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.

Three new books on the Blessed Mother

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

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

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

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

Science, theology: no competition for truth?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the rest is my license thesis. . .

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

Once again. . .Coffee Bowl Browsing!

Dan Brown's One World Religion agenda

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

Everything you always wanted to know about apokatastasis

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

Dorothy's house is assimilated by the Borg

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

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

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

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

Multi-tasking in a non-insectoid world

Classic philosophy texts podcast for your mental exercise

A multimedia presentation of Dante's The Divine Comedy

The games played in Alice of Wonderful

Why are there no Obama jokes? "The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny." --E. Abbey

A free on-line library. . .a million links to just about everything

DON"T FORGET! Join my minions. . .errrmmm. . .I mean, Followers! (Right side bar)

Verdict: guilty!

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

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

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

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

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

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

VERY close call

I'm very clumsy.

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

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

Nothing.

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

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

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

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

Caricature of a U.S. President

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

I thought there was one particularly hilarious paragraph:

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

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

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

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

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

Heaven thru Mississippi eyes

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

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

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

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

Using Notre Shame vs. the Obamanation

This is a fantastic idea. . .

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

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

The Monday Project!

Literary Snob Turns Redneck for $7

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

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

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

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

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

This I can't wait to see!

Mission accomplished

Mission accomplished!

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

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

God bless, Fr. Philip, OP

We're becoming more pro-life!

Excellent news for the human race!

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

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

Naw.

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

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

Several jokes about Jebbies, Dominicans, and other religious orders

Interview with an exorcist, Fr. Amorth

An e-breviary

Lay "blessings" at communion are a no-no

Demonic attack!

Darth Vader comes to Hitler's aid

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

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

45 Tips for a happier life

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

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

Filled with awe at the wonder of the universe

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

Poetry so bad, it's good!

Obamanomics in action

Why do non-conservatives exist?

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

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

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

I love Ann Coulter!

Liberal Taliban Issues Fatwa Against Miss California (link)

[. . .]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pics from yesterday's Eucharistic Procession!

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

(R) Archbishop Burke and deacon














Happy, singing nuns! The Angelicum Choir. . .













Inside the Ss. Dominic and Sisto Church



Pics by Heralds of the Gospel

Truth-telling is a dangerous business

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[. . .]

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

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

Questions for Those Discerning a Religious Vocation

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

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

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

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

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

Three Cautions

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

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

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

Practical Advice

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions to ask yourself:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Archbishop Burke on the Culture of Death

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

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

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

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

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

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

[. . .]

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

St Joseph Novena

An excellent novena to St. Joseph. . .offered in response to the upcoming scandal at Notre Dame on May 17th.

Chaput, science, DNC brownshirts, and motivation to buy me a book

Archbishop Charles Chaput's speech upon receiving the Becket Fund’s Canterbury Medal:

Archbishop Chaput said this view of the value of human life was in direct contrast to a contemporary American spirit in which science can “comfortably” coexist alongside “superstition or barbarism.” As the Western moral consensus weakened alongside the progress of science, people did not become more ethically mature.

“The 20th century was the bloodiest in history, and today the occult is flourishing right alongside our computers and Blackberries,” he said.

“Knowledge is merely knowledge. Power is merely power. Nothing inherent to knowledge or power guarantees that it will translate into wisdom or justice or mercy.”

He quoted a passage from President Barack Obama’s inaugural speech about restoring science to “its rightful place,” contrasting this with a passage from the 2008 Vatican document Dignitas Personae:

“The dignity of a person must be recognized in every human being from conception to natural death. This fundamental principle expresses a great ‘yes’ to human life, and must be at the center of ethical reflections on biomedical research, which has an ever greater importance in today’s world.”

Archbishop Chaput said that the rightful place of science is “in the service of human dignity, and under the judgment of God’s justice.”

“Science can never stand outside or above moral judgment. And people of faith can never be neutral or silent about its uses. Otherwise, sooner or later -- but unavoidably – human beings, their rights and their dignity pay the price.”

Give this man a Red Hat! Thank God we will have bishops like this around when the Nannified Brownshirts come to round us up for our "Cookies and Waterboarding" at the summer camp sponsored by the Obamessiah's newly founded and fully funded Committee for the Promotion of Religious Diversity and the Propagation of the Gospel of Moloch.

High Priestess Linda Sanchez, House Representative Democrat from CA, has fired a major salvo in this summer's war on the Christian faith. Sanchez is ready to toss into jail any emailer, blogger, website operator who posts anything that might be taken to cause "substantial emotional distress to a person." Of course, far be from me to miss a chance here.

When I look at the 25 books on my WISH LIST and see that no one has bought me any books today, I begin to feel a substantial emotion distress. Even a bit weepy, actually. So, I suggest that all of you click over to the WISH LIST and shoot a book my way before the Mujerista of Moloch, Ms Sanchez, sics her Brownshirts on you for making me cry.

For a devastating fisking of Uberfrauline Sanchez's fascistic tendencies, check this out.

The next book?

In the past I've asked readers to suggest topics for blog posts. The topics suggested were usually quite good.

So, now I'm asking readers to suggest topics for my next book. I already have a couple of ideas bouncing around in my head, but it's good to keep things fluid.

The question: if you could order a custom-made book written by a Dominican priest, what would you order?

Guidelines:

1). Nothing too academic. I have a thesis and dissertation to write, so what brainpower I still have access to will have to be spent pounding out these demonstrations of academic prowess.

2). Something useful to regular Catholics. I spend way too much time around "religious professionals," i.e. priests, religious, etc. so it is too easy for me to see the world in terms of our issues and answers.

3). Something that will challenge, provoke, build-up. It would be too easy to write something that confirms what we already know.

4). Something creative. I take this to mean: not a Q&A, not a "self-help" book, not a "Catholicism for Dummies" type book, nothing merely apologetical.

What I'm thinking of doing. . .

. . .a book of short essays dealing with cultural themes (e.g. violence, debt, excess, joy, death)

. . .a book of meditations on selected passages from the writings of the Church's spiritual masters, a sort of daybook for growing in holiness

. . .or maybe a book of meditations on selected poems from a Catholic perspective

. . .at some point I want to write a book of short stories.

. . .what else?

Some news: I sent too much material to my editor, so there is a possibility that we will divide the manuscript into two books!

Needing literary relief!

Having sent my own creative writing project off to be edited and prepared for publication, I returned to philosophy and theology. . .I was not expecting to miss the thrill of reading and writing creatively as much as I have!

I've updated the WISH LIST to include a series of anthologies that collect spiritual writing, short stories, and essays from the last few years. These anthologies always provide an excellent overview of what's going on in the literary world I miss so much. . .

Check 'em out! (Anyone wanna guess what I'm thinking my next book might be. . .?)

Coffee Bowl Browsing

Obama's bizarre definition of "publicity": $330,000 publicity pics will not be published

Fighting Leftist GroupThink in Canada and winning (the vids are the best part!)

Most Catholics support torture? Not quite.

The One de-funds Charter Schools, supports public schools, and yet sends his daughters to a private school. . .Why?

What's appropriate for a bride to wear on her wedding day? (I've never had to address this problem; however, I make a point of announcing that flash photography during the liturgical celebration is absolutely forbidden.)

Feminist outrage & the banality of abortion (UPDATED)

NB. I have edited this posted to eliminate my inflammatory language. A commenter correctly pointed out that my description of the author is less than charitable (not in those words but close enough). My apologies to the author. I'm not going to lie and say I didn't intend to offend. That's exactly what I intended to do, and by doing so, I distracted from the real issues. Having been a pro-abortion proponent for years, including a stint as a NOW escort at one of the south's largest abortion clinics, and having worked for a rape crisis center, a battered women's shelter, and a hospital for sexually abused children, I have seen the emotional and spiritual devastation that abortion causes women who have been encouraged to kill their children because not doing so would be taken as a sign that they have capitulated somehow to male dominance. My opposition to the radical feminist agenda is not simply a knee-jerk Catholic reaction to an ideology that rejects the Church. I was a radical feminist and Marxist for years. Up-close and personal, I've seen their agenda destroy lives. The obstinate refusal to recognize what abortion does to women is not only a political blindness, it is a willed evil as well. From the inside, I know that the "pro-choice" movement is anything but supportive of a woman's right to choose to have children. The pressure to abort unwanted preganancies is overwhelming. And the rhetoric of the pro-aborts is designed to de-humanize the child using medical terminology so that the woman is numbed to the reality of what she is choosing to do. In my experience, women who have been raped and choose to carry the child to term are characterized as "gender traitors" and seen by the feminist community as enablers of male dominance. They would rather see a child murdered than see their ideology challenged by a traitor who refuses to sacrifice her child for the good of the cause. A note on comments: I simply don't have time to respond to everyone's objections. But please continue commenting. . .just sign a name!

I've been asked in one of the com-boxes to comment on the following anti-Catholic polemic from a pro-abortionist:
___________________________________

In Brazil, there is a horrific story of a 9-year-old girl who was raped and impregnated. It’s believed that the rape was committed by her step-father. The girl was not only pregnant at that young age, but also pregnant with twins. And so, as makes perfect sense, she had an abortion [Of course! It makes perfect sense to add double homicide to this horror]. Because she was raped, because she was much to young to have a child, and because the stress of having twins would of course have been far too much for a 9-year-old’s body to handle. And she could have died.

Now, the Catholic Church has excommunicated both the girl’s mother and the doctors who performed the abortion, which likely saved the girl’s life [and killed two other people in the process].

[NB. Notice that the author of piece never once acknowledges the humanity of the children much less their personhood. The children are simply disposal by-products of a violent rape. Also note that there is never a peep about the possible mental trauma a forced abortion might cause a pregnant nine-year old.]

Well then. At least they didn’t excommunicate the girl, right? Maybe they decided that she was much too young to have made the decision to have the abortion on her own, or to understand what was happening [and yet Planned Parenthood and other pro-aborts ruthlessly oppose any and all attempts to require parental notification for underage girls, and they illegally encourage the statutory rape of underage girls by telling them to lie about the father's age when the girls seek abortions]. But not too young, apparently, to be forced to give birth to the twins caused by her rapist. Not too young to quite possibly die in the process [and apparently not too young to be forced to get a double abortion].

In defending the decision, the Church’s lawyer has said:

“It’s the law of God: Do not kill. We consider this murder,” Miranda said in comments reported by O Globo.

But rape, apparently, is a-okay [yes, exactly. . .b/c the Church opposes murder, it must necessarily follow that the Church supports rape]. After all, I don’t see the step-father, who allegedly admitted to having raped the girl since the age of 6, being excommunicated [raping a child is beyond horrible, but does it rise to the level of killing her?]. Killing a fetus is apparently worthy of such censure and shunning. Horrifically violating a small child, though? Well, we all make mistakes [in so far as the father has committed rape he is in effect excommunicated. . .he may not "worthily receive" the sacraments until he has repented and received absolution]. And this stance is of course nothing new.

The lawyer also argued that the girl just should have carried to term and had a cesarean section. Because obviously a lawyer knows the girl’s condition better than her own doctor. And obviously the girl’s mental well-being doesn’t count for a damn thing [because avoiding even the possibility that the girl might suffer mentally from giving birth is worth the lives of two children. What about the damage a forced abortion will cause this girl?].

Who knows what a cesarean section would have done for the girl [precisely, who knows? On the other hand, we know exactly what abortion does to children], since the doctors didn’t present the issue of her giving vaginal birth as being the main health concern here. But oh well. God says. Clearly, if this child died in the course of fulfilling “God’s wishes,” it would have been a lesser tragedy than the cold-blooded murder of those innocent little fetuses [no, it would have compounded this tragedy even more. . .]. After all, in other extremist Catholic doctrine, a woman is better off dead than raped anyway [yup, got us again. . .this interpretation of Catholic doctrine seems to square quite well with paragraph 2356, of the Catechism, which reads: "Rape is the forcible violation of the sexual intimacy of another person. It does injury to justice and charity. Rape deeply wounds the respect, freedom, and physical and moral integrity to which every person has a right. It causes grave damage that can mark the victim for life. It is always an intrinsically evil act. Graver still is the rape of children committed by parents (incest) or those responsible for the education of the children entrusted to them." Did you catch that: like abortion, rape is always an "intrinsically evil act."

RH Reality Check asks: Is this what religious objection to abortion looks like [No. But this woman's post is what anti-Catholic bigotry looks like]? Seeing as how the point of the entire anti-choice movement is indeed to erase any and all concern for the woman in question, in fact to erase her very existence if at all possible [again, right on! And the fact that the Catholic Church is the single largest non-governmental donor of charitable funds to social service organizations in the world is entirely besides the point. . .also ignored in this piece is the fact that the Catholic Church in the U.S. provides free pre-natal care, free adoption services, and even free recovery services to any pregnant woman who wants them. . .let's see, I think Planned Parenthood charges $350 per abortion] . . . clearly, yes. In an extreme nutshell, this is exactly what it looks like.
___________________________________

Folks, this is what the Church is up against. The sheer irrationality and venom of this post is incredible. The author sees no moral dilemma here, no horror in aborting the girl's children. She takes no stand against forcing a nine-year old, already traumatized by rape, to undergo an abortion. Abortion, after all, is the Feminist Sacrament. The real kicker is that she directs her outrage at the Church for announcing the excommunications of the mother and doctor. . .excommunications that happened long before the Church even knew the abortions had taken place. The Church did not excommunicate these people. They excommunicated themselves by committing a double-murder. And, AND! These excommunications are really quite simple to lift. Those babies are still dead. And always will be.

I don't know the all the circumstances of this case. I don't need to know the circumstances to call an abortion murder. If it became apparent later in the pregnancy that carrying and giving birth to the twins would kill the girl, then an extraordinarily difficult decision would have to be made. And even if the girl's mother and doctor opted to abort the children, we could never call it good. It would be an evil regardless of circumstance or intent. The only thing that we might say is that culpability for the murders would be somewhat mitigated by circumstances and intent. The object of abortion. . .the ONLY object of abortion. . .is the death of an innocent human person. When can we say that this is a Good Thing? Never.

NOTE: Sign a name to your comments or they will be deleted. HancAquam does not tolerate anonymous hit and run cowards in its com-box!

Coffee Bowl browsing. . .

And yet even more eco-hypocrisy. . .

Lots of Top Ten Lists

Bishop Blair and friend of the CDF Theological Assessment team confront the LCWR

And don't forget to vote for HancAquam in the 2009 Cannonball Blog Awards. . .make ACORN proud and vote as many times as you like.

Big "C" Catholic

Click over to Big "C" Catholic and welcome them to the Papist Blogosphere. . .

They are re-posting installments of my piece, "Put Down the Missalette!"

This was one of my first non-homily postings on HancAquam. . .it caused quite a stir in the comment boxes.

Come on, Jesus! Just tell us!

4th Week of Easter (T): Acts 11.19-26; John 10.22-30
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Convento SS Domenico e Sisto, Roma

Those among the Jews who flock around Jesus at the Portico of Solomon sound very much like my literature students when we begin reading modern poetry: “Just tell us plainly what all this means!” Growing increasingly impatient with the ambiguity of his metaphors and parables, those following Jesus around town want a straight-forward, plain-spoken declaration that can either be rejected as false or accepted as true. No more vague hints. No more esoteric gibberish. No more stories within stories that excite imagination so that the heart might believe. Like my poetry students, Jesus’ followers want The Answer because they know it’s going to be on The Test. Truly, who can blame them? Unlike my students, however, those among the Jews who have been captivated by our Lord’s preaching and miraculous works are risking their places in heaven by listening to this Nazarean upstart. He is leading them away from the surety and comfort of the temple and the into the potentially deadly desert of faith alone. So, they clamor after him, crying out in frustration: "How long are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly." As simply and as plainly as he can, Jesus answers: “I told you and you do not believe. The works I do in my Father's name testify to me […] The Father and I are one.”

As the philosopher in the crowd, I would be the one to ask those pestering Jesus for clarity: “Um, he says he and the Father are one. But why would you believe that? You are asking the would-be King to declare himself King so that you might know who is King.” One would hope that there is at least one soul in the crowd who would point out, “He says he and the Father are one. He also acts in a way that shows he and the Father are one.” Even the most hard-headed, cold-hearted philosopher would have to admit that an empirically verifiable demonstration of divinity is worth consideration! But demanding such a demonstration misses the point entirely.

Those demanding clarity from Jesus have witnessed his miracles. They have much more than his allegedly flighty stories on which to base their faith. Jesus tells them that it is not a lack of empirical evidence or verbal clarity that impedes their acceptance of his claim to be the Messiah. What’s preventing them from coming into the fullness of his revelation is their lack of belief. They cannot see his works for what they are because do not believe in their Father’s promises. Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”

First, we must hear the Lord’s voice, then we come to believe. Once we believe, empirical evidence supporting the truth of our belief is irrelevant to our relationship with God. We do not base our love for friends and family on verifiable evidence. Jesus did not perform his miracles as evidence for us to witness, evaluate, and then either accept or reject as proof of his divinity. He cured the sick, fed the hungry, and raised the dead out of compassion, out of love for those who suffer. The question that Jesus’ entire life and ministry—from his virgin birth to his sacrificial death and resurrection—the question he poses to us is this: will you follow me to the cross and suffer for the love of your neighbor? That, brothers and sisters, is an unambiguous question. Now, how do you answer?

Angels, Demons, Liars & Thieves

Excellent review of the movie adaptation of Angels and Demons. . .this is the latest piece of hateful flotsam to be produced by anti-Catholic bigot and Know-Nothing harpie, Dan Brown. Tom Hanks' participation in this farce is disappointing. Note the liberal cowardice of the movie's producers who change the distinctly Muslim/middle eastern name of the assassin in the book to something less potentially offensive to our fatwa-prone friends. Obviously, the producers aren't all that worried that the violent minions of the Evil Catholic Church will kidnap them and make a Youtube video of their beheading.

During the fracas over The DaVinci Code, I was asked many times if Catholics should go see the movie or read the book. My advice then remains the same for Brown's latest excretion: if you want to give your hard-earned money to someone who is willing to lie about the Church to make a profit, do so.

One could argue that Brown's books and their movie adaptations are immoral in themselves. I won't argue this point. I will say, however, that giving Brown your cash is not unlike an Israeli citizen giving a sweet donation to Hamas. To what degree would you be culpable in any anti-Catholic violence that might result from the hatred puked up by Brown's twisted imagination? Your moral cooperation would be remote at best, but why put yourself in the position of even having to ask the question?

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed an incredibly dangerous "hate crimes" bill. Federal prosecutors will be allowed to investigate and prosecute as "thought criminals" anyone who is suspected of inducing by means of "hate speech" a violent act against a member of an enumerated, protected class of citizens, This bill is modeled on similar laws in Canada that have already been used to arrest and charge clergy who preach against same-sex marriage.

Setting aside the obvious First Amendment objections, this bill violates the Fourteenth Amendment by giving selected citizens more protection under the law than others. Anyone remember this: "Some animals are more equal than others?" Violence against someone due to animus toward their religious beliefs is one of the enumerated crimes.

My question: when some whacko vandalizes a Catholic Church, will the Feds go after Brown for his obvious anti-Catholic "hate speech"?

Yea. I'll sit here and hold my breath.

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