Opposition to Artificial Equivocation . . .

The success of the Obama revolution depends on the elimination -- by the time-honored method of divide-and-conquer -- of the Catholic opposition to his radical abortion, embryo-cannibalizing, and marriage-eviscerating agenda. The president of Notre Dame University has allowed the use of the most famous -- in many respects, and from this day forward, infamous -- American Catholic educational institution to be exploited for precisely this purpose.

What the Notre Dame president and others at the university have done -- whether wittingly or not -- is to allow themselves to be used to create the impression either that the Church's position on abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and the univocal meaning of marriage as the covenant between a man and a woman is unsettled and amenable to "evolution" or that one can disagree with what the Church has for two thousand years opposed and in recent years declared to be the preeminent moral issue of our age (the intentional killing of innocent human beings in the womb or in their embryonic stage) and still be a faithful Catholic in good standing.

As Ralph McInerny -- nearing his retirement after 54 years as a Notre Dame faculty member -- put it in a recent column for TheCatholicThing weblog:

By inviting Barack Obama as commencement speaker, Notre Dame is telling the nation that the teaching of the Catholic church on this fundamental matter can be ignored. Lip service may be paid to the teaching on abortion, but it is no impediment to upward mobility, to the truly vulgar lust to be welcomed into secular society, whether on the part of individuals or institutions.

Stephen Barr, writing for the FIRST THINGS On the Square weblog, put it this way:

Abortion is a defining issue of our time, in the way that slavery was in the mid-nineteenth century and segregation and racial discrimination were in the mid-twentieth century. Overlooking the pro-abortion views of a politician now would be analogous to overlooking pro-slavery or segregationist views in those eras. Would Notre Dame have invited a champion of segregation to be a commencement speaker in the 1960s, however brilliant or talented, however well-meaning in other ways and on other issues he or she may have been?

Some will say that there is no comparison between the issues of racial discrimination and abortion. From a Christian point of view, however, they are at root the same issue: the respect due to our fellow human beings simply as human beings. The lives of fifty million innocent human beings have been snuffed out in the United States since 1973, so it would be absurd to suggest that abortion is less serious an issue than racial discrimination. The difference between the two issues lies not in their intrinsic moral gravity, but in the way that society views them. Virtually everyone agrees that racial discrimination is morally repugnant. There is a strong social consensus on that issue, whereas on abortion at present there is not. The social elites of this country are largely pro-choice, and being pro-choice is regarded by many as a mark of enlightenment. This, I think, has everything to do with why an institution like Notre Dame would never honor a champion of segregation, but would honor a champion of so-called abortion rights. What governs the moral reflexes of institutions like Notre Dame is not how things appear in the light of the gospel, but how they appear in the eyes of the social elites—or to use more biblical language, how they appear to the world. St. Paul told us not be “conformed to this world”, but to put on the “mind of Christ.” It seems that the University of Notre Dame is conforming itself to the world.

What can those of us who deeply regret this latest sign of capitulation do in response? It's very difficult to say. Here is what I wrote to my bishop yesterday:

I realize that there are probably limited courses of action with regard to the shameful decision of Notre Dame University to invite the most anti-life politician in America to deliver this spring’s commencement address, but I hope and pray that you and your fellow bishops will do something equally dramatic to send a message of reassurance to the faithful Catholics in this country who have endured this kind of shamelessness for far too long.

I have no doubt that your heart is in the right place, and I have no advice as to what might be done, but if there is something, it would be greeted with a great sigh of relief from the faithful.

From the point of view of the increasing number of post-modern relativists who realize that the Catholic Church is the chief obstacle to the accomplishment of the moral and cultural revolution to which they have committed themselves, the next best thing to silencing the Church -- which even they realize is impossible -- is to drown its voice of moral clarity in a cacophony of opinions expressed by self-proclaimed "faithful Catholics."

Jeff Hendrix Update

Jeff just notified me that the results of his medical tests were encouraging. He thanks us for our prayers.

Jeff Hendrix

Please keep Jeff in your prayers today as he is tested to determine the effectiveness of the treatments he is undergoing for cancer.

The Inexorable Logic

“If they are going to be terminated, it is a shame to waste their organs,” says an adviser to the Royal Society and the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority at a conference at the Oxford International Biomedical Center.

More here.

5-day-olds vs. 50-year-olds

On the First Things Blog, Nathaniel Peters reviews an article on Slate by William Saletan, and he concludes it with a comment and a quotation from Saletan's article that sums up beautifully the embryonic stem-cell issue. Here's Peters' comment, followed by Saletan's.

At one time, liberal principles claimed to defend the weaker party against the interests of the strong. Not so today. As Saletan concludes,

The stem-cell fight wasn’t a fight between ideology and science. It was a fight between 5-day-olds and 50-year-olds. The 50-year-olds won. The question now is what to do with our 5-day-olds, our 5-week-olds, and our increasingly useful parts.

The New Cannibalism

As surely as night follows day, the Obama administration is now poised to lift the ban on the federal funding of research on human embryos, meaning that we are moving along the path down which the white-coated Nazi scientists were the first to tread. If what made the the wanton use of human life for medical research so horrendous in the 1930s and 1940s was the blatant barbarity of the experiments, what makes the embryonic version of it so horrendous is the sheer numbers of tiny innocent human lives that will be used as so much raw material. The old and growing ever older will now begin to live off the young. Such a civilization neither deserves to survive, nor will it.

While we have breath, we must not let this become the status quo.

More on the End of Tolerance . . .

Tomorrow is a travel day, and with it begins a whirlwind schedule. So I'm posting again today, not knowing when I might be able to do so for the next while.

This from David Stevens of the Christian Medical Association, on the news that the Obama administration is moving to rescind a regulation protecting the exercise of conscience in healthcare:

The move to rescind the healthcare provider conscience regulation imperils women's healthcare access, threatens healthcare professionals' freedom to practice medicine according to ethical standards, and exposes the myth of moderation in Obama's abortion policy.

The Obama administration claims, without offering a shred of statistical evidence, that the regulation has 'created confusion' and will somehow hinder access to healthcare. What can be clearer than not using federal funds to force healthcare professionals to violate longstanding principles of medical ethics like the Hippocratic Oath, which guided medicine for over two millennia? The real threat to healthcare access is driving out every healthcare professional who conscientiously practices medicine according to life-affirming ethical standards.

Perhaps those who, despite glaring evidence to the contrary, were sanguine about Mr. Obama's reputed moderation on the abortion issue might want to come forward to tell us how they assess these developments.

The whole CMA statement is here.

The Angel of Death . . .

This from today's New York Times:

According to the documents released today, Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz death camp doctor known as the "Angel of Death" for his experiments on inmates, practiced medicine in Buenos Aires for several years in the 1950's. He "had a reputation as a specialist in abortions," which were illegal.

Wouldn't you know.

Hat tip: my friend Dan Florio.

The whole story is here.

That rarest of rarities . . .

The vast majority of cases in which someone changes his or her position on abortion involve a move from a pro-choice to pro-life position. But the exception proves the rule.

In the recent issue of -- you guessed it -- The National Catholic Reporter, Kate Childs Graham chronicles her moral shift in the opposite direction. You can read it here, discovering at the end, to no one's great surprise, that she "serves on the Women’s Ordination Conference board of directors and the Call to Action Next Generation Leadership Team."

The "next generation," pray God, will continue to move in the opposite direction.

Hat tip: Carl Olson: Ignatius Insight Scoop.

The Tolerance Vigilante-in-Chief

President Obama must have gotten a pay-raise. He no longer seems to have any doubts about when the child in the womb deserves legal protection. The answer is, when he or she takes his or her first breath, and not a minutes sooner.

Taking another step into the abortion debate, the Obama administration today will move to rescind a controversial rule that allows healthcare workers to deny abortion counseling or other family planning services if doing so would violate their moral beliefs, according to administration officials. . . .

Last month without official ceremony, Obama overturned a controversial ban on U.S. funding for international aid groups that provide abortion services.

The move by the Department of Health and Human Services to throw out the conscience rule is being made equally quietly as most of Washington focuses on the president's blockbuster budget plan.

As predicted here and in many other places, abortion (and same-sex "marriage") will now begin to trump religious freedom, a catastrophe not only for the children who will be killed in the womb and the children who will be indoctrinated by in the absurd belief that sex between members of the same sex is indistinguishable from the marriage of a man and a woman -- but it will be a catastrophe for the American political experiment, for which religious freedom is a fundamental bedrock.

Read the L.A. Times story here, tame, even tepid, though it is.

More on Dunstan Morrissey, O.S.B.

Dunstan at the house of silence and prayer that he founded.
He called it "Sky Farm."

Father Dunstan Morrissey

Here is the obituary of this most extraordinary man:

Fr. Dunstan Morrissey, O.S.B., died on Ash Wednesday, February 25, 2009 at the age of 85. He was the son of Robert and Joy Buchanan Morrissey and graduated magna cum laude from University of Notre Dame. He also attended L'Institut de Hautes Etudes Internationales, Geneva, and Sandeepany Sadhanalaya, Bombay. He served as a U.S. Vice Consul at Alexandria, Egypt before entering monastic life at St. Bede Abbey, Peru, Illinois where he taught and was ordained a priest. Fr. Dunstan devoted the rest of his life to his vocation as a hermit monk, in silence, solitude, and solidarity with the world.

His was a life of solitude, silence and prayer lived with such integrity that the lives of those fortunate enough to discover it were changed by his witness.

Fr. Dunstan Morrissey

Father Dunstan Morrissey, a dear friend of many, many years; a man of God; a monk to the marrow of his bones -- laid his life in the Lord's hands this morning just before dawn, his life-long Lenten journey at an end just as we begin our annual one.

Fr. Dunstan Morrissey
May he rest in the peace of Christ.

Enough said

Women in Afghanistan

Martin Luther King's Spirit Lives . . .

In Oakland, California:

In a courtroom jammed to capacity with spectators, a judge yesterday sentenced a Baptist pastor from Berkeley to 30 days in jail, fined him $1,130 and placed him on probation for three years for violating Oakland’s restrictive ‘bubble law,’ crafted to keep pro-life sidewalk counselors away from women entering abortion centers.

Observers said as many as 150 people were outside the courtroom, which seats only about 60, before the 1:30 p.m. hearing began. Some of the standing-room-only crowd were there to support the embattled pro-lifer, while others showed up to back the abortion clinic.

Alameda Superior Court Judge Stuart Hing sentenced the Rev. Walter Hoye amidst what one attorney close to the case called “total chaos, procedurally speaking” after Hoye refused to accept as a condition of probation an order that he stay away from the Oakland abortion clinic where he was arrested. . . .

Rev. Walter Hoye

Hoye had initially been charged with four counts of violating the ordinance – two counts of “unlawful approach” and two counts of using “force, threat of force or physical obstruction” against ‘escorts’ at Family Planning Specialists Clinic in Oakland. The charges stemmed from two separate incidents – one on April 29, 2008 and one on May 13, 2008. Hoye was arrested on May 13 after a clinic staff member called police. He was carrying a 40-inch sign that read, "Jesus Loves You & Your Baby. Let Us Help You," and attempting to hand out pro-life literature. . . .

Hoye, who has no previous criminal record, rejected a plea bargain offered by the district attorney before trial. The deal guaranteed no jail time if Hoye pleaded guilty to one count in exchange for dismissal of the other three. “The threat of four years in jail is a potent one, but my client is more interested in getting the truth out, both on the sidewalk and in the courtroom,” commented Mike Millen, another Life Legal Defense Foundation attorney working on Hoye’s case, when the offer was turned down.

More of the story here.

If you're happy, inform your face.

That was the subtitle to a talk that Anna Scally gave at the Galveston-Houston Catechetical Conference where I spoke last Saturday.

Lovely thought.

Patience, and Trust . . .

This from Hans Urs von Balthasar, speaking of Jesus:

He is an Israelite, and it is part of his maturation process that the fate of Israel occupies first place in his heart – to assemble the straying flock, to lead the lost sheep back to the center of the Covenant. Yet from the very beginning he knows in the far reaches of his consciousness that Israel does not exist for herself but rather for all of mankind – ever since Abraham, and, with special clarity, since the Servant of God arrived.

The universal is made concrete in the particular. What von Balthasar says of the relationship in Jesus' consciousness between his concern for Israel and his universal mission applies, mutatis mutandis, to the responsibility we have for the spiritual and moral integrity of Western civilization. Civilizations come and go, and we must not turn any of them into idols, but neither should we ignore our responsibility to our children and grandchildren. The demise of Western civilization – if it occurs – will be an unmitigated disaster for those who will stagger among its ruins. All the more so will this be the case – especially for women and girls – if, as seems possible, the resulting vacuum is filled by a revived and unapologetic Islam.

But . . . then we must also remember something else that von Balthasar says in the same context, something about Jesus' own openness to the mystery of God's unpredictability. Of Jesus, von Balthasar writes:

He does not want to know in advance, and he sets out no personal plans – the Father takes care of all that. Like a man he permits the Father’s will to advance toward him from the future.

At this point in my life, I find this enormously inspiring. It is not a recipe for passivity, for it coincides, in Christ, with the most resolute determination to remain faithful to his mission of proclaiming the truth. So may it be with us.

Happy Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day in the Islamic world brings out the religious police.

Associated Press files this:

As Feb. 14 approaches, the police begin inspecting gift shops for items that are red or are intended as gifts to mark the holiday — a celebration of St. Valentine, a 3rd century Christian martyr — which is banned in Saudi Arabia. Such items are legal at other times of the year, but as Valentine's Day nears they become contraband.

At best, shops caught selling Valentine's gifts are ordered to get rid of them. Some salesmen have been detained for days.

The Valentine's Day prohibition is in line with the ascetic Wahhabi school of Islam that the kingdom follows. Marking Christian holidays is banned in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and a country where non-Muslims are banned from openly practicing their religion.

Celebrating any holidays but the two most important for Muslims — Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr — is taboo . . .

"My colleague spent a night in jail last year because of the color red," said one salesman, who insisted on anonymity, fearing his colleague's fate.

It is a challenge for courting Saudi couples to be together at any time of the year because of strict gender segregation. Unmarried men and women cannot take a drive together, have a meal or even talk on the street unless they are close relatives. Dating consists of long phone conversations and the rare tryst. Infractions are punished by detention.

Now in John's Gospel there is the famous story of the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. It's a serious story, a story of the Good Shepherd reaching out to save a lost sheep. But, is it just me, or can one detect in this sometimes playful repartee something suspiciously like flirting?

I'm susceptible to this sort of speculation inasmuch as I fear that flirting — like so many other aspects of the man-woman relationship — has been damaged by the decline of the sexual morality that is its underlying secret. I may well be too old and sad for more advanced expressions of the attraction between men and women, but the inverse of that sad possibility is that I'm all the more easily and readily charmed by genuine femininity, of which our world is in far too short a supply.

My blessed mother, God rest her, lost her husband (my father) when she was 30 years old. She never took off her wedding ring, and she died at age 86, living alone most of her life. She was, however, a consummate flirt. There was never any hint that her flirting was preliminary to anything else, and she was the soul of Catholic moral rectitude. But she was a flirt.

My wife Liz, God rest her, was the most modest woman I've ever known, but flirting was a regular source of levity and tenderness in our relationship, strictly limited though it was (I'm happy to say) to our private moments together.

So flirting is not something that should be restricted to the courting stage. (Does anyone remember courting? A quaint ritual the natives once practiced.) Except for that between spouses themselves, however, to be morally proper and in good taste, flirting should be limited to the unmarried. It's a token of my mother's genius for the art, however, that she would occasionally flirt with married men, but only in the presence of their wives and only in order to have a good laugh, for which she also had a renowned gift.

I can't claim either to have my mother's natural gift for flirting or to have achieved any great competence, but I do think it's underrated and misunderstood by both the moralizers and the meretricious.

In this month's Emmaus Road Initiative sessions, I have been talking about Euripides' The Bacchae. Donald Sutherland is one of the translators of the play, and in his commentary he says that "the everyday pleasures, if you are lucky enough to have them every day, are the best.”

Flirting is not, alas, an everyday pleasure, but it seems to me to be a kind of natural grace, one of the unofficial gifts of the Holy Spirit. For like the Spirit, it is elusive and unpredictable and a reminder that the nuptial mystery is the human analogue of the Trinitarian mystery. As my sainted mother beautifully demonstrated, and as I have experienced now and again, one is never too old or too sad to enjoy it. If I'm not mistaken, Jesus didn't pass up the occasional opportunity. He was, after all, like us in all things but sin.

Destroying the Civilization from Within

In Virgil's Aeneid, as the Greeks assault the walls Troy, the Trojans panic and begin to dismantle their own citadel and hurl fragments of it at the advancing Greeks. It's a grim metaphor for what can happen to an exhausted and panicked civilization.

The episode came vividly to mind on reading about yet another example of Western loss of confidence, especially as that loss of confidence has to do with the Christian patrimony of western civilization. Here's the latest disheartening example.

Wiley-Blackwell, a major academic press, was set to release its four-volume Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization this month. According to the encyclopedia’s editor, George Thomas Kurian, the set had been copy-edited, fact-checked, proofread, publisher-approved, printed, bound, and formally launched (to high praise) at the recent American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature conference. But protests from a small group of scholars associated with the project have led the press to postpone publication, recall all copies already distributed, and destroy the existing print run. The scholars’ complaint? The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, they have reportedly argued, is “too Christian.” “They also object to historical references to the persecution and massacres of Christians by Muslims,” Kurian says, “but at the same time want references favorable to Islam.”

Weep for such craven cowardice, described (again) so lucidly by Victor David Hanson, whom I quoted in the blog-post just prior to this.

European postmodern man offers mostly platitudes that he thinks please those who might be dangerous to him, and finds psychological recompense and solace by gratuitously trashing those who aren't.

Read Edward Feser's commentary on ‘Too Christian’ for Academia? here.

Extremism and Displaced Anxiety

A number of stories have appeared in recent weeks about the steep rise in antisemitism in Europe, among them some focusing the rise in Britain, especially London. According to an column in the Boston Globe -- which puts so many moral equivalences into play that the column loses all relevance -- the biggest employer in London is the London Police Department (ponder the implications of that!), and it's response to the rise of "extremism" is for the Police Department to hire more Muslims. Antisemitism swallowed by the generic "extremism," the response to which is to increase the social and cultural influence of those who are -- statistically -- the most likely to espouse antisemitism.

Meanwhile, BBC is airing a documentary by British comedian Stephen Fry which, according to reports (I have not seen it) takes the Brits to task for their reflex anti-Americanism.

In an interview in Good Housekeeping, [Fry] said: "When they mock America for its supposed lack of knowledge, irony or sophistication, they are revealing nothing but the pathetic inadequacy and inferiority complex of the British.

All of which makes this salient comment by Victor David Hanson all the more salient:

European postmodern man offers mostly platitudes that he thinks please those who might be dangerous to him, and finds psychological recompense and solace by gratuitously trashing those who aren't.

Read Hanson's piece here.

Integrating the tools we use . . .

As many of you know, we are developing various new technologies in an effort to both use our diminished resources wisely and expand the community of those with whom we are in conversation. These include a more robust use of our website and this weblog, as well as adding streaming audio and streaming video to the CDs that can be ordered from our website and the free downloadable MP3 files that can be downloaded from our website.

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Thanks as always for all your many kindnesses.

Another Outtake from the January session

Just back from the Emmaus Road Initiative session here in Wheaton, Illinois.

In my continuing effort to keep the plate spinning on this particular stick even while I'm shuffling from city to city, here is another outtake from the January session.
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This from an article “How Catholic is France?” by Steven Englund, a professor of History at the American University in Paris, which appeared in the November 7, 2008 edition of Commonweal:

What France’s Catholic renewal makes clear is that Christianity’s offer of meaning consists … [of] … a personal and existential choice: the choice to live the old faith. . . .
If Christianity appears to be exhausted . . . , its rivals and critics are in far worse shape. The great difference is this: Unlike, say, the Communists or the Greens, Catholicism is not desperately looking for renewal from without; instead it is finding it within – not effortlessly and not always serenely, but surely and confidently. [French] Catholics here have no doubt that ressourcement is always at hand, as near as the parish church and the Sunday Mass, and so they aren’t blindly feeding like mako sharks on every idea that floats by, as others do.

Hope for a cheerful outcome in Europe is a bruised reed one doesn’t want to break and a smoldering wick one is loathed to quench, but among Christianity’s European competitors Englund mentions only Communists and Greens. But there are others. Communists and Greens may be feeding on every piece of ideological flotsam and jetsam they can choke down, but radical European Islam is today feeding on a very staple diet, prepared strictly according to the Quranic recipe: Namely conversion by the violence and intimidation.

Compared with this challenge, communism and eco-spirituality are little more than Christian heresies enjoying their 15 minutes of fame and leaving their disciples in a spiritual wasteland. But what Belloc saw in a glass darkly early in the 20th century was the looming potential of a "great heresy." In a book entitled, The Great Heresies, he wrote that even though Islam “happens to have fallen back in material applications; there is no reason whatever why it should not learn its new lesson and become our equal in all those temporal things which now alone give us our superiority over it – whereas in Faith we have fallen inferior to it.”

I don’t concur in this assessment, but it contains enough truth to be worth quoting, which is why I just did. For the emergence of degenerate and secular facsimiles and fragments of Christianity like communism and the eco-religiosity is evidence to which a Belloc could point in confirmation of his assessment of the West’s religious emaciation.
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If you would like to listen in on any of the E. R. I. sessions -- including the January one -- on our website we have CDs and free downloadable mp3 files and (within a few days) we will also have a streaming audio version of the January session.

The Thought for the Day:

From Lucy Beckett:

"Either everything means something, or nothing means anything. But the first requires belief in God, while the second is perhaps too frightening to be faced by those (and that is almost everyone) without Nietzsche's desperate courage."

Freedom of Speech on the way out . . .

I'm still trying to wrap up (and interrelate) the subject of the last two posts, but there seems no end to the stories dealing with the encroachments on freedom of speech in Europe (and here) on the part of Islamic activists, on one hand, and homosexual activists, on the other.

This is from Soeren Kern, Senior Analyst for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Strategic Studies Group.

Nor are Muslims the only ones trying to restrict free speech in Europe. In Britain, for example, the government is facing pressure from homosexual rights activists to overturn a [20] free speech protection amendment added to a controversial “gay hate” law. The free speech protection clause, which states that criticizing homosexual practice or urging people to refrain from such conduct will not, in itself, be a crime, was added to the new offense of “incitement to homophobic hatred.” But now the government wants to remove that protection. The crime of inciting homophobic hatred includes any words or behavior which is threatening and intended to stir up hatred. It carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.

At the European level, meanwhile, government ministers from the 27 member states of the European Union are debating a draft [21] EU directive that aims to outlaw discrimination and “harassment” in the provision of goods and services. The new legislation would, for example, shut down Christian adoption agencies if they refuse to provide same-sex couples with children. Indeed, the definition of “harassment” is so broad that even moderate explanations of Christian beliefs on sexual conduct or other religions could be considered a crime.

Europe’s war on free speech is the result of a profound identity crisis, one that is being generated by the blanket abandonment of traditional Judeo-Christian values coupled with mass immigration from Muslim countries. But in their zeal to criminalize free thought and free speech, the leftwing guardians of Orwellian political correctness are systematically destroying European democracy.

It's all here.

Britain, a "moral slum" says Hitchens

Not that the rest of the once vibrant "West" is far behind.

Like Peter Hitchens in the quotation below, I'm more than eager to get back to matters of a more wholesome and edifying nature. But the first task of those who would preserve some vestige of western civilization is to prevent our moral vocabulary and our anthropological realism (call it "commonsense") from being commandeered and corrupted by ideologues.

Compare what the British comedian, Pat Condell, says about the capitulation to radical Islam (in the blog post below) to what the British journalist, Peter Hitchens, says about the perfectly parallel capitulation to the "Lesbian-Gay-Bi-sexual-Trans-sexual" agenda. (The hyper-hyphenated quote is taken from the Obama White House website, where the new administration pledges to strictly enforce that agenda.)

Compare Condell's concern with Hitchens' and you get an idea of what is actually happening to what was once Western Civilization.

Here's Hitchens:

If I never again had to read or write a word about homosexuals, I would be very happy. I really don’t want to know what other people do in their bedrooms. But these days they really, really want us all to know. And, more important, they insist that we approve. No longer are we allowed to keep our thoughts to ourselves, while being polite and kind.

We are forced to say that we think homosexuality is a good thing, that homosexual couples are equal in all ways to heterosexual married couples. Most emphatically, we are compelled to agree that homosexual couples are just as good at bringing up children as the children’s own grandparents. Better, in fact.

Many people who believe nothing of the kind now know that their careers in politics, the media, the Armed Services, the police or schools will be ruined if they ever let their true opinions show. I am sure that many of them regularly lie about their views, to avoid such trouble.

We cringe to the new Thought Police, like the subjects of some insane, sex-obsessed Stalinist state, compelled to wave our little rainbow flags as the ‘Gay Pride’ parade passes by.

And that’s another thing. We can’t even call homosexuals ‘homosexuals’ any more. This neutral word is not considered enthusiastic enough. We have to say ‘gay’. Which is exactly why I don’t, apart from in inverted commas.

You think I exaggerate the power and fury of these forces? The totalitarian rage on this subject is quite astonishing.

I have had several brushes with it, and been called rude names by its militants.

Well, I can live with that. It’s my job. But what about a powerless pair of grandparents in Edinburgh, their grandchildren’s lives shipwrecked by the multiple horrors of our ‘liberated’ society?

First, their daughter ends up as a drug abuser, like so many others in a country which permits the endless promotion of drug use by rock stars and refuses to punish the possession of narcotics, the only measure that would work.

Then, when they seek to look after her children, they are first insultingly informed that they are too old, and that their minor illnesses disqualify them from the task. Heaven help any employer who dared ‘discriminate’ in this fashion. But the new Thought Police are oddly exempt from their own rules.

Next, the grandparents are informed that the children are to be put into the care of a homosexual couple. And – this is the crucial moment – they are warned in the most terrifying terms that if they object to this arrangement they will never see their grandchildren again.
Leave aside the rest of it. It is this demand, that they mouth approval of the new regime like the defendants at some show trial, which is the bit that ought to make your flesh creep.

This is the action of a tyranny in operation, especially the use of children to blackmail their parents and grandparents. People who can do this can do anything.

Isn’t it amazing to reflect that this campaign began in the name of tolerance?

The original is here.

European multiculturalism is a brief interlude on the way to a European monoculture. The only question is whether this rigorously enforced monoculture will be doctrinaire metro-sexual secularism or Sharia Islam. (Care to guess which is more likely to stand its ground when push comes to shove?) As we speak, members of the European political class are carefully placing their bets and acting accordingly. It is conceivable that these two antagonists will forestall their final clash by turning their mutual contempt for Christians and Jews into a common cause, but that will only postpone the final showdown.

"Pre-emptive Capitulation"

"Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism," wrote Vaclav Havel. "It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." In accepting the Nobel Prize, he said: "In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot."

This short YouTube cry of frustration by Pat Condell may sound a little too like a pistol shot for many, but one has to factor in the level of frustration felt by people like Condell, who obviously sense that they are living in an asylum run by the inmates. It's easy for those of use not faced with this sort of irresponsible lunacy to tut-tut the exaggerated rhetoric of those who are, but we should not overlook the message they are desperately and sometimes shrilly trying to send.

Outtake: January E. R. I.

Another short outtake from the January session of the Emmaus Road Initiative:

Precisely because the content of the Christian revelation is the mystery of unimpeded giving and receiving of love within the Trinity, its transmission necessarily depends on a relationship of unguarded trust on the part of the recipient – which, of course, places a special onus on the transmitter, for if the recipient is docile to the transmission and the transmitter betrays the heightened responsibilities that this docility requires, he or she stands under the judgment of Jesus’ words: “If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Matt. 18:6)

More to follow when there's time. When the CDs, free downloadable audio files and streaming audio versions of the January session are available we will send an email notice to those on our email list. To receive an email, type your email address in the box at the top of the right-hand column.

Lift up your hearts . . .

Outtakes from the January Emmaus Road Initiative session:

What is hidden from the proud and the haughty is revealed to the humble and contrite hearts of the spiritually childlike, and if people can be made to believe that deference, humility and the penitential spirit are signs of slavishness unworthy of serious adults, they can be effectively prevented from knowing God.

In addition to its doctrinal, intellectual and apologetic functions, catechesis has what one might call “liturgical” functions. It should not only spell out the Christian Truth but “put us in the mood for it.” It should inspire us to “drop our guard”: to approach Christian truth in a childlike spirit.

There is risk that our catechetical efforts will be too doctrinal and propositional, as was the rote Thomism of the Manuals well into the 20th century. In such cases, we may become intellectually fortified, adroit at marshaling “muscular” arguments and “equipped” for giving an account of Christian truth but lacking in the grace that Ronald Knox said is necessary to turn the water of conviction into the wine of faith.

Those on our email newsletter list will receive an email when the CDs, streaming audio and (maybe) streaming video of the January session are available on our website, probably within the week.

If you are not on the list and would like to be, just type in your email address in the box at the top of the right-hand column.

Gilbert Hunt Bailie IV

Enjoying the Wine Country

I indulge myself. My son wears several hats, and one of them is a helmet which he wears leading Segway tours in Sonoma (my old hometown) where he manages Murphy's Irish Pub, and where Hunt and his wife Yuni operate Sonoma Segway, leading Segway tours in the wine country.

Here is story about a tour that appeared today in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Here's Gilbert Hunt Bailie III
on a Segway tour last year.

If you find yourself in Sonoma someday, look up Hunt. You'll be glad you did; he's a great fellow.

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.