Ciao! (for now...)

Dear HancAquam Readers,

I am off for another adventure. . .the squirrels of Mississippi await my arrival.

Then off to Houston before returning to Rome for another exciting year of gelato, the Italian postal service, Catholic tourism, and heavy reading/writing.

Blogging will resume around Sept 4th.

While in Houston (Sept 3-Oct 3) I will be available for talks/retreats. . .frankly, any sort of work I can do to raise some $$$ for my thin student budget!

I've given talks/retreats on:

Faith and Science
Dominican Spirituality
Charity and Truth
Documents of Vatican Two
Pope Benedict's Encyclicals
Basic Catholic Moral Theology
Suffering and Death for Christians
Vocation Discernment
The Mass: Line by Line
Basics of Confession
Theology of Campus Ministry. . .

If you have a special interest, just let me know and maybe we can work something out!

God bless, Fr. Philip

Oh! Don't forget to get a copy of my prayer book, Treasures Old & New: Traditional Prayers for Today's Catholics, vol 1. The publisher wrote to me yesterday and reported that they have already have 680 pre-publications orders! It's not even in the bookstores yet.

Oh, oh! And visit the WISH LIST. . .of course!

Catholics and health-care reform

I'm asked rather frequently these days how faithful Catholics should be thinking about health-care reform. We seem to be in a tight bind between the Catholic imperative to care for others and the equally Catholic imperative to respect individual conscience and freedom.

Here's the very basic question I ask when evaluating any reform of the health-care system: what are the moral principles that stand under the proposed system and drive its inevitably tough choices?

Given the answer to this question, I ask another: what system of laws, regulations, incentives, etc. will be used to implement these moral principles?

In the current debate it seems to me that the proposals under review are based on a highly objectionable utilitarianism; that is, the reforms proposed rely on a variety of cost-benefit analyses that require those making medical decisions to commodify human life. If those making the decisions are not the ones who will suffer the consequences of the decisions made, then the utilitarianism in use becomes nothing short of immoral.

If, as a 95 year old Dominican friar, I decide to forego cancer treatment that will cost my province $150,000, that's my right as a person. However, having this decision made by a government accountant is simply wrong. I may use cost-benefit analysis to determine whether or not I will receive medical treatment. The government cannot. If the argument is made that the government will be paying for the treatment, therefore the government gets to decide on the treatment's value for my life, then I would retort: get the government out of the health-care business!

My fundamental worry is this: I simply do not trust the government to do the right thing, meaning I do think that the government is the proper body for deciding on the relative value of medical treatments. In order to be fair, such decisions would have to be made on objective criteria. We can't have the government deciding life and death issues based on circumstance and intention. This breeds injustice and inequality. Given this, it falls to bureaucrats to establish objective guidelines for decision-making, guidelines that ignore everything that makes me a person created in the image and likeness of God by placing a monetary value on my life. I am reduced to the value of my life expectancy and weighed against monetary costs of extending my life beyond a pre-determined point.

At some point between now (at 45 years old) and my expected age for death, I reach a tipping-point and become an potentially expensive liability to the public treasury. And the only thing that seems to matter is my age. Wholly ignored as irrevelant in the decision-making process is my potential to create something of value after a certain age; and worst of all, my inherent value as a person created by God to flourish is never even considered. Under a utilitarian cost-benefit analysis this inherent worth has no monetary value whatsoever.

So, do the proposals currently under debate respect the inherent worth of the individual person created and sustained by a loving God? Are the proposed medical decision-making processes grounded in the notion that patients have the freedom of conscience inherent to being persons? Will these processes reduce the person to a monetary value or treat persons as inherently valuable?

I don't think so.

Mocking the Obama-icon

This vid drew my attention as a literary theorist.

One staple of literary criticism is the process of digging out the symbols, signs, icons, and idols of an author/text and subjecting them to "a reading." In my time in grad school, the favored kinds of readings to do were Marxist, feminist, and deconstructive--all of these offered (and still do) perfectly legit methods of getting at an interpretation of a text. No one method is fool-proof or absolute (the $5 academic word is "totalizing"). We were encouraged and sometimes even required to mix it up a bit and produce Marxist-feminist, or feminist-deconstructive, etc. readings that revealed all sorts of literary goodness in the text, or rather, revealed the reader's meta-narrative assumptions about how literary texts are produced and consumed (ahem).

Anyway, this vid does an excellent job of deconstructing the (in)famous Obama-icon we see popping up on all sorts of government propaganda. The critic here makes a simple point: at no other time in American history have we seen a President of the U.S. "branded" in the way that Obama is being branded. He notes that the Obama-icon has replaced the presidential seal in many venues and has even been displayed overlaid on the presidential seal to suggest the dissolution of the presidency and the ascendenacy of The One.

This would be scary if Americans were not so marketing-savvy. We get it. Political icons only work if they manage to sublimate themselves as signs; that is, if they become part of the semiotic landscape, disappearing so as to stand up for something more substantial. Political icons as brand labels fail precisely because they mark out an impermanent personality, a changeable, compromising agenda, and the political ambitions of a narcissist.

The American flag, the presidential seal, the blind-folded statue of justice, "We the People. . ." all stand for enduring principles and ideals. The Obama-icon stands for nothing more than the political ambitions of a Chicago bureaucrat who happens to occupy the White House for a time. Obama is not America. Neither was Bush, Clinton, Bush I, Reagan, Carter, or any of the others. All of these men served a larger agenda, a bigger principle. The Obama-icon and its attached ideology makes one wonder if The One serves the same ideals.

The critic in this vid correctly predicts that the Obama-icon will backfire on The One. Perpetual campaign mode is no way to run a country. Already the "O" icon is being lampooned. And the one thing a serious narcissist* cannot tolerate is ridicule.

*There's nothing special about Obama's narcissism. Anyone entering politics has to be something of a narcissist.

The red-herrings of the LCWR

Meeting recently in New Orleans, the LCWR issued a statement on the upcoming theological assessment by the CDF. Among the predictable "pearl clutching" exclamations of indignation are two charges against the Vatican's probe that are meant to serve as red herrings. Both these charges are made under the general charge of "lack of transparency":

1). Why can't we see the report itself?

2). Who's paying for this investigation?

The first charge sets up an ominous specter of secretive Vatican-doings. You can almost hear the dark, foreboding music in the background as the sisters furrow their collective brow. The second charge plants the idea that the investigation is being bankrolled by some nefarious right-wing group, implying that the investigation would not be taking place if this group had not paid the Vatican to do it.

Why are these charges red-herrings? How do they attempt to distract readers? The LCWR is either teaching with the Catholic Church, or it isn't. They are either leading their associated nuns and sisters in the apostolic faith, or they aren't. The investigation is set to determine whether or not these women religious--vowed to serve the Church--are, in fact, serving the Church honestly or using their vast resources and influence to undermine the Catholic faith. Having access to the reports will not change nearly forty-years of public statements supporting women's ordination, same-sex marriage, feminist political ideology, etc. Knowing who (if anyone) is paying for the investigation will not change these public statements either. Basically, these charges by the LCWR are analogous to a reckless driver charging the police officer who stops him with reckless driving himself. How else did you catch me, Officer? You must have been speeding too! The officer's speeding in no way mitigates the recklessness of the indignate driver.

Here's what the LCWR is really afraid of:

From the Instrumentum Laboris (this is not the CDF document but the working instrument for the assessment of the quality of life for the sisters, a separate investigation: "If any sister wishes to express her opinion about some aspect of her religious institute, she may do so freely and briefly, in writing and with signature, specifically identifying her institute by title and location. In order to respect each sister’s freedom of conscience, any sister may send her written comments directly and confidentially to Mother Mary Clare Millea at the Apostolic Visitation Office (PO Box 4328, Hamden, CT, 06514); or by fax: (203-287-5467) by November 1, 2009."

Why is this scary? The LCWR knows what many of us know about the "sisters in the convents." They do not support the neo-pagan/eco-feminist agenda of their leadership conference, but often find themselves intimidated into silence. By allowing individual sisters to write to Mother Clare (the lead investigator for this assessment), the Vatican is encouraging sisters to express themselves outside the tightly controlled, ideologically pure agenda of the LCWR. In other words, this move undermines the power of the LCWR to manage the message. The last thing the leadership of any self-proclaimed revolutionary movement wants is public criticism from those they claim to represent. How often do "people's revolutions" end up in the hands of elitist demagogues?

My own experience with nuns and sisters with regard to both assessments is telling. I've yet to run across a "sister in the convent" who understands the reasons for these assessments. When I describe the stated reasons, they are often shocked and saddened to hear what the LCWR has been spewing against the Church in their name. All they hear about the assessments comes from the LCWR.

It it vitally important for Catholics to understand that the CDF's theological assessement of the LCWR is NOT an investigation into the theological opinions of individual sisters or congregations. The leadership conference itself is being assessed; that is, the focus of the assessement is on the public statements of conference speakers, conference resolutions, and projects funded by the conference to determine whether or not these adhere to basic Church teaching. In its forty-year history, the LCWR has publicly supported women's ordination; overturning the Church's teaching on same-sex morality; and seriously questioned the unique and final role of Christ in salvation history (i.e., Christ may not be the only way to God, leading some to hold that other religions can lead to salvation on their own terms). These three areas of dissent have been marked for special attention by the CDF.

This bears repeating: any negative conclusion made by the CDF with regard to its investigation accures to the LCWR itself. . .NOT to individual sisters or congregations; meaning, if the CDF concludes that the LCWR has been deficient in teaching the Catholic faith, this should not be understood as a condemnation of any one sister or congregation. Investigations into the work of individual theologians is an entirely different process that sometimes takes up to ten years or more.

I am being so adamant about this distinction b/c I fear that faithful Catholics may conclude that a negative evaluation of the LCWR by the CDF means that all (or even most) American religious women are involved in dissident activity. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am confident that the overwhelming majority of our sisters are doing exactly what they vowed to do: serve the Church. The "non serviam" that the LCWR often proclaims to the Church should not be extended to most sisters.

Please offer prayers and fasts for the LCWR, the CDF, Mother Clare, and especially for the innocent sisters and nuns who are being subjected to this investigation through no fault of their own. Also, encourage individual sisters to write to Mother Clare and express themselves freely.

H/T: Ignatius Insight

Sample pages of my prayer book

WooHoo!!!

Liguori Publications has sample pages of my prayer book up for view.

Go here and then buy one!

By the way, all royalties from the sell of this book go to my province.

(Please link to the sample pages if you have a blog)

The joker behind the Joker

You really gotta love how politics produces the best ironies in the world!

Remember that Obama-Joker poster that popped up in L.A. with "socialism" as a caption?

Remember how the NYT, CNN, WaPo, LAT, and just about every other Old Media parrot machine assured us that whoever created the poster was obviously an angry, white, Republican racist?

Remember how the above mentioned parrots squawked about how denying the blatant racism of the poster is itself a form of racism?

Remember how you reacted when you discovered that the poster's creator is a left-liberal Palestinian-American Democrat?

I do! I laughed. Hard.

Caffeine Quotes

"Liberalism that is not anchored in natural law, that has no framework of values by which to identify the true and the good -- a liberalism at the mercy of relativism -- is bound to become illiberal." And illiberality always serves those with the most money and guns.

+

Speaking of illiberal irrationality. . . "If you kill an unborn child, the legal response depends upon the mother's perspective. If she wanted to bear the child, then you're a killer, liable to criminal prosecution. If she didn't want to bear the child, and you're properly licensed to do the killing, then you're engaged in a legitimate form of commerce, and deserve proper payment."

+

A chilling wind blows from the north. . . "As President Obama and his Democrat-controlled Congress try to force healthcare reform on an American population largely pleased with the current system, our neighbors to the north are actually considering improving their structure by -- wait for it!!! -- welcoming additional competition from private insurers."

+

Compassion in the service of a lie is not compassionate: "To defend the truth, to articulate it with humility and conviction, and to bear witness to it in life are therefore exacting and indispensable forms of charity. Charity, in fact, 'rejoices in the truth' (1 Cor 13:6)." (Pope Benedict XVI)

+

"It's 'debate' now, not 'conversation,' because the wrong people are doing the talking. The real conversation is what those people who aren't talking would say." In the Church, progressives call conversation "dialogue." This is code for "keep them talking while we make the changes we want to make so that when we're done we can claim that our unwarranted changes are now the status quo." Cf. the Episcopal Church, Spirits of VC2, ad nau.

+

"For whatever reason, the Obama administration has acted as if those hagiographical comparisons to FDR were apt. It let its liberal allies from the coasts drive the agenda and write the key bills, and it's played straw man semantic games to marginalize the opposition [. . .] write bills that excite the left, infuriate the right, and scare the center; insist on speedy passage through the Congress; and use budget reconciliation to ram it through in case the expected super majority did not emerge. This might have flown during FDR's 100 Days. But this is not 1933 and Barack Obama is no Franklin Roosevelt." Hey, Rahm! Where'd you put my mandate?!

+

"'We believe that there are important differences among the college majors in world views and overall philosophies of life....,' they write. '[O]ur results suggest that postmodernism, rather than science, is the bête noir -- the strongest antagonist -- of religiosity.'" Told ya.

Young Catholics are really Protestants

NCReporter has an article up on a recent survey of younger Catholics and their attitudes about the Church. It's a sad story.

Here's the saddest part:

While a "sizeable minority" of young Catholics, estimated at about 20 percent, are deeply religious, attending Mass and confession regularly and thinking of themselves as "orthodox," most are less rigid in their observance ["rigid" is NCR-speak for what the Church calls "faithful"]. "As long as they believe in God, Jesus' Incarnation and Resurrection, and Mary as the Mother of God and as long as they do whatever they can to love their neighbor, they do not feel obliged to attend Mass every week, go to Confession every year or even marry in the church," according to American Catholics.

So, in other words, a majority of young Catholics in this survey have identified themselves as Protestants. . .with a little Marian stuff thrown in for flavor. Following the Protestant pattern of mimicking the zeitgeist of the dominant culture, these folks also have a decidedly consumerist philosophy about where they attend Mass (when they do) and what they choose to believe (if anything).

Since the whole goal of the "Spirit of Vatican Two" cadre is the Americanization and Protestantization of the Roman Catholic Church, the NCR crew is crowing about this. Lots of work to to. . .lots of work!

Of Mice and Friars. . .

I wrote to a friend recently, "So goes the plans of mice and friars. . ."

Sometimes the itinerant life of a friar is exciting. Lots of travel (naturally), new places and faces, new challenges.

And sometimes all that excitement, travel, etc. is just headache-worthy.

My fall plans have changed a bit. I will be leaving Irving this Thursday to drive to MS for a visit with the parents. Then I am off to live in Houston until time to return to Rome on October 3rd.

Why the delay in returning to the Eternal City? Along with my thesis director and the dean, I've decided to move my comps and thesis defense to Jan 2010. I'm not so worried about completing the thesis or passing the comps. It's the French translation exam that's worrying me. If I failed the exam, I wouldn't graduate in time to teach this fall. This would leave the department a prof short and the class I was scheduled to teach untaught. Since the undergrad program is based on a progression of courses, the spring courses based on this untaught fall course would be hampered. The students would be left without a key step in their program.

So, I'll finish in Jan 2010 and start up my Roman teaching career then!

P.S. The shipping address for the WISH LIST has been changed to reflect this movement of the Spirit! And recently updated. . . :-)

Moving around at Mass

Every time I teach Western Theological Tradition at U.D., I am newly impressed with the Catholic tradition of sacramental theology. Where else can you find a solid understanding of how rational creatures can worship their Creator without becoming either materialist-pagans or Platonic spiritualists?

Most Catholics intuitively "get" the use of material things in worship--bread, wine, candles, incense, color, music, etc. What is often not so well understood is the use of gesture and movement--sign of the cross, standing/kneeling, processing, etc.

We've all heard the jokes about "Catholic calisthenics." Up, down, kneel, sit, stand, cross, up, down. Why do we spend so much time moving around? On a recent visit to my parents' community church, I was struck by the fact that we stood at the beginning to sing a hymn and then sat for the rest of the service. The only movement was reaching for the hymnal. They passed a communion tray and a collection plate; other than this simple, utilitarian movement, we sat right where we were for the whole hour. Do I need to contrast this with the typical Catholic Mass? I don't think so.

Why do we move around so much? There are lots of good liturgical reasons for doing so. And there are lots of anthropological reasons as well. But I think the most important reasons are deeply personal--not "personal" as in "me and mine" but personal as in "for the person."

Each of us is a Body/Soul together in an intimate relationship that we call personhood--the state of being a person, whole and entire, created in the image and likeness of God. For the Christian, the goal in this life is to be justified before God through the saving merits of Christ's sacrificial death and then grow in holiness by doing His work with the help of His grace. We are justified by faith and sanctified in works. Both our initial justification and our subsequent sanctification happens because we receive the graces He offers to us.

So, how do we receive grace? Typically, we think of "receiving grace" as little more than having grace given to us. But this only part of the story. God can give us grace all day long. We never have to receive it. His grace is not truly graceful until we take it in as a gift.; that is, His grace only becomes effective for us when we say yes to Him. If we understand grace to be a spiritual energy boost, then we may find ourselves verging toward the Platonic side of the faith and coming to believe that we are only valuable as persons in so far as we are souls. This threatens to ignore the body. When we ignore the body's job in perfecting us as persons, we ignore a basic tenet of the faith, namely, our responsibility to be living signs of Christ for others.

Moving around during the Mass reminds us that we are embodied souls seduced by a loving God to return to Him. The journey of return (the reditus) is graced by God and made by each of us as whole persons. . .not merely as souls on a trip to heaven or as bodies working toward earthly perfection. Liturgical gesture, posture, movement is meant to keep us "in the body" even as we soak up the soulful benefits of the Eucharist.

I've argued in class that our current secular obsession with gym bodies, health food, vitamins, etc. is a postmodern form of the Albigensian heresy St Dominic fought against. While the Albigensians held that the body is evil and the soul good, postmodern Albigensians reverse this and hold that only the body matters. If the soul comes into play at all, it is relegated to a subordinate role as a kind of "peace of mind" or "inner relaxation." What's important is that I feel good; meaning, my body is healthy as an organic machine. Though physical health is vital to the person, spiritual health is not achieved through diet and exercise. Spiritual health requires recognizing and striving for a transcendent purpose, a goal well-beyond the impermanent things of the material world.

Ideally, for Christians, we do not seek a balance of body and soul. We seek a total intergration in the holy person. "Balance" implies a shared purpose, a separate but equal goal of each half of Me. Not so. During the Mass, we pray silently while kneeling. We process up for communion while singing. The priest prays with hands raised; he bows during his private prayer; he blesses with words and the sign of the cross. Each physical act is done with spiritual intent, purpose. There are no "halves" to unite. No parts to bring together.

Imagine for a moment a Mass where there is no gesture. No movement. Everyone remains absolutely still and the Mass is read out loud. Or. . .imagine a Mass with no words, only gesture and movement. What would we think upon exiting the Church after Masses like these? I imagine we would think that we not been to Mass at all, that we have been sorely cheated of what we need as persons to grow in holiness!

Simple Profession

Please pray for our brothers making simple profession this morning in Irving!
Friars Peter Damian Marie Harris, Tan Leo-Hyacinth Do, Joseph Dominic Velazquez,
and Joseph Marie Dussouy

CONGRATS!

On hooligans and cookies

Had a great time last night with MightyMom, Subvet, and the Hooligans--who were not all THAT hooliganish. . .exceedingly cute but not too hooliganish! I am still going to argue that two year olds are capable of absorbing sufficient nutrition through the skin while eating. That's the only explanation for why the Littlest Hooligan is still alive and thriving.

BTW, Subvet, just to let you know. . .most of the cookies made it back to the priory. . .most, well, OK. . .half. :-)

What happens after we die?

Heather Barrett, OP attended the Lay Dominican retreat last Saturday. She writes to ask: "One question has occurred to me. One thing mentioned at the retreat is that human persons are body and soul, integrated. Which I understand. But it makes me wonder what happens to us when we die and the body and soul separate. Who are we when in that state of separation? Are we still 'ourselves'?"

My attempt at an answer. . .

Human persons are body/soul. The best way to understand "person" is "substantial relationship," that is, a relationship that defines a substance (what a thing is). Without This Body, I am not Philip. Without This Soul, I am not Philip. And unless This Body and This Soul are in a substantial relationship, I am not a person.

We define death as the separation of the soul from the body. The soul is immortal. The body is not. At death, I will cease to be a person. I will cease being Philip. According to Catholic teaching, Benedictus Deus, my soul will be immediately judged and accordingly disposed--heaven, hell, purgatory.

Now things get murky. What about the body that was once in substantial relationship with my soul, making me Philip? Well, that body undergoes the natural process of decomposition. And awaits its resurrection.

If we understand the resurrection of the body as a future historical event, something will happen that will transform that body into a suitable element for a renewal of the substantial relationship with my soul, and I will once again be a person. If we understand the resurrection of the body to be an event that is always, already occurring from all-eternity, then something else happens to the body, and I am me wherever I find myself "after" death.

Here's the problem: we tend to think of the resurrection of the body in terms of future conditionals b/c we are embodied souls while still living, meaning as physical beings we experience the world as a continuous sequence of events located in space and measured in duration by time. However, at death, we are no longer embodied souls, so we do not experience space-time at all. This could mean that what we call the resurrection of body is an immediate consequence of death.

But my body is still physically present in the grave. So, what does it mean to say that my body is resurrected at the moment of death? I have no idea. The Church points to Christ's transfiguration as his promise of what happens to us at death. It is entirely unclear to me what transfiguration means for us.

We talk about a future resurrection of the body b/c it makes the most sense to us as embodied souls, i.e. as rational animals that live in space-time. What immortal life after death and the resurrection looks like is a Mystery.

Hope that helps a little. . .

Congress: "chaotic, rapacious, solipsistic"

My poor brain is leaking. . .

First, the NYT publishes an entire piece about the Catholic Church and never once mentions sexual scandal, or quotes a reliable dissident harpy like Richard McBrien or the roldex-ready media star, Tom Reese, SJ, or even hints that American Catholics disagree with the Pope on contraception or women "priests." Amazing enough, right?

Now, Salon's own Camile Paglia, that odd-ball liberal, has spanked B.O. for his health-care revolution and called on Madam "Let the Nazis Eat Cake" Pelosi to resign over her condemnation of the citizentry's free expression of legitimate political dissent.

I fully expect CNN and MSNBC to renounce their P.R. contracts with the White House and start reporting as real journalists again! Why not? Apparently, miracles are swirling all around us!

From Paglia:

[. . .] Except for that wily fox, David Axelrod, who could charm gold threads out of moonbeams, Obama seems to be surrounded by juvenile tinhorns, bumbling mediocrities and crass bully boys.

Case in point: the administration's grotesque mishandling of healthcare reform, one of the most vital issues facing the nation. Ever since Hillary Clinton's megalomaniacal annihilation of our last best chance at reform in 1993 (all of which was suppressed by the mainstream media when she was running for president), Democrats have been longing for that happy day when this issue would once again be front and center.

But who would have thought that the sober, deliberative Barack Obama would have nothing to propose but vague and slippery promises -- or that he would so easily cede the leadership clout of the executive branch to a chaotic, rapacious, solipsistic Congress? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom I used to admire for her smooth aplomb under pressure, has clearly gone off the deep end with her bizarre rants about legitimate town-hall protests by American citizens. She is doing grievous damage to the party and should immediately step down.

[. . .]

I just don't get it. Why the insane rush to pass a bill, any bill, in three weeks? And why such an abject failure by the Obama administration to present the issues to the public in a rational, detailed, informational way? The U.S. is gigantic; many of our states are bigger than whole European nations. The bureaucracy required to institute and manage a nationalized health system here would be Byzantine beyond belief and would vampirically absorb whatever savings Obama thinks could be made. And the transition period would be a nightmare of red tape and mammoth screw-ups, which we can ill afford with a faltering economy.

As with the massive boondoggle of the stimulus package, which Obama foolishly let Congress turn into a pork rut, too much has been attempted all at once; focused, targeted initiatives would, instead, have won wide public support. How is it possible that Democrats, through their own clumsiness and arrogance, have sabotaged healthcare reform yet again? Blaming obstructionist Republicans is nonsensical because Democrats control all three branches of government. It isn't conservative rumors or lies that are stopping healthcare legislation; it's the justifiable alarm of an electorate that has been cut out of the loop and is watching its representatives construct a tangled labyrinth for others but not for themselves. No, the airheads of Congress will keep their own plush healthcare plan -- it's the rest of us guinea pigs who will be thrown to the wolves.

Read the whole jaw-dropping article.

Someone didn't get the anti-Catholic memo at NYT

From the otherwise despicable NYT, "New nuns and Priests Seen Opting for Tradition":

A new study of Roman Catholic nuns and priests in the United States shows that an aging, predominantly white generation is being succeeded by a smaller group of more racially and ethnically diverse recruits who are attracted to the religious orders that practice traditional prayer rituals and wear habits. [Yes, you read that correctly: the orders that have spent decades shoving their leftist versions of diversity, difference, and tolerance down the throat of the Church aren't attracting the majority of minority vocations. . .oh the irony!]

They are the generation defined by the Second Vatican Council, of the 1960s, which modernized the church and many of its religious orders [of course, VC2 did nothing of the sort]. Many nuns gave up their habits, moved out of convents, earned higher educational degrees and went to work in the professions and in community service [and some of them chose to become radical Earth-worshiping neo-pagan feminists]. The study confirms what has long been suspected: that these more modern religious orders are attracting the fewest new members.

[. . .]

“We’ve heard anecdotally that the youngest people coming to religious life are distinctive, and they really are,” said Sister Mary Bendyna, executive director of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. “They’re more attracted to a traditional style of religious life, where there is community living, common prayer, having Mass together, praying the Liturgy of the Hours together. They are much more likely to say fidelity to the church is important to them. And they really are looking for communities where members wear habits.” [Of course! Who wants to spend the time, energy, and money joining a football team that refuses to wear football uniforms and never plays the game?]

Of the new priests and nuns who recently joined religious orders, two-thirds chose orders that wear a habit all the time or regularly during prayer or ministry, the study found. [This is all fine by me, so long as these new recruits understand that the habit will not magically transform them into holy people.]

+

This is a remarkably well-written article from the NYT. Not one snide remark from the writer. Not one lonely bellow from a dying dinosaur assuring us that the Spirit of Vatican Two will bring a "New Church" into being. Nothing really negative about the Church at all. . .not even a closing question about how many of these recruits will turn into child-molsters! Truly, truly remarkable.

The Road I hope we never travel

If you've not read Cormac McCarthy's The Road yet, do it! You might want to wait for a cold, cloudy day. . .or maybe not. My lit class starts discussion of this novel today. When I first read it two years ago I had no idea what to make of the form, the language, the message. . .it is at once lyrical, epic, post-apocalyptic, and down right tear-jerky. Now, that's hard to pull off in a 240 page novel!

The novel tells the story of a father and son traveling to a sea-shore in a post-apocalyptic world. Everything is dead but a few humans. . .and some of those are cannibals. The father is obsessed with survival and the son with remaining human. Therein lies the central but subtle conflict of the book.

Here's a sample paragraph.

The land was gullied and eroded and barren. The bones of dead creatures sprawled in the washes. Middens of anonymous trash. Farmhouses in the fields scoured of their paint and the clapboards spooned and sprung from the wallstuds. All of it shadowless and without feature. The road descended through a jungle of dead kudzu. A marsh where the dead reeds lay over the water. Beyond the edge of the fields the sullen haze hung over the earth and sky alike. By late afternoon it had begun to snow and they went on with the tarp over them and the wet snow hissing on the plastic.

Also, keep a dictionary handy. McCarthy is meriless with his arcane vocabulary.

While waiting on the miracle of caffeine. . .

Wandering around waiting for the Caffeine to Kick-in. . .

Like everyone else, I've been following the health-care "debate" on CNN and Fox. And, like most everyone else, I'm not exactly excited about the prospects of having our health insurance run by the same government that gave us $20,000 hammers and the IRS. My personal stake in the debate isn't all that clear b/c most religious participate in some form of health-care trust fund that negotiate fees with doctors and super-pharmacies like Medco. Essentially, we have a "self-pay" system. What B.O.'s plan would do to/for us is beyond me. Shawn Tully of CNNFortune has an interesting article posted entitled, "5 Key Freedoms You'll Lose in Health Care Reform." One thing that bothers me about the rhetoric on this issue is the way the phrase "health care reform" is used almost exclusively by the MSM as an equivalent for B.O.'s plan. You will hear from B.O. supporters that opponents of B.O.'s reforms are opponents of all reform. This is simply false. I keep thinking to myself: "We are the country that invented the A-bomb, the personal computer, the internet, etc. . .surely we are smart enough to reform health insurance w/o socializing health care!" I say, "UNLEASH the Dogs of Invention!" (Hmmmm. . . think the caffeine just kicked in. . .)

+

Quick insurance story. . .when I worked as the Team Leader of an adolescent psych hospital, I was frequently called "up front" to access teens for admission. When the admissions people handed me the paperwork, they stuck a sticky-note on the forms that indicated the family's insurance. This told me immediately what questions to ask. If the note indicated that the teen had private insurance provided by his/her parents' employer, the questions were fairly routine and the standards of admissions were very low. However, if the note indicated that the teen was covered under the public option provided by the state, admission was almost an impossibility. The potential patient had to be demonstrably suicidal and even then he/she would only be admitted for three day acute care. . .the very minimum sort of observation and med evaluation. Public option patients were prescribed older, less effective drugs b/c they were cheaper and rarely received more than one evaluation from the staff shrink. Even though we were all statist liberals on staff, we knew that public option insurance was not the way to go.

+

A couple of generous Book Benefactors sent me Pierre-Marie Emonet's three volume set on Aquinas' philosophy of being. I highly recommend these books. They are at once poetic, philosophically astute, and accessible. Having recently taught large sections of my Dominican brother's (in)famous Summa, I am reminded (again) that his contribution to Catholic philosophy, theology, and spirituality is beyond measure. Most Catholics would find the Summa to be plodding and overly rigid in style. It is. But it was meant to be textbook for first year grad students and it most definitely reads like one. Aquinas' literary talents are better displayed in his biblical ccommentaries and hymns. He was a medieval multi-tasking machine!

+

Other excellent books on Aquinas: Fr. Paul Philibert's English translation of Fr. M-D. Chenu's book, Aquinas and His Role in Theology; Fr. Robert Barron, Thomas Aquinas, Spiritual Master; Fr. Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (this is essential reading for seminarians); Fr. Tom O'Meara, Thomas Aquinas, Theologian; and Fr. Jean-Pierre Torrell's two volume set, Saint Thomas Aquinas. Timothy McDermott's Summa Theologiae: A Concise Translation is worth it for those who want to read Aquinas himself but find the standard translation too much to bear.

+

Down the rabbit-hole. . .several readers have written to ask me to comment on the controversy raging around B.O. birth certificate and the question of his nationality. Now, I love good conspiracy theories! They appeal to my literary love for the beauty of putting all the pieces together to form a coherent worldview. My distaste for B.O.'s policies is no secret. But the idea that he made it to the White House w/o someone uncovering his foreign nationality seems a bit too much to swallow. I find it almost impossible to believe that the Clintion Machine didn't find out about this and expose it. Of course, if B.O. wants to see an end to the speculation, all he has to do is disclose his birth certificate. You have to wonder why anyone would spend $900,000 in legal fees to keep a harmless birth certificate locked away!

+

Well, time to re-read a few Flannery O'Connor stories for class. . .not to mention a chapter or two of John Clavin's The Institutes of the Christian Religion. Yes, I get to explain Calvin's theology of predestination this morning. Just what any good Dominican hopes to do as the sun rises on another day. . .

Another book? Fall plans...

Just a "Thank You" to everyone who took the time to comment on my homily for this past Sunday, "We must pray for death."

As always, your feedback helped me to understand a bit better what I am doing and not doing as a preacher. I truly appreciate your honestly and your willingness to share your stories of personal suffering and struggle.

Many of you have suggested that this homily could serve as the basis for a book-length mediation on surrender, suffering, and death. This is certainly a possibility. I am considering a couple of other book proposals right now, but this is quickly rising to the top of my list.

My plans for the fall have recently changed rather dramatically! I am not going to be teaching at the Angelicum come October. Teaching will begin in Feb 2010. This is actually good news, because I will not be rushed to finish the thesis, take oral/written comps, and pass the French translation exam--all before the first week of Oct.

This means that I will not have to return to Rome until sometime in late Sept or early Oct. Where I will be staying while in the U.S. until then is still up in the air. Also, this delay means that I will have the time in the fall to pursue a creative project along with my usual studies and writing. . .truly, I have to have something creative going on while I am reading and writing about the philosophy of science. The field is fascinating, but my right-side dominate brain can only handle so much analytical logic and dry scientific argument!

So, as I contemplate another book proposal, please pray for me!

Fr. Philip

We must pray for death

[NB. I welcome feedback on my all homilies. . .I am particularly interested in hearing what readers think of this one. . .feedback from Mass goers this morning was positive, but people rarely tell you in person if your homily bombed. Also, I would really appreciate hearing from deacons/priests/bishops who might read this piece. . .]

19th Sunday OT: 1 Kings 19.4-8; Eph 4.30-5.2; John 6.41-51
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, Univ of Dallas

Elijah, the prophet of God, prays for death: “This is enough, O Lord! Take my life. . .” How thick, how deep must your despair be to pray for death? How heavy must your desperation be before you can no longer lift it? When do you cry to God: this is enough! Here and now, I am exhausted, weary beyond living. Elijah killed 450 prophets of Baal. For this reason, he confesses to his Lord, “. . .I am no better than my fathers. Take my life.” Elijah challenges Baal's prophets to a contest of power. He pits the real power of the Lord against the demonic power of the Canaanite god. Baal loses. And so do his prophets. Elijah marches the demon's priests to the River Kishon and cuts their throats. Fleeing the wrath of Jezebel for killing her prophets, Elijah goes into the desert and there he discovers—among the stones and sage brush—that he no longer wants to live. “This is enough, O Lord. Take my life. . .” Elijah, prophet of God, touched by His hand to speak His Word, despairs because he has murdered 450 men. What weight do you lift and carry? How thick and deep is the mire you must wade through? At what point do you surrender to God in anguish, walk into the desert, and pray for death? When you balance on the sharp point of desperation, poised to ask God to take your life, remember this: “When the afflicted call out, the Lord hears, and from all their distress He saves them! Taste and see the goodness of the Lord!”

To varying degrees and in different ways, all of us have discovered in one sort of desert or another that we are tired, exhausted beyond going another step. Overwhelmed by studies, financial stresses, marital strife, family feuds, personal sin, physical illness, we have all felt abandoned, stranded. We might say that it is nothing more than our lot in life to rejoice when our blessings are multiplied and cry when the well runs dry. These deserts look familiar. We've been here before and doubting not one whit, we know we will visit them again. We hope and keep on; we pray and trust in God. This is what we do, we who live near the cross. But there are those times when the desert seems endless and only death will bring rescue. We find hope in dying. And so, we cry out to God: “Take my life, O Lord!” Is this the prayer we should pray when we find ourselves broken and bleeding in the deserts of despair? It is. There is none better.

The witness of scripture pokes at us to remember that our God provides. Beaten down and hunted by Jezebel, exhausted by his prayer, Elijah falls asleep under the broom tree. An angel comes to him twice with food and drink, ordering him to wake up and eat: “Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you!” Elijah obeys. Strengthened by the angelic supper, he walks for forty days and nights; he walks to God on Mt. Horeb. The Lord provides. Jesus reminds the Jews who are murmuring about his teaching that their ancestors wandered around in the desert for forty years, surviving on angelic food. Though they died as we all do, and despite their constant despairing, they survived as a people to arrive in the land promised to them by God. As always, the Lord provides. Paul reminds the Ephesians (and us) that Christ handed himself over “as a sacrificial offering to God” for us, thus giving us access to the Father's bounty, eternal access to only food and drink we will ever need to survive. Paul writes, “. . .you were sealed for the day of redemption.” Therefore, “. . .be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.” We always have before us the feast of mercy. The Lord provides. So, wake up! And eat!

What are we promised, and what is provided? Even the slightest glance at scripture, even the most cursory perusal of our Christian history will reveal that following Christ on pilgrimage to the cross is no picnic. To paraphrase Lynn Anderson, “He never promised us a rose garden.” Sure, Christ promised us a garden alright. But it's the Garden of Gethsemane. Betrayal, blood, and a sacrificial death. He also promised us persecution, trial, conviction, and exile. He promised us nothing more than what he himself received as the Messiah. A life of hardship as a witness and the authority of the Word. The burdens of preaching mercy and the rewards of telling the truth. An ignoble death on a cross and a glorious resurrection from the tomb. What he promises, he provides. All that he provides is given from His Father's treasury. Food and drink on the way. The peace of reconciliation. A Father's love for His children. And an eternal life lived in worship before the throne.

All of this is given freely to us. But we must freely receive all that is given. Elijah flees into the desert, seeking his freedom from Jezebel's wrath. The former slaves of Egypt flee into the desert, seeking their freedom from Pharaoh's whip. The men and women of Ephesus flee into the desert of repentance and conversion, seeking their freedom from the slavery of sin. Each time we flee into a desert to despair, we are fleeing from the worries, the burdens of living day-to-day the promises we have made to follow Christ to the cross. Our lives are not made easier by baptism and the Eucharist. Our anxieties are not made simpler through prayer and fasting. Our pains, our sufferings are not relieved by the saints or the Blessed Mother. Our lives, anxieties, our pain and sufferings are made sacrificial by the promises of Christ and all that he provides. We are not made less human by striving to be Christ-like. We are not brought to physical and psychological bliss by walking the way of sorrows. We are not promised lives free of betrayal, blood, injury, and death. By striving to be Christ-like, by walking behind our Lord on the way of sorrows, we are all but guaranteeing that we will suffer for his sake. And so, the most fervent prayer we can pray along this Christian path is: “This is enough, O Lord! Take my life. . .!” Surrender and receive, give up and feast. Surrender your life and receive God's blessing. Give up your suffering and feast on the bread of heaven.

What Christ promises, he provides. He says to those behind him, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” Exhausted under a tree and running for your life; pitiful and despairing, wandering lost in a desert; chained to sin, wallowing in disobedience, yet seeking mercy. . .where do you find yourself? Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Are you exhausted? Spent? Do you need to be rescued? Cry out then, “Take my life, O Lord. . .” Pray for death. Pray for the death of Self. Pray for the death of “bitterness, fury, anger, reviling, and malice.” Pray for the death of whatever it is in you that obstructs your path to Christ; pray that it “be removed from you. . .So [you may] be [an] imitator of God, as [a] beloved child[], and live in love, as Christ loves us.” Remember and never forget: “When the afflicted call out, the Lord hears, and from all their distress He saves them! Taste and see the goodness of the Lord!” The bread come down from heaven, Christ himself, is our promised food and our provision for eternal life.

Knowing nothing but the crucified Christ

Solemnity of Saint Dominic: 1 Cor 2.1-10; Luke 9.57-62
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

While “knowing nothing” and without the “sublimity of words or wisdom,” what does a preacher proclaim when he proclaims “the mystery of God”? And if this proclamation is preached out of “weakness and fear and trembling” without “persuasive words of wisdom,” from where does the demonstrative “spirit and power” of the preaching come? Paul writes to the church in Corinth, claiming that he preached to them so that their “faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God. . .not a wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age who are passing away. Rather,” he insists, “we speak God's wisdom, mysterious, hidden. . .” If contemporary Dominican preachers speak God's wisdom, without “sublimity of words” or the wisdom of this age, while “knowing nothing,” from where we do draw the “spirit and power” we need to prepare eyes and ears to see and hear His saving words and loving deeds? Paul, recklessly but not without hope, sets before us a demanding quest: to know nothing “except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” What does it take, what must we do to grow ignorant of this world's wisdom and flourish in God's?

While on a journey with his disciples, Jesus is approached three times by those who would join his traveling school of wisdom. Each time the prospective student would declare his intention to become a student of the Master. The first intended disciple says that he will follow Jesus wherever he goes. Jesus replies, “. . .the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” The second is told “Follow me,” but he needs to bury his father before committing to the life of a preacher. The third says that he too wants to follow Jesus, but that he wants to say goodbye to his family first. Jesus, knowing what lies ahead for anyone who follows him, issues these potential preachers a warning: you may follow me wherever I go, but there is no place for rest, and if you follow, you must do so absolutely, without condition, doing nothing—not even burying the dead or saying farewell to family—putting nothing and no one before the preaching of the gospel. Let the dead bury the dead, never looking back at what you have left behind.

God's wisdom, revealed in Christ, and him crucified, is this: to follow Jesus as a preacher of the Good News is to abandon all attachments to the burdens of this world, to throw off the yoke of man's wisdom, and do nothing else but proclaim God's marvelous deeds to all nations. Paul could have said that he knows nothing except Jesus and leave it at that. Instead, he says that he knows nothing except Jesus. . .and him crucified, nailed hands and feet to his cross, abandoned to death. The vows we take as Dominican preachers are not meant simply to regulate belief and behavior, what we think and how we act. Our vows—even when imperfectly lived—are meant to make us into the sorts of men and women who are eager to seek out crucifixion, to run after Christ along his way to Golgotha, all the while proclaiming the Lord's mercy and love to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear. Will you long to stop along the way to say farewell to family, or feel the obligation to bury your dead, or look over your shoulder to see what you have left behind? Of course. And not only will we long to cultivate and harvest these worldly attachments, we will do so, sometimes with great fanfare and expense. Thank God then that there is more than just one of us walking the path in this gospel adventure! Paul says that “we speak God's wisdom.” We use our strengths. We perfect our weaknesses. With Christ and one another, we live this reckless life of gospel preaching.

From where do we draw the “spirit and power” to proclaim God's marvelous deeds to all nations? Even as we empty ourselves out on the cross of Christ, we are filled with a purer sort of knowing: we are, whole and entire, the sons and daughters of a loving God, the Father of a preaching family, the only source of anything and everything we will ever need.