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Falsely Accused, Wrongly Imprisoned, Truly Set Free | CWR Staff | Catholic World Report
An interview with author, apologist, evangelist, convert,
and former prisoner Russell Ford
Russell Ford’s
testimony is captivating, surprising, sobering, and, at times, rather humorous. The following interview is much longer than most CWR features, but we think readers will find his story, perspective, and insights both challenging and encouraging. Also, Russell's recent appearance on EWTN's "The Journey Home" can be viewed on the EWTN website.
CWR: For those who might not be familiar with your background,
let’s go back to the mid-1980s. Prior to going to prison, were you a
Catholic? What were you doing prior to being imprisoned?
Ford: No, I wasn’t
a Catholic. I hunted bounty after I got out of the army. Between my time in
the military and as a bounty hunter (the more politically correct term these
days being “independent fugitive recovery agent”), I was shot twice, stabbed
twice, poisoned, run over by a car, fell off the side of a car at 70 miles
per hour, and beaten almost to death. So when I got tired of being other
people’s punching bag, I left bounty work to get into the slower life of
business. I eventually made some major errors, because I’d gotten too big for
my britches, and lost everything. I decided to go to Alabama, where I’d done
part of my military training, because I recalled how well I was treated
there. I came to realize quickly, however, that I’d been treated well before because
I was in the military. What I discovered was that anyone who was from any
place other than Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, or Louisiana was considered
to be a Yankee… and Yankees are hated there. I’d only lived in Alabama for a
few months when I found myself in a mess of trouble.
CWR: Why
were you arrested and sentenced to prison? And when were you released from
prison? How did that come about?
Ford: This series
of questions are considered a major social blunder in the joint. Indeed, for
a convict to ask these questions it is potentially deadly. You never ask a
convict why he’s in prison, how much time he has to build, or when he gets
out. However, this may be an opportunity to finally explain things fully and
correctly.
A Schall Report on Things Current and Otherwise | Fr. James V. Schall, SJ | Catholic World Report
Thoughts on moving across the country, teaching, universities, and popes.
Basically, I
packed up my worldly goods at the Jesuit Community in Georgetown, gave many
things away, and shipped other books here to Los Gatos. I flew via San Jose
here on the first day of spring. It is a beautiful place. About seventy retired
or infirm Jesuits live here, many old friends and classmates whom I have but
rarely seen over the years.
What have I been
doing? Once I was set up with the normal household things, the staff and my
nephews set me up with a computer. I can still use my Georgetown e-mail. So the
world is suddenly as close or as far away as it was in Washington.
So
far, I checked the galleys of two books which are hopefully to be out in the
fall. One is entitled, Rational Pleasures,
to be published by Ignatius Press. I wrote this book while recovering from my
jaw cancer operation during the Spring Semester 2010 when I was not teaching.
The second is called, Political Philosophy and Revelation: A Catholic
Reading, to be published in the fall by the
Catholic University of America Press. In many ways, this book is the summation
of my thinking about the nature, extent, and purpose of political philosophy,
where it fits into the “order of things”.
Also, I put
together for Jameson Books a manuscript entitled Schall at Georgetown: On
Being Liberally Educated. This collection
contains essays that I wrote in The Hoya, Utraque Unum, and other Georgetown journals over the years. It
includes the “Last
Lecture,” that was delivered last December 7 in Gaston Hall. The book is a
reflective summation of what I was doing, or at least thought I was doing,
during my many years at Georgetown. It reflects the memorable influence that
students, colleagues, and friends have had on my thinking about what makes
sense in the world.
Someone asked if I
would return for Georgetown graduation in May. My answer was: “Alas, I shan’t
be able to return for graduation. Missing it will break my heart, but not half
as much as being there.”
Having left a
place for a time, what does one miss?
The Vampire School | Anthony Esolen | Catholic World Report
The Vampire School drains the life out of learning, producing dull workers for the Vampire State.
“Schools, I
hear it argued, would make better sense and be better value as nine-to-five
operations or even nine-to-nine ones, working year-round. We’re not a farming community anymore, I
hear, that we need to give kids time off to tend the crops. This new-world-order schooling would serve
dinner, provide evening recreation, offer therapy, medical attention, and a
whole range of other services, which would convert the institution into a true
synthetic family for children, better than the original one for many poor kids,
it is said—and this would level the playing field for the sons and daughters of
weak families.
“Yet it
appears to me as a schoolteacher that schools are already a major cause of weak
families and weak communities. They
separate parents and children from vital interaction with each other and from
true curiosity about each other’s lives.
Schools stifle family originality by appropriating the critical time
needed for any sound idea of family to develop—then they blame the family for
its failure to be a family.” (John
Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden
Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling)
One day it
struck John Taylor Gatto, Teacher of the Year for New York State in 1991 (and
therefore, inevitably, disliked by his administrators), that our schools were not failing. Rather, they were succeeding fabulously at
what they were constructed to do: to produce dull and compliant workers in a
technocratic economy. School, he argued,
instills in us a perpetual childish neediness.
We need to toady for grades, because we need to get into the “best”
schools, because we need to have a prestigious and well-remunerated job,
because we need to buy a lot of stuff to
pretend to fill the emptiness of our lives.
Among that stuff will be the odd child or two, who will also need to
toady for grades, to get into the “best” schools, and so on, world without end,
Amen.
The Vampire State naturally requires a
Vampire School. Recall the two things
everybody needs to know about vampires.
Cardinal Bergoglio’s Letter to the Catechists of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires | CWR Staff
An exclusive English translation of the future Pope Francis’ 2012 letter on evangelization and opening the doors of faith
Editor’s note: On August 21, 2012, the feast of St. Pius X, then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio—now Pope Francis—published a letter to the catechists of his Archdiocese of Buenos Aires. This is an exclusive English translation of that letter.
“In those days, Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.” (Lk 1:39)
Dear catechists,
It has been a custom now for many years that I write you a letter around the feast of Saint Pius X. In this way I wish to greet you on his day, thank you for your quiet, faithful work each week, for your ability to be Good Samaritans who offer hospitality out of faith, by being familiar faces and dear hearts that make it possible to transform, in some way, the anonymity of the big city.
This year, the day of the catechist finds us facing a grace-filled event that we are already starting to experience. Within two months begins the Year of Faith that our Pope Benedict XVI has declared “so as to shed ever clearer light on the joy and renewed enthusiasm of the encounter with Christ” (Apostolic Letter Porta Fidei, 2).
It will certainly be a jubilee year. Hence the invitation that the same Pope extends to us to enter through the “Door of the Faith.” Entering through this door is a journey that lasts a lifetime, yet in this time of grace we are all called to renew it. Therefore from the bottom of my heart I exhort you in this year, as your pastor and as your brother, to strive to experience the present time with the transforming power of this event.
We all remember the invitation repeated so many times by Blessed John Paul II: “Open the doors to the Redeemer.” God is urging us once again: Open the doors to the Lord: the door of the heart, the doors of the mind, the doors of catechesis, of our communities... all the doors to the Faith.
In this opening of the door of faith there is always a free and personal Yes: a Yes that is a response to God that takes the initiative and draws near to man so as to start a dialogue with him, in which the gift and the mystery are always made present.
A Yes that the Virgin Mother was able to give in the fullness of time, in that humble village of Nazareth, so that through this interaction the new and definitive covenant could begin what God had prepared, in Jesus, for all mankind.
It always does us good to turn to look at the Blessed Virgin. Even more so for those of us to whom is entrusted, in one way or another, the task of guiding the lives of many brethren, and thus united, to be able to say Yes to the invitation to believe.
But catechesis would be seriously compromised if our experience of faith were to leave us confined in and anchored to our familiar world or in the structures and spaces that we have been creating over the years.
"A failure to do that is an abdication of my responsibility."
| Carl E. Olson | Catholic World Report
Bishop Robert F. Vasa talks about education, witness, conscience, responsibility, faithfulness—and Benedict XVI.
His
Excellency, Bishop Robert F. Vasa, is the sixth bishop of the Diocese of
Santa Rosa, California. Prior to coming to Santa Rosa in January 2010,
he was the bishop of the Diocese of Baker, Oregon, for ten years. Bishop
Vasa recently required the 200 teachers in the diocesan schools to sign an
addendum to their contracts, titled "Bearing Witness". This addendum
acknowledges that they are called "to a life of holiness" and that "this
call is the more compelling for me since I have been entrusted, in my
vocation as a teacher/administrator in a Catholic school, with the
formation of souls." It also states, "I am especially cognizant of the
fact that modern errors -- including but not limited to matters that
gravely offend human dignity and the common good such as contraception,
abortion, homosexual 'marriage' and euthanasia -- while broadly accepted
in society, are not consistent with the clear teachings of the Catholic
Church."
Bishop Vasa spoke last week with Carl E. Olson,
editor of Catholic World Report, about the controversy over his
directive, the proper goals of Catholic education, the serious
misunderstandings that exist about "conscience", and some of the biggest
challenges facing the Church in the United States.
CWR: You
had a similar situation when you were the bishop of the Diocese of
Baker, Oregon, where you asked all those involved in catechesis—
Bishop Vasa: —in ecclesial ministries of one kind or another.
CWR: —to sign. How similar are the two situations?
Bishop Vasa: It was the same general principle, but it is different
here because it involves people who work for me in a contractual
relationship because I am their employer.
CWR: And the
situation in Oregon involved people who were sometimes volunteers and
such.
Bishop Vasa: Right.
CWR: You know the lay of
the land and you surely expected some negative reaction. Did the
reaction live up to your expectations?
Prayer is essential to the life of faith. In this superb book, based on Pope Benedict's weekly teaching, he examines the foundational principles of the life of prayer. Believers of various backgrounds and experience in prayer-from beginners to spiritually advanced-will be enriched by this spiritual masterpiece.
Benedict begins considering what we can learn from the examples of prayer found in a wide range of cultures and eras. Next, he turns to the Bible's teaching about prayer, beginning with Abraham and moving though Moses, the prophets, the Psalms to the example of Jesus. With Jesus Christ, Pope Benedict considers not only the Lord's teaching about prayer, but also his example of how to pray, including the Our Father, his prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane, and prayers on the Cross. The prayers of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and the early Church are also explored. Benedict also draws on insights from spiritual masters, the saints, and the Church's liturgy. He challenges readers to live their relationships with God "even more intensely, as it were, at a ‘school of prayer'."
Although Benedict provides a sweeping survey of great figures of prayer, his discussion centers on Jesus Christ and even invokes him in the study of prayer. "It is in fact in Jesus," writes Benedict, "that man becomes able to approach God in the depth and intimacy of the relationship of fatherhood and sonship. Together with the first disciples, let us now turn with humble trust to the Teacher and ask him: ‘Lord, teach us to pray' (Lk 11:1)."
The internationally best-selling book, YOUCAT - The Youth Catechism of
the Catholic Church, explained to young people the meaning of their
faith in language, style and design that has appealed greatly to them.
Now YOUCAT - The Youth Prayer Book, helps them to live their faith and
deepen their spiritual lives.
The book includes modern, new prayers, along with traditional prayers,
and the time-honored prayers of Holy Scripture. It also gives a lot of
practical advice on how to pray: in the morning, in the evening, and in
between; in sorrow or in joy. The prayer book is illustrated with many
photos of young people from all over the world.
Bishop Robert Vasa of Santa Rosa, California, has done the unthinkable—nay, he has gone beyond outrageous, to a place so foreign and radical, many Catholics in his diocese are going apoplectic and having complete meltdowns (with low-fat lattes in hand, I presume). Prepare to be shocked:
The Santa Rosa Catholic Diocese is requiring its 200 schoolteachers to sign an agreement affirming that "modern errors" such as contraception, abortion, homosexual marriage and euthanasia are "matters that gravely offend human dignity."
The move is an effort by Bishop Robert Vasa to delineate specifically what it means for a Catholic-school teacher -- whether Catholic or not -- to be a "model of Catholic living" and to adhere to Catholic teaching.
That means means abiding by the Ten Commandments, going to church every Sunday and heeding God's words in thought, deed and intentions, according to a private church document that is an "addendum" to language in the current teachers' contract.
Who does he think he is? Their employer? Their bishop? Um, yeah, he is both, in fact. But, of course, some of the teachers would rather not walk the talk and be adults about the reasonable requirement:
Reading the Catechism, Rebuilding Catholic Culture | Carl E. Olson | Catholic World Report
An Interview with the author of Rebuilding Catholic
Culture: How The Catechism Can Shape Our Common Life
Dr. Ryan N. S. Topping earned a doctorate in theology at
Oxford, is a Fellow at Thomas More College in New Hampshire, and has written
two books about St. Augustine. His recently published book, Rebuilding
Catholic Culture: How The Catechism Can Shape Our Common Life (Sophia Institute Press, 2012), has been praised by
Fr. Aidan Nichols, OP (“This book deserves to
take its place among the Catholic
classics.”), Joseph Pearce (“Ryan Topping wields the Catechism as a weapon of wisdom…”), and Fr. John Saward (“This
profound work of scholarship is a delight to read.”), among others.
Dr. Topping corresponded recently with Catholic World
Report about his book, and discussed the Catechism
of the Catholic Church, resisting the
modern and secular “masters”, the challenges posed by modernity, the various
assaults on Catholicism and the family, and why Kant rules our days and
Nietzsche our night life.
Catholic World Report: It has now been nearly twenty years since the Catechism
of the Catholic Church was published
in English. How well or how poorly do you think it has been received and used
in that time? How do you hope Rebuilding Catholic Culture will inspire a deeper reading and appreciation of
the Catechism?
Dr. Topping: The work of the restoration of culture is the work
of saints. How are saints born? They are born through grace, to be sure. But
grace is aided by precept and example. The task of reclaiming our culture
for the Church is a battle with many fronts. Far more important than good books
is the renewal of liturgy within our churches and the restoration of order
within our families and schools. Books rarely excite without lively teachers to
place them in our hands.
To explain a doctrine is to teach, but to illustrate how its
meaning can transform action is to excite. I tried to keep both of these aims
in view while writing. My hope is that Rebuilding Catholic Culture will in some small way strengthen the nerve and
excite the imagination of its readers.
CWR:
You write, in the Introduction, that, “Intellectual humility is a great good,
but self-imposed humiliation before our medical, moral, and political masters
is unbecoming.” What are some examples of that “self-imposed humiliation” and
why do so many Catholics embrace it? What are some examples of these modern masters?
Dr. Topping: We improperly
censure ourselves each time we talk about “faith communities” or “Christian
values” or “gender”. None of these things exist in the Catholic lexicon. We
belong to the Church, believe in good and evil, and are created male and
female. Language shapes our perceptions. We need to recapture once more,
through catechesis and in our schools and colleges, a grounding in the basics
of Catholic philosophy. Not that everyone needs to become a scholar. But good
philosophy is needed if only to counter bad philosophy. And our public
discourse has been dominated for a very long time by those versed in sub-human
philosophy.
How to reverse this trend? Every profession and trade affords its own
opportunities for heroism. If you are a college president, refuse to remove
crucifixes from your classrooms. If you are a principal of a Catholic high
school, hire Catholic teachers. If you are a Catholic doctor, stick your neck
out and refuse to prescribe contraception. If you are a mother, know what your
children are being taught at school, and assert your role as the primary
educator.
CWR: A
central theme of your book is the uneasy and often contentious relationship
between modernity and Catholicism. Why are you so hard on modernity? Hasn't it
produced all sorts of wonderful technological, medical, and cultural advances
and accomplishments? Are you simply pining for a golden age of Catholicism when
the Church dominated culture and every other aspect of life? Aren’t you a bit
young to be nostalgic for the Middle Ages?
The Orwellian World of Catholic Higher Education | Anne Hendershott | Catholic World Report
A report on the implementation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae reveals next to nothing about the real state of affairs on Catholic college campuses.
In 1990, Pope John Paul II
released Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the
papal document defining the centrality of Catholic higher education. Its title translated
as “from the heart of the Church,” the document called for Catholic colleges to
be faithful to their Catholic mission and accountable to their local bishops. Fiercely
resisted by many Catholic college presidents and faculty members, who viewed Ex Corde Ecclesiae as a threat to their
academic freedom, it took more than 10 years to implement. Last month, the Office
of the Secretariat of Education at the United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops released what they called The
Final Report for the Ten Year Review of the Application of Ex Corde Ecclesiae for the United States.
Unfortunately, the Ten Year Review provides almost no
information about the progress that has been made in implementing the papal
document on the 230 Catholic campuses throughout the country. Rather than providing
facts about the implementation, the Ten
Year Review is a one-page, self-congratulatory, platitudinous document
that lauds “ongoing dialogue” and a “spirit of collaboration,” but says almost
nothing about what is really happening in Catholic higher education. In fact, any
Catholic who has been paying attention to the culture and curricula on many of
these campuses can be forgiven if he felt like he had stepped into a chapter of
George Orwell’s 1984 when reading a
recent headline in the National Catholic
Reporter, which proclaimed: “Bishops, colleges find good collaboration in Ex Corde review.” That same Catholic
must have been even more surprised to read a headline in Our Sunday Visitor that claimed: “Progress seen in boosting
Catholic identity on campuses.”
Good collaboration with bishops? Boosting
Catholic identity? For faithful Catholics, it must have seemed like just
yesterday there was yet another serious scandal on a Catholic campus. That is
because it was just yesterday. In fact, this month alone included a long list
of scandals on Catholic campuses. Leading the list are the annual productions of
The Vagina Monologues, most scheduled
on or around Valentine’s Day. This year, performances of the play were held on 12
Catholic campuses, up from nine last year; among other things, the play favorably
portrays homosexual relations, adult-child sex, and abortion.
Beyond these annual events, on many
Catholic campuses students can get class credit through internships at Planned
Parenthood, serving as clinic escorts.
It
is a great honor to be asked to write a foreword to a
masterpiece.
The book you hold in your hands is, I firmly
believe, the single most useful and important book (outside of the
Church’s own official teachings in the Catechism
of the Catholic Church
and the papal encyclicals) that we can possibly read about the single
most important field of conflict between the Catholic Church
and the
increasingly de-Christianized Western world today.
Frank Sheed
was one of the three best Catholic apologists of the twentieth
century, the others being G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis (a
Catholic who thought he was an Anglican). Just as Sheed’s Theology
and Sanity
remains the very best introduction to Catholic theology, Society
and Sanity
remains the very best introduction to Catholic social and political
philosophy, even now, sixty years later. Like Huxley’s
preternaturally prophetic Brave
NewWorld,
it is astonishingly current, though it was published in 1953.
The
Church and the world both face exactly the same most basic problems
and issues today as then. These issues are not only the perennial,
unchanging ones that are many millennia old (good and evil, God and
man, sin and salvation, life and death), but are even the new,
distinctively modern ones that are only a century or two old, the new
crises.
What are these current civilizational crises? For many
centuries the issues that divided the Church and the world were
theological issues. But today they are all “social issues”. All
the “hot-button” controversies today are about man and marriage
and sex and society. This is why the greatest philosopher of modern
times, John Paul the Great, focused on anthropology; what C. S. Lewis
called “the abolition of man” follows necessarily upon the
abolition of God from any area of life—not only theology but also
society, both private (sex, marriage, and family) and the “public
square”. The greatest war today is not in the Middle East but in
the Middle Earth of Europe and North America. It is a war between two
world and life views, especially views of man and society. The new
view was summarized most candidly by Justice Anthony Kennedy of the
U.S. Supreme Court in his support of abortion in the Planned
Parenthood v. Casey
decision: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s
own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the
mystery of human life.” In other words, “Move over, God; you’re
sitting in my seat.”
Gregory Lukianoff’s Unlearning
Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debateis 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).
... at the Dominican
School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, California. Bay
Area folks can attend in person; the events are free of charge. Those who cannot attend can watch by
streaming video:
Natural Law in American Rhetoric, Jurisprudence, and Governance Thursday, January 31, 7pm
This event will be a stimulating evening discussion with Russell Hittinger, William K. Warren Professor of Catholic Studies and Research Professor of Law at the University of Tulsa; Jean Porter, John A. O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame; and Lloyd Weinreb, Dane Professor of Law at Harvard University. For more information visit www.dspt.edu/naturallaw.
From Hollywood to Government to Fortune 500 Advertising - Catholics Engaging Contemporary Society Presentations by DSPT Fellows Saturday, February 2, 1:30- 4:30pm
DSPT
Fellows are men and women of eminence in diverse fields who have joined
DSPT to engage society in a fruitful dialogue about Faith and culture.
The Fellows convene each year around the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas.
This year's presentations will be delivered by Ron Austin, Hollywood producer and screenwriter, and author; Gleaves Whitney,
Director of Grand Valley State University's Hauenstein Center for
Presidential Studies, senior scholar at the Center for the American
Idea, and senior fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal;
and Agnieszka Winkler, Founder and Chairperson of The Winkler
Group, a San Francisco based management consultancy specializing in
branding and marketing efficiency and effectiveness. For more
information, visit our website.
A Younger Generation Marches for Life | John Burger | Catholic World Report
The 2013 March for Life, which marked the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, was a youthful and youth-filled event.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In the beginning, Nellie Gray imagined there would be a
need for one march for life. It was a
year after the Roe v Wade
decision, and there was perhaps just enough outrage that people felt a
legislative remedy could be attained.
“But then we realized that Congress wasn’t going to help, so we had a
second,” Gray reflected.
And a third, and a fourth…
Today, the 2013 March for Life marked the 40th anniversary of Roe
v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, which struck down most abortion laws in the United
States. It was the first March for Life without Gray, who died last August at
the age of 88. But for those who knew her and worked with her, and for
thousands of people who have been to the annual event in the past, her spirit
was everywhere.
The story of her initial naiveté was revealed in a moving video tribute to
the attorney-turned-activist, which was broadcast on large jumbotrons for the
hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers gathered on the National Mall. Jeanne
Monahan, the new leader of the march, and others extolled Gray’s dedication,
perseverance and spunk, and a younger generation — which made up perhaps 90% of
the rally and march—seemed by their enthusiasm more than ready and willing to
take up her mantle.
Gabrielle Hoekstra, for example, attending the march for the first time,
finds that more and more young people are becoming more pro-life -- or at least
are open to listening to pro-life ideas.
“It’s something I feel very passionate about,” said Hoekstra, a junior
studying aeronautical science at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in
Daytona Beach, Fla. “When I was younger my parents were active in local crisis
pregnancy centers. When you go to college you realize there are a lot of people
out there who are prochoice, and it’s important to stand in your values and
have the reasons to support them. Coming to places like this you can get
together with other people who share your values and educate yourself more so
you can defend your prolife position.”
Lost in Translation (from Latin)?
| Christopher S. Morrissey | Catholic World Report
Pope Benedict XVI sent out his first tweet in Latin today. Lessons in Latin now follow.
The Pope finally sent out his first tweet in Latin from his
Twitter account @Pontifex_ln on
Sunday, January 20, 2013: “Unitati christifidelium integre studentes quid iubet
Dominus? Orare semper, iustitiam factitare, amare probitatem, humiles Secum
ambulare.”
The Pope immediately followed it up with translations into
the languages of his other Twitter accounts. He translated the Latin via his
English language account @Pontifex this
way: “What does the Lord ask of us as we work for Christian unity? To pray
constantly, do justice, love goodness, and walk humbly with Him.”
But the news service Reuters performed a valuable service by
quoting the University of Cambridge scholar Tamer Nawar, who teased out a more
nuanced translation of the Latin: “What does the Lord command to those wholly
eager for the unity of those following Christ? To always pray, to continually
do justice, to love uprightness, to walk humbly with Him.”
True, Nawar’s translation sounds more clunky in English than
the Pope’s English tweet. But it certainly exhibits an appreciation of all the
subtlety packed into the Latin tweet. For me, it demonstrates why knowledge of
Latin is indispensable. Namely, that it can help one become attuned to
subtleties and nuances of thought that would otherwise be missed.
Perhaps my favorite part of the Pope’s inaugural Latin tweet
is his use of the verb “factitare” in relation to “justice”, since “factitare”
has the connotation of “to make or do frequently; to be wont to make or do; to
practice.”
Indeed, I’m very happy with the Pope’s first Latin tweet,
but I was in a bit of a sour mood because of the press coverage leading up to
it. That coverage had me wishing for the impossible, that the Pope’s
first Latin tweet would be a sarcastic: “ROMANES EUNT DOMUS”.
If you don’t get the joke, then Google the phrase and watch Monty Python’s famous
Latin lesson, in which a Roman soldier corrects the graffiti of an empire
rebel.
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The Professor Who Knows Our Names | Brian Jones | Catholic World Report
A tribute to the man who is Schall
“Father Schall cares
about where you’re from and how you’re doing. He doesn’t need to do that, but
he does. The greatest professor I’ll ever
have knows my name.”
— Victoria Edel, former
student of Father James Schall
“What, in the end, does a
professor most want his students to remember? Not himself but what is true and
the search for it. Above all, he wants them to remember the Socratic
foundations of our culture, that ‘it is never right to do wrong,’ that death is
not the worst evil, that ultimately our lives are about eternal life, as
Benedict XVI writes in his great encyclical on modernity, Spe Salvi. The university is a place where truth, all truth, can be
spoken, ought to be spoken. Often it is not. It is imperative, as Schumacher
said, that a student knows where to turn when it is not.”
— Father James V. Schall, SJ,
“The Final Gladness,” December 7, 2012.
I once took a philosophy
course in which, at the end of the semester, the professor told us a story about
whether or not there was such a thing as a “stupid question.” He said that
toward the close of a recent semester at a university in Bulgaria, a young and
tepid student raised her hand and asked, “Professor, is there such a thing as a
stupid question?” Hoping to relieve the young student of her fear and worry, he
quickly shot back, “Of course not. If you have any questions in this class, I
want you to come right out and ask them with no worry of rebuke or concern that
your question is not worth asking.” The girl breathed a sigh of relief, and
then proceeded to ask her question: “Professor, how come you don’t know any of
our names?” The professor, with his smile turning to stone, simply responded,
“I guess I was wrong: that is a stupid question.”
The point of my telling
this story as the introduction for a tribute to Father James Schall will hopefully become apparent.
To even attempt to write something in honor of such a man, who the Georgetown
University student newspaper calls a “living legend,” will surely fall
enormously short of the true pietas that
we, as his students, owe to him. Last month, Father Schall gave his last public lecture at
Georgetown University, a place that he has been able to call home for the last
34 years. Of course, Father Schall would be quick to remind us, along with
Chesterton, that even at home, he still has a sense of being “homesick.” Even
in the greatest of places, surrounded with the joy of family and friendship,
this life nevertheless leaves us unsettled. We are still restless, since even
the good things of this life are simply a prelude to what is to come, whereby
the fulfillment of all our desires and pursuits will come to rest in Him who is
our end. It is all the more poignant, then, that Father Schall titled his last lecture, “The Final
Gladness.” And what precisely is this “final gladness”? Schall tells us that it
will ultimately consist “in a meeting in which we, in friendship, at last find
ourselves seeing God as we would have it, face-to-face.”
Schall has bequeathed to
us a plethora of writings wherein he has explored practically every topic in
human affairs.
Challenging Young People to Live the Faith | Jim Graves | Catholic World Report
Youth ministry programs at the diocesan and national levels change the hearts and minds of countless young people.
At
World Youth Day 2011 in Madrid, Spain, Pope Benedict XVI addressed more than a
million young people who had traveled from countries across the globe to
participate in the event. Referencing Christ’s command in Mark 16:15, “Go into all the world and proclaim the
Gospel to the whole creation,” the Holy Father said, “You too have been given
the extraordinary task of being disciples and missionaries of Christ in other
lands and countries filled with young people who are looking for something
greater and, because their heart tells them that more authentic values do
exist, they do not let themselves be seduced by the empty promises of a
lifestyle which has no room for God.”
The decades after Vatican II saw
many young people leave the active practice of the Faith, often to the distress
of their parents. A variety of factors are often cited for this exodus,
including the lure of materialism, relativism, and the sexual revolution, poor
catechetical programs and formation, and the influence of non-Catholic
religions in search of converts.
Today, lay Catholic youth
ministers are on the front lines, winning teens back to the Church. Their role
is often to provide an initial outreach to teens, getting them excited about
the Faith and steering them back to regular involvement in their local
parishes. While battling cultural messages that are the antithesis of Catholic
teaching can be a daunting challenge, youth ministers are reporting that
progress is being made in winning back young people, one soul at a time.
Diocesan
programs
Gary Foote, coordinator of youth ministry
for St. Edward Church in Dana Point, California, has worked in youth ministry
for 14 years.
The Catholic Church is the longest-enduring institution in the world.
Beginning with the first Christians and continuing in our present day,
the Church has been planted in every nation on earth.
The Catholic Church claims Jesus Christ himself as her founder, and in
spite of heresy from within and hostility from without, she remains in
the twenty-first century the steadfast guardian of belief in his life,
death, and resurrection. The teachings and redemptive works of Jesus as
told in the Gospels are expressed by the Church in a coherent and
consistent body of doctrine, the likes of which cannot be found in any
other Christian body.
The history of the Catholic Church is long, complicated, and
fascinating, and in this book it is expertly and ably told by historian
James Hitchcock. As in the parable of Christ about the weeds that were
sown in a field of wheat, evil and good have grown together in the
Church from the start, as Hitchcock honestly records. He brings before
us the many characters-some noble, some notorious-who have left an
indelible mark on the Church, while never losing sight of the saints,
who have given living testimony to the salvific power of Christ in every
age.
This ambitious work is comprehensive in its scope and in incisive in its
understanding, a valuable addition to any school or home library.
James Hitchcock, Ph.D., is a longtime professor of
history at St. Louis University, which he attended as an undergraduate.
He received his masters and doctorate degrees from Princeton University
and has authored several books, including The Supreme Court and Religion in American Life; The Recovery of the Sacred; What Is Secular Humanism; and Catholicism and Modernity: Confrontation or Capitulation?
"A remarkable achievement that synthesizes a lifetime of learning, James Hitchcock's History of the Catholic Church
is also a signal service to twenty-first century Catholicism, a
religious community in which controversy and contention are often the
by-products of severe amnesia. The Church of the New Evangelization has
to know its own story, and that story is told here in full." - George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington, D.C.
"For years, James Hitchcock has been our premier historian - a dissident
from conventional wisdom, well-armed and solid. Here he pioneers a new
method for presenting a long sweep of history: an orderly and altogether
fascinating series of vignettes - of arguments, movements, distinctive
persons, and concrete events. There is just enough narrative in these
sequences to carry the reader along, but without involving her in
excessive interpretation. This book provides both a great resource for
easy reference, and a stimulating definition of a Christian humanism
that holds in tension the transcendent and the down to earth, the holy
and the sinful. This is a tension which Hitchcock maintains throughout."
- Michael Novak
"James Hitchcock has a well-earned reputation as an outstanding scholar,
insightful commentator and lucid, accessible writer. All of these
skills come together and shine in his History of the Catholic Church.
It's a masterwork: exhilarating in scope and a joy to read. If you
want an unforgettable account of the fullness and drama of the Christian
story, read this book." +Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop of Philadelphia
"The gap in knowledge of history and current events sadly extends to us Catholics in our grasp of the Faith and
the rich history of the Church. In his ambitious new work, History of the Catholic Church from the Apostolic Age to the Third Millennium,
James Hitchcock has given us an accessible tool to better our
understanding...and love for the history of the Church. To love the
Church, we must understand her history. As Blessed Pope John XXIII
remarked, ‘History is our best teacher.' Thank you, Dr. Hitchcock, for
this timeless gift to the Church for the Year of Faith." - Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York
"James Hitchcock is one of the few historians alive today with the
background and ability to present the two-millenium history of the
Catholic Church. In this remarkable volume Hitchcock brings a lifetime
of insights and research to this important subject. It is a work of
erudition in which the reader will discover not only the importance of
the Catholic Church in past centuries, but in our own time." - Thomas F. Madden, Ph.D.
Director
of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Saint Louis
University
"This book, by one of the premier American Catholic historians, is
clearly addressed to a broad audience. It is apologetic in the best
sense, written from the point of view of a practicing Catholic, and
addresses the various questions that would occur to a lay reader
inevitably influenced by views found in the larger culture. The book is
well written. It is not burdened down with details or many footnotes,
but is attached to a strong narrative line centering on meaning. It
would therefore be appropriate to study groups." - Glenn W. Olsen, emeritus Professor of History, University of Utah
Prior to Adult Faith Formation, One Thing Is Necessary | R. Thomas Richard, PhD | Homiletic & Pastoral Review
I stress a simple but essential prerequisite (for adult formation), without which all the formal education in the faith will remain merely on the surface of the person.
In a recent article in HPR, I stressed the need in the Church for adult formation. 1
Of course, the leadership of the Church knows the need very well! But,
the inconvenient truth is that there is widespread neglect in following
through on the well-documented magisterial recognition of that need.
The many wonderful documents that teach the rightful priority of adult
formation don’t seem to make it down to the pews. That, however, was
the subject of the first article: we need adult formation in the faith!
In this article, I hope to stress a simple but essential prerequisite
to that needed formation. Without this one thing, all the formal
education in the faith will remain merely on the surface of the person.
Is that so bad? Yes, it is. God sees the heart, and wants to pour his
life and his love and his truth into human minds and hearts. God seeks
to gather human persons—mind, will, body—into blessed communion with
him.
Yes, God sees the heart. In this world, humans cannot see into the
heart of another, but they can often sense, or intuit, whether the
Christian witness of a Catholic is authentic or not. In this world,
humanity, who are still of this world, recognize a “salesman.” They
know intuitively about the “hired man;” they understand the duplicity
that is so common in the “City of Man.” If imitated in the Church, such
duplicity does not generate the radical transformation that Christ was
sent to effect by the cross. Worldly humanity can sense the presence,
or absence, of authentic, supernatural love—indeed, it is by such love
that “all men will know that you are my disciples” (Jn 13:35). Humans
in this world can hide, as Adam and Eve hid from God in their sin. They
can hide from the Gospel behind a cynicism begotten by duplicity! But
their hiding places are penetrated by the supernatural love that gives
without limit—that gives whatever is necessary—the love that imitates
God’s love.
There is “one thing” that is necessary (i.e., Lk 10:38-42).
History of the Catholic Church: From the Apostolic Age to the Third Millennium
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