Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog

The Menace of the Herd

by Thomas M. Doran | Catholic World Report

“Alice came to a fork in the road. 'Which road do I take?' she asked.

‘Where do you want to go?' responded the Cheshire Cat.


'I don't know,' Alice answered.

'Then,' said the Cat, 'it doesn't matter’.”
— Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

A long time ago, my dad told all of us in the car to beware of the menace of the herd. My dad happened to be a blue-collar philosopher, if not a prophet, though I didn’t realize it at the time.

The common wisdom, what the smart set is apt to tell us, is that religious believers don’t think, don’t question, don’t challenge. Believers are the herd in the worst sense, a herd of stupid, blind sheep. But how often is rigorous reason applied to this assertion, an assertion that is now conventional wisdom, an assertion that troubles and intimidates many believers?

A black hole is defined by physicists as a region of space-time from which gravity prevents anything, including light, from escaping, a speck of space containing unimaginable mass. The smart set and their disciples are certain (one might say, they have faith) that black holes exist, but try to find a smart setter who understands and can delineate the quantum physics that underlies this concept.

Evolution is defined as the change in the inherited characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. The smart set and their disciples are certain (one might say, they have faith) that evolution is occurring, but try to find a smart setter who understands the genetics and biochemistry that underlie evolutionary processes.

And then there’s string theory. Particles that are waves and waves that are particles. Dimensions exceeding those we can measure. Fundamental particles. The smart set accepts all of it because science proclaims it, but is clueless as to the theoretical physics and mathematics that predict these phenomena.

That’s not to say that black holes, as understood by modern science, don’t exist, or that an evolutionary process isn’t contributing to change in species, or that string theory is a wayward explanation of reality, but only to point out that many put faith in scientific concepts they cannot themselves comprehend. In this sense, they are no different than the “herd of religious believers” they so often ridicule.

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

Ignatius Press CEO: "I am ashamed when we Catholics are embarrassed by Catholic teaching."

Mark Brumley, CEO of Ignatius Press, has written a piece, "Aren't You Ashamed?", for National Catholic Register. From the opening:

“Aren’t you ashamed of your Church? How can you be so bigoted to oppose marriage equality? Why do you persecute gay people?” 

That’s how one supporter of redefining marriage put it to me.  Another said about the same thing, only she claimed to be a Catholic. My response:  I am not ashamed of the Catholic Church.  If I am ashamed of Catholics, it is for my failure and others’ failure to live the whole gospel, truth and love.  And I am ashamed when we Catholics are embarrassed by Catholic teaching.

Why is it bigoted to believe, as Jesus did, that marriage is a union of a man and a woman for life? If that’s bigotry, then I am a bigot for Jesus’ sake, I guess. People like to recall the story of the woman caught in adultery and rightly so. We should not be quick to judged. We should ultimately seek reconciliation. Why does that mean, though, we should support so-called same-sex marriage?

Yes, it can be awkward when family members differ with us.  We have to find ways of remaining faithful to Jesus and loving to our family. That doesn’t allow us to compromise on the truth: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Mt 10:37).

The fact is, following Jesus can be very “divisive”.

“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery.”  Very divisive, Lord.

“You brood of vipers ...”. Very divisive.

“Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood ...” Divisive, again.

“Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of ...”

Well, you get the point.

Read the entire post on the Register's site.

Hysterical Hatred and the Halls of History

Hysterical Hatred and the Halls of History | Michael Coren | Catholic World Report

Both are plain to see and ever with us, but only one has lessons worth learning.

I write this column while looking out onto Westminster Bridge, Britain’s Houses of Parliament, and a London still pulsating with news of the death of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Pulsating indeed, because she changed the beat, the rhythm, and the pace of this country, and fundamentally and irreversibly transformed the nature and style of the United Kingdom. As such, she is revered as well as reviled, and that polarization extends to the Catholic reaction to her passing. There are Catholics here in Britain who believe she was one of the last political leaders to properly appreciate the link between Europe, democracy, and Christianity. Others, especially in Ulster and northern England, can barely contain their anger at a woman they believe destroyed their way of life.

The truth about Margaret Thatcher reflects a greater truth about how the world approaches history, facts, and downright hysteria and propaganda, and reflects directly to the Church and how it is treated in the popular imagination

Much, if not most, of what Mrs. Thatcher has been accused of is pure fantasy, and the reaction to that campaign of disinformation has been downright obscene: street parties celebrating her death; the singing of “Ding dong the witch is dead” (with “b” replacing “w”); the public announcement that people will urinate on her grave. Many of these malicious idiots weren’t even born when she was in office, and those who were have little to complain about, if truth be told. But it is the extent and excess that is so repugnant. There are numerous politicians whom I loathe, but not one whose death would lead me to rejoice.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

What Are Catholics To Do? (Part II)

What Are Catholics To Do? (Part II) | James Kalb | Catholic World Report

In the absence of agreement with the rest of society on human nature and the good life, Catholics must remain a sign of contradiction.

Last month I noted that Catholics need settings in which they can lead a Catholic life among Catholics. For most of us, loving God and living as Christians take schooling and support, which we aren’t going to get from the world at large. That may be one reason the Apostle Paul’s letters focus more on the practical internal life of Christian communities than on evangelism. The ultimate ideal may be the New Jerusalem, in which the distinction between the Church and the World disappears, but we’re not likely to get there any time soon.

Still, those who object to “fortress” or “ghetto” Catholicism have a point. Something of an inward focus may be necessary, because today’s world is so much at odds with the Faith, and we Catholics are not already everything we should be. It should not be exaggerated, however. Christ told his followers to go out and teach all nations, and love of neighbor means engagement with the world both individually and socially.

But how do we engage the world socially when Caesar—and the media—are ever more powerful and anti-Catholic? During the Christian centuries, when social leaders accepted Catholic Christianity as the norm, it was natural for them to recognize the authority of the Church regarding matters on which she has special competence. It was no odder for the king to accept Church authority on faith and morals than it is today for a government to accept the authority of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or defer to the National Academy of Sciences on an engineering question.

Those days are past, and it is less obvious today how the Church can play an effective social and political role. People mostly aren’t Catholic, and social leaders are less so than most. Vatican II, while reaffirming traditional doctrine on the duty of men and societies toward the Church and the true religion, recognized that reality. Ever since, Catholics have been trying to find practical ways to cooperate in building a better social order in a setting that does not accept Catholic doctrine as authoritative.

Cooperative efforts require common ground, and the more complex and comprehensive the effort the more common ground is needed. In the absence of agreement on the most fundamental issues, Catholics have tried to base their cooperation with the extremely complex and comprehensive activities of the modern state and other secular actors on natural law.

Natural law can be developed philosophically in various ways.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

“Satanism is about destroying the Church”

“Satanism is about destroying the Church” | Jim Graves | Catholic World Report

From Satanism to the Occult and back to the Catholic Church, one woman found hope and healing through Christ and the sacraments.

The world of Satanism is a secretive one, often vulgar and sometimes dangerous, or so says ex-Satanist and Catholic “revert.” Fifty-one-year-old Deborah [who requested her last name not be used in this article] said that although the beliefs of Satanists vary tremendously, they center on indulgence of the appetites and a mockery of Christianity. Additionally, you’d be surprised to discover that seemingly respectable citizens in your community are members of Satanic covens.  As she explained, “They’re people you meet on the street.”

Since memberships in covens are so secretive—with the threat of death for members who share details of their participation, according to Deborah—it is rare to find ex-Satanists willing to share their experiences.

Deborah was born in 1961 and grew up in Salem, Massachusetts. She attended both Catholic and public schools. As a teen, she got involved in Satanism. She returned to the Catholic Church in 2009. Today, she is married and lives on a farm in Maine.

Deborah shared details of her experiences in her book A Message of Hope, Confessions of an Ex-Satanist: How to Protect Yourself from Evil. She is also a featured speaker at the Spiritual Warfare Conference, held at the Ontario DoubleTree Hotel in Ontario, California on May 4 and 5, 2013.  Deborah recently spoke to CWR.

CWR: Tell me a little about your background and how you first got involved in Satanism.

Deborah: First off, as an adult, I was diagnosed as a high-functioning autistic. [Autism is a neurological disorder that can adversely affect a person’s ability to communicate and establish friendships with peers. It is often manifested in children through a variety of atypical behaviors, such as the ones Deborah describes here.] When I was a child I was undiagnosed, and I exhibited a lot of autistic symptoms. These included rocking, hand-flapping, and humming. I also argued with my teachers, and didn’t want to socialize with my peers. Today, I’m still unable to live independently. 

Additionally, my mom was a German in an anti-German, Jewish neighborhood. (My father abandoned the family when I was young.) The other kids in school would make fun of me, steal my toys, and call me a “retard.” I was also beat up physically every day. I begged my mom to let me stay home from school. I was hurt, angry, and wanted to be by myself. I isolated myself from others. 

I attended a Catholic school from grades 7-10. I went to the nuns who ran the school for help. Because of my behavior, I was unpopular with them and they suggested I deserved the treatment I received. I was angry at the nuns, so, as a joke and to get even, I started coming to school wearing the pentagram. I would also draw it on my homework assignments. They asked me to leave the school.

Now, these were the pre-Internet days, so I began reading about Satanism in books, and then began talking with Satanists.

CWR: Did you attend Black Masses?

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Piers, Penn, and the Essence of Catholicism

by Brian Jones | CWR blog

At the end of a Wednesday evening class last semester, one of my students approached me to ask a question. After hesitating somewhat, he proceeded in the following manner: “Professor, I really have enjoyed your class, but you always teach as though Catholicism is true. You rarely talk about other religions, of which I was actually hoping to learn more about.” I reminded the troubled young man that he should re-read the syllabus, since “Teachings of the Catholic Church” is actually the official course title. The humorous encounter reminded me of Walker Percy’s response to the question of why he became a Catholic: “What else is there?” How ironic, yet typical of most university students, that someone would be taking a course on Catholicism and simultaneously be disgruntled that this is precisely what he is getting. 

The history of Catholicism has thankfully shown us that there is a tremendous pedagogical character regarding the nature of error: it helps us achieve greater clarity on a particular matter that may have, up to that point, been otherwise. Moreover, error also helps us to see whether or not the one committing it has willfully chosen it. It would be safe to say that the latter is a hallmark of many post-modern Catholics. The student mentioned in the beginning was, in my estimation, suffering from a high degree of excusable ignorance; he did not have a full grasp of what he was asking, and seemed more the result of a cultural that had groomed him to accept relativism a priori. Others, have fallen away from the faith, not by an excusable ignorance or happenstance, but by a mode of living that refuses to conform itself to the demands of the faith.  

These preliminary points came to mind last week as I watched the brief exchange between Piers Morgan and Penn Jillette (easily accessible on YouTube). 

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

What Are Catholics To Do?

What Are Catholics To Do? | James Kalb | Catholic World Report

We can offer the world something only if we maintain what we have to offer.

The world goes its own way without much regard for the Church, because it has very little regard for truth—that is to say, for reality.

The problems go to the roots of current ways of thinking. The modern movement of thought began as an attempt to attain security and certainty by emphasizing what is practical and by imposing strict standards of evidence. That meant tossing out quite a lot: tradition, revelation, and the insight into natural forms and functions—and their connection to permanent human concerns—that lies behind our understanding of natural moral law.

People wanted to be scientific, and that meant rejecting many normal ways of thinking. They hoped the result would be knowledge that was exact, reliable, and useful, and modern natural science has indeed given us amazing advances in medicine and weaponry. Modern forms of organizing society, such as the modern state and the business corporation, have also proved immensely effective in important ways.

There have also been other results, the most notable of which is the reduction of all seriously-considered human concerns to technology and desire. After all, if higher goods and ultimate truths can’t be measured or produced to order, and it seems we can get by without them by figuring out how to give people what they want, then why not simplify matters and forget about them?

That’s what’s happened in our public life. Everybody who matters is a secularist today, and the situation has far-reaching implications. One is that educated and well-placed people now believe that the institutions on which social order is based should be technically expert, economically rational, morally nonjudgmental, and universal in their reach. So the world should be ordered comprehensively by global markets and expert regulatory bureaucracies, together with subsidiary institutions such as universities, think tanks, media organizations, and various NGOs that serve or try to influence government and business. That, it is thought, is the uniquely rational way of organizing society, and whatever threatens it, or attempts to limit it or introduce other authorities, is irrational, disruptive, and a threat to humanity.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Garry Wills' sour screed against the priesthood

by Anne Hendershott | Catholic World Report blog

Review of Why Priests?  A Failed Tradition
By Gary Wills
New York: Viking Press, 2013.
302 pages.

It was no surprise to see Gary Wills’ op-ed on the upcoming papal conclave published in The New York Times, Wills has been a longtime critic of the Church and her leaders—so when he titled his opinion piece, “New Pope? I’ve Given Up Hope,” it was nothing new.  The author of the virulently anti-Catholic book, Papal Sin, Wills—a former Jesuit seminarian—gave up hope for the Church many years ago.  Now, in his new book, Why Priests? A Failed Tradition, we find that in addition to giving up hope, Wills has now given up his faith.  Denying the Real Presence in the Eucharist, the sacrificial interpretation of the Mass, and the salvific mission of Christ, Why Priests? argues for a “re-envisioning” of the Church which removes the distinction between the ordained and the laity.  Rather than lobbying for female priests, or gay priests, Wills chooses instead to do away entirely with apostolic succession and the God-given power of the priest to consecrate the Eucharist. 

Indeed, Wills’ hatred for priests and the priesthood is palpable on nearly every page of his angry polemic.  But it is difficult to understand the source of this hatred because his examples of “clerical privilege” are so silly.  For example, on page 31 we begin to get an idea of his early anger toward priests when he describes his days as a young golf caddie who had to give priests “special treatment” on the golf course: “Men already prepared to tee off let him go ahead of them. It was presumed he had to get back to his spiritual tasks.”  Wills also recalled that priests often abused parking rules: “once when a priest drove me to the airport to pick up a friend, he stopped in a no-parking area just outside the entry…he told me he had a clerical sticker on his car.” (p 31)

So why did Wills enter the seminary and stay for five years if he had such hostility for the priesthood?

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

Related articles

The Eternal Priesthood of Jesus Christ

"The Crisis of Faith" by Fr. John Hardon, S.J.

The McAleese Report shocker you'll not hear about in the MSM

by Carl E. Olson | Catholic World Report blog

Don't expect to hear much inthe U.S. media about the stunning McAlleese Report, especially not since the mythology of vicious, vile, and abusive Irish nuns running the the Magdalene Laundries has been so firmly established by Hollywood and the lame-stream media in recent years. The 1,000-page long "Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries" is the result of an in-depth and wide-ranging investigation into the infamous Laundries (a big ht to Dave Pierre, Jr., of TheMediaReport.com). 

The atheist Brendan O'Neill, who is editor of spiked! (and whose journalistic integrity has long impressed me) summarized the Report recently in a blog post for The Telegraph:

The publication last week of the Irish government's McAleese Report on the Magdalene laundries has proved kind of awkward for Catholic-bashers. For if McAleese's thorough, 1,000-page study is to be believed, then it would appear that those laundries were not as evil and foul as they had been depicted over the past decade. Specifically the image of the laundries promoted by the popular, much-lauded film The Magdalene Sisters – which showed them as places where women were stripped, slapped, sexually abused and more – has been called into question by McAleese. This has led even The Irish Times, which never turns down an opportunity to wring its hands over Catholic wickedness, to say: "There is no escaping the fact that the [McAleese] report jars with popular perceptions."

In the Irish mind, and in the minds of everyone else who has seen or read one of the many films, plays and books about the Magdalene laundries, these were horrific institutions brimming with violence and overseen by sadistic, pervy nuns. Yet the McAleese Report found not a single incident of sexual abuse by a nun in a Magdalene laundry. Not one. Also, the vast majority of its interviewees said they were never physically punished in the laundries. As one woman said, "It has shocked me to read in papers that we were beat and our heads shaved and that we were badly treated by the nuns… I was not touched by any nun and I never saw anyone touched." The small number of cases of corporal punishment reported to McAleese consisted of the kind of thing that happened in many normal schools in the 1960s, 70s and 80s: being caned on the legs or rapped on the knuckles. The authors of the McAleese Report, having like the rest of us imbibed the popular image of the Magdalene laundries as nun-run concentration camps, seem to have been taken aback by "the number of women who spoke positively about the nuns".

As O'Neill points out, the approach taken by many media members now is that, well, hey, even if many or all of the more sensational accusations were false or wildly embellished, at least they did good by pointing out problems. He writes, "The idea of the 'good lie', the lie which helps open people's eyes to the existence of wickedness, should be anathema to anyone who cares about getting history right and establishing the truth." You would think. But, of course, the approach taken is a tried and true one. Just look at the example of Pope Pius XII, who no one thought was responsible for the persecution and death of Jews—until an anti-Catholic German playwright wrote "The Deputy" in the early 1960s, setting in motion the now prevalent—and false—image of an anti-Semitic, passive pontiff. 

I've not, of course, read the entire Report, but here are a couple of important passages; first, from Chapter 19, which describes living and work conditions:

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

A Figure of Impossibility

A Figure of Impossibility | Carl E. Olson | Editorial | Catholic World Report

The pontificate of Benedict XVI has been a short, bracing, and often surprising journey in discipleship.

“The rejection of the primacy of St. Peter has driven men on to a slippery course, where all the steps are downwards.”— Lord Acton

It has been quite a week. My head is still spinning, and I'm sure that only half of it is due to the flu, fever, and medication I've been fighting, enduring, and imbibing (respectively) since last Sunday afternoon.

I.

Where to start? How about with the head of the Catholic Church?

Consider: He is brilliant, yet enigmatic. Some find him inspiring; others think he is frightening. Some insist his reign is the result of mythology, superstition, and ignorance. Others claim he is the personification of humility, service, and true charity. In some corners, he is rejected for his politically incorrect views about marriage and sexuality, and his insistence that only certain men, no women at all, can be priests or bishops. His talk of sin and of eternal judgment has upset many, but his call to discipleship, sacrifice, and humble worship resonates with countless millions.

But there has often been talk of scandal. One of those closest to him betrayed his trust, exposing him to ridicule. There was even talk of arrest and prosecution. Some within his inner circle have apparently been more interested in pursuing power than in service. He is, in short, controversial—a lightning rod for debate, discussion and, sadly, division.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Unlearning Christianity

Unlearning Christianity | Benjamin Wiker | Catholic World Report

A review of Gregory Lukianoff’s Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate

Gregory Lukianoff’s Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate is well worth the read, even with the criticisms I’ll be making of it. Lukianoff is a self-declared liberal and atheist, but one who believes in free speech and works tirelessly for it through his Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). That makes his book all the more important for Christians—FIRE is not the ACLU. Lukianioff and FIRE are actually working for free speech, rather than, with the ACLU, attacking Christianity at every turn and trying to establish secularism and atheism.

Lukianoff wants fairness, and that brought him to a very interesting realization about who is actually getting treated unfairly on our campuses today. “If you told me twelve years ago,” Lukianoff confides, “that I, a liberal atheist, would devote a sizable portion of my career to defending Christian groups, I might have been surprised. But almost from my first day at FIRE, I was shocked to realize how badly Christian groups were often treated.”

As Lukianoff amply documents, on campuses across the nation persecution is directed at Christians by secular liberals intent upon imposing uniformity in the name of diversity, complete intolerance in the name of tolerance, liberal absolutism in the name of relativism—and all this with identifiably religious zeal in inculcating the far Left’s beliefs as orthodoxy.

I know whereof he speaks. Twenty-five years ago I saw it firsthand during my graduate school experience earning my Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University. Even mild disagreement with the “politically correct” party line was met with hysterical accusations and verbal attacks. Not arguments, mind you. I was informed by one well-indoctrinated young woman that rationality and logic were instruments of male domination, and that she would have no part of them. She was good to her vow, as were her mentors. It was very clear what one was allowed and not allowed to say, and which moral and political positions were considered clean and unclean, and the unclean were not permitted to speak.

My experience was not unusual. The combination of liberal dogmatism backed up by institutional authority is still the rule, not the exception, in academia. And in fact, it has gotten far worse, both on the graduate and even more on the undergraduate level, since I was in school.

Today, for example, incoming students routinely undergo intensive indoctrination during freshman orientation week, and it continues for the rest of the year, administered in regular doses by heavy-handed propagandists in the administration, among the faculty, and through converted students (especially the RA’s that oversee dorm life). 

Continue reading on the CWR site.

The Latest From the “Pius Wars” Front

The Latest From the “Pius Wars” Front | Michael Coren | Catholic World Report

The new book, Soldier of Christ, published by Harvard University Press, is a definitive biography of Pope Pius XII

There’s a running joke in Canada about our charming sense of delicate hubris. A Toronto newspaper headline wryly proclaims: “Man Lands on Moon. Boots made in Montreal!” In other words, we’re only 30 million strong and we’re invariably mistaken for quiet Americans, and so when we do achieve something remarkable, even of a minimal variety, we like people to know.

Which is why the world needs to know that what will now be the standard life of Pope Pius XII—the definitive biography of the wartime pontiff at least for the present—has just appeared. And it was written by a Canadian academic. It’s true that Harvard University Press published the book, but Robert A. Ventresca is a professor at King’s College at Western University in London, Ontario. And his new volume, Soldier of Christ: The Life of Pope Pius XII is a splendid work.

It won’t be the last word in the “Pius wars”, of course, but it is one of the best. It depicts a profoundly good and devout man who, contrary to what the critics have claimed, had absolutely no personal animus against Jewish people, was active in the struggle against Nazism, and was clearly and transparently the victim of a concerted attempt to libel him and by extension the Papacy, the Church, and serious Catholicism. Ventresca does agree that were times, both before and during the war, when Pius could have been more specific in mentioning Jewish targets of Nazi eugenics and oppression, but that’s about as severe as the censorship goes.

I’ve obsessed about this issue for some years, partly out of familial and emotional necessity, in that I am a Catholic whose father was Jewish. He was not only Jewish but also from a Polish family.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

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The Puzzle of Religious Liberty

The Puzzle of Religious Liberty | Benjamin Wiker | Catholic World Report

Why the affirmation of religious liberty can lead, ironically, to its extinction at the hands of the secular state.

A Most Puzzling Puzzler

I invite the reader to think through an interesting and very serious conundrum. Many of us are rightly alarmed at ever-bolder attempts by our increasingly secular state to violate the religious liberty of its citizens.

To ward off such violations, we embrace the relevant part of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …”  We therefore invoke the so-called “Free Exercise Clause” as a shield to impede attempts by the state to control or prohibit the free exercise of our religious convictions (and implicitly, the “Establishment Clause,” as we’ll see).

We do not tend to regard this shield as something merely man-made, a rule that happened to be adopted in a game and now we must stick to (“Collect $200 if you pass Go”), but a rule written, somehow, into our very nature—indeed, a kind of sacred, inviolable right.

That is certainly the way the American Catholic bishops wielded the First Amendment last summer when the Obama Administration attempted to use an HHS mandate to force Catholic institutions to provide insurance coverage for contraception, abortifacients, and sterilizations. The bishops cried out, “Religious Liberty.”

The embrace of religious liberty as a right was memorably expressed by James Madison in his “Memorial and Remonstrance” (1785). Madison, one of the great Founders, is considered to be the father of the Bill of Rights, so it would seem we’d want his opinion about the First Amendment. “The Religion…of every man,” Madison proclaimed, “must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right.”

In fact, Madison declared that this right was rooted in a duty, “the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he [i.e., every man] believes acceptable to him [presumably, but not unambiguously, God].”

Here comes the puzzler, which I’ll set out in semi-syllogistic enumerated steps.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Diarmaid MacCulloch "does not conceal his preference for secularism."

CWR's sister publication, Homiletic & Pastoral Review, has a number of new book reviews posted, including a lengthy review of Diarmaid MacCulloch's popular 2010 book, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. It is reviewed by Fr. Brian Van Hove, S.J., a regular contributor to both CWR and HPR. Fr. Van Hove begins:

According to Catholic tradition, faith is a gift. The author’s cultural background is Low-Church or Evangelical Anglicanism. But this is a heritage and not a theological virtue.

Diarmaid MacCulloch is professor of the History of the Church in the theology faculty at St Cross College, Oxford. Professor MacCulloch proclaims himself a skeptic, although he writes with the zeal of an apostate. His is a paradoxical mixture of both skepticism and appreciation of religion, especially Christianity. At times, he reveals classical Greek tastes which are benevolently pre-Christian, though he has been shaped by the Enlightenment. His erudition permits him to indulge freely in refined, urbane scoffing. And his erudition is considerable.

Why is this important? Because all writing emerges out of a tradition; 1 no author can be fully original. Perhaps, he could have written a shorter work had he not considered the subject a formidable one. In over a thousand pages, he writes about Christianity—not as a Christopher Dawson (d. 1970), or a Paul Johnson, or a Hubert Jedin (d. 1980), or a James Hitchcock, 2 who, each of them from within the subject, wrote histories of Christianity and the Church. Nor are these religious historians ever quoted. Anglican—especially Owen and Henry Chadwick—and various, and often liberal, Christian historians—including Richard P. McBrien and Hans Küng—do appear among the “Further Reading” selections, beginning on page 1098. 3 John W. O’Malley, Eamon Duffy, and John McManners are a few of his more favored historians.

He says that Edward Gibbon, who wrote a celebrated Enlightenment-era history in seven volumes, 4 “had a fine eye for the absurdities and tragedies that result from the profession of religion.” 5 The author does not conceal his preference for secularism. One can say that MacCulloch is a thoughtful, post-Enlightenment writer who knows more about Christianity than most Christians, including the clergy. Yet another reason for us to posit that faith is a gift, although we must observe that, some without this gift, at times strenuously defend the Church and the Christian tradition. 6

Read his entire review, along with several other reviews, at HPRweb.com. Fr. Van Hove's review of Dr. James Hitchcock's new book, History of the Catholic Church (Ignatius Press, 2012), will be published by CWR later this month.

Atheist A.C. Grayling is a meretricious thinker, but a marvelous comedian

by Carl E. Olson | Catholic World Report blog

Here is the deep, philosophical question of the week: What is more annoying, insufferable, and unintentionally hilarious than the pontifications of atheist, "humanist", and "free thinker" A. C. Grayling?

Yes, I know, it's a tough one. I won't keep you in suspense.

Answer: The fawning, embarrassing adoration of an eighteen-year-old English student who interviews Grayling and acts as if the impressively maned Englishman's empty pontifications are rhetorical gold nuggets. That the interview is published in The Humanist is cause for the stones to cry out: "Oh, the inhumanity! Stop! Cease!"

But, to be honest, we can at least admit how fun it is to read this sort of nonsense and think, "And atheists think Christians are stupid? Goodness. I weep for them." No need to waste time with the entire train wreck of an interview, but a few pieces of broken thinking and confused stereotypes are worth kicking about for a moment. First, from the opening:

Philosophy is a rather strange business in the modern world of consumerism and commerce, I suppose. We’re so used to being force-fed ideas these days that we rarely, if ever, stop and think for ourselves.

Uh, speak for yourself, young man, speak for yourself.

And that’s where Grayling bucks the trend.

I think a gallon of coffee just shot out my nose. That is one of the funniest things I've read in a long time. Mind you, I've crossed cyber swords with Dr. Grayling in the past, over the matter of his ridiculous—nay, farcical—take on Christianity and the "Dark Ages". How shall I put this? Grayling isn't about bucking trends, but making bucks out of trends—in this case, the whole "new atheists" vehicle, to which he has hitched his modest bag of philosophical agitprop and public relations handles. A few years ago, an acquaintance who earned his doctorate in London and is now an atheist (we attended Bible college together 20 years ago as young Evangelicals), smirked at the mention of Grayling, saying, "He's all about fame and money." True enough.

But there is also the fact that Grayling acts as if his thinking is fresh and his perspective is daring, when both are actually decades out of dates. As I wrote six years ago: "He is an heir to the Enlightenment and thrives on the sort of anti-Christian polemics and dubious historical assertions that became the rage among many intellectuals during the Enlightenment era, so much so that he seems to be nearly entombed in a dusty (dare I say 'old-fashioned') form of simplistic skepticism that was in style many decades ago." Carry on.

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

"Sanity and Society" by Frank Sheed

Sanity and Society | Frank Sheed | From Knowing God: God and the Human Condition (Ignatius Press, 2012; originally 1966. Also available in electronic book format)

Insanity is all about us. I do not mean that men individually are madmen, but they add up to a society which is not truly sane. Sanity means seeing what’s there and planning life accordingly. And as a society ours does not see the major part of reality at all, therefore does not see aright the minor part that it is aware of, shapes its activities as though the mis-seen fraction of reality were the whole of it. Secular ethics means deciding our actions as though there were no God, while not settling the question whether there is or not. I do not mean that men of this mind are acting evilly; they may act nobly (as believers may act appallingly).

But they would add a fuller rationality to their nobility if they knew the true order of reality. To act without full vision is a formula for chaos. And in a chaos we live, exhibited to us by every newspaper we read, yet disguised from us by the care and intelligence and goodwill expended upon the understanding and ordering of the fraction—disguised again by the mental muscularity, the almost blinding scientific and technological brilliance, with which the seen part of reality is analyzed, is formulated and systematized, packaged, and offered for acceptance. The chaos is amiable so far; but chaos cannot be relied on to stay amiable—there are parts of the world in which it has not.

Even short of some such catastrophe befalling our own part of the world, it is not good to be the sane minority in a society that has lost contact with God. We hold our own mental health precariously when sanity so partial and defective is accepted as the norm. Insanity is catching: we grow uncertain of the cadences of normal speech when all around us men are gibbering, and gibbering so learnedly and so gravely and so confidently. Our world at its best has all the airs and graces, the rationalizations and courtesies and card indexes of sanity, so that the notion that it might not be sane may not occur to us. The card indexes especially, so tidy, so efficient, so inclusive—only a fanatic would question the rationality of the mind that produces them.

“Fanatic” is the word. We can frighten ourselves with it. I have talked of assumptions and seepage that we are mystery unaware of. But there is something else: the Catholic can be consciously embarrassed at his difference. There are those who feel out of step, self-conscious because out of step, self-questioning because out of step. If they have not made the mysteries of revelation truly their own, they may see life fluid and free, theology all bones. There is great psychological value in a strong affirmation, said Hilaire Belloc. No affirmation was ever stronger than our world makes of its own rightness.

The temptation is to try to get into step with everybody else, while somehow hanging on to the truths. Short of denying them, there is a kind of scaling down and shading off, a resolute switching of the mind away from doctrines at which the world would raise an eyebrow. At all costs, one must not be a fanatic. Saint Paul had met this attitude, right at our beginnings: “Be not conformed to this world, but be re-formed in the newness of your mind” (Rom 12:2).

It is not only faith that demands this, but sheerest common sense. One remembers a stock joke of the last fifty years—the old lady watching a line of soldiers on parade and saying proudly, “They’re all out of step except my George.” We all smile, we all assume without the shadow of a second thought that it is George who is out of step. But if everybody else in the battalion happened to be deaf, then George might well be the only one marching in time to the music of the band.

The parallel is exact. The follower of Christ does hear a music which does not reach the ears of other men; he is bound to be out of step with them, for they are out of step with it. But in our world we must listen to that music with unflagging attention—partly that it may not be drowned out of our own ears by all the tom-toms of chaos, partly that others may begin to catch from us first some hint of the rhythm, then some hint of the tune. Unflagging attention, I say. Few of us can give it that. We catch strains of the music tossed on the winds of the spirit—but how fitfully that wind can blow for us, how fitfully we listen for it.

Not Your Mother: An Autopsy on "The Testament of Mary

Not Your Mother: An Autopsy on The Testament of Mary | Mark P. Shea | Catholic World Report

Colm Tóibín’s book won’t tell you anything about Mary. It will tell you plenty about its very sad and very angry author.

With zombies all the rage (pardon the pun, 28 Days Later fans) there are all sorts of helpful instructions out there for dealing with them. One illustration of sundry methods for dispatching zombies pictures a man with a gun pointed at a drooling old woman shuffling toward him. His hand covers his face as he weeps in grief and hesitation. The caption reads, “Shoot, you fool! She’s not your mother anymore!”

I think of this as I contemplate the latest piece of Catholic-hating detritus to wash up on our shores from the Emerald Isle. The past 20 years have not been good to Irish Catholicism. The Isle of Saints and Scholars, having withstood Viking hordes and centuries of English oppression and sectarian strife, could not withstand the most insidious attack the devil has sent against the Irish: economic prosperity. Has corruption in the Church aided and abetted the vicious turn against the Faith there? Sure. Abusive and corrupt clerics bear very serious responsibility for the hostility to the Church in large measure.

But let’s not kid ourselves. Sin—very serious sin—has always been present in the Church, and Catholics who knew and understood their Faith did not therefore abandon it. Still less did they try to solve the problem of human corruption by telling lies about God, Jesus, and Mary. Time was when Irish Catholics knew that God, Jesus, and Mary were their best friends in a mad world.

That’s gone now. Ireland sold its soul for a brief period of Celtic Tiger prosperity and got two things in return: a media class that is now totally cloned from post-Christian England’s culture of casual anti-Catholic blasphemy, followed by a bursting economic bubble that has left it with neither man’s friendship nor God’s consolations. All it has left is spite, blasphemy—and profound sadness.

Into the midst of this devolution of the Country That Used to Be Ireland comes Colm Tóibín, the issues-filled author of (ahem) New Ways to Kill Your Mother, to deliver unto us what NPR breathlessly calls “A New ‘Testament’ Told From Mary’s Point of View”: his novella The Testament of Mary. It’s a book that fills a profound void—in the twice-annual need of God-haters in corporate publishing to find some sort of media phenomenon that will insult and blaspheme Christianity for Easter and Christmas.

Tóibín is the man of the hour, doing for Mary what Dan Brown did for Jesus: turning her into a blank screen upon which the author can project current cultural and personal obsessions for 30 pieces of silver. Tóibín, it will shock no one to know, is an ex-Catholic homosexual who “once contemplated the priesthood” (that clause is mandated in the standard corporate biosketch of every embittered ex-Catholic screed writer), but jettisoned his faith when he went to college and came out as gay.

In terms of content, the book is a by-the-numbers hatchet job written in sensitive, spare, and poetic diction for the delectation of UK and New York Chattering Classes and dipped in a bath of relentless, willful sadness and bitterness.

Read the entire review at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Turning the Corner

Turning the Corner | James Kalb | Catholic World Report

Catholics should not hesitate to bring Catholic beliefs and arguments into the public square.

In the last several months I’ve been discussing the problems Catholics face dealing with public life today. The recent election underlined some of them. The bishops and others made their pitch about threats to the family and the freedom of the Church, the Democrats stood firm, and most Americans—including most self-identified Catholics—voted for the Democrats. Not only does the world care very little for Catholic concerns, but it seems that Catholics acting as citizens care little for them as well.

So what should the faithful do? If the world’s against us, so it’s becoming harder and harder to act or even think as Catholics, should we retreat to monasteries? Return to the catacombs? Overthrow the government and establish a dictatorship run by a revolutionary vanguard? Such proposals have serious drawbacks, and something much more moderate would be more to the point. All we really need to participate with integrity in public life as citizens and Catholics is a society in which what is good—and not freedom, equality, or prosperity—is the highest standard. If we had that, discussions about goals that rise above who gets what would become possible, and Catholic concerns could become mainstream.

It seems that those concerns would do well in such a setting. Our social doctrine is consistent with natural law, which means that on the whole it follows a common-sense understanding of what things are, what’s good for them, and how they work best. So we should be able to get a lot of mileage out of talking about what’s good in human life as we find it, and how that can be respected and promoted. All that’s necessary is that people accept the good life and common sense as standards.

The problem is that appeals to those standards don’t work very well today. Modern public discussion doesn’t like common sense, even educated common sense. If something can’t be observed, measured, and dealt with by neutral professional standards, people think it’s rational to ignore it and do what they otherwise want to do. After all, they believe, if something can’t be nailed down and proved it’s a prejudice, a stereotype, or an attempt to spin the discussion, so it doesn’t deserve serious attention.

That skeptical approach to informal knowledge can be productive in the natural sciences, but it doesn’t work when applied to life in general. Basic human decisions require insight and judgment, and neither can be made exact or turned into academic expertise. If we limit ourselves to what can be made rigorous our decisions must either ignore reason altogether or base themselves on arbitrary default assumptions like equality. In either case, the results will defy common sense. For examples, look at what educators, architects, and legal thinkers have done to schools, cities, and the law. What now passes as expertise has led to results that are often completely at odds with normal ways of thinking, learning, and living.

Such an approach to knowledge and reason has nonetheless become established, and the result is that ideas of ultimate goals and natural patterns have more and more been driven out of public discussion. 

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

NPR's Mary: bitter, angry, and mad at Christians

Sure, National Public Radio did not publish novelist Colm Toibin's novella, The Testament Of Mary; it was published last month by Scribner. But NPR seems to love it. No, make that: NPR really loves it! There was a very sympathetic November 13th feature, "'Testament Of Mary' Gives Fiery Voice To The Virgin", then a glowing November 14th review, "A Vengeful Virgin In 'The Testament Of Mary'", then an excerpt from the book, and (finally, for now) an interview with Toibin, "A New 'Testament' Told From Mary's Point Of View", posted today. I'm not sure how many NPR pieces there are about the Pope's new book, but I doubt it's more than three, at the very most.

What is Tolbin's gimmick? And, yes, it is a gimmick, no matter how literate, thoughtful, deep, anguished, and intellectual NPR tries to make it sound. Here are some of the pertinent bits of information, gleaned from the ever-informative NPR pieces:

In his new novel, The Testament of Mary, Irish writer Colm Toibin imagines Mary's life 20 years after the crucifixion. She is struggling to understand why some people believe Jesus is the son of God, and weighed down by the guilt she feels wondering what she might have done differently to alter — or ease — her son's fate.

Toibin grew up Catholic and, for a time, considered joining the priesthood. This changed upon his arrival at university, however, when exposure to new people and ideas soon led him to lose his faith. "I suppose I had been moving toward it without knowing," Toibin tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross, "but, yeah, it went very quickly."

It was around this time, too, that Toibin acknowledged his homosexuality. Growing up, he says, "there was no word for it," and he describes his feelings as "absolute confusion." It was after meeting an openly gay friend at university, he explains, that "I moved very gingerly from between being a very conservative boy from a small town and being out with some friends."

And from the review:

The work is pointedly not called a gospel — good news — but a testament — a giving witness to, an attestation. "I was there," she says. And, having seen the Crucifixion, the Mother of God tells the apostles: "I can tell you now, when you say that he redeemed the world, I will say that it was not worth it."

Much of the elegance of this novella comes from its language, which is poetic but spare, much like cryptic music of the Gospels. And, as in the Gospels, understatement and implication are used to great effect. Most expressively, the name "Jesus" is never used — not once. Neither is Christ. Instead, Mary calls him "my son" or "him" or even "the one who was here." Part of this is her pain — she cannot bear to say the name — but part of it is also a refusal to contribute to the narrative of the man named Jesus Christ.

Toibin leaves the most important questions unanswered: Did he cure the sick? Raise the dead? Turn water into wine? Mary only hears stories.

And from the author himself:

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

Cardinal Edwin O'Brien on the threat to religious liberty in the U.S.

From Catholic News Service: