purpose and is tied to the order of creation and the nature of the human person. Reclaiming Western liturgy is a much deeper project than simply ordering up a handful of talented singers to sing pretty music during Mass.

Germain Grisez, Contraception and Natural Law

2008-08-17T17:06:00.000-05:00

I am still working my way through the conclusion of this book, but so far I can not recommend it highly enough. Any contemporary Catholic who is interested in the ethical underpinnings of the Church's teaching on contraception should familiarize themselves with Grisez's arguments. For myself, Grisez's thesis has tied together a number of philosophical problems which have been nagging me for some time now. The chief difficulty among said problems is my perception that, in the popular Catholic mind at least, the Church's teaching on the intrinsic immorality of contraception has split itself into a seemingly irresolvable dialectic. On the one hand, there are proponents of what I would call a "scientific" natural law theory, who oppose contraception on the grounds that "contraception is immoral because it frustrates the natural purpose of the act." Underlying this theory is a certain version of natural law which assumes that natural law is the "scientific" search within a construct called "human nature" for a set of categorical moral norms ,the violation of which defines the limits of human action. On the other hand, there are those who, rejecting the scientific-natural law theory for various reasons, would propose what I call the psychological-therapeutic model. In this view, contraception is forbidden because non-contraceptive sex leads to the fullest state of emotional and personal well-being. Underlying this argument is the notion that ethical norms are most properly founded upon psychological principles.

The deficiencies of this dialectic have become more strongly apparent to me over the summer. On a theoretical level, my recent reading of Leo Strauss and Alasdair Macintyre has convinced me that the scientific model of natural law is fundamentally deficient, and incapable of rationally grounding a consistent ethic. Moreover, I think Philip Rieff shows why abandoning this model for a psychological-therapeutic model is even more disastrous and unsustainable. On a practical level, I seem to have recently had an inordinate number of encounters with people, both online in real life, who wrestle with one end or the other of this dialectic. One can see this in the wide range of sometimes-incompatible statements which get offered up in support of Church teaching. These statements span the ideological range from "this is how you have great Catholic orgasm" to "you can never prevent conception when it is possible," to discussion of a mythical "contraceptive mentality" which is somehow supposed to be the same thing as actual contraceptive acts.

(N.B. - For online examples of people who wrestle the scientific natural law view, check out the comments thread on the various contraception posts on Dr Liccione's blog, such as this recent example on this post. For online examples of the therapeutic model, you need only to spend a few minutes on this website, an unfortunate, if well-intended example of the problem)

From what I can tell so far, Grisez's work shows a way out of this dialectical mess. While I will not recapitulate his argument here, his book offers a fairly sound critique of both models, and proposes a theory more closely aligned with classical-Thomistic virtue ethics. By aligning the Church's teaching with the pursuit of fundamental human goods, I think Grisez escapes the problems in modern ethical theory highlighted by Macintyre and Strauss. Also, by rejecting the psychological model, the ghost of Philip Rieff can be effectively laid to rest in popular Catholic thought. On a practical level, many of the popular deficiencies offered up in support of Church teaching can be corrected by a careful reading of Grisez's argument. Contraception is not merely the fact of not having children. The traditional formulation of primary and secondary ends in marriage does not have to be interpreted as "really good" and "not as "good" or as "more important" and "less important." Maximizing family size is not a moral obligation which follows from the Church's anti-contraceptive stance. There are other examples one can think of, most of which I believe Grisez's argument effectively answers.

As a closing aside, I think that Grisez's approach offers the possibility of more fully integrating the the two modern documents most closely associated with Church teaching on contraception. Humanae Vitae (HV), lately lionized on the occasion of the anniversary of its release, tends to be popularly associated with the scientific natural law view. This explains its frequent citation by those of a more philosophic bent, as well as the endless quibbling which occurs over some its phrasings and their translation (e.g. the phrase "grave reasons"). However, I think a close reading of HV points towards the more classical virtue ethics proposed by Grisez, and explains its constant emphasis on the goods of human life and marriage, and its less explicit emphasis on the violation of moral obligation.

More interestingly, is the recent series of catechetical talks given by John Paul II, popularly referred to as the "Theology of the Body" (TOB), and which have enjoyed a popularity among the faithful, though typically in a more distilled and summarized form as exemplified by the work of Christopher West. I would argue that these talks have been misread in three fundamental ways: the first is by the theological academy, which is not so much of a mis-reading as a non-reading, whereby the content of JPII's message is dismissed as not consonant with the various structures of modern theology. The second misreading of TOB is by the traditionalist camp, whereby the persistent personalist language employed by JPII is taken as evidence that the content is nothing other than existentialist nattering, with the ghost of Heidegger given free reign over Church teaching. The third mis-reading tends to follow the psychological-therapeutic model I discussed above, and Christopher West's work is often the most prominent example of this mis-reading (though to his credit, West often shows a more perceptive reading of JPII, and the conflicts between this more perceptive reading and the popular therapeutic understanding are left unresolved.)

However, it is my belief that TOB can be read in a manner more closely tied to JPII's original intent. Such a reading would approach the talks on their own terms, namely as a catechesis explaining the true shape of the goods known through human relations. When seen in the light of a virtue ethics such as Macintyre's or Grisez's, where moral actions are the means by which human goods are freely realized within the community (i.e. Church), then the substance of TOB becomes yet another expression of that constant and unbroken ethic which the Church has proposed from Her founding. In such a reading, the constant reference to the origin of Creation found in TOB becomes a method for revealing the full and supernatural end towards which all human actions must be directed.

Humanae Vitae

2008-08-10T19:37:00.003-05:00

Excellent first-hand account of the chaos ensuing the encyclical.

Solzhenitsyn 1918-2008

2008-08-08T20:40:00.001-05:00

"It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil."

-The Gulag Archipelago

Brilliant

2008-07-25T16:55:00.000-05:00

"Inside those nice old ladies, racial solidarity wrestled with old catechism lessons, and Ferraro stood before them like Joan of Arc."

Shakespeare, Ideology, and the Catholic Church

2008-07-25T13:06:00.000-05:00

Robert Miola has a devastating review of Joseph Pearce's The Quest for Shakespeare in the current issue of First Things. Miola says that Pearce's work suffers from two fatal flaws: firstly, Pearce's biographical account of Shakespeare appears to exhibit no real familiarity with the rudiments of modern Shakespeare scholarship. While I have no pretensions to Shakespearean historiography, this seems about right to me. I had seen lighter versions of Pearce's fundamental thesis pop up in various conservative Catholic media outlets previously, and I always thought it was a bit ridiculous. Despite my limited knowledge of Shakespeare and his place in English history, I could not quite fathom how one of the most overly-researched figures in English literature could lately be discovered as a Catholic.

The larger and more important criticism that Miola makes is to pose the question of why a recusant Shakespeare matters at all. Though Miola does not put it so forcefully, he seems to indicate that Pearce's work is primarily ideology masquerading as scholarship, noting with irony that Pearce himself decries such ideologically-driven scholarship when in the form of post-structuralist theory. In short, Miola argues that, in attempting to locate a Catholic Bard, Pearce operates within the same structural and methodological world as his ideological opponents.

If Miola is correct, then I would suggest that Pearce's work is representative of a larger trend within the world of conservative Catholicism, namely the tendency to express the faith within a neat framework of ideological concepts. Such ideology typically divides the world into opposing theological schemes, between which there can be little hope of reconciliation or even understanding. Needless to say, one of these schemes would be considered intrinsically orthodox, and the rest are to be thought of as essentially heretical. Google the phrase "save the liturgy, save the world" sometime, and you can see some excellent examples of what I refer to here.

I think this is trend is fundamentally destructive, and runs counter to the aims that most faithful Catholics hope to achieve within the Church. Conservative Catholics would do well to remember that a slavish commitment to ideology is part of what led to the current mess within the Church. A simple inversion of liberal ideology which masquerades under the label of orthodoxy will not solve any problems, and is likely only to perpetuate them in the long run. The Catholic "worldview" (if there is such a thing) is one that sees things for what they really are. Jesus Christ is the eternal Word that grounds all reality, and our call to conversion is a call to union with that Reality. Ideology, whether conservative or liberal, is a move away from what is real, towards our own self-constructed ideas, and must inevitably lead away from Christ Himself.

Something cool.

2008-07-23T23:51:00.002-05:00

From a reader:
---------------------
Dear x-Catholics,I found your blog and I thought that you might be interested in the musical act called The Priests. What separates this classical trio from others is that they really are catholic priests, who have recently signed a recording contract with Sony BMG. They are currently recording an album of classic hymns from the Latin Mass but you can find them on their website and even on youtube If you like what you hear it would be great if you could help them become better known to the public by mentioning them in one of your blog posts one day.
---------------------

The link didn't work for me tonight, but you can use this one.

Alasdair MacIntyre and the RNC

2008-07-23T08:58:00.001-05:00

The 2008 RNC is being held here in my hometown of St Paul, MN, and as the event gets closer, our local paper is filling up with daily news items about various protests that have been planned. I think of Alasdair MacIntyre whenever I see these stories:

"It is easy also to understand why protest becomes a distinctive moral feature of the modern age and why indignation is a predominant modern emotion. 'To protest' and its Latin predecessors and French cognates are originally as often or more often positive as negative; to protest was once to bear witness to something and only as a consequence of that allegiance to bear witness against something else."

"But protest is now almost entirely that negative phenomenon which characteristically occurs as a reaction to the alleged invasion of someone’s rights in the name of someone else’s utility. The self-assertive shrillness of protest arises because the facts of incommensurability ensure that protestors can never win an argument; the indignant self-righteousness arises because the facts of incommensurability ensure equally that the protestor can never lose an argument either. Hence the utterance of protest is characteristically addressed to those who already share the protestors’ premises. The effects of incommensurability ensure that the protestors rarely have anyone else to talk to but themselves. This is not to say that protest cannot be effective; it is to say that it cannot be rationally effective and that its dominant modes of expression give evidence of a certain perhaps unconscious awareness of this."

MacIntyre, After Virtue

Ironically enough, all these planned protests require a permit from the city, a nice bureaucratic-managerial touch which MacIntyre would likely appreciate for its absurd irony.

Word Youth Day report: this is cool...

2008-07-22T07:59:00.002-05:00

Australia's largest-ever crowd falls silent...

Sydney, Jul. 21, 2008 (CWNews.com) - At the height of the World Youth Day (WYD) celebration, the Randwick racetrack outside Sydney became the 10th-largest "city" in Australia-- a city in which 200,000 joined in silent adoration of the Blessed Sacraments, and 1,000 priests were mobilized to hear confessions.

Australian officials report that the Sunday-morning Mass at Randwick on July 20 saw the largest single gathering of people in the country's history. An estimated 400,000 people joined in the congregation as Pope Benedict presided at the closing Mass of WYD.

Earlier, at a Saturday-evening prayer vigil, about 200,000 young people joined the Holy Father in silent prayer before the Eucharist after Benediction. The Blessed Sacrament was exposed for 24-hour veneration in a tent maintained by the Missionaries of Charity at one side of the racetrack venue. The tent remained crowded, with prayerful pilgrims coming and going throughout the night.

WYD organizers had set up 250 locations around Sydney for young people to receive the sacrament of reconciliation, and recruited priests to hear confessions in a number of different languages. Long lines formed for confession, noted Msgr. Marc Caron, who organized that aspect of the WYD project. He reported that over 1,000 priests were busy hearing confessions at a time to accommodate the young pilgrims.

Benedictio Cerevisiae

2008-07-14T20:13:00.000-05:00

Blessing of Beer
V. Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini.
R. Qui fecit caelum et terram.
V. Dominus vobiscum.
R. Et cum spiritu tuo.

Oremus.
Bene+dic, Domine, creaturam istam cerevisiae, quam ex adipe frumenti producere dignatus es: ut sit remedium salutare humano generi, et praesta per invocationem nominis tui sancti; ut, quicumque ex ea biberint, sanitatem corpus et animae tutelam percipiant. Per Christum Dominum nostrum.
R. Amen.

Et aspergatur aqua benedicta.

English translation

V. Our help is in the name of the Lord.
R. Who made heaven and earth.
V. The Lord be with you.
R. And with thy spirit.

Let us pray.
Bless, + O Lord, this creature beer, which thou hast deigned to produce from the fat of grain: that it may be a salutary remedy to the human race, and grant through the invocation of thy holy name; that, whoever shall drink it, may gain health in body and peace in soul. Through Christ our Lord.
R. Amen.

And it is sprinkled with holy water.

The Ruin

2008-07-09T20:35:00.001-05:00

Wondrously wrought and fair its wall of stone

Communio Personarum

2008-07-02T21:21:00.001-05:00

"This is so because, right from the beginning, that unity which is realized through the body indicates not only the body but also the incarnate communion of persons -communio personarum - and calls for this communion"

Words

2008-06-27T08:02:00.001-05:00

The world does not need words. It articulates itself
in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path
are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being.
The kiss is still fully itself though no words were spoken.

And one word transforms it into something less or other—
illicit, chaste, perfunctory, conjugal, covert.
Even calling it a kiss betrays the fluster of hands
glancing the skin or gripping a shoulder, the slow
arching of neck or knee, the silent touching of tongues.

Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot
name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica.
To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper—
metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa
carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.

The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds,
painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving
each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it.
The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always—
greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon.

from Interrogations at Noon
© 2001 Dana Gioia

Catholic Experience and Contraception

2008-06-26T11:15:00.001-05:00

A recent comment I posted on the thread to this post.

"Having foundered on fundamental disagreements regarding first principles, it seems that this discussion has inevitably turned to an existential exchange of claims regarding the "authenticity" of Church doctrines on contraception, especially insofar as those doctrines have an "experiential" basis.

While a combox is rarely a suitable form for this sort of existential discourse (one's college dorm discussions at least took place with actual people, with whom one lived and regularly interacted), it seems that there is perhaps some benefit to discussing the "real" experiences of Catholics in regard to the matter. Moreover, it seems the commenters in this thread who seem the most concerned about "hearing the voices of women" on the issue, are in fact very poorly acquainted with any actual Catholics, men or women, who have accepted the Church's stance on these matters. With that in mind, I offer the following thoughts:

My wife is a cradle Catholic who grew up, like most women of her generation, being taught that "theological development [should be] based on the actual experiences of men and women rather than on the ideal experience that no one has." Upon leaving her parents' house, she followed that premise to its natural conclusion, and promptly left the Church, a pattern her two sisters repeated also, and which was shared by most women of their generation. Naturally, she rejected the Church's teaching on contraceptive acts, both in theory and in practice. However, a time came in her life when she was forced to re-evaluate her relationship to the Church, as well as consider the significance and status of its teachings on contraception. The interesting part of her story is that she was firm in her rejection of the former until careful study of the latter. Her reconciliation with the Church came only through an acceptance of the Church's teaching on the meaning of the marital act. Indeed, it was a close reading of Humanae Vitae (from a tract containing an introductory essay by the aforementioned Janet Smith) that first captured her moral imagination on the subject. In understanding the Church's teaching on the meaning of the human person, and its embodiment in the most intimate of human acts, as well as its "obstinacy" in the face of popular opinion on the matter, she came to realize that, just perhaps, the Church had a vision for human existence that is somewhat deeper than the cultural currents of our time.

We now live in a suburb of St Paul, MN, and she is connected to a wide network of Catholic familes, nearly all of whom accept the Church's teachings on contraception, with varying degrees of understanding and practice. Interestingly, the women and families with whom she is connected here make up the majority of mass-attending Catholics at their respective parishes, at least for their generational group. For none of them is the "rhythm method" the "sacred pillar of Catholic identity," and none of those women would recognize the snide and facile conflation of theology and practice that lies behind such remarks. Indeed, most of them are adamant about the fact that they do not practice the "rhythm method," and are equally adamant about the non-negotiable role of the Church's teachings on contraception, especially as it shapes their own lives and marital acts. Most of them see and understand, even if they cannot fully articulate it, the right order of theology and practice in this area, and choose to not contracept, not because this or that practice or method is somehow formative of their identity, but because contracepted sex would be a repudiation of their existence as human persons. They realize contraceptive acts are not the acts of human beings - they are they the acts of a consumer, using persons as mere products for the fulfillment of sterilized pleasure. And most of them understand these things, not from careful consideration of theological propositions, but from that lived experience which some commenters in this thread regard as a theological fetish. Indeed, most of them have gained these experiences in as "authentic" a manner as one could hope for, either through extensive use of contraceptives followed by non-contraceptive practices, or from hard and bitter divorces which resulted from contraceptively sterilized marriages.

While I do not expect that anecdotal evidence such as this will be sufficient to change the opinions of some on this matter, I hope that those who have expressed concern about the experiences of "real Catholics" on the issue will at least take time to meet, interact with, and understand the large and growing number of Catholics who have actual experience in the matters at hand."

Quebec, the Cube and the Cathedral, and Leo Strauss

2008-06-21T19:54:00.006-05:00

George Weigel has a book called The Cube and the Cathedral, in which he uses two architectural landmarks in France as an analogy for the contrast between modernist-nihilist and cultural-religious visions of the world. When I was in Quebec two weeks ago, I discovered that the Old City district there has its own version of Weigel's analogy.

The first landmark is the site of the oldest market in North America, anchored by the Church of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires.

The second landmark lies a block or so down from the Church, and is a sculpture given as a gift from France to Quebec in 1987.

One of the more persistent questions of my life is to try and understand exactly how Western culture got from there to here. How does a culture come to the point where it decides to stop building churches, and starting building formless arrangments of aimless lines? It's not enough to simply trace the problem, as Weigel does, to 19th-century atheistic humanism and the ensuing rise of secularism. The problem must lie deeper than that, since after all, the 19th century cultural trends that Weigel deplores did not come from nowhere - they are themselves the product of other trends and cultural philosophies which must be explored if the full context of the problem is to be understood.

I do not pretend to have a full answer to the question posed by the cube and the church. I do think, though that one clue is provided by the purpose of La Grand Arche, the modernist cube referred to in Weigel's book. It is built to house the International Foundation for Human Rights. In other words, if we seek to understand the Cube, and why an entire culture would celebrate itself through such a monstrosity, it would perhaps be worth our time to understand what is intended by the phrase "human rights."

Which brings me to Leo Strauss, and his exploration of the modern doctrine of Human Rights, as explored in History and Natural Right. If Strauss' account is in any way correct, it seems that the anthropology and metaphysics implied in the modern doctrine of human rights is indeed in profound conflict with that authentic Catholic anthropology which leads to the building of churches. By tracing the problem back to early-modern philosophy, Strauss shows that the rise of 19th-century secularism is a direct descendant of philosophical trends that were on their face seemingly compatible with the existing Christian order, but in were actually in a position of radical discontinuity with that order. Of course, I would argue that this disconinuity has its roots in an even earlier time, which coincided roughly with the Renaissance, but that is a post for another time.

I would also note in passing that Catholics who consider themselves "politically conservative" generally accept Lockean natural right theory wholesale. A close reading of Strauss should make such persons a bit uncomfortable. I myself am generally appreciative of Edmund Burke, and found Strauss' critique of Burke to be rather intriguing, and a bit unsettling.

Leo Strauss, History and Natural Right - Chapter 5

2008-06-21T09:09:00.005-05:00

[begin quote]
Locke is a hedonist: "That which is properly good or bad, is nothing but barely pleasure or pain." But his is a peculiar hedonism: "The greatest happiness consists" not in enjoying the greatest pleasures but "in the having those things which produce the greatest pleasures." It is not altogether an accident that the chapter in which these statements occur, and which happens to be the most extensive chapter of the whole Essay, is entitled "Power." For if, as Hobbes says, "the power of a man...is his present means, to obtain some future apparent good," Locke says in effect that the greatest happiness consists in the greatest power. Since there are no knowable natures, there is no nature of man with reference to which we could distinguish between pleasures which are according to nature and pleasures which are against nature, or between pleasures which are by nature higher and pleasures which are by nature lower: pleasure and pain are "for different men...very different things." Therefore, "the philosophers of old did in vain inquire, whether summum bonum consisted in riches, or bodily delights, or virtue, or contemplation?" In the absence of a summum bonum, man would lack completely a star and compass for his life if there were no summum malum. "Desire is always moved by evil, to fly it." The strongest desire is the desire for self-preservation. The evil from which the strongest desire recoils is death. Death must then be the greatest evil: Not the natural sweetness of living but the terrors of death make us cling to life. What nature firmly establishes is that from which desire moves away, the point of departure of desire; the goal toward which desire moves is secondary. The primary fact is want. But this want, this lack, is no longer understood as pointing to something complete, perfect, whole. The necessities of life are no longer understood as necessary for the complete or good life, but as mere inescapabilities.The satisfaction of wants is therefore no longer limited by the demands of the good life but become aimless. The goal of desire is defined by nature only negatively - the denial of pain. It is not pleasure more or less dimly anticipated which elicits human efforts: "the chief, if not only, spur to human industry and action is uneasiness." So powerful is the natural primacy of pain that the active denial of pain is itself painful. The pain which removes pain is labor. It is this pain, and hence a defect, which gives man originally the most important of all rights: sufferings and defects, rather than merits or virtues, originate rights.[...]The painful relief of pain culminates not so much in the greatest pleasures as "in the having those things which produce the greatest pleasures." Life is the joyless quest for joy.
[end quote]

Emphases in bold are my own. While I have reservations about Strauss, I think that his account of Locke and the modern natural law tradition poses a serious challenge to any Catholic who wishes to defend both classical liberalism and traditional Catholic political doctrine, which is typically grounded in the Thomistic natural law concept.

Adoration Chapel, St Jean de Baptiste, Quebec

2008-06-12T21:25:00.008-05:00

Train Across the St Croix River

2008-06-06T06:34:00.002-05:00

There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling,
Whether as learned bard or gifted child;
To it all lines or lesser gauds belong
That startle with their shining
Such common stories as they stray into.

Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues,
Or strange beasts that beset you,
Of birds that croak at you the Triple will?
Or of the Zodiac and how slow it turns
Below the Boreal Crown,
Prison to all true kings that ever reigned?

Water to water, ark again to ark,
From woman back to woman:
So each new victim treads unfalteringly
The never altered circuit of his fate,
Bringing twelve peers as witness
Both to his starry rise and starry fall.

Or is it of the Virgin's silver beauty,
All fish below the thighs?
She in her left hand bears a leafy quince;
When, with her right hand she crooks a finger, smiling,
How many the King hold back?
Royally then he barters life for love.

Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,
Whose coils contain the ocean,
Into whose chops with naked sword he springs,
Then in black water, tangled by the reeds,
Battles three days and nights,
To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore?

Much snow if falling, winds roar hollowly,
The owl hoots from the elder,
Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup:
Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.
The log groans and confesses:
There is one story and one story only.

Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,
Do not forget what flowers
The great boar trampled down in ivy time.
Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,
Her sea-blue eyes were wild
But nothing promised that is not performed.

Robert Graves, "To Juan at the Winter Solstice"

Fr Adolphe Tanquerey - The Spiritual Life: A Treatise on Ascetic and Mystical Theology

2008-06-04T05:50:00.002-05:00

II. Defects Born of Pride

"From the intellectual point of view, we think ourselves capable of approaching and solving the most difficult questions, or at least of undertaking studies which are beyond the reach of our talents. We easily persuade ourselves that we abound in judgement and wisdom, and instead of learning how to doubt, we settle with finality the most controverted questions."

As I further explore Leo Strauss, I have come to the realization that one of my comments below was a cheap and facile remark based on nothing other than my complete lack of familiarity with Strauss. It has been withdrawn accordingly.

I include the quote from Fr Tanquerey as a reminder to myself that doubt, properly understood, is one of the rarest and most difficult intellectual virtues to cultivate. I do not refer here to the more popular conception of "doubt," popular today in "Emergent" Evangelical circles and certain quarters of the Catholic world, where "doubt" is a signifier for emotional ambiquity regarding some tenet of the faith, and is typically used as an excuse for one's unwillingness to engage in the difficult tasks of shunning vice and cultivating virtue.

As Fr Tanquerey indicates here, doubt is nothing other than the virtue of humility applied to the operations of one's intellect, and whose particular focus is the relation of one's own judgements and opinions relative to those of others. May God grant us all the grace of such humility.

Leo Strauss, History and Natural Right - Introduction

2008-05-31T20:12:00.002-05:00

"This means that people were forced to accept a fundamental, typically modern, dualism of a nonteleological natural science and a teleological science of man. This is the position which the modern followers of Thomas Aquinas, among others, are forced to take, a position which presupposes a break with the comprehensive view of Aristotle, as well as that of Thomas Aquinas himself. The fundamental dilemma, in whose grip we are, is caused by the victory of modern science"

On the one hand, this little aside from the introduction describes quite nicely the situation of many modern Catholics. They have a two-story universe, as it were, where the physical or natural world serves no directed purpose or end, and can be engaged, used, or manipulated as each individual sees fit, since there is no ultimate purpose behind merely material things. Only the relatively small corner of the world known as "the human soul" is subject to purpose and meaning. Divine revelation and Divine law are directed only towards the interior world of the human soul, and the purely material world is left to fend for itself, as it were. Oddly enough, it can be argued that this peculiarly modern mindset is not a very Catholic one, since the very structure of sacramental theology supports the idea that physical objects are subject to Divine purposes and can reveal or even contain Divinity itself.

On the other hand, does any intelligent Thomist believe such a thing as Strauss says here? Just because scientific methods can very capably describe the efficient and material causes of the natural world, does that really mean that modern Thomists now exclude formal and final (i.e. teleological) causes from the explanation of the natural world? I smell a a whiff of old-fashioned Enlightment-era hyperrationalism in this particular passage. Richard Dawkins would be proud.

Summer Reading List

2008-05-29T21:00:00.007-05:00

Here is what I plan to read this summer. I just finished a winter-long Aquinas reading project, so these are my "fun books." Sad, isn't it?

Leo Strauss, History and Natural Right

I've lately become interested in various critiques of Natural Law theory. Leo Strauss' account is supposedly one of the more penetrating, and he is apparently critical of both the Enlightenment-era natural law tradition as well as the Scholastic formulation. This is interesting to me, since, in my view, those two natural law theories are diametrically opposed. I'm very interested to hear what Strauss has to say.

This book also contains a fairly extended critique of historicism, and reading it is part of my effort to understand the influence of Hegel and all his disciples on Western thinking. I've seen several intelligent critiques of contemporary Catholic theology which rest on the proposition that modern Catholic theology is deeply (and erroneously) dependent on historicist assumptions. This book occasionally gets invoked in those critiques, so I am very curious to see what all the fuss is about.

Philip Rieff, Triumph of the Therapeutic

This is one of those books that I've read about for a long time, but never actually got around to putting eyes on paper. It is a classic work of cultural analysis, and, from what I hear, gives one of the most damning critiques of contemporary Western culture that can be found.

Germain Grisez, Contraception and Natural Law

I'm perpetually of two minds on whether or not the Church's teachings on contraception are more coherently explained by natural law theory or by JPII's more biblical-patristic account, commonly referred to as "Theology of the Body" (readers take note - I despise that phrase, and henceforth will not use it in this blog)

This intellectual waffling of mine, combined with my questions on natural law theory in general (see Leo Strauss above) should make for a interesting read.

Leo Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion

Don't laugh. Several people for whom I have deep intellectual respect claim that this is one of the best books they've ever read.

As time permits, here's what else might be on tap:

Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being

Supposedly contains a defense of Aquinas from Heidegger's "ontotheology" critique. Marion also has a (perhaps undeserved?) reputation as a "postmodern" philosopher. Should be interesting.

If Wikipedia is any indication, Marion seems to intersect a number of topics that have been on my mind lately....patristics, neo-Platonism, ontology, phenomenology/Personalism, Aquinas, La Nouvelle Theologie...you name it, he seems to be connected to it somehow

George Bernanos, Diary of a Country Priest

I am woefully inadequate in my reading of good literature. This book has a good reputation amongst intelligent and orthodox Catholics.

Anonymous, Meditations on the Tarot

Written by Valentin Tomberg, a convert to the Church from neo-pagan esotericism. Forward by von Balthasar. How much weirder can you get? A perfect "beach read" for philosophy/theology nerds.

Catechism Catholicism

2008-05-29T10:48:00.005-05:00

In recent months, there has been much discussion in the Catholic-oriented media about the possibility of a solemn papal declaration for the so-called"fifth Marian dogma"

Now I generally oppose this effort, not because the dogma is not true, but because it reinforces what I perceive to be a wholly negative trend in the modern Church, namely, the perceived dependence of Catholic dogma on papal authority. Included below is a portion of an email I sent to some friends discussing this issue. As I argue below, I think this trend in ecclesiology reinforces the more destructive trends occurring in the life of the modern Church.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Generally speaking, I "oppose" the declaration, not in the sense that I think it is untrue, but rather because I can't make real theological sense out of it, nor can I see how it would be a good idea, ecclesially speaking.

a) My current theological understanding is that the "mediatrix" and "co-redemptrix" titles derive from the common nature which the Blessed Virgin shares with Christ, and through which we were redeemed, receive grace, etc. I think this is the Thomist formulation, and I haven't seen any other strong arguments for the titles that aren't essentially lists of (necessarily imprecise) quotations from the liturgy, papal documents, etc.

Now the problem here is that if this is the theological basis for the mediatrix/redemptrix, then it would seem to be simply a consequence of an already-defined dogma, namely the theotokos. As such, it is hard for me to see the necessity of an additional dogmatic declaration.

Since canon law currently requires us to invoke Ratzinger in these types of discussions, I will additionally note that I believe this was part of Ratzinger's earlier views on the topic, namely that the doctrines, while true, are theologically vague and subject to confusing interpretation.

b) my second concern is a more practical one - I'm concerned that a papal declaration would simply reinforce the "pope = Catholic CEO" model of ecclesiology that seems to exist in the minds of modern Catholics...that is to say, can't we all just believe something without the pope having to officially say that it is true? The mediatrix and coredemptrix titles exist in the liturgy, they exist in tradition.....can't we just believe them, as part of the ordinary magisterium? Is there really a Marian crisis within the Church that requires solemn proclamation? Wouldn't a proclamation simply re-inforce one of the more negative trends in the modern Church, namely the phenomena of "Catechism Catholicism"...i.e. the attitude that "I believe doctrine X because the pope and the Catechism say so," as in opposition to sacred tradition and liturgy?

I think in some ways, too, that this phenomena of "Catechism Catholicism" is part of the ongoing story of the Church's struggle to fully understand the implications of Vatican I. Regarding Vatican I, it seems clear that a strong papal primacy is part of the dogmatic patrimony of the Church...but there is a strong argument to be made that the pronouncement came at a time when Catholic culture worldwide was in the initial stages of its collapse, due to the rise of secularism/modernism, etc......the strong formulation of papal primacy allowed the average Catholic, whose grasp of liturgy and tradition was becoming more tenuous, to begin formulating the Faith in more strictly hierarchical/monarchical terms. This led to the ecclesial mess we have today, where the average orthodox Catholic formulates their ecclesiology, not primarily with reference to Scripture, liturgy, tradition, but to "canon X of CCC", or "papal document y." This is the "pope=CEO of the Church" model of ecclesiology, and one sees it in both liberal and conservative factions...conservatives, when they say things like "I wish the pope would just fire Cdl Mahony," and in liberals when they say, "I wish the pope would hurry up and ordain women,gays,dogs, etc"

In some ways, even the cultural mess that followed Vatican II can be seen as part of the outgrowth of the development of "Catechism Catholicism." I think many of the Vatican II promulgations can be seen as an attempt to undo the mess caused by the misappropriation of Vat I teaching. Hence all the emphasis on the collegiality of bishops, and the function of the laity, and the returning of the liturgy to the people and their cultures, etc......all of which is well and good, except that the laity and bishops were in full-blown cultural collapse at the time. I don't think I need to elaborate on the many unfortunate results that came from the conjunction of V2 teaching with modern Western culture of the late 20th century...

To illustrate more clearly what I am referring to here, check out this blog post and its long chain of comments. It highlights quite nicely what I am trying to get across - namely, that misuse of the Petrine privilege can have the unintended effect of weakening the Church's authority. In the post, a conservative Catholic argues with a fairly standard paint-by-numbers liberal theologian over the subject of Church teaching.

The interesting thing is that the crux of the liberal theologian's argument for rejection of many critical Church teachings, such as Humanae Vitae (HV), is that they were not infallibly proclaimed, and thus subject to "development," by which he means "negation. And in a strict technical sense, he's correct - HV was not infallibly proclaimed.

It's an interesting exchange, because it shows how the misuse of dogmatic authority can contribute to all sorts of unforeseen problems. I think it would have been unfathomable to theologians 200+ years ago to make the argument that "well, it's not infallible, so we can believe what we want." Thus, one dogma (infallibility) is played off of another (contraception), because there is a mindset, rampant in both conservative and liberal circles, that the only important dogmas are ones defined from the extraordinary magisterium. The movement for the fifth Marian dogma only reinforces this unfortunate trend, in my opinion, since it seems to reinforce, this time from a "conservative" standpoint, the idea that that "it only really matters if the Pope says its true!"

Dear "Just me"

2008-05-28T15:10:00.001-05:00

Dear "Just me" (from this comment),

I hear what you are saying my friend. I congratulate you for the virtue showed first in making the trek and now in staying on the path. Eventually, your stock of good Catholic friends will grow, but you might have to endure a "dark night of the soul" (or at least a few more quiet evenings). There is a vibrant Catholic community on line which, though not ultimately a substitute for face-to-face interaction, can be life-sustaining and joy-filled.

I'm baaaa--aaaak!

2008-05-08T12:25:00.001-05:00

The semester is O-V-E-R! Looking forward to summer blogging!

Mailbag: When Tossed at Sea

2008-04-29T13:13:00.000-05:00

dude. im lost in a big way. i feel like im in a spiritual and intellectual haze and the harder i strive to get out the thicker the fog gets. any wise words pointing towards clarity?
---------
Jesus. As in, the Jesus Prayer. This is the version I pray: "Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me a poor sinner." That much is clear, right? He is our LORD, the one with the right to command us. He is JESUS, God among us, what we need from him is MERCY above all for our wasting what we have been givin, for becomming first and formost SINNERS, sinners who are POOR in that we have not the resources to save ourselves. I understand the feeling of spirtual waywardness. You are upon the waves. You are sea sick. It is right that you have set sale in search of a spiritual home, the nausia is natural. Just do what I'd adivse you to do if you were on a literal ship tossed in a literal sea: pray the Jesus Prayer until it prays you.

Counsel of Trent: Morality and Religion

2008-04-02T14:04:00.001-05:00

There are all kinds of goods in the world. There’s the good of enjoying a good movie, the good of enjoying some good food, a good performance at a sport or hobby, a good glass of wine, being a good parent, receiving good parenting. These are all things that make an individuals life good and society good as well. There’s also moral goodness. Moral goodness helps society experience some of the goods listed above and it also produces a kind of goodness in the soul of the one who does good. But there’s yet another kind of goodness: the goodness of a right relationship with one’s creator; of knowing who the Creator is and giving due worship in the right way. There is great good in the creature’s mind reflecting the mind of the creator and contemplating the Creator’s nature.

So consider two people Alf and Beth. They both live in a beautiful part of the country, enjoy the finest foods and entertainment. Each is passing on the good training for life they had from their parents. The both do their duties and some charity besides. However, Beth, but not Alf, goes to see a Monk once a week, on the weekend, and the Monk is able to communicate to her certain truths about the nature of reality including the nature of the Creator. The Monk has Beth go through certain sacred rituals that actually put Beth in a certain temporary communion with the Creator. As a result, Beth both is and knows that she is in a position of learning truths about herself, the Creator, and her relation to the Creator.

Beth’s life is better than Alf’s. Beth’s life has all the goods Alf’s does plus the great goods the Monk imparts to her. Note that the person who doesn’t count these goods as great goods—the person who thinks that these goods aren’t as good as the good of drinking fine wines—doesn’t really deserve those goods or isn’t ready for them. The same is true of the person who thinks it’s not worth the extra effort to get these goods if one has all the other goods.

Note that it doesn’t matter what you think about how to weigh certain goods against others. Would it be better to rightly worship God but be a morally bad person or to be a morally good person with out God or to be a morally good person with God but who is persecuted or otherwise deprived of all the other goods. These are complex questions but it doesn’t matter to the thesis here advanced: Knowing the truth about God, worshiping God rightly, and communing with God are great goods which one ought to desire to add to all of one’s other goods whatever those goods might be.

Mailbag: Taoism

2008-03-28T12:31:00.002-05:00

From a letter I just wrote to a student who was "raised Catholic" but now is more interested in Eastern Religions, espeically Taoism.

------------------------------------

Our society doesn't really encourage people to think much about their religion, unfortunately not even in the Church. That's a real passion of mine, to try to change the culture at large and especially the culture in the Church to appreciate the riches of the Catholic heritage of thought in philosophers and theologians like Ambrose, Augustine, Anselm, and Aqinas (what I call the A-list). I mean these guys say amazing things. One of Saint Augustine's famous quotes is "O Lord our hearts are restless until they rest in thee." Why isn't our society, in and out of the Church, addressing the sense of restlessness of youth. What's more, this sense of restlessness is limitless, there's nothing on earth that can always satisfy, nothing that offers infinite bliss. So are we doomed either to finite existence/enjoyment or infinite restlessness? Augustine thinks not since exploring the infinite Mind of God offers infinitely many new facets every moment. God's mind has infinitely many limbs with infinitely many branches with infinitely many leaves... In the words of Saint Anselm, who as influenced by Augustine, God is "That than which no greater can be conceived." In one of his prayers he realizes that this being must exist because perfection includes existence. So if that than which no greater can be conceived failed to exist then it wouldn't *be* the greatest conceivable, but that's a contradiction so there must be such a being. Saint Thomas Aquinas then provides the resources for seeing why this must be true because, as he puts it, God's essence includes his existence. For all finite, contingent creatures our essence includes some properties, but not existence: we could be or not be, the would could have gone on even we hadn't existed. But God's essence and existence are one: God cannot not exist.

In my survey of Eastern religions I suppose I found certain kinds of Hinduism most plausible from a metaphysical point of view but abhorred its stratified ethics. I found Buddhism most plausible from an ethical standpoint (except inaction), but find its metaphysics implausible (guess what, I *do* exist, there's no denying that as Descartes taught us "Cogito ergo sum"). I do believe in a Tao, but I hold a view called Personalism which puts persons and personhood at the top of the metaphysical ladder (human persons are just one kind of person, I'm talking about any being with will, intellect, choice, rationality, creativity) and so I think the Tao is not an impersonal force but rather an abstraction of the mind of God. God thinks only perfectly harmonious thoughts containing the perfection of all things. When we think in harmony with God we grasp God's thoughts, the Tao. I think a Tao divorced from personhood is unintelligible. On the moral side I find the same flaws in Taoism as in Buddhism: the principle of inaction. Both are essentially Stoic, telling us we should accept things as they are rather than fight to bring the world into conformity with our ideals. I think that's the wrong way to think about the Tao. I think the Tao impels us to action to bring about that ideal to which the Tao stretches. Some Taoist's versions of active inaction come close to this, though I still find it unintelligible as an impersonal force and think it must be grounded in the Mind of a Person. I suppose I'm a Catholic Taoist although it's basic teachings were found in Judaism long before the writing of the Tao Te Ching. The Hebrew Scriptures taught that all humanity should be humble since we are somewhere in the middle of the Great Chain of Being, far from the most advanced creatures in existence. The Hebrew Scriptures taught compassion through all kinds of rules about gleaning and usury and hospitality. The Hebrew Scriptures taught moderation through its dietary constraints. So the "Three Jewels" of Taoist ethics and the Tao itself, the metaphysical centerpiece are already included in an informed understanding of the Judeo-Christian worldview.

Hail Mary!

2008-03-25T13:59:00.001-05:00

Annunciation Of The Lord The time arrived for Jesus to come down from heaven. God sent the Archangel Gabriel to the town of Nazareth where Mary lived. The glorious archangel entered Mary's little house and found her praying. "Hail Mary, full of grace!" said the angel. "The Lord is with you, and you are blessed among women." Mary was surprised to hear the angel's words of praise. "Do not be afraid, Mary," said Gabriel. Then he told her that she was to be the mother of Jesus, our Savior. Mary understood what a great honor God was giving her. Yet she said, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord!" At that very moment, she became the Mother of God. And still she called herself his handmaid, his servant. Mary knew, too, that as the mother of Jesus, she would have many sorrows. She knew she would have to suffer when her Son suffered. Yet with all her heart, she said, "Be it done to me according to your word." This feast celebrates Mary's response to God, and the awesome moment of the Incarnation. Take some time today to reflect on how profoundly our lives have been changed as a result of Mary's "yes" to God.

He is Risen!

2008-03-23T08:42:00.001-05:00

Seven Stanzas at Easter

By John Updike

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

Telephone Poles and Other Poems © 1961 by John Updike.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

2008-03-18T01:02:00.002-05:00

Sorry it's late, my picture posting function wasn't working!

Another great conversion story!

2008-03-18T01:01:00.001-05:00

Check out this cool conversion story by my new friends, both of whom are grad students here at the University of Rochester.

From the email bag: Doctrines and Dogmas of the Church

2008-03-18T00:14:00.001-05:00

Where can I find the list of 300+ or so doctrines of the Catholic Church? I was told there are about 300. Would you let me know the difference between dogma and doctrine, if there is a difference? I was told that there are about eight "different levels" of doctrine/dogma or "methods of declaring" the doctrine/dogma. I am just looking for succint list (without elaborate exposition).
----------------------------------

LOL There might or might not be 300 doctrines of the Church, but there certainly is no such list. Depending on how you slice them there may be thousands!

Perhaps someone once tried to count assertions in the catechism or something, but that would be a fool’s errand (or a very bored Medieval scribe). I doubt anyone since about 1320 has had the patience required for such a task. There is just no principle way to individuate doctrines. Is the doctrine of divine simplicity a distinct doctrine from the doctrine of aseity? It’s not clear to me whether it is or not. I doubt there is any clear criterion of individuation possible.

As for the difference between dogma and doctrine that’s also ambiguous. The word “doctrine” is from a Latin root and just means “a teaching” (a “doctor” is one who teaches, to be “docile” is to be teachable). The word “dogma” is from a Greek root which means little more that “belief”. The words have evolved many different uses in different contexts. In connotation “dogma” typically denotes (these days) a more substantive property. The Church teaches many things in many ways. The totality can be called the Magisterium, though that term is often used to denote the teaching authority of the Church (so it’s used as a kind of synecdoche). The broadest division is the Ordinary Magisterium—primarily the Fathers and Doctors of the Church especially as synodically organized but extending all the way down to the local ordinary in some degree—and the Extraordinary Magisterium—the canons of full Ecumenical Councils and Ex Cathedra statements of the Bishop of Rome. It is arguable that there are subtler distinctions, but this is the place to start. You might want to call the doctrines taught via the EM “dogmas” (the real Greek plural or its anglicized counterpart is probably “dogmata”) but that would just be a convention of language. It’s common but not exclusive for “doctrine” and “dogma” to be used this way, although “dogma” having a more stringent connotation is a fairly recent phenomenon.

One might conceivably count up the doctrines taught via the EM by counting up the number of the canons of the ecumenical councils—which typically are numbered, at least in the MSS we have, though the primary data for some can be sketchy, there’s be scholarly quibbles even here. But suppose you went with the most conventional numbering and added them up and they summed to n. You could then plausibly add 2 to that to get the total number of dogmas. The two others being the Marian dogmas of the Immaculate Conception (Pius the IX I think, 1954) and the Assumption of Mary (Pius XII, 1950). The dates are the dates of the *promulgation* as revealed doctrines. They were, arguably, part of the ordinary magisterium prior to that. Items can go from the ordinary magisterium to the extraordinary when a Council or ex cathedra statement by a Pope promulgates something that was taught previously, but not via those means. For example in the last decade there has been some stir about the term “Mediatrix” being elevated from the OM to the EM.

Some people will argue that there are other than these two methods of EM, for example there is a statement somewhere that “it is not permissible to disagree with all of the Fathers.” But plausibly all they agree on with total unanimity are items already in a Council. It’s debatable, it would make a good Historical Theology dissertation. The same goes for whether there have been more than two ex cathedra statements. Still, all the debatable points leave a core idea intact which I hope you will find useful.

Trent

Frank Makes the News

2008-03-18T00:07:00.002-05:00

In this video, starting at about exactly the 10 minute mark, the President of the Saint Louis Blues Hockey organization reads a letter from our own Frank Hogrebe, President of the Saint Louis Saints adult hockey team. He applauds Franks and the Saints community spirit.

Way to go Frank!

For backstory on the Saints see these prior stories.

Another look in the rear-view mirror

2008-02-29T10:22:00.000-05:00

I get a lot of inquiries about my conversion from Evangelicalism to Catholicism and it's interesting what my answers look like from time to time. It would be really easy to have a few prepared paragraphs to paste in an email, but as time goes on I think my vision actually gets clearer (perhaps it gets more cloudy in other respects) and so I thought I'd paste in here the most recent version.
-------------------------------

As I say, I’m about to head out of town, but before I go—and I will write more later—there were two realities I unexpectedly bumped into which I couldn’t see as consistent with my evangelicalism, one past, one present. The fact from the past was that there were extant, authentic records of the writings of the people who immediately succeeded the Apostles. This I found very shocking. Letters written by 2nd generation Bishops to Christians in Rome, Corinth, Philipi, etc. The present reality was the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The Apostolic Fathers taught it, and it was perceived at the Mass. That one-two punch was the core of the battle. Leading up to that was a complete loss of belief in the traditional “solae” of Protestantism: sola fide and sola scriptura. I had already come to believe on strictly Scriptural grounds that both these doctrines were hopeless. Two other important prior events were my coming to see justification as an eternal process rather than a legal fiction and seeing the Jewishness of the Gospel. It seems to me that both of these insights were great forerunners to my conversion to Catholicism.

Happy Saint Valentine's Day!

2008-02-14T17:29:00.001-05:00

What do we know about Saint Valentine? Almost nothing. Here is a History.com article which is a pretty good summary and agrees with all the evidence I have from other sources.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, which is usually thorough to the point of verbositiy, doesn't find much to say about Saint Valentine. Indeed, there were at least three saints by that name and we know next to nothing about any of them. But if you want a summary of the pious version here it is at Catholic.org.

The legend that one Saint Valentine fell in love with his jailer's daughter has been embellished in popular culture. We don't know if the legend is true and if it is true whether the love was romantic and if it was romantic whether it was consummated. We have virtually no evidence one way or the other. The best evidence is that there was no torrid love affair because the very legends which tell of his "love" for the girl are perpetuated in an environment which would have denied his sainthood if he had an affair. It's much more exciting though, to trash a Saint, so whatever. The whole modern myth stems from an older legend that he miraculously restored her sight and then, on the eve of his execution, sent her a goodbye letter signed "from your Valentine". However, this embelishment was added in the 13th Century, some 800 years after the establishment of the feast in his honor. The romantic associations come from the legend that he was imprisoned in the first place for illegally conducting Christian marriages and otherwise aiding persecuted Christians under Claudius II.

The Wikipedia articles on Saint Valentine and his feast day seem pretty accurate. A quick perusal did not reveal any typical nonsense (it's usually easy to spot anyway).

Though the association with romantic love is probably most due to Chaucer's work up of an embellishment of a legend, I'm happy to join the fun and send my girl a Valentine card telling her how much I love and appreciate her. I doubt Saint Valentine will mind.

Faith, Doubt, and Certainty

2008-02-14T16:42:00.003-05:00

“Belief
(be and lyian, to hold dear).
That state of the mind by which it assents to propositions, not by reason of their intrinsic evidence, but because of authority.”

“But there is another very general use of the term belief in which it is taken to designate assent complete enough to exclude any practical doubt and yet distinguishable from the assent of knowledge. In this use no account is taken of authority. We have many convictions resting upon evidence that is not sufficiently clearly presented to our mind to enable us to say we know, but abundantly sufficient for us to produce a practically unqualified assent. ”

“this would seem to fall under the Scholastic head of opinion”

Doubt
(Latin dubium, Greek aporí, French doute, German Zweifel).
A state in which the mind is suspended between two contradictory propositions and unable to assent to either of them.

I am not in a position of doubt with respect to the objects of Catholic Faith: I assent to them. Yet this assent is attended by doubts, i.e. by the existence of recognized evidence to the contrary. It is not, obviously, doubt whether some thing God said is true, that would be absurd and anathema. Necessarily, if God said it, it is true, no room for doubt remains. Thus when “faith” is used to name the assent we have to the truths of revelation it excludes not just a state of doubt—inability to assent—but the presence of any doubts—recognized evidence to the contrary.

However, what God has revealed is not a matter of necessity but is a contingent truth and must be attended by what Vatican I calls “external signs” or natural evidence. The doubts which attend my faith therefore are not doubts about God’s knowledge or veracity but rather doubts about whether for some particular thing, God has revealed it.

From the old Catholic Encyclopeia on certitutude.
“As regards certitude concerning the fact of Divine revelation, the Vatican Council teaches that the proofs are not, indeed, such as to make assent intellectually necessary (De Fide, cap. iii and can. v), but that they are sufficient to make the belief "agreeable to reason" (rationi consentaneum),”
And concludes “It is, then, moral certitude that is attainable by the reason as to the fact of Divine revelation.”

If God in fact said it, then I may have the highest degree of certainty. As to whether God said it, some doubts might remain. I take it that God can grant one faith so that one may be certain that He has said some thing, but, as usual, Grace works with nature and not against it, and, sadly and obviously enough, what is ours by faith is not always achieved.

Let us pray for the gift of faith and for the grace to let that faith have it's full effect in us. Let our hearts be convicted by the Holy Spirit to drive us to reconciliation so that that grace may be operative in our lives.

Saints Hockey Scores again!

2008-02-01T20:34:00.000-05:00

February 1, 2008Men's hockey team defeats stereotype of men of faith...

Full story here.

Congrats to Frank for this great idea and consistant execution!

Previous Catholic Hockey news here.

It's official: Tony Blair is Catholic

2008-01-04T17:16:00.001-05:00

I blogged on this before when rumours were first circulating, but now it's official:

Tony Blair Converts to Catholicism
By Randy Sly12/24/2007
Catholic Online

In a private Mass at his residence chapel on Friday evening, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster received former Prime Minister Tony Blair into the Roman Catholic Church. Blair had been a member of the Anglican Church, however his wife and four children were all Catholic. "It can be confirmed that Tony Blair has been received into full communion with the Catholic Church by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor.” This was the official statement from Church officials, who went on to quote the Cardinal. “I am very glad to welcome Tony Blair into the Catholic Church. For a long time he has been a regular worshipper at Mass with his family and in recent months he has been following a program of formation to prepare for his reception into full communion. “My prayers are with him, his wife and family at this joyful moment in their journey of faith together." Through his role as a special Middle East peace envoy, Blair had met privately with Pope Benedict last June and many thought, at that time, that Blair would convert. Blair went through a process of spiritual formation under the leadership of Father Mark O’toole, private secretary to the Cardinal. A spokesman for the Vatican, Federico Lombardi, stated that the Catholic church in Rome shared the same “satisfaction” as Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor has expressed concerning Blair’s decision. "The choice of joining the Catholic Church made by such an authoritative personality can only arouse joy and respect." According to Anthony Seldon, the former prime minister’s biographer, Blair’s faith had always played a significant role in his politics. "He's a profoundly religious figure. Religion brought him into politics in the first place, not reading Labor Party history.” Seldon went on to say, "Catholicism has been the religion of his wife - Cherie Blair has been incredibly important to him throughout his political life, encouraging him to go into politics and adopting many of his positions, so I think it was the obvious part of the Christian faith for him to come into." Everyone did not share this optimistic perspective. Ex-Tory minister Ann Widdecombe, who converted to Catholicism in 1993, stated that Mr. Blair's voting record as an MP had often "gone against church teaching". In an interview with the BBC, Widdencombe said that Mr Blair's move raised some questions. "If you look at Tony Blair's voting record in the House of Commons, he's gone against Church teaching on more than one occasion. On things, for example, like abortion," she said. "My question would be, 'has he changed his mind on that?'" Former Anglicans, who had previously converted, said they were pleased with Blair’s decision. Some wondered, however, whether his decision would have been much more significant had it taken place while he was still prime minister, especially with respect to Northern Ireland. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who leads the Anglican Communion worldwide, commended Blair on his spiritual journey. "Tony Blair has my prayers and good wishes as he takes this step in his Christian pilgrimage." According to the last census in 2005, 72% of United Kingdom declared they were Christians. Of that number, over 27% claim they are Anglicans and 5.5% say they are Catholic. A very small portion of that number, however, actually attends worship on a regular basis. In regular Sunday attendance, Anglicans and Catholics are almost equal in number with 875,000 attending a Catholic Mass and 867,000 present in Anglican parishes.

http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=26264

2007-12-25T19:02:00.000-05:00

Puer natus est!

2007-12-22T23:03:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to wish you all many graces during these last few days of Advent, and a very merry Christmas.

Recently, I wrote an article about Ukrainian Christmas traditions, which also gives some glimpse on the history of religious freedom in Ukraine. The article and some links to videos of me performing Ukrainian Christmas carols accompanied by bandura can be found here:
http://groups.msn.com/HumanintheWorld2/videos.msnw.

Merry Christmas!

Oksana

Scottish Catholic Culture, a sample

2007-11-25T12:56:00.000-05:00

Mass today was amazing. I went to the Cathedral of Saint Mary in Edinburgh. The crowd was noticeably younger than in the average American perish, even the more traditional one (and by now it is nearly not ironic that "traditional" means "young" in American parishes).

These people were hip even by European standards and I saw more kids there than in the sum of the whole rest of my Scottish travels (and this time I covered most of the country).

The priest was very bright and his homily was both theologically informed and pastorally challenging. And the challenge was to be more captive to Christ and to critically engage the culture. He addressed Sir Richard Dawkins by name (of _The God Delusion_ fame (Oxford's Alistair McGrath has replied with _The Dawkins Delusion_)). He said he was an intelligent man but that his "Scrrreemin' ahhnd shootin' aboot rreligion ahhnd seeahnce" are based on ignorance of Faith.

The singing was very nice as well. It was a very moving experience and I hope that this sample is somewhat representative.

On Being a Catholic Philosopher

2007-10-19T11:41:00.000-05:00

Some people have asked me to address the question "Can one be a Catholic and a philosopher?" as a result of various provocations (including a recent blog post in which the question came up, but which I've not had time to read). I paste below a very quick email in response to these requests.
----------------
Haven’t had a chance to look, but it's hard for me to imagine what the point of the question is. The only interesting question I can see in the vicinity is this: do one’s commitments as a Catholic prevent one from having the intellectual freedom to do philosophy as it should be done? The answer to that question is also clearly yes. Every philosopher has certain commitments which are or nearly are “ungivupable” because of what seems most clearly true to them. Sometimes these are called our “intuitions”. Some intuitions are stronger than others and sometimes they shift. For many (I’d guess most) philosophers there are certain intuitions which are pretty strong and stable, for example that there are no true contradictions. I don’t take seriously the idea that there are, but I know there are smart people who think there’s something to paraconsistent logic and I’ve been convinced in the past of the necessity of certain deviations from classical logic, so I’m not 100% certain that there are no true contradictions (though I don’t even at this point know what it would mean to say that there are). An even better example is the Moorean response to skepticism. I’m very convinced that there is an external world. Much more convinced than I am of the disjunction of the conjunction of all the premises of all the skeptical arguments of which I am aware. I don’t take skepticism seriously in that I’m not the *least* bet tempted to believe skepticism. However, I do take it seriously as a *puzzle* I’m convinced that we learn a lot about rationality when we consider the skeptical puzzles. Nevertheless, it’s conceivable to me that things could change. Likewise, I’m quite convinced that Catholicism is true. I’m not very tempted to believe any objection to its truth of which I am aware. However, I do take such objections seriously in that I think there is much of value to learn from pondering them. Still, it’s conceivable that things could change: if I became more convinced of the conjunction of the premises of some argument the conclusion of which entailed the negation of the core claims of the Church, then I’d stop being a Catholic. In short, that Catholicism is true is one of the things about which I count as being rationally convinced. So other, less-certain items have to make room for it (just like they have to—to different degrees—the law of non-contradiction and the existence of the external world). But I’m a good neo-Bayesian, so I don’t have 100% confidence in anything. All propositions are negotiable. A better question is Can a Naturalist be a philosopher? It has been noted that naturalism is not really a philosophical approach to anything, but rather a stance or attitude (see van Fraassen’s essay in Kvanvig’s volume on Plantinga and recently my colleague Ney “Physicalism is an Attitude” but there are others in between such as Perry’s “antecedent physicalism”). It’s essentially a kind of fideism, but fideism has been condemned by the Church so though it is an option for Naturalists and Protestants, it simply isn’t an option for Catholics (modulo what’s said above). The use of the terms "certitude," "certainty," and "doubt" have pretty narrow usages in traditional Catholic epistemology, so don't be mislead by statements before Vatican II on the subject.

Neat Conversian Story

2007-08-31T14:38:00.001-05:00

Frank came across this link recently.

Longish, but worth the read.

Cardinal Dougherty

2007-08-31T12:30:00.001-05:00

Dennis Joseph Cardinal Dougherty (August 16, 1865 - May 31, 1951) was the 5th Bishop of Buffalo, New York and the Archbishop of Philadelphia and ranking prelate of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the U.S.

His years in office in Philadelphia were marked by the greatest increase in diocesan schools in the history of the diocese. After his death in 1951, the largest Catholic high school in the world was built and named in Cardinal Dougherty's honor. Finished in 1956, Cardinal Dougherty High School was the first school of its kind.

Pretty cool, eh?

Have a blessed feast!

2007-08-15T17:26:00.001-05:00

The doctrine of the Assumption of Mary was once a huge obstacle to converting. I kept asking myself "But what is the evidence for it." Of course, that's a perfectly good question, but I was ignoring the evidence. What I was really asking myself was "What is the evidence outside of the Magisterium for the doctrine?"

But that the Magisterium teaches it is evidence! All the evidence I had for the identity of the Church *was* evidence for the doctrine. Since I had good evidence for that and no good evidence against the doctrine, it ceased to be a problem.

Consider this analogy. Some evils seem utterly unredeemable: we just can't imagine how good could come of them. What's the evidence that the will be redeemed?

All the evidence for a just God *is* evidence that all evils will be redeemed.

This is just an application of what epistemologists call epistemic closure. I wish I would have realized that sooner.

SCP at the ACPA: Virtue and Value

2007-08-03T18:36:00.000-05:00

John Greco (now at SLU don't forget) is currently putting together a session for the Society of Christian Philosophers at the American Catholic Philosophical Association meeting. Jason Baehr will give a paper on open mindedness as an intellectual virtue and Stephen Grimm will give a paper on epistemic value. Daniel Breyer (Fordham) will comment on Jason's paper and I'll be commenting on Stephen's paper.

Call for Papers

Catholicism, Protestantism, and Evidence

2007-07-20T17:16:00.000-05:00

I think there needs to be more clarity about this, so I'm posting it. It should be obvious which is the seeker's text and which are my replies.
-----------------
To him the case is: where's the evidence to get from who Jesus is and
what he taught to the Catholic church. He believes you need to, to be
justified in believing in papal infallibility, which in my mind (and
in his) is the key doctrine, since it is unique among all
Christianities (as it were!). To him you need to have evidence that
Jesus authorized Peter to teach with His (Jesus') own authority, that
is, infallibly.
[Trent] I don’t disagree one bit, I’m an evidentialist to the core. But of course there is the testimony of the Church Herself. I’m sure you’re familiar with the idea of dong a dilemma argument on the Church. She claims to be the fullest expression of the visible Body of Christ on Earth, headed by the viceroy of Christ. That’s either true or false. If it’s false, then the Catholic Church must be destroyed. But if it’s true, then…

But of course there is evidence. Given that the Church has claimed—via the ordinary Magisterium and by the Extraordinary Magisterium in Vatican I—that the Bishop of Rome, the Successor of Peter, is the viceroy of Christ—Ever seen the study on the keys in the OT?—anyway, given that claim, then we may be practically certain of the following conditional

(1) If there was not apostasy before Vat II, then Papal Infallibility is a true doctrine.

This assumes, as I said I would assume before, since I honestly don’t take it to be historically tenable to deny, that the doctrine of Apostolic Succession is true. Clement, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Tertullian all testify to it. The very successors to the Apostles, and their immediate successors, teach Apostolic Succession pretty straightforwardly.

Let ATS state the Apostolic Fathers testimony to Apostolic succession.

Let S state the doctrine of Apostolic Succession.

(A) Pr(S/ATS) = very very high

Since I take ATS to be part of my background information, I’m taking S for granted.

Since I think the balance of evidence greatly supports the claim that there was no apostasy, I am forced by Bayesian Evidentialism to give at least equal credence (the theorem says at least as much, but it could be more) to S.

So again, I am in *complete* agreement that one's cognitive states need to fit the evidence, but it still seems to me that the Protestant position has it completely backwards with regard to the default position and who needs evidence for what.

Lacrimae Sancti Monicae

2007-07-18T14:36:00.000-05:00

A dear Catholic friend with a deep respect for the Eucharist commended to me today--in a moment of near despair--the tears of Saint Monica.

If you have a friend whose self-destructive behavior is breaking your heart, I commend those tears to you along with this traditional prayer.

"Exemplary Mother of the great Augustine, you perseveringly pursued your wayward son not with wild threats but with prayerful cries to heaven. Intercede for all mothers in our day so that they may learn to draw their children to God. Teach them how to remain close to their children, even the prodigal sons and daughters who have sadly gone astray."

Like God the Father--Isaiah 66, Matthew 23--we can all express this motherly love for those wandering in some wilderness.

The Latin Mass is Back

2007-07-07T17:52:00.000-05:00

Actually, it never really went anywhere according to canon law, but liturgists kept it in the background to say the least. I can't help but lead with this quote:

It has clearly been demonstrated that young persons, too, have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction and found in it a form of encounter with the mystery of the most holy Eucharist particularly suited to them.

This document has been in the making for quite some time and is in part aimed at bringing back into the fold members of the Society for Saint Pius the Tenth (SSPX) who broke away from the Church over changes real or imagined in Vatican II.

The text has not yet been translated into English, but an explanatory letter by the Pontiff has (link). The official Latin text is here.

Following are some leading Catholic news wire storeis.

Catholic News Agency: Pope establishes the full return of the Tridentine Mass with new letter

Catholic World News: Pope broadens access to 1962 Mass

Surprisingly, Zenit and bunch of others still haven't posted stories at the time of writing.

Saint Blog's Parish will be ablaze I imagine. Here's a list of Catholic blogs I watch: http://www.bloglines.com/public/trentdougherty

Just a few weeks ago--just a few posts ago--we discussed the growing popularity of the Latin Mass--again, especially among younger people as Chesterton predicted. In fact, I doubt doors will be broken down by parishioners demanding the Latin Mass. This fact--to be expected--will no doubt be reported attended by such headlines as "Latin Mass Falls Flat" and "Faithful Not Interested in Aged Pope's 'Reforms'".

Of *course* most people--including priests and Bishops--will go on with life as usual. That's the American way. The "small" difference--which I think could have big ramifications--is that fewer people will feel the need to turn to organizations like SSPX for a "traditional" Mass and the more reasonable members of that group will feel comfortable in returning. There's some good energy in SSPX too, and it will be nice to have it back in the Church.

It should also provide an opportunity for folks like me--and some less traditional folks--to occasionally ground themselves in a Mass which wears its reverence on its sleeve. I like my kids to see a more traditional, more obviously relevant Mass, and I don't like the current narrow range of choices.

Please alert me when you see the first headline long the lines of those I mentioned above, I want to see just how long they wait.

Until then...semper fi! ;-)

Looking for the Church

2007-07-07T17:44:00.000-05:00

Another snippet from a recent email inqury...

(Some of the formatting is messed up.)

Ahhh, the first stage…remember it well. Actually, Chesterton’s first stage is already dangerously far down the road: few return ***spooky music plays***.

As a fellow co-exemplifier of silliness, internalismness (of sorts), epistemologistness, as well as evidentialistness (which is, after all, independent of internalism link), I salute your desire to look before you leap. I will happily
describe the lay of the land from my angle, but first I wonder if you haven’t
got thing quite the wrong way around.

What I mean to say is that don’t you really need evidence *not* to be a Catholic? One thing seems just plain clear: in, say, AD 987 there was one Church: one visible body of Christ on Earth under the direction of Bishops—with some special role played by the one in Rome—whose oversight was considered constitutive of the Church. I just don’t think there’s much room to dispute that—I mean really dispute, not dispute in the way that silly analytic philosophers can dispute ANYTHING!

Now after that point there are lots of places to jump off the train. Some hop off at station 1054. I spent some time sleeping on benches there. Lots of people get off at 1517, though few can say quite why. The least sophisticated stopping points are in the 1820s, the two most, I think, are either 1414ish or perhaps even 1870.

The Real Protestants up thar in Moscow, Idaho are quite consistent and rational (to the point of being kinda scary) and posit apostasy at the Council of Constance. I considered that option well myself. But, to return to my main point, *unless* one has good reason to posit apostasy, one has reason to be Catholic by default (assuming one has reason to be a Christian simpliciter).

Relatedly it’s often overlooked that—all things considered—it would be better to be united to the Catholic Church even if you thought it in *serious* need of reform than exist outside her without good reason. I highly doubt you’ll find any communion of Christianity with which you don’t have pretty significant disagreements—and as you’ll soon find, the papacy does not afford as serious a disagreement as one first expects. So *even if* I thought that the Eastern Church was fundamentally correct in its ecclesiology and that the Bishop of Rome, though the last court of appeals—had nowhere near the authority claimed in Vatican I, I’d still be Catholic, for I am, after all, a child of the West. This extends quite far I think.

Nevertheless, I will be happy to address your question concerning books. I’m a primary source guy myself and was most affected by what I read in the Apostolic Fathers, especially the epistles of Ignatius of Antioch. Also, that third generation is a very good read: Justin Martyr and, especially, Irenaeus of Lyons. There are nice one-volume editions of the Apostolic Fathers, including the Lightfoot edition
once published by Baker. Of course I’m sure you’re aware you can get full text
here:

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/. There’s also this book which a lot of Catholics rave about (his blog: http://www.fathersofthechurch.com/ and
his list of top books). It seems too broad to me, but has lots of extra info you might be interested in.

I’m pretty fond of the book _Four Witnesses: The Early Church in Her Own Words_. It’s the one I most often give to people. But, as I said, I’m a primary source guy—taught Great Books and all—and I don’t have much info on where you’re coming from. If you have a strong attachment to some of the core Protestant doctrines like sola fide then maybe you need to start with a theological tome like _Not by Faith Alone_. If it’s culture shock then _Crossing the Tiber_,
_Evangelical is not Enough_, or _ By What Authority?:
An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition_ might be the right books. Almost
forgot another good one:

Upon This Rock: St. Peter and the Primacy of Rome in Scripture and the Early
Church.

I hope you find these recommendations helpful, and please do follow up.

Pax Christi,

Trent

Parish life: Keep your eyes on the prize.

2007-06-20T16:13:00.000-05:00

Snippet from a recent conversation:

-------------------------------------------------

I'm not sure why God built the Church out of people, but I suppose he had a
good reason.

It is interesting to wonder what the Church would have looked like if it had
been built out of angels. I'm not sure what other options there were or how they
would differ.

So it seems that it's either New Jerusalem Now or people. It seems good to have
to work for the New Jerusalem, so that leaves people.

From a Catholic perspective, considering the doctrine of the Communion of
Saints, working out our differences is an absolute necessity, indeed a
purgatorial precondition of the Beatific Vision. According to the "zap
theology" of Calvinism--and really, all Protesters who don't have a doctrine of
Purgatory--when you die you'll just be zapped into perfection. Since the
afterlife in a sense starts now we are after a manner in purgatory now.

Now the specific purgation required for the Communion of the Saints aspect of
Heaven is getting along with one another. Right now we set there in the
sanctuary grumbling about such-and-such nonsense of so-and-so (I think of
Screwtape's description). Now *surely* it won't be like that in the
Beatific Vision.

In the Beatific Vision our happiness will grow *exponentially* in the following
way: I'll be experiencing bliss. You'll be experiencing bliss. I'll
be so united to you that when I see that you're experiencing bliss, my bliss
will bulge. They same will happen for you. Then I'll get a bliss
boost from the fact that my bliss gave you a bliss boost. And so on.
Now add in, say, our friend KB. The same process that happened between you
and I will happen between you and him and also he and myself. But *in
addition to that* I'll be so united to KB that I'll be elated that his joy
juiced your joy. And so on, and so on, world without end, Amen.

So how we gonna get there from here? Well, it seems it's either ZAP! or
Purgatory. Surely not ZAP!. Ergo...

So I think, as is no longer surprising to me, that dogma is devotional.
The doctrine of the Communion of Saints tells us that as we endure this
purgatorial period we can perhaps somewhat alleviate our frustration by thinking
of the Joy toward which we are hurled.

Old Latin Mass Makes a Comeback

2007-06-14T12:26:00.000-05:00

I'm back from my trip now (see my personal blog for details) and ready to resume bloggage.

This forwarded from Frank:

Old Latin Mass Makes a Comeback
By Tim Townsend
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
06/14/2007

Melinda Scanga (left), of Jefferson County, prays during Latin mass at St. Francis De Sales Oratory. (Dawn Majors /P-D)The church's windows are broken, its beige bricks are sooty, its paint is chipped. The 300-foot steeple, a hallmark of the St. Louis skyline, is pulling away from its foundation. One day it could tumble into traffic on Gravois Avenue.St. Francis de Sales church, often called the Cathedral of South St. Louis, is an ideal home for a group of Roman Catholic priests devoted to restoration. But restoring this 19th-century neo-Gothic church to its former glory is only one reason St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke assigned the priests to oversee St. Francis de Sales.The real mission of the group, called the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, is the restoration of the traditional Latin Mass. The 1,600-year-old Mass isn't used much today, but it's making a comeback.

Jesus Tomb pushers backtrack

2007-04-16T10:22:00.000-05:00

Hopefully this will be the final post on this subject. I previously posted stories on the Jesus Tomb Hoax (here and here).

Now the protagonists themselves are backpedaling (surprise, surprise).

The story is "Jesus tomb film scholars backtrack" in the Jerusalem Post.

He is Risen!

2007-04-08T10:20:00.000-05:00

The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God

2007-04-06T11:26:00.000-05:00

Over at The Council of Trent I've posted some brief comments on an argument for the existence of God first given by Saint Augustine, but later more fully developed by Saint Anselm and now a favorite among philosophers. It's a very non-technical presentation of the most technical argument for the existence of God, so you might find it helpful.

Equality of Women in the Catholic Church

2007-04-04T15:33:00.000-05:00

I'm cross-posting this from this post at The Counsel of Trent since I cross-posted the orginal post here as well. It concerns the charge that the Catholic Church does not respect the equality of women in virtue of the fact that ordination is restricted to men.
--------------------------------
I do think the charge falls flat, but sometimes you do have to address such a question to be polite and because some people have become persuaded that it is so or just absorbed it due to repetition in our culture. Here are a few quick tips:

First, as a dialectical point always ask people what their evidence is for their assertions or by what reasoning they get from the alleged evidence to the conclusion. What is it, for instance, that logically gets you from women not being able to be ordained to women being treated unequally? It's not at all obvious that there's any reasonable connection here. Also, ask them to define their terms. What do they mean by inequality here? Or do they think than inequality is always unfair? Is it unfair that the handicapped get closer parking places? It's certainly unequal in a very clear sense, but it doesn't seem unfair. So inequality is not necessarily unfair. But then even IF this is a case of inequality why should we think it is a case of the unfair kind of inequality?

People who make claims need to be willing to back them up. In most cases like this people are parroting what they keep hearing.

But apart from the dialectical points here are some other brief points.

The problem here *can't* concern authority. Consider the following proposition:

(A) If X has authority over Y then X and Y are unequal.

Every Catholic is dogmatically bound to deny (A). The reason is that in the Holy Trinity the Father has authority over the Son and the Son has authority over the Spirit, but all are perfectly co-equal.

Here is something always to point out: Who is the most exalted non-divine human in all of existence? Mary. God asked her permission to be born and she has been made the Queen of Heaven. There are also lots of female Saints and Doctors of the Church who are of much greater authority, ultimately, than Priests and even Bishops at any given time.

This leads to a question you should always ask in such circumstances. Say "You know who Mother Theresa is, right?" They'll say "Of course," of course. Now ask them if they know who her parish Priest was, or who her Bishop or arch-Bishop was. The fact is, that in the Catholic Church your status is ultimately determined not by who has authority over whom, but who leads the most Christ-like life.

Catholics and Protestants: The Fundamental Difference

2007-03-26T13:52:00.000-05:00

Cross-posted from The Counsel of Trent:

----------------------------------------

Amandalaine,

As it so happens, I'm currently composing a post on why I became Catholic in response to many requests. You ask "Could you elucidate why you left protestantism and turned to catholicism?"

As a philosopher I first have to give the obvious answer: because I think the Claims of the Catholic Church regarding her authority are true and incompatible with Protestantism. Note that I designate a sub-class of claims of the Catholic Church, namely those regarding the Church's authority. Most claims of the Church are perfectly compatible with Protestantism (well, with magisterial Protestantism anyway, part of the problem is that there are like 30,000 (literally) different protestant denominations (if you count all the independent ones separately) so making claims about what "Protestants" believe can be tricky: most Catholic doctrine is compatible with Lutheran, Presbyterian, Anglican, and Evangelical beliefs).

What Mother Kirk claims is that she is the fullest expression of the visible Church on Earth and that the Bishop of Rome is the final authority in matters of the Faith and governance of the Church. The basis for this claim is the doctrine of Apostolic Succession. I've got a brief summary of some evidence for this doctrine here, and am working on a draft of a fuller argument. So the basic claims of the Church are as follows:
1. Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, promised in the Old Testament, and expanding his plan to we Gentiles.
2. Jesus founded a visible Church to carry on his teachings and selected the Apostles to govern this body.
3. Peter was the Chief of the Apostles as witnessed by Peter's divine anointing and unique reception of the Keys of the Kingdom (Matt 16) which represent the vice-regent of the King, his special relationship with Jesus ("feed my sheep," Gospel of John, Chatper 21), and his authoritative pronouncement at the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15).
4. The Apostles anointed new leaders--called Bishops (episkopos in the Greek New Testament)--and when an Apostle died, someone took their place (just like occurred with the loss of Judas at the beginning of The Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament).
5. The line of Apostolic Succession has never been broken.

The doctrine of Salvation among Catholics and Mainline and (many or most) Evangelical Protestants are essentially the same (no more differences than among some Protestants): we are given the Gift of Faith to trust in the finished work of Christ in atonement for our sins. The rest is details.

As a Protestant I already accepted #1 of course, but gradually came to believe the rest of them as well. There's much, much more to the story, but a sufficient condition for my becoming Catholic was being rationally persuaded of #'s 2-5 (in addition to #1).

This is just the bare bones and only states the minimum sufficient condition, so stay tuned for a more robust answer. Hope that helps.

Hockey Saints

2007-03-16T15:44:00.000-05:00

Frank is too modest to post this himself. If I make it back to Saint Louis, I'm in like Flynn.

http://www.stlouisreview.com/article.php?id=12545

Polytheism, Monotheism, and Henotheism

2007-03-06T17:56:00.000-05:00

What could be farther apart than monotheism and polytheism, right? Weeeellllll, not so fast.

After all the largest body of monotheists by far is Catholics and polytheism is "pagan" and after all the main line of the Church has always been happy to baptize the pagan. As C.S. Lewis points out in his great essay "Myth Become Fact" Catholicism is the completion of paganism, not its negation. It completes it in that the myths become incarnate if facts when The Word becomes incarnate if The Flesh.

Just as Jesus said of the Jewish Law: "I come not to abolish it, but to fulfill it" (Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 5, verse 17) likewise he did not come to abolish paganism, but to fulfill it. Sure, there's "bad paganism" which involves human sacrifice and the like, but what I have in mind is good old fashioned nature-based paganism: the deep spiritual connection with the earth and her rhythms.

When the Apostle Paul went to Athens to talk to the philosophers he ended up at a temple of various gods. He didn't tell them they were completely mistaken and going to Hell. He just said he wanted to fill in their knowledge of what they were doing.

Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. (Book of Acts, Chapter 17, verse 22)

So in the tradition of bridge building which Jesus imparted to the Apostle Paul and to the Catholic Church in general, I want to question the divide between monotheism and polytheism. The meditation could also demonstrate the power of words to shape our thoughts.

One of the words for "one" (as a prefix) in Greek is "mono" another is "heno". Both serve as prefixes for a kind of theism. Monotheism refers to the belief in one deity only. Henotheism refers to the belief in a heirarchical array of deities with one which is on top. Now lets think about what it was to be a deity according to the ancient Greeks. The two main properties of deity were A. immortality, B. supernatural power, i.e. power over the ordinary course of natural events.

Notice, though, that angels have both these properties. Angels never die and they have power over natural events, they can do things in nature which would not happen by themselves, they can perform little miracles which suspend the ordinary course of nature. The word "angelos" in Greek just means "messenger". The Greek prefex "eu-" means "good" like a "eulogy" or "good words" said about someone at the time of their death. 'u' and 'v' are interchangeable in classical languages most of the time so the word "evangelst" is just "eu" (good) + "evangelon" (news), a bearer of good news, a messenger with a happy message.

So angels have the functional properties the Greeks would have considered deity. If you described some of the things angels are described as doing in Sacred Scripture and are believed by the Catholic Church to be able to do to an ancient Greek, he'd clearly have thought of the angel as a god. So using pagan terminology angels are just lesser gods, and according to Saint Thomas Aquinas--the "Angelic Doctor"--angels are arranged hierarchically.

And of course there are also the Saints. The saints also qualify as deities according to ancient Greek standards. To become a Saint the Church has to decide that one has been responsible for three miracles. And consider C.S. Lewis's insightful comments from his essential essay "The Weight of Glory":

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit...It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as your now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

And this should come as no surprise, for great Catholic theologian Saint Maximos the Confessor taught the doctrine of deification or theosis:

"A sure warrant for looking forward with hope to deification of human nature is Provided by the incarnation of God, which makes man god to the same degree as God Himself became man." and "let us become the image of the one whole God,
bearing nothing earthly in ourselves, so that we may consort with God and become gods, receiving from God our existence as gods." (PHILOKALIA Volume II)

And there's lots more where this came from. No, to be sure, Catholics believe that the Divine Trinity is the Ground of Being in a way that no other being can be. God is the original, we are the copies. Still, we are copies of *God*.

Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are gods'?" (Gospel of John, Chapter 10, verse 34; quoting Psalm 82:6, 6 "I said, 'You are "gods"; you are all sons of the Most High.')

Tomb Scmoomb

2007-03-03T13:59:00.000-05:00

New York Times has good article today on the Jesus Tomb hoax (it's shaping up to be a perfect sequal to the James Tomb hoax). Here's an insighful comment:

-------------------------
And his logic can seem like circular — to the point of fallacious — reasoning.
“The idea of finding Jesus’ tomb might not seem so outlandish if we could locate tombs belonging to his followers,” Mr. Jacobovici says to his crew.
Soon after he adds, “Although we found ourselves in the wrong tomb, perhaps these finely crafted ossuaries, so close to the Talpiot tomb, are somehow connected to Jesus or his followers.”
In other words, because this is Jesus’ tomb, the nearby tombs are likely those of his followers; because those nearby tombs are likely those of his followers, this must be the tomb of Jesus.

full story

Bones of Jesus?

2007-02-27T23:15:00.000-05:00

Short version:

"Amos Kloner, the first archeologist to examine the site, said the proposition doesn't hold water.
'They just want to get money for it," Mr. Kloner said. 'It's a joke.'"

--Canadian National Post

Augustine's Handbook of Catholic Faith: Post #4, "Go out and love!"

2007-02-25T15:13:00.000-05:00

Chapter V. Brief Answers to These Questions

In Ch. V Augustine eloquently states the Ultimate Goal of each person: Beauty. (A little more than a year ago, I posted about "the transcendental unity of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty here by the way.)

"When the mind has been imbued with the first elements of that faith which worketh by love, it endeavors by puritiy of life to attain unto sight, where the pure and perfect in heart know that unspeakable beauty, the full vision of which is supreme happiness."

This Vision of Beauty is what the Medievals often called The Beatific Vision. It is what we were made for. The old Baltimore Catechism says in response to the catechal question "Why did God make me?" "God made us to show forth His goodness and share with us His everlasting happiness in Heaven." The whole point of our existence is Happiness (not just feel-good-ism, but what Aristotle called Eudaimonia, the summum bonum, what a Saint might call the Filling of our Souls.

To clear up a misconception, it's not that we perform acts of Faith, Hope, and Charity *in order order to be rewarded* with happiness. Rather, such acts are--partly at least--*constitutive* of this state of total fulfillment called Eudaimonia which is had only in the Beatific Vision of God's very essence. I don't play *in order* to be happy so much as playing *just is* a certain kind of happiness. Likewise, loving *just is* a certain kind of happiness. The key is to be the kind of person who can *feel* the reality of loving, the joy of loving, who wants to go out and love the way they want to go out and play.

Augustine's Handbook of Catholic Faith 3

2007-02-11T12:58:00.000-05:00

Augustine's handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love--the Enchiridion--is ostensibly written in response to the inquiry of one Laurentius. At first glance it's not exactly clear how Augustine's equation

Wisdom = Worship = Acts of Faith, Hope, and Love (see last post)

addresses Laurentius' hodge podge of questions:

"IV. The Questions Propounded by Laurentius"
1. What ought to be man's chief end in life.
2. What ought we chiefly to avoid in view of the various heresies.
3. To what extent is religion supported by reason.
4. What there is in reason that lends no support to faith when faith stands alone. [This is a very strangely worded question!]
5. What is the starting point and what is the goal of religion.
6. What is the sum of the whole body of doctrine.
7. What is the sure and proper foundation of the Catholic Faith.

I can just imagine Augustine getting this letter and saying "Oh, that's all!" We'll go into the details subsequently but I think it's worth a full post just to contemplate the bare fact that Augustine's Equation is intended to address all these questions. So if Augustine is correct in his approach, it seems that there is no aspect of the Catholic Faith which cannot be addressed through Faith, Hope, and Love. That fact alone is worthy of much reflection and practice.

Augustine's Handbook of Catholic Faith 2

2007-02-04T14:19:00.000-05:00

Augustine encodes the trajectory of his reasoning in the titles of his first three sections. Here they are.

I. The Author [Augustine referring to himself] Desires the Gift of True Wisdom for Laurentius

II. The Fear of God [piety, that which pertains to right worship of God] is Man's True Wisdom

III. God is to be Worshiped Through Faith, Hope, and Love

Wisdom = Worship = Acts of Faith, Hope, and Love

Modern readers, especially those who came out of a sojourn in the Evangelical world will find it odd that Augustine conceives of Worship in a way that does not make immediate reference to praise songs and such. This is probably a useful corrective. No doubt the worship of God will involve such things but they are derived not basic. They are derived first from concrete acts of Faith, Hope, and Love.

Want to worship God? It might be easier out of Church than in it because our neighbor (think Parable of the Good Samaritan) is not always (or even frequently?) there in the pew. Go, step out in faith and love someone in need by sharing with them the hope you have in God. Just remember these words as you do.

James 2:15-17 15 Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? 17In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

[First Reflection]

Thoughts on Liturgy

2007-01-31T15:45:00.000-05:00

My old friend and writer Christine Ansorge has a very nice meditation on the liturgy (she's currently protestant) on her excellent blog Weedy Garden here (you may need to click "Show original post". Here's the direct link. It was posted Jan 1.

Lewis on Reading Old Books

2007-01-31T13:47:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite short pieces by Lewis about the necessity of reading Old Books

LINK

Great article from Dr. Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

2007-01-30T10:14:00.000-05:00

Dr. Alveda King, Pastoral Associate, Priests for Life, and niece of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“A picture is worth a thousand words.”

Our learning experiences in life shape our understanding and our methods of communicating with and relating to others in our world. As a post-abortive mother, who has spent over 20 years as an educator, with many of those years as a teacher, I find it natural to consider learning styles when seeking more effective ways to share the pro-life message. Learning styles are an integral part of working to share the “culture of life” in every community. Because I am an African-American woman, I am especially interested in reaching the people of my communities.

It has been said that African-Americans have a particular learning style that causes them to be global learners in that they want to see the big picture and not necessarily all the small details. They also tend to be better writers than speakers because they excel in non-verbal communication. In addition, they tend to use approximations frequently and focus better on a person rather than an inanimate object (Wilson, 2004). One of the characteristics of our African-American culture is an emphasis on visual learning. We are particularly impacted by visual imagery.

For many years, I have been an outspoken advocate for the unborn child, because in a culture of abortion, the child is like a slave. The new civil rights movement of our time is the pro-life movement, and as I seek to preserve the dream of my uncle, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and of my father, Rev. A.D. King (Martin’s brother), I ask the question, “How can the dream survive if we murder the children?” I grew up seeing these two great men fight for the equal rights of their people.

But equality is not something you can see. What you can see are people. My uncle knew that the ugly reality of segregation had to be seen visually by the American public. He therefore organized events at which the eyes of the media could broadcast the way our people were treated when water hoses and dogs were unleashed on their peaceful marches. People responded to those images, not simply to abstract concepts of “segregation” and “equality.”

Likewise, people – and especially African Americans – respond to the disturbing images of aborted children. Sure, some people get angry when we show them. But everyone who fights injustice has to be ready to pay a price. My uncle did, and so did my Dad. So does everyone who has the courage to show the ugly reality of abortion. Don’t be afraid to do so. Many people are grateful. As a woman who has had two abortions, I am grateful that the truth is being shown, so that others can avoid this pain in the first place.

For more information visit www.priestsforlife.org

The Seaside in Winter

2007-01-13T13:26:00.000-05:00

I have been a part of this blog for over a year but have hesitated to post anything because I wanted my opening salvo to be something interesting, meaningful or in some other way special. I have finally encountered something that I can not help but want to pass on to others. I have recently finished reading Peter Kreeft's "The Sea Within - Waves and the Meaning of all Things". Please find a way to get you hands on this wonderful devotional reflection. It will reward and refresh your soul just as a day at the beach does your body.

C.S. Lewis on Creation and Evolution

2007-01-03T14:50:00.000-05:00

"For long centuries God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of Himself. He gave it hands whose thumb could be applied to each of the fingers, and jaws and teeth and throat capable of articulation, and a brain sufficiently complex to execute all the material motions whereby rational thought is incarnated. The creature may have existed for ages in this state before it became man: it may even have been clever enough to make things which modern archaeologist would accept as proof o fits humanity. But it was only an animal because all its physical and psychical processes were directed to purely material and natural ends. Then, in the fullness of time, God caused to descend upon this organism, both on its psychology and physiology, a new kind of consciousness which could say “I” and “me,” which could look upon itself as an object, which knew God, which could make judgements of truth, beauty, and goodness, and which was so far above time that it could perceive time flowing past. This new consciousness ruled an illuminated the whole organism, flooding every part of it with light, and was not, like ours, limited to a selection of the movements going on in one part of the organism, namely the brain. Man was then all consciousness."

C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain. Chapter 5 "The Fall of Man."

Works for me.

Augustine's Handbook of Catholic Faith 1

2006-12-31T14:09:00.000-05:00

As promised, here's my first installment as I blog my way through Saint Augustine's "Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love."

Prolegomena (words that come before):

OF VIRTUE IN GENERAL
We can understand the essence of a virtue if we think about them as dispositions of the soul. A disposition is a tendency to behave in a certain way. Having a disposition toward some behavior does not mean that it will always happen, but it can't just happen by chance and still be called a disposition. They are like good habits.

Faith, Hope, and Love are called the "Three Theological Virtues". This contrasts with the "Four Cardinal Virtues" of Courage, Moderation, Prudence, and Justice. They are called "cardinal" because the Latin word *cardines* means "hinges". Thus metaphorically the Cardinal Virtues are the virtues upon which all else pertaining to virtue hinges. This the Church has accepted for man's natural orientation. But man also has a supernatural orientation and thus the Three Theological Virtues are hinges upon which our divine life hinges. In fact, sometimes they are called the Divine Virtues.

They are called "theological" virtues not because of any direct connection to theological studies (though of course there *is* such a connection and Augustine treats it in detail), but rather because they requires special divine assistance to acquire, they are infused by God (theos). So that's the essence of a Divine Virtue: a disposition toward acts of Faith, Hope, and Love infused into the soul by God. Sometimes the term "Divine Virtue" refers to God's own virtues, but I'm going to use that term for the present subject frequently anyway. In the context there is no worry of confusion.

OF THE USE OF THE BOOK
The work is called "The Enchiridion." That's a transliteration of a Greek word. A transliteration is different from a translation. A transliteration is where the word is just transferred into a new language "whole". So even though the Greek alphabet has different letters than ours it has most of the same sounds. And the Greek word for "Enchiridion" is pronounced the same.

The word breaks down like this: En-chir-idon. The last part is just a suffix that tells you the grammar of the word (Greek is an "inflected" language, it uses changes in the word endings to tell you about the grammar of the word and what adjectives go with it). In this case it's a "diminutive" suffix which means "little". En = "in" and "chir" = hand, so a literal translation is "in the hand". It's what we now call a "handbook," a little quick-reference guide to have at hand. It's much nicer to call it a Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love rather than Enchiridion on Theological Virtue. The former is much more inviting, eh?

It also explains both the origin and the use of the book. The book is apparently written in response to a request by one Laurentius of Rome for a summary of the main teachings of the Church. So it's not mean to go into a great deal of nuance or detail. Rather, it is intended to lay out the basics in a quick and comprehensible manner. As such, being written by the most influential theologian there has ever been, it is sad that the work is not better known. I hope by blogging through it to contribute to the reversal of its neglect.

New Year's Resolution

2006-12-28T13:52:00.000-05:00

Last night we celebrated the third day of Christmas. The three French hens represent the Three Theological Virtues: Faith, Hope, and Love.

I made an early New Year's Resolution to use this space to finish blogging through Saint Augustine's Enchiridion thereon.

So I hope to get started this Sunday.

WWJD

2006-12-27T12:47:00.000-05:00

Matthew 9:36 (American Standard Version)

But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were distressed and scattered, as sheep not having a shepherd.

Exhibit A: http://www.juliascheeres.com/

The excerpt is heart-wrenching. And the Q&A doesn't help. Yes, this is from the world of Calvinism, but we have our examples as well.

Is it as wide-spread as Big Media would have us believe? No. Has it effected enough lives to be a multi-generational cultural disaster? Yes.

I don't care how many people are exaggerating, I do care about the people in my own life who are distressed by being "raised Catholic".

It is our solemn responsibility not to repeat the mistakes of the past. If John Paul the Great is right, then it is our responsibility to stand in solidarity with those in distress and to make penance for the sins of Catholics past.

ut unum sint

2006-12-01T21:04:00.000-05:00

In a compelling story entitled "Pope demonstrates diplomacy skills" in the Chicago Tribune today Tom Hundley accurately describes BXVI's mad people skills.

The bulk of the article is about the Holy Father's mending relations to global Islam (his praying with an Imam will no doubt enrage some of our "Tranditionalist" bretheren), but he was originally going there to seek unity with the Eastern Patriarch.

I thought this observation poignant.

"The divide between Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy is not about theology. The differences are coming from historical memories, and you can't overcome those by sitting down at a table and talking," Wauck said. "You have to build a different set of historical memories, and this has to be done over a long period of time."

It's not *intirely* true that it's not about theology, but I do think it's now less about theology than historical memory and I do think JPG could work miracles from beside the thrown of God in this regard.

(Full Story)

Related books by the Pontiff:

*Truth And Tolerance: Christian Belief And World Religions

*Many Religions, One Covenant: Israel, the Church, and the World

resquiescat in pacem

2006-11-22T21:44:00.000-05:00

Lewis died at 5:30 p.m. at The Kilns, one week before his 65th birthday on Friday, November 22, 1963; the same day on which President Kennedy was assassinated and Aldous Huxley died. Every year at this time, for my Thanksgiving treat, I read Peter Kreeft's _Between Heaven and Hell_.

Most of you will have it--it was the first Kreeft I ever read. If you don't, get it. It's a delightful mythical dialog between JFK--playing the role of modern humanist--Huxley--the "New Ager"--and Lewis. It's a sort of Areopagus scenario with Paul battling Epicureans on one side and Stoicism on the other. It's barely over 100 pages and super-easy reading. It's still my "go to" book for people outside the academy who want to read something on the reasonableness of Christianity.

A Brave New Britain?

2006-11-18T18:07:00.000-05:00

Respectable Baby Killing -- Building Mainstream Support for Euthanasiaby
Wesley J. Smith

The push to permit infanticide has entered the mainstream. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology (RCOG) has recommended that a debate be had about whether to permit “deliberate interventions to kill infants.” The recommendation, which was widely reported in the media, was in response to a query from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics concerning ethical issues pertaining to health care which prolongs the life of newborns. It was at the urging of the RCOG that euthanasia of infants was added to the topics that the council would consider. As reported by the London Times, the RCOG’s recommendation states: A very disabled child can mean a disabled family. If life-shortening and deliberate interventions to kill infants were available, they might have an impact on obstetric decision-making, even preventing some late term abortions, as some parents would be more confident about continuing a pregnancy and taking a risk on outcome. The article goes on to quote a number of British doctors and professors who support euthanasia. Consider carefully what has happened here. A prestigious medical association has seriously suggested that killing some babies because they are seriously ill or disabled might be ethically acceptable and, at the very least, is worthy of considered and respectable debate. It is about time that people start paying attention to this. Read the complete story.

A Difficult Pastoral Pickle Indeed

2006-11-14T10:10:00.000-05:00

The document also takes up the issue of baptizing the adopted children of gay couples, saying that while the matter "presents a pastoral concern the Church does not refuse the Sacrament of Baptism to these children" if there's reason to believe the children will be brought up Catholic.

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
11/14/2006 (link)

The Pope on the Limits of Science

2006-11-09T11:12:00.000-05:00

Benedict XVI addresses the members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on the occasion of their plenary assembly being held in Rome.
VATICAN CITY, NOV. 6, 2006 (Zenit.org)

As some of the papers presented in the last few days have emphasized, the scientific method itself, in its gathering of data and in the processing and use of those data in projections, has inherent limitations that necessarily restrict scientific predictability to specific contexts and approaches. Science cannot, therefore, presume to provide a complete, deterministic representation of our future and of the development of every phenomenon that it studies. Philosophy and theology might make an important contribution to this fundamentally epistemological question by, for example, helping the empirical sciences to recognize a difference between the mathematical inability to predict certain events and the validity of the principle of causality, or between scientific indeterminism or contingency (randomness) and causality on the philosophical level, or, more radically, between evolution as the origin of a succession in space and time, and creation as the ultimate origin of participated being in essential Being.At the same time, there is a higher level that necessarily transcends all scientific predictions, namely, the human world of freedom and history.

Whereas the physical cosmos can have its own spatial-temporal development, only humanity, strictly speaking, has a history, the history of its freedom. Freedom, like reason, is a precious part of God's image within us, and it can never be reduced to a deterministic analysis. Its transcendence vis-à-vis the material world must be acknowledged and respected, since it is a sign of our human dignity. Denying that transcendence in the name of a supposed absolute ability of the scientific method to predict and condition the human world would involve the loss of what is human in man, and, by failing to recognize his uniqueness and transcendence, could dangerously open the door to his exploitation.
-----------

In short:
*humans have free will and so their behavior cannot be--and will not ever be--perfectly predictible merely from observations of the natural order.
*That we cannot predict certain *natural* phenomena does not mean that they are not caused.
*That we evolved along a certain course does not explain why we did so. *That* we did and *why* we did are two separate questions. The natural sciences are capable of addressing the first but not the latter question.

For more on this see Stephen Barr's excellent pair of essays in First Things: The Design of Evolution and The Miracle of Evolution.

The Crisis in Ecclesiology

2006-11-09T08:42:00.000-05:00

I was discussing with a friend the nature of dissent and how hard it is to dissent correctly--future book project: _The Diffident Dissident: How to Disagree with the Church_--and I ended up expressing what I thought was perhaps at the very root of the crisis in catechesis.
-------
Again, my worry is that the biggest part of the problem is catechal: people have very little idea what—or more importantly why—the Church claims authority. From what I can tell working with religious ed with teens and with undergrads at the Newman Center is that the average Catholic’s idea is this: The Church is there to tell us to fight racism and other forms of discrimination, basically to love each other and be decent. They also tell us some theological stuff which is presumably true but so arcane that I’m not interested. However, they clearly overstep their boundaries when they invade my personal life, especially my sexual life. They are almost all—almost without exception—very old white men who have never been in a meaningful relationship with a woman—but who are probably secretly gay—who are so completely out of touch with the modern world that there is no reason to listen to them about such matters. In my heart I think probably a lot of the theology is outdated as well, but as long as I’m not teaching that we should just keep out of each others way.
-----

I think that's an accurate description of a *lot* of people's attitude toward the Church and it is not without some reason that they have that attitude. It's hard *not* to have that attitude if you are not very historically and philosophically minded. When one is primarily concerned with the historical and philosophical aspects of the Faith one's mind is constantly drawn away from the concrete present moment either into abstractions or the "glory days". Now please keep in mind *I* am such a person, so *I* often overlook the concrete present. But when I do, it is not always a pretty sight. Since most traditional Catholics are very historically and philosophically minded, they tend to under represent to their consciousness the concrete present and all its particular scandal.

It is *right* to put present concerns in proper historical and philosophical context. And when you do, the picture which emerges is a people struggling to follow God often wandering far from the path but always called back to it and full of Saints and sinners along the way. But we can't blame people for being distracted by the bad stuff in front of them or for tending to believe a story our essentially anti-Catholic culture has been telling them all of their lives. Someone doesn't have to be stupid or evil to accept it. People claiming to be from the Church--weeds among the flowers--have given them plenty of reason to believe it.

Key words: dissent, authority, cateches

Meet Me in Saint Louis

2006-11-08T15:00:00.000-05:00

Google has an interesting service which allows you to see the search stats on high-volume search strings.

Being a growing Catholic I first searched for "Pope". Not too surprising was that Ireland was in the lead. Saint Louis was 3rd. Saint Louis was also #3 in "Catholic" and #1 in "catechism" and #4 on "priests" and #5 on "Mary" and #7 on "Saint" (most here were from Europe). It did not, however, show up on "relic," (unless restricted to US) "angel," or "apparition" (all France).

They were also #10 on "Bible" and #3 on "God" as well as "Jesus".

Dublin and Pittsburgh were the only two cities I noticed showing up a lot.

You are free to draw your own conclusions, but somehow I think this shows that Saint Louis is just right!

Categorical Defeat for Pro-Lifers

2006-11-08T11:48:00.000-05:00

Today's Headlines from Lifenews.com
• Abortion Advocates Capture House, Appear to Have Senate Too
• Missouri Voters Appear to Have Approved Human Cloning Measure
• California Voters Reject Parental Notification on Abortion Second Time
• South Dakota Voters Defeat Statewide Abortion Ban on Tuesday
• Oregon Voters Opposed Parental Notification on Abortion Measure

I'll be pondering this over the next couple of days, but I suspect that moral failure among Republicans was the main cause.

ELECTIONS TODAY

2006-11-07T09:57:00.000-05:00

Electioneering? Maybe.

Serious possibility? Definately

Bottom Line: There may be one more supreme court justice to nominate in the Bush administration which will need to be confirmed.

Possible Supreme Court Retirement Shakes Up Election Last Minute
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Speculation that a pro-abortion member of the Supreme Court may be planning to step down soon is providing a last-minute shake up in a hotly contested Congressional election that is expected to go down to the wire. The head of a judicial watchdog group says political observers believe Justice John Paul Stevens may retire. Stevens, an 86 year-old judge appointed in 1975, has been battling health problems and several reports have appeared in recent days that his health has taken a turn for the worse. Stevens is a member of the five justice bloc of judges on the high court who back legalized abortion and his retirement could potentially pave the way for the confirmation of a justice who could be the deciding vote in overturning Roe v. Wade. However, should Democrats capture control of the Senate tomorrow, President Bush would likely have a tough time securing the nomination of a justice would strictly interpret the Constitution and not read a so-called right to abortion into it. Sean Rushton, the executive director of the Committee for Justice, writes about the Stevens retirement possibility in a national editorial yesterday. "It points out what could be a once-in-a-lifetime chance for the 20-year movement to recast the court with a constitutionalist majority," Rushton said. Rushton urged voters to consider the potential for a Stevens retirement when they vote and to keep control of Congress in pro-life hands. Read the complete story.

The News You Won't Hear

2006-11-05T09:19:00.000-05:00

The Big Stem Cell Research Breakthrough The Media Won't Discloseby
Wesley J. Smith

Did you see the size of those headlines? "Stem Cells Used to Create Artificial Liver," the New York Times screamed on its front page. "Breakthrough! Stem Cells to One Day Create Organ for Liver Transplant," was how the Washington Post put it. "Stem Cell Breakthrough Demonstrates Viability of New Science," yelled the Los Angeles Times. "Stem Cell Hope for People with Liver Disease," agreed USA Today. The story was so big that Katie Couric narrated a special report, expressing her profound gratitude for the hope these dedicated stem-cell scientists had brought to suffering humanity.

What's that? You didn't see those headlines? You say you somehow missed the story? Well, don't blame yourself. You are not out of touch. The above headlines never appeared, the stories have not been written. Don't get me wrong: The breakthrough described in the fictional headlines is real. British scientists have created an artificial liver--from scratch--using stem cells. The research does offer tremendous hope for the alleviation of human suffering. But you probably didn't hear about this amazing achievement because the stem cells the scientists used to build a human liver did not come from embryos: They came from umbilical cord blood.
Read the complete story.

UPDATE: I verified this on Google News and the search reveal 21 stories. Of those, not a *single* one was a US news agency. It was reported in Australia, the UK, and India, and it was reported by three pro-life research groups. If this story is going to get out, it’s going to have to be via email and the blogosphere.

MO Update

2006-11-05T08:55:00.000-05:00

Missouri Amendment 2 is a Fraud, It Promotes Human Cloning
by Cathy Ruse
Constitutional Amendment 2 is a fraud. It purports to ban human cloning, but the fine print actually creates a constitutional right to human cloning. It purports to ban the purchase and sale of human eggs, but the fine print actually gives a constitutional safe haven to human egg trafficking. It purports to keep its hands out of taxpayers' pockets, but the fine print actually puts biotech special interests above the law and gives them constitutional arguments for public funding. The first big deception involves human cloning. Page one appears to ban human cloning, but deep in this 2,000-word amendment is a provision giving biotech firms the constitutional right to conduct "somatic cell nuclear transfer." That's the scientific term for cloning, the same method used to clone Dolly the sheep. But don't take our word for it. The National Institutes of Health says, "somatic cell nuclear transfer is the scientific term for cloning." And the Food and Drug Administration explains how a Scottish scientist "successfully used a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) to create a clone of a sheep." Read the complete story.

Truth about Two

2006-11-03T09:15:00.000-05:00

In this regard please see Frank's comments on the post below.

Missouri's Amendment 2 Endorses Human Cloning Science Experts Say
Jefferson City, MO (LifeNews.com) -- Over two dozen experts in science, medicine, law and ethics have released a joint open letter saying that Missouri's Amendment 2 endorses human cloning, despite claims from its supporters to the contrary. They say Missouri voters are being misled into thinking that it actually prohibits human cloning when the opposite is true. "Amendment 2 creates a constitutional right for researchers to engage in human cloning. Efforts to deny this are misleading and deceptive," they write. "As individuals who have studied this issue in depth, we hold that it clearly authorizes and promotes human cloning." In their letter, the experts conclude, "the people of Missouri should know what they are actually voting on." The signers include experts in embryology, microbiology and maternal/fetal medicine, as well as past and present members of the President's Council on Bioethics and several founding members of Do No Harm: the Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics. Read the complete story.