Catholic News and Views

Benedict XVI on Same-Sex marriage legislation

2006-07-10T08:59:00.000-04:00

In Spain, Benedict XVI addressed Zapatero's program which has either adopted or discussed legislation in favor of same-sex marriage legislation, fast-track divorce, embryonic stem-cell research, easing abortion laws, etc. His comments can be guiding principles for how we also address these issue in the US: accent the positive:

"Attempts are being made to organize the life of society on the basis of subjective and ephemeral desires alone, with no reference to objective, prior truths such as the dignity of each human being and his inalienable rights and duties, which every social group is called to serve," the pope said in a Sunday morning Mass attended by one and a half million people.

In a similar vein, Benedict exhorted the Spanish bishops to "dauntlessly proclaim that prescinding from God, acting as if he did not exist or relegating faith to the purely private sphere, undermines the truth about man and compromises the future of culture and society."

The pope minced no words in defining the family as "founded on the indissoluble marriage between a man and a woman," drawing strong and sustained applause twice at the Sunday Mass.

Yet Benedict XVI never crossed the line into direct challenge to Zapatero. In fact, he never even mentioned the prime minister, or referred directly to the Spanish situation. When tempted to do so, Benedict shifted to a positive register.

During a brief encounter with the press on the papal plane en route to Valencia, Benedict XVI was asked about the legalization of gay marriage in Spain.

"I would say that we shouldn't begin immediately with the negative things," Benedict XVI replied, "because we also see families that love each other, that are happy, and we want to encourage this reality, which gives us hope for the future."

"It's true that there are problems, things to which Christian life must say 'no,' " the pope said. "We want to make people understand that on the basis of human nature, it's man and woman who are ordained to one another, who are ordained to give humanity a future.

"Let's shine a light on these positive things, so we can try to make people understand why the church cannot accept certain things, but that at the same time it wants to help people and to respect them," he said.

Upon arrival, Benedict again accented the positive.

"Christian faith and ethics are not meant to stifle love, but to make it healthier, stronger and more truly free," he said in front of a million people Saturday night. "Human love needs to be purified and to mature if it is to be fully human and the principle of a true and lasting joy."

Solidarity Key to Globalization

2006-07-04T14:19:00.000-04:00

Benedict XVI considers solidarity the key to turn globalization into an ally, not an enemy, in the struggle against poverty.

"It is an opportunity," he continued, "to be weaving a network of understanding and solidarity among peoples, without reducing everything to merely mercantile or pragmatic exchanges, in which there will also be room for the human problems of every place and, in particular, of emigrants forced to leave their land in search of better conditions of life, which sometimes entails serious consequences in the personal, family and social realms.

"The Church, considering the exercise of charity as an essential dimension of her being and mission, develops in an abnegated way valuable care of the needy of any condition or provenance, and collaborates in this task with the different public entities and institutions in order that no one who is in need of support will lack a friendly hand to help him overcome his difficulty."

The Pope added that the Church "offers her personal and material resources, but especially human closeness which tries to rescue from the saddest poverty, loneliness and abandonment, knowing that love, in its purity and gratuitousness, is the best testimony of the God in whom we believe and who impels us to love."

Benedict XVI has the last word in the Synod on the Eucharist

2006-07-03T04:52:00.000-04:00

A concluding document for the Synod will be issued this summer by Benedict XVI. Preview: "A correction is necessary. The liturgy must be won back, in the spirit of the Council."

Sandro Magister's article states that the council of 15 men who are preparing the outline for the document has been told by Benedict XVI to move along more quickly. The outline follows from the proposals of the Synod. The surprises will come from Benedict's ideas. According to the secretary for the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship, Archbishop Albert Malcolm Patabendige Don, "The reform of Vatican II never got off the ground." And he stated in an interview: "The Church has always been aware that its liturgical life must be oriented toward God, and must bring with it a profoundly mystical atmosphere. Now for a number of years the tendency has been to forget this, and to substitute for it a spirit of complete liberty that leaves everything open to a rootless and depthless creativity."

Read the whole interview. A breath of fresh air.

Orthodox and Catholic Relations

2006-07-03T04:46:00.000-04:00

The Orthodox-Catholic dialogue has received new impetus as both religions have studied the developments of the modern world. Both Orthodox and Catholic representatives are beginning today a summit that will precede the G-8 summit of industrial leaders in St. Petersburg, July 15-17. The summit will address burning issues of global development and will offer religious leaders the opportunity to inform political leaders of the world's leading countries about the results of this discussion at the G-8 summit.

According to Metropolitan Krill:

In the countries of Catholic and Orthodox tradition, various negative tendencies have grown. There is also growing aggression and intolerance, the continued low birthrate, growing drug addiction and alcoholism, serious epidemics, the increasingly polluted environment and depleting natural resources.

At the same time, society has overlooked the fact that all this happens because of the lack of a system of people's moral education. Religion has been confined to the private sphere, while the social sphere often supports norms contradicting traditional morality.

In the process of our contacts and monitoring the developments, we have discovered that the Orthodox and Catholic Churches have the same vision of the problems facing the world today.

Moreover, our two Churches advocate the same ethical norms. Therefore, we cannot but unite our efforts

The Church still suffers today

2006-07-01T15:33:00.000-04:00

Good to remember when we read news reports regarding the Church: from Benedict XVI, June 29th:

The Lord is continually on a journey towards the Cross, towards the lowliness of the suffering and slain servant of God, but at the same time, he is also headed toward the vastness of the world, in which He goes before us as the Risen Lord [...]. For the Church, Good Friday and Easter always go together. [...] The Church – and Christ in it – still suffers today. Christ is relentlessly mocked and stricken over and over again in the figure of the Church; there are always efforts to push it out of the world. The barque of the Church is forever being buffeted by the wind of ideologies that penetrate it with their waters, seemingly condemning it to sink. And yet, precisely in the Church’s suffering, Christ is victorious. [...] He stays on his boat, the ship of the Church. Thus even in the ministry of Peter there is revealed the weakness of what comes from man, but also the strength of God.”

A time of silence

2006-07-01T15:26:00.000-04:00

Every once in a while an extended time of silence can be very fruitful. A time of retreat and then immersion in a great deal of work has meant that I have not been able to keep up this blog for the past month. Words.... Words mean much more when they come out of silence. There are so many words, too many words, a cacophany of words around us all the time. I have been in places where it was the silence that was deafening...a silence that spoke of presence and warmth and belief. Less is more. Fewer words and greater silence...the program of poetry and art. Just now I read the words addressed by Benedict XVI to Ionnis Zizioulas, the metropalitan archbishop of Pergamum who attended the papal Mass in St. Peter's on June 29, the Feast of Peter and Paul:

“I am pleased to recall how Byzantine hymnography attributes to Saint Peter a title charged with meaning, that of ‘protocoryphaeus,’ the first in the choir who has the task of maintaining the harmony of the voices, for the glory of God and the service of his people. I am therefore grateful to you who have come to unite your prayer to ours, prompted by our common commitment to continue the journey that leads us step by step to eliminate all dissonance from the choir of the one Church of Christ.”

The goal of words should be harmony. Even when they have to carry out the painful duty of correction or disagreement, the goal is ultimately the harmony of the voices who together praise the wonders God has wrought in us and for us.

Going on retreat

2006-06-08T21:22:00.000-04:00

I am going on retreat on the 19th of June. I'll be praying for you all and for your intentions.

"Alone with God and God alone."

Sr. Kathryn James, fsp

Pentecost Reflection by Founder of Sant'Egidio

2006-06-05T08:44:00.000-04:00

I found in my e-mail this morning a reflection by Andrea Riccardi on Psalm 112, a reflection he offered at the Vatican on the Feast of Pentecost. In the often lonely world, he reminds us of the comforting and powerful presence of a God who stoops down to us in our pain.

The more time goes by, the more we feel we need to pray. Community life is a school of prayer for everyone, for the young and for the old: "Blessed be the name of Yahweh, henceforth and forever." Prayer is the material where a charisma is not extinguished, nor emptied by pride, where it yields fruit. Because a charisma is a gift, not a utopia, an ideology, or a project of power.

Over the years we have seen the light of utopias promising a new world shine and then die out, while hopelessness grew, indifferent to the sorrow of others, surrendering to an old world. The word of God, however, the liturgy and prayer, have given shape to another sentiment; it is a tenacious and patient love: love of Jesus, gift of Pentecost, the basis of every charisma, which is communicated to our hearts thanks to the Spirit.

The psalm sings "Supreme over all nations." The pious Jews imagined God above the heavens: "supreme over the heavens his glory," distant from the miseries down on the earth. In our world distances grow bigger -- between the great and the little, between peoples and civilizations: Great distances pave the way to conflicts with despise.

On the contrary, he who is indeed distant from our miserable world is also closest: "Who is like Yahweh our God? His throne is set on high, but he stoops to look down on heaven and earth."

The supreme stoops down. It is written in many pages of the Scripture: "I dwell in the high and holy place," says Isaiah (57:15), "with him also who is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite."

Human lives do not roll by forgotten, only under the indifferent gaze of people. Psalm 11 says: "His gaze scrutinizes the children of Adam." God is not distracted or indifferent. His eyes tear indifference. Jesus often looks at men and women in their sorrow, even at Peter, after he denies him. The Supreme stoops to look down. This does not leave the lives of men and women the same as they were. The psalm sings to this with two small, but effective pictures: the poor and the barren woman.

The poor. Whoever knows the peripheries of the world has often seen the dunghills where children often play; they have walked on dusty roads. I am thinking of Africa. But I also have in mind the poor whose home is a dunghill; abandoned elderly men and women, people living in prison. This is what quite a part of the world is.

But people do not see, nor do they stoop down. However, God is not indifferent: "He raises the poor from the dust, he lifts the needy from the dunghill, to give them a place among princes, among princes of his people." Lifted up, the poor are seated with dignity among princes. If these do not consider the poor, they may become an assembly of evil people.

It is a world overturned by love. It happens: We have seen it. It is not a utopia. It is born from that patient and tenacious love that God outpoured in our hearts. God listens to the plea of the poor: "For you have been a stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat" (Isaiah 25:4).

The barren woman. We are not condemned to the barren life of living for ourselves. The barren woman of the psalm reminds us of other barren lives: women of the Bible, but also many men and women of our times, rich in resources, but incapable of giving life. There is a world of rich and barren people. The Lord looks down on them, as well: "Yahweh looks down from heaven at the children of Adam" (Psalm 14:2). He stoops to look down at us. We see it in Jesus: "In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them" (Isaiah 63:9). We celebrated it during Easter.

Today we sing to the fecundity of life in the Spirit: "He lets the barren woman be seated at home, the happy mother of sons." It is true for many rich and barren people. It is the joy of this evening, of us rich and barren people, made humble and fecund fathers of sons in this beautiful house, without walls, but so brotherly and so intimate nevertheless.

Communities and movements, we are barren people who have received a fecund charisma thanks to God, who stoops to look down. Now we live and rejoice within the Church, with children, with you, Holy Father, with the bishops, with you all. In addition to those who are present, there are others on this square here tonight: it is an immense people of "poor and humble people" -- Zephaniah says (3:12); there are many poor people lifted by the love of the humble people we are.

This is the special covenant of the poor and the humble, which lives within the Church as a fruit of the Spirit. It celebrates what you, Holy Father, wrote in the encyclical: "Love of God and love of neighbor are now truly united."

John Chrysostom, who was bishop in troubled times, said: "This psalm asks us to be united in prayer. Indeed, it asks us to love and esteem each other. We are different, but we are not distant -- called by you, Holy Father, to communicate this Gospel with more love and more strength. And so, we thank the Lord with the Hallelujah that opens and closes the psalm. In our weakness, we are clothed with the power from on high. That is why we say: "Who is like Yahweh our God?"

Benedict XVI meets the Bush agenda

2006-05-25T14:55:00.000-04:00

I found an interesting article by James Hug, SJ on the Center of Concern website (coc.org). The article looks at the current US political spectrum, especially as we face important elections this year, and explores the document of Benedict XVI, God Is Love, as a guide to finding a common faith foundation which will unite rather than further divide the country. An excellent read.

Benedict sets about reawakening Europe's Christian Roots

2006-05-25T13:42:00.000-04:00

John Allen is reporting daily on Benedict XVI's trip to Poland, May 25-28. Benedict's first trip is the beginning of his "Take Back Europe" campaign for this summer. The motto for his visit to Poland is: "Stand firm in your faith!" For daily courage visit NCRonline.org.

Mary Ann Glendon on US Immigration Policy

2006-05-25T12:10:00.000-04:00

Pontifical Academy President Suggests a Principle to Guide Debate

NEW YORK, MAY 24, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Part of the solution to the United States' immigration problems will require a renewed commitment to solidarity, says Mary Ann Glendon.

Glendon, the president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and a Harvard law professor, writing in the June/July issue of First Things, argues that such a commitment to solidarity is necessary to maximize the advantages and minimize the disadvantages of immigration for all involved.

Her comments come amid a national debate, dominated by alarmists on one hand and those who ignore problems associated with liberal immigration policies on the other.

For her part, Glendon observes that the world is experiencing an age of great movement of people. Worldwide, there are some 200 million migrants and refugees.

She states that, despite an ongoing conversation, especially in the United States, about what to do with the great influx of migrants, the debate has been largely silent regarding the relation of this phenomenon to the "demographic winter" occurring in Europe and North America.

Glendon notes that because of social experimentation, as well as what she calls the "culture of self-fulfillment" in these regions, people are having fewer children and the basic social structure of the family is being altered gradually.

Advantages

The point often overlooked is that societies that accept fewer children will have to accept more immigrants. "The issue is not who will fill the jobs Americans don't want," writes Glendon. "The issue is who will fill the ranks of a labor force that the retiring generation failed to replenish."

Nevertheless, America has distinct advantages in solving its demographic problem that Europe does not share.

The United States has a history of pluralism as well as experience absorbing and assimilating millions of immigrants from all over the world. Furthermore, most of America's immigrants come from largely Christian countries, and thus share a similar cultural heritage with the United States.

However, for any assimilation process to be successful, Americans will have to avoid lumping immigrants into multiculturalist subgroups such as "Latino," insists Glendon.

As well, she continues, Americans will have to address the "rule of law" and economic problems associated with the prospects of granting citizenship or amnesty to large numbers of immigrants -- problems that are very different from those faced in the great waves of immigration in the early 20th century.

The call to solidarity

Glendon closes by asking all participants in the debate to re-examine the five principles of the joint statement of the American and Mexican bishops entitled, "Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope."

Those principles are:

1) persons have the right to find opportunities in their homeland;

2) when opportunities are not available at home, persons have the right to migrate to find work;

(3) sovereign nations have the right to control their borders, but economically prosperous nations have the obligation to accommodate migration flows;

(4) refugees and asylum seekers should be protected; and

(5) human dignity and rights of undocumented migrants should be respected.

To these five principles, Glendon advocates a sixth: "the need for a highly diverse, rule-of-law society to be careful about the messages it sends to persons who wish to become part of that society."

Citing Pope John Paul II, Glendon argues that solidarity imposes obligations on the disadvantaged as well as the advantaged. While the advantaged should care for the needs of the disadvantaged, the latter cannot be passive recipients of aid or undermine the social fabric, but must instead contribute all they can to the common good.

While these principles might be somewhat in tension, Glendon argues they are the basis of sound solutions to a heavily charged policy battle.

The Apostle Peter

2006-05-24T09:27:00.000-04:00

Benedict XVI is speaking on the personalities of the apostles. Since it is still the Easter Season I thought to include his reflection yesterday on Peter. It was a reflection that deeply touched me:

"Peter's impetuous generosity did not safeguard him from the risks of human weakness. ... The moment came in which even he gave in to fear and crumbled. He betrayed the Master. The school of faith is not a triumphal march but a road beset with suffering and with love, with trials and with faithfulness, to be renewed day after day.

"Peter, who had promised absolute faithfulness, knew the bitterness and humiliation of denial; the proud man learns the cost of humility at his own expense. ... When the mask finally fell and he understood the truth in his weak believing-sinner's heart, he burst into liberating tears of penance, after which he was ready for his mission."

One day, on the shores of Lake Tiberias, "that mission was entrusted to him by the Risen Jesus," as St. John recounts. The dialogue between Peter and Jesus, the Pope observed, "contains a very significant play of verbs. In Greek, the verb 'fileo' expresses the love of friendship, tender but not total, while the verb 'agapao' means unreserved, complete and unconditional love. The first time, Jesus asks Peter: 'Simon, do you love Me? (agapas-me?).'

"Prior to his experience of betrayal, the Apostle would certainly have replied: 'I love You (agapo-se).' Now that he has known the bitter sadness of infidelity, the drama of his own weakness, he simply says: 'Lord, I love you (filo-se),' in other words, 'I love you with my poor love.' ... Simon had understood that his poor love, the only one of which he was capable, was enough for Jesus. ... We could almost say that Jesus had adapted Himself to Peter, rather than Peter to Jesus."

Pope Benedict continued: "It was precisely this divine adaptation that gave hope to the disciple. ... From that day, Peter followed the Master with a specific awareness of his own frailty. But this knowledge did not discourage him; he knew he could count on the presence of the Risen One at his side."

He concluded: "From the ingenuous enthusiasm of the outset, passing through the painful experience of denial and the tears of conversion, Peter came to trust himself to the Jesus Who had adapted Himself to his own poor capacity to love. It was a long journey that made him a reliable witness, because constantly open to the action of the Spirit in Jesus. Peter would describe himself as 'a witness of the sufferings of Christ as well as a partaker in the glory that is to be revealed'."

Self-actualization or obedience--which makes us more authentically human?

2006-05-24T09:14:00.000-04:00

I ran across this passage taken from "God's Power--Our Hope" in Song for the Lord--Faith in Christ and Liturgy Today (New York: Crossroad 1996). In a world were self-actualization and self-fulfillment are the most important things individuals can achieve for themselves, it is a breath of fresh air to touch again the Word and the blessed gift of obedience. And in a religious environment where people so frequently quote the text of Scripture in opposition to the Church ("Jesus wouldn't do that. Read the Gospels and see."), it is a ray of light in the midst of the confusing dark:

Faith is obedience; it means that we relearn the essential form of our being -- our nature as creatures -- and in this way become authentic. It means that we recognize the relationship of responsibility as the basic form of our lives and that as a result, power changes from being a threat and a danger to hope.

This obedience is directed to God Himself -- on the one hand it presupposes an attentive and vital relationship with God, and on the other hand it makes this possible, for only the obedient person perceives God. To ensure, however, that our obedience becomes concrete and is not inadvertently equated with the projections of our own desires, God has made Himself concrete in many different ways -- to begin with, in His words.

Thus obedience to God is a relationship of obedience to His Word. We have to enter into a relationship of awe and obedience toward the Bible, which nowadays is frequently in danger of being lost. If individuals or different groups continually create their own Bible by means of separating the sources and criticizing the tradition, and then place this Bible in opposition to the unity of Scripture and the Church, this is no longer obedience to God’s Word. It is rather an apotheosis of their own position with the help of a text-montage whose selection and omissions are ultimately based on the positions they want.

Today even Catholics frequently use Scripture as a weapon against the Church. As the Word of God, it certainly does stand above the Church, which must constantly let herself be judged and purified by it. But it does not stand apart from the Body of Christ -- a privatized reading can never penetrate the core of Scripture.

Proper reading of Scripture presupposes that we read it where it has made and still makes history, where it is not witness to the past, but the vital strength of the present: in the Church of the Lord and with her eyes, the eyes of faith.

In this sense, obedience to Scripture is always obedience to the Church; this obedience becomes abstract if we try to remove the Church from the Bible, or even try to play her off against it. Scripture alive in the living Church is also God’s present power in the world today -- a power which remains an inexhaustible source of hope throughout all generations. (Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI

Excellent Analysis of DaVinci Code Movie

2006-05-22T08:17:00.000-04:00

The Theology of the Book & the Movie

In order for Dan Brown’s premise to work, that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had a daughter and that their blood line continues is divine, the Christian believer must suspend any belief in the divinity of Jesus. Dan Brown does so in the book by debunking Jesus’ resurrection from the dead; Academy Award winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man) does so by ignoring the resurrection of Jesus entirely and repeating over and over that Jesus was only a man. This subtle shift between the book and the film is not immediately noticeable; at first it seems that Mary Magdalene is depicted as the Holy Grail, the womb that bore Jesus’ child and not a lowly cup that held the wine he transformed into his blood at the Last Supper. Yet as the film continues, it recounts Mary Magdalene’s escape from Jerusalem, pregnant with Jesus’ child, as he dies on the cross never to be heard from again. The film is concerned with Mary Magdalene’s many and varied burial places, never that of Jesus, who if he did not rise from the dead must have been buried somewhere. Jesus merits little attention in the film except as the father of Mary Magdalene’s child – and the reason for Bishop Aringarosa’s and Silas’ weird and murderous behavior. In fact, Mary Magdalene herself is actually the divine one. According to Teabing in the film, her purpose is to save the oppressed and the poor.

In both the book and the film the key to the conspiracy and the de-divinization of Jesus is Teabing’s prolonged rhetorical explanation of the conspiracy to Langdon and Sophie, as Barbara Murphy explores in her analytical article “Sir Leigh Teabing’s Jesus in The Da Vinci Code” He does away with the authenticity of the four Gospels and Scripture and replaces these with Gnostic texts that emerged later than the Gospels. Among other things, Gnosticism believed that God the Father, an immaterial being and therefore good, created Jesus, a material being, and therefore evil because all matter was considered evil. Gnostic texts were never accepted as revelation by the early Church.

The Fonts of Divine Revelation

How does the average Catholic know with certainty that the Gospels are authentic and divinely inspired? How do we know that the content of the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed (formulated by the Council of Nicea in 325AD) that we pray at Sunday Mass together are true?

Although The Da Vinci Code makes it seem that there is no historical proof to anything Christians believe, a review of the fonts of divine revelation and Church history can reassure us.
Divine Revelation is God’s communication to us about himself, ourselves, and God’s plan for us, made known to us through Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition – the two fonts of Divine Revelation.

Sacred Scripture is the Word of God and the Bible is the book that contains it. The Bible consists of the Old Testament (46 books) and New Testament (27 books, including the four Gospels). The Church believes these are divinely inspired. The canon of the New Testament was formed by the year 220; St. Justin Martyr and other Fathers of the Church were quoting from the Gospels as we have them now by the year 150AD.

The Basic Catechism (Pauline Books & Media; 1999), based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994), explains that “Sacred Tradition is the process by which the Church, through the assistance of the Holy Spirit, preserves and hands on to all generations, in its teaching, life, and worship, all that it is and believes.” It is the teaching authority of the Pope, the Vicar of Christ and the successor of St. Peter, who in an unbroken line of “apostolic succession” that is historically verifiable, preserves and helps the Church grow in its understanding of the “heritage or deposit of faith.”

The Film

As a film, I found The Da Vinci Code to be suspenseful and a good watch. The cinematography is admirable. Ron Howard is an excellent director and though he was not able to tell this story with absolute clarity, nonetheless, it’s a better-than-average thriller, including murder and mayhem – and of course, the Vatican. (The Vatican is everywhere these days and is a “character” in The Da Vinci Code, Mission: Impossible III and in the upcoming remake of The Omen.)

One of the problems with the film is that the conspiracy is everything. There is no character development so everyone comes off as rather shallow. There are plenty of bad guys – and they are all members of the Catholic Church that is fronted by Opus Dei, a real religious congregation-like organization approved by the Catholic Church to spread the Gospel. Unfortunately, like the Jesuits before them, members of Opus Dei and the institute itself, make a very large target for the imagination of writers and filmmakers.

Another problem is that the double-stranded inner logic of the film is not integrated. The narrative component does have a beginning, middle, and an end as do most stories. What is illogical and inconsistent is exactly what the characters mean by what they say – and they say a lot. The plot is so full of holes that it takes a leap of faith to believe Teabing’s parallel feminine divinity tale, and he does not believe in faith. In truth, The Da Vinci Code is a fiction. The film’s tag line says: Seek the truth. Good idea.

The biggest difficulty with this story that purports to be “religious” is that there is no transcendence and no – love. Goodness is supposedly found in the feminine divine in the film’s mythology, but the idea is preserved by mostly dead white men. Therefore, I wonder if Dan Brown actually has a point of view about women in the Church and the world or just a good, albeit almost incoherent, storyline?

At the end of the day, without any examples of unconditional love that lays down its life for another, male and female, there is no relationship with God in the story, no reason for the characters to get up in the morning - and certainly no heroes.

A Pastoral Approach to The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code, book and movie, is entertainment media, and therefore, it’s about big business and will probably produce enough profit to support a small country. Entertainment media are part of our capitalist economic system that has no religion and comes with an ethical framework that is almost non-existent. Millions of people have read the book and will see the movie, and people are talking about it.

I think there are several things we can do as Catholic Christians regarding this cultural phenomenon:

• Be informed about your Catholic faith; read the New Testament and a good book on Church history; find out what each phrase of the Creed means
• Listen to others when they want to talk about The Da Vinci Code; let them finish their thought before jumping in; enter into respectful dialogue
• If you don’t know the answer, find out
• Avoid being defensive
• Respond rather than react
• Build a bridge of understanding
• Think of the film as a table around which we can gather to converse about Jesus
• Don’t talk authoritatively about something you haven’t seen or read: Maybe: “I didn’t see it/read it yet; but what did you think?”

Jesus said in John 10:10: “I came that you may have life and have it to the full” and in Mark 16:15: “Go out into the whole world and preach the Gospel to all creation.” But the best is from John 6:20 “It is I; do not be afraid.” No one in The Da Vinci Code ever says this.

Sr. Rose Pacatte, FSP

Making Sense Out of Bioethics

2006-05-17T19:13:00.000-04:00

Concise explanations of the Church's position on crucial issues of bioethics.

http://www.ncbcenter.org/makingsense.asp

New Author on biotechnology

2006-05-17T19:00:00.000-04:00

I just discovered tonight a new author in the area of science and faith, particularly biotechnology and in vitro fertilization: Robert A. Brungs, SJ.

The linchpin of his argument lies in the argument that the Church's understanding of sexual difference and activity is connected to worship:

Strictness in reproductive matters arises from the Church's understanding that sexual difference and activity is intimately linked to worship of God in history. Stress should be placed more on its worshipful character than on violation of the natural. Sexuality must be treated as a sacrament symbolic of Christ's love for His Church, as something more significant than, say, digestion.

"Da Vinci Code" as an Opportunity for the Church

2006-05-16T20:49:00.000-04:00

Interview With Philippe Oswald of Famille Chrétienne

ROME, MAY 16, 2006 (Zenit.org).- This week's release of the film "The Da Vinci Code" could turn out to be positive, says the head of a French weekly magazine.

"An opportunity has been given to us to show the true face of the Church," affirmed Philippe Oswald, editor in chief of Famille Chrétienne.

In this interview, Oswald shared his views about the Dan Brown novel and about the conclusions of a survey on the book's impact on the Church in France.

Q: On the occasion of the release of the film "The Da Vinci Code," you are publishing a survey carried out with IPSOS Institute. What are the important points of this survey?

Oswald: Out of every 10 people, without distinctions of categories, questioned in France by IPSOS on Christ and the Church, three thought that Jesus certainly or probably never existed; one judged that he was an impostor; only two affirmed his divine nature. Seven said he changed nothing in their lives; eight thought the Church was an invention of men.

It is futile to underline how this result confirms the growing distancing of the French from the faith and simple Christian culture.

In this sample, of 1,000 individuals surveyed, 21% had read and 47% had heard talk about the novel "The Da Vinci Code." Adding both, 68% of people surveyed, more than two-thirds, knew more or less what it is about, obviously a considerable ratio!

However, the survey has confirmed some disquieting differences among those who had read or had heard talk about the novel, and those who had no idea of its content.

For example, close to half -- 48% -- of readers of the book do not see in Jesus anything other than a man, as opposed to less than a third -- 29% -- of those who have not read it.

The readers of the book were induced to think that Jesus did not resurrect; among them, the ratio of those who deny the resurrection is 10.7% higher in relation to those who did not know the novel.

They also no longer think that the Church has a positive role -- 14% more than those who do not know the book.

More than one-fourth -- 26.4% -- of those who have not read the book think that Mary Magdalene was Jesus' wife or mistress; this figure is already impressive. But of those who have read the book, close to half -- 48.3% -- came to this conclusion! Does this not call the Church to an examination of conscience?

Q: How do you explain the passion for this film and the police intrigue invented by Dan Brown?

Oswald: Archbishop Angelo Amato, secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, explained the strange success of a novel obstinately anti-Christian such as "The Da Vinci Code" by noting "the extreme cultural poverty of a good part of Christians who often do not know how to give reasons for their hope."

"The Da Vinci Code" is certainly a "thriller" full of twists. But its success is still strange, if one considers the number of implausibilities it accumulates, not only in regard to the Church but to history in general, including art history -- what it says about Leonardo da Vinci, supposedly affiliated to a "Priory of Sion," founded in fact by an illuminati in 1956, should make it lose all credibility.

Having said this, the enthusiasm is also explained by the masses' fondness for conspiracy theories and the growing challenge to religions, which also affects Christianity, and which is particularly addictive among the old prejudices against the Catholic Church, allegedly "totalitarian" because it is hierarchical. What is more, the Church has the audacity to warn persistently about moral behavior.

The magisterium's positions on unconditional respect for life, from conception until death, and heterosexual and indissoluble marriage, attract a priori challenge or rejection.

However, the Church is "saved" for a majority of people surveyed, whether or not they read the book, because of its humanitarian commitment. At least, this is how we interpret the 63% of positive and very positive answers from the totality of people questioned, but with the 14-point gap as already indicated by the readers of "The Da Vinci Code," compared to those who have not heard talk about the book.

Q: As editor in chief of a Catholic family weekly, why do you feel it is important to report on controversial aspects of Dan Brown's history?

Oswald: Within a few days, on May 17, the manipulation of "The Da Vinci Code" novel will reach new levels with the première in Cannes of the film inspired by it.

Dan Brown's ruminations on the alleged "secrets" of the Church, Jesus' person, his relations with Mary Magdalene, the "invention" of Christianity by Emperor Constantine, or the dark intentions attributed to Opus Dei, will have a redoubled impact on spectators who, in the majority, have but a vague idea of the Catholic religion. It would be discouraging.

But we can also say that an opportunity has been given to us to show the true face of the Church. Not only does it have nothing to hide, but comes out into the open to proclaim salvation in Jesus Christ, true God and true man.

Moreover, our survey also reveals that if 30% of people who read the book think that it is essentially "rather true," 30% judge it "completely false." Without prejudging the effect the film will have, does this not "draw" open avenues for a strategy of communication, or better, of evangelization?

We have conceived our reply to "The Da Vinci Code" in the spirit of judo -- that sport of nonviolent combat, which consists in turning the adversary's force against him. It consists of a series of four numbers [of Famille Chrétienne] -- May 13, 20, 27 and June 4 -- with surveys, interviews, feature articles, etc.

They can be received without charge by requesting them at the site www.davincicode-laverite.com.

Benedict XVI and the respect due to the human embryo

2006-05-15T10:07:00.000-04:00

In his meeting with the Pontifical Council for the Family on May 13, Pope Benedict referred to the:

"extremely delicate subject" of "the respect due to the human embryo, which should always be born from an act of love and be treated as a person. Scientific and technological progress in the field of bioethics becomes a threat when man loses the sense of his own limitations and, in effect, aims to take the place of God the Creator." In this context, he recalled Pope Paul VI's Encyclical "Humanae vitae," affirming that "human procreation must always be the fruit of a conjugal act with its dual unitive and procreative significance."

"'Eros, reduced to pure sex," Pope Benedict continued, quoting his own Encyclical "Deus caritas est," becomes "a commodity, a mere thing to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. ... Here we are actually dealing with a debasement of the human body.' Yet thanks to God, many people, especially the young, are rediscovering the value of chastity, which appears ever more clearly as a sure guarantee of authentic love."

Benedict XVI on protecting the family

2006-05-15T10:04:00.000-04:00

On May 13 in a meeting with the Pontifical Council for the Family:

Pope Benedict recalled how "the family founded on marriage constitutes a 'heritage of humanity,' a fundamental social institution; it is the vital cell and the pillar of society, and concerns both believers and non-believers. This is something to which all States must give great consideration because, as John Paul II liked to say, 'the future of humanity passes by way of the family'."

After highlighting how separation and divorce are currently on the rise, "breaking family unity and creating no small number of problems for children, the innocent victims of such situations," the Holy Father called for the stability of families to be protected. This, he added, "often means going against the tide," and requires "patience, commitment, sacrifice and the incessant search for mutual understanding." Married couples can overcome their difficulties and remain faithful to their vocation by "relying upon the support of God through prayer and assiduous participation in the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist. The unity and strength of families helps society to absorb true human values and to open itself to the Gospel."

Should we boycott The Da Vinci Code movie?

2006-05-08T05:26:00.000-04:00

There is a flurry of activity in Christian circles regarding the upcoming release of The Da Vinci Code on May 19th. Some advise boycotting the movie. Others advise seeing it so that you can defend the faith against it. Others advise going on that day to see another movie. I read an excellent article on this question this morning. The question raised by the author was whether this is an opportunity to boycott the culture or to engage the culture. In the long run, we might be more successful in reaching out to evangelize the culture by engaging it.

Will The Da Vinci Code drive millions away from the historic Christian faith? Doubtful. The Barna Research Group reported that less than one-tenth of 1% of the people who watched The Passion of the Christ actually accepted Christ as a result of viewing the film. The gay population won’t spike because of Brokeback Mountain, and I doubt The Da Vinci Code will create a nation of agnostics. What it will do is give us one of the greatest platforms we’ve had in a long time for sharing the story of our faith.

Don’t waste this opportunity by holding a picket sign. Be ready to engage in a spirit of friendship and respect that will begin a conversation that could eventually change the culture.

Historical Errors in Da Vinci Code

2006-05-08T05:20:00.000-04:00

You can find a "cheat sheet" for some of the the historical errors in The Da Vinci Code at this address:

http://www.cbn.com/special/DaVinciCode/

Church in China--a delicate situation

2006-05-08T05:00:00.000-04:00

History is being made in China. The Catholics are divided between the clandestine Church (those who have remained faithful to the Holy See and are persecuted by the Chinese authorities) and the Official Church (those who against their conscience under the Patriotic Association have acquiesed to the demands of Chinese officials to separate themselves from the Holy See and submit to regulation by the Chinese government, including to bishops chosen and ordained without with the approval of the Holy See). Under John Paul II the response was to ask forgiveness. But Benedict XVI is concerned for the religious liberty, indeed the liberty, of all Chinese Catholics, and has acknowledged in public the massacre in this past century of bishops, priests and religious and t he suffering of all Catholics. Bishops ordained by the Chinese government are generally not accepted by the people.

Relations have improved lately under Benedict XVI. A set back was encounted, however, when the government ordained two new bishops in April and May without the approval of Rome. On May 4 the following statement was released from the Holy See:

“I can inform you of the position of the Holy See regarding the episcopal ordination of the priests Joseph Ma Yinglin e Joseph Liu Xinhong, which took place, respectively, last Sunday, April 30, in Kunming (province of Yunnan) and Wednesday, May 3, in Wuhu (province of Anhui).

“The Holy Father has learned of the news with profound displeasure, since an act so relevant for the life of the Church, such as an episcopal ordination, has been carried out in both cases without respecting the requirements of communion with the pope.

“It is a grave wound to the unity of the Church, for which severe canonical sanctions, as it is known, are foreseen (cfr. canon 1382 from the Code of Canon Law).

“According to the information received, bishops and priests have been subjected – on the part of external entities to the Church – to strong pressures and to threats, so that they take part in the episcopal ordinations which, being without pontifical mandate, are illegitimate and, besides, contrary to their conscience. Various prelates have given a refusal to similar pressures, while others were not able to do anything but submit with great interior suffering. Episodes of this kind produce lacerations not only in the Catholic community but also in the internal conscience itself.

“We are therefore facing a grave violation of religious liberty, notwithstanding that it is sought to present the two episcopal ordinations as a proper act to provide the pastors of vacant dioceses.

“The Holy See follows with attention the troubled path of the Catholic Church in China and although aware of some peculiarities of such a path, believed and hoped that similar, deplorable episodes would by now belong to the past.

“Holy See considers it now her precise duty to give voice to the suffering of the entire Catholic Church, in particular to that of the Catholic community in China and especially to those bishops and priests who have been obligated, against conscience, to carry out or to participate in the episcopal ordination, which neither the candidates or the consecrating bishops want to carry out without having received the pontifical mandate.

“If it is true the news according to which other episcopal ordinations are to take place in the same manner, the Holy See would like to repeat and stress the need for respect of the liberty of the Church and of the autonomy of her institutions from any external interference, and eagerly wishes that such unacceptable acts of violent and inadmissible constrictions are not repeated.

“The Holy See has, on various occasions, stressed her willingness for honest and constructive dialogue with the competent Chinese authorities to find solutions that would satisfy the legitimate needs of both parties.

“Initiatives such as the above mentioned do not favor such dialogue but instead create new obstacles against it.”

AsiaNews has been receiving continuous messages from Chinese priests and bishops, stating their approval for the Vatican stand. Anthony Liu Bainian, the PA deputy chairman, remains the only person defending the decision to go ahead with the ordinations of Kunming and Wuhu. There has been no official reaction from the government so far.

Tomorrow at 9am, in the Cathedral of Shenyang (Liaoning, north-east China), there will be another episcopal ordination: Fr Paul Pei Junmin will be consecrated as coadjutor bishop of Shenyang by the ordinary bishop, Mgr Jin Peixian. The very important fact is that this new ordination takes place with the approval of the Holy See. “Fr Pei Junmin received the approval of the Holy Father,” a Vatican source told AsiaNews. “And he is an excellent candidate from all points of view.”

Fr Pei Junmin, 37 years, entered the seminary when he was 16. He was ordained in 1992 and worked for a year in the parish of the cathedral. Then he was sent by his bishop to Philadelphia in the US to study Sacred Scripture. He was among the first group of Chinese priests sent abroad for studies. So far, he has taught Sacred Scripture and he was dean of studies and vice-rector at the major seminary in Shenyang that has 70 vocations. The diocese of Shenyang has 100,000 faithful.

AsiaNews sent Fr Pei a message of congratulations for his ministry: “Dear Fr Pei, we want to express our happiness and joy about your consecration as bishop of the Catholic Church, Our ties to the Rock of Peter are a guarantee of strength and edification. From Italy and the world, we are praying for you. We are honoured to have met you in Rome. We work ever more closely for the mission of the church in China and for unity with the universal Church.”

Catholics in China deserve our prayers. As late as April 28th, seven Catholics were arrested in Hebei.

Benedict's proposal for Islam's peaceful coexistence globally

2006-05-04T09:28:00.000-04:00

For an excellent assessment of Benedict XVI's understanding of Islam and the way he proposes that Islam work toward coexistence with other cultures and religions, read the excellent article on www.chiesa by the Egyptian Jesuit Samir Khalil Samir.

In summary this is how he assesses Benedict's thought:

Benedict XVI is probably one of the few figures to have profoundly understood the ambiguity in which contemporary Islam is being debated and its struggle to find a place in modern society. At the same time, he is proposing a way for Islam to work toward coexistence globally and with religions, based not on religious dialogue, but on dialogue between cultures and civilizations based on rationality and on a vision of man and human nature which comes before any ideology or religion. This choice to wager on cultural dialogue explains his decision to absorb the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue into the larger Pontifical Council for Culture.

While the pope is asking Islam for dialogue based on culture, human rights, the refusal of violence, he is asking the West, at the same time, to go back to a vision of human nature and rationality in which the religious dimension is not excluded. In this way – and perhaps only in this way – a clash of civilizations can be avoided, transforming it instead into a dialogue between civilizations.

The question: Is the embryo already a person?

2006-05-02T14:36:00.000-04:00

In the current bioethical debate, the question is often tossed about: When precisely does the human embryo become a person? In the popular debate, which can be followed on the radio and in newspapers, experts are referred to who pinpoint the moment when the embryo has a moral status according to extrinsic criteria--that is starting with factors external to the embryo itself.

An examples of extrinsic criteria that has been positied is the 1960s idea that the status of the human being and the personality of an individual emerge at the moment of nidation, because this implicates the beginning of a close relationship with the mother.

Another extrinsic criterion is that the embryo becomes a human individual when recognized as such by positive law. "In our pluralistic society, the only possible solution to the controversy over the status of the human embryo is, according to many people, that such status be defined by democratic consensus. However the truth, even that regarding the status of the embryo, cannot be established by statistical survey.

A third criterion makes the status of the embryo depend on the choice of others to give the embryo created by 'in vitro' fertilization the possibility of further development by transplanting it to the uterus. In this case the the personhood of the embryo depends on the choices of others, such as researchers and parents.

The problem with this approach, according to 12th General Assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life which held an international congress on "The Human Embryo," is that "this approach has not proved suitable for truly identifying the moral status of the embryo, since any possible judgment ends by being based on factors that are wholly conventional and arbitrary." Adriano Bompiani,gynecologist and director of the International Scientific Institute of Rome's Sacred Heart Catholic University, stated:

"In order to attribute a 'juridical status' to the embryo," said Adriano Bompiani, "it is necessary to 'understand' its nature." And such understanding, he added, must be based on ontological study.

"Today, it is not enough to examine the embryo under the microscope," he went on. Rather, it is necessary "to use all available means" from the fields of genetics, morphology, biochemistry and molecular biology.

In "recognizing" the embryo, Bompiani continued, "we come up against the concepts of human life, human being, human individual, and person. Reflection on these concepts is, obviously, the aim of ontological study. However, in my opinion, this should be undertaken only after having described and understood what happens in the few hours following the encounter between a living human ovum and a spermatozoon." From a rational standpoint, he concluded, the origin of a new human being lies "in the meeting between a spermatozoon and an ovum of the same species."

In the final communique of the International Congress, issued in March, the researchers and experts at the Congress stated:

It can be concluded from this data that the human embryo in the phase of pre-implantation is already: a) a being of the human species; b) an individual being; c) a being that possesses in itself the finality to develop as a human person together with the intrinsic capacity to achieve such development.

From all this may one conclude that the human embryo in the pre-implantation stage is really already a "person"? It is obvious that since this is a philosophical interpretation, the answer to this question cannot be of a "definite kind," but must remain open, in any case, to further considerations.

Yet, on the precise basis of the available biological data, we maintain that there is no significant reason to deny that the embryo is already a person in this phase.

Of course, this presupposes an interpretation of the concept of the person of a substantial type, referring, that is, to human nature itself as such, rich in potential that will be expressed during the embryo's development and also after birth. To support this position, it should be noted that the theory of immediate animation, applied to every human being who comes into existence, is shown to be fully consistent with his biological reality (in addition to being in "substantial" continuity with the thought of Tradition).

The Psalm states: "For you did form my inward parts, you did knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for you are fearful and wonderful. Wonderful are your works! You know me right well" (Psalm 139[138]:13-14), referring to God's direct intervention in the creation of every new human being's soul.

From the moral viewpoint, moreover, over and above any consideration of the human embryo's personality, the mere fact of being in the presence of a human being (and even the doubt of this would suffice) would demand full respect for the embryo's integrity and dignity: Any conduct that might in some way constitute a threat or an offense to its fundamental rights, and first and foremost the right to life, must be considered as seriously immoral.

Benedict XVI stated in his address at the beginning of the Congress:

“In man, in all men and women, whatever their stage or condition of life, there shines a reflection of God’s own reality,” the Holy Father emphasized. “For this reason, the Magisterium of the Church has constantly proclaimed the sacred and inviolable nature of each human life, from conception to natural end. This moral judgement also holds at the beginning of an embryo’s life, even before it is implanted in the mother’s womb.”

New Vatican Website

2006-05-01T19:51:00.000-04:00

The Vatican is planning to launch a new Web site this autumn, aimed at bringing together the faithful so they can interact, says Business Week magazine.

The publication in its May 8 issue reported that the Web site will include personal news updates, e-learning programs, and areas set aside for families, young people and parishes.

It quoted Sister Judith Zoebelein, the editorial director of the Internet office of the Holy See, saying: "People will be able to find each other and work together online, and then go back and use what they have learned or done in their own communities."

Vatican and the debate over condom use

2006-05-01T05:31:00.000-04:00

There has been a report that the Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care is preparing a document that would provisionally accept the use of condoms in the narrow context of a married couple, where one partner is infected with HIV/AIDS and the other is not, as a means to prevent transmission of the disease.

The tentative conclusion needs to be reviewed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and ultimately Pope Benedict XVI. It was the pope who had asked the Congregation to study the subject.

There has been a public discussion of the issue lately among senior church officials: some of whom support the use of condoms in the context of AIDS in one fashion or another, and some of whom do not.

Before this discussion hits the US news it is important to be aware of two things. According to John Allen who spoke with members of the Council for Health Pastoral Care:

First, a finding in favor of condoms in the context of marriage to fight HIV/AIDS would not mark a "change in policy," since the church has never spoken officially on this specific question.

Such a conclusion would not, according to these experts, represent a break with the church's traditional ban on birth control. The aim would be the prevention of disease, not contraception. No matter what happens, according to these Vatican sources, the church is not on the brink of approving condoms or any other "artificial" means for the purpose of limiting births.

Second, if there is eventually a document, how important it might be would depend on what line of reasoning it employs. Specifically, experts would be looking to see if it treats condom use in the context of AIDS simply as a "lesser evil," or takes a more positive view.

In essence, the question boils down to this: Can a condom ever be used without sin?

The "lesser evil" argument goes back to St. Augustine. In summary form, it holds that one may counsel a lesser evil if it is the only way to stop someone from doing a greater harm. A classic example employed in moral theology courses is the mob boss who comes to confession and says he's planning to kill an enemy. The confessor must try to dissuade him, but if it can't be done, he can suggest that the boss beat up his enemy instead.

The beating is obviously not morally acceptable, but it's preferable to murder. In this case, the confessor has not "approved" the action, but rather saw it in a pastoral setting as the best that could be achieved. Neither, obviously, would the church be "recommending" beatings as a matter of policy.

Applied to AIDS and condoms, many theologians regard the "lesser evil" argument as fairly clear. If someone is determined to have intercourse where there is serious risk of infection, and can't be talked out of it, this view holds, it's better to use a condom. Often bishops and theologians phrase this argument in terms of applying both the sixth commandment, "thou shalt not commit adultery," and the fifth, "thou shalt not kill."

For those who take this view, the most urgent question is usually not about the logic of the conclusion, but the pastoral wisdom of announcing it publicly, given the risk that people may misunderstand it as a kind of "approval" of condoms.

There is vigorous theological debate, however, on the far more tricky question of whether such use is not merely a "lesser evil," but no sin at all. There are strong views on both sides.

Some Catholic moralists argue that because sexuality must be open to life, intercourse using condoms is, by the physical character of the act, immoral. They point to Paul VI's insistence in Humanae Vitae that sexual activity must be "apt in itself" for the generation of children.

Respected ethicist Luke Gormally, writing in the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly in January 2005, put the argument in graphic form.

"A condom is as inappropriate a receptacle for the deposition of semen as the anus," Gormally wrote. "Choosing to ejaculate into either amounts to the choice of a type of act which … plainly detaches sex from its ordering to the good of children. And that, as St. Thomas teaches, is the essence of 'unnatural vice.'"

On this line of reasoning, sexual intercourse with a condom must always be immoral, even for the noble aim of preventing infection with a deadly disease.

Others, however, argue that wearing a condom during intercourse cannot have moral value in itself. It's the intent, they say, that matters.

"It's not sex with a condom that's intrinsically evil, but contraception," Redemptorist Fr. Brian Johnstone, a leading moral theologian at Rome's Alphonsian Academy, said in an April 25 interview with NCR.

He argued that use of a condom to prevent AIDS infection within a marriage can be seen as an instance of the "principle of double effect," in the sense that the aim of the action is to block disease, with preventing pregnancy merely an undesired but foreseen consequence.

"From my reading of the Catholic moral tradition, I think it can be justified," he said.

* * *

As Johnstone explained it, the principle of double effect was initially formulated in the 17th century and nuanced further in the 19th and 20th centuries. Generally speaking, it holds that if an act can be foreseen to have both good and evil effects, one can morally commit the act if four circumstances obtain:

* The act is not intrinsically evil
* One intends the good effect, not the bad
* The good effect does not occur by means of the evil effect, since one may not do evil to obtain good
* There's "proportionate reason," meaning, roughly, that the good outweighs the evil

Johnstone believes the case of married couples where one partner has AIDS is a classic example. The couple does not intend to prevent pregnancy, he said, merely to block the disease, and the preservation of life is an obvious good.

Other theologians, however, argue that using condoms violates the first condition, i.e., that the act must not be intrinsically immoral.

"Condomistic intercourse cannot be conjugal intercourse," said Fr. Robert Gahl of Rome's Opus Dei-sponsored Santa Croce University. "Since that's the only licit kind, condomistic intercourse cannot be an affirmation of the love between a man and a woman."

Gahl said that if intercourse between husband and wife poses a risk, then "they ought to express their affection in another way."

Johnstone noted there is at least one precedent for the Vatican considering the intent behind the use of artificial birth control, rather than focusing exclusively on the physical character of the act.

In the early 1960s, Johnstone said, the Holy Office (today the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) gave permission for religious women in the Belgian Congo to use contraceptives as a defense against rape.

"It was seen as a protection against pregnancy arising from unwanted, unfree sexual intercourse," Johnstone said.

Unexplained absence

2006-05-01T05:30:00.000-04:00

No, I have not dropped off the face of the earth. I have just been involved in the inventory pruning of our St. Paul Book and Media Centers this past week. I will get return now to my daily blogging.

Clarification on Condom--Aids Study by the Vatican

2006-04-25T20:29:00.000-04:00

VATICAN CITY, APRIL 25, 2006 (Zenit.org).- The Holy See is preparing a "study" for internal dialogue, not a "document," on condoms and AIDS, says the president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers. Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, clarifying information published recently in the media, told ZENIT that this "profound study," requested by Benedict XVI, takes into account "both the scientific and technical aspects linked to the condom, as well as the moral implications in all their amplitude."

The Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers does not have the "competency to present a document to the Church. It is the Holy Father who has the competency or whoever he entrusts" with the task, the cardinal explained.

"We are in the first stage," the 73-year-old cardinal said. "This study is promoting a dialogue only at the level of the Holy See and it is not finished yet. Once it's finished, will there be a document? There might or might not be. To issue a document is not proper to this dicastery. That it is or is not issued by another dicastery depends on the Holy Father."

The question the study addresses in particular is that of couples united in sacramental marriage, in which one of the spouses suffers from AIDS. The discussion as to whether in such cases it would be licit to use a condom to save a life arose with the idea of the establishment of the Good Samaritan Foundation in September 2004.

The Vatican-headquartered group aims to financially support the neediest sick, in particular those suffering from AIDS. "In that process the discussion arose over the action of condoms in cases of married couples with AIDS," Cardinal Lozano Barragán said. "This discussion took place in John Paul II's last months of life, but John Paul II was very, very conscious of these problems. I know it through personal experience, because I had access to him in this respect."

"When the Holy Father Benedict XVI did me the favor of granting me an audience he told me that it would be appropriate to talk about this subject" among competent persons of the Holy See, the cardinal said.

"It is a question of examining scientifically and morally how things are." The study responds first to the question: What guarantee exists to prevent infection with AIDS through a condom? A second question is: Is it morally licit to use a "technical" condom?

To respond to these two questions, the cardinal explained, "there are two important principles, which are the Sixth Commandment that says, 'You will not commit impure acts,' and the Fifth, which must always be taken into account: 'You shall not kill.'" General principles "Both commandments must be taken into account," he said.

"But these are very general principles. The study is being done reflecting on the different opinions of experts on the application of both principles to the concrete case of the condom in these specific circumstances.

"The theologians give their opinions. We, as a council, cannot say, 'I adopt this opinion.' We contribute the existing opinions to the dialogue that, on the other hand, are known."

Cardinal Lozano Barragán added: "The Holy Father will see the results of this dialogue and with the help he has from the Holy Spirit must tell us, if he wishes, where we must go. He might also think that it isn't the appropriate moment to pronounce himself.

CARA study on Catholics' trust in their bishops

2006-04-23T19:37:00.000-04:00

CARA--the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate-- released a 37 page study of 10 national surveys of Catholic attitudes and practices between January 2001 and October 2005. Their findings?"

Those Catholics who say they are aware of the church's policies and actions in response to clergy sexual abuse are more likely to give bishops high marks in leadership.
The study found little to no change from 2001 to 2005 in the percentage of Catholics who give to their parish, in their church attendance patterns or in the proportion of U.S. adults who identify themselves as Catholic.
Despite the intensity of coverage of sexual abuse allegations in the media, only a minority of Catholics in CARA's polls say they have heard of a priest in their local diocese being accused of sexual abuse.
CARA found the decline in numbers who say they contribute to the diocese -- from 38 percent in the earliest survey to 29 percent in the latest -- "statistically significant."
General Catholic satisfaction with church leadership dipped significantly during the sex abuse crisis but gradually climbed back up in 2004-05 to about the same level as before the crisis.

Revenge is not justice

2006-04-23T19:11:00.000-04:00

From Zenit (ZE060423): A legislative movement to allow the filing of decades-old sexual-abuse claims could devastate the resources of the Catholic Church in the United States, warns an archbishop.

Archbishop Charles Chaput, writing in the May edition of First Things magazine, points to the efforts being made in more than a dozen state legislatures to remove statutes of limitation on old claims of clerical sex abuse.

The Denver prelate warns that amending the civil statutes could "decimate the remaining resources of the Catholic faithful in the United States and steal the religious future from a generation of Catholic young people."

Archbishop Chaput notes that statutes of limitation exist for good reason: to protect justice through the timely and fair resolution of claims.

However, as sex abuse claims have steadily declined since the early 1990s, plaintiffs' lawyers are trying to open up new avenues for suing the Church, a lucrative target.

Allying themselves with victims' groups, these attorneys are working with legislators to create loopholes in the statutes and apply them retroactively to sex abuse claims, some more than 70 years old.

Media pressure

According to Archbishop Chaput, savvy media campaigns sensitize the public in a target area, which puts pressure on lawmakers "to provide 'justice' for those victims whose claims have expired due to statutes of limitation."

The 61-year-old prelate argues that it is questionable whether singling out the Church and other private institutions for "retroactive liability" really serves justice, especially since public schools that record high instances of abuse are largely immune from lawsuits.

"Catholics," notes Archbishop Chaput, "can live with hard laws if they serve the common good." But those laws, he says, must apply equally to "all offending persons and institutions."

"Justice is a right balance of competing legitimate rights and obligations; it is not a form of auctioneering."

He adds: "Communities of faith have an obligation to generously help people who have been hurt by their members, past or present. But they also have a right to maintain their mission of serving others and to be protected from predatory judgments designed to gut their resources and identity.

"Revenge is not justice, no matter how piously one argues it."

New Book

2006-04-23T19:04:00.000-04:00

Last night I was reading the book What is the Point of Being a Christian. What a wonderful read. Timothy Radcliff offers a vision of the world that is vast, deep, and free, one which points the way forward even amidst the confusing and complexity of the modern world. He writes on page 141:

When Thomas Merton left his monastery after sokme years, to visit the local town for the first time, he was overwhelmed with a sense of the beauty and goodness of the people whom he had met: "It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes terrible mistakes: yet, with all that, God Himself glorified in becoming a member of the human race. A member of the human race! ...There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.... There are no strangers.... If only we could see each other as we areally are all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed.... I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other...the gate of heaven is everywhere."

What a wonderful tonic after reading the daily newspaper!

Signs of Hope

2006-04-20T18:23:00.000-04:00

We have all been reeling from the continual news for the past four years regarding sexual abuse of children by clergy in the Catholic Church. Yesterday Sr. Joan Paula went to the day-long meeting of financial transparency for the Archdiocese of Boston. I wanted to share with you some of the signs of hope from the day.

Cardinal Sean stated that his elevation to Cardinal signifies the importance of the diocese of Boston. He acknowledged we have been through a lot in these past four years, and that we are still suffering from sexual abuse and the closure of parishes. We also face the deterioration of financial funds and the alienation of people from the Church. Though the financial picture is of great concern, the needs of the victims of sexual abuse are even greater and we put these people first and foremost. He stated, "Not a day goes by that we don't ask for pardon and forgiveness."

John Conner who is the head of the committee that acts as the financial council said these words of hope: "It is a new day." He believes this is the beginning of a new day for the archdiocese. He encouraged the priests and all those present not to concentrate on the losses, but on what you still have: a holy mission to nurture God's Church. Some may be disillusioned, he stated, but we are at the beginning of a new day. We need to have hope.

Another sign of hope: 75 young men attended the retreat for discernment at the seminary for the priesthood.

In the darkest hours, God is with us, guiding us through painful purifications, through our own Calvary into resurrection. One lesson learned? We need to be on our knees every day of our lives asking for grace and strength to allow God to work in us and through us.

An offensive Mohammed cartoon published in Catholic magazine

2006-04-16T18:58:00.000-04:00

Zenit reported Sunday that a cartoon showing the prophet Mohammed in hell was published by the magazine Studii Cattolici, edited by Cesare Cavalleri, a member of Opus Dei.

The cartoon, based on a passage of "The Divine Comedy," shows Italian poets Dante Alighieri and Virgil on the edge of a circle of flames looking down on Mohammed, whose body is cut in half. Dante comments that the prophet is cut in half because of the division he brought to society.

A statement released by Marc Carroggio, director of the Opus Dei press office in Rome, stated: "We consider it deplorable that this cartoon should appear in a magazine that has the name Catholic in its title. Its publication shows a lack of sensitivity and Christian charity."

"Although the Opus Dei has no responsibility for this magazine," the statement continued, "and each person is responsible for his or her own actions, we wish to ask forgiveness for the offense given."

The statement adds that "religions and their symbols should be respected and religious sensibilities should not be subjected to ridicule. The only road to peace and brotherhood is respect for others' convictions and practices. Such respect cannot remain at the level of theory, but should be expressed in concrete gestures and actions."

The Way of the Cross at the Colisseum

2006-04-14T09:45:00.000-04:00

I printed these out and am using them for prayer today. This Way of the Cross which was led by the Holy Father on Good Friday is the best I've seen for years. I'll share with you the introduction:

A Few Words Along the Way

In making the “Way of the Cross”, we are struck by the certainty of two things: the destructive power of sin and the healing power of God’s Love.

The destructive power of sin: the Bible never tires of repeating that evil is evil because it hurts us: sin is self-punishment; it carries its own retribution. A few texts of Jeremiah clearly make this point: “They went after worthlessness, and became worthless themselves” (2:5); “your wickedness will punish you, and your apostasies will convict you; know and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the Lord your God; the fear of me is not in you” (2:19); “your crimes have made all this go wrong, your sins have deprived you of all these favours” (5:25).

Isaiah is equally insistent: “Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel: because you reject this word, and trust in oppression and deceit, and rely on them; therefore this iniquity shall become for you like a break in a high wall, bulging out, and about to collapse; its crash comes suddenly, in an instant; its breaking is like that of a potter’s vessel that is smashed so ruthlessly that among its fragments not a sherd is found for taking fire from the hearth, or dipping up water out of the cistern” (30:12-14). And, voicing the deepest convictions of God’s People, the Prophet cries out: “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away” (64:6).
The Prophets likewise denounce the hardness of heart that leads to appalling blindness and prevents us from perceiving the gravity of sin. Let us listen again to Jeremiah: “For from the least to the greatest of them, every one is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, every one deals falsely. They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying ‘Peace, peace’, when there is no peace. They acted shamelessly, they committed abomination, yet they were not ashamed, they did not know how to blush” (6:13-15).

Jesus entered into this history ravaged by sin, and took upon himself the burden and brutality of our sins. When we look upon Jesus, we see clearly the destructive power of sin and the sickness of our human family. Our own sickness! Yours and mine!

Yet – and this is the second certainty – Jesus countered our pride with humility; he countered our violence with gentleness; he countered our hatred with the Love that forgives. The Cross is the event which enables God’s Love to enter into our history, to draw close to each of us, to become a source of healing and salvation.

Let us never forget: from the beginning of his ministry Jesus had spoken of “his hour” (Jn 2:4), of the hour “for which he had come” (Jn 12:27). It was an hour which he joyfully welcomed, when, at the beginning of his Passion, he cried out: “The hour has come!” (Jn 17:1).

The Church treasures this memory, and in the Creed, after professing that the Son of God “became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man”, she goes on to say: “For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried”.

For our sake he was crucified! Jesus, at his death, embraced the tragic experience of death as it had been fashioned by our sins; yet, in his death, Jesus filled death itself with Love, he filled it with the presence of God. By Christ’s death, death itself was vanquished, for he filled death with the one power capable of cancelling the sin that had spawned it: Jesus filled death with Love!

Through faith and Baptism, we have access to the death of Christ, to the mystery of the Love by which Christ himself tasted and conquered death ... and this in turn becomes the first step of our journey back to God, a journey which will end at the moment of our own death, a death experienced in Christ and with Christ: in Love!

As you begin this “Way of the Cross”, let Mary take you by the hand. Ask her for just a bit of her humility and docility, so that the Love of Christ Crucified will be able to enter your heart and recreate it after God’s own Heart.

God bless you on your way!

+ ANGELO COMASTRI

I still forgive him

2006-04-14T09:36:00.000-04:00

On the way to chapel this morning for Good Friday morning prayer, my attention was caught by the Boston Globe open on the table. In bold letters across the top were the words, "I still forgive him." I stopped to read the article of a five year old girl in court forgiving the man who had short her two years before, paralyzing her for life:

The little girl said the word porch and then began sobbing loudly. After her mother comforted her, 5-year-old Kai Leigh Harriott looked up from her blue wheelchair in the hushed courtroom yesterday and faced the man who fired the stray gunshot that paralyzed her nearly three years ago.

''What you done to me was wrong," the dimpled girl with purple and yellow plastic ties in her braids said softly. ''But I still forgive him."

On a summer night in 2003, Anthony Warren of Hyde Park fired three gunshots into the air outside a three-decker in Dorchester to scare two women who lived on the first floor after an argument. One bullet severed the spine of Kai, then 3, who was sitting outside on her family's third-story porch with a sister, singing ''Down by the Bay" from the ''Barney" television show.

Yesterday, in emotionally wrenching victim-impact statements that left many spectators in tears, Kai and four members of her family told a Suffolk Superior Court judge that the shooting had changed their lives forever, but had also shown them the value of forgiveness.

''We're not victims here; we're victors," said Kai's mother, Tonya David, addressing the court.

Forgiveness, such a lonely forgotten concept in these days of suing and legal action. Without it, we live in fear of mistakes, of accidents, of ourselves. How much forgiveness would change our lives and our world. Imagine what would happen if Christians were known today for their forgiveness. The old song says it, "They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love...." It is the miraculous and mysterious courage of unexpected people that teaches me how to live my own discipleship to Jesus. Thank you Kai Leigh and everyone else whose stories are burned in my memory as examples of love and discipleship.

Survivor Show turns Catholic

2006-04-12T05:54:00.000-04:00

It's finally happened: Reality TV has found religion. In the A&E cable channel's new five-part "God or the Girl," four young men with a calling to the priesthood must decide whether to enter the seminary or serve God as laypeople.

The series will air, appropriately enough, during Easter week, with the first two episodes premiering on Easter, April 16, 9-11 p.m. EDT. (The third and fourth hours debut Monday, April 17, 9-11 p.m. EDT, with the finale Sunday, April 23, 10-11 p.m. EDT.)

Apart from the slightly sensational title -- actually a misnomer as none of these devout men would ever consider abandoning God -- the series created by Darryl Silver, Stephen David and David Eilenberg and executive-produced by Silver and Mark Wolper offers a surprisingly reverential treatment of a profound life passage.

In its essentials, the series is as serious-minded as a public television documentary on the subject, albeit fitted out with all the trappings of "Survivor."

read more

Neither liberal nor conservative

2006-04-12T05:46:00.000-04:00

A professor and mentor at the theological center from which I received my degree said to me once, "You don't have to be liberal or conservative." I was tired playing the games of hide and seek, trying to duck the labels and see through the mirage of name-calling. His words were welcome refreshment. Archbishop Sambi, the new apostolic nuncio to the US in an interview this week seems to think likewise. He said: “I don’t like to speak inside the Catholic Church about liberal or conservative, but about people faithful to Jesus Christ and to his church. The church has been established by our Lord to continue the mystery of the salvation of human beings. It is not your invention, it is not my invention.… The question of the church is not only a question of culture, it is a question of the gospel.”

In the same interview he stated: “There are problems in the church of the United States, I also know also there is a lot of vitality – I would like that this be more known.”

As a widely travelled diplomat, Sambi has seen the problems of the Church all over the world, so as we welcome the hundreds of thousands of people who are joining the Church for the first time at Easter here in the US, we can reflect that maybe things aren't that bad after all.

Day of Action for Immigrant Justice

2006-04-12T05:36:00.000-04:00

Hundreds of thousands of people nationwide, often joined by their Catholic bishops, took to the streets to join rallies, marches and prayer services yesterday to call attention to the contributions of immigrants and to ask for changes in immigration law and policies just days after senators left Washington for a two-week recess without voting on a comprehensive immigration bill worked out in a bipartisan compromise.

Organizers support legislation that would make it possible for the estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants to legalize their status.

In St. Louis, Archbishop Raymond L. Burke said, "It is not right to make immigrants the scapegoats of social and political problems of our nation. It is profoundly unjust to place the blame for the acts of terrorism perpetrated by a few at the door of all immigrants."

On a stage where he was joined by Protestant, Jewish and Muslim leaders, he said: "Our presence here today expresses the teaching common to our different religious traditions which instructs us to receive immigrants as true brothers and sisters."

The Gospel of Jesus Revisited

2006-04-12T05:30:00.000-04:00

James Martin, SJ, in the New York Times, points out several reasons why the storyline of the gnostic gospel The Gospel of Judas doesn't make sense:

It seems unlikely that Jesus would have had to entice Judas to betray him. There were ample opportunities when Jesus himself could have sufficiently enraged both the Jewish and Roman authorities, who were often members of the crowds that witnessed his miracles or heard his subversive teachings. Jesus could easily have gotten arrested on his own.

And it seems unlikely that Judas would have done it for money. Why would Judas have been traipsing around the desert for three years if he was looking to get rich?

But the biggest roadblock to all these interpretations is Judas's suicide, reported by Matthew in his gospel -- written earlier than the Gospel of Judas, and therefore probably more accurate. (In Acts, Judas's death is both more unclear and more gruesome.) If he was in cahoots with Jesus, and hoping for the death of Jesus, as the Gospel of Judas contends, why would he have killed himself?

Perhaps the most plausible explanation was articulated several decades ago, by the Scripture scholar William Barclay, author of the widely used ''Daily Study Bible." Barclay contended that the most compelling reason for the betrayal was that Judas, frustrated with Jesus' slowness in overthrowing the Roman overlords, hoped somehow to force his master's hand. Perhaps he hoped that after being arrested by the Romans, Jesus would have to act, ushering in a sort of miraculous revolution. What happens instead horrifies Judas: His friend is tortured and executed. Overcome with remorse, Judas kills himself. As Barclay concluded, ''This is in fact the view that best suits all the facts."

In the end, Judas wanted a God of his own making, an avenging God who would serve justice by tossing out the hated occupiers and restoring the fortunes of the people of Israel. What Judas got was very different: a suffering God who accepted a shameful death on a cross. Tragically, Judas didn't stick around to see what happened on Easter morning.

The Gospel of Judas will continue to be fodder for television shows, magazine covers, and lunchtime conversations. But the answer to the question raised every Good Friday remains the same. Why did Judas do it? Because Judas, like many of us, wanted to make God in his own image -- rather than the other way around.

The Rev. James Martin is author of ''My Life With the Saints."

Stats on sexual abuse by teachers in public schools raises questions

2006-04-10T05:38:00.000-04:00

Last night I read an enlightening article in The National Catholic Register, with statistics that show that the national press has seriously underreported public educator sexual miscondiuct. While it regularly and graphically reports of incidents of sexual abuse involving Catholic clergy from 20, 30, 40 years ago, they rarely, if ever, look for the same patterns in public institutions. While it has been good that so much has been done to protect children in Catholic schools and churches, as a result of news coverage of the abuse, it is curious why journalists are not as eager to protect children in public schools:

Last year, Archdiocese of Denver staffers invited a leading Colorado newspaper – the Denver Post – to research national patterns of sexual misconduct among public educators and other groups, and then compare them with similar patterns in the Catholic clergy. The Post ignored the story for six months. The archdiocese finally released the information itself as part of current Colorado General Assembly hearings.

California is the poster child for this biased kind of coverage of the sex abuse facts. A quick overview of press reports on child sexual abuse in major California newspapers, sorted by offending institution, is revealing.

For the first six months of 2002, California newspapers carried 1,783 reports of sexual abuse involving Catholic entities, but only four regarding public schools – even though Hofstra University’s Charol Shakeshaft, the leading national expert on educator sexual misconduct, testified that there are more victims of educator misconduct in California public schools than the entire enrollment of students in California Catholic schools.

The situation in Colorado is just as lopsided.

Earlier this year, the Archdiocese of Denver secured a selection of Colorado teacher files from the statewide teacher-licensing authority under Colorado’s Open Records Act. Note that, in the view of Shakeshaft, this sampling of Colorado data is almost certainly much lower than the real statistics.

When specific public school districts and county health departments were asked for sexual misconduct data, every one of them – without exception – refused to provide any information. One county’s Department of Human Services offered to provide the relevant information if the Colorado Catholic Conference first paid a $250,000 research fee.

In reporting on the files received by the Archdiocese of Denver, I’ve edited out the offending teachers’ names and used numbers instead. I’ve also deleted the victims’ names.

Nonetheless, even these partial records show that 85 Colorado teachers lost their teaching licenses for sexual misconduct over the eight-year period from 1997 through 2005. Nearly all of them taught in public schools. If this pattern persisted over the same 50-year period of the current lawsuits facing Colorado dioceses, more than 350 offending Colorado teachers would be a reasonable projection.

Many of the license revocations only occurred after a criminal conviction.

Equally troubling, many of the stipulated settlements in these cases only require the former teacher to promise never again to seek employment in a public school, thereby making it permissible for the perpetrator to seek future work with private or religious schools or in other settings with children without violating the settlement. These files dispel any notion that sexual misconduct and abuse with minors are uniquely – or even predominantly – a “Catholic Church” problem.

Teacher No. 1 was hired by a Colorado public school district in August 2001 – four years after a court order restrained this person from practicing psychotherapy because he had repeatedly engaged in sexual relations with his former client. Teacher No. 1 was eventually charged in July 2002 with seven counts of sexual assault on a child, 10 counts of sexual assault by a person in a position of trust, and five counts of aggravated incest. Even so, he kept his teacher’s license for 14 more months.

Teacher No. 6 sexually abused a 9-year-old girl and pleaded nolo contendere to kidnapping in 1979. Despite this, his state teacher’s certificate was granted in 1980, and then renewed in 1985, 1989, 1990 and 1995. He did not lose his license until October 1997.

Teacher No. 11 was convicted of felony sexual conduct in 1991 and sentenced to eight months in jail and three months on probation before he was hired by a Colorado public school district.

Teacher No. 24 had sexual relations three times with an 18-year-old male student and provided alcohol to students watching athletic games at the teacher’s home. Instead of firing this teacher and thereby compromising her future ability to acquire replacement employment, a Colorado charter school allowed the teacher to resign effective March 23, 2001, and then placed her on paid administrative leave through May 31, 2001.

Teacher No. 26 was arrested stalking a jogger but thereafter was hired by a Colorado public school district. Later he pleaded guilty to two counts of enticement of a child – including exposing himself to an 11-year-old after pretending he was going to take her to church. And it still took 18 months before the state revoked his license.

Teacher No. 27 – after sexually assaulting a child and pleading guilty to third-degree assault – had his teacher’s license restricted for merely four years.

Similar stories inform many of the remaining 79 summaries.

What’s the moral of this tale?

Civil statutes of limitations exist for very good reasons: Memories fade; witnesses and perpetrators die; evidence disappears or grows stale. Retroactive liability – which amounts to changing the rules and penalties after the fact – is an especially punitive idea.

The problem of public school educator sexual misconduct and abuse with minors is at least as prevalent as – and arguably much worse than – sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. But public institutions in most states – including public schools – enjoy special legal protections like strict damage caps and government immunity. So guess at whom these so-called “sex-abuse statute of limitations reforms” are really aimed?

Catholic families around the country should check their wallets. Plaintiffs’ attorneys already have them targeted.

Save the Sudan

2006-04-10T05:33:00.000-04:00

The hopeful signs that the genocide in Sudan is becoming the center of people's concern and what you can do about it.

The whole article is worth reading but if you don't have time, here is the nuts and bolts of what you can do. It only takes a minute to help save the millions of starving and dieing Sudanese:

Third, pending before Congress this month is an amendment to the supplemental appropriations bill that would add $175 million for peacekeeping efforts in Darfur. This would be used to bolster the thin line of African Union troops trying to restore order and protect humanitarian efforts in that devastated region.

Fourth, and related to the third point, the Save Darfur Coalition is promoting this week (April 2-9) as a week of prayer and action. Further information can be found at SaveDarfur.org. The Coalition seeks to bring a million voices to bear on this issue, through an on-line postcard to President Bush (takes only a few seconds to include your voice). In addition, take a moment this week (or next) and send a message to your representative in Congress, urging additional funding for a multinational force to end the genocide in the Sudan. And as you go to Palm Sunday Mass, dedicate it through your prayers to the people of Darfur.

More information on The Gospel of Judas

2006-04-10T05:20:00.000-04:00

A Professor from the Moscow Theological Academy explains why The Gospel of Judas cannot change the vision of Christ's life that we already have from the four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John:

Moscow, April 7, Interfax - Deacon Andrey Kurayev, professor at Moscow Theological Academy, is convinced that the so-called Gospel of Judas published in the USA can add nothing to the canonical vision of the life of either the Saviour or the apostolic community.

'This document cannot be traced back to Judas Iscariot for the simple reason that Judas hung himself on the day Christ was crucified and no Gospel of Judas can exist. Most probably, this work was created by one of the 3th-4th century Gnostic sects', Father Andrey said in an interview to Interfax.

He said all kinds of pseudo-Christian occult sects thrived in that period, especially in Egypt. Some of them deliberately appropriated the names of negative biblical characters. For instance, Ophite (Greek for serpent) sect worshipped the serpent who tempted Adam and Eve in Eden, while the Cainite sect named itself after Cain, the first murderer in the Old Testament.

'I believe the so-called Gospel of Judas can certainly clarify our ideas of the Gnostic beliefs of that time, but this manuscript will hardly change in any way our vision of the life of either Christ or the apostolic community of the 1st century', Father Andrew stated.

The Gospel of Judas

2006-04-07T18:50:00.000-04:00

The National Geographic Society headquartered in Washington D.C. announced that they have pieced together and translated the Gospel of Judas which has been lost for almost 1,700 years. Also called the codex, the National Geographic Channel will premiere a television two hour event on April 9th called "The Gospel of Judas.”

What does the Gospel of Judas say? The Gospel of Judas which was written on 26 pages with 13 sheets of papyrus with writing on both front and back, says that Jesus requested Judas to act as a traitor.

The Gospel of Jesus is a Gnostic Gospel. (The DaVinci Code is based on The Gospel of Mary which is also a Gnostic Gospel. The underlying theme of the novel is that the Bible cannot be trusted to give us the real truth about Jesus which the Church has been hiding all along. It successfully hid the truth by banning the gnostic gospels from inclusion in the canon of Scripture.) Gnostic Christians believed that salvation is attained through mystical knowledge imparted by Jesus, rather than through his death and resurrection.

They believe that humans are fundamentally spiritual beings imprisoned in physical bodies, and they seek to explain why there was so much suffering in the world.

The key passage of the Gospel of Judas appears to be Jesus' statement to Judas, after reviewing the mistakes of the other apostles, that ''you will exceed all of them, for you will sacrifice the man that clothes me." In other words, Jesus' spirit will be released from an evil body. Gnostics see the body as evil.

Gnostic groups and texts proliferated in the first centuries after Christ's death, but went into decline after the year 180, when they were pronounced heretical by Irenaeus of Lyon, an influential church father.

So this discovery will be important to understand the different strands of Christianity in the ancient Church, but what it has to say about Jesus and Judas is certainly not an eyewitness account since it was written at least 150 years after Jesus died. The four Gospel included in Scripture (a choice that was made during a period of hundreds of years) are chosen because they are ancient, written by the apostles or someone who knew the apostles, and their teaching is orthodox. It is to the New Testament that we must turn if we really want to know Jesus and to encounter him in truth.

Intelligent design absurd according to Vatican Observatory director

2006-04-05T21:24:00.000-04:00

In America magazine, April 6:

The director of the Vatican Observatory called the concept of intelligent design “absurd” and part of a religious fundamentalist movement in the United States, which wants science to show that God exists. “They are using the Bible as science, as a source of scientific knowledge. This is wrong,” George Coyne, S.J., told Catholic News Service after a lecture on March 27 in Washington, D.C. The earliest date given for the start of modern science is the 13th century, more than 1,000 years after all of the books of the Bible were written, he said. “How could biblical writers draw on science when modern science didn’t exist yet?” said Father Coyne. He also discussed intelligent design in his speech on the evolution of the universe and in a subsequent question-and-answer period. His talk was sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “Intelligent design is a religious movement based on fear that if you don’t teach an alternative to evolution, we will have a lot of little atheists running around,” he added.

Thousands take steps toward joining the Church this Easter

2006-04-05T21:17:00.000-04:00

Across the US tens of thousands of prospective Catholics began the final phase of preparation for joining the Church, a process that will culminate with the sacraments of Christian initiation at the Easter Vigil. Some numbers: In Washington D.C. 1,133 catechumens; Arlington, Va. 697; Little Rock, Ark. 560; Nashville, Tenn. 500; Albany, N.Y. 264; Hartford, Conn. 269....

The Spirit is present, even as we suffer as a Church. For me, it is a reminder to turn my face to gaze on God, to stop a minute from endless chattering and planning about debating, and wonder in silence at why we are all here in the first place, together, united, one Body... the Body of Christ.

Marriage Debates--who will decide?

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

The Culture of Life Foundation yesterday reported on a paper, "Why a Marriage Amendment is Necessary," published by the Republical Policy Committee. The paper basically says that if the Senate fails to act at the beginning of June on a proposed Constitutional amendment that defines marriage as consisting only on the union of one man and one woman, it will be decided state by state in the courts, leading to a national fragmentation of marriage definitions.

In the end the chaos that will be created by the differing state legislations will necessitate it being brought to the Supreme Court. In other words, if the Senate doesn't decide, the courts will decide. So the questions is do we want the courts to be the arbiters of the definition of marrage, or do we want it to come from the people.

The president of the U.S. bishops' conference is asking prelates that they and the people in their dioceses become involved in the effort to support a federal constitutional marriage amendment.

Bishop William Skylstad, in a letter to all U.S. Catholic prelates, also said that the Knights of Columbus have initiated a national postcard campaign to promote support for the Protection of Marriage Amendment. The amendment defines marriage as consisting only of a union between a man and a woman.

"Today there is a growing sense shared by many people, including a wide range of religious leaders, that a Marriage Protection Amendment is the only federal-level action that ultimately will protect and preserve the institution of marriage," Bishop Skylstad said.

The entire text of the announcement from the Culture of Life Foundation follows:

GOP Policy Committee Says
Marriage Amendment Needed to Stop Courts

By Mark Adams

An important Senate committee says in a new policy paper that if a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman is not passed, state and federal courts may eventually impose same-sex marriage. The paper says that advocates of same-sex marriage plan to challenge state marriage laws producing a patchwork of laws across the country that "will inevitably end up playing out in the courts, as same-sex marriage puts new stresses on the legal system."

"Why a Marriage Amendment is Necessary," published by the Republican Policy Committee comes in anticipation of the impending June 5th debate on the floor of the Senate over a proposed Constitutional amendment defining marriage as consisting "only of the union of a man and a woman." Majority leader Sen. Bill Frist announced that the Senate will vote on the amendment on June 6th. The policy paper details the status of marriage law today and includes a discussion of the overwhelming popularity of traditional marriage laws at the state level and the challenges those law are already facing in the courts.

The paper says, "Failing to act to protect traditional marriage laws by a constitutional amendment will, in the end, likely result in the judicial imposition of same-sex marriage on a nationwide basis." This will come about through a three step process. First, "some state supreme courts undoubtedly will strike down state marriage laws" resulting in "national fragmentation of marriage definitions." Second, the fragmented status will become untenable as cases that come before courts "involving everything from divorce to child custody to health care to probate will be more complicated and require case-by-case analyses in the courts." Such "a patchwork of definitions is not likely to endure" leading to the third step in which the issues becomes federal and the "ultimate arbiter will be the Supreme Court."

The paper says the Supreme Court would have "Have a duty to assist the lower courts in the management of the plethora of thorny legal problems that same-sex marriage will have created in a patchwork system. The Court will be under enormous pressure to craft a national solution." The paper says that regardless of whether or not an amendment is passed, there will eventually be a federal definition of marriage with the only question being whether it come from the people or the courts.

Right now 45 states have laws defining marriage according to traditional norms. Of those 45, 19 have state constitutional amendments and at least seven states are considering an amendment in 2006. The paper also notes that in the 19 states that have considered a state constitutional amendment, not only has the amendment passed but it has done so with an average of 71.5 percent of the vote. As of March nine states face court challenges to their laws defining traditional marriage and in four of those states lower courts "have already struck down the marriage laws and found a right to same-sex marriage in state constitutional provisions dealing with equal protection and due process."

Manifesto of the international congress "Women and the media"

2006-04-03T11:34:00.000-04:00

The image of women is exploited, abused, and used in the media.... No secret. But someone is doing something about it. Not boycotting or angry editorials. The Athenaeum Regina University's Institute of Higher Studies on Woman held an international Congess entitled "Woman and the Media." Their conclusions were synthesized into the following 10 points:

The manifesto reads:

1. We defend and promote in the media a respectful image of woman's identity and of the dignity of femininity.

2. We combat the abuse of the feminine image as an advertising or consumer instrument.

3. We promote correct and true information on the problems affecting the feminine world.

4. We commit ourselves to avoid sensationalist tones and refuse to make a show of information.

5. We defend the role of woman as co-responsible with man in the edification and development of society.

6. We promote a culture of freedom and peace, which respects the contribution of the feminine genius in the humanization of society.

7. We defend and promote the irreplaceable role of woman as educator of society in the defense of the more authentically human values, such as love, respect, dignity in suffering and weakness, tolerance.

8. We defend and promote the active presence of woman in public life and the world of work.

9. We promote the dignity of woman and the equal rights of woman and man.

10. We commit ourselves to responsibly provide information and sensitization by detecting, documenting and speaking out against situations and practices that limit freedom and violate the rights of women and girls.

100% Debt cancellation for 17 impoverished countries

2006-04-03T11:31:00.000-04:00

The debt agreement will cancel 100% of 17 impoverished countries' debts to the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and African Development Bank in 2006.

In a statement posted Friday on the U.S. episcopate's Web site, Bishop Wenski called the decision "a concrete application of Pope John Paul II's call for the 'globalization of solidarity.' The poverty that traps so great a portion of our human family shocks us."

Completion point

The plan for implementation of debt cancellation originally under consideration at the World Bank Board would have required impoverished countries to keep making non-refundable debt payments to the World Bank, even after reaching the "completion point" when they become eligible for debt cancellation.

But in the plan that was finally approved, impoverished countries that complete mandatory economic reforms and reach "completion point" in the International Monetary Fund and World Bank's debt relief program will see their debts canceled within three months of qualifying.

This will enable a country like Malawi, which is estimated to reach completion point this June, to see debt cancellation to the World Bank on July 1, rather having to wait until July 2007.

Benedict XVI supports two day fast for peace in Iraq and the world

2006-04-03T11:29:00.000-04:00

Zenit reported that at today's Angelus message Benedict XVI invited all Catholics to join in fasting and prayer for peace in Iraq:Benedict XVI encouraged believers worldwide to fast and pray Monday and Tuesday for peace in Iraq and the world.

After reciting the midday Angelus today from the window of his study, the Pope echoed the initiative announced in a message signed by Chaldean Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly of Babylon and Iraqi bishops.

"We are estranged from God with our deeds," wrote the patriarch in his message, "we do not fulfill his will, and we have abandoned piety, virtue and forgiveness and, because of this, the blood of so many brothers has been shed and so many children have been left orphans.

"We must return, repentant, to the house of the Father to do the will of our sovereign God; to attain this sublime objective, we invite all Iraqis, in and outside of Iraq, and all believers and men of good will, to prayer and fasting on next Monday the 3rd and Tuesday the 4th, so that the Lord will restore peace, tranquility and security to Iraq, country of beloved Abraham."

Benedict XVI invited "all to join this initiative of our brothers of that tormented country, commending this intention to the intercession of Mary Most Holy, Queen of Peace."

100,000 people expected at the Vatican for anniversary of John Paul II's death

2006-04-01T14:22:00.000-05:00

Catholic News Service reports that as many as 100,000 pilgrims are expected at the Vatican this weekend to mark the first anniversary of the death of Pope John Paul II.

One year ago, thousands of the faithful gathered spontaneously in St. Peter's Square for a prayer vigil to accompany their beloved Pontiff during the final hours of his life, and many thousands more arrived to pay homage after his death on April 2, 2005.

Although many different observances are planned, in Rome and around the world, the focal point will be the prayer vigil organized in St. Peter's Square on April 2, with Cardinal Camillo Ruini (bio - news)leading the Rosary and texts from the late Pontiff used as meditations. At 9:37 in the evening-- the time of the Pope's death one year ago-- Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) will speak. The next day, the Pope will preside at a memorial Mass in St. Peter's Square.

Walking away when the going gets tough

2006-03-31T16:49:00.000-05:00

A great reflection for Catholics who have remained in the Church, yet do so with sorrow or anger at the scandals and shame:

What do we do when we're depressed? What's our temptation when a dream is shattered, when we feel betrayed, and when it seems like the trust we've shown someone was childish naiveté?

Generally the temptation is to gather what pride we have left and walk away, away from that person, away from that place of rejection, away from the humiliation, and away from our former dream, all the while saying to ourselves: "I'll never trust in this way again! I've been burned, taken in, I now know the lesson!"

And, as we walk away from the place where we got hurt, what do we invariably walk towards?

We walk towards human consolation, towards compensation, towards something that looks like it will alleviate the hurt, soothe our wounded pride, or at least distract us from the pain. Sometimes, in fact, we're so wounded that what we walk towards is simple bitterness and despair. We unconsciously turn our backs on energy, family, community, happiness, faith, trust, and God. Life isn't worth living, why try!

In Luke's Gospel, we see this in the story of two, dispirited, disciples walking from away from Jerusalem towards Emmaus on Easter Sunday morning, unaware that Jesus had risen from the dead. Luke writes that on the morning of the Resurrection "two disciples were walking away from Jerusalem toward Emmaus, a village some seven miles away, their faces downcast." read more

Spiritual Retreats for Physicians

2006-03-31T16:41:00.000-05:00

The Catholic Medical Association has listed their calendar of spiritual retreats for physicians at their website.

Letting Go

2006-03-31T16:27:00.000-05:00

While surfing the internet I came across a fantastic article by Dan Conway. Although written in January, it is nonetheless current in the season of letting go--graduations, weddings, ordinations...

“Letting go” may be the most counter-cultural principle of Christian spirituality. Every day, our obsessive media culture tells us in thousands of words, images and music that the only things that matter in life are youth, wealth and at least 15 minutes of fame. The values of the world urge us to consume and acquire constantly – in order to be young, to be rich and to be famous (at least vicariously). But the Gospel of Jesus Christ challenges us to be and do something radically different.

So this 2006, resolve to consider Christ's invitation to those who would be his disciples is: “Go, sell what you have; give it to the poor, and come, follow me.” He does not ask us to accumulate or to hang on to anything. On the contrary, the Lord challenges us to give up our dependence on people, places and things. He wants us to empty ourselves, as he did, and to cling to him alone, “the eternal present who tries in every way to enter the human heart.”

The whole article is a great read.

The Battle Over Marriage

2006-03-31T16:15:00.000-05:00

Majority Leader William Frist announced in January that the Senate will take up a constitutional amendment to defind traditiohnal marriage in June. It is the latest sign that the fight over marriage is expanding in the US.

Campaigns to win legal recognition of same-sex unions as marriages and efforts to counter them are now taking place against the background of proposals to legalize polygamy and "polyamory" – relationships that involve three or more persons and any gender mix. Legalization of same-sex marriage is seen as a necessary step to that end.

Our Sunday Visitor reported on March 31st:

Meanwhile, attention has begun to focus on a small but growing movement among legal theorists and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered groups on behalf of polygamy – marriage of one man to two or more women -- and polyamory – marriage of three or more persons of any gender to one another.

A much-discussed cover story by Stanley Kurtz in a December issue of the Weekly Standard cited the case of a man and two women in the Netherlands who last September entered into a government-approved "cohabitation contract."

Kurtz, a fellow at the public-policy think tank Hudson Institute and a writer on social issues, called this "an unmistakable step down the road to legalized group marriage" and pointed to evidence of support in U.S. legal and media circles.

Writing in the Feb. 3 issue of National Review Online, Kurtz said the ultimate aim is nothing less than the abolition of marriage. "Legalize gay marriage, followed by multi-partner marriage, and pretty soon the whole idea of marriage will be meaningless," he wrote.

As evidence of this trend, he cited a 2001 report by the Law Commission of Canada called "Beyond Conjugality." Canada in 2005 granted legal recognition to same-sex relationships as marriages, joining the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain as one of four countries which have done that to date.

What advocates of this new way of thinking want in the end, Kurtz maintained, is "an infinitely flexible relationship system that validates any conceivable family arrangement, regardless of the number or gender of partners."

Pope Benedict XVI has spoken frequently against the idea of same-sex marriage. Only in monogamous marriage between a man and a woman does human love "fulfill its deepest purpose," he declared in his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love), published in January.

Send Pope Benedict a Birthday eCard

2006-03-28T18:33:00.000-05:00

Wish Pope Benedict XVI a happy birthday (his birthday is April 16, Easter Sunday) by sending him an eCard courtesy of William H. Sadlier, Inc., and the National Conference for Catechetical Leadership.

Mary Magdalene--Disciple or Wife?

2006-03-28T18:31:00.000-05:00

By John Thavis, Rome Bureau Chief, Catholic News Service

The Da Vinci Code came in for some resounding criticism at a recent round-table discussion at the Marianum Pontifical Theological Faculty in Rome.

It wasn’t a pick-it-apart session by church historians. Instead, four women spoke about Mary Magdalene, and her distorted depiction in Dan Brown’s book.

The moderator of the discussion, Marinella Perroni, a New Testament theologian, said DVC joins a list of books and other media treatments that exploit the figure of Mary Magdalene. She said caution is always needed when dealing with Scriptural figures, but for some reason people feel free to take great liberties with Mary Magdalene.

Maria Luisa Rigato, a retired professor of exegesis at the Pontifical Gregorian University, said she found Brown’s book entertaining fiction -- but it was clear to real scholars that Mary Magdalene was neither the wife nor the lover of Jesus.

The Catholic participants drew a sharp distinction between what we know about Mary Magdalene from the approved Gospels and what has been circulated for centuries in the so-called Gnostic gospels, which were long ago rejected by the church.

But a Waldensian pastor, Rev. Letizia Tomassone, said she thought the non-canonical gospels, although they are clearly later manuscripts, can be valid secondary sources of information. In some of these later gospels, she said, Mary Magdalene appears as the “mediator of the resurrected Christ,” which aligns with what the Gospel of St. John says about her being the first witness of the resurrection.

Mary Magdalene, Rev. Tomassone said, comes across as “one who knows how to heal the heart of a wounded community.”

The experts generally agreed, however, that there is no Scriptural evidence that Jesus and Mary were lovers, which is a key element in the DVC plot. Even the incomplete references in the Gnostic gospels about Jesus special relationship with Mary Magdalene depict a “spiritual intimacy,” not a sexual relationship, Rev. Tomassone said.

The panelists differed about whether it should matter to Christians whether Christ was married or not. Some said they would have no problem with that -- but the Gospels make no mention of it.

That prompted an objection from a young priest in the audience, who said he would not have made a promise of priestly celibacy unless he believed he was imitating Christ.

The moderator, Rigato, downplayed the impact of DVC, saying it was “third rate literature” compared to earlier treatments of similar subjects, like “The Last Temptation of Christ” by Nikos Kazantzakis.

“Dan Brown with his 40 million copies is nothing compared to the billions of copies of the Bible. It’s something you consume and forget, and will not affect the faith in the least,” she said.

But Miriam Diez i Bosch, a Catholic journalist who lectures on communications, said it was disturbing that a book like DVC was succeeding so well. Similar books may follow, she said.

The good thing is that DVC has given Catholics a chance to explain themselves, she said. The bad part is that Catholics clearly need to be better instructed in their faith, she added.

She said the church in particular needs better catechesis and more widely published scholarship on the figure of Mary Magdalene -- something more profound than presenting her as “the icon of the fallen woman.”

Immigration ins and outs

2006-03-27T19:37:00.000-05:00

Now is a good time to bone up on immigration policy as the Senate is expected this week to consider legislative proposals to overhaul the nation's immigration laws. Thousands of your fellow Americans are out marching for comprehensive immigration reform and bishops are asking the Senate Judiciary Committee to do more than crackdown on illegal immigrants. The bill approved in December by the House "would literally criminalize not only every nondocumented immigrant in our country but every person who helped, assisted, reached out [or] otherwise responded in a humanitarian way to the needs of immigrants," according to Senator Clinton. The follow links are helpful places to begin to understand the issue:

From Catholic News Service: As hundreds of thousands of people marched in cities across the country in support of comprehensive immigration reform, Catholic bishops in various states joined the chorus of voices calling on Congress to do more than crack down on illegal immigrants. The Senate Judiciary Committee was to take up immigration legislation the last week of March, pressured by Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to quickly turn a completed bill over to the full Senate. As committee and floor votes neared, immigrants, church activists, union members and others who are pressing for change led rallies and marches in Washington, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Chicago, Denver and other cities. The Saturday before the Senate returned from a weeklong break to consider the bill, more than half a million people marched in downtown Los Angeles. Bishops from Georgia, Arizona, New York, California, Pennsylvania and Colorado are among those who have issued pastoral letters or public statements in recent months about immigration and what they would like legislation to address.

PDF file on the Catholic Campaign for Immigration Reform put out by the Catholic Bishops.

Though the issues being debated are complex and the
array of advocates on all sides of the debate diverse,
there are essentially two sides, each advocating dramatically
different visions of reform. On the one side are
those who believe the first (and for some the only)
order of business is to dramatically increase enforcement
and getting tough on illegal immigration. Many
arguing this approach believe that sealing our borders
and creating intolerable conditions in the U.S. for someone
here without authorization will stem the flow of
future illegal entries. Generally, those on this side of
the debate view any steps to deal with the millions of
undocumented in the country, other than deporting
them, as an “amnesty.” Equally unacceptable to this
side is the notion of creating more legal avenues for
foreign labor. Simply put, the motto of this side could
be characterized as “seal the border” and “report to
deport.”

The other side of the debate, which has a growing and
diverse following, sees true immigration reform as not
only getting control over a broken immigration system,
but fixing the causes of the current ills. This side acknowledges
that immigrant laborers are an economic
necessity and that the current legal immigration system
is woefully outdated and inadequate to today’s realities,
keeping families separated for years and providing very
few legal options to fill the jobs requiring foreign labor.
Generally, those on this side of the debate also recognize
that all too often the conditions in the migrants’
home countries actually encourage emigration for lack
of viable options there in which to raise a family and
that this reality needs to be addressed, as well. The
voices on this side call for comprehensive reforms that,
if employed in tandem, will stem the flow of illegal entries.
This side calls for the expansion of legal visas,
both permanent and temporary, for foreign workers
to fill jobs that cannot be filled by American workers.
These advocates call for the elimination of unacceptably
long backlogs in the availability of visas so that
families can be together. As for the undocumented
in the country, this side says that they should be
given the opportunity to earn legalization over time if
they are otherwise admissible. The motto of this
side could be “rational reforms will regain control”
and “immigrants are good for the country.”

Legal and Illegal Immigrants is a Fairly Recent Distinction

Here's a little-understood fact about immigration law: Until well into the 20th century, pretty much anyone who showed up at a port of entry or walked across a border got to stay in the United States.

In other words, one reason so many people today can say "my ancestors followed the law when they came here" is because until fairly recently there was no distinction made about whether someone arrived legally or not. With few exceptions, anyone who got here was admitted. read more

China's policy to remain

2006-03-27T19:28:00.000-05:00

Contrary to rumors China is not going to relax its policy of allowing families to have only one child. The CNS report documents the number of babies that have been "prevented," an interesting way to put it:

Zhang Weiqing, the minister in charge of Beijing's National Population and Family Planning Commission, this week declared the policy a success, saying in an interview published on a government website that it had prevented the birth of 400 million babies over the past three decades.

"We've taken only 30 years to almost achieve what developed countries have done with population control targets in 100 years," he said. "I have to say our work is commendable."

Since the policy was instituted, the average number of children for each Chinese couple had dropped from nearly six in the early 1970s to 1.8 today.

The policy is controversial because it has involved coercive measures including forced sterilization and abortions, as well as punitive tariffs for those who exceeded the stipulated family size.

The policy restricts most Chinese couples to one child, although in rural areas and for some ethnic minorities, a second child is allowed if the first baby is a girl.

2 days of fasting for peace in Iraq

2006-03-27T19:21:00.000-05:00

We have tried using military might to restore peace in Iraq. Zenit reports that the Chaldean Patriarch of Baghdad has called Iraqis and all people of good will to pray and fast for two days to obtain the gift of peace in this region. Mark your calendars for next Monday and Tuesday.

Chaldean Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly of Baghdad has proposed April 3-4 as days of fasting and prayer for peace in Iraq.

Auxiliary Bishop Shlemon Warduni read the patriarch's appeal on Sunday, during a visit to the Italian city of Gallipoli.

"We have estranged ourselves from God by our deeds," wrote the patriarch in the message, which was reported by Italian bishops' SIR news service; "we do not obey his will, and we have moved away from piety and virtue, from forgiveness, and because of this the blood of so many brothers has been shed and so many children have remained orphans."

For this reason, the Christian representative said, "we must return, repentant to God's house to do the will of our sovereign God."

"To achieve this sublime objective," the message said, "we invite all Iraqis, in and outside of Iraq, and all believers and people of good will, to prayer and fasting this coming Monday the 3rd and Tuesday the 4th of April, so that the Lord will restore peace, tranquility and security to Iraq, country of our beloved Abraham."

From the Testament of John Paul II

2006-03-27T19:16:00.000-05:00

During a visit to a parish of the Rome diocese, Benedict XVI read from the text prepared by John Paul II for the meeting with the faithful last year on April 3rd, a text which was never delivered. These words seem so prophetic:

"To humanity, which at times seems to be lost and dominated by the power of evil, egoism and fear, the risen Lord offers as a gift his love that forgives, reconciles and reopens the spirit of hope. It is love that converts hearts and gives peace."

"How much need the world has to understand and accept Divine Mercy!"

Meetings with Cardinals to Continue

2006-03-27T19:11:00.000-05:00

Benedict XVI announced that he will continue to meet with all the world's cardinals, as he did last week, to address key questions in the life of the Church. This will also allow the Cardinals to meet and know each other, something about which they complained when they were called together to elect a new Pope. They hardly knew each other as they went into the Conclave.

Cardinal Mahoney instructed LA priests to disobey proposed Border Protection Bill

2006-03-24T16:46:00.000-05:00

A wonderful piece. Here is just a taste, but be sure to click on the title above and read the whole thing:

Called by God to Help
by Roger Mahony, Archbishop of Los Angeles

Some supporters of the bill have even accused the church of encouraging illegal immigration and meddling in politics. But I stand by my statement. Part of the mission of the Roman Catholic Church is to help people in need. It is our Gospel mandate, in which Christ instructs us to clothe the naked, feed the poor and welcome the stranger. Indeed, the Catholic Church, through Catholic Charities agencies around the country, is one of the largest nonprofit providers of social services in the nation, serving both citizens and immigrants.

Providing humanitarian assistance to those in need should not be made a crime, as the House bill decrees. As written, the proposed law is so broad that it would criminalize even minor acts of mercy like offering a meal or administering first aid.

Explanation for dropping the title "Patriarch of the West" for the Pope

2006-03-24T16:37:00.000-05:00

John Allen synthesized a six paragraph statement by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity regarding the announcement last month by Benedict XVI that he was dropping the title "Patriarch of the West." His move started a rumble of conjecture and speculation which has been largely clarified by the statement:

A month after the fact, the Vatican has issued an official explanation of the recent decision to drop the papal title "Patriarch of the West." Issued on Wednesday, the six-paragraph statement from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity says that the title never had a clear meaning, and appeared officially in the Annuario Pontificio, the Vatican's yearbook, only in the 19th century.

The statement makes three key points:

* Dropping the title "Patriarch of the West" signifies no new claim to papal authority;
* The move should therefore not be read as anti-ecumenical, and may even have positive ecumenical value;
* The pope has a special relationship to the Latin Church, which involves a more direct form of authority than he has in the East, but the term "West" is not the right way to designate that relationship.

In addition, it seems clear from the March 22 statement that the creation of new patriarchates in the West is not in the cards, since the document says that bishops' conferences and international associations of conferences represent "the canonical order adequate for the necessities of today."

"The title 'Patriarch of the West,' which was not very clear from the beginning, became over the course of history obsolete and practically not usable any more," the statement said.

"Abandoning the title … clearly does not change anything regarding the recognition, solemnly declared by the Second Vatican Council, of the antique patriarchal churches," the statement said. "Even less so does the suppression signify new claims of authority. Renunciation of the aforesaid title is intended to express a historical and theological realism, and, at the same time, the renunciation of a pretense that could be helpful for ecumenical dialogue."

John Allen's report on discussions at the Consistory

2006-03-24T16:31:00.000-05:00

John Allen reported briefly in his Word from Rome on the discussions held in the Consistory in Rome these days:

Sources told NCR that on the subject of Islam, several cardinals touched on the need for greater emphasis on reciprocity -- the idea that if Muslim immigrants to the West claim the benefit of religious freedom, the same should be true for Christian minorities in majority Islamic states.

"I think most of us felt that Islam represents a challenge to the church, and we need to reflect on how to respond," one cardinal told NCR.

In that regard, sources told NCR that the emerging line of Benedict XVI's papacy on Islam, featuring more explicit challenges to Islamic leaders on terrorism and religious freedom, enjoys strong support in the College of Cardinals.

With regard to the Lefebvrite movement, sources said that a variety of opinions were expressed. Some cardinals were in favor of rapid movement towards reconciliation, including wider use of the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass, while others were concerned with the terms upon which reconciliation might occur. These cardinals stressed the importance that traditionalists accept the teaching of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

"There wasn't any strong consensus," one cardinal said. "We'll continue to study and review the situation, but I'm quite sure the pope is not going to issue a decree tomorrow."

As for retired bishops, various proposals were floated for ensuring that their material needs are met, and that they continue to have opportunities to make contributions to the church. One cardinal suggested the idea of raising the retirement age above 75.

Despite expectations to the contrary, one cardinal told NCR that there was basically no discussion of reform of the Roman Curia.

A number of cardinals left the Synod Hall expressing the hope that such encounters can be held on a regular basis. Many cardinals complained during last April's conclave that they do not have adequate time to get to know one another, or to reflect together on issues. Some cardinals suggested trying to hold similar "study days" once a year.

Benedict's Message to the 15 new Cardinals

2006-03-24T12:15:00.000-05:00

"May the scarlet that you now wear always express the 'caritas Christi,' inspiring you to a passionate love for Christ, for His Church and for all humanity. You now have an additional motive to seek to rekindle in yourselves those same sentiments that led the incarnate Son of God to pour out His blood in atonement for the sins of the whole world.

"I am counting on you, venerable brothers, I am counting on the entire College into which you are being incorporated, to proclaim to the world that 'Deus caritas est,' and to do so above all through the witness of sincere communion among Christians."

"I am counting on you to ensure that the principle of love will spread far and wide, and will give new life to the Church at every level of her hierarchy, in every group of the faithful, in every religious institute, in every spiritual, apostolic or humanitarian initiative."

Benedict concluded: "I am counting on you to see to it that our common endeavor to fix our gaze on Christ's open Heart will hasten and secure our path towards the full unity of Christians. I am counting on you to see to it that the Church's solicitude for the poor and needy challenges the world with a powerful statement on the civilization of love. All this I see symbolized in the scarlet with which you are now invested. May it truly be a symbol of ardent Christian love shining forth in your lives."

15 new Cardinals

2006-03-23T20:39:00.000-05:00

Friday, the 24th of March, 15 bishops are receiving the red hat of the cardinal from Benedict XVI. The red hat manifests their willingness to shed their blood for the Church.

The text of the oath taken by the new Cardinals, translated from the Latin original, states:

"I [name and surname], Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, promise and swear to be faithful henceforth and forever, while I live, to Christ and his Gospel, being constantly obedient to the Holy Roman Apostolic Church, to Blessed Peter in the person of the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI, and of his canonically elected Successors; to maintain communion with the Catholic Church always, in word and deed; not to reveal to any one what is confided to me in secret, nor to divulge what may bring harm or dishonor to Holy Church; to carry out with great diligence and faithfulness those tasks to which I am called by my service to the Church, in accord with the norms of the law. So help me Almighty God."

Then each new cardinal will approach the Pope and kneel before him to receive the red hat and be assigned a title or deaconry. The Pope will say, in part:

"It is red as a sign of the dignity of the office of a cardinal, signifying that you are ready to act with fortitude, even to the point of spilling your blood for the increase of the Christian faith, for peace and harmony among the people of God, for freedom and the spread of the Holy Roman Catholic Church."

As we pray for these new cardinals and their important work for the whole Church, I also ponder my own willingness to shed my blood for the Church. I recall there are many Catholics around the world in the past 100 years who have shed their blood as martyrs. It this martyrdom, this fidelity, this self-sacrifice that is the seed of the faith.

Deaths related to RU-486

2006-03-23T09:43:00.000-05:00

I was the assistant editor of a Catholic magazine when RU-486 was first made available in the US. I remember the medical concerns that were raised at that time, although the desire to have a ready abortion pill available won the day. Now there is concern by the FDA regarding the safety of women who use this pill:

A U.S. bishops' aide lamented the deaths of two more women linked to the RU-486 abortion pill, bringing the total of known maternal fatalities to 10.

"We are deeply saddened by yet another advisory from the Food and Drug Administration that two more women have died from RU-486 abortions," said Deirdre McQuade, a spokeswoman for the bishops' Pro-Life Secretariat.

Media reports published Friday said that federal health regulators were warning doctors to watch for a rare but deadly infection implicated in earlier deaths.

"According to the New England Journal of Medicine," McQuade said in a statement, "RU-486 abortions are 10 times more likely to kill a woman, from infection alone, than are surgical abortions in early pregnancy. This estimate does not even include RU-486 related deaths from other causes, such as ruptured ectopic pregnancy."

"After five years of trauma and death associated with RU-486, the FDA's response has been limited to health advisories and amended drug labeling," the bishops' aide continued. "How many more healthy women must die before the agency takes a close second look at RU-486?" (ZENIT)

Putting work in perspective

2006-03-23T06:30:00.000-05:00

For those who have been wondering why the blog has been silent these past three days, I have been away giving presentations on Depression and Faith--these are connected with my book, Surviving Depression: A Catholic Approach.

One of the first things I noted when I came back and started plowing through over 100 e-mails was the Pope's comment about Sunday and work:

The biblical teaching on work finds its coronation in the commandment to rest. The Sabbath rest is a holy day consecrated to God, in which man understands better the meaning of his existence and also of his work activity.

A good reminder to me that a better celebration of the Sunday feast of worship and Sabbath rest will put my workload into perspective.

New monthly documenting John Paul II's cause for beatification

2006-03-17T21:26:00.000-05:00

Announced by CNA today:

The Vicariate of Rome has announced that they will launch a new monthly magazine that will provide ongoing information about the process for the beatification and canonization of Pope John Paul II.

The publication, which will be called “Totus Tuus” in honor of Karol Wojtyla’s papal motto, aims “to become a valid instrument of unity between all those who await the conclusion of the process and support spiritually and materially.”

Some 25,000 requests have already been received for the first edition, which will be distributed free of charge. Requests can be made through the Vicariate’s website www.vicariatusurbis.org/beatificazione.

One of the major features which the Vicarate of Rome announced is the inclusion of outstanding testimonials about the holiness of life of John Paul II within the magazine.

Many little Gethsemane's

2006-03-17T21:24:00.000-05:00

Father Cantalamessa, preacher to the Papal Household, said in his latest Lenten homily:

"Many little nights of Gethsemane" happen in human life for very different reasons, Father Cantalamessa said. Among the most profound are "the loss of the meaning of God, the overwhelming awareness of one's sin and unworthiness, the impression of having lost the faith," in short, what the saints have called "the dark night of the soul," he continued. "Jesus teaches the first thing to be done in these cases: to turn to God in prayer"; he himself began his prayer in Gethsemane acknowledging: "Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee."

"And if one has already prayed without success, one must pray again, with greater earnestness," exhorted Father Cantalamessa.

Acting selflessly

2006-03-17T21:18:00.000-05:00

From Oberlin Times:

Jeff McGarry, a 39-year-old Roman Catholic who has been a quadriplegic since a teenage diving accident, said it would be wrong to accept stem cells from an embryo.

"I would be acting very selfishly in doing that," he said, "because it's taking a life of an individual in order to better my existing life."

quoted in the blog: http://www.marymeetsdolly.com/blog/

The Gaze of Christ

2006-03-17T21:12:00.000-05:00

In the face of the terrible challenge of poverty
afflicting so much of the world's population,
indifference and self-centered isolation
stand in stark contrast
to the "gaze" of Christ.
Benedict XVI, Message for Lent 2006

A Communal Lent

2006-03-15T13:13:00.000-05:00

I wanted to share with you a thought from our Mother General's letter to us during Lent--it casts Lent into a more social or communal perspective which we don't often encounter in Lenten meditations:

On Ash Wednesday, we began a pilgrimage toward Easter--a journey in which te Master blazes the way for us, bearing his cross in solidarity with the many people of all ages throughout the world who are suffering the effects of hunger, abandonment, poverty, injustice, illness and war. The Lord Jesus also walks alongside the many women and men who are striving to sow hope, dry tears, promote peace and build communion wherever they go.

Sr. Antoinetta Bruscata, FSP

What is a Christian movie?

2006-03-15T11:54:00.000-05:00

One opinion from Barbara Nicolosi, founder and director of Act One, an organization whose mission is to train committed Christian writers to work in the Hollywood film industry.

So what would be some of the themes that would define a Christian movie?

Affirmation of spiritual realities. The twentieth-century Christian apologist Frank Sheed distinguished Christian storytellers from pagan ones by the fact that Christian writers live in a world that is as much driven by spiritual realities as by material ones. He noted, "The secular novelist sees what is visible; the Christian novelist sees what is there." Created with a Christian sensibility, a movie should be haunted by the invisible world. For believers, everything that we see is a sign of a reality that we cannot see. As Flannery O'Connor expressed it, "The real novelist, the one with an instinct for what he is about, knows that he cannot approach the infinite directly. He must penetrate the natural human world as it is. The more sacramental his theology, the more encouragement he will get from it to do just that."

Connectedness. A Christian film should be imbued with the certainty that we are not alone. We were conceived of, worked out, prepared for, and assigned a place in the plan. We are connected to one another and to the One who yearns for us as the apple of his eye. Humans are meant to be merciful to one another. Talents are given to us to speed us corporately on our way home to God. We should treat human beings the way we would treat any unique and precious treasure that belongs to someone else.

Good and evil are not equal. Despite how it seems to a merely human perspective, good and evil are not locked in an equal struggle. The good is much greater, because it can incorporate every evil and turn it into a good. A Christian dramatist needs to portray sin with the same intensity as does a purely secular dramatist because, as Flannery O'Connor noted, "Redemption is meaningless unless there is a cause for it in the actual life we live." But a Christian movie would ultimately lead viewers away from cynicism and toward hope.

The culture of life. Coined by Pope John Paul II, the term "the culture of life" encapsulates the attitude toward human persons that defines Christians. Pope John Paul II distinguishes the reverence with which believers approach the human person from what he calls secularism's "culture of death." A Christian project will emanate the certainty that men and women are the summit of everything created. If rareness makes something valuable, then human beings are precious in their uniqueness. Human beings are not valuable because of what they can do but because of what they are: vessels of love. Love called forth to be poured in. Love seeping out on those around. And so a Christian movie will reflect a reverence in its bearing toward the human person.

Juxtaposition of joy and suffering. The weirdest thing about Christians is the way we can hold both terrible suffering and joy in our hands at the same time without any sense of contradiction. Good Friday is at once the worst thing that ever happened and the best thing that ever happened. In every death, we see the seeds of resurrections, and so our grief can never be complete, as in despair. Because of this, our stories are always going to emit an aroma of hope. Comfortable with this mystery, as the human creature's lot in life, we do not have to resolve every conflict in our stories. But our unresolved conflicts will always reflect our conviction that, as screenwriter and novelist Karen Hall has said, "I may not understand the reason why, but I know Someone does."

But will it sell? The capacity for a product to sell: this is a primary paradox for Christian writers and producers in Hollywood. On the one hand, we have vital stories and themes that we want to see produced. We stress with our community of Act One writers that the first thing they need to have in starting to write is passion for the subject matter. On the other hand, professionalism demands that we offer a product that will be saleable. Too often writers who pitch me movie ideas will be stymied when I ask them the necessary question, "What will drive millions of people to the movie theaters to see this story?" This doesn't have to be a paralyzing problem for Christians in Hollywood. The answer to the problem of commerciality is to find the intersection of our themes with the current cries of the world. What is it that the people of our world are worried about today? What are the most urgent fears of this generation? These are the "signs of the times" for the church in this age, and particularly for those of us who are storytellers.

Jesus Yes, Church... no?

2006-03-15T11:46:00.000-05:00

Benedict XVI has begun a new cycle of meditations at his Wednesday general audiences. His topic? One that couldn't be more essential for today: the relationship between Christ and the Church. As the Catholic World News reported, Benedict

said that there is "a deep, inseparable, and mysterious connection" between Jesus and the Church founded on his apostles. Warning against "individualistic" approaches to faith, and the temptation to separate individual piety from "organized religion," the Pope said: "There is no conflict between Christ and his Church."

In commissioning the apostles, the Pope explained, Jesus left a clear sign that he wanted a constant presence in the world, to bear witness to Him and spread the Gospel. The Pontiff said that "the entire mission of the incarnate Son has a community goal."

Despite the inevitable weaknesses of human agents, the Pope continued, the Church reflects the face of Jesus Christ. Today's Church, led by bishops to whom the faith was passed down from the original apostles, remains intimated linked with the Savior, and in the teachings of the Church "we can read the truth of Christ."

The Holy Father prompted warm applause from the large crowd when he drove home the point: "The slogan that was fashionable a few years ago-- 'Jesus Yes, Church No'-- is completely irreconcilable with the intentions of Christ."

But the commentary is almost longer than the general audience address itself so I also put the actual words of the Pontiff:

In coming weeks, our catechesis will focus on the mystery of Christ and the Church. Jesus willed to found his Church upon the Apostles, and it is through their witness that we continue to encounter him. The mission of the Apostles must be seen in the context of the mystery of communion of God’s People, spanning both the old and the new Covenant. Jesus’s entire ministry took place against the backdrop of Israel’s faith and hope, and was aimed at gathering into one the eschatological People of God. Far from a purely individualistic summons to conversion, his mission was directed to the establishment of the community of the new and eternal Covenant. Jesus’ conscious decision to choose the Twelve Apostles was a prophetic sign announcing the eschatological renewal of the twelve tribes of Israel, the dawn of salvation and the fulfilment of God’s promises. In the person of the Apostles, charged with the celebration of the Eucharist and the forgiveness of sins, the Church has been made the sign and instrument of the Kingdom of God in our midst. Christ can never be separated from the Church; through the Church he remains ever present in his people, and in a special way in the successors of the Apostles.

Three bishops seem to reject statement of Catholic Democrats in Congress

2006-03-15T11:40:00.001-05:00

Three senior prelates in the American Catholic Church have responded to a recent statement on abortion issued by 55 Catholic Democrats in Congress. In part, the statement said, "We also need to reaffirm the Catholic Church's constant teaching that abortion is a grave violation of the most fundamental human right, the right to life that is inherent in all human beings, and that grounds every other right we possess."

"Statement on Responsibilities of Catholics in Public Life" was signed by Baltimore Cardinal William H. Keeler, chairman of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Pro Life Activities; Washington Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, chairman of the USCCB Task Force on Catholic Bishops and Catholic Politicians; and Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Domestic Policy.

The bishops were responding to the Democrat's "Statement of Principles" that was issued early in March which called abortion "undesirable" but fell short of calling for the overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision mandating abortion on demand. The bishops called the release of the Representatives' statement "an opportunity to address several important points about the responsibilities of Catholics in public life."

The Representatives' statement placed great emphasis on increasing funding for welfare and other government programs saying that doing so will reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. The bishops said they "welcome the Representatives' recognition that Catholics in public life must act seriously and responsibly on many important moral issues" and called "priority for the poor, the protection of family life, the pursuit of justice and the promotion of peace . . . fundamental priorities of the Catholic moral tradition which cannot be ignored or neglected." But, they countered, "While it is always necessary to work to reduce the number of abortions by providing alternatives and help to vulnerable parents and children, Catholic teaching calls all Catholics to work actively to restrain, restrict and bring to an end the destruction of unborn human life."

The bishops also responded to the Representatives' claim that they "seek the Church's guidance . . . but believe also in the primacy of conscience." The bishops replied that, "As Catholic legislators seek to act in accord with their own consciences, it is essential to remember that conscience must be consistent with fundamental moral principles. As members of the Church, all Catholics are obliged to shape our consciences in accord with the moral teaching of the Church."

The Representatives approvingly quote Pope John Paul II's letter on the laity, Christifideles Laici and in what might be interpreted as a gentle tweak on the part of the bishops, they quote Christifideles Laici right back; "Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights — for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture — is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination. The human being is entitled to such rights, in every phase of development, from conception until natural death..."

Culture of Life Foundation
1413 K Street, NW, Suite 1000
Washington DC 20005
Phone: (202) 289-2500 Fax: (202) 289-2502 E-mail: clf@culture-of-life.org Website: http://www.culture-of-life.org

Three bishops seem to reject statement of Catholic Democrats in Congress

2006-03-15T11:40:00.000-05:00

Follow Aslan

2006-03-12T13:44:00.000-05:00

I don't know about you, but when I saw Narnia in the movie theater after Christmas, and met Aslan for the first time, I wished he were real. I realized I was meeting God, I mean seeing the goodness of Jesus who gave his life for me, and I wanted my image of God to be dashed on the rocks to be replaced with reality, this reality that I saw before me. The theater had become a cathedral. I came across an article that spoke precisely of this: From Strattford Caldecot's excellent article about Aslan from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe:

So if you feel moved to speak to Aslan, to pray to him, there is nothing wrong with that. You are praying to someone that exists. Test it out and see if he answers. Just as the noble young Calormene, Emeth, found out after death that the prayers he had directed to Tash were counted by Aslan as prayers to himself, you may find that prayers to Aslan have been redirected to the One of whom Aslan is a fictional image. What I am saying is not that the Narnia stories are just copying the Gospels, and that we have to decode the events and characters so they can be translated into Christian terms. I am saying that in the imaginary world (just as in the Gospels if we read them in the right spirit) we can find things stirring in us that are true, that exceed what is on the page, that are present in our imagination as tokens of something deeper and truer than the imaginary world.

Where they may lead us is up to us. They may lead us eventually to Christian belief, as they have for many people, or they may not. The important thing is to follow—not to follow C. S. Lewis, but to follow the tracks of infinite desire that we find in his story, to pick up the trail of something real, and not pretend we have sensed nothing that speaks to us about our own life. There is something called wishful thinking, and we have to be on guard against it. But there is also wishless thinking, or cynical thinking, like that of the dwarfs in The Last Battle who refuse to be taken in. We need to be searching for truth, and to settle for nothing less.

The whole article is worth reading.

Catholic scholar explains Church’s position on adoption by same-sex couples

2006-03-12T12:43:00.000-05:00

Excerpts from an interview with Dr. John Haas regarding the decision of the Boston Diocese to cease their Catholic Charities adoption services (the entire interview is an excellent educational piece, but if you can't read the whole thing, I hope these excerpts will help clarify a painful and confusing issue):

Q: The Vatican document says that “Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children.”

Dr. Haas: When the Holy See talks about the violence being done to these children, it is not talking necessarily about physical violence being done to them. They are talking about placing them in an environment in which they are deprived of the opportunity for their full wholesome development by having the example of a mother and a father and care being given by a mother and a father in their rearing.

Q: The bishops maintain their decision is a matter of faith. What does divine revelation have to say about this issue?

Dr. Haas: Nobody ever brings up the fact that we, as Catholics, know that God has a plan for marriage and family. He has revealed it. It’s crystal clear. It’s from the first book of the Bible to the last book of the Bible. In Genesis you have the establishment of the family, you have the creation in God’s likeness of Adam and Eve: “Male and female He created them.” You have Jesus Himself quoting Genesis when He says, “This is why a man shall leave his mother and his father and cling to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.” So you have Jesus Himself, who is the founder of the Catholic Church and in whose name Catholic Charities works, who has said this is God’s plan, this is the plan for a family to be wholesome and function best. Then you get to the last book of the Bible, the Apocalypse, in which Jesus Christ is referred to as the bridegroom and the Church is going to be referred to as His bride. The overwhelming evidence from divine revelation says this is God’s plan, and we know that any departure from God’s plan is going to be deleterious or hurtful to those who depart from that plan.

Q: Some of the board members of Catholic Charities who resigned say that, in conscience, they cannot continue serving in an organization that will actively discriminate against gay people. Can a well-formed Christian conscience disagree with the teachings of the Church on this issue?

Dr. Haas: No. It is a misunderstanding of what conscience is. Conscience conforms to reality and the moral law. It doesn’t make the moral law and determine what reality is or is not.

Conscience is the capacity to see reality for what it truly is and then to base one’s judgement for action on that. One cannot, by appealing to conscience, make up what constitutes reality or what constitutes moral law. That’s not what conscience is. It has an objective component that must conform to the moral law and to reality and, for us as Catholics, must conform to what is revealed to us in divine revelation, in Scripture and in the teachings of Jesus Himself.

Q: Are the bishops actively discriminating against gay people by refusing to allow Catholic agencies to place children with them?

Dr. Haas: It is not an issue of discrimination. Catholic Charities and the Catholic Church have never denied health care, counseling, material support in terms of houses and support because people are gay. It’s my understanding that no one, other than government agencies, provides more care and assistance to those suffering of HIV/AIDS, many of whom are homosexuals, than the Catholic Church.

But when it comes to the matter of placing children [in adoptive homes], the greatest concern on the part of the placement agency has to be the good of the child. In fact, adoption agencies in the state “discriminate” all the time. Because people have to go through these qualifying programs before it’s determined that this or that couple can adopt a child. The agencies in this state will sometimes make the judgement that this, that or another couple ought not to become adoptive parents.

So, there is discrimination going on all the time, the real point is whether this is an unjust discrimination. I think one could say the other [type] is just discrimination. And here, in accord with what we believe God has revealed about what would be for the greatest benefit of these children, that for their benefit, we cannot place them into those environments. It’s not a matter of discriminating against homosexuals, it’s a matter of making judgements in accord with what we know of God’s plan for humanity, making judgements about what would be in the best interest of the children.

For example, polygamy. The state agencies might determine that a child would not benefit in a household that has one husband and four wives. If what we have at the heart is the best interest of the child, it would not be an unjust discrimination.

Eucharistic Adoration backed by Pope Benedict

2006-03-10T16:07:00.000-05:00

From Zenit, the Pope's response to a member of the clergy of Rome who has instituted perpetual Eucharistic Adoration in his parish:

"I only wish to thank God, that following the [Second Vatican] Council, after a period in which something of the meaning of Eucharistic adoration was lacking, this adoration has been reborn everywhere in the Church, as we saw and heard in the Synod on the Eucharist," Benedict XVI said.

He continued: "Certainly with the conciliar constitution on the liturgy, all the wealth of the Eucharistic was particularly rediscovered, the celebration where the Lord's will is fulfilled: He gives himself to us and we respond giving ourselves to him."

But now "we have rediscovered" that "the ability to celebrate his sacrifice and in this way enter into sacramental, almost corporal communion with him, loses its profundity and human richness if adoration is lacking, adoration as the act that follows receiving Communion," the Holy Father said.

"Adoration," he added, "is to enter into profound heartfelt communion with the Lord, who makes himself bodily present in the Eucharist."

Who attempted the assasination of John Paul II?

2006-03-10T15:52:00.000-05:00

John Allen had an excellent comment on the subject in an interview for CNN:

Last week, I was asked by CNN to do a couple of interviews on the report by a commission of the Italian Parliament which asserted "beyond any reasonable doubt" that the Soviet Union was behind the 1981 assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II.

When time allows, TV producers generally like to do a "pre-interview," going over possible questions and answers in order to prepare the host who's actually going to conduct the interview. Generally, these pre-interviews cover far more ground than the on-air appearance. I like doing them, in part because I see it as a bit of continuing education for colleagues in the secular press on the subject of religion, a field that's often terra incognita.

My pre-interview for the bit on the commission's report was a classic example.

After discussing the mechanics of the commission report, the producer asked me about John Paul's 2005 book Memory and Identity, in which the pope said of the assassination attempt that "someone else planned it, someone else commissioned it." She asked if John Paul had in mind the Soviets or some other intelligence service.

"Not necessarily," I replied. "He may not have been referring to any human agents at all."

There was a moment of silence, then the producer said simply, "Fascinating."

I explained that neither John Paul nor senior Vatican officials had ever pressed very hard to unearth the chain of causation behind Mehmet Ali Agca's actions in 1981. In part, this is because Ali Agca has given varying accounts; in part, it's because incontrovertible proof is a rare commodity in this sort of affair.

Deeper than that, however, I suspect John Paul felt he already knew the answer. The pope saw the events of his life through the lens of faith, against a broader cosmic backdrop, so he believed the ultimate author of the assassination attempt was the force of evil let loose in the world. By the same logic, he believed it was the hand of Our Lady of Fatima that saved his life on her Feast Day, May 13.

My producer friend's reaction was not derision or critique, but surprise. It had simply not occurred to her that a pope might interpret an attack against himself in terms of supernatural causation.

Without belaboring the point, this illustrates a broad problem with much media coverage of religion. It's not that coverage is intentionally unfair, which the great majority of the time it's not. The problem is rather that some basic assumptions religious believers make about the world just don't come naturally to many reporters and producers.

In covering religion, journalists would do well to remember that the supernatural remains a powerful explanatory concept for legions of believers -- popes included.

"Patriarch of the West"

2006-03-10T15:49:00.000-05:00

Without any fanfare, Benedict XVI last week set aside a traditional title of the Roman Pontiff for roughly 1,500 years, "Patriarch of the West."

For a lucid study of what this might mean, read John Allen's Report today on the National Catholic Reporter's website.

Interesting comment on the Da Vinci Code movie

2006-03-10T15:38:00.000-05:00

Mark Shea posted an interesting comment regarding the Da Vinci Code phenomenon:

One of the fascinating things about the DVC Phenom is how small-minded True Believers are. Brown's thesis, at the end of the day, is "A dead rabbi had a girlfriend." For some reason, this claim is treated as earth-shattering and important, but the claim "God became man, was killed on a cross and rose from the dead" is treated as ho-hum dusty dogma suitable only for pettifogging theologians. Whatever else this is, it's a spectacular failure of a sense of proportion....

Does Easter arouse in us as much enthusiasm and interest as Brown's novel? Good question!

Mystical Images of Lent

2006-03-09T22:13:00.000-05:00

This Lent Ronald Rolheiser is doing a series on Mystical Images. The second in the series is posted: Sweating Blood in the Garden.

His father told him as a child: Unless you sweat blood you will never be faithful. Now he finds in Jesus struggle in the garden an icon of love and fidelity:

the fact that Gethsemane is a garden (rather than in a temple, a boat, or a mountain-top) tells us something too. Archetypally a garden is a place of love, a place of delight, a place to drink wine with friends, a place of intimacy. Conversely, that also makes it the place where love is lost, where one feels the deepest kind of loneliness, and where one suffers emotional crucifixion.

Thus, it's Jesus, the lover, who sweats blood in the garden. What he suffers there is the emotional agony that sometimes comes on us as the price of love. What Jesus sweats there is a lover's anguish. What is that?

Several years ago, there was a TV series entitled, Thirty Something. One of the episodes ran this way:

A group of men had gathered for a "men-only" party at a hotel. One of the men at party, a married man, found himself attracted to one of the hotel managers, a young woman who was on duty that night, in charge of the hospitality. He had to deal with her all evening in terms of making arrangements for food, drink, and music. She was attracted to him too and as the evening went on their bond grew and, though nothing but practical conversation was exchanged, the romantic chemistry between them began to intensify. Each sensed it without, of course, revealing it to the other.

As the evening drew to a close, both did what comes naturally, they lingered near each other and found every kind of practical excuse to prolong their contact, without really knowing what to say to each other, but sensing that there was a special connection that they were reluctant to break off.

Finally, it was time to part. The man stalled, thanking her one last time for what she'd done for the group. She, not wanting to lose the moment, took the risk and said to him: "I very much enjoyed meeting you. Would you like to get together again sometime?"

He, guiltily fingering his wedding ring and apologizing for not being more forthright, did what too few of us would have the honesty and courage to do. He sweated a little blood and then said to her: "I'm sorry, but I'm married. I need to go home to my wife."

My dad used to say to me: "Unless you can sweat blood sometimes, you will never keep a commitment, in marriage, in priesthood, or in anything else. That's what it takes to be faithful!"

A Lenten Prayer

2006-03-09T22:04:00.000-05:00

O Trinity uncreated and without beginning,
O undivided Unity, three and one,
Father, Son and Spirit, a single God;
Accept this our hymn from tongues of clay
As if from mouths of flame.
—from the Lenten Triodion of the Orthodox Church

It is impossible to be faithful to Scripture and not take Mary seriously

2006-03-09T21:52:00.000-05:00

An excellent article by Rene Laurentin commenting on the joint declaration by the Anglican and Roman Catholic Commission on Mary: grace and hope in Christ. He seeks to address the demotion of Mary in Catholic life in recent decades. Article is in 30 Days.

How can I love doing God's will: Benedict's Encyclical a Byte at a Time

2006-03-08T09:23:00.000-05:00

The authentic content of love, since antiquity, Benedict defines as the loved and the lover wanting the same thing and rejecting the same thing. God and myself wanting the same thing and rejecting the same thing. Surely a purified love leads to this as its goal. A similarity between my desire, my thought, my will, my preferences, and those of God. Benedict states it this way:

The love-story between God and man consists in the very fact that this communion of will increases in a communion of thought and sentiment, and thus our will and God's will increasingly coincide: God's will is no longer for me an alien will, something imposed on me from without by the commandments, but it is now my own will, based on the realization that God is in fact more deeply present to me than I am to myself.[10] Then self- abandonment to God increases and God becomes our joy (cf. Ps 73 [72]:23-28). (no. 17)

Is Love a Feeling--Benedict's Encyclical a Byte at a Time

2006-03-08T09:16:00.000-05:00

Is love a feeling? Can it be produced at will? Can we be commanded to love? Important questions. Can we be commanded to love God or our neighbor or can we expected to do so only if we feel like it?

Benedict's answer is profound:

God does not demand of us a feeling which we ourselves are incapable of producing. He loves us, he makes us see and experience his love, and since he has “loved us first”, love can also blossom as a response within us.

In the gradual unfolding of this encounter, it is clearly revealed that love is not merely a sentiment. Sentiments come and go. A sentiment can be a marvellous first spark, but it is not the fullness of love. Earlier we spoke of the process of purification and maturation by which eros comes fully into its own, becomes love in the full meaning of the word. It is characteristic of mature love that it calls into play all man's potentialities; it engages the whole man, so to speak. Contact with the visible manifestations of God's love can awaken within us a feeling of joy born of the experience of being loved. But this encounter also engages our will and our intellect. Acknowledgment of the living God is one path towards love, and the “yes” of our will to his will unites our intellect, will and sentiments in the all- embracing act of love. But this process is always open-ended; love is never “finished” and complete; throughout life, it changes and matures, and thus remains faithful to itself.

Thus, we encounter again one of the major keys of the encyclical: the need for purification if our love, our sentiment, is to be truly mature and life-giving.

A Good Summary of Current Pro-Life Legislation Battles

2006-03-08T09:12:00.000-05:00

An accessible article that summarizes what is happening with pro-life legislation across the US, along with pros and cons concerning the timing of seeking these bans on abortion.

New Catholics this Easter

2006-03-08T09:03:00.000-05:00

In the Archdiocese of Washingon, 1,233 people gathered in the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception for the Rite of Election and Call to Continuing Conversion, a liturgy marking the final period of preparation before the sacraments of initiation at Easter. The liturgy is held each year on the first Sunday of Easter. This number is the highest number for the past several years.

In 2004, 155,000 adults in the US were baptized or confirmed as Catholic on Easter.

"Welcome to full Communion," said Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, archbishop of Washington, after each of the two ceremonies held on Saturday afternoon. "You knew you needed something more than you had. ... Somehow, over all the noise of the world, you heard the Lord say, 'I want you to hear I love you, and I want you to come into My family.'?"

Benedict XVI Live

2006-03-08T08:47:00.000-05:00

The Holy Father met with the priests of Romer on March 7, 2006. Departing from any prepared talk he preferred to answer their questions. Fifteen questions and answers are reported by Sandro Magister in www.chiesa. To read them visit:

http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=46491&eng=y

What does being a cardinal of the Church imply?

2006-03-02T13:08:00.000-05:00

From a Zenit interview with the 60-year-old archbishop of Toledo who is on the 15 Church figures scheduled to receive a cardinal's hat at the consistory on Marhc 24th:

A cardinal is he who sheds his blood for the Pope. What does this mean in the present-day context?

Archbishop Cañizares: To be a cardinal is reflected in the [red] color that implies giving witness with the Pope of the faith unto death, if necessary. It is to give witness of the living God and, with Peter, to confess that Jesus Christ is the only Savior, the only hope for the whole of humanity.

It implies living with the Pope, servant of servants, in a life of service and full commitment without any reservations, to spend oneself and exhaust oneself for the hard works of the Gospel, to lose one's life so that the world will believe.

It is to serve in communion, in unbreakable unity with the Successor of Peter; it is to defend the dignity of the injured and poor man, to give him to Jesus Christ.

It is a very beautiful mission, a grace to be able to be associated with the Holy Father in his ministry of confirming the faith, in his ministry of concern for all the Church and of love for all, with that love of which Benedict XVI has spoken to us so beautifully in his encyclical.

Restoring the human being

2006-03-01T10:30:00.000-05:00

Jesus gives men and women total familiarity with the truth and continuously invites them to live in it. It is truth offered as a reality that restores the human being and at the same time surpasses him and towers above him, as a Mystery that embraces and at the same time exceeds the impulse of his intelligence.

Human embryos deserve the same protection as all other human beings

2006-02-28T09:30:00.000-05:00

Human embryos deserve the same protection as all other human beings, Pope Benedict XVI told an audience of scholars on February 27, participants in a conference on the human embryo, organized by the Pontifical Academy for Life.

"The love of God does not distinguish between the newly-conceived infant still in its mother's womb, the baby, the youth, the grown adult or the elderly, because in each of them He sees the sign of His own image and likeness."

The Vatican conference has drawn over 300 experts from around the world to discuss the status of the human embryo prior to implantation in the mother's womb. The Pope acknowledged that the topic is "fascinating but difficult," involving both scientific data and fundamental about the nature of the human person.
However, the Pope observed, the Bible gives clear guidance on the
question, pointing to "the love of God toward all human beings, even before they take form in the mother's womb." God's love, the Pontiff continued, is not conditional, nor is it based on the personal traits of the individual. Every human person, regardless of condition or state in life, bears the image of God. "Human life is a good thing, always and definitively," he insisted.

The nature of life remains a "profound and impenetrable enigma," the Pope said. Science can continue to shed more light on that mystery, he continued, and even furnish stronger grounds for belief. The Holy Father observed that "those who love truth must be aware that research into such profound themes puts us in the position of seeing and almost touching the hand of God."

Da Vinci Code on trial for copying ideas from other books

2006-02-27T14:31:00.000-05:00

Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, claims to have done impeccable research for this fast-moving thriller that has been seen as a frontal assault on Jesus' divinity and the Church. However, it has been well known that his ideas have appeared in books before, namely Holy Blood, Holy Grail, published in 1982, as well as The Woman with the Alabastar Jar, and The Templar Revelation.

In London today Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, appeared before London's High Court to accuse Brown of stealing the whole architecture of research from their book.

Whatever the outcome of the court case, it is even more clear that the far flung ideas that appear in The Da Vinci Code are not fact, but fiction, not history, but imagination. Novels are a powerful means of diseminating ideas on a popular level and many have believed the claims made in the book. However, if you investigate the information supplied in the book about art, the Church, Jesus, Mary Magdalene, the knights templar, the priory of sion, and scripture, it becomes clear that his sources contradict each other and do not carry the weight of historical evidence. And so it remains just a work of fiction, and not exceptionally good fiction at that.

For a good quick read of the facts: The Da Vinci Deception.

Lenten fast for an end to bloodshed

2006-02-27T14:27:00.000-05:00

Responding to a new spate of religious violence in Iraq and in Nigeria, Pope Benedict XVI said in his Sunday audience yesterday:

"God, the Creator and Father of all, will be severe in his judgment of those who shed their brothers' blood invoking His name."

With the season of lent approaching, the Pope suggested that Christians should fast and pray for an end to bloodshed, particularly in the nations where religious conflicts are now flaring.

Will my pet be in heaven with me?

2006-02-27T08:16:00.000-05:00

A creative answer on the Second Spring Question and Answer page:

Why don't animals have souls? Will they be in heaven, or not?

According to St Thomas Aquinas, animals do have souls, as do plants, although he didn't think they would be in heaven (or the resurrected earth). A soul is what animates or makes alive. But every type of creature has its own type of soul, so animals have animal souls, which – in all the animals we know, except the human – does not seem to include faculties beyond those of instinct and feeling. I said 'seem' because we don't necessarily know for sure, and whatever St Thomas says, some creatures, such as the great apes in particular, and maybe dolphins and elephants, not to mention dogs, may have more to them than meets the eye.

Human souls are immortal because we have an ability (through our intelligence or reason) to 'step back' from the world as it appears to our senses, to reflect upon it and choose alternative courses of action, to judge what is true and false, and above all, to recognize and worship God. We are capable of a personal relationship with our Maker, and it is this which makes physical death to be not the end for us.

C.S. Lewis thought that animals could enter the immortal state and be found in heaven by virtue of their relationship with human beings, which in some way 'personalizes' them (in the case of pets, especially). So they come to heaven through us. His friend Charles Williams seemed to suggest (The Place of the Lion) that while individual animals may not be able to transcend the physical state, the species to which they belong are more 'real' than they are, and these are eternal archetypes which we will meet in heaven. So all individual lions, or all individual dogs, or mice, are fragments and glimpses of some great Lion-Angel, or Dog-Angel, or Mouse-Angel. Either way, we should not fear that animals we have loved and lost will not be found again in the place where 'every tear is wiped away' (Rev. 21:4).

The Bible is directed at human beings, and is mainly about them, so we cannot tell much about the fate of animals from reading it. We are free to speculate, as long as we do not lose the important distinction that makes human beings special: our direct relationship with God, not as a species, but as a unique person.

Marriage as a Common Good

2006-02-26T18:45:00.000-05:00

New book announced by Zenit: The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market and Morals, edited by two professors from Princeton and the University of Chicago.

Marriage's role as a public institution is increasingly under attack. In the midst of pressures for legalization of same-sex marriage, formal recognition of de facto couples, and the continuing problem of divorce, the traditional view of marriage is no longer clear to many people.

But a volume of essays just-published collects an impressive array of evidence by leading scholars defending marriage and arguing that it serves the common good. "The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, and Morals" (Spence Publishing) is edited by Robert P. George and Jean Bethke Elshtain, professors at Princeton University and the University of Chicago, respectively.

Elshtain notes in the book's foreword that nobody is left untouched by the marriage debate, because it is such a pervasive institution in society. Discourse over the future of marriage, however, has become increasingly fractious as groups such as same-sex couples demand recognition of their "rights."

An underlying theme in the book, she continues, is the conviction that altering the institution of marriage will have profound and perhaps unintended consequences for ourselves as individuals, and for society in general.

In all observed societies some form of marriage exists, comments English philosopher Roger Scruton in his chapter. Not only does it play a vital role in handing on the work of one generation to the next, but it also protects and nurtures children, is a form of social and economic cooperation, and regulates sexual activity.

Long-linked to religion, the marriage tie in recent times has faced a steady de-sacralization. As well, social constraints tying husband and wife have diminished to the point where marriage has left behind the Christian undertaking of "till death do us part," and now resembles more a short-term contract.

Indeed, this loss of the religious aspect of marriage played a key role its weakening, Scruton argues. A sacred vow is a far more binding commitment than a civil promise. And little by little, the state has loosened the marital tie, to the point where, he contends, we now approach "serial polygamy." But these rescindable civil unions cannot carry out the traditional functions. In fact, they serve principally to "amplify the self-confidence of the partners," he maintains, and cannot guarantee security to the children.

Iraq--a responsible transition

2006-02-26T16:21:00.000-05:00

I was one of those who questioned the morality and the responsible use of information that led up to the Iraq war. I did a lot of research at the time, and today as I read the newspapers I see all that I had feared would happen. So what is the best course of action today as the violence escalates seemingly out of our control? Do we cut and run? Would this be the best for the Iraqi people? Do we have a responsibility for the nation we are building, and if so, what is the extent of that responsibility? Does the fact that we imposed ourself on Iraq in a preemptive war that we now see clearly had no connection to the 911 attacks in this country give us the permission to pull out? Can an unjust war make a just peace?

These questions were taken up by Gerard F. Powers, directory of policy studies at the University of Notre Dame and former director of the Office of International Justice and Peace of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. The article in the March 6 edition of America is well worth the read for some clear-headed ethical discussion of the situation the US finds itself in with regard to Iraq. I quote here the final two paragraphs:

The United States has made some progress in meeting the criteria for an ethical exit from Iraq, especially in re-establishing political institutions, but much greater progress could have been made, and must still be made. From failures to prepare for looting or provide adequate troop levels, to the decision not to seek substantial new funding for reconstruction, U.S. policy has suffered from a moral failure: it has willed the ends but not the means. It is probably not too late to correct course, but valuable time and credibility have been lost.

Even if the United States had better matched ends and means, Iraq could not be expected to overcome decades of devastation and despotism in a few short years. Given my moral opposition to the U.S. intervention, I wish I could agree with Tom Hayden that “the Iraq war is not worth another minute in lost lives, lost honor, lost taxes, lost allies.” An ethic of obligation prevents me from doing so. The United States has imposed itself on Iraq. It cannot, in good conscience, withdraw until it has exhausted the long-term process of helping Iraqis through a period of what the U.S. bishops call “a responsible transition.” An ethic of obligation must incorporate a hard-headed calculus of the efficacy of occupation. The futility of U.S. efforts must be very clear, however, in order to override the heavy obligations the nation owes the Iraqi people. The U.S. presence is no doubt contributing to the insurgency, but it would be worse if the United States embarks, as it might be doing, on a slow, quiet version of “cut and run.” This could leave Iraq a festering, failed state that is a source of regional instability and global terrorism.

We are not at the point in Iraq that we were in 1971, when the U.S. bishops concluded that the war in Vietnam was futile and its harms were disproportionate to any good that could be achieved. Even if we are fortunate never to reach that point in Iraq, the moral conundrum posed by the dilemma we face there should prove, if further proof were needed, the moral bankruptcy of preventive war.

Most of the Catholics I know...

2006-02-24T09:00:00.000-05:00

A delightful article answering people's skepticism about the value of Catholicism based on their experience with actual Catholics:

Most of the Catholics I know don't take it seriously. ...
I'm still in the Baptist Church because I don't see enough fruits coming from the Catholic Church. ...
How can the claims of the Catholic Church be true when so many Catholics are so dead? ...

I wish I had known about this article a few months ago when someone e-mailed me with this exact questions.