Permanent renewal, persistent peace

St Andrew Dung-Lac and Companions: Readings

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

SS. Domenico e Sisto, Roma

Anything that can be put together can be taken apart. Anything fixable is breakable. If it can be composed, formed, or united, it can be decomposed, unformed, and disunited. The material universe rises from the play of order and chaos, making and unmaking. You do not have to be a mystic to realize that impermanence is the way of all things. Visit a maternity ward. And then a graveyard. The two are inevitably bound together by the passage of time. Some of us find this truth to be a source of anxiety, a point for jumping off into the abyss of meaninglessness. Some are indifferent, challenged nonetheless by the competition to survive. And others are delighted at the prospect of death, rushing headlong to their end, encouraged by the possibility of immortality. Since humans started thinking about the purpose of their lives, each of these responses to impermanence—anxiety, indifference, and delight—each of these has had its philosophical and theological defenders. The gospel preached by Christ and his Church offers another alternative, another way to live the joys and pains of passing through God's creation: permanent renewal, persistent peace.

Pointing to the temple and its splendor, Jesus says to the crowd, “All that you see here—the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.” For a people whose lives are centered on the worship of God, such a prediction must have shocked them. How can something as monumental, as stable as the temple crumble? How can our connection to God be thrown down? They want to know when this horror will occur and how will they know that it is coming? Jesus gives no date, no day and time. He doesn't even hint at a season. Instead, he points them to the impermanence of creation, the chaos of human life: earthquakes, famines, plagues, insurrections, wars, awesome signs from the sky. Had someone from the crowd yelled out to Jesus, “But these happen all the time!” Jesus would have answered, “Yes, they do.” Those with eyes to see and ears to hear would have taken his point. We are always in the midst of destruction, the failure of creation's fall. Therefore, put your love, your hope, your faith in the only place left untouched by the currents of chaos. Store up all you treasure in the promises of eternal life.

Does this mean then that we must abandon creation to its fate? Do we run for the hills with our guns and provisions, waiting for The End? No. Though we may be tempted to hide from the world while we hold out against the enemy, our charge as followers of Christ is to save the world not abandon it. Jesus doesn't predict the destruction of the temple in order to warn the crowd away from its fall. He warns them of its collapse so that they will know where they should store their treasured faith. Not in buildings or votive offerings or adornments. But in their humble and contrite hearts. What our Father wants from His children is that we should live as if the temple has already been destroyed, as if we were already in His presence—face-to-face—daily, even now. Then, like Christ, our trust in Him is lived in the world as a sign of His love and mercy. We are His temples; we are His tabernacles. And as such we are—ultimately—indestructible.

Christians do not have the luxury of anxiety, indifference, or a heroic delight in death. All of these abandon us to the currents of The Fall. All of these tell us that we have no purpose, no goal, that there is nothing more, nothing beyond the stones and mortar of a universe well-made to fall. Instead, we are vowed to travel through this world as living, breathing sanctuaries of His presence. Having placed all we love, all we hope for, all we trust in in the hands of the One Who brings us peace, we become His peace, the peace among wars and insurrections, tools for rescue and renewal.

Sign the Manhattan Declaration

Yesterday, I posted excerpts from "The Manhattan Declaration," an ecumenical Christian Here We Stand document defying the Culture of Death.  I lamented the absence of the opportunity for regular folks to sign the document.

Fr. Dismas, OP drew my attention to the fact that regular folks CAN sign this historic declaration in defense of the Culture of Life!

So, read it.  Sign it.  And keep on praying!

Fr. Barron on 2012: Spoiler Alert!

Fr. Robert Barron nails "2012" as anti-religious, specifically anti-Catholic and "boring."

23 year "coma"

After being in "coma" for 23 years, Rom Huben was discovered to be conscious but immobile.  New technology allowed doctors to ferret out his true condition.

I can't begin to imagine what this must have been like.  Twenty-three years of immobility!  No way to communicate.  Perhaps the only thing worse would be undergoing surgery while still conscious, or being buried alive.

Pray for him, please.

Christians gettin' buck*

More than 150 prominent Christian leaders signed the Manhattan Declaration this last Friday, including many big name Catholic bishops.  Reading through the document, all I can say is:  "BOOM!"  A large caliber shell has been fired across the bow of B.O.'s pro-abortion/anti-family agenda.

What I find most appealing is that the language of the document is not USCCB bureaucrat-ese.  It's plain, hard-ball You Shall Not Pass words of defiance.
 

Excerpts from the declaration include: 

"We are Christians who have joined together across historic lines of ecclesial differences to affirm our right -- and, more importantly, to embrace our obligation -- to speak and act in defense of these truths. We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence." 

"We recognize the duty to comply with laws whether we happen to like them or not, unless the laws are gravely unjust or require those subject to them to do something unjust or otherwise immoral."  

"…We will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriage or the equivalent or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family."

You can read the whole thing here.  My only criticism:  too long.  Most people won't take the time to read it.  But the excerpts above are typical.
   
Expect the following words and phrases to be used by the Left to characterize this document:  "not helpful," "divisive," "separation of Church and State," "tax-exempt status," "narrow," "closed-minded hierarchy," "closes dialogue," "outside the mainstream," "failure to move forward," and other assorted euphemisms used in the rhetoric of anti-Christian bigotry by our Cultural & Intellectual Betters.

Maybe we should agitate the signers to allow regular Christian folks sign it too.

* "Gettin' buck" is slang for "preparing to fight."  I may be showing my age here.  This was popular not too long ago.  There's probably a more recent slang-term, but it serves well enough.

Million Catholic March! (not quite a million...)

The future of the Catholic Church in the U.S.! 

Eucharistic procession of the National Catholic Youth Conference in Kansas City.

(h/t: Whispers)

Hacker Jargon

The recent hack (or was it a whistleblower?) of the Climate Research Center in the U.K. has not only exposed some of the naughty inner-political workings of the Global-Warming Alarmists, but it has also once again drawn attention to hacker subculture.

I don't know much about this subculture--other than the romanticized movie depictions--but I admire it for its tenacity and innovation. As a counter-narrative to the dominant-narrative of computer programming, hacker culture keeps the Big Guys on their innovating toes. At the same time, hacker culture is dependent on the B.G.'s as a source of fodder and fun. Without Microsoft, the hacker would be placed in the very awkward position of being The Man. And a new hacker culture would form as its counter-narrative.

As an old English teacher, I am fascinated by the way hackers have adapted the language to suit their creative needs. Of course, their innovations threaten standard usage, but standard usage is a lot like manners--what's appropriate and say and do at table with one's family is probably not said or done at table with strangers. Grammar, spelling, pronunciation, etc. like table manners depends heavily on circumstance and the contemporary goal of speaking and writing. 

Anyway, I think hacker jargon/culture gives us an amazing insight into both the dominant narrative of the internet world and its grimy underside. Check it out.

Should we give to the CCHD?

Catholics in the U.S. will be asked this morning to donate to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.  In the last few years the CCHD has been criticized for giving money to groups that support a variety of "social justice" causes that conflict with Catholic teaching.  The bishops have assured Catholics that these groups have been de-funded.  

Here's the difficult thing.  Community organizing groups often funnel grant money to secondary and tertiary groups that are not immediately known to the granting institution.  CCHD may give $50,000 to "Save Our Neighborhood," who grants $20,000 to the "Park Project," who then grants $10,000 to the local abortion clinic for improvements to its security fence.  Maybe some in the CCHD know about this, many don't.  It's hard to track the money.  Layers of groups with complex bureaucracies and innocent-sounding names, claiming to do worthwhile things can easily hide their activities from the original granter.  I used to write grants for one of the largest public universities in the South.  You wouldn't believe the layers of waste that the money has to filter through!

Now, should you give to the CCHD?  Here's what Archbishop Chaput has to say: 

People, first of all, should be prudent. They shouldn’t just jump to rash conclusions. I have seen some blogs that are excessive in their judgment of the issue and are harsh in what they say.

Some of the members of the CCHD staff who have allocated funds from the collection have made mistakes, and I think the Campaign itself admits that.

Whether these mistakes are frequent enough for people to be as upset as they are is a matter of the facts: They have to look what the facts are, not just jump to conclusions. People shouldn’t believe everything they read or be upset with the kind of intensity that I’ve seen, because I think that intensity leads to blindness.

I think that people can contribute to the collection without worrying that they are supporting causes that conflict with Church teaching.

At the same time, Jesus tells us that our treasure should be where our heart is. If people don’t like the decisions of the Campaign staff and their allocations, one of the ways they can show their displeasure is by withholding funds from their diocesan collections. It’s unfortunate that mistakes have been made, and I think the staff has to be more cautious and more critical in its judgment.

There are many ways of responding to the situation. We bishops serve ourselves and the collection well if we are honest about mistakes, try not to make them again, and move on appropriately. 

Fair enough.  So, give if you are called to it. . .but at the same time hold the CCHD accountable to Church teaching.

Not a hoax but a global fraud

Some HancAquam readers have objected to my use of the word "hoax" to describe the recently hacked and published emails of the global-warming alarmists in the U.K.

Strictly speaking, a hoax is perpetrated when the hoaxers know that they are playing a trick on someone.  The GWA seem to really believe their theory that the earth is heating up and that we are causing this warming by our misuse of our natural resources.  

OK.  "Hoax" is not the right word.  I was using it in the more general sense of "fooling someone."  What's revealed in the emails is systematic fraud, a concerted effort on the part of the GWA to manipulate, hide, and destroy data that falsify their predetermined conclusions.  This is not science but politics.  In some ways this is far worse than a mere hoax.  Billions of taxpayers dollars/pounds/euros have been spent to combat this illusionary threat.  Whole industries have been created with investment capital to address our destruction of the atmosphere.  It is being suggested that these scientists and their more popular preachers be charged under RICO for conspiracy to defraud.  Discovery on that case would be interesting!

True-believers in conspiracy theories (not the legal kind but the sort of kookie kind) have argued that global-warming hysteria is really about bringing the globe under a single government.  This was easily dismissed as Chicken Little squawking.  However, the newly elected president of the E.U., Herman von Rompuy, recently said in a speech to the E.U. parliament that he sees the Copenhagen Treat as just one move toward "global governance."  Maybe the Chicken Littles aren't so chicken or little after all.

Though it goes without saying, I'll say it anyway:  the hackers need to be found, arrested, and prosecuted.  They have done the world a great favor.  Unfortunately, they did it in an illegal manner.

Hand kissing, Lying, Guilt, and the Translation Battles

Questions. . . 

1).  What's the deal with kissing a priest's hands? 

As demonstration of respect and reverence for the priesthood some people will kiss a priest's hands rather than give him the more customary handshake.  There is nothing weird or wrong about doing this.  Kissing hands is largely a custom limited to historically Catholics countries like Italy, Poland, Mexico, etc.  When I've celebrated Mass in Hispanic parishes, many of the older parishioners will greet me at the door with a hand kiss.  The first time this happened I was a little surprised!  It is quite humbling.  Priests in the U.S. do not have the mystery surrounding them that they do in other parts of the world.  This is both good and bad.  It's good b/c too often "mystery" can go to the priest's head and he begins to think of himself as the object of reverence.  It's bad b/c the priesthood is not a function but a vocation, not a job/career but an identity.  Losing the mystery of the priesthood tends to reduce the priesthood to just another category of parochial employee.  It seems to me that hand kissing is perfectly acceptable so long as both the Kissed and the Kisser know that it is the priesthood being reverenced and not the priest.  Perhaps the best test of this would be to ask yourself (the Kisser):  would I kiss the hands of a priest I do not respect/like as a person?  If the answer is no, then I would say you should probably refrain. . .of course, kissing his hands may be a way for you to overcome your aversion to him.  But I'm not sure this is the best motivation.  I would hope that a priest who has his hands kissed would receive this sign of reverence humbly and not try to discourage it.  By and large, I think American, Canadian, and western European priests would be uncomfortable with it.  But, properly understood, there's really no reason to be.  I understand that the practice is more common in the eastern churches, but my knowledge of eastern Christians customs is very limited. 

2).  Is it ever OK to lie? 

I get this question a lot.  Most of the time people are wanting to know if it is OK to lie in order to avoid hurting someone's feelings, or spare them some sort of "hard truth."  Aquinas provides the classical Catholic analysis of the question.  He teaches that lying is always a sin.  As a sin, lying is subject to the same moral evaluation that we afford other sins.  Is the object of the act evil?  Is the act itself freely willed?  Is the act intended?  As moral agents we are constantly seeking the Good.  Everything we do we do to achieve this end--goodness.  Frequently, we are mistaken about whether or not a particular act takes us closer to the Good.  Sometimes, we know this act will not get us closer.  In the case of lying, we must know that we are speaking a falsehood (object).  We must be competent to will ourselves to speak the falsehood (i.e. free, not mentally or emotionally incapacitated).  And we must intend to deceive by freely willing to speak the falsehood.  All three conditions must be met in order for there to be a sin committed when speaking a falsehood.  Circumstances can mitigate the degree of culpability (guilt) for the sin.  The classic example is lying to the Nazis about the Jews you have hidden in your basement.  Yes, it is a sin to lie to the Nazis and save the lives of the Jews you have hidden.  Your guilt here is mitigated by duress.  Some would argue that you are not free.  But this is a dangerous interpretation of Aquinas' conditions b/c just about any situation where you want to spare someone hurt could be considered a limit on freedom.  So, lying is never OK.  But there are degrees of culpability in different circumstances. 

3).  In the post below, "Sacrificial service vs. being a doormat," I tried to distinguish the difference between serving others in a truly Christian fashion and simply allowing others to abuse your good will.  Ultimately, this distinction is going to be lived out in the individual conscience of the servant:  am I serving for the greater glory of God, or am I serving for some other, lesser reason?  Commenters noted that women are often culturally conditioned to feel guilty when they fail to serve "as they ought."  Not being a woman, I'll have to assume that this is true.  Guilt serves an important role in our conscience.  Understood in a healthy way, guilt alerts us to possible violations of conscience.  When guilt is imposed from an outside force (culture, spouses, etc.), it limits freedom and becomes coercive.  I can't speak to individual cases without spending a lot of time on the details involved, but generally speaking, our Christian service must be freely given--without any kind of coercion--in order for it to be sacrificial service.  Think of the difference between making a donation and paying a tax.  Who feels good about writing the IRS a check?  Who doesn't feel good about writing a check for a favorite charity?  The difference is the degree of freedom involved.  If you know that you are "serving" out of a sense of imposed guilt, then I would say that you are not serving freely.  Knowing that you are serving out of guilt is the tricky part.  That requires some spiritual direction.  It's not something that I can tease out in general terms.   

4).  What's the big deal with the new English translations of the Mass?  Why the constant delay? 

In my experience, people rarely argue over the Real Issue at Hand.  We tend to choose what I'll call "ciphers," or symbols that allow us to reduce a larger problem into smaller, manageable bits.  At stake in the Liturgy Wars is the soul of the Church.  Who are we?  What are we about?  It's a question of Catholic identity in this postmodern age.  But the problem of Catholic identity is cultural, social, economic, religious, legal, etc.  In other words, it's HUGE.  And as such, largely unmanageable.  So, we pick smaller battles to fight the larger war.  The Translation Battles have to do with what sort of language will use to pray together.  Both sides of the battle know that language shapes attitudes and influences beliefs.  Both sides know that the kind of language we use in prayer together shapes our view of God and our relationship to Him.  Some will go so far as to say that language-use is the only reality we have direct contact with.  Control language-use, control reality.  This is the philosophical base for the P.C. movement, i.e., if we can change how people speak, we can change the reality they live in.  The Translation Battle is really about how will we come to understand ourselves as Catholics in the next few decades.  One side wants us to maintain a "marketplace diction" so as to emphasize your communal nature as a Church.  The point of this language is to bring God down to us and have us share together in His immanent presence.  The other side wants us to use a more "sacred diction" so as to emphasize the transcendence of God beyond His creation and elevate us up to Him.  Both sides have very distinct ideas about what counts as a language of prayer.  The recently approved translations favor the "sacred diction" side of the battle.  This side will point out that the "marketplace diction" of the last 30 years has desacralized the liturgy to the point where Mass is really nothing more than a sort of community picnic to which God is invited but whose presence is not really all that important.  Mass is about us.  The other side argues that the "sacred diction" will alienate Catholics from their everyday experience of God, leaving them in a fog of complicated concepts and tortured syntax.  Faithful translations of Latin prayers introduces a vaguely foreign feel into the English and will make people feel spiritually queasy.  This side fears that "sacred diction" is a way of reimposing an unhealthy distinction between priestly prayer and the ordinary prayer of the people.  It's important here, I think, to understand that these differences are not merely a matter of taste.  The issues are very real and the concerns are legitimate.  Though I favor "sacred diction," there is a danger of the Mass becoming incomprehensible to the average Catholic.  Mass is about God.  But prayer doesn't change God.  It changes us.  And for it to do so, we must be able to understand it.  Sacred language can be clear, beautiful, and transcendent without being unnecessarily complex.  We'll have to wait and see how the new text actually works.  The delay?  Well, Vatican Two mandated that each bishops' conference is responsible for the translations in its major language.  Once a translation is done, it goes to the Vatican for approval.  The Vatican can send it back with requests for corrections.  This is an arduous process requiring years of hard work and negotiation.  As we have seen, it only takes a handful of bishops to gum up the works!  We've been waiting for an approved English translation of the ordination rite for almost 25 years now.  

More later. . .

Delete the emails! More from the climate-hacks

Wow. Now the hacked/leaked emails are demonstrating a "conspiracy" among the global-warming alarmists to suppress evidence, shut-out peer reviewed papers, ignore Freedom of Information Act requests, suppress opposition comments on their websites, and they even celebrate the death of a leading global-warming skeptic!


One of the scientists writes, "...If anything, I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences. This isn’t being political, it is being selfish." Regardless of the starvation, natural disaster, disease, etc. Wow.


Remember last year when tons of climate data was "lost":


From: Phil Jones To: “Michael E. Mann”

Subject: IPCC & FOI

Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008


Mike,


Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?

Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment - minor family crisis.

Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.

We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!


Cheers


Phil


Wow. Just wow. Governments all over the world have spent billions and billions on this nonsense and it's looking more and more like the whole thing really is nothing more than a giant hoax.

Emails catch climatologists fudging the numbers (UPDATED)

Oops!


Hacked emails show global-warming alarmists in the scientific community "hiding the data."


Inconvenient truths, indeed. . .


Update from the Telegraph (UK):


As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:


Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

Sarah Palin for the people and by the people?

Amanda Fortini's post at Salon, "The Annie Oakley of American Politics," concludes with this observation on Sarah Palin:

After all, as the populist governor of a state whose voters respond to plainspoken directness, she suddenly found herself a national figure addressing big-media sophisticates. She was given about seven seconds to learn her role and then, after eight seconds, patronized and mocked. The reasons she performed so poorly are the very reasons her fan base loves her. If, over the next three years, her performance improves as much as it appears to have in just the last year, the conventional rap about her rustic idiocy may come off as mean-spirited and archaic. Her foes might be wise to contemplate the notion that someone of Palin’s background and sensibilities has a right, regardless of her views, to participate in the national debate merely because she speaks (though often unclearly) for many like her. If this possibility can’t be countenanced, then government for the people by the people is an abstract idea we’ve grown too cynical to practice. Sarah Palin endures not because she’s brilliant, smooth or philosophically correct, but because hope in democracy endures, too.

I'm really indifferent to Palin as a politician.  My own rural, southern values resonate with hers, but being president is about more than just having good values.  As the ineptitude of B.O.'s amateurism in the Oval Office is proving all too well, being President is about sound judgment--in personnel decisions and policy-making.

Her appeal as a candidate will ultimately fall on how well she reflects the American voting public as it sees itself.  If there's anyone out there in the GOP or among the Dems who does this better than she does, I don't know who they are.  

Roe v. Wade will defeat ScaryCare?

George Will has an interesting post up: "Unlawful health care reform?"


He suggests that the "right of privacy" invented by the Supreme Court in '60's that allows abortion may come back to bite the supporters of Pelosi-Reid Care:


[. . .]


The court says the constitutional privacy right protects personal "autonomy" regarding "the most intimate and personal choices." The right was enunciated largely at the behest of liberals eager to establish abortion rights. Liberals may think, but the court has never held, that the privacy right protects only doctor-patient transactions pertaining to abortion. David Rivkin and Lee Casey, Justice Department officials under the Reagan and first Bush administrations, ask: If government cannot proscribe or even "unduly burden" -- the court's formulation -- access to abortion, how can government limit other important medical choices?


[. . .]

O.P. friar gets owned

From the combox on my post about B.O. bowing to the Japanese emperor:

"However, with all due respect, I don't think you need to resort to using phrases such as 'pie-hole' to get your point across. You are too much of a gifted and talented writer for that!"

THIS, folks, is how you shame a big-mouthed Dominican into being more polite!

My only (and pathetic) defense?  Politicians make me crazy.  I plea "not guilty by reason of insanity."

Mea culpa.