Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog

Lady Gaga Gets the Indonesian Boot

Lady Gaga Gets the Indonesian Boot | Matthew Cullinan Hoffman | Catholic World Report

Asians are sending a message to America. Are we listening?

News of the cancellation of the Lady Gaga concert scheduled for early June in Jakarta, Indonesia is receiving a lullingly uniform spin in the American and international media. It is, we are told, a morality play about the triumph of radical Islamism over artistic freedom, and a disturbing omen of Indonesia’s supposed slide into religious fanaticism.

In reality, however, the negative response to Gaga’s hypersexualized and iconoclastic performances was not isolated to extremists, nor to the country of Indonesia. Gaga’s religion-insulting concert tour and other, similar forms of entertainment are increasingly ill-received throughout the region of Southeast Asia and beyond, and reflect a growing indignation at what is perceived as an American cultural imperialism that treats the moral values of other countries with contempt.

Blame for the Jakarta fiasco is being assigned to an organization known as the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), a hard-line Muslim group known for its clashes with Christians and its strict interpretation of the Koran. According to the International Crisis Group, a peacemaking organization whose verdict on the affair is being quoted by the Associated Press, it is “clear that there wouldn’t have been a thought of canceling the concert” if the FPI and other extremist groups hadn’t “mobilized” to stop it. 

The FPI and kindred groups, however, were not at all alone in their opposition to the Jakarta concert.  In fact, it was vigorously opposed by a dozen other Islamic organizations, including the Indonesian Ulema Council, the highest Muslim authority in a country known for its moderate religious temperament.

Moreover, opposition to Gaga’s performance didn’t stop at the border of Indonesia. In fact the tour, dubbed the “Born this Way Ball” in reference to Gaga’s scientifically-unsubstantiated claim that homosexuals are born with their “gay” orientation, has provoked protests in multiple countries in the region, mostly by Christian groups.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

"For Greater Glory: The True Story of Cristiada"

Now available for pre-order from Ignatius Press:

For Greater Glory: The True Story of Cristiada The Cristero War and Mexico's Struggle for Religious Freedom

by Ruben Quezada

Related Products: Cristiada (Spanish Edition of "For Greater Glory")  - Paperback

Available June 2012

Foreword by Archbishop Jose Gomez
Introduction by Eduardo Verastegui

Many people of faith today are asking, “What is the price of religious liberty?” In the 1920’s many Catholics in Mexico answered this crucial question at the cost of their very lives. The new major motion picture, For Greater Glory: The True Story of Cristiada tells the epic tale of Mexico’s heroic struggle for religious freedom in a little-known conflict called the Cristero War – but many questions still remain. Now you’ll go much deeper into the exciting history behind the movie with this fact-filled companion book – and gain important insight into the on-going fight for religious freedom today. This is the Official Companion Book to the epic film. Lavishly illustrated with photos from the film and with historical photos.

 As you read you’ll discover:

• Who were the Cristeros?
• What drove the Mexican government to ruthlessly persecute Catholics?
• Can a priest “wage war”
• What role did groups like the Knights of Columbus play in this armed resistance?
• Why did thousands of Catholics - priests, religious, lay people - willingly give their lives in the Cristiada?
• What role did the U.S. play in ending this bitter conflict?
• What did the Pope do to support the Church in Mexico?
• Which characters in the movie went on to become Catholic saints and blesseds in real life?
• Why is this dramatic episode of history so little known today?
• What is the lesson of the Cristiada for those struggling for religious freedom today?

Ruben Quezada is Director for the Catholic Resource Center and St. Joseph Communications, Inc. in Southern California. He is a recognized expert on "The Persecution of the Catholic Church in Mexico in the 1920s" and has traveled internationally as a bilingual speaker giving lectures on this subject for many years to all age groups.

“For Greater Glory is a top-flight production whose message of the 
importance of religious freedom has particular resonance for us today.”
— Most Reverend Jose Gomez, Archbishop of Los Angeles

“For Greater Glory is ‘must-see’ viewing for all those who care about faith and liberty today.”
— Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight, Knights of Columbus

Visit the book's website: www.ForGreaterGloryBook.com. For the Spanish Edition of For Greater Glory, click here. 

Sample images from the book:

When Pregnancy Met Pregnancy | Abp. Fulton J. Sheen on The Visitation

When Pregnancy Met Pregnancy | Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen on The Visitation | From The World's First Love | Ignatius Insight

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One of the most beautiful moments in history was that when pregnancy met pregnancy when childbearers became the first heralds of the King of Kings. All pagan religions begin with the teachings of adults, but Christianity begins with the birth of a Child. From that day to this, Christians have ever been the defenders of the family and the love of generation. If we ever sat down to write out what we would expect the Infinite God to do, certainly the last thing we would expect would be to see Him imprisoned in a carnal ciborium for nine months; and the next to last thing we would expect is that the "greatest man ever born of woman" while yet in his mother's womb, would salute the yet imprisoned God-man. But this is precisely what took place in the Visitation.

At the Annunciation the archangel told Mary that her cousin, Elizabeth, was about to become the mother of John the Baptist. Mary was then a young girl, but her cousin was ''advanced in years," that is, quite beyond the normal age of conceiving. "See, moreover, how it fares with thy cousin Elizabeth; she is old, yet she too has conceived a son; she who was reproached with barrenness is now in her sixth month, to prove that nothing is impossible with God. And Mary said, 'Behold the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done unto me according to thy word.' And with that the angel left her." (Luke 1:36-38)

The birth of Christ is without regard to man; the birth of John the Baptist is without regard to age! "Nothing is impossible with God." The Scripture continues the story: "In the days that followed, Mary rose up and went with all haste to a city of Juda, in the hill country where Zachary dwelt; and entering in she gave Elizabeth greeting. No sooner had Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, than the child leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth herself was filled with the Holy Ghost; so that she cried out with a loud voice, "Blessed are thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. How have I deserved to be thus visited by the mother of my Lord? Why, as soon as ever the voice of thy greeting sounded in my ears, the child in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed art thou for thy believing; the message that was brought to thee from the Lord shall have fulfillment." (Luke 1:39-45)

Mary "went with all haste"; she is always in a hurry to do good. With deliberate speed she becomes the first nurse of Christian civilization. The woman hastens to meet a woman. They serve best their neighbor who bear the Christ within their hearts and souls. Bearing in herself the Secret of Salvation, Mary journeys five days from Nazareth to the city of Hebron where, according to tradition, rested the ashes of the founders of the people of God, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The terraced-fields of Juda
pregnant with seed
called out to her
as she passed, praising the Child
she was yet to bear,
invoking His Blessing
on their expectancy.*

"She gave Elizabeth greeting"; springtime served the autumn. She, who is to bear Him Who will say: "I came not to be ministered unto but to minister" now ministers unto her cousin who bears only His trumpet and His voice in the wilderness. Nothing so provokes the service of the needy as the consciousness of one's own unworthiness when visited by the grace of God, The handmaid of the Lord becomes the handmaid of Elizabeth.

Merry England Fights Over Gay Marriage

Merry England Fights Over Gay Marriage | Greg Daly | Catholic World Report

Prime Minister David Cameron and other government leaders push for same-sex marriage, but most Brits are wary.

The contrast could hardly have been more jarring.

In a televised White House interview on Wednesday, May 9, President Barack Obama claimed that, having gone through an evolution on the issue, he had concluded, “it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

That same day, an ocean away in England, Queen Elizabeth II opened the current session of Parliament, for the 60th time in her reign sitting in her House of Lords throne to proclaim her government’s legislative program for that year. Wearing her Imperial State Crown and parliamentary robe, she spoke for eight minutes, and on the issue of same-sex marriage, said absolutely nothing.

Cameron’s cynical campaign

The Home Office claims the government never intended to include same-sex marriage in this year’s legislative program, but it is beginning to look as if Prime Minister David Cameron’s wish to redefine marriage in English law is set to end, not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Cameron’s campaign had always looked like a cynical vanity project, given how the 2004 Civil Partnerships Act enables same-sex couples to make a public declaration of their commitment and avail themselves of the same legal rights as married couples. When then-Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government introduced that legislation, it insisted that although the new scheme gave same-sex couples equal rights and privileges to married ones, civil partnerships and marriages were not the same thing.

Stonewall, Britain’s leading gay lobby group, was so content with this arrangement that in September 2010, its chief executive Ben Summerskill publicly opposed the newly-declared wish of the Liberal Democrats—the junior partner in Britain’s Conservative-led coalition government—to redefine marriage and civil partnerships so that same-sex and opposite-sex couples could choose which arrangement they wished to enter. Claiming this could cost as much as £5 billion and noting that a cosmetic marital reform was hardly a priority for the gay movement, Summerskill pointed out that many lesbian, gay, and bisexual people were opposed to same-sex couples participating in “something that is either the same as or synonymous with marriage.”

Even without Stonewall’s opposition, the Liberal Democrats’ original proposal to redefine marriage looked purely aspirational without a popular mandate; the introduction of same-sex marriage had been conspicuously absent from the manifestos of Britain’s three main parties in the general election that had been held just months earlier.

On September 17, 2011 the Liberal Democrat equalities minister Lynne Featherstone announced at her party’s annual conference that the government would begin a formal consultation this March on how to introduce same-sex marriage into UK law by the end of this parliament. “This is a Liberal Democrat policy,” she said. “But now it is a policy being put into action.” 

This time Stonewall approved, and scarcely two weeks later, David Cameron proclaimed at the Conservatives’ conference, “I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I’m a Conservative.”

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

40% off Carl E. Olson's Pick of the Week*

40% off Carl Olson's Pick of the Week*

I've chosen a book that I recommend for at least three good reasons. First, it addresses a topic of great importance to everyone. Second, it is written by a fabulous scholar who has spent most of his life studying, teaching, and writing about the topic and related subjects. Third, it is a "101" text, the sort of introductory work that is perfect for the "ordinary" lay Catholic, but also ideal for catechists, priests, teachers, and bishops. Oh, and let's not forget politicians, newspaper editors, and television pundits.
 
The book is Marriage: The Rock on Which The Family is Built (2nd Edition, 2009) by William E. May. I first read it—in its first edition—fourteen years ago for a class on family and marriage in my Masters in Theological Studies program. It was the first book I'd read by Dr. May (not the last, thankfully!), and I was impressed by his clarity of style (no words wasted!) and his masterful handling of complex theological truths and philosophical ideas (no words mangled!). Dr. May, who is now retired, taught for many years at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Washington, D.C., and he served at one time on the Vatican's International Theological Commission. In other words, he's a smart guy! He has dedicated his great skills as a scholar and educator to explaining and defending the divinely ordained institution of marriage. Or, as he states at the start of the book's first chapter, "I shall show that marriage, the rock upon which the family is built, is a person-affirming, love-enabling, life-giving, and sanctifying reality." And he does. 
 
The first edition had five chapters with an appendix; the second edition has been expanded to seven chapters plus appendix. The opening chapter expounds on the sentence quoted above; the second chapter is about the complimentarity of male and female, and what it means. Chapter three is titled, "Pope Paul VI: A True Prophet", and is about Humanae Vitae; the fourth chapter discusses the serious moral problems with the "laboratory generation of human life". Chapter five explains why the family is "the domestic church" and chapter six is on Blessed John Paul II's theology of the body. The final chapter is on Pope Benedict XVI's teaching on marriage and family life. The appendix is an overview of John Paul II's "Letter to Families". 
 
Marriage is, as you well know, increasingly and directly under attack in many ways. For anyone who wishes to understand and appreciate more deeply the truth about the person-affirming, love-enabling, life-giving, and sanctifying reality of marriage, this book is a perfect place to start.

And it is available in three formats: in paperback, as an electronic book download, and as a downloadable audio file.


Carl E. Olson is the editor of Catholic World Report and IgnatiusInsight.com, and the moderator of the Insight Scoop weblog. Carl is the author of the best-selling book Will Catholics Be "Left Behind"? (2003), available as an e-book, and is the co-author, with Sandra Miesel, of The Da Vinci Hoax: Exposing the Errors in The Da Vinci Code. Carl is the former editor of Envoy magazine and has written dozens of reviews and articles for periodicals including Catholic Parent, Crisis, Envoy, First Things, National Catholic Register, Our Sunday Visitor, Saint Austin Review, and The Catholic Answer.


*Employee Pick of the Week program features savings of 40% off a book, movie, or compact disc personally chosen and recommended by an Ignatius Press employee.  Each week, an Ignatius Press employee will select a favorite book, movie, or other Ignatius Press product and write a few sentences about why he/she thinks customers will enjoy the particular selection. A short bio of the selecting employee will also be included, giving customers a chance to learn a bit more about the people who are Ignatius Press. Email blast items below are not 40% off, but 20% off

20% off books by Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, May 29 - June 5

Offer ends Tuesday June 5th, 2012 at 12:00 midnight EST. These prices are available online only through Ignatius.com

Christoph Cardinal Schönborn is the Archbishop of Vienna. The renowned theologian was the primary editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Born in 1945, the Dominican was a student of Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. He has written numerous books and articles on faith. Ignatius Press is offering 20% off on a selection of books that were written by Schoenborn.

See below the "fold" for a full listing of sale books:

When the Catholic Faith Was Outlawed

When the Catholic Faith Was Outlawed | Jim Graves | Catholic World Report

For Greater Glory offers a compelling depiction of a dark period of Mexican history.

After decades of seeing their Church maligned in cinema, Catholic moviegoers have enjoyed a smattering of pro-Catholic movies in recent years. The latest of these, For Greater Glory starring Andy Garcia, will be released in the United States on June 1. The movie tells the story of the Cristero War in Mexico (1926-29), a peasant uprising against the stridently anti-Catholic policies of the Mexican government under President Plutarco Elias Calles. Garcia portrays General Enrique Gorostieta, a retired federal general hired by the Cristeros to be their leader. 

“It’s a fascinating story, and one I previously didn’t know anything about,” Garcia said about the Cristero uprising.

The war erupted in 1926, after Calles implemented the “Law for Reforming the Penal Code” or “Calles’ Law,” which severely restricted the free practice of religion in Mexico. Among other regulations, the law levied a 500-peso fine (nearly $5,000 in the U.S. today) on priests or religious wearing clerical garb in public, and clerics who spoke out against the government could be jailed for five years.

The Mexican bishops suspended public religious services in response to the law, and supported an economic boycott against the government. Violence soon erupted, as bands of Catholic peasants battled federal forces. Priests were shot and hung, Church property seized, and many religious institutions closed. Ninety thousand would die over the next three years. The Cristeros’ battle cry was, “Viva Cristo Rey!” (“Long live Christ the King!”).

For Greater Glory was filmed in seven different states in Mexico, with a Mexican crew and an international cast. It had a budget of $11 million—modest by Hollywood standards, but a significant sum in Mexican filmmaking—and was a hit when it was released with Spanish subtitles in Mexico, Garcia said.

Continue reading on www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Watch the trailer for "When Hitler Took Austria"

When Hitler Took Austria: A Memoir of Heroic Faith by the Chancellor's Son by Kurt & Janet von Schuschnigg is available in hardcover and as an electronic book download.

The Pope on Pentecost and True Unity

by Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. 

“Where men situate themselves in the place of God, they can only find themselves struggling one against the other. Where, on the other hand, they place themselves in the truth of the Lord, they open themselves to the action of His Spirit which sustains and unifies them”

—  Pope Benedict XVI, Pentecost Sermon, May 27, 2012.

I.

The Pentecost Mass in St. Peter’s was accompanied by the choir of the Academy of Saint Cecelia and its youth orchestra. In his homily, the Holy Father broached one of the most difficult of all Christian teachings: How is it possible, as we are commanded, to love everyone whereas we have neither the time, nor the opportunity, nor even the desire to do so? The pope wants to reflect on an aspect of Pentecost that remains true. 

Pentecost is the feast of the union of the Church, of the communion of all humanity with one another. Aristotle had insisted that the more friends we have, the fewer good friends we have. Yet, Christianity came along, without necessarily denying Aristotle’s point, to tell us that we should go out to everyone. We are also warned about friends who can corrupt us. We have to choose carefully. Plato’s idea of friends being friends with everyone needs careful distinctions, as Aristotle also said.

Benedict points out how modern means of communication seem to bring us closer together no matter where we are in the world. Yet, people choose to remain in their own “I”. Is there a place for a genuine “we”? We can learn something from the Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel, which account seems directly implied when, on Pentecost morning, the Apostles through the gift the Holy Ghost began to speak in different tongues. Benedict recalls that the men at the time of Babel wanted to challenge God with a tower what would do what only God could do. In order to pursue their construction, they needed to communicate with each other.

God’s response to this defiance was to give them all different languages so they could not understand each other. Obviously, the diversity of languages still seems both a curse and a blessing. It seems that all men should be able to understand each other. Yet, the diversity of languages is not only a thing of beauty, but also allows us to live in smaller groups. The pope tells us that Pentecost is the “feast of the union, comprehension, and communion of all men.”

We human beings have a common origin and destiny even when we do not understand each other’s language. Yet, it seems that the more we can communicate across the world in a few seconds, the less we understand about each other. People prefer to remain isolated in themselves. The essential element of a human being, however, is the capacity “to agree, to understand and to act together.” We cannot be content with simple otherness that denies a common nature and origin.

II.

This biblical story of the Tower refers to a constant truth that recurs “throughout history.” With the progress of science and technology, we realize we can “dominate the forces of nature, to manipulate the elements, to reproduce living things, almost to the point of manufacturing humans themselves.” If we can do such extraordinary things, why do we need “to pray to God?” Benedict rhetorically asks. “We can construct any city that we want.” Yet, we fail to see that we are in fact simply “repeating” the account of Babel. We have made many devices whereby we can transmit words and sights. Yet have we increased or decreased our capacity to “understand” one another?

Continue reading.

The Liturgy and Divine Adoption

by Owen Vyner | Homiletic & Pastoral Review

(Mng. Editor’s note: This article was submitted before the new translation of the Roman Missal became the version presently being used.)

Introduction

The great German scholar, Romano Guardini, stated that it is only the faith of Christianity that reveals a correct understanding of the person. 1 Based upon the liturgical principle, lex orandi, lex credendi, we can add that the prayer of the Church is the ultimate source of a proper anthropology.  As such, the foundation for an authentic vision of the human person is the liturgy.

When we turn to the liturgy to understand who man is, we see that, on multiple occasions, the liturgy employs the use of the word, adoption, and its derivatives, to refer to man’s relationship with God.  However, the 1973 ICEL translation of the Missal translates adoptionis filiorum, more often than not, as “children,” and at other times, the term is not even translated.  With the new translation of the Roman Missal imminent, it will be very interesting to see how the Latin word, “adoption,” is ultimately rendered.  If it is translated as “adopted sons,” as opposed to “children,” then the faithful will hear that we are not children of God, in some sort of natural sense; but rather, we have been gratuitously adopted in the Son.  This will have ramifications for an understanding of the human person.

In order to explicate these potential anthropological ramifications, this article will examine a theology of divine adoption in scripture, the teachings of the Church, and in the work of Blessed Columba Marmion.  It will then discuss how this theology is made manifest in the Church’s liturgy.

Theology of Divine Adoption
The notion of divine adoption is a key concept in St. Paul’s theology.  In five separate passages, he refers to Christians as having received the Spirit of adoption as sons (c.f. Rom 8:15, 23; 9:4; Gal 4:5; Eph 1:5).  St. Paul explains that we have been predestined to be adopted sons in the Son, through the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Through receiving  “the Spirit of adoption of sons,” a completely new life is bestowed upon the Christian, fundamentally changing his existence.  As a consequence of this filiation, the Christian is now able to address the Father as Abba, the same term of intimacy by which the Son addresses his Father (cf. Mk 14:36).  Thus, through adoption, the Christian is drawn into the Son’s own relationship with the Father.

Continue reading at www.HPRweb.com.

“Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here”

“Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here” | Brian O'Neel | Catholic World Report

Hellish conditions in North Korea’s prison camps enable the Kim dynasty to maintain its stranglehold on the impoverished country.

As far as anyone knows, the gates of North Korea’s notorious gulags, or kwalliso, do not have the words “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“Work makes you free”) emblazoned above them, as the ones to Auschwitz did, or, as did the entrance to hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy, the admonition, “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”

No, the gates of North Korea’s gulag archipelago—which imprisons an estimated 200,000 men, women, and children at any given time—don’t have these inscriptions, but they may as well. For the authorities in the kwalliso will work you hard, and the “freedom” this brings is almost certain death. Indeed, for most inmates, there is no hope of seeing the outside ever again.

Percentage-wise, the kwalliso population—200,000 people out of a nation of 24 million—amounts to roughly the same as the percentage of American citizens who are incarcerated, that is, slightly less than 1 percent.

However, North Korea’s prison population includes many who have no idea why they are there. Some were taken in the middle of the night with no explanation, no arraignment, and no trial. It includes people guilty of crimes such as singing songs they didn’t know are forbidden, or speaking carelessly in a public place.  

It also includes people whose only crime is being related to an accused criminal, and children who innocently made politically incorrect remarks in public.

Perhaps the biggest difference, though, is that our American prison system does not experience an estimated 20-40 percent annual mortality rate. And yet, even with 40,000-80,000 inmates dying each year from starvation, physical abuse, disease, and execution, the population in the kwalliso (pronounced “kwah-lee-soh”) stays steady at 200,000. It has to. These camps are a critical piece in the totalitarianism puzzle that allows the Kim dynasty—the first dynasty in the history of communism—to stay in power.

History of the kwalliso

At the conclusion of the Korean Conflict (1950-53), Kim Il Sung, founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), initiated a series of brutal purges to weed out both potential rivals and anyone who would actively question his vision or decisions.

By the late 1950s, most of those swept up in these internecine conflicts were either dead or in concentration camps. These institutions were not the same as today’s kwalliso, however. Their purpose simply was to segregate those who could undermine the regime by “infecting” the general population.

By 1958, however, Kim had decided this was not enough. So much did he fear any dissent in the “Hermit Kingdom” (so-called because of its utter isolation), he ordered a complete ideological profile worked up on every one of his nation’s 9,864,000 people.

Every friend, every family member, ancestry, family connections, their connections’ connections—each relationship was studied. Anything indicating imperialist, reactionary, or counter-revolutionary relations or tendencies was grounds for torture, and then execution or imprisonment.

Continue reading on www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

The Contraception Contradiction

The Contraception Contradiction | Daniel Allott | Catholic World Report

Growing evidence suggests that the “more contraceptives, fewer abortions” theory is flawed.

[Editor's Note: This article was originally published one year ago in the May 2011 issue of Catholic World Report.] 

New York City is the abortion capital of America. More than 40 percent of pregnancies in New York City end in abortion (excluding miscarriages), nearly twice the national rate. The abortion rate among the city’s black residents is a jaw-dropping 60 percent. In 2009, New York City saw more than 87,000 abortions—one roughly every six minutes.

Not surprisingly, New York City also has one of the country’s most pro-abortion political establishments. When the New York Post interviewed the City Council’s 51 members in 2010 about the city’s abortion rate, only five would allow that it was too high. One council aide even fretted that a lower abortion rate might bankrupt the city.

Asked to comment on how her city could best lower its rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion, Council Speaker Christine Quinn told the Post, “We can reduce the number of unintended pregnancies…by expanding access to contraceptives and increasing sex education.”

A similar analysis was offered in 2008 by Deborah Kaplan, deputy commissioner of New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Responding to questions about the city’s high abortion rate, she told Crain’s business journal, “To me, the problem is access. If we improved access to contraceptives, there would be a reduction in abortion.”

Quinn and Kaplan were echoing the conventional wisdom about the relationships between contraception, unintended pregnancy, and abortion. The theory holds that since most abortions are the result of unintended pregnancies, efforts to reduce unintended pregnancies will reduce the number of abortions. And since contraceptives can reduce the number of unintended pregnancies, expanding access to contraceptives will lower the abortion rate.

But that logic has not worked very well in practice. If New York City is the abortion capital of America, it is also the contraceptive capital of America. Free or low-cost birth control is available through dozens of publicly-funded programs at more than 200 places throughout New York state, most of them in New York City and its suburbs.

The city’s health department distributes a pocket-size guide showing teenagers where they can get low-cost or free contraception, information that is also available on the city’s 311 phone and Internet hotlines. New York City hands out three million free condoms every month at thousands of venues. The city even has its own brand of condoms, NYC Condoms.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

The Holy Spirit, Iconographer of Divinization

From The Wellspring of Worship (Ignatius Press, 2005) by Jean Corbon:

In the economy of salvation everything reaches completion in Jesus through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit; in the liturgy as celebrated and as lived everything begins through the Holy Spirit. That is why at the existential origin of our divinization is the liturgy of the heart, the synergy in which the Holy Spirit unites himself to our spirit (Rom 8:16) in order to make us be, and show that we are, sons of God. The same Spirit who "anointed" the Word with our humanity and imprinted our nature upon him is written in our hearts as the living seal of the promise, in order that he may "anoint" us with the divine nature: he makes us christs in Christ. Our divinization is not passively imposed on us, but is our own vital activity, proceeding inseparably from him and from ourselves.

When the Spirit begins his work in us and with us, he is not faced with the raw, passive earth out of that he fashioned the first Adam or, much less, the virginal earth, permeated by faith, that he used in effecting the conception of the second Adam. What the Spirit finds is a remnant of glory, an icon of the Son: ceaselessly loved, but broken and disfigured. Each of us can whisper to him what the funeral liturgy cries out in the name of the dead person: I remain the image of your inexpressible glory, even though I am wounded by sin!" [3] This trust that cannot be confounded and this Covenant that cannot be broken form the space wherein the patient mystery of our divinization is worked out.

The sciences provide grills for interpreting the human riddle, but when these have been applied three great questions still remain in all that we seek and in all that we do: the search for our origin, the quest for dialogue, the aspiration for communion. On the one hand, why is it that I am what I am, in obedience to a law that is stronger than I am (see Rom 7)? On the other, in the smallest of my actions I await a word, a counterpart who will dialogue with me. Finally, it is clear that our mysterious selves cannot achieve fulfillment on any level, from the most organic to the most aesthetic, except in communion. These three pathways in my being are, as it were, the primary imprints in me of the image of glory, of the call of my very being to the divine likeness in which my divinization will be completed. The Holy Spirit uses arrows of fire in restoring our disfigured image. The fire of love consumes its opposite (sin) and transforms us into itself, which is Light.

We wander astray like orphans as long as we have not accepted him, the Spirit of sonship, as our virginal source. All burdens are laid upon us, and we are slaves as long as we are not surrendered to him who is freedom and grace. And because he is the Breath of Life, it is he who will teach us to listen (we are dumb only because we are deaf); then, the more we learn to hear the Word, the better we shall be able to speak. Our consciences will no longer be closed or asleep, but will be transformed into creative silence. Finally, Utopian love and the communion that cannot be found because it is "not of this world" are present in him, the "treasure of every blessing", not as acquired and possessed but as pure gift; our relationship with others becomes transparent once again. This communion of the Holy Spirit is the master stroke in the work of divinization, because in this communion we are in communion also with the Father and his Son, Jesus (2 Cor 13:13; Jn 1:3), and with all our brothers.

Following these three pathways of the transfigured icon, we are divinized to the extent that the least impulses of our nature find fulfillment in the communion of the Blessed Trinity. We then "live" by the Spirit, in oneness with Christ, for the Father. The only obstacle is possessiveness, the focusing of our persons on the demands of our nature, and this is sin for the quest of self breaks the relation with God. The asceticism that is essential to our divinization and that represents once again a synergy of grace consists in simply but resolutely turning every movement toward possessiveness into an offering. The epiclesis on the altar of the heart must be intense at these moments, so that the Holy Spirit may touch and consume our death and the sin that is death's sting. Entering into the name of Jesus, the Son of God and the Lord who shows mercy to us sinners, means handing over to him our wounded nature, which he does not change by assuming but which he divinizes by putting on. From offertory to epiclesis and from epiclesis to communion the Spirit can then ceaselessly divinize us; our life becomes a eucharist until the icon is completely transformed into him who is the splendor of the Father.

Read more on Ignatius Insight.

Pentecost, the Church's birthday, and the Church's humility

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, May 27 2012, Pentecost Sunday | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• Acts 2:1-12
• Ps 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34
• 1 Cor 12:3b-7, 12-13 or Gal 5:16-25
• Jn 20:19-23 or Jn 15:26-27; 16:12-15

“The Christian Church is the detonation of that explosive for which a train had been prepared through the centuries,” wrote Monsignor Ronald Knox in a collection of essays titled Stimili (Sheed & Ward, 1951). “Everything that happened before the day of Pentecost was a kind of dress-rehearsal for the day of Pentecost.”

Many of the Church Fathers contemplated how Old Testament events foreshadowed or pointed toward the dramatic outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the Upper Room and the events immediately following.

This was interpreted by some of the Fathers as a reversal of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9). Responding to man’s arrogant attempt to build a tower “with its top in the heavens”, God came down and confused the language of men so that they could not understand one another. Without the ability to communicate, mankind was scattered “abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” At Pentecost, God again descended and again caused confusion—but it was confusion caused by awe and astonishment, for men “from every nation under heaven” could understand one another.

“The church’s humility,” wrote St. Bede, “recovers the unity of languages that the pride of Babylon had shattered.” Man cannot, by his own efforts and intellect, achieve heaven; it is a grace and gift granted by the power of the Holy Spirit.

A second foreshadowing was the span of time between the first Passover and the arrival of the Israelites at Mount Sinai. The book of Exodus does not provide an exact time, stating the people arrived at Sinai on “the third new moon” (Ex. 19:1). Later, however, the feast of weeks, which was celebrated seven weeks after the first harvest was cut (cf., Dt. 16:9; Ex. 23:16; Lev. 23:9-21), was connected with the Exodus. Eventually, a span of fifty days was reckoned between the Passover and the feast of weeks, also known Pentecost (Greek for “fiftieth”).

Christ was the final and perfect Passover lamb who had, in fact, died during the feast of the Passover; by his Resurrection, he was also “the first fruits” from the dead (1 Cor 15:20). Therefore, Pentecost was the celebration of the divine harvest, brought about by the work of the Holy Spirit.

Finally, Pentecost had become associated in Judaism with the giving of the Law and the establishment of the Mosaic covenant at Sinai. The parallels here are both evident and significant: the new people of God, the Church, is formed by Christ (who is the New Moses) and filled by the Holy Spirit (who is the soul of the Church). The new and everlasting covenant is established by the law of Christ—that is, the law of Love—which in turn we are able to live because of the grace and gifts of the Holy Spirit.

The Church, St. Paul states in today’s Epistle, is the Body of Christ, having many parts but being one by virtue of one Spirit and one baptism (1 Cor 12:12-13).  The Church was not an afterthought or a Plan B, but was at the heart of the Father’s plan of salvation from the beginning; it was, the Catechism notes, “the goal of all things”, because it is the household of God, in which man enters into saving communion and is filled with the divine life (CCC 760).

Pentecost, then, is the birthday of the Church—a birthday giving new birth to mankind, regardless of race, sex, or social status. We are meant, Monsignor Knox wrote, “to find ourselves as members of a Spirit-filled, Spirit-actuated Body; if we remain in its unity, we know that the life of the Spirit, is, however imperceptibly, expressing itself in us.”

That unity, however, is often threatened by the temptation to save ourselves and to achieve wholeness apart from God. The feast of Pentecost reminds us that we have been saved from the land of sin by the Son, filled with divine life by the Holy Spirit, and called to the Promised Land by the Father.

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the May 31, 2009, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

Just when you think the misandrous Maureen Dowd cannot go any lower...

... she writes this sort of stuff, from her most recent, uh, screed, "Father Doesn't Know Best":

The bishops and the Vatican care passionately about putting women in chastity belts. Yet they let unchaste priests run wild for decades, unconcerned about the generations of children who were violated and raped and passed around like communion wine.

When hell freezes over, Dowd will write the following:

The public school administrators and educators care passionately about talking of "tolerance" and "respect". Yet they still allow preying teachers to run wild, unconcerned about the tens of thousands of children who are harrassed, molested, violated, and raped, and passed around like hall passes.

Rather than bother with another fisking (we've already done that and been there recently), let's go with a simple clerihew:

The mocking, misandrous Maureen Dowd,
Preaches her Time-ly religion, loud and proud:
Men are evil and hell will forever persist,
While chastity, clergy, and Church exist. 

We now return to our regularly scheduled blog posts.

The uniqueness of Saint Philip Neri, the "Apostle of Rome"

Prior to editing and designing the booklet accompanying the film, Saint Philip Neri: I Prefer Heaven, I knew only the bare outlines of the life of St. Philip, whose feast is celebrated today. He is, I think, one of most unusual and intriguing of the Saints. Here is a bit about him from the short bio I wrote for the booklet:

Philip’s approach was unique, especially for sixteenth-century Rome. He engaged in personal conversations, using his natural humor and warm personality to gain the attention and interest of the youth. “His tactics,” observed Rev. Louis Bouyer in St. Philip Neri: A Portrait, “were entirely spiritual and none could avoid his influence except by avoiding him altogether; and there he was, like another Socrates, with apparently nothing else to do but wander about the Roman streets joining in every kind of group quite freely, as ready to play quoits as to pass his time in any shop where customers, without any intention of buying anything, could talk indefinitely.” It was especially his quips, jokes, and wit that gained him a growing following. Philip knew, Bouyer wrote, how humor can direct, shape, and guide: “His shrewdness is shown by the fact that a teasing joke thrown out in passing often altered the whole course of someone’s life.”

Also unique was the absence of any distinctive doctrine or devotion. Because of this absence, it would be easy to misjudge the source of Philip’s dynamic work and miss how deeply rooted it was in a profound mysticism and disciplined asceticism. “What cannot be doubted,” stated Bouyer, himself an Oratorian, “is the mysticism which crowned all his asceticism. This astonishingly human saint was saturated in the supernatural; this Florentine, while being truly a man of his times, seemed to have stepped out of the Acts of the Apostles.” On the eve of the Feast of Pentecost in 1544, not yet thirty years old, Philip had a vision of a ball of fire, which “entered his mouth and settled in his heart”, causing it to palpitate with a strange violence, but without causing him pain. For the next fifty years, Gallonio records, he experienced “continuous involuntary tremors and palpitations of the heart.” After his death, an autopsy revealed that two of the ribs on his left side were broken and expanded outward.

And from Fr. Frederick L. Miller's essay (also in the booklet), "Saint Philip Neri: Priest and Spiritual Father":

Although the Protestant Reformation did not directly influence the Church in Italy, Philip was aware that something dark and harmful was happening in the Lord’s vineyard. Philip lived his priesthood in a Church torn apart by heresy, schism and even cruel martyrdom. He had a particular love and concern for the seminarians of the Venerable English College in Rome. He was aware that the majority of these students, once ordained priests, would return to England and ultimately shed their blood as martyrs for Christ and his Church. To this day, the seminarians of the English College sing first vespers on the Solemnity of Saint Philip Neri at the Chiesa Nuova in honor of the Roman priest who blessed their forebears on their way to martyrdom.

Historians have opined that Saint Philip played a large role in protecting Rome from the intrusion of the errors of Protestantism. He did this in at least three ways. First, he organized a prayer group known as the Oratory for young people. The youth would gather in his presbytery each week, or several times a week, to read and discuss Sacred Scripture, to pray spontaneously, to sing hymns and to present ferverinos (short and fervent presentations on a theme assigned by Saint Philip) on Christian doctrine, the virtues and the lives of the saints.

In effect, Philip, by introducing the young to a form of lectio divina, taught them to pray with the Scriptures. Their presentations on doctrine and the lives of the saints helped the young to interpret the Scriptures within the sacred tradition of the Church. At the same time, Father Philip was preparing his spiritual children to explain the faith to their contemporaries and defend it whenever necessary, especially if Reformation thought found its way into Italy. In effect, Saint Philip’s prayer meetings formed contemplative apologists of the faith.

The booklet also contains an essay by Sandra Miesel, "Saint Philip's Legacy: Holiness and Friendship", and Discussion Questions. Here is more about the film:

 Saint Philip Neri: I Prefer Heaven

DVD | 205 minutes

An epic feature film on the famous "Apostle of Rome" and great friend of youth in the 16th century. One of the most popular saints of all time, St. Philip Neri was widely known for his great charity, deep prayer life, and tremendous humor. Hoping to join St. Ignatius of Loyola's new order of Jesuits and be a missionary to India, Philip was instead guided by Providence to seek out the poor and abandoned youth of Rome to catechize them in the faith and help them find a better life. He became the founder of the religious congregation, the Oratory, that worked with the youth and also labored to re-evangelize a decadent Rome.

This captivating film highlights Neri's great love for youth, his warm sense of humor, contagious joy, deep mystical spirituality, and his amazing gift for miracles. Actor Gigi Proietti gives a moving performance as St. Philip in this beautifully produced film that is directed by Giacomo Campiotti, director of the acclaimed films Bakhita: From Slave to Saint and St. Giuseppe Moscatti. Includes a 16 page booklet including essays by Carl E. Olson and Sandra Miesel. 

This DVD contains the following language options: Italian with English or Spanish subtitles. This is a Region 1 DVD (playable ONLY in Bermuda, Canada, the Cayman Islands, United States and U.S. territories).

Michael Hesemann to guest on CatholicTV on Tuesday, May 29th

WATERTOWN, MA (May 25, 2012) – Michael Hesemann to Appear on Live Talk Show of the CatholicTV® Network

On Tuesday, May 29, 2012, Michael Hesemann, who worked with Msgr. Georg Ratzinger on the book My Brother, the Pope, will be featured on the CatholicTV Network’s nationally broadcasted live talk show; This is the Day.

Michael Hesemann has become one of the most important religious historians in the world. Accredited as a journalist by the Holy See Press Office, he is one of few academic historians who have been granted access to the Vatican Secret Archives for research.

Born in Duesseldorf, Germany, he studied history, cultural anthropology and journalism at Germany’s Goettingen University. Hesemann has written more than 30 books, and has been involved in the production of a number of documentaries throughout his career.

In “My Brother the Pope,” Msgr. Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI’s older brother, gives insight to the Ratzinger family, and the close friendship two brothers developed early and have maintained for more than 80 years.

Msgr. Ratzinger became an accomplished musician and, while his younger brother was becoming known in German academic circles as a brilliant young professor, he would become the director of the world-famous cathedral choir of Regensburg, Germany, the Regensburger Domspatzen. The Ratzingers endured the difficult period of National Socialism in Germany, and the brothers went on to become priests and leaders, with one of them, ultimately, Pope Benedict XVI.

Msgr. Ratzinger recalls their lives in intimate detail, and warmly. In the process, he paints a beautiful portrait of Catholic family life and, in the most literal sense, of enduring fraternal charity. The words are seasoned and complemented by many photographs in black and white and color.

“My Brother the Pope” is available in hardcover and eBook format for the Kindle, Nook, iPad and more from Ignatius Press. Ignatius Press is among the largest U.S. publishers and distributors of Catholic books, magazines, videos, DVDs, and music. It is the primary English-language publisher of Pope Benedict XVI’s books.

For more information visit: www.ignatius.com/promotions/my-brother-the-pope.

Bad Religion, Bad Results

Bad Religion, Bad Results | Christopher White | Catholic World Report

Ross Douthat's book, Bad Religion, sets out to explain "how we became a nation of heretics".

Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics
by Ross Douthat
Free Press (New York, 2012)
337 pages.

In a 2005 study conducted by sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, they found that 97% of teenagers professed some sort of belief in the divine. 71% of those teenagers also agreed that they were “very” or “somewhat” close to God, and an overwhelming majority identified themselves as Christians. Contrary to public opinion—and the fear of many parents and churches around the nation—secularism does not appear on the rise in the United States. Celebration, however, would be premature. According to Ross Douthat, it’s not that we no longer have religion in this country. Instead, we have bad religion—which is the theme (and title) of Douthat’s latest book Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics.

For Douthat, the youngest ever New York Times op-ed columnist,  “America’s problem isn’t too much religion, or too little of it.” Bad religion, according to the author, is “the slow-motion collapse of traditional Christianity and the rise of a variety of destructive pseudo-Christianities in its place.” Chock full of telling anecdotes and history, Douthat surveys the rise and decline of mainline Protestantism in the United States, as well as the golden era of American Catholicism that reached its peak in the 1960’s.  For Catholics and Protestants alike, much of the twentieth century was defined by an individual or a family’s commitment to their particular faith tradition, which had a core understanding of orthodox beliefs and practices, dubbed by the Anglican C.S. Lewis as a mereChristianity. The problem today, however, is that most Americans are losing that center.

Continue reading...

Liturgical Diversity in the Third Millennium

Liturgical Diversity in the Third Millennium | Charles G. Mills | Homiletic & Pastoral Review

The liturgy in the West, today, is far richer than that set forth in the liturgical books promulgated by Pope Paul VI.

In the 1970s, it was generally assumed that the liturgical reform, called for by Vatican II, had taken its final shape with the publication of the new liturgical books. Recent events have shown clearly, however, that the liturgy in the West, today, is far richer than that set forth in the liturgical books promulgated by Pope Paul VI.

Recent decisions regarding the extraordinary or older form of the Roman Rite, the Anglican Catholic Rite, and the ancient rites of religious orders, opened the door to a rich variety of rites. In the 1970s, however, most insisted that, outside of a few places in Milan, Spain, and Portugal, there was only one way to celebrate a Latin or Western Mass: the Roman Rite of Paul VI. The flexibility of the newer, or ordinary form, of the Roman Rite has proven to be an inadequate substitute for a variety of rites.

The most important alternative to the ordinary form of the Roman Missal, promulgated by Paul VI, is the extraordinary or older form of the Roman Mass. This form of the Mass has a much more extensive, richer text of its ordinary parts. It has fewer Gospels, Epistles, and Lessons. Unlike the newer form, there is never both an Epistle and a Lesson on the same day. The older rubrics are much more detailed and strict than the newer ones. There are more allowed variations in the newer form than in the older one. Unlike the very flexible newer rite, there are a very limited number of forms the older right can take. The flexibility of the newer rite has not always been completely positive. The alternatives to the newer form of the Roman Rite are described below, with special attention to the older form of the Roman Rite, which is the only alternative most pastors will encounter.

Many people currently misunderstand what distinguishes the two forms of the Roman Mass.

Continue reading at www.HPRweb.com.

Catholic Education and Life Down Under

Catholic Education and Life Down Under | CWR Staff | Catholic World Press

An interview with Tracey Rowland, Dean of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Melbourne, Australia.

Dr. Tracey Rowland is Dean and Associate Professor of Political Philosophy and Continental Theology at the John Paul II Institute (Melbourne), a member of the Centre for Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham, and a member of the editorial board of the English-language edition of Communio, founded, among others, by Joseph Ratzinger. She is the author of Culture and the Thomist Tradition: After Vatican II (2003), Ratzinger’s Faith: The Theology of Benedict XVI (2008), and, most recently, Benedict XVI: A Guide for the Perplexed (2010). Catholic World Report interviewed her recently about the John Paul II Institute, the writings and thought of Blessed John Paul II, and the state of Catholicism in Australia.

CWR: Thirty years ago this October, Blessed John Paul II issued the apostolic constitution Magnum Matrimonii Sacramentum, promulgating the Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family, which today has campuses all over the world. What specific hopes and goals did he have for the institute?

Tracey Rowland: Blessed John Paul II hoped that the institute could undertake the academic work needed to defend marriage and family life. Most dioceses have pastoral agencies to help struggling families, but in the post-1968 intellectual climate it was no longer a simple case of providing pastoral support, but of intellectually defending the whole notion of marriage as something worthwhile in itself. 

Extensive research also needed to be undertaken in the ancillary fields of bioethics, sexuality education, natural family planning, taxation policies, and secularism. One could say that the mission of the institute was to undertake the intellectual work needed to promote a culture of life and a civilization of love.

CWR: This past summer marked the 10th anniversary of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and the Family in Melbourne. How did the institute come to be established in Australia? What has been your involvement with the school? 

Read the entire interview on www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Catholic feminist admits the CDF is right about wayward Sisters

by Carl E. Olson | Catholic World Report

After the CDF released a Doctrinal Assessment on April 18th focused on the renewal of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), various Catholics came out in support of the (supposedly) unfairly maligned sisters. Sure, the common line went, some problems exist here and there, but everyone knows women religious are almost uniformly selfless, dedicated, and orthodox. They are also, it was said, defenseless and stunned by the CDF's document. Further, the "attacks" on these aging sisters by the Vatican (or "Rome", or "the Pope", or "tyrannical, white men who can't jump") are not only based on wildly exaggerated and politically-motivated accusations, they reflect the sort of ultra-conservative, hyper-controlling, mega-authoritarian approach so common among bishops since the Second Vatican Council. 

Many disagreed, including myself (shocking, I know). More surprising is the disagreement of Catholic feminist and journalist Angela Bonavoglia, author of Good Catholic Girls: How Women Are Leading the Fight to Change the Church. In contrast to many of her progressive allies, Bonavoglia doesn't think women religious have been wrongly accused. Instead, she thinks the CDF is mostly on the mark in identifying the actions and beliefs of the LCWR leadership (and others), but that the CDF is completely wrong to think those actions and beliefs are anything but good, wholesome, and necessary. She writes, in a May 21st piece for The Nation titled, American Nuns: Guilty As Charged?:

After giving an obligatory nod to the sisters’ good works in schools, hospitals and social service agencies, the CDF devoted the remainder of its Doctrinal Assessment to attacking the sisters for failing to provide “allegiance of mind and heart to the Magisterium of the Bishops”; focusing on the “exercise of charity” instead of lambasting lesbians, gays, and women who use birth control or have an abortion; refusing to accept the ban on women’s ordination; allowing “dialogue” on contentious subjects; and tampering with the notion of God the “Father” while promulgating other “radical feminist” theological interpretations. The CDF’s solution: send in three men, an archbishop and two other bishops, to take control of LCWR for five years.

This led to an enormous outpouring of support to the sisters. But to anyone who has been watching the nuns closely, an unsettling observation emerges: these charges appear, in some measure, to be true. But that is not because, as the Assessment insists, LCWR has rejected “communion” with the church. Instead, it is evidence of a theological conflict that is raging in the Catholic Church, a conflict that most of us only notice when it spills over into American politics.

Bonavoglia is, of course, correct in situating the wayward beliefs and actions of certain women religious within a larger context. And she is right to point to a "theological conflict that is raging in the Catholic Church", even though I disagree with how she fleshes out that description—a description reliant on the same tired, and misleading "liberal vs. conservative" paradigm that has been in vogue since the time of the Council itself:

Continue reading on the Catholic World Report blog.

Mark Brumley's Pick of the Week: "a book every adult Catholic should read at least once..."

40% off Mark Brumley's Pick of the Week* I can't tell you my all-time-favorite Ignatius Press book because I have several "all-time favorites". Far be it from me to talk up one over the others. However, here's a book every adult Catholic should read at least once--Theology and Sanity by Frank Sheed, the famous author, publisher and street teacher.   Theology and Sanity is simply one of the best books on the Catholic faith ever written. Period. It offers clear thinking (sanity) when it comes to God and what he has created (everything else).    This book revolutionized my life when I first read it over thirty years ago. I was then an Evangelical Protestant and a fan of C.S. Lewis.  I challenged a Catholic friend to show me the Catholic Lewis. My friend handed me Theology and Sanity.   Frank Sheed was, like C.S. Lewis, a master of lucidity. It was Sheed who first led me to think seriously about Catholicism.   Theology and Sanity is Sheed's masterpiece. Don't be put off by the word "theology" in the title. This is no abstract, hifalutin tome.  Every word of it was "street tested" in Hyde Park and elsewhere, in Sheed's platform talks for the Catholic Evidence Guild and his inevitable encounters with the anti-Catholic hecklers.  You'll be shocked by how much Sheed makes theology make sense!  You won't look at the world in the same way after you've read this book.   Theology and Sanity is available in print and ebook format.  Plus, don’t miss Sheed's other books--Saints are not Sad, A Map of Life, and To Know Christ Jesus. Buy two copies--one for you to read and keep, and the other to give away to a friend or family member. *Employee Pick of the Week program features savings of 40% off a book, movie, or compact disc personally chosen and recommended by an Ignatius Press employee.  Each week, an Ignatius Press employee will select a favorite book, movie, or other Ignatius Press product and write a few sentences about why he/she thinks customers will enjoy the particular selection. A short bio of the selecting employee will also be included, giving customers a chance to learn a bit more about the people who are Ignatius Press. Email blast items below are not 40% off, but 20% off Mark Brumley is President of the Board of Directors of Guadalupe Associates and Chief Executive Officer for Ignatius Press. He also oversees magazines for Ignatius Press and is associate publisher of IgnatiusInsight.com.  His articles have appeared in a wide variety of publications.  Mark lives in Napa, California with his wife and children.

A most quotable day!

There have been a number of quotes worth noting and passing along regarding the many lawsuits against the HHS mandate. Let's begin with Timothy Cardinal Dolan, appearing today on "CBS This Morning:

Timothy Cardinal Dolan told "CBS This Morning" Tuesday that the compromise reached earlier this year is not sufficient because the exemptions made for churches are too restrictive.

"They tell us if you're really going be considered a church, if you're going to be really exempt from these demands of the government, well, you have to propagate your Catholic faith and everything you do, you can serve only Catholics and employ only Catholics," Dolan said.

"We're like, wait a minute, when did the government get in the business of defining for us the extent of our ministry," Dolan said. ...

Dolan also criticized Georgetown University's decision to invite Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to speak to graduates of its school of public policy last week because of her role in formulating the policy.

"Well, I do think that's a problem. Georgetown is the oldest Catholic university in the country. Part of Catholic identity is to be in union with the bishops," Dolan said.

"When they would invite someone that is so dramatically at odds with one of the central tenets of the faith, that does bother us," Dolan said.

Next, an excerpt from Mary Ann Glendon's WSJ essay, "Why the Bishops are Suing the U.S. Government":

Like most Americans, the bishops have long taken for granted the religious freedom that has enabled this nation's diverse religions to flourish in relative harmony. But over the past year they have become increasingly concerned about the erosion of conscience protections for church-related individuals and institutions. Their top-rated program for assistance to human trafficking victims was denied funding for refusing to provide "the full range of reproductive services," including abortion. For a time, Catholic Relief Services faced a similar threat to its international relief programs. The bishops fear religious liberty is becoming a second-class right. ...

More is at stake here than the mission of all churches, including the Catholic Church, to provide social services like health care and education to everyone regardless of creed, and to do so without compromising their beliefs. At the deepest level, we are witnessing an attack on the institutions of civil society that are essential to limited government and are important buffers between the citizen and the all-powerful state.

If religious providers of education, health care and social services are closed down or forced to become tools of administration policy, the government consolidates a monopoly over those essential services. As Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, put it, we are witnessing an effort to reduce religion to a private activity. "Never before," he said, "have we faced this kind of challenge to our ability to engage in the public square as people of faith."

And from George Weigel, writing at NRO yesterday:

This argument over the meaning of religious freedom was not initiated by the Catholic Church; it was initiated by an administration that seems to regard “religious freedom” as merely a privacy right to certain kinds of recreational activities (like worship). As in its international human-rights policy (which speaks exclusively of “freedom of worship”), the administration seems unwilling or unable to grasp an elementary truth: Religious convictions are community-forming, and those communities, like the individuals whose conscientious convictions form them, are the subject of genuine religious freedom.

While Obama supporters (including some Catholics) will contend that this is partisan politics, it isn’t — except insofar as the administration has made it so. It was the administration that refused to countenance Catholic concerns before and after the mandate was issued. It was the administration whose apologists (including Secretary Sebelius) bent every effort to turn what was clearly a religious-freedom issue into a “War on Women.” It has been the administration and its Senate allies, like Majority Leader Harry Reid, who have refused to enter into any sort of serious discussion aimed at mitigating Catholic concerns. It is the administration that seems willing to drive the Catholic Church out of health care, education, and social services if that is what is required to enforce the administration’s notions of “reproductive health” and “reproductive choice.” If the administration pays a price for this in November, it will have no one to blame except itself.

Read his entire piece, "The Mandate War". The fourth and final quote is from Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center:

The evening news broadcasts all but spiked the largest legal action in history to defend our constitutionally protected religious freedom. The May 21 editions of ABC’s World News and NBC’s Nightly News refused to report the fact that 43 Catholic dioceses and organizations filed a lawsuit on Monday against the Obama administration. CBS Evening News gave this historic news a mere 19 seconds of air time.

This is the worst bias by omission I have seen in the quarter century history of the Media Research Center. Every American knows about the Chinese communists withholding for 20 years the news that the US had landed on the moon, because it reflected poorly on the government. Our US media today are no different. They are now withholding news from the American people if it is harmful to the re-election of Barack Obama. ...

The fact is that the Catholic Church has unleashed legal Armageddon on the administration, promising ‘we will not comply’ with a health law that strips Catholics of their religious liberty. If this isn't 'news' then there's no such thing as news.

His entire post can be read on the News Busters site. I'm not too taken with the use of "Armageddon", but for those who are familiar with the Book of Revelation, it has a certain if strained viability.

Gay Marriage—Nothing New Under the Sun

Gay Marriage—Nothing New Under the Sun | Benjamin Wiker | Catholic World Report

Gay marriage and homosexuality were part of the moral landscape faced by the first Christians in Ancient Rome.

Given that the gay marriage agenda will be increasingly pressed upon Catholics by the state, we should be much more aware of what history has to teach us about gay marriage—given that we don’t want to be among those who, ignorant of history, blithely condemned themselves to repeat it.

Contrary to the popular view—both among proponents and opponents—gay marriage is not a new issue. It cannot be couched (by proponents) as a seamless advance on the civil rights movement, nor should it be understood (by opponents) as something that’s evil merely because it appears to them to be morally unprecedented.

Gay marriage was—surprise!—alive and well in Rome, celebrated even and especially by select emperors, a spin-off of the general cultural affirmation of Roman homosexuality. Gay marriage was, along with homosexuality, something the first Christians faced as part of the pagan moral darkness of their time.

What Christians are fighting against today, then, is not yet another sexual innovation peculiar to our “enlightened age,” but the return to pre-Christian, pagan sexual morality.

So, what was happening in ancient Rome? Homosexuality was just as widespread among the Romans as it was among the Greeks (a sign of which is that it was condoned even by the stolid Stoics). The Romans had adopted the pederasty of the Greeks (aimed, generally, at boys between the ages of 12 to 18). There was nothing shameful about such sexual relations among Romans, if the boy was not freeborn. Slaves, both male and female, were considered property, and that included sexual property.

But the Romans also extended homosexuality to adult men, even adult free men. And it is likely that this crossing of the line from child to adult, unfree to free—not homosexuality as such—was what affronted the more austere of the Roman moralists.

Continue reading this article at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

The Eminent Doctrine of St. John of Avila: A Most Dynamic Priesthood

The Eminent Doctrine of St. John of Avila: A Most Dynamic Priesthood | Brother John Paoletti, MIC | Homiletic & Pastoral Review

The prayer, work, and lifestyle of St. John of Avila provides an eminent doctrine for priests and seminarians: intense spiritual life, rooted in faith, coming first in the life of a priest, flowing from an interior union with Christ, consummated, and made real, on Calvary.

Pope Benedict XVI announced, to all the priests and seminarians gathered at World Youth Day in Madrid, that he will soon declare St. John of Avila a doctor of the Church. 1  We should not understand this event as an isolated occurrence.  In 2008, Pope Benedict declared the Year of St. Paul, and in doing so, turned our gaze to Christ crucified.  Soon thereafter, we celebrated the Year of the Priest, in which we recalled the great dignity of the sacred orders, and the example of St. John Marie Vianney.  Declaring St. John of Avila a Doctor of the Church, is yet another action taken by our Holy Father in his efforts to bring revival to the many priests in the third millennium.  It is, at the same time, a gift to the entire Church to have a new doctor from which to learn.

Doctors of the Church are distinguished in three ways: by eminent doctrine, by a life of significant sanctity, and by a declaration of the Church.  What does John of Avila (nicknamed “The Master”) have to contribute to the doctrine of the Church, and what can we learn by looking at the life he led?  These two questions of doctrine, and a living example, are not separate in his life.  The prayer, work and overall lifestyle of St. John provides an eminent doctrine for priests and seminarians on how an intense spiritual life, rooted in faith, comes first in the life of a priest, with everything flowing from this interior union with Christ—a union consummated, and made real, on Calvary.

The Rock of Faith
John of Avila (Jan 6, 1500 – May 10, 1559) was raised in a wealthy and religious family in southern Spain.  He began to study law but was unsatisfied dealing with the matters of the world, returning home to live the life of a hermit.  After three years of seclusion, he encountered a Franciscan friar who was passing through his town.  The friar told him that he had too many useful gifts to remain a hermit.  So, John left his hometown to study for the diocesan priesthood, being educated by the Dominicans.  After ordination, he desired to be a missionary in the Indies.  He was prevented from doing so by his local bishop.  He spent the rest of his life serving parishes, defending himself against the Inquisition, building seminaries and schools alongside the Jesuits, and offering exceptional spiritual direction to many people, including: St. Teresa of Avila, St. Peter of Alcantara, St. John of God, and St. Francis Borgia.

Read the entire essay at www.HPRweb.com.