Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog

A simple question:

If you were to:

• claim to have accomplished something that, in fact, you weren't capable of doing (lying),
• that you did not have the authority to do (dissenting),
• that violated the very nature of what you said you were doing (causing scandal),
• and that openly attacked the authority and structure of the community which you claimed to be serving in humility and truth (rebellion and deception),

do you think you would be the subject of an endless stream of newspaper articles extolling your actions, your cause, your conscience, and your courage? No? Maybe? Not sure?

By the way, here's a little blast from the past regarding the same issue. The more things change...

"Mary is the purely human form of the divine will to save."

The brilliant Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis on the relationship between Mary and the her Son's disciples:

Because a Christian disciple is above all a Christ-bearer, there exists a deep and indispensable relationship between Jesus' disciples and the Mother of Emmanuel. By an ineffable design of his grace, God has appointed us to be the visible manifestation of Jesus Christ in the world, the visibility of him who is the Son common to the living God and the humble Virgin of Nazareth. It was she who first made him visible among us, this Virgin whose childbearing, in Isaiah's promise, is inseparable from her Son's labor to "save his people from their sins".[1] We, too, should carefully take to heart the angel's words to Joseph: "Do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit."[2]

Now, this communion with the Mother of Jesus, far from being an eccentric and misguided departure from the purity of the Gospel, is precisely that to which the Lord Jesus is calling us if we would follow him perfectly.

When in Luke 11:28 Jesus proclaims the great beatitude: "Blessed . . . are those who hear the word of God and keep it", surely he intends a great deal more than simply the observance of specific commandments. For the "Word of God", used in the singular and in such a solemn proclamation, must refer above all to Jesus himself as eternal Son of the Father, especially in the context of an anonymous woman declaring Mary's womb to be blessed for having borne him as Savior. Likewise, the Greek word [phulassontes] in this same context conveys much more than simply "observing" or "keeping": indeed, its full range of associations extends to "defending", "cherishing", "fostering' safeguarding", all meanings directly relevant to the conception, bearing, and rearing of a child.

"To keep the Word of God", as Jesus enjoins, cannot at bottom mean anything other than allowing the Holy Spirit to implant the Son of the Father in the womb of our Souls, and then for us to give birth to this Word into the world in union with Mary, the historical Mother of Jesus and the perennial Mother of the Church. The kerygmatic birth of Jesus into the world from the womb of the apostles' faith cannot be a substantially different birth from the historical one that took place in Bethlehem, for there is only one Christ Jesus. The "keeping of the Word of God" in this sense is in full harmony both with the Father's proclamation at the Transfiguration ("This is my beloved Son ... ; listen to him"[3]) and with Mary's advice to the guests at Cana ("Do whatever he tells you!"[4]).

Both the Father and the Mother point to the incarnate Word with love and pleasure. The Holy Spirit conceives him in us, and the Word, bent on redeeming us, points to himself as revelation of the Father. Mary is the purely human form of the divine will to save.

Theotokos sums up all that Mary is

From an Advent/Christmas column I wrote a few years ago:

God has a mother and she was chosen before the beginning of time.

This is an amazing belief, one that is sometimes mocked and often misunderstood, and misrepresented, sometimes even by Catholics. Yet this truth is at the heart of Advent and Christmas–as well as at the heart of the entire Christian Faith.

This belief is also captured in a short phrase in the Hail Mary: "Holy Mary, Mother of God." They are just five simple words, but words bursting with mystery and meaning. They tell us many things about Mary and about the Triune God and His loving plan of salvation for mankind, in which Mary has such a significant place.

Mary is holy. To be holy is to be set apart, to be pure, and to be filled with the life of God. The call to holiness, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, is summarized in Jesus' words: "Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt 5:48; CCC 2013). Mary's holiness comes from the same source as the holiness that fills all who are baptized and are in a state of race. But Mary's relationship with the Triune God is unique, as Luke makes evident in his description of Gabriel appearing to Mary:

Mary, the virginal mother of God, and feminist theology

From Fr. Manfred Hauke's book, God or Goddess?: Feminist Theology: What is it? Where Does it Lead? (Ignatius Press, 1995):

Mary, the virginal mother of God, is a kind of central point at which the main lines of the Catholic Faith come together. Since it is impossible to conceive of sacred history without her, she points in a unique way toward the mystery of Christ and the Church. By virtue of that position, she also becomes a criterion against which new theological conceptions must be measured. Mary's criteriological significance is of supreme value when assessing feminist theology, which puts forward demands for fundamental changes in religious life.

Mary Daly's and other Feminist Critiques of Mariology

The decisive impulse to theological feminism's critique of Mariology came in 1973, from Mary Daly's Beyond God the Father. Already in 1968, Daly published a book on the theme of women, its title and basic content closely tied to Simone de Beauvoir: The Church and the Second Sex. For Daly, too, one does not arrive in the world as a woman, but one becomes a woman. In view of the theory of evolution, we can no longer speak of an "essence" of man or of woman or, likewise, of an immutable God who grounds immutable orders of things. Hence, there are no longer any creation-imposed presuppositions to serve as standards for the transformation of society and the Church, but only the ideal of "equality."

In her 1973 critique, Daly has been inspired once again by Simone de Beauvoir, who had pointed out the contrast between the ancient goddesses and Mary as early as 1949; whereas the goddesses commanded autonomous power and utilized men for their own purposes, Mary is wholly the servant of God: "'I am the handmaid of the Lord.' For the first time in the history of mankind," writes Beauvoir, "a mother kneels before her son and acknowledges, of her own free will, her inferiority. The supreme victory of masculinity is consummated in Mariolatry: it signifies the rehabilitation of woman through the completeness of her defeat."

Daly now sharpens this critique and puts it in a wider systematic context: Mary is "a remnant of the ancient image of the Mother Goddess, enchained and subordinated in Christianity, as the 'Mother of God'." To this attempt to "domesticate" the mother goddess, Daly opposes a striving to bring together the divine and the feminine.

In the later work Gyn/Ecology (1978), Daly abandons the ideal of "androgyny" that she had previously still advocated and becomes the most important representative of the gynocentric "goddess feminism." Mary is a "pale derivative symbol disguising the conquered Goddess," a "flaunting of the tamed Goddess." Her role as servant in the Incarnation of God amounts to nothing other than a "rape." For Daly, the subordination of man to God is something negative, especially when this state of affairs is expressed in a feminine symbol such as Mary.

Mary as a "domesticated goddess" – this basic notion of Daly's is not something original to feminism. The same objection can be found, from another perspective and primarily since the nineteenth century, in liberal polemics against the Catholic teaching on Mary. Particularly, the title "Mother of God" is often explained in terms of the common people's need to worship a goddess. It seems unnecessary to discuss this "unsellable" item from anti-Catholic polemics further here. Whereas, however, the anti-Catholic literature of earlier generations found it important to stress that Mary is no goddess, the feminists emphasize Mary's place-holding function: Mary discloses the female attributes of God that have heretofore been suppressed.

Read more from this section of Fr. Hauke's book. For more about Mary Daly's work, see my post, "Mary Daly, radical elemental feminist, God-hater, man-basher, self-described..." (January 2010).

A dose of reality about Christopher Hitchens, RIP...

... courtesy of Dr. Edward Feser (himself a former atheist), in case you missed his post of two weeks ago:

Christopher Hitchens, who had been suffering from esophageal cancer for over a year, has died.  I think I first came across his work around 1990, at the time his book Blood, Class, and Nostalgia appeared.  (My copy is still around here somewhere.)  I recall seeing him on television -- grilling some George H. W. Bush administration official, perhaps -- and being very impressed by his forceful and formidable intelligence.  I have always been conservative and have usually disagreed with him, but I followed his work with interest from that point on, long before he started to please right-wingers with his well-argued criticisms of the Clintons and support for the Iraq war.  He was almost always smart, funny, and interesting even when he was wrong.

Except on religion, where he was a complete bore and an insufferable hack.  There is no use sugar-coating that fact now that he is gone, and Hitchens was not in any event a fan of the polite obituary.  Religion is the last subject about which to have a tin ear or a closed mind, and Hitchens had both.  Some Catholics seem to have gotten it into their heads over the last year that he might convert -- as if someone who is overtly so very hostile to Catholicism simply must be compensating for a secret longing for it, and is sure to be moved by the prospect of imminent death to let his inhibitions fall away.  This struck me as romantic fantasy, born of too steady a diet of happy “crossing the Tiber” stories.  Sometimes a man has mixed feelings about you, but will accentuate the negative, loath as he is to acknowledge the merits of an adversary.  And sometimes he just hates your guts, and that’s that.  As far as I know, Hitchens was no closer on his deathbed to becoming the next Malcolm Muggeridge than he had been when penning his decidedly un-Muggeridgean book about Mother Teresa.   I very much hope I am wrong.

Read the entire post on Feser's blog. I've read a few of Hitchens' articles over the years and readily acknowledge his exceptional writing ability. But I was actually embarrassed for him when I read God Is Not Great. It was so bad you'd be forgiven for thinking, "Was this actually penned by a lobotomized undergraduate at a fourth-rate college who was injected with huge doses of God-hating, Christian-despising serum?" Regardless, while praying that God has mercy on Hitchens' soul, I think Feser is absolutely right in saying, "And sometimes he just hates your guts, and that’s that." Indeed.

China's leading bishop openly declares support for the Communist Party

From Dr. Anthony E. Clark, this follow-up note to his recent article, "China's Catholics: Sixty Years of Faith, Resistance, and Reaching for Freedom" (Ignatius Insight, Dec. 28, 2011):

As radical nationalism reaches a fevered pitch in China, the country’s official Catholic leader, Beijing’s Bishop Li Shan published recently his testimony in support of China’s Communist Party and declared China’s Church is “independent, self ruling, and self managing.”

Bishop Li’s anti-Rome remarks come just a few months after he defied Vatican orders not to ordain bishops illicitly; Li’s refusal to obey Rome has caused grave rifts in China’s Catholic community, as he has become increasingly pro-Party, and has proudly announced his chairmanship of Beijing’s Catholic Patriotic Association. Here is a preliminary translation of Bishop Li’s “Introduction” to the “Sixtieth Anniversary Celebration of Beijing’s Catholic Patriotic Association,” published in October 2011.

____________

Introduction

On September 16, 1951, the first meeting of Beijing’s Catholics was solemnly convened under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and 500 Catholic clergy represented Beijing’s 30,000 Christians. They resolutely determined to cast off the shackles of colonialist and capitalist control for a more unpolluted Holy Church, so that the Holy Church can continue to transmit the Gospel. In support of and under the leadership of the Communist Party and a New China, they worked together with their compatriots to establish a Socialist society. The Patriotic Religious Organization was established at the great meeting to resolutely advance an independent, self-ruling, and self-managing Church: this was called the Beijing Catholic Patriotic Association. From that moment Beijing’s Catholics entered a new glorious era of evangelization.

For sixty years now the Beijing Catholic Patriotic Association has rallied together and guided the clergy, who have raised high the banner of the Catholic Patriotic Association, determined to firmly go down the road of being an independent, self-ruled, and self-managed Church. We enthusiastically promote the governance and rights of the Patriotic Association, and direct ourselves toward the aim of the collective education of the clergy, who together with the Party and government are linked together by a common purpose. The diocesan and administrative committees work together toward the goals of pastoral evangelization, earnestly work serve the interests of society, energetically work to serve the whole, to serve the capital, to serve humanity, and witness “the love of Jesus,” and implement the sacred commission, “that they may all be one,” to the glory of the Son.

+ Li Shan

Chairman of the Beijing Catholic Patriotic Association
Chairman of the Beijing Catholic Service Committee
Bishop of Beijing

Below are photos (from top to bottom) of Bishop Li Shan (left), the cover of the program for the "Sixtieth Anniversary Celebration of Beijing’s Catholic Patriotic Association", and the original, Chinese text of Bishop Shan's introduction:

Peter Kreeft: "Of all the questions the human mind can ask, three are of ultimate importance:"

1. What can I know?
2. What should I do?
3. What may I hope?

The three questions [1] correspond to the three "theological virtues" of faith, hope, and charity. [2] Faith in God's word is the Christian answer to "What can I know?" Love of God and neighbor is the Christian answer to "What should I do?" And hope for Gods' Kingdom, the Kingdom of heaven, is the Christian answer to "What may I hope?" Just as faith fulfills the mind's deepest quest for truth and as love fulfills the moral will's deepest quest for goodness, so the hope of heaven fulfills the heart's deepest quest for joy.

It is the quest that moves irrepressibly through the world's great myths and religions, the masterpieces of its greatest artists and writers, and the dreams that rise from the primordial depths of our unconscious. However different the heavens hoped for, wherever there is humanity, there is hope.

The question of hope is at least as ultimate as the other two great questions. For it means "what is the point and purpose of life? Why was I born? Why am I living? What's it all about, Alfie?"

Most people in our modern Western society do not have any clear or solid answer to this question. Most of us live without knowing what we live for. Surely this is life's greatest tragedy, far worse than death. Living for no reason is not living, but mere existing, mere surviving. As Viktor Frankl found in a Nazi concentration camp, our deepest, rock-bottom need is not pleasure, as Freud thought, or power, as Adler thought, but meaning and purpose, "a reason to live and a reason to die". [3] We need a meaning to life more than we need life itself.

Millions all around us are living the tragedy of meaningless life, the "life" of spiritual death. That is what makes our society more radically different from every society in history: not that it can fly to the moon, enfranchise more voters, have the grossest national product, conquer disease, or even blow up the entire planet, but that is does not know why it exists.

Every past society gave its members answers to all three great questions. It transmitted the teachings of its sages, saints, mystics, gurus, philosophers, or gods through tradition. For the first time in history, society no longer regards tradition as sacred; in fact, it no longer regards it at all. We are the first tree that has uprooted itself from the universal soil. If we are to find an answer to the question "For what may I hope?" we must find the answer individually; our society simply does not know. The only sound we hear from our noisy society concerning the most important questions in the world is the sound of silence.

How has this silence come about? How is it that the society that "knows it all" about everything knows nothing about Everything? How has the knowledge explosion exploded away the supreme knowledge? Why have we thrown away the road map just as we've souped up the engine? We must retrace the steps by which we have come to this dead end; to recapture hope we must diagnose the causes of our hopelessness before we begin to prescribe a remedy. Before we undertake the main task of this book, the exploration of the deepest hope of the human heart, the hope for heaven, we must first answer two preliminary questions: first, why our society is so silent, and second, how our hearts can substitute for our society in being our teachers and guides on our quest for hope, our quest for heaven.

The History of Hope

From earliest times, humanity has hoped for heaven. The earliest artifacts are burial mounds. The dead were always prepared for the great journey. However various the forms, belief in an afterlife is coterminous with humanity.

On Hitchens, Havel, and Kim—and Totalitarianism

From Paul Kengor, prolific author and professor of political science at Grove City College:

They say that famous people die in groups of three.

I recently heard the news of the death of Christopher Hitchens, one of the world’s best-known atheists and polemicists. I was saddened by Hitchens’ death. I’m no atheist, but I respected the man, his writing skills, and his fierce independence of mind. When I got the news, I immediately did what Hitchens might have done: I started writing, trying to collect my feelings into words. It’s how I cope with things.

Two days later, on a Sunday morning, a friend of mine at church grabbed my arm and whispered: “Did you hear that Vaclav Havel died?”

No, I hadn’t. That one hurt, too. Havel is one of a handful of individuals responsible for the collapse of communism. I’ve lectured on the man. As I sat in the pew, I began writing again—in my head.

When I got home, I hurriedly composed an article on Havel and Hitchens both. Hitchens, ironically, had great respect for Havel, conceding Havel’s crucial role in communism’s collapse. He did not, however, agree with Havel on matters of faith. Havel was Roman Catholic, and saw in God the source of our fundamental freedoms. Havel extolled the inalienable rights of the Declaration of Independence, and the One who endows those rights. Hitchens, by contrast, called God a “totalitarian.” Havel lived under totalitarianism, one of its victims, and viewed God as the purest response to totalitarianism.

Later that day, Sunday evening, I attended a Christmas play. A colleague of mine, a fellow professor, was in the play. We were discussing the deaths of Hitchens and Havel, and the parallels. My friend recalled November 22, 1963, a remarkable day when John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley all died. We nervously chuckled: “Well, who will be the third person to die this time?”

At that very moment, our answer was unfolding in North Korea: it was Kim Jong-Il. And therein is more irony: Kim was the anti-Havel.

Read the entire article on the Center for Vision & Values website.

The Pope's year in review...

... in short form, courtesy of Vatican Information Service:

VATICAN CITY, 29 DEC 2011 (VIS) - In a recent interview on Vatican Radio, Holy See Press Office Director Fr. Federico Lombardi S.J. reviewed the activities of the Holy Father over the course of 2011. A summary of his remarks is given below.

  Fr. Lombardi first turned his attention to the Pope's trips, noting that the visit to Germany in September had reflected the Holy Father's concern to speak to modern secularised society, especially in Europe, about God and His primacy. By contrast, his visit to Spain for World Youth Day was "a great experience of the vitality of the faith, of its future". In Benin, Benedict XVI had signed the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation "Africa munus" in which he examines the problems facing Africa and "identifies reasons for realistic hope with which to face the future, recognising the dignity of the African people", Fr. Lombardi said.

  Another key moment of 2011 was the inter-religious meeting at Assisi in October, which had focused on "the search for truth". The event had been attended not just by representatives of different religious confessions, but also by "people who, though they do not recognise a God, sincerely seek after the truth".

  Among the documents published during 2011, Fr. Lombardi mentioned the Motu Proprio "Porta Fidei" with which Benedict XVI proclaims a "Year of Faith" to begin in October 2012. This, he noted, is associated with one of the great themes of the pontificate: new evangelisation. The Holy See Press Office Director also recalled the recent Mass to mark the independence of various Latin American countries, during which the Pope had announced his forthcoming trip to Mexico and Cuba.

  At Christmas every year the Holy Father makes special visits of solidarity, and this year's took him to the Roman prison of Rebbibia where he gave spontaneous answers to questions put to him by the inmates. That meeting, said Fr. Lombardi, shows "how the Church, though recognising that civil society has legislative responsibility for dramatic issues such as justice and prisons, ... can send out a strong message ... about reconciliation, hope and reintegration into society".

  Also during 2011 the Pope was able to speak with astronauts orbiting the earth on the international space station, "thus underlining with great willingness and joy the Church's benevolence towards scientific research and technology, when they serve the good of humanity". The beatification of John Paul II was another key moment of the past year, which "mobilised the entire Church" and was experienced "with immense delight".

  The year also saw the publication of part two of Joseph Ratzinger's book "Jesus of Nazareth", focusing on the death and resurrection of Christ. "We continue to hope", Fr. Lombardi concluded, "that he will write a third volume, on the infancy, in order to complete this extraordinarily vivid and profound presentation of Jesus for us today".

Here is much more about Pope Benedict XVI and his many writings.

More novel conversations...

This time on Maria Radio with Ignatius Press editor Vivian Dudro about two classic novels recently republished by Ignatius: Ida Elizabeth by Sigrid Undset and The Song at the Scaffold by Gertrud von Le Fort. The Preface to the latter novel can be read here:

China's Catholics: Sixty Years of Faith, Resistance, and Reaching for Freedom

China's Catholics: Sixty Years of Faith, Resistance, and Reaching for Freedom | Anthony E. Clark | Ignatius Insight

Karl Marx once said that, "History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their own ends." Chinese authorities appear to have listened well to this famous quote about the utility of history; history is often conveniently reinvented to support an official ideology. October 1^st is National Day in China. It is the day on which Mao Zedong, the "Great Helmsman," stood above the vast crowds at Tiananmen and proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. It commemorates the day that Communism became the official ideological engine of Chinese society, and for Catholic Christians this also marks the beginning of decades of struggle to maintain their faith and identity as members of the world's largest religious community. Indeed, there are roughly the same number of Catholics in the world as there are Chinese.

Just prior to the nation-wide celebration of the "birth of new China," Beijing's Catholic cathedral was ordered to celebrate the sixty-year anniversary of the founding of China's Catholic Patriotic Association, which is most curious as the Patriotic Association was officially founded in 1957, making it only fifty-four years old. No matter, according to the Religious Affairs Bureau, China's Catholics have "enjoyed the benefits of independence from Rome" since shortly after the country's establishment, around sixty years ago.

The reality is that in 1957 China's Religious Affairs Bureau convened a large number of China's Catholic hierarchy and officially established the Catholic Patriotic Association, founded on the principal that China's Church should not "obey a foreign influence". This meant that from that day forward the hierarchy was expected to follow the Chinese Protestant system of "self-governance, self-support, and self-propagation." China's government even tried to pressure a Chinese bishop into claiming the title "pope." When offered this position the shrewd bishop replied, "I'll happily accept the position ... as long as I am elected in Rome and live in the Vatican."

The existence of China's Catholic Patriotic Association, which defines itself in opposition to Rome, has resulted in an awkward sense of ecclesial separation from the administrative authority of the pope. To assert its self-governance, the Patriotic Association has made a habit of selecting priests to be ordained bishops, often without the pope's sanction or approval. In his recent letter to Chinese Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI noted that in China today, it is "persons who are not ordained, and sometimes not even baptized," who "control and make decisions concerning important ecclesial questions, including the appointment of Bishops."

In spite of this present reality, it would be incorrect to assume that China's Catholics and clergy have simply surrendered to state interference in matters of faith—China's Church has never stopped resisting Communist control and pressures, but its resistance is not often seen or heard of beyond the Great Wall.

Read the entire article on Ignatius Insight...

"Failure makes people bitter and cruel."

So said the novelist W. Someset Maugham (1874-1965). And when it comes to being bitter, it's hard to top left-wing, dissenting, arrogant "Vatican commentators", as evidenced by this piece in The Irish Times:

“JOSEPH RATZINGER should never have become pope. It could not happen. According to the unwritten rules of papal conclaves such a ‘divisive’ figure would never be able to command the two-thirds vote necessary to be elected.”

Those are the opening words of a new book, Ratzinger, A Pontificate In Crisis , by Marco Politi, the veteran Vatican commentator who in an interview as early as November 2004 had indicated the then Cardinal Ratzinger as a “secret candidate” to become the next pope. In his book, (not yet available in English) Politi outlines the background to his interview with Ratzinger.

He points out that he had originally issued a formal request for the interview in 2001. However, it was only in November 2004, at a time when John Paul II’s chronic ill-health was all too obvious, that the then senior Vatican spokesman, Opus Dei member, Joaquín Navarro-Valls confirmed the interview.

Politi suggests that during the summer of 2004, an inner Holy See cabal of ultra-conservative, Hispanic Curia cardinals had decided that “God’s Rottweiller” Ratzinger was the cardinal who could best defend their hardline conservative views. The cardinals in question included the Colombians, Darío Castrillón Hoyos and Alfonso López Trujillo, the Spaniard Julián Herranz and the Chilean Jorge Medina Estévez. The idea of the interview with Politi, then the Vatican correspondent for influential left-wing daily La Repubblica was to “promote” their man.

The rest, of course, is history. The best-laid plans came to fruition with the April 2005 election of Pope Benedict XVI, a Curia figure who for most of the previous 20 years had not even figured on the list of papabili (future popes) drawn up by Vatican commentators.

Failure not only leads to bitterness, but to the sort of gnawing anger that breeds conspiracy theories, victimhood, and bigotry. The failure seen here, however, is not a failure to win power or to leverage for political influence, but the failure to have faith. Show me a Catholic who talks endlessly and obsessively of power struggles, personality clashes, "plans", "programs", and politics, and I'll show you a Catholic who has either lost his faith or is on course to do so. Once your gaze fails to ever look heavenward, you are bound to curse nearly everything on earth, either through impotent words of rage or violent acts of domination. The Epistle to the Hebrews states:

Strive for peace with all men, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fail to obtain the grace of God; that no "root of bitterness" spring up and cause trouble, and by it the many become defiled; that no one be immoral or irreligious like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal. (Heb 12:14-16)

What is that "holiness" but the purity of heart and clarity of vision gifted by grace and grown by faith? Why is being "immoral" linked to being "irreligious"? Because the rejection of Creed (to borrow from Abp. Fulton Sheen) is almost always rooted in a defiant rending of the Commandments. This is not to dismiss such omniscient Vatican commentators as sad sinners unworthy of attention; after all, we are all sad sinners if we are without grace, repentance, and confession. Rather, it is marvel at the arrogance of those who denounce the Pope and his work as devious and "dysfunctional" failures while they lash out in confused frustration over their failure to circumvent the work of the Holy Spirit.

But, again, there's the rub: if you really do believe in the Holy Spirit, the power of Jesus Christ, and the supernatural character of the Church, your criticisms will exhibit far less desperation and a bit more charity. But if the Church is just a matter of politics clothed in bells and smells, then don't waste any time going after that dark and sinister "inner Holy See cabal of ultra-conservative, Hispanic Curia cardinals"! After all, when all else fails—especially faith—bitterness and cruelty are some of the only options left on a desolate table.

Watch Fr. Andrew Apostoli talk about "Archbishop Fulton Sheen: Servant of All"

Fr. Andrew Apostoli, CFR, was on EWTN's "Bookmark" program earlier this month to talk with host Doug Keck about the new documentary, Archbishop Fulton Sheen: Servant of All:

More about the DVD set, available from Ignatius Press:

Archbishop Fulton Sheen: Servant of All

2 DVDs | 200 minutes

This special double DVD film package includes an acclaimed new film on the great Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Servant of All, along with five of his most popular television programs from his #1 rated TV series, Life is Worth Living. For decades Fulton Sheen was a shining example of what it means to serve God and men. His TV series reached 30 million viewers weekly, and his profound words were captured in over 100 books. Millions were influenced by the way he lived, what he taught and the witness of his personal relationship with God. His cause for sainthood is progressing along in Rome.

This powerful film Servant of All introduces the beloved Archbishop to a new generation that greatly needs his inspiring example of love for God and neighbor. It reveals how the impact of Sheen's prolific life and works continue on in those whose lives he forever changed. Guests interviewed for this film include Fr. Andrew Apostoli, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, Regis Philbin, Fr. Jonathan Morris, biographers of Sheen, his surviving relatives, friends, and many others who were influenced by him.

The five remastered films from his award-winning TV series present Sheen himself with his unique, captivating teaching style on the crucial importance of faith, love and spirituality. The programs are Ages of Man, False Compassion, Love is a Many Splendored Thing, The Divine Sense of Humor and Angels.

Michael O'Brien goes "Between the Covers"...

... and talks to John J. Miller of National Review Online about his latest work, The Father's Tale: A Novel.

The opening pages of the novel can be read on Ignatius Insight:

Secularist Ireland

By George Neumayr, for Catholic World Report:

The government’s decision to close its Vatican embassy for lack of “economic return”

Adorning books about Ireland’s storied past are such titles as How the Irish Saved Civilization. Today’s Ireland, however, is busy losing it. In recent decades secularism has coursed through the country, transforming a pious island that once dispatched missionaries to foreign lands into an agnostic muddle that now needs them.

The news of November brought yet another illustration of secularism’s dismal triumph in Ireland: its government decided to shutter the country’s Vatican embassy. The Irish government will henceforth maintain remote diplomatic ties from Dublin, a move widely seen as a snub to the Vatican.  

As if to underline the small-minded materialism that now holds sway over the Irish elite, Foreign Affairs Minister Eamon Gilmore explained the decision on grounds of crass and dubious economics. “While the embassy to the Holy See is one of Ireland’s oldest missions, it yields no economic return,” he said.

Ireland has reaped spiritual and cultural riches from its close historic relationship with the Vatican, not to mention material ones through a tourism industry heavily dependent upon the country’s charming Catholic past. But Ireland’s cocky secularists don’t care. Like third-rate Jacobins, they seek to rebuild Irish society from scratch, using the Church’s recent disgraces as an anticlerical pretext to turn their backs on history, tradition, and faith.

Read the entire piece on www.CatholicWorldReport.com...

2011 Best Sellers...

... for Ignatius Press:

Books:
1. YOUCAT
2. Jesus of Nazareth, Vol 2
3. Unplanned
4. Be a Man!
5. He Comes! He Comes!
6. Jesus of Nazareth
7. Catholic Study Bible: New Testament Paperback)
8. Ignatius Bible (RSV) 2nd ed. (Hardcover)
9. Rome Sweet Home
10. Ignatius Bible (RSV) 2nd ed. (Paperback)

Music/CDs:
1. Dream with Me
2. Harmony: The Priests
3. The Priests
4. Chant: Music for the Soul
5. Noel: The Priests
6. The Truth and Life Dramatized Audio Bible
7. Andrea Bocelli: Sacred Arias
8. Voices
9. Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week
10. The Rosary and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy

Films:
1. No Greater Love
2. The 13th Day
3. Padre Pio Miracle Man
4. Bakhita 
5. Edith Stein: The Seventh Chamber
6. St. Giuseppe Moscati
7. The Reluctant Saint
8. Saint Rita
9. Nine Days That Changed the World
10. Of Gods and Men

More lists on this page.

God's plan, the reality of evil, and the Holy Innocents

God has everything in his hand Nothing exists outside the sphere of his influence. Nothing can upset his plans. Augustine formulates this very radically: "Nothing happens that the Almighty does not will should happen, either by permitting it or by himself doing it." [1] To let something happen is also a decision of God.

That God allows so much to happen is a great stumbling block for us. Why is he so passive? Why does he not intervene? How is Auschwitz possible and the torture chamber and the threat of a horrible nuclear war if God is concerned with us? These questions torment us and are not easy to answer. In chapter 2, I will return to this and try to show why God endowed human beings with free will, though he knew that this very freedom would pave the way for terrible catastrophes.

Let us limit ourselves for now to the undeniable fact that the Father did not prevent the painful death of his only-begotten Son. This fact is a kind of archetype, which shows us two things very clearly. The first is that suffering and even total ruin do not signify a lack of love on the part of the Father. The second is that suffering is not in vain; it bears fruit and has redeeming power. Since Jesus has gone through it, suffering has become an instrument of salvation. This applies not only to suffering that is borne generously and heroically. Who knows how we would react in the torture chamber? It is enough that we try as best we can to accept suffering or that we merely allow whatever comes our way to happen. The Church regards the Holy Innocents as martyrs, even though they never consciously or willingly consented to their violent deaths.

God makes use of evil in such a superb way and with such skill that the result is better than if there had never been evil. For those of us who find ourselves in the midst of evil, this is not easy to swallow. We think that the price to be paid for these good results is far too high. But Saint Paul rejoices when he ponders the "mystery", God's magnificent plan, "hidden for ages in God" (Eph 3:9), where evil and sin also have their place. "God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all" (Rom 11:32). In this daring passage, which, strictly speaking, seems somewhat questionable, since it seems to place the initiative of sin on God, Saint Paul assures us that even the greatest catastrophe, namely, sin, contributes to the revelation of love. Nothing falls outside of God's plan. That is why the tragedy of the world, despite all its terror, has no definitive character. All the absurdity of which mankind's foolishness and blindness are capable is caught up in God's loving omnipotence. He is able to fit even the absurd into his plan of salvation and thereby give it meaning.

From Fr. Wilfrid Stinissen's Into Your Hands, Father: Abandoning Ourselves to the God Who Loves Us. Read more:

Seeing Jesus in the Gospel of John

Seeing Jesus in the Gospel of John | An Excerpt from On The Way to Jesus Christ | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

The farewell discourses of Jesus, as the Gospel of John presents them to us, hover in a singular way between time and eternity, between the present hour of the Passion and the new presence of Jesus that is already dawning, because the Passion itself is at the same time his "glorification" as well. On the one hand, the darkness of the betrayal, of the denial, of the abandonment of Jesus to the ultimate ignominy of the Cross weighs upon these discourses; in them, on the other hand, it seems that all of this has already been overcome and resolved into the glory that is to come.

Thus Jesus describes his Passion as a going away that leads to a new and fuller coming–as a state of being-on-the-way with which the disciples are already acquainted.[1] Thereupon Thomas, surprised, asks the question, "Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?" Jesus answers with a statement that has become one of the central texts of Christology: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me."

This revelation of the Lord, however, elicits a new question now-or rather, a request, which this time is made by Philip: "Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied." Again Jesus replies with a revelatory word, which leads from another perspective into the very depths of his self-consciousness, into the very depths of the Church's faith in Christ: "He who has seen me has seen the Father" (Jn 14:2-9). The primordial human longing to see God had taken, in the Old Testament, the form of "seeking the face of God". The disciples of Jesus are men who are seeking God's face. That is why they joined up with Jesus and followed after him. Now Philip lays this longing before the Lord and receives a surprising answer, in which the novelty of the New Testament, the new thing that is coming through Christ, shines as though in crystallized form: Yes, you can see God. Whoever sees Christ sees him.

This answer, which characterizes Christianity as a religion of fulfillment, as a religion of the divine presence, nevertheless immediately evokes a new question. "Already and not yet" has been called the fundamental attitude of Christian living; what this means becomes evident precisely in this passage. For the next question is now (for all of post-apostolic Christianity, at least): How can you see Christ and see him in such a way that you see the Father at the same time?

This abiding question is placed in the Gospel of John, not in the discourses in the Cenacle, but rather in the Palm Sunday account. There it is related that some Greeks, who had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to worship, came to Philip–that is, to the disciple who in the Cenacle would voice the request to see the Father. These Greeks present their request to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, an extensively Hellenized part of the Holy Land: "Sir, we wish to see Jesus"' (Jn 12:20-21). It is the request of the pagan world, but it is also the request of the Christian faithful of all times, our request: We want to see Jesus. How can that happen?

Forget egalitarianism—I want a dish washer with a doctorate!

Occupy Eugene is no more. Alas, the brief and fragile light of higher consciousness and social awareness that disguised itself as a muddy huddle of tents, tarps, and crude cardboard signs was closed down last week after a series of "incidents", most notably a man being beaten and then choked to death. The Eugene Weekly expressed outrage at the merciless, insensitive actions of the police, who apparently were growing tired of living full-time at the site in order to keep assaults, body odor, public defications, and acts of severe violence in check:

The man, Rick Youngblood, was a not a member of the camp, according to Terry, a firefighter who has been volunteering at the camp. Terry and a police officer worked together to give Youngblood lifesaving CPR. [Youngblood died four days later at the hospital.]

The eviction hurts, Terry said, because the incident actually showed “we work well together.” He said several of the incidents written up as assaults in the police report that led to the council vote were merely arguments without physical violence.

"We" apparently referring to the fireman and police officer, as Occupy Eugene folks don't seem to know how to perform CPR, or to recognize an assault victim. But, amidst the tragedy, there is also humor, albeit unintentional:

“Shut down before Christmas. How crude,” Greg Nagle said. Nagle holds a doctorate in watershed science from Cornell and had been volunteering washing dishes at the camp. 

If my Occupy camp ever needs a volunteer dish washer, I'm all for it being someone with a Ph.D. in "watershed science". It makes perfect sense. And lest it be said that the Occupy Eugene movement didn't educate anyone, pay heed to the lesson nestled in this nugget of information:

According to Valkyrie, one of the extraordinary things Occupy has done is bring the street families together and let street kids learn from older activists, and the activists in turn learn from the street families.

 “A Ph.D. stands next to a homeless kid and they both have an equal say and an equal vote,” she said.

Who really is more intelligent: the man who spends many years and tens of thousands of dollars earning a doctorate in watershed science, or the street kid who figures out how to get said Ph.D. to wash dishes for her? (Put that in your dish washer and rinse it!)

Finally, lest my glib remarks appear flippant (or my flippant observations seem glib), the executive director of FOOD for Lane County points out the obvious:

It was pointed out that there were homeless people in Eugene. And some people were hungry. And for some reason some among the movement thought that those conditions had gone unnoticed and ignored in our community until the conditions were pointed out by demonstrations in the downtown park blocks, Alton Baker Park, Franklin Boulevard, on the University of Oregon campus, and finally at the Washington-­Jefferson Park portion of the Willamette Greenway.

What a shame they might have thought that. And what an affront that suggestion seems to the thousands and thousands and thousands of people who for decades have been giving their time, their money and their hearts to the needy people in our community. ...

It’s amazing how generous the people of Lane County have always been. And it’s a little frustrating for somebody to come along and suggest that you haven’t done anything before.

This gets to one of my biggest issues with the Occupy movement: its ignorant arrogance, fueled by an angry and sometimes destructive self-righteousness that was both obviously naive (about history, reality, and everything else) and ideologically driven. It was, in short, infantile, and in the worst possible meaning of the word.

• Meanwhile, in an alternative universe... (Dec. 5, 2011)
• What would Jesus Occupy? (Nov. 29, 2011)
• Occupy Olsons: A Report From the Front Lines (Nov. 3, 2011)

"The real dirty little secret of religiosity in America...

... is that there are so many people for whom spiritual interest, thinking about ultimate questions, is minimal," says Mark Silk, professor of religion and public life at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn.

That is from this USA Today article about the "'So What?' set":

Researchers have begun asking the kind of nuanced questions that reveal just how big the So What set might be:

•44% told the 2011 Baylor University Religion Survey they spend no time seeking "eternal wisdom," and 19% said "it's useless to search for meaning."

•46% told a 2011 survey by Nashville-based evangelical research agency, LifeWay Research, they never wonder whether they will go to heaven.

•28% told LifeWay "it's not a major priority in my life to find my deeper purpose." And 18% scoffed that God has a purpose or plan for everyone.

•6.3% of Americans turned up on Pew Forum's 2007 Religious Landscape Survey as totally secular — unconnected to God or a higher power or any religious identity and willing to say religion is not important in their lives.

Hemant Mehta, who blogs as The Friendly Atheist, calls them the "apatheists"

It's a clever and apt name, as indicated by these quotes:

Helton, a high school band teacher in Chicago, only goes to the Catholic Church of his youth to hear his mother sing in the choir.

His mind led him away. The more Helton read evolutionary psychology and neuro-psychology, he says, the more it seemed to him, "We might as well be cars. That, to me, makes more sense than believing what you can't see."

Ashley Gerst, 27, a 3-D animator and filmmaker in New York, shifts between "leaning to the atheist and leaning toward apathy."

"I would just like to see more people admit they don't believe. The only thing I'm pushy about is I don't want to be pushed. I don't want to change others and I don't want to debate my view," Gerst says.

Most So Whats are like Gerst, says David Kinnaman, author of You Lost Me on young adults drifting away from church.

They're uninterested in trying to talk a diverse set of friends into a shared viewpoint in a culture that celebrates an idea that all truths are equally valid, he says. Personal experience, personal authority matter most. Hence Scripture and tradition are quaint, irrelevant, artifacts. Instead of followers of Jesus, they're followers of 5,000 unseen "friends" on Facebook or Twitter.

My own introduction to this general mentality came about twenty years, when my girlfriend (now my wife) was working on a project for a class on evangelization at Multnomah Bible College. It involved asking three non-Christians a series of questions about life, death, and a few other light-weight topics. One of the questions was, "What do you think is the meaning of life?" I was with her when she asked the questions of a relative of mine, a forty-year-old man with a Masters degree in education who taught at the local high school. He paused for a few moments, with a blank expression on his face, and then said, with remarkable honesty, "That's a really good question; I've never thought about it before."

I think I've mentioned that response more than once on this blog, if only because it shocked me and it showed me there are, in fact, many people who go through life without asking the Big Questions or even knowing of their existence. It still surprises me a bit, but of course I've seen and heard much more over the years along the same lines.