Error, Heresy, & You

My Dominican service for the day: making distinctions and telling lies. . .

All too often these days we hear that This or That theologian or priest is teaching/preaching heresy. It's been a problem from the beginning (cf Paul's letters) and it will be with us until The End.

Most of time those teaching/preaching heresy draw a heavy line between Evangelization and Doctrine, meaning they separate the Work of the Church from Word of the Church. This separation allows them to do all the "feel-good" Work without being too terribly bothered with the Word. For example, "What does the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception have to do with feeding the hungry, making peace, and helping the poor find affordable health care?" The underlying assumption here is that they can do the Work of the Church without reference to the Word of the Church. This is false.

This last Trinity Sunday, we read in Matthew's gospel Jesus' charge to his disciples to go out into the world and "teach all that I have taught you." Christ irrevocably binds together evangelization, works of mercy, and truth-telling in our teaching and preaching. Strictly speaking, a priest who teaches heresy cannot evangelize the world by doing good works. His works may indeed be good, but an atheist or a Muslim or a Wiccan priestess could do the same work and do so in the absence of Catholic doctrine. The point of helping the poor is to honor God by honoring the creatures whom He made in His image and likeness and remade in Christ. In other words, we help the poor in order to worship the Triune God.

Now, we must draw a sharp distinction between error and heresy. The temptation to charge a fellow Catholic teaching error with the crime of heresy is nearly irresistible. We want it made perfectly clear that this guy is not teaching with the mind of the Church. Though all heresy is erroneous not all error is heresy.

"Error" is exactly that: a mistake, "getting it wrong," flubbing a statement of the truth. You forget to carry the "1" when subtracting. You switch letters when spelling out a word. Error, by definition, is unintentional and therefore blameless. Error can be corrected and instantly forgiven.

"Heresy" is something else entirely. Heresy is error stubbornly taught as truth; it is a mistake one holds as a truth. It's the banking equivalent of forgetting to carry the "1" and then obstinately refusing to admit the mistake, demanding that your calculation be accepted despite having been shown your error. Heresy is insisting that your spelling of a word is correct even after your reader uses several dictionaries to show you your error. Heresy is intentional, obstinate, and arrogant.

Let's say your pastor on Christ the King Sunday preaches a homily in which he says, "Christ our Lord was created by the Father to give us eternal life." The idea that the Son is a creation of the Father is part of the heresy called "Arianism." The Son was not created but rather eternally begotten. The Three Persons of the Trinity are co-eternal; there is no temporal or ontological priority within the Trinity. You point this out to your pastor: "Father, you were teaching heresy this morning!" Strictly speaking, this is true. He did indeed teach the heresy of Arianism. But is Father a heretic? It depends on how he responds.

He responds to you, "I know! I realized it later in the Mass, and I should have corrected myself. I'll put a note in the bulletin. How embarrassing." Though he has taught heresy, he is not a heretic. Let's say he responses, "Oh yes, I know. Basically, I think the idea of the Son as begotten of the Father is baloney. Jesus is one of us, a creature. We shouldn't think of him as God." You, a bit shocked, remind him that the Council of Nicaea condemned Arianism in the Nicene Creed. Again, he says, "I know, I know. But that council was one big political mess. Besides, all that Greek philosophy should have never been allowed into the Church" and so on. Is Father a heretic? Not yet.

So far, no one with magisterial authority has attempted to correct Father. If you contact the bishop and the bishop contacts Father and corrects him and he refuses to budge on the issue, then he compels the bishop to determine his orthodoxy. Maybe Father simply misunderstands what the Creed teaches. Maybe he has a mistaken notion of what "begotten" means. Maybe he is somehow intellectually impaired or in a fit of misplaced compassion, he has given one doctrine (Jesus' humanity) priority over another (his divinity) in a false move to make Christ accessible. The bishop corrects all of these errors. And Father still refuses to budge.

At some point in the exchange it becomes clear that Father is a formal heretic; that is, he actually believes his error to be the truth. By refusing to be corrected by a competent ecclesial authority, Father places himself outside the communion of the Church and remains there until he recants. Even if he faithfully teaches every other doctrine of the Church correctly, he is teaching heresy on this issue. Of course, it's simply impossible to teach just one heresy. Like the game of Jenga, when you remove one support from the structure, the whole thing starts to wobble and eventually it collapses. A heretic who wants to be wrong on one doctrine faces the daunting prospect of either abandoning the faith altogether in an effort to be theologically consistent with his heresy, or figuring out a way to teach his heresy as consistent with all other doctrinal truths. I do not believe the latter is possible. Heresy corrodes one's faith by compelling you to reject one truth after another in order to remain consistent with the initial heresy.

So, feeding the poor as an act of Christian mercy while believing that Jesus is simply a creature just like one of us is not possible. Though the act can be merciful, it is not Christian. We do good works AS Christians. An atheist can do good works, but he does not do them in order to evangelize. A Buddhist can do good works, but she does not do them to honor the poor in their dignity as creatures made and remade in the likeness and image of God. Everything we do as Christians is principally about giving glory to God. Any material good that comes from this spiritual duty is welcomed and wonderful, but it's hardly the point of being a Christian.

Do not let anyone tell you that orthodox belief is irrelevant to orthodox practice. One cannot exist without the other.

Coffee Bowl Browsing time!

Sad but necessary: Australia's adolescent attention-seeking Fr. Hollywood suspended

Don't mess with R.N.'s (Real Nuns)!

HA! And the Catholic Lite Left accuses us of "keeping God in a box"

Lefty media meltdown. . .couldn't happen to a better bunch

Newsweek editor deifies Obama. . .but the MSM has no idea why it is dying. Duh.

Good analysis of last week's center-right victories in E.U. elections

Sticking it to the ACLU's soft-fascism

The inevitable and entirely predictable slippery-slope of same-sex "marriage"

For the grammatically challenged!

Podcasting the Church's saints

What's the Church teaching on the theory of evolution? You might be surprised!

Can we ever say that a particular war is just?

Har-har. . .B.O. meets the Saudi King (a cartoon)

Lots of excellent articles on Catholic theology and science

American postmodern malaise: wanting, getting, and still having nothing

How dead philosophers died (warning: a philosopher attempts humor. . .OY!)

I have met many priests of Dudeism. . .some of them claim to be Catholic priests!

Albert Einstein's "Credo"

I believe that people who talk during movies should be summarily executed.

Answers to all those questions that nag you at 3am

Platonic kiss? Other kinds of philosophical kisses (NB. his definition of an Aristotelian kiss is flat wrong)

"Shut up, brain, or I'll stab you with a Q-tip!" The wisdom of Homer Simpson

Her Majesty and B.O.'s iPod (B.O. gave the Queen of England an iPod a few months ago)

David Mamet (playwright), "Why I am no longer a 'brain dead liberal" (language warning)

Suffering for Mystery

Most Holy Trinity: Deut 4.32-34, 39-40; Rom 8.14-17; Matt 28.16-20
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Convento SS. Domenico e Sisto, Roma

The wooden box just sits there. Closed. Locked tight. Brass hinges tempt the curious with the possibility of discovery, the odd chance that the grained, varnished top might be coaxed into releasing the box’s treasure. A snooping heart wants to know. Must know! But the key hole is a door that will not open; the hinges, like clenched teeth, stubbornly grit against their created purpose. And as if to annoy and frustrate further, an aroma seeps through the only splinter in the box’s safety, pushing an inquisitive mind to the very edge of patience. Rose, cinnamon, a hint of lemon, a little musk and dust. And something unaccountable. Aged paper? Ancient ink? Olive oil and wax? The origin of the box is mentioned in family stories told at Easter and Christmas. It was a wedding gift from a stranger. Never opened because the bride died too soon. No, it was sent from the Middle East by a monk who wanted it kept safe during war time. The key was lost. No, it was purchased at a flea market in Peru from a shaman generations ago by a friend of the family who gave it to a servant in secret, hoping to one day retrieve it. That day never came. The box just sits there. Closed, locked, and decorating the room with its infuriating incense. It is a mystery. Wholly unknowable unless you are willing to force it open and risk destroying what’s inside.

Without the least bit of hesitation or shame, the Church proclaims the Holy Trinity a mystery. Incomprehensible, baffling, and curious. And even as she declares the ineffable nature of the Trinity, the Church exhausts every resource—philosophical, theological, and magisterial—to unlock the puzzle of the Divine Persons and to describe the mystery of the Godhead as Three-in-One. One God, three Persons. Three distinct Persons with one divine nature, one God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What is knowable and known about the Holy Trinity is knowable and known as a gift, freely given to creation by God Himself. Whether we come to know what we know by reason or faith, we know it in virtue of God’s desire that it be known and to the degree that He wishes us to know it. Both reason and faith are gifts. Both lead to His truth. Both operate by His grace. And because we are limited creatures and receive His gifts imperfectly, both reason and faith are misshapen keys that cannot fit the lock that holds the fullness of His mystery tightly away from us. For us to know His mystery perfectly we must be perfected in the mystery; essentially, we must become the mystery in order to see Him face-to-face. This journey will require more than curiosity, more than intellectual prowess, and than pious determination. It requires us to suffer.

Paul writes to Christ’s Church in Rome, no doubt telling them what all Christians at the time already knew by long experience. He writes that if we will become the children of God, joint-heirs of His kingdom with Christ, “we [must] suffer with [Christ] so that we may also be glorified with him.” To look forward to glory with Christ in heaven, we must look no further than how we suffer with Christ right now. If we foolishly believe that heavenly glory comes without earthly suffering, we foolishly believe that we can go to the Father without Christ. We go to the Father with Christ by becoming Christ and to become Christ we must follow him along his suffering way. We bear a cross. We walk the way of sorrow. We are crucified in the flesh. And we cry out in despair even as we are given up for the love of our friends. If we want to know mystery, we must become mystery. Standing aside and away from Christ’s suffering, avoiding at any cost the troubles that come with dying and rising again with him, we return his gift unopened; and not only do we remain in ignorance of the mystery, we tempt an eternal life without his glory.

We may wonder why the promise of eternal life is to be believed. What is the worth of a promise given by an unseen god? Why should we come to understand our pain, our loss, and our mourning as necessary parts of God’s plan to make us His heirs? Moses challenges God’s people, saying: “Ask now of the days of old, […] Did anything so great ever happen before? Was it ever heard of? Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live?” Even as they suffered in the desert on the way to the Promised Land, God spoke in fire and smoke to His people, showing them the way to their salvation. Even as they suffered, God was with them. Even as they suffered, God chose them to be His people, a holy nation, a royal priesthood. As a nation, they were His prophets and kings and for this they suffered. He took them out of slavery and into the desert on a promise, on a covenant-oath never to abandon them, never to forsake them to final godlessness. In response to this gift, Moses acclaims, “This is why you must now know, and fix in your heart, that the Lord is God in the heavens above and on earth below, and that there is no other.” If this piece of the puzzle, this truth of the mystery is fixed in our hearts, a truth we now know, why do we shrink from suffering?

Look at the disciples. Jesus orders them to a high mountain in Galilee. Matthew reports in his gospel that “when they all saw [Christ], they worshiped, but they doubted.” What did they doubt? Did they doubt the veracity of his teachings? Did they doubt their own strength? Their piety, their determination, their intellectual prowess? No! They doubted the true nature of the one who stood before them, freely offering them the Kingdom of his Father. Knowing the reason for their doubtful hearts, Jesus says, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” With all the power of heaven and earth, Jesus fulfills the covenant as his Father promised He would. With all the power of heaven and earth, Jesus reveals the Father and His Son and promises the coming of the Holy Spirit. With the power of heaven and earth, Jesus sends his disciples out as apostles to baptize, to teach and preach, and to make disciples of the whole world. And these newly anointed apostles are to do all this in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, in the name of the Triune Mystery; and as they preach and teach and baptize, they become more and more fully sons of God. They doubt no longer.

When their Lord is arrested and convicted, scourged, crucified, and raised from the dead, the apostles witness their way to heaven: to glory through suffering, to the fullness of the mystery through earthly trial and persecution. And so they walked behind him with their crosses all the way to heaven. Each one taught, preached, made disciples, and spent his life doing what Christ did so to become like Christ for those who would follow after them. We are those who follow after. And whether we suffer in small ways or grand, in jail or exile, at home or far away, so long as we do all things for the greater glory of God, Christ says to us, “[…]behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” Therefore, our suffering can never be useless misery; it brings us nearer to the Triune Mystery we were made to adore, that we were made to become according to His will for us.

Word and images, concepts and logic, ancient wisdoms and new, none approach the unapproachable light that blinds the holiest human eye. The glory of God at once seduces and repels, draws in and pushes out. And whether you are reeled in or run away reeling hangs on the clearest of Christian truths, one key truth: have you suffered as Christ suffered—for the love of your friends in name of the One Who made you? This key fits any lock, opens every door, lifts any lid. This key, the Key of David, the only Son of God, opens the treasure house of the Father’s Kingdom and makes us heirs to the fortunes of heaven. The Good News of salvation is that there is no chain so tight, no cell so strong, no sin so binding that the key of the cross cannot free us. Yes, we must suffer to follow Christ, to join him in his glory. But this no burden. It is a blessing. “[We] did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but [we] received a Spirit of adoption, through whom we cry, "Abba, Father!’"

Mortal Sin & Culpability: two case studies

First, I want to say how pleased I am that HancAquam readers did such an excellent job of analyzing the two case studies below! It's encouraging that the fine distinctions were made and the correct conclusions reached.

Here's my take on the case studies. . .

Both Beth and Sue committed an intrinsically morally evil act, acquiring an abortion.

Beth committed a mortal sin b/c her act met all three criteria for mortal sin. As an intrinscially morally evil act, abortion is certainly a grave matter. As a former Catholic with a graduate degree in theology, she certainly knew that abortion is an intrinsically morally evil act. Since she is an adult, in complete possession of her reason, and not in any way temporarily mentally imparied, she deliberately consented to the act. Her apostacy from the Church and subsequent history of fornication is irrelevant to the analysis of this case. An abortion acquired by a rigouously faithful married Catholic woman with no history of fornication would be mortally sinful.

Sue did not commit a mortal sin. Though her abortion is an intrinsically morally evil act, she acquired the abortion without full knowledge of the moral implications of the act and her minority grants her the assumption of the inability to consent. By no fault of her own, Sue is ignorant of the Church's teachings and confronted by a culture of gang violence hostile to learning. That her pregnancy is the result of rape is irrevelant to the intrinscially morally evil nature of the act of abortion, but it does mitigate against the assumption that she is free to consent to the abortion. Rape is devastately traumatic and can severly impair the victim's ability to render culpable judgments.*

Beth is culpable for her mortal sin to the degree that she was truly free to acquire the abortion. Her culpability could be somewhat mitigated if she has a legitimate fear that being pregnant would hurt her in a significant economic fashion--if, for example, her firm had a history of demoting or firing pregnant women. This situation would count as indirect duress. However, the case states that she acquired the abortion in order not to hurt her chances for a promotion not to save her job. Culpability might be somewhat mitigated on the grounds that being a pregnant lawyer in NYC poses a threat to her reputation and the possibility of doing her job at the levels of expected professionalism. Inordinate pressure from her boyfriend, if present, would certainly mitigate culpability.

Since Sue's abortion is not a mortal sin for her, her culpability for the act is zero. The overwhelming pressures of her mother's authority and her violent school life make her little more than a pawn. Poverty and lack of education will almost always mitigate against culpability if culpability is in question. Under duress, she cooperated in committing an intrinsically morally evil act, but she did not sin. Remember: we cannot be forced to sin (venially or mortally) nor can we sin by accident or in ignorance.

In the combox, Annie writes, "So, if the Church did indeed push Beth away through a series of even minor actions or attitudes, those people share in her sin too." To the degree that Beth was deliberately "pushed out," I would agree. But this question needs quite a bit of fleshing out. I am often told by ex-Catholics that they were "driven out" of the Church by an evil pastor or group of hateful parishioners. When pushed for details, these folks almost always reveal that what actually happened was that they were living a publicly sinful life and found the parish's unwillingness to celebrate their sinful lives to be "unwelcoming." In other words, no one pushed them anywhere. They left the Church when they started living publicly sinful lives. The parish's refusal to celebrate their sin was the appropriate medicinal response. Rather than repenting and asking for forgiveness, they chose to leave. Calling this "being pushed out" is false. I've also been told by ex-Catholics that they left the Church b/c they were silenced or harassed or shunned. Again, details are the key! In most cases these folks were pushing dissident theologies, abusive liturgical practices, or causing scandal by stirring up chaos. I also know of cases where orthodox Catholics were "pushed out" of a parish for what they felt were illegitimate reasons. Sometimes the reasons given seemed illegitimate to me. And sometimes the reasons were good. There are, of course, plenty of cases where nothing more than parochial politics, parishioners feuds, and evil pastors get folks booted. To what degree of culpability these folks would be held to if they committed a mortal sin while under this sort of duress is open to debate.

Thanks for playing! We might do this again soon. . .

*My initial phrasing here was ambiguous, so I've amended the paragraph to clarify my point.

Mortal Sin: two case studies

Following on the post below about confession, let's take two test cases and work out the moral implications of both.

Beth is a 45 year old lawyer working in New York City. Before joining the bar she graduated from Notre Dame with an M.A. in theology. Disgusted with the Church's historical ill-treatment of women, she leaves the Catholic Church and becomes a Unitarian. While working in NYC she becomes sexually involved with one of her legal associates and gets pregnant. Knowing that she is soon to be made a partner in her firm, and knowing that her pregnancy might detrimentally influence her promotion, she acquires an abortion.

Sue is a 13 year old schoolgirl living in Chicago. Though very bright and academically accomplished, she must attend the local public school because her unemployed single-mother cannot afford private school tuition. The school she attends is notorious for gang violence. Sue does her best to avoid trouble, but often becomes embroiled in the local gang activity. She has had no religious instruction other than a general introduction to spiritual ideas via the mass media. On her way home from school one day, she is violently raped. She becomes pregnant. Because of her family's poverty and Sue's young age, her mother decides that Sue must have an abortion. Though she doesn't want the abortion, she complies out of deference to her mother. She has the abortion.

Keeping in mind that an act can be considered a mortal sin only if the act is gravely serious, done with the full knowledge that the act is sinful, and done with deliberate consent, can we say that Beth and Sue have committed mortal sins? If so, to what degree is each culpable (guilty) or not? [NB. ALL three conditions mentioned above must be met. The absence of any one of the three renders the act non-mortal.]

Applicable Church teaching:

According to Church teaching some acts are always morally evil by their very nature, meaning that circumstance and intention do not change the intrinsically evil nature of these acts. Abortion is always a morally evil act. But the question here is: are the morally evil acts committed by Beth and Sue mortally sinful? [Bonus question: are all intrinsically morally evil acts sinful--mortal or not?]

Though circumstance and intent may not count in determining whether or not morally evil act is indeed evil, both can be considered in assigning culpability if the evil act counts as a mortal sin.

The evidence you have here is the only relevant evidence. Do not assume any other facts (e.g., the availability of abortion alternatives, etc.).

Your answers. . .? [Lots of excellent answers in the combox. . .keep 'em coming!]

But God loves me anyway, right? (Now with footnotes!)

Recently the "Vatican" (whoever that is) lamented the decline in the use of confession among Catholics.

It should be noted that this decline is directly tied to the lack of preaching against sin from Catholic pulpits. I don't mean screaming tirades bellowed from the ambo, but simple, straightforward declarations that sin is real and deadly to one's growth in holiness (1).

Some theologians and clergy don't see a problem with Catholics letting the Confession Muscle atrophy. They exclaim, "But God loves us where we're at! God accepts us as we are!" Yes, this is true. But confession is not about God loving you more or less. God will love you straight to hell if that's what you want. That's what free-will is all about (2).

Confession is not about how much God loves you but about how much you love God. Confession is our chance to apologize for those sins that have damaged our relationship with God, for those crimes against His love that prevent us from being fully in love with God. God does not need our apologies, our repentance, or our penance. We do.

Does God love you despite your sin? Yes, always. Can you love God despite your sin? No. Your sin is evidence enough of this simple truth. And because God loves and respects you, He will honor your decision to spend eternity without Him. That, brothers and sisters, is what we call Hell.

Update: Father, when should I go to confession? The minimum is once a year. Ideally, you would go to confession for any mortal sin. What's a mortal sin? A mortal sin is any disobedience that "destroys charity in the heart"(3). In the ancient Church, the Big Three were: adultery/fornication, murder, and apostasy. Good start. You want to be aware of two extreme tendencies: making every sin into a mortal sin "just in case" and making mortal sin into "no big deal" b/c you don't want to stop committing the sin. Every sin disrupts your relationship with God. Some sins kill that relationship from your end. The question to ask is: did that sin kill my ability/desire to love God? There is a subjective element here that only you can answer. There is an objective element that does not depend on your perception of the sin. You cannot murder someone and then claim that you don't feel that your relationship with God has been damaged. It has. . .whether you "feel" it or not. Use the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes to examine your conscience. If you have serious doubt, ask your pastor. Circumstances and intent do make a difference in most cases. If you have access to a priest, regular/frequent confession is not a problem. Just be careful that you are not becoming scrupulous. Ultimately, scrupulosity is the denial of the reality of God's mercy and can quickly become the sin of pride--"Not even God can forgive MY terrible sins." Wanna bet?

Confessing venial sins is perfectly fine (4). But be aware that participating in Mass with a confessing-repentant heart takes care of venial sin. Also, be sure that you are confessing actual sins. "I forgot my morning prayers" is not sin. Sexually explicit dreams are not sinful. For an act to be sinful it must be a deliberate act against God's law and love; meaning, you have to know you are doing it. You cannot sin in ignorance or by accident (5).

Notes from the Catechism of the Catholic Church

(1) CCC 1849: "Sin is an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience; it is failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods. It wounds the nature of man and injures human solidarity. It has been defined as 'an utterance, a deed, or a desire contrary to the eternal law.'"

(2) CCC 1861: "Mortal sin is a radical possibility of human freedom, as is love itself. It results in the loss of charity and the privation of sanctifying grace, that is, of the state of grace [...]"

(3) CCC 1855.1: "Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God's law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him."

(4) CCC 1855.2: "Venial sin allows charity to subsist, even though it offends and wounds it."

(5) CCC 1857: "For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: 'Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent.'" See CCC 1858-18690 for defintions of grave matter, full knowledge, and deliberate consent. So, if I commit Act X it must be gravely serious (not trivial); and I must know that Act X is sinful; and I must knowingly consent to committing Act X (personally choosing to act). If any of these three conditions is missing, I have not committed a mortal sin. You cannot sin mortally in ignorance, trivially, accidently, or against your will.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.