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The Nativity of St. John the Baptist—prophet, forerunner, best man, martyr

Here is the "Opening the Word" column I wrote for Our Sunday Visitor in June 2007 for the Solemnity of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist:

The birth of a child is a momentous occasion, filled with joy, hope, and, yes, some apprehension. It is also a time of transition; it breaks time into “before” and “after,” and brings all sorts of changes into the lives of parents, family, and friends.

The Church, in the course of the liturgical year, celebrates the birth of three people, related by blood, bound together by the work of the Holy Spirit, and united in bringing about the greatest “before” and “after” in the history of the world.

The greatest of these solemnities is, of course, the Nativity of our Lord, Jesus Christ. The second is the Nativity of the Mother of God, the blessed Virgin Mary, who was conceived, born, and lived without sin. The third is John the Baptist, whose role in the mystery of God’s plan of salvation is difficult to exaggerate and yet is often taken for granted.

While Mary was chosen to bear and mother the Son of God, John the Baptist was chosen to prepare the way for the Lamb of God and to announce Him to the world. “John surpasses all the prophets,” remarks the Catechism, “of whom he is the last. He inaugurates the Gospel, already from his mother's womb welcomes the coming of Christ, and rejoices in being ‘the friend of the bridegroom’, whom he points out as ‘the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world’” (CCC 523).

But, the Catechism also points out, John was more than a prophet (CCC 719). He was the culmination of a long and illustrious line of prophets who spoke and suffered for the Lord. Today’s reading from Isaiah, in which that Old Testament prophet described how God named him while yet in the womb, finds perfect fulfillment in John. His father, the priest Zechariah, had been told by an angel—as he offering incense in the temple—that he would have a son whose name would be John. “He will be great in the sight of the Lord,” the frightened priest was told, “He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb, and he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God” (Lk 1:13-17).

The birth, life, and martyrdom of John the Baptist are intimately connected with the work of the Holy Spirit. Even before birth he was filled with the Holy Spirit, and from the womb he leapt in recognition of his Lord’s presence (Lk 1:41). He was the “voice of the Consoler” who was yet to come, bearing witness to the light of Christ, just as the Holy Spirit has done since Pentecost (CCC 719). When the Triune nature of God was revealed at Jesus’ baptism in the river Jordan, it was John who, reluctantly, performed the baptism. That revelatory event marked the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry and John’s declaration, as a self-described “best man” of the Bridegroom, “He must increase; I must decrease” (Jn 3:30).

This feast celebrating John the Baptist’s birth is also a celebration of the prophet’s role in paving the way for the new birth granted to all those baptized into Christ. “Finally, with John the Baptist, the Holy Spirit begins the restoration to man of ‘the divine likeness,’ prefiguring what he would achieve with and in Christ. John's baptism was for repentance; baptism in water and the Spirit will be a new birth” (CCC 720).

Called by God, John knew who he was because he always saw himself in relation to Jesus. Filled with the Holy Spirit, John poured out his life for the Kingdom, his own death foreshadowing the crucifixion of the King of Kings. Born in the midst of the greatest events of human history, John the Baptist continues to declare, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”

A Blogger and the Blessed Mother

A Blogger and the Blessed Mother | Mark Shea, interviewed by Carl E. Olson | Ignatius Insight | June 24, 2009

Carl E. Olson, editor of Ignatius Insight, talks to Mark Shea, well-known blogger, author, and apologist, about Mary, Mother of the Son, Mark's three-volume exploration of the Marian dimension of Catholic thought, life, prayer, and practice.

  Mark is the man and mind behind the popular "Catholic and Enjoying It!" blog. He is also the author of several books--including Making Senses Out of Scripture, By What Authority?: An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition, and This Is My Body: An Evangelical Discovers the Real Presence--and a regular contributor to Catholic Exchange, InsideCatholic.com, and National Catholic Register.

In this 47-minute interview, Mark talks about his Marian trilogy, misconceptions about Marian beliefs, and Marian devotions, as well as the life of an established blogger and budding actor.

Click here to go listen to the interview...

Pope and President meeting on July 10th at the Vatican

From CNS:

Pope Benedict XVI will welcome U.S. President Barack Obama to the Vatican July 10 for an audience scheduled to begin at 4 p.m.

Obama will visit Italy July 8-10 to participate in the Group of Eight summit, a meeting of leaders of the world's wealthiest nations. The meeting will be held in L'Aquila, site of a devastating earthquake in April.

After the G-8 summit, the president and his wife, Michelle, are scheduled to fly to Ghana, arriving late July 10.

Although Pope Benedict usually meets heads of state and government in the morning, the Vatican agreed to host Obama's first visit to the papal palace the evening before he flies to Africa.

Read the entire piece.

New books due out this fall from Ignatius Press

Here are some of the books slated to be published and released by Ignatius Press this fall. Actual availability and month of publication are subject to change, of course, so don't hold my feet over the flames if changes do take place. By the way, kudos to the IP designers; these covers look great!

• Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: John Epistles And Revelation, by Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch (September 2009; now available!)

• The Dividing Of Christendom, by Christopher Dawson (September 2009; now available!)

• Handbook of Catholic Apologetics, by Peter J. Kreeft and Fr. Ronald K.Tacelli (now available!)

• Chosen: How Christ Sent Twenty-three Surprised Converts to Replant His Vineyard, edited by Donna Steichen (September 2009)

• Dayspring: A Novel, by Harry Sylvester (October 2009)

• Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe | Ignatius Critical Editions (October 2009)

• The Merchant of Venice, by William Shakespeare | Ignatius Critical Editions (October 2009)

• Leisure: The Basis of Culture, by Josef Pieper; intro by T. S. Eliot; foreword by Fr. James Schall (October 2009)

• Marriage: The Rock on Which Which The Family is Built, by William E. May (October 2009)

• Templars: Knights of Christ, by Regine Pernoud; foreword by Piers Paul Read (October 2009)

• Max and Benedict, by Jeanne Perego; Illustrated by Donata Dal Molin Casagrande (October 2009)

• Who Needs God? Barbara Stöckl in conversation with Christoph Cardinal Schönborn (September 2009)

• Socrates Meets Kant: The Father of Philosophy Meets his Most Influential Modern Child, by Peter Kreeft (October 2009)

• Be A Man! Being the Man God Meant You to Be, by Fr. Larry Richards (October 2009)

• From Aristotle To Darwin And Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality, Species and Evolution, by Etienne Gilson (Fall, 2009)

• A Song For Nagasaki: The Story of Takashi Nagai – Scientist, Convert, and Survivor of the Atomic Bomb, by Fr. Paul Glynn, S.M. (October 2009)

• Catherine Of Siena, by Sigrid Undset (October 2009)

• Reason To Believe: On the Philosophy of Religion, by Richard Purtill (October 2009)

• Maria: Pope Benedict XVI on the Mother of God, by Pope Benedict XVI (November 2009)

Piers Paul Read's recent interview on EWTN's "The World Over"...

... can be heard online or downloaded as an mp3 file:

• Click here to listen online.
• Go here to download the mp3 file.

The interview, which first aired on June 19th, begins at the 7:30 mark and ends at the 33:30 mark.

For more about Read's novel, The Death of a Pope, visit the book's website.

Seven years later, the USCCB addresses...

... one of the more embarrassing and controversial documents in recent memory, "Reflections on Covenant and Mission," originally released on August 12, 2002, by delegates from the Bishops’ Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs (BCEIA), a sub-committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and the National Council of Synagogues.

It created quite a sensation and was presented by many in the media as an official document declaring, in essence, that not only were Catholics not to evangelize Jews, the Old Covenant was just as valid as the New Covenant established by Jesus Christ. The Boston Globe, for example, ran the headline, "Catholics reject evangelization of Jews" the following day. In this case, the media could not be criticized for misrepresentation or hyperbole, for the document was a mess of ambiguity, confused theology, and, dare I say, outright falsehoods. (For some helpful background and context, see Christopher Blosser's page about the document and the resulting controversy the Ratzinger Fan Club site.)

When the document came out, I was working at editor of Envoy magazine. I wrote a piece about it, stating:

"I thought lifting the SSPX excommunications was meant..."

"... to bring them closer to Catholic unity; instead, it seems to confirm their drifting more distant."

Yes, it does seem so. Canon lawyer Ed Peters ponders the confusing situation with Rome and the SSPX in "Three points on the recent SSPX ordinations."

The Pattern of Revelation: A Contentious Issue

The Pattern of Revelation: A Contentious Issue | Aidan Nichols, O.P. | From Lovely Like Jerusalem: The Fulfillment of the Old Testament in Christ and the Church

We need now to stand back from the materials we have surveyed and ask about the pattern of revelation they show--always in relation to our more familiar New Testament, since the Church's Bible is a unity of two collections representing the two Covenants, Old and New. These two Covenants, like the two collections of books that are their witnesses, are not just two disparate bodies of literature that happen to lie side by side. They are, so to speak, made for each other: the Old Testament is constituted in its very identity as "old" by the New Testament, and the same is true of their relation when seen the other way round: the New Testament is what it is only because of the Old.

Neo-Marcionism

This is a doctrinal truth rarely recognized in academy departments for the study of religion where most professional study of the Old Testament goes on. But I know from hearing of the experiences of students in Cambridge, which can hardly be wholly untypical in this respect, that they have great difficulty as a consequence in making theological use of the Old Testament and, if they are ordinands, getting any idea of how it might be used in preaching or in the catechetical activity of the Church. And that is so even though it is only through the Church that this literature becomes specifically the "Old" Testament in the first place. The academic desire to free the foundational literature of Judaism From the Church (which is not in order to return it to Judaism since generally people in academic faculties arc as little interested in rabbinic Judaism as they are in Christian orthodoxy) fuses with an attitude of disdain toward the Old Testament in the liberal Protestantism that is the chief background of university theology in the English-speaking, as in the German-speaking, world--if not only there.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there took place in the professional theological faculties of Protestant Europe and eventually North America a resurgence of the heresy of Marcion, the second-century admirer of Saint Paul who wished to abandon the Old Testament entirely as incompatible in its spirit with the Gospel proclaimed by the Church. Following the depiction by English Old Testament scholar Francis Watson, it can be said to have had three main figures: the systematic theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, often called the father of modern (Protestant) theology, who lived from 1768 to 1834; the historian of theology Adolf von Harnack, who lived from 18511 to 1930, and the exegete Rudolf Bultmann, who lived from 1884 to 1976. I furnish below the essentials of Watson's account.

Continue reading...

Bishops offer public support for Bishop John M. D’arcy

From the USCCB website

During their spring General Assembly, June 17-19, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops expressed their solidarity for Bishop John M. D’Arcy of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Ind., in particular for his care and concern for the University of Notre Dame, which resides in his diocese.

The bishops made this show of support during executive session, but released the following statement:

The bishops of the United States express our appreciation and support for our brother bishop, the Most Reverend John D'Arcy. We affirm his pastoral concern for Notre Dame University, his solicitude for its Catholic identity, and his loving care for all those the Lord has given him to sanctify, to teach and to shepherd.

HT: American Papist, via Twitter.

TIME "renews" the celibacy debate. What's the point?

At the rate things are going, Pope Benedict XVI may find his next trip to the U.S. dogged by airplanes overhead trailing banners with images of aborted fetuses.

That was how Amy Sullivan, a senior editor for TIME magazine, kicked off her May 16, 2009, article, "The Pope's Stand in Obama's Notre Dame Controversy," which was quickly taken to the woodshed for being a snarky, ill-informed, and rather embarrassing piece of, uh, journalism (using the term as loosely as possible).

Sullivan is now back for more, once again ham-fistedly mixing together sensationalized "controversies" with a shallow understanding of Church teaching and practice. Her June 21, 2009, article, "Sex and the Priestly: Father Cutie Renews Celibacy Debate," begins with the sort of breathless, meaningless sentence you might expect to find at the head of a 10th-grade paper titled, "Why I Find the Catholic Church Annoying and, Like, Behind the Times":

It's hard out there for a pope these days.

How so? Is it because the world is so filled with sin, war, greed, hatred, corruption, and general nastiness?

Overshadowing the Pope's declaration [of the Year for Priests], however, was the news that earlier in the week Father Alberto Cutie — the Miami-based priest and television personality who left the Catholic church last month amid soap opera-worthy scandal — had married his girlfriend of two years.

Oh. Hmmm, that is rough: another Catholic failing to live up to his vows and Church teaching. What next: Catholic politicians supporting abortion and euthanasia? Catholics divorcing? Catholics cohabitating? Catholics contracepting? Catholic aborting?

Sure, Cutie made a fool of himself and it's always sad to see such lunacy. But isn't it a bit of a stretch, even for TIME magazine, to claim this has "overshadowed" the Pope's declaration of the Year for Priests? Well, I suppose it does make sense if you are certain, as Sullivan seems to be, that the most important thing for priests is to be married and/or have sex, preferably with whomever they want whenever they want:

Also making waves was the publication of former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland's memoir detailing his life as a closeted gay man within the church and the loneliness that drove him to pursue a sexual relationship with another man. ... Although both he and Cutie have insisted they do not want to be held up as poster boys for changing the Church's celibacy requirement, their stories have added new fuel to a long-simmering debate.

Yes, a "debate" that has been raging in editorial offices all across the fruited plane, as I noted in this May 17, 2009, post (scroll down to #4). In other words, when a priest or bishop admits to being a smooth-talking scoundrel/fornicator/unrepentant, attention-demanding homosexual, the story isn't about how he's a smooth-talking scoundrel/fornicator/unrepentant, attention-demanding homosexual, but how the Church needs to "change," because everyone recognizes the greatest virtues known to post-modern man are mindless change, meaningless change, and change for the sake of change—or is it change for the sake of "advocates of celibacy reform"?

The Catholic Church in the U.S. has a serious priest crisis — the number of men entering the priesthood has dropped by 60% over the past four decades and the current average age of active priests is 60. Many dioceses have been forced to close parishes or import foreign priests to deal with shortages. But advocates of celibacy reform say there is a better solution: ditch the 900-year-old church law prohibiting priests from marrying or being sexually active.

Of course, this is more than a bit misleading since it gives the impression that as the U.S. goes, so goes the world. But that's not the case at all, as Jeff Ziegler wrote in his 2008 CWR report on vocations worldwide:

The Church worldwide has been blessed since 1978 with a surge in the number of seminarians. According to data published in L’Osservatore Romano and the Vatican’s statistical yearbook (the Secretariat of State’s Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae), there were 63,882 diocesan and religious major seminarians when John Paul II began his pontificate in 1978; by the end of 2005, that number had grown to 114,439—a remarkable increase of 79.1 percent. During the same time period, the number of Catholics worldwide grew 47.4 percent from 756,533,000 to 1,114,966,000, while world population increased 48.8 percent, from 4.302 billion to 6.4 billion.

Most of the growth in the number of candidates for the priesthood took place in Africa, where seminarians more than quadrupled from 5,636 to 23,580, and in Asia, where the number nearly tripled from 11,536 to 30,066. The Americas, too, saw a growth in the number of seminarians, from 22,011 to 36,891, as did Australia and Oceania, whose numbers rose slightly from 784 to 944. The number of European seminarians, on the other hand, declined from 23,915 to 22,958.

Ziegler points out the stunning fact (go figure!) that countries with highest ration of seminarians display a vibrant Catholic culture, have Catholic schools that are loyal to Church teaching, have very committed and active priests, and have Catholic families devoted to family prayer and family devotions. Strangely enough, boys who are encouraged to consider the priesthood are more likely to actually consider the priesthood (no, really, it's true!) than boys who are either not enouraged or who are even discouraged. I suspect that even people without degrees from Harvard can see the commonsensical connection therein.

Sullivan, who is deeply, passionately, and obsessively concerned the Church keep up with the times, is also keen to cast doubt on the historical roots of the celibate priesthood:

For the first thousand years of the Christian church, priests, bishops, and even popes could — and often did — marry. At least 39 popes were married men, and two were the sons of previous popes. The ideal of celibacy existed, but as a teaching from the Apostle Paul, not a church doctrine. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul argued simply that single men had fewer distractions from their godly work: "He that is without a wife is solicitous for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please God. But he that is with a wife, is solicitous for the things of the world, how he may please his wife: and he is divided."

Over the centuries, the Church tried to split the difference, prohibiting marriage after ordination and encouraging married priests to abstain from sex with their wives after they had joined the priesthood. (The Eastern Orthodox CHurch continues to allow married men to be ordained as priests.) But it wasn't until the Second Lateran Council in 1139 that a firm church law allowing ordination only of unmarried men was adopted. Journalist and former priest James Carroll contends in Practicing Catholic that the reasons for this celibacy requirement were not purely theological. "Celibacy had been imposed on priests mainly for the most worldly of reasons: to correct abuses tied to family inheritance of Church property," he writes. "Celibacy solved that material problem, but because of the extreme sacrifice it required, it could never be spoken of in material terms. So it was that sexual abstinence came to be justified spiritually, as a mode of drawing close to God."

So, without getting into all of the numbers, what does this tell us?

1. Celibacy was not always the practice of the clergy. Check.

2. Celibacy was, however, an ideal presented by the Apostle Paul. Check.

3. The Apostle Paul made an appeal to practical living in presenting the ideal. Check.

4. The Eastern Orthodox continue to ordain married men. Check. Sullivan might want to note that this is also the practice of the Eastern Catholic Churches: "In the Eastern Churches a different discipline has been in force for many centuries: while bishops are chosen solely from among celibates, married men can be ordained as deacons and priests. This practice has long been considered legitimate; these priests exercise a fruitful ministry within their communities. Moreover, priestly celibacy is held in great honor in the Eastern Churches and many priests have freely chosen it for the sake of the Kingdom of God. In the East as in the West a man who has already received the sacrament of Holy Orders can no longer marry" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 1580). It should also be noted that, in the East (whether Orthodox or Catholic), if a priest's wife dies, he cannot remarry.

5. Quoting former priests in this context is like asking Terrell Owens for an objective opinion of the 49ers, Eages, and Cowboys, and accepting his word without questioning it. Sure, he might give you some good stuff, but he's hardly a balanced, objective source.

Okay, whatever (it's 4:45 a.m. and I'm a bit irritable). Next?

Prospective priests understandably needed more convincing to embark on a life of chastity. Which is why, according to conventional wisdom among Catholic scholars, alongside the celibacy requirement grew a theological argument that God would bestow the "gift" of celibacy upon those whom He called to religious vocations. A document from the Council of Trent assured skeptical priests that "God refuses not that gift to those who ask for it rightly, neither does He suffer us to be tempted above that which we are able."

It might be good to note how a fellow named Jesus, who played a fairly major role in this whole Christianity thing, saidto his disciples, "For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it" (Matt. 19:12). Considering Jesus is God and that he wasn't married (how did he cope?!), despite Danny Brown's best efforts to set him up with Mary Magdalene, methinks it is a passage that shouldn't escape notice.

Donald Cozzens, professor at John Carroll University and author of Freeing Celibacy, has written that some priests do indeed feel freed from sexual longing and a desire for personal intimacy upon entering the Church. But "there remain other priests who believe deep down they are called to the priesthood but not to celibacy," he writes. "And for these men, the burden of mandated celibacy threatens their spiritual and emotional well-being." Weakland felt this challenge acutely, particularly once he rose to the rarified but also isolated position of archbishop. "I soon realized that a relationship with Jesus Christ, as intense as it might be on the spiritual level, could not fill the emptiness rising from the lack of the physical presence and reality of another human person," he writes in A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church.

Which explains, I suppose, the $450,000 settlement. 'Nuf said. George Neumayr says more so I don't have to.

Okay, let's fast forward to the final paragraph:

As for Benedict, it seems unlikely he will be more inclined to revisit the Church's celibacy policy. In 2006, he publicly reaffirmed the spiritual purpose of the requirement and made it clear that dissenters on the issue would not be tolerated, excommunicating an African bishop who had ordained several married men as priests. For now, at least, celibacy is not open for discussion. And that is why Father Cutie, Catholic priest, is now Alberto Cutie, Episcopal priest-in-training.

First, Sullivan doesn't seem to grasp that discussing or debating Church discipline is quite different from disobeying and breaking said discipline. Catholics are free to discuss all sorts of factors related to the discipline of clerical celibacy in the Western Church. But that doesn't mean a rogue bishop who is directly disobeying the Pope can run around ordaining men he isn't supposed to be ordaining. Duh. Plus, wouldn't it be nice to hear from a priest or bishop who explains why he is celibate and happy, normal, loving, whole, devoted to Christ, loyal to the Church, and so forth? (More on that later this week, by the way.)

Secondly, her conclusion is a complete and utter falsehood. Fr. Cutie is an "Episcopal priest-in-training" because he chose to be. He chose to break his priestly vows. He chose to leave the Catholic Church. He chose to become Episcopalian. No one made him do any of those things.

Yet in Sullivan's world, it is the always the fault of the Pope, the Church, and loyal Catholics when priests break their vows, grope their girlfriends in public, or jump in the sack with other men. In her world, the Church doesn't have the right or authority to define the parameters of priestly discipline, but it does, somehow, have the amazing and powerful ability to make men fornicate and sodomize. Go figure.

Monsignor Ronald Knox on Saints Thomas More and John Fisher

St. Thomas More had no lack of plausible excuses if he had wanted to avoid the crown of martyrdom; no lack of sincere people who urged him to take refuge in them. Never, I suppose, was man so tempted both by friends and foes to abandon his purpose. His own wife, his own daughter took the part of his enemies, and entered into a loving conspiracy to save him from himself. But to friend and foe alike he opposed the impenetrable wall of his good-natured banter.

You see, he realized, long before other men of his time, that what stood before England was a complete parting of the ways. He saw that, in the conditions of his time, you must needs throw in your lot either with the old faith or with the heresies that were beginning to spring up all over Europe; that a nation which defied the authority of the Pope, although it might do so merely in the name of national independence, would be forced, sooner or later, into the camp of the heretic.

You see, he [More] realized, long before other men of his time, that what stood before England was a complete parting of the ways. He saw that, in the conditions o fhis time, you must needs throw in your lot either with the old faith or with the heresies that were beginning to spring up all over Europe; that a nation which defied the authority of the Pope, although it might do so merely in the name of national independence, would be forced, sooner or later, into the camp of the heretic. It is amazing to us, looking back upon all the intervening centuries have brought, that so many good men of that age – men who were afterwards confessors for the faith – were hoodwinked for the moment into following the King when he incurred the guilt of schism. But perhaps if were could think ourselves back rather more successfully into the conditions of the time, we should pardon them the more readily; and for that reason we should feel even greater admiration for the few men who, like our martyr, were wise enough to see what was happening. It was a time of national crisis, a time of intellectual ferment. There were only a few people who kept their heads, and those few who kept their heads lost their heads, like St. Thomas More.

… Let us thank God’s mercy for giving us the example and the protection of a great Saint, our own fellow-countryman, who knew how to absorb all that was best in the restless culture of his day, yet knew at once, when the time came, that he must make a stand here; that he must give no quarter to the modern world here. His remembrance has long been secure in the praise of posterity; it only remained for us to be assured by the infallible voice of the Church, what we could not doubt already, that he is with our Blessed Lady and the Saints in heaven. He knows our modern needs, let us turn to him in our modern troubles; his prayers will not be lacking for the great country he loved so, for the great city in which he lived and died. ...

Let us praise God, then, for our English martyrs, Thomas More and John Fisher and the Charterhouse monks, and, from Blessed Cuthbert Mayne onward, the long line of proscribed and hunted priests. Men of our blood, they have left sayings which ring more familiarly to us than the translated pieties of the Continent; men of our latter-day civilization, they stand our with more of human personality than the mist-wreathed heroes of the medieval world. And surely, if they have not forgotten among those delights of the eternity the soft outlines and the close hedgerows and the little hills of the island that gave them birth; if in contemplating the open face of God, they have not ceased to take thought for the well-loved kingdom that exiled and disowned them, the patiently evangelized people that condemned and hurried them to the gallows, their prayers still rise especially, among all the needs of a distracted world, for the souls we love whom error blinds or sin separates from God.

— Monsignor Ronald Knox, Captive Flames: On Selected Saints and Christian Heroes (Ignatius Press, 2001; originally published in 1940).

Captive Flames: On Selected Saints and Christian Heroes
by Ronald Knox

The well-known Catholic convert and apologist Ronald Knox was highly esteemed for both his gift for writing and preaching. This volume combines both skills as it is a collection of his homilies on his favorite saints, men and women of history who were "inflamed with the love of Christ."

In his always descriptive, profound and witty style, Knox shows how these heroes of history struggled with many of the same spiritual battles that modern believers encounter daily, and overcame them with faith, courage, character and virtue. These are the shining witnesses of the truth and charity we all seek to grasp and emulate.

In his vivid style, Ronald Knox tells the stories of a variety of these Christian stalwarts including St. Cecilia, St. George, St. Dominic, St. Albert the Great, St. Thomas More, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Philip Neri, St. Anselm, St. Joan of Arc, and many more.

• The Ignatius Insight author page for Monsignor Ronald Knox

Chapter One of "The Spear: A Novel"

Chapter One of The Spear: A Novel | Louis de Wohl | Ignatius Insight

BOOK ONE | CHAPTER I

The Lady Claudia Procula was amused. Whirlwind courtships were not exactly new to her, but this young man seemed to wish to make up within a few weeks for all the time he had spent at some impossible outpost of the empire.

Otherwise there was nothing extraordinary about him. He was fairly tall, with good bone structure, eyes the color of black cherries, and rather heavy, dark eyebrows that made him seem serious even when he was laughing. He came from a good family; the Longini had been soldiers for many generations and his father was a retired general.

She had met Cassius Longinus first at a garden party in the house of Nerva Cocceius, and he would not leave her side even when a proconsul and two senators tried to get rid of him. A few days later she met him again in the house of Senator Pomponius and observed that he paid no attention at all to his host's dazzlingly beautiful daughter, although she flirted with him quite shamelessly. And now he had turned up at Marcus Balbus' dinner party.

When the Lady Claudia found him sitting on a corner of her dining couch, she laughed. "You again! We seem to have a good many friends in common."

Cassius beamed at her. "I am doing my best to see to that, Domina. If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have come here."

"You would have been wrong there. Balbus' parties are famous."

He laughed. "They say he's almost as rich as he is fat. If that's true he must be horribly rich."

She raised her eyebrows. "Careful! He is not fond of such remarks and he's not a man to be trifled with."

"The Chatts are bigger ."

"The—who?"

"The Chatts—Germans. None of them under six feet, some nearer seven. They're good fighters. I've had to deal with them these last four years. I can't see Balbus standing up to them."

He did not see the warning in her eyes.

"What's that about me?" asked Marcus Balbus softly. He liked to amble from one table to the other to see that his guests had everything they wanted and like many fat people he walked noiselessly. He was pot-bellied and almost bald, but the jutting chin spoke of energy and the small eyes were cold and hard.

"We were speaking about fighting", Cassius said.

"Ah, were you? Of course, you've just come back from the German frontier. The Twenty-First legion, I believe? I suppose he's been bragging a little about his military exploits, has he, Lady Claudia? Well, well. I bet you he's never seen a German near enough for real danger ."

Cassius was too young to detect the angry undertone of jealousy. He heard only the challenge.

Continue reading...

"Discovering the Fatherhood of God in a Gender-Neutral Society"

Discovering the Fatherhood of God in a Gender-Neutral Society | Mary Anastasia

In a popular movie of several years ago, a cherubic six-year-old girl blithely explains her family drawing to her dumb struck kindergarten companions: "This is Mark, he's my daytime Daddy; this is Peter, he's my main Daddy; this is Jack, he's my biological Daddy; this is my Mommy, and this is me." This situation, while admittedly contrived for the sake of the comedic story line, still points up a "wrinkle" in modern thinking which sometimes poses problems for the catechesis of children and adolescents. This "wrinkle," or, more properly, this deviation, is the clouding of the concept of fatherhood. This lack of a human "reference point" can make it very difficult to teach young people about the loving Fatherhood of God. This paper will explore the background of the problem, and then look to the Church's teaching for the response of Faith.

The first point to be examined in this review of the problem is one which impacts all the other points. This is the assault on "manliness" in our society today. A very wise man once said, "There is no one so narrow as an open-minded liberal." This statement is illustrated by the rabid way in which the "doctrine" known as "political correctness" is wielded by that small but violently vocal segment of society, the radical feminists. While claiming to champion "equality" between males and females, they have really brought about the emasculation of language and induced a "hunted quarry syndrome" among men today. Those qualities of maleness which once defined the role of the man in the fabric of society have been vilified into grounds for prosecution: the strength which makes him the protector suddenly becomes "animalistic aggression"; the logic and lucidity which give him the ability to provide for his family suddenly become "paternalistic oppression"; the love which moves him to desire children is criticized as "patriarchal enslavement." A generation of men has learned to suppress its instinctive chivalry for fear of fiery retribution. Masculine forms of language have become the dirtiest of swear words and masculinity in men (but not in women) a punishable offense. In short, the essential dignity of being created "male" through the deliberate act of the Creator has been shredded at the altar of misguided "equality."

This emasculated mind-set leads to tangible situations in which the concept of fatherhood is darkened beyond recognition. Webster defines "father" as both a noun and as a verb. As a noun, "father" is listed as "a male parent," while in its verb form it means "to act or serve as a father." In today's society, we very often see the noun function without the verb function: biological fathering is not followed by the continuing presence and nurturing of the male parent. The root of this phenomenon lies in a defective understanding of sexuality, aptly described by Pope John Paul II in his document, The Gospel of Life:

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"[O]ne of the best Christian novels about forgiveness and grace I've ever read."

So wrote Marvin Olasky in World magazine at the end of 2007.

The novel? Michael O'Brien's Island of the World, published earlier that year by Ignatius Press. Olasky recently, in the July 4, 2009, edition of World magazine, listed O'Brien's novel as one of the Top 40 books he's read and reviewed since 2007. It is particularly interesting that—as far as I can tell (please correct me if I'm mistaken)—O'Brien is the only Catholic on the list and Island of the World is the only novel on the list. Most of the other books (all non-fiction, it appears) are works of history, theology, or cultural criticism.

Anyhow, back to Olasky's 2007 review, which is, as they say, short but sweet:

All those books make sobering reading, but—as is often the case—fiction shows best the friction of ethnicities and ideologies in combat, as well as the opportunities for healing. Michael O'Brien's Island of the World (Ignatius, 2007) is one of the best Christian novels about forgiveness and grace I've ever read. Its central character is Josip Lasta, a child born in Bosnia in 1933 who loses all he loves at the hands of Serbian nationalists during World War II and Tito's Communists during the 1950s.

The book is long but hard to put down. It includes brilliant scenes of the love of a father for his son, of terror that would make a boy want to die, of a wondrous love at first sight, of terror that would make a man want to die, of a prison island where only dreams of vengeance keep a man from dying, of despair that outweighs vengeance, and of a tipping point where grace outweighs despair.

In the end, the book is about the worst and the best. Flashbacks of the hell Josip has seen keep him from even entering a church. He yearns to leave this world and finds God sending him to a new world. Crucifixion, through God's providence, leads to resurrection, and in turn the opportunity to save other lives. Such a summary of Island of the World sounds theoretical and dry: O'Brien, though, like the best novelists, turns words into flesh.

From Ignatius Insight:

The Opening Pages of Island of the World: A Novel | Michael O'Brien | Ignatius Insight

Prologue

I am old. Time has revealed itself and shed its pretense of eternity; though it is of course contained within eternity. I clean the hallways, take out the garbage, try not to be irritated by the roar of ten million automobiles, and by the jackhammers that are breaking up the street outside the front door, only to lay down another stratum of tar for future generations to dig up. This is a big city, and though I have lived within it for close to forty years, I still do not understand how it survives.

Its people display an astonishing variety of colors, languages, temperaments, and ratios of good and evil (as is everywhere), but they do not seem unhappy. Neither do they contemplate the body of the world. Its foundations are below them, they believe, in the concrete and tar, the pipes and wires. During my time among them I have noticed this delusion particularly. Seldom have I encountered the few who are awake, who cast their gaze to the real foundations, which, as human beings should know, are above.

Soon I will leave this place and return to my first home. Perhaps I will find myself waiting for me there. Is this a candid admission that I have failed to know myself? Yes, of course it is. What else is there to learn save that we know almost nothing? I am not referring to biographical data, but to something more important, the character of presence that appears to be displacement, as a stone or tree displaces air as it fills space. That I am a displaced person is true enough. Yet this is true of all men, each in his way. What is to be learned of me now rests in memory; the interior, a country that contains ranges of mountains and their shadowed vales, the beds of alpine glens, the crevasse and its fall from which there is no return, and the summit from which one does not wish to return.

Why do we in memory seek ourselves, when it is ourselves who shape the memories? The truth is, we shape and are shaped. In the beginning we unwittingly find our forms, as the first steps of a child. Later we take our longer strides, with secret timorousness, preferring a crowd of companions. Then, in time, we go farther out into the world with blind and knowing willfulness, with good intent and ill, alone inside ourselves. For in solitude the blur of safe indistinction becomes sharp and dangerous identity. Then, when identity has sealed its form, we seek union with the other islands, within the island of the world.

Of my life I can only resort to pictures. It began, as most lives do, with warmth and milk and love.

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A Dim Future: A special report from CWR

A Dim Future

Special Report  After disbanding the President’s Council on Bioethics, what kind of advisory body will Obama put together?  By Elenor K. Schoen Within the recesses of the US Department of Health and Human Services, the President’s Council on Bioethics quietly went about its work, as it had done, under various titles and different mandates, for over 30 years. However, during the week of June 8, 2009, council members received letters from President Obama letting them know their services were no longer required. The present council will be shutting its doors. Not related to HHS, but only housed there for administrative reasons, the present council was established by President George W. Bush’s executive order in November 2001. The 18 members were chosen by Bush from among a group of leading scientists, doctors, ethicists, social scientists, lawyers, and theologians. The council was chaired by Dr. Leon Kass, MD, PhD for its first four years, and by Edmund Pelligrino, MD during Bush’s second term. With a new president in office now, the present bioethics council’s term was set to expire on September 30, 2009. The abrupt early disbanding of the council led to the cancelation of a meeting planned for late June, which was to include, among other things, reflections from council members on “The Future of National Bioethics Commissions.” According to Bush’s executive order, the President’s Council was created to “advise the president on bioethical issues that may emerge as a consequence of advances in biomedical science and technology.” The New York Times reported that White House press officer Reid Cherlin said President Obama will appoint a new bioethics commission, one with a “new mandate” which “offers practical policy options.”   Judging from Obama’s preliminary policies, the future reincarnation of the bioethics council will no doubt be decidedly different. Whether the new bioethics commission will function mainly as a mouthpiece for the president, or as an independent advisory board, will be made more apparent in Obama’s choices in picking a chair and members, and in creating its mandate for serving under him during his first presidential term.

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St. John Vianney's Pastoral Plan

St. John Vianney's Pastoral Plan | Fr. John Cihak, S.T.D. | Ignatius Insight

"St. John Vianney's ministry gives parish priests a fundamental blueprint for a pastoral plan for any place and time."

St. John Vianney (1786-1859) is regaining popularity among diocesan seminarians. After a generation of being ignored, if not ridiculed, the patron saint of parish priests is once again finding his way into the hearts and minds of seminarians and priests. The Church names him as patron because this humble priest, assigned to the backwaters of southeastern, post revolutionary France, reveals things perennial about the priesthood and priestly ministry. The pioneering Pope Blessed John XXIII even wrote an encyclical letter on St. John Vianney recommending him as a model for diocesan priests to follow. The new generation of American priests is not discovering St. John Vianney because it simply has nostalgia for what is old, rather because it has a hunger for what perdures. This article is the fruit of this search and the summary of a discussion I had with a group of transitional deacons on the cusp of ordination. By the time this article is published, these men will already be priests.

Their assignment was to examine the beginning years of St. John Vianney's ministry in Ars through the lens of two questions: 1) What was the cultural landscape of his time? 2) What are the basic contours of his pastoral plan? How was it that within eight years of the Curé's arrival to Ars many of the people who were living indifferent and nominally Christian lives became fervent and committed believers? The biography used was Father Francis Trochu's The Curé D'Ars, whose research was based on the Curé's process of canonization. Notwithstanding the literary style of his time, the work is still the most comprehensive treatment of his life in English, and fortunately still in print [Trochu, Francis. The Curé D'Ars, tr. Ernest Graf (Rockville, IL: TAN, 1977)].

The group discovered that St. John Vianney's ministry gives parish priests a fundamental blueprint for a pastoral plan for any place and time. This assertion may strike some readers as naive, but I invite them to risk reading what follows. After all, if we are honest with ourselves and the current spiritual state of our parishes, we know that the various approaches of the last forty years have not borne much fruit, and we often feel that we are grasping at straws in knowing what to do. Perhaps we have settled into mediocrity and have allowed ourselves and our people to drift into lukewarm waters which deep down we know have drastic consequences (cf. Rev. 2:15 16).

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Defending Devotion to the Sacred Heart

Defending Devotion to the Sacred Heart | Timothy T. O'Donnell, S.T.D. | Introduction to Heart of the Redeemer

I have attempted not so much to speak with authority of things that I know, as to seek to know them by speaking about them with reverence. -- St. Augustine, De Trinitate, I v. 8

In our inquiry into the devotion to the Sacred Heart and its perennial value, it is best to begin with a proper understanding of what is meant by devotion. St. Thomas Aquinas defines devotion as a willingness "to give oneself readily to what concerns the service of God" (Summa, II-II, q. 82 a. 1). Accordingly, the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus appears essentially as a worship of and a response to the Person of Christ as viewed from the perspective of His divine and human love which is manifested through His sacred humanity and is symbolized by His wounded physical Heart. In his masterful encyclical, Haurietis Aquas, Pope Pius XII gives the following definition of this devotion:

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, by its very nature is a worship of the love with which God, through Jesus, loved us, and at the same time, an exercise of our love by which we are related to God and to other men.

From this definition it can be seen that authentic devotion to the Sacred Heart is not merely an optional set of pious practices (which may be very helpful) but an essential element of the Christian way of life. All Christians are called to the comprehension of certain truths concerning God and to a response in love to them. In living a life in imitation of Christ, as found in the Gospels and taught by the Church, the Christian should use all the spiritual aids offered to him by God. He should fill his life with an ever growing and deepening love for God and his fellow man. Every Christian will build his own unique spirituality upon this common foundation, which should include a response to the Heart of Christ that gives honor to the divine love and is offered for the sake of that love.

It would be accurate to say that by the middle of the twentieth century the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus had universally triumphed throughout the Church. Everywhere in the world, churches, monasteries and congregations were to be found dedicated to the Sacred Heart. In virtually every Catholic church one would find a statue of our Lord revealing his Heart. Large numbers of the faithful gathered on every continent for First Friday devotions, the Holy Hour and other pious practices associated with the devotion. This triumphal procession, however, was not welcomed in all quarters and the devotion began to draw criticism from some Catholic theologians who began to question certain aspects of these devotional exercises. Some outside, and even within, the Church questioned the theological foundation of the devotion.

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Liturgy translation votes goes to mail ballot

From The Catholic Spirit newspaper, reporting on the meeting of bishops taking place in San Antonio:

The U.S. bishops will have to poll members missing from their meeting in San Antonio before it's known whether they are approving liturgical prayers, special Masses and key sections of an English translation of the order of the Mass.

Five texts being prepared for use in English-speaking countries failed to get the necessary two-thirds votes of the Latin-rite U.S. bishops during the June 18 session of the bishops' summer meeting.

With 244 Latin-rite bishops in the United States eligible to vote on the questions, the required two-thirds votes in favor of each of the sections would be 163. With 189 eligible bishops attending the meeting, only 134 voted to accept the first section, Masses and prayers for various needs and intentions.

On four subsequent translations, the votes also failed to reach two-thirds, meaning the 55 bishops not in attendance will be polled by mail for their votes on all five parts. That process was expected to take about two weeks.

The items that failed to pass contain prefaces for the Mass for various occasions; votive Masses and Masses for the dead; solemn blessings for the end of Mass; prayers over the people and eucharistic prayers for particular occasions, such as for evangelization or holy orders.

The closest of the votes was on the Order of the Mass II, with its prefaces, blessings and eucharistic prayers, with 159 yes, 19 no and three abstentions.

The bishops did have enough votes to approve a sixth action item from the Committee on Divine Worship, a Spanish-language lectionary. After that vote of 181 to 2, with three abstentions, the bishops' president, Cardinal Francis E George of Chicago joked: "Ahora, vamos a continuar en espanol" ("Now we will continue in Spanish.")

Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli of Paterson, N.J., chairman of the Committee on Divine Worship, warned that delaying approval or failing to send the Vatican guidance by the end of November will risk shutting the U.S. bishops out of the translation approval process.

Read the entire piece.

From a satisfied reader of Read's "very engaging read"

From the comments section, by W. of the Eagle and Elephant blog, about Piers Paul Read's The Death of a Pope:

I just finished the book. Really enjoyed it. After the first 30 or so pages, a very engaging read. I was up till almost 1am last night reading it and had to get up at 5:15 this morning. Could ... not ... stop.

Then I spent today sneaking away at times to get a few pages read here and there. Could not finish it amidst all the activities of the last day of school so after work I went to a Middle Eastern restaurant and ordered some tea and baklava, sat in a corner of their patio--isolated enough, I had hoped--and finished the book. The waitress even asked what kind of book had me so fixated. So I told her and she decided she would buy herself a copy.

The book was one of those that I kept re-reading sections of the end as I felt the last page coming on. Nooooo. I did not want it to end. Had a similar feeling with Fr. Elijah.

Mr. Read: a very enjoyable and captivating book. A great read for any and every one this summer.

Visit the website for The Death of a Pope. "Fr. Elijah" is a reference to Father Elijah: An Apocalypse, by MIchael O'Brien.

Gonzaga University says goodbye to...

... Father Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., who is stepping down, on July 15th, from the presidency of the school after eleven years of service in that position. From The Gonzaga Witness:

So what's in store for Fr. Spitzer? Though his role as President is coming to an end, Father Spitzer's vocation of education and service continues.

Father has several books long overdue for publishing, including Jesus-Emmanuel: Evidence of the Divinity of Christ and the Unconditional Love of God (Ignatius 2010), Suffering and the Unconditional Love of God (submitted to Ignatius for possible 2010 publication), and New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy (Eerdmans 2009), the latter many of us have experienced in lecture form in Father's Faith and Reason course. Father has spent seven years writing these books and is looking forward to working one-third time on the publication of six other books in the next two years-"I have these six books in my head, and they have been there for quite some time. I really need to do a 'data dump' and get them onto the laptop so they can see the light of day. My underwriters are willing to make this possible."

In addition to this, Father Spitzer will be moving to Orange County, California, where he will be conducting audio-visual lectures for ethical leadership, spiritual leadership, and faith and reason curricula. In response to many student inquiries, Father Spitzer will continue the Faith and Reason philosophy course via audio-visual medium. This is a phenomenal opportunity for Father Spitzer, whose knowledge of the material must be shared with as many people as possible. "Honestly, I have loved being here," says Spitzer, "but the Holy Spirit has just been pushing me out the door towards this opportunity." In the first year alone, Spitzer hopes to reach over 100,000 organizational and church leaders and college students with the same amazing lecture material that we have experienced in his course, and that is only the beginning-"If you really want to make a cultural impact, you have to start thinking about numbers like one million people per year."

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports:

Spitzer, 55, will return to study, teaching and writing in the ethics field. He is a prominent scholar-critic of the movement to legalize assisted suicide, and a leading Catholic spokesman on the right to life.

Spitzer, who is legally blind, has overseen a turnaround on the Spokane campus since taking over Gonzaga's presidency in 1998. Enrollments at the Jesuit university have risen from 4,500 to 6,900, and a higher volume of applications has allowed Gonzaga wider leeway in who it accepts.

Fr. Spitzer has published two books so far with Ignatius Press: Five Pillars of the Spiritual Life and Healing the Culture: A Commonsense Philosophy of Happiness, Freedom and the Life issues. Here are excerpts from each:

•  The Introduction to Five Pillars of the Spiritual Life | Fr. Robert Spitzer, S.J.
• Happiness and the Heart | Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J. | From Healing the Culture: A Commonsense Philosophy of Happiness, Freedom and the Life issues