A Maryland Lenten Program

Another Lent, another great

Lenten Lecture Series

The Bishop Fenwick Chapter of Lay Dominicans is sponsoring a series of Tuesday night talks on the role of Scripture in the Catholic Faith.

The talks will be at St. Andrew Apostle Catholic Church, Silver Spring, MD. The schedule is as follows:

Tuesday, February 27
Fr. Joseph Alobaidi, O.P.
"Jesus Christ: Fulfillment of the Promise of the Old Testament"

Tuesday, March 6
Fr. Kevin McGrath, O.P.
"The Church's Scriptural Prayer: The Liturgy of the Hours"

Tuesday, March 13
Fr. John Corbett, O.P.
"Understanding the Symbolic Language of the Book of Revelation"

Tuesday, March 20
Fr. John Langlois, O.P.
"Mary's Scriptural Journey and the Rosary"

Tuesday, March 27
Fr. Peter Fegan, O.P.
"Unlocking the Scriptures: The Ancient Art of Lectio Divina"

Each program will begin with Evening Prayer at 7:30 in the church.

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"As" is

I have just noticed something about the fifth petition of the Lord's Prayer.

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

I'd always thought of the "as we forgive those" as something like a parenthetical reminder or doctrinal footnote, a short way of saying that the party of the first part acknowledges that the Party of the second part shall deem Himself free of all obligations in re. this petition in the event that the party of the first part fails to forgive those who trespass against the party of the first part.

But while it's true that we will be forgiven as we forgive, the statement isn't a doctrinal assertion, it's a petition. Every time we say an "Our Father," we are asking God to forgive us as we forgive others. We are declaring, "It is my will that, as I forgive, so shall I be forgiven."

We aren't simply acknowledging that forgiveness is transitive; we are praying for it to be transitive. Which is a brash thing to do if we aren't actually planning on doing much forgiving.

St. Thomas considers the question of someone saying this prayer who wants forgiveness without forgiving:

But you may think, "I shall say what goes first in the petition, namely, 'forgive us,' but that 'As we forgive those who trespass against us,' I shall not say." Would you seek to deceive Christ? You certainly do not deceive Him. For Christ who made this prayer remembers it well, and cannot be deceived. If therefore, you say it with the lips, let the heart fulfill it.

That's good advice, certainly, but what of the one who won't follow it?

But one may ask whether he who does not intend to forgive his neighbor ought to say: "As we forgive those who trespass against us." It seems not, for such is a lie. But actually it must be said that he does not lie, because he prays not in his own person, but in that of the Church which is not deceived, and, therefore the petition itself is in the plural number.

Finally, St. Thomas proposes two forms of forgiveness:

One applies to the perfect, where the one offended seeks out the offender: "Seek after peace." The other is common to all, and to it all are equally bound, that one offended grant pardon to the one who seeks it: "Forgive thy neighbor if he hath hurt thee; and then shall thy sins be forgiven to thee when thou prayest." And from this follows that other beatitude: "Blessed are the merciful." For mercy causes us to have pity on our neighbor.

This doesn't mean that only some few people, specially picked by God, have to forgive perfectly, while most of us are only called to a second-rate forgiveness.

Rather, St. Thomas is saying that even the stubborn fellow who does not intend to forgive his neighbor is perfectly capable of forgiving him anyway when his neighbor asks for forgiveness. It's not perfect, but it's a start, and enough of a one that whoever is prepared to make it isn't lying when he prays this petition.

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What does the mute spirit say to us?

Today's Gospel is the story of the boy possessed by a mute and deaf spirit whom Jesus meets as He comes down the mountain after the Transfiguration.

The story contains that wonderful prayer, "I do believe, help my unbelief!," and that great promise, "Everything is possible to one who has faith." We laugh at the blockheadedness of the disciples that drew from Jesus the rebuke, "O faithless generation, how long will I be with you? How long will I endure you?" (There's so much going on in this story that we may never get around to thinking about the rebukes our own blockheadedness draw from Him.)

In all this, the mute spirit possessing the boy comes off as something of a Macguffin. It's just there to get the plot rolling, an indifferent means to the end of revealing the many things God reveals in the passage.

It might repay the time, however, to take a closer look at this mute spirit. Here are two lines of thought:

First, courtesy of Fr. John Dear, SJ, in his book Transfiguration, note that the spirit "has often thrown him into fire and into water to kill him." In the New Testament, fire and water symbolize the Holy Spirit and baptism, sources of life. The spirit, though, tries to use them as the means of death^*. Jesus' word overcomes these "anti-sacraments" (as I say, this is a line of thought; you'll have to do the shading yourself), since He has come to bring life to the dead.

Second, the father says that, when the spirit seizes his son, "he foams at the mouth, grinds his teeth, and becomes rigid." Do you know anyone in your own life who has a tendency -- perhaps when the subject turns to religion or politics or morality -- to foam at the mouth, grind his teeth, and become rigid? Perhaps, and this is offered without the implication that there is a demonic spirit at work, perhaps the way forward in truth with this person is only through prayer (and, as a variant, through fasting).

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*:It's interesting to note that, for the Jews, water readily signified death. Gentle rain and peaceful streams were all to the good, but if you have too much water in one place you can drown. Witness the disciples' terror at the storms on the Sea of Galilee. As for sailing on the Mediterranean, that was best left to the pagans. When the Psalmist felt overcome by woe, he called to the LORD "out of the depths." Yet, time and again, Jesus told His disciples, "Be not afraid," even as He told them, "Put out into the deep."

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Is evil necessary?

In a comment below, Nate sums up his position (more fully expressed here) about the Church's teaching on war:

My argument is simple - that the Church's thought has always been: "war is a necessary evil."

Now the Church's thought it, "war is an unnecessary evil."

As I replied at the time, that's a neat-- in the sense of tidy and orderly -- way of putting it. But we need to use this formula with care.

The term "necessary evil" is particularly tricky. To my mind, in common usage it connotes a certain fatalism, a degree of willing acceptance of moral evil in this vale of tears. The sort of pragmatism that doesn't look too closely at the means to a good end has no place in the Church's thought.

If we want to use "necessary evil" in a stricter sense, we immediately run into the problem Steven Riddle noted: that evil is never necessary. In fact, if by "evil" we mean "moral evil," the term "necessary evil" is an oxymoron, a logical impossibility that can be employed only if we don't really know what moral evil is.

That leaves us with the idea of "necessary material evil," where by "material evil" I mean simply a lack of something that shouldn't be lacking. Material evils are things like blindness and hunger and sickness. (They don't need to be physical; my failure to love you as I love myself produces the material evil of you lacking what my charity ought to provide.)

The Church does speak in terms of necessary material evil -- okay, not literally; I haven't seen the term "necessary material evil" used in teaching documents (or anywhere else, come to that). But, for example, the principle of double effect is basically one of necessary material evil: I take bad tasting medicine, not for the sake of the bad taste, but to be restored to health.

And of course "necessary" here means "unavoidable if the end is to be achieved," not "essential" or "required" in an absolute sense.

With that in mind, in what sense has the Church's thought always been "war is a necessary evil" and is now "war is an unnecessary evil"?

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An example of thinking with the Church

In his weekly newspaper column, my archbishop prepares his flock for Lent (emphasis added for subliminal purposes):

This Lent we cannot make our own personal way of the cross without making every effort, like Simon of Cyrene, to help lift the cross from others who suffer from violence.

The most powerful means that we have at our disposal as followers of Christ, as those who seek peace and wish to be instruments of love, is prayer. Let us never forget or underestimate the power of prayer. It is God's grace that touches hearts, and it is enlightened and changed hearts that bring about the transformation of lives and the reformation of the world in which we live.

Many times Pope John Paul II called us to seek non-violent solutions to all problems whether individual, local, national and international. We have repeatedly associated ourselves with that call over and over again through our United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and personally closer to home.

There are no easy solutions to the many complex issues we face today. Nonetheless, as true peacemakers we can always strive to make peace our first priority, the goal of our actions and the object of our constant prayer.

Returning again to the words of Benedict XVI we are reminded that "our crying out (in prayer) is, as it was for Jesus on the cross, the deepest and most radical way of affirming our faith in his sovereign power" (38).

The Prince of Peace is the Christ of Calvary. In Him and His example are both our challenge and our salvation.

I think there's a difference between seeking non-violent solutions to all problems and seeking nonviolence as the solution to all problems. Those who do the latter, though, may be signs pointing us toward the former.

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A reading lesson

According to the Rule for Dominican Laity, "study of the signs of the times" is one of the "principal sources of Dominican formation." Let's practice reading this sign, from the vocations blog for the Dominican Province of St. Joseph:

27 men attended the February 9-11, 2007 vocation weekend. Two had to bring sleeping bags for lack of beds!

Those brand new to sign reading might interpret this as meaning that next year there will be 27 novices in formation for the province. Attendance at a vocation weekend, though, does not by itself imply a vocation.

Those with more experience will find this a hopeful sign, while leaving precise numbers up to God. True enough, I think, but there's more to it than that.

The masters at reading signs know that, wherever you can't find enough beds, you can find a capital campaign.

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Sound distinctions

In a comment below, Steven Riddle alludes to an important phenomenon in discussions on nonviolence -- viz, that the term means different things to different people. In particular, Steven notes the

Gandhian sense of nonviolence, which perpetrates on its own a whole series of violences that are unique in their brutality. (Not giving a person an injection of a much needed anti-biotic because it represents violence to the body, so that the person, in fact, dies.)

As I suggested in a subsequent comment, Fr. John Dear, SJ, seems for the most part to intend "nonviolence" in the literal and narrow sense of avoiding physical acts of aggression against another person.

Which is fine, but then what term do we use for psychological or spiritual acts of aggression against another person? For that matter, why privilege acts of aggression against another person as the only relevant sins?

Far be it from me to criticize the categorizing of sins in illuminative ways. But if you're going to use your categories as the basis of a moral code, they have to cover all the acts you want to proscribe.

And in the case of those who want to proscribe violence, I might be more convinced of the soundness of their moral code if they were soundly nonviolent themselves. It's certainly possible, and possibly useful, to distinguish between physical violence and passive-aggressive sanctimony, for example, but I don't think it's very sensible to condemn the former in the spirit of the latter, which seems to be common among those who preach nonviolence.

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The habit of joy

It looks like this.

And, in a rather understated way, it reads like this.

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Non-transfigured nonviolence

When I started reading Transfiguration: A Meditation on Transforming Ourselves and Our World, by Fr. John Dear, SJ, I was curious. As I read, I became puzzled. Then I came up with what I think is the key to the puzzle. After I finished the book, I settled on what I'd say is its major fault.

I began in curiosity, because all I really knew about the author was that he is something of a big name in the Peace & Justice Catholic movement. Being given a review copy seemed like a good opportunity to find out what he had to say.

The book is an extended reflection on the Transfiguration of Jesus and what it means for Christians today. It's divided into five parts: following Jesus before the Transfiguration; going up the mountain; on the mountaintop; going down the mountain; following Jesus to Jerusalem.

There's some good stuff here, chiefly in Fr. Dear's call to develop a relationship with Jesus through contemplative prayer and reading the Gospels. Some of his insights on the Gospel accounts of the Transfiguration are helpful, as is his recognition of the value of seeking a mountaintop encounter with God in our own lives. There's a good line that, "In this age of pop stars and movie celebrities, we are, at best, fans of Jesus, not followers."

But here's the puzzle: How can a Catholic priest who recommends a schedule of prayer and reflection like that have such a peculiar idea about Jesus' life and ministry? If he's reading the same Gospels and praying the same prayers as generations of Catholics did before, and as his own and subsequent generations are, then why does he reach such different conclusions about what the Gospels say?

In Fr. Dear's mind, Jesus is a "nonviolent revolutionary" Who has come into the world to oppose the Roman Empire and its toadies within Jewish religious circles. Following the Transfiguration, Jesus has "one goal in mind: to challenge corruption in the Jerusalem Temple." Even the demon who possesses the boy whom Jesus meets at the foot of the mountain symbolizes "the imperial forces of violence, which kill the poor around the world."

For Fr. Dear, it is simply axiomatic that "creative nonviolence" against the Empire sums up the Gospel. That axiom colors the entire book: his reading of the Transfiguration story; his selection of "quintessential sayings of Jesus"; his opinion of the Church in which he serves as a priest; his choice of religious heroes. On this last point, like many Catholic pacifists, he relies heavily on Martin Luther King and Gandhi, and attributes the relative lack of Catholic pacifists to a defect of the Church.

And that, I think, is the key to the puzzle. Fr. Dear does not think with the Church. He is, if it's not too cute to say it, something of a sola Scriptura Catholic, who uses his hermeneutic of nonviolence to interpret every verse according to his own opinion, and if the Church does not share his opinion, so much the worse for the Church.

Thus we have Peter, James, and John falling asleep on Mount Tabor serving as an "image [that] helps explain today's male-dominated, institutional Church," which "must of course ordain women and married people, and include everyone in its embrace." Where that "of course" comes from, and where it's supposed to go, isn't made clear, but I suppose it follows somehow from the Church not knowing that creative nonviolence sums up the Gospel.

Which brings me to the book's major fault. Fr. Dear is so convinced of the rightness of his opinion that he does very little to convince the reader. Without denying its genuine insights, taken as a whole the book is a sermon to the converted, to those who already agree with him that the Gospel reduces to a message of nonviolence.

The result is a disservice to those who don't agree with him, because it makes it very difficult to discern areas of potential agreement. Saying that nonviolence is all there is to the Faith is a good means of preventing those who say nonviolence has nothing to do with the Faith from questioning their own position.

To a lesser extent, the book is even a disservice to Catholic pacifists, in that Fr. Dear's confidence in the justness of his own position comes off as self-righteousness, and self-righteousness won't win anyone to your side.

Transfiguration is not the book for someone looking for an apology for Catholic pacifism; the assumption of Jesus-as-nonviolent-revolutionary makes for some jarring non sequiturs for those who don't share that assumption (e.g., "If we want to live an authentic, faith-filled life, we need to proclaim good news to the poor, liberty to prisoners, vision to the blind, liberation to the oppressed, the cancellation of Third World debt, and the redistribution of the world's resources from the First World nation to the poorer nations...."). It's too bad, because the Transfiguration is a wonderful mystery through which to view the Christian life, and the Christian attitude toward violence is something most of us Catholics could stand to think more about.

Labels: Reviews

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Filling a niche

Cooperation with evil is sometimes licit. So it just might be licit this time. So no one can say it isn't. That's the Catholic position. More or less.

Come Join

The Catholic Coalition for Material Cooperation with Evil

You Provide the Reason. We Provide the Excuse.

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Not pro-anti-Catholic, just anti-anti-anti-Catholic

Three brief thoughts on the teapot tempest around John Edwards and his staff:

1. "Some of my best friends are Catholic" doesn't cut it as a defense. The question isn't whether people hate Catholics, it's whether they hate Catholicism. And by "Catholicism," I mean the actual Faith handed down by the Apostles, not the private treaties many of us negotiated between our consciences and our passions.
2. Tu -- which is to say, Republicans -- quoque doesn't cut it, either. The question of whether people hate Catholicism is simply of a different order of importance than the question of whether people hate Islam or homosexuality or whatever it is Republicans are said to hate.
3. In some way, this whole episode points to the evidential power of beauty. The intellect immediately grasps the truth of the matter, not discursively, but by apprehending the ugliness of those involved. Discursive reasoning may follow along, tidying things up, but its end is already known.

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The ages of man

I have just noticed how the mysteries of the Rosary match a common pattern in life.

The Joyful Mysteries line up with the innocence of childhood, when the Faith is about Baby Jesus and being loved and taken care of.

The Sorrowful Mysteries match the doubt of adolescence, when ancient questions occur to you for the first time, and the whole structure of the Faith seems undermined. For some, the structure wobbles, for others it collapses altogether and dies.

The Glorious Mysteries correspond to the recovery of the Faith from adolescent doubt. Adult faith has undergone a transformation, perhaps similar to the transformation of the human body after resurrection.

The Luminous Mysteries ... well, in this scheme, they'd align with a more systematic catechesis, when some of the facets of the Faith that were glossed over for young children are examined. Something like that, but I'm not sure that's quite as common as the other stages. (I might say that I find the Luminous Mysteries to be a fruitful addition to the Rosary, but something of a tough fit for these sorts of Ubiquitous Rosary Program posts. It seems to be a lot more natural to think in terms of triples than quadruples.)

Labels: Praying the Rosary

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Grammar lesson

As a verb, "affects" means "produces an effect upon." As a verb, "effects" means "brings about or causes." In the following sentences, should the missing verb be "affects" or "effects"?

1. The humidity            how much flour to use in the recipe.
2. Your signature here            the transfer of ownership.
3. My relationship with God            my life.

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The traditions of men

With some traditions, it's hard to see how they got started, or why they endured. With others, it isn't.

(Link via Shrine of the Holy Whapping.)

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The Divine Tailor

What was the first thing God did after His conversation with Adam, Eve, and the serpent, the one where He explained to each the consequences of their disobedience?

For the man and his wife the LORD God made leather garments, with which he clothed them.

Having realized they were naked, the man and woman had made themselves loincloths out of fig leaves.

Think about that for a minute. They made clothes out of fig leaves! Is there a better indication of just how unprepared we humans are for the consequences of our sins?

The LORD God, though, can see clearly the road we choose to travel. He knows that fig leaf clothes won't cut it outside the Garden. And for Adam and Eve, just before banishing them from Eden, God made them clothes of leather, an act of mercy within an act of punishment, providing them with greater protection than they had thought they needed.

(Or it could be that sewing leaves was the best they could do, that making leather was beyond their skill if not beyond their desire. We might also wonder what the animals whose skins provided the leather thought of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit.)

A tiny detail, generally overlooked, in the opening chapters of Genesis, but it captures the relationship God has preserved with us even after the Fall, and even after each of our own falls.

(The detail was pointed out in a talk by Fr. Joseph Alobaidi, O.P.)

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Like I need a hole in the head

Suppose you're chatting with several acquaintances, in the course of which you say, "But I'll get hit in the head by a meteorite before I get the hang of candy making." One of the women in your group begins sobbing.

What do you do if someone else explains that her husband (unbeknownst to you) was killed by a meteorite? (Hey, it could happen.)

You apologize and comfort her as best you can, right? You don't say, "I was talking about me, not your husband," or, "Come on, it's just a figure of speech," or, "Oh, please, like I was trying to upset you." That's because her being upset makes immediate sense to you once you understand the facts.

But what if, instead, the other person explains she had just watched a soap opera episode in which a character was killed by a meteorite?

Or what if there is no explanation -- if, say, you were only speaking with just the one woman, who suddenly began sobbing?

Or what if meteorite victims weren't as uncommon as you thought?

To translate the questions into the context of my exegesis of "Nobody Loves Me But My Mother":

How common are the spiritually fragile among those whom you come into contact with? How prepared are you to respond to them? How understanding or sympathetic?

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I wish I'd thought of this

I suppose I can tell myself I'm too busy thinking about virtues to think so much about sins.

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Ribands of blue

Our text today comes from the First Book of Kings. (That would be B.B.'s lyrics. Albert's compose the Second Book, Freddie's the Third.)

We begin on the tonic with:

Nobody loves me...

In three words, all the longing and fear of the human heart is captured. The happiness that we seek as our final end is a matter of love. To find someone who, on finding us, loves us. There can be no greater loneliness than to be unloved, and man is by nature social, even as is the Godhead in Whose image man is created.

Yet this lyric is not one of complete despair:

...but my mother

A mother means you belong somewhere, belong to someone. And though the literal sense here is of a biological mother, we can appropriate the allegorical sense in which the mother is the Blessed Mother, or equivalently Holy Mother Church. Read this way, the lyric is the plaint of the martyr, of the one alone in a society whose only support is spiritual.

The text, however, continues:

And she could be jiving too

With this, the despair overwhelms. The thought of being so unlovable even your own mother can only pretend to love you, that is soul-crushing.

It does, of course, echo Isaiah 49:15:

Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you.

But is this message of hope really available to one who doubts his own mother's love for him? For some, the objective fact that God loves them is like a nut inside a shell they lack the strength to crack. In these cases, repetition will not help; it might even hurt, perhaps driving the one who despairs to think, "Since I cannot see the truth of what you say for myself, it must not be true of myself."

And indeed, the verse concludes:

Now you see why I act so funny, baby,
When you do the things you do.

Again, the literal sense of a romantic relationship expresses a spiritual truth: those among us who feel unloved, perhaps even unlovable, will act funny when we do things that presume they do not feel that way. Our repeating our own actions more emphatically won't help, any more than speaking slowly and loudly to someone who doesn't understand your language helps.

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It's never too early...

to start thinking about Lent!

Okay, it is. It's not even February, for crying out loud.

Nevertheless, the USCCB website has a lot of good resources already set up: on the Creed, the Sacraments, morality, and prayer. There's nothing particularly reserved to Lent about those things. (And only some of the links take you to a USCCB Publishing order form.)

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The light is on for you

The associate pastor parochial vicar of my parish had holy cards printed for his ordination last May that concluded, "Open for Confession 24/7."

While I have no doubt of his commitment to the Sacrament -- not least because he mentions it again and again in his homilies -- I would be surprised to learn that many parishioners take him up on that offer. Surely only a tiny fraction of American Catholics would ever call to make an appointment for Confession, and I'd guess most of those would be Catholics who have been away from the Church for a while.

The rest of us make do with the parish's regular hours for Confession, perhaps the annual parish penance service -- or perhaps we make do without the Sacrament altogether.

The typical American parish seems to offer the Sacrament of Reconciliation for one hour each Saturday afternoon. There's not much original to say about the inadequacies of this system, so I'll settle for this: Between the time I get off work on Friday and the time I start work on Monday, it would be hard to pick a consistently less convenient hour for me to go to church than late Saturday afternoon.

Of course, convenience is a pretty light counterweight to forgiveness of sins, objectively speaking. But however we might speak, most of us live practically, and if it's a practical nuisance to break off what you're doing to go confess some venial sins that, objectively speaking, will be forgiven the next time you bless yourself with holy water, it's unlikely that the custom of regular confession will take hold any time soon.

For that matter, the more it does, the more inconvenient it will be as the lines get longer. (As it is, it seems to me there are usually enough penitents to fill the hour.) In this way, the demand for Confession might increase the supply of regular hours -- if, that is, the current supply doesn't cut off the demand before it grows enough to increase the supply.

All of which is why I am happy to see, in Archbishop Wuerl's pastoral letter on the Sacrament of Penance, the following:

...during this Lenten season, beginning with the Wednesday of the first week of Lent until the Wednesday of Holy Week, priests will be available in every church throughout the Archdiocese from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in order to hear confessions. The name given to this pastoral initiative is "The Light Is On For You," highlighting that the light will be on churches throughout the Archdiocese as a beacon of hope, reconciliation, and absolution.

I am, perhaps, too optimistic, but I hope the people of the Archdiocese of Washington prove equal to this initiative, and meet the increased supply with enough demand that it become a new custom. If in each deanery, there were one church where confession was available from 7 to 8:30 one night every week -- the church could rotate, and the schedule become a common part of every parish bulletin -- who knows but that we might become an archdiocese habitually made new and restored to the fullness of union with God and each other.

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Archbishop Wuerl's first pastoral letter

His first as archbishop, that is.

"God's Mercy and the Sacrament of Penance" is now on-line. From the introduction:

My invitation to every Catholic in this Archdiocese is to join in a Lenten spiritual journey to celebrate the sacrament of Reconciliation or, as we have traditionally said, "go to Confession," preferably during the season of Lent.

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Support vocations and youth programs in the Washington Archdiocese

On Sunday, April 15, 2007, the Washington Wizards will play the Chicago Bulls at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C.

Following that game, four teams from the Archdiocese of Washington will play for the championship. The teams are DC 'Hood (composed of priests and seminarians); the CYO coaches; and the 11th and 12th grade co-ed CYO all-stars. The winner of the old people's game will play the winner of the young people's game.

The event will raise money for the Catholic Youth Organization / Office of Youth Ministry, as well as raise awareness of vocations to the priesthood and religious life.

Tickets are $85 for the lower level, $35 for upper level A, and $25 for upper level B. (Yeah, I know. Is it my fault the Wizards are having a good season?)

For more information, see this link; call Bill Anderson (Wizards sales manager) at 202-628-3200 ext. 3855; or call Deacon Mike Bond (CYO/OYM) at 202-281-2465.

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Fr. Byrne's homily at the Youth Mass for Life

Many bloggers who attended the Youth Mass for Life this past Monday at the Verizon Center in Washington, DC, commented in particular about what a great homily they heard. Now you can hear it, too.

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We can but hope

So will this book make the rounds of St. Blog's reviewers?

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Fr. Ratzinger on lost zeal

Coincidentally, a post at Whispers in the Loggia links to a selection from a 1964 sermon by then-Fr. Joseph Ratzinger that relates to my post below:

Anyone who looks on the loss of salvation for others as the condition, as it were, on which he serves Christ will in the end only be able to turn away grumbling, because that kind of reward is contrary to the loving-kindness of God.

Fr. Ratzinger had in mind the grumblers who resent sharing salvation with non-Catholics. But what about the sluggards who are delighted by the thought, because of all that evangelization work it saves them?

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The zeal of Thy house

In reading the 95-year old Everyday Apostles, I was struck by how... I don't know, churchy it was. For Fr. Garesché, being Catholic was not merely a matter of faith, but of being an active member of the Catholic Church, understood in a brick-and-mortar sense perhaps as much as a spiritual sense. The apostleships he wrote of weren't for a moment Christian in any generic sense; they were Catholic apostleships, through and through.

As I read, I thought that a possible sub-title for the book would be, "You Might Be The Only Baltimore Catechism Another Person Reads." Even apart from the anachronisms of always defending your pastor and bishop and of the value of reading "the Catholic papers," it's simply not a style Catholics write in these days, unless they're consciously imitating it for reasons of nostalgia or parody.

It wasn't at all triumphalistic, though. There was nothing about Catholics being better than Protestants. The one passage I remember that dealt directly with such a comparison allowed that there were plenty of Protestants who were better than large numbers of Catholics; the lesson Fr. Garesché drew from this was, just think how much better they'd be if they had the sacraments to buck them up! (That may strike some Protestants today as triumphalistic enough, but that would just show how far Catholic style has come in the last hundred years.)

I suppose I'd say the attitude Fr. Garesché expresses regarding the Catholic Church is a confidence that she possesses the fullness of truth and that everyone is better off if they, too, possess it. In a word, that would be "zeal," specifically the zeal for souls that says, "I have something very good, and I really want others to have it, too."

I think Catholics nowadays would be generally embarrassed by that attitude. Some seem to prefer saying, "I have something very good, and I really want others to have their noses rubbed in it," others, "I have something very good, and others have their own very good things, or at least things that are good enough," still others, "I have something that's not so hot."

It's as though we can't find any ground between, "Non-Roman Catholics are damned, so we need to convert everyone," and, "Non-Roman Catholics aren't necessarily damned, so we don't need to convert anyone."

Several times, Fr. Garesché used examples from business: you wouldn't let a friend invest in what you knew to be a scam; why would you let him store up his treasure in the paltry things of this world? This lack of zeal for souls is like saying, "My friend could make a great deal more money if he invested in this business, but he's probably already making enough money, so I won't bother him about it." Do pagans do as little?

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There is still time

...to get the ingredients you need for your Burns Supper tomorrow night.

Or your Conversion of St. Paul Supper. Whichever.

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Unintentional impressions

I am bemused by the bemusement surrounding the Catherine of Siena Institute and its new blog. The bloggers at Intentional Disciples can't understand why some people think they're arguing for the Protestantization of the Church. Bloggers elsewhere can't understand their argument as anything but the Protestantization of the Church.

I'd say the fundamental difficulty can be expressed in two words: "Intentional Disciples."

I'm pretty sure the bloggers at Intentional Disciples use the term in a generic sense -- you're a disciple if you follow Jesus, you're intentional if you do it with awareness. But it's easy to infer that they're using it in a specific sense -- you're an Intentional Disciple™ if you've attended the Intentional Disciple Training Course™ taught by a Certified Intentional Disciple Trainer®.

Other things contribute to the miscommunication. Things like measuring the success of a parish activity and taking an inventory of your personal charisms really are more commonly associated with evangelical Protestantism than with Catholicism (setting aside the question of whether they ought to be). And at least some skeptics betray their own Calvinistic tendencies in judging the Institute based on a handful of the organizations its website links to.

But even I, marginally familiar with the Institute's mission and supportive of it to the extent of my familiarity, have a hard time seeing the term "intentional disciple" over and over without visions of a display case in a Christian bookstore holding Intentional Discipleship for Teens! books, Intentional Disciples page-a-day calendars, and little gold-plated dogtags stamped "I.D." to go on your "W.W.J.D." charm bracelet.

All of which goes to show that, if nothing else, the Institute is correct that Catholics don't usually talk about the things the Institute talks about.

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Maybe it's just news on your television

Here's one for the theologians: Can you turn on the radio and hear "God Trying to Get Your Attention" without it being God trying to get your attention?

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Dominican Friars for Life

See an eighteen-minute video on the experiences of Dominicans at the 2007 March for Life, including student brothers, friars in parish work and campus ministry, students at Dominican schools, Nashville sisters, even a Franciscan deacon! Also, the singing of the Dominican Salve Regina in front of the Supreme Court.

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Little-a apostles

"Are all apostles?," St. Paul asked the Corinthians, and the answer, of course, is no, not in the big-A Apostle sense of being sent by God on a particular mission to carry the Gospel to an area of the world that has not yet heard of Jesus.

But every Christian is called to be a little-a apostle, so to speak, to carry the Gospel to areas of their own little worlds of family, friends, and associates. Everyday Apostles: Commonsense Ways to Draw Others to Christ is a book about this sort of everyday apostleship, a Sophia Press reprint of a 1912 book by Fr. Edward F. Garesché, SJ.

The book contains eleven brief chapters covering different but interrelated apostleships:

1. The Apostleship of the Common Man: Most of us will never work mighty deeds for the Faith, but we can bring Christ in countless ordinary ways.
2. The Apostleship of Speech: Be ready to give reason for the hope within you. If your friend has a question, is he going to call up a priest or is he going to ask you?
3. The Apostleship of Service: You aren't prepared to answer the need that lies before you? So you aren't prepared. Answer it.
4. The Apostleship of Home: If you can't live your faith in front of your children, why would they live the Faith?
5. The Apostleship of Encouragement: Don't fail to encourage people who need encouragement.
6. The Apostleship of Praise: Praise virtue, and others might come to value it.
7. The Apostleship of Speech in Business: Refrain from evil speech at work, and people might notice.
8. The Apostleship of Character: "Put on a Catholic face," which is to say, live with a Catholic spirit so that you put a human face on Catholicism.
9. The Apostleship of Counsel: You wouldn't let a friend invest in a losing stock. Will you let him invest in a losing worldview?
10. The Apostleship of Charity: The poor you will always have with you, so the opportunity to help them you will always have, too.
11. The Apostleship of Consistency: Imagine what effect just one non-hypocritical Catholic might have on the world.

Some of this amounts to pointing out the beneficial effects on others of simply doing what you ought to and not doing what you ought not do.

But a lot of it also requires a conscious decision or commitment to add to what is required of you. And a number of these apostleships -- Speech and Counsel in particular, I'd say -- are just the things in practice that give apostleship a bad name.

The artlessness with which counsel is so often offered is enough to put a body off counsel altogether. But of course, the problem isn't with counsel, it's with artlessness. We can overcome artlessness with preparation, and the best preparation is prayer.

Who doesn't think it would be nice to lead others to Christ? Well, whoever thinks that but doesn't pray for the gifts to actually do it is just daydreaming.

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NOTE: I bought Everyday Apostles when I heard about the financial problems Sophia Institute Press is having. It has some excellent books in its catalog, and it would be a real shame if some of those old classics were to go out of print again. You might consider taking a look at their books and, if the spirit moves you, placing an order yourself.

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The Perpetual Rosary Association

What a great idea! You can join in the apostolate of prayer of the Summit Dominicans by committing to spend one hour a month praying the Rosary.

Yes, it's an hour all at once, on the same day each month. Nobody said spiritual benefits come easy.

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