Form and Matter in the Liturgy—Sacrifice (Part 1)

When it comes to worshiping the Lord Almighty God, in my opinion, there is nothing too extravagant. All that we have we have received from him and therefore I think it is only fair to give him the better share of our toils. This, at least, is the lesson I take from the story of Cain and Able. As you remember, Cain kills his brother out of jealousy because God praises Able for his sacrifice (the best produce of the land) while ignoring Cain's sacrifice (a less than choice specimen of livestock). The moral of this story is that in offering sacrifices to God, NOTHING we could give God is a worthy repayment for what he is given us. However, acknowledging this, if we do give an “unworthy” offering it should be the best “unworthy” offering possible, it should be an offering not from our surplus but from our need. As Jesus says in the Gospels the poor woman's meager alms are better than the rich mans extravagant donation.

When it comes to the Divine Liturgy, the Mass, you often hear people say that God chose to be born in a stable, in squalor, and so, since he lived his life in relative poverty he doesn't need fine vessels, vestments, etc. when he is being worshiped. This of course is true—God needs nothing because all, that is, is his. The fruits of the earth offered by Able, belonged to God before Able sacrificed them to God. God had no need of them, but it pleased God that fallen man still realized that all that he had was a gift from God, and it pleased God that man was willing to sacrifice the best portions of his labors to the one who gives all things existence.

Today this is still the case, despite what we tell ourselves about our hard work, all that we “earn” is a gift from God. For nothing that exists exists without his willing it to be. “In the beginning was the Word...” In years past, poor peasants devoted huge portions of their labor to the construction of fabulous churches and the purchase of fine appointments for use in the liturgy. Today, while so many are fabulously rich compared with the masses of just a century ago, we scoff at fine vessels and vestments, while building inornate, drab, unprayerful churches. At the same time we build larger and larger homes, buy more extravagant toys, and live in greater luxury than even the Roman emperors of Jesus' era lived in.

Part of this is from an incorrect understanding of the Evangelical council of simplicity. There are those who ask, how one can justify purchasing beautiful things for the sacrifice of the Mass when there are poor among us. Isn't it socially unjust to have extravagant churches while the poor are homeless, hungry, without health care, etc. It of course shouldn't surprise you that Jesus predicted that the poor would always be with us. And yes, we are most definitely called to minister to them: to feed the hungry, cloth the naked, visit the sick, etc. However, Jesus' trice-repeated instruction to Peter and the Church which he would lead, “Feed my sheep,” “feed my lambs,” “feed my sheep,” was not only an instruction to care for the temporal well beings of people but also to feed their souls. “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that flows from the mouth of God,” and so feeding Christ's flock means feeding them with the bread of life, the word of God made flesh truly present in the Sacrifice of the Altar.

This brings us to the crux of the issue. God does not need sacrifice, yet sacrifice is present and requested by God throughout the Old Testament, and it is perfected by Christ in the New Testament. God does not need the best portion, and yet it pleases him that it is offered. Why is this the case?? Why does the God who is All in All, who owns all created things, place these burdensome requests for fine sacrifices upon the shoulders of his chosen people?? It is because, in truth, the sacrifices we offer are not to God's benefit but to ours. WE NEED THE SACRIFICE!! We need to learn how to sacrifice. Our sacrifices teaches us what true love is about. True love is the total emptying of self, a gift of self to another, with no expectation or guarantee of return. In turn, our sacrifices teach others what we believe in and they teach others how to love. Isn't this what Christ taught us on the Cross, to give ourselves totally? We may not be asked to give our lives, but ought we not give the best, choice, portion of our earnings to the worship of the one who gave us all we have?

When I visited Asissi a few months ago I was struck by seeing St. Francis' habit and his dalmatic (the vestment he wore while assisting at the Mass). His habit was really little more than a rag, far poorer then the rags that a poor person in the US might wear today. However, what struck me was that despite the fact that Francis was the evangelist of poverty, at the liturgy, serving as a deacon, the dalmatic he wore was at the same time a simple and yet quite beautiful woven silk and silver. I will conclude this first part of a multi-part series of the Catholic liturgy with this thought: when we celebrate the Mass, Catholics believe that Christ opens the gates of heaven to the faithful and that the priest steps to the threshold of heaven offering meager gifts of bread and wine and receiving in return the bread of everlasting life, the Word of God which sustains our life for all eternity. We as American's pay millions of dollars a year to transport our presidents and leaders safely and comfortably around the world, we also pay all that we can afford in order to transport our own families in similar safety and opulence, is it too much then to ask that we spend a couple dollars to transport our Lord and Savior's gift of his own flesh in similar safety, opulence, and reverance?


Form and Matter in the Liturgy—Why things matter in a created world (Part 2)Form and Matter in the Liturgy—Latin and Lace Smells and Bells(Part 3)

God's gift of Suffering

Yesterday I watched a fill called Shadowlands, and I was quite impressed. The film told the story of CS Lewis and one great love in his life, a dying woman. I will not tell you the story, watch the movie or better still read the book, upon which it is based. I did want to discuss again the concept of suffering, which is central to the movie and has particular significance in the wake of the various natural disasters which have been visited upon us, and most like will continue to be visited upon us.

A member of the Anglican Hierarchy, such as it is, recently stated that he refuses to believe in the idea of a vengeful God—a God who would wrathfully deal with our sinfulness. Obviously this is a result of the Anglican abandonment of Revelation, in favor of erroneous but more democratic theological thinking. Clearly a vengeful God who repays man's disobedience with suffering is clearly biblical. In fact, I would venture to say that it is built into the system, sin results in evil in the world which results in suffering through one of several venues. Man's rejection of God's friendship in the garden would have led to suffering and death, whether or not God cast man out of the garden. The more I think about suffering the more I come to realize two things, first that, though not particularly pastorally sensitive to say to those enduring it, suffering is a gift from God, and secondly that it is a gift that often seems more like a curse, we don't like it and often reject it thus compounding the sin and bring upon ourselves greater suffering.

First the most difficult proposition, that suffering is a gift. Modern man declares that, suffering is evil, and that if God who is supposed to be good allows it to happen to “good” people then either He is not good or He is not (existent).

First things first, it seems that there is a fallacy in the proposition “good” people, since goodness is relative to the fallen depravity of man. I question whether in reality, there has ever been a man (male or female), other than God's gift of our Lord and His mother. Isn't this the meaning of the story of Job—who is supposedly a just man. Job in the end vindicates himself as a just man through his humble acceptance of evils from the God who had given him so many goods, but while Job may be just, he is not sinless. Only four humans were ever born sinless, two who sinned and brought suffering to the world, and two who did not sin and brought eternal life to the world. By this I am not seeking to say that because of original sin we are all deserving of punishment. Oh, if only this was our only sin! Original sin makes it harder for us to do what is right, and because of this all of us have actual personal sins weighing on our souls. In most cases these sins are abundant, and so in fact I think there is no such thing as “good” people. Its not that your evil and you deserve what you get, but rather that you are not good and the suffering you experience calls you to realize this and become better. I am not trying to insult the rest of humanity, but to point out that we all must put things in perspective, as even Jesus says, “why do you call me good, only the Father is Good.”

Only God, who gives us all things, is good, if we accept good things from him, ought we not accept what we perceive is evil. If one where truly good, I do not believe they would suffer, because for them even pain would be a joy. Suffering and pain are objectively not good, God, who is all good, does not will that his creatures suffer. However, he does permit it. While suffering may be objectively evil, in a particular case it can be a good. This is true both in the natural realm and the supernatural realm. Hold your hand over a lit match and you will see this demonstrated. Does it hurt, yes, is it objectively evil, yes, but the fact that you suffered for an instant, in the subjective sense is good, because it convinced you not to leave your hand in the flame. If you hadn't felt that pain you may have left your hand in the flame until it was completely burnt, and rather than having an instant of pain in your hand you would have had the rest of your life without the existence of your hand. Thus while evil in itself, its evil is not a moral evil but a physical evil, and thus as a means to an end it can be good.
Evil, that is suffering, both physical and emotional, is indeed useful to man's salvation because it alerts him to the reality that, just like the hand over the match, something is not right! A fundamentalist preacher recently declared that the recent eruptions and Tsunami in Southeast Asia are a sign of the impending end and a punishment of our sins. He is of course right, but not in the way he intended. Suffering, and the death it causes are the result of sin, however not being God, I would not venture a guess as to whose sin a natural disaster is targeted to redress. In fact, it is not necessarily the particular sin of the people impacted, it could be the sin of the whole world. Suffering serves to get our attention, and while the recent disasters happened to a particular group of people they got the whole world's attention. These disasters also point to the impending end of the world—this world is passing away—but I would not care to venture a guess as to the date and the time. I am sure after Pompey, or Mt. St. Helen's, or any of the plethora of natural, and man made, disasters of the past two thousand years people said, 'well its all over,' and in truth it is, but the day and hour of the end is known only to the Father, it may be tomorrow or a century of tomorrows from now.

Suffering reminds man that his destiny is not in this world, that attachment to this world hampers one's preparation for the next, and that the price of sin is death. Suffering of the physical sort reminds man not to make idols out of the things of this world. Augustine discusses this at length in his treatise On Christian Doctrine (De Doctrina Christiana, Book I). He says we enjoy things for two reasons, because they lead to an end or for their own sake. Things which we enjoy for the sake of something else are properly not enjoyed but used. Augustine says only God should be enjoyed, for if we enjoy things that are not God in the way that we enjoy God then we are committing idolatry. Emotional pain is also useful in the same way because it reminds us that while we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, our first duty and ultimate end is to love God. Emotional suffering and death helps us to stay detached, in a loving way, from those we love. If we love the other and wish the best for them then to become attached to the point which we wish that they did not leave us to enter the eternal kingdom is both uncharitable to them and idolatrous.

I am not sure that God wants us to be comfortable and happy in this world. He has tried that before and time and time again every time people are prosperous and happy they see to forget God en masse. It is not that God is a party killer, but that God is and knows the Truth!! He knows the truth about man, the truth which we ourselves often forget. Man is and always has been, from the beginning of time destined for communion with God, for heaven. I honestly believe that even original man, before sin, was destined to “die,” if in the most pleasant of ways, possibly along the lines of the Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin Mother of God. All men have always been called to be with God forever, but in the state of original sin we forget this and and choose to live in this world as if it is the only. St. Paul states it well when he says, if Christ was not raised from the dead then we shall not rise, and if we do not rise eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. But God knows what we forget, that man is destined to rise, with Christ, that man has been destined since his creation to be with the One in whose image and likeness he was fashioned.

For man to live life for today, when in reality he is destined for tomorrow, i.e. for Heaven not Earth, is then a state of denial. It is a state of denial that will have eternal ramifications. Soren Kierkegaard calls this despair: despair over being what we do not want to be, not being what we want to be, and over not knowing what we are. We are in despair because we are not omnipotent, eternal, and omniscient—we are not God. We are in despair because we are subsistent, we are man a radically subsistent being. And, we are in despair because we don't know what being man really is!! Suffering lays open our state of despair and provides us with a moment in which we can embrace our destiny eternity. If we reject the moment then it is just that a lost chance, however if we utilize it the we embrace the eternal consciousness. Man doesn't like this! He doesn't like being forced to see himself as he is. He prefers to live in his pretend world of dillusion, in which he is an island, independent of the rest of humanity and more importantly independent of God.

Man is quite happy to live in the despair that is not realizing that one is in despair, the despair that is not knowing your telos (Greek for end or purpose) and not caring because you think you don't have one. It is for this reason that man throughout the ages has taken offense at God. When nature, which man holds (and rightly so) as an agent of God, forces man to ask the basic questions that are basic life tasks for man, but which often man forgets to ask (or ignores the answer), man takes offense at God. In the Papal encyclical Fides et Ratio, John Paul II notes:
a cursory glance at ancient history shows clearly how in different parts of the world, with their different cultures, there arise at the same time the fundamental questions which pervade human life: Who am I? Where have I come from and where am I going? Why is there evil? What is there after this life? (Fides et Ratio, 1)

These questions have over the ages, the Pontiff points out, resulted in the various religions of the world—which are man's natural desire to reach toward the transcendent. While man searched for God in the world religions he was limited by his own capabilities and fallen nature, and so in his mercy, God, who had been rejected by man, revealed himself to man through the children of Abraham, and later through his own Son, through his own being, his own word, that he sent into the world. The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, revealing to us in himself the Father who sent him. This is the center of history, i.e. in the conception, birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus; this is the moment of import to all mankind, because at this moment God answered all our questions And yet though man had an innate desire for God, man rejected Him when He revealed himself to Man. Man prefered to live a lie, he prefered to fashion God according to his own likings, he wanted to know God, but when he hear him man didn't like what he said.

Here we arrive at my second point, percisely that man rejects the gift of suffering, and thus increases the the quantitative amount of suffering in the world. The gift of suffering is first and foremost the gift of God, who can not suffer, suffering for us. God sanctified the physical evil of suffering in and through the Passion of his Son. In living the human life, complete in all senses, Jesus redeems man, and in suffering with man he makes our suffering redeeming. Suffering is an essential part of Christianity. Paul speaks of uniting his sufferings to those of Christ to fill up what was lacking in his sufferings. I am not sure there was anything lacking in the sufferings of Christ, who suffered more than any man, but this sentiment points to the fundamental truth that in humbly accepting sufferings, God grant us bountiful graces. However, knowing God, man has chosen to reject the sufferings that befall him as a curse of God. They have taken offense at the thought that God knows best. They take offense of the fact that God asks them to deny themselves and take up their cross, following Him. They wanted to know God, and now that they do they resent Him. For, of course, it is essential to know a person to resent Him. But rejecting God is a sin, and so if the first premise is true, that suffering is the result of sin, then in rejecting suffering we sin and call down further sufferings upon ourselves. Sin multiplies the sufferings of man, we see this in the great sinners of the twentieth century, Lenon, Stalin, Hitler, Moa, etc. If we choose to ignore suffering, if we choose to ignore the fact that our hand is in the fire and it hurts, whose fault is that. Man can never advance until he realizes that he is helpless without God. Man will never move beyond barbarity until he is civilized by God.
And this is the world we live in, a world which damns God for suffering, thus calling down all the more suffering. It is a sad state, will we ever learn? I don't know, but what I do know is that this suffering isn't the worst part of our situation. The worst part of the contemporary existential problem is that in the end, when we die, we will be faced with an eternity to reap what we soe. I think of a famous quote from one of our founding fathers, “I shudder to think that God is Just.”

Humanae Vitae

A received wisdom exists among both liberals and conservatives regarding Humanae Vitae: "In opposition to 'the spirit of Vatican II' which otherwise prevailed in the Church at that time, Humanae Vitae was a strong reaffirmation of the Church's traditional teaching on birth control. Liberals were dismayed to see the Church return to a 'pre-Vatican II' approach, while conservatives were pleased to see a period of experimentation brought to a halt."The purpose of this article is to determine what correspondence, if any, exists between reality and this accepted history. When we examine closely the actual text of the encyclical, do we find that it indeed reinforces the constant teaching of the Church? Or is it possible that it repudiates nearly everything taught by Pope Paul's predecessors? What if Humanae Vitae was not a stabilizing influence at all, but instead was a radical new element in the history of Catholic moral doctrine?We may begin by noting that amidst the many disputes regarding Humanae Vitae, one fact is indisputable: the encyclical has absolutely failed in its mission to teach and to persuade Catholics. Statistics show that contraceptive usage is ubiquitous. Widely available data indicate only five percent of women of childbearing years are refraining entirely from the use of artificial contraceptives. The total effect of contraceptive usage by American Catholics has resulted in a birth rate far below the replacement level, correlating with data from virtually every Catholic country in Europe - most notably Italy, which has one of the lowest birthrates in the world.The Alan Guttmacher Institute reports that fertility rates remained "much higher" for Catholics than for Protestants "until the late 1960s" (when Humanae Vitae was released), but since that time they have plummeted to levels even lower than those of Protestants. The proportion of Catholics using birth control is so large that it could not possibly be any larger even if Humanae Vitae had come out and repudiated the Catholic teaching. As John Kippley, founder of the Couple to Couple League, explained: "With a continuation of the status quo [1991], a parish priest can expect that about 97% to 99% of his newlyweds will be using unnatural methods of birth control."How then do we explain such an abject failure of the teaching authority of the Church? For three decades liberals have claimed that the low acceptance rate of the encyclical indicates that it must be wrong. These dissidents have no difficulty establishing a prima facie case: "How could a teaching of the Church be so utterly rejected if it is indeed true?" But this argument is self-referential: "The teaching is false because I reject it, and I reject the teaching because it is false." Counterpoised against this tautology is a massive amount of evidence concerning the lethal effects of contraception, spiritually as well as physically. Everyone has seen statistics describing the skyrocketing incidence of pornography, masturbation, fornication, adultery, divorce, homosexuality and abortion since 1968. These "leading cultural indicators" demonstrate that the much touted "sensus fidei" may be nothing more than mass apostasy.At a more fundamental level, for a believing Catholic, rejecting this teaching amounts to rejecting the Faith. For this moral doctrine has been taught repeatedly and dogmatically, not by one pope, but by every recent pope, not just in recent times, but throughout the history of the Church. If the teaching on contraception is false, then the authority of the Magisterium is empty. As Fr. John Hardon, S.J., has said, "Professed Catholics who practice contraception either give up the practice of contraception or they give up their Catholic faith." Meanwhile the Church apparatus has clung with equal tenacity to the belief that there is no problem with Humanae Vitae. On this issue they have reacted as they have to so many other problems in recent decades: a resolute head-in-the-sand approach. While the liberals' approach amounts to discarding the Faith, the approach of the hierarchy means despairing of the faithful. For this position essentially says, "We recognize that virtually all Catholics are living in a state of serious sin, but there is nothing we can do about it, so we wash our hands of responsibility." This responsibility will not be shrugged off so easily. As Fr. Hardon's writings point out, contraception is not only "fatal to the Faith," but "fatal to salvation" as well: "The practice of contraception is a grave sin. Those who indulge in the practice are in danger of losing their immortal souls…. Christianity has always held, holds now, and always will hold, that contraception is a serious offense against God. Unless repented, it is punishable by eternal deprivation of the vision of God, which we call eternal death." It is intolerable that the Church should stand by passively as the vast majority of its members - amounting to hundreds of millions of souls - lead lives that must come to eternal perdition. Isn't it likely that the failure is not only on the part of those listening, but also on the part of those preaching as well? This is where we must consider a third alternative: "The doctrine is true, but the presentation has been fatally flawed." By "presentation" I do not mean rhetorical style; it is not simply a matter of saying the same things in a different way. Rather, Humanae Vitae needed to say very different things if it wished to present the Catholic teaching on birth control in all its fullness and beauty and with the requisite persuasiveness. It is the abandonment of Sacred Scripture, of Catholic tradition, of Catholic doctrine, and of Catholic philosophy that has rendered the encyclical incapable of convincing the faithful and has left the Church unable to cope with the moral breakdown that has afflicted virtually every Catholic country in the world.As the noted natural law philosopher J. Budziszewski said in the journal First Things: "Though addressed not only to Roman Catholics but to 'all men of good will,' Humanae Vitae is both diffuse and elliptical; its premises are scattered and, to non-Catholics, obscure. Though the encyclical letter is magisterial in the sense of being lordly, it is not magisterial in the sense of teaching well. It seems to lack the sense, which any discussion of natural law requires, of what must be done to make the self-evident evident, to make the intuitive available to intuition, to make what is plain in itself plain to us."Below I explore in detail nine specific problems that have rendered Humanae Vitae impotent and resulted in the rejection of its conclusions. 1. Bureaucracy and DelayBy the time the encyclical Humanae Vitae was released, it was quite literally a "dead letter." Opposing viewpoints had been released to both Catholic and secular media in a steady stream. Rebuttals to the Church's position had been prepared and signed, only awaiting the moment of the encyclical's release for them to be submitted for publication. In hindsight, Humanae Vitae appears quite naïve when it makes the statement, "We believe that the men of our day are particularly capable of seeing the deeply reasonable and human character of this fundamental principle." Now that three decades have passed, isn't it time that we as the Church started taking responsibility for our own failings and stopped bemoaning the fact that the encyclical was never given a fair hearing? The decision to appoint a "Papal Commission for the Study of Problems of the Family, Population and Birth Rate" sealed the fate of the encyclical in three ways.First, the decision to place the fate of a crucial Church doctrine in the hands of a commission can only be considered an act of imprudence. Janet Smith, who has researched the background of Humanae Vitae more extensively than anyone else in the world, says, "It is not possible to find a published statement that makes clear the purpose of this commission." In the actual event, the creation of the Papal Commission turned out to be a major disaster. The commission released to the press a "Majority Report" that advocated a change in the perennial teaching of the Church. A seemingly authoritative document from the Vatican was now widely available in the press, signed by nine cardinals and archbishops, which said "responsible parenthood" could include the use of contraceptives. This viewpoint had the field all to itself for more than two years, sufficient time to garner increasing support and to turn public opinion away from the teaching of the Church. Secondly, the appointment of the Papal Commission occasioned a delay of many years. The Pill was introduced in 1958. Vatican II opened in 1962. The study commission was appointed by Pope John XXIII in 1963 and later expanded by Pope Paul VI. The topic was covered in the 1965 Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes, but in only a cursory manner because Pope Paul VI had reserved this topic for himself, awaiting the recommendations of the commission. There is evidence that the Vatican II document only worsened the situation; upon the promulgation of Humanae Vitae, a Congress of theologians released a statement saying, "The Encyclical does not meet the expectations aroused by the pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes."These expectations were fed a steady diet of articles from various theologians, pundits and experts. Already by 1966, Richard McCormick, author of the compendium "Notes on Moral Theology" in Theological Studies, wrote that contraception had become "the major moral issue troubling the Church," and that the literature in the previous six months was "voluminous." Note that Humanae Vitae still was not to appear for two more years. It was during these crucial years that the consensus of society turned away from the Church. It was during these years that the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Griswold vs. Connecticut decision invalidating state restrictions on the dispensing of contraceptives. It was during these years that contraceptive usage rates began to skyrocket, forcing the Church into the position of requiring people to cease doing something that had become an integral part of their lifestyle, rather than merely maintaining the status quo.This result can only be compared to the difference between driving a train and righting a train that has gone off the tracks. One requires virtually no effort, so little in fact that one might be tempted to take one's eye off the track. The other requires the coordinated efforts of thousands of men and even then is not guaranteed success.Lastly, this bureaucratic approach dealt a fatal blow to Humanae Vitae itself, since it leads off with an admission that the Papal Commission reached an opposite conclusion. The message of the encyclical is thus crippled by a description of conflicts within the teaching authority of the Church. Readers of Humanae Vitae find that the well has been poisoned before they even come to the Church's point of view, a defect that will always remain a permanent part of the encyclical.2. Lack of Context on Christian MarriageAt the Lambeth Conference of 1930, the Church of England approved the use of contraception by married couples, the first time such a thing had been permitted by any Christian denomination. Pope Pius XI was faced with a serious crisis, arguably as serious as the crisis faced by Pope Paul VI in the 1960s. Birth control usage became widespread among Protestants following this historic event, and fertility rates among white Protestants soon entered a period of decline from which they have never recovered. So the stakes were high.The response of Pope Pius XI was immediate, since he realized that delay would sow doubt and confusion in the minds of the faithful. Fortunately he was able to release the Catholic response in the same year, 1930. His response did not require any panels, commissions or committees; it was dogmatic and magisterial. Most notable about his response, however, was the fact that his encyclical was titled "On Christian Marriage," not "On Birth Control." He responded to the Anglican challenge by reaffirming the entire Christian view of the married life. Certainly he was firm and unambiguous on the issue of contraception - much more so than Humanae Vitae despite the latter's focus on this single topic - yet he was equally firm and unambiguous on several other controversial topics.What Casti Connubii presents to the faithful is an entire Catholic way of life, one that must include fidelity, permanence and fruitfulness. Marriage may not be attempted on an a la carte basis; one does not pick and choose individual items. When you make the choice for Christian marriage, then you buy the whole package, including generosity in accepting children from God. This approach was magisterial, systematic, logical, and - not least - successful.In contrast, Humanae Vitae presents only a short synopsis of Catholic teaching on marriage. The general discussion of Christian marriage is contained in sections 8 and 9, little more than a dozen sentences combined. Personalist concepts of marriage such as "fully human" and "total" are each given their own paragraphs, while the three traditional foundations of marriage - fidelity, permanence and fruitfulness - must together share a single paragraph.There is another way in which the lack of Catholic marriage doctrine has contributed to the failure of the encyclical: by disowning the virtue of obedience. Humanae Vitae actually quotes from Ephesians chapter 5, but commences with the very next verse (Eph. 5:25), deliberately excising St. Paul's instruction, "Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord" (Eph. 5:22-24). Casti Connubii, in contrast, united Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium as it explained the truth of Christian marriage: "Domestic society being confirmed, therefore, by this bond of love, there should flourish in it that 'order of love,' as St. Augustine calls it. This order includes both the primacy of the husband with regard to the wife and children, the ready subjection of the wife and her willing obedience, which the Apostle commends in these words: 'Let women be subject to their husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife, and Christ is the head of the Church.'"During this era in which the Church has maintained a vow of silence on the virtue of obedience in marriage, the crisis over Humanae Vitae has continued and has been characterized most often as a crisis of obedience. The period immediately after Humanae Vitae's promulgation was marked by massive defiance and dissent. Theologians openly defied the Vatican; many bishops' conferences issued statements implying that Catholics could use contraception in good conscience. Pope Benedict XV would not have been surprised by the way a devaluing of the virtue of obedience in the family has resulted in the abandonment of obedience in the Church. He pointed out the natural connection in his first encyclical (Ad Beatissimi 1914):"The unrestrained striving after independence, together with overweening pride, has little by little found its way everywhere; it has not even spared the home, although the natural origin of the ruling power in the family is as clear as the noonday sun; nay, more deplorable still, it has not stopped at the steps of the sanctuary."Humanae Vitae has thus contributed both directly and indirectly to a crisis in which we have gone from losing the battle on birth control to losing the very concept of obedience itself.3. Natural vs. Artificial MethodsDefenders of Humanae Vitae protest against a "misreading" that views the encyclical merely in terms of a contrast between "artificial" and "natural" methods of birth control. But this is not a misreading at all; this is the stated message of Humanae Vitae. Consider first the title of the encyclical, "On the Proper Regulation of the Propagation of Offspring." The question is already settled before the discussion has begun: there should be a "regulation"; the issue to be discussed is using "proper" methods.In fact, the encyclical step by step builds a case for birth control. First it discusses the "serious difficulties" of population, conceding the argument to the population control advocates. Then it speaks of "responsible parenthood," commending a decision to "avoid new births." Then it evaluates means to achieve this goal, condemning "artificial methods" while praising "legitimate use of a natural disposition." The title of the advisory commission is enlightening: "Papal Commission for the Study of Problems of the Family, Population and Birth Rate." Family, population and birth rate have now become "problems"; they are no longer bona, "goods." The encyclical starts off with a dire warning about overpopulation, and later refers readers to Pope Paul VI's prior encyclical, Populorum Progressio, where we find even gloomier statements about "depressing despondency" caused by "population increases."Section 20 of Humanae Vitae tells us that the job of the Church towards the faithful is to "strengthen them in the path of honest regulation of birth" while comforting them "amid the difficult conditions which today afflict families and peoples." In other words, "People are miserable, so we will help them regulate births that there might be fewer people to be miserable." This is a far cry from the attitude of generosity displayed in documents from Pope Paul's predecessors, who continually strove to enlarge the appreciation of fruitfulness. Pope Pius XII's 1958 "Address to Large Families," for example, is a masterpiece that every Catholic family should read and ponder. Compare Humanae Vitae's pinched, meager attitude with Pius XII's lyrical poetry in praise of new life when he calls for "esteem, desire, joy, and the loving welcome of the newly born right from its first cry. The child, formed in the mother's womb, is a gift of God, Who entrusts its care to the parents."The new goal established by Humanae Vitae is "responsible parenthood" rather than "generosity towards children." Living out the message of the encyclical "undoubtedly requires ascetical practices," and "perfect self-mastery," Humanae Vitae claims. "Responsible parenthood" means that before deciding to have a child, a couple must "recognize fully their own duties towards God, towards themselves, towards the family and towards society, in a correct hierarchy of values." Humanae Vitae offers no explanation of these duties, leaving couples to wonder if adding to population growth could likely be a violation of their obligations. No longer does there exist a presumption in favor of fertility, with any type of birth control - even natural means - reserved for extraordinary cases. Now the "decision to raise a numerous family" must be "deliberate"; it is no longer a natural and spontaneous outgrowth of the marriage commitment.We find reasons for avoiding a new birth as basic as "harmony and peace of the family" and "better conditions for education." These reasons can "derive from the physical or psychological conditions of husband and wife, or from external conditions," while an earlier section had listed "physical, economic, psychological and social conditions." In other words, one is hard pressed to imagine reasons that would not qualify. Later on, Humanae Vitae lowers the bar even further, citing merely "plausible reasons" to seek "the certainty that offspring will not arrive." All one need do is "take into account the natural rhythms immanent in the generative functions." The encyclical repeatedly differentiates between "artificial" birth control and a "natural" disposition. For example, when Humanae Vitae famously predicts the harmful results of widespread adoption of contraception, it refers to "the consequences of methods of artificial birth control." It thus defines the problem as being one of methods that are artificial, not a lack of fruitfulness, a failure of generosity, etc. Ironically, despite repeated emphasis on "the path of honest regulation of birth" through "the use of marriage in the infecund periods only," Humanae Vitae achieved a result directly contrary to what it intended. Fr. Paul Marx, OSB, founder of Human Life International, and a leading teacher and proponent of NFP in the 1960s, has reported, "With Humanae Vitae, NFP more or less died in the USA. I did 9 international symposia and many weekend conferences on NFP in various parts of the USA. No bishop encouraged me."4. Missing References to ScriptureVatican II called for a renewed effort on the part of the Church to investigate and reinforce the scriptural basis for its moral teachings. It is ironic that Humanae Vitae, one of the first encyclicals released after Vatican II, should have taken just the opposite approach and stripped all the scriptural foundation from its arguments. Humanae Vitae makes no reference to any of the standard texts that have been cited for millennia.In a recent symposium in the journal First Things, Gilbert Meilaender and Phillip Turner described the fundamental importance of Scripture, especially for reaching across denominational lines:"As theologians representing the Lutheran and Anglican churches who seek a common mind with our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, we think it most appropriate for us to direct our attention to the first of the questions posed for this symposium: 'Do you judge the argument of Humanae Vitae with respect to artificial means of contraception convincing?' Our answer in brief is no … Though the first three chapters of Genesis are generally cited as loci classici for beginning a discussion of marriage and sex, they are not discussed in Humanae Vitae. Had more adequate reference been made to Holy Scripture, it might indeed have proved to be the case that 'a teaching rooted in natural law' would have been 'illuminated and made richer by divine revelation.'"The scriptural supports for the Church's teaching are numerous and compelling, sufficiently so that all Christian denominations shared the Catholic position until 1930. First of all there is the commandment to "Increase and multiply and fill the earth" found in the very first chapter of the Bible (Genesis 1:28).Moreover, God gives this commandment not only to Adam, but He repeats it in every case where He makes a covenant with man. God speaks the same words twice to Noah (Genesis 9:1 and 9:7). God tells Abraham to be fruitful when he changes his name from Abram (Genesis 17:4-6). God gives the same instruction to Jacob when he changes his name to Israel (Genesis 35:10-12). God confirms his covenant with Moses in the same way (Lev. 26:9). The commandment to be fruitful surely must take priority as not only the first given by God to man, but also the one most often emphasized by God.The story of Onan is another Old Testament reference that directly condemns birth control in the strongest possible way. Despite some modern opinions, all classical Jewish commentators, St. Augustine, statements of popes, and even all three of the major Protestant founders agree upon the plain meaning of the text: "Intercourse even with one's legitimate wife is unlawful and wicked where the conception of the offspring is prevented. Onan, the son of Judah, did this and the Lord killed him for it."As Pope Pius XII noted, the Old Testament abounds in additional references to fruitfulness: "With what delicacy and charm does the Sacred Scripture show the gracious crown of children united around the father's table! Children are the recompense of the just, as sterility is very often the punishment for the sinner. Hearken to the divine word expressed with the insuperable poetry of the Psalm: 'Your wife, as a fruitful vine within your house, your children as olive shoots round about your table. Behold, thus is that man blessed, who fears the Lord!', while of the wicked it is written: 'May his posterity be given over to destruction; may their name be blotted out in the next generation.'"My own favorite is Psalm 127, "Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, The fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one's youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them." The New Testament as well is not lacking in scriptural supports for the Church's teaching. Pope Pius XI, for example, again unites Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium, "St. Augustine admirably deduces from the words of the holy Apostle Saint Paul to Timothy when he says: 'The Apostle himself is therefore a witness that marriage is for the sake of generation: "I wish," he says, "young girls to marry." And, as if someone said to him, "Why?," he immediately adds: 'To bear children, to be mothers of families."Another New Testament reference is Galatians 5:19-21, a catalog of sins that St. Paul condemns as "works of the flesh." Among them in the original Greek is pharmakeia, which is usually translated as "sorcery" but which in the first century A.D. specifically referred to the mixing of potions for illicit purposes, including the prevention of pregnancy. Two additional references to pharmakeia (Rev 9:21, 21:8) indicate a similar usage linking it with sexual sins and with murder. St. Paul says, "I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God." 5. Missing References to TraditionCatholic theology has never been something that can spring full-blown from the brow of Zeus, but rather should manifest beliefs that have been held "always and everywhere by all the faithful." Humanae Vitae stands in stark contrast to the papal pronouncements of Pope Paul's predecessors, by ignoring the history of its controverted teaching, claiming only its own authority, and making use of few sources more than a decade old. This despite the fact that the teaching on contraception is almost unparalleled for the vast range of traditional sources supporting the teaching of the Church. The theologian John T. Noonan was a member of the Papal Commission who supported the recommendation to overturn the Church's teaching. Yet in 1965 he wrote the following:"In the world of the late Empire known to St. Jerome and St. Augustine, in the Ostrogothic Arles of Bishop Caesarius and the Suevian Braga of Bishop Martin, in the Paris of St. Albert and St. Thomas, in the Renaissance Rome of Sixtus V and the Renaissance Milan of St. Charles Borromeo, in the Naples of St. Alphonsus Liguori and Liege of Charles Billuart, in the Philadelphia of Bishop Kenrick, and in the Bombay of Cardinal Gracias, the teachers of the Church have taught without hesitation or variation that certain acts preventing procreation are gravely sinful. No Catholic theologian has ever taught, 'Contraception is a good act.' The teaching on contraception is clear and apparently fixed forever."Listing even a fraction of the traditional sources would require an article of its own. Here is just a sampling of quotations that indicates the unbroken tradition going back to apostolic times and encompassing every period of the Church's history:In 195, Clement of Alexandria wrote: "Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly ejaculated, nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted" (The Instructor of Children 2:10:91:2).St. Augustine: "Sometimes this lustful cruelty or cruel lust goes so far as to seek to procure a baneful sterility, and if this fails the fetus conceived in the womb is in one way or another smothered or evacuated, in the desire to destroy the offspring before it has life, or if it already lives in the womb, to kill it before it is born."St. John Chrysostom made numerous references to contraception, including this one: "Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit, where there are medicines of sterility, where there is murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain only a harlot, but you make her a murderess as well.... Indeed, it is something worse than murder, and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation" (Homilies on Romans 24 [A.D. 391]).A medieval source, the Penitential of Vigila of Alvelda (c. A.D. 800), stated: "A woman, also, who takes a potion shall consider herself to be guilty of as many acts of homicide as the number of those she was due to conceive or bear." St. Thomas Aquinas says, "Next to murder, by which an actually existent human being is destroyed, we rank this sin by which the generation of a human being is prevented."This tradition did not gradually taper off, but continued to evoke unanimous consent until the very day of Vatican II's commencement. The same Notes on Moral Theology that previously documented the voluminous discussions occurring in 1966, was able to say in 1962, "Since theological discussion of the annovulant drugs began some four or more years ago, moralists have never been less than unanimous in their assertion that natural law cannot countenance the use of these progestational steroids for the purpose of contraception." He declared that the moral status of the pill was a "theologically closed issue."Why is all this tradition missing from Humanae Vitae? Writing in Fidelity magazine, Fr. Anthony Zimmerman, SVD, a priest serving in Japan and an ardent defender of the Church's teaching, explains "Why Aquinas Was Kept Out of Humanae Vitae":"St. Thomas made the welfare of the human race pivotal for his rejection of contraception. Yet we do not find his name in the text of Humanae Vitae, except in footnote 9, which really does not allow him to speak. Why did the Vatican exclude the pivotal argument of Aquinas from Humanae Vitae? I once had an experience at the Vatican which suggests to me that he was purposefully excluded... It was not yet politically expedient in 1968 to use Thomistic argument. The argument of St. Thomas about the need to preserve the race might have backfired. At any rate, when we were editing the book Natural Family Planning for the 1980 Synod of Bishops, [Father Gustav Martelet's] contribution, which contains the fear of public reaction against the natural law argument even as it is in Humanae Vitae now, generated scruples in one or the other of our staff."6. Missing References to the MagisteriumSir Isaac Newton was arguably the greatest genius ever to live, yet he was humble enough to claim that his achievements were possible only because he "stood on the shoulders of giants." Until recently, a similar attitude was a hallmark of papal teaching. Every pope was careful to demonstrate the continuity between his own teaching and that of all his predecessors. Pope Pius XI, for example, while not neglecting any aspect of the patrimony handed down to him, gave pride of place to his predecessor Pope Leo XIII: "We follow the footsteps of Our predecessor, Leo XIII, of happy memory, whose Encyclical Arcanum, published fifty years ago, We hereby confirm and make Our own, and while We wish to expound more fully certain points called for by the circumstances of our times, nevertheless We declare that, far from being obsolete, it retains its full force at the present day." To what advantage might Pope Paul VI have made use of passages from Arcanum such as this one: "God thus, in His most far-reaching foresight, decreed that this husband and wife should be the natural beginning of the human race, from whom it might be propagated and preserved by an unfailing fruitfulness throughout all futurity of time." Or this passage from Pope Leo's most famous encyclical, Rerum Novarum: "No human law can abolish the natural and original right of marriage, nor in any way limit the chief and principal purpose of marriage ordained by God's authority from the beginning: 'Increase and multiply.'"No such acknowledgement is found in Humanae Vitae. Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI are entirely missing; neither is named in the document itself. Pope Leo is included in one footnote, among a long list of sources. Pope Pius XI's encyclical Casti Connubii is footnoted four times, in all four cases in shorter or longer lists that include documents from at least one other papacy. In no instance is there a direct quotation.Instead there is a section which describes "the various changes that have taken place in modern times," "changes in how we view the person of woman and her place in society," and the "stupendous progress in the domination and rational organization of the forces of nature." Humanae Vitae says that since we have a "new state of things" with a new "meaning which conjugal relations have with respect to the harmony between husband and wife," then we "require that the Magisterium of the Church give new and deeper consideration to the principles of moral teaching concerning marriage." Thus Humanae Vitae commences by making sweeping claims to invalidate the applicability of all prior pronouncements. Unlike his predecessors, Pius XII does appear twice in the encyclical, and he is footnoted several times. But when one investigates more closely, it is apparent that his views are not represented. The quotation below represents a key passage from Allocution to the Italian Midwives that shows how Humanae Vitae took a diametrically different approach from Pope Pius XII: "Now, on married couples, who make use of the specific act of their state, nature and the Creator impose the function of providing for the preservation of mankind. This is the characteristic service which gives rise to the peculiar value of their state, the bonum prolis. The individual and society, the people and the State, the Church itself, depend for their existence, in the order established by God, on fruitful marriages. Therefore, to embrace the matrimonial state, to use continually the faculty proper to such a state and lawful only therein, and, at the same time, to avoid its primary duty without a grave reason, would be a sin against the very nature of married life."Here in one paragraph are so many of the items that are missing or attenuated in Humanae Vitae: we have the "matrimonial state," we have its "characteristic service," we have the "bonum prolis," we have "the order established by God," we have "fruitful marriages," we have "primary duty," we have "the very nature of married life"; in short, we have the structure of Natural Law as articulated by the Magisterium of the Church. While Humanae Vitae does refer to the documents of Vatican II, we need to consider two points when evaluating these references in the context of magisterial tradition:First, when Humanae Vitae refers to Gaudium et Spes, Lumen Gentium, Inter Mirifica, Apostolicam Actuositatem, and Populorum Progressio, we are reminded that they were "solemnly promulgated by His Holiness Pope Paul VI." The preponderance of documents from his own pontificate, rather than demonstrating continuity of Catholic tradition, indicates a focus on the present to the exclusion of the two-millennia history of the Church. Second, all the discussion of marriage and family in Vatican II amounts to one chapter of Part II of Gaudium et Spes, a document designed to deal with all the issues of "The Church in the Modern World." So the Council cannot contribute an extensive amount of doctrine. Moreover, this is the very place where Pope Paul VI intervened to insist on significant changes to the description of birth control and the purpose of marriage. When Humanae Vitae cites the following statement from GS: "Children are really the supreme gift of marriage and contribute very substantially to the welfare of their parents," it is quoting words interjected into the document at the behest of Pope Paul VI himself.7. Reliance on Consequentialist PhilosophySection 17 of Humanae Vitae lists four consequences that will ensue upon widespread acceptance of contraception. This section is not overstated, and even more extensive claims could be supported. The problem with the consequentialist arguments is the undue reliance placed upon them due to the weakness of Humanae Vitae's other arguments.Human beings are not capable of perceiving all the ultimate consequences of their actions. The causal links between an action and its consequences are always tenuous. More importantly, consequentialist arguments cannot establish the intrinsic rightness or wrongness of a moral action. Bad consequences do not make an action wrong, and good consequences do not make an action right. A discussion of consequences can only reinforce a position that has been established on a solid moral basis. Since the publication of Humanae Vitae, the defense of the Church's position has relied almost entirely on examining the social consequences since 1968. Janet Smith, for example, is the foremost defender of Humanae Vitae in the United States, perhaps in the world. Although she is a professor of philosophy with a Thomistic background, she relies primarily on consequentialist arguments when giving her many presentations on the topic. The most notable defense of Humanae Vitae in the United States in the last few years has come from a pastoral letter from a well-respected American bishop. Oddly, however, the document complains about the "terms of academic theology" used in Humanae Vitae, as though our problems would be solved by means of even greater ambiguity and imprecision! Humanae Vitae itself is quoted only in reference to its prediction of consequences; not another line from the encyclical appears anywhere in his pastoral letter. What does it say about the intellectual status of the Church when the best defense of Humanae Vitae offered in many years (Janet Smith calls it "arguably the very best to date") relies on moral reasoning such as this: "Few couples understand their love in terms of academic theology. Rather, they fall in love. That's the vocabulary they use. It's that simple and revealing. They surrender to each other. They give themselves to each other. They fall into each other in order to fully possess, and be possessed by, each other. And rightly so."Three decades of experience have shown that consequentialist arguments are unconvincing unless the person has already decided on the intrinsic rightness or wrongness of birth control. That's why we see them used so frequently by those who already agree with the teaching of the Church, with so little effect on those who do not. To make any headway, we need to abandon our reliance on consequentialist arguments, except as anecdotal evidence, and begin again to teach the faithful how to distinguish right from wrong.8. Reliance on Personalist PhenomenologyThe entire argument of Humanae Vitae rests upon the sentence, "That teaching, often set forth by the magisterium, is founded upon the inseparable connection, willed by God and unable to be broken by man on his own initiative, between the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning."In the entire history of the Church, has the magisterium ever put forward as a dogmatic statement such a bare assertion? When Humanae Vitae refers to "That teaching, often set forth by the magisterium" it means the prohibition of contraception - which certainly has been "often set forth." But when it speaks of an "inseparable connection" between "the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning," Humanae Vitae is creating out of thin air a concept that has never before existed in any form of Catholic doctrine. After this breathtaking act of bare assertion, the encyclical gives virtually no support to its novel concept. Why are there two meanings and not more than two or less than two? What makes them inseparable? Such fundamental questions are left unanswered. A strained comparison between contraception and marital rape represents Humanae Vitae's only attempt to elucidate this new formula. Nor is it going out on a limb to say that virtually no one, whether defender of Humanae Vitae or dissident, has found this explanation convincing. We must recognize that this new formulation stands in sharp contrast to the justification offered by traditional Catholic theology. The substitution of the new concept "meaning" in place of the traditional language of "end" or "purpose" represents a radical restructuring. This transformation is like taking a house, moving it down the road and placing it onto an entirely new foundation. Philosophers may then debate whether it is the same house at all. The walls and the roof are the same, but can you call it the same house when it has a different foundation in a new location?How did the magisterium come to discard the natural law explanation of such a fundamental institution as marriage and replace it with a novel and untried philosophy? The answer, in a word, is "Personalism." Soon after its release, Cardinal Wojtyla (now Pope John Paul II) offered an extended testimony to the thoroughly personalistic nature of Humanae Vitae. Pope Paul himself confirmed that he relied on the new personalist philosophy in writing Humanae Vitae: "We willingly followed the personalistic conception that was characteristic of the Council's teaching on conjugal society, thus giving love - which produces that society and nourishes it - the preeminent position that rightly belongs to it in a subjective evaluation of marriage."Pope Paul VI thus confirmed the opposition between Humanae Vitae and the dogmatic pronouncements of Pope Pius XII, who only seventeen years before had said, "Now, the truth is that matrimony, as an institution of nature, in virtue of the Creator's will, has not as a primary and intimate end the personal perfection of the married couple but the procreation and upbringing of a new life. The other ends, inasmuch as they are intended by nature, are not equally primary, much less superior to the primary end, but are essentially subordinated to it." Pope Pius was insistent that this was not just his personal opinion but the received teaching that he was unable to alter or deny, "We Ourselves drew up a declaration on the order of those ends, pointing out what the very internal structure of the natural disposition reveals. We showed what has been handed down by Christian tradition, what the Supreme Pontiffs have repeatedly taught, and what was then in due measure promulgated by the Code of Canon Law" (n.b.: still very much in force in 1968).Rev. John R. Waiss of the Tilden Study Center succinctly expresses the difference between personalism and natural law: "In his encyclical Paul VI moved the Catholic Church away from the traditional natural law arguments that were based on an 'objective' teleology, i.e., one that emphasizes the causal link between sex and procreation or the natural law arguments by design. Humanae Vitae (and subsequent interpretations by John Paul II, especially his theology of the body) has taken Catholics and other people of good will in another direction. The encyclical develops the natural law in regard to the meaning of the marital union. It tries to get us to ask: what does the marital union say? What does contraception say? How does contraception affect what the marital union says? Humanae Vitae develops the natural law argument based on a 'subjective' teleology" (emphases in the original).It is apparent that Humanae Vitae acted as a springboard by which personalism could launch its new philosophy of marriage, displacing the traditional teaching. Since that time, it has replaced all the customary supports of the Church such as history, tradition, authority and hierarchy with an impenetrable philosophy of interpersonal relationships that has proven disastrous in practice. Mustn't we consider the following questions?How should we evaluate the phenomenological underpinnings of personalism as a sufficient basis for building a Church? Is it possible to reconcile personalist phenomenology with teleological natural law theory and practice? What is to become of 1960 years of prior history and tradition - are they to go down the Orwellian memory hole? What happens to doctrines like obedience that don't fit onto the procrustean bed of personalism? What shall we do with personalism when the next pope introduces his own brand of philosophy - "Catholic deconstructionism," for example? And what are we to make of previous magisterial judgments of the Church, such as this one by Leo XIII, when upon concurring with the testimony of a long line of predecessors, he concludes with the words of Innocent VI: "[St. Thomas Aquinas'] teaching above that of others, the canonical writings alone excepted, enjoys such a precision of language, an order of matters, a truth of conclusions, that those who hold to it are never found swerving from the path of truth, and he who dare assail it will always be suspected of error."9. Without Teleology there is no Natural LawOur final reason for the failure of Humanae Vitae is last in order, but first in importance: the denial of teleology. Teleology incorporates two principal aspects: design and purpose. Just as eyes are designed to see and fish are designed to swim, we have been designed by our creator for a purpose. Specifically, teleology means that our sexuality, the conjugal act itself, and the institution of marriage have all been designed by God to achieve a purpose, His purpose.The absence of teleology has affected Humanae Vitae on two levels. On a practical level, the absence of a "primary purpose of marriage" has been the most often noted element of Humanae Vitae's new approach to marriage. On a more fundamental level, the absence of teleology means that the encyclical can have no coherent approach to natural law.We have already seen examples in which the primary purpose of marriage was spelled out clearly in the past, but was excluded from Humanae Vitae. To summarize and conclude, here are the words of Pope Pius XII from his Allocution to the Italian Midwives in which he specifically rejects personalist language (i.e. "reciprocal gift and possession"), and then describes the "great law" of marriage:If nature had aimed exclusively, or at least in the first place, at a reciprocal gift and possession of the married couple in joy and delight, and if it had ordered that act only to make happy in the highest possible degree their personal experience, and not to stimulate them to the service of life, then the Creator would have adopted another plan in forming and constituting the natural act. Now, instead, all this is subordinated and ordered to that unique, great law of the 'generatio et educatio prolix,' namely the accomplishment of the primary end of matrimony as the origin and source of life.Those who proselytize on behalf of Humanae Vitae recoil from such natural law language due to a widespread belief that people cannot understand it. But the historical evidence all comes down on the other side. Here follows an example of the type and quality of teaching that was once presented to average Catholic laymen and women starting out on their marriages:Since Catholics maintain that the primary purpose of the generative faculties is reproduction, they have always prohibited the deliberate exercise of this drive outside of marriage. [Note how the same argument applies against fornication, adultery, sodomy, etc.]… Happiness and success in marriage can result only from the fulfillment of God's plan in establishing marriage. We want to know, therefore, what God intended when He created man "male and female," and blessed marriage as the union of "two in one flesh," saying, "increase and multiply" [Beginning Your Marriage, Cana Conference of Chicago, 1957].In simple marriage manuals once handed out to newlyweds we find a level of discourse that has virtually disappeared in the Church today. We see teleological natural law arguments presented in a way people could immediately grasp. And we must be struck by the success of this method compared to the methods of Humanae Vitae. At the beginning of this article we documented the precipitous decline in fertility rates among Catholics that started in the late 1960s. It is indisputable that the Church was extremely successful during the years that it believed and taught natural law. It is equally indisputable that the Church has failed in this important task during the years that it has abandoned this philosophy. Some say that this is only a coincidence, that one cannot claim post hoc, ergo propter hoc. But what possible reason could there be to stick with a methodology that has been such a failure, and what possible harm could there be in using the method that was so successful? Is it because we're so concerned about losing that last one to three percent? Or is it simply an unwillingness to examine ourselves humbly, to confess our mistakes, to admit defeat, and to retrace our steps?Now we can now see why the absence of teleology has crippled the philosophical coherence and integrity of the encyclical. We can understand the reason Budziszewski said, "Though the encyclical letter is magisterial in the sense of being lordly, it is not magisterial in the sense of teaching well. It seems to lack the sense, which any discussion of natural law requires, of what must be done to make the self-evident evident, to make the intuitive available to intuition, to make what is plain in itself plain to us." Back in 1968, and during the intervening years, many commentators expressed their appreciation for the absence of teleological arguments. They were certain that this medieval method and language was holding the Church back from making progress in the modern era. Most of all, they thought that this holdover from the pre-Reformation Church was limiting our ability to engage in ecumenical dialogue. From our vantage point of hindsight, we know that abandoning natural law did not bring about an ecumenical reunion, but it did cause a new schism. This result is not surprising to participants in the newly reinvigorated discussion of natural law, which includes such prominent philosophers as Alasdair MacIntyre, John Finnis, Germain Grisez, Robert George, Russell Hittinger, and Ralph McInerny. They have demonstrated that the only way we can engage in meaningful dialogue with other moral systems is through the instrumentality of teleology. The Rev. David K. Weber expressed this well in First Things:If we conclude that rival moral systems are closer to a serious and fruitful encounter, it is because these rival systems are becoming more teleological in a Thomistic sense…. While they may explicitly reject a teleologically fixed moral order, they must, in giving a public account of their moral philosophy, smuggle in such an order to render their philosophy intelligible. So, for example, no moral system can speak of moral progress unless it articulates the direction and goal of that progress.This revival of interest in natural law is often dated to the publication of Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue (1981). Gilbert Meilander, in describing the world as seen by MacIntyre, could just as easily be describing the Church after Humanae Vitae:What we had lost was a teleological understanding of human life. The moral duties and virtues that traditional morality commended made sense only if they were understood as depicting the means by which we could get from our present self-interested and sinful state to a quite different state: human nature in its flourishing condition, as it could be if its telos were realized…. Only if understood as the way from our present corrupted nature to our promised flourishing nature could these precepts make sense. Ripped from that setting, traditional precepts were bound to seem arbitrary and hard to defend - with the flavor of inexplicable taboos.Could there be a better description of society's failure to appreciate Humanae Vitae's condemnation of contraception, a precept "ripped from" its setting in Scripture, Tradition, the Magisterium and teleological natural law? Doesn't popular opinion view it precisely as an "inexplicable taboo"? The participants in this "school" of natural law are still far from reaching consensus, and there is disagreement about moral issues, contraception included. But since the main thesis of Alasdair MacIntyre's book was that the loss of teleology had made meaningful moral discourse impossible, the fact that there are important moral theologians who are able to talk to each other again is a sign of hope.Why then should the post-conciliar Church, as represented by Humanae Vitae, abandon its patrimony of teleological realism at the very time when the rest of the world is re-discovering its glories? (MacIntyre, for example, was previously a Marxist.) Should we not instead return like a Prodigal Son to the philosopher whom Pope Leo XIII described as "likened to the sun, for he warmed the whole earth with the fire of his holiness, and filled the whole earth with the splendor of his teaching"?Only when she returns to her "perennial philosophy," only when she reclaims the teleology that has stood the test of time, only when she abandons philosophical fads, only then will the Church once again speak with authority, with the conviction of Truth, with logic, precision and consistency, and with the ability to move the hearts of both the faithful and "all men of good will," as she desires to do.

Anger and Forgiveness

My anger at the Children of the sixties for ruining the World

I recently woke up and realized that I have allowed hate to feaster in my heart. Granted it sprang from a righteous hate of evil—but it became an unforgiving hate of unrepentant sinners. Men who deserve my pity and prayers, not my hate. Men whose hearts are hardened and whose ears are stopped up, who look upon evil calling it good, but when glimpsing good shrink away calling it evil.

I am a child of the post Christian world. I have felt the world's despair and have been sicken by it, my mind is corrupted by the spirit of this age, and my vision tainted by it. My parent's generation, possibly unwittingly, brought about the final battle against the Christian West and after after centuries of siege its great walls fell. Europe, which was the faith, forsook its strong foundations. Now many things of great beauty have been destroyed. However worse than the destruction of Christian art, thinking, and culture is the destruction of the Christian paradigm of man as an icon, an image and likeness of God.

Our age is in the grips of the sickeness unto death and still these wise fools continue along their path to destruction closing their eyes to all the misery their lies have caused. They say naively, “a little more power, a little more time, we must stay the course and we will be the saviors of mankind.” They continue on their path, with some defections by those who see the errors of their ways, they continue down the path of destruction their backs to the Light. They have lead many into errors, their errors abound, so that even those men of good will who's hearts repent have a difficult time returning to the fold. They cooperate with evil, destroying and negating the goodness of creation.

These men and women have sinned greatly against their children. However for the first time I realize that if I continued down the path of hate their sins have kindled in my heart I would soon end up like them. And so I resolve to pray for them, to forgive them, and to see in them the eclipsed icon of Christ.

The forgotten sacramental—community

It seems to me that in The Catholic Church, at least in much of the Roman Rite, we have forgotten one of the most important sacramentals; the one that goes hand and hand with the Sacrament which the Catechism of the Church describes as the source and summit of our Christian lives.

In the not too distant past I had the privledge to visit with a community of Ge'ez Rite Catholics. Now if you haven't heard of the Ge'ez rite don't feel too bad, I hadn't either until a friend told me about them. This rite, which dates back to the 4th century Ethiopia and has its roots in the Coptic Rite, has only one parish in the US. Their belief in God and in the Presence could be seen in every part of their two hour liturgy. It was quite beautiful, and unlike their Roman co-religionists they did not complain ever five minutes after the liturgy last longer than an hour. However, what struck me most was how welcoming these people were—AFTER the liturgy was over and all had had sufficient time for thanksgiving, we were greeted by numerous worshipers and their priest and deacon. Whats more despite the length of the liturgy, or maybe because of it, almost all those present at the liturgy proceeded directly to the parish hall to begin the fellowship and feasting that was common to the early Christians but has been forgotten by many in the Roman Rite.

We say that as a parish community we are the people of God. Yet it strikes me that in most parishes after a Mass has ended people immediately shift gears and no longer want anything to do with the people of God. Sure, there are coffee hours and small clicks that get together after Mass—some talking in loud voices in the Church before, after, and sometimes during the liturgy—most of these involving the elderly of the community. However for the majority Catholics, fifteen minutes after the kiss of peace and receiving the bread of heaven, they are beeping and yelling at their brothers and sisters in Christ, so that they can leave the church parking lot all the more rapidly.

All people Catholic or not, are children of God. Each person in their uniqueness is a mystery that in his own way reveals the goodness and glory of God and in a specially way
Catholics, after having received the bread from heaven, are icons of the divine. The community that we gather together to pray with in a special way is a gift from Christ that gives grace. Just as the family is the domestic Church, so the Church is a supernatural family. In a unique way we are bound to the people of God through baptism, and we reject God's gift of grace when we reject the fellowship and community of life that is essential to a parish community and that flows out of the communion we make in the Eucharist.

In a solemn way Christ broke bread and gave it to his disciples and in a similar way he gave the chalice of wine to them, and it is important to remember that this breaking of bread was the institution of a supernatural sacrifice consummated on Calvary. We must never confuse the sacrifice of the Mass with a community meal the way our separated brothers in Christ have. However while not confusing the sacrifice with the meal is their any reason why we as Catholic ought not celebrate both?? Both the sacrifice of the Mass followed by the feast of thanksgiving and community?

My frustration with Politics

Politics is an art, not a science. Sciences study the way things are in nature. Arts are meant to artificially recreate things in nature for the sake of the common good. Humans have made, through artifice, most of the structures of society in this world. The one exception being the family—which is both natural and fundamental to humanity. The family is the first society, the first government, the building block of society, and in fact it is the model for all other artificially created forms of governments. This is, of course, not to say, as Rousseau did, that governance is un-natural, no it is quite natural even if the structure it takes on are artificial.

Naturally speaking people are from the beginning in societies with hierarchical governing systems. A child is born and is immediately subject to its father and mother. The “government” which this child is subject to is responsible for providing for the good of the child: his sustenance, his education, etc. In the ideal family the father plays the role of “king” of the family, not tyrant, providing for, raising, and correcting his children. Fathers serve as the face of the family, as the primary bread winner for a family with small children, as the chief disciplinarian for the family, etc. However they are most unique from their wives in their primary purpose, defense. They are charged with the defense of their wives and children much in the same way that a mid-evil warlord or king might be charged with the defense of the realm.

A mother, though in some ways subject to the “king” (her husband), especially while nursing and raising the small children, is in reality her husband's partner, consort, and chief adviser who aids in raising, nurturing, and governing the “populi,” the children. In this way a wife is like an aristocrat. Ideally wives serve the role of the aristocracy, providing counsel to the government and yet accepting decisions that are contrary to her counsel so long as they are not intrinsically immoral or evil. In the ageless tradition of true aristocracy, as opposed to oligarchy, a wife and mother provides the voice of morality for the family when the monarch, i.e. the father, falters, as we all occasionally do. Of course in this model the children are like the people, often driven by passions, often impulsive, and often in need of guidance and assistance. Children are born a tabula rasa, a blank slate, which must be educated and nurtured into a mature adult. Of course it is less the case that children are like the people, wives live the aristocracy, and husbands like monarchs than that “the people” are like children, aristocrats are like wives, and kings are like fathers, since the family is prior to the state.

This view of the family and politics is not my own, but rather, is described in detail by Aristotle and Aquinas. Moreover the ideal family is described in the epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians where he admonishes wives to be submissive to their husbands (Ep 5:23-24). However this charge cannot be understood without the verse that follows immediately on its heals, “husbands love your wives.” Husbands are the head of the family as Christ is the head of the Church, and therefor authority and leadership requires service and self sacrifice. Love is the key to this description of the ideal family, because without love this becomes the description of what some people claim it is, a chauvinistic tyranny. However with love authority is not abused, or lorded over others, but rather it is used for the benefit of the individual and the whole. This of course has obvious implications for how just governments should be ordered whether monarchies, aristocracies, or polities. Furthermore St. Paul admonishes children to obey their parents (Ep 6:1-2), invoking the fourth commandment of Moses, “honor your mother and father.” This of course means that in the case of a just government the people ought to honor their government and obey it.

The ideal government, the building block of all societies, the family, is thusly ordered toward creating life through children, promoting goodness through discipline, promoting truth through leaning, and promoting beauty through love. In this way the family participates in the transcendentals—in the familial relationship of the triune God-head. This participation is most perfectly seen in the Holy family of Nazareth. This is also how larger societies ought to be ordered, and here is the purpose of politics to help create these larger societies modeled after God's perfect model.

My frustration with modern day politics is thus twofold. First so-called “political science,” forgets that politics is an art, choosing to observe politics as it is rather than teach how it ought to be. For it is the duty of the masters of an art to teach his students how to do the art well, not how to observe the art being done haphazardly. More fundamental however is the fact that, as a result of politics, the art, forgetting itself politics has cast off any pretense of following the natural model. It has disconnected itself from the transcendentals and thus has disconnected itself from God. Modern politics is not longer about truth, but about propaganda, no longer about goodness but about power, no longer about beauty but about efficiency, and most disturbingly it is no longer about bringing things into existence, but rather about maintaining the tired old things that are already in existence. This is most obviously seen in the undermining of the family that has gone on over the past decade and a half.

This problem is not unique to right or left, liberal or conservative, but seems to be almost universal in society and until it is corrected I fear for the existence of our nation. For if we turn away our face from God we are blind, if he turns away his face from us we are as nothing.

Love

Love is:
not a feeling,
not an emotion,
not physical pleasure.
Love is none of these things because these things are fleeting and love is eternal
Love does not decay or diminish
Love is a stange cordal of unity and plurality
Love makes many one and gives one the power of many
Love can be given to one or to a thousand and yet remain undivided
Love is the contridiction to the rule for it allows one and one to equal one and three
Love is a thousand unseen kindnesses
Love is a rose on the day of you 123rd day anniversary
Love is the agony you feel when your beloved is in pain
Love is accepting pain and hardship for the good of your beloved
Love is the pain of birth and the joy of new life
Love is the first squeez from your tiny newborn's hand
Love is a long night spent by your sick little one's bedside
Love is the hard years of work spent to nurture and raise your child
with no assurance of reward!
Love is not easy but it is in the end the greatest treasure in the world—the only treasure we can earn in this life and take to the next

LIFE: MAN IN SEARCH OF HIS HUMANITY

“When I was a child I spoke as a child...” As children we have not a care in the world. We just are, we trust those who care for us, no matter whether they smother us with love or forget that we are there. We are happy, at least at first, playing, with toys if present, even with plain old dirt and water. We dream, engaging the world with our imagination and immersing ourselves in hope as we would a down comforter on a cold winter day. Essentially we are happy with just being, we wonder at the marvelous things around us acknowledging their innate intelligibility we ask why?, what?, where?, and how?. For children everything is wondrous and the only thing to fear is the monster under your bed or in the closet, but even this is not of much concern to you because you rest assured in the faith that your mommy and daddy will save you if the monster rears its ugly head.

“But when I became a man I put aside childish things...” And then every thing changes, you put aside your childish fears of evil lurking in the corner and you begin to search in earnest for yourself; and in doing so you begin to see the failures and sins of others. You doubt. The more sin abounds the more the boy in pursuit of manhood doubts, the more he looses the ability to trust. While at the same time in his search for himself the he digs inwardly the more he realizes his own lack of being. True, he is there, standing there, thinking about himself thinking, but this is a illusion, you can't have true being unless you have true purpose. Finally in his search for himself he finds out that at his core he IS NOT. This is maturity, this is what all men must arrive at if they are to truly become men, this is the crisis. We see, if only for a minute, that the world that most people pretend to live in is a fantasy, a machine concocted in the mind of some overly rationalist men who preferred to live in a predictable, i.e. controllable, illusion rather than in an unpredictable reality. Our world of doing, and systems, is for an instant unmasked as sand, a poor foundation for building an eternal self, and we are faced with the decision.

We find ourselves empty, subsistent, lacking substance, and we are face with Kierkegaard's existential decision, do we despair or do we move from despair in search of the purpose and meaning for our lives open to the One who can fill our emptiness? Pain and death, replace in the adult, the monster hiding under the child's bed. If we choose to continue in despair, we either lie to ourselves assuring ourselves that we are not in despair, that death is the limit, the end, and so we must make meaning for our meaningless lives, most often embracing the hedonistic mantra “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die,” or we acknowledge our despair and continue in ever greater horror of death. This is where it seems that the majority of our contemporaries reside, either denying that this existential anxiety exists, or acknowledging it and becoming consumed by it, i.e. embracing nihilism. In the poetry of John Paul II we see quite clearly this anxiety, which is truly good and useful if we choose not to continue in despair. For despair is a rejection of the Good in this world, at one or many levels it is a rejection of the goodness of existence and a refusal to engage the world in the way proper to man.

Despair is sin, it is a sickness that leads unto eternal death. But this despair is not necessarily a bad thing—despair is the natural response of man, separated from the font of life. In man despair causes an existential anxiety, i.e. fear, and in fear is the beginning of wisdom. Death is the limit, the horizon, for man. It is the the limit of life as we know it and thus it terrorizes man. Death means the end of this semi-subsistent state, like the top container of an hour glass, our being slowly pours out as we approach death. In response to the numberedness of our days man can give up on life, he can pretend that annihilation doesn't bother him, or he can look to the one whose days are numberless. And looking to He who IS that he IS, in trust and love, we can in a moment of his grace engage the eternal consciousness.

Jesus said, “if you wish to enter the Kingdom of heaven you must BEcome like one of these little ones.” In the end it seems that man in search of his humanity stops being a child to find himself and in finding himself starts being a child once more. Man is terrifies of death, and of pain, and maybe he should be, since these are not very nice things for an animal. But man's days as an animal are numbered and unless he wishes to inherit the destiny of the animals he must start to act like a man. Embracing the infinite, embracing his own limit and trusting that the Limitless One will carry him beyond it, man has no reason to fear death, or even pain. Man's reward is in heaven and no on earth, and thus death is impotent. “O death where is your sting?” In the end it turns out that fear of death and pain are immature, whereas fear of evil lurking in the corner are, though childish, are much more well-founded.

Cardinal Meisner Quo Vadis?

Cardinal Joachim Meisner, a German cardinal on Saturday said he regretted comparing abortion to the genocides carried out by Hitler and Stalin, which sparked a public outcry here, and claimed to have been misunderstood.

Aside from the immediate politically correct emotional response I ask what is the difference between the death camps, masacares, holocausts, and the gulags of the early 20th century and abortion. We, modern society, have taken a group of human beings and dehumanized them. An honest scientist will tell you that the fetus is not part of the mother, having a unique genetic code, and so it must a being a creature of its own right. What kind of being, you ask, well it has a unique intact human genetic code just like all other humans have. In fact no creature that is not a human has a human genetic code, and since DNA is the code of life, a fetus must be a human life, a human being. And so we are stuck with the fact that human beings are being carted off like things to horrid dark places where they are injected with poison, torn limb from limb, cut to pieces, and finally burned as biological waste.

It is true that the government is not mandating that these children be killed as Hilter mandated that the Jews, Poles, Gypsies, and Handicaps be killed. Sure everyone gasps in shock over government imposed killings like Chinese forced abortions, or the mass murders those of Stalin, or Hitler, however, I argue that what is happening today is even more evil and insiduous. Its worse than one mad man and a bunch of thugs murdering 9,000,000 people over six years. Today the government does not mandate murder, it simply promotes it, it rationalizes it, and in doing so it makes murders out of a whole people. In its propaganda, united with the propaganda of big businesses like Planned Parenthood and the Contraceptive/Abortificant Drug companies, who make a fortune off of abortion and contraception, it convinces the family members of the "targeted" groups to kill these humans rather than killing them by force. It is as if Hitler convinced Jews to wipe out their own race by convincing them to kill their own Children. And it is not just the unborn, governments and Capitalist mass-market culture are convincing families the world over to kill their wives, husbands, parents, aunts, and uncles because of something called "quality of life." Germans in Wiemar Germany also cared about quality of like, struck hard by World War I and the Depression they wanted to insure their quality of life, their material happiness, they did this as we are doing today by deporting and eventually killing off vast sections of their populace that were less than human, who didn't have a good quality of life, and who were a drain on the social order. The only difference is the German people could at least claim ignorance, since the vast majority of them at least did not have a clear picture of what is happening. We KNOW, we are complicit with this evil, and that is why this evil known as abortion and euthanasia, which is really just murder, plain and simple, is not just the same its worse than the evils of Hitler and Stalin and all the rest put together.

I do however fault the Cardinal, a Christian ought to be a source of contradiction, he ought to make people feel uncomfortable, and challenge them to accept the truth and to live by it, even when its hard. The Cardinal did all this, but then when he was about to be crucified for it he got down off of that cross. I hope the Cardinal contemplates what it would have meant if Jesus got off the Cross, and next time considers the famous question Quo Vadis?

The gift of life and suffering

Fair? Quality of life? What do these things mean? Chatting with some acquaintances the other day we came upon the sad story of a man, with three young children, who is in the last stages of a battle with brain cancer. This young man, and father, was always a vibrant fellow, always upbeat, always cheerful and loving, a faithful husband, father, and disciple of Christ Jesus. Now as he prepares for his death he can hardly speak, he is always sleeping, and he doesn't care to “entertain” visitors. My friends were saying how unfair it is that such a young energetic guy, with a wife and three young kids, had gotten such an bad deal. How unfair it was, that in his last days he had such a poor quality of life.And I thought to myself what do they mean? True, it is not a good thing that this man is dying—but it does happen eventually to the best of us. And it is a tragedy that he is leaving behind his wife and three children. But is there really any room for complaint? This man has live a good life for thirty or so years on the earth. He has been a good son, friend, husband, and father. From what I can tell, in talking with this man I have never gotten a complaint out of him, this man has no complaints and only regrets leaving his wife alone to raise their three children. We are all radically subsistent beings, none of us have a leg to stand on with out creation, without the constant emanation of existence from our creator. As Job says in Sacred scripture, I came naked from my mothers womb and naked I shall return. We have nothing that is our own—all that we have is a gift, which we did not create. Quoting Job again: if I have accepted good things from God should I not also accept evil. God does not give us evil things, just as a father does not give his son a snake when he asks for a loaf of bread. However, he does allow for the existence of evil, or rather more precisely for it not to exist, since evil is an absence of goodness, because without allowing for evil to “exist” nothing could exist except for God who is the only truly good thing in existence. But God's allowance for the existence of evil is such that evil can exist in the particular creature while still allowing for the overall goodness of creation. Thus even when, first the angel Lucifer and then, man increased the evil in creation by committing original sin and sentencing himself to suffering, death, and damnation, creation was still as a whole still good and still redeemable. The physical and moral evils in this world are a result of this original sin that will plague us till the end of the world, but where evil abounds grace abounds the fuller. All that we have and all that we shall receive is a gift from God for which we should be thankful—and if in the fullness of time God chose to take from us his breath of life, depriving us of existence, who are we to complain. Rather we ought at least to be thankful for what time he has given us. However, while our material bodies corrupt and return to the dust from which they came God so love mankind, go so love the world, of man, that in the fullness of time he sent his only begotten son that we might not perish but have eternal life. What my acquaintances could not grasp was that all of life is a gift—a gift which God has given us for a time in this life where we must suffer the effects of our own sins, and a gift which he has promised us even unto the end of the world for, ages unending, in the life to come.Yesterday as I visited with some people in the hospital I got many different responses to their suffering and illness. Some felt self-pity, others sorrow, others despair, and still others hope of going home, but one lady stood out as an example of how a Christian ought to react to suffering, illness, and even death. This woman had been sick for a while and did not expect to go home any time soon, and yet she was cheerful and happy, and she made those around her cheerful and happy. She had a hope which was not for any earthly peace but for the arms of her savior. Though in pain, though suffering, this woman approached life as it is, as a gift, and she gave thanksgiving for all the blessings she has received. Fairness or quality of life was not a part of the equation, for all that mattered was love, the true love of her savior. If more people embraced this philosophy of life, if more people embraced the love and hope that is the Christian faith, then there would be considerably more happy people in this world, despite, or rather because of their, infirmities, sufferings, and joys. A ll life is precious, be thankful for what is given you and adore He who gave it, this is the secret of true happiness.

posted by A Radically Subsistent Being at 10:43 AM

The Church

I spent the last three days in a small chapel on the New England seashore. The chapel wasn't much to glance at, but the people who built and worshiped at the chapel were fiercely proud, and defensive, of it. And although the chapel was significantly less beautiful, objectively speaking, than even the most simple of Gothic or roman style chapels of the so-called dark and middle ages it possessed a great beauty. Beauty that was not a material participation of the transcendental property beauty, but rather a spiritual participation in beauty—that is love. Within the little chapel through the whole night the people of God sat and prayed with Christ, truly present in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. These were the few the proud the elite of the Roman Catholic faithful. These were the people who truly believed the faith and lived it to the fullest.As the scandal in the Church continues, and I am not speaking of the “sex scandal” (see previous entry), the Church will in the words of Cardinal Ratzinger grow smaller, but at the same time she will become more fiercely Catholic. We will become more committed and devoted to the good news, and in doing so we will become stronger. Many people remember fondly the glory days of the 1950s and 40s, a period of affluence when the Church seemed to be coming into its own in this country and globally, but as the saying goes, the good old days were never really that good. The problems that are fully materializing today are the result of errors and sins and the works of the enemy that goes back millennia to original sins of Adam and Eve, but in particular goes back to the errors of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The fifties had the appearance of the faith without the real assent of faith that John Henry Cardinal Newman believed was essential to conversion of the heart. Thus in a way our current circumstances work more to our favor, since now the enemy is no longer camouflaged within our ranks but has become exposed. We should not loose faith, though our enemy is a cunning adversary, it has been promised from on high that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church just as they did not prevail against her head, Jesus Christ. While standing outside of that chapel keeping all night vigil with the Blessed Sacrament I realized that this chapel was symbolic of the Church. It was both small and diminished in size, but within it contained all that was need to attain eternal glory.
posted by A Radically Subsistent Being at 10:45 AM 0 comments

The gift of life and suffering
Fair? Quality of life? What do these things mean? Chatting with some acquaintances the other day we came upon the sad story of a man, with three young children, who is in the last stages of a battle with brain cancer. This young man, and father, was always a vibrant fellow, always upbeat, always cheerful and loving, a faithful husband, father, and disciple of Christ Jesus. Now as he prepares for his death he can hardly speak, he is always sleeping, and he doesn't care to “entertain” visitors. My friends were saying how unfair it is that such a young energetic guy, with a wife and three young kids, had gotten such an bad deal. How unfair it was, that in his last days he had such a poor quality of life.And I thought to myself what do they mean? True, it is not a good thing that this man is dying—but it does happen eventually to the best of us. And it is a tragedy that he is leaving behind his wife and three children. But is there really any room for complaint? This man has live a good life for thirty or so years on the earth. He has been a good son, friend, husband, and father. From what I can tell, in talking with this man I have never gotten a complaint out of him, this man has no complaints and only regrets leaving his wife alone to raise their three children. We are all radically subsistent beings, none of us have a leg to stand on with out creation, without the constant emanation of existence from our creator. As Job says in Sacred scripture, I came naked from my mothers womb and naked I shall return. We have nothing that is our own—all that we have is a gift, which we did not create. Quoting Job again: if I have accepted good things from God should I not also accept evil. God does not give us evil things, just as a father does not give his son a snake when he asks for a loaf of bread. However, he does allow for the existence of evil, or rather more precisely for it not to exist, since evil is an absence of goodness, because without allowing for evil to “exist” nothing could exist except for God who is the only truly good thing in existence. But God's allowance for the existence of evil is such that evil can exist in the particular creature while still allowing for the overall goodness of creation. Thus even when, first the angel Lucifer and then, man increased the evil in creation by committing original sin and sentencing himself to suffering, death, and damnation, creation was still as a whole still good and still redeemable. The physical and moral evils in this world are a result of this original sin that will plague us till the end of the world, but where evil abounds grace abounds the fuller. All that we have and all that we shall receive is a gift from God for which we should be thankful—and if in the fullness of time God chose to take from us his breath of life, depriving us of existence, who are we to complain. Rather we ought at least to be thankful for what time he has given us. However, while our material bodies corrupt and return to the dust from which they came God so love mankind, go so love the world, of man, that in the fullness of time he sent his only begotten son that we might not perish but have eternal life. What my acquaintances could not grasp was that all of life is a gift—a gift which God has given us for a time in this life where we must suffer the effects of our own sins, and a gift which he has promised us even unto the end of the world for, ages unending, in the life to come.Yesterday as I visited with some people in the hospital I got many different responses to their suffering and illness. Some felt self-pity, others sorrow, others despair, and still others hope of going home, but one lady stood out as an example of how a Christian ought to react to suffering, illness, and even death. This woman had been sick for a while and did not expect to go home any time soon, and yet she was cheerful and happy, and she made those around her cheerful and happy. She had a hope which was not for any earthly peace but for the arms of her savior. Though in pain, though suffering, this woman approached life as it is, as a gift, and she gave thanksgiving for all the blessings she has received. Fairness or quality of life was not a part of the equation, for all that mattered was love, the true love of her savior. If more people embraced this philosophy of life, if more people embraced the love and hope that is the Christian faith, then there would be considerably more happy people in this world, despite, or rather because of their, infirmities, sufferings, and joys. A ll life is precious, be thankful for what is given you and adore He who gave it, this is the secret of true happiness.