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Conducting the Symphony of Truth

Dr. Edward Mulholland — 2013-05-19T18:59:00+00:00

When I was in high school, I went to the symphony for the first time. I was impressed by the sound, the acoustics of Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. But I didn’t get the conductor. He didn’t play any instrument, and the musicians all had the music in front of them, anyway. Seemed like useless hand-waving, window dressing to me. Non-essential.

Like so many high school thoughts of mine, it was dead wrong. If we human beings are to do anything together, there must be a person to focus on, who coordinates our efforts toward the intended goal. A six skull crew boat could shed weight by ditching the coxswain, but at the price of the concerted strike that is the secret of their speed.

During his homily on Pentecost Sunday, Pope Francis spoke of the Holy Spirit’s role in the Church. His three-word (oh, how Jesuit) summary was “newness, harmony and mission.” The Holy Spirit is the source of many different gifts. (Though we name seven specific gifts, the number seven is also symbolic of fullness.) So it would seem that the Spirit is a source of diversity and confusion, like the different tongues at the Tower of Babel.

But the Holy Spirit is harmony. “One of Fathers of the Church has an expression which I love: the Holy Spirit himself is harmony – ‘Ipse harmonia est’. He is indeed harmony.” Harmony brings diversity into unity, but not uniformity.

We have all been to 5^th grade band recitals with seven trumpets, five trombones, ten clarinets, eight flutes and the kid who was born to play the tuba, embracing his destiny. Jingle Bells thumps, unjinglingly, along: bum-bum-bum, bum-bum-bum, bum-BUM-bum-bum-BUUM… The band director does all she can do to keep them in rhythm. But the music is uniform.

It is a victory over total cacophony, but, -to borrow Robert Frost’s phrase- “still artless, uninspired, unenhanced.”

Now, the New York Philharmonic is a different story. It is a true symphony. Different sounds and rhythms arranged and brought into harmony. There is a unity of key and of purpose, not merely a uniformity of rhythm. It is unity through and despite the diversity of musical instruments, tonal qualities and dynamics. And it is glorious. And the person who brings it together is the conductor.

In the Church, it is the power of the Holy Spirit that helps bring diverse gifts together for the same mission, who helps us appreciate diversity and not manufacture it artificially (for there is nothing lamer than fake diversity.) His Holiness said, “Only the Spirit can awaken diversity, plurality and multiplicity, while at the same time building unity. Here too, when we are the ones who try to create diversity and close ourselves up in what makes us different and other, we bring division.”

As our wonderful parish choir director says, “To blend, you have to be able to hear a voice, a part that is not the one you are singing.” If in our work for the Church we can only hear ourselves, we probably are out of tune.

On this Solemnity of Pentecost, as she conducted us through Gabriel Faure’s Cantique de Jean Racine, I knew that we could not do it without her. She brought the diverse voices into a unity. She was doing for us what the Holy Spirit does, invisibly, for the Church.

But the Spirit assists the Holy Father in a special way. He conducts the 1.4 billion piece orchestra which is the Catholic Church. He reminds us what the notes are (for if we are off the page, we are not into unity with the Church), but no tone quality or culture is out of place. The pastors of the Church, and the Supreme Pastor above all, animated by the Holy Spirit’s special help, are the von Karajans that bring us into harmony. “Journeying together in the Church, under the guidance of her pastors who possess a special charism and ministry, is a sign of the working of the Holy Spirit,” Pope Francis reminded us.

Pentecost repairs Babel. It is a diversity that blossoms in unity, not uniformity. It is a unity made up of many gifts, many voices singing the same tune. It is symphonic.

Pentecost is the birthday of the Church. At my house, we always have a cake and candles. Those little fires and the breath that blows them out are traditional symbols of the Holy Spirit. But I may start a new tradition this year. As we sing Happy Birthday to the Church, in thanksgiving for the gift of the Spirit and of the Papacy, I think I’ll wave a baton.

The Strength To Be Counter-Cultural

Benedictine College — 2013-05-14T20:28:00+00:00

Homily at Benedictine College's 2013 Baccalaureate Mass
St. Benedict Abbey Church, May 10
by Archbishop Joseph Naumann

I. Introduction

It is always a joy and an honor to celebrate this Baccalaureate Mass. It is a moment in which we prayerfully give thanks for our Graduates and all that they through God’s grace and with their hard work have accomplished in their years at Benedictine. Four years ago or more, this day seemed so far away. To get to this moment, there were many classes attended, many books read, many papers written, many oral presentations given and many tests taken and evidently passed. Many of you have had to overcome obstacles and challenges known only to yourself. We give thanks today for your discipline, your determination and your perseverance to reach the goal of graduation.

This is a special moment also for the parents and families of our graduates. Their achievement is in many ways the fruit of the encouragement and support you have given to them throughout their lives. We give thanks this afternoon for our parents whose love has given life to our graduates and whose families have been the first and most important schools in which our graduates have developed the Faith, virtues and discipline that were instrumental in their success at Benedictine.

We also give thanks to God for President Minnis, Dr. Kim Shankmann and the exceptional leadership team which surround him, the faculty and staff of Benedictine College. This College is a very special place not primarily because of its beautiful setting on the bluffs of the Missouri River, but because of the people who lead it are great men and women of Faith and Learning who create a culture at this Institution where truth is pursued as vigorously in the chapel as in the classroom.

We give thanks for the two sponsoring communities — the Benedictine Monks of St. Benedict Abbey and the Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica Monastery. Your communities have given birth to this great College. Your Benedictine charisms of abiding Faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ as well as an eagerness to pursue the truth in every area of study makes this College such a unique and special place.

It has been a special year for the Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica with the celebration of the 150th anniversary commemorating the faith, the courage, and the boldness of those first seven sisters who came to Atchison, Kansas in the midst of our nation’s Civil War. Their bravery in responding to God’s call, despite so much uncertainty, set in motion what would become a rich history of witness and service that especially was focused on education. Similarly, this has been an important year for St. Benedict Abbey with the election of Abbot James Albers, chosen by his brother monks to lead them in building upon the rich legacy of this monastic community, a critical part of which is this College and its formation in Faith and Reason of young adults.

II. Lou Holtz and the Natural Law

I am always amazed at the quality of national and international leaders who come to Benedictine College in the course of a year. What a blessing to have Lou Holtz on campus for the Academic Convocation in August.

Lou Holtz does not pretend to be an academic. Nevertheless, it is obvious to everyone he is a keenly intelligent man who has worked hard at becoming one of the best in a very competitive profession. Coach Holtz has developed a wisdom that is as uncomplicated as it is profound. He attributes his success both on and off the football field to three principles:

Do the right thing
Be passionate about what you do always striving for excellence
Care about people

Great teachers are able to take the complex and make it simple. There is actually a great depth to Coach’s formula for without ever using the term, Lou in his first principle is making an argument for Natural Law. In order to “do the right thing,” one must be able to know what the “right thing” is. Coach Holtz’s first principle presumes moral truths that are engraved upon the human heart that allow us to know in any given situation what is “right” as well as what is “wrong.”

Of course, this principle strikes at the heart of the relativism pervading our more and more secularized culture so prevalent on many college campuses. Relativism questions the very existence of truth. In essence, it claims that what might be “right” or “true” for you is not necessarily “right” or “true” for me. It is this nihilistic philosophy that is responsible for the moral chaos in our culture.

III. Immaculee — Seeking What Endures

Just a couple weeks later Benedictine College hosted another truly remarkable speaker, Immaculee Illabigiza, a survivor of the Rwanda Holocaust who travels the world speaking a message of mercy and forgiveness. Immaculee in her college years had to endure the most horrible ordeal imaginable, living for three months hidden in a crowded tiny bathroom with seven other women under the constant fear that if discovered they would be raped and brutally murdered.

Immaculee survived those three months because of prayer. With unspeakable horror surrounding her, Immaculee entered into this intense time of prayer where she grew in her Faith and her capacity to follow Jesus in the way of mercy. When she emerged from hiding only to discover her worst fears realized — her parents and two of her three brothers killed along with the massacre of a million others of her tribe, she did not become embittered and angry, but was led to embark on a mission of reconciliation and mercy.

During her visit at Benedictine, Immaculee challenged us with the question: Why do we spend so much time worrying about this life that quickly passes away and so little about the eternal life. Dear Graduates, Benedictine College has sought to equip you with the tools to make a contribution in this world, while at the same time setting the gaze of your hearts beyond this life to what endures forever. The goal of this College is not just to get you into Graduate School or to be hired for a good job, but to assist you on the way to heaven.

IV. The Legacy of Pope Benedict

This has been a very historic moment in the life of the Church. Your senior year has coincided with the resignation of a Pope that had not occurred for 600 years. When I received my Pallium from Pope Benedict 8 years ago in June, 2005, I told him there was a College in Kansas that shared a patron saint with him and where the students were thrilled by his election as the Successor of Peter. Now that he has more time, maybe we can get him to visit B.C.? Pope Benedict has given the Church a very special legacy.

In his final audience, Pope Benedict gave a beautiful personal account of what was going through his mind when he had been chosen as the Successor of St. Peter 8 years earlier. He said that he wondered in his prayer:

Lord, what do you ask of me? It is a great weight that you are placing on my shoulders but, if you ask it of me, I will cast my nets at your command, confident that you will guide me, even with all my weaknesses. And eight years later I can say the Lord has guided me. He has been close to me.

The Pope remembered beautiful and exhilarating times as well as difficult and stormy ones but constant in every season Jesus was faithfully beside him:

I felt like St. Peter and the Apostles in the boat on the Sea of Galilee. The Lord has given us many days of sunshine and light breezes, days when the fishing was plentiful, but also times when the water was rough and the winds against us, just as throughout the whole history of the Church, when the Lord seemed to be sleeping. But I always knew that the Lord is in that boat and I always knew that the boat of the Church is not mine, not ours, but is His. And the Lord will not let her sink.

I pray that our Graduates have this same experience as you reflect on your years at Benedictine. There have been beautiful days of sunshine and light breezes where everything seemed to be going right and the fishing was easy, but also difficult and stormy ones as well when you did not know how you would make it to the shore — to this moment of graduation. Hopefully, you discovered like Pope Benedict, no matter the external conditions around you, Our Lord was always in the boat with you — a boat He was not going to allow to sink.

I believe Pope Benedict’s greatest legacy has been his encouragement to all Catholics to realize that the essence and foundation of our Catholic Faith is and must be a personal encounter, a personal friendship with Jesus Christ. This was the heart of the Holy Father’s message to Youth gathered in Madrid, Spain almost two years ago for World Youth Day.
He said to the almost 2 million young people assembled from every corner of the earth:

Yes, dear friends, God loves us. This is the great truth of our life; it is what makes everything else meaningful. We are not the product of blind chance or absurdity; instead our life originates as part of a loving plan of God. To abide in his love, then, means living a life rooted in faith, since faith is more than the mere acceptance of certain abstract truths; it is an intimate relationship with Christ, who enables us to open our hearts to this mystery of love and to live as men and women conscious of being loved by God.

The Holy Father continued:

If you abide in the love of Christ, rooted in faith, you will encounter, even amid setbacks and suffering, the source of true happiness and joy. Faith does not run counter to your highest ideals; on the contrary, it elevates and perfects those ideals. Dear young people, do not be satisfied with anything less than Truth and Love, do not be content with anything less than Christ.

V. Strength to Be Counter-Cultural

It is only with this friendship in Jesus Christ that we can find the strength to live the truth of the Gospel in a progressively secular culture. Frankly, we should not be surprised by the opposition to living the Gospel, because Jesus warned us.

If the world hates you, realize it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. Remember the word I spoke to you, No slave is greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.

We should not be surprised that we find ourselves opposing the prevailing winds of our culture. My dear graduates you must be prepared to defend the Christian foundations of our American society which are becoming increasingly imperiled.

You should not be surprised that you have to stand up to a culture of death that advocates a right for mother’s to kill or authorize the killing of their own children in the womb.

You should not be surprised that you have to stand up to protect the family from a culture that has become so confused about something so fundamental as what constitutes a true marriage. You have to be ready to stand up and defend marriage as a covenant between one man and one woman for their good and the good of the children born from their union.

You must be prepared to stand up to protect children from a culture that can no longer distinguish beauty and art from pornography and its dehumanization of the human person.

You must be prepared to stand up and defend those with profound disabilities or the frail elderly against a culture that has become so utilitarian that it would discard the lives of those it considers non-productive.

You must be prepared to defend religious liberty and conscience rights against those who would trample on these most fundamental of American principles. .
To remain faithful in such a culture, you must have a close friendship with Jesus whom you know is in the boat with you and who alone can give you peace in the midst of storm.

VI. New Evangelization and the Church of Yes

However, we are not called to be a people who just say “No!” to the moral chaos around us. Indeed, we must stand in strong opposition to the attacks on what is true, moral and beautiful. Yet, we are called to do and to be so much more.

We are not being called to simply keep the Faith, as difficult as that may seem at times. We are being called to go and make disciples. We are called to lead others, to draw others to Jesus by the witness of our lives. You are called to inspire others to discover the joy of being loved by the only One who can satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts.

What the Church needs today are martyrs! The word martyr means witness. Many people today are not convinced by rhetoric and logic, but are intrigued and inspired by the witness and beauty of the Christian life well-lived.

What Jesus needs today is an army of martyrs, of witnesses, who are prepared to bring the truth and beauty of the Gospel of Jesus into the board room and the class room, into the laboratory and the legislature, into the athletic field and the movie theater, into the neighborhood association and the family living room. Jesus needs today young men and women who are prepared to announce the Gospel, not primarily by words but by the integrity of their lives.

Jesus needs disciples who radiate in their every day lives the joy and the hope of His Gospel. And when others ask us the source of our hope and joy amidst all of the struggles of life, we need to be prepared to point them, to lead them to Jesus Christ.

VII. The Witness of Pope Francis

In a talk that Pope Francis gave during the pre-conclave meetings, he told his brother Cardinals that often times we picture Jesus knocking on the door seeking to enter our hearts. This image is true enough. The soon to be Pope then told his fellow Cardinals that he often pictures Jesus on the other side of that door, knocking from the inside and begging the Church to let Him out, to let him out to bring His love to those on the streets, in the ghettos and on the margins of society.

Pope Francis is showing us the power that our Christian Faith has when it is lived with purity and passion. Pope Francis has grabbed the imagination of much of the world with the witness of the humility and simplicity of his life.

Conclusion

Dear Benedictine graduates, you have been prepared and you are being asked to be on the front lines of the implementation of the New Evangelization. You are being called to be witnesses of Jesus Christ drawing others to him by the quality of your lives.

However, we have something so much more to offer the world than a resounding “No!” to the present evils that afflict us. We are being called to lead others to the abundant life and the complete joy that Our Lord desires for all humanity. We are called not just to get ourselves to heaven, but to bring as many others as possible with us.

Last year, when I was privileged to receive an honorary degree from the College and officially became a Raven, I recalled how President Kennedy in the early 1960’s in Berlin, Germany, a flashpoint of the Cold War between atheistic communism and the free world, said that just as in the ancient world it was a matter of great pride to declare I am a Roman, so at that moment it was an honor to say Ich bin ein Berliner — I am a Berliner. So today, at this moment when Benedictine College is a place that is preparing an army of young people to be witnesses of the Gospel of Jesus — to be on the front lines of the New Evangelization, it is a point of pride to be able to say I am a Raven.

You and I, are being called to set the world on fire with the love of Jesus Christ. And so we pray, during this Mass of the Holy Spirit: Come Holy Spirit come and enkindle — ignite — in our hearts the fire of your love.

The Meme Generation

Dr. Edward Mulholland — 2013-05-14T14:20:00+00:00

It is college graduation season, and conflict over commencement speakers is the flavor of the month, with a side order of reflections about who these mortar-boarded (gee, that sounds like torture) young people really are.

I have taught young people in college, seminary and even high school for twenty-plus years. I am Jane Goodall among primates. I have closely observed their behaviors, eating habits, bizarre mating rituals. Time Magazine has already christened the millennials as “lazy, entitled narcissists,” before some other words of praise. I wish to comment only on one aspect of their intellectual development.

This the Twitter generation. They were raised on McNuggets of mind and of body. They have the attention span to read a billboard. They are more suited to write ad copy than term papers. I state this fact not necessarily as a criticism. It is a weakness of sorts. It is also a strength, but one which, I will endeavor to show, contains a risk.

Today’s graduates never had a textbook, at any level of instruction, which did not have a picture on every page. Think about that.

Ideas, for them, are always interspersed with side-bars, captions, summary text boxes along a diagonal. They tend not to be newspaper readers. They prefer the screen to the written page. They almost always have the option of customizing the way they receive information. Even when they read the same content, it is on their own terms, fonts, colors and screen savers.

All of this means that they struggle with that Arts and Letters staple: the five paragraph essay, (and its longer siblings.) They struggle with longer readings, and especially with secondary sources. It is inexperience with such sources at the high school level, in my opinion, that has hampered their essay writing. After all, a paper about Mark Twain looks more like an article about Mark Twain than it looks like Mark Twain.

But this communication gap does not mean they lack understanding. The concepts are there, and when you ask for a PowerPoint or similar interactive presentation, they emerge. They can often encapsulate understanding into few words, especially when they can choose an accompanying image. They are the Meme generation.

The fact that they understand billboards means that they can make them, very effectively. If one looks at the verbose, overly direct advertising of the 50’s and 60’s, you will see a different generation, one which was adept at essays but could not compact their communication into a punch. The millennials are all punch, which is good, but are less adept at the longer, deeper reasoning process, which is a weakness.

But aren’t you, college professors, supposed to remedy this? Well, we assign essays and readings, but we are also trying to find ways in which to cater to strengths students arrive with. That’s why essays were assigned in the first place. That was the accepted medium of idea exchange. I am not a harbinger of the end of the essay, but I foresee more , not fewer, avenues for other, more interactive, communication of ideas in the future.

The further risk which I see, during my weekday hours in the millennials’ natural habitat, is that this McNugget communication ritual aims not at the sharing of truth, but of eliciting an emotive response. And this response, increasingly, is a quick chuckle and on to the next thing.

The next Tweet, the next viral YouTube clip, the next caption for poor Bad Luck Brian.

In other words, the Meme Generation is morphing into the Meh Generation. And this is what I most worry about. The lowering of an attention span in the pursuit of truth is problematic, but educators can deal with it. We deal with it by motivating them with things they care about. There’s nothing like a description of the life of a slave to make students delve into Huck Finn’s gradual unlearning of his prejudices as he and Jim float down the river.

But what can I do when the attention span of their heart is diminished? Ignorance weakens. Apathy kills.

The remedy is what I call “the laboratory of the humanities,” and we will discuss it in another post. For now, ask your millennial what his or her summer reading plans are. Even better, choose a book to read together and Tweet about it.

Gosnell Guilty: A Triumph over Evil in the Year of Faith

Benedictine College — 2013-05-13T21:32:00+00:00

By Frank Kessler | Dr. Kessler is a professor of political science, Benedictine College.

More disturbing than the accounts of the house of the human carnage that was Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s “Women’s Clinic” in Philadelphia was the fact that Gosnell and his attorney seemed shocked that a jury viewing the evidence of abortion there, found him guilty on three counts of first degree murder and one of manslaughter. To reach those verdicts, the jury had to find “beyond a reasonable doubt,” that those little ones were still alive when the doctor and/or clinic workers used surgical scissors to sever each of their spines. A Philadelphia grand jury had handed down a 300 count indictment against the proprietor of this business involving such brazen butchery of the vulnerable. Oh the mental and verbal gymnastics to which one must go to defend the indefensible.

Pennsylvania’s “moderate” (which to progressives means favorable towards the option of abortion) Governor Tom Ridge refused to even order a safety examination of this house of horrors seventeen years ago. No one has followed up since. How could such disregard for the value of human beings be so cavalierly shunted aside. Ridge’s dereliction of duty provides us with a cautionary tale about the principle that a law means nothing if it is not enforced.

Years before this Dr. Kenneth Edelin (1976) was tried, in Massachusetts for manslaughter after he resorted to other means to abort a little one when he realized he had not succeeded using chemical means since the baby was still alive in utero. To finish the job, while the baby (fetus in the bio-legal terminology of Roe v. Wade ) was still inside the mother, he pinched the baby’s nose to shut off the air and clamped his hand over the mouth until the little one stopped kicking. Then he removed the lifeless baby and sniped the chord. This was the reality of legal abortion. President Obama while he was a state senator opposed the Illinois "Born Alive Infants" act which forbid doctors from "finishing the job" and leaving the little one a ward of the state. Edelin was acquitted because he had used “standard medical procedures” in performing a legal abortion. It should be no surprise that so few doctors in the US want to be involved in such grisly business these days.

How Orwellian we are to say that if the fetus is "wanted" it is a baby and every effort should be made to save it with advanced neo-natal care; but if it is "unwanted" it should be killed. In many hospitals across the nation this lunacy is being played out on different wings of the same hospital.

Thank God a jury had the courage to stand for reason, science and life. All of this abortion carnage brings to mind a poem by Alexander Pope on the Human response to evil.

Evil is a monster of such hideous mien

That to be hated needs but to be seen

But seen too often

Familiar with her face

First we pity

Then endure

And finally embrace.

In our 21st century land of “Alice in Wonderland” morality, evil has become a “sacred” legal right. Everything is upside down. Even the science of fetology must be sacrificed at the altar of of personal self-fulfillment and freedom. No one dare tell the devotees of Planned Parenthood, including President Obama, that “the emperor has no clothes.”

My prayer is that this jury’s principled verdict is one of the many fruits of the Year of Faith and proof of the power of intercession to the Blessed Mother of the infant Jesus on behalf of the unborn and their mothers and fathers.

Benghazi and the Culture of Consequentialism

Dr. Edward Mulholland — 2013-05-11T13:29:00+00:00

This week, while watching the hearings about the events surrounding the attack on US diplomats in Benghazi, I was haunted by two questions.

The first was then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s impassioned utterance, “What difference does it make?” by which she explained that finding the perpetrators of the violence was more important than the immediate causes of the violence.

The second was an internal question, “What difference will it make?” Even assuming the worst, -- and that worst would be that the Obama Administration failed to protect American diplomats overseas, and in effect began to participate in a cover-up even as the events unfolded, subsequently lying to the American people,-- I ask myself will enough people even care. I am guessing that they won’t.

Since it is unlikely that “the worst” will become the accepted public narrative of the Benghazi tragedy, I begrudgingly hold that people will care even less. For my reflections here, it is irrelevant how close to “the worst” the truth about Benghazi ultimately is. My aim is to explain why no one seems to care.

When today’s college graduates were toddlers, millions of Americans shrugged their shoulders and said, “But he only lied about sex.” In other words, one must not judge an act wrong in itself, but in view of its intention and consequences. Lying is not always wrong. It all depends. In ethics, justifying the end by the means is called "consequentialism."

President Clinton was and is a product of our culture. But each of us influences that culture, for our moral culture is largely made up of the rules we live by and the degree to which we hold each other accountable.

When I taught philosophy, (before my first love, language, was reawakened) I used to define culture as “the set of circumstances that maximize the growth potential of something.” Do you know what makes a particular type of bacteria grow? You can make a culture for that bacteria. Do you know what makes a successful ballplayer? You can create on your team a culture that maximizes that.

But when it comes to moral growth, it is impossible to create a culture when there is no consensus on what makes human beings grow. No houseplant will thrive when some people think it needs half shade and water every week, while others full sun and a monthly dousing. Many think our country today suffers from this lack of consensus.

I think that, practically speaking, we have a consensus, and that consensus is a culture of consequentialism. Most people afford themselves the luxury of allowing the ends justify the means. We inhabit a world that is Machiavellian, and not only for The Prince, but for each individual. As a result, in order to safeguard our own individualistic consequentialism, we give a pass to others when they justify their acts.

Hence, the only true sins in our culture are those that stray beyond the borders of individualism (lacking “tolerance” by “imposing ones morality on others) and those that cannot be justified by noble purposes, however remote (usually ones that do not provoke emotional reactions, often because there is no graphic footage of them.)

This summer marks the twentieth anniversary of Blessed John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor. It was a document written to remind Catholics and the world that we human beings cannot flourish if consequentialism is the moral air we breathe. In other words, such moral reasoning, in theory and practice, prohibits human flourishing. In John Paul II’s oft quoted phrase, it is part of a “culture of death.”

These lines point to a diagnosis, not a cure. The popes of the last decades have spoken openly and often about the cure, which is a return to absolute moral norms, those written in the stone of the Ten Commandments, which as I recall had no footnotes nor addenda nor conditions, a la “unless you have a good reason not to obey this.”

The sad fact is that, even given a worst-case scenario, I fear that not much will happen about the Benghazi attack. Our culture will give the administration a pass, because “he was only lying in order to get elected, and he has so many good ideas to implement in his second term.” We have already elected adulterers and liars from both parties. Why does it shock us that we don’t find this shocking?

In future posts, we can explore small ways to renew and restore our culture. For today, it is enough to examine our conscience and root out any latent consequentialism. Do you create a moral culture in which you and those around you can truly flourish?

“What difference does it make?” Culturally, it is a difference between life and death.

Article image: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Under One Umbrella

Dr. Edward Mulholland — 2013-05-06T04:57:00+00:00

On a dismally rainy Sunday Pope Francis gave a homily at a mass, already planned under Pope Benedict as part of the events of the Year of Faith, to representatives of different confraternities of popular piety throughout the world. Yes, those little prayer groups you’ve seen at your parish and thousands that you have never heard of, praying to saints you know only in passing, and devotions that sound the thing of Catholic sketch comedy (a favorite of mine: devotion to the shadow of St. Peter.)

And they all have something in common (beyond the fact that, to print pamphlets, their go-to fundraiser is without fail that old classic: the bake sale.) The Holy Father said, “Down the centuries confraternities have been crucibles of holiness for countless people who have lived in utter simplicity an intense relationship with the Lord.” In other words, these are the groups that really get the job done. The job, of course, is making people holy.

The homily began with an atta-boy to a crowd which braved the rain. He later made reference to umbrellas. It is an even money bet that you can name, right now, three or four people who belong to small groups in your parish who show up, rain or shine, and who own old umbrellas. My recommendation? Buy one of them a golf umbrella and share it with them. These are the people who teach you how to be Catholic. They are God-centered people who conceive of their life as a mission, and who, often in silent, other-serving ways, live lives that revolve around prayer and the sacraments, and who also seem not to care much for the ups and downs of Hollywood stars, though they may pray for them, commending some of them, no doubt, to the shadow of St. Peter.

An umbrella is an interesting mechanism. A central rod, with spokes going forth and forming a circle, a shield from rain or sun. But the spokes must all emerge from the same center, and they must not stretch further than the others. The Pope spoke “the center from which everything must go forth and to which everything must lead: loving God and being Christ’s disciples by living the Gospel.”

And where do the spokes extend? To every culture on earth. What purpose do these groups serve? Why this multitude of popular devotions? Pope Francis said: “You have a specific and important mission, that of keeping alive the relationship between the faith and the cultures of the peoples to whom you belong.” That is major. An umbrella cannot do its job with two or three spokes.

There is no one-size-fits-all Christianity. There must be many devotions, many roads to suit the many cultures and personalities of God’s children. But all under the one umbrella of the Church.

But what goes out must also return. And popular piety, though unmistakably part of its culture (nothing is more Mexican than devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe; nothing more Spanish than the Virgen del Rocío) points back to the center. It leads us to Christ and his Church. Again Pope Francis: “In this Square I see a great variety: earlier on it was a variety of umbrellas, and now of colors and signs. This is also the case with the Church: a great wealth and variety of expressions in which everything leads back to unity; the variety leads back to unity, and unity is the encounter with Christ.”

The umbrella of the Church is wide and many-spoked, multicolored and has been repaired and resewn throughout millennia. It casts a wide shadow. The shadow of Peter, in fact, and Peter’s confession of Christ’s divinity. You are safe from the elements as long as you stay under the umbrella of the Church’s beliefs and precepts.

If you think that you could use a deeper relationship with Christ, chances are there is a small Church group or a popular devotion you may have missed, that will bring you both out and in. Farther out, into the patchwork of faith as it bears fruit in every culture, and father in, into the central mystery, the core of our seemingly-so-diverse lives: a saving encounter with the Lord of sun and rain.

Bubble Catholics and World Wide Funnel Webs

Dr. Edward Mulholland — 2013-05-02T19:19:00+00:00

Among the many linguistic paradoxes that populate my word-loving mind is “narrow-minded Catholicism.” Since “catholic” means “universal, according to the whole,” it would seem that a mind that is catholic, ipso facto, would not be narrow. And yet, I have encountered a few Catholics in my day who are, -here comes another paradox,- rather parochial, and not in a good way.

To spread the Gospel, we will have to break out of our bubbles. Pope Francis has spoken about a Church that doesn’t go beyond itself becoming sick and narcissistic. “Self-referential” was a term he used. Sounds like a bubble to me.

Of course, bubbledom is not a modern phenomenon, but in our age there is little reason for such bubbles to exist. Don’t we all have easy access to the World Wide Web? Don’t we have knowledge and viewpoints at our fingertips like never before? What is the reason for this entrenched parochialism? We know that the Holy Spirit transcended Babel at Pentecost, why are we so apt to stay put in our Babel-Bubble-onian exile?

I have no easy answers, but at least one reason has to be the subtle narrowness of the web itself, due to the tailoring features that have proliferated of late.

How does Amazon.com suggest books that I am interested in? How does Pandora include artists I have never heard of, whose songs I end up liking? Simple. They track my preferences and, based on them, suggest things that match them. It is an advertiser’s paradise, for it is niche-marketing at the individual level. But, far from widening my tastes, it only deepens my niche.

That leads to remarks like this one. “Boy, everything I read seems to say the Church is in a profound crisis.” I don’t deny that there aren’t many indices pointing in that direction, but it is also true that your computer has picked up on the fact that you read such things, so such articles find their way to you, as if by magic. They are high on your search engine lists.

Years ago, we all got the same news. In about half an hour. These days, we generally get the news we want, from the point of view we want, and we can spend hours delving deeper, without gaining any different perspective on events.

This means that, while we may hear a lot about what others say, we don’t always know where they are coming from. We dismiss other points of view out of hand.

In the world of the 30-second quip or two-line Tweet, there are fewer chances for real exchange of ideas and true debate. There never seems to be the time where we can back up an issue to the point where both sides agree (as far back as that needs to be sometimes) and find the real roots of disagreement.

“Diversity” is a quintessentially modern value. But it doesn’t seem to hold much value unless we achieve unity beyond and despite diversity. A gathering of people who agree about nothing is no big whoop. A group of people who are very different and yet reach a consensus around something positively real is worthy of a high-five, if only to prove that our hands were strangely designed to fit together.

This can only happen when we seek out those with points of view we disagree with and find common ground, even if we still disagree on many things. That can’t happen in a bubble.

Such agreement seems harder to come by these days, at least partly because of the World Wide Web, whose gossamer filaments stretch across the world, but which can often trap us, like a funnel-web spider, in ever narrower pockets.

If the Church needs more pop in her mission, what needs to pop first are our bubbles.

Are We Catholic Americans Or American Catholics?

Benedictine College — 2013-04-25T22:23:00+00:00

By Father Matthew Habiger OSB | Fr. Matthew, a Monk at St. Benedict's Abbey in Atchison, Kan., is a moral theologian, former president of HLI and noted expert on Natural Family Planning.

Today there is a great emphasis upon the New Evangelization. God wants His person and His message to be brought to every man, woman and child. And God chooses to work through many human instruments, like Paul and Barnabas, like you and me.

There is a real problem with Evangelizing that we must deal with. Russell Shaw explains this in his book, American Church: the Remarkable Rise, Meteoric Fall and the Uncertain Future of Catholicism in America. The problem is this. We are both Catholics and Americans. But can we be both fully Catholic and fully American? Is it possible to remain faithful to the person and teachings of Jesus, as found in the Roman Catholic Church, and still feel comfortable in our attempt to accommodate ourselves completely to the dominant American culture?

We are to carry our Faith everywhere, and bring it to bear upon everything that we do. This means we are to engage the American culture with the values of the Gospel. We are not to allow ourselves to be absorbed into the dominant culture, at the risk of watering down our moral principles and deeply cherished beliefs. Our loyalties belong first to God, and only secondly to any human organization. We are Catholic Americans, not American Catholics.

How has that worked out in the recent past? Since the Second World War there has been a steady erosion of loyalty to the values and teachings of the Church. At the same time, many Catholics have allowed the dominant secular American culture to dominate their values and decisions.

Some examples illustrate this. We know that Jesus strongly condemns divorce. But Catholics today imitate the American culture with a 50% divorce rate. We know that the Church condemns contraception and sterilization as completely contrary to God’s plan for spousal love. Yet Catholics imitate the secular culture with an 85% rate of contraception and a 40% rate of sterilization. In our country there are fewer and fewer marriages. That is reflected in the 63% drop in numbers of Catholic marriages over the past 40 years. God condemns abortion as a horrible crime, but many Catholics vote for pro-abortion candidates, as though this were an insignificant matter. The U.S. government is now crossing the line drawn by the 1st Amendment, dealing with the free exercise of religion. Think of the recent efforts to force religious organizations (Catholic hospitals, colleges, and charitable organizations) and private businesses to comply with the HHS mandate, compelling them to offer free contraception, sterilization and abortifacient pills to all their employees.

Brian Benestad, in his book Church, State and Society, summarizes some of the subtle, but real, deviations that liberal democracy has injected into American Catholics. He says: “In sum, liberalism tends to promote individualism, the separation of rights from duties, the loosening of commitments in families and at work, undue sympathy for the principle of autonomy and the ‘culture of death,’ more deference to reigning opinions than to Church teaching authority, the reception of revealed religion as opinion, and understanding morality more in terms of rights and values than virtues” (p. 435).

Francis Cardinal George, in his book The Difference God Makes: a Catholic Vision of Faith, Communion and Culture, sums up the overall situation (p. 181): “We have to recognize what we are up against. The world is both friendly and unfriendly, both holy and demonic. The world will welcome some of our criticisms and will do everything it can to contest others. When we hear the demands of the world, which we have to hear, lest we fail to attend to the signs of the times, the great missionary challenge then is to discern what the Church must adapt to and what is incompatible with the faith.”

Clearly, loyal Catholics who wish to be part of the flock that hears the voice of Jesus, its only pastor, must be able to discern between what is true and authentic, and what is false and counterfeit in the dominant secular American culture. Loyal Catholics, like the loyal flock, must strive to create its own subculture where it can live, and defend, a high Catholic identity.

Catholic Americans must take a fresh, creative look at the role of the laity. The greatest failure of the post Vatican II Church, Cardinal George says, has been a failure “to call forth and form a laity engaged in the world politically, economically, culturally and socially, on faith’s terms rather than on the world’s terms. If perhaps we paid less attention to various Church ministries, and more to its mission or purpose, then we might recapture the sense of what should be genuinely new as a result of the Council” (George, Difference, 180).

Shortly before the Conclave that elected Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio the new Pope, the then Cardinal Bergoglio gave a speech on Evangelizing Implies Apostolic Zeal. He said: “Evangelizing pre-supposes a desire in the Church to come out of herself. The Church is called to come out of herself and go to the peripheries, not only geographically, but also to the existential peripheries: the mystery of sin, of pain, of injustice, or ignorance and indifference to religion, of intellectual currents, and of all misery.

“Put simply, there are two images of the Church: the Church which evangelizes and comes out of herself … and the worldly Church, living within herself, of herself, for herself. This should shed light on the possible changes and reforms which must be done for the salvation of souls.”

As I pointed out this past Good Shepherd Sunday, all this should remind us that Jesus is our Pastor, and we are his flock. The flock knows the voice of the Pastor and they follow him. Jesus leads his flock to eternal life. He and the Father will protect the flock, but this does not mean that it will be spared trials and difficulties. In the first reading today, from the Apocalypse, there was a large crowd who experienced a great tribulation. They washed their cloaks in the blood of the Lamb, and the Lamb of God (Jesus) will lead them to the sources of living water. We all want to be in that crowd of witnesses.

We need to remind ourselves that in this world we must deal with forces of wickedness and evil. There are forces at work in this world that are determined to do us harm and injury. There are not only demonic forces, but also wicked people who take delight in harming others (think of modern day terrorists).

It is something like our physical bodies. We all want good health, yet we know that there are many factors working against our bodies’ good health. Our bodies have an immunity system, and white corpuscles to fight off harmful bacteria and viruses. We avoid certain rich foods and drinks because of what they do to our circulatory system. We resist some comforts and laziness, because we know we must regularly use all our muscles and exercise all our joints if our bodies are to stay agile and healthy. If we don’t do these things, then our bodies get flabby, our joints get stiff, and our arteries become sclerotic. And think of how we protect ourselves against smoking, even secondary smoke.

It is the same way with our faith, which is the most precious gift we have. We are to exercise and protect our faith, our relationship with God. We are to resolutely resist anything that would do damage to our faith, as we resist evil temptations. Using the values of our faith, we are to influence the world for the good. We overcome evil with goodness. We strenuously resist evil forces from undermining our faith. If a person does not know that there are people out there who want to harm, lead astray, and even destroy him, then he is in double jeopardy.

We are citizens of two worlds, of this world for 70-80 years, and then we must die. We are citizens of another world where we have an invitation to live forever, sharing in the intimate love and life of God. Jesus is our guide. We are his followers. He teaches us the truth, and gives us the strength we need to live according to the truth. In this world we have freewill and must make many choices. May we make good choices, well-informed choices, always advancing the good, while exposing and resisting the evil.

We are Catholics because we want to honor our God. We are Americans and we want to honor our country. The best way to be good American citizens is by being strong Catholics, by bringing our Catholic values and principles into the public square, to give guidance to the life of the community and of the nation. This is primarily the task of the Catholic laity, the 99.9% of the Church.

We are Catholic Americans, not American Catholics.

Francis’ Fearless Frankness

Dr. Edward Mulholland — 2013-04-23T17:44:00+00:00

“The high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching. Jesus answered, ‘I have spoken openly for all the world to hear; I have always taught in the synagogue and in the Temple where all the Jews meet together; I have said nothing in secret.’” (John 18:19-20)

The high priest was fishing for a hidden agenda. Jesus had none, and told him straight. For his straight-talk, He took one across the face from one of the guards.

Jesus says he spoke “openly.” The Greek term is παρρησία, (parrhesia) meaning "openness, frankness." From its etymology (πᾶν "all" and ῥῆσις / ῥῆμα "utterance, speech") it points to an openness to talk about everything and to hide nothing.

Such bold speech is a hallmark of Christ and his disciples. In Acts 4:13 the Jewish authorities are amazed at the parrhesia of Peter and John. Such has been and will be a hallmark of Pope Francis. In fact, he likes to use that very word.

He celebrated mass Tuesday morning, April 23rd, with the Cardinals resident in Rome on the occasion of the Feast of St. George, which for a man named Jorge Mario is his onomastic feast (his name-day, an occasion for celebration in many countries.) In his very straight-forward homily, Pope Francis said “Let us ask the Lord for this parrhesia, for this apostolic courage.”

He was commenting on chapter 11 of the Acts of the Apostles and the Holy Spirit pushing the Church forward. The first preaching was to Jews, and suddenly the Holy Spirit inspired men to preach to the Greeks. Back in Jerusalem this raised a few eyebrows, so Barnabas was sent to check it out. The Holy Father sparked a chuckle from a chapel full of cardinals when he said “Maybe with bit of humor we can say that this was the theological beginning of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, this Apostolic Visitation of Barnabas.”

Barnabas sees that the Spirit is at work beyond where many thought it was possible, and Mother Church gets an influx of new children, whose tie to her is in the newness of life brought by belonging to Christ, not by race or tribe.

This outgoing nature of the Church is the translation into action of what parrhesia means for speech. The Church is missionary because we must frankly act upon what we frankly believe and proclaim. We are called to bring all people to a relationship with Jesus Christ. That’s not a hidden agenda, it’s wide open.

On April 14^th in St. Paul Outside the Walls, Pope Francis preached about Peter and John’s frank answer to their own arrest, stating that they had to obey God before men. “Peter and the Apostles proclaim courageously, fearlessly, what they have received: the Gospel of Jesus. And we? Are we capable of bringing the word of God into the environment in which we live? Do we know how to speak of Christ, of what he represents for us, in our families, among the people who form part of our daily lives? Faith is born from listening, and is strengthened by proclamation.”

The phrase translated as “fearlessly” in the official English translation is not a common word in Italian. In fact, it’s Greek. You guessed it: parrhesia. That’s twice in ten days. It’s a word that is definitely on Pope Francis’ mind and heart.

Frank and direct preaching of the Christian message is useless without frank and fearless living of the truths we proclaim. It is not only about speaking truths to power; it’s about having the power to live out the truth, in season and out of season.

One who speaks and lives this way will take his lumps from the world. But the Holy Spirit inspires us with apostolic courage.

Better to obey God rather than man. The joy and rewards are greater.

Far greater, frankly.

Let’s Help the New Morality Fail

Tom Hoopes — 2013-04-19T11:16:00+00:00

We who believe in affirming civilization’s basic building blocks — for instance, the Ten Commandments — sometimes feel like we’re losing, bigtime. The new morality, after all, undermines them: Thou Shalt Go Ahead and Kill the Unborn and Elderly; Thou Shalt Redefine Adultery as Thou Wish; Thou Shalt Dishonor Thy God With Thy H.R. Budget.

So it’s good to read an article like Victor Davis Hanson’s “Postmodern Prudes” and realize that we are not being bested after all. He catalogs some of the strange contradictions of modern morality. Here is my paraphrase of some of Hanson’s examples:

Smoking marijuana — good. Smoking cigarettes — bad.
Pornography in college classrooms — good. Calling a woman “honey” — bad.
Morning-after pill on-demand for girls under 16 — good. Sex with girls under 16 — bad; illegal bad.
Near-nude women gyrating on stage — entertainment. Calling them “hussies” — offensive.
Eliot Spitzer's prostitution scandal — a career-changer. Carrie Prejean’s “I’m for traditional marriage” scandal — a career-ender.
Michael Vick’s dog-killing — big news. Kermit Gosnell’s baby-killing — not news.

It made me think of some others.

Going hunting — bad. Going to watch gun violence set to music on a giant screen — good.
Plastic bottles that hurt the environment — bad. Contraceptives that hurt the environment —good (read Simcha Fisher on that, by the way).
Excessive plastic surgery to make a woman into the woman she wants to be — bad. Excessive plastic surgery to make a man into the woman he wants to be — good.
Not having a car-seat at the hospital for your newborn — bad; illegal bad. Killing your not-yet-born at the hospital — freedom of choice.
Religious people promoting chastity in an age of rampant venereal disease — dangerously repressive. Secular people promoting promiscuity in an age of rampant venereal disease — sexy fun!

And of course …

Military interventionism before 2008 — bad. Military interventionism after 2008 — good.

Anyway, you get the drift. Hanson draws his own conclusions from this new morality. But I draw an additional conclusion: This can’t last. An ideology is something to take seriously: An uncompromising worldview that pulls beliefs and actions into its orbit with inexorable force. Environmentalism. Pacifism. Feminism.

But the new morality is only environmentalist until it wants to drive a car; it is only concerned about water pollution until hormonal contraceptives are the pollutant.

The new morality is for peace and domestic civil liberties only when they are threatened by a Texan.

The new morality is feminist except when it comes to pornographers and Beyonce.

The truth is, there is no new morality … just a collection of untethered beliefs “tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine,” to quote Ratzinger quoting Ephesians on the way to decrying “the dictatorship of relativism.”

The problem with such a morality is that it is very vulnerable: Like a teen-ager, the new morality rushes to affirm whatever happens to be "cool" at the moment. It can easily be hijacked and used for evil by a popular figure.

Its vulnerability is also an opportunity. I can think of literally dozens of people who I personally know who shook their heads at the absurdity of it all and left the new morality behind for firmer ground.

Let us help more people do so.