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Jesus, Marriage, and Homosexuality

Jesus, Marriage, and Homosexuality | Leroy Huizenga | CWR

The early Christians, following the lead of Jesus, doubled down on traditional Jewish sexual morality.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decisions striking down the substance of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Proposition 8, Jesus’ opinion—or lack thereof—on homosexuality has received renewed attention. In a crass fundraising email running the risk of violating the Second Commandment, Mike Huckabee wrote, “My immediate thoughts on the SCOTUS ruling that determined that same sex marriage is okay: ‘Jesus wept,’” while social media ran rampant with memes of Catholic comedian Stephen Colbert’s words from a show in early May 2012: “And I right now would like to read to you what the Jesus said about homosexuality. I’d like to, except he never said anything about it.”

Colbert’s claim is common, and it’s effective because it’s true: Jesus did not directly address the matter. But it does not follow that Jesus’ words and example have no relevance for marriage, sex, and family, nor that modern Christians should approve of gay marriage. A few observations:

First, Jesus was a Jew who inherited Jewish Scripture and tradition. Jesus did not drop out of the sky to bring a brand new set of moral teachings de novo. If he did, perhaps his apparent lack of attention to sex and sexuality would be striking. But the Jesus of the Gospels—especially Matthew, the First Gospel in so many significant ways—is a conservative Jew, as was in all likelihood the so-called historical Jesus behind the Gospels. And whether we're talking about the historical Jesus or the Jesus of the Gospels, Jesus stands well within the breadth of Jewish tradition. Thus, it's not true that things Jesus doesn't spend an inordinate amount of time on or doesn't mention are unimportant. Rather, we should assume that those things in Jewish tradition which Jesus doesn't overturn or reinterpret are assumed. Sure, Jesus doesn't outright forbid homosexual practices in the Gospels. But he doesn't have to, because Jesus' Judaism did.

Assuming that religion is a matter of prohibitions, in debates over sexuality people often assume that Jesus came simply to forbid certain behaviors, and if he didn't forbid something, it's therefore licit. The principle would be "Scripture permits anything not expressly forbidden." But why assume that hermeneutical posture?

Continue reading on the CWR site.

The mission of the prophets and the resolution of the Messiah

 

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for June 30, 2013, the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• 1 Kgs 19:16b, 19-21
• Ps 16:1-2, 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11
• Gal 5:1, 13-18
• Lk 9:51-62

“I’m on my way!” “We’re on our way!”

These are common enough expressions, and we know their meaning. They indicate movement, purpose, resolution. We’ve uttered them many times, with anticipation, or with anxiety.

Jesus, we hear in today’s Gospel reading, was “on the way.” The days for his “being taken up” had been fulfilled, and so “he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem.” A more direct translation is that “he hardened his face to go”. This language is meant to evoke connections with the prophets, especially Ezekiel: “Son of man, set your face toward Jerusalem and preach against the sanctuaries; prophesy against the land of Israel…” (Ezek. 21:2; RSVCE). Jesus sent messengers ahead, reminiscent of God sending messengers before Moses and the people (Ex. 23:20).

The journey to Jerusalem was, in other words, a prophetic mission and the concrete realization of a new Exodus—not from Egypt, but from sin, death, and separation from God. Jesus was resolute and unflinching in this decision, by which “he indicated that he was going up to Jerusalem prepared to die there” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 557). Some have suggested or insisted that Jesus, in going to Jerusalem, did not really know of his approaching death, but was acting with naïve optimism or blind faith.

However, as we heard last week, Jesus told his disciples that he would suffer, be rejected by the religious leaders, killed, and raised on the third day (Lk. 9:22). What the prophets of the Old Testament sometimes saw in startling glimpses, Jesus saw with calm clarity: his mission was to liberate mankind from the slavery of sin and the curse of death by being the sinless, sacrificial Lamb of God. And as the Holy One journeyed to the holy city, he encountered rejection, opposition, confusion, and even fervent promises—the same reactions he still encounters today. 

The Samaritans, whose harbored strong hostility toward the Jews, did not welcome him, apparently because he journeyed to Jerusalem and not Mount Gerizim, the site of their temple (cf. Jn. 4:20). Jesus did not fit their concept of a prophet or messiah, and so they rejected him. Of course, the Pharisees and scribes also rejected him for the same reason, and the similarities (and irony) of this fact was likely not lost on St. Luke’s first-century readers.

Jesus then encountered three men who got a taste (and give us a clear picture) of the demands of discipleship. It is easy to say to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go,” but keeping such promises is far more daunting than making them. Another asked to be given time to first bury his father; a third wished to first say goodbye to his family.

Was Jesus insensitive to familial responsibilities and hardships? No, said St. Basil the Great, but “a person who wishes to become the Lord’s disciple must repudiate a human obligation, however honorable it may appear, if it slows us ever so slightly in giving the wholehearted obedience we owe to God.” Jesus recognized that these men, well intentioned and fervent as they may have been, were like those who “receive the word with joy, but they have no root; they believe only for a time and fall away in time of trial” (Lk. 8:13).

As St. Frances de Sales wrote, in Treatise on the Love of God, “…we receive the grace of God in vain, when we receive it at the gate of our heart, and not within the consent of our heart; for so we receive it without receiving it, that is, we receive it without fruit, since it is nothing to feel the inspiration without consenting unto it.” Contrast that with the newly selected prophet, Elisha. Called by God, he asked permission to say farewell to his family. Yet, given permission to do so by Elijah, Elisha decided instead to literally sacrifice his old life, recognizing that following God requires going all the way.

His actions said, “I’m on the way.” What do our actions say?

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the June 27, 2010, issue of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

Giving thanks for the separation of Church and State

by Russell Shaw | Catholic World Report

In the question period after a talk I'd given on my new book, American Church, a woman raised an important point: "If the Church in the U.S. faces as many problems as you say, why is it doing so much better here than in much of Europe?"

Great question. My answer--which I also give in the book--was along these lines.

"It has a lot to do with the First Amendment principle of separation of Church and State. Yes, I know--'separation' sometimes is used as a club by secularists who want to drive religion out of the public square. But on the whole it's been a great blessing for the Church and for religion in America.

"For one thing, church-state separation has generally kept government out of religious affairs, while also keeping clerics out of inappropriate involvement in politics. In combination with Cardinal Gibbons' wise decision to embrace the emerging labor movement in the late 19th century, this spared the Church the sort of virulent anticlericalism found in countries like France, Spain, and even 'Catholic' Ireland as a reaction against the political clericalism of the not so distant past."

Almost always, I might have added, clericalism breeds anticlericalism. That we've largely escaped the worst sort of clericalism in America means we've also been spared the worst sort of anticlericalism.

But granted all that, the situation of the Catholic Church in America today is increasingly perilous. American Church explains why. In brief, the explanation goes like this.

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

Authentic Freedom and the Homosexual Person

Authentic Freedom and the Homosexual Person | Dr. Mark Lowery

The tragic impasse that exists in our culture on the issue of homosexuality stems from two errors.

On the one hand, many moderns have embraced an autonomous view of reality: "I can do what I want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else." According to such relativism, homosexual acts are perfectly legitimate so long as they are between two consenting adults. In stark reaction to such subjectivism, many others embrace a moralism that easily turns venomous when it vilifies and demonizes: "Homosexuality is wrong because God said so" (and nothing more). The distinction between the homosexual condition and homosexual acts, if added at all, is added as an afterthought. This view, opposite that of autonomy, could be termed heteronomy, because God's law is understood to be extrinsically and somewhat arbitrarily placed upon man with a seeming lack of concern for actual experience of the persons involved.

Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor (art. 41), distinguishes the Catholic moral outlook from these two erroneous positions. He labels the Catholic view a "participated theonomy." If for autonomy there is no law, and if for heteronomy the law is to be followed because God said so, for participated theonomy the moral law is something friendly to our being, something built for our genuine fulfillment and for our authentic freedom. The law is not true because God commanded it; rather, God commands it because it is true. When we use our free will to align our lives with this truth, we possess authentic freedom.

What does this mean for the debate on homosexuality?

Continue reading on IgnaitusInsight.com.

Man and Arbiter

Man and Arbiter | Thomas M. Doran | CWR

Human beings are notoriously fallible. Making even the wisest among us an arbiter of moral questions is risky business.

An arbiter, derived from the Latin for judge, is defined as “one chosen to judge or decide a disputed issue”; also, “one who has the power to judge at will”.

Many insist that an arbiter for morality and behavior is irrelevant today, that enlightened societies have progressed beyond judging morality and behavior, unless behavior breaks a law. Nonetheless, it is evident that human beings, though many will not admit it, need an arbiter. The fundamental question is who or what will this arbiter be?

Belief systems are at the heart of this question. Scientific materialists deny a Deity and anything transcendent, including objective Truth. Many believe in a “disengaged Supreme Being, or force”, including Deists, New Agers, and Buddhists; Star Wars is a modern depiction of such a “force”. There are those who believe in an “engaged Supreme Being”, including many traditional Jews and Muslims. Most Christians believe in a “Trinitarian Supreme Being in solidarity with man, even as man.”

Pantheists and dualists accept numerous deities, some opposing others. Syncretists adopt bits and pieces of more than one of these belief systems. Agnostics profess to be ambivalent on the matter of a Supreme Being, with most eventually drifting into the camp of the scientific materialists or the syncretists.

Many scientific materialists who are critical of “Deity as arbiter” fail to acknowledge, or recognize, that they themselves have need of an arbiter. To those who assert that they are post-morality, offer a view contrary to the avant-garde positions on homosexual activity and reproductive “rights” and see what happens.

Consider. Whether one makes this choice explicitly or implicitly, all rely on an arbiter for essential questions of justice, truth and falsehood, good and evil.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

What Price Marriage?

What Price Marriage? | John S. Hamlon | CWR

A Review of  What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense by Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George

“What Price Glory?” is the title of a 1924 play about life, death, and heroism in the trenches of World War I.  One of the co-authors, Laurence Stallings, was a Marine sergeant in the famous Battle of Belleau Wood during which the Marines earned (according to American combat reporter Floyd Gibbons) the eternal epithet, “Teufelshunde”—“Devil Dogs.”  Stallings was wounded in that battle, eventually losing one of his legs. 

This review—“What Price Marriage?”—points to another kind of war, that of preserving the original meaning of marriage—the union of one man and one woman as husband and wife.  In the near, and not so near, future there will be countless skirmishes and many pitched battles between preservationists and revisionists.  The difference is that we who are for traditional marriage will likely be on the defensive for decades to come.  We will not have the chance to shock the opposition with an offensive as definitive as the Marine advance at Belleau Wood.  If the opposition is able to be shocked at all, it will be in retrospect when it finally recognizes the societal no-man’s-land it helped create by ignoring the goods inherent in conjugal love: commitment, exclusivity, procreation, complementarity, and stability.

What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense is, in fact, part of an ongoing strategic offensive, certainly in light of the U.S. Supreme Court decisions on Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).  The authors—Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George—would eschew the military references.  They have taken great pains to keep the dialogue non-confrontational.  You will find in their work no button-pushing words, ad hominem attacks, “hetero”/“homo” juxtaposition, or moral/religious arguments.  It is straight, transparent common sense.  There are no cunning, carnivorous agendas in sheep’s clothing.  So, the warring metaphor (if it is a metaphor) is solely mine.

About the authors: Were I ever brought before a civil or criminal court for “hate speech” (in support of traditional marriage), I would want the authors to be my defense team, no question.  Their minds are like ginsu knives that can slice through anything from brass pipe to overripe tomatoes.  If they learned a modicum of legal protocol, the prosecution would have its hands full. 

I have listened to Girgis, seen Anderson, and heard George give a talk in Sacramento.  All are professional, beyond intelligent, and unflappable.  In addition, Professor George (Princeton University) has a marvelous sense of humor.  Even if my case were lost, the listening public would be way better educated about the reality of marriage, and not a little mesmerized.  

In What Is Marriage? there are six chapters sandwiched between an Introduction and Conclusion, followed by an Appendix.  The text covers 109 pages, all filled with straightforward, down-home thinking.  That does not mean it is an easy read—it presumes that the reader’s forebrain has been oiled with Logic 101, Aristotle 202, and Aquinas 303.  I am hyperbolizing, somewhat.  There are some paragraphs I had to re-read several times to get the gist.  But most major points leap off the page and are quite brain-friendly.  I shall spotlight a few of those points, and, where appropriate, insert a reservation or two.

Introduction 

According to the authors, there are two operative views of marriage today, one existing from time immemorial and the other from the day before yesterday:

(1) The conjugal view “has long informed the law… of our civilization.  It is a vision of marriage as a bodily as well as an emotional and spiritual bond, distinguished thus by its comprehensiveness…. In marriage, so understood, the world rests its hope and finds ultimate renewal” (p. 1).

(2) The revisionist view focuses on “a loving emotional bond, one distinguished by its intensity—a bond that needn’t point beyond the partners, in which fidelity is ultimately subject to one’s own desires.  In marriage so understood, partners seek emotional fulfillment, and remain as long as they find it” (pp. 1-2).

In the first definition, note well the word “comprehensiveness.”  For the authors, marriage is a comprehensive union, meaning “a union of will (by consent) and body (by sexual union); inherently ordered to procreation and thus the broad sharing of family life; and calling for permanent and exclusive commitment, whatever the spouses’ preferences” (p. 6).  Such a union, by definition, exists only between a man and a woman.

The central purpose of the book is to show that conjugal marriage laws are rationally grounded.  While doing that, the authors argue that marriage is a moral reality—“a human good with an objective structure, which it is inherently good for us to live out.”  Their syllogism:

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Fr. Joseph Fessio, SJ, laments SCOTUS rulings: "we are about to sink even lower. God help us."

Fr. Joseph Fessio, SJ, founder and editor of Ignatius Press, which is based in San Francisco, expressed obvious frustration this morning in commenting about the Supreme Court rulings striking down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and dismissing Proposition 8.

"They are profoundly wrong and wrong-headed decisions," he stated in e-mail correspondence this morning. "And it is deeply depressing that in each decision a Catholic justice was the swing vote."

"There is a twofold problem that underlies both decisions," he wrote. "1) That issues of such fundamental significance for society should be decided by a single, unelected person. That’s what happens when there is a 5-4 decision. 2) That the judges of the Supreme Court who ought to be exemplary for their wisdom as well as their technical knowledge of the law can be completely blind to the obvious: this is not an issue of equality at all. Same sex unions are not in any way equivalent to marital unions."
 
Fr. Fessio specifically named Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote for the majority in the Court's ruling on DOMA ("United States v. Windsor"). "Justice Kennedy wrote, 'The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the state, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.' This is only slightly less outrageously self-contradictory than his famous 'mystery” utterance: 'At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.'"

That statement was written by Justice Kennedy (along with Justices Souter and O'Connor) in his opinion on the 1992 case, "Planned Parenthood v. Casey."

"If you can define your own concept of meaning," added Fr. Fessio, "well, I suppose you can play Alice in Wonderland with any concept you want, including marriage. So at least Justice Kennedy is consistent in his self-contradiction, and this decision is simply a consequence of the earlier principle. However, he even goes farther here and apparently can read hearts, since he claims that the 'purpose' is to 'disparage and to injure'. So one man sets himself against the wisdom of all recorded history which recognizes the obvious: a marital union can do what no other union can; further it is not only a benefit to the state, but the state cannot exist without it. Giving it special status and protection does not disparage or injure anyone; it simply recognizes an empirical fact that only the willfully blind can fail to see."

Justice Kennedy, in the majority opinion on DOMA, flatly stated that "the principal purpose and the necessary effect of this law [DOMA] are to demean those persons who are in a lawful same-sex marriage." Kennedy also wrote, "The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity. By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment."

Justice Antonin Scalia, in his dissenting opinion, stated, "I am sure these accusations are quite untrue."

Scalia also strongly criticized Kennedy's opinion, arguing that it essentially describes as bigots anyone who upholds marriage as an institution consisting of a man and a woman:

But to defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to condemn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions. To hurl such accusations so casually demeans this institution. In the majority's judgment, any resistance to its holding is beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement. To question its high-handed invalidation of a presumptively valid statute is to act (the majority is sure) with the purpose to "disparage," "injure," "degrade," "demean," and "humiliate" our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens, who are homosexual.

All that, simply for supporting an Act that did no more than codify an aspect of marriage that had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence--indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history. It is one thing for a society to elect change; it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis, enemies of the human race.

Fr. Fessio also criticized the majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts in the Court's ruling on Proposition 8 ("Hollingsworth v. Perry"). The Chief Justice, he noted, wrote, "We have never before upheld the standing of a private party to defend the constitutionality of a state statute when state officials have chosen not to. We decline to do so for the first time here." By that principle, observed Fr. Fessio, "the Supreme Court should have never made any decisions, since each new decision was a 'first time'."

He added, "So we have the sad parody of one Catholic judge being so liberal that even the meaning of meaning isn’t fixed. And another Catholic judge so conservative that he can’t recognize the need for an unprecedented decision when there is an unprecedented set of facts."
 
"People, myself included, lament the moral decline of America," reflected Fr. Fessio, "Without this stunning intellectual decline—where one can claim that an unborn baby is not a human person and that man-to-man copulation is equivalent to marital union—we could not have sunk so low. With this decision we are about to sink even lower. God help us." He said that he thinks it is clear that the rulings are "going to make it far more difficult for those who defend marriage."

Asked how the rulings will affect the Catholic Church in the United States, Fr. Fessio remarked that they "will call forth saints and scholars who will 'shine like the stars in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation'. They will also be humiliated and very likely, in time, persecuted. Welcome to the Brave New World."

The Human Family and the Family of God

The Human Family and the Family of God | James V. Schall, S.J. | CWR

The recent audiences by Pope Francis emphasize the intimate, familial nature of the Church

“Last Wednesday, I emphasized the deep bond that exists between the Holy Spirit and the Church. Today, I would like to begin on the mystery of the Church, a mystery which we all experience and of which we are part.” — Pope Francis, General Audience, May 29, 2013 (L’Osservatore Romano, English, June 5, 2013)

“The ‘koinonia-communio’ of the Spirit of the Father and the incarnate Son is, as it were, the Council’s master key, as the principle of communion and mission. The key opens our access to the mystery of the Church, the universal sacrament of salvation, in all its dimensions: Trinitarian, Christological, anthropological, ecumenical, and pastoral.” — Marc Cardinal Ouellet, “Communio”: Address, May 21, 2013, Sydney, Australia.

I.

Over the years, priests are often reminded of Christ’s admonition that “you have not chosen Me, I have chosen you.” I was ordained on June 7^th fifty years ago in San Francisco. In retrospect, one might question the Lord’s prudence about whom He chooses. But, if we remember that He also chose Judas and a few other sour apples along the way, we need not become too vain. The world is full of folks who purport to be scandalized by sinful priests or by a vice filled Catholic laity. Such reactions just mean that these critics have never read the New Testament. While it condemns sin at every turn, especially scandal, the Gospels gives us no indication that, with the appearance of Christ in the world, His followers will subsequently be perfect.

Rather, Christ came into the world with the clear realization that most of us would need to be forgiven many times (”yea, seventy times seven” Matthew 18:22) before it is all over. Christ did not dwell amongst us to eradicate sin’s possibility and hence our freedom. He came to provide a way in which, should we sin, we could be forgiven, but only if we choose to avail ourselves of the means He set down, not those we concoct for ourselves. The Church, with its priests and sacraments, exists in the world so that such a redemptive purpose might be carried out in the concrete context of everyday life, wherein most of our sins are committed. The place where these sins are to be forgiven is not the state, the university, the psychiatrist’s office, the hospital, the press, or the media. It was in the Church and in the sacrament of confession. About why God chose to do it this way rather than some other, we might wonder. But there is a certain good sense to it. It puts the divine power of forgiving sin also in a human context. 

II.

In a recent General Audience (May 29), Pope Francis spoke of “the mystery of the Church.” A “mystery” in Catholic thinking, does not so much mean something we have no clue about and could not understand if we did have one. It rather means that we can understand some things correctly enough and that we should strive to do so. The fact that we cannot understand everything about any “mystery” only means our own intellects are not angelic or divine. But they do understand what is not themselves. They know what is. To have a mind means we can “be” what is not ourselves while what we know remains itself and we remain precisely ourselves.

Thus, when we call the Church a “mystery,” we recognize it as something brought into existence by God for His own plan or purpose.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

American Anti-Catholicism and the Confessional

American Anti-Catholicism and the Confessional | John B. Buescher | CWR

A brief history of the anti-Catholic rhetoric deployed in the US against the sacrament of Confession.

The highest tides of anti-Catholic feeling in this country occurred in the 19th century.  The standard explanation for this simply points to Protestant fears that the waves of Catholic immigrants, especially from Ireland, would take their jobs away.

Anti-Catholicism, as this explanation goes, was rooted in the Protestant fear that the “trying of swords” between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism which had reshaped European history was moving to the continent of North America, and that the Protestant United States was not only being outflanked and encircled by Catholic Latin America and French Canada, but that the US was itself being undone from within by Catholic immigrants, who were simply waiting until they could impose their anti-American views on the country by their hive-mind bloc voting, controlled by “priest police.”  The most well-known exponent of this view of the Catholic Menace was inventor and painter Samuel F. B. Morse, who in 1835 wrote and published Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the United States.

But there was certainly another aspect of the antipathy to Catholics: they were thought to be essentially alien in the sense of un-American, that is, they could not or would not be assimilated to basic American principles of freedom and the common good.  Some of this came out into the open during the battles over the public schools and parochial schools—and Catholics today may still have some lingering sense of that—but the other place this particular anti-Catholic rhetoric was deployed was in attacks on the Catholics’ sacrament of Confession.

Catholic apologist James Chancy wrote in 1888, “By far the bitterest attacks of the Protestants have been directed against the Confessional.  They merely scoff at the other sacraments of the Church, but of the Sacrament of Penance their condemnation is strong, their hate deep, bitter, and lasting.”

Why was their antagonism focused most especially on Confession?  Chancy continued, “Instinctively they feel this is one of the greatest powers the Church wields to preserve its members from the contamination of the world, the continuance of the indulgence of passion, and the taint of heresy.”  Unsurprisingly, this was not what non-Catholics offered as their reason for opposing it so strongly.  Confession, to them, was the very sink of iniquity and foremost danger to the republic.  Today’s Catholic surely would be surprised to learn this.  Or to learn that two ex-Catholic priests carried the banners in the crusade against Confession.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Jesus and Marriage? A Theological Response

Jesus and Marriage? A Theological Response | R. Jared Staudt, Ph.D. | Homiletic & Pastoral Review

The celibacy of Jesus, and the Christian response to it, is ultimately a question of love, an intimate relation that is hard to grasp for modern man looking in from the outside.

On September 18, 2012, Karen L. King introduced an alleged Coptic papyrus fragment, which speaks of a wife of Jesus. The Christian response to the discovery of this fragment has been overwhelmingly historical in nature, focusing on either the inauthenticity of the fragment or the lack of evidence in the Gospels to support the claim. This approach has been significant, raising doubts on its authenticity based on striking parallels with the Gospel of Thomas and certain grammatical irregularities. Only to respond on this level, however, seems to play into the comments that King herself made during her press conference in Rome: “Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was not married, even though no reliable historical evidence exists to support that claim.” 1 In order to respond fully and adequately to a position alleging a marriage for Jesus, it is necessary to complement the historical response from a theological perspective. Even if the fragment were authentically from the fourthcentury, Christians could still be able to affirm confidently the celibacy of Jesus, drawing on the Gospels’ portrayal of, and the Church’s unbroken teaching in, the divine identity of Christ and his mission as Savior of the world. The need for such a response is significant given the climate of contemporary culture in relation to sexuality and its questions about the identity of Jesus in relation to sexuality and marriage. The debate surrounding the papyrus fragment is only the most recent in a series of popular presentations of Jesus having a wife. In response to these claims, this article seeks to demonstrate the overwhelming theological evidence necessary to support the Church’s teaching on Jesus’ celibacy. It will draw upon Scripture, the Church’s magisterium, and the Catholic theological tradition, especially St. Thomas Aquinas and Bl. John Paul II, to demonstrate the incompatibility of marriage with the identity and mission of Christ. It will conclude by addressing the root of the question in contemporary culture, which uses the question of marriage precisely to question this identity and mission.

The Testimony of the Magisterium and Tradition

The first argument in favor of Jesus’ celibacy is the unanimous witness of the Church through the centuries. It is true that Scripture is silent on the topic of a wife of Jesus, at least directly, but the Church has not been silent. Unlike an historical document, or a fragment dug out of the past for that matter, the Church has a living and continuous voice and witness concerning Christ. While there are no major pronouncements from a Council or any great theological treatises concerning Jesus and marriage, Christians have always held to Jesus’ celibacy. One example of a treatment of the topic from the Fathers, however, can be found from writings of St. Ambrose: “Don’t you see that Christ is chastity, Christ is integrity?” 2 Even if the topic were not regularly addressed, the absence of official pronouncements and theological controversy is significant in its own right. The issue was simply not controversial, with Jesus’s celibacy being accepted by orthodox Christians unanimously.

The place where the celibacy of Jesus is explicit in Christian thought is in the Church’s pronouncements on priestly celibacy.

Continue reading at www.HPRweb.com.

St. John the Baptist, Forerunner

St. John the Baptist, Forerunner | Frank Sheed | From To Know Christ Jesus | Ignatius Insight

All four evangelists begin Jesus' entry into public life with John the Baptist's emergence from his desert. Matthew leaps straight to John's mission after the return of the Holy Family from Egypt, Luke after the finding of the boy in the Temple. The other two actually begin their Gospel with it, nothing of our Lord's earthly life being told before, apart from John's "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us."

It is clear, then, that John the Baptist's mission was essential: Jesus' own mission needed it. In his Gospel, St. John interrupts his breathtaking Prologue about the Incarnation of the Word (which we Catholics read as the Last Gospel at Mass) to say: "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to give testimony of the light, that all men might believe through him." So that the Light of the World, the Light which of all lights could surely not be hid, needed someone to give testimony to him, needed John to give testimony to him!

Little is said in the New Testament to show why John's work was thus essential. Our Lord praises him indeed: "Amongst those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist" (Luke vii.28): and he was not lavish of praise; pause a moment and try to think of anyone else he praised. But although Jesus says (you will find it in the verse before) that John was to prepare his way, it is hard to find any hint from him as to why any preparation at all was necessary for a mission as powerful in word and as studded with miracles as his. We are not shown in the Gospels mighty things flowing from John's work into Christ's. And in the rest of the New Testament nothing much is made of St. John's mission either. St. Paul never refers to it at all, though he must have known about it, since the only description we have of John's origin is given by Paul's companion and disciple, Luke.

Thanks to Luke, all the same, the Church has been intensely aware of John ever since. He is one of that small and immeasurably select band to whom we say the Confiteor at every Mass and daily in our own prayers. Great saints have been named after him—St. John Baptist de la Salle, for instance, who founded the Brothers of the Christian Schools in the seventeenth century; St. John Baptist de Rossi, the eighteenth-century saint whose own instincts were rather like those of his namesake; in the nineteenth century the Cure of Ars, Jean-Marie-Baptiste Vianaey, who would have loved a desert but was never allowed by God to go to one. The number of not spectacularly saintiy persons. who bear his name is, of course, beyond counting—the great French writer of comedy, Moliere, for instance, was Jean-Baptiste Poquelin.

But all that this means is that the parents of the saints, to say nothing of the parents of the dramatist and of the unnumbered others, had a great devotion to the son of Zachary and Elizabeth, not that they had any clear understanding of why it was essential that Our Lord should have him for a Forerunner, or why be should have anybody for a Forerunner. What herald could he possibly need? Their devotion was almost certainly not to the prophet without whom Christ's mission would have lacked an essential element: it was to the child whose birth had been foretold by Gabriel, the child who had leapt in his mother's womb at the sound of Mary's voice as she entered the house of his parents with the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity in her womb: it was to the man who had paid with his head for telling the truth about Salome's mother.

Pius XII: Hated or Revered by the Third Reich?

Pius XII: Hated or Revered by the Third Reich? | Alberto Carosa | CWR

An interview with historian Pier Luigi Guiducci about his new book on the war-time pope.

The unprecedented abdication of Benedict XVI and the election of his successor, Pope Francis, has rekindled worldwide interest in the popes and the papacy. This interest has extended not only to Benedict and Francis, but also to other pontiffs, including the always-controversial Pius XII.

Pius XII is currently in the spotlight mostly because of the bumpy road to his beatification, which is opposed by those who accuse him of having been too lenient towards Hitler’s Third Reich or even of having been in cahoots with the Nazi regime. Recent years have seen the publication of a vast amount of scholarly works refuting these accusations, including books by Sister Margherita Marchione, who is an American nun and member of the Religious Teachers Order Maestre Pie Filippini, and Rabbi David Dalin.

The latest example of this is Il Terzo Reich Contro Pio XII: Papa Pacelli Nei Documenti Nazisti (The Third Reich Against Pius XII: Pope Pacelli in Nazi Documents), by Italian historian Pier Luigi Guiducci, with a preface by Father Peter Gumpel, SJ, the postulator of Pius XII’s beatification cause. Editions in English, Spanish, and French are already in preparation.

Professor Guiducci, who teaches Church history at three universities, including the Pontifical Lateran University’s Ecclesia Mater Institute and the Pontifical Salesian University, has authored nearly 100 books, most with a historical-religious focus, and was so kind as to accede our request for an interview.

Professor Guiducci, could you describe the motives underlying your decision to address such a controversial topic as Pius XII and the Nazis?

Guiducci: Since the Sixties a certain literature has insisted on presenting the figure of Pope Pacelli in a negative connotation, hinting at an alleged passivity on his part during the years of World War II, bordering on some sort of sympathy for a Germany that in those years was dominated by the swastika. What appeared somewhat unclear from the viewpoint of a historical analysis was why so much fuss was being made over Pius XII while…many other, no less dramatic, and even more tragic situations were hardly exposed, scantily reported, and even thoroughly silenced. But by now, dreadful realities, which were neglected and/or sidelined, are increasingly cropping up, thanks to historical studies, investigative reporting, and new in-depth researches. 

Can you give us some examples of these wilfully hidden or neglected tragic realities of that era?

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Rallying for Religious Freedom under the Shadow of Planned Parenthood

Rallying for Religious Freedom under the Shadow of Planned Parenthood | Arland K. Nichols | HPR

  Our Founding Fathers understood that when the state oversteps its boundaries—offending its very charge and offending the rights of the people—we must stand up.

From a keynote address given at the 2012 Rally for Religious Liberty in Houston, Texas.

We stand today in a shadow cast by this massive Planned Parenthood facility, which was designed to extinguish innocent human life when it is most vulnerable. We tremble, perhaps with anger, frustration, sadness, or even fear, as religious liberty, granted by God, protected by our Bill of Rights, teeters at the edge of the cliff. We stand here, at the brink, fearful that if our religious freedom goes over that edge, our country—and all that we cherish about it—goes right along with it.

So we stand as Catholics, yes. But we also stand as men and women from every faith background you can imagine. As we join thousands of people of good will, scattered across this nation we love, we recognize that we fight for a core human truth—we should never coerce a people to commit an act that is contrary to their deeply held religious beliefs. The state, if it is to be just, is never to impose its will over and against the inalienable rights of its citizens.

Our Founding Fathers understood that when the state oversteps its boundaries—offending its very charge and offending the rights of the people—we must stand up. We must remind that state, in the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln, that it is a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” We hope that if we stand up in this moment, in this moment of great need, this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. That is our hope. The stakes are high. The losses have already been great. But we will not sit it out when our nation needs us most, when our fellow citizens need us most.

It was President John F. Kennedy who said, “I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish … where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.” Though many would understandably disagree with much of President Kennedy’s approach toward his faith, these words ring loud and true.

Continue reading on the HPR site.

A “Laboratory of Ecumenism”: Cardinal Koch Visits Ukraine

A “Laboratory of Ecumenism”: Cardinal Koch Visits Ukraine | Michael J. Miller | CWR

Ecumenical trip marked by candor and optimism

The president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Cardinal Kurt Koch, visited Ukraine from June 5 to 12, 2013.  Upon his arrival the curial official was welcomed at Borispol Airport by the primate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), His Beatitude Sviatoslav (Shevchuk), and by Archbishop Thomas Edward Gullickson, apostolic nuncio for Ukraine.  Since it was the first journey of the honored guest to Ukraine, his chief purpose was to meet with the Greek, Latin, and Armenian Catholic communities and their respective leaders in a country that Bl. John Paul II had called “a laboratory of ecumenism” during his pastoral visit in June 2001.  Cardinal Koch spent two days in Kyiv, the capital, then traveled on Saturday to Lviv in Galicia (Western Ukraine), a Catholic stronghold, and finally on Monday to Uzhorod and Mukachevo, near the border with Slovakia and Hungary.

Cardinal Koch is also the co-chairman of the Mixed Commission for Theological Dialogue between Catholic and Orthodox Churches.  In that capacity he held talks, during his visit, with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church leader, Metropolitan Volodymyr, of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC MP), and other representatives of that Church.  He also learned about the inter-confessional fellowship that takes place within the framework of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations, and about the work of Institute of Ecumenical Studies at the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) in Lviv. 

Past documents of the official Catholic-Orthodox ecumenical dialogue have typically ignored or papered over crucial differences in how the two sides understand Church and authority.  The keynote of Cardinal Koch’s visit, however, was a refreshing candor on the part of the Catholic speakers.  On June 10, in a lecture at Ukrainian Catholic University, he explained that: 

Continue reading on the CWR site.

The Most Popular Moral Heresy in the World

The Most Popular Moral Heresy in the World | Mark P. Shea | CWR

Consequentialism and why we can’t do evil so that good may come of it.

In the previous two pieces in this space, we have looked at two fallacies: the ad hominem and the genetic fallacy.  Both fallacies are, like all fallacies, bad ways of trying to achieve good ends.  For arriving at Truth is, of course, a very good end, but fallacies are poor ways to get there.  To be sure, sometimes even fallacious arguers can occasionally arrive at truth despite their bad arguments.  So, for instance, it may be that the guy I claim is too ugly to understand science is also factually wrong about the earth being 6,000 years old.  It could be that the member of the McCoy clan whose every utterance I and my fellow Hatfields reflexively reject is, in fact, wrong about the infield fly rule.  But the fact remains that I arrived at a true conclusion despite, not because of, my ad hominem or genetic fallacy.  It was a matter of dumb luck, like throwing my racket and scoring a point in tennis.  If I learn from this experience, “Throw my racket more” and not, “Learn to play tennis better” I may get lucky now and then, but the (pardon the pun) net result will be that I become a terrible tennis player. 

Likewise, if you stick with fallacious reasoning, you may now and then reach a good end by accident, but the overall result will be that you will not reach the end you seek, but something evil.  It may be an intellectual evil such as wilful stupidity or it may be a moral evil such as talking yourself into knocking over a Qwiki Mart in the name of economic justice.  Very often, it will be both.  But it will not ultimately be anything good because good ends do not justify evil means.

The notion that good ends do justify evil means—also known as “consequentialism”—is probably the most popular moral heresy in the world.  We all believe it to some degree or other. You could argue, in fact, that it’s practically the definition of sin.  It’s what Adam and Eve attempted when they sought the good end of “wisdom” by the evil means of disobeying God.  It’s what everybody tries every time we sin.  And we do it because we all want something good: we all want happiness.

Everybody?  Even…Hitler?

Yeah.  Everybody.  Every sin is committed in pursuit of something good.  Power, money, health, peace, security, comfort, sex, love, honor: all these things are good in themselves. It’s only when we try to get them by disordered means that evil comes into the picture.  And in fact, the nobler the goal you seek, the greater the temptation can be to do something monstrous to get it.  So in Hitler’s case, he thought he could get happiness through a renewed and powerful Germany and he thought he could get that via race war and mass murder.  World War II and the Holocaust were caused, as all evil is caused, by people looking for happiness in radically wrong ways.

At this point, the cry will often go up, “Stop humanizing Hitler!”  That cry against humanizing a human is telling: Why on earth is it offensive to point out that Hitler was, in fact, a member of the same species we are and subject to the same desires we are?

Answer: because we want to believe that Bad People are motivated by pure evil while we are motivated by basic goodness. 

So the interior narrative goes something like this:

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Thirsting, Seeing, and Believing

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, June 23, 2013 | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• Zec 12:10-11; 13:1
• Ps 63:2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9
• Gal 3:26-29
• Lk 9:18-24

St. John of the Cross (1542-1591) produced several profound works of mystical theology, filled with powerful descriptions of the soul being purified by God’s burning love. Writing in his Spiritual Canticle of this work of sanctification, he stated, “The very substance of soul and body seems to be dried up by thirst after this living well of God, for the thirst resembles that of David when he cried out, ‘As the hart longs for the fountains of waters, so my soul longs for You, O God.’”

Thirsting after God—what John often called “the thirst of love”—is described many times in the Psalms and in the writings of mystics. It can rightly be said that David the Psalmist was a mystic, just as St. John was a poet of the highest order. Both the poet and the mystic seek to reveal the deepest recesses of the soul and express their longing for the transcendent. “My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God,” David cries out in today’s responsorial Psalm, “O God, you are my God whom I seek; for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water.”

The prophets also expressed this desire for God, usually focused on the people of God as a whole. The prophets Zechariah and Haggai were the first prophets of the post-exilic period, writing in the sixth century B.C., following the Babylonian captivity (c. 597-538 B.C.). They were the “prophets of a new beginning,” wrote Fr. Eugene H. Maly in Prophets of Salvation (Herder and Herder, 1967), “Both were concerned with the rebuilding of the temple.” And both saw a coming time when God would “bring history to its appointed climax.”

This would be accomplished, we hear in today’s reading from Zechariah, when “a spirit of grace and petition” was poured out on those in Jerusalem. This would involve mourning and grief on the part of those who had “pierced” the Messiah, a prophecy describing the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Yet there is hope, for there will be “a fountain to purify from sin and uncleanness”, a prophetic description of the sacrament of baptism.

That same sacrament, by which men are cleansed of original sin and made sons of God, is the focus of today’s epistle, from St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Those who have been baptized, Paul stated, are “children of God in Christ Jesus,” having been clothed with Christ—that is, putting on Christ and a new nature, divinized by the life of the Trinity (cf. Eph. 4:24; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1243, 1988). Adults baptized in the early Church donned white baptismal garments after receiving the sacrament; the first martyrs were described by John the Revelator as having “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb”. And those who enter into the throne room of God wearing the white robes “shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more” (Rev. 7:14-17). 

Today’s Gospel reading does not refer to thirsting, but there is certainly a connection to be made. The Evangelist Luke provides a pithy account of Jesus asking the disciples, “Who do the crowds say that I am”? (cf. Matt. 16:13-20). The answers vary, but are incorrect. “But who do you say that I am?” Peter gives the correct answer. The disciples, thirsting after truth, had given up everything to be with Jesus—and thus knew him far better than did the crowds. Yet they would still have to learn further that such thirst will only be satisfied by accepting Jesus for who he really is and what he really did, by embracing his call to take up the cross, and by being obedient unto death. 

But, then, baptism is death—and new, divine life. “The trials of this world,” wrote St. John of the Cross, “the rage of the devil, and the pains of hell are nothing to pass through, in order to plunge into this fathomless fountain of love.”

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the June 20, 2010, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

Lessons of the Past: A Review of "Lions of the Faith"

Lessons of the Past | William Kilpatrick | CWR

A review of Andrew Bieszad’s Lions of the Faith: Saints, Blessed, and Heroes of the Catholic Faith in the Struggle with Islam

Lions of the Faith chronicles the lives of saints, martyrs, and heroes who were caught up in the struggle between Islam and Christianity that commenced in the seventh century and continues to this day. The 800 martyrs of Otranto who were recently canonized by Pope Francis appear in these pages, as do the seven monks of Tibhirine, Algeria whose death at the hands of Islamic terrorists in 1996 is the subject of the 2010 film Of Gods and Men. The author also tells the story of many lesser-known saints, such as St. Casilda of Toledo, who was a Muslim but converted to the faith as a result of her contact with the Catholic prisoners for whom she secretly cared.  In addition to saints and martyrs, Lions of the Faith also provides brief accounts of the exploits of Catholic heroes such as Charles Martel, who turned back a Muslim army in the pivotal battle of Poitiers in 732, and King John III Sobieski, whose 1683 victory over the Turks at the Gates of Vienna initiated the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

Although most of the book is concerned with the first thousand years of struggle between Islam and Christianity, it is as contemporary as today’s news. As the author observes, nothing has really changed: the basic problems and differences between Christianity and Islam remain. Chief among these is the Islamic conviction that all other religions must be subjugated under Islam. Thus, as Bieszad notes, “The reality which the seventh-century Church faced is the same in the 21st century.”      

One of these realities—a reality that is still very much with us—is that Western Christians were rarely able to achieve unity in resisting Islamization. In fact, on numerous occasions Christian kingdoms allied themselves with the Muslim Ottoman Empire against other Christians. “Better a Turk than a Papist” was a popular slogan among Dutch Calvinists, and in their fight against Catholic Spain, Dutch sailors wore a crescent-shaped medal with that inscription.  

Throughout much of the 16th and 17th centuries, Catholics were fighting a two-front war—against Muslims in the south and east and against Protestants in the north. 

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Man of Steel and Cross of Wood

Man of Steel and Cross of Wood | Nick Olszyk | CWR

Man of Steel is the superhero movie Catholics were waiting for, and it was worth the wait.

MPAA Rating, PG-13
USCCB Rating, A-III (Adults)
Reel Rating,  (5 Reels out of 5)          

Among the great Christ figures of world literature, Superman is our country’s best such figure by, literally, leaps and bounds. And Man of Steel is his best depiction yet, a towering achievement of both entertainment excellence and theological inspiration. It demonstrates how to make a Christological story the right way, complete with a villain that is both disturbing and appropriate for our post-modern age.

It is the end of the world, for Krypton at least. This world is dying in exactly the same fashion as ours: overdependence on science, disrespect for the human person, and unrepentant pride. Krypton is a haunting view of the secular revolution brought to its climax. The scientist Jor-El has a secret hope that will save at least one of his people: he and his wife have a son, the first natural birth in hundreds of years. The villainous General Zod calls this an act of “heresy,” because on Krypton children are bred for specific, socially conditioned lives and harvested only for the good of the state.

Fortunately for Earth, Jor-El’s son makes it to our planet and is adopted by a loving family in Kansas, taking the name Clark Kent. His supernatural abilities of flight, strength, and x-ray vision come from alien DNA but his dignity, goodness, and sacrificial love from human parents. Aware of his uniqueness, he patiently waits for years, learning to be human and helping people quietly. His decision to reveal himself comes in a conversation with a Catholic priest, a scene that is beautifully reminiscent of the Baptism in the Jordan and the Wedding Feast of Cana.

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

When the State Replaces God

When the State Replaces God | CWR Staff | Catholic World Report

An interview with Benjamin Wiker, the author of Worshipping the State: How Liberalism Became Our State Religion

Benjamin Wiker is a senior fellow at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, a contributor to Catholic World Report, and the author of several books, including the recently published Worshipping the State: How Liberalism Became Our State Religion(Regnery, 2013). He spoke with CWR about his book.

CWR: Isn’t the title of your book hyperbolic and simply meant to stir up interest? Can it really be argued that anyone, at least in the United States, really worships the state? Whatever do you mean by that? 

Wiker: Well, it’s certainly meant to stir up interest! Do people in the US, especially from the Left, physically get down and bow before, say, the steps of the Supreme Court? No! But do they treat the state as a kind of substitute for God? Yes, very much so. Is there precedent in the history of liberalism for an actual worshipping of the state? Again, yes.

We first have to stand back and look at our current situation within a larger historical framework. Over the last two hundred years, self-consciously secular states have, quite literally, transferred worship from God to humanity itself, or more precisely, to the greatest concentration of human power, the state.

The French Revolution’s Religion of Reason was actually a worship of man himself, and the secular revolutionary state made up its own religion, so that the revolution itself and the revolutionary state became the object of actual religious devotion.

This same kind of movement—rejecting Christianity, only to idolize the secular state—occurred with various other political movements in the 19th and early 20th centuries: nationalism, communism, Fascism, and Nazism are the most obvious examples. For good reason, scholars have called these “political religions.”

Socialism was one more political religion, which quite literally understood itself as transferring the worship from God to humanity itself, or more exactly, to the socialist state that promised to give citizens in this life what Christianity had promised only in the next—a this-worldly utopia. Socialism was, therefore, essentially religious in its original conception, and it became the historical foundation of liberal progressivism in the United States.

So, yes, we are talking about actual worship of the state! But we can also see, even aside from this historical background, that the liberal state has taken upon itself the role of God, even while it busily evicts Christianity from the public square.

Let me offer one important example, President Obama’s HHS mandate, compelling all institutions, including Catholic institutions, to pay for contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization. That’s the liberal state saying, “Thou shalt participate in the liberal sexual revolution.” That’s the state defining good and evil.

The same thing is occurring with the Left’s use of the courts to impose the acceptance of gay marriage, or the state, with abortion and euthanasia, taking upon itself the authority to define what marriage is, what life is, and when death should be dealt. 

CWR: There are, as you note, many types of “liberalism.” What form of liberalism is your book about? And why do you write that “we cannot even understand liberalism until we understand some important things about Christianity”? What things?

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

 

"Terrapin" recommended as a "compelling mystery novel" and an "exceedingly complex tale"

Mary McWay Seaman reviews T. M. Doran's novel, Terrapin: A Mystery  (Ignatius Press, 2012) for New Oxford Review:

A careful reading of this compelling mystery novel uncovers bounteous symbolism and multiple cryptic allusionssurrounding a long-hidden crime and several adolescent indiscretions. That said, readers should steel themselves early on against urges to overanalyze events in this exceedingly complex tale. The temptation to “find” themes quickly or to identify culprits is tricky as T.M. Doran’s intricate thriller, Terrapin, braids common strands from four men’s pasts to underscore the point that no one emerges wholly unscathed from the vicissitudes of youthful villainy. The long-dormant villainy in this case explodes unexpectedly into the four perpetrators’ lives during their sports-weekend reunion in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Aficionados of suspense fiction will appreciate the book’s surreal plot, its brisk pace, and its snappy repartee.

And:

Doran’s prose proclaims that mortals drag their childhoods with them through life’s long fight, and that each generation inhabits its own culture within the same country. Be that as it may, the novel’s unimaginable ending demonstrates that fraudulent intellectual and moral gymnastics in any culture are no match for the ongoing, unmitigated ramifications of malice on perpetrators and victims alike, ramifications that play forward in ways seen and unseen, whether or not they are ever acknowledged.

Read the entire review on the NOR website.

For more about the novel, or to purchases it, visit the Ignatus Press site, or go to  the Terrapin book site to view a trailer, read excerpts, download a free short story, and learn more about Doran and his writing.

Last September, CWR interviewed Doran about his writing:

CWR: Who are some of the authors and thinkers who have influenced you the most?

Doran: As to literature, Evelyn Waugh, Flannery O'Connor, J.R.R. Tolkien, and T.S. Eliot, writers and poets who wrote from a Catholic perspective rather than writing explicitly Catholic novels. I read a variety of writers: Jane Austen, Dostoevsky, Patrick O'Brian, Thornton Wilder, Oscar Wilde, Dickens, Richard Adams, and I have learned something about the craft of writing from every one of them. I enjoy mystery stories, especially the golden age puzzle-plot stories from the 1920s through the 1940s. Some of my favorite mystery authors are G.K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, J.D. Carr (the locked room master), Rex Stout, and the early Ellery Queen mysteries that featured pure "ratiocination". I enjoy P.D. James, who is still writing.

I have been an avid reader of history and biography for decades, which helped immensely when I was composing Toward the Gleam

Thinkers who have influenced me include Blessed John Paul II (especially "Faith and Reason" and "The Splendor of the Truth"), Edith Stein (her journey from phenomenology to the convent), Kurt Goedel (his ideas about time and space), G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis and Frank Sheed (their accessible apologetics), Blaise Pascal (reason in the light of faith), William F. Buckley (conservatism based on first principles and natural law), and Augustine and Aquinas (a little at a time). I have a four-volume Encyclopedia of Philosophy on my bookshelf, to which I refer quite often. I've always had a fascination with competing ideas.

Read the entire interview.