St Philip Neri (1515-95), was a Florentine priest who spent his life in pastoral work among the poor of Rome and founded the Congregation of the Oratory. This is a federation of communities of secular priests who live together but are not bound by the solemn vows of a religious order, and who engage in pastoral work in urban centres. John Henry Newman was an Oratorian priest, and his writings on St Philip are an interesting guide to the spirit of the saint by one who lived it, and is often thought of as the second founder of the Congregation.
Nor was it only skilled theologians whose art was enlisted in the service of St Philip's vision. It is often suggested nowadays that the way in which the painter Caravaggio presents the saints and the Holy Family as resembling the Roman poor of his own day - dirty, wrinkled, ragged, with elements of the grotesque - was intended as secret mockery of Christian belief by an unbelieving artist; but in fact St Philip encouraged artists to depict the saints and the Gospel in this manner, so that the poor might see their hope in them, and the rich and powerful (who included St Philip's patrons and members of his Congregation) might be called upon to see Jesus incarnate in the poor and to help them as they would assist Jesus and Our Lady, instead of despising them for their dirt and rags.
This is worth bearing in mind as we contemplate today how a mixture of social snobbery and spiritual pride contributed to the torture and rape and exploitation disclosed in the Ry a n report; it also illustrates how the literature of horror and the grotesque may be used either to tempt us to despair in God and humanity, or to help us see in the most degraded among us the face of Jesus. How far Caravaggio, whose own life was stormy and full of crime, was touched by the Spirit of Christ through St Philip, is not known; but all who take pleasure in his works should commend him and themselves to St Philip's intercession. This morning at Mass the priest told us a story about him that I had not heard but which highlights the absence in him of spiritual pride - that every day when he awoke he would say: "This day, O Lord, have mercy on Philip; for this day Philip will betray thee."
St Philip was known for his cheerfulness, and has always been one of the most beloved of saints. (When I visited Armagh Cathedral recently I noticed a window depicting St Philip, presented by an Irish-American archbishop in honour of his father, also called Philip. I was a little surprised that he had not placed him under the patronage of St Philip the Apostle; but given that we know so little of the Apostle and so much of his sympathetic Italian namesake, it is understandable.) St Philip forms a contrast to the view of sanctity as necessarily gloomy and austere. He wrote little himself, but by the force of his love drew to him men of greater talents than himself who recognised something in him which outweighed all their talents; he did not ask them to renounce their talents but to use them in God's service.
When Newman chose as his patron the humble and loving teacher of Rome, he followed in the footsteps of such of St Philip's contemporary disciples as the great Church historian Cesar Baronius; and although Newman's insistence on human friendship as a necessary part of the love of God and of intellectual attainment pre-dates his entry into the Church and attachment to the Oratorian ethos, it is very much in the spirit of St Philip, as is the motto which Newman chose as a cardinal, cor ad cor loquitur ("heart speaks to heart"). St Philip's contemporaries testify that when his body was opened after his death his heart was shrunken as if consumed by fire, and his ribs cracked as if they had been pressed outward by the swelling of his heart; these were seen as signs of love akin to the stigmata of St Francis.
At the same time he was a man of broad sympathies. He had been taught by the Dominicans of Florence, and he always believed, as many Dominicans have done from that day to this, that the Florentine Dominican Girolamo Savonarola, burned at the stake with the approval of Pope Alexander VI whom he had denounced, was in fact a martyr and a saint. This seems a strange affinity, for Savonarola was a puritan rigorist and St Philip (by the standards of his day) the opposite; but its very strangeness lends it force. I used to be sure that Savonarola was rightly condemned; I have never been sure since I heard of St Philip's attitude towards him. St Philip is known as the apostle of Rome; and Newman rightly says that this title is as much to the discredit of the Church of his day as it is to his own honour, because it is a fearful sign of the state into which it had fallen that a new Apostle should be required to evangelise the city of Peter and tend to the needs of its poor. As we look today at the collapse of Catholic observance here in Ireland and the revelations of how, as in Renaissance Rome, outward shows of piety cloaked the most fearful abuses and corruptions, we can learn from St Philip that things have been as bad before, that we must not lose hope, and that we must bear witness for Christ in our own cities as he did.
St Philip, who rekindled the light of faith among the people of Rome when corruption had driven out faith, and whose son John Henry Newman came to Ireland to teach us the mutual nourishment of faith and intellect, pray for us. Through your intercession may God raise up new apostles to win back our land to Christ and His Church as He raised up St Patrick, and as he raised you and others up in what seemed the darkest hour. Fill our hearts with the cheerfulness that comes from God, and in that hope inspire us to labour for Him.
Hibernicus
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.
- From Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare
Contemplating the almost unbelievable horrors contained in the Ryan report, I was cudgelling my brains for inspiration about what more we could possibly have to say about the atrocities committed over many years by people whose lives are supposedly dedicated to Almighty God, and to the least of his brethren. To say nothing would be cowardly; to join in the media - o rchestrated hate-fest unthinkable; to defend the perpetrators of sadistic and/or sodomistic abuse impossible. How to strike the right balance? The answer suddenly came, as if from on high - in the form of the item by Hibernicus which you have just been reading.
What needs to be added is to express sympathy to the teaching religious - in particular to the Christian Brothers as a body. They are now cordially hated by a large proportion of the Irish people; yet for two centuries they provided an excellent education for hundreds of thousands of boys who might not otherwise have received any. Many of those now loudest in blanket condemnation are now in positions of power and influence, thanks to most of the Brothers' selfless dedication and educational skills. The real problem is that little or no clear distinction has been made between sexual perverts (including those who covered up for them) who deserve all the obloquy they are getting, and those brothers who were too free with the strap, who don't. By 21st-century standards, the latter may have formed the overwhelming majority in the Order. But contrary to what many newspaper columnists apparently believe, there is nothing Catholic, or Irish, about inflicting excessive corporal punishment on school pupils.
Most people in the Western world now believe that caning should be absolutely banned in all schools. But until comparatively recently it was regarded as a necessary instrument of discipline - even in virtually all British public schools frequented by the sons of the upper and upper middle classes. In many, it was inflicted by senior boys as well as by masters. In some Jesuit schools, I am told, the instrument of punishment was a piece of whalebone enclosed in leather, known as a "tolley". This was because before each application the teacher would say to the pupil: tolle manum(hold out your hand). In view of the chaotic state of discipline in many schools today, teachers may surely be pardoned if they wish the strap was still available - as a last resort and under strictly controlled conditions.
It also has to be said that many of the boys in the industrial schools came from very deprived backgrounds. They were certainly not "evil" but many were very tough, and already coarsened by erratic and excessively harsh discipline at home, often consisting of blows with a razor strop or thick leather belt. The brothers no doubt genuinely believed that they would not respond to any other form of correction - laid on pretty hard. As a wise priest of my acquaintance writes:
The system at that time reflected attitudes in the wider society, in England as well as in Ireland. Indeed, many of the attitudes regarding the brin ing up of a child in Ireland were inherited from Victorian times. What was considered as wise teaching, for the parent as well as for the teacher, was that to spare the rod was to spoil the child. Although I was never beaten at home, it was sufficient for Mum to suggest her having to resort to the wooden spoon to stop us being "bold". I was however beaten by a Christian Brother, on my hands. It is easy now to condemn him, but he was part of the whole scene, when a muscular Christianity was in vogue. When I heard the BBC and ITV gloat over the expected downfall of the Catholic Church's moral authority, I wondered if they had ever read Tom Brown's Schooldays, or the many autobiographies of ex-public school boys of that time regarding life in those schools.
Indeed, my friend might well have mentioned the Catholic convert novelist Bruce Marshall, who attended Glenalmond public school in Scotland early in the last century. His George Brown's Schooldays, although very funny in parts, contains accounts of brutalities similar to those which occurred in Irish Christian Brothers ' establishments. Dr Geoff rey Fisher, later Archbishop of Canterbury, had a reputation as a ferocious flogger when he was headmaster of Repton.
In British Catholic public schools, run by Benedictines or Jesuits, caning was inflicted for minor breaches of discipline. At Downside, I once received four of the best for forgetting I was due for a bath one Tuesday might. Afew years earlier, a newly arrived 12-year-old was beaten by the headmaster for the trifling offence of carrying a bottle of ink from one classroom to another. He was not even aware of the regulation. The junior housemaster, former Abb y Theatre actor Dom Wulstan Phillipson, was so furious when he heard about this that that he went to the head and read him the riot act. That headmaster, Dom Christopher Butler, later became abbot, and then a bishop. He was one of the liberal luminaries of the Second Vatican Council.
To end on a more positive note, one former pupil of the Brothers' Artane school, who was recently interviewed on RTÉ radio, was so well trained, motivated and self-disciplined that when he joined the British army he rose to the rank of Regimental Sergeant-Major. That is a far greater achievement for a man of his background than it would be for a public schoolboy to be made a colonel. There are many similar stories, and the Brothers can share much of the credit for them.
Some readers resent the fact that we sometimes allow contributors such as Hibernicus to employ noms-de-plume, arguing for total transparency. Believe me, I only permit this when I consider it necessary. In the case of Hibernicus it certainly is; he is an academic in a very vulnerable situation.Nick Lowry
This sermon was preached by Father MICHAEL CAHILL, PP Kilbeg, Co Meath during Mass for Ascension Sunday this year. It was broadcast on Louth-Meath FM Local Radio
WHATan awesome spectacle as the Lord Jesus "was lifted up as they looked on, and a cloud took Him from their sight".
How much more awesome is the mission He entrusted to His disciples and all who would follow Him until He returns in glory. To the disciples of all times and places He committed and entrusted the greatest message the world has ever heard or ever will hear:
To accomplish this momentous mission the Lord equipped His disciples, now no less than then, with power and authority to speak and act in His name on every issue, in every area and circumstance of human life. He entrusted to His disciples, now no less than then, the entire treasury of Heaven in the Mass and the Sacraments - the means of bringing mankind into contact and relationship with God.
Many generations of disciples, at different times and in different places, have been spectacularly faithful to that charge - the Irish no less than any other race.
Now, to our great sadness and shame, we see that at a particular time in our recent history it all went horribly wrong; it was turned upside-down and inside-out:
Did the Lord not say that it was the disciples themselves who were supposed to suffer? That they were meant to be the sheep, not the wolves? That they were meant to be the servants, not the masters? That they were meant to become like the little children whom they were sent to serve?
Because some were so spectacularly unfaithful, the legacy of faith handed down to us has been despoiled, squandered, the features of God's Holy Church disfigured beyond all recognition, so it seems as if we have nothing now to build on. We can only ask the question the disciples ask in today's gospel: "Lord, when are you going to restore the Kingdom / to renew your Church" and we will receive the same response: "It is not for you to know times and dates that the Father has decided." And so it may not even be the present generation that will reclaim Irish hearts and minds for God.
But take heart: remember Christ's promise to be with us always and that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church even when the Devil attacks from within as he surely has; so much so that "the signs associated with believers" of which today's gospel speaks are now not just contradictory and confusing but negative and destructive signs.
Yet nothing can ever invalidate the Truth of the Gospel or diminish the power of the Sacraments or dim the beauty of Worship or tarnish the integrity of our Christian witness. In the face of truly appalling sins and crimes we renew our own commitment to live the full, authentic practice of our faith, in response to the encouragement of St Paul in today's epistle: "I implore you to lead lives worthy of your vocation".
That's really all we can do in the face of the failure of leadership, holiness and example in the Church - a Church we so often call Christ's Body, as in today's second reading.
A Body which so often seemed so disappointingly human during His life on earth; seemingly powerless in the face of Pilate's abuse of power; and, in words which have had such popular currency this past week, a body so bloodied, broken, bruised and battered that He could scarcely carry His cross.
Beyond 'States of Fear'
Yet, despite it all, the Ascension gives us hope because in it we see Christ as He really is. The Ascension demonstrates His true nature and ours because, even now, we share in His life in His Risen and glorified Body. We do this to the extent that we live by a faith by means of which we can not only rise above the daily cares and concerns of the body, the troubles of life and the worries of this passing world but, more importantly, if we persevere in our faith He will even take us beyond our frail human nature - beyond states of fear, and pain; and change; and sin; and death, to realise our true selves and our eternal destiny.
In the words of two of the prayers of today's Mass, if we are faithful, we will not only "rise with Him to the joy of heaven" but also "follow Him" not only into a new and better world, but "into a new creation".
Fr Michael Cahill is chaplain to the Latin Mass Society of Ireland, and also to Craobh Pádraig, the Irish Chapter of the Association Notre-Dame de ChrÉtientÉwhich takes part in the walking pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres at Pentecost each year.
THE past few months have given me plenty of opportunity for meditation on death. My good friend Laura and my Aunt Peggy have both died of cancer. As I write, my Uncle Thomas is in the advanced stages of cancer, and by time you read this he may very well have left this world. Several friends, acquaintances, and friends-of-friends have recently died as well. It is worthwhile, then, to reflect a bit on the final article of faith in the Nicene Creed: "I believe in the life of the world to come."
Before I take it for granted, though, I should ask: Do you believe in the life of the world to come? If this question were asked 50 years ago in Western countries, there would have been a high percentage of affirmative replies. But in our present post-modern age, everything seems to be subject to doubt or disbelief. Books by atheists are making the best-seller lists, and traditional beliefs are almost universally scoffed at in the media and in academic and other "sophisticated" circles. God is seen as a quaint relic of an irrelevant past - tolerated, if at all, with a curious mixture of amusement and contempt. Man is the measure of all things; God is a concept that may be left to the realm of one's subjective self-medication, as long as it is excluded from all serious public discourse and policy-making. By cutting ourselves loose from God, the secular prophets tell us, we have finally evolved. We have seen the light and have left the Dark Ages behind, no longer dependent upon the superstitious props of religion and its pie-in-the-sky hopes.
New Towerof Babel
Since God has been run out of town, all beliefs and silly mythologies (like eternal life) must depart along with Him. All that's left is the City of Man, the earthly project that history demonstrates is doomed to repeated collapse and rebuilding and collapse. The new Tower of Babel is under construction. We can design our future, redesign our own species, and create more refined and effective means of obliterating that species from the face of the earth.
Let's hear what we can expect after a life of human accomplishment in this brave new godless world, from one of the most famous and outspoken atheists of the past century, Madalyn Murray O'Hair: "There is no God. There's no heaven. There's no hell. There are no angels. When you die, you go in the ground, the worms eat you...." Adeceased human being, O'Hair wrote, was nothing more than "a fallen leaf from a tree, a dog killed on the highway, a fish caught in a net". That is the glorious conclusion to our bright and wonderfully evolved existence.
I beg to differ with Ms O'Hair who, after having been brutally murdered in an act of revenge toward her unlimited (and well-documented) spite and hatefulness, must see things quite differently now, for better or worse.
The falling away from faith has a long and complex history (and there have been unbelievers in every time and place), but its current manifestations can probably be traced to the advent of "modernism" in the late-19th and 20th centuries. Pope St. Pius X, who formally condemned modernism as "the synthesis of all heresies", said that it was philosophically rooted in agnosticism: Man is at the centre, religion is merely a vehicle for man's subjective desire for the divine (understood merely as inner experience or "religious consciousness"), and all religions are true to the extent they reflect the human psyche.
Why call it Catholic?
As for the future of the Catholic Church in such a Spirit-less context, the modernists' position can perhaps be summed up by the excommunicated ex-priest Alfred Loisy: "Another Catholicism will have to come into being...in no way conditioned by the pontifical institution or the traditional forms of Roman Catholicism." Catholicism in no way conditioned by traditional Catholicism? Uh, why then do they still want to call it Catholicism? If that is their idea of the Church, then the dogmas of our Faith - Eucharist, Resurrection, Virgin Birth, Heaven and Hell, etc. - have no place in this new enlightened religion, which ends up as little more than an emotional appendage to the ever-changing "truths" of modern science, psychology, and politics.
So, what has man gained, liberated from faith in, and hence obedience to, God? Are we really free, unrestrained, and unrestricted now? Are we securing a life of earthly happiness, without enslavement to fear of some future Judgement concerning our eternal destinies? No, today's enlightened and "free" unbelievers are nothing more than "the loose-jointed marionettes of contemporaneity", to use Thomas Howard's phrase. As for me, I believe in the life of the world to come.
I will not attempt to demonstrate that there is life in a world to come, for I didn't say that I have proven it, only that I believe in it. In so doing, I am joining billions of people who have for millennia also believed, among whom are numbered many of the greatest intellectuals the world has ever known. The only reason I specify "intellectuals" here is that in these days they are among the greatest and most vocal doubters and scoffers. For me, the testimony of the Scriptures (which includes eyewitness accounts of Jesus' death, resurrection, and ascension), the combined testimony of countless saints and mystics, as well as my own limited personal experience, are enough to convince me that there is indeed a world to come: the Kingdom of Heaven, to which we have been explicitly directed ever since John the Baptist preached his first fiery sermon on the banks of the Jordan.
Selling God short
Another John, the sainted seer of the Apocalypse, described his vision of the heavenly Jerusalem, and this has been handed down to us as Divine Revelation. Though his vision is symbolic (for example, we don't have to check, should we be found worthy of entering therein, if the courses of precious stones in the walls line up with the biblical account), it is nonetheless true - that is, it speaks of a reality that is, and that will be manifested for every eye to see when the appointed time comes.
Recent decades have witnessed the phenomenon of "near-death experiences", which claim to give evidence of the reality of the afterlife. Many people who have had these experiences say they have been taken to Heaven; a few say they have been taken to Hell. It is very difficult to judge these experiences - and they are quite numerous - but if even one vision of Heaven really is true, then the life of the world to come is true. Personally, I can't believe them all, but neither can I categorically say that they are all some sort of psychic deception. If we believe in God, we must believe in what He has revealed, which includes the reality of Heaven and Hell. So if some people's experiences verify these revelations, I think we should give them serious consideration.
We sell God short if we think He has created us - and sent His only Son to suffer and die for the expiation of our sins - merely so we could eke out a few decades of anxiety-ridden life in this world marked by endless sorrow and suffering. It wouldn't have been worth it, for Him or for us. And we sell ourselves short if we live as if that were the case. St. Paul agrees: "If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable of men" (1 Corinthians 15:19).
We have in fact been created for an eminently noble and glorious purpose, one that exceeds all possible hopes for happiness in this world. The breath- taking beauty of much of God's creation is but a faint intimation of what God has prepared for those who love Him. Being created in the image of God, we shall not perish like insects or grass or Ms O'Hair's roadkill. God created and redeemed us out of love, "so that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). Eternal life, unending life with the One who loved us into being, who breathed life into us, creating our immortal souls at the moment of our conception.
The God of life has revealed to us something far greater than the relatively brief span of our earthly lives: He created us to live forever, spiritually to survive bodily death and ultimately to recover - in an eternally vibrant and glorious state - the body/soul unity that fully constitutes our human nature. In short, God has created us for Heaven, for the life of the world to come. This present life is but a preparation, a test, to see if we are willing to embrace what God has revealed and to follow His "directions" to His Kingdom of everlasting life and joy.
Divergent destinies
If, then, men don't merely die like flies but rather have an eternal destiny, we ought to pay close attention to what our Creator says about it. Indeed, though all souls will endure forever, there are divergent destinies. We ought to make every effort to secure our place in the abode of happiness - and not discover all too late that, by our choices in this life, we have made reservations in the abode of torment. The great gift of immortality is not given lightly. Part of what it means to be created in the image of God is to have free will. God gives us the necessary grace to choose Him and His ways, and He also gives sufficient freedom to reject Him, if we wish to be so tragically foolish.
God is love and has created beings capable of love. One can truly love only in freedom, so God took the risk of making us free so that we would have the opportunity to love Him and one another, learning what it means to give ourselves in service to God and to others. Heaven is the place where love reaches its fullest and eternal expression, which is why it is a place of joy and peace as well. Hell is the place of torment because it is the place of hate, of radical selfishness and the rejection of all that is holy and good. Using freedom to love as Jesus loves and to live for God carries us to Heaven, while using freedom to serve our own desires and to rebel against God drives us to the slavery of Hell.
Holy Scripture repeatedly calls us to live in such a way that we are well prepared for the life of the world to come. St. Paul calls us to seek the things of Heaven, to set our minds and hearts where Jesus reigns with His Father, so that when He comes in His glory, we too will be glorified with Him. Colossians 3 gives practical advice on what to do, and what not to do, if we are to attain our goal. We see this in other places as well: what not to do (1 Corinthians 6:9-10; 1Timothy 1:9-10) and what to do (Romans. 12:9-21); how not to be (Galatians 5:19-21) and how to be (Galatians 5:22-26). This is all for the sake of entering the Kingdom of God, the only thing that ultimately matters.
No lasting city
Paul's Letter to the Hebrews urges us to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus (12:1-2), and to go to Him - even to the point of suffering for Him - for He has suffered and died to sanctify us by His own blood (13:12-13). In the next verse we are given the reason: "For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come" (13:14). And what kind of place is that? It is "a better country, that is, a heavenly one" (11:16). We're not asked to believe in Heaven as if it were just one more piece of information that we are to file in with the other things we know or believe. It is really a highly practical and urgently serious matter, for here we have no lasting city. We are going to die, all things are eventually going to decompose, even the earth itself will not last forever.What is left when we are faced with the indisputable fact that our "city" - our present life, possessions, etc. - will not last? We must have faith in the lasting "city", the heavenly one, the ultimate goal of our lives, the reason why God created us in the first place.
But to believe in the life of the world to come is not like taking out some sort of insurance policy that will guarantee our salvation while we satiate our carnal indulgences in the meantime. We have to live our whole life with our eyes on Heaven, and allow the reality of Heaven to be that which conditions the way we live on earth. If we are living for this present life instead of the life to come, we will be consumed with self-interest, we'll order our lives according to our desire for comfort or personal advantage - and we will flee all sacrifice, suffering, and self-denial as being detrimental to our immediate happiness.
It has been said that all believers really do want to go to Heaven - especially when one considers the alternative. But is that general wish manifested in practical ways in our daily lives? And is Heaven so important to us that we are willing to forsake everything else to attain it? How do we know that we are really living for Heaven and not for this passing world?
Some practical points
Here are a few practical points to ponder. If we get disappointed because things don't go our way, we are living for earth and not for Heaven. If we get upset, indignant, and defensive when someone points out a fault of ours - rather than being grateful for the opportunity to repent of it before we have to carry it to the Judgement Seat of God - we are living for earth and not for Heaven. If we resist or complain about the demands of our state in life, we are living for earth and not for Heaven. If we refuse to accept sufferings, hardships, and even occasional ill-treatment, refuse to accommodate another's wishes, or if we return evil for evil, or hold grudges or refuse to forgive, or in any way insist on our own ideas or opinions, we are living for earth and not for Heaven.
Why is this? It is simply because we thus manifest in practice - despite what we might say or think - that our own present comfort, self-esteem, personal vindication, or preferences in life are the most important things to us. If we don't act like we are living for Heaven, then we aren't living for Heaven. But if we are living for Heaven, all these selfish things that belong to this passing life will be of little concern to us, for our eyes are fixed on Jesus and the fulfilment of His promises in us. We will be equally content if things go our way in this life or if they don't. For this world is not our home, this is not our destiny. Heaven is our home and destiny, and if we really live for Heaven, we will not respond inappropriately to the insignificant irritations of this life. This is a tall order, but Heaven is a tall place, so to speak.
To have our eyes and hearts fixed on Heaven does not mean that we don't take seriously our earthly responsibilities - for our fidelity and obedience on earth will decide whether or not we will go to Heaven - but it does mean that we won't take ourselves too seriously, we won't be touchy, easily offended, or suspicious of others. People who are going to Heaven don't act as if it is of utmost importance to get their way on earth.
Wipe away every tear
Several times in his first epistle, St. Peter describes Christians as strangers, sojourners, and exiles in this world, who are expected to "set [our] hope fully upon the grace that is coming at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 1:13) - that is, at His Second Coming. That's when it will be finally manifested that this world is "no lasting city", and that the only lasting "cities" will be the heavenly one and the infernal one.
Believe in the life of the world to come. The present life is relatively short and is often marked by sorrow and pain. But lo, a day is coming in which those who believe in God and His revelation and have obeyed His commandments will enter His marvellous and joy-giving presence forever. God "will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away" (Revelation 21:3-4).
Everything that makes up this present life, all that we tend to cling to or put our hope in, will soon be referred to as "the former things that have passed away." Let us not cling to passing things, but rather look to the yet unseen eternal things, keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, setting our hearts on Heaven, as we await the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.
Abbot Joseph, a monk for 25 years, has for the past eight been the superior of Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Redwood Valley, California, a Byzantine-rite monastery of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. He is the author of two books, Joy Comes With Dawn: Reflections on Scripture and Life and How Lovely Is Your Dwelling Place: Lifting the Veils on the Presence of God, and edited and provided commentary for Prepare for the Kingdom: AJournal of Hope in the Face of Death by Laura Grossman. He blogs regularly on Scripture and the spiritual life at http://wordincarnate.wordpress.com. This article originally appeared in the Advent-Christmas 2007 issue of Gladsome Light (P.O. Box 217, Redwood Valley, CA94570), the monastery's newsletter, and is reprinted with permission.
Over the past few months we have carried quite a substantial amount of material on Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict'smotu propriofreeing up the old Latin Mass. Probably the best summary of the background to this development is this lucid article by JOHN CASEY, lecturer in English at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College.
ON June 14 this year about 1500 people filled Westminster Cathedral. Every seat was taken; people stood in the aisles and spilled out on to the piazza outside. The occasion was a Mass, but not an ordinary Mass. It was indeed a Mass in what is now o fficially called the "extraordinary form" of the Roman rite, i.e. the Mass as it had existed before the changes that followed the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). It was celebrated by Cardinal Castrill—n Hoyos, and was the first Mass in the traditional form to be celebrated in the Cathedral by a cardinal in 39 years.
Before the Mass, Cardinal Castrill—n had addressed the English and Welsh Latin Mass Society, a group which had striven for 40 years to preserve the ancient liturgy. He told them to "take heart" because the new Pope sympathised with them, and he spoke of the "sacrifices" of those members of the Society "who have not lived to be here today".
To outsiders, all this emotion, this talk of sacrifices made by dead Catholics for the liturgy might well be unintelligible. What are the great issues at stake? Why should people throng Westminster Cathedral and spill out on to the street, including many too young to remember the old ways, just to experience a service in Latin conducted by a prelate with his back to the people?
Church in crisis
In July the Pope was in Australia for World Youth Day. About 400,000 of the young, who had travelled from all parts of the globe, acclaimed him at a vast open-air Mass in Sydney. But the Mass had some new-old features; Latin (Gregorian) chant, an altar adorned in the old style with crucifix and seven candles, and an attempt at solemn reverence that is not usually seen at these mass liturgical events. Something is in the air.
The truth is that the Roman Catholic Church has been in crisis ever since the Second Vatican Council, a crisis not only of falling numbers attending Mass, a reduction of vocations, the virtual extinction of some religious orders, but a crisis of identity of the Church itself. The confident, tightly-centralised "triumphalist" Catholicism that followed the 16th century Council of Trent and regained many of the lands that had been lost to Protestantism, the Church that claimed to be "the one ark of salvation for all", has been replaced by the "pilgrim Church", tentatively stretching out to other faiths, often apologetic about the past, sometimes ready to play down its most distinctive doctrines.
There is a deeper issue. Hilaire Belloc had said "Europe is the Faith, and the Faith is Europe". Although Catholicism is a world-wide religion, and an Abrahamic faith, its European inheritance has been central, its philosophical theology deriving from Greece, its language and structures of authority from Rome. It was not for nothing that Hobbes described the papacy as "the ghost of the dead Roman Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof". Enthusiasts for Vatican II thought they had changed all that. Rituals, language, even theology were to reflect the diverse cultures of the faithful, and even the subjective convictions of the individual.
The attempt since the Counter-Reformation of the 16th century to resist some of the most important developments in modern culture, with an index ofbooks forbidden to Catholics to read that included most of the greatest philosophers and imaginative writers of the modern world, was to be seen as a sort of auto-immune disorder - an inability to cope with foreign bodies. In the light of this, an attachment to tradition seemed like a rejection of intelligence, and a scarcely defensible surrender to clerical dictatorship. The Church had raised the drawbridge against the modern world, and Vatican II would confidently lower it again. Central to that was the rejection of the traditional Latin Mass. It was there that the battle lines were most obviously drawn.
The culture wars
Nearly 25 years ago, a Pole was dining in my college in Cambridge. He told us that he had been an altar boy in Poland, and had often served the Masses of the Archbishop of Cracow.Ayear or two after that prelate, Karol Wojtyla, had been installed in the See of Rome, he decided to visit him, for John Paul II never became too grand for his old Polish friends. The Pope (so he told the story) strode up to him, punched him lightly in the chest, and began: Introibo ad altare dei ... to which our guest responded: Ad Deum qui laetificat iuventutum meum. ("I will go unto the altar of God"' "To God who giveth joy to my youth.") This was the opening exchange between priest and server of the old "Tridentine"' Latin Mass, abolished in the early1970s, and the two continued it right down to the Confiteor. Then the Pope shrugged his shoulders and said: "Well, that's no use to us any more." His old altar boy replied: "No, Holy Father, and that's why I no longer go to church." To which the Pope (he said) instantly rejoined: "Don't blame me. Blame that maniac John XXIII!"
In September 2007, a motu proprio(legislation of his own volition) of Pope Benedict XVI, liberating the old Mass, and obliging parishes to provide it for those of the faithful who want it, came into effect. It was clearly an attempt to console those who were still attached to the old rite, including the followers of Archbishop Lefebvre, who rejected the new Mass and many of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (summoned by "that maniac, John XXIII"). "Liberal" Catholics grimly suspect that the Pope himself has long been disillusioned with the Council, and is bent on restoration of the old order. One Italian bishop said that he actually wept when he read the motu proprio, because he saw one of the greatest achievements of the modernists, a new style of liturgy, dissolving before his eyes. He was right to be alarmed. Benedict's undoubted love of the old liturgy is also a love of the European culture which produced it.
On the other side, traditionalist Catholics, who were so joyously in evidence at Westminster cathedral, rejoiced mightily. Benedict XVI is on the way to becoming a hero as dear to them as Cyrus the Great was to the ancient Jews, because he freed them from the Babylonian captivity.When the motu proprio was issued, their websites triumphed in the imminent defeat of the philistines and were filled with accounts of celebratory champagne parties and suggestions that everyone should send flowers to the Pope in sign of gratitude.
But what is the fuss all about? Is this just a matter of some people preferring to talk to God in Latin? Or is it the re-igniting of a subterraneous culture war that has troubled the peace of the faithful over the past 40 years?
First of all: it is not just a question of Latin. The "Tridentine"' Mass and the Latin Mass are not one and the same thing. True, the Tridentine Mass must be said in Latin in the Roman church. But decades ago you could attend Tridentine Masses in High Anglican churches in Cornwall celebrated entirely in English. The new order of Mass, promulgated by Pope Paul VI after the Second Vatican Council, was originally meant to be usually in Latin, but is nearly always said in the vernacular. But whatever the language, it is different from the old Mass, in feel, liturgical gesture and some would even say in theology.The liturgy has always embodied both prayer and doctrine: it is both lex orandi and lex credendi. The ultras would argue that the changes in the Mass were part of a stealthy attempt to alter doctrine. The great Council of Trent (1546-63) marked the final separation between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism with ferocious clarity. Catholic doctrines such as the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, reaffirmed by Trent, are liturgically enforced in the Tridentine Mass with no possible ambiguity.
A new religion?
The ultras have a point. Apious Catholic who had fallen asleep in 1960 and woken up 40 years later would be puzzled indeed at a modern Mass (unless he had been allowed to slumber all those years in Brompton Oratory or a few other traditionalist redoubts.) He would find the modern Church culturally and psychologically so altered that he might be tempted to see it as a new religion masquerading under the old name. He might, like my Polish acquaintance, decide not to bother any more.
The first time I was taken to Mass as a child, my mother told me to watch the altar attentively, because an angel might fly across it. My hope in seeing the angel faded quite soon, well before my faith did, but the feeling that the celebration of Mass marked a mystery in which the Godhead was truly present on the altar, body, blood, soul and divinity, under the appearances of bread and wine was astonishingly powerful. The form of the old Mass enforced it. There was an overwhelming emphasis on the Mass as an actual sacrifice, a mysterious re-enactment of Christ's sacrifice on Mount Calvary. The priest began at the foot of the altar, with prayers that he might be worthy to ascend the steps: Introibo ad altare Dei. In mounting the altar steps the priest was being brought "unto thy holy mount, and into thy tabernacles". These are the words of psalms from the Hebrew Bible, and they go with an extraordinary insistence on using the language of ancient Jewish sacrifice - "a holy victim, a pure and unblemished sacrifice"' (AJewish friend of mine, attending a Tridentine Mass for the first time, said that this language, and the elaborate cleansing of the sacred vessels, took his mind back to Temple Judaism.)
The ritual proceeded with the inevitability of a piece of intricate and beautiful mechanism, as the priest mounted the steps, read the epistle and gospel and came to the canon of the Mass. The climax, the obvious focal point of the exercise, was the Consecration. The Latin words of this were uttered in a very audible stage whisper, and were followed by genuflection, elevation, genuflection, accompanied by the ringing of bells.
Every gesture by the priest, the signs of the cross, the genuflections, the many kissings of the altar, were strictly controlled by the rubrics. There was no place for "creativity"' or the expression of personality. The authority of liturgy has always been its immemorial antiquity, and this strange, intensely focussed ritual certainly took you back to the remote past. This was sometimes a cause of scandal. The Good Friday liturgy (which was not actually a Mass, Good Friday being the only day in the year when Mass was not said) notoriously had a prayer for the "unbelieving Jews" (perfidis Judaeis) that God would remove their "blindness"' and lead them to Christ. Even worse, this was the one prayer during which the congregation did not have to kneel. (John XXIII removed the offensive words in 1962.) There were also curiosities of an innocent sort. Amissal published in 1935 contains a Good Friday prayer that God will "look favourably on the Roman empire" and "render all barbarous nations" subject to the Emperor.
The curious thing about the old Mass was that it did not much matter if it was performed badly. It often was. Some priests spoke the Latin intelligently and well. Others gabbled it. We altar boys fought to serve the Low Mass of a certain Franciscan priest because he got through it, by means of remarkable elisions, in 12 minutes flat.
The priest was a craftsman, bringing Christ to the altar, and distributing Him to the faithful in Communion. In many ways, it was the priest's Mass, to which the congregation were onlookers, or listeners-in. Much of it was in silence, with the priest raising his voice at certain moments to indicate what point the Mass had reached. In northern Europe and the United States most of the congregation followed in their missals, which were in Latin and English. But in earlier times people would instead read "prayers during Mass", rather than follow the actual words. Illiterates would simply tell their beads. Perhaps they looked for angels to fly across, or at the stained-glass windows. Yet there is overwhelming evidence that they, too, were moved, for they participated in a ritual that signified visually and in terms of movement as well as in words.
Participation theology
Vatican II decreed that the people should "actively participate" in the Mass. To the older idea that active participation could take place largely in silence and stillness was opposed the feeling that the congregation should always be doing things, saying prayers aloud, reading passages of scripture, presenting the bread and wine for the Mass. The priest became less one who offered an awe-inspiring sacrifice, and more like one who presides over a community meal. Altars were turned round, so that the priest faced the people, rather than praying on their behalf to the East, as had been done from ancient times. (Critics of the new order often suggest - rightly - that this leads to a cult of the priestly personality.) The first part of the liturgy is now given over to scripture readings, somewhat in Protestant style, so that when the priest goes to the altar to say the actual canon of the Mass, this can seem like an afterthought, rather than the focal point of the whole proceedings. The priest's genuflections and other ritual signs of assent to the real presence, which in the old Mass enacted an idea of worship and transcendence, seemed to have been cut to a minimum. For many, the remarkable beauty of the Latin text itself, set by so many great composers over the centuries, and a profound influence on the authors of the Book of Common Prayer, had helped create a sense of the sacred which had now all but vanished.
How did this happen? There had been a liturgical movement, strong in northern Europe, going back to the 19th century. It emphasised the intelligent participation of the laity, the use of missals, and a partial return to what were believed to be pre-mediaeval liturgical practices. This led to the half-conscious assumption that there was some golden age before the "accretions" that led to the elaborate liturgy of modern times. This was rather like the Protestant idea of the "primitive" Church before Roman "corruptions".
There was another line of thought. This was that the Council of Trent had been a tragedy just in that it had sealed the division between Catholic and Protestant in the 16th century. Trent had re-affirmed the hierarchical structure of the Church, the role of the priest, and the Mass as the continual re-enactment of Christ's death on the cross. The Anglican Thirty Nine Articles say that the "one oblation of Christ is finished on the cross. Wherefore the sacrifices of Masses were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits". The underlying purpose of the new rite was reconciliation with Protestantism. Its chief inventor, Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, actually said: "We must strip from our Catholic prayers everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren, that is, for the Protestants."
Papal power opposed
To undo the Council of Trent would be no mean endeavour, although to anyone with a sense of the religious history of Europe during the last 450 years it must seem a madly ambitious one. But what really ignited the Catholic culture wars was the way it was done: by an unprecedented exercise of papal power. Hardly anything of what happened was prescribed by the Second Vatican Council, not the turning around of the altars, not the almost universal use of the vernacular, not the scaling down of the sense of transcendence and sacrifice, not the discouraging of the faithful from kneeling when receiving Holy Communion, not the receiving of Communion in the hand rather than on the tongue.
Traditionalists point out that the Council had decreed that the Latin language was to be preserved. (And the "maniac" John XXIII had been totally opposed to the vernacular in the Mass.) It had all been done by Pope Paul VI, Archbishop Bugnini and a close circle of liturgical experts. It was never even passed by a synod of bishops.
The paradoxical conclusion might have been foreseen: it was the most pious Catholics, most devoted to the papacy and its prerogatives who were most outraged, but who felt most bound by loyalty and obedience. Their anguish when they were presented in 1971 with the abolition of the old rite can be imagined. (The most popular English Catholic newspaper, The Universe, informed its readers on November 26 that year that "as from this Sunday it is forbidden to offer Mass in the Tridentine rite anywhere in the world".)
Only in France was there open rebellion. Led by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, a thousand or so traditionalists occupied the Church of St Nicholas in Paris, resisted all attempts to evict them, reintroduced all the old ceremonies, and have been there ever since. The Lefebvrists decreed that with Vatican II Rome had departed from Tradition, and had as good as apostatised.
The bitterness (even despair) of traditional Catholics ran deep. The enthusiasts for Vatican II hailed it as inaugurating an epoch of religious liberty. Yet the abolition of the old Mass actually depended upon a Vatican diktat.The Anglican Church has introduced new forms of service, often distressingly banal. But it is impossible to imagine the Anglicans wishing, let alone being able, suddenly to forbid the Book of Common Prayer in all churches of the Anglican Communion. I remember in the 1970s attending out of curiosity a Tridentine Mass "illegally" celebrated by Archbishop Lefebvre in the Great Western Hotel at Paddington. The atmosphere was extraordinary, like that of some improbably enormous catacomb where a clandestine ceremony was going on. Catholics had come from all over England, and many were in tears as they participated in a rite that had suddenly been forbidden them. It was tempting to see this as religious persecution.
Iconoclasm and novelty
The changes were accompanied by an astonishing outbreak of what one can only call iconoclasm, for that is what it literally was. In the University Catholic chaplaincy in Cambridge, the furniture of the chapel, including a charming little baldacchino, was largely destroyed at the instigation of the Chaplain. The parish priest of the main Catholic church in Cambridge proposed replacing all the pews with cinema-style seats, removing the stained glass, and dismantling their own noble baldacchino. (He was frustrated by his congregation, which had been infiltrated by dons.) In my own old parish church, the Franciscans smashed to pieces the whole Byzantine-style sanctuary. Such scenes were replicated all over the country.
There was also liturgical vandalism, especially in America, including priests with red-nose masks celebrating "clown-Masses," Halloween Masses, dancing girls and various New Age fooleries. In England, Catholic practice plummeted, and churches were shut.
English Catholics had a special reason for attachment to the old Mass. In penal times, several hundred English priests had been executed for saying it. At the place of execution they would often kiss the scaffold, as the priest kisses the altar in the Tridentine Mass (much more rarely in the new rite.). The English, more docile than the French, did not rebel. Instead they organised a letter signed by cultural luminaries, many of them non-Catholic, politely asking the Pope for an "indult" - permission to celebrate the old Mass on special occasions, with the permission of bishops. But their letter did not conceal their feelings of horror: "If some senseless decree were to order the partial or total destruction of basilicas or cathedrals, then obviously it would be the educated, whatever their personal beliefs, who would rise up in horror." The old Mass "in its magnificent Latin text, has inspired a host of priceless achievements by poets, philosophers, musicians, architects, painters and sculptors in all countries and epochs. Thus it belongs to universal culture as well as to churchmen and formal Christians."
Agatha Christie exception
How could the Pope fail to respond to such a letter, signed as it was by (amongst many others) Vladimir Ashkenazy, Agatha Christie, Kenneth Clark, Robert Graves, Graham Greene, F.R.Leavis, Cecil Day-Lewis, Nancy Mitford, Iris Murdoch, Yehudi Menuhin, Malcolm Muggeridge, Joan Sutherland and the Anglican Bishops of Exeter and Ripon? The story goes that Paul VI was quietly reading through the list of signatories and then suddenly said: "Ah, Agatha Christie!" and signed his approval. Ever since, this permission has been known in traditionalist circles as the Agatha Christie Indult.
But although this indult had been granted, many bishops were unwilling actually to give permission. The traditionalists, including the Latin Mass Society, were often treated as troublemakers and rebels.
I once interviewed the Patriarch of Antioch, in Damascus. I asked His Beatitude whether he, like the Bishop of Rome, believed he had power radically to alter the liturgy. "Oh yes, we have authority in liturgical matters. And in fifteen hundred years we did once alter a prayer." Clearly the idea of virtually inventing a new rite had never entered the Patriarch's head. (The so-called "Tridentine"' rite was not invented by the Council of Trent, but was a codification of the Roman rite which dated back many centuries.) The question all along was whether Pope and bishops really do have such authority. One distinguished Catholic thinker judged that there was no such sweeping power, that liturgy had its own authority based on immemorial tradition, and that the Pope's authority in liturgy "is at the service of Sacred Tradition". The same thinker even dared to describe the new Mass as "no re-animation but devastation...fabricated liturg y... banal-on-the-spot product".
The man who wrote those words is now Pope Benedict XVI. The Cardinals elected Ratzinger knowing that these were his convictions. It cannot have been done in a fit of absence of mind.
Mass and invariance
The Catholic Church has often enforced unity with ferocity.Yet in the present culture war (officially denied, of course) real unity seems far away.As the Pope's intentions become clear (Cardinal Castrill—n said that the Pope wants to make the old rite available "in all the parishes" of England and Wales) the English bishops have fallen into a curious silence. The parish priest of a famous Jesuit church, politely asked whether he would make some traditional Masses available, responded with unconcealed rage. (This church advertises a children's liturgy, Japanese Masses, services for Brazilians and Filipinos, but apparently drew the line at the ancient Roman liturgy).
The dispute about liturgy is part of a wider battle. Those who want to align the Church with modernity, which inevitably means drawing on current liberal values, became influential following Vatican II. But if they hoped that the Church would change its stance on liberation theology, divorce, homosexuality, the ordination of women, they found their nemesis in John Paul II. Wojtyla's reassertion of tradition in all these areas was less flamboyant than Pio Nono's famous denial that "the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to come to terms with progress, liberalism and the modern world", but it came to much the same thing.
Pope Ratzinger is even more profoundly traditional than his predecessor, and he believes that disputes about liturgy are disputes about the very nature of the Church. He prizes a Mass that develops according to its own laws throughout the ages. He is also attracted by the Eastern Orthodox conception of a liturgy "whose light illumines our changing times with its unchanging beauty and greatness". Those who altered the Mass after Vatican II thought it possible to create a form of worship that was illumined, indeed determined, by the changing times. These are two wholly incompatible visions. As Benedict puts it in a letter to the bishops that accompanied his motu proprio: "What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful."
Something unexpected seems now to be happening in the Catholic Church. Far from attachment to the old forms dying away, a generation of younger priests and lay Catholics is coming into view that is enthusiastically attached to the Tridentine Mass, and to Catholic orthodoxy. In France, one in five of all priests currently being ordained is devoted to the old Mass. And this is a committed, determined minority growing up in a virtual wasteland for the French Church. Only five per cent of French Catholics attend Mass regularly. In one diocese, the Cathedral attracts seventy worshippers on Sunday, while the chapel of the semi-schismatic Society of St Pius X (of Archbishop Lefebvre) attracts 700 to a traditional Mass. Indeed, it is suggested that an actual majority of churchgoers on a Sunday in France attend Lefebvrist services.
Rooted in rationality
Pope Benedict himself is a philosophical traditionalist of a sort that is barely understood in the modern world. In a lecture to the University in Regensberg he enraged some Moslems because he quoted a Byzantine Emperor who suggested that Mohammed countenanced violent religious conversion. But what he was talking about was the relation between religion and reason. Ratzinger suggested that the God of certain Moslem theologians - like that of some late mediaeval philosophers, as well as Luther and Calvin - so transcends our categories, even of rationality, that all that is left for us is his sovereign will. If God so commanded, we would have to practice idolatry, or violence.
The Pope argued that the Christian understanding of God has to be rooted in rationality: God is reason, the logos, so any attempt to convert by violence is contrary to the nature of God. This may seem an arcane dispute in theology, but what it comes to is that Christianity is inevitably tied up with Greek philosophy, is, indeed, a marrying of Judaic religion with Greek thought. Add the Roman heritage, and we can say (in Ratzinger's remarkable words at Regensberg) that "Christianity created Europe."
In other words, Christianity is a culture as well as a set of beliefs. Equally, Europe should remember its Christian roots. (Cardinal Ratzinger once said that if Turkey were ever allowed to join the EU this would represent "the triumph of economics over culture".) Catholic liturgies have to keep their Roman and European heritage, and cannot simply be adapted to local conditions, tongues and cultures. The Mass in China should not be celebrated with rice and rice wine; and in America it should not express folksy inclusiveness. For Ratzinger, this special blend of Judaism, Greek philosophy and Romanitasis essential to the Church, an idea that Luther scorned. So it is almost literally unthinkable that a genuine liturgy could be fabricated, rather than grow out of immemorial tradition.
Admirers of Ratzinger insist that his traditionalism is no blinkered love of the past, no theological auto-immune disorder. As T.S.Eliot put it, tradition cannot be blindly inherited, but has to be re-discovered in every age, an enterprise that requires great labour. No one who reads Ratzinger can deny that he brings a very lively intelligence into his attempt to rediscover tradition. It is his critics of the ageing Vatican II generation who begin to look intellectually lazy.
In Benedict XVI, Catholic modernists meet a formidable antagonist indeed. His gentle manner and readiness to persuade rather than bludgeon conceals (from those that have not eyes to see) a philosophy of tradition that challenges not only liturgical philistines, but all those Catholics for whom history began with the Second Vatican Council. He is the immediate cause of all those joyful traditionalist Catholics congregating in Westminster Cathedral and overflowing on to the pavement.
The authority of a pope of Rome is not to be underestimated. When the Pope's motu proprio became known to Catholic traditionalists, not a few of them wept for joy.At the moment his election was announced in St Peter's Square in 2005, several priests of modernist sympathies were also seen to weep - but with chagrin. Provided his health holds, then (to misquote Henry James) those tears are not the last they are destined to shed.
©With acknowledgements and thanks to John Casey. John Casey writes and reviews frequently in newspapers and journals. Among his books are Pagan Virtue: An Essay in Ethics (Clarendon Press, 1990). This article was taken from the openDemocracy website. It may not be used for commercial purposes, and must not be altered, transformed, or built upon.
THE Wethersfield Institute in the United States has as its declared purpose "to promote a clear understanding of Catholic teaching and practice and to explore the cultural and intellectual dimensions of the Catholic Faith".
One of its projects for advancing this purpose is the promotion of the theory that scientific facts provide evidence of intelligent design in nature - a theory known as ID. A book, Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe, consisting of papers presented at a conference of the Institute in 1999, has been published by Ignatius Press. I shall refer to this book as SEDU.
There has been a great deal of misunderstanding and misrepresentation of ID. Evolutionists in general dismiss it as merely another name for creationism, which they describe as a religious belief having nothing to do with science. Before replying to this assertion, I must point out that some creationist bodies, e.g. the Creation Science Movement in England, while believing that evolution conflicts with the Bible, base their case against it on scientific facts.
Irreducible complexity
ID is not in itself a religious belief. While it is probably true that all, or almost all, adherents of ID are creationists (as is only logical), the theory itself says nothing about the existence of God. It is merely an obvious inference from a vast number of scientific facts to the conclusion that these facts are evidence of design and purpose in nature, and it does not go beyond this conclusion. The question of the identity of the designer is a philosophical one, and is therefore outside the scope of ID. This limitation of ID to scientific facts and an inference from them may make it more likely that some of those who would be put off by a creationist argument will be willing to consider the theory.
In a paper in SEDU the biochemist Michael J. Behe, Professor of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University, Pennsylvania, states that what he calls "irreducibly complex" organs or systems are evidence of design. He defines an irreducibly complex system as one which has a number of interacting components and which no longer works if any of its components are taken away. As examples of irreducibly complex systems he mentions part of the structure of the eye and certain components of the living cell, and gives details of their irreducible complexity.
Also in SEDU Stephen C. Mayer, who holds a Ph.D in the History and Philosophy of Science, writes as follows about what he calls "molecular machines": In 1998 the leading (biological) journal Cell featured a special issue on "macromolecular machines". Molecular machines are incredibly complex devices that all cells use to process information, build proteins, and move materials back and forth across their membranes. Bruce Alberts, President of the National Academy of Sciences, introduced this issue with an article entitled "The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines". In it he stated that "we have always underestimated cells...The entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines...Why do we call the large protein assemblies that underlie cell function protein machines? Precisely because, like machines invented by humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic world, these protein assemblies contain highly co-ordinated moving parts."
Specified complexity
Another mark of intelligent design is what is called in SEDU"specified complexity", i.e.complexity having no discernible purpose. As an example of this Stephen Meyer mentions what he calls the "fine tuning" of the universe to make it life-sustaining. He writes:
Beginning in the 1960s, physicists unveiled a universe apparently fine-tuned for the possibility of human life. They discovered that the existence of life in the universe depends upon a highly improbable but precise balance of physical factors. The constants of physics, the initial conditions of the universe, and many others of its features appear delicately balanced to allow for the possibility of life. Even slight variations in the values of many factors...would render life impossible. Physicists now refer to these factors as "anthropic coincidences" (because they make life possible for man) and to the fortunate convergence of all these coincidences as the "fine-tuning of the universe". Given the improbability of the precise ensemble of values represented by these constants, and their specificity relative to the requirements of a life-sustaining universe, many physicists have noted that the fine-tuning strongly suggests design by a pre-existing intelligence. As well-known British physicist Paul Davies has put it, "the impression of design is overwhelming"...Oxford physicist Roger Penrose has noted that a single parameter, the so-called "original phase-space volume" required such precise fine-tuning that the "Creator's aim must have been [precise] to an accuracy of one part in 1010123(which is ten bil lion multiplied by itself 123 times."
To escape the ID implication of fine-tuning, "some scientists", says SEDU, "have postulated the existence of a quasi-infinite number of parallel universes. By doing so they increase the amount of time and number of possible trials available to generate a life-sustaining universe and thus increase the amount of time and number of possible trials available to generate a life-sustaining universe and thus increase the probability of such a universe arising by chance...(But) we have no evidence for any universes other than our own."
Moreover, it is utterly irrational to believe that mindless matter could ever, no matter what length of time is postulated for its operation, produce a finely tuned cosmic system of enormous complexity having the obvious purpose of making life possible on earth. The "multiverse" notion, as it has been called, is clearly a desperate expedient to try to evade the ID implication of the specified complexity of the universe. (Incidentally, the complexity of the cell is specified as well as irreducible, since it has the purpose of providing the biological building blocks of life.)
Jaki and Groeschel
An article on "Catholics, Intelligent Design and Darwin'sTheory" in the January 2007 issue of the American Catholic New Oxford Review mentions some objections to ID by, surprisingly, two orthodox and worthy Catholic theologians, Frs Stanley Jaki and Benedict Groeschel. According to Mark Cole, Fr Jaki states (in opposition to ID) that "metaphysics, not science, is the chief reason we can assert that the universe is coherent, that is, that it needs no intervention by an outside agency (i.e. God) to keep everything running." But since ID says nothing about God it obviously says nothing about interventions by God to keep the universe running.
As I have already said, it is simply an obvious inference from scientific facts to purposive design as the cause of these facts, and it does not go beyond this inference. (Incidentally, Fr Jaki's implication that direct creation would have required interventions by God to keep the universe running is incorrect. The divine fiat creating the universe and all it contains could have included the bringing into existence of the main forms of life successively without linking them by modification through descent, and a creationist argument based on ID does not in itself entail any conclusion as to the mode of creation. It is compatible with both direct creation and theistic evolution, as both would have required what in human terms is called design.)
Father Jaki, says Mark Cole, "has several serious objections to the ID movement. Purpose, he notes, is not something science can determine; only metaphysics can do that. And there is also a danger that science and philosophy will end up mixed together." While Fr Jaki's statement about purpose is true of God's purpose, or purposes, in creating the universe, life and man, it is patently untrue of the only kind of purpose with which ID is concerned, i.e., purpose inferred from scientific facts. For example, it is an obvious inference from the scientific facts about the fine-tuning of the universe that its purpose is to sustain life on earth, and one does not have to be a metaphysician to make this inference.
Analogical language
As for confusing science and philosophy, Father Jaki's above-mentioned objections to ID are themselves examples of such confusion; they are philosophical/theological objections, whereas ID is solely concerned with scientific facts - and an inference from them to purposive design as their cause. All that is needed to avoid such confusion is a correct understanding of ID.
Mark Cole mentions two objections to ID by Fr Benedict Groeschel: "first, that science cannot reach an understanding of God, and second, that ID gives the false impression that God sat down at a drawing board and laid out the plans for living things. The reality is that God is absolute. He merely spoke the word and it was." These objections, like Fr Jaki's, confuse science and theology. As ID says nothing about God, it obviously says nothing about reaching an understanding of Him, and does not give any impression, true or false, about God's mode of creation. And as regards an argument for the existence of God based on ID, Fr Groeschel's "drawing board" objection fails to take into account the use of analogical language in relation to God. For examples, references in the Bible to God's "arm", His "resting" on the seventh day etc., and Fr Groeschel's own statement that God "spoke the word" are analogical.
In an argument for theism based on ID, the word "design" would be used in an analogical sense to mean an effect brought about by God which, if it were of human origin, would be attributed to design.
Mark Cole himself raises two objections to ID:
The first of these two objections is factually incorrect. The notion of irreducible complexity is - to repeat yet again - an inference from scientific facts; it is not a philosophical concept. As to the second objection, it is not clear to me whether it is theistic evolution that is posited by the objection as an alternative to ID, but in any case the objection is theological and therefore irrelevant.
ID is a very important notion, and potentially a very influential one, and it is regrettable that orthodox Catholics have raised these unfounded objections to it.
WHEN Sister Francis McAndrew went home to God from Mount Sackville Convent on April 22nd at the age of 90, the Brandsma Review lost one of its most ardent and faithful readers and supporters. I am sure that, within the Communion of Saints, she will be mindful of the Brandsma, which she relished over many years. At the editor's request she had, during the 1990s, compiled a short Catechism suitable for primary school children whose need for sound doctrinal teaching, at that time, was great indeed.
Sr Francis was a native of Coolagagh, Foxford, Co Mayo, attended the National School there, and received her secondary school education with the St Louis Sisters in Kiltimagh, after which she went to Carysfort, in Blackrock, Co Dublin to train as a primary school teacher. She entered the Congregation of St Joseph of Cluny in Ferbane, Co Offaly in 1943, was professed in 1946 and remained in the novitiate as mistress of the second year novices for some years.
It was there that I first came under the influence of Sr Francis as a second year novice and young professed sister. She taught me French and English literature and by one simple piece of advice she influenced my entire spiritual life to date. She was an excellent teacher, interesting, stimulating and methodical, all the time conscious of the need for self discipline where work was concerned. "When you leave class or study, switch off from them and turn your mind back to interior prayer and to cultivating the habit of living in God's Presence. That's why you entered Religious Life." I took her advice to heart and obeyed it with great spiritual benefit.
Booklets and articles
Sr Francis had a rich and varied life and many interests. She taught in Cluny Junior School in Killiney, Co Dublin for 40 years, was an accomplished violinist and trained the school choir. She wrote for the Catholic Truth Society and had several booklets published. She also wrote articles for Position Papers whose editor, Fr Charles Connelly held her in great esteem. The upheaval in the Church in Ireland saddened and perturbed her and she distanced herself completely from the flawed theology and rejection of papal authority which deceived so many priests and religious with disastrous results. After her retirement from school she taught in Mountjoy Prison and was full-time Christian Doctrine teacher in a secondary school in Killester, North Dublin.
Sr Francis suffered much throughout her life. She had operations for cancer and a heart by-pass and, finally, a stroke which necessitated her leaving her beloved Killiney and moving to the nursing home in Mount Sackville for greater care. It was here that I met her again on a daily basis, having spent most of my life on missions abroad. She was as alert as ever, with only deafness to impede her slightly. She had the same shining integrity, sense of humour and no-nonsense approach to any deviation from the teaching of the Church.
She had, all her life a fear of death, while I looked forward to it. One day I remarked on this and learned that she, too, was now looking forward to meeting her great-grandfather who had been a great character and much revered by the family.
So, at peace with death and having loved and served God with undeviating fidelity and joy Sr Francis went quietly to meet her Spouse, Jesus Christ whom she had taken great pains to come to know intimately and love with her mind, soul, strength and will throughout her whole life as a Sister of St Joseph of Cluny. His Will was her compass and her conscience her guide in the Church she knew spoke His Truth.
May she enjoy the vision of God and the knowledge of the mysteries of her Faith which must surely be one of the great occupational joys of Heaven.
GOVERNMENT officials and international organisations in Eastern Europe are warning of a dramatic increase in human trafficking as the recession begins to bite.
The number of victims of trafficking in Belarus is showing a steep rise already, according to data gathered by the Red Cross Red Crescent International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and local authorities.
More than 800,000 citizens of Belarus are "missing", presumed to be working - voluntarily or otherwise - in Russia which has an open border with its smaller neighbour. In Ukraine - a transit, source and destination country for modern-day slavery - fears are growing of a new wave of emigration as industrial output shrinks (by 30 per cent since September). In Moldova, Europe's poorest country, one quarter of the population has migrated and things can are set to get worse.
Tempted to migrate
A recession brings new business opportunities for the traffickers, explains Lars Linderholm, the newly-appointed facilitator for migration issues in the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies'Europe zone office. Migrants lose their jobs in western Europe and return home, where a cold welcome awaits them. Eastern Europe's nascent middle class, with its mortgages, car loans, and maxed-out credit cards may, for the first time, be tempted to migrate.
An advertisement in a newspaper, a friend's story of foreign streets paved with gold, or a flyer in a night-club can quickly trap the unwary into months of misery and degradation on a building site in Moscow, a brothel in the UK or backbreaking agricultural work.
Although IOM's figures show that 99 per cent of people in this part of the world are aware of the phenomena of human trafficking, only 15 per cent think they are vulnerable - a precious state of affairs for the traffickers.
Natasha, from Mogilev, Belarus'second-largest city, has a typical story to tell. This articulate mother-of-four had recently become sole provider for her family, and decided to answer an advertisement to work in a factory packing frozen vegetables just outside Moscow. On arrival she handed over her passport and was informed se had to work off the debt she incurred to get the job.
At the end of a month working 16 hours a day, with three toilet breaks and one meal, sleeping on the factory floor, she went looking for her salary. She got nothing, except threats of sexual violence.
It was the same after the second month, when her health was starting to fail due to the intensity of the work and stressful conditions. "We escaped in a car we flagged down and I went home. The police ignored me, treated me like a whore and then a friend referred me to the Red Cross Red Crescent."
Rehabilitation service
The Belarus Red Cross, working with IOM and the authorities, provides a full rehabilitation service for trafficked people like Natasha through its five "Hands of Help" centres around the country. When trafficked persons are referred to the centres by the authorities, they are given health check-ups as well as psychological support, legal advice, addiction treatment if necessary, accommodation and vocational training to help get them back to work and reintegrated into communities whose first reaction is often to shun them.
The medical statistics speak for themselves: since 2006, 20 active TB cases were diagnosed (in just one centre), along with cases of syphilis, gonorrhoea, HIV/AIDS and other sexually-transmitted diseases (STD). Almost 90 per cent of trafficked men and women return with some sort of STD.
In Natasha's case, the local Red Cross centre even got her into chemotherapy for the cancer that she developed shortly after her ordeal. "Who helped me? Only the Red Cross," she says, tears in her eyes.
Now she's back on her feet, a waitress in a busy local bar, and ready to volunteer for the Belarus Red Cross to prevent "others being as stupid as me". She is full of ideas: public lectures, videos in schools, leaflet campaigns, a hotline: all things that local Red Cross chairman Andrei Nikitin would love to expand if he had more funds.
And Natasha has a whole new reason to be concerned. Her eldest daughter, an economics student, recently asked for permission to go to work in Moscow with "a friend". Natasha told her the story of what mama was really doing in 2005, and the girl stayed home.
Psychologist Natalia Domarenko works at the Mogilev Hands of Help Centre. In January, she saw 17 trafficked persons in January, and she also expects the numbers to rise sharply now.Although 75 per cent of her clients are women, she estimates that an equal number of men and women are trafficked, with the majority of men duped into slave labour on building sites. (In Russia it is not illegal for an employer to retain someone's passport, nor is it illegal to employ private security to seal off building sites, keeping the workers inside).
"Women will talk, will share their problems", she says. "But men don't want to. Men have only one doctor: Doctor Vodka."
Tatiana is another of her clients, an attractive woman in her mid-30s with an impish smile. She's been home for 14 years, but is still recovering from her year-long ordeal when she was passed from apartment to apartment, man to man in Moscow. Her huge handbag stays clutched over her stomach the whole time we are talking and while her face smiles, the memories dart like demons across her eyes.
Life, money and fun
Like many 20-year-olds, Tatiana was looking for life, money and fun, and had heard stories from friends about the money to be made selling leather goods in Moscow's markets. So when a friend of a friend put her in touch with a good job and free transport she didn't think twice.
"But as soon as I got to Moscow, and was put in that apartment I immediately understood the situation." Eventually she took one of the few chances presented to her, and left. The police were kind, put her in touch with the Red Cross and now - long, lonely road travelled - she's one of the top ten hairdressers in Mogilev, with an eight-year-old son who is the one and only man in her life.
As for the friend who went to Moscow with her? "I heard she got into drugs. She's lost."
Tatiana and Natalia are just two of the 500 trafficked persons helped by one branch of the Red Cross in one city, in one tiny corner of the continent. No one knows how many other men and women are living in torment, unable or ashamed to return, getting deeper and deeper into the mire of drugs, drudgery and depression.
While there is at least some world-wide data on trafficking of men and women for sexual and labour exploitation (although no doubt seriously under-estimated) there is almost nothing on child trafficking for labour, begging and sexual exploitation.
It's a question that is disturbing Ana Ravenco, the president of the Moldovan anti-trafficking organisation La Strada, which has worked closely with the Red Cross Red Crescent.
"We can't find children via hotlines or information campaigns. Children don't call hotlines. Once they are trafficked they are often gone forever."
La Strada, IOM and the Red Cross Red Crescent all report a trend towards "soft" trafficking, where the "simulation of a safe environment" is used to lead people to believe they have choices and to make irregular trafficking look like regular migration.
One way to tackle trafficking (particularly in women and children), she believes, is to tackle domestic violence in all its forms - physical, economical and emotional. "I would say 100 per cent of [those affected] are also victims of violence. Once women have economic independence it is easier for them to get away from an abusive environment."
La Strada is establishing a "trust line" for victims of domestic violence. Meanwhile, the Moldova Red Cross has just begun an information campaign to bring domestic violence out into the open. This is a good initiative in a country where a familiar adage runs "a woman who isn't beaten is like a house that isn't cleaned".
Shameful crime
Lars Linderholm is determined to put trafficking back on the agenda. "One of the most serious problems we face is lack of data", he says. "That's in terms of the scale of the problem, the actual response, and the potential the Red Cross Red Crescent has to be more involved."
Lars sees trafficking as a problem for all parts of Europe, on both the demand and the supply sides. He will encourage the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement to work closely with the authorities and with specialist organisations to inform, detect and rehabilitate victims of a crime that shames us all.
Anew poster in the middle of the Belarusian capital Minsk encourages people at risk of trafficking to "know before you go" and warns: "Leaving to work abroad? Get information on the employer!"
Joe Lowry, the editor's son, is IFRC representative for Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine.
Huffing, Puffing and Whisking
Despite the instructions of Summorum Pontificum, I have noticed quite a bit of hostility to the Mass of Blessed John XXIII, not only among some clergy but among professional paraclerics who feel their territory has been invaded.
Recently I fulfilled my obligation by attending Mass in the Extraordinary Form in a parish where it is not usually celebrated on Sundays. The congregation, though quite sparse, was appreciative, and joined in singing the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Deiof the Missa de Angelis.The Mass was well served by a middle-aged man and two boys, and the priest preached a competent sermon on the Trinity. Afriend and I were up in the choir loft, singing the propers (he confidently, I diffidently).
All went well until the end of the Salve Regina, which was the recessional hymn. The strains of the final phrase O dulcis virgo Maria had barely died away when the lady sacristan huffed into the sanctuary, puffed out the candles, whisked across to the credence table and swept up the cruets. She then grabbed the altar missal and the altar cards, as well as the bell, and scooted back into the sacristy.
There was no good reason for this at all. The servers were willing and able to tidy up the altar and even to set it up for the usual parish Novus Ordo - which wasn't due to start for another half hour. My friend turned to me with a wintry smile. "Well," he said, "as Pius IX once asked, was that a sacristan or a Saracen?"
We both then knelt to make a brief thanksgiving. Afew seconds later, the treacly sound of taped Novus Ordo musak floated from the sacristy into the church. It was as though the alien sound of Gregorian chant was somehow being exorcised. We immediately made our excuses to Almighty God and left.
An organisation called Paix Liturgique (Liturgical Peace) has been set up in France to try to achieve more mutual tolerance between Traditionalists and those who prefer the Novus Ordo. Maybe we need something like that in Ireland. I intend to tell you a bit more about Paix Liturgiquein a future issue. They seem a very efficient outfit.
************************
Oldest Irish Jesuit
It was good to see the Irish Catholicpaying tribute to An tAth Proinsias Ó Fionnagáin SJ, the first Jesuit priest of the Irish province ever to reach the age of 100 - and still very active.
I remember the first time I came across Fr Ó Fionnagáin. It was (I think) in St Paul's, Arran Quay, one of the many churches to which the Dublin Latin Mass community has been shunted during the 25-odd years of its existence. (It now has a permanent home in St Kevin's, Harrington Street, thanks to Archbishop Diarmuid Martin.)
On most Sundays Fr Ó Fionnagáin used to oblige local Gaeilgoiri by celebrating Mass in St Pauls's as Gaeilge. On one such occasion - it must have been around 15 years ago - he had just finished the Irish Mass and was leaving the Church when organisers of the Latin Mass, which was to follow, realised they had no celebrant. One member of the congregation ran after Fr Ó Fionnagáin and asked him if he could say the old Latin Mass. "Well, I remember how", he replied. Before you could say Dominus vobiscum, the elderly Jesuit had been bundled up the steps and into the sacristy.Afew minutes later, he was celebrating a Low Mass.
Since then, Fr Ó Fionnagáin has been a frequent participant at the Sunday Latin Mass - at St Pauls, St Audoen's High Street and then St Kevin's. Only a year ago, he took an active part in the Holy Week ceremonies, reciting one of the Prophecies at the Easter vigil. (His voice is still quite astonishingly strong.) One day this year, he helped to distribute Holy Communion.
************************
A Morale Booster
As it happens, I heard from Fr Ó Fionnagáin the very week that the Irish Catholic carried the report on his 100th birthday. His letter, accompanied by his renewed subscription to the Brandsma Review, was a great morale booster for me because I was wondering whether the article in Issue 101 on Glenstal should really have been toned down a bit. One does get niggles about what one has written, particularly in the wee small hours. (It's not so much fear of a libel suit, as the possibility of a serious breach of fair play.)
In his clear firm hand Fr Ó Fionnagáin actually tendered congratulations on that particular story. He also informed me that the Brandsma Reviewis the only English-language publication to be found in the reading room at the Jesuit Residenza in Rome, where he had spent Easter. He takes out a subscription for his good friend Fr Bernard Hall SJ, former British Provincial, now Superior at the Residenza.
Ó Fionnagáin concluded: "My genuine affection for your good self and loving wife and son." That's a letter than won't go in the bin. I shall treasure it.
When someone reaches the age of 100 journalists are (or were) inclined to ask the question: "To what do you attribute your longevity?" I think Fr Ó Fionnagáin would probably have a ready answer. He has had his share of winter ailments, but manages to conquer them by dosing himself with garlic as soon as a snuffle manifests itself.
************************
Another Centenarian
A very good friend of mine died recently at the age of 101. Gwen Oliver looked after me when I was evacuated to a village in North Cornwall from the blitz in Plymouth. I went to Dorchester to celebrate her 100th birthday and was sorry to see her more or less immobile in an armchair, and extremely deaf, but pleased that she was able to take a lively interest in the family, remembering the names of our four children and asking after Stramentaria's brother who is a minister of the Eucharist in Dorchester parish.
Gwen was brought up in Truro, Cornwall, at the time of the First World War. She taught me one of the first songs I remember, which went like this:
Oh, the moon shines bright on Charlie Chaplin
His boots are cracking
For want of blacking
And his little baggy trousers they want mending
Before they send him
To Dardanelles.
She later spent many years as housekeeper to Canon James Weekes, PP Dorchester, a Kilkenny man who had been my parents'parish priest at Bovey Tracey in Devon.
************************
Scarlet Woman?
This little poem rather tickled my fancy. It comes from the newsletter of Tewkesbury Abbey, the magnificent Norman church close to the house where Stramentaria lived as a girl. Anglican ritualists often have rather a pleasant sense of fun.
A lady in the parish once decided to ensure
That the Church's ritual colours matched the underclothes she wore.
And so for Christmas, Easter and the saints' days
pure and bright
The priest and congregation knew her lingerie was
white.
For all the holy martyrs whose precious blood was
shed,
And for the Feast of Pentecost she wore the colour
red.
In Advent and in Lent the lady competently strove
To choose the penitential shades of purple or of
mauve.
Good Friday was a special day, and so upon her back
She wore with pride - and some panache - a set of
smalls in black.
At other times throughout the year her underwear
was seen
To complement the natural world in various shades
of green.
At last on Maundy Thursday (your indulgence I
entreat)
They stripped the church of colours - so this line
remains discreet...
Besotted by her underwear the vicar always knew
The colours of the Church's year - he'd seen them
through and through.
They brought a sparkle to his eye, excitement to his
life.
But judge him not to harshly, friends; the lady was
his wife.
The late Myles O'Farrell, a colleague of mine on the radio-sub-editors'desk in RTÉ once wrote a little verse on the same sort of theme:
There once was a Bishop of Cobh
Whose girlfriends went round in a drobh;
He selected his fancies
By the colour of their panties
With a clerical preference for mobh.
Tewkesbury Abbey, as I think I've mentioned before, had been marked out for demolition by Henry VIII at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries. He relented when the townsfolk offered to pay him £453.00 if he would let them keep it as their parish church.
************************
Crucifixion 'Too Scary'
The Vicar of St John's at Horsham, in Sussex, has taken down a crucifix from the front of his church. Rev Ewen Souter said it had to go because it might detract from the parish's "welcoming" environment. It was a "a real put-off", said the vicar. "The crucifix expressed suffering, torment, pain and anguish. It was a scary image, particularly for children. Parents didn't want to walk past it with their kids, because they found it so horrifying."
In place of the crucifix, St John's now has an ultra-modern stainless steel cross. One parishioner remarked acidly that this would look more at home on the side of a shopping centre. "Next they'll be ripping out the pews and putting sofas in, or throwing out all the Bibles and replacing them with laptops."
It doesn't seem to have occurred to Rev. Souter that the real crucifixion - a central event in the Christian faith - may have been just a teeny bit "off- putting".
************************
Not the End of the Story
Of course, we Catholics are above this kind of nonsense, aren't we? Or are we?
Let me repeat what I reported in our issue No. 75:
People keep asking me what, if anything, is happening about Alive-O. I hadn't heard much more about it until recently, but it appears they're finding it necessary to sell it really hard in the diocese of Elphin. At one workshop or whatever they call it, parents were shown a video of happy children singing along with Mrs Spring or Mrs Santa or somebody. An Alive-O priest-facilitator rebuked one grandmother who innocently dared to ask when the nitty-gritty of our redemption was imparted. "Let me tell you..." he began hectoringly, assuming she was a heckler who needed putting down. What he had to tell her was that he had heard of children being reduced to tears by being informed about the Crucifixion.
When one considers that the average six to ten-year- old sees the portrayal of umpteen shootings, stabbings and beatings evening after evening on television, this tale rings pretty hollow. Did learning about the Passion of Our Lord do youany harm? Anyway, when we consider the price paid for our sins, and the great drama of Calvary, might not tears be an appropriate reaction? Agood teacher would be sure to point out that the Crucifixion was not the end of the story, that death was swallowed up in victory by the Resurrection on the third day.
Is it any wonder that so many youngsters subjected to this Alive-O mush decide as soon as they are old enough that the Catholic religion is for the birds?
************************
Moslem Praise forBenedict
It looks as though traditional Catholics have suddenly become Politically Correct. When the Holy Father was in Jordan recently, he was greeted by Prince Ghazi, a Western-educated scholar who has helped foster a Vatican-Moslem dialogue called "the Common Word initiative". Prince Ghazi, no doubt to the considerable chagrin of Catholic modernists and of their militant secularist allies, praised Benedict for "a reign marked by the moral courage to do and speak your conscience, no matter what the vogue of the day." That must have taken quite a bit of courage, in view of the bigotry of some of his co-religionists.
Astonishingly, the Prince singled out for approval the Pope's efforts to "refacilitate" the use of the traditional Tridentine Mass. Can you believe it? A Moslem praising Pope Benedict for issuing Summorum Pontificum! (I'm going to have to revise my opinions about some of these lads.) And what's more, it was reported in the New York Times.
Maybe some day President Obama will make a similar statement? No, I think perhaps not.
Muzzling the Ox
Dear Nick
Congrats again on the latest issue of the
Brandsma. When I read the bit on John Bradburne
and "muzzle not the ox", I was reminded of seeing
this in practice. In 1975 I was Chairman of Concern
and visited projects in Ethiopia on my way home
from a consultancy assignment in India. While driving across the plateau in Tigre Province, not far from
the ancient capital of Aksum, we spotted some farmers at work on their grain and went to look. These
Coptic Christians were still using primitive Old
Testament farming methods: the oxen trod out the
grain, which was then winnowed by tossing it in the
air with forked sticks, "pitchforks". The oxen were
not muzzled and their minder kept them walking
round on the grain with prods of his stick; he would
let them take a few mouthfuls every so often, and
then get them moving again with a whack on the
rump.
Éanna Johnson
Loughlinstown, Co. Dublin
The editor adds: I wish I had the space - and the technology - to show you the two beautiful colour photos Éanna sent to illustrate the scene he describes above.
Abortion and Excommunication
This letter was sent to the Irish Catholic, but not published. We think it deserves an airing here.
Dear Editor,
I disagree profoundly with your Editorial of
March 19, 2009, p. 18, in which you support the condemnation by Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella,
President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, of the
actions of Archbishop JosÉ Cardoso Sobrinho in publicising the fact that those directly responsible for the
abortion of two twins in Brazil were excommunicated automatically.The excommunication doesn't apply
to the nine-year-old mother herself, as she is too
young to be held responsible for what happened. The
twins were being carried by the nine-year-old mother,
who was, according to reports, raped by her stepfather. It is reported also that the abortionist claims that
the life of the nine-year-old mother was being put at
risk by the pregnancy, and at the very least the young
mother would never have been able to become pregnant again.
It is difficult to credit what the abortionist says, for several reasons.
The abortionist, Dr Rivaldo Mendes de Albuquerque, was interviewed by George Arney for the BBC World Service on March 18, 2009, on their Outlook programme. It is clear from the interview that Dr Mendes de Albuquerque has done several direct abortions, and so was excommunicated automatically long before this present case. The abortionist claims to be a Catholic. But his own words in this interview indicate that he is a Catholic in name only:
[S]ome positions of the Catholic Church, on birth control, against abortion, against homosexuality, in defence of celibacy, and other examples, only reinforce that the Church seems to be out of tune with people's thinking, and people's will, not God's will, for God never mentioned any of that. Men wrote about that, and said it came from God.
There has been a Declaration of March 16 of the Archdiocese of Olinda and Recife on the matter that has been ignored largely by the secular press, and even by some in the Catholic press, unfortunately. The Declaration was signed by several prominent people on the staff of that Archdiocese. They are clearly very aggrieved at the very unjust way their Archbishop has been treated by Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life. Archbishop Fisichella, they say, simply ignored all the caring pastoral work done by the local Church in this case for the young mother in question.
To return to the claims of the abortionist, it should be said that permanent infertility is sometimes caused by an abortion.
Not only that, but according to Margaret Cuthill of British Victims of Abortion, young girls whose babies are aborted are among those who experience the most psychological suffering from the abortion. They are a lot more likely to commit suicide themselves. This is borne out by research conducted in the US by the Elliot Institute. Even those medics in Britain who favour pro-abortion legislation are beginning to admit publicly that abortion does cause a lot of psychiatric problems. This was corroborated last year by Spanish psychiatrists. It is probable that the stepfather in this case will be out of prison in a few years.
Archbishop Cardoso Sobrinho was reiterating authentic Catholic teaching. One may repent of mortal sin before death, but not after death. Excommunication is a call to repent in time, whether the excommunication be automatic as in this case, or an excommunication imposed by ecclesiastical authority.
Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella is the one who has rushed to judgement, and in his effort to make the Church appear "reasonable" on this issue, he has sided against a fellow archbishop, but with a notorious abortionist. Archbishop Fisichella has taken his cue from the international campaign of hysteria by the secular, pro-abortion, media. He has rewritten, off his own bat, Church teaching on direct abortion. Archbishop Fisichella should do the honourable thing in the circumstances, and resign.
SÉamas de Barra
Beaufort Downs, Rathfarnham Village,
Dublin 14.
European Elections Results
Readers may well wonder why we have no analysis of the European and local election results. The fact is, we are having to produce this particular issue earlier than usual, partly because we have fallen a bit behind, and also because I have other things to do in the first two weeks of July, and Issue 102 will need to reach subscribers before the end of June.
It takes a week or so from the time the "copy" reaches the printers before we are able to post the Brandsma to clients and deliver it to the few shops that take it.
All I can say at this stage (a day or so after the results came in) is that they don't look good from a pro-life perspective, or from that of the Lisbon Treaty. Both Declan Ganley and Caroline Simons deserved to do much better, and the loss of Kathy Sinnott is a sore blow. More on all that in Issue 103.
When ordering, please do not include any money: we will send you an invoice with the package. You may contact us by post, by telephone, by fax, or by e-mail (brandsmabooks@eircom.net). Please note that the cost of postage and packaging is extra and will be included on the invoice. Unfortunately we can no longer accept payment by credit card.
Edited by Nick Lowry, and James. R. Lothian, and published by Brandsma Books Ltd., 14, Villarea Park, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin. (Tel: 01 280 3540). Cost of yearly subscription in Ireland (six issues), EUR19.80.