A Day Spent in the Company of Heroes

I spent yesterday at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, IN attending the ND Response rally countering the University's invitation to President Obama to be the commencement speaker and receive an honorary law degree. The demonstration was thoughtful, well planned and organized, and, above all, deeply Catholic.

As with all Catholic demonstrations, this one was centered on Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, providing overnight Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, Benediction with the Blessed Sacrament (which packed the tiny chapel in Alumni Hall to overflowing), and Mass on the South Quad.

The event was well attended by a well behaved crowd of several thousand including such Catholic heavyweights as Bishop John D'Arcy, Father Frank Pavone, Father John Corapi and Dr Charles Rice. The speakers for the event were thoughtfully chosen. Especially touching was the address of Lacy Dodd, who took the stage accompanied by her nine year old daughter, Mary. Lacy is a 1999 graduate of the University who found herself pregnant three months before her graduation and rejected the abortion option favored by her child's father. Most inspiring, though, was the address of Fr John J. Raphael SSJ, the black principal of St Augustine High School in New Orleans, LA, who took the podium to refute the ridiculous charges of racism levelled at the organizers of this demonstration. Father Raphael laid the racist charges back at the feet of the Presidential Administration, pointing out that nearly a quarter of all abortions take place among the black community which comprises on 13% of the US population. His address brought the crowd to its feet and left them there for the duration. Keep checking http://www.ndresponse.com/ for transcripts of the speeches.

The Rosary in the Grotto was a beautiful event, with meditations on the Glorious Mysteries provided by Father Frank Pavone, president of Priests for Life.

Father Jenkins, since you have an spare Laetare Medal laying around around gathering dust, why not present it to ND Response for putting the Catholic principles they learned at Notre Dame into action?

I spent yesterday in the company of true Catholic heroes. My congratulations and best wishes to the Class of 2009. God bless you all, you are the hope of the American Church!

More thoughts on this event to follow. Til next time, all the best. Joe

Christianity: Narcotic or Cure?

My friend, my very old friend, wrote a while back to me after noticing some of the posts to my Face Book account asking "Have you lost your mind? I just can't believe in this overly simplified, pre-packaged narcotic for reality...while I remain basically spiritual in my outlook on life, I can't buy the myth of organized Christianity...to quote Jimmy Buffet 'the god's honest truth is it ain't that simple'..."

Perhaps I have lost my mind. But, if that is so, then the disease, to borrow a phrase from Edgar Allen Poe, has "sharpened my senses, not dulled them or destroyed them". Then again, perhaps the illness is not mine. I think that for the first time in years I now see more clearly. Perhaps, just perhaps, the medication is a cure and not a narcotic. Does the possibility exist that the medication, the "pre-packaged" therapy, which my friend so decries is a cure for my ills? Is it possible that the places where I have sought solace before, that the cures of the world, are what induces narcosis?

I think it not only likely, but highly probable. I've tried finding solace in the things of the world, and they availed me nought. My drinking didn't work, my sexual escapades got me nowhere. You know about that. Talk about pre-packaged. Whatever makes me feel better. Forget the common good. Forget the intrinsic dignity of every human being. There's no need to worry about others. Self-restraint, self-discipline, self-control count for nothing. There's your narcotic, my friend. Numbness.

Now I feel, and what I feel is something quite different from narcosis. It's not pre-packaged in the sense that you think, it's more a regimen, and as part of that regimen, I'm required to feel outside myself. My spirituality requires me to feel faith and hope and love. Faith in a God who has made and keeps His promises; hope for the world He has made and redeemed; love for Him and for those He has put into this world with me.

Most of those with whom I argue see Christianity as anything but simple, and I'm inclined to agree. Greater minds than mine have grappled with its truths and been left stuttering. St Thomas Aquinas, the capo Di tutti capo of Catholic thinkers, after a lifetime of thought and writing of Christianity admitted at the end that his writings were as but straw compared to the Truth. Take a read of Augustine, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, John Paul II and tell me then that you don't begin to see the marvelous and beautiful tapestry that is Christianity. If this is a drug, then I implore you to pump my veins full of it and more! Let me pop some Chesterton and snort some Faustina Kowlaska, pour me a long draft of CS Lewis and let me drink it to its dregs, then perhaps a blunt of Richard J Neuhaus spiked with JRR Tolkien for good measure. And still I'd not be sated.

Now I see, my friend. Dimly, though, as through a glass and darkly. I see that though I suffer, others suffer more. It is through that suffering I see that all this is real, for no man would wish suffering to be if he could will it not to be so. But I see a God who suffers with us to bring about the redemption of those whom He loves. In my suffering, in our suffering, we can unite ourselves to Him in pursuit of that goal. There is no deadening of the pain; in fact, it is felt more acutely. There is hope, though, and in the end "he who has hope lives differently."

Let me know what you think, my friend, and til next time, all the best. Joe

Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan

Anyone catch Archbishop Dolan's installation to the Archdiocese of New York the other day. The Big Apple's gotta winner there. You can plainly see that he is a man of the people..all the people. My favorite passage from his homily:

"[T]he Resurrection goes on, as His Church continues to embrace and protect the dignity of every human person, the sanctity of human life, from the tiny baby in the womb to the last moment of natural passing into eternal life. As the Servant of God Terrence Cardinal Cooke wrote, “Human life is no less sacred or worthy of respect because it is tiny, pre-born, poor, sick, fragile, or handicapped.” Yes, the Church is a loving mother who has a zest for life and serves life everywhere, but she can become a protective “mamma bear” when the life of her innocent, helpless cubs is threatened. Everyone in this mega-community is a somebody with an extraordinary destiny. Everyone is a somebody in whom God has invested an infinite love. That is why the Church reaches out to the unborn, the suffering, the poor, our elders, the physically and emotionally challenged, those caught in the web of addictions."

Follow this man, New York.

Til next time, all the best. Joe

The Day After

While there must be a million or so reflections available on the Passion event of Good Friday, and probably even more on the glorious Resurrection event of Easter Sunday, I've never read many reflections on Holy Saturday. It's never really puzzled me before, but for some reason this year it's really kinda nagging at me.

During morning prayer this morning ( well, earlier this afternoon actually), my mind kinda kept going back to that Saturday in 30 AD when the world held its breath. My imagination replayed what that day may have been like.

For the followers of the itinerant upstart preacher, Jesus of Nazareth, fear and panic. Scattered and in hiding, stunned, expecting the tramp of boots onto their doorstep at any second accompanied by the shouts of soldiery they thought were probably on the way to round them up. Debating what was next for them, wondering exactly what their role in the culture might be now. They must have thought their decision to throw in with this Jesus character a big mistake. I would think that they decided that they would probably just live the easier teachings of their rabbi quietly, personally, and stay under the radar, They figured it'd be much safer not to engage the culture with the challenging things they'd heard from their Master.

Their leader, Simon Peter, had denied the Master. Perhaps he thought the Teacher was just that, a teacher and nothing more. Certainly he was not, as Peter had earlier thought, "the Holy One of God".

Even the youngest, John, the beloved one, must have had his doubts. Not only that, he now had responsibility for supporting a mother, he had to consider that. What a heavy responsibility for a young teen.

Only the Mother, Mary, although inconsolable over the death of her only Son, held onto hope. Her only words through her constant tears were in disagreement with the others. He would fulfill His promises.

Other Jews celebrated the Passover Sabbath. Certainly the dinner conversation turned around the events of the previous day. The consensus would have been that the high priest had upheld the Law. The Law had been vindicated, Judaism was safe from another heretical upstart. But what a row that had been. King of the Jews, indeed! How dare He!

Still, there were some who wondered if maybe He could have been the One. Joseph of Arimithea must have been one. Simon the Cyrene had looked into the eyes of the condemned as he helped to bear the awful burden of the Cross and must have seen something there. Veronica gazed at the image on her apron and wondered. It certainly wasn't a peaceful Passover. Little did they realize that the Passover had been fulfilled. The journey out of Egypt was over.

Among the Romans there was talk as well. I can imagine a Roman Richard Dawkins crowing over the silliness of the whole "God Delusion", saying that all religions, even the religions of Rome were merely superstitions, that their only purpose were to enslave and to hold Man in thrall to the State and that Man could accomplish his own salvation if only we all embraced the unity ofPax Romana. Pax Romana, that is the doctrine that saves. All that foolishness about a God was unneeded, everything could be explained away as coincidence and mass hysteria.

But, even among the Pagans of Rome a seed had been planted. Not far from Jerusalem a centurion heard the news of the events of the previous Friday, scratching his head in puzzlement as he watched a young servant, recently recovered from a life threatening illness carried out his duties about the house. And deep in the fortress of Antonia, in a barracks room in the heart of the Roman garrison, a grizzled veteran of the garrison sat with his commander and stared with wonder at the lance with with the soldier had pierced the Condemned and wondered.

Jerusalem, although a relative backwater of the empire, was still the commercial center of the Judean region, especially during the Passover season. Greek merchants and other Gentiles flocked to the city for trade, sensing a quick profit. Among them too word of the goings on of the previous day spread, and that had their opinions. The forerunners of Daniel Dennet, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens could be found among them. These men would say that there was no need for religion, it just poisons everything, and besides this Jesus character wasn't so good, he embraced riff raff, prostitutes and the like. We can be saved by the philosophies of men.

"There is nothing new under the sun." Two thousand years after the events of the Friday, we still have those Dawkins and Dennets, those Harris and Hitchens among us. They've always been there, they always will be, and their message is still the same, that Man is sufficient unto himself. But those of us who examine history with a critical eye can see otherwise. We can see that somehow, we aren't what we were intended to be. Whether it be a "selfish gene" or original sin, something, somewhere, sometime has gone amiss.

We all speak of progress. Progress implies a fixed destination. A destination implies a planner who sets the destination. Planning implies intelligence. No, it's not the selfish gene that's amiss, it's we ourselves. Science and philosophy are not the answers, the answer is tomorrow. The answer is Easter Sunday. The answer is the Resurrection.

Happy Easter! He is Risen!

Til next time, all the best. Joe

The Democracy of the Dead

On 20 July 1997, the USS Constitution, the oldest warship in the US Navy, and the oldest warship still afloat made her first unassisted cruise in 116 years. One of the greatest challenges facing her commander was training a crew to sail her since no one alive had ever sailed a fighting frigate. With the help of a naval training manual published in 1819, it still took nearly ten years of planning and training before a crew was ready to man her for her forty minute cruise. The skills required to safely operate such an antiquated piece of equipment had languished and been forgotten.

On a more personal level, in the early 1990's, while assigned to National Guard unit in Cleveland, I participated in a project to restore portions of an old retaining wall in Wade Park. The wall had been constructed by the Works Project Administration (WPA) in the 1930's as part of Roosevelt's New Deal. The wall was a massive structure, several hundred feet long, terraced, and 20-25 feet high at its highest. The most impressive feature of the wall, though, was the method used in its construction. I can't recall the name of the construction method, but it consisted of lying limestone stones one on top of the other, fitting them together carefully without mortar. We were unable to do much restoration of that wall because the method hadn't been practiced in decades. No one knew how to do it. It was a skill which had been lost since it hadn't been used in decades.

Now you may ask, what exactly do these two incidents have to do with anything? Well, here's my point. The tradition had been broken. People had thought that we had progressed beyond the point of needing to know how to sail wooden fighting ships or build mortarless masonry walls. Nobody thought it necessary that sailing skills, nobody thought it necessary that such masonry skills be handed on to the next generations. Certainly, they thought, we have progressed beyond the need for that. Most likely it was those to whom these traditions were to be handed as opposed to those who were to hand them on who denied their relevance.

For we moderns (or more accurately, I suppose, for we post-moderns), the word "tradition" is laden with all kinds of baggage. It conjures up images of ancient rituals whose origins are lost in the mists of time; we think of rustic folk dances, or perhaps hidebound bureaucrats, maybe the reading room filled with cigar smoking elderly men at an old fashioned gentleman's club. But an examination for the origins of the word itself belies such notions. From the Latin tradere, meaning "to hand on" the word "tradition" shares a lineage with the word "trade". In that sense then, tradition is our legacy. Like heirlooms, traditions are possessions for which our forebears have paid dearly which generally had great meaning for them and which they believed would be of great values to their posterity.

Traditions have found their way into our culture at multiple points. They are to be found in our speech and in our laws, in our music and in our literature. Chesterton says of tradition that it is "...an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead....All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of their birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death."

But, like the sailor and the stonemason, we have decided that the skills and opinions of our forebears are of little account. We have decided that we have progressed beyond the point of needing the opinions of our fathers. We have discarded their hard earned wisdom and disregarded the foundations they established for our benefit. By doing so, we risk much. We will have to relearn that life is valuable, but not a commodity. We will have to rediscover that monogamy is unitive, not bondage. We will have to rediscover that sons are a blessing and daughters are a treasure, not burdens. That's just for starters.

Look around and see those areas where the disregard of the opinions of those who have gone before us have degraded our culture. That disregard is bringing us closer to a precipice that our ancestors saw clearly. The economic straits we currently find ourselves in is just the beginning. More hard lessons lie ahead.

To paraphrase the Bard of Avon, "Ah, the tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive..." ourselves.

Til next time, all the best. Joe

A Man of Honor?

The Catholic blogosphere is all abuzz, and rightly so, over the invitation extended to President Obama to speak at the University of Notre Dame's commencement and to recieve from that University an honorary law degree. The president of the university, Father John Jenkins, has borne the brunt of the anger for the decision of the university to bestow these honors upon the President, and again rightly so. But few have taken the President to task for his acceptance of these invitations. A portion of the balme for this scandal rests with th President.

President Obama is an intelligent man. He knows full well that many of his views and some of the policies he has impemented, particularly those views and policies regarding the snactity of human life, fail to square with the teachings of the Catholic Church. Further, he knows that the University of Notre Dame is the flagship institution of Catholic higher learning in the United States. Honor requires that such knowledge would preclude acceptance of any awards from such an institution. His acceptance of the university's invitation is the equivalent of Francis Cardinal George agreeing to accept the Margaret Sanger Award from Planned Parenthood.

Unfortunately, it seems that the concensus is that it would be impolite for the university to disinvite the President now that the invitation has been extended and accepted. I disgaree. It's never to late to acknowedge a mistake. There is, however, another honorable way out of this dilemna. The President could prove himself a man of honor, as opposed to a crass politician, and decline the invitation. If he wishes to avoid admitting having made a mistake he could beg off on the grounds of pressing issues of state, it's not like there aren't plenty of those around these days. We'd understand his hesitance to admit error.

Til next time, all the best. Joe

Missing in Action

Sorry I've been away so long, dear readers. I promise not to let that happen again. No excuses, just a promise that I won't let it happen again. A new post is in the works even as we speak.

In the mean time, I urge anyone reading this to let Notre Dame University know the mind of true Catholics on the matter of President Obama delivering the commencement address and recieving an honorary law degree from America's foremost institution of Catholic higher learning by signing the petition at http://www.notredamscandal/.com .

Til next time, all the best. Joe