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Being Reasonable About Faith and Science

Being Reasonable About Faith and Science | William L. Patenaude | Catholic World Report

The recent “Modern Science/Ancient Faith” conference explored the oft-misunderstood relationship between science and Catholicism.

“Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth. Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, par 159.

Portsmouth, RI —Can faith exist in a world where science is demonstrating ever more details of creation and the evolution of human life? Is there a place for science among those who believe that the Book of Genesis is God’s inspired revelation?

Such questions anchored “Modern Science/Ancient Faith,” a conference sponsored by the Benedictine-run Portsmouth Institute, housed in Rhode Island’s Portsmouth Abbey School, on June 22-24. The event brought together some ninety scientists, theologians, philosophers, clergy, lay faithful, and skeptics—or some mix of the above—to explore the dialogue between the natural sciences and Christianity.

While few participants expressed difficulties with the coexistence of faith and reason, the how of this coexistence wasn’t always in agreement. Some demanded a decidedly scientific approach to questions of beginnings. Others championed a more literal understanding of Genesis. This made for polite but fiery discussions that began in the early summer’s heat of the Abbey’s grounds and now continue online.

After opening with Adoration and the Rosary, the first talk was a review of the Galileo affair by Rev. Dom Paschal Scotti, O.S.B. His presentation set an amicable tone for the conference by demonstrating Christianity’s affinity for the natural sciences. The priest made clear that the driving issue at play in Galileo’s run-in with the Church was not an inherent fear of science. Rather, most Catholic theologians and scientists working with Galileo fought with the astronomer to keep scientific observations in their proper arena.

And as in the modern debates about issues such as evolution or climate change, what further inflamed the Galileo saga were the nuances of human sin, politics, and egos. According to Fr. Paschal, relations between Galileo and the Church were complicated by issues such as tensions between the Dominican and Jesuit orders; secular pressures on Pope Urban VIII; Galileo’s often aggressive approach and sometimes sarcastic writings; and the effects of Protestantism’s demands for sola scriptura.

Fr. Paschal noted that, human failings notwithstanding, an incarnational faith by its nature intersects with the natural world and, thus, the sciences—and this may explain why Christianity was the fertile ground from which the natural sciences could take root.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Human Rights and Natural Law

By Archbishop Rino Fisichella, recently posted on the Homiletic & Pastoral Review site:

(This lecture was delivered earlier at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio.)

Human Rights

When, therefore, I see the right and capacity to enact everything given to any authority whatsoever—whether it be called people or king, democracy or aristocracy, whether exercised in a monarchy or a republic—I say: the seed of tyranny lies there, and I seek to live under different laws. 1

Alexis de Tocqueville’s statement, although made many years ago, is, without a doubt, especially relevant today. The historical period we are living in today seems to recognize a sort of unbounded extension of individual rights, which can only alarm those who have the good of all society at heart. It would appear that the contents of the 1948 United Nations’ “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” now forms part of the cultural patrimony of the world. As Pope Benedict XVI has stated, in his discourse to the United Nations on April 18th, 2008, that this document highlights: “The result of a convergence of religious and cultural traditions, all motivated by the desire to place the human person in the heart of institutions, laws and actions in society, and to consider the human person essential for the world of culture, religion and science”.

Whatever judgment one would arrive at, that document remains as an event that has altered the history of nations and, therefore, represents a point of no return. Such a document, after all, by its very nature, requires that it be injected with the spirit proper to every generation that reads it, interpreting it always in a new way, and in light of the changes that history brings. The passing of the decades, therefore, does not occur in vain, but allows us to analyze the path taken thus far, realizing how much still needs to be accomplished in order to fulfill the wishes of those who inspired the document. It is important to ask ourselves how much of the Declaration has been fulfilled in these last decades. What should we say about recent incidences of genocide and religious conflicts; or about the defense of life, from conception until natural death; or about the dignity of the family? Should we not consider the growing gap between the planet’s few wealthy people—holding immense financial resources—and the millions of men, women, and children, living in absolute poverty? Are we still capable of concern for those nations that are in a permanent state of underdevelopment? Are we still sensitive to, and worried about, the use of torture, the arbitrariness of capital punishment, and the unfolding drama of millions of refugees seeking assistance? What is left to say of the tremendous international silence concerning massacres, inflicted without any reason, upon Christians in different parts of the world?

If we move the analysis onto a cultural plane, we cannot deny that something extraordinary is happening in various societies. Revolutionary technologies, especially in the area of health care, are provoking new ethical questions, which often do not find adequate answers. Discoveries relating to the human genome, cloning, genetically modified organisms, the donating and trafficking of human organs, the questionable experiments with human cells, as well as pushing the very limits of behaviour in one’s personal life—to name just a few examples—highlight, on the one hand, the recourse to novel individual rights; and, on the other hand, a real emptiness of values and ethics, raising the ante tremendously. These kinds of problems cannot be addressed politically if, at first, they are not confronted with due care and intelligence culturally: to be able examine the anthropological concept at the root of this situation with a culture so affected by such a simplistic, fashionable relativism.

Read the entire essay at www.HPRweb.com.

“Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here”

“Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here” | Brian O'Neel | Catholic World Report

Hellish conditions in North Korea’s prison camps enable the Kim dynasty to maintain its stranglehold on the impoverished country.

As far as anyone knows, the gates of North Korea’s notorious gulags, or kwalliso, do not have the words “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“Work makes you free”) emblazoned above them, as the ones to Auschwitz did, or, as did the entrance to hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy, the admonition, “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”

No, the gates of North Korea’s gulag archipelago—which imprisons an estimated 200,000 men, women, and children at any given time—don’t have these inscriptions, but they may as well. For the authorities in the kwalliso will work you hard, and the “freedom” this brings is almost certain death. Indeed, for most inmates, there is no hope of seeing the outside ever again.

Percentage-wise, the kwalliso population—200,000 people out of a nation of 24 million—amounts to roughly the same as the percentage of American citizens who are incarcerated, that is, slightly less than 1 percent.

However, North Korea’s prison population includes many who have no idea why they are there. Some were taken in the middle of the night with no explanation, no arraignment, and no trial. It includes people guilty of crimes such as singing songs they didn’t know are forbidden, or speaking carelessly in a public place.  

It also includes people whose only crime is being related to an accused criminal, and children who innocently made politically incorrect remarks in public.

Perhaps the biggest difference, though, is that our American prison system does not experience an estimated 20-40 percent annual mortality rate. And yet, even with 40,000-80,000 inmates dying each year from starvation, physical abuse, disease, and execution, the population in the kwalliso (pronounced “kwah-lee-soh”) stays steady at 200,000. It has to. These camps are a critical piece in the totalitarianism puzzle that allows the Kim dynasty—the first dynasty in the history of communism—to stay in power.

History of the kwalliso

At the conclusion of the Korean Conflict (1950-53), Kim Il Sung, founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), initiated a series of brutal purges to weed out both potential rivals and anyone who would actively question his vision or decisions.

By the late 1950s, most of those swept up in these internecine conflicts were either dead or in concentration camps. These institutions were not the same as today’s kwalliso, however. Their purpose simply was to segregate those who could undermine the regime by “infecting” the general population.

By 1958, however, Kim had decided this was not enough. So much did he fear any dissent in the “Hermit Kingdom” (so-called because of its utter isolation), he ordered a complete ideological profile worked up on every one of his nation’s 9,864,000 people.

Every friend, every family member, ancestry, family connections, their connections’ connections—each relationship was studied. Anything indicating imperialist, reactionary, or counter-revolutionary relations or tendencies was grounds for torture, and then execution or imprisonment.

Continue reading on www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

What’s Next for Faith and Freedom in Cuba?

What’s Next for Faith and Freedom in Cuba? | Jordan Allott | Catholic World Report

Cuban opposition leaders struggle to remain hopeful despite disappointment in the wake of Pope Benedict’s visit.

For three days in late March, Pope Benedict XVI traveled across Cuba on a tightly choreographed spiritual pilgrimage. During his trip, Benedict met with government and Church officials, celebrated large public masses in Santiago de Cuba and Havana, and made statements meant to lift the spirits of the communist country’s citizens, including its six million Catholics. 

I was in Cuba during the Pope’s visit, my third trip there in four years. I traveled to Cuba, in part, to learn how the Cuban people would respond to the papal visit. I also wanted to know whether Pope Benedict’s pilgrimage would contribute to lasting spiritual renewal and political change in Cuba. 

I spent a lot of my time with Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet at his home in Havana. Biscet is one of Cuba’s most prominent dissident leaders and a devout Christian. Last year he was released from prison after nearly 12 years of incarceration for his human rights work. I asked Biscet about the meaning of the Pope’s visit.

“We want Pope Benedict XVI to offer his support to the poor people in Cuba, to the weak, to the rejected,” he said. “And if he does, the freedom of the Cuban people may be accomplished very soon, because this would result in many voices being raised in favor of the Cuban people and for the respect of their basic human rights.”

The Pope’s trip was dubbed by the Vatican as “pastoral in nature,” as he was celebrating the 400th anniversary of the miraculous finding of the statue of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre. But any trip to Cuba by a head of state or religious leader involves politics. 

Hundreds of Cuban opposition leaders were detained during the Pope’s visit. Others were placed under house arrest, instructed not to attend any of the Pope’s public events, or had their cell phone connections disrupted.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Just in: Cardinal Pell and Richard Dawkins don't exchange Christmas cards

The two men—one of the leading light of the Catholic Church in Australia and the other the most well-known of the so-called "new atheists"—met in a highly anticipated (and highly rated, as it turned out) televised debate one (or two?) days ago. The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

It was a match-up made in Q&A heaven: two pugilists of opposing convictions going head-to-head in a debate about the existence of God.

Australia's highest-ranking Catholic and Sydney's archbishop, Cardinal George Pell, spent an hour with evolutionary biologist and celebrity atheist, Professor Richard Dawkins taking questions covering everything from evolution, resurrection and eternal damnation.

Frustration and something bordering on barely concealed mutual disdain boiled over more than once during the ABC television show.

The hour-long debate can be viewed online; the transcript is also available. Here is one exchange regarding the afterlife:

Read the entire post on the Catholic World Report blog.

The Science of Nothing

The Science of Nothing | William E. Carroll | Catholic World Report

A review of Lawrence Krauss’ book A Universe From Nothing: Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing.

Why is it so important for believers to affirm that in creating all that is God does not work with or use anything at all—nothing, that is, other than his own omnipotence? When the doctrine of creation out-of-nothing was being formulated in the early Church, it seemed obvious to the Church Fathers that the opening of Genesis stood out in stark contrast to the prevailing philosophical and scientific view that the universe is eternal. A Platonic Demiurge, for example, or an Aristotelian Unmoved Mover, would work with already existing stuff to bring order and/or motion to the world. Such a god would not be the complete cause of all that is, would not be the sovereign Lord of the universe. To emphasize that God, revealed in the Bible, was such a complete cause of existence meant that creation had to be “out of nothing.” What this meant was that God did not use anything at all—no pre-existent matter, no primal chaos—in his creative act.

For the Church Fathers, creation out-of-nothing also countered any temptation to think that matter was evil and not created by God. All that is comes from God, and all that is, is good. There are not, as the Manicheans thought, two first principles, one supremely good, the other supremely evil. Systematic reflection in the Christian tradition (and in Jewish and Muslim traditions as well) on what it means for God to create involved difficult questions about the intelligibility of something’s coming from nothing, given the fundamental premise that it is not possible to get something from nothing. It also involved discussions about the relationship between a created universe, generally identified as one that is temporally finite (i.e., with a beginning), and the well-established scientific view that the universe is eternal. It would not be until the 13th century that the doctrine of creation would find its fullest expression (and its most able defender) in Thomas Aquinas.[1] 

For Thomas, God’s act of creating the universe is not primarily some distant event. Creation is the on-going, complete causing of all that is. To be created means to have a relationship of complete dependency, of everything that one is, upon God as cause.

Read the entire review at www.CatholicWorldReport.com...

The Continuing Struggle for the Soul of Cuba

The Continuing Struggle for the Soul of Cuba | Jordan Allott | Catholic World Report

In the wake of Pope Benedict's visit, Cuban Catholics express frustration and anger as the Castro regime continues political repression and religious persecution.

A day before Pope Benedict XVI’s historic visit to Cuba on March 26, I was in Arroyo Naranjo, one of Havana’s poorest areas, meeting with Lilvio Fernandez Luis, a Catholic and the leader of JACU, or Joventud Activa Cuba Unida. Lilvio spent the day showing me the life he has worked hard to create—a life built on a strong family and the courage to fight against the repression that the Cuban government has inflicted on its people for more than 53 years. 

When I spoke with him, Lilvio wasn’t planning to attend the papal Mass at the Plaza de Revolution in the center of Havana on March 28. “I will attend Mass here at my home parish of St. Barbara just two blocks away,” he explained.  “If I try and leave my neighborhood on the day of the Mass, I will most likely be detained by state security.” 

Lilvio’s situation was not unique. Although the Church’s goal was to reach out to the Cuban people during Pope Benedict’s visit, many individuals and families found it difficult or impossible to participate in the three days of events organized by the Cuban Catholic Church and Vatican with permission from the island’s Communist government. Despite the government’s limitations, however, Lilvio and almost everyone I talked to during my time in Havana believed the Pope’s trip would be a positive spiritual experience, if not a positive political experience, for the people of Cuba.

Throughout the past five decades, the Communist government of Fidel and Raul Castro has consistently repressed institutions and organizations not under their strict control. Soon after the 1959 revolution, Fidel Castro declared Cuba an atheistic state and reduced the Church's ability to work among the people by deporting hundreds of priests and nuns, seizing all Church properties, and imprisoning and executing countless Catholics and others who expressed faith in God. As the decades passed, Christians continued to face severe discrimination.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, however, the Cuban government felt the need to ease up on its repression against the Church in order to receive economic concessions from Europe—aid it had previously received from the USSR. In 1992, Cuba declared itself a secular state and permitted Catholics and others to join the Communist Party, the country’s only legal political party.

In 1998, Pope John Paul II made a historic visit to Cuba. It was Cuba’s first papal visit, and the trip ignited hope amongst those who remembered John Paul II’s journeys to his native Poland (then Communist) in 1979. The Pope’s visits helped initiate the Solidarity Movement that ultimately contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

During his five-day visit to Cuba, Pope John Paul II held meetings with Fidel Castro and religious leaders, and celebrated public Masses in several cities. John Paul II spoke often about the nation’s need for individual responsibility, strong families, and a culture of life. With his visit, Pope John Paul II brought spiritual hope not only to Roman Catholics, but also to the many other Christians and non-believers who attended the various public Masses and celebrations.

But certain topics were off limits during the Pope’s visit, including any public discussion of Cuba’s political prisoners.

Read the entire essay at www.CatholicWorldReport.com...

Richard Dawkins: Blustering polemicist, bad philosopher, naked atheist emperor

Charlie Spiering reports for Crisis magazine about the Rally for Reason, which featured a bunch of people without ultimate purpose who randomly gathered to and emote and to talk, by complete chance, about their accidentally shared hatred of religion, which they insist, with great intensity, is beneath them and is not worthy of their attention—other than, of course, holding a six-hour rally:

But as gloomy rain clouds hung low over the Washington Monument, the rally quickly degenerated into open mockery of religion and people of faith.

“F— the motherf—-, f— the mother—- pope,” sang Musician Tim Minchin as he played profane songs on the piano for a laughing and cheering crowd.

Few religions remained unscathed while cruel spokesmen of reason roundly ridiculed Mormons, Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims.

Perhaps some of the talented people involved thought it was a Rally for Ridicule and Rage? Apparently so:

But even the laughs turned into malaise as the event drew to a close. Famed atheist headliner Richard Dawkins labored through a speech that quickly grew bitter.

“Do you really believe that when a priest blesses a wafer, it turns into the body of Christ?” he said, ridiculing Catholics. “Are you seriously telling me you believe that?  Are you seriously saying that wine turns into blood?”

Hawkins challenged his fellow atheists to expose people who still cling to their faith in spite of their doubts.

“Mock them, ridicule them in public, don’t fall for the convention that we’re far to polite to talk about religion,” a frustrated Dawkins continued, “Religion is not off the table. Religion is not off limits. Religion makes specific claims about the universe, which need to be substantiated.  They should be challenged and ridiculed with contempt.”

Mockery and ridicule aren't, of course, owned and copyrighted by atheists; you'll find plenty of Christians who are jerks, oafs, blockheads, fools, loons, and all-around louts. But I've never heard, say, the Pope or Billy Graham or some other significant, recognized leader of particular Christian churches or groups say, "Mock them, ridicule them in public" and so forth. But, really, is anyone that surprised? Dawkins might be a fine biologist, but when it comes to religion and philosophy, he's not just the emperor without clothes, he's the proverbial atheist without arguments—that is, real arguments. He has learned that mockery, ridicule, and contempt are the best tools for spreading the religion of anti-religion, since it distracts from all of the nagging questions and robust arguments that otherwise might have to be addressed. Dr. Edward Feser, himself once an atheist, has written:

Continue reading on the Catholic World Report blog...

A science fiction author promotes philosophical fiction. People applaud.

The science fiction author, Ursula Le Guin, was recently in town (she lives up the interstate in Portland) to talk about the great threat that hovers Darth Vader's bad breath over civilization: book censorship by fundamentalist Protestants. Huh. Is she stuck in the early 1970s or something? Apparently:

Sometime in the 1970s, a group of fundamentalist Christians in the United States decided that “fantasy was evil,” famed science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin told a standing-room-only crowd of about 200 at the Eugene Public Library on Saturday.

“A lot of school boards had members who were kind of determined to get fantasy and sci-fi away from kids,” the Portland author said.

Le Guin once went to a hearing that would determine whether her 1971 novel, “The Lathe of Heaven,” would be removed from a particular school district’s shelves, and she’ll always remember what one of the students who stood up to defend the book said about it:

“I thought this book was really stupid. But I want to decide that for myself.”

No, no, that isn't the remark alluded to in my headline. And, to be fair to Le Guin, I know a bit about that fundamentalist group she referred to (update: that's a tongue-in-cheek remark. Beware!). It consisted of about thirty people meeting in a "home church" in Plains, Montana. I know, because I was at the meeting. And there was spirited discussion (this was in 1974 or so) about whether or not some of the teenagers there should be reading C. S. Lewis's Narnia books because, first, the books had witches as characters and, secondly, the books used a lion to apparently symbolize the person of Jesus Christ. Although I was only five or so, I recall one man saying, "There is no need for allegory; if people want to learn about Jesus, they can read the Bible." Indeed. And if people want to read symbolism or allegory, they can read the Book of Revelation, which is, um, in the Bible. (And what about The Pilgrim's Progress? That was considered to be near gospel. But wasn't it just a wee bit allegorical in nature?)

Where was I? Well, it goes without saying that no one in our little group mentioned Le Guin, but I'm sure she and her dread book were on our mind.s Or not. I hadn't read it, and I never did.

Here, however, is remark, by Le Guin, that prompted the headline:

“Theism and atheism can be equally dangerous,” she said. “Any belief, any unbelief, is dangerous if it is adopted, enforced, accepted as the only acceptable ideology.”

Whew. If Le Guin is as good of science fiction writer as she is philosophical fiction writer, she's fabulous. This is gold. Fool's gold, glittering in its unashamed casuistry. Because if Le Guin is correct, then it follows that her absolute and uniquely "acceptable" statement—“Any belief, any unbelief, is dangerous if it is adopted, enforced, accepted as the only acceptable ideology"—is itself to be condemned as dangerous. In fact, in one neat and incredibly tidy remark she has exposed a mortal flaw in modern, secular liberalism: the belief that all beliefs are equal, which necessarily holds, as a presupposition, that said belief is itelf above, beyond, and superior to all other beliefs. Which means that some beliefs must be superior to other beliefs, which then brings us back to the key questions: What beliefs? And on what grounds, basis, or authority?

Also interesting is the remark that theism and atheism "can be equally dangerous". That sounds very deep, but it is really just very vacuous, similar to saying, "Love and hate can be equally dangerous", or "Sky diving and scuba diving can be equally dangerous". Except there is a deeper problem, since her claim that theism and atheism can be equally dangerous is, as we've seen, based on a completely false assumption about absolutes. Besides, the far better question is: Is atheism or theism more true? Which of the two makes better sense of existence, reality, morality, and human nature? And what sort of "theism" are we talking about? Of course, Le Guin was kept free from having to delve into those deep waters as she preaching to People's Republic of Eugene, Oregon, choir, who are absolutely sure that absolutely nothing is absolute.

Le Guin's statement is what I call the "Wile E. Coyote Philosophy of Life": You don't think through the premises of your plan, you don't calculate the costs if it makes no sense, and you don't bother to look at where you'll end up if you are wrong until it's too late:

Cuban government detains protest group Ladies in White, others

From BBC News, this bad news:

Cuban police have arrested dozens of opposition activists, a week ahead of a visit by Pope Benedict XVI.

Most of those detained are members of the protest group Ladies in White, who are demanding the release of political prisoners.

Many were stopped as they staged their silent weekly protest march along an avenue in the capital, Havana.

The group says the country's Communist authorities have increased pressure on them in recent days.

The government says they are paid by the US to undermine Cuba's revolution.

The Ladies in White (Damas de Blanco) usually attend Mass together and then stage a protest march outside calling for the release of all political prisoners. ...

A group spokeswoman said that 19 of its members had been detained on Saturday evening while trying to stage a march in central Havana. Three have since been released without charge.

On Sunday morning, police detained another 36 members of the group - including leader Bertha Soler - as they made their way to attend Mass together in Havana.

After the church service, 22 women and two men were arrested as they marched to the city centre, trying to go beyond a route that has recently been tolerated by the authorities.

For a detailed look at the Ladies in White and their activism on the behalf of political prisoners in Cuba, read Daniel Allott's May 2011 article for Catholic World Report, "Cautious Defiance". Allott writes:

Read the rest on the CWR blog.

Perfecting the Art of Totalitarianism

Perfecting the Art of Totalitarianism | Brian O'Neel | Catholic World Report

Since the mid-20th century, North Korea has become the most fully realized totalitarian regime in history.

For most people, a normal day might look like the following.

After rising and getting yourself ready for the day, you read the newspaper or get your news online. You like to be informed, so you read the op-ed section, making sure to see what both Mr. Liberal Columnist and Miss Conservative Columnist have written.

During your commute, you flip back and forth among any number of radio stations. After arriving and beginning the day’s work, you might now and then take break and talk with colleagues. Naturally, each person would express his or her own opinions, which might lead to some strong disagreements.

If you work a blue-collar job, maybe you occasionally check your cell phone for texts or emails. If yours is a white-collar job, you would probably check your work and personal emails accounts. You might also surf the web, either because of a project or to handle some light personal business.

After returning home, maybe you watch the news, read the newspaper, or peruse a magazine that came in the mail. After dinner, maybe you gather with friends at a local coffee house or pub for some carefree conversation over some current political topic. Or maybe you stay home and pray the family Rosary or the Liturgy of Hours.

Before going to bed, if you didn’t stay up and watch the news or a late-night comedy show, you might read some book of your choosing. Perhaps, for the sake of illustration, an excoriating evaluation of your nation’s leader.

Perfecting the system

If you live in most nations on the planet, the description above probably looks familiar. If, however, you live in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (or the DPRK, and better known as North Korea), 12 of the items described above would not be possible, and six of them would get you and your whole family arrested. If the latter happened, it is very likely that none of you would live beyond five years, much less the duration of your 15-year sentence.

Such is life in the world’s most totalitarian state—which is not, as many claim, Stalinist so much as it is a combination of Stalinism, pre-1945 Japanese fascism, and national socialism in slightly varied forms.

Read the entire article at www.CatholicWorldReport.com...

God and Liberal Modernity

Ecclesia et Civitas: God and Liberal Modernity | James Kalb | Catholic World Report

All around us we can see the results of excluding God from our understanding of the world.

“How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun?” — Friedrich Nietzsche

“Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” — Alexander Solzhenitsyn

What lies behind the radically anti-Catholic form of society to which we are tending, one in which Catholic beliefs count as patently delusional and Catholic moral doctrine as an outrage that must be suppressed? The power and durability of the tendency show that some basic issue is in play, while the difficulty of opposing it suggests that the issue is somehow hidden, so that people have trouble grappling with it directly.

In fact, the issue is the most basic of all: God or no God. What we see around us are the results of excluding God from how we understand the world.

The very size of the issue makes it hard to see clearly. It’s difficult to stand back and get perspective on something that changes absolutely everything. Western people are mostly practical atheists who see God as an add-on to a world that can pretty much get by without him. Everyday habits and practicalities carry life forward, so ultimate beliefs seem beside the point. When problems do come up—when our neighbor leaves his wife or starts picking pockets or whatever—it is easy to find particular causes: it’s because of the economy, it’s what people see on TV, the guy’s got personal issues, and anyway there have always been problems and religious people are no different from anyone else.

So the link between ultimate causes and their effects becomes obscured, and people who insist on a connection between religion and how we live together seem like cranks.

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

Three False Christs: The Myth, the Mortal, and the Guru

by Carl E. Olson

Albert Schweitzer, in the opening pages of his famous and influential 1906 book The Quest of the Historical Jesus, wrote, "And so each subsequent epoch in theology found its own ideas in Jesus, and could find no other way of bringing him to life. Not only epochs found themselves in him. Each individual recreated him in the image of his own personality."

Examples abound:

• Many atheists insist that Jesus didn't even exist or that, if he did, he is either lost in the mists of time or misused by Christian zealots.
• Rationalists tend to depict Jesus as a philosopher of good or questionable abilities and intentions.
• Socialists often present Jesus as a protoMarxist and liberation leader whose struggle was ultimately political, not religious or spiritual. Other leftists paint a portrait of Jesus the community organizer or community agitator.
• Denizens of the New Age realm regularly equate Jesus with Buddha and speak of "Christ-consciousness."
• Some Christians speak of a friendly, all-inclusive Jesus who hardly warrants interest, let alone worship, while others preach a Jesus who is judging and angry and hardly warrants charity, let alone discipleship.

Some of these "Christs" are simply false; some are, more specifically, also heretical. "Every heresy has been an effort to narrow the Church," wrote G. K. Chesterton in St. Francis of Assisi. Likewise, these heresies seek to narrow the person of Jesus Christ. Here, then, are three popular depictions of Jesus Christ that are not only flawed but dangerous to one's intellectual and spiritual health.

No Generic God

From a new essay by Fr. James V. Schall, S.J., posted on the Catholic World Report site:

Just before Christmas every year, the Holy Father has a meeting with local university students in Rome. This year’s talk was centered about a passage in James (5:7) about patience. Essentially, patience is on the side of letting things happen in their own due time. We often wonder why God does not do things in a more tidy and speedy fashion. We set up our standard and wonder why God does not conform to it.

“There are many people in our time, especially among those you meet in university lecture halls, who voice the question of whether we should await something or someone, whether we should await another messiah, another god…” The implication is that the Messiah we have been given has not come through for us. We must look about, perhaps make our own redeemer. It is quite interesting to read that these impatient folks populate university lecture halls. We might speculate: why?

Everyone knows that university professors (and sometimes politicians) are constantly tempted to invent their own world in order to explain their private theory about how things should be. This Christian idea of receiving a revelation and waiting for the plan of God to unravel is much too inefficient. There has to be a speedier way. The trouble with such theories is that, once they are in effect, we end up gazing into the face of the professor and not into the Face of God.

We are created ultimately to behold God “face to face.” But salvation comes to us in God’s way and time, not ours. The meaning “in the depth of life and history” is that seeing the face of the Lord requires “patience, fidelity and constancy in seeking God and openness to him that he reveals his Face.” It is a subtle temptation, to compare what God does to what we think, if we were He, He ought to do.

Read the entire essay.

Secular Theocracy: The Foundations and Folly of Modern Tyranny

Secular Theocracy: The Foundations and Folly of Modern Tyranny | David J. Theroux | Ignatius Insight

Part 1:

We live in an increasingly secularized world of massive and pervasive nation states in which traditional religion, especially Christianity, is ruled unwelcome and even a real danger on the basis of a purported history of intolerance and “religious violence.” This is found in most all “public” domains, including the institutions of education, business, government, welfare, transportation, parks and recreation, science, art, foreign affairs, economics, entertainment, and the media. A secularized public square policed by government is viewed as providing a neutral, rational, free, and safe domain that keeps the “irrational” forces of religion from creating conflict and darkness. And we are told that real progress requires expanding this domain by pushing religion ever backward into remote corners of society where it has little or no influence. In short, modern America has become a secular theocracy with a civic religion of national politics (nationalism) occupying the public realm in which government has replaced God.

For the renowned Christian scholar and writer C.S. Lewis, such a view was fatally flawed morally, intellectually, and spiritually, producing the twentieth-century rise of the total state, total war, and mega-genocides. For Lewis, Christianity provided the one true and coherent worldview that applied to all human aspirations and endeavors: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” (The Weight of Glory)[1]

In his book, The Discarded Image, Lewis revealed that for Medieval Christians, there was no sacred/secular divide and that this unified, theopolitical worldview of hope, joy, liberty, justice, and purpose from the loving grace of God enabled them to discover the objective, natural-law principles of ethics, science, and theology, producing immense human flourishing. [2] Lewis described the natural law as a cohesive and interconnected objective standard of right behavior:

This thing which I have called for convenience the Tao, and which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgements. If it is rejected, all values are rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgement of value in the history of the world. What purport to be new systems or (as they now call them) “ideologies,” all consist of fragments from the Tao itself. Arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they possess. If my duty to my parents is a superstition, then so is my duty to posterity. If justice is a superstition, then so is my duty to my country or my race. If the pursuit of scientific knowledge is a real value, then so is conjugal fidelity. (The Abolition of Man)[3]

And in his recent book, The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark has further shown “How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and the Success of the West.”[4] Similarly and prior to the rise of the secular nation-state in America, Alexis de Tocqueville documented in his 1835 volume, Democracy in America, the remarkable flexibility, vitality and cohesion of Christian-rooted liberty in American society with business enterprises, churches and aid societies, covenants and other private institutions and communities.[5]

Read the entire essay on Ignatius Insight...

The Catholic Faith Is Not a Noble Lie

The Catholic Faith Is Not a Noble Lie | Thomas Storck | Homiletic & Pastoral Review

What is needed is a real debate on religious questions providing a rational public apologetic for the faith.

For we were not following fictitious tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his grandeur. – 2 Peter 1:16

The last few years have seen the appearance, in the English-speaking world, of several public and militant atheists.  Writers such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett have attacked, not only Christianity, but religion itself which they label a negative and divisive factor in the world.  This phenomenon has not gone unnoticed by Catholics.  To confine myself only to this journal, I alluded to the appearance of the new atheists briefly,1 while David Carlin had already discussed the question at length over a year earlier. ²  In this article, I do not intend to go over the same ground, but to call attention to something that, in my opinion, is even more worrisome.  This is manifested in the response of certain Protestant spokesmen to some of the activities of the atheists, a response that I think reveals a deep defect in much of American thinking about religion.  We will discuss, however, not the books written by those who aspire to appear as intellectual representatives of atheism, but a more mundane project that some atheist organizations engaged in.

What I am speaking of is the international campaign which placed ads in busses, and other public places in Europe and the United States, attacking belief in God.  They have appeared in Great Britain, Spain and other European countries.  They began to appear here sometime in 2008.  I first saw them on a bus in the Washington, D.C., area in the fall of that year.  Of course, such public promotion of atheism is unusual in the United States, where generally there is a stance of giving lip service to God, or at least of not attacking his existence explicitly, however far from obeying his law we may be.  As Carlin noted, the conventions of American discourse, our “rules of good manners,” meant “that atheists and agnostics were not allowed to attack theism in general, or Christianity in particular.”

Interesting and revealing as the cultural shift is that allows such public attacks on the existence of God, what I found more interesting about the ad campaign than the mere fact of its existence was the slant or angle of the atheists’ message.  The ads pictured a (black) man3 dressed in a Santa Claus suit with the message, “Why believe in a god?  Just be good for goodness’s sake.”  This to me was interesting because the atheists did not attack the notion that God exists, they did not offer any arguments on behalf of the self-existing character of matter, or anything of that sort.  Instead, they exhorted one to be good without God’s aid.  This would seem to me to be rather beside the point:  Are we debating whether God exists, or are we debating whether we can be good without his help?  Why would the sponsors of the ad campaign take the particular line that they did?

Read the entire article on HPRweb.com...

The illogical creed of Charles Krauthammer's ...

... hopeless, agnostic conservatism, examined, re-examined, and found lacking, by yours truly.

Can religion turn people into fools?

Certainly. But it's not the sort of religion most people think of as "foolish"—or as being a religion.

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.

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.