Gentle Persuasion in the Slums of Secunderabab

I am very moved by the work these sisters are doing.

Jack Kerouac, the Author, and His Work

This is the best thing that I ever read about Jack Kerouac. The URL points to, "Drive, He Wrote," by Louis Menand, published in the October 1, 2007 print issue of, "The New Yorker." Louis Menand gives us many reasonable and realistic perspectives on many different aspects of Jack Kerouac, of "On The Road," itself, and associated social phenomena, but here I shall focus on Menand's observations as they relate to Kerouac's search for meaning in life, his Catholicism, and his response to what Luigi Giussani refers to as, the religious sense.

"In 1948, Kerouac, is supposed to have remarked, in a conversation with the writer John Clennon Holmes, 'You know this is a really beat generation.' ... In 1952 he published an article in Times Magazine, called, 'This is the Beat Generation,' in which he credited Kerouac with the term. "Holmes wasn't referring to a movement. He was referring to the Cold War generation, which he said had been disillusioned by the war, the bomb, and the 'cold peace,' but was obsessed with the question of how life should be lived. Holmes thought that Beats were optimists, risk-takers, seekers--young people with a desperate craving for belief."

"The book is not about hipsters looking for kicks, or about subversives and nonconformists, rebels without a cause who point the way for the radicals of the nineteen-sixties. And the book is not an anti-intellectual celebration of spontaneity or an artifact of literary primitivism. It's a sad and somewhat self-consciously lyrical story about loneliness, insecurity, and failure."

Kerouac did write the first draft of, "On the Road," in three weeks, on a continuous scroll. And he was fueled by coffee not Benzedrine. "...the scroll was a way of forcing himself to stick to this vision...The scroll was therefore a restriction: it was a way of defining form, not a way of avoiding form. In religious terms (and Kerouac was always, deep down, a Catholic and a sufferer), it was a collar, a self-mortification. He did, after he finished the scroll, go back and make changes. But first he had to submit to his discipline." He spent six years revising the scroll. A religious term for this work would be ascesis. Jack was a literary holy man, which is exactly how he is popularly treated.

Of the characters, "They are not hipsters, either, cats too cool for life in suits. There is nothing cool about Dean or Carlo Marx (the Ginsburg character, Karl converted into a Marx Brother.)"

"It's a mistake to read this as an anticipation of the counterculture."

"The Beats were not rebels; they were misfits."

"There is no good cultural model, in the period in which the story is set, for the kind of men the characters are--as there was no model for Kerouac and Ginsburg themselves. This was the reason that Kerouac became so embittered by the caricature of the Beats: They played off stock conceptions of masculine types--the hip anarchist, the leotard-chasing, jazz-fiend tea head, the swaggering barfly, the hotrodder, the cruising delinquent. Kerouac was none of these things." ... "He was the opposite, a poet and a failed mystic. He was what in the nineteen-fifties was referred to as a 'sensitivo.' This was the demon that he wrestled with. And this is the point at which the thematic preoccupations of, 'On the Road' meet the style of 'On the Road'-- the lyrical gushing, excessive prose."

"The Beats were men who wrote about their feelings."

So what do you think of all that? I think it explains the popularity of Kerouac and his book. This was the period between World War II and the social movements of the 60’s, a period of extreme social conformity. After all, the Great Depression had ended with the war. The war was now over, and everybody was making up for lost time in their loves and getting back to normal life. Every able-bodied young male had served in the military. The military had formed their world view. They had been conditioned to obey orders. They studied hard, worked hard, and never deviated from a cookie-cutter, middle-class lifestyle. Men were stoic. Men didn’t express their feelings. They numbed them with alcohol.

But Kerouac was lonely, had desires, and was vulnerable. He was also intelligent, had a deep heart, and was a seeker of the Divine. He was no tourist in life--he took his experiences seriously. Unfortunately, Kerouac lacked a fatherly role model in his formative years, and he could not conform to any of the stock male personas that society offered men. That made him a misfit.

But Kerouac was good looking, athletic, a big drinker himself, and a few other things. He represented someone who was masculine enough that ordinary, straight-jacketed, middle-class men could allow themselves to relate to or admire. And Kerouac’s freedom caused them to imagine that maybe, just maybe, they could be free too.

Cardinal George's plan to evangelize America

- an interview about his Cardinal Francis George's book, The Difference God Makes.

This is the most sensible thing that I've ever about the contemporary Roman Catholic Church in America, since I can't remember when At School of Community last night, our leader happened to mention that Crossroads New York will be hosting Cardinal George at the Metropolitan club, to make a presentation about his new book.

Nike Is Still Exploiting It's Workers

What is Christianity? How We are Born in that Question

Fr. Giussani's entire career with the movement was an attempt to rescue Catholicism from an empty formalism. Note that this is in the form of a Platonic Dialogue. I'd like to thank Fred Kaffenberger for showing me this article from Traces Magazine, of the same title as the blog entry.

Notes from a conversation Fr Luigi Giussani had with a group of university students. Chiesa Valmalenco, Italy, August 31, 1978

This assembly’s theme: the situation of the Movement , the life of the Movement

Fr Giussani The theme is a very generic one, so that we can deal with any point at all, but wherever we start from, there is a “certain” point we have to reach.

Intervention In these recent months, I have realized something important. All of a sudden, I realized that I didn’t yet know what the Movement is, but it didn’t put me off, it was very attractive. I saw opening up before me room for new knowledge of myself and of a depth of life, a taste that I had not known before. In other words, to say that I didn’t–or don’t yet–know the Movement means that I discover that a deeper life that I don’t yet know is possible for me. I am made aware of this because I see it alive in others.

The most important aspect of what I am living is the inclination to learn from others, and it becomes clearer to me that Christianity is the opportunity that I am given to be human. I’ve understood that this is the core of Christianity. The core of Christianity and the core of the Movement coincide, and Christianity and the Movement are my opportunity for being human.

Fr Giussani He has pointed out two connections, and we need to keep them in mind. We must not leave this lane, or we will be wasting time. Everyone should still be free to intervene as a reaction to the experience he has had up to now, especially this year. I don’t want to block this spontaneity, but I want to anticipate that the point we have to reach is included and channeled between the two “banks,” the two connections noted. He noted the connection between the Movement and Christianity and the connection between Christianity and humanity, real humanity. If we move outside these two points of reference, or these “synonyms,” we will begin to wander off track and speak of facts or reactions that are a waste of time.

We could even change the topic. Couldn’t we change the topic? What do you think, why don’t we change the topic?! Because it’s clear to everyone that the Movement is a very debatable mode that each of us follows because he experiences or hopes for an enrichment; it is a contingent mode that can lead us in a more mature and pleasant way into the Christian fact. Otherwise, what would the Movement be? The value of the Movement is its educative function regarding the Christian fact. This is what interests us.

So I propose that we set aside the topic I gave this morning and ask ourselves point-blank what Christianity is for us. Couldn’t we do this? In other words, let’s make it a doctrinal session, a sort of catechism lesson.

What is Christianity for us? If one of us were to be even slightly involved in the Movement, but not in search of an answer to this question, an intelligent and existentially provoking answer, a practical answer to this question, if one of us were involved without trying to find an answer to this question, he would really be an idiot, wouldn’t he?

Let’s try to ask ourselves if we ever asked ourselves this question, not simply throwing out a few ideas, but trying to be systematic, not in the scholastic sense of systematic, but in the vital sense of the word, because life is an organism, a system.

If you feel I am forcing you into something too demanding, we can go back to the first topic. But I suggest we change the topic because I don’t really see it as a change. In any case, it will help us to eliminate some useless steps in the argument, because what interests us is not the Movement itself, but an answer to life. And, for us, Christianity is this answer to life.…

Come on then, let’s get to the point. What is Christianity for us?

Intervention I have been reminded to think of this place as the place of the Lord’s presence, and therefore of my truth, and not as the place where people get together because they all think in the same way about a given point. I’ve understood that here, with these faces, with these people, my salvation is at stake.

Fr Giussani And so? How does your intervention immediately connect with the question we have posed? It seems I am a bit slow to catch on.

Intervention The immediate connection is that here…

Fr Giussani But what is Christianity?

Intervention It’s the truth of my life.

Fr Giussani You used another word, too, the word “salvation.”
Now, guys, we need to come to grips with these words! You haven’t understood a word unless you perceive the “thickness,”–as you call it–the existential depth. A word is an indication, a sign, the sign of a reality. A word is the sign of a reality, a sign, like an arrow… So you haven’t understood a word unless you perceive the reality that the word indicates.

This is why the question, “What is Christianity?” is the most urgent question for us who are committed to it. But it’s the most urgent question for the whole world if–even only as a hypothesis–Christianity is understood as history’s proposal for a more authentic human journey and as a means of security regarding destiny.

So, we have to break open the formal packaging of the words “salvation” and “truth,” because everything man uses tends towards formalism. All revolutions and all reforms, of any kind, degrade into formalism, into standardization, and become schematic. There is an inertia in human impetus which leads the wealth of that impetus toward death, right from the start! It’s called original sin.

Original sin seems to be the term in our language most easily emptied of meaning (in fact, much post-conciliar theology has emptied it completely of meaning), because it doesn’t seem to connect with anything, it seems not to correspond with anything in our experience, with any fact of life. So the whole of modern thought considers it abstract and seeks to identify it, at most, with a gap between what man is and what he should be. So the term “original sin” would indicate the lower stage of an evolution; original sin would be evolution that has not developed as it should. Is it clear?

But it’s not true! Original sin is an idea essential to Christian anthropology, and it means this: any effort, any initiative on man’s part–whether intellectual or practical, doctrinal or affective–slips existentially, tends to slide toward death, toward formalism, toward complete sclerosis.
Perhaps some of you will remember the example I used to use at school, the one about the tightrope. If I try to walk along a tightrope that is lying on the ground, I can manage it very well, but if I take the same tightrope and raise it up 300 feet, I can’t do it any more. I have the theoretical, structural ability to do it, but if the existential conditions change, I can’t do it. If you raise it up 300 feet, you need an expert to walk it.

This is an illustration. Christian doctrine has this to say about original sin: structurally, man should be able to do certain things, but existentially he is in a condition–his existential condition–in which he is incapable of pursuing the ideals that are born in his heart, and the ideal impetus decays and slides toward death, right from the start!

If you apply this Christian idea to your own life, it’s striking how well it describes human existence. If you haven’t yet discovered this corruption of your noblest ideals as original impetus (affection for a woman, attention for others, compassion for others, passion for the truth, and the fascination that draws man toward reality, whose immediate form is curiosity, the overwhelming fascination of curiosity), if you haven’t yet discovered in yourself the immediate corruption that these noble feelings undergo (it’s as if they can’t manage to keep afloat, as if they were unable to keep up the standard suggested by the impetus), then you are not yet a man; you are still a child.

Do you remember how many times, during the spiritual exercises, we looked at human experience and asked ourselves: What are the most striking, the most human experiences? The answer was love between man and woman, between parents and children, and passion for politics (in the broader, platonic sense of the term)–the passion of an effective service to society, that it be more expressively human, of more help to man’s journey, to every man’s journey. Then we asked: Are there more impetuous and uncontrollable sources of selfishness and exploitation than these three? Humanly speaking, we would be led to despair, and the more one tries to create a system for correcting this bitter destiny of the noblest things he feels being born inside him, the more he generates a sense of disappointment that in the end makes things worse.
Man’s presumption of saving himself is at the origin of all the despotism, all the terrorism, all the intolerance in society and in family life, in social life and in friendships.

A Christian, who has received the announcement of salvation, has been freed from despair; what he retains is this enlightened sadness filled with hope.

Intervention In Lagerkvist’s Barabbas, when Peter meets him under the portico, he doesn’t recognize him and Barabbas begins to question him. Peter replies, “He is risen from the dead; we are waiting for Him.” Barabbas doesn’t believe him and Peter says, “Some say He is the Son of God. He just might be.”… Barabbas is even more scandalized. Then Peter says, “Some say He is the Son of God. He just might be, but what is important for me is that He come back as He was before.”

I was struck by this. Peter wanted the experience he had had with that man to go on. This is what interested him. For me, the Christian fact is a bit like this. What we are following is an experience of total humanity. And, as you told us once, the sequela is “a critical comparison with the proposal offered.”

Fr Giussani What you have said is true as far as it goes, but only as far as it goes. You have to have reasons, as St Peter said: “Be ready to give reasons for the hope that is in you.” We have to be able to give reasons.

The question, “What is Christianity?” is not just a formal question; it is the question, because one of the gravest dangers is exactly this absence of reasons. It’s not a danger in the sense that it threatens our adherence, because our adherence is to a reality–however little we live it–so rich that, humanly speaking, we realize that we would be worse off leaving it. But it is a danger for our capacity of being a presence, because what challenges society, in time, cannot be anything but a reason, an experience that carries its reasons on its front page.

But the last thing you said leads to what I am saying. The sequela is the critical comparison between the cluster of original needs we have in us and the proposal we are offered. But the critical comparison between the cluster of original needs that are in us and the proposal we are offered implies a work that is not at all easy.

It is not at all easy because, firstly, discovering the original needs that are in us is not something immediate or instinctive. It should be immediate, but it isn’t. Why? Because our brain is completely penetrated by the mindset of society. The dominant culture is our mentality, so our original structure is buried under a sediment of the effects of history and society. We have to break through this sedimentation, we have to crack it open! This takes more than an atom bomb–because poverty of spirit has far more explosive power than an atom bomb!
Secondly, we have to pay honest attention to the proposal offered to us. This is difficult, too, because in the febrile anguish or anxiety of the desire to find an answer to his just feelings, a person creates his own images and formulae, or adheres to what pleases him most immediately (as St Paul has said).

So work is needed. In this sense, it emerges that sequela is the name of the work we have to do. Sequela is the comprehensive term, the all-embracing term for the work, or the term that indicates the whole of the work we have to do.

It is only in the sequela that you discover the new taste of life. Otherwise, you remain complacent; you can be satisfied only by your own opinions. But being bogged down in your own opinions is something bourgeois, which gives a bourgeois satisfaction. A bourgeois satisfaction is short of breath, like asthma; the bourgeois taste of life is like asthma.

Intervention I wanted to say that for me Christianity is the way I have learned to have a passion for everything, even the most everyday things, and to grasp the meaning of everything without being a slave of anything (of the ideas I have, of the opinions I form, or of the partiality that I live). As I listened to what you were saying, I understood that the sequela is the way to do this.

Fr Giussani What you said brings out a consequence. It is a corollary of what Christianity is. It can also be a diagnostic criterion, a heuristic criterion.

Intervention I realized now, when I heard your question, that in fact it is anything but formal, and the answer to it puts me in difficulty.

I would make this comparison: If you ask me what life is, I would immediately have the same difficulty, and I would answer that life is what I am, what is going ahead.

What is Christianity for me? I cannot imagine myself outside the Christian fact. Christianity is the fact that Someone has truly taken hold of me, made Himself present in my life, for whom my life was able to begin to be life, can be life.

Now, this Presence in my existence, thanks to which I no longer live in terms of solitude, and therefore ultimately in terms of death, has a great connotation: this Presence constitutes itself as a judgment in my life. I don’t know if I am able to render the aforementioned word, truth, according to its existential value, but the greatest desire of my humanity is to rediscover, to recognize what the truth is, what direction my existence has taken, that for which it is worth living, moving myself.

Now, this Person, who has become present in my life, is what judges my existence. He is the source…

Fr Giussani Listen, your intervention still points to a possible consequence of what Christianity is. Christianity is something that has provoked this in you and, in provoking this phenomenon in you, has become a judgment on your life. But this is a consequence. We are trying to find out what Christianity “is.”

InterventionThinking over these last months, I would like to say what the Christian experience is. I would say that it is a way of preventing life….

Fr Giussani No, sorry. Perhaps the question is ambiguous. We are asking ourselves what Christianity is! So, we have to find an answer that would be valid for me even if I were an atheist. Do you get it? Even though I wouldn’t accept it, the answer has to be valid for me. Do you see?

What is Christianity? What is it?

Intervention Recognizing His presence in life, in things, in the facts that happen; recognizing the presence of an Other.

Fr Giussani So, Christianity is an eminently subjective phenomenon. Subjective, meaning, you are the one who recognizes a presence. Like that time when Fr Franzoni went to Busto Arsizio to talk about divorce, and a little old lady contested what he said. First he talked about the question, “What is a Christian?” and he said that a Christian is someone who wants justice for the poor, then, “What is a Marxist?” and he said that a Marxist is someone who wants justice for the poor. Then he concluded that today a Marxist is a Christian. An old lady put up her hand and said, “So what is the difference?” And Franzoni, rather taken aback, answered, “Well, a Christian sees Christ in the poor; a Marxist doesn’t.” At that point a friend of ours put his hand up and said, “So a Christian is someone who has visions!”

Look, please, I am not arguing for the sake of arguing. All your answers are quite correct, but I’d like us to understand the question better. According to what our friend just said, Christianity is a subjective fact, the perception of a real presence among us. Do you see?

Intervention I would answer this: Christianity is the objective, living fact of the Church, which has become reasonable, meaningful and full of promise of life for me in the historical encounters that are the Movement. It is the proposal of the Church, just as it has reached us, in its gestures, in its life, in its truth, which has become evident to my humanity in these encounters, because if I had not encountered people, that objective reality would not have been there for me, it would not have had any meaning for me, and would not have been full of hope for me.

Intervention I find it almost impossible to say what Christianity is, if not as someone involved in it. I am unable to distinguish the awareness of what Christianity is from the sequela. This leads me to say that my intelligence is able to lean toward something that doesn’t give evidence of its measure, but is like the first criterion from which to set off. The essence of Christianity is recognizing that God is an historical fact; in other words, that the meaning, the wholeness that I desire, that each one of us desires, is an historical fact.

Intervention But this is faith.

Fr Giussani Certainly, this is faith. I agree with him. But we have to answer the question, “What is Christianity?” I agree totally. Only in the sequela can we understand what Christianity is. But the point is that the question we put is a test on how we follow the Movement. Do you understand me? This was the connection.

Clearly the difficulty we have in answering this question indicates that longa enim tibi restat via: you’ve still got a long way to go on your journey in the Movement, because if the Movement is the instrument for adhering, for entering into Christianity… We have already said that the Movement is the instrument for entering into Christianity, because what interests us is that–not the Movement as such.

So, if the Movement is this instrument for entering into Christianity, then the question, “What is Christianity?”–which seems ridiculous and leaves us a little perplexed at the start, because it seems to be something obvious (and it’s not something obvious, as we are discovering)–is essential. It means that the life of the Movement has to be lived with an even greater intelligence and faithfulness. So, let’s get on with it!

Intervention I’d like to start off from the question asked before. When does someone begin to ask what Christianity is for him? I asked myself this when I met a person who, at a certain point of my life, challenged me in this way and proposed a hypothesis for my life. He told me that Christ could be a total answer to life. This hit me, even though the Church and what it was saying didn’t seem to be exactly what answers to life. As I spent time with him and with others who were living this experience with him, I tried to see if this hypothesis worked. Belonging to this companionship, trying to understand how Christ was in the experience of people who live in the name of Christ, trying to verify the hypothesis that Christ is the answer to the whole of life, I began to understand what Christianity is, because this is Christianity. In other words, if I speak of this kind of thing to a companion or a person we meet at university, if I say, “Listen, I have experienced something because, at a certain point in my life, someone told me, ‘Maybe Christ is the answer you are looking for, the hypothesis that can make you happy in life.’”

Fr Giussani This indicates the way in which someone comes to Christianity!

Sorry, but we can’t pass from one answer to the next without criticism, without a critical awareness. I left the earlier intervention on the Church suspended, and I did it purposely. We’ll take it up again later. What he has just said is a documentation of what was said before, quite rightly, that you understand in the sequela, through an encounter.

If you had been serious about the Community School this year, Traces of Christian Experience (you should keep reading it until you know it by heart), which is a documentation on this, you would understand this point more.

Intervention I think Christianity is given by people who recognize that…

Fr Giussani … So Christianity is the believers. This is still subjective. In any case, the objectivity would be purely sociological and statistical. It would be no more than sociology and statistics, if Christianity were the believers.

Intervention I think that Christianity is the fact of Jesus Christ who came on this earth, and I
see this in you; I see it and recognize it for the fact that my life is changing, not only inter nos, humanly, but is changing even in the choices we make.

Fr Giussani Okay, these are the consequences. You say, “Christianity is the person of Jesus Christ come down to earth, whom I see in you, and this changes me.” Is that it? Let’s leave this answer suspended, too.

Intervention The first reflection that comes to mind before such a dramatic question as this is that it is certainly not to be taken for granted.

Fr Giussani It’s dramatic to pose the question. It’s a dramatic question! Because, it would be simple as a question, like asking yourself what this is or what that is. Questions are simple in themselves; it’s asking the questions that is dramatic. Asking this question is dramatic, not the question in itself. Do you see? Because it’s easily taken for granted.

Listen you guys, the problem of the Movement is that almost 100% (apart from 0.1%) of what the Movement is, is taken for granted. So, in all the relationships and connections, in all the objects proper to the activities the Movement provokes or that are done in the Movement, the true object of the Movement escapes; it is taken for granted. So, all the activities are perceived, received and carried out “out of phase”–and the lesser evil that this produces is that it takes ten years instead of one day to get a certain result.

Intervention The first reply that comes to me is that Christianity is a fact that stands before me. In other words, after two thousand years, that Man who died and rose again, who has the power to assimilate me to Himself in Baptism, and therefore saves me and frees me, is a fact other than me, but a fact that concerns me totally. And I would like to say that I feel how dramatic it is to answer this question because I don’t take at all for granted what I have been hearing you say for over a year: that if this fact is not a human presence then it is something abstract and theoretical.

Fr Giussani A consequent development, a consequence of the answer.

Intervention As I see it, Christianity is a new way of living the things of this world.

Fr Giussani An ethic.

Intervention No, this new way…

Fr Giussani A new way of living, meaning a new behavior.

Intervention As a result, yes.

Fr Giussani Just as I said!

Intervention For me, Christianity is a journey toward the reality of things…

Fr Giussani A journey toward the reality of things…

Intervention …toward reality and toward the truth of things, and this is the value of my life.

Fr Giussani A method; it’s a method for approaching reality.

Intervention And to get to know it.

Fr Giussani It’s a method for approaching, getting to know reality and using it.

Intervention And for living.

Fr Giussani A wisdom, like there is Buddhist wisdom, like there is…

Intervention No, not only a wisdom. Something that is adequate to what I am.

Fr Giussani A wisdom adequate to your measure.

Intervention There is an aspect for which the definitions given up to now seem to me to be inadequate, because we still need to see what I am. Christianity, it seems to me, is a presence, and a presence means the presence of something other than just me and my desire and my humanity that is fulfilled. It is the presence of the condition for which my humanity comes into being. My humanity is humanity not abstractly, but in this relationship with this presence.

Fr Giussani The condition, in any case, a condition for being human.

Intervention Or, rather, the condition that enables me to recognize, to recover my humanity. For example, the encounter I had with the Movement was not only the answer to my desire for humanity, it was a challenge to my capacity to grasp my desire; something that forced me to break out of a restriction.

Fr Giussani In any case, the category of the answer is the category of an experience, but of an experience that is adequate, unlike other experiences.

InterventionThere is an aspect for which the word experience seems to be insufficient to explain the reality of the fact, because it is a mystery; it is an experience that is rooted in something that is not only an experience.

Intervention I think that Christianity is the event of God who became a man, and this man said He was God and chose…

Fr Giussani That’s enough. It’s enough, we’ve got there! Only this is Christianity! Christianity is this; it’s a fact! A fact. If I were to punch him in the face and break his glasses, that I have broken his glasses is a fact. In the same way, a man said He was God. God became man, and this is why this man said, “I am God.”

The essential category of an answer to the question, “What is Christianity?” is that of a fact; a fact like the existence of Moscow, or the fact that he is a priest; he has been ordained priest–it’s a fact.

It’s a fact. Look, it’s not a question of taste, of intellectual clarity, or putting things in place. It is a condition, it’s the fundamental condition for every Christian thought and every Christian action. The category of “fact” becomes the fundamental category for the Christian journey.
So what is Christianity? It is a man who said He was God; in other words, a man who said, “I am the salvation of you life. I am the meaning of your life.”

The word “experience” and all the rest are consequences of this, do you see? What is Christianity? It is this.

Since I’ve got the answer that I think is exact, I’ll stop here and I don’t want to go back, unless there is some objection, some outstanding question.

Intervention This is the elementary faith of our fathers; my father and my mother taught me this first of all, whereas we see, we look and develop…

Fr Giussani Yes. In other words, this is the danger for us, it’s a really pathetic attitude we have. We are not able to build on this (like all our answers, do you see?), taking for granted, as if we were already aware of what we are building on. Instead, what happens is that we build while leaving behind the cornerstone we need to build on. This is why our thoughts are a little crooked, and this is why our approach to things is always rather ambiguous.

I left the answer about the Church suspended, because the category of “Church” belongs to the fact. But, now, let’s go back to it, and try to come up with an answer.

The word “Church” points to a fact. What category is the Church? In what category must we include the Church? It is a fact! It is an historical fact of a gathering of people who say, “We are Christ”–that is to say, the body of Christ. So the Church must be added as a Nota Bene to the answer, “Christianity is the fact, the event, so much an event… an event happens in a certain place, in a certain moment of time.” Do you follow? It is made of time and space.
The answer to the question, “What is Christianity?” is a piece of time and space, this piece of time and space and this being, born of a girl in that place in Palestine, conceived in that faraway town of Palestine, born in that other faraway village that was Bethlehem. Christianity is this event! Only that this time and space are prolonged. My name and surname are those of a being born in a particular place and time, only it goes on, and from 1922 it has gone on up to 1978. Do you follow?

Instead of lasting from 1922 until 1978, this event has gone on for 2,000 years up to now, and is destined to last to the end of history. How and when I don’t know. It could grow bigger or it could be reduced to twelve people (as Solov’ev imagined at the end of history, with the last Pope, Peter II). This isn’t important; this is the mystery of God. But that event is an event that goes on, like a bang that begins and grows, like a clap of thunder that grows louder, and instead of getting smaller and disappearing, as thunderclaps do, it began and keeps growing. It goes on. This going on is called Church, whereas the period 1922-1978 is called a human life, my human life. It is called Church, the life of Christ. After all, St Paul used the expression, “realizing the maturity of Christ.” The Church realizes the maturity of Christ, so it is precisely the life of Christ Himself.

So it is an event, the event of a man who said, “I am God and I will go on in history in the visible reality of the people who will adhere to me and be united among themselves,” the Church. It is a fact! You can believe in it or not, but it is a fact!

From humanism onwards, Christianity has tended to be reduced to wisdom (the best way to live, the most excellent human philosophy), up to today, or to a morality (the best way to love our fellow men, the prophecy of humanity). It has been reduced like this, and reason will always try to do this, because otherwise Christianity will dominate wisdom. If, instead, reason can reduce Christianity, then it can prevail; reason will judge Christianity. Instead, Christianity is a fact. You can be angry because it’s there, because it has happened; you can blaspheme, you can skin yourself alive hysterically because you don’t want it to be, but factum infectum fieri nequit: you cannot make a fact not a fact.

It is a fact that holds an element of challenge for the future, because tomorrow is not yet here, and this fact, which has reached us over two thousand years, and in which we, too, are implicated, says, “Look, after 34,000 years, I’ll still be here, and after another 3,400,000 years I’ll still be here.”

But it is a fact! Christianity is a fact! That is why our faith, our being Christians, is first and foremost a fact that you cannot get rid of, try as you might, because it is Baptism that took hold of you; it’s a gesture that took hold of you and drew you into the fact, and you cannot get out of it.

I keep on insisting on this point because nothing like this can give our life the power of certainty, the energy of what is certain. It simplifies everything! It doesn’t depend on your mood, on what you have felt or haven’t felt, on your opinion, on what is clear or unclear for you. Christianity is a fact that has this as its content: the appearance of a fact, the form of a fact is a Man who has spread through history by assimilating to Himself the people He takes hold of, and the content of this is that this is the presence of man’s salvation to man, of the meaning of history, the presence of the meaning of history, of man with all his various connections, because history is made of me with all my connections, with everything connected with me. History is this; without me there would be no history.

Now we can understand the two most important riders to this answer, the two fundamental corollaries. The first is that if you don’t come across a Christian or a Christian reality that tells you this, if you don’t meet up with a prophetic moment (prophetic means a person or a reality that tells you this; prophecy is proclamation), if you don’t come across a person or a reality that tells you this, then it’s as if for you it didn’t exist. This is the phenomenon of encounter. The phenomenon of encounter is, for our being Christians, like Pentecost was for the relationship with Christ that the Apostles had, because if Pentecost had not happened, they would have remained a bunch of fools, with this great but useless tragic memory inside them. So the encounter is the spirit of that man, or of this fact, that communicates itself to you; the encounter is the spirit of that fact that communicates itself to you. And the spirit of that fact communicates itself through something quite ordinary, tongues of fire, a fire, a thunderclap, like the fleeting ordinariness of any man whatever, of any group whatever.

I once went to Brescia to speak about “Communion and Liberation and Our Lady” at the National Marian Convention. As I arrived, Fr Maggioni (who is one of the few who talk seriously) was saying, in a discussion with another priest (he had given the Biblical lecture), that the crime of the Church today, the great shortcoming of the Church today, is that there is an ecclesiastic structure without the event. The encounter is that fact which becomes an event for life. Because, he said, without the event, that fact is as if non-existent (as I just said).

Think of the breathtaking importance that the ordinariness of an encounter takes up! Think of how we need to adore the presence of things so ephemeral as the names and the faces we have encountered, or as our groups, our community! Think of the eternal value these “stupid” things have.

The encounter is the first corollary. If it is a fact, then this fact is noticed, innotescit; you become aware of it through an encounter. This is Pentecost–in other words, the fact becomes an event for you, in your life. The historical event becomes event for you through an encounter.

Second corollary: Since the Christian fact is a man or a reality, a human presence (a human presence!) that claims to be the meaning of your life and the meaning of history–of your life, with all its relationships (remember that my life and the cosmos are the same thing, because the cosmos and history are my life with all its relationships, so they are my real life); since the content of this fact is the presence of a man, a human reality that says, “I am the meaning of history, of the cosmos, and therefore your meaning; I am the meaning of your existence and the existence of all things,” this fact is destiny made present; it is destiny that has become a presence, the presence of destiny, of my destiny and of your destiny, everyone’s destiny, and I recognize it through an encounter… Listen, what is the most important thing in your life? Your destiny. What is the most important thing in my life? My destiny. If my destiny and your destiny are the same thing, then we are living the same thing. This is communion, unity among men. What is impossible, here becomes so real that it becomes the moral law. The only moral law is unity, or charity. Thus, in communion, that fact becomes the new face of humanity, of society and of history.

Now, what I have described is the Movement. The Movement is only these things, and nothing else.

I don’t know if in Rome, in Pescara, in Bologna, and so on, we have lived the Movement with the awareness of these things. All I want to say is that the growing awareness of these things is the attraction, the only attraction of the invitation we’ve received. And it’s our only strength, in the face of anyone and anything, even were we to remain alone.

“This is the victory that conquers the world: our faith.” So, what conquers the world is the meaning of the world.

So the question we have substituted for the one we had this morning was only a switch in terminology, because the answer to “What is Christianity?” is the answer to “What is the Movement?” Actually, the question was, “How is the Movement going?” but, now, I believe we have the criteria for deciding how we are to go on.

I don’t know if you heard that piece of Jeremiah the other day, the reading for the martyrdom of St John the Baptist, when the Lord told Jeremiah, “I will make your face like a wall of bronze before them. They will attack you, but they will not prevail.” The wall of bronze is the “hard face” against any kind of assault, against the assault of what is different–in other words, against the assault of what is not the meaning–because what is different from this is what is not; it is falsehood. “The world is set in falsehood.” Because the world is not the pretty stars, the pretty face of a woman, the children who are growing… The question is the meaning with which a man lives his relationship with his wife, with the stars, and with his children. Because man is the animal who approaches everything (even himself) through the interpretation of a meaning.

So what is not this is falsehood! What gives us a “wall of bronze” against what is different is faith–that is, the acknowledgment of this Presence that has become event in our conscious life (and here is where our maturity began) through an encounter, and lives in my life only in as much as it is joined with yours, in other words in communion. This is true in my life, in as much as it is joined with yours, and not because I get together with you once a day to say morning prayer or see you 44 times a day because I hold 44 meetings, as it would still be the case if I were to be alone in America for 6 months! Your relationship with money, with time, with work, with your girl, with strangers… is with you; it is felt, conceived, approached and lived in the awareness of my belonging.

It has to do with everything I do. Why do people go to work? To earn their living or, in exceptional cases, out of interest in science or technology. Why do people marry? People marry because… they marry. And why do they have children? Because... because... they just do. And why do people eat? In order to live. Okay. All these answers have to be broken apart and replaced, or rather something else has to be born inside. The phenomenon is called transfiguration, in the Christian sense.

We do all this to build up the witness to Christ in the world, in other words, to build up unity, communion. Or, as the psalm said this morning, “Lord, I love the house where You dwell, the place where Your glory abides.” All we want is to build this.

It is through what we do that we build, because nothing is marginalized or censured. This is why we live the concept of transfiguration, because we are overwhelmed by “something else,” so that “whoever has a wife lives as if he did not, whoever has possessions, as if he had nothing, and whoever uses things lives as if he didn’t use them” because what is seen at first glance is not the true face of things. It is like another world.

To conclude, at least for the time being, what you experience is really like a new humanity.

So, the concept of experience and all the rest you have said is correct, because all the interventions had something correct. It is the experience of a new humanity, something just beginning, if you like, but justice, what all mankind hopes for, is this humanity that is beginning to dawn in us; justice is the final outcome.

This is not just one more thing alongside the problem of social justice. It invests the problem of social justice, too, and transforms, or transfigures its terms. It doesn’t marginalize or censure anything.

So then, how have our communities lived the Movement this year?

The New Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan

I like this guy; he has an effective leaderships style. In the article, I like how he articulated how he would counsel a woman who came to him considering an abortion, as well as how he articulated the church's position on same sex relationships. It is not clear to me that he has been handling the pedophilia crisis in the best possible way. He may be, but I'm just saying that that is not clear to me based on the article.

Sisters Face Death with Dignity and Reverence

Christian community and relationships make for dignified aging and death.

Dept. of State 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report

The introduction is the best primer on human trafficking that I have read yet.

Peace Begins Here, by Aaron Chassy

This is worth reading (yeah, why else would I blog it!)

The Genius of Luigi Giusani

The initial attraction is to his wild and passionate style. It sustains itself with simultaneous poetic and logical power.

Giussani is a man who would stand on his head to teach the faith, if he had to. It is never about him. It is always about reality, truth, purpose, meaning, you, and your destiny.

Nomi Network and me

Click on the above title.

Major Chocolate Companies Still Using Child Labor

If you want to avoid buying chocolate that was made with child labor, only buy Fair Trade Certified Chocolate.

The State of the Pro-Life, so-called Movement

As Roman Catholic Bishop Blase Cupich of South Dakota cautioned his fellow bishops at a national meeting, a “prophecy of denunciation quickly wears thin.”

Fr. Louie Vitale Joins Delegation to Iran

Thank God someone is working for peace.

Steppenwolf

I had read the novel Steppenwolf, by Herman Hesse, when I was in my late teens. I was not sophisticated enough to understand that I did not understand what was going in the book, but the feelings, tone, and mood, captivated me. It was a time in my life when I needed something like that, though I knew no one else who read Hesse.

The name Steppenwolf made me think of StephenWolf. (Stephen is my first name.) I used to fancy myself a rugged individualist, a sort of lone wolf, but I understand now that this was really a rationalization of fear and insecurity over social engagement with others.

I then saw the movie Steppenwolf (released 1974), a few years later, when I was in college. An understanding of the complete story was still a mystery to me, but parts of it resonated so vividly with me that I still remember the salient points today, 30+ years later. The protagonist, Harry Haller, was an overwrought, isolated, and unhappy intellectual. But I identified with and admired Harry for his objectivity, his independence of mind, and his freedom from social conformity.

Harry had dinner with an academic friend. Harry became disgusted with the nationalism of his friend. The friend then ridiculed and condemned an article that had been published in the newspaper which was against war. The friend's wife (relying on my fallible memory) also joined in the ridicule. The friend and his wife did not know that Harry wrote the column. Harry felt further isolated, alone, and beleaguered. I feel the same way about my own beliefs.

I remember Harry entering the Magic Theater. The entrance to the theater was enchanting. I felt that Harry was on the verge of despair due to his isolation and lack of social acceptance. I felt that his entering the Magic Theater was an escape, a flight from despair. Once in the theater, Harry did not find happiness or inner peace, only more anxiety and alienation from himself. In the theater, I felt Harry compromised or abandoned his principles. He disappointed me. He gave me anxiety in the pit of my stomach, and I lost respect for him.

However, I, Stephen, am not in flight from despair, and I have no intention of compromising my beliefs.

In my teens and early twenties, I had read perhaps 6-8 novels of Herman Hesse. I loved them. They moved me. I related to them greatly. I ate up everything about India and the world of The Glass Bead Game (Magister Ludi). Since then, I have picked up novels by Hesse, and they mean absolutely nothing to me now--nothing. I think certain books are for a certain time in your life. We move on. Life moves on.

Bishop Faces Death Threats For Fighting Human Trafficking

Click on the title above for the article. It will first come up in Spanish, but click on the small button in the upper right hand corner that says "English," for a translation.

Bishop Jose Luis Azcona belongs to a small order called The Augustinian Recollects (O.A.R.). I am familiar them because they have a community, Tagaste Monastery, in my hometown of Suffern, N.Y. While the Augustinian Recollects number 1,200 worldwide, in total, 20 are Bishops. What does that tell you about them?

In the United States, besides Tagaste Monastery, the Augustinian Recollect communities can also be found at Saint Cloud Monastery in West Orange, N.J., Saint Augustine's Priory in Oxnard, CA, as well as several parishes in Southern California and the New York City area.

Bishop Azcona is not the only bishop, or Christian, who lives under persecution or the threat of death. Never-the-less, I am awed by his courage, persistence, and commitment to the gospel.

Eradicating Sex Slavery in Cambodia

Will you take three minutes to vote for this worthy cause?

Nomi Network is a new, non-profit organization whose mission is to leverage the marketplace, fashion, and film, to help eradicate sex slavery in Cambodia.

Nomi Network is also participant in a contest on a website called ideablob.com that will enable it to receive $10,000.00 in funding if it wins. Nomi Network has just proceeded to the final round of the contest, along with seven other contestants. We need your vote to win the $10,000.00

To help Nomi Network win this contest, go to the ideablob website and vote for Nomi Network as a good idea. It only takes 3 minutes:

http://ideablob.com/ideas/4242-Nomi-Network
- Create a user name and vote for our idea.
- The deadline is January 31, 2009.

Spread the word and invite your friends to vote:

- Email your friends- especially the bloggers and tech savvy people.
- social networks like Facebook, My Space are Linked In
- online communities
- web and chat forums
- only one vote per person

If you are a blogger, twitterer, or hip with the social networking stuff, please contact Diana or Alice at NomiNetwork.org if you are interested in helping her secure more votes.

Thank you for your support! Look for Nomi Network as a “Cause” on Facebook- http://apps.facebook.com/causes/posts/105621?m=9bfabf26


(clock on the above image to enlarge)

Some Background on Sex Slavery in Cambodia, from the New York Times:

Fighting Sex Trafficking in Cambodia - Video

The Evil Behind the Smiles

Cambodia, Where Sex Traffickers are King

The Lunatic in the Pew

“Being Catholic is an act of rebellion. A mad stubborn, outrageous, nonsensical refusal to be comforted by anything less than the glorious impossibility of the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.”

”In his refusal to be reconciled, Jesus makes possible our impossible hopes, confirms our primitive rebellion against that terrible thing that is the death of those we love. And reminds us—or should remind us, if we could just shake ourselves from the numbing familiarity of the tenets of our church, the platitudes, the rote rituals, and the petty obsessions—that ours is a mad, rebellious faith, one that flies in the face of all reason, all evidence, all sensible injunctions, to be comforted, to be comfortable. A faith that rejects every timid impulse to accept the fact that life goes on pleasantly enough despite all that vanishes, despite death itself.”

“But as we face the church of the twenty-first century, my hope is that we nonfictional Catholics regain the courage to be difficult, rebellious, mad , the courage to refuse to be comforted. That we refuse to be comforted by the familiar, by the way we’ve always done things (priests in charge, laity usering, women running the bake sales). That we refuse to be comforted by our own self-satisfied eloquence about the dignity of unborn life while political or practical imperatives silence our objections to the destruction of life in the ghetto or in the death chamber. That we refuse to be comforted by our good, prosperous lives, by the careful picking and choosing of what words of Christ we will take to heart.

“My hope for the church, for us, is that we recall the adolescent rebellion that seems part of most of our biographies as Catholics, recall our youthful dissatisfactions and objections (whether we voiced them in Dunkin’ Donuts or in our permanent disassociation from the church), and speak them again, Or, if that adolescent rebellion seems too distant to recall, then my hope is that each of us becomes the garrulous drunk in the congregation, the loudmouthed, inappropriate, indiscreet psycho who cries foul over hypocrisy and deception and illogic and cliché, refusing to accept the easy comfort of assurances that the hierarchy will fix itself, that Jesus doesn’t want women to be priests that it is acceptable for Catholics to acquiesce to a politically defensible but morally unjust war.

“At the heart of our beliefs, at the heart of our belief, lies the outrageous conviction that love redeems us, Christ redeems us, even from death. Following this wild proposition, this fulfillment of our most primitive yearnings, every other outrageous thing we expect or demand of ourselves and our church—honest, charity, goodness, forgiveness, peace—surely must begin to seem reasonable, even easy. Every other challenge the twenty-first century brings should seem—even to the likes of us not-so-great Catholics-simple enough: a benefit, no doubt, of the simple grace of being Catholic.”

- Alice McDermott, extracted from an essay titled, "The Lunatic in the Pew," published in Boston College Magazine, 2004.

P.S.
Coincidentally, I ran into this article from America magazone, which is apropos to Alice McDemott's argument.
http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=542

Two Extraordinary Acts of Christian Witness

Ingid Betancourt's faith during her captivity by FARC and after her rescue:

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/articles/a0000343.shtml

An American Catholic Deacon was arrested for proclaiming Christ in Beijing during the Olympics:

http://www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=28867

A Girl Named Fatima - from America Magazine

At the above URL, see the subtitle, "Fatima's Quest."

The approach of the author, Fr. Klein, has been criticized in online comments and blog entries. In the article, Fr. Klein himself notes criticism from conservatives on the Fordham campus.

I know that Fr. Luigi Giussani, founder of the Communion and Liberation movement would have taught and counseled Fatima exactly the same way as Fr. Klein. The issue is beyond simple tolerance. If we believe in Grace, then we better not get in the way and interfere with it. To discover the Truth and take it to heart requires freedom. To impose a narrow agenda of conversion on Fatima would have only made her defensive.

Book Review: The Shack, by William P. Young

The Shack is a warm-fuzzy about God. It is a very imaginative fantasy that attempts to teach spiritual truths, but as literature, it is rather poor. Thankfully, it is not about dogma but relationship to God. At first impression, the novel may not seem to address more difficult to accept concepts like brokenness, sin, or discipleship, but they actually hover over the entire story, in the person of the main character, Mackenzie Allen Phillips. While a few of the ideas are clearly off-track theologically, the book illustrates some spiritual concepts very well.

Mackenzie’s young daughter had been abducted a few years prior. The body was never found, just some bloody clothes in an old shack in the mountains. Now, Mack receives a mysterious note inviting him to return to the shack. The heart of the novel is a dialogue with God. The enchanted world in and around the shack reminded me of the imaginary land of Teribithia, from Bridge to Teribithia. The combination of ordinary people and the supernatural remind me of the works of Stephen King, with the difference that The Shack is about good rather than evil.

Rigid, unimaginative, authoritarian, legalistic, or overly dogmatic Christians (they are legion) may have a hard time appreciating the story. It will be a challenge to anyone whose image of God is of an angry patriarch, or whose experience of Christianity is of fire and brimstone.

As far as literary style goes, I choked on the first paragraph of the first chapter. This is a book about relationship to God, and the author states that, “the god of winter was not about to relinquish its hard-won dominion without a tussle.” A Christian author who is trying to teach truth who starts a book with a citation of pantheistic theology confuses the reader and undermines his own credibility as a teacher or a narrator. The same paragraph finishes with this gem of originality: “snuggle up with a book and a hot cider and wrap up in the warmth of a crackling fire.” The book is rife with similar cliched images.

Beneath each chapter heading is a quote from a different author. The quotes are bold and provocative in themselves, but they tend to spoil the reader experience. Besides being distracting, good authors do not tip off the reader that way. A well written story can speak for itself. Part of the fulfillment of reading is to discover the substance and meaning of a text on one’s own.

I have no intention of trying to vet the validity of the theology that is presented. I learned quite a bit about the Biblical concept of submission in relationships (it is a little different than what it sounds like!). I am sure that that part is absolutely correct. The book presents a reasonable but not original answer to the age-old question of why God permits the existence of evil. Forgiveness is presented as extraordinarily difficult but possible. However, the author’s heretical presentation of Wisdom as a fourth person, apart from the Holy Trinity, is just too wacky.

The Shack correctly takes the common but mistaken notion that religion is primarily about morality and stands it on its head. Christianity is firstly about one’s relationship to God. As Luigi Giussani says, morality is less about abstract rules and laws than it is about honoring a relationship.

For Christians, the concept of relationship is ultra-important. Those who do not cultivate or experience relationship are doomed to living out their lives as empty shells. I am relatively new to an appreciation of relationships, whether between myself and God or between myself and another person. I am not sure that one can have a positive relationship with God until one has had a positive relationship with another person. One models the other. Perhaps we can only cultivate a relationship with God to the extent that we can cultivate relationships with other people? Or is it the other way around, or in parallel? I have observed that those who actively, continually work on their relationship with God tend to apply the same effort to their human relationships, with fruitful results. Christians are expected to act with charity, that is, love, towards others. The place where charity begins, and can be practiced by anyone, is in our relationships with those closest to us.

I accept at face value the numerous people who say their lives have been changed by book. That is a good thing. As a “message” book, I do not mean to be so harsh, but The Shack is a work of fiction, not theology, and ultimately, it must be judged as such.

G.K. Chesterton

I am posting this mostly because I was struck by the quote below.

G.K. Chesterton was a British writer who was an older contemporary of C.S. Lewis and who converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism. He was quite an interesting character, and on EWTN, there is a classy, one hour show about him every Sunday night, which I enjoy. He is notorious for endless, sharp aphorisms and notable quotes. I am always reluctant to mention Chesterton to my Protestant friends because he is such a pro-Catholic bigot. Witness this zinger of an aphorism: "The Catholic Church is the only thing that saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age. " Yet, to my surprise, I see Protestants citing him enthusiastically here and there.

We all know that converts tend to have much more zeal than those born into a religion and Chesterton was no exception. The following quote is about Chesterton’s zeal in the books he wrote following his conversion.

“In these books, Chesterton becomes a Pangloss of the parish; anything Roman is right. It is hard to credit that even a convinced Catholic can feel equally strongly about St. Francis’s intuitive mysticism and St. Thomas’s pedantic religiousity, as Chesterton seems to. His writing suffers from conversion sickness. Converts tend to see the faith they were raised in as an exasperatingly makeshift and jury-rigged system: Anglican converts to Catholicism are relieved not to have to defend Henry VIII’s divorces; Jewish converts to Christianity are relieved to get out from under all those strange Levitical laws on animal hooves. The newly adapted faith, they imagine, is a shining, perfectly balanced system, an intricately worked clock where the cosmos turns to tell the time, and the cuckoo comes out singing every Sunday. An outsider sees the church as a dreamy compound of incense and impossibility, and over-glamorizing its pretensions, underrates its adaptability. A Frenchman or an Italian, even a devout one, can see the Catholic Church as a normally bureaucratic human institution, the way patriotic Americans see the post office, recognizing the frailty and even the occasional psychosis of its employees without doubting its necessity or its ability to deliver the message. Chesterton writing about the church is like someone who has just made his first trip to the post office. Look, it delivers letters for the tiny price of a stamp! You write an address on the label, and they will send it anywhere, literally anywhere you like, across a continent and an ocean, in any weather! The fact that the post office attracts time servers, or has produced an occasional gun massacre, is only proof of the mystical enthusiasm that the post office alone provides! Glorifying the postman beyond what the postman can bear is what you do only if you are new to mail.

“The books became narrower as they got bigger. The problem of how you reconcile a love of the particular with a love of universal values seemed easy; the Catholic Church was large enough to provide a universal code and ritual for life with plenty of room for variation among lives within it. The trouble is that Catholic universalism is not so convincing to those whose idea of local variation involved a variation on the Catholic ritual, or wanting some other ritual, or wanting no ritual at all. Chesterton’s vision has no room in it for tolerance, except as a likeable personal whim or an idiosyncratic national trait. (That he was personally tolerant, on this basis no one can doubt.)"

- from the column, “Critic at Large,” titled, “The Back of the World,” subtitled, “The Troubling genius of G.K. Chesterton,” by Adam Gopnik, in The New Yorker, July 7 & 14, 2008, p58, par 1.”

As someone born into a large Roman Catholic family, and not a convert, I find the people and the institution of the church to be like extended family--we all are familiar with everyone else’s personality, habits and all too-humanness, good and bad. I find the occasional paranoia about the church, on the part of some American Protestants, to be somewhere between charming and amusing. We cradle Catholic know better! We also readily welcome new members of the family, and I’m glad we occasionally get some fun and interesting enthusiasts like G.K. Chesterton.

Some G.K. Chesterton Resources:

http://www.chesterton.org/
http://chestertonandfriends.blogspot.com/

Book Review: Little Chapel on the River (2005)

Little Chapel on the River is a warm memoir of a family and a community that eat, drink, and socialize at Guinan’s, a family owned Irish pub in the town of Garrison, N.Y. The pub, now closed, was on the Hudson River, across from West Point and next to the Garrison train station.

I am mostly Irish-American, and I enjoyed the depiction of modern day Irish-American culture.

The author, Gwendolyn (Wendy) Brooks is from North Carolina and is a journalist for the Wall Street Journal. She is in a relationship with another woman, Kathryn. Their apartment was across the street from the World Trade Center, and they had to flee on the morning of 9/11. Some months later, a friend brought them to Guinan’s, upstate, and Wendy became so enchanted with the place that they settled in Garrison.

Guinan’s became an important part of her life. The personalities and relationships of each of the diverse characters who frequent the pub are well drawn. Each comes across as interesting and dignified. Common courtesy is expected and people respect each other in general. Wendy doesn’t flaunt the fact that she is in a relationship with another woman but doesn’t hide it either. She comes across as a normal, even classy person and is accepted by the men and women who hang-out there. Soon enough, she earns the trust of the Guinan family and, inevitably, pitches-in at the pub whenever help is needed. She becomes a member of the inner circle of an extended group of family-like Guinan loyalists. Their lives became part of her own.

The event of 9/11 caused many who experienced it so reflect upon what is most important in life. Each chapter of Little Chapel on the River is suffixed with a recollection of the author from her childhood in North Carolina. For Wendy, post 9/11, the discovery of Guinan’s provided her with a network of relationships in a community of ordinary but very human and loving people, like the ones she knew as a young child.

The book evoked a bit of sadness in me. America has been in a decades-long love affair with the self and the almighty dollar. The pub and its community are a relic from the past, when persons, relationships, family, and community counted. Little Chapel on the River is a reminder of something that America has been slowly losing for a long time.

My Encounter with the Communion and Liberation Movement

My first encounter with Communion and Liberation Movement and Msgr Luigi Giussani was the November, 2004 issue of their monthly magazine, Traces. My wife and I had had a vicious fight right before she took the kids to Hong Kong for a month, in December, 2004. I was home alone that Christmas season, feeling down, alone, and somberly reflecting on my situation. Meanwhile, at work, Virginia C. had left a Traces magazine on a co-worker’s desk, and so I took it and read it.

Two articles struck me deeply:

“God's Commitment with Man's Brutal Loneliness”

and

“Be It Done To Me According to Your Word”

After reading the whole magazine, I felt like I knew Luigi Giussani personally. To understand why, you would have to have known one of our parish priests, Fr. Richard Joyce, back when I was in grammar school and junior high (the 1960’s). Fr. Joyce had regularly engaged young people in casual settings, with questions about the faith. He taught and evangelized people at their own level, but he also understood and discussed freely the trends and ideas in society from the viewpoint of Philosophy. Joyce was passionate in his Christian convictions and acted freely according to what he believed, without concern for career, status, conventional wisdom, or what anyone else might think of him. I saw all this in Giussani, in spades.

Beyond that, Msgr Giussani's ideas about evangelization, about what was wrong with the church, and how to fix it, agreed with my own, and that's about the first time that ever happened!

Not only that, but intuitively, with Giussani, I saw the signs for the way out of my own personal tangle of formalism, moralism, authoritarianism, and intellectualism. I intuitively sensed that not only had I discovered a way of being Christian that would allow me to be fully and freely human and one that approached life as a wonderfully grand adventure; albeit, one where the stakes were all or nothing.

After I read that issue of Traces magazine, I asked Virginia, "What is this? Who are these people?" I had only heard of Communion and Liberation once, years ago, in an article in the New York Times that criticized them as being conservative because they were loyal to the Pope.

For those that do not know, Fr. Giussani had been a seminary professor in Milan, Italy. In the summer 1954, while taking a train to a vacation on the Adriatic Sea, he saw a group of teenagers on the train and, out of curiosity, decided to question them about their knowledge of the faith. He discovered that they were not only ignorant of Christianity but contemptuous of it as well. This precipitous encounter led Fr. Giussani to decide to resign his professorship and seek a position teaching in a high school, that fall. And that was the origin of the Communion and Liberation Movement. One reason that that encounter resonated with me was that our old parish priest, Fr. Joyce often sought out young people and engaged them in conversation conversation to see how much they knew about the faith.

In addition to Giussani’s encounter on the train, I was profoundly moved by several other encounters that Giussani had in his first few weeks of teaching high school. Those incidents were examples of living what one believes, of preaching the gospel always--a powerful witness. In the interests of brevity, I won’t describe those additional encounters, but I will at least list them: (1) the encounter with the student named Claudio Pavesi in his very first class at the high school, over faith vs reason (2) the encounter with the students on the street who were wearing Catholic Action logos, (3) observing the groups of students gathered under the school stairways, passionately discussing Communism, and (4) the school assembly where students debated the politics of Communism and Monarchical-Fascism. In each of these incidents incidentally, there is no doubt that Fr. Joyce would have responded in exactly the same way as Fr. Giussani. So you can see why I feel that I know him.

After I had read that issue of Traces magazine, I was still unaware of Giussani's method, teachings, perspectives on scripture, his wonderfully wild writing style, his exemplary tolerance and respect for the beliefs of people who were non-Christian, and his deep interest and value that he put on all things cultural, especially music.

Nor did I grasp Giussani's emphasis on experience. That took a long time and has been the biggest adjustment I've had to make. I now understand that, at a social-psychological level, the reason that reliance on experience was so foreign to me was that I grew up Irish-Catholic at a time when Protestantism was still the dominant, overarching culture in America (that insight is courtesy of Christopher Bacich). And my insight is that in that context, unity needed to take precedence over individualism. The mentality was one of circle the wagons, over-protect the children’s minds and morals, tolerate no dissent within the ranks, and present a unified front--survival tactics well-honed in British occupied Ireland, transported to America. To learn from experience was too risky. The community might lose control over someone who did. They would risk making mistakes; they might fail. They might come to do something immoral, or worse, succumb to heresy. That is how I perceive it.

A few months after my encounter with C&L, I attended a seminar on Giussani's book, The Religious Sense. The seminar leader, Christopher Bacich, talked boldly and forthrightly about using experience to grow as a Christian, and I was completely flabbergasted! To me, experience meant experimentation and that was absolutely, completely forbidden! The spector of sex, drugs, and violence!

I needed to think about the implications and consequences; yet, though it was hard for me to imagine it for myself, I saw the reliance on experience as an invitation to walk and breathe freely in life, though I still could not accept it. It was quite a shock: I had just been given permission to be in charge of my own life. I am still working on overcoming my old, overly rigid ways, towards becoming freely human, not to mention Christian, and of course, this is a life-long task.

The War in Iraq

Stability in Iraq may never be achieved. The Iraqis say they can’t assume control of their country until the Americans leave. We can’t leave because there will be a civil war. The American military learned many lessons from the Vietnam War, but our civilian policy makers did not.

I am very disappointed in my own clarity of thinking just before the invasion of Iraq. Originally, I was opposed to an invasion of Iraq, based on the principles of Just War theory. But as the buildup came closer to the time of the invasion, I got caught-up in the surrounding emotions, based on what was being reported in the media. In hindsight, I realized that before the invasion, the U.S. and Iraq were behaving like my two sons fighting in the back seat of the car.

I knew that the Iraq war did not meet the necessary conditions of the Just War theory, but I told myself that the theory had not been updated for modern realities. I thought the war was justified on a “greater good” basis because of the crimes Hussein was committing against his own people. However, the Pope had warned Bush that in going to war against Iraq, too many innocents would suffer and that he would not be able to predict or control the course the war would take, the consequences or outcome.

You should only go to war when you have no other choice. We need to deal with people like Sadaam Hussein with negotiation, no matter how difficult it is or how long it takes. Our government does not put enough effort, talent, resources or priority into negotiations in situations like this. We need to be more creative in applying political pressure. To say that one can’t negotiate with the likes of Hussein is a mistake. One should never walk away saying that such negotiations aren’t working. The Bush administration does not negotiate or exercise diplomacy. Their policy towards smaller, non-friendly countries is to simply demand they do things our way, and if they do not, they don’t talk to them except to threaten, bomb, or invade them.

One sad thing about the war in Iraq is that there is nothing like the anti-war movement that there was against the Vietnam War. One reason is that there is no draft. Another is that because of 9/11, and because most Iraqis are Islamic, many Americans wrongly associate Iraq with a general threat against America from Islamic terrorists. But the American military also learned a lot from Vietnam. Journalists are not permitted to embed themselves with troops in Iraq the way they were in Vietnam. That prevents them from reporting on atrocities committed against civilians. Also, the military does not allow the filming of the coffins of returning American dead. Enemy body counts are not reported like they were during the Vietnam War, and we don’t see news footage of piles of the enemy dead stacked like cordwood. With Iraq, it’s a case of see no evil.

Americans don’t know history or other cultures. The people making our foreign policy are all mid-Westerners (Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al) who have no exposure to people different than themselves. They can’t imagine or understand that other people in the world think and behave in ways that are entirely different than themselves. They assume that other people are reasonable, based on their own understanding of what reasonable means. In the 20^th century, the British had a long history in Iraq. They understood the tribal culture very well (and got out!). Our leaders chose not to learn from the British experience but that would have required them to acknowledge that they did not understand that part of the world.

Colin Powell had warned Cheney and Rumsfeld about invading Iraq that, “If you break it, you fix it.” I still find it incredible that Rumsfeld actually thought that we could march into Iraq, be greeted by streets full of cheering civilians, that the Iraqis would all go back to work the next day and everybody was going live happily ever after. When will they ever learn? When will we ever learn?

Of Laughter and Confession

In reference to the May 7, 2000 New York Times article, by Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete, at the above URL:

Earlier this year, I attended a seminar with the author, and he was exactly as he appears in the article—a vaudeville comedian who articulates orthodox, lofty theology with laser like precision, in a way that anyone can understand.

Personally, I have never understood the phenomena of laughter. I always found Freud's explanation of humor depressing and unsatisfactory. The way the Puerto Rican Albacete bundles the teaching of serious topics with humorous stories is outside my Irish Catholic comfort zone. I mean, how can you tell jokes about something as serious as the confession of sins? Nevertheless, I immediately understood Lorenzo's comments about giddiness and laughter. It explains my awful, embarrassing habit of laughing while at funerals and at other inappropriate situations.

Note Albacete's implied criticism of formalism, of which I am guilty. I also appreciate his casting of confession as something that is less of a moral accounting, of which I am also guilty, than it is an act of completely exposing our innermost selves in front of the Ultimate.

Albacete is trying to teach us that a sincere confession of sin is something beyond the mere formal or legalistic expiation of moral guilt. It is a deep, gasping cry of desire to be loved by the Ultimate-- by the mysterious God who loves me, despite my insignificance. And what joy! I may be just starting to understand this laughter and giddiness business.

The Religious Sense in Karl Rahner

Quoted from Karl Rahner's Wikipedia entry-

The basis for Rahner's theology is that all human beings have a latent ("unthematic") awareness of God in any experiences of limitation in knowledge or freedom as finite subjects. Because such experience is the "condition of possibility" for knowledge and freedom as such, Rahner borrows the language of Kant to describe this experience as "transcendental."

Such is the extent of Rahner's idea of the "natural knowledge of God" — what can be known by reason prior to the advent of "special" revelation. God is only approached asymptotically, in the mode of what Rahner calls "absolute mystery." While one may try to furnish proofs for God's existence, these explicit proofs ultimately refer to the inescapable orientation towards Mystery which constitute — by transcendental necessity — the very nature of the human being.

John McCain's Alleged Scarlet Letter

The recent New York Times article on John McCain was nothing but a witch hunt of gossip and innuendo. If the article showed anything of substance, it was that our politicians, of necessity, must work in a dark wood of ethical pitfalls and dilemmas. Contrary to the article’s intent, I was impressed by the priority that McCain gives to ethics and by the corrections that he has made after committing ethical lapses. Unlike other politicians who lie, rationalize and deny, John McCain has owned up to his mistakes. Unfortunately, for many people, that’s not good enough.

Puritanism is very much alive and well in the media and public square of America. The Puritans believed in an Elect, that God had pre-elected who was to be saved. They believed that the Elect were morally perfect, that the Elect lived among everyone else, but that no one could be sure who they were. The motivation to behave morally was that, even though you couldn’t know for sure, there was a possibility that you might be among the Elect. In that society, if you sinned, you were damned forever, with no possibility of redemption. That is the attitude that the media and most American citizens still have towards our Presidential candidates.

This is why the politics of “gotcha” among the media and politicians is such a popular sport—if they can catch you in a few or just one good, “gotcha,” you’re toast. With the media, any sin, hypocrisy, or excess of flip-flopping in a Presidential candidate’s past is sufficient to make them unfit for office, forever. That is one reason why, when politicians are accused of wrongdoing, they go into denial--if they confess and come clean, their career may be over. Net-net, wrong doing remains hidden, festers and is never expurgated. This legacy of Puritanism has made hypocrites of both us and our politicians. Ultimately, it reinforces the very thing that it overtly opposes. It is unfortunate that politics, government, and the public square in America are such a dark wood of scrupulosity, condemnation and hypocrisy.

Christians and Atheists Together

I think we should form a group composed of Christians and atheists who want to have respect for each other and are willing to engage in dialogue, in an effort find common ground. Such a group would be good for both religion and political life. One of the group's goals would be to inculcate respect in churches and society at large.

A friend who is an atheist sent me this (used with her permission):

“so i have this new client at an onsite freelance gig. she's a very nice lady, but wow, does she talk about prayer and jesus a lot. i've kept my thoughts quiet and nod and smile, but i think she assumes i'm a born again too.

“she did ask if i didn’t like talking about god, and i was like, "oh on the contrary, i LOVE theological debates, i just don't want to offend anyone with my opinions, that’s all.

“she's a really nice lady, but i'm slightly worried that if she were to find out that i'm an atheist, she would treat me differently. then again, she knows i'm an artist. and most people should know by now that we're hardly saintly, lol.

"tonight is my 3rd official day at the job, and i've gathered that she seems kinda lonely to me. i overheard her talking on the phone to a friend along the lines of...'but you shouldnt condemn them, maybe they are sick in the head. we are supposed to pray for these people, not punish them or look down on them' and that struck me as a decent human being. she definitely means well, and i think she has the best intentions.

"i negotiated a lower rate for her since its an easy job for me, and its kinda fun. she's constantly praising my work and she said she already really likes working with me. she talks about being blessed a lot, and i don't really mind that at all. however, when she mentioned that men are higher in the hierarchy than compared to women, because woman came from adam's rib... i tried my best not to counter attack. i just said, 'i don't really know about that'

"yes, i held my tongue! i'm just gonna see how long this all lasts before we end up in some theological debate. as for now, i'm keeping my mouth shut. i like getting paid a decent hourly wage for really easy work."

One Reaction that I Have:

Believe it or not, I have been in her shoes, that is, fearing that I won’t be respected by a person who has different beliefs.

When I was a freshman in college, I had a roommate who was a member of the school’s Christian Fellowship. All of his friends were members of the Christian Fellowship, and so I got to know most of that group. Naturally, my roommate invited me to some of their gatherings. They knew that I was a Catholic, and one of the student leaders liked to make a point of criticizing Catholicism to me. This was 1973, and that particular student happened to be a Baptist from Texas. He was arrogant, close minded, and loudmouthed. One peculiar thing though was that many regular members of the Christian Fellowship, including another leader (who is a priest today) were Catholic. One time, after making a criticism of Catholicism to me, he turned around, and I heard him say to the people behind him that, “Actually, Catholics are O.K.”

WTF?

The faculty advisor to the Christian Fellowship was very anti-Catholic. Once, the school hosted an “ecumenical” meeting of all the Christian denominations in the area. The Catholics were represented by a well-known Jesuit priest who was the president of Saint Peter’s College in Jersey City. To the Christian Fellowship members, the man who was faculty advisor expressed intense criticism of the Jesuits because, among other things, the formal name of the Jesuits is The Society of Jesus. (Can’t you think of anything better to criticize?). Once when I and others were sitting at a cafeteria table with the faculty advisor, unprompted, he took out paper and a pen, and drew a diagram explaining to me about God, Grace, Heaven, Earth and man. Now I had had 12 years of Catholic schooling where I was taught theology every day. The concept that he thought he was teaching me I had probably internalized by the 6th grade. I felt very patronized.

The problem with all these people is that they didn’t respect my Catholic beliefs or my integrity as a person. They didn’t know me well enough to be saying these things. I’m guessing that the people who were saying that Catholics were O.K. said that because they had gotten to know the Catholic members of the group. All of the members of the Christian Fellowship were good people. I’m just highlighting the imperfections of a few otherwise good people.

There were other “cultural” conflicts. Once I had said that I liked theology, and several of them expressed derision for theology. Their Bible studies were fine; I actually enjoyed those. I did not feel completely at home in their worship services. Catholic services are more impersonal, formal, and unemotional, whereas theirs were more casual, emotional, and personal. The difference in worship was not a big deal though. By the way, my roommate did come to a Catholic Mass or two. Afterwards, he said that it did confirm his pre-conceptions, that it was formal, rigid, and liturgical, and so on.

We have to respect the integrity and beliefs of others. Respecting the beliefs of others does not mean that you are accepting their beliefs. It is O.K. to disagree. Preaching, teaching, and evangelizing are fine, but don’t be obnoxious about imposing your beliefs on others.

After Midnight Mass

Behold the night sky this Christmas morning.

Gaze upon the heavens and the silent night
of galaxies, stars, and planets beyond,
embedded in the dark of the cosmos.

Behold the gargantuan gods of old,
those mummified constellations of myth,
frozen so brightly in play, love, and war.

Pause and consider the vast ambit of
physics, biology, philosophy,
mathematics, and all human knowledge.

The only sounds are the stampeding ghosts
of raw winter wind, the mournful rocking
and muted wooden murmuring of trees.
Every bleak, naked limb mirrors myself;
every shaking branch mocks my aloneness.

I am an atom, a mere iota,
an infinitesimal of space-time,
journeying through the trough of an abyss.

Yet, I reject the void. It is not my end.
It was like this, on the road, for Joseph,
the shepherds, and magi of Zoroastor.

Before my birth, before I was nothing,
Someone took pity on my nothingness.

But who am I, and what is my purpose?
Never-the-less, amid my confusion
I have hope, for I am accompanied
on my journey, by the Word within me.

The Overcoat, by Gogol

I recently rented to movie The Namesake, where Gogol and his short story, “The Overcoat,” were featured prominently. It prompted me to read the short story.

The story is about human dignity, and that is what the overcoat symbolizes. Akaky Akakyevitch is a person of no worldly consequence, influence or power, without even a wife or family. He lives in material, social, and spiritual poverty. What little human dignity he has is constantly under assault at the office. He invests all of his human dignity in a new overcoat which he purchases at great sacrifice. Soon, he is violently robbed of his overcoat. The police offend Akaky by having not the slightest inclination in investigating the robbery. And then, a person of Person of Consequence adds mortal insult to the original injury. It is no wonder Akaky dies.

Ultimately, I find the story disappointing. Yes, there is a retributive justice. To make up for his loss, Akaky’s ghost robs many others of their coats. He flusters the police, just as they had flustered him, and, finally, Akaky’s ghost confronts and terrifies the Person of Consequence while freeing him of his overcoat. It was sad to see that the justice achieved was only transactional, as opposed to transformational, and that none of the characters redeemed themselves, repented, or were significantly changed for the better in anyway. It is no wonder that these social conditions of Russia resulted in revolution.

After reading the story, I also read Frank O’Connor’s, “The Legacy of Gogol’s Overcoat.” O’Connor talks about how groundbreaking this story was, but of course, I cannot read it as if I had never ready anything written afterwards.

I think O’Connor is going too far in stressing that the story is an analogy to the crucifixion of Jesus. However it is very much a Judaic-Christian story, in that it is about the innate human dignity of a person regardless of their station in life

Experience in Giussani and Protestantism

Stanley Hauerwas is a Protestant and a professor of theology at Duke University. My understanding is that he is among the most highly respected theologians in America today, among both Catholics and Protestants.

Stanley Hauerwas is very familiar with Luigi Giussani’s writings and holds him in high regard. Hauerwas has said that he wishes that he had thought of some of Giussani’s articulations! For a source on Giussani’s reliance on experience, see his book, The Religious Sense, Chapter 1.

Both Hauerwas and Giussani are passionate Christians.

Divine Mercy Sunday - written April 15, 2007

Today, the Sunday after Easter, is Divine Mercy Sunday. It was added to the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar by Pope John Paul II, in the year 2000, to emphasize and celebrate the mercy of God.

My Lent was excellent. I chose not to sacrifice anything apart from the minimum but instead did a series of daily meditations, from a booklet titled, From Fear to Love. Lenten Reflections on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, by Henri Nouwen. Each meditation spoke directly to me. I was able to make it to The Sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession) on Good Friday. I’m always on a “high” after confession—great relief! The combined euphoria from Lent, Confession and Easter lasted almost a week. And now I am back to feeling like a dirty, broken sinner. Divine Mercy Sunday arrived just in time.

From Fear to Love - Henri Nouwen

Twenty years ago, I had come across the name Henri Nouwen in a magazine article, and once, a parish priest mentioned the name and one of his books in a sermon. At the time, I tried one of his books but found it bland and abstract--nothing resonated, and I was disappointed.

But this past Ash Wednesday, I went to Mass near where I work, and in the back of the church was a stack of booklets titled, From Fear to Love. Lenten Reflections on the Prodigal Son, by Henri Nouwen. In his sermon, the priest enthusiastically recommended to the congregation that we take a booklet and read each day’s meditation during Lent. A replica of the famous Rembrandt painting, The Return of the Prodigal Son was propped up in front of the altar. The priest explained that Henri Nouwen’s meditations were inspired by his contemplation of this painting by Rembrandt.

Every single meditation speaks to me powerfully and insightfully. He seems to be one of the few Catholic writers of whom “brokenness” is a regular part of his vocabulary. He also emphasizes the love of God for us seemingly more than any other writer. I realize now that 20+ years ago, I was too undeveloped, immature, and unwise for Nouwen to have been insightful for me. Now I wish I had the time to read all his books. Any one who has experienced the difficulties of life will find redemptive consolation, inspiration and direction with Henri Nouwen.

He is described, along with Thomas Merton, as having explicitly developed a “Theology of the Heart.” His thought is saturated with scripture and has been described as being above Catholicism and Protestantism. What I am most impressed by is that he quit a Yale professorship to work with developmentally disabled adults for the last ten years of his life.

If you want to know more, see the web page for The Henri Nouwen Society.

Witness

I’ve been avidly following the news coverage of the Amish schoolhouse massacre. I’ve been intellectualizing it as an American gothic tale—like something straight out Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, or Stephen King. Considering the facts about the perpetrator and the victims, this was a case of almost pure evil versus pure good.

The Fox News station has had the most extensive reporting of the incident, with Greta Van Susteren doing most of the on-the-scene coverage. I’ve long found Greta to be intriguing. She is a lawyer and a Scientologist. She has a unique look, and she always comes across as acting like her true self.

In the first hours of the coverage of the incident, Greta appeared very tense, as well as shocked and horrified, like everyone. She said that she wants to hate the man who did this, but said, with a look and tone of perplexed, emotional disorientation, that the Amish want to forgive the man who did this, as well as want forgiveness and compassion for his family.

On Fox News, the Amish forgiveness and compassion have become one of the bigger elements of the story. The grandfather of the two Miller sisters who were killed told the widow of the perpetrator, “We will forgive you.” And several news stories reported that the Amish community will be helping to support her and her children.

Believe me when I tell you, as someone of 51 years of age, forgiveness is one of the most difficult things for a person to do. Through my Catholic education and my devout Catholic mother, I was taught to forgive also. If you were to ask me when I was much younger, say 30, I would have said that I forgive easily and that I always forgive. I also noted that it seemed that many Catholics were not willing to forgive. However, as I got older, say in my forties, and I experienced and observed more of life’s hard experiences, as well as developed more self-knowledge, I learned how difficult it is to forgive. Even as I objectively understand that forgiveness is the only complete emotional therapy, even as I understand that scripture and the church command and counsel forgiveness, I have serious doubts that I would be able to forgive someone who did harm to me or anyone close to me. I’ve learned that forgiveness is a very difficult place to get to.

Yet, this past Friday night on Fox News, I heard Greta say that she, like the Amish, wants to forgive the man who did this.

The Religious Sense: Psychoanalytic Theory and Jacques Marie-Emily Lacan

something far-fetched, perhaps too fanciful, perhaps something to put you to sleep, a midnight snack for the left and right brains

My next class is called Ethics and Public Policy (ethics for the public administrator). Class does not start until September 25, but I'm getting a head start reading and researching. The book starts off with background information in post-modern ethics. So I've been poking around the Internet at related topics, and in the Wikipedia entry on postmodern philosophy, I found a reference to the psychoanalytical theorist Jacques Marie-Emily Lacan. This drew my curiosity. Prior to this the only place I have ever seen that name was on the web pages of MySpace friend Theophila. So out of curiosity I went to Lacan's Wikipedia page. The last two sections (titled, "The Other" and "The Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic") prompted certain ideas to my imagination.

"Lacan considered the self as something constituted in the "Other", that is, the conception of the external."

If this statement is not 9 months pregnant with theological meaning then I don't know what is. At least the parallels are there. A newborn only knows that s/he exists, then in its dependency becomes conscious of the parent as other. But the parallel to God (the Other) is great. The statement is extremely Augustinan in the sense of God as Other, yet at the same time ourselves being in God and God in us.

"unconscious prefigured structuralist linguistics"

More vague though, the talk of language is very suggestive, as the primary form of revelation for us Christians comes to us as the Word--that is in the form of language. Interesting too that, ironically, with Wittgenstein’s destruction of metaphysics (a pillar of Christian philosophy) and the birth of linguistic philosophy, how much more prominence have the signifiers of language been given?

"...language is never completely contained - it always contains things beyond what is intended, and these things form an endless chain of signifiers. This signifying chain, and more broadly the ordering structures of language in general constitute the Other (that word is always capitalized in Lacan's work)."

Is this not analogous to the, "Religious Sense?”
Is this not, as the church has taught at least since the middle ages (Aquinas), that with reason alone, a person can to some extent intuit/ascertain the existence of God (higher power) ?

"Lacan also formulated the concepts of the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic, which he used to describe the elements of the psychic structure."

Are not the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic all part of worship and spirituality? (Perhaps this is more obvious to a Catholic or within Catholicism, with the emphasis on the Sacramental).

Similarly, "The Real, therefore, can never truly be grasped or engaged with - it is continually mediated through the imaginary and the symbolic."

Lacan had been raised by a devoutly Catholic mother, but left the faith in adolescence. He had a brother who became a monk however, and Jacques remained close to him throughout his life.

There is a profile of Lacan here: http://www.richardwebster.net/thecultoflacan.html

His Wikipedia entry is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Lacan

A Google search on “Lacan God” yields this brain squeezer:
http://www.lacan.com/zizekother.htm

Justification

The following is part of a comment that was left by someone on a prior entry on this blog, titled, “The Religious Sense: Nietzche”

“What about your views as a Catholic? I'm sure you are sincere but unfortunately sincerely wrong as well. What do I mean? The Bible says that there is only one way to getting saved and my website will show that as a Catholic you do NOT know how to get saved.”

This fellow is talking about what the theologians call justification. On the Biblical level it is a simple, straightforward subject. As far as the theology of justification goes, I know enough to know that it is a serious, sophisticated subject full of nuances and semantics, of which I do not pretend a working knowledge.

Of justification, Thomas Merton once wrote:

“The religious genius of the Protestant Reformation, as I see it, lies in its struggle with the problem of justification in all its depth. The great Christian question is the conversion of man and his restoration to the grace of God in Christ. And this question, in its simplest form, is that of the conversion of the wicked and the sinful to Christ. But Protestantism raised this same question again in its most radical form—how about the much more difficult and problematical conversion, that of the pious and the good? It is relatively easy to convert the sinner, but the good are often completely unconvertible simply because they do not see any need for conversion.

“Thus the genius of Protestantism focused from the beginning on the ambiguities contained in “being good” and “being saved” or “belonging to Christ.” For conversion to Christ is not merely the conversion from bad habits to good habits, but nova creatura, becoming a totally new man in Christ and in the Spirit.”

- from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, pp 168-169.

I have a working colleague who is Baptist. We rarely talk about religion, but one of the few times that we did, I was shocked to hear him say that they (I assume he meant Baptists and other Protestants) were very relieved when Pope John Paul II made a statement that people were saved by grace and not by works. I was also surprised that he felt it necessary for the Pope to make such a statement. Apparently the Pope’s statement was beneficial although, obviously, many Protestants still haven’t gotten the message or are not convinced. I’ve also run across websites run by Protestants that simply state as a fact that Catholics believe we are saved by good works.

I also have two young Evangelical friends who, although they knew I was a serious Catholic, I sensed that they did not consider me a Christian until they saw evidence that I have a personal relationship with Christ. However, I will grant you that that attitude is justified somewhat, because a relationship with Christ is what it is all about. I felt a little strange being put to a litmus test, but I consider it as a statement of the sad state of the spirituality of so many who are Baptized Catholics.

I attended Catholic school from the first through twelfth grade and attend church regularly, and I was never taught that we were saved by good works. I distinctly remember the nuns in my grammar school stressing our relationship with Christ, and the same with my theology teachers in high school.

As well, many years ago, I attended a Bible study group composed of young adult Catholics. In one of the sessions, we were asked to discuss whether we were saved by grace or works, and we all concluded that we were saved by grace.

I also refer you to the section in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, titled, Grace and Justification, paragraphs 1887-1995 (they are numbered). I don’t think that any Protestants would disagree with it says there.

For a Catholic treatment of the traditional differences in the theories of Protestant and Catholic justification (dated 1910), see the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia entry titled Justification. Note that for the Catholic point of view the author relies very heavily on teachings from the Council of Trent (1545-1563) which was the official culmination of the reactionary Catholic response to Luther and the Reformation. We have come a long way since then.

The Roman Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), while acknowledging many, big differences in belief with Protestants, gave recognition to great leaps forward on the part of the Church, towards unity, in Decree on Ecumenism. Read section 3 especially.

In the United States, there is a group called Evangelicals and Catholics Together that was organized by Charles Colson. The group has been discussing differences in belief. You can read about them here and there. One of the leaders, the former Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor, and now Catholic, Fr. Richard Newhaus says that he thinks both sides are now saying the same thing.

You should be aware of the milestone joint declaration between the Catholic Church and the Lutheran churches in 1999, “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.”

The bigger problem now, as I see it, is how do we get rid of all the bigotry, prejudice and misunderstandings between us?

Ask Not What You Can Do for Your Country...

" And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country."

I just re-read John F. Kennedy's inauguration speech of 1961 as part of my leadership class. It is startling and refreshing. Read it and lament what could have been. It is but one fragment from the aborted vision of the 60's.

The Religous Sense: Nietzche

"In his book, The Gay Science, Nietzche tells the story about a mad man who goes to a crowded market place in broad daylight, carrying a lantern and shouting, “I am looking for God! I am Looking for God!” But the crowd simply ridicules him and bombards him with verbal abuse. Turning angrily to the crowd, he declares, “God is dead.” Then he smashes his lantern on the ground. “God is dead,” he continues. “We have killed him, you and I. All of us are his murderers. How did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?”

Commenting on this story, Rolheiser writes, “How can someone kill God? What Nietzche is suggesting with this parable is that unbelief, a certain kind of atheism, is not something which exists primarily outside the circle of those people who take themselves as believers. It is, first of all, a phenomenon within the circle of believers. Simply put, the problem of atheism and unbelief is not so much that the existence of God is denied by certain persons, but that God is absent from the ordinary consciousness and the lives of believer. God is not enough alive or important in ordinary consciousness."

- Most Rev. Fr. Patrick Buzon, D.D. (Philippines)

The Religious Sense: Leopardi

Wherefore those many nights,
That boundless atmosphere,
And infinite calm sky?
And what the meaning
Of this vast solitude?
And what am I?

Giacomo Leopardi

(translated from Italian, of course)

The Religious Sense: Ludwig Wittgenstein

(This was an article titled, “Thought in Movement,” by Carlo Dignola, published in the December 2000 issue of Traces, the magazine of the Catholic Movement, Communion and Liberation.)

Thought In Movement
By Carlo Dignola

“Christianity is not a doctrine, it is not a theory of what has happened and will happen to the human soul, but rather the description of a real event in man’s life.” This explosive observation written among personal notes in 1937 by Ludwig Wittgenstein [1889-1951], one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century, is a patent example of how human intelligence, exercised in a way consonant with its nature, not only does not contradict faith, but even manages to glimpse a possibility of it.

Wittgenstein was certainly one of the most acute, powerful, and anti-conformist minds of the century; he is considered by every serious history of philosophy to be one of the great “destroyers of metaphysics.” During his lifetime he published only one book, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. In this work, in which his purpose was to say everything that can be said in philosophy, and only that, he deliberately was silent on everything that concerned religion, and more generally the world of values, tracing in an almost perfect logical system a razor’s edge, beyond which human thought is expressly forbidden to go. “Ethics,” wrote Wittgenstein, including in this also the entire sphere of religious experience, “cannot be formulated.” It belongs to silence. We knew this about Wittgenstein, the relentless critic of every kind of spiritualistic talk, the Logical Positivist who forbade the senseless chatter of religion. Piece-by-piece, however, in recent years, as the diaries and notebooks are published in which he jotted down, one after the other on the same pages, philosophical observations and details of his private life friendships, affections, opinions on concerts by Brahms and Beethoven, and solutions for highly complex mathematical problems–it emerges that Wittgenstein was not only the inventor of a philosophy that acted like a policeman guarding the boundary between reason and religion, but also that his elaborations of philosophical thoughts were constantly and almost obsessively stimulated and supported by explicit questions about human existence.

Every Problem

Michele Ranchetti, the editor of a fine edition of Wittgenstein’s diaries that appeared last year (Movimenti del pensiero, Movements of Thought [Italy]), rightly observes that Wittgenstein’s manner of studying philosophy is the “perennial examination of conscience of those who–as he himself says–cannot avoid seeing every problem from a religious point of view.”

It is well known that Wittgenstein chose his words very carefully. We realize only now that many of his less gifted followers have, in order to banish from philosophy every question of meaning, made use of a thinker who on the contrary penetrated into the “infernal” world of logic–as he called it–starting always from metaphysical questions. Or rather, to be more precise, he started from a “wrestling match” with Christianity and with the figure of Jesus Himself that lasted his entire life.

Naturally, this does not mean that Wittgenstein was a Christian; he was Jewish, even though–with great guilt–he tried for a long time to hide it, in the years when anti-Semitism was rampant all over Europe. Part of his family felt close to the German Protestant culture, its work ethic, and its moralistic and intimate conception of Christianity. And yet his intellectual and ethical touchstone seems to have been Catholic Christianity. Essentially, he never embraced faith (“everything,” he wrote in 1920 in a letter to his friend Paul Engelmann, “arises naturally from the fact that I have no faith”). Perhaps he never encountered it in an outstanding personality (even though his biographies reveal that for a period he thought of entering a monastery),–and yet he always felt Christ to be a stumbling block not only of his own, but of every system of thought. He had intuitions about the figure of Christ marked by a breathtaking profundity and clarity, which only a genius could have grasped so immediately and directly.

But these facts must not deceive: it is not a certainty he might have reached (although he would turn his investigations in the last years of his life); it is not faith that drew him toward Christianity.
Rather, it was a basic loyalty to the data of experience, which Wittgenstein understood mainly as “linguistic experience.” This splendid observation reveals precisely his way of seeking, explaining what religion is, beginning with language: “There is no one here, and yet I speak and thank and ask. Is this talking and thanking and asking therefore an error? Rather, I would say, this is a marvelous thing.” In this sense Wittgenstein appears to be a strange kind of realist philosopher: a realist “of signs,” we might perhaps say, and not “of things.”

He approaches Christianity, too, as a datum of linguistic experience that cannot easily be liquidated. “Just as the insect buzzes around the light,” he wrote, “so do I around the New Testament.” Some of his intuitions are astonishing in their exactness, which is often not found even in twentieth century catechisms. We could say that Wittgenstein does not have faith, but he intuits quite well what faith is: “I need certainty–not wisdom, dreams, speculation–and this certainty is faith. And faith is faith in what my heart needs, my soul, not my speculative intellect. Because it is my soul, with its passions, almost with its flesh and its blood, which must be redeemed, not my abstract spirit.”

Christianity, Wittgenstein thus says, is not a doctrine. It is not an idea or a written word that can save man. “The Bible is nothing more than a book in front of me… This document cannot, in itself, ‘bind me’ to any faith in the doctrines it contains–as little as any other document could that might fall into my hands. If I have to believe in these doctrines, it is not because this and not that is told to me. Rather, they must be clear and obvious to me: and by this I do not mean only teachings of ethics but historical teachings.” The adjective “historical” here indicates exactly the unfolding over time of that category of “event.” It is not the words one hears in church that give the true motivation for adhering to Christianity: “Preaching can be a preliminary condition of faith, but through what happens in it; it cannot set faith into motion. Faith begins with faith.”

Wittgenstein, by the force of logical reasoning, realizes that the event of belief is something original, a primum that goes beyond logic but that does not contradict it in the least, and he understands very well that this depends on a fact, and on the position that man takes in front of this fact as a consequence.

Incalculable

The precision of these judgments is impressive, and yet Wittgenstein is honest enough to realize–and write–that “all this is naturally not Christianity,” that his intelligence and even his great moral strength have not managed to convert him. “This tending toward the absolute… appears to me as something splendid, sublime, but I myself aim my gaze at earthly things–unless ‘God’ should ‘visit’ me.” “It is also clear,” he wrote, “that this faith is a grace.”
Philosophizing, on this plane, is worth very little; a treatise will not solve the problem of existence. Wittgenstein wrote this very clearly, as was his style: “If you are not ready to sacrifice your work for something higher, it will not be blessed in any way. Because it obtains its height from the fact that you place it at its true height in relationship with the ideal.”

Wittgenstein realized–differently from what was indicated by the mentality of the environment in which he grew up–that it is not an effort that saves man. He knew first of all that he was not capable of this (“Know yourself, and you will see that you are always and in any case a poor sinner”), and that anyway it would not be enough. Rather, he sought refuge–a little like Franz Kafka–in what he considered an ethic but what we could also call a “human position,” a proper disposition, which does not guarantee salvation but invokes it (“I am like a beggar”).

A line in the diaries may summarize, in an almost prophetic manner, the meaning of this reflection on Christianity, as an event of the spirit that is still indecipherable; a line that we could read, at the close of this century, as an anti-Nietzschean motto, the opposite of the “death of God” Nietzsche proclaimed. “In metropolitan civilization,” we read in Movimenti del pensiero, “the spirit can only withdraw into a corner. And yet, it is not at all worn out or superfluous, but, like an (eternal) witness, floats above the rubble of culture–almost like an avenger of God. As though it awaited a new incarnation."

The Religious Sense: Science

"It is true that individuals who subscribe to an
allegedly unified and self-evident "scientific
world view" of the modern type are seen as
having failed to engage the larger intellectual
challenge of the age--thereby receiving the
same judgement in the post-modern era
that the ingenuous religious person received
from science in the modern era. In virtually
all contemporary disciplines, it is recognized
that the prodiguous complexity, subtlety, and
multivalence of reality far transcend the grasp
of any one intellectual approach, and that
only a committed openness to the interplay
of many perspectives can meet the
extraordinary challenges of the postmodern
era. But contemporary science has itself
become increasingly self-aware and
self-critical, less prone to a naive scientism,
more conscious of its epistemological and
existential limitations. Nor is contemporary
science singular, having given rise to a
number of radically divergent interpretations
of the world, many of which differ sharply from
what was previously the conventional
scientific wisdom.

Commmon to these new perspectives has
been the imperative to rethink and reformulate
the human relation to nature, an imperative
driven by the growing recognition that modern
science's mechanistic and objectivist conception
of nature was not only limited but fundamentally
flawed."

-from The Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas.

Tarnas then goes on in detail.

The Religious Sense: Kurt Vonnegut

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC

-Kurt Vonnebut

Vonnegut's Blues for America

The Religious Sense: Sean Penn

“Why are we close friends? I don’t ask. I don’t want to know. Love the mystery. Don’t want to know why I’m here, per se, in life. Feel it, follow the feeling. But don’t want the answer. Don’t believe I’ll get it. Don’t want the safety net of ‘Am I gonna have an afterlife or not?” He continued, “Somebody says there’s a God. I think it’s a kind of funny notion. Somebody says there’s not. I think it’s a funny notion. To know is a funny notion. And so you know, if I’ve got religion, it’s the mystery of the thing.”

- the actor Sean Penn (1960-), from an article titled Citizen Penn. The Many Missions of Sean Penn, by John Larh, in the April 3rd, 2006 issue of The New Yorker magazine.

DVD: Be Still And Know That I Am God (2006)

Life is not only full of more distractions and noise than ever, but if you are like me, then it is almost a compulsion that whenever you get into the car, or the house is silent, the first thing you do is turn on the radio, stereo, or TV. I know many people are never without their I-Pod or cell phone—on the train, at the beach, shopping, or anywhere. If you’re like me, it has gotten to the point where you don’t know what to do with yourself unless you’re stuffing information into your brain, whether it’s words, sounds or images. When I’m not talking or writing, I’m reading a book, a magazine, a screen, a newspaper or a cereal box. I seem to be making it very difficult for any thoughts and feelings to surface freely of their own accord. I seem bent on drowning them all. Have I had any inner peace lately? Can I put two and two together?

This DVD is an introduction to contemplative prayer, also known as listening prayer, or Christian meditation. This is the kind of prayer where, instead of talking to God, you give God a chance to talk to you. It is reflective prayer. Different aspects of the topic are presented by about a dozen different Christian educators, authors and ministers.

The topics include the issue of distraction and noise in contemporary society, the importance of silence as a spiritual discipline, discernment of thoughts, and usage of the Bible in contemplative prayer including the method known as Lectio Divino. The presenters stress that contemplative prayer is for everyone---we ordinary people in our everyday lives.

Several of the presenters talk of their own experience with listening prayer, but also many of the great Christian spiritual masters of history are discussed and quoted: St. Benedict, France de Sales, Francis of Assisi, Brother Lawrence, Theresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich and Evelyn Underhill.

If nothing else, this DVD will open your mind about opening your mind. It should also give you greater respect for, and an understanding of the importance of silence.

The most insightful thing I heard was when a woman said (a paraphrase) that many people say they do not like being alone and silent because then they have face themselves and their own thoughts. Her rejoinder was that it was those very thoughts are God trying to talk to you.

The names of the people on the DVD are: Dr. Henry Cloud, Richard Foster, Max Lucado, Beth Moore, Dr. Lon Allison, Dr. Mark Brewer, Jan Johnson, Dr. Peter Kreeft, Michelle McKinney Hammond, Dr. Calvin Miller, Ginny Owens, Dr. Jerry Root, Priscilla Shirer, Dallas Willard.

As a Catholic, I found it refreshing, and a great leap forward, that the DVD was done entirely by Protestants.

I found this DVD in my local Hollywood Video store. I was only able to find one link to it on the Internet:

http://www.crosswalk.com/fun/1386003.html

Barrabas

Barabbas is one of my favorite Biblical characters. I recall knowing about Barabbas when I was a young boy. Today is Palm Sunday, and in the Catholic Mass, the Passion narrative from the Bible is always read. The priest, lecture, congregation, and another voice take different roles from the narrative, like actors rehearsing their roles. The congregation plays the role of the crowd in the square before Pilate, and, among other lines, we get to shout, “Barabbas! Give us Barrabas!” When you’re a little kid, this is fun.

Also as a boy, on TV, I had seen the film, Barabbas, starring Anthony Quinn. Between the Passion narrative and the film, I had a very romantic image of Barrabas. I thought of him the way little boys think about cowboys, outlaws, and frontiersmen. Barabbas was a self-reliant leader, a courageous man, an outlaw, and an underdog—all the things that American culture traditionally idolizes. He was a man of action, a man’s man who stood on his own two feet.

In the film, The Passion of the Christ, we see a seething brute, who, though bound in chains, continues to taunt and resist the Roman soldiers. He looks filthy, ragged, and violent, and we assume he is guilty as charged.

But what actual facts do we know about Barabbas? Scripture says he was a notorious criminal, had taken part in a rebellion and was charged by the Romans with insurrection and murder. That is all we know about his actual background.

Like any other leader, Pilate had to balance conflicting demands. Pilate did not like to use the death penalty unnecessarily. Pilate understood that Jesus had been brought to him out of clerical envy and did not want to kill Him. Pilate’s wife had even told him that she had a dream about Jesus, and that he should not harm Him. Moreover, Pilate seems taken aback by Jesus’ answers to his questions--such answers from a man faced with immanent crucifixion made him wonder.

However, Pilate had to answer to Rome for keeping the peace, and he had an enraged mob in front of him. There had been unrest and insurrections before. If Pilate didn’t placate the populace, would he soon have another rebellion on his hands?

Pilate’s offer to trade the notorious, murderous Barabbas was a bluff. He thought the mob would have enough sense to call for the release of Jesus, but the fired-up, unthinking mob accepted. Pilate had painted himself into a corner. When Pilate washed his hands in front of the crowd, he was not merely trying to disclaim his own responsibility and guilt but was trying to cast the blame on the crowd.

The drama of Barabbas is multi-layered and symbolic. It’s a microcosm of almost the whole gospel. In Aramaic, “Bar-Abba” means, “Son of the father.” To say, “Son of the father,” would be redundant in ordinary discourse. In my opinion, the author of the gospel stated the name this way to remind us of the guilty Barabbas’ humanity—that he was a child of God, just as we are. He is our brother just as Jesus was. Furthermore, the innocent one, the Son of God, is put to death, of His own accord, while the guilty one is set free. One must ask one’s self, what kind of God is this? And make no mistake about it: You and I are no different than Barabbas.

A Testimony from the Actor who Played Barrabas in The Passion of the Christ

The Look of Barabbas

(From Traces magazine, February 2006)

by Pedro Sarubbi

I have always been an unusual guy, full of great emotions and great contradictions. I preferred adventure stories to toys, and rather than football games in the yard, I preferred the company of my grandfather (a war hero) or the tales of the old fishermen in the port. Reality was oppressive for me and I took refuge in fantasy. This led me with natural ease to become an actor from my earliest years.

Unfortunately, as I gradually became used to the routine of my profession, I lost contact with the research and the quality of life, and became more and more cynical and superficial. Mel Gibson saw me in the film Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and offered me the part of Barabbas in the film The Passion. I was concerned about how big a part I would have, how much they would pay me, and how much publicity it would bring me. I was unhappy to find that Barabbas had nothing to say, something really humiliating for actors of a certain standing. At the end of the screen tests, I went to Mel Gibson and told him I was enthusiastic to work with him, but couldn’t accept a non-speaking part. He took me to one side in a fatherly way and explained that this will be a beautiful and very important film and that my dumb Barabbas will be more important for me and for the film than any other speaking role in an ordinary film.
“You will use the power of your look, like all the actors in this film!” he told me. We did the filming and I went on complaining. During the third week of filming, when I came down the first stairway of the Sanhedrin, my eyes met the eyes of the actor Jim Caviezel, and it was like an electric shock, a great emotion came over me, and I carried that wonder with me and my life began to change.

I have the feeling that something really happened and that look was there, but it was really between Pedro and Christ. It was something enormous and it sent me into complete confusion. Why did it happen? This question keeps coming back to me. I produced the Passion on the stage, trying to analyze it and understand, but I am unable to do it alone. All my interviews are full of these doubts; what happened in that look? One day, a priest, Fr. Gabriele Mangiarotti, called me on the phone and asked me to dinner in the parish of Brugherio to speak about this look. I went and there were three hundred people there, and we began to talk. Everyone wanted to know, to understand–I want to ask myself, but they are all asking me.

After the talk we began to eat. At the table are Fr. Gianni Calchi Novati and a group of nice people in their forties. I got talking with one of them about my doubts. His name was Ermes, and he said, “If you like, come to School of Community with us; maybe it will help you understand.” We agreed on the first date. That was the beginning of my journey of encounter with Fr. Giussani, not meeting him but enjoying his writings, his answers to my questions in his books and in the companionship of his people. Ermes spoke of Fr. Giussani’s passion for a person’s look and how he searched for it in every sacred image. Fr. Gabriele taught me the buoyancy of being in peace; Fr. Gianni with his scolding showed me the way. They were all close to me.

Then, with them I saw the huge pain of Fr. Giussani’s death. I realized I was suffering more by sharing their loss than for the actual departure of someone whom I had known only through his writings, but at the funeral, in the cold and freezing weather, in the Cathedral Square, I became aware of my new condition. I was serene: finally after years, I was surrounded by so many people who I loved and who loved others and they were all there, united by the sorrow, firm in love. To feel myself part of those people made me understand how I, too, was touched by Fr. Giussani and how great a part he had in my spiritual rebirth.

Testimony: A Liberating Point of Departure

I was moved by this article which I shamelessly took it from the January 2006 issue of Traces, the monthly magazine of the Catholic movement Communion and Liberation. I am not "pushing" Communion and Liberation, but that is where the author below encountered Christ.

The hyperlink in the article was added by me, as I am not sure that all readers would know what "School of Community" refers to.


A Liberating Point of Departure

A Spanish doctor tells about the change in her way of facing both the pain of her patients and the things of day-to-day life

by Teresa Suarez Del Villar

I am a doctor, specializing in family and community medicine. I work mornings in a public health center and afternoons as a family therapist. The Movement is the form that the Presence of Jesus takes on for me, the place where He makes Himself concrete, becoming flesh. Being in the Movement means belonging to this historic place that enables me to recognize Christ present at every moment, now, while I am writing these lines.

School of Community work over these years with Fr. Carrón has taught me a use of reason that has changed my way of putting myself in relationship with things, and thus also my way of being at the doctor’s office. My desire to do things well, to make no mistakes, made me more attentive to the results of what I was doing, rather than to the person I had before me. Now, my experience is that if I keep Jesus in the corner of my eye, it is always possible to put myself in relationship with Him, moment by moment, in everything that I do–when I have to see a patient, when I have to tell someone that he has cancer, or when I prepare a meal at home. The most concrete consequence is that my entire “I” is present to what I am doing, and I don’t waste energy calculating other things; I simply look at and embrace what is given me, when it is given me, and how it is given me.

In this way, work is more intelligent because I manage to see more things; I enjoy it more, and my heart is at rest because there is no greater satisfaction than putting yourself in relationship with the One who prefers you.

I am learning not to fear my desires, to look at them deep down, to remember that my sin is not the final word on me. What is true for me is also true for my colleagues and patients. This certainty gives me a totally liberating point of departure: when I get up in the morning, I can recognize a definitive, eternally faithful embrace, which fills life with passion and gladness.

I would not be capable of accompanying an AIDS patient all the way to his death, or his suffering family, if I thought that the responsibility for his gladness or comfort was on my shoulders. I have learned that I am an instrument for his health, but not the response to his needs, and when this “pressure” to measure up to this challenge, to make no mistakes, disappears, then an “ingenuous self-confidence” arises, as Fr. Giussani said, for going to the depths of the heart, my heart, the heart of my companions and of my patients, and to look at them, keeping in mind their desire for happiness and collaborating in awakening the questions that only He can answer.

Opus Dei and Me

This entry was triggered by Megan’s comments on my previous blog entry.

This happened more than 20 years ago. I was working in lower Manhattan at the time.

One afternoon, I walked from my office building to go to the nearest Catholic Church (Our Lady of Victory) in order to receive confession. I went specifically to receive the Sacrament face-to-face, rather than use the traditional screen. It was obvious to me that the priest who heard my confession was a “heavy hitter.” He was very serious, very spiritual, and ultra-orthodox—exactly what I needed and wanted. To say that he was passionate about the faith would be an understatement. I sensed all this immediately from my brief, routine confession. He also asked me questions about my moral behavior at work—no one had ever asked me that before. That struck me as very conscientious on his part—somebody that really cared about my soul.

After confession, I was brimming with curiosity about who and what he was, and so I asked him, “What order do you belong to?”

“Oh, I don’t belong to an order.”

I looked at him with stunned curiosity. He was like no Diocesan priest I had ever run into before. Moreover, now that my confession was over, his manner of speaking, overall body language and demeanor was one of humility and self-effacement.

Quietly, he said, “I belong to the Prelature of Opus Dei.” I’m sure he saw the look of recognition on my face, at the mention of the name. His body language and facial expression changed to a cringe-like look of someone that had experienced undeserved hurt before and was anticipating more-- I had previously read reports in the mass media about Opus Dei (of course, I sensed that most, if not all, of the talk of conspiracies, of them being a cult, of manipulative recruiting and of being a secret power within the church was sour grapes and bunk.)

In my need to try and say something intelligent, I blurted out, “You guys are controversial.”

He responded sharply, “There’s no point in existing if you’re not controversial!”

This was a man was on a mission from God! (I can't say that about every priest that I've met.)

I just stood there, wanting to know more. After a pause, he very hesitantly handed me a business card with his name, a phone number and the address of the Opus Dei prayer center on Riverside Drive in Manhattan. I still remember his name: Fr. Lamb. The last thing he said to me (very humbly) was that he hears confessions here every Thursday.

This was the most memorable and high quality confession that I have ever had. I have had no contact with him or Opus Dei since. I’ve researched them on the Internet and in the media, including about the conspiracy theories, allegations of being a cult, allegations of being a secret power within the church and government, and of “recruiting.” I’ve made one observation about these negative stories: There are about 150,000 Opus Dei members, worldwide, and it seems like the worst allegations seem to be originating from two or three individuals and some of these are from decades ago. It seems the same stories get recycled over and over by the media. And none of this is to say that the individuals telling these stores have any credibility either.

I am not naïve. I do have some minor, negative opinions of Opus Dei, but again, based only on what I’ve read. I am sure some people have had negative experiences with them. It’s not inconceivable that in an organization of 150,000 people that has existed since the late 1920’s that there may have been some faults, imperfections or horror stories. But that occurs in every organization.

My brother works with a person whose wife is a member of Opus Dei. The woman’s husband says that he has never heard of any of the crazy things the mass media has mentioned.

With regard to The Da Vinci Code: I read and appreciate serious, literary fiction. I purchased the book, a long time ago, to see what the fuss was all about. I’m perfectly capable of reading a book with an open mind, as fiction. However, I started the book twice and couldn’t get past the first chapter. The idea that an Opus Dei numerary would be a cold-blooded, pre-meditated killer is just so flagrantly ludicrous that it made me laugh out loud. Even as a self-contained work of fiction, it had no credibility for me. I conclude that the author is like most of the reporters in the mass media—completely ignorant about anything to do with religion.

I think that any religious organization with a clear sense of mission and highly motivated members is potentially liable to be associated with conspiracy theories or accused of being a cult. I can even understand that for some non-Catholics or non-religious people that a global organization of highly motived people that practices chastity, individual poverty and obedience might conjure up some paranoia.

I do not have any problem with them recruiting. Common sense dictates that if one is a member of an organization and you want that organization to grow and prosper that you are going to try and recruit people and that you are going to try and recruit the very best people you can. In my parent’s generation, in Jesuit run schools, the Jesuits always recruited the top students. No one ever had a problem with that; it was an honor to be the subject of Jesuit recruitment!

I will say this. The organization originated in Spain, from before the Spanish Civil War. It is said that their founder supported the fascists in the civil war. That is water long under the bridge, but it is no surprise to me if the organization reflects or embodies some of the Old World, traditional Spanish attitudes and customs.

There are still many, very conservative, traditional Catholics in America and the world. I think that if they find a spiritual home in Opus Dei, well good for them! It’s a free country.

Around roughly the time that I met Fr. Lamb, I was dating a girl named Vicki. She had a friend who had been a member of Opus Dei. Vicki had taken part in some of their activities but decided it wasn’t for her. She felt that the women were too segregated from and subservient to the men in the organization. Other than that, she had no issues with them.

I think that Opus Dei’s overall purpose, of being a vehicle to help people in the work place achieve sanctity, is one of genius. I’ve read about how so many members are in the professions and the business world. Unfortunately, I’ve never had the opportunity to encounter a member at work. I would love to have the opportunity to have an Opus Dei numerary as a boss or in higher management.

And after posting this blog entry, I just hope I don’t have any albino hitmen coming after me! (LOL)

The Da Vinci Code, ha ha!

Oh, the dramatic irony!

On the trail of the ficticious albino hit man and OPUS DEI numerary named Silas, the only real-life OPUS DEI member named Silas that the New York Times could find was a dignified and happily married black man.

I've read elsewhere that the publicity from the book and movie has resulted in a higher volume of serious inquiries to the organization than they have ever experienced.


The New York Times
February 7, 2006

Catholic Group Says of 'Da Vinci Code' Film: It's Just Fiction

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

When "The Da Vinci Code" became a publishing sensation, leaders of the Roman Catholic organization Opus Dei realized they had an image problem on their hands.

The assassin in the best-selling thriller is an albino Opus Dei monk named Silas, and the group is depicted as a powerful but secretive cult whose members practice ritualistic self-torture. In a preface titled "Fact," the author, Dan Brown, said his book was more than mere fiction.

When plans were revealed for a movie based on the book, Opus Dei leaders say they tried to persuade Sony Pictures to excise any mention of their group, sending a letter last year saying the book was "a gross distortion and a grave injustice."

Their effort failed.

With the film starring Tom Hanks now set for release on May 19, Opus Dei is trying to sate public interest and cast the group in a very different light than the religious home of a fictional assassin.

The group is promoting a blog by an Opus Dei priest in Rome, revamping its Web site and even arranging interviews with a member said to be the only "real Silas" in Opus Dei — a Nigerian-born stockbroker who lives in Brooklyn.

Silas Agbim, the stockbroker, said that Opus Dei taught its members to hold themselves to the highest standards. "If you do your work well, it's pleasing to God," said Mr. Agbim, a graying father of three grown children who is married to a professor emeritus of library science. "And if you think you will get holy by reciting 10 rosaries a day and doing your work sloppily, that is wrong."

Still, the "Da Vinci Code" movie is sure to revive a long-simmering debate among Catholics over whether Opus Dei is a positive or negative influence in the church. Critics say that while the group is relatively small, a few members seem to hold important positions in the Vatican, including the pope's chief spokesman.

Questions about whether Opus Dei has outsize influence grew when Pope John Paul II granted the group a unique status in the church in 1982, and 10 years later set the group's founder on an unusually speedy track to sainthood.

Opus Dei's reputation for secrecy developed partly because of the group's tradition that members should not publicly proclaim their affiliation. "Is he or isn't he Opus Dei?" guessing games have focused on prominent figures, particularly in Washington.

A controversy exploded last year in England when it surfaced that Ruth Kelly, the young new secretary of education in the liberal Labor Party, was affiliated with Opus Dei. She did not deny it but never clarified her status with the group, prompting even louder criticism. Robert P. Hanssen, an F.B.I. agent who pleaded guilty in 2001 to spying for the Soviet Union, confirmed that he was a member and acknowledged that he had confided his crimes to his priest.

Opus Dei leaders say they are neither secretive, nor particularly powerful, nor lockstep conservatives. They say the group is a decentralized network of more than 84,541 Catholic lay people and 1,875 priests around the world, relatively small numbers in a church of 1.1 billion.

They say they have no aspirations to control the Vatican and believe their calling is to live out their devotion to God by doing their jobs well, be it janitor, senator or full-time mother. Opus Dei is Latin for "the work of God."

Lynn Frank, an Opus Dei member in Walden, N.Y., mother of seven and the owner-entrepreneur of a business that promotes healthful eating, said: "The determination I have definitely comes from my vocation with Opus Dei, because every single day with Opus Dei, you wake up and say, 'I'm giving 100 percent of my day to you, Lord.' And if you slack off, that's a boss you don't want to answer to."

Since its founding in 1928 by a Spanish priest, Josemaría Escrivá, the group has found favor with several popes, in particular John Paul II, whose theological emphasis on holiness, the importance of the family and the dignity of work meshed well with Father Escrivá's beliefs. In 1982, John Paul granted Opus Dei the status of a "personal prelature," and it remains the only one in the church, meaning that it has its own bishop who reports directly to the pope.

Then in 1992, Father Escrivá leapfrogged other candidates for sainthood and was beatified a mere 17 years after his death. He was canonized a saint in 2002.

Joaquín Navarro-Valls, a spokesman for John Paul and now for Pope Benedict XVI, is a member, as was one of the co-authors of a controversial Vatican document released in 2000, Dominus Iesus, on the primacy of Christianity. When the pope wanted to clean up an Austrian diocese where pornography was found on a seminary computer, he appointed a new bishop from Opus Dei.

Also feeding the impression of influence is Opus Dei's American headquarters, in New York, a 17-story building at the corner of Lexington Avenue and 34th Street on which the group spent $69 million for the property, construction and furnishing.

Mention of the location in "The Da Vinci Code" has brought a constant stream of the curious and conspiratorial to the door, said the doorman, Robert A. Boone. He says he tells them, "You think I'd be working here if there were people like Silas walking around?"

Some Opus Dei members are incensed about how the three-year-old best seller presents not only Opus Dei, but also Christianity. In "The Da Vinci Code," a pair of sleuthing heroes discover that the doctrine of Jesus' divinity was made up by the fourth-century Roman Emperor Constantine, and that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had children.

Mr. Agbim said he had read the book. "It is poison," he said. "It will lead the people to have doubts."

But Opus Dei leaders are taking a less confrontational approach. Opus Dei's United States leader, the Rev. Thomas G. Bohlin, said, "We don't want the controversy to pump up publicity for the movie." Father Bohlin sent the letter to Sony Pictures asking that Opus Dei be left out of the movie and said he had received a "polite but noncommittal" response.

Jim Kennedy, a spokesman for Sony Pictures, said: "We see 'The Da Vinci Code' as a work of fiction and not intended to harm any organization. At its heart the film is a thriller, and we do agree that it really provides a unique opportunity for Opus Dei and other organizations to let people know more about their work and their beliefs."

After researching Opus Dei for a book, John L. Allen, the Vatican correspondent for The National Catholic Reporter, has concluded that its power and wealth have been largely exaggerated. The group's worldwide membership is about equivalent to the number of Catholics in the Diocese of Hobart on the island of Tasmania, Mr. Allen said.

Opus Dei keeps no central financial records, but Mr. Allen determined its assets to be $2.8 billion, a figure the group's spokesmen say appears accurate. Much of that is tied up in the schools and hospitals worldwide. Half of the expense for the New York headquarters was paid for by a single donation of stock, said Brian Finnerty, a spokesman.

"Opus Dei certainly is a growing force in church affairs, and they probably have a very disproportionate number of those church positions that have impact, but let's not mythologize that," said Mr. Allen, author of "Opus Dei: An Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church."

Some former members accuse Opus Dei of behaving like a cult, with aggressive recruiting and excessive control over members who choose to live in Opus Dei centers. Tammy DiNicola, who joined Opus Dei as a college student and left in 1990 after two years, said the organization pulled in idealistic and very spiritual people by deceiving them.

"They don't tell you you wouldn't spend any holidays with your family, your mail would be read, you would hand over your salary to them, and you wouldn't be able to watch television or radio or even leave the house without permission," said Ms. DiNicola, who helped found the Opus Dei Awareness Network to help former members.

Mr. Finnerty, the Opus Dei spokesman, said that contrary to accusations by some former members, independence and personal freedom were central to the doctrine.

Seventy percent of Opus Dei's members, like Lynn Frank and Silas Agbim, are working people, usually married, who live in their own homes, a category of membership known as "supernumerary." Although they maintain a rigorous schedule of daily prayer and reading, weekly confession and meetings with a spiritual director, they carry on with their lives and professions.

About 20 percent are "numeraries," who give their lives entirely to the organization, living as celibates in an Opus Dei center. Some hold outside jobs, but many work full time in affiliated institutions, like hospitals and schools. Ten percent are "associates," who are celibate but live on their own and not in Opus Dei centers.

Much of the eerie mystique surrounding Opus Dei comes from the numeraries' practice of "corporal mortification." In "The Da Vinci Code," Silas the murderous monk is shown whipping himself bloody and wearing a spiked chain around his thigh so tightly that it draws blood.

In reality, numeraries do wear a "cilice," a chain with points, under their pants for two hours a day. Once a week, they beat their backs with a small cord while reciting a prayer. Opus Dei says corporal mortification is an ancient Catholic practice that promotes penance and identification with the suffering of Christ.

Ms. DiNicola, the former member, said that wearing the cilice was supposed to be optional but that numerary members were made to feel guilty if they did not. "It does cut and it does leave little blood pricks," she said.

Despite the dismal portrayal of their group in "The Da Vinci Code," Opus Dei leaders acknowledge some benefits from the attention. Doubleday, the publisher of the book, is about to release "The Way," a collection of spiritual writing by Opus Dei's founder. Mr. Finnerty, the group's spokesman, said it was "The Da Vinci Code" that opened the door for the deal.

DEUS CARITAS EST (God Is Love)

The Pope's awaited encyclical is out.

And here are two news reports about it:

http://www.asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=5213

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11010116/from/RSS/

Pope Benedict XVI - Jan. 1 World Day of Peace Address

Christianity, Beautiful and Joyous

Is my heart sleeping?
No. My heart isn’t sleeping.
It is awake, awake.
It neither sleeps nor dreams, it looks,
with clear open eyes
at far off signs and listens
at the shore of the great silence.

- Antonio Machado (Spanish)

Earthly Father: What if Mary wasn’t a virgin?

The above hyperlink of the title is to an article in Slate, by Chloe Breyer, posted today, 12/22/05. There are a large volume of comments about it on Slate, ranging from the reactionary and ignorant (mostly!) to the thoughtful and informed. I opened an account on Slate today and posted my comment below, under the name Kabloona.

Personally, I’m not ready to give up such a pillar of Christian doctrine as the virgin birth!

However, In the Bible, the usage of the term virginity always has a higher meaning of spiritual virginity, which is the only meaning that counts with God. Even if a person were to not believe in the virgin birth as traditionally understood, Mary was always a virgin spiritually.

If it was the case that Mary had relations prior to her betrothal to Joseph, then, if anything, that God chose the violated Mary to be the mother of Jesus would only serve to emphasize, even more, the God-given, irrevocable human dignity of all, no matter how low, humble, stigmatized, or degraded a person may feel or appear in the eyes of the world.

Note however, that even if Mary had relations with someone prior to her betrothal, it does not preclude Jesus having been conceived by the Holy Spirit. I can’t and won't give up that belief.

Without giving up the idea of the traditional virgin birth, there is much here that one can ruminate over, with profit. In terms of Jesus’ humanity and his sharing in the same troubles as we, imagine Him growing up and being aware of being looked at or spoken of as a child conceived out of wedlock. There is a message there for any person born out of wedlock. Moreover, how dare we look down on, scorn or stigmatize any child born out of wedlock! Imagine Mary, a teenage girl totally dedicated to God, and how she may have felt being looked upon or talked about by others, as having relations prior to marriage? How dare we look down upon any teenage girl in a similar situation! Imagine how Joseph may have felt being looked upon as a cuckold and a fool? The common denominator here is shame, stigma, and humiliation, and one need look no further than the Holy Family for empathy, a sense of dignity, and as an example for one’s own situation in life.

Post-Modernism, Depression, and the Gaze of Christ

Thoughts provoked by the poem, Gaze, by Elizabeth Lynn Rakphongphairoj, 18 years old.

But I was still sincere; I would have presented the problems to Him if it would have listened. And I reproached myself once so much, each time that it was annoyed against me for something, but I want only that it looks me in the white of the eyes and listens to me, includes/understands me.- online diary entry from Elizabeth Lynn Rakphongphairoj (crudely translated from French).

The deepest passion of the Western Mind has been to reunite with the ground of its own being. (Richard Tarnas).

On an abstract and philosophical level, I wonder if the reason that so many of us are depressed is that we were raised on traditional values but live in a post-modern world full of nihilism and relativistic morality. Moreover, I think that regardless of how we were raised, our depression is aggravated by the fact that nihilism—the dark side of post-modernism--permeates all of society and culture and attempts to deny our innate human need for meaning, for absolutes, for a sense of purpose, and to know our Destiny.

If you don’t think nihilism or relativistic morality is infecting all of society, just turn on the T.V. or radio or look at the magazines on any newsstand. The problem is that we Christians cannot be expected to live completely separate from society, like trolls living under a bridge. Nor could we, even if we wanted to.

Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete has proposed the following. “The question facing us who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ today is this one: ‘Does our faith interpret adequately the characteristic experiences of post-modern men and women, and if so, how? We really should not speak of facing a “crisis” of faith. Instead, we should be aware of having a task before us.” My question for Msgr. Albacete is who is this “we” you speak of? I am weak, broken and alone.

The institutional church has been no help. I always wanted to behave according to what the church teaches. However, when I was in my late teens and twenties, I recall feeling very disappointed, almost to the point of bitterness, that the church offered no support in how to deal with non-Christian society. Their answer was an naïve, assumed, unspoken, and ineffective, “Just say no.” They do not understood how difficult it can be for Christian young people to cope with our post-modern, post-Christian society. If you are looking for support or direction from the run-of-the-mill clergy or the mass of church attendees, forget about it!

“All the growing weakness of the Church in the modern world,” said Peguy, “derives from the fact that she has not remained what she was: a communion. This is one of the reasons why modern people do not understand anything about Christianity, the real, the true Christianity, the real history of Christianity: the church in the modern world is no longer a people, an immense people.” This is the battle. (Julian Carron quoting Charles Peguy) One could write a thick book on this subject.

Small communities and movements can be very supportive, but they are not everywhere or not available to everyone who wants them. Albacete’s solution for himself is to get involved with the Communion and Liberation movement, of which he is the North American head. Pope Benedict XVI advocates the same approach—to get involved in a smaller group or movement that is more radically committed to the gospel. Even he has very diplomatically said, “…dioceses, parishes and other church structures caring for all Catholics and trying to meet a variety of needs often lack the focus some Catholics want as an aid to living the Gospel in a radical way.” Outside of the Roman Catholic Church, I am well aware that the evangelicals have many thriving churches, colleges and youth groups that have true community. But circumstances do not always permit one to get involved in these movements.

When I brought my son to a psychologist this past summer, in a side conversation, he said that he thought every adolescent needed psychotherapy. It is no wonder to me. And one must wonder and think deeply, what is wrong with our society and family lives that so many adolescents have so many problems? Through no fault of their own, they are deeply confused, and most do not even know they are confused. Many have no sense of purpose, direction or meaning in their lives. The have been endlessly assaulted by the confusion, anomie, and evil generated by Nihilism. There are no norms for adolescents to grab hold of, at least not ones that the greater society supports. Society doesn’t support any values these days. Adolescents are launched into the world not only without rudder, compass, or maps, but without a purpose or Destination. You leave your parents traditional household in the morning and go out into the chaotic post-modern jungle of values and lifestyles. It is more than confusing. It is bewildering. Parents, pastors, teachers – the one’s who should be mentoring young people -- are the ones least able to do it, the ones who have the least amount of answers and the least understanding on how to deal with the world. So what happens, as what happened to me, is that this doesn’t get resolved as an adolescent. I went through early adulthood and through my thirties, depressed, tied up in emotional knots and without feeling like I was able to fit in anywhere.

If you want to be a disciple of Christ, you are on your own. It’s depressing. If you are a teenager, it will be confusing, overly daunting at times, and even occasionally terrifying.

“The first thing we have to be aware of is that we are no different than anyone else. We live, we are called to live the faith in the same circumstances as everyone else, and for us too, the struggle is against nothingness. We are not safe and sound, we are spared nothing. So if Christianity does not happen as an event once again among us, and for all those who meet us, then sooner or later we will lose interest in belonging to Christ, and nihilism will win.” (Carron / La Thuile)

“You are here because you are, Fascinated by Christ. Now unless this happens continually, unless each of us is fascinated by Christ, it is impossible for nothingness not to prevail even in us. We have not solved the problem; the drama goes on living in each one of us. The struggle is fought out in our hearts every day, in the personal, mysterious dialogue between the “I” of each of us and the fascination that is Christ. Without the victory of this fascination, we are finished, from the youngest to the oldest, to the one who is here for the first time today and the one who has been here since the beginning. And tomorrow, as soon as we open our eyes, the same drama is proposed.” (Carron / La Thuile)

“I don’t wish to reduce, even by a single gram, the drama of the relationship each one of you has with Christ. We are not here in order to spare ourselves the drama, but to arouse it continually, and so we want to help each other in this sense by changing the very way we stay together in this gesture.” (Carron / La Thuile)

“…let’s propose a journey together towards destiny.” (Carron / La Thuile)

“We find it difficult, as true children of our time—that is as “moderns”—to recognize “Something within something else.” That is to say, we reduce reality to appearances and so we live a relationship with reality that has done away with the Mystery, the ‘Something that is within every something.’ This is what we can call dualism: on the one hand we have the real and, on the other hand, the Mystery. We can all see how true this is, by simply asking ourselves what happened this morning. How many of us, as we looked at reality today, said, “You” to the Mystery that makes reality and that makes the “I” that woke up this morning? Who was moved with gratitude this morning because He is there, because the Mystery is there, because my “I” with all its limitations is already embraced by His presence (and is therefore glad and thankful)? When we take note of this, we all realize how little the Mystery is familiar in our immediate relationship with reality, and on the other side, an “I” already constituted, to which we then add something.”
(Carron / La Thuile)

“This dualism, that can begin an instant after our first relationship with reality, is already the beginning that will lead to the victory of nihilism, because the appearance will not be able to draw along the “I” and therefore to hold its interest for long; after a while the interest will vanish. But if there is no relationship with reality, the “I” is not awakened, it remains closed up in itself. So much so, as I was told, one of you asked, “What if there is no desire?” There we have an “I” in which there is no desire anymore. This is the nihilism Augusto Del Noce spoke about: “The nihilism abroad today is that gay nihilism, gay in the sense that it feels no restlessness. Perhaps we could even define it as the suppression of what Augustine called inquietudine core meum. That restlessness of desire is lacking in the “I” – this is the sign of the nihilism we are talking about.”
(Carron / La Thuile)

“Hope is possible. It is possible for dualism—and therefore nihilism—not to win only if this event goes on in the present as a companionship, a companionship in which Christ, the Mystery , goes on being present, as John and Andrew experienced Him.” (Carron / La Thuile)

“This is what Fr. Giussani narrates about the first moment of John and Andrew’s first meeting with Jesus. From the first moment, they went home with a certainty: ‘We have found the Messiah.’ In other words, they didn’t reduce the encounter from the beginning; they discovered from the first moment that Something inside that thing. There is an apparent disproportion between the simple way it happened and the certainty those two had. An apparent disproportion: a human encounter and a certainty.”
(Carron / La Thuile)

“’They accepted Him at once. Why was it easy to recognize Him? Because he was exceptional beyond compare. They had before their eyes something exceptional beyond compare; they had come in contact with an exceptional man, absolutely out of the ordinary, irreducible to any analysis.’”. And in this they had grasped that there was Something within that something. ‘He is the Messiah!” What does ‘exceptional’ mean? When it corresponds adequately to the original expectations of the heart, however confused and hazy may be our awareness of it.” (Carron / La Thuile)

“’For John and Andrew, that man corresponded in an unimaginable way to the irresistible and undeniable needs of their hearts.” There was no one else like that man.” This is why we cannot reduce Him. There is no one like that man. “Who is He?” (Carron / La Thuile)

“Hope is possible if an event like this goes on among us. An organization is not enough; what is needed is an event, an event that goes on happening, with the powerful attractive force. We discover if this event goes on not by developing the logic of theological argument; we discover it above all if it produces the same thing that we saw happening in John and Andrew, if it happens again as an event and therefore awakens the whole of our “I”, and draws us along the point of awakening this liking that glues us together, and thus opens us up continually. (Carron / La Thuile)

What has come into life with Jesus is a passion for man, a tenderness for man for you and for me. (Julian Carron quoting Luigi Giussasni)

Try to imagine the gaze of parents on their newborn child, and you will understand immediately what vibration, what emotion they feel in front of that little being, in front of the destiny – they can even be indifferent to their own destiny—but they cannot help taking an interest in the destiny of their child. (Carron)

I know the vibration of my being in the encounter with Christ. (Carron)

On reaching the tree, Jesus stopped, fixed his gaze upon him and cried Zacchaeus! (Luigi Giussani quoting the Bible) Christ’s gaze, His words, touched the humanity of Zacchaeus, so that the perspective of Destiny was introduced in to the closed perimeter of his life… Quite simply, he had been captured and penetrated by a gaze that recognized and loved him for what he was. (Carron)

It is hard to find a person who is powerful, and yet truly good. In Jesus, by contrast, his witnesses were able to see that gaze which was not only powerful, but prodigious, intelligent and captivating, but also good. (Giussani)

He lets them talk, training that penetrating gaze on them which made men feel that the depths of their hearts were being laid bare. (Giussani)

The gospel notes that he “healed them all” – turned His gaze upon them, understood them, he took all of them seriously. (Giussani)

The greatest miracle of all was that truly human gaze which revealed man to himself and was impossible to evade. (Giussani)

Looking past Christ, failing to see him is something that can occur in various ways, but all these ways have this in common—that the gaze cannot withstand looking at the form of Christ himself. (Giussani)

Do we have the courage to meet His gaze?

*****

The above quotes are not contiguous or always in the same sequence as in the original. The Quotes are taken from:

The Passion of the Western Mind, by Tarnas

At the Origin of the Christian Claim, by Giussani

The Destiny of Man, Exercise of the Fraternity of Community and Liberation. Rimini 2004. A pamphlet.

Something Within Something. International Assembly of the Responsibles of Communion and Liberation. La Thuile. August 2005. A Pamphlet.

Shadows – online diary entry of Elizabeth Lynn Rakphongphairoj.

The Albacete quote can also be found in, “To Build the Church,” in the Christmas 2005 issues of the magazine Traces, the monthly magazine of the Communion and Liberation movement.

An L.A. Protestant Pastor's Involvement with Communion and Liberation

Also see other bloggers comments:

La Nouvelle Theologie, 11/08/05

La Nouvelle Theologie, 12/10/05

I am always happy when I see different Christian denominations coming together on common ground.

I have only recently purchased the book, The Psalms, by Don Luigi Giussani. Giussani presents only a subset of the 150 or so Psalms--his favorite Psalms, I presume. After each Psalm, he gives a one or two page teaching-reflection. The teaching is not intended to be one's own reflection but is intended to to assist or coax one's own ruminations. It is not intellectually challenging, which is a relief. Meditation should never need be intellectually challenging or intense. And Meditation upon scripture is something I need much more of in my life.

Looking For Some Christmas Music?

"Performance has true integrity when the heart
of the artist is conveyed in the music. Such is
the case with Kathleen and Christopher for whom
the spirituals, in particular, reflect their faith."
- John MacArthur, pastor of the Grace Community
Church, Panorama City, California

I own the following CD's which I appreciate greatly.

A Christmas Celebration. Kathleen Battle

Pleasures of Their Company. Kathleen Battle & Christopher Parkening.

You will not find a finer piece of music than the above. If you were to purchase one CD of Kathleen Battle, or Kathleen Battle and Christopher Parkening together, this is it! I am a fan of beautiful female voices and of the classical guitar, and this CD is one of my most prized posessions. While this is not Christmas music, six of the twenty songs are spirituals.

FYI, I also own: Handel - Arias. Kathleen Battle.

I'd like to own the following, which is all Christmas music: Angel's Glory. Kathleen Battle & Christopher Parkening

This one is, which I do not own, is also all Christian music: Grace

Some consider the beautiful Kathleen Battle one of the finest, if not the finest lyric coloratura soprano in the world. They will get no argument from me. Christopher Parkening was a student of Andres Segovia who called him one of the most brilliant guitarists in the world. Without question, he is America's finest. Both performers are Christians and were brought together by their common manager, partly for that reason. And yes, I am aware that Kathleen has a reputation for being a notoriously difficult prima donna.

The 25th Anniversary of John Lennon's Death

Today is the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's death (and the feast of the Immaculate Conception).

The N.Y. area radio stations are all talking about John Lennon today and playing his music, including his Christmas song. There is much activity at Strawberry Fields. Dick Cavett was on Q104.3 (the major classic rock station in NY). They are selling a DVD containing the three shows where John and Yoko appeared. The pair were the only guests for the full 90 minutes of each of the three shows, and they say that the conversations were very representative of the times.

I can remember watching the Monday night footballgame when Howard Cosell announced his death to the nation.

I feel moved and uplifted by all this commemoration. It has a very positive, magnanimous feeling, and it tends to bring out the better nature of people.

A Dream I had This Morning.

The Characters in the Dream:

Me - Stephen M. Bauer
Rod - a friend, colleague, and neighbor who died in the WTC on 9/11.
Pat - Rod’s widow.
Pablo - a current friend and colleague, from Argentina. Two years ago the woman he loved, and her son and daughter from a prior marriage, who he also loved deeply, died from carbon monoxide asphyxiation from a faulty heater in their house. The impact on Pablo is as though, spiritually he is dead also.

The Dream:

We were all sitting in a living room. Pat and I sat in chairs across from each other. Rod’s ghost-spirit and Pablo’s ghost-spirit sat on a sofa to my right. [Even though Pablo is alive in real life, it was his ghost that was in the dream] I was saying something to Pat, and I made a reference to her husband, as if I had forgotten that Rod had been her husband and as if he wasn’t sitting right there. I realized my mistake right away and saw that it caused Pat sadness and anguish. I apologized. She said it was O.K. A minute later, she excused herself to go out of the room.

With Pat was out of the room, I apologized to Rod for my mistake also. He was in his usual good mood and said that it doesn’t matter. Pablo nodded in agreement. Rod, Pablo, and I continued talking about some banal topic. Then, I abruptly said to Rod, “I’m real sorry that you died on 9/11.”

Rod grinned and said, “That’s O.K. I probably deserved it.”

Abruptly again, I said to Rod and Pablo: “The strangest thing about all this is that you guys aren’t supposed to be here. You are both supposed to be dead.” To emphasize my point, as I said this, I pressed each of my hands on their chests, simultaneously, and pressed real hard, saying, “See, you are really here.”

***
How do you interpret this dream? The, "I probably deserved it," remark disturbs me. People aren't supposed to deserve what happened to them. It also bothers me that, in the dream, Pablo is dead.

Symbolic of America's Role In Iraq

Why Do We Praise God?

This is not a rhetorical question. I would like to hear from people why they think we should praise God. I am not questioning the need to praise God. Praise of God is everywhere in the Bible, including the Lord’s Prayer.

I am one of those people that don’t like doing things unless they understand why. For most of my life I never understood why we should praise God. In Thomas Merton’s book, Praying the Psalms, (follow the link and scroll down for my review) he says that we need to praise God in order to condition ourselves to be able to feel loved by God. This makes sense to me. This sounds similar to an idea that I heard about petitioning God, that even though God knows what we need, we should petition God in order to condition ourselves to receive his gifts. From my own sense, I wonder if we need to praise God in order to remind ourselves that He loves us. But this is the same as what Thomas Merton says.

I want to hear what others have to say. I am as interested in "catechetical" type anwers as much as any other, as these are often good jumping off points for insight.

A Quote from Elizabeth Lynn R.

"If we allow Him access to our hearts, our imperfections don't even matter."

- taken from her journal entry titled "purpose", on November 20, 2005, posted on her XANGA site and her deviantART site.

my own ruminations...

(which may or may not be related to her post)

Forgiveness is love. Love is forgiveness.
Whether between humans or between humans and God.

To feel loved by God, we must feel loved by ourselves.

To love ourselves, we must forgive ourselves.

To forgive ourselves we must deposit our broken selves at His feet. The concept of brokenness is far broader and more inclusive than the idea of sin or sinful condition. Brokenness includes everything. The temptation of the word sin is that we can use it in a way that is reductionist, jargon, or legalistic.

God is everywhere, including in our hearts; the problem is we avoid and hide from Him, not Him from us. There is at least a spark of the Divine in everyone's hearts, however small or hidden it may seem.

It is we who are separated from our (true) selves, and therefore, separated from God.

"Know thyself" - the point is that the more we know ourselves, the more we find ourselves in God, who is our origin and, hopefully, our final destination.

To reunite our alienated selves with God, we must seek out those secret and no-so-secret ruined and broken places in our hearts, break down all the doors and widows, let the fresh air in, and hopefully a spark of the Divine spread within and kindle into a purifying, loving flame.


Oh, kick the soapbox out from under my feet! Moreover, where is my heart: I can take something simple, analyze it, and make it so intellectual and complicated!

Compassion Fatigue

In light of the Tsunami; the hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma; the earthquake in the Pakistan area; plus numerous smaller disasters; not to mention the poverty in our own backyards; and the fact that Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming up, the gospel reading at last Sunday’s mass couldn’t have been timed better.

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.' Then the righteous will answer him and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?' And the king will say to them in reply, 'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.' Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.' Then they will answer and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?' He will answer them, 'Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.' And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

- The words of Jesus, from Matthew 25:31-46

Autumn Leaves - Naive Thoughts on a Fall Day

This past Sunday was gorgeous with a clear sky, cool air, and low humidity. I drove my two sons to my parent’s place in Suffern, N.Y. and then further upstate N.Y. to my sister’s house in Mountainville. The reason for the trip was to leave my wife alone so she could study for her CPA exam. The peak of the foliage season has just passed, but it was still wonderful. The reds and particularly the yellows are exceptionally bright this year. Just enough leaves have fallen so that the ground was covered with yellow, read and brown; yet, the tress still have most of their leaves on. We went to see my niece’s basketball game, at St. Thomas of Canterbury in Cornwall. In town we stopped at a place called Prima Pizzeria, where we ate at a table outside. A gargantuan, old maple tree towered over the whole eating area like an umbrella, while yellow leaves and winged maple seeds cascaded down and around on us, as we drank and ate our iced tea, pizza and calzones. There was only one other party eating outside with us. They were four West Point cadets, in uniform, including two girls. (West Point is close by). The unsurprising surprise is they looked and acted so much like children. Everyone knows the formal, public relations image of disciplined West Pointer cadets, but it is refreshing to see them off base, acting like adolescents, which is what they are. One of the girls, who could have passed for a 13-year-old, whined that she hoped no one from the school sees her not wearing her uniform hat. One of the guys was wearing a long dew rag with his uniform, which was quite a sight! He was taking an even bigger risk than the girl, in the event an officer caught him. I couldn’t help but picture these young people against the images of the war in Iraq, of truck bombs and bullets, of the butchered flesh of once beautiful bodies, of amputees in rehabilitation, of coffins arriving at Dover Air Force Base, and of grief stricken mothers. These cadet’s peers and seniors are getting killed and maimed overseas, and soon they will be in harm’s way themselves--the crème de al crème of American youth. Other cadets were passing on the sidewalk, including a group of Chinese-American cadets. Some teenaged boys and girls from the town, in spiked and purple hair, were milling around, and the punks and cadets got along like leaves from the same tree. I sensed some jealousy and envy on the part of the cadets towards the punks, plus a sense of respectful fun at the cadet’s expense on the part of the punks. The two groups are, in reality, peers after all, members of a shared culture of youth. The boy cadets were happily interacting with the girl punks and likewise between the girl cadets and the boy townies. I loved the peaceful, loving humanity of it all. Moreover, I must be abrupt and ask: How we can send beautiful children such as these off to war?

Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller

The Author's Note from the book-

I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Baghdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.

After that I liked jazz music.

Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.

I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened.

[end quote]

Such a powerfull metaphor for Christian witness! It's not about musicology, going to the right clubs, being in-the-know, or somehow being genetically endowed with soul. It's about an Encounter! I am tempted to quote Louis Armstrong in jest: "If you don't understand it, I can't explain it to you!"

Why I am a Catholic

Someone on another website asked me the following question. Do you feel reconciled to some of the things your chosen faith has said/done? Do you feel a struggle? How do you feel about that shared religious experience?

There are so many ways to answer this question! There are also so many ways to challenge one's own religion. I could probably write 10,000 words on the subject. I will try and be brief and I can only be brief due to time constraints. I'm sure I won't do the question justice. If I didn't answer something or didn't answer to your satisfaction, pester me!

I was born and raised as a strict Roman Catholic. I remain one, I suppose, because I haven't found anything better to replace it. But one could say simple inertia is another reason I remain a Catholic. I do want to say that I have a number of friends that I love who are of the born-again/evangelical Christian persuasion who are profoundly real and authentic Christians and who I would take a bullet for. Repeat: take a bullet for.

Real Christians are the most joyful people. Real Christians are also the most loving people around. Unfortunately, Catholics, as opposed to other groups, can be a miserable lot, me included.

We Catholics know we are hypocrites. That's why we go to church--to get saved! We're also the church of the unwashed masses; no elitism here.

I think that despite all the criticism and failings, that on the whole the Catholic Church has done more good for the world than any other institution. I think that today, the Catholic Church is the greatest force for good in the world.

We Catholics like being Catholics. The historian and journalist Garry Wills, although very critical of the Catholic Church and the Papacy has written a whole book titled, Why I am a Catholic.

It is a very balanced religion that accommodates human differences and failings comprehensively. It has a large, long and rich tradition of art, music, literature, philosophy, and spirituality.

Most people are confused, believers and unbelievers alike. Religion and worship are not primarily about the imposition of rules and morals. True religion is about one's relationship to ultimate reality. Call it God or Jesus, if you will. Any rules, morals or customs, etc. must be derived from, or flow from that relationship. Historically and in practice, especially in the Roman Catholic Church, sometimes the message gets taken for granted so that it becomes a cliché or pious platitude that no one thinks seriously or critically about. Praising God becomes as unauthentic as saying Good Morning to an acquaintance you pass on the street. Sometimes the message gets obscured, overwhelmed by other concerns or drowned out in all the noise.

I admit some of what I choose to believe and adhere to is done on faith.
I do not think that I am one who you could say has unqualified blind faith. I am of the "faith seeking understanding" type. However, if I do not understand something, I often defer and take the path of mere faith. I trust in God and my church.

Existentially, the truth is, men and women are lonely. We try to numb that loneliness in our activities, good and bad: self-illusion, politics, drugs, sex, art, money, busy-work and ideologies, etc. In their attempt to have a relationship with reality, the true man or woman of faith experiences even more loneliness than the rest. This propels us into trying to cultivate an even deeper relationship with that reality. Ultimate reality, that is, God, is totally other, but with the Incarnation, God gave us a companion.

The Fiddler on the Roof

Daylight savings time doesn't start until the end of the month. I leave for work at 06:00 A.M., and the sky has been startlingly dark at that hour. With intermittent rain for weeks, everything is soaked and smells faintly of wet leaves. The air feels like a soft quilt on a cool night.

It is the perfect time to talk to God, if I can fight off the compulsion to put Bob Dylan: No Direction Home in the CD player. But there’s no hurry, and so, first, I tell all my issues to God.

When I’m done, the fiddler likes to play, for himself, and recite his favorite poem of late, Hello Daddy. He tells me it was written by a little girl, Elizabeth Lynn Rakphongphairoj, and it comforts me.

By the time I get to the parking lot at work, the sun has risen, and the fiddler has vanished.

A Quote Given To Me By Alicia

"There is a secret place where the Christian dwells. It is the shadow of the Almighty. Transactions take place there which none but God knows." - Elisabeth Elliot -

Who am I?

-I ache to be loved, and to love.

-I want, need to be touched.

-I want to kiss and be kissed, by someone who means it, wants it, and needs it.

-My wife says I'm a sex maniac.

-I love my wife and two sons. I wish I had a daughter to love.

-Having children was the biggest event of my life.

- Raising children is the most important thing I will ever do.

- I am sometimes hostile to my wife and children (but am making great progress on that one).

- I feel forced into being a permissive parent, for balance, because my wife is such a punitive parent.

- I am intense, dependent, obedient, docile, introverted, inhibited, and have a passive-aggressive personality.

- I enjoy it when I am being extroverted and outgoing with others.

- I have difficulty making decisions.

- I have a lousy self-image.

- I am very sensitive to others. I hurt easily but always forgive, to a flaw.

- I have an OCD-type behavioral problem called compulsive skin picking (CSP) that causes inflammation of the skin on my face--the bane of my existence.

- I enjoy a few drinks now and then.

- I am a Christian in the Roman Catholic tradition who loves His church.

- I used to be skinny. Now I'm heavy.

- My head and heart are not as well integrated as they could be.

- I have exceptional self-control.

- I am always tense. I do not know how to relax. I wish I did.

- I can't let go.

- I am trying very hard to improve my relationship with God.

- I enjoy conversations with women immensely, to the extreme chagrin of my wife.

- I love intelligent women.

- I love women who love freely, warmly and spontaneously with their heart.

- I love women who love children.

- With women, I am a permission asker (unfortunately).

- My life has been a social, emotional and relationship wasteland.

- I was in therapy for 5 years and found it to be an enriching experience in countless ways.

- When I was single, I was kissed passionately by a women once, in a way that made me experience pleasure greater than I could have ever possibly imagined and greater than any physical pleasure I have experienced since. It was almost so beyond physical pleasure that I almost didn't know what was happening to me. The woman, who happened to have been divorced and anulled, had dedicated her life to God, and she ended our relationship because of that. I had initiated the
relationship, and she only entered into it reluctantly, as a friendship, not intending for it to get "romantic" which was what I was after. She expressed annoyance that she frequently got very aroused by me! At the end, she confided to me she was discerning whether or not to become a nun. I have no idea what happened to her.

- I hate social kissing.

- I started to go through the process to become a priest (about age 26) until the realization fell on me like a ton of bricks that I did not want to separate myself from women that way. Incidentally, my therapist (years later) thought that my interest in the priesthood was an attempt on my part to solve my depression. I think there is half truth to that. The other half is that I was always interested in the priesthood. After experiencing the very painful difficulties of marriage, the priesthood doesn't look so much more difficult now. I could still have friendships with women, just
no hanky-panky. But I'd still be looking for that Divine kiss! *sigh*

- I am in touch with my feelings most of the time, but it often takes me a while to figure out what I am feeling and therefore respond. This makes things difficult for me at times.

- I do not take ownership of my feelings. This is my biggest problem. If I could solve this problem I could be a much freer person. And if I'm going to sin, I need to learn to at least sin boldly. And I suspect that even this is freedom in Christ. It comes from an understanding that God loves us even in our brokenness and sin. This is strictly intellectual and I have not been able to make it part of my being (yet!).

- I wish humans would love me in my brokenness. I already judge and condemn myself more than any other human will judge and condemn me.

- I have occurences of foot-in-mouth disease.

- I periodically get intensely interested in something new. This usually lasts weeks/months and as a result I have a lot of knowledge about a lot of things, almost all of them of them useless.

- I have a few significant regrets in my life, all for things that I didn't do.

- I don't like many of the images and messages from society and the media about what constitutes manliness. I was taught in my Catholic high school that a real man is one who sticks to his principles, and I still believe that.

- I love rock, pop, and folk music. I am a serious jazz fan.

- I love to eat.

- I am a nerd. (I don't like the label, but I admit I fit society's definition).

- I wish I was more educated.

- I wish I was more creative.

- I wish I could be more spontaneous.

- I wish I had more friends.

- I would rather be famous than rich.

- I wish I had the time to read more books.

- I am a major procrastinator. (Just ask my wife.)

- I work in dilbertville (a cubicle in corporate America). I manage 4 people.

- I am a hard worker, with a strong work ethic and high standards.

- I want to volunteer for my town's first aid squad.

- I am thinking of a second career in something.

- I dreamed of being a published writer. I don't think I care now.

- I went to an all-boy Catholic high school and a college that was 90% male.

- I have wife that was born and raised in Hong Kong. I understand Asian culture better than most.

- I am 75% Irish, 25% German, by ancestry. 100% American.

- I come from a family of seven children. My father and later, my mother were grade school teachers. Our family is very close, but outwardly, emotionally cold. We are not cold inwardly; we just don't know how to express ourselves. Anger, on the part of our parents, was one emotion
that was expressed while growing up. We children were not allowed to express anger.

- I have had a history of losing my temper and going ballistic periodically , but I may be cured of this by now.

- I wish I was fluent in foreign languages.

- I have been over-protected my whole life, but now I feel that it may have made me a better human being, from not having become corrupted with cynicism as some other people have.

- Getting old is not bad. It's not having lived life to the fullest, when you can, that is bad.

- I am disappointed with my peers--men--who do not try and grow as human beings.

- I have been in the middle of some very difficult, upsetting and unresolvable cultural conflicts involving my family.

- I dated a psychotherapist once who, near the end of our brief relationship, told me that I was "all there." (She wasn't). She said I was psychologically whole, that I had all the ego defense mechanisms operating properly. From when I was in therapy myself, early on, my therapist said that I feel everything. I think they were talking about the same thing.

- I cry when I am alone and think of tragedies that have happened to people close to me.

- I have been an intimate witness to the effects on adult survivors of childhood physical abuse, emotional abuse, and incest.

- I care passionately for social justice.

- I hate racism and bigotry.

- I believe passionately in the innate, God-given dignity of every human being, without exception.

- I ache to be loved.

Heart's Home - an encounter!

A few weeks ago (or was it months?), I brought my wife and children to a get-together at a working colleague’s new house. At the party, I met several people from France who are members of a Catholic movement called Heart's Home, that I had never heard of before. They lived in a residence in the Bronx. They are missionaries whose objective is to assist poor children, and "to love them as God loves them."

At the party, I met two French guys who were college students but are taking a year off to do an internship with Hearts Home. Also present were two French girls--O.K., women!-- in their early twenties who came to the U.S. from France a year ago. They are permanent members of Hearts Home and have committed themselves to a lifetime of poverty, chastity and obedience.

I had met the French women previously at a book seminar in Manhattan, but had
no idea what they did exactly. After hearing so much about how secularized Europe is now, especially with the young people, and especially in France, it was a very heartwarming experience to have met them, the guys included.

In talking with one of the French guys, I said that as an American I felt ashamed that people had to come all the way from France to be missionaries in our own inner cities. It is shameful that such a wealthy and great nation as America has so many poor people and that we do not take care of them.

He responded by saying that in many places in the world with lots of poor people, they never-the-less often have supportive networks and communities and help each other out. He said, however, that it is in the big cities of advanced countries you find many, many lonely people living in despair.

Later, I asked one of the French women how, at such a young age, was she was able to make a lifetime commitment to something like this. She immediately shot back, "You are married. How was it that I was able to make a decision to get married?"

I answered without hesitation, "I was scared, very, very scared, terrified, in fact."

She made a very good point. I do not know if her decision was difficult or not, but she made me realize that I belong to a generation and a culture that avoids commitments, especially permanent ones.

What I also felt but did not say was that of course a life of celibacy is hard, but I think married life can be even harder. In marriage I have experienced emotional pain and anguish the likes of which I never imagined.

Bear in mind that I am 50, and the people I speak of are young enough to be my children. I commend and envy the guys, and I have awe and admiration of the women.

Well, I was thinking about all this and many other details and impressions from this encounter when I drove to work, and I happened to be listening to an old music CD, Buddha and the Chocolate Box, from Cat Stevens (my favorite pop artist of all time). There is one very good song on it called, "Oh Very Young," and it occurred to me as I listened, that it touched, however ambiguously, on both what I had felt about these courageous, adventuresome and risk taking men and women who have decided to dedicate all or part of their lives to Christian service to others, as well as what I felt about myself in relationship to them. (Read the pessimistic parts as about me and the optimistic parts about them!) The lyrics also vaguely deal with commitment. Cat Steven’s best love songs are about relationships that have broken up and this is in that category. Overall, emotionally, I relate it to the fact that the two consecrated French girls have separated themselves from us guys! Just like Cat Stevens loses his girl! You really need to listen to the recording though to hear the emotions as sung by Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens).

Oh very young
What will you leave us this time
You’re only dancing on this earth for a short while
And though your dreams may toss and turn you now
They will vanish away like your daddy’s best jeans
Denim blue fading up to the sky
And though you want them to last forever
You know they never will
You know they never will
And the patches make the goodbye harder still

Oh very young
What will you leave us this time
There’ll never be a better chance to change your mind
And if you want this world to see a better day
Will you carry the words of love with you
Will you ride the great white bird into heaven
And though you want to last forever
You know you never will
You know you never will
And the goodbye makes the journey harder still

Oh very young
What will you leave us this time
You’re only dancing on this earth for a short while
Oh very young
What will you leave us this time

By the way, the founder of the movement, Fr. Theiry was also at the party, and I found him to be a very, genuinely humble man.

My God Bless Heart's Home and may it prosper!

New Jersey Catholic Radio

My job moved from Manhattan to Warren Township, N.J. last June, and so I have been driving to work instead of taking the train. Listening to the radio in the car, I have gotten tired of listening to the same classic rock songs and have little interest in kiddie pop. I became digusted with talk radio very quickly, especially the afternoon show on N.J's main station, 101.5 As an alternative, I had been hoping to find a good Christian radio station.

As of September 2, New Jersey has a Catholic Radio station, named New Jersey Catholic Radio, at 89.3 on the FM dial. It is associated with EWTN (the Eternal Word Television Network) and the broadcasts are mostly of programs that were broadcast on EWTN television, but they do some programming of their own. They are licensed in Hazlet Township (where I live!) but broadcast from Telegraph Hill in Holmdel Township (next door to Hazlet). Their range is central New Jersey and parts of Staten Island and Brooklyn. . On the Internet, they also do live streaming audio of their broadcasts. They are non-profit and rely on donations. They do have periods of dead air. I have not been able to get reception on the Garden State Parkway south of exit 105. I have been able to get reception as far north as Warren Township, Somerset County, but I haven’t tested the northern limits.

Faith vs Good Works

So they said to him, "What can we do to accomplish the works of God?"

Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent."

John 6:28-29

What is this with Penguins?

My parents, coworkers, and everyone I know that has seen the movie, March of the Penguins, raves about it, including people who are never interested in animal movies or documentaries. I’ve read that it’s the second largest grossing film documentary in history. And then I read that some Christian groups are promoting the film as supportive of family values!

I was browsing in Barnes & Noble yesterday, and I picked up the book, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts On Christian Spirituality, by Donald Miller. I saw scattered references to penguins and, then, lo and behold, there is a chapter titled, “Faith: Penguin Sex.”

Contemporary Literature Has Gone to the Dogs!

While browsing the book table in my local Costco, I saw the following titles.

never have your dog stuffed and other things I’ve learned, a memoir by Alan Alda

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight. Subtitled, An African Childhood. a memoir by Alexandra Fuller. (I read the first few pages, and it is very good, by the way!)

the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, a novel by Mark Haddon

The Last Day’s of Dogtown, a novel by Anita Diamant

On the Strength of Christian Women

The other day I watched a documentary on the Catholic TV channel (EWTN) about the persecutions of Christians in ancient Rome. I will spare you the details of the various tortures which were practically beyond our imagination. I am also skipping over the fact that to avoid torture all one had to do was to renounce Christ and pray to the pagan Roman gods. I am also skipping over the fact that many of the martyrs were women. But, what I also felt very strongly moved by and deserves note was something else. Rome had a central sewer system which emptied into the various rivers. After the Romans killed a Christian, they dumped the dead, dismembered, burnt and disfigured bodies into the sewer system. Every morning, Christian women in Rome would gather where the sewers emptied into the river. They would reclaim the bodies of the dead, wash their bodies, and bury them in the catacombs. Can you imagine the strength of character, the faith, the belief in Christ, to have the fortitude to do even this? The documentary did not mention any men doing this, only the women! And that there were so many women who did his! Interestingly, one of the ancient Roman sewers ducts is still there. One can stand on the bank of the river where those Christian women stood, pulling the corpses of saints out of the sewage. For me the entire documentary was a VERY powerful meditation on Christian faith. There is nothing like the example of others to bolster one’s own faith.

Book Review: Feast of Faith, by Ratzinger

I’ve just completed reading, Feast of Faith, by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. It is the first book that I have read that was authored by our new Pope. It is also the September book, for members of the Enzo Piccininni reading group which is a reading group for members of the movement Communion and Liberation.

Feast of Faith is a response to controversies, issues and differences of opinion regarding the proper forms of liturgical worship by Christians, especially of Mass, that have arisen since Vatican II. For myself, I found it to be an excellent introduction to liturgical tradition. I found Ratzinger to be flexible, reasonable, and down to earth. He is no ideologue; he has no agenda other than to be faithful to the taproot of Christian tradition. In several places, Ratzinger, who is a theologian, expressed strong criticism of theologians or theology, and that was very refreshing.

Ratzinger’s method of instruction is to take the controversial positions of other theologians as a starting point. He explains their positions quite well, but in a way, which shows them to be pathetic. He then follows through with sound catechesis, philosophy, history, and the lessons of scripture. The first half of the book is very cerebral, much more so than the writings of the late Pope John Paul II.

Ratzinger’s first argument is with an article titled, Have We Come to the End of All Religion? To me, it sounds like the death of God fad from the 1960’s. I don’t need this. I already believe, and I don’t sweat the small things when it comes to my religion or liturgy. I suspect that the market for this book is among only the more intellectually oriented lay people. Do we really need to know about these obscure, esoteric arguments between academics? However, there are a number of interesting points and instructive teachings here, many of which I shall be going back to re-read and re-read. I found his philosophical comments fascinating. While Ratzinger pulls no punches with respect to adversarial theologians, I was impressed by Ratzinger’s respect for the person of his adversaries.

One question I came to the book with was what is the Mass? What is it supposed to be? I mean how would you sum it up in one word or in a simple declarative sentence? From my childhood education, it was branded into my brain that it was a sacrifice. I never fully understood this. From the experience of attending Mass my entire life, I understood it to be many things. The word Eucharist, whcih is from the Greek, means thanksgiving. If you were to ask me, from my own experience I would describe Mass as a commemoration of Jesus. And after all, at the Last Supper, didn’t He say, “Do this in memory of me.” Ratzinger discusses the meal aspect of the Mass as well as the sacrificial aspect.

Of course, Ratzinger writes at length on the meaning, exegesis, and theology surrounding the Last Supper of scripture. The forms of liturgical practices are not to be fixed at a certain point in historical time, but nor are they to be changed willy-nilly based on mere human creativity and whim. He says that new liturgical forms should be derived and evolved from scripture and tradition. Sound liturgical practices and innovations result from a natural process over a long time. The adoption of purely pagan or earthly customs into liturgy is frowned upon. Practices which are incorporated must be of a transcendent nature.

Ratzinger expresses extreme frustration with the Traditionalist’s myopia with respect to liturgical tradition. “Hence those who cling to the “Tridentine Missal” have a faulty view of the historical facts. … We must say to the “Tridentines” that the Church’s liturgy is alive, like the Church herself, and is thus always involved in the process of maturing, which exhibits greater and lesser changes. Four hundred years is far too young and age for the Catholic liturgy—because in fact it reaches right back to Christ and the apostles and has come down to us from that time in a single constant process. The Missal can no more be mummified than the Church herself.”

Scattered throughout the book are many comments about human freedom and liberation, including how they relate to prayer, which are very enlightening. I ahsll be going back to study those. I found the three different meditations on Corpus Christi (the Body of Christ) to be spiritually enriching. The section on the Eastward- or Westward-Facing positions of churches was informative. All-in-all, it seems the book addresses the liturgical attachments, excesses and errors of both the right and the left, while giving an overview of the principles upon which good liturgy is based.

...together, beauty and love form the true consolation in this world

Next to the saints, the art which the Church has produced is the only real “apologia” for her history. It is this glory which witnesses to the Lord, not theology’s clever explanations for all the terrible things which, lamentably, fill the pages of her history. The Church is to transform, improve, “humanize” the world—but how can she do that if at the same time she turns her back on beauty, which is so closely allied to love? For together, beauty and love form the true consolation in this world, bringing it as near as possible to the world of the resurrection. The Church must maintain high standards; she must be a place where beauty can be at home; she must lead the struggle for “spiritualization” without which the world becomes “the first circle of hell”.

- from Feast of Faith, by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), p124

To Her It Was a Religion of Joy and Celebration

A friend of mine described an old girlfriend of his who was a devout Christian: “An evangelical of sorts… She came to it by invitation from friends, and meetings. To her it was a religion of joy and celebration.”

Why must people like this be an exception? Why are people like this even more uncommon in the Catholic church?

What Does the Christian Religion Have to Do with Liberation?

“The truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)

The religious sense turns the understanding of the concept of liberation inside-out and upside-down. In the secular and pagan mentalities, the concept of religion as liberation is counter-intuitive and contradictory. In contemporary society, liberation is generally understood to be freedom from restrictions on personal autonomy. Religion is commonly perceived as something that imposes rules and restricts personal autonomy. But if the understanding of meaning of such things as love, parenthood, the rights one has over one’s own body, or the body of another, are determined by the common way of thinking, then this is an imposition of power and slavery to the common way of thinking. Luigi Giussani in his book, The Religious Sense, says, “Let us begin to judge. This is the beginning of liberation.” By this, he means to question everything and to learn to think critically. This is no idle past-time but hard work. We must break our attachments to impressions already formed. Giussani says, “You must love the truth of an object more than your attachment to the opinions you have already formed about it.” More pithily, he says you must, “Love the truth more than yourself.” The hard work of freeing ourselves from the common mentality and of impressions and assumptions already formed is the beginning of freedom.

God does not suppress the freedom of human beings to act but, rather, makes freedom possible because man’s errors, faults, and fatigue limit his operative freedom. (Giussani). In the book, City of God, St. Augustine says, “Take the case of the will. Its choice is truly free only when it is not a slave to sin and vice. God created man with such a free will, but, once that kind of freedom was lost by man’s fall from freedom, it could be given back only by Him who had the power to give it. Thus Truth tells us: ‘If therefore the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.’ He might equally have said: ‘If therefore the Son loves you, you will be saved indeed.’ For the same reason that God’s Son is our Savior He is also our Liberator.” Augustine was very narrow in citing slavery to sin and vice as barriers to freedom. I would add attachments to fashionable opinions and ideas, the influence of mass media, peer pressure, and ignorance in general. For the Christian, true liberation is only found only in taking up our crosses and following Jesus Christ, because He, and only He, provides release from the punishments and effects of Original and ongoing sin (man’s errors, faults and fatigue).

A secular minded person might say that yes, the non-religious person may be a slave to lust, money, status, and so on, but that an ideal religious person, rather than being a slave to earthly powers and influences is merely a slave to God instead. They may ask, so what’s the difference? Yes, it is true that God is the creator; we are the created, and we are at his mercy. However, our relationship to God is not one of master-slave but of the unconditional love of a father of his children.

What is Spirituality?

“In terms typical of Giussani’s thought, “spirituality” can be defined as a relation with Mystery that is perceived by the religious sense as totally transcendent and yet at the origin and as fulfillment of those defining human experiences that he calls the “original” desires of the heart. Giussani also uses the expression “original experiences of the heart,” which is similar to term John Paul II’s concept of “primordial experiences” in the “Wednesday Catechesis on Human Love” where he uses this concept to construct what he calls an adequate “anthropology.” The point of departure for both, therefore, is the experience of being human, of being a person, of being someone unique and unrepeatable. The word “heart” is a metaphor for the subject, the acting agent, the “I,” or self that engages with reality. In this engagement with a reality that is not created by the self, the subject experiences its own originality. The experience is the point of departure for “spirituality.

It is important to note, therefore, that for Giussani spirituality is a response to a presence: spirituality is the response of the self to the encounter with reality as other. It is the response to an event, to the experience of an event. Its defining characteristic “wonder” (stupore) at Being. It is a going out of the self before it is a going within. The capacity for this experience is what Giussani calls the religious sense. It is what defines the human being as such. This is why the real point of departure for Giussani’s vision is not the religious sense as a human capacity but the event that awakens it. Applied to Christian spirituality, this vision means that the starting point is the encounter with Jesus Christ, the Incarnation of the Transcendent Mystery perceived by the religious sense”

- From the essay, "The Spirituality of Luigi Giussani," by Lorenzo Albacete, in the book, A Regenerative Thought, An Introduction to the Works of Luigi Giussani.

The late Fr. Luigi Giussani was the founder of the Catholic lay association, Communion and Liberation. Lorenzo Albacete is the North American spiritual director for Communion and Liberation. He is also a professor at the seminary for the Archdiocese of New York. He is also the author of God at the Ritz.

What About Jesus?

The first disciples of Jesus did not believe he was the Messiah because of any theological or philosophical reasoning. Nor did they believe as the result of a reading of Old Testament prophesies or because some human authority told them that he was the Messiah. Rather, the first disciples believed in Jesus because they had an encounter, or a series of encounters with him. Through their own experiences, they came to know, in their head and heart, that Jesus was the One.

I am struck by the similarity of I John to the philosophical approach of Fr. Luigi Giussani. Let us look at the beginning of I John 1, verses 1-4: “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands concerns the Word of life--for the life was made visible; we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was made visible to us-- what we have seen and heard we proclaim now to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; for our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We are writing this so that our joy may be complete.”

In the above one can see the emphasis on the encounter, as well as of realism and the importance of openness to experience that are emphasized by Fr. Luigi Giussani. From p.17 of The Religious Sense: “Imagine Peter, John, and Andrew before Jesus of Nazareth. They knew his mother, father, and relatives; they fished and ate with him. At some point, it became evident to them that they could say of this man: “If I should not believe this man, then I should not even believe my own eyes.”

How can we have an encounter with Jesus now? The only means available to us are by proxy through the word of God in the New Testament or through the church. The experience of reading the Bible lacks the immediacy of having been there in person 2,000 years ago, and the church is composed of lukewarm and flawed human beings and institutions. Those of a strictly biblical tradition will emphasize the New Testament. Others may emphasize the church more. However, the historical Jesus is a fact, and anyone who has ever thought about ultimate reality must decide what to make of the man Jesus.

Habemus Papam!

God bless Pope Benedict XVI, and may his reign be long and successful!

I want to drink some Franziskaner Weissbier (a Bavarian beer, the new Pope's favorite) and listen to some Mozart (his favorite music)! I've heard
he likes wines from Piedmont (an Italian region).

I never believed the negative press that Ratzinger received as the number two man in the Vatican. It was all so uninformed and one dimensional. He was the best man for the job. He will make a great Pope.

For information on Pope Benedict XV, the prior Pope Benedict, see:
http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/pope0258.htm

For information on the original St. Benedict, see:
www.catholic-forum.com/saints/saintb02.htm
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02467b.htm
http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=26

Pope John Paul II, 1920 - 2005

There is nothing that I could possibly say that hasn't already been said. In particular, I am astounded at the respect with which he was held by the the leaders and people of other faiths.

"He was a thoroughly, radically committed Christian disciple who really believed, as he put it, that 'Jesus Christ is the answer to the question that is every human life.' The rest followed from that." - George Weigel.

Time Magazine's, "How To End Poverty"

I invite you to ruminate on these photos.
I found the first photo powerfully moving.
Imagine yourself passing through the train
station and coming upon these children. WWJD?
I will not be surpised if this photo wins a
Pulitzer Prize.

The Influence of St. Augustine in One Man's Life

R.R. Reno, a professor of theology at Creighton University, explains his recent conversion from Episcopalianism to Roman Catholicism.
It includes an erudite and deep discussion of how The Confessions of St. Augustine affected his spiritual growth and thinking. There is also discussion of John Cardinal Newman's thought regarding the authenticity of the Catholic church.

This is also posted on one of my other blogs:
http://theconfessionsofsaintaugustine.blogspot.com

At the Origin of the Christian Claim

I just finished reading a book, At the Origin
of the Christian Claim, by the recently deceased
Fr. Luigi Giussani, who is also the founder of the
Catholic fraternity, Communion and Liberation.

I'm not able to write a comprehensive
review of the book, but I will make a few comments.

It is a historical fact that there once lived a
man named Jesus, who gradually revealed
to those who saw, heard, and interacted
with him, that he was the Son of God and the
Messiah that was long awaited by the Jews.
Those closest to him became convinced
that this was the case, to the point of
willing to suffer persecution and death
for their belief. It is up to us to decide
what to make of this series of events.
This is Fr. Giussani's proposition. The
dramatic issue, the pressing question of
the characters in the gospels, and the issue
for us, is the question of, who is this man
Jesus?

Most readers of the book, I'm sure,
are believing Christians. So I quote
from the back cover of the book:

"In this inquiry into Christ's Incarnation,
Luigi Giussani examines Christ's "claim"
to identify himeself with the mystery that
is the ultimate answer to our search for
the meaning of existence. Giussani
argues that if we accept the hypothesis
that the mystery entered the realm of
human existence and spoke in human terms,
the relationship between the individual and
God is no longer based on a moral, imaginative,
or aesthetic human effort, but instead on
coming upon an event in one's life."

The book is the second in a trilogy, the others
being The Religious Sense, and Why the Church?

In, At the Origin of the Christian Claim, Fr. Giusanni
follows a three step pattern that is roughly analogous
to the pattern of the trilogy. First he discusses man's
need and want to understand the ultimate reality
and meaning of life. The central part of the
text is based on the historical event of the man
named Jesus and how those who knew him came
to understand who he was. He finishes with a
discussion of what the man Jesus' Divinity means
and ends with a discussion of the meaning of the
mystery/meaning of the Incarnation (always a great
topic).

I personally greatly appreciated chapters 6 and 7
where Fr. Giusssani gives a very clear and precise
analysis of how and why Christ chose to reveal his
Divinity, Messiahship, and mission to his followers
in a gradual fashion. I am not sure if I had read
anything like that before. The implication for me
is that there is a similar pattern that should and
will occur for those discover Christ and start a
relationship with him, even in the year 2005.

Fr. Giussanni is very erudite and articulate. He
freely references various thinkers and artists, some of
whom we general readers in America may not
have been familiar with. Apart from the topic
and the theological language, Giussani's style
is complex. And I have been told that it is not an
issue of translation. They say that in Italian he is
just as difficult. My statement that he can be
difficult/complex is not a negative criticism.
On this score, he is at least on a level with Thomas
Merton. With the cost of this complexity however,
Giussani has managed to communicate some very
complex ideas in a more succinct style than would
otherwise be possible (if that doesn't seem like a
contradiction!). I personally enjoyed discovering
and reading this different and complex style.

The Son of Man

On EWTN today I was listening to Dr. Timothy O'Donnell, president of Christendom College, who was reading from Matthew, chapter 8, which included:

When Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side.
A scribe approached and said to him, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you
go."

Jesus answered him, "Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head."

- Romans 8:18-20

According to O'Donnell, this is the first time that Jesus used the phrase Son of Man to refer to himself. O'Donnell goes on to say that Jesus was identifying himself with the son of man from the book of Daniel:

As the visions during the night continued, I saw One like a son of man coming, on the clouds of heaven; When he reached the Ancient One and was presented before him, He received dominion, glory, and kingship; nations and peoples of every language serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not be taken away, his kingship shall not be destroyed.

Daniel 7:14-14

Amen.


The Biblical text has the following footnote/comment on this passage in Daniel.

One like a son of man: in contrast to the worldly kingdoms opposed to God, which appear as beasts, the glorified people of God that will form his kingdom on earth is represented in human form (⇒ Daniel 7:18). Just as our Lord applied the figure of the stone hewn from the mountain to himself (⇒ Daniel 2:36-45), he also made the title "Son of Man" his most characteristic way of referring to himself, as the One in whom and through whom the salvation of God's people came to be realized.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/__PSS.HTM#-2MS

Jesus Christ: The Human Being

Below is the text of an article called, “Jesus Christ: The Human Being,” by James W. Douglas that was published in a journal called The Critic , published by the Thomas More Association, in the summer of 1991. Ponder this article in light of all the war, terrorism, murder and abuse in the world today, including the violence depicted in Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of the Christ.


IN 1968, a team of archeologists discovered four cave-tombs just north of Jerusalem, the burial site of several families of Jesus’ time. The discovery has become famous because it includes the only extant bones of a crucified man, whose name was Jehonanan. His bones have made it possible to reconstruct the terrible ordeal of an execution by crucifixion under the Roman Empire. Perhaps as significant, the site reveals the overall systemic violence in the time of Jesus. The four caves contain the bones of thirty-six individuals, at least ten of whom were killed by oppression or violence. Specialists have determined that three of the children died of starvation; a child of four died from an arrow wound in his skull; a boy about sixteen years old was burned to death bound on a rack; a slightly older girl was also burned to death; an old woman was killed by the crushing blow of a mace-like weapon; a woman in her thirties died in childbirth, with her unborn child in her pelvis, because of the lack of a simple intervention by a midwife; and Jehonanan, the man, was crucified.

This was the oppression and violence suffered by Palestinian Jews in Jesus’ time.

Christians have paid slight if any heed to this systemic violence as the real situation out of which Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God. As with so many of the world’s peoples, then and now, Jesus had to decide how to respond to the overwhelming oppression surrounding and bearing down upon him. His response was a deepening vision of a nonviolent transformation of his people, in which the kingdom of God, and, “The Human Being,” became his principal terms for expressing a new reality.

That mysterious dimension of Jesus’ vision which he called, remarkably enough, “The Human Being,” Bar Enasha (or Bar Nasha) in Aramaic, is usually translated through an intermediate Greek phrase as, “The Son of Man.” It is commonplace of biblical scholars that Bar Enasha is the most authentic layer of Jesus’ self-identification in the gospels. As John L. McKenzie put it, “The very fact that the phrase is attributed to Jesus [82 times] and to no one else in the gospels is a persuasive consideration that the phrase goes back to Jesus. It then becomes a question of what he meant by the phrase” (New Testament Without Illusion).

The question of the meaning of Bar Enasha has mired scholars in endless debate, even as they have (perhaps not coincidentally) accepted, “Son of Man,” as the term for that debate. But as Mckenzie points out concerning, “Son of Man,” and its Greek derivation, “The phrase was as meaningless in Greek as it is in English.” The Aramaic idiom, with the nuances given it by Jesus, transcends what McKenzie calls the, “Excessively literal, ‘Son of Man,’” (Dictionary of the Bible).

TO BEGIN to understand Bar Enasha, we may need to see it through a more nuanced translation, as well as through those dimensions of our own experience which parallel most closely the human reality Jesus was probing. Scripture scholar Walter Wink has suggested a linguistic approach to Bar Enasha emphasizing its collective meaning. Concerning, “Son of Man,” Wink says, “Son of,” is merely a Semitic idiom meaning, ‘Of or pertaining to the following genus or species.’ To translate Bar Enasha as the, ‘True Humanity,’ or the ‘Human Being,’ or your own, ‘Divinely revolutionized humanity,” or M.L. King’s, ‘Beloved Community,’ would all be better [than Son of Man].”
Thus, perhaps it is in terms of the, “Human Being,”–understood personally, collectively, and interchangeably with the synonyms suggested by Wink – that we can begin to understand this self-designation of Jesus, fraught with overtones of something about to happen: “But that you may know that the Human Being has authority on Earth to forgive sins” – he said to the paralytic – “I say to you, rise, take up your pallet and go home” (Mark 2:10-11). Bar Enshasa stands a theological junction. Besides having been Jesus’ way to refer to himself, Bar Enshasa was to become the basis for the Christian church’s doctrine of Jesus’ second coming. In almost every passage of the gospels that has been interpreted to mean Jesus’ Second Coming, Jesus refers specifically to himself as the, “Human Being.” A vivid instance is Jesus’ parousia saying, “The coming (parousia) of the Human Being will be like lightning striking in the east and flashing far into the west” (Matthew 24:27).
That Bar Enasha or, “Human Being,” by which Jesus identified himself and his vision has, in its original context in the Hebrew Scriptures, a collective meaning as well. Bar Enasha bridges two powerful concepts. What was to become for the church a statement of Jesus’ return in glory was, for Jesus himself, a vision of Israel’s and the world’s non-violent transformation. The Palestinian Jew, Jesus of Israel, envisioned for his people, and strove to create a nonviolent society based on faith, a reality which for us remains all but unthinkable. A recovery of his vision, within the visions of the Synoptic Gospels, can mean our seeing for the first time the non-violent coming of God, both then and now.

I believe that the Second Coming of Bar Enasha, as the, “Human Being,” Jesus Christ, is happening right now. Christ the human being is coming into the world today, as Martin Luther King realized when he said, “ I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that [people], in some strange way, are responding –something is happening in our world. The masses of people rising up. And wherever they are assembled today...the cry is always the same – ‘We want to be free.’ (I see the Promised Land.)” But this Second Coming of Bar Enasha, as identified prophetically by Martin Luther King, has been repressed in our consciousness and has gone unrecognized.

The Real Presence

About twenty-five years ago, I had a read a book of tales about Saint Brendan the Navigator and some other legendary sailor-monks of early Medieval Ireland. I was fascinated by one story about a monk who lived in a cave on an island in the North Atlantic. Alone, he spent all of his time in prayer. Whenever he needed it, an angel appeared in his cave and provided him with bread. I had a very vivid image of a thin and rugged looking monk with pale Irish skin and long white beard and hair.

Some years later I took a vacation trip to Ireland, by myself. I had no special plans; I simply bought a round-trip ticket on Aer Lingus. I figured I’d rent a car at Shannon Airport, drive around the country, and stay at Bed and Breakfast places. One day, I found myself in a small city called Tralee. I had heard of the name Tralee from Irish-Americans of my parent’s generation who sometimes referred to a song called, "The Rose of Tralee." And if a guy had a very pretty Irish girlfriend, they might refer to her as a, "Rose of Tralee." But only when I got there did I know that Tralee was the name of a town in Ireland.

In Ireland, there were hitchhikers everywhere, but the roads going into Tralee had an unusual number. In the town center was a large park where hordes of unwashed and hung-over teenagers from all over Ireland had been camping out and making use of the public rest rooms next to it. There were people everywhere and wandering in all directions. The town seemed to be wallpapered and carpeted in placards, handbills and litter. I remember a man who popped out of bar and shouted down the street, "Hey, Americans! Get your beer here!" The city was packed and partying. I learned that I had arrived during the annual, Rose of Tralee Festival, which was a beauty pageant. People I met thought that I should be so fortunate to be in Tralee during the festival.

Being a Catholic, one of the things I wanted to do was to experience what church was like in Ireland, and while wandering in the city of Tralee, I came upon a church. From what was going on all around me, I felt inundated with commercial tackiness. I felt no sense of the sacred or transcendental. Never the less, since the church was right there, I decided to go in. The church was full, and mass was going on, so I stood in the back and watched. The priest was at the point in the Mass where he was beginning the consecration. I can’t quite express what I saw, but I was struck by the ecstatic and profound reverence and adoration that the priest expressed in the prayers of consecration, his body language, and the expression on his face and in his eyes. He was venerating the real body and blood of Christ. Then, I realized that the priest was the identical image that I had had of the hermit in the North Atlantic. Here was the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, the Holy Spirit, and a saint to boot, smack dab in the middle of garbage strewn, drunken, piss-smelling Tralee.

Let me explain something for non-Catholic readers. Protestant church services are Word focused, but in the Catholic (includes Orthodox) faith, although the Word is present also, the Mass is Sacrament focused. Not only that but we believe that the bread and wine are changed into the real body and blood of Christ in the consecration.

I remember seeing such impressive awe and reverence once since them. A few years ago, while visiting my parents on the weekend, I went to Mass in my old home parish. There were no seats available in the church, so rather than stand, I went to the auditorium where the children’s (or "family") Mass was being held. Because it is a Children’s Mass in an auditorium, the atmosphere isn’t the same as in the church. For one, it looks like an auditorium. The altar is a portable one. You sit on metal chairs rather than pews. You hear chairs pushing and banging, especially kneelers hitting the hard gym floor. Children talk and occasionally yell. Babies cry.

As in the case of Tralee, this was not a time and place where I expected profound things. The priest who said the Mass was someone I had never seen before, a Carmelite, and a Hispanic I think. However, when he prayed the consecration, he addressed the Eucharist as if Jesus was truly present in person, and I was entirely moved. He addressed the Eucharist as, "You," and it was personal, very deeply personal. And during the consecration, at least twice, spontaneously, he broke into singing the refrain, "O, Come Let us adore Him."

This may read like dull stuff, but I will never forget these incidents; they have affected me deeply. They are a reminder of the Real Presence and serve as a model of reverence for the rest of us. When certain lines from certain Christmas hymns are sung, especially lines from songs like, "O Come, O Come Emmanuel," "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," and, of course, "O Come All Ye Faithful," I become so filled with emotion that I cannot sing or even speak. I simply cannot get any words out of my mouth. Often, the same thing happens when I am receiving Communion. After the priest or Eucharistic minister says. "The Body of Christ," I am unable to say Amen. I am literally speechless.

A Note From The Principal

In last week's newsletter from my children's Catholic grammar school, the principal included the following note.

What Would Jesus Do?

We are called as Christians to teach non-violence and peace. We need to communicate this to our children in every aspect of their lives...that violence in any form is unacceptable (it can look like bullying, sarcastic remarks, racial slurs, copying of work, cheating, favoritism, gender inequality, etc. in our homes and schools) and we need to be clear in all our messages. We encourage our children to try to be more like Jesus. We need to ask them, "What would Jesus do?" We need to ask that question, give them time to think about a response and ask them to answer the question by indicating how Jesus would have acted. Then we need to encourage them to "go and do what Jesus would do." As we begin a New Year, let us continue to promote peace within and among ourselves and our children!

- Sr. Kathleen Marie, CR

The Cataclysm, Man, and the Need for God

Giancarlo Cesana - "Corriere della Sera," January 7th, 2005

Dear Editor,

Permit me to intervene, in response to the provoking juxtaposition (see Corriere della Sera, Jan. 3) of Professor Severino’s comment on the Pope’s affirmation (and invocation!) in the face of the "fearful cataclysm" of Southeast Asia, "God never abandons us."

The catastrophes that smash blindly against the life of men, as if they were ants or mice, re-propose in exceptional terms the question, which is daily, about destiny. In fact, currently in the world every year 56 million people die, over 150 thousand a day, and only a small minority does so after a long life and an appropriately assisted illness in the midst of loving faces. Even the latter condition, which we perceive as normal, does not eliminate the laceration of death, which is truly a personal, as well as collective, tsunami. Fr Giussani once told about a philosophy professor at Berchet High School, an atheist, who at the end of the funeral for colleague, a Greek professor, who had died in the classroom in the midst of teaching, said, "Ah, yes, death is the origin of all philosophy!" Fr Giussani commented that this problem is the origin of every true system of thought, and no humanity exists that is not qualified by this dramatic wound. Notwithstanding the apparent indifference of the few who take vacation in the midst of the dead, who would not want—to put it lightly—a clarification on the tsunamis that strike our existence? The first clarification is not realized in understanding, as much as in recognizing someone who can respond. A little child is trustful about life not because he has understood it, but because he knows that his father and mother will introduce him to it. In the face of the infinite mystery that dominates us, we are eternal children who need a hand to guide us. The meaning of things—for us, who have not created them, nor who have made ourselves—cannot be demonstrated in an impossible, cold, logical concatenation of everything, but in the warmth of a relationship that supports us for the time necessary for its unveiling, which—in any case—at least in this life, will never be total.

A destiny that is simply fate does not take away tragedy: it sharpens it, because it makes the pain not only necessary, but also irredeemable. This is what the Gospel verse refers to, "Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did." That is, you will die without meaning. The problem of the meaning of death is the same as that of birth, and of all of life. It is the problem of whether there is a ‘you’ to cling to, to be saved by, in the face of the catastrophes that crash down on us, and those, just as dreadful, that we ourselves produce. There is in fact a kind of criminal association between the violence of nature and the maliciousness of man, who thinks he can manage alone. Christ proposes himself as the ‘you’ to whom man can cling, the response of a God who is more than a philosopher, who does not define the human condition, its contradiction and its suffering, but has pity on it and shares it, defeating death with an incommensurably greater act of love. It is toward this act of love that all the initiatives of solidarity and dedication strive, all these efforts that—precisely in the midst of tragedy that seems to flood everything—emerge as a survival instinct that seeks to become an indomitable hope.

If an affirmation can be drawn from the cataclysm that has struck us, it is that the world of nature and of men—of individuals and of peoples—is not sufficient unto itself. It needs a God who never abandons us, a Presence who is friend, who is strong, who rescues us in life when it seems lost. This for me is the experience of faith, which does not abolish evil, but does, however, attack its aspect of despair.

Thank you.

Giancarlo Cesana, of Communion and Liberation

New Year's Resolution

A great way to start the new year: contribute to the relief of the Tsunami victims.

If not now, when?

Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good People?

Today, five days after the Tsunami, an acquaintance at work, a man in his fifties, told me that on the afternoon of 9/11/01, he opened the Bible to the book of Habakkuk. He said that once he read it, he saw the parallel to 9/11 clearly and immediately became a believer in the word of God.

He pointed out this passage near the end of the book:

"Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyfull in God my Savior."

Habbakkuk 3:17 - 3:18

Next to the first six of the above above verses, my friend wrote the word, "Dead." He is an immigant from a country that was all agricultural and understands full well, more than any native born American would, that if you don't have those things, you are dead!

About that passage in Habakkuk, I asked my friend, "But then why do they rejoice?"

"Because they are saved," he said.



"The Christian understanding of evil has always been more radical and fantastic than that of any theodicist; for it denies from the outset that suffering, death and evil have any ultimate meaning at all. Perhaps no doctrine is more unsufferably fabulous to non-Christians than the claim that we exist in the long meloncholy aftermath of a primordial catastrophe, that this is a broken and wounded world, that cosmic time is the shadow of true time, and that the universe languishes in bondage to "powers" and "principalities"--spiritual and terrestial--alien to God.
In the Gospel of John, especially, the incarnate God enters a world at once his own and yet hostile to him--"He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not--and his appearence within "this cosmos" is both an act of judgement and a rescue of the beauties of creation from the torments of fallen nature.

"Whatever one makes of this story, it is no bland optimism. Yes, at the heart of the Gospel is an ineradicable triumphalism, a conviction that the victory over evil and death has been won; but it is also a victory yet to come."
...
"When confronted with the sheer savage immensity of worldly suffering--when we see the entire littoral rim of the Indian Ocean strewn with tens of thousands of corpses, a third of them children's--no Christian is licensed to utter odious banalities about God's inscrutible counsels or blaphemous suggestions that all this mysteriously serves God's good ends. Wwe are permitted to only hate death and waste and the imbecile forces of chance that shatter living souls, to believe that creation is in agony in its bonds, to see this world so divided between two kingdoms--knowing all the while that it is only charity that can sustain us against, "fate," and that must do so until the end of days."

- David Hart, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 31, 2004; a quote from the Houses of Worship collumn; titled, "Tremors of Doubt."



"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adaption as sons, the redemption of our bodies."

[Romans 8:18 - 8:25]

On Evangelization

I extracted the following excepts from the November, 2004 issue of the magazine Traces, which is published by an international Christian youth group called Communion and Liberation.

The occasion of the two articles that I drew these excerpts from was the 50th anniversary of the founding of Communion and Liberation, the "Movement" referred to below.

"...the genius of the Movement that I saw being born is in having felt the urgency of proclaiming the need for going back to the elementary aspects of Christianity, in other words, passion for the Christian fact as such, in its original elements and nothing more."
...
"Firstly, we have to correct the usual conception of faith. The whole new beginning of a Christian experience--and therefore of every relationship--is not generated by a cultural point of view, as if it were a discourse to be applied to things, but it happens precisely as an experience. It is an act of life that sets everything in motion. The beginning of faith is not an abstract culture but something that precedes this: an event. Faith is taking note of something that has happened and continues to happen, of something new from which everything starts off, really. It is a life and not a discourse about life, because Christ has begun to "leap" in the womb of a woman.

Yes, it's this perception of Christianity and the Church that has been lost in recent centuries, and with it we have lost the possibility of the beginning of an answer to the questions of the youth. If the beginning is missing, there is no tackling the problem posed by man's nature: the need for an answer to the demands of his reason. So, to speak of faith to the youth, but even to adults, is to speak of an experience and not to repeat a discourse on religion, however correct it might be."
...
"Thus to the brutal loneliness to which man calls himself, as if to save himself from an earthquake, Christianity is offered as an answer. The Christian finds a positive answer in the fact that God has become man; this is the event that surprises and comforts what would otherwise be a misfortune. It's inconceivable for God to act toward man unless as a "generous challenge" to his freedom. The modern objection that Christianity and the Church reduce man's freedom is nullified by the adventure of God's relationship with man. Whereas thanks to a limited idea of freedom, it is inconceivable for man today that God should commit Himself in a straitening relationship with man, as if denying Himself. This is the tragedy: man seems more concerned to affirm his won freedom than to acknowledge this magnaminity on God's part, that alone fixes the measure of man's participation in reality and thus really frees him."

- Fr. Luigi Giussani, founder of Communion and Liberation


"The discovery of Christ becomes the fact that unsettles our life, which works, grows and continually renews itself, sustained by the power of the Spirit and enlightened by the presence of the Risen Christ."
...
"...Fr. Giussani...wanted to communicate the the youngsters the beauty and the reasonability of the Christian event..."
...
"The Movement wanted and wants to indicate not a road , but the road for the solution of the existential drama of human existence. The road is Christ!"
...
"We will not be saved by a formula, "the Holy Father wrote in Novo Millenio Ineunte, but by a Person and the certainty that he gives us: I am with you."
...
"How many times though, even in the Christian announcement, this essential truth is taken for granted, reducing it to its ethical and social consequences, or relativizing it..."
...
"Animated by this awareness go on with your Movement, announcing to everyone the beauty and the joy of the encounter with the Redeemer of man..."


To see the full text, go to http://www.traces-cl.com/ and clock on the November issue. The above extacts were taken from the article-interview, "God's Commitment with Man's Brutal Loneliness," by Guido Vecchi and from , "Be It Done To Me According to Your Word," the printed version of an address by Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe.

The Communion and Liberation website can be found at: http://www.clonline.org/us/
http://www.clonline.org/

God is with Us

In the days before Christmas, I read something that reminded that the meaning of Christmas cannot be understood unless we also understand the passion, death and resurrection of the Lord.

On Christmas Eve, I went to a midnight Mass at a nearby parish. The priest who said the Mass was a slightly older, very jolly, very down-to-earth guy who happened to be from the Philippines. In his sermon, he said one thing which stuck hard with me:

Jesus did not come to take away our sufferings but to give meaning to them.

Chew on that one for a while. Indeed, one could spend one's entire life reflecting on it with the greatest profit.

The Incarnation

Behold the night sky this Christmas morning.

Behold the heavens and the silent night
of galaxies, stars, and planets beyond,
embedded in the dark of the cosmos.

Behold the gargantuan gods of old,
those mummified constellations of myth
frozen so brightly in play, love and war.

Behold the sciences, philosophy,
mathematics, and all theology.

Behold your own heart. Reflect upon its
vast purgatorial seas of hope, pain,
passion, loss, and unrequited desire.

The only sounds are the stampeding ghosts
of raw winter wind, the mournful rocking
and muted wooden murmuring of trees.
Each shivering limb mocks my loneliness.

I am an atom, a mere iota,
an infinitessmal of space-time,
journeying through the trough of an abyss.

Yet I reject the void. It is not my end.
It was this way, on the road for Joseph,
the shepherds, and the magi of Zoroastor.

But who am I? What am I? Why am I?
The Virgin embraces and consoles me
against my pitiful insignificance.
And behold, this night I am born again.

The Theatre

I love live performances—music, plays, and everything in between. When I was single and lived in Manhattan, I did not avail myself of the opportunities to see top-flight theatre (although I did of Jazz music). During the 80’s, there was much solo performance art and small company theater work going on in New York. I regret not making a point of seeing any of it. One of my pipe dreams is to someday be able to go to the theatre on a regular basis.

The following is from the program notes, from the Black Friars Repertory Theatre production of Infant Holy, December 9, 2004 at Carnegie Hall:

To BE HUMAN is to be caught up in the human
drama. "The basic human drama is the failure
to perceive the meaning of life, to live without a
meaning" (Pope John Paul II) . Where can we
go to find it? We have to look outside ourselves
for something to provoke our passion, to
propose an answer.

We live each day confronted by needling
questions leading in their way to the Ultimate
Question. At the core of it all is the inescapable
conflict that scores our moments…yet strangely
keeps us always seeking. All drama is about
conflict; it is what enables a play to be a play.
Conflict is the relationship between a
protagonist and an antagonist. Conflict engages
us, engrosses us, makes us curious, makes us
care. In the characters’ dramatic struggles we
recognize our own. According to William
Faulkner, the one thing worth writing about is
"the human heart in conflict with itself."

That is why the theatre will always be appealing.
For there we experience, not some impersonal
dissertation of ideas, but rather the living,
breathing presence of persons passionate about
their purpose.

Drama is the lived relationship between a "you"
and and "I." In letting ourselves experience that
relationship via the stage we somehow become
more human, more alive. This can be the only
reason for eschewing the digital perfection of a
pre-recorded concert in favor of being here in
this hall to hear this performance.

Nothing else explains why we go to the theatre
and, there with our imaginations, for awhile
willing suspend disbelief. The beauty that us
the theatre helps us to believe in life’s meaning.
It makes us certain that the human drama is
really a comedy. For its ending is a happy one.

-Peter John Cameron, O.P.

The Blackfriars Repertory Theatre Prayer

LORD JESUS,
the fullness of your humanity
leads to the fullness of your divinity.

Help me to bring all of my humanity

to the company in which you have placed me,

that our hearts may burst with wisdom

and our hearts with insight,

that "with parables and harps"

we may communicate your Presence

to all who will listen.

May our work exalt all that is human,

that our world may be touched by the divine.

We ask this in your holy name.

Amen.

I am not a trained actor or a dramatist; yet, we are all featured actors (and actresses!) in the drama that is our life. May we make the most of it.

A Letter From The Principal

On Mondays, my sons’ Catholic grammar school sends home a school newsletter, plus a motley collection of notices, announcements, sign-up sheets, etc. This past Monday, the last sheet that was stapled to the pack was titled, "Letter to Parents."

Dear Parents,

We see times in history and even today the terrible and terrifying acts that can result from a lack of respect for differences among nations, among groups, and between individuals. While we accept in theory the idea that multiculturalism adds richness to our lives, our daily actions often negate that acceptance. We see stereotypes rather than individuals. We view with suspicion those who are "different" in any way.

As parents and teachers, we have an obligation to stop the spread of negativism in our relationships with others. We are the models our children follow. We must forgo the ethnic jokes, racial slurs, and tendency to categorize groups. Just as we treasure our own identity, customs and beliefs, we need to respect those of others. Mutual respect is important in dissolving disagreements on an international as well as a personal basis.

A sense of fairness and the knowledge that all people are God’s children will help us avoid making wrong judgements. To keep Christ in our hearts requires that we also look for him in others. If we demonstrate our own love and respect for those who are different from us, we will be models who show our children that diversity can enrich the flavor of America’s melting pot. We will have taken one more step toward that peace on Earth that must begin with us.

Yours in Christ,

Sr. Kathleen, CR

Advent: The Passion for Peace

In Mel Gibson's, The Passion of the Christ, I was struck by the beauty of the opening image which consists of a black screen with the words:

"He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; by his wounds we are healed."

- Isaiah 53

In the version of the Bible that I have, there is another phrase inserted between the last two phrases:

"the punishment that brought us peace was upon him"

At Mass this past Sunday (11/28/04), which happened to be the first Sunday of Advent, the scripture readings included:

"In the last days...
He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plow shares and their spears into pruning hooks, Nation will not take up sword against nation,nor will they train for war anymore."

- Isaiah 2

I guess we are a long way from the last days!

Yet, in our personal lives, and in our souls, we don't have to wait for the second coming of the Prince of Peace to get started. One of the messages of the Man of the Cross was to take the swords and spears that we carry within our hearts and forge them into instruments that sow the good news of love and compassion.

Just about everyone these days is familiar the Arabic word "jihad," and I assume that most people associate it with actions of violence by militant Moslems to further the cause of Islam. But the word jihad is accurately translated to mean "struggle" with a continuum of meanings depending on the context. In Islam the most common usage of the concept of jihad is about the struggle in the heart and mind of the believer against sin and evil.

I was listening to a sermon by a priest (Fr. Corapi) on the Catholic TV channel the other day. He described how when he travelled, especially when he was in the south, after seeing his collar, someone will often say something to him like, "Are you saved brother?"

The priest says he always answers, emphatically, "No! I am not saved!"

He explained that neither he nor anyone else can say they are saved until after they are in heaven ( so much for the OSAS people).

Jesus fought the Big Jihad for us. Satan and despair are defeated. But each of us carries around own personal jihad within our hearts.

I was a child during the social uproar of the 1960's. (I entered high school in 1969). Through the media I observed the struggle for civil rights, the struggle to end the war in Vietnam, and the the struggles against many unjust social and institutional restrictions. Much of thiswas inspired or influenced by Christian ideals. Though a child, I understood that the Christian way was one of non-violence and transformation of the heart. I was totally perplexed by the statements and actions by a small minority who advocated violence. For the life of me, I couldn't understand how they could advocate violenceas a way of protesting for peace and justice. I was raised to believe that if you wanted to change the world, you had to begin by changing yourself. There seemed to be a huge, gaping canyon between between the morality of a few in the "movement" and the morality they wanted for society. Christian witness requires that one set an example, that one attempts to live-out as much as possible the ideals of morality and justice that one works for, for society.

I remember from the 1960's (or maybe it started in the 1970's) that some ideological people on college campuses academic would throw-out certain phrases to rationalize insults and vitriol on other people : "the personal is political" or " the political is personal." These sound like excuses to hate people who have different opinions of you.

The New Yorker magazine recently ran an article about the issue in France where Moslem School girls have been forbidden by law to wear veils to public schools. The article said thatteenage Moslem girls have been spit upon and cursed while appearing in public wearing veils. This is in self-righteous France, which likes to think of itself as a highly civilizednation. Some articles in the press referred to France as "Catholic" France. Given the this behavior of the French, I don't see how France could possibly be considered a Catholic or Christian nation. Calling France "Catholic" makes me feelashamed to call myself a Catholic. It seems that France, in the veil issue is behaving like those student protesters for peace and justice that commit violence and hate to further their cause.

The situation in Holland isn't too different, in the fallout of the murder and dismemberment of the filmmaker Van Ghough. In Holland, prior to the murder of Van Gough, the law was that one was free to say anything, with two exceptions: 1) You can not without reason and without proper founding insult a person or a group, and 2) You can not instigate hatred. Now in the fallout of the murder,there is discussion of adding a third exception: One can notsay that the religion of another is wrong.
Both the French and the Dutch have taken the same ineffectiveapproach. They want to simply outlaw that which could gives offense.They make no attempt teach or cultivate respect of others. There is no attempt at changing people's hearts and minds. Theidea that all human beings have dignity and should be treated as suchis one of the roots of Judeo-Christian (surprise--Western!) values. (The idea of universal human dignity comes from the book of Genesis, btw.) It seems that the course of "progress" is turning Europe's value back to the days when they were barbarians.After WWII, Pope Pious XII commissioned and published an analysis to answer the question of how the Holocaust (Shoa) could have occurred in "Christian" Europe. The conclusion was that Christian values had never penetrated very deeply into European society.

Fr. Oldfield (O.A.R.) in Madrid says that while America has a society that is substantially Bible based, Europe is still living on the ideals of the Enlightenment. It would seem to me that the Enlightenment hasn't been very enlightening!

Now I know that there must be many good and sincere Christians inFrance and the Netherlands, and I am certainly not condemning individuals. But the issues coming out of Europe provide great fodder for social criticism and good examples to discuss. (and by the way, France and the Netherlands have had a radically different history than we have had in the U.S.A-- a history loaded with religious wars and persecutions. There are reasons why they have a differnt point of view. But this is another topic.)

Now to wrap this up. I was planning on saying something about forgiveness, so let me just say it. We will never have world peace or personal peace unless we forgive others. If we sit around passively assuming that only world leaders and governments can do something about world peace, we are wrong. We can all work to bring peacein the world, however small the effort, by working for peace in our own lives, in our interactions in thoughts, words, and deeds with others.

...as the hymn goes, "Let it begin with me."