St. Peregrinus: Martyr and Pilgrim

     Over the past two millenia the Church has seen an endless flood of inspiring Saints.  Most of these heroes of The Faith are not officially recognized, but thousands of them are commemorated with a feast day (in most cases, the date of the saint’s death, which is to say the anniversary of when he or she joined God in Heaven).  The major commemoration today is for St. Anthony of Padua [here], one of the great Saints and a Doctor of the Church. But it is also the feast of St. Augustine of Huy, one of the Vietnamese Martyrs, of whom most of us westerners know far too little (the bio of the saint [here] on Catholic.org tells us that somewhere between 130,000 and 300,000 Catholics have been martyred in Vietnam over the past two centuries, both under the imperial government of the nineteenth century and the more recent communist regime, and often by horrific means: St. Augustine of Huy was literally sawed into pieces while still alive).  There are also saints about whom little more than the name has survived, such as the Irish St. Damhnade and the African Saints Fortunatus and Lucian.

     One of the lesser-known saints commemorated today is St. Peregrinus [bio here], whose actual name was Cetteus.  We are warned that his biography is largely unverifiable, but it seems believable enough.  He was bishop of the Italian city of Amiternum in the 6^th century.  There was a feud between two of the invading Lombards, one of whom was threatened with death.  The bishop successfully pleaded to save his life, for which reason the other, assuming the bishop was simply taking his rival's side, had him thrown into a river with a large stone tied around his neck.  Cetteus was called "Peregrinus" (which means "pilgrim" or "traveler") by the fishermen who discovered his body, who knew he was a bishop by his vestments, but did not know his name.
     Several things stand out from the story of St. Peregrinus.  One, of course, is that Christ's followers would "be hated by all" (Matthew 10:22), even for doing nothing more than trying to spread peace. We don't need to look back to the early centuries of the Church to see the truth in that. We also see, in the Lombard chieftain whose imagination could not conceive of any motives higher than his own ambitions, the truth of St. Paul's assertion that "The wisdom of this world is folly with God" (1 Corinthians 3:19). The Saint's adopted name also reminds that, as St. Paul tells us (Phil. 3:20), our true citizenship is not here, but in heaven.  St. Augustine adds that "We are but travelers [peregrini] on a journey without yet a fixed abode . . ."
     Peregrini is sometimes translated as "pilgrims", because we are travelers on our way to a Holy Place (in our case, we hope, the Holiest of Places).  Let us ask St. Peregrinus to pray for us on our earthly journey, so that we might enjoy with him eternity in the Presence of Our Lord.

Abortion Myth # 7

MYTH:  “Women have a ‘right to choose’.  We have no right to tell a woman what she can do with her own body.”  

TRUTH: While this common pro-abortion pronouncement may sound good on the surface, it does not stand up to  examination on several grounds:

1)      Abortion is directed at, and kills, the body of the child, not the mother.  From the moment of conception the zygote, embryo, fetus, child, and so on is a separate body having its own process of growth, growing its own organs, and with its own DNA; no part of our bodies has its own organs or DNA.  Pro-life people are not trying to tell the mother what to do with her body: we are seeking to prevent others from doing deadly harm to the unborn baby’s body.

Mother and Child: two bodies

2)       A generic “right to choose”  is a non-sensical  proposition that even abortion rights supporters don’t really believe in. Any action at all can be expressed as a “choice”.   How many people, pro-life or pro-choice, support the choice to rape, murder, or steal?  Many people who call themselves  “pro-choice” don’t even want to permit the “choice” to hold a sign in front of an abortion clinic.  Choices can only be evaluated on the basis of what is being chosen, and people who go by the label “pro-choice” almost always mean no more than the choice of a mother to abort her unborn child.

3)      Likewise, even pro-choice advocates are in favor of laws restricting what people, including women, can do with their bodies.  There is no public clamor in favor of the right of women to use their bodies to drive drunk; nobody that I know of supports the right of women to use their bodies to beat their already born children; I have never heard a pro-choice advocate support the right of women to strap explosives to their bodies and set them off in crowded marketplaces.

4)      Pro-choice supporters are inconsistently silent on the issue of women who feel they have been given no choice but abortion:

-          The Alan Guttmacher Institute (historically associated with Planned Parenthood, the world’s largest abortion provider) has found that the two most common reasons women  bort are lack of finances and emotional support.   And yet pro-choicers try to shut down the pregnancy help centers that offer emotional support and material help that’s not available anywhere else (see Pro-life Answers to Pro-choice Arguments) .

-          Mary Cunningham Agee surveyed post-abortive women about what they had really wanted.  91 0ut of 100 women said that they would have preferred to give birth, but felt that abortion was their only choice.  This survey was part of her inspiration for the founding of The Nurturing Network, an organization with thousands of volunteers providing the practical assistance that women told her they needed.

  

DON’T BUY THE LIE!

Essential Pro-Life Resources:

Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments (link)  

The Elliot Institute (link)  

National Right To Life Committee (link)  

Care-Net (link)

The Nurturing Network (link)


To See The Entire Abortion Myths Series Click HERE 

Dressing For The Wedding Feast Of The Lamb

     It’s hard to deny that the standard of dress for Mass attendance is significantly lower than it was a few decades ago.  I’m not talking about people who, due to work schedule or other external circumstances, need to attend Mass in other than their “Sunday Best”, but to the very large number of Catholics who could dress better but, for whatever reason, don’t.  And now that the warm weather is here, it’s not simply a matter of people being poorly dressed, but also many dressing immodestly, some to the point where they create a near occasion of sin for their fellow congregants.  I propose that we all undertake to bring back the concept of our “Sunday Best” for Mass, and encourage our fellow believers to do the same.

Dressed for the Wedding Feast: not a t-shirt or pair of shower clogs in sight

     Some will say, “God doesn’t care what I’m wearing, as long as I’m there.”  I respectfully disagree; consider the following passage from the Gospel of Matthew, (a similar one appears in Luke):

But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment; and he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment? And he was speechless.  Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.” (Matthew 22:11-13)

     Now, some will object that this is not intended as a literal instruction on proper Mass attendance, but is a figurative description of what our interior disposition should be.  That’s true, but we also believe that our internal disposition should be reflected externally: that’s the point of all the standing, kneeling, blessing ourselves with the Sign of the Cross, etc.; the word needs to become flesh.  We recognize this in the secular world: what does it tell my wife if I don’t acknowledge her birthday?  How many wives or husbands would be satisfied with “You know I love you, why should I bother with a card or flowers”?  Consider also that the wedding banquet in the passage above stands for the Kingdom of God, which is similarly represented in Revelation (Rev. 19:6-9) as the “Wedding Feast of the Lamb”; we also apply this term to the Mass, as before Communion when the Celebrant quotes Revelation : “Blessed are those who are called to the supper of the Lamb.”  Heaven, Wedding Feast, Mass, it all goes together. Figurative or not, I wouldn’t dismiss the fate of the poorly-clad wedding guest lightly.

     There are places in the Bible, of course, where we do receive explicit directions on liturgical dress, such as St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Here the Apostle says that Men should not cover their heads, but that a woman should veil their heads during worship, since her hair is “her glory” which was given to her “as a covering” (Corinthians 11:15); this passage was taken literally and followed in the Catholic Church from St. Paul’s time through the Second Vatican Council, and mostly still is at Masses in the Extraordinary Form.  One hardly needs to imagine what St. Paul would say about women coming to Mass with legs bared up to mid-thigh, or other immodesties that I blush to mention.  In any case, we can see from Sacred Scripture itself that how we dress for worship has always been important.

     A more contemporary authority, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, published a very helpful document [here] in 2006 called “’Happy Are Those Who Are Called to His Supper’: On Preparing to Receive Christ Worthily in the Eucharist” (note yet again the connection of the Mass to the Wedding Feast).  This publication considers many aspects of the Mass, including a section called “How Can We Prepare To Receive Holy Communion More Worthily?” which begins by saying: 

The Mass is not simply a private encounter between an individual and Jesus Christ. In a mystical manner, the whole Church is present in every celebration of the Mass, including the angels and the martyrs and saints of all ages.

In more direct language, the Mass is not just about me, or you, and we don’t get to make up our own rules.  This section contains a brief section on “Appropriate Attire”:

We should also come to the sacred liturgy appropriately dressed. As Christians we should dress in a modest manner, wearing clothes that reflect our reverence for God and that manifest our respect for the dignity of the liturgy and for one another. 

Notice the three standards by which we should judge our own dress:  1) “reverence for God” – how would we dress to meet the President, or even a prospective employer?  Shouldn’t we dress at least as well to meet our Creator and the Lord of the Universe?  2) “respect for the dignity of the liturgy” – don’t we dress up for a Broadway show, or the opera?  How then should we dress for the Miracle of the Eucharist?  3) “respect for one another” – wouldn’t we dress up for friend’s wedding, or other special occasion?  And is it respectful to our fellow congregants to distract and even tempt them by dressing provocatively?

     No doubt someone will point out that you can avoid the whole thing by attending Mass in the Extraordinary Form; that’s true up to a point, although I’ve seen the same problem creeping in there as well. The fact is that we live in a world that has lost a sense of boundaries, because we have lost sight of the idea that everything does not revolve around us and our desires.  And so even many of us Catholics have forgotten St. Paul’s admonition:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

     Instead we not only conform ourselves, but try to conform even the Church to this world by making it a place where we dress and talk like we do anywhere else, listen to music that sounds just like the music outside (or at least like it sounded, in some circles, in the 1970’s), and where we can’t criticize the secular orthodoxies that are current at the moment.  We have completely lost sight of that most important boundary, the dividing line between the sacred and the profane (used in its traditional sense, roughly synonymous with what we now mean by “secular”).  “Sacred” and its Germanic equivalent “Holy” literally mean “separate” or “set apart”: set apart for God, and therefore separate from the ordinary things in our lives.  Recognizing our need to express both internal and spiritual realities in external and physical ways, we were reminded that the interior of the Church was “Holy Ground” and set it apart by using a different language, singing a different kind of music, and wearing different clothes.  Even inside the Church the altar rail was a sign to us of our separateness from God, and only those specially commissioned could enter the Sanctuary (as only the High Priest could enter the Holy of Holies in the ancient Temple) to represent all of us to God.

          Today we like to intellectualize everything, because by simply dismissing anything we can’t ourselves figure out we maintain the illusion that we are the masters of reality.  But the intellect only touches the surface of our consciousness: to really understand reality on a deep level we need signs, symbols, and images, we need to experience it, and not simply understand it.  What are we saying about the reality of the Mass, the significance of Christ present in the Eucharist, if we feel free to show up in shorts and shower clogs, or skimpy clothes that draw attention away from the Divine Presence and toward our own bodies?

     So, what to do?  I suspect that many people don't really know any better, and are just doing what they see everyone else doing.  I propose that we try to lead by example, and emphasize that how we dress is not only a reflection of our devotion, but can actually be an expression of our devotion, a physical form of prayer.  Perhaps if we make a point of talking, in a positive way, about reverent dress, and come up with a catchy slogan ("Offer The Lord Your Sunday Best"? "Bring Out Your Best Every Sunday"?  Any suggestions out there?) we can start to see an improvement in our local parishes. 

     I firmly believe that when we take our worship more seriously we take our faith more seriously: lex orandi, lex credendi, "the law of praying is the law of believing" (how many times have I used that quote?).  Whether it's the improved translation, better liturgical music, or a manner of dress that shows more respect for God, the liturgy, and our fellow-worshippers, anything that brings more reverence to the Mass will have a beneficial effect in other areas as well.  I invite everyone to join me in a campaign to encourage attire worthy of the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.

  

Sunday Snippets - A Catholic Carnival (Pentecost 2014)

 Today is Pentecost, one of the great Feasts of the Church, in which we remember when Jesus sent the Holy Spirit upon his Disciples to guide them in their mission of Evangelization and in the governance of his Church.  In the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles we read that the Apostles, Mary and others were gathered in the Upper Room when there was a rush of mighty wind, tongues of flame, and those gathered began speaking “in other tongues”.  The international crowd gathered in Jerusalem, on hearing them, was 

. . .  amazed and wondered, saying, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?  Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphyia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God." (Acts 2:5-11)

Referring to this event, St. Gregory of Agrigentum said:

           

Therefore if somebody should say to one of us, “You have received the Holy Spirit, why do you not speak in tongues?” his reply should be, “I do indeed speak in the tongues of all men, because I belong to the body of Christ, that is, the Church, and she speaks all languages. What else did the presence of the Holy Spirit indicate at Pentecost, except that God’s Church was to speak in the language of every people?”

The Church speaks to everyone because Christ is for everyone, and his language is universal.  Today we have ways of reaching people all over the globe that St. Gregory Agrigentum could not have imagined back in the 6th century, but it's the same Gospel, the same proclamation that the Apostles made 2,000 years ago.
     One of those new ways of speaking to people throughout the world is, of course, the internet, which brings us to this week's "Sunday Snippets - A Catholic Carnival", in which some of us Catholic bloggers, doing our own small part, get together every Lord's Day and share our posts from the previous week.  The main gathering place is here, at This That and the Other Thing, home blog of our host RAnn.

     It's been a crazy week here at Principium et Finis, with the end of the academic year, getting treated for tick bites and various other distractions, but the show must go on, and we did manage to do some blogging:

Tuesday - Simply gorgeous: "Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor – Kyrie" [here]

and - The abortion industry and its apologists specialize in slogans and "arguments" that only sound good if you don't think about them, such as "It's between a woman and her doctor": "Abortion Myth # 14" [here]

Wednesday - A discussion of the Great Both/And, here applied to the question of whether we should direct our efforts toward the Coming of the Kingdom, or toward problems here and now: "The Forest And The Trees" [here]

and - One of the clearest, easiest to grasp explanations of ad orientem worship, in the form of a simple little picture, taken (in my case) from Fr. Z's blog: "Food For Thought" [here]

Thursday - Another both/and thing, this time in answer to those who argue we should stop talking about morality and simply help the poor; in fact, the two go together: "Unless The Lord Builds The House: Poverty And Morality (Throwback Thursday Edition)" [here]

Friday - His wasn't the primary observance of the day, but I thought he was worth a mention: "St. Philip: Deacon and Evangelist" [here]

St. Philip: Deacon and Evangelist

The Baptism of the Eunuch, by Rembrandt

     There are a number of Saints whose feast we celebrate today, among them St. Philip the Deacon, also known as the Evangelist (not to be confused with St. Philip the Apostle).

     Philip was one of the original seven deacons, first appointed because, in the first explosive growth of the Church, it was not considered right that the Apostles “should give up preaching the Word of God to serve tables” (Acts 6:2), and so the deacons were chosen to carry out some the more mundane duties.  Interestingly, however, they were not limited to “serving tables”, because almost immediately we see the Deacon Stephen preaching and suffering death as the first Christian martyr after the death of Christ Himself (Acts 6 & 7).  Next we see Philip preaching in Samaria, and “the multitudes with one accord gave heed to what was said by Philip, when they heard him and saw the signs which he did” (Acts 8:6).  On the other hand, there were still limits to his authority:

Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John,  who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit; 16 for it had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. . . (Acts 8:14-16)

While he could baptize, as a deacon Philip did not have the authority to confirm.

     After that, an angel of the Lord sends Philip to the road that runs from Jerusalem to the coast and to Egypt and beyond.  There Philip sees

. . . an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a minister of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of all her treasure, had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit said to Philip, "Go up and join this chariot." So Philip ran to him, and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" And he said, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now the passage of the scripture which he was reading was this: "As a sheep led to the slaughter or a lamb before its shearer is dumb, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken up from the earth." And the eunuch said to Philip, "About whom, pray, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?" Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this scripture he told him the good news of Jesus.  And as they went along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, "See, here is water! What is to prevent my being baptized?"  And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught up Philip; and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. (Acts 8:27-39)

This is the last we see of Philip in Scripture, aside from the observation that he “preached the Gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea” (Acts 8:40), where years later St. Paul visited him and his daughters, who had the gift of prophecy (Acts 21:8-9).  There is a pious tradition that he later served as a bishop in Asia Minor.

     I have always been fascinated by St. Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch.  There’s a lot going on in that one brief passage.  First, we see that God will answer those who sincerely want to know him, and that he usually uses other people as his instrument, as he does with Philip here, and we also see the necessity of baptism.  It’s worth noting that in the very next chapter, even after his direct encounter with the risen Lord, St. Paul similarly needs direct contact with Ananias before the scales fall off his eyes, and then is immediately baptized (Acts 9:1-18).  We also see the universality of God’s love: the eunuch is not only a foreigner (albeit with some connection to Judaism), but has been mutilated in a way that sets him apart from most other men; he receives the Holy Spirit nonetheless and goes off rejoicing to become the spiritual father (in spite of his castration) of the Church in Ethiopia.  Philip’s immediate disappearance is also instructive: once his work is done, the evangelist needs to get out of the way so that he doesn’t come between the convert and Jesus Christ.  Finally, the entire story of Philip shows us that while we do indeed all have difference roles and responsibilities in the Church, we are all called to spread the Good News.

    In these days when the world, even the nominally Christian part of it, is so much in need of Evangelization, we would do well to call upon the intercession of St. Philip the Deacon.

     

Unless the Lord Builds the House: Poverty and Morality (Throwback Thursday Edition)

This piece was originally published on February 17th 2014 under the title "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain" (I've done some minor updating for this new posting).  It is a sort of companion piece to my more recent post, "In Mother Jones, of All Places" [here].  Where "Mother Jones" deals with a left-wing perspective on poverty, this post discusses the views of an economist looking at poverty from the right.  Despite differences in rhetoric and proposed solutions, they come to some similar conclusions.

Economist Walter Williams 

     Walter Williams published a piece earlier this year called ”Dependency, Not Poverty” [link] that immediately brought to mind the brouhaha over Pope Francis’ supposed condemnation of capitalism in Evangelii Gaudium. You might recall that in said brouhaha the “smoking gun” brandished by gleeful leftists is the following quote:

"In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably  succeed in bringing about greater justice and  inclusiveness in the world". (Evangelii Gaudium 54)

     As I pointed out in an earlier post [link], this statement fits in perfectly with over a century of Magisterial teaching by popes (Leo XIII, Pius XI, John Paul II) who were in no way friendly to socialism.  One could argue that it is simply common sense.  William’s article provides a perfect, real-world example of the truth in the Pope's statement: Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The United States of America.

     Williams offers some intriguing facts taken from a report by Dr. Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield, “Understanding poverty in the United States” [link]:

*80% of poor households have air conditioning

*Nearly three quarters have a car or truck (31% have two or more)

*Two-thirds have cable or satellite TV

*Half have one or more computers 

*42% own their own home

*“Poor Americans have more living space than the typical non-poor in Sweden, France
    or the UK.”

     Williams also points out that, while the poverty rate among American blacks in general is 35%, “the poverty rate among black married families has been in single digits for more than two decades, currently at 8%.”  Williams concludes that, rather than simple material deprivation caused by factors beyond the reach of the sufferers, “What we have in our nation are dependency and poverty of the spirit, with people making unwise choices and leading pathological lives aided and abetted by the welfare state.” 

     In short, while “economic growth, encouraged by a free market” has indeed created enough wealth and more for every person in the United States, it certainly has not succeeded “in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness.”  The question is what, as Christians, ought we to do?

     This is a very complicated question, to which I, at least, could not do justice in one blog post, even if I had all the answers.  I expect to return to it in the future.  For today, I’d like to sketch out a brief outline.  First, those on the economic left (including many of those who style themselves “Social Justice Catholics”) advocate more government redistribution, accomplished by taking wealth from those who produce it and giving it to others who consume it.  Walter Williams (and many others) argue that it is just such redistributionist policies, which separate wealth from work and incentivize dependency and indolence,  that are largely responsible for the “spiritual poverty” that is, is many ways, more damaging and demoralizing than ordinary material poverty (and which ultimately creates material poverty as well).

     Common sense and human experience bear him out.  Benjamin Franklin famously said:

I am for doing good to the poor, but . . . I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, it is leading or driving them out of it.  I observed . . . that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer.  And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

Benjamin Franklin

Most of us Christians would not want put the matter quite so harshly; after all, Christian Charity demands that we do much more than simply letting the poor enjoy the benefits of the Law of Consequences.  Still, Mr. Franklin has a valid point: if doing nothing pays as well as or better than working hard, what incentive is there to choose the more difficult road?  And St. Paul himself said: “If anyone will not work, let him not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work.” (2 Thess 10b-11) 

     As Catholics we also recognize how important work is to our dignity as human beings.  Saint John Paul the Great says:

Work is a good thing for a man – a good thing for his humanity – because through work man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his own needs, but also achieves fulfilment as a human being and indeed, in a sense, becomes “more a human being.”  (Laborem Exercens 9)    

We could truly say that it is uncharitable to induce otherwise capable people not to work, because we are robbing them of a part of their human dignity.  Pius XI said that “it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do.” (Quadrigesimo Anno 79 – italics mine)  This same Principle of Subsidiarity holds as true for individuals as it does for groups and organizations.

     So what are we to conclude?  Again, just a couple preliminary conclusions.  First, while it’s true that the market economy’s ability to generate wealth is not sufficient to create a just society, and does not of itself eliminate poverty, it is certainly a necessary condition; welfare state policies, on the other hand, create no wealth at all and, at least in some cases, discourage people from making choices that could lift them out of poverty.  This doesn’t mean that we ought not to help the needy, but it does mean that such assistance, whether private or public, ought not to make dependency more attractive than work.

     Also, no system, no program and no amount of wealth can save us from the effects of original sin; whether we’re looking to welfare state programs or the market economy for salvation we’re going down the wrong road.  I can’t help but think (not for the first time) of another quote from Saint John Paul II said: “It is not therefore a matter of inventing a ‘new program’. The program already exists: it is the plan found in the Gospel and in the living Tradition, it is the same as ever.”  (Novo Millenio Ineunto 29)

   Clearly this is true on the eternal level: the permanent disposition of our souls far overshadows our material circumstances in this world. But it is also true on a more mundane level. To the degree that poverty in the United States and other Western nations is the fruit of what Walter Williams calls “unwise choices and  . . . pathological lives aided and abetted by the welfare state,” (what we used to call “immorality” and “living in sin”), it can be corrected by wise choices and healthy lives.  Men and women who put Christ at the center of their lives, and therefore live according to Christian moral norms (such as traditional monogamous marriage) are likely to live in a way that leads to a better economic outcome.

     My final thought is this: Christian morality is not simply one “lifestyle choice” among many; it is the truth, based on the reality of human nature as God created it.  The so-called “culture wars” are not a diversion from more important economic and political matters, but are in fact the key to solving problems in the political and economic realms.  After all, “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him.” (Rom 8:28)

Food For Thought

Many thanks to Fr. Z , from whom I swiped the dandy little graphic below, which he had swiped from St. Peter’s List [here], who had previously swiped it from Fr. Kirby at Vultus Christi [here]; I couldn't tell you where Fr. Kirby swiped it.  Anyway, gets you thinking, doesn't it?  You can see Fr. Z's post here.  

The Forest And The Trees

     Like many of my fellow Catholics, I tend to focus on particular issues (in my case life and family issues) as an expression of my faith and as a means of evangelizing.  There is always the danger of losing sight of the “big picture” when we commit ourselves to specific causes which are necessarily finite and subordinate to Eternal Truths.  For instance, one criticism of the “Abortion Myths” series that I have been posting is that we are in danger (or I am in danger) of reducing Catholicism to nothing more than an anti-abortion crusade.  One commenter suggested that we should instead simply preach the Gospel, and once we have converted the world the abortion problem will solve itself.

Raphael's St. Paul Preaching in Athens

     There is a degree of truth in such criticism: there is always a possibility that we will be governed more by our own limited enthusiasms than by the will of God.  On the other hand, it is God’s will that we act against wrongs being committed in our own time and place.  This is stated over and over again in Holy Scripture, as in this Old Testament passage:

"So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, O wicked man, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand.  But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way; he shall die in his iniquity, but you will have saved your life.  (Ezekial 33:7-9)

And here we see the same principle in the New Testament:

My brethren, if any one among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. (James 5:19-20)

     Saint Peter gives us some guidance on how we can address particular situations without neglecting the Full Gospel:

But even if you do suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed.  Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts reverence Christ as Lord.  Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence; and keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are abused, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. (1 Peter 3:14-16)

By exemplifying in our manner and mode of address respect for the dignity of our adversary, we are preaching by example the Gospel of Christ’s love.

     We very often see wonderful examples of this approach in some of the Church’s teaching documents, and in a special way those addressed to correcting a particular wrong.  These magisterial correctives take advantage of the interest generated by a particular “hot topic” as a teachable moment both to gently but firmly invite back those who have strayed, and also to give a positive lesson on how the Church’s teaching in a particular area is grounded in the greater principle of God’s all-embracing love.

     One such document is Pope Paul VI’s 1968 Encyclical Humanae Vitae [here], to which I will be returning in the near future.  Another less well-known one is the 1984 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith document called Instruction on Certain Aspects of the “Theology of Liberation” [here], signed by the CDF’s then prefect Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.   The main purpose of the document is to correct errors in the Liberation Theology movement similar to those described above, specifically that it tends to give worldly “liberation” from material want and suffering precedence over the Liberation from Sin that is the true core of Christian belief, and also that it associates itself too closely with the anti-Christian political philosophy of Marxism.  At the same time, the document acknowledges the areas where Liberation Theology is right, particularly its focus on very real problems of poverty, suffering and injustice in many parts of the world.  Finally, the document takes the opportunity to present a wonderfully concise mini-lesson in the Catholic understanding of poverty and our responsibility as Christians to work actively on behalf of the poor and oppressed.

     This document is but one of many examples of the fact that the Big Picture and finite issues are inextricably intertwined.  If our attempts to address and correct particular wrongs are not first grounded in Christ’s Love, then we are no better than “a noisy gong or clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1), or worse than that if our lack of charity actually drives people away from the Gospel.  On the other hand, if we simply preach the Love of God without applying it to concrete situations, it becomes an insubstantial abstraction, and our Faith is as good as dead (see James, chapter 2).  Our role as Catholics is to be both/and, body and soul, and to witness to the Word made Flesh.  In no other way can we, as Saint Paul says (1 Timothy 6:12), “Fight the Good Fight”.

    

Abortion Myth # 14

MYTH: “Abortion should be a decision between a woman and her doctor.”

TRUTH:

-          Involving a “doctor” doesn’t change the nature or reality of abortion; it is still the intentional taking of innocent human life, which is never morally permissible, not even with a doctor’s assent.

Hippocrates: doctors must not abort

-          Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath, which for over 2,000 years had the following clause:

I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.  Similarly, I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy.  In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.

Unfortunately, this clause has been removed at medical schools in the United States and Western Europe.

-          Very often the only doctor involved is the abortionist himself or herself, who frequently does not even speak to the mother before, during or after the “procedure”.

-          We quite rightly expect fathers to take responsibility for their children when they are allowed to live; should we deny them the right to protect their unborn children from death by abortion?

-          Fathers of aborted babies often undergo great suffering; see “Men Hurt Too” [here] on the Priests For Life website and FatherhoodForever [here].  Shouldn’t they have a say in the decision?

-          The aborted child, who is most directly affected by abortion, has no say at all.

The idea for the arguments above comes from Randy Alcorn’s Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments.

DON’T BUY THE LIE!

Essential Pro-Life Resources:

Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments (link)  

The Elliot Institute (link)  

National Right To Life Committee (link)  

Care-Net (link)

The Nurturing Network (link) 

Priests for Life (link)

Links to entire Abortion Myths Series:

Abortion Myth # 1 [link] 

Abortion Myth # 2 [link] 

Abortion Myth # 3 [link]

Abortion Myth # 4 [link] 

Abortion Myth # 5 [link] 

Abortion Myth # 6 [link] 

Abortion Myth # 7 [link] 

Abortion Myth # 8 [link] 

Abortion Myth # 9 [link] 

Abortion Myth # 10 [link] 

Abortion Myth # 11 [link] 

Abortion Myth # 12[link] 

Abortion Myth # 13 [link] 

Abortion Myth # 14 [link] 

Abortion Myth # 15 [link] 

Abortion Myth # 16 [link]

Mozart's Great Mass in C Minor- Kyrie

Mozart's personal imperfections are well known (sometimes greatly exaggerated: see Peter Shaffer's Amadeus).  At the same time, only a man who truly loved his Lord could compose this magnificent Kyrie.  From his Great Mass in C Minor.