Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Marshall McLuhan

2011-07-20T05:02:00.000-04:00

I remember hearing much about Marshal McLuhan in my youth.

I Shall Not Hate -- Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish

2011-03-27T10:47:00.007-04:00

I Shall Not Hate - an interview from a Canadian T.V. Show

I find this man and his story to be extraordinary. He is someone who embodies what it means to be human and who refused to surrender his humanity to hatred after the killing of his daughters and niece by the Israeli military. The ability to forgive someone who has committed evil against loved ones is the most difficult thing for a person to do.

Dr. Abuelaish was born and raised, in poverty, in a Palestinian refugee camp in Israel. He is a Moslem. For me, as a Christian, it has been too easy for me to think of forgiveness as a virtue that only Christians preached or valued (while admitting that most Christians fail to live up to the standard). The fact that this man is a Moslem, that in the face of what happened to his family, that he has refused to hate, shows that the capacity for forgiveness and reconciliation is common to all people. Dr. Abuelaish has an extraordinary humanity.

The Amazon Website for Dr. Abueliash's Book About His Experience:
I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journay on the Road to Peace and Dignity

Another Interview with Dr. Abuelaish:

Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish on Democracy Now

Dr. Abuelaish's Website Dedicated to His Daughters:
Daughters for Life

St. Patrick, Abolitionist

2011-03-13T15:29:00.038-04:00

Slavery was as common in pre-Christian Ireland as it was in the rest of the ancient world. Ireland was entirely agricultural, and it was a standard practice for families to have slaves. The man known to history as St. Patrick is known for evangelizing Ireland, but he is not usually thought of as an abolitionist. However, Patrick ministered equally to free and slave, was militant about the human dignity of all, and worked to emancipate slaves whenever possible.

Patrick was born in the early 400’s, in Britain, the son of a Roman official. Patrick’s father had an estate with many slaves, many of whom were probably Irish. When Patrick was 16, the family estate was raided by Irish pirates. Patrick and a number of the family slaves were seized and transported back to Ireland in bondage, where Patrick was sold as a slave to a wealthy farmer. He pastored sheep and spent much time alone, sleeping in the fields and forests, and praying a great deal. After six years, he escaped on a boat back to Britain and reunited with his astonished parents.

However, Patrick was on a mission. When he was a slave, had a deep Christian conversion. He now sought ordination as a priest, and after many years of education, returned to Ireland. Preaching from farm to farm, Patrick knew that if he could convert the women, then the men in the family would follow. Moreover, as a former slave, he identified with and easily related with the slaves. Among his converts were the sons and daughters of Irish kings and the wealthy but also numerous slaves. Large numbers of women became Christians, including large numbers of women slaves. Under Patrick’s influence, many of these women, including many slave women, also took vows of perpetual virginity.

The life of a woman in Ireland was difficult, not too different than the life of a woman in Rome or Greece at the time. A woman always belonged to a man. They were daughters, wives, or slaves, and Irish law enforced male control over them. If a man had an attractive daughter, he could improve his status and wealth by requiring her to marry the right person. Kings and clans often settled disputes by providing girls as brides. When a woman chose to commit herself to virginity, it often meant a conflict with her family. While not casting doubt on the authenticity of their Christian faith, one reason why so many women chose to remain virgins was that it gave them enormous freedom in society. One pastoral problem that Patrick had to deal with was that female slaves, including Christian ones committed to virginity, were subject to rape and other forms of sexual abuse by their masters. But because they were slaves, pagan society did not consider it rape.

In his ministry, Patrick experienced enormous difficulties including threats, kidnapping, robbery, and other violence. In one abominable incident relating to slavery, Patrick had just baptized an entire clan over Easter. While walking home from the baptism, the clan was set upon by a slave raiding party from Britain, led by a king named Coroticus. They killed several of the clan and transported the rest back to Britain, still in their baptismal robes. Coroticus and his men would have kept the most beautiful women for their own use and sent the rest to the slave markets in Britain.

Patrick sent a message to Coroticus diplomatically asking that the captives be returned to him, but he was laughed at. In response, Patrick, using his full authority as a Bishop, wrote a long, rage filled letter known to history as the Letter to the Soldiers of Cororticus. Assaulting Coroticus with waves of scripture, Patrick denounced, shamed, and excommunicated him, while still urging that he repent by returning the captives. To bring maximum shame, Patrick sent the letter to all of the Christian leaders in Britain and distributed it throughout Ireland. It should be noted that most Britons were prepared to think of the Irish as subhuman and fit only for slavery. For that reason, in the beginning of his letter, Patrick stressed God’s love for the barbarians and pagans.

History does not record the response of Coroticus, but to the church leaders in Britain, it was considered outrageous that Patrick excommunicated someone who lived outside of his church jurisdiction, and they responded by accusing Patrick of corruption. They accused him of accepting church donations and using the money for himself. Patrick responded with the impassioned letter known today as the Confession of St. Patrick. Besides refuting the charges of corruption, Patrick detailed his former life as a slave, his escape., and his life as the evangelist of Ireland. The two letters are the only surviving letters that are known for certain to have been written by Patrick. They comprise almost all that we know of him.

The above information was distilled from the book, St. Patrick of Ireland, by Philip Freeman. 2004. Simon and Schuster. New York.

Stephen M. Bauer
Nomi Network
stephen@nominetwork.org

The Death of Sargent Shriver, age 95

2011-01-23T08:19:00.002-05:00

R. Sargent Shriver, Peace Corps Leader, Dies at 95, by Robert T. Mcfadden. The New York Times. 1/18/2011

Sargent Shriver was of the generation of Catholics educated pre-Vatican II, who were vigorous promoters of social justice. Pre-dating the Religious Right, he was a political liberal who was also pro-life. "Mr. Shriver was never elected to any national office. To political insiders, his calls for public service in the 1960s seemed quixotic at a time when America was caught up in a war in Vietnam, a cold war with the Soviet Union and civil rights struggles and urban riots at home. But when the fogs of war and chaos cleared years later, he was remembered by many as a last vestige of Kennedy-era idealism."

In 1955, in Chicago, he became president of the Catholic Interracial Council, which fought discrimination in housing and education. In 1961, under JFK, he became the founding head of the Peace Corps. Under LBJ, he headed the Office of Economic Opportunity, which created Head Start, the Job Corps, Volunteers in Service to America, the Community Action Program and Legal Services for the Poor. Shriver was actively involved in the The Special Olympics, which was founded by his wife Eunice. In 1967, he founded the National Clearinghouse for Legal Services, now known as the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law. Sargent Shriver was the epitome of public service.

Luigi Giussani and the Communion and Liberation Movement

2011-01-23T07:04:00.000-05:00

The most valuable thing that I am learning from the teaching of Luigi Giussani and my involvement in the Communion and Liberation movement is that I am learning to become human.

A Deeper Understanding of What It Means to be Moral

2011-01-17T06:49:00.007-05:00

"Morality is less a set of abstract principles or laws than a way of honoring a relationship." - Luigi Giussani."

"I am using the word ‘moral’ or ‘morality’ in its deepest, essential sense which is the position of a person in front of Being, that is, in front of life, in front of existence as origin, consistency, destiny—let’s say destiny, which encompasses everything. It is not coherence with some rules, because this is moralism; morality is the position in front of Being. To have this sympathy in front of Being doesn’t require any special characteristic or energy of our will, something that makes one become a saint because he has this energy, while I, being a poor wretch, don’t have it. Morality is not this; it is not my capacity to be coherent with certain rules, but rather the position I have in front of the sun, my wife, the mountains, the gaze of Christ. Can anyone among us raise his hand and say that he is lacking something to be able to surrender to this gaze? Whatever the level of difficulty of the circumstance he is in at the moment, does he need some particular energy? He needs simply to surrender."

- Julian Carron. p. 35. Living is the Memory of Me. August 2010. La Thuile, Italy. Assembly of Responsibles of Communion and Liberation. Trace (magazine).

In terms of understanding the above, one way in which I understand it is to say that to be fully moral is to be completely present with all of my humanity, before reality. To me, being completely present means without defenses--being completely honest in relation to myself, as well as being completely vulnerable. To me, reality means life, existence, facts, our experiences, and encounters. The above definition of morality is not based on rules but on respect for relationships. To feel guilt over an act or a relationship is to be present before the memory of the act or relationship, with our humanity. To become more moral in this sense, we must work to become more fully and completely human.

I should explain to readers who are either not Christians or fellow travelers of the Communion and Liberation movement that in reference to destiny, our ultimate destiny means union with Christ. Furthermore, the more we follow Christ and attempt to live the gospel, the more human we become. The fullness of humanity is to be found in Christ.

International Development: Anti-poverty Programs that Work on a Large Scale

2011-01-04T08:58:00.000-05:00

To Beat Back Poverty, Pay the Poor, by Tina Rosenberg. The New York Times. January 3, 2011.

Brazil and Mexico have anti-poverty programs that are working on a large scale. Note the emphasis on "the girl effect" and building human capital (education). They found far greater success by giving the money to female heads of households than to male. And they also emphasize the building of human capital by requiring that children remain in school and also requiring that mothers get education in health and nutrition. It doesn't say much for us men, does it? And imagine if they did something equivalent in the U.S.! The common denominator with what Nomi Network is trying to do is the empowerment of women.

New York City on the Cheap

2010-12-31T06:54:00.004-05:00

From the New York Times, December 30, 2010: A New York City Weekend for $100

Of course the above article only scratches the surface. For cheap food, you can't beat Chinatown. And don't forget Brooklyn's Chinatown on Eighth Avenue in Brooklyn, which is even cheaper than Manhattan Chinatown.

Whether you know anything about art or not, I recommend walking around Soho or Tribeca on a Sunday afternoon. Many individual artists and galleries display their work on the sidewalks. I have seen art on the sidewalk or in gallery windows that was amazing, and I don't use the word amazing lightly. And anyone interested in architecture will find an abundance of notable buildings to look at in Manhattan.

Just to relax, I recommend walking the river front promenade in the Battery Park City Area. Visit the children's playground. Look at the sculptures of the frogs and turtles and poetry inscriptions. Drop in on the Irish Hunger Memorial and the Holocaust Museum. Walk over to Ground Zero. Take a stroll to Park51. One thing that I have always wanted to do but never have, is to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.

If you like to take photographs, there is no end of things to take pictures of. Definitely take in a ferry ride of some sort, preferably one that goes near the Statue of Liberty. It is rather dramatic when seen close up from a boat. But also, New York Harbor is beautiful when seen from a boat. It also yields one of the best views of the skyline. If the weather is good, a walk in Central Park can be stimulating too.

Visit locations in NY that have been used as scenes/locations in movies or cited in works of literature. Then of course, there is a laundry list of famous, old, or trendy saloons to wet your whistle afterwards.

The Spirit of Christmas Present

2010-12-30T09:13:00.000-05:00

When Jesus Comes, Everything Changes, An Advent Experience in Cairo

- about the zabaleen in Muqattam (Mokattam)-- the garbage pickers in Cairo's garbage city.

The Spirit of Christmas Present

2010-12-25T10:16:00.004-05:00

Of the nations of the world, Cambodia ranks among the poorest of the poor, most certainly among the poorest in spirit (Mt 5.3). On December 26 on the Roman Catholic calender, we commemorate St. Stephen (Acts 6.1 - 7.60). St. Stephen fed and clothed the widows and orphans of the first Christian community while witnessing to the Truth. For this he was stoned to death, becoming the first martyr of the church. Below are two articles about contemporary Cambodia. As Christians and others in Cambodia feed, clothe, house, educate, heal, and free the captives, we also pray that the people who are responsible for their oppression will be redeemed.

An Excellent Account of Contemporary Cambodian history:

The Beleaguered Cambodians, by Margo Picken, former head of the UN Office for Human Rights. 12/15/2010.

An Interview with Theary Seng, on the State of Contemporary Cambodian Society, 9/17/2010:

A Discussion with Theary Seng. Founder, Cambodian Center for Justice and Reconciliation and CIVICUS: Center for Cambodian Civic Education.

The Annunciation of the Birth of Jesus

2010-12-19T11:25:00.000-05:00

"In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, 'Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you.'

"But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus.

"'He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.'

"But Mary said to the angel, 'How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?'

"And the angel said to her in reply, 'The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.

"''And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren; for nothing will be impossible for God.'

"Mary said, 'Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.' Then the angel departed from her." - Luke 1.26.38

Points to meditate on:

Mary was not yet married. Joseph was bethrothed to a girl who was pregnant with a child that was not his. Under Jewish law, Mary was liable to be stoned to death. Mary was most likely around 13 or 14 years old.

What message does this story have for society, about unwed, teenage mothers?

An Appeal for Help for Victims of Sex Trafficking

2010-11-28T12:27:00.001-05:00

I am a volunteer with a non-profit organization called Nomi Network that combats human trafficking. We were formed in 2009 and are headquartered in N.Y. Our major initiative is in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. We provide job training and jobs for women who have been rescued from sex trafficking, as well as for women who are at risk. The jobs are in the manufacture of women’s fashion accessories, mostly hand bags. The women that we employ (23 at this time) receive a living wage that includes family health insurance, child care services, and transportation if they work late. Each woman that we employ supports a family of four or five, on average—we are lifting entire families out of poverty. We market the goods that they make in the U.S., in boutiques, fairs, and the Internet. All profits are re-invested in anti-trafficking efforts in Cambodia. The sale of the bags is critical to sustaining the enterprise.

I would like you to consider either making a donation to Nomi Network directly, or buying one or more of the products that we make, perhaps as a gift for someone. Our bags are marketed under the brand-name, Buy Her Bag Not Her Body. The bags can be purchased on the Internet at http://www.buyherbagnotherbody.com/

The website for Nomi Network is www.nominetwork.org

On that website, there is a button labeled, “Please Donate Now,” as well as one labeled, “Pick Up Your Bag,” which will bring you to the Buy Her Bag Not Her Body website.

Nomi Network is a 501(3)(c) organization, and our IRS EIN # is 80-0290896

Incidentally, next year, we will be starting an effort to provide scholarships for higher education for children who have been rescued from brothels. If you would like to donate for that effort now, please indicate so on your donation.

Also, please direct your wives, girlfriends, and other family members to this initiative. And if anyone is interested in volunteering for the organization, please contact us.

If you would like to find out more about Nomi Network or sex trafficking in Cambodia, I invite you to look at our main website and explore our blog.

Stephen M. Bauer

Religion, Relationship, Power, and Conformity

2010-11-18T08:22:00.002-05:00

I liked this paragraph, from last night’s School of Community reading--“Living is the Memory of me,” Julian Carron, Aug. 2010, section 5, p. 39.

Here we can understand, as we heard yesterday from Marta, what influence the power has on us (it is peculiar that Giussani uses the same term Friedrich Nietzsche used: bourgeois religiosity). What effect has power on us? What influence? It atrophies our relationship with Christ, making it ineffective socially and in our personal lives. What brings us to this predicament is not persecution, but rather conformism. Nobody prohibits it, but nobody dares to live fully his religious dimension as the form for his entire life. We stay in society like everybody else. We detect the influence of power in the fact that we stop desiring to the extent that our humanity is capable, we reduce our desire for the infinite. It is not that we are not religious, that we do not make some particular religious gestures. Nietzsche never thought for a moment that religion had disappeared; when he was talking about God’s death, he was objecting to religion’s ability to move the person and open the mind, of making the “I” be reborn. So, we see that we belong to the power due to this reduction of the “I” that power achieves. We are content with a reduced way of being together, and often we don’t even have an inkling that something is missing, so much has the power assimilated us, reducing us.

Request for a show of Solidarity with Christians in Iraq

2010-11-14T11:00:00.000-05:00

From: Maria Teresa Landi
Date: Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 2:20 AM
Subject: Letters to the Christians in Baghdad

Dear friends,

As you all know, our Christian brothers and sisters in Baghdad have been suffering persecution for a long time, and today there was another attack, possibly from Al Qaeda, just 10 days after more than 50 Catholics were killed in a Church during Sunday Mass. They have been killed for their faith, martyrs of our time.

I kept thinking at their suffering, at their mysterious participation in the cross of Christ, and what this means for me and for the history of Iraq, the Middle East and the entire world. I thought to offer my work for them, to do it very seriously as my way to be present to them. And to pray for them, to ask the pastor of my Church to say a Mass for them, that they could be sustained in this difficult time and not feel alone in their struggle. That they could recognize Christ in these challenging circumstances.

Suddenly, I had an idea and this is why I am writing to you.

In addition to pray for them, why don’t we all write letters to them, many, many letters as soon as possible, also from our kids, to tell them that we are with them, that even if we are far, we are One in Christ, we pray for them, and we thank them for their presence in that precious land and in our lives? We can witness to them the miracles we see in our lives, the path we are following, our certainty in the presence of Christ in any circumstance, so they could be sustained in their faith.

It is a small gesture, like a drop in the ocean, but Christ can use it to make great things, because, as He said, when 2 or 3 are united in His name, He is in their midst.

Olivetta spoke with the Nuncio at the UN, who was very happy for our initiative and offered his diplomatic pouch (direct mail) to reach the Nunciature in Iraq. He proposed to have all letters and messages sent to him by Tuesday night in a package and he will send the package to the Nunciature in Iraq on Wednesday morning. His pouch leaves every Wednesday at noon. In addition, he will send a copy to the Syrian Patriarch in Newark, New Jersey (many Catholics who were killed last Sunday belong to the Syrian rite).

I hope you can participate in this gesture or suggest other ways to be close to our friends in Iraq. Please, be free to write as many letters as you want and share these indications with friends who would like to write to the Christian families in Iraq to support them in their faith.

Thanks a lot!

Tere

As to the practical details, Olivetta Danese, the CL national secretary, offered to collect all letters and messages, put them into a package and hand carry it to the UN Nuncio.

If you choose to write a letter, put it in an envelope addressed to:

His Beatitude
Emmanuel Delli
Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, Baghdad
President of the Assembly of the Catholic Bishops in Iraq

Put this envelope within another envelope and address it to Olivetta Danese at:

10 Kraft Avenue
Bronxville, NY 10708

If you choose to send an email, please address it to His Beatitude Emmanuel Delli as above, and use the following email address:

tonuncio@gmail.com

Olivetta will print the messages and put them into enveloped directed to His Beatitue Delli.

Beauty Will Save the World

2010-11-12T16:04:00.002-05:00

"Like the rose under the gaze of eternity that withers day after day and in the evening is no longer as it was in the morning, what you seek most to grasp and hold tight in your hand has become undone, you haven't possessed it, you have destroyed it. In order not to destroy it, you need a rose you can hold by its stem, that you can look on in admiration, bathed in the morning dew and fed by the mysterious winds of the Mystery of Being."

~ Luigi Giussani

Human Trafficking in New Jersey

2010-10-04T15:11:00.001-04:00

New Jersey is Sordid Work in Crossroads of Human Trafficking

"Sex trafficking relies on customers who do not care if the person gyrating on stage or answering an online personal ad is coerced. Indeed, one crusader on the issue said the sex trade would not be able to operate without trafficking victims.

"'You can almost take that to the bank,' said Rep. Chris Smith, R-Mercer, sponsor of a landmark anti-trafficking law in 2000 and several subsequent updates. 'Based on the evidence, it is true, there are women who are commingled with women who might say they’re doing it on their own. And that’s everywhere. I hate it. It’s a commoditization, like a supply issue.'

"Myles said the 'staggering demand' from men for commercial sex far outweighs the number of women willingly working in the sex trade.

"''That demand drives a need for more trafficked women,' he said."

Theary C. Seng Talks About Poverty in Cambodia

2010-10-02T09:51:00.003-04:00

Addressing a crowd in Rostok Germany:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEhoXdxP3mw&feature=player_embedded

Theary C. Seng came to the U.S. as a refugee from the Khmer Rouge when she was 9. She went to Georgetown U., then U. of Mich. for law school. and is a member of the bar in N.Y. State.

In 2004 she chose to return to Cambodia permanently to work justice for the survivors of the Khmer Rouge. She has posted things on sex trafficking. She appears regularly in Ki-Media and the Phnom Penh Post. She is also a committed Christian.

A video profile of Theary C. Seng:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2V-AVVIRFA&feature=related

Some of her family history:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiHNle0Ojcs

And another video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8znaBJH8t7M

Fighting Poverty in Cambodia: The Jesuit Mission at Battambang

2010-10-01T20:04:00.000-04:00

Three Videos:
The Jesuit Mission's Arrupe Centre, Battambang, Cambodia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8z418JoRJ4

Personal Stories from people at the Arrupe Centre:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sExoiVo-4Cg&feature=related

Background of the Arrupe Center:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgG7olKLvJ0&feature=related

Fighting Poverty in the Rural Villages of Cambodia

2010-09-25T11:30:00.002-04:00

Click on the title of the blog entry to view a video from CNN.

"Ponheary Ly has survived genocide, the murder of several family members -- including her father -- and life in poverty. Today, she's working to build a brighter future for the children of Cambodia -- by helping them go to school." ...

"Primary schools are free to attend in Cambodia, but not all children go. With most of the population living in rural areas, children often lack transportation to get to school -- and many families keep children home to help on the farm and earn money, said Ly.

"Those able to go often must pay a small fee -- around $20 a year -- to buy uniforms and supplies, and many families can't afford it.

"Cambodia is one of the poorest nations in the world, where about 40 percent of the population of 14.7 million live off less than $1.25 a day, according to World Bank.

"'They don't have enough to eat,' said Ly. 'How can they have the money to buy uniforms and supplies?'"

The Two Wolves

2010-09-20T22:48:00.000-04:00

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all.

"One is Evil - It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

"The other is Good - It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

International Development, Nomi Network, and the 'Girl Effect'

2010-09-19T07:24:00.018-04:00

Getting involved as a volunteer with Nomi Network has caused me to educate myself about international development. If you have not done so, I recommend reading the books, Three Cups of Tea, and its sequel, Stones into Schools, both by Greg Mortenson, as well as Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. I also recommend a book called, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, by Rodney Stark. The latter has sections about the importance of human capital, especially the correlation between the literacy rates of a country and its level of economic development. Throughout the book, Stark makes historical observations about why certain countries and cultures became economically advanced and why others didn’t.

What I learned from the above books is that to improve a country in the long term, especially economically, it is necessary to improve the human capital, and the foundation of human capital is education. With regard to capitalism, for better or for worse, and despite its side effects, capitalism is the best system that we have for the economic betterment of people. The fundamental problem in the underdeveloped countries of the world has been that education has not been universally available. Furthermore, the problem has been compounded by the fact that education has tended to be reserved for the boys.

The single best thing that can be done to improve an impoverished country like Cambodia that has had a history of female disenfranchisement is to go to the rural countryside, build schools, and educate the girls. In theory, education is available to everyone in Cambodia. But the reality is this. Half the schools in Cambodia do not have bathrooms for girls, and that causes a high dropout rate among girls. When a family member is seriously ill or dying, it is a daughter that is required to stay home from school to care for them. When parents become destitute, it is the daughter who is required to go out to work to help support the family.

The average wage in rural Cambodia is between one and two dollars a day. Cambodia requires that children wear uniforms in school. How is a parent that is making only $1.60 a day and who is not able to provide satisfactory food and health care to their children able to afford school uniforms? Transportation is another problem. In the rural areas, schools can be miles away from where the children live. Rightfully, parents will not let their youngest children walk such distances to school. And for older children, how can parents possibly afford a bicycle at $50.00?

So many of the non-profit charitable organizations that are doing international development have their offices in the capitals of the countries they are trying to help. They need to get out into the countryside, and work to improve life in the rural villages. That is where the majority of the people live, including the poorest.

When you educate boys in a rural village, they tend to leave and never return. When you educate girls, they tend to stay, which becomes a great resource for the village. It makes all the difference. When they marry, girls become the mothers of the next generation of boys and girls. If a girl can be educated even to just the fifth grade level, it has a significant, cascading social impact on the village, in health, sanitation, nutrition, and child-rearing. International development experts call this, "the "girl effect."

A literate girl also means that when she is an adult, she can get a better paying job. In addition, when girls receive a higher education, it leads them to postpone childbirth until after their education is complete. This causes them to have fewer children overall, a morally acceptable form of population control.

One of the major reasons that China has become an economic power is that decades ago, the government made a decision to educate girls. In doing so, they doubled the available population of literate workers and citizens. And similarly, decades ago in impoverished India, in the state of Kerala, the Kerala government made a conscious decision to educate the girls, and today, because of that decision, compared to India as a whole, Kerala is at a relatively advanced state of educational and economic development.

In Cambodia, and other countries that are underdeveloped, one of the ongoing social phenomena is the emigration of people from the countryside into the cities. This occurs because of the poverty in the countryside, and it has resulted in serious social problems in the cities. Among these are increased organized crime, street crimes, homelessness, human trafficking, prostitution, and the break-up of families.

Nomi Network is working with young adult women in Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia. We are providing job training and jobs for women who were rescued from brothels as well as for women who were at risk of being forced into the sex industry. The women are mostly illiterate but have education available to them if they want it. Due to various social and economic circumstances, these women cannot or do not want to return to their villages of origin. We pay the women a wage that is well above the average in Phnom Penh and provide them with other benefits as well. But the, "girl effect" still applies. Each woman that works for us is supporting, on average, a family of four or five people.

Education mitigates human trafficking in several ways. In a country like Cambodia, if a child is in school, it reduces the risk of them becoming a victim of sex or labor human trafficking. And with females of working age, they only enter sex work when they are destitute and have no other options . Literacy makes other options available.

I don’t mean to overlook the boys. I am a boy myself. But it is the women who raise the boys. In countries like Asia and Africa, gender equality is seriously lacking--boys are greatly advantaged already. In underdeveloped countries, an investment in girls education may have the greatest long term return on investment, in building a better society.

The Characters in the Film, Doctor Zhivago (1965)

2010-09-17T08:32:00.007-04:00

(1965)I have not read the book, but the characters in the film, Doctor Zhivago, represent the range of humanity.

The Czar and the ruling class only care about remaining in power. The Bolsheviks only care about seizing power. The young Pasha—Pavel Pavlovich Antipov--is a revolutionary, a militant idealist, and a moralist. Originally, he hated the Bolsheviks.  He said that they do not know right from wrong. But later, he joins them.

Lara Antipova seems to be an ordinary Russian girl, someone who simply wants to love and be loved but has little control over her destiny. Victor Kamarovsky is a wealthy, well connected, but corrupt attorney.  To me, he is a mixed bag. He represents the ordinary person, the Russian caught in the middle. Though greedy for himself, he is sympathetic to the revolutionaries. He is a fallen man, and guilty of the rape of Lara, but ultimately, he tries to redeem himself.

And then there is Doctor Yuri Zhivago himself, medical doctor and a poet. He is the ideal man, someone in full possession of his own humanity.

Yevgraf Zhivago, a general and Yuri’s half brother, seems to represent the reality of the new Soviet system. He is cold, tough, and impersonal. He is all business yet still somewhat human.

For better or for worse, the character with whom I identify is Pasha Antipov. Later in the film, he morphs into the fanatic Bolshevik extremist known as Strelnikov, who has denied practically his entire humanity, even his love for Lara, for the sake of the revolution. But near the end, Pasha/Strelnikov fails to continue to be able to suppress his love for Lara. It breaks him, and he deserts his position to meet her. He is caught on the way, but before they can put him before the firing squad, he commits suicide.

Penitential Prayer

2010-07-10T16:29:00.003-04:00

I contemplate my sin and wonder, why?
Why do I do what I know is wrong?
Why do I do that which deters me from my destiny?
There is the one who knew me before I was conceived,
The one whose thought became my existence.
Happy are those who do not follow the council of the wicked.
Yet wickedness comes from my own heart.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God,
Have mercy on me, a sinner.

Stephen M. Bauer

The Model of Christian Community Life

2010-05-31T06:42:00.002-04:00

At a School of Community (Community and Liberation) meeting in Paramus few weeks ago, Fr. Stephen mentioned in passing that the model for Christian community was the book of Acts. I appreciated the reminder, went back and thumbed through Acts. To me, the following verses are preeminent.

Acts 2:42-47

They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one's need.

Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area and to breaking bread in their homes. They ate their meals with exultation and sincerity of heart, praising God and enjoying favor with all the people. And every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

Acts 4:32-37

The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common. With great power the apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great favor was accorded them all. There was no needy person among them, for those who owned property or houses would sell them, bring the proceeds of the sale, and put them at the feet of the apostles, and they were distributed to each according to need.

Thus Joseph, also named by the apostles Barnabas (which is translated "son of encouragement"), a Levite, a Cypriot by birth, sold a piece of property that he owned, then brought the money and put it at the feet of the apostles.

Ashley Judd at Harvard, on Human Trafficking

2010-04-27T14:11:00.003-04:00

This presentation is about the issue of contemporary slavery. It contains a richness of content and values.

Kevin Bales is among the top researchers on slavery. Note how his Quaker values permeate his work. The actress and activist Ashley Judd talks freely of how her Christian values drive her activism. Note her criticism of Hollywood's portrayal of the exploitation of women, as well as her anger over pornography and the effect on young males. Of Timothy McCarthy, director of the Human Rights and Social Movements Program at Harvard, I do not think that it is an accident that he is a Catholic.

But most especially for my fellow members of the Communion and Liberation Movement, I want to relate, from Ashley Judd, an encounter that she had with a slave in India. It is the last two minutes of the video.

"I just want to share a story about a guy whose soul, the last time I saw him, was not yet crushed. And his name is Mohammed. And he migrated to a slum outside of Mumbai looking for work because the push factors from the rural countryside in which he had been born were very strong.

"And he was sewing, and lived in a very small room not much larger than the size of this desk actually, with two other men. And they had a little space where they did their cooking and they had their bucket where they fetched their non-potable water. And he was one of the most gentle people I have ever met in my life. And I was very touched by him because I didn't quite understand how he could maintain such a sense of loveliness actually, while living and working in these abysmal conditions of slavery.

"There was a little piece of jagged mirror that he had tacked onto the wall. And in this one moment when he passed it, and I was passing behind him, our eyes met in the mirror. I stopped and asked him, "Mohammed, what do you see when you look at yourself in the mirror."

He said, 'I see a beautiful child of God.'

And I said, 'That's what I see too.'

When I asked him how he stayed alive in those circumstances, he said that it was because he knew that he was sending beauty out into the world, because the quality of his work was so high."

A Letter from Ashley Judd

2010-04-26T19:21:00.002-04:00

April 21, 2010

Dear friends of Nomi Network,

As an advocate in the fight against gender-based violence, I am writing to applaud Nomi Network's innovative approach to combating sexual trafficking in Cambodia. I have visited more brothels than I care to remember in 12 countries, and have learned that this kind of violence against women is not the exception to the problem, but the norm. Nomi Network's marketplace solution of providing job opportunities and hands-on job training empowers survivors and at-risk populations with financial independence. This mission is accomplished through the nurture and care of the dedicated individuals that make Nomi Network possible.

One of the key individuals of Nomi Network is my dear friend and fellow activist, Ruchira Gupta. Ruchira was awarded the Clinton Global Citizen Award in 2009 for her visionary leadership and work with Apne Aap in the red-light district of India. Ruchira's outrage against the exploitation and suffering of the sex slaves that are sold in Bombay drove her to give her life so that those who were enslaved can start new lives. She is a pioneer in this movement and an inspiration to all of us abolitionists world wide. When I was traveling to India, I set aside time to meet Ruchira, whom I had been told was, in all of India, with its many wonderful grassroots practioners and enlightened souls, "the" person I had to get to know. Boy, what a meeting that was, and what a beautiful friendship has come from it! In addition to supporting her work in India, I've had the honor of Ruchira coming to Harvard to speak to one of my classes, and students literally followed her to her car, wanting to learn more, do more and duplicate her model!

Wherever I go, people ask me how they can fight the modern slave trade in a meaningful way. I am grateful for Ruchira, Apne Aap, and Nomi Network, and I urge you to take part in their efforts. Reach out and contribute your time, energy and talent to make a difference in a life.

I thank you for joining us in honoring Ruchira Gupta at the first annual Spring Gala and appreciate your contribution towards Nomi Network's vision of a world free from gender based violence and the end of sexual slavery.

Sincerely,

Ashley Judd
Global Ambassador for YouthAIDS,
PSI Board of Directors

To RSVP for Nomi Network's Spring Cocktail and Award Ceremony on May 5th at6:30 PM please visit www.nominetwork.org or http://www.nominetwork.org/invites/rsvpspringcart.html

Of Ludwig Wittgenstein

2010-04-25T06:36:00.000-04:00

“He claimed that language has a certain logical structure, and this structure mirrors the structure of the world. Wittgenstein distinguished what a statement says from what it shows. Propositions say that the world is a certain way, but they show us in their organization, what the world’s structure is. Logic is about the structure of propositions. It does not say anything, but it shows us what the structure of language and the world is. Wittgenstein concluded that most philosophical problems spring from the misguided attempts to say what can only be shown. He argued that philosophers encounter problems when they attempt to say the world has a certain structure, rather than making that structure apparent through logic.

“He believed philosophical problems arise from confusion about language. He argued difficulties arise only when we use words in nonstandard ways, or we ignore the variety of ways in which they can be used. He wrote, ‘Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.’ Thus, Wittgenstein advocated a therapeutic conception of philosophy, in which the point is to clarify the meaning of language.”

“Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood”

2010-04-07T01:14:00.013-04:00

Back in the Neolithic Age, when I was an undergraduate in college, I took a class in linguistic philosophy. I learned one thing only: that all statements can be classified as either factual or moral statements.

A factual statement is one that asserts that something is the case. A moral statement is one that asserts that an action or thought is more preferable than another. If I say that Barack Obama believed in the health care reform bill, that is a factual statement. The statement is about what Barack Obama factually believes. If I say that the health care reform bill was a good thing, then that is a moral statement. A moral statement is a factual statement of the attitude of the speaker about an issue.

Moral statements only indicate the mode of the statement; they do not necessarily imply that the subject is what is conventionally considered morality or ethics, although they often are. Factual statements make claims about the nature of reality. Moral statements express an attitude towards reality. Factual statements are about what is and moral statements are about what should be.

For a statement to have the form of a factual statement does not necessarily mean that the purported fact is true but only that the speaker is asserting that it is. Likewise when a speaker makes a moral statement, it does not necessarily mean that what the speaker says is morally correct, only that the speaker is asserting that it is.

I discuss politics with many people, and I find it very, very frustrating that so many people are incapable of differentiating between factual and moral statements.

I happen to find the Tea Party to be an interesting movement in American politics. I've been observing them for the purpose of being able to arrive at an informed judgment about them. I have been getting my information from the print media, not T.V., or God forbid, radio. I have been making factual statements about the nature of the Tea Party and what I think they believe and advocate. People have been criticizing and attacking me for what I have been saying, as if I was advocating the Tea Party’s positions, which I am not.

I am trying to be objective and use reason, and people are reacting to me with wildly subjective attitudes, emotions, generalizations, and things not based on fact. When I say something, they twist my words into something I never meant and read things in that aren’t there. It is as though by making a factual observation, I stand accused of believing the thing that I observe. It's like being a citizen in North Korea or something.

People are watching reports of the lunatic fringe on cable T.V. I’ll say something sober and reasonable about the Tea Party, and then I will get hit with an angry stream of left-wing bigotry based on what that person saw on cable T.V. One person accused me of supporting the existence of white supremacy organizations. I was particularly offended by that one because that person knows me.

This is How I Lived to Such a Ripe Old Age

2010-03-26T21:36:00.003-04:00

My life's philosophy is simple.
I just put one root in front of the other.
I limber up and exercise whenever the wind blows.
I get my bark washed every time it rains.
I change my leaves every year between fall and spring.
I donate sap to the Green Cross every winter.
I've always been kind to woodpeckers.
And press on flesh, it's been a good life.

Romero Remembered - Close Encounters with a Martyr

2010-03-26T19:46:00.004-04:00

An account of the then American Ambassador's one encounter with Archbishop Oscar Romero.

About All of the Martyrs of El Salvador.

More on the Four American Church Women.

More on the 1989 assassinations of 6 Jesuits, their cook and her daughter.

From The Economist: The Worldwide Genocide of Baby Girls

2010-03-07T11:47:00.000-05:00

Two provocative articles from The Economist, dated March 4, 2010.

The Worldwide War on Baby Girls. Technology, declaring fertility and ancient prejudice are combining to unbalance societies.

Gendercide. Killed aborted or neglected, at least 100m girls have disappeared--and the number is rising.

The above articles speak for themselves.

The Way to Reduce World Poverty and Achieve World Peace

2010-02-22T20:59:00.005-05:00

The Girl Effect

“Studies from the World Bank indicate that just one year of primary school can result in an income bump of 10 percent to 20 percent for women later in life. According to Yale economist Paul T. Shultz, an extra year of secondary school may raise that same girl’s lifetime wages by an additional 15 to 20 percent. And the effects don’t end there. A number of studies indicate that in communities where a majority of the girls are educated through the fifth grade, infant mortality drops significantly after a single generation. At the same time—and somewhat paradoxically—basic education for girls correlates perfectly with lower, more sustainable population growth. In communities where girls have received more education, they marry later and have fewer children than their illiterate counterparts.

“These premises, which I also encountered in the work of Novel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, are now accepted by many development experts around the world. (The definitive short book on the general subject is What Works in Girls’ Education: Evidence and Policies from the Developing World, by Barbara Herz and Gene B. Sperling.) Simply put, young women are the single biggest potential agents of change in the developing world—a phenomenon that is sometimes referred to as the Girl Effect and that echoes an African proverb I often heard during my childhood years in Tanzania: ‘If you teach a boy, you educate an individual; but if you teach a girl, you educate a community.’ No other factor even comes close to matching the cascade of positive changes triggered by teaching a single girl how to read and write. In military parlance, girls’ education is a ‘force multiplier’--and in impoverished Muslim societies, the ripple effect of female literacy can be profound.

“Take the issue that many in the West would consider to be the most pressing of all. ‘Jihad’ is an Arabic word referring to a ‘struggle’ that is undertaken as a means of perfecting oneself, improving society, or defeating the perceived enemies of Islam. In Muslim societies, a person who has been manipulated into believing in extremist violence or terrorism often seeks the permission of his mother before he may join a militant jihad—and educated women, as a rule, tend to withhold their blessing for such things. Following 9/11, for example, the Taliban’s forces suffered from significantly increased desertions; as a countermeasure, they began targeting their recruitment efforts on regions where female literacy was especially low.

“Education, of course, offers no guarantee that a mother will refuse to endorse violent jihad, but it certainly helps to stack the odds against the men—and, yes, they are invariably men—who promote the lie that killing innocent people is in keeping with the teachings of the Koran. Although I am not an authority on the Koran, religious scholars have repeated emphasized to me during the last sixteen years that murder and suicide are two of the most unforgivable sins in Islam.

“It is important to be clear about the fact that the aim of the Central Asia Institute is not indoctrination. We have no agenda other than assisting rural women with their two most frequent requests: ‘We don’t want out babies to die, and we want our children to go to school.’ And in the process of addressing those wishes, it is certainly not our aim to teach the children of Pakistan and Afghanistan to think or act like Americans. We simply want them to have the chance to attend schools that offer a balanced, non-extremist education. In this respect, we’re also extremely sensitive to the difference between literacy and ideology. It is our belief that the first helps to thwart intolerance, challenge dogma, and reinforce out common humanity. The second does the opposite.

“At the moment, female literacy in rural Afghanistan continues to languish in the single digits. In rural Pakistan, the figures are a little higher, but not by much. The demand for schools, teachers, books, desks, notebooks, uniforms, chalkboards, paper, and pencils in these two Islamic nations is immense, and the benefits of American investment in this “intellectual infrastructure” are absolutely clear. Nothing that has happened since my unsuccessful attempt to climb K2—including 9/11-has changed my conviction that promoting female literacy represents the best way forward for Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

- From the book, Stones into Schools, by Greg Mortenson. 2009. pp12-14. Viking, N.Y.

In his prior book, Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson cited the following, from development experts, which are confirmed by his own experiences and observations. When boys from rural villages are educated, they tend to leave and never return. When girls are educated, they tend to return, which is an enormous resource for the village. If you can educate the girls to the fifth grade, it has a significant cascading social impact on sanitation, nutrition, the education of others, and the ability for them to get a job that pays a living wage. And mothers that are literate do not let their sons join terrorist organizations.

Luis CdeBaca, President Obama's Anti-Human Trafficking Czar

2009-12-06T08:16:00.002-05:00

Advent of the Heart

2009-12-05T11:50:00.008-05:00

Move your cursor over the blog title, and click, to see the Amazon.com, advertisement for the book, Advent of the Heart , by Alfred Delp.

Fr. JC Maximilian, a priest who is involved with Communion and Liberation is basing his own Advent homilies on the above book. Fr's blog entry with his first Advent homily is here:

http://frjcmaximilian.stblogs.com/2009/11/29/november-28-2009-a-homily-for-the-1st-sunday-of-advent/

Fr. Maximilian's blog entry was also cited here:

http://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2009/12/-i-was-particularly-moved-by-his-homilies-given-for-the-advent-of-1941.html

Gentle Persuasion in the Slums of Secunderabab

2009-11-17T14:18:00.002-05:00

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

Jack Kerouac, the Author, and His Work

2009-10-21T20:32:00.032-04:00

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

2009-10-08T06:07:00.006-04:00

- 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

2009-10-07T04:14:00.001-04:00

What is Christianity? How We are Born in that Question

2009-09-27T14:11:00.052-04:00

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

2009-09-26T17:24:00.003-04:00

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

2009-07-09T10:53:00.003-04:00

Christian community and relationships make for dignified aging and death.

Dept. of State 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report

2009-06-27T16:23:00.002-04:00

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

Peace Begins Here, by Aaron Chassy

2009-06-18T10:21:00.001-04:00

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

The Genius of Luigi Giusani

2009-06-12T08:39:00.003-04:00

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

2009-06-10T22:48:00.001-04:00

Click on the above title.

Major Chocolate Companies Still Using Child Labor

2009-04-26T20:47:00.002-04:00

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

2009-03-27T18:14:00.003-04:00

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

2009-02-26T20:09:00.001-05:00

Thank God someone is working for peace.

Steppenwolf

2009-02-15T08:32:00.005-05:00

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

2009-01-27T20:25:00.021-05:00

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

2009-01-22T13:04:00.022-05:00

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

2009-01-17T18:19:00.004-05:00

“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

2008-09-19T21:50:00.001-04:00

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

2008-09-14T22:00:00.004-04:00

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

2008-08-08T06:32:00.004-04:00

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

2008-07-23T16:35:00.009-04:00

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)

2008-05-31T14:03:00.004-04:00

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

2008-05-11T21:01:00.023-04:00

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 moved me greatly:

"God's Commitment with Man's Brutal Loneliness"
and
"Be It Done To Me According to Your Word"

With Giussani, intuitively, I saw the signs for the way out of my own personal tangle of formalism, moralism, authoritarianism, and intellectualism. I intuitively sensed that I had 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 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 and high school (1960s/1970s). Fr. Joyce had regularly and spontaneously 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 philosophical trends and ideas that were current in society. 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, and I saw all that in Giussani. Beyond that, Msgr Giussani's ideas about evangelization, about what was wrong with the church, and how to fix it, agreed with my own observations, and that's about the first time that ever happened!

Back at work, and after I had 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 labelled them as being conservative because they were loyal to the Pope.

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 to seek a position teaching in Berchet high school, in Milan, Italy, that fall. The youth group that he formed and the initiatives that they undertook evolved into what is known today as the Communion and Liberation Movement.

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. Incidentally, in each of these incidents, there is no doubt that Fr. Joyce would have responded in exactly the same way as Fr. Giussani.

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, as well as 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. 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 rebellion, sex, drugs, radicalism, 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

2008-04-27T11:35:00.000-04:00

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

2008-04-26T08:20:00.005-04:00

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

2008-03-04T21:32:00.002-05:00

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

2008-02-24T11:19:00.003-05:00

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

2008-02-22T18:08:00.010-05:00

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

2007-12-31T07:20:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-30T08:32:00.001-05:00

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

2007-08-08T22:23:00.000-04:00

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

2007-04-21T16:10:00.000-04:00

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

2007-03-01T20:08:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-08T11:50:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-16T17:32:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-03T21:14:00.000-04:00

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...

2006-06-03T09:28:00.000-04:00

" 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

2006-05-31T16:58:00.000-04:00

"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

2006-05-01T21:49:00.000-04:00

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

2006-04-26T08:49:00.000-04:00

(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

2006-04-25T10:36:00.000-04:00

"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

2006-04-25T10:33:00.000-04:00

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

2006-04-23T07:28:00.000-04:00

“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)

2006-04-17T23:55:00.000-04:00

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

2006-04-09T20:59:00.000-04:00

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

2006-04-05T17:49:00.000-04:00

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

2006-02-25T12:32:00.000-05:00

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

2006-02-08T22:05:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-02-07T19:34:00.000-05:00

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)

2006-01-25T20:55:00.000-05:00

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

2006-01-01T09:47:00.000-05:00

Christianity, Beautiful and Joyous

2005-12-27T09:39:00.000-05:00

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?

2005-12-22T17:44:00.000-05:00

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

2005-12-16T17:51:00.000-05:00

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

2005-12-12T11:47:00.000-05:00

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?

2005-12-11T21:12:00.000-05:00

"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

2005-12-08T08:33:00.000-05:00

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.

2005-12-04T11:13:00.000-05:00

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

2005-12-03T07:50:00.000-05:00

Why Do We Praise God?

2005-11-26T08:27:00.000-05:00

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.

2005-11-24T08:54:00.000-05:00

"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

2005-11-21T20:17:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-15T04:27:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-05T20:22:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-03T22:55:00.000-05:00

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.