Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

H/T Fr Alvin Kimel, Pontifications Purgatory as Self-Knowledge :

Humankind cannot bear to see the destruction and horror that it brings into the world, cannot bear to accept the responsibility for the injuries it has afflicted on others. Our offenses, infidelities, greed, lust, and violence ripple through families and communities, affecting people unto the third and fourth generation. We spend much of our time, both individually and corporately, protecting ourselves against this knowledge; - “Human kind”, T. S. Elliot

Like cursed offspring, mankind continues to suffer as a result of the sins of our ancestors past who sought refuge among the destructive sins of abortion, contraception, violence and sexual “freedoms”. In our quest of seeking out happiness and self fulfillment away from God, we develop into a type of spiritual hurricane with the hope of dwelling within the eye of the storm. The quick fixes, “personal choices” and alleged “rights” bring about the false sense of security one usually experiences while in the eye of a storm, holding on to a false hope of totally isolating themselves from the destruction and chaos of the storm swirling about them. The effects of our sins bring about a spiritually blindness, and through fear we learn to justify and accept the horror of abortion, the selfishness of contraception, the immoralities of lust and other immoral and unethical means of protecting the integrity of our selfish pride, comfort and safety. All the while, we believe we are making personal decisions and unaware that our evil deeds have become a new source of spiritual destruction, causing harmful scandal and suffering for generations to come and we allow injustices to go on, saying and doing nothing - out of fear and indifference, and for that we will be held accountable.

We see the meaning and the effects of ALL our sins in Purgatory—their effects on others as well as ourselves, both directly and indirectly, through chains of influence presently invisible, chains so long and effectual that we would be overwhelmed with responsibility if we saw them now. Only a few can endure the saint’s insight that “we are each responsible for all. - “Human kind”, T. S. Elliot

I’m feeling not so much in the judgmental mood right about now.

I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. For you say, “I am rich and affluent and have no need of anything,” and yet do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich, and white garments to put on so that your shameful nakedness may not be exposed, and buy ointment to smear on your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and chastise. Be earnest, therefore, and repent. —Revelation 3:15-19

We go to Mass and know all of our favorite prayers and devotions by heart and give thanks and praise to God for our charmed lives and blessings. We understand grace, sin, humility and so on. So it is, we intellectually practice our faith. We understand that we are ourselves sinners and the importance of showing tolerance, charity, forgiveness, mercy, etc..unto others. - Easy enough to intellectually understand and appreciate, “except for the grace of God - there go I“, but why is it so difficult for some of us to fully accept and embrace, to the point we faithfully live it?

By nature we are prouder than peacocks, we cling to the earth more than toads, we are baser than goats, more envious than serpents, greedier than pigs, fiercer than tigers, lazier than tortoises, weaker than reeds, and more changeable than weather-cocks. We have in us nothing but sin and deserve only the wrath of God and the eternity of hell. —Saint Louis Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, 79

In the fallen world which we live, there are those among us who develop a type of pathological, self-hating wretchedness and choose to intellectually run away from it’s associated pain by seeking out hedonistic means of “feeling good” while convincing ourselves that we were somehow superior to our enemies (which in itself can become an addictive behavior). Those of us who pick this particular path of self-destruction eventually become blind to one’s own wickedness, and many times project the evil from within onto any enemy of choice.

There are many among us who are in the process of healing from the sins of our past while desperately holding on to this deep seeded, dysfunctional coping mechanism, which ultimately makes for a self-discovery of one’s own wretched heart a slow and often painful process. Many will choose to never venture outside of their spiritual comfort zone and remain neither hot nor cold. Others will buy His gold refined by fire, and despite the struggles and many prideful falls along the way, one may hope to attain the prize of purifying clarity. For those who persevere through divine grace, will be the hope of loving God more deeply and seeking greater and greater purification from our wretchedness, which will ultimately make us free to love others as God loves us.

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Just as children who are ignorant of the realities of dirt and disease will resist bathing, those who reject the realities of being subconsciously enslaved through one’s own past will most likely resist spiritual purification. When one is faced with personal tribulations (as we surely all will be), a golden opportunity will be lost by those of us whose only focus is to, “get rid of the problem.” If only more of us would be willing and able to look deep within our selves to critically recognize and remedy psychological ailments/emotional conflicts which are responsible for so many of our problems, we would recognize these trials as God’s way of calling us to overcome old weaknesses and develop new virtues.

An excerpt from the teachings of the sixth century abbot, St. Dorotheus:

Certainly if someone examines himself carefully and with fear of God, he will never find himself completely innocent. He will see that he has given some provocation by an action, a word or by his manner. If he does find that he is not guilty in any of these ways, certainly he must have injured that brother somehow at some other time. Or perhaps he has been a source of annoyance to some other brother. For this reason he deserves to endure the injury because of many other sins that he has committed on other occasions.

The man who thinks that he is quiet and peaceful has within him a passion that he does not see. A brother comes up, utters some unkind word and immediately all the venom and mire that lie hidden within him are spewed out. If he wishes mercy, he must do penance, purify himself and strive to become perfect. He will see that he should have returned thanks to his brother instead of returning the injury, because his brother has proven to be an occasion of profit to him. It will not be long before he will no longer be bothered by these temptations. The more perfect he grows, the less these temptations will affect him. For the more the soul advances, the stronger and more powerful it becomes in bearing the difficulties that it meets.

“It does not matter how many virtues a man may have, even if they are beyond number and limit. If he has turned from the path of self-scrutiny, he will never find peace. He will always be troubled himself, or else he will be a source of trouble for others, and all his labors will be wasted.” —from the teachings of Saint Dorotheus, abbot, Office of Readings, Monday, Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

A request for prayers…

It had been twelve and a half years. At the time the decision had seemed a temporary concession for a greater good. If he had known at the time that it would not have been so temporary, he wondered if he would have made the same decision. That is immaterial now. He now recognized that God could not have been calling him to a marriage that would separate him from the Sacraments, even for a short period of time.

She was a single mother who had been severely sexually abused by her father and, or so she claimed, had been physically abused her first husband. This was the first woman that he had felt such a closeness to and she really needed him. He hadn’t understood then what this type of need really meant. He thought that he was being called to help her. Little did he realize that she suffered from disorders for which he could never have been prepared.

While he was, like the rest of his generation, very poorly catechized; unlike the average Catholic, he had a great sense of closeness and relationship with God while growing up. However, this sense had waned over the last decade. However, he had always recognized God’s presence in the Eucharist and this was something that he sorely missed. In hindsight, he could now see that her denial that she had agreed to seek an annulment and have the Church bless the marriage after the baby was born, was likely a symptom of her personality disorder. He found that this was something common among those who were so severely abused as children. He was now just beginning to realize that the nightmare she was putting them through was probably lurking at the margins of their relationship from the very beginning. He also admitted to himself that he was not wholly innocent. The sins which had led to the marriage and marrying outside of the Church aside, he had adopted her button pushing acumen; something that she used for her confused sense of controlling the situation he would often employ in his weaker moments, for retaliatory measures. He realized now that this probably had the effect of reinforcing her errant belief that relationships were about controlling the other.

She had always seemed to want to be the best mom to her children. This probably was still the case but clearly this maternal instinct could no longer overcome her almost primal need for control and her very distorted need for self affirmation. When her out of control spending had required his getting a second job, the reduction in attention may have been what finally drove her to these apparently new extremes. On the other hand, perhaps this also had occurred, though less obviously, throughout the marriage. Nevertheless, the disordered relationships she now sought out and the ridicule she subjected him to with her new consort made her very public infidelity all the more demeaning. And when he had finally discovered her betrayal, her demand for a divorce now drew his children into his nightmare.

This was probably the hardest part. After she had told them that she was divorcing him, whenever he looked into their eyes they seemed to be pleading with him to make all of this insanity go away. This tore his heart out; he was their father and there was nothing he could do to protect them. He didn’t know then how much worse things could get. When she found her spending made a divorce impossible until the house was sold and she was unwilling to give up the house, he found out how insane this would be. This occurred that day after Christmas when the police showed up late that night giving him five minutes to get what he needed and get out of the house because she had filed for a restraining order with the false claim of domestic battery. While the casual observer could see that she really should be the one committed to psychiatric care, it was obvious that without the enormous amount of money that he did not have, the legal system had little ability to recognize and appropriately deal with such a situation. Instead of getting her the help she needs, she will rather be enabled by the system to continue her downward spiral until something even more tragic happens.

Given this turmoil, his preparation for returning to the Sacraments was all the more poignant. Attending Mass, he could not withhold the tears realizing that very soon he would again receive Christ: Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. He finally was led to recognize that he needed this Communion as much as he wanted it. His mother was there for Christmas and so she was there when he finally received Holy Communion again after more than a decade. Neither of them could withhold the tears of joy, if the experience of it somewhat mitigated by the situation. It is not at all clear how all of this will end; especially how his sons will fare in the short and long term. However, he does know that with God’s grace now giving him solace and strength, whatever comes he will be given the strength to handle it. He is also beginning to understand in his experience of God’s closeness throughout this terrible pain, what is meant by the truth that God permits evil in the world only that greater good may come from it.

Please keep this suffering family in your prayers.

Historian Sergio Luzzatto’s latest book The Other Christ: Padre Pio and 19th Century Italy has deduced that Padre Pio faked his stigmata through pouring carbolic acid on his hands. A secret Vatican document found by Luzzatto revealed how a pharmacist remembered a young Padre Pio buying four grams of carbolic acid in 1919. The testimony was originally presented to the Vatican by the Archbishop of Manfredonia, Pasquale Gagliardi, as proof that Padre Pio caused his own stigmata with acid.

What I suspect is conveniently omitted from Luzatto’s novel is a fair disclosure on the truth surrounding Archbishop Gagliardi’s “veritable satanic war” waged against Padre Pio. For what ever reason, the Archbishop was bent on sabotaging St. Pio’s ministry through baseless accusations of sexual and monetary improprieties and soliciting falsified letters which were then forwarded to the Vatican. When in truth, it was the archbishop himself who was the center of controversy which included public accusations of sexual molestation, unchastity and faulty accounting errors, in addition to his diocese being infected with continued and habitual pederasty as well as acts of cleric sodomy. The Vatican eventually removed him from his diocese.

Saint Pio never retaliated nor ever criticized Archbishop Gagliardi and immediately said Mass for him after his death. It is said that the angriest he was ever seen about the archbishop’s attacks was against one of his own supporters who had verbally attacked Gagliardi - another fact that will most likely never come to light in Luzzatto’s book which has the stench of anti-catholicism which far exceeds that of carbolic acid.

A new study released which involved almost 1,000 Catholic nuns, priests and monks over 12 years revealed that those who were most conscientious had a lower risk of developing Alzheimers disease. It’ believed that being conscientious might result in a capability to better cope with plaques that may build up in the brain, eventually leading to a progression of the disease.

Nuns, priests and monks with scores in the top 10 per cent had an 89 per cent lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s than those with scores in the lowest 10 per cent and also found that conscientiousness was associated with a slower rate of mental decline. . (more)

Conscientious - guided by or in accordance with conscience or sense of right and wrong; displaying or resulting from a sense of responsibility or devotion to duty faithful performance of his duties

The popular press it seems is making this claim. CBS ran a story this evening based upon a new book publishing Mother Teresa’s letters to her spiritual director. This information is nothing new. It was in the Catholic press many years ago (e.g. see this Zenit article for example). Here is what CBS reports:

“Where is my faith?” she writes. “Even deep down … there is nothing but emptiness and darkness. … If there be God — please forgive me.”

Eight years later, she’s still looking for the belief she’s lost.

“Such deep longing for God,” she writes. “… repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal.”

As her fame increased, her faith refused to return. Her smile, she says, is a mask.

“What do I labor for?” she asks. “If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.”

This is what this means to the reporter:

Shortly after beginning work in Calcutta’s slums, the spirit leaves her.

I have not read the context but if you read St. Thérèse’s Story of a Soul, you will see very much the same thing.Again, the context is important but here you read her pouring out her sufferings in her many years of temptation against her faith.

The popular press goes beyond its competence in trying to explain what she wrote.What the passages mean depends upon what you understand faith to be.Because the press exists in an essentially emotivist culture, I suspect that they equate faith with affective experience, i.e., feelings. That is no doubt what they mean by “the spirit” leaving her.

This is not faith. Rather, as Mother Teresa, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Thérèse of Lisieux and a host of others witness, the strongest faith is that which presses on without the affective experience. So what is faith?

Faith is both a human act and it is also content. The act of faith is one of surrendering yourself to God in trust in order to believe what it is that He reveals and to do that which He wills. The content of faith is that which God reveals through His Church and as taught by the Magisterium.

However, faith is also a theological virtue. In other words, it is a gift of grace that supernaturally strengthens one’s act of faith and it provides (usually) a supernatural certitude that one’s faith is true. Recall that grace doesn’t force nature, but it heals, elevates, and perfects human nature. Thus, this grace takes the human act of faith, which is necessary because without it there is nothing for grace to work on, and grace supernaturalizes it.

Time magazine also did a rather longer article, which did do more research. In fact, unlike CBS, the reporter has heard of the dark night of the soul. With St. John of the Cross, he says that though St. John suffered for 45 years, he eventually recovered. Clearly this is a psychological experience as far as he is concerned. Here is how time magazine described it:

I love God, but I do not love my neighbor,’” she said, since in dying on the Cross, God had “[made] himself the hungry one — the naked one — the homeless one.” Jesus’ hunger, she said, is what “you and I must find” and alleviate. She condemned abortion and bemoaned youthful drug addiction in the West. Finally, she suggested that the upcoming Christmas holiday should remind the world “that radiating joy is real” because Christ is everywhere — “Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor we meet, Christ in the smile we give and in the smile that we receive.”

Yet less than three months earlier, in a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, that is only now being made public, she wrote with weary familiarity of a different Christ, an absent one. “Jesus has a very special love for you,” she assured Van der Peet. “[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak … I want you to pray for me — that I let Him have [a] free hand.”

The two statements, 11 weeks apart, are extravagantly dissonant. The first is typical of the woman the world thought it knew. The second sounds as though it had wandered in from some 1950s existentialist drama. Together they suggest a startling portrait in self-contradiction — that one of the great human icons of the past 100 years, whose remarkable deeds seemed inextricably connected to her closeness to God and who was routinely observed in silent and seemingly peaceful prayer by her associates as well as the television camera, was living out a very different spiritual reality privately, an arid landscape from which the deity had disappeared.

Of course, Time had to go to Christopher Hitchens for his expert analysis. I will spare you Hitchen’s response as you can probably guess. So why do these reporters say that she lost her faith?Do any of the statements above show that she lost her faith?

Let’s look at the act of faith.Is there any evidence in the above that Blessed Teresa chose not to surrender herself to God? No, she continues to long for God but she does not experience His consoling gift.Let’s look at her public actions. They were continually vivified by faith, even when she did not experience it. She did not surrender to doubt or she would have not continued to suffer the doubts. In fact, to the end she preached the gospel in every occasion. So she never refuted the content. This is heroic faith, to perdure against the greatest of temptations. In fact, as the Zenit article above, as does a careful reading of the Time article, indicates that those closest to her did not have a clue that she was undergoing this intense suffering but that she did not stop offering herself to God. This is Christian heroism.

So if she did not stop offering herself to God in trust, she did not lose this aspect of her faith.  Then how about the theological virtue, the gift? Do we say that God did not give her this gift if she didn’t experience it. Given what she was able to continue to do and the experiences of grace people in her presence received while she was living, and finally, given the fact that we believe that this gift of grace is given in the Sacraments which she continued to receive, it must be assumed that she never lost this gift of faith. So what was there for her to lose, if anything?

The only thing she lost was the experience of consolation, the affective assurance of her faith that was always there. This is a universal experience of those who experience the dark night of the soul. One might ask why would God ask people to go through this experience?

Well, we are made in the image of total, self-giving Love. That is what the Trinity is. Thus, we are made to give ourselves totally to God and then to others. With respect to faith, when we experience affective reinforcement for our faith, there is always a part of us that is motivated to give itself to God for the positive feelings that we experience. These feelings, in a real way, deprive us of the opportunity to make this total, disinterested gift of ourselves.

Those, who in this life, experience this dark night, are those who God knows will remain faithful and so they are given the great grace of embracing the Cross and Christ’s dark night (”My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me”). They are given the opportunity to most perfectly give themselves totally. They continue to love God–they give themselves totally to Him for His sake and not for anything that they receive in return.

The press is understandably ignorant of this and interpret her experience from an emotivist and utilitarian (i.e. that something is only good if it results in pleasure) world view. Emotivism tells us that if we do not feel something then it is not there. If we do not “feel” sorry, then we are not sorry. If we do not “feel” in love, then we are not in love. This makes feelings the arbiter of truth. It is a very dangerous error because while our feelings are good, it is our reason and free will that make us human. To surrender our freedom to our feelings is to deny our humanity and make us slaves to ourselves and almost defenseless against Satan’s temptations.

It is no doubt why this is “important” news to the mass media. It helps them to placate the burning emptiness the vast majority of them (polls suggest) experience for their lack of faith. They want to believe that faith is not possible and so they think that this is their assurance–if a great Blessed like Mother Teresa seems to have lost her faith then faith must not be possible.

There is a great difference between the emptiness that Mother Teresa experienced in her dark night and the emptiness that those without faith experience. Mother Teresa experienced hers in love, knowing but not feeling that she was united to Christ and she was given the grace to press on in her mission and her growth in holiness. She did not try to fill the emptiness with material goods but left it there to be filled by God.

Those without faith attempt to fill their emptiness with “stuff” of the world. Eventually they will experience despair of this longing ever being filled.They do not grow in holiness but regress into selfishness and look with disdain at those who tell them that faith and peace are possible. They cannot receive the grace they need for their healing and so they continue to take when their healing only comes through giving.

It is not surprising that Satan can turn a great life of heroic faith into an argument against its possibility. This is simply because love is misunderstood in our society. Only those who experience self giving love can understand how the dark night can be God’s gift to those who He loves most. Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, pray for us!

I suppose that most of us do not need demographic analyses to tell us that Catholics have been, by and large, assimilated into the American culture. Nevertheless, the Ventura, California based Barna Group has completed a study that seems to verify exactly that. The California Catholic Daily concludes:

In sum, according to the Barna report, Catholics have assimilated to the American mainstream; they are “more influenced by the social mainstream than by the core principles of the Christian faith,” it said. George Barna, director of the Barna Group, said in the report, “the trail of Catholicism in America is a clear example of culture influencing faith more often than faith influencing culture.” Catholic leaders “must address this spiritual drift within the body,” said Barna. “If they fail to do so, in the next quarter century American Catholicism could well lose its ability to shape people’s minds and hearts in ways that conform to the historic teachings and purposes of Christianity.”

Americanism is a term that was coined by Pope Leo XIII in 1899 in his personal letter to Cardinal Gibbons entitled Testem Benevolentiae. In the letter Leo condemned what he called “religious Americanism,” which he distinguished from political Americanism–praising the latter. Leo recognized that the problem of religious Americanism might have been primarily one of a mistranslation of Isaac Hecker’s biography into French.

Nevertheless, he thought that he still must address the erroneous positions found in the French translation. These problems include the claim about a malleability of Church teaching as if it were simply philosophical propositions that could and should be modified in order to fit better with modern circumstances and the claim that natural virtues are higher than the theological virtues… i.e., personal action is more efficacious than grace. Cardinal Gibbons responded that these views are not those of American Catholics and also he condemned this type of thought.

However, Cardinal Gibbons was one who supported a view of Catholic engagement with American culture that some refer to as Americanism. Gibbons was one of several prelates who espoused the view that American culture was so amenable to Catholicism that what was needed was the integration of Catholics into the culture so that they could let Americans see how Catholic they really were. Others who shared this view with Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore included Bishop John Ireland of St. Paul, Bishop John Keane of Dubuque, Bishop John Lancaster Spaulding of Peoria, and Bishop Dennis O’Connell of Richmond.

These so-called “Americanist” bishops had no explicit program but held a general agreement in some areas that could foster the acceptance of Catholics and Catholicism by Americans. These ideas include, for example, that immigrants ought to be integrated as quickly as possible into American culture and that preaching and teaching should be done only in English. Bishop Ireland is even accused by some of thinking American 1^st and Catholic 2^nd. Whether this is a fair assessment or not, it is clear that these prelates were thoroughly orthodox and they sincerely thought that the future of the Catholic Church lay in America. They believed that there was a general movement toward the Catholic Church by Americans and so the faith should be presented in such a way as to be attractive to them.

Not every Bishop thought this way. There were those who some term “Conservatives” or “Traditionalists” such as Archbishop Michael Corrigan of NY, Bishop Bernard McQuaid of Rochester, and Bishop Henni of Milwaukee. These bishops were concerned over certain issues that went against the American grain, such as labor’s association with socialism and free masonry and so, unlike some of the Americanist bishops, they did not support these unions. They were also concerned that Catholics would lose their faith by being absorbed into Protestant America and so integration of Catholics was to be avoided. Henni especially believed that the immigrants’ European culture was important for maintaining their Catholic faith. Many of these conservatives therefore, supported teaching and preaching in the immigrants’ native tongue. You can see here how terms like “liberal” and “conservative” have more ability to confuse than enlighten.

Many issues conspired to make the Americanist dream of Catholic integration into American society a reality.  It has been more successful than could have been imagined by the Americanists.  If one were to follow the historical reading of events that says there was a conflict between the Americanists and the “Conservatives,” then one would have to say that today, the Americanist goal won the day. It also seems that the Conservative reservations with this goal also proved correct.

Catholic Americans are, by and large, first Americans and if Catholic in their thinking at all, Catholics, at best, second . They have been absorbed into American society but into a culture that is now post-Protestant. The suburbanization of the cities and the coincident departure of Catholics from Catholic ghettos in the post-WWII US, the traditional ties of Catholics to the Democratic party, the confusion of Catholics about the faith in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, the crowding out of religion from public life, etc. are all elements of the perfect storm that has almost annihilated the average Catholic’s sense of the importance of his faith. Where we are today is a state that both the “Americanists” and the “Conservatives” of the 19th century would have agreed upon: they would both react in horror.

The issue today with the faith of Catholic politicians is emblematic of this.  Up until JFK, the questions leveled against Catholic politicians had to do with concerns that they would allow the Pope to dictate U.S. policy.  Today, Catholics have followed the JFK approach and enshrined in the infamous Mario Cuomo Notre Dame speech . . . “my faith has absolutely nothing to do with my actions.”  This seems to confirm the average US Catholic in his “thinking” that his religion means whatever he wants it to mean. The individualism of Catholics today is in perfect accord with the individualism of Americans.  In other words, even before this poll was taken, I could have told you that this would be the result.

Here is a link to John Brown, S. J.’s, website who, along with some Jesuit companions, is doing a series on the Society of Jesus.  It is very well done and informative.  It is also very enheartening to see that it appears that at least the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus seems to be returning to its charism of authentically teaching and defending the faith.  The first installment is on Ignatian Spirituality and the Spiritual Exercises.  It is now available (which you can also see below if you want to check it out before going over) with subsequent installments being released over the next 9 weeks (click on Jesuit Review when you get there).

He has some other helpful information available on his website as well.  Take a look and see if you might be ready for an Ignatian silent retreat.  I hear that the Lousiana retreat house is especially good.

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This summer has been crazy around here. We (i.e. The Institute of Catholic Thought) began the summer with a pilot program for a catechetical initiative at St. John’s Catholic Newman Center (SJCNC) at UIUC. It is aimed at providing a robust intellectual formation in the faith for students at St. John’s. It has been fairly successful so far as it would seem from the feedback. We also have been busy trying to begin a School of Theology under the Institute of Catholic Thought and offer an M.A. in Theology. This turns out to be quite an effort, especially trying to figure out how to begin without any money, but it may be possible (but if anyone has any good ideas about possible funding sources I would be most interested). We also hosted a seminar with the Institute for the Study of Nature which I mentioned here a few weeks ago. Tonight I am in Peoria speaking at a conference (if you look into the seminars you will not be surprised to see the title’s of my talks).

I was surprised to see how well known SJCNC is to many of the keynote speakers. I talked to Fr. Richard John Neuhaus who was quite familiar with it. I was going to mention that fact that he had linked to C-L-S in one of his On The Square posts a while back, one that caused Andrew Sullivan to call us a “far right Catholic website.” However, he was suffering from the stomach flu so I thought it best to just answer his questions. I also talked to Tim Gray who is familiar with us through his work with FOCUS. The most curious conversation was with Jeff Cavins. When we were introduced, he said “I know you.” It turns out that we did meet about 9 years ago at a conference in which we talked for about 20 minutes. He seemed to think that this must have been it. Myself, I can forget that I met someone 5 minutes after talking to them. What do you think? Does he have a phenomenal memory or did I just look like someone he knew?

Any way, all of this is to say that I have not had time to do much of anything (especially to blog). I am way behind also in my correspondence. Nevertheless, here is the first of a couple of things that I have been meaning to pass along. Stephen Dillard (who I did not know had “outed himself” as the anonymous contributor to the Southern Appeal blog which I also did not know had ceased to operate some time ago…I don’t get out much) has begun an effort to bring to greater light, Rudy Giuliani’s dismal demonstration of what it seems to mean to be Catholic and political today. In doing so he will be launching a website called Catholics Against Rudy, which is supposed to be stood up by July 4th (but check it out now for background).

Rudy is still the front runner in the Republican presidential race, and like the last Catholic presidential candidate, seems to have little appreciation for the faith or the logical contradictions in his positions. Besides the obvious concerns that they seem to demonstrate gross intellectual and character shortcomings, these “Catholic” candidates are even worse for the faith in the sense that they are anti-evangelists.

What I mean is that they help to confirm for the average, vague thinking, Catholic that a Catholic need only regurgitate the party line when it comes to why they think that can claim to be Catholic and reject Church teachings. These candidates also confirm a mistaken view of faith in general, and the Catholic faith in particular, for those outside of the faith.

I think that this is an excellent opportunity to help catechize the average Catholic and correct the mistaken views of others about Catholicism. In addition, it will also be good to remove an objectionable player from the field of other mostly objectionable candidates (for anyone who is Republican and from Iowa who wants to aupport a good Catholic [of course he is a convert] candidate, please get on board with Sam Brownback for the Ames Iowa Straw Poll in August…for anyone who is a Democrat please get working on your party to put forth any acceptable candidate).

This campaign will be very insightful. The last campaign made it clear where people put their Catholic faith in relation to their politics. I know many life long Democrats who had to swallow hard and with great difficulty decided they had to vote for a Republican. This campaign will help to show which Catholics are Republicans rather than Catholics. Ironically, this is what you get when you separate faith from reason…you get neither.

Pope Benedict, during his general audience, spoke of the necessity of theologians maintaining a  sense of humility by using Tertullian as an example:

“…, this man who made such a great contribution to Christian thought. It is clear that in the end he lacked the simplicity and humility to be part of the Church, to accept her weaknesses. When one sees only one’s own ideas, in all their greatness, in the end it is precisely this greatness that is lost. The essential characteristic of great theologians is the humility to remain with the Church, to accept her weaknesses and their own, because only God is truly holy. We, on the other hand, always have need of forgiveness.”

Words of wisdom for all of us to live by, being either towards the Church or each other - the foundation of true freedom.

If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you might be asking yourself what the heck is this guy doing writing about Catholic, or for that matter any, literary matters. This would be an excellent observation. I don’t intend to write about the literary arts per se, rather, on a particular concern associated with the. Some time ago I posted on a book by a Catholic novelist on the issue of chastity.

It was a good book but I had some misgivings about some of the content (actually a quite small part). However, it was very much in line of what you might read from Walker Percy or Flannery O’Connor. There was the use of obscene language and some mild sexual scenes. So what’s my problem?

There are three issues here as I see them. First, there is the issue of purity. Second, we have the matter of material participation in evil. Finally, we have the issue of scandal. I will take them one at a time.

Flannery O’Connor had some misgivings about her style and how it corresponded to her faith but after consulting with her spiritual director, he told her that she did not have the obligation to write for a 15 year old girl. True enough; I suppose that we are guilty here at C-L-S of assuming this as well. However, there ought to be more said about this. While we do not have the obligation to limit everything we write or say to audiences that are not sufficiently mature to deal with certain topics this is not the same as saying we do not have the obligation to attend to the concern of avoiding putting others into the near occasion of sin. We are our brothers’ keepers and must help to guard others’ purity. This is not the same as puritanism.

O.k., so what is the difference between purity and puritanism? Purity is a single minded commitment of the will to be in accord with God and therefore to look upon other human beings in the way that God created them. In other words, purity recognizes that each human person is made in the image of God and created for their own sakes. The person is made body and soul and purity recognizes, therefore, the beauty and goodness of the body and its important role in manifesting the person. It also recognizes the importance and goodness, nay holiness, of marital sexual intercourse. Purity recognizes that the only proper attitude toward a person is love. Others cannot be treated as a means but must always be looked upon as ends in themselves. Thus, no one can be reduced to their physical (or any other) attributes. They cannot be looked upon as a means to pleasure.

Purity also recognizes that we are in a fallen state and that it is a constant struggle to avoid the reduction of the other to a means to an end. This is very often sexual or emotional pleasure, but not always. And so purity recognizes that there are certain things that can lead one to see and treat others as objects. As an example, men are very visual and can be, in varying degrees, visually superficial. Thus, those wishing to be pure must avoid such occasions that would subject them to impure thoughts. While these are often visual, as I will discuss below, words can be powerful occasions for returning one to problematic visual experiences. Women wishing to guard men’s purity will not subject reveal their bodies in such a way as to make themselves the occasion of temptations against purity.

Puritanism, on the other hand, sees the body and even marital sexual intercourse as dirty, as something of a necessary evil. So while the response of someone motivated by puritanism and one motivated by an authentic concern for purity may sometimes externally appear to be the same, it will not be such in all cases because of their different motivations. For example, while respecting purity, the naked human body may be portrayed in art if it is done in such a way as to reveal the whole human person rather than to evoke an erotic response. Puritanism would never allow this to be done.

So now that we have these terms defined, we need to look at what we are doing in literature with words and word images. Words are symbols and have symbolic value. They point to a reality beyond themselves. I suppose that our post-Cartesian mindset has led us to view symbols in a disembodied, even arbitrary manner. A rose by any other name…

There is some truth to the claim of arbitrariness to the assigning of names to things, but this is not universally true. Nor does this fact negate the mediation of the thing symbolized, in a very real way, through its symbol. Symbols are more than just arbitrary signs of something else. We recognize this in our human experience. For example, the way a person’s name can mediate their presence to us in such a way that we actually experience in a certain manner, their presence.

Another example might be the way we react when someone says something kind or hateful to us. Even if we know what they are thinking, the experience of hearing or reading the words gives us the sense that the words have an ontology of their own. We are cut to the quick with hateful words or uplifted in an almost transcendent way with words of affirmation. There is a weightiness to the spoken and written word that goes beyond simple affective or psychological response.

Thus, words and word images can and do mediate to us the object or experience they symbolize, in way that cannot be reduced to the cognitive. That is why words are so powerful and must be used with much care. This brings us to the second issue: material participation in evil.

We must always avoid evil, but there are times when as an unintended side effect of a good act with a good intention, we find that the good done results in bad consequences. Sometimes we find that accepting the unintended consequences is justified by the greater proportion of good that will come from the good act and good intention. The Catholic tradition refers to this as the principle of double effect. Just war teaching relies upon this principle. In the case of using words or word images that might evoke impure responses in others but the intention is to explain circumstances and/or actually counter the effects of such events and words the use of them may be justified. However, we must first recognize that they are evils.

If we look at obscenities, we can see that they usually have to do with the bathroom or the bedroom. Most others tend to reduce the human person to something less than human. Most all have the same goal. They take what is holy or sacred (an act or a human person) and try to reduce it to the profane. Even if they are not always intended in this way by those who use them, that is their etymology. Thus, the use of them is at least a material participation in evil. Formal participation would be actually intending, to some degree, to convey the evil sentiment. Material participation can sometimes be licit and necessary. Formal participation in evil can never be justified.

Therefore, one must recognize the gravity of choosing to use obscene words or word images. It seems to me that literary merit in and of itself cannot be the only consideration. Rather, the gravity of material participation in evil dictates that one must ensure the use of obscene words or word images is an absolute necessity with no other effective way to bring about the good. Furthermore, one can never employ obscenities with the intent that the reader will experience a lurid response and furthermore, the writer must use all his skill to ensure that this is avoided. This would be formal participation and no good result can ever justify it.

The final issue is scandal. There are two aspects to this issue. The first is that which we have been discussing all along. Christian scandal is not what is often meant colloquially by the use of the term, mainly shocking sensibilities. Rather, the Christian meaning can be found in its Greek etymological origin, scandalon, which means a stone upon which one stumbles. In other words, in this context one is guilty of scandal when he causes others to sin or he makes it at least a near temptation. Today, so many have been exposed to pornography that this becomes a dicey issue. It does not take much for some (many?) to be led back to these images impressed forever in their memories. This ought to be taken into consideration, at least in deciding how to craft the use of one’s literary material.

However, something else ought to be considered as well. We are conditioned by our culture with the idea of “adult” humor, content, etc. into a mistaken notion about adult abilities. Now, while it is true that adults do have a greater maturity and therefore, capacity and obligation to master themselves and their responses to exposure to impure, or suggestively so, experiences, we too often naively assume that these exposures have no effect on us. All have varying degrees of self-mastery, but no one can be so confident in themselves that they would unthinkingly expose themselves to impurity. In fact, I would submit that exposure to impurity has a tremendous, cumulative, and perhaps almost imperceptible effect on our thinking and willful responses to temptations against purity. Being an “adult” does not give anyone license to expose himself to impurity with the presumption that their are no negative consequences for so doing. In fact, just the opposite is true. As an adult, one has the obligation to recognize and avoid all temptations against purity.

The other aspect of scandal is that by use of obscenity one can lead his readers to assume that obscene words or word images are “no big deal.” I think that this does happen when, for example, someone reads Walker Percy, knowing that he was a very faithful Catholic and sees his use of obscenities, the reader comes to think that there is nothing wrong with or at least no caution necessary with their use.

This is why you do not see the use of such words here and that we edit out or delete any such use as seems appropriate. Thoughts?

According to the Linacre Institute, the major cause of the sex-abuse scandal in The Church goes beyond isolated incidents and poor judgment of disturbed individuals. The problem of today can actually be traced back to the 1950s, when the basic religious purpose and intellectual formation of many priests began to mutate into what is commonly referred to today as a progressive Catholic. Catholic World News highlights an in-depth analysis from a book called After Ascetism: Sex, Prayer, and Deviant Priests which explains why the sexual problems of some go well beyond pedophilia or pederasty, and more importantly outlines the key elements which provide a solution. These solutions can empower the Church to break free from some of the failures of psychology specialists who have never had an interest or comprehension of religious devotion, chastity, prayer, ascetical discipline, in other words, an adequate understanding of the whole human person.

The Linacre Institute, which was founded within the Catholic Medical Association to develop position papers on various bioethical issues, has taken a special interest in the role that the sciences and professions have in shaping judgment and opinion on sexual ethics, and the treatment of disturbed priests, and has supported efforts to advance Catholic social teaching in these areas. With After Asceticism the Institute has made an important contribution to a discussion– long overdue– about the collapse of clerical discipline that allowed the sex-abuse crisis to develop.

The core change over the course of the twentieth century was one of purpose or allegiance– leaving behind ascetical discipline, having disdain for religious tradition, and adopting the therapeutic mentality, a popular belief that fulfillment of the human person springs from emotional desire in a quest for self-definition, or self-actualization, without regard to an objective philosophical, religious or moral truth. Further, the therapeutic mentality views sin as a social concern and discourages loyalty to religious authority; it is profoundly anti-ascetical.

As society becomes more deeply immersed in pagan sexuality, the Catholic Church will remain mired in sexual crisis absent a return to its ascetical tradition.

I recently finished reading a book entitled Emma’s Journal, by Juli Loesch Wiley. The book is an edited version of Juli’s journal which she kept during the years 1983-88. It is not exactly her conversion story. By this time she had already become Catholic. Rather, it is a story of her struggle for chastity after she had committed her life to Christ.

As a promotion of chaste living, it is not unlike Dawn Eden’s, Thrill of the Chaste. They both are very personal and brave testimonials about their faults and weaknesses. They both also provide the firm conviction that a chaste life is the authentic, and only path to true happiness and joy.

This is Juli’s description of the book:

The story of an activist’s journey from living as a lay woman in a community of radical sisters to founding a movement combining peace and pro-life conviction. In the process she wrestles with conflict, friendship, suffering, sexuality, grace, pain and love and finds - eventually - her heart’s home.

What I liked about it:

I think that Juli is a very talented writer (this might even be a negative for regular readers of this blog so you can find samples of her writing here and here to decide for yourself). Because her story is so very personal, it is also very compelling. However, she also has a gift with her prose that keeps the story moving and engaging. She allows the reader to discover along with her, the areas of her life that she needs to transform and along the way, perhaps might allow one to be somewhat self-reflective in a nonthreatening way. While the story, I suspect, will resonate with women more than men, there is still much in it for men as well. Men can understand more about the way the women experience the temptations against chastity which I think most will find quite foreign to them. It can provide men insights into feminine psychology (for lack of a better phrase) that can allow Christian men to better empathize and support Christian women in their vocations to holiness.

We need more books of this genre on chastity. It is important for women to realize that they can easily be misled by the false sense of intimacy that they get from corporal intimacy. This is especially important for women who have already begun to engage in pre-marital sexual relations. I say women because this is not the same experience for men.

Some other comments and cautions:

It would not be valid to consider this category of comments as the polar opposite to my “what I liked” paragraph. Rather, these are caveats for those who might be taken aback by some parts of the book. First, there is the issue of some graphic language and mildly descriptive sex scenes. If you subscribe to the Flannery O’Connor school of literary license in this regard, then you will not be disturbed. Myself, I have upset some commentors on this blog for deleting their comments that followed this line of thinking. I will explain more my thoughts on this in a later post. I do not want these thoughts to take away from my recommendation for this book. However, you should realize that if your temperament and/or personal history are such that these would be temptations against purity, then you ought not read the book.

Juli was/is a peace activist. While, I agree with all of her sentiments with regard to peace and violence, I do not agree with all of her moral analyses. Some, especially those who have served in the military as I have, might find it hard to identify with her do to some of these statements. However, I think that we should listen closely to what she has to say in this regard. As I said, I do not agree with everything but she comes closer to the authentic Christian position on the use of violence than the tendency of some of us who have been bred in the military.

Conversations with a female acquaintance (if she would permit, I would say friend) about the book suggested the concern about Juli’s comments about the “fictionalization” of her journal. Well, the first “fictionalization” is that she uses a pseudonym, Emma. I asked Juli about this and she offered that her plans for anonymity changed as she wrote the book. But more importantly, she employed the Emma pseudonym as a psychological tool to allow her to distance herself enough to make this project an emotional possibility. Another concern was the caveat in the preface that some of the characters were composites, leading to the question: what was real and what wasn’t. Juli told me that this was done primarily to make the book more readable. All of the events and conversations were as they occurred but to avoid having to sort through 50-70 different names, for example, she assigned conversations with 8 different sisters to 3 composite sisters…however, all of the conversations were actual. In the end, I would say that this is not an issue.

If you think you would like to read it, you can get a copy for a very modest sum right here.

What others have said: Amy Welborn, Mark Shea, Maggie Gallagher, and Annie Gottlieb

As a postscript, in the book Juli writes about her parents. Here is a very moving witness she gives to the recent passing of her father.

There appears to be growing concensus among the elite in the psychiatric community who contradict the logic of using evidence based medicine to appropriately diagnose and effectively treat patients afflicted with gender dysphoria; choosing, instead, to collaborate with the illness and authorize a cosmetic mutilation commonly called a sex change operation. The scientific facts are that chromosomes, not genitals or cognitive discernment, determine gender. While in the womb, prenatal hormones shape the brains of the child, so rest assured, there is no invasion of a body waiting to trap a brain of it’s opposite sex.

Given the scientific evidence of gender development vs. a two year old insisting that he is a girl, I tend to support science. Unfortunately, there is resistance to provide any type of documented, long term follow up for those who undergo a sex change. I wonder why that is? Could it be the physicians and therapists who support this type of intervention ignore the facts that point to the appropriate diagnosis of Gender Identity DISORDER, so subsequently, they leave an illness untreated?

As for a story of the 12 year old boy who is undergoing hormonal therapy in order to protect his personality, I’m trying to understand how a denial of reality and deception used in conjunction with hormonal injections are supposed to nuture a healthy personality. As for the theory of a male being trapped in a female’s body, why do you suppose some men who have had their gentalia removed to become a pseudo-woman have wives and girlfriends? Thankfully, I don’t get “it”.

Catholic teaching in this area is clear. It is impossible to “change” a person’ sex.

Some relevant posts that we have done on this issue include: Extreme Makeover: The Tragic Edition and Sex and Human Personhood: Sex Differences.

Today is the first day in the octave of Prayer for Christian unity that John Paul the Great encouraged Catholics to participate in. It begins on the 18th of January and culminates with the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul on the 25th.

Ut unum sint– that all may be one! This was the name of the encyclical that our late Holy Father, John Paul the Great, penned on Christian unity. It is hard to imagine a contemporary personality with more zeal for Christian unity than John Paul II. He was driven by, what I believe was a unique, mystical insight into the terrible horror of the wounds to the Mystical Body of Christ caused by Christian disunity. He also recognized that charity, supernatural love enkindled by the Holy Spirit in the hearts of Christians, is the only way home to a visible unity in the Mystical Body.

I am reminded in this of St. Augustine’s meditation on the 6^th chapter of John’s Gospel. Specifically, beginning in verse 16 of this Bread of Life discourse, in which St. Augustine sees the ship being tossed by the seas as an image of the Church, the bark of Peter, and explains the primary cause of Her experience of tribulations:

As the end of the world approaches, errors increase, terrors multiply, iniquity increases, infidelity increases; the light, in short, which, by the Evangelist John himself, is fully and clearly shown to be charity, so much so that he says, “Whoso hates his brother is in darkness;” that light, I say, is very often extinguished; this darkness of enmity between brethren increases, daily increases, and Jesus is not yet come. How does it appear to increase? “Because iniquity will abound, and the love of many will begin to wax cold.” Darkness increases, and Jesus is not yet come. Darkness increasing, love waxing cold, iniquity abounding,—these are the waves that agitate the ship; the storms and the winds are the clamors of revilers. Thence love waxes cold; thence the waves do swell, and the ship is tossed (Tractate 25, 5).

Love waxes cold daily in my heart too I am afraid. In our everyday lives we have so many tasks pressing upon us, daily struggles, and urgent obligations that such a seemingly impossible goal as visible Christian unity can often seem to spare of our time, little more than a pious nod in assenting to this intention. But it is so often this disunity that comforts unbelievers in their belief that they need not seriously investigate the claims of Christianity. It so often is also the cause of questioning in the hearts of Christians as well. The current situation is certainly not that of which Jesus prayed, that the unity of the Church be that of His unity with the Father.

Please consider using this first day of prayer for an increase in our own charity. Specifically, that through God’s grace we be given the ability to fully possess ourselves and when we do, that we may be enabled to give ourselves totally to God and that through this increase in our charity the Church may move one step closer to Her calling of visible unity.

In recognition of this week, the Institute of Catholic Thought is hosting an ecumenical discussion of the problem of Christian disunity. If you are in the area, we would be honored if you would join us on Tuesday evening with your thoughtful questions and comments as we seek to know one another better and pray together for more visible unity in the body of Christ.

Can Jesus’ Prayer Still Be Fulfilled?

Discussion on Christian Unity

January 23, 2007 (7PM)

Lewis Lounge

St. John’s Catholic Newman Center

604 E. Armory Ave. Champaign, IL

On the night before his death, Jesus prayed that all his disciples might be one. Yet Christians today find it hard to believe that unity is possible in a world where there are thousands of Christian churches. What is the real meaning of Christian unity? Does it mean mutual love without organizational unity? Is unity of heart possible without unity in truth? What would Jesus want Christians to do today to express a greater unity?

Representatives of three major Christian traditions come together to address these questions by considering the meaning of Jesus’ high priestly prayer recorded in the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John. Jointly sponsored by The Institute of Catholic Thought (of St. John’s Catholic Newman Center), Urbana Theological Seminary, and the Three Hierarchs Greek Orthodox Church, this evening of dialogue returns to the fount of our knowledge of Christ in the New Testament. Our three presenters, all intimately acquainted with the pastoral needs of the church, will speak to the issue of Christian unity by twenty minute reflections on Jesus’ prayer. Ample time is allotted for questions and discussion.

All are welcome as we ponder one of the most pressing problems in world Christianity today. It promises to be an evening of enlightenment, encouragement and thoughtful prayer.

Where: Lewis Lounge, St. John’s Catholic Newman Center

When: January 23^rd at 7:00-9:00PM

Contact: Kenneth J. Howell, Director of the Institute of Catholic Thought. khowell@sjcnc.org or call 344-1184.

Presenters and Discussants

Presenter to be determined, Urbana Theological Seminary.

Fr. George Pyle, Pastor of Three Hierarchs Greek Orthodox Church.

Kenneth J. Howell Ph.D., Director of the Institute of Catholic Thought and Professor of Religious Studies, UIUC.

Awhile back, I did a short series on the human person. In one of the articles, I touched on the relationship between the human person’s ultimate end and that which we often confuse for it. To be more specific, I discussed how man’s ultimate happiness is to be found in his participation in Trinitarian Communion and the way that consumption in the material world often disguises this end and often diverts us from the path leading to it.Given that we have come to the end of the Christmas Octave, the liturgical time in which we commemorate the Incarnation that made possible our incorporation into Trinitarian Communion by means of the Hypostatic Union, I thought I would jot down a few more thoughts on this topic based upon reflections from other theologians, especially John Paul the Great’s theology of the body catecheses.

John Paul reminds us that we were made in the image of a Communio Personarum, a community of divine Persons. However, unlike divine Persons, human persons were created with a potency, a capacity, to cooperate in perfecting themselves. This perfection is described as holiness. What holiness means is that we achieve total self-possession by cooperating with grace, through prayer and practice of the virtues, such that we are able to readily and totally give ourselves to God first and then to others. This need for total self-gift for human holiness, read human happiness, derives from the fact that God is Love. John Paul shows what this means by using the tradition of the Trinitarian Processions to find that Love means total self-gift (see our About post for more of an explanation of this). Thus, on earth we are given the task to develop the habitus, the habit, by which we can totally give ourselves to God. But John Paul reminds us that we cannot give that which we do not first possess.

This task remains for us as long as we live out our lives in this fallen state. Here on earth we must cooperate with grace, which is the partaking in the divine nature (see 2 Peter 1:4), through the Sacraments in order to overcome our fallen desires. In our fallen state, our appetites for the goods which satiate the needs of the material aspects of our being become disordered when they do damage to the higher goods which perfect our whole personhood. For example, our desire to have communion with that extra donut when we know we ought not becomes problematic when we habitually give into our desire for this material good. Doing so deprives us of the self-possession necessary if we are to give our whole selves to God. While, this might seem a minor example, the principle is the same for more grave examples. In fact, the habitual submission to lesser temptations, makes it more and more difficult to resist graver temptations.

Notice above that I characterized eating the donut in terms of a communion. Eating is the predominant form of communion available to the aspect of our nature that we share with lower life forms. In this “communion” we take up the lower organic materials and incorporate them into our own bodies. This, however, is not the true communion for which our whole being pines. The communion by which the lower life forms give way to the higher life forms is called consumption. Consumption is solely a temporary satisfaction of an affectivity or appetite by which the lower forms are annihilated by the higher.

It is no surprise then, I suppose, that Adam and Eve’s fall is depicted in terms of consuming the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. This is what I mean. Though it is not a necessary result, creation arises out of the overflowing of Trinitarian Love, from total Self-gift. Created being, because it’s archetype is in God, must reflect God’s perfection in some manner. The Early Church Fathers, especially Pseudo-Dionysius, characterized the manner the entire cosmos reflects its Trinitarian archetype as the eternal cosmic return to the Father, where all that was given by the Father will ultimately all return to Him. They saw this truth firmly revealed in Scripture when all creation will be recapitulated in Christ.

Adam and Eve, who on behalf of all of visible creation, were called to freely complete this eternal return after the archetype of Trinitarian love, by totally giving themselves back to God in trusting thanksgiving for their existence. This free act of total self-gift was destroyed when instead of trusting in God and receiving as a gift all He intended to give them for their happiness, they decided they needed to “take” instead. They were tempted to believe God was withholding from them something that they needed for their fulfillment, for their ultimate happiness. This taking seems to be presented as the antithesis of the gift. Instead of returning themselves to God and bringing forth a communion with Him, they chose another path. Notice, they not only take, but they consume. Consumption has now replaced communion as the dominant mode by which mankind is motivated and, thereby, so often deceived into replacing the true good with apparent goods.

With the Fall, we lost original communion, original grace. God reconciled this grave situation through a new creation. To transcend the infinite gulf between God and man, a rupture opened up by an act of consumption, indicating self-trust at the expense of divine trust, God became Man. On behalf of all creation, the God-Man returned to the Father all He was given, which included His human life. The Cross is, par excellence, a manifestation of Trinitarian love. It is also the singular saving act of human total self-gift because it has an infinite character due to its having been performed by a divine Person. With the Cross, humanity now has renewed access to divine nature. However, this access comes only through each person’s incorporation into the Incarnation. We must become new creations as Jesus told Nicodemus and as St. Paul advised, through Baptism. Baptism incorporates us into the Mystical Body of Christ, which is the Catholic Church. In the Church we are wedded to divinity through the Bridegroom and through which we become what we eat. We are the Mystical Body of Christ because we consume Him, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Eucharist. Only by this act of consumption can we have real communion.

As I mentioned above, consumption incorporates lower life into higher life. Communion, rather, weds lives together. In the Eucharist we can see the way that God redeems consumption, showing us that the material aspect of our humanity is a good if kept in the proper order. In Holy Communion we consume God, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, but instead of bringing him down into our nature, we are brought up into His. We become divinized. Neither person is absorbed into the other, but we are wedded to Christ and thereby, incorporated into Trinitarian love.

Through this communion, we are given the strength we need to overcome the “man of lust.” That is, man in the dispensation of sin in which he is subject to the threefold lust of which St. John the Divine speaks: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. These are an ever present temptation. We are continually tempted to try to satisfy our desire for communion with God with consumption of food, drink, and other pleasures of the flesh. We are tempted to distort the life giving love of marital communion with the consumption of another soul in selfish sexual intercourse for the sake of pleasure or the sake of binding another to ourselves in seeking a sense of security or self-worth. We are tempted to replace our trust in God with a misplaced faith in the gods of science who promise us health, wealth and power, even power over life itself.

It is only through authentic communion with God in Christ that we can prepare ourselves for our ultimate communion with God in heaven. Sacramental communion gives us access to grace and the supernatural virtues, which alone heals, elevates and perfects nature. Grace alone can perfect the natural virtues of prudence, temperance, justice and fortitude whereby we gain the total self-possession we need to escape slavery to our passions so that we can become slaves to Christ. It is through prayer where we perfect our thirst for total self-giving by which we become holy.

In the end, the only consumption upon which we dare rely for our salvation is Holy Communion.

O.k., how about a discussion about spiritual maturation? When one has finally “broken the code” so to speak, and recognized that the only path to authentic happiness is found in following the universal call to holiness, in some ways the road gets easier. Initially, trying to live a life of purity and self-possession can seem to be a burden, but soon it bears fruit.

However, there are many pitfalls to be found along the way and after the spiritual fruit begins to appear. Temptation is always lurking at the door, John Paul the Great warns in his theology of the body catecheses, for the “man of lust” (the new English translation correctly replaces lust with concupiscence, but I find the former term more dramatic). Here it can be an up and down struggle. Temptation can be so insidious. First, one gets an impure thought and then comes the sense that one is now committed to the thought. It seems as if it is too late to do anything but submit to it and then to wallow in it. In retrospect, one can almost sense Satan himself had been walking next to him. I think that this is likely what St. Paul was referring to in Romans 7 when he discussed the struggle in serving the law of God against the law of the flesh. This chapter is oft misunderstood, unless it is read in light of the tradition of concupiscence.

The interior disharmony caused by original sin in which one’s affectivities, pressing for satisfaction of material goods, compete against reason’s recognition that these desires often come at the expense of higher goods. This disharmony can only ultimately be conquered by God’s grace. As St. Peter said, by partaking in the divine nature (2 Pt 1:4). We are wretched in our subjection to the law of sin. However, Christians, and especially Catholics who have regular access to the divine nature in the Sacraments, live under the law of redemption. Grace is restored, though the effects of the loss of original grace are not removed (hence the perdurance of concupiscence). Though if grace is to be fruitful, it requires our cooperation…ultimately, God’s plan of salvation is not welfare but an authentic gift.

It is true that often we do not need the temptation of personified evil to entice us away from purity. However, it is many times the case that it is this active, unrelenting, compelling temptation that first entice and then accuse, trying to convince that one has no choice but to accept and even embrace his impure inclinations. I find that these often occur when, in hindsight, one sees that he was on the road to some particular spiritual progress or an important vocational decision. Interestingly enough, it seems to me that my personal resistance alone is never enough to assuage the inclinations. While it often takes some time to recognize what is going on (o.k., so I’m a slow learner) it is only through prayer that the attack ends, and very quickly at that. I find most helpful a full out retreat to the protective mantle of The Woman whose seed crushes Satan’s head.

On this Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, when we celebrate our Blessed Mother’s entry into the world proveniently saved from original sin, it is a good opportunity to recall her loving solicitude for all of her children. Humanity’s solitary cooperated with God to bring forth from her womb, the source of our redemption. She continues to work in the Church to apply, through the Church, the grace this redemption restored to mankind. As she was rescued from death before her conception, she wishes Her Son’s redemption for all her children as well.

Blessed Virgin Mary, the Immaculate Conception - Pray for us, we wretched men!

Rorate-Caeli has posted a small piece by a rad-trad seminarian in Rome who tells us about the persecution he must endure as he is forced, due to his traditionalism, to live “in the closet.” He tells us how he draws near daily to the Lord’s Passion by suffering a perpetual, bloodless martyrdom, forced to deny in public who he really is in order to make it through the process of formation. Of course, his situation leaves him as frustrated with so-called “neoconservative” Catholics as with “progressive” Catholics. He must hide his true self from the former as well as the latter. The former, he claims, crave tradition but have no real understanding of it, because it has not formed them. They think, he asserts, “that every word John Paul II uttered was as valuable as the Holy Gospels themselves!” “Neocon” Catholics seem to strike him as a rather bumbling lot.

One comment of his in this regard struck me as rather amusing: “In the parish, [the neocons'] piety will score them points with the faithful—but their ignorance of the ecclesial patrimony that has preceded them will destroy their credibility in the eyes of the educated. They are more of a weakness for the Church than the liberals (who are dying off with no young vocations to carry their torch).”

One wonders who these educated souls are of whom he speaks. Does he count himself among this elite group of cultured and discerning souls? Clearly he must, given the condescending tone of the statement. However, the statement raises a question that often strikes me in regard to the rad-trads: “To what extent is this seminarian truly educated in theology?” I would grant that constant exposure to the traditional rite of the Roman Mass — as it is usually celebrated in this day and age by the faithful who have preserved it — is an unparalleled formative tool for one’s spirit and can refine one culturally in a way that the current state of the Pauline Rite, frankly, cannot do. But, given