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The Catholic Thing
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The Catholic Thing is a daily column rooted in the richest cultural tradition in the world, i.e., the concrete historical reality of Catholicism.
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Why Should We Trust Them?
4w ago00:05:40Tap to summarizeBy Anthony Esolen The German episcopate appears all agog, not to say hot and lathery, to extend blessings to men who bed down with men, and women with women, apparently believing that Saint Paul and Saint Jude have nothing to teach them: Germany having led the way toward a world in which families are rich with children and stronger than ever; the love between man and woman is celebrated in song and confirmed in customs and laws; the popular culture is, in its most public manifestations, wholesome and clean; and what sleaze there is has to hide its rat's head in dirty alleys, ducking and dodging if not the law, then the reproach of all decent people. Is it so, reverend sirs? A commercial I saw the other day on German television, advertising a sexual prophylactic, featured two men snuggling in a bed, and a woman in black underwear, entering the room to have her fun with both of them at once. "Mit beiden?" read the caption, meant to entice, while a strain of canned music, featuring the female "vocal fry" that is now worldwide, as of a woman straining very hard to pass a bladder stone, celebrates the delight to come. I was dismayed, but not shocked. The last time I visited Germany, I saw what were intended as comic pornographic T-shirts on sale at a little town on the Rhine, in the open air, for the benefit of tourists and anybody else out on a warm September day. They featured cartoons of a talking phallus, cracking jokes. In the train, I picked up a glossy magazine for teenagers that somebody had left on the seat, and what I read in the advice column isn't repeatable here. In this regard, Italy – my ancestral home – was no better. It was fortunate for us that our children were too young to notice things. Want a postcard to send back to your family? Don't go to that big stand near the Tiburtine railway station in Rome, at least if your kids are past the first or second grade. For that matter, don't look at what's on offer at that nice family-owned hotel on the cliff overlooking Sorrento. We Americans have plenty of our own problems, of course, and pornography is a soul-devouring plague that has spread all over the world – almost. At least I can say that what is common in western Europe would shut you down if you tried to sell it in an American airport or train station, from what I can tell. Perhaps American television is sicker and fouler than I know. Many years ago, the retired tennis pro Bjorn Borg was enlisted to urge Swedes to do something about their cratering population. They put him on billboards, employing the Swedish word for the common English obscenity. Of course, now the English word is everywhere in the United States, on shirts, bumper stickers, and in the potty-mouths of students, teachers, and just about everybody else in public. Even more, as it seems to me, from women than from men, women who do not attain the traditional male virtues, but manage to pick up and flaunt the nastiest male vices. But I still cannot imagine it on a public billboard – unless the word is spray-painted on it by the petty criminals that some of our mayors do not bother to punish. The point is that no one in the western world, least of all western Europeans, have the slightest credibility when it comes to arguing that we should liberalize matters regarding sexual morality. In 1900, in the United States, even the poorest classes bore children within wedlock, more than 90 percent; that included blacks, poor farmers, factory workers, everybody – not high-class puritans. That is long past, but so also is the time when nations managed to replace themselves with children, because people understood that a man worked mainly, and sometimes exclusively, for the welfare of his wife and children. And that children were at the heart of all the good things in life, not a burden to be borne with, at best, some nice photographs and a good measure of stoic resignation, and at worst with resentment and contempt. We are out of our minds, and Europeans in...
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Raphael at New York's MET
4w ago00:06:21Tap to summarizeBy Brad Miner The current show at America's greatest museum, Raphael: Sublime Poetry, will run through June 28th of this year. As with most major exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, curators have gathered works by the artist from museums around the world – and in this case, not just by Raphael. There are 237 works in total, including 33 paintings, 142 drawings, some monumental tapestries, and some sculptural work, too. In remarks before the show's opening, principal curator Carmen Bambach said that, whereas many consider him third on the list of Renaissance masters, she "could make the argument that Raphael is every bit the equal of Leonardo and Michelangelo." After spending eight years pulling together the exhibit, I doubt she could say anything else. In any case, Raphael was a superb artist, and the show is stunning. I wonder, though, if most people could name a Raphael painting. Asked about da Vinci, many could name "The Last Supper" and certainly the "Mona Lisa." And about Michelangelo, the Sistine Chapel ceiling or one of his sculptures, the "David" or "Pietà" perhaps. Of course, visitors who've toured the Vatican Museum and seen the Raphael Rooms would certainly remember those extraordinary frescoes. But Ms. Bambach is among the best in the business when it comes to Renaissance art. When Robert and Veronica Royal were in Manhattan in 2017, my wife, Sidney , and I joined them at another of Bambach's MET curations, Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer. And even if I'd visited the Raphael show not knowing Bambach is its curator, I would likely have assumed it must be her handiwork. Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (1483-1520) was a kind of shooting star: He came to Rome from Umbria in northeast-central Italy at the age of 23 and died there at 37. In his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, the first true art historian, Giorgio Vasari (who was born in 1511, so did not know Raphael personally) wrote of him: How generous and kind Heaven sometimes proves to be when it brings together in a single person the boundless riches of its treasures and all those graces and rare gifts that over a period of time are usually divided among many individuals can clearly be seen in the no less excellent than gracious Raphael. Vasari did know the great Michelangelo, and it's probably not an exaggeration to say he idolized him. And he definitely knew that the older man (Michelangelo was eight years Raphael's senior) frankly detested the upstart from the east, which enmity may have begun when Michelangelo saw himself portrayed in Raphael's Vatican fresco, The School of Athens, as an isolated, brooding, tormented Heraclitus. Michelangelo was neither a schemer nor a debaucher, and Raphael had a reputation for being both. Maybe yes, maybe no – it doesn't matter, because it's clearly what Michelangelo believed. But Vasari does write that when the sculptor Donato Bramante, keeper of the keys, let Raphael into the Sistine Chapel for the first time (Michelangelo was away in Florence), the young man was so stunned by the majesty and muscularity of Michelangelo's prophets and patriarchs, that "after he had already finished it, Raphael immediately repainted the figure of. . .Isaiah in Rome's Sant'Agostino." This may have been why Michelangelo said, "Everything he knew about art he got from me." In some versions of the quote, "got" is "stole." Whether or not Raphael was a plagiarist is debatable. After all, everybody who has mastered anything has had teachers along the way. The MET's show is comprehensive. It even includes a room in which all the frescoes from the aforementioned Vatican Raphael Rooms are projected by video onto the walls in rotation. (The same was true at that Michelangelo show, with the Sistine Chapel illuminated overhead in the gallery.) It is fine and fitting to see featured in the exhibit paintings by Pietro Perugino, a superb painter and one of Raphael's teachers, as well as bas-relief sculptur...
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Respecting Boundaries, Papal and Political
4w ago00:06:27Tap to summarizeBy Luis E. Lugo The feud between Pope Leo and President Trump over U.S. immigration policy and military action in Iran raises important questions about the propriety of observing boundaries and not crossing certain lines. Little needs to be said about the president's behavior on this score, except to recall Hilaire Belloc's description of Henry VIII, whose chief characteristic "was an inability to withstand impulse." Belloc astutely observes that the sixteenth-century monarch "was passionate for having his own way – which is almost the opposite of having strength of the will." It was this lack of self-restraint, he notes, that prevented Henry from understanding when "this lack of self-control passed the bounds of common decency." More critical for Catholics is the question of whether Pope Leo, some U.S. bishops, and other Church officials might themselves have crossed important lines, not in their personal demeanor, but in the substance of their pronouncements. As Pope Leo has encouraged us to do, I have been revisiting the documents of Vatican II. One major takeaway from that treasure trove of Christian teaching is the clear distinction modern Catholic social thought draws between doctrines and principles, on the one hand, and their prudential application in particular cases, on the other. It's clear from the documents that when our pastors articulate and defend foundational social principles, they do so with the full authority of their office. Catholics are placed in a difficult situation, however, when our spiritual leaders publicly voice their views regarding the specific applications of those principles. Should the faithful consider these pronouncements as authoritative or simply as personal opinions, with which they might legitimately disagree? The tradition of Catholic social thought has always recognized that there are many contingent factors involved in applying the Church's social teachings in specific contexts. It requires those responsible for such decision to wade into the messiness and uncertainty of things, to weigh potential consequences. Immigration policy and the use of military force in Iran are prime examples. It's for this reason that the virtue of prudence plays such a prominent role in these decisions. It's also why the Church emphasizes the indispensable role of the laity, especially those with the requisite knowledge and skills, in making these determinations. Which brings me back to the magisterial documents of Vatican II. In the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity (Apostolicam actuositatem), the Council Fathers affirmed that it is especially incumbent on the laity to learn the moral and social teachings of the Church so that they might be capable of "rightly applying these same principles and conclusions to individual cases." Another Council document (Ad Gentes) gives us the flip side of this when it declares that "the Church has no desire at all to intrude itself into the government of the earthly city." Church leaders will always, and appropriately, call for the peaceful resolution of conflicts. But we should not assume that calls for continued dialogue and negotiations in every instance occupy the moral high ground. Dragging out diplomatic talks may, in fact, only allow bad actors to continue killing more innocents and, even more alarmingly, afford them more time to acquire greater lethality with which to kill countless others. The Catholic tradition of social thought has always recognized that, as long as we live in a sinful world, resort to force – through police power or military means – will sometimes be necessary. That is why just war teaching articulates criteria for judging the justice of going to war (jus ad bellum) as well as for ensuring that even just wars are carried out only through licit means (jus in bello). Sometimes moral principles bear directly on the social order, and in those instances, pastoral pronouncements can proceed straightforwardly. Abortion, genocide, and other ...
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The Moon, the Crucifixion, and the Feast
4w ago00:06:31Tap to summarizeBy Joseph R. Wood The new month brings a trifecta on my ecclesiastical calendar: a full moon, First Friday, and the feast of St. Joseph the Worker. My calendar's tracking of astronomical events is a holdover from long ago, when the Church had its own astrology. It accepted the possibility of the influence of the heavens on earthly events as natural causes, much as the relative orientation of the earth to the sun causes seasons, and the sun and moon cause tides. The Church has always rejected a deterministic astrology that denies both free will and providential influence in human affairs. Astrologers were often dangerous enemies of the Church. That never stopped frauds from claiming prophetic powers to read the stars and swindle the gullible. And more than a few folks still sneak a peek at their horoscope from time to time, something that in Church teaching belongs alongside Tarot cards and Ouija boards. But people wise and foolish have always been transfixed by the power of a full moon. It may not make people lunatics, but its beauty is hard to ignore. It affects our hearts. I'm glad my calendar signals the arrival of another full moon. We moderns need the reminder to look up sometimes. First Friday devotion came from the revelation of the promises of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in the late 17th century. By then, Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler had provided a better understanding of the solar system's physical causes and effects. That didn't stop people from consulting astrologers, but it may have made them more sheepish about admitting it. The Church had won the battle against deterministic astrology even as it began a long struggle against the claims for a godless, mechanistic, and exclusively material universe. First Friday devotions have helped us retain the truth of a divinely-given telos to the order of the universe, which began in a good Creation by a good Creator and unfolds through providential guidance towards its end in that Creator Himself. Compared with full moons, astrology, and First Friday promises, today's Feast of St. Joseph the Worker is a newcomer to my calendar. Devotion to Joseph was slow to develop in the Church. Some sources claim the Eastern Christians got a head start on it in the Church's early centuries. Aquinas noted the necessity of Joseph's role. But writing in the fourteenth century, Dante does not mention him among the blessed in Paradiso. His March 19 feast was only added to the Universal calendar in the fifteenth century. As Elizabeth Lev explains in this month's Magnificat, a "seismic shift in artistic depictions of St. Joseph" followed in the seventeenth century. From being portrayed "as a debilitated geriatric, essentially harmless to women," artists changed St. Joseph into a younger man, vigorous and plausible as a protector of Mary and Jesus, perhaps in the prime of a working life. Devotion to Joseph grew rapidly. In 1870, Pope Pius IX declared him the Patron and Guardian of the Universal Church, a powerful title if ever there was one, and added a second feast. In 1955, Pope Pius XII changed the second feast to May 1 and named it for St. Joseph as Worker. This is a rare, perhaps unique, example of a feast placed on the calendar in response to secular political tides. It was to coincide with International Workers' Day, offering a Catholic alternative to the celebrations of atheistic Marxist movements. Today's feast is an optional memorial, but it punches above its weight for many Catholics who love this recognition of the holiness of a humble carpenter or house builder. "The Worker" is one of many titles that St. Joseph carries. We hear of St. Joseph the Silent, who speaks nothing in the Gospels but acts readily on divine command. "Sleeping St. Joseph" is a recurrent theme for artists. There's another possible title that suggests a vital aspect of Joseph's life, fitting with his work and his silence: St. Joseph the Contemplative. The Desert Fathers kept the...
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A Light Shines in the Darkness
4w ago00:06:15Tap to summarizeBy Stephen P. White God made man in His own image and likeness. God Himself, then, is the primary reference point for man's self-understanding. Accordingly, when man loses sight of God, he loses sight of his own humanity. This is the story of our secular age writ large. It is also, in some vaguely reassuring sense, the story of man writ large. I say "reassuring" in the sense that our failings are rarely quite so novel as we think they are, which means the remedies are less inaccessible than we might otherwise suppose. From the earliest chapters of Genesis, we see how disobedience toward God leads to a diminution of our humanity. The Fall was a moral event – an act of disobedience and a failure of the will – which brought about a darkening of the intellect. Sin, as the saying goes, makes us stupid. Each of us understands this because each of us sees the same disobedience in ourselves. We are, all of us, like Adam and Eve. St. Paul can say (and I can nod along with him) that "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." Knowing this about the spirit and the flesh does not help me choose the good anymore than knowing that Paul knew it helps me choose the good. But knowing that Paul and I are on the same page – that what ails him ails me – is nonetheless edifying. There is solidarity among us sinners, we who long for God's grace. Even outside of a strictly theological or Scriptural sense, materialism (whether of the practical or ideological sort) invariably leads to inhumanity, precisely insofar as it denies that which is highest and best in the human person. Leo XIII, in his great encyclical on the restoration of Christian philosophy, Aeterni patris, clearly indicated that the cause of the "strifes of these days" was a confusion about "divine and human things" originating in the "schools of philosophy," and creeping from there to the State and to the masses. The Second Vatican Council, in one of its weightiest and pithiest passages, states the matter succinctly: The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear. "The fundamental error of socialism," insisted Pope John Paul II, some three decades later, "is anthropological in nature." And what did he name as the first cause of that anthropological error? Atheism. Moreover, the "consumerist society," according to the Polish pope, "agrees with Marxism," insofar as it, "totally reduces man to the sphere of economics and the satisfaction of material needs." As for Leo XIII's day, as for John Paul II's day, so too for our own. Confusion about the things of God and man leads to injustice, conflict, and immiseration. For those of us living in a Christian (or Post-Christian) society, this seems the obvious causal order of the problem: When we lose sight of God, we lose sight of man. For readers of The Catholic Thing, this is all familiar ground. But the converse, it turns out, is also true: When one loses sight of nature – and particularly human nature – it becomes increasingly difficult to glimpse God, particularly the Christian God. And we might be less used to thinking of things in that way. If we begin from an inadequate view of the human person, certain questions about God aren't just harder to answer; they can cease to appear relevant at all! Most of the great controversies of the early Church – and the corresponding heresies: Docetism, Arianism, Nestorianism, etc. – were tied up with Christological questions. Who was this Jesus Christ? Was he human or divine? Did He have one nature or two? These were existential questions for the early Church because they understood the implications of the Incarnation, both the implications for what that event reveals about God and what it reveals about our h...
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You Might Get Assassinated
Apr 2900:06:21Tap to summarizeBy Elizabeth A. Mitchell Recently, while I was imparting that rarest of elusive concepts, a civics education, to a group of Fourth and Fifth Graders, I presented the "Preamble" to the Constitution of the United States. We listed, on that dying breed of communicative forums – the blackboard – the reasons for the establishment of our Constitution: "to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." The students were enthused by the clarity and comprehensiveness of the "Preamble." After this foray into foundational awareness, we sallied forth to imbibe the "First Amendment" to the Constitution, including the words "Congress shall make no law. . .abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble." The chalk had barely skimmed the slate when a hand shot up in the front row. A young girl, age 10, interjected, "But you might get assassinated." This fifth-grade civics student was not objecting to the high-minded ideals of the "First Amendment," nor was she contradicting the sentiment embodied in the statement. She was trying to alert me to the reality of its application. I rushed to reassure her, with the usual platitudes, reiterating that we are certainly glad that the "First Amendment" protects our right to free and safe speech. I thought I had assuaged all the counter-constitutional confusion when I was interrupted by another urgent hand. A sprite of a girl, age 9, interjected, "Yes, Doctor E., but you might get assassinated." It was not so much the statements that the children made, nor the urgency of their wanting to warn me, which shocked me. It was the certitude with which they now believed their right to speech is a relic of the past, a dusty textbook lesson, no longer applicable or attainable. They were matter-of-fact in their tone, as if patiently explaining to me, the well-intentioned but somewhat outdated person at the front of the room, the new normal. I am not sure that we, the older and (allegedly) wiser generation, are aware just how much the worldview of the younger generation has been rocked, deconstructed, and reformed in recent years, but especially in the past months. And what can be our response? Are these children stating aloud what we have all accepted subconsciously, but not yet admitted to ourselves? I was reminded of a scenario during a recent brutal snowstorm, when a young man got stuck in his car exiting the garage in our building. He jumped out to clear the tires of snow, and his car doors automatically locked. He looked, bemused, into the car, where his dashboard and means of managing life lay just out of reach. The key in his running ignition, the digital access card for the building, and, most important, yet most frustrating of all, the Alexa app on his phone. I saw the young man yelling through his closed car window, instructing Alexa to call AAA. This was a job for real people. I put on my snow boots and ventured outside. After AAA came and opened the car door, we were still left with a Prius stuck in a snowbank. I offered to steer while my new friend (ironically named Alex) pushed the car from behind. Slowly, two more people, a young man and a young woman, came to offer assistance. As the two young men pushed the car, I rolled down the window and took instructions. It was then that I heard the young woman yelling to the wind, "Where are the people?" "Excuse me," I stared at her, "what people?" "The people who come to help," she said in a daze, looking around helplessly. "We are the people," I told her. She stared at me. And yet, this statement is perhaps the response we also owe to those street-smart, but not yet battle-tested Fourth and Fifth Graders. We are the people. "We the People of the United States. . .do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." The est...
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Civic Education in Person
Apr 2800:06:31Tap to summarizeBy Randall Smith Civics education is all the rage at the moment. And for good reason. In a recent article in Commentary, ("A Republic, If You Can Teach It"), Robert Pondiscio reports the grim news that: "Scores on the long-running National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in history and civics make the same students dismal performance in reading and math seem robust by comparison. . .'the typical American student is stunningly ignorant of her history and government,' with only 20 percent scoring 'proficient' in civics and 31 percent scoring 'below basic.' NAEP history test scores are even worse." Pondiscio's article is a review of The Cradle of Citizenship by James Traub. Traub recognizes that "history and civics standards, curricular material, official pronouncements from school leaders, and indeed the entire atmosphere surrounding the schools is shaped by progressive views so pervasive as barely even to be recognized as views." But he is defensive of "action civics" — "an approach to civic education favored by progressive educators that valorizes student participation in real-world political or community projects." According to Pondiscio, Traub believes such experiences "offer students an authentic encounter with democratic participation." Pondiscio replies that "Action civics stumbles, like so many education fads before it, because it assumes – incorrectly – that doing is a substitute for knowing": In practice, cultivating an activist impulse without deep background knowledge does not produce independent civic agency so much as the appearance of it. Students learn how to act, but not how to judge; how to mobilize, but not how to understand. The result is not self-government but a kind of civic ventriloquism – preparing young people to march energetically in someone else's army, convinced all the while that they are acting on their own. I have an alternative. This past semester, I assigned my students to attend a city council meeting, a county commissioners meeting, and a school board meeting. They were to sit and listen, then report and discuss what they saw. The results were instructive. • First, they had to find where those meetings were held. • Second, they had to get themselves there. They're adults; I wasn't taking them. No car? Take the bus, like plenty of people do who live in the city • And third, they found there were no long speeches. Speakers get no more than two minutes to make their case. I expected that what my students would find was mostly chaos and craziness, and that they would be somewhat put off by this. I was wrong. To their credit, my students found the good amid the confusion. And to their credit, they realized quickly they didn't know enough to make any sensible suggestions about the things being discussed. The city council was discussing the closure of a road to make way for a public works project. Some citizens complained this would make it impossible for them to get to work. "What did they think?" I asked. They admitted they didn't know where that road was, why it was being closed, or whether it would cause insoluble problems for these people. Other citizens complained about a homeless shelter slated to open near their school. The mayor reassured them it would be a "great" center with "the best people" and "expert care," so no worries. "Were they reassured?" Not really, but they weren't sure. They wanted to help the homeless. But a center right down the street from a school? They understood why the parents would be concerned. They also understood why people would be out in the streets demonstrating for the center ("Don't be heartless; we have to care for the homeless!") and against it ("These are our children!") At the county commissioners' meeting, they met up with another important issue: federalism. The commissioners were supposed to take up the re-districting approved by the Texas legislature. But that re-districting plan was being challenged in court, so the commissioners' meetin...
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The Pope, the Press, and the Present
Apr 2700:07:02Tap to summarizeBy Robert Royal Pope Leo travelled to four African countries this month, which included not only the usual calls for peace, justice, and brotherhood, but several touching and poignant moments with local communities. Let's hope that the presence of this Successor to Peter, who possesses a natural gentleness and piety, bears much fruit. Unfortunately, on the way back to Rome on Thursday, we were treated to yet another muddled in-flight papal press conference, which grabbed headlines and has left many Catholics confused – and dismayed. A pope has multiple good channels to express himself. A press conference is not one of them. By its very nature, these informal Q&A sessions make it seem that the Church's teachings and the words of the pope himself, are like a politician commenting on political issues. One could already see the usual rhetorical and moral tangle coming, for instance, in this exchange with a German journalist: I would like to know how you assess the decision of Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Archbishop of Munich and Freising, that he gave permission to the blessing of same-sex couples in his diocese, and in light of different cultural and theological perspectives, especially in Africa, how do you intend to preserve the unity of the global Church on that particular matter? [Pope Leo XIV, in English:] First of all, I think it's very important to understand that the unity or division of the Church should not revolve around sexual matters. We tend to think that when the Church is talking about morality, that the only issue of morality is sexual. And in reality, I believe there are much greater, more important issues, such as justice, equality, freedom of men and women, freedom of religion, that would all take priority before that particular issue. The Holy See has already spoken to the German bishops. The Holy See has made it clear that we do not agree with the formalized blessing of couples. We "do not agree" is a weak response to a strong challenge. It's not a matter of agreement or disagreement, but of the teachings of Jesus and His Church since time immemorial. And like it or not, sexual ethics – which go deep into the Christian conception of the human person ("male and female he created them') – is a central matter. Not the only one to be sure. But trying to finesse what amounts to rebellion within the Church and surrender to the spirit of the world is a poor tactic for holding the Church together. And it won't work against the global LGBT juggernaut. The only thing that might is a firm theological and doctrinal stance Further, while it is true that the Church teaches that there are more and less serious sins (as we often say here, see Dante's Inferno for a graphic image) – and it is in fact an Augustinian theme that has been stated more clearly by other recent popes – is this a good way to speak to our culture today? [BTW, next month I will be offering a brief course on "Leo and the Augustinian Tradition" (here) in which we will pursue several of the central questions in greater detail.] What would be better? The pope has his own attractive style, and he could decide about that. But the substance would have to go something like this to remain a good Augustinian, which is to say faithful to the fullness of Catholic reality: All mortal sins are serious. Indeed, all sins, however venial, take us away from God, our fellow human beings, and our own true selves. The human person has been so created by God that – ever since Cain and Abel – the most obvious way we turn away from God's order and being is through physically harming, even to the point of killing one another. This would be the barest of openings and at least Biblically grounded. But it couldn't stop there. It would have to make some distinctions that have always existed in the Church. Something like this: Sexual sins are the easiest to understand, because they so closely resemble the love God has placed in us to love other persons, especially God Himself. They a...
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A Gated Community
Apr 2600:05:28Tap to summarizeBy Fr. Paul D. Scalia Today is commonly known as Good Shepherd Sunday. It puts before us one of the most familiar and beautiful descriptions of God. The prayers at Mass speak of Him as the "brave" and "kind" shepherd. For this reason, today is also World Day of Prayer for Vocations. As we hear about the one Good Shepherd we should be moved to pray for more shepherds after His own Heart. Problem is, the Good Shepherd doesn't make an appearance in today's Mass. In the Gospel (John 10:1-10), Jesus says not, "I am the Good Shepherd" but "I am the gate of the sheep." Which is not as warm and inviting an image. Christian art has many depictions of the Good Shepherd, but are there any of the Gate? And "Gate Sunday" doesn't have the same ring as "Good Shepherd Sunday." Still, this image (and more than that) of the gate captures not only what Christ is for us but also what should be prayed for, instilled, and demanded of the Church's shepherds. "Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the gate for the sheep." This verse is one of the great "I am" statements of Christ in John's Gospel. Jesus makes the first as He comes walking on the water: "Do not be afraid. I am." (Jn 6:20) After that comes a whole series: I am; the bread of life; the light of the world; the good shepherd; the way, the truth and the life; the true vine. With each statement, Jesus reveals more fully what was first proclaimed to Moses on Mount Sinai: "Say this to the people of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" (Exodus 3:14) He reveals more what the Lord is for His people. "Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the gate for the sheep." We have to get the analogy right, because, like the others, this is not just an image. Jesus is not like bread; bread is like Him. He is not like light; light is like Him. So also, He is not like a gate; a gate is like Him – and points to the reality of what He is for us. An evocative detail of shepherding in our Lord's day is that the shepherd would corral his flock into the sheepfold and then would himself lie down across the opening – thus in a real sense becoming the gate of the sheep. Jesus is not just a gate; He is the Gate that all those other shepherds pointed to. A gate guards. A shepherd might lie down and with his body against part of the wall or fence, to keep out what is not of or for the flock. As the gate, Jesus is the guard and guarantee of good shepherds. He keeps out "thieves and robbers." This reminds us of the reality that throughout the Church's history there have always been those so-called shepherds who do not want the flock to "have life and have it more abundantly," but who have come only "to steal and slaughter and destroy." In every day and age of the Church, there have been wolves in shepherd's clothing. But a gate also opens – and thus gives access to the flock inside the sheepfold. This is how true shepherds enter: "Whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep." The gate is open, but as a kind of pathway that can only be passed by those who shepherd the flock rightly. An authentic and authoritative shepherd is the one who passes through the gate, who approaches the flock – not on his own terms or his own wisdom or for his own glory – but through Christ Himself. A true shepherd proportions himself to the gate. Indeed, this whole passage is directed more to would-be shepherds than to the sheep. John notes, "Although Jesus used this figure of speech, the Pharisees did not realize what he was trying to tell them." That is, Jesus is speaking not so much to the crowds – to the flock – as to those who claim to shepherd the flock. Obviously, this also constitutes an examination of conscience for us priests (or maybe I'm just being too sensitive). The temptation to use the flock for one's own selfish gain – for material gain or emotional comfort or applause – can sneak slowly and imperceptibly into a priest's heart. The purifying question for a priest is whether I am entering into the sheepfold on my own terms an...
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The Fact That Corners You
Apr 2500:06:44Tap to summarizeBy Nick Palmer There are things I did during my wife's final illness that, had you asked me beforehand, I would have said I could never do. Not would not, could not. The distinction matters. When the time came, I did them. Not heroically – there was nothing heroic about it. I did them because the fact of her need, fully accepted, left me no honest alternative. The decision space had collapsed. What had looked, in the abstract, like a wide field of options turned out, on the ground, to be a very short list. On that list, when she wasn't hospitalized, was waking every forty-five minutes through the night to help her roll over. She could not do it herself. I thought about this recently when reading a Medal of Honor citation. The recipient, in the aftermath, said what so many of them say: "I just did what anyone would have done." This is usually taken as modesty. I no longer think that's what it is. Consider what Major Jay Vargas faced over three days at Dai Do, Vietnam, in May 1968. He entered the second day already wounded from relocating his unit under fire the day before. He led the attack anyway, crossing seven hundred meters of open rice paddy under mortar, rocket, and artillery fire. Hit again by grenade fragments, he refused aid, reorganized his perimeter, and held it through the night against repeated counterattacks. On the third day, wounded a third time, he watched his battalion commander go down with a serious injury. He crossed the fire-swept ground, carried the man to cover, and returned to supervising the defense. His citation records not what he endured but what he did each time a new challenge arose. When men like Vargas say afterward that anyone would have done it, they are making a precise claim: that the facts, fully accepted, corner you. At each point across those three days, two of his three options were evasions: run or collapse. One was not. Courage, in this account, is not a superhuman quality. It is the refusal to lie about what the situation requires. Aristotle would recognize this. For him, courage is not the absence of fear. The courageous man feels fear, as any sane person would with multiple shrapnel and bullet wounds. Courage is the correct response to the situation as it actually is. The coward and the man who runs are not lacking in feeling. They are evading the fact. The courageous man is simply the one who doesn't. This is a pattern, not an exception. Facts, genuinely accepted, narrow your options. Often to a binary. The diagnosis that cannot be unfound. The child who needs feeding. The friend you have watched fall. In each case, there is a version of yourself that knew, in the abstract, that such things happen. But now, at a concrete moment, you must respond to the fact that it is happening. The second version has fewer choices available than the first. That is not a loss. It is a form of clarity. Fr. Luigi Giussani was an Italian priest who founded Communion and Liberation, one of the most significant Catholic renewal movements of the twentieth century. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) celebrated his friend's funeral Mass in 2005 at the Duomo in Milan. His central intellectual achievement is a trilogy – The Religious Sense, At the Origin of the Christian Claim, and Why the Church? – which argues that Christianity must be encountered as a living reality. In the second volume Giussani makes the distinction that snaps our earlier examples into focus. All of human religious history, he argues, can be understood as man reaching upward toward the mystery – imagining it, constructing systems to approach it, building what he calls bridges with a thousand arches between earth and heaven. 'This is a noble effort. It is also, he says, an effort that by its nature cannot complete itself. The mystery, properly understood, exceeds reason's reach. The horizon recedes as you approach it. But then something changes the question entirely. Into the plain full of bridge-builders comes a man...
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