Vocations

Hello, all,

Yes, I know--this blog's a ghost town.  Wasn't planning on posting today, either, but I've had a few things going around in my head that I want to work out on electronic paper.

Our shortage of vocations in America (and most of the developed world, for that matter) is well known.  Over at Lifesite, Anthony Esolen suggests a few causes.  I won't argue too much, though I think we've done the whole "it's-the-liturgy-stupid" thing to death.  But I did note his point that we don't offer as much challenge as perhaps we ought.

It's certainly true with every recruiting effort for the clergy I've ever seen.
Here's a ten-minute clip from a larger project aimed at teens.  Two young priests tell the stories of their discernment.

Now, I'm not dissing these priests.  I have no doubt their stories are genuine, and their love of the Church is clear.  But look at the filmmakers' subtext, and you'll see things common to every religious appeal to young people (apart from World Youth Day itself).

Apparently, there are just oodles of young, single Catholics out there thinking:

"Golly gee - I'd really like to join the religious life, but I'm afraid they won't let me play sports anymore!"

Really?

I'll grant, priests come in all varieties.  Some are introverted and scholarly.  Some are mushy sentimentalists.  Some (mercifully few) are downright effeminate.  Insofar, then, as this may be some young people's only experience with priests, it might not hurt to see a couple from more humble beginnings, doing "guy" things.  Street cred.  I get that.

On the other hand, we've got the pop soundtrack, and the edgy camerawork, and from all we see, they spend more time working out than they do in prayer.*

All this seems to say:  See?  God's not really asking that much of you.  You'll still be the same person, doing the same things.  For someone like my teenage self, they'd have said, "You can still have your booze, and your cigarettes, and your ponytail, and your Zeppelin albums.  C'mon, be a priest; it'll be really keen!"

It's all fun and games, until someone loses the Faith.

And I would have run the other way.  As, in fact, I did.  Because that's not the Christ I was looking for.

I wanted a Christ who'd say, "Put those things away.  Sell them and give to the poor.  Leave your nets on the boat, and come follow me.  It's the greatest adventure you could ever imagine!"

If we try that, I think, they will come.

It certainly works for the enemy.  Look at ISIS.  Young people from all over the civilized world are running to join a barbarian horde in the desert.  Why?  Because it offers something to believe in.  Something to which they can sacrifice everything.  Something that shows their contempt of a world full of pornography, political correctness, consumerism, and an overblown notion of fair play that refuses to let them risk anything.

How do we answer them back?  One-up them.  If young people will go to those lengths for something that offers them death, how much more will they give to something that offers them resurrection?

Let me show you something now that put me in a very good place this week.


This is who's getting vocations these days.  Note, for example, that their Prioress is nearly ten years younger than I am.  Note the joy.  Note the faith.

"But they're Traddies!" I hear you cry.  Yes, but they're the joyful kind.  They're traddies because they love their Catholic heritage, not because they hate everyday Catholics.  But if you're really disposed to argue, here's some Ordinary Form Dominicans getting even more vocations.


Yes, they play sports, too, but note what attracted the young novice from Australia:  The sisters walking around campus in their habits.  Post-Vatican II modified habits, but still set.  Apart.  From.  The.  World.

A modest proposal:  If you want to recruit young people, don't tell them how much they can keep.

Tell them how much they can give.


*Not to mention the stereotypes.  Fr. White's running through the hills to a Pure Moods-ish movie anthem - or is it a Zyrtec commercial?  Meanwhile, Fr. Not-So-White's walking through the inner city to a brooding hip-hop track.  Racist much?

TWO POPES, TWO BISHOPS, TWO SISTERS AND A TRANSFIGURATION - BUT THE SAME SPIRIT (OR, Why Two Visible Heads Are Better Than One)

Well, hello, everyone.  Been a while, hasn't it?  See, I had this hospitalization thing (Type II Diabetes), and some long, slow recovery.  Then there was the soul-searching, as I questioned my motives for blogging in the first place - yeah, that's probably going to come up again at some point, but that's me.  I won't promise anything regular, but while my first novel is out to beta readers and I'm well into the research-and-notes phase of my second, I've got a moment to put some thoughts down on . . . er, electrons, I guess.

So, what have I missed?

Oh, yeah, we've got a new pope.  In fact, it turns out we have two popes!

Two popes, and a whole lot of dopes.

We've all heard the narrative, haven't we?  Heard it to death.  Big bad Benedict was the Pope for this Church:

You're not supposed to like this.  If you're into smells, bells, and solemnity, you're elitist and exclusionary, you hate women and poor people, and you're probably a Republican.

While Pope Francis represents this Church:

That's more like it!  All heresy and nowsy and bursting with okayness.  You can tell these guys don't discriminate against women, or the poor, or minorities, or the untalented, or trivial things like sin.

Well, let's put this idea to the test, shall we?  Only instead of quoting lines out of context from ill-translated interview questions answered on the fly, what say we turn up the volume and focus on actions, hmm?

Let's take a recent example from my own beloved upstate.  When Buffalo's Bishop Kmiec retired, Mean, Nasty, Recactionary, Misogynist Benedict replaced him with an über-devout catechetics expert from New England.

His Excellency, Bishop Richard Malone of Buffalo.

Two years later, when Rochester's Bishop Clark retired, Humble, Caring, Progressive, Pastoral, Did-We-Mention-He's-From-The-Third-World, Rock-Star Pope Francis replaced him with . . .

An über-devout catechetics expert from New England.

His Excellency, Bishop-Elect Salvatore Matano of Rochester.

Big difference, yeah?

Hermeneutic o' Continuity, FTW.

WHAT'S UP WITH THAT?

Well, part of it has to do with ill-managed expectations.  For some reason, people assumed that if Francis didn't explicitly repeat everything Benedict said before him (and sometimes even when he did), he must not believe it.  This is like saying that since John's Gospel omits many of the events found in the Synoptic Gospels, John must be repudiating Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  Rather odd, when it's John who has Jesus praying for unity among His disciples in Chapter 17.

The reason Francis doesn't go around repeating Benedict is that he assumes (perhaps foolishly) that we already heard Benedict.  That he treasures Benedict's doctrinal legacy is clear in his speech last month when awarding the Ratzinger prize, praising Benedict for his Jesus of Nazareth trilogy:

No one can measure the good he has done by means of this gift; only the Lord knows! But we all have a certain perception of this, having listened to so many people who, thanks to these books on Jesus of Nazareth, have nurtured and deepened their faith, or have indeed drawn close to Christ for the first time, as adults, bringing the demands of reason alongside their search for the face of God.

Benedict didn't just give up, give in to his enemies, and let them have the new direction everybody wanted.  He had a plan in mind.

THEN WHY DID POPE BENEDICT RETIRE? 

Pretty much why he said:

I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry. I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering. However, in today's world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.

In a word, he'd taken us as far as we can go, and the next step required a pope with the physical stamina to go out to the world.  And isn't that just where Francis rocks.  Our.  Socks?

In the end, I think, it all comes back to the Transfiguration.

Jesus takes his Big Three up Mt. Tabor - Peter, James, & John - The first Pope, the first to die, and the last to die.  There they see His glory for what it is, at least insofar as unregenerate human eyes are able.  Peter wants to build a shrine, maybe sell tickets.  This is what he signed on for, baby.  That and fish.  Lots of fish.

As Bishop Sheen put it, Peter "tried to make the honeymoon the marriage."

Our Lord is having none of it.  Back down the mountain with them.  Down where the other nine are making asses of themselves, trying to exorcise a demon that just Will. Not. Budge.

In a word, it's Monday down there.  Coffee break's over; back on your heads.

If, when you think of the Transfiguaration - as I will this morning in the Luminous Mysteries - you think only of Jesus standing up there with Moses and Elijah, while the apostles stand there picking their jaws off the ground, I humbly suggest you're missing much of the story's point.  Yes, Jesus is Lord.  He is glorious.  And to be fair, his chat with the two prophets seems to be revolving around His impending crucifixion (the problem being, the apostles still don't get it).  But the coming back down is the punch line, if you will.

The first thing Christ told His disciples was, "Come and see."  The last thing he said was, "Go, and tell."

This is the sum of the whole Christian mission.  First we go up the mountain and behold Christ's glory - the glory of His Divinity, and the glory of His victory over death.  Then we go back down, to a world full of devils, convulsing society and growing ever more entrenched.  This is the meaning of the New Evangelization.

It also recalls the story of Mary and Martha.

From the tenth chapter of Luke:

 38 Now as they went on their way, he entered a village; and a woman named Martha received him into her house. 39 And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. 40 But Martha was distracted with much serving; and she went to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me." 41 But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; 42 one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her."

For centuries, doctors of the Church have seen in Martha and Mary the embodiments of the Active and Contemplative modes of Christian life, respectively.  Methinks Pope Benedict represented the contemplative.  As Pope Francis said, 

 "He gave a gift to the Church, and to all humanity, of what was most precious to him: his knowledge of Jesus, the fruit of years and years of study, of prayer, of theological investigation, and he made it available in the most accessible form”.

And Benedict will stay on, to pray and contemplate on our behalf, while Francis leads us down the mountain to do battle. 

In the last chapter of her Interior Castle, St. Teresa of Avila says that Mary and Martha ought to walk together on our path to heaven.  Now we have them both in Rome.  SCORE!

"Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!"  (Ps. 133:1)
Our popes can do it; why can't we?

And Now, A Word From A Young Convert

Photo courtesy of Catholic With A Vengeance.
Extraordinary Form  for an extraordinary blog.

Rae Marie, over at Catholic With A Vengeance, has a great piece up about parishes (is yours one?) who beg and plead for young parishioners to get involved . . . until the younger people actually try it.

I spoke up once during choir practice (I’d since then joined the choir because I enjoyed singing and praising the Lord). I said “You know, I’d really like some Latin hymns…Maybe we can have some silence after Mass during Lent- you know for reverence…”

I suggested to our priest once: “I think a Eucharistic procession around Christmas to celebrate the incarnation would be cool…” Deaf ears in reply. I was told by the music director: “We don’t do that anymore…Silence bores the congregation…” and by the priest “A procession would be inconvenient…” 

What I gave was the opinion of a young Catholic- a real, live young Catholic. They didn’t want it. 

The problem is all these pastors, youth pastors and music directors keep telling us young folk what bores us, what we really like, what we find interesting. And guess what, THEY’RE WRONG! If one listens to the young Catholic voice, one would find we are yearning for beauty, for tradition and for truth. Traditional Catholicism honestly fascinates us! We go all week hearing perky pop-songs, jumping techno and chatter that doesn’t leave a minute of silence. We go to church and we get exposed to the same exact things. Thus, of course we find it boring! Why should we go to Mass when we can stay home and sing “Gather us in”, listen to a preacher on tv and fill our rooms with noise? Young people are sick of the world. We long for a safe habitat where we can bow before God and think. We crave contact with ancientness, with a strong grounding, with strong Catholic identity. God’s people are chosen out of the world, set apart, destined for a heavenly home. We want a taste of that!

Read the whole thing here.

We see here yet another case of pastoral and liturgical disconnect: committees and "experts" striving to make Catholicism fresh and relevant for the young people of 1968.  It was a different generation, combating different kinds of abuses by a different kind of authority figure.  Yet here they still are, in 2012 - soon to be '13 - rebelling against an establishment that's been dead since the 1970s.  Jim Kalb has an excellent series on this over at Crisis.  Read all four parts; they're worth your time.

I've seen this nonsense all my life.  I was younger than Rae when I volunteered to teach Religious Ed. to high-school kids.  I'd studied the Catechism (brand new in those days), read the Bible daily, and had a couple semesters of Catholic Theology at undergraduate level from professors who later had shows on EWTN.  My qualifications were nothing, however, compared to those of the young lady who got the position.  She lived in such a close imitation of Our Lady that, like her, she managed to conceive a child without a husband - which child she was visibly carrying at the time.  What better way to teach our young folk than by example?

For twenty years, under four different pastors, I offered to train altar servers.  No takers.  Now, even if they asked, I don't remember enough to be of much use anymore (I could talk you through the average Mass, sure, but weddings, funerals, Benedictions, etc. I just can't remember how it went).

Of course, I'm no longer young, by any stretch.  Young Catholics cannot remember a time before John Paul II was pope.  I can.

But speaking as a recovering young person, I can tell you what young people want:  Christ.  They want Christ, they long for Christ, they hunger and thirst for him:  "When shall I behold His face?"  (cf. Ps. 42: 3)
They want a sense of something holy, mysterious, otherworldly.  Something to challenge their imaginations.  Something to live for.  A Mass to dress up for.  A sense that what they're doing matters.

What better means than through our own long-standing (if now long-lost) traditions?  It's no accident that you'll find ample candles, incense, and recording of Gregorian Chant in any college dorm.  Why don't we find them in our churches?  Why aren't we saying, "You like that?  We invented that!  Come check out what else we have to offer!"  It's time to raid the Church's attic and break out the Ancient Tools for the New Evangelization.  Trust me on this.  When I was 18, a traditional-minded priest called us altar boys together for exactly such a raid.  The object:  Locate the old cassocks and surplices the altar boys of the 1940s had used.  We found them, along with lots of other cool stuff.  Our mothers washed and ironed them, and we wore them as we served Midnight Mass.  We had smells.  We had bells.  Father said the Roman Canon in Latin.  It was one of the greatest nights of my life.  I can't even describe - the closest analogy I have would be falling madly in love, but the stirring's in a different part of you, one I can't pinpoint, because I didn't know it was there till I felt the stirring therein.

Christmas, 1987.  Yours Truly, top right.
What I wouldn't give to have that hairline back!

I've been saying a lot lately, with regard to Evangelization, "Get with Christ!"  That's exactly what I recommend for young people.  Get them with Christ.  And the ones who've got with Him already?  Listen to them!  They are wiser than you know.

"And a little child shall lead them." (Isaiah 11: 6)

Penitence: In Hoc Signo Vinces.

"Did you ever hear that to conquer your enemies,

you must repent first, get down on your knees,

and beg forgiveness?  Does West Point teach that?"

                                                                                -Bob Dylan

In my last post, I discussed Evangelization as our last, best move against the way our society (or lack thereof) is moving.  I mentioned that to accomplish this, we need to get with Christ, jack up the prayers and self-mortifications.  Re-reading it, I see now that I failed specifically to mention Sacramental Confession.  My bad.  It was so much on my mind that I assumed it must have spilled over onto the page somewhere.

It really falls under the "Get with Christ" heading.  When encountered, very often the first thing the Holy Spirit does is convict us of sin (Jn. 16: 8).  Note Peter's reaction when Our Lord shows him Whom he's dealing with in the miraculous catch:  "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" (Lk. 5: 8)  When we get with Christ, we see His goodness, and quickly realize our own is nothing but a cheap ersatz imitation, probably made in China.

I also mentioned the meeting of the USCCB going on this week, and speculated what the impact of the elections might be.  Would the bishops busy themselves with day-to-day admin-as-usual, or would they wake up?

Well, now we have our answer.

Cardinal Dolan gets it.  He soooOOOooo gets it. It's time for a spiritual tack.  It's time to evangelize, and Evangelization Begins At Home.

I stand before you this morning to say simply: first things first. We gather as disciples of, as friends of, as believers in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, "the Way, the Truth and the Life," who exhorted us to "seek first the Kingdom of God."
We cannot engage culture unless we let Him first engage us; we cannot dialogue with others unless we first dialogue with Him; we cannot challenge unless we first let Him challenge us . . .

 With this as my presidential address, I know I risk the criticism. I can hear it now: "With all the controversies and urgent matters for the Church, Dolan spoke of conversion of heart through the Sacrament of Penance. Can you believe it?" 

To which I reply, "You'd better believe it!"

Read the whole thing here.  Also, Father Z. has the audio up, if you'd rather listen.

Friday abstinence all year round, like they did before the Council?  Oh, hell, yeah!  I hope they approve it.  Yes, I know, we've always been free to do it individually, but there's something more there when you're doing it in union with the whole Church in your country.  There are all kinds of things I like about this.

1. It identifies us as Catholic, at a time when Pope Benedict is moving us toward a renewal and reclamation of Catholic identity.  Ashes on the forehead every day would be impractical, and would eventually become showpieces for spiritual pride, like the extra-wide phylacteries of the Pharisees.
2. It's a sacrifice - a self-mortification (unless you're a vegan) at a time when we need more spiritual sacrifice.  "this kind cannot be driven out by anything except prayer and fasting" (Mk. 9: 29).
3. It reminds us of our brethren here and abroad who don't have enough to eat, or to eat well.  Look at the victims of Sandy, some of them learning the joys of living in Haiti (without the heat) in the discomfort of their own homes in New York.  May I remind you that the idea behind abstinence is to take the extra you would have spent on meat and give it to the poor?  Does your Religious Ed. program teach that?  Mine never did.

In the original, pre-Monty Python quest for the Holy Grail, no one shows more enthusiasm for the idea than Sir Gawain.  He's so eager, he can't even be bothered to accept the bishop's invitation to Confession before he sets off.  There's no time, and besides, he hasn't done anything that bad.  After all, he's one of Arthur's Knights!

So off he goes, unshriven, ready to set the world to rights.  In the course of the story, he gets lost, trapped, tricked, betrayed, dazed, and confused.  Not only does he not find the Grail (and barely even finds his way back to Camelot), but he misjudges every situation, misses or misinterprets every clue, and winds up inadvertently killing several of his own friends and allies.

The long and short, kids, is this:  We need to remove the beams from our own eyes before we can see to remove the speck from the world's eye . . . or even see the forest for the trees.  Get ye Shriven!

"But it's dark and cramped in there!  It looks like a coffin!"

It is a coffin!  That's where we bury the old man when we put off what's earthly in us! (Col. 3: 5-10)

"But why do I need to go to some man?  Can't I just pray to Jesus and be forgiven?"

Of course, you can pray to Him, and should!  There's just two little things:

1. The little matter of John 20: 22ff:  "Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are  forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.  Or, they can just pray to me, and I'll take care of it.  So there's really no point in my giving you this authority, I'm just saying. . ."
2. You are praying to Jesus when you go to Confession.  When Christ came to earth, He took on a human nature to get around and do His work in.  And He's still doing just that.  Only now, it's not His physical Body He's using; it's His Mystical Body - the Church.  It's Jesus Christ Himself Who hears your Confession, prescribes your penance, and absolves you.  The priest is just loaning himself to God for the purpose.

And He stays with you, by the way.  Once He's cleaned out all that sin to make a little room for Himself, He's the one who really does your good works.  And it's through you that He's going to spread his gospel to the world.  You're the weapon in this holy war, but Christ is the warrior. That's what Gawain forgot.  You can't find the Grail, but He can.  And he'll do it through you, if you'll let Him.

Get.  With.  Christ.

Evangelize. Now. Or Die.

And so, the verdict is in.  A majority of Americans, and a majority of Catholic Americans, has re-elected a regime that has mandated the faithful to fund infanticide, sacralized sodomy, and is poised to drive religion, not only from the public square, but from health care, education, and charity work as well.

Fedora-tip to Mark Shea for this image.

If you're within shouting distance of my generation, you may remember watching the Berlin Wall come down in 1989.  Like me, you may very well have rejoiced that the Cold War was finally over.

Bet you didn't realize we'd lost.  I know I didn't.

When President Obama said that America was no longer a Christian nation, we called it an outrageous lie.  In fact, the president was merely telling us, correctly, what time it was.

It is twilight - evening in America.

Welcome to the Great Rude Awakening.  We are no longer a center-right nation that values hard work and fair play.  We are now a center-left nation that values fair work and hard play.  Religion is the new porn, and vice versa.  Life begins when you're old enough to vote, and ends when you're voted off the island.  Individualism is selfishness, the Gospel is hate speech, and self-denial is genocide.

Welcome to the United Soviet States of America.

And it's all the will of the people.  Vox populi, vox diaboli.  The "silent majority" that gave Nixon his landslide forty years ago, that gave Reagan his mandate thirty years ago?  A lot of them are dead now, and their descendants do not share their fathers' values.  We are a minority.  Not even a minority.  We are a small fringe that makes up part of a minority, together with libertarians, hard-money activists, protectionists, Ayn Randians, military adventurers, and yes, sad to say, even a few white supremacists.  Even if we somehow take back the reins of power, what could we do?  Ban abortion and gay marriage, drive the social engineers out of our schools and replace them with effective teachers, re-establish blue laws to encourage church attendance?  How?  How do you enforce a law, however just, that most of society doesn't want and will not back up?  Look at Prohibition.  There's no way to enact such laws without becoming the dictatorial police state we most fear.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops must be in a similar quandary.  The conference goes into its Fall General Assembly next week knowing that more than half its flock are giving it the finger and are de facto apostates and/or schismatics who will drop the name of Catholic the minute it works to their disadvantage.  It would seem that the bishops must either put in their teeth and start laying down the law, or resign themselves to being not so much a prophetic voice in the wilderness as a tree falling in the forest that no one hears.

Locutus, president of catholicsforchoice.borg

So what to do?  Politically, we're beaten; it's hopeless.  I'm not saying we shouldn't still vote.  I'm not saying we should turn our backs on society, retreat to our Catholic ghettos of old, and wait for the Huns to arrive and start Middle Ages II.  For one thing, the Visigoths and Vandals are already here.  They're us.  Without the sanctifying grace of Christ and His Church, we're devolving back into the barbarian hordes our ancestors were.

What I am saying is that we can't count on mere politics to save us anymore.  At best, a Romney administration would have only been a stop-gap, while we worked on building permanent solutions.  Like Original Sin or falling down a well, we got ourselves into this mess, but that doesn't mean we can get ourselves out.

If we want to save our country, our society, our civilization, there's only one move left open to us:

Do I mean preaching on street corners?  Only if you're good at it.  The world has heard all the sermons.  It's heard all the apologetics.  It's ready to deny and ignore them all.  But one thing it can't ignore is personal holiness.  For most of us, it means random acts of kindness.  The corporal and spiritual works of mercy.  Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven" (Mt. 5: 16).  We must be prepared to jack up our prayer life, and to make spiritual sacrifices and self-mortifications, for "this kind cannot be driven out by anything except prayer and fasting" (Mk. 9: 29).  We need to live close to the sacraments, so that they'll see we've been with Jesus.

That above all.  Get.  With.  Christ.  Read his love letters in the Scriptures.  Visit Him in Eucharistic Adoration.  If your parish doesn't have a Perpetual Adoration chapel, adore Him in the tabernacle.  If you can see Him through the accidents of bread and wine, a couple of metal doors should be no problem.

Get with His Mother, too.  She was the first evangelist, as Mother Theresa tells us, because the first thing she did after she received Christ was to bring him to St. Elizabeth in the Visitation.  The Rosary is Our Lady's lasso.  It has roped more souls into heaven than even the angels could count.

Bishop Sheen (forty years ago, no less!) predicted that the postmodern Church was like Gideon's army in Judges 7.  Christ is thinning his ranks, telling the cowards and the comfortable to go home.  We may be few, but He is with us:  "The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be still" (Ex. 14: 14).

And for God's sake, be joyful!  Don't get into arguments.  Don't get mad at your enemies.  Pity them.  Say, like Shelley's Prometheus, "I weigh not what ye do, but what ye suffer, being evil."  Consider that, as John Paul II said, hell begins here.  If you've been far enough down the path of mortal sin, as I have, you've felt it.  You know how awful it is.  Imagine what some of these folks who hate us are going through.  Show some compassion, and remember, we're here to help.

We've got to change the culture.  That's the real transformation America needs.  If we can do that, the laws, economics, and politics will take care of themselves.

Why I Don't Fret Much About Atheists

If you're already a fan of Bad Catholic, you'll know he delights in making atheists' heads explode.  If you read my last post about his new organization, 1Flesh, you know they're taking on the task of showing the world that Humanae Vitae was right.

The timing couldn't be better.  With the hullabaloo over Obamacare and the HHS mandate, the Fortnight for Freedom vs. the so-called War on Women, people are hungry for answers on what exactly the Church teaches on contraception, why, and what reasonable arguments are there on the subject.  It's no surprise, then, that 1Flesh has gone viral.  Just a few days into the official launch, the site's had so many hits, they're sprawling for a server big enough to handle it.  Their Facebook page, as of this writing, four days into its announcement, has over 2300 likes.  The world is listening.

Needless to say, the world, the flesh, and the devil aren't going to take this lying down.  Haters gonna hate.


In fact, they've already started.

You've probably been expecting this.  In fact, some small part of you has probably been kinda hoping for it.  Come on.  You can admit it.  Some small part of me wanted it, too.  I think it's kind of hard-wired in us, sometimes, to want to ride forth into battle for Truth, Justice, and the Latin Rite.

VOTR Bonus Points if you've seen this movie!

On the whole, though, I'm not really big on arguing with atheists.  With some exceptions, I see no point in it, other than the sheer joy of battle, which is risky to your spiritual health.  As St. Escriva said, it's not wise to waste time throwing stones at the dogs who bark at you along your way.  Oh, the Gentiles are raging again?  Ho-hum.  Been there.  Done that.  It's the same old song and dance (cue Aerosmith).  It amounts to, "Come down, and we will believe!" (cf. Mark 15: 32)


And that's just it, isn't it?  The whole of our faith, its single most important claim, is that Jesus Christ literally, physically rose from the dead one Sunday morning in A.D. 33.  That is the hope in which we are called.  For this hope, we do things that otherwise would seem counter-productive, if not downright masochistic.  We accept and bear our crosses and trials with patience, bless those who curse us, do good to our persecutors, return good for evil, forgive injuries and ask pardon for our own, always putting our own self-interest last.  At least, we're supposed to.  If you don't believe in the hope of a resurrection - what unbelievers call the "pie in the sky" - why wouldn't you baulk at such moral teachings?  St. Paul saw this clearly:

If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.  Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.  If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied (1 Cor. 15: 16-19). 

Either God exists, revealed to us His will through the Scriptures and a teaching Church, and will come to judge the living and the dead unto eternal reward or punishment,

-OR-

Christianity is by far the single greatest crime against humanity ever conceived, and must be destroyed at all costs.  It logically follows.  Debate in these cases, then, comes down to first premises.  You've got to be far more skilled than I to get anywhere in situations like that.

So I cut the honest atheist of good will a lot of slack.  As I've said elsewhere in these pages, faith is a gift.  We can't achieve belief on our own.  And this is why we leave the judging of people up to God.  We can discern the objective matter of a deed, but only God knows the extent of anyone's culpability.  Some of the atheists who hate us because some of us first hated them.  You will usually do more harm than good to a soul by telling him he's going to hell.  Most people today are already in hell.  If you want to evangelize people, start by getting them to admit that, then show them the Way out.

That's for the "honest" atheists, mind you.

There is, of course, another species of atheist.

These are the ones you see and hear about the most.  I suspect they're a great, loud-mouthed minority, like planes that crash, or self-styled pro-lifers who think we can show killing babies is wrong by blowing up buildings and shooting doctors.  A lot of outsiders think most of us are like that.  Let's not make the same mistake about others.

For a small minority, though, these folks sure do get around.  I've not had any here yet, but the blog is young.  (Heck, I don't even get spam yet.)  I don't argue with this type, because they're not interested in debate.  They don't want to improve their understanding, nor do they wish to enlighten others.  They just want to pick a fight.  

It's Envy incarnate:  people who can't stand anybody else being happy, and feel they have a right and/or duty to "bring them down a peg or two."

Traditional catechetics teaches that Envy of Another's Spiritual Good is a subspecies of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost.  Such sins are all but unforgivable, for it is hard to repent when you reflexively sneer at Mercy itself.  Appeals to reason cannot prevail here.  Even prayer can be doubtful.

There is a sin which is mortal;  I do not say that one is to pray for that (1John 5: 16).

Such people may not believe in God, but they serve a god.  The god who is always most powerful when his existence is denied.

Heroic Virtue

 

Heroic charity is rare.

Without it, what, except despair,

Can shape the hero who will dare

The desperate catabasis

Into the snarl of the abyss

That always lies just underneath

Our jolly picnic on the heath

Of the agreeable, where we bask,

Agreed on what we will not ask,

Bland, sunny, and illumined by

                                             The light of the accepted lie?- W.H. Auden, "New Year Letter, 1940" 

 It was hard to be a Catholic kid in the 1970s.  Hard because you couldn't get anyone to tell you exactly what being Catholic meant.  You learned your basic prayers, of course.  You'd see a crucifix, and someone might tell you that Jesus was God's Son, Who died, then rose again on Easter, when bunnies lay colorful, pre-cooked eggs.  Your grandmother might teach you the Rosary (mine did).  Your parents took you to church, maybe sent you to a Catholic school (mine did).  That didn't necessarily help all that much.

In the theological turmoil and confusion that followed in the wake of Vatican II, amplified by the rebellion against Humanae Viate, few Catholics on the ground were really sure exactly what the Church taught anymore.  How much still applied from the old days?  How many of the new ideas were true?

Small wonder, then, that religious education was a mess.  Mark Shea is said to have quipped that CCD stood for "Cut, Color, and Draw."  I'd say that's pretty apt.  The less old, more progressive teachers, following the workbooks, spoke of "Signs and Symbols," which apparently existed so we could draw them on construction paper, cut them out, and make mobiles and mozaics out of them. (Hosanna to the Lord of Arts & Crafts!)  So much for doctrine.  As for morals, it essentially added up to "Mean people suck," swathed in a vague echo of Kennedy-era volunteerism.

On the other side of this bad coin were a few leftover Jansenists, who painted us a face of God that wore Big Brother's moustache, with our Guardian Angels as a kind of heavenly KGB, just waiting for some juicy sin to report.  Caught betwixt this catechetical Scylla and Charybdis, you practically needed a Freedom of Information request to get any idea who this God person was, why somebody would want to kill His Son, and what any of this had to do with you.  Who are you, Jesus Christ, and what do you want from me?


The answer came when I was about nine or ten, and it came from a man who would be dead within a year.  Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen had a gift for preaching and teaching whose equal I've not seen since.  He was the world's first televangelist. (Bet you thought that was a Protestant invention - nope!  Billy Graham took notes from him).  His 1950s show, Life is Worth Living, ran up against Milton Berle, and beat him in the ratings.  He worked with the missions for years, as Director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, held professorships at Catholic universities and seminaries, and made numerous converts, some of them notable.  He also served a brief stint as Bishop of Rochester, NY, but left after three years, having neither time nor talent for administrative duties - not unlike some other bishops I could name:  "It would be a grave mistake for us to neglect the word of God in order to wait at table." (Acts 6: 2) [NOTE:  I'm using the New English (NEB) translation here, because that was Bishop Sheen's favorite.]

IIRC, it was in 1979 that my father got hold of a series of tapes from retreats Bishop Sheen had led.  They were my road to Emmaus.  The Bible, Christ's life, His death, His resurrection, the Church, the Mass, the Sacraments, the love of the Cross, the value of pain, and the transferability of merit - all of it began to make sense, as one coherent whole.  It's the same faith I have today, thirty-some-odd years later.  Everything I've learned since has merely added to or clarified the picture.

Archbishop Sheen prefigured much of what the Church is about today:  the need for evangelization, a more Biblical dimension to our theology, the dual dangers of Marxism and Ayn Randinanism, the need for personal holiness as the strongest argument for the Faith.  If you've followed the pontificate of Benedict XVI much, you'll note these same themes coming up again in his teaching as well.  Small wonder, then, that yesterday the Holy Father approved a declaration of Heroic Virtue for Bishop Sheen, the first concrete step toward canonical sainthood.  In the blogosphere, I've heard someone propose making him the patron of the Internet.  I'll second that, especially for Catholic Bloggers - he'd have been all over this technology!  More than this, though, I propose Fulton J. Sheen as patron of the New Evangelization in general.  He who wore a silver pectoral cross in reparation for all those priests and sisters who took off their identifying apparel to blend in with the world - he above all knows how to reclaim our Catholic identity.

Venerable Fulton Sheen, pray for us!  Pray for Rochester.  Pray for America.