The Feast of Stephen

Yesterday Dec 26th my little group of friends was scheduled to bring the Eucharist to those Catholics with the misfortune of being in the hospital on Christmas.  As we rode the elevators, I thought about some comments of a few mentors who introduced me to this ministry.  While much focus was given to bringing the physical presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, my Deacon and Priest friend also focused on the importance of bringing Jesus in companionship and brotherly love. In other words we are all called to be His hands and His feet.  The deacon said that often times, no one comes to visit these people and they are starved for some simple conversation and attention.   As I rode the elevator up I wondered where it was that he got the impression that so many were looking for that.  It was a rare experience for me.  I kid you not, the following then happened...

For it being the day after Christmas, a surprising number of people did not want to receive, but this was tempered by the genuine enthusiasm and gratitude of those who did receive.  At my very last stop though, I experienced something new.  I had one last woman to visit in room 448.  It was a two bed room, but there was no one in the first bed.  The lights were off, though there was that grey illumination that comes from the overcast sky.  Behind the divider curtain slouched an elderly woman who watched me approach.  I asked her name, and it turned out that she was not the person I was looking for.  On a whim, I asked if she was Catholic and explained why I was there.  She was not Catholic.  She then engaged me in a conversation that  was filled with the fear of a person confused as to where they were and what was happening.  In the beginning, I was seeking a break in the conversation, or an opportunity to extricate myself (I had to serve at Mass within the hour).  But  when she denied me every opportunity I thought "so what if I am late, they'll get along fine without me."  And so I started to speak with her and tell her a few stories about my Christmas, and the cruise I just returned from.  She lit right up, had long moments of lucidity and laughed at my stories.  She complained of being hungry but couldn't sit up to eat or peel the banana that was on her breakfast tray.  So, I helped her rearrange her pillows and sit up, peeled her bananas and told her another story while I helped her to eat.  In the end as I left she thanked me for 'being the only Human contact' she has had.

On the elevator down I realized that today was the feast of St. Stephen -- the first Deacon and martyr in the Church.  The Diaconate was created to serve because of inequities and human failings  in the early church; 'the Hellenists murmured against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution'.  And now, on the cusp of my 40th birthday I ask for clarification on this aspect of the diaconate, and the Holy Spirit provides.  How remarkably easy it would have been for me to turn around and leave this woman the second I learned she wasn't who I was looking for.  And yet... she was who I was looking for after all.

Ephesians 5 set to music -- Sanctus Real, 'Lead Me'

Food. Incorporated

I think every adult should watch this movie.



"A Culture that views this pig as a pile of protoplasmic inanimate structure to be manipulated by whatever creative design the human mind can foist on that critter will probably view individuals within its community and other cultures in the community of nations with the same type of disdain and disrespect and controlling type mentality."  -- An organic farmer interviewed in the movie.

Amen brother. Aldous Huxley, how prescient you were.

Nero's Torches

From the Annals of Tacitus (56-125 A.D.)

Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.

(click for super large version)
Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man’s cruelty, that they were being destroyed.

On the Debt of Science to Christianity

I came across this thought provoking article originally at the Augustine Club of Columbia University.  The original publisher is closed and knowing how ephemeral such College Clubs can sometimes be, I am reposting the article in it's entirety here, as I think the facts and arguments presented here are critical for some individuals in my audience who might take umbrage at the title of the article and this post.

From THE POPE’S PHYSICIST by Fr. Paul Haffner

---

The Origin of Science
How is it that science became a self-sustaining enterprise only in the Christian West?

…as Whitehead pointed out, it is no coincidence that science sprang, not from Ionian metaphysics, not from the Brahmin-Buddhist-Taoist East, not from the Egyptian-Mayan astrological South, but from the heart of the Christian West, that although Galileo fell out with the Church, he would hardly have taken so much trouble studying Jupiter and dropping objects from towers if the reality and value and order of things had not first been conferred by belief in the Incarnation. (Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos)

To the popular mind, science is completely inimical to religion: science embraces facts and evidence while religion professes blind faith. Like many simplistic popular notions, this view is mistaken. Modern science is not only compatible with Christianity, it in fact finds its origins in Christianity. This is not to say that the Bible is a science textbook that contains raw scientific truths, as some evangelical Christians would have us believe. The Christian faith contains deeper truths– truths with philosophical consequences that make conceivable the mind’s exploration of nature: man’s place in God’s creation, who God is and how he freely created a cosmos.

In large part, the modern mind thinks little of these notions in much the same way that the last thing on a fish’s mind is the water it breathes. It is difficult for those raised in a scientific world to appreciate the plight of the ancient mind trapped within an eternal and arbitrary world. It is difficult for those raised in a post-Christian world to appreciate the radical novelty and liberation Christian ideas presented to the ancient mind.

The following selection summarizes the most notable work of Stanley Jaki, renowned historian of science and Templeton Prize laureate.

How did Christian belief provide a cultural matrix (womb) for the growth of science?

In Christ and Science (p. 23), Jaki gives four reasons for modern science’s unique birth in Christian Western Europe:

1. “Once more the Christian belief in the Creator allowed a break-through in thinking about nature. Only a truly transcendental Creator could be thought of as being powerful enough to create a nature with autonomous laws without his power over nature being thereby diminished. Once the basic among those laws were formulated science could develop on its own terms.”
2. “The Christian idea of creation made still another crucially important contribution to the future of science. It consisted in putting all material beings on the same level as being mere creatures. Unlike in the pagan Greek cosmos, there could be no divine bodies in the Christian cosmos. All bodies, heavenly and terrestrial, were now on the same footing, on the same level. this made it eventually possible to assume that the motion of the moon and the fall of a body on earth could be governed by the same law of gravitation. The assumption would have been a sacrilege in the eyes of anyone in the Greek pantheistic tradition, or in any similar tradition in any of the ancient cultures.”
3. “Finally, man figured in the Christian dogma of creation as a being specially created in the image of God. This image consisted both in man’s rationality as somehow sharing in God’s own rationality and in man’s condition as an ethical being with eternal responsibility for his actions. Man’s reflection on his own rationality had therefore to give him confidence that his created mind could fathom the rationality of the created realm.”
4. “At the same time, the very createdness could caution man to guard agains the ever-present temptation to dictate to nature what it ought to be. The eventual rise of the experimental method owes much to that Christian matrix.”

But what about the other monotheistic religions?

Jaki notes that before Christ the Jews never formed a very large community (priv. comm.). In later times, the Jews lacked the Christian notion that Jesus was the monogenes or unigenitus, the only-begotten of God. Pantheists like the Greeks tended to identify the monogenes or unigenitus with the universe itself, or with the heavens. Jaki writes:

Herein lies the tremendous difference between Christian monotheism on the one hand and Jewish and Muslim monotheism on the other. This explains also the fact that it is almost natural for a Jewish or Muslim intellectual to become a patheist. About the former Spinoza and Einstein are well-known examples. As to the Muslims, it should be enough to think of the Averroists. With this in mind one can also hope to understand why the Muslims, who for five hundred years had studied Aristotle’s works and produced many commentaries on them failed to make a breakthrough. The latter came in medieval Christian context and just about within a hundred years from the availability of Aristotle’s works in Latin

As we will see below, the break-through that began science was a Christian commentary on Aristotle’s De Caelo (On the Heavens).

So how did it all happen? Or fail to happen?

Fr. Paul Haffner writes:

Modern experimental science was rendered possible, Jaki has shown, as a result of the Christian philosophical atmosphere of the Middle Ages. Although a talent for science was certainly present in the ancient world (for example in the design and construction of the Egyptian pyramids), nevertheless the philosophical and psychological climate was hostile to a self-sustaining scientific process. Thus science suffered still-births in the cultures of ancient China, India, Egypt and Babylonia. It also failed to come to fruition among the Maya, Incas and Aztecs of the Americas. Even though ancient Greece came closer to achieving a continuous scientific enterprise than any other ancient culture, science was not born there either. Science did not come to birth among the medieval Muslim heirs to Aristotle.

….The psychological climate of such ancient cultures, with their belief that the universe was infinite and time an endless repetition of historical cycles, was often either hopelessness or complacency (hardly what is needed to spur and sustain scientific progress); and in either case there was a failure to arrive at a belief in the existence of God the Creator and of creation itself as therefore rational and intelligible. Thus their inability to produce a self-sustaining scientific enterprise.

If science suffered only stillbirths in ancient cultures, how did it come to its unique viable birth? The beginning of science as a fully fledged enterprise took place in relation to two important definitions of the Magisterium of the Church. The first was the definition at the Fourth Lateran Council in the year 1215, that the universe was created out of nothing at the beginning of time. The second magisterial statement was at the local level, enunciated by Bishop Stephen Tempier of Paris who, on March 7, 1277, condemned 219 Aristotelian propositions, so outlawing the deterministic and necessitarian views of creation.

These statements of the teaching authority of the Church expressed an atmosphere in which faith in God had penetrated the medieval culture and given rise to philosophical consequences. The cosmos was seen as contingent in its existence and thus dependent on a divine choice which called it into being; the universe is also contingent in itsnature and so God was free to create this particular form of world among an infinity of other possibilities. Thus the cosmos cannot be a necessary form of existence; and so it has to be approached by a posteriori investigation. The universe is also rational and so a coherent discourse can be made about it. Indeed the contingency and rationality of the cosmos are like two pillars supporting the Christian vision of the cosmos.

The rise of science needed the broad and persistent sharing by the whole population, that is, the entire culture, of a very specific body of doctrines relating the universe to a universal and absolute intelligibility embodied in the tenet about a personal God, the Creator of all. Therefore it was not chance that the first physicist was John Buridan, professor at the Sorbonne around the year 1330, just after the time of the two above-mentioned statements of the Church’s teaching office.

Buridan’s vision of the universe was steeped in the Christian doctrine of the creation; in particular, he rejected the Aristotelian idea [in De Caelo] of a cosmos existing from all eternity. He developed the idea of impetus in which God was seen as responsible for the initial setting in motion of the heavenly bodies, which then remained in motion without the necessity of a direct action on the part of God. This was different from Aristotle’s approach, in which the motion of heavenly bodies had no beginning and would also have no end. Buridan’s work was continued by his disciple, Nicholas Oresme, around the year 1370; impetus theory anticipated Newton’s first law of motion.

The doctrine that God created the universe out of nothing and that the universe had a beginning was later to be reiterated at the First Vatican Council, against the errors of materialism and pantheism which enjoyed a new vogue at that time. In addition, Vatican I stated the absolute freedom of God to create, and made clear (against fideism) the possibility of arriving at God’s existence through a rational reflection upon creation. As Jaki states: “The Council, in line with a tradition almost two millenia old, could but insist on the very foundation of that relation which is man’s ability to see the reasonability of revelation, which in turn is inconceivable if man is not able to infer from the world surrounding him the existence of its Creator.

It is precisely the inability of many scientists to trace the grandeur of the Creator in His works that Jaki opposes with great skill. He challenges the atheistic positions of R. Dawkins in the biological sphere and of Stephen Hawking in physics. He shows that the best way to unmask the thought of non-believing scientists is to show how the basis for their reasoning cannot be proven scientifically. In an unjustified way they leave the realm of their own scientific disciplines and make a priori philosophical deductions against Christian belief. Again, one example of this is the pervasive “chance” or “chaos” ideology used to “explain” the coming into being of the material universe, of life and of the human person. Stanley Jaki has also refuted such approaches to the cosmos and creation in his masterly work,The Purpose of It All, published in 1990.

The originality of Jaki’s thought also lies in the link which he describes between the dogmas of the Creation and the Incarnation. He shows how the development of the doctrine of creation out of nothing was “connected with the conceptual refinements of the doctrine of the Incarnation around which raged the great inner debates of the early Church.” Jaki then discusses how the Jewish position on creation underwent a change during the first few centuries of Christianity. Philo, a contemporary of Jesus, tried to interpret the first chapter of Genesis, but his view “showed him closer to Greek eternalism than to Biblical creationism.” The earliest midrashim “showed that Jewish theologians were no longer willing to uphold the doctrine of the complete submission of matter to the Maker of all.” In the Mutazalite tradition of Islam there was also a tendency to slide towards emanationism and pantheism, as a result of endorsing the pantheistic necessitarianism of Aristotle.

Jaki clearly affirms that in Christianity, a slide into pantheism was prevented because the doctrine of the creation was bolstered up by faith in the Incarnation. Pantheism is invariably present when the eternal and cyclic view of the cosmos prevails. The uniqueness of the Incarnation and Redemption dashed to pieces any possibility of the eternal and cyclic view; for if the world were cyclic, the once-and-for-all coming of Christ would be undermined. The uniqueness of Christ secures a linear view of history and makes Christianity more than just one among many historical factors influencing the world. The dogmas of the Creation and Incarnation mean “an absolute and most revolutionary break with a past steeped in paganism,” and the enunciation of these dogmas and their historical impact is “an uphill fight never to be completed.”

…

But the cosmos and all the specific laws which govern it do not form a self-explanatory system; they point beyond science and call for a metaphysical foundation in the Christian doctrine of creation. It is precisely this Christian doctrine of creation which, according to Jaki, was the stimulus for the unique viable birth of science. The Christian doctrine of creation finds its expression within the Church.

 

How many times did the Risen Christ appear to you this week?

It would be much easier to live a Christian life
if the risen Jesus were merely some ghost of his former self,
but he is not that.

He has hands and feet, arms and legs;
he is short and tall and of every imaginable build;
his face is male and female;
his voice is loud and soft, encouraging and demanding,
commanding, compelling and consoling.

He lives in those we love and he lives in those we don’t love.
He lives in the young and in the old and in those not yet born.

Today in this church he has hundreds of faces,
each one different and each the same because he wears them all.

Who knows how many times in the past week
did the risen Christ appear to you and me
and ask, in some way, for something to eat, something to drink,
for some gesture on our part to show that we recognize him,
that like the first disciples, we too are witnesses of his resurrection.

From the Concord Pastor. Be sure to read the whole thing.

Odd

Sunday mornings, once a month I have the privilege of bringing the Eucharist to people in the hospital.  It is always an experience that reveals the true presence to me in different ways.  The oddest way so far happened to me this past Sunday morning.

I was tasked with both the cancer ward, as well as the maternity ward.  Everyone who I came across in the cancer ward was very grateful to receive the body of Christ.  This was a stark contrast with the maternity ward.  I entered one room as a mother was breastfeeding her newborn baby girl.  I introduced myself as being a Eucharistic Minister from the catholic Community of N. W-B and would she like to receive communion this morning.  The mother replied, "For her?"

"No, for You," I said.  She responded again, "No, not for me, but can she?" indicating her newborn.  this caught me completely off guard.  My first reaction was not one in reference to the age of reason (in my Byzantine background, First communion is often given with baptism) but rather of practicality.  "your newborn is just learning to breastfeed, and I only have the Body of Christ with me."  "Oh, well... when can she receive?"

Another stumper.  Wasn't this woman listed as a Catholic on the call sheet?  I told her it wouldn't be until first communion, then, said God Bless and congratulations, and moved on.

But this young woman has been troubling me all day.  I can understand (sort of) if a parent has no faith, but wants their child brought up in a faith for developmental and intellectual reasons.  The idea being that a child will retain something of an intellectual faith or moral underpinning that the parent sees as valuable.  But in this case, even if the mother didn't understand exactly what I was doing, she at least understood it as being of some sort of spiritual grace or benefit.  The infant could clearly not have any intellectual gain from whatever she thought I was doing.  This being the case, why oh why would the mother acknowledge the spiritual benefit and want her child to have it, but refuse it for herself?

Discipline of Prayer

One other note I picked up from this John Allen book, “Opus Dei – AN Objective Look”.
I mentioned before that I struggle to say the Liturgy of the hours with any regularity.  Since I have been contemplating the Permanent Diaconate, I thought I should get some practice at this.  I am always on the lookout for new tools to help me say this, when really all I need is greater discipline at prayer.
Once upon a time, I thought that saying the Rosary was an onerous chore — who would want to do that?  This of course was back when I would zip through a Hail Mary lickety split without any thought — if even I went that far.  Once I was comfortable with saying one or more (!) rosaries a day, the Liturgy of the hours didn’t seem like such a big hill to climb.  But I still tend to rush through it at times, and mostly just forget about compline or vespers.  Attending Daily Mass — right now that is a Mountain for me to climb.
I mention all this because in the John Allen book, he recounts the daily requirements of prayer for members of Opus Dei — and I nearly fell over.

1. Awaken saying ‘Serviam’ (I will serve)
2. Daily Mass
3. Rosary
4. 1/2 hour mental prayer in the AM and the PM
5. Noontime Angelus or Regina Coeli depending on the season
6. 10 minute meditiation on a spiritual reading
7. 5 minutes reading the New Testament
8. Short prayers throughout the day called ‘aspirations’ such as ‘Everything with Peter to Jesus through Mary’
9. A daily set of prayers in Latin called the Preces, which include invocations to the Holy Spirit, Jeses Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Guardian Angels, then prayers for the Holy Father, the Bishop, unity among those working to spread the gospel, and invocations to Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Peter, Paul, and John (patrons of Opus Dei)
10. A Daily visit to the Blessed Sacrament (often immediately ater supper) and includes 3 Our Fathers, 3 Hail Mary’s, 3 Glory Be’s, and making a “Spiritual Communion” meaning an act of union with Christ that doesn’t involve physically receiving communion during Mass.
11. A daily examination of conscience
12. Saying three Hail Mary’s as an intention for holy purity and blessing onesself with Holy Water before going to bed.

That program is certainly not for the faint of heart.  It probably amounts to 3 or 4 hours of prayer daily.  And to think I can’t make it through 40 minutes of the Liturgy of the hours.
It’s all about discipline I suppose.  And Love.

The Confessional Attitude of Judas Iscariot

I struggle to say the Liturgy of the Hours on a regular basis.  I find great inspiration from it, yet still, I struggle.  I have sought out many ‘helps’ to inspire me to greater discipline — often to little avail, but I digress.  One of those helps is Adrienne von Speyr’ “Book of All Saints.”  For those who don’t know, Adrienne was a 20th century mystic, who amongs other things was granted startling visions of the saints (and others) at prayer.  Much of her experience was the foundation of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theological studies.  All of this falls under the domain of private revelation, but I find it to be helpful and at times inspiring.  So for Today, I present Adrienne von Speyyr’s vision of Judas Iscariot at prayer.

Inner Attitude.
Judas’ attitude is that of standing in a growing contradiction to the Lord.  And it is uncomfortable for him.  But above all Jesus feels an unease in relation to Judas.  He allows this unease to occur precisely within the sphere of his human nature.  He does not allow it to grow or diminish through his divine knowledge; he does not hate Judas as the betrayer.  But he is also incapable of simply setting aside his unease and ignoring it until the time of the Passion.  He allows it to follow human laws and development.  Judas has a certain share in this discomfort, with increasing rancor.  He sees more and more that something is not right.  Why does the Lord not intervene, since he in fact sees that it is not right this way?  And because he does not do anything about it, perhaps he is not the messiah.  But Jesus does not make an exception for Judas.  He gives him the entire lesson of Christianity, just as he gives it to the others — no more and no less.  Judas does not receive any ‘private lessons.’  Jesus cannot make any special efforts in order to convert him, for these would have their ground purely in his divine and supernatural knowledge; he would be able to justify an extraordinary effort only on the basis of the whole of his knowledge, which includes the human.  Occasionally he does make use of the higher knowledge, for example, in his prediction of Peter’s denial.  But what he does in relation to Peter he does not do in relation to Judas.  He does not give him any predictions; he does not warn him.  In relation to Judas, he fundamentally avoids doing this.  He turns only his human knowledge toward him.  It is almost as if it were necessary to avoid forcing Judas’ guilt too far, almost as if Judas already had enough to bear, without awakening in him an extraordinary faith through extraordinary graces, which would only burden his betrayal more deeply.  By keeping silent, the Lord protects Judas.  To be sure, an abyss opens up here for us: we are unable to see what law the Son of God is following in administering his divine knowledge, when he uses it and when he does not.
Judas becomes inwardly more and more alienated and stubborn.  He plays in a sense with his inner attitude: he clings to the fact that the Lord called him in spite of everything and, then, again to the fact that the whole thing is not possible; everything he picks up from the Lord’s teaching makes it possible to deny it even more.  And nevertheless he is involved.  He is like the religious who has taken vows and can no longer undo them.  Ultimately, he has no faith.  He acts as if he were trying to decide between belief and unbelief.  He weighs what it would be like to believe…But the most important thing is: he has no hope.  And, therefore, no love and, therefore, no faith.  He does nothope that he could become someone else through his calling, that God would root himself in himself, that he could accept Jesus’ teaching.  He does not hope because he thinks he knows himself.
There is no confessional attitude.  He does not believe in any forgiveness, because ultimately he does not believe in any sin.  When he lies, for example, he is completely aware of the fact that he does not speak the truth.  In fact, he knows this quite clearly.  Indeed, it would be desirable for the majority of Christians to have such a clear understanding of their sin!  But Judas recognizes them, not as sins, but only as facts, which are arranged somehow in his life’s system, in the system of his self-justification.
Prayer is foreign to him.  When the others pray, he blasphemes God inwardly.  In the moment when he betrayed the Lord, there is the glimmer of a possibility of hope in him.  It is the first time he reflects: “Perhaps he truly was the Lord!”  Something like hope is born out of the despair: “If it is the Lord, then he belongs to God, and then the truth is in him and not in me.”  This could have been hope; this could have been liberation form the ego, the recognition that God is the one who is right.  One cannot say that Judas did not know this “hope”.  Nevertheless he does hang himself.  This situation, in any event, is too monstrous, too brutal for him to be able to find a solution for himself.  But he sees that there may be a solution for the Lord.  Because his betrayal would not be able to thwart the Lord if he comes from God.  And it may be that he turned to his Lord for just this reason, … like the evil tenders of the vineyard, who say: he is the Son, and therefore we want to kill him…  And in the hope for Jesus, for the possibility that he could really be the one, is somehow so powerful in Judas that it does not leave any room in him, as it were, for any hope for himself…  The “regret”, which causes him to bring the money back to the Temple , is a fruit of his hope; he would not have been able to achieve this if he did not have this hope.  And if he does hang himself, then it is because he is no longer able to live any longer, because he betrayed the Lord!  If hope — a single hope — had arisen before the betrayal, then it would have been available for himself as well.  He is like an Abraham who really did kill his son Isaac and now realizes the angel was in fact present to keep him from doing it… And thus Judas murders his whole negating subject; his deed appears to him so deserving of destruction that he destroys himself.  He knows no other way of undoing what he has done.

She is running 100 miles an hour in the wrong direction...

An Unlikely Disciple

This weekend I have switched up for some light reading.  I found a really interesting book that I heard about on the radio recently.  Called  "The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University", it follws a Brown University Sophomore who goes spends a Semester at Jerry Fallwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA.
Rather than go to Europe for a Semester, or spend a semester at sea, like so many of his cohorts in college, the author reasons, "Why go to learn about a culture in another country when there is one in this country that I know nothing about?"

So he tries to live with and understand Evangelical Christians, while being a very very marginal Quaker himself (realistically, he admits he's basically non-Christian).

The most fascinating thing that happens repeatedly in the story, is how the author feels attracted to parts of the Chirstian message, but is turned off by some frankly un-Christian behavior.  He doesn't always recognize the behavior as being specifically un-Christian, which doubles the damage becasue he then thinks that this is what Christians believe, or sees the hypocrisy of certain things as being part of Christianity.

If anthing, the book is an interesting cautionary tale of how the merits of Christ are judged by the (in)actions of his followers.  But also, the most attractive and mysterious of his Christian friends is one guy who consistently and always is filled with the joy of being Christian.  That joy was warm enough to melt the author's heart enough to plant a seed...

Tanzania Expedition Diary 2/26/94 -- Nairobi

February 26th, 6:10PM at Nairobi, Kenya

Travis and I never did go on a sightseeing tour in London.  Not being able to get any sleep on the plane and arriving at a midmorning local time left us a bit tired.  Plus there was all that extra carry-on luggage that we were both carrying.  So ultimately we just sacked out in the terminal.  I struck up a conversation with the ticket agent at the British Airways desk in London yesterday.  When she was looking at my passport she noticed I was from northeast Pennsylvania, and she very cheerfully told me about her brother lived in Tunkhannock.  When she handed back my boarding pass I found that she had upgraded me to first-class!  And first-class on a 747 means that you get to sit on the upper deck!

The service was very nice, the food excellent, and the seat was very close to a lazy boy recliner in size and comfort.  The first in-flight movie "Cool Runnings" -- a sort of comedy/truestory about the Jamaican bobsled team in the 1992 Olympics.  I settled down for the 11 hour flight enjoying what would likely be my last luxury for the next few months while I thought of Travis back in the coach section, and went to sleep with a smile on my face.

During the landing at Jomo Kenyatta Airport, I realized I had forgotten how unsettling the runway really is.  As our enormous jet got closer and closer to the ground, you can see the how badly the tarmack is maintained and watch the large cracks in the pavement and runway weeds as they wip by at 300 miles an hour.  Quick prayer for safe landing.  Make that several quick prayers for safe landing...

Now, out into the un-air conditioned terminal.  And through customs.  All told I am bringing about 110 pounds of luggage in 2 bags.  My checked bag is just my Field backpack inside a 5 foot long green army surplus duffle bag.  Fortunately the customs officers didn't ask me to unpack anything because it would have been quite the scene opening all those pockets.  It's always a bit startling to see the security here at th airport compared to what you see back home.  There seem to be just as many police officers as at home, but here they are wearing combat fatigues, carrying semi-automatic rifles at the ready, with lazy, realxed leans against the walls and surly expressions on the faces.  No, not friendly AT ALL. Then we walk around the corner and are confronted by a mob of Taxi drivers all shouting and reaching to grab our bags (and thus our business).  "Bwana, come with me -- do not listen to these other vultures!"  Thank heavens we didn't have to wait, as Scott was already here and we piled our luggage onto our 1974 Land Rover Mk III.  During the dawn ride into the city we just sat quietly looking at the landscape as it passes by.  Something about the multicolored blue and pink sky silhouetting the stands of Acacia trees fills the heart with awe until there is no room left for any other sensation.  As we get closer to the city and 'rush hour', the roads are filled with a procession of vehicles that looks like a museum display of the evolution of transportation.  Pack Camels and horses next to new Mercedes, truck beds filled with produce being pulled by young men, Old British Leland open body truck next to Small buses filled with an insanely dangerous amount of passengers.  And the smell...  from the moment I stepped off the 747 I could smell Nairobi.  The acrid, pungent smell of 100,000 cooking fires, I'll never forget it.

Nairobi is a strange city to Western eyes.  The extremely rich living side-by-side with the extremely poor.  At the same time that the rich put up with the incredible filth, inefficiency, and breakdowns; the poor seem to do their best to be well dressed (with much dirt and several holes) and socially responsible.  It is just incredible.

Tonight we are going to a restaurant called The carnivore.  Here you can eat exotic game that is raised on a farm that the restaurant owns.  And then later someone will pick up Sean from the airport.  I'm getting along with Travis rather well but I suspect that is partly due to the courtesy that strangers extend to each other.

It's a slow fade...

Lawrence of Rome

Several Days late for his feast day, but I though I'd share a great article on St. Lawrence, one of the big early models of the Permanent Diaconate.

Sentenced to death in the Emperor Valerian's sweeping condemnation of all Christian clergy, Lawrence offended the Emperor-and thereby endeared himself to all Christians since-by assembling before Valerian the "gold and silver" of the Church. According to the tradition, Deacon Lawrence, knowing that the fervor of Valerians' hatred was extending to all Christians who owned property, began to give it all away. He distributed the money and treasures of the Church to the city's poor-believing the clear admonition of the Savior that they were blessed and especially loved by Him.

Valerian heard the news and wanted the treasure to satisfy his unbridled lust for worldly power. So, he offered Deacon Lawrence a way out of sure death...

Read the rest at catholic.org

Even if you were familiar with the story about St. Lawrence, I'll bet you didn't know that he is a key individual in the 'mystery' of the whereabouts of the Holy Grail.  For the full and riveting tale, and to find out the ACTUAL history of the Chalice Christ used at the last supper, listen to the Saintcast #108.  Or if you don't like to hear a good story well told, I suppose you can check out a the highlights over at Fr. Z's What Does the Prayer Really Say.

Tanzania Expedition Diary 2/24/94

I went to college and grad school to become an archeologist.  I probably saw too many Indiana Jones moveis and national geographic magazines when I was younger.  I got this idea into my head that I could expore the world, have great adventures, satisfy my intellect, and have a cushy job as a University Professor all at the same time.  Only some of that turned out to be true.

Ultimately I left archeology because I had theoretical problems with how we could interpret human behavior in the archeological record way back in the 1.8 Million Year ago time frame (the one I was working in), as well as a belief that living a long life and being an African Archeologist might not be coexisting goals.  My experiences were really somewhat similar to what you find in Peter Matthiessen's The Tree Where Man was Born (the quintessential modern treatise on travel to Africa as a Westerner).  Finally, I didn't think that being in the field for months at a time, incommunicado was a just way to treat a spouse and raise a family.  Of course, this was all before the dawn of mobile communications as we know them today.

But I thought I would share some of my Journals of my final trip to Africa.  Unfortunaltey I only have part of them -- my field notes are missing.  But some of you might find this to be an interesting story.  My maturity level or lack thereof shows through at times, and I hadn't composed these to be read by a larger audience -- so forgive the flights of juvenility...   I'll post an entry every few days or so...

At JFK Airport  Feb 24th 1994 7:15PM

Well, I'm sitting here at gate 5 of JFK Airport, looking out at the Concord parked at the next gate and wishing I was on that plane.  It's amazing how small the cabin really is compared to the 747 I'll be flying on.  This trip is already off to a crummy start.  My grandmother gave me a tiny gold "Angel on my Shoulder' pin, which I clipped to my jacket.  I lost it before I even got into the airport.  Fortunately I still have my St. Anthony/St. Christopher medal that I imagine my great Uncle Carried with him in World War II.  Not only did I lose that gift, but it seems my baggage was improperly checked onto an invalid flight to Nairobi.  The ticket agents assure me it will arrive on the proper flight anyway, but we shall see.  I won't have an opportunity to wait for it in case of a lte arrival in Nairobi -- so I may have to be all new clothes in Kenya or Tanzania.
Travis, one of my expedition mates is on this flight with me (there are three others -- Henry, my Graduate advisor, Scott, and Shawn) and we discussed wheter we would go sightseeing in London tomorrow, since we have a rather long layover in Heathrow for the flight to Jomo Kenyatta Airport.  Sightseeing won't be very easy with my 40 pounds of carryon luggage -- mostly the video camcorder I brought along...Looks like we are boarding...

Lumina

All too often souls  do not linger where the Lord's Incarnation is at it's most complete: in their neighbor or in the Eucharist.

--Adrenne von Speyr

Merton and Kreeft on Atheists and how to see God

Thomas Merton in The Seven Storey Mountain reflects on his concept of God as an atheist::

I never had an adequate notion of what Christians meant by God.  I had simply taken it for granted that the God in Whom religious people believed , and to Whom they attributed the creation and government of all things, was a noisy and dramatic and passionate character, a vague, jealous, hidden being, the objectification of all their own desires and strivings and subjective ideals.

The truth is, that the concept of God which I had always entertained, and which I had accused Christians of teaching to the world, was a concept of a being who was simply impossible.  He was infinite and yet finite; perfect and imperfect; eternal and yet changing-subject to all the variations of emotions, love, sorrow, hate, revenge, that men are prey to.  How could this fatuous, emotional thing be without beginning in the without end,be  the creator of all?  I had taken the dead letter of Scripture at its very deadest, and it had killed me.

I think one cause of my profound satisfaction with what I now read was that God had been vindicated in my own mind.  There is in every intellect a natural exigency for a true concept of God: we are born with the thirst to know him and to see him, and therefore it cannot be otherwise.  I know that many people are, or call themselves, "atheists" simply because they are repelled and offended by statements of God made in imaginary and metaphorical terms of which they are not able to interpret and comprehend.  They refuse these concepts of God, not because they despise God, but perhaps because they demand a notion of him more perfect than they generally find: and because ordinary, figurative concepts of God could not satisfy them, they turn away and think that there are no other: or, worse still, they refused to listen to philosophy, on the ground that it is nothing but a web of meaningless words spun together for the justification of the same old hopeless falsehoods.  What a relief it was for me, now, to discover not only that no idea of ours, let alone any image, could adequately represent God, but also that we should not allow ourselves to be satisfied with any such knowledge of him.

At a recent Men's fellowship meeting we talked a bit about what types of proofs are required for people to see God.  In the end, we discussed how Belief must come first -- then you see God.  Peter Kreeft addressed this concept of coming to know God in a lecture on Beauty.  In talking about beauty he described it as an aspect and sign that points towards God. 

So the more you see the beauty of God, the more you love Him.  Well how do you see the beauty of God, how do you open your eyes?  Unfortunately the only way to open the eyes is love.  So you could only see God when you love Him and you can only love him when you see Him.  So where do you start?  Well with both, because they reinforce eachother.  It's like the relationship between the mind and the senses.  If you have no sensory information then you have an empty mind, but if you have no principles and concepts, you don't understand your sensory experiences.  So the more sense knowledge you have the more conceptual knowledge you have, and the more conceptual knowledge you have, the more clear your sense knoweldge is.  Each feeds the other and starts simultaneously, it's not like the chicken and egg dilemma.

Likewise loving God and seeing the beauty of God reinforce eachother and each is the most powerful means to the other.  I know of no more effective way of loving God than seeing His beauty, and no more effective way of seeing His beauty than to love Him.  And that is true of human beings too.  Why did Dante perceive the beauty of Beatrice when to everyone else in the world she was a 'plain Jane'?  Because he loved her.  Why did he love her?  Because he suddenly by divine grace had the vision of her beauty.  It's the same with God.

Sometimes though, people don't believe in God for altogether different reasons. Some, because it would require them to change their views and behavior. If there is no God, then I am god.  Some others are scandalized by the disconnect between the way some 'believers' behave and the what it is that they believe.

Bill Veeck on Value

For those of you who don't know or aren't baseball fans, Bill Veeck was perhaps one of the most colorful baseball team owners.  My father tells a story that in the mid 1970's when the Chicago White Sox were doing poorly and considering leaving town, Bill made a pitch on the evening News that if all the White Sox fans would send him a penny each -- he would buy the team and keep them in Chicago.  And boy, did the fans respond.  He is probably most famous/notorious for the 'Disco Demolition Night' promotion which ended badly.

Here's Bill with some wisdom learned about the relationship between Cost, Value, and happiness.  These things are repeated elsewhere in some other sources worth checking out.

Stick Around to the 4 minute mark

Where's YOUR rosary?

A soldier who stood on a landmine and was shot in the chest in Afghanistan is convinced a rosary saved his life in exactly the same way as his great-grandfather towards the end of the Second World War.  Glenn Hockton, 19, who is now home from a seven-month tour of duty with the Coldstream Guards in Helmand Province, was on patrol when his rosary suddenly fell from his neck. His mother Sheri Jones said today: 'He felt like he had a slap on the back. He bent down to pick up his rosary to see if it was broken. As he bent down he realised he was on a landmine.'  Glenn had to stand there for 45 terrifying minutes while his colleagues successfully managed to get to him.  Mrs Jones, from Tye Green, Essex, said she was physically sick when her son rang to tell her of his ordeal.

His great-grandfather Joseph 'Sunny' Truman also credited a rosary with saving his life in a World War II blast that killed six members of his platoon.  He was with the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers and after being captured towards the end of the war, he and other prisoners were forced to march away from the advancing Allied armies.  Mrs Jones, 41, recalled: 'He was walking across a field with half a dozen of his platoon. He bent down to pick something up and was the only one to survive a sudden bomb blast. He had picked up a rosary.'  Before Glenn was deployed to Afghanistan, she said he asked for a rosary to take with him.

Read More

St. Ignatius of Legola

Tip of the hat to Jim... love it!

Now that is strength of convictions

Here's a woman who was nearly added to the roll of 21st century martyrs.  Would you have the presence of mind and strength of convictions she showed?  I ask myself the same question, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have reacted the same way...

A would-be armed robber who held up a mobile phone shop repented during the raid and left as a rescued soul after a sermon from a Christian shop assistant.
Nayara Goncalves, 20, told the man calmly that God had better plans for him when he drew a gun and demanded cash from the till of the shop in Pompano Beach, Florida.
The fearless shop assistant even made the robber promise he would go back to church and turn his life around as he sheepishly left after listening to five minutes of preaching.
'I said I know you have a gun and you’re going to do what you want, but let me tell you about Jesus,' said Miss Goncalves, who added she always carries a Bible.
I’m a Christian and I have God, and let me tell you about Jesus because he can change your life, you don’t need to do this.'
During the encounter, which was captured by a security camera at the MetroPCS shop, the man told her that he was going to be evicted in three days and needed $300 (£192) to cover his rent.
'I’ve never done this before,' he is heard telling her. 'I’m not very good at this, obviously. If there’s no money in the register, can you show me?'
Miss Goncalves told him that there was little cash in the til but that any he took would be deducted from her wages.

Check out the whole story at the Daily Mail

My Name is Clayton McDonald, and I'm at the end of my life...

There is something this teen needs you to hear:

Trouble me

Sometimes I get asked what it is like to 'feel a calling.'  It's hard to describe, but for the most part it feels closest to the nervous anxiety you have (at least I did) before going away to college.  Though you want to go and know that there is much good that can come of it -- you are very nervous of the unknown, and the changes that will come about in your life.  It is very comfortable staying where you are, but you know that you need to move on...

Tom Jones has a new album, Praise and Blame the style and content of which is as much a surprise to me as it is I'm sure to you.  Not sure if it's quite my cup of tea yet, but one of the songs gets across another aspect of 'the calling' as I feel it.

20th Century Martyrs: Maximillian Kolbe

Coming up soon on August 14th is the feast dat of St. Maximillian Kolbe, a Franciscan priest sentenced to Auschwitz because he was... well, a Catholic Priest.  His story is relatively well known in Catholic circles, but it got me to thinking that we don't hear much about other 20th century martyrs.  With the exception of the first 400 years of it's existence, this was among the most anti-Christian of centuries,  but it's hard to tell from the comfort of an American home.  Sometimes the saints seem to be these otherworldly people with unnattainable ideals and lives of perfect prayer.  People admire them, but often easily dismiss them thinking 'who has the stomach to limit one's life in that way?'  Well the martyrs are people who limited their lives because they would not limit their convictions.  Pray that you don't be thrust into a situation where standing up for your beliefs means laying down your life... or maybe pray that you have the courage to do the same.   So I am using the story of Fr. Kolbe to kick off a series on the martyrs of the 20th century -- but back to Fr. Kolbe for those of you unfamiliar:


The story begins on 8 January, 1894 - Raymond Kolbe was born the second son of a poor weaver at Zdunska Wola near Lodz in Poland. In his infancy Raymond seems to have been normally mischievous but one day, after his mother had scolded him for some mischief or other, her words took effect and brought about a radical change in the child's behaviour. Later Raymond explained this change:

"That night I asked the Mother of God what was to become of me. Then she came to me holding two crowns, one white, the other red. She asked if I was willing to accept either of these crowns. The white one meant that I should persevere in purity, and the red that I should become a martyr. I said that I would accept them both.'" 

Thus early did the child believe and accept that he was destined for martyrdom. His belief in his dream coloured all his future actions.

In 1910 he became a Franciscan, taking the name Maximilian. He studied at Rome and was ordained in 1919. He returned to Poland and taught Church history in a seminary. He built a friary just west of Warsaw, which eventually housed 762 Franciscans and printed eleven periodicals, one with a circulation of over a million, including a daily newspaper.

In 1930 he went to Asia, where he founded friaries in Nagasaki and in India. In 1936 he was recalled to supervise the original friary near Warsaw. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, he knew that the friary would be seized, and sent most of the friars home. He was imprisoned briefly and then released, and returned to the friary, where he and the other friars began to organize a shelter for 3,000 Polish refugees, among whom were 2,000 Jews.
The friars shared everything they had with the refugees. They housed, fed and clothed them, and brought all their machinery into use in their service.

Inevitably, the community came under suspicion and was watched closely. Then in May 1941 the friary was closed down and Maximilian and four companions were taken to the death camp Auschwitz, where they worked with the other prisoners.

On June 15, 1941, he managed to write a letter to his mother:

"Dear Mama, At the end of the month of May I was transferred to the camp of Auschwitz. Everything is well in my regard. Be tranquil about me and about my health, because the good God is everywhere and provides for everything with love. It would be well that you do not write to me until you will have received other news from me, because I do not know how long I will stay here. Cordial greetings and kisses, affectionately. Raymond."

One day an SS officer found some of the heaviest planks he could lay hold of and personally loaded them on the Franciscan's back, ordering him to run. When he collapsed, the SS officer kicked him in the stomach and face and had his men give him fifty lashes. When the priest lost consciousness the Nazis threw him in the mud and left him for dead. But his companions managed to smuggle him to the camp infirmary - and he recovered. The doctor, Rudolph Diem, later recalled:

"I can say with certainty that during my four years in Auschwitz, I never saw such a sublime example of the love of God and one's neighbor."

Prisoners at Auschwitz were slowly and systematically starved, and their pitiful rations were barely enough to sustain a child: one cup of imitation coffee in the morning, and weak soup and half a loaf of bread after work. When food was brought, everyone struggled to get his place and be sure of a portion. Father Maximilian Kolbe however, stood aside in spite of the ravages of starvation, and frequently there would be none left for him. At other times he shared his meager ration of soup or bread with others.

In the harshness of the slaughterhouse Father Kolbe maintained the gentleness of Christ. At night he seldom would lie down to rest. He moved from bunk to bunk, saying: "I am a Catholic priest. Can I do anything for you?"

A prisoner later recalled how he and several others often crawled across the floor at night to be near the bed of Father Kolbe, to make their confessions and ask for consolation. Father Kolbe pleaded with his fellow prisoners to forgive their persecutors and to overcome evil with good. When he was beaten by the guards, he never cried out. Instead, he prayed for his tormentors.

A Protestant doctor who treated the patients in Block 12 later recalled how Father Kolbe waited until all the others had been treated before asking for help. He constantly sacrificed himself for the others.

In order to discourage escapes, Auschwitz had a rule that if a man escaped, ten men would be killed in retaliation. In July 1941 a man from Kolbe's bunker escaped. The dreadful irony of the story is that the escaped prisoner was later found drowned in a camp latrine, so the terrible reprisals had been exercised without cause. But the remaining men of the bunker were led out.

'The fugitive has not been found!' the commandant Karl Fritsch screamed. 'You will all pay for this. Ten of you will be locked in the starvation bunker without food or water until they die.' The prisoners trembled in terror. A few days in this bunker without food and water, and a man's intestines dried up and his brain turned to fire.

The ten were selected, including Franciszek Gajowniczek, imprisoned for helping the Polish Resistance. He couldn't help a cry of anguish. 'My poor wife!' he sobbed. 'My poor children! What will they do?' When he uttered this cry of dismay, Maximilian stepped silently forward, took off his cap, and stood before the commandant and said, 'I am a Catholic priest. Let me take his place. I am old. He has a wife and children.'

Astounded, the icy-faced Nazi commandant asked, 'What does this Polish pig want?'

Father Kolbe pointed with his hand to the condemned Franciszek Gajowniczek and repeated 'I am a Catholic priest from Poland; I would like to take his place, because he has a wife and children.'

Observers believed in horror that the commandant would be angered and would refuse the request, or would order the death of both men. The commandant remained silent for a moment. What his thoughts were on being confronted by this brave priest we have no idea. Amazingly, however, he acceded to the request. Apparantly the Nazis had more use for a young worker than for an old one, and was happy to make the exchange.

Franciszek Gajowniczek was returned to the ranks, and the priest took his place ...

Gajowniczek later recalled:

'I could only thank him with my eyes. I was stunned and could hardly grasp what was going on. The immensity of it: I, the condemned, am to live and someone else willingly and voluntarily offers his life for me - a stranger. Is this some dream?

I was put back into my place without having had time to say anything to Maximilian Kolbe. I was saved. And I owe to him the fact that I could tell you all this. The news quickly spread all round the camp. It was the first and the last time that such an incident happened in the whole history of Auschwitz.

For a long time I felt remorse when I thought of Maximilian. By allowing myself to be saved, I had signed his death warrant. But now, on reflection, I understood that a man like him could not have done otherwise. Perhaps he thought that as a priest his place was beside the condemned men to help them keep hope. In fact he was with them to the last.'‘

Father Kolbe was thrown down the stairs of Building 13 along with the other victims and simply left there to starve. Hunger and thirst soon gnawed at the men. Some drank their own urine, others licked moisture on the dank walls. Maximilian Kolbe encouraged the others with prayers, psalms, and meditations on the Passion of Christ. After two weeks, only four were alive. The cell was needed for more victims, and the camp executioner, a common criminal called Bock, came in and injected a lethal dose of cabolic acid into the left arm of each of the four dying men. Kolbe was the only one still fully conscious and with a prayer on his lips, the last prisoner raised his arm for the executioner. His wait was over ...

A personal testimony about the way Maximilian Kolbe met death is given by Bruno Borgowiec, one of the few Poles who were assigned to render service to the starvation bunker. He told it to his parish priest before he died in 1947:

'The ten condemned to death went through terrible days. From the underground cell in which they were shut up there continually arose the echo of prayers and canticles. The man in-charge of emptying the buckets of urine found them always empty. Thirst drove the prisoners to drink the contents. Since they had grown very weak, prayers were now only whispered. At every inspection, when almost all the others were now lying on the floor, Father Kolbe was seen kneeling or standing in the centre as he looked cheerfully in the face of the SS men.

Father Kolbe never asked for anything and did not complain, rather he encouraged the others, saying that the fugitive might be found and then they would all be freed. One of the SS guards remarked: this priest is really a great man. We have never seen anyone like him ..

Two weeks passed in this way. Meanwhile one after another they died, until only Father Kolbe was left. This the authorities felt was too long. The cell was needed for new victims. So one day they brought in the head of the sick-quarters, a German named Bock, who gave Father Kolbe an injection of carbolic acid in the vein of his left arm. Father Kolbe, with a prayer on his lips, himself gave his arm to the executioner. Unable to watch this I left under the pretext of work to be done. Immediately after the SS men had left I returned to the cell, where I found Father Kolbe leaning in a sitting position against the back wall with his eyes open and his head drooping sideways. His face was calm and radiant ..'

So it was that Father Maximilian Kolbe was executed on 14 August, 1941 at the age of forty-seven years, a martyr of charity. The death certificate, as always made out with German precision, indicated the hour of death 12.30.

Father Kolbe's body was removed to the crematorium, and without dignity or ceremony was disposed of, like hundreds of thousands who had gone before him, and hundreds of thousands more who would follow.

The heroism of Father Kolbe went echoing through Auschwitz. In that desert of hatred he had sown love. A survivor Jozef Stemler later recalled:

"In the midst of a brutalization of thought, feeling and words such as had never before been known, man indeed became a ravening wolf in his relations with other men. And into this state of affairs came the heroic self-sacrifice of Father Kolbe.' Another survivor Jerzy Bielecki declared that Father Kolbe's death was 'a shock filled with hope, bringing new life and strength ... It was like a powerful shaft of light in the darkness of the camp."

The cell where Father Kolbe died is now a shrine. Maximilian Kolbe was beatified as Confessor by Paul VI in 1970, and canonized as Martyr by Pope John Paul II in 1981.
But what happened to Gajowniczek - the man Father Kolbe saved?

He died on March 13, 1995, at Brzeg in Poland, 95 years old - and 53 years after Kolbe had saved him. But he was never to forget the ragged monk. After his release from Auschwitz, Gajowniczek made his way back to his hometown, with the dream of seeing his family again. He found his wife but his two sons had been killed during the war.

Every year on August 14 he went back to Auschwitz. He spent the next five decades paying homage to Father Kolbe, honoring the man who died on his behalf.

Wrongful Life

Dovetailing nicely with my post on demographic winter below, here is a story from Australia about two couples suing their doctors for essentially, wrongful life.  Basically, the doctors failed to diagnose the unborn children with Down Syndrome  because the parents would have aborted them if they had known.  Raising a child with specials needs is expensive don't you know -- so the hospitals should be on the hook for the financial burden the parents now face...



Christ takes it for granted that men are bad.  Until we really feel this assumption of His to be true, though we are part of the world He came to save, we are not part of the audience to whom His words are addressed. -- C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

May these children never learn their parents preferred that they were aborted.  Lord have mercy, for our sins are without number.

Mass -- Anno Domini 155

In his Letters, St. Justin Martyr describes the Mass as celebrated from the very earliest of days, only hinted at obliquely in the Acts of the Apostles, Letters of St Paul, and book of Revelation.

Demographic Winter

John Allen's book The Future Church has an great chapter on the projected drop in human population for the rest of this century. Back in the 1970's the big panic was underpopulation -- promoted by the factually inaccurate book 'the Demographic Bomb'.  Amongst all the environmetalists today, there is a subtle and sometimes not so sublt complaint that there are too many people for the earth to sustain.  I even heard a report on NPR yesterday promoting that people should reduce what they eat principally because it reduces their carbon footprint -- oh, and oh yeah, you will lose some weight too. They think that underpopulation is okay and even necessary to conserve the worlds' resources etc. Not really. Underpopulation brings economic recession because a growing population means a growing economy. There is no economy in the history of the world that has grown with a shrinking population.  Along with a declining birth rate goes an increasing number of elderly. By 2040 the developed countries won't have enough young people working to support their elderly. Long term health care costs for the elderly will skyrocket. Immigration provides a temporary part of the solution, but the birth rates in Mexico and Latin America are dropping too.  There is a great documentary on the net called Demographic Winter which presents all this in an interesting light.

Inevitably there will be a whole range of societal shifts that need to take place. Forget about the concept of 'retirement'--especially retirement at 65. We won't be able to support such a thing. It will be more like retirement at 75 if you're lucky. Get ready for euthanasia. They will argue that we simply can't support so many elderly people who are contributing nothing and who's quality of life is negligible. Here comes Nurse Ratched to put you to sleep. Get ready for the closure of schools and colleges and the opening of rest homes. There's a good business opportunity. Buy up little colleges and turn them into retirement communities. There won't be the market for colleges then.  Or even a visiting nurse service...

What might turn it around? In some countries it can't be turned around for a couple hundred years. The replacement birth rate for the population has already been too low for too long, and it cannot now recover. One thing which might turn it around is for people to start regarding children as an asset again. When a society is agrarian a child is an asset. Many hours of labor are required to feed everyone so every child helps keep the farm going. When people move to the city and work in factories and offices a child become an expensive liability, not an asset.

However, if elderly health care is unavailable, pension funds dry up, social security goes bust, the Medicare pot is empty and insurers refuse to pay for long term elderly health care, having more kids might just be your chance for survival.

Think about it. Who is going to get the sleepy pills first? It will be the old people with no family, no one to visit, no one to object, who's money has run out. That's assuming that there are care facilities that have room for the anyone in the first place. Who's going to pay and look after all these folks who have no one?

On the other hand, if you've got lots of kids invest in a different kind of insurance plan: send one off to college to specialize in geriatric medicine. Once kids start being seen as retirement insurance people might start having more. It's terrible to recommend such a course simply out of self interest, but hey, if Nurse Ratched is coming for you with the sleepy pills, wouldn't you rather have your kids in charge?  Of course, if you raise your kids to believe the dominant themes our cultures presents to them; that there principle concern should be the pursuit of pleasure and comfort for themselves; then you may not like their ideas of altruism.  As Peter Nixon writes over at Patheos:


Our children and grandchildren are abandoning the faith because they perceive -- rightly -- that its demands are at fundamental variance with the lives we have prepared them to lead. We have raised them to seek lives characterized by material comfort, sexual fulfillment, and freedom from any obligations that they have not personally chosen. Should it surprise us that they fail to take seriously our claims to follow one who embraced poverty, chastity, and obedience to the will of God?

You're about to hear something anti-catholic when...

I just got done with the wearisome and charity-building task of replying to an anti-catholic screed on an atheist's blog.  I say wearisome because fundamentalist atheists have a tendencey to believe that 'reason' is a domain that they have a patent on -- whether they are using those faculties at this particular moment in time or not.  Mostly in replying to them, the fundamentalist ones (yes, J. I am using that word to needle you a little as you meet your own definitiion) discount everything you say because they think your first principles are farsical.  I.E. the existence of God.  Anything derivative of those principles is fiar game for ridicule, ad hominem's, etc...

No sooner did I finish replying than aI read this post over at Creative Minority Report about when you are about to hear something blatantly prejuediced, ignorant, self righteous, wrong, and anti-catholic.  OR perhaps I should just revert to a shorthand some of these people will understand -- Catholi-phobes.

You are about to hear something anti-catholic when the prefacing statement is:
44% chance if someone says "I'm not religious but I'm very spiritual."


49% chance if someone says, "The Pope during WWII..."
A 53% chance if someone says "I read in the New York Times..."

57% chance if someone says "I don't need an intermediary between me and God..."

68% chance if a representative of Barack Obama's Faith Based Advisory Council office is quoted.

83% chance if you hear from your television, "You're watching Hardball..."

84% chance if someone says "Richard Dawkins said..."

89% chance if someone says "I don't normally watch "The View" but Joy Behar said..."

94% chance if there's any mention of a flying spaghetti monster.

98% Any mention of The Inquisition or the Crusades.

100% If someone says "I was raised Catholic so..." anything that follows is guaranteed to be anti-Catholic.

How Ironic that today is the feast of St. Bonaventure.   Or perhaps the timing of this is a bit providential -- a mini-miracle, the movement of the holy spirit perhaps.  From today's Magnificat -- "O  Lord, you sent Saint Bonaventure to teach the wisdom he had learned through prayer and study: -- send us wise teachers in our day.  Make known your ways; teach me your paths, and grant me an increase in Charity.

Lucky or Miracle, you decide

Watch this youtube video about the luckiest people on Earth. I know my atheist friends will say, correctly, that there are millions of instances around the world on a daily basis where people are not so lucky. What is it about these few instances that make them miraculous versus just coincidence (except maybe the last one :) )  

I don't know about you, but I find that I am able to see tiny miracles in everyday life -- nothing so extravagant as this.  It's important to remember the thank Him for the little ones too.

Visual Bach

I wish we could hear this kind of postlude played after Mass more often.  I know some of you organists are up to the task.  To give us mere musical mortals a glimpse at what the organist's fingers and toes must cope with, watch this:

Ut unum sint -- an ecumenical greeting and then some.

The Presbyterian church is meeting in a General assembly to determine how much more 'inclusive' it will be toward active homosexuals in the ministry.  They invited  Fr. Siarhei Sardun, a Belorussian Orthodox Priest to give the Ecumenical Greeting.  And what a greeting it was.  Check out the video at Ancient Christian Defense.  I'd link it here but I'm having trouble with the video posting on blogger.  The action really kicks up a notch at the 5 minute mark.

If you are unfamiliar with the currents in the Presbyterian Church, the introductory minute shows you a glimpse of the Clash of Cultures (and Christianities, Fr. Sardun encountered) The shorthand from Fr's speech:  I am from the Ancient Orthodox church, unchanged from 2,000 years.  We were nearly extirminated by the secular forces of the 20th Century, but are now resurgent.  The East is embracing Orthodoxy again.  We have had the financial help of the Presbyterian church in America, so I have come here to thank you since I have never encountered the Presbyterian Church before.  Now that I have encountered you, I find that you do not embrace the ancient faith.  You have changed the Nicene creed by adding the Filioque.  And another thing.  I was really struck by your discussion of Christian morality.  Christian morality is as old as the church itself.  It doesn't need to be invented now.  And those attempts to invent a new morality, look to me like attempts to invent a new religion.  A sort of modern paganism.  When people say they are led and guided by the Holy Spirit to do it, I wonder if it is the same Holy Spirit that inspired the Bible, the same Holy Spirit that inspires the Holy Orthodox Church not to change anything in Christian Doctrine and Moral Standards...

Sing it Brother!  It took some cast iron cojones to stand before the entire leadership of the Presbyterian Church and warn them of turning into pagans -- speaking Truth to Power.  This is what we are all called to do every day folks -- in large ways and small.  Pray that the Lord helps us find the courage to love him this much.