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The difficult issue of embryonic adoption

From Catholic News Service, the story of a Catholic couple who have had three children through embryonic adoption:

As committed Catholics, Timothy and Dawn Smith respect Vatican pronouncements, but recent statements about frozen embryo adoption from church officials have bewildered the Fitzwilliam, N.H., parents of three children who came into the world through this process.

In the document "Dignitas Personae" ("The Dignity of a Person") -- released at the Vatican Dec. 12 -- church leaders did not condemn frozen embryo adoption, but said the practice raises serious ethical concerns.

Vatican officials insist no fully moral solution exists for dealing with frozen embryos, not even the idea of adopting or "rescuing" abandoned embryos to bring them to full development and birth.

"If the church did come out and say you can't adopt frozen embryos, we wouldn't openly challenge church teachings," said Timothy Smith, 44, whose wife Dawn, 40, has given birth to three children who were adopted as frozen embryos and believes their road to parenthood was morally righteous. "But, the door is still open a crack here. Until that is shut, we would like to say we think this is a very good thing to do."

The Smiths ask a very important question:

Speaking at the Dec. 12 Vatican press conference to explain the document, Bishop Elio Sgreccia -- former president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, who helped prepare the Vatican's new bioethics document -- told reporters: "The basic advice, explicitly stated in the document, is that embryos must not be frozen. It is one of those actions that has no remedy. Once it is done, correcting it implies committing another error."

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, current president of the academy, told reporters that "the discussion is still open" and the Vatican has not completely ruled out the possibility of embryo adoption, although it is leaning toward an entirely negative judgment because embryo adoption involves the future parents in an immoral process.

But according to that reasoning, Smith said, "How is the traditionally adoptive couple not also participating in an immoral act -- in many cases they're assisting the unwed mother who had sex outside marriage."

"I believe the church not only condones adoption; it helps carry them out," he added. "Should not the church not only accept, but actively support, the rescue of frozen embryos?"

Regarding embryonic adoption, Dignitas Personae (PDF document) says:

Proposals to use these embryos for research or for the treatment of disease are obviously
unacceptable because they treat the embryos as mere “biological material” and result in their
destruction. The proposal to thaw such embryos without reactivating them and use them for
research, as if they were normal cadavers, is also unacceptable.

The proposal that these embryos could be put at the disposal of infertile couples as a
treatment for infertility is not ethically acceptable for the same reasons which make artificial
heterologous procreation illicit as well as any form of surrogate motherhood; this practice
would also lead to other problems of a medical, psychological and legal nature.

It has also been proposed, solely in order to allow human beings to be born who are
otherwise condemned to destruction, that there could be a form of “prenatal adoption”. This
proposal, praiseworthy with regard to the intention of respecting and defending human life,
presents however various problems not dissimilar to those mentioned above.

I'm certainly not a moral theologian, but I know that good moral theologians have differing views on embryonic adoption. I also know, that for me, the above statement not only needs to be expanded and address in more detail, it doesn't make much sense. Is there not an obvious difference between using embryos for research or for the treatment of disease/infertility and bringing (so to speak) those embryos to full term and allowing them to have what the Church teaches all embryos deserve: life? The Smith's point about traditional adoption is a good one.

My two children, both adopted, were conceived and born outside of wedlock. Have my wife and I, in adopting them, somehow involved ourselves in an immoral act? Have we condoned said act? Or, to put in a somewhat different light, does the victim of rape who decides to have the baby resulting from that gravely sinful action somehow condoning what happened to her? Of course not. It seems to me (again, not being versed in all of the nuances and complexities of embryonic adoption) that embryonic adoption is, in fact, an act of keeping and protecting what is good and sacred (as Dignitas Personae notes)—that is, life—in a situation that came about because of immoral actions.

My guess, in reading that section of Dignitas Personae, is that (of course) the CDF is well aware of the ongoing discussion and debate and is not yet willing to render a final judgment. Until then, the question remains open: "Should not the church not only accept, but actively support, the rescue of frozen embryos?"

What do you get when you mix together British gangsters...

... the "Spear of Destiny," Bill Murray, an "ancient biblical prophecy," smuggling rings, and religious fanaticism?

Why, "The Rapture," of course. Yes, of course. All part of the monumental quest, I suspect, to see if a decent, intelligible, well-written, adequately acted, and competently produced movie can be made about "the Rapture." Good luck, chaps.

The inherently heterosexual nature of marriage

Two articles that might be of interest if you've not read them yet:

• "Why Marriage is Inherently Heterosexual" by Patrick Lee (Public Discourse, December 19, 2008)
• "Is there a natural right to same-sex marriage?" by Fr. Juan R. Vélez (Mercatornet.com, December 12, 2008

A "lean man who wrote lean prose"

That apt description of Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., comes by way of a post on First Things by Nicholas Frankovich titled, "Avery Dulles and the Recovery of Teleology."

Also on First Things, from the January 2009 issue, an article by Joseph Bottum about Obama and abortion that offers what I think is an accurate  and insightful description of the next President of the United States:

On abortion, Obama is the complete man, his support so ingrained that even his carefully controlled public speaking can’t help revealing it. He’s not a fanatic about abortion; he’s what lies beyond fanaticism. He’s the end product of hard-line support for abortion: a man for whom the very question of abortion seems unreal. The opponents of abortion are, for Obama, not to be compromised with or even fought with, in a certain sense. They are, rather, to be explained away as a sociological phenomenon—their pro-life view something that will wither away as they gradually come to understand the true causes of the economic and social bitterness they have, in their undereducated and intolerant way, attached to abortion.

Read the entire piece.

Theosis: The Reason for the Season

Theosis: The Reason for the Season | Carl E. Olson | December 30, 2008 | Ignatius Insight

"The Cross of Christ on Calvary stands beside the path of that admirable commercium, of that wonderful self-communication of God to man, which also includes the call to man to share in the divine life by giving himself, and with himself the whole visible world, to God, and like an adopted son to become a sharer in the truth and love which is in God and proceeds from God. It is precisely besides the path of man's eternal election to the dignity of being an adopted child of God that there stands in history the Cross of Christ, the only-begotten Son..." — Pope John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia, 7.5.

"Love of God and love of neighbour are thus inseparable, they form a single commandment. But both live from the love of God who has loved us first. No longer is it a question, then, of a 'commandment' imposed from without and calling for the impossible, but rather of a freely-bestowed experience of love from within, a love which by its very nature must then be shared with others. Love grows through love. Love is 'divine' because it comes from God and unites us to God; through this unifying process it makes us a 'we' which transcends our divisions and makes us one, until in the end God is 'all in all' (1 Cor 15:28)." —Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 18.

I.

What, really, is the point of Christmas? Why did God become man?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in a section titled, "Why did the Word become flesh?" (pars 456-460) provides several complimentary answers: to save us, to show us God's love, and to be a model of holiness. And then, in what I think must be, for many readers, the most surprising and puzzling paragraph in the entire Catechism, there is this:

The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature": "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God." "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God." "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods." (par 460)

So that "we might become God"? Surely, a few might think, this is some sort of pantheistic slip of the theological pen, or perhaps a case of good-intentioned but poorly expressed hyperbole. But, of course, it is not. First, whatever problems there might have been in translating the Catechism into English, they had nothing to do with this paragraph. Secondly, the first sentence is from 2 Peter 1:4, and the three subsequent quotes are from, respectively, St. Irenaeus, St. Athanasius, and (gasp!) St. Thomas Aquinas. Finally, there is also the fact that this language of divine sonship—or theosis, also known as deification—is found through the entire Catechism. A couple more representative examples:

Read the entire article...

President Obama's Abortion Plan?

From American Spectator:

A policy report published last month on the Office of the President-Elect's website puts a hole right through the fanciful notion, believed by some evangelicals, that Barack Obama will save a place at the table for pro-lifers.

Titled "Advancing Reproductive Rights and Health in a New Administration," the report suggests a radical abortion agenda for the first 100 days of Obama's term. The recommendations carry quite a price tag. In an era of ballooning national debt and unprecedented government expansion, the abortion industry (and it is an industry -- Planned Parenthood made $115 million in profits for the 2006-2007 fiscal year) can look forward to hefty handouts next year, even if Obama enacts just half of the policies in the report.

Among other policy objectives, the report calls for increasing Title X Family Planning Funding by $400 million. Although the funds can't be used for abortions, Title X grants go to controversial family planning entities that offer contraception services, including Planned Parenthood clinics.

The report also calls for at least $50 million in federal funding for contraception-based sex education programs in public schools, an amount that parodies current spending on abstinence-until-marriage instruction. The report recommends that Obama de-fund the abstinence programs in his proposed budget to Congress.

Most indicative of Obama's radical cultural agenda would be lifting bans on taxpayer-financed abortions domestically and internationally, both of which the report calls for. In keeping with the international theme, the report also urges Obama to support backing the United Nations Population Fund and devoting $1 billion for international family planning programs.

Read the entire piece.

The document, it should be noted, was posted on the "Your Seat at the Table" section of the Change.gov site, which includes this disclaimer: "The PDFs listed below do not represent the views of the Obama-Biden Transition team, or the views of the current administration. These documents were created by the organizations and individuals listed, and delivered to Transition team members with knowledge that all materials would be made public on Change.gov."

China, Catholicism, and Buddhism

China, Catholicism, and Buddhism | Dr. Anthony Clark and Carl E. Olson | Ignatius Insight Podcast | Dec. 29, 2008

The editor of Ignatius Insight talks to Dr. Anthony E. Clark, assistant professor of Asian history at the University of Alabama and a contributing editor to This Rock magazine (his most recent article for This Rock was this May-June 2008 piece on Thomas Merton).

Dr. Clark, who has written a series of pieces for Ignatius Insight about the Church in China (see links below), recently returned from four months of teaching in Beijing (August-December 2008) and traveling in other parts of China. He talks about the "two churches" in China, his life-long interest in China, and the popularity of Buddhism in the West compared to how it is practiced in Asia.

On February 11, 2009, Dr. Clark will be a guest on "EWTN Live", and will talk wth Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J., about "The Zen of Catholicism: What Attracts Westerners to Buddhism."

Listen to the 28-minute interview...

Spring 2009 books from Ignatius Press

Here is a sneak peek at some of the new books being published this spring by Ignatius Press:

The Human Family and the Holy Family

The Human Family and the Holy Family | From "The Story of the Family," The Superstition of Divorce | G. K. Chesterton

Indeed, there is something in the family that might loosely be called anarchist; and more correctly called amateur. As there seems something almost vague about its voluntary origin, so there seems something vague about its voluntary organisation.

The most vital function it performs, perhaps the most vital function that anything can perform, is that of education; but its type of early education is far too essential to be mistaken for instruction. In a thousand things it works rather by rule of thumb than rule of theory. To take a commonplace and even comic example, I doubt if any text-book or code of rules has ever contained any directions about standing a child in a corner.

Doubtless when the modern process is complete, and the coercive principle of the state has entirely extinguished the voluntary element of the family, there will be some exact regulation or restriction about the matter. Possibly it will say that the corner must be an angle of at least ninety-five degrees. Possibly it will say that the converging line of any ordinary corner tends to make a child squint. In fact I am certain that if I said casually, at a sufficient number of tea-tables, that corners made children squint, it would rapidly become a universally received dogma of popular science.

For the modern world will accept no dogmas upon any authority; but it will accept any dogmas on no authority. Say that a thing is so, according to the Pope or the Bible, and it will be dismissed as a superstition without examination. But preface your remark merely with "they say" or "don't you know that?" or try (and fail) to remember the name of some professor mentioned in some newspaper; and the keen rationalism of the modern mind will accept every word you say.

Continue reading...

Some bookish mirth, via Malaysia

The Star profiles "a young up-and-coming Malaysian publisher in town and his name is Ezra Mohd Zaid of ZI Publications, a new independent Malaysian publishing house. Ezra is a personable and engaging young man bursting with vigour and wonderful ideas to shake up the local literary landscape. Exactly the kind of publisher we need in a contemporary Malaysia: broadminded, enthusiastic, funny and straight-talking."

He is indeed funny. This, in particular, was humorous in more ways than one:

The Da Vinci Code was not just a compelling read to those who could read it in English, but to people all over the world who read it in its various incarnations in different languages.

Get it? The "various incarnations" of a novel that denies the Incarn—oh, never mind. I thought it was hilarious. Meanwhile, Ezra explains that he is currently reading "Slash (HarperCollins, 2007) – the memoir of one of the greatest rock guitarists of our era." Funny, rocking, and cutting-edge. Look out local literary landscape!

This recipe for Lapsed-Disgruntled Catholic Pie...

... brought to you by National "Catholic" Reporter:

1 cup of growing disenchantment
1/2 cup of some pronounced unease
3/4 cup of rotting historical illiteracy
1 cup of disillusioned with dogmatic bans
3 teaspoons of outgrown child childhood fantasies about the Real Presence, purgatory, and guardian angels (note: can be substituted with a 1/4 cup of ripe theological ignorance)
4 cups of stale, bitter skepticism

Mix all well in a bowl of ambiguity. Pour into a pan of uncertainly. Heat stove of 150 degrees, the preferred temperature for lukewarm spirituality. Cook for whatever length of time feels good to you. Coat with thin layer of sugary, neo-pantheistic frosting. Serve to readers of National "Catholic" Reporter while in a natural state of discomfort, chanting, "I am Catholic. I am Catholic."

Read entire recipe. My favorite line: "I know now that humans can never penetrate the idea of God; certainty is – and has always been -- an illusion." Hmmm...for someone who doesn't believe in certainty, she certainly sounds very certain about not being certain.

Seeing Jesus in the Gospel of John

On the Feast of Saint John, Apostle and evangelist:

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

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

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

Continue reading...

CHRISTMAS, 2008

CHRISTMAS, 2008 | Fr. James. V. Schall, S.J. | December 25, 2008 | Ignatius Insight

"Dearly beloved, today our Savior is born; let us rejoice. Sadness should have no place on this birthday of life." -- St. Leo the Great, Pope, d. 461 A.D., Sermon on the Birthday of Christ, Christmas Office.

The antiphon for the Office of Readings for Christmas Day reads: "Christ is born for us: Come let us adore Him." This antiphon does not say "May Christ be born," let alone, "May He be born 'for us.'" It states rather an "is," a fact. Christ is born. Christ is born for us.

Why does it not say, "Christ "was" born for us?" We know He died on the Cross in Jerusalem thirty-some years after His birth. It is because the Christ who was born of Mary in the time of Caesar Augustus is not dead. He is risen. He was born to conquer death, which He did.

But here on the Feast of the Nativity, we celebrate the birth, the Nativity of Christ. To comprehend it all, we take one thing at a time. Pope St. Leo, speaking of the same event, the same fact, says that a "savior" is born to us. He is identified as "Christ the Lord."

Continue reading...

"Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary"

"Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary" | Hans Urs von Balthasar | An excerpt from Credo: Meditations on the Apostles' Creed

In the twelve months before his sudden death, Hans Urs von Balthasar had been writing a series of reflections on the twelve articles of the Apostles' Creed. These texts, which are undoubtedly among the last things he wrote, take on the character of a legacy, a spiritual testament. For they amount in their extraordinary compactness and depth to a little "summa" of his theology. What he had set out in detail in numerous books over five decades, he summarizes in Credo: Meditations on the Apostles' Creed in contemplative plainness and simplicity.

All the characteristics that make von Balthasar's work so distinctive and valuable are to be found here: breadth of vision, loveliness of style, and an intuitive-contemporary passion that allows him to "pray intellectually and think 'cordially'."

The following is von Balthasar's reflections on the phrase, "Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary".

  I

"Conceived." This is said of the Son of God, but it sounds passive; an Other is active in this conception, and he will be named immediately: the Holy Spirit. And an Other is she who conceives: the Virgin Mary. Just as a child is passive when conceived, whereas the parents take part actively. But it is only later on that a child awakens to consciousness, whereas the Son of God possesses eternal consciousness and also the will to become human. To be sure. Yet still we acknowledge in faith that he does not incarnate himself, does not himself take hold of the human nature that he will inhabit, but allows himself to be conveyed, as the "seed" of the Father, into the virginal womb by the Holy Spirit. But this means that the occasion of his Incarnation is already the beginning of his obedience. Theologians have very often claimed the opposite, on the ground that the union of the human and the divine natures occurs solely in the Son as the Second Person in the Divinity.

Continue reading...

Another unoriginal, angry atheist...

... with yet another silly mockery of Christmas: the "Godless Holiday Tree":

From a distance, the scene on the lawn of the old Chester County Courthouse in West Chester seemed a Christmas classic.

Ornaments in hand, a red-clad woman stood high on a stepladder, smiling merrily at a 12-foot evergreen. "A little forward," Margaret Downey called down to a young man holding the rungs.

Grasping the tree, she attached a yellow sheet of paper to a branch. Along with dozens of other facsimiles of book covers, A Portable Atheist by Christopher Hitchens fluttered in the December breeze.

Downey, founder of the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia, declared it "Good!" and reached for the cover of Gospel Fictions by Randel Helms.

The society's "Godless Holiday Tree" - decorated entirely with book covers about atheism, religious skepticism and secular philosophy - took its provocative place yesterday alongside West Chester's Nativity creche and the Chamber of Commerce's towering artificial Christmas tree. A Hanukkah menorah soon will join the tableau.

"This helps to balance and shows the diversity of the community," Downey said of what her group also calls the "Tree of Knowledge."

Named so, I presume, as a reference to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is, admittedly, a very apt connection. One also presumes that the descriptive "godless holiday tree" is also meant in jest, as it's hard to figure how those denying the existence of God or a transcendent, sacred reality would bother with a "holy day." The "Atheism is Dead" blog notes:

It is rather interesting that Margaret Downey is promoting her own brand of prejudicial cheer and stated “We’d love to see Kwanza candles and a Buddha statue, too.” Yet, in 2001 she “sued the county to remove its large [81 years old], bronze Ten Commandments plaque from the face of the stately courthouse.”

Perhaps next year Ms. Downer—er, Downey, can find a way to present a "Godless Hanukkah Menorah" and a "Allahless Ramadan Fast." By the way, my description of Downey as an angry atheist is not an insult on my part; I took it from her own website:

Downey, 57, was brought up by her Puerto Rican mom in a dirt-poor quarter of Baton Rouge, La., and later Los Angeles. Her Irish dad left home when she was 3. She got angry about injustice and intolerance early on—“I could never figure out why my mother was belittled for her accent and why my half-sister Martha, a person of color, had to sit at the back of the bus.” And she stayed angry.

I believe it. And this, from another bio page, is rather humorous:

Free from the constraints of religious dogma and patriarchal systems, Margaret became involved with the feminist movement. She fought for basic rights such as freedom of expression, freedom of choice, personal family leave for working parents, equal pay and promotion opportunities for women.

Due to concerns with children's health, Margaret was also involved in anti-smoking issues.  Being an activist for such controversial issues nearly cost Margaret her job twenty-five years ago, however, these initiatives are commonplace today. Even as a single mother Margaret was willing to jeopardize her income to demand respect for women, freedom of choice, freedom of expression and freedom from religious intrusion.

Freedom of Choice! Freedom of Expression! Unless, of course, such freedom involves smoking...

The Incarnation

The Incarnation | Frank Sheed | From A Map of Life

The human race then had broken its right relation of friendship with God: men had lost the way because they had lost the life (without which the way cannot be followed) and the truth without which the way cannot even be known. To such a world Christ, who had come to make all things new, said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life." In those three words–way, truth, life–Christ related Himself quite precisely to what man had lost: as precisely as a key fits a lock. In the precision of that threefold relation, we are apt to overlook the strangest word in the phrase–the word "am."

Men needed truth and life: what they might have expected was one who would say "I have the truth and the life": what they found was one who said "I am the truth and the life." This strange word forces us to a new mode of  approach. If a man claims to have what we want, we must study what he has. If a man claims to be what we want, we must study what he is. With any other teacher the truth he has is our primary concern–the teacher himself is of no importance save as the bearer of truth, and his work is done when he has given it. With Christ, the teacher is primary: He cannot simply give us the truth and the life, and then have done with us. He can only give us Himself, for He is both. This point must be insisted on, not as a figure of speech, but as a strict fact. It is a map we are making, not a poem; and what is now being said, mysterious as it is, is strictly and literally true. Our study of the road of life has brought us to an examination of truth and life: we cannot understand the road if we do not understand them. But if Christ is the truth, then we must understand Him: if He is the life, then He must live in us.

Obviously, then, our map-making cannot progress till we are clear about Who and what Christ is, because the road we are to travel depends even more on what He is than on what He did.

Continue reading...

Must read: Benedict XVI's reflection on 2008...

... and topics including God, creation, salvation, the Cross, the work of Christ, the Person of the Holy Spirit, anthropology, sexuality, and much more.

Some people are going apoplectic over it, and a few are even accusing Pope Benedict XVI of "stoking homophobia" ("homophobe" is apparently 2008's "Infantile, Brain-Dead Insult of the Year"), so two things are immediately evident: the Pope said something that must be read, and that whatever he said is being misunderstood or misrepresented.

Sure enough. The address, which was given yesterday as part of the traditional Christmas greetings to prelates and members of the Roman Curia, can be read in full on Teresa Benedetta's site (scroll down about a third of the page; ht: Amy Welborn). Here is a small excerpt from the lengthy and excellent address:

Joy as a fruit of the Holy Spirit - thus we come to the central theme of Sydney which was, in fact, the Holy Spirit. In this retrospective, I wish once more to point out in summary the orientation that was implicit in the theme.

1. First of all, there is the affirmation that comes to us from the start of the story of Creation, which tells of the Creator Spirit that moved over the waters, created the world and continuously renews it.

Faith in the Creator Spirit is an essential element of the Christian Creed. The fact that matter has a mathematical structure, is full of spirit (energy), is the foundation of the modern science of nature.

Only because matter is structured intelligently, our mind is able to interpret it and actively remodel it. The fact that this intelligent structure comes from the same Creator Spirit that also gave us our spirit, implies a task and a responsibility.

The ultimate basis of our responsibility towards the earth is our faith in creation. The earth is not simply a property that we can exploit according to our interests and desires. It is a gift of the Creator who designed its intrinsic order, and through this, has given us the orientative indications to follow as administrators of his Creation.

The fact that the earth, the cosmos, mirror the Creator Spirit also means that their rational structure - which beyond their mathematical structure, become almost palpable through experimentation - carries in itself an ethical orientation.

The Spirit that shaped them is more than mathematics - it is Goodness itself, which, through the language of creation, shows us the road to correct living.

Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Creed, the Church cannot and should not limit itself to transmitting to its faithful only the message of salvation. She has a responsibility for Creation, and it should validate this responsibility in public.

In so doing, it should defend not just the earth, water and air as gifts of Creation that belong to everyone. She should also protect man from destroying himself.

It is necessary to have something like an ecology of man, understood in the right sense. It is not outdated metaphysics when the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and asks that this natural order be respected.

This has to do with faith in the Creator and listening to the language of creation, which, if disregarded, would be man's self-destruction and therefore a destruction of God's work itself.

That which has come to be expressed and understood with the term 'gender' effectively results in man's self-emancipation from Creation (nature) and from the Creator. Man wants to do everything by himself and to decide always and exclusively about anything that concerns him personally. But this is to live against truth, to live against the Spirit Creator.

The tropical rain forests deserve our protection, yes, but man does not deserve it less as a Creature of the Spirit himself, in whom is inscribed a message that does not mean a contradiction of human freedom but its condition.

The great theologians of Scholasticism described matrimony - which is the lifelong bond between a man and a woman - as a sacrament of Creation, that the Creator himself instituted, and that Christ, without changing the message of Creation, welcomed in the story of his alliance with men.

Part of the announcement that the Church should bring to men is a testimonial for the Spirit Creator present in all of nature, but specially in the nature of man, who was created in the image of God.

One must reread the encyclical Humanae vitae with this perspective: the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against consumer sex, the future against the exclusive claim of the moment, and human nature against manipulation.

The Times reports:

The Rev Sharon Ferguson, chief executive of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, described the Pope's comments as "totally irresponsible and unacceptable in any shape or form". She said: "It is more the case that we need to be saved from his comments. It is comments like that that justify homophobic bullying that goes on in schools and it is comments like that that justify gay-bashing.

Right. Because we know, for example, that it is the supporters of traditional marriage and sexual morality that are physically accosting and verbally abusing opponents of Proposition 8. Just as importantly, how is it "irresponsible" to articulate what was, in the West, commonly held for centuries as basic, bedrock truth? Put another way, how responsible is to demand that we should, in the course of a few short years, simply toss out (and also disparage, in the process) core beliefs about man, marriage, sexuality, and traditional morality?

One of the fascinating things about Pope Benedict's pontificate is how he has consistently and continually appealed to reason and to man's ability to think, know, and understand. He has worked tirelessly to show that Catholic doctrine and theology is not contrary to logic, but is both logical and supra-logical. In in his project, if you want to call it that, is the basic question: "How then shall we live? According to what principles? Upon what moral basis?"  The reaction of many of his critics is not simply avoidance of questions, but anger that the questions are even raised; they consider it insulting that their "orthodoxy"—which is, in fact, based upon the manipulation of human nature, consumer sex, and self-destructive fads—is even considered open for discussion.

Fifteen or twenty years ago, the proponents of transsexuality, bi-sexuality, try-anything-sexuality, "gay marriage," and other deviant beliefs insisted that they simply wanted a seat at the table; they merely wanted their views to be heard and considered. Now they insist their views should not only be heard, they must be proclaimed, accepted, instituted, and celebrated. Further, those disagreeing with them are quickly labeled "homophobes" and "bigots." There is no discussion; furthermore, there never really was a serious interest in discussion. Such ideology, being inherently unreasonable and rooted in power and emotion, has no interest in reason, tradition, or commonsense. It certainly has no interest in Catholic doctrine, which it despises. It is "unacceptable in any shape or form."

In a passage in Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures (Ignatius Press, 2006), written shortly before he was elected pope, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger wrote:

Christianity is this remembrance of the look of love that the Lord directs to man, this look that preserves the fullness of his truth and the ultimate guarantee of his dignity. The mystery of Christmas reminds us that in the Christ who is born, every human life—from the very beginning—is definitively blessed and welcomed by the look of God's mercy. Christians know this and stand with their own life under this look of love; with this look, they receive a message that is essential for man's life and for his future. This means that they can humbly and proudly accept today the task of proclaiming the good news of the faith, without which human existence cannot long survive. In this task of announcing the dignity of man and the duties of respecting life that flow from this dignity, they know they will probably meet derision and hatred. But the world cannot live without them.

Amen. Preach it, Papa Benedict!

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The Mystery Made Present To Us

The Mystery Made Present To Us | Fr. Alfred Delp, S.J. | Pre-Christmas Reflection Preached in Munich, December 22, 1942

The following is an excerpt from Advent of the Heart: Seasonal Sermons and Prison Writings by Alfred Delp, S.J., priest and martyr.

The meaning of our Christian holy days is not primarily our external holiday celebration, but that particular mysteries of God happen to us, and that we respond. Something in the deepest center of our being is meant here, more than the exterior symbols can even indicate. Anyone who lacks spiritual eyes, and whose soul has not become open and watchful, will not understand the reason we  are so often festive in the cycle of the liturgical year. The Church stands before us with great gestures and great pomp and ceremonial rites. This is only an attempt to indicate something that reaches much deeper and must be taken much more seriously.

We need to celebrate holy days in three ways. First, by recalling a historical event. The feasts are always based on verifiable, historical facts. We should not just get carried away with unbridled enthusiasm. What is really going on? This is a question of discernment and recognition. Seen from God's perspective, there is always a clearly defined event connected to the mystery, a clear statement intended, a fact.

This brings us to the second point. Within all of the foregoing, a great mystery--the Mysterium--is hidden. Something happens between Heaven and earth that passes all understanding. This mystery is made present to us, continues in the world till the end of time, and is always in the process of happening--the abiding Mysterium.

Continue reading...

Advent conversation with Fr. James Schall, S.J.

Courtesy of The Claremont Institute:

KM: "The life of God is fundamentally a friendship. The Trinity is friendship" (138). God is never lonely, but how does man fit in?

JVS: This is your last question. Chapter 10 of this book was from my first book, Redeeming the Time (1968). I can still remember that astonishment I felt in the formulation of its sub-title: "God Is Not Alone." Anyone who knows Aristotle will recognize the problem addressed here. I spelled it out in Chapter 8. Aristotle had worried that, in the end, there must be imperfection in the inner life of the First Mover who moved by reason and love. And in his own light, Aristotle was quite right.

Aristotle asked the right question, as he almost always did. He had not yet heard an answer to it that would allow him to reject the hypothesis that God is lonely. This is what the Trinity is about on the level of political philosophy. It was the answer to a question that in fact had been properly formulated by the philosopher. In this light, we cannot be surprised at what Benedict said in the Regensburg Lecture about the reason why Paul went, not East, but over into Macedonia.

If there is any one recurring impression a professor receives from teaching over the years thousands of students all more or less twenty years old, it is that they know, in books eight and nine of the Ethics, that Aristotle is onto something that concerns the very meaning of what they are. They know they are made for friendship, and that of the highest order. Aristotle allows them often for the first time to think about what they vividly experience though they are usually confused about what the full experience entails, as Aristotle suggested they would be.

So, you ask, if the life of the Godhead is fundamentally friendship, the Trinity, that God is not alone, where does man fit in? This is what Chapter 21 of the book is about, the ultimate meaning of existence. Once we understand that God does not need to create a world in order that he might have friends-this is the reason some not unperceptive sages gave for creation-we see that God, because of His otherness, did not "need" anything but Himself. Thus, if something not God exists, it exists not out of necessity, but out of an abundance of that which is the inner life of the Trinity, things of goodness, generosity, love, givingness.

Each human being, not just the philosophers, but them too, exists that he may participate in this inner life of the Godhead. This is what explains that restlessness that we all experience about any beautiful earthly thing that is offered to us as our happiness. Augustine is the master here. We all recognize our souls in his.

But it would not mean anything if God created automata who had to love Him. He could not simply create another "god" just like Himself. What was left to the Good, to recall Plato, was indeed what was good. Creation involved an invitation, like all friendships ultimately do. It involved freedom, including the freedom to reject, the freedom to choose oneself alone. Hence the "First Circle of Hell" is not a frivolous sideline. It is the realism that Adorno saw in the need for judgment of the human beings who did choose, as Plato said, good or evil.

Thus, to conclude, I do think that philosophy and revelation do pass through political philosophy. The latter does not always know its dignity or even its purpose. The polity itself is the arena of both temporal and ultimate actions of free human beings. The temporal activities are the everyday ones in which we reveal our souls before our fellows. All philosophers die the same death. It is not surprising, in Fides et Ratio, that John Paul II said that all men are in their own way natural philosophers. The common man not only wants to save his soul, but also to know the truth of things as best he can.

In Spe Salvi, that most remarkable document, Benedict recalls that early Christian sarcophagi record the figure of Christ as both a shepherd and, most surprisingly, a philosopher. "Philosophy at that time was not generally seen as a difficult academic discipline, as it is today. Rather, the philosopher was someone who knew how to teach the essential art: the art of being authentically human-the art of living and dying" (#6). And the shepherd, it also seems remarkable that Christ told us to rule as servants not as masters. Both on the grounds of philosophy and on that of revelation , there are reasons posed to all men about the inner coherence of all things. Political philosophy stands at the heart of this drama.

As Fortin quipped, and Nietzsche fumed, few philosophers and theologians know what they are about. Indeed the pope himself said, "It had long since been realized that many of the people who were around philosophy, teachers of life, were charlatans who made money through their words, with nothing to say about real life" (#6). Plato called such folks "sophists." He did not like them at all. Revelation admonished us to try to save them, including their minds, none the less.

We still read philosophy to see what answers are addressed to us after we have formulated our wonderments about what is. We are the common men who know and need to know about "the art of living and dying." Plato, after pondering the death of Socrates, wanted to put the city of speech, the faithful city, in our souls so that we would take nothing less that what it is when, if ever, it is finally offered to us. The meaning of Augustine in political philosophy is that something was "offered" to us, the friendship that is the ultimate purpose of existence. Thus, in this context, it does not seem strange that Christ, before He died, told the disciples that he no longer calls them "servants" but friends. The reason He gives is that He has told them all things the Father has told Him. This is why we read in something approaching awe what Aristotle said in the two books on friendship.

Nulla homini est causa philosophandi, nisi ut beatus sit.

Read the entire interview, which includes discussion of Fr. Schall's newly published book, The Mind That Is Catholic: Philosophical and Political Essays (CUA, 2008). It is an excellent book, and I'm pleased to note that one of the essay in it was originally published on Ignatius Insight. Here are some of Fr. Schall's more recent essays for Insight:

• "The Single Divine Plan": Thinking About Poverty
• The World We Think In and the Drama of Existence
• "Words create history": On Benedict XVI and the Synod
• On Being Amazed In The Cosmos: Christoph Cardinal Schönborn and "The Purpose of the Path"
• Evangelization and Truth
• Benedict in Paris: "Logos is among us."
• The Truth About Families
• The Beijing Invitation
• Against What Do We Fight? On Cardinal Dias at Lambeth
• Ultimate Battles

What gives?

Who gives more: a liberal or a conservative? Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times is surprised by the answer:

This holiday season is a time to examine who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, but I’m unhappy with my findings. The problem is this: We liberals are personally stingy.

Liberals show tremendous compassion in pushing for generous government spending to help the neediest people at home and abroad. Yet when it comes to individual contributions to charitable causes, liberals are cheapskates.

Arthur Brooks, the author of a book on donors to charity, “Who Really Cares,” cites data that households headed by conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than households headed by liberals. A study by Google found an even greater disproportion: average annual contributions reported by conservatives were almost double those of liberals.

Other research has reached similar conclusions. The “generosity index” from the Catalogue for Philanthropy typically finds that red states are the most likely to give to nonprofits, while Northeastern states are least likely to do so.

The upshot is that Democrats, who speak passionately about the hungry and homeless, personally fork over less money to charity than Republicans — the ones who try to cut health insurance for children.

“When I started doing research on charity,” Mr. Brooks wrote, “I expected to find that political liberals — who, I believed, genuinely cared more about others than conservatives did — would turn out to be the most privately charitable people. So when my early findings led me to the opposite conclusion, I assumed I had made some sort of technical error. I re-ran analyses. I got new data. Nothing worked. In the end, I had no option but to change my views.”

Something similar is true internationally. European countries seem to show more compassion than America in providing safety nets for the poor, and they give far more humanitarian foreign aid per capita than the United States does. But as individuals, Europeans are far less charitable than Americans.

Americans give sums to charity equivalent to 1.67 percent of G.N.P., according to a terrific new book, “Philanthrocapitalism,” by Matthew Bishop and Michael Green. The British are second, with 0.73 percent, while the stingiest people on the list are the French, at 0.14 percent.

Read the entire column. This is indeed shocking. No, not really. I had long thought that the reason liberals wanted to take more of my money through increased taxes and such was because they really care more about people. No, not really. Turns out that some of them might want to merely appear generous while using other people's money to gain more control, more power, and more influence. Funny how much easier it is to spend other people's money than one's own. Yes, really.

Back in 2003, Brooks wrote an article, "Religious Faith and Charitable Giving," for Policy Review, which suggests that this is not so much a "liberal/conservative" issue as it is "religious/secular":

Note that neither political ideology nor income is responsible for much of the charitable differences between secular and religious people. For example, religious liberals are 19 points more likely than secular liberals to give to charity, while religious conservatives are 28 points more likely than secular conservatives to do so. In other words, religious conservatives (who give and volunteer at rates of 91 percent and 67 percent) appear to differ from secular liberals (who give and volunteer at rates of 72 percent and 52 percent) more due to religion than to politics. Similarly, giving differences do not disappear when income is neutralized. This should not be particularly surprising, however, because the SCCBS data show practically no income differences between the groups. Furthermore, research on philanthropy has consistently shown that the poor tend to give more frequently — and a higher percentage of their incomes — than the middle class. For example, economist Charles Clotfelter and others have shown that the poor tend to give a proportion of their income to charity that is comparable to the giving proportion of the very wealthy — and nearly twice that of the middle class.2 (This seems to be true only for the working poor, however. Welfare support appears to depress giving substantially.3)

Charity differences between religious and secular people persist if we look at the actual amounts of donations and volunteering. Indeed, measures of the dollars given and occasions volunteered per year produce a yawning gap between the groups. The average annual giving among the religious is $2,210, whereas it is $642 among the secular. Similarly, religious people volunteer an average of 12 times per year, while secular people volunteer an average of 5.8 times. To put this into perspective, religious people are 33 percent of the population but make 52 percent of donations and 45 percent of times volunteered. Secular people are 26 percent of the population but contribute 13 percent of the dollars and 17 percent of the times volunteered.

Read the entire article.