Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog

"This book is the fulfilment of my vow"

"This book is the fulfilment of my vow" | Franz Werfel | The preface to The Song of Bernadette

In the last days of June 1940, in flight from our mortal enemies after the collapse of France, we reached the city of Lourdes. The two of us, my wife and I, had hoped to be able to elude them in time to cross the Spanish frontier to Portugal. But since the consuls unanimously refused the requisite visas, we had no alternative but to flee back with great difficulty to the interior of France on the very night on which the National Socialist troops occupied the border town of Hendaye. The Pyrenean départements had turned into a phantasmagoria--a very   camp of chaos.

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Ratzinger on ecumenism: a reading list

A while back I was asked by an Orthodox priest if I could provide him some references for Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's writings about ecumenism. In light of the Holy Father's current trip to Turkey, here is the list I came up with. It is undoubtedly incomplete, but may be helpful for those interested in reading more in this area:

1). Principles of Catholic Theology (Ignatius, 1987. Orig. German, 1982) contains a major section (pages 193-314) on ecumenism, including:

    I. General Orientation with Regard to the Ecumenical Dispute about the Formal Principle of Faith. A large part of this directly addresses Catholic-Orthodox relations. This was originally a lecture delivered in 1976.
    II. The Key Question in the Catholic-Protestant Dispute: Tradition and Successio Apostolica
    III. Catholicity as the Formal Structure of Christianity

2). The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood (Ignatius , 1993. Orig. German edition, 1960). This is an early synthesis of Ratzinger's ecumenical thought, with a strong emphasis on biblical exegesis.

3). Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today (Ignatius, 1996. Orig. German, 1991). Ratzinger's ecclesiological vision, with a major section on the "Primacy of Peter" and Petrine office.

4). Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion (Ignatius, 2005. Orig. German, 2002). A lot of great material on ecumenism here. Includes an exchange of letters between Metropolitan Damaskinos and Ratzinger (pp 217-241), as well as "On the Ecumenical Situation" (pp 253-269). Recommended!

Two books that address inter-religious dialogue and relationships:

1). Many Religions, One Covenant: Israel, the Church, and the World (Ignatius, 1999. Orig. German, 1998). Focus on Judaism and shared heritage.

2). Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions (Ignatius, 2004. Orig. German, 2003). A nuanced critique of relativism, religious indifferentism, and pluralism.

The Homily by His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew...

...given today, is available on the www.patriarchate.org website. The site contains information about breaking news, official statements, and much more, including a bio of Pope Benedict XVI.

Mary in the Movies

Christianity Today has a piece titled "Mary Goes to the Movies," about various cinematic portrayals of the Blessed Mother:

Making a movie about Jesus is difficult enough. Anyone who would dramatize the life of Christ must strike a fine balance between his full humanity and his full divinity, and many filmmakers have erred on one side or the other. But at least the Scriptures give us ample data to work with, and at least there is broad agreement across church boundaries that Jesus was, and is, both divine and human.

But making a movie about Mary poses even thornier challenges. The Bible says little about her life, so dramatists who focus on her life—such as the writer and director of The Nativity Story, which opens Friday, Dec. 1—must invent whole aspects of her story from scratch. Even more daunting, for filmmakers who want to reach as broad an audience as possible, is the fact that different churches have strongly different views on Mary.

Was she as fallible as any other human being? Or was she free from the stain of sin? Did she bear any other children? Or did she remain a virgin throughout her life? Should Jesus ever be shown correcting her, possibly even offending her? Or, as the mother of Jesus, should she offer him any guidance and possibly correct him?

The earliest Bible movies didn't have to wrestle with these questions so much, partly because the silent era relied heavily on traditional religious iconography—which is to say, Catholic iconography—for its visuals.

Although the article is respectful of the Catholic perspective and is not trying to make any theological points, it's worth noting that the series of questions are a bit misleading. For instance, this contrast — "Was she as fallible as any other human being? Or was she free from the stain of sin?" — skews the Catholic (and Orthodox) teaching about Mary, which is that Mary could have sinned, but she did not. Mary was conceived free of original sin (the Immaculate Conception), and by God's grace and her free will, remained free of personal sin throughout her life on earth. The Catechism, for instance, states:

Mary benefited first of all and uniquely from Christ's victory over sin: she was preserved from all stain of original sin and by a special grace of God committed no sin of any kind during her whole earthly life. (CCC 411; cf. CCC 493-94; 503

The next set of questions — "Did she bear any other children? Or did she remain a virgin throughout her life?" — refers, of course, to biological children, but from a Catholic (and, again, Orthodox) perspective, overlooks the spiritual motherhood of Mary, which is rooted in her virginity and her fiat. This is also beautifully articulated in the Catechism:

By his virginal conception, Jesus, the New Adam, ushers in the new birth of children adopted in the Holy Spirit through faith. "How can this be?" Participation in the divine life arises "not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God". The acceptance of this life is virginal because it is entirely the Spirit's gift to man. The spousal character of the human vocation in relation to God is fulfilled perfectly in Mary's virginal motherhood. (CCC 505; cf. CCC 2675).

Finally — "Should Jesus ever be shown correcting her, possibly even offending her? Or, as the mother of Jesus, should she offer him any guidance and possibly correct him?" Again, both are possible (and, I think, quite reasonable) and would not be contrary to a proper understanding of Mary and her Son. The temptation is to think that because Jesus is God and is sinless, that He came into the world without need of parenting, correction, and guidance. But, of course, Jesus was human, He did indeed grow and mature (cf. Lk 2:40; Heb 3:17-18; 4:14-5:3), which would have involved parental correction, something that can certainly happen outside of the context of a sinful action.

None of this to say that portraying Mary in a movie is easy; far from it. But it would be erroneous to think that because Mary and Jesus were sinless, they are somehow not fully human as we are. On the contrary, because they are free from sin, they are fully human, as we are called to be.  As Pope John Paul II liked to emphasize we are called to become who we are: sons of the Father by grace, through the work and person of Jesus Christ, and by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit:

The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature":  "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God." (CCC 460).

Finally, although not a fictional narrative, Steve Ray's "Mary, the Mother of God" video, part of the "Footprints of God" series, provides a wealth of material about Mary, all of it filmed in and around the Holy Land. And I'll never tire of recommending Cardinal Ratzinger's short but indispensable book about Mary, Daughter Zion.

TIME vs. Newsweek

The two large news magazines have taken very different approaches to covering Benedict XVI's trip to Turkey. Terry Mattingly (who is Orthodox) discusses over at GetReligion.org:

Wow. Reader Janette Kok dropped us a note noting the radical difference taken in the Time’s article on the papal trip to Turkey, in comparison to that in Newsweek, which, in fairness, was written by a ringer — Catholic scholar George Weigel.

The Newsweek piece is about the important ecumenical trip the pope planned long ago that has been changed, radically, by the tempest over his remarks about Christianity, Islam and human reason.

The Time piece by Jeff Israely focuses totally on Islam and politics, with little or no content on the original papal goal of pushing for human rights and religious liberty in Turkey (with a special emphasis on the plight of Orthodox Christians). Everything starts with the headline, which is “The Pope Tones Down His Act in Turkey — Long known for his rigid thinking, Benedict XVI shows new flexibility in trying to mend fences in the wake of his controversial speech about Islam.”

No, I didn’t make that up. Read the article for yourself.

Read the entire post.

B16 prays inside "Blue Mosque"

From the Associated Press:

Pope Benedict XVI prayed alongside an Islamic cleric in Turkey's most famous mosque Thursday in a dramatic gesture of outreach to Muslims after outrage from the pontiff's remarks linking violence and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.

The pope bowed his head and closed his eyes for nearly a minute inside the Blue Mosque after Mustafa Cagrici, the head cleric of Istanbul, said: "Now I'm going to pray."

As the pope left the famous 17th century mosque, the pope turned to Cagrici and thanked him "for this moment of prayer," the Italian news agency ANSA reported.

On a related note, I was mildly amused by this head and subhead in today's Chicago Tribune (registration required):

Pope reaches out to Orthodox flock
But Al Qaeda message demonstrates tensions over his trip to Turkey

I suppose that any time a particular group (Al Qaeda) makes it clear in numerous ways (bombing, beheading, killing innocent people, statements) that they exist for the sole purpose of killing non-Muslims and destroying the West, there is bound to be a bit of tension.  The subhead is a small matter, of course, but the "But..." suggests that some folks are having difficulty with the fact that as as long as there are radical Muslims seeking to kill us, there will be tension—no matter what we do.

B16, the Blessed Mother, and Mass at Ephesus

Here is the homily given today by our Holy Father while saying Mass at Ephesus. It is a beautiful reflection on Mary, the Mother of God:

Mary’s motherhood, which began with her fiat in Nazareth, is fulfilled at the foot of the Cross. Although it is true – as Saint Anselm says – that “from the moment of her fiat Mary began to carry all of us in her womb”, the maternal vocation and mission of the Virgin towards those who believe in Christ actually began when Jesus said to her: “Woman, behold your son!” (Jn 19:26). Looking down from the Cross at his Mother and the beloved disciple by her side, the dying Christ recognized the firstfruits of the family which he had come to form in the world, the beginning of the Church and the new humanity. For this reason, he addressed Mary as “Woman”, not as “Mother”, the term which he was to use in entrusting her to his disciple: “Behold your Mother!” (Jn 19:27). The Son of God thus fulfilled his mission: born of the Virgin in order to share our human condition in everything but sin, at his return to the Father he left behind in the world the sacrament of the unity of the human race (cf. Lumen Gentium, 1): the family “brought into unity from the unity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Saint Cyprian, De Orat. Dom., 23: PL 4, 536), at whose heart is this new bond between the Mother and the disciple. Mary’s divine motherhood and her ecclesial motherhood are thus inseparably united.

Do you live in or near Williamstown, MA?

If so, do you know of a good parish and/or good priest in that area? I've been in correspondence with an Evangelical Protestant, a professor at Williams College, who is seriously considering becoming Catholic and who like to meet with a Catholic priest. If you have any ideas or info, please drop me a note or leave a comment. Thanks!

B16: Defender of Freedom

Sandra Magister reports on Benedict XVI's first day in Turkey:

On his first day in Turkey, Benedict XVI did not again quote sura 2:256 of the Qur’an, which he had taken as the launching point for his lecture in Regensburg: “There is no compulsion in religion.”

But it was as if he had referred to it again. In speaking in Ankara, first to the “Diyanet” for religious affairs, and then to the diplomatic corps, pope Joseph Ratzinger placed the question of freedom at the center of both addresses.

In the first of the two addresses, Benedict XVI had before him, among others, the head of religious affairs in Turkey, Ali Bardakoglu, who is one of the harshest critics of his lecture in Regensburg, but also the grand mufti of Istanbul, Mustafa Cagrici, who was one of the signatories of the open letter commenting upon that same lecture, written in mid-October by 38 illustrious Muslims from various countries, and very respectful toward the pope and his reasoning.

In speaking to them, Benedict XVI urged “an authentic respect for the responsible choices that each person makes, especially those pertaining to fundamental values and to personal religious convictions.”

The Vatican Radio has more news, as well as transcripts of the Holy Father's speeches.

CNS reports on how smoothly and safely the trip has gone so far:

The important thing, the Vatican spokesman said, was that his Turkish audience responded positively to the pope's argument that religions need to inspire modern cultures with values, reflecting a harmony between reason and faith.

Other Vatican officials beamed with satisfaction.

"We felt strongly how the Turkish government did everything to warm up the atmosphere. This was a very positive day, especially because the meeting with (Bardakoglu) was very cordial," said retired French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, who accompanied the pope as a kind of "wise man" of Vatican diplomacy.

Added Cardinal Walter Kasper: "The dialogues were very positive, and it was a day that expressed peace and reconciliation."

MonstersandCritics.com has pictures (see upper right hand section of the page) of the trip so far.

Meanwhile, the AP reports that "Al-Qaida denounces pope visit to Turkey." Surprise, surprise!

Michael O'Brien: "Are Christians Intolerant?"

Are Christians Intolerant? | Michael O'Brien | An excerpt from A Landscape with Dragons: The Battle for Your Child's Mind

Christmas is approaching as I write the final passages of this book. The stores are full of the very merchandise that these lines have examined. The malls are packed with shoppers. They are, like me, trying to beat the Christmas rush or tap into the pre-Christmas sales, or maybe just get into the spirit of things early. You may have noticed that life in the twentieth century is somewhat tense, and who can be blamed for rushing the season of peace just a little. There's a holiday feeling in the air: the potted pines and the shop windows are all decked out; the robot Santas and the synthetic jingle on the loudspeakers are jolly in about equal portions. As is usual at this time of year, people are more patient with one another, will allow complete strangers to enter elevators before them, will overlook the irritating behavior of the occasional aggressive bargain hunter, and will smile more easily at mothers with small, noisy children. It is the season of tolerance.

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Student association seeks to silence pro-life students

If you are a pro-life student at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, you might soon find it more difficult to express your point of view. From LifeSite.com:

A motion debated at the November 21 session of the Carleton University Students' Association (CUSA) council meeting would prohibit any group opposed to abortion from attaining club status at the University.  While aimed at a pro-life group of students seeking club status on campus, the proposed policy may ban Catholic, Evangelical, Jewish and Muslim clubs as well.

On November 21, Katy McIntyre Vice President of CUSA Student Services, proposed a "Motion to Amend Discrimination on Campus Policy" which would bar from club status all groups opposed to abortion.  The motion stated:

1) CUSA and CUSA Inc. respect and affirm a woman's right to choose.
2) No CUSA resources, space, recognition or funding be allocated for anti-choice purposes.

The summary of the motion argues that pro-life groups are "anti-choice", and "seek to remove choice by making abortion illegal and it would be impossible to make abortion illegal without violating the Canadian Constitution, by removing a woman's right to life, liberty, and security of the person".

I'm not very familiar with the Canadian Constution (yes, shame on me!), but it seems rather obvious that the CUSA is doing its best imitation of Canadian government, which has a  tendency to shove politically-correct ideas and beliefs down the throats of the Canadian people. For example, note how CUSA relies on psycho-babble to pursue its agenda:

It [the motion] also states that pro-life groups "compromise the personal safety and threaten the self esteem of women who may contemplate abortion or have chosen to have an abortion".

In the battle between a woman's self-esteem and a baby's life, esteem must prevail because, well, we say so. Period. So much for a fair and civilized exchange of ideas. But those who have followed events in Europe and Canada (and, increasingly, in the U.S.) cannot be surprised. Novelist Michael O'Brien (IgnatiusInsight.com author page), who has lived in Ottawa Ontario, Canada, for many years, has written and spoken quite a bit about this form of "soft totalitarianism":

• "Thought Crime Becomes a Reality in Canada" | An article by Michael from August 2004 about a new Canadian federal hate crimes law that will include speech against sexual orientation.

• Two-part interview with Michael | August 2004. Michael talks with IgnatiusInsight.com about his novel, A Cry of Stone, the work of the novelist, and the role of the arts in the Catholic Church and in the world. Read part one of the interview here and part two here.

Prayer for the Pope...

...during his apostolic trip to Turkey, courtesy of the Knights of Columbus.

Were the Crusades Anti-Semitic?

Were the Crusades Anti-Semitic? | Vince Ryan | IgnatiusInsight.com

Popular historical works are frequent recipients of academic sniping and snootiness. Envious of the broad readership of these works, certain professional historians will usually dismiss these books outright--and often rightfully so, for these histories are regularly riddled with errors. An even bigger problem, however, is the widespread effect that these popular narratives have on the historical consciousness of the reading public.

One popular error is the claim that the Jewish massacres during the Crusades foreshadowed the Nazi Holocaust. Terry Jones and Alan Ereira, the duo behind a widely viewed and wildly inaccurate A&E Crusades documentary, hold that the Jewish pogroms witnessed the systematic persecution and elimination of the Hebrew minority, much like the Holocaust of the twentieth century. Arno Mayer makes explicit the connection hinted at by Jones and Ereira: "There is no denying the striking homologies between the slaughter of the Jews accompanying the original crusades and the extermination of the Jews attendant on Operation Barbarossa."

In his controversial study, Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews, James Carroll concurs with such assessments, describing these attacks as "Europe's rehearsal for the extermination of Jews that would not conform." However, the Carroll interpretation adds a new twist, for the author sees the Crusades as inherently anti-Semitic. The attacks upon the Jews were a natural outgrowth of the new movement.

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Is "Bishop" Schori trying to destroy Episcopalianism?

For those who are fascinated by trainwrecks, political correctness, and grand, heretical nonsense, check out Jordan Hylden's recent post over at First Things. Hylden, a self-described "conservative Episcopalian," laments how matters have gone from bad (squishy and soaked) to worse (waterlogged and sinking) under the rule of Katherine Jefferts Schori, who has graduate degrees in oceanography (from Oregon State, just up the road from me) and isn't afraid to dive into controversy:

No one thought it possible, but there is a wave of nostalgia sweeping through the ranks of conservative Episcopalians for their old presiding bishop, Frank Griswold. Of course, he may well have been heretical, but no one could really tell for sure. His statements were a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a bureaucracy, raising what commonly is known as “Episco-babble” to something of an art form. By and large, we conservatives could confidently ignore what he said, resting assured that no one understood him anyway.

But those days, alas, are now gone. Our new presiding bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schori, is by comparison a model of clarity, and within the span of a month has managed to offend a rather astonishing range of people, including Catholics, Mormons, individuals without a graduate degree, and mothers with children. Lord Carey, former archbishop of Canterbury, has said that conservatives ought to give her a chance, which is of course the charitable thing to do. But for those less inclined to charity, there is good reason to believe she intends nothing less than to run conservatives out of the church, finalize the split between the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, and set up an international communion of liberal Anglicanism as a rival to Canterbury. In short, from her recent actions and public statements, it is reasonable to infer that her term is likely to tear the Episcopal Church in two—and, what’s more, that that is precisely what she intends.

Read the entire post.

Weigel on B16 and "A Question of Freedom"

George Weigel has a piece in Newsweek about the Pope's trip to Turkey:

Rome and Constantinople formally parted ways via mutual excommunications in 1054, after centuries of controversy in which geography and language played perhaps as large a role as controverted questions of theology and liturgical practice. However we understand the reasons for the split between Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy, those mutual excommunications opened up a religious and psychological fault line that would have profound historical consequences throughout the second millennium of Christian history. Ever since the historic 1964 meeting in Jerusalem between Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras, Catholic theologians and Orthodox scholars have worked to close the breach formalized almost a thousand years ago so that the church could once again "breathe with both lungs," as the late Pope John Paul II liked to put it. So when Pope Benedict XVI, successor of the apostle Peter, goes to Istanbul on Nov. 28 to meet Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, successor of the apostle Andrew, the pontiff's primary concerns will be ecumenical: how might he and Bartholomew (who did some of his doctoral work in Rome) advance the dialogue between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, so that Peter and Andrew and the churches they embody might, one day, find themselves again in full communion with each other?

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The Pope's itinerary in Turkey

ZENIT has published the missal that the Holy Father will folllow in his apostolic trip to Turkey. It was prepared by Archbishop Piero Marini, who is master of the liturgical celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff. The introduction:

1. The Significance of the Apostolic Journey

In the footsteps of his predecessors Paul VI and John Paul II, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI has chosen to honor the land of Turkey with one of the first Apostolic Journeys of his Pontificate. Turkey is spread over a vast region which, not without reason, has been called "the Holy Land of the Church". It was there that the Christian community, particularly in the great centers of Antioch and Ephesus, became conscious of her identity and consolidated her growth. There the Church opened out to the ancient world in a process of inculturation and adaptation which made her truly "catholic", open to all cultural expressions. Furthermore, this land was the starting-point for the first evangelization of both the Far East and the Slav peoples.

It was not by chance that most of the writings that make up the New Testament originated in this land or were addressed to its Christian communities. Two of those biblical authors, Paul of Tarsus and Luke of Antioch, are among the first witnesses to a Church that in the course of the centuries saw a rich flowering of outstanding figures who left their mark on the whole of Christianity. We need but recall the Cappadocian Fathers, and those of Antioch and the Syria, to say nothing of the ranks of martyrs and ascetics whom even today the liturgy offers us as models of Christian life.

The journey of the Bishop of Rome to Turkey takes place between two significant dates that recall those illustrious witnesses of the faith: the seventeenth centenary of the birth of Ephrem the Syrian (306) and the eighteenth centenary of the death of John Chrysostom (407).

Both are splendid rays of that "light from the East" which the Holy Father John Paul II, in his Apostolic Letter "Orientale Lumen" (1994), wished to reaffirm, so that the universal Church would treasure the rich witness, wisdom and spirituality of the Christian East and would look back with nostalgia to the first Christian millennium, when the Church lived in unity.

In a pluralistic age like our own, the manifold riches of the various religious traditions, past and present, found in the land of Turkey bear witness to the fact that pluralism in liturgical and spiritual expressions, and unity of faith in Christ the Lord, can be combined harmoniously. The Holy Father has rightly spoken of dialogue as a "polyphony of cultures".

This principle is true for the various Christian confessions, but it is also applicable to the dialogue between Christians and the followers of Islam. Shadows from the past cannot obscure the light radiating from the daily "dialogue of life", the "dialogue of charity" and the "dialogue of religious experiences" which has marked relations here between Christians and Muslims.

The journey of Pope Benedict XVI to Turkey is a part of this history, and must be understood in the light of that history. It is a pastoral journey, an ecumenical journey and a journey of dialogue with the Islamic world.

Read the entire missal.

Benedict and Turkey

John O'Sullivan has an op-ed in the New York Post about B16's upcoming trip to Turkey. After providing some religious and political context, he writes:

But the underlying question in the pope's mind will be the character of the Islam that Turkey would bring into Europe. Which brings us to John Paul's third objective: establishing a warm fraternal relationship with Islam.

Benedict can only achieve that if the great majority of Muslims and Muslim religious authorities demonstrate by word and deed that their religion is one of peace and reason. This was the meaning and intention of the pope's great speech at the University of Regensburg. There, he asked Muslims to abandon any interpretation of jihad as a legitimate war against other religions and to re-examine their view of the proper relationship between God and Reason.

Christians believe that God is Reason and cannot act against His nature in that regard, any more than he can act in contradiction to Love. Given that the Christian God appeals to reason, He rejects forced conversions, holy wars and the murder of apostates.

That understanding has not always marked the history of Christianity, but it describes the Church of today - and as such it provides non-Christians with reassurance and safety.

Benedict was inviting Muslims to consider whether their own faith might not benefit from a re-examination of the relationship between God and Reason. For non-Muslims would certainly be reassured by such a theological development. His words were misunderstood as hostile - and evoked a hostile reaction.

In visiting the secular state of Turkey, Benedict is visiting the Muslim nation where such a message has the best hope of being understood and responded to. If it is rejected amid expressions of hatred, that too will be a sign - a sign that a rapprochement between Islam and Christianity will be a long, hard and winding road. As we are often reminded, however, the longest journey begins with a single step.

Read the entire piece.

Fr. Richard Hogan on NFP

The National Catholic Register has an interview with Fr. Paul Richard Hogan, co-author, with Fr. John M. LeVoir, of Covenant of Love: Pope John Paul II on Sexuality, Marriage, and Family in the Modern World (Ignatius Press). An excerpt:

How did you first become interested in the theology of the body?

I had always been convinced that the Church was right in her teaching against artificial contraception. But I was looking for a pastoral way to help married couples find their families in some way.

Pope John Paul II was elected in 1978, my second year in seminary, and shortly after that he began giving his Wednesday audiences on the book of Genesis — what we now refer to as the theology of the body. I had read his writings and talks before, and they initially shocked me because it sounded a little like what I was hearing at the seminary, which was not always in tune with the Church. So, I knew I was missing something. Then, when I began hearing the theology of the body, I figured out what he was doing, and I’ve been fascinated by it ever since.

Could you explain what you found?

St. Augustine gave us a method to understand God based on Plato. St. Thomas gave us a second way based on Aristotle. But neither one fits our modern culture because we are subjective, inductive and experiential. Pope John Paul II gave us a new and third way that is subjective, inductive and experiential. Yet it is also solid. The entire project [of theology of the body] was grounded in the natural law, which is based on the human person. This is what is called personalism. It made the Church’s teaching on sexuality more palatable. He didn’t change anything; rather, he gave us a new way of saying the same truth.

Read the entire interview.

The Pope at the Gregorian

What is the Proper Object of Theology? The Pope at the Gregorian | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | November 27, 2006        

"The immediate object of the different branches of theological knowledge is God himself, revealed in Jesus Christ, God with a human fact." -- Benedict XVI, Address Gregorian University, Rome, November 3, 2006

"The dominant practice of Harvard now is choice. Students should be able to choose the courses they want to take. The practice applies also to professors, who are permitted to choose the courses they want to teach. I say this is the 'practice,' not the principle, because a principle would say why choice is most important and what goal is to be sought by it. Our postmodern professors, however, do not care for principles." -- Harvey Mansfield, "Have It Your Way," The Wall Street Journal, November 16, 2006.

I.

The Holy Father visited the Gregorian University on November 3. I first saw the full text of his Address published on Zenit on November 20. Also, it was in L'Osservatore Romano (English, November 15), which I received on November 21. It so happens that, on the same date, I came across the essay of Harvey Mansfield at Harvard about proposed changes of curriculum there to include, of all things, the study of "America and religion"! One might wonder what was previously being studied at Harvard if it did not include "America and religion," just as one might wonder what was being studied at the Gregorian if it did not include the knowledge of "God himself, revealed in Jesus Christ, God with a human face."

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Ignatius Press and Dr. Peter Kreeft present:

"The Battle of the Brains!"