03 June 2009

Questions and more questions

The Question Box has been full to overflowing lately. I've been pecking away on this post for weeks, here's a stab at trimming the pile a bit:

1). You're a priest! Should you be criticizing President Obama?

As I have noted many, many times before: I did not renounce my American citizenship when I took solemn profession as a Dominican nor when I was ordained a priest. I have exactly the same free speech and exercise of religion rights as any other U.S. citizen. Since I do not believe that Catholics are morons, I am not even a little worried that my political opinions will unduly influence readers. My readers are perfectly capable of making up their minds and will do so.

2). Where do you get ideas for your homilies?

There are a few hard and fast rules that I follow when composing homilies. First among these is a near maniacal adherence to the lectionary readings given for Mass that day; that is, the assigned readings themselves always, always form the foundation of my homilies. I do this not only b/c this is what the Church asks priests to do but also b/c I am convinced that (as a Dominican) my principal task as a preacher is to give the gospel a contemporary life within the long-lived wisdom of the Church. Also, I get ideas from the literature I read, from the daily news, from classes I teach and attend, from readers. Basically, as Catholics we are called to be in the world living our faith openly and eagerly. Anything that happens in the world is fair game for a homily. You may have noticed that I ask a lot of questions in my homilies. This is more than a rhetorical technique. These are questions I am asking myself. . .the homily is one way I am thinking through the answers.

3). My pastor is a good man. He's thoughtful and compassionate. He's a good businessman with the parish money. But he's a horrible preacher. Is there anything we in the parish can do to help him?

Yes. If he knows that he's a bad preacher there's help for him. If he thinks he's a wonderful preacher, then you are going to have problems. It's important for him to figure out exactly how he's a bad preacher, meaning what does he fail to do? If the content is good, is it the delivery? If the delivery is good, is the content superficial or heretical? Or is he just bad all around? I think preachers tend to make three basic content mistakes: 1). the homily is my chance to show these people how wonderful I am by telling jokes, stories, Hallmark scenarios, etc.; 2) the homily is my chance to pound on my pet issues to a captive audience; 3) the homily is my chance to settle scores and nurse grudges against my enemies. And there are three basic mistakes made with delivery: 1) Fr. Oprah chit-chats on nothing in particular; 2) Fr. Hollywood takes the place by storm like Jerry Springer in vestments; 3) Fr. Professor reads his homily like a paper given at the Annual Meeting of Professors of Ancient Greek Prepositional Phrases. Any combination of a content mistake and a delivery mistake is deadly. I would argue that there are a few givens to good preaching:

1). Stick to the assigned readings as your basic content. Use the images and language of the readings in your homily.
2). Keep stories, jokes, antecdotes to a minimum and make them directly, painfully obviously relevant. Don't tell a joke just to get a laugh.
3). Ask questions. Give answers. I have a pet peeve about purely rhetorical questions. The answers you give don't have to be blindingly brilliant, but asking a purely hetorical question always sounds slightly dishonest to me. . .if you have the guts to ask the question, answer it. . .even if only tentatively.
4). Preach and teach what the Church preaches and teaches. Why? Well, beyond the simple fact that this is what you promised to do at your ordination, you might find that consistently preaching and teaching the truth of the faith improves your preaching overall! Nowadays, the really radical preachers are the ones who are dissenting from the Received Wisdom of the Dinosaur Left and preach a counter-cultural gospel.
5). Delivery style is highly specific to the preacher, obviously. You must do what you are most comfortable doing. Delivery should be transparent, that is, how you deliver the homily should not be the point. Running around the church, yelling into a microphone, and acting like an idiot will not improve bad content. Good content, however, can be ruined by bad delivery.
6). If, like me, you write your homilies out, write for the ear not the brain. Academic papers are meant to be read silently. You can go back and refer to sentences or paragraphs. Papers are intensely logical, usually linear from Point A to Z in clearly defined steps. Homilies are heard. You need certain rhetorical devices to help the hearer. Most useful here is the repetition and the alliteration. Make a single point and repeat it. When making important points make them in a way that's memorable: alliteration or a lively metaphor.
7). Finally, ask for honest feedback and be prepared to change. Many Catholics see homilies as necessary evils to be endured. Few Catholics come to a parish Mass just to hear the preacher. This is very common among Protestants.

To those who must endure Catholic homilies: your pastor will not improve his preaching as long as he thinks you're happy with what he's doing. Silence = approval.

4). You haven't said anything about Judge Sotomayor. What do you think? Good choice?

Yes and no. Strictly speaking, she is not the most qualified candidate out there. To the degree that B.O. chose her b/c for gender, ethnic, ideological reasons, he's being predictably irresponsible. I don't think she will be the radical leftist that some are predicting. From a purely political standpoint, I would rather have a mediocre liberal on the Court than a brilliant one. B.O. is not going to appoint a constructionist, so I would rather he appointed a dull liberal than a charismatic leftist like Brennan. Her Catholicism seems to be irrelevant. If she's confirmed, she and the other five Catholics might have plenty of opportunities to defend the faith against B.O.'s determined efforts to undermine religious freedom.

5). A lady in my parish told us recently that we are required by the Church to believe in the revelations of Fatima. Is this true?

No, absolutely not. You are required to believe the revelations of scripture as understood and taught by the magisterium of the Church. Private revelations like Fatima, Medujorge, Lourdes, etc. are strictly optional. Church approval of private revelations means nothing more than that the contents of the revelation do not contradict Church teaching.

6). How much should a family give to their parish? Do Catholics tithe?

Always a difficult question! Protestant churches have long advocated tithing, i.e. "giving ten percent." This is definitely biblical and was even traditional in the Catholic Church for centuries. The problem comes when tithing runs up against your duty to your family. Can I really tithe to my parish if it means not paying my utility bill? I would argue that tithing should be done gradually, that is, start with a fixed amount and slowly increase over time until the ten percent is reached. This gradual approach allows you to adjust other expenses to compensate for the ten percent outlay. I found this lots of good info on Catholic tithing here. One related practice that I have argued against is withholding donations to the parish or diocese as a form of protest. This is profoundly anti-Catholic and smacks of the heresy of "Americanism." Attempting to influence parochial or diocesan politics through donation manipulation is simply vile. The parish should be your Christian family. Do you deny your family support? I understand that pastors and bishops often do and say things that upset the faithful, but voting with your pocketbook is not the Catholic way of settling disputes. I know I'm going to get blasted for this. . .oh well.

7). How public should my acts of charity be? How obvious should I make them?

Two principles apply here: 1) our witness should be readily identifable as Christian and 2) our witness should always, always point to God and His holy work. So, ask yourself before undertaking any public work of charity: am I doing this work for the greater glory of God and will the work point others to God? If the point of the work is show the world how holy you are or what a great person you are, don't do it. If the point of the work is to outdo the Baptists and showup the local Hindus, don't do it. If you can do the work in genuine love with your heart open to channeling God's mercy and care into the world, then go for it! Be very careful of what I call "passive-aggressive charity." This is charity work done to show others what needs to be done and how they aren't doing it. I find this sort of thing all the time on the religious left. There's a deep self-righteousness about how the Church is not "doing enough" for X or Y or Z, so I'm going to go put in a token afternoon so I can crow about the Church's deficiency at the next parish council meeting. Yea, whatever.

8). Aren't priests supposed to be kind and caring and not smart-alecks like you?

Hey! Smart-aleck priests can be kind and caring. We just limit ourselves to being kind and caring to once a month so we don't burn out. I get some variation on this question about once a week. It touches on people's expectations about how priests ought to present themselves as priests. I find it highly amusing that the people asking this sort of question seem to think that all priests should be little more than a religiousy version of a social worker or a therapist. Priests are supposed to be open, non-judgmental, good listeners, and above all, welcoming. Now, all of these are perfectly good characteristics for a priest to possess. However, we all know that words don't mean much these days, so each of these characteristics really hides an agenda that most certainly does not describe a good priest. For example, "non-judgmental" really means "don't tell me that I have sinned." "Welcoming" here really means, um, "don't tell me that I have sinned." And, of course, "good listener' really means. . .ermmm. . ."don't tell me that I have sinned." Basically, when I hear that someone thinks I am not being "pastoral enough," I take that to mean that I am telling the truth and someone doesn't want to hear the truth. Since I believe that the truth is always pastoral, I always tell the truth! Admittedly, I sometimes (only very rarely) throw in a little humor, or perhaps a tiny little smart-alecky comment. I must be forgiven! My whole family is a veritable three-ring circus of smart-alecks. . .I come by it honestly.

9). Catholics drink and smoke and cuss. Is that Christian?

I get this question a lot when I go home and hang around my Baptist family and friends. A lot of evangelical Protestants operate on a quasi-puritanical spirituality that sees the body as corrupting. Prohibitions against smoking, drinking, etc. are usually loosely grounded somewhere in scripture, but for the most part these prohibitions arose in the temperance movements of the 18th-19th centuries. Now, there are certainly puritanical elements in Catholic spirituality, but these tend to be exaggerated and often lead to heresy. For Catholics, the rule of thumb is: all things in moderation unless clearly morally prohibited or illegal. A nightly tumbler of bourbon is fine. It becomes a problem when you can't function without it, or when you are ignoring your responsibilities. Spending your last $10 on beer instead of food might be considered immoral. Failing to provide basic necessities for your children in order to play the ponies. . .big problem.

10). My son/daughter wants to go to the University of Dallas. Do you recommend it?

Absolutely! If they have the high schools grades and the SAT scores, they can't do much better than U.D. for a rigorous Catholic lib arts based education. Some have asked me to distinguish Christendom College and U.D., or Steubenville and U.D. I really can't. I know U.D. but not the others. From what I have gathered from U.D. students, they see the primary difference as one of how Catholic culture is taught and lived. While other small Catholic lib arts colleges and universities have strong Catholic identities, some of them tend to expect students to live rather monastic lives, sometimes downright puritanical lives. Strict dress codes, visitation rules, mandatory Mass attendance, etc. There's nothing wrong with any of this, of course. Some students need this level of structure and it should be available to them. U.D. takes a different tack. The Catholic culture at U.D. tends to be very Aristotelian in a healthy, southern, conservative sort of way. IOW, most of what the other schools impose as moral absolutes, U.D. students tend to discern and follow as a matter of right reason and good conscience. Yes, there are rules. And yes, the students bark and snipe at them like students everywhere do. But this isn't the distinguishing feature of U.D. What makes U.D. standout is the hardcore, kick-butt, take no prisoners academic atmosphere. If your son/daughter is not prepared to work like a cheap mule on a canyon tour, they need to apply somewhere else. The core curriculum is based on the literature, philosophy, theology of classical western culture (Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, Augustine, Aquinas, etc.). They will write, write, write. And they will study like they have never studied before. In the first semester, they will see their heads grow by an average of 3%. U.D. students tend to be brilliant, funny, well-mannered, intellectually curious, a tad bit geeky, and highly talented in the creative arts. Most are Catholic, some not. There are non-Catholic Christians on the faculty and non-Christians. And there's a healthy percentage of Virtuous Pagans around too. Everyone--regardless of religious belief--believes in the value of the Core. If your child is looking for a college version of a CCD class, they will need to look elsewhere. U.D. faculty teach the western tradition--warts and all--and eagerly locate the Catholic faith within that tradition--warts and all. This does not mean that faculty dissent from Church teaching or rabble-rouse against the Holy Father. Hardly! It means that students do not get the sanitized P.R. version of Church history or philosophy or theology. They get the Truth as it is best known in the western tradition.

I love teaching at U.D.! (NB. I think they should hire me permanently. I mean, they would get a literature Ph.D. and philosophy Ph.D., a Dominican priest, a decent preacher, and an all-around swell guy! And the being smart-aleck only helps at U.D.)


02 June 2009

Burdened to breaking by truth? (UPDATED)

Pentecost Sunday: Acts 2.1-11; 1 Cor 12.3-13; John 15.26-27, 16.12-15
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Convento SS Domenico e Sisto, Roma

How much truth can we bear? How much before we break? Before the scale tips from ecstasy to madness, from joy to hysteria? If you read sci-fi/fantasy novels, you know that one of the constants of these fictional worlds is the notion that there is a truth, a body of knowledge, an arcane stock of wisdom that only a few can access, that only the truly gifted can call upon when necessary. There is always a price to be paid for knowing more than one ought to and for knowing anything at all about what one should not know. The price is sometimes physical, sometimes mental; sometimes the price is paid with one’s humanity. With one’s life. And the sacrifice is not always triumphant. Sometimes knowing more only leads to more confusion, additional puzzles, greater obstacles. How much truth is too much? When does “bearing up under” the truth become a burden worthy of a cross?

To his friends and students, Jesus promises to send an Advocate, the Holy Spirit who will comfort them in their trials and give them a sure defense against malicious persecution. Because his friends and students have been with him from the beginning, he says that they will testify to the truth of his gospel and that the Advocate will testify along with them. Then Jesus says something rather odd; he says, “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.” Is Jesus playing Arcane Master here? Occult Guru? Gnostic Wise Man? What truth does he have to tell that the disciples cannot bear? True, the disciples have shown themselves to be less than stellar pupils at times. And true, they have fussed and fumed about petty marks of dignity among themselves. And we know that when the Judas’ plan comes to fruition in the Garden, these best-buds will run squealing into the night. But what truth, what “much more to tell” will break the disciples?

Just after this odd admission that the disciples aren’t ready for the fullness of truth, Jesus adds, “But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth.” Ah, so maybe the issue here is not that the disciples are incapable of bearing under the truth, it’s just that now is not the time to pile on the truth? The disciples are at a fragile stage, or maybe they aren’t spiritually ready to hear all that Jesus has to reveal at the moment. Possibly. But this still presumes that what remains unrevealed is heavier than what a disciple of the Lord can bear. And we are still left with what this great burden is. Details of Jesus’ trial and execution? A prophecy about future persecutions of the apostles? Some apocalyptic end-time scenario? No. When the Spirit comes, he will guide you to all truth. The Spirit has come. What was revealed?

(Imagine a chilly spring night in Jerusalem, the dark is almost total, only a few stars blink at the earth. From the horizon on the east blazes a meteor, a fist of fiery spirit, a knot of tightly bound love, streaking with undeterred purpose toward the upper room. At the moment of deepest despair, greatest regret, the most intense impatience for the disciples, the meteor smashes into the room and explodes in a thunderous clap, piercing the bodies and souls of the men and women in the room, whipping their spirits clean, sending them all into an ecstasy that overwhelms thought, speech, spirit, motion, and leaves them, each one, ablaze like a star stuttering to its full brilliance…).

The Catechism teaches, “On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit of the Promise was poured out on the disciples […] The Spirit who teaches the Church and recalls for her everything that Jesus said was also to form her in the life of prayer” (n. 2623). Perhaps more than any other day of the Church calendar, Pentecost marks our longest distance from fear. Easter comes close. But Pentecost brings us into direct contact with the questions: what do I fear as a follower of Christ? What prison have I locked myself in? What darkness have I protected from the cleansing fire of the Holy Spirit? Pentecost raises these questions for us precisely because it is the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost that gives birth and rebirth to the Church, the Body of Christ on earth. At the most intense moment of persecution, on the cusp of the Church’s birth, the disciples are ruled by terror, steeped in dread. The Holy Spirit explodes in their midst…and everything is changed forever.

They have locked themselves away in fear and by fear they are ruled. The walls of their chosen prison give them comfort. They know where they are, who they are; they know who is outside, and who it is that hunts them and why. To the temple priesthood, they are heretics. To the Roman governor, they are rebels. They have offended God in His sanctuary and Caesar in his court; they are hiding from the clergy of an ancient religious tradition and from the foot soldiers of the world’s only military superpower. They are menaced soul and body.

From within their self-imposed prison—the easy safety of walls and familiar company—the beloved of the crucified Lord tremble in terror, waiting on the wrath of God’s priests and the punishments of Caesar’s troops. Some of them may have remembered a promise Jesus made before his death. And though it has been some several weeks since he died in the garbage dump outside Jerusalem, that promise comes back in a whispered memory, just a hint of hope sprinkled in among the fear and desperation of those who keep themselves prisoner. If they gird themselves, put their eyes to heaven, and remember! They will remember: “When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father, he will testify to me.” When the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, comes…he will testify to the truth as the Truth. There is nothing to fear in the truth though for now the whole truth may burden you. Turn the key of your cell door and walk away to freedom. Your wait is over. Walk away from fear and toward the Truth—away from loss, toward everlasting gain! What fear guards your cell door? What terror keeps that door locked?

Into the locked room where the disciples hid, the Holy Spirit, like a furious bonfire—ripping through fear and doubt, burning away indecision, cowardice, spiritual torpor, putting to the sacred torch of truth any and all motivation for hesitancy, complacency, and double-mindedness—the Holy Spirit roared in among them, setting to each a flame that unstuck their tongues, that unlocked their imprisoned hearts, and set them free! Is this the heritage of the Spirit that we lay claim to? Are we heirs to this strength, this purpose? They spill into the street, preaching God’s truth in every tongue. Where is their fear? Where is their hesitancy? Their reluctance? They are abandoned in truth and wholly given over to Him! And because of their fervor, their dedication and exuberance, and because they spoke the Word so plainly and without embarrassment, they were killed. Not all of them. But some of them. Those gone so far in the Spirit that nothing of this world was left in them to threaten.

Is this the burden that Jesus did not want to load onto the disciples too early? Is this the truth that he feared might break them? The coming of the Spirit sparked the glory of the Church in the upper room, giving birth to the Body of Christ as the engine of spirited grace in the world. Set ablaze in holy love, the disciples flee into the streets, spreading God’s holy fire everywhere they run, seeding tinder-dried hearts with embers ready to burst into flame. They are contagious. From heart to heart, from mind to mind, they spread out and plant the Word, scattering seed, rowing up fields for the Church! But does “bearing up under” this truth of the gospel, the work of evangelization, does it become a burden for us, a burden worthy of a cross? Yes, it does.

Inevitably, the truth of the gospel will clash with the lies of the world. At first, the world will draw back in astonished amusement, mildly shocked that someone, anyone would challenge its power. Then, when mockery fails to diminish the fervor with which the Church preaches the truth, the world will react with increasing anger and violence. And, like the early persecutions of the Church by the Empire, the Church will be cast as an enemy of the state, a threat to moral freedom, and a tumor on the body of good order. As an intolerant cult that refuses to honor the diversity and difference that makes modern culture so wonderful, we will be found guilty of refusing worship to the postmodern gods of elitist ideology and labeled “domestic terrorists.”

We are charged by the Holy Spirit to finish telling the truth of the gospel. If that truth burdens us to breaking, then we break burdened by the gospel truth: “If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit.” And, if necessary, we die preaching the Spirit.

28 May 2009

Friday's Coffee Bowl Browsing!

Why do we continue to pathologize the Human Condition?

I'm sad that he is leaving, but at least he's not hanging around whining about celibacy

Roman Catholic "priestess"/reporter dragged kicking and screaming from Barry's sacred view

Supreme Court nominee's life story is not all that compelling. . .he's conservative, after all

Catholic colleges and universities that honored pro-aborts

Ah, the smell of regret in the morning! Kool-aid drinker wakes up. . .too late.

I'm gonna get in trouble for this one: maybe, just maybe this isn't such a bad idea? (ducks)

Cleaning the ecclesial house in Africa: Vatican removes morally lax archbishop

I need one of these for those folks who don't leave their cell phones in the car at Mass!

Fascinating list of people who were killed by their inventions

Rx drugs in our drinking water. . .hey, that stuff doesn't show up in good bourbons

At this point in the flight I would need to be restrained

Elvis leaps babies in a single bound! (Don't try this at home)

Lots more quotes about religion. . .quotes about feminism (most of which are true)

What is space? Are we free? Does God exist? Are numbers real? Ask a philosopher!

Movies reviews from a Catholic perspective

In case of veliocraptor attack. . .vital info here

Your presence reminds one of a blind jackal, eternally dependent upon misguided archbishops to provide instruction in bowling.

Recession/Obama timeline. . .scary.

Theologians doing what Judges do?

In a post below I suggest that judges often do what theologians do when they arrive at legal judgments by applying principle to specific issues within a given set of precedents.

Ed Whelan at NRO offers this run down of Judge Sonia Sotomayor's judical philosophy, quoting her with his own emendations:

Sotomayor argues, “It is our responsibility”—the responsibility of lawyers and judges—“to explain to the public how an often unpredictable system of justice is one that serves a productive, civilized, but always evolving, society.” She identifies—and treats as equally legitimate—four “reasons for the law’s unpredictability”: (a) “laws are written generally and then applied to different factual situations”; (b) “many laws as written give rise to more than one interpretation”; (c) “a given judge (or judges) may develop a novel approach to a specific set of facts or legal framework that pushes the law in a new direction”; and (d) the purpose of a trial is not simply to search for the truth but to do so in a way that protects constitutional rights.

Let's make some changes and see how this might apply to theology:

The theologian argues, “It is our responsibility”—the responsibility of theologians—“to explain to the faithful how an often unpredictable system of thinking about revelation is one that serves a productive, civilized, but always evolving, Church.” The theologian identifies—and treats as equally legitimate—four “reasons for theology's unpredictability”: (a) “revelation is written generally and then applied by theologians to different factual situations”; (b) “many revelations as written give rise to more than one interpretation”; (c) “a given theologian may develop a novel approach to a specific set of facts or interpretative framework that pushes revelation in a new direction”; and (d) the purpose of theological thinking is not simply to search for the truth but to do so in a way that protects fundamental revelation.

This is not entirely wrong, I think. Judges use the Constitution as their "revelation." Theologians use scripture, creation, and the unique revelation of Christ as theirs. Judges produce "ways of thinking about the Constitution" that become binding on lower courts. Theologians have the magisterium. Judges have to apply not only the law but the higher court's reasoning to specific cases. Theologians do the same thing when they apply magisterial interpretation to both settled and novel facts in order to reach the right conclusions.

My only worry here--for both the law and for theology--is the notion of the "novel approach." We've seen the disastrous results of this play out in both the courts and the Church. However, Thomas' use of Aristotle was quite novel and very controversial when he started teaching at the University of Paris. His approach directly challenged and upset the long-settled neo-Platonism of the academy. In fact, his approach was roundly condemned by Church authorities and his academic colleagues. Of course, Thomas' approach never led him to deny any of the truths of revelation nor did he challenge the authority of the Church to teach the faith conclusively.

Perhaps the lesson here is that novel approaches to researching, developing, and teaching the truth of the Constitution/revelation are fine so long as they do not pretend to be the Constitution/revelation itself. There's a big difference between what is revealed and how it is understood. For theologians, revelation is closed. Our understanding of what has been revealed continues to develop because we are limited creatures grasping at divine truth. I'm not sure the same applies to the judges and the Constitution.

27 May 2009

The Man Library

Pertinent to my post below on bringing virtue back in order to save our young men from the feministization of postmodern culture. . .I give you The Man Library!

This is a list of literary works that extol "manliness" in all its glory. . .

I would quibble with a few of the selections, but it's an interesting list nonetheless.

25 May 2009

St Philip Neri

For your reading pleasure. . .

A cornucopia of St Philip Neri info:

St Philip Romolo Neri

EWTN: Philip Neri

Patron Saint Index with lots of links

Saint of the Day: Philip Neri, saint and joker

The Toronto Oratory

The London Oratory, Brompton

At Catholic Fire: Philip Neri, humorous saint

. . .and the Chiesa Nuova, Philip Neri's church in Rome. Only in Rome can you call a 17th century church a "new church"! Philip is buried in a side chapel there. I've visited frequently, asking for a better sense of humor for dealing with the enemies of the Church.

And today is my 45th birthday. My mother denies it, refusing to believe that she has a 45 year old son!

I am often asked why a Dominican would choose "Philip Neri" as his religious name. I wish there were some mystical, mysterious story to tell. There isn't. When I was going through RCIA, my pastor urged us all to take confirmation names. He suggested that we look at the saints honored on our birthdays for inspiration. He reasoned that picking a name from a saint celebrated on our birthday would help us to remember to imitate that saint. I picked "Philip Neri" for no other reason than that May 26th is his feast day. When I joined the Order, we were told we could use a religious name. One of the brothers asked me my confirmation name and suggested that I make it my religious name. With just a little research into Philip Neri's life, I found quite a lot I wanted to imitate!

Philip knew many of the great Dominicans of his day. He was a renowned preacher and confessor. He worked tirelessly among the spiritually defeated youths of Rome. He was a practical joker and an outrageous spiritual director. When he died, an autopsy revealed that his heart had grown too big for this body. An apt description of this saint of Christ's joy! Philip was canonized along with Theresa of Avila and Ignatius of Loyola.

We have only just begun

Memorial for St. Philip Neri: Acts 20.17-27; John 17.1-11
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Convento SS. Domenico e Sisto, Roma

We are almost done here. Almost there. Just a little longer and all this will be over. Never to be done again. Waiting for us when we are done here is everything we have left to do somewhere else. There can no question that our work—our study, our teaching, our preaching, our ministry, all we do in Christ’s name—there can be no question that this side of the Kingdom our work continues so long as we breath, so long as rise and answer the spirit by doing what Christ did, by being his working Body in this world. We are almost done here. But we have yet to start his work somewhere else. Tomorrow’s gospel has yet to be preached. Tomorrow’s truth has yet to be taught. What Christ accomplished in one day from the cross, we must accomplish daily in the work we have promised to do. What he completed in one breath, we must bring to completion while we yet breathe. To the Father, Jesus prayed, “I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do.” And Paul confesses to the priests of the Church in Ephesus, “I served the Lord with all humility and with the tears and trials that came to me […] Yet I consider life of no importance to me, if only I may finish my course […] to bear witness to the Gospel of God's grace.” Do you, as the hands and voice of the crucified Christ, risen to the Father, do you, his worker and child, bear witness to the gospel of God’s grace?

Standing in the spirit of his Father with eyes raised to heaven, our Lord prays for his people, commending them body and soul to the care of the loving God Who made them. He prays, “I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world. They belonged to you, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.” With the living Word living among them, our ancestors in the faith kept His Word, doing what they promised to do. Through trial, persecution, murderous plots, torture, and the ever-present threat of death, they held to the living Word and lived His Word in the face of persistent evil and obstinate opposition. They ran their course. And we must run ours. They are done. We are just getting started.

Do you bear witness to the gospel of God’s grace? With all the gifts that you have been given, in the time and place that composes your part in human history, with all the faults, failures, and false starts that sin brings to your work, do you witness to God’s grace? Paul says that he “bears witness.” We read these words to mean “carrying testimony,” or “standing up by speaking out.” But we can hear “to bear witness” as “baring witness,” making our testimony to grace bare, naked, stripped, and exposed. And if you are your witness, that is, if everything that you are and everything that you do bears witness, then you are indeed exposed, stripped naked before the world. To watch you is to watch God’s grace at work in the world. Without pretense or illusion or deceit, you show us Christ.

We are almost done and yet we have hardly begun. We are almost there and yet the end is as far from us as it has ever been. Our task is not to build buildings or win arguments or solve difficult social problems. Our task is to bear witness, to expose the truth, to strip naked the Word. Our task has only just begun.

Set aside not above

7th Sunday of Easter: Acts 1.17-17, 20-26; 1 John 4.11-16; John 7.11-19
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Convento SS. Domenico e Sisto, Roma

Walking the streets of Rome can teach you a lot about negotiation. Walk up the Via del Corso on a Saturday afternoon. Sidewalks jammed with idly strolling citizens. The street choked with wandering tourists lost in their maps. Fashionistas linger in front of the shop windows, damming up traffic, sending thousands into the street to play catch with the taxis. For someone with a destination in mind, a purpose and a goal, taking the del Corso is an adventure in paying attention, dodging threats of bodily harm, and negotiating the perils of polite society. Will that bus stop at the crosswalk? Will the group of trendy ladies in front of me stop suddenly to squeal over a pair of Ferragamo pumps? Do I need to say “excusa” every time I bump into someone? What degree of impatience do I express when zipping past the amorous couple clogging up the sidewalk with their public display of sloppy affection? You have a goal, a purpose; you have a destination and a mission. You don’t have the time or the patience or even the inclination to suffer these social obstacles lightly, to indulge these worldly distractions with anything less than haughty contempt! How often do you sigh in angry exasperation and imagine yourself screaming: “For the love of all that is holy: move!” When you are a Christian and the world you live in is the Via del Corso on a Saturday afternoon, how do you negotiate the traps, the potholes, the slippery curbs? How do you weave through the foot traffic without landing in the street dodging the buses? Do you surrender to the flow, slow your pace, assume your place in the crowd, and hope your destination comes to you? What happens to the urgency of your mission? Your schedule? One vital point to keep in mind when thinking about these questions: as Christians, we are set apart; we are not set above.

Knowing that his time draws near, Jesus commends his people to the Father. Lifting his eyes to heaven, he prays to God: “I speak this in the world so that they may share my joy completely. I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.” What could Jesus mean? Of course, we belong to the world! We need food, drink, clothing. We are as much affected by gravity, the weather, and the passage of time as anyone else. We have jobs, kids, taxes, and all sorts of worldly ties. We are bound to all the physical necessities of living well in our skins. How exactly do we not belong to this world? What sets us apart? In other words, how are we consecrated in truth? And how does this complete our joy in Christ?

Many of the great heresies in Church history are deeply rooted in a distorted view of the relationship between heaven and earth, body and soul, world and Church. Like most heresies, these distortions exaggerate a distinction, mutate a vital difference, and privilege one extreme over another. In the early Church, most heresies exaggerated the spiritual over the material, leaving us with a disembodied Christ and a purely mystical, intellectual faith that proclaimed the evils of the flesh and demanded radical asceticism. Today, we tend to the other extreme, privileging the material and historical, leaving us with a Christ who is just some guy who said some interesting stuff about the need for social change. Among those who saw the world as a place of greed, lust, and gluttony, the only way to combat murderous distraction was to withdraw into the desert to seek out a spiritual purity in extreme practices of bodily mortification. Among those today who see the spiritual, especially the moral, as a kind of straight-jacket, a fuddy-duddy fussing about mythical codes of behavior, the world is a place of license, freedom, unlimited choice. Even among some Christians, the world is to be revered, imitated, and lauded, if not worshiped. What both the desert-dwellers and the world-worshipers fail to see is that the “world” Jesus implicitly condemns is not the material world, the cosmos of stuff and physical law, but that time and place where the powers of rebellion and strife hold sway, the material and spiritual battlefield where obedience to God and the temptation to disobey God compete for our allegiance. This is the world we are in and yet the world we do not belong to.

To be consecrated in the truth in this world is to be set aside by grace to achieve a divine purpose wherever you find yourself. You will not fulfill your divinely gifted purpose by hating the material world and living only for the spiritual. You will not fulfill your divinely gifted purpose by hating the transcendent world and living only in the flesh. We are body and soul. Neither one nor the other wholly without the other. If you are only your soul, then what you do materially is irrelevant to your spiritual growth. Be spiritual! And be as you please. If you are only your body, then what you believe about the spiritual is irrelevant to your material growth. Just do it! And do anything you please. Christians are saddled with a much more difficult task: as embodied souls consecrated in the truth, we are bound materially to a world ruled by sin and obligated to achieve spiritual purity in the midst of physical temptation. What we do materially affects us spiritually. What we believe about spiritual truths affects us materially.

If this is true, and it is, what good does it do us to be consecrated in the truth? We are set aside not above. “To consecrate” means “to aside for a specific purpose.” We consecrate things, people, places. We don’t use the altar as a card table. We don’t use a chalice to chug beer. Priests and religious do not participate in government as elected or appointed officials. As baptized priests, prophets, and kings of the Father’s Kingdom, we are set aside to work toward and achieve a specific goal, an end that perfects us in all His gifts. Notice that Jesus does not say that he has removed us from the battleground of this world. He does not elevate us above it or subject us to it. He does not say that we do not belong in the world. He says that we do not belong TO this world. We are not slaves, citizens, or subjects of the dominion of the Enemy. Our purpose is not defined by the laws of nature or the rules of engagement followed by the Enemy. We are free. We are free from this world in order to be free for this world. Not above the world. Not of this world. But in it and beside it, not belonging to it, but free to show a better way, a divinely gifted Way.

Our joy is completed not by worldly victory or political conquest. We are not given a completed joy by winning elections or getting federal funding. There is no joy in making ourselves slaves to a world we do not belong to. There is no joy in raising ourselves above it all, or fleeing into the desert to watch it all burn. Our consecrated work, our baptismal duty is right in the middle of the mess, squarely centered in the heart of the world, right where the Enemy is strongest. We are chosen to be vessels and conduits of God’s love for the world and to the world not because we are morally superior or spiritually invincible. We are neither. We are chosen because we chose to answer His call to be everything He made us to be in love. A choice anyone can make.

To this world, we are dramatic, pathetic failures. Lost and hopeless zombies driven by superstition and irrational religious mythology. In this world, we can be tragic examples of hypocrisy, self-righteousness, and religious zealotry. For this world, we are a comedic scandal that brings salvation and peace. But for this to work, we must be set aside in truth. Engaged but detached. Involved but distant. Who and what we are most fundamentally is found in our end not in the means we use to get there. But our means must always prophesy the truth of the gospel. How else do we witness to our divinely gifted end if not through our divinely gifted means?

We are consecrated in the truth so that our joy may be complete. We are set aside in Christ by Christ so that we may come to him in the end wholly joyful, perfected in love. John writes: “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us.” Our nearly impossible task is to love God and one another in a world ruled by the Enemy. Tempted though we are by passions unruled by reason, we are set aside for a purpose. That purpose and its pursuit is how we succeed—in our witness, in our ministries, in our duties to Love Himself.

In and beside this world, shining out the love and mercy we have received, we bring our joy to its highest human perfection. Beyond this world, having done as we promised to do, we become Joy, seeing Truth Himself face-to-face.

24 May 2009

For the sake of our young men, it's time to reconsider virtue

As a college teacher for the years between 1989 and 2008, I find this article on the state of men in universities very, very intriguing.

What's so intriguing? The report shows that college men are pressured to be stereotypically "masculine" without doing the hard work of getting a good college education. In other words, they are expected to be Rambo and Steven Hawkings by nature not effort. In fact, any effort they might put into becoming Well-educated Men is seen as decidedly "gay" or feminine by themselves and their struggling peers.

How did this happen? The report is fuzzy on this question. My guess is that there is a combination of factors.

First, the feministization of college campuses places men in a position of repressing their masculinity publicly and overemphasizing it privately (dorms, frats, etc.). Men are oppressed into being "feminist" in class by ideologue profs and campus administrators. Then, the more extreme forms of outrageous masculine behavior (binge drinking, fighting, sexual aggressiveness) are indulged when the nannies aren't around.

Second, part of the feministization of our campuses involves the repression of classically positive male virtues (virtue means manliness, not that virtue is exclusively masculine, of course!). Courage, temperance, fortitude, etc. are cast as overly intellectual and anti-emotional. This leaves courage to be practiced as bravado. Fortitude becomes aggression. Temperance becomes weakness.

Third, for the most part adolescent males have no one to teach them how to be virtuous men. Who do they have in the popular culture to look up to? Rappers, professional wrestlers, ambiguous superheroes, gangsters, rapist/drug addicted/narcissitic athletes?

As an academically successful teenager with little or no interest in athletics, I can witness to the pressures guys like me came under when it's time to play ball. I still bristle at suggestions that men who don't play sports are somehow less masculine, less than Real Men. Competition is part and parcel of the game to go up and "be a man." In religious life, men are constantly admonished to suppress competitive impulses in favor of vaguely defined and practiced concepts like "cooperation" and "collaboration." Of course, there's healthy and unhealthy competition. A friendly yet fierce game of cards or football or pool is a good thing. But without the virtue of sportsmanship, the game becomes an occasion for domination and ridicule.

Sometimes the solution is make everyone a winner just for playing. Sometimes the solution is to play without keeping score. No winners means no losers. More often than is strictly healthy and helpful the solution is to direct competitive energies away from actual competition and toward exercises that attempt to produce something like a community project or a corporate ministry. In my experience, these are futile efforts precisely because they are attempts to suppress individuality into an amorphorous whole. There's nothing inherently wrong with a community project, but these projects rarely call on men to be men and often require that the men involved suppress natual tendencies to stand out as individual talents.

One thing I have noticed about college-aged men is the need to prove themselves, to find a way of showing themselves and their peers that they are competent, even expert at something. Even among highly educated and accomplished men there's a tendency to wrestle in the pack to be the Alpha Dog. If this tendency is not civilized by the classical virtues and scored according to the rule of sportsmanship, the competition and aggressiveness gets ugly fast. Spend an hour on Youtube watching videos of stupid stunts performed by young men to prove their bravery and physical prowess. You will come away thinking the gene pool is being properly drained.

I was put in the unfamiliar role of Alpha Dog during my time as a Team Leader in an adolescent psych hospital. My guys were all violent sex offenders with criminal records. It took me about two days to realize that appeals to rules, regulations, and their desire to leave the hospital alone would not keep order. This non-competitive liberal quickly saw the light. I had to "bust heads" and demonstrate that I had the "right to lead" in virtue (!) of my superior strength and determination. Oddly, even with their increased aggression and lack of socialization, the boys on my unit were far better behaved than the girls. Why? The boys seemed to recognize and respect order because it gave them the necessary sense of security their wounded masculinity needed to function. The girls thrived on chaos. They were unfased by a show of strength. Immune to threats of consequence. They had no pecking order, no allegiance to the group. Every new arrival to the group threw the whole group into chaos for days. For the boys, there was a very short period of struggle until the new arrival found his place and thrived. So long as "Mr. Powell" or his equivalent on another shift was present to set the proper order, the boys chugged along in their treatment plan. The second shift team leader was a therapeutic liberal. He indulged the boys. He did not enforce the rules. And he was seen by the boys as weak and easily manipulated. His shift on the boys' unit was almost always in chaos. They acted out in order to force him to impose order. He never did. And the result was twice as many injuries and restraints on his shift.

What's my point? Boys/young men are natually competitive and aggressive. When I was a feminist I followed my radical feminist friends and called this tendency "testerone poisoning." But there's no good reason to consider these natural inclinations poisonous. They are most definitely dangerous to the individual and the group if not channeled by healthy competition and properly practiced virtue. The differences between my freshmen men in the public university and the private university are telling. Granted, the public university had no sectarian affiliation and the private university attracted more intellectually gifted men. The big difference between the two? Not a religious code that constrains or punishes misbehavior but rather a cultural expectation that virtue rules passion. American universities twist themselves into knots writing and implementing speech codes, behavior contracts, and rules against barbarism because they are ideologically disinclined to teach the classically western virtues. They limit themselves to forbidding what they consider anti-social behavior and promote what they consider politically correct behavior. It is no accident that P.C. attitudes and behaviors favor aggressive feminist ideals, ideals that are almost always entirely emotive in nature and arbitrarily defined and enforced. The movie "Fight Club" was a run-away hit among college men for a reason: it spoke directly to those impulses and inclinations that feminist P.C. culture wants to eliminate.

Most of this applies to the Church as well. Why are male religious orders that demand strict discipline, theologial conformity, and allegiance to the community thriving? Orders that promote laxity, theological creativity, and individuality are dying. Yes, the impulse to conformity can be dangerous if not properly tempered by a healthy sense of self, but a healthy sense of self quickly devolves into indulgent narcissism if it is not reined in by a clearly articulated and vigorously enforced duty to the whole. The idea is to grow as an individual within the identity of the group. The moment the individual is dissolved into the group or the group becomes a loosely associated collection of individuals, the dangers become more and more apparent and abuse is more and more likely.

What do we have as a regulative force? As a commonly shared and understood core? Virtue! I believe the rapid decline of religious life (and by analogy, university life) in the west is directly tied to the suppression of virtus-based formation and the rise of therapeutic formation. We replaced the classical virtues with ego-centered therapies. Needs trump duties. Wants trump obedience. Wishes trump realities. And in both religious life and university life we are left with the illusion of autonomy guided by little more than our unguided passions. Can anyone say "sex abuse scandal"? Can anyone say "binge drinking"? If there is any doubt that male aggression and competition are natural to the creature, ask yourself this: why have we failed to successfully end the worse examples of masculine abuse through speech codes, conduct contracts, and years of politically correct indoctrination in the culture and the public school system? Why haven't we seen an end to date rape, binge drinking, fighting, cheating, racism, etc.? My guess is that the energies that produce these destructive behaviors are not being respected for what they are: natural inclinations. Rather than provide young men with productive channels to expend these energies we grasp at rules, regulations, laws, and public ridicule in an effort to suppress them. Without a virtuous means to be competitive, aggressive, sexual, etc. they turn to vicious means. And we all suffer for it.

Time to reconsider the virtue of virtue? You bet. The sooner the better.

22 May 2009

Three new books on the Blessed Mother

If you have any interest in learning more about the Blessed Mother, I highly recommend the recently published triology written by Catholic blogger-extraordinaire, Mark Shea.

I've not read the books, but I've been reading Mark's blog for about five years now, and I've read his voluminous output at Inside Catholic. He is by far the most articulate and fair-minded Catholic apologist writing today. Like me, Mark is a convert, and this gives him a perspective on all things Catholics that cradle-Catholics cannot match.

Mark is particularly good when he is explaining and defending Catholic teachings against fundamentalist Protestant attacks on the Church's alleged "unscriptural" approach to the faith.

Check them out and let me know what you think! Oh, and let Mark know as well. . .he's a bit shy about praise, so let's give him some practice in humility. :-)

Science, theology: no competition for truth?

Here's a tiny bit of payoff for the Book Benefactors who have helped me purchase books necessary for my studies. . .

As part of my on-going education in the field of philosophy of science, I attended two lectures yesterday--one in Italian, one in English--that reinforced a basic point of the discussion between scientists and believers:

The Christian debate is not with science or reason but with materialism; that is, our philosophical struggle is with the notion that the universe is simply material and that there is nothing about this material world that needs divinity, transcendence, ethical imperatives, or spiritual understanding.

The Christian faith is perfectly happy in the scientific world and the world of enlightening reason. The attempt by materialists to co-op reason for their exclusive use is illegitimate. There is a legitimate debate between science and theology as academic disciplines, but both use reason as an investigative tool.

Proper to their role as researchers into the material workings of the universe, scientists limit themselves to making claims that are demonstrable in the lab or with mathematics. When scientists overstep their proper roles and use their unique methods to make claims about the divine and how the divine interacts with the universe, they engage in pseudo-theology.

Proper to their roles as researchers into the spiritual workings of creation and God's Self-revelation, Catholic theologians limit themselves to making claims that are consistent with God's Self-revelation as understood and developed by the living Body of Christ, the Church. When Catholic theologians overstep their proper roles and use their unique methods to make claims about the how the material universe works, they engage in pseudo-science.

With reason as the common method between the two fields and each limiting themselves to the methods and conclusions proper to their goals, there is no reason why scientists and theologians have to be in competition.

That's the most common way of dividing up the work of science and theology.

A problem arises, however, when we think for a moment about this arrangement of exclusive spheres of investigation. Though it is certainly the case that scientists deal almost exclusively with the material fact and theologians with spiritual implications of faith, both scientists and theologians legitimately work outside their well-founded fields. Scientists often find themselves working with concepts and theories that go well beyond factual description (multi-dimensional universes). Theologians must admit that the spiritual implications of God's Self-revelation demand an adherence to a certain set of established material facts (laws of physics). Neither group deals only with the raw materials proper to their field. Scientists do more than measure. Theologians do more than pray.

Is there a way to understand the fundamental human need to explain the material universe and to make spiritual sense of it? What's common to both scientists and theologians is the pursuit of the truth, a consistent description of reality that accounts for all known phenomena and matches the really Real. Basic to this pursuit is the idea that though all facts are true but not all truths are factual. From the Catholic perspective there is no contradiction between the truths of faith and the truths of science because truth has a single source: God. From the scientific perspective this is controversial precisely because the notion of a transcendent Being called God is not verifiable (or falsifiable) as a fact of the material universe. Believers cannot fault scientists for asserting the non-existence of God given the limits of scientific inquiry. They are simply being consistent and honest investigators.

And yet, scientists frequently find themselves speculating on the existence of unobservable objects in order to make their theories about the material universe work, for example, quarks. Are quarks real? That is, do quarks really exist as a part of the material universe? Or, are they simply "theoretical objects" necessary to the consistency and intelligibility of a particular theory about how the universe operates?

Can we ask a similar question of theologians? Is God real? Or, is God a "theoretical object" necessary to the consistency and intelligibility of a particular theory about how human beings achieve and maintain spiritual/ethical enlightenment? The idea that theoretical objects are really real is called "realism." The idea that theoretical objects are simply postulated necessities in a theory is called "anti-realism." The most basic way of understanding this difference is to ask this question: is "reality" mind-independent or mind-dependent? This is a question about the degree to which the human mind's investigation into the real impinges on the real. Are we describing the world as it really is, or are we describing theories about how we see the world?*

Does it matter to scientists and theologians whether or not the objects of their respective investigations are real, i.e. really existing separate from theories about them? I believe that the answer to this question is: Yes, it matters a great deal!

And to expand on this answer I would propose that both scientists and theologians would benefit from a epistemological approach to truth called "critical realism."

And the rest is my license thesis. . .

*I should note here that anti-realists do not deny the existence of the material world. They do not argue that we are living in an illusion. They simply deny that the unobservable objects of our theories really exist. There are several versions of both realism and anti-realism, but my claim about anti-realism generally is a fair description.

19 May 2009

Once again. . .Coffee Bowl Browsing!

Dan Brown's One World Religion agenda

The painter of Obama-as-Christ gets it wrong. . .again

Everything you always wanted to know about apokatastasis

I've outlived Gerard Manley Hopkins. . .and you?

Dorothy's house is assimilated by the Borg

Pope John XXIII being funny. . .and speaking the Truth

Yea, I need a new laptop, but I don't need this one!

Fill it with a good bourbon and you've got a deal

Lots of good anti-religious quotes. . .most of which are true

Multi-tasking in a non-insectoid world

Classic philosophy texts podcast for your mental exercise

A multimedia presentation of Dante's The Divine Comedy

The games played in Alice of Wonderful

Why are there no Obama jokes? "The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny." --E. Abbey
A free on-line library. . .a million links to just about everything
DON"T FORGET! Join my minions. . .errrmmm. . .I mean, Followers! (Right side bar)

Verdict: guilty!

6th Week of Easter (T): Acts 16.22-34; John 16.5-11
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Convento SS. Domenico e Sisto, Roma

Christianity is the “one great curse, the one great inmost corruption...the one immortal blemish of mankind” (Hovey 3). Thus spake Friedrich Nietzsche, the prophet of the anti-Christ. The British theologian, Craig Hovey, notes that Nietzsche “loathed Christianity, especially Christian morality. He thought Christians were irrational, self-deceived, repressed, and arrogant; he took Christian morality to be pettily reactionary and positively fatal to life…”(3). Will the prosecutor of the Church in his closing argument before the judge of the world rest his case and demand a guilty verdict? Do we stand convicted by the evidence of human history—the thoughts, words, and deeds of our own hearts and minds? Are we guilty? We can point to the hospitals and orphanages we have built. Our prosecutor can point to the injuries we have caused and the orphans we have made. We can point to the spread of the Gospel in the New World, the souls we brought to Christ. Our prosecutor can show the jury our destruction of whole cultures in the pursuit of gold and slaves, all the souls we lost to our greed. We can point to our tireless efforts to relieve poverty, hunger, and suffering. Our prosecutor can bring evidence of the poverty, hunger, and suffering we have caused. Are we guilty? Before the judge of the world and a jury of our peers, how do we plea? What is our defense?

If Nietzsche were to serve as our defense attorney, he might argue that though we have certainly committed the crimes the prosecution charges us with, but that we should be found not-guilty by reason of insanity. If indeed the Church is cursed, if we are an “immortal blemish” as he claims, the slaves of a herd mentality, following our basest instincts and primitive impulses, then we are irrational, self-deceived, little more than animals doing what animals do. He could simply repeat our crimes and ask, “What sane Church would do these things?” Would the judge and jury buy this plea? Would they look at us with contempt but nonetheless find us not-guilty?

Before the bench of the judge of this world, we have an Advocate, an intercessor, one who pleas on our behalf. Nietzsche would argue our insanity and ask that we be found not guilty because of it; our true Advocate knows we are guilty and makes no excuses. Our true Advocate knows our crimes better than we do because he became those very crimes for us. He can do more than merely show evidence of our sins, he can give personal testimony to them. He became sin for us, so that sin might be put to death and we might have eternal life. He knows we are guilty and loves us anyway. He loves us all the way to his cross, and he is with us as we approach ours.

Is the Church “irrational, self-deceived, repressed, and arrogant”? Are we “pettily reactionary and positively fatal to life”? Yes, we can be. This is not who we are fundamentally. But we are certainly capable of truthfully pleading guilty to the charges. At our worst, we are worse than the unbelievers and those who would persecute us. At our best, we are Christ for the world. The Good News is that we never again have to be anything or anyone less than Christ. Never again are we compelled by irrational instinct or inordinate passion or selfish greed to commit a single sin, not one crime against God, our world, or one another. We are free. Free from all that would acquit us on the grounds of insanity; free from all that would excuse our crimes as animalistic and primitive. We are free to love, to show mercy, to build tighter and tighter bonds of friendship. We are free because we have been freed by the mercy of the One Who sits in judgment.

Hovey, Craig. Nietzsche and Theology. T&T Clark, 2008.

18 May 2009

VERY close call

I'm very clumsy.

Turning from the sink last night I rammed my hip into my desk, spilling a bottle of water onto my closed laptop.

Drained the water. Wiped the mess up. And tried to power up the 'puter.

Nothing.

Setting it on its edge to drain the water, I started praying that there would be no permanent damage.

Overnight, I directed my small desktop fan on the keyboard in the hope of drying any remaining water.

This morning. . .with a prayer. . .I pushed the power button. All the little green lights flashed and she booted up! So far, there's no evidence of damage.

Deo gratis! Let's pray, please, that it stays that way. . .


17 May 2009

Caricature of a U.S. President

B.O.'s Notre Dame speech was pretty boring. The best parts were quotes from far better orators/writers.

I thought there was one particularly hilarious paragraph:

"Understand - I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. No matter how much we may want to fudge it - indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory - the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature. Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words."

OK. . .this from a guy whose Department of Homeland Security issues a report labeling pro-life activists "domestic terrorists"! Here's a suggestion: show us how serious you are, B.O.: fire Napolitano. She should be fired for incompetence anyway, but now that you've decided that caricaturing pro-life supporters is something we should never do--fire her for violating policy. Let's watch to see if he tells the abortion-pushers to stop demonizing the pro-life movement in the future.

And, of course, the leftist appeal to be "open-minded" is really just a case of special pleading to agree with them. Since, by their own definition, they are paragons of open-mindedness, it's the rest of us rubes who must be closed-minded.

And I will never again open my heart or my mind to the idea that killing a child is a Good Thing.

P.S. Someone asked me recently if there is anything B.O. could say that I wouldn't find offensive. I said, "Sure! He could say, 'It is with great sadness that I resign the Office of the Presidency of the United States, effective immediately.'"


16 May 2009

Heaven thru Mississippi eyes

This is what Heaven looks like to an over-educated, home-sick redneck priest living in Rome!


My thanks to my most generous Book Benefactor, N.M., for making the purchase of this little piece of southern heaven possible. N., if I had a Jack Daniel's and Coke right now, I'd toast you.

Side note: I first heard of my fellow Mississippian, Larry Brown, while teaching English in China. I tuned into V.O.A. one afternoon and heard his beautiful southern accent twanging out over the airwaves and nearly cried. I taught one of his novels, Dirty Work, to my literature students when I got back to the U.S.

Another local boy made good: Barry Hannah. I had the great privilege of taking Barry's first creative writing class at Ole Miss in 1989. What I wouldn't do to be in a creative writing MFA program right now. . .ah well. . .

Using Notre Shame vs. the Obamanation

This is a fantastic idea. . .

"President Obama speaks at the University of Notre Dame on Sunday. What happens on Monday?"

Let's use the publicity of the Notre Shame scandal to raise money for N.D.'s pro-life activities:

The Monday Project!

15 May 2009

Literary Snob Turns Redneck for $7

I'll stand toe-to-toe with the snobbish European elite in a battle of literary tastes. I only read the best poetry and the best fiction. If the author isn't on his/her way to a Pultizer, a PEN/Faulkner, a Man Booker, or a Nobel, I don't read it.

Movies, on the other hand, are an entirely different story. My blue-blood literary elitism turns decidedly Mississippi-redneck when I shuck out $7 at the local Malco.

I have three criteria for movies I will pay to see:

Anything with aliens (the outer-space kind not the illegal kind)
Anything with lots of explosions
Anything with lots of exploding aliens.

I may need to add a fourth criterion: anything with giant octopi fighting giant sharks.

This I can't wait to see!

Mission accomplished

Mission accomplished!

I brought all of the intentions I received before the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament this afternoon.

My thanks to all of you who promised to remember me in your prayers. Keep it up! Serious work on the prayer books is underway.

God bless, Fr. Philip, OP


We're becoming more pro-life!


Excellent news for the human race!

Gallup reports that for the first time in years more Americans are identifying themselves as pro-life rather than pro-abortion.

I wonder if the media will report that The Obamessiah is "out of touch with the American mainstream."

Naw.

It's time for. . .Coffee Bowl Browsing!

Mark Shea spanks Dan Brown anti-Catholic bigotry. . .keep this handy for that blow-hard anti-papist uncle who shows up at summer family reunions

Several jokes about Jebbies, Dominicans, and other religious orders

Interview with an exorcist, Fr. Amorth

An e-breviary

Lay "blessings" at communion are a no-no

Demonic attack!

Darth Vader comes to Hitler's aid

I have no idea what this is. . .but it looks good!

"Why did the chicken cross the road?" Answered by philosophers (my fav: "To die. In the rain." --Hemingway)

45 Tips for a happier life

Compendium of Cracked Conspiracy Theories (some R-rated stuff here)

Funny philosopher tee-shirts (warning: lots of "insider" jokes)

Filled with awe at the wonder of the universe

One of my fav poems to teach: "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

Poetry so bad, it's good!

Obamanomics in action

Why do non-conservatives exist?

Great political cartoon
. . .it's amazing how one picture can explain things so clearly

Anti-terrorist training camp in Texas. . .I think I see some of my family there

14 May 2009

Coulter vs. the Burqa-ed Bobble-heads of MSM Broadom

I love Ann Coulter!

Liberal Taliban Issues Fatwa Against Miss California
(link)

[. . .]

From Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Picasso and Bertrand Russell, who treated women -- mostly their mistresses -- like dogs, to Teddy Kennedy and Bill Clinton in our own day, liberals are ferocious misogynists. They share Muslims' opinion of women, differing only to the extent that liberals also support a women's right to have an abortion and to perform lap dances.

You'd be better off in a real burqa than under the authority of a liberal American male.

I'm not sure we needed a psychological profile of Prejean to figure out why she holds the same position on gay marriage as: the president, the vice president, the secretary of state, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards and his mistress, and the vast majority of the American people.

But what is crying out for an explanation is why every bubble-head TV news anchorette from a nice, churchgoing red state ends up adopting the political views of Karl Marx.

From Katie Couric on CBS to Norah O'Donnell on MSNBC, the whole stable of TV anchorettes weirdly have the exact same politics as their liberal masters. It's the ideological burqa women are required to wear to work in the mainstream media. As with a conventional burqa, it enforces conformity and severely restricts the vision.

The only way to protect yourself is to do the liberal male's bidding, as the bubble-head anchorettes do, or stand on the rock of Christianity.

Now, another beautiful Christian has thrown off the liberal burqa, thereby inciting mass hysteria throughout the liberal establishment. Prejean doesn't care. She is blazing across the sky, as impotent nose-pickers jockey for a piece of her reflected light by hurling insults at her.

Watching even a few seconds of the MSM attack Carrie Prejean is an exercise is restraint. All of my old feminist anger rises to the surface in defense of women. The poisonous bile excreted by these people is demonic. How do people who label themselves "progressives" get away with these woman-hating screeds?

When I was in grad school, even the suggestion that a woman could be identifed solely on the basis of her body, her gender, her "role," her choices. . .any kind of parallel drawn between who a woman is and can be and any restriction or limit was attacked as hatred and denounced immediately as violence done to the humanity of women everywhere.

Watching the bobble-heads in the MSM these days--especially the women!--makes me want to dig around for my N.O.W. tee-shirts and charge the battery on my bullhorn. Who's holding these apes accountable?

Normally, that would be the job of the media and Professional Feminists. But they abandoned that duty when it became clear that defending women against the real dominance of men would mean attacking Democrat, President Bill Clinton. Thus, we see the depth and breadth of feminist outrage: as deep as a swift political calculation, as broad as their corrupt agenda to destroy us.

Pics from yesterday's Eucharistic Procession!



(L) Priests in procession. Typically, the OP's didn't know whether or not we should wear our cappas!

(R) Archbishop Burke and deacon














Happy, singing nuns! The Angelicum Choir. . .













Inside the Ss. Dominic and Sisto Church



Pics by Heralds of the Gospel

13 May 2009

Truth-telling is a dangerous business

[NB. For the life of me, I can't finish this homily. Maybe it's b/c I don't feel well. . .for whatever reason. . .it's not complete. . .but I pray it touches someone out there who needs it.]

5th Sunday of Easter: Acts 9.26-31; 1 John 3.18-24; John 15.1-8
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Convento SS Domenico e Sisto, Roma

Truth-telling is a dangerous vocation. If you are called to tell the truth about those in power—to those with some power over you—it can be a deadly vocation. The stark clarity of the undisputed fact, the sharp focus of a truth told with a convicted tongue—these pierce the intended confusion of a lie, slice through the chaotic twists of nuance, obstruction, deceit, and expose the tumorous heart of falsehood: the drive, the compulsion to hate. Such a violent passion, based as it is on the desire to love, is not lightly angered. To stir up hatred with the white light of truth is an act of courage—knowing fear, you tell the truth nonetheless. And like a patient who bucks against the pain of surgery, or an animal caught in a trap that bites at its owner in blind fury, a liar cannot bear for long the furious pain that truth causes. He will bite back. Truth-telling is medicinal, liberating, and ultimately salvific for both the speaker and the hearer. But what must both have in order to benefit from the truth? What must be present in each for the truth to settle, flourish, and bear good fruit?

For the speaker, an honest tongue speaking without pretense. For the hearer, open ears ready to listen and obey. And we can even reverse that: a speaker with ears ready to listen and obey and a hearer ready to speak without pretense. The point being that there is no difference between hearing the truth spoken and speaking it yourself. There is no difference between speaking the truth and hearing it spoken. He Who is present in the hearing and the speaking is the same One who is Truth both spoken and heard. The lie derails the truth when the speaker pretends to speak something else and when the hearer pretends to hear something else. The only reason for derailing the truth is hatred. The hearer, the speaker wills evil for the spoken to and for the one who speaks. The branch is cut from the vine. The vine is cut from the root. The root is pulled from the ground. And the whole plant dies. How is this disaster avoided? The ground in which truth thrives must be firmer than our desire for truth. In other words, that which motivates our love for truth must be stronger than our awareness that truth is necessary. It is not enough that we long for truth. It must be the case that we die without it…and that we know this.

The truth will set you free. Not: the truth will make you happy. Not: the truth will please you. Not: the truth will confirm your prejudices. The truth will liberate you; set you free; release you from the lies of sin; show you the gates of divine obedience and dare you to open them; the truth will set you free and piss you off; you will be freed and angered…for no other reason than that your notion of freedom is so tiny, so limited, so restricted and cramped. Do you think “freedom” is about making choices? Or about “choosing options”? Really? Do you seriously believe that your freedom…your eternal freedom in the Word made Flesh is about picking A, B, or C? And having that choice honored as “just as good as any other”? Really? Is that the gospel? Is that what Christ died for?

Listen again: “You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you. Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me.” A branch cannot bear fruit on its own. How many branches have you seen floating out in space near a fruit tree? You cannot, I cannot, none of us can bear the truth of the faith floating out in space away from the branch, away from the Body. We must have as a core-foundational element of our very being a commitment to the gospel rooted in obedience, the Good News that transforms the world by its very declaration: the proclamation of Truth Himself.

What happens when the Word of Truth rings out over human history, over just one nation, one people, even just one person? A choice is made: live free in the truth, or die chained to a lie. If you choose life, you will flourish even as you are hounded, persecuted, and possibly killed. Your choice will enrage the worshipers of death. The chains they wear sparkle like jewelry in their eyes. They count their freedoms with the chain-links from the stake to the yank of the choke-collar. If you choose life and preach the good news of life in Christ, the death cultists will mark you as an enemy of liberty. And only the right to choose to kill is more sacred to them than the limitless absolutes of moral license. If you choose death, you too will flourish; you will flourish as a minister of death, preaching the gospel of moral rot, diseased reason, extolling death’s greatest act of mercy: the necessity of killing the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly for no other reason than that these bothersome accidents tend to cause the most unfortunate inconveniences to your standard of living. Having accepted that the death of another person is no real problem for your peace of mind, it is a simple thing for you to conclude that it is in fact much better that someone should die than it is for you to risk that even the shortest life might inconvenience you. When killing is the solution, no problem is too small. And since the last killing is much easier than the first one, it is simply better to get on with it.

Paul debated the Hellenists and they tried to kill him. This fact alone bore sufficient witness to the veracity of his ministry that the disciples in Jerusalem accepted him as an equal. The best testimony to Paul’s power as an apostle was given by his enemies.

[. . .]

12 May 2009

Make a choice, people...the time is ripe...



For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.' Then they will answer and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?' He will answer them, 'Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.' And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

10 May 2009

Questions for Those Discerning a Religious Vocation

A couple of commenters and a few emailers have suggested that I write a book or some posts on the Dominican religious vocation.

My upcoming prayer book has a couple of Dominican themed litanies/novenas and a novena for discerning a vocation to the priesthood.

For those who don't want to wait until Sept for the prayer book, here's a post from back in January 2009 about discerning a vocation:

What basic questions should those discerning a religious vocation ask themselves?

I get a lot of questions from younger readers about vocation discernment. For the most part, they want to know how they know whether or not they have a religious vocation. I wish it were as easy as drawing blooding, testing it, and announcing the result. If horse had wings, etc. Here are three cautions and a few questions to ask yourself:

Three Cautions

Suspend any romantic or idealistic notions you might have about religious life. Religious orders are made up of sinful men and women. There is no perfect Order; no perfect monastery; no perfect charism. You WILL be disappointed at some point if you enter religious life. You are going to find folks in religious life who are angry, wounded, bitter, mean-spirited, disobedient, secretive, and just plain hateful. You will also find living saints.

Do your homework. There is no perfect Order, etc. but there is an Order out there that will best use your gifts, strengthen your weaknesses, and challenge you to grow in holiness. Learn everything you can about the Order or monastery you are considering. Use the internet, libraries, "people on the inside," and ask lots and lots of questions. Vocation directors are not salesmen. For the most part, they will not pressure you into a decision. They are looking at you as hard as you are looking them.

Be prepared to do some hard soul-searching. Before you apply to any Order or monastery, be ready to spend a great deal of time in prayer. You will have to go through interviews, psychological evaluations, physicals, credit checks, reference checks, transcript reviews, retreats, and just about anything else the vocations director can think of to make sure he/she knows as much about you as possible. Think of it as penance.

Practical Advice

If you are considering religious life right out of undergraduate school, consider again and again. Get a job. Spend two or three years doing some unpaid volunteer work for one of your favorite Orders. These help you to mature spiritually and will make you a better religious. Most communities these days need folks with practical life-skills like managing money, maintaining cars and equipment, etc.

If you have school loans, start paying them back ASAP! For men, this is not such a huge problem b/c most men's communities will assume loans on a case by case basis when you take solemn vows. For some reason, women's communities do not do this as much. Regardless, paying back your loans shows maturity. I was extremely fortunate and had my grad school loans cancelled after I was ordained! Long story. Don't ask.

Don't make any large, credit-based purchases before joining a community. Cars, houses, boats, etc. will have to be disposed of once you are in vows. Of course, if you are 22 and not thinking of joining an Order until you are 32, well, that's different story. But be aware that you cannot "take it with you" when you come into a community.

Tell family, friends, professors, employers that you thinking about religious life. It helps to hear from others what they think of you becoming a religious. Their perceptions cannot be determinative, but they can be insightful.

Be very open and honest with anyone you may become involve with romantically that you are thinking of religious life. One of the saddest things I have ever seen was a young woman in my office suffering because her fiance broke off their three year engagement to become a monk. She had no idea he was even thinking about it. There is no alternative here: you must tell. Hedging your bet with a boyfriend or girlfriend on the odds that you might not join up is fraudulent and shows a deep immaturity.

Be prepared for denial, scorn, ridicule, and outright opposition from family and friends. I can't tell you how many young men and women I have counseled who have decided not to follow their religious vocations b/c family and friends thought it was a waste of their lives. It's sad to say, but families are often the primary source of opposition. The potential loss of grandchildren is a deep sorrow for many moms and dads. Be ready to hear about it.

Questions to ask yourself:

What is it precisely that makes me think I have a religious vocation?

What gifts do I have that point me to this end?

Can I live continent chaste celibacy for the rest of my life?

Can I be completely dependent on this group of men/women for all my physical needs? For most, if not all, of my emotional and spiritual needs?

Am I willing to work in order to provide resources for my Order/community? Even if my work seems to be more difficult, demanding, time-consuming, etc. than any other member of the community?

Am I willing to surrender my plans for my life and rely on my religious superiors to use my gifts for the mission of the Order? In other words, can I be obedient. . .even and especially when I think my superiors are cracked?

Am I willing to go where I am needed? Anywhere in the world?

Can I listen to those who disagree with me in the community and still live in fraternity? (A hard one!)

Am I willing join the Order/community and learn what I need to learn to be a good friar, monk, or nun? Or, do I see my admission as an opportunity to "straighten these guys out"?

How do I understand "failure" in religious life? I mean, how do I see and cope with brothers/sisters who do not seem to be doing what they vowed to do as religious?

What would count as success for me as a religious? Failure?

How patient am I with others as they grow in holiness? With myself?

I can personally attest to having "failed" to answer just about every single one of these before I became a Dominican. I was extremely fortunate to fall in with a community that has a high tolerance for friars who need to fumble around and start over. In the four years before I took solemn vows, there were three times when I had decided to leave the Order and a few more times when the prospects of becoming an "OP" didn't look too good. I hung on. They hung on. And here I am. For better or worse. Here I am.

Archbishop Burke on the Culture of Death

Archbishop Raymond Burke lays out the Catholic resistance to the Culture of Death!

6. Over the past several months, our nation has chosen a path which more completely denies any legal guarantee of the most fundamental human right, the right to life, to the innocent and defenseless unborn. Our nation, which had its beginning in the commitment to safeguard and promote the inalienable right to "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" for all, without boundary, is more and more setting arbitrary limits to her commitment. Those in power now determine who will or will not be accorded the legal protection of the most fundamental right to life. First the legal protection of the right to life is denied to the unborn and, then, to those whose lives have become burdened by advanced years, special needs or serious illness, or whose lives are somehow judged to be unprofitable or unworthy.

7. What is more, those in power propose to force physicians and other health care professionals, in other words, those with a particular responsibility to protect and foster human life, to participate, contrary to what their conscience requires, in the destruction of unborn human lives, from the first or embryonic stage of development to the moment of birth. Our laws may soon force those who have dedicated themselves to the care of the sick and the promotion of good health to give up their noble life work, in order to be true to the most sacred dictate of their consciences. What is more, if our nation continues down the path it has taken, healthcare institutions operating in accord with the natural moral law, which teaches us that innocent human life is to be protected and fostered at all times and that it is always and everywhere evil to destroy an innocent human life, will be forced to close their doors.

8. At the same time, the fundamental society, that is, the family, upon which the life of our nation is founded and depends, is under attack by legislation which redefines marriage to include a relationship between two persons of the same sex and permits them to adopt children. In the same line, it is proposed to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. At the root of the confusion and error about marriage is the contraceptive mentality - which would have us believe that the inherently procreative nature of the conjugal union can, in practice, be mechanically or chemically eliminated, while the marital act remains unitive. It cannot be so. With unparalleled arrogance, our nation is choosing to renounce its foundation upon the faithful, indissoluble, and inherently procreative love of a man and a woman in marriage, and, in violation of what nature itself teaches us, to replace it with a so-called marital relationship, according to the definition of those who exercise the greatest power in our society.

9. The path of violation of the most fundamental human rights and of the integrity of marriage and the family, which our nation is traveling, is not accidental. It is part of the program set forth by those whom we have freely chosen to lead our nation. The part of the program in question was not unknown to us; it was announced to us beforehand and a majority of our fellow citizens, including a majority of our fellow Catholics, chose the leadership which is now implementing it with determination. For example, I refer to our President's declared support of the Freedom of Choice Act, which would make illegal any legislation restricting procured abortion; his repeal of the Mexico City Policy, permitting U.S. funding of procured abortion in other nations, together with the grant of fifty million dollars to the United Nations Fund for Population Activities which, for example, supported the Republic of China's policy of one child per family by means of government-dictated sterilization and abortion; his proposal to rescind the regulations appended to the federal Conscience Clause, which assure that, not only physicians, but also all health-care workers may refuse to provide services, information or counsel to patients regarding medications and procedures which are contrary to their conscience; his removal of limitations on federal funding of embryonic-stem-cell research, involving the wholesale destruction of human life at the embryonic stage of development; and his choice of the members of his administration, who are remarkable for the number of major officials, including several Catholics, who favor the denial of the right to life to the unborn and the violation of the integrity of marriage and the family. These are only some examples of a consistent pattern of decisions by the leadership of our nation which is taking our nation down a path which denies the fundamental right to life to the innocent and defenseless unborn and violates the fundamental integrity of the marital union and the family.

10. As Catholics, we cannot fail to note, with the greatest sadness, the number of our fellow Catholics, elected or appointed by our President to public office, who cooperate fully in the advancement of a national agenda was is anti-life and anti-family. Most recently, the appointment of a Catholic as Secretary of Health and Human Services, who has openly and persistently cooperated with the industry of procured abortion in our nation, is necessarily a source of the deepest embarrassment to Catholics and a painful reminder of the most serious responsibility of Catholics to uphold the natural moral law, which is the irreplaceable foundation of just relationships among the citizens of our nation. It grieves me to say that the support of anti-life legislation by Catholics in public office is so common that those who are not Catholic have justifiably questioned whether the Church's teaching regarding the inviolable dignity of innocent human life is firm and unchanging. It gives the impression that the Church herself can change the law which God has written on every human heart from the beginning of time and has declared in the Fifth Commandment of the Decalogue: Thou shalt not kill.

[. . .]

24. In the present situation of our nation, a serious question has arisen about the moral obligation of Catholics to work for the overturning of the Supreme Court decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. There are those who would tell us that such work is futile and, therefore, is to be abandoned, so that we can devote ourselves to help prevent individuals from choosing abortion. As Catholics, we can never cease to work for the correction of gravely unjust laws. Law is a fundamental expression of our culture and implicitly teaches citizens what is morally acceptable. Our efforts to assist those who are tempted to do what is always and everywhere wrong or are suffering from the effects of having committed a gravely immoral act, which are essential expressions of the charity which unites us as citizens of the nation, ultimately make little sense, if we remain idle regarding unjust laws and decisions of the courts regarding the same intrinsic evils. We are never justified in abandoning the work of changing legislation and of reversing decisions of the courts which are anti-life and anti-family.