This is just the beginning . . .

Embryonic stem-cell research is now to be funded by the Federal Government, putting tax dollars to work cannibalizing the smallest and most defenseless humans.

In addition on Friday the Associated Press announced:

President Barack Obama will sign an executive order later Friday ending the ban on federal funds for international groups that promote or perform abortion, officials said.

It is a move certain to please liberals and other abortion-rights advocates, and the reversal was expected in the Democrat’s first week as president.

The so-called “Mexico City policy” has been reinstated and then reversed by Republican and Democratic presidents since Repulican President Ronald Reagan established it in 1984. President Bill Clinton then ended the ban, but President George W. Bush re-instituted it in 2001 as one of his first acts in office.

The result is that the number of innocent and defenseless unborn children killed each year will soar.

The day after the inauguration, the White House webpage was refreshed with this pledge from the new administration to turn the "Lesbian-Gay-Bi-sexual-Trans-sexual" agenda into social and legal reality:

• Expand Hate Crimes Statutes: In 2004, crimes against LGBT Americans constituted the third-highest category of hate crime reported and made up more than 15 percent of such crimes. President Obama cosponsored legislation that would expand federal jurisdiction to include violent hate crimes perpetrated because of race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, or physical disability. As a state senator, President Obama passed tough legislation that made hate crimes and conspiracy to commit them against the law.

• Fight Workplace Discrimination: President Obama supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and believes that our anti-discrimination employment laws should be expanded to include sexual orientation and gender identity. While an increasing number of employers have extended benefits to their employees' domestic partners, discrimination based on sexual orientation in the workplace occurs with no federal legal remedy. The President also sponsored legislation in the Illinois State Senate that would ban employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

• Support Full Civil Unions and Federal Rights for LGBT Couples: President Obama supports full civil unions that give same-sex couples legal rights and privileges equal to those of married couples. Obama also believes we need to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and enact legislation that would ensure that the 1,100+ federal legal rights and benefits currently provided on the basis of marital status are extended to same-sex couples in civil unions and other legally-recognized unions. These rights and benefits include the right to assist a loved one in times of emergency, the right to equal health insurance and other employment benefits, and property rights.

• Oppose a Constitutional Ban on Same-Sex Marriage: President Obama voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2006 which would have defined marriage as between a man and a woman and prevented judicial extension of marriage-like rights to same-sex or other unmarried couples.

• Repeal Don't Ask-Don't Tell: President Obama agrees with former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili and other military experts that we need to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. The key test for military service should be patriotism, a sense of duty, and a willingness to serve. Discrimination should be prohibited. The U.S. government has spent millions of dollars replacing troops kicked out of the military because of their sexual orientation. Additionally, more than 300 language experts have been fired under this policy, including more than 50 who are fluent in Arabic. The President will work with military leaders to repeal the current policy and ensure it helps accomplish our national defense goals.

• Expand Adoption Rights: President Obama believes that we must ensure adoption rights for all couples and individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation. He thinks that a child will benefit from a healthy and loving home, whether the parents are gay or not.

One feels the walls closing in. The price to be paid for holding alternative moral positions will almost surely increase with each passing day. As I've said before, the Tolerance Vigilantes are saddling up, the lawyers accompanying them no doubt reassured by the fact that the new president will be appointing a vast number of new judges, chosen for their commitment to the above mentioned view of the world.

Our children will soon be taught that Christian morality -- which most of their parents still try to instill at home -- is vile and odious.

Congratulations to those Catholics who cheered for (or winked at) the Obama revolution and thereby encouraged their fellow Christians to do likewise.

Fr. Tom Kraft

Fr. Tom Kraft

Yesterday, Fr. Tom Kraft left this world, and he left it a better world for his having graced it with his joy, love, and faith.

I posted something about Fr. Tom after meeting him on a recent visit to Seattle, here. And Mark Shea posted a most moving tribute to him on his blog here.

My this extraordinary man of faith rest in peace.

And, oh by the way . . .

After the all culinary talk in early posts about me and humble pie, it occurs to me that exactly none of those who supported Mr. Obama after either underestimating his commitment to an across the board abortion on demand ideology or subordinating the abortion issue to this or that item purportedly higher on the moral agenda -- precisely none of those folks have offered to eat humble pie if their rosy predictions prove unfounded.

To mix culinary metaphors: what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Clarification . . .

In yesterday's post about the inauguration of Barack Obama, I said: "I would like nothing better than to acknowledge that I was wrong and forthwith to eat great huge helpings of humble pie."

A comment by Dennis took exception, and it appears to me that he took my remarks to mean that I was already willing to acknowledge that my deep reservations about an Obama presidency were wrong. That is most assuredly not the case. The new president's action on the life issues, as important to me as to Dennis, will be pivotal as far as my assessment of his presidency are concerned.

There were Obama supporters who assured us that he was more moderate on these issues than his record and his rhetoric suggested. We'll see about that. In the meantime, I stick by the serious concerns I earlier expressed.

But for the love of God and the good of the world, I pray that someday, in retrospect, Mr. Obama will have proved to be a defender of life from conception to natural death. At which point my huge helping of humble pie would be served up and dutifully consumed. Then and then only.

We have a new president . . .

All of us should hope and pray that President Obama goes down in history as a great president, for we are at a critical moment in history, and the United States cannot avoid being a major influence on how the challenges of our time are resolved.

I have expressed serious reservations about Mr. Obama, but I would like nothing better than to acknowledge that I was wrong and forthwith to eat great huge helpings of humble pie.

The Dalai Lama

In the last post, I saluted George Bush for his work on behalf of the unborn. No shoes were thrown in my direction. Good thing, too. For thanks to Athos over at Chronicles of Atlantis we have this from The Times of India:

The Dalai Lama, a lifelong champion of non-violence on Saturday candidly stated that terrorism cannot be tackled by applying the principle of ahimsa because the minds of terrorists are closed.

"It is difficult to deal with terrorism through non-violence," the Tibetan spiritual leader said delivering the Madhavrao Scindia Memorial Lecture here.

He also termed terrorism as the worst kind of violence which is not carried by a few mad people but by those who are very brilliant and educated.

"They (terrorists) are very brilliant and educated...but a strong ill feeling is bred in them. Their minds are closed," the Dalai Lama said.

He said that the only way to tackle terrorism is through prevention. The head of the Tibetan government-in-exile left the audience stunned when he said "I love President George W Bush." He went on to add how he and the US President instantly struck a chord in their first meeting unlike politicians who take a while to develop close ties.

National Sanctity of Human Life Day

President Bush has made some mistakes, perhaps the biggest due, not to the right-wing ideology which his detractors discern in all his actions, but to his naive generosity of spirit. For he assumed that the kind of democracy the West has enjoyed, and which was dependent on the Judeo-Christian foundations of Western civilization, could be readily grafted onto cultures with no such foundations. He may yet be proven correct in this assumption, but the indications are not all that promising.

Be that as it may, history will treat President Bush far, far better than he has been treated by his contemporary critics. In one area especially he has earned a great debt of gratitude: his defense of the unborn. Characteristically, on his final day in the White House he declared January 18th to be "National Sanctity of Human Life Day." The text of the declaration is a stirring appeal to noble principles that we have lately forgotten. Here it is:

National Sanctity of Human Life Day, 2009
A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America

All human life is a gift from our Creator that is sacred, unique, and worthy of protection. On National Sanctity of Human Life Day, our country recognizes that each person, including every person waiting to be born, has a special place and purpose in this world. We also underscore our dedication to heeding this message of conscience by speaking up for the weak and voiceless among us.

The most basic duty of government is to protect the life of the innocent. My Administration has been committed to building a culture of life by vigorously promoting adoption and parental notification laws, opposing Federal funding for abortions overseas, encouraging teen abstinence, and funding crisis pregnancy programs. In 2002, I was honored to sign into law the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which extends legal protection to children who survive an abortion attempt. I signed legislation in 2003 to ban the cruel practice of partial-birth abortion, and that law represents our commitment to building a culture of life in America. Also, I was proud to sign the Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004, which allows authorities to charge a person who causes death or injury to a child in the womb with a separate offense in addition to any charges relating to the mother.

America is a caring Nation, and our values should guide us as we harness the gifts of science. In our zeal for new treatments and cures, we must never abandon our fundamental morals. We can achieve the great breakthroughs we all seek with reverence for the gift of life.

The sanctity of life is written in the hearts of all men and women. On this day and throughout the year, we aspire to build a society in which every child is welcome in life and protected in law. We also encourage more of our fellow Americans to join our just and noble cause. History tells us that with a cause rooted in our deepest principles and appealing to the best instincts of our citizens, we will prevail.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 18, 2009, as National Sanctity of Human Life Day. I call upon all Americans to recognize this day with appropriate ceremonies and to underscore our commitment to respecting and protecting the life and dignity of every human being.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fifteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.

GEORGE W. BUSH

The Incarnation . . .

This month's Emmaus Road Initiative theme is: "Why did it take the Incarnation to save us?"

I am beginning this month's reflections with an extended quotation from Hilaire Belloc's The Battleground: Syria and the Seed Plot of Religion, which was recently highlighted on the Ignatius Insight blog:

The central thing in the business of Europe is the Doctrine of the Incarnation: the affirmation that God had appeared among men, and the denial thereof. From the first public announcement of that affirmation about A.D. 29-33, it has been the main issue dividing all men of the Graeco-Roman world, moulding and unmoulding our society. . . .

Let there be no error; the question is fundamental not only to that time but to our own. It remains the root question for those who ridicule the doctrine, for those who are indifferent to it, and for those who would defend it. With Jesus Christ as God incarnate there is one view of the world. With Jesus Christ as a Prophet, a model, or a myth, there is another: and the one view is mortal enemy to the other.

There had been presented before the world by this new thing, the Christian Church--this Ecclesia, this new society which . . . changed the values of human action, and the nature of social life. Despair, which the old pagan civilisation universally admitted, from which it turned away its eyes by following pleasure on the one hand, however shameful, or honour on the other, however sterile; despair, Epicurean or Stoic, was, by the Christian hope, denied its empire. . . .

If that claim to Divinity were abandoned by posterity . . . The hope was lost . . .

I will post other quotes and excerpts from this month's ERI as time permits.

Anti-Semintism is too polite a term . . .

Mr friend, Jeff Hendrix, writes me with this question:

In light of the mounting "protests" by Muslims and mob-supporters of Israel's move on Gaza, I wonder why the silence regarding what is obvious, to me, at least, that the right to legitimate defense by Israel as a nation is seen as another trip-wire to scapegoat Jews world-wide?

I cannot speak for all "Girardians" of course. Those influenced by Girard's work have widely varying opinions about many things. I would hope that few, if any, would defend Hamas, which after all expresses its genocidal intentions explicitly and emphatically. I would also hope that few would be playing the moral-equivalency game so lately fashionable, a fashion that allows one to strike a moral pose without having to take a moral stand.

As one who has tried to incorporate Girard's work in both my personal life and in my political and moral assessments, and at Jeff's urging, here are a few thoughts. (I wish I had more time to substantiate them and nuance them, but I am in the midst of the Emmaus Road Initiative cycle of talks and have only limited time available for blogging.)

The new European amalgamation is short on glue, on something that binds peoples together. Economic self-interest is not sufficient. Having declined to even mention Europe's Christian foundations in the E.U. constitution, something had to be found on which European's could agree, and, as any Girardian can tell you, the easiest and cheapest form of social glue is a shared contempt for something or someone on whom collective animosities and frustrations could be safely vented, with no fear of reprisals. For the last few years, George W. Bush filled this role, and he saved Europe from confronting its rudderlessness by serving as its piñata. But, alas, he is leaving office, to be replaced by a man for whom Europe has unbounded affection.

In such an emergency, a new repository for European animosities and anxieties must be found. As fate would have it, at the appointed hour the Israelis finally decided to dismantle the Hamas deathworks and, in doing so, they gave Islamic fanatics and their enablers and assorted antisemites a familiar scapegoat: the Jews.

The word "antisemitism" is too venerable a term for what is happening today throughout the Middle East and -- more alarmingly -- throughout Europe and other once healthy strongholds of Western Civilization. Many have observed that the question about the future of Europe is whether what will emerge is a Europeanized Islam (that is the optimistic scenario) or an Islamicized Europe. In light of these "peace demonstrations" and the reaction to them by politicians and the press, the latter outcome seems increasingly more likely.

In the aftermath of the Israeli assault on Hamas -- a long-overdue response to incessant attacks intentionally aimed at Israeli civilians -- what we are seeing is Jew-hated pure and simple. It is driven by Islamic radicals who have made no effort whatsoever to disguise their genocidal intentions. But the "Heil Hitler!" salutes, the chants about finishing what Hitler began, the placards urging the rebuilding of the gas ovens -- these little pieces of madness have been able to magically assimilate the hard-right and the hard-left in Europe and elsewhere, including here in the U. S.

Here, for example, is a comment left on the PBS website expressing agreement with Bill Moyers' condemnation of Israel for its incursion into Gaza:

"The irony of it all is the Jews who believe they are ‘chosen'...better than anyone else, and entitled by God to kill and steal homes and land...are shooting themselves in the foot. Madoff, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, all Jewish American companies and investors, lied to the American people about their true financial status, and have sunk us all..."

Examples abound, most discretely ignored by the liberal media, but documented in irrefutable detail on countless blogs and new-media outlets. Sanity on this controversial topic can also be found, but not often in the places once thought to be its natural repository. Here are a few places where I found it: here, and here, and here, and here, and here.

Decent people must repudiate this madness without equivocation.

Examples abound, most discretely ignored by the liberal media, but documented in irrefutable detail on countless blogs and new-media outlets. Sanity on this controversial topic can also be found, but not often in the places once thought to be its natural repository. Here are a few places where I found it: here, and here, and here, and here, and here.

Decent people must repudiate this madness without equivocation.

From Houston . . .

Last weekend I was in Seattle for the Emmaus Road Initiative session at Blessed Sacrament Parish, a Dominican parish near the University of Washington campus.

I stayed in the Dominican Priory next to the church, where six Dominican priests live. A day or so before I arrived, one of the priests, Fr. Tom Kraft, a man in his mid-50s who has been struggling with cancer for almost a year, was told that he had perhaps two weeks to live. At the time of my visit, however, Fr. Tom was not yet entirely bedridden, and to my surprise, he came down to join the small community for dinner my first night at the Priory. He was of course thin and pale, but except for that one would hardly have known that he was facing imminent death. During dinner, he was engaging and curious and showed real interest in the various topics that were being discussed at the table. It was clear that he had a keen sense of humor along with a deep faith. Needless to say, I was struck by his graciousness.

But it was only later that evening, when 20 or so young people whom Fr. Tom had influenced and befriended at the Newman Center at U. W. came to the priory to say vespers with Fr. Tom that I found myself deeply moved. He chatted with his young friends in the most personal way, asking many of them for details about what they were doing and so on. After a while, he took out his breviary and led them in vespers. Even though he was obviously in pain, which occasionally halted his speech, he prayed beautifully, as one who has grown familiar with Christ.

After prayers, he chatted a while longer before bidding each of his young visitors farewell for the last time. These parting embraces were filled with emotion for Fr. Tom and for his friends.

I am not a total stranger to death, and Fr. Tom's graciousness obviously reminded me of Liz's journey into death. Like Liz, Fr. Tom was fully aware of how few hours he had left and he filled those hours with remarkable faith and tenderness.

As the gathering was coming to a close, Fr. Tom said, almost offhandedly: "I'm not 100% ready." Then after a pause due either to physical pain or emotion, he said: "But I'm in the high 90s." He then said he figured that that was enough to get the job done.

Please keep Fr. Tom Kraft in your prayers. He is a living saint, and nothing that happens in the next couple of weeks will alter that.

Fr. Neuhaus

As Fr. Neuhaus nears the threshold, I remember this poem by Edmund Waller (1606-1687) which he quoted in the October issue of First Things:

The seas are quiet when the winds give o’er;
So calm are we when passions are no more.
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal that emptiness which age descries.
The soul’s dark cottage, batter’d and decay’d,
Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made;
Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become
As they draw near to their eternal home.
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view
That stand upon the threshold of the new.

God bless Richard John Neuhaus, the Lord's faithful servant.

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus

Please keep Fr. Neuhaus in your prayers. He is near death in New York.

ERI Outtakes - - Fall of 2008

A special welcome to those who might be visiting this blog for the first time in response to a recent Cornerstone Forum Newsletter . . .

Since I am often asked for the written notes of my Emmaus Road Initiative talks, I have decided to post outtakes from my notes as occasional blog entries. When I do this, I will include a link to the free downloadable version of the talk and to the web-page where CDs of the talk can be ordered.

Below are three very brief outtakes from each of the the three Fall sessions of the Emmaus Road Initiative. As we master the relevant technologies, we may be posting short audio and video clips as well. If you are interested in our work, you can "subscribe" to the weblog and be notified when a new item is posted by clicking here.

This is from the September session of the Emmaus Road Initiative, on CD #1 in the series, entitled: "The Present Time."

The confusions which the “Rights Discourse” fosters are not exclusively cultural, moral and political. There are subtle but significant personal and spiritual dangers as well. Plato’s said that: “The regime in the city shapes the regime in the soul.” So it does.

Where the rhetoric of rights is the touchstone of social affairs and the cornerstone of jurisprudence, "each thing meets in mere oppugnancy." [Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida] Such a culture is spiritually toxic, especially for those trying to live a Christian life, for a social order based on constantly competing rights tends to foster an adversarial and defensive form of personal autonomy, corrosive of a shared sense of meaning and purpose, and in sharp contrast to the Christian vocation to participate in the Trinitarian Life of Self-Donation and the sacramental life of the ecclesial communion that is its earthly analogue.

To download a free audio file of the September ERI session,
click HERE.

To order a CD of the September ERI session,
click HERE.

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This excerpt is from the October session of the Emmaus Road Initiative, on CD #2 in the series, entitled: "Creation and Fall: Why Are We Here?"

Speaking of John Paul II’s decision to put emphasis on marriage and family, Monsignor Livio Melina of the Lateran University said:

"He understood that to overcome this crisis, it's not enough to repeat some moral norms. What was needed also and above all, was to deepen a theological anthropology, the foundation of Christian life."

The Emmaus Road Initiative is concerned with theological anthropology. In the interest of developing such an anthropology, we begin by asking about "hominization," the emergence of humanity. The question is: "When and how did humanity emerge?

The strangest and most obvious fact about the emergence of humans is this: "The first human who ever lived did not have human parents."

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To download a free audio file of the October ERI session,
click HERE.

To order a CD of the October ERI session,
click HERE.

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This is from the November session of the Emmaus Road Initiative, on CD #3 in the series, entitled: "What is Happening in History? -- History and Hope"

As the Australian theologian Tracy Rowland notes: “The possibilities for participation in the life of the Trinity can be either thwarted or enhanced by cultures which are more or less impervious or receptive to grace and the cultivation of virtue.” So, as I have said in previous sessions, culture matters. For not only the willingness to consider the Christian proposal but the ability to experience Christian truth is profoundly determined by cultural influences, most of which today predispose those exposed to them to a superficial and unappealing view of Christianity and blind them to its incomparable role in ennobling our lives and shaping our civilization.

Passing on Christian faith and thereby preserving what is best in our civilization is a moral responsibility. Like all moral responsibilities, it can be expected to meet resistance. But as Dante said in the Divine Comedy:

" . . . if, half friend of truth, I mute my rhymes,
I am afraid I shall not live for those
who will think of these days as 'the ancient times.'"

How many today share Dante’s concern for those who to come after us?

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To download a free audio file of the November ERI session,
click HERE.

To order a CD of the November ERI session,
click HERE.

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To make a tax-deductible donation to our work,
click HERE.

Thank you for helping to make our work possible.

From Incarnation to Incorporation . . .

Writing of the mystery of faith, Hans Urs von Balthasar says this:

The background for understanding this mystery lies in the fact that the natural man best acknowledges the gift of himself by passing the gift on in an unstinting service of his fellowman and of the whole human work of cultivation. This service remains something whose scope we can comprehend in one way or another. In contrast, what the Christian’s selfless following of Christ – who died for all – effects in the world of grace cannot be surveyed. We can say only this much: to the extent that a Christian more and more selflessly and unselfishly serves and commits himself to the work of God-in-Christ in the world; allows God, the Church, and his fellowmen to make use of him; opens his heart to the needs of others; considers Christ’s concern, the salvation of all, to be weightier even than his own salvation and welfare; universalizes his prayer to God to include the whole of mankind, especially its most reprobate members; offers himself to God and makes his life, and, if need be, his death, available to God’s saving will – to that very extent God, the Church, and individual human beings can pluck fruit from his tree, and his existence will be all the more spacious and universally accessible. Such a Christian can in some sense grow up to the dimensions of the Church and identify himself with her intentions. He becomes, as the Fathers say, a “man of the Church,” an anima ecclesiastica. [Mary: The Church at the Source, 134-5]

One thing can be said of von Balthasar: he doesnt't lower the bar on the Christian vocation.

Merry Christmas.

Giving Thanks

A friend sent me this story which appeared last month in the Rhode Island Catholic. It's a beautiful reminder.

The boy who changed my life forever

by Sr. Patricia McCarthy, CND
Rhode Island Catholic -- November 27, 2008

I was 19; Douglas was 13. Far more than six years seemed to separate us. I had just taken my first vows as a religious sister and was attending a small college in New York City.

I grew up in a large, happy family, had a good education, many friends and seemingly endless opportunities for choices in life. Douglas was in a large state institution, also in New York City, abandoned at birth, severely physically disabled, paralyzed from the neck down, and had spent his entire life in the same institution with little hope that anything would change in the future.

We met and my life was changed forever.

One day while walking to college with a few other equally young sisters, a car pulled over. A priest opened his window and asked, “How many of you are there?” I answered, “27,” knowing exactly what he meant by his question. There was a string of black-and-white garbed nuns walking to the same college. “I need religion teachers for people in the state institution,” he said hopefully.

A few days later the deal was set. Any who wanted could teach on Sunday morning at the largest state institution in New York. Two buses and an hour of travel got us to the site where 6,000 patients lived, many of them Catholic. I volunteered for the boys who couldn’t walk. A consequence of that fact was that while everyone else taught for 20 minutes and then took their class to Mass, I was left in Building 21 with 12 children in 12 wheelchairs for an hour and a half.

It didn’t take me long to arrange for the old men on walkers to leave their walkers and push a chair over to Building 3 for Mass. Life was good and God was better! I never had to teach, since it took me 20 minutes to get the boys to Mass and another 20 to get them back. We went all year, no matter the weather, until a brutal fall rainstorm hit one Sunday. The boys were sad; I was desperate. What could I possibly teach them?

I started, “God is not only in Building 3; God is right here in our Building 21 and in our hearts.” Douglas perked up and in his very halting, slow, measured voice said, “I already know that. I talk to God every day.”

I stopped mid-sentence and looked at this child, who was abandoned at birth, whose only home had been this institution, whose earthly possessions consisted of a few trinkets in a bag hanging on the back of his wheelchair, who needed help for every action in his life, who had neither family nor friends to visit him, who never had a birthday party or a trip outside Building 21 except for the hospital and Mass. I looked at this child and wondered. Hesitatingly, I asked Douglas, “When do you talk to God?”

Again the halting, struggling attempt to speak, “I talk to God every night before I go to sleep.”

I looked beyond Douglas and the other boys and stared out at the dormitory where bed after bed was lined up, all with identical white sheets and bedspreads, about 40 of them in rows. This was where Douglas slept; this was where Douglas talked to God.

“Douglas, if you want, will you tell us what you say to God every night?” The boys and I waited.

Douglas gave me his most radiant smile, tried to hold straight his unsteady head, and then spoke in a clear, steady voice for the first time I had ever heard. Douglas simply said, “I say, ‘Thank you.’”

Sr. Patricia McCarthy is associate provincial for the Congregation of Notre Dame. For many years she taught troubled children and victims of abuse.

This true story has been illustrated and written as a children's book. To purchase a copy email: pabmccy@aol.com.

Podunk

Podunk has become a word of mild derision for a small and unenlightened town, remote from the sophistication of city life. It turns out, however, that Podunk is an actual place, and it’s just down the road from the little town where I live in central Massachusetts. Podunk was named after a tribe of Algonquians whom the Europeans dubbed the Podunks. There is still a Podunk Road not far from my house, but what was once called Podunk is now East Brookfield, a few miles away from North Brookfield where I live.

Today North Brookfield resembles the “Podunk” of the condescending urban imagination even more than does East Brookfield. It’s a small blue-collar town where people have second jobs to make ends meet. Standing in the middle of town – which you can’t miss – you might think you were in rural Arkansas or West Virginia. There are no traffic lights, no gas station, one grocery store, and no road wider than one lane each way. I live quietly when I’m in town, and I’m out of town most of the time, so I know no one in town well and very few people at all, except for the people at the post office, one or two people at the grocery store and the local auto mechanic.

But North Brookfield is a place where people who try to say things well are vastly outnumbered – thank goodness – by people who try to make things work. And when the chips are down, or the power is out, or the car won’t start, we all need people who can make things work. I love these people, even though I’m sure I’m a puzzle to them. I am in constant admiration of my fellow townspeople. Our town is a little piece of the "Midwest" right here in the otherwise ideologically trendy Massachusetts.

I live a very solitary life here. Months go by without visitors. But my little house sits on the brow of a hill, about a hundred yards from a road that leads into the center of town. There is a large window in the entry room of my home that is visible from the road. So, as I did last year, I put my Christmas tree in front of that window, where it’s more visible to passersby than it is to me. It’s my way of wishing my neighbors a Merry Christmas.

My only real friends in this part of the world are monks at St. Joseph’s Abbey where I go for Lauds and Mass every morning when I’m in town. I’ve gotten to know a number of the monks over the four and a half years that I’ve lived here. Some of them listen to the monthly CDs from the Emmaus Road Initiative talks and regularly assure me of their prayers for our work. With rare exceptions, however, almost the only verbal exchange the monks and I have is when one of them says “The Body of Christ” and “The Blood of Christ” at the Eucharist and I reply “Amen.” Monks are masters at communicating with small and ecclesial gestures, and the Eucharist is an especially opportune occasion for this.

It’s life in Podunk. It has its challenges, but it has its charms as well. I'm grateful for it.

Merry Christmas.

P. S. Speaking of monks, my friend Brother Jonah Wharf is being ordained a priest tomorrow – Saturday, December 20th – at New Melleray Abbey in Iowa. Please keep him in your prayers.

A Long, Loving Look . . .

My cousin Ken Padgett sent me this story. It is apparently circulating on the internet, and for obvious reasons. Some will disparage it as fiction, but it has the ring of truth, and, in any case, it is filled with truth of an unassailable and timeless sort.

The Cab Ride

So I walked to the door and knocked. 'Just a minute', answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor.

After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 90's stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940s movie.

By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets.

There were no clocks on the wall s, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.

'Would you carry my bag out to the car?' she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman.

She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb.

She kept thanking me for my kindness. 'It's nothing', I told her. 'I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated'.

'Oh, you're such a good boy', she said. When we got in the cab, she gave me an address, and then asked, 'Could you drive through downtown?'

'It's not the shortest way,' I answered quickly.

'Oh, I don't mind,' she said. 'I'm in no hurry. I'm on my way to a hospice'.

I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening. 'I don't have any family left,' she continued. 'The doctor says I don't have very long.' I quietly reached over and shut off the meter..

'What route would you like me to take?' I asked.

For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator.

We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl.

Sometimes she'd ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, 'I'm tired. Let's go now.'

We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico.

Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her.

I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.

'How much do I owe you?' she asked, reaching into her purse.

'Nothing,' I said.

'You have to make a living,' she answered.

'There are other passengers,' I responded.

Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly.

'You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,' she said.

'Thank you.'

I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dim morning light. Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life.

I didn't pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift?

What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away?

On a quick review, I don't think that I have done anything more important in my life.
We're conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments.

But great moments often catch us unaware – beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.

PEOPLE MAY NOT REMEMBER EXACTLY WHAT YOU DID, OR WHAT YOU SAID, – BUT – THEY WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER HOW YOU MADE THEM FEEL.

You won't get any big surprise in 10 days if you send this to ten people. But, you might help make the world a little kinder and more compassionate by sending it on.

Thank you, my friend...

Advent is a good time to think about remaining alert for just such graced opportunities.

To be fully incarnated . . .

Hans Urs von Balthasar:

An either-or between Christ and Mary is as impossible as an either-or between Christ as the head and the Church as his body. If Christ is artificially detached from his Mother or his Church, he loses his historical believability in Christian devotion; he becomes something abstract; he becomes one who falls down from heaven like an aerolite and then goes back up without having become rooted concretely in the past or future tradition of human beings.

To be a Catholic is to understand these two sentences and to affirm them.

Diogenes in characteristic form . . .

The newly elected US Congressman:

• was once a former Jesuit novice, before realizing that his calling was to marriage and a secular career.
• remains an active Catholic layman-- in fact, served a term on the National Advisory Council to the US bishops' conference.
• won a special-election victory over an incumbent who is facing bribery charges.
• is the son of immigrants, whose father spent years in a Communist prison camp.
• has worked primarily as an attorney for immigrants.
• is solidly pro-life.

So why isn't Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao a poster boy for Catholic activism? Why isn't be being asked to speak on the campus of every Jesuit university in the country? Why aren't editors of America magazine shaking their pom-poms?

And please don't tell me that America editors don't carry pom-poms.

Link

Prayers for Jeff Hendrix

My good friend, Jeff Hendrix, is in need of prayers. A health issue we hoped had been resolved has returned.

Jeff is one of the great and good souls of whom his friends universally can say: "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers."

Please keep him in your prayers.

Nostalgia for Thanksgiving

I recently pulled one of Hans Urs von Balthasar's books off the shelf to get the citation for a quote I had taken from the book. It was Vol. I of Theo-Drama as it happens. The cover of the book dropped open revealing Liz's signature, for the book was as gift from her. I am in my little cottage in the country at the moment, and there is no one here with whom to share it, so I decided to share it with whomever might pass this way, as apparently you just did. All the better if the visitor knew Liz, who was and is the light of my life.



Liz's inscription in the book she gave me is a typical example of her elegant penmanship. The brain tumor that took her life was in the area of brain controlling language. So as the tumor progressed, Liz lost the ability to speak and to write.

Just as I was surprised to stumble upon the inscription in the book, so a few weeks after Liz's death I found a scrap of paper on which she had scribbled what were very likely the last words she ever wrote. They were from the heart of a woman for whom the Eucharist was the source and center of her life.

These are blessings for which I am immeasurably thankful this Thanksgiving, as I am for all the incomparable blessings I receive from my children and grandchildren and friends.

History takes time and God gives it time.

The loser when the game of dice is done
Remains behind reviewing every roll
Sadly and sadly wiser and alone
The crowd leaves with the winner . . .
Purgatorio, Canto VI: 1-4

Osama bin Laden: "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse."

Some will. Some won't.

Here it comes . . .

I had hoped to believe at least for a while that things are not as bad as I had predicted in my earlier posts they would be, but alas the news is already coming in, suggesting that the political tsunami is on its way.

This from my friend Mark Gordon:

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, offered this moving tidbit:

"Last night, while standing just a few feet from the podium from which our next pro-choice president spoke, I was overcome with pride and emotion. Would it have been possible to react in any other way? I was so proud of what pro-choice America did to make this historic moment possible and I knew in that moment that the electricity I felt in this crowd in Chicago was being felt across the country."

Read it all here.

The fact that the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America was standing a few feet from the podium at which president-elect Obama gave his victory oration says all that needs to be said about how deadly serious he was when he declared: "I will not yield and Planned Parenthood will not yield."

And then this from Piero Tozzi at C-FAM:

Douglas Kmiec, the “pro-life” law professor whose outspoken stumping for Barrack Obama dismayed former allies, recently speculated that the President-elect would likely tap Supreme Court Justices . . . Kmiec’s list includes Yale Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh . . .

Koh is perceived as championing abortion and homosexual rights, pointing to developments in other jurisdictions as indicating a shift in world opinion that should be reflected in constitutional law. This past October, he chaired a panel discussion on “Transnational Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Rights” at a Yale conference which predicted “dramatic changes in the near future” in Supreme Court jurisprudence in these areas.

Read it all here.

It looks for all the world as though the grim predictions were not exaggerated. How I wish they were.

Turning the Page . . .

I am in Wheaton, Illinois in the western suburbs of Chicago. I had lunch today with a friend who is also a member of the Cornerstone Forum board of directors. He has just returned from a trip to the Congo, where he and a few others are helping to build a school in a very poor and very remote Congolese village. What he saw in the Congo, especially in the cities, was grinding poverty, despair, political corruption, and epidemic violence -- a vast country that appears to western eyes to be ungovernable.

Meanwhile in this country, following one of the most contentious elections in recent history, both the losing candidate and the outgoing president extended their congratulations to the president-elect and wished him well in the most heartfelt and sincere way, as he prepared to assume one of the most difficult jobs in the world under some of the most difficult circumstances. What a luxury it is to live in a society where the transition of political leadership -- even after a very divisive and hard fought campaign -- is accompanied by this kind of spirit.

I have made my reservations known about the president-elect's policies regarding the lives of the unborn, the sanctity of traditional marriage, embryo-destructive medical research and similar issues, and I retract none of my concerns, based as they are on explicit commitments he has made to some of his most fervent supporters. That said, however, I share with others a pride in the historic fact that our next president represents a milestone in our long journey away from the racial divisions that have so plagued our nation.

I will be praying for our new president, and I urge you to do so as well. I would like nothing more than to be able to say four years from now that my misgivings about his moral philosophy and political agenda were mistaken. Humble pie is a staple of the Christian diet, and I have had enough helpings of it in my life to have acquired a certain perverse taste for it.

Whatever policies emerge from the new administration, however, the erosion of our culture's moral and religious underpinnings proceeds apace, and we will continue to do our small part in the effort to reverse that trend.

Thank God for the Cistercians

My itinerant life presents major challenges when it comes to retaining a contemplative center. I found this reflection in today's Magnificat wonderfully helpful. Where would we be without the Cistercians? Since my spiritual home – for which I pine while on the road – is St. Joseph’s Abbey near my domestic home, I have feel a special appreciation for the Cistercian charism, which is surely the source of this beautiful reflection by Father André Louf, O.C.S.O., abbot emeritus of the Cistercian monastery of Mont-des-Cats, France:

We sometimes have to stop the furious pace of our activities, know how to pause, to put down our weapons, and fold our arms, to listen at length to the silence of our hearts. It is at times like these that God’s action has some chance of emerging and taking the initiative within us. This only gives the appearance of being easy, especially for the active person used to feeding unconsciously on his own activity – as someone gets used to a drug which he cannot stop using without going through withdrawal. This is, in fact, a matter of going from a well-intentioned activism – not without tangible results – to a certain passivity even within action whose effectiveness is not always immediately perceptible. It is a matter, even at the very heart of action, of not getting so caught up in it that the active person not unknowingly cuts the thread which binds him to his own interiority from which all his activity should spring.

Since posting the earlier blog entry, my introduction to this month's ERI session has gone through a few changes, which I have not bothered to insert into the weblog. I hope those who have some interest in these things will listen to the audio of this month's entire session, either on CD (for those who attend our sessions) or by way of the MP3 audio file which will be on our website within a week or so.

The Old Gil Bailie - Updated: 10/21/08

In a comment below John asks: "Where is the OLD Gil Bailie?"

The answer is that he is older than he was when he was "the old Gil Bailie." In the meantime, he has learned a great deal, and the world has changed a great deal.

Here are my opening remarks (as they now stand; I am half way through the October round of lectures) for this month's Emmaus Road Initiative. The theme this month is "hominization" -- the birth of homo sapiens, but it is essentially a exploration of the Trinitarian and Nuptial mysteries. The controversial introduction helps explain the importance of recovering the anthropological relevance of these mysteries in our time.

Here are my introductory remarks:

Since, as T. S. Eliot wrote in “Little Gidding,” the end of all our exploring will be to arrive at where we started and know the place for the first time,” it behooves us to begin at the beginning, which is in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. For that Trinitarian mystery is not only at the origin of all things, but it is also the great mystery into which Christ came to invite us.

And as it happens, our theme this month – Creation and Fall – returns us precisely to where we started – namely at the birth of humanity itself – and we will be trying to “know the place for the first time.” But before turning to it I feel it my duty to make a few remarks about the contemporary cultural and historical setting which makes this month’s topic especially urgent.

In a rightly ordered world – a world in which the most essential moral and cultural realities are “as American as motherhood and apple pie” – this month’s theme would be the least controversial subject imaginable. With each passing day, however, the gears of a massive cultural revolution grind on, drawing western civilization ever deeper into what John Paul II called “a culture of death,” the certain historical outcome of which – if not reversed – will be the death of western civilization itself.

We will all have to answer to God and posterity for how we conducted ourselves at this critically important moment in our history.

So, I ask your indulgence while I outline the immediate moral and political threshold we – as a culture – are poised to cross in the wrong direction. If my opening remarks seem overly polemical, the argument that justifies them will follow, and I hope you will stick around for it. So if you feel the impulse to walk out, I hope you will resist it, even if only to spite me. For I have a hunch that for every person who walks out on a talk like this I’ll reap a small recompense in the life to come.

I have worked hard on this presentation, so if you you’re going to reject what I have to say I hope you will do me the favor of hanging around long enough to reject the whole of it and not just the first of it.

Speaking to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, on July 17, 2007, today’s Democratic nominee for president was loudly cheered by the largest abortion provider in America when he declared: "The first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That's the first thing that I'd do." The FIRST THING he would do . . . that’s quite a testimony to his political priorities. What is the Freedom of Choice Act?

The Freedom of Choice Act would Eliminate:

• State abortion reporting requirements in ALL 50 states
It would render null and void:
• Laws in 44 states requiring parental notification when minors request abortions
• Laws in 40 states laws restricting late-term abortions
• Laws in 46 states providing conscience protection for individual health care providers
• Laws in 27 states providing conscience protection for institutions
• Laws in 38 states banning partial-birth abortions

The bill would abolish all restrictions on government funding for abortions. Once signed into law, therefore – as the Democratic nominee for president has promised to do – all restrictions on abortions would be eliminated and they would be funded by taxpayers, like it or not. Doctors and nurses would risk losing their jobs if they refuse to cooperate.

But there’s more: The Born Alive Infant Protection Act – which would require medical personnel to provide medical care to children who survive an attempted abortion – passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate – all the pro-abortion politicians voting for it. But the Democratic nominee for President, then a state legislator, led the fight against an identical bill in the Illinois legislature.

Robert George, Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics and former member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights – says that the Democratic nominee for President: “has favored protecting what is literally a form of infanticide.”

In the pagan world, infanticide often took the form of what was delicately referred to as EXPOSURE – leaving the unprotected infant to die out of sight of those who abandoned it. The Born Alive Infant Protection Act prevented the revival of that pagan practice in our day, but the Democratic nominee for president fought vigorously against the Illinois version of that bill.

As Professor George puts it:

he . . . is the most extreme pro-abortion legislator ever to serve in either house of the United States Congress. . . .

To show just how unyielding he is determined to be, the Democratic nominee for president dismissed those who object to this radical proposal in words that cheered the Planned Parenthood gathering:

. . . I am absolutely convinced that culture wars are just so 90’s. Their days are growing dark; it is time to turn the page; we want a new day here in America. We’re tired arguing about the same old stuff. . . . On this fundamental issue, I will not yield and Planned Parenthood will not yield. . . .

Phrases like turning a new page, moving beyond the culture wars, and so on are pure political boiler-plate – the audacity of hype – I would call it. They make it sound as though he has some compromise in mind. The truth is that the plan the Democratic nominee for president proposes for ending the culture war over abortion is to crush the pro-life opponents of abortion with draconian legislation which amounts to the destruction of religious freedom. To the great satisfaction of abortionists, he is also on record as opposing any federal funding for pro-life emergency pregnancy centers that provide alternatives to abortion.

As weary as you and I might be of the culture wars, in the face of such aggressive assertions of the culture of death we must never grow tired of “arguing about the same old stuff,” for the outcome of that argument will determine whether our civilization descends into barbarism or recovers its moral bearings.

His temporizing in the last presidential debate notwithstanding, the Democratic nominee for president made it clear in a Glamour magazine interview that he would apply a pro-abortion litmus test in nominating people for the judiciary and especially the Supreme Court. The next president will fill countless judiciary appointments and is likely have to fill several vacancies on the Supreme Court. If filled with dedicated pro-abortion judges, these appointments will set the nation on a full-steam-ahead culture of death course for decades to come.

Happily, if belatedly, a growing number of Catholic bishops have spoken courageously on the gravity of this situation. As someone who visits Dallas every month, for instance, I’m aware of how forthright Bishop Farrell of Dallas and Bishop Vann of Fort Worth have been on these matters. Their joint statement on the moral responsibility of voters in the upcoming election states unequivocally that abortion is “THE preeminent intrinsic evil of our day,” and that Catholics “are morally obligated to . . . abolish the evil of abortion in America.” Predictably of course, others equivocate, often suggesting that, on balance, foreign policy, economic or environmental issues outweigh the life issues.

Imagine what life was like for the average German in the 1930s. The Jews were being rounded up and sent first to ghettos and then to concentration camps while respectable German politicians sought to “balance” their hand-wringing on those matters by pointing to how clever and compassionate their proposals were for improving the tax code or public transportation or working conditions in the armaments industry. This is our situation today.

What, after all, was the moral monstrosity at the heart of both slavery and the Holocaust? It was that a whole class of human beings were morally and legally invisible and therefore exploitable or expendable at the whim of others. This is the crystal-clear moral center of the abortion issue.

If western civilization abandons the most vulnerable and innocent to abortion, it doesn’t deserve to survive, and if it abandons the institution of marriage, it won’t.

For the other paramount moral and cultural issue of our age – ideologically related to the abortion issue – is the meaning and definition of marriage. On that issue, George Neumayr, editor of Catholic World Report decodes election-year winks and nods when he writes that the Democratic presidential nominee:

. . . goes through the throat-clearing rigamarole of saying that he's opposed to gay marriage, but he isn't. Were he opposed to gay marriage, he wouldn't be sending out letters to gay-rights activists congratulating them on their new marriage licenses; he wouldn't consider Bill Clinton's Defense of Marriage act reactionary; he wouldn't send his wife out to applaud gay-rights activists for torpedoing gay-marriage bans . . .

The dogmatic secularists relentlessly pushing this agenda are quick to say to the rest of us: “just move along; there’s nothing here to see, just a few belated items of social justice, nothing to be concerned about. Let’s get back to the ‘real issues’ we face.” Busy as we are with other things, their reassurance is comforting.

But, with a court decision here and an act of political or ecclesial cowardice there, the screws are tightened. When the Rip Van Winkles awaken and rub their eyes, they will find that their children and grandchildren are being taught in public schools that the deeply held moral principles of their parents are not only wrong but morally odious and socially hateful – a hint of what’s to come as the modern intermission in the world’s persecution of the Church draws to a close and Christian faith once again entails an increasing degree of social opprobrium, legal and financial hardship, and more.

Since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, the number of innocent babies killed in this country alone is at 48.5 MILLION and counting. If the voters elect the presidential candidate who has made his radical commitment to the culture of death appalling clear and his acquiescence in the demise of traditional marriage as clear as political expedience allows – future historians will blame two groups: American journalists and American Catholics, the culpability of neither mitigated by the threat of physical violence. History will judge the former for professional negligence in refusing to apply the same standards of scrutiny to the Democratic nominee that they applied to his opponents, but Catholics will be judged more harshly for a moral failure, especially when the whole sordid episode of abortion becomes as clear in hindsight as the Nazi Holocaust is today. The past is prologue.

SEE THIS.

AND THIS.

Aña and Mike’s Wedding

An opportunity for me to reminisce:

My daughter Aña and her husband Mike Orsi

on their wedding day.

Aña and Mike asked me to read St. Paul's famous passage and offer any thoughts I might have. Several people asked me to post what I said, which just gives me an excuse for indulging in some nostalgia.

First Corinthians 13:1-8

If I speak with the eloquence of men and of angels, but do not have love, I am nothing but sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith enough to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body to be burned, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is never envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way; it does not take offense and is never resentful; it does not gloat over the wrongdoing of others but delights in the truth.
It is endlessly forbearing, always ready to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes.
Love abides. . . . faith, hope, and love: these three abide; and the greatest of these is love.

On the day of his daughter’s wedding, the father of the bride has a thousand things he would like to say. But Aña knows her Dad quite well, and she and Mike have wisely chosen St. Paul’s justly famous hymn to love as a reading for their wedding. Since in this passage St. Paul says pretty much everything there is to say, there was a slight chance that Aña’s Dad would recognize this and have nothing to add to it. It was a brilliant strategy, and it almost worked. But, alas, when a father’s heart is as full as mine is today – as Aña marries the only man on earth worthy of her – I want to add a word of blessing and encouragement.

Aña and Mike, today you formally enroll in the School of Love. You are not entirely new to it; you have been auditing the course for a while; but today begins the exciting part, when you will be taking the course – not for credit but for keeps.

Mediocre as my performance has been, and slow learner that I am, I am still enrolled in that school myself, and I learn something new every day. But the most important things I have learned took me a lifetime to learn. I am only sorry that I didn’t know them when I was your age. So, by way of a blessing, I want to share them with you, but not before returning to St. Paul to emphasize something he says in the passage I just read.

“Love is patient,” St. Paul said, “love is kind.”

“Love is patient; love is kind.” These six words are pure gold. Write them on your hearts, and repeat them to each other.

“Love is patient; love is kind.”

To that I can only add three things which the world we live in today will try its best to hide from you:

The first and greatest is that the secret of happiness is self-sacrifice. Nothing else can make you really happy. This is heresy in our world today; but it is true.

The second is that the secret of intimacy – which is the heart and soul of happiness – is prayer. God is love, and in drawing closer to God in prayer you will draw closer to each other. Prayer is the key to the hidden chamber in the heart where the greatest love is stored. Nothing else will unlock it. So my word of encouragement is: Pray.

As the French philosopher, Maurice Nedoncelle wisely said: “Every human love that omits prayer loses what is finest and most distinctive in the presence of the beloved.”
Pray in the morning. Pray in the evening. Pray at mealtime. Pray together. Pray with your children. Pray when you’re sad or distraught. Pray when you’re joyful. Pray when you feel grateful, and if you don’t feel grateful, pray for a grateful heart.

For the third secret is the secret of gratitude. Life is a gift from God. Be grateful for every moment of it. Gratitude isn’t a response to happiness; it is the path to it. So be grateful. Be grateful in good times and bad, for happiness eludes all but those with a grateful heart.

So my blessing for you is that you will discover these secrets: the secret of self-sacrifice, the secret of prayer and the secret of gratitude, and that having discovered them you will come to know a joy that flows quietly beneath the surface of life, underneath the trials and turmoil that may come your way, subtly reminding you that even heartaches have a religious meaning, and that the only crown worth wearing and the only one that won’t fall off when you stumble is one that has some thorns on it.

Aña’s mother and I love you and give you our most heartfelt blessing, as I do David and Debbie and all these your friends and family.

I pray that God will bless you and your children with great happiness, that you will grow spiritually in one another’s embrace, and that one day you will experience the joy that is in my heart today.

God bless you.

Aña and her Dad

Aña and her Dad at a Father-Daughter Dance
at St. Francis Solano School in the early 1990s.


Aña and her Dad at a Father-Daughter Dance
at Aña's wedding day.

Youthful Maturity vs. Aging Adolescence

In my talks this month, I am repeating something I said in one of the talks last year, namely that in Christianity maturation and rejuvenation go hand-in-hand. We grow in wisdom and age and we grow more childlike at the same time. The secular parody of this -- to grow simultaneously older and more adolescent at the same time -- is on full display in a myriad of ways.

This came to mind this morning when I read over a few things I saw on the internet.

In a morning column, the economist Thomas Sowell, senior fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University said:

"Experience" is often just a fancy word for the mistakes that we belatedly realized we were making, only after the realities of the world made us pay a painful price for being wrong.

Those who are insulated from that pain-- whether by being born into affluence or wealth, or shielded by the welfare state, or insulated by tenure in academia or in the federal judiciary-- can remain in a state of perpetual immaturity. . . .

Even people born into normal lives, but who have been able through talent or luck to escape into a world of celebrity and wealth, can likewise find themselves in the enviable position of being able to choose whether to grow up or not.

This morning as well, Juan Cole, an American professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history, as if to prove Sowell’s point, wrote an article for the widely read online journal Salon, entitled:

What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick

The rambling and predictable article ended with the following sentence:

You can't say you are waging a war on religious extremism if you are trying to put a religious extremist a heartbeat away from the presidency.

It’s the moral equivalency instinct that is triggered by any sense that the ideological bubble is being threatened by realities the ideology can no longer wish away.

Alas, however, Professor Cole is himself a religious man. In the middle of his article, for instance, he puts his professional erudition on display by observing:

As for global warming, green theology, in which Christians and Muslims appeal to Scripture in fighting global warming, is an increasing tendency in both traditions.

Green Theology.

His mistake here, as his co-religionists will have pointed out to him by now, was to use the now-retired term “global warming.” Statistics now show that the earth has been cooling for the last number of years, and, not to be deterred from their faith by facts such as these, the green theologians have renamed the apocalypse. It is now called “climate change,” a way of hedging one’s bets as to which direction that change might take.

On the question of “climate change,” I’m neutral, but on the question of “Green Theology,” I’ll go out on a limb. It’s further evidence of the spiritual crisis among those who fall under G. K. Chesterton’s withering observation that: “When a Man stops believing in God he doesn't then believe in nothing, he believes anything.”

Pro-Choice . . .

Sometimes a person is faced with a choice.

In a brutal Vietnamese prisoner of war camp where he was being tortured, John McCain was faced with a choice: he was offered release. He refused the offer, deciding instead to stay with the fellow prisoners under his command.

Many years later John McCain's wife Cindy was visiting an orphanage run by Mother Theresa. There she faced a choice. In the orphanage she saw an abandoned three-month old Bangladeshi girl in need of medical care. She brought the child to the United States, and the McCains later adopted her. Her name is Bridget; she is seventeen years old.

Early in her fifth pregnancy, Sarah Palin was faced with a choice: The Governor of Alaska, in the throes of a demanding and politically promising public career, she was told that the child she was carrying had Down Syndrome, a text-book case for pro-abortion feminists. Sarah Palin chose to have the child. His name is Trig.

Bristol Palin, herself a 17-year-old and the daughter of Sarah and Todd Palin, faced a choice. In her senior year in high school she got pregnant. She accepted responsibility for her behavior, as did the father of the child, and they plan to marry and provide a loving home for the child they are bringing into the world.

In a speech during the primary season, Barack Obama spoke of his support for abortion -- a support so wholehearted that he voted against a bill in the Illinois legislature banning infanticide. In his speech, Obama -- invoking as always the principle of choice -- defended abortion by saying that if one of his daughters happened to get pregnant he would not want her to be "punished with a child."

Bristol Palin and her future husband are not being punished with a child; they are being blessed with one, though they may not be as fully aware of that right now as they soon will be. But even before they discover the fullness of that blessing they will feel something of the moral maturation that comes to those who do the right thing even when it entails self-sacrifice.

The bitter irony is that the term "pro-choice" is almost exclusively used to justify the refusal to take responsibility for a choice.

"Freedom," said Benedict XVI, "isn't opting out; it's opting in."

What he meant by that was that we are given the gift of freedom so that we can use it in ways that are ennobling and selfless and courageous. We opt in by choosing, not the easy way out, but the responsible way forward.

Aña Bailie

My daughter, Aña, a paramedic who will be married next month to a fantastic young man, Mike Orsi, is on her way to Louisiana to help with the hurricane rescue and relief effort. Keep her in your prayers. Here are some visual aids.

Mike & Aña

Dad & Aña

Point of Order, Madame Speaker . . .

I'm sorry, Madame Speaker, but your repeated reference to the fact that you have five children -- clearly meant to telegraph to attentive Catholics your fidelity to Church teaching -- is entirely irrelevant to the discussion of the Church's teaching on the sanctity of life.

The question is not about the mothering of five children but about the murdering of fifty million of them. Your role in the former is no justification for your role in the latter.

Thanks, however, for clarifying how woefully and blissfully ignorant you are of the last 2000 years of Catholic moral theology on this matter. It helps the rest of us understand, and it gives a glimmer of hope that, once apprised of this tradition, you might become a champion of all those children who will otherwise suffer the violence of the abortionist's cold instruments.

For a very short but very incisive moral guide to voting: the Kansas Bishop's "Moral Principles for Catholic Voters."

Go HERE

One needn't be a Catholic to appreciate the clarity, charity, and moral seriousness of this wonderful reflection.

"Above my pay grade . . ."

I have on more than one occasion found myself using the phrase "above my pay grade" -- mostly in deference to the teachings of the Church and my entirely appropriate humility vis-a-vis the theological tradition over which the Church's Magisterium stands guard. But, alas, thanks to Barack Obama's response to a straightforward question about the moral status of the child in the womb, the phrase "above my pay grade" will now live in infamy for years to come. It may be a generation before the moral duplicity now attached to that phrase finally wears off and some future rhetorician can use it without embarrassment.

I apologize for the photograph that follows. But perhaps if Barack Obama took a long look at it, the moral status of the child in the womb would become something on which he might venture an opinion even at his current pay grade.

Catholic Voters Guide

Just prior to my trip to Oxford and Cambridge, I spoke at a catechetical conference sponsored by the four Catholic dioceses of Kansas. I was very impressed with the bishops I met there, and today I have discovered one of the fruits of their labors. It is a very brief but very substantial Catholic voters guide, which I heartily recommend, not just to Catholics but to anyone concerned with casting a vote in a morally intelligent way.

Go here.

London Heathrow

A picture is worth a thousand words.
Let those with eyes to see see.

Theologia a Cruce

Henri de Lubac:

If theology, according to a much-used equivalent expression perpetuated by St. Thomas at the beginning of the Summa, is the science of the Scriptures, then in truth it may be said that the whole of theology is Theologia Crucis [Theology of the Cross], that is Theologia a Cruce [Theology from the Cross]. For it is the Cross which disperses the cloud which until then was hiding the truth.

(Posting from Oxford)

Frorm Oxford, England

I am here at Oxford taking part in the C. S. Lewis Foundation's "Oxbridge" conference. It has been a very rewarding experience, and the people are lovely. The setting, as you can imagine, is stunning. Here is a photo I took of a painter, Richard Pryke, himself a graduate of Keble College Oxford, painting a view of Keble College where I am staying for the conference.

Ritual

C. S. Lewis:

A man performing a rite is not trying to make you think that this is his natural way of walking, these the unpremeditated gestures of his own domestic life. If long usage has in fact made the ritual unconscious, he must labour to make it look deliberate, in order that we, the assistants, may feel the weight of the solemnity pressing on his shoulders as well as on our own. Anything casual or familiar in his manner is not 'sincerity' or 'spontaneity,' but impertinence. Even if his robes were not heavy in fact, they ought to look heavy.

Vocation

“It is the nature of a vocation to appear to men in the double character of a duty and a desire. . . . To follow the vocation does not mean happiness: but once it has been heard, there is no happiness for those who do not follow.” – C. S. Lewis

Modesty

"We know a lot more about how little we know of the universe than did previous generations." Ralph McInerny

My self-indulgence

My newest granddaughter's big sister and her father.

Commentary on Contemporary Developments

"The devil has landed in a furious rage, for he knows his time is short." Rev. 12:12

Hans Urs von Balthasar:

[Christ] taught "differently than the scribes," with an authority never before encountered, even though he taught nothing different from the scribes. The scribes serve the authority of the law that they expound. The tone of Jesus' preaching makes clear that he is the master of the law he explains. . . . For that reason it seems to the listeners, who, after all, are hearing an exposition of words very familiar to them, as if "a completely new teaching is being proclaimed" (Mk 1:27).

Now, when Jesus' "completely new teaching" sounds forth, a completely new head rears itself, that of the apocalyptic beast. The Word has reached the demon, has called it by its name. . . .

Balthasar makes mention of these things in the context of Jesus' first preaching in Mark's Gospel, which occurred after he cast a demon out of a man possessed. Balthasar observes:

. . . in the story of this healing, the demon must depart, but not before he displays himself in a farewell seizure of his victim. According to the Church Fathers, all the persecutions of the Church since the time of Christ are part of this tantrum thrown by the devil on his way out: the head of the serpent has been crushed underfoot, but the body thrashes about in a desperate wrestling with itself.

On Liberty and Guilt . . .

"Humanity is a marvel," wrote Henri de Lubac, "wounded yet indestructible, which finds the meaning of its liberty in the confession of its guilt." Alas, however, he elsewhere observes:

Following another avenue of escape, which seeks its justification in a grandiose theory, there are those who wish to recognize only collective sin, "objectivized" sin, "social" sin, i.e. the sin committed by others. A universe is constructed where evil is everywhere denounced, but now where admitted; where it is always endured, never committed. By thus "transferring the evil which is in man to the evil in the structures" -- called "structures of sin" -- one is led, in addition, to the idea that man is essentially good, and that it is only society which corrupts him, and that he has no need of conversion of heart.

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse . . .

To paraphrase T. S. Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock:

No! I am not a Weblogger, nor was meant to be;
Am an itinerant scribe, one that will do
To quote a passage, and turn a phrase or two,
Trying not to mince, nor to be too Sunday school,
Deferential, glad to be of use . . .

And so on.

This being more or less the case, please do not mistake this blog entry for a serious revival of this moribund blogsite. It is an experiment almost certainly doomed to fail; the kind of thing one does on a lovely midsummer morning after the second cup of coffee, knowing full well that the circumstances that occasioned it are not likely to be replicated on a regular basis, making the experiment a likely cause of future embarrassment. Nonetheless . . .

Once we post the Emmaus Road Initiative schedule for 2008-2009 -- a schedule even more daunting than lasts year's schedule -- it will be perfectly clear that I will have precious little time to devote to this blog. But it occurs to me that I just might be able to post a thought or two -- "to quote a passage or turn a phrase or two" -- and in this way keep a small conversation going with those interested in the work of the Cornerstone Forum.

If you're on your second cup of coffee, or otherwise feeling experimental, feel free to subscribe to feeds from this blog or stop by again when you're in the neighborhood. If all you find is a stale blog entry, murmur a little prayer for me, for it will be indicative of a very busy schedule, nothing more.

In appreciation for your having stopped by today, here's a bon mot from Hans Urs von Balthasar:

We must not imagine that we can make the entry into a heavenly Jerusalem with a waving of palms and seated on the gentle ass of evolution.

Human Rights and the Challenge of Evangelization

Earlier this year, I met Fr. Samir Khalil Samir, SJ at a conference at Notre Dame sponsored by the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture. I knew from reliable sources that Fr. Samir is widely considered to be the Vatican's most trusted expert on Islam, and so it was a rare honor to be able to chat with him during dinner at the conference. He was as charming as he was immensely well-informed.

Yesterday, I noticed an article in the Asian Times by Fr. Samir which I think is a must read. It is here.

Also a must read, in my opinion, is an article by Roy W. Brown about the demise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that is now well under way at the United Nations. It is an extremely important article. It is here.

World-historical shifts are usually impossible to notice except in hindsight, but today they are happening at a breathtaking pace. These two article are evidence of what is happening.