Extraordinary in the Ordinary

In my bedroom hangs a portrait of a parish priest – Fr. Michael McGivney. For those who might not be familiar with Fr. McGivney, he is responsible for founding the Knights of Columbus in 1885, and his cause for beatification is under review. The postulator for his cause, Fr. Gabriel O’Donnell, was recently a guest on Fr. Mitch Pacwa’s Wednesday evening EWTN Live program, where they discussed the Church’s canonization process and two causes that Fr. O’Donnell is involved with, that of Fr. Michael McGivney and that of Rose Hawthorne. Fr. O’Donnell currently serves as the Academic Dean at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC.

Fr. O’Donnell on why the Church canonizes saints:

The Church chooses certain individuals to canonize so that the ideal for holiness can be enshrined in flesh and blood, we have examples, and the glory of God is manifested in people in their ordinary lives. In fact, I think some theologians today would say that modern saints are often saints of ordinary life. The classic example would be Therese of Liseux, someone who did nothing extraordinary. She was a simple Carmelite nun, but she was extraordinary in the quality of her life – the way she loved, the way she lived with her sisters, etc. And in a way, that’s true of Fr. McGivney. He’s one of those people who lived the ordinary life of a parish priest in an extraordinary way.

Fr. O’Donnell on the canonization process:

The primary issue is, can the Church see in this individual the qualities of what is called heroic virtue. In other words, this person isn’t just a good Christian, but goes above and beyond and is virtuous to such an extent that it’s a kind of martyrdom. They endure all things for Christ. And so the Church’s judgment is always, “Does this candidate have the quality of heroic virtue?” And the whole canonization process is unearthing the proof of whether that’s true, also unearthing the things that might say that it’s not true. So the long process from beginning to canonization is really all about constantly looking at this individual, his life or her life, writings, activities, what they did, what they didn’t do, and always trying to probe, “Can we see the heroism of Jesus Christ in this person?” … Today the process is long, and it’s very complex. There are norms from the Church that govern every step along the way, and the main thrust of the canonization process is really, almost more scientific. You’re gathering a tremendous amount of information through research and then interviewing people who may have known the person or, if the person is long dead, people who know the reputation for holiness. The point of it all is that the norms are only meant to legitimate the ultimate conclusion that this indeed is someone in whom we can see Christ clearly through their life of virtue. And both Fr. McGivney and, I think, Rose Hawthorne qualify for that, even though they’re not yet canonized.

During the question and answer period, a viewer asks whether a Protestant can be canonized. Fr. O’Donnell’s answer:

No, they can’t, because canonization is an act whereby the Church takes a member of the Church and brings him or her forward as an example of heroic virtue. The Church would have no right to investigate or lay claim to that person’s life. I mean, ti would be an invasion, you might say. You can imagine how a family or a church body would be terribly upset if you ever tried to coopt one of their members as a Catholic martyr or saint. So no, the church only beatifies and canonizes baptized Catholics.

As with most EWTN programs, a podcast of the program is available in the archives (I really love those archives). For more information on Fr. McGivney and his cause, visit the website of the Father Michael J. McGivney Guild.

You Pull, I'll Push

Last week was the one-year anniversary of the death of a remarkable man. Remarkable in the sense that his life and death are worthy of being remarked upon. That man was Thomas Vander Woude, who died in Virginia on September 8, 2008.

Mr. Vander Woude, a retired airline pilot, was tending to his small farm when his youngest son, Joseph, fell through the cover of a septic tank. Joseph, 20 years old at the time of the accident, is the youngest of seven brothers, and he happens to have Down Syndrome. Mr. Vander Woude jumped into the tank to save his son. It is reported that his last words, spoken to a hired hand, were, “You pull, I’ll push.” Joseph was saved, and spent five days recovering in the hospital. Thomas was lost, his life sacrificed for that of his son.

What became obvious in the days following Thomas Vander Woude’s death was that he died as he had lived. In life, he embodied many of the ideals of the loving husband and father. He was able to die well because he had lived well.

His oldest son, a priest for the Diocese of Arlington, VA, was a guest on EWTN’s Life on the Rock last week. He noted that his father would have been mortified by all of the attention being paid to him. He also noted that his dad would have been among the first to note his own faults. And yet, he remains an individual who embraced and lived out his Catholic faith to the fullest. As a husband and a father, he provides a role model for the rest of us to emulate.

At one point in the program, a viewer asks Fr. Vander Woude via email, “I would imagine your father’s glorious death was the crown of his spiritual journey. Can you mention some of the times you noticed your father’s growth in sanctity and in what ways he acted in accord with Our Lord’s grace in order to grow over the years?” Fr. Vander Woude responded, “Definitely. My dad’s life was a very joyful life, but as he grew and got older it was definitely a balance in life as far as the joys and being able to be patient with the inconveniences of life, and whatnot. And so I definitely saw that. And to the point that with my youngest brother, Joesph, doing things that, ultimately you have to laugh. He keeps reminding you of what is most important in life, and that’s what I saw in a particular way with my own dad (and mother). These little things that people oftentimes get upset about, inconveniences around the house – nah.”

At this point, Fr. Mark, who co-hosts the program with Doug Barry interjected, “I’ve heard that so many times from parents of a child who has Down Syndrome or something like that, that it really helps them to shake up their priorities and focus on what’s really important.” To which Fr. Vander Woude added, “And there’s a lot of joy in that as well, and being able to – now it’s just more of a focus out of self. Pope John Paul used to talk a lot about total self-giving. There’s joy in that.”

The audio from the September 10 episode of Life on the Rock is available in the audio library section of the EWTN website. Fr. Roger Landry wrote an excellent account of the life and death of Tom Vander Woude.

The Widow of Niam

by William Baer

Copyright (c) 2008 First Things (June/July 2008).

I follow the rank corpse, holding my breath,
prepared to bury my son forevermore;
a widow left with nothing, nothing but death,
who prays, but doesn’t know what she’s praying for.
Suddenly, the multitudes appear
following the Rabbi at Niam’s Gate,
who meets my eyes and whispers, “Have no fear.”
The funeral procession stops. I wait.
He turns to sees the corpse of my dead son,
then calls out loud, “I say to thee, arise.”
My son sits on his bier, his death undone,
the flash of heaven gleaming in his eyes.
Then, watching Jesus leave, though shocked and numb,
I know that He’s “the one who is to come.”

Killing Cars

Got my October 2009 issue of First Things today. In the back of the journal, where Fr. Richard John Neuhaus used to make his observations, Editor Joseph Bottum now carries the mantle. Among many other things, he comments on an article that appeared in the August 4, 2009 issue of the Wall Street Journal.

Believe it or not, sodium silicate ("liquid glass" to its friends) is in the news. The gederal government gave this unassuming compound a huge boost in popularity by making it the official poison for killing fuel-inefficient cars under its now, alas, bankrupt "Cash-for-Clunkers" program. In a detailed, 136-page manual distributed to dealers, the government mandated that "clunkers" be permanently disabled by running the engine with sodium silicate instead of oil, thereby abrading the engine beyond repair.

Suppliers happily scrambled to meet the sudden demand (the Wall Street Journal reported that one distributor was working "sixteen-hour days"), and across the nation, mechanics were energized by the prospect of a novel thrill: "At dealerships across America, mechanics accustomed to fixing engines are battling for the chance to ruin them. 'Everybody wants to go first, so I'm probably going to have to make them draw straws,' says Jim Burton of Randy Curnow Buick Pontiac GMC in Kansas City, Kansas. As service manager, however, he might reserve that thrill for himself. 'I can't wait,' he says."

By all accounts, the prescribed method is quick, safe, and effective. At one dealership in Kansas, sodium silicate killed a 2002 Ford Windstar and a 1999 Jeep in approximately two minutes. (A 1988 Jeep held out for six minutes. "Sometimes," observed the dealership president, "those old engines are hardest to kill.") The simplicity , efficiency, and dispatch with which this debut federal euthanasia program was administered should help quiet fears that the federal government is incompetent to administer health care.

Why Catholic to Threshold

Over the last four years, many of the parishes in our area have participated in the Why Catholic program from Renew International. Over the course of those four years, participants made their way through the entire Catechism of the Catholic Church, with each year devoted to one of the four pillars of the Catechism. Participation was widespread. When the program started, there were over three hundred registered participants from our parish cluster alone. As could be expected, the numbers dropped off a bit over the course of the program, but it still is significant. Regardless of how the individual group leaders might have facilitated the discussions within their groups, it’s hard not to recognize that, at the very least, a large number of adult Catholics in our area became aware of the contents of the Catechism.

The obvious task for those involved in adult faith formation is finding a way to build upon the success of the Why Catholic program. With that in mind, the St. Marys Deanery is promoting the Threshold Bible Study (TBS) within its member parishes. TBS is a topical Bible study. Rather than look in-depth at a particular book of the Bible, each study takes a topic and surveys what the canon of scripture says as a whole about that particular subject. For the first year of the TBS program, the Deanery has selected the study on the Eucharist.

Although I (along with my wife) was a small group facilitator for Why Catholic, I decided already last spring that with all the other things going on, I was not going to sign up to be a facilitator for whatever came next. I’m on the fence about whether to be involved in one of the TBS groups. It’s hard to find the time without taking it away from the family, and, as a participant, you risk having a facilitator who will try to dominate the conversation and take it far off-subject. At the same time, I want to be able to follow along with what everyone else (OK, maybe not everyone) in the parish is studying, just in case it comes up in conversation. So, I purchased the Eucharist study through Amazon.

It looks like it has some pretty solid content to it. The publisher has collected positive blurbs on the TBS series from prominent bishops and theologians, including such figures as Archbishop Chaput of Denver, Cardinal George of Chicago, and Dr. Scott Hahn of Steubenville. The Eucharist study is divided into 30 lessons. For group study, the text recommends six sessions, one for the introduction and then six lessons per session. The parish and deanery plan to follow the Why Catholic model with six fall sessions and six spring sessions.

It will be interesting to see whether the TBS program has as much participation as the Why Catholic program did. My inclination is to believe that Why Catholic, which was billed as a journey through the Catechism, appealed to people who were hungry for doctrinal content and wanted to know what official Church teaching was. I don’t think that the Bible study format will have as wide an appeal. I hope that I’m wrong – it surely wouldn’t be the first time. In the meanwhile, I’ll be following along from home.

Disentanglement

Our local religious education program for high school students will be starting this weekend, and for the first time in nearly ten years, I will not be a part of it. It seems as though, in general, I have been disentangling myself from various commitments, and yet when I sit down with my wife and we look at our weekly calendars, we’re both still incredibly busy, just with different stuff.

I had a list of excuses prepared for why I would not be returning as an instructor this year, but I was not asked why I didn’t want to return, and I was easily replaced. Had I been asked, I would have explained that I never seemed to achieve any kind of rapport with my students and, while I think I did a pretty darn good job in the classroom, the curriculum is explicitly not instructional (it follows a youth ministry model) and as such, it is not suited to my personality type, and there are other people out there who can do as good a job (better, even) than I can.

That doesn’t exactly mean that I’m no longer a catechist. I still have to instruct my own children. With my oldest entering high school this year, I recently purchased the Didache Series for just that purpose.

There was a time when I was deeply involved in my parish: not only was I a high school catechist, I also served on the Parish Council, facilitated a small faith group, took classes in the Lay Pastoral Ministry Program, and was discerning a vocation to the diaconate. Since then, it feels as though a gulf has grown between me and my parish. I’ve been attending mass elsewhere for liturgical reasons. Last week, I needed to go to mass on Saturday, so I gave my own parish a try for the first time since March. We skipped the Creed and sat through the general intercessions. The prayer over the gifts was flubbed and there was a bit of ad-libbing in the Eucharistic Prayer. We were told to hold hands during the Lord’s Prayer. I might be ready to try my parish again after another three months away.

None of this disentanglement has been the result of a conscious effort. It’s just happened. I remain convinced of the need for faith to be actualized through works of apostolate. And so, I remain an officer in my Knights of Columbus council (albeit a minor officer, after two years as Grand Knight and six years as a Trustee) and a volunteer with our local ConQuest club.

At first, I thought that maybe God was clearing out my schedule to make use of me for something else. As I mentioned, though, my wife and I still find that our schedules are full. As our family grows, it is becoming necessary for us to direct more of our attention inward, to their needs. It makes little sense for me to spend hours catechizing other people’s kids while neglecting the religious education of my own. In addition, my wife’s work schedule will take her out of the home several times during the week, and while our older kids are able to babysit occasionally, we believe that an adult presence is important. It’s all too easy to forget that a parent’s first apostolate should be the family.

For several years, it was popular to ask, “What would Jesus do?” The letters “WWJD?” could be seen everywhere, it seemed. I don’t see it much anymore. As a husband and father, I would occasionally turn that into “What would Joseph do?” Almost invariably, I would conclude that Joseph would never allow himself to become entangled in anything that would get in the way of his primary vocation. It’s a lesson that I’m still trying to learn.

What's a Hypocrite to Do?

Not long ago, a Facebook friend expressed a desire to see hypocrites just shut up. Last week, the weekday mass readings from the Lectionary featured the woes that Jesus declared to the Pharisees in chapter 23 of Matthew’s Gospel. This past Sunday’s Gospel featured a parallel condemnation from chapter 7 of Mark’s Gospel. These passages have led to the term Pharisee being listed at dictionary.com as a synonym for hypocrite. It’s impossible (for me, at least) to read these passages without a degree of introspection.

My actions are not always in accord with what I say. By most measures, that makes me a hypocrite. Nobody likes a hypocrite. The typical attitude was given voice by the Beastie Boys when they rapped, “Your dad caught you smokin’ and he said, ‘No way!’ That hypocrite smokes two packs a day!” What’s a hypocrite like me to do?

Option 1: Shut up. That seems to be what my Facebook friend and the Beastie Boys would have us do. The problem with this approach is that it seems to say that only canonized saints are allowed to speak against sin. Since the rest of us (including the Pope!) have fallen natures which incline us toward sin, we would be automatically disqualified from pointing out that sin ruins lives, and we are called to something greater. Admittedly, our sinfulness varies by degree; but the Church teaches that anger (not the righteous sort) is a violation of the fifth commandment (thou shalt not kill). If anger and murder are violations of the same commandment, but to different degrees, does that make the angry man who denounces murder a hypocrite? Do we really mean to suggest that the nicotine-addicted smoker who wants to quit but can’t is not able to urge others not to smoke without being labeled a hypocrite?

Option 2: Embrace hypocrisy. If I say one thing and do another, so what? A variation on this option would be to argue that most people have to live a certain way in order for us to have a society that doesn’t implode into chaos, but society won’t collapse if I don’t follow the rules. The rules apply to other people, not to me. This option has roots in pride and relativism. The only logical conclusion is that morality is for other people, not for me.

Option 3: Change what I say. If I am unable to make my actions match my rhetoric, then I should make my rhetoric match my actions. The family man with a mistress should promote the benefits of infidelity, even if it hurts his political career and destroys his family. Whatever I want to do is moral, and I’ll be happy to tell you why: because I want to do it. This option can’t possibly work because of all the contradictions that pile up on themselves.

Option 4: Change what I do. Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. If I am going to say that the moral thing to do is X, then I should do X and not Y. At the very least, I should want to do X and try to do X. Thus, the smoker from Option 1 should want to quit smoking and try to quit smoking, even if he finds the addiction overpowering.

Clearly, we can’t let accusations of hypocrisy cow us into silence regarding moral obligations. At the same time, we can’t hold ourselves up as the standard. The standards for virtue and morality are absolute and external to ourselves. None of us on this side of heaven is going to meet the standard. However, our inability to meet the standard doesn’t absolve us of the responsibility to try or to encourage others to strive for the ideal. While we can’t perfectly meet the standard, we can get reasonably close (but again, only if we try).

Being told to do something by a hypocrite galls us. The actions of the hypocrite are scandalous and tempt us to dismiss what they say. Our own weakness tempts us to refrain from rebuking the sins of others. Jesus, though, neither told the Pharisees to stop teaching, nor did he tell people to ignore their teachings. To the contrary he acknowledged their authority and told the crowds to do what they say.

Just because something is said by a hypocrite doesn’t make it wrong, and just because I might not measure up to the standards I set for myself and others doesn’t mean that those standard need to be compromised.

The Archbishop's Retirement

The Dayton Daily News has an article on the retirement of Cincinnati Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk. The lede of the story is that the Archbishop's time at the helm has been marked by scandal and controversy. The only scandal and controversy noted in the body of the story is that of sexual abuse of minors by the clergy and the apparent failure of the American episcopate to recognize and adequately address the problem. I found the story, although brief, to be fairly even-handed, despite the sensationalist headline.

What was anything but even-handed were the comments. They made me appreciate the level of discourse and civility that is found on the blogs that I read. I hope that the commenters are not representative of the inhabitants of the Archdiocese (Catholic and non-Catholic).

Payday Inspiration (or Not)

Like most of the employees where I work, my pay is delivered to me via direct deposit – the money is transferred directly to my primary savings account. However, I still get a “pay check” every Friday telling me important things like how much was deposited in my account, how much was withheld for taxes, and how much vacation time I have accrued. Most of the time, there’s also an innocuous message. My cubicle mates and I have made a bit of a game out of ripping open our statement every Friday to discover the message. It’s like the fortune cookie you get with your bill at the Chinese buffet.

Sometimes, the message might be promoting safety (“You’re important to us!”). At other times, it might be advising us of administrative details such as the deadline for filing changes to our health benefits package. Today’s message had me scratching my head, saying to myself, “Huh?”

“Innovate or evaporate. (Jim Higgins)” That’s it. There’s a capital letter at the beginning and period at the end. It’s been a while since I had an English class (I understand they call it “Language Arts” now), but that looks like it’s supposed to be a complete sentence, and an imperative one at that. I have received the command to either innovate or evaporate. I guess the choice is up to me. Evaporating doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, but if I’m not able to innovate, will evaporation be force upon me? Maybe, if I’m lucky, I won’t be the object of the evaporation, but the subject. If I boil water on the stove, is that close enough to evaporating?

I took to Google to find out who Jim Higgins is or was. There are lots of chaps named Jim Higgins out there. One of them is an Irish politician. The one that I was looking for, though, is an author of business books. These are like self-help books for business men, where they learn all the latest buzz words. Mr. Higgins apparently has written a book entitled Innovate or Evaporate, in which he encourages executives to discover their company’s IQ (Innovation Quotient).

I wish that I could say the message on my pay stub is reassuring. Unfortunately, serene confidence was not the first emotion that I felt upon receiving this week’s dose of inspiration.

Monica, Marilyn, and Vanity in Death

Driving in to work today, I heard a segment on NPR that once again highlighted for me the difference between the culture of the world and the Christian culture, where we are called to be in the world but not of the world.

There is, it seems, a market for people who want their remains to be buried near those of a celebrity. In this case, a Japanese gentleman purchased a mausoleum space directly above that which houses the remains of Marilyn Monroe. The winning eBay bid was a cool $4.6 million. The current resident of that space, who asked that he be buried face down, is being evicted by his widow, who needs the money.

Contrast that with St. Augustine’s account of the death of his mother, St. Monica, whose memorial is today:

While she was sick, she one day sank into a swoon, and was for a short time unconscious of visible things. We hurried up to her; but she soon regained her senses, and gazing on me and my brother as we stood by her, she said to us inquiringly, "Where was I?" Then looking intently at us stupefied with grief, "Here," saith she, "shall you bury your mother." I was silent, and refrained from weeping; but my brother said something, wishing her, as the happier lot, to die in her own country and not abroad. She, when she heard this, with anxious countenance arrested him with her eye, as savouring of such things, and then gazing at me, "Behold," saith she, "what he saith;" and soon after to us both she saith, "Lay this body anywhere, let not the care for it trouble you at all. This only I ask, that you will remember me at the Lord's altar, wherever you be." And when she had given forth this opinion in such words as she could, she was silent, being in pain with her increasing sickness.

St. Monica, intercede for us, that we might be saved from vanity in death as well as in life. Pray for us!

Oh, and the gentleman with the winning bid? He’s trying to renege on the deal “because of the paying problem.”

Lions and Lambs and Louis

There is a chapter in G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy in which he examines the paradoxes of Christianity. He found it simply amazing that critics of Christianity could hold that the Church was simultaneously two contradictory things. One of his examples is that there are those who consider followers of Christ to be entirely too pacifistic, while asserting at the same time that Christianity is the cause of all wars and bloodshed.

Here is another case of the same kind. I felt that a strong case against Christianity lay in the charge that there is something timid, monkish and unmanly about all that is call "Christian," especially in its attitude toward resistance and fighting. The great skeptics of the 19th century were largely virile. Bradlaugh in an expansive way, Huxley in a reticent way, were decidedly men.

In comparison, it did seem tenable that there was something weak and overpatient about Christian counsels. The gospel paradox about the other cheek, the fact that priests never fought, a hundred things made plausible the accusation that Christianity was an attempt to make a man too like a sheep.

I read it and believed it, and if I had read nothing different, I should have gone on believing it. But I read something very different. I turned the next page in my agnostic manual, and my brain turned upside down. Now I found that I was to hate Christianity not for fighting too little, but for fighting too much. Christianity, it seemed, was the mother of wars. Christianity had deluged the world with blood. I had got thoroughly angry with the Christian because he never was angry. And now I was told to be angry with him because his anger had been the most huge and horrible thing in human history; because his anger had soaked the Earth and smoked to the sun. The very people who reproached Christianity with the meekness and non-resistance of the monasteries were the very people who reproached it also with the violence and valor of the Crusades. It was the fault of poor old Christianity (somehow or other) both that Edward the Confessor did not fight and that Richard Coeur de Leon did. The Quakers (we were told) were the only characteristic Christians; and, yet, the massacres of Cromwell and Alva were characteristic Christian crimes.

What could it all mean? What was this Christianity that always forbade war and always produced wars? What could be the nature of the thing which one could abuse first because it would not fight, and second because it was always fighting? In what world of riddles was born this monstrous murder and this monstrous meekness? The shape of Christianity grew a queerer shape every instant.

I bring this up because today is the feast day of St. Louis IX. He is a canonized saint of the Church. As king of France, he fostered learning, literature and the arts. He was also a crusader, who did not shirk the responsibility of defending Christendom with his sword. Chesterton recognized him for this.

And, sometimes, this pure gentleness and this pure fierceness met and justified their juncture; the paradox of all the prophets was fulfilled and, in the soul of St. Louis, the lion lay down with the lamb. But remember that this text is too lightly interpreted. It is constantly assured, especially in our Tolstoyan tendencies, that when the lion lies down with the lamb, the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem is - Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity? That is the problem the Church attempted; that is the miracle she achieved.

Jephthah Did What?

Today's Lectionary reading from the Book of Judges is a shock to modern ears. The passage recalls how Jephthah, leading Israel in battle against the Ammonites, vow to sacrifice to God the first person who greets him when he returns home, if God will only grant the Israelites success in battle. The Israelites meet with great success, and Jephthah returns to his home, where he is greeted by his daughter, an only child. After two months in which she mourns for never being able to be married, the vow is consummated and she is sacrificed.

Wow!

The literal sense is a little troubling here. God seems to accept the oath, for Israel is rewarded with success in battle, and Jephthah is not stopped short of sacrificing his daughter, as Abraham was stopped from sacrificing Isaac. Nowhere does the scripture explicitly state that God was displeased with the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter, although it does note that Jephthah served as a judge for six years before he died. Six is a number associated with incompleteness, being one less than the seven days associated with the creation account.

What about the allegorical, moral, and anagogical senses?

The moral sense seems to suggest that human sacrifice is A-OK, but we know from subsequent revelation and Tradition that that's not true. In the allegorical sense, we might suggest that the daughter of Jephthah is a type, but is she a type for Jesus in that she is willingly sacrificed, or a type for Mary in her virginity? Only in the anagogical sense, in which we see that Jephthah held nothing, even his only daughter, back from God, does the passage make any real sense. Jephthah made a rash oath to God, but even though the oath was rash, he fulfilled the terms. Oaths to God are not to be taken lightly.

It's About Dad

Last week, Mark Shea was a guest on The Journey Home. Mark is an author of several books, a speaker, and one of the foremost Catholic bloggers. His blog is Catholic and Enjoying It.

During the course of their conversation, Mark and host Marcus Grodi discussed the current fad of popular atheism, and Mark noted that all of the arguments against God’s existence boil down to one of two basic assertions: either things are going badly and, therefore, God doesn’t exist or things are going well without God, therefore we don’t really need him. St. Thomas Aquinas anticipated both arguments and answered them long ago.

Mark attributes much of the current vogue for atheism to a statement that he attributes to Pope John Paul II, that the mark of original sin is loss of the apprehension of God as Father. Mark went on to add:

And when you lose the apprehension of God as father, God doesn’t disappear. What happens is, you perceive him simply and solely as master, and then you’ve got a choice. You can submit to him as master, which is what Islam is, or you can rebel against him as master, which is what atheism is. As Chesterton said, it is always the Christian god that the atheist does not believe in. If you don’t believe it, try saying something blasphemous about Thor. You don’t run into people doing that too often.

Yes, it’s true that we live in a society that’s obsessed with sex and this sort of thing. And so it really is true sometimes that, as a wag once said, “The person that says to you that the modern rational intellect can no longer accept the primitive doctrines and dogmas of transubstantiation and the Trinity, what he often mean by that is, ‘I’m sleeping with my neighbor’s wife.’” But far more than that, I’m really discovering that it’s not about sex, it’s about Dad. Great, great anger at the father, and that gets directed at God the Father, and there you go. But it comes back to that remark that John Paul made. The longer I live, the more insightful that I think it is.

And so, it comes down to me. I hold the faith (or lack of faith) of my children in my hands. Their first intuition of God as a loving Father will be my example. It is an awesome responsibility, and I am painfully aware of my every failure and weakness as a parent. I know that I cannot be perfect. I can only try my best, ask God for the grace to do better, and pray that I don’t leave them permanently damaged.

Fool of a Took!

There's a scene in The Fellowship of the Ring, after the Fellowship has entered the Mines of Moria and found Balin's tomb. As they read from the book and learn how the dwarves released an ancient evil that had been locked in the earth, the hobbit Peregrine Took pokes at a corpse near a vertical air shaft or well. The corpse's helmeted head rolls off into the shaft, followed by the body of the corpse, a chain, and a bucket at the end of the chain. The whole thing bounces noisily off the walls of the shaft, deeper and deeper into the mine. With each loud clang, the members of the Fellowship wince, until Gandalf, looking directly at the hobbit, snarls, "Fool of a Took!"



The scene leaps to mind whenever somebody does something stupid, and it leaps to my mind today because of the non-Gospel readings. Proverbs 9:6 tells us, "Forsake foolishness that you may live; advance in the way of understanding." And St. Paul writes in Ephesians 5:15, "Watch carefully how you live, not as foolish persons but as wise, making the most of the opportunity because the days are evil."

We are, it seems, surrounded by foolishness, and all to often we find ourselves infected by it to a greater or lesser degree. As we advance in scientific understanding, we become tempted to wield the power, much as those in the Lord of the Rings were tempted to wield the power of the one ring. There are some who would compromise, intending to wield the power only so long as it is needed to defeat evil. They have good and noble intentions, but they underestimate the corrupting influence of the power. There are others who have given themselves over entirely to the desire to wield the power. For them, "the science" is the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong. If we have the technology to do something, then we should do it. To them, sacrificing a generation of human embryos is a small price to pay for bio-engineering a superior race. Such fools seek to understand how the world works, but neglect to consider why.

There are other fools who claim to be trying to understand the why of human behavior, but in practice do little more than try to justify aberrant behavior. People act the way they act, they will say, because they can't help it. Those who follow their advice end up embracing destructive behaviors, and then wonder why their lives are so messed up. Uninhibited pleasure does not lead to happiness. Pleasure can, in fact, lead us away from happiness. A married man might find pleasure in the affections of a woman other than his wife. That pleasure leads to unhappiness as his marriage falls apart.

We, however, are called to seek wisdom. Wisdom, we are told, begins with fear of the Lord. That doesn't mean that the wise are cowering in fear before a vengeful deity. It means that we are to have a healthy perspective regarding who we are and what God is. "Were you there when I laid the foundations of the earth?" (Job38:4) We are creatures, he is our creator. Paradoxically, the world often sees the wisdom of God as foolishness. Suffering and sacrifice, in the eyes of the world, are evils to be avoided. Yet, God the Father sacrificed his own Son through suffering for our sake, that we might become sons and daughters of God.

We are to live our lives, not as foolish persons with only the standards of the world in mind, but as fools for God, prepared to be mocked by the worldly. The world will tell us to eat, drink, and be merry. We have to be prepared to remain sober. When the world laughs, we must be prepared to mourn. And yet we are still struck with the paradox that through it all, the love of Christ must fill us to that we radiate a certain joy. Joy in mourning will seem perverse, indeed even foolish, to the world.

It's not easy finding the right balance, and I readily admit that I'm not there. But I'm working on it. Repentance, conversion, and confession are regular events for me, and I suspect that they will be until the day that I die. I don't know why God made us this way - it is beyond my understanding. But I refuse to allow my oft-demonstrated personal weakness become an excuse for foolish behavior. Rather, I will seek Wisdom's house and "try to understand what is the will of the Lord." May God grant me the grace and the gifts (wisdom, knowledge, understanding, right judgment, courage, piety, and wonder) necessary for me to live as I ought, as is fitting for a believer. Let me not appear before Him at the end of my life and hear the words "Fool of a Took!"

Emphasis in Scripture

You've probably heard the adage that 90% of communication is non-verbal. Even with verbal communication, commiting the words alone to text can lose a bit of the nuance in a sentence. Take for instance, the phrase from today's Gospel, "I am the bread of life." (John 6:48)

That sentence could be uttered with an emphasis on the subject. "I am the bread of life." Jesus would have been indicating that the bread of life is not to be found anywhere other than in Him. It would be as if he were saying, "If you want eternal life, look to me."

The sentence could also be said with an emphasis on the verb. "I am the bread of life." When I speak the words both ways in my mind, it seems as though the meaning is slightly different, although I can't exactly put my finger on the difference.

There is another example where the distinction is a little easier to see: "Follow me" versus "Follow me." In one case, the emphasis is on the action of the person being spoken to, in the other the emphasis is on the one being spoken about. Most people, when reading aloud, default to the second formulation. I prefer the first.

My point is that the text doesn't say how it should be read. There might be some clues from the context, but those clues aren't always easy to read. In my mind's eye, I can see Jesus saying, "I (Jesus, the man standing here before you) am the bread of life. Your fathers (the ones who were delivered from Egypt and cared for in the desert by my Father) at the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This (gesturing to himself) is the bread that comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die (unlike the manna of the Exodus). I am the living bread (not only that you might never die, but that I might teach you through my life) which came down from heaven."

The Murmuring Crowd

It seems so easy to accept the words of the Bread of Life Discourse from the 6th chapter of John that we heard from in today's mass. We have the benefit of living after the great signs of John's later chapters and the death, resurrection, and ascension. We live in the era after the Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost. We have two millenia of tradition upon which to draw. It is enough for us to know that He said it. We accept that He was the Son of God. The crowds from today's Gospel reading didn't enjoy those benefits.

If I had been in the crowd, it is quite likely that I would have been disturbed by what I was hearing. Knowing the family life of the man making the claim and remembering his childhood would make his words even harder to accept, even if he was able to do miraculous things. I probably would have been one of those murmuring against Him, much to my detriment.

Do we take the time often enough to thank God that we don't have to figure all this out for ourselves? Don't get me wrong. There's still plenty for us to discern. But we already have so many of the really important, foundational answers. It means that we can focus our attention on actually trying to live up to what He taught. And God knows that, for me at least, that's plenty hard enough.

An Elegantly Simple Child

I’m a big fan of Catholic radio. Unfortunately, our local station does not carry most of my favorite programs, so I end up listening to archived podcasts. One of my favorites is Catholic Answers Live, produced by Catholic Answers, an evangelization and apologetics apostolate located in San Diego, CA. Catholic Answers Live is a call-in show with two one-hour segments every day, Monday through Friday.

A few weeks ago, Catholic Answers Live featured Dr. Ross Porter for an hour-long discussion about raising a handicapped child. Dr. Porter is a clinical psychologist specializing in integrative psychology and family systems. He is also the founder and Executive Director of Stillpoint Family Resources, a non-profit organization that offers counseling services to individuals, couples, and families in crisis, with nine different office locations throughout Los Angeles and Orange Counties, California. Dr. Porter and his wife have four children, the oldest of whom, John Michael, has Down Syndrome.

It was an interesting program, with the discussion touching upon many of the areas that Amy and I have talked about with respect to our own child with Down Syndrome.

The Porters had three more children after John Michael, and a fair number of people were surprised by that. Dr. Porter talked about feeling overwhelmed at times, but returning to the challenge of Pope John Paul the Great, “Be not afraid.” And so, they made a conscious effort to stay open to life and to the god of miracles. “A lot of people were surprised. Gosh, you’re gonna have another child? Well, why wouldn’t we want another child? This wasn’t a mistake, like John Michael didn’t go well so we better close up shop. He’s the baby that God intended for us, and why would we stop now?”

Raising a child with special needs is a challenge, but it is not one that comes without any rewards. You’re life might be rearranged, but you arrive at a new sense of normal.

One caller questioned whether, having received a prenatal diagnosis of Down Syndrome, it would be appropriate to pray for healing. My wife has discussed something similar with other parents of children with Down Syndrome. If you could give back the extra chromosome, would you? Dr. Porter would not. “John Michael was sent to us exactly how John Michael was meant to be. If we had known while he was in utero that he was Down Syndrome, we would not have prayed for a healing because I really believe that (and my wife also) this is John Michael’s mission and that as long as John Michael has life, he will be leading people to God through his disability. That’s not to say that people are wrong if they pray for healing. The way that I feel about it is that you pray for God’s perfect will, and then the courage to do it. So if there’s going to be a miracle of healing where the Down Syndrome child is suddenly not Down Syndrome, fine. The deeper miracle is if we’re able to love and do God’s Will.”

Elaborating upon the rewards of raising a child with special needs, Dr. Porter noted that he is a better man because of John Michael. “All my children have helped me to grow and to be a better man, but no one has stretched me like John Michael has stretched me. And nobody challenges – none of us, including my wife and I – challenge people like John Michael does. There’s something very powerful and compelling about him, and as I’ve said before, Patrick, that you talk about a disable child – John Michael is happier in any given week than I’ve been in 45 years. He doesn’t have the neuroses, the hangups, the anxieties, the fears that I have with my degrees and my knowledge and blah blah blah. So what he really challenges us to do is almost redefine disability. He wears his disability on the outside. We’re all disabled, we’re just better at hiding ours. The more resources and the more education you have, the better able you are to hide it. He’s a great grace. I would never pray that he would be anybody but the person that God made him to be.

The phrase the Dr. Porter especially likes to use with regard to his son is that he is “elegantly simple.”

Dr. Porter also touched upon the challenges of parenting his elegantly simple son compared to his three typical children. “We’ve got four children. John Michael has his particular challenges that he brings to the table, but he is going to be, in a lot of way, our easiest kid. We’re never going to have to worry about him out late at night. We’re never going to have to worry about him in moral areas. He’s got this gift of simplicity that will always keep him a little child. All children are going to have their challenges. All of us, as we get older, it’s not like we have less challenge or less temptation in our lives. That’s just part of being human, is dealing with the challenges that come with humanity.”

The full hour with Dr. Porter is available from the Catholic Answers radio calendar. The Rosses have written a book, Hidden Graces, which can be ordered from Dr. Porter’s web site. “Ross and Jenni Porter offer a personal and uplifting book of reflections on the lessons God has taught them through their very special boy John Michael, who has Down Syndrome. This book is not only applicable to parents, siblings, and friends of special needs people, it is a work that will inspire anyone interested in a deeper life of faith, hope, and love. ‘We believe in the relevancy of this book because it is ultimately a story about God's love, and God's love includes everyone whether they have a special needs child or not.’”

Exodus Reflections

For the last three weeks, the weekday Lectionary readings have led us through the book of Exodus and into Leviticus. This week we'll move into Numbers and then Deuteronomy and Joshua. We returned to the story of the Exodus this past Sunday for the connection between the manna in the desert and the Bread of Life discourse from the Gospel of John.

Throughout our time in the Book of Exodus, I've found two themes occupying my mind: the immanence of God to the Exodus Israelites and their inability, in spite of that immanence, to trust in Him and live up to their end of the Covenant.

The Israelites of the Exodus could see the power and glory of the Lord. After the plagues in Egypt, culminating in the Passover and the death of the first-born, God led the Israelites out of Egypt, going "before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light that they might travel by day and by night; the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people." (Exodus 13:21-22) Yet, in spite of this visible presence, when the Egyptian army pursued them, they feared and wanted to return to Egypt.

So the pillar of cloud/fire stopped the Egyptians while the waters of the Red Sea were parted, allowing the Israelites to escape. God then allowed the Egyptians to pursue them, only to be swallowed up by the waters of the sea. The pursuing army was destroyed by the hand of God, and the Israelites knew it. "Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the seashore. And Israel saw the great work which the Lord did against the Egyptians, and the people feared the Lord; and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses." (Exodus 14:30-31) Yet only three days later, the people were once again upset with Moses (and God) because of bitter water!

Again and again, the people would grumble and complain against God, and again and again, God would provide for them, giving them flakes of manna and quail to eat and water from the rock to drink. A little gratefulness would be understandable.

When Moses went up on Mt. Sinai "Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire; and the smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mounting quaked greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder." (Exodus 19:18-19) "Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel." (Exodus 24:17) In the shadow of all of this glory, "the people gathered themselves together to Aaron, and said to him, 'Up, make us gods, who shall go before us." (Exodus 32:1) With God's power visible before them, after having been miraculously fed in the desert and delivered from the Egyptians, this seems almost unfathomable. And yet, we continue to create our own gods everyday. We might not fashion our gold into a calf, yet we still look to our gold to save us.

Even after the golden calf incident, God remained visibly, tangibly present to the Exodus Israelites through the Tent of Meeting. "Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud abode upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would go onward; but if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not go onward till the day that it was taken up. For throughout all their journeys the cloud of the Lord was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel." (Exodus 40:34-38)

All that we get today is a single flame in the sanctuary lamp that tells us that the Blessed Sacrament in present in the tabernacle. The glory of God is hidden in the mundane. Is it any wonder then that we are prone to losing the plot? Yet while the Israelites were saved from slavery in Egypt, we have received a much greater grace. We have been redeemed by the blood of the lamb.

After all that they had seen with their own eyes, the Israelites so quickly forgot. They forgot the power and the glory and the merciful kindness of the Lord, and they forgot the humiliation and shame of slavery in Egypt. They grew tired of the desert and the manna, and they longed to return to Egypt. We grow tired of ascetic detachment from the things of this world, and we take for granted the extreme gift that comes to us in the Eucharist. In spite of all that we know and all of the evidence to the contrary, the allure and glamour of sin still beckons to us.

So where does that leave us? Are we worse off than the Israelites of the Exodus? By no means! If anything, we learn from the past that signs and wonders are no guarantee of faithfulness. God’s ultimate self-revelation took place in the incarnation, and we are the beneficiaries of His redeeming sacrifice. Those who claim that they would believe if only they had a sign refuse to accept the signs that are present, even today. 70,000 witnessed the miracle of the sun at Fatima. Numerous miraculous cures have occurred at Lourdes. Scientific tests have been performed on the particles of the Eucharistic miracle of Lanciano.

God is immanent. He is present to us. He loves us, and he remains true to his covenant. We just need to let go of Egypt.

Dean Koontz at Catholic Exchange

There's a short interview with author Dean Koontz over at Catholic Exchange. Some highlights:

On Catholicism:

I did become engaged, more and more as the years went by, by the intellectual rigor that lies behind the Catholic Church. A lot of people will possibly laugh at that but if you know St. Thomas Aquinas and some of the other famous writers of the Church — or laymen who wrote brilliantly from a Catholic perspective like G.K. Chesterton — then you understand what I’m talking about. There is a deep intellectual basis behind it and that always appealed to me.

On Special Needs Children:

I’ve featured Down Syndrome kids in books at times and I’ve gotten literally thousands of letters from people who have Down’s children. Every single one of them says, “This was the best thing that happened to me.” They’re not pretending; they’re not trying to make the best of a bad situation. They’re saying it really was a tremendous benefit to their lives.

Aglet Awareness and the Nexus of Culture

Each of us occupies a nexus of culture. That sounds rather high-brow, don’t you think? Please allow me to explain what I mean.

We are all consumers of culture. Personally, I consume sizeable doses of science fiction, fantasy, video games, politics, and religion. The list is not exhaustive, but it covers most of the major contributors, and it makes for an interesting combination of interactive cultural references. There are aspects of culture that I don’t consume much of: sports, theater, classical music, celebrity gossip. Thus, all to often, conversations can become hard to follow when I miss somebody’s baseball reference and they miss my Marvel comics reference.

As a parent, I sometimes consume a bit of kiddie culture. Some of it is really bad, and will never, ever produce a cultural reference of significance (for example, Hannah Montana or Suite Life). There are some gems, though. Spongebob had a good run, but I really don’t care much for the new stuff. One of my current favorites is the animated Phineas and Ferb on the Disney Channel.

Phineas and Ferb, if you’re not familiar with them, are two brothers who have a list of things that they want to do during their summer vacation. They also happen to have smarts that rival Nickelodeon’s Jimmy Neutron and Cartoon Network’s Dexter. Meanwhile, their pet platypus, Perry, goes about the business of foiling the machinations of the evil (or is he just misunderstood?) Dr. Doofenshmirz (of Doofenshmirz Evil Incorporated). Their sister Candace resents the activities of Phineas and Ferb, but can never seem to reveal their activities to their mother. Each episode includes an original musical number.

In one unforgettable episode, the two boys set out to make the world appreciate the humble aglet. What’s an aglet, you say? Why, it’s the plastic tip on the end of a shoe lace, of course. The pair organize an aglet-awareness concert at the local stadium and spend the day promoting it at the local mall. Here’s clip from the show:



Now I need to tie (ahem) this whole post back together regarding the nexus of cultural influences. At the last 5K that I ran, one of my rivals had a little problem with his shoe laces. He actually caught the toe of one shoe in the loop of the laces on the other shoe and went down in a fall. After the race, he was lamenting his condition and voiced that he was considering cutting his laces shorter. Before I could help myself, I blurted out, “But then you wouldn’t have any aglets!”

He laughed and said, “Yeah,” but I don’t know whether he really got the reference.

Time Management

Luther in the year he spent
as Junker Joerg in Wartburg towers,
translated the New Testament
to pass the everlasting hours.

Though living as a refugee
Erasmus wrote his tour de force.
In Praise of Folly’s said to be
the product of a trip by horse.

With dinners late, D’Aguesseau saw
an opportunity to write
his sixteen-volume work of law
in fifteen minutes every night.

Today I slept late, took a walk,
sipped coffee on my ragged lawn,
checked the mailbox, saw the clock,
and noticed half my life was gone.

by Stephen Scaer
From the June/July 2009 issue of First Things

Anchors Aweigh

Several months ago, Amy and I went out to dinner with another couple, Jamie and John. It's rare that we actually go out with somebody else. It was a very pleasant evening, filled with good conversation.

At one point, John leaned across the table and, looking me in the eyes, asked, "Can I ask you a question?" My breath caught as I wondered what was going to come next? Was he going to ask my advice about some pressing problem? Was he going to pitch Amway? Was he going to ask me to reveal something deeply personal?

I forget how I answered, but I gave him the go-ahead. He could ask his question.

"Is it true that you have an anchor in your backyard." My breath released as I smiled, laughed, and answered in the affirmative.

Back when my wife was my fiance, my future father-in-law was a machine trades teacher at the Joint Vocational School. I was a midshipman in the Navy ROTC, to be commissioned as a naval officer shortly before our planned marriage. My father-in-law-to-be figured that every Navy man needed an anchor, so he made me one. I had the pleasure of carrying it around with me throughout my bachelor party. It remains with me to this day.

If asked about it, the maker of the anchor will claim that it is symbolic. "Have you figured out what it means?" he'll ask in his typically loud voice. Yeah, I have a pretty good idea of what it could mean, although I think he made it mainly because he could, and he thought it would be neat. The anchor, though, is not the only thing that this machine trades instructor made for me. He also made me a cannon that is supposed to be capable of firing one-inch slugs.

I haven't figured out yet what the meaning of the cannon is.

Catholic Priesthood Through the Ages

In this Year for Priests, I can't recommend highly enough a resource from the EWTN archives. Fr. Charles Connor has got to be one of the treasures of the Church for his popularization of history. He turned his talents to the subject of the priesthood in the series Catholic Priesthood Through the Ages.

The series is designed to give priests and especially catholic laity a deeper insight into the scriptural, theological, historical and spiritual richness of the Sacrament of Holy Orders.

The are 13 Episodes available from the EWTN audio archive:

Episode 1: What is the priesthood?
Episode 2: The priesthood of Jesus Christ
Episode 3: The Priesthood in the Mind of St. Paul and the Early Church
Episode 4: The Fathers of the Church on the Priesthood
Episode 5: The Medeival, Reformation And Counter-Reformation Mind on the Priesthood
Episode 6: The Eucharist and the Priesthood
Episode 7: Prayer and Suffering: Essential Ingredients of the Priesthood
Episode 8: The Priest as Preacher of the Word
Episode 9: The Gift of Priestly Celibacy
Episode 10: Priesthood in the Third Millennium
Episode 11: Priestly Theology of Pope John Paul II – Part I
Episode 12: Priestly Theology of Pope John Paul II – Part II
Episode 13: The Blessed Virgin Mary And The Priesthood

I've listened to the whole series several times now, and probably will listen to it several more times before the Year for Priests comes to an end next year. Fr. Connor presents the views of Pope John Paul II, Joseph Ratzinger (before he became Pope Benedict XVI), Archbishop Fulton Sheen, John Cardinal O'Conner, and others in this inspiring series. Each episode is approximately 27 minutes in length and is available as a 3.15 MB mp3 file.

Facebook Friends

I have, for a long time, had little use for social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace. They seemed to me to be too much like exercises in vanity (but then, what the heck is Blogger?). I have, however, watched my wife get a great deal of enjoyment out of it. The site allows her to connect with old friends and keep tabs on distant cousins. At times, she looked like she was just plain having fun.

We’ve also learned that our thirteen year old daughter is not ready for Facebook without a hefty amount of parental supervision.

After all this time and ambivalence, I’ve decided to jump in (I'm sooooo vain). What brought about the change in attitude? Old friends of mine (my college roommate, for cryin’ out loud!) started sending friend requests to my wife as a way to get to me. I can’t have my friends cluttering up my wife’s wall!

So, now I’m on Facebook, in addition to Blogger. Oh, won’t you be my friend?

Priests and Rest

I am not unsympathetic to priests who complain about not being able to get away from the demands of parish life. One part of me is amazed that so many members of the typical parish seem to be so needy that the pastor has to spend an inordinate amount of time tending to a small minority. Occasionally, a blogging priest will write a "day in the life" post, and it does make it appear that they are on-the-go through most of the typical day. If, of course, those days are truly typical.

The other side of the coin is that sometimes the pastor is not available. When our daughter Erin was born, we feared the possibility of a congenital heart defect, so we made arrangements with the Lutheran hospital chaplain to have her baptized immediately after her birth. "Good luck," he told us, "finding a Catholic priest on a Friday night." I have first-hand knowledge of a parish pro-life coordinator who wanted to get the pastor's permission to participate in the red-letter campaign from this past spring. Phone calls and personal trips to the rectory were fruitless. Even notes from the secretary to the pastor did not produce results. The pastor could not spare one minute to return a phone call from a parishioner trying to conduct parish business!

Fr. Peter Daly is a Maryland priest who writes a column syndicated by the Catholic News Service. He recently wrote that he finally had his first day off in four months. That sounds really bad, especially in light of this past Sunday's Gospel, in which Christ directed his disciples to take a day of rest. On a human level, these moments of rest and recuperation are necessary, and priests are certainly human. But what does a day off mean to a priest? Is it the same as a day of rest? What it seems to imply is a day in which Fr. Smith is just Mr. Smith. I find that troubling.

In the same column, Fr. Daly noted the results of a 2002 survey in which 18% of parish priests said they worked more than 80 hours a week, with the average at 63 hours. That's a lot of time on the job, but I have to wonder what is included as work. Is everything that they do as a priest included? If that is the case, then every hour of every week should be included, because the ordained man is a priest forever. Fr. Smith is always Fr. Smith, he never becomes just Mr. Smith (I'm not considering the possibility of laicization here).

A lay person like me might spend 45 hours a week working on the job. Is that to be compared against the 63 hour average for the parish priest? That's the time that I spend making a living as an engineer. That's not the sum total of my vocation, however. As a father, I have to spend time parenting my children. Do I get to include the time that I spend counseling, educating, entertaining, feeding, and transporting my kids? What about the long, boring meetings that I have to attend for school and extra-curricular activities? It's part of my vocational identity that the priest doesn't have to attend to. As a husband, I have spend time with my wife for the strength of our marriage and the good of the children and the community. Every minute of every day, I am a father and a husband. It would be unseemly for me to take a day off from being married.

But wait, as they say in the infomercials, there's more! I am also a believing member of the laity. I devote time to my full, conscious, and active participation in the liturgy. I catechize and volunteer and attend more meetings. I study and pray and try to discern and follow the will of God for my life. That all takes time, and I think that most priests think of Sunday as a "work day" because they celebrate multiple masses and deliver their big homily of the week.

I started this post by noting that I am not unsympathetic to over-worked priests, and I'm not. They need their periods of rest, and a chance to get away from the demands of a needy public. But when they speak of their duties (and privileges!) as a priest in the same way that I might speak of my responsibilities as an engineer, separate from my responsibilities as a father, husband, and lay person, then I think that maybe they've lost sight of what their vocation to the priesthood really means.

Our pastors should be able to get away from the parish more often than once every four months, but it saddens me to think that some of them might be counting or rationing the hours that they give to the sheep of their flock.

Prayers and Penance for Priests

In her broadcast for today (click here to listen), Sr. Ann Shields takes Sunday’s first reading from Jeremiah (“Woe to the shepherds. . .”) and uses it as a platform from which to encourage us to pray for our priests. It’s a message that I needed to hear. Yes, we have our Holy Hour every Monday evening with rosary, prayers for priests, and Benediction, but that gets to be so routine. Just as St. John Vianney did penance for the sheep of his flock, so we lay persons need to pray for and do penance for our pastors.

While I won’t be doing anything as dramatic as donning Fr. Brunner’s penance shirt shown at right (yes, Russ, I finally found a way to work it in – thanks for the image), I can put the suffering that I inflict upon myself during my training runs to good use. Maybe knowing that the suffering has been given meaning will strengthen me to endure the punishment.

Total Consecration

Today marks the twelfth anniversary of what should be a pivotal moment in the lives of my wife and me. On the Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in 1997, we completed the total consecrate to Jesus through Mary according to St. Louis Marie de Montfort and we were invested with the brown scapular.

De Montfort's method includes 33 days of prayer and preparation prior to the final consecration. The parish that we were in at the time, St. Lawrence the Martyr in Alexandria, Virginia, hosted a series of evenings for those interested in making the consecration, so there was a large group of us. I can still remember speaking with someone about the consecration. She was an unmarried middle-aged woman, very active as a volunteer in the parish. "I did that years ago," she said. Then she added jokingly, "You can't tell, can you?" I laughed with her, but I remember thinking, "Yes, I can." She was one of those good souls that we are fortunate to meet on our journey.

Life didn't change much for us after making the consecration. I separated from the Navy, and we moved back to Ohio and had three more children. Spiritually, I can hope that I've made improvements, but if so, they've been incremental. I still find that I have a need for sacramental confession. I still have trouble consistently saying my daily prayers. I still get extremely drowsy whenever I try to attend a holy hour. In short, I don't feel consecrated, but I am.

Also on that day twelve years ago, we received our brown scapulars. I look at my scapular as a sign of devotion to Our Lady. It's like a little piece of the carmelite habit that reminds me (and tells any who might catch a glimpse of it), that I love our Blessed Mother and want to better serve her Son. Scapulars are a common sight around town. Many children are enrolled after they make their First Communion. It's not unusual to see them with their scapulars double-looped around their necks, with both ends peeking over the tops of their shirt fronts.

Some people focus on the promises that were allegedly made regarding assurances to anyone who dies wearing a scapular. While I might hope that those promises are true if I'm lucky enough to be wearing mine when I die, I resist the temptation to think of the scapular in a superstitious manner, as though it were a straight-to-heaven talisman. I prefer to think that the promises might be true for anyone who is disposed to wear a scapular for the right reasons. In other words, it's not the patch of brown cloth that wins what is promised, rather it is the devotion and humility that leads one to wear the brown cloth with the proper intention.

One Month from Today

One month from today, on August 15, the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Amy and I will be in Buffalo, New York, listening to a conference given by Fr. John Corapi. His Sunday evening program on EWTN is one of the few television programs that can tear her away from the Food Network or Home and Garden Television (not that she watches a lot of television, but when she does, that’s where she’s tuned). She just loves to offer a bad imitation of Fr. Corapi’s baritone voice. She’s wanted to hear him in person for a long time, and she got our tickets as soon as they were available, referring to them often as her “Christmas present” and thanking me for the gift.

Fr. Corapi has recorded a video message regarding the upcoming event.

St. Augustine on Islam

One of the fun things about having a blog is being able to see what kind of internet searches land people on your site. I've had several Google referrals that have resulted from people trying to find out what St. Augustine had to say about Islam. Let me make this simple. St. Augustine of Hippo died in the year 430. Muhammad, the founder of Islam, lived from ca. 570 until 632. St. Augustine never wrote anything about Islam, because Islam didn't exist when St. Augustine was alive.

I note this as a public service to those who use internet search engines.

Paying Attention

A while back, Fr. Kyle Schnippel noted on his blog that some priests do not like the award-winning film Fishers of Men. They object to the heroic presentation of the priest because, they say, it establishes unrealistic expectations. We priests, they say, just can't measure up. It’s a powerful film, and the trailer is embedded below.

I was reminded of Fr. Schnippels comment today when I happened upon an Ignatius Press advertisement promoting books for the Year for Priests. Among the titles were The Cure D’Ars Today by Fr. George Rutler (“this spiritual biography of St. John Vianney, the Cure of Ars, gives us new insights about the Cure’s life and message for today’s Church”), The Priest is Not His Own by Archbishop Fulton Sheen (“Sheen delves deeply into what he considers the main character of the priesthood, that of being a ‘holy victim’, to imitate Christ in His example of sacrifice, offering himself as a victim to make His Incarnation present in the world”), Theology of the Priesthood by Fr. Jean Galot, S.J. (“in this masterful work, Jean Galot, S.J. explains how the Jewish priesthood, the perfect priestly ministry of Jesus, and the role of the Twelve help us understand the ministerial priesthood”), and Christ, the Ideal of the Priest by Fr. Columba Marmion (“Marmion wrote this classic work on the priesthood to show the holiness that priests are called to, and how it can only be attained through close union with, and imitation of, Jesus Christ”).

When we speak of Jesus, we sometimes hear distinctions between a high Christology which emphasizes the divinity of Christ versus a low Christology which emphasizes the humanity of Christ. The Church teaches that Jesus is true God and true man – one divine person with two natures. Overemphasizing the divine nature runs the risk of forgetting the He was “a man like us in all things but sin.” Overemphasizing the human nature runs the risk of forgetting that He is the eternal Word, present at the creation and coeternal with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Through the Incarnation, we have the mystery of the hypostatic union. The right line to walk is not to split the difference, making Jesus a little less than God and a little more than man (i.e., a sort of demigod), but rather to embrace both the high Christology and the low Christology at the same time.

It seems to me that we can also speak of a high and low presbyterology (I think I just made the word up). The high presbyterology emphasizes the ontological change that transforms a man into an alter Christus. The low presbyterology emphasizes that the priest is still just a man. Just as in Christology, where the right answer is not either/or nor split-the-difference, so the right approach with respect to the priesthood has to be the simultaneous recognition of his mere humanity and the sacred character of the vocation to which he has been called.

There seems to be a low priesthood movement afoot. I see it in complaints that priests have no time for themselves and therefore need homes away from the rectory. I see it in calls for the repeal of priestly celibacy requirements. I see it in priests who prefer to dress in civilian clothes (aka “incognito”) when “off-duty.” In this Year for Priests, Pope Benedict XVI is encouraging priests to rediscover that they were not called to a job, but to a vocation. I suspect that many of those priests who did not like “Fishers of Men” are hoping that nobody is paying attention.


video link

Summer Reading

I'm currently trying to read three separate books, each of which came to me in a different way.

Theology and Down Syndrome by Amos Yong came home with my wife from her support group meeting for parents of children with special needs. She promised that I would read it and post a review on her blog at My Little Saint. I'm only a chapter into it, but the author, who is Pentecostal, seems to treat the whole subject of theology a little differently than I would expect a Catholic author to. His whole approach seems to be subjective rather than objective. That is to say, rather than writing and thinking about God, he is focused on the person's response on an individual and social level. Thus, there was much hand-wringing at the beginning about whether he could even write about the theology of disability without being disabled himself. Needless to say, I don't expect to see much about the sacraments or magisterial teaching.

Coincidentally, I'm slowly slogging my way through Transformation in Christ by Dietrich von Hildebrand. I'm having a hard time grasping the densely packed verbiage in this one. I find that I have to re-read paragraphs several times, and even then I only understand half of the content. At the point in the von Hildebrand book at which I started reading the Yong book, von Hildebrand was discussing simplicity, and noting that "all forms of false simplicity, except the one based on a deficiency of intellectual gifts, constitute an insuperable obstactle to the attainment of true simplicity." Mental disabilities, therefore, do not constitute a barrier to the attainment of holiness. My sister in Biloxi originally read this book, and then gave it to my mom, who passed it on to me.

A third book came to me in a most unusual way. One of my kids came to me with it, saying that a lady had dropped it off. I went to the door and looked, but she had gone. All that the kids could tell me was that she had brown hair. I recognized the name of the author, so now I also find myself reading When the Spirit Comes in Power, by Peter Herbeck. Mr. Herbeck is Vice President of Renewal Ministries, through which he has a daily radio program, Fire on the Earth, and he is also a panelist on the EWTN program Crossing the Goal. His book is subtitled "Rediscovering the Charismatic Dimension of the Christian Life." Whoever dropped the book off evidently thinks that I can benefit from opening my life to the power of the Holy Spirit. The Charismatic aspects might even help to close the circle, allowing me to appreciate the Pentecostal aspects of Mr. Yong's theology.

I don't know how long it will take me to read these. I tend to be a slow reader, and other material continues to arrive (e.g., the latest issue of First Things, the encyclical Caritas in Veritate), and I would like to get another pleasure read (I'm thinking maybe a Brad Thor or Andrew Klavan novel) in before the summer ends.

5K Reflections

We've officially passed the half-way point in the 2009 5K season. Last Saturday's Independence Day race in Fort Loramie was race number six of twelve. I'm running better than I did last year, and yet for some reason I still feel a little disappointed. Here are some points of reflection for the season thus far.

1. Sometimes I don't understand myself. Training can be frustrating. I can have a couple of good, back-to-back 6.5 mile training runs, and then go out and really struggle after two miles, finally giving up and walking after three. It leads me to wonder which me is going to show up? With every run, I wonder whether it's going to be a good run or a bad run. A spiritual analogy to concupiscence and sin seems apt.

2. I ran a strong race in the third race of the season at Anna. After that race, I was confident that I was going to break into the teens. The fourth race, the Daffy Derby, was an evening run. I paid too much attention to the runners ahead of me, I was unable to hold the pace, even though it was slower than at Anna, and I ended up walking after 2.5 miles. I was very disappointed with myself. Following that race, I decided that I needed to run at my pace rather than worry about the leaders. The same thing is probably true in the spiritual life. Rather than try to match the holiness of others, I should concentrate on my own relationship with God and my response to his grace.

3. My hip has been bothering me a lot, to the point that I really needed to concentrate if I wanted to walk without a limp. Naturally, it affected my training. My confidence was already shattered after the Daffy Derby, but now I also had to worry about aggravating an injury. I had to try and find a balance between running enough to maintain conditioning and allowing my hip to heal. Sometimes slow and steady is better than strenuous. In terms of spiritual analogy, I think of a husband and wife who are at different points on the scale of spiritual awareness. One spouse might want to jump into the pious devotions with both feet, but doing so could alarm the other spouse and create some serious tension in the marriage. A little prudence goes a long way. By the way, my hip, thankfully, has not bothered me at all since Independence Day.

4. A lot of these races start with a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. At Fort Loramie, we were invited to join in the singing, and I think that most of us did (it was the Fourth of July, after all). My wife's cousin was standing near me, and I saw him wipe a tear from his eye. My eyes were welling up, too. The whole first half of that race, the national anthem kept repeating in my head. After that, I had to concentrate just to keep running.

5. Fort Loramie was the first race this year in which I've actually been involved in a last mad dash for the finish. As we rounded the last turn, with about a tenth of a mile to go, three of us in the same age group were tightly bunched together. I don't know who moved first, but all three of us spent everything we had left to get to the line first. I ended up in the middle of the pack. In retrospect, it was fun, but at the time, I just wanted to collapse in a pile.

6. The last half mile has been really hard for me. It takes an extreme focusing of the will for me to keep running when my body is telling me to stop and walk. Every race ends up being a contest of the will. I can only pray that, by exercising my will to resist the voice that tells me to walk, I am thereby exercising my will to resist other, more deadly (in a spiritual sense) temptations.

7. I've never thought much about my weight being in issue in my running, except for the fact that the Oktoberfest 10K features weight categories (I won the over-225 lb category last year). There have been some instances to make me reconsider. After the Anna race, another runner asked me how much I weighed. After telling him that I weighed 230-235 lbs, he commented, "Just think how much faster you'd be at 200!" At the Daffy Derby I was told that the heat would be hard on heavier runners like me. At Fort Loramie, I was chatting with the runner who edged me out at the finish. I commented that he's really running well - more than a minute better than he ran last year. He told me that he isn't training any harder, but he's dropped ten pounds from a frame that was smaller than mine to begin with. All this has me seriously thinking about whether I should make an effort to shed some of my extra weight. The spiritual analogy seems obvious -- our attachments are like the extra weight we carry that prevents us from attaining true holiness.

8. The Anna and Botkins races were photographed by DAT photography. They place water-marked images on the internet for review and runners can purchase prints that they want. In reviewing some of my pictures, I noticed that my form was really bad. There's not much I can do about my right foot swinging wide, but I was running with my palms down, swinging my arms across my body. I've changed the orientation of my palms and focused on swinging my arms in a vertical arc. It should be a more efficient form. It seemed to help somewhat at Fort Loramie, anyway. Spiritually, we can slip into modes of piety that are "bad form." A spiritual director is like a coach who can point those things out so that we can run with the greatest possible efficiency. Poor form doesn't just slow us down and make us work harder than we need to, it can also contribute to injuries.

Does running always have to have a dual meaning? Of course not! But the fact that it analogizes so well provides me with plenty to think about, reflect upon, and pray over.

iConfess

Chaput's Visitation

A handful of my regular visitors (OK, all of my regular visitors only amounts to a handful, I’m talkin’ about a fraction thereof) will find this interesting. The Apostolic Visitation of the Legionaries of Christ is finally scheduled to begin. Catholic News Agency has the confirmed report. There will be different prelates responsible for the Visitations in different parts of the world, with Visitation to the Legion’s institutions in the United States being carried out by Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver. The Visitations and an official announcement are expected to begin on Julyl 15.

I trust that Archbishop Chaput will conduct a fair and thorough examination. The Legionaries have many friends and enemies, both of whom will be expectantly awaiting the reports of the Visitors.

An Apostolic Visitation is the Pope’s way of exercising his jurisdiction. In essence, he deputizes somebody to go and look around on his behalf, and then report back what you find. In some cases, the Pope’s legates might be authorized to enact changes or levy canonical penalties. In this case, I believe that the Pope has reserved those options to himself.

Dying on the Vine

Oh, the things you hear on NPR!

On Tuesday morning, it was a story about the Texas town of Cleburne, where residents wonder whether drilling for natural gas is the cause of a series of recent earthquakes.

"Natural gas recovery in the Barnett Shale involves drilling down several thousand feet and then drilling sideways thousands of feet more. Liquid is then pumped down the wells at very high pressures, which fractures the strata releasing the pockets of natural gas. Could this be causing little quakes?"

It was a mildly interesting story, but what grabbed my attention was a phrase used by the reporter, Wade Goodwyn.

"While most of rural America slowly dies on the vine,...."

I live in an Ohio village of 2800 souls, surrounded by farmland. We have quite a bit of interaction with "rural America." I was surprised and a little taken aback at the assertion that rural America is slowly dying on the vine. At 39 years old, I am actually above the median age in my little village.

Cleburne, Texas, on the other hand, is a city of 29,000. If that's rural, then what are we?

And the intelligentsia wonder why people think that NPR is biased.

A House Full of Girls

You know that you live in a house full of girls when every time you try to tidy up a bit, you find hair pieces and hair brushes everywhere. When you actually want to brush your hair, though, none of the fifty hair brushes that you put away the night before are anywhere to be found.

Intimate and Conscious

There’s an interesting article by Patricia Snow about Communion in the hand over at the On the Square section of the First Things website. She covers a lot of ground in a relatively short piece. Among other things, she points to the unity of liturgical symbolism that is lost when Communion is given in the hand, particularly the cleansing rituals that are supposed to ensure that no crumbs of the sacred species are casually left to be trampled upon.

I choose to receive Our Lord on the tongue, but I admit that my thought has always tended toward the subjective. Why do I receive him this way, and so I never gave much thought to the appropriateness in the general sense of Communion in the hand. The Church, so my thinking went, had decided that it was OK, and that was good enough for me. The Church, of course, can make bad decisions that do not affect doctrine itself, but might have the effect of undermining the way in which the doctrine is received or perceived. I can’t help but wonder what would happen if the Church decided to take back some of the allowances that have been granted to U.S. Catholics over the last forty years.

As for my subjective reasons, they are summed up well by this paragraph from the article:

So why, once Communion in the hand was permitted in the United States, did it so swiftly and almost universally become preferred? The answer is obvious. For a twentieth-century American, receiving on the tongue seems difficult. It is undignified and dependent, uncomfortably intimate and interior. By an act of the will, one must set aside one’s pride and embarrassment and make a conscious decision to see the priest as Christ.

It is intimate. It is conscious. It reminds me that what I am receiving is not mere bread.

I am not an absolutist. When the Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion is two feet shorter than I am, I usually receive in the hand. When experience has taught me that the EMHC is going to try to throw the host into my open mouth from six inches away, lest there by any incidental contact, I will receive in the hand rather than risk his or her missing the target. But in these cases, I’m reduced to questioning whether that person should really be distributing the Body of Christ

The Perks

by Midge Goldberg
Copyright (c) 2008 First Things (June/July 2008).

Why is Satan not too hot in hell?
He doesn’t seem to suffer like the rest
Who languish there. You’d almost say he’s blessed,
He’s acclimated to the place so well.

Perhaps he has a fast metabolism?
But he can’t be impervious to heat-
That would be kind of silly and defeat
The purpose of this weather-changing schism.

No, there’s a different way he disobeys-
An air-conditioned office where he stays,
A well-stocked mini-fridge that would entice
God himself-cold beer and, oh, the ice!
To his chagrin, he cannot let God know.
From time to time, he mops his brow for show.