Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog

New: "The Christian Meaning of Human Sexuality (Expanded Edition)" by Fr. Paul Quay S.J.

Now available from Ignatius Press:

The Christian Meaning of Human Sexuality (Expanded Edition)

by Fr. Paul Quay S.J.

Edited and with an Introduction by Joseph Koterski, S.J.

An updated and expanded edition of a classic work on the Christian meaning of human sexuality by an acclaimed teacher and priest. The unique gift of human sexuality allows us to choose, or not to choose, to participate in one form of God's creation. This book presents the understanding of human sexuality that divine revelation offers us. It is intended primarily for Christian adults who wish to know what kinds of sexual behavior are right or wrong, and to gain true insight into why such behavior is right or wrong for those who seek to love and live in Christ. For sexual morality is part of the mystery of our life in Christ and makes full sense only when seen as such.

Understanding of this Christian mystery, as far as we are given access to it, is offered us through the Scriptures and the living Tradition of the Church. This book uses Scripture and the teaching of the early Church Fathers to show what sexuality means in Christian terms, and is an indispensable guide to learning not just what the Church teaches, but why. Quay's insightful descriptions of the complementarity of male and female, a complementarity that is psychological, spiritual and bodily are exceptionally illuminating.

It also explains the Bible's frequent use of the symbolism of marriage and sexuality in its accounts of the Covenant to understand better the relationship between God and his people, and the relationship of spouses to one another. It reflects on the natural symbolism of the human body and of spousal communion as a way to understand what is right and proper in sexual activity, and what is not. The new material in this expanded edition considers the theology of natural family planning (NFP). It explains the moral principles that govern the use of NFP and also provides a theological reflection on the meaning of this practice.

Paul Quay, S.J ., Ph.D., was a longtime Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University of Chicago and the author of numerous articles for Catholic periodicals.

"A superb book that is intelligent, realistic and grounded in a profound faith in the truths about human persons and human sexuality set forth in divine revelation."
— William E. May, Ph.D., Professor of Moral Theology, Catholic University of America

New, updated editions of classic works by mystic Adrienne von Speyr now available

 San Francisco, May 3, 2017 – Ignatius Press has long published the writings of Adrienne von Speyr, a contemporary Swiss convert, mystic, wife, medical doctor, and prolific spiritual writer, who was under the spiritual direction of renowned theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. Now three books have been released as new editions, each updated with a new Foreword, bringing renewed attention to her insightful life and work.
 
First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr
 
This second edition of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s book on Adrienne von Speyr is his personal introduction to the mystic, First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr, whose message and mission he believed to be vitally important for the Church. Von Balthasar was the spiritual director of von Speyr for almost thirty years as she progressed in the life of grace. She helped him to found the Community of Saint John, an international secular institute, and she wrote more than sixty books on various topics, including prayer, Scripture, sacraments, and saints, which continue to bear fruit for those seeking to deepen their understanding of Catholic spirituality and theology.
 
This book contains three main sections. The first includes a short account of Adrienne’s life, which describes her childhood, conversion, and mission; an analysis of her most important theological concerns; and an overview of her published and unpublished works.  The second is a collection of enlightening statements that Adrienne made about herself, which illuminate both her exterior and interior life. The third section contains prayers that she herself wrote, which best reveal her spirit.
 
Hans Urs von Balthasar writes, “On the whole I received far more from Adrienne, theologically, than she from me. As her confessor and spiritual director, I observed her interior life most closely, yet in twenty-seven years I never had the least doubt about the authentic mission that was hers. Her work appears far more important to me than mine. I am convinced that when her works are made available, those who are in a position to judge will concur with me about their value and will thank God that he has granted such graces to the Church in our time.”

Adrian Walker, Ph.D., Professor of Theology at the John Paul II Institute and author of the Foreword of this new edition, says, “Von Speyr was one of the great Catholic converts of the twentieth century. Her great passion was what might be called ‘the thirst for catholicity’ — the unreserved, joyful adherence to all the teachings of the Church and the attitude of total surrender to the Truth.”
 
“The abundant harvest of graces hidden in this theological mission for our times still waits to be more fully carried into the storehouses of the Church for whom Adrienne von Speyr was sent. Now, however, a century after her birth, there are many signs to indicate that the moment of her ‘reawakening’ is at hand!” says Jacques Servais, S.J., Director of the Casa Balthasar in Rome.
 
Confession
 
In this second edition of her profound book on confession, which Hans Urs von Balthasar calls “one of her most central works”, Adrienne von Speyr discusses the moral and practical aspects of this sacrament in great depth. The most complete spiritual treatise on confession ever written, the book covers conversion, scruples, contrition, spiritual direction, laxity, frequency of confession, confessions of religious and lay people, and even confessions of saints.
 
The most intriguing element in von Speyr’s understanding of confession, fully developed in this volume, is its trinitarian and christological basis. The Cross is the archetypal confession, and Christian sacramental confession is thus an imitation of Christ in the strict sense. Confession examines the enormous fruitfulness of this dogmatic basis from many perspectives, giving a wealth of suggestions that both the theological expert and the layman will find very helpful. Its practical applicability to one’s own confession emerges from every page.
 
Fr. John Riccardo, the author of the Foreword, writes, “Few writers have impacted me like von Speyr has. I use Confession every year in RCIA to teach on this great gift that Jesus left to the Church on the day He rose from the dead. Whether you are a frequent celebrant of this Sacrament or, like I once was, have been away for many years, I pray that this book will profoundly change your life.”
 
Handmaid of the Lord
 
In this profound book on the mystery of Mary, Adrienne von Speyr reflects on the life, attitude, and prayer of the Mother of God. She shows how Mary’s assent to God’s will—her Fiat: “Let it be done to me according to thy word” — is what defines and sanctifies every aspect of her life. She gives new insights into Mary’s holiness, suffering, prayer, and role of spiritual motherhood for all mankind.
 
Handmaid of the Lord is not a biography detailing the daily life of the Mother of Jesus, filled with the sights and the sounds found in the holy imagination of a saintly visionary. Rather, it responds to our desire to know Mary in a penetrating and personal way, opening us to the mystery of her inner life, which can be revealed only by the Word himself and pondered in the heart, just as Our Lady herself did.
 
Humility, obedience, availability, joy, suffering, and transparency before God are some of the key spiritual attributes of Our Lady found in this timeless work. As with her other books, von Speyr helps us to savor and to appreciate each word of Sacred Scripture as self-revelation from the Father through the heart of the Church, the Bride of the Son, in a loving exchange of the Spirit. In this way, the Word may be absorbed into the very core of our being, as it was for Mary, the Mother of God.
 
Kris McGregor, founder of Discerning Hearts, writes in the Foreword, “This work offers a doorway into the heart of one of Christianity’s greatest mysteries - the mystery of Mary - and there is no better spiritual guide through that door than Adrienne von Speyr. She is a grand spiritual master of the practice of Lectio Divina and a beneficiary of its fruits. Handmaid of the Lord is Lectio Divina par excellence. It reveals the sheer beauty of Marian contemplation like no masterpiece of temporal art or music ever could; hence its status as a spiritual classic.”
 
About Adrienne von Speyr
 
Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967) was a Swiss medical doctor, a convert to Catholicism, a mystic, and an author of more than sixty books on spirituality and theology. She collaborated closely with theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, her confessor for twenty-seven years, and together they founded  the Community of Saint John. Her numerous books, published by Ignatius Press, are a major contribution to the wisdom of the Church. Among her most important works are Book of All Saints, Confession, The World of Prayer, Handmaid of the Lord, and The Passion from Within.
 
Kris McGregor, the author of the Foreword of Handmaid of the Lord, is available for interviews about these three books. To request review copies or an interview with Kris McGregor, please contact: Rose Trabbic, Publicist, Ignatius Press at (239) 867-4180 or [email protected]
 
Kris McGregor is the Founder/Executive Director of Discerning Hearts, a non-profit broadcast media apostolate dedicated to evangelization and spiritual formation. She has produced/hosted a wide range of series programs under the banner “Discerning Hearts presents”, as well as hosted “Inside the Pages”, interviewing hundreds of today’s leading Catholic authors and spiritual leaders. Her programs are prominently featured on the Spirit Catholic Radio Network line-up and on DiscerningHearts.com. In the past, she has served as a Director of Religious Education, Director of Liturgy, and Director of Pastoral Ministry in parishes located in the Archdiocese of Omaha.  Kris and her husband of 34 years, Bruce, are Benedictine Oblates and parents of 3 children.  
 
Product Facts:
                                                                                        
Title: First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr
Author: Hans Urs von Balthasar
Release Date: May 2017                                                                
Length: 228 Pages
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-162164-180-3
                                               
Title: Confession
Author: Adrienne von Speyr
Release Date: May 2017                                                                 
Length: 295 Pages
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-1-62164-182-7
                       
Title: Handmaid of the Lord
Author: Adrienne von Speyr
Release Date: May 2017      
Length: 203 Pages
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-1-62164-181-0
 
To Order: 1-800-651-1531 or www.ignatius.com

New: "That Nothing May Be Lost" by Rev. Paul D. Scalia

Now available from Ignatius Press:

That Nothing May Be Lost: Reflections on Catholic Doctrine and Devotion

by Rev. Paul D. Scalia

Fr. Paul Scalia reveals a scholar's mind and a pastor's heart in these inspiring reflections on a wide range of Catholic teachings and practices. Rooted in Scripture, these insights place the reader on a path to a deeper, more meaningful relationship with God.

Among the topics explored are deepening one's knowledge of Jesus, partaking of the life of grace through the sacraments, and cultivating the art of prayer as a continuous conversation with God.

Each section is introduced by a moving essay by a highly regarded Catholic. Fr. Paul Check, Jim Towey, Scott Hahn, Mary Ellen Bork, Gloria Purvis, Raymond Arroyo, Lizz Lovett, Helen Alvaré, and Dan Mattson offer their personal accounts of being Catholic, which are followed by Fr. Scalia's illuminations. Archbishop Charles Chaput contributes a thought- provoking foreword, which begins the reader's exploration of the many important aspects of the Catholic faith presented in this book.

Fr. Paul Scalia, a native of Virginia, studied theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome. Ordained in 1996, Fr. Scalia was appointed the Bishop's Delegate for Clergy in 2012. He has written for various publications and has served as a frequent contributor to the Arlington Catholic Herald and Encourage and Teach, the diocesan blog.

"Fr. Scalia has written a book that deepens our faith and leads us closer to God in a hundred different ways."
— Most Reverend Charles Chaput, Archbishop of Philadelphia, from the Foreword

"Fr. Scalia has a unique gift of taking stories from Scripture that we've heard many times and casting them into a whole new light. In this book he opens up Catholic teaching in fresh and sometimes surprising directions that will change the way you think about your faith."
— Carrie Gress, Author, Nudging Conversations

"It is the great joy of a priest to see the two people he loves most, the Lord Jesus and whichever person he is caring for at that moment, in each other's arms. It is my hope that the many reflections Fr. Scalia offers us in these pages will bring us all into the arms of the only One who can ultimately satisfy."
— Fr. John Riccardo, Author, Heaven Starts Now

"Sacraments are symbols that convey the reality they signify. All other signs remain distinct from the things they signify. Only sacraments bring about what they signify. Sacramental signs convey the sacred reality itself. There can be no more perfect communication than this. Only God could express Himself in this way."
— Scott Hahn, from the Introduction to Chapter IV, The Sacraments

"One of the blessings of being a Catholic is discovering we are part of a large extended family of holy people. Their stories cover many centuries and diverse cultures, and knowing them, we come to a better understanding of Christ, the One they loved and followed."
— Mary Ellen Bork, from the Introduction to Chapter VI, The Saints

"As I read my friend Fr. Paul's moving and rich reflections on various feast days, an image from my childhood returned. It is of a Corpus Christi procession through the French Quarter around St. Louis Cathedral. Once again that eternal clash of the sacred and the profane that the rest of the world tries to ignore or deny is made manifest. This is what feast days are all about: dedicated times for us to stop and experience the deeper spiritual reality beyond the blur of our chaotic lives."
— Raymond Arroyo, from the Introduction to Chapter IX, Feasts: The Pattern and Rhythm of the Christian Life

New: "Saint Mary Magdalene: Prophetess of Eucharistic Love" by Fr. Sean Davidson

Now available from Ignatius Press:

Saint Mary Magdalene Prophetess of Eucharistic Love

by Fr. Sean Davidson

Adoration is love, and eucharistic adoration is love of Christ present in the Blessed Sacrament. In the Gospels there are few people who understand love for Jesus as well as Mary Magdalene, which is the reason she is a prophetess of eucharistic love.

This work is an extended meditation on the life of Saint Mary Magdalene, known as the "Apostle to the Apostles" because the Risen Christ appeared to her first and then sent her to announce the Resurrection to the apostles. Based on the biblical texts traditionally associated with Mary Magdalene, this book helps readers to learn from her inspiring example and to enter more deeply into adoration of Jesus Christ truly present in the Blessed Sacrament.

In telling the story of Mary Magdalene's profound conversion after the Lord had to expel seven demons from her soul, this book shows how she is a shining witness to the transforming power of an encounter with Jesus Christ. Mary Magdalene is the perfect model for those who have experienced the redeeming love of Christ and who seek to deepen their devotion to him and to the Eucharist.

Father Sean Davidson is a member of the Missionaries of the Most Holy Eucharist.  He spent two years serving at the magnificent Basilica of Saint Mar y Magdalene in Provence, France, where he received the inspiration for this work. He is currently serving at the Eucharistic Retreat Center in the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception, Long Island.

"Saint Mary Magdalene reminds us of the need to recover the primacy of God and the primacy of adoration in the life of the Church and in the liturgical celebration."
— Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, Author, God or Nothing: A Conversation on Faith

"Saint Mary Magdalene has finally been given her deserved praise and understanding. Her amazing story of renewed life, restored love and relentless devotion to Christ as Savior is deeply inspiring!"
— Mother Dolores Hart, O.S.B., Author, The Ear of the Heart: An Actress’ Journey from Hollywood to Holy Vows

"This bracing immersion into the life, heart and soul of one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented of saints, is rooted in Scripture, history, and deep contemplation. It calls us to emulate Magdalene's 'holy recklessness' and her radical adoration of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament."
— Carl Olson, Author, Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?

"Those longing to sit quietly 'at his feet' in times of eucharistic adoration will find Saint Mary Magdalene already there, with her tears, her ointment, her devoted love  and her deep attentiveness to his hidden presence. This thoughtful exploration of Magdalene's life and her gifts of contrition, gratitude and adoration will inspire all who long to dwell quietly in his presence in the company of the saints."
— Dan Guernsey, Author, Adoration: Eucharistic Texts and Prayers throughout Church History

"Drawing from Scripture and scholarship, Father Davidson paints a soul-stirring portrait of the 'Apostle to the Apostles' that speaks directly to the heart of the reader. Filled with remarkable insights, this is a highly engaging and deeply moving look at how the encounter with Christ can truly change your life."
— Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers, Author, Behold the Man: A Catholic Vision of Male Spirituality

"The life of Saint Magdalene bears witness to the infinite mercy of Christ, and our world stands in great need of an outpouring of divine mercy today. This work goes to the heart of the identity of this holy woman who was above all an ardent adorer in spirit and in truth. May her example enkindle a new fire of love for Christ in our hearts."
— Father Florian Racine, Rector of the Basilica of Saint Mary Magdalene, France, Author, Could You Not Watch with Me One Hour?

Practical, 40-Day guide offers plan to detach from today’s toxic dating culture

San Francisco, January 23, 2017 – Many young adults are tired of today’s toxic dating culture, and want something better than what the world is offering them. Once they hear the message of chastity, they desire it – but without a concrete plan, they quickly fall back into old habits. Now a new book, Dating Detox: 40 Days of Perfecting Love in an Imperfect World by husband and wife team Kevin and Lisa Cotter, helps them to formulate a concrete plan so that they can gain the freedom to love and be loved. Featuring daily chapters filled with stories, teachings, and resolutions, this forty-day detox provides a practical “cleanse” for those who want to purify themselves from the poisoned dating culture and live a life of authentic freedom.
 
Dating Detox offers compelling and clear explanations of God’s plans for love, dating, and sex and hopeful, true-life stories of people who have successfully moved from desiring chastity to actually living it. Each chapter features practical tools, habits, and strategies to live more virtuously with joy and freedom.
 
Jason and Crystalina Evert write in Foreword of Dating Detox, “If we want love, why do we often settle for less?” Reading and following the Dating Detox will help anyone searching for authentic love and give them the tools they need to find it.
 
Kevin Cotter says, “Lisa and I grew tired of hearing from youth and young adults who were held back from a real relationship with Christ because of their struggle to lead a chaste life. We wanted to offer them a practical tool that would help them make a lasting change.”
 
Lisa Cotter adds, “Dating Detox is not a fluffy book; it’s real life and at times it’s quite raw. Rather than preach at the reader, our hope was to walk alongside them as they journey through the detox.”
 
Matt Fradd, the founder of The Porn Effect, says, “Battling for purity is tough, but the Cotters’ book makes it a whole lot easier. A must read for anyone who desires authentic relationships!”

“Everyone has experienced brokenness in relationships at one time or another, and it can be hard to put the pieces back together. Through healing, forgiveness, and personal stories, this book will help you find the love you have been searching for,” says Sarah Swafford, the author of Emotional Virtue: A Guide to Drama-Free Relationships.
 
“Dating Detox will be a real asset to all those who have tried to change their lives but have found themselves unable. The practical advice Lisa and Kevin offer is a gift to anyone who has wondered if following Jesus is really possible as a modern-day young adult,” says Fr. Mike Schmitz, chaplain at University of Minnesota-Duluth.
 
Edward Sri, the author of Men, Women, and the Mystery of Love, explains, “In a simple forty-day plan, Lisa and Kevin Cotter help you form the habits you need to change the way you approach your romantic relationships. Discover how the real love you long for is possible ... but only in following God’s plan.”

About the Authors:
Kevin and Lisa Cotter have worked with university students for over a decade as a missionary family with FOCUS (the Fellowship of Catholic University Students). Lisa is the founder of Made to Magnify (madetomagnify.com), and speaks to young adults on living life with excellence. She has been featured on numerous video series including Beloved, Forgiven, and YDisciple’s True Beauty. Kevin holds an MA in Sacred Scripture and is the Sr. Director of Curriculum for FOCUS. He has authored three books on Pope Francis and numerous FOCUS resources. Lisa and Kevin reside in Denver, Colorado, with their three children.

The Pastoral and Moral Crises That Lie Ahead

(Image: us.fotolia.com/eugenesergeev)

The Pastoral and Moral Crises That Lie Ahead | Fr. Mark Pilon | CWR

What we are witnessing today, following the publication of "Amoris Laetitia", is a radical adoption of the absolutizing principle of subjective judgments of conscience and private interpretation of all moral norms.

There has been a moral and pastoral crisis for the last half century in the Church, but I honestly think we haven’t yet seen anything like what might lie ahead. The 4 Cardinals—I like to call them "The Four Just Men" (coined by the prolfiic Edgar Wallace a century ago)—have nailed the roots of this threat in their five questions related to the apparent undermining of Church doctrine on intrinsically evil acts and the objective formation of conscience in Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia (AL). In fact, we are already seeing the very divisive effects of this document’s confusion.

For instance, we are witnessing the very different implementations of AL in different local Churches. Some continue to follow the traditional pastoral practice of the Church which denies Holy Communion to couples living as husband and wife in invalid second unions following divorce. Others call for a case by case resolution where the Catholics involved are encouraged to decide whether this second [adulterous] union is God’s will for them and whether they are allowed to receive Communion.  Thus one American bishop has now encouraged divorced and remarried Catholics to “utilize the internal forum of conscience” in making their decision as to whether they should receive Communion or refrain. In other words, private conscience now trumps the canon law of the Church and the moral law of God.

Another division arises when an American bishop, now a Cardinal, openly criticizes an American Archbishop’s directives regarding Communion for the divorced and remarried as being out of step with the Church. Then there was the unseemly attack of the Dean of the Roman Rota, bitterly criticizing the 4 Cardinals for their supposed betrayal of their office, which evidently requires that they never asks clarification from a pope, never mind question the actions of a pope. 

Following that divisive incident, an Australian Archbishop demeaned the 4 Cardinals by asserting thatthey are seeking a “false clarity that comes because you don’t address reality.” He went on to say that during the Synod he himself “heard voices that sounded very clear and certain but only because they never grappled with the real question or never dealt with the real facts.”

So much for the intelligence, integrity and pastoral experience of 4 distinguished Cardinals and their supporters! 

In another part of the world, an Archbishop in Ireland joined the chorus of criticism with this bit of ecclesial wisdom:

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

The Four Cardinals and the Encyclical in the Room

Top left: Cardinal Raymond Burke; bottom left: Cardinal Carlo Caffarra; top right: Cardinal Walter Brandmüller; bottom right: Cardinal Joachim Meisner; middle: St. John Paul II and "Veritatis Splendor" (Images: CNS and Wikipedia)

The Four Cardinals and the Encyclical in the Room | Carl E. Olson | Catholic World Report

The essential questions remain what they have always been: "what is freedom and what is its relationship to the truth contained in God's law? what is the role of conscience in man's moral development?"

How to make sense of the current situation? There is no single answer, for the ongoing saga—encompassing Synods and stratagems, debates and dubia, Exhortations and excoriations, posturings and pontifications—is about a wide range of questions. Some of them are obvious and capture the headlines, especially: does Pope Francis want to allow those Catholics who have been divorced and civilly remarried access to Holy Communion, even while they continue to live as though married?

But beneath that question are other, very fundamental questions often not voiced or discussed. In the words of one pastor:

What is good and what is sin? What origin and purpose do sufferings have? What is the way to attaining true happiness? What are death, judgment and retribution after death? Lastly, what is that final, unutterable mystery which embraces our lives and from which we take our origin and towards which we tend? ... These and other questions, such as: what is freedom and what is its relationship to the truth contained in God's law? what is the role of conscience in man's moral development? how do we determine, in accordance with the truth about the good, the specific rights and duties of the human person?

That pastor was St. John Paul II, and he posed those questions in Veritatis Splendor (par 30), his great encyclical on the Church's moral theology, released in 1993. While mindful, again, of the many issues involved, I am increasingly convinced that Veritatis Splendor, nearly a quarter century old now, is the elepha—er, encyclical in the living room. Of course, it does not stand alone, since John Paul II spoke often and wrote in detail about mercy, marriage, freedom, conscience, and a host of related matters over the course of his lengthy pontificate. In fact, every single issue relating to family, marriage, divorce, Holy Communion, culpability, subjective experience, and objective truth that Pope Francis has sought to address, analyze, explore, and grapple with since he announced the Extraordinary Synod of 2014 had already been addressed, analyzed, explored, and grappled with by John Paul II in the 1980s and 1990s.

Which is not to say that these pressing and often complicated matters should not be raised again or discussed further. Of course not. Rather, it is to wonder at how little attention has been paid in recent years to what John Paul II said and wrote over the course of his long and brilliant pontificate about family, marriage, divorce, Holy Communion, and all the rest. 

The 2014 Extraordinary Synod and the 2015 Ordinary Synod were held in order to address, as the USCCB site states, "topics related to the family and evangelization." This was followed by the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, which is (at nearly 60,000 words) the longest official papal text in history. What has been the result of all of this time, labor, discussion, and ink? Judging by events of recent weeks and months, it has been much discord, confusion, and frustration, quite a bit of it revolving around that one question: "Are divorced and civilly remarried Catholics now able to receive Holy Communion?" Prior to the current pontificate the answer was "No", as it was understood—if not always accepted or practiced—that those Catholics who had entered into a second "marriage" without addressing the validity or nullity of their first marriage were, in fact, committing adultery.

Now, in short, that clear answer has been called into question, since Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia, entitled “Accompanying, Discerning and Integrating Weakness”) allows, as moral theologian Dr. E. Christian Brugger observed on this site earlier this year, "and seems intentionally [to allow]—for interpretations that pose serious problems for Catholic faith and practice." 

Proof of the contention over the now famous chapter is easy to find.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Cardinal Sarah’s pastoral call to “turn to the Lord”

Cardinal Robert Sarah celebrates Mass in Port-au-Prince in January 2011. (CNS photo/Paul Jeffrey)

Cardinal Sarah’s pastoral call to “turn to the Lord” | Jeanette Flood | CWR

Some de-mythologizing needs to take place in order for many to accept Cardinal Sarah’s call to celebrate Mass “ad orientem.”

With Advent around the corner, one cannot help but wonder if any pastors or bishops will accept the controversial invitation Cardinal Robert Sarah made last July. As keynote speaker at the 2016 Sacra Liturgia conference, the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments called for a “return to a common orientation of priest and people eastwards.” He urged that the change be implemented beginning on the first Sunday in Advent.

The news was met with intense consternation in some quarters and a tendency to paint Cardinal Sarah as a rogue throw-back, suffering from a warped nostalgia. With the dampening reaction made by the Holy See Press Office shortly afterward, followed by the considerable papal changes to the membership of the congregation, it is unlikely that there will be widespread implementation at this time, but it does not follow that there will be none.

What is clear is that a great deal of education and de-mythologizing must take place first.

Anti-Vatican II?

I can understand the shock and even aversion to Sarah’s proposal. I was raised on the idea that before Vatican II, the Church was stuck in the Middle Ages and the priest said Mass with his “back to the people.” In fact, when the opportunity arose in the ’90s for me to attend ad orientem Masses, I avoided it for some time.

I was blessed to work in-house at Ignatius Press for two years. While I liked and respected the Press’ founder and editor, Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, I was a little hesitant to attend his Masses. I had grown up in the charismatic movement, and expected his style of Mass—while fine for those who liked it—to be too different from my spirituality for me to enjoy.

When I finally went, it turned out to be a real eye-opener. I was pleasantly surprised to find how much I learned and, ultimately, how perfect it was.

What really struck me was that Father didn’t “turn his back to us” the whole time as I expected, but frequently turned around to address us. As he explained to me afterward, “When I’m talking to the people, I face the people. When I’m talking to God, I face God.” He didn’t have his back to us but his face to God. He was facing God with us, leading us in prayer.

Years later, Father Fessio wrote:

I don’t say Mass “with my back to the people” any more than Patton went through Germany with his “back to the soldiers.” Patton led the Third Army across Germany and they followed him to achieve a goal. The Mass is part of the Pilgrim Church on the way to our goal, our heavenly homeland. This world is not our heavenly homeland. We don’t sit around in a circle and look at each other. We want to look with each other and with the priest towards the rising sun, the rays of grace, where the Son will come again in glory on the clouds.

Father Fessio didn’t come up with this all on his own. The director for his doctoral thesis was Joseph Ratzinger. In other words, Father Fessio studied with the future Pope Benedict XVI less than a decade after Vatican II. Ratzinger was not only present at the Council, in the capacity of a peritus (expert, or consulting theologian), but was a shining light there, a featured speaker on theological topics. As early as 1967, Ratzinger spoke of “exaggerations and aberrations” that had crept in to the new Mass, asking, “Must every Mass, for instance, be celebrated facing the people?” [1] This indicates that that orientation was not intended by the Council to be the norm.

The change took hold nonetheless (along with many others made in a free-form “spirit of Vatican II”). Years later, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then-Cardinal Ratzinger reflected:

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

The Liberty of Dogma vs. the Tyranny of Taste

St. John the Apostle, a portrait from the Book of Kells, c. 800 (Wikipedia)

The Liberty of Dogma vs. the Tyranny of Taste | Carl E. Olson | Catholic World Report

Those who say that doctrines must serve the Church's pastoral mission have both inverted the proper order of things and placed sentiment above shepherding.

Years ago I wrote an article titled "Dogma is Not a Dirty Word". In it, I noted how those who criticize the Church for being "dogmatic" fail to understand that everyone is dogmatic in a very real sense, as G.K. Chesterton noted in his 1905 book Heretics: "Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. . . . Trees have no dogmas." Along those same lines, in 1928, Chesterton observed, “There are two kinds of people in the world, the conscious dogmatists and the unconscious dogmatists. I have always found myself that the unconscious dogmatists were by far the most dogmatic.”

In fact, the unconscious dogmatist has a funny way of dogmatically insisting he is entirely free of dogma—or, at the very least, he has attained a special perch above and beyond the clutches of dogma and doctrine, which are sources of discord, confusion, and contention. Examples abound within the secular realm. Far more disconcerting, however, are examples and instances within the Church. As when, to draw upon my dusty article, we encounter those who declare "that real ecumenism and real Christianity are not found in dry formulas but in the 'spirit of Christ.' Much is made of 'love' or 'sincerity' but often with little or no reference to the kind of demanding, self-denying life of holiness that Jesus set before his disciples." 

This came to mind upon reading a recent Crux interview with Bishop William Kenney of the Archdiocese of Birmingham, who was appointed by Pope Francis in 2013 to be, as his online bio states, "co-chair of the international conversations between the Lutheran and Catholic Churches." It's not that Bishop Kenney is unaware of various theological or doctrinal concerns, but it appears he has happily moved past them, saying:

The things that we thought caused the Reformation have been taken away- the excommunication of the Lutherans was lifted, the condemnation of the Catholics were lifted. That is the formal Churches’ position now, it is not just a theological proposition. There are those who say this has already achieved unity; it is certainly a major step forward, and it has removed most of the problems of the Reformation.

Yes, he acknowledges, the "women priests question is complicated", but he then muses that when it comes to the Eucharist, "Lutherans have more or less the same doctrine as we have." How much more, or in what way less is not clear. But does it really matter? Apparently not. "Would Martin Luther have been excommunicated today? The answer is no, he probably wouldn’t. And he did not want to split the Church - he came to that, but it’s not where he began." In truth, contra the bishop's Monday morning quarterbacking, Luther was a man of many moods and many positions, perhaps even multiple personalities. As Dr. Christopher Malloy, a theologian who has studied and written extensively on Catholic-Lutheran matters, said to me in a lengthy June 2007 Ignatius Insight interview: "We need to pay attention to the following question: 'Which Lutheranism? Whose Luther?'" 

Not to worry, however, as Bishop Kenney serenely assures readers:

Continue reading on the CWR site.

The Catholic Conscience, the Argentine Bishops, and "Amoris Laetitia"

(Photo: us.fotolia.com/andriychuk)

The Catholic Conscience, the Argentine Bishops, and "Amoris Laetitia" | E. Christian Brugger | Catholic World Report

Chapter 8 of Pope Francis' Apostolic Exhortation is characterized by a false dichotomy between the objective and subjective realms of morality, contrary to Vatican II and St. John Paul II.

A group of Argentine bishops (ABs) recently published pastoral guidelines for implementing Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia (AL). The ABs tell their clergy that under certain circumstances divorced Catholics in sexually active second unions may receive the Holy Eucharist, even without receiving an annulment.

The ABs sent their guidelines to Pope Francis to ask whether their pastoral approach was consistent with the meaning of AL. Pope Francis replied in a letter on papal stationary saying that their “document is very good and completely explains the meaning of chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia”; he then stated, “There are no other interpretations.” The authenticity of the pope’s letter was verified on Sept. 12 by the Italian edition of L’Osservatore Romano and reprinted later by Vatican Radio. There no longer seems to be any doubt about where Pope Francis stands on the disputed “Kasper Proposal”.

Other authors have commented and reported on the papal reply, so I will not do so here. The purpose of this article rather is to critique the account of moral conscience implicit in the reasoning of the AB’s and AL as defended in a recent article in National Catholic Reporter by Michael Lawler and Todd Salzman entitled: “In Amoris Laetitia, Francis’ model of conscience empowers Catholic”. The Salzman-Lawler (SL) duet made fame in 2008 for its publication of the book, “The Sexual Person”, which set forth a fulsome defense of same-sex genital acts from Scripture, tradition, and natural reason, and which was censured by the Committee on Doctrine of the USCCB in 2010.

In the NCR article, the authors consider what they refer to as two “diametrically opposed” understandings of conscience, one which they say overly emphasizes the “objective realm” of moral truth, and the other which, in their opinion, rightfully emphasizes the “subjective realm” of freedom and individuality. Let’s call these the “objectivist” and “subjectivist” models.

SL say that St. John Paul II,¹ Archbishop Charles Chaput (“Pastoral Guidelines for Implementing Amoris Laetitia”) and Germain Grisez² represent the objectivist model; and Pope Francis (in Evangelii Gaudium 231-232 and Amoris Laetitia Ch. 8), the German Jesuit theologian Josef Fuchs, and German Redemptorist theologian Bernard Häring represent the subjectivist school.

In what follows I will show that SL have set up a false dichotomy between the objective and subjective realms of morality; then demonstrate how that false dichotomy characterizes the account of conscience found in the ABs and Ch. 8 of AL; and finally offer a fair explanation of the John Paul II-Chaput-Grisez (and Vatican II) account of conscience. I end with some remarks on the question of whether Catholics are obliged in conscience to accept the papal prescriptions taught in AL, Ch. 8.

Proportionalism: “no intrinsically wrongful actions”

Before summarizing SL’s account, it’s important to understand a presupposition of their theory. They follow the reasoning of Fuchs and Häring, who in the years after Vatican II became Europe’s foremost defenders of the moral theory known as “Proportionalism”.³ Although it comes in different flavors, common to all proportionalists is the insistence that intending evil as an end or means (what defenders refer to variously as “premoral evil”, “ontic evil”, “disvalue”, etc.) does not by that fact make an action morally wrong. If there are “morally relevant circumstances” justifying the commission of the evil—what they call “proportionate reasons” (not to be confused with proportionate reason as used in the classical Principle of Double Effect)—then it can rightly be chosen.

Why do I say this is important to understand?

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Cardinal Raymond Burke on Life, Truth, Mother Teresa, Islam, and Cardinal Sarah

U.S. Cardinal Raymond L. Burke, patron of the Knights and Dames of Malta, and Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Astana, Kazakhstan, walk in the 6th annual March for Life in Rome May 8, 2016. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

by Carl E. Olson | Catholic World Report

Speaking to reporters from Rome about his new book, the American prelate goes on record about Christians and Muslims (they don't worship the same God) and Cardinal Sarah (“I agree with him completely...").

In a wide-ranging international teleconference call on Monday with media members, Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke spoke in detail about many timely topics, including the priority of standing up for life in addressing poverty and other social ills, the witness and message of Mother Teresa, essential differences between Christianity and Islam, and the recent controversy over remarks by Cardinal Robert Sarah about liturgical orientation. The occasion of the call was Cardinal Burke's recent book Hope For the World: To Unite All Things in Christ (Ignatius Press), an interview given to French author Guillaume d'Alançon in 2015, and translated by Michael J. Miller for Ignatius Press.

 

Since being named a bishop by Pope John Paul II in 1994, Cardinal Burke has become one of more well-known prelates in the English-speaking world, known for his willingness to address controversial topics forthrightly, despite often being criticized. Noted as a canon lawyer, Cardinal Burke was made a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010, and then called to Rome to become Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura. During the two recent Synods on the Family, Cardinal Burke spoke out often about his concerns, telling CWR during the October 2014 gathering that he thought the Synod's mid-term report "lacks a solid foundation in the Sacred Scriptures and the Magisterium", a remark made a month after he was removed from his position as Prefect and named chaplain to the Order of Malta by Pope Francis.

Cardinal Burke, conversing from Rome, told reporters that his new book was motivated by a desire to reflect on his upbringing and how he discerned his vocation as priest, and also "to reflect as a pastor, as a bishop, on certain on certain critical issues of the day". As such, he noted, the book is a "kind of testimony of faith on my part", and the hope is that the book, in keeping with its title, will "give hope" to readers.

Asked about an apparent shifting of priorities among American bishops since the beginning of Francis' pontificate, Cardinal Burke pointed out that while the issues of abortion, poverty, immigration, and global warming all have "moral importance", the Church's tradition and philosophical reason both indicate that "the fundamental question has to be the question of human life itself, the respect for the inviolable dignity of human life and of its Creator, of its Source, and the union of a man and a woman in marriage, which according to God's plan is the place where new human life is welcomed and nurtured."

He expressed concern that the matter of human life and the issues of abortion, artificial insemination, contraception, and euthanasia be placed somehow on the same level as "questions regarding immigration and poverty." The first priority, he emphasized, must be given to proper respect for human life and for the family in order to have "the right orientations in addressing all of the other questions" and challenges faced by people in daily life. It makes no sense, he pointed out, to be concerned with immigration or poverty "if human life itself is not protected in society ... The first justice accorded to any human being is to respect life itself, which is received from God..." Cardinal Burke observed there are some who advocate an elimination of certain parts of the population in order to fight poverty, or who adhere to a "contraceptive mentality" in order to pursue a sort of "social engineering" harmful to society and to individuals.

The former Archbishop of St. Louis emphasized that bishops have a responsibility to proclaim the truth of Christ in love within the Church, following the example of Christ himself, knowing that the love that will "best serve society is the truth, a truth that respects God's plan for us from the moment of creation..." When he travels, the cardinal said, he finds that people want to hear "the truth of the faith" from priests, bishops, and cardinals—"they aren't interested in my personal opinions about things, which won't save their souls, and I am as aware of that as they are; they look to me to reflect very deeply on the truths of the Faith and their application on society today, and to speak to that truth with love and care for society." The fundamental mission of Catholics in the world is to be united to Christ and to "give witness to the truth", a witness that is "very much needed in our time".

Asked how it was that he, as a young seminarian in the Sixties, avoided falling into the "craziness" of that era, Cardinal Burke credited his parents and his upbringing. He acknowledged he was not unaffected by the "tumultuous" times, especially after going to Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, in 1968 to study philosophy. He credits the "stable and good" discipline, prayer life, and formation he experienced in minor seminary, which he entered at the age of fourteen. He lamented that so many seminarians, seminary professors, and priests at CUA abandoned their vocations and ministry during that time. But he "simply couldn't be convinced that this so-called 'new way', this 'new Church'" was a good and right path, as if what he had been taught growing up was now "wrong and needed to be abandoned". He expressed, however, "great sympathy" for many of those who lost their way, saying that it was a "very tumultuous time and we were young".

Reflecting on the upcoming canonization of Mother Teresa by Pope Francis on Sunday, September 4th, Cardinal Burke expressed his happiness that the famous nun will be named a saint, saying "she has been an inspiration to me from my years in the seminary when I first came to know her".

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Saint Teresa of Jesus and the Search for the Sacred

Saint Teresa of Jesus and the Search for the Sacred | Fr. Erik Varden, OCSO | Catholic World Report

Does the Church’s liturgy enable, now, the expression and communication of sacred realities? Is the ‘sacred’ still a meaningful category?

Among the signal events to mark the Church’s life in 2015 was the 500th birthday of St Teresa of Jesus. The year’s peak event, her feast on 15 October, was overshadowed by headlines from the Synod; yet this year has been nonetheless a Teresian year, calling to mind the Castilian Doctor’s formidable legacy. I found myself gently haunted by Teresa while reading Fr Uwe Michael Lang’s Signs of The Holy One.

I should like, with her help, to reflect on questions raised by the book. For this is a volume that interrogates. It formulates problems not susceptible of easy resolution. There is material here for an examen of consciousness. I invoke the term ‘consciousness’ advisedly. Although Fr Lang mainly addresses issues of liturgical praxis, he knows better than just to bemoan the transgression of rubrics. He points towards a breakdown of sense in liturgy. He shows how this breakdown ominously points to senselessness likewise in life and belief. It is tempting to imagine his subtitle ending with a question mark: ‘Liturgy, Ritual, and Expression of the Sacred?’ Does the Church’s liturgy enable, now, the expression and communication of sacred realities? Is the ‘sacred’ still a meaningful category?

The book’s first part expounds the sense-content of ‘sacredness’ as defined by modern anthropology and theology. The sheer variety of approaches bewilders. This is brought out in the second part, which indicates wrong turns taken in sacred architecture, music, and art over the past half-century. They happened because the signifier ‘sacred’ was often put, as it were, on its head. Hijacked by human criteria, it could no longer effectively point upward and out to the transcendent. The crisis of sacred liturgy and art is thus a crisis of purpose, of finality. By way of illustration, Fr Lang cites examples apt to make the reader smile. Really, though, there is cause for sadness. When the proclamatory impact of Christian devotion is compromised; when the aesthetic response to faith becomes purely subjective, cut off from a sharable paradigm; when ritual seems little more than fortuitously repeated action: then woe is us, for the Gospel is not preached with the force it requires and deserves. What can we do? How can we respond? We might turn for counsel to the half-millenarian, plain-speaking Doctor of Ávila.

Teresa’s Autobiography, completed in her fiftieth year, chronicles the irruption of the divine into an ordinary life. Seeing Teresa at a distance, we may object to the adjective ‘ordinary’. She seems anything but! Teresa, however, argued this point with passion. She was conscious of singular favour shown her; but she insisted that nothing in her nature marked her out from the common run of men and women. She presents her life in its extraordinariness as a typical life, an exemplar each of us might emulate, had we but faith and courage to surrender to God’s work in us. The trajectory she traces reaches from the outset right to the loftiest end of spiritual life. She counsels souls who wobble ‘like hens, with feet tied together’ but also those who soar like eagles (xxxix.12).¹ Nor does she forget the perplexing darkness of the long intermediate stage when the soul, like a timid dove, is dazzled by rare glimpses of God’s Sun while, ‘when looking at itself, its eyes are blinded by clay. The little dove is blind’ (xx.29). Everything she writes, she tells us, is born of experience. For long years she herself ‘had neither any joy in God nor pleasure in the world’ (viii.2). She lived in an in-between state, a no-woman’s land. What changed it? No summary can do justice to her subtle account of the transformative miracle wrought in her by God. We can, though, get some sense of its impact. Teresa testifies how, at a decisive juncture, ‘todos los que me conocían veían claro estar otra mi alma’: her soul had become other; it was no longer what it used to be (xxviii.13). She had seen something that changed her way of seeing. It caused others to see her differently. It was not, she says, a matter of ‘a radiance that dazzles’, rather of ‘a soft whiteness’, ‘an infused radiance’ that, for being gentle, was so unlike any earthly light that in comparison with it ‘the brightness of our sun seems dim’. Measured against Uncreated Light all light of this world seems ‘artificial’. Had we a choice, she assures us, we should never again ‘want to open our eyes for the purpose of seeing it’ (xxviii.5). To entertain such grace is not just sweetness and joy. It brings on a new kind of homelessness, a numbing sense of being out of place, and that for good. At the end of her book Teresa remarks that life in this world seems to her now ‘a kind of sleep’ (xl.22). She yearns to awaken to eternity. She is weary of being torn apart by existential - or better, essential - tension, for ‘natural weakness’ cannot sustain such spiritual vehemence (xl.7). Anyone who makes even moderate progress in prayer is reminded, like her, of how little Spirit our natural human frame can bear. ‘¡Válgame Dios!’, he or she might exclaim with Teresa: ‘God help me!’

Teresa is a witness to the beautiful dimension of faith. When she speaks of it, she is categorical: ‘The fact of seeing Christ left an impression of his exceeding beauty etched on my soul to this day: once was enough’ (xxxvii.4). This beauty is disturbing, even dangerous.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Quick thoughts on the ultimate purpose of canon law and social doctrine

The interior of St. Joseph the Betrothed Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Chicago, Illinois (Wikipedia)

Carl E. Olson | The Dispatch at Catholic World Report

And what is real social justice? The Book of Revelation answers that important question.

In his most recent column, Archbishop Alexander Sample of Portland, Oregon, points out something that every Catholic should know:

The Church’s Code of Canon Law contains 1,752 laws covering everything from the structural organization of the Church as the people of God, the teaching of the Faith, the sacramental life of the Church, the administration of the material goods of the Church, and even penal and procedural law. But lest any of us (especially canon lawyers) forget the purpose of all of this body of law, the very last law (or “canon”) states that the “salvation of souls”, which must always be the supreme law of the Church, must be kept before our eyes.

The salvation of souls. How often do we hear this language in the Church today? Not very often, I am afraid. And yet that is the very mission of the Church!

Quite right. But how often do we hear that the essential point of Christianity is to help the poor, or to seek social justice (more on that in a moment), or implement better programs for healthcare, education, and what not? Quite often. But everything in and of the Church should be oriented toward the ultimate goal of bringing people—by the grace of God, of course—into saving communion with the Triune God. Archbishop Sample says:

Why am I emphasizing this point, you may ask? Because I sincerely think that we are in danger of losing our focus in fulfilling the mission that Christ has entrusted to all of us in the Church. Our ultimate mission is to bring as many people as possible into the one People of God, to incorporate them into the one Body of Christ, and be built up as the temple of God, animated by the Holy Spirit. The gift of eternal salvation is the greatest gift God has given to us, a gift that was purchased at a great price, the blood of his only begotten Son. ...

It seems our current environment cultivates the opposite view. Our culture seems to tell us that the way to life is easy and wide, and most people find it, while to find the road to destruction is narrow and hard, and really very few people end up there. I go by our blessed Lord’s words.

Part of the reason I think that we are in danger of losing the essential and primary message of salvation of souls is based on how I see many people defining what it means to be a good Catholic. Many people have reduced being a good and faithful Catholic to being nice, tolerant and doing good works. They think if we do service projects for the poor and needy, and don’t make any judgments about human behavior and sin, then we are fulfilling the Gospel mandate.

"While it is a good and even essential thing that a disciple of Jesus care for the poor and seek justice for the oppressed in this world," he adds, "there is so much more to the message of redemption in Jesus Christ. We must follow the Ten Commandments, avoid sin, and repent and seek forgiveness when we fail. Our eternal salvation depends on all these things, as Jesus himself taught. 'If you love me, you will keep my commandments.' (John 14:15)". As a certain document of the Second Vatican Council summarized matters:

Christ, having been lifted up from the earth has drawn all to Himself. Rising from the dead He sent His life-giving Spirit upon His disciples and through Him has established His Body which is the Church as the universal sacrament of salvation. Sitting at the right hand of the Father, He is continually active in the world that He might lead men to the Church and through it join them to Himself and that He might make them partakers of His glorious life by nourishing them with His own Body and Blood. Therefore the promised restoration which we are awaiting has already begun in Christ, is carried forward in the mission of the Holy Spirit and through Him continues in the Church in which we learn the meaning of our terrestrial life through our faith, while we perform with hope in the future the work committed to us in this world by the Father, and thus work out our salvation. (LG, 48)

Then there is the matter of "social justice", which has often become a sort of mindless mantra of those looking to attach deeper meaning to whatever political agenda or ideological project they are pushing, selling, or supporting.

Continue reading.

"We have lost sight that Christianity is foundationally a mystical and not a moral religion..."

Tedmund Chan, the Associate Editor of the Thomas International Center, recently interviewed Fr. David Meconi, SJ, about Called To Be the Children of God: The Catholic Theology of Human Deification (Ignatius Press, 2016), which he co-edited with Carl E. Olson:

A recipient of the pontifical license in Patrology from the University of Innsbruck and a D. Phil in Ecclesiastical History from Oxford University, Fr. Meconi is currently Assistant Professor of Early Christianity in the Department of Theological Studies at St. Louis  University, Director of the Edmund Campion Centre for Catholic Studies, and editor of Homiletic and Pastoral Review. He is also a former president of the Jesuit Philosophical Association, a Fellow at the Augustinian Institute at Villanova University, and member of the ecclesiastical board of the School of Theology and Ministry at Boston College. His recent publications include The One Christ: St. Augustine’s Theology of Deification (Catholic University of America Press), the forthcoming The Enemy Within: Augustine on Sin and Self-Sabotage, and his editing of the Cambridge Companion to Augustine and of On Earth as It Is in Heaven: Cultivating a Contemporary Theology of Creation.

Fr. Meconi, many Latin Catholics are suspicious of deification or theosis as not being a properly Christian teaching. Could you please give us a short explanation of what the Catholic teaching on deification is? Why isn’t it more familiar to Catholics in the West (or in the United States)?

We have lost sight that Christianity is foundationally a mystical and not a moral religion: we are saved not so much by what we do or not do but who we become. Galatians 2:19-20 is a perfect snapshot of this: Paul says he is now dead to the law because he is alive in Christ and it is Christ who is now living his fully human life.  The Catholic teaching on deification (look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church §460 for an excellent synopsis)​ maintains that God becomes human so we humans can become godly–no longer having to live a merely fallen life as incomplete and sinful humans, we can now partake of God’s own life and become immortal, perfectly wise, loving, and so on.​

How would you respond to the claim that the teaching of deification is not important or relevant to the Christian moral and spiritual life, as we’ve managed without it for so long? What does deification add to our understanding of the Christian life as being rooted in charity, the sacraments, and life in the Church?

Everything is grace, everything. In the Gospel of John, for example, Jesus Christ makes it quite clear that without him we can do nothing, absolutely nothing (Jn 15:5).  Deification is the honest admittance that we are all in need of grace, not only for our mere existence, and not simply for the glory of being human, but especially for our sanctification which makes us God’s own sons and daughters.  The sacraments are the channels of this new union, as they continue Christ’s own incarnate presence in the world.​

It seems that quite a few books on deification by scholars both Catholic and Protestant have been published recently in the English-speaking world. The attention being given by Western Christian scholars to deification may indeed be an indication that something is missing in contemporary presentations of the Gospel. How does this particular volume of essays serve to change that?

Continue reading on the Thomas International Center website.

Cardinal Sarah: In facing liturgical East, we experience "the primacy of God and of adoration"

Cardinal Robert Sarah celebrates Mass on January 12, 2011. (CNS photo/Paul Jeffrey)

Cardinal Sarah: In facing liturgical East, we experience "the primacy of God and of adoration" | Carl E. Olson | The Dispatch at Catholic World Report

In a recent interview with a French publication, the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, explains how God can put "back at the center" of the liturgy.

The most recent edition (June 3) of the French publication Famille Chrétienne has a lengthy interview with Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, part of which is available online (in French only). While touching on several topics, the focus of the interview is liturgy and worship. As usual, Cardinal Sarah is both eloquent and direct, qualities that will be familiar to those who have read God or Nothing (Ignatius Press, 2015), the Cardinal's autobiographical interview with French journalist Nicholas Diat. 

Asked how we, as Catholics, can put God "back at the center" of the liturgy, Cardinal Sarah emphasizes that the liturgy "is the door to our union with God. If Eucharistic celebrations turn into human self-celebrations, there is a great danger, because God disappears. We have to start by placing God back at the center of the liturgy. If the man is the center, the church becomes a merely human society, a simple NGO, as Pope Francis said." 

What is the remedy? Cardinal Sarah first emphasizes the necessity of "a true conversion of the heart." He then states: "Vatican II insisted on a major point: in this area, the important thing is not what we do, but what God does. No human work will ever be able to accomplish what is found at the heart of the Mass: the sacrifice of the cross." The liturgy, the Prefect notes, "allows us to go outside the walls of this world. Rediscovering the sacredness and beauty of the liturgy therefore requires a work of formation for the laity, the priests and the bishops. I am talking about an interior conversion." As he has done before, notably in a detailed reflection published earlier this year, Cardinal Sarah emphasizes the importance of silence: "In order to put God back at the center of the liturgy, silence is necessary too: the ability to be quiet so as to listen to God and his word. I maintain that we only meet God in silence and by pondering his word in the depths of our heart."

This insistence on conversion—which is "to turn toward God"—and contemplative silence leads to the recognition "that our bodies must participate in this conversion." And the best way to realize this bodily participation is by facing liturgical East (ad orientem) in worship:

The best way is certainly to celebrate with the priests and the faithful all turned in the same direction: towards the Lord who comes. It is not a matter of celebrating with one’s back to the faithful or facing them, as you sometimes hear. That is not where the problem lies. It is about turning together towards the apse, which symbolizes the East, where the cross of the risen Lord is enthroned. By this way of celebrating, we will experience, even in our bodies, the primacy of God and of adoration. We will understand that the liturgy is first of all our participation in the perfect sacrifice of the cross. I have experienced it personally; by celebrating in this way, the assembly, headed by the priest, is as though drawn in by the mystery of the Cross at the moment of the elevation.

Cardinal Sarah is asked if this way of celebrating is allowed. Yes, he responds, it is indeed "lawful and in keeping with the letter and the spirit of the Council." He notes that in a June 2015 article that he wrote for L’Osservatore Romano, "I proposed that the priests and the faithful turn toward the East at least during the Penitential Rite, during the singing of the Gloria, the Prayers of the Faithful and the Eucharistic Prayer." 

Naturally, Cardinal Sarah is asked about Vatican II and the "change in orientation of the altar". 

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

The Blessed Sacrament: It's either All or nothing

"Communion of the Apostles" by Fra Angelico (1440-41)

The Blessed Sacrament: It's either All or nothing | Carl E. Olson 

On the Readings for May 29, 2016, The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

Readings:
• Gen 14:18-20
• Ps 110:1, 2, 3, 4
• 1 Cor 11:23-26
• Lk 9:11b-17

Shortly after my wife and I entered the Catholic Church in 1997, I had a conversation with an Evangelical friend that was as disconcerting as it was friendly. A.J., who I met in Bible college several years earlier, was curious about the Catholic doctrine that the Eucharist is the true Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. I say “curious” because A.J., unlike some of my other Protestant friends, was not really bothered or offended by this belief, merely puzzled. After much discussion, he said, “I don’t see what the big deal is. I believe that Communion is symbolic, and you believe it is more than a symbol. But, either way, we’re both Christians.”

His comment surprised me because it was readily evident to me—as it is to many Protestants—that the Catholic belief in the Eucharist (shared by Eastern Orthodox and Ancient Oriental Christians) is an “all or nothing” proposition. If the Eucharist is Jesus, it calls for a response of humble acceptance; if the Eucharist is not really Jesus, it is an idolatrous offense against God—worshipping bread and wine as though they are somehow divine.

On this feast day celebrating the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, the readings reveal, in different ways, the truthfulness of the ancient and consistent belief in the Eucharist. It is fitting that this great mystery has ancient roots in one of most mysterious of all biblical figures: the priest Melchizedek, who makes just one historical appearance in the Scriptures (Gen. 14:18-20), is mentioned once more in the Old Testament (Ps. 110:4), and then reappears in the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

Having just left the battlefield, Abram encountered the “king of Salem”, who was also a “priest of God Most High.” Melchizedek brought bread and wine to Abram and blessed the patriarch, and Abram responded with a tithe. Both actions indicated Melchizedek’s superior position, as noted in the letter to the Hebrews (Heb 7:1-7). It is the first time a priest is mentioned in the Scriptures, several centuries before the Hebrews had a priesthood.

“The Christian tradition,” the Catechism states, “considers Melchizedek, ‘priest of God Most High,’ as a prefiguration of the priesthood of Christ, the unique ‘high priest after the order of Melchizedek’” (CCC 1544, 1333). Christ’s priesthood is superior to the Aaronic priesthood. Because He is the Son of God and is God Himself (the argument of Hebrews 1), His priesthood is validated by His eternal nature and His infinite being (Heb. 7:16, 24ff). Melchizedek’s importance lies in his loyalty to God Most High, the purity of his intentions, and his sacrifice of bread and wine.  He represents a time when the priesthood was part of the natural order of family structure. By establishing the New and universal covenant through His death and resurrection, Jesus Christ formed a new and everlasting family of God, bound not by ethnicity, but by grace and the Holy Spirit.

And because Jesus is God, He is able to give the household of God His Body and Blood for the nourishment of soul and body, and for the forgiveness of sins. By providing this Eucharistic banquet, a foretaste of the Kingdom of God, He fulfills the promise of a worldwide family of God foreshadowed in the person of the king-priest Melchizedek. The feeding of the five thousand, described in today’s reading from Luke’s Gospel, anticipates and represents the sacrament of the Eucharist, as Christ miraculously feeds—with the assisting hands and efforts of His priests, the Apostles—those who hunger to hear His words.

If the bread and wine remained unchanged, Christ would be, at best, equal to Melchizedek. But the King of Kings said, “This is my body that is for you”, and the High Priest declared, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” The Eucharist is Jesus Christ. That is the great truth we humbly celebrate today—and every day we receive the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the June 10, 2007, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

Carl E. Olson on the Catholic theology of human deification

Dr. Adam A. J. DeVille is Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department of Theology-Philosophy, University of Saint Francis (Fort Wayne, IN) and author of Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy (University of Notre Dame, 2011). He is a regular contributor to Catholic World Report and his "Eastern Christian Books" site is an invaluable source for information about books about Eastern Catholic and Orthodox history, theology, and spirituality. He recently interviewed Carl E.  about Called To Be the Children: The Catholic Theology of Human Deification, recently published by Ignatius Press; the two discussed the genesis and purpose of the book, common reactions to the Church's teachings about theosis/deification, misunderstandings about the teaching, the Scriptural foundations for deification, and why this topic is so significant for ecumenical relations between Catholic and Orthodox believers:

Though it's been almost a decade since Daniel Keating's book Deification and Grace appeared from Catholic University of America Press, lingering suspicion of divinization or deification in Catholic circles is still to be found, which is staggering and stupid in equal measure. Happily, however, we now have what I hope will be the definitive answer to that nonsense: a new, and wholly welcome, collection of articles co-edited by Carl Olson (my editor, in fact, at Catholic World Report) and the Jesuit priest David Meconi, a patrologist who teaches at Saint Louis University. That collection, Called to Be the Children of God: The Catholic Theology of Human Deification, really, really deserves a place in every Catholic library large and small so that, among other things, it can finally drive a fatal stake through the heart of the foolish notion one still finds in some Catholic circles (including as late last year at a major Catholic university in Europe) that theosis (deification or divinization) is (a) some esoteric and suspect "Eastern" notion held by those "schismatic" Orthodox; (b) something quasi-pagan and therefore suspect; or (c) both of the above.

And what a thoroughly catholic collection it is, too! It really does show the universal breadth of the Church, and some of her many diverse traditions, communities, and expressions. Thus we have, inter alia, chapters on deification in the Latin and Greek patristic traditions; in the Dominican and Franciscan traditions; deification in the French Catholic spiritual tradition; in the neo-Thomistic tradition; in the thought of Cardinal Newman (who was, of course, so deeply immersed in the Fathers, especially the Greeks); in the teaching of Trent, Vatican I, and Vatican II; in the thought of Pope John Paul II; and in the liturgy (a chapter most aptly written by David Fagerberg, author of such works as On Liturgical Asceticism, which, like his break-out book Theologia Prima: What is Liturgical Theology? shows deep immersion in the Christian East).

All this and more is to be found in a handsome book (bearing on the front cover what is my favourite Byzantine icon of all time, Theophanes the Greek's rendition of the Transfiguration) that is both affordable and accessible to your average "lay" reader. This book really does belong in personal and parish libraries as well as those of every Catholic academic institution.

I asked the editors for their thoughts on this book, and Carl was able to respond. Fr. David is engaged in an extended period of travel just now, so I hope to have a chance to hear from him later.

AD: Tell us about your background.

Olson: I was raised in a Fundamentalist Protestant home, and my father was the co-founder of a small Bible chapel in western Montana that is still going strong. One of the great things about my upbringing was the immersion in Scripture, which would later play a key role in my decision to become Catholic and, more specifically, my recognition of the incredible truth of theosis, or deification. After a couple years of art school, I attended Briercrest Bible College in Saskatchewan, Canada, which proved to be a pivotal time for me, as I was (rather surprisingly) exposed to a wide range of Catholic and Anglo-Catholic theology and writing. Not only did I learn a great deal, I also learned how much I didn't know (a lot!), which spurred me on to studying a lot of Church history and theology on my own.

That led, eventually, to the realization that I was reading a lot of Catholic (or Anglo-Catholic) writers--Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Russell Kirk, and T.S. Eliot stand out--which led to my reading of the early Church Fathers, Newman, Aquinas, and John Paul II. More to the point, I wound up listening to a Scott Hahn tape series "The Catholic Gospel," which was actually a class he taught at the time at Steubenville. His focus was on "divine sonship," and he delved into a wide range of theologians, including Matthias Scheeben (the subject of a chapter in the book), whose Mysteries of Christianity was an eye-opening read. I also read Fr. Emile Mersch's Theology of the Mystical Body, which further impressed upon me the essential truth of deification. I was very happy and honored that Scott graciously wrote the Foreword to the book, because his influence on my own study and thought was substantial.

My wife and I entered the Catholic Church in 1997, and that same year I began working on a Masters in Theological Studies from the University of Dallas, via that school's Institute for Religious and Pastoral Studies. Those three years of theological formation were invaluable for many reasons, not least a firm and deep grounding in the teachings and practices of the Church. This topic continued to be an important one for me, and I ended up writing a paper on the theme of deification in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which has been revised and included as a chapter in this book.

Finally, I must note that our family has attended Nativity of the Mother of God Ukrainian Catholic Church in Springfield, Oregon, since 2000, and my understanding and appreciation of theosis has deepened even further through the Divine Liturgy, the friendship and teaching of Fr. Richard Janowicz, and the weekly Bible study I've taught there for over fifteen years.

AD: What led you to collaborate on Called to Be the Children of God: The Catholic Theology of Human Deification?

Read the entire interview on Dr. DeVille's "Eastern Christian Books" site. 

“God became a human, so humans could become God”? Catholic scholars explain human deification in new book

The first generations of Christians saw in their new lives in Jesus Christ a way to transcend all the limitations of sin and death and become new creatures. St. Peter expressed this as “participating in the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4), while St. Athanasius stated it succinctly 300 years later: “God became a human, so humans could become God.” This is the heart of the Christian faith and the pledge of the Christian promise: that those baptized in Christ become “divine” through their partaking in God’s own life and love. This is why Christians can live forever, this is the source of their charity and their holiness, this is why we do not need to live in a world ruled by fallen instinct and sinful desires. We have been made for more, for infinitely more.

A new book, Called to Be the Children of God: The Catholic Theology of Human Deification, offers essays from more than a dozen Catholic scholars and theologians to examine what this process of “deification” means in their respective areas of study. Editors Fr. David Meconi, S.J. and Carl E. Olson have gathered fifteen chapters showing what “becoming God” meant for the early Church, for St. Thomas Aquinas and the greatest Dominicans, the significance it played in the thinking of St. Francis and the early Franciscans. It shows how such an understanding of salvation played out during the Protestant Reformation and the Council of Trent, as well as in French School of Spirituality, in various Thomist thinkers, in John Henry Newman and John Paul II, at the Vatican Councils, and where such thinking can be found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church today.

No other book has gathered such an array of scholars or provided such a deep study into how humanity’s divinized life in Christ has received many rich and various perspectives over the past two thousand years. This book therefore hopes to bring readers into the central mystery of Christianity by allowing the Church's greatest thinkers and texts to speak for themselves, showing how becoming Christ-like, becoming truly the Body of Christ on earth, is the only ultimate purpose of the Christian faith.

Dr. Scott Hahn, author of Rome Sweet Home and the author of the Forward of Called to Be the Children of God, writes, “Rescue from sin and death is indeed a wonderful thing—but the salvation won for us by Jesus Christ is incomparably greater. And that is the subject of this book. In all its parts, this book, like Christianity in all its parts, is about salvation. But that means it’s about everything that fills our lives, on earth and in heaven.”

“The richness of Catholicism is on full display in these marvelous essays as they show how Scripture’s revelation of theosis is both taught and embodied throughout the Church’s history. I loved reading, pondering, and praying with this marvelous book,” says Dr. Timothy Gray, President of the Augustine Institute and Senior Fellow at St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. 

Dr. Brant Pitre, Professor of Sacred Scripture at Notre Dame Seminary and Graduate School of Theology, says, “At last, we have an up-to-date, comprehensive, and readable introduction to the classical doctrine of divinization. Called to Be the Children of God is a must read for any serious student of Catholic theology.”

“In the explanations of the historical developments of this doctrine, the reader discovers openings into Christian literature that will enrich the spiritual life and theological understanding through deepening our understanding of the effects of God's grace and indwelling, particular through Baptism, the Holy Eucharist and other sacraments,” says Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J. of EWTN and Ignatius Productions.

Fr. James V. Schall, S.J., Professor Emeritus of Georgetown University, explains, “To follow the history and meaning of what it means that we exist to be adopted into the Trinitarian life of God is the exact purpose of this most welcome and well-presented text.”
 

About the Editors: 

Fr. David Meconi, S.J., a professor of theology at Saint Louis University, is the editor of Homiletic and Pastoral Review. He has published widely in early Church theology and broader Catholic issues, most recently the Annotated Confessions of Saint Augustine, and The One Christ: St. Augustine’s Theology of Deification. 

Carl E. Olson, MTS, is the editor of Catholic World Report and Ignatius Insight. He is the author of two best-selling books, Will Catholics Be “Left Behind”? and The Da Vinci Hoax, and the author of hundreds of articles on theology, Scripture, current events, and apologetics.

Fr. David Meconi, S.J., is available for interviews about this book.

To request a review copy or an interview with Fr. Meconi, please contact: Rose Trabbic, Publicist, Ignatius Press at (239) 867-4180 or [email protected]

Product Facts:

Title: CALLED TO BE THE CHILDREN OF GOD

The Catholic Theology of Human Deification

Editors: Carl E. Olson and Fr. David Vincent Meconi, S.J.

Release Date: April 2016

Length: 292 pages

Price: $22.95

ISBN: 978-1-58617-947-2 • Softcover

Order: 1-800-651-1531 • www.ignatius.com

Five Serious Problems with Chapter 8 of "Amoris Laetitia"

(CNS Photo)

Five Serious Problems with Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia | Dr. E. Christian Brugger | CWR

The most controversial section of Pope Francis' apostolic exhortation is fraught with problematic arguments and dubious moral theology—and gives the German bishops all they want.

For Catholics who feel weary about the abuse that the Christian family has lately suffered at the hands of militant secularism, Pope Francis’s Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia (AL) has many encouraging things to say: e.g., its forthright assertion that “no genital act of husband and wife can refuse” the truth that “the conjugal union is ordered to procreation ‘by its very nature’” (AL, 80; cf. 222); its ardent rejection of the killing of the unborn (no. 83); its unapologetic affirmation that every child has “a natural right” to have a mother and a father (no. 172), and its needed treatment—the lengthiest in any papal document of the last 50 years—of the importance of fathers for children (175).

But though the text says many true and beautiful things about “love in the family,” Chapter 8 (entitled “Accompanying, Discerning and Integrating Weakness”) allows—and seems intentionally so—for interpretations thatpose serious problems for Catholic faith and practice.

I focus here on five such problems:

1) The way it presents the role that mitigated culpability should play in pastoral care

2) Its inconsistent notion of “not judging” others

3) Its account of the role of conscience in acquitting persons in objectively sinful situations

4) Its treatment of moral absolutes as “rules” articulating the demands of an “ideal” rather than binding moral duties on everyone in every situation.

5) Its inconsistency with the teaching of Trent

1. AL’s treatment of subjective factors limiting responsibility

Catholic moral theology has spoken about the importance of pastors being sensitive to factors limiting a penitent’s subjective guilt in order to help penitents assess their true guilt retrospectively, i.e., to help them look at what they’ve already done to assist them to judge rightly about their culpability, so they can repent and be forgiven and deal with those factors and begin freely to choose rightly.

Chapter 8 introduces a significant change in the role that mitigating factors play in pastoral care. Pastors are directed to assess subjective culpability as a way of “discerning” what kinds of ecclesial participation, including sacramental participation, are appropriate for people who are going forth from the confessional. It focuses on assessing mitigated guilt for directing prospective action leaving in place the factors that mitigate guilt, so people may continue to sin without ever becoming responsible enough to sin mortally.

Example 1:

300. If we consider the immense variety of concrete situations such as those I have mentioned, it is understandable that neither the Synod nor this Exhortation could be expected to provide a new set of general rules, canonical in nature and applicable to all cases. What is possible is simply a renewed encouragement to undertake a responsible personal and pastoral discernment of particular cases, one which would recognize that, since “the degree of responsibility is not equal in all cases”, the consequences or effects of a rule need not necessarily always be the same. [note 336]¹”

The term “pastoral discernment” is used throughout chapter 8, but its meaning is not consistent. Here it refers to the “personal discernment” of the divorced and civilly remarried. They are encouraged to assess their own subjective culpability in order to determine what kinds of ecclesial participation are appropriate. The text says that since “the degree of responsibility is not equal in all cases”, the consequences of the “rule”—meaning consequences of violating the rule— may apply differently in different cases. “Rule” is AL’s term of choice for the objective demands of the Gospel for marriage.² “Consequences” refer to the moral and ecclesial implications of violating the norm against adultery, namely, that one is guilty of grave sin and should not go to Holy Communion.³

The text will be read by many “remarried” spouses as meaning that they themselves can “discern” that, because of the complexity of their “concrete situations” (e.g., it is wrong to leave the kids and/or the new “spouse” and stressful to live as brother and sister, etc.), they themselves lack such a “degree of responsibility” as would have the consequence that they are guilty of grave sin and ought not to communicate.

The text goes on to speak about the ‘accompanying’ role of pastors:

300. Priests have the duty to ‘accompany the divorced and remarried in helping them to understand their situation according to the teaching of the Church and the guidelines of the bishop’.… What we are speaking of is a process of accompaniment and discernment which ‘guides the faithful to an awareness of their situation before God. Conversation with the priest, in the internal forum, contributes to the formation of a correct judgment on what hinders the possibility of a fuller participation in the life of the Church.’ (emphasis added; internal quote from Relatio Synodi, 2014)

Pastors are encouraged to assist individuals, who are objectively committing adultery, to judge what hinders their fuller participation in the sacraments.

Pastors will interpret this in conflicting ways. Those who are committed to traditional Catholic doctrine and practice will interpret it to mean accompanying remarried divorcees in their process of repenting for their sins, ordering their relationships according to the Gospel (at very least, ceasing to engage in non-marital intercourse), and reintegrating into the sacramental life of the Church. Others, however, will interpret it to mean assisting remarried divorcees to arrive at the judgment that since they lack sufficient responsibility, nothing hinders the possibility of fuller participation, provided they go through the formality of getting their pastors to agree with their judgment.

Example 2:

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

New: "Called to Be the Children of God: The Catholic Theology of Human Deification"

Now available from Ignatius Press:

Called to Be the Children of God: The Catholic Theology of Human Deification

Edited by Fr. David Vincent Meconi, S.J. and Carl E. Olson

The first generations of Christians saw in their new lives in Jesus Christ a way to transcend all the limitations of sin and death and become new creatures. St. Peter expressed this as "participating in the divine nature" (2 Pet 1:4), while St. Athanasius stated it succinctly 300 years later: "God became a human, so humans could become God." This is the heart of the Christian faith and the pledge of the Christian promise: that those baptized in Christ become "divine" through their partaking in God's own life and love. This is why Christians can live forever, this is the source of their charity and their holiness, this is why we do not need to live in a world ruled by fallen instinct and sinful desires. We have been made for more, for infinitely more.

This book gathers more than a dozen Catholic scholars and theologians to examine what this process of "deification" means in their respective areas of study. It offers fifteen chapters showing what "becoming God" meant for the early Church, for St. Thomas Aquinas and the greatest Dominicans, the significance it played in the thinking of St. Francis and the early Franciscans. It shows how such an understanding of salvation played out during the Protestant Reformation and the Council of Trent, as well as in French School of Spirituality, in various Thomist thinkers, in John Henry Newman and John Paul II, at the Vatican Councils, and where such thinking can be found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church today.

No other book has gathered such an array of scholars or provided such a deep study into how humanity's divinized life in Christ has received many rich and various perspectives over the past two thousand years. This book therefore hopes to bring readers into the central mystery of Christianity by allowing the Church's greatest thinkers and texts to speak for themselves, showing how becoming Christ-like, becoming truly the Body of Christ on earth, is the only ultimate purpose of the Christian faith.

"Rescue from sin and death is indeed a wonderful thing—but the salvation won for us by Jesus Christ is incomparably greater. And that is the subject of this book. In all its parts, this book, like Christianity in all its parts, is about salvation. But that means it's about everything that fills our lives, on earth and in heaven."
— Dr. Scott Hahn, Author, Rome Sweet Home

About the Editors:

Fr. David Vincent Meconi, S.J., a professor of theology at Saint Louis University, is the editor of Homiletic and Pastoral Review. He has published widely in early Church theology and broader Catholic issues, most recently the Annotated Confessions of Saint Augustine, andThe One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification.

Carl E. Olson, MTS, is the editor of Catholic World Report and Ignatius Insight. He is the author of two best-selling books, Will Catholics Be "Left Behind"? and The Da Vinci Hoax, and the author of hundreds of articles on theology, Scripture, current events, and apologetics.

Praise for the book:

"Theologians, pastors, students and laity alike would benefit immensely from reading this book, not only for developing their theological knowledge but also for deepening their love for the divine life they already live here on earth."
— Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M., Cap., Member of the International Theological Commission 

"The richness of Catholicism is on full display in these marvelous essays as they show how Scripture's revelation of theosis is both taught and embodied throughout the Church's history. I loved reading, pondering, and praying with this marvelous book."
— Dr. Timothy Gray, President of the Augustine Institute and Senior Fellow at St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology

"At last, we have an up-to-date, comprehensive, and readable introduction to the classical doctrine of divinization. Called to Be the Children of God is a must read for any serious student of Catholic theology."
— Dr. Brant Pitre, Professor of Sacred Scripture, Notre Dame Seminary, Graduate School of Theology

"This is an important book, full of surprises for the expert yet written in an attractive style that makes it accessible to a broad readership."
— Norman Russell, St. Stephen's House, Oxford; author of The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford University Press)

"In the explanations of the historical developments of this doctrine, the reader discovers openings into Christian literature that will enrich the spiritual life and theological understanding through deepening our understanding of the effects of God's grace and indwelling, particular through Baptism, the Holy Eucharist and other sacraments."
— Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J., EWTN and Ignatius Productions

"To follow the history and meaning of what it means that we exist to be adopted into the trinitarian life of God is the exact purpose of this most welcome and well presented text."
— Fr. James V. Schall, S.J., Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University

"The importance of this publication, which is a major contribution to the study of Catholic soteriology, can hardly be exaggerated."
— Fr. D. Vincent Twomey, S.V.D., Author of Pope Benedict XVI: The Conscience of Our Age

"This is a wonderful collection of essays on an issue that has been largely ignored by Western Christianity, which has focused far too much attention on how you get into heaven rather than how heaven gets into you."
— Dr. Francis J. Beckwith, Professor of Philosophy & Church-State Studies, Baylor University.