Catholic Metanarrative

Friday, February 27, 2009

Article: Germany and Italy Have Done It — Shouldn’t We?

FATHER TADEUSZ PACHOLCZYK

Laws like those in Germany and Italy, while they would not stop every injustice done to embryos, could go a long way towards stemming the tide and assuring that further forms of laboratory barbarism and human exploitation do not become commonplace.

Nearly 500,000 human embryos are currently stored in liquid nitrogen tanks in fertility clinics in the United States, a number comparable to the population of a mid-sized city like Cleveland or Tucson. By contrast, only a handful of human embryos have been frozen and held in storage tanks in the entire country of Germany.

The reason for this striking difference lies in the fact that Germany enacted an Embryo Protection Law during the 1990's which included provisions outlawing the freezing of human embryos. Italy has similar legislation in force. Both countries closely regulate in vitro fertilization treatments, and allow the production of no more than 3 embryos at a time, all of which must be implanted into their mother. Both countries forbid the production of extra embryos, experimentation on embryos, embryo cloning, and genetic testing of embryos.

The United States has largely failed to establish any reasonable legal or ethical framework to regulate its own multi-billion dollar infertility industry, and the result has been aptly described as a kind of "Wild West of Infertility," a lawless frontier where nearly anything goes, including the routine freezing of scores of humans who are still in their embryonic stages. Indeed, this practice remains one of the great ongoing humanitarian tragedies of our time.

Not much ethical reflection is needed to appreciate the serious injustice involved in freezing another human being. The freezing and thawing process subjects embryonic humans to significant risk, and up to 50% of embryos may not survive the process. In many cases, stored embryos end up being abandoned by the couples who create them, condemned to a kind of perpetual stasis, and locked in time in the harsh wasteland of their liquid-nitrogen orphanages. Countless parents then find themselves caught in agonizing dilemmas about what to do with their offspring held in suspended animation. This injustice, once it has been foisted upon human embryos, is then used by others to argue on behalf of an even more egregious offense against their dignity, namely, the destructive strip-mining of embryos to acquire their stem cells.

The argument that embryos will "just be thrown away anyway" has been very effective in convincing lawmakers and politicians to rally on behalf of scientists who desire to destroy human embryos for research. By appealing to a kind of American pragmatism that tries to "maximize return on investments," the embryo's subjugation has become nearly complete in our society, as he or she is reduced to a mere "thing," an object to be manipulated -- valuable primarily for how he or she can serve the interests and desires of others.

While the language of embryonic stem-cell scientists and their supporters remains thoroughly professional, it still exudes, in the words of Rosen, “an unmistakable whiff of cannibalism.”

Dr. Chi Dang, a professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, building on the argument that frozen embryos will otherwise be discarded, put it this way during a recent interview: "The question is: Is it ethically more acceptable to destroy these embryos by pouring acid on them, or do you deploy these clusters of cells to create new cell lines that could benefit us in the future?" By promoting such false dichotomies and constructing these kinds of ethical sand castles, we have begun to slip into a kind of complacency, a deadening moral slumber regarding our most basic duties towards the weakest and smallest of humans.

Writing in the New York Times, Gary Rosen once observed that even a basic course in Ethics 101 ought to be enough to let us see the problem here, namely, that we should not be treating other people as a means to our own ends, but as ends in themselves. Yet even the most basic ethics can be hard to square with the efficient, cold, clinical discussions of "harvesting embryos" and "deploying clusters of cells." While the language of embryonic stem-cell scientists and their supporters remains thoroughly professional, it still exudes, in the words of Rosen, "an unmistakable whiff of cannibalism."

In the United States today, we urgently need Embryo Protection Laws. The temptation to dehumanize our own human brothers and sisters is a perennial one, hearkening back to the time in our country when slaves could be considered three-fifths of a person for purposes of congressional representation. Treating embryos as zero-fifths of a person constitutes an even more deplorable human rights violation. The smallest members of our human family deserve legal protection. Laws like those in Germany and Italy, while they would not stop every injustice done to embryos, could go a long way towards stemming the tide and assuring that further forms of laboratory barbarism and human exploitation do not become commonplace.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk. "Verbal Engineering and the Swaying of Public Conscience." Making Sense Out of Bioethics (February, 2009).

Father Tad Pacholczyk writes a monthly column, Making Sense out of Bioethics, which appears in various diocesan newspapers across the country. This article is reprinted with permission of the author, Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D.

THE AUTHOR

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. earned his doctorate in neuroscience from Yale and did post-doctoral work at Harvard. He is a priest of the diocese of Fall River, MA, and serves as the Director of Education at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. See www.ncbcenter.org.

The National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC) has a long history of addressing ethical issues in the life sciences and medicine. Established in 1972, the Center is engaged in education, research, consultation, and publishing to promote and safeguard the dignity of the human person in health care and the life sciences. The Center is unique among bioethics organizations in that its message derives from the official teaching of the Catholic Church: drawing on the unique Catholic moral tradition that acknowledges the unity of faith and reason and builds on the solid foundation of natural law.

The Center's staff consults regularly on life science issues and medical issues with the Vatican, the U.S. bishops and public policy-makers, hospitals and international organizations of all faiths. Vatican agencies including the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Pontifical Academy for Life and the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers consult with the Center to help formulate magisterial teaching.

The Center publishes two journals (Ethics & Medics and The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly) and at least one book annually on issues such as physician-assisted suicide, abortion, cloning, and embryonic stem cell research. The latest publication is an update of its Handbook on Critical Life Issues, which examines such topics as the theology of suffering, euthanasia, organ transplantation, and stem cell research.

Inspired by the harmony of faith and reason, the Quarterly unites faith in Christ to reasoned and rigorous reflection upon the findings of the empirical and experimental sciences. While the Quarterly is committed to publishing material that is consonant with the magisterium of the Catholic Church, it remains open to other faiths and to secular viewpoints in the spirit of informed dialogue.

Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. is a member of the advisory board of the Catholic Education Resource Center.

Copyright © 2009 Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D.

Article: Do what you are doing

FATHER GEORGE W. RUTLER

Lent is a time to increase the power of perception.

Alexander Fleming around 1909.
He discovered penicillin in 1928.

The discovery of penicillin as an antibiotic has been called the most important medical discovery of the last thousand years. The extraction from mold of the genus Penicillium has saved at least two hundred million lives so far. Penicillin has been around for millions of years but its antibacterial properties were noticed for the first time on September 28, 1928, when Alexander Fleming saw bacteria-free mold in a laboratory dish which he had retrieved from a pile of rubbish in St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, London. He paid attention. No one until then had.

Fleming was the son of a Scottish farmer and, learning Latin as a Catholic student, he knew the meaning of age quod agis. As a maxim, "do what you are doing" means to pay attention to ordinary things and extraordinary things may result.

When Jesus walked among men, most did not pay much attention to him precisely because he seemed ordinary. "He sighed from the depth of his spirit" and said, "Why does this generation seek a sign? Amen I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation" (Mark 8:12). The truth behind miracles is in the often unnoticed details. For instance, the miraculous feedings of the five thousand and four thousand were not as important as the twelve and seven baskets of fragments left over, which represent the Apostles and the sacraments. "Do you not yet understand or comprehend? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear?" (Mark 8:17-18).

Lent is a time to increase the power of perception. Small acts of penance and good confessions in this season are meant to increase that power. Instead of attempting extraordinary things, it is better to do more intensely the ordinary practices of Christian life: prayer, almsgiving, study, and evangelism. Age quod agis.

Jesus asked, "Have I been so long with you, Philip, and do you still not understand?" (John 14:9).

Shortly before Cardinal Dulles died last December, he reflected on how "doing what you are doing" with love in the normal process of living can lead to the most remarkable discoveries of God's power in human weakness. It is simply a matter of paying attention:

"Suffering and diminishment are not the greatest of evils but are normal ingredients in life, especially in old age. They are to be accepted as elements of a full human existence. Well into my ninetieth year I have been able to work productively. As I become increasingly paralyzed and unable to speak, I can identify with the many paralytics and mute persons in the Gospels, grateful for the loving and skillful care I receive and for the hope of everlasting life in Christ. If the Lord now calls me to a period of weakness, I know well that his power can be made perfect in infirmity. 'Blessed be the name of the Lord.'"


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Father George William Rutler. Weekly Column for February 20, 2009.

Reprinted with permission of Father George W. Rutler.

Photo: Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum

THE AUTHOR

Father Rutler received priestly ordination in 1981. Born in 1945 and reared in the Episcopal tradition, Father Rutler was an Episcopal priest for nine years. He was received into the Catholic Church in 1979 and was sent to the North American College in Rome for seminary studies. Father Rutler graduated from Dartmouth, where he was a Rufus Choate Scholar, and took advanced degrees at the Johns Hopkins University and the General Theological Seminary. He holds several degrees from the Gregorian and Angelicum Universities in Rome, including the Pontifical Doctorate in Sacred Theology, and studied at the Institut Catholique in Paris. In England, in 1988, the University of Oxford awarded him the degree Master of Studies. From 1987 to 1989 he was regular preacher to the students, faculty, and townspeople of Oxford. Cardinal Egan appointed him Pastor of the Church of Our Saviour, effective September 17, 2001.

Since 1988 his weekly television program has been broadcast worldwide on EWTN. Father Rutler has published 16 books, including: Coincidentally: Unserious Reflections on Trivial Connections, A Crisis of Saints: Essays on People and Principles, Brightest and Best, Saint John Vianney: The Cure D'Ars Today, Crisis in Culture, and Adam Danced: The Cross and the Seven Deadly Sins.

Copyright © 2009 Father George W. Rutler

Article: The Ways of the Desert: Biblical Reflection for 1st Sunday of Lent 2009

FATHER THOMAS ROSICA, CSB

Let us begin with Jesus in the desert -- the Gospel for the first Sunday of Lent.

Does anyone really look forward to Lent? What is it about Lent that excites us? What aspects of the Lenten journey test us? The Scriptural readings for this season are carefully chosen so as to replay salvation history before our very eyes.

Let us begin with Jesus in the desert -- the Gospel for the first Sunday of Lent. The desert sun and the pangs of hunger and thirst conjured up the demon for him. Mark presents Jesus wrestling with the power of Satan, alone and silent in the desert wastes. Mark's version of the temptations of Jesus does not mention three temptations, nor does it say that Jesus fasted. Mark's whole focus is on presenting the temptations of Jesus as part of the great struggle between good and evil, between God and Satan.

Jesus' desert experience raises important questions for us. What are some of the "desert" experiences I have experienced in my life? What desert experience am I living through right now? When and how do I find moments of contemplation in the midst of a busy life? How have I lived in the midst of my own deserts? Have I been courageous and persistent in fighting with the demons? How have I resisted transforming my own deserts into places of abundant life?

In Matthew and Luke there is an ongoing conversation, as the prince of evil attempts to turn Jesus aside from the faith and integrity at the heart of his messianic mission. But if Israel had failed in the desert, Jesus would not. His bond with his Father was too strong for even the demons of the desert to break.

In the first temptation in the desert, Jesus responds to the evil one, not by denying human dependence on sustenance (food), but rather by putting human life and the human journey in perspective. Those who follow Jesus cannot become dependent on the things of this world. When we are so dependent on material things, and not on God, we give in to temptation and sin.

God's in charge

The second temptation deals with the adoration of the devil rather than God. Jesus once again reminds the evil one that God is in control. This is important for us to hear and believe, especially when our own temptations seem to overpower us, when everything around us might indicate failure, shadows, darkness and evil. It is God who is ultimately in charge of our destiny.

We realize that we must have some spiritual space in our lives where we can strip away the false things that cling to us and breathe new life into our dreams and begin again.

In the third temptation, the devil asks for a revelation or manifestation of God's love in favor of Jesus. Jesus answers the evil one by saying that he doesn't have to prove to anyone that God loves him.

Temptation is everything that makes us small, ugly, and mean. Temptation uses the trickiest moves that the evil one can think up. The more the devil has control of us, the less we want to acknowledge that he is fighting for every millimeter of this earth. Jesus didn't let him get away with that. At the very beginning of his campaign for this world and for each one of us, Jesus openly confronted the enemy. He began his fight using the power of Scripture during a night of doubt, confusion and temptation. We must never forget Jesus' example, so that we won't be seduced by the devil's deception.

From Jesus we learn that God is present and sustaining us in the midst of test, temptation and even sinfulness. We realize that we must have some spiritual space in our lives where we can strip away the false things that cling to us and breathe new life into our dreams and begin again. We come to believe that God can take the parched surface of our hope and make it bloom. These are the lessons of the desert. That is why we need -- even in the activity of our daily lives and work, moments of prayer, of stillness, of listening to the voice of God.

We meet God in the midst of our deserts of sinfulness, selfishness, jealousy, efficiency, isolation, cynicism and despair. And in the midst of the desert we hear what God will do if we open our hearts to him and allow him to make our own deserts bloom. The ways of the desert were deep within the heart of Jesus, and it must be the same for all who would follow him.

[The readings for this Sunday are Genesis 9:8-15; 1 Peter 3:18-22 and Mark 1:12-15]


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Father Thomas Rosica, CSB "The Ways of the Desert: Biblical Reflection for 1st Sunday of Lent 2009." Zenit (February 25, 2009).

ZENIT is an International News Agency based in Rome whose mission is to provide objective and professional coverage of events, documents and issues emanating from or concerning the Catholic Church for a worldwide audience, especially the media.

Reprinted with permission from Zenit - News from Rome. All rights reserved.

THE AUTHOR

Fr. Thomas Rosica, CSB, is the CEO of the Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation and Television Network. He is also a member of the General Council of the Congregation of St. Basil. Father Rosica holds advanced degrees in Theology and Sacred Scripture from Regis College in the Toronto School of Theology [1985], the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome [1991] and the École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem [1993]. From 1994-2000 Fr. Rosica served as Executive Director and Pastor of the Newman Centre Catholic Mission at the University of Toronto. He began lecturing in Sacred Scripture at the Faculty of Theology of the University of St. Michael's College in 1990 and has continued until the present. From 1999-2003, he served as the National Director and Chief Executive Officer of World Youth Day 2002 and the Papal Visit to Canada. Father Roscia is on the advisory board of the Catholic Education Resource Center. He can be reached at: rosica@saltandlighttv.org

Copyright © 2009 Zenit


Article: Rendering Unto Caesar: The Catholic Political Vocation

ARCHBISHOP CHARLES J. CHAPUT, O.F.M. CAP.

The following lecture was delivered on Monday evening, February 23, 2009, to a standing-room only audience in St. Basil’s Collegiate Church on the campus of the University of Toronto.

I want to do three things with my time tonight. First, Father Rosica asked me to talk about some of the themes from my book, Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life. I'm happy to do that. Second, I want to talk about some of the lessons we can draw from the recent U.S. election. And third, I want to talk about the meaning of hope.

As I begin, I need to mention a couple of caveats. Here's the first caveat. Canada and the United States have a long and close friendship as neighbors. It's so long and so close that Americans often forget that our histories, our political structures and the ways we look at the world are, in some respects, very different. Obviously I'll be speaking tonight as an American, a Catholic and a bishop -- though not necessarily in that order. Some of what I say may not be useful to a Canadian audience, especially those who aren't Catholic. But I do believe that the heart of the Catholic political vocation remains the same for every believer in every country. The details of our political life change from nation to nation. But the mission of public Christian discipleship remains the same, because we all share the same baptism.

Here's the second caveat. Not much of what I say tonight will be new. In fact, I've been saying pretty much the same thing about faith and politics again and again, every year, for the past 12 years. So if you've heard it all before, please feel free to snooze. I've learned from experience, though, that Henry Ford was right when he said that "Two percent of the people think; three percent think they think, and 95 percent would rather die than think."

Ford had a pretty dark view of humanity, which I don't share. Most of the people I meet as a pastor have the brains and the talent to live very fulfilling lives. But Ford was right in one unintended way: American consumer culture is a very powerful narcotic. Moral reasoning can be hard, and TV is a great painkiller. This has political implications. Real freedom demands an ability to think, and a great deal of modern life -- not just in the United States, but all over the developed world -- seems deliberately designed to discourage that. So talking about God and Caesar, even if it wakes up just one Christian mind in an audience, is always worth the effort.

The most important fact to remember about our discussion tonight is this: As adults, each of us needs to form a strong and genuinely Catholic conscience. Then we need to follow that conscience when we vote. And then we need to take responsibility for the consequences of our vote. Nobody can do that for us. That's why really knowing, living and submitting ourselves to our Catholic faith are so important. It's the only reliable guide we have for acting in the public square as disciples of Jesus Christ.

So let's talk for a few minutes about Render Unto Caesar. When people ask me about the book, the questions usually fall into three categories. Why did I write it? What does the book say? And what does the book mean for each of us as individual Catholics? This last question will be a good doorway into talking about the U.S. election last year, but let's start at the beginning first. Why did I write this book, now?

One answer is simple. A friend asked me to do it. Back in 2004, a young attorney I know ran for public office in Colorado as a prolife Democrat. He nearly won in a heavily Republican district. But he also discovered how hard it can be to raise money, run a campaign and stay true to your Catholic convictions, all at the same time. After the election he asked me to put my thoughts about faith and politics into a form that other young Catholics could use who were thinking about a political vocation -- and it really is a "vocation."

But Ford was right in one unintended way: American consumer culture is a very powerful narcotic. Moral reasoning can be hard, and TV is a great painkiller. This has political implications.

That's where the idea started. But I also had another reason for doing the book. Frankly, I just got tired of hearing outsiders and insiders tell Catholics to keep quiet about our religious and moral views in the big public debates that involve all of us as a society. That's a kind of bullying. I don't think Catholics should accept it.

Another reason for writing the book is that when I looked around for a single source that explains the Catholic political vocation in a simple way, it just didn't exist. I found that very strange. Public life is a demanding vocation, but it's not voodoo or advanced physics. As citizens, we can never afford to abdicate our shared civic life to a political or economic elite. A nation's political life, like Christianity itself, is meant for everyone, and everyone has a duty to contribute to it. A democracy depends on the active involvement of all its citizens, not just lobbyists, experts, think tanks and the mass media. For Catholics, politics -- the pursuit of justice and the common good in the public square -- is part of the history of salvation. No one is a minor actor in that drama. Each person is important.

So what does the book say? I think the message of Render Unto Caesar can be condensed into a few basic points.

Here's the first point. For many years, studies have shown that Americans have a very poor sense of history. That's very dangerous, because as Thucydides and Machiavelli and Thomas Jefferson have all said, history matters. It matters because the past shapes the present, and the present shapes the future. If Catholics don't know history, and especially their own history as Catholics, then somebody else -- and usually somebody not very friendly -- will create their history for them.

Let me put it another way. A man with amnesia has no future and no present because he can't remember his past. The past is a man's anchor in experience and reality. Without it, he may as well be floating in space. In like manner, if we Catholics don't remember and defend our religious history as a believing people, nobody else will, and then we won't have a future because we won't have a past. If we don't know how the Church worked with or struggled against political rulers in the past, then we can't think clearly about the relations between Church and state today.

We need to be very forceful in clarifying what the words in our political vocabulary really mean. Words are important because they shape our thinking, and our thinking drives our actions.

Here's the second point, and it's a place where the Canadian and American experiences may diverge. America is not a secular state. As historian Paul Johnson once said, America was "born Protestant." It has uniquely and deeply religious roots. Obviously it has no established Church, and it has non-sectarian public institutions. It also has plenty of room for both believers and non-believers. But the United States was never intended to be a "secular" country in the radical modern sense. Nearly all the Founders were either Christian or at least religion-friendly. And all of our public institutions and all of our ideas about the human person are based in a religiously shaped vocabulary. So if we cut God out of our public life, we also cut the foundation out from under our national ideals.

Here's the third point. We need to be very forceful in clarifying what the words in our political vocabulary really mean. Words are important because they shape our thinking, and our thinking drives our actions. When we subvert the meaning of words like "the common good" or "conscience" or "community" or "family," we undermine the language that sustains our thinking about the law. Dishonest language leads to dishonest debate and bad laws.

Here's an example. We need to remember that tolerance is not a Christian virtue. Charity, justice, mercy, prudence, honesty -- these are Christian virtues. And obviously, in a diverse community, tolerance is an important working principle. But it's never an end itself. In fact, tolerating grave evil within a society is itself a form of serious evil. Likewise, democratic pluralism does not mean that Catholics should be quiet in public about serious moral issues because of some misguided sense of good manners. A healthy democracy requires vigorous moral debate to survive. Real pluralism demands that people of strong beliefs will advance their convictions in the public square -- peacefully, legally and respectfully, but energetically and without embarrassment. Anything less is bad citizenship and a form of theft from the public conversation.

Here's the fourth point. When Jesus tells the Pharisees and Herodians in the Gospel of Matthew (22:21) to "render unto the Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's," he sets the framework for how we should think about religion and the state even today. Caesar does have rights. We owe civil authority our respect and appropriate obedience. But that obedience is limited by what belongs to God. Caesar is not God. Only God is God, and the state is subordinate and accountable to God for its treatment of human persons, all of whom were created by God. Our job as believers is to figure out what things belong to Caesar, and what things belong to God -- and then put those things in right order in our own lives, and in our relations with others.

So having said all this, what does a book like Render Unto Caesar mean, in practice, for each of us as individual Catholics? It means that we each have a duty to study and grow in our faith, guided by the teaching of the Church. It also means that we have a duty to be politically engaged. Why? Because politics is the exercise of power, and the use of power always has moral content and human consequences.

We need to be very forceful in clarifying what the words in our political vocabulary really mean. Words are important because they shape our thinking, and our thinking drives our actions.

As Christians, we can't claim to love God and then ignore the needs of our neighbors. Loving God is like loving a spouse. A husband may tell his wife that he loves her, and of course that's very beautiful. But she'll still want to see the proof in his actions. Likewise if we claim to be "Catholic," we need to prove it by our behavior. And serving other people by working for justice, charity and truth in our nation's political life is one of the very important ways we do that.

The "separation of Church and state" does not mean -- and it can never mean -- separating our Catholic faith from our public witness, our political choices and our political actions. That kind of separation would require Christians to deny who we are; to repudiate Jesus when he commands us to be "leaven in the world" and to "make disciples of all nations." That kind of radical separation steals the moral content of a society. It's the equivalent of telling a married man that he can't act married in public. Of course, he can certainly do that, but he won't stay married for long.

Partly because I'm a bishop and partly because I'm older and a little bit wiser, I don't belong to any political party. As a young priest I worked on Bobby Kennedy's campaign. Later I volunteered with the 1976 and 1980 campaigns for Jimmy Carter. So if I have any partisan roots, they're in the Democratic Party. But as I say in the book, one of the lessons we need to learn from the last 50 years is that a "preferred" Catholic political party usually doesn't exist. The sooner Catholics feel at home in any political party, the sooner that party takes them for granted and then ignores their concerns. Party loyalty for the sake of habit, or family tradition, or ethnic or class interest is a form of tribalism. It's a lethal kind of moral laziness. Issues matter. Character matters. Acting on principle matters. But party loyalty for the sake of party loyalty is a dead end.

I wrote Render Unto Caesar with no interest in supporting or attacking any candidate or any political party. The goal of Render Unto Caesar was simply to describe what an authentic Catholic approach to political life looks like, and then to encourage Americans Catholics to live it. And that brings us to the 2008 election and its aftermath.

Three weeks before last November's election, I wrote the following words:

I like clarity, and there's a reason why. I think modern life, including life in the Church, suffers from a phony unwillingness to offend that poses as prudence and good manners, but too often turns out to be cowardice.

I believe that Senator Obama, whatever his other talents, is the most committed 'abortion-rights' presidential candidate of either major party since the Roe v. Wade abortion decision in 1973. [T]he party platform Senator Obama runs on this year is not only aggressively 'pro-choice;' it has also removed any suggestion that killing an unborn child might be a regrettable thing. On the question of homicide against the unborn child -- and let's remember that the great Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer explicitly called abortion 'murder' -- the Democratic platform that emerged from Denver in August 2008 is clearly anti-life.

I added that, "To suggest -- as some Catholics do -- that Senator Obama is this year's 'real' prolife candidate requires a peculiar kind of self-hypnosis, or moral confusion, or worse. To portray the 2008 Democratic Party presidential ticket as the preferred 'prolife' option is to subvert what the word 'prolife' means."

I like clarity, and there's a reason why. I think modern life, including life in the Church, suffers from a phony unwillingness to offend that poses as prudence and good manners, but too often turns out to be cowardice. Human beings owe each other respect and appropriate courtesy. But we also owe each other the truth -- which means candor.

President Obama is a man of intelligence and some remarkable gifts. He has a great ability to inspire, as we saw from his very popular visit to Canada just this past week. But whatever his strengths, there's no way to reinvent his record on abortion and related issues with rosy marketing about unity, hope and change. Of course, that can change. Some things really do change when a person reaches the White House. Power ennobles some men. It diminishes others. Bad policy ideas can be improved. Good policy ideas can find a way to flourish. But as Catholics, we at least need to be honest with ourselves and each other about the political facts we start with.

Unfortunately when it comes to the current administration that will be very hard for Catholics in the United States, and here's why. A spirit of adulation bordering on servility already exists among some of the same Democratic-friendly Catholic writers, scholars, editors and activists who once accused prolifers of being too cozy with Republicans. It turns out that Caesar is an equal opportunity employer.

I think Catholics -- and I mean here mainly American Catholics -- need to remember four simple things in the months ahead.

First, all political leaders draw their authority from God. We owe no leader any submission or cooperation in the pursuit of grave evil. In fact, we have the duty to change bad laws and resist grave evil in our public life, both by our words and our non-violent actions. The truest respect we can show to civil authority is the witness of our Catholic faith and our moral convictions, without excuses or apologies.

It's instructive to note that the one lesson many activists on the American cultural left learned from their loss in the 2004 election -- and then applied in 2008 -- was how to use a religious vocabulary while ignoring some of the key beliefs and values that religious people actually hold dear.

Second, in democracies, we elect public servants, not messiahs. It's worth recalling that despite two ugly wars, an unpopular Republican president, a fractured Republican party, the support of most of the American news media and massively out-spending his opponent, our new president actually trailed in the election polls the week before the economic meltdown. This subtracts nothing from the legitimacy of his office. It also takes nothing away from our obligation to respect the president's leadership.

But it does place some of today's talk about a "new American mandate" in perspective. Americans, including many Catholics, elected a gifted man to fix an economic crisis. That's the mandate. They gave nobody a mandate to retool American culture on the issues of marriage and the family, sexuality, bioethics, religion in public life and abortion. That retooling could easily happen, and it clearly will happen -- but only if Catholics and other religious believers allow it. It's instructive to note that the one lesson many activists on the American cultural left learned from their loss in the 2004 election -- and then applied in 2008 -- was how to use a religious vocabulary while ignoring some of the key beliefs and values that religious people actually hold dear.

Here's the third thing to remember. It doesn't matter what we claim to believe if we're unwilling to act on our beliefs. What we say about our Catholic faith is the easy part. What we do with it shapes who we really are. Many good Catholics voted for President Obama. Many voted for Senator McCain. Both parties have plenty of decent people in their ranks.

But when we hear that 54 percent of American Catholics voted for President Obama last November, and that this somehow shows a sea change in their social thinking, we can reasonably ask: How many of them practice their faith on a regular basis? And when we do that, we learn that most practicing Catholics actually voted for Senator McCain. Of course, that doesn't really tell us whether anyone vo;ted for either candidate for the right reasons. Nobody can do a survey of the secret places of the human heart. But it does tell us that numbers can be used to prove just about anything. We won't be judged on our knowledge of poll data. We'll be judged on whether we proved it by our actions when we said "I am a Catholic, and Jesus Christ is Lord."

Here's the fourth and final thing to remember, and there's no easy way to say it. The Church in the United States has done a poor job of forming the faith and conscience of Catholics for more than 40 years. And now we're harvesting the results -- in the public square, in our families and in the confusion of our personal lives. I could name many good people and programs that seem to disprove what I just said. But I could name many more that do prove it, and some of them work in Washington.

The problem with mistakes in our past is that they compound themselves geometrically into the future unless we face them and fix them. The truth is, the American electorate is changing, both ethnically and in age. And unless Catholics have a conversion of heart that helps us see what we've become -- that we haven't just "assimilated" to American culture, but that we've also been absorbed and bleached and digested by it -- then we'll fail in our duties to a new generation and a new electorate. And a real Catholic presence in American life will continue to weaken and disappear.

Every new election cycle I hear from unhappy, self-described Catholics who complain that abortion is too much of a litmus test. But isn't that exactly what it should be? One of the defining things that set early Christians apart from the pagan culture around them was their respect for human life; and specifically their rejection of abortion and infanticide. We can't be Catholic and be evasive or indulgent about the killing of unborn life. We can't claim to be "Catholic" and "pro-choice" at the same time without owning the responsibility for where the choice leads -- to a dead unborn child. We can't talk piously about programs to reduce the abortion body count without also working vigorously to change the laws that make the killing possible. If we're Catholic, then we believe in the sanctity of developing human life. And if we don't really believe in the humanity of the unborn child from the moment life begins, then we should stop lying to ourselves and others, and even to God, by claiming we're something we're not.

Bernanos once wrote that the optimism of the modern world, including its "politics of hope," is like whistling past a graveyard. ...Real hope "must be won. [We] can only attain hope through truth, at the cost of great effort and long patience . . . Hope is a virtue, virtus, strength; an heroic determination of the soul. [And] the highest form of hope is despair overcome."

Catholic social teaching goes well beyond abortion. In America we have many urgent issues that beg for our attention, from immigration reform to health care to poverty to homelessness. The Church in Denver and throughout the United States is committed to all these issues. We need to do a much better job of helping women who face problem pregnancies, and American bishops have been pressing our public leaders for that for more than 30 years. But we don't "help" anyone by allowing or funding an intimate, lethal act of violence. We can't build a just society with the blood of unborn children. The right to life is the foundation of every other human right -- and if we ignore it, sooner or later every other right becomes politically contingent.

One of the words we heard endlessly in the last U.S. election was "hope." I think "hope" is the only word in the English language more badly misused than "love." It's our go-to anxiety word -- as in, "I sure hope I don't say anything stupid tonight." But for Christians, hope is a virtue, not an emotional crutch or a political slogan. Virtus, the Latin root of virtue, means strength or courage. Real hope is unsentimental. It has nothing to do with the cheesy optimism of election campaigns. Hope assumes and demands a spine in believers. And that's why -- at least for a Christian -- hope sustains us when the real answer to the problems or hard choices in life is "no, we can't," instead of "yes, we can."

Seventy years ago the great French writer Georges Bernanos published a little essay called "Sermon of an Agnostic on the Feast of St. Théresè." Bernanos had a deep distrust for politics and an equally deep love for the Catholic Church. He could be brutally candid. He disliked both the right and the left. He also had a piercing sense of irony about the comfortable, the self-satisfied and the lukewarm who postured themselves as Catholic -- whether they were laypeople or clergy.

In his essay he imagined "what any decent agnostic of average intelligence might say, if by some impossible chance the [pastor] were to let him stand awhile in the pulpit [on] the day consecrated to St. Théresè of Lisieux."

"Dear brothers," says the agnostic from the pulpit, "many unbelievers are not as hardened as you imagine . . . [But when] we seek [Christ] now, in this world, it is you we find, and only you . . . It is you Christians who participate in divinity, as your liturgy proclaims; it is you 'divine men' who ever since [Christ's] ascension have been his representatives on earth. . . . You are the salt of the earth. [So if] the world loses its flavor, who is it I should blame? . . . The New Testament is eternally young. It is you who are so old . . . Because you do not live your faith, your faith has ceased to be a living thing."

Bernanos had little use for the learned, the proud or the superficially religious. He believed instead in the little flowers -- the Thérèse of Lisieuxs -- that sustain the Church and convert the world by the purity, simplicity, innocence and zeal of their faith. That kind of faith is a gift. But it's a gift each of us can ask for, and each of us will receive, if we just have the courage to choose it and then act on it. The only people who ever really change the world are saints. Each of us can be one of them. But we need to want it, and then follow the path that comes with it.

Bernanos once wrote that the optimism of the modern world, including its "politics of hope," is like whistling past a graveyard. It's a cheap substitute for real hope and "a sly form of selfishness, a method of isolating [ourselves] from the unhappiness of others" by thinking progressive thoughts. Real hope "must be won. [We] can only attain hope through truth, at the cost of great effort and long patience . . . Hope is a virtue, virtus, strength; an heroic determination of the soul. [And] the highest form of hope is despair overcome."

Anyone who hasn't noticed the despair in the world should probably go back to sleep. The word "hope" on a campaign poster may give us a little thrill of righteousness, but the world will still be a wreck when the drug wears off. We can only attain hope through truth. And what that means is this: From the moment Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life," the most important political statement anyone can make is "Jesus Christ is Lord."

We serve Caesar best by serving God first. We honor our nation best by living our Catholic faith honestly and vigorously, and bringing it without apology into the public square and its debates. We're citizens of heaven first. But just as God so loved the world that he sent his only son, so the glory and irony of the Christian life is this: The more faithfully we love God, the more truly we serve the world.

Thanks for your time tonight.

---

Fr. Thomas Rosica's Introduction of Archbishop Charles Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
University of St. Michael's College - St. Basil's Church
Monday evening, February 23, 2009

Your Grace, Archbishop Collins,
Sr. Anne Anderson, President of this venerable Basilian, Catholic, university,

Dear Friends,

On behalf of the University of St. Michael's College, the Salt and Light Catholic Television Network, the Toronto Legatus Chapter, and the Archdiocese of Toronto, it is my great pleasure to introduce this evening's speaker. Archbishop Charles J. Chaput was born September 26, 1944, in Concordia, Kansas. A Native American from the Prairie Band Potawatomi tribe, he entered the Capuchin Franciscans in 1965.

After earning a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from St. Fidelis College Seminary in Pennsylvania, in 1967, Charles Chaput pursued studies in Psychology at Catholic University in Washington D.C., in 1969. He also holds a Master of Arts in Religious Education from Capuchin College in Washington and a Master of Arts in Theology from the University of San Francisco. He was ordained to the priesthood on August 29, 1970. The young Friar Charles held several leadership roles in his Capuchin province until he was named bishop of Rapid City, South Dakota in 1988 by Pope John Paul II. Nine years later, the same Pope appointed him Archbishop of Denver, Colorado.

Catholics throughout the United States of America and indeed throughout the world have come to recognize him as an outstanding, courageous leader and champion of the dignity of human life. He is widely known for his strong, public teachings on abortion, the death penalty, immigration and against the equivocation of the truth. He is a former two-term member of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a tenure which included missions to China and Turkey. Archbishop Chaput doesn't hide from the truth and proclaims it for all to hear… even to those who didn't invite him to lead the prayers at the Democratic National Convention held in his very own city last year!

Many consider the Archdiocese of Denver to be an authentic, vibrant centre of Catholic life and culture in North America. Archbishop Chaput built on the strong foundation of World Youth Day 1993 in his own diocese and has shown the world and the Church how to reap the World Youth Day harvest in his local Church. In this regard, we have much to learn from him in Canada, and especially here in Toronto.

In his most recent book Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life, the Archbishop urges Catholics to live our faith without compromise and to use our faith as the foundation for renewing our North American society in the twenty-first century. Though written for an American audience, his message extends to all people of good will- including Canadians. He urges Catholics to deepen our commitment to Catholic teaching on abortion, the death penalty, immigration, poverty and others maters of social justice -- and to carry our faith-rooted convictions in the voting booth. Grounding our citizenship in our religious beliefs is not just a right, but a moral duty and a gift to democratic life.

Earlier this month in a major address delivered in Ireland, Archbishop Chaput ended his comments stating that it was important for pro-lifers to "be strategic." He said: "History shows that guerrilla wars, if well planned and methodically carried out, can defeat great armies. And we should never forget that the greatest 'guerrilla' leader of them all wasn't Mao (Zedong) or Che (Guevara), but a young shepherd named David, who became a king."

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome a courageous, young, dynamic and articulate Franciscan -- not a king, but a good shepherd; the Archbishop of Denver, Most Reverend Charles Chaput.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The Most Reverend Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap. "Rendering Unto Caesar: The Catholic Political Vocation." an address delivered at St. Basil's Collegiate Church at the University of Toronto (February 23, 2009).

Transcripts provided by the kind permission of Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation and Television Network.

THE AUTHOR

The Most Reverend Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., has been the archbishop of Denver, Colorado since February 18, 1997. As member of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Tribe, Archbishop Chaput is the second Native American to be ordained bishop in the United States, and the first Native American archbishop. He is the author most recently of Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life, and Living the Catholic Faith: Rediscovering the Basics.

Copyright © 2009 Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Wednesday Liturgy: Holy Water, Abstinence and Mimes

ROME, FEB. 24, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Legionary of Christ Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum university.


As Lent approaches I wish to deal with some questions which we have addressed in previous years but which are continually raised.

One refers to the novel practice of removing holy water from the stoops during Lent. We explained on March 23, 2004, why this should not be done, quoting from an official reply of the Congregation for Divine Worship (3/14/03: Prot. N. 569/00/L). To wit:

"This Dicastery is able to respond that the removing of Holy Water from the fonts during the season of Lent is not permitted, in particular, for two reasons:

"1. The liturgical legislation in force does not foresee this innovation, which in addition to being 'praeter legem' is contrary to a balanced understanding of the season of Lent, which though truly being a season of penance, is also a season rich in the symbolism of water and baptism, constantly evoked in liturgical texts.

"2. The encouragement of the Church that the faithful avail themselves frequently of the sacraments is to be understood to apply also to the season of Lent. The 'fast' and 'abstinence' which the faithful embrace in this season does not extend to abstaining from the sacraments or sacramentals of the Church.

"The practice of the Church has been to empty the Holy Water fonts on the days of the Sacred Triduum in preparation of the blessing of the water at the Easter Vigil,
and it corresponds to those days on which the Eucharist is not celebrated (i.e., Good Friday and Holy Saturday)."

Many questions refer to the nature and obligation of the Lenten fast. A fairly extensive treatment of this topic can be found March 14 and 28, 2006, in which we deal with the general rules and acceptable exceptions to the laws of fast and abstinence.

Regarding this, a priest reader from Oklahoma asked: "Is it a grave matter to eat meat, knowingly and without necessity, on a Friday in Lent?"

This is more related to moral theology than liturgy. There are sins in which the matter may be grave or not grave according to other circumstances. For example, stealing even a small sum would be grave matter if the thief knows the victim to be desperately poor and needy. It would not necessarily be grave matter, although still a sin, if it represented a slight loss.

Considering this, I would say that the act of eating meat on a Friday of Lent could be grave or venial according to other circumstances. If this act is carried out knowingly, without necessity in such a way that the Church's laws are openly despised and denigrated, then it would be grave matter and should be confessed as such.

However, there may be many circumstances that could mitigate the culpability. For example, in a religiously pluralistic society a Catholic could easily find himself invited to a gathering where refusing what was offered would deeply offend the host. Strictly speaking, he is knowingly and unnecessarily eating meat on a day of abstinence but finds himself in a social conundrum that would make his fault less grave.

Not that he is off the hook completely. A Catholic should foresee these situations and avoid them whenever possible. He should also be willing to testify and defend his faith. After all, precisely because we have a pluralistic society nobody ridicules Buddhists for vegetarianism nor Jews and Muslims for abstaining from pork. Therefore Catholics should be courageous and visible in observing our somewhat miniscule rules on the days the Church asks us to make a sacrifice.

Finally, several readers asked if it was permitted to incorporate mimes and dramas during the reading of the Passion and other Holy Week readings. We repeat what we said in April 2007: "While such elements may be incorporated into extra-liturgical events such as a Way of the Cross or catechesis, they are never permitted within the liturgy. God's Word must be heard in the silence of the soul with as little interference as possible from visual or audible distractions."

Of course, this rule applies to all seasons of the year. The liturgy is simply not the appropriate situation for such demonstrations even though they are praiseworthy and effective catechetical tools in other circumstances.

Wednesday Liturgy: Follow-up: Alternative English Texts for Mass

ROME, FEB. 24, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Legionary of Christ Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum university.


Related to our Feb. 10 comments on alternative English texts for Mass, a South African reader asked: "Is it permissible at Mass for the readings to be read from a non-Catholic version of the Bible rather than from the authorized Catholic missal or lectionary? The reason for this is that the non-Catholic version (particularly of one of St. Paul's letters) is couched in a language which is more understandable today."

The short answer is no. All scriptural texts used at Mass must be approved by both the bishops' conference and the Holy See before they can be used in a particular country.

It is possible that a translation toward which both Catholics and non-Catholics have contributed may be approved for liturgical use. For example, in 2006 the Holy See approved a lectionary based on the second Catholic edition of the New Revised Standard Version (published by Ignatius Press) for use in the Antilles.

If they so desired, other bishops' conferences could adopt, or at least allow, the liturgical use of this highly appreciated translation.

Another reader asked about other liturgical books: "I'm a little confused about the Latin and English versions of the Catholic liturgical and ritual books. Post-Trent there was the Roman Ritual, the Roman Pontifical, the Roman Missal, the Breviary, the Martyrologium, and to a lesser degree the Ceremonial of Bishops. What are they now, after Vatican II? Do these books (like the Rituale Romanum) still exist, or have the liturgical books been combined and placed into other books? What about the official Latin version of these books? I can't find them."

The books which retain an identity similar to that of the extraordinary rite, albeit in updated versions, are the missal, the Liturgy of the Hours, the Ceremonial of Bishops, and the Martyrologium. Each one of these is a distinct book.

The new rites developed after Vatican II usually had a greatly expanded selection of Scripture and several forms of carrying out the rite according to different circumstances. For this reason the rites formally contained in The Roman Pontifical (rites pertaining to the bishop) and the Roman Ritual (the principal sacraments and sacramentals) have been divided into several books.

Thus we have a book with the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, another for children, another for weddings, another for attention to the sick and dying, and so on.

As far as I know there is no official book which contains all of the rites together in a practical volume. There are some private or semiofficial publications available. For example, there is a two-volume book in English called "The Rites" which gathers all of the rites together; but it is a study version, not designed for liturgical use, and some of the translations have since been renewed. There is a very practical Spanish version which collects the most frequently used rites in a small-sized book ideal for use in places such as hospitals and homes. Similar resources may exist in other countries.

The official Latin versions of most of these books can usually be picked up in Rome or via the Internet using the Web site of the Vatican Bookstore, www.vaticanbookstore.com.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Article: Columba's Psalter (a poem)

DAN DOYLE

According to Irish tradition, Colmcille, or Columba, a monk and abbot, became obsessed by a desire to possess a particular psalter owned by a local king.

Saint Columba
521-597


He was unable to obtain it from the king, nor was he able to borrow it to make a copy of it for himself. He began stealing away with it during the night, taking it to his cell. It was said that he would hold his left hand up and that flames would rise from his fingers to give him enough light to do his copying, He was found out. Both the original and the copy were taken from him. In an angry rage he took to the field with his monastic army and slaughtered many of the kings men. He was defeated, and was ultimately exiled, forced to leave his beloved Ireland. He would not be allowed to return to Ireland until he had brought as many converts to the faith as he had left dead on the battlefield. This was the beginning of what would later be called the "White Martyrdom". It was this that started the the return of literacy and learning to the European continent after the fall of the ancient Roman Empire.


Columba's Psalter

The thing of too much beauty,
The word-winged thing, its borders
Bound in lovely, lithe colors,
Seemed alive, even gregarious.
Mystery rose from it
Like a thin ribbon of smoke
Scented with beyondness, and
I desired it with all my being.
The Ri* would not sell it,]
Would not lend it to me.
Could he see my lust for it
In my downcast eyes?
The bright thing held me in thrall.
I could not bear its absence.
Through the long nights that winter
I stole into the Ri’s fort
And bore the thing of beauty away,
Buried in the deep folds
Of my threadbare robes
And secreted myself, alone,
In the black solitude of my cold cell
To copy it, to make it echo
Upon new velum, a second-thing,
But at least mine.
I who had cast the world aside,
Who had vowed myself to Sister Poverty,
Could not stop my incarnate desire
To possess this unspeakable beauty.
My heart burned for it
And small flames grew up from
The uplifted fingers of my left hand
Pushing back the darkness,
Illuminating my own thieving script,
Heating my desires all the more.
It could not be, of course.
The Ri’s druid found me out
And relieved me of my dream.
It should have been easy then,
For one vowed to humility,
To let it go without concern.
But its loveliness had mastered me.
Overwhelmed me with a mad passion
To take it back, even at the cost of life.
I led my brothers into the field of battle
Against my dear Ri
And I slaughtered his men
Driven wild, as I was, with an
Unquenchable greed that
Possessed my whole heart,
My whole mind, my whole soul.
For this I was exiled,
Forced to leave my lovely Eire.
I was excommunicated from my home
Sent out to spend my wretched life in penance,
Until I’d claimed as many souls for Christ
As I had left lying on that bloody field,
Food for the insatiable crows.
And so I did. And so I did.
Thanks be to God. So I did.




ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Dan Doyle. "Columba's Psalter." CERC.

Reprinted with permission of Dan Doyle.

THE AUTHOR

Dan Doyle has taught for 30 years at the high school and university level. He is currently in his 20th year at Seattle University in Seattle, WA. He is an Assistant Professor in the Matteo Ricci College of Seattle University and teaches several Humanities based courses including: The Greek, Roman and Medieval periods, Character Development and a Capstone course called, Unforgettable Books. He has been writing and publishing poems for most of his career. Dan Doyle is on the Executive Board of CERC USA.

Copyright © 2009 Dan Doyle

Article: Verbal Engineering and the Swaying of Public Conscience

FATHER TADEUSZ PACHOLCZYK, PH.D.

Whenever longstanding laws are reversed, and practices come to be sanctioned that were formerly forbidden, it behooves us to examine whether such momentous legal shifts are morally coherent or not.

Over the years, a number of unjust laws have come to be replaced by more just ones. Laws overturning the practice of slavery, for example, were a significant step forward in promoting justice and basic human rights in society. Yet in very recent times, unjust and immoral laws have, with increasing frequency, come to replace sound and reasonable ones, particularly in the area of sexual morality, bioethics and the protection of human life. Whenever longstanding laws are reversed, and practices come to be sanctioned that were formerly forbidden, it behooves us to examine whether such momentous legal shifts are morally coherent or not.

Concerns about moral coherence have always influenced the crafting of new laws, as they did in 1879 when the State of Connecticut enacted strong legislation outlawing contraception, specified as the use of "any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception." This law, like the anti-contraception laws of various other states, was in effect for nearly 90 years before it was reversed in 1965. It codified the longstanding dictate of the public conscience that contraception was harmful to society because it promoted promiscuity, adultery and other evils. It relied on the nearly universal sensibility that children should be seen as a help and a blessing to society, and that, as Joseph Sobran puts it, "a healthy society, however tolerant at the margins, must be based on the perception that sex is essentially procreative, with its proper locus in a loving family."

Such a view had been remarkably deeply engrained in Western society for millennia, and interestingly, until as late as the 1930's, all Protestant denominations agreed with Catholic teaching condemning contraception. Not until the 1930 Lambeth Conference did the Anglican church, swayed by growing societal pressure, announce that contraception would be allowed in some circumstances. Soon after, the Anglican church yielded entirely, allowing contraception across the board. Since then, every major Protestant denomination has followed suit, even though their founders, including Luther, Calvin and Wesley, had all unhesitatingly condemned contraception, and insisted that it violated the right order of sexuality and marriage. Today, it is only the Catholic Church which teaches this traditional view.

How is it that modern times have seen such a striking reversal of this ancient view of the moral unacceptability of contraception? How is it that our age continues to witness a seemingly endless stream of legislative activity that promotes contraception through exorbitant government funding initiatives in nearly every major country of the world, with A merican taxpayers providing, for example, more than $260 million of Planned Parenthood's total income for 2004? Can something almost universally decried as an evil in the past suddenly become a good, or is such a legislative reversal not indicative of a significant misuse of law, and of a collective loss of conscience on an unprecedented scale?

Here too, sophisticated verbal engineering was necessary, since nobody could reasonably expect the abortion ethic to advance by saying, "Let's kill the kids." Many things simply cannot be achieved when it is clear to everyone what is going on; obfuscation is essential.

Whenever widespread social engineering of this magnitude occurs, it is invariably preceded by skillful verbal engineering. The late Msgr. William Smith observed that the argument about contraception was basically over as soon as modern society accepted the deceptive phrase, "birth control" into its vocabulary. "Imagine if we had called it, 'life prevention'," he once remarked. The great Gilbert Keith Chesterton put it this way: " They insist on talking about Birth Control when they mean less birth and no control," and again: "Birth Control is a name given to a succession of different expedients by which it is possible to filch the pleasure belonging to a natural process while violently and unnaturally thwarting the process itself."

Fast on the heels of such seismic cultural shifts over contraception was even more radical legislation permitting abortion-on-demand. Since the early 1970's, such legislation has effectively enabled the surgical killing of 1 billion human beings worldwide who were living in the peaceful environment of a womb. Here too, sophisticated verbal engineering was necessary, since nobody could reasonably expect the abortion ethic to advance by saying, "Let's kill the kids." Many things simply cannot be achieved when it is clear to everyone what is going on; obfuscation is essential.

The growing child in the womb was thus recast as a "mass of tissue" or a "grouping of cells." The abortion procedure itself was re-described as "removing the product of conception" or "terminating a pregnancy" or simply, "the procedure." Those who were "pro-choice" obfuscated as to what the choice was really for. As one commentator put it, "I think a more realistic term would be 'pro-baby killing'."

Euphemism, of course, has a serious reason for being. It conceals the things people fear. It is defensive in nature, offsetting the power of tabooed terms and otherwise eradicating from the language those matters that people prefer not to deal with directly. A healthy legislative process, however, will abstain from euphemism and obfuscation, zeroing in on truth and moral coherence. It will safeguard and promote an enlightened public conscience, particularly when crafting laws dealing with the most foundational human realities like sexual morality, bioethics and the protection of human life.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk. "Verbal Engineering and the Swaying of Public Conscience." Making Sense Out of Bioethics (February, 2009).

Father Tad Pacholczyk writes a monthly column, Making Sense out of Bioethics, which appears in various diocesan newspapers across the country. This article is reprinted with permission of the author, Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D.

THE AUTHOR

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. earned his doctorate in neuroscience from Yale and did post-doctoral work at Harvard. He is a priest of the diocese of Fall River, MA, and serves as the Director of Education at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. See www.ncbcenter.org.

The National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC) has a long history of addressing ethical issues in the life sciences and medicine. Established in 1972, the Center is engaged in education, research, consultation, and publishing to promote and safeguard the dignity of the human person in health care and the life sciences. The Center is unique among bioethics organizations in that its message derives from the official teaching of the Catholic Church: drawing on the unique Catholic moral tradition that acknowledges the unity of faith and reason and builds on the solid foundation of natural law.

The Center's staff consults regularly on life science issues and medical issues with the Vatican, the U.S. bishops and public policy-makers, hospitals and international organizations of all faiths. Vatican agencies including the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Pontifical Academy for Life and the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers consult with the Center to help formulate magisterial teaching.

The Center publishes two journals (Ethics & Medics and The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly) and at least one book annually on issues such as physician-assisted suicide, abortion, cloning, and embryonic stem cell research. The latest publication is an update of its Handbook on Critical Life Issues, which examines such topics as the theology of suffering, euthanasia, organ transplantation, and stem cell research.

Inspired by the harmony of faith and reason, the Quarterly unites faith in Christ to reasoned and rigorous reflection upon the findings of the empirical and experimental sciences. While the Quarterly is committed to publishing material that is consonant with the magisterium of the Catholic Church, it remains open to other faiths and to secular viewpoints in the spirit of informed dialogue.

Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. is a member of the advisory board of the Catholic Education Resource Center.

Copyright © 2009 Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D.

Article: History Without Christ

DONALD DEMARCO


In Why I Am Not A Christian, Lord Russell explains, rather tersely and simplistically, why he could not be a disciple of the Nazarene: "Christ tells us to become as little children, but little children cannot understand the differential calculus, or the principles of currency, or the modern methods of combating disease." Such an attitude, of course, is mockery rather than argumentation and hardly warrants a rebuttal. Russell does not really explain why he is not a Christian, nor why he has so little regard for the love that Christ brought into the world and that his followers spread to its four corners. He does tell us, however, that he finds it preferable to believe that man is a product of chance and that life is entirely devoid of purpose: "The world in which we live can be understood as a result of muddle and accident; but if it is the outcome of deliberate purpose, the purpose must have been that of a fiend. For my part, I find accident a less painful and more plausible hypothesis."

On another occasion, the same Bertrand Russell writes: "If life is to be human it must serve some end which seems, in some sense, outside human life, some end which is impersonal and above mankind, such as God or truth or beauty" (Principles of Social Reconstruction). This is an extraordinary admission for such a stouthearted atheist. If there were no God, needless to say, there would be no atheists. But here, Russell is in touch with his deeper self, the self that yearns for meaning and dignity, but does not know how to locate it.

Coventry Patmore once said that Mary is "Our only Saviour from an abstract Christ." By extension, we can say that Christ incarnate is our only Saviour from an abstract God. Russell, Freud, Nietzsche, Marx, Darwin, Sartre, and other staunch and influential opponents of Christianity were not entirely irreligious. Their problem was that of worshipping a God who is so abstract that he is an indistinguishable blend of wish, imagination, egoism, yearning, and realism. Christ is God who enters the world as a human being and forevermore clarifies His reality and distinguishes it from myth and wishful thinking. His teaching clarifies who we are and what is expected of us.

Heathenism sought religion; Judaism hoped for it. Christianity is the embodiment of what the heathens sought and what the Jews hoped for. Without Christ, people would be still seeking and hoping for that religion and that person who is the incarnation of their deepest longings. They would be still searching in that twilight where wish and hope converge for a reliable morality, a way of truth, a consolation for suffering, and an assurance of the hereafter. Without Christ, who brought light into a darkened world, the world would still be in the dark.

"The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality; in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart; in the facility with which it accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect; in the consolation which it bears to every house of mourning and in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave."

The English historian Thomas Babington Macauley was right when he eloquently outlined some of these essential gifts that Christ brought to the world: "The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality; in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart; in the facility with which it accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect; in the consolation which it bears to every house of mourning and in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave."

Christ offers us the answer to what we seek. It brings light to dispel darkness, hope to relieve anxiety, joy to replace sadness, truth to efface error, justice to counter prejudice, and love to overcome indifference. Pope Leo XIII stated in Rerum Novarum that "Civil society was renovated in every part by the teachings of Christianity. In the strength of that renewal the human race was lifted up to better things. Nay, it was brought back from death to life."

In Christ, God became man and entered into history. The eternal entered into time. The divine and the human were united. Thus, it made perfect sense that in art, the finite symbolizes the infinite; that in marriage, spousal life images Christ's mystical union with the Church; that procreation is a continuation of creation; that everyone who abides in love abides in God. As St. Thomas Aquinas has written (Summa Theol. III, 40, 1): "Christ's manner of life was shaped to the purpose of His incarnation. He came into the world, first that He might proclaim the truth . . . Secondly, He came that He might free men from sin . . . Thirdly, He came that we might have access to God."

Henri de Lubac, S.J., in The Drama of Atheist Humanism, documents how "man cannot organize the world for himself without God; without God he can only organize the world against man." Exclusive humanism, that is, atheist humanism, is inhuman humanism. The existence of God means that we are not mere members of society, but brothers and sisters of the same family. The reality of Christ means that we can participate in His divine life. Regnum Christi intra nos est (the kingdom of Christ dwells within us).

One of Pope John Paul II's favorite themes was how Christ reveals man to himself. The ancient Greeks believed that the counsel to "know thyself" was so profound as to have a supernatural origin. Without this understanding of what man is, he experiments endlessly with a limitless variety of false identities. He is a mere individual or a faceless member of the collective! He is a consumer or a laborer! He is a netizen of cyberspace or a pawn of big government! He is an animal or an angel, a divinity or dust! He is the product of blind evolution or a self-made man! He is an intricate machine or a trousered ape; an id without a super-ego or a super-ego without an id! He is a winner, a loser, a victim, a predator, a success, a failure, an alien, a patriot, a nobody, a somebody, a superman, a patient, a pauper, a prophet, a party member! Man oscillates miserably between identities that do not quite fit the measure of his being. It must be explained to him from a higher source that he is of infinite value and yet must live, not by pride, but by love.

Exclusive humanism, that is, atheist humanism, is inhuman humanism. The existence of God means that we are not mere members of society, but brothers and sisters of the same family. The reality of Christ means that we can participate in His divine life. Regnum Christi intra nos est (the kingdom of Christ dwells within us).

"Why do we need Him? This is the question John Paul asked in Celebrate 2000 about our need for Christ. "Because," he answers, "Christ reveals the truth about man and man's life and destiny. He shows us our place before God as creatures and sinners, as redeemed through His death and resurrection, as making our pilgrim way to the Father's house. He teaches the fundamental commandment of the love of God and love of neighbor. He insists that there cannot be justice, brotherhood, peace and solidarity without the Ten Commandments."

The question, "what would history be like without Christ?" is something like asking, "what would the statue of David be like without Michelangelo?" Christ is the Maker of history! He is that agent without whom history would not have its proper meaning and direction. Christ is the alpha and the omega. He is the architect that gives history its eschatological significance. Without Christ, history would be unintelligible to the mind; but it would be unbearable to the spirit. Without Christ, the life of each person would be accurately encapsulated by T. S. Eliot's mordant phrase: "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."

Aquinas states (Summa Theol. III, 35, 8) that "one difference between Christ and other men is this: they do not choose when to be born, but He, the Lord and Maker of history, chose His time, His birthplace, and His mother."

Christmas means that Christ enters the world and thereby gives meaning and direction to both human life and to the course of human history. He reveals man to himself, forgives sins, provides grace, and through His resurrection, offers a place with Him in paradise. He clarifies our dignity, our destiny and our duty. He arrives as a child, advises us to be as little children, but invites us to renew the face of the earth. He arrives on Christmas Day to tell us, as Clarence Oddbody, Angel Second Class, said to George Bailey: "You've really have a wonderful life. Don't you see what a mistake it would be to throw it away?"

Christ chose to be born so that we, who could not make such a choice, could nevertheless choose to be reborn, to accept our birth and life with meaning and joy. His physical birth was for our spiritual rebirth. He brought light into the world so that we could cherish and enjoy the gift of life. Without prizing life and sharing His light with others, the world would lie in darkness and our lives would remain unlit, unappreciated, unhappy, unhopeful, and unredeemed. Christmas is a festival of light, a light by which we begin to discern the value of our lives and the glory that is God's.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Donald DeMarco. "History Without Christ." National Catholic Register.

Reprinted with permission of Donald DeMarco.

THE AUTHOR

Donald DeMarco is adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College & Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut and Professor Emeritus at St. Jerome's University in Waterloo Ontario. He also continues to work as a corresponding member of the Pontifical Acadmy for Life. Donald DeMarco has written hundreds of articles for various scholarly and popular journals, and is the author of twenty books, including The Heart of Virtue, The Many Faces of Virtue, Virtue's Alphabet: From Amiability to Zeal and Architects Of The Culture Of Death. Donald DeMarco is on the Advisory Board of The Catholic Education Resource Center.

Copyright © 2008 Donald DeMarco