Catholic Metanarrative: May 2009

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Article: The Need for Sacrifice

FATHER KENNETH BAKER, S.J.

Catholics should get into the habit of making small sacrifices for God.

"I am the Lord your God. You shall not strange gods before me." The First Commandment positively prescribes the worship of God and negatively forbids idolatry, superstition, sacrilege and anything that would dishonor our Creator and Lord. We might be tempted to think that the ancient peoples were crude in their worship of idols, that modern scientific man does not do such things, and that therefore we do not have to worry about violations of the First Commandment because, since we have now "come of age" we are above such behavior.

Actually we are creating small and large idols all the time. In a certain sense, every time we sin, every time we prefer a creature to the Creator, we are setting up "strange gods" and falling away from the true God.

We all know that adoration of God is one of the basics of our Catholic religion. In the last section we made a few observations about the nature of adoration. Now is the time to expand on that a little.

Adoration always involves some kind of recognition of the absolute supremacy of God and of our total dependence on him. One of the most fundamental types of adoration is "sacrifice" -- an idea that is often misunderstood and in any event is not popular in today's pleasure-seeking world.

Often when we pray to God we proclaim our love and devotion for him. But St. Ignatius Loyola said in his Spiritual Exercises that love is shown more in deeds than in words A true sacrifice is shown in deeds more than in words. The requirements of a valid sacrifice are that some object, normally a desirable or valuable object, is offered to God as a sign of man's total dependence on him and of his subjection to the Lord. There is such a thing as a sacrificial mentality -- a readiness to give up something for the love of God. But a real sacrifice requires more than that, in order to make it clear that the offerer is sincere. It requires that the object is actually surrendered to God, destroyed, or completely removed from the possession or control of the one making the sacrifice.

In this sense, the supreme sacrifice for a human being is to offer up his life for another. As our Lord said, "Greater love than this no man has, that a man lay down his life for a friend." And that is exactly what Jesus himself did for us on Calvary -- he offered up his life to his father as a propitiation for our sins. He took our sins upon himself and suffered in our place, he, the perfectly innocent One.

The Mass is a re-presentation now, in an unbloody manner, of the bloody sacrifice of the cross over nineteen hundred years ago. Since it is a re-offering of Jesus on Calvary, the Mass is rightly referred to as "the holy Sacrifice of the Mass", although we do not hear this expression much today. It has been replaced with the more general and vague "liturgy", which also applies to the celebration of the other sacraments.

Our Lord said, if you want to be my followers you must take up your cross daily and follow me. Those who try to lead a Christian life cannot expect to avoid what Jesus did not avoid -- the Cross.

Every dimension of human existence can, and often does, require sacrifices. There are certain things that we have to give up, that are taken away from us, and so forth. But a sacrifice to God, a religious sacrifice, is one that is freely given to God as a sign for reverence and submission to him. Such sacrifices are very meritorious in the sight of God, because they are basically acts of love of God and that is what God wants from us more than anything else -- love. Love must be free; it cannot be forced and it cannot be bought.

Catholics should get into the habit of making small sacrifices for God. Sacrifices come in thousands of different forms: fasting, penances of various kinds, controlling vain curiosity to see and hear everything, giving up smoking or drinking during Lent, getting up early to attend a weekday parish Mass, denying oneself sweet desserts on occasion, and so on. If you are familiar with the life of any saint, male or female, young or old, you know what I am talking about. For there has never been a saint who did not practice some kind of sacrificial self-denial.

Our Lord said, if you want to be my followers you must take up your cross daily and follow me. Those who try to lead a Christian life cannot expect to avoid what Jesus did not avoid -- the Cross. As many Christian writers have pointed out in the past, the baffling thing about the cross is that we all have to carry it -- whether we want to or not. For those who accept it and submit to God, it is salvific; for those who reject it, it is the occasion of damnation. We should often pray for the grace to be able to accept and offer up the crosses that the Lord sends us.

See the index of chapters from Fundamentals of Catholicism
which have been reprinted to CERC here.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Father Kenneth Baker, S.J. "The Need for Sacrifice." In Fundamentals of Catholicism Vol. 1 Part II, Chapter 8 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983), 141-144.

Reprinted with permission from Father Kenneth Baker, S.J.

THE AUTHOR

Rev. Kenneth Baker, S.J., has served for the past thirty years as editor of the Homiletic & Pastoral Review. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1947. In 1970 he served as president of Seattle University and in 1971 became editor of the Homiletic & Pastoral Review. In 1973 he published his translation of the Philosophical Dictionary and adapted it to American usage. In 1975 he became president of Catholic Views Broadcasts, Inc., which produces a weekly 15-minute radio program that airs on 50 stations across the United States. He has built and run three community television stations. In 1983 he published a three-volume explation of the faith called Fundamentals of Catholicism Vol. 1, Creed and Commandments; Vol. 2, God, Trinity, Creation, Christ, Mary; and Vol. 3, Grace, the Church, the Sacraments, Eschatology.

Article: The role of death

MARGARET SOMERVILLE

Approval for euthanasia muffles our proper emotional response to a person's passing.

It has been reported that police in Minnesota expect to charge William Melchert-Dinkel, a nurse, for allegedly using the Internet to encourage Ottawa resident, 18-year-old Nadia Kajouji, who committed suicide, to kill herself. So far, at least, no one has argued that this was or should be ethically or legally acceptable.

That is not the case in relation to George and Betty Coumbias, two 73-year-old British Columbia residents. George suffers from serious heart disease; Betty is healthy. But in Betty's words, "I don't think I can face life without (George), and since we read about Dignitas (a Swiss organization that assists people to commit suicide), we felt what would be better than to die together, you know, to die in each other's arms?"

Under Swiss law, because George is seriously ill, Dignitas has no problems in helping him. But it is seeking a ruling from local officials as to whether they might help Betty, as a healthy woman, to kill herself and allow her and George to carry out their suicide pact.

If, as pro-euthanasia advocates argue, respect for people's rights to autonomy and self-determination means everyone has a right to die at a time of their choosing, and the state has no right to prevent them from doing so, then Betty would have the right to choose to die with George. And that's precisely what Ruth Von Fuchs, head of the Right to Die Society, argued on CTV's Canada AM. In her words, "life is not an obligation."

Most of us, I suggest, including some people who would support assisted suicide in some circumstances, see the situation differently from Ms. Von Fuchs and would regard helping Betty to kill herself as wrong, just as they do the encouragement given the Ottawa woman. The possibility that legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide could allow this might make some pro-euthanasia people rethink their stance.

Euthanasia and assisted suicide involve extinguishing human life. Research shows that humans have a basic instinct against killing other humans, which might be a source of the widely shared moral intuition that it's wrong to do so.

People who oppose euthanasia and assisted-suicide believe these interventions are inherently wrong -- they can't be morally justified, and that even compassionate motives do not make them ethically acceptable -- the ends do not justify the means.

People who would accept euthanasia and assisted-suicide, but only in some circumstances, usually limit access to them to people who are terminally ill and in serious pain and suffering that can't be relieved (which are exceptional cases). These limitations show that these people believe each case of euthanasia or assisted-suicide needs moral justification to be ethically acceptable.

Even Ms. Von Fuchs, although she thought Ms. Coumbias should have the unfettered right to assisted-suicide, argued that it would allow Ms. Coumbias to avoid the suffering, grief and loneliness associated with losing her husband -- that is, she articulated a justification.

But surely the answer to loneliness and grief is not to help the person commit suicide? As I once suggested to a Dutch physician who had carried out euthanasia on an old woman in similar circumstances . . . "Did you think of buying her a
cat?"

Loneliness and social isolation are strongly associated with requests for euthanasia. Although the need for euthanasia to relieve pain and suffering is often the reason pro-euthanasia advocates give to justify it and the justification the public accept in supporting its legalization, research shows that dying people who request euthanasia do so far more frequently because of fear of social isolation and of being a burden on others, than pain.

Further, Ms. Coumbias is only anticipating her grief, not experiencing it. We give much more negative weight to -- we disvalue -- dreaded events in anticipating them, as compared with when they actually befall us. For instance, on a scale of zero to minus 10, with minus 10 being the worst affliction, sighted people put blindness around minus 8.5; blind people put it around minus 2.

That leads to wider considerations raised by this case. Most of the analysis has been at the individual level of Ms. Coumbias's right to die. But how we die is never just a private matter. It necessarily involves society and what it allows or prohibits, and some of society's most important values and institutions.

Society would be complicit in euthanasia or assisted suicide in legalizing them and in allowing medicine to be involved. Law and medicine are the two main institutions in a secular society that carry the value of respect for life. That value would be unavoidably seriously harmed.

Even utilitarians, who base their ethics on whether benefits outweigh risks and harms, should decide against euthanasia and assisted suicide because the harms outweigh the benefits, especially on the slippery slope these interventions open up.

We can see that in the Netherlands, which has a 30-year experience of euthanasia.

The original Dutch criteria for euthanasia were that it was limited to competent adults, who were terminally ill and had pain and suffering that could not be relieved, and who repeatedly asked for euthanasia. Now none of those requirements apply.

The recent Groningen protocol allows parents of disabled babies to request euthanasia for them.
Children aged 12 to 16 years can request and obtain euthanasia with their parents' consent and those over 16 can give their own consent.
There are more than 500 deaths a year from euthanasia (and possibly many more) where the adult was not competent or whose consent was not obtained.
A middle-aged depressed woman, who was not terminally ill, was given euthanasia by her treating psychiatrist. A court ruled this was justified.
An old man who had a dread of being put in a nursing home was given a choice by his family between a nursing home and euthanasia. He chose euthanasia. He was not terminally ill or in unrelievable pain and suffering.
Recent research showed that in the Netherlands the rate of suicide in late middle-aged men (a group with an increased risk for suicide) had dropped, but the rate of euthanasia in this same age-group had risen.

What impact would recognizing suicide as a legitimate way to relieve suffering have on people who are suicidal?

Although the need for euthanasia to relieve pain and suffering is often the reason pro-euthanasia advocates give to justify it and the justification the public accept in supporting its legalization, research shows that dying people who request euthanasia do so far more frequently because of fear of social isolation and of being a burden on others, than pain.

Legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide causes death to lose its moral context and us to lose our proper emotional response to it, a loss which recent research shows detrimentally affects our ethical judgment.

It delivers a "better off dead" message that treats dying humans as disposable products. As one Australian politician expressed this: "When you are past your 'use by' or 'best before' date, you should be checked out as quickly, cheaply and efficiently as possible."

An aging population, scarce health-care resources and legalized euthanasia or assisted suicide would indeed be a lethal combination, not only for individuals, but also for important societal values and institutions that uphold those values and the overall ethical tone of our Canadian society. But the Coumbias's campaign to die together through assisted suicide might have a silver lining for people opposed to euthanasia and assisted suicide.

In 1999, when Princeton philosopher, Peter Singer, told a Newsweek reporter that he thought there was no ethical or moral difference between abortion and infanticide, and he approved of both, he was described as the pro-choice "abortion-rights movement's worst nightmare" come true. He was expressing the logical extension of the pro-choice stance and, thereby, doing a favour to those opposed to abortion.

Now, in 2009, the same kind of "nightmare" faces the dying-with-dignity, pro-euthanasia lobby as a result of George and Betty Coumbias's campaign. They are expressing the logical extension of the pro-euthanasia stance and, thereby, doing a favour to those opposed to euthanasia and assisted suicide.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Margaret Somerville. "The role of death." Ottawa Citizen (May 14, 2009).

Reprinted with permission of the Margaret Somerville.

THE AUTHOR

Margaret Somerville, AM, FRSC is an Australian/Canadian ethicist and academic. She is the Samuel Gale Professor of Law, Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, and the Founding Director of the Faculty of Law's Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University. She is the author of The Ethical Imagination: CBC Massey Lectures, Death Talk: The Case Against Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide, The Ethical Canary: Science, Society, and the Human Spirit, and Do We Care?.

Article: A Way of Beholding the World

ANTHONY ESOLEN

Those of us who profess the Catholic Faith still have a way of beholding the world that marks us apart from our neighbors.

Blessed Margaret of Castello
1287-1320

"Health," said a very bright and good-natured colleague of mine, "seems absolutely necessary for human flourishing. After all, if you don't have your health, you can't very well contribute your talents to the community."

Most of the other members of our seminar agreed. That in itself was illuminating, because we didn't agree on a whole lot. We could agree on no definition of human nature, nor even on whether such a thing existed. We could agree on no definition of the good. We were not sure, granting for argument's sake that human beings were free, where that freedom lay, how it was made manifest, and what it was good for. But we knew at least that without health, you cannot have much of a life.

And yet I sat there, uneasy, wanting to concede the obvious, that health is a good thing, and very much not wanting to concede what is not so obvious, that there is no point whatsoever to suffering. My eyes wandered over to the crucifix upon the wall, and that epitome of what it means to be human, and good, and, shockingly enough, free -- free to love, even unto death.

In our postcultural time, as I see it, we slide toward the inversion of the communion of saints: the collectivity of the self-willed. We are simultaneously indistinct from one another, and disunited. We rejoice in no transcendent good that blesses us all together and blesses each one of us uniquely. But those of us who profess the Catholic Faith still have a way of beholding the world that marks us apart from our neighbors, as surely as if we bore the cruciform ashes on our foreheads every day of the year. We are seldom aware of this way of beholding, and yet it is there, and maybe it is time for us to think about it more keenly.

For the world knows the comforts of the world, and though comforts do not bring hearts and souls together, they can assuage the pain of loneliness and make the ride on the conveyor belt to death a little smoother. But we Catholics cast our eyes toward heroes who left comfort far behind, knowing both suffering and joy. I think of Blessed Margaret of Castello, born in 1287 to a cruel Italian warlord and his wife. The child Margaret was lame, stunted, deformed in feature, and blind. Her parents gave out that she had died, revealing the terrible secret of the child's identity to but a few maids in their fortress home and to the priest.

That man, Margaret's confessor, perceived in her a ready intelligence and a devout heart. All the worse for the little girl, for against the bitter protests of the priest, her father conceived the idea of walling her up as an anchoress, in a small cubicle attached to the chapel in the village some miles away. There Margaret lived in almost total isolation for nine years, till she was released at age sixteen.

For most of her life she was shunned and mocked, but she bore insults with such meek heroism that she won many to her side, particularly the poor, among whom she often lived in the streets, to whom she ministered (for though she was blind, she could work hard, cook, clean, and tend the sick), and who ministered in turn to her. She spent a year or two in a convent, as a novice of an order of nuns who had grown slack in their observance of their ancient rule. At first the nuns were kind to her, but when Margaret quietly but firmly attempted to keep the rule -- for instance, by declining to accept gifts from rich patrons -- they hated her for it, and expelled her from the convent.

It has occurred to me that the wise and prudent of my world -- I mean academe -- would be hard-pressed to come up with a reason why an infant Margaret of Castello should be allowed to see the light of day.

Is that, so far, a life of human flourishing?At the point of despair, she lay prone upon the dusty street, and she seemed to hear in her mind the voice of the wounded Christ, saying, "Margaret, will you also leave me?" No, she said; no, she loved Christ too dearly, and if suffering was to be her lot, then she would suffer beside Him, rejected even by the poor, yet loving them all the same. Her reputation for sanctity grew, and when she died -- at age 33 -- the common people gathered in a great crowd to demand that she be buried in the church. The miraculous healing of a paralyzed girl settled the debate. Margaret's remains, almost seven hundred years later, are incorrupt.

It has occurred to me that the wise and prudent of my world -- I mean academe -- would be hard-pressed to come up with a reason why an infant Margaret of Castello should be allowed to see the light of day. Yet, for all their wisdom, they can agree on little beyond that it is good to enjoy the health of our brittle bodies and a few amenities of modern living. Margaret, who had a keen mind, had an even greater heart, and lived a more human life than we can imagine, because she loved much, suffering patiently and praying for those who persecuted her. Her life was full because it was good. She folded her pain into her daily happiness of loving Christ and loving His image in her neighbors.

We Catholics still retain some patches of a culture, insofar as a story such as Margaret's makes sense to us, causing our hearts to beat more quickly and our eyes to glisten with understanding. Our opponents, though legion, have no particular way to look upon the world, except to say, with the smirk of weariness, that there is no particular way to look upon the world.

Yet I am persuaded that secretly they envy us that we see something, and that we all see, in our sundry ways, the same thing. Or rather the same Person, in the features of men's faces. The world sees success in a business suit, and we see Christ in the poor little man of Assisi, halting down the slope of Mount Alvernia, his palms bright with blood.

The world sells cruises, a vast swimming pool and spa afloat; we see Francis Xavier on the shore of Japan, fumbling his way to preach the gospel, stuttering out Japanese in a heavy Basque accent. The world sells sex, as cheap as dirt and, finally, not much more interesting, and we see the blessed Mother, appearing in royal womanhood to the peasant Juan Diego.

The world sees the unwanted -- the orphan lying alone at night, the old man alone and losing his mind -- and wishes in pity to ease their pain by ushering them out of our way. We see our saints of loneliness, Charles de Foucauld, Benoit Labre, and that unknown soldier named in our prayers, the Most Abandoned Soul in Purgatory. The world dispenses anodynes for grief, but we take grief in, and make up in ourselves what is lacking, as St. Paul says, in the suffering of Christ. The world sells fun, and we look for joy, what Dante called the "laughter of the universe."

The world has weekends, and we have holy days. The world prepares us to be food for worms; the Church invites us to the wedding feast of the Lamb. The clock rules the world, but God is the creator of time and all its works, and time is but the moving image of eternity. The world is blind, but Margaret of Castello saw. Let us see likewise, and proclaim what we see. But we had better proclaim it loudly. For that old world is hard of hearing, too.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Anthony Esolen, "A Way of Beholding the World." Inside Catholic (May 26, 2009).

Reprinted with permission of InsideCatholic.com. The mission of InsideCatholic.com is to be a voice for authentic Catholicism in the public square.

THE AUTHOR

Anthony Esolen is Professor of English at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island. He is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization and has translated Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata; Titus Lucretius Carus's On the Nature of Things: de Rerum Natura and Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. He is a senior editor of Touchstone and a member of the advisory board of the Catholic Education Resource Center.

Article: The Sacred Heart and the Eucharist

FATHER RICHARD NEILSON

May is the month of Mary, our Blessed Mother, and June is the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. As May leads to and introduces June, so Mary brings us to the love of her Son, the love symbolized by His Sacred Heart.

The Good News of Jesus Christ is a message of love. Saint John in his first epistle tells us, "The man without love has known nothing of God, for God is love." In his great encyclical Haurietis Aquas, "You Shall Draw Water," (a quotation from Isaiah), Pope Pius XII wrote, "We do not hesitate to declare that devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the most effective school of the love of God; the love of God . . . which must be the foundation on which to build the Kingdom of God in the hearts of individuals, families, and nations" (no. 123). Pope Pius XI called it "the synthesis of our whole religion and the norm of a more perfect life." Pope Paul VI in 1965 wrote, "It is absolutely necessary that the faithful venerate and honor the Sacred Heart in the expression of their private piety as well as in the services of public cult, because of His fullness we have all received." In 1984, on the feast of the Sacred Heart, Pope John Paul II said, "In the Sacred Heart every treasure of wisdom and knowledge is hidden. In that Divine Heart beats God's infinite love for everyone, for each one of us individually."

We adore the physical Heart of Jesus with that worship we give to God alone because the unique Person whose Heart it is is truly and completely both God and man. That physical Heart, said Pius XII, is a natural sign and symbol of Christ's three-fold boundless love for the human race: human sensible and human spiritual love, and the divine love of the Incarnate Word. In the Old Testament, God is described in human terms, metaphorically; He sees, hears, speaks, is offended, angry, rejoices, etc: Now His own body, the God-man actually sees, hears, speaks, is offended, angry, rejoices, experiences every authentic human feeling. Devotion to the Sacred Heart, then, translates the divine nature into human terms for us so that no longer do our prayers seem to die away into infinite distance: Instead they reach readily the very human Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Love for the Eucharist

Christ's heart of flaming love finds its truest and most profound expression in the Blessed Sacrament of His love, the Eucharist, God's giving of Himself, whose feast, Corpus Christi, each year most often falls within the month of June. How appropriate this is, for devotion to the Eucharist and to the Sacred Heart are in fact one thing, inseparable -- devotion to the mystery of Christ's human and divine love. In the Sacred Host dwells the God-man, Jesus; in His Person pulses His Heart through which we are loved with the perfection of His humanity, the fullness of His Godhead, one Person who not only loves but is love. Thus St. Peter Julian Eymard instructs us, "Let us learn to honor the Sacred Heart in the Eucharist. Let us never separate them."

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus infallibly leads souls to the Eucharist. Love for, and devotion to, the Eucharist infallibly leads souls to the mystery of God's infinite love symbolized for us by the Sacred Heart, a symbol necessary because love itself is immaterial and imperceptible: We need the sensible manifestation of the Divine Heart. So it is that the Sacred Heart, the Holy Eucharist, and Love itself, are one and the same thing; for in the Eucharist dwells Jesus, in Jesus His Heart, and in His Heart is infinite love. The Eucharist can be explained only by love; the love of Jesus is the love of His Heart, and so the Eucharist is explained only by the Sacred Heart. Drawn close to the Sacred Heart of Jesus by cords of love, we receive into our own hearts the Eucharistic Lord in Holy Communion. It is not possible to carry fire in one's bosom and not become inflamed by it. Fire enkindles fire. Every sacrament is an effect of Christ's love, but as St. Bernard said, the Blessed Sacrament is the love of loves, the effect of Jesus giving us Himself who is love, and the most fertile source of that most tender and ardent love man should have for Jesus. St. Francis de Sales tells us our great intention in receiving the Eucharist should be to advance in the love of God, to become intimate with Him. You cannot love someone you do not know, and you do not know anyone you do not speak to or visit often and intimately. Thus frequent visits to the Blessed Sacrament, periods of prayer, adoration, are absolutely necessary.

Revelations to St. Margaret Mary

It was while she was kneeling in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament that Our Lord appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque displaying Hs Heart (I quote the saint), "represented as a throne of fire with flames radiating on every side. It appeared more brilliant than the sun and transparent like crystal. The wound received on the Cross appeared clearly: There was a crown of thorns around the Heart and it was surmounted by a cross."

Pope Pius XII wrote, “We do not hesitate to declare that devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the most effective school of the love of God; the love of God

Our Lord told the saintly nun it signified His immense love for us who are the cause of His sufferings that He, in His humanity, willed freely to undergo for our redemption, and especially the outrages He is exposed to in the Blessed Sacrament. He lamented that man largely ignored His great thirst to be loved in the Blessed Sacrament. He told the saint that in Gethsemane, immediately after the Last Supper, as He sweated blood, His great suffering was caused by the ingratitude of men, particularly toward the Blessed Sacrament.

And so He asked for Communions of reparation and consolation every First Friday and for a Holy Hour of Reparation every Thursday evening in memory of the agony in the garden and His desertion by the Apostles on the very night of the institution of the Eucharist. During His Passion, Our Lord must have seen down the centuries the millions who would pass Him by in the tabernacles of the world without giving Him a thought. He must have seen millions of indifferent or even sacrilegious Communions; He must have seen the cruelest of all, those of His intimate circle, His priests and religious, who by coldness, indifference, carelessness, selfishness, infidelity, at or around the altar, would betray His Heart of love.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart did not begin with the private revelations of Sr. Margaret Mary. It is rooted in Sacred Scripture and Tradition beginning with the early Fathers as Pius XII outlined in Haurietis Aquas. It was through the revelation to Sr. Margaret Mary that the true meaning of the devotion was established and distinguished from other forms of piety by the special qualities of love.

Christ's Priests

It was Christ's infinite love that instituted the Eucharist; and at the same moment came into being the priesthood, essentially and inseparably connected to the Sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood. To His priests, chosen by Himself, Jesus confided the task of spreading abroad the Gospel in every age and place. To them He has given a participation in His power -- to offer sacrifice, to preach the Word, to absolve, to console. In His priests, Christ perpetuates Himself, living through them unceasingly His life of love for all mankind. To render them capable of this awesome mission, Jesus has opened to them the treasure of His unfailing love.

It is especially to priests already consecrated to God, and called to profound holiness thereby, that the Sacred Heart wishes to manifest His love so they can communicate it to the world. Through the Sacred Heart a priest should enter into intimate knowledge and love of Jesus, giving all of his poor self to Him. That Sacred Heart is like a door leading into the very soul of Christ, towards complete conformity to Him. Priests, more than others, are called to progressive identification with Christ and so to the giving of their all in the work of spreading Christ's kingdom, as Presbyterorum Ordinis, as Vatican II's document on the "Life and Ministry of Priests" puts it. Indeed, the only measure of love is to love without measure.

Gift of Entire Self

That Sacred Heart is like a door leading into the very soul of Christ, towards complete conformity to Him.

True devotion to the Sacred Heart is full of human and supernatural meaning. Do not confuse it with displays of useless and sugary piety devoid of doctrine. Sacred Scripture, the Liturgy, the writings of the Fathers and the saints, the teachings of the popes, are the basis of a true piety such as St. Paul presents to us in his letter to the Ephesians (3:14-19), a program of knowledge and love, prayer and life, all beginning with devotion to the Heart of Jesus, the root and foundation of all love. Sacred Scripture means by "heart," not a fleeting sentiment of joy and tears but the personality directing the whole being, soul and body, to its good. Jesus told us, "Where your treasure is, there will be your heart also."

When devotion to the Sacred Heart is recommended, what is being recommended to us is the gift of our entire self to Jesus, soul and body, thoughts, feelings, words, actions, joys, and sorrows. Jesus came to light a fire on earth. Fire purifies, gives light, communicates, unites. Such is the blaze of divine love devotion to the Sacred Heart enkindles in our hearts. The Heart of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament feeds the flame of our love for the Lord, burning from us the dross of self. Thus afire, we thirst for souls as He does, becoming His dedicated emissaries among the men and women of our day, so many of whom neither know Him nor love Him.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Father Richard Neilson. "The Sacred Heart and the Eucharist." Lay Witness (June, 1988).

Reprinted with permission of Lay Witness.

Lay Witness is the flagship publication of Catholics United for the Faith. Featuring articles written by leaders in the Catholic Church, each issue of Lay Witness keeps you informed on current events in the Church, the Holy Father's intentions for the month, and provides formation through biblical and catechetical articles with real-life applications for everyday Catholics.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Wednesday Liturgy: Pre-recorded Masses

ROME, MAY 26, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Legionary of Christ Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum university.

Q: I am a priest and have been wondering for some time about the validity/liceity of Masses I've celebrated for my diocesan television station. I celebrated specific Masses, including Christmas and Divine Mercy Sunday, well in advance of the actual dates. I believe these are valid, but are they licit? -- J.R., Queens borough, New York

A: We dealt fairly amply with the question of televised masses and related questions in our columns of Jan. 18 and Feb. 1, 2005.

In this column, while illustrating the different norms issued by the U.S. bishops' conference we touched on the question of pre-recorded Masses:

"The least satisfactory solution, to be avoided if possible, is the pre-recorded telecast.  "Viewers must be informed that it is pre-recorded and has certain limitations such as having been celebrated outside the liturgical day or season. The guidelines give as an example the 'taping of "Christmas morning Mass" on Monday of the fourth week of Advent.'

"Other disadvantages are that the Mass usually must take place in a studio and not in a community that regularly gathers for worship. Editing may include inappropriate special effects, or shorten some elements which are not convenient for worship. Editing may even make the priest and ministers appear to be actors.  "However, if no alternative is available, this Mass should be taped on the closest possible date to the day of transmission and only one liturgy may be taped with the same group on any one day.  "Also, the full liturgy should be recorded and editors should not eliminate any elements of the Mass (the Gloria or a reading) due to time constraints."

With this in mind we can say that if these norms are respected, then the pre-recorded Mass is both valid and licit, albeit it is not the ideal situation.

The complete guidelines can be found online at the U.S. bishops' conference Web site: http://www.usccb.org/liturgy/current/tv.shtml.

Wednesday Liturgy: Follow-up: "So Very Dry" Liturgy

ROME, MAY 26, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Legionary of Christ Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum university.

Pursuant to our May 12 column on "dry liturgy" we received a couple of interesting comments.

One reader wrote: "Whereas I agree with you for the most part, I believe we must get past the rubrics and spend time celebrating the liturgy properly, with enthusiasm. In my priesthood of 42 years, anyone who shows enthusiasm, is a good homilist, and celebrates with joy and happiness gets dissed by other priests because people are going to a different parish. I have always felt that if a priest sees his congregation dwindling in favor of another parish, he ought to go over and find out what that parish is doing and perhaps learn from them. You can follow all the rules and rubrics and have a meaningful celebration of the liturgy. Good music, good homily, prayerful presiding will turn a dry liturgy into a true celebration of God's gifts to us. Unfortunately, jealousy reigns."

While it is true that human limitations such as jealousy can also be present, I agree with our reader on persisting in celebrating the liturgy with faithful enthusiasm. In the end the effort will bear fruit where it matters most, the salvation of souls. To paraphrase an expression of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta: "If in doing what is right people say you are working for egotistical motives or seeking personal adulation, don't worry; do what is right anyway."

Another priest correspondent, writing from India, commented on the original letter: "The question of 'So Very Dry Liturgy' I found very disappointing/disturbing. I do not know whether that is the questioner's personal experience or that he is quoting from hearsay. I am also an Indian priest but working in Nepal. And I have traveled through many parts of India and have known many dioceses and missionaries and am in touch with many areas of the Indian Church on a regular basis. And my own personal experience has been quite contrary to what the questioner writes. On occasions I have heard from non-Catholics who attend our liturgy that they find it deep and much more meaningful than theirs, except maybe for the singing and 'entertainment' part.

"Of late I am afraid some think -- maybe with the influence of the mass media -- that liturgy has to be entertaining, and occasionally we do find some priests attempting comical things to make it 'more interesting.' Once, even someone came to complain to me that one of the priests asked the gathering of the youth, 'Would you like to have a short and enjoyable Mass or a boring and dry long Mass?'

"I was so surprised that a priest was able to say such things to youngsters and also that he had different categories of Masses in store for them. Unless we have it clear within ourselves that the liturgy and especially the Eucharist is not an entertainment program but worship -- 'source and summit of our Christian life' -- I think these types of questions are natural. And I fully agree with you that what is lacking in such areas (if it is true as the questioner says) is proper catechesis, and [hence a need to] develop true and authentic devotion at the sacraments. In many parts of India there are very many prayer groups, charismatic and others, where spontaneity finds its proper application. And I find it very difficult to accept that fidelity to liturgical norms makes it 'dry.'"

I am grateful for this comment. While I have not yet had the privilege of visiting India, my work in Rome brings me into frequent contact with Indian priests, seminarians and laypeople of various Catholic rites. Every time I attend one of their liturgies I perceive an enthusiasm and degree of participation that is anything but "dry" but rather reverent and fervent.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Article: Adore God, and Him Alone

FATHER KENNETH BAKER, S.J.

Only God may be adored, since he alone is the Supreme Being, source of all that is.

When the existence of the true god is denied or doubted, men tend to create their own gods, more to their liking. A convenient aspect of created gods is that they are much more manageable than the living God who created the heavens and the earth. We live in a time of widespread denial of God, for atheism, often disguised as a compassionate humanism, has become the "religion" of millions.

To be a real atheist, it is not necessary to tell everyone, "I am an atheist," and then proceed to offer arguments from science or from the problem of evil in order to "prove" that God does not exist. Certainly, there are many among us who proceed in this fashion. Much more common, however, is the practice of atheism, that is, one lives as if there were no God, as if the soul were not immortal, as if there would be no final accountability to the Eternal Judge, as if there were no heaven or hell. Such persons are actual or practical atheists, even though they may say they believe in God. A notable characteristic of our time is the tremendous growth in the number of such practical atheists. Since man is born with an irresistible impulse to worship and seek God, if he denies God then he always sets up false gods and false idols.

The First Commandment gives the atheist something to think about. In the first place God says, "I am the Lord your God. You shall not have strange gods before me." According to the traditional understanding of the Church, this Commandment positively prescribes the practice of the virtue of religion and negatively forbids everything that is contrary to religion.

Religion is concerned with man's relationship to his Creator and Lord. The virtue of religion is the moral virtue by which we are disposed to render to God the worship he deserves. It will be very helpful for us to consider some of the implications of the worship that we owe to God. "Worship" is the name that we give to the reverence we show almighty God. The word is also sometimes used in reference to veneration of the saints and the Blessed Virgin Mary, but without an overtone of "adoration" which is offered to God alone.

Worship of God is put into practice by adoration, prayer and sacrifice. We will say something now about adoration, leaving the other two notions for a later consideration.

Adoration usually suggests an image of someone bowing or kneeling or prostrate before God. These bodily postures, of course, were borrowed from the external honor that is shown to oriental kings and potentates in the past. When applied to God, they signify man's total dependence on God for everything that he is and has. Since God is the source of all reality, by adoring him we give expression to that knowledge and belief. True adoration for man involves both his body and his mind, that is, an exterior sign of reverence accompanied by a mental act of submission to God.

We honor and venerate the saints because they are God's heroes. Whatever good deeds they accomplished on earth, and whatever sanctity they may have attained was completely dependent on the grace of God.

Only God may be adored, since he alone is the Supreme Being, source of all that is. Adoration is different from the veneration offered to Mary and to the saints. Often Protestants and other non-Catholics, seeing Catholics praying the Rosary or kneeling in prayer before a statue of a saint such as St. Francis or St. Theresa, accuse Catholics of offering adoration to the saints. Those who know their catechism know that this is a false accusation. We honor and venerate the saints because they are God's heroes. Whatever good deeds they accomplished on earth, and whatever sanctity they may have attained was completely dependent on the grace of God.

Saints are saints because they responded heroically to the abundant graces God offered them. They are the heroes and the heroines of the faith. By dedicating churches in their honor, by honoring images of them, by praying to them, we are in reality acknowledging the wonders that God achieved in these weak human beings by the power of his grace. Every Catholic with a modicum of training in his faith knows that we no not adore statues or saints. That would be the abomination of idolatry, which is explicitly condemned by the First Commandment.

See the index of chapters from Fundamentals of Catholicism
which have been reprinted to CERC here.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Father Kenneth Baker, S.J. "Adore God, and Him Alone." In Fundamentals of Catholicism Vol. 1 Part II, Chapter 2 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983), 138-141.

Reprinted with permission from Father Kenneth Baker, S.J.

THE AUTHOR

Article: A comprehensive approach to character building in Catholic schools

THOMAS LICKONA

The purpose of the Church and of Catholic education is to turn us into little Christs, to continue the process of our transformation in Christ that began in our baptism. How can Catholic schools help to develop, in both students and staff, the character of Christ.

Sanctity is not reserved for a few. Jesus, by His Incarnation and death on the Cross, merited the means of salvation and sanctification for all who believe in Him. He did not give the precept "Be you perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" to a chosen group of persons. . . . He proclaimed it to the multitude who were following Him. - FATHER GABRIEL OF ST. MARY MAGDALENE

In Donald DeMarco's The Heart of Virtue (1996), the chapter on "Generosity" opens with the story of Jean Valjean, the hero of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. Jean Valjean had spent 19 years in the galleys: five for stealing a loaf of bread to feed the starving children of his widowed sister, and 14 years for attempting to escape four times. On being released, he received a yellow passport, which the law required him to present to employers and which made it highly unlikely anyone would hire him, for it read: "This man is dangerous." A return to crime and imprisonment seemed inevitable.

After his release, Jean journeyed a great distance on foot. He was rudely rejected wherever he sought food or lodging. On the fourth day, as a cold rain chilled his body, a kindly stranger suggested he knock on the door of Bishop Bienvenu's house.

When he did, the good bishop welcomed him with a warm "Monsieur!" that startled him. "This is not my house," the bishop explained, "it is the house of Christ. It does not ask any comer whether he has a name, but whether he has an affliction. You are suffering, you are hungry and thirsting; be welcome -- whatever is here is yours. Your name is my brother."

The bishop entertained Valjean, fed him well, and when the meal was over, took him to his quarters. After sleeping soundly for several hours, Valjean awoke in a perturbed state. His thoughts became fixed on the six silver plates that had graced the bishop's supper table and were now in the bishop's sleeping chamber only a few feet away. As solid, old silver, they would bring a handsome price. The temptation overcame him. He slipped into the bishop's room, removed the plates from the cupboard, and fled the house.

The next morning three police appeared at the bishop's door holding Valjean by the collar. They had arrested him, searched his knapsack, and found the plates, which Valjean said the bishop had given him. The bishop, seeing immediately what was at stake, spoke directly to Valjean without even greeting the police: "Ah, there you are, my friend, I am glad to see you! But I gave you the candlesticks, too, which are silver like the rest and would bring you 200 francs. Why didn't you take them along with your plates?"

Valjean was dumfounded. The police, respecting the bishop's word, released their suspect and went away. Bishop Bienvenu then took the silver candlesticks from his mantle and gave them to Valjean, who was trembling. The bishop said, "Never forget that you have promised me to use this silver to become an honest man. Jean Valjean, my brother, you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am purchasing for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God."

This was the turning point in Valjean's life. He never sold the candlesticks, which came to symbolize to him not only the bishop's generosity but also his own redemption.

The purpose of the Church and of Catholic education is to turn us into little Christs. It is to continue the process of our transformation in Christ that began in our baptism. We experience this continuing transformation through the sacraments, through prayer, through the many ways we receive God's grace, and through our own efforts to cooperate with that grace. Finally, we may be transformed, if our spirits are open, by our encounter with the Jesus in others, as happened to Jean Valjean through his encounter with the Christ-like bishop.

In all these ways, Catholic schools can help to develop, in both students and staff, the character of Christ. Broadly stated, the challenges of Catholic character education are two: (1) How can we encourage children and adults to develop a personal, prayerful, sacramental relationship with Jesus that will enable him to live more fully in them -- to give them his very self, his character? (2) How can the Catholic school become a living incarnation of Christ, a community that enables all its members to experience -- as did Jean Valjean -- the transforming power of God's love through the generous, forgiving, yet demanding love of Christians like Bishop Bienvenu?

What Virtues Should Catholic Schools Foster?

"Character" is the constellation of virtues possessed by a person. Character education can be defined as the deliberate effort to cultivate virtue. What are the particular virtues that Catholic schools should seek to cultivate?

Among the natural moral virtues that all schools should try to foster are the four "cardinal virtues" advanced by the ancient Greeks: prudence (which enables us to judge what we ought to do), justice (which enables us to give other persons their due), fortitude (which enables us to do what is right in the face of difficulties), and temperance (which enables us to control our desires and avoid abuse of even legitimate pleasures).

In his book Character Building: A Guide for Parents and Teachers, the British psychologist David Isaacs (1976) offers a more elaborate scheme of 24 moral virtues, grouped according to developmental periods during which the different virtues should be given special emphasis: (1) Up to 7 years: obedience (respecting legitimate authority and rules), sincerity (truth-telling with charity and prudence), and orderliness (being organized and using time well); (2) From 8 to 12 years: fortitude, perseverance, industriousness, patience, responsibility, justice, and generosity; (3) From 13 to 15 years: modesty (respect for one's own privacy and dignity and that of others), moderation (self-control), simplicity (genuineness), sociability (ability to communicate with and get along with others), friendship, respect, patriotism (service to one's country and affirmation of what is noble in all countries); and (4) From 16 to 18 years: prudence, flexibility, understanding, loyalty, audacity (taking risks for good), humility (self-knowledge), and optimism (confidence).

Besides fostering these natural virtues, Catholic schools must develop the spiritual virtues necessary for our transformation in Christ. These spiritual virtues include:

faith in God and confidence in his omnipotence, omniscience, providence, love, mercy, promise to answer our prayers, call to us as individuals, and will to fill us with his holy life
loving God with all our heart, mind, and soul
obedience to God's will, in imitation of Jesus, and obedience to the teachings of the Church that Jesus founded
personal prayer
awareness of and sorrow for our sins
frequenting of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Confession
worship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
hunger for a knowledge of God
dying to self
willingness to pick up our cross and join our sufferings with the Cross of Christ for the salvation of souls
a sacrificial love of neighbor
a humility that acknowledges our total dependence on God, seeks God's graces in all we do, and is grateful for all of God's blessings
a devotion to Mary as the Mother of God, perfect model of surrender to God, and sure path to union with her Son.

A Comprehensive Approach to Character Development

In order to develop Christ-character -- both the natural moral virtues and the spiritual and supernatural virtues -- Catholic schools need a comprehensive approach, one that seeks to develop character through the total moral and spiritual life of the school. This comprehensive approach can be conceptualized in terms of twelve mutually supportive components. Let me describe and illustrate each of these.

1. The teacher as caregiver, model, and mentor.

The relationship between the teacher and the student is the foundation of everything else in character education. In their relationships with their students, teachers can exert positive influence on character development in three ways: respecting and loving their students, setting a good example, and serving as moral and spiritual mentors.

Teachers can love their students even before they come into their presence. One third-grade teacher says she tries to find a quiet moment before the teaching day begins to sit with a list of her students and say a brief prayer for each one, such as: "Lord, give me patience with Brian. Help me to see his strengths." On days when she does this, she finds she sees her students in a more positive light and has more grace to deal with the inevitable difficulties.

Similarly, there are countless opportunities for a teacher to foster good character through personal example. One middle school teacher models his faith by leading his students in the following prayer at the start of each class:

O Lord, open my eyes to see what is beautiful
My mind to know what is true
And my heart to love what is good,
For Jesus's sake, amen.

Some teachers teach the importance of prayer by providing silent time in class for personal prayer. Says one teacher, "For many of my students, this may be the only time they pray in this way."

Serving as a moral and spiritual mentor includes love and good example but adds explicit guidance -- a kind of moral or spiritual coaching. For example, one sixth-grade teacher challenges her students to "make a difference for good." She shares a personal story about how she and other adults in the parish tried to make this kind of a difference:

Our nearest gas station sold pornography. It wasn't convenient to drive to another, but we got 30 people in the parish to boycott that station. The owner decided it wasn't worth the loss of business and pulled the pornography. I explain to my students that if you're silent and do nothing, you're part of the problem.

"Students are seldom challenged to stand up for what's right," says this teacher, "so I challenge them to take a stand as a class. This particular class decided to write to Doritos, which at the time was running a commercial they felt was very disrespectful toward old people. Doritos wrote back and said they had received a number of critical letters and were going to change the commercial. You have to give kids the experience that they can make a difference."

2. Helping students develop a personal prayer life.

The Spiritual Hunger of the Modern Child (Addison, 1985) reports an inter-faith conference that addressed a difficult question: "Why do so many young people, even those raised in committed religious families, stop practicing their faith -- and even believing in God -- once they leave home?"

One answer stood out for me. It was that of a British Catholic priest, Father Hugh Thwaites. He said that in his experience, when young persons fall away from the faith, it is because of one or more of three reasons.

The first is sin. Before there is a spiritual falling away, Father Thwaites said, there is usually a moral falling away: "Moral disorder and spiritual disorder are linked together, as cause and effect."

The second reason is that the young person "never personally grasped the meaning of the faith." Religion was for them a set of external behaviors, not a living relationship with the living God. "If our young people grow up without growing in intimacy with Christ," Father Thwaites says, "what wonder that their religion would come to seem cold and empty?"

The third reason is intimately linked with the second: The young person did not have a personal prayer life. "Not praying," Father Thwaites says, "will not, of itself, kill the spiritual life. Only serious sin does that. But the absence of any prayer life will so weaken the spiritual life, that it will be unable to meet the onslaughts of a pagan world."

Those of us who work in a college environment know the intellectual and moral onslaughts that young people face there, even at ostensibly Catholic institutions. Young people succumb to these attacks and temptations, Father Thwaites says, "through sheer lack of spiritual vitality. What food and drink is to the body, prayer is to the soul."

Father Thwaites concludes: "If young people going through a spiritual crisis give up on prayer, they will come to reject their religion."

If prayer is essential to sustain the faith and character that Catholic schools work to develop, how can we help students establish a vital personal prayer life? Besides setting a good example and providing time to pray in school, teachers can provide students with short prayers to pray upon rising in the morning ("Good morning, Lord; thank you for this day; help me to serve you today") and going to bed at night. An aid to prayer for teenage students is the Catholic booklet Living Faith (1997), which contains brief meditations based on the Scripture readings for the day's Mass.

We can teach our children to pray conversationally, talking to Jesus as if he were right there with them (which, of course, he is). We can teach them a pattern of praying, such as beginning with prayers of thanksgiving and then praying prayers of petition. We should help them understand that, as Jesus taught, God always answers our prayers but according to his perfect will. Sometimes the answer is "yes," sometimes "no," sometimes "wait." Like a loving parent, God gives us what is best for us. (My wife Judith has a friend who says that her atheism began at age seven when she prayed very hard for a pony and didn't get one. "I concluded no one was listening," she says.)

We should also teach young people to look carefully for the ways God may be acting in their lives. An answer to prayer may take the form of a "chance" comment someone makes to us. It may take the form of an obstacle God puts in our path to keep us from doing something that would not be good for us.

Finally, in encouraging our students to pray, we should point to the example of Jesus. As Father Gabriel's Divine Intimacy (1964) reminds us, Jesus's long years at Nazareth and forty days in the desert were consecrated to prayer. Before he chose the twelve apostles, Jesus passed the whole night in prayer to the Father (Lk 6:12). He prayed before Peter's confession, before the Transfiguration, at the Last Supper, in Gethsemane, on Calvary. He frequently interrupted His apostolic activity to retire into the desert to pray. "We can imitate the conduct of Jesus," Father Gabriel writes, "by readily interrupting any activity, even apostolic work, in order to focus our attention on God alone."

3. A caring classroom community.

Children need adults who love them, set a good example, and teach them about good character and the spiritual life, but they also need positive relationships with each other. The peer group can provide an experience of belonging and mutual support, or it can provide an experience of exclusion and cruelty.

Catholic schools, like most schools today, struggle with growing peer cruelty. Says one principal: "We have students who have transferred out because of the persecution they have suffered at the hands of their classmates. Because we are a Catholic school committed to teaching God's love, this is our most painful failure."

How can teachers take proactive steps to develop peer-group norms of caring and respect? Four things are helpful: activities (e.g., partner interviews) that enable students to get to know each other; providing students with everyday ways (such as "compliment time") to affirm each other; developing a sense of interdependence (e.g., through cooperative learning) and group solidarity (e.g., through class rituals); and responding swiftly and effectively to peer cruelty whenever it occurs.

One 2nd-grade teacher fosters a caring community in her classroom through the ritual of a morning prayer circle. At the beginning of each day, students stand with their arms around each other and pray for each others' intentions.

Cooperative learning is a way to ensure that no child is left out of the classroom community. When our son Mark was in sixth-grade and a new kid in his school, he told us he felt "absolutely friendless" even after six weeks in his class. When I reported Mark's experience to his 6th-grade teacher, he said (in an act of humility for which I was forever grateful), "I'll take responsibility for that. I usually do cooperative projects, but this year I've let that slide. We'll start them next week." He did, and Mark soon had two friends and was looking forward to going to school. For students at any grade level, friendship is the deepest need. (Many teachers build on that by doing a unit on friendship which has students reflect on what makes for a good friendship.)

Peer cruelty can sometimes be turned around by appealing to the perpetrator's capacity for empathy and responsibility. Haim Ginott, in Teacher and Child (1972), tells a story that illustrates this approach. Jay had been the ringleader of attacks on Andy in their 3rd-grade class. The teacher wrote Jay the following letter:

Dear Jay,
Andy's mother has told me that her son has been made very unhappy this year. Name-calling and ostracizing have left him sad and lonely. I feel concerned about this situation. Your experience as a leader in your class makes you a likely person for me to turn to for advice. I value your ability to sympathize with those who suffer. Please write me your suggestions about how we can help Andy.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Spaulding

Jay never replied in writing, but his attacks on Andy ceased.

When students' needs for acceptance and belonging are met through a caring classroom community, they are more likely to care about others. When a teacher is successful in creating this kind of a classroom, students receive respect and care from their peers and practice giving it in return.

4. Moral discipline.

Discipline, if it is to serve character development, must help students develop moral reasoning, self-discipline, and respect for others. Rules should be established in a way that enables students to see the moral values, such as courtesy and caring, behind the rules. The emphasis should not be on extrinsic rewards and punishment but on following the rules because it's the right thing to do -- because it respects the rights and needs of others.

In one Catholic K-8 school, a school pledge is used to foster students' intrinsic motivation to follow the rules. Students recite the pledge daily: "I believe that Jesus is present in each of my classmates and in my teachers, and therefore all my actions will show my respect for Jesus."

Students' moral reasoning and commitment to rules can also be developed by having them help create the rules. ("What rules do we need to help us respect each other and therefore respect Jesus?") When students break a rule, consequences should include moral dialogue that makes explicit reference to the relevant virtues: "Did that behavior show respect? Did it show caring? What can you do to make up for it?" Whenever possible, students should be asked to devise and carry out an appropriate way to make restitution for their offenses. Carrying out a positive action to set things right is an important exercise in taking responsibility for their actions.

5. Participatory decision making.

We can also build character by involving students in shared decision making that gives them responsibility for making the classroom a good place to be and learn. The chief means of creating this kind of shared responsibility is the class meeting, a face-to-face circle meeting emphasizing interactive discussion. Class meetings can deal with problems (cutting in lunch line, put- downs, homework problems) or help to plan upcoming events (the day, a field trip, a cooperative activity, the next unit). Most important, class meetings help students go beyond "saying the right words" to doing the right thing.

For example: A Catholic school second-grade teacher called one of her first class meetings to deal with "chaos in the coat closet." It was January; the snows were deep. "All day long," she said, "we talk about love of God and neighbor, but at 3:00 it's Lord of the Flies at the coat closet." There were angry words and pushing and sometimes tears as children tried to find their boots, mittens, hats, and so on. Some even missed the bus as a result of the confusion and conflict.

At their class meeting, the teacher posed the problem in the collective moral voice: "How can we, working together, solve this problem?" After brainstorming possible solutions, the class decided that everyone should be assigned a hook; all would put their things under their personal hooks. "How are we going to make sure everyone does this?" the teacher asked. A girl proposed, "If you don't keep your things where they belong, you should have to keep them at your desk during the next day." The teacher and class decided this was a fair consequence.

The teacher then drew up a class agreement, had each of her students sign it, posted it next to the coat closet, and set a time when they would meet again to see how their solution was working. She comments: "Since we adopted this plan, not a single person has missed the bus." Similarly, middle and high school teachers have used the class meeting to convert classroom management challenges (e.g., students talking out of turn, being tardy, not doing homework) into occasions for students to take responsibility for solving real-life problems.

6. Teaching virtues through the curriculum.

Mining the academic curriculum for its character-building potential requires teachers to look at their grade-level subject matter and ask, "What are the natural intersections between the curriculum I have to cover and the virtues I wish to foster?"

A science teacher can design a lesson on the need for precise and truthful reporting of data and how scientific fraud undermines the scientific enterprise. A social studies teacher can examine questions of social justice, actual moral dilemmas faced by historical figures, and current opportunities for civic action to better one's community or country. A literature teacher can have students analyze the moral decisions and moral strengths and weaknesses of characters in novels, plays, and short stories.

Academic instruction should be guided by the idea that the highest purpose of the curriculum is moral and spiritual. As Ed Wynne and Kevin Ryan (1993) maintain in their article, "Curriculum as a Moral Educator," the curriculum should engage students in thinking about the most fundamental human questions: How should I live my life? What qualities in human beings are admirable and worth emulating? What goals are worth pursuing? What leads to fulfillment in life, and what does not?

Biographies of the saints offer a wonderful way to explore questions such as these. Students can read about the lives of the saints, write about them, report on them, tell stories about the saints to younger children, and choose a saint to pray to and to seek to emulate more closely. Some teachers put a quote from a saint on the board as the "thought for the day." An excellent source of thought-provoking spiritual wisdom is the pocket-sized Thoughts of the Cure D'Ars (1967), a compilation of quotes from the writings of St. John Vianney.

When one of our sons was a freshman at a well-known Catholic university, his theology instructor was a woman who did not believe in the Resurrection and who had her students read only the writings of demythologizers. Our son said it was focusing on the saints that brought him through the crisis of faith precipitated by this course. "The saints," my wife observes, "have their eyes on God. God is very real in their lives." For that reason, they can help God become real in the lives of our students.

For students to benefit as much as they should from studying the lives of the saints, we must help them get hold of a very large idea: We are all called to be saints. This does not mean that we are all called to the same degree and kind of sanctity. The "great saints" had a special mission to accomplish and therefore received singular gifts of nature and grace. "Sanctity," Father Gabriel explains in Divine Intimacy, "does not consist in the greatness of the works accomplished or of the gifts received, but in the degree of sanctifying grace and charity to which the soul has attained by faithful correspondence with God's invitations." By His death on the cross, Jesus merited grace for us not in a limited measure but superabundantly. That is why we all can become saints.

7. The conscience of craft.

Our personal character often affects the lives of others through the quality of the work we do. When we do our work well, other people benefit; when we do it poorly, others suffer. One of the most important "voices" of conscience, therefore, is the conscience of craft, the voice that says: "Do a good job." It is a mark of people's character, Syracuse University professor Thomas Green (1985) observes, when they take care to perform their jobs and other tasks well.

A student's schoolwork affords the opportunity to develop this conscience of craft and the work-related qualities of character: (a) self-discipline, including the ability to delay gratification to pursue future goals; (b) persistence in the face of discouragement; (c) dependability, including a public sense of work as affecting the lives of others; (d) diligence; and (e) responsibility, including making the most of one's education.

The faculty of one Catholic K-12 school, as part of its long-range character education plan, devoted a full year to discussing ways to develop students' work ethic, defined as "doing one's personal best." At all levels of the school, staff agreed on the need to provide students with more opportunities to do in-depth work and to reflect on the quality of their work. In the school's "Character Happenings" quarterly newsletter, faculty shared what they did to help students thoughtfully assess the quality of their efforts. One middle school teacher wrote: "I had students find two items of work from the first semester: one that was of high quality and another that was not. They then wrote about why they thought the items fell into these categories and how they could avoid poor work in the future."

8. Self-awareness and moral reasoning.

Especially important here is teaching students what the virtues are, how their habitual practice will lead to a more fulfilling life, and how each of us must take responsibility for developing our own character. For example, the Catholic psychologist Patricia Cronin (1995) has designed a junior high school curriculum centered on helping students increase their awareness of their own behavior. Students are encouraged to set small daily goals for improvement in their practice of a particular virtue such as respect, cooperation, or generosity (e.g., to give help before it's asked, or to defend someone against negative gossip). At the end of the day, they self-assess and, if they choose, record their progress in a personal journal. This daily goal-setting is considered important for self-awareness and good habit formation.

In national comparisons (see, for example, The American Freshman, 1990), Catholic college students are only marginally different from their non-Catholic counterparts in their attitudes toward moral issues such as legal abortion and premarital sex. American culture is clearly a powerful shaper of the values of Catholic youth. Catholic schools, if they are to produce disciples of Jesus who follow the countercultural values of the Gospel, must do more to develop their students' moral reasoning about crucial moral issues.

Regarding abortion, the goal should be to help students not only avoid the personal sin of abortion but also to be effective witnesses for life. Students should, for example, be able to respond with cogent arguments to the common assertions in the abortion debate: "But it isn't a life." (From the very beginning of its development, the baby is a separate genetic structure, a separate immune system, a separate life. By 18 days, its heart is beating. Abortion is wrong because it violates the baby's right to live.) "But the fetus isn't a person." (The same could be said of the newborn baby. Both the preborn baby and newborn baby are totally dependent on someone else for survival.) "It's the woman's right to choose." (Ethics tells us we have a right to exercise choice only when that exercise does not violate the rights of another. We don't say the rapist should have a "choice" to rape, or the child abuser a "choice" to abuse children.) "It's wrong to bring unwanted babies into the world." (Studies find that most battered children were planned pregnancies. The life-affirming solution to an unwanted pregnancy is not abortion but adoption.) "Outlawing abortion will harm women." (Women suffer harm under legalized abortion. If a woman has had an abortion, her chances of having a miscarriage during a future pregnancy are much greater. Many women also suffer "post abortion syndrome": symptoms such as depression, guilt, and nightmares about the aborted baby.) "What about rape and incest?" (It isn't fair to punish the unborn child for the crime of the father. What helps women to be healed of the trauma of rape is love and support, not adding another trauma by abortion. With incest, adoption is the most positive solution.)

At the secondary level, students should study and discuss Pope John Paul II's eloquent encyclical, The Gospel of Life (1995), and its challenge to all persons of good will to defend life in the face of the growing culture of death. In today's society, there is no greater opportunity for young people to develop moral courage, and to follow Jesus's call to be "persecuted for the sake of righteousness," than to fight the dark tide of abortion and euthanasia. Catholic high school students will also benefit from studying Professor Janet Smith's carefully reasoned pamphlet, The Connection Between Contraception and Abortion (n.d.).

Regarding sex, Catholic young people should know what the Church teaches: that, in the Pope's words, "sex is the beautiful gift of a good God," but it is meant for marriage and marriage only. Outside the marriage commitment, it is a mortal sin that jeopardizes their eternal souls. They should know the Scriptural basis of this teaching, such as Jesus's naming fornication, along with "murder, theft, adultery, greed, and maliciousness," as "an evil that comes from within" (Mark 7:21-23). But young people also need help in understanding why God forbids sex outside the marriage commitment.

This means understanding that there is a natural moral law, built into human nature, just as there is a law governing physical nature. When we follow the natural moral law, we live in harmony with ourselves and each other. When we act in ways that go against the natural law, we create problems for ourselves and others.

In the natural moral order, what are the natural consequences of having sex? Bonding and babies. This is sometimes expressed as God's "two-in-one" plan for sex: deepening love and making new life. If you have sex with someone you aren't married to, you may very well create or deepen an attachment that ends up being broken. And, even if you are trying to avoid it, you may create a life you aren't ready to assume responsibility for.

Once, when I was sitting in on an ethics class in a Catholic high school, one young woman asked me what I thought about premarital sex. I said, "To answer that question, it helps to ask, what is the intrinsic meaning of sexual intercourse? When you have sex with someone, you're being as physically intimate as it is possible to be with another human being. You can't get any closer than that.

"When you're married, sexual intercourse symbolizes and strengthens a bigger union: your total commitment to each other. You join your bodies because you've joined your lives. In body language, sex says to the other person, `I give myself to you completely.' When you're married, that's really true. But if you have sex before you've committed yourself to the other person in marriage, you're really lying with your body. It's like saying, `I give myself to you completely, but not really.'"

After the class, this young woman came up to me and said, "I never heard anyone talk about sex like that. Now I know what I think" (Lickona & Lickona, 1994). (An orthodox Catholic K-8 curriculum that does a good job of teaching chastity is The New Corinthians Curriculum, 1996, Judy Harris, Editor.)

Developing respect for God's gifts of life and sex will, however, be an uphill battle as long as Catholic youth lack a larger spiritual vision, including an understanding of God's plan of salvation. How many Catholics of any age can accurately state what the Church teaches about how to get to heaven and avoid hell? Boston College philosopher Peter Kreeft points out that it is Jesus, in the New Testament, who repeatedly talks about hell, who warns that eternal separation from God is the consequence of unrepented sin (e.g., Mt 3:40-42, 25:31-45; Mk 9:44). If we care about the souls of our students and want to teach as Jesus did, we will not hide this truth from them. There are three big ideas about salvation that we should teach students from an early age:

1. Salvation is God's free gift to us, because Jesus died for our sins on the cross.
2. We can, however, throw this gift away by serious sins that we do not seek God's forgiveness for.
3. Our salvation therefore requires faith in Jesus, obedience to God's commandments, and repentance of our sins.

9. Frequenting the Eucharist and Confession.

For Catholic schools, the sacraments -- in which we encounter Jesus and receive transforming graces -- must be at the center of any effort to develop the character of Christ in our children or ourselves. For this reason, it is a tragedy of the greatest order that, according to any number of polls, most Catholics say they do not believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist but think it is only a symbol. Belief is lowest of all among the youngest Catholics.

When my wife and I taught CCD in our home to a group of eighth-graders, we tried to strengthen their faith in the Real Presence by giving each one a copy of the story of the Eucharistic Miracle at Lanciano. Around the year 700, a Basilian monk in Lanciano begged God to remove his doubts that at the consecration, the bread and wine became the Body and Blood of Christ. One day, as he said the words of the consecration, the bread literally changed into Flesh and the wine into Blood, which coagulated into five globules. Overwhelmed by what he saw, he called the faithful to come to the altar to witness the miracle.

The changed substances were not consumed but placed into a precious ivory container. In 1713, they were enshrined in a silver monstrance in which they are preserved and may be seen to this day at the Church of St. Francis in Lanciano. In 1970, the Church asked a team of medical experts, chaired by the skeptical Dr. Odoardo Linoli, Distinguished Professor in Anatomy and Pathological Histology, to determine the true nature of the elements. On March 4, 1971, the team submitted its findings: "The Flesh is human flesh, the tissue of the human heart, and the Blood is human blood" (The Eucharistic Miracle at Lanciano, n.d.).

God gives us miracles to strengthen our faith. Our 8th-grade students said their faith in Jesus's Real Presence in the Eucharist was strengthened by the pamphlet about the Eucharistic Miracle at Lanciano.

How does Confession contribute to character development? Jesus established the Sacrament of Penance -- his first act when he appeared to his disciples on the day of his resurrection (Jn 20:23) -- for two reasons: the forgiveness of our sins and our growth in holiness.

If we don't go to Confession, we won't have cause to examine our conscience. If we don't examine our conscience, we're not likely to be aware of our sins. It shouldn't surprise us that Catholic teens who have not gone to Confession since their First Reconciliation -- as is increasingly the case -- have little or no sense of sin.

With young children, Confession helps them to form a conscience -- to learn what sin means in terms of their everyday moral experience. This requires helping children learn to identify concrete acts of commission (Have I disobeyed or been disrespectful toward my parents or teachers? Told a lie? Teased my brothers or sisters or been mean to kids at school?) and acts of omission (Have I not helped when help was needed? Failed to be a good friend? Neglected to say my prayers?).

Going to Confession on a regular basis will help children develop a number of habits that are good for their moral and spiritual growth: self-examination; taking the perspective of others and considering how our behavior affects them; learning to say "I'm sorry" to God and to those we've offended; and asking Jesus humbly and prayerfully for the grace to avoid our sins in the future.

Unfortunately, as a sense of sin has faded from our culture and our moral consciousness as Catholics, we feel little need to frequent the Sacrament of Reconciliation. If our children are to be drawn to this sacrament, we must return as adults to seeing Confession and awareness of our sins as essential to our sanctification. Indeed, in his classic Transformation in Christ (1948), the great Catholic philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand asserts that a deep contrition for our sins is an indispensable precondition for our transformation in Christ.

10. Caring beyond the classroom.

As students develop greater personal sanctity, as they draw closer to God through prayer and the sacraments, they will be able to be channels of God's love to others.

Catholic schools have a long tradition of fostering character through service. Service begins in the school -- older students serving as reading buddies to younger ones, for example -- and then extends outward to the Church and to the whole human family. In order to have an effect on students' personal character, service ideally should involve students in face-to-face helping relationships so they can experience the fulfillment of touching another's life. At the Stuart Country Day School in Princeton, New Jersey, principal Sister Joan Magnetti (quoted in Lickona, 1991) describes the opportunities for that kind of service:

Our students read to the blind, work with kids in inner-city neighborhood houses, help in soup kitchens, rebuild houses, and spend two weeks in Appalachia. Many have also interviewed their congressional representatives regarding social issues. Since we believe this kind of education should ideally have an international dimension, we've also sent many students to Bogota. Our goal is to prepare our students for leadership by exposing them to the moral imperatives in the world today.

11. Creating a schoolwide moral community.

A Catholic school must embody the character of Christ. It must be a moral and spiritual community in which all members support and care for each other.

St. Rita's Catholic School in Dayton, Ohio offers an imaginative way to foster this kind of community among students. At St. Rita, children are grouped in "families" of nine, consisting of one child from each grade, K-8. A 7th- and 8th-grade boy and girl serve as the "parents" and are actually called "mom" and "dad" by the younger children.

At the start of the school year, these family groups spend much of the first three days together in games and other activities that build bonds. During the rest of the year, the family groups come together for regular events, such as Mass, and for special occasions such as Feast Days and Holy Days. During Lent, they pray the Stations of the Cross together. At Mass, they sit together in their family pew. If a younger child needs to go to the bathroom, an older one will take him. "It used to be hard to get our older students to sing at Mass," says principal Maryann Eismann. "Now they sing out because they feel a responsibility to be good models for the little ones."

"In general," says principal Eismann, "the older members of a family group look out for the younger ones. They help the little ones solve problems. They're glad to see them in the hall and on the playground. There is no craziness in our school, just a very peaceful and loving atmosphere. We think much of that is due to our family groupings."

12. A devotion to Mary.

In The Splendor of Truth (1993), Pope John Paul II writes: "Christian morality consists, in the simplicity of the Gospel, in following Jesus Christ, in abandoning oneself to him, in letting oneself be transformed by his grace and renewed by his mercy."

The model for abandoning ourselves to Jesus is Mary. Her fiat -- "Be it done unto me" -- made our salvation possible. She shows us how to receive Jesus so that we can offer him to the world. She exemplifies all the virtues. Catholic schools that hope to develop Christ-like character in their students should help them develop a devotion to his Blessed Mother and a Marian spirituality. We should teach our children to turn to Mary, as their Mother, in all situations. "If the winds of temptations arise," writes St. Bernard, "call upon Mary. In danger, sorrow, or perplexity, think of Mary, call upon Mary."

We should teach our children faithfully to pray the Rosary, with confidence in the Blessed Mother's intercession for all our needs and our growth in holiness. She is the model for our interior life. "From the very first moment of her life," writes Father Gabriel, "Mary was entirely God's and lived only for Him." She will lead us to her Son.

The Pope, who has dedicated his papacy to the Blessed Mother, writes (1994): "I entrust the whole Church to the maternal intercession of Mary. . . . She, the Mother of Fairest Love, will be for Christians on the way to the Third Millennium the Star which safely guides their steps to the Lord." The Pope closes The Gospel of Life (1995) with a prayer to Mary, whom he calls "the incomparable model of how life should be welcomed and cared for." It is a prayer, I think, that describes very well the kind of character that Catholic education should strive to develop in God's children:

"O Mary, Mother of the living, to you do we entrust the cause of life. Look down, O Mother, upon the vast numbers of babies not allowed to be born, of the poor whose lives are made difficult, of men and women who are victims of brutal violence, of the elderly and the sick killed by indifference or out of misguided mercy. Grant that all who believe in your Son may proclaim the Gospel of life with honesty and love to the people of our time. Obtain for them the grace to accept that Gospel as a gift ever new, the joy of celebrating it with gratitude throughout their lives, and the courage to bear witness to it resolutely, in order to build, together with all people of good will, the civilization of truth and love. . . ."

References

Addison, W. (Ed.). (1985). The spiritual hunger of the modern child. Charles Town, WV: Clymont Communications.
The American Freshman: National Norms for Fall 1990. (1990). Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA.
Cronin, P. (1995). A manual for character education. Chicago: Metro Achievement Center.
DeMarco, D. (1996). The heart of virtue: Lessons from life and literature illustrating the beauty and value of moral character. San Francisco: Ignatius Press.
The Eucharistic Miracle at Lanciano. (n.d.). Stockbridge, MA: Association of Marian Helpers.
Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen. (1964). Divine intimacy. Rockford, IL: Tan Books.
Ginott, H. (1972). Teacher and child. New York: Avon Books.
Green, T. F. (1985). The formation of conscience in an age of technology. American Journal of Education, 94, 1-38.
Isaacs, D. (1976). Character-building: A guide for parents and teachers. Blackrock, County Dublin: Four Courts Press.
Harris, J. J. (Ed.). (1996). The new Corinthians curriculum, K-8. Cincinnati: Foundation for the Family, Inc.
John Paul II. (1993). The splendor of truth. St. Paul Books & Media.
John Paul II. (1994). As the third millennium draws near. Quoted in 1996: The year with John Paul II. New Hope, KY: Urbi et Orbi Communications.
John Paul II. (1995). The gospel of life. New York: Random House.
Lickona, T. (1991). Educating for character: How our schools can teach respect and responsibility. New York: Bantam Books.
Lickona, T. & Lickona, J. (1994). Sex, love & you: Making the right decision. Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press.
Living faith: Daily Catholic devotions. (1997). St. Louis: Creative Communications for the Parish.
Thoughts of the Cure D'Ars. (1967). Rockford, IL: Tan Books.
Smith, J. (n.d.) The connection between contraception and abortion. Dayton, OH: One More Soul.
Von Hildebrand, D. (1948). Transformation in Christ. Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press.
Wynne, E. & Ryan, K. (1993). The curriculum as moral educator. American Educator, 17, 20-48.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Thomas Lickona "A comprehensive approach to character building in Catholic schools." Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice, Vol 4, No. 2, Dec. 2000, 259-271.

Reprinted with permission of Thomas Lickona.

THE AUTHOR

Thomas Lickona is a developmental psychologist and professor of education at the State University of New York at Cortland. He is the author of Character Matters: How to Help Our Children Develop Good Judgment, Integrity, and Other Essential Virtues (Touchstone, 2004) and the Christopher Award-winning book Educating for Character (Bantam Books, 1992). He has also written Raising Good Children (Bantam Doubleday 1994) and co-authored Sex, Love and You (Ave Maria Press, March 2003). Thomas Lickona was instrumental in development of the Center for the Fourth and Fifth Rs. He is on the Advisory Board of the Catholic Education Resource Center.

Catholic Metanarrative

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Article: The Need for Sacrifice

Catholics should get into the habit of making small sacrifices for God.

Article: The role of death

Approval for euthanasia muffles our proper emotional response to a person's passing.

Article: A Way of Beholding the World

Those of us who profess the Catholic Faith still have a way of beholding the world that marks us apart from our neighbors.

Article: The Sacred Heart and the Eucharist

May is the month of Mary, our Blessed Mother, and June is the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. As May leads to and introduces June, so Mary brings us to the love of her Son, the love symbolized by His Sacred Heart.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Wednesday Liturgy: Pre-recorded Masses

Wednesday Liturgy: Follow-up: "So Very Dry" Liturgy

Friday, May 22, 2009

Article: Adore God, and Him Alone

Only God may be adored, since he alone is the Supreme Being, source of all that is.

Article: A comprehensive approach to character building in Catholic schools

The purpose of the Church and of Catholic education is to turn us into little Christs, to continue the process of our transformation in Christ that began in our baptism. How can Catholic schools help to develop, in both students and staff, the character of Christ.

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