Cahiers Péguy

We've Moved

2010-09-13T21:06:00.000-05:00

2010-09-13T10:49:00.000-05:00

Teens and Achievement: let's look again

2010-09-11T08:30:00.002-05:00

...But maybe it just takes a wider, freer eye to recognize something new to express instead of just rolling into our own small circles.

While pondering the above challenge, which appeared here on Wednesday, I noticed that a few of my friends had posted an article on Facebook that had been published on Psychology Today, titled A Nation of Wimps, by By Hara Estroff Marano, who claims that:

But taking all the discomfort, disappointment and even the play out of development, especially while increasing pressure for success, turns out to be misguided by just about 180 degrees. With few challenges all their own, kids are unable to forge their creative adaptations to the normal vicissitudes of life. That not only makes them risk-averse, it makes them psychologically fragile, riddled with anxiety. In the process they're robbed of identity, meaning and a sense of accomplishment, to say nothing of a shot at real happiness. Forget, too, about perseverance, not simply a moral virtue but a necessary life skill. These turn out to be the spreading psychic fault lines of 21st-century youth. Whether we want to or not, we're on our way to creating a nation of wimps.

It is interesting to note that the article begins with the word "Maybe" but as the author gathers rhetorical speed, all caution is abandoned for the tone of grave and important certainty with which the above-quoted judgment is delivered. The article asserts that surveys of college counseling centers (conducted since 1988) are where the effects of over-protective parenting are first seen. We will have to accept that even though there is no study or survey cited (only isolated, anecdotal evidence is offered) to support the author's claim that the increase of psychological problems among students is linked to a shift in the way American citizens parent (and no scientific proof offered that such a shift has occurred), that there was some kind of sound scientific method used in this survey to determine that college students' mental problems are both more frequent and more severe (as described in the article):

By all accounts, psychological distress is rampant on college campuses. It takes a variety of forms, including anxiety and depression—which are increasingly regarded as two faces of the same coin—binge drinking and substance abuse, self-mutilation and other forms of disconnection. The mental state of students is now so precarious for so many that, says Steven Hyman, provost of Harvard University and former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, "it is interfering with the core mission of the university."

The author of the article suspects that parenting styles have changed since the early 1980's; this suspicion is driven less by empirical evidence and more by the nature of the author's professional training in psychology, which posits that all psychological disturbances are caused by some combination of poor "nature" and/or poor "nurture," where parenting has a greater role in determining outcomes. The greatest problem with the claims made in the article, though, is that it offers no proof that parents are behaving any differently in the 21st Century than they did in the middle of the 20th Century. The assumption that an increase in psychological disturbances (or conversely, an increase in psychological wellness) is always caused by changes in parenting styles has such cultural currency today that an article such as this one can be published and reviewed without the reviewer or editors finding anything amiss.

The other assumption that the author makes in the article is that the purported increase in college student psychopathology has something to do with a higher emphasis placed on achievement. But how was this claim tested? What standards of measurement were used? Again, we don't know. In fact, there have always been stressors that put human beings at risk for psychological disorders; why would the drive to achieve be any more severe or damaging that the exigency to survive?

If we can make the claim that more college students are struggling with psychological issues and stress (again, it's important to remain cautious, since this article is already an unreliable source for its central thesis), then perhaps applying a "wider, freer eye" to this problem could yield a different judgment. First, we might ask what has actually changed since 1988? Across the board, the percentage of U.S. citizens who report that they belong to any form of of religion has dropped significantly since the 1990 census. While other trends and shifts in demographics have been measured by various studies, as well as by the census, the particular shift among adults who consider themselves Christians (which dropped from 86% in 1990 to 76% in 2008) is indeed a factor that would impact students' mental health (the combined change for all other religions practiced in the United States was only 0.5%, which would not make any significant impression on the overall state of college student psychological coping).

That a change in religious practices effects psychosocial competence has been studied scientifically and documented in numerous studies. In just one of those studies, researchers found that "Intrinsic religiously motivated members, in general, manifested more favorable competence attributes than less intrinsically motivated members" ("Religious Participation, Religious Motivation and Individual Psychosocial Competence," Kenneth E. Pargament, et al, published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion).

If a significant shift in parenting styles has occurred in the United States since the early 1980's, then this shift has yet to be studied and documented. If there has indeed been an increased emphasis on achievement in our culture, this incidence would need somehow to be quantified and measured before it could be accepted as fact.

Yet what has been scientifically observed and measured already offers an avenue whereby a more interesting and complete judgment might be made about any increase in college student psychosocial disorders. Why is this important and evident fact ignored?

Parents, and their attempts to raise their children in a world fraught with the particular dangers the 21st Century offers, will continue to bear the brunt of the blame for any undesirable behaviors that appear in their children, as long as we, as a culture, continue to ignore the impact of a worldview that shuts out all possibility of an answer to any of the most basic questions that people ask (particularly when they reach the developmental stage of the college student): Why are we here? What use are we? Why are we given this life and not some other life? etc. This worldview has become increasingly dominant as U.S. citizens abandon religious practice.

Islamophobia and Mother Teresa - Communion and Liberation

2010-09-10T18:07:00.000-05:00

Islamophobia and Mother Teresa

The proposed construction of an Islamic center and mosque at Ground Zero has resulted in the outrage of many Americans and the recent public discussion about "Islamophobia" in America. These events provoke us to affirm the following:

1. We notice a growing tendency to manipulate circumstances to serve as a pretext to create a public furor that demands people make a choice between one of two pre -packaged, ideological positions. We refuse to engage in a debate about whether or not to build a mosque at Ground Zero. The reality of Islam in America brings up questions that go much deeper than that of the construction of one mosque. Indeed, one critical and open question is how contemporary American culture comes to grips with the human person's religious sense.

2. Many of those among the cultural elite, as well as many who hold the levers of power in our nation, have abandoned the religious tradition that informed the lives of the vast majority of their ancestors: Christianity. They have reduced it to a moral code or a vague myth, linked to a man dead for more than 2,000 years. Instead, they have embraced a "scientific" outlook on human life. But science provides no answer to those questions that continuously gnaw at the human heart, such as the problem of justice, the meaning of human life, or the problems of suffering and evil. In fact, science tends to stifle them. Hence, contemporary American culture finds itself weak and tremendously uncertain about any response to universal human inquiries and longings.

3. Just over two weeks ago, we marked the 100th anniversary of Mother Teresa of Calcutta's birth. One who looks at her sees a resplendent human person, overflowing with love for everyone, especially strangers of different religions. Her humanity touched all: religious and atheist; Muslim and Hindu; rich and poor. Mother Teresa's life invites anyone who seeks truth to open his or her heart and mind and take a fresh look at Christianity.

4. For serious Christians, the challenge of Islam, the large-scale abandonment of Christianity, the emptiness of the dominant culture, and the witness of Mother Teresa signal the urgent need for conversion. Pope Benedict XVI recently said that "conversion...is not a mere moral decision that rectifies our conduct in life, but rather a choice of faith that wholly involves us in close communion with Jesus as a real and living Person." The Pope brings us face to face with the defining difference between Christianity and Islam: one religion bases its response to the human person's religious sense upon a message delivered 1,400 years ago, while the other offers the experience of a Man who died but is alive and present with us today. As Fr. Juliàn Carròn, President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, recently affirmed: Jesus' message and even all the miracles He performed were not enough to overcome the sadness of His disciples on the road to Emmaus --only His risen presence could ignite their hearts once again.

5. We are not Islamophobic, nor do we fear our post-modern world. On the contrary, we invite all to look at Mother Teresa and at the Man to whom she gave her life. In His Person, present with us today, all can find the Truth that alone will deliver the freedom America promises.

Communion and Liberation

September 11, 2010

Notes

Benedict XVI, General Audience, Paul VI Audience Hall, Wednesday, February 17, 2010 (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20100217_en.html)

cfr. Luke 24: 13-35

What's the Topic Today?

2010-09-08T17:05:00.000-05:00

Recently, we had some friends over for dinner and as we are like-minded and obsessed with the same topics, we readily got onto those. Later, I heard from one person who was not pleased with the usual Catholic conservative cant. He found it was not an environment that would have made sense to a person who was not part of the in-crowd.

Now I'm not interested in dictating what is discussed at a party (in fact, it reminds me of the contrast between the political wrangling at the dinner table in Joyce's "The Dead" and the real issue for Gabriel), and while I felt defensive about our issues, I recall a similar experience during the time of the uproar over Obama being invited to speak at the Notre Dame commencement. I was out to dinner with a crowd that was not Catholic and who could not comprehend the rancor. In fact, a year later, no one knew or cared who the next year's commencement speaker at Notre Dame was.

I was involved with Catholic electronic communications from before the time the internet was open, when we exchanged files and discussion over a BBS network via phone lines (1987-). We typed and shared encyclicals and papal addresses before there was a vatican.va. It was exciting, and I love the fact that everyone now waits for that next encyclical to get posted. Before, people rarely talked about encyclicals. If you wandered into a Catholic bookstore, you might pick one up, as one selection among hundreds of choices. There is much to be said about all this instant and important information. And I respect causes and those who dedicate their lives to them. Those of us who want to judge events can't avoid writing about health care reform, stem-cell research, a mega-mosque at Grand Zero. If anything, we need more nuance, not less. Still, it can seem truncated, these viral Catholic threads that spiral through cyberspace, which are incomprehensible to most people because they lack the context that would allow them to be heard.

A few weeks ago, I read about a bishop of Lyons, France who went to the site of the destruction of gypsy camps, to advocate for his people. It was a great story and of course some told it. I think of Suzanne's striking piece about the sports events at the Meeting, which included the rigor of "a bicycle race that begins in Rimini and includes a pass through the Republic of San Marino, a triathlon (as well as a mini triathlon for kids), basketball and fencing (and even rugby) tournaments, and a 6 Km race", which shows a passion for life that anyone can appreciate.

I hope not to discourage anyone, or myself, from engaging in the public square. But maybe it just takes a wider, freer eye to recognize something new to express instead of just rolling into our own small circles.

A Popular Last Supper

2010-09-06T09:05:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, I visited the Andy Warhol exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, "The Last Decade". One of the pieces that intrigued me most was "The Last Supper" (the Big "C"). Warhol's irony always leaves space for a dialogue, and his late obsession with religious images invites a longer horizon than his glitzy commercial pop images. The themes in this picture are so familiar, those bad boys, former Hell's Angels, now converted, clinging to the emblems of their former lives. Salvation is not out of reach: $6.99! I was struck by a section of the painting which seems to underlie the kitschy presentation of Christ, a second image of the Savior, with the details of the eye crossed in death as for a cartoon figure but sketched as a dagger, and the circle at the gather of his cloak recalls a simplified sacred heart with emanating rays. There is a dignity to this sketch resurrected from crude depictions of popular piety.

Glenn Beck to revive American Christianity?

2010-09-06T08:51:00.003-05:00

HERE is a blog post a from a few days ago by a Baptist minister, Dr. Russell Moore. Dr. Moore articulates well the problem that surrounds Glenn Beck. Much of the following of Beck has me uncomfortable, not because Beck is a Mormon, but because the way the following manifests itself reflects poorly on American Christianity. Dr. Moore says this as well. As someone who, just a few years ago, might have been swept up by Beck's movement, I encourage you to read Dr. Moore's whole post. Here are a few excerpts:

"It’s taken us a long time to get here, in this plummet from Francis Schaeffer to Glenn Beck. In order to be this gullible, American Christians have had to endure years of vacuous talk about undefined “revival” and “turning America back to God” that was less about anything uniquely Christian than about, at best, a generically theistic civil religion and, at worst, some partisan political movement."

"There is a liberation theology of the Left, and there is also a liberation theology of the Right, and both are at heart mammon worship. The liberation theology of the Left often wants a Barabbas, to fight off the oppressors as though our ultimate problem were the reign of Rome and not the reign of death. The liberation theology of the Right wants a golden calf, to represent religion and to remind us of all the economic security we had in Egypt. Both want a Caesar or a Pharaoh, not a Messiah."

"The answer to this scandal isn’t a retreat, as some would have it, to an allegedly apolitical isolation. Such attempts lead us right back here, in spades, to a hyper-political wasteland. If the churches are not forming consciences, consciences will be formed by the status quo, including whatever demagogues can yell the loudest or cry the hardest. The answer isn’t a narrowing sectarianism, retreating further and further into our enclaves. The answer includes local churches that preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, and disciple their congregations to know the difference between the kingdom of God and the latest political whim."

(Image: http://silentmajority09.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Glenn-Becks-Restoring-Honor-Attendance.jpg)

The Mystery of Stephen Hawking

2010-09-05T10:33:00.008-05:00

My daughter’s boyfriend sent me a link to the Stephen Hawking piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Why God Did Not Create the Universe.” Typical of me, I did not know about the article until it had gone viral.

What strikes me about the piece is not the title, which was probably written by a subaltern at the Journal’s copy desk. (In fact, the piece is an excerpt from a forthcoming book with the intriguingly ambiguous title The Grand Design.) Nor does the chilling message of the excerpt strike me particularly, as it seems to hinge on a single sentence: “As recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing.” This sentence raises a few questions—including how dead certain or merely suggestive these “advances” are, and where you can get laws without a Legislator like the One we encounter in Psalm 119.

Still, what strikes me, after several readings, is none of the above. What strikes me is Stephen Hawking’s face.

For as long as I have been an adult, or nearly 40 years, Stephen Hawking has been a cultural icon: a latter-day Einstein tragically confined to a wheelchair and a battery of electronic support systems because of a progressive neuromuscular disorder similar to ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease. Because he combines intellectual gymnastics with physical paralysis, and not because I have any wish to mock him, Hawking has always struck me as a disembodied brain in a chair. It takes only a short imaginative jump from this image to that of the Wizard of Oz, the disembodied head that terrorized Dorothy and company, until Toto pulled aside the curtain. Like the Great and Powerful Oz, Hawking has loomed over our culture, and when he speaks with a certain amount of electronic assistance, we feel obliged to listen. (Listen, tremble, but perhaps not judge carefully: I have never read a book by Hawking.)

Now comes this article with that face. It is the face of a man nine years older than I, a man who, since his birth in London under a V-2 barrage, has faced some terrifying challenges. But whatever his differences from me (does he have a daughter? does she have a boyfriend?), his face is a human one and that of a man who has made a career of confronting the Mystery.

The brief Journal piece begins with a snippet of Viking mythology, about two wolves who catch the sun and moon, thereby causing eclipses. The paragraph ends with amusement, to remind us that those silly old Norsemen did not have the benefit of our modern science: “After some time, people must have noticed that the eclipses ended regardless of whether they ran around banging on pots.”

But no matter how old or silly, they were just like you and me and Stephen Hawking—clutching our slippery cosmology while contemplating the Mystery with a human face.

James Madison and Religious Liberty in America

2010-09-03T15:07:00.010-05:00

Relative to men like Jefferson, Hamilton and Washington, our fourth president gets relatively little attention in schools and beyond. This was evinced when, just yesterday, a college student expressed to me that he had never heard of James Madison. I am currently wrapping up my summer research work, which centered on the persuasive method and thought of Madison. Having had Madison at the forefront of my thoughts for the past four months, I was more than shocked that someone anywhere in the United States had never heard of the Father of the Constitution. It’s understandable, though. Madison was short, sickly and incredibly soft-spoken. Those who admired him did so for his immense knowledge, practicality and ability to identify subtle nuances in complex issues facing republican government, which would be the topic of another (much longer) post. Sadly, the ability to identify nuance doesn't earn monuments.

One area of Madison’s life that should win him a particular amount of attention from Americans, especially men and women of faith, is the role he played in protecting religious liberty. Although the bulk of my work this summer did not focus directly on this aspect of Madison’s thought and work, I thought that the Cahiers Péguy readership might be particularly interested in seeing a bit about how Madison ingrained freedom of conscience in our culture and Constitution:

-Madison attended the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) which was known for its liberalism (in the more traditional sense) at the time. There, under the direction of John Witherspoon, Madison studied enlightenment thinkers who had an affection for, at least, tolerance of various religious positions.

-Though the details of exactly what he did are unclear, we know that Madison rose to the defense of what he called “persecuted Baptists” early in his career. Historians suspect that he was writing about a group of Baptist preachers in Virginia who were arrested for preaching without licenses. He did this although he was not particularly religious or influenced by revivalism. This experience, he wrote after age 80, gave him “very early and strong impressions in favor of liberty both Civil and Religious...”

-After the Virginia Declaration of Rights was drafted, Madison objected to the word “toleration” for the exercise of religion. He suggested that the word be struck from the draft, penned by George Mason. Ralph Ketcham writes: “The change was crucial, however, because it made liberty of conscience a substantive right, the inalienable privilege of all men equally, rather than a dispensation conferred as privilege by established authorities.” Many regard this to be Madison’s first important public act.

-Patrick Henry sponsored a bill in Virginia that would have required citizens to pay assessments in support of churches. Madison wrote the Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments. This 15-point document argued for religious freedom from the state and made arguments focused on the nature of mankind, the nature of government, the nature of religion and the best interest of religion. He was successful and not only defeated the bill, but also set the stage for the passage of the Bill for Religious Freedom in Virginia.

-Virginia, in large part due to Madison’s influence, ratified the Constitution and made recommendations for a bill or rights. Virginia’s recommendations included provisions for religious liberty.

-In drafting the Bill of Rights, Madison fought for clear and unequivocal protections of conscience. Here is a quote from the article linked to below: "Madison's original draft was among the most ambitious: ‘the civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship...nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed....’ Though somewhat less expansive in its protections, the final version--’Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof’ --clearly bears the Madison stamp.”

Here is a LINK to an article that expounds upon most of what I said above... an article I wish I found a few months earlier than this morning because it pulls everything together very well. By posting this, I’m not necessarily endorsing the author’s conclusion at the end.

This Week in Ilsussidiario.net

2010-09-01T09:22:00.000-05:00

English Spoken Here

http://www.ilsussidiario.net/News/English-Spoken-Here/

Arts, Entertainment & Media

Sharon Mollerus HITCHENS/ Hitch-22: The Last Revolution
Jonah Lynch FACEBOOK/ 1. Is technology really a neutral instrument?

Culture & Religion
Lorenzo Albacete   WHY ME?/ This is the real question put by Hitchins
Jean Louis Tauran (Int.)   CARD. TAURAN/ Interfaith dialogue presupposes a clear religious identity
Miguel Diaz (Int.)   COEXISTENCE/ Diaz, U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See: we all need bridges between diverse communities
Fiammetta Cappellini   HAITI/ Fiammetta: is the world still remembering our tragedy?
Giovanna Parravicini   ECUMENISM / Sharing a passion for Christ
Gerhard Ludwig Müller (Int.) RIMINI MEETING/ One cannot know without the heart: the words of Benedict XVI

Politics & Society
Mary McAleese RIMINI MEETING/ The Forces that Change History Are the Same That Change Man’s Heart

Science & Technology

Kimerer Lamothe (Int.) HEALTH/ What the Body Can Teach the Mind About Wellness

Hitch-22: The Last Revolution

2010-08-31T09:22:00.005-05:00

Christopher Hitchens, the famous author and journalist, lays out his life story in his recent bestseller Hitch-22. In many ways, he embodies the generation which came of age during the 1968 revolution, throwing over political and sexual conventions, and, over time, shedding their illusions about socialism and pacifism. His memoir leaves nothing for anyone else to embellish on, from his early sexual escapades, to his high profile fights with prominent thinkers, artists, and politicians of the day, to his political reversals. It offers a fascinating history and perspective on the last forty years of world events and the people who made them, recalling for baby-boomers the ride they have taken through the decades, through for most from an armchair.

Hitchens' father was a career military man and World War II veteran who had found his war years to be the best and most meaningful. His mother was free-spirited and pushed his education forward. Her tragic suicide while he was a young man was a bitter experience, particularly knowing he had missed phone calls that he might have intervened. Later he discovered the Jewish roots she had concealed and found more places from his past.

His years at Oxford's Balliol College he described as follows: “a training in logic chopping and Talmudic-style microexegesis [that] can come in handy in later life, as can a training in speaking with a bullhorn from an upturned milk crate outside a factory, and then later scrambling into a dinner jacket and addressing the Oxford Union debating society under the rules of parliamentary order.”

Hitchens traveled from place to place as a young revolutionary supporting the cause, from Greece to Cuba, Portugal to Poland, and his observations during these engagements would test his socialist leanings. On a field trip to Cuba for young revolutionaries, in answer to his question about whether free speech was allowed, he was told: of course, except in the case of the “Leader of the Revolution” himself. Hitchens replied to the effect that “if the most salient figure in the state and society was immune from critical comment, then all the rest was detail” and was amused to find himself labeled a “counter-revolutionary.”

He soon discovered that journalism was best-suited to his tendency to straddle both sides of the fence and his relish for argument. Hitchens realized he could not support the curbs on freedom that a socialist regime imposes for the supposed good of all. “Whatever I might argue, I was more profoundly attached to liberal concepts of freedom—freedom of speech and of the press, academic freedom, independent judgment and independent judges.” A leading figure in the Solidarity movement in Poland, Adam Michnik, told Hitchens: “The real struggle for us is for the citizen to cease to be the property of the state.”

9/11 was another turning point. “In truth, a whole new terrain of struggle had just opened up in front of me.” And this time it was personal. As the Pentagon burned, his wife couldn't get across town to pick up their daughter from school. While the multicultural left was enabling radical Islam, Hitchens recognized that “to repudiate war in [a] morally neutral way was to allow fascism a clear run.” As Hitchens challenged a Georgetown audience, would Mandela or Allende have recruited supporters to slaughter innocent bystanders to move their cause forward?

In Iraq, he saw allied forces greeted as “liberators”, and in a harrowing description he recalled the brutal chemical slaughter of the Kurds as a reminder of the unpredictable brutality of Saddam Hussein, even while deploring the war's excesses. Hitchens dubbed himself a “pro-government dissident” from the Left. After living through the revolutionary years of 1968, 1989 and 2001, he recalls Hannah Arendt’s observation of “the lost treasure of revolution” with their “convolutions and contradictions". He considers Islam the worst enemy and America the best hope.

As is well known, Hitchens bitterly opposes religious strictures and hypocrisy. Recently, he called Pope Benedict XVI that “elderly criminal” and said that he was sorry he wouldn’t see his death before his own. His sloppy accusation, from a cursory and not disinterested reading of the sexual abuse scandal, is only the latest of his regular invectives against the Church. He is currently one of the four best-known British atheists and has written an entire volume on Mother Teresa and her “fraudulent” work, along with another bestseller God Is Not Good, the title of which his friend Salman Rushdie critiqued as having one word too many. Hitchens was hired by the Vatican to critique Mother Teresa’s canonization proceedings, and he boasts he is "the only living person to have represented the Devil pro bono".

Hitchens became an American citizen in 2007. He has an unabashed admiration for the American ideals, after so many disillusions. He described a deep admiration at his first sight of the skyline of New York: “I knew that I was surveying a tremendous work of man” and he asks himself: “How is the United States at once the most conservative and commercial AND the most revolutionary society on Earth?”

His idealism has been tempered by his philosophy. He writes: "I suspect that the hardest thing for the idealist to surrender is the teleological" and recalls Oscar Wilde's quip that "A map of the world that did not show Utopia would not be worth consulting." He states that: "It is not that there are no certainties, it is that it is an absolute certainty that there are no certainties". He is not unaware of the contradiction between his asserting rights and wrongs and his denial that religion should give anyone such an assurance of truth, nor does that hinder him. He adds that he sees "the unbounded areas and fields of one's ignorance are now expanding in such a way, and at such a velocity, as to make the contemplation of them almost fantastically beautiful".

He shares with fellow atheist Richard Dawkins the acknowledgement of an incredible coincidence, the "sense of wonder at the sheer unlikelihood of having briefly `made it' on a planet where crude extinction has held such sway, and where the chance of being conceived, let alone safely delivered, is so infinitesimal." Again, it is personal, because he lived, while his mother had aborted twice, just before and just after him.

The coincidence of his memoir’s publication and his cancer diagnosis is especially poignant with the volume's reflections on death. The first page of his book quotes Leopold Bloom in Ulysses: “Read your own obituary notice; they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life.” Hitchens proactively discounts any potential deathbed conversion as untrustworthy and "pathetic" because he would be "half-demented". He is only at his best and truest, according to himself, when being in full possession of his powers.

Hitchens doesn’t squirm to confront his own logical conclusion: “The fact is that all attempts to imagine one’s own extinction are futile by definition.” For a man who has always been ready to brawl over the latest injustice, he adds: “I do not especially like the idea that one day I shall be tapped on the shoulder and informed, not that the party is over but that it is most assuredly going on—only henceforth in my absence.” Even after such so many and varied experiences, he complains: "How terrible it is that we have so many more desires than opportunities." He refuses any answer to this, a priori.

Reprinted from ilsussidiario.net

Where do you start?

2010-08-27T06:38:00.001-05:00

There is a very moving article by Fiammetta Cappellini from the Meeting at Rimini, "Is the world still remembering our tragedy?", who works for the AVSI aid organization in Haiti. I have been following her story at ilsussidiario.net since the earthquake hit. In each of her letters she gives insight into how to keep starting again in the face of every imaginable obstacle. What I learn from her is not to imagine that we can solve problems in any comprehensive way, because it doesn't belong to us to do this but to Another, and that presumption only paralyzes us. Instead, it's about taking steps and following the provocation. In this case, a teacher and some schoolchildren took a step which gave Haitian children living in tents a chance to continue their studies.

It is difficult to land here from Haiti to a world without cracks, to Western life, and to succeed in building a speech with iron logic and meticulous explanations that people expect. I got a bit troubled, I didn't feel up to it. I still have the impression of not being able to make people understand the most important thing: that Haitians have found hope, and trust again, and that the desire for great things that is hope in tomorrow, has taken force, and has returned to life. I thought I did not find the words to tell about the long road made of small steps which has carried us from the tragedy to a window on the future.

John Waters Reports on The Meeting

2010-08-26T19:05:00.000-05:00

The Irish Times: "Time to Revel in a Little Mystery"

"It is easy to be deceived by the content of the meeting, which on the whole appears to be a bumper accumulation of the things we deal with in our everyday culture. There are politics and science and art and music and literature and sport.

But the approach is different to conventional cultural approaches in that it opens everything out in the direction of what is unknowable. Everything that is touched upon is immediately seen to lead somewhere else, to become detached from the schemas our culture creates to accommodate knowledge that is reluctantly conceded as contingent or provisional or partial, but nonetheless claimed as a down-payment on omniscience."

- More -

This Week in Ilsussidiario.net

2010-08-25T07:50:00.000-05:00

English Spoken Here

http://www.ilsussidiario.net/News/English-Spoken-Here/

Culture & Religion
Lorenzo Albacete   U.S./ Religio-phobia in the country of religious freedom
David Kretzmer (Int.)   HUMAN RIGHTS/ Today there is a trend to over-legalize values
Giorgio Vittadini   At the Heart of Subsidiarity: Men Who Still Desire Great Things
Editorial Staff   RIMINI MEETING/ The Pope's Message: The "Big Things" to Which the Heart Longs Are in God
Roberto Fontolan   RIMINI MEETING/ Religious Freedom: An Irrepressible Need of the Human Heart
Editorial Staff RIMINI MEETING/ The Company of Don Giussani
Alberto Savorana RIMINI MEETING/ "That nature which pushes us to desire great things is the heart."

From the World

Wael Farouq EGYPT/ Meeting in Cairo

Politics & Society
John Waters IRELAND/ Mary McAleese: a true President for a true Ireland
Steven Meyer U.S. Nuclear Strategy: Old Wine, New Bottles?

The Church Defends the Gypsies

2010-08-22T08:09:00.000-05:00

France is having its own immigration crackdown, and for the past month President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for "security measures" in regard to the Roma people, or gypsies. Some fifty illegal camps have been dismantled.

Archbishop of Aix Christophe Dufour was present during one of the police raids. He gave this statement:

The caravans have been destroyed. I do not question the police who obey orders. But I ask for respect for persons and their dignity, under French law. Security discourses which may suggest that there are inferior populations are unacceptable. These people are Europeans and living here peacefully for the most part, some of them for many years.

The archbishop offered to meet with the authorities in an attempt to arbitrate (via @lepetitchose).

Today, in his weekly Angelus address, the Holy Father addressed this issue with the French-speaking pilgrims:

The liturgical texts of today repeat to us that all men are called to salvation. They contain a call to learn to accept legitimate human diversity, following Jesus who came to unite people of all nations and all languages. Dear parents, educate your children in universal brotherhood.

The Origin of a Cultural Initiative

2010-08-22T07:25:00.000-05:00

Fr. Giussani wrote a brief statement describing the origin of the Meeting, just months after the very first session, in 1980. What it is today was there from the beginning. An excerpt:

This is the ideal that unites: it is a response to the need to live that unites people, that creates society. Friendship: a company guided toward destiny, as I always defined it with the youngsters. The perception of a situation as the absence of the ideal, and therefore a commitment, so that it would exist, so that the presence of the ideal happens.

Therefore the event of a new initiative, the generation of an adult begins, the adult starts generating. They have created a place where one encounters a subject. The presence is this: a place. The generation of an adult, which makes present one's own life beyond oneself, it is a place where one encounters a subject. A subject, a person, a humanity, who has something to say; a humanity with a message.

Meeting: An Expansion of the Heart

2010-08-21T05:46:00.004-05:00

The theme of the 2010 Meeting, ""That nature which pushes us to desire great things is the heart", quoted from Camus' Caligula, started from a characteristically contemporary expression of doubt:

This sentence is part of the response of Don Giussani to a young woman who had confessed her doubt that it was all an illusion to wish for great things. His response continued like this: "Then follow it. What does it mean to follow? It means to compare all the encounters you have with what your heart tells you and when they correspond, to follow them. So, going forward you will have no fear that it is an illusion, but understand that in fact this is not an illusion. What seems an illusion, is in fact, a bias, a suspicion."

The Meeting explores a humanity which is not reduced to biological and psychological boundaries. The participants are not in lockstep, politically, socially or otherwise. They are open and ready for something new and great.

What was evident at one time is not obvious today: does there really exist a universality of the human? Is there something objective in the subjectivity of each of us? Can we speak of an "elementary experience" common to all men, whatever their race, history and culture?

On this an unprecedented cultural battle is being waged. It is enough to make a careful and honest observation about ourselves to realize that we have an infinite desire. This is the stature of the human heart.

Even more than a discussion about ideas, the Meeting introduces individuals who demonstrate this expansion of the heart.

The Meeting intends to document that the original nature of the heart exists and is the only resource to resist any attack against the humanity of each one. It will do so primarily through the intervention of Don Stefano Alberto, a professor of introductory theology at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, which will be dedicated to the title of the Meeting; by the conference by Cardinal Scola and by an exceptional dialogue between the Metropolitan Filaret and Cardinal Erdo. Further, it will try to bring forth people for whom the "I" is not reduced and who are a testimony to a new subject who lives the reality of everything with a positive and constructive gaze.

(Rimini Meeting: "That nature which pushes us to desire great things is the heart", Alberto Savorana)

Does the anti-mosque fury mirror past anti-Catholicism?

2010-08-20T16:21:00.004-05:00

Patricia Zapor reports HERE on the similarities between the anti-Islam of today and the anti-Catholicism of yesterday. At first read, I was moved by the comparison. It made me sympathetic toward those Muslims who are not enemies of freedom, the United States, Christianity or whatever else; and it made me frustrated with those behind the sentiments.

Georgetown professor, Chester Gillis: "At its core, the mosque furor is not unlike what Catholics experienced in the United States for more than 100 years, according to Georgetown University theology professor Chester Gillis.... While there are a wide range of political, philosophical and even zoning arguments about the Islamic center plans, Gillis sees anti-Muslim sentiment -- based in misconceptions and xenophobia -- at the core of the debate."

At the end of the article, Gillis is quoted as saying, "it may sound simplistic, but you really need to know Muslims as people."

As I said, my initial reaction was sympathy for Gillis's position. However, I can't overlook the "simplistic" action he takes by saying that the anti-Muslim sentiment at the core of the debate is based on misconceptions and xenophobia, just as it was when Catholics were the center of xenophobic ire.

While I don't purport to be an expert of Catholic history in the United States, I am unaware of any massive attacks carried out against United States citizens in the name of the Catholic Church. I am also unaware of many cases where Protestant fears about papists actively working to subvert American democracy and culture were substantiated. I am also unaware of Catholics actively seeking to set up parallel laws and systems of justice for themselves as some Muslims hope to do with Sharia law here and in Europe... of course, I am open to correction! Sadly for those Muslims forced to qualify themselves "moderate Muslims," there is reason for mistrust and wariness that needs to be acknowledged and dealt with, not glossed over as "misconception" or "xenophobia."

To create a dichotomy between ignorant xenophobes and the enlightened open-minded in this debate (which goes much deeper than the Ground Zero Mosque) is stifling. Those favoring the mosque and an improved position of Muslims in the United States need to "call a spade a spade," there are violent radicals among them. Those in opposition do not need to abandon their memories, but need to be open to a reality that is different from their preconceptions or previous experiences. Each side need to be cognizant of the difficult position they are asking the other to adopt.

As always, comments of disagreement and discussion are welcome and desired!

Meeting: Irish President Mary McAleese

2010-08-20T09:18:00.000-05:00

Irish President Mary McAleese will address the Rimini Meeting on Sunday, August 22nd. Journalist John Waters, who will join the panel, offers background on her political role in an article for Il Sussidiario.

She was marginalized and repudiated by her fellow workers (some of whom have since recanted and apologized to her as President). When, later on, she acted as spokeswoman for the Catholic Bishops, she was the subject of venomous attacks which resulted in her life being threatened by unionist extremists.

Nevertheless, by sheer force of personality, McAleese emerged as a thoughtful and courageous voice, unafraid to speak up about her origins, her faith or her sense of an Ireland ungoverned by ideological prescriptions. A keen student of philosophy, history and politics, her public interventions were characterized most of all by her engagingly conversational style, by which she succeeded in saying quite complex, and sometimes quite rigorous things without conveying any sense of intellectual detachment.

In addition to all this, she was a clear-minded and unapologetic Catholic who took her faith seriously and saw no reason to compartmentalize it outside or alongside her public persona. Her work with the Catholic bishops had mainly been in the context of a forum established to address the matter of the continuing conflict that had blighted her home place for many years. She was, naturally, dismissed by opponents as “conservative” and “traditionalist”, but when the arguments started she left them all for dead.

Meeting: Flannery O'Connor Exhibit

2010-08-20T07:59:00.002-05:00

Flannery O’ Connor

The infinite measure of the limit

22 August 2010 - 28 August 2010

Meeting: Michael Fitzgerald on the Courage of Flannery O'Connor

2010-08-20T06:11:00.001-05:00

This coming week at the Meeting at Rimini, there will be an Anglo-American exhibit on the American fiction writer Flannery O'Connor (see also Traces 12:7). Screenwriter Michael Fitzgerald accepted an invitation to give a presentation on O'Connor. Fitzgerald, the son of O'Connor's close friends Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, persuaded director John Huston to produce the 1979 film Wise Blood, based on O'Connor's novel. He wrote the screenplay together with his brother and raised the funding for the low-budget production.

Fitzgerald is presenting on O'Connor's courage in living with lupus, the inherited illness which crippled her and took her life at age 39. In an interview with Martino Cervo, he described her ironic outlook with the story that when she was six years old she taught a chicken to walk backwards. Referring to the film, he said, "I was there with the chicken. I was just there to help, but it was the highlight of my life. Everything that has happened since then has been an anti-climax." He said:

The illness was the central event of her life. At twenty years old, right after returning home after a stay with us, she had her first attack. After that, it always accompanied her. But the limitation on her talent was a springboard for her freedom. There is one episode that explains better than anything else what I mean. In the last moments of her life, at 39 years old, she sent a letter to my parents describing the food at the hospital: she wrote of a terrible "stew that smelled like Kleenex". She was dying...

She would have deflected or laughed at the idea of being considered a great writer, which in fact happened. She would have been horrified at the idea of promoting a particular artistic conception. She was a great Catholic writer, her Catholicism and her sense of the absolute were completely at the center of everything she wrote. And this is exactly what shocked the literary world, without them knowing it. For example, there is no doubt about her influence on a giant like Cormac McCarthy.

This Week in Ilsussidiario.net

2010-08-19T06:28:00.000-05:00

English Spoken Here

http://www.ilsussidiario.net/News/English-Spoken-Here/

Arts,Entertainment & Media

Edith Bogue UNIVERSITY/ Tough research question on web site use

Culture & Religion
Lorenzo Albacete U.S. / Freedom detached from truth

Christopher Tollefsen WARFARE/ The Abiding Significance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Scott Dodge The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Economics & Finance

Robert Sirico FINANCIAL CRISIS/ Robert Sirico: The Cultural and Moral Failures that Precipitated the Crash

Science & Technology
Helen Williams (Int.) CLUSTER HEADACHE/ When a headache can lead to suicide

NYC Mosque: Exercise rights or do the right thing?

2010-08-18T17:39:00.004-05:00

There is little question in my (albeit inexperienced) mind about whether or not the Muslims seeking to build a mosque, cultural center, or whatever you want to call it, have a right to do so. Bill McGurn asks if it is the right thing to do and refers to how John Paul II counseled a group of carmelites facing a similar dilema in Poland.

The full article on WSJ is HERE.

"So what did Pope John Paul II do? He waited, and he counseled. And when he saw that the nuns were not budging—and that their presence was doing more harm than good—he asked the Carmelites to move. He acknowledged that his letter would probably be a trial to each of the sisters, but asked them to accept it while continuing to pursue their mission in that same city at another convent that had been built for them... By asking the nuns to withdraw, he didn't concede them either. What he did was recognize that having the right to do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do."

A real question for those wanting to build: As a matter of prudence, is moving forward with your plans best? Of course, it is hard to look in the face of what may be unjust objections and appear to concede. But those unjust objections, being a reality, may make the mosque a bad idea and unnecessarily fuel the anger being directed toward Islam in general. Reality does not always direct us to do what we can do just because we can do it, other factors are at play.

As for me, I don't have a concrete view one way or the other.

The Dimensions of the Human Heart

2010-08-18T05:39:00.000-05:00

The 31st session of the Meeting for Friendship Amongst Peoples in Rimini, which drew 800,000 visitors last year, begins on Sunday. The subject is the human heart. In an introduction to the topic the challenge is set forth, to break out of the prescribed mold.

We are immersed in a culture that tends to erase “man’s humanity,” the “want and emptiness … the chief sign of the grandeur and nobility of human nature” expressed by Leopardi in his Thoughts, and risk affirming a purely materialistic conception of life. The provocation in this year’s title, instead, affirms the opposite. The human being’s nature is first of all the heart, which expresses itself as desire for great things. The driving force of all human action is this aspiration to something great, the need for something infinite. The human being is relationship with the infinite. This striving is the unmistakeable feature of the human, the spark of every action, from work to family, from scientific research to politics, from art to provision for daily needs.

Journalist John Waters has a wry piece in Traces (12:7) exploring the problem of the heart in anticipation of the Meeting. We think of the heart as the nemesis of the thinking person, or a "scapegoat", as it gets carried away and messes up the plan. In fact: "The mind has effected a coup in which the heart is retained for operational and symbolic purposes, but stripped of all authority concerning decision-making." There is no way out without acknowledging that the autonomous model does not account for that "something [that] remains unexplained". There is this "irrationality. The heart, the font of the desire that follows me from the beyond whence I came, speaks to me every moment of what this `I' really seeks, really wants, really is."

Rimini Meeting August 22-28

2010-08-16T11:43:00.003-05:00

Rimini Meeting 2010

"That nature which pushes us to desire great things is the heart."

The Meeting Program 2010

The Program 2010 has just come out: you can find all the Meetings, Focus, Texts & Contexts, Shows and Sport.

From 22nd to the 28th August 2010 - in Rimini Fiera

Click here to read the program