“Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence” (1Peter 3:15 RSV)

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Well, my sister and I have come to a resolution of the iPod issue, I would exchange it for a non-Red iPod, but the sale wouldn’t be canceled so she could still make her contribution to the Global Fund. We have agreed to disagree on matters of faith, morals and the magisterium of the Catholic Church.

I’ve been left to consider, after our very frank exchange, that so much of what is part of my faith is completely incomprehensible to the rest of the planet. Even more so, how difficult it is for us to comprehend God’s infinite love for us, or how that love is made manifest to us in our lives.

AMDG

Archbishop Chaput on Citizenship and Evangelization

“We’re Better Americans by Being More Truly Catholic”

NEW YORK, NOV. 3, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is the address Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver delivered Oct. 26 at St. John’s University School of Law in Queens, New York. The talked is titled “Church and State Today: What Belongs to Caesar, and What Doesn’t.”

Cutting to the end of his address -

It’s time for all of us who claim to be “Catholic” to recover our Catholic identity as disciples of Jesus Christ and missionaries of his Church. In the long run, we serve our country best by remembering that we’re citizens of heaven first. We’re better Americans by being more truly Catholic — and the reason why, is that unless we live our Catholic faith authentically, with our whole heart and our whole strength, we have nothing worthwhile to bring to the public debates that will determine the course of our nation.

Pluralism in a democracy doesn’t mean shutting up about inconvenient issues. It means speaking up — respectfully, in a spirit of justice and charity, but also vigorously and without apologies. Jesus said that we will know the truth, and the truth will make us free. He didn’t say anything about our being popular with worldly authority once we have that freedom. In the end, if we want our lives to be fruitful, we need to know ourselves as God intends us to be known — as his witnesses on earth, not just in our private behavior, but in our public actions, including our social, economic and political choices.

If pagan Rome could be won for Jesus Christ, surely we can do the same in our own world. What it takes is the zeal and courage to live what we claim to believe. All of us here tonight already have that desire in our hearts. So let’s pray for each other, and encourage each other, and get down to the Lord’s work.

The entire address can be found here.

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34 RSV)

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I had recently turned twenty-one. My sister, a year younger, had just given birth to her second child, a daughter. Times were hard for her. Her then husband was away in the navy, and her monthly allotments didn’t go very far. I went over to visit one afternoon, and as I often did (f0llowing a tradition in my family) I brought a couple of bags of groceries along. She was grateful for the gift. Shortly after I arrived, my brother, home from college for a visit, called to say he was coming over. Excited at having so much company, she unwrapped the steaks I had just bought and began preparing dinner. I protested. The food was for her and her children to eat, my brother could get a steak dinner at home. I saw my “gift” going to waste, as it was not being used as I had intended. But my sister just gave me one of her looks and turned her attention back to the sizzling steaks. She was right of course.

Last week after my iPod mishap, I put out a call for a loner of any unused iPod that anyone might have lying around. Not an unusual situation, I had an old G3 until I donated it the the Christmas auction at my church. My sister emailed me back saying she still had the G3 she had gotten for her 50th (she has since upgraded to a video), and I could borrow it until I could afford to buy a replacement. But it seems that the giver of that gift didn’t like the idea of it being loaned out to someone else, so my sister decided to buy me a new iPod Nano.

Now gifts are things that I’ve rarely received throughout my life, probably because I so rarely indicate any preference for anything that anyone would give as a gift. So when my sister went through the trouble of driving to the Apple Store on 57th & 5th in the midst of pre-marathon traffic late last night I was touched and extremely appreciative. But I took the sleek plastic box out of the white bag and saw that it was a red (8 gig!) Nano, I knew it would never be mine.

I expressed my gratitude and pleasure at receiving the gift, but explained that I could not keep it, as I do not support the Product Red campaign. I’m as concerned about the epidemic of HIV/AIDS in Africa as she is, but a portion of the funds are allocated to condom distribution programs, which I cannot support. So for me to enjoy the use of a Red product would be sending false message. Besides, there are other ways to support the distribution of anti-retroviral drugs in Africa, the D.R.E.A.M. project being one of them. My sister’s response was that if I didn’t support the campaign, she did, and she was the one spending the money. Anyway she wasn’t going to return it, I’d have to take it back myself (without the receipt), maybe they would exchange it for me. So it was not a gift after all.

It might be difficult for some to understand why I would have to take such a stand. It’s not just a matter of defending my principles or taking a personal stand on an issue. It’s following the very wise advice of St. Benedict, to “prefer nothing to the love of Christ”. And it is Christ’s love that calls me to reject the lie which is the condom. It’s not just a barrier to conception, it becomes a barrier to relationship between men and women and with God. But that’s another topic. It saddens me when the preference for Christ’s love leads to discord, but when challenged there is no other choice.  Besides that, condom distribution programs have not been particularly effective in stopping the spread of AIDS in Africa, as epidemiologists are discovering.

In all of the study and discussion of Theology of the Body that I’ve been involved in of late, there are two constant themes. One is that of the gift freely given. The other is that of human freedom. If the gift of any item is supposed to satisfy any desires of the giver beyond that of the happiness of the receiver, then that gift is not freely given, it’s a gift with strings attached. If the receiver of a gift must utilize it in a manner determined by the giver, then the freedom of the receiver is denied, the receiver becomes enslaved through the gift.

Now I’m not demanding that my sister, or anyone else for that matter, come around to my way of seeing the world. She has her own world view, formed out of her own convictions. But it does surprise me that she would be upset at the fact that I would not want to be seen using a product that sends a message contrary to my own beliefs, that I would not willingly compromise my own freedom. I would not ask that of her.

This morning my sister left a message in voice mail letting me know that she was offended by my response and that she didn’t want the gift returned, but I should give it back to her so she could give it to her granddaughter for Christmas. She said it was her intention to only give red iPods as gifts in the future, as she was in full support of the Product Red campaign and any projects that it funded.

Our Lord did warn us that he had come as a sword. Any response that we might have to his love would be misunderstood and misinterpreted by the world.

I’ll be shipping the Nano (insured) first thing tomorrow.

AMDG

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

(Rom 8:1 RSV)

Miseducating the Young: Saving Children from Their Parents

Now I’ve never been a big fan of Dinesh D’Souza, for one thing his political views are not to my taste. So when Drucilla told me about last Tuesday’s debate sponsored by the NY Society for Ethical Culture between D’Souza and Christopher Hitchens I decided to give it a miss. The venue and the participants just didn’t float my boat. But after reading the above article, I listened to the debate, which is available online at the link above.

Being an educator I’ve become acutely aware of the intense effort to disassociate faith from reason being undertaken in our educational institutions. There’s a war going on, but it seems only those crazy Christian fundamentalists are aware of that fact. It’s probably due to the fact that fundamentalists for the most part have decided to take on the battle against the culture of death while most American Catholics have decided to back away from it.

Here’s one frightening quote from the article:

“Faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate,” writes Richard Dawkins. “Religion is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness.”

So these folks want to relieve parents of the responsibility for the ethical education of their children and have that facet of their education managed by the state. Gee, where have we heard that before?

If you have a few moments to spare, take a look at Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 8.

AMDG

“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. ” Matt 6:21 RSV

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It was Tuesday October 16. I was walking up the stairs of the #1 train station at 125th Street when my purse slipped off of my shoulder and fell to the ground. I picked it up and continued up the stairs, but when I sat down on the train and commenced to plug my ears and retreat into my own world (as most New Yorkers do on the subway), to my horror of horrors the screen looked something like this -

It was just sitting there in my purse unprotected, and I think the screen bumped into my keys. I’ve been in a state of depression ever since, which tells me how dependent I’ve become on this little electronic device to maintain my sanity in an insane world. The horrible weather last week hasn’t helped either. I’ve put out an emergency call for an interim iPod until I can afford to purchase another one (probably the cheapest Nano.) I don’t know how long I can hold it together without that wall of sound between myself and the rest of New York.

What’s interesting is, when I am away on my monastic retreats, the buds are never in my ears. I leave the thing in my “cell”, sometimes hooked up to some portable speakers so I can listen to Christmas carols or some Anonymous 4. For one thing, I wouldn’t be able to heard the bells calling me to mass or the office. But I’d also much prefer to hear the sound of the sea as I walk along the beach or the wind as I walk into town or a bird chirping in the front garden as I work indoors to the voice of Loreena McKennitt or even the old USSR Ministry of Culture Choir (try to get a hold of one of their recordings of liturgical music.)

I think you can guess that there isn’t much that I like about living in this city. There’s so much of man’s creation being thrown in your face 24/7 that it becomes difficult to find and maintain that connection with the Creator. It’s just kind of ironic that in order to maintain some kind of equilibrium I have to walk around town with another one of man’s latest gadgets plugged into my ears.

AMDG

Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” (Matthew 19:21 RSV)

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I know that a number of my friends and acquaintances are going to accuse me of religious intolerance and Catholic superiority, but hold off for a bit.

The feast of St. Francis is big stuff here in NYC, among Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Even non-Christians go in for the feast. The Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine, right down the road apiece, has a huge, almost Noah’s Ark type procession into the church and New Yorkers of all stripes come with their house pets to wait outside the cathedral to have them blessed. St. Francis who I’ve just found out is the patron saint of the environment, has been since the sixties the unofficial patron saint of hippies, which is probably why he’s so popular here in the Upper West Side.

Anyway, last night I went to a service with a few members of a Lutheran congregation in the area. They had decided to observe the saint’s feast day with a vigil prayer. As I joined in the prayer, I realized that, hey, these folks are really looking for the truths that are contained within the teachings of the Catholic Church. They just can’t acknowledge it. It was as if they were trying to find something by continuing to grope around in the dark when the light switch was right in front of them, a finger’s length away.

There was a discussion of the Beatitudes, especially about the meaning of poverty of spirit. But of course, without the richness of Catholic teachings on the meaning of poverty as a foundation for the discussion, the conversation focused on St. Francis’ material poverty, and that he chose it to “be in solidarity with the poor.” The necessity of detachment from material possessions for the purification of the soul is a very basic part of Catholic spiritual formation, and the bedrock of Franciscan spirituality. But if you’ve never the yearly discussion of “What are you giving up for Lent?” detachment is probably not a part of your spiritual vocabulary. Without that understanding, one cannot discuss the spirituality of St. Francis with any depth. I felt a little sad for them, but what could I say?

Actually I knew what to say, but I also knew that anything I said would have been resented. All I could do, can do, is pray that one day they can connect with the humility that St. Francis lived so beautifully to turn on that light switch that’s right in front of them.

AMDG

“For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of man be in his day. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.” (Luke 17:24-25 RSV)

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There was a brief thread in Catholic Pages this week about the state of Christianity in Canada. It began with a YouTube video Degeneration and continued with an article which excerpted material from the book What Happened to Christian Canada? by Mark A. Knoll.

What I found interesting in the article is what Mark Knoll says may be the reason for the abandoning of the faith that seems to have taken by Canadian Christians. Back in the sixties and seventies, social justice issues became the focus of much attention in the mainline Christian churches of North America. To know love and serve Christ became to know love and serve your neighbor. All well and good, but in the focus on neighbor, many began to loose focus on Christ. So when responsibility for many of those initiative moved outside of the church to government or private sector entities, the young people who had been drawn into the churches by those initiatives followed, leaving the churches empty.

It seem to me that many of my “faith friends” here in NYC seem to be following the same path. More and more, Christ is being replaced by the community. Anyway, I’ll link to the thread here.

AMDG

“Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking some one to devour.” (1Peter 5:8 RSV)

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We are at war against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Well at least that’s how our sojourn here on earth used to be represented. There was “The Church Triumphant” in heaven and “The Church Militant” here on earth. Those of us still in the flesh were waging constant battle against attacks on our immortal souls, from within our own wounded nature as well as from the world around us. Now we are “The Pilgrim Church”, making a spiritual journey.

Not that I have any argument with the idea of life being a spiritual pilgrimage. Just that we should not think that the battle against the fallen nature of humanity has ended. The term “Church Militant” may not seem to be politically correct, but that’s because we’ve misinterpreted the meaning.

That’s why I’m happy to have discovered The Spiritual Combat by Dom Lorenzo Scupoli. I’ve been following along with the exegesis on the podcast Into the Deep (they actually began back in January, but I decided to join in just last week), but I think I really need a director to work through this, as it’s pretty heavy-duty stuff. I wish I had know about this work when I first began direction ten years ago. Back then all I knew was The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, which did not suite me at all. It seems to me that the Exercises are too much about personal feelings and impression, which make them very amenable to a “New Age” approach. The Combat is much more direct in what we must do to address the state of our souls. Nothing “New Age-y” about that.

Still-

AMDG

“Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (Matt 10:16 RSV)

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Last week I bought a container of cherry flavored toothpaste. The fact that it was fuchsia pink made me suspicious, but it was being sold as toothpaste for adults, and since there were no other choices at that store, I took a risk and bought it. I should have known better.

It seems to me that our culture has been selling us a false bill of goods for at least the last half century, and we’ve all been fooled. Back in the sixties it was called the “youth culture”, it’s still the culture today. It’s one that keeps folks seeing themselves as children well into adulthood.

Before I get branded as just another nutty conspiracy theorist, let me recommend the book Architects of the Culture of Death by Donald De Marco and Benjamin Wiker, which details, in a series of fourteen short biographies, the progression, or rather, deterioration, to the condition we find our culture in today. Margaret Mead, a woman who shaped much of my thinking as a young girl, was one of the fourteen. But it’s the portrait given of Hugh Hefner is important here. Moral judgments aside, it’s easy to see that the impetus behind the whole Playboy phenomenon is the notion that a man need never grow up, he can remain an adolescent for his entire life. An adolescent who has no responsibility for wife or children, whose only concern is himself. His female counterpart is Helen Gurley Brown, who postulated the same lifestyle for women, portrayed so well in the television series Sex and the City. In this lifestyle model an adult woman has a job, a number of close girlfriends, and a series of boyfriends from whom she seeks emotional and sexual gratification, without the encumbrance of marriage.

Put all this together with the latest “advances” in available “birth control”. Now a woman need have no more than three or four periods a year. Next step will be for them to disappear altogether, i.e., to render women sterile and “girl like” for her entire life.

Of course the ultimate agenda is population control, a program which seems to have been wildly successful in western Europe. The fact that a number of those countries seem to be facing population collapse has not deterred them from continuing the contraception/abortion campaign. They’ve convinced India and China to join in with them, now if they could only get those pesky Africans and Latin Americans to get with the program.

I remember quite clearly being in the fifth grade and being marched into the auditorium one day to see a movie about life in the year 2000. The film began with a woman and her son walking on an empty beach, the boy, who was about my age at the time, turned to his mother as asked “Mom, how old are you?” The woman the bent over and traced her age in the sand, which was exactly what my age was to be in the year 2000. Of course the movie then had my undivided attention. That first image of the mother and son, (the woman seeming rather old to have a son so young), sans father, remains emblazoned in my mind decades later. I often wonder who produced that film, and how many young children throughout this country were exposed to it. I know it molded my perception of what the future would be for me.

So try and tell me that there hasn’t been a plot afoot to deceive the culture.

AMDG

“I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” (Rom 8:18 RSV)

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A collection of her correspondences will be published next month. TIME Online has an article that appeared today, which examines the darkness of faith that persisted for the last fifty years of her life. I’ve heard this before, but am eager to get my hands on the book to read about it in depth.

AMDG