Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog

Are Protestants Heretics?

Father Edward Oakes poses that question at the First Things weblog:

My lucubrations for today’s webposting would like to argue just this one single point: Doctrinal clarity is lost when Catholics call Protestant heretics. To be sure, that habit of unthinkingly hurling accusations of heresy at Protestants pretty much died out after the Second Vatican Council, when talk of “separated brethren” became all the rage. But a random spot-check of some Catholic blogsites of a conservative bent–where heresy is often used as the term of choice when these bloggers are in their Colonel Blimp harumphing mood–tells me it’s time for some clarity here. Which prompts the following reflections.

For the rest of the story, go here: http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=617.

Benedict on Aquinas: "Faith Implies Reason"

Benedict on Aquinas: "Faith Implies Reason" | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | February 1, 2007        

"According to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, human reason, to say it as such, 'breathes,' that is, it moves on a wide-open horizon in which it can experience the best of itself. Nonetheless, when man limits himself to think only of material and experimental objects, he closes himself to the questions of life, about himself and about God, impoverishing himself." -- Benedict XVI, Feast of Thomas Aquinas, January 28, 2007

I.

A seminarian friend of mine in Connecticut brought my attention, via e-mail, to the ZENIT copy of the Holy Father's Angelus for Sunday, January 28, entitled, "On the Faith-Reason Synthesis: A Precious Patrimony for Western Civilization." Naturally, I hastened to look it up as I had not yet read it. One good thing about the weekly papal Sunday "Angelus" talks is that they are short, to the point, and seldom designed to say more than one thing to the folks assembled below the papal balcony to receive the papal blessing. As I had been reading both Chesterton's Heretics and John Paul II's Memory and Identity with a class, this particular brief comment on Aquinas was of particular interest to me.

I have always considered particularly prophetic the conclusion of Chesterton's book, written in 1905. It described, in his own vivid and far-seeing way, what would, more than anything, be the philosophical irony of the then upcoming 20^th and 21st centuries...

Continue reading...

More Secularist Rages...

... from Professor A.C. Grayling, in a January 29th column in The Guardian. Suffice to say, he's not backing down from his audacious and hyper-polemical excoriation of Christianity:

Madeleine Bunting, in a column today, thinks that discrimination is a minor matter; we should all spend every day that the Iraq war lasts wringing our hands over it, paying no attention to anything else, least of all efforts by self-selected tendentious minorities to protect their prejudices from efforts to make our society a fairer place.

The impression of confusion is heightened by Ms Bunting's version of history, which she opposed to mine by name. She tells us that Christianity has "fostered learning and science" in Europe for "hundreds of years".

I challenge her to name one - even one small - contribution to science made by Christianity in its two thousand years; just one; and in the process perhaps she might kindly explain how, so late as 1615, after Galileo had seen the moons of Jupiter through his telescope, the great Cardinal Bellarmine could write: "read, not merely the Fathers, but modern commentators on Genesis, the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Joshua; you will discover that all agree in interpreting them literally as teaching that the sun is in the heavens and revolves round the earth with immense speed, and that the earth is very distant from the heavens, at the centre of the universe, and motionless. Consider then in your prudence whether the Church can tolerate that the scriptures should be interpreted in a manner contrary to that of the holy fathers and of all modern commentators, both Latin and Greek." ...

If the Catholic Church were still running Europe, Ms Bunting would not be writing for the Guardian. Actually, if this was 1950s Ireland, she might not be writing anything.

I'm afraid that Professor Grayling is becoming a sad caricature of the Angry Village Atheist, full of vitriol and few facts or arguments. It reminds me of an exchange I had on the radio last March with a man who declared:

"The Catholic Church has always been late in accepting scientific facts. Why, it wasn't until the 1960s that a pope admitted that the Big Bang theory was probably true."

Me: "That's strange, because the Big Bang theory was actually proposed and developed by a Catholic scientist."

After a break I mentioned that the scientist in question, Belgian mathematician Georges Lemaitre, was also a Catholic priest. Whose work (in the 1920s and 1930s) was applauded by Pope Pius XI. And by Albert Einstein.

Meanwhile, another Guardian columnist, Mark Vernon, notes that Christians/Christianity played a direct or indirect role in most of the Top 10 scientific discoveries (as rated by Encarta).

"Mary has a pivotal and irreducible place in the Bible..."

"... and evangelicals must reclaim this aspect of biblical teaching if we are to be faithful to the whole counsel of God."

So writes Timothy George, Baptist theologian and dean of Beeson Divinity School of Samford University, in a First Things article titled, "Evangelicals and the Mother of God." He continues:

When it comes to the gospel, Mary cannot be shunted aside or relegated to the affectionate obscurity of the annual Christmas pageant. In the New Testament, she is not only the mother of the redeemer but also the first one to whom the gospel was proclaimed and, in turn, the first one to proclaim it to others. Mary is named a “herald” of God’s good news. We cannot ignore the messenger, because the message she tells is about the salvation of the world.

Evangelical retrieval of a proper biblical theology of Mary will give attention to five explicit aspects of her calling and ministry: Mary as the daughter of Israel, as the virgin mother of Jesus, as Theotokos, as the ?handmaiden of the Word, and as the mother of the Church. Consider Mary’s first title, Daughter of Israel. Mary stands, along with John the Baptist, at a unique point of intersection in the biblical narrative between the Old and the New Covenants. When Mary cradles the baby Jesus in the Temple in the presence of Anna and Simeon, we see brought together the advent of the Lord’s messiah, and the long-promised and long-prepared-for “consolation of Israel.” The holy family is portrayed as part of a wider community, namely “all those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38).

Certainly worth reading, especially to get a sense of how far ecumenical dialogue between Catholics and some Evangelicals has come--and what still needs to be addressed. George, I should note, wrote the Foreword to the 2005 edition of Avery Cardinal Dulles's excellent work, A History of Apologetics. That Foreword can be read here; an interview with Cardinal Dulles about that book can be read here.

Hypothetically...

Let's say that when I got married I recognized that my wife had Qualities XYZ and Personality ABC. Let's say that after a few years I decided that I'd like her more if she changed said qualities and personality to fit me and my evolving needs. Let's say she refused, saying she must remain true to who she is and, besides, I had promised to be with her til death do part and so forth.

Let's say I finally became very angry with my wife's refusal to change and left her for another woman.

Let's say I then spent most of my time complaining publicly about my former wife and ranting about how she needs to change, and how I was going to make her change.

Well, I'm happy to say that's a completley hypothetical situation. For me, at least.

Not for this guy.

Sigh. Some people just don't get it. But I'm happy to report that the "first wife" is doing just fine. As for the "second wife," not so well...

Dark Ages and Secularist Rages: A Response to Professor A.C. Grayling

Dark Ages and Secularist Rages: A Response to Professor A.C. Grayling | Carl E. Olson | January 30, 2007

As readers of the Insight Scoop blog know, I recently posted a somewhat caustic fisking of a column, "The persistence of the faithful" (The Guardian, Jan 23, 2007), written by Professor A.C. Grayling, professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. This led to some responses by Grayling (here, here, here, and here).

Grayling's column was ostensibly concerned with the apparent decision of the British government passing a law, the "Equality Act," that would make it law that adoption agencies, including those run by the Catholic Church, would have to allow homosexual couples to use their adoption services. But Grayling's column touched on a number of larger issues,   both historical and philosophical in nature, which deserve some further response, especially since many readers have shown an interest in the various issues involved, and because Professor Grayling has taken the time to join the conversation. My goals in this short piece are modest: to offer some context to situate this small discussion in a larger and older debate, to suggest some resources that might be of interest to readers, and to critique some of the premises set forth by Professor Grayling. ...

Continue reading...

Am I a Christian? | Malcolm Muggeridge

Am I a Christian? | Malcolm Muggeridge | From Seeing Through The Eye: Malcolm Muggeridge on Faith

The subject that has been chosen tonight [1] is one that to me is of immense seriousness. Am I a Christian?

I don't think it's merely of seriousness to me. I think that many people who might in their normal habits of thought and ways seem very remote from any connection with the Christian religion might well be putting that question and putting it sometimes with great disconcertment. Am I a Christian? It ought to be the easiest question in the world to answer. A Christian is a follower of Christ, and I'm quite sure that the early Christians, from whom it all began and in whose honour this edifice and millions of others like it were erected, would have had no difficulty whatever in answering that question. To them it was abundantly simple. They followed a man of whom they'd known or heard at first hand, and who told them that His Kingdom was not of this world; and therefore the problem to them was an infinitely simple one. They didn't feel bound to relate their thoughts and their conduct to the permissive morality of the Court of the Emperor Nero.

That was something that had nothing whatever to do with them. They didn't feel bound to associate themselves or attach themselves to political causes; they belonged to another world. Their cause was their love and loyalty to this Man. Even Peter on that tragic occasion when the cock crew knew exactly what he had done–denied an allegiance, an allegiance which was terrifically simple and meaningful.

Continue reading...

Philosophy 101 on the Brain?

Flunking Philosophy 101 on the Pages of Time Magazine

Few people enjoy reading other people's rants, so I will try to avoid falling into a rant here. But it is easy to do when scientists and putative scientists try to swindle people into thinking scientific expertise automatically endows the expert with sound thinking in other areas, such as philosophy or theology.

Steven Pinker's recent Time piece, "The Mystery of Consciousness", may not amount to a swindle--I don't know that he is trying to mislead. But swindle or not, he does mislead his readers and in the process reveals a profound ignorance of basic philosophical and theological issues shocking in an educated man, much less in a professor of psychology.

To be sure there is a lot of worthwhile stuff in his piece. Unfortunately, there is a lot more than isn't worthwhile. Here is one gem from among the seemingly inexhaustable supply:

[T]he biology of consciousness offers a sounder basis for morality than the unprovable dogma of an immortal soul. It's not just that an understanding of the physiology of consciousness will reduce human suffering through new treatments for pain and depression. That understanding can also force us to recognize the interests of other beings--the core of morality.

As every student in Philosophy 101 learns, nothing can force me to believe that anyone except me is conscious. This power to deny that other people have feelings is not just an academic exercise but an all-too-common vice, as we see in the long history of human cruelty. Yet once we realize that our own consciousness is a product of our brains and that other people have brains like ours, a denial of other people's sentience becomes ludicrous. "Hath not a Jew eyes?" asked Shylock. Today the question is more pointed: Hath not a Jew--or an Arab, or an African, or a baby, or a dog--a cerebral cortex and a thalamus? The undeniable fact that we are all made of the same neural flesh makes it impossible to deny our common capacity to suffer.

And when you think about it, the doctrine of a life-to-come is not such an uplifting idea after all because it necessarily devalues life on earth. Just remember the most famous people in recent memory who acted in expectation of a reward in the hereafter: the conspirators who hijacked the airliners on 9/11.

Think, too, about why we sometimes remind ourselves that "life is short." It is an impetus to extend a gesture of affection to a loved one, to bury the hatchet in a pointless dispute, to use time productively rather than squander it. I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.

Note the second paragraph. Now that we know that our own consciousness is a product of our brains, so the argument goes, and we now know that others have brains, the age-old problem of why I should believe others have consciousness is suddenly solved.

Right.

And because I now know others are conscious I now know others can suffer.

Right.

Therefore ... what? I have now, according to Pinker, "a sounder basis for morality than the unprovable dogma of an immortal soul"?

Hmmm. Even granting the fallacious reasoning he employs to bring us to his conclusion that I now know that others suffer because I know that they have brains like me, why does all of that lead me to the moral obligation to care whether others suffer? Why again is it a moral imperative for me to do anything about the suffering of others? How do I get that ought-statement from the is-statement that other people have brains and therefore have consciousness?

Only if there is a moral ought--a category of thought not reducible to the biology of consciousness--can the fact that others suffer have any moral significance for me. And that's granting the fallacious reasoning that supposedly leads up to Pinker's conclusion.

Pinker says Philosophy 101 teaches us that nothing can force us to believe that others are conscious. Well, with all due respect to Dr. Pinker, I think he might benefit from a refresher course in Philosophy 101 because his supposed "biology of consciousness" provides no more basis for the conclusion that others are conscious than it provides for morality, superior or otherwise. Common sense tells us that other human beings are conscious. Whether or not you want to regard the common sense argument for the proposition as a sound "proof", if you reject the common sense argument, you will not find a better one in the so-called biology of consciousness. Why should I accept the testimony of my senses and my reason when it tells me that such things as brains exist and that these brains are linked to (not pace Pinker the sole producer of) consciousness, when I can't accept the testimony of my senses and reasoning when I conclude from my experience of the world and my interactions with other beings that some of them are conscious? To rule out the latter is tacitly to rule out the former.

Pinker's argument about the idea of an afterlife devaluing this life also misfires. One hardly knows where to begin. If this life really is all there is, why does anything I do in this life matter? Why does consciousness matter? Why do I matter? Why do you? Why aren't we simply a product of matter and "chance"? Why not live only to please oneself before one must face the inevitable extinction of existence in death? Why get all bothered about moral issues such as racism or the Holocaust? At the very least, one who denies a transcendent dimension to human life--who reduces consciousness to biology, for example--has "a lot of splainin to do" when it comes to providing a rational justification of morality.

"I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift," writes Pinkers.

Hmmm. A gift. From whom?

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

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

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

Some time ago I wrote a little book of this type and shape on St. Francis of Assisi; and some time after (I know not when or how, as the song says, and certainly not why) I promised to write a book of the  same size, or the same smallness on St. Thomas Aquinas. The promise was Franciscan only in its rashness; and the parallel was very far from being Thomistic in its logic. You can make a sketch of St. Francis: you could only make a plan of St. Thomas, like the plan of a labyrinthine city. And yet in a sense he would fit into a much larger or a much smaller book. What we really know of his life might be pretty fairly dealt with in a few pages; for he did not, like St. Francis, disappear in a shower of personal anecdotes and popular legends.

Continue reading...

Philosopher of Virtue

Philosopher of Virtue | Josef Pieper (1904-1997)

Josef Pieper was born on May 4th, 1904, in the small Westphalian village of Elte, Germany. At that time not even a local train connected the isolated spot in the middle of the heath with other towns of Westphalia; whoever wanted to reach the next station had to cross a river in a small ferry-boat. Pieper's father was the only teacher at the only school of this village. Josef Pieper went to the Gymnasium Paulinum in Münster, one of the oldest German schools, which has existed for more than eleven hundred years. His son took up that tradition as a pupil of that old institution, the buildings of which, however, were completely destroyed during World War II.

A teacher at the Gymnasium Paulinum, a priest, convinced Pieper to read the works of Thomas Aquinas. "At that time," Pieper wrote, "I was foolishly fond of Kierkegaard, whom we used to devour, my friends and I, naturally without quite understanding him; and it was this paternal friend and teacher, who directed me – with a sort of violent, ironical, and humorous intensity – to St. Thomas' Commentary to the Prologue of St. John's Gospel. Being a youngster of eighteen, I set about reading this work and, in fact, finished it, of course, again without understanding it perfectly. But from that moment the work of St. Thomas has accompanied me through life." Years later he translated this Commentary to the Prologue of St. John's Gospel into German.

Continue reading...

NEW: On Conscience | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

NEW FROM IGNATIUS PRESS:

On Conscience

By Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

Prepared and co-published by the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, this book is a combination of two lengthy essays written by Cardinal Ratzinger and delivered in talks when he was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Both talks deal with the importance of conscience and its exercise in particular circumstances.

Ratzinger's reflections show that contemporary debates over the nature of conscience have deep historical and philosophical roots. He says that a person is bound to act in accord with his conscience, but he makes it clear that there must be reliable, proven sources for the judgment of conscience in moral issues, other than the subjective reflections of each individual.

The always unique and profound insights that the new Pope Benedict XVI brings to perennial problems reminds the reader of his strong warning before the recent Papal conclave of the great dangers today of the "dictatorship of relativism."

It's Over! Or So They Say...

"They" are Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, co-authors of the best-selling, worst-written Christian series of novels ever to kill an entire forest: The Left Behind Series. Soon, they claim, the 16th (or so) final book of that end-of-the-world, "we're proud to write rubbish!" series will be published. Titled Kingdom Come: The Final Victory, it will be released on April 3rd (just in time for my birthday!). (And to think that I believed the 12th book of the series might be the final ka-ching!)  It is described on the Left Behind site in these words:

Kingdom Come is the final book in the best-selling Left Behind series. The horrors of the Tribulation are over, and Jesus Christ has set up his perfect kingdom on Earth. Believers all around the world enjoy a newly perfected relationship with their Lord, and the Earth itself is transformed. Yet evil still lurks in the hearts of the unbelieving. As the Millennium draws to a close, the final generation of the unrepentant prepares to mount a new offensive against the Lord himself—sparking the final and ultimate conflict from which only one side will emerge the eternal victor.

Now, I hate to play devil's advocate when it comes to such a holy topic, but I confess to some confusion (on top of my normal addled state, which is due to reading too many books by LaHaye, Hal Lindsey, and Jack van Impe): if the future, earthly kingdom established by Jesus Christ is perfect, why does "evil still lurk in the hearts of the unbelieving"? For that matter, what are unbelievers doing in such a perfect kingdom?

The answer, of course, is found in the theology of the system of dispensational premillennialism promoted by LaHaye/Jenkins, who are happy to also promote anti-Catholic nonsense and (with all sincerity) spread a form of radical theology that is less than 200 years old and is as far from classical Protestant thinking as it is from orthdox Catholic doctrine. It's all explained, analysed, and critiqued in my first book, Will Catholics Be "Left Behind"? A Catholic Critique of the Rapture and Today's Prophecy Preachers (read excerpts and reviews on my personal website). As for the Kingdom and whether it has come or not:

The kingdom of heaven was inaugurated on earth by Christ. "This kingdom shone out before men in the word, in the works and in the presence of Christ" (LG 5). The Church is the seed and beginning of this kingdom. Its keys are entrusted to Peter. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 567)...

Christ the Lord already reigns through the Church, but all the things of this world are not yet subjected to him. The triumph of Christ's kingdom will not come about without one last assault by the powers of evil. (CCC 680)

Catholicism, Pelosi style

Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of the new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has been getting some major press (as well as celebrity endorsements) lately for her documentary, "A Friend of God: A Road Trip With Alexandra Pelosi," which takes a look at Evangelicalism (although it sounds as though it focuses quite often on Fundamentalist groups and various televangelists). Pelosi's relationship with Catholicism, the religion of her youth, is rather conflicted. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Alexandra Pelosi doesn't like to say she's a "lapsed" Catholic. Because when she does, her mom, recently appointed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, tends to take it as a "failure that she couldn't keep me in the church." That position looks especially bad lately, after the elder Pelosi stressed her devout Catholicism during swearing-in ceremonies this month.

So despite 12 years of Catholic education in San Francisco and four more at a Jesuit university, Alexandra, a 36-year-old documentary filmmaker, prefers to say that Catholicism "didn't stick. I always try to tell my mother that I believe in God, but I don't believe in church. But that offends her. Parents take it personally when you reject something they gave you."

If Nancy Pelosi is a devout Catholic, then, well, I'm a devout left-handed, neo-Marxist, lesbian Buddhist who loves pro wrestling and walks on the beach. I only say that based on her abortion-loving public record. For all I know, she might privately be very devout, and only pursues public policies in direct violation of Church teaching just to show others how private her beliefs really are. Anyhow, the California Catholic Daily provides a further glimpse into the sixteen years Alexandra spent losing her faith while being educated in Catholic doctrine, practice, and culture:

“In my family, we have a hundred years of Catholic school experience, and none of us ever heard that homosexuality was a sin. At my school, the nuns taught us about evolution.” So Alexandra Pelosi, 36, told the Jan. 21 Washington Post. Pelosi is the fifth child of Nancy Pelosi, the pro-abortion San Francisco congresswoman recently elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.  ...

Pelosi, a graduate of San Francisco’s upscale Convent of the Sacred Heart High School and Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, said what she was taught in these Catholic schools differed dramatically from what she learned from the Evangelicals. “We were taught just to accept people, that was just a given,” she told the Jan. 17 San Francisco Chronicle. “I don't ever remember being told at Convent of the Sacred Heart that gay was wrong. They never even told us there was anything wrong with abortion. They were just choices. That’s why it was weird when I’d go to these [Evangelical] places and... people would say, ‘It’s in the Bible.’ And they fall back on the Bible for everything.”

And then, returning to her famous mother, the quote of the day:

Of Madam Speaker, who supports a woman’s “right to choose,” the younger Pelosi said, “My mother, throughout her entire life, has been faithful to the Church, even though the Church has not been that faithful to her because of her politics. And I think that takes a lot of perseverance. And still, people protest her right to go to her own church.”

Not only did Alexandra not learn what the Church teaches, she apparently didn't learn a bit of formal logic or common sense. I hate to break it to the Pelosis, since they seem quite comfortable in their alternative reality, but neither the world nor the Church revolves around them. But maybe Ma Pelosi could work with Congress to try to change that.

Mike Liccione of Sacramentum Vitae offers some good commentary:

Alexandra Pelosi affords the perfect living synecdoche of AmChurch. If you didn't grow up Catholic during the last half of the twentieth century, all you have to do to know the nature, and the fruits, of "progressive Catholicism" is listen to her and her story. Are you evangelized by such an example? Of course you're not. If you're impressed all the same, is that because you care passionately about the truth?

This is not a religion anybody would die for. It is a religion destined to die. Its dilution of truth in a soup of relativism and individualism proceeds apace by the generation.

Young Catholic blogger Natalie Aka Inksmudge, who is a Democrat, rightly asks, "Since when did following Church doctrine become choices and Nancy Pelosi a “faithful” Catholic???" And:

Those that happen to be Catholic Republicans will immediately jump on this story to showcase Pelosi, saying that one cannot be both Catholic and Democrat. I don’t believe so. Am I a Democrat? Yes, but I’m also a Catholic and not a Pelosi Catholic. I can’t even begin to describe the hostility I’m met with when I encounter other orthodox Catholics. With the exception of perhaps three people, every orthodox Catholic I’ve come across with is a Republican.

Yet the real story isn't "Dem. vs. Rep.", but that a person claiming to be a devout Catholic supports things that are completely contrary to consistent, clear Church teaching. This is a "Catholicism vs. My Personal Brand of Modified Catholicism" story, regardless of the political parties. 

Medieval Achievements

My January 24th post, "The Pernicious Myth of the 'Dark Ages'", caught the attention of many readers and generated some interesting comments, including some by Professor A.C. Grayling, whose recent column in The Guardian was the focus on my post. Medievalist Sandra Miesel (co-author of The Da Vinci Hoax), has now posted a response to several of Professor Grayling's claims about the medieval era:

Yes, Tertullian famously asked "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" but he ended up a heretic. Over the first millennium, churchmen wrestled with the question of how to reconcile the two, culminating in the Renaissance of the 12th C when full texts of Aristotle finally became available.

Medievalists restrict the term "Dark Ages" to the centuries 500-1000. The Middle Ages run 1000-1500, sometime subdivided into Early, High, and Late. The different regions of Europe move at a different pace and sweeping generalizations are tricky about either the Middle Ages or Renaissance.

Professor Grayling's idea of "art' seems to mean stand-alone painting and sculpture. He seems unacquainted with manuscript painting, the highest form of medieval pictorial art and by no means always religious. Sculpture in and around medieval churches isn't restricted to religious subjects either. The Church was the primary patron of medieval art, learning, and the preservation of the classical heritage.

Art requires some economic surplus and a market. Neither is available in the dangerous, economically depressed and depopulated Dark Ages except in Ireland and early Carolingian and Ottonian eras. 90% of all our classical Latin literature comes down via Carolingian copies funded by Charlemagne--so much for suppression of ancient pagan authors. Knowlege of Greek was almost entirely lost after the fall of Rome. And even the court of Charlemagne's grandson was home to the highly orginal philosopher John Scotus Erigena.

Once the new barbarians had been minimally Christianized and civilized, Western Europe pacified, and agricultural productivity increased by new devices after the year 1000, people had the means to support art, architecture, and learning. When there's no art market, art isn't produced and the market also determines what subjects will be depicted. (Low Countries genre painting is lovely but Rembrandt continued with religious subjects as did Titian, El Greco, and Rubens.)When major buildings are affordable, cathedrals, castles, bridges will be built--and built beautifully

Medieval prosperity rested on technical advances the Romans didn't apply or know such as wind and watermills. (There were 5,000 watermills in England before the Norman Conquest and they did more than grind grain.) See Lynn White's MEDIEVAL TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL CHANGE and Jean Gimpel's THE MEDIEVAL MACHINE. Clocks and eyeglasses are among medieval invention that quickly spread and became commonplace. The Middle Ages didn't do as much in science and medicine as the Renaissance but one of the things holding things back was an excessive reliance on classical authorities. Medieval thinkers and innovators made Renaissance progress possible through their technical skill and a fundamental Christian concept that the universe is an orderly place that's good to study.

All the national epics of Western Europe are medieval. Christians wrote down the pagan stories of Ireland and Scandanavia. Christians created vernacular literature, polyphonic music, printing (first by woodblock, then by moveable type), and universities with set programs of study and formal degrees. Because of Christian preference for Bibles in codex form, we use books rather than scrolls and read them in separated words, not runalltogether as in classical times. At least a million books were made in medieval Europe, many of these objects great beauty.

Ironically, one thing that the Church worked hard to suppress unmentioned by Professor Grayling was lending at interest. Her suspicion of the money economy would affect social teaching even after the Renaissance.

Professor Grayling really needs to chat with some medieval academics and update his knowledge of the period.

I'm also working on a short response to some of Professor Grayling's remarks, all in the spirit of healthy debate, which I think (based on his remarks) he appreciates. Stay tuned.

The Priesthood, Women's Ordination, and Equality

Making a comment regarding my recent post about women's ordination, Mark Brumley makes some helpful distinctions:

While there are women who claim to have a call to priesthood the fact that they make the claim doesn't mean the claim corresponds to reality. This is not necessarily to suggest they are being dishonest. It means only that the claim to have a call is not sufficient grounds for determining that one in fact has been called to priestly ministry by God.

People often think they are called by God to do all sorts of things that God hasn't called them to do. People sometimes think, for example, that God wants them to be unfaithful to their spouses and to be with someone else they think God intends for them. Some people even think God wants them to blow themselves up and others with them.

The point is not that women who think God wants them to be ordained priests are in all respects just like people who think God wants them to commit adultery or wants them to blow themselves up along with others. The point is that simply because someone thinks God wants something of him that doesn't make it so.

The question of the nature of priestly ministry--whether it is inherently masculine by virtue of the priest's acting in persona Christi--is to be settled by reflecting on what God has revealed about Christ, the priesthood and the Church. The authority to judge for the community of the Church what revelation has to say on this subject resides with the Magisterium. The ordinary Magisterium of the Church has consistently held that only men can be ordained priests. John Paul II, in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, confirmed that teaching as something to be definitively held by all the faithful. He repeated the teaching regarding the masculine nature of priestly ministry many times during his pontificate.

That priestly ministry is inherently masculine is no more unjustly discriminatory than that fatherhood is inherently masculine or that motherhood is inherently feminine. Fundamental equality of human beings and fundamental equality of all the baptized refer to equality that results from being human or being baptized. All human beings are equal insofar as they are all human. Whatever any human being has by right because he is human all human beings have by right because all human beings are, well, human. Likewise whatever any baptized person has by right of being baptized all baptized persons have by virtue of being baptized.

But fundamental human equality and fundamental Christian equality don't logically preclude all differences, including differences in roles related to gender. To establish that I have a right to whatever any human being or any baptized person has a right to doesn't establish that that includes priestly ministry (or motherhood, for that matter).

A detailed and erudite book on this and many related topics, see Fr. Manfred Hauke's excellent work, Women in the Priesthood. He is also the author of God or Goddess? Feminist Theology: What Is It? Where Does It Lead? (read an excerpt from that book here).

Former KGB Agent: "The Deputy" was...

... produced with the help of the KBG. Or, perhaps more accurately, it was produced by the KGB. Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa, who is the highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc, tells the fascinating story in an NRO piece titled, "Moscow’s Assault on the Vatican," which details various efforts by Soviet leaders and spies "to counter the Catholic Church’s strong anti-Communism":

In 1963, General Ivan Agayants, the famous chief of the KGB’s disinformation department, landed in Bucharest to thank us for our help. He told us that “Seat-12” had materialized into a powerful play attacking Pope Pius XII, entitled The Deputy, an oblique reference to the pope as Christ’s representative on earth. Agayants took credit for the outline of the play, and he told us that it had voluminous appendices of background documents put together by his experts with help from the documents we had purloined from the Vatican. Agayants also told us that The Deputy’s producer, Erwin Piscator, was a devoted Communist who had a longstanding relationship with Moscow. In 1929 he had founded the Proletarian Theater in Berlin, then sought political asylum in the Soviet Union when Hitler came to power, and a few years later had “emigrated” to the United States. In 1962 Piscator had returned to West Berlin to produce The Deputy.

....

Just a year before The Deputy was launched, Agayants had pulled off another masterful coup. He fabricated out of whole cloth a manuscript designed to persuade the West that, deep down, the Kremlin thought highly of the Jews; this was published in Western Europe, to great popular success, as a book entitled Notes for a Journal. The manuscript was attributed to Maxim Litvinov, né Meir Walach, the former Soviet commissar for foreign affairs, who had been fired in 1939 when Stalin purged his diplomatic apparatus of Jews in preparation for signing his “non-aggression” pact with Hitler. (The Stalin-Hitler Non-Aggression Pact was signed on August 23, 1939, in Moscow. It had a secret Protocol that partitioned Poland between the two signatories and gave the Soviets a free hand in Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Bessarabia, and Northern Bukovina.) This Agayants book was so flawlessly counterfeited that Britain’s most prominent historian on Soviet Russia, Edward Hallet Carr, was totally convinced of its authenticity and in fact wrote an introduction for it. (Carr had authored a ten-volume History of Soviet Russia.)

The Deputy saw the light in 1963 as the work of an unknown West German named Rolf Hochhuth, under the title Der Stellvertreter. Ein christliches Trauerspiel (The Deputy, a Christian Tragedy). Its central thesis was that Pius XII had supported Hitler and encouraged him to go ahead with the Jewish Holocaust. It immediately ignited a huge controversy around Pius XII, who was depicted as a cold, heartless man more concerned about Vatican properties than about the fate of Hitler’s victims. The original text presents an eight-hour play, backed by some 40 to 80 pages (depending on the edition) of what Hochhuth called “historical documentation.” In a newspaper article published in Germany in 1963, Hochhuth defends his portrayal of Pius XII, saying: “The facts are there — forty crowded pages of documentation in the appendix to my play.” In a radio interview given in New York in 1964, when The Deputy opened there, Hochhuth said, “I considered it necessary to add to the play a historical appendix, fifty to eighty pages (depending on the size of the print).” In the original edition, the appendix is entitled “Historische Streiflichter” (historical sidelights). The Deputy has been translated into some 20 languages, drastically cut and with the appendix usually omitted.

Before writing The Deputy, Hochhuth, who did not have a high school diploma (Abitur), was working in various inconspicuous capacities for the Bertelsmann publishing house. In interviews he claimed that in 1959 he took a leave of absence from his job and went to Rome, where he spent three months talking to people and then writing the first draft of the play, and where he posed “a series of questions” to one bishop whose name he refused to reveal. Hardly likely! At about that same time I used to visit the Vatican fairly regularly as an accredited messenger from a head of state, and I was never able to get any talkative bishop off into a corner with me — and it was not for lack of trying. The DIE illegal officers we infiltrated into the Vatican also encountered almost insurmountable difficulties in penetrating the Vatican secret archives, even though they had airtight cover as priests.

During my old days in the DIE, when I would ask my personnel chief, General Nicolae Ceausescu (the dictator’s brother), to give me a rundown of the file on some subordinate, he would always ask me, “For promotion or demotion?” During its first ten years of life, the Deputy leaned toward the Pope’s demotion. It generated a flurry of books and articles, some accusing and some defending the pontiff. Some went so far as to lay the blame for the Auschwitz atrocities on the pope’s shoulders, some meticulously tore Hochhuth’s arguments to shreds, but all contributed to the huge attention this rather stilted play received in its day. Today, many people who have never heard of The Deputy are sincerely convinced that Pius XII was a cold and evil man who hated the Jews and helped Hitler do away with them.

Pacepa then writes, "As KGB chairman Yury Andropov, the unparalleled master of Soviet deception, used to tell me, people are more ready to believe smut than holiness." There is much truth to that statement, as the influence of The Deputy in its day and the success today of other fictional works, such as The Da Vinci Code, readily indicate. The way to move the emotions (if not the minds) of many people is usually not through scholarly tomes or sober analysis, but through stories, especially sensational, controversial stories. Just one more reason that there is no such thing as "just fiction."

Saint Gianna: A Model For Mothers

Saint Gianna: A Model For Mothers | Helen Hull Hitchcock | The Foreword from Saint Gianna Molla: Wife, Mother, Doctor by Pietro Molla and Elio Guerriero

"A woman of exceptional love, an outstanding wife and mother, she gave witness in her daily life to the demanding values of the Gospel." In his homily on the occasion of her beatification, April 24, 1994, Pope John Paul II proposed Gianna Beretta Molla as a model for all mothers: "By holding up this woman as an exemplar of Christian perfection, we would like to extol all those high-spirited mothers of families who give themselves completely to their family, who suffer in giving birth, who are prepared for every labor and every kind of sacrifice, so that the best they have can be given to others."

In canonizing Gianna Beretta Molla this spring, the Church officially recognized the extraordinary sanctity of a woman who chose to live an ordinary life ...

Continue reading...

Celebrating Life with 15% off selected titles.

CELEBRATING LIFE WITH 15% OFF SELECTED TITLES

Offer ends Tuesday, January 30th, 2006 at 12:00 midnight EST.

These prices are available online only through Ignatius.com

With January 22 being the anniversary of the infamous Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision to legalize abortion on demand, Ignatius Press offers this week a special exclusive online discount on a number of outstanding titles directly connected with this vital life issue. Titles by great authors, teachers, leaders, Popes and more, these illuminating and powerful books, films and CD ROMs offer a variety of titles for all ages. These works will inform, inspire and motivate you to help build a "Culture of Life".

Architects of the Culture of Death | Donald DeMarco and Benjamin Wiker
In Architects of the Culture of Death, authors Donald DeMarco and Benjamin Wiker expose the Culture of Death as an intentional and malevolent ideology promoted by influential thinkers who specifically attack Christian morality's core belief in the sanctity of human life and the existence of man's immortal soul. In scholarly, yet reader-friendly prose, DeMarco and Wiker examine the roots of the Culture of Death by introducing 23 of its architects, including Ayn Rand, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Jean-Paul Sartre, Alfred Kinsey, Margaret Sanger, Jack Kevorkian, and Peter Singer. Read an interview with the authors.

Saint Gianna Molla: Wife, Mother, Doctor  | Elio Pietro, Guerriero Molla
A unique story, co-authored by her own husband, with his deeply moving personal insights of the heroic witness, love, sacrifice and joy of his saintly wife. A woman for all times and walks of life, this moving account of the multi-faceted, selfless St. Gianna Molla, who made the ultimate sacrifice to save her unborn child, will be an inspiration to all readers. Read the foreword, written by Helen Hitchcock.

Love and Responsibility | Karol Wojtyla
Perhaps the most striking feature of the book is that Wojtyla appeals throughout to ordinary, human experience, logically examined. He draws support for his views on the proper gratification of sexual needs, on birth control, and on other matters, from the findings of physiologists and psychologists. His conclusions coincide with the traditional teachings of the Church, which invoke scriptural authority.

Three Approaches to Abortion | Peter Kreeft
Three Approaches to Abortion, by popular author Peter Kreeft, cuts through the nonsense of the “pro-choice” position. He shows in an irrefutable way why abortion is evil and why it’s illogical to support abortion rights while claiming to be “personally opposed to abortion.” Kreeft’s commonsense approach to the issue, his lucid arguments, easy-to-grasp illustrations and examples, and his thoughtful dialogue between a pro-lifer and a “pro-choicer” make this book an invaluable tool in the pro-life cause. Read the introduction to Three Approaches to Abortion.

Life is a Blessing | Clara Lejeune
 
War Against Population: The Economics and Ideology of Population Control | Jacqueline Kasun

Anti-Abortionist at Large: How to Argue Intelligently about Abortion and Live to Tell About It | Raymond Dennehy

Healing the Culture | Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J.
 
It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good | Rick Santorum
 
Why Humanae Vitae Was Right: A Reader | Edited by Janet Smith
 
FILMS

A Distant Thunder
This powerful drama was produced by professional Hollywood filmmakers for today’s visually-oriented culture. Ann Brown, a successful “pro-choice” prosecutor, is asked to take a complex case involving partial birth abortion. She reluctantly agrees to take the case which becomes a life-changing journey for her. This fast-paced, sometimes graphic thriller will especially interest today’s youth.

Love is a Choice: Life of St. Gianna Molla
This video documents the heroic life of St. Gianna Molla through interviews with her husband, children, friends, letters, and family mementos. St. Gianna, who sacrificed her life to save her unborn baby, was a mother, a medical doctor, a lover of opera, art, and culture; one who can speak much to our present day especially when family life is threatened on so many fronts.

Contraception: Why Not?
Catholic author and philosophy professor Janet E. Smith presents a challenging discussion on the problems and pitfalls of contraception, and its relationship to abortion, divorce, poverty and other social ills. She underscores the positive effects of "being open to life," accepting children as a gift from God, and using natural family planning when needed. Includes a study guide. Also available on VHS.

Pro-Life CD Library (CD-ROM)
Human Life International presents the world’s first pro-life library on compact disc. Fully indexed and cross-referenced, it contains thousands of documents totalling over 10 million words - equivalent to more than 50 large books. Includes: Catechism of the Catholic Church, all 293 papal encyclicals, all 16 documents of Vatican II, Summa Theologica, Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, 9 books and 165 articles on NFP, a complete pro-life dabating course, The Facts of Life, and much more.

Book Reviews from Jan 2007 HPR

Three new book reviews from the Jan 2007 issue of HPR are now available! 


Common Sense 101: Lessons From G. K. Chesterton, by Dale Ahlquist

A Biblical History Of Israel, by Iain Provan, V. Phillips Long, and Tremper Longman, III

Joy: The Spirit’s Gigantic Secret Behind The Church’s Survival, by Father John T. Catoir

Church and State in Early Christianity

Introduction to Church and State in Early Christianity | Hugo Rahner, S.J.

The first edition of this book appeared seventeen years ago when the struggle between Church and state in Nazi Germany was at its height. It then bore the title: The Liberty of the Western Church, Documents Concerning Church-State Relations in Early Christianity (Einsiedeln-Cologne: Benziger, 1943). Since then times have become more tranquil, but only in a superficial and impermanent way. Thus the question of the relations between Church and state remains as interesting as ever; it is a continuing problem in America and Russia and could at any moment reappear in Germany now that it has again become a world power. This alone would justify a new edition.

The book remains substantially unchanged in form and fundamental ideas. It provides the living witness of the early Church to the solution of the ever-recurring problem touching us as citizens of a state and members of the Church because all persons, in addition to the complex of influences affecting their personality and status as citizens, are in the Church or are called to her. For the Church is the "Kyriaké", the queen just as Christ is the King. She must, therefore, proclaim to all generations and to all states the revelation that Christ the Redeemer has brought to mankind in his power and majesty, And the state is called to listen to the Church. But both those who make the proclamation and those who hear it must do so in a way that neither exceeds nor blurs the limits of the mutual autonomy that God the Creator has set for the state, and God the Redeemer for the Church. Because citizens of the state and the members of the Church are the same individuals, the problem of the just relationship between Church and state remains a difficult and vital question for all.

Continue reading...