Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog

"This book is a must-have" for arguing against those "who think the sexual revolution a grand thing."

From David Deavel's review of Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution on the Unique For a Reason—Why Marriage Matters site:

G. K. Chesterton wrote in his 1908 classic Orthodoxy, “The unpopular parts of Christianity turn out when examined to be the very props of the people.” The outer crust of Christian reality is a moral sternness that seems ugly, but makes possible “pagan freedom.”  Neo-pagans wishing to excise those outer morals have brought on themselves “despair within.”

This is one of the central paradoxes of Mary Eberstadt’s new book “Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution.” The sexual revolution made possible by modern, more reliable contraception came with promises of a world that was emancipated, free-spirited, and happy. Instead, everywhere embraced, the revolution has brought a shrinking, aging general population, scores of abused, abandoned, and aborted children, and unhappiness for men and—most strikingly—for women.  The despair is within, but its ugly fruits are everywhere to be seen in anecdotal form and even in the hard data of thoroughly secular social scientists.

What does the data say?  In contrast to scholars who argued in the Sixties that contraception would reduce abortion and child abuse, stabilize marriages and be a barrier to poverty, Eberstadt cites the work of Lionel Tiger, which linked contraception to “the breakdown of families, female impoverishment, trouble in the relationship between the sexes, and single motherhood.”  Tiger, who views all religion as “toxic,” also explicitly argues that “contraception causes abortion.”

Even Pope Paul VI did not make that last argument in his encyclical Humanae Vitae, reiterating Catholic teaching on contraception. But he did make four specific predictions: lower moral standards in society, more infidelity, less respect by men for women, and coercion by governments to get people to use reproductive technologies. In all four cases, the Church was right. ...

Eberstadt brings to this book not only a comprehensive knowledge of social scientific research and a discerning eye for popular culture, but a wicked sense of humor that helps one laugh a bit at the data that would otherwise brings tears. She also brings an eye of sanity that is surely connected to her experience as a wife and mother of four (her husband, demographer Nicholas Eberstadt, is also a serious Catholic scholar). This book is a must-have for those who want arguments to use against people who think the sexual revolution a grand thing. It is also useful to give to Catholics and other Christians who want to reject the more outlandish aspects of the revolution but keep contraception. Eberstadt shows it is, after all, a bitter pill.  And she has the data of social scientists—who don’t necessarily like the Church that teaches this truth—to back her up.

Read the entire review. Also:

• The Introduction to Adam and Eve after the Pill
• Visit the website for Adam and Eve after the Pill
• "The Party's Over": A Catholic World Report interview with Mary Eberstadt

Sola Gratia: The “Prog” Foolishness of Neal Morse

Sola Gratia: The “Prog” Foolishness of Neal Morse | Bradley J. Birzer | Catholic World Report

How an angry young musician has become a committed Christian and influential artist

As progressive rock continues to regain ground in terms of sales and respectability, Neal Morse’s name simultaneously gains increasing recognition in our larger culture as well.

As well it should. Morse has served as one of the most important figures in the current revival of the progressive rock scene, which began to re-emerge nearly two decades ago, since its recognized heyday of the early 1970s, prior to the rise of disco and punk. Over the last two decades, a number of acts, including Big Big Train, Dream Theater, Spock’s Beard, The Flower Kings, Porcupine Tree, Agents of Mercy, Frost*, Gazpacho, Tin Spirits, Ayreon, the Fierce and the Dead, and Riverside have produced albums every bit the equal of those by Yes, Genesis, Jethro Tull, and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer in the early 1970s. For better or worse, prog (as its followers call it) has been characterized by elaborate lyrics and stories, long (rarely less than six minutes) songs, intricate time changes, and immaculate audio production. Every aspect of the release matters for a prog artist, and the genre tends to attract an inordinate number of perfectionists.

As a master of the style, Neal Morse's longest song is the baroque “The Whirlwind,” written with his bandmates in Transatlantic, clocking in at just four seconds shy of 78 minutes, the limit of music a CD can hold. It tells the story of a modern culture willfully ignorant of Christianity. The New Jerusalem arrives, catching most citizens of the Earth unaware. This is not just a song, it’s an epic. And, as an epic, it needs to be 78 minutes long.

To make Morse and his reputation even more interesting, he has become an important, if unusual, Christian evangelist for our time. In that strange twilight realm where Christian culture and secular culture awkwardly meet as suggested by the very title of “The Whirlwind,” there stands Morse, beckoning anyone and everyone to enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

The Gnostic Christ fails, the True Christ heals

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, September 9, 2012, Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
Is 35:4-7a

Ps 146:7, 8-9, 9-10

Jas 2:1-5
Mk 7:31-37

How do you know the gnostic writings provide us with a less historically accurate depiction of Jesus than the Gospels?”



That question was put to me a few years ago after I had given a talk about The Da Vinci Code at a Catholic parish. The man who asked it was apparently upset I doubted Dan Brown’s claim that the so-called “Gnostic gospels” described a believable, human Jesus, while the four canonical Gospels had created a deity who had little or nothing to do with the real world. 



My answer was simple: “I read them.” No need to take my word for it when the evidence is readily found on the printed page. The Gnostic “gospels” aren’t gospels in the sense Christians use the word. They lack historical narrative, concrete details, historical figures, believable people, and details about social and religious life. The Jesus they describe has hardly any interest in the material realm. After all, the primary goal of Gnosticism, which came to maturation in the second century, was to escape the physical world. The Gnostic Jesus talked endlessly (and often nonsensically), but wouldn’t get his hands dirty.

Compare that with today’s Gospel reading, the story of Jesus healing the deaf mute, which is unique to the Gospel of Mark. It is a masterful and pithy account, filled with theological and spiritual riches. Jesus and the disciples were spending time in Gentile territory, circling north and then east before traveling south to the district of Decapolis, which is east of the Jordan River and south of the Sea of Galilee. During his previous visit to the region, Jesus had freed a man from demonic possession by sending the unclean spirits into a herd of swine (Mk. 5:1-20). Word of his return had apparently spread, and he was asked to heal a man who was both deaf and mute.

The primary source for Mark’s Gospel was Peter, and the detailed description of the healing indicates the head apostle was profoundly moved by what he witnessed. There are seven specific actions described by Jesus: he took the man away from the crowd, touched his finger to the man’s ears, spit, touched the man’s tongue, looked to heaven, groaned, and said, “Be opened!”

In many ancient cultures, saliva was believed to possess healing properties. What is perhaps more striking for the modern reader is the intimate physicality of the action, as when a mother uses her saliva to rub dirt from her child’s cheek. The healing was not the work of a dispassionate doctor, but of the Lover of Mankind, the healer of body and soul. The Son, in becoming man, did not reluctantly put on flesh and blood, but was truly Incarnate, embracing humanity fully, completely, wholly. “That power which may not be handled came down and clothed itself in members that may be touched,” wrote Ephrem the Syrian, the great fourth-century theologian, “that the desperate may draw near to him, that in touching his humanity they may discern his divinity.”

Whereas the Gnostic Christ fled the material realm and ultimately failed to meet man where he lives, the real Christ—the Creator of all things seen and unseen—entered into time and history, experiencing the heat, the hunger, the sorrow, the weariness, and the pain.

But this miracle, like all of Jesus’ healings, was about far more than relief from physical ailments and illness. It was a sign that the Kingdom was established, that streams of living water had been loosed in the desert, and that the poor were being offered the riches of faith and everlasting life. Jesus embraced all of humanity—Jew and Gentile, healthy and ill, hearing and deaf, speaking and mute—because each of us needs to be touched and transformed by his hands and his word.

So, one reason (out of many) the Gospels are far more believable than the Gnostic writings is they describe real people in the real world meeting a Man who really heals both body and soul.


(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the September 6, 2009, issue of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

Play It Again, Sam

Play It Again, Sam | Joseph F. Martin | Catholic World Report

The reissue of Sam Phillips’ classic album Martinis & Bikinis invites a reconsideration of her Christian-pop roots and what drove her away from them.

Contemporary Christian Music will probably always languish under an association with easy answers, clappy-happy choruses, and kitsch. But for the born-again baby boomers that grew up in the 70s amidst the rapid proliferation of radio pop, it began as a bona fide spiritual lifeline, a way for teenagers to merge seemingly disparate passions for Christian faith and the world of rock. Once upon time a Zion curtain really did effectively muffle any exchange between cultural worlds. So much so that when Amy Grant pioneered a joint distribution agreement between her label and A&M Records, Billboard magazine ran an ad that rightly informed its secular readers, “You may not know this artist by name, but millions know her music by heart.” Fast-forward to today, when magazines like Christianity Today weigh in with reviews of albums ranging from Hillsong to Bruce Springsteen indiscriminately. We have morphed into a media- and market-driven age where “Christian & Gospel” is a marketable category on iTunes right up there with “Dance” and “Hip-Hop and Rap,” and where songs by CCM bands like Switchfoot can fall into the Top Forty without a note of a ripple. Now it sounds nostalgic to explain to a rising generation just why it provided any sort of rush to hear Paul Davis sing “Do Right” on commercial airwaves for the first time, or why Bob Dylan’s Christian infatuation with faith ever proved a sensation. At some point in the preceding decades a Wall of Sound fell. So “Christian Hipster,” once an oxymoron, is now a demographic.

Those early days came to mind as I scanned the e-mail I just received from CCM expatriate Sam Phillips announcing her landmark 1994 album Martinis & Bikinis is getting the full reissue treatment on CD and—we are talking hipsters after all—double LP, with the first 1,500 copies to be pressed on white vinyl. The infamous cover art for Martinis—showing her strewn, in feigned exhaustion, across a bed that hides the still-warm corpses of her former Fundie fans—remains an iconic indictment of the frequent conflicts between religious conservatism and art. But despite her protests, Phillips’ debt to her Christian past remains evident, and later critical laurels never quite managed to propel her beyond early notoriety. Nonetheless, her discography proves her to be not just lead vocalist in an episodic memory play but formidable artist in her own right as well. Hot house flower, haunting performer, or perhaps more than a little of both, a fresh round of Martinis provides a fitting occasion for a retelling of her story, if not quite a toast.

Read the entire article at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Whence Come These Puppets of Doom?

Call to Action closing liturgy, 2008.

Whence Come These Puppets of Doom? | John B. Buescher | Catholic World Report

“Liturgical puppets” have shown up in churches for years, but aren't limited to Catholic venues—they have long been used as agents of iconoclasm and revolutionary agitprop.

“We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.”

— Hilaire Belloc, This That and the Other (1912)

I, for one, hesitate to welcome our new puppet overlords.

They visited the 2008 West Coast Call to Action Conference closing liturgy, the video of which the proprietors of the Orate Fratres blog have linked under the title “Mr. Potato Head Concelebrates the Holy Mass?”

Other recent sightings (among many) are documented on the web, showing one puppet floating through a nave at a Minneapolis church’s Palm Sunday Mass, and several puppets pausing for a few moments from Speaking Truth to the Man to pose with their human wards, stimulating the owner of the Bad Vestments blog to ask, “What is up with leftists and giant papier-mâché puppets of doom?”

Sightings of the large, sad variety of “liturgical puppets” go back some years, and are by no means limited to Catholic venues. Episcopalians, unsurprisingly, have paraded them down the aisle of St. John the Divine Cathedral. And St. Michael’s Episcopal Parish in Litchfield, Connecticut supports the Colossal Puppet Theater Company. In recent years, puppets have appeared in many denominations’ services.

All of which has elicited enraged incomprehension in some quarters—what is the point of these visitations into the sanctuary?

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

On Music and the Priestly Life

On Music and the Priestly Life | Fr. Gary Selin | Homiletic & Pastoral Review

Since music imitates the inner life of the soul, it follows that good music imitates and evokes sentiments that are consistent with a virtuous life, while music that evokes vicious sentiments is detrimental, and even destructive, to the soul.

The subject of music is a great pastoral challenge for priests, who often realize that what they preach at Mass can be quickly undone by the destructive forms of music which the baptized faithful listen to at home. Modern culture operates on the unquestioned premise that we will be massaging our emotions throughout the day by listening to music. This explains why music is being blared in virtually all places, from malls, to grocery stores, to restaurants, to doctors’ offices, to personal music players, and in almost every car driving down the highway. This noise-filled world of ours profoundly undercuts virtue, for God is heard primarily in silence, as the saints continually tell us. Having to be continually plugged in to music makes us “affective cripples,” unable to live in joy without having some sound going into our ears. 1  What is more, the type of music we listen to also has an impact on our life of virtue.

Priests need to be aware of how to engage, with courage, the people on this topic while maintaining authentic pastoral charity and understanding. It is my hope that this essay will help priests—and seminarians—to reflect deeply on the type of music they listen to and the role it plays in priestly life.

At the moment of priestly ordination, the candidate prostrates himself at the foot of the altar.  This is an act symbolic of dying to the world and its delights, even to those things that are not in themselves sinful, yet may not be fitting for a priest, in that they would hold him back from an intimate union with the Triune God.  The priest has the supreme duty of striving for, and achieving, with God’s grace, divine contemplation and resplendent holiness. In imitation of St. John Marie Vianney, the priest must be fully immersed in a life of prayer in his ministry. Here, we look to the Holy Eucharist as the source and goal of all priestly ministry, as well as the exemplar for the priest in his relationship to the world:

Continue reading at HPRweb.com.

Light in the Dark Knight

Light in the Dark Knight | Meryl Amland | Catholic World Report

The most recent installment in the Batman franchise transcends the superhero genre.

Christopher Nolan’s superior genius has done it again. The Dark Knight Rises combines intellect with action to make a film that is certainly worth watching again and again. This is not your typical superhero movie—it reaches beyond the comic-book character and dives deep into the wounded human condition. While The Avengers was entertaining and certainly left me satisfied, The Dark Knight is much darker and goes a few steps further. With an impressive cast including Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Marion Cotillard, Morgan Freeman, Anne Hathaway, and Tom Hardy, this is a film to be reckoned with. (However, it is definitely not kid-friendly; parents, you have been warned.) While there is not much gore, the violence ranks an eight out of ten, and the terrorist villain, Bane, is terrifying. But through the darkness, it is a movie about hope.

The Batman has not shown his face for nearly eight years after taking the blame for Harvey Dent’s actions in the previous movie, The Dark Knight. Incidentally, billionaire Bruce Wayne has also been in hiding. After Rachel Dawes’ death and saving Gotham City, Bruce doesn’t seem to have anything to live for anymore. That is, until a new terrorist, Bane, reportedly born and raised in a dreaded prison known only as The Pit, appears in Gotham. Much of the peace and control of organized crime has been due to the death of former District Attorney Harvey Dent, whom everyone believes to have died a hero. But Commissioner Gordon and Batman are the only people that know the truth. Harvey Dent died a corrupted man and a murderer—and Batman took the blame for his actions. Now Bane and his army must reveal the truth in order to sow discord among the people and set them against the corrupt aristocracy as well as the police force, which appears to be built on a lie.

Alfred, played by Michael Caine, is one of the most important characters in all three films; he delivers what I think is the best performance in the entire film. Alfred is the only person who truly understood the motivation behind the infamous Joker in The Dark Knight, and he’s the only one who truly understands Bane and what he stands for. Alfred also believes the truth is meant to be shared. But Bruce, as always, does not listen. So, Alfred does the unthinkable—he decides to leave Bruce. After explaining to Bruce that all he ever wanted was for him to be happy and continue living, he says, “Maybe it’s time we stop trying to avoid the truth and let it have its day.”

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Grey is the Devil’s Favorite Color

Grey is the Devil’s Favorite Color | Teresa Tomeo | Catholic World Report

Even many Catholics dismiss Fifty Shades of Grey as harmless entertainment. They couldn’t be more wrong.

“Grey is the devil’s favorite color.” How I wish I could take credit for that powerful quote. However, it actually belongs to none other than philosopher, Catholic convert, author, and esteemed professor Dr. Peter Kreeft. A wise listener of mine sent me the Kreeft quote to help summarize the current obsession, and not just among the general public, with the Fifty Shades of Grey book trilogy. The fictional series written by E.L. James focuses on the sado-masochistic relationship between a young woman, Anastasia Steele, and her billionaire boyfriend, Christian Grey. It is so terribly raunchy it’s been dubbed “mommy porn” by secular critics and so graphic it’s described as yet one more example of “violence against women” by Dr. Drew Pinsky, TV host and popular relationship expert.

Kreeft’s clever quip was not referring to Fifty Shades of Grey in particular, of course, but to moral relativism in general. You know the “We can do whatever we want with whom, whatever makes us happy or feel good” approach that in many ways has taken over our way of thinking, if you can even call that thinking. Book sales have reached the 30 million-plus mark. The movie rights have been sold for $5 million. The owners of a hotel in Great Britain have also decided that, out of the goodness of their hearts, they are replacing Gideon Bibles with Fifty Shades of Grey, because, well, some of their guests may be too shy to purchase the books or feel a little strange about reading them at home around family. So that’s just the type of thoughtful hotel proprietors they are. And in June E.L James signed the dotted line on a deal with an agency responsible for licensing and building the Fifty Shades brand, a brand that is expected to include lingerie, perfume, and even bedroom furniture and linens mostly targeted at adult women. Here’s another quote that comes to mind, and this one is from P.T Barnum: “There is a sucker born every minute.”

So what does all of this have to do with Christianity, or, more specifically, Catholic Christians? Well unfortunately, as I have learned over the months since Fifty Shades hit the book shelves and Amazon.com, quite a few of those suckers are sitting next to you and me in the pews in your local Catholic parish. You might be thinking that, when it comes to Catholics, this trash has been picked up only by the types who tend to frequent a church once in a while. Au contraire. Try this one on for size. Among those contacting me after I conducted several radio interviews on the Fifty Shades phenomenon was a pastor at a large parish in the Midwest. This priest had been doing his best to teach on the damaging impact of pornography and thought one of the ways to get his parishioners attention would be to utilize the computerized lawn sign in front of the church. After hearing me mention the Peter Kreeft quote on the air, he incorporated it into his message. That prompted quite a Facebook discussion among some of his parishioners who were—you guessed it—gobbling up the books. Mind you, according to this priest, these were active parishioners, not your Christmas-and-Easter-only types. At one point they apparently said that they thought it would be “funny” to take a picture next to the sign and post that on Facebook. The pastor also told me some of these same members of his congregation went so far as to say the books saved their marriages.

Continue readingn at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Ecology of the Body, NFP, and "Adam and Eve After the Pill"

Judy Barrett, Respect Life coordinator for the Santa Rosa Diocese, reflects on the physical and moral evils of contraception:

It strikes me as a curious disconnect that in this health-conscious environment, millions of women daily pop birth control pills made of artificial hormones, taking the Pill for decades from their teens through menopausal middle age, with hardly a second thought about potential physical, psychological, and societal downsides. Think about it: healthy women take a daily dose of man-made hormones to control a perfectly natural bodily function—fertility—that occurs only a few days each month.

The Pill is deemed to be safe, and modern contraceptives are undoubtedly safer from a medical viewpoint that the early higher dose formulations. But every package of birth control pills comes with a fine-print insert warning of side effects that may include blood clots, strokes, breast cancer, cervical cancer, depression, weight gain and bleeding and advising that certain people should not take the drugs. If you watch television, you’ve undoubtedly seen commercials urging women who have suffered serious harm from several kinds of contraceptives to join in class action lawsuits against the makers of the drugs. So—how “safe” is safe? Yet, most people take it as a given that the physical side effects and health risks are outweighed by the benefits of the Pill.

Whether or not the Pill is safe begs some larger questions: Is it morally right?

She then makes the excellent point that the focus on religious liberty should not obsure the truth about contraceptives and the gift of NFP:

But while emphasizing the very real religious liberty threats, I wonder if we Catholics are letting a teaching moment slip by. One of the responsibilities of the Church and the faithful is to bear witness to the truth, to get the message of the Church out into the world. Sometimes we don’t do that as well as we could, either as the institutional Church or as the laity.

Here’s my point: Church teaching on contraception is morally correct, good for individuals, families and society at large, and it needs a fair hearing. One of the best kept secrets of the Church is natural family planning (“NFP”). NFP, properly understood, is the moral, holistic, drug free, natural, healthy, modern and scientific means of cooperating with God’s plan to achieve or postpone pregnancy. Every year the USCCB sets aside the week around the anniversary date of Humanae Vitae as Natural Family Planning Awareness Week. The website is a gold mine of information for individuals and parishes.

During NFP Awareness Week beginning July 22 we would do well to ponder and talk about serious questions that deserve to be examined in light of our faith. What are the consequences to individuals and society from the widespread use of birth control? What is the negative fallout of severing procreation from sexual activity? I suggest as a starting point a careful reading of Humanae Vitae. The writings of Professor Janet Smith are noteworthy. For an eye-opening look at the broader societal impact, I recommend Adam and Eve after the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution, the recently published book by Hoover Institution research fellow Mary Eberstadt.

Eberstadt's book has been receiving a large number of positive reveiws. The Weekly Standard recently reviewed Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution at length. Jonathan V. Last writes:

The scope of her work is depressingly grand, yet Eberstadt retains a winsome equanimity. She believes that the tide might yet recede, so long as we’re willing to face facts. And she believes—in another parallel she draws with the Cold War—that the right side need not be the losing side. As evidence, Eberstadt offers the amazing case of America’s double-reverse on pedophilia. It’s difficult to remember, but from the 1970s until the 1990s there was a sustained effort to legitimize pedophilia as merely another lifestyle choice. (Eberstadt coined the term “Pedophilia Chic” in these pages.) It nearly succeeded. But during the last 10 years something remarkable happened: As the near-universal condemnation of Roman Polanski showed in 2009, pedophilia was restigmatized.

Eberstadt suggests that this reversal was largely the byproduct of another scandal—the Roman Catholic church’s legacy of priestly abuse. The crimes committed within the church were irresistible to the church’s critics, many of whom were part of the sexual avant-garde and disliked the church specifically because of its teachings on sex. Empowering these critics, Eberstadt wryly notes, “logically created a whole new class of antipederasts.”

Read the entire review. Nancy Piccion, in her recent review on the Reading Catholic site, says:

This book is not enjoyable –in fact, reading it can be downright discouraging.  But it is a must-read in understanding, “the moral core of the sexual revolution (is) the abundant evidence that its fruits have been rottenest for women and children.”

Every single essay-chapter is important and stands alone.  It’s hard to pick out a best chapter, but “The Will to Disbelieve” is crucial in setting up the notion that society at large is largely ignoring the clear results of the sexual revolution, much the same way the “the moral facts about the Cord War remained disputed at the highest intellectual levels, especially on American campuses, until about two seconds before the Berlin Wall came down.”

Perhaps the only hopeful chapter of Adam and Eve After the Pill is “‘Pedophia Chic’ Then and Now” which outlines how just a few short decades ago, pedophilia was more in vogue and even defended in the public square such as mainstream magazine articles.  Ebertstadt writes that it is “a small case of small but real moral progress that bodes a little better for the youngest and most innocent among us, even as it confirms that the sexual revolution has made the world a more dangerous place for them.”

One of the most interesting reviews appeared in Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of American Evangelicalism. The reviewer, Sharon Hodde Miller, is a doctoral student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School; she states:

Eberstadt's final chapter sheds a different kind of light on current evangelical conversations about sex. As often as these discussions are taking place, and as important as it is to affirm sex in marriage, there is a distinctly individualistic flavor to these teachings. While church leaders should encourage marital intimacy in the bedroom, married sex (and the teachings behind it) can still have negative social ramifications. Using contraception is not a private act, nor is it a neutral one. Eberstadt's book is Exhibit A of this reality.

Knowing this, pastors cannot address the widespread sexual brokenness in our culture simply by encouraging married sex. They must also address the ideology and theology behind the brokenness, and contraception is Ground Zero for those discussions.

Although Eberstadt's primary aim is to present the empirical evidence of the sexual revolution's fallout, her research serves an additional purpose. It also presents the empirical evidence for thinking carefully and soberly about embracing contraception. In this day and age, such a suggestion will seem ridiculous to Christians and non-Christians alike, but the data is undeniable. If we want to think seriously and Christianly about sex, then we need to think seriously about contraception.

For more information:

• Visit the website for Adam and Eve after the Pill
• Read the Introduction to Adam and Eve after the Pill
• "The Party's Over": A Catholic World Report interview with Mary Eberstadt

It’s Time to Remember What Men Have Forgotten

It’s Time to Remember What Men Have Forgotten | Carl E. Olson | Catholic World Report

Three basic truths we must remember if we are to remain free.

The following address was given at the Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally held in Eugene, Oregon, on Friday, June 8, 2012.

Good afternoon!

One of my heroes is the great Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who spent decades recording the horrors and history of Communism until his death four years ago. In 1983, he gave an address that began with this statement:

More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: “Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.”

The Communist revolution was, of course, a violent and bloody one. Like the French Revolution, which took place in the late 1700s, it was openly opposed to belief in God and Christianity. While the leaders of those respective revolutions directly attacked belief in God, their paths to power, tyranny, and terror were made easier because so many men had forgotten God.

The American Revolution is often compared to the French Revolution. In fact, when I was in high school, the two were presented as twins, as if they were essentially the same in character and intent. But they were not.

While the leaders of the French Revolution savagely attacked tradition and order, the American founders were deeply concerned to preserve and respect the rich tradition inherited from the Magna Carta (1215) and the English Bill of Rights (1689). And while the French revolutionaries sought to violently overthrow Christianity and to establish a secular religion with a secular calendar, the American colonists sought independence from Britain in order to peacefully govern themselves as free men.

Many of the American founders were Christians; all of them recognized the transcendent and rational basis for authentic freedom.

Which is why the Declaration of Independence stated: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The Declaration of Independence also refers, in the opening paragraph, to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God.” This past January, Pope Benedict XVI met with American bishops in Rome. During that meeting, he made the following remark about the founding of the United States and its founding documents:

At the heart of every culture, whether perceived or not, is a consensus about the nature of reality and the moral good, and thus about the conditions for human flourishing. In America, that consensus, as enshrined in your nation’s founding documents, was grounded in a worldview shaped not only by faith but a commitment to certain ethical principles deriving from nature and nature’s God. Today that consensus has eroded significantly in the face of powerful new cultural currents which are not only directly opposed to core moral teachings of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but increasingly hostile to Christianity as such.

We could spend hours, I think, considering the many important points raised by the Pope in his statement. I want to highlight just three points, especially in light of the HHS mandate, which is a direct assault on religious freedom, political freedom, and the deeply held, principled beliefs of millions of Americans.

The first point is this: True freedom is a gift from God. This is true of religious freedom, political freedom, and every other authentic freedom enjoyed by humans.

What we believe about freedom says a lot about what we believe about truth, goodness, the meaning of life, the origin of our existence, and the purpose of our time here on earth.

Continue reading over at www.Catholic WorldReport.com.

“Be a Straight Shooter in the Midst of This Crooked Generation”

“Be a Straight Shooter in the Midst of This Crooked Generation” | Carl E. Olson | Catholic World Report

This Keynote Address was given at the Baccalaureate Mass and Commencement for St. John Bosco High School (Silverton, Oregon), held at Mount Angel Abbey on Friday, June 1, 2012.

Thank you, Rolando. And thank you, faculty and teachers of Saint John Bosco High School for your gracious invitation to speak at this graduation. It is an honor to be here.

Good evening, graduates, and congratulations!

Twenty-five years ago this very week, I graduated from high school in Plains, Montana, a small town with a dozen churches, three restaurants, two grocery stores, one police officer, and no stop lights.

High school graduations were a big deal in that small town, and I can still remember the emotions of the moment, of being happy and excited, as well as a little nervous about the future.

At that moment, I thought I had my life planned out. And I knew I had plenty of time to accomplish all of the things I wanted to do.

But over the past twenty-five years I’ve learned that time moves very quickly. It actually speeds up as you get older! And I’ve learned that many of the things I wanted to accomplish were not what God wanted for me.

And I would tell you more about my life and all of the mistakes I made and lessons I’ve learned, but I was told we do not have the necessary ten hours for that particular talk.

So, instead, I want to talk about you, the graduates. Not that I know you well at all, of course. Tonight is the first time we’ve met. But I do know one important, essential thing about each one of you: you are a Catholic, a Christian, a disciple of Jesus Christ.

You have been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and have been regenerated in the waters of baptism, united with Christ, incorporated into the Church, renewed by the Holy Spirit, and filled with the divine life of God.

One of my favorite passages from the Catechism of the Catholic Church is the very first sentence of the first paragraph: “God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life.” Each of you was created by God out of the overflowing abundance of his perfect love. It is impossible to fully comprehend that truth, but I think we sometimes take it for granted and don’t contemplate it enough.

Before I became Catholic, I spent two years at an Evangelical Bible college. In one of my very first classes, a professor made this rather shocking statement: “God does not need you.” He repeated it several times, pointing to us, staring at us. He actually yelled it! And then he said, “But God created you out of love and he loves you so much he came and died for you.” God is indeed good, despite vicious rumors to the contrary!

However, there are a lot of people, including many Christians, who think God owes them something. I know that I have sometimes fallen into that trap. I’ve learned that if we live as if God owes us something, we are implicitly saying that we, in some way, know more than God! “If only God would realize what I have already figured out!”

Being a Catholic means being completely honest about the distance between God, the Creator of all things, and myself, a creature who is limited and, frankly, doesn’t know as much as I think I do. The famous 20th-century preacher Archbishop Fulton Sheen once wrote “A Catholic may be defined as one who made the startling discovery that God knows more than he does.”

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Lady Gaga Gets the Indonesian Boot

Lady Gaga Gets the Indonesian Boot | Matthew Cullinan Hoffman | Catholic World Report

Asians are sending a message to America. Are we listening?

News of the cancellation of the Lady Gaga concert scheduled for early June in Jakarta, Indonesia is receiving a lullingly uniform spin in the American and international media. It is, we are told, a morality play about the triumph of radical Islamism over artistic freedom, and a disturbing omen of Indonesia’s supposed slide into religious fanaticism.

In reality, however, the negative response to Gaga’s hypersexualized and iconoclastic performances was not isolated to extremists, nor to the country of Indonesia. Gaga’s religion-insulting concert tour and other, similar forms of entertainment are increasingly ill-received throughout the region of Southeast Asia and beyond, and reflect a growing indignation at what is perceived as an American cultural imperialism that treats the moral values of other countries with contempt.

Blame for the Jakarta fiasco is being assigned to an organization known as the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), a hard-line Muslim group known for its clashes with Christians and its strict interpretation of the Koran. According to the International Crisis Group, a peacemaking organization whose verdict on the affair is being quoted by the Associated Press, it is “clear that there wouldn’t have been a thought of canceling the concert” if the FPI and other extremist groups hadn’t “mobilized” to stop it. 

The FPI and kindred groups, however, were not at all alone in their opposition to the Jakarta concert.  In fact, it was vigorously opposed by a dozen other Islamic organizations, including the Indonesian Ulema Council, the highest Muslim authority in a country known for its moderate religious temperament.

Moreover, opposition to Gaga’s performance didn’t stop at the border of Indonesia. In fact the tour, dubbed the “Born this Way Ball” in reference to Gaga’s scientifically-unsubstantiated claim that homosexuals are born with their “gay” orientation, has provoked protests in multiple countries in the region, mostly by Christian groups.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Bad Religion, Bad Results

Bad Religion, Bad Results | Christopher White | Catholic World Report

Ross Douthat's book, Bad Religion, sets out to explain "how we became a nation of heretics".

Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics
by Ross Douthat
Free Press (New York, 2012)
337 pages.

In a 2005 study conducted by sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, they found that 97% of teenagers professed some sort of belief in the divine. 71% of those teenagers also agreed that they were “very” or “somewhat” close to God, and an overwhelming majority identified themselves as Christians. Contrary to public opinion—and the fear of many parents and churches around the nation—secularism does not appear on the rise in the United States. Celebration, however, would be premature. According to Ross Douthat, it’s not that we no longer have religion in this country. Instead, we have bad religion—which is the theme (and title) of Douthat’s latest book Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics.

For Douthat, the youngest ever New York Times op-ed columnist,  “America’s problem isn’t too much religion, or too little of it.” Bad religion, according to the author, is “the slow-motion collapse of traditional Christianity and the rise of a variety of destructive pseudo-Christianities in its place.” Chock full of telling anecdotes and history, Douthat surveys the rise and decline of mainline Protestantism in the United States, as well as the golden era of American Catholicism that reached its peak in the 1960’s.  For Catholics and Protestants alike, much of the twentieth century was defined by an individual or a family’s commitment to their particular faith tradition, which had a core understanding of orthodox beliefs and practices, dubbed by the Anglican C.S. Lewis as a mereChristianity. The problem today, however, is that most Americans are losing that center.

Continue reading...

Not Nearly Blue Enough and Nothing Like Jazz

Not Nearly Blue Enough and Nothing Like Jazz | Thomas S. Hibbs | Catholic World Report

The dilemmas of the contemporary Christian filmmaker

Despite the fact that nearly the entire plot of Blue Like Jazz is preoccupied with its main character’s loss and eventual recovery of his Christian faith, its director, Steve Taylor, insists that it is not a Christian movie. In distinguishing Blue Like Jazz—based on Donald Miller’s best-selling semi-autobiographical novel—from Christian films, Taylor has in mind overtly religious films such as Facing the Giants, Fireproof, and Courageous.  Unlike these films, Blue Like Jazz contains more humor, is less intent on evangelization, and makes an attempt at engaging secular culture. In another, less welcome way, in terms of box office receipts, Blue Like Jazz has also distinguished itself from explicitly Christian films. Whereas these films have seen long and lucrative runs in theaters, Blue Like Jazz nearly disappeared after a modest opening weekend. Part of the problem with Blue Like Jazz is that it is not complex or subtle enough to appeal to a secular audience, so it ends up appealing to a sub-sub-culture, liberal Christians disaffected from what they take to be the constraints of Southern Evangelicalism.

Blue Like Jazz is the coming of age story of Donald Miller, a smart but sheltered Texas Southern Baptist, who becomes disillusioned with his faith after he discovers that his own mother is having an affair with his church’s married youth minister. Prodded by his secular father, who supplies him with a collection of jazz albums, the most notable of which is John Coltrane’s Love Supreme, he heads off to Reed College in Portland, Oregon, a bastion of academic liberalism. Surrounded by stridently secular students, Miller casts aside his Christian commitment and becomes immersed in a culture that celebrates all the things Miller’s boyhood church warned him against. 

The gap between Miller’s former and new life comes to the fore late in the film and resolves itself with a confession of faith that involves mostly apologies for how Christians have behaved.  Some Christian critics have objected that while Texas-style Christianity comes under severe criticism in the film, the liberalism at Reed does not receive anything like the same treatment.  That’s true in a way; for example, liberalism is not subjected to the sort of mockery that Miller bestows upon the liturgical kitsch of the church of his youth.   An early scene in which a pastor uses a prop (a piñata in the form of a cross) to make a point about Jesus is amusing.  He has the kids come up and gather round the altar, beneath the piñata; when it shatters, candy comes flowing out.  He draws out the lesson for the children: just as the piñata had to be broken so that the kids could get the candy, so Jesus had to be broken for us to receive his blessings. 

Although there is some truth to critics’ objections, what is striking about the film is its isomorphic depiction of Texas religion and Northwest liberalism.  In a comical way, Miller juxtaposes Christian bumper stickers with liberal bumper stickers.

Read the entire review at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Newsflash: I agree with Dan Brown on something!

The Boston Globe sounds the warning: Dan Brown is working on a new book. The acclaimed historian author pulp fiction peddler has this to say:

I can tell you there is another book in progress. I am having a great time with it. I cannot share with you the subject matter or the location, but it’s another ROBERT LANGDON THRILLER in the world of symbols and codes. It opens in a much different way than my other books, and Langdon is in a very different situation than he’s ever been in and has to use a different set of tools to extricate himself.

Hmmm. A "different set of tools", eh? How about one or more of the following, Mr. Langdon:

1. A brain. For someone who is so smart, you ain't too smart
2. Real books by real scholars. Margaret Starbird is not a good source for anything but nonsense.
3. Humility. I know, I know; arrogance is your essential personality trait. Still...
4. Laryngitis. It would cut down on the painful, embarrassing dialogue. And shorten the book by 88.438%.
5. A thesaurus. On second thought...

Brown adds the following: "Once I pick a topic and location, I have to read a lot to educate myself." I agree! He has to. But does he? The evidence doesn't speak well for the level of his self education.

The Decline of Decadence: A review of "Damsels in Distress"

The Decline of Decadence | Christopher S. Morrissey | Catholic World World

A review of Whit Stillman’s Damsels in Distress, a film depicting the search to be rescued from the rampant boorishness of contemporary culture.

Pope Benedict XVI has observed that “Christianity, Catholicism, isn’t a collection of prohibitions: it’s a positive option. It’s very important that we look at it again because this idea has almost completely disappeared today. We’ve heard so much about what is not allowed that now it’s time to say: we have a positive idea to offer ... I believe we need to see and reflect on the fact that it’s not a Catholic invention that man and woman are made for each other, so that humanity can go on living: all cultures know this.”

Whit Stillman’s new film, Damsels in Distress, offers one of the most positive film endings in recent memory. What most reviewers of the film have neglected to mention is how the film makes a subtle suggestion about authentic Catholicism as a positive, counter-cultural option in the face of dominant cultural trends.

The film’s virtuous heroine, Violet (Greta Gerwig), speaks a number of times about the need to be a good Christian. Most reviewers pass over this important aspect of her character in silence, no doubt for the same reasons that audiences have reportedly gasped out loud in horror at such declarations by Violet.

At first, Violet’s charming naivety seems to be played for laughs, as if she is simply a comic character with an amusing form of mental illness. But by the time the movie ends, the audience is challenged to ask themselves: Isn’t Violet’s crazy dream-world in fact preferable? Is hers not the most beautiful way of choosing to transfigure the real world? Isn’t it really the dominant culture—concretely symbolized by the movie’s decadent “Cathar” heretic, Xavier (Hugo Becker)—that is truly crazy?

Read the entire review at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Here's why I'm happy that Dion has the blues

One of my hopes and goals for Catholic World Report is to have some regular reviews of not just books and movies, but also of good music. (Or, on occasion, of really bad music crying out to be exposed from empty note to empty note.) This post isn't a review, per se, but a short note about Dion DiMucci and his new album, A Tank Full of Blues.

Although I'm something of a music buff (50,000+ songs in my iTunes library—don't tell my wife!), I've never been much of a blues fan. And I confess, with some shame, that I only started to really listen to Dion's music a couple of years ago. But I do enjoy Dion's blues, which feature his impressively strong and clear vocals, economic and expressive guitar playing, a palpable sense of joy and gratitude, and a wry, knowing sense of humor. Some cuts, such as "Ride's Blues (for Robert Johnson)", have a more raw and gritty sound, while others, including "My Michelle", harken back a bit to Dion's blues-tinged rock music produced for Columbia in the early 1960s. In fact, the roots of Dion's interest in the blues goes back to those fifty-year-old cuts, as evidenced by the songs "Troubled Mind" and "Sweet Papa Di", as well as by the title of a collection of those cuts: Bronx Blues: The Columbia Recordings (1962-1965).

The final cut of Dion's new album is "Bronx Poem", a spoken word piece that is uniquely Dion: poignant, humorous ("Man, I've got a wife who drives me sane!"), thoughtful, and—again—joyful. It captures a man of faith who is also a musician full of life, love, and laughter. All Music Guide gives the album 4.5 stars out of five, stating:

Accompanied by his own haunting guitars and Robert Guertin's quietly shuffling drums, Dion celebrates humanity in the light of his spiritual convictions. In doing so, he comes full circle to meet himself as a street corner poet in the 1950s, and reveals his wisdom as the result of his experiences in the past and the present. He has no need to romanticize or apologize; he remains the keen-eyed, tender-hearted observer he has always been. Tank Full of Blues may be the late entry in a catalog of great work by Dion, but it stands with his best recordings. In fact, it is the album he's been waiting an entire career to make.

I recently e-mailed with author Mike Aquilina, who helped Dion write his 2011 book, The Wanderer Talks Truth and also co-wrote several cuts on A Tank Full of Blues:

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

New: "Real Love" (2nd Edition) by Mary Beth Bonacci

Real Love: Answers to Your Questions on Dating, Marriage and the Real Meaning of Sex (2nd Edition)

by Mary Beth Bonacci

• Also available in Electronic Book Format

Mary Beth Bonacci has spoken to hundreds of thousands of people across the country and around the world-about friendship, about relationships, about marriage, about God's plan for sexuality, and about finding real, honest love.

And they speak back to her. They ask her questions-about sex, about dating, about healing after a shattered relationship, about marriage, about their struggles to live love. In this newly updated and expanded edition of Real Love, Mary Beth shares those questions-and her answers-in an even more comprehensive guide which addresses the details of the very real struggle we all face in trying to live real love in a world gone mad.

Through these questions and her answers, Mary Beth offers a comprehensive catechesis of the Church's teaching in the areas of marriage and human sexuality. She tackles the toughest issues-premarital sex, contraception, divorce, homosexuality, internet pornography and others. She gives practical advice on living the Church's teachings. And throughout it all, she demonstrates that living respect for God's gift of sexuality is the way-the only way-to find real, honest love.

Mary Beth Bonacci is an internationally known speaker and writer. She is also a syndicated columnist and the author of the book We're on a Mission from God. Mary Beth holds a Master's degree in Theology of Marriage and Family from the John Paul II Institute, and an honorary Ph.D. in Communication from the Franciscan University of Steubenville.

 "Looking for a book with staying power? Mary Beth takes the heart of Theology of the Body and breaks it down into practical, real-life situations. If you're looking for a resource to help you understand for your self, or to help you teach others the heart of the message about sexuality, healthy dating relationships, and everything in between, Real Love is it."
- Jim Beckman, Author God Help Me, Director of Youth Ministry, Augustine Institute

"Real Love is, hands down, one of the most effective books out there for conveying that chastity isn't about saying ‘no' to sex, but ‘YES' to freedom, happiness and the kind of love we were made for."
- Chris Stefanick, Speaker and Author, Director of Youth Outreach, yDisciple

"Real Love is a spirit-filled solid compass that guides one safely through the wild jungle of secular values. I would recommend it to anyone who wishes to experience a stable, happy and meaningful life in the context of encountering true love in relationships - the way God intended. The lessons I learned from Real Love helped me to make sense of God's intention for love in relationships. I attribute my passion for chastity and the joy I have encountered in my marriage toReal Love. Thank you MaryBeth for sharing the wisdom and love of God plainly and powerfully."
- Joe Sengooba, Rustenburg, South Africa. 

Catholic Music: A non-definitive but exceptional, eclectic list

The April 29th edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper has a feature article, "Make a joyful noise", about Catholic music and musicians, which I co-authored with long-time, tuneful friend, Gregory Oatis. We had a certain numbers of words and a limited budget (we were only able to visit South America and Europe; no Australia. Just kidding.) The final list includes 21 (or so) artists, bands, and composers.

Frankly, we stressed out a bit about our choices, knowing it was inevitable that readers would say, "How in the world could you leave This Great Catholic Band off your pathetic, narrowminded, tone deaf, biased list!?" So we established some rigorous criteria for making our selections. I forget what was involved in said criteria, but I know it was impartial and intelligent. Mainly, we wanted a wide range of artists. My one disappointment was not including a jazz artist; I could have gone with Dave Brubeck, but decided to let it go and give someone else some ink. Another criteria, which came from OSV, was to focus on living artists. Otherwise Haydn would have made a big splash.

Of this I'm fairly certain: most readers will learn about some musicians and music they've never heard of before. And many readers will, of course, take umbrage with this or that pick, or especially with this or that non-pick. Hey, I get it. My feelings aren't hurt, and I hope yours aren't, either. Here's your chance: who would you have added? Why?

"'Adam and Eve After the Pill' raises painful questions for political leaders..."

The National Catholic Register reviews Mary Eberstadt's new book:

The essays in Adam and Eve” frame the author’s unique and perceptive take on a host of related topics. In one discussion, “What Is the Sexual Revolution Doing to Children? The ‘Pedophilia Chic’, Then and Now,” the author examines how the clergy abuse scandal forced Americans to grapple with the destructive impact of adult sexual predators. In “The Transvaluation of Values…: Is Pornography the New Tobacco?” she critiques the normalization of an Internet-fueled addiction.

During a recent interview, Eberstadt acknowledged that her reassessment of the ’60s was prompted by exposure to young people and their struggles to deal with a culture that has drifted away from a commonsense approach to human flourishing.

“I listen to the way they talk and what they talk about with extra sharp ears,” she said. “Part of what motivated me to write this book and a previous one, called Home Alone America, about the impact of day care, is that life is tougher during these times than it used to be, and our material progress over the past 50 years can’t trump that truth.”

And:

However, the author’s abiding passion is not political activism, but studying and writing about the cultural mores that have reconfigured the world in which her children live.

“Since the ’60s, any kind of critical thinking went underground. At some point I made a conscious decision that I would use what I had to shed light on what needed light,” she said.

Her unique and unpredictable perspective caught the eye of Joseph Bottum, then the editor of First Things, the journal on religious and public life founded by the late Father Richard John Neuhaus. A number of the essays in Adam and Eve were first published in some form in First Things.

“Mary has an interesting way of looking at the world,” Bottum said. “She is not trapped by the categories of normal analysis. The result is that she provides insights I read in no one else’s work.

Adam and Eve After the Pill raises painful questions for political leaders like Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who has challenged the validity of Catholic moral teaching as she advocates for expanded access to birth control.

More importantly, the research packed into Eberstadt’s book could help stiffen the spines of Cardinal Dolan’s brother bishops. The devastating social research provides grist for somber reflection in Sunday homilies, pre-Cana presentations and CCD textbooks.

Read the entire review on the Register's site. And find out more about Adam and Eve after the Pill on the book's website.