Catholic Worship

One sometimes hears from Protestants, especially the more "charismatic" variety, that Catholics don't really worship God, because the Mass is too somber.  Worship, they continue, is jubilent and "alive."  Well, other than requiem Masses, all the parishioners I've seen have been alive.  And if language be our guide, Catholics are the ones appropriately worshiping.

Below, I paste the content of an email on this subject.

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As I was walking up here, I recalled (non-factive) learning that "worship" was short for "WORTHship".  The OED did not fully verify this, but the root word is "α. ME worþ".  That last letter is an anglo-saxon character called the "thorn" and makes the "th" sound, so the root is "worth."

Here is the full def:

a. trans. To honour or revere as a supernatural being or power, or as a holy thing; to regard or approach with veneration; to adore with appropriate acts, rites, or ceremonies.

b. transf. To regard with extreme respect or devotion; to ‘adore’.

I think "to honor" is "to give honor to" which is basically appropriate value for.

And not that the acts, rites, and ceremonies are an outflow, as I indicated.

The entry for "adore" mostly refers to "to venerate" and "to reverence" but this one is nice.

To revere or honour very highly; to regard with the utmost respect and affection; to love deeply. 

So, as per Catholic prediction, reverence seems to be the root notion.  Here's the entry for "to reverence"

a. To greet (a person) with deep respect; to pay respect to (a person) by bowing, kneeling, etc.; to make obeisance to

 b. To treat (a person) with respect, deference, or honour

To regard or treat with deep respect; to hold in high esteem as being of an exalted or superior kind.

And of course the more modern "revere" has essentially the same meaning.

To regard or treat with deep respect; to hold in high esteem as being of an exalted or superior kind.

And, finally, the more ecclesiastical term: "to venerate"

 1. trans. To regard with feelings of respect and reverence; to look upon as something exalted, hallowed, or sacred; to reverence or revere.

I think this all comes together to support my account of valuation followed by appropriate feelings and actions.

Something good on "Nothing"

Reply to Stephen Hawking

Ratzinger was Right #327

"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

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

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

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.

Catholic Sex Abuse: Blunt Q & A

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

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"

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

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

Everybody just calm down now.

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

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

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

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

With special consideration to Darwinian theory.

Saint Darwin?

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.