Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog

The Bowl, the Bet, and the Bard

I am a man of words and, just barely, a man of my word. And I am also a man of my birds, however I might try to duck my allegiances when things go south on national television.

Explanation: This past December, buoyed by success, media hype, and my environs (I live four minutes from Autzen Stadium), I drank the Oregon Duck Kool-Aid and accepted the prevailing wisdom that Coach Chip Kelly and Crew would win the Rose Bowl on January 1st against the Ohio State Buckeyes. I was so deliriously confident, I made a bet with Greg O., a friend who lives in Ohio, about the game. It was typical of most bets involving football bowl games: the loser had to write a serious, straight-up Shakespearean sonnet about the game, including an overt note of congratulations. No sarcasm, no weasel worse, no free verse.

The sonnet, once approved by the winner, would be posted on this blog. As I said, a very typical bet.

Unfortunately, the Oregon Ducks lost to the Ohio State Buckeyes, 26-17.

I am finally, a month later, fulfilling my end of the bargain. So, without further ado—or, with much ado about pigskin—here is my sonnet:

The Rose Bowl Sonnet: A Duck's Lament

My spread, Chip said, would shred with confusion,
Scamp'ring past the Buckeyes towering yet
slow, spun by misdirected illusion,
Hence confidence and this rash, beguiling bet.

Two fortnight gone, and still the ling'ring pain
Doth endure; twas glory held, dimmed, then flushed,
Gridiron dreams first flew then fell in vain,
Ducks scattered; Masoli's crew dashed, smashed, crushed.

Alas, Tressel's men did spread their massive paws
and cast Coach Kelly's lads from side to side,
A chance—brief!—died quickly; the fumble lost
Pryor smelt blood and did to glory glide.

Tis better to have played and lost, you say?
I only know thy team was best that day.

Speaking of Shakespeare, did I mention that Joseph Pearce's new book, Through Shakespeare's Eyes: Seeing the Catholic Presence in the Plays, is now available from Ignatius Press?

Fr. Robert Barron on "apokalupsis" and apocalyptic literature

Fr. Robert Barron offers a short primer on the meaning of "apocalypse":



It is a topic, of course, of some interest to me, and there are several sections in my book, Will Catholics Be "Left Behind"? A Catholic Critique of the Rapture and Today’s Prophecy Preachers (Ignatius Press, 2003), which address many of the historical, theological, and biblical issues related to "apocalypse," including an entire chapter—"A Book of Confusion or Revelation"? (pp. 69-112)—on The Apocalypse. Also see:

More on McInerny

Thomas Hibbs has posted a great piece on Ralph McInerny at the First Things site:

One of the marks of a virtuous character, according to Aristotle, is the performance of virtuous acts with ease and delight. On that basis, as well as others, Ralph McInerny was a remarkably virtuous man. One of Ralph’s most beautiful books is entitled The Very Rich Hours of Jacques Maritain: A Spiritual Life, the premise of which is that “we can find in the person of Jacques Maritain a model of the intellectual life in the pursuit of sanctity.” Those words certainly apply to Ralph, one of the great Catholic intellectuals of our time. What distinguished Ralph was not just his fidelity, his intelligence, and his astonishing productivity, but his gracious and ready wit. He possessed a knack for conversation with everyone—from philosophers and politicians, to the elderly and children. Unlike most gifted individuals, Ralph was never burdened by his gifts. He engaged in serious pursuits joyfully, almost playfully.

Go here for the whole piece.

McInerny | by Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.

McInerny | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.  | January 29, 2010

Ralph McInerny died in South Bend this morning. Several of his children were with him. Many friends knew he was dying.

He was the best of men. He lived with a light heart and a careful eye.

McInerny introduced many of us to Aquinas. Not that we had not read him before, but McInerny gave us the greater view. I still recall the sudden realization that I had on reading something in McInerny about how philosophy and revelation are related. There were things in revelation that could also be known by reason, a fact that suggested the sources of reason and revelation knew each other

One wonders if Notre Dame can be Notre Dame without McInerny. He taught so many students there. Indeed, McInerny saw the world and the Church through the lenses of Notre Dame, but the place seemed to be drifting. He always thought the idea of a “research” institution was rather silly. Why would one want to know the little things without first having the big picture?

McInerny was behind so many good tings. Almost single-handedly he enabled Catholic intellectual things to be both intellectual and Catholic. He was behind the old Crisis, the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, and the Maritain Center and its many works at Notre Dame. If an institution was not doing what it should, he founded something that did.

McInerny was a happy, witty man. He had a lovely wife who preceded him to Paradise. He had children and grandchildren. He was always a pillar of sanity for us all. His autobiography, I Alone Am Left to Tell You, is most amusing, but its very title reveals turns in the society, in the university, and yes in the Church that never should have been taken.

McInerny gave the famous Gifford Lectures in Scotland several years ago. This is an honor of high rank which he deserved for his philosophical work.

If he could help it, McInerny never missed a football game. If he was at a conference in some distant city on Saturday during the Fall, he would never be there during the hours of the game. The recent years, with the losses and second-ratedness, were agonizing for the true fan he was.

We have the impression that when God called him, he was ready. He had lived a full life and knew it. What, we might wonder, is his legacy to us? It is that of intellectual courage, I think. He was not fooled by the temptation of prestige, of placing the criteria of the world over that of truth.  Because of him, I think, many of us were able to rely on his voice and his courage.

McInerny was born in St. Paul, of which he had many fond memories. He tried the seminary. He gave it a good shot, but it was not for him. But once he settled into Notre Dame, he found his place. And yet, this “place” was not always identical with the place where a man of letters and insight needed to be. The pursuit of truth can be a lonely task even in the midst of glittering things.

His death assures us that a living voice and a wisdom we relied on is not there except in memory. Yet, we can read him as long as we wish. He lives on in his words and, yes, in his children and students.

McInerny was a happy man in a happy marriage. He did not need to count his blessings. They were simply there before him. McInerny pursued the truth all his life. He was a true professor who knew his priorities. They were not himself. He was a generous man who gave us all his most precious gift: a love of truth, an appreciation of wit, and a delight in our search for what is.

Dr. Ralph McInerny, requiescat in pace

I've just received the sad news that Dr. Ralph McInerny, one of the great Catholics teachers and writers of our time, has died. Joseph Bottum of First Things reflects. More info soon.

We have met the confused, the indifferent, and ...

... the poorly catechized, and they are us. Here is the opening of a Christian Science Monitor article, "Why some Americans mix Christianity, Eastern religions":

Chicago — Because she attends Catholic mass every Sunday and observes all the religious holidays of her faith, Angela Bowman may well exemplify the Latin root of the word “religion,” which is “to bind.”

But the Chicagoan also meditates several times each day and practices yoga every other week. She knows Catholicism, Hinduism, and Buddhism have contradictory elements but is unfazed by her multiple observances because, to her, “it’s all pretty much the same thing.”

“The biggest part of praying is opening yourself up to a connection with God, and I perceive clearing your mind in meditation as another form of receptivity,” says the 30-something textbook editor. Although she is a devoted Roman Catholic, she says she doesn’t “believe it’s the one true path and anything else is flirting with the devil.”

How, exactly, are the following "pretty much the same thing"?

• Belief in a personal God who is One in nature, God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
• Belief that the question of whether or not there is a God or gods is irrelevant.
• Belief in multiple gods (polytheism).
• Belief that everything is God (pantheism).

I suspect that if Ms. Bowman were asked how she might reconcile the four specific beliefs above, she would likely say, "Well, those are just different ways to get at the same thing." What, then, is this "same thing"? If there is no "one true path," what is the goal, the point, the reason for meditation, prayer, and chasing "a connection" with "God"?

Yet the primary and pressing issue here is not about a particular understanding of God, but about a particular approach to truth. The 1996 document, "Christianity and the World Religions," produced by the International Theological Commission, put it is this way: "The problem of the truth of religions underlies this whole discussion. Today one can see a tendency to relegate it to a secondary level, separating it from reflection on the salvific value of religions. The question of truth gives rise to to serious problems of a theoretical and practical order, since in the past it had negative consequences in interreligious encounters. Hence the tendency to ease or privatize this problem with the assertion that criteria of truth are only valid for each individual religion."

One of the finest books in recent years on this matter of truth and religious relativism is Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions (Ignatius Press, 2004). Ratzinger is well aware of the approach taken by Bowman and so many others—"most people," he says:

The dominant impression of most people today is that all religions, with a varied multiplicity of forms and manifestations, in the end are and mean one and the same thing; which is something everyone can see, except for them. The man of today will for the most part scarcely respond with an abrupt No to a particular religion’s claim to be true; he will simply relativize that claim by saying "There are many religions." And behind his response will probably be the opinion, in some form or other, that beneath varying forms they are in essence all the same; each person has his own.

And:

To lay claim to truth for one's religion's particular expression of faith appears today, not merely presumptuous, but an indication of insufficient enlightenment. ... Culture is set against truth. This relativism, which is nowadays to found, as a basic attitude of enlightened people, penetrating far into the realm of theology, is the most profound difficulty of our age. This is also the reason why practice is now substituted for truth and why the whole axis of religions is thereby displaced: we do not know what is true, but we do know what we should do: raise up and introduce a better society, the "kingdom", as people like to say, using a term taken from the Bible and applied to the profane and utopian sphere.

There is much, much more from Ratzinger, but the point that interests me here is captured in the statement: "we do not know what is true, but we do know what we should do..." Bowman, for example, doesn't believe there is one true path, but she is apparently convinced of the necessity of prayer and meditation. Again, why? Based on what, exactly? How is saying, "There is not a single, true path," any less of an objective claim to truth than saying," There is a single, true path"? Both require the same amount of certainty and confidence, do they not?

Ratzinger points out that one problem is that "in the consciousness of mankind today, freedom is largely regarded as the greatest good there is, after which all other good things have to take their place. ... In the scale of values with which man is concerned, to live a life worthy of humanity, freedom seems to be the truly fundamental value to be the really basic human right of them all. The concept of truth, on the other hand, we greet rather with some suspicion: we recall how many opinions and systems have already laid claim to the concept of truth; how often the claim to truth in that way has been the means of limiting freedom."

The religious relativist inhabits a most uneasy land; in fact, he stands in metaphysical quicksand. To his credit, he might well reject the claustrophobic fatalism of scientism, which asserts—once you cut to the cold chase—that man is a material accident driven by complex but impersonal, evolutionary forces. So he fights for freedom and free will: "I will meditate; I will pray; I will try to seek transcendence!" But, having admitted, at least implicitly, his desire for the Other, he refuses to accept that the Other—whatever he, she, or it might be—can really be known or distinguished or defined to any real degree. Why? Because, as Ratzinger suggests, as soon as you acknowledge or accept specific characteristics of God—He is Creator; He is personal; He is omnipotent; He is holy—you begin to realize that freedom has a source and a goal beyond yourself. The hip spirituality of our day is loath to get into specifics; they are anathema to the "open minded" seeker. But, said Chesterton, "An open mind is really a mark of foolishness, like an open mouth. Mouths and minds were made to shut; they were made to open only in order to shut."

Which means, taken further, that freedom, which is a great good and gift, is oriented toward an ultimate Good. Freedom cannot exist for its own sake; by its very nature it testifies to a greater good. "Freedom without truth," Ratzinger states, "is no freedom." And yet so many people, including many Catholics, continue to believe that freedom is the goal, and freedom can only be found by rejecting—either openly or otherwise—the existence of truth.

• Cardinal Ratzinger Considers Whether Truth, Faith, and Tolerance Are Compatible | Ignatius Insight
• The Better We Reason, the Nearer We Come to Truth | The Introduction to Reason to Believe: Why Faith Makes Sense | Richard Purtill
• Relativism 101: A Brief, Objective Guide | Carl E. Olson

What was the point of Pope John Paul II's...

... self-mortification? Jimmy Akin sums it up very well:

The first thing to point out is that this isn’t masochism. It’s not the case of wanting the pain out of some sick craving. While there are masochists, anything they do along these lines is not a genuine spiritual exercise. The whole point of self-mortification is that you don’t find the pain attractive but are willing to submit to it anyway for a higher goal.

And the non-believer, unless he is a unthinking hedonist, should be able to acknowledge that it can be legitimate to endure pain for a higher goal (i.e., that there can be higher goals in life than just avoiding pain). For example, the pain that soldiers undergo to defend their country, the pain that parents undergo to help their children, and the pain that absolutely all of us must shoulder in order to achieve important goals.

So what goal was John Paul II, and other practitioners of self-mortification, striving for?

Holiness.

Read Akin's entire piece on the National Catholic Register site.

Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J., will be giving a talk...

... titled “The Pope, The Anglicans, & The Mass” on Sunday, February 21, 2010, at 7:30 p.m., at St. Ambrose Catholic Church in Annandale, Virginia. The talk is being hosted by the Institute of Catholic Culture. Visit TheAngloCatholic.com for more information.

40,000 vs. 80

A bit more about the Walk for Life West Coast 2010. First, from the Walk's blog:

40,000 Walk for Lifer's an UNDERCOUNT?

So says "Zombie."

For those who have not heard of him, Zombie is a well known San Francisco photojournalist and reporter, who records many demonstrations in the Bay Area. Don't let the name fool you, "Zombie" is a serious man. He has been pivotal in a number of exposès that were then followed up by the mainstream media: "Anatomy of a Photograph", "Obama's Science Czar," etc.

Zombie, who describes himself as "mostly pro-choice" attended the Walk. His testimony as to the number of attendees is significant because first, he is not on our side, and secondly, because he has more experience covering San Francisco demonstrations than just about anybody.

Read the entire post. Then, if you can stomach some vulgar pictures and revolting signage, read Zombie's piece (accompanied by numerous photos) over on PajamasMedia.com. He concludes his piece with this:

Walk for Life had over 35,000 attendees pre-registered before the rally, and on-site estimates placed the final number of attendees at probably closer to 40,000, which from my vantage point actually seems like an under-count.

The San Francisco Chronicle tried to downplay the size of the crowd by characterizing it vaguely as “several thousand,” but they also more accurately assessed the size of the pro-choice counter-protest as “only a few dozen demonstrators.” In fact, that was an under-count too, as I later took overhead photos of the pro-choice contingent and carefully counted exactly 80 counter-protesters total — which probably included more than a few uninvolved passersby, but I wanted to be generous. (The far-far-left IndyBay tried to spin the numbers as 200 counter-protesters and cited the Chronicle’s ridiculous “several thousand” pro-lifers, but I saw nowhere near 200 in the pro-choice camp.)

<snip>

The question then becomes: Why did basically no one on the pro-choice side show up, aside from a few demented radicals? I can only imagine that the answer is this: That every liberal in the Bay Area is already so confident that the status of abortion in this country is unchangeable and safe as a permanent socio-political fixture to such a degree that they feel it isn’t worth defending, since it’s not really under threat. What else could explain a 500-to-1 disparity in pro-life vs. pro-choice protesters in the most liberal area of the United States?

But if 40,000 people come out to rally against something you take for granted while only a handful stand against them, perhaps you shouldn’t take it for granted any more.

Or could it be that the support for abortion in the Bay Area is not nearly as strong as it once was?

In this new America, anything is possible.

• Pro-lifers—young, old, and in-between—march, confusing reporters. (January 25, 2010)

News you can use...in the confessional

From The Herald Sun (Australia):

A BBC magazine show's investigation has supposedly shown we Aussies are still born to be bad - coming out trumps in a global tally of the seven deadly sins.

While America is dominated by gluttony and greed, South Africa by wrath and Japan and South Korea by their lustful natures, Australians are the most envious people on the planet.

The tally was put together by comparing national statistics for plastic surgery (pride), theft (envy), violent crime (wrath), number of annual holidays (sloth), annual salary (greed), money spent on fast food (gluttony) and porn (lust).

Focus Magazine awards Australians the dubious prize of being named "the most sinful nation on earth" for scoring highly in every one of the seven categories.

Of course, I was grabbing grains of salt as soon as I read, "A BBC magazine show's investigation..."

Catholic priest Fr Bob Maguire said Australians had their vices, but they were also very virtuous.

"I think the people who did this survey are just jealous of we Aussies and rightly so," he said.

"Australians like to indulge and enjoy the good things in life - we are open about that. But people forget that the mirror image of the sins are the seven virtues and Australians also have a lot of virtues on balance. We're just too laconic to talk about the things we do right."

Hmmmm, perhaps I'm actually Aussie. After all, I often let it be known that my greatest virtue is humility. I would make further modest remarks, but will avoid—reluctantly—such a near occasion of sin.

Preach it, Christopher Hitchens!

Nope, I'm not being sarcastic. Check it out.

It reminds me an old joke: What do you get when you combine a Jehovah's Witness and a Unitarian? Someone who knocks on your door but has nothing to say.

On a more serious note, it raises this question: Would you rather be disliked (but taken taken seriously) for believing in orthodox Christian doctrine or dismissed (and not be taken seriously) for claiming to be Christian while denying essential Christian beliefs?

Saint Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Doctor of the Church

Saint Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Doctor of the Church | G. K. Chesterton, Josef Pieper, Etienne Gilson, and more| January 28, 2010 | The Memorial of Saint Thomas Aquinas

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From Saint Thomas Aquinas: "The Dumb Ox" by G.K. Chesterton

Thomas was a huge heavy bull of a man, fat and slow and quiet; very mild and magnanimous but not very sociable; shy, even apart from the humility of holiness; and abstracted, even apart from his occasional and carefully concealed experiences of trance or ecstasy.

St. Francis was so fiery and even fidgety that the ecclesiastics, before whom he appeared quite suddenly, thought he was a madman. St. Thomas was so stolid that the scholars, in the schools which he attended regularly, thought he was a dunce. Indeed, he was the sort of schoolboy, not unknown, who would much rather be thought a dunce than have his own dreams invaded, by more active or animated dunces. This external contrast extends to almost every point in the two personalities.

It was the paradox of St. Francis that while he was passionately fond of poems, he was rather distrustful of books. It was the outstanding fact about St. Thomas that he loved books and lived on books; that he lived the very life of the clerk or scholar in The Canterbury Tales, who would rather have a hundred books of Aristotle and his philosophy than any wealth the world could give him. When asked for what he thanked God most, he answered simply, "I have understood every page I ever read." St. Francis was very vivid in his poems and rather vague in his documents; St. Thomas devoted his whole life to documenting whole systems of Pagan and Christian literature; and occasionally wrote a hymn like a man taking a holiday.

They saw the same problem from different angles, of simplicity and subtlety; St. Francis thought it would be enough to pour out his heart to the Mohammedans, to persuade them not to worship Mahound. St. Thomas bothered his head with every hair-splitting distinction and deduction, about the Absolute or the Accident, merely to prevent them from misunderstanding Aristotle. St. Francis was the son of a shopkeeper, or middle class trader; and while his whole life was a revolt against the mercantile life of his father, he retained none the less, something of the quickness and social adaptability which makes the market hum like a hive. In the common phrase, fond as he was of green fields, he did not let the grass grow under his feet. He was what American millionaires and gangsters call a live wire. It is typical of the mechanistic moderns that, even when they try to imagine a live thing, they can only think of a mechanical metaphor from a dead thing. There is such a thing as a live worm; but there is no such thing as a live wire. St. Francis would have heartily agreed that he was a worm; but he was a very live worm. Greatest of all foes to the go-getting ideal, he had certainly abandoned getting, but he was still going.

Continue reading...

Abp. Chaput: "God has never been more absent from the Western mind than he is today."

The Archbishop of Denver made his case in Rome at the Fifth Symposium Rome: Priests and Laity on Mission. A short taste:

Having said all this, we still face a problem. And here it is: God has never been more absent from the Western mind than he is today. Additionally, we live in an age when almost every scientific advance seems to be matched by some increase of cruelty in our entertainment, cynicism in our politics, ignorance of the past, consumer greed, little genocides posing as “rights” like the cult of abortion, and a basic confusion about what – if anything at all – it means to be “human.”

Science and technology give us power. Philosophers like Feuerbach and Nietzsche give us the language to deny God. The result, in the words of Henri De Lubac, is not atheism, but an anti-theism built on resentment.  In destroying God, man sees himself as “overthrowing an obstacle in order to gain his freedom.” The Christian understanding of human dignity claims that we are made in the image and likeness of God. Thomas Aquinas – whose feast we celebrate tomorrow – said that “In this [likeness to God] is man's greatness, in this is man's worth, in this he excels every creature.”  But this grounding in God is exactly what the modern spirit rejects.

Read it all on ZENIT.

And read an excerpt from Henri de Lubac's book, The Drama of Atheist Humanism:

Rabbi Neusner: Benedict XVI told me he's written his last book

Rabbi Jacob Neusner, who revealed last week that Pope Benedict had told him that he was finished with the second volume of his work on Jesus (which I mistakenly thought would be a trilogy), drops this surprising bit of news:

Waiting outside the papal office, my wife and I wondered what the pope would want to discuss. We need not have worried. The pope and I have in common and talked about what professors always discuss: What are you working on, and what will you do next?

So when my wife and I spent our 25 minutes by ourselves with Benedict, I asked him how he was progressing with volume two of “Jesus of Nazareth,” and he asked me whether I’m still publishing a book a month. He told me that the second volume would come out soon and that it would be the last book he would write. But, he explained, he has other work that will keep him busy. That’s the price exacted from a major scholar who is elected pope.

And that was before we even sat down. The news that he was writing his last book struck me as sad. I said so, and he reminded me that he is older than me — as it happens, by five years. That his book-writing days are coming to an end precluded any discussion of the book I had hoped to someday convince him to write with me — a dialogue on the apostle Paul’s theology of Israel in Romans — and I didn’t bring it up.

He asked me what I’m working on, and I started to explain: “Form analysis of the rabbinic canon…” His eyes seemed to glaze over, so I broke off that line of discussion and took the occasion to give him a copy of my new book introducing the Talmud, published just now in Italian, and the German translation of my “A Rabbi Talks With Jesus.” He appreciated receiving the book in his native German and said he was thankful that the Talmud book was not too long for the time he had for reading. He told my wife that reading “A Rabbi Talks With Jesus” gave him comfort when his sister died.

I left with a vivid picture of a humble and good-natured man wholly devoted to the service of God. He is generous in his appreciation of others and does not take for granted others’ appreciation.

Read the entire piece in today's edition of The Jewish Daily Forward. The "other word," I'm guessing (and hoping), might well include another encyclical or three.

• Rabbi: Pope's second book on Jesus now finished (January 19, 2010)

Joy Behar of "The View" spews sick, sexist, pro-abort stupidity

I hadn't been following the furor over the pro-life Tim Tebow Super Bowl commercial too closely, but then came across this on a sports site:

The Tim Tebow Super Bowl Ad controversy is heating up with women's groups across the nation.  So naturally it was not surprising that it became a topic on conversation on Tuesday's edition of The View.

What was surprising was Joy Behar's comments regarding Tim Tebow, including the following quote:

“The only argument against any of it is, that, you know, he could just as easily become some kind of a rapist pedophile. I mean, you don’t know what someone’s going to be,”

Sure, and Ms. Behar could have been a productive, intelligent, helpful member of society, but instead she is on "The View." Well, at least she inspires viewers to think, "Wow, if she can hold a job, the sky is the limit for me!"

Behar continued, saying, "In this case, he [Tebow, that is] turned out to be great; but it's not an argument about abortion or not abortion..." I suppose she is correct in the sense that she actually didn't offer an argument or anything resembling coherent, post-first-grade thought. Instead, she suggests that killing an unborn child can be justified on the grounds the child might turn out to be a "rapist pedophile." Which suggests the following:

1. She implicitly admits it is a child who is being aborted, as even rapist pedophiles were once unborn babies, who are then born, grow up, etc.

2. She apparently believes those who choose to have abortions also have psychic abilities, able to peer into the future and see what awaits their unborn child.

3. But, then, she immediately admits, "you don't know what someone's going to be." A classic "covering-all-of-my-confused-and-contradictory-bases" move.

4. Which means she believes (or feels?) it is alright to kill an unborn baby based on the completely subjective notion that the child might turn out to be a "rapist pedophile."

5. Of course, if that is the case, what would be the argument against killing a three-year-old who is mean to the house cat, or the nine-year-old who yells at you for no good reason, or the fifteen-year-old who plays rap music really loud despite your pleas to "Kill the beat"?

6. And, taken further (logically, that is), it follows that if it is alright to terminate someone because of what they might do, it is arguably alright to kill anyone at anytime on the basis that they might rape, murder, or molest small children.

But, to be fair to Ms. Behar, her remark is built, however pathetically, upon prevailing pro-abortion "wisdom", which includes (but is not limited to) the following assumptions:

1. There is no truth, and that is the truth.
2. There is no actual right or wrong, and I'm right when I tell you how wrong you are to think otherwise.
3. Unborn babies aren't really human, especially if they might grow up in poverty, which no human should have to do.
4. "What I do with my body is my business alone and no one can judge me or my actions, you sanctimonious, narrow-minded, fundamentalist jerk!"
5. I have the right to kill a baby. You have no right to question my choice. None. Shut up. Now.

By the way, the controversial commercial, which was produced by Focus on the Family, hasn't even been made public yet. But that didn't stop Jehmu Greene, President of Women's Media Center, from going on "The O'Reilly Factor" in order to prove that she is just as witless and soulless as Joy Behar:

O'REILLY: Why would it do that though? If it's a positive ad that I made my choice and it was the right choice and I'm happy we made the choice and Tim obviously is happy, why is that trying to take anything away from anybody? It's a positive statement.

GREENE: This is clearly a thinly veiled attempt to undermine a woman's right to…

O'REILLY: How?

GREENE: ...make decisions about her reproductive decisions.

O'REILLY: How? How is it though? I don't understand how it undermines anything. It just tells their story.

GREENE: I think it tells a story of a woman who had that right…

O'REILLY: Right.

GREENE: (INAUDIBLE).

O'REILLY: Exercised it and it came out well for them.

GREENE: Yes, it did turn out well for them. But taking that choice away from American women who have…

O'REILLY: But they're not trying to take it away.

GREENE: Clearly, clearly Focus on the Family has an anti-choice agenda. They also have…

O'REILLY: Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's true, Focus on the Family's…

GREENE: ...a homophobic agenda.

O'REILLY: Wait, wait, wait.

Oh, now I get it: "women's groups" are upset that if CBS airs a commercial with a woman expressing happiness that she didn't kill her son when he was a baby, it will take away the right of homosexual men to have abortions when they get pregnant. Got it. Why didn't she just say that in the first place?

Benedict XVI on St. Francis of Assisi, "a great saint and a joyful man"

From Vatican Information Service:

FRANCIS OF ASSISI, A GIANT OF SANCTITY

VATICAN CITY, 27 JAN 2010 (VIS) - Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis during the general audience, held this morning in the Paul VI Hall, to St. Francis of Assisi (1181/82-1226), a "true 'giant' of sanctity who continues to enthrall many people of all ages and religious beliefs".

 Francis, the Pope explained, was born into a rich family and passed a carefree youth. At the age of twenty he took part in a military campaign and was taken prisoner. On his return to Assisi he began a process of spiritual conversion that gradually led him to abandon worldly life. In the hermitage of St. Damian, Francis had a vision of Christ, Who spoke to him from the crucifix inviting him to repair His Church.

 This call "contains a profound symbolism", said the Holy Father, because the ruinous condition of the hermitage also represented "the dramatic and disquieting situation of the Church at that time, with her superficial faith that neither formed nor transformed life, her clergy little committed to its duties, ... and the interior decay of her unity due to the rise of heretical movements. Yet nonetheless, at the middle of that Church in ruins was the Crucifix, which spoke and called for renewal, which called Francis".

 Pope Benedict also remarked upon the coincidence between that event in Francis' life and the dream of Pope Innocent III in the same year of 1207. The Pope had dreamt that the basilica of St. John Lateran was about to collapse, and a "small and insignificant" friar held it up to prevent its fall. Pope Innocent recognised the friar in Francis, who came to see him in Rome two years later.

 "Innocent III", said Benedict XVI, "was a powerful Pontiff, who possessed profound theological culture as well as great political power, but it was not he who renewed the Church. It was the 'small and insignificant' friar, it was Francis, called by God. Yet it is important to recall that Francis did not renew the Church without the Pope or against the Pope, but in communion with him. The two things went together: Peter's Successor, the bishops and the Church founded on apostolic succession, and the new charism that the Spirit had created at that moment to renew the Church".

 Having renounced his paternal inheritance in 1208, the saint elected to live in poverty and dedicate himself to preaching. A year later, accompanied by his first followers, he travelled to Rome to present his project for a new form of Christian life to Pope Innocent III.

 Referring then to the philosophical debate concerning, on the one hand, the Francis of tradition and, on the other, the Francis some scholars define as historical, the Pope explained that the saint "wished to follow the Word of Christ ... in all its radical truth", but at the same time "he was aware that Christ is never 'mine' but 'ours', that 'I' can never possess Him, that 'I' can never rebuild against the Church, her will and her teaching".

 It is also true that at first Francis "did not wish to create a new order" with all the due canonical procedures. However, not without disappointment, he came to understand "that everything must have its order and that the law of the Church is necessary to give form to renewal. Thus he entered ... with all his heart into communion with the Church, with the Pope and the bishops".

 The Holy Father recalled how St. Clare also joined the school of St. Francis, and he praised the fruits that the Second Order of St. Francis, the Poor Clares, has brought to the Church. He then went on to speak of Francis' 1219 voyage to Egypt, where he met the Sultan Melek-el-Kamel and preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ. "In an age marked by an ongoing conflict between Christianity and Islam, Francis, armed only with the faith and his personal gentleness, effectively followed the path of dialogue. ... His is a model which even today must inspire relations between Christian and Muslims: promote dialogue in truth, in reciprocal respect and mutual understanding".

 The Pope also referred to the possibility that Francis might have visited the Holy Land and pointed out that the saint's spiritual children have made the Holy Places a privileged place for their mission. "I think with gratitude", he said, "of the great merits of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land".

 Francis, who died in 1226, "lying on the bare earth" of the Porziuncola, "represents an 'alter Christus'", and this "was, in fact, his ideal, ... to imitate Christ's virtues. In particular, he wished to give fundamental value to interior and exterior poverty, also teaching this to his spiritual children. ... The witness of Francis, who loved poverty in order to follow Christ with complete devotion and freedom, continues to be, also for us today, an invitation to cultivate interior poverty so as to develop our trust in God, with a sober lifestyle and a detachment from material goods.

 "In Francis", the Pope added, "love for Christ was expressed in a special way in the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist". He also mentioned the saint's great admiration for priests "because they have received the gift of consecrating the Eucharist. ... Let us never forget", he said, "that the sanctity of the Eucharist requires us to be pure, to live in a manner coherent with the Mystery we celebrate".

 Another characteristic of the saint's spirituality was "the sense of universal fraternity and love for nature which inspired him to write the 'Laudes Creaturarum'. This is a very relevant message because ... the only form of sustainable development is that which respects creation and does not harm the environment", and "even the construction of lasting peace is linked to respect for the environment. Francis reminds us that that the creation reflects the wisdom and benevolence of the Creator".

 The Holy Father concluded by describing Francis as "a great saint and a joyful man. ... There exists, in fact, an intimate and indissoluble bond between sanctity and joy. A French author once wrote that only one sadness exists in the world: that of not being saints".

Related Ignatius Insight Excerpts; Ignatius Press Resources:

• Saint Francis and the Imitation of Christ | Ivan Gobry | From Saint Francis of Assisi: A Biography
• St. Thomas and St. Francis | G.K. Chesterton
• Chesterton and Saint Francis | Joseph Pearce

Saint John Vianney: A Celibate Man with Scores of Children

Saint John Vianney: A Celibate Man with Scores of Children | From The Grace of Ars | Fr. Frederick L. Miller | Ignatius Insight

Saint Matthew records a discussion Jesus had with the Pharisees and his disciples on the indissolubility of marriage and on the mystery of virginity or celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of heaven. This scriptural text is the foundation of the Church's understanding of the evangelical counsel of chastity:

Pharisees carne up to him and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?" He answered, "Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one'? So they are no longer two but one. What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder." They said to him, "Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?" He said to them, "For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery; and he who marries a divorced woman, commits adultery."

The disciples said to him, "If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry." But he said to them, "Not all men can receive this precept, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it." (Mt 19:3-12)

In becoming man, the Son of God chose celibacy as his own way of life. He asked the twelve apostles, even though they were married, to leave everything to follow him. Paul, likewise, was celibate and extolled the celibate way of life for those to whom it is given by the Holy Spirit.

Clearly, for Christ and Paul, and the other apostles, celibacy is a special grace from God, a gift that is and will continue to be given to men called to share in Christ's mission. The gift of celibacy is given for the sake of building up the Kingdom of God on earth. The celibate makes present and visible in the world the life that all of the redeemed will experience in heaven after the resurrection of the dead on the Last Day.

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A Canon Law Conference for Canonists and Civil Attorneys...

... is going to be held at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, WI, on August 3 and 4, 2010. Featured guests include Archbishop Raymond Burke, Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura. Dr. Ed Peters has all of the information and links.

"... arguably the most compelling short biography of a saint to date..."

The Clarion Review has posted a review, "The Hook of Truth," written by Gerard Kreijen, of Evelyn Waugh's masterful Edmund Campion: A Life (Ignatius Press, 2005 [orig. Longmans, 1935]):

That the undisputed master of dark humor and satire should have produced what is arguably the most compelling short biography of a saint to date is perhaps even more extraordinary than the claim that, today, both the biography and its author deserve close attention. Indeed, few means serve better to confront the hollow relativism of our age than turning to the conversion of Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) and the life of Edmund Campion (1540-1581), the saintly subject of his 1935 book.

When Waugh was received into the Roman Catholic Church on September 29, 1930 his latest book had just been dubbed “the ultramodern novel”, so that his conversion caused sensation and bewilderment. In an article entitled, “Converted to Rome: Why It Has Happened to Me”, Waugh made it perfectly clear that his decision was not about ritual nor about submission to the view of others. The essential issue was the choice between Christianity and chaos.

Waugh had come to see Modernity as “the active negation of all that Western culture has stood for”. Civilization, he understood, “has not in itself the power of survival”. Christianity was the foundation of the West and without it the moral and aesthetic fabric of Europe would unravel. For Waugh this was a fact and the acknowledgment of this fact set him against modern society; it was his casus belli:

“The loss of faith in Christianity and the consequential lack of confidence in moral and social standards have become embodied in the ideal of a materialistic, mechanized state […] It is no longer possible […] to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis upon which it rests. “[1]

Read the entire review.